My friend Tim Waters came over two weeks before I moved to Mexico City, we sat in my living room with the lav mics I got for Christmas, and this is what happened.

We get into growing up super religious and what happens when that falls apart, Duolingo streak psychology, unintentional black guitars, and how music—like discovering Green Day as a kid—can completely reroute your life.

We also played some music, most of which you (fortunately) won't get to hear. A bit, though.

Follow Tim on Instagram @radiocityrecords, listen to some of his old music on Soundcloud at someoneliketim, and watch the music video for his band Nothing Less' song "Record Store" on YouTube.

Please show some support for the podcast and get access to some extra content by subscribing to the Patreon page: http://www.patreon.com/onefjef

Instagram: @onefjefpod

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onefjefpod

TikTok: @onefjefpodcast

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@onefjef

Email: onefjefpod@gmail.com

You can also call the podcast and leave a voicemail at 1-669-241-5882 and I will probably play it on the air.

Thank you for listening, please do it again, but make it a struggle.

Onefjef is produced, edited & hosted by Jef Taylor.

We lived on 5 per diems per member.

Jesus Christ.

Our tour bus would stop at a Flying J with an attached Wendy's and we would We

would get out and file with guys that I had, I remember my career was two people

in front of me in line at a Flying J. He's a singer for a band called MXPX.

Like I had a poster of them on my wall.

Like all these bands, huge bands, in line.

Why are these And guess what?

Spoiler alert.

90 percent of these bands had a 5 per meal budget.

This is episode 44 of onefjef.

44 shows up in subtle ways.

It's the molecular weight of carbon dioxide, the air you're constantly

cycling, and a piano has 44 white keys shaping how music is laid out.

In Japan, it can feel unlucky since four can sound like the word for

death, so 44 doubles that association.

And really, its pull comes from us.

Our brains latch onto repeating numbers like 44, turning simple patterns

into something that feels meaningful.

I keep thinking about getting rid of that number thing.

At the beginning.

But then I'll be talking to somebody and they'll be like, I like it.

So it remains in.

For now.

We shall see what happens when the new season begins.

Whenever the new season begins.

When does the new season begin?

Anyway, hello my parasocial friends.

I hope you're thriving, as always.

I am not thriving, but I'm doing okay.

I played pickleball here in Mexico City a couple days ago, and I was not good.

So bad, in fact, that my partner was telling me how to play, which,

honestly, I found to be a bit obnoxious.

But he was quite good, so, okay.

Anyway, after a few embarrassing games, I was talking to this guy And trying

to justify the sorry state of my game.

And he was like, yeah, the ball floats differently at this altitude.

It takes some getting used to.

And I was like, whoa, okay.

And it turns out this is true.

Significantly.

So we're at like 2, 250 meters here in Mexico city.

And yeah, I'm using meters because I'm in Mexico city.

And also because feet and inches, it's stupid.

It's stupid.

Anyway, the air's a lot thinner, and that thinner air makes the ball go faster,

it makes it float longer, and it makes it go out of bounds more often, and it

makes a person who's used to playing at basically ground level suck at it.

Because I remember thinking like, what's going on?

Why can't I hit anything in bounds?

Why am I so terrible?

I'm not this terrible in Ohio.

But now we have the culprit.

It's the elevation.

It explains everything about my poor play.

How long I can use this as a justification has yet to be determined,

but for now, I am running with it.

And also, in case you're wondering, pickleball in Spanish is pickleball.

You're welcome.

My guest today is someone who I don't think has ever played

pickleball, but he has played in my poker game, and he has played On

the Warped Tour, which is honestly way cooler, his name is Tim Waters.

Tim Waters is a Columbus, Ohio based vocalist, songwriter, and producer

who got his start fronting the pop punk band Nothing Less, which

played the band's Warped Tour.

He later became the frontman and production force behind We Are the Movies.

A band that earned a spot on Alternative Press Magazine's Bands

to Watch list in 2020, and built a following through extensive touring,

sharing stages with Sum 41, sleeping with Sirens, and State Champs.

Outside of performing, Waters runs Radio City Records, a Columbus studio

where he has produced and shaped the sound of numerous regional artists.

Tim and I talk about how we met at length in this episode,

so I won't recount that here.

But he's another one of these Rare humans who I immediately connected with.

As if we'd been friends for years, and it's kind of been

like that with us ever since.

I honestly didn't see Tim as often as I would have liked to

when I was living in Columbus.

He's got kids and, uh, he's got a full time job at a multinational

corporation and all this stuff, and for a while I didn't know if

I'd get to see him before I left.

But I'm so glad that I did because that's when we recorded this podcast.

It was about two weeks before I left and I had taken down my podcast studio.

So we recorded it in my living room using these wireless lav mics.

That I got for Christmas.

So it doesn't sound quite as good as this does, but it still sounds good.

And you get some atmosphere, like the clinking of the ice

and the drinks and so forth.

So maybe that adds a little je ne sais quoi to the interview.

Me saying, I really enjoyed this conversation with blank before every

interview is kind of becoming a cliche.

A me cliché, a meche, if you will, but it's true.

But for this one, it's more true, I guess, because Tim and I really

just have good conversation.

Maybe it was because we were just sitting in the living room, too,

but this conversation just kind of went all sorts of different places.

And I learned a lot about Tim and his early semi rockstar days.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for being here.

Here's Tim Waters.

See, I always imagine when I think podcast, I think, like, you have your

headphones on like you're in a radio room.

Yeah, yeah, and that's more fun, but I've already kind of taken that down.

Yeah, you had your chance.

Anyway, Tim, here with Tim.

Um, Tim's, uh, Last name is God, what is Tim's last name?

How did I forget your last name?

I'll get it.

Redacted.

Waters.

Why, I knew, I didn't, you know why I didn't remember that?

Because my best friend when I was, uh, in, uh, young, very young, in my, on

my street, his name was Jason Waters.

Maybe what you're, maybe you're related to him.

No shit.

And he lives in Columbus, but we have not once seen each other since I've been here,

because he's, has a different life now.

So, I, but I did run into his sister at a hair salon many years ago.

Anyway, that's not who's here right now.

Tim Waters is here.

Uh, Tim Waters is, um, a very good friend of mine.

This is the last time we may see each other for a long time until he

comes to Mexico and, um, visit to me.

And we get the tacos that make your brain reconsider the idea of a deity, of a God.

Yeah.

Yes.

Um, And we're sitting in my living room using the wireless

lavalier mics, which is, uh, I don't think I've done this before.

I have not done this.

I don't think I've done this.

I have not.

I did it in a bar last night with another friend of mine in O'Reilly's.

And it worked out?

Yeah, because it's got good noise cancellation.

That's wild.

I don't really want to have to edit this this much, but I'm

already going thinking about it.

I'm like, oh, I'm gonna have to edit some of this already.

Goddammit.

Son of a bitch.

Um, anyway, Tim, tell me about Tim Waters.

Tim waters.

Oh God.

I don't know.

You were born in Alaska then?

I was born in Anchorage, Alaska.

Yeah.

Yep.

In the summer of 82.

Wow.

Yeah.

My dad was born in Alaska before it was a state.

It was the territory of Alaska.

Wow.

Yeah.

What do they call that?

What did they call it?

I think it was actually known as like tent city or something.

There's gotta be a name for those people who were like originators

or originalists or something.

Colonists?

Colonist something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That might be derogatory nowadays.

Oh yeah.

What's, so what was it, like growing up in Anchorage, Alaska?

Cold.

I get that.

Probably cold.

So it was cold.

A lot of mosquitoes.

Dark a lot of the time and then light a lot of the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was born in Alaska and then when I was really little I ended

up moving to the Pacific Northwest.

Um, a little baby.

Okay, so you don't really remember that much.

The last time I saw my dad, I was five.

Okay.

Before I met him again.

Right.

But you didn't spend a lot of time in Alaska then?

No, it was, it wasn't very long.

Right.

And then, um, lived in, uh, the Everett, you know, Seattle area, Pacific Northwest.

Always raining.

Lived in a little town called Coos Bay, Oregon.

Always reading.

Koosbay?

Koosbay.

Koosbay, all right.

Koosbay.

Koosbay.

It's a town so small that on the map we were Koosbay slash North Bend, which

is the other small town next to us.

Well, it was so small.

Yeah, they have an airport now, though.

Just call it Koos Bend.

Koos Bend.

Because they could make it easy for everybody.

But then you can't have high school rivalries.

Oh, right.

You guys hated the North Bend?

Yeah, the North Bend Bulldogs.

We were the Marshfield Pirates, because they never updated the high school name

to match the town name when that updated.

Oh, it was Marshfield before it was Coos Bend.

Yeah, it was one of those things where you have like, you know, a

handful of small little townships back before civilization, and then

they all like, incorporated as a town.

The good old days.

Coos Bay, North Bend, is actually the, um, I learned this, A long time ago,

so grain of salt, but I believe it is the, um, one of three natural deep water

ports on the Pacific, uh, ocean on the U.

S. San Francisco, Seattle, and Coos Bay.

That sounds about right.

It was a shipping town.

Oh, all right.

And logging.

Those giant barges that you see?

Yeah.

Imagine filled with logs.

Cut down all the trees, yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah.

I remember being really little when we first moved there.

I was like 10 years old.

Yeah.

Um, and we were driving, my stepdad who was from there, um, that's why we moved

there, uh, we were driving through, like, the hills and everything I was told

was like, oh, you know, it's beautiful.

Everyone wanted to just talk, like, my mommy, she was very excited to move there.

She was like, oh, it's beautiful.

It's so green.

It's so green.

And we drove through, and I can still close my eyes and picture

it to this day, we drove through these hills, and it was just stumps.

As far as you could see, I mean like as far to the horizon were just these little

hills popping up covered in stumps.

Beautiful.

And it was so, and you know, like they, they replanted.

Sure.

Yeah, I mean, that's good, but it's not gonna be the old trees though.

My stepdad who grew up there, Um, I remember him even at that age.

He was like, oh, yeah, those liberals are coming in here making us plant new trees.

Oh, God forbid.

Yeah, and I'm like 10 thinking well, yeah, shouldn't you?

Right, well, you know why Iceland is so barren.

It's because the Vikings came in and cut down all the trees and

they can't even like plant new trees because the wind is so harsh.

So the trees don't really take.

So it's a lot of, it's just barren.

And because the Vikings came in wanting to build other ships to

Viking it up, it probably like shifted the entire climate for sure.

You know, and everything.

That's why liberals coming in, planting their new , God forbid we plant new trees.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, I mean, they could call it, they could rename it Stump stump town.

Stump stump something.

Yeah.

You know, that'd be a good name of a bar stump.

I mean, isn't there a, like a guy with a hook?

Oh, it's STAs Coffee.

It's not Stumps Coffee.

There's gotta be a Stumps coffee somewhere.

Like a guy with one leg?

You know, my, my high school, one of my high school English teachers,

we actually called her Old Stumpy.

Oh, why'd you call her that?

Because she did, had one missing leg?

She was missing an arm, and it was a meat grinder accident, and she was very open

with it, and she was an awesome teacher.

I don't remember her at all.

She ever talked about every class you told us about the meat grinder accident?

No, but like, when I get my arm caught in a meat grinder,

day one, she was like, yep.

The rumors are true.

When I was a kid, my, you know, we had a butcher shop or whatever,

and I fell into the meat grinder.

Um, and this is what I'm working with now.

Anyway, what did she teach?

English.

Creative writing.

So she'd be like, okay, and Macbeth in this part here, like

the accident that I had with the meat grinder, uh, is also, yeah.

Maybe.

Related to every single book that you're reading.

Yeah.

We had a teacher in my school, Mrs.

Wilder was the English teacher, and everybody liked her, but she was, she

would, she would be drunk sometimes.

No shit?

Like actually drunk at school?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

People talked about it.

Yeah.

Yeah, she just seemed eccentric, but then you're like, oh yeah, she was drinking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Little Teacher's Lounge.

Did you take Spanish in high school?

No, unfortunately I didn't.

I wish I had because it would be a lot more easy.

Right now I took French, which Yeah.

Oui, je parle français un peu, mais it's useless in Mexico.

Yeah, I wish I'd learned Spanish when I was young, but now I'm trying to

learn it as an older person and it's very hard to acquire a language when

you're, you know, above 45 or 50.

Yeah, they say the best time to learn is like before the age of five or when your

brain is malleable yeah yeah before but uh we'll do the best we can yeah um perdón

solo hablo un poco espanol hold up one one more time slower perdón solo espanol

excuse me i speak a little spanish i only speak a little spanish i only speak

a little solo which is the only oh solo okay right i mean uh perdón yo hablo un

poco espanol would be I speak a little bit, I speak a little bit of Spanish.

I don't, I'm probably already screwing that up, but I can

say, I'm getting better at it.

Una mesa por tres personas, por favor.

Oh, bueno, bueno, si.

Gracias.

That was the extent of my Duolingo learning.

Right.

I've been doing Duolingo.

I got a 428 day streak right now.

Is that the longest streak you've ever had, or is that the only

streak I've ever had, yeah.

Okay.

I just started Duolingo when, before I went to Mexico the first

time, and I just kept it up.

If you, if you don't keep it up, the whole thing unravels, I've learned.

My experience is not unique.

Oh, it unravels?

Yeah.

Like I was hardcore about, uh, Duolingo.

I was like even doing like, you know, the pronunciation exercises and stuff.

I'm like, I'm gonna learn this.

I'm gonna like, you know, I, I took a year of high school Spanish.

Did you do professional where you can actually do the AI that they have now?

Were you using that?

Or is that, this is earlier than that?

It was a couple years ago.

Okay, they have AI now.

You can have a conversation, but I don't pay the extra money for that.

Yeah, no, don't.

Um, they, fucking AI.

They, they, now all I can think of is AI.

I mean, AI for language learning is actually pretty effective.

Like, it's not terrible.

Like, you can, I'll talk to the chatbot sometime and be

like, hey, can you help me?

And it'll be like, yeah, blah, blah.

But then I'll pronounce things.

It doesn't, it can't pick up on pronunciation nuances.

Like, it doesn't get that.

So it's like, I can say something, I'll be like, so if I say, yo hablo un taco

por favor, and it'll be like, perfect.

Yeah, I'll be like, yeah.

I started gaming the system at the end before I lost my streak.

You can buy streak freezes.

I'm gonna pay for it.

