Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue with part two of our conversation with
Mike Rowe. Right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors,
(00:31):
we now return to Mike and yet another normal person
who supported him, Fred King.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
He is a big one man. This is you know,
it's funny. I didn't know what we were going to
talk about, but it's a And just to be clear,
there are women in my life who have been transformatively influential.
In fact, with the exception of my producer Chuck, I
only hire women. My business partner is a woman. I'm
(01:01):
I like women, Let's be clear, however, I like however.
Growing up, my mom, of course was always there, but
it was men. It was men who grabbed me periodically
by the scruff of the neck and said no, not
that way, this way, not there here. And Fred King
(01:27):
was the one who did that in a most meaningful way.
He was my high school music teacher. If you saw
mister Holland's opus, you know that's the kind of guy
he was.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
He could he changed the uh, he.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Changed the barometric pressure in a room when he walked
into it. He was just a force. You know, he
looked like Don Rickles, He had false teeth. He lost
all his teeth boxing and playing football when he was
in the Navy. But he was also the most gifted musician,
and I ever knew he was known as the King
(02:03):
of the barber shoppers. He was, Oh, that's where that
comes from in your world, the barber. That's where that
whole thing that comes from. That's why I sing four
part harmony on all the commercials on my podcast, because
a I can be. It amuses me, sometimes it makes
me uncomfortable, and it's an homage to Fred King. Fred
(02:27):
he started teaching an overly senior high the same year
I became a freshman there and I still had my stammer,
but I knew I could sing thanks to mister Huntington,
so I signed up for all the choruses, and my
chorus teacher, my choir teacher, was this freak named Fred King,
who would he would challenge students in ways that no
(02:51):
teacher could do today, just like just like mister Huntington
did in The Boy Scouts. Fred Fred King occupied that
part of the map that says here be dragons. He
did things very, very differently and he turned my high
school inside out, right, I mean, you're a football guy, right,
(03:12):
I am, so you'll appreciate this. In his first year,
during the homecoming weekend at Overly, Fred King went into
the band the giant band room and took a snare
drum and put it around his neck, and with me
(03:34):
and about a dozen other people following him, he started
marching up and down the.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Halls playing.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I mean a real like a like a charge into
battle cadence on the snare drum.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah. Yeah, that's like, that's like a march beat. That's
exactly what it was.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And of course Fred played in a marching band for years.
He played every instrument. We didn't know any of this
at the time. We just saw this pied piper marching
up and down the normally sedate halls of Overly, and
people would come out of the classrooms. He'd march into
the classrooms, disrupted the class He got.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
The whole school.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
To follow him out to the football field where the
Overly Falcons were preparing to get there. Kicked again. I
think we didn't win a lot, but it didn't matter.
It didn't matter. He got like the whole student body
out there and taught us the overly Falcons school song.
(04:33):
We didn't even know we had a school song, but
he taught it to us, and he made us sing
it like with great pride. And he was another one
of those guys, very macho, very manly, and masculine in
all the traditional ways. But he would he'd look you
a square in the face and weep as he was
singing God Bless America or some old song about sweethearts
(04:54):
and mothers and wars and all these things. It was
such a He was such an interesting dude, and over
that first year I formed a relationship with him rooted
in the kind of trust that really, I think can
only be fostered through music and a certain level of sacrilege.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
He was just so compelling that I was really I
was just enamored of the guy. And one day I
found an album in his office called the Oriel four,
and that's when I learned that he was the baritone
and a world champion barbershop quartet. And that's when I
learned that he conducted this amazing group of men called
(05:44):
the Course of the Chesapeake, who had won international gold
medals singing. This was a world that I didn't know existed, right.
I took the album home and I realized after listening
to it that I could hear all of the part
and I could sing them, and I could kind of
make sense of them, like a puzzle. And when I
(06:05):
told him about it, he found three other boys in
my class, one of whom you know Chuck, the guy
who produces my podcast, and he taught us how to
sing four part harmony. And then he brought us into
this chorus of the Chesapeake where an army of men,
not all of whom were normal, but many of whom
(06:27):
served in the army, many of whom fought in the
Second World War in Korea. These old guys would take
us out after rehearsals for a beard a place called
Johnny Jones, and they would teach us old songs and
we would They called it wood shedding, you know, the
kind of singing you should probably do in a woodshed
where nobody can hear you. But it's how you learn
(06:47):
to harmonize and how you learn to figure out these parts.
And so suddenly every Tuesday night I'm getting I'm getting
a lesson in music in history from men with gold
stars and all kinds of metals for meritorious service in
the Marines and in the army. And through it all
(07:08):
was Fred. You know, he was always there for that.
But the thing he did Bill, honestly, that changed everything.
Later that year, he made me audition for a play
for the school play. And what part it was Curly
in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
And he made me audition for this thing. And my
problem wasn't the music. I could sing, I could hit
the notes. I was all right, but there's a lot
of talking in that musical. And I really didn't want
to do my porky pig routine in front of, you know,
eleven hundred students.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
But he made me audition.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
He made me do a monologue and I got maybe
twenty seconds into it. I was doing a monologue from
a play called The rain Maker, a character called Starbuck,
and I know it. I'm getting through it. So Burt
Lancaster did that. Yeah, that's right, the movie Once upon
a Time. So I'm stammering and making a hash of it.
I'm about twenty seconds in and I look out and
(08:10):
Fred sitting out there in the audience with maybe you know,
four or five other teachers and twenty other kids who
are going to be auditioning, and he held up his
hand and he said, Mikey, hey, I like what you're
doing with the character here, but the character you're auditioning
for doesn't stutter.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So do me a favor.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Stutter on your own time, and just do it once
without all that porky pig crap. Okay, that's how he
talked to me.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
He really said it that way. He said it just
like that, just like that. Matter of fact, did you
feel undressed standing up there in front of it like that?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, yes, I was nervous, but I wasn't. I didn't
feel disrespected in spite of the way he talked to me, because.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I trusted him.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I'd get that and I knew that right, and so
I didn't like without thinking, without questioning the glibness of
what he had just suggested, I do.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
I did it without the stammer, and twenty five thirty
seconds into it, he looks at me from the audience
and he makes this gesture. He goes this kind of
shrugs his shoulders as if to say, was that so hard?
And I remember, Bill, it was a sound like this.
(09:38):
In my head, something clicked and I thought, well, I
don't want to oversimplify it, but I think maybe I'm
going to just try for a while to act like
somebody who doesn't stutter. And that was that wow, you know,
to answer your earlier question. As it turns out, I didn't.
I didn't have a physiological and I don't want people
(10:01):
to hear stories like this and think that it's all
in their mind. There are people stutter and stammer for
all sorts of different reasons. Mel Till has had a
different problem than I did. I was just shy, and
I was just trapped in a version of myself that
had limitations, and guys like my granddad and my dad
and mister Huntingdon and mister King, they they weren't having
(10:25):
any of that.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
My pop told me the truth about my limitations. Get
a different toolbox, right. Mister Huntington told me the truth
about this comfort. Don't just endure it, embrace it. And
Fred King told me the truth. Showed me the truth
about what's possible in the world. If you act like
somebody who has a temperament different than the one you
(10:53):
were born.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
With, we'll be right back. Two things. I lettered in
(11:21):
six sports in high school, so that's what I did,
and my freshman year, I tore up my shoulder during
football season, and my favorite teacher was Deel Flickinger, who
was the math teacher. He also did the great name
Flickinger from North Dakota. He also did the stats for
(11:41):
the football team, and I later learned that he was
the starting center on a football team who hadn't lost,
who didn't lose a single game from his freshman senior
year four state championships, which doesn't really yeah, you know,
And then I found out that he's a amazing musician
(12:03):
and he also happened to be the chess team coach.
Four years later, I found myself at the national championships
in high school wearing my letter jacket with all my
stripes all over it, playing chess against a bunch of
kids that don't look anything like me. Because Dale Flickinger
taught me to think about myself in different ways than
(12:23):
I had before, and Mike, one of the reasons I
thought about myself the way I had before is because
my father left home when I was four, and my
mother was married and divorced five times, so I had
five fathers in my life by the time I was
eighteen years old, none of which were worth assault. And
(12:48):
it was my coaches and men like Dale Flickinger who
largely defined who I am today. So when I hear
your stories, despite the fact that we grew up much
different ways from our family standpoint, I really do identify
with how great people do support greatness, and that I
(13:12):
don't think i'm anything. I'm not just like any of
my coaches or any of my teachers or any of
the men that I'm not exactly like any of them,
but I'm one hundred percent like pieces of each of them. Absolutely,
So in some I represent a piece of all these people.
So the question then is from Fred, if the grandfather's humility,
(13:38):
then the scout master taught you how to embrace the suck?
What Fred teache? What's that word? Let's go with.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Let's go with the reverse commute, because really, when I
got out of high school and then went into a
commun unity college to really try and apply all of
these lessons, you know, the road into my industry is
(14:10):
just paved with IEDs and landmarks.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It's a very, very diffic brutal, for sure, it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, but there's always another path, there's always another way
to skin the cat and when I learned that I
could get my union card, my Screen Actors Guild card,
which is something I really wanted to get in my
mid twenties because without that, you can't audition for union work.
(14:42):
And if you can't audition for union work, you can't
get an agent, and no agent will represent you unless
you have your union card. But you can't get your
union card unless you do union work, and so it
was a closed system. Well, the loophole was it's totally miserable.
So the loophole was, wait, if you really need to
(15:03):
get into the Screen Actors Guild, you could get into
the sister union, one of the sister unions, and this
one was called AGMA. It was the American Guild of
Musical Artists, and it oversaw the opera and the opera,
the National Opera and the Baltimore Opera and all these
(15:25):
other opera houses around the country. Held zero interest for me.
The last thing in the world I ever imagined I
would do for money was singing the opera. But if
you could get in and get your AGMA card, you
could then buy your Screen Actors Guild card because they're
(15:46):
sister unions.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
And so that was my way in.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I thought, if I can somehow fake my way into
the Baltimore Opera, I will be able to buy my
membership into this Green Actors Guild and then go about
the business of becoming a famous television personality.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
I mean, how hard can it be? Right? So I.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Went to the library, armed with all the lessons that
Fred and Glendon and Carl Noble had taught me, and
I got a recording of La Bom and I memorized
the shortest aria ever written by Jiacomo Puccini, called the
Coat Aria. It's less than three minutes long. It's an
(16:31):
Italian And I walked around the streets of Baltimore for
weeks with a sony walkman on, listening to Samuel Raimi
make these sounds, these Italian sounds, over and over and over.
And then I went to an open call and I auditioned,
and somehow, somehow I got in. They were looking for
(16:56):
young men with low voices. I checked both of those
boxes in nineteen eighty four, and suddenly, just like that,
I'm in the American Guild of Musical Artist and I'm
able to buy my union card for the Screen Actors Guild.
But then, you know, proving once again that just when
(17:18):
you think you have a plan figured out or a
commute mapped out, it's the reverse commute that winds up
being interesting. Because the opera turned out to be a
hell of a lot more fun than I thought it
would be. The music was amazing. It was a whole
new world to me, right, just like barbershop was, just
like the boy scout. I'd never heard of such a thing,
(17:39):
but suddenly I'm dressed as a Viking, standing in a
repertory company with seventy other people, singing right, singing along
in a production of Wagner's De Ring des nibel Lungeon,
and and just having the time of my life. I mean,
it was just such a kick. Pavati was on the stage,
(18:02):
Domingo came through that stage. You know, James Morris, some
of the greatest singers of the twentieth century were standing
five feet from me.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
And I'm a twenty two year old kid.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Dressed as a pirate, singing in a language he doesn't
even understand. Because Fred King said, hey, do me a favor,
try it once without the stutter stutter on your own time.
Because Glendon Huntington said, no, dude, it's not enough just
to endure it. Figure out a way to love it, right,
So yeah, I mean, I hadn't really thought about it.
(18:35):
But when you start looking back at those I mean,
isn't it funny how the moments in your life that
turn out to be the most pivotal you don't recognize
when you're in the middle of it. It's only when
you look back and you can start to get that
thirty thousand foot view that you realize, for instance, that
(18:59):
you never really did have a dad. You had five dads,
but none of them were really the guy that you
were supposed to have. Until the universe gets together and says, Okay,
we're gonna send him a Fleckinger. We'll send him at
del Fleckencher, We'll send him this, We'll send him that.
It's yeah, it's a hell of a thing, Mike.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
It's It's true. And the irony of irony is, you know,
we're we're producing a show called an Army of Normal
Folks to highlight normal folks in our communities that do
amazing things despite the difficulties to overcome, and inside that
occasionally we're talking to people like you who've reached really
(19:39):
great levels but we're talking about the people that supported
how you've reached that level. And the irony of ironys
is you've told me that you revere your grandfather and
he taught you humility. You revered your scout master and
he taught you to embrace the suck, and you're vered
a music teacher who taught you how to reverse commute.
(20:02):
And the most valuable supportive lessons in your life that
make up the essence of what you are came from
the very most normal people on earth. A carpenter and
a hard working grandfather, and a scout master who is
a former military guy, and a music teacher in a
(20:22):
high school, normal people that people would walk past every
day and not give two thoughts about them as something special,
who are in fact the most special people in the
life of a man who's done amazing things, which to
me speaks to every interaction and every opportunity we have
in our communities can matter. If we make them count,
(20:49):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
You know. It occurs to me too listening to you
talk that one of one of the things that Dell
Fleckinger and Fred King and my pop and all these
people had in common, that is, in short, supply today
is a generalist approach to living like a general practitioner
(21:22):
as opposed to a specialist. I think maybe we've we've
entered the realm of speciality where we give such great
deference to people who have mastered one thing. But life right,
well lived anyway, requires lots of different competencies. And this
(21:46):
was a big lesson in Dirty Jobs. Again, I didn't
know it when I was learning it, but looking back,
especially farmers, you know what is a farmer really like?
Speaker 1 (21:56):
What's the skill?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Well, he's got to be a weatherman, and he's got
to be geologist, and he's got to be oh, he's
he's got to be a businessman for sure. You know,
he has to be able to lay pipe and run electricity.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Many of them have to bevet areas. Absolutely. Yeah. I
mean I saw the show on the artificial insemination with
the cow. That was crazy? Sure was that fun? Did
you enