Unknown: Bitcoin is so volatile. Yeah, there are days, there are
weeks that I've lost $40,000 but
then it comes back up. He's got to keep the faith. It's day to
day. Could be so are you gonna get, are you gonna get into any
of that? That's
not my thing, man. My wife's a tax accountant. She's all about
the safe investments. You know, safe, yeah,
store value. Well,
you guys are younger, so you can go a little bit more aggressive.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah, we can still take the risks. Nice. She's a tax
accountant. Yeah, she's
taking on new clients. No, why not? She? She works
for the business management on the firm, does
she? Yeah, we know where she works and everything. Yeah,
amazing.
Because, I mean, they're in demand right now? Yeah, yeah.
It's they may not be in demand if the IRS goes away, which I
pray for the day that comes, it would be
nice to save that amount of money in taxes every year. Oh,
god. What would you do with it? You could do home improvements.
You could stick it in your IRA, and
imagine the economy that's taken off and rip roaring, because I
have to worry about freaking April 14. But I think you would.
You want me to go on my IRS tirade again, I will. I think
it'd be sometime before that actually happens where we
abolish taxes. It's good, oh, it's not gonna be.
We're not abolishing taxes. We're just changing the
framework of how we get the taxes.
I know, but I think it's gonna be some time. I don't know. It's
even with the best joke of it,
of a pen man, he's me. He's making changes with that
executive those executive orders pretty quickly. He you're
talking
about anyway, this is the rich Redmond show.
Well, I've been doing it, you know, you're doing the spiky,
yeah, but where it's shaved around everywhere. Now I'm doing
the, I'm gonna try to do the Grayson or whatever his last
name is, where it's just all kind of like
you should grow a, you should do a neck beard. Grow a grow just a
big old bush shoulder. Start being like a competitive
bearder. I think
this would be, did you eat all of your things? Because we can
use these as shakers. Yeah, dude, what do you think
competitive beer, competitive bearder. That's probably already
a thing, it
is? It totally is. There's one of the guys that works for us,
does it? He's got a big old beard. Beards
are so Did
you ever do it? No, I can't look at me. I
do have a baby face, which is nice. And, you know, the funny
thing, Jim is, I
love the fact you look great with the more hair. I think you
should do the, you know, a beard with the Antonio Banderas. What
you say, I'm making you like me with the more hair. Yeah,
thanks, babe. You got the more hair, and then slick it back in
a ponytail and look like, you know, a Venezuelan gangster.
Well, what's
great about growing it out, bro, is that when my band is back in
action one five or six weeks from now, I'll be ready, dude,
I'll be like, I tell all the kids, you don't have to get
ready if you stay ready. So I got the sticks in my hands, you
know, I'm, have
you been, uh, shaking the rust off? I
mean, I'm busy teaching. So I got the sticks in my hands. You
know, that's good. Well,
you always got the kid here if you need to. You know, don't
want to work and bang on those drums all
day. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, I know I gotta get the studio together.
Why? Because I'm chasing the youth. Man. Today's guest, I
tell you what we always talk about reinventing and today is a
prime example of someone who has the same background. Of me went
to the same school, studied with the same guys. Probably had some
similar interests, similar influences. We moved to the same
city, one generation apart, and he's doing the thing. It's
amazing, but then he decides he wants to do something else, and
he's incredible at it. Who am I talking about? Talking about Ben
Jackson. Ben Jackson is our guest today on the rich Redmond
show, where we talk about music and motivation and success and
drums and whatever comes up along the way. He's from
Atlanta. He moved to Nashville in oh eight at the tender age of
24 he's played for people like Aaron Tippin. Remember building
the bike Frankie Ballard, love Frankie Ballard, I played some
shaker and tambourine on his records. On that tour, they
opened for Bob Seeger with John Brewer from Grand Funk Railroad
on the drum. So he's going to tell us how they got to visit
and know each other. Hope they did. I also played with guys
like Greg Bates, Joe Nichols halfway to hazard. We share that
credit. Yeah. Ben, how are you? Man, welcome aboard. Man, good
to be here. Thanks for having me. Man, well,
I tell you what, you deserve to be here, and you probably win
the award for most traveled. Well, we did have a gentleman
that drove from Chattanooga yesterday, but all the way from
Mount Juliet, that's an hour, yeah, and then we had to kill
some time. I got two tacos, and you've been so patient, and
thank you all good.
It was sort of my fault. Yeah, we fully blame you. That's good
as you should. Scheduling
is crazy. I mean, all of our episodes, I have to send Jim a
Google calendar invite. Sometimes he gets and sometimes
he doesn't, but that's the whole thing in life. Is just like.
Realizing it's like sands through the hourglass is we've
only got so much time. Yeah, half my life is scheduling too,
you know? And so you were saying you get up early because you got
to be tracking in your own home studio.
Yeah, I'm in there. I want to be in there way before anybody
else. So I'm up early. So
if the session starts at 10 and some other players are coming
in. They want to get sounds. You're having your coffee at
eight o'clock. Yeah, I'm in the door at eight o'clock, nice. And
you're 20 feet from your house. 40 couple 100 but yeah, a couple
100 feet.
Yeah, I want to say that. He said that half of his life is
scheduling his life. Yeah. Do you actually block out time to
schedule your life? And is it on a calendar
I spend, I do block out admin time. Now, that's not something
I did when I was just a drummer, you know. But like, yeah, yeah,
there's like, AD, would you
like, if you got so busy, would you be able to have your wife
help you with that?
She's got her own job, right? Yeah?
I mean, she would, she would help. But
my wife's actually helped me with my schedule in my life,
yeah, which
is she's, she's got her hands full with the with the kids and
the house nowhere. We're
down one kid, you know? She's, she can come off the bench.
There you go, you know? And we have the, she's
always busy making, like, incredible sourdough bread and
dinner for you every night. I mean, as she should, this is,
this is, this
is going great already. This is very
all in the family.
Make sure that she's barefoot, you know, in the kitchen.
Mostly. This
is why we don't have women on the show. We need to have women
on the show. I'm
so happy to be here on the last episode of the
season, the series finale. So, well, Ben was, you know, he's a
very savvy business, business minded young man. And he says,
yeah, what's the goal of the podcast? So these revenue, is
it? What is it? And I said, we don't know. Yes, we just keep
doing it. We just keep doing it, and we're refining it. Okay? We
made it more cash. Now, by the time this comes out, yeah, we're
gonna have merch. We have to call the girl today and approve
the coffee mug and the hoodie and the baseball shirt and male
and female and the sizes, and get this stuff happening.
Because we've only been talking about it for six years. That's
right. You
know, we get 6000 downloads per episode per minute, so
advertisers, let's talk, Jim.
Don't give away our secrets. Man, right. But look at some of
these accomplishments. East End Studio. I like that because West
End, no one has an East End. Yeah. I
put it there because at the time it was the east end of civil
civilization in Nashville, yeah. And
so you officially built it in 2019 and look at these
production credits, man. And usually I'll have to say, I do a
massive deep dive into our guests. But um, this is going on
the to do list. I couldn't get to Spotify to pull up today.
We're talking about AT and T having trouble getting calls
going out. I know what's up. AT T you too. Yeah, yeah. It's
really weird. I've had to power down my phone, turn it back on.
Doesn't matter. What are you Verizon? Horizon. Can you hear
me now? I
think I still can. If we're out here, I'm still working, yeah,
so
sister, Hazel, San C and crash debris. I like that. It's a full
length album. When did that come out?
Uh, into last year. Okay, yeah, so we cut it for it was, it was
about two years that we worked on it, two
years in the making, on and off, on and off. Okay, yeah, and you
got Brian. How do you spread that last name DeVoe, silent s
from nine days. That's the story of the girl. Story of a girl.
Yeah, you know Keith sobroski was in that band. You remember
Keith? I did not know Keith was in that band. He was Miranda's
drummer in the early days. He was in nine days. I did not know
if it was an original member, yeah, but single, beautiful son
was like, was it a triple A radio, modern rock radio thing?
Yeah? 100 Yeah. It was fun to do. It was just me and him that
played everything. Did everything. Okay? So
between you and him, you covered all the instruments. Amazing
indie folk artist, Grace days, maybe American dreaming. You
were the producer and musician mixer. Well, you've always been
a musician at the highest level. Then you started getting into
what would have been next, mixing projects. No producing
first for producing first. And then, instead of passing it off
to a mixer, you said, Let me handle this.
Yeah. Well, somebody said you should handle this, yeah. So
you're not afraid to just dive into the deep end of the pool.
Not anymore, yeah, yeah. I used to be, I mean, that was like,
there was a long time as a musician that doing other stuff
besides what I was already good at, felt like, felt fake, very
impostery, very not, not okay to do. And it was, and I felt like
it was gonna wreck a reputation that I had if somebody sees me
do, do one thing, and, oh, and you confuse the heck out of
people, right? And I was worried about that like, like, there's a
thing that, yeah, it's, you know, the the, for lack of a
better term, the branding of of who you are in your career,
right? Yeah, right. I felt like that mattered a ton. And I've
kind of found out that it, it does. And it doesn't, it's like,
you can't be everything to everybody, yeah, but if you dive
in and get good at something, and you're not afraid to start
over and kind of suck at it for a while, yeah, then you become
that thing for some people. And that's, that's kind of how all
that other
thing for other people, yeah, yeah. I for a while, you know,
when I was kind of going between Nashville and Los Angeles,
people like, do you live in LA or Nashville, I was like, Yes,
right? And they never knew where I was, so they had to always
reach out and find out where I was and if I was available,
yeah, which is good. I always
think it's kind of fun. I mean, in the end, it's like, Well,
wait, are you producing? Are you playing or on the road, right
now, right? Yeah, just reach out, man, the first time, like,
I ended up doing a production, kind of a CO production thing
where I was also engineering, which was way not something I
put out there much like in a commercial studio. Yeah? And I
got the biggest kick out of standing at a console, kind of
trying to get stuff going for the day, yeah, and seeing my
buddies that I've known forever, that I've played with on
sessions, getting sounds on the other side of the glass, and one
of them in particular, just kind of look up at me and just kind
of squint, kind of going like, well, there's a drummer here,
but you're there. Oh, and then just look back down in his
guitar and keep doing his thing. And it's like, yeah, who was
that? Oh, stranger.