No, well, you can use the gems that you get those gems and you can use those

Yeah, I've done some of that Yeah when I hit when I finally hit the end of my

streak and I didn't have any of the gems or whatever to You know, the end of the

road, I was like, oh, I guess I'm done.

Cool.

There was no more dopamine.

There was no more trying to sustain it.

So sustaining that, it's like carrying that lottery, that winning lottery ticket

across your, you know, your driveway.

It's terrifying.

And that is what motivated me to keep going was the fear of losing that streak.

And once I lost it, it was, I was done.

I'm like, this is a reasonable amount.

It wasn't about learning Spanish at all.

Well, I mean, that's the psychological hook.

It's about the Spanish, but for my brain and the little addictive talons

that it gets in there Oh, no, that's it was purely the don't lose your streak

Oh that works that stuff works for me to a degree that is almost unhealthy

like with the I got an Apple watch and like I Close my rings every single day.

I always close my rings like I went through over the summer I didn't know

because I was traveling and stuff But like for the last four months I've closed

my rings every day and it's not an easy thing to do like but I you know Yoga

and whatever and I got but yeah, I'm upset but it helps me keeps me in shape.

So whatever works whatever works.

Yeah

Yeah, I don't know that I would Completely give up if I lost my streak on Duolingo,

but I have two streak freezes left.

So I'm not going to, yeah, once I get to Mexico, maybe it'll change,

but, um, you'll have the perfect reason to not pick it back up.

You know, I'm already here.

I'm immersed.

What better way is there to learn the language?

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's good.

It doesn't really, I don't even know how much it teaches you.

It really more helps you with vocabulary as opposed to actually like real world

speaking situations is the thing.

And now there's so many, Apps that are trying to teach you Spanish.

Like now, since I, the algorithm now knows that I'm trying to learn

Spanish and probably knows I'm going to Mexico, so I, my Instagram is flooded

with Spanish stuff all the time.

It's nutso.

Um, and I'm even getting, I don't know how this has happened, but

on podcasts now, when I listen to them, I'll get Spanish commercials.

I'm like, how did this happen?

Like, how does it know?

Like, commercials in Spanish, commercial breaks in Spanish, because everywhere

you go, they change the commercials, you know, if you're in, you know,

but now I'm literally getting, I'm in Columbus, and I started getting

Spanish commercials like three weeks ago, and it's like, how does it know?

How does it know?

It knows.

Uh, or maybe it's just, yeah, I don't, I don't know.

It is a little bit creepy.

Um, anyway, so then you, um, you were a child.

You grew up and you started you, your music stuff.

When did this happen?

When I was 15 years old.

Um, when I was 14 years old, I discovered Green Day.

Oh, I've heard of them.

My, uh, my buddy Dookie, was it before Dookie?

Pre Dookie?

Um, insomniac was the first one I heard.

Oh, that's pre pre Dookie?

No, it was after.

Oh, that's after Do.

Oh, wow.

So I, yeah, I came into it a little late, like, I don't even remember.

Insomnia.

What's a song?

Off Insomniac?

Um, I'm having trouble trying to sleep.

Dun dun, dun dun.

Oh, yeah, that's a good song.

That's the big hit from that one.

Dun Yeah.

That's actually a good song.

Yeah.

But Dookie, that was a classic.

Oh, yeah, that was great.

One of the best.

That became my favorite album once, my buddy, so I didn't have That's

like five hits from that album.

It's crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, I went from not having a CD player to, we did have a CD player in the house,

but I had a very sheltered upbringing, so if it wasn't, like, Christian

music, it wasn't allowed in the house.

You were raised Christian?

Like, hardcore Christian?

Oh, super hardcore.

Oh, really?

Oh, wow.

Super hardcore.

Like, how hardcore?

If I didn't go to church on Sunday morning, I was grounded

until I went to church.

But you weren't going every day, though.

No, no, no, no.

I went twice a week.

What denomination?

Like, what was the label?

The non denominational community church type thing.

Yeah, I got grounded for not, for ditching, for skipping church.

Did you get grounded until the next Sunday?

No, they caught me because they would let me drive to church.

I used to have to go with my parent, my mom.

My dad didn't go to church, but I used to go with my mom.

And then once I learned how to drive, they would let me go by myself.

And I was like, I don't want to go to church by myself.

I don't want to go to church.

So I would go to the record store and just hang out there for an hour.

Wait, so they trusted you to go to church on your own and not with them?

They weren't even at the church?

Her.

Me and my mom.

My dad didn't go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, they, they expected I was gonna go to church and I

went to the record store instead.

My generation best record store in Cleveland, Ohio for many years.

And I would just spend an hour there.

I spent so much time in a record stores when I was a kid, but, uh, and then

they needed the car, so they went to the parking lot of the church.

They couldn't find the car, and then they, they went to the record store

and they, they found the car and then I got grounded and had to walk home.

And Jesus was mad.

Jesus was pissed.

Uh, pissed off.

Mm-hmm . But he understood, 'cause Jesus is a cool guy ultimately.

And he understood music.

He's like, I get it buddy.

Yeah.

My parents didn't understand.

Jesus is the reason I'm an atheist.

What does that mean?

And so, and I, when I say atheist, I mean it loosely because I'm, I feel

like I'm a very, like, I'm open to all sorts of possibilities, right?

Uh, but when I was growing up in the church, like, so I had a very sheltered

upbringing where I had to learn to be a duplicitous and be that good Christian

boy at home and then go to school or hang out with my friends and be myself.

And the thing is, that they used.

This was really popular in the 90s, was to have some, like, recovered,

troubled teen come to a youth group or church and give his testimony or

witness or whatever it's called, right?

And I noticed, when I was a teenager, that literally all of the, like, the

coolest thing you could do at church was to be, like, a bad kid that finds Jesus.

Right.

Right.

And I remember when I was, uh, 17 years old.

And my youth group decided that their age bracket stopped at 17

and I could no longer attend.

I was like, holy shit.

I was essentially excommunicated from that community that I had become

so embedded in because I was so involved in the youth group aspect

that like I aged out of it, right?

Oh, that's wild.

Um, and I, I remember feeling so just like rejected in a way.

And I was, I had a studio apartment.

I was 18.

It wasn't 17.

18, that makes more sense, right?

Oh, whatever.

Yeah.

Um, but I had a studio apartment at the time.

This is summer right after I graduated at 17.

And, uh, I was walking by the church from my job bagging groceries.

I had to walk by the church and it was on Thursday night, youth group night.

And I saw everyone out there having fun, like playing.

And, uh, I remember the last conversation I had with them about how, you know,

it's Yeah, it's totally normal to like, you know age out of these things like

you'll be going off and living your life and stuff and I thought you know what?

Fuck it.

All right, God if you're real bring me back I'm gonna be

doing my own thing for a while.

Mm hmm.

Does it do anything?

Yeah.

Oh, that's not Jesus's fault That's God's fault.

I know but it's the uh, I guess that the point I was trying to make is that

Jesus was so big on The forgiveness, and the second chances, and the, and

the, sure, the mingling with the Right, everything that the church in America

generally is against these days, about open mindedness, and treating your

neighbor as yourself, and all that.

Yes, and so the best thing that you could do is be like a, uh,

a delinquent that found Jesus.

And I was like, it's time to shift into my delinquent chapter.

So you became a delinquent just in order so you could be cool

with the Jesus people again?

Yes!

Yes!

