#2177 - Chris Robinson
2024-07-18 02:19:58
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Okay, so that's the first season, like 1972 or 3, I think.
Columbo. I almost forgot about that show. They used to tell him not to smoke?
Well, no, like, the character, I can tell they're probably just building up. Like, you notice that he has a cigar in his hands. the whole series, or every episode. But it's funny, the 1972 people are like, please don't smoke in here. Or Mr.
Columbo, Lieutenant Columbo, he's always being reprimanded for it.
Interesting. I forgot about that.
And he's always, really, you know, Peter Fox, he's always like, oh, sorry. And he puts it out on us. He's never upset or anything.
Yeah, that was an interesting character, right? Because he was like this bumbling guy who was actually not. He was kind of setting you up the whole time. Letting you underestimate him.
Pardon me, but another thing. He's always about to leave, and he's like, oh, yeah. And he comes back.
And he's annoying people, and they're like, oh.
Incredible, though, aesthetic. And, like, the other day I'm watching this episode that Jonathan Demme directed, Steven Spielberg, I mean, like, all of these famous directors, start to cut their teeth on TV and on episodic things like that. But there's a real tone to it and stuff. It's cool in the way everyone looked. But one other funny thing about it that I've noticed in Columbo is it always starts with a murder.
And then usually a lot of times in the arc of the story, someone shows up to the crime scene. Usually whoever did it, or whatever, right? And so, but they're never upset. There's never someone that runs in, what happened here? Your uncle's been murdered.
Oh, I didn't do it. It's kind of like how it starts. instead of some dramatic, you know, like, oh, my God. How could this have happened? No one's even, they're just like, okay, well, you're bothering me now.
In cop shows, you can always tell police, even SVU, they're always like, I've had enough. Can you guys leave? And they leave. I'm like, is that how it goes? I don't know.
No.
It's weird how many of those shows there are where they catch the bad guy. Like that is, it's like something that I guess people with anxiety need to let them feel like. if someone is a bad person and they do commit a murder, they're going to get caught.
Like are the interest in those kind of dark scenarios, you're only interested in them when there's justice at the end? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, for sure. Because anything nebulous or whatever is like too real maybe.
Yeah, there's those shows, and then there's medical shows. Remember when there was a time where every other fucking show on TV was about a hospital?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the only one that I really remember is Quincy. So Jack Klugman yelling at everyone. He's yelling about the sandwich.
He's yelling about the blood sample. When we were kids, we were hardcore. We were in that initial phase of American kind of hardcore punk stuff because we had just missed out the like 77,, 78, 79.. And then there was an episode about the L.A. scene and Quincy goes to the punk club.
Don't you see what you kids are doing to yourselves with the loud music and the anger and the pills or whatever? And there was a thing when we were kids and there was this song. I forget which band did it. But you were fake if you were a Quincy punk. Because they took the way people looked on Quincy or whatever, and that instantly became.
A fake punk.
Yeah, yeah. You're bullshit now.
When you started out, what was the inspirations for your band? What were you guys into?
I mean, it's hard to untangle because my dad was a singer. So our dad was a singer. And he was very, well, my dad was kind of a strange guy in general. A lovely guy, but dynamic to say the least. But he had like a hit in the late 50s called Booma Dip, Dip.
Like a top 40 kind of record.
And a couple of subsequent sort of rock and roll singles. And he was living in New York and stuff. And then, when he, that kind of pales out. And then he moves back to Atlanta and he immerses himself in like the folk music scene. And he was signed to a label called ABC Paramount.
So by the time I come along in 66, it's kind of, he's not doing it anymore.
What was he doing?
He was a schmata guy. He was in the middle. He was like Willie Loman. He was in the garment business. My grandfather, Ike Robinson, they were in children's wear.
My dad was in women's wear. And then ended later back in children's wear. But the one thing around the house that I remember earliest memories are him pilling out his guitar and singing folk songs. And just, I don't know. I'm a dyslexic person.
And so my, you know what I mean? So there was, I don't know if that has anything to do with it. But there was something about always singing these songs. It would like open up stuff for me. Almost like being high or in a, not in a psychedelic way.
But in a way that it changed the space. You know what I mean? And records started doing that to me very early. And that kind of is where, so it's kind of, we think it's normal. Other kids' dads aren't playing old folk songs at the house.
that I know. But by the time Rich and I, you know, we're kind of like angst-ridden suburban youth. For some reason my parents decided to move to the suburbs. Financial reasons. General apathy.
Ready to begin the mound of resentment and regret. I don't know. All the things. the suburbs represent me. You know what I mean?
I would say, for me, there was a television show. Do you remember Night Flight on USA Network back in the early days?
I remember the name. I don't even remember what it was about.
Yeah, it would be like, it would come on at midnight. And it would be concerts and like films. Like cool, like probably the first time I saw a racerhead. Or Rude Boy, the movie about the clash. And, you know, declining western civilization.
Punk things and new wave things. And I always had an interest in stranger things. You know, and things that weren't normal. Or, you know,
Mr. Roper, on Three's Company or whatever. You know what I mean? And this show, they had a show that came on at two in the morning. And it was from Los Angeles, called New Wave Theater.
And that was like huge, huge. Being a kid in the suburbs in Georgia where, you know, it's still pretty much like that band, all the people that listen to that band. Alabama, you know. They wear like trucker hats and flannels and like, want to beat you up because you have a Ramones record or something, you know. And that's how it was, you know.
Wow. So this show was like a real beacon of, you know, my mom was like, oh yeah. Peter Ivers. A very interesting character, Peter Ivers.
Well, the material has surfaced in many incarnations. Tonight they're here as 45 Grave. Piece of wax.
45, yeah. So this is what I'm really into. Don Bowles is the drummer in 45 Grave who was in the Germs.
Not a happy childhood amongst them.
No, but, well, I don't know. But they definitely made amazing, beautiful, cool, outsider art. And, you know, I think something that we have a hard time understanding in this day and age is art that's made because of the visceral interaction with you and other people. that has nothing to do with. I'm going to be a big star.
Some of the things I think, I mean, fuck, I'm like one of the last, I mean, the Black Crowes, we have to be one of the last bands of the time where we kind of felt it was our duty to never truly give in to the other side, you know what I mean, and kind of understand this. us versus them, idea, you know what I mean, and something that's inspiring and something that is like, you know, I was always interested in counterculture, you know, and anyone, again, that's like why the algorithm maybe isn't as perfect or it never will overtake everything, because there's always going to be the one person who's like, I'm going this way. That's not enough for me, you know, the deep dive people. And so we kind of found ourselves in the crosshairs of this kind of stuff, the cramps, we were in, the cramps, the gun club. So, and then REM comes around, their first record, Chronic Town.
And so my dad and my mom and dad had a lot of records, maybe 250 records, 300 records, you know, which was a lot of records back then. Bluegrass records, you know, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs records or Moe's Allison records, Jimmy Reed records, Johnny Guitar Watson, and then they had, you know, Buffalo Springfield records and the Bob Dylan records. I mean, that's a big, I mean, for millions of people, but something as a kid that I knew no other kids would go, you guys want to come over and listen to records? I'm going to put on, you know, the times. they are a-changing.
I'd be like, again, there would be a reason to get beat up, you know.
But that kind of stuff catapults us into, then punk rock comes along and it's like, oh, anyone can do this. You don't have to be, we'll figure it out later. what talent or whatever. You know what I mean? Like.
we just want to plug in and start going ding, ding, ding, and singing horrible things and trying to be offensive. You know what I mean? Because, think about, now you go to the, you know, now people walk around in Dead Kennedys T-shirts and it's like, oh, cool. But back then, Dead Kennedys made people, like the name of that band, the Circle Jerks, like the names of these bands made people upset.
Legitimate rebellion. Yeah. Instead of, you know, posturing. Which is a lot of what's going on today with Dead Kennedys T-shirts.
But, I mean, I think inevitably anything like that, I mean, Edgar Allan Poe. was that in a literary way in the, you know, the tail end of the Victorian age, but now he's just like a thing hanging in some goth kid's car, like an air freshener or something. You know what I mean? So things get swallowed up culturally.
Right.
And regurgitated, as just, you know, and it just so happens that Dead Kennedys have one of the greatest logos of all time.
Yeah. Well, there's always going to be adherence to, you know, what most people are interested in and what's popular. And then people that are trying to mimic what's popular so that they can become popular. And then there's always legitimate counterculture where people are just like, I don't buy with any of this.
Yeah. I'm looking for something.
Yeah. I'm looking for something that's real, something that's raw. And, as I think that's going to accelerate with AI music and, you know, all this electronic music. And again, as you were saying before, stuff that's sort of created to feed the algorithm. Yeah.
You know, there's, there's strategies to become successful, rather than just expression that resonates with people.
Let the people. Yeah. Yeah. In a way, I mean, someone took a chance, you know, a band like Alan Vega and, you know, like suicides, like someone, you know, the no wave music in New York in the late seventies, someone took a chance and said, yeah, I would think about how weird was that. You know, like bringing that into a studio where who was just in here?
fucking 38 special or some shit, you know what I mean? And then there's like this or whatever, you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it's a cool thing about early, you know, like the first Sex Pistols record, the Clash record's a little different, but even the dead boys or bands like that, like a lot of those early punk records and a lot of the post-punk records, those are bands. They're not making records, trying to sound, you know, Oh, I can make a record sound like I don't give a fuck or something on my garage.
But what, you know, you can do anything now with, like a button and, and, and people, and I like lo-fi shit too, of course. But back then there, there's bands, they're not making lo-fi records. They're in just like, that's a real band in a, but with great gear and people who are making like records that we would think are sonically like, Oh, that's correct. Right. And then you have like these punk people in there, just like, you can't turn it up all the way.
Well, we're doing that, you know what I mean?
Wasn't this sort of rebellion at, you guys had like a falling out with ZZ Top, right? When you were on tour, wasn't part of it something about corporate involvement?
Yeah, we were always, and it's funny. I just saw Billy Gibbons a couple of weeks ago in London and we've been friends for many years and a massive ZZ Top fan. I mean, what those records, especially the early records. I mean, they just sound delicious. You know what I mean?
I just, and when, what is it? Which one is it? Is it Rio Grande? I don't know. One of those records where you open it and there's like a giant plate of Mexican food, like growing up in Atlanta, like that was, I didn't know what that, you know what I mean?
Like you could get that. We had barbecue and we had soul food. You know, we have our own regional culinary identity, but to see stuff like that, I was like, wow, I gotta try that. You know what I mean? But no, we,
they, I don't even know if ZZ Top, where they were in their career, if they knew anything that was going on about like these guys that were the opening band, except for the fact that, you know, in the music business at that time, when you're still selling records and you're selling 250,000 records every week or whatever for a couple of years, it starts to be kooky when it was a thing, but they were sponsored by Miller Lite. And, uh, I just got into this thing where, you know, so we'd go on stage and do our thing. and there's big Miller Lite posters all over the state or whatever, you know? And I got in my little troublemaker mind, we're the black crows, you know what I mean? no one gives us money.
We don't drink this beer. No one gives us fucking money. You know, I'm standing under this sign cause I have to be here tonight, but I want you to know that no fucking beer company sponsors our music. No one owns us. No one, you know what I mean?
I have these,
these naive sort of thing about, like, I don't know. And we, my brother and I, talk about it a lot. And as we've gotten older and especially since we've put the band back together these last few years and have been in a really positive place and a really good place, I realized like,
you know, part of our, part of that, that we were involved in, we believed in like as if rock, the S what we feel is really the true essence of rock and roll. It's like, I, I describe it as like the movie quest for fire, you know, when they have to keep the fire burning in that little thing and they're going across the swamp and they don't want the Neanderthals to get it or whatever. That's kind of how we felt in a weird way about everything that was out at, you know, one minute you're in control, your kids were writing songs. We're in control of that. I'm in control of like, this is what we're doing.
This is how we look. This is what we are. And then you're in the grownup world and you've sold, you've made people tens of millions of dollars.
And I'm hardly a savvy business person. I never could be, I never would be. It wasn't in the cards for me.
And so part of our, like being hard about it or being difficult, not being compliant, was trying to, in our minds, keep this pure thing. You know what I mean? And in a way that still is part of what we are today.
How old were you guys back then?
Oh, in the summer of 89, Rich was 18.
. I was 23 when we made our first record.
Just a young rebel.
Well, you know, the other thing is, is rock, you know, you remember, rock and roll was culturally and socially, its place and its importance and its reverence was a lot different than today. Yeah. You know, I think it's one thing I think is cool about hip hop music is the hip hop stars have taken over the, that kind of attitude.
Yes.
Which I, when I see their fashion and I see, you know, I mean, there's lots of, hip hop's. not one thing, of course. And I'm 57.. I like what I like. You know, I like old records anyway, but when I hear new things that I like and I'm like, okay, so they're singing about drugs, they're singing about sex, and, you know, they're singing about, you know, maybe, maybe I can't really identify with the violence of poverty and stuff.
You know what I mean? Like the extreme nature of some of it, but, but it's still, that's another form of rebellion as well.
Yeah. And it's, it's, that's, isn't it? Hip hop itself is an interesting art form because there's not a push to popify it. You know, like the, the hardcore hip hop artists are very successful and the lyrics are rough. Yeah.
You know, they're, they're very hard edged lyrics, but yet these are the lyrics that, you know, get millions and millions of views. You can't even say millions of sold albums anymore, because it's like, that's, that had to be the weirdest thing to watch the sale of albums evaporate.
Not just the sale. You're absolutely correct. Not just the sale, but the, the meaning of a record, like of, you know, and again, in the big scheme of things, the record business isn't as old as, say, you know, the writing or whatever, but in the way that we would listen to music and you would, you know, there's a company that would find talent and put that whole thing, but yeah, making a record and saying, okay, we're songwriters.
Uh, this is what we're, this is our, this is our latest work. This is what we've been working on. This is our craft and this is our talent and our poetry and our, this is what we want to say now. It's like, you know, you know, an album, you know what I mean? Like, I personally think that it's still an important medium and I, I've yet to give up on it.
You know what I mean? Uh, if they said, right, you know, Oh, you know what I mean? What am I supposed to, that's what I've always, that's what Rich and I've always done. We, we write songs. It was one of the only things, again, the way we can, could experience the world was through that.
Cause he's, you know, as crazy as me, just doesn't talk as much, not crazy, but I mean, different, you know, um, artists, you know,
I think it resonates with a lot of people, which is why there's this resurgence of vinyl, right? Like people still want to listen to actual vinyl. They still want to see an actual album, you know? And there's, there's a lot of like looking at that. There's a lot of reminiscing from people that have like my age and your age, that were around when these things were the way you consume music.
I've been buying records since I was 12 years old. You know what I mean? Like, and it was weird. Maybe that's because my mom and dad had a lot of records, but you know, my wife and I, we just moved just around the block in LA and we've been together seven years, but we kept our records separate. I don't know.
We have thousands and thousands. I just put 4,000 records in storage because we don't have space for that. Wow. And, but I'm like, but it's funny because no matter what, I see a record store, I'm going in and I'm, I can, I could, and you know, after however many years of buying records, I know what I'm looking for and I don't buy records online very much.
I still like, I don't know.
I liked it. I'm like a kid when I, if I've been looking for something and I see it, am I, I'm like, I get a shot of like endorphins. I'm like, you know what I mean? I'm looking around like, I don't want to, you know. Yeah.
It's weird. It's geeky stuff. It's nerd stuff, but, but the record store was really important to me as a young person and a musician, because before you could go on your phone or before the algorithm, like there's another person that looks cool. I, Oh, you know what I mean? Like.
they have Chelsea boots on or like a cool band t-shirt. And the suburbs back in the eighties, it wasn't like, you know what I mean? If you saw someone, you took the chance to be like, we need to go to their house and look through their records. You know what I mean?
And it's funny. That's still that way. You know what I mean? I have so many friends in my life and we're friends because of records, you know what I mean? And it's like my wife and I DJ all the time in LA and we go to New York and we carry our records around.
You DJ? Like, yeah.
Like we have the, my wife's name is Camille. So we have the best DJ name ever. The captain and Camille.
Uh, we do, yeah. Concerts and bars and parties and gigs and stuff.
Really? Yeah. When did you start doing that? DJing?
Uh, I started like, well, back in the eighties, everyone used to take a turn playing records at the pizza place. They had two turntables called Fellini's in Atlanta, where all the, as my dad referred to them, dirtbags and low lives hung out. Everyone in a band, of course. but then in, uh, I think in the early two thousands, a friend of mine that worked at the great record store, other music in New York, my friend, Michael, we started doing these nights of playing like a lot of weird psych folk as a, as a kind of, as genre. And we both love those records.
and we called that, we called gurus galore. And, uh, yeah. And just when I wasn't doing the black crows, I had this band called the CRB. We were like a little psychedelic folk rock little group that toured around and made a bunch of records, but our, so we played two sets a night. So it was kind of like grateful dead model, like very heady trippy.
So, but the CRB in, especially in California, we always had friends, DJ the shows with doors open till after the show and in between sets playing records. Um, I don't know. She's something we've always done. And my wife used to DJ before I met her and stuff.
So it's just, just something you enjoy.
We, I, by the way, if I could make, if I could make money doing it, I would never do it. I, if I, if me and Camille could just play records, I would be the happiest person.
You would stop performing? No, I'm kidding.
I love singing. I love performing. I love being in a band. You know what I mean? I love, uh, it's changed a lot, like anything else, and travel and everything, but I personally, it's yet to beat the adventure out of me.
You know what I mean? You never know. Same thing about why I could go online and buy whatever book or record I want right now. Anything, almost anything, you could imagine, you know,
is available,
is available, but you know, I, I, I know when I'm in Denver, I'm going to this certain bookstore and I know that what, that they have really curated things in there that I'm looking for. I can wander into, you know, you never know who you're going to meet. You never know what you're going to eat, who, you know what I mean? The laughs and the, you know, it's still a lot of stuff out there for someone like me, a lot of, uh, stimuli,
real experiences. Yeah.
That are good and human.
Yeah. Human experiences. Yeah. I mean, that is what live music and live performance is all about, right? I mean, music is great.
Live music is something really special.
I tell you the, you know, the pandemic was weird for the world and it was, you know, for artists and musicians, we had, you know, no one's, no government bailout for the guy who, you know, playing guitar or whatever, but as hard as it was, one of the, one of the worst parts of it to me was not, not just being able to do what we do, but not going to see bands. You know what I mean? I, I have a little, I have a label called silver arrow, and we've been doing this for a few years. The black crows records come out on silver arrow. It's a little different, but I'm always going to see bands.
You know what I mean? I'm, we go, whether it's the rolling stones or whether we go see a band at a little club in LA, and I'm always looking for new, you know, things to people that are interesting. If I could help them out in their careers, a lot of it is with really young artists. I want to put them in the studio. I want to give them good experience.
I want to give them a great record deal, because the it's changed the model. But we, but to do that, you have to go out and get in it. You know what I mean? And it's, we always laugh. I'm like, is there anyone older here tonight than me?
You're like, Oh, there's one. You know what I mean? It's a freaky dude who still goes to see bands.
Yeah. Well, people don't want to let it go. And why should they?
I mean, in LA right now is a great time. I mean, there's a lot of good music going on in LA and there's a lot of bars where, you know, we know, if someone has a, it plays great records, we'll go listen to them play records. You know what I mean? There's a lot of good record, people, bands. There's a lot of cool.
LA is very alive right now.
No kidding. Well, like what parts of LA are this happening?
I mean, it happens all over, but especially more downtown and like to the east.
Downtown.
I mean, yeah, you have to survive getting into the place. Downtown is so fucked up. I know.
But that's probably something that adds to the feeling of it.
You know what it does? And it's funny. Cause I had a nostalgic moment about when we started talking about, look, man, I'm. don't get me wrong. My parents did the best they could.
They're just fucking people too. But part of the other part of adventure and the other part of being interesting and night new wave theater, my mom was like, they all look like mental patients, just like you, you know, like great, but was to go to downtown Atlanta in the eighties was dangerous too. You know, during the crack epidemic,
it was a violent place. And, and we were, you know, obviously we were white kids from the suburbs. Traversing like this urban place to get into these little underground clubs to see these bands. that added to it. You know what I mean?
It added, and just the aesthetic, you know what I mean? I was, I still am, an obsessive influenced by the beat writers and beat culture. And so for me, like, you know, Jack Kerouac, isn't writing about the suburbs. He's writing about the, you know, Mexico city or whatever. You know what I mean?
Like all the Gregory Corso or Allen Ginsberg, all these poets and people are writing about all these experiences that don't seem to be happening in like a neighborhood where they call the houses, a five, four, and a door, you know what I mean? So a certain angst is cultivated. Yeah. You know, that only the only thing that could satisfy that would be something that I felt was gritty and real.
Well, there's a, there's something about, if you can, I mean, I haven't been to downtown LA to see music in quite a while, but the last time I went there, I saw Gary Clark Jr. and honey, honey at this very small place, with, you know, maybe there was like 200 people in there. I took my daughter and it was like a late show on a Monday night, like 1130.. And here we're seeing Gary, Gary Clark Jr. and honey, honey play a cover of a midnight rider.
And it just, it just felt so special because there was no one there.
And you survived.
And you survived. And you get out, you're like, let's get out of here. Where's the car? Let's get the fuck out of here. But you know,
it's weird about that. And I get it. And we, but I haven't, I, I, I spend a lot of my time reading. I read a lot of varied materials. And one thing that comes up is humans are dangerous.
Yeah. And places where there's a shit ton of them are usually pretty gross and dangerous. Yeah. Well,
it's just a numbers thing, right?
It's totally numbers thing. It's other things. Ills as well. Sure. That are hard for us to deal with.
And, and look, if we're lucky enough to be walking upright and some, how mentally stable or whatever. Right. Um, but, but you're, but I think cities have always been dangerous places.
They certainly have.
Ancient Rome was a dangerous place. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? I mean, it was so wild. We were just in Sicily and we went to Palermo for the day, and it was wild.
Have you ever been to Palermo? Wild.
Yeah.
That city is like, like an electric wire that's got sparks shooting out of it. You can't get ahold of it.
That's where my grandfather's from. Yeah. Palermo. Yeah. When we went to Italy, one of the most interesting places.
Is this water?
Yes. Yes. And there's coffee in this, if you want. Cheers. Um, one of the most interesting things is just Italy.
in general. It's like, I, every time I go there, I'm like, maybe I should live like this. Like they, they fucking know how to relax. People know how to relax. Like with the way they sit down and eat.
No one sits down and eat for 40 minutes. You sit down and eat for two hours.
French people have it dialed in pretty good. They do. As well. Yeah. And they have pasties, which is the, you know.
What is pasties?
Pasties is a, it's, it's a aperitif from the South of France. You ever see it? It says Ricard. Marseille. Marseille is famous for pasties.
It's a, it's. all Mediterranean cultures have an anisette-based drink. Italians have Zambuca. The Greeks have Ouzo. Arat in Lebanese people.
And there's all sorts of them. In the South of France, they drink one that's a little more, uh, sophisticated and a lot more herbs and things in it. And they say, you always know in France someone from Marseille because they always have a pasties in their hands. Mmm. It's like four, it's a high alcohol level, a lot of sugar, but it's delicious.
You put it in ice and dilute it with water and it makes it all this kind of milky color. Mm-hmm. It's genius.
Well, it's just, you only have a certain amount of time on this planet and they've chosen to live their time in a more relaxed manner, more community-based, and just. people like to sit around and talk.
Do you think that any of that has to do with embracing a certain middle classness, or even lower middle class, you know what I mean? Right. Like the working, you know what I mean? Even in a blue collar way, I think, you know what I'm saying? Right.
Whereas here, it seems that's been stripped away from something to be proud of. Unless it's kind of, in a way, distortedly proud, you know? Yes. Distortion of what that could be.
Right. I know what you're saying. Yeah. Well, in here, it's supposed to be. your main goal is to get to be the type of person that can look down upon that.
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. Your goal is not to exist in that and just accept it. This is life. Life is, you have money for food, you have money for your house. You're not wealthy, but you're okay.
Well, if you look at media, sitcoms from the 70s, whether it's Archie Bunker or whatever, they're just people with jobs and even Taxi, or Barney Miller or whatever. You know what I mean? And now, then it turns into Full House, where somehow all these people and these kids live in this amazing house and everyone has clean clothes. You know what I mean?
There's no struggle.
Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. And no,
it's not just recognition. I think it's, and it's not celebratory. It's just like, look, man, this doesn't make the man. Right? My material things don't make me who I am.
It's who I am, how I feel, what I've learned.
That's the big problem with what we're sold in Western culture, that the goal is to acquire things and to achieve a certain financial status, and then you'll have made it.
I get it. Pastis doesn't grow on trees. You know what I mean? I gotta pay for that shit.
Right, but it's not that expensive. You know what I mean? It's just, there's a distortion of goals. You know what's fucked up about that,
though, like when we were kids and I get it, like I said, I made the choice in my life. Mom and dad, we weren't, you know, we were middle class people, but I made the choice.
When I said I'm not going to university, I'm going to be in a band. My dad, that was like the last dollar I ever saw. Not even like, hey, you know what I mean? And,
but I made that choice. That choice wasn't made for me.
Right.
You know what I mean? And, within two years, I'm on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and we're fucking around. You know what I mean? Like selling millions of records. I get that.
You know what I mean? It's not lost on me, but it gets back to where we started talking about. there will always be a part of me.
that is making music, because it's really maybe the only place where I'm truly free. You know what I mean? I have the freedom. You know, it's funny. I tell this story.
We were on Saturday Night Live two times. The second time was on our second album, Southern Harmony. And we went on the show. It was the number one album in America. It debuted at number one.
Our new single was a song called Sometimes Salvation. We were going to play that. And we were going to play one of our big hit records. And at the time, it was called Remedy. And we had just written this song called Nonfiction.
And I was like, let's play Nonfiction. And it's funny, because it's different. My brother and I, Rich, was like, yeah, fuck it. You know what I mean? It's a cool song.
The guy, whoever was the music guy, he was like, you can't do that. And I was like, well, I mean, we can do what we want, I think.
He was mad because we were smoking weed in the dressing room. I'm like, didn't John Belushi OD in the bathroom? He was like, what do you fucking care? Call the cops. I told him, call the cops.
We get arrested and Saturday Night Live for smoking weed will be bigger than this. But the guy, now that I'm older, I realize I'm just totally being just horrible, like kid. But he goes, you're making a big mistake not playing this single. And I said, okay, well, here's the deal. You're on this show next week with some other fucking band.
And then the next week after that, and then the next week after that, well, this is my band. So let me make the mistake. I'm not going to let you tell us what to do. And if it's a mistake, then we'll fucking eat it. Won't we?
And I'm still here.
And where is he? Well,
it's funny. Someone told me he has a, I forget his name. I read it to him once before. He did not like our attitude. He has, he was on a podcast about Saturday Night Live or something and said we were the worst people he ever dealt with in his entire career there.
And I was like, well, thank you.
That's funny. The worst how? Cause you just didn't listen to him?
Yeah. Yeah. We didn't do what he wanted.
That's not what you're supposed to do with artists.
Especially when you're young and you're still like the fire is like so intense. You know what I mean?
That's always the problem with executive mindsets versus artistic mindsets. Right? And you have some producer character who just wants everything to go according to this very specific plan they have laid out. And you're trying to take an artist. and, first of all, just trying to take an artist and making them sing one song is kind of crazy.
Right?
Yeah. I mean, I think we see that now. Yeah. We see people like, I'll do it. I'll do it.
You know what I mean? There's someone who's ready to jump up and do anything. And I think that's been a part of showbiz. But that's kind of what we were saying before. I think the talent show thing, you know, the vote for me.
Right. You know, when no one was voting for us.
Right.
We were unvotable. Right. And that was part of the reason that we were drawn to these characters and these people and these other outsiders and these other, whatever kind of spectrum we're on, or whatever. that's different. That we were, like, you know, music to us represented.
everything anti-vote for me.
But did it feel weird to transcend that and become mainstream, massive? Yes.
It's still weird sometimes.
What is the juxtaposition? I mean, it has to be so strange. You're these rebels and then all of a sudden you're the number one fucking band in the world.
And then, yeah, and it's, it was tough. It was maybe tougher for me because I was more boots on the ground, in the scene and with people, and now it's like, especially in the 80s in Atlanta, it was like, uh,
you know, fuck major. Anyone who signs with a major label, man, fuck that. You know what I mean? And I'm like, yeah, you know, power to the people, or whatever, you know, and then it's like, you're on MTV 30 times a day and, you know, in between fucking Toyota commercials and Snapple or whatever, you know what I mean? So, and it's weird, because our politics are so in line with so many of the, like, the alternative politics of music, the way, you know, uh, that would lay the grunge, or whatever, you know, so, you know, I'm the same age as all of the grunge bands, but I don't exist in the 90s in the same way.
We weren't, you know what I mean? Right, right. Because we were doing something, but it is funny, you know, people say, well, Kirk, no fucking label is signing Kirk Cobain today. But, as a matter of fact, Kirk and our generation of people were, we were talking about compliance and defiance. You're making a mistake.
Fuck it. It's my mistake to make. It's my band. It's my art. And people.
may, we may, and my kind of generation, it's not about being old, but now I think there's so much compliance. Okay. I don't want to cause any trouble at the record label.
this is, we're all distorted right now with social media and all the different avenues for people to get attention and to get famous. It's so, so easy. I shouldn't say it's easy because it's rare, but common. So, it's like, it's more, it's more highlighted, which way you can go to achieve success. But do you remember that famous time where Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were playing and they were forcing them to lip sync?
Yeah, yeah.
And so, what did Kurt do? Did he start reading out of a book or something like that? Like, he did a bunch of wild things?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. I mean...
See if you can find that, Jamie, because it's kind of hilarious.
Yeah, I know.
Nobody did that at the time and they were telling them, no, no, no, you can't play live. Yeah, here it is. Set to perform the recent single Smells Like Teen Spirit, the British music chart television program Top of the Pops. Time to show the policy requiring artists to sing live vocals over pre-recorded backtracks. As you would expect, Kurt Cobain and his bandmates would not let this go without having some fun.
So, they started fucking around in the middle of the song. The result was, and still, one of the greatest middle fingers to live performances ever, the band literally made its own Shred video.
Yeah, amazing. Yeah, because he got to sing the live vocal over the track. Yeah,
so he started fucking around and coming up with new lines. That's great. Yeah. I mean,
we loved the replacements. You know, that was like a band, like, their being on Saturday Night Live was a disaster. But we thought, that's our band. You know what I mean? I remember every fucking person that we knew in Atlanta that Saturday night that the replacements came on and made in TV.
on Saturday Night Live. We all were at parties and watching it and getting completely shit-faced. Watching, they like shaved their eyebrows off and shit and were rolling around and changed clothes, and people were like, oh dear. You know,
we were like, yeah,
cheering it on. Like, that's how you, that's it. Isn't that part of one of the goals is to be that big of a pain in the ass to the, and who are you being? a pain in the ass to? But some authority.
Right.
Something that says you can't do that, or this is the way it goes and that changes, you know, but I think as a youth, that's definitely something I'm not feeling with a lot of bands. I mean, I think it's there in the punk scene and stuff like that, but they're not getting access to that. Green Day is still that way.
The carrot is still dangled right in front of everybody's face. It's so close now. You know, especially with people that make it independently, through YouTube and TikTok and all these different venues. There's just so many different ways that someone could become massively successful now.
See, this is where I become the time traveler. I am from the last century. I get it. I find, I don't, you know, I think a guy smashing his nuts on a rail on a skateboard is as funny as anyone, but I've seen it. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's not like, you know what I mean? It's not like Steve Coogan or something. You know what I mean? Like Kraft and like Subtext and like all this other weird cerebral stuff with comedy or whatever. I just don't, I will never,
I guess, it's just me as well. The things that I, the cinema that I enjoy, the books I read, the records that I listen to, there is, all of them, if there's one thing in common, there's a level of craft.
There's a difference between having, it's the difference between having a fine meal at a very nice restaurant versus eating garbage. Yeah. Eating tasty garbage. And TikTok is tasty garbage.
Yeah, you're right. That's absolutely, I've never thought about it like that.
It's bad for you and you can't put it down, and you keep going to it and you over-consume it.
And at least when you do, when it's just visual, you don't get a big stain on your shirt.
But you get a stain, I think you get a stain.
on your brain.
Yeah, I really do. I do. I think so much of what's going on today, like, even if I just waste 10 minutes scrolling through TikTok, when it's over, I just feel like, confused. Like, what am I doing? Like, why am I fucking paying attention to this shit?
I don't have any, I never had my, I never did any of that.
You don't have Facebook, Twitter, nothing?
No. I mean, the band has one, I guess. That's perfect. I don't, personally. Good.
I never tweeted or any of those things.
Good for you.
And it's funny, my phone, like, I'm still this way, you wanna,
my best friends, like, the three or four people in the world that, like, I'm super, super, the closest people, we talk on the phone. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Like, I love talking on the phone.
For hours. You know what I mean? About whatever. So it's, I, I get it, but I don't, I'm one of those older people, I just, Well,
you developed in a different time, and this time is fucking bizarre.
I can't imagine spending your life, grown ass people, spending all of their time playing video games. That's a real thing.
Well, at least that's exciting.
It is?
Yeah, video games, some video games.
Why does it give you a shock?
No, some video games are so immersive, man. You have 3D sound and incredible graphics. Running through corridors and people are chasing you, it's very exciting. And it hits all of your dopamine receptors and just, like, it fires you up. I mean, video games are pretty fucking amazing now.
But it's just that the world that we're living in today is, it's not designed for human beings. It's designed to capture human beings. Capture your attention. It's not, it's not a, like, if you're spending your time going from a coffee shop to a restaurant, to a bookstore, to a record store, to a live concert. Yeah.
To an art gallery.
These are human experiences. These are human experiences. But if you're spending your time arguing with people on Twitter all day, like, nothing is more depressing to me than seeing old rock stars argue about politics on Twitter. It is so goddamn depressing watching rock stars virtue signal and, uh, attacking people personally for having differing political beliefs. Like, and then looking at their timeline and realizing these poor fucks are addicted to this shit and they're doing this five, six hours every day.
Get off my lawn!
Yeah,
it's get off my lawn.
Get off my lawn!
But it's, you know, it's fucking rock stars. It's like, good lord, man. Do you have friends? Like, get out. Get out of the house.
Stop doing this.
We just, you know, it's funny, we were gone for three months. We did the States on this latest tour. We played a lot of new songs from our latest record. It was amazing. And then we finished in Europe.
And my wife and I stayed in Sicily and went back to London at the end.
And I've been doing it for 35 years. of that. You know, 1990, first time I go to Europe. And it's still like, I don't care 35 years, it's a lot of shows. I don't care if I wake up and I'm tired.
And we have friends all over the place, which is a beautiful thing. Friends in Amsterdam, friends in Paris, friends in London, friends in Madrid, friends in this, you know, Germany, whatever. But we're.
constantly out doing, you know what I mean? There's no way. we're not hitting the town in any town and finding what it has. that makes maybe it unique or special, whether that tastes or whatever. I mean, it's, I, it sounds silly, but like I said before, there's still adventure in the world.
And I'm not talking about jumping out of an airplane adventure or, you know, that just stimuli.
I think it's good cognitive nutrition. I think it's actually good for you to experience different cultures and see how people hang out and see their restaurants and see, you know, weddings.
And you see everyone's doing the same shit. You know, they're just styling it a little different.
Doing it in a different way. But it flavors your understanding of human beings.
That's why my very, very special place, the thing that I love almost more than any other thing, is Jamaica.
Really?
I've been, I was lucky enough to have a dear friend introduce me to Jamaica 30 years ago. And I have friends there and uh, I have a whole life there. that has nothing to do with anything other than Jamaica, shit. And I go to the country and, like, we like, have like a country kind of life there. You know, by the ocean and no resorts, you know.
The food there is fucking incredible.
amazing food in Jamaica.
Jamaican food is so delicious.
And you have to get out there and eat it, and they have like anything else. You know, the fruits there, the vegetables there, the seafood and, and you know, they say in Jamaica that the goat, a goat in Jamaica, only has one bad day, man, you know. Yeah.
It's not even a whole bad day.
It's just a.
quick moment. One bad moment, and that's a wrap.
One bad moment and the rest we're all happy with.
Yeah, and the rest everyone's eating it. Yeah, that's one of the things I loved about Anthony Bourdain's show. You know, that he would go and really immerse himself in these cultures and eat their food and hang out with their chefs and hang out with the people and get toured. You know, someone would take him on a tour around the town.
You know what happened to, sometimes he would be tired and hungover. Oh yeah,
most of the time.
Yeah, but, but again, you know, I have people, I mean, I get it, man. Everyone has a tough thing, but it's like, oh dear, I don't know, you know, I better get this. I'm like, okay.
If you enjoy what you're doing, being tired's not that bad. No. If you enjoy what you're doing, it's like, so what? Just get up, have a coffee, let's go.
And I, bullshit you not, if, for some reason, I had to like get a quick 20, 25 in, I could curl up right there and do it and you wouldn't even know I was here. I believe you. I'm like expert. That's 35 years of being on the road.
Knowing how to power nap.
I gotta get, I gotta go down, or I'm gonna like be in an intersection waving a gun around with my pants down by my ankles or something.
I've learned how to sleep instantly on planes. I get on a plane and almost always I'm out cold.
Me too. I annoy every single person.
I'm traveling with. Yeah. Like how does he?
sleep so quickly? She's like, what?
How'd you fall asleep that quick? Even with my?
Jamaican dog in my lap. We brought a, when my wife and I were married in Jamaica and we have a little street dog that we brought back.
Oh, that's cool.
Bammy Longface. Yeah. Bammy, she's 35 pounds, but I can even sleep with my Jamaican street dog on my lap.
Ah, that's cool. So Jamaica's your spot, huh?
And they just got hit very hard with this hurricane. So it's, my friends are okay and stuff, but they're, everyone's really shooken up over it in Jamaica.
Ah, it's scary shit, man.
And it's been a bad, they haven't had something like that since 2007 and this was worse.
I saw live footage of it. Some live cell phone footage of it. It's just, unless you've experienced that live, when you're around the sky and the sky becomes an angry monster and everywhere around you is dangerous and the winds are 120 miles an hour. and just like, it's so humbling.
I've never, I mean, I was in a tornado in Atlanta in the early 70s and that was,
I mean, I was probably too young to be like traumatized, but I remember my feeling, my parents' trauma, about this thing going over our house or whatever.
Oh, it's fucking terrifying shit, man.
When it was over, though, when you're a kid, it was like amazing. Like, the whole world was one big pine sap jungle gym. I mean, for weeks, we were just, because you're just climbing in all the fallen trees, and my dad had some old Pontiac and that thing was like a U. in the car, some giant pine tree smashed it. Wow.
So, it was like a surrealist thing, too, as a kid. You know, like, wow, everything's been shaken up.
Yeah, it's also a lesson in the temporary nature of things. You can look out and think, this is my lawn. This is where the cars park. This is how things are. And then, all of a sudden, the sky's like, not today, bitch.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's throw a tree through your fucking house.
What was that commercial in the 70s that Mother Earth gets angry? Remember that? It was like shampoo or something, but it was like, oh, there was their catchphrase and it would be like,
you know. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I don't know,
it was like a, I think it might be shampoo or something.
Something stupid like that.
But, it's true. You know what I mean? You have to do it. I mean, shit, fuck. Katrina is still something like, you know, I love New Orleans.
New Orleans is one of the most special cities in the world and it's still amazing. It's still vibrant, dynamic, alive, but I think the scars of that place are still there. I mean, that was.
devastating. Brutal. Yeah, unbelievably brutal. I mean, when hurricanes hit places and devastate them, it takes decades for them to recover, especially without aid. And then, sometimes it's like the people that are there, they just don't want to do it anymore.
It's like, when you realize you're in a place that this happens and there's other places where this doesn't happen, you just get the fuck out. You know? But there's a humbling of being attached to nature in that way that I think, like, I grew up in Boston, and there's something to the people that live up there that understand that every winter it's going to get so cold that you could die outside. Right. That's a reality that no one in L.A.
experiences. Because in L.A., it's like...
Earthquakes, fire, floods, zombie apocalypse.
You get a little bit of that, but you can kind of get away from that. It's not going to overcome your entire city.
You can build a very high fence and have the state-of-the-art security system.
The fires are wild. I was evacuated three times living in L.A. Because we were in the valley. Yeah, yeah. Three separate times.
The last time, the two houses across the street from my house burnt to the ground. It was wild. It's just wild going through your old neighborhood and seeing just house after house. Like, there's 40 houses in our neighborhood that were burnt to the ground.
We were in Marin County, Northern California, and out in a place called Lagunitas, and this is four or five summers ago. And we just, you know, kept shit in the car. Guitars. You know, there's one guitar. I just can't live without.
Some pictures. Just in case. Both our cars filled because you're out, you know, just ashes falling in the yard every day. Scary.
Well, when it goes bad, it goes real bad. I was filming Fear Factor once and it was about an hour and a half away from L.A. And, um, the fires get so bad. we had to stop shooting and drive home. And on the way home, we were off the 5 freeway and on the way home, the entire right side of the highway for an hour was in flames.
Like, completely in flames, like a Lord of the Rings movie. Like you're waiting for demons to ride horses over the top of the mountains. It was, but it's, there's something about those, those kind of scenes. that's like, it puts you back in check. That's like, hey, man, like.
maybe the things you're concentrating on aren't all that important for real.
I think it also touches us in a, in a, in our animalistic DNA of like, still being that person, you know, these people, again, it's Quest for Fire, being these people who are really not just, completely immersed in their environment as well for survival and sustenance and everything.
Yeah.
That it's still like in the way, I guess, you know, there's an instinctive thing in those moments that, that has to be the exact same chemical reaction in every human being. Mm. In any expanse of time that we've been like this. Yeah.
Yeah. When we were in Sicily, we were at one, I guess there was an eruption there recently.
There's one today or last night.
Yeah. That's right. I was seeing it on the news, but when we were there, there's, we were, um, at, near this one island that had a, a constant eruption. at nighttime. You could see the red at the top of the mountain, just a little bit of red, like, bubbling up off the top of the mountain.
It was so fucking cool.
I've never really got close to something like that. Like I've, you know.
Have you ever done a tour in Hawaii? We fly over in a helicopter. No. Hawaii is wild. The big island is wild because it's growing every year.
Yeah. The lava is constantly flowing into the ocean. You can literally watch the island expand in real time. That's wild. And you fly over in a helicopter, so you're flying over, you're looking down at the lava pouring out of the earth.
Is this Italy? Mount Etna, look at that.
Isn't that wild, man? Sicily, yeah. That's incredible.
Not to be confused with regular Italy.
Yeah, Sicilians think of themselves very differently. Look how beautiful that is, man. God, that's so fucking cool. We visited Pompeii, too.
I did that as a kid. That's crazy. And it's still one of the coolest. But I was like, you know, it's funny when I look back. You know, they have like, up the streets, they'll have like the fountain at the end of the street where the water would come and you could see like where people lean their hand.
There's like an indention for the centuries of people leaning in to get a sip of water. Yeah. And I just put my hand on that as a kid. Just like, I could, I almost couldn't stop like thinking about that. I do that all the time.
I do, you know, I do that with my kids. when I'm like fucking around. I'm like, shake the hand. I shook Chuck Berry's hand. Bo Diddley's hand.
Little Richard, I shook Little Richard's hand. John Lee Hooker. You know, they're all like laughing.
Damn, you met John Lee Hooker?
I did one time, yeah. Wow.
That's a guy I'd love to meet.
It was, his handshake was like amazing. It was just like a, he touched my hand and it was just like a, like a cloud. It was the softest, like pillow. I was like, wow. And it was early, you know, early days.
We headlined the Memphis Blues Festival and he went on before us and I was like, I just don't think that's right. Right, right, right. I know we're selling a lot of records, but that's,
It's crazy.
That's John Lee Hooker, man. Yeah. Never get out of these blues alive. Yeah.
Boom, boom, boom. Yeah, he was as cool as it gets. That's amazing, man. Have you ever met anybody that, just like gave, you're like, I can't even believe I'm talking to this person.
Yes. But, one time it was Dr. J. Oh, wow. I was at some party in Vegas.
This was back in the mid-90s. Some VH1 thing or something. And I was standing outside. I was at the Hard Rock, and this is the guy's name, Steve Wynn, who owns the thing, the Hard Rock. Wynn?
Yeah.
Or something.
He owns a bunch of that stuff.
Yeah, and this was 30 years ago. And I was there and he was like, Oh, hey, Chris, have you ever met Julius Irving? And I was, I mean, I was like, I loved Dr. J. so much.
growing up. He and George Gerber were my heroes. I played basketball. And I was like, and he was just so cool. And he was like, Hey, man, nice to meet you.
And I was just, I was like, a little kid. I just couldn't believe that I met Dr. J. I shook Dr. J's hand.
I gotta throw him in there, too. Wow. And the other one would be.
Robert Altman, the director. Oh, really? I met Robert at a, at a party. I was at a party, like a Donatella Versace party in London. And there were a bunch of famous people there.
But everyone sat down at a table and, you know, and different things. And he was, I was just like,
oh, and he was with Richard E. Grant. They were making Gosford Park. Richard E. Grant also, I was impressed to see in me because of the film Withnail, and I is one of my favorite movies of all time.
And there's Withnail, you know, like there he is. I mean, it's Richard, but, but there's Bob Altman, who is, you know, lord of my imagination and, you know, one of the best film, my favorite film, some of my favorite films of all time. And so, after, when the dinner kind of like is less whatever, people are up talking to other people, I just go over to him. I'm like, fuck it, I'm just gonna sit. You know, because I would be a little bit timid or shy in that situation.
And I would never think anyone, I still to this day never imagine. anyone knows who I am or what I do, or whatever. It's a good way to go through life, actually. You know what I mean? I'm being totally honest.
Yeah.
And then you find out most people don't know who you are, give a fuck, what you do.
But I go over and I introduce myself and I instantly recognize that he smells like weed. Like he's, you know, got a roach in his pocket or something. And I'm like, Bob, are you holding? He goes, yeah, you want to get stoned? I was like, yeah.
So he pulls out a joint and we're sitting there and we're just talking about weed. you know, he's like, it's hard to get, I get this from California, you know. And I was like, wow, man, you know. And we smoked a joint and talked a little bit about music and jazz and London. And that was kind of it.
And he was like, oh, you should come by the office. And I never took him up on it, like the production office, just because I just, I felt out of my depth. You know what I mean? I should have. But, but that, that was like one of those things I will always remember.
It's interesting when you meet the people that were heroes to you and they're just, they're human beings. They're just normal. And then you realize, like, especially in your case, like you've become that to other people. And then some kid will come up to you, Chris Robinson? Yeah.
And you're like, yeah, fucking normal person, just a person. But to them, you're, you're the black crows. You're not a normal person. You're a fucking God. You know, it's, it's weird.
You're an inaccessible, like plateau of society that very few people ever experience.
I think music is a part of that as well. Yeah. You know, like you said, I mean, and I, you know, there will always be, I don't know, there, I think that there's a connection in the, in creation, art, you know, where does the idea come from? I mean, I think there's people who can manipulate that and make like, I'm going to make a pop song and it's going to sound like this. And not saying that it's not special, not good, but then I think there's other things that there's, I'm not using it in a Christian way or whatever, but there's a divine spark of something that happens or whatever.
drops in your lap, imagination, wise. The muse, you know, the muse is real.
The muse is real. I think it is real too.
And the one thing that I, I do believe about the muse, and I consider the muse a female presence, a female dynamic, you know? And I feel that, that the muse, at least my, the muse that I feel, is, it's a very jealous thing. And I don't mean it in like any possessive way or anything weird, but just like, the second, your devotion is turned somewhere else, the muse could leave you. That might be as superstitious as throwing salt over your shoulder or whatever, but I honestly believe that. And it makes it difficult in life, because life isn't just the muse.
Life isn't just the dream world that I live in, and my imagination. And the ideas have to come from somewhere. It's not just singing and dancing, and you have to have ideas. What is this? You know, for me, I've always had to be involved with every aspect.
The album covers, the stage design, the fucking laminate. Everything has to fit into a world that I can feel like I want to inhabit, you know? Something that's comfortable and interesting. And I think, if you remove, so, it's not just the musical part of the muse, it's the whole thing. And I think if you're like, oh, you know what?
I'm going to get into, I'm not, if my reverence for that goes away, and even in the slightest, I feel that she will turn her back on me forever and I'll have nothing, no more poetry, no more music.
Well, you're probably right. Because let's assume the muse is real. The muse would probably reserve its greatest inspiration for its most devouted followers.
I think so.
Yeah. The most devout followers are the ones that are going to be adherent to a ritual, sit in front of the computer or the notepad.
or however you write,
and just spend time. Yeah, I could never,
ever write lyrics on a screen. I could never do it.
You write it on paper?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I'm like completely.
Does anybody write lyrics on screens?
I think, yeah. I think a lot of people.
Like artists that you know of? Yeah, yeah. Interesting.
I think a lot of hip-hop people write rhymes on their phones.
Yeah, I know a lot of guys do that.
I've seen, I know a lot of rock and roll people who are like, hey, you know.
Well, the phone thing's convenient. I transfer all my notes to phones because it's, and occasionally I'll write something on the phone. The best thing about the phone, honestly, is like sometimes I have an idea, maybe I've had a couple of cocktails too, which is like, you know, memory is slippery. When you're drinking with friends and you're having a good time, but you have an idea, I'll just like run into a bathroom stall and I'll hit the voice recorder and just say it.
I do that too. I do the voice recorder as well, for like if I'm plucking around a guitar and I get a little something that I like. Mm-hmm. Or when Rich and I are writing songs too, like if we're not, but you know, I've never had a home studio. I've never wanted that.
Really?
I want to go to a place.
and part of my thing is I like everyone's contribution. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? I mean, in The Black Crows, Rich, and I write the songs, but the contributions can be musical or it could be anything.
Right.
I mean, sometimes it's the engineer and the producer and the band.
It's the vibe of those people being together.
And it's all of that circulating and percolating and making something, everyone in on it. You know what I mean? Like an old submarine movie or something. You're being depth charged and everyone has a job to do, so you don't die.
Right.
You know? But I think that's important for me. You know, like I love, I mean, Prince is one of my. musically, I mean, there's an argument you made that maybe Prince was the baddest motherfucker of all time.
Definitely an argument.
Yeah. I mean, because there's people who can write, there's people who can play, there's people who can produce and record, and there's people who can dance and sing and perform. That guy did it all at its ultimate level.
Every musical instrument.
I mean, yeah.
Yeah, he was insane. He was so good. And he was so different. I remember when the first album came out, it was just that picture of him with his shirt off, with like his hair, you know, and you hear the songs and you're like, wow, this guy's out there.
Yeah, the second record, Prince.
Is that the second record?
Yeah, the first one's called For You, and there's a picture of him, kind of like, it's, he was,
For You, is that one with Jack Me Off?
No, that's later.
Oh, okay.
For You, the first single is Soft and Wet. Oh. Which is before Jack You Off. It has to be Soft and Wet. And so I always laugh because I was, you know, by the time we're in the suburbs, I live in Atlanta, you know, I'm obsessed with black radio.
at the time. I'm only listening to V-103 FM Atlanta. My first concert is Slave and Cool and the Gang and Sky at the Omni. Oh, I'm going to see The Time, Vanity Six, SOS, Lakeside, Cameo. Oh,
wow, Morris Day.
Yeah, that was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Wow. At that, you know, at that time in my life, and only listening to that radio. So the first Prince single comes out, and it's Soft and Wet. It's a great song.
It's like funky and cool. This little kind of disco breakdown in the middle. A little roller skating shit in the middle. And I'm like, but I didn't really know what Soft and Wet was. yet.
You know what I mean? I was like, is this like a washcloth that he left in the back? What is this? Yeah.
No, he was a character.
I never met him. I never even, I saw him, I only saw him in concert once.
Really?
And it was fantastic. He was amazing.
He was doing a residency once at House of Blues in Vegas. But it was like really late at night and I had to do something in the morning and I passed on going. To this day, I kill myself.
Yeah, because he would do the concert and then go play another eight hours or whatever.
Yeah, well, he was going up really late. It's like, it was after midnight and I was like, I got shit I have to do tomorrow. I can't do this. I can't be that tired. To this day, I'm like, fuck.
You know, it's funny, the other person I met that put me very much at ease, but when I first said, hello, that I was totally freaked out was George Jones. Oh, wow. I met him at the Ryman Auditorium after Johnny Cash passed away.
It's like meeting Jesus at the Sistine Chapel.
man. I mean, I was like, I got ushered into this dressing room, you know, as a guest. Chris Christopherson was there. I was amazed to meet him. And, but I'm like, fucking George Jones.
Old Possum's right there. And I end up talking to him, and he was really, really sweet, man. I wanted to talk about Kansas City Chiefs. He loved the Chiefs. And I used to watch football back then.
And, but I will always remember. So, they were, he was taking over for Johnny Cash singing,
I think it's Johnny Cash. Maybe it was Waylon's part. I don't know the song. that great. The Highwaymen.
I was a highwayman on the Columbia highway.
Yeah.
And he was the dam builder. Mmm. On the Columbia River or whatever. But, he, he kept looking at the lyrics and he went, I'm a dam builder?
And Chris Christopherson was like, man, it's not like, he goes, I don't think my fans want me to, I'm a dam builder. I mean, he just kept thought it was so funny. And I was like, what amazing, you know, that I got to be in there. But the other funny part of that is, they were like, Chris, we take a picture with George and Chris. And I'm like, I'm getting my fucking picture taken with George Jones and Chris Christopherson.
That's pretty wild.
This is the, like,
coolest thing.
And I'm like, I'm like in the middle. You know? And I'm like, man, this is the coolest day ever. And then, the door opens.
Look at that. My ex-wife is there too.
Wow.
But then the door opens and Al Gore gets in the picture and ruins it. Get out of the picture!
How did he get in there? I don't know. Did he start talking about the climate? Well, yeah.
That was his initial climate thing. But I'm like, let's talk about your wife, telling people what they can listen to. Tip of Gore. Get out of here. Who are you?
Self-righteous. Yeah,
people forgot about that. She was the one who made, well, it actually helped albums. Because when they put those warning labels.
Everyone wanted them.
Everybody wanted a warning label one. Yeah.
I never even got a warning label. Oh,
I remember when N.
W.
A. had the warning label on them.
I mean, all of it. But I mean, I'm like, you guys are really seriously upset about the band Wasp. I mean, like,
it's really ridiculous now in hindsight. But I remember, you know, I was in high school at the time. It was a big thing.
Well, they're telling you what to do again. You know what I mean? And a lot of it was racist. You know what I mean?
Oh, yeah. But it was like, well, I guess it was out of high school. It was like when rap music was really starting to emerge and those lyrics were so shocking, like early Ice T, Ice Cube, all that stuff.
it happened with rock and roll. Sure.
Elvis Presley. They wouldn't let him shake his hips on TV.
I mean, it happened with Chuck Berry, too. You know what I mean? And there's that, the initial phase of the cosmic fucking blood and brimstone of rock and roll ends pretty quickly when it starts. And then you turn into like the Paul Enka, Pat Boone sort of style until the Beatles really come back around. Right, right.
You know, you have lots of cool records in between there, but they're small.
But it's interesting, like that where things come in waves. They come in waves of great artists, for whatever reason.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, I mean, at least if you look at like, when I look at my age people, we were just, we were close enough to the Beatles and close enough to the Sex Pistols and close, you know what I mean? And the Stones and Zeppelin. That shit's long gone for a lot of younger people, you know, as time moves on.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
I have to ask you a question because, before I forget, did Rick Rubin try to get you guys to change the name of your band? Yes. And did he really try to get you to change the name of the band to KKK, the Cobb County Crows?
I know that the king of yoga, or whatever the fuck, he's selling, whatever, you know, whatever his, you know, but under that beard, that guy, and it's funny, because good for Rick Rubin, whatever, he can do, whatever he wants. You know, he has very little, but he did say, that's a true story. And by the way, it was unimaginably offensive. Unimaginably.
Why would you say that to us? Explain the conversation.
How does it happen?
Because I think, well, we were called Mr. Crow's Garden and it's a book. It's like a children's book from like the twenties, called Mr. Crow's Garden, with an E, so it's a name, you know, he was Mr. Crow.
And we were kind of, you know, into, like psychedelic, you know, like it was our, whatever, that was the name of our band. So when we made Shake Your Money Maker, a few years had gone by since we first were Mr. Crow's Garden, and now we don't sound like that. And George Sikoulias, our producer and our A&R guy and our lifeline to the music business, to the world, who signed us and stuff, he was like, we need, you know, we got to change the name. So there was a little bit of time where before we'd said we'll be the Black Crows.
And that's when Rick interjected that. that's what he, because we're Southern, aren't all Southern people fear-driven, ignorant, bigots? Isn't every one of them?
But he didn't say it that way, right? So how did he say it?
No, he said it like, it'll be cool, it'll be like controversial. I'm like, yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah.
So I, and I, and how did he bring it up?
Like, I think this is a cool, you're from Cobb, Cobb County. See, we're not from there, but my, when we, we're from Atlanta, by the way, it's fucking hard to get it to change Wikipedia that they're like, we're being rich or born in Marietta. We're not, we're from Atlanta, Georgia, you know, third generation Atlantans. And I was like, my grandfather was born in Atlanta in 1906.. You know what I mean?
So it's hard to get that shit changed. But he was like, oh, so you live in Cobb County, C-O-B-B. Well, you should change it to Cobb County Crows and put them all Ks. And we were like, it's, it's, that's so foul and disgusting.
It's also, it's such a crazy idea to not have like context to it. Just to, to, to imagine that you're going to call a band the KKK. Like, what the fuck? Cobb County Crows actually sounds cool.
With Cs. You know,
it was the Cobb County CCC. Nope, no problems. Great name. Nothing wrong with it. You probably achieved the exact same success as the Black Crows.
But,
I don't know, because the poet in me and the, the, the armchair occultist, would believe that, that the only way we got, we achieved what we achieved, became. what we became, is because of the way the, the, some reason, also leaving the E in it, made, that was the one thing that I said we would do. So it's, you know, and by the way, leaving the E in it was also great, and it's still great to this day. when we're, someone requests something or wants something from you and they misspell the name of the band, we're like, no. Fuck that.
No. You could've,
could've looked that out a little bit,
a little bit of a search. It's right there. You know what I mean?
It's not that hard to add an E. I just can't imagine that conversation. Someone saying,
I can't imagine it either, to be honest.
Rick is a friend of mine. Just to, you know, for clarity.
I don't hate Rick Rubin or anything. He's a genius. He did say that.
He's a fascinating guy. I mean, he's a very interesting thinker, and I can imagine this idea intrusively embedding itself in his mind and then coming out of his mouth. I just can't see how anybody would.
to be honest, you know, I found a lot of,
when, especially in this, you know, when our first record came out and, you know, we're on tour and we're working that record and I'm the one who has to get up in the morning and okay, so, we're playing, we're in Cleveland, now we're playing Cincinnati. I have to go to ten radio stations in Cleveland and Cincinnati and do the handshaking and the talking and the, you know, sell the band.
I meet all the, like, local promo people, you know, so they pick you up and stuff. And most everyone was really super cool and they would be the people that could get you drugs and pay for drinks and stuff, you know. And, but, wow, I would be driving in the car with some of these guys and they'd be like, must be tough being, I'm like, you know, like, talking down to me, like, you don't know me. Just because I'm southern and I'm a musician doesn't mean that, you know, talking down to me like I'm stupid or something, or I'm like, whoa, whoa, you don't know.
Well,
like, you're from Atlanta, like, do they have schools there? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, like just kind of patronizing me or thinking that everyone's supposed to be like, oh, oh, just happened to be here in some place, and damn, you know what I mean? I'm like, we're not, I'm from Atlanta, Georgia.
You know what I mean?
You don't know what books I read. You don't know what I'm into. You don't know.
anything about me. Well, there's always been a deep history of prejudice about people and what they would call the flyover states. The arrogance of New York and Los Angeles, and, you know, you kind of.
sort of accept. these are the flyover state people talking to me. that's funny. Even worse.
You know, there's some people that, like, accept Chicago a little bit and some other cities, Detroit a little bit, but the reality was it was about the coasts and everything in between was bullshit.
As if everyone in Rochester, New York, has like a PhD in French literature.
By the way, that used to be kind of true when you would go on the road. Not true, but you would notice a marked difference in the awareness, if you were talking about anything out of the ordinary. The awareness of people's, what they knew in certain cities and certain places in the country versus what they knew in Los Angeles and New York. There was a difference.
Yeah, they're a hipper audience.
or something. Yeah, they weren't as sophisticated. They didn't know as much, but that changed with the internet. Yeah,
everyone has exact same references.
Cleveland, Ohio, you know, wherever you go, there's fucking people that get it. They get it.
Do you remember when Bill Hicks used to just look at the audience and go, Moo!
Oh, yeah.
A lot of people still haven't caught up to Bill.
Oh, he was great. I mean, he used to call it his flying saucer tour, because he would only go to places where flying saucers would land. Weird little out of the way spots.
What's that record called, Rant in C Minor? A Minor? Is it A Minor? I don't remember. I don't know what key it's in, but I mean, I still put that on and it's just.
unbelievably funny. Fantastic. It changed comedy. Changed comedy. Made people want to become profound.
It changed comedy from just a bunch of stuff to laugh at to stuff that made you think about it after you're done laughing.
I think George Carlin had that as well. For sure.
Yeah, for sure. In a different way. But, you know, Hicks was more psychedelic inspired and it was just more esoteric. There's a rock and roll.
like thing in him that, for lack of another description, I think, that gave him that kind of energy.
Yeah, it's the right way to describe it, I think. I had a chance to see him live a bunch of times. Luckily.
Like, in a way, he understood what a great underground band means to someone.
Oh, yeah. And what it meant to him.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
He was an artist. He was an artist that was also a comedian. You know, he wasn't trying to conform to whatever the stereotypical. this is the guy that's going to get a sitcom act is going to create. Yeah.
But there's not.
a lot of those guys. Is the sitcom worth it?
It doesn't exist anymore.
No, but I mean, for those comics that took that route. You know what?
It was the golden carrot. It was the thing that they held over all of our heads is that if you develop an act that could be converted into a sitcom, all of a sudden, you're Tim Allen and you have 50 million dollars in the bank. Or you're Jerry Seinfeld. Or you're Brett Butler. Or you're Roseanne Barr.
There was a few of those people.
Yeah.
And there's a bunch of people that had managed some more obscure shows that people forgot about, but they made a lot of money as well. And it was this thing that if you could get on a sitcom, and then, all of a sudden, you're the king of queens. You know, like my friend Kevin James. That was his thing. Right, right.
And that's how he got through it. And that was the magic portal. The magic portal to wealth. And it also fucked up a lot of people's acts because there was.
a lot of really funny comics. After that, now you're kind of stuck. Mm-hmm. And...
Censored.
Yeah. And now the things that you want to say you can't say.
They self-censor. This is the saddest thing. I know some of the great comics of the 90s that are ruined because they self-censor now. Because they sort of developed this act for television, and then, once they were on television, they got all that TV money. They wanted to keep it coming in, so they never really branched out into more offensive subject matter, or, you know,
just more provocative.
More provocative. You know what I mean?
And I think irreverent in some ways. You know what I mean? Right. Everyone else will judge what that is. Yeah.
But it's just. the problem is, you're never gonna make everybody happy, and now way more people have an opinion they can express because of social media. Like, everyone can express their opinion. It's not as simple as you hope to get the favor of a reviewer. Like, someone who's cool, really likes bands, comes to see, oh, Bob's here.
This guy's fucking cool. He's gonna review our show. And you're, like, you, kind of trusted. Bob. Bob was a good guy.
He really loved music. He wasn't trying to tear things down. Those guys don't exist anymore. Yeah, yeah. You know, now what everyone's trying to do is get people on social media to like them or not be mad at them.
So when they put out a special,
you see these.
. Not be mad at them.
Yeah, you see these, which as a comic.
The role of the artist sometimes is to make your audience mad at you, to challenge them. Yes. I mean, you know what I mean? In a way, like, oh, God, how many things in life did I didn't like at a time that I finally found my way through later and be like, oh, of course. Thank you.
You know what I mean? Like you... Of course, that's the natural...
Of course.
progression. It's the natural... And, by the way, not everything is supposed to be like you were saying. I guess that's where we are with this social media. Nothing can have that sort of mystique around it anymore.
Right. Because it's... It's forcing too much out of someone. You're expecting too much from someone to either follow you and or understand, get it, or acceptance.
Right. Yeah. Well, it's just a foolish pursuit. The pursuit of other people who you don't even know, their love and attention, and you'll morph and change and adapt whatever you're trying to produce in order to gain their favor, that's a fucking folly. That's such a foolish way of interacting with human beings.
And whatever you create.
. Well, it's false. ...it's not going to resonate.
It's completely false. Right. I mean, you're... And you can see where, you know, personally, I think you're starting to see culturally where that hollowness and that falseness isn't helping.
Oh, it's definitely not helping. It's pushing us over the edge. Yeah, it's not good. You need experiences from people where, when they resonate, when they put out these works, whether it's a book or music or anything, this thing represents their soul and their perspective and their actual... This is a thing they've created.
Not a thing they're doing. so they hope you like it. Not a thing they're doing. so they hope you don't get mad. Not a thing they're doing where you highlight social issues, so people think they're a virtuous person.
Yeah. It's not...
It's funny when you say that, the virtuous part of it, that's funny too, because, you know,
especially like, I don't know, the lobby of your place is full of pictures of famous people who've been arrested for shit.
Yeah, all my mugshots.
And it's like, I mean, in a way, in a counterculture way, whether it's a poet, a musician, a jazz musician, anyone, Robert Mitchum. You know what? You know. Robert Mitchum is cooler than Kurt Douglas because he got busted for smoking pot. So Robert Mitchum is cooler than you, Kurt Douglas.
But
the outsider. in culture, you know what I mean? The loser and the outsider are other themes that we do not celebrate as much. And I'm not talking about some fabricated pop star who pouts and is like, look how dark I am. You know what I mean?
That's not.
what I'm talking about. No.
And that's always there. Again, showbiz and corporate things, you know, can manipulate these kind of archetypes. Yes. And put them into genre-specific things that they want, because they know. That's not...
Formulating a rebel is so gross.
Yeah, yeah. Totally. Oh, my God.
A formulated rebel. A disingenuous, formulated rebel. Yeah.
You see them. You do.
But I think they sort of make you really appreciate people that are true artists. People that are just, it really is just their expression of what they're trying to create. They hope people enjoy. I mean it's funny.
because that's, you know, more than ever, not just for the fact that I really had to go through certain things to come full circle with my career and my brother and what the Black Crows mean.
And my life. A lot of things, you know. A lot of it, starting with my wife, Camille, and stuff.
one of the things that keeps me excited, and one of the main things that I love, is I know that we're, and call us old-fashioned, or call us naive or anything you want. It doesn't matter. But we were talking about that stupid flame idea, this purity. But I know, when we go out on tour and we write songs, make records, play concerts, it's something that is raw still in there. We're not in-ear monitors.
There's no computer on our stage. You know what I mean? We don't, you see? these fucking bands cancel a show because their laptop didn't work. I'm like, well, borrow your mom's.
Borrow your mom's laptop. Do they really cancel shows because their laptop crashes? Yeah, it happens.
all the time.
That is fucking hilarious.
And there's bands that are up there, not even playing, and they press a button and they're up. You know what I mean? Which is fine. Whatever you want to do to get over. I get it.
Again, I was born the same year. the Beatles made Revolver. I get it. You know what I mean? But think about that.
In my daughter's lifetime, the Beatles will be a fucking hundred years old. The record will be 1964 is a hundred years ago.
That's crazy.
You know what I mean?
That's so crazy when you think about it that way. Because when I was a kid, it was just a decade or two ago.
Well, in the same decade between the Beatles, if that hundred years was the end of the Civil War and the Beatles, you know what I mean? It's weird. It's a weird thing to look at time that way.
It really puts it into perspective, because we look at everything through this lens of a finite lifespan of a hundred years. if you're lucky. You know, we look at everything like this is a long time. But it's not a long time. I used to do this joke about the Constitution.
America was founded in 1776.
. I go, people lived to be a hundred. That's three people ago. Yeah. Three people ago they started this.
It's nothing. It's so new. Everything's so new. Civilization itself. Oh my God, it's so ancient.
Is it really?
It's not. I mean, you're talking about 3,000 years, but in the big scope of things.
It's not that much time.
And they, and I think historically and because of science and things,
you know, it's like that idea of, well, this was the Bronze Age. It started on Thursday and then it went, but then they find a corpse in the ice in the Italian Alps and the guy has a bronze sword and he's 2,000 years before. they thought. They're like, fuck, I gotta re... There's a problem.
with that, with an archaeologist.
I gotta get my abacus out and do the math.
Yeah, they're very reluctant to change the dates of things they've been publishing about forever. But there's some things that they find every now and then that force them. Like. there's a place called Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. that's 11,000 years old and they found it in the 90s.
I believe it was a sheep herder, found this piece of stone in the ground and kicked at it and moved it around and realized it had an edge to it, and then they excavated it and it's just an enormous temple structure and to this day they've only excavated like 5% of it. There's a lot of controversy behind it because people are like, why aren't they continuing to excavate? What are they doing?
Well, now in archaeology they can do almost just as much. with sonic. They can plan out what's going on and not disrupt it.
Well, that's how they know. there's many, many of these structures around that same area.
You know,
these things are 11,000 years old.
The last show of our tour. we were in Merida, Spain, playing in a Roman theater that they had only done the excavations in the 50s, because I guess at a certain point they just filled. there's an amphitheater next to it where they would have gladiatorial games and things, and then the theater for theatrical and religious purposes. But you're sitting, you know, like we're, Pink Floyd gets Pompeii, we get Merida. It's still cool.
You know what I mean? Yeah. But you're playing in this place. it was built during the reign of Augustus.
and then the guy goes yeah, well, you know, it was just filled with trash.
There it is. Wow. That's incredible.
It was just filled with trash and then finally they dug it all out of there. And then this was down there. Wow.
That was all covered? Yeah. That's nuts. That is so nuts.
It was fantastic. Beautiful place.
We went to Greece last year. And I got to see the Delphi? Well, we went to Ulysses, or no, how do you say it?
Elysian?
Well, Elysian Mysteries, right? Elysian Mysteries.
Where you can descend into the cave, I think. At one point it was a parking lot, from what I've read, because I'm really You mean now? Yeah, yeah. Like where the original mysteries took place.
No, no. You can still go there. Oh, really? Yeah, it's all carted off. It's protected.
You know, you have to go through a gate to get in. There's guards there and stuff. But we went to there, which is where the Elysian Mysteries were, and I got really lucky to go with my friend Brian Murrow Rescue. I was there with my family and Brian was there at the same time, and Brian Murrow Rescue was a scholar who wrote this incredible book about the use of psychedelics in ancient Greece. that's now been confirmed through.
they take these old pieces of pottery and they found ergot in the pottery. Yeah, of course. They think all their wine was laced with psychedelics, and these people were and they invented democracy. I mean, they were tripping balls and trying to give everybody an equal participation in society and figuring things out. but you're around these structures and these are fucking thousands of years old.
What is it? What was it?
What was my mind on? The Kukion? The drink?
Yeah, the drink.
Yeah, the Kukion.
You know, and they find this almost exact same structure in Peru as well. Really? And down in the thing, psychedelics,
mirrors in the corner where they could build fires and send lights around and stuff. Yeah.
That's awesome. Yeah.
But what happens in Greece is
what is the law? It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but then the rich people get their hands on it and they start having their ceremonies, private ceremonies, more exclusive or elitist, and that's kind of the fall of that.
Well, the Romans put a stop to it. No, these people are like rethinking society the same way. they put a stop to it in the 1960s when the government made all psychedelic drugs Schedule I, when they were doing that so they can go after the anti-war protesters and the Black Panthers, and they changed the counterculture movement.
Cannabis is close to the same thing. I mean, you know, when I first made the decision to be a daily cannabis user, I was an outlaw. Now I'm a patient.
Yeah, isn't that interesting?
You're like, we used to be like, you know, people think they killed Bob Marley because of shit like that, but now it's just like it's my medicine.
Yeah. Well, you know, it's now. in how many states, Jamie? Legal? in how many?
Did we say it was like legal in 19?
? I think it's half the country has legal marijuana. Half the country. And the other half the country wants it. It's like, what are we doing?
Like how the fuck is it 2024, with all that we know about all the drugs and that this one, 24 states, three territories in Washington, D.
C. have legalized recreational cannabis use. Seven states have decriminalized its use. Commercial distribution is legal in all jurisdictions where possession is legal, except for Virginia and Washington, D.C. Personal cultivation for recreational use is allowed in all jurisdictions except for Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey.
That's surprising. And Washington state, that's even more surprising.
Well, first off, let's just be honest. No one's ever, ever had fun in Delaware. I'm just kidding.
Isn't that where Biden's from? I think it's just a dumb thing for us to be hanging on to. The fact that they're still allowing grown adults to tell other grown adults what they can do with their consciousness. With all the data that we know about things that are very harmful, that are not just legal but prescribed by doctors.
How about? just everything is harmful that they allow in the world? They don't give a fuck about the sea being a plastic desert but a don't smoke pot. I mean, I find that's always been the case with authority, isn't it? You know what I mean?
Like language. I mean, what language? You know what I mean? What language can you use and how you use it?
Sex and violence.
Talk about Rome, man. Now we're going back to Rome. And one of the reasons Rome was so successful is because they placated, and we talk about Rome, and we're not talking about Italy. We're talking about the city-state of Rome. That is the thing that conquered the room.
The city-state. And the surrounding areas were other things. But they keep the masses happy with violence and free bread.
And, you know, in the same way that you keep people, you control people by fear and ignorance. Keep them, you know what I mean? And it's exactly...
Just keep them mildly entertained all day long.
and distracted. I find the idea of TikTok about as interesting as the game TikTok.
I don't even know. Oh, Tic-Tac-Toe?
Tic-Tac-Toe, yeah. I'm not doing that either.
No, I'm not doing that either. It is crazy when you go to the Coliseum and you realize the extent of the construction of it and how elaborate it was and how many different things they had going on, where they would turn it into,
like, they'd have boats. Naval battles. They'd fill it up with water. Incredible.
Wild, wild shit. They'd have animals in cages. They could race through the floor.
It's unimaginable. And now, you know,
the thing about going there, too, is you go, I wonder if they ever thought this was going to end. Did they ever imagine... No, of course not. No, they certainly never imagined. some idiot comedian and his family from California at the time were going to go, visit and go, Whoa, cool.
This is where they had sword fights. Whoa.
I mean, I.
I imagine.
. Yeah, it's... I think some of the emperors, probably, in an egocentric way, felt... And it's true. Everyone knows, you know, there might be some kid who never heard of Bird's record, but he might know who Nero was.
Or Caligula, or something. Sure. Or, like, the most dramatic sort of deranged parts of, like, where the...
where that period of Rome of the dictator starts to become.
It's just always shocking when you go to a place that was in complete control of, like, most of the world, and then now it's nothing. Now it's gone. Now it's just ruins that people visit, and it's just a city.
Yeah, what if Bill Gates had been, like, you know, Guido, you know, whatever. That'd be a different thing. You know? Like, what, if... What if the whole Internet came from Italy, not America?
You know what I mean?
Right.
It's.
It's just always weird to go to a place, too, when you're from America.
Claudio Gozzo, whatever. Like, he, came up with this. You know what I mean? But they had a pretty good run in the Renaissance.
Oh, well, they've had amazing runs. Artistically... I mean, that's also something I think about when I go to Italy. Like, there is something about their life and their lifestyle that contributes to this incredible body of work. when it comes to art, when it comes to music, when it comes to sculptures and paintings.
Like, there's so many great artists that came from that part of the world.
Have you ever seen a book called Naples 44?
? No. Do you know this book? It's one of... It's...
A friend of mine gave it to me a couple years ago. It's a British Secret Service officer. comes to Naples in 1944, directly in the, you know, push of the Allies, pushing the Germans and then fascists up the peninsula from Sicily and then landing in Italy. And it's an unbelievable book that this guy writes. And it's...
The sadness and the, like, tragedy of it, as you.
. And like anything else, war is dramatic. War is pain and violent. The aftermath of war is something that people rarely can wrap their heads around or are interested in. Maybe because it's even...
You know, you take away the drama of the battle and stuff. It's bleak. But there's something about... And this guy, he's not Italian, English guy, but he captures the spirit of the humanity within, like, this transitional period in Naples, but unimaginable stories, depravity, but also great, exalted human things as well. And then just some things that are incredible, like, you know, Italians in their clothes.
And even the rich, the aristocratic class in Naples, to the person that could.
. When they didn't have any fabric around this time. after that, they're walking around Naples in beautifully tailored suits made of old army blankets that they would use black paint on to make them look chic. Really? Yeah, and I was like, wow, I would love to see that garment in a museum.
But just all manner of things. And there's another... American guy was there at the same time and wrote another book about it, which is also very interesting because this guy was one of the only books of that time. I have it in my phone, I could tell you. But it talks about, like, the gay scene with the soldiers in Naples, and stuff, too, like, during this thing.
Like, just.
. You know what I mean? Incredible stories, incredible survival and heroics, and art and culture that still survive, you know, during the darkest time. It's a great, great book. Unbelievable.
Unforgettable.
Well, it's always interesting, too, when you're thinking about things thriving and existing against resistance. You know, in a dark time or a different time, a time of much more difficulty. You know, and you get a chance to sort of feel what they felt when they were doing what they were doing.
I mean, I think, culturally, historically, I mean, I think, one of the great reasons Europeans have a much different attitude. You're talking about, you know, Sicilians, Italians, everyone. French, Spanish. Spanish, people know how to have a good time. Oh, yeah.
Sure. Sure. To have two events like World War I and World War II,
yeah, we have very little.
It's hard for us to understand what those two events must have felt like through communities, cities, families.
I just read another amazing book called Wine and War, and it's a history of, like, the wine business during the Nazi occupation during World War II.
Unimaginable, wild shit going on. But the French people, you know, because the Germans, they knew as well. Like, you know, what's the blood of France? It's the wine. What is the thing that holds it together in all these things?
But it's also a great commodity and also something of great elevated status. You know, all this stuff. with the way they dealt with the Vichy. You know, and I'm like, wow, man, these guys had a lot on their plate for five years. And leading up to the, you know, inevitable Nazi occupation.
Well, even in World War I. I mean, in World War I, France lost 25% of its men. Man, yeah. And then in World War II, they lost another 25%.
Just crazy. And in the book, I mean, and also just history, I think that's one of the people, you know, one of the reasons I think Germany, I mean, a lot of French people, just didn't want to do it again. You know what I mean?
Right, right, right.
And that, I think, you know, and you know, it's funny too, like history repeats itself all the time. We know this, you know, and there was a lot of infighting and political things within the French government at that time. Whether that's, you know, through the military or whatever that made them really a soft spot, you know what I mean? They had no, no one was, there was no cohesiveness of the way they would think about fighting or defending or whatever as well.
Yeah.
But they went out in the end, you know what I mean? But this book about just how that affects all the different wine regions and the characters and stuff.
That has to be insane.
It's a great, great book.
Because it's so important over there. Wine is everything to them. It's so important.
And, you know, it's funny, one of the, like, things in the book, you're like, okay, so they're obviously, you know, confiscating everything for the Wehrmacht and doing all this stuff. But they take this, I might be wrong, but I think it's the Pouille Fusée. They take this, this guy has, like, you know, however, many casks or whatever.
And they just take everything. And then the guy's upset. He's been in his family for 400 years or whatever. And he's sitting there with his head in his hands and they're like, it's just wine. And he goes, I know it's just wine, but they destroyed 300-year-old casks, the oak barrels, that that's the secret to our wine.
And they chopped them up and threw them on a fire or whatever, you know what I mean? And he was more upset about that than the wine itself at that time. And he was like, they're irreplaceable. Could never, ever have that again. It's been in my family, for, you know, stuff like that really gets my head spinning.
Oh, yeah, forget it. It's not just the grape and the person that makes the wine. You know what I mean? It's every, every detail, every aspect.
Well, they could also destroy the history of how it was made. Like, people won't know how to do it correctly. I mean, that's one of the darker aspects of occupation is when they destroy ancient stuff. Like the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
I mean, could you imagine what that, I mean, we have? no, I mean, unimaginably, and, by the way, who burned it down? Christians.
Did they?
Yeah. It was Christian people who ran amok because of something that had happened, some sort of crime that was committed or something. And they, it was the early Christians, who burned that down.
Those motherfuckers. You imagine if that had some sort of an explanation as to how they built the pyramids, and it was lost forever?
I mean, it could be anything. I mean, millions and millions of...
But that was the most sophisticated society that has, even today, ever existed. If you look at ancient Egypt, in terms of their ability to construct things that baffle us to this day, like the Great Pyramid baffles people to this day. Yeah. There's hundreds of thousands of people debating how and why, and what they were for and what they did, and we really don't know.
I'm also interested in anything where, before science becomes one thing and the occult is another thing. And I'm just, you know, there's a certain time and I'm really interested in John Dee, the great occultist, scientist, English, around the, Elizabeth I reign. Alchemist. But that his scientific ideas were equally, they possessed the same gravity as his occult ideas, and those things were in the same world. They weren't removed from each other.
It wasn't like one was silly and one was serious. Right. They were both taken with the same level of, you know, sobriety or whatever, you know.
And that's what we were talking before. I think there's a, to be, to remove the mystic from everything or not to be able to at least have a nod to it. or understand, I mean, what is ancient Egypt? You know what I mean? Yes, they're a great civilization that could organize, but at its base and what's holding it together?
is this mystical, like weird thing, you know. So to remove that completely, I think, is, I don't know. It seems so rigid.
It's a foolish, rational, There has to be.
an integration of different things, because you feel people's need for that to integrate those things.
Well, there has been in all great cultures, right? I mean, in Chichen Itza, have you ever been to the ancient Mayan structures?
I've been to some, but I didn't go to that one. They all involve.
places of worship and they all involve rituals. I mean, there was a lot going and what they did was incredible.
And psychedelics.
And psychedelics, yeah.
I mean, as well.
I went to Chichen Itza, we got lucky. There was a really good professor that was kind of explaining things to us and he was talking about the different psychedelics that they believed that they would use and the way they had structured all of their buildings to align with constellations and the way they had sort of worshipped this whole integration of the sky into all of their architecture.
I mean, it's an integration into universal consciousness. I mean, that's really what it is. And it's funny because you think, well, you're poisoning the water. Well, you're poisoning, we're all, it's all one living organism and the universe is one living organism. Right, right, right.
I mean, I don't want to get too far out, man. You know, but of course, it's all just like the ecosystem or whatever. Like the frog eats the tadpole and then the bird eats the frog. You know what I mean? But it's, just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it's not...
It scales up. Yeah.
And out and within.
And in. Yeah, forever. Yeah, that's the reality of it. So it's not just we're poisoning the water, we're poisoning ourselves.
Yeah. And of course, you know, again, I would like to think the earth is a strong thing, and I don't get wrapped up in it, but it's like, I mean, if you live in your own shit, you get sores. You know? Yeah. You know what I mean?
Right. Hence the plague.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, there's a.
. This is just when you think about the universe as a whole, it's just too big for our brains. And we don't think, we just think about our neighborhood or our lives, or our personal problems or our bills, or...
Or our TikTok.
Yeah, nonsense. And it's just thinking about nonsense seems easy.
You know what people think about? That they can buy shoes that they don't have to touch to put their feet in. I see this.
You just order them?
You see, I see a commercial and the guy walks over and they're like, never touch your shoes again. I'm like, wow. You know what I mean? Like, finally.
Oh, shoes, you can slide into. Yeah.
And I'm like, amazing. Everything is... Everyone relax. You never have to touch your shoe. What if I want to touch my shoes?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, well, some people don't understand. They want comfort. You know, and some people, especially. if you're doing something you don't enjoy, you think of struggle as like your job or work.
And then, once you're not doing that, you don't want any struggle. You just want relaxation.
But isn't it funny also that our culture is dictating a certain health thing? Take the sober challenge. Go to the gym. Buy these gym clothes and walk around in them. Do all this, but we're not gonna take care of anything else.
You know what I mean? Like, you don't care about our mental health. Right. You don't really care about our health. You know what I mean?
You don't do anything, but it's like.
. But culturally, let's start putting this out there. You know what I mean? Like, why... You know, there's...
When I first went to New York City, there were bars and bookstores and weird junk stores and all sorts of things that weren't corporate. And now it's just gyms and banks.
And I think.
. I don't really go to the gym, but I imagine you could get an ATM in the gym next door to the bank with the ATM.
I'm sure you could. A lot of gyms, I'm sure, have ATMs.
I'm just saying, you know, like, be healthy. You know what I mean? But I'm like, it is funny. There's nothing that's saying to you. be cerebral.
You know what I mean? Right. There's not a lot out there. You know, you watch old Dick Cavett shows. They're smart people.
Then they're not promoting a movie or a fucking book or what. They're just talking about ideas and philosophy and art and their culture and the society. Even, what was his name? Mike Douglas show.
Yeah. Muhammad Ali.
Yeah. John Lennon, and then some senator from Oklahoma, or whatever. You know, like,
they're just talking. You could do that back then.
Now, it's gotta be, you know, the interview is pre-done. It's about the mood. They show the clip.
But that's only on television, but that's also why podcasts are so popular. True, true. You can just kind of talk about anything.
You have a new place that's also not under the scrutiny of having to play commercials every five seconds.
It's also, that's a big factor, but it's also not under anybody else's direction or advice. Yeah. That's what's really important.
No, no, I know.
If I'm not doing it, it's not gonna happen.
I'm just being cynical.
But I mean, if I'm not doing it at my level of the game, if I'm not doing it, like, you, don't have to do it.
You just don't,
you don't have to. All you have to do is make something that resonates with people and avoid anybody else's input. I've had a lot of bad input come my way that I've ignored. You know, and especially in the early days when things started to kind of take off, everybody has an opinion about how you can grow this thing to the next level, which is always what I'll talk about. You know how to take the show to the next level.
You know, I thought about having more celebrity and more of this, and that. Everyone has advice, but maybe just avoid these kind of topics, or maybe this, and that. As long as you don't have any input from other people, then, whether people like it or don't like it, at least it's you. It's you and the people you're talking to, and it's a real thing. It's not a...
It's not a promotional thing. Right. It's not a buy. this. Right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It just exists, as.
. Which is just one.
dimension of things. Yes. And, you know, it's nice to be clean cut and your teeth are white and you're smiling and you're selling shit. You know what I mean? By the way, I got a pair of shoes.
You don't even have to touch them. Like, what size are you?
I don't even understand that. But it's just...
If I could walk around like an 18th century French duke, I would.
Well, look at that jacket. That is a rock and roll fucking jacket. I've been looking at that, thinking the moment I saw you, could I wear that? I don't know if I could pull that off.
Your muscles are too big to get in there. Well, I mean,
I could get one tailored that would fit me. Yeah, yeah,
we could get you one.
But I'm just thinking, I don't know if I could pull that off out in public. People are like, what are you doing, dude? As a comedian, you can't be too cool unless you're Cat Williams.
I knew you were going to say that.
Cat could be cool as fuck.
I'll tell you why. Cat Williams is cool because he's still out there talking shit and an 8-year-old beat him up that time. Remember that shit? An 11-year-old kid in the hood grabbed that motherfucker in the headlock and he's like, let go of me! And he's like laying on the ground.
I was like, man, you gotta be cool to come back from that.
Well, he's just real. He is who he is, and everybody loves him. That guy can wear anything. But I can't. I can't wear sparkly shoes.
Look at him.
Dude, that's amazing.
Look at him in his fur coat and his fucking giant rings. He's an awesome dude, too. Fun guy. Yeah, they're cool.
I only got to meet him.
the one time where I did a podcast with him. And it was because he did another podcast where he said, Joe Rogan will never have me on his podcast. And I'm like, I'll have you on anytime you want. I never met him before. Oh, really?
No, and then finally I met him.
I thought comedians were like drummers. They all know each other. Most of us. Everyone, knows every drummer in every band.
I know everybody else. I just never met him.
That's funny.
He was already so huge that when he would stop by in comedy clubs, this was like after the Pimp Chronicles, he would only go by, he would go to a bunch of different clubs and if you weren't there when Cat was there, you missed him. So he only came to the comedy store like a handful of times. And the comedy store was, that was my haunt. And that's where I went with all my friends, and all the best comics in LA and New York were all collaborating at the comedy store. And I never got to see him because he wasn't there.
I mean I'd heard he was like, he smacked somebody once. He got in a fight with somebody in the front porch one night. I missed it. You know, but I just, I'd always admired him. And I'd always talk nice about him.
I didn't understand why he thought I wouldn't have him on the podcast. But once I met him, he's a joy. He's a funny, smart dude who's a lot of what he's saying, he knows what the fuck he's doing. He's like very tongue-in-cheek and very, just having a good time with it. But he's a genuine character.
Like a genuine, unique character.
I would love to meet him.
Oh, he's great. You'd love him. Very smart dude too.
If I see him at the airport, I'll say, yo man, you like this jacket?
He might be able to fit in that. He'll be a little long. Might have to get the sleeves taken in. But yeah, where the fuck do you get that jacket?
You know,
I,
my wife got me this jacket.
It's pretty dope. She's got good taste.
Yeah, she truly does.
Yeah, and then you're wearing about 10 pounds of silver.
Yeah. It's true. They call me the silver stacker. I don't know if you guys know.
That's what the kids call it. My daughter calls it that when she wears a bunch of bracelets. That's my stack, man.
Stacks. They have stacks. That's my stack.
I'm just learning about these things.
I just gotta be careful not to fall in the pool, you know? Yeah.
But I just love when rock stars stay rock stars. It's, nothing bums me out more than seeing an old rock star in a golf shirt.
I'm like, dude. Come on, man.
You gotta hang in there. I know you're 60..
I'm fucking 60.
. I just saw the stones. They're 80.. They look amazing.
Bro, they're amazing.
I love, I mean, I'm wearing, I have stones. I mean, the stones are everything. I love the rolling stones. I always have. And I've, the Black Crowes toured with them in 1995..
We did all of Europe with them. We did Wembley Stadium with them. You know, I've got, you know, I've got to hang with Keith and Ron. I've, you know, that's hung with Mick a little bit. They're the fucking rolling stones, you know?
And so, my wife and I, and my 14-year-old daughter who lives on the East Coast, she was with us for the few weeks this summer. I'm like, let's go. You know what I mean? I haven't seen them in a while and we went and I went without any, I don't, you know what I mean? I went with nothing.
I wasn't going in with any expectation except to pay my, you know, be there with everyone and see the rolling stones and be there. And they were great. Mick Jagger's voice was incredible.
Incredible. I mean,
his energy and stuff is incredible, but his singing, I mean, they did Wild Horses that night and I looked over and my 14-year-old was like crying and I was like, I'm so proud of you. You know, she's feeling it so deep. Yeah. Great midnight rambler. They're in a stadium with, just like, Ronnie and Keith just had, like two speakers on stage and still playing.
A lot of bands don't play live anymore. They have their digital shit through the PA. There's not even any sound on stage. Wow. It's all through their in-ears and to me, that's really weird.
Whatever it takes for you to get the gig, I'm hip too. People do, I've seen cool shows like that, but personally, I like a lot of sonic chaos. You want it real. Yeah. I want to feel it.
I saw them at CODA, the Circuit of the Americas, a couple years ago, and you know, it's just, when you watch Mick Jagger walk out onto the stage, you almost can't believe he's really there. Like, how is that really him?
I told my wife, he's like a Sasquatch, but everyone's seen him. Right. It's like,
he, and he's still out there. I remember Bill Hicks had a bit in 1988 about the Stones still doing it. Yeah. In 1988. but there's this crazy thing, oh my God, the Stones have a new album.
Like, what? This is 88.. Yeah. And here we are in 2024 and they're still out there killing it, and the show was amazing.
That was amazing.
Amazing. It's so good.
The best, I mean, the best, I consider myself a midnight rambler of Fishing Auto. One of the best midnight ramblers I've ever heard.
Oh, they were so good.
It was so good and people were, you know what I mean? Just, it was, it was really, I'm so happy that we went to SoFi Stadium. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I was just, it was great, you know, because I will admit, sometimes, and okay, let's be honest, I get access to backstage, you know, we have a, it's cool, but sometimes in big places like that, something, I get a little bit like, not because of, that, people would know you were, I just get weird around giant crowds. Right, right. I did when I was little, I didn't like theme parks, you know, all sorts of weird stuff. Yeah. But it was so cool.
I was so inspired. You know what I mean? I walked out, I like floated out of there, so happy.
That guy has two trailers that he takes with him everywhere that are just a gym. Two huge trailers that are just, like, Mick Jagger works out every day and when he gets out on that stage and like, he's fucking 80.. I know. He might be 81 now.
If I live to be 80, you can come find me, I'm gonna be 300 pounds living in Sicily and they're gonna, you know, those beautiful painted wagons, they'll drag me around and it's like.
But you won't even get to 300 pounds either.
No, you don't.
That's what's crazy. That's when you realize we're being poisoned. Yeah. When you eat in Europe for a week and you don't gain any weight. You're like, this is nuts.
I had pizza, I had pasta, I didn't feel bad. You come over here, you feel like you got hit with a tranquilizer dart. Yeah. Like, we're fucking poisoning ourselves. You won't get to 300 pounds if you live in Sicily.
No, no.
Unless you drink a lot of fucking wine.
Yeah, and even the wine is like.
It's better. Well, it's just, there's something about, like, just the air there. There's something about the atmosphere.
I'm not a, you know, I'm not, I have no, I'm English, we are pretty much in our DNA, English. and then, like a big scoop of Polish Jew on top. You know what I mean? Not even a big scoop at this point. Both my grandfather and my dad were shiksa, loving Jewish men who whittled me and my brother down to about 20%.
And,
but when I'm, I don't know, there's, there's something about there. that is so, just, I don't know. I, I, I love to go to Paris, but Paris isn't relaxing. You know, I'm out all day doing stuff. I love London.
I love Madrid. I love lots of places. I love Rome. I love lots of places in the world. There's something about Sicily, man.
I'm like, just, I'm, I'm in. You know what I mean? Like, this is, like you said, it's something about the lifestyle just so laid back, and it's, maybe I like it because it's a bit of anachronism. I think, you know what I mean? Like, you're going, you feel like you've stepped out of the same pace and or rhythm of the modern future world that we see every day.
Yes. It's a different vibration. It's a different, I mean, and then everybody's doing it that way too. So, you sort of settle into their way of life. You sort of settle into their pace of things.
And then, if you need,
a shot of adrenaline, just hit Palermo, because that place is wild. Oh,
I'm sure.
It was so good.
Is it still run by the mob?
I don't know. They say no.
Oh, then yes.
They say that it doesn't exist anymore, but, but if I remember, there was a big scandal during lockdown in some small town in Sicily, or maybe it was Palermo. I'd have to research it. Did they, the police were upset because some old mob guy had died and they had a giant parade and no one, like, was in masks. everyone was just out there, old people, you know, everyone was out there doing their thing for Don, whoever it was, who's not with us anymore. And I was like, okay, they didn't want that story.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
Well, those people ran that place for a long ass time. You know, they're an integrated part of their society, like the Yakuza is in Japan.
For a very long time. For a very long time. you know, the way it works. Have you ever seen a funny movie called Johnny Stacchino?
No.
With Roberto Bellini, the Italian comedic actor? No. You would love it. Yeah? It's so funny.
It's from the 80s and he, Stacchino's a toothpick, yeah? So he's Johnny Toothpick. And it's that, what's the story of, it's a famous story, you know, he, he's a school teacher in Naples or whatever, but he, or in Italy, and he, and this girl who's the wife or lover, or whatever, some big gangster in Sicily, she sees, he's trying to, he's in hiding because he did like rat it on someone, I don't know, something. She sees him and he looks just like him. so she brings him to Sicily and he's like walking around and people are like, yo, what are you doing?
You know what I mean? Like, so it's that kind of thing, but it's unbelievably funny movie. It's insane. Okay.
Do you remember? there was an Italian singer who created a very popular song where it was fake American lyrics? God, I'm trying to remember his name, but it was a song where he's singing fake words that sound like he's singing like the Rolling Stones, or, you know, the Beatles or something like that, but he's doing it with fake words. It's like what he thinks American songs sound like, but it's gibberish. This is the guy.
What is his name?
Adriano Celentano. Give me some volume on this. Wow. Listen. It's really cool.
That's amazing. I love that. It's a cool song too.
The song is very cool, but there's a couple of different versions of it. This is like a live performance of it, but there's another one that's like a music video of it and it's like really fucking interesting what that guy did.
That's cool. That's really good. Yeah,
he just made up fake American music. It's fucking great.
I'm gonna do that next week.
Why not? Fuck it.
I mean,
you know, that's, there's a lot of songs that have like words that aren't really words. You know, they're just kind of like sounds. You know? Dan Auerbach talks about that from the Black Keys. Like a lot of times when he sings things, he's just like making up sounds, making up words.
Mick Jagger did it.
Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, or he took words and mashed them into something that was more.
Especially live in the 70s. he has a lot of vowels going out and you're like I don't know what he's saying. It's so good.
But man, he's not lost any of the energy. If you watch, like his old performances, and now it's just an older guy doing the same vibe. I mean,
it's also very cool because they play everything in the same key. You know, you'll find a lot of older and I get it, man. You know, singing is, singing is a physical thing. I mean, my one thing. it's kind of like the muse.
Like if I stopped singing, it would go away. Mmm. You know what I mean? If I didn't sing, you know,
if I, I'm going to take two years off. I would never, I would never get back to where my voice is.
Why is that?
It's just the nature of the physicality, I think. You know what I mean? Especially as it's 35 years, 40 years of singing.
So it's like you're working muscles in your neck.
Your vocal cords are just muscles, yeah. Wow.
And you're working them on a regular basis and they get out of shape.
Yeah. And then, like that, and then it just won't come back. Oh, wow. Or it won't come back to where I'd like to, like my, I'd really like where my voice is. I say, we sing the songs in the same keys, you know.
Mmm. It was funny, we played the Forum, we were the first concert in the Forum, LA Forum, after COVID. And it was a bit, I had never played there. It was a big night. It was, you know, friends and family.
It was great. But George Dekoulias, who's produced our first records, first two records, and signed the band after the show, he was like, if I had known, you'd still be singing 30, whatever years later, we could have put the keys down for you, you know. I was like, I was like, that wasn't how it worked back then. Because, you know, in rock and roll, you get, you know, you have the verse and then you get to the chorus and you want to get it exciting. Yeah.
So, you want to knock it up a notch, you know. But we don't change them either, and I like that. I mean, my voice has changed, obviously, but.
But it's still the same key. Do you wonder how long you're going to do it? Do you ever think about stopping?
I don't. I do. sometimes. I mean,
you know, the pandemic was funny for me because, at first, not financial three things or whatever, it was just like, you know, since I was a teenager, pretty much, this is what we do. We tour, we do concerts and we make music, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, maybe I'm going to go a little kooky not doing it. And then, I really, I mean, I had horrible days, like everyone else, and, you know, despair and fear and stuff of the unknown. But a lot of those days, like, I was like, I have a lot of interests, you know what I mean?
I have a lot of other, I'd like to write a book, I'd maybe like to write more than one book, you know.
Find my voice outside of the musician, in another artistic way or whatever, and just loving my wife and.
living life.
Yeah, and, you know, moving to Sicily. But, a lot of those things you, you know, I'm not ready to do that now. But also I look ahead and I'm like, do,
do I want to be on stage when I'm 75?
? Do I want to? There's a difference. if I have to. I don't know.
I guess I'll call it. if I'm lucky enough to get to 75, you know what I mean? I'll get through the end of the week, you know what I mean? But, I do, I love it, but for that event gave me the perspective of there's other, I don't want to, you know what I mean? I would hate to be, I've always hated the idea that this is all I could do.
That might sound weird, but.
No, no, it's a great thought.
Because I'm born to do it. I love that kind of scenario. you know, like this is, my wife's, like, when I watch you, we're good friends. When I see you in your element, this is obviously what you're supposed to do. Yeah.
But, but I think I have, I don't know if ambition is the right word, but I definitely have interest in things that have nothing to do with this. Yeah. You know.
Well, that's part of being a human, right? Yeah. You don't want to be isolated to one specific interest. And I. There's so many fascinating things.
And the isolation, that's a thing too. And I, I'm really happy with, would, would, could we have a level of success that's greater or whatever? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. But the one thing I like about my life is, I, I'm not the kind of, I'm not so well known that I still can't do my own grocery shopping.
I cook, I love to cook. I like to go to the market. I like to pick out my shits, you know? Or that, you can't get, you know what I mean? That we have access to the whole world, you know?
And I don't have to worry about anyone giving a shit. You know what I mean? Yeah. Or, the people that do like it, that come up to me wherever I am in the world, they're usually real fans. They're not celebrity people.
Right, right, right. So they're like, man, I saw you at the, when you played this song, you know. And that's the other thing about music. It's like, rock music. You know, you can be, you can do a lot of stuff, but, you know, one thing about the songs we've written, and I meet people, and people play the songs we've written at weddings and at funerals, you know what I mean?
Not just parties, and not just things, but like, you know, my brother, I wrote, you know, when we wrote. She Talks to Angels, I get, I always have time, and I'm always.
humbled by people's experiences with that song, and addiction, and things in their lives. Whether it's them, a family member that lost,
or people that have overcome things, you know what I mean? And that we, you know, just wrote that song one day when we were kids, and that means so much to people. I mean, there's a lot of songs like that in our repertoire that people come up, I mean, really funny things. sometimes. Like, people will pick some song, I'm like, that was your wedding song?
I'm like, okay.
That's weird. Jealous?
Or more obscure, or even, you know, like some weird, like, this song called Nonfiction. Like, we walked down the aisle to Non, I'm like, Nonfiction? Really? It's kind of a dark song. You know what I mean?
Well, that's, you're giving out, you know, with music. It's like, it's an art form that changes people's feeling. When you hear a great song, it literally gives you energy.
Completely.
It's a drug. It really is. It's like an audio.
Exactly the same. I mean, we, I mean, it's maddening to be with me, because it's, this is the only time during this day that I don't have music on. But I, you know what I mean? But I listen to French music from the 20s, and I listen to, like, Peruvian cumbias from the 70s, or, avant-garde electronic composers, whatever, you know. Or blues, and rock and roll, and jazz, and funk, and R&B, and whatever.
But, a lot. Yeah. Well,
that means you're doing the right thing, right? Like, you really love it.
I also need it, like you just said, not only just for energy, but, like, for some soulful.
connection, as well. Yeah. you know, when,
especially with, you know, when I was younger, we all suffer from depression, and some people have a more acute relationships with that.
But, you know, if there's a certain
melancholy that comes over me, there's only some artist that can, I can sail across that deep water with. You know what I mean? Right. To kind of assure me that I'm not the only one. We're not the only ones that feel this way.
We're not the only ones that,
are, you know, life is, life is, that is what it is. You know what I mean? Like, no matter how rich you are, no matter how successful you are, no matter who you are, you still have to deal with the ups and downs of it. Absolutely. And I think adversity is the thing that really makes us who we are.
You know, it's one thing as like, being a father, I'm like, I'm not afraid of the adversity my kids face. As a matter of fact, that's what I really want to get to, is how, because what makes us who we are is how we deal with adversity. Mm-hmm.
And if you don't deal with any adversity, it's not good.
And if you push it under the table, or this or that,
avoid it.
then where are you? You know what I mean? You're lost. Where's the, and the great, and it's, these. things are cliches, but the greatest lessons are the hardest ones.
You know what I mean? Those are the ones that stick to you the most.
Yes. And those are the ones that make you grow.
I have a great friend who's in a fantastic band. They just opened for us. We've been friends. They're called, his name is Jim Jones. This band's called The Jim Jones All-Stars.
He was in a band called The Hypnotics. And, and we've known each other for 30 years, and he went through really deep heroin addiction in the 90s,
uh, and it's funny to talk to him, and I love him, you know, he's, but he's like, yeah, man, it was something, it was a lesson. You know what I mean? I'm like, that's a fucking tough lesson, and I'm happy you're still here to talk about it. But, I love his attitude. You know what I mean?
I love that spirit in people. You know what I mean? That it didn't, you know, I learned from this, and I've moved on from this, and I don't have any regrets, I don't have any resentment towards this, or anger towards, about it, and it's no one's doing, but my own. Mm. That responsibility, to take responsibility for stuff, you know, is a big, and that's, that's important, and I think we see a lot of that gone away, you know what I mean, with people.
and every story is different, you know what I mean? And every, not everything, is the same, and, and the, the, what is real, and what isn't real, between there, that's for everyone to figure out, for people, you know. Yeah. But, but the fact that
that can be captured in a song, and, like you said, sort of carry you through these bad moments, where you realize, like, other people, are experiencing grief, hardship, depression, darkness, terrible thoughts of loss, and that's the reason why those songs are so popular. It's not like people want to suffer. Like, no, there's like something they're resonating with.
And anger is a part of that, too, you know what I mean? Like, and it's funny, like, with the newer music, I'm like, you guys, like the world looks pretty shitty, aren't you guys pissed a little bit, or are you just like, no, I'm just gonna get some likes, and my pants fit right, and my hair is good. I'm like, okay, I get pop. music is light sometimes, but I would like for the young people to, you know, I'd like to see in the art a little more anger. Well,
I'd like to see more rock. You know, it's like, when I'm looking at music coming up today, there's a great absence of strong new rock bands that seem like rock bands from the past. Guitar,
bass.
Yes, yes. I mean, goddammit, people still love that music. What the fuck is going on?
Yeah, you go see ACDC there at a fucking stadium. Yeah. You go see Metallica there at a stadium. Yes. So people are going.
So what the fuck happened? I mean, where is everybody? I mean,
I think it's definitely there. It's just, it's, it's, again, I think people, for some reason, think the music business is supposed to be the gauge, or they're just like any other fucking salesman. They always have been. Just because one salesman had a cool taste and one didn't, don't kid yourself. Right.
They're not artists. They're salesmen. And there's cool people and not cool people. But they're not, you know what I mean? Yeah.
And I think, like, now we live in a time, and you see it a lot, you see people making comments about it in our industry, about how you're just following. Whereas before, yeah, you had things that were popular, but someone, you know, someone said, fuck, sign the Stooges.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, Danny Fields did that, but he had great taste, but he was still a record company guy, the business side of it. Someone, you know what I mean? Someone said, sign Suzy and the Banshees, or whatever. Someone said, dude, I mean, Bob Dylan, you didn't know when they made first Bob Dylan record that he'd be 83 years old.
Bob Dylan. today. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
And a lot of people said, don't sign him. He's not marketable. He's not commercial. And, you know, that's my thing. I'm looking for.
still that maverick spirit or somebody who does have the wherewithal and or vision to see that maybe something is a little bit outside the box still could have, not just, it would have importance, and it can be popular as well.
Well, of course. And it always has been that way. The idea that that can't, that everyone has a short attention span now and we're interested in frivolous things. No, that's not true. That's just still junk food.
It's still junk food. Right. And there's still people that like a nice meal. I'm glad you're out there, dude.
Thanks. Thanks for doing this.
I really appreciate it.
It was a lot of fun.
I really enjoyed talking to you.
We got to talk about a lot of weird stuff.
Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Cheers. Bye, everybody.
Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Stream by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night! All day!
Okay, so that's the first season, like 1972 or 3, I think.
Columbo. I almost forgot about that show. They used to tell him not to smoke?
Well, no, like, the character, I can tell they're probably just building up. Like, you notice that he has a cigar in his hands. the whole series, or every episode. But it's funny, the 1972 people are like, please don't smoke in here. Or Mr.
Columbo, Lieutenant Columbo, he's always being reprimanded for it.
Interesting. I forgot about that.
And he's always, really, you know, Peter Fox, he's always like, oh, sorry. And he puts it out on us. He's never upset or anything.
Yeah, that was an interesting character, right? Because he was like this bumbling guy who was actually not. He was kind of setting you up the whole time. Letting you underestimate him.
Pardon me, but another thing. He's always about to leave, and he's like, oh, yeah. And he comes back.
And he's annoying people, and they're like, oh.
Incredible, though, aesthetic. And, like, the other day I'm watching this episode that Jonathan Demme directed, Steven Spielberg, I mean, like, all of these famous directors, start to cut their teeth on TV and on episodic things like that. But there's a real tone to it and stuff. It's cool in the way everyone looked. But one other funny thing about it that I've noticed in Columbo is it always starts with a murder.
And then usually a lot of times in the arc of the story, someone shows up to the crime scene. Usually whoever did it, or whatever, right? And so, but they're never upset. There's never someone that runs in, what happened here? Your uncle's been murdered.
Oh, I didn't do it. It's kind of like how it starts. instead of some dramatic, you know, like, oh, my God. How could this have happened? No one's even, they're just like, okay, well, you're bothering me now.
In cop shows, you can always tell police, even SVU, they're always like, I've had enough. Can you guys leave? And they leave. I'm like, is that how it goes? I don't know.
No.
It's weird how many of those shows there are where they catch the bad guy. Like that is, it's like something that I guess people with anxiety need to let them feel like. if someone is a bad person and they do commit a murder, they're going to get caught.
Like are the interest in those kind of dark scenarios, you're only interested in them when there's justice at the end? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, for sure. Because anything nebulous or whatever is like too real maybe.
Yeah, there's those shows, and then there's medical shows. Remember when there was a time where every other fucking show on TV was about a hospital?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the only one that I really remember is Quincy. So Jack Klugman yelling at everyone. He's yelling about the sandwich.
He's yelling about the blood sample. When we were kids, we were hardcore. We were in that initial phase of American kind of hardcore punk stuff because we had just missed out the like 77,, 78, 79.. And then there was an episode about the L.A. scene and Quincy goes to the punk club.
Don't you see what you kids are doing to yourselves with the loud music and the anger and the pills or whatever? And there was a thing when we were kids and there was this song. I forget which band did it. But you were fake if you were a Quincy punk. Because they took the way people looked on Quincy or whatever, and that instantly became.
A fake punk.
Yeah, yeah. You're bullshit now.
When you started out, what was the inspirations for your band? What were you guys into?
I mean, it's hard to untangle because my dad was a singer. So our dad was a singer. And he was very, well, my dad was kind of a strange guy in general. A lovely guy, but dynamic to say the least. But he had like a hit in the late 50s called Booma Dip, Dip.
Like a top 40 kind of record.
And a couple of subsequent sort of rock and roll singles. And he was living in New York and stuff. And then, when he, that kind of pales out. And then he moves back to Atlanta and he immerses himself in like the folk music scene. And he was signed to a label called ABC Paramount.
So by the time I come along in 66, it's kind of, he's not doing it anymore.
What was he doing?
He was a schmata guy. He was in the middle. He was like Willie Loman. He was in the garment business. My grandfather, Ike Robinson, they were in children's wear.
My dad was in women's wear. And then ended later back in children's wear. But the one thing around the house that I remember earliest memories are him pilling out his guitar and singing folk songs. And just, I don't know. I'm a dyslexic person.
And so my, you know what I mean? So there was, I don't know if that has anything to do with it. But there was something about always singing these songs. It would like open up stuff for me. Almost like being high or in a, not in a psychedelic way.
But in a way that it changed the space. You know what I mean? And records started doing that to me very early. And that kind of is where, so it's kind of, we think it's normal. Other kids' dads aren't playing old folk songs at the house.
that I know. But by the time Rich and I, you know, we're kind of like angst-ridden suburban youth. For some reason my parents decided to move to the suburbs. Financial reasons. General apathy.
Ready to begin the mound of resentment and regret. I don't know. All the things. the suburbs represent me. You know what I mean?
I would say, for me, there was a television show. Do you remember Night Flight on USA Network back in the early days?
I remember the name. I don't even remember what it was about.
Yeah, it would be like, it would come on at midnight. And it would be concerts and like films. Like cool, like probably the first time I saw a racerhead. Or Rude Boy, the movie about the clash. And, you know, declining western civilization.
Punk things and new wave things. And I always had an interest in stranger things. You know, and things that weren't normal. Or, you know,
Mr. Roper, on Three's Company or whatever. You know what I mean? And this show, they had a show that came on at two in the morning. And it was from Los Angeles, called New Wave Theater.
And that was like huge, huge. Being a kid in the suburbs in Georgia where, you know, it's still pretty much like that band, all the people that listen to that band. Alabama, you know. They wear like trucker hats and flannels and like, want to beat you up because you have a Ramones record or something, you know. And that's how it was, you know.
Wow. So this show was like a real beacon of, you know, my mom was like, oh yeah. Peter Ivers. A very interesting character, Peter Ivers.
Well, the material has surfaced in many incarnations. Tonight they're here as 45 Grave. Piece of wax.
45, yeah. So this is what I'm really into. Don Bowles is the drummer in 45 Grave who was in the Germs.
Not a happy childhood amongst them.
No, but, well, I don't know. But they definitely made amazing, beautiful, cool, outsider art. And, you know, I think something that we have a hard time understanding in this day and age is art that's made because of the visceral interaction with you and other people. that has nothing to do with. I'm going to be a big star.
Some of the things I think, I mean, fuck, I'm like one of the last, I mean, the Black Crowes, we have to be one of the last bands of the time where we kind of felt it was our duty to never truly give in to the other side, you know what I mean, and kind of understand this. us versus them, idea, you know what I mean, and something that's inspiring and something that is like, you know, I was always interested in counterculture, you know, and anyone, again, that's like why the algorithm maybe isn't as perfect or it never will overtake everything, because there's always going to be the one person who's like, I'm going this way. That's not enough for me, you know, the deep dive people. And so we kind of found ourselves in the crosshairs of this kind of stuff, the cramps, we were in, the cramps, the gun club. So, and then REM comes around, their first record, Chronic Town.
And so my dad and my mom and dad had a lot of records, maybe 250 records, 300 records, you know, which was a lot of records back then. Bluegrass records, you know, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs records or Moe's Allison records, Jimmy Reed records, Johnny Guitar Watson, and then they had, you know, Buffalo Springfield records and the Bob Dylan records. I mean, that's a big, I mean, for millions of people, but something as a kid that I knew no other kids would go, you guys want to come over and listen to records? I'm going to put on, you know, the times. they are a-changing.
I'd be like, again, there would be a reason to get beat up, you know.
But that kind of stuff catapults us into, then punk rock comes along and it's like, oh, anyone can do this. You don't have to be, we'll figure it out later. what talent or whatever. You know what I mean? Like.
we just want to plug in and start going ding, ding, ding, and singing horrible things and trying to be offensive. You know what I mean? Because, think about, now you go to the, you know, now people walk around in Dead Kennedys T-shirts and it's like, oh, cool. But back then, Dead Kennedys made people, like the name of that band, the Circle Jerks, like the names of these bands made people upset.
Legitimate rebellion. Yeah. Instead of, you know, posturing. Which is a lot of what's going on today with Dead Kennedys T-shirts.
But, I mean, I think inevitably anything like that, I mean, Edgar Allan Poe. was that in a literary way in the, you know, the tail end of the Victorian age, but now he's just like a thing hanging in some goth kid's car, like an air freshener or something. You know what I mean? So things get swallowed up culturally.
Right.
And regurgitated, as just, you know, and it just so happens that Dead Kennedys have one of the greatest logos of all time.
Yeah. Well, there's always going to be adherence to, you know, what most people are interested in and what's popular. And then people that are trying to mimic what's popular so that they can become popular. And then there's always legitimate counterculture where people are just like, I don't buy with any of this.
Yeah. I'm looking for something.
Yeah. I'm looking for something that's real, something that's raw. And, as I think that's going to accelerate with AI music and, you know, all this electronic music. And again, as you were saying before, stuff that's sort of created to feed the algorithm. Yeah.
You know, there's, there's strategies to become successful, rather than just expression that resonates with people.
Let the people. Yeah. Yeah. In a way, I mean, someone took a chance, you know, a band like Alan Vega and, you know, like suicides, like someone, you know, the no wave music in New York in the late seventies, someone took a chance and said, yeah, I would think about how weird was that. You know, like bringing that into a studio where who was just in here?
fucking 38 special or some shit, you know what I mean? And then there's like this or whatever, you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it's a cool thing about early, you know, like the first Sex Pistols record, the Clash record's a little different, but even the dead boys or bands like that, like a lot of those early punk records and a lot of the post-punk records, those are bands. They're not making records, trying to sound, you know, Oh, I can make a record sound like I don't give a fuck or something on my garage.
But what, you know, you can do anything now with, like a button and, and, and people, and I like lo-fi shit too, of course. But back then there, there's bands, they're not making lo-fi records. They're in just like, that's a real band in a, but with great gear and people who are making like records that we would think are sonically like, Oh, that's correct. Right. And then you have like these punk people in there, just like, you can't turn it up all the way.
Well, we're doing that, you know what I mean?
Wasn't this sort of rebellion at, you guys had like a falling out with ZZ Top, right? When you were on tour, wasn't part of it something about corporate involvement?
Yeah, we were always, and it's funny. I just saw Billy Gibbons a couple of weeks ago in London and we've been friends for many years and a massive ZZ Top fan. I mean, what those records, especially the early records. I mean, they just sound delicious. You know what I mean?
I just, and when, what is it? Which one is it? Is it Rio Grande? I don't know. One of those records where you open it and there's like a giant plate of Mexican food, like growing up in Atlanta, like that was, I didn't know what that, you know what I mean?
Like you could get that. We had barbecue and we had soul food. You know, we have our own regional culinary identity, but to see stuff like that, I was like, wow, I gotta try that. You know what I mean? But no, we,
they, I don't even know if ZZ Top, where they were in their career, if they knew anything that was going on about like these guys that were the opening band, except for the fact that, you know, in the music business at that time, when you're still selling records and you're selling 250,000 records every week or whatever for a couple of years, it starts to be kooky when it was a thing, but they were sponsored by Miller Lite. And, uh, I just got into this thing where, you know, so we'd go on stage and do our thing. and there's big Miller Lite posters all over the state or whatever, you know? And I got in my little troublemaker mind, we're the black crows, you know what I mean? no one gives us money.
We don't drink this beer. No one gives us fucking money. You know, I'm standing under this sign cause I have to be here tonight, but I want you to know that no fucking beer company sponsors our music. No one owns us. No one, you know what I mean?
I have these,
these naive sort of thing about, like, I don't know. And we, my brother and I, talk about it a lot. And as we've gotten older and especially since we've put the band back together these last few years and have been in a really positive place and a really good place, I realized like,
you know, part of our, part of that, that we were involved in, we believed in like as if rock, the S what we feel is really the true essence of rock and roll. It's like, I, I describe it as like the movie quest for fire, you know, when they have to keep the fire burning in that little thing and they're going across the swamp and they don't want the Neanderthals to get it or whatever. That's kind of how we felt in a weird way about everything that was out at, you know, one minute you're in control, your kids were writing songs. We're in control of that. I'm in control of like, this is what we're doing.
This is how we look. This is what we are. And then you're in the grownup world and you've sold, you've made people tens of millions of dollars.
And I'm hardly a savvy business person. I never could be, I never would be. It wasn't in the cards for me.
And so part of our, like being hard about it or being difficult, not being compliant, was trying to, in our minds, keep this pure thing. You know what I mean? And in a way that still is part of what we are today.
How old were you guys back then?
Oh, in the summer of 89, Rich was 18.
. I was 23 when we made our first record.
Just a young rebel.
Well, you know, the other thing is, is rock, you know, you remember, rock and roll was culturally and socially, its place and its importance and its reverence was a lot different than today. Yeah. You know, I think it's one thing I think is cool about hip hop music is the hip hop stars have taken over the, that kind of attitude.
Yes.
Which I, when I see their fashion and I see, you know, I mean, there's lots of, hip hop's. not one thing, of course. And I'm 57.. I like what I like. You know, I like old records anyway, but when I hear new things that I like and I'm like, okay, so they're singing about drugs, they're singing about sex, and, you know, they're singing about, you know, maybe, maybe I can't really identify with the violence of poverty and stuff.
You know what I mean? Like the extreme nature of some of it, but, but it's still, that's another form of rebellion as well.
Yeah. And it's, it's, that's, isn't it? Hip hop itself is an interesting art form because there's not a push to popify it. You know, like the, the hardcore hip hop artists are very successful and the lyrics are rough. Yeah.
You know, they're, they're very hard edged lyrics, but yet these are the lyrics that, you know, get millions and millions of views. You can't even say millions of sold albums anymore, because it's like, that's, that had to be the weirdest thing to watch the sale of albums evaporate.
Not just the sale. You're absolutely correct. Not just the sale, but the, the meaning of a record, like of, you know, and again, in the big scheme of things, the record business isn't as old as, say, you know, the writing or whatever, but in the way that we would listen to music and you would, you know, there's a company that would find talent and put that whole thing, but yeah, making a record and saying, okay, we're songwriters.
Uh, this is what we're, this is our, this is our latest work. This is what we've been working on. This is our craft and this is our talent and our poetry and our, this is what we want to say now. It's like, you know, you know, an album, you know what I mean? Like, I personally think that it's still an important medium and I, I've yet to give up on it.
You know what I mean? Uh, if they said, right, you know, Oh, you know what I mean? What am I supposed to, that's what I've always, that's what Rich and I've always done. We, we write songs. It was one of the only things, again, the way we can, could experience the world was through that.
Cause he's, you know, as crazy as me, just doesn't talk as much, not crazy, but I mean, different, you know, um, artists, you know,
I think it resonates with a lot of people, which is why there's this resurgence of vinyl, right? Like people still want to listen to actual vinyl. They still want to see an actual album, you know? And there's, there's a lot of like looking at that. There's a lot of reminiscing from people that have like my age and your age, that were around when these things were the way you consume music.
I've been buying records since I was 12 years old. You know what I mean? Like, and it was weird. Maybe that's because my mom and dad had a lot of records, but you know, my wife and I, we just moved just around the block in LA and we've been together seven years, but we kept our records separate. I don't know.
We have thousands and thousands. I just put 4,000 records in storage because we don't have space for that. Wow. And, but I'm like, but it's funny because no matter what, I see a record store, I'm going in and I'm, I can, I could, and you know, after however many years of buying records, I know what I'm looking for and I don't buy records online very much.
I still like, I don't know.
I liked it. I'm like a kid when I, if I've been looking for something and I see it, am I, I'm like, I get a shot of like endorphins. I'm like, you know what I mean? I'm looking around like, I don't want to, you know. Yeah.
It's weird. It's geeky stuff. It's nerd stuff, but, but the record store was really important to me as a young person and a musician, because before you could go on your phone or before the algorithm, like there's another person that looks cool. I, Oh, you know what I mean? Like.
they have Chelsea boots on or like a cool band t-shirt. And the suburbs back in the eighties, it wasn't like, you know what I mean? If you saw someone, you took the chance to be like, we need to go to their house and look through their records. You know what I mean?
And it's funny. That's still that way. You know what I mean? I have so many friends in my life and we're friends because of records, you know what I mean? And it's like my wife and I DJ all the time in LA and we go to New York and we carry our records around.
You DJ? Like, yeah.
Like we have the, my wife's name is Camille. So we have the best DJ name ever. The captain and Camille.
Uh, we do, yeah. Concerts and bars and parties and gigs and stuff.
Really? Yeah. When did you start doing that? DJing?
Uh, I started like, well, back in the eighties, everyone used to take a turn playing records at the pizza place. They had two turntables called Fellini's in Atlanta, where all the, as my dad referred to them, dirtbags and low lives hung out. Everyone in a band, of course. but then in, uh, I think in the early two thousands, a friend of mine that worked at the great record store, other music in New York, my friend, Michael, we started doing these nights of playing like a lot of weird psych folk as a, as a kind of, as genre. And we both love those records.
and we called that, we called gurus galore. And, uh, yeah. And just when I wasn't doing the black crows, I had this band called the CRB. We were like a little psychedelic folk rock little group that toured around and made a bunch of records, but our, so we played two sets a night. So it was kind of like grateful dead model, like very heady trippy.
So, but the CRB in, especially in California, we always had friends, DJ the shows with doors open till after the show and in between sets playing records. Um, I don't know. She's something we've always done. And my wife used to DJ before I met her and stuff.
So it's just, just something you enjoy.
We, I, by the way, if I could make, if I could make money doing it, I would never do it. I, if I, if me and Camille could just play records, I would be the happiest person.
You would stop performing? No, I'm kidding.
I love singing. I love performing. I love being in a band. You know what I mean? I love, uh, it's changed a lot, like anything else, and travel and everything, but I personally, it's yet to beat the adventure out of me.
You know what I mean? You never know. Same thing about why I could go online and buy whatever book or record I want right now. Anything, almost anything, you could imagine, you know,
is available,
is available, but you know, I, I, I know when I'm in Denver, I'm going to this certain bookstore and I know that what, that they have really curated things in there that I'm looking for. I can wander into, you know, you never know who you're going to meet. You never know what you're going to eat, who, you know what I mean? The laughs and the, you know, it's still a lot of stuff out there for someone like me, a lot of, uh, stimuli,
real experiences. Yeah.
That are good and human.
Yeah. Human experiences. Yeah. I mean, that is what live music and live performance is all about, right? I mean, music is great.
Live music is something really special.
I tell you the, you know, the pandemic was weird for the world and it was, you know, for artists and musicians, we had, you know, no one's, no government bailout for the guy who, you know, playing guitar or whatever, but as hard as it was, one of the, one of the worst parts of it to me was not, not just being able to do what we do, but not going to see bands. You know what I mean? I, I have a little, I have a label called silver arrow, and we've been doing this for a few years. The black crows records come out on silver arrow. It's a little different, but I'm always going to see bands.
You know what I mean? I'm, we go, whether it's the rolling stones or whether we go see a band at a little club in LA, and I'm always looking for new, you know, things to people that are interesting. If I could help them out in their careers, a lot of it is with really young artists. I want to put them in the studio. I want to give them good experience.
I want to give them a great record deal, because the it's changed the model. But we, but to do that, you have to go out and get in it. You know what I mean? And it's, we always laugh. I'm like, is there anyone older here tonight than me?
You're like, Oh, there's one. You know what I mean? It's a freaky dude who still goes to see bands.
Yeah. Well, people don't want to let it go. And why should they?
I mean, in LA right now is a great time. I mean, there's a lot of good music going on in LA and there's a lot of bars where, you know, we know, if someone has a, it plays great records, we'll go listen to them play records. You know what I mean? There's a lot of good record, people, bands. There's a lot of cool.
LA is very alive right now.
No kidding. Well, like what parts of LA are this happening?
I mean, it happens all over, but especially more downtown and like to the east.
Downtown.
I mean, yeah, you have to survive getting into the place. Downtown is so fucked up. I know.
But that's probably something that adds to the feeling of it.
You know what it does? And it's funny. Cause I had a nostalgic moment about when we started talking about, look, man, I'm. don't get me wrong. My parents did the best they could.
They're just fucking people too. But part of the other part of adventure and the other part of being interesting and night new wave theater, my mom was like, they all look like mental patients, just like you, you know, like great, but was to go to downtown Atlanta in the eighties was dangerous too. You know, during the crack epidemic,
it was a violent place. And, and we were, you know, obviously we were white kids from the suburbs. Traversing like this urban place to get into these little underground clubs to see these bands. that added to it. You know what I mean?
It added, and just the aesthetic, you know what I mean? I was, I still am, an obsessive influenced by the beat writers and beat culture. And so for me, like, you know, Jack Kerouac, isn't writing about the suburbs. He's writing about the, you know, Mexico city or whatever. You know what I mean?
Like all the Gregory Corso or Allen Ginsberg, all these poets and people are writing about all these experiences that don't seem to be happening in like a neighborhood where they call the houses, a five, four, and a door, you know what I mean? So a certain angst is cultivated. Yeah. You know, that only the only thing that could satisfy that would be something that I felt was gritty and real.
Well, there's a, there's something about, if you can, I mean, I haven't been to downtown LA to see music in quite a while, but the last time I went there, I saw Gary Clark Jr. and honey, honey at this very small place, with, you know, maybe there was like 200 people in there. I took my daughter and it was like a late show on a Monday night, like 1130.. And here we're seeing Gary, Gary Clark Jr. and honey, honey play a cover of a midnight rider.
And it just, it just felt so special because there was no one there.
And you survived.
And you survived. And you get out, you're like, let's get out of here. Where's the car? Let's get the fuck out of here. But you know,
it's weird about that. And I get it. And we, but I haven't, I, I, I spend a lot of my time reading. I read a lot of varied materials. And one thing that comes up is humans are dangerous.
Yeah. And places where there's a shit ton of them are usually pretty gross and dangerous. Yeah. Well,
it's just a numbers thing, right?
It's totally numbers thing. It's other things. Ills as well. Sure. That are hard for us to deal with.
And, and look, if we're lucky enough to be walking upright and some, how mentally stable or whatever. Right. Um, but, but you're, but I think cities have always been dangerous places.
They certainly have.
Ancient Rome was a dangerous place. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? I mean, it was so wild. We were just in Sicily and we went to Palermo for the day, and it was wild.
Have you ever been to Palermo? Wild.
Yeah.
That city is like, like an electric wire that's got sparks shooting out of it. You can't get ahold of it.
That's where my grandfather's from. Yeah. Palermo. Yeah. When we went to Italy, one of the most interesting places.
Is this water?
Yes. Yes. And there's coffee in this, if you want. Cheers. Um, one of the most interesting things is just Italy.
in general. It's like, I, every time I go there, I'm like, maybe I should live like this. Like they, they fucking know how to relax. People know how to relax. Like with the way they sit down and eat.
No one sits down and eat for 40 minutes. You sit down and eat for two hours.
French people have it dialed in pretty good. They do. As well. Yeah. And they have pasties, which is the, you know.
What is pasties?
Pasties is a, it's, it's a aperitif from the South of France. You ever see it? It says Ricard. Marseille. Marseille is famous for pasties.
It's a, it's. all Mediterranean cultures have an anisette-based drink. Italians have Zambuca. The Greeks have Ouzo. Arat in Lebanese people.
And there's all sorts of them. In the South of France, they drink one that's a little more, uh, sophisticated and a lot more herbs and things in it. And they say, you always know in France someone from Marseille because they always have a pasties in their hands. Mmm. It's like four, it's a high alcohol level, a lot of sugar, but it's delicious.
You put it in ice and dilute it with water and it makes it all this kind of milky color. Mm-hmm. It's genius.
Well, it's just, you only have a certain amount of time on this planet and they've chosen to live their time in a more relaxed manner, more community-based, and just. people like to sit around and talk.
Do you think that any of that has to do with embracing a certain middle classness, or even lower middle class, you know what I mean? Right. Like the working, you know what I mean? Even in a blue collar way, I think, you know what I'm saying? Right.
Whereas here, it seems that's been stripped away from something to be proud of. Unless it's kind of, in a way, distortedly proud, you know? Yes. Distortion of what that could be.
Right. I know what you're saying. Yeah. Well, in here, it's supposed to be. your main goal is to get to be the type of person that can look down upon that.
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. Your goal is not to exist in that and just accept it. This is life. Life is, you have money for food, you have money for your house. You're not wealthy, but you're okay.
Well, if you look at media, sitcoms from the 70s, whether it's Archie Bunker or whatever, they're just people with jobs and even Taxi, or Barney Miller or whatever. You know what I mean? And now, then it turns into Full House, where somehow all these people and these kids live in this amazing house and everyone has clean clothes. You know what I mean?
There's no struggle.
Yeah. Totally.
Yeah. And no,
it's not just recognition. I think it's, and it's not celebratory. It's just like, look, man, this doesn't make the man. Right? My material things don't make me who I am.
It's who I am, how I feel, what I've learned.
That's the big problem with what we're sold in Western culture, that the goal is to acquire things and to achieve a certain financial status, and then you'll have made it.
I get it. Pastis doesn't grow on trees. You know what I mean? I gotta pay for that shit.
Right, but it's not that expensive. You know what I mean? It's just, there's a distortion of goals. You know what's fucked up about that,
though, like when we were kids and I get it, like I said, I made the choice in my life. Mom and dad, we weren't, you know, we were middle class people, but I made the choice.
When I said I'm not going to university, I'm going to be in a band. My dad, that was like the last dollar I ever saw. Not even like, hey, you know what I mean? And,
but I made that choice. That choice wasn't made for me.
Right.
You know what I mean? And, within two years, I'm on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and we're fucking around. You know what I mean? Like selling millions of records. I get that.
You know what I mean? It's not lost on me, but it gets back to where we started talking about. there will always be a part of me.
that is making music, because it's really maybe the only place where I'm truly free. You know what I mean? I have the freedom. You know, it's funny. I tell this story.
We were on Saturday Night Live two times. The second time was on our second album, Southern Harmony. And we went on the show. It was the number one album in America. It debuted at number one.
Our new single was a song called Sometimes Salvation. We were going to play that. And we were going to play one of our big hit records. And at the time, it was called Remedy. And we had just written this song called Nonfiction.
And I was like, let's play Nonfiction. And it's funny, because it's different. My brother and I, Rich, was like, yeah, fuck it. You know what I mean? It's a cool song.
The guy, whoever was the music guy, he was like, you can't do that. And I was like, well, I mean, we can do what we want, I think.
He was mad because we were smoking weed in the dressing room. I'm like, didn't John Belushi OD in the bathroom? He was like, what do you fucking care? Call the cops. I told him, call the cops.
We get arrested and Saturday Night Live for smoking weed will be bigger than this. But the guy, now that I'm older, I realize I'm just totally being just horrible, like kid. But he goes, you're making a big mistake not playing this single. And I said, okay, well, here's the deal. You're on this show next week with some other fucking band.
And then the next week after that, and then the next week after that, well, this is my band. So let me make the mistake. I'm not going to let you tell us what to do. And if it's a mistake, then we'll fucking eat it. Won't we?
And I'm still here.
And where is he? Well,
it's funny. Someone told me he has a, I forget his name. I read it to him once before. He did not like our attitude. He has, he was on a podcast about Saturday Night Live or something and said we were the worst people he ever dealt with in his entire career there.
And I was like, well, thank you.
That's funny. The worst how? Cause you just didn't listen to him?
Yeah. Yeah. We didn't do what he wanted.
That's not what you're supposed to do with artists.
Especially when you're young and you're still like the fire is like so intense. You know what I mean?
That's always the problem with executive mindsets versus artistic mindsets. Right? And you have some producer character who just wants everything to go according to this very specific plan they have laid out. And you're trying to take an artist. and, first of all, just trying to take an artist and making them sing one song is kind of crazy.
Right?
Yeah. I mean, I think we see that now. Yeah. We see people like, I'll do it. I'll do it.
You know what I mean? There's someone who's ready to jump up and do anything. And I think that's been a part of showbiz. But that's kind of what we were saying before. I think the talent show thing, you know, the vote for me.
Right. You know, when no one was voting for us.
Right.
We were unvotable. Right. And that was part of the reason that we were drawn to these characters and these people and these other outsiders and these other, whatever kind of spectrum we're on, or whatever. that's different. That we were, like, you know, music to us represented.
everything anti-vote for me.
But did it feel weird to transcend that and become mainstream, massive? Yes.
It's still weird sometimes.
What is the juxtaposition? I mean, it has to be so strange. You're these rebels and then all of a sudden you're the number one fucking band in the world.
And then, yeah, and it's, it was tough. It was maybe tougher for me because I was more boots on the ground, in the scene and with people, and now it's like, especially in the 80s in Atlanta, it was like, uh,
you know, fuck major. Anyone who signs with a major label, man, fuck that. You know what I mean? And I'm like, yeah, you know, power to the people, or whatever, you know, and then it's like, you're on MTV 30 times a day and, you know, in between fucking Toyota commercials and Snapple or whatever, you know what I mean? So, and it's weird, because our politics are so in line with so many of the, like, the alternative politics of music, the way, you know, uh, that would lay the grunge, or whatever, you know, so, you know, I'm the same age as all of the grunge bands, but I don't exist in the 90s in the same way.
We weren't, you know what I mean? Right, right. Because we were doing something, but it is funny, you know, people say, well, Kirk, no fucking label is signing Kirk Cobain today. But, as a matter of fact, Kirk and our generation of people were, we were talking about compliance and defiance. You're making a mistake.
Fuck it. It's my mistake to make. It's my band. It's my art. And people.
may, we may, and my kind of generation, it's not about being old, but now I think there's so much compliance. Okay. I don't want to cause any trouble at the record label.
this is, we're all distorted right now with social media and all the different avenues for people to get attention and to get famous. It's so, so easy. I shouldn't say it's easy because it's rare, but common. So, it's like, it's more, it's more highlighted, which way you can go to achieve success. But do you remember that famous time where Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were playing and they were forcing them to lip sync?
Yeah, yeah.
And so, what did Kurt do? Did he start reading out of a book or something like that? Like, he did a bunch of wild things?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. I mean...
See if you can find that, Jamie, because it's kind of hilarious.
Yeah, I know.
Nobody did that at the time and they were telling them, no, no, no, you can't play live. Yeah, here it is. Set to perform the recent single Smells Like Teen Spirit, the British music chart television program Top of the Pops. Time to show the policy requiring artists to sing live vocals over pre-recorded backtracks. As you would expect, Kurt Cobain and his bandmates would not let this go without having some fun.
So, they started fucking around in the middle of the song. The result was, and still, one of the greatest middle fingers to live performances ever, the band literally made its own Shred video.
Yeah, amazing. Yeah, because he got to sing the live vocal over the track. Yeah,
so he started fucking around and coming up with new lines. That's great. Yeah. I mean,
we loved the replacements. You know, that was like a band, like, their being on Saturday Night Live was a disaster. But we thought, that's our band. You know what I mean? I remember every fucking person that we knew in Atlanta that Saturday night that the replacements came on and made in TV.
on Saturday Night Live. We all were at parties and watching it and getting completely shit-faced. Watching, they like shaved their eyebrows off and shit and were rolling around and changed clothes, and people were like, oh dear. You know,
we were like, yeah,
cheering it on. Like, that's how you, that's it. Isn't that part of one of the goals is to be that big of a pain in the ass to the, and who are you being? a pain in the ass to? But some authority.
Right.
Something that says you can't do that, or this is the way it goes and that changes, you know, but I think as a youth, that's definitely something I'm not feeling with a lot of bands. I mean, I think it's there in the punk scene and stuff like that, but they're not getting access to that. Green Day is still that way.
The carrot is still dangled right in front of everybody's face. It's so close now. You know, especially with people that make it independently, through YouTube and TikTok and all these different venues. There's just so many different ways that someone could become massively successful now.
See, this is where I become the time traveler. I am from the last century. I get it. I find, I don't, you know, I think a guy smashing his nuts on a rail on a skateboard is as funny as anyone, but I've seen it. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's not like, you know what I mean? It's not like Steve Coogan or something. You know what I mean? Like Kraft and like Subtext and like all this other weird cerebral stuff with comedy or whatever. I just don't, I will never,
I guess, it's just me as well. The things that I, the cinema that I enjoy, the books I read, the records that I listen to, there is, all of them, if there's one thing in common, there's a level of craft.
There's a difference between having, it's the difference between having a fine meal at a very nice restaurant versus eating garbage. Yeah. Eating tasty garbage. And TikTok is tasty garbage.
Yeah, you're right. That's absolutely, I've never thought about it like that.
It's bad for you and you can't put it down, and you keep going to it and you over-consume it.
And at least when you do, when it's just visual, you don't get a big stain on your shirt.
But you get a stain, I think you get a stain.
on your brain.
Yeah, I really do. I do. I think so much of what's going on today, like, even if I just waste 10 minutes scrolling through TikTok, when it's over, I just feel like, confused. Like, what am I doing? Like, why am I fucking paying attention to this shit?
I don't have any, I never had my, I never did any of that.
You don't have Facebook, Twitter, nothing?
No. I mean, the band has one, I guess. That's perfect. I don't, personally. Good.
I never tweeted or any of those things.
Good for you.
And it's funny, my phone, like, I'm still this way, you wanna,
my best friends, like, the three or four people in the world that, like, I'm super, super, the closest people, we talk on the phone. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Like, I love talking on the phone.
For hours. You know what I mean? About whatever. So it's, I, I get it, but I don't, I'm one of those older people, I just, Well,
you developed in a different time, and this time is fucking bizarre.
I can't imagine spending your life, grown ass people, spending all of their time playing video games. That's a real thing.
Well, at least that's exciting.
It is?
Yeah, video games, some video games.
Why does it give you a shock?
No, some video games are so immersive, man. You have 3D sound and incredible graphics. Running through corridors and people are chasing you, it's very exciting. And it hits all of your dopamine receptors and just, like, it fires you up. I mean, video games are pretty fucking amazing now.
But it's just that the world that we're living in today is, it's not designed for human beings. It's designed to capture human beings. Capture your attention. It's not, it's not a, like, if you're spending your time going from a coffee shop to a restaurant, to a bookstore, to a record store, to a live concert. Yeah.
To an art gallery.
These are human experiences. These are human experiences. But if you're spending your time arguing with people on Twitter all day, like, nothing is more depressing to me than seeing old rock stars argue about politics on Twitter. It is so goddamn depressing watching rock stars virtue signal and, uh, attacking people personally for having differing political beliefs. Like, and then looking at their timeline and realizing these poor fucks are addicted to this shit and they're doing this five, six hours every day.
Get off my lawn!
Yeah,
it's get off my lawn.
Get off my lawn!
But it's, you know, it's fucking rock stars. It's like, good lord, man. Do you have friends? Like, get out. Get out of the house.
Stop doing this.
We just, you know, it's funny, we were gone for three months. We did the States on this latest tour. We played a lot of new songs from our latest record. It was amazing. And then we finished in Europe.
And my wife and I stayed in Sicily and went back to London at the end.
And I've been doing it for 35 years. of that. You know, 1990, first time I go to Europe. And it's still like, I don't care 35 years, it's a lot of shows. I don't care if I wake up and I'm tired.
And we have friends all over the place, which is a beautiful thing. Friends in Amsterdam, friends in Paris, friends in London, friends in Madrid, friends in this, you know, Germany, whatever. But we're.
constantly out doing, you know what I mean? There's no way. we're not hitting the town in any town and finding what it has. that makes maybe it unique or special, whether that tastes or whatever. I mean, it's, I, it sounds silly, but like I said before, there's still adventure in the world.
And I'm not talking about jumping out of an airplane adventure or, you know, that just stimuli.
I think it's good cognitive nutrition. I think it's actually good for you to experience different cultures and see how people hang out and see their restaurants and see, you know, weddings.
And you see everyone's doing the same shit. You know, they're just styling it a little different.
Doing it in a different way. But it flavors your understanding of human beings.
That's why my very, very special place, the thing that I love almost more than any other thing, is Jamaica.
Really?
I've been, I was lucky enough to have a dear friend introduce me to Jamaica 30 years ago. And I have friends there and uh, I have a whole life there. that has nothing to do with anything other than Jamaica, shit. And I go to the country and, like, we like, have like a country kind of life there. You know, by the ocean and no resorts, you know.
The food there is fucking incredible.
amazing food in Jamaica.
Jamaican food is so delicious.
And you have to get out there and eat it, and they have like anything else. You know, the fruits there, the vegetables there, the seafood and, and you know, they say in Jamaica that the goat, a goat in Jamaica, only has one bad day, man, you know. Yeah.
It's not even a whole bad day.
It's just a.
quick moment. One bad moment, and that's a wrap.
One bad moment and the rest we're all happy with.
Yeah, and the rest everyone's eating it. Yeah, that's one of the things I loved about Anthony Bourdain's show. You know, that he would go and really immerse himself in these cultures and eat their food and hang out with their chefs and hang out with the people and get toured. You know, someone would take him on a tour around the town.
You know what happened to, sometimes he would be tired and hungover. Oh yeah,
most of the time.
Yeah, but, but again, you know, I have people, I mean, I get it, man. Everyone has a tough thing, but it's like, oh dear, I don't know, you know, I better get this. I'm like, okay.
If you enjoy what you're doing, being tired's not that bad. No. If you enjoy what you're doing, it's like, so what? Just get up, have a coffee, let's go.
And I, bullshit you not, if, for some reason, I had to like get a quick 20, 25 in, I could curl up right there and do it and you wouldn't even know I was here. I believe you. I'm like expert. That's 35 years of being on the road.
Knowing how to power nap.
I gotta get, I gotta go down, or I'm gonna like be in an intersection waving a gun around with my pants down by my ankles or something.
I've learned how to sleep instantly on planes. I get on a plane and almost always I'm out cold.
Me too. I annoy every single person.
I'm traveling with. Yeah. Like how does he?
sleep so quickly? She's like, what?
How'd you fall asleep that quick? Even with my?
Jamaican dog in my lap. We brought a, when my wife and I were married in Jamaica and we have a little street dog that we brought back.
Oh, that's cool.
Bammy Longface. Yeah. Bammy, she's 35 pounds, but I can even sleep with my Jamaican street dog on my lap.
Ah, that's cool. So Jamaica's your spot, huh?
And they just got hit very hard with this hurricane. So it's, my friends are okay and stuff, but they're, everyone's really shooken up over it in Jamaica.
Ah, it's scary shit, man.
And it's been a bad, they haven't had something like that since 2007 and this was worse.
I saw live footage of it. Some live cell phone footage of it. It's just, unless you've experienced that live, when you're around the sky and the sky becomes an angry monster and everywhere around you is dangerous and the winds are 120 miles an hour. and just like, it's so humbling.
I've never, I mean, I was in a tornado in Atlanta in the early 70s and that was,
I mean, I was probably too young to be like traumatized, but I remember my feeling, my parents' trauma, about this thing going over our house or whatever.
Oh, it's fucking terrifying shit, man.
When it was over, though, when you're a kid, it was like amazing. Like, the whole world was one big pine sap jungle gym. I mean, for weeks, we were just, because you're just climbing in all the fallen trees, and my dad had some old Pontiac and that thing was like a U. in the car, some giant pine tree smashed it. Wow.
So, it was like a surrealist thing, too, as a kid. You know, like, wow, everything's been shaken up.
Yeah, it's also a lesson in the temporary nature of things. You can look out and think, this is my lawn. This is where the cars park. This is how things are. And then, all of a sudden, the sky's like, not today, bitch.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's throw a tree through your fucking house.
What was that commercial in the 70s that Mother Earth gets angry? Remember that? It was like shampoo or something, but it was like, oh, there was their catchphrase and it would be like,
you know. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I don't know,
it was like a, I think it might be shampoo or something.
Something stupid like that.
But, it's true. You know what I mean? You have to do it. I mean, shit, fuck. Katrina is still something like, you know, I love New Orleans.
New Orleans is one of the most special cities in the world and it's still amazing. It's still vibrant, dynamic, alive, but I think the scars of that place are still there. I mean, that was.
devastating. Brutal. Yeah, unbelievably brutal. I mean, when hurricanes hit places and devastate them, it takes decades for them to recover, especially without aid. And then, sometimes it's like the people that are there, they just don't want to do it anymore.
It's like, when you realize you're in a place that this happens and there's other places where this doesn't happen, you just get the fuck out. You know? But there's a humbling of being attached to nature in that way that I think, like, I grew up in Boston, and there's something to the people that live up there that understand that every winter it's going to get so cold that you could die outside. Right. That's a reality that no one in L.A.
experiences. Because in L.A., it's like...
Earthquakes, fire, floods, zombie apocalypse.
You get a little bit of that, but you can kind of get away from that. It's not going to overcome your entire city.
You can build a very high fence and have the state-of-the-art security system.
The fires are wild. I was evacuated three times living in L.A. Because we were in the valley. Yeah, yeah. Three separate times.
The last time, the two houses across the street from my house burnt to the ground. It was wild. It's just wild going through your old neighborhood and seeing just house after house. Like, there's 40 houses in our neighborhood that were burnt to the ground.
We were in Marin County, Northern California, and out in a place called Lagunitas, and this is four or five summers ago. And we just, you know, kept shit in the car. Guitars. You know, there's one guitar. I just can't live without.
Some pictures. Just in case. Both our cars filled because you're out, you know, just ashes falling in the yard every day. Scary.
Well, when it goes bad, it goes real bad. I was filming Fear Factor once and it was about an hour and a half away from L.A. And, um, the fires get so bad. we had to stop shooting and drive home. And on the way home, we were off the 5 freeway and on the way home, the entire right side of the highway for an hour was in flames.
Like, completely in flames, like a Lord of the Rings movie. Like you're waiting for demons to ride horses over the top of the mountains. It was, but it's, there's something about those, those kind of scenes. that's like, it puts you back in check. That's like, hey, man, like.
maybe the things you're concentrating on aren't all that important for real.
I think it also touches us in a, in a, in our animalistic DNA of like, still being that person, you know, these people, again, it's Quest for Fire, being these people who are really not just, completely immersed in their environment as well for survival and sustenance and everything.
Yeah.
That it's still like in the way, I guess, you know, there's an instinctive thing in those moments that, that has to be the exact same chemical reaction in every human being. Mm. In any expanse of time that we've been like this. Yeah.
Yeah. When we were in Sicily, we were at one, I guess there was an eruption there recently.
There's one today or last night.
Yeah. That's right. I was seeing it on the news, but when we were there, there's, we were, um, at, near this one island that had a, a constant eruption. at nighttime. You could see the red at the top of the mountain, just a little bit of red, like, bubbling up off the top of the mountain.
It was so fucking cool.
I've never really got close to something like that. Like I've, you know.
Have you ever done a tour in Hawaii? We fly over in a helicopter. No. Hawaii is wild. The big island is wild because it's growing every year.
Yeah. The lava is constantly flowing into the ocean. You can literally watch the island expand in real time. That's wild. And you fly over in a helicopter, so you're flying over, you're looking down at the lava pouring out of the earth.
Is this Italy? Mount Etna, look at that.
Isn't that wild, man? Sicily, yeah. That's incredible.
Not to be confused with regular Italy.
Yeah, Sicilians think of themselves very differently. Look how beautiful that is, man. God, that's so fucking cool. We visited Pompeii, too.
I did that as a kid. That's crazy. And it's still one of the coolest. But I was like, you know, it's funny when I look back. You know, they have like, up the streets, they'll have like the fountain at the end of the street where the water would come and you could see like where people lean their hand.
There's like an indention for the centuries of people leaning in to get a sip of water. Yeah. And I just put my hand on that as a kid. Just like, I could, I almost couldn't stop like thinking about that. I do that all the time.
I do, you know, I do that with my kids. when I'm like fucking around. I'm like, shake the hand. I shook Chuck Berry's hand. Bo Diddley's hand.
Little Richard, I shook Little Richard's hand. John Lee Hooker. You know, they're all like laughing.
Damn, you met John Lee Hooker?
I did one time, yeah. Wow.
That's a guy I'd love to meet.
It was, his handshake was like amazing. It was just like a, he touched my hand and it was just like a, like a cloud. It was the softest, like pillow. I was like, wow. And it was early, you know, early days.
We headlined the Memphis Blues Festival and he went on before us and I was like, I just don't think that's right. Right, right, right. I know we're selling a lot of records, but that's,
It's crazy.
That's John Lee Hooker, man. Yeah. Never get out of these blues alive. Yeah.
Boom, boom, boom. Yeah, he was as cool as it gets. That's amazing, man. Have you ever met anybody that, just like gave, you're like, I can't even believe I'm talking to this person.
Yes. But, one time it was Dr. J. Oh, wow. I was at some party in Vegas.
This was back in the mid-90s. Some VH1 thing or something. And I was standing outside. I was at the Hard Rock, and this is the guy's name, Steve Wynn, who owns the thing, the Hard Rock. Wynn?
Yeah.
Or something.
He owns a bunch of that stuff.
Yeah, and this was 30 years ago. And I was there and he was like, Oh, hey, Chris, have you ever met Julius Irving? And I was, I mean, I was like, I loved Dr. J. so much.
growing up. He and George Gerber were my heroes. I played basketball. And I was like, and he was just so cool. And he was like, Hey, man, nice to meet you.
And I was just, I was like, a little kid. I just couldn't believe that I met Dr. J. I shook Dr. J's hand.
I gotta throw him in there, too. Wow. And the other one would be.
Robert Altman, the director. Oh, really? I met Robert at a, at a party. I was at a party, like a Donatella Versace party in London. And there were a bunch of famous people there.
But everyone sat down at a table and, you know, and different things. And he was, I was just like,
oh, and he was with Richard E. Grant. They were making Gosford Park. Richard E. Grant also, I was impressed to see in me because of the film Withnail, and I is one of my favorite movies of all time.
And there's Withnail, you know, like there he is. I mean, it's Richard, but, but there's Bob Altman, who is, you know, lord of my imagination and, you know, one of the best film, my favorite film, some of my favorite films of all time. And so, after, when the dinner kind of like is less whatever, people are up talking to other people, I just go over to him. I'm like, fuck it, I'm just gonna sit. You know, because I would be a little bit timid or shy in that situation.
And I would never think anyone, I still to this day never imagine. anyone knows who I am or what I do, or whatever. It's a good way to go through life, actually. You know what I mean? I'm being totally honest.
Yeah.
And then you find out most people don't know who you are, give a fuck, what you do.
But I go over and I introduce myself and I instantly recognize that he smells like weed. Like he's, you know, got a roach in his pocket or something. And I'm like, Bob, are you holding? He goes, yeah, you want to get stoned? I was like, yeah.
So he pulls out a joint and we're sitting there and we're just talking about weed. you know, he's like, it's hard to get, I get this from California, you know. And I was like, wow, man, you know. And we smoked a joint and talked a little bit about music and jazz and London. And that was kind of it.
And he was like, oh, you should come by the office. And I never took him up on it, like the production office, just because I just, I felt out of my depth. You know what I mean? I should have. But, but that, that was like one of those things I will always remember.
It's interesting when you meet the people that were heroes to you and they're just, they're human beings. They're just normal. And then you realize, like, especially in your case, like you've become that to other people. And then some kid will come up to you, Chris Robinson? Yeah.
And you're like, yeah, fucking normal person, just a person. But to them, you're, you're the black crows. You're not a normal person. You're a fucking God. You know, it's, it's weird.
You're an inaccessible, like plateau of society that very few people ever experience.
I think music is a part of that as well. Yeah. You know, like you said, I mean, and I, you know, there will always be, I don't know, there, I think that there's a connection in the, in creation, art, you know, where does the idea come from? I mean, I think there's people who can manipulate that and make like, I'm going to make a pop song and it's going to sound like this. And not saying that it's not special, not good, but then I think there's other things that there's, I'm not using it in a Christian way or whatever, but there's a divine spark of something that happens or whatever.
drops in your lap, imagination, wise. The muse, you know, the muse is real.
The muse is real. I think it is real too.
And the one thing that I, I do believe about the muse, and I consider the muse a female presence, a female dynamic, you know? And I feel that, that the muse, at least my, the muse that I feel, is, it's a very jealous thing. And I don't mean it in like any possessive way or anything weird, but just like, the second, your devotion is turned somewhere else, the muse could leave you. That might be as superstitious as throwing salt over your shoulder or whatever, but I honestly believe that. And it makes it difficult in life, because life isn't just the muse.
Life isn't just the dream world that I live in, and my imagination. And the ideas have to come from somewhere. It's not just singing and dancing, and you have to have ideas. What is this? You know, for me, I've always had to be involved with every aspect.
The album covers, the stage design, the fucking laminate. Everything has to fit into a world that I can feel like I want to inhabit, you know? Something that's comfortable and interesting. And I think, if you remove, so, it's not just the musical part of the muse, it's the whole thing. And I think if you're like, oh, you know what?
I'm going to get into, I'm not, if my reverence for that goes away, and even in the slightest, I feel that she will turn her back on me forever and I'll have nothing, no more poetry, no more music.
Well, you're probably right. Because let's assume the muse is real. The muse would probably reserve its greatest inspiration for its most devouted followers.
I think so.
Yeah. The most devout followers are the ones that are going to be adherent to a ritual, sit in front of the computer or the notepad.
or however you write,
and just spend time. Yeah, I could never,
ever write lyrics on a screen. I could never do it.
You write it on paper?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I'm like completely.
Does anybody write lyrics on screens?
I think, yeah. I think a lot of people.
Like artists that you know of? Yeah, yeah. Interesting.
I think a lot of hip-hop people write rhymes on their phones.
Yeah, I know a lot of guys do that.
I've seen, I know a lot of rock and roll people who are like, hey, you know.
Well, the phone thing's convenient. I transfer all my notes to phones because it's, and occasionally I'll write something on the phone. The best thing about the phone, honestly, is like sometimes I have an idea, maybe I've had a couple of cocktails too, which is like, you know, memory is slippery. When you're drinking with friends and you're having a good time, but you have an idea, I'll just like run into a bathroom stall and I'll hit the voice recorder and just say it.
I do that too. I do the voice recorder as well, for like if I'm plucking around a guitar and I get a little something that I like. Mm-hmm. Or when Rich and I are writing songs too, like if we're not, but you know, I've never had a home studio. I've never wanted that.
Really?
I want to go to a place.
and part of my thing is I like everyone's contribution. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? I mean, in The Black Crows, Rich, and I write the songs, but the contributions can be musical or it could be anything.
Right.
I mean, sometimes it's the engineer and the producer and the band.
It's the vibe of those people being together.
And it's all of that circulating and percolating and making something, everyone in on it. You know what I mean? Like an old submarine movie or something. You're being depth charged and everyone has a job to do, so you don't die.
Right.
You know? But I think that's important for me. You know, like I love, I mean, Prince is one of my. musically, I mean, there's an argument you made that maybe Prince was the baddest motherfucker of all time.
Definitely an argument.
Yeah. I mean, because there's people who can write, there's people who can play, there's people who can produce and record, and there's people who can dance and sing and perform. That guy did it all at its ultimate level.
Every musical instrument.
I mean, yeah.
Yeah, he was insane. He was so good. And he was so different. I remember when the first album came out, it was just that picture of him with his shirt off, with like his hair, you know, and you hear the songs and you're like, wow, this guy's out there.
Yeah, the second record, Prince.
Is that the second record?
Yeah, the first one's called For You, and there's a picture of him, kind of like, it's, he was,
For You, is that one with Jack Me Off?
No, that's later.
Oh, okay.
For You, the first single is Soft and Wet. Oh. Which is before Jack You Off. It has to be Soft and Wet. And so I always laugh because I was, you know, by the time we're in the suburbs, I live in Atlanta, you know, I'm obsessed with black radio.
at the time. I'm only listening to V-103 FM Atlanta. My first concert is Slave and Cool and the Gang and Sky at the Omni. Oh, I'm going to see The Time, Vanity Six, SOS, Lakeside, Cameo. Oh,
wow, Morris Day.
Yeah, that was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Wow. At that, you know, at that time in my life, and only listening to that radio. So the first Prince single comes out, and it's Soft and Wet. It's a great song.
It's like funky and cool. This little kind of disco breakdown in the middle. A little roller skating shit in the middle. And I'm like, but I didn't really know what Soft and Wet was. yet.
You know what I mean? I was like, is this like a washcloth that he left in the back? What is this? Yeah.
No, he was a character.
I never met him. I never even, I saw him, I only saw him in concert once.
Really?
And it was fantastic. He was amazing.
He was doing a residency once at House of Blues in Vegas. But it was like really late at night and I had to do something in the morning and I passed on going. To this day, I kill myself.
Yeah, because he would do the concert and then go play another eight hours or whatever.
Yeah, well, he was going up really late. It's like, it was after midnight and I was like, I got shit I have to do tomorrow. I can't do this. I can't be that tired. To this day, I'm like, fuck.
You know, it's funny, the other person I met that put me very much at ease, but when I first said, hello, that I was totally freaked out was George Jones. Oh, wow. I met him at the Ryman Auditorium after Johnny Cash passed away.
It's like meeting Jesus at the Sistine Chapel.
man. I mean, I was like, I got ushered into this dressing room, you know, as a guest. Chris Christopherson was there. I was amazed to meet him. And, but I'm like, fucking George Jones.
Old Possum's right there. And I end up talking to him, and he was really, really sweet, man. I wanted to talk about Kansas City Chiefs. He loved the Chiefs. And I used to watch football back then.
And, but I will always remember. So, they were, he was taking over for Johnny Cash singing,
I think it's Johnny Cash. Maybe it was Waylon's part. I don't know the song. that great. The Highwaymen.
I was a highwayman on the Columbia highway.
Yeah.
And he was the dam builder. Mmm. On the Columbia River or whatever. But, he, he kept looking at the lyrics and he went, I'm a dam builder?
And Chris Christopherson was like, man, it's not like, he goes, I don't think my fans want me to, I'm a dam builder. I mean, he just kept thought it was so funny. And I was like, what amazing, you know, that I got to be in there. But the other funny part of that is, they were like, Chris, we take a picture with George and Chris. And I'm like, I'm getting my fucking picture taken with George Jones and Chris Christopherson.
That's pretty wild.
This is the, like,
coolest thing.
And I'm like, I'm like in the middle. You know? And I'm like, man, this is the coolest day ever. And then, the door opens.
Look at that. My ex-wife is there too.
Wow.
But then the door opens and Al Gore gets in the picture and ruins it. Get out of the picture!
How did he get in there? I don't know. Did he start talking about the climate? Well, yeah.
That was his initial climate thing. But I'm like, let's talk about your wife, telling people what they can listen to. Tip of Gore. Get out of here. Who are you?
Self-righteous. Yeah,
people forgot about that. She was the one who made, well, it actually helped albums. Because when they put those warning labels.
Everyone wanted them.
Everybody wanted a warning label one. Yeah.
I never even got a warning label. Oh,
I remember when N.
W.
A. had the warning label on them.
I mean, all of it. But I mean, I'm like, you guys are really seriously upset about the band Wasp. I mean, like,
it's really ridiculous now in hindsight. But I remember, you know, I was in high school at the time. It was a big thing.
Well, they're telling you what to do again. You know what I mean? And a lot of it was racist. You know what I mean?
Oh, yeah. But it was like, well, I guess it was out of high school. It was like when rap music was really starting to emerge and those lyrics were so shocking, like early Ice T, Ice Cube, all that stuff.
it happened with rock and roll. Sure.
Elvis Presley. They wouldn't let him shake his hips on TV.
I mean, it happened with Chuck Berry, too. You know what I mean? And there's that, the initial phase of the cosmic fucking blood and brimstone of rock and roll ends pretty quickly when it starts. And then you turn into like the Paul Enka, Pat Boone sort of style until the Beatles really come back around. Right, right.
You know, you have lots of cool records in between there, but they're small.
But it's interesting, like that where things come in waves. They come in waves of great artists, for whatever reason.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, I mean, at least if you look at like, when I look at my age people, we were just, we were close enough to the Beatles and close enough to the Sex Pistols and close, you know what I mean? And the Stones and Zeppelin. That shit's long gone for a lot of younger people, you know, as time moves on.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
I have to ask you a question because, before I forget, did Rick Rubin try to get you guys to change the name of your band? Yes. And did he really try to get you to change the name of the band to KKK, the Cobb County Crows?
I know that the king of yoga, or whatever the fuck, he's selling, whatever, you know, whatever his, you know, but under that beard, that guy, and it's funny, because good for Rick Rubin, whatever, he can do, whatever he wants. You know, he has very little, but he did say, that's a true story. And by the way, it was unimaginably offensive. Unimaginably.
Why would you say that to us? Explain the conversation.
How does it happen?
Because I think, well, we were called Mr. Crow's Garden and it's a book. It's like a children's book from like the twenties, called Mr. Crow's Garden, with an E, so it's a name, you know, he was Mr. Crow.
And we were kind of, you know, into, like psychedelic, you know, like it was our, whatever, that was the name of our band. So when we made Shake Your Money Maker, a few years had gone by since we first were Mr. Crow's Garden, and now we don't sound like that. And George Sikoulias, our producer and our A&R guy and our lifeline to the music business, to the world, who signed us and stuff, he was like, we need, you know, we got to change the name. So there was a little bit of time where before we'd said we'll be the Black Crows.
And that's when Rick interjected that. that's what he, because we're Southern, aren't all Southern people fear-driven, ignorant, bigots? Isn't every one of them?
But he didn't say it that way, right? So how did he say it?
No, he said it like, it'll be cool, it'll be like controversial. I'm like, yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah.
So I, and I, and how did he bring it up?
Like, I think this is a cool, you're from Cobb, Cobb County. See, we're not from there, but my, when we, we're from Atlanta, by the way, it's fucking hard to get it to change Wikipedia that they're like, we're being rich or born in Marietta. We're not, we're from Atlanta, Georgia, you know, third generation Atlantans. And I was like, my grandfather was born in Atlanta in 1906.. You know what I mean?
So it's hard to get that shit changed. But he was like, oh, so you live in Cobb County, C-O-B-B. Well, you should change it to Cobb County Crows and put them all Ks. And we were like, it's, it's, that's so foul and disgusting.
It's also, it's such a crazy idea to not have like context to it. Just to, to, to imagine that you're going to call a band the KKK. Like, what the fuck? Cobb County Crows actually sounds cool.
With Cs. You know,
it was the Cobb County CCC. Nope, no problems. Great name. Nothing wrong with it. You probably achieved the exact same success as the Black Crows.
But,
I don't know, because the poet in me and the, the, the armchair occultist, would believe that, that the only way we got, we achieved what we achieved, became. what we became, is because of the way the, the, some reason, also leaving the E in it, made, that was the one thing that I said we would do. So it's, you know, and by the way, leaving the E in it was also great, and it's still great to this day. when we're, someone requests something or wants something from you and they misspell the name of the band, we're like, no. Fuck that.
No. You could've,
could've looked that out a little bit,
a little bit of a search. It's right there. You know what I mean?
It's not that hard to add an E. I just can't imagine that conversation. Someone saying,
I can't imagine it either, to be honest.
Rick is a friend of mine. Just to, you know, for clarity.
I don't hate Rick Rubin or anything. He's a genius. He did say that.
He's a fascinating guy. I mean, he's a very interesting thinker, and I can imagine this idea intrusively embedding itself in his mind and then coming out of his mouth. I just can't see how anybody would.
to be honest, you know, I found a lot of,
when, especially in this, you know, when our first record came out and, you know, we're on tour and we're working that record and I'm the one who has to get up in the morning and okay, so, we're playing, we're in Cleveland, now we're playing Cincinnati. I have to go to ten radio stations in Cleveland and Cincinnati and do the handshaking and the talking and the, you know, sell the band.
I meet all the, like, local promo people, you know, so they pick you up and stuff. And most everyone was really super cool and they would be the people that could get you drugs and pay for drinks and stuff, you know. And, but, wow, I would be driving in the car with some of these guys and they'd be like, must be tough being, I'm like, you know, like, talking down to me, like, you don't know me. Just because I'm southern and I'm a musician doesn't mean that, you know, talking down to me like I'm stupid or something, or I'm like, whoa, whoa, you don't know.
Well,
like, you're from Atlanta, like, do they have schools there? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, like just kind of patronizing me or thinking that everyone's supposed to be like, oh, oh, just happened to be here in some place, and damn, you know what I mean? I'm like, we're not, I'm from Atlanta, Georgia.
You know what I mean?
You don't know what books I read. You don't know what I'm into. You don't know.
anything about me. Well, there's always been a deep history of prejudice about people and what they would call the flyover states. The arrogance of New York and Los Angeles, and, you know, you kind of.
sort of accept. these are the flyover state people talking to me. that's funny. Even worse.
You know, there's some people that, like, accept Chicago a little bit and some other cities, Detroit a little bit, but the reality was it was about the coasts and everything in between was bullshit.
As if everyone in Rochester, New York, has like a PhD in French literature.
By the way, that used to be kind of true when you would go on the road. Not true, but you would notice a marked difference in the awareness, if you were talking about anything out of the ordinary. The awareness of people's, what they knew in certain cities and certain places in the country versus what they knew in Los Angeles and New York. There was a difference.
Yeah, they're a hipper audience.
or something. Yeah, they weren't as sophisticated. They didn't know as much, but that changed with the internet. Yeah,
everyone has exact same references.
Cleveland, Ohio, you know, wherever you go, there's fucking people that get it. They get it.
Do you remember when Bill Hicks used to just look at the audience and go, Moo!
Oh, yeah.
A lot of people still haven't caught up to Bill.
Oh, he was great. I mean, he used to call it his flying saucer tour, because he would only go to places where flying saucers would land. Weird little out of the way spots.
What's that record called, Rant in C Minor? A Minor? Is it A Minor? I don't remember. I don't know what key it's in, but I mean, I still put that on and it's just.
unbelievably funny. Fantastic. It changed comedy. Changed comedy. Made people want to become profound.
It changed comedy from just a bunch of stuff to laugh at to stuff that made you think about it after you're done laughing.
I think George Carlin had that as well. For sure.
Yeah, for sure. In a different way. But, you know, Hicks was more psychedelic inspired and it was just more esoteric. There's a rock and roll.
like thing in him that, for lack of another description, I think, that gave him that kind of energy.
Yeah, it's the right way to describe it, I think. I had a chance to see him live a bunch of times. Luckily.
Like, in a way, he understood what a great underground band means to someone.
Oh, yeah. And what it meant to him.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
He was an artist. He was an artist that was also a comedian. You know, he wasn't trying to conform to whatever the stereotypical. this is the guy that's going to get a sitcom act is going to create. Yeah.
But there's not.
a lot of those guys. Is the sitcom worth it?
It doesn't exist anymore.
No, but I mean, for those comics that took that route. You know what?
It was the golden carrot. It was the thing that they held over all of our heads is that if you develop an act that could be converted into a sitcom, all of a sudden, you're Tim Allen and you have 50 million dollars in the bank. Or you're Jerry Seinfeld. Or you're Brett Butler. Or you're Roseanne Barr.
There was a few of those people.
Yeah.
And there's a bunch of people that had managed some more obscure shows that people forgot about, but they made a lot of money as well. And it was this thing that if you could get on a sitcom, and then, all of a sudden, you're the king of queens. You know, like my friend Kevin James. That was his thing. Right, right.
And that's how he got through it. And that was the magic portal. The magic portal to wealth. And it also fucked up a lot of people's acts because there was.
a lot of really funny comics. After that, now you're kind of stuck. Mm-hmm. And...
Censored.
Yeah. And now the things that you want to say you can't say.
They self-censor. This is the saddest thing. I know some of the great comics of the 90s that are ruined because they self-censor now. Because they sort of developed this act for television, and then, once they were on television, they got all that TV money. They wanted to keep it coming in, so they never really branched out into more offensive subject matter, or, you know,
just more provocative.
More provocative. You know what I mean?
And I think irreverent in some ways. You know what I mean? Right. Everyone else will judge what that is. Yeah.
But it's just. the problem is, you're never gonna make everybody happy, and now way more people have an opinion they can express because of social media. Like, everyone can express their opinion. It's not as simple as you hope to get the favor of a reviewer. Like, someone who's cool, really likes bands, comes to see, oh, Bob's here.
This guy's fucking cool. He's gonna review our show. And you're, like, you, kind of trusted. Bob. Bob was a good guy.
He really loved music. He wasn't trying to tear things down. Those guys don't exist anymore. Yeah, yeah. You know, now what everyone's trying to do is get people on social media to like them or not be mad at them.
So when they put out a special,
you see these.
. Not be mad at them.
Yeah, you see these, which as a comic.
The role of the artist sometimes is to make your audience mad at you, to challenge them. Yes. I mean, you know what I mean? In a way, like, oh, God, how many things in life did I didn't like at a time that I finally found my way through later and be like, oh, of course. Thank you.
You know what I mean? Like you... Of course, that's the natural...
Of course.
progression. It's the natural... And, by the way, not everything is supposed to be like you were saying. I guess that's where we are with this social media. Nothing can have that sort of mystique around it anymore.
Right. Because it's... It's forcing too much out of someone. You're expecting too much from someone to either follow you and or understand, get it, or acceptance.
Right. Yeah. Well, it's just a foolish pursuit. The pursuit of other people who you don't even know, their love and attention, and you'll morph and change and adapt whatever you're trying to produce in order to gain their favor, that's a fucking folly. That's such a foolish way of interacting with human beings.
And whatever you create.
. Well, it's false. ...it's not going to resonate.
It's completely false. Right. I mean, you're... And you can see where, you know, personally, I think you're starting to see culturally where that hollowness and that falseness isn't helping.
Oh, it's definitely not helping. It's pushing us over the edge. Yeah, it's not good. You need experiences from people where, when they resonate, when they put out these works, whether it's a book or music or anything, this thing represents their soul and their perspective and their actual... This is a thing they've created.
Not a thing they're doing. so they hope you like it. Not a thing they're doing. so they hope you don't get mad. Not a thing they're doing where you highlight social issues, so people think they're a virtuous person.
Yeah. It's not...
It's funny when you say that, the virtuous part of it, that's funny too, because, you know,
especially like, I don't know, the lobby of your place is full of pictures of famous people who've been arrested for shit.
Yeah, all my mugshots.
And it's like, I mean, in a way, in a counterculture way, whether it's a poet, a musician, a jazz musician, anyone, Robert Mitchum. You know what? You know. Robert Mitchum is cooler than Kurt Douglas because he got busted for smoking pot. So Robert Mitchum is cooler than you, Kurt Douglas.
But
the outsider. in culture, you know what I mean? The loser and the outsider are other themes that we do not celebrate as much. And I'm not talking about some fabricated pop star who pouts and is like, look how dark I am. You know what I mean?
That's not.
what I'm talking about. No.
And that's always there. Again, showbiz and corporate things, you know, can manipulate these kind of archetypes. Yes. And put them into genre-specific things that they want, because they know. That's not...
Formulating a rebel is so gross.
Yeah, yeah. Totally. Oh, my God.
A formulated rebel. A disingenuous, formulated rebel. Yeah.
You see them. You do.
But I think they sort of make you really appreciate people that are true artists. People that are just, it really is just their expression of what they're trying to create. They hope people enjoy. I mean it's funny.
because that's, you know, more than ever, not just for the fact that I really had to go through certain things to come full circle with my career and my brother and what the Black Crows mean.
And my life. A lot of things, you know. A lot of it, starting with my wife, Camille, and stuff.
one of the things that keeps me excited, and one of the main things that I love, is I know that we're, and call us old-fashioned, or call us naive or anything you want. It doesn't matter. But we were talking about that stupid flame idea, this purity. But I know, when we go out on tour and we write songs, make records, play concerts, it's something that is raw still in there. We're not in-ear monitors.
There's no computer on our stage. You know what I mean? We don't, you see? these fucking bands cancel a show because their laptop didn't work. I'm like, well, borrow your mom's.
Borrow your mom's laptop. Do they really cancel shows because their laptop crashes? Yeah, it happens.
all the time.
That is fucking hilarious.
And there's bands that are up there, not even playing, and they press a button and they're up. You know what I mean? Which is fine. Whatever you want to do to get over. I get it.
Again, I was born the same year. the Beatles made Revolver. I get it. You know what I mean? But think about that.
In my daughter's lifetime, the Beatles will be a fucking hundred years old. The record will be 1964 is a hundred years ago.
That's crazy.
You know what I mean?
That's so crazy when you think about it that way. Because when I was a kid, it was just a decade or two ago.
Well, in the same decade between the Beatles, if that hundred years was the end of the Civil War and the Beatles, you know what I mean? It's weird. It's a weird thing to look at time that way.
It really puts it into perspective, because we look at everything through this lens of a finite lifespan of a hundred years. if you're lucky. You know, we look at everything like this is a long time. But it's not a long time. I used to do this joke about the Constitution.
America was founded in 1776.
. I go, people lived to be a hundred. That's three people ago. Yeah. Three people ago they started this.
It's nothing. It's so new. Everything's so new. Civilization itself. Oh my God, it's so ancient.
Is it really?
It's not. I mean, you're talking about 3,000 years, but in the big scope of things.
It's not that much time.
And they, and I think historically and because of science and things,
you know, it's like that idea of, well, this was the Bronze Age. It started on Thursday and then it went, but then they find a corpse in the ice in the Italian Alps and the guy has a bronze sword and he's 2,000 years before. they thought. They're like, fuck, I gotta re... There's a problem.
with that, with an archaeologist.
I gotta get my abacus out and do the math.
Yeah, they're very reluctant to change the dates of things they've been publishing about forever. But there's some things that they find every now and then that force them. Like. there's a place called Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. that's 11,000 years old and they found it in the 90s.
I believe it was a sheep herder, found this piece of stone in the ground and kicked at it and moved it around and realized it had an edge to it, and then they excavated it and it's just an enormous temple structure and to this day they've only excavated like 5% of it. There's a lot of controversy behind it because people are like, why aren't they continuing to excavate? What are they doing?
Well, now in archaeology they can do almost just as much. with sonic. They can plan out what's going on and not disrupt it.
Well, that's how they know. there's many, many of these structures around that same area.
You know,
these things are 11,000 years old.
The last show of our tour. we were in Merida, Spain, playing in a Roman theater that they had only done the excavations in the 50s, because I guess at a certain point they just filled. there's an amphitheater next to it where they would have gladiatorial games and things, and then the theater for theatrical and religious purposes. But you're sitting, you know, like we're, Pink Floyd gets Pompeii, we get Merida. It's still cool.
You know what I mean? Yeah. But you're playing in this place. it was built during the reign of Augustus.
and then the guy goes yeah, well, you know, it was just filled with trash.
There it is. Wow. That's incredible.
It was just filled with trash and then finally they dug it all out of there. And then this was down there. Wow.
That was all covered? Yeah. That's nuts. That is so nuts.
It was fantastic. Beautiful place.
We went to Greece last year. And I got to see the Delphi? Well, we went to Ulysses, or no, how do you say it?
Elysian?
Well, Elysian Mysteries, right? Elysian Mysteries.
Where you can descend into the cave, I think. At one point it was a parking lot, from what I've read, because I'm really You mean now? Yeah, yeah. Like where the original mysteries took place.
No, no. You can still go there. Oh, really? Yeah, it's all carted off. It's protected.
You know, you have to go through a gate to get in. There's guards there and stuff. But we went to there, which is where the Elysian Mysteries were, and I got really lucky to go with my friend Brian Murrow Rescue. I was there with my family and Brian was there at the same time, and Brian Murrow Rescue was a scholar who wrote this incredible book about the use of psychedelics in ancient Greece. that's now been confirmed through.
they take these old pieces of pottery and they found ergot in the pottery. Yeah, of course. They think all their wine was laced with psychedelics, and these people were and they invented democracy. I mean, they were tripping balls and trying to give everybody an equal participation in society and figuring things out. but you're around these structures and these are fucking thousands of years old.
What is it? What was it?
What was my mind on? The Kukion? The drink?
Yeah, the drink.
Yeah, the Kukion.
You know, and they find this almost exact same structure in Peru as well. Really? And down in the thing, psychedelics,
mirrors in the corner where they could build fires and send lights around and stuff. Yeah.
That's awesome. Yeah.
But what happens in Greece is
what is the law? It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but then the rich people get their hands on it and they start having their ceremonies, private ceremonies, more exclusive or elitist, and that's kind of the fall of that.
Well, the Romans put a stop to it. No, these people are like rethinking society the same way. they put a stop to it in the 1960s when the government made all psychedelic drugs Schedule I, when they were doing that so they can go after the anti-war protesters and the Black Panthers, and they changed the counterculture movement.
Cannabis is close to the same thing. I mean, you know, when I first made the decision to be a daily cannabis user, I was an outlaw. Now I'm a patient.
Yeah, isn't that interesting?
You're like, we used to be like, you know, people think they killed Bob Marley because of shit like that, but now it's just like it's my medicine.
Yeah. Well, you know, it's now. in how many states, Jamie? Legal? in how many?
Did we say it was like legal in 19?
? I think it's half the country has legal marijuana. Half the country. And the other half the country wants it. It's like, what are we doing?
Like how the fuck is it 2024, with all that we know about all the drugs and that this one, 24 states, three territories in Washington, D.
C. have legalized recreational cannabis use. Seven states have decriminalized its use. Commercial distribution is legal in all jurisdictions where possession is legal, except for Virginia and Washington, D.C. Personal cultivation for recreational use is allowed in all jurisdictions except for Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey.
That's surprising. And Washington state, that's even more surprising.
Well, first off, let's just be honest. No one's ever, ever had fun in Delaware. I'm just kidding.
Isn't that where Biden's from? I think it's just a dumb thing for us to be hanging on to. The fact that they're still allowing grown adults to tell other grown adults what they can do with their consciousness. With all the data that we know about things that are very harmful, that are not just legal but prescribed by doctors.
How about? just everything is harmful that they allow in the world? They don't give a fuck about the sea being a plastic desert but a don't smoke pot. I mean, I find that's always been the case with authority, isn't it? You know what I mean?
Like language. I mean, what language? You know what I mean? What language can you use and how you use it?
Sex and violence.
Talk about Rome, man. Now we're going back to Rome. And one of the reasons Rome was so successful is because they placated, and we talk about Rome, and we're not talking about Italy. We're talking about the city-state of Rome. That is the thing that conquered the room.
The city-state. And the surrounding areas were other things. But they keep the masses happy with violence and free bread.
And, you know, in the same way that you keep people, you control people by fear and ignorance. Keep them, you know what I mean? And it's exactly...
Just keep them mildly entertained all day long.
and distracted. I find the idea of TikTok about as interesting as the game TikTok.
I don't even know. Oh, Tic-Tac-Toe?
Tic-Tac-Toe, yeah. I'm not doing that either.
No, I'm not doing that either. It is crazy when you go to the Coliseum and you realize the extent of the construction of it and how elaborate it was and how many different things they had going on, where they would turn it into,
like, they'd have boats. Naval battles. They'd fill it up with water. Incredible.
Wild, wild shit. They'd have animals in cages. They could race through the floor.
It's unimaginable. And now, you know,
the thing about going there, too, is you go, I wonder if they ever thought this was going to end. Did they ever imagine... No, of course not. No, they certainly never imagined. some idiot comedian and his family from California at the time were going to go, visit and go, Whoa, cool.
This is where they had sword fights. Whoa.
I mean, I.
I imagine.
. Yeah, it's... I think some of the emperors, probably, in an egocentric way, felt... And it's true. Everyone knows, you know, there might be some kid who never heard of Bird's record, but he might know who Nero was.
Or Caligula, or something. Sure. Or, like, the most dramatic sort of deranged parts of, like, where the...
where that period of Rome of the dictator starts to become.
It's just always shocking when you go to a place that was in complete control of, like, most of the world, and then now it's nothing. Now it's gone. Now it's just ruins that people visit, and it's just a city.
Yeah, what if Bill Gates had been, like, you know, Guido, you know, whatever. That'd be a different thing. You know? Like, what, if... What if the whole Internet came from Italy, not America?
You know what I mean?
Right.
It's.
It's just always weird to go to a place, too, when you're from America.
Claudio Gozzo, whatever. Like, he, came up with this. You know what I mean? But they had a pretty good run in the Renaissance.
Oh, well, they've had amazing runs. Artistically... I mean, that's also something I think about when I go to Italy. Like, there is something about their life and their lifestyle that contributes to this incredible body of work. when it comes to art, when it comes to music, when it comes to sculptures and paintings.
Like, there's so many great artists that came from that part of the world.
Have you ever seen a book called Naples 44?
? No. Do you know this book? It's one of... It's...
A friend of mine gave it to me a couple years ago. It's a British Secret Service officer. comes to Naples in 1944, directly in the, you know, push of the Allies, pushing the Germans and then fascists up the peninsula from Sicily and then landing in Italy. And it's an unbelievable book that this guy writes. And it's...
The sadness and the, like, tragedy of it, as you.
. And like anything else, war is dramatic. War is pain and violent. The aftermath of war is something that people rarely can wrap their heads around or are interested in. Maybe because it's even...
You know, you take away the drama of the battle and stuff. It's bleak. But there's something about... And this guy, he's not Italian, English guy, but he captures the spirit of the humanity within, like, this transitional period in Naples, but unimaginable stories, depravity, but also great, exalted human things as well. And then just some things that are incredible, like, you know, Italians in their clothes.
And even the rich, the aristocratic class in Naples, to the person that could.
. When they didn't have any fabric around this time. after that, they're walking around Naples in beautifully tailored suits made of old army blankets that they would use black paint on to make them look chic. Really? Yeah, and I was like, wow, I would love to see that garment in a museum.
But just all manner of things. And there's another... American guy was there at the same time and wrote another book about it, which is also very interesting because this guy was one of the only books of that time. I have it in my phone, I could tell you. But it talks about, like, the gay scene with the soldiers in Naples, and stuff, too, like, during this thing.
Like, just.
. You know what I mean? Incredible stories, incredible survival and heroics, and art and culture that still survive, you know, during the darkest time. It's a great, great book. Unbelievable.
Unforgettable.
Well, it's always interesting, too, when you're thinking about things thriving and existing against resistance. You know, in a dark time or a different time, a time of much more difficulty. You know, and you get a chance to sort of feel what they felt when they were doing what they were doing.
I mean, I think, culturally, historically, I mean, I think, one of the great reasons Europeans have a much different attitude. You're talking about, you know, Sicilians, Italians, everyone. French, Spanish. Spanish, people know how to have a good time. Oh, yeah.
Sure. Sure. To have two events like World War I and World War II,
yeah, we have very little.
It's hard for us to understand what those two events must have felt like through communities, cities, families.
I just read another amazing book called Wine and War, and it's a history of, like, the wine business during the Nazi occupation during World War II.
Unimaginable, wild shit going on. But the French people, you know, because the Germans, they knew as well. Like, you know, what's the blood of France? It's the wine. What is the thing that holds it together in all these things?
But it's also a great commodity and also something of great elevated status. You know, all this stuff. with the way they dealt with the Vichy. You know, and I'm like, wow, man, these guys had a lot on their plate for five years. And leading up to the, you know, inevitable Nazi occupation.
Well, even in World War I. I mean, in World War I, France lost 25% of its men. Man, yeah. And then in World War II, they lost another 25%.
Just crazy. And in the book, I mean, and also just history, I think that's one of the people, you know, one of the reasons I think Germany, I mean, a lot of French people, just didn't want to do it again. You know what I mean?
Right, right, right.
And that, I think, you know, and you know, it's funny too, like history repeats itself all the time. We know this, you know, and there was a lot of infighting and political things within the French government at that time. Whether that's, you know, through the military or whatever that made them really a soft spot, you know what I mean? They had no, no one was, there was no cohesiveness of the way they would think about fighting or defending or whatever as well.
Yeah.
But they went out in the end, you know what I mean? But this book about just how that affects all the different wine regions and the characters and stuff.
That has to be insane.
It's a great, great book.
Because it's so important over there. Wine is everything to them. It's so important.
And, you know, it's funny, one of the, like, things in the book, you're like, okay, so they're obviously, you know, confiscating everything for the Wehrmacht and doing all this stuff. But they take this, I might be wrong, but I think it's the Pouille Fusée. They take this, this guy has, like, you know, however, many casks or whatever.
And they just take everything. And then the guy's upset. He's been in his family for 400 years or whatever. And he's sitting there with his head in his hands and they're like, it's just wine. And he goes, I know it's just wine, but they destroyed 300-year-old casks, the oak barrels, that that's the secret to our wine.
And they chopped them up and threw them on a fire or whatever, you know what I mean? And he was more upset about that than the wine itself at that time. And he was like, they're irreplaceable. Could never, ever have that again. It's been in my family, for, you know, stuff like that really gets my head spinning.
Oh, yeah, forget it. It's not just the grape and the person that makes the wine. You know what I mean? It's every, every detail, every aspect.
Well, they could also destroy the history of how it was made. Like, people won't know how to do it correctly. I mean, that's one of the darker aspects of occupation is when they destroy ancient stuff. Like the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
I mean, could you imagine what that, I mean, we have? no, I mean, unimaginably, and, by the way, who burned it down? Christians.
Did they?
Yeah. It was Christian people who ran amok because of something that had happened, some sort of crime that was committed or something. And they, it was the early Christians, who burned that down.
Those motherfuckers. You imagine if that had some sort of an explanation as to how they built the pyramids, and it was lost forever?
I mean, it could be anything. I mean, millions and millions of...
But that was the most sophisticated society that has, even today, ever existed. If you look at ancient Egypt, in terms of their ability to construct things that baffle us to this day, like the Great Pyramid baffles people to this day. Yeah. There's hundreds of thousands of people debating how and why, and what they were for and what they did, and we really don't know.
I'm also interested in anything where, before science becomes one thing and the occult is another thing. And I'm just, you know, there's a certain time and I'm really interested in John Dee, the great occultist, scientist, English, around the, Elizabeth I reign. Alchemist. But that his scientific ideas were equally, they possessed the same gravity as his occult ideas, and those things were in the same world. They weren't removed from each other.
It wasn't like one was silly and one was serious. Right. They were both taken with the same level of, you know, sobriety or whatever, you know.
And that's what we were talking before. I think there's a, to be, to remove the mystic from everything or not to be able to at least have a nod to it. or understand, I mean, what is ancient Egypt? You know what I mean? Yes, they're a great civilization that could organize, but at its base and what's holding it together?
is this mystical, like weird thing, you know. So to remove that completely, I think, is, I don't know. It seems so rigid.
It's a foolish, rational, There has to be.
an integration of different things, because you feel people's need for that to integrate those things.
Well, there has been in all great cultures, right? I mean, in Chichen Itza, have you ever been to the ancient Mayan structures?
I've been to some, but I didn't go to that one. They all involve.
places of worship and they all involve rituals. I mean, there was a lot going and what they did was incredible.
And psychedelics.
And psychedelics, yeah.
I mean, as well.
I went to Chichen Itza, we got lucky. There was a really good professor that was kind of explaining things to us and he was talking about the different psychedelics that they believed that they would use and the way they had structured all of their buildings to align with constellations and the way they had sort of worshipped this whole integration of the sky into all of their architecture.
I mean, it's an integration into universal consciousness. I mean, that's really what it is. And it's funny because you think, well, you're poisoning the water. Well, you're poisoning, we're all, it's all one living organism and the universe is one living organism. Right, right, right.
I mean, I don't want to get too far out, man. You know, but of course, it's all just like the ecosystem or whatever. Like the frog eats the tadpole and then the bird eats the frog. You know what I mean? But it's, just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it's not...
It scales up. Yeah.
And out and within.
And in. Yeah, forever. Yeah, that's the reality of it. So it's not just we're poisoning the water, we're poisoning ourselves.
Yeah. And of course, you know, again, I would like to think the earth is a strong thing, and I don't get wrapped up in it, but it's like, I mean, if you live in your own shit, you get sores. You know? Yeah. You know what I mean?
Right. Hence the plague.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, there's a.
. This is just when you think about the universe as a whole, it's just too big for our brains. And we don't think, we just think about our neighborhood or our lives, or our personal problems or our bills, or...
Or our TikTok.
Yeah, nonsense. And it's just thinking about nonsense seems easy.
You know what people think about? That they can buy shoes that they don't have to touch to put their feet in. I see this.
You just order them?
You see, I see a commercial and the guy walks over and they're like, never touch your shoes again. I'm like, wow. You know what I mean? Like, finally.
Oh, shoes, you can slide into. Yeah.
And I'm like, amazing. Everything is... Everyone relax. You never have to touch your shoe. What if I want to touch my shoes?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, well, some people don't understand. They want comfort. You know, and some people, especially. if you're doing something you don't enjoy, you think of struggle as like your job or work.
And then, once you're not doing that, you don't want any struggle. You just want relaxation.
But isn't it funny also that our culture is dictating a certain health thing? Take the sober challenge. Go to the gym. Buy these gym clothes and walk around in them. Do all this, but we're not gonna take care of anything else.
You know what I mean? Like, you don't care about our mental health. Right. You don't really care about our health. You know what I mean?
You don't do anything, but it's like.
. But culturally, let's start putting this out there. You know what I mean? Like, why... You know, there's...
When I first went to New York City, there were bars and bookstores and weird junk stores and all sorts of things that weren't corporate. And now it's just gyms and banks.
And I think.
. I don't really go to the gym, but I imagine you could get an ATM in the gym next door to the bank with the ATM.
I'm sure you could. A lot of gyms, I'm sure, have ATMs.
I'm just saying, you know, like, be healthy. You know what I mean? But I'm like, it is funny. There's nothing that's saying to you. be cerebral.
You know what I mean? Right. There's not a lot out there. You know, you watch old Dick Cavett shows. They're smart people.
Then they're not promoting a movie or a fucking book or what. They're just talking about ideas and philosophy and art and their culture and the society. Even, what was his name? Mike Douglas show.
Yeah. Muhammad Ali.
Yeah. John Lennon, and then some senator from Oklahoma, or whatever. You know, like,
they're just talking. You could do that back then.
Now, it's gotta be, you know, the interview is pre-done. It's about the mood. They show the clip.
But that's only on television, but that's also why podcasts are so popular. True, true. You can just kind of talk about anything.
You have a new place that's also not under the scrutiny of having to play commercials every five seconds.
It's also, that's a big factor, but it's also not under anybody else's direction or advice. Yeah. That's what's really important.
No, no, I know.
If I'm not doing it, it's not gonna happen.
I'm just being cynical.
But I mean, if I'm not doing it at my level of the game, if I'm not doing it, like, you, don't have to do it.
You just don't,
you don't have to. All you have to do is make something that resonates with people and avoid anybody else's input. I've had a lot of bad input come my way that I've ignored. You know, and especially in the early days when things started to kind of take off, everybody has an opinion about how you can grow this thing to the next level, which is always what I'll talk about. You know how to take the show to the next level.
You know, I thought about having more celebrity and more of this, and that. Everyone has advice, but maybe just avoid these kind of topics, or maybe this, and that. As long as you don't have any input from other people, then, whether people like it or don't like it, at least it's you. It's you and the people you're talking to, and it's a real thing. It's not a...
It's not a promotional thing. Right. It's not a buy. this. Right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It just exists, as.
. Which is just one.
dimension of things. Yes. And, you know, it's nice to be clean cut and your teeth are white and you're smiling and you're selling shit. You know what I mean? By the way, I got a pair of shoes.
You don't even have to touch them. Like, what size are you?
I don't even understand that. But it's just...
If I could walk around like an 18th century French duke, I would.
Well, look at that jacket. That is a rock and roll fucking jacket. I've been looking at that, thinking the moment I saw you, could I wear that? I don't know if I could pull that off.
Your muscles are too big to get in there. Well, I mean,
I could get one tailored that would fit me. Yeah, yeah,
we could get you one.
But I'm just thinking, I don't know if I could pull that off out in public. People are like, what are you doing, dude? As a comedian, you can't be too cool unless you're Cat Williams.
I knew you were going to say that.
Cat could be cool as fuck.
I'll tell you why. Cat Williams is cool because he's still out there talking shit and an 8-year-old beat him up that time. Remember that shit? An 11-year-old kid in the hood grabbed that motherfucker in the headlock and he's like, let go of me! And he's like laying on the ground.
I was like, man, you gotta be cool to come back from that.
Well, he's just real. He is who he is, and everybody loves him. That guy can wear anything. But I can't. I can't wear sparkly shoes.
Look at him.
Dude, that's amazing.
Look at him in his fur coat and his fucking giant rings. He's an awesome dude, too. Fun guy. Yeah, they're cool.
I only got to meet him.
the one time where I did a podcast with him. And it was because he did another podcast where he said, Joe Rogan will never have me on his podcast. And I'm like, I'll have you on anytime you want. I never met him before. Oh, really?
No, and then finally I met him.
I thought comedians were like drummers. They all know each other. Most of us. Everyone, knows every drummer in every band.
I know everybody else. I just never met him.
That's funny.
He was already so huge that when he would stop by in comedy clubs, this was like after the Pimp Chronicles, he would only go by, he would go to a bunch of different clubs and if you weren't there when Cat was there, you missed him. So he only came to the comedy store like a handful of times. And the comedy store was, that was my haunt. And that's where I went with all my friends, and all the best comics in LA and New York were all collaborating at the comedy store. And I never got to see him because he wasn't there.
I mean I'd heard he was like, he smacked somebody once. He got in a fight with somebody in the front porch one night. I missed it. You know, but I just, I'd always admired him. And I'd always talk nice about him.
I didn't understand why he thought I wouldn't have him on the podcast. But once I met him, he's a joy. He's a funny, smart dude who's a lot of what he's saying, he knows what the fuck he's doing. He's like very tongue-in-cheek and very, just having a good time with it. But he's a genuine character.
Like a genuine, unique character.
I would love to meet him.
Oh, he's great. You'd love him. Very smart dude too.
If I see him at the airport, I'll say, yo man, you like this jacket?
He might be able to fit in that. He'll be a little long. Might have to get the sleeves taken in. But yeah, where the fuck do you get that jacket?
You know,
I,
my wife got me this jacket.
It's pretty dope. She's got good taste.
Yeah, she truly does.
Yeah, and then you're wearing about 10 pounds of silver.
Yeah. It's true. They call me the silver stacker. I don't know if you guys know.
That's what the kids call it. My daughter calls it that when she wears a bunch of bracelets. That's my stack, man.
Stacks. They have stacks. That's my stack.
I'm just learning about these things.
I just gotta be careful not to fall in the pool, you know? Yeah.
But I just love when rock stars stay rock stars. It's, nothing bums me out more than seeing an old rock star in a golf shirt.
I'm like, dude. Come on, man.
You gotta hang in there. I know you're 60..
I'm fucking 60.
. I just saw the stones. They're 80.. They look amazing.
Bro, they're amazing.
I love, I mean, I'm wearing, I have stones. I mean, the stones are everything. I love the rolling stones. I always have. And I've, the Black Crowes toured with them in 1995..
We did all of Europe with them. We did Wembley Stadium with them. You know, I've got, you know, I've got to hang with Keith and Ron. I've, you know, that's hung with Mick a little bit. They're the fucking rolling stones, you know?
And so, my wife and I, and my 14-year-old daughter who lives on the East Coast, she was with us for the few weeks this summer. I'm like, let's go. You know what I mean? I haven't seen them in a while and we went and I went without any, I don't, you know what I mean? I went with nothing.
I wasn't going in with any expectation except to pay my, you know, be there with everyone and see the rolling stones and be there. And they were great. Mick Jagger's voice was incredible.
Incredible. I mean,
his energy and stuff is incredible, but his singing, I mean, they did Wild Horses that night and I looked over and my 14-year-old was like crying and I was like, I'm so proud of you. You know, she's feeling it so deep. Yeah. Great midnight rambler. They're in a stadium with, just like, Ronnie and Keith just had, like two speakers on stage and still playing.
A lot of bands don't play live anymore. They have their digital shit through the PA. There's not even any sound on stage. Wow. It's all through their in-ears and to me, that's really weird.
Whatever it takes for you to get the gig, I'm hip too. People do, I've seen cool shows like that, but personally, I like a lot of sonic chaos. You want it real. Yeah. I want to feel it.
I saw them at CODA, the Circuit of the Americas, a couple years ago, and you know, it's just, when you watch Mick Jagger walk out onto the stage, you almost can't believe he's really there. Like, how is that really him?
I told my wife, he's like a Sasquatch, but everyone's seen him. Right. It's like,
he, and he's still out there. I remember Bill Hicks had a bit in 1988 about the Stones still doing it. Yeah. In 1988. but there's this crazy thing, oh my God, the Stones have a new album.
Like, what? This is 88.. Yeah. And here we are in 2024 and they're still out there killing it, and the show was amazing.
That was amazing.
Amazing. It's so good.
The best, I mean, the best, I consider myself a midnight rambler of Fishing Auto. One of the best midnight ramblers I've ever heard.
Oh, they were so good.
It was so good and people were, you know what I mean? Just, it was, it was really, I'm so happy that we went to SoFi Stadium. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I was just, it was great, you know, because I will admit, sometimes, and okay, let's be honest, I get access to backstage, you know, we have a, it's cool, but sometimes in big places like that, something, I get a little bit like, not because of, that, people would know you were, I just get weird around giant crowds. Right, right. I did when I was little, I didn't like theme parks, you know, all sorts of weird stuff. Yeah. But it was so cool.
I was so inspired. You know what I mean? I walked out, I like floated out of there, so happy.
That guy has two trailers that he takes with him everywhere that are just a gym. Two huge trailers that are just, like, Mick Jagger works out every day and when he gets out on that stage and like, he's fucking 80.. I know. He might be 81 now.
If I live to be 80, you can come find me, I'm gonna be 300 pounds living in Sicily and they're gonna, you know, those beautiful painted wagons, they'll drag me around and it's like.
But you won't even get to 300 pounds either.
No, you don't.
That's what's crazy. That's when you realize we're being poisoned. Yeah. When you eat in Europe for a week and you don't gain any weight. You're like, this is nuts.
I had pizza, I had pasta, I didn't feel bad. You come over here, you feel like you got hit with a tranquilizer dart. Yeah. Like, we're fucking poisoning ourselves. You won't get to 300 pounds if you live in Sicily.
No, no.
Unless you drink a lot of fucking wine.
Yeah, and even the wine is like.
It's better. Well, it's just, there's something about, like, just the air there. There's something about the atmosphere.
I'm not a, you know, I'm not, I have no, I'm English, we are pretty much in our DNA, English. and then, like a big scoop of Polish Jew on top. You know what I mean? Not even a big scoop at this point. Both my grandfather and my dad were shiksa, loving Jewish men who whittled me and my brother down to about 20%.
And,
but when I'm, I don't know, there's, there's something about there. that is so, just, I don't know. I, I, I love to go to Paris, but Paris isn't relaxing. You know, I'm out all day doing stuff. I love London.
I love Madrid. I love lots of places. I love Rome. I love lots of places in the world. There's something about Sicily, man.
I'm like, just, I'm, I'm in. You know what I mean? Like, this is, like you said, it's something about the lifestyle just so laid back, and it's, maybe I like it because it's a bit of anachronism. I think, you know what I mean? Like, you're going, you feel like you've stepped out of the same pace and or rhythm of the modern future world that we see every day.
Yes. It's a different vibration. It's a different, I mean, and then everybody's doing it that way too. So, you sort of settle into their way of life. You sort of settle into their pace of things.
And then, if you need,
a shot of adrenaline, just hit Palermo, because that place is wild. Oh,
I'm sure.
It was so good.
Is it still run by the mob?
I don't know. They say no.
Oh, then yes.
They say that it doesn't exist anymore, but, but if I remember, there was a big scandal during lockdown in some small town in Sicily, or maybe it was Palermo. I'd have to research it. Did they, the police were upset because some old mob guy had died and they had a giant parade and no one, like, was in masks. everyone was just out there, old people, you know, everyone was out there doing their thing for Don, whoever it was, who's not with us anymore. And I was like, okay, they didn't want that story.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
Well, those people ran that place for a long ass time. You know, they're an integrated part of their society, like the Yakuza is in Japan.
For a very long time. For a very long time. you know, the way it works. Have you ever seen a funny movie called Johnny Stacchino?
No.
With Roberto Bellini, the Italian comedic actor? No. You would love it. Yeah? It's so funny.
It's from the 80s and he, Stacchino's a toothpick, yeah? So he's Johnny Toothpick. And it's that, what's the story of, it's a famous story, you know, he, he's a school teacher in Naples or whatever, but he, or in Italy, and he, and this girl who's the wife or lover, or whatever, some big gangster in Sicily, she sees, he's trying to, he's in hiding because he did like rat it on someone, I don't know, something. She sees him and he looks just like him. so she brings him to Sicily and he's like walking around and people are like, yo, what are you doing?
You know what I mean? Like, so it's that kind of thing, but it's unbelievably funny movie. It's insane. Okay.
Do you remember? there was an Italian singer who created a very popular song where it was fake American lyrics? God, I'm trying to remember his name, but it was a song where he's singing fake words that sound like he's singing like the Rolling Stones, or, you know, the Beatles or something like that, but he's doing it with fake words. It's like what he thinks American songs sound like, but it's gibberish. This is the guy.
What is his name?
Adriano Celentano. Give me some volume on this. Wow. Listen. It's really cool.
That's amazing. I love that. It's a cool song too.
The song is very cool, but there's a couple of different versions of it. This is like a live performance of it, but there's another one that's like a music video of it and it's like really fucking interesting what that guy did.
That's cool. That's really good. Yeah,
he just made up fake American music. It's fucking great.
I'm gonna do that next week.
Why not? Fuck it.
I mean,
you know, that's, there's a lot of songs that have like words that aren't really words. You know, they're just kind of like sounds. You know? Dan Auerbach talks about that from the Black Keys. Like a lot of times when he sings things, he's just like making up sounds, making up words.
Mick Jagger did it.
Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, or he took words and mashed them into something that was more.
Especially live in the 70s. he has a lot of vowels going out and you're like I don't know what he's saying. It's so good.
But man, he's not lost any of the energy. If you watch, like his old performances, and now it's just an older guy doing the same vibe. I mean,
it's also very cool because they play everything in the same key. You know, you'll find a lot of older and I get it, man. You know, singing is, singing is a physical thing. I mean, my one thing. it's kind of like the muse.
Like if I stopped singing, it would go away. Mmm. You know what I mean? If I didn't sing, you know,
if I, I'm going to take two years off. I would never, I would never get back to where my voice is.
Why is that?
It's just the nature of the physicality, I think. You know what I mean? Especially as it's 35 years, 40 years of singing.
So it's like you're working muscles in your neck.
Your vocal cords are just muscles, yeah. Wow.
And you're working them on a regular basis and they get out of shape.
Yeah. And then, like that, and then it just won't come back. Oh, wow. Or it won't come back to where I'd like to, like my, I'd really like where my voice is. I say, we sing the songs in the same keys, you know.
Mmm. It was funny, we played the Forum, we were the first concert in the Forum, LA Forum, after COVID. And it was a bit, I had never played there. It was a big night. It was, you know, friends and family.
It was great. But George Dekoulias, who's produced our first records, first two records, and signed the band after the show, he was like, if I had known, you'd still be singing 30, whatever years later, we could have put the keys down for you, you know. I was like, I was like, that wasn't how it worked back then. Because, you know, in rock and roll, you get, you know, you have the verse and then you get to the chorus and you want to get it exciting. Yeah.
So, you want to knock it up a notch, you know. But we don't change them either, and I like that. I mean, my voice has changed, obviously, but.
But it's still the same key. Do you wonder how long you're going to do it? Do you ever think about stopping?
I don't. I do. sometimes. I mean,
you know, the pandemic was funny for me because, at first, not financial three things or whatever, it was just like, you know, since I was a teenager, pretty much, this is what we do. We tour, we do concerts and we make music, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, maybe I'm going to go a little kooky not doing it. And then, I really, I mean, I had horrible days, like everyone else, and, you know, despair and fear and stuff of the unknown. But a lot of those days, like, I was like, I have a lot of interests, you know what I mean?
I have a lot of other, I'd like to write a book, I'd maybe like to write more than one book, you know.
Find my voice outside of the musician, in another artistic way or whatever, and just loving my wife and.
living life.
Yeah, and, you know, moving to Sicily. But, a lot of those things you, you know, I'm not ready to do that now. But also I look ahead and I'm like, do,
do I want to be on stage when I'm 75?
? Do I want to? There's a difference. if I have to. I don't know.
I guess I'll call it. if I'm lucky enough to get to 75, you know what I mean? I'll get through the end of the week, you know what I mean? But, I do, I love it, but for that event gave me the perspective of there's other, I don't want to, you know what I mean? I would hate to be, I've always hated the idea that this is all I could do.
That might sound weird, but.
No, no, it's a great thought.
Because I'm born to do it. I love that kind of scenario. you know, like this is, my wife's, like, when I watch you, we're good friends. When I see you in your element, this is obviously what you're supposed to do. Yeah.
But, but I think I have, I don't know if ambition is the right word, but I definitely have interest in things that have nothing to do with this. Yeah. You know.
Well, that's part of being a human, right? Yeah. You don't want to be isolated to one specific interest. And I. There's so many fascinating things.
And the isolation, that's a thing too. And I, I'm really happy with, would, would, could we have a level of success that's greater or whatever? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. But the one thing I like about my life is, I, I'm not the kind of, I'm not so well known that I still can't do my own grocery shopping.
I cook, I love to cook. I like to go to the market. I like to pick out my shits, you know? Or that, you can't get, you know what I mean? That we have access to the whole world, you know?
And I don't have to worry about anyone giving a shit. You know what I mean? Yeah. Or, the people that do like it, that come up to me wherever I am in the world, they're usually real fans. They're not celebrity people.
Right, right, right. So they're like, man, I saw you at the, when you played this song, you know. And that's the other thing about music. It's like, rock music. You know, you can be, you can do a lot of stuff, but, you know, one thing about the songs we've written, and I meet people, and people play the songs we've written at weddings and at funerals, you know what I mean?
Not just parties, and not just things, but like, you know, my brother, I wrote, you know, when we wrote. She Talks to Angels, I get, I always have time, and I'm always.
humbled by people's experiences with that song, and addiction, and things in their lives. Whether it's them, a family member that lost,
or people that have overcome things, you know what I mean? And that we, you know, just wrote that song one day when we were kids, and that means so much to people. I mean, there's a lot of songs like that in our repertoire that people come up, I mean, really funny things. sometimes. Like, people will pick some song, I'm like, that was your wedding song?
I'm like, okay.
That's weird. Jealous?
Or more obscure, or even, you know, like some weird, like, this song called Nonfiction. Like, we walked down the aisle to Non, I'm like, Nonfiction? Really? It's kind of a dark song. You know what I mean?
Well, that's, you're giving out, you know, with music. It's like, it's an art form that changes people's feeling. When you hear a great song, it literally gives you energy.
Completely.
It's a drug. It really is. It's like an audio.
Exactly the same. I mean, we, I mean, it's maddening to be with me, because it's, this is the only time during this day that I don't have music on. But I, you know what I mean? But I listen to French music from the 20s, and I listen to, like, Peruvian cumbias from the 70s, or, avant-garde electronic composers, whatever, you know. Or blues, and rock and roll, and jazz, and funk, and R&B, and whatever.
But, a lot. Yeah. Well,
that means you're doing the right thing, right? Like, you really love it.
I also need it, like you just said, not only just for energy, but, like, for some soulful.
connection, as well. Yeah. you know, when,
especially with, you know, when I was younger, we all suffer from depression, and some people have a more acute relationships with that.
But, you know, if there's a certain
melancholy that comes over me, there's only some artist that can, I can sail across that deep water with. You know what I mean? Right. To kind of assure me that I'm not the only one. We're not the only ones that feel this way.
We're not the only ones that,
are, you know, life is, life is, that is what it is. You know what I mean? Like, no matter how rich you are, no matter how successful you are, no matter who you are, you still have to deal with the ups and downs of it. Absolutely. And I think adversity is the thing that really makes us who we are.
You know, it's one thing as like, being a father, I'm like, I'm not afraid of the adversity my kids face. As a matter of fact, that's what I really want to get to, is how, because what makes us who we are is how we deal with adversity. Mm-hmm.
And if you don't deal with any adversity, it's not good.
And if you push it under the table, or this or that,
avoid it.
then where are you? You know what I mean? You're lost. Where's the, and the great, and it's, these. things are cliches, but the greatest lessons are the hardest ones.
You know what I mean? Those are the ones that stick to you the most.
Yes. And those are the ones that make you grow.
I have a great friend who's in a fantastic band. They just opened for us. We've been friends. They're called, his name is Jim Jones. This band's called The Jim Jones All-Stars.
He was in a band called The Hypnotics. And, and we've known each other for 30 years, and he went through really deep heroin addiction in the 90s,
uh, and it's funny to talk to him, and I love him, you know, he's, but he's like, yeah, man, it was something, it was a lesson. You know what I mean? I'm like, that's a fucking tough lesson, and I'm happy you're still here to talk about it. But, I love his attitude. You know what I mean?
I love that spirit in people. You know what I mean? That it didn't, you know, I learned from this, and I've moved on from this, and I don't have any regrets, I don't have any resentment towards this, or anger towards, about it, and it's no one's doing, but my own. Mm. That responsibility, to take responsibility for stuff, you know, is a big, and that's, that's important, and I think we see a lot of that gone away, you know what I mean, with people.
and every story is different, you know what I mean? And every, not everything, is the same, and, and the, the, what is real, and what isn't real, between there, that's for everyone to figure out, for people, you know. Yeah. But, but the fact that
that can be captured in a song, and, like you said, sort of carry you through these bad moments, where you realize, like, other people, are experiencing grief, hardship, depression, darkness, terrible thoughts of loss, and that's the reason why those songs are so popular. It's not like people want to suffer. Like, no, there's like something they're resonating with.
And anger is a part of that, too, you know what I mean? Like, and it's funny, like, with the newer music, I'm like, you guys, like the world looks pretty shitty, aren't you guys pissed a little bit, or are you just like, no, I'm just gonna get some likes, and my pants fit right, and my hair is good. I'm like, okay, I get pop. music is light sometimes, but I would like for the young people to, you know, I'd like to see in the art a little more anger. Well,
I'd like to see more rock. You know, it's like, when I'm looking at music coming up today, there's a great absence of strong new rock bands that seem like rock bands from the past. Guitar,
bass.
Yes, yes. I mean, goddammit, people still love that music. What the fuck is going on?
Yeah, you go see ACDC there at a fucking stadium. Yeah. You go see Metallica there at a stadium. Yes. So people are going.
So what the fuck happened? I mean, where is everybody? I mean,
I think it's definitely there. It's just, it's, it's, again, I think people, for some reason, think the music business is supposed to be the gauge, or they're just like any other fucking salesman. They always have been. Just because one salesman had a cool taste and one didn't, don't kid yourself. Right.
They're not artists. They're salesmen. And there's cool people and not cool people. But they're not, you know what I mean? Yeah.
And I think, like, now we live in a time, and you see it a lot, you see people making comments about it in our industry, about how you're just following. Whereas before, yeah, you had things that were popular, but someone, you know, someone said, fuck, sign the Stooges.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, Danny Fields did that, but he had great taste, but he was still a record company guy, the business side of it. Someone, you know what I mean? Someone said, sign Suzy and the Banshees, or whatever. Someone said, dude, I mean, Bob Dylan, you didn't know when they made first Bob Dylan record that he'd be 83 years old.
Bob Dylan. today. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
And a lot of people said, don't sign him. He's not marketable. He's not commercial. And, you know, that's my thing. I'm looking for.
still that maverick spirit or somebody who does have the wherewithal and or vision to see that maybe something is a little bit outside the box still could have, not just, it would have importance, and it can be popular as well.
Well, of course. And it always has been that way. The idea that that can't, that everyone has a short attention span now and we're interested in frivolous things. No, that's not true. That's just still junk food.
It's still junk food. Right. And there's still people that like a nice meal. I'm glad you're out there, dude.
Thanks. Thanks for doing this.
I really appreciate it.
It was a lot of fun.
I really enjoyed talking to you.
We got to talk about a lot of weird stuff.
Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Cheers. Bye, everybody.
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