Oh nice. Yeah, he was a guy I listened to, you know, there's
that studio musician Academy, yeah, I have listened to every
episode, you know, I really, I've really enjoyed that, you
know, getting in inside baseball insights to all these people
that do the thing every day, sure, you know.
So, yeah, they need to have you on there. Man,
I don't know, those guys love to go on there. Miles, yeah, yeah.
I've listened to his Yeah.
So it also makes you realize how fast these engineers are on big
tracking dates when, say, in a demo session where you got five
songs to do in three hours, so you're at the average song just
every 35 minutes, right? And they have got so many inputs,
and everybody's asking to be punched, and they do it so fast
that is, like, I don't know if I could ever it's time in the
trenches, obviously,
yeah. And I did a lot of that, like the Pro Tools, part of it,
keeping up that way. Yeah, I did a lot of it on busses, like I
did, which, you know, you're not punching people in on busses,
but you're doing all this editing and learning all your
shortcuts. Yes, and I was doing that in the front lounge of
busses while I was still kind of going in and out on weekends and
subbing, sub dates and all that stuff, and getting getting to
where I could so how did
you get yourself these DAWs Pro Tools and Ableton, is it like
pulling up YouTube University kind of a thing? No,
I mean, I didn't. Then I do that stuff now a lot. I'm a YouTube
junkie now, but at the time, and I don't even know if I how,
well, I remember how I taught myself Pro Tools, but I, you
know, I had come up doing some of that stuff even in high
school, playing with like cake walk and Sound Forge and stuff
that was
out in the late 90s, right? Yeah, yes. I never played
software audio workshops. Saw, Oh,
I never did, but yeah, I know I knew about it, cue based, yes,
and I never used that. That still exists, apparently, but,
but I had done that, and I put all that down when I went to
school and was just focused on the music thing and for years
and touring and all that, and when it came back around, there
was enough familiarity, plus I did all the Ableton stuff, you
know, for the road. Okay,
so now that's another skill set that a lot of people like to
tout, and it's a great way to, like, have a side hustle or
monetize. I mean, Matt Payne has that amazing, yeah, he was one
of my first guests on the show. And he has, I forget the name of
the company, but I know that Jeff Marino probably works with
him a little bit, you know, Darius Rutgers drummer, right?
And they put these giant shows together for people and the
tracks and everything, so you have that skill set. Yeah, you
did that for a lot of people, like even Gary Allen, right.
I did it for Gary Allen. I did it for Houser for a long time. I
did it for Steven Tyler solo thing. Oh, wow. And my rigs were
not as intricate as some of the stuff that's especially going on
now, yeah, but I got it. It was part of the getting the tip. And
gig is they were moving from, this is what, oh eight. They
were moving from a like, task cam, you know, port, a studio
for track, for to run their backing tracks. Ouch. When I was
auditioning for the gig, like we were supposed to use a laptop,
and they say it's good on Mac. Do you know how to use that?
Said, sure. You know how to build track rig? Absolutely. You
made
yourself so valuable. I had no idea how to do
it. Oh, you said, Yes. Then
you faked it. And I called, I called Riley because he was
doing it with the flats, and I knew they were using Ableton. I
said, Hey, how do you guys do this? And this is what we use. I
don't know a whole lot else. And I just dove in and figured it
out. Wow. What do you think they're gonna think when they
hear this? What depends guys, yeah, they're like, Oh, you
didn't you. You completely misled us. Oh
no, they they've been told, yeah, okay, you came through.
Yeah, it worked out fine. And at the time, that wasn't such a
prevalent thing on like, mid level touring acts, middle of.
The middle of the bill acts, yeah. And so we'd go out and
play these festivals, and people would ask, you know, hey, who
built the rig? Me, Oh, I did. Doesn't everybody have to do
their own because that's what I thought. That's why I was on the
guy. No. So I did like some work for with Tracy Broussard, for
Shelton, and I can't remember all of them now, but yeah, they
just kind of would come in. So you're,
you became a kind of a go to guy for that, and will you still do
it, knock it out
very rarely, like, I actually grew to really dislike it,
because it's if you're not going to do what Matt does, where it's
like a full service thing that you're really building out to do
that. The the downside of of doing something like that is
you've got to be willing to kind of be on call when they have
issues on the road, yeah, and in the studio on the middle of a
session, I can't, can't help you, if you're on the deck for a
festival on a Thursday and something's not working.
So Matt, a team of people that are available kind
of okay, I would think so, you know. And now probably it's been
a long time since I've done them, I would imagine now the
the band leader, the guys on the road know way more about that,
then it's not as new as it was when I was doing, yeah, because
when
I had the sub for like, Mark POIs, you know, and he had to go
get married. I, you know, he's like, Hey, man, here's the SPD,
SX. This is how you forward to the next track. This is how you
started. This how you stop it? If Tyler is going to extend this
section, hit this thing, then you got to get out of it. And it
was like, I had to, you know, work that stuff to orchestrate
right into my DM
for drummers that have done that, like, because Nashville,
the drummers almost always fire that stuff. Yeah, it's like,
that's the that's half of learning the gig. It's not just
the learning the tunes. It's learning how to play and play
that thing. Yeah, and, and,
but are you? Are you? Are you signaling it while you're
playing? Or you just start stopping? It
depends on the rig. But a lot of people would have, you know,
something would run for a certain amount of time, and then
you trigger the next section. Or you it would go to the bridge
and loop the bridge, and then you'd trigger out of it. And so,
yeah, there's a lot of and it depends on, again, the artist.
There's a couple artists there's a couple artists that I won't
name, that really didn't like they wanted the tracks, but they
didn't want to be constricted by the tracks, and the drummers
were just chasing them all over the place all the time, you
know? And so it's just really dependent on the gig.
Yeah, Harry, Harry Myrie got really exceptionally good at it,
too, I believe, on a couple of his gigs that he had. And, you
know, I, I don't want to sound like the old, you know, get off
my long guy. But I mean, there's a lot of legacy acts that
there's, there's no there's no tracks. Yeah, you know what I
mean, very basic, no tracks on seekers gig, that's right. So,
did you get to visit with Don Brewer? A ton, yeah. Nice. Cat.
Great. So, so Jim Don Brewer was the drummer with
Grand Funk. Real
nice. Really? Wrote that song too. I believe he wrote it so
you need more cowbell. So he goes to the mailbox Like Bill
Gibson all the time. Does he to collect a check? How
many other songs did they have
some kind of wonderful is that that's right, but that wasn't
theirs, though. That was a cover, right? That was a cover,
but that was a song from the 60s. I want to say there's
another one I'm getting. I'm getting closer to my home.
That's right, nice. That's a good one. Very eerie and
mystical. Yes. Great drummer. Yeah. We played all those had
some big hair back in the
day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big old Tommy Aldridge, that's
what I love about obviously, you had a preference. You know,
you're a family man, you know, you work the road, but then
you're like, No, I'm gonna build a studio, I'm gonna produce, I'm
gonna do sessions, I'm gonna stay home. Did you enjoy it when
you did it, or do you miss it? No,
you're good on the barbecue. I don't.
Yeah, I don't, yeah, exactly. The best barbecue you've ever
had every day. I love, I loved doing the road, and I still like
going out. I go out a couple times with hazel a year, usually
for Mark, and that's, that's, that's more like a, it's more
like going out of town to see your uncles and cousins and
buddies now, like they were so close. But yeah, it's a I liked.
I loved playing on the road, and I love learning stuff. I didn't
love sitting around as much as you sit around on the road.
Yeah, I really wanted to be actively involved in making
music a lot of the time. And I think the production thing for
me was kind of twofold. It was one of one, one of the reasons I
did it was because I really wanted to be more involved in
the creative process of record making. And I had done enough
demo sessions to know that that wasn't really what you did as a
session player so much you're more, more of a you're in
service to that production team, you know, which is great, yeah.
But, and, and opportunity, there was a, and I just talked to
Justin shipper steel player about this not long ago on a
session, because he, he kind of made a pivot from guitar to
steel. That's worked out okay for him. I think he's done
pretty good. Yeah. Uh, recognizing sort of when, when
there's a an availability for something else that you do, and
do you want to, you know, I could have kept on the road and
stayed and played drums and tried to work my way into
sessions that way forever, or I wanted to be in studios and
making records sooner. And this there was, there's more of an
open door over here, and so I went through it,
you saw the door open. And
it seems like a lot of drummers do that, you know, Tom Reeves
quit, totally, yeah, yeah. Well, not quit, but they become
octopi, you know, we're, I was, you know, me being a drummer
coming up and having that kind of an identity throughout my
teenage years, and then getting into radio learning, you know,
multi track production and things like that, eventually
getting into video production. It just seems those skill sets
just make sense for us. For some reason, I agree. I see that a
lot getting behind the radio board and flying faders and, you
know, pulling carts and firing things off as you're talking,
that's a that's a skill. It's all percussion.
Did you do it on purpose? Because I didn't necessarily
know I was doing it. I just
always knew that it's like when I saw when I first got into a
radio production studio in Connecticut, at the home of rock
and roll. That's where we 95 all the Grand Funk Railroad tunes.
The production director, at the time, he had the job I wanted. I
saw what he did, sitting in the production studio and putting
all these things together. And it was the first time I heard a
radio station imaging voice without all the stuff around it,
like just the raw track. And I was going, and I remember,
that's actually a real guy that it just dawned on me. I was
like, 22 years old, 23 years old, going, Holy crap. I never
thought about it. That's, that's a real person, dude. He paid
taxes, right? Yeah, and he's got this big voice in the home of
rock and roll. I know, you know, he's the big imaging voice. And
he would always the guy who's, his name was rich Conway. He
would sit in the studio and was like, it was like, Candy Land,
yeah, you know, sound effects and zip zaps and booms and
explosions and all these different things. And I was
like, This is me, you know, I was either gonna go into radio
or I was gonna go, Dude, how if I this happened, you and I would
probably would never have met, no, you'd be so ingrained in
radio. I was in rate, but I went into radio thinking I wanted to
go into ESPN. Did you know that? Well, it's a Connecticut
company. Yeah, it was in Bristol. Yeah, I was at my
holdout. Was like, well, I'll hang out in radio for a bit
until they're hiring up in
Britain. Did you know Did you know enough about sports no
sports ball, you don't really need to no no. So I basically
you have to have an opinion. It's like, you sound like you're
like, when you're a news anchor, you really do. It's not like
you're just reading copy. You do have to have somewhat of an
opinion, possibly,
yeah, well, it used to not be that way, but that's a whole
separate topic. When I saw the control room for live
television, and you saw the guy, I can't remember what role he
had, but he was like, you know, you know. Okay, ready was,
camera two goes. Camera two. Ready? You know, I'm like, I
could totally
do that. Now, the dudes at Moo TV do it in a different city
every day. They set up their mobile TV production facility.
You know what? I mean, they take turns doing the show. You do the
opener tonight, I'll do the headliner. And they take turns
and they Hey, you jump on camera tonight, then these guys are
carrying the big cameras around.
It's just, it's just anything like anything else got processes
and procedures and systems and all that systems and processes.
But I knew that when I saw like he was working on something
called the Fostex Foundation, 2000 Wow. And it was a,
basically a four track mixer, but it was eight mono tracks
that you pan to left and right, yeah? And I figured that out,
you know, touch screen, all that stuff, yeah, scrub wheel. It was
really cool.
It's like being a drum channel, which is in Oxnard, is like a
real TV production facility, right? Yeah? I mean, with jibs
and a producer and guys with headsets, that's the
same area as drum. Drum you or is drumeo different?
Oh, no, don't say that. No, drama O's is the Canadian
conglomerate now muzzora, because they've got guitaro,
they've got basio, they've got, they got, they got, they're so
smart they expanded. Hey, Jim, do me a favor. Bring my overall
volume down. If you can just a little bit. Just talk quieter.
What? What?
Like, that's in the recipe. We've
got, we've got some tic tac, you
know, it's funny. Getting back to this doesn't really work.
Let's see. Oh,
we've got checks mix flying everywhere, guys. But that's the
beautiful thing about about percussion, is that everything's
a percussion that the chain. You could change the sound, no, by
eating some of these. Well, you know what I thought about doing?
I really thought about becoming a DJ, yeah? DJ, you would have
been a great DJ. DJ, Redman, I mean, I can still do it, because
I watched some people do it. I'm like, No, aren't
you kind of doing that with your own right? Podcast? Well,
I want to, you want to do the what do? No,
we know not like, not like, quest love, like artistic DJing
with vinyl. I'm talking about coming in with the bare minimum.
You got your two laptops, you guys, you got your thumb drive,
you guys, you got your little walk out, walk out of thing
there. You got your microphone. You introduced the bride and the
groom say, like, weddings, bar mitzvahs, parties, give me my
give me my 10 grand. And then I'm incorporating a grant, dude.
I'm incorporating my rolling pads and percussion zip code. Is
he
doing these parties? I know. Man, they're probably DJs out
there going, where are you gonna get 10 No,
I'm telling you, that's what that what a good wedding DJ.
Makes sense. 10 grand, really? Yeah, I don't know. That's what
I'm asking for. Actually, I actually, actually have a, have
a student from my first drummers weekend, right?
That's where I'm starting at this. I'm not,
I'm not gonna say names, but we got to catch up. And he was
telling me the ins and outs of being a DJ. And he does. He's a
drummer first, but he makes a great living as a wedding and
corporate DJ. And I'm telling you the numbers 10 grand.
Well, I mean, I guess if you were to come up with a program
where you, you did put percussive implements in there
and stuff like that, and you got the audience involved with
tambourines. And, yeah, you
could bring, like, a basket of percussion stuff, yeah,
interactive DJ,
dude, let's, let's do it, pass it out. Yeah, I'm not doing any
of the heavy lifting. I'm just gonna show up and cheer you on.
That's the
beautiful thing is, you don't have to have, you don't have to
bring in buckets of LPs anymore, like baskets and baskets of LPs.
It's all, well, I bet you didn't know that this is where this
interview I
was going. I knew it's going somewhere. We
have just a casual, free flowing conversation, yeah, who were?
How did you? How did you get into, like, really quickly,
doesn't have to be your you know, Marvel orange story,
origin story. But how did it all when did you start playing?
I think I was
10 or 11, yeah, so, so just
started hitting, hitting everything in sight.
No, I wanted to play my my grandfather. Short version of
the story is my dad's dad passed away. He had a couple guitars
that he didn't know how to play, that we inherited, and I was at
the age where that looked really cool. And then I saw a buddy
playing drums, and somehow I just took a left turn, and
that's, that's where it was. But it was about playing rock and
roll. And, yeah, you know, not, not, not a classical guy to
start
with. What was, okay? So for me, like, you know, 1983
MTV, Martha Quinn, I love her. Um, wouldn't
a 1981 for you.
Okay, so 81 Yeah, leading, that's how it was for me. Yeah,
81 you're right. So what was it for you? Because your
generation, plus, yeah,
and like, you must have been born 8583
8183 sounds like by the time I started playing. It was, it was,
you know, the Smashing Pumpkins and the wall flowers and Dave
Matthews Band. Oh yeah, you know, all the, all the 90s
stuff, and half the people on that list over there that I've
worked with now, but yeah, yes, yeah, they were all
on the radio. Yeah, I got to spend a day with him. He's just
a very nice, approachable guy, man,
that's what I hear. Stitzel knows him rich, you know,
because they're both Chicago guys, yeah and yeah, he's, I've
never met him, but he was my he was probably one of my first
drumming heroes, him and Carter,
I guess. Yeah, he got, I think he got into tech, yeah, time
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Jim's got his big book, Bitcoin. You have a whole Bitcoin, but,
yeah, let's tell the world that that's fine. Okay,
get the whole the whole Bitcoin. Yeah, it's nice,
but I got an early so then I'm hodling, as they say, you hold
the kids say, actually it is a, I guess it was a misspelling,
but in the Bitcoin unit, the bit the bitty verse, I would say
it's, yeah, they say it's hodling, holding on for. Your
Life? Oh, yeah, yeah, because Bitcoin is so volatile. Yeah,
there are days, there are weeks that I've lost $40,000 but
then it comes back up. It's got to keep the faith. It's day to
day. Could be so are you gonna get, are you gonna get into any
of that?
That's not my thing, man, my wife's a tax accountant. She's
all about the safe investments. You know, safe, yeah,
lower value.
Well, you guys are younger, so you can go a little bit more
aggressive, yeah, yeah, yeah, we
can still take the risks. Nice. She's
a tax accountant. Yeah, she's
taking on new clients. No,
why not she? She works for the business management on
the firm. Does she we know where she works, and everything, yeah,
amazing. Because,
I mean, they're in demand right now. Yeah, yeah. It's they may
not be in demand if the IRS goes away, which I pray for the day
that comes. It
wouldn't be nice to save that amount of money in taxes every
year. Oh, god. What would you do with it? You could do home
improvements. You could stick it in your IRA
and imagine the economy that's taken off and rip roaring,
because I have to worry about freaking April 14, but I think
it would be, you want to go on my IRS tirade again? I will. I
think it'd be
sometime before that actually happens where we abolish taxes.
It's good. It's not going to
be, we're not abolishing taxes. We're just changing the
framework of how we get the taxes.
I know, but I think it's going to be some time. I don't know.
Even with the best joke of
a of a pen man, he's me. He's making changes with that
executive those executive orders pretty quickly. He
you're talking about anyway,
man, that day comes, it's going to be a, it's going to be a,
make it a national flipping holiday. I cannot stand income
taxes or property taxes. Close
to, this is close to Jim's heart. I mean, who wants it? I
mean, you want, you do want to have highways and infrastructure
and all
this stuff. I'm not saying that, but that's where people go off
the rails. They think that's what I'm saying. That's not what
I'm saying. No, no, there are other ways to collect taxes that
are not, you know, intimidating and based on intimidation
tactics. I did this on my own podcast with Mercurio. I said
the actual freaking font of the IRS is designed to make you feel
intimidated. It's the
intimidation font, right? Wonder who get that gig? Like the font
selection. Dude,
dude. Every font has a voice. Yeah, you ever relaxed? Like,
you know? Why did you
choose those fonts for our our logo?
I don't know. It just, it's, to me, it's like the rich Redmond
show.
Yeah, it's book ended by happiness.
We could change it up. I mean, it was, it's just impact.
But every font has a voice. You ever read a sign and derive the
voice from it? There's a voice to it, yeah? I mean, the first
Comic Sans has a voice, the first try at the logo. Jim sent
me out of the park, and I just okay, if the IRS font was in
Comic Sans, would you take them seriously? Which one is that?
Which was comic book?
Oh, God, but the Bible in the bubble font?
People hate Comic Sans. Is what I'm pretty much.
This is way off the rails.
This is what you know. This makes a episode fun. Oh yeah,
people universally hate the IRS, so, yeah, this is a good topic.
So with your wife being in that position, you guys probably pay
on time. It's like, boom, no extensions. Oh
no, everything's extended because she's working on
everybody's stuff. Ah, yeah.
So this is a stressful time of year, kind of like from like,
March to May,
yeah, yeah. And then again, September, October, because it's
the extension deadlines. Oh, man, yeah. It's just I learned
all kinds of stuff I never
wanted to know. Yeah, when is that? When did you guys meet?
And you said you married 12 years we met at
North Texas. You're, you guys was, she had music, uh, she was,
and then also she ended up double majoring in business, and
then did the accounting thing here.
Smart, yeah, so what was your degree in performance,
education, Jazz Studies, dude, like, a, it's like a philosophy
degree, yep, basically, but, but, man, it's good to have that
in your back pocket.
Yeah? And, I mean, it was the path that that for me. Let me
focus on what I want to do the most, right? All the other
options were gonna limit my time behind drums, yeah,
and if you can't play jazz drums, I mean, it's like,
there's a lot of fantastic people that have never even
dabbled it. They think they never even tried being spang a
Lang but, you know, I always tell the kids it the reason why
we have a drum set is because of an American art form known as
jazz, and it gets you used to working in a triplet subdivision
and tons coordination, yeah, yeah. And
the the melodic phrasing and the improvisation stuff that doesn't
it still applies to all the other styles, just kind of, you
know, it's all derivative. So that was
your favorite, some of your favorite jazz drummers? Haines
was okay, yeah, probably my still favorite, playing
to the end. He was playing up to like, the last couple months of
his life.
I saw him in like, 2017,
or 18 in New York, at the Blue Note. Wow. And yeah, I mean, I.
Uh, yeah. I mean, Haynes, obviously, Tony Gad, really? I
mean, I mean, yeah, I always love Gad, because it just the
vocabulary stayed the same whether he was playing with
Chick Corea or Eric Clapton, and it somehow worked for both.
So sad about his son, yeah, yeah, terrible. That's terrible.
That is terrible, yeah, you know, the older we get, it's
like we're, I'm in, I'm in this season. I don't know if you're
starting to notice it, but people are, oh yeah. People are
fading, yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one thing that
is certain
is that and freaking taxes, yeah, and the damn iron
callback,
yeah. Now, now, what about your pop guys? Now, before you moved
to Nashville, did you say, Hey, I better do a deep, deep dive, a
little bit on, like, Eddie bears and Lonnie Wilson
or totally, absolutely, yeah, yeah. Uh, did a bunch of that.
And I started playing with, like, the Texas country artists
and stuff. And, oh, he's doing van tours out there across Texas
and Oklahoma and all that. Any guys we know that probably not,
yeah. Most of them aren't doing and doing it anymore, you know,
wow. But like, you know, opening for the burgeoning Eli young
band, oh yeah, you know, they were at it for some time before
they pop. Yeah. And some around the guys like Stoney LaRue and
Kevin Fowler and guys that have just been the staples out there
for a long time. Kevin Fowler, Fowler, that's
Ken to Andre, yeah, our buddy, yeah.
And still, I'm still working with Aaron Watson now, but from
the other side of the glass, yeah. And so, yeah, it's a did a
bunch of that, but yeah, before I moved here, absolutely, kind
of dug in and studied hard how to do that, and even took
lessons outside of UNT with some like Sean McCarthy, some of
those Dallas guys. So what wOJ a little bit like, Hey, get me my,
like, commercial chops together, a little
bit. So, what it was so, so Jim Dan wojowski was kind of like,
uh, he's so great. He's like, an urban legend. I mean, he was
basically in the unit, you know, University of North Texas, lab
bands in like, 8283 84 kind of around there live in Australia,
like
right after Bissonnette, probably right after
business. And he was just, he's just, is still an amazing
drummer, and he kind of ruled the roost in Dallas for a long
time. And now he's playing with Peter Frampton. He lives in the
Pacific Northwest, but when you studied with him, um, what did
you What do you guys cover? Man, I
think I took, like, half a lesson with Dan. He was
impossible to nail down, because he was always on the road with
always on the road with with Frampton. But we he would, he
had a practice room over in this place off 75 that I was taking
some lessons with McCarthy and and occasionally some other
people, and he would just be in there. So it was more of a, just
a those were like life lesson, gig lesson, hallway, discussion,
lesson, kind of things which are great, you know, off of 75 off
of, like, Mockingbird Lane over there, I think so, yeah, it was,
like a really colorful place, yeah,
like planetary murals on the walls and stuff. Yeah,
yes, to rehearse there with all of my top 40 bands. Yeah, yep,
that's the spot. Now, when you were in Dallas, did you ever
play with the Dallas press and electric, or the bill Tillman,
or the project, or random access, or did
some of those as sub things. And I did, there's a guy named Jeff
Taylor that did a lot of that cover band. Yep, I was a
founding member of front line. Yeah, yep. And Tin Man Band, and
some of that stuff play with Jeff a good bit. And yeah, did
weird like country gigs. I remember playing some it was
this huge Honky Tonk in Fort Worth that I did for about a
year, white elephant, Sloan, no way bigger and way not in the
middle of anything like that. Billy Bob's no way off the
beaten path. Wow, I promise you've never seen this place,
but it was down there, and it was huge. And there'd be like 30
or 40 people in there on a Wednesday night, we'd be playing
old country songs, yeah? And, uh, some other drummer at UMT
handed me the gig. And come to find out that all the people
that were there were swingers.
It was a way, as in, upside upside down, pineapple Swingers,
yeah? Or actual Spanx bangalang swinging on music. No, the first
thing, yeah, like,
Shut Yeah, really, yeah, yeah.
Just a intro to country music.
I'm thinking, like, yeah. Like, you know, swing, yeah. Do
you ever think about throwing your keys in there? No, were
they attractive swingers? Are they? You
know, that's the thing you learn in life, is that those, those
things are not as portrayed on TV. Usually, yeah, usually
nudist colonies are full of people that shouldn't be new.
That's kind of but they they just love it. Yeah, they do.
They're so free. Yeah, have you ever done that? Just walk around
naked? No, on a beach, like, you know, specifically on a beach,
no, well, you know, nude beach. Never been to a new beach. Would
you ever want to do it?
Okay? I want to ask them. I don't
think that was just the setup, not the question. Okay, great.
All right, I'll make a note of that. He
was gonna invite me this weekend.
Well, yeah, you go to a lot of, you go to a lot of I don't go to
nude beaches, but you go to the camps, the campgrounds. Well,
yeah, we used to go camping, but none of them had that. Kind of,
did you get rid of your camper? Yeah,
we sold it. So I produce, I produce the try that in a small
town podcast. Try that in small town.com. And homosexual, yeah,
one of the guys, Courtney and I, went to a trip al tapasa Robles,
to do something that was a can aligned with the podcast, and
Neil and kaylo went with their wives as well. And on the way
back from one of these events, we were in a limo all together,
and we were telling stories. And we happened to tell our story of
when Courtney and I went to a brothel, grand opening of a
brothel in Pahrump, Nevada, when we lived out in Vegas,
did they have one of those, like things that just does out front?
Yeah,
inflatable crazy arm wavy guy, whatever they call that, a
family guy. They did not have that. It was, it was a grand
opening that our radio station was invited to, to do a remote
broadcast there, and, you know, on the way there. I mean, we're
probably 2625 years all the time. And my wife's like, you
think they're going to be naked, you think it'd be walking
around. You think that they're going to talk to me. You think
they're going to do that. She's asking me all the questions. I
said, Do you think if I knew the answers to these questions, you
might be slightly worried? She goes, good point. I said, I
don't know. I don't know what to expect. So we told them that
story, and, you know, it was an amazing night one for the
memories and all this other stuff. Apparently they came away
from it, kalo and Neil thinking that we had done this recently,
not 20 some odd years ago. Oh, wow. So amongst their group,
they're like, yeah, they're, they're kind of adventurous. I
mean, you know, don't, don't judge them from the outside.
They Jim and Courtney. They're kind of living it up. And
they're like, looking at their you know, if they're doing it,
ladies, I mean, you know, what are those things? And they
brought him, like, Have you been to any brothels lately? Jim and
I'm going, Dude, that happened over 20 some odd years ago. Oh,
total misunderstanding. You just let him keep going with it.
Yeah. But never been to a swingers club or anything
yet. Jimbo, you're crazy. What Fort Worth? Honky Tonk, the
drag. So what do you what are you listening? What are you
listening to nowadays? Like, you know, I always talk about the,
you know, keeping up with the kids, and, you know, you don't
want to be the Get Get off my long guy. What? What are there
some bands or artists that are like, light in your fire, or
drummers you're following, or, man,
I don't know. I mean, I'm bad at that now, because everything's
so focused on the work you're doing, focus on the work and the
references that we're working on, and but I've been doing,
I've been listening to a lot more like indie artists stuff
and indie pop stuff, and just kind of just diving into
different things, and I keep a big playlist of that around, but
I'm, I'm nowhere near as good as I used to be about, like, living
with records for a long time. Yeah. And I don't know if that's
just the nature of what I'm doing, or the nature of how the
world is, or me just being lazy, but that's, it's just different.
But, uh, I mean, a lot of the like, the the anything now that
I think sort of challenges my ideas about production I'm
pretty interested in. So I love listening to stuff that, you
know, anything that Jack Antonoff worked on is really
kind of interesting. He just thinks super differently than I
would on anything. So a lot of guys out there that I can go up,
okay, I see how you got from point A to point B. I might get
somewhere similar and not that guy. I would not have gotten to
that same place from the same starting point, I don't think.
And you know, a lot of the Billie Eilish stuff is really
cool and interesting, and just anything that, to me, just kind
of feels really cool and feels inventive and fresh. You
could buy a laptop and have like, a MIDI keyboard, and
you're a brother and a sister, and you could create Grammy
Award winning, career defining records in your bedroom.
Amazing. Yeah. And
I kind of got way into the, the tread lightly on this, the synth
thing, in a way, but as a supplement to I've like, I've
started really liking putting instruments on records that
weren't traditionally thought of as being on those kinds of
records. So sneaking a Moog into a country record, or moving some
Americana singer songwriter stuff and some pop stuff
together. So I kind of look for stuff like that, where people
are just kind of taking some chances and doing something
different, like a patchwork quilt, yeah? Like Maggie Rogers
stuff has been really cool. Ian Fitch did the last one, oh,
yeah. But even the one before that was awesome. Uh, there's
just been a bunch of stuff out there like that. That's kind of
like, Great songwriting, and then really kind of cool and
invented production. Has been so
many new producers in town, yeah? You know, new
whippersnappers that I, you know, I'm not running this down,
yeah, it's interesting. People are going to be chasing you down
because you know you're having some success, and they're like,
You got to get on that guy's radar. It's
been fun to stay busy and work with different people, and
that's been a big focus. Was trying to work on different
types of music that I find challenging still, even though
that might might not be the most. Direct path to to one, one
outcome. It's been a lot more rewarding. And I feel like in
the last couple years, really, maybe the last two it started,
I'm looking at the calendar and going, Oh, I like all the stuff
I'm working on. Like, I like all the people I'm working with. I
like all the stuff I'm working on. I don't feel like I'm having
to take stuff to fill in nice
the gaps as much, yeah, you turn the corner. Because in the early
days, you take everything as, first as a drummer, you take
everything and then you started taking everything as a Yeah.
Start all over. Yeah, producer. And then are you trying to write
with the artist?
I'm doing that a lot more now too. Yeah, yeah. And so I just
had a an admin go through all my catalog to upload it, because
I'm terrible about that stuff and and they sent me this list
back of like, did you write and produce this? This, this, this
holy crap. I've written a lot more than I thought I had. And
so, yeah, I've been doing a lot more right, probably last five
years. A ton of the stuff I produce, I'm writing some of
with them. That's great. So basically,
you're in the studio as a producer, like, mixer, yeah,
first, right? Yeah. And then, so I had a question about, and
it's, it's like, as you're talking, it reminds me a lot of
how I kind of progressed in radio, immersing yourself, uh,
emulating people that you, you admire. Did you surround
yourself with producers and mixers engineers and watch that
what they were doing, because for me to make a radio
commercial sound, not local, yeah, and make it sound agency
was a big thing for me when I started out, and I learned all
the different tips and tricks the hard way. Did you have
somebody pouring into you to show you? Okay, here's how you
go from making it sound like you're in a garage to an actual
polished, you know, sweetened album?
Yeah, that's a good question. I think because I came at it from
already having been a player, I didn't come in as a 24 year old.
Let me intern with this producer and learn everything and be the
assistant. For a long time, I had to make money like I had to
figure out how I was going to play and start doing that and
make the time work. And so I did learn a lot, but I learned a lot
of it from relationships and connections I built with with
producers that were older than me, that would let me glom onto
something, or that would come in and if, even if I was producing
it, I would call them and hire them and go, Hey, can you
engineer this? But, you know, make sure I don't fuck this up.
Like, right? Like, make it sound good. Like, can I? Can I
basically pay you to apprentice me through this a little bit
amazing. So I did a lot of that, and then a lot of my buddies,
like, you know, Bobby Holland was a huge help, who's got a
studio in Berry Hill, and we worked on a lot of stuff where I
was kind of producing, and so I was arranging with, you know,
finding the artists, working with the songs, and arting the
project, arranging the music, and he was doing all the
engineering and mixing. I also worked with Jeff Braun a lot,
who I believe works all your stuff. Yeah, now, and Jeff was
on, he was singing merch on Greg Bates' bus for a summer, wow,
just to get out and see what was going on. Did a bunch of indie
records together. And he was a, he was great because he was
already so talented, and he was really young, and he was walking
me through all sorts of stuff, Pro Tools, stuff, mix stuff. He
was kind of the guy that pushed me to start mixing eventually.
Was like, Hey, you should just, you should just be mixing this
stuff. You know, you know how to do that. And so I learned a lot
from the peers too, you know. So no formal background. Education
is all real world, absolutely on the job training, yeah, just my
one of my buddies also here. I'll credit him with this
statement, whether he likes it or not. Jonathan Roy is a great
mixer in town. Yeah? He says all the things, yeah. People get
kids ask me all the time how to get good at mixing, and I just
tell them, you just got to ruin people's indie records for two
indie records
for 10 years. You got to get an ear for it, yeah. And know what
to listen for. I mean, even I'm thinking about putting together
a curriculum for voiceover talent, aspiring or otherwise,
on how to produce their own stuff, yeah, so they could spec
projects and make themselves stand out amongst on the crowd,
which takes an ear. It takes, you know, okay, I need to fit
this music bed in the context of the voice and, you know, maybe
pull certain Sonic frequencies down or pump some up, that kind
of a thing. At what point did you realize, Okay, I've got,
I've got an ear for this. It
wasn't the early part. Wasn't that I had an ear for it. It was
that I didn't want to stop until I got it right. Like I have a
passion for it that I discovered I was super obsessed with making
the record sound like what I heard in my head, and so I just
kept asking questions and kept failing until it's it now, it
gets much closer to what I'm hearing in my head than it used
to and and then there's the, the commerce part of it comes in
where, you know, it's, you do figure out, okay, well, this is,
this has to be done by this deadline. So you get comfortable
with, how surgical do you get in
terms of, like, well, I'm imagining a certain kind of kick
sound. Do you get that precise?
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I think it's a big, giant puzzle,
and it's got to fit. Together as much as possible. So there's
like, there's this two it's a, it's a really like double edged
sword. May not if that's the right term, but it, on one hand,
I want the whole thing, every little piece and component, to
sound exactly the way I want it to, to fit and be a unique
record, and not something that we could pull up really quickly
and just go, yeah. But on the other hand, you do also have to
sort of accept what's happening. You have to be open to going
like, oh, well, that's not really what I thought, but
that's kind of working. And there's a, there's a little
curriculum in the back of my head, a little little checklist
of like, hey, is this, is this cool? Is this, like, a good
surprise, or is this going to be something that we have to get
rid of later, or we have to we regret. You know, is this
pulling us in the wrong direction? How
often you got to reset your ears?
I should do it more than I do because I sit there for too
long. Yeah, but yeah. I mean pretty frequently, and it's good
to reference stuff, you know, as you're going I do, we do more
referencing in pre production and early production than we do,
like, at some point in the production process. For me, I
want to stop doing that, and I want to just go with whatever
we've got. Do
you ever come back into it like from a night before and listen
back and be like, What the hell were we thinking? Oh, my. We
were tired infrequently anymore, but early on all the time. Yeah,
you know, yeah,
it sounded so good last night. What were we thinking? Right?
You know how you ginger is a palette cleanser. You know
you're eating sushi or whatever. So for your ears, you know,
you're probably got this beautiful chair, beautiful desk,
you have your speakers, and then you might go listen to it, car,
yeah, on the phone. I mean, how are the crazy kids listening to
music? They're listening to it on their phone.
Yeah? I mean, I get mixed revisions sometimes where
somebody just listened to it on their, like, their phone. And I
don't mean like earbuds on their just, I mean speaker phone,
like, sounds great, man, it's like, no. So I always listen to
the mixes there. You know, that's the sound we used to do
that in radio in order to test a spot. Once we were finished.
Obviously, it's, you know, not a full mix production. It's a
couple of tracks, but we had a cue speaker in the actual
console, so we would turn all the speakers down and just play
it through the cue speaker, and if I could hear my voice cutting
through, that meant it was extra. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. You know the guy, Pete Coleman, that engineers all of
our records. He listens to playbacks soft, yeah, very soft
when we were, when we were actually using real percussion
for the first, I don't know, nine records or whatever. There
is a shaker buried on every Aldean track, and it is this
little glue. It's amazing, because you could tell the
difference, even if it's buried in the track. And he will listen
to my execution so softly he goes, it's, it's just easier to
hear soft. I'm like, wow, yeah,
the detail comes out better soft. And you're not exciting
the room and getting lied to by what's going on there
interesting
you have when it comes to compression and stuff like that.
I know a lot of the tracks over the past. I don't know, 20 years
you look at, you know, the waveforms, brick, a lot. They
went from like to brick, nuanced in the 80s, little, you know,
dynamics, and now they're just,
yeah, is it still like that? Are we getting back to nuance? We're
getting
back to nuance, I think, in a lot, and it's genre dependent.
Still, some genres are expect to be, to be that, like metal,
yeah. And even, I mean, a lot of times I feel like, like modern
country, like radio country, there's so many tracks on modern
country, yeah. So those are, those are pretty, those are
pretty loud, you know, but you get into the the indie stuff and
the Americana stuff, and those are really, a lot of those are
cut with vinyl in mind. So they're, they're a lot more
dynamic, and they kind of keep them that
way. Have you ever gotten into a project where you're like, 30
plus tracks deep and the computer crashes,
yeah, without a save. So you save frequently?
Yeah, it auto saves. I've got, like, I'm the guy that, I mean,
remember that was Ableton guy for a long time, too. So I'm the
guy that people go, Hey, what should my backup system be? And
I tell them, and they never do it, but it's, I have my backup
system. That's, that's, it's cloud and and physical, yeah,
smart,
that's crazy. That's how I would receive my years. You
think about it, you're met, you're messing with, like, yeah,
you know, some of these people are spending $100,000 on a
record or more if there's a label involved. I mean, this is
like, I tell, I've told other producers that don't do it. I'm
like, You got to think about it like you like you're walking
around with a suitcase full of cash, yeah? And the longer you
work on that project, the more cash is in that suitcase. And if
it's all just in that one suitcase and it's unlocked and
you just leaving it on the floor, that's, I don't feel good
about that. Yeah, whoa, yeah.
It's, yeah. I would reset my ears when the computer crashed,
and I'd freaking go, the worst
thing that I ever did
is I, but the backup system was made it fine is I was I put in a
new drive to make a a copy for the artist of the sessions at.
For mixing was done after everything was done, and you
have to initialize the drive, which means you have to erase
it. And it was the same name as the drive they had given me to
work off of, oh no, and I did it, Yep, I sure did you erase
the entire erased the entire drive. But I had it backed up on
my archive local, and I had it backed up in the cloud, and I
just pulled it right back over and set it over. It was, it was,
did you?
Did you soil your pants? Oh, god, yeah. There was, like, that
moment of your heart just jumping into your throat, cold
sweats. Like,
I mean, I think I jumped up in the studio and screamed like it
was the scariest thing that's ever happened. And it took me
about, it took me about two minutes of just sheer panic
before I really, like, I knew immediately. I'm like, What's
fine. It's in these other places. But I've never had to
use the backup before. I never had to restore anything. It's
like, it's there. I know it's there. I don't want to look what
if it's not there, and it was there, and it took one second to
just Boop. Boop.
Okay, cool. Recording four camera feeds at some of these
podcasts I produce. It's like, I'm constantly monitoring to
make sure everything's recording, yeah, just, you know,
it's, it sounds good. We got, you know, okay, you know, if
something goes out, or maybe I run out of space on a card, for
some reason, it's like, okay, I know that's feeding into there,
so I gotta back up there, so that should be good. Yeah?
Oh, it's like, no matter how careful you are, because I'm
super careful, I have those systems in place. It just takes
one time. It wasn't a lost. It was me. I did it like I made a
mistake and it it that would have been a huge mistake if I
hadn't. It's a miracle you'll never make again. Oh, God no,
yeah, because it's like, how many times I've shot video and I
forgot to turn the camera on right and hit him record? Oh,
get this.
I have never messed up with 200 and something episodes of this
show, but the same drummer that I'm a fan of, Mike Miley from
the rival sons, we had a 60 minute gorgeous, flowing,
beautiful conversation. Never press record. So I remember that
I apologize to him. We set up another one, and then the audio
was corrupted, and he's like, I'm like, twice, and then I am
so happy that he reached out. He's like, Should we try this
again? He goes, I love chatting with you. Bucha. Like, we're
gonna do it. I just got to make sure that I get to
call you up and say, okay, am I being punked? Ashton Kushner,
come out, poor guy, yeah. I mean, twice. I mean,
it's technology stuff happens, and it's like, you know? And so,
yeah, that was, that was the one I had not told that publicly,
that I did that, but it's been a long time now, and but you know
that it doesn't happen to the best of the best had, had to,
yeah, you know? I mean, think about all the stuff that's on
tape that's been lost over years. You know, it's just gone
well even. But even when you're recording on tape, it's pretty
obvious if the reels aren't moving right, you're
not recording, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we had, I remember us
all going to a lunch at
those Jackson's, wasn't it Jackson's before I moved to
town,
and Steve misomo was there, and I had Steve misomo as a guest,
and he was talking about, you know, how he got paid all those
years to work at Sony tree and transfer all those audio
recordings physical to a digital format. Oh, so he did. That was
his job. Yeah, like, eight archiving that stuff. And he got
to basically hear the history of country music coming through
Nashville in the 50s, 60s, 70s. Pretty, pretty amazing. Yeah.
Chris Mara does all that out. And welcome to 1979 like they do
all kinds of tape transfer stuff. It's amazing. Yeah. How
many studio, commercial studios do you think are in Nashville?
We're talking hundreds, right? Yeah.
I mean, and far less than there used to be. But if you count
now, the all the private stuff like mine that's popped up to
make records, yeah, probably more than there used to be.
Yeah, no, but yeah, yes. So
an operation like yours is heavy man and the financial and you
got to have the insurance and all that kind of stuff. But if
somebody wants to start doing what you're doing, what's the
minimum that they is gonna they can have a powerful laptop,
right? Some nice microphones,
yeah, 20 grand,
small interface. I mean, you can get started for five grand
virtual like a little Mackie board and, yeah, you don't need
that. You need Apollo twin and a laptop and I'm in one good mic,
wow. And you can, you can start making music talented. You can
learn a lot, yeah, or don't be talented, just suck and work
hard. Yeah, yeah, suck first, yeah. So
what's the schedule when you is it artist to artist? Or do you
like to have a particular schedule? Like, Hey guys, we're,
you know, 10 o'clock, latest?
No, it does. I mean, I have, yes, I have that, like that
ideal schedule, and that gets shot to hell frequently, you
know, but it depends on the artist. I try to run it sort of
the same, the same hours that that all the sessions work,
because we're using the same. Players, and they're on the same
schedule, and so we're, you know, we need to kind of keep
that going. And, yeah, I try to do mostly morning, afternoon
sessions. The night thing is, is okay, but because it's usually
just me by myself out there, it's, it just turns into a very
long day of me. There's only so much concentration juice in the
in the can over here, so, but we do them, you know, like, a lot
of the Hazel stuff would be, would include evening sessions,
because they would come in and they would do their sessions on,
like, front and back of tour dates. And so they come in work
a day or two, go out and play three shows, come in work a day
or two. Maybe not all of them. Maybe it'd be, you know, Mark
and jet on the first two days, and then they'd come back in and
and, you know, Ryan would come do guitar stuff for a day, yeah?
And a lot of times it's like, you've, you've got to get a
certain amount done before they leave town, so we can kind of
keep on schedule here, which means, yep, we're out here until
10 or 11 or 12 o'clock, you know? And that's fun, though,
when that happens, because you're also, you're like, that's
like camp, like you're dug in, focused on one, one thing and
one thing only, yeah, and it's like coffee and making a record,
and that's, that's, that's all the world's your coffee intake
is high during the day, during those days especially, yeah. I
mean, I give myself a score, you know? I just, I'll do it, do it
with a smile on my face. It's just a thing in the studio. No,
it's gonna stay away from the bagel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got
a really good bagel place out by us too. It's dangerous, yeah,
yeah, when you
were talking about songwriting, and I guess by app, by accident,
getting into it, you know, while they're making adjustments to
the song right there in the studio. I mean, there's like,
steps of Moxie. I guess that has to happen. I know it did for me,
where you'd kind of like, Okay, I'll try that. You know, your
little stair steps to where you want to be, you know, even like,
hey, I'll adjust the fader for you. And that's how you get into
mixing and stuff like that. I've always wondered,
I've always wondered,
you know, I've always wondered, like, if you walk past somebody
writing a song and they're like, hung up on a phrase and it's
like, right in your head, you just blurt it out, and you're
like, co write, credit.
Is it worth the old word for a third?
Is that what that's called? Yes, no.
I mean, I think especially, more than almost any other aspect of
of the creative process, from writing to the the final
product, the writing is not something I insert myself in
without being asked, asked and invited, and I'm totally cool to
produce and mix records that I had no writing on I'm not I'm
not a writer producer that wants to write the song and then
produce it to make sure it gets out. But I have found that
writing with artists is a really great way to develop a rapport
with that artist and develop a relationship and a trust factor,
and it's just a good way for them to get to know me, and we
can demo things in the process, and they can kind of see what
it's like to work with me on some stuff, and just a good way
to try stuff out before everybody's on the hook. Are
there people in
that like that in the business? Oh, there's bug. The word you're
looking for is, indubitably, I regret it. Well, you know,
you're not really gonna be in the room on like, just a sole
writer session. But, I mean, there's more hanger ons when
you're working collectively like that in the studio. But usually
you know, you know the etiquette is to be, I mean, every cut that
I ever had with my five little years of writing songs, I was in
the room with the artist, yeah, and now I was talking to
somebody. They're not even publishing companies aren't
signing down the middle corporate songwriters. They're
hiring artists to develop, yeah, you know, they're not just, you
know, hiring guys that just sing Okay, and they can get the
melody across, and they know the craft of songwriting. They're
hiring just
straight up, artists, staff writers are in, yeah, not as
much of a in
decline. And demos are in decline. And there are demos
that are done, but they're usually done by two people, a
track guy, and somebody that's going to sing it, right? And so
for us guys that that was, that was an outlet. There was there
was the demo scene as a drummer, there was the custom record, you
know, Tex may hand is coming into town, and he saved $10,000
and we're gonna crank out songs for him, and boom, he's gonna
cover lunch for us. It's gonna be a great day. And then there
was the low budget masters, and then there was master recordings
that get end up on records at Walmart and Tarjay and all that
kind of stuff. And now the demo thing completely gone.
Pretty much gone. Yeah, pretty much gone. So when I met you,
and you were doing all, like, three sessions
a day every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it was a lot of
demos, publishing demos. It was a lot of custom doesn't happen
anymore, not the demos, really.
No, they do them in the rights most of the time, you know. And.
And so the the that's part of, that's more of a scratch
track. I would think, not
anymore. Virtual instruments, yeah, they sound so they bang
out a lot of stuff pretty quick, and they get the idea across.
