Steve Poltz

Steve Poltz is a national treasure. Known for co-writing "You Were Meant for Me" with Jewel, Poltz is one exposure away from becoming a ubiquitous star. You'll be riveted and entertained from the very beginning.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftstts Podcast. My
guest today is the one and only Steve Holtz. Steve,
where are you right now?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm in Sydney, Australia and it is Thursday morning?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
And how do you end up in Sydney?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, it's my twenty second time over here and I'm
on a tour. I'm on my way up to play
Byron Bay Blues Fest. And so that is how I
ended up in Sydney. I played a show last night
that win till about midnight at a really cool club
and it was packed. And the night before I was
in Newcastle and so I'm here on the road my

(00:47):
twenty second time. Can't believe it.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Okay, let's go back to the beginning. How do you
go to Australia the first time?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
The first time I went to Australia, I was invited
to come over with Jewel and we had put together
a band with myself and Tony Hall playing bass, Brady
Blade on drums, Doug Pettybone on electric guitar, and Steve
George on keys. And Steve George was in a band
called Mister Mister and he had written a song called

(01:18):
Currie Eleys song and take these Broken Wings, and we
put together this band and Jewel had had this hit
record out and so I went over and I got
to open the shows and be in her band. And
that's what first brought me to Australia back in nineteen
ninety nine.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Okay, twenty two times. Almost no music lact is going
to Australia twenty two times, So explain how you keep
going back.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
I have boundless energy, and so Australia has become kind
of just like another tour stop to me. I live
in Nashville, and it's like, oh, do you want to
go to Louisville and play a show? It's that easy
for me now. I just think, oh yeah, I'll fly
down to Melbourne, Australia, and then hit Sydney and go
to Tasmania. I love it, and so I've always kept

(02:08):
coming back, and I rent cars and I drive on
the left side of the road, use my iPhone for
the maps, and I just always end up at the
gigs and I've never quit coming back. So it's become
a regular tour stop.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Okay, you want to play Australia, do you have an
agent that books the dates. How do you line up
the dates? Yes?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
So I at the time, the first time I came
over here, I was on CIA and I had this
agent named Rick Roskin, so he booked the tour and
then Frontier, a big agency down here, brought Jewel over
and then they saw me play when I opened and
they said, how would you like to come back? We'll
bring you back. So that was how it started here.

(02:49):
But now I have my own agent. He's a smaller agency,
and he saw me play somewhere and said he wanted
to work with me, and that's what me back and
keeps me coming back. And there's so many festivals I
can play.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Okay, so if you go to Australia, how many gigs
can you play?

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh my gosh. Now, when most people come here, they'll
do like maybe four gigs. I'll do like twenty to thirty.
It's crazy because I go to all these little country
towns now and they sell out. And like I was
just in a little place called Archie's Creek and you'll
get three hundred people in there. They make you a
great meal and you're hanging out with all these crazy

(03:30):
Australians and every night it's just like a new thing,
and I show up and they go all out for
the shows, and they're just so welcoming.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
How do they know you?

Speaker 2 (03:39):
And Archie's creak just over the twenty two years, like
everything in my career has been built with my hands,
just playing live shows, and then people talk about the
live shows, and every show I just go out and
I give all the effort I can and then they
tell their people and everything just keeps happening and it

(04:00):
slowly grows. So it's the most organic thing ever.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Is it lucrative for you to go to Australia?

Speaker 2 (04:09):
It really is, believe it or not. Like I go
over here and I make money. I actually have an
Australian tax accountant who is in co He works with
my accountant in the United States, and he just can't
believe because I bring over so much merch and I'm
slinging T shirts, tope bags, hats, Vinyl records, CDs and

(04:34):
it just goes on and on and I sell all
this merch and my wife is my tour manager, and
we're just like a dog and pony show and we
go in and we just sell merch. We play shows
and every night it's just a blast. And then the
next day I'm headed to another city.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Now you have hardcore fans, but for those who have
never seen a Steve Poltz show, do your best to
describe it.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Well, it's kind of madness because I've never used a
set list in my life, and I never know what's
going to happen. So I have fans, like last night
fans that came three shows in a row from different cities.
They drive. It's like the Grateful Dead fans or something,
and they're never going to get the same show twice.
So what it is is I just go out and

(05:22):
I just sort of feel the room and I can
feel the energy of everybody, and I slowly take them
on a two hour journey. And I've tried to really
learn to play fewer songs, like because for a while
I was doing four hour shows and I realized, you know,
there's got to be a beginning, a middle, and an end.

(05:44):
So I've learned to pair it down.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Okay, if every show is different, you know, back in
the old days of classic rock, you'd go to see
acts in different cities who would have the exact same pattern. Okay,
your stories are different. I mean, how much is prepared
how much have you told the stories before? How much

(06:06):
are you making up that night.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Well, I'll have stories that'll be a rough outline, and
they're always changing. It's like if you took a pack
of tortillas and they were in saran wrap and you
nailed them to a wall and they slowly got mold
and the mold grew on them. That's the stories. They
change and they blend in for whatever city I'm in,

(06:30):
and then I'll talk about what happened that day. So
the thing I've learned is if I go on stage
and just talk about what I did that day, something
funny is going to come out of it. And I'm
going to take the piss out of the audience, make
fun of their accent and what I did that day,
and hopefully have them all smiling and feeling good. I

(06:50):
always want like a sense of redemption by the end
of the show, where everybody's just up there on their
feet and they're just feeling really good.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Okay, so what happened yesterday that was worth talking about?

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Okay, So for instance, last night, I got on stage
and I had written a little story about I told
people that they need to start creating, because if you
have friends over for dinner. What I said is you
should have them prepare a poem that they wrote, because

(07:23):
if you write something, it will feel good for you,
and then to perform it will make you feel nervous.
And the body makes its own drugs, and who here
doesn't love drugs. That's what I told the audience. And
so I want you guys to feel good, and so
I would give them an example of a poem. And

(07:44):
it doesn't have to rhyme, but you just go up
and you get to do this poem and it makes
it so much fun. So, for instance, last night I
was on stage and I just I remember I was
sitting there and I said, dear Diary, this was my poem.

(08:04):
I took a shower and used doctor Bronner's peppermint hemp
hippie soap. It smells so good. I washed my armpits
and my bum and my private parts. And then I
thought to myself, I need to wash my feet too.
The water in the shower isn't going to just clean them.
I should scrub them with his hand towel and soap.

(08:26):
Now I'm sixty four years old, So I lifted up
my foot and scrubbed it real good with the soap
every little toe. It felt so good and clean, like
I was doing God's work. Then I washed my other
foot and that felt good too. I was so happy
and proud that my feet were clean. Then I thought
I should scrub my butthole because I have this hand

(08:49):
towel and lots of soap. But then I was worried
that the foot germs might get into my butt like
athlete's foot, so I scrubbed my buttole anyways, and then
I had to pee in I thought to my so
I should wait till I get out of the shower
and pee in the toilet. But then I looked around
and Sharon wasn't in the bathroom, and I obviously wasn't
live streaming. So I peed real good like, and I

(09:11):
watched it all go down the drain, and it felt
like I was doing something bad and that felt good
to me. So I got out of the shower and
dried off. Now I can't sleep because as I was
drying off, I looked in the mirror and my balls
looked terry. So I thought I'd try shaving them, even
though I'd never shaved them before. It just seemed like

(09:32):
an impulsive decision. So I tried it, but I accidentally
got a cut on my scrotum and red blood dripped
into the white sink. It looked really cool, like art,
and I like art. Then I signed my name in
the sink with a swirly S and a swirly P.
But then Sharon walked into the bathroom as I was

(09:53):
stretching my ball sack and looking at the blood, and
she goes, what the fuck is wrong with you? And
then some the air scaped out of my butt and
made a party sound. So I decided I should go
to sleep and not shave my balls anymore, and Sharon
put a band aid on them. The shaving was a
bad idea. Thank you God for listening to me, your
friend Steve. So I did that piece last night because

(10:16):
I knew it would make me sweat to do that
on stage, and I just wanted to take them on
a journey, and see, I like to take a risk.
And then my body makes a drug and that drug
is this adrenaline, and then all limits are off and
I can sing any song I want because I've taken
them to a place where I want them to go,

(10:38):
and I want to encourage them to write.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
You mentioned this drug adrenaline. To what degree do you
use or have used recreational drugs or alcohol?

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Oh? Man. It all started when I was young and
I was an altar boy in the Catholic Church, and
I was in Palm Springs, California, at Saint Teresa's and
they had this altar wine and I would drink it.
I called it backstage, and the priest would leave the
altar wine back there, and I'd go out as the

(11:10):
altar boy at Saint Teresa's and I would pretend I
was a French waiter, so I'd bring the wine up
to the priest and when they ring the bells, that
changes the wine into Jesus's blood. This is what they
tell you. So I would go up and pour the
wine into the gold chalice that the priest is holding,
and I would say, this is in nineteen sixty seven,

(11:32):
Goblin Savignon. He would be good with it, Phil Mignon, Goodrea,
and then the priest would just look at me and go,
this guy is crazy. And that kind of basically stopped
my altar boy career. And so then I kept drinking,
and I would have fun drinking, and that led to
marijuana queludes in the seventies led to cocaine, opium, everything,

(11:55):
and then, like any good musician, I ended up in
rehab nineteen years ago and I haven't had a drink since,
and my career got better due to not drinking and drugging.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Okay, reab only works if you want to get clean.
What was the motivation to go to rehab? And why
did it works? People have gone like ten times and
it still hasn't worked.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
The reason it worked for me is because I never
wanted to do it till I was ready, and I
knew one day it was going to happen. I just
could feel I was heading into that direction. And I
had this best friend of mine named Steve both spelled
fot and we had written a Rugburns song my old band,
the Rugburns, and the song was called Hitchhiker Joe. It's

(12:41):
about a cannibalistic hitchhiker that would hitchhike and then he
would eat you, and so we made a video for
it and everything, and then Steve got into drugs and
he got stabbed to death in a crack deal that
went awry with some prostitutes, and so I had to
id him at the Morgue and I had a nervous breakdown.

(13:06):
And I remember I flew back to San Diego from
being on the road. I've been doing blow all night
and I kind of collapsed at the airport night. There
was this one attorney. I knew this guy, Michael Wilson,
and I called him and he heard it in my voice.
He answered the phone. I don't even know how he
answered the phone because he had secretaries, but he heard

(13:27):
my voice and I said Michael, and he goes Stephen
and he goes, what's up. And I said, I'm in
big trouble. I've gone insane. And he said, you need
to go right away to this rehab place. And for
some reason, after twenty eight days in rehab, they graduated
everybody except for me, and they said you need to

(13:47):
do another twenty eight days. So I did another twenty
eight days and then they let me go, and I
remember I got out and I had a show at
the Belly Up in San Diego Salona Beach, and they
sent guards with me to make sure I wouldn't drink.
And then it was weird Bob. I just I didn't
want to drink anymore. I realized I could do more

(14:08):
damage not drinking and drugging, and it was getting in
my way of my muse and my creativity. And I
love not drinking like I love it. It's a drug
to not be on drugs and to just create and
take chances and risks.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Well, I had a similar thing giving up drinking, and
it is liberating in a way that people don't understand.
But let's go back. You're playing these festivals in Australia.
If you play a festival, not everybody knows who you are,
and it's like being an opening act at an arena
for a superstar. It's very frustrating. How do you win

(14:47):
over a larger audience who is unaware of you and
may not be paying attention.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
It's the greatest thing in the world. So before I
go out, I say a little prayer to my id
of whatever the powers that be are in the sky.
Because when I went to rehab, they said you needed
a higher power, and that higher power was God. And
I had a hard time with the God thing. So
I made my higher power Neil Young because he was

(15:14):
a power greater than myself, I figured, and they accepted that.
So Neil Young became a higher power. And then as
it went on, I had no problem with the God thing,
the idea of that there might be something up there, stronger,
and who knows what it is if it's just a spirit.
So I just say a prayer of thanks. I don't
pray to be good, but I do this visualization thing.

(15:35):
It only takes me a minute where I picture everybody
on their feet smiling, and I've converted the room and
it's just going to be I've done some work that
was good. I made people feel good. Maybe I'm down
in the middle of the crowd, maybe I'm on the stage,
but I love it. I just like coming out with
whatever I'm feeling. So it's just honest because people can tell.

(15:58):
And an audience is like a horse, and a horse
knows when you get on it, if you're scared of it,
if you come out and let the audience know you're
in control, they're gonna come along for the ride. And
that's where you really build a fan base because you
got five thousand people out there. You know, I'll be
playing Newport Folk Festival this summer, or in Australia, I'm
going to Byron Bay Bluesfest. Probably played a seven thousand

(16:20):
people and a lot of whom have never seen me,
and so what you need to do? Do you know?
Do you remember Huey Lewis?

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Of course I remember.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, Okay, So there was an article once in Rolling
Stone and Huey Lewis did a quote that I've never forgotten.
He talked about how he was in a blues band
in northern California and they were doing cover songs and
he said, every once in a while they would sneak
in an original song. And I loved how he said that,
and he said he called it infiltrate then double cross,

(16:53):
so he'd suck them in and then double cross them,
and then on the break people would come up and go,
what was that song you did? I loved and he'd say, oh,
that was an original, and they said that is so good.
So at a festival you need to infiltrate then double crossing,
not meaning you're doing covers, but go out. You can't
just go out and talk about shaving your balls in
the shower. You've got to lure them into your world.

(17:16):
And then slowly, once they commit to loving you, they're
with you. They're a part of your tribe. It's amazing.
And then you slowly collect people. My buddy Oliver Wood
from the Wood Brothers has a quote that he told
me about my career. It's a slow rise to the middle,
and that's the best kind of career to have.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Okay, let's just use that. You're playing to seven thousand people.
Usually an act that's not well known throughout the world
has to play during the day when the sun is out.
Do you feel that you have to get all seven
thousand people interested or you just need three hundred in

(17:59):
front of the state, What do you say. I'm gonna
get this three hundred and grow it and grow it.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
I know that it's going to be successful. It sounds weird,
but I love walking out on stage and there's five
or seven thousand people and it's just a little cadence
and the voice are the way I may tell a story, slowly,
suck them into my world. And you see people kind
of touching each other, like what's going on here? And

(18:25):
then the diehard fans are up front and the energy
passes from fan to fan. It's crazy. And by the
end of that everybody's over there at the merch area.
You're selling stuff and I shake everybody's hand. I believe
in the Willie Nelson School of music, you'd always wait
by his tour bus afterwards and shake everyone's hand and

(18:46):
sign everything. I love it. I love the interaction taking
pictures with people and then playing the show, and slowly
they convert over. And then you play a club in
a town and they show up and say, oh, oh, man,
I saw you at High Sierra Music Festival, or I
saw you at tell your Ride Bluegrass Fest. And the
cool thing is I'm just solo on stage, so I

(19:10):
don't have to deal with a lot of logistics of
band members and everything. I can surgically strike and play
Stan Rogers folk Fest way out in Canso, Nova Scotia,
and then zip across the country and play Rocky Mountain
Folksfest in Lions, Colorado. And I can do it and
get there pretty fast.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Okay, let's go back to the Oliver Wood quote. I
think the Woods started off independent to begin with. Okay,
when you started in the pre internet era, the key
was to have a label deal and to have a hit,
whether it be a top forty hit at MTV, hit
a hit on a FM rock The point is to
have a notable trick. So today to use a word

(20:03):
that has too many connotations, but I'll use it anyway.
You are a cult item. It's amazing. I printed an
email that you had written all these people who know
who you are. Okay, you can't see that and say, oh,
it's Steve Poltz and you know, number ten in the
Spotify Top fifty, but they know who you are. So

(20:25):
the game has changed. Yet you have continued in the game.
To what degreed does it frustrate you that you have
this middle level of success and to what degreed do
you have hunger to be known and exposed to more people.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
This is a great question, and I would like to
first say I love you. I want to get that
from here, but okay, okay, I do. And the way
that it works for me is I picture everybody, you know,
those rock climbing walls, Bob, where you got sure a

(21:06):
place and climb up. You know, there's always somebody going
to be above you and somebody below you. That's the
business we're in. There's always going to be somebody who
has something you want. Even Springsteen, where he's at on
the wall now isn't in the stadium thing he was
at at one time. So we always want to be
somewhere else. So number one, the first rule is be

(21:26):
kind to everybody you meet on the way up, because
sooner or later you will meet him on the way
back down, and you're always going to want more, but
you've got to just remain grateful and thankful for what
you have, your little slice of the pie. And for me,
I'm happy with the slice I have because I get
to do the weirdest shit on stage. Bob, I'm not

(21:48):
beholden to a hit song. I go out and I'm
doing spoken word and it's a drug to me. I'm
an addict, and so I'm addicted to the performance and
I'm looking for that high, that sort of danger on
stage and also the sense of community. And so I
have like the ultimate career because I go from city
to city. People show up in Australia and it's like whatever,

(22:11):
a fifty dollars ticket and they're showing up. The shows
are selling out and they're in small areas. Of course,
you think, God, it would be cool to go up
to bigger theaters, but it's just one day at a time,
and I get such a high from the shows that
I'm happy where I'm at and if it grows I'm
playing on the house's money because I don't have to

(22:32):
do this anymore. I could retire right now. My wife
always reminds me of that, that you don't have to
do this anymore. I was one of those musicians that
put money away back in the day when some jewel
money came in and other money, and I'd just go
out and work and I just put it in a
Charles Schwab account and never touch it. I've never touched it.

(22:53):
I'm sixty four years old, and I don't need a
lot because I live kind of a simple life.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Okay. I mean, certainly your stage act is unique and
no one is going to see you and not remember it.
So is there a part of you that says, well,
if only more people could see me, they would have
the same feeling.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, I do think that sometimes, and every once in
a while you do get a little bit of jealousy
and you want the career, maybe you want the crowds
that somebody else is getting. But I've learned to just
get that out of my system and I just sort
of say a prayer of gratitude for what I have,
and I truly believe in that. Of course, you me Nactually,

(23:46):
I only speak for myself. Like when Jewels started getting
big and we were dating and I was in the
Rugburns and I was helping her find a place to play,
and then she blew up really big. I was just like, Wow,
why is she blowing up big? And I'm not or
Jason Moraz another friend of mine from San Diego, Like
there's a whole San Diego scene, why did these people

(24:09):
blow up so big? But then when I really analyzed
it and did a deep dive in it, I'm not
really made for the masses. I'm not. Jason Ras has
a great boys, Jewela has a great voice. I'm sort
of a wild card, and I get the freedom of
doing the show I want, and I have gratitude for

(24:30):
what I'm doing. And Jason's a friend of mine, Jewele's
a friend of mine. And I saw Blink one eight
two blow up big, but the Rugburns didn't, And why
didn't that happen? I just felt like we weren't made
for the masses. Probably, and that's okay. You got to
make peace with that way.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Let's go back to the beginning. You're born in Halifax, Canada.
Are you just born there? And you move on or
do you live any of your life there.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
We moved when I was really young to southern California.
So all the relatives are in Nova Scotia and Cape
Breton and some in Ontario. But I'm a total Southern Californian.
I may live in Nashville, but I'm a Southern Californian.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
As it gets, okay, And what did your parents do
for a living?

Speaker 2 (25:19):
So my dad was in the Royal Canadian Air Force
and one morning he woke up and we were snowed
in and he said, I want to go somewhere warm.
And it was the early sixties, and we came out
to Pasadena, California. We lived right in Pasadena, and my
dad had a job in air conditioning and he just

(25:40):
found this job. He drove us across the country with
no money, got a job in an air conditioning warehouse
and became a manager of it. And I went to
a private Catholic school called Saint Rita's Elementary School. We
lived in Hastings Ranch for a little while, and then
we moved out to Palm Springs, California, because he got

(26:03):
a great air conditioning job out there, and that was
how I ended up meeting like Frank Sinatra and Elvis
Presley and Liberacchi and Bob Hope and all these people
that lived there, and it was pretty interesting being a
part of that. So it was great.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Tell me more about being a part of that. This
Palm Springs.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
So in Palm Springs, when we would go trigger treating
and stuff, we would go to Liberacchi's house and everybody
knew where he lived, and he had these piano keys
for his front steps and they would wind almost in
an Alison Carroll kind of weird psychedelic way, and you'd
ring the doorbell and you'd be dressed up like Casper

(26:46):
the Friendly Ghost, and the doorbell when it rang would go.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
Dun dunt dunt dun dun't dunt dun dun Livereracchi would
come out and he'd have a big boa around his neck,
and then chauffeur guy, his boyfriend, the blonde guy, he'd
have arm next.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
To him like this and he'd say hello kids, hop
a Snicker's bar and he'd give these huge Snickers bars
out and then I'd go change in the Batman and
come back again. And we would keep changing our outfits
because he had the biggest candy bars, and it was
so cool and I always loved being a part of that.
And my uncle was gay, my mom's brother, and so
I was raised with this sense of gayness in our house,

(27:23):
which was like a different time. Nowadays, everybody's flying a
rainbow flag and stuff, but back in those days, it
was like some more broke back Mountain type stuff, especially
for my uncle who had come from Cape Bretton and
he was a musician.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
So okay, And what did your mother do all day?

Speaker 2 (27:41):
So my mom was a teacher, an English teacher, and
she demanded she wouldn't even accept an A minus. I
had to get straight a's. And I would always get
bad citizenship grades because I was always making smart at
I just couldn't help it, and I was pushing things
to the limit. But I got a's and I loved school,

(28:05):
like I loved going there, and I liked studying guitar,
and I started playing guitar when I was six years old,
And so my mom really made sure I practiced. She
was very strict about it. She said, if I pay
for lessons, you're practicing forty five minutes every day, no excuses,
Not thirty minutes, not forty two minutes forty five minutes,

(28:27):
and I realized how hard it was to learn guitar,
and I hated it. But after twenty one days it
became a habit, just like anything, and then I just
would get so into it. My guitar was my best
friend because I stuttered as a little kid, and I
had asthma and exema, and so I would just be

(28:49):
alone in my room playing guitar, and I loved it.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
So how many kids in the family just.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Too my sister. I have an older sister, and you
know how, I think you've written about this too in
your letter. A lot of times somebody has an older
sibling and that older sibling is the one who turns
the other one onto music. And my sister had exquisite
taste in music, and she would make me put my

(29:17):
head between the speakers and she would put on Joni
Mitchell Courton Spark and say, listen to it, really listen
to it with your head between the speakers, and you
would hear Joni. All of a sudden, love came to
my door with a sleeping role and a madman's soul.
I thought for sure I'd seen him dancing up a

(29:38):
river in the dark looking through a woman to the
core and spa and I would listen to that, my
mind would be blown. We had a Moranz receiver, these
big speakers, and my sister would have me. Then she
would put on another record and we would listen to music,
and really listen to music. I'm talking like where you

(30:00):
would drink it in. And I remember I went to school, Bob,
and there was a Jewish girl named Hallie Rothstein, and
she was so beautiful and they had been living on
a kabbutz in Israel, and her dad, Jean Rothstein, was
the chemistry teacher, and he was so cool, and he

(30:21):
also did the hiking club and he went out of
town on business and Hallie Rothstein asked me to come over.
And I was fifteen years old and she had me
come over. I know, I couldn't believe it, and I thought,
this is when I'm going to lose my virginity. And
I always loved the I just my mom was like,

(30:42):
you're Catholic. You got the only dated Catholic girl. And
so when I heard Hallie Rothstein was Jewish, it was
like that forbidden fruit. It even made me like her more.
And they would talk about you know, how they would
celebrate Hanukkah, and I found it all so interesting. And
my gay uncle Louie would dress me up and I
would sing Fiddler on the Roof songs to all his

(31:04):
gay boyfriends. And so I always had this love of
the Jewish faith because it was so different to me.
So my uncle Louie would dress me up and I'd
sing if Iridi go dumb, and he'd have his arms
around a couple guys, and I thought that's how all
kids grew up. But I went over to Halle Rothstein's house,

(31:25):
and I remember she wanted me to bring some boons
farm wine over, and I was only fifteen years old.
So I went to the liquor store, and everybody knew
there was this old perverted guy that would sit outside
the liquor store and if you let him touch your
leg a little bit, he would go in and buy
you the wine or the beer you want. So I
remember having this whole existential crisis. Do I let the

(31:47):
old man touch me so I can go to Halle
Rothstein's house and lose my virginity. And I rode my
bike over to her house and the old man was there.
He got to grab my leg and he comes out
with a bottle of Boons Farm wine and I had
it in a brown paper bag, and I was so disgusted.
After the old man grab my leg. I was riding

(32:08):
my bike to Ali Rothstein's and I had screwed the
cap and I was drinking the wine and chugging it.
And I went over to her house and I crawled
in the window of her room and then we started
making out. And you know, back in the early seventies,
you would make out with the girl and she'd have
Levi's five oh one button flies on and she would
let me on dudes like two buttons, and I'd get

(32:30):
my hand ride down her pants almost to the promised Land,
and then she'd pull it up put it back on
her boop. We both had braces, and the braces were
clicking as we were making out, and the dried saliva smell,
you could smell it wafting up your nostrils and we're
making out. But then back in those days, you couldn't
just put your iPhone on Spotify shuffle and have it

(32:52):
keep playing music. No, the record would die out. So
you hear this, and she asked to get up change
the record, so she gets up to change the record
and she puts on this other record. Come back. I
think I'm gonna lose my virginity to this beautiful Jewish girl.
We're making out. One thing leads to another, and I

(33:13):
hear this voice, this beautiful voicego moving in silent desperation,
keeping the nih on the Holy lad a hypathetical destination.
Say who is this Walking Man? And I just stopped
kissing her and I said who's that? She said, it's

(33:35):
James Taylor. And I just looked at the album covered
Walking Man. He was in this cool pose. And back
in those days, you couldn't look up if they were
shopping at Kroger and what they looked like, and when
they were getting their groceries. All you had was the
mystery of what was on that album. And you held
that big album up and you look at the back
of You're like Danny Kortzmark Russell, kunkle Leland Sklark. Who

(34:00):
are these people? These are gods. I need to know
about all these players and who they are. And I
looked at Hallie. I said, I'm sorry, I have to go.
Can I borrow this record? She said, I guess so,
so I didn't lose my virginity because I wanted to
go home and listen to James Taylor and hear Danny
Korchmark Cooch. They called him Cooch. That's all I knew.

(34:23):
Cooch was his name. I needed to do my research
and I needed to listen to this James Taylor guy.
Then years later, Danny Goldberg signs me to Mercury Universal Records,
and Timothy White, the now deceased editor of Billboard Magazine,
calls me up because he hears my record One Left Shoe,

(34:44):
and he says, Steve, I'm wondering if you were influenced
at all by James Taylor because of your fingerpick. I
really like this record, And I said, was I influenced
by James Taylor? And I proceeded to tell him about
the old man grabbing my leg embraces, clicking the drive Sliva,
the buttons on the Levi's five oh one, my hand,

(35:05):
going down to the promised land of Nirvana. And I said,
because of James, I didn't lose my virginity, and Timothy
White goes, oh my god, I love this story. Listen.
I'm friends with James Taylor. He's in Martha's Vineyard. Right now,
I'm gonna call him up, and would you tell him
that story? Well, Bob, I'm freaking out because James Taylor

(35:29):
was like one of my heroes. Right. So he gets
James on the phone in Martha's Vineyard. Timothy White's in
New York Billboard Magazine office, and I'm in San Diego,
and it's like a split screen, triple screen Doris da
Pillow talk. We're all on our phones. Can't see him,
but I can imagine it. And then all of a sudden,
right before James gets on the phone, Timothy White says,

(35:51):
tell James's story, but don't tell him the part about
the old man grabbing you, because that's kind of he
doesn't need to hear that. But tell him the story
about everything else. And I said, okay, okay. And so
that James gets on the line and I hear that
sweet tenor voice go hello, Steve, and I go James,
He goes yeah, Timothy goes tell them the story, and

(36:12):
then I go, I let an old.

Speaker 4 (36:13):
Man grab my balls.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
I couldn't help myself. And then I proceeded to tell
him the whole story. And after I told James Taylor
the whole story. There was this awkward pause on the line,
and then I heard James go, well, I hope you've
gotten laid since.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Okay, a little cleanup. Where's Hallie today?

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Oh my gosh, I would like to know. I need
to track her down on Facebook, but I have some
friends that told me I think she might still be
in Palm Springs. I would love to know how she's doing.
I would love her to hear that story because it
really was a memory mark.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Okay, you would have this one my old sensibility. This
doesn't come out of nowhere. What was going on in
your home that you had this way of looking at things, insights,
telling these funny stories. Was this your mother? Was this
your father? Your gay uncle? Where did this come from?

Speaker 2 (37:16):
It was a combo meal deal. My dad would write
poems and he would run around the house and tap
dance and sing. He would always sing the Canadian national
anthem to me in the morning, so I would know
my Canadian roots. And my mom played piano and guitar
and would sing like an angel. And my uncle Louis

(37:38):
was a genius piano player, and so I was a
combination of all of them. And my uncle would always
have me play at recitals, and I would do the
part of Joel Gray and Cabaret. At a very young age.
I could do everything I could get up there, and
he would paint a little mustache on me and I'd
go become Bear, come and I would do the whole

(38:03):
thing and gabba lay, oh, gaballet do gabal lele, and
he would dress me up as Oliver, and I didn't
know how weird it was, because he'd have like eight
gay men over to the house and he would dress
me up like Oliver and make me go, please, suh,
may I have some more? And then they'd go, he
wants more. And then I'd have to think, oh, well,

(38:24):
buye this wonderful morning, and I'd put on a whole
show for them and I'd see how it worked. And
that was where I really started learning stuff because of
all of them. And he took me to see Julian
Bream at the Hollywood Bowl at the age of six
years old, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McCrae, Sarah Vaughan, Jesus Christ, Superstar,

(38:46):
god Spell, Hair. He took me to every Planet of
the Apes movie. My uncle Louis was just he was
so good for me.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Okay, that's your musical background. How about your twisted sense
of humor and your observational character.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
So I started the rugburns in a garage and Sandy.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
No, no, no, no, no, no, way before.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
That, way before that was okay?

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Was it the type of thing you were all having
dinner together and people were telling long stories where you
were cracking jokes at the table. This sensibility has to
come from somewhere.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
I think it was because my mom was really strict,
so I liked finding a way to get my sister
to laugh. Because my sister had a bit of depression
and my mom suffered from depression. So my mom had
to get shock therapy and the house was always really dark,

(39:42):
and I remember she came out of shock therapy and
she didn't know who we were, and it scared me,
and she would I would come home and she would
always be crying and the house would be dark. So
I would play classical guitar songs to her and I
would try to make her laugh. I really wanted to
make my mom happy because it hurt me to see

(40:02):
her so sad, and my sister was really sad. So
I would figure out what made them laugh. So if
I was able to do the Lord's Prayer with a
French accent without my mom hearing it at church to
get my sister to laugh, I would.

Speaker 5 (40:20):
I would.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
That's where things started. I would if false it would
be that name, SOI Kingdom come and Kathy would be
laughing so hard and my mom would get mad, and
then I'd find out a way to get my mom
to laugh. But honestly, I really believe I'm I think
you know, my mom died a few years ago and
the first thing I said was do you think she

(40:43):
loved me? And I think she did. But I used
to feel like the audience is kind of like my mom,
and maybe I'm on this search to win over the
audience to get her a rooval, And so I think
that's where it all started. Was I wanted to make

(41:05):
sure that I could try to make her happy because
I wanted to make sure she loved me. And I
haven't done deep therapy at all on it, but I
sort of have a sense that the audience is like
my mother.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Okay, before you get to the Rugbirds, you're going to school,
You're a smart kid, You're sort of sassy, which is
frustrating because you're doing well, but the teachers don't like
the disturbance. Did you have a lot of friends, Did
you play sports? Were you in student government or were
you off to the left somewhere.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
So I was into student government and I loved sports.
I ran across country. I was on the wrestling team,
and I was in drama, so I did all the drama.
I did everything. Wrestling practices would go late. The only
reason I was on the wrestling nam is because I

(42:09):
didn't make the basketball team and the wrestling coach saw
me crying when I saw my name wasn't on the list,
and he said he needed a ninety eight pounder and
I weighed about ninety two pounds in ninth grade. So
I got on the wrestling team. And I wrestled for
four years ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade. And I

(42:29):
got really good at it and it really helped me
because I didn't quit. But I was the only guy
on the wrestling team that was also in drama. And
I was in the Madrigals, which was the top singing
group where we would go to other schools and compete
sing songs in Latin and French and German, and so
I was constantly busy in school, constantly, and I think

(42:51):
part of that too was I didn't want to go home.
Because I went home, I felt a sense of darkness
and I didn't want to see my mom sad.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Okay graduate from high school?

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Then what So I graduated from high school and I
went away. My sister had gone away to up with people.
Do you remember Up with People?

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Absolutely used to be the halftime show with the NFL.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Oh yeah, So my sister she went away to up
with people and I was playing.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Oh, well, well that just doesn't happen by accident. How
did she get up with people?

Speaker 4 (43:25):
So?

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Up with People came to Palm Springs High School, which
is where I graduated from, and she applied and got in.
So she left me her Dodge Demon three on a
tree and on the back was a bumper sticker that
said give Jesus a chance. She got me stoned before
she left, taught me out to smoke beeed, and so

(43:48):
she she leans to go to up with people, and
then Up with People came back to our high school
and I went, man, I got to get out of here.
If I could go away with up with people, that
would be the greatest thing in the world. So they
came into our high school and played I've Never Forgotten
the shows in a big assembly hall a theater in

(44:10):
our Palm Springs High and I went up and I said,
can I apply for Up With People? And all my
friends were like, the stupid man, don't do that, like
all their wrestling friends. They're so lame. So I auditioned
for them, and I've Never Forgotten. I played a song
called Romanza, this Andre Segovia piece that's really sad. It's

(44:30):
a beautiful piece, Romanza, and I played it and they went, man,
you're a really gig guitar player. And then they ended
up giving me a scholarship Up with People. So I
got accepted and I went and I lived in Tucson.
And this is back in nineteen seventy eight. Like most
people have like that started band, like the Rugburns have
like punk credibility. You know, they're listening to television and

(44:53):
CBGB's what's happening. Not me. I was in Eliza Minelly
Barber streisand and Up with p People, Joel Gray and
classical guitar and so Up with People. I go over
there and I auditioned, and I live in Tucson and
I get in casts I think I was in cast
A and we were in the Latin American group. So

(45:15):
we went and lived in Mexico and we would sing
instead of up with people, because the song up with
people goes up up with people you meet and wherever
you go. But ours was biev lahente, and so we
would live with Mexican families and that's where I learned Spanish.
And then we went to Argentina and imagine I was
eighteen years old and I was in the band of

(45:38):
up with people playing guitar and we had like a
full orchestra, French horns, timpany, drums, everything, and that was
where I learned about soundcheck, loading and staying with people
in their houses. We'd have to write them a thank
you note afterwards. And we'd stay with all these different people,
and we traveled around the world and I got out
of up with people, and then I went away to

(45:59):
college University of San Diego, Catholic University, which made my
mom happy because it was Catholic, and I graduated from
there and that was where I started well a little
bit slower, okay.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
So everybody Up with People has a tom No one
continues to stay in.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
The act that no one what.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Okay, let's say I join up with People. Do I
know going in that I have a two year tenure
and then I'm done? Oh can you be in for
ten years?

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Oh, it's a one year tenure. So you go in
and it's like going through boot camp. You learn all
these songs. My fingers that blisters on them. They got
me an ovation guitar around back guitar Glenn Campbell Artists
signed by Glenn Campbell, and I had that Ovation acoustic guitar.
So I go in for a whole year, and Bob,

(46:52):
it's so goofy to say, I think I'm the only
person in the world who has co written a song
with Billy String's Jewel Mojo Nixon and wasn't up with
People and played CBGB's and got to open for the Ramones,
Like it just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Okay, okay, but just staying with up with People for
one second. Up with People didn't have a religious element.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
Did it.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
No?

Speaker 2 (47:16):
It was about kind of building bridges. It was non denomination,
right right, right.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
But the things that are clean and cut have a
reputation under the surface of being the wildest, the most sex,
the most drugs, the mold booze. What was it like
being in up with people?

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Oh my god. So there were all kinds of cast relationships,
like you're told you can't date somebody in it. That's
kind of the reason I wrote the song hand Job
on a Church Bus, Like I have a song called
hand Job on a Church bus. Like there was stuff
going on. There was gay stuff going on and cast
relationships happening. I remember I had a cast girlfriend and

(47:56):
a girl named Kathy McCarty, and we would have to
find places to meet up, to sneak out of our
host families or go in because you always stayed with families.
So I would find out where she lived, and we
didn't have Google maps. It was nineteen seventy eight. I'd
have a street map in Mexico, and I'd at midnight
climb out of the window of my place, find out

(48:18):
what Kathy McCarty was, sneak into the room where she
had a cast mate with her in another bed who
was asleep, and have the most silent sex that was
so forbidden, and the forbidden sex is the best, and
then climb back in the window of somebody's house in Mexico,
wake up in the morning and act like I've been

(48:38):
in sleep, and then surreptitiously walk by her on the
bus the next day and kind of wink and we'd
be laughing at what we pulled off. Yeah, it was crazy.
There was a lot of sex happening.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
What about the University of San Diego? What was your
experience there?

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Now that was really cool because what I did was
I went to gross I'mont College first and I took
classical guitar because they had a classical guitar.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Oh wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait, not everybody knows that.
Tell us a little bit more about that.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Okay. So in San Diego there's a bunch of different
colleges and they have junior colleges, that's what they're called.
So a junior college I went to because Grossmont College
was in La Mesa, and they had a classical guitar
department run by a guy named Miles Moignier. So Miles
was a great classical guitar teacher, and I was in

(49:31):
love with the classical guitar. I was learning box forat
I was doing duet pieces with Miles, so he was playing.
It was nineteen seventy nine at a place in La
Mesa called Porfivore, a Mexican restaurant, and then another restaurant
in Eltahonne, California, and that was called Ela Migo Ballroom.

(49:52):
So Miles went, hey, you're pretty good. I can't always
play well. You sub for me at the gigs. So
here I am nineteen years old playing at elam Ego
Ballroom and at poor Footbore, playing like four nights a week,
classical guitar, four hours a night, five hours a night.
I'd get a break in the middle. They'd feed me

(50:13):
when I got in and feed me again when I left.
I was a growing kid. I'd did two Mexican meals.
I had it made Bob. I was getting twenty five
bucks a night sitting in the corner playing classical guitar pieces.
And then one night I sang a song, and I
sang the song Time in a Bottle by Jim Crochy,

(50:33):
and we were only supposed to play, but I sang
Time in a Bottle and one of the waitresses was
named Brenda. I'll never forget. She was like forty five
years old. She came up to me and she goes, hey,
you can sing. I didn't know you could sing. You
sounded really good. Come outside, you want to smoke a
joint with me? And it was like Steve Martin and
the Jerk. And I went all right. And she was

(50:55):
this tough biker chick. So I smoked a joint with her.
And then she said, my old out of town at
a biker rally in Sturgis. He's got choppers out there.
He's shown him with all his biker friends. Why don't
you come over the house with smoke some more weed
and drink some beer. So I went over to her
house and it was in this area of Elkoholm that
was kind of scary. And she brings me into her house.

(51:18):
One thing leads to another. We end up in their waterbed.
We're having sex. I'm nineteen years old. Also, I hear
this Harley pull up in the driveway. She goes, you
gotta get out of here. You gotta get out of
the window right now. That's my old man. He'll kill you.
And I said, I thought you said he was in Sturges.
She said, he doesn't trust me. I think he came back.

(51:38):
He will kill you. And I remember leaving out of
that window, and one of my shoes was left there.
It was my left shoe, and I ran out and
I never showed up again at that place. I just
quit playing classical guitar in that one restaurant because that
guy was going to be looking for me. And to
this day, So I was in nineteen seventy nine and

(51:59):
she was four five years old. I was nineteen. I
don't know how old she'd be today, but I'm still scared.
When I see a biker come up, I imagine him
coming up with like a voicebox thing in his throat.
I'm going to kill you. I'm ninety.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Okay, how do you segue from community college to University
of San Diego?

Speaker 2 (52:23):
So I went to UH Crossmont College. Then I went
to San Diego State for a year, and I'll never forget.
I was there the day John Lennon died. And at
San Diego State they had these music rooms, and in
those music rooms, you would show them your student card
and they would have Vinyl records and you could go

(52:43):
all alone in a music room and they'd have headphones
and it was amazing. Bob and I'd pull a record
out and I go ros Daman vibrations, re reggae music
that sounds interesting, and I put it on and all said,
I to hear Bob Mark like I'd never heard that.
It was like this whole foreign feat and I got

(53:04):
to listen to as many records as I want. So
I finished that year out there, and then I was
driving around San Diego and I saw University of San Diego,
Catholic University, and it all goes back to my mom.
I wanted to please her. I thought my mom would
like it if I went to USD. It's a Catholic school.
So I applied, got in, and I remember what got

(53:25):
me in was that when you were in up with people,
you're the kind of guy we want.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
So I.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Know, I know, I know, it's just so wrong. And
so I got into the University of San Diego and
I played in the folk mass in church, and that's
where the rugburns started because I knew all the folk
songs because I was in a church choir my whole
life in the Catholic Church. I would sing all those
songs and so I knew them all. Like the Lamb

(53:56):
of God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins
of the world have mercy on us. Lamb of God,
you take away the sins of the world, grand us piece.
But I rewrote that as a punk rock song and
I had to go, Lamb of God, you take away
the sins of the world every day, give them back.

(54:17):
We want them back. Well, you think it's so cool,
you can take them away any time you want. We
got nothing to say, so we rewrote that. And that's
where the rugburn started. Was at USD and the guy
I started with was a guy named Rob Driscoll, and
we did classical guitar duets together, and now the Rugburns
started as classical guitar duets like box Beret and we

(54:39):
would play outside at Balboa Park for passing change. And
then our first gig was at Oh Hungary's where they
had yard long piers and I got really drunk and
broke a yard long pier and rather than pay us,
we had to pay them fifty bucks for the broken
glass that we did. And that was how we got started.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Okay, that's what while you're still going to school, or
really does your career start after you finish school?

Speaker 2 (55:05):
So it started in school. Now I studied political science
with a minor in Spanish, so sometimes I like to
say I knew I wouldn't have a job, but at
least i'd know why. And so there I was. And
I would bring home professors to Palm Springs, all the
way from San Diego for Thanksgiving dinner. I would invite them,

(55:28):
and one of them was a Nixon apologist right wing
professor named doctor Starter, real right wing, and the other
was a San Denista loving socialist named doctor gil Otto.
And doctor Stoddard and doctor Otter Auto would come to
Palm Springs. I would drive them, my professors from University Bob.

(55:48):
I drive them two and a half hours. My mom
would have them over and the professors would get drunk
and try to hit on my sister, just like Elvis
Presley tried to hit on my sister when he Elvis
had me on his shoulders my sister, but these professors
were hitting on my sister. And I would ask them
political questions to try to get them into an argument.
It was like I was. It was almost like I

(56:10):
was Chris Matthews or somebody. I would ask me questions,
what do you think about this? And I'd get them
going at each other. They'd be screaming at each other.
It was really fun. We'd have the best political discussions.
He had a book written on Nixon Ping pong diplomacy,
and gil Otto would talk all about the Sandinistas and
what was going on in Central America. And I found

(56:30):
both sides really riveting and fascinating. And I've always been
a political animal because of that.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Okay, you graduate from college, do you ever think about
getting a street job.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Yes, So I got out of college, and the day
I got out of college, they had, you know how,
they would have job boards where they put all the jobs.
USD had that, and I was on the Speakers committee
at USD, so we would bring in speakers. You remember
John Anderson ran for president. He was the guy that
was kind of into no taxes. We got to bring

(57:05):
John Anderson in to talk. And then one day a
senator came in, and I was on the speakers committee.
I got to have dinner with him. And it was
a senator named Joe Biden. And so Joe Biden came in,
I have dinner with him, and it was at that
moment I went, oh, my god, this guy is going
to be president. Of course, this is back in nineteen

(57:27):
eighty three or eighty four. And I remember he looked
like Charles Groden, and I always loved Charles Groden and
the stuff he did with Goldie Hahn and Joe Biden
was just so charming and so fun to have dinner with.
And I went, I would quit everything and go work
on this guy's career. Little did I know he would

(57:48):
be president so many years later when he was old.
But back in the day, that guy was sharp and
he was so charming, and it was really neat to
say that I had dinner with Joe Biden. Got out
of USD. I graduated, had really good grades, and I
applied for a job at a plastics factory because my

(58:08):
parents used to always go to me plastics, plastics, just
like in the graduate and so I thought my mom
would be happy if I got this job. Honestly, Bob,
the theme I'm finding out you're like a great shrink.
You asked really good questions, and I'm going to reiterate
this long time. I love you like I always have.

(58:31):
I love your letter. I love what you write, and
you've taught me a lot of just being yourself. That's
all you can be. I'm apologetically you. And so the
theme of this is I wanted to please my mom
and get a real job, even though I wanted to
just play music. So the night before the interview for
my job, there was this girl that lived at the

(58:52):
beach right by me named Kiara Talini, beautiful Italian girl,
and she was in her room and I was walking
down by the beach and she was with Elizabeth, her roommate,
and she said, hey, Steve, I've you ever eating magic mushrooms?
And I said no, but I want to. So she said,
we just got some and I said, well, I got
an interview at eight am. I had a plastics factory.

(59:15):
And she said, oh, they'll be worn off by them.
So it was midnight and I ate these magic mushrooms.
It didn't kick in. It had been an hour. It
was one in the morning, so I said, give me more.
They gave me more, and it kicked in at about
two am. And when it kicked in, I was out
with my fucking mind. I took a can of spray

(59:38):
paint out and started spray painting the wall of my house.
I had Elizabeth and Kiara with me. I said, let's
all three of us get in the bathtub and get
a dozen eggs, and we took off our clothes, were
in our underwear, and then they broke eggs over my head.
And I remember this feeling so free and so good.
And next thing I knew, my roommate came in and said, dude,

(01:00:00):
I got to take you to your job interview. It
was seven. I had egg in my hair and I
bought an old suit at a thrift store. I duct
taped up the pants and I went in for a
job interview. I was tripping balls on shrooms and this guy,
Tom Plane sits behind this desk and he was a
Wharton graduate from University of Pennsylvania, and he said, tell

(01:00:21):
me why I should hire you, dude, this is why
mushrooms were so cool back then. It was like I
became Tony Robbins or Stephen Covey the Seven Habits of
highly effective people. I sat down and told him why
he needed to hire me at his plastics factory because
he had a product called slip Fix that could repair
PBC pipe. And I said, let me tell you why

(01:00:41):
you need to hire me. I'm going to get a
truck and a barbecue, and I'm going to go out
where the contractors go and I'm going to make them
hot dogs, and he goes hot dogs and I said, yeah,
I'm gonna call it slip fis and dogs, and I
will sell more than you've ever expected in your life. Dude.
This guy's mind was blown. And then he took out
a piece of paper and he wrote seventeen point five

(01:01:03):
and that was his offer for a salary for me,
and he slid it across the table and I didn't
know what it meant. So I crossed that ou out
and I wrote fourteen point two. He goes, what do
you mean that's less than I'm offering you? And I
didn't even break a beat and I said, why would
I want more when I could have less? And he

(01:01:24):
said what do you mean? I said, I want back
in deals, Tom, And I said, I know I'm going
to sell a lot. I need a company car. I
need a percentage of sales. And he said, I like
your style. He hired me right there. He said, you
can take the company on a car home. In my mind,
I'm like, I'm tripping balls on trims. Let me pick
it up on Monday. So I got the job. He

(01:01:45):
gives me the job. I worked there for three years,
went to sales conferences, everything I would tell people I
wasn't up with people to try to get them to
trust me. And after three years, I read a book
called The Edge by William Somerset Mom and Mom is
spelled im a Uga Champ, great author. That book changed

(01:02:08):
my life because the protagonist in the story was a
guy named Larry Daryl, and he wants to just go
bum around Europe, and that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to play my guitar on the streets. So
I went into my boss's office. I said I need
some time on He said how much time do you need?
A week? Two weeks? I want to go to Europe
and he says I said to him, I need nine

(01:02:31):
months and he looked at me like I was crazy.
He said why, I said, because I want to play
my guitar on the streets. And he goes for passing change.
I said yeah, and he said like a bum and
I go yeah, like a bum And he said, you
know what, I'm going to give you nine months off,
but you have to shake my hand and promised me
you'll come back and work for me after nine months.
And I said, I'm a man of my word. I
will do that. He gave me. Nine months off, I

(01:02:53):
went to Europe. I played guitar on the streets. I'd
already been in the Rugburns, started the Rugburns, but I
wanted to be a street musician. Nine months I went
all around Ireland. I hitchhiked, rode a bicycle, played in
front of the Loop in Paris. I played in Amsterdam.
Then I want to see what it'd be like to
busk in Morocco, so I went to Africa. Busked in Morocco,

(01:03:13):
went to Lisbon, Portugal, Bartholona, Spain, everywhere, ended up in England,
and then went up to Sweden Norway. Met beautiful people
and I would play guitar on the streets. Lived in Amsterdam.
And after nine months I came back and my hair
was long. He made me cut it, and he hired
me back, and I did it for three more years. Well.

(01:03:35):
I played at nights and then I said I've got
to quit now. And I'm still friends with that guy
Tom Play. I just stayed at his beachfront palace in
San Diego. He has like a ten million dollar house
right on the beach, and he's still a dear friend
of mine. And he laughed so hard because he comes
to my shows and sees the crazy shit I say
on stage, and I always make him stand up and

(01:03:57):
take a bow. Changed my life.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Oh okay, Yeah, that whole tripping sales pitch. Did you
live up to it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Oh? I was really good. It was bizarre. I don't
even I could go in there and I could sell
anything to anyone because I would just become their friend
and then take them out to dinner and they'd start
getting orders coming in. So yeah, I made him a
lot of money, and that's why he kept me on.
But I knew my life wasn't as a nipple salesman.

(01:04:26):
I sold nipples, is what it was. PVC nipple is
a piece of pipe that's threaded. And I said, when
I'm eighty years old and I'm on my deathbed, do
I want to look back on my life and go, hey,
you were a great nipple salesman. Or do I want
to say you didn't whist out and you followed your
heart and you lived your dream, which was to play music,

(01:04:49):
make cassettes. The rug Burns we had cassette release parties.
You know, would we would have this whole scene we
created because I always believed rather than play in a
bar without our has a scene like the Chasmon in
San Diego or something. Find a bar that's your own.
And that's what I told Jewel as well. Find a bar,

(01:05:09):
create your own scene, and people will come to you,
kind of like you. You started your lefts Its letter,
you were mimiographing that shit.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
You.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
I mean, I knew of you back when I was
signed by Danny Goldberg back in those days, and you
would have the lefts Its Letter and then you just
went digital. You've always gone with the thing, and you
created your own thing. And there's nothing better than home cooking.
That's why when I read a biography of Steve Jobs

(01:05:39):
or Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, I relate, or Phil
Knight even I relate to all those guys because they
were singular, purpose driven. It's not about how rich you are,
what you have, or if somebody has more people than
you and they're playing to a stadium. No, what it's
about is were you in the flow? How did you

(01:06:00):
live your life? Were you in the flow? Did you
find something that you had to do because I have
to do this, like I have to play shows. I
will play shows till I die.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Okay, go back for three years after being in Europe,
you quit. Tell me about quitting. Do you say, well,
I have enough money in the bank. What was the
plan when you quit? And what actually happened?

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
So he gave me a forty thousand dollars payout, and
I remember I called my friend Jerry and Boseman Montanae.
I said, I just got forty thousand dollars and it
was nineteen ninety two, and he said to me, You're
never going to get that much money again. Put it

(01:06:52):
in the bank, don't touch it. You'll never get that again.
So I put it in the bank. Everybody in San
Diego was getting record deals, right. It was at the
time when things were just starting to happen Rocket from
the Crypt, Rust, Blink Inch a Miniature. There was this

(01:07:16):
whole punk scene happening, and so the Rugburns. I became
really good friends with Mojo Nixon and the Beat Farmers.
Those guys were kind of my teachers. So I said
to myself, I gotta go out and keep playing music.
So this guy who was in the Beat Farmers, his
name was Buddy Blue. He's now deceased, but he was

(01:07:36):
also a writer for the San Diego Reader and for
the Union Tribune, and he was in the Beat Farmers.
Buddy Blue got me signed to Bizarre Planet Records and Bizarre.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Oh okay, okay, wait wait I yeah, wait, Wait a second.
I knew Herb and his brother, but there were stories
onto themselves. How do you get hooked up with Herb cold?
I know?

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
Is this crazy? So what happened is Buddy Blue was
signed to Bizarre and so he brought them in to
see me, Herb Cohen and said, you got to see
this guy. He's in this duo. We were a duo Rugburts,
Me and Rob Driscoll, and he came to see us,
immediately signed us and said you need to come up

(01:08:19):
to La meet Mutt Cohen, and I want you to
do an ePK. They used to do epk's back then,
electronic press kits where they would send them out on
a video cassette. And my ePK was me with Wildman
Fisher because Wildman Fisher was on Bizarre and wild Mount
Fisher would walk around and for those of you listen

(01:08:40):
out there, wild Mount Fisher was signed by Zappa and
he was this guy you would go.

Speaker 4 (01:08:43):
My name is Larry.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
I have a sister, and we have this whole thing
where he would go up to people who's a better songwriter,
Steve Poltzer, Wildman Fisher and wild Mattfisher would have crumbs
in his beard and just crazy stuff. So we make
this electronic press kit the rugber Get signed. Next thing
I know, we're playing at like the True Badoura in
La and Club Lingerie and all these different places, and

(01:09:09):
so weird Al would always come out to see us,
and so weird Al loved a song by the Rugburns
called Dix Automotive. Because of Dick's automotive, weird Aal wrote
the song Albuquerque, which is one of his songs he wrote,
but it's a direct takeoff of the Rugburns, but he
didn't credit us. I kind of wish he would have,
but it's okay. He wrote Albuquerque. If you ab di'x

(01:09:31):
automotive and Albuquerque he's doing. He would always he was
obsessed with that song, would come in and listen to.
John was living in Ocean Beach, California with his girlfriend
Juliet's where I'm talking really rapid, and so we get
signed herb Cohen for whatever reason, loves me. He flew
He would fly me to Paris with him to meet
this guy named Ben Waugh who worked at Monterey Jazz

(01:09:55):
Fest and stuff. And Herb Cohen was this insane guy
who used to to run guns with Fidel Castro. He
signed Lenny Bruce, Alice Cooper, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Waits. I
mean his history is crazy. They on the publishing on
Everybody's talking at me. Fred Neil saw on that Harry
Niels would say, so, Herb Cohen would fly me to

(01:10:16):
Paris out of the blue and go, I know a
great place where we can get couscous on Saturdays. Are
you in? And he would buy me and him tickets
first class, probably charge it to me, and then he'd
pay like three hundred dollars cab. Right, we'd end up
in some nondescript Moroccan neighborhood in Paris eating couscous with
Ben Law. I mean, being signed by Herb Cohen was

(01:10:40):
like a blessing. Even though he took half the publishing.
I didn't even care. And he would show up at
my gigs and Herb would go because Herb if put
anybody out there listening. He was on the cover of
Nighthawks at the diner with Tom Waits, he's the guy
sitting in that picture, and Herb Cohen would go, you
need to get midgets on the stage with you, and

(01:11:01):
don't drink whiskey. Put iced t in the whiskey bottle.
So we get signed to that label and this guy
Mike Haller and ninety one X starts playing a song
called Hitchhiker Joe and the song starts kind of getting
college radio favorite type stuff. So we end up going
on tour with the band X and I'd split my

(01:11:23):
head open. I had fifty six stitches in my skull
and we would play with X and John Doe and
then we got to play with the Ramones and Cleveland,
and it was just nuts because Joey Ramone was really
nice to me. They didn't let bands stay backstage when
they would be on, but Joey went, you guys are cool,
you could watch us play. But everything changed when Mojo

(01:11:45):
Nixon took me out, because Mojo was insane, and we
would play stashes in Columbus, Ohio, and a biker would
show up and you'd go come down to the basement.
I just made some crystal meth in the desert in
Baker's Field, and Mojo was like Saddam Hussein, and he
would have me try his drugs to make sure they

(01:12:06):
weren't poisonous first before he did them. So you go
have Bolts try that drug. And so I would snort
the meth and then we would be out of our
minds and the Rugburanns would go on stage and just
destroy shit, get the power turned off on us. And
Mojo came up with this quote, no mom meth, but Bolts, y'all.
Motherfucker is gonna make me work too hard. And so

(01:12:28):
we became super close with him. And so the only
couple times I'd done meth where with Shane McGowan of
the Pogues and with Mojo Nixon and think I'm the
only guy that sat on Elvis Presley's shoulders and snorted
meth out of Shane McGowan's dirty thumbnail, and then with
Mojo Nixon's drug taster. And so our shows just became

(01:12:49):
nuts where we would just anything would go on stage,
and the Rugburnds toured hard.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
It was crazy, okay, continue So.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
As we were going on the road, we had this
drummer in the band. We became a full band, and
we went from being a duo. Herb Cohen thought we
should get a drummer and a bass player, and so
I would go up to La a Lot to Herb
and Mutt's office and they also have a son, Evan
Con and I would hang out with Herb and Mutt

(01:13:21):
in their office all the time, and Herb would go,
I know a great place that makes a great oxtail soup.
We're going to go over there. And we would go
to Musso and Franks and just hang out, Me and
Herb Cohen. It was crazy. So they would give us
money to go out on the road. We toured NonStop.
We would go for like nine months at a time.

(01:13:42):
And we had this old van and most band members
when they're in a van, they put band stickers on it,
you know it's a band. But I came up with
this idea because fans are always getting broken into tint
out the windows black and on the side, just put
Saint Joseph's Catholics had that on the back and on
the sides.

Speaker 4 (01:14:03):
Nobody ever broke into our van, never, So we.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Would just drive down the road in this van and
it says Saint Justine's Catholic school. I remember one time
we were in West Virginia and we got pulled over.
But if you really inspected the van, on the roof,
we had all these naked lady playing cards, you know
where they used to sell those at truck stops where
the girls would have big boobs and they'd be a
deck of fifty two cards. We had them glued to

(01:14:29):
the ceiling of the van, and my hair was like
long and striped, weird. And we had this record out
called Morning Wood. It was on bizarre and then we
had Mommy, I'm sorry, this other one where I'd be
in a pink dress. And so this state trooper pulled
us over when we were in the rugbords and he
starts looking at us and looking at our hair, and

(01:14:50):
he goes, what is Saint Justsephe's Catholic school? I said,
And I remember I said to him, I'm just singing
for the Lord, sir. And then he saw make a
lady playing cards and he didn't know what was going on.
Just get out of the van. He looked at the
van and he didn't know what to do. And this
is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me. He goes,
you can go and he goes here, maybe you need these,

(01:15:11):
and he gave me some handcuffs with a key, like
real cop handcuffs. He gave me them, Bob, and I
remember I would pull them out on stage and a
big part of my show would be I'd handcuff myself
to the drum kit and I put the key somewhere
and I'd fake like I lost it, like I was
going to be chained to the floor of the whole show.

(01:15:33):
So then we played in a Chicago at a club
called shubas Southport and Belmont. There was a girl that
was beautiful named Anastasia who was the booking agent. Now
she's a big part of my life because she went
to UCLA and I took her to a place called
mccabs in Santa Monica to see a guy named Loud

(01:15:54):
and Wayne right the third And I remember when I
was with her at that show, I watched Luden Wayne Wright,
and that's when I saw my future. So what I
mean is I'm watching Laden Wayne Write play on stage
at mccabs and I was in the rugburns and I
have my arm around Anastasia and I looked at her.

(01:16:14):
I've never forgotten this and I said I can do that,
and she goes, what do you mean? I said, what
he's doing, I can do that. I'm in the Rugburns
right now wearing a dress on stage. But that's my future.
I don't mean I can be him. I mean I
can do what he's doing and I can make a living.
Everything came before I saw everything my future. And then

(01:16:37):
Anastasia got a job as the booking agent moved out
to Chicago. I remember I showed up sorrow. I had
just gotten the handcuffs, and I said, why don't you
meet me anywhere in Europe this summer. Let's take two
weeks and go make love on the beaches somewhere. And
we opened up the Let's Go Europe book. This is
pre internet, and I said, wherever my finger touches on

(01:16:57):
the page, you're going to meet me there. In October.
It was a place called Making Use and Greece. She
showed up and I brought the handcuffs, and I was
with my friend Kevin McGrath, who I wrote I want
all my friends to be happy about. He died of
cancer and he came out to run the Athens Marathon.

(01:17:18):
I brought the handcuffs Bob and Tom Petty had just
come out with free Fall, and so we were walking
on the down the streets and Greece and making us
singing She's a good girl, loves her mama, drinking shots
of Luzo, but me and Anastasia are fake drinking the
shots because we had no money, so we were all
sharing a room. I wanted to have sex with Anastasia,

(01:17:39):
but Kevin was going to be in the room, so
I needed to get him drunk enough where he was
passed out because I wanted to use the handcuffs on Anastasia.

Speaker 5 (01:17:47):
So we're walking on the streets going She's bat and
I'm a bad boy living in Mezieda, and then he's
getting the chorus.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
I'm free free falling. So we go back to the room,
Kevin asses out, Anastasia goes. I brought over some sexy
lainger aim and to go in the bathroom and change
into it. So I got totally naked and I handcuffed
myself to the ceiling fan, and then the ceiling fan
was kind of going slow, so I was like a

(01:18:15):
rotisserie chicken. But I almost looked like an egon ChIL
painting because I was real skinny, my fingers are real long,
and I'm hanging from the ceiling fan twirling around real slow,
and Kevin's asleep and I'm nude. Anastasia walks out in
some sexy lingerie and she sees me, and she goes,
you're a bad boy. And then all of a sudden,

(01:18:36):
Kevin sits up like a mummy.

Speaker 5 (01:18:37):
And goes living in Resida, and he was awake the
whole time. I'd seen everything. So this is the kind
of shit. This is why I do this line of work.
For the handcuffs, for the love, and for the music
and all of that stuff. To have been able to
have been signed to Bizarre Planet Records after being on

(01:18:58):
up with people, I mean, come on, it's a great life.
We get to live here, Bob.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
So how did it end with Herb?

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
What happened was Herb I would go up and see
in La and then I met this girl named Jewel,
and Jewel was working at a place called Java Joe's,
and that was in Poway, California. So I would come
off of the road with the rugburns and I'd gotten
in a fistfight with our drummer and I had a
big old black eye and I had taught Joe's strummer

(01:19:29):
from the class how to play black jacket. Vegas got
to see him play at the joint. He was with
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros and I walk in I
got a black eye, and I show up at this place,
Java Joe's, and there's this blonde girl and she's beautiful
and she says, oh, I like the Rugburns. How can
I get a following like the Rugburns? And she was

(01:19:51):
making me some tea. It was midnight. They would run
an illegal poker game in the back of Java Joe's.
And I said, well, you should find your own place
and that that doesn't have a music scene and make
it your own. I'm a big believer and create your
own scene. And so Jewel says, you want to hear
some of my songs and I said sure. So she
takes me out to her Volkswagen van. She was living

(01:20:11):
in it in the back of Java Jo's and Powie
and we made stained glass art and then we fell
in love and we would go surfing together and we
found a place for her to play. And so at
the time I was still signed with the Rugburns. And
then Jewel and myself. We ended up in Mexico surfing

(01:20:33):
and we ended up on a drug bust with all
these cops and the pictures are online where there was
tons of weed and we end up on this drug bust.
We take pictures with her arms around these cops. And
that's when I went back and we wrote this song
called you Were Meant for Me in the room, which
meant nothing to me at the time. Little did I
know it was like writing a winning lottery ticket. So

(01:20:56):
we write this song you Were Meant for Me. Come
back to the United States from Mexico. We go out
for six year old tacos.

Speaker 4 (01:21:04):
Wh whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
What happened with the drug bust?

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
Oh? So we're out. We break into a hotel room
in a place called Bahia. They San Luis Gonzaga, and
I'm with Jewel and she wants to go well watching.
So nobody's in the hotel, so we kick open one
of the doors. We fall asleep in a king sized
bed with Mexican blankets. We wake up and the sun's
coming up and I look out the window and Jewel goes,

(01:21:29):
oh my god, this is beautiful. So we go out
on the beach and she says, we got to get
a boat, and none of us had any money. So
we're sitting on the beach and Jewels in a yellow bikini.
She looks beautiful, and these four Mexican federales come down
the beach with guns in their belts and they walk
up to us. It's like something out of a Clint
Eastwood film and you can see the heat rising off

(01:21:51):
the sand and they say, would you guys like to
go watching? So I said no because I was scared
to go out on a boat with them, but Jewel
said yes, so I had to go. So we go
out on the middle of the water the Bahia. They
sent the weeds Gonzaga and these guys have automatic weapons.
They're just looking at Jewel in this yellow bikini. I

(01:22:13):
think they're gonna kill me, throw me overboard. It's like
a Cone Brothers Blood Simple or something. And so instead
they get a call on their radio and they say, hey,
we have to go catch these drug smugglers and we
don't have time to take you back to shore and
put on these bulletproof vests. So we put on the vests.
My heart's found it, so fast. The boat goes to

(01:22:33):
this little island. It's like Miami Vice. You see these
drug smugglers running. They caught the slowest one. He tells
them where all the weed is. So the cops make
me go to this boat and carry all the weed
back to the boat and they give those guys those
plastic ties around their wrists. They have like six drug smugglers.
And we get on the boat with the drug smugglers

(01:22:54):
who look at me like I'm stealing their weed, and
they're like they want to kill me and the cops there.
So we go back to the shore and we get
out and I said, well, we're going to get going.
I I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
And I said, what are you guys going to do?
And they said, this is the largest drug bust we've
had in years in this area. We're going to have
a party. And so we go to walk away and

(01:23:17):
the cock goes stay by Bena key, which means Steve
come here. And I said what he said, I want
you to take some And this is back in like
nineteen ninety two, right, maybe ninety four, I think, And
he opens up a switchblade and he stabs one of
the kilos of this Mexican dirt, and you can smell
the skunk smell coming up through my nostrils, and he says,

(01:23:38):
take some. So I'm trying to figure out what less
than announces, and I stick my long, bony fingers in
to grab the weed out, and as I do, he says,
take the whole kilo jewel, digs her fingernails into my
arm and goes, Steve, don't do it. You're gonna end
up in jail. It's going to be like Midnight Express.
I'll be talking to you from me on a glass wall.
And then I just said, a man with the badge

(01:24:00):
in Mexico is telling me to take the jewel, and
they pulled their guns out, and I took the whole kilo,
and they said, let's take a picture. So if you
look and type in Jewel drug Bust photos, you'll see
us and all this weed shoved into a black suburban.
Behind us. We're holding Corona beers or some kind of beer,
and we have guns in our hands, and the cops

(01:24:21):
are next to us in Mexico. And these pictures I
think made High Times magazine, and my parents were so proud.
So we went back to the room after the drug bust,
and I gave the kilo to this old woman who
was making some spaghetti sauce for a Mormon youth group,
and she poured the whole kilo into the spaghetti sauce

(01:24:42):
fed the youth group. And I woke up at midnight
and all these Mormon missionary kids were like playing frisbee
and stuff. And I came back, got in bed with Jewel,
woke up in the morning and I grabbed the guitar,
and Jewel goes, do the thing where you make up
a song, So I start doing the riff you were
meant for me. Little do I know this song's gonna
sell millions and millions of records, like ten million. Who

(01:25:04):
knows set a record on the Billboard Top one on
your chart. I have no idea I'm writing something that's
gonna pay me the rest of my life. And so
we write the song, but then we write a second
song called food Stamp Love, and I go, this is
the hit you were meant for me sucks. Food Stamp
Love's cool, and the whole chorus was I'm sick of

(01:25:24):
your Foodstamp Love about a lever who doles out food
do you like, it's a government assistance program, and Jewel goes,
I'll never forget jewels. She was like, I think you
were meant for me as the hit, not Foodstamp Love.
And we're driving back to get to San Diego, and
you were meant for me flies out of the window.
We didn't have iPhones back then. It was on like napkins.

(01:25:45):
It was written and it flew out, and I go,
it's okay, we got food Stamp Love and Jewel goes.

Speaker 4 (01:25:51):
You gotta go back and get you were meant for me.

Speaker 2 (01:25:53):
Those words were cool, please Si. We got in an argument.
I made a U turn. I drove back. You were
meant for me the winning lottery ticket that was on
the freaking ground. And then we drove across the border
and we go to a Mexican place called La Posta
on University Avenue where drug dealers and prostitutes would hang

(01:26:13):
out and it's the only place that was opened late
at night, and you would get a bean and cheese
burrito and six year old tacos with guacamole. Stick the
Crispy World taco with the shredded beef inside, stick it
in the bean burrito and then bite that for the crunchiness. Boh,
it's sublime with the guacamole a on top of the
six year old tacos for like a dollar ninety nine.

(01:26:35):
So we're sitting out there, me and Jewel and there's
four prostitutes and they say, what do you guys hippies?
And we go yeah, and they said you sing songs
and I go yeah. They go, sing us a song.
I go, we just wrote a song called you Were
Meant for Me. You want to hear it now if
you look at Timespace Continuum. Nobody'd ever heard that song
but me and Jewel and now four hookers. So we

(01:26:56):
sing it for the four hookers. I go, tell us
who should sing the song? So I sang it first,
and then Jewel sang it, and then they clapped for
both of us, and they said we're going to go
over here and deliberate and we'll let you know. We'll
come back tell you should sing it. And it was
a quick verdict, which is never good. Off they came
back and the lead prostitute, I said, have you reached

(01:27:18):
a decision and she said yes, we have your honor,
and I said, please let us know, and they looked
at Jewel and they said, honey, you sing that that
white boy can't sing. You do the song. And that's
that was our an R department. And then Jewel ended
up getting signed to Atlantic Records by the same guy
you signed me, Danny Goldberg, because he was the Atlantic
back then he was the president of the ACLU. He

(01:27:40):
would switch things. He was married to Rosemary Carol, you know,
who had been married to Jim Carroll, and Rosemary was
Nirvana's lawyer. And so Jewel gets signed and everybody's going,
you were met from me, this is the hit, and
I was like, what about food stamp love?

Speaker 5 (01:27:58):
No like fuck you?

Speaker 4 (01:28:00):
That song means nothing, and I remember being really hurt.

Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
And then Neil Young came to see Jewel play at
the Interchange, which was the scene she created because we
found it and it would get so packed. Neil Young
came all the way down at San Diego would record
her outside of it, and then asked if we would
come live at his ranch to make his record. So
me and Jewel move up to Elliott Roberts Place that

(01:28:24):
was on Neil Young's property because Elliott was going through
a divorce and wasn't there, so we lived on Neil
Young's Ranch and the Stray Gators were the band, and
I got to beat the guitarist. The drummer was Kenneth Butchery,
who was the drummer on Rainy Dame Women number twelve
and thirty eight. I think that's the numbers from the
Bob Dylan song.

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
I never thirty five, but that's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:28:43):
Thirty five right, yeah, thank you? And so I remember
I walked in, I saw Kenneth Buncher. I go, Kenneth Butchery,
you're the guy that did that beat. Will you do it? Bob?
This is one of my favorite moments in life. He
looked at me and goes, young Man, Yes I will,
and he went and I was in heaven. The bass

(01:29:05):
player was Tim Drummond. He was so good. It was
produced by the guy that was in Neil Young's band,
Ben Keith, who also played pedal steel guitar on Patsy
Klein's Crazy. We had the coolest band and I got
to play guitar, so we did. You were meant for me.
We lived at Neil Young's ranch and Ben Keith and
Neil Young couldn't believe how much food I could eat

(01:29:27):
because I'm so skinny, but I was always hungry from
the Rugburns days. So Neil Young had his own personal
chef who he called Cookie, and they would weigh me
before breakfast and after breakfast because they said they'd never
seen anybody eat so much. I was like a snake
with apossum and his stomach, and so he would Neil
Young would.

Speaker 4 (01:29:48):
Go, that was a four and a half pounder.

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
So then we'd go into the studio and we recorded
You Were Meant for Me, and Atlantic stuck with that record,
and the version of You Were Me for Me didn't
do a lot early, and they got it redone by
some other guy who was a famous producer, Peter Collins
or something. He redid it and they got Flee to

(01:30:14):
play bass on it, and so they they did you
Were Meant for Me again, and at first they had
Sean Penn direct the video, and Sean Penn had stolen
jewel from me and so he directed the video. So
I was glad when the video failed because then they
redid it and I was the guy in the video
with jewel and I'm not wearing a shirt, and that

(01:30:36):
version went really big and Flee played bass on it,
and so it was pretty cool. Because I got to
see Flee when we played Woodstock ninety nine and Fleega
was about to go on stage naked, and I remember
he didn't even have a sock over as Dick. And
I remember talking to Flee and I had smoked some
fog hat weed because Jewel bought fog hats sold tour bus,

(01:30:56):
and I was so stoned, and I remember just looking
at Flee's Dick and you should not be named Flee
because that thing's big and he's a little guy, and
he's jumping around on stage at Woodstock ninety nine is
Dick's flopping around. And I remember before he went on,
he was like, did you like the bass part? I
laid on you were meant for Me? And when we
played the riots calmed down. There was like all these

(01:31:18):
limp biscuit dudes out there. Nobody was rioting because we
were singing you were Meant for Me, and everybody was
at peace at that moment, and Juel End had to
set on who Will Save Your Soul? And Elvis Costello
went on before us. He had warned us it was
getting crazy, and then we got off stage, and then
the Chili Peppers were the final band, and you could
hear what.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
Give it to your mom?

Speaker 2 (01:31:39):
On fleas Dick's flapping around and people are setting porta
potties on fire and everything. But when we played, I
got to tell you, Bob, there was peace at Woodstock
ninety nine.

Speaker 1 (01:31:49):
Okay, Slower, did she already have to deal with Atlantic
when you went to Neil Young's ranch? Or was it
the work you did there that got you the deal?

Speaker 2 (01:32:00):
She already had the deal. She got the deal already.
She got signed out of the interchange, and Tommy Mottola
was coming down. He bought her a guitar from Sony Records.
There was all these There was a bidding war, and
I remember we met am at Erdigend. Then he had
this cane and it was amazing to meet him. And

(01:32:26):
then Danny won the bidding war. Jewel got signed and
Neil Young had already heard of her, So Neil Young said,
why don't you come open for me at Madison Square Garden.
I think it was like a couple of nights sold out.
So he flies Jewel in to open for Neil Young
at Madison Square Garden before her record's out. Nobody really

(01:32:49):
knows who she is. And he comes backstage and he goes,
how you doing, Jewel, She's not too good and Neil
Young why not? And she goes come about to open
for Neil Young at Madison Square Garden and it's sold out,
and Neil Young goes, ah, it's just another hash house
on the road to success. Show them no respect, which

(01:33:13):
I think to this day is the best advice. And
uh so, then the record Jewel goes out and she
would open. I was with her. She would open for
Peter Murphy and there'd be all these goth fans there
and Jewel would come out barefoot and go, Hi, I
just want you guys to know I believe in angels.
And I would think I'd be standing side stage going,
don't say that these are goth people. But to Jewel's credit,

(01:33:36):
she was true to herself and it worked and she
would win over these goth crowds. Then next thing, you know,
the songs gets legs and it starts breaking all these records,
and I am now checks were coming in and I
was using my mom and dad's address and checks would
be like one hundred and thirty thousand dollars and my
dad would call me up and go, this must be

(01:33:57):
a mistake. I'll put it in my account how much
faith he in me?

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):
Just so I got it straight. Sean Penn stole Jewel,
but then she came back to you.

Speaker 2 (01:34:16):
Well we did. We did that show in La I
think it was the Leno Show, Jay Leno Show, and
Jewel was opening for Liz Fair at the will Turn
and so she would have me come out and we
would play some songs and by the I still love Jewels.

(01:34:39):
She's like one of my best friends. Like, that's the
coolest thing. Is our relationship so fun? So we did
the Jay Leno Show and that was I think Michael
Caine was on it, and I remember I was backstage
and I asked Michael Caine to make an outgoing message
on my answering machine. We were getting our makeup and
on the same time, and I had a flip phone,

(01:35:03):
you know before we had iPhones, and I said, will
you make my outgoing message of Michael King goes sure,
and when it beats, he goes, hello, this is Michael Caine.
Steve's nodding. They'll call you when he's recovered. It was
so cool. Off the top of his said, So we
do the show and then Sean Penn came to the
Liz Fair Show and Liz Ferrer was playing I'm a

(01:35:25):
huge fan of Liz Fair, Exile and Guieville and all
that stuff. And then he invited us over to his
trailer in Malibu because his house burnt down where he
lived with Madonna, and so that house burnt down, and
then I think he and Robin Wright had broken up
or something. So he invited us to his trailer. And

(01:35:45):
so we go to Sean Penn's trailer and Malibu overlooking
the water, and I remember he had a broken nose
and we were smoking weed. Jewel didn't smoke, she didn't drink.
Me and Sean were smoking weed and he was playing
me tapes that do you remember Dave Baerwald, David and David,
that band.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
I know Dave Bearwald.

Speaker 2 (01:36:05):
Well, yeah, so Dave Barwald had given Sean these tapes
he got from the CIA of bombings going on. Sean.
I remember I was talking about everything. Sean knows a
lot of stuff, like I love Sean Penn. But I
remember I was so stoned and I went and took
a piss and Sean was pissing next to me, and
I remember I looked at his Dick for some reason

(01:36:27):
because we were pissing side by side. I remember thinking,
holy shit, he's gonna steal Jewel. I saw the future.
I'm really good at seeing things. And I remember then
she was in New York and I called her room
and Sean Penn was in the room and answered the phone.
I remember I go Sean and he goes Steve, and
that was it. I was sad for a while. And

(01:36:49):
then she flew to con Film Festival with Jack Nicholson
and Sean Penn, but then they didn't last and then
Jewel redid you were met from. Peter Collins was the producer,
and redid it because they thought I could be a hit.
And then Flee played bass on it and they kept
my guitar part, and then Jewel asked me to be

(01:37:10):
in the video, so I was like that. That was
when MTV was huge. So I was the shirtless guy
in the video and we were like the remote host
of the MTV Music Awards. And me and Jewel lived
in wind and Sea Beach and La Joya, and they
had all these MTV crew there and they go, let's
cut the Jewel Saint with Steve Poltz and La Joya
and we would talk about the Music Awards, and that

(01:37:32):
video was everywhere, and I was for a while known
as the dude in the Jewel video and people would
see me, go, that's the dude from the Jewel video.
Like bikers and shit would come up and want me
to sign their old ladies breasts and stuff. I was
always scared it was gonna be the biker that was
gonna kill me. I had slept with this old lady
when he was at Sturgis. But uh, yeah, it was

(01:37:53):
crazy all that stuff that happened.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
Okay, once, once Sean stole Jewel, it was never a romance.
We knew and Jewel again.

Speaker 2 (01:38:01):
No, then we were just buddies. Actually got closer. We
just got super close, you know, like at first you
go through a heartbreak and I was really sad, and
then I just thought, you know what, you get over it.
And I love her so much and she's such a
good friend of mine and she's so creative. To this day,

(01:38:22):
we're just super close. So but Sean did steal her
from me.

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
I s okay, let's go back to you were meant
for me. It sounds like you wrote it, but it's
credited to you and Jewel.

Speaker 2 (01:38:36):
Oh no, we co wrote it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:39):
Okay, so you co wrote it? Do you own fifty
percent of the song?

Speaker 2 (01:38:43):
Yeah. I could have never written it without her, like
I could have never written with it. I would have
never said you were met from her.

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
Okay, just just aligning the stories. Yeah, okay, So there's
one hundred cents in the U in a dollar. Was
your deal with publishing? Deal with her Cohen already over?
How come he didn't get half the publishing?

Speaker 2 (01:39:03):
Oh yeah, he got money too. Yeah, herb got a
lot of money, and Bob Duffy and Evan Cohen and
Mutt Cohen. I don't even know how it works. I've
never you know, I've never cared enough because I always
had I was always making money. All I cared about
was playing shows. So I was never the kind of
guy who was nikelaing diming stuff. I mean, I probably

(01:39:27):
had a bad deal because I signed it on the
hood of a Cadillac outside Molly Malone's in la and
I was like, you'll give me two thousand bucks cash
right now if I signed half my publishing away, Because
that was how those guys worked back in those days.
So yeah, they probably owned part of it. I've never
analyzed it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:47):
So at this point in time, is there still reasonable
income from you where men for me?

Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
Yeah? You know what's weird? I still get checks. It's bizarre,
like it's not huge, but it it makes me money.
And it's pretty cool because it still comes in and
I'm waiting for it to be used in some movie
one day, like where Well Ferrell's naked singing it at
karaoke or something.

Speaker 1 (01:40:13):
Well, I don't want to be your lawyer here, but
there's rites of reversion, et cetera. You might be able
to get the other half of the publishing back. Really,
not that I'm giving Yeah, not that I'm giving you
any legal advice. Check with your attorney. I'll leave it
at that. Okay, So you're married to Sharon today. How
many times you've been married?

Speaker 2 (01:40:34):
Once?

Speaker 1 (01:40:36):
So how did you meet Sharon?

Speaker 3 (01:40:38):
Then?

Speaker 1 (01:40:38):
When did you meet Sharon?

Speaker 2 (01:40:41):
So? I met Sharon she had a hair salon in
San Diego, and I went in to get my haircut,
and we were both friends with a friend of mine
who got murdered, Steve Boge, and so I had come
out of rehab and we would do victims of violent

(01:41:03):
crime benefit shows at the Caspo in San Diego and
we would sing. My friend Steve was in a band
called CLA that stood for Carnivorous Lunar Activity, and so
we would sing all the Carnivorous Lunar Activities songs and
I would learn all the parts that Steve wrote, and

(01:41:24):
we had written a song called Hitchhiker Joe together, and
so that was where I met Sharon because she played
bass in the band, and so we started dating. And
she has been really good for me because you know
how that whole same behind every man, that whole thing,
and she is organized. So see, I used to make

(01:41:48):
money on the road and I would come off the
road with Jewel, and I was making great money because
I was opening every show as Rusted Route would go
on first, I'd go on in the middle, and then Jewel.
We'd play Red Rocks or The Gorge, and I was
selling like if we played Royal Albert Hall in London
a couple nights in a row, I would sell like
three fifty four hundred CDs a night. Back in nineteen

(01:42:11):
ninety seven of One Left Shoe this Mercury release, and
Bob I had so much money. I would come home.
I would shove it into suitcases. And I lived at
the beach, would just leave my doors open. I wouldn't
even put the money in the bank. I don't know why.
So I would have like four hundred grand in my
closet and old suitcases. I just shove it in there,
come off the road. I lived in a shitty apartment

(01:42:32):
and drove an old Ford truck. I never cared about money.
I didn't need it. I just knew. I bought my
clothes at thrift stores. I had my one guitar I needed,
and I had an audience. That's what I cared about.
So I didn't pay my taxes for like ten or
eleven years. And the irs showed up at my apartment

(01:42:53):
and they were outside the door, and I came walking up,
and they go, does Steve Poltz live here? It was
at wind and Sea Beach and La Joya, right across
from the pump house that Tom Wolfe the pump House
came about. And so I said, I don't know who
you're talking about. I remember I ran as fast as
I could down the beach and I got away. And

(01:43:13):
then I called this guy who was the CFO of
the San Diego Padres and he met me. He said,
meet me at the tilted Kilt. And the tilt kilt
is like a Hooters, but for girls that dress and
plaid skirts and their boobs are pushed together. And so
that was where the accountant wanted me to meet him,
at the tilted kilt. I've never forgotten this, So Sharon

(01:43:35):
put all my IRRs notices in a brown wrinkled paperbag.
I'd never opened them, and I show up at the
tilted Kilt with Bob Crozdill, the accountant who's still my accountant.
And he opened up each one as he would eat
some of his nachos with his other hand, and he
opened him up and he looked and his face was

(01:43:55):
kind of growing a little more pale with each one.
And I remember finally when he was and I go,
is it bad? Is it bad? Is it bad? And
he looks at me and he put his hand on
top of mine across the table, and he goes, I've
seen worse. We're going to get through this together. And
it made me feel so good. And then everybody said,

(01:44:17):
you can make a deal with the irs. They'll make
a deal. And the irs said, not only were it
not going to make a deal with mister Poltz. He's
lucky he's not going to jail for willful negligence to
pay taxes. The next morning, I woke up and the
night before I'd had four hundred and fifty thousand dollars
in my checking account like an idiot, like not even
really earning interest, and it was gone, and I remember thinking,

(01:44:39):
they're going to probably take my money, and I thought,
if they take it, I want to kill myself. I
want to take it out first and give it to
my niece and nephew. But then once they took the
money away, I remember going I felt a sense of
peace because I paid off my debt to the irs,
and it was almost as if somebody said, if you
give us four hundred and fifty thousand dollar, you will

(01:45:01):
have peace of mind. I'd say take it. I'd give
you anything to have peace of mind. So then I
just built it all up again, and I still had
that money in my closet, and I slowly would put
it into my account, nine nine hundred dollars at a
time and get everything going again. I don't know why
I wasn't putting it in the bank, because it wasn't
like it was I was a drug dealer, so yeah,

(01:45:23):
it's pretty crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:45:25):
Well you brought this up, you said, Sharon. Agent organization
sit you straight.

Speaker 2 (01:45:30):
So Sharon was like, you need to put your money
in the bank, you need to put it in a
Schwap account, you need to buy some property. And she's
really really organized. She got my whole life in order.
And I remember at the time, by then I'd gotten
out of rehab. I got dropped from Mercury Universal Records,
I got dropped from CIA. I didn't have an agent.

(01:45:53):
I was booking myself. I was playing gigs. I went
from flying private jets with Jewel to being in a
Volkswagen van staying in trailer parks. And I remember thinking,
I did this whole tour where I called it the
where did it all Go Wrong? Tour. I would play
like twenty three people in Iowa, and I would say
to the audience, last night I found myself negotiating in

(01:46:16):
a trailer park to get my costs down in my
Volkswagen van from forty dollars a night to twenty eight
dollars a night. And as I popped the top of
my west Bali at Camper before I went to sleep,
I said, where did it all go wrong? And that's
what I named the tour, and I thought it was
the funniest thing. So I got signed by this guy
named Charles Dreby to be my manager. At the time,

(01:46:38):
he was managing Blind Boys of Alabama, and it was
He's still a friend of mine, he's an attorney. But
it was the wrong mix because my first posters I
sent out was me catching a rock in the air,
opposing like I'm catching a rock, but it was blurred
and I called it the Catch a Falling Turd Tour,
and Charles Dreby got so mad. He was like, we
poked the Blind Boys, but this is not how we

(01:47:01):
want to be represented. And that was a three year
management deal. I was so glad when it was over,
and then I ended up getting finally got a booking
agent again, and man, I'm still with him to this day.
And I have the best manager, a nice Jewish boy
named philine Son with seven S Management out of Denver.

(01:47:22):
I love my manager, phil line Son, and I love
my booking agent, Adam Bauer. He's with Madison House. He
was with Fleming Artists and took me with him when
he went to Madison house, and I say this to
this day. I would not take any other agent. Anybody
could come with me with any offer about anything, or
another manager told me promised me in the world. I

(01:47:42):
would not leave either of these guys because they took
me in like a rescue dog. Adam Bauer saw something
in me and has slowly built me up. I'll be
playing Newport Folk Fest this year. I play all these
great festivals. I tour everywhere, and I'm so loyal to
that guy. I want him to make money and I
want my manager, Phill to make money, like I would

(01:48:04):
do anything for these guys. And we're the smallest team.
Sharon books all the travel and we're Marriotts. We always
stay Marriotts. Sharon has a sewed down We're special, like
they have Titanium Platinum where this special top level called
Ambassador Elite. And it's so funny because they have a
special carpet you stand on when you stay at really

(01:48:26):
nice places like we are here in Sydney, Australia at
the Hyde Park And whenever I stand there, there's businessmen
behind me and they always go, excuse me, sir, you're
supposed to be over there, yes, And they go to
the business time behind. I go, no, this is a
line for me because the way I look, and they go,
this is ambassador Elite. I go, yeah, I'm Ambassador Elite
and they go, oh, I'm sorry, and they just look

(01:48:47):
really weird, and I'm Ambassador Elite. I get upgrades to suites.
And my manager always gets me the best deals of
playing gigs, like gets my offers up and my booking
agent does too. They work in tandem and we're just small,
bare bones operation and we make a great living.

Speaker 1 (01:49:07):
Okay to sharing. Always go on the road with you.

Speaker 2 (01:49:10):
She's with me almost always, and she doesn't always come
to the shows. She'll stand and we'll get somebody else
to sell merch. But she gets up in the morning.
She packs us. She's highly organized. Make sure we get
to the airport on time. Make sure we're getting all
our points for national executive car rental the best and

(01:49:34):
getting good places to stay. If I do the Chaamo cruise,
she gets us packed for that. Make sure my passports
don't expire ab a Canadian passport in a United States passport. Everything,
So she's the organized side of that. And Phil Einson
with seven s, my manager. He looks at the bigger

(01:49:55):
picture of things, and Adam is the booking agent, because
you really need a good agent and you need a
good manager. As you know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:02):
Okay, you don't have any children, right.

Speaker 2 (01:50:05):
We have a son, Neil, who is twenty nine years old,
but he's from her prior husband.

Speaker 1 (01:50:17):
How do you end up moving to Nashville?

Speaker 2 (01:50:20):
So I left San Diego eight years ago. Sharon wanted
to move. She sold her hair salon, and she thought
we should go to Nashville because she saw everybody living
there and every time we play festivals, people would be there.

(01:50:40):
So we moved to Nashville and bought a house. I
never wanted to own a house, and Sharon said, you
really need to own a house, and she's always owned
real estate. So we bought a house together eight years ago,
which was the best move ever. Like, Sharon has been
so good for me. Now I'm a homeowner. My money
is in a Charles Schwab account and I could retire,

(01:51:02):
and so she said, you need to be in Nashville.
So that's how I ended up writing songs with like
Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle and Oliver Wood. Everywhere I
go at Sierra Hall, there's all these friends of mine
that are songwriters, and just being in that area, crumbs
will fall on your plate just from being there. It's

(01:51:24):
just it's such a great vibrant city to live in.
I'd always been in San Diego and said to come
to Nashville's I think the only place I would live
other than Nashville would be Los Angeles, and that might
be our next move because I miss California so much.

Speaker 1 (01:51:41):
Tell us about your heart attack.

Speaker 2 (01:51:43):
Well, I had a stroke, is what it was. Right
about nine years ago. I was on stage at World
Cafe Live in Wilmington, Delaware, and I went blind in
the middle of my show, and I thought they had
turned the lights out, but it was I couldn't see,

(01:52:05):
and I didn't tell the audience because I didn't want
to upset them. But I was singing the same verse
over and over to an old Rugburn song called single Life.
So I played single Life over and over and over,
and then people were looking at me like this guy's
I don't know what's happened to him. They thought I
was taking the piss out of him, and the way

(01:52:26):
Andy Kaufman might like, just to see how long I
could keep a bit going. But it wasn't that, And
so I got rushed to the hospital and if you
ever want to get to the front of the line,
tell them you've gone blind. And it's like a curtain
coming down. They fast track you ahead of the guy
with the ice pick in the side of his head
and everybody else. And so they did these tests, and

(01:52:47):
I've never forgot the lady. She was from India, doctor Mody,
I think was her name, and she said, mister Poltz,
you've had a stroke. You're going into the stroke woard.
And I couldn't see and then my vision came back,
and when it came back, I couldn't read, like the
letters didn't make sense to me. And it took a
couple of weeks and then everything started getting back in order.
But I didn't want to drive for a few months.

(01:53:09):
And I remember Sharon was like, you're going to drive again,
and she pulled the car over and made me drive,
kickstarted me. And I recuperated from that stroke and went
back out on the road. And they don't know why
it happened, because I'm pretty healthy, but things happened.

Speaker 1 (01:53:26):
And no after effects whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (01:53:30):
No, I've been really lucky, really lucky. I hope. You
know that. Doctor told me he didn't know why it happened,
but he said, the next time it does, it'll probably
kill you. I remember because the other night I was
on tour and I was in the United States, and
I did fifteen shows with a good friend of mine
named Paul Thorne. Do you know Paul.

Speaker 1 (01:53:48):
Yes, I don't know him personally, but I've seen him.
I know who he is.

Speaker 2 (01:53:50):
Yeah, So he's a He was a boxer and he
lives in tup Blow, Mississippi, and he fought roberted around.
We did a tour. It's really fun today because if
you're a solo artist, you can do tours with people
where you're on stage and trade songs. We discovered each
other on Komo Cruise. We played in the theater and
we realized we had a good vibe together because I'm

(01:54:11):
kind of so cal and he's really Southern Mississippi kind
of guy. And so we were on stage together and
playing all these shows. And I just finished that tour
and then came to Australia and I thought I was
having a heart attack on that last tour and I
missed a show because I had chest pains and it

(01:54:31):
freaked me out, and I never I'm not a hypochondriac,
Like I never go to the doctor. I should. I
read your letter and you're always telling us we need
to go to the doctor. I do get my teeth
cleaned every three months. I and your letter is making
me go I need to And I love it when
you say that in your letter. It's really important. And
so I was on stage and I got chess pains

(01:54:53):
and I didn't know what it was and I didn't
tell Paul, and I went to the room that night
and it got worse than at two am, googling chest
pains and a nausea, and it said, immediately call an ambulance.
But I had a showing at the Vogel and Red Bank,
New Jersey the next day. My buddy Mojo Nixon had
just died of a heart attack. So I thought, I
wonder if I'm having a heart attack Mojo just died,

(01:55:15):
And instead I called an Uber like an idiot, and
I'd got this uber and that uber driver was from Iraq.
He was from Baghdad, and as we were driving there,
I thought, I'm gonna die in the uber because it
got worse than chest pains. This was just two weeks ago.
And my last thing I said to the uber driver
was I'm sorry we bombed you guys. I was apologizing,

(01:55:39):
and then we pull up to the emergency room. He goes,
are you sick? And I didn't want to upset them,
so I said no, I'm just visiting someone here, and
so I got out and they fast tracked me because
I told him I was having chest pains, and they said,
do you have heart disease in your family? And I
said no, and then he goes, you don't have any
and I said no, And I said, well, my mom

(01:56:00):
had a heart attack, and he said, well that's heart disease.
And he goes how old was she when she had
I go sixty four. He goes how old are you?
I go sixty four, and then he goes, is your
mom still allowed to go No, she died of heart
failure at the age of eighty eight. He goes, anybody
else in your family?

Speaker 3 (01:56:14):
I go no.

Speaker 2 (01:56:15):
I go oh.

Speaker 4 (01:56:15):
Wait.

Speaker 2 (01:56:15):
Her younger brother died of a massive heart attack at
forty four, and then Uncle Louis died as well of
heart failure, and so didn't at her sister, aunt Sylvia,
and the guy's like what part of heart disease in
your family? Don't you understand? So they did the treadmill
stress test on me, and he goes, I can't get
your heart beat up. Even if you're in great shape.
Your recovery time's great. They did the photos. He goes,

(01:56:37):
you have a really healthy heart. What do you do?
And I said, I dance around on stage every night
because I don't sit. I'm running around stage. And he said, well,
your heart looks good. What did you eat for dinner?
And I said, I don't like to read the menu
because I have add and I just like, I don't
like to think about it. I'm in a hurry, so
I just let the waitress decide for me, and she

(01:56:59):
suggested it She's burger with deep bread pickles and hot sauce.
He said, have you ever had heartburn before? And I
said no. Back once I ate four bites of that
deep bread pickles, it really affected me, and he said
it mimics a heart attack. And I had chest pains
for like four days after that, but now I feel great.
So I'm back up and hat.

Speaker 1 (01:57:18):
Well, you know, here's my warning if you have heart
disease in your family. There's a million other tests they
need to do besides treadmill tests itself is not that accurate,
but usually it's false positives. Do not think that you
get a path. You have to get the carotid artery scan.
You gotta get all the stuff because listen, I have

(01:57:42):
one of my close friends, his father died of a
heart attack at sixty seven, said, oh yeah, I went
to the regular doctor. He fell over with a heart
attack at sixty seven. Oh yeah, I was totally healthy.
And then that's it. I mean, I see this special
heart doctor, which I would recommend to you because with
that amount of heart disease in your family. You know,

(01:58:03):
the guy in the er, you know, it's good that
he you know, don't take that as a complete pass,
even though your symptoms may have been because of the
deep right pickle. It's like you have no idea what's
going on. Everybody thinks they're cool, and it just like
Russ never sleeps, Calcium never sleeps. But changing subjects completely.

(01:58:26):
Speaking of the dearly departed Mojo Nixon, you know, he
had somewhat of a record career and then he had
a giant career as a personality. He was on outlaw country,
on serious XM. You have a lot of personality, You
tell a great story. Have people ever offered you similar opportunities?

Speaker 2 (01:58:50):
People keep telling me to start a podcast, write a book,
and I'll see what happens. You know, you never know.

Speaker 1 (01:59:00):
Well, I'm actually talking about something different. I'm talking about
you're sitting there and reading a book. Whatever, Jered you
have to get an email out of the blue. Hey,
I'm aware of you. You'd be good for me on
X on the radio, on TV. God knows what. That
never happened to you. No, well, I'm surprised. I mean,

(01:59:20):
I don't want to put too much faith in the
uh you know, and the people who might make decisions.
But you're certainly a man of a lot of personality,
riveting stories, and a unique outlook. And Steve, I want
to thank you so much for taking this time to
speak with me and my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:59:42):
Thank you. Bob. I'm a huge fan of yours, so
it's a pleasure to be on your show.

Speaker 1 (01:59:47):
And it's always great to see you in mine in
the box. Till next time. This is Bob left sets
sh