Okay, you're starting to get it.

Okay, I was like, I am going to try and live my life going forward

as if I never even was introduced to the concept of religion or

God, because it is so difficult to get that voice out of your head.

It took years and when I finally did, I rejoiced and I was like,

hell yeah, I'm an atheist.

I went on Reddit.

I was like, yeah, atheism.

What subreddit did you go on to do that?

Atheism?

Atheism.

Slash atheism.

It like, it was so freeing.

And once I finally.

Did but once I was finally cut free from all that.

Yeah, I Realized that there is nothing that really could happen to me in my

life Knock on wood that would bring me into that form of religion again.

It's religion is the problem It's not the it's the the God stuff doesn't bother me

so much because the ideas are good It's that the religion screws it up entirely.

It's like if Jesus came back, I always feel like he'd be

like, what are you guys doing?

This is not what I meant at all.

This is nothing.

None of this is what I meant.

I'm going back until you figure it out because this is not, you

don't reinterpret the Bible.

It's not like what Jesus meant to say was that we should hate the gays.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That's not how.

Right.

Yeah.

I think that the teachings of Jesus It's really unfortunate that, like, myself

and a lot of my friends grew up in that, that overbearing religious household, and

so we naturally rebel against religion.

You wouldn't put like the teachings of Jesus on a pedestal because you know

you kind of group them in your mind like oh Yeah, well, that's kind of

religion and religion is bullshit, right?

But the teachings of Jesus like honestly need to be socialized better

Oh, there's good stuff in there.

Take all the good shit strip out all the supernatural and I'm sorry I understand

that's blasphemy and you know burn me for this but strip out all the supernatural

and And you've got a pretty damn good, like, how to be a decent human.

Except for turning water into wine.

That's the only supernatural they should keep in, because that's a good trick.

And that would make anybody be loved, you know?

Yes.

Bing bong, boom.

I mean, if you're at parties, can you imagine?

We're out of booze.

Jesus, do your thing.

Right.

Oh, the water's we didn't pay the water bill.

Oh, we can't even get wine from Jesus this time.

Sorry, that was a tangent.

Yeah, I mean, Jesus was the first hippie, really.

Hated the money stuff, money people.

He was like, fuck you money people.

He was like, just everybody be nice to each other and love each other.

Right.

And people have taken that and turned it into, uh, gay people are bad and whatever.

A system of control.

All the things.

Yeah, of course it is.

Yeah.

Because everything eventually becomes a system of control.

I don't know if I entirely agree with that, but, but,

but, but I understand the idea.

Yeah, yeah, so then the music stuff happened because you listen to Green Day

and you heard that song Okay, I'm having trouble trying to steal it Didn't yeah,

I was like, this is awesome before Green Day I I, so I played in, I played in band.

They were like the first power punk band, really, in a way, weren't they?

Like the first power pop punk band, really?

They were like one of the first mainstream, yeah.

And it's weird, so, you know, every generation still has their thing.

So I heard Green Day, and to me, Green Day was a completely unique sound.

I'd never had music resonate with me like that before, and all of a

sudden, I'm like, oh, this is cool.

I want, I want to just bathe in this, right?

But now, looking back, you know, with decades of, of, Experience.

I can see that Green Day was just like a tiny tweak of the dial from the

previous seven things before them, right?

Of course.

It's just, it's slow iterations.

We see it as revolutionary because it's new to us.

Yeah, but I mean, I mean, what would you say that the predecessors of

Green Day would be like the Clash?

The Clash.

But I mean even that was not quite as, like Green Day took the things

that the punk stuff that had come before and turned it into something

much more polished and much more radio friendly in a way that was like not,

was a very new thing at the time.

And they're still doing it now.

It's classic rock.

It's crazy.

There were a dozen Green Days.

Playing throughout different little unknown scenes.

Right.

And they got lucky.

And then it's like, who gets to this level?

Who gets to this level?

Who gets to this level?

And then the first person out there to establish that narrative.

Who got the prize?

Yeah, they got the prize.

Yeah.

And now they own that lane.

They sure do.

And then everything else is compared to them.

Although when they did that song, I hope you had the time of your life.

That was when I felt like they kind of went off the rails a

little bit because like that was.

I fucking hate that song.

I remember thinking Green Day did an acoustic song.

Fucking sellouts.

Right.

Totally.

And it was like, oh, this is for high school graduation.

That's what that's for.

That's for like the end of high school.

That's the song they play at every high school graduation.

I really wanted it to be for my class.

Yeah.

Because as much as I hated the song.

Right.

But it was Green Day.

What was the song though?

I think ours was like, I don't think it was closing time.

It could have been closing time.

That's a great song.

That song was the song of my high school, my college graduation

that was like happening when I would graduate from college.

Wow.

That was a good album.

What year was that?

I mean, when did I graduate from college?

I mean, I'm trying to make a year of the song.

98, 97, 98. Feeling Strangely Fine was the album, but that guy's a good songwriter.

He still writes songs for a lot of other artists.

That's so What, that they write songs for other Yeah, like a good songwriter.

Gotta make money, yeah.

They've got credits across the spectrum.

Right.

Yeah, if you're a good songwriter, it's hard to be a good songwriter.

It's funny how many musicians don't even write their own songs, you know?

I mean, Taylor Swift does.

Well, at this point Unfortunately.

At this point, like, Taylor Swift says, I want to record an album,

or I'm ready to do an album.

She's already has a nearly infinite supply of songs that are

vetted and ready to go for her.

But she writes her own songs though.

Right.

Yeah.

But like, she writes her own songs, other songwriters.

Of course, yeah.

With the guy who did the, yeah.

So she brings the vibe.

Yeah.

And they help turn it into something that translates.

Well, he has, he has the producer, the, the guy from Fun.

Got that.

Jack Antonoff.

Yeah.

Or whatever.

Who she should probably drop because she's kind of retreading new

territory, but he does some good stuff.

He's a talented guy.

Um, he's a singer for a band called Bleachers.

I fucking love some songs by Bleachers.

I Wanna Get Better is like one of my, it's like an amazing drop anthemic song.

I love that song.

The drop is so good in that song.

Have you listened to the Taylor Swift albums that he produced?

Yeah.

It sounds like Bleachers.

Yeah, kind of.

Which is awesome.

That's his strength.

But he brought like that really cool indie vibe to hers.

It's a mix with the pop.

There is a universal of colors or sounds or textures or whatever you have.

What is around us naturally and what we can create through

manipulating electricity or whatever.

And nobody is showing up with new colors that you've never seen.

No, it's people are finding interesting new color combinations and adding

their own outliers to You know, throw in something non complementary and

it jumps out and it's like, whoa, that's new, but it's not, right?

Like, well, there's only so many chord combinations you can really do, right?

Exactly.

Um, and there are, there are even, we're at the point because

so much music is being generated.

Oh yeah.

And then if you were to calculate, you know, The AI generated music on top of it.

Holy shit.

We're basically, we've reached critical mass where every melody has been sung.

Every guitar chord, every chord progression has been played, right?

So what, now let's talk about like intellectual property law.

How can you own something that is essentially common because

what you're really selling.

Through the art is you're telling your story.

It's your experience.

It's your words.

You're a storyteller Yeah, it may not be your own story, but you're telling

the story and a good storyteller is captivating for sure so like I've always

leaned more towards the performance aspect of music versus the I love

the recordings, but they just make me want to see the band live, because

it's about that shared experience.

