Jared Easterling

Full episode transcript, auto-generated from the audio and lightly formatted (verbatim, not edited).

herbalife in the canyon [Music] [Music] only a small chisel [Applause] [Music] uh this building i actually don't know where this building's from hey do you know how old this building is that we're in late 1800s see what a gift it's actually pretty cool isn't it yeah oh it used to be a bank okay so like back there is a vault fault it's

not just for show you know you can actually go in there yeah that's where we hide the bodies okay you're not joking hey so before we started this uh you were talking about the latest recording process that you were going through and uh it was interesting to start hearing about the difference between like the rock recording process and then what you're doing

now like you said what you're doing now is um not quite as pre there's not as much pressure which was interesting to me like how does that feel yeah so going from rock to i guess this is country but it's still rock i'm still hitting the piss out of the drums you know what i mean in fact some of the guys get

upset if you call this country which i understand that oh really yeah not upset but just like we're not a country sure um there's just a lot less uh going on when i'm playing with this genre versus the other one so uh it's just not as technical so yeah pressure to have to play those technical parts okay um but just the way

that the whole process is done is different they're uh with the band i was in before we would do we'd program the drums out with guitar and kind of just build the song and it would be very demos it would be very demoed sounding and wouldn't be very um clean and then after that was all done that we'd record the vocals clean

everything up and then i would do drums afterwards right but with co what we're doing is i feel like if i had never been in music ever i feel like this is how most people would think about recording music you go in there as a band and you kind of just start putting ideas down you're playing uh you would play the songs

a certain way and then we'd try to change a part so i'd go in and redo drums we can kind of redo guitar it's all recorded separately which i don't know if most people know that's how most music is recorded these days um well what do you mean by separately like not recorded at the same time okay drums will be recorded and

then the guitar player will listen to that playback and record the guitar to that um yeah there just wasn't the pressure of like this has to be perfect this time you can kind of like have different uh different chances to keep playing through it yeah um i feel like that was a lot easier than the last band i was in so huh

do you feel like that might be more expressive like in an art sort of way um i guess the way my brain works it's kind of like you're combing through each pass okay we like the verse in this one but we like the chorus and this version better so you can kind of like comp you know put them together that way yeah

and it's um i don't i prefer to do it that way okay i don't know if i'm explaining that no you are yeah um but okay so for people that don't know so you're drumming for code now but the way you got there is pretty unique i don't think it's super normal for most country drummers because you already had a really successful

career in like a i guess like what you did before was kind of a niche genre it was metal it was heavy okay it was aggressive and it was it was fun it was something that i had been doing since high school so it just um it had been growing since then well didn't you start that band in high school or yeah

i was 17 senior in high school i just started playing music with some friends of mine and then um just never got smaller i guess i always told my parents because i know this is like it was kind of a weird thing to present your parents hey i'm playing in a metal band like we're going to try to make a living doing

this most parents wouldn't be i guess super stoked on that um but i just i always told them hey if this ever got smaller if this didn't seem realistic for me i just wouldn't do it anymore but it just kept growing yeah um you know fast forward to i think it was 2014 is when i met co and that whole group my

old roommate at the time he was their producer or still as their producer and they had recorded at our apartment back in fort worth and co was doing vocals in like the bathroom so the producer was your buddy yeah y'all have an apartment together in fort worth okay this is when he had just kind of started out okay uh his name is

taylor the producer taylor had recorded coe's cousin i think it was okay um and then co had heard that recording and said i would love would love to record with this guy too yeah so ended up coming over to the house i didn't know what texas country was never heard of it ever but you're from texas aren't you i am so that's

interesting it's weird i was one of those kids that just liked um you know what warped tour is yo yeah like warped tour kind of music just kind of alternative rock yeah kind of i had like a weird uh because i have like a sort of similar entrance into country music i didn't come from like rock or metal but i came from

like what taught me how to play the guitar and how to write songs wasn't necessarily country music like i grew to appreciate country and like folk okay uh maybe at like a little later moment but obviously growing up geographically around here country music is sort of just like around always so it's like you know every one of those songs like you could

play any george strait song it's like even when i what maybe wasn't super into that music initially i knew every song just because it's just part of your life you walk into a store and it's playing so i think that actually does start to have an impact on you know when you start creating something of your own there's some subconscious stuff that

starts coming through but then you know once i got past the idea of like being the best guitar player ever or having to just technically play the most difficult stuff to be good i could grow to appreciate some things where it's like wow that was just an interesting lyrical turn of phrase i feel like that's a that's a younger mentality that when

you first start people ask you what's the coolest thing you can play what's the craziest thing you can play and like that's where our brains are at the beginning yeah but then we think maybe what's the best song what's the most popular song that you can write i think that's it's a different challenge yeah right yeah it's like because you start hearing

from some of the best musicians i know it you know like the phrase it's like the notes you don't play rather than the ones you do play and it's sort of minimalism and that's when i started to grow appreciate the genre a little bit more but it is you know kind of interesting that you didn't hear about texas country like hardly at

all i used to be kind of embarrassed about that because of you know these guys are coming in and they're super nice and i do like the music sure um i wasn't trying to adapt to who they are but i was like i said i felt embarrassed a little bit that i didn't know who they were even know the genre but then

as time went on i'm like i thought you know like everyone has their own story i'm proud of where i came from i love the music that i used to listen to growing up um so it's i like taking uh my story and then kind of evolving it into theirs sure you know so well and i bet but there are some douche

bags that like are gonna just make you feel bad about it i just don't care oh i know dude just yeah don't even listen to them because they're douches they'll always be douches but they're you've probably encountered some guys like that some of them but most everyone's nice i don't let that stuff bother me i don't give them energy there's some purists

though well co deals with it yeah a lot i think that maybe helps me because i can see him doing his thing for sure him not caring at all yeah it's empowering yeah that's a good thing about being the drummer and not the vocalist is you can kind of like hide behind your vocals when you need to yeah this is his band

yeah dude hey bro but at the same time like no i'm in the band yeah i mean it depends when you want to pick in pictures yeah picture i'll sit in the front right three alcohol i'm here exactly you know how it goes yeah totally so uh so you said okay so you went on warp tour is that what you were gonna

tell me you asked me yeah i mean i have but i was i was saying that just to let you know like if the type of music that i'm coming from yeah kind of the screaming and like the breakdowns and the mosh pits yeah i just man so like even the guy that got us in touch yeah micah sitting over there uh

i mean we go back we've been buddy since we were 13 years old yeah and we he likes a lot of the music that i like and then he likes a lot of music that i'm not super crazy about but he's a drummer so i never had like the drumming thing and i can appreciate a lot of that music because of how

technically difficult it is but like when you're a singer and a songwriter and you're just trying to find like melody and lyrical turn of phrase i don't know man it's just it was always kind of difficult for me to get behind but like i skateboarded and i raced motocross and so like there was a lot of that music around i was gonna

bring that up a second ago the two big things two big sports i'm into are uh ufc and then motocross oh you did you race motocross i've ridden some but i was never i always got into the sport later dude so i was already like it's one of the craziest yeah it's one of the most insane things ever yeah i mean i'm

a big fan for real yeah still follow it i was listening to pull up and make something up here i don't even know what that was steve mathis yeah okay he used to wrench for um tim ferry that's like super old school isn't it this was yeah this is the right before ricky carmichael yeah around that timeframe heck yeah so uh do

you follow supercross yeah i'm going on uh next saturday yeah good morning yeah that's cool yeah heck yeah so ufc and motocross well yeah so the warp tour thing and rock and all that i mean they're heavily involved so something i would tell someone who's never been to like a metal show because i get it i know it's crazy i've heard this

for 15 years of the amount of time i was in this last man i get i've heard everything you just have to go to one the energy that you feel from that kind of show is unlike anything else really it's just so high energy and obviously when if a friend or my parents come to the show they're gonna be on the side

of the stage not gonna be in the crowd getting like uh trampled on sure but um it's just so intense it's like the most energy one can feel from like live music i feel like interesting but it's also a young man's game yo what do you mean um that's a big reason that i chose to move from that band to this band

because the oh that's funny what it does to your body when you're yeah playing that stuff is like it's hard okay i see what you're saying okay yeah okay i now know what you're saying yeah i feel like you just made it straight from playing yeah so that yeah it would wear you out yeah and i was thinking i don't know if

i want to be playing that kind of music is there actually physical like ramifications from playing that type of music for a really long time as a drummer um elbows i've had some friends that have been playing as long as i have that had to change the way that they physically hit the drums because they're like rotator cuffs it'll be like going

out on them and stuff like that i've never had any problems with it but i could just tell the difference in uh the next morning i wake up and i'm super sore and like um i'm sore for other reasons we just stay up late in that camp so yeah i'm just staying up playing scrabble that's it yeah maybe some uno or something

like that domino's uno oh no i like uno i know also played dominoes for the first time yeah like a couple weeks ago mexican train i played that one recently which uh had a little rooster on it was called mexican train and i was like i feel like this is probably gonna get cancelled yeah you know more than likely yeah i would

have i don't know what's gonna get canceled or what's not i feel like i know i'm safe i just discover new things every day that i'm supposed to be offended uh i'm working on it trying to get more offended but it's not it's not going well yeah okay so domino's uno not no not doing anything other than that late at night uh

so when you when you actually transitioned over to co that had to have been a heck of a process because that was essentially leaving the band that you started when you were in high school playing the type of music that you like loved yeah i never thought about um stopping the other band was called fit for a king i never stop thought

about stop playing for them stopping playing for them when covet happened the whole world stopped and ko's uh band he kept playing music he was allowed to play certain places because they could you could wear a mask and go to that kind of music concert but you can't go to a metal show and like you can't be really separated from people right

sure you're not sitting down at a metal show okay so well that's funny you say that because i would feel like most people their perspec perception of a co-show would be pretty wild right and but you can get away with sitting down or like being in what we did we had pods we would play like these minor league baseball fields and they

would have pots where you can fit like 10 people and they're six feet another pod ten people okay um so i agree with what you're saying but you can get away with having a concert like that and people still enjoy it got you a lot of concerts people will just rush to the front anyways yeah and the security can't really stop you

but sure fortunately things are basically back to normal now yeah with them with a metal show you can't get away with doing something like that i feel like unless you're metallica or something that big yeah i got you um so they just shut it down completely shut down dang we were actually in the studio we had recorded the last album that co

put out sellout and he said i was doing the drums on that album and um so you actually recorded on that record before you were touring with him yeah okay yeah i had done some of the half of the record before that harold saw high yeah and all of sellout um so the relationship was already there and taylor was producing that okay

cool yeah taylor has been in the in the picture since noise complaint i want to say that was 2015 or 16. yeah um so yeah i just i just called co one day and said hey like we've talked about me playing with you for a long time like let's pull that trigger because i'm not touring with my other band right and but

the initial conversation was i'll play with you until the world comes back and then when the world did come back i was having to try to manage both at the same time and that was just a nightmare i was literally like pulling my hair out how many dates uh was fit for a king doing [Music] um you mean like a year yeah

like roughly we did probably five or six months on the road okay yeah we're grounded so yeah it's a lot of shows yeah um but when fit for king would go on tour it'd be like a month at a time yeah you know i feel like with this world you kind of do a weekend yeah that is a different yeah i don't

know why that's why is it different i don't understand that i don't know either i mean if we're if we're referencing specifically texas country i guess most bands don't travel outside much outside of texas so it's just they're able to do it more like that maybe i don't know that's something i'm still figuring out because well yeah so because that's been a

struggle for me like with booking agents it's like i can't get anybody to get on board with the idea of like let's go just play shows and then be done with it just go play shows and be done with it yeah your body needs that rest but they want to do like this like it's like well uh a show here two shows

here and then two shows next weekend i'm like why can't we just like i and i can't get anybody but all these other genres that's like the way they do it and the way a lot of agents work i don't know why so i don't know why that seems so crazy i don't get it either i really don't um it seems like

i think it might be a geographic thing though because you guys traveled further within a king yeah i've been all over the world yeah band yeah so i think that's another thing with just i'm 31 so i'm not that old but like i've had a chance to go see everything and like it's not that i don't want to do that anymore but

i've seen it i'm like okay it'd be nice to just like yeah be able to come home more for sure but so like you're a road dog though yeah i love being on the road yeah there's nothing like it yeah man you were doing that all through your 20s yeah living the dream all over the world like how many different countries um

i did two i know the three european tours so all over europe i don't know how many countries we went to in europe but we did south africa in australia a few times japan canada we've been all over the place yeah how big of rooms would you all be playing in somewhere like australia um one of the tours we did over there

not that big i would say 500 capacity places okay you know we've just never been there before shoot to go all the way over there and play a 500 seater i think that's freaking crushing it if i can do that i'd like you know i wouldn't talk to people you know you're not worthy no it was cool it was um just that

country and in and of itself is awesome it's um i would relate it more to like california it's just very like yeah um young and free hotel vibe yeah it's expensive but australia is so beautiful uh what cities were y'all in um we did on the east side so australia has the same land mass as the u.s so it's pretty big but

it's like oh yeah but it's like 98 of it is uninhabitable yeah for sure so it's big but like you have to travel a long ways um we played like sydney melbourne um perth adelaide uh i honestly haven't been there since 2014 so it's been a while but uh i think we played like 10 different cities over there well so did y'all

sign like a uh did y'all get a label deal early on or yeah that being signed in 2012 2012 okay and then started touring full-time about 2013. yeah so it's been a hot minute for sure um but yeah we had we had a manager i think got signed to a record label and at the same time got a booking agent yeah or

like a better booking agent yeah you know because that's a hard thing to do is a record label it's hard for them to want to invest and you have other people haven't shown interest like why would we sign you there's no like booking agents trying to talk to you or there's no manager yeah it all feeds each other yeah it gives each

other credibility uh-huh so um but yeah it's been a while since we had signed that record deal and the ban is still assigned to the same label so yeah that's rare the relationship is really good i think that's rare i don't know about the more how do i refer to it sorry i'm an idiot like is it the like rock world metal

world metal rock is it vital it's probably similar the way that they work okay because i just don't know as much about that world in terms of labels and dynamics there i'm just i'm assuming that they work similarly i would have to think so um but what labels do is at the end of your contract before you have a chance to go

talk to other labels they give you a new deal and if you don't choose to go with that one then like they can revoke that deal and you have to work you have to basically like hope that other labels will offer you something better ah yeah so they've just always offered us a better deal the label that we were assigned to are

you seeing some more younger uh bands just try to do the diy independent thing a little bit more now or no i think a lot of bands think being signed means making it yeah but it doesn't it just means what a record label is it's basically like a bank they loan you money you go to the studio you do music videos preach

it and you have to pay all that money back preach it but the difference is you would hope that their record label knows that they're putting the money in the right places with whether most bands just don't know what to do so they're assuming that the label knows what to do but ultimately it's a bank what you could do is invest in

someone who knows how to how to uh put your money in the right places and then just go to the bank and get a loan out and the rates are way better yeah you know so the rates are waived totally oh yeah because they're a bank but the interest rate they charge you is insane yeah so yeah so that's reassuring so ko's

last record was called sellout i think it was a lot of people think oh he signed a deal with this record label they don't know what that means no it's just it's a bad a bad sounding thing plus when you hear somebody sign with a label you give this big broad they signed and it's like but dude all those deals are so

different oh yeah like cody johnson signing a dealer co-signing a deal is far different than some new young act going to nashville that nobody knows and signing the deal with warner i bet those deals look alive oh yeah it's just not the same thing yeah coastal has all like the creative control i think he just signed a distribution deal too exactly so

he had all the leverage before he even walked in there i'm not sure about cody johnson's deal but i'm assuming it was a similar thing yeah i mean because most of those acts like they're it's it at that point it becomes way more of like an acquisition or a merger than you know actually selling out and you know because like what you

said with fear if you're a young band going to nashville and trying to make it you're basically saying i don't even care about making money right now i just want to get popular and get i don't say famous but you want to get your name out there yeah like you said there's no leverage no leverage yeah but i think cody johnson and

co had leverage when they when they made those deals it seems like to me that now with the internet though at least there's some people that are starting to realize like i think you can probably do this on your own if you just get some little pieces to the puzzle moved in there with people that can help you in the right way

you don't need a label anymore right because you can go like direct to consumer i think yeah just in my world that's i think that's the way it's but there still is that deal that and you just want that help that it feels like a strong support behind you and you have a label that just it just honestly it sounds cooler i

guess to some people maybe not the other to everyone it for sure does i think it's valuable like yeah validation supporting hey i have this group of people behind me that are working to make me bigger and make me more successful it's still the same way with uh you know like radio or something where not to knock on radio but like you

could have millions and millions of streams on spotify and like from people all over the world and like you know when you say that to like your great aunt at the family reunion she's like okay but when you're like my song's on the radio they're like oh wow okay you're really doing it yeah it means something to them yeah but what it

objectively means is like not the same i feel i don't i don't know exactly how radio works but in my experience you pay people to put your music on the radio so it's like but most people don't know that yeah maybe not for everyone but just for the experience that i have it's you kind of have to pay to make that happen

yeah for the most part it's pay for play uh which goes sort of goes into my theory a little bit like a lot of artists a lot of musicians they kind of like don't want to do it themselves they like kind of want somebody to do it for them they like sort of want to go do the brown nosing and be like

i met this person they're going to make it happen for me rather than being like screw everybody i'm just going to do it yeah that's why i've always thought co was pretty dope because he's like dude i don't need nobody he had the balls to do i'm just gonna do it and do my thing yeah i like it like him or not

like it's him and he's doing his thing and like can't really argue what happens a lot of times is bands will play for so long and they get burnt out they get to the point where they're thinking well i'm either gonna sign a deal and maybe they'll help push me further to where i need to go or it's like they quit yeah

you know yeah i feel like it's rare that bands start and pop off instantly yeah so how many times did you all think about quitting there were two times i thought about quitting two like specifically two times yeah you answered that pretty quick yeah just there's right before we got signed i was like this just isn't going to happen but i didn't

have this these aspirations to be like a touring professional like making a living doing this i didn't just didn't have it what do you mean you didn't have the aspirations to do that was never my goal okay when i started a band was just to be a professional dr whatever you want to call it like to make a living doing this i

just wanted to play music with my friends and travel and uh and just be wild on the road you know what i mean like that's what i wanted to do and there was never much thought play dominoes play dominoes yeah or who knows crazy or no if you want to get real crazy play reverse uno you ever seen that i had not

seen that it's an off-brand one but okay i'll have to introduce it to you sometime um yeah i just didn't have those dreams and then so that was right before the band got signed and then in 2014 we put out another album that i just wasn't stoked on and when you put out an album you have to play those songs on the

road over and over and over so it was just it was music i wasn't passionate about how many albums had y'all done before 14 uh like three or four okay dang so y'all are already recorded a lot of music yeah we've been out there for a while interesting and then so you did a record that you just weren't super into like yeah

we went to this new producer who honestly the producer was great it just wasn't um we had just gotten a new bass player that also was helping with the singing it's no one's fault we just kind of like were thrown into the studio with not really the right material with this new singer it was like none of it was really cohesive yeah

it's no one's fault sure this is just my personal experience and my opinion maybe the other guys loved it you know so yeah i just didn't feel like um i was stoked to play those songs so i thought i had thought about quitting that the touring was just all right it wasn't uh wasn't our best year of playing music in what way

like crowd reaction or sizes of crowd or just the way y'all were playing i don't know if this is normal for musicians but i had like that whole year was a lull in my drumming just didn't feel good playing that was funny you did this you said it was a lull in my drumming i did do that i'm like i'm like it's

like it's like a lull in my guitar playing i feel like when i talk about music i always go always i don't know uh i wish i could play guitar but i can't it's better than like going to singing that would be weirder yeah i actually used to sing and play drums when the band started i was one of those guys yeah

did they why'd you stop did i was kind of just the guy who wanted to do it in the beginning but never thought i was like an insane singer i can just okay i can hold pitch all right and i was i was passionate about writing melodies and stuff like that so then when we got someone who was actually good at it

then i just stopped doing it oh okay does that make sense like a harmony guy no that was that guy was doing like the lead oh i know you were like singing yeah oh dang i know about like harmonies and everything like that yeah but i just wasn't uh and i'm honest about it you know i wasn't the best at it i

was just all right yeah you know i'm not like a i'm not definitely not like a lead singer caliber okay that's always been a weird thing like what makes actually somebody have like a lead singer's voice i always think it's uh it's just like uniqueness mm-hmm like there just has to be some sort of vocal quality or tone out or something making

stand out yeah that's and i think that's like across like most genres there has to be something that sort of sets it apart and there's also people who just sound good singing no matter what like i think john mayer is a good example he can just you can just sing the grocery list or like drake you know what i mean and it

just sounds good those were two so funny very different those are really funny ones to put back to back mayor and drake but i mean shoot they pop up in a dillards elevator yeah so you're gonna know who they are drake probably isn't in a dillards i bet you he is you think so i think so probably nowadays yeah it used to

be way more mayor though but mayor was probably like nordstrom yeah it's like a solid nordstrom rack thing yeah or a macy's that was a jc penny kid my mom would take me there dude who played at jcpenney this is before buble huh i feel like he's a good he'd be a jcpenny guy boobley oh yeah michael buble i don't know i

don't know why i was thinking that you were trying to say bieber oh i just was not thinking of michael buble for sure is a jcpenney macy's in christmas time oh yeah dude he's all over it she's probably on the walls those uh stand up posters for sure the full body posters hey so i went to nashville actually for the second time