And I do it a little. I mean, I've seen people that, you know,
they're, they're, yeah, their track guide demo that happens in
the right maybe gets finished that afternoon, or whatever,
sounds kind of like a record. I mean, I don't do that because I
want there to be a big difference between that and the
record that we're going to hopefully make. And also want
to, I don't want to pigeon hole us in with two hours worth of
ideas that we have to now live with forever, but, but a lot of
times it makes sense to do it that way. And yeah, a lot of
times I'm filling in as a writer. I'm filling in whatever
the room needs. If the two, if there's three of us and two of
them are lyric people, and they are just, they're they're moving
like I've learned to get very comfortable just sitting still
and doing nothing. Sometimes it's just, it's my place, and
I'm here to help where I'm needed. If it's turning on a
microphone at the end and getting a scratch vocal, yeah,
that's fine. If it's building a little bit of a track for you
guys to get going on. Great. If it's lyric writing with you,
that's great. But I don't, I don't try to, like, wedge myself
into that
role, and I usually go right for arrangement and lyrics. Yeah,
when I, when I was the Lyric, I mean, I guess it's like, a Neil
appear thing. You know, what
percentage of the time do you guys come across something where
you're like, oh my gosh, great idea. Just gold. What's the
pretty rare, right? Yeah.
I mean, yeah, yeah. I think it's gonna be huge. Yeah, yeah. I
mean, if you write with good writers, hope most of the time
you you can get somewhere that you're happy with at least. Then
How often
are you saying myself,
this is just garbage. This is awful. Sometimes,
for sure, a lot of times, a lot of times, and a lot of times
you, I mean, there are times numbers game, yeah. And
sometimes you get an hour and a half into a three hour right?
And look up and everybody just goes, Yes, isn't happening.
Let's reset our ears. I've got, I'd make the computer crash.
There's a cat in town, Dave, Dave Goodwin, and he is also an
artist, and he has this. It's like pop art. It's almost like
the Warhol Campbell soup can, yeah, and it says, verse,
chorus, bridge, lunch. Chorus two, verse two, chorus two. And
it's true, because verse two is always a problem. Verse Two is
the always the heart. It's usually always after lunch. Why
is that? It's just coming up with the next tickets for a
minute there. Like all country songs had, like little twists in
them. Remember where they had the twists? Yeah, we're
back to kind of like a some of those, that double entendre,
yeah, I
can't think of one like
homeboy. Let's just take you know Eric Church, homeboy, yeah,
you think of what the typical, what you would imagine? You
imagine a homeboy, yeah, but he managed to, I think, paint three
pictures off that term in that song. Totally. That doesn't
really happen anymore. I guess, like, a
chorus is, like a big idea, right? So if you come in with
that big idea, sometimes that falls out pretty quick, because
you're, you're, you kind of know where you're going. The first
verse sets up that big idea. And just like maybe writing an
episode of television or a novel, that second verse is
like, that development. That's where, that's where everything
has, like, how are we progressing? Yeah, from now that
you know this big idea now, how do we, like expand on it? Yeah,
that's, that's why I think it's always the at least for me,
that's why it's
always challenging. And that that piece of pop art is hanging
in about 50 different publishing Yeah, companies on the row. And
I bought one from him, and I framed it up, and it's in my
house. People, songwriters will come by and be like, Oh my god,
that is so true. Yeah, you
guys want to be a successful songwriter. Let me tell you the
secret. Okay, yeah, that book right back there behind yours
pendulum. We're about to go through essentially, what was
19? Well, we should be in 1945 right now. So anything that's
like culturally significant from 1945 to 1955 emulate that
what was going on during that time? I don't know, gotcha, but
basically, everything happens in cycles. Yeah, everything.
Oh, okay, I see. I just don't want corduroys to come back.
They're too heavy. Yeah? And I don't think the noise for oil. I
mean,
I'm in the studio all the time, the noise,
hey, do you realize we were just talking about demos, and how
demos have gone away that that I moved here early enough in 97
that when I started getting into demos, you know how detailed
they are now kick drum patterns, and the drums sound like fully
developed and there's soft sense, and it sounds like a
record, right? And so we're chasing that. Sometimes we're
copying that with our and then just applying our own humanity
to it. And but man, back in the day, the artists would come to
the studio, they would strum an acoustic guitar. We tap tempo
and on a rhythm. Watch, and they would say, think this, think
that, think Springsteen, think Steve Earl, think Emmy Lou
Harris, and we would have to know the history of music enough
to think about a kick drum pattern, and we'd have to copy
that tempo. And it would, it took a while, yeah. And we were
all realizing that on the floor democratically, of course, with
the songwriter having the total veto, right, power of veto. But
now it's so fleshy. How about
all those times that they came in and they played the song and
it sounded just like George straight, and they said, like,
think Devo and you're going that. How am I going to do that?
Oh yes, that doesn't work that. That's not how that works, you
know? But yeah, yeah, yeah, instead of
doing dude, got it in. Say, crazy.
But you think that style of songwriting, and, you know, Song
making will ever make a comeback, because it's almost
like the evolution of food, you know, farm to table has now
become very big. I would imagine music is going to go through
that kind of an evolution, like, is the music we're listening to
right now, like GMO modified.
I think you're already seeing it in, like, the the the big word
is the indie world, but like in the country world, the alt
country world, the Jason is supposed and those, they're
already, they're already back to that. It's already very much
humanity, yeah. I mean, you know, Jason throws his band in
rcaa, and they cut most of it live on the floor, and they
don't hear the songs, I don't think, until right that minute
he plays, which is nice, yeah, you know. And so it's, it's
humanity in it, yeah? And that's why those things have a huge,
huge fan bases. People feel that too. And they, you know, both
stool are they still playing with a click, though,
I don't know. Depends
on the song, like, if they can't get the feel or whatever. I
mean, it's, it's a tool, but, I mean, look at Dave Cobbs
production. It's like, so raw. And the, you know, we had Chris
Powell on. He's like, Dude, I've used the smallest sticks, and
hits so lightly, and the frees are just cranked, yeah, it's
like the Joey warrinker thing, okay, you know, we're, we're, if
sounds great, yeah.
He plays literally, like with chopsticks, but they sit on huge
and he just, but the engineer opens up the pres all the way
the compressors, yeah, yeah. Oh, the compression, yeah, yeah, and
the priest. It's
back when we recorded the big album for Connecticut, white
bread. Oh,
no, yeah, no. Click, Jim will mention his band from 20 years
ago. Oh, over three
like 35 years ago. Episode, yeah, so
yeah, no, click, just play the song from memory. It was our
demo four song, demo that we spent $600 on. You sound pretty
good, buddy. No, didn't
it was 1995
like a good, you know, rap rock drummer before it was cool, you
know, yeah, we had very unsavory songs. Oh yeah,
they were very salacious. I
did not partake in any of the songwriting. Just gonna clear my
name right now, before I get canceled, Jim,
look up some of those crazy internet questions and pick two
of them. But in the meantime, what's your favorite
color? Let's go with blue, damn it. There we go. What's your
favorite food?
Mexican food. So because it says here on your bullet points. So
you sent me, let's talk about the best place to get tacos,
right? Is it mas tacos? I think it's MOS tacos, okay, because I
was right there last night across the street at lag Lyra,
yeah, Lira, yeah. It's Mediterranean food. And I had
the fish, I had the chicken, and I had the lamb, and we had the
potatoes. We had the the the Middle Eastern, you know, non
type bread. We had humus. It's not hummus. Hummus, yeah, and I
was digging in with near z. We had that we share some hummus
together. And that area is amazing because I also tried the
pharmacy for the first time, living all these years in
Nashville, had never been there, never had a pharmacy burger eat
outside. No, it's cold. Oh, okay, you got to go there when
it's warming up. Awesome, yeah, but that's where so Larry
aberman And I always go to moss taco, yeah, and they have the
fried they had the fried guac and the avocados,
yeah, the fried avocado taco and the plantains, yeah, yeah.
But what do you like? Just a street taco vibe, yeah.
I mean, yeah. I mean, all the time in Texas too. The Tex Mex,
great. Don't you miss it? Yeah? Remember
they have street corn when you were there in Texas? Yeah, yeah,
that's, it's delicious. You
can get that from, uh, there's a place. There's a food truck in
East Nashville. Now that's doing great street corn. I can really
name it, but yeah, yeah. Last
time I had it was in Miami at the rusty the rusty pelican. And
it was one of these places I had to do a shoot down there in
downtown Miami. Yeah, and on the way to Key Biscayne, it was
like, it looked like a hole in the wall. So I'm like, this is
perfect. There's a little bar. Pull up, whatever, have some
dinner. I was gonna head back to the hotel, and I pull up. It's
like. A luxurious gourmet restaurant, yes? And I'm like,
Okay, I'm not dressed for this. Yeah, people are in black tie.
Put me at a seat at the bar. I had a nice steak and street corn
instead of potato. It was unbelievable,
amazing. I know you're you and I were talking about this, but
what is your favorite drink when you are doing it?
Well, if it was cocktail there, I became quite an old fashioned
aficionado for a while. So you make them at the house, yeah?
But I kind of got to where just a good bourbon on the rocks is
good. That's it. Yeah, bourbon on the angels envy would be my
nice and they're angels rye. I mean, it's really expensive, but
it's, it's really good. Now, what's the
difference again, between the bourbon and the rides, the
treatments, the process, the barreling or something? Bourbon?
Basically,
whiskey, yeah, yeah. Whiskey, yeah. I think it has to be made
in Kentucky. I don't know that might have been right back
shame.
Podcast, no, we need a guy like Joe Rogan. Hey, he's on the
computer the whole time. Well, his name Francis, sometimes
Jamie, sometimes Jim will do it. What's your favorite drummer of
all time? Man, yeah, it's really hard because you like one guy,
because he plays ballads great you you like, you know, yeah,
this person for this I'm still going with gad. Yeah, best all
around drummer, yeah, in the history of the universe, yeah.