Although I will say that I think what's interesting about new music,

which I've started to listen to more than I used to, is that the

production has really become the thing.

It's like, since there's only so many chords, and there's only so many songs,

People are still writing the same songs, but now there's like really interesting

and unique production stuff going into these songs that are making them sound

really unique and different and weird in ways that you're like, whoa, I don't

know how they can do that on stage.

Frankly, they probably oftentimes can't because it's pre recorded, right?

But, um, a lot of it is, although Bad Bunny was not pre recorded.

And if you saw Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl show, the first time they'd done

the Super Bowl show live, really.

I didn't even know the Super Bowl was happening.

No.

Every year I go to Vegas with my dad and we meet up.

He plays the slot machines and I hang out drinking, um, free beers.

Right.

I got so busy just with, honestly, I just like got caught up in this weird twilight

swirl of, is the world collapsing?

So I didn't really process the things around me.

And I was like, okay, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to I'm still kind of there and So I didn't end up going and then Joanna

was like, oh the Super Bowl is on what?

So she put it on and I saw I saw part of the half I didn't watch any I didn't

watch a single full play of the game.

The game was horrible.

Yeah, it usually it I mean, honestly, this was one of the worst Super

Bowls I've ever seen in my life.

I didn't see a single Super Bowl commercial Oh, the Super

Bowl commercials were half AI.

It was crazy.

That was the weird part about the Super Bowl.

AI companies?

Both.

Both.

Both.

Yeah, it was nuts.

Yeah.

But Bad Bunny, I'll say this, like, I've watched a lot of Super Bowl halftime

shows and I, most of them don't care for, you know, I find the pre recorded

thing really to be problematic.

Yes.

But this, this was live and it was flawed and he, you know, his voice

isn't perfect, but like, it was joyful.

And I was like, this is exactly what we need right now.

But don't get me wrong, The NFL is a, you know, an evil, you

know, money making organization.

This is a very cynical move to basically get the audience that the NFL wants.

But whatever it was, I can separate myself from it to say I watched that Super Bowl

halftime show and I felt joy in my heart.

And I was like, that is all we need.

That's what music is for.

It's to make you feel something, to help you feel something.

For sure.

Yeah.

To like surface And if you don't understand the language, it's even

better because you think he's saying something more interesting than he is.

And the reality is he was just saying things like, I have so many

girlfriends, girlfriends, girlfriends, so many girlfriends, girlfriends.

I'm going to take them to the VIP room, girlfriends, girlfriends.

I don't want to know the words.

I just want to hear this vibe.

That's all I want.

Yeah, that's dope.

I have exciting news.

Two days ago, I got a new Patreon subscriber.

You know who you are, John.

I won't use your last name.

Thank you for signing up, John.

While I am extremely grateful to have another Patreon subscriber, as

always, I am very excited for the day when I get a Patreon subscriber

that I do not know, personally.

So, if you're listening to this right now, and you don't know me, go immediately

to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up.

For as little as 5 a month, you, stranger, can make me feel like

this podcast is on its way up.

I mean, I know that it is, but I would love to have your help in

making it tangible in some way.

So please do go to patreon.com/onefjef

and sign up.

And also, if you do know me and you haven't signed up for the Patreon

yet, what are you waiting for?

What in God's name are you waiting for?

If you've been listening to this for as long as I've been making it,

which is almost a year now, and you haven't signed up for the Patreon,

number one, I'm angry with you.

I'm disappointed.

Maybe you don't have a lot of money.

That's okay.

But if you do, and you just haven't done it, come on now.

I've been giving you free content for almost a year now, and

you haven't given me anything?

I'm not trying to guilt you into this, but I'm guilting you into this.

So get thee to patreon.

com and sign the fuck up, biatch!

Sorry, it just felt natural to do that, to say that.

But I apologize.

Please go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up.

The end.

I really enjoyed.

When did you start your first band?

So I, I got a paper route.

Yeah.

Saved up 50 bucks, 75 bucks.

I don't know, over the summer.

Wow.

And I bought a little student model, electric guitar and a little amp.

And, uh.

Taught yourself how to play?

Yeah, I went and got a little book at the music store that.

Taught me how to play electric guitar and acoustic guitar electric, but

it was like a child sized model.

It was embarrassing like when I Took it to Youth group because they're like,

hey, does anyone want to be in the band?

And I was allowed into the band because the guy felt so bad for

me He was the first thing we did was he took me to a pawn shop and

he bought me a 50 guitar Right.

It was a decent one and that was awesome.

Um, what color what color was this black?

All right, that's cool.

Yeah every You Every guitar I have ever owned, besides one that

I built myself, has been black.

And that's not intentional.

It's just, I don't own very many guitars, because to me it's like a relationship.

Like I feel a connection playing an instrument.

I like the sound of it.

I like the feel of it.

It's a whole thing.

And then I'm like, it's like art.

I'm not leaving without that.

Now that I've experienced it, I need that.

It's a part of me now.

Right.

So, um, That's how I am with all my instruments, and just for whatever reason,

they just happen to all be sexy and black.

Plus, people who collect guitars, or anything really, I feel like

collecting things is a weird, I don't know, I don't really understand.

At what point does it become a numbers game?

Exactly, right.

And how many of these do you play?

Or do you just have them on your wall?

Like people who, you know, you go on Reddit, 50 guitars and

it's like, what are you doing?

Even to ski collections.

What are we doing?

Yeah.

Like, what do you, like, spend that money on?

Go travel.

Go do something.

You know, what are you, whatever, who am I to judge?

Maybe people like to, but I feel like collecting is just

a way of trying to prevent it.

There's a, there's a relationship between collecting and our

relationship with death.

That's very, that I feel is kind of direct.

That's good.

Yeah.

Because we're like being stewards of this memorabilia.

Right, but you can't take it with you, and that's the end of

the collecting thing is when you realize you can't take it with you.

But if we ritualize it and make it really important, then we can

pass on that memorabilia to the next, to our kids or whatever.

And in that, that's the same way that our memories and stuff.

I knew a guy in high school who had, he was a Jethro Tull fan, the biggest Jethro

Tull fan you would ever meet in your life.

Yeah.

You know the man Jethro Tull.

Yeah.

Um, the flute, right?

Flute.

And that's all that you, you know, the flute.

Yeah.

Um, anyway, he had, I think one of the biggest collections of, cause this is

bootleg days and all that, he had one of the biggest collections of Jethro Tull

albums and bootlegs probably in the world.

He had so many, like, and he knew them all.

Yeah.

And now he's, he's literally a insane.

Jethro Tull?

No, the, the guy who was collecting Jethro Tull, he's, he's an insane person now.

Yeah, he's, he's gone off the rails I haven't heard from in years.

The last time I heard from him he left a message on my answering

machine where he was making cat noises and then talking in French.

That's fun.

Yep.

Drugs or psychotic break?

Uh, I think it was a combination of both.

Usually is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One leads to the other.

Yeah, anyway, uh, his dad was the vice principal of the high school too.

Weirdly enough.

Yeah.

Anywho, um, so the first big band was, what was the name of the first big band?

The first real band?

Uh, so after high school, I got that studio apartment, um,

lost my youth group community.

Which was probably for the best.

Realized there's nothing here in Coos Bay, Oregon for me.

So I called my dad and I was like, can I come up to Alaska

and figure shit out up there?

And he was like, son, I've been waiting for this phone call,

which was the, one of the kindest.

Is that what he said?

Yeah.

Yes.

Oh, wow.

And it was one of the most emotionally significant moments of my entire life.

No, that's beautiful.

You're like 18, 19 years old.

I was 18.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I moved up there, um, when I was 18.

And then I love my dad.

He's such a great person.

Like, Hey, we all have our flaws, but we sure do.

That man, he was in my life from 15 years old onward.

And we had a couple of falling outs where we didn't talk For a few years

because we're both stubborn assholes.

Mm hmm, but man, I try to be more like him Um, what's your mom like?

She's a lovely woman fair enough.

Love you mom if you hear this Probably not.

Um, no, no, my mom raised me.

Uh, my mom raised me as a single mother.

We lived in the projects What was your dad?

Was your dad religious at all?

My dad is Religious in the way that george carlin is religious He's like,

there's a great ball of energy out there.

Oh, that's kind of the way that I'm a religious.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's how I've found the higher consciousness,

something, something, something.

Yeah.

We're all connected.

We're all part of it.

I mean, if you've done anything, you know, hallucinogenic, it's all energy.

Yes.

100%. It's all energy.

And that energy is love.

And the energy goes somewhere when you die.

Energy doesn't just disappear.

Remember when my dad died, we were, we, you know, we had him, we had him burned,

you know, cremated and all that, and, uh, and I thought, you know, the, you know,

you burn something and then it's just energy turning into something else that's

going into the But energy is a constant.

I'm not a scientist, but I understand that energy is a constant.

So it's kind of this idea that, where did that energy go?

It had to go somewhere.

Mm hmm.

Um, who knows?

Who knows?

And if there's nothing, then that's also cool, because you wouldn't even know.

He'll be, it's already gone.

When I was a little kid, we would, um, you know, we had some dogs and

a couple of them passed away and we would bury them in my grandparents

backyard and plant a tree on top of it.

And it was almost like you were like directing that energy into.

So because they're using the energy.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, and Now that I think about it as a kid there were a lot of

trees back there Why are there so many dead dogs grandma, right?

Fido, well your grandpa liked to shoot dogs.

We didn't tell you that when you were a boy, but my grandpa My stepdad's dad.

Mm-hmm . Um, I remember I watched Old Yeller at their house.

Yeah.

And he just was, he was so, he was a Korean War vet. Mm-hmm . So,

you know, give him grace.

But, um, I cried.

I was so sad.

I was like, why did they have to kill the dog?

He like, oh, how can you not cry the movie?

He's like, I'd do it today if I had to.

Yeah.

He's like.

Gotta face the real world!

Oh, yeah.

I saw Koreans in the face when I was out there.

That was a brutal war, too.

I mean, they don't talk about how brutal that war was.

Boy, we bombed the living hell out of North Korea.

He did not talk about his time in Korea until he was literally on his deathbed.

He opened up to my stepdad.

Wow.

Yeah, and yeah, I heard some secondhand accounts and he was like,

no, he saw real messed up stuff.

Yeah, like the korean war is far more dark than people talk about.

Yeah.

It was a really disturbing.

I remember being a kid and um, Asking him about like an army thing.

I was like, oh like you were in war like that's so cool or whatever

And he was just stoic and silent.

He did not talk about it at all At all.

But how can you like, I mean, I can't imagine having, experiencing that

kind of, if I got drafted, like I would go to Canada 'cause I could

not, like my Constitution is not made up to deal with that kind of thing.

Like I'm not, no.

Um, but like, people who did it, like, good lord.

I mean, of course you're.

You come back from Vietnam and then the people are spitting on you.

I mean it was, it was the craziest, not just as in Vietnam of course, but still.

It's the same concept.

The only people that can even come close to comprehending or understanding your

experience are people that were there.

They were there, yeah.

And that's it.

Full stop.

Yeah.

Like good luck integrating into what is we call normal life,

which for them is nothing.

Close to normal.

Yeah, right once you've been exposed to that like you don't know what you

don't know and that's for the better and once You've seen some shit.

Well, nothing is ever the same and it's so pared down like out there I

would imagine to like you're down to the basics of existence It's life and

death period like you're gonna you got to kill that guy or that guy's gonna

kill you and that's it It's gotta be.

I can't.

And survival instinct is running the show.

You're training.

The reason they drill that shit so hard is because in the moment,

you will not have time to think.

You can only react.

And shoot.

Yeah.

And shoot.

And so that has to be muscle memory.

That has to be instinct because you're operating in a fight or flight situation.

Emotion is running the show.

You're not thinking.

Yeah.

And opioids to a degree.

I mean, if you were thinking, do you really think that if you were

not a murderer that you could just start murdering people?

Yeah, no.

I mean, it's, you've got to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway.

So your first band, we're going to get to that at some point.

So I played in, I played, uh, you know, some music in high school.

Um, We got up to the paper route, got the guitar, did that.

Right, got that.

Youth group, learned some chords.

Yep.

Cool.

Actually, I got kicked out of the youth group a year into it.

We're getting to the band though, we're getting to the band.

It's because my mom found out that I was also playing secular music.

Oh, Satan music.

Yeah, Satan music.

And well, you can't have two good things.

No, you gotta play praise music.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so then I went back up to Alaska and 2018.

Started a band pretty much immediately.

What was the name of that band?

That band was called Nothing Less.

Oh, that's not bad.

And we were a little trio, pop punk kind of green day.

But you know, we were not very good.

I go back and I listen to it.

I'm like, it was a vibe, you know.

But the Anchorage music scene is not flourishing.

Exactly.

I mean, Honestly, the Anchorage music scene for the entirety of the

time I was there and even several years afterwards, very active.

But name a band that's come out of Anchorage.

Besides like 36 Crazy Fists or Jewel.

Jewel, Jewel.

Yeah, Jewel's the one that he got.

The only one that I can reckon is Jewel.

Because that's mainstream.

The thing about Alaska is that She's such a good poet though.

Did you read her poetry?

It's beautiful.

Jewel.

Alaska is a bit of a closed community.

It doesn't matter what's mainstream.

If it's mainstream in Alaska, it matters in Alaska.

Right, but you're not breaking.

Right.

You know, it's hard to break into the mainstream.

Yes, yes, yes.

So we were like a, you know, medium sized fish in a pretty Small ass pond up there,

played for like a year or two, booked a tour in 2002 down the west coast and back.

And you're the lead singer.

Yeah, yeah, I was the lead singer, songwriter, guitarist.

And what was your big hit?

Oh, we didn't have a big hit.

You had one song that everybody liked though.

The one song that everybody liked that we did a music video

for was called Record Store.

Okay.

And the chorus is literally, I'm in love with the girl at the record store.

Love it.

Can I still find this?

Can I include this in the podcast?

Um, it's actually floating around on, um, YouTube.

There's a music video.

You can send me a link or I'll find it and I'll include it in the podcast.

Oh my god.

Okay.

So we did a tour and that went pretty well.

We actually had some label interest.

How far did you go?

Uh, we went all the way down to San Diego.

And you're in a van?

In a van.

Wow.

That we blew the headgasket.

You drove from Anchorage to Alaska to San Diego.

And back.