and uh for a bachelor party not that long ago and like to go down broadway have you been to nashville i'm sure you have to go down broadway and everybody always rants and raves about like oh my gosh you can just stop in any bar and it's the most unbelievable talented person you've ever encountered and it's like no don't agree with that's

not true i have seen some a lot of talent a lot of talent there but i wouldn't say for sure but like the way people talk about it yeah it doesn't match up because i saw i heard some trash also heard some really great stuff um but these what do you call them they're like these roll out life-size versions of themselves yeah

with like all of their social media and criteria and like four-time best singing artists of east tennessee and it's just like oh my gosh and one person does this set for two hours plays whatever songs and then the next person rolls in like that dude rolls up rolls up his little thing the next guy rolls his one out plays like the same

set it's like the same songs i was just like this is unbelievable yeah some people just don't have that voice to make him stand out right i didn't have that voice and i realized it but some people just want it so bad and maybe their time is just not now but um a lot of people in nashville are trying to make it

dude well like you saying that you didn't really have the aspirations to just be huge or whatever be a star and play in the band and do all that you just wanted to play music and it was kind of more for the love of the game yeah it's more simple than i want to go out and like play arenas and i want

to be massive do this forever do you think that makes a difference sorry to cut you off i have to get this question out because i think it's super important do you think that makes a difference like on the back end probably where you're at now and where you're going like why you did it was not to just seek attention and to

just be cool do you think that makes a difference on like your happiness now i think it's something good to look back upon and think you know this is why i started it just because it was fun and like in my story my exact stories i just wanted to play drums and it's my favorite thing to do so like why don't i

just do this as long as i can so to me it's the simplicity of that thought is uh fun to look back upon yeah so like as opposed to somebody that is seeking some sort of just extra validation or attention and like that's what the ultimate goal is whether or not they're honest with themselves about that and then once maybe they get

that and it's like it's probably not going to satisfy them as much as they think and then it's ultimately going to go away two thoughts on that there's two perspectives one is like there's some of those people that have no shame and they'll post whatever and some of it's for validation i feel like i'm too aware i'm like oh people are going

to think i'm looking for validation so i don't post something okay right if it seems like it's they're too thirsty for that like those likes or like they're posting with a picture with this dude because he has a lot of followers you know what i mean i'm like oh very aware of that yeah i think some people just don't care i'm posting

this for likes i don't care i'm posting this for whatever for validation reasons and sometimes it works out and they keep climbing that ladder and um i feel like i'm more on the side of like i don't want them to think i'm trying too hard okay does that make sense yeah it does um i wouldn't say one's right or wrong it's just

right whatever you're uh more comfortable with yeah i mean i hate to sound too like artsy fartsy though like because i never really thought i'd be that person but it really does to me boil down to like you would be real happy just like playing drums with your buddies in a garage playing music like that would you would be super down with

that not now not well okay all right i get it i get it like we have to make a living and like yeah you know like have to make it realistic i understand that um but like from my perspective if i didn't if i didn't have anything happening in music i would i would still write songs yes and i would send them

to my buddies in an email mm-hmm we would go play poker on a friday night and they would give like they would tell me if it was cool or something the passion's there no matter what yeah but i think the older you get the more like you have responsibility now totally yeah sure yeah that's the difference but the goal it isn't like

necessarily just for attention right i think no not for me some people it is that's what that's what i mean and i think it ends up being empty for some people yeah because it's like they might even get it and then they're like oh well this wasn't actually as cool as i thought or and then they get it and then it goes

away and they're like oh boy no i'm super sad this is how i lost it yeah i know a lot of friends who have um you kind of find your validation in playing music and especially when you do it for so long i understand why they do that and i'm just i don't want to be that person i'm trying to like not

find my validation in oh this is the drummer of co-what so i don't want that to be a thing cool um i do like that's sure that's a thing but i'm saying i don't want to be no i don't i don't want to only be that person did you catch flack from like your genre because you were moving over and doing this

i don't feel like that was a normal transition what no it's kind of ironic because it happened to two other drummers at the same time i think that helped me feel better about it the drummer that's playing for john langston do you know him not personally yeah um i know i know john lanks do you know him or of him yeah anyways

his new drummer and then the drummer jelly roll we were all like we're in the same genre yeah and so we were all texting each other hey are you gonna like are you gonna quit to do this i'm like i don't know are you gonna do we had this like uh triangle conversation going on and um it was just it was nice

to be able to be to relate to someone else that was in the same position and it kind of all happened through covid so um yeah i didn't really catch flack you know i didn't care do you know what i mean because i was looking out for me sure and i wasn't screwing over my other band yeah you know i gave them

like months and months advance and i told them all the time hey this is what i'm thinking about i don't know if i'm going to do this tour with y'all you know what i mean i was very uh honest with them yeah and so the transition from that band was uh super easy yeah i didn't realize that there were some other guys

in that same genre that were doing it too is it just from is it a lot of it from kovid or is there something happening more than that or that's a good question i just i saw that it all happened during covid but that's why i did it i don't know if that's the exact reason that those guys chose to do it

that way yeah um i think it just opened the door for that to happen because when the matter world stopped there was no way to make money there's you can't fortunately our actually our record label gave us money during that time so that was sick for real yeah that was awesome of them but i don't know if the other band's labels did

that so i'm sure that they were yeah you know pressured to make money and so they were maybe feeling more pressure than i was yeah but the dirty little secret maybe not so dirty but uh is the streaming stuff like even some of the guys that maybe sign major label deals yeah i'm scared about major label deals i feel like they're so

cutthroat that's my guess yeah i've never signed one yeah if you're not if you're not aware of like how the world is working i think you can get yourself in a real pickle and then not even know you're getting screwed because the streaming deal changed it for sure and i get a little bit nervous sometimes when i talk to like some guys

that i know maybe like are on like maybe not a major label but labels and they signed like 2013 14 15. because it back then it like spotify apple music like a lot of the streaming wasn't taken off i think 2014 or so was when that really started yeah having a thing yeah and then even then they just didn't quite have the

infrastructure in place to like collect the revenue right so there was still like money being left on the table and i think i my theory is there's some guys that have signed some deals that they don't actually know how much revenue they're generating that's my theory because i'm not like i'm just doing my little thing and just trying to grow and build

you know and uh but like it's getting to a point where i'm like well damn i'd like make like a real little living over here like with my songwriting royalties and then i talked to some of these dudes who have like way more streams than me and they're like they're like yeah i mean you make some money on it and i just

have no idea like that something's not adding up here and i wonder if they're just not aware because if you're not seeing it come in so i mean i pray that they're not getting hosed but i think in about 10 years we're gonna have like the documentaries where just like back in the old deal where they got screwed on the record deals

there's bands all the time even like um actors who was the actor uh the comedian where his brother stole all his money because he was his manager oh shoot it was um well there's probably a bunch of them but dan cook dane cook was it really him yeah he got all of his money stolen brother yeah his own brother stole it yeah

he uses manager i've heard a lot of stories about their manager just taking advantage of the bands and stuff like that because bands just don't know what they're doing look man when i type in on my little digital distributor when i upload a song to the world wide webs and i type in on the distribution like the percentage the cuts of the

royalties i mean if you're the one filling that out it's as simple as just going zero percent 100 percent it's just right there on the little website page and they would never know or you just put them in for whatever 30 and then it just they get 30 and then if there's enough streams it would prob the 30 would probably be a

substantial amount of money and if the artist is constantly being fed oh there's no money in streaming there's no money in streaming then they would be like well i make a little bit so i'm doing pretty good there's no money in streaming anyways but then they're just i mean i don't know i hope not but it seems like the and it would

be so easy if you're the guy feeling in charge yeah not good that's not good well shoot hopefully i'm not telling you something that like no i've been through like horror story not with the money portion but like a small example is back and this is like back when the band was not big at all but because you kind of looked at

me and you were like well because my brain's turning it's not like i'm not accusing you oh no the one of our guitar players at the time uploaded the wrong mp3s and we printed all these cds and stuff like that and put it up like put this music up on like i think it was itunes or something and it was like the

demoed unmixed version we had spent all this money did i mean like that's where my brain went an honest mistake but it's like where do you where did you go from there this was like 2009. you know what i mean a long time ago oh dang it before like money was much of a thing for us um but yeah it was like

did you were you able to pull it all you obviously can't we didn't know it until we had sold cds at a concert like a physical copy and someone said hey is this supposed to be an instrumental it was super embarrassing but like at the same time like no one was there to double check him no one like asked questions it was

just an embarrassing thing so that's where my brain went more so than like someone's stealing sure but going back to like keeping your manager accountable that's important fit for king had this has had the same manager since 2010 and you still have like we're very close friends with him you still have to talk to him every now and then and say hey

like what are you doing for us sure can you like show us what you're physically doing yeah he's our homie sure like he's making a lot of money off the band so he shouldn't feel pressured by that question no and if some that man talk about a telltale sign if somebody's taking advantage of you if you ask for anything or like you

know what's up what do you got going on and they get defensive it's like okay like that should be a super easy uh if you are doing something you should be excited to answer that question i'm glad you asked i've been working on my ass yeah you guys don't freaking ever care what i'm doing you know i'm thank you for asking because

i'm killing it for you uh yeah when they get mad but yeah it seems like there maybe needs to be some sort of checks and balances within and that's probably any business you know it's like the accounting guy has to know that like the fi you know 100 i was actually talking to a guy today and um a pretty big artist from

around here and he was talking about how he uh he didn't feel like his manager like had any fire underneath his butt before like so he wants to he wants to work with someone who actually cares and someone who's willing to like maybe shop them to labels and um so he's asking he was asking me like hey do you know anyone that

could maybe potentially help us out and i just thought that was interesting how we're bringing it back up now it's how important it is for someone to believe in who you are and actually want to invest the time and energy into promoting you yeah how quickly after when you all started recording music how quickly did y'all sign we saw we started playing

music in 2007 signed in uh 2012. oh yeah so you had a grind for sure gosh dude played the worst shows for so long oh did you have a booking agent or no not till 2012. dude and that is such a tough one to be in guitar player just messages people here's how it used to work this will date me you get

on uh our guitar player get on myspace he would go to let's say there's a there's a band that is uh from dallas we were from east texas at the time in tyler there's a band from dallas were you born in tyler yeah one and raising tyler he would he would check and see if there's a band that's a similar size maybe

a little bigger in dallas he would say hey do you guys want a show swap or something like that and then that band would say hey there's a promoter in the area that we're friends with you should message him suddenly you play for you know 50 bucks 100 bucks however much it is starting out and like it's just a grind and it's

awful but at least that's when you like you're super hungry to play and you just love playing music so yeah that's when we become like top eight friends with whoever on myspace chopping you know what i mean yeah dang yeah so what you would put them in your top eight something like that i actually wasn't the person who would run the myspace

but it was it was kind of like yeah find friends from different areas that were a decent sized band or maybe a little bit bigger than yours or the same size and try to like grow your bands at the same pace yeah and then you just yeah you just grind it out man do you feel yeah i when i kind of yeah

we played a show for zero paid before no one oh yeah exposure bucks right yeah this is this is like right before we got signed and that was like one of the moments i was like dude i don't know if we can do this for real yeah and then so how did they find you was it like a guy that was at

a show or what have we got like an a r guy or something was like at a show or they just kind of got some of that maybe even seeing us we just had good uh good sales okay uh record sales yeah um it was also one of those things with the manager at the time or actually he wouldn't sign us the

manager wouldn't sign us because he said hey like you need to change this and this and then i'll like talk to you again about managing your band six months later we changed everything he asked he was like oh yeah you guys actually did what we actually do right and he helped us get signed you know what i mean so yeah we just

we wanted it we wanted to keep growing our band um and we weren't afraid to hear things that most fans maybe are afraid to hear so how about like your process and becoming how much better do you think you are as a drummer like now as opposed to when you started uh i think i'm a lot better i just think i just

think so just to compare metal to this country rock thing is like they're both technical to do um there's something challenging and playing something simple but playing it very well very clean versus like when there's a lot more hits to be played in metal it can almost it still sounds impressive but like it can be a little sloppy but still sound like

whoa how did he play that right sure versus if you play a simple beat but it sounds a little off it sounds off sure so there's a different challenge in that too and to me it's not as hard on your body but it's still fun to try to play awesome okay so do you backing up to your entry point into like drumming

playing with a real band getting signed to a label playing that type of music like would you ever see yourself saying that what you just said oh no i hated country but i was one of those like rebel kids sure yeah i was like if it's not like a little heavy if it doesn't have like high pitched singing or whatever it was

i was yeah it's not good but there would be no logic behind it i was just a teenager that was like you know a little rebellious and like i liked what i liked i remember so i started playing drums at church like the first drum set gig ever had was playing for the praise man yeah had like two kick drums set up

he was so over the top for sure way too much but yeah the dudes up there just lord got him oh yeah i was playing a little hard out dude it was great though but yeah i don't know i just definitely didn't like contour didn't like anything that was softer yep well that's funny that you brought up mayor i don't think big

john may i used to make fun of one of my friends in the praise band for like john mayer whoa and like dave matthews and all this stuff oh all bands well see that's a weird one though i can't understand mayor but like as a drummer if you hear a lot of dave matthews stuff it's like especially live yeah well carter beaufort

is an insane drummer i mean good gosh yeah anywhere golfing gloves i think so much no he just has it um but yeah i used to they used to talk [expletive] for sure even about dave matthews yeah it was i just it was there was no uh logic behind what i was saying it was just like oh this person is not what

i like so it's bad yeah you know well so when did that really start changing for you when i started writing and trying to make a living doing this you're like oh okay like it's not easy like people who like a worship song let's say there's like three chords the whole song anyone can do that you know it's like three chords we'll

just write one then when you start trying to write like oh wow like okay this is hard okay so it was like humbled by just like doing it yeah trying to do it yeah so you like to write too yeah i do like i like that process a lot yeah i heard you mentioned that you really dig like melody or chasing down

melodies i've always been a melody guy versus like in metal specifically there's like a melodic version of metal and there's also like just heavy riffs dude that is my number one knock on that music what the so like even um what the heck is that song it's one of y'all's biggest songs uh oh i'm gonna freaking i just listened to it earlier

what the heck is that um grip uh what the heck death grip yeah um it's like that little chorus melody is super dope it's nothing crazy it's like pretty simple but i love like the minimalist i do too like even taylor swift's deal where she'll do like those one note verse melodies because then it like gives you the ability to take the