Plays everything. Feels great all the time. 80 years young.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing to think that he's probably one of
these guys that has never rushed or dragged ever in his entire
life. Yeah,
probably when he's young.
I don't know, who just don't know. Yeah, maybe he had to
start somewhere. Man, nobody's perfect. It's always, always
feels very measured, though, doesn't it? Like, so
intentional,
so intentional, yeah, because the band could be pushing so far
ahead, and he has the ability to just sit on it, yeah, but not
make it uncomfortable. It's like, just, you know, it's all
the time in the trenches, the 10s of 1000s of hours. I just
think it's great that you've been here for 16 years. I think,
yeah, around 16 years, and you, you have just grown this amazing
skill set. And you know, you got a roof over your head, you got a
family. You got the two dogs, yeah, get a life. Have a life.
It's here, yeah, I parents must be proud. You still got your
parents. Yes, yeah, Lucky
still have the family. And do they come visit? They do, yeah,
yeah, yeah. And it's, yeah, it's, it's, I don't know if you
do this, but it's, it's, so I bet you do, though, it's easy to
always be looking for the next thing and ahead, oh yeah. It's
tough sometimes to look, look around and realize, like, oh
yeah, I've been doing this for 16 years, and I'm not worried
about paying the mortgage and the hell that happened. Like,
you know, that's good. And that lasts about three seconds, and
then it's back to, like, you're like,
worried about the next thing. Let's get back to let's get back
to securing our relevance. Yeah, yeah. So much fun. It's amazing.
Well, it's endless. And, you know, you know, Jim and I have a
common bond is that we're, we're entrepreneurs, and you
essentially are too, yeah, you know what? I mean, it's like,
we're all essentially working for ourselves. Yeah, you gotta
have a business mind, and we do. I mean, I mean, yeah, I know so
many creatives that don't Yeah, and many times their career
reflects
that, yeah, it's tough to stay in it. It's tough to have
longevity if you don't have enough organization to keep,
keep the business
organizational skills and some I mean, of course, I take it to a
whole other level. And I'm probably get tons of shit for
it, but it's just, you know, the idea of, you know, always
shagging the trees,
yeah, you have to. It's called prosper. You have to. I mean,
everything's a hustle. And, like, that's the whole, I mean,
I joked earlier that my half my life is scheduling. It's not
but, but literally, a third of my work is developing new
opportunities like that. That is absolutely like, that is
intentionally, like, 33% of my time, yeah, is devoted to,
are you going out, like an A and R guy to check out talent? No,
not a
ton. I do a little bit, but a lot of mine is, is, is done
through the artists I'm already working with, the CO writes, and
as long as if I can keep it that way, I do. And when that starts,
when I feel like the the tide is pulling out, then I start going
out a bunch more. You know, word of mouth, referrals, that's
always the best, building relationships from that small,
little nucleus outward. Yeah, it's too
bad you never heard Connecticut white bread. Man, you'd be like,
who says I haven't I missed a golden opportunity. Jim, what's
your question that you would love to ask, buddy, which body
part do you wish you could detach and why?
Lately it's been my right foot, because it's been killing me.
So, yeah, really,
yeah. What's the most imaginary from the bass drum?
I think so really, bass drum walking too much. Yeah.
What's the most imaginative, imaginative insult you can come
up with,
oh, that's kind of unfair to put somebody on the spot for it is
true the most imaginative insult, Hey, look.
Cock face, bear, put you in your place over there. Cock face, you
look like Andy Garcia stuck his tongue in an electrical socket.
Oh, my God, it's amazing. I'll take Andy.
Garcia, you did really good buddy. You do great improv
comedy. You got to create something out of nothing. Jim, I
thought you were gonna ask him about his cover band. He told me
to ask the weird questions, tribute band.
Okay, what's the tribute, man? What's the tribute
for the rest of your life. For the rest of
your life, you can't do anything else. Oh, it's the only music I
get to play that to the day you die, you cannot freaking
vacillate. It's got to be the same song over and over. Okay?
So
that either means one of two things. You either want to play
music that you love enough to play all the time, or you want
to play shit you hate so that you don't ruin something that
you love, and I'm gonna play something that I don't care for
one way or the other. Yeah, really, I'm just like, I'll just
pick something like playing like a Buddy Holly tribute band for
the rest of my life. Because completely, yeah, that way I
don't ruin any music I love by just driving it into the
ground. You're not gonna ruin it. So using your God given
ability to lift this music up, but use the inspiration from the
original drummer as a launching pad. What is that? Is it the
police? Is it Zeppelin? Is it rush? Is it in steely? Dan, ooh,
yeah. I mean, man, the police might be on that list, right?
Yeah,
because it's, it's super high energy. Yeah, it's challenging.
It
is, yeah, it has some room to to play with too. It's not super
rigid, right? Like Stuart's doing the thing, but he's doing
different things. So yeah, yeah,
his take on his drum parts now, yeah, 3540 years later, are so
different, yeah, because he's a different drummer. He's a
different human being. He got into production, composition,
orchestration. He's another guy that just went off the rails.
So, so, like I My thing is, I really am just so impressed,
because, well, you know, maybe I went off the rails a little bit.
I mean, I went out to Hollywood and expanded my skill set. I do
motivational speaking. I do tons of teaching. Yeah, any interest
in
that? Man, I'm getting more interested in it again now,
yeah, I didn't want to hustle it for a long time because I was
focusing on other stuff. Yeah. And now, I think if there were
opportunities to teach, especially some of what I'm
doing, production stuff, mixed stuff, to other musicians, I'd
be kind of interested. Oh, you'd be teaching that, not to drums,
yeah. I mean, I could teach some drums here and there, but it's,
I'm not, man, that's like anything else you're doing all
the time. That's a, you know that the good teachers, that's a
skill set they have. That's a knife that needs to stay sharp
for it to be really effective. And I'm not in that, in that
boat right now,
yeah, but you would, even after wearing an old pair of shoes,
I'd have
to work it up again, yeah,
man, I guess I take it for granted, because I just do it so
much in different settings, like I do a one on one, I do it in
person, I do it online. I do it at drum shops. I do it in music
schools, due to colleges, it's like, yes,
you can actually hire rich at the drum tensive, the one one on
it's one on one. Drum tensor, see, it's a little wordplay.
Drum tensive.com, did
you get that yet? I locked it down, and I just have to build
the page. Let me tell you guys, okay, go to drumtensive.com when
it's available, it's gonna be up there with our merch page
someday and hire rich the guy is just only $5,000 a day for you
to come in. Damn Jim, well, you're not far off. That's
$5,000 you'll ever spend. He'll DJ for you too. He'll DJ for
you. 10,000 you're gonna go to moss tacos, right? Oh, yeah. And
no, actually, for the drum tensive, I take him to sushi
steak. I mean, we don't, we don't fuck around. We
usually go to sushi. That's what I've been to sushi with you.
Bucha, yeah.
Where do we go? Rousseau's down in the Gulch. It was kind of,
wasn't done yet. It was, like, that kind of place. Oh, sorry,
but Jim, yeah, I was promoting you, I know. But it's like, not
sincere. It's like, really. It's like, you know, it's fake. It's
like, fake news.
You think I'm being fake China, it's
no it is genuine. Come on, you know, I believe,
do I believe in you? I So, so Ben, if people wanted to get in
touch with
you, are you.com? Guy? Are you? Yeah, it's Ben Jackson music.com
Awesome. Yeah,
yeah. And you can hear clips of your work. And you got some
stuff with your pictures of your studio up there. Yep, there are,
yeah, I gotta drop by some time come over. I've been invited to
Ray luziers place. I've been invited to near these place.
I've been invited to your place. Why not officially, but why
don't we do, like, a video series of that? We should,
you know what? You'll probably you know the ever been on the
working drummers podcast with Matt Krause.
Matt just came out and did the filming thing. I was gonna say,
yeah, he was just on this, wasn't he? Yeah,
perfect, because he was celebrating 600 episodes. He's
killed that. I did that. Thing forever ago with him, and it's
amazing see what it's done. I know just
well. The thing is, is this an endless parade of guests?
Because drummers were just so thick as thieves? Yeah, you
know. And we love hearing each other's stories, because your
story is completely unique. We went to the same university a
decade apart. Had the same teachers, the same curriculum,
the same influences at our fingertips. We moved to the same
city, and we're doing completely different, yeah, yeah, but I'm
just a big fan. I'm happy for you, and I'm proud of you, man,
thanks, dude. Yeah, man, thanks for having me on congratulations
today, and I'm proud of you. Well, thanks, man. Ben Jackson,
music.com Jim, when this comes out, I think we're going to be
on the verge of appearing at the Music City drum show, and that's
going to be July 19 and 20. You're going to be holding down
a booth for us on July 19. On the 20th, I'm going to pop in,
yeah, and we're going to be hanging, we're going to be
mugging, we're going to have books for sale. We're going to
have a step and repeat. We're going to have a bunch of merch
for the podcast. You can buy merch. It's going to be great. I
get to field all the questions of, who are you and where's
rich?
This is very just pass around the email list, right? Yeah, and
we'll and we'll push these coffee mugs. People have been
asking for these coffee mugs for six years. I'll put one
in the studio. Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. Oh, you're the
gym on the podcast. Yeah, I am. Oh,
Jim, no. People know all sorts of things. I tagged Jim McCarthy
voiceovers and it's your show.co. On every social post,
people were like, We get it. You're friends for 19 years. You
know it's good though. Hey, thanks, buddy, yeah, man, thanks
really, really appreciate it continued success, Jim, thanks
for your time and talent and to all the listeners. Thank you. We
really do appreciate you. Be sure to subscribe, share, rate
and review helps people find the show until next time. Take care.
Thanks, guys, this
has been the rich Redmond show. Subscribe rate and follow along
at rich redmond.com forward, slash podcasts. You.