Wow.

And we blew the headgasket in Fresno.

What's a headgasket?

The engine of the van.

Okay, that's the headgasket.

And we had to greyhound.

Down to, uh, to San Diego.

And then we stayed with, uh, like my girlfriend had family at the time.

We basically ended up just crashing at places and like spending our

days in guitar centers and stuff.

Just, um, you know, just hawking.

I mean, are you living the rockstar life?

Like, are you like, you know, drinking, doing drugs, whatever it is, and playing

gigs at night in these same places and all this, We're playing gigs at night.

We're partying to this.

I did, I didn't have a drop of alcohol until I was 23.

So, okay, before this I was just 100 percent like focused and um, I Yeah,

it was like, it was all consuming, but there were no lines of people

coming up to, coming to see us.

It was like fighting for scraps and just hustling.

Right, tiny little plans.

So how much would you get for a particular, like a gig?

You'd get to play.

Oh, and you wouldn't get any money at all?

Sometimes.

Okay.

But like, like the door money.

So here's the reality of music and like touring.

Most bands are somewhere in between we'd like the hobby to pay for itself

and we're investing our time now In hopes for a later, later payoff.

So your tours, if you can do a breakeven tour, you're winning.

You're winning, right?

If you can do a breakeven tour and have people come to the shows, like

how many people would be at your shows?

For this tour.

Uh, for this tour, it was since we were from Alaska.

Right?

Right.

So we were hopping on shows with local bands.

Mm-hmm . And so it was just whoever they would bring.

But we're talking like the biggest venue we played there was like scully's size.

Right.

So we're talking like maybe 200 people, cat.

But like, there's 50 to 300 people there a night, and it's 100

percent dependent on their job.

But you're learning how to do the thing.

We're learning how to do the thing, and learning that like, I just loved it.

God, I loved it.

Yeah, I always wanted to do it.

I didn't care if I ever made a dime.

I just, there's something about it.

No, I always wanted to be a

So we, uh, we go back to Alaska after that, stars in our eyes.

Um, we signed a little independent one album deal with

a label in, uh, San Francisco.

We went back the summer of 2003 to Oakland, Stout Studios, I

think it's what it was called.

It was like a tape machine, like old school.

And um, we recorded our, our debut full length, released it locally in

Alaska, and then decided, all right, we've done all we can do in Alaska.

Let's move to California.

So they got, and the two guys were still in college.

Okay.

And so the plan was we're going to move down to California

right after we graduated.

So we did, we moved down.

Um, and then that summer, uh, Where'd you move to?

Modesto.

Wow.

Cowtown.

Strange choice.

Yeah.

Right.

The, so we moved to Modesto because the most responsible member of

the band had a girlfriend that he had met when we were recording

that happened to live in Modesto.

Oh, so that's why you have to end up Which was kind of, in the end, uh,

when we parted ways, it was revealed that essentially we were all just.

He was gonna do these things anyway, and he was just convincing

the band to come with him.

He wasn't investing his own It was a manipulative one, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Um, so, yes.

Modesto would not be my choice for a music town in California.

Right.

Modesto music scene is not well known.

No, but it was He convinced us that it was cheap.

Compared to most places in California, I would say it's probably cheap.

Yeah, because nobody wants to be there.

Right, right, right.

Oh my god.

Yeah.

I mean, why don't you go to Sacramento or something?

It's an amazing town, like, yeah.

Well, you know, it's it's kind of like how I ended up in Columbus, Ohio.

The idea is that you're sort of centrally located and So you're two hours from

Frisco, you're two hours from Sacramento, you're two hours from, well, you're,

you're way more hours to L. A. Well, whatever, but Modesto, got it all, yeah.

So we did that, and then we got a little break, um, got invited out

onto the Warped Tour, uh, in 2005.

That's big.

To basically be merch people.

Oh, okay.

So this is, this is the reality of it, right?

It's, we weren't a very well known band.

Of course.

We just happened to make the right friends at the right time that were like,

hey, come out, uh, help us sell CDs.

And we're like, okay, can we bring our gear?

And they're like, yeah, sure.

Sure.

If you want to haul it around, I'm not going to play it, but yeah, so we did.

And the very first day that we were there, we played, Oh, on a stage right outside

of the main gates, like the parking lot stage, which was, that was ran by.

The bassist for a band called the Ataris.

Okay.

Yeah.

And he was super cool, dude.

Um, made a lot of good friends that year.

Uh, we played that stage a handful of times.

Um, but we also, we were up at 6 AM every day.

We were selling CDs in the lines.

We were helping, uh, we were helping set up stages.

We were just carrying shit.

We're just being useful.

But you're networking and meeting people and Right, exactly.

And just wanting to be a part of it and contribute to this huge thing.

Like for me, that life I was living that summer, I had made it.

For sure.

And we went from, can we bring our stuff?

Sure, but you're focusing on selling CDs to, um, By the end of it, we were

in a tour bus and we were the, uh, the everyday main act at the MySpace tent.

The parking lot act, yeah, yeah.

We had the conversation with the MySpace people.

That convinced them to start doing music in their tent.

Huh?

Yeah, Jack.

Was that the guy's name?

Everybody was friends with Tom.

I never met Tom, but my, my, uh, my bandmates did.

They went to Tom's house.

Wow.

Yeah.

Um, nothing less was, uh, in the running to be the first signed.

band to Myspace Records.

What happened to Myspace Records, Disney?

That was, yeah, right, that was 2006.

Right, right before Myspace started to Yeah, it was, and it was that year.

So I found out when we got back from that tour in 2005, that we were

at the number one, the number one slot on the MySpace Unsigned band.

So they used to have these charts.

Yeah.

And it was signed.

Yeah.

Unsigned.

And we were on the unsigned.

It was just wild and mind, mind boggling because we were

like out there in the trenches.

Right.

Not seeing it.

Right.

Didn't even have access to a computer.

Right.

Came back, was like.

Are we a big deal?

And then things started coming our way.

Uh, we did castings for MTV.

They were going to do a reality show about us.

This band from Alaska comes down and lives the dream.

No, it's a great story.

And then I learned that, oh my god, the pseudo pilot, which was

essentially just interviews, like, like talking head interviews.

They, they were feeding us not just lines, but entirely fabricated backstories.

Of course.

He's like, to sell, oh, to sell this.

Okay.

So there's this process where they basically, they make all

these pitches for shows and then they, you know, see who gets one.

Yeah.

So we were one of those that did that.

That didn't get picked.

Um, it lost out to something.

I had a friend who was a PA for MTV, um, unrelated to this.

Yeah.

Uh, who did tell us what show got picked?

It was something along the lines of like, oh, my best friend's mom is hot.

And what was the of the show that you were gonna be in?

The working title of the show is Pimp My Band.

It was the Pimp My Ride.

And there's no irony there that you're actually kind of pimping yourselves

out in a way to make this show.

Oh, dude, they had like this list of requirements.

They're like, okay, so here's how we're going to do it.

Here's the arc. The band is going to go from like this really shitty,

like, so we had to find A garage that was really shitty and run down.

They just build a set.

That they could transform into a really nice rehearsal area

with studio recording equipment.

Right.

Like Pimp My Ride type thing.

And then it would end with us getting to go and open up for like Green Day

or some big band that we idolized.

So I remember like we, a friend of a friend of a friend was like, yeah, yeah.

She has a condo that has, you know, A garage, a detached garage, and then we're

like trying to figure it out because it's like, well, we don't get the stuff.

Like, she would get this stuff.

It's like, okay, can we sell it to like fund another year of

doing the band thing and shit?

Because our money, we made money during Warped Tour by selling CDs.

Right.

And we lived on five dollar per diems.

We lived on the, on the Wendy's value menu, right?

Our tour bus would stop at a Flying J with an attached Wendy's and we would

get out and file with guys that I had.

I remember my career was two people in front of me in line, at a Flying J.

He's a singer for a band called MXPX.

Like I had a poster of them on my wall, like, like, All these bands, like

huge bands, I was surrounded by it.

I was just like a part of that crowd.

They were just in line.

Wendy's.

At Wendy's.

Rock and roll.

And guess what?

Spoiler alert, 90 percent of these bands had a 5 per meal budget.

You really gotta want it.

You really gotta want it.

You really gotta want it.

It's a sickness, and man, I was Well, I mean also, I think that

there's a story here about the, you know, the lecherous nature of the

entertainment industry in general, right?

Yeah.

Because they're paying you five dollars per diem because they can.

Because you're making them money.

Because they know that you want it, and they'll do whatever you can, and

they can get away with paying you garbage just to chase your dream.

Yeah.

Well, it sounds like a remarkable time.

It sounds like, like it was like a time of, like Remarkable highs and

also like profound horrible lows.

Yeah, that was the big high and then it was like this sort of roller

coaster of oh a big opportunity.

Nope, hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait and nothing really happened.

We went for another year or so and it just sort of fizzled.

Uh, 2008 is when we, right.

That was our last Warp tour run.

We only did two weeks.

And, uh, but still, I mean, and yeah, awesome story.

I mean, I mean, we run the Warp Tour for Christ's sake.

It's like, it was huge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I will say a little capstone for me was, uh, later on I started another band,

which was actually, we did way more stuff.

We were more active.

It was called, we Are the Movies and.

We're all still friends.

Like we, some of my best friends, um, if not entirely my best

friends, but life got in the way.

So we just need that external, like motivation to get back to making music.

Cause the pandemic just wiped everyone out.

Well, it's also hard to, The thing that has to motivate you is doing

the thing itself and not the goal.

Yes.

Because if you, if you're living for the goal of this is that I'm going to

be big or whatever it is, then you're going to be perpetually unsatisfied.

You've got to enjoy this.

Also never be living in the true reality.

Right.

You need to experience, you need to joy.

It's got to be in the moment of the doing the thing itself, the making

the movie, the making the music, the living on doing the work to

whatever it is, making the thing.

And whatever else happens is gravy.

But like, really.

Yeah, that's winning, really, is enjoying the thing itself, enjoying the

creative act itself, as opposed to doing a creative act and planning it to be

bigger than, you know, like, well, we, you know, but most people do that, like,

this is what our brains do as we live.

At least when you're younger, I feel like my brain was always in

a space of like, this isn't life.

Life is coming.

Yeah.

Life is coming down the road.

This isn't the real thing.

Yeah.

Right.

But then actually it was when, after I moved to Columbus, it was like a

year, maybe after I moved to Columbus, I remember realizing I was like in the

backyard of my friend's place and just like drinking beer, sitting around a fire.

And I had, I was like, realized that, oh no, this is it.

This has always been it.

This, me and you sitting here talking right now is, is it, is this is it.

Literally it.

Right, literally it.

And this is the things that, and that's good.

That's okay.

That's life, right?

Yeah.

And to find that is the, I think it's a profound, profound thing.

I mean, it felt profound at the time, and it still kind of does, because I think

it's people spend so much time living for a future or dwelling in the past.

We like to push that boulder up the hill.

Right, the Sisyphean boulder.

Well, we're a race in America, too, and American bullshit mythology is that,

you know, anybody can be a success.

You just gotta He's got to really want it.

But yeah, that's always been the biggest lie of American, you know, the

American mythology has always been.

When I was a kid, uh, we had a Nintendo.

It was a really big deal.

The first one?

The first one.

Me too.

It was awesome.

The silver, the gold Legend of Zelda cartridge.

Oh, I never, I never had that.

Oh, you didn't get the gold one?

Well, you weren't that rich.

We were, we were doing well than you.

We were doing better than you.

Yeah.

My parents got me that for Christmas.

They had some money.

Well, mine was like, my parents kind of like, Kind of got it for themselves.

Oh, they were in the games.

Okay, and so When I did get to play the nintendo It was a really big deal and I

got a game for my for my birthday metroid.

Oh, that was a great game I was too young to really appreciate that game.

It was just really hard and really complex I had to figure that shit out completely

on my own like through trial and error.

This is early struggle part of the podcast frustrating Right?

But in pursuit of something bigger.

Now, I cherished that game.

I hated it.

I won't, if you had Nintendo games lined up and Metroid was

in the list, I would not play it.

I had no connection to joy in that game.

I had connection to struggle.

The struggle and the sense of, I owned this, this was my game, and if

I beat it, that is my accomplishment.

Yeah, but the thing with video games is once you beat it, it's like, Okay.

Now what do I do?

Well, you play it again.

All right.

You try going left instead of right.

All right.

You go faster.

So I went over to this kid's house.

You know, I was a few years older, I think I was in high school and it was like a

new cousin through marriage or something.

Anyway, you know, they were well off.

The kid had a wall of video games, like he, um, they're like, Oh, you and Danny,

whatever, go play in the bedroom while the parents, you know, get fucking zonked.

And this kid had like the whole built in, you know, And it was

like every NES game you could imagine, the Game Genie, everything.

And I remember being so excited, like a kid in a candy store.

And I remember picked up the first one.

I put it in the Nintendo.

It's on.

Sweet.

Oh, this is so cool.

Wait, I don't, how do you, how do you control it?

Right, next one.

This is, all right, anyway, next one.

Right.

And I played a dozen video games for like 30 seconds each, never

able to invest myself into one because there was no scarcity.

And that was this realization that I realized, like, I'd go back to that

moment as an adult and I realized that, and this is, this is almost

like a philosophical question, right?

How is it that I am more happy?

I, I feel more, I don't know if happy is the word, but I feel more

alive and like life has meaning when I'm struggling towards happiness.

A bigger cause than if I am just surrounded in everything I want.

For sure.

I mean, it's like Spotify, really.

It's like when we grew up, when I grew up, it was like we, I would get like, I'd have

enough money for one album and I would listen to the album non stop, non stop.

I'd know the whole album back and forth.

Slippery When Wet was one of the first ones I remember very well.

The Bon Jovi, yeah, Living on a Prayer and all that.

Yeah.

Knew the album backwards and forwards.

Um, but now Spotify is I mean, it's a different experience of music, and it's

wonderful to be able to pay, what, 15 a month to have every song, almost,

from anywhere, but it's also, like, Made the experience of music much more.

I don't know.

It's just it's like when you get every option It's also the scarcity

of choice, you know toothpaste aisles, right in toothpaste aisles.

They try to overwhelm you with choice They got tartar control.

They got whitening.

They got gum control and then they've got one that's got all of them total, right?

It's got all of them.

So like what am I picking like which was it's all the same probably toothpaste But

they've got so many of them And you get paralyzed, you're like, which, I mean,