chorus and really do something special right really make it pop um but then it's like man i don't know it's like the scream just that's the part you can't get on i just i don't that's like that's not weird it's not no who cares but i want to like it i want to like maybe go to a live show i for sure

need to yeah even if you don't like it then at least you know okay i tried it so i like it you know what i mean um yeah there's certain things that works with there's some things you just can't come back from like there's some things you can't try i'd you're very reverse uno no but with metal i just i prefer like

the melody and guitars versus like the super heavy chugging and like the riffing yeah which i like both at this point but yeah at the time is i just i preferred the melody okay yeah what how do melodies typically so did you ride a bunch for a king like you wrote a lot of those songs yeah okay i was the one keeping

it more simple honestly like i prefer like to make it more digestible versus a lot of metals like what's happening here and which is cool it's its own thing but i liked it to like i like you to be able to know where every part's at you don't have to worry about what timing is this how can i bob my head to

this weird timing music i was like you know four or four yeah dude just make this groove yeah pop music kinda i guess yeah every genre has it man yeah like pop to me is not a dirty word pop country is very different that's a dirty word yeah like because most of that stuff's just trash yeah absolute trash but i just mean

in the sense of like just because a lot of people like it doesn't mean it's bad you know um like i think there's something to doing something that the masses like that's saying i mean that's kind of the point of art in some ways like you're going to tell me some of the biggest songs of all time that was me telling people

that country was bad when i was younger like i just had didn't have any logic behind it i just said it was bad because it wasn't what i liked yeah but like you just said if that many people like it how can it be bad like it's it maybe isn't as intellectually written you know it's not as like detailed but like it

can still be good yeah it may not be your thing man there's just something to me that is so intriguing and endearing a musician that you know could just rip your face off and then they don't and they just play something that's just yeah i think john mayer is a good example of that right for sure yeah he's such a great example

and he talks about it and i love how his records i'm a huge john mayer fan and his records like he doesn't have these huge solo sections for the most part like with guitars he chooses these super melodic like serve the song type bridge section solo sections and then live he's able to like extend that and then really like dig in live

i've never seen him live for real everyone tells me how insane their live show is oh dude it's so incredible to see it yeah we've seen him a few times like seen him in dallas and saw him out in vegas one time that way yeah his killer does he play stadiums is he that big or is it like arenas what size venues

yeah arenas he doesn't play stadiums i don't think maybe he had no but he's not that big which that's interesting that he hasn't gotten to that point because in my mind he's huge same uh but yeah then there's that whole other level of a stadium dude like what did we bring up morgan while on yet how big is that dude now he's

playing stadium stadiums and uh i mean what do you think about it i like his music i got no shame his voice is awesome to me oh yeah it's so gritty though it's so hit and miss for me though that's fair like he'll do something that i'm like this is so good and then there will be a next one it's got a

trap beat on it and i'm like sure because i don't like rap music with a trap beat i hate that stupid hi-hat i know exactly we're talking about it's just like everybody did it and that's just annoying now it's just an annoying sound to me we would never do anything like that but i understand why you don't like it but like i'll

have another one that's really good yeah i get why people do like it though it's maybe a sense of uh familiarity with rap or something i don't know not your thing though no the tr the hi-hat thing and it's an unnatural sound but even i like i like a lot of programmed drum sounds like i'm super into 80s music like guys pop

and stuff like some of those drum sounds are the most ridiculous sounds ever dude i love the 80s but i love them snares [Music] it's the splashiest most ridiculous thing ever yeah uh love it so like most uh musicians i'm like just kind of all over the map you really can't even it's just that's why it's just all kind of opinion at

some point so it's hard to knock somebody too much i'm the same as you have a wide spectrum of music that i like but i didn't used to remember i used to talk [expletive] on some bands just because they weren't what i liked yeah but how you and i write music now it's like you grow an appreciation for um other genres for

sure that's i'm not hating i'm organ i actually like his music but i can understand how everyone doesn't like it yeah you can't deny his voice though that dude's got a killer voice and he does get in he gets in some freaking super good songs uh country starts to frustrate me at some point because it starts to become really pandering like obviously

like dirt roads and beer jean shorts and all it's like that's not like i'm a horseshoer my wife trains barrel horses okay and we have a horse ranch it's like i'm i am and like the people i hang out with like rodeo and ride bulls and like it like we're what they're i guess they're trying to like say that they yeah and

it's like no i don't want to roll in the hay with my wife i don't want to do that at all i don't even want to see hey yeah you know yeah and uh and it's just it's the same way a politician goes around and like they go do a thing a campaign in georgia and they start talking a little bit slower

you know and it's like dude please give me a break stop it's painful yeah it's just pandering and country seems to be one maybe not it seems like one of the only ones that kind of does that where it becomes such a cultural thing well with metal you just talk about the most brutal intense things you can think about it's something yeah

literally you can say anything like lyrics don't have to make sense sometimes i wouldn't say that with my band with my old band but like um i feel like a lot of bands their lyrics just don't make sense but it sounds heavy and it sounds they're really intense so people like it yeah i guess yeah so it probably does it probably does

exist like in every genre where they just yeah because it does become like a little microcosm for just whatever everybody's into is just kind of what you pander to and then there's one person that comes through and just like does something totally out of the mold and then that's the new thing i guess exactly what co did it is like everybody was

like poo in him and i guess that some people still kind of do uh that's what the more attraction you get the more people are gonna try to bring you down when you're small people like don't talk crap on you they just i mean why would they but when you get bigger it's like oh this record is different from this record he's

not good anymore or you know whatever it may be so i think that's always going to be a thing did that happen to y'all at all with fit for a king like do you all catch that kind of stuff um i would say so for us it was like the first record did really well second one every record got the band bigger

but the uh the angle of growth it was like here and then the next one like really blew the band up or yeah they blew the band up but there was a significant difference in growth yeah like the third one on yeah kids who are like starting out and maybe not even necessarily need to be a drummer and stuff like what do

you think is the best way to like really start getting some traction and making something happen in today's day and age like with playing music uh first off just practice like literally play your instrument because there's nothing else that can replace that you can't like watch videos and like get better you could like physically play the drums um doing that being connected

and like the uh the scene whatever scene that you want to be in just be connected talk with people and like be likable you don't have to be fake but just like don't be an [expletive] you know totally be someone that people want to be around those are really important things um that's a really important one it really is being somebody that

people like to be around but yeah those are probably too big don't try to be somebody that people like to be around or getting yeah be yourself just like i guess when you're younger and like developing those skills like definitely have that in the back of your mind yeah i didn't realize that until um like six years ago that's when something just

hit and i was like yeah like i know a lot of drummers that are awesome why aren't they getting these gigs i don't understand oh because no that happens legitimately yeah that's a huge part of it yeah especially if you're going to play that many shows like you're freaking you're running down the road in a van or a bus with these dudes

like if you're not cool it's not going to be worth their time you want to be with you no dude like you so many more people that would are going to put in the effort to make that happen dude in like a vibe on stage maybe not as much i don't know like i'm probably kind of like you know talking out of

place uh but like probably a more programmed show that's it's not even about being on click but like if you have a lot of stems and like a lot of like a full production yeah exactly so if you have a big production like that it's much more it seems much more uh just you know predetermined in some ways there's not quite as

much free flowing or like room to ad lib sure so maybe in that world it's not as important to have like a good vibe on sleep playing wise yeah most the time on the road is not playing for sure remember yeah for sure but what i was gonna say is like maybe playing a little bit more unscripted live show dude that chemistry

on stage is like so important so even if some dude might be technically more proficient of a musician like if he was complaining about dinner and complaining about this and being just rude to somebody and then you got to get on stage and like look at him and like act like you're into it and just like it's draining for sure because you

just gotta fake it yeah it just creates a bad vibe so yeah definitely being a good hang that's such an important thing how do you be a good hang you just don't get in the way don't like don't be mean to people i don't know like be positive yeah you know like no one wants to be around someone who's like you just

said oh the food sucks today yeah like just always a downer i don't know just try to be happy and try to like be nice to people yeah so you got to play like get good at your instrument pull up and like how long did you play before you were like i think i could like do this in front of people and

kind of um like i said i started playing drums in church so i was always kind of kind of playing in front of people i was on the drumline though before that in school okay and i was like i was pretty good on that drumline dude yeah freaking nick cannon over here it kind of was kind of like nick cannon so that's

probably where i gained some confidence in drums in general and then my brother was a worship leader my older brother okay so he like he was a he's awesome to me he always like made sure his friends thought i was super cool when i really wasn't he would just like be a homie really he would just say yo look how good my

brother is even if i wasn't good yeah his friends were like oh yeah he's really good whoa what i mean yeah he like kind of instilled some confidence in me um when he didn't have to that's cool yeah so are y'all's still pretty tight yeah yes he's in california i don't get to see him too often but what's he do out there

he's an engineer a civil engineer yeah he's small cali oh yeah he's san francisco it's like the second most expensive city to live in the country uh he's doing great though yeah married and stuff got kids and all that no kids no kids mm-hmm crushing it though oh yeah that's cool does he still play at all i don't think so i think

he'd more he'd be more of like a it's late on the patio plan acoustic kind of thing but not like playing in front of people sure yeah but he was the smart one i was just like the creative one i would say i always liked writing music maybe more so than he did so i just kept doing it yeah dude so you

gotta play grind it out yeah you have to play consistently if you stop playing even for a couple weeks there's gonna be like a lull in your playing so for example we yeah with co we're gonna have some shows starting i think on march the 3rd and uh so two weeks before that play every day play for an hour every day before

that starts so that when the when the shows are happening you're starting sharp you don't want to use those shows to start sharpening yourself because then the first shows won't be as ever as good as they can be yeah dude right there's little thoughts like that i think some people don't think about for sure yeah lots of little like ideas that i've

kind of come up with over the years maybe that's common sense but to me it wasn't no because it takes discipline yeah and there's there i think it's like most successful people they probably do things throughout their day that might seem mundane and pointless to others but it's like purposeful and it might not be of some big extravagant process but they like

do something every single day to like achieve this dude something i saw parker mccollum do he like reads a lot of books really i don't like reading yeah but i remember he's getting on that audio talking to him about that and i was like he was just explaining me how it like widens his vocabulary like it makes his perspective change on things

not like not even like political or religious things just like just opens his mind yeah i was like man i should probably start reading books dude they say something about because i hate reading too and it seems so inefficient with my time like i could listen to an audio book and drive and like work do whatever and i could be listening to

it but supposedly there's some sort of research uh on like the physical act of reading it that somehow stimulates something i know that sounded super scientific but it was next week on ted talk yeah i mean like i'm going to have to go so something scientific happens okay so first deal is like you kind of play your instrument second uh we'll be

a good hang you got to be a good hang on it sounds so simple did you play sports i played baseball in tennis for hello um i was like on like coach pitch and then like i didn't play t-ball in baseball but basically when i was like five or so i started playing baseball but you were like hanging out with people and

in social interactions with other kids and stuff quite a bit a lot yeah because maybe because that being a good hang man i don't know plus i'm uh one of four kids in the family so there's always siblings around you know it seems like some of it might just come from getting called out on stuff like probably because if you're a bad

hang like whether in your family or on like a sports team you're gonna pretty quickly start realizing i do these things and people don't like me and don't want to be around me but i guess if you never around anybody to learn that then you just keep yeah and then you just become a badass on that same token imagine like some of

the younger kids right now who had that whole year of covet where they couldn't hang out with anyone i bet you that stunted some of their vocabulary son of some of their like their ability to talk to people hey i feel bad for him i think it's gonna be real bad because you already have i'm not like in anti-video games or like

i do think that there might need to be some sort if you're sitting in your room for 12 hours a day doing it like it's gonna be a problem were you a video game kid it was like a social thing like let's all play madden sure you know i play with my buddies or yeah like call of duty and halo but you

would do it with your friends and you would compete talk trash yeah and i never was super into like fantasy stuff like by myself uh which there might be a difference there it was more like my buddy comes over and we played video halo parties or something like totally yeah but it was to me that was not a lot different than playing

a board game with your friends or playing cards or something yeah but it was an activity together i never played video games through maybe at the end of high school yeah like you said the mad and they're like the halo parties and stuff like that i would just go outside and build jumps for my bike just oh for years it'll be hours

and hours and hours don't have to talk to anyone i did a lot of that too yeah dude freaking yeah we had trails out behind the house yeah build little kickers and all that kind of stuff that's the best yeah i freaking wreck my ribs just oh yeah did you get pretty good i mean i was never like insane i just had

so much fun doing it yeah i would like build the biggest jumps i could possibly build for like how much speed i could get and i would wad all the time i just came home bloody you know oh yeah everywhere but i just had fun doing it yeah dude skateboarding bmx motocross do you ever wakeboard you know wakeboarding i've been before i'm

not awesome at it but i have fun yeah i love that too it's crazy the older you get the more it's like man my legs gonna be tired afterwards and go home be sore yeah but when you're young you don't think about any of that no and it has seems to have i think it's like after 25 maybe so you just start

becoming even a little bit more everybody tells you that and then one day you kind of wake up and you're like i'm sore today yeah like i heard very sore started playing uh i played like a little bit of college basketball and uh i started playing basketball again like three months ago or something and like the first two pickup games i played

dude i it was bad i thought i was going to die no i couldn't move the next day and it was a funny moment to have you know 17 16 17 18 year old kids like i was intimidated you know and i'd be like man you know what i hope they pick me oh no it was like that i'm like the old

guy yeah i hope that you're tall though i'm sure you were picked pretty quick sorta you know but they're like we don't know him it's probably the things that you don't even realize they're like why is he wearing those shoes oh no you know it's like the things you don't know and they're like he's wearing his socks like you know like that

went out of style yeah years ago you don't know you know i'm walking in there thinking it's still cool that got me thinking about the last time i played i didn't play in high school or anything like that but um i played a pickup game with some guys that worked at the gym i was going to and these guys are very unathletic

and i remember like one of the dudes like they're so unathletic like if you were to play with someone who's like decent like they know how to move their body the right way and stuff like that these people like were throwing bows like didn't know where things were going to go somewhere elbowed me right in the face i was just like i

can't be playing basketball with these people you know what i mean i actually really haven't played much since then i think they like chipped my tooth or something good grief it just wasn't worth it they're just so out of control yeah dude then you get hurt not good no not even a little bit i get so frustrated i was screaming at little

kids not good for me no wrong we scream at little kids no i had to work on that for sure but their parents don't yell at them so okay you know what i mean so i feel like it's my job set them straight you know thump them on the nose dude be better oh grandpa oh g paul had that freaking big old

ring just whop you right on the head i mean how somebody could generate such force to the forehead dude just dance for me when i was in church my dad wouldn't let me sleep he wouldn't let me like chew gum focus he liked to shoot gum for real but it was uh on the bulletin i would just count god and jesus how

many times the preacher would say god or jesus so if i wasn't like paying attention he would flip me on or thump me on the back of the head it would hurt so bad yeah dude [Music] i at least got to lay down dude that's my bucket list that's on my bucket list i don't care how old i am i'm laying down

i'm gonna fall asleep sprawled out the entire way dude let's go do that i'm super dude i'll do it with you let's do it um but i'm going to chew gum that's going to be mine oh because you couldn't cheat so that's funny like i was allowed to lay down and like sleep not chew gum but did smack or what probably okay

uh i was stoked for the gum mom gum it probably was because we would be loud yeah at least if i was sleeping it was like okay these kids nowadays have ipads like playing angry birds you know what i mean like yeah you had to write at least you were writing down god and jesus you know what i mean you know what's

funny about uh things when you have to be quiet or when things are the funniest so i remember my sister would sit next to me and that would i would draw her but it'll be like making her look super stupid or whatever it was he'd make her look super like massive eyes whatever it would be and then we just try not to

laugh but it's like the hardest to not laugh oh for sure and you're supposed to be quiet and that might be that or a funeral oh yeah funeral is a little darker it's a little more uh darker yeah i don't think i've ever had that happen i think i might have oh for real when i was younger yeah i don't know why

i felt like i had to whisper because we were talking about being quiet oh my gosh what was the funeral one i just to me it sounds like something that would have happened i can't remember a specific time i used to go to funerals all the time my parents would just take me to these things i didn't want to go like for

people at the church yeah they're invested into the church yeah so that maybe that's another reason that i'm i guess able to be more social with people i've just always had to talk to people um yeah for sure my mom can talk to a brick wall really yeah like she's uh like she's good at talking or she just starts likes it yeah

okay she's good at talking she's a good conversationalist she's not just like no she's great i'm saying she can talk to uh to anyone okay because there's some of those people that they're like a jack russell terrier you know what i mean i didn't know what you're saying you know like a jack russell on meth mm-hmm you know not your mom my

mom is not that i don't think no mom is not she has wine some sometimes uh she has one sometimes hey so uh y'all start touring in a couple weeks in the spring right or in march the third i think yeah okay or first where's that first one independence uh kansas okay just outside of st louis and this will be nationwide right

um yeah the shows are almost every weekend through july okay that's when we have the uh the dates booked through i'm not sure if they're gonna they're probably a bit more but yeah as of now it's through july yeah so do you have other projects or anything else that like people need to go check out or follow or anything like that other

than um no not really every once in a while i'll record drums for other bands okay but um like i said we just got back from recording co's record so i've had these last few weeks to just lay low and do things like this you know what i mean for sure but yeah i don't have anything else as of now hell yeah

dude uh do you have a third advice for uh you had your first two advices for the young musician what's your third one um you don't have to have no i the first thing that popped into my head was um be able to take advice from people you know there's there are so many bands i've talked to that are younger that i'm

not saying what i have is like the perfect advice ever but i just i've given so many bands advice that i think that are easy things to do that they just choose to not do them and then i'd see them all break up i don't know i'm not saying i have all the answers but just be able to take advice from people

maybe people that you look up to or someone that's more successful than you are yeah you know so yeah be able to take correction mm-hmm heck yeah dude that's super important i would say so it takes a certain element of just being humble enough to hear it mm-hmm yeah i feel like when i was younger i didn't want to hear i just

thought my music is good and this music is bad which come to find out it was pretty much the opposite right that's interesting so you when was there a certain point that you were like willing to take some sort of criticism um i just think after a while after touring a little bit and seeing bands become more successful i was like okay

well there's a there's something that they're doing there's something that's working for them i think just kind of like evaluating other bands yeah in other bands success yeah i can't tell you when that happened probably 2010 or 11 something like that yeah that seems like one of the most important things heck yeah dude well cool everybody go see a show with co

and i need to go to a rock concert with you dude i'll take you to one what will we go to um i'll send you a list of things that you can choose from can we really i'm not messing around let's go yeah i would love to take you to a fit for a kingdom one but we won't be here when they're

playing in dallas oh okay unfortunately but dude co is pretty much a rock show yeah pretty much i don't play with a shirt on it's spitting water so you get after it oh i just do my same thing yeah oh so and that's totally something that he wanted to bring in i'm sure so yeah i didn't he didn't tell me so i

was like oh foreign that makes sense though because it's like i actually heard mayor say that when he was going on sessions playing guitar for guys it kind of got in his head because he's like well what do they want me to do and he's like well if they asked me to come play they probably just want me to do me mm-hmm

you know so i'm sure if he asks you he's just like i didn't realize that yeah i tried to just do what i thought was the right thing to do or i thought was the thing that he wanted but now i just i think part of the reason that he wanted me to play was because i was just doing me totally yeah

dude so well i think well you need to find yeah uh i'm sure it is that's my that's my moral support thank you i'm gonna receive that yeah i'm sure he did well find a find a rock show for us to go to i got you go but i don't know how to do it no i'll make sure that you have all

liked it i'll hold your hand you know what don't walk here you're gonna get punched in the face you know what i mean totally i'm wearing my cowboy hat yeah i almost work happy boots here but i thought you know what i just got a pair because i'm trying to you know heck yeah dude what'd you get there's a pair of justin's

yeah well ostrich i like yeah full quill heck yeah i don't even know what that all that means somebody just told me what to get she said it man you know come on now you know you're in the club yeah i'll have to dress up like uh i'll get you some skinny jeans and black can you not do it hold on give

me a second just give me a minute i'm gonna have you can do it honestly just wear all black you could do that yeah so i can do that but at the same time there's something good about standing out so maybe you can still wear the cowboy hat dude i wear my i have black wranglers and i mean i starch those suckers

up oh yeah creases down the middle was it called heavy starch is that a thing man i live at the dry cleaners if you looked at my dry cleaning bill oh my unbelievable you have like a subscription dude my chest my jeans like you could stand them like in the corner they would just stand aggressive sounds like uh i don't know like

you can flick them they're like a diving board dude i owned my first pair one of my best friends got married and that's why i bought the pair of boots he said you have to we have to wear these boots you have to have these uh heavy starch jeans and like just like a button-up heck yeah dude and it was the same

thing i was like dude i can't even move wearing these jeans right now yeah but i mean like i said i'm used to wearing skinny jeans but it's different starch is different for sure it is it is such an absurd thing like really when people are like why do you do that i'm like i don't know i love it i love it's

just i don't know it's just totally one of those ridiculous cultural things yeah and it's just like that's just what you do it looks good i guess the pants look nice might have holes in them yeah i'll wear my black starchies okay would i would probably would somebody punch me if i were a cowboy hat of course you're bigger than everyone no

one's gonna punch you okay well that's good i don't want to get hit i just want to hear the music just be nice be likable right we're going to have to do things be a good hang on a good hank we could hang i'm going to walk in there like a little jack russell yeah there you go oh no get this guy

out of here this guy's a cowboy hat all right cool man i appreciate it thanks for coming thanks for having me this is fun y'all go check out adios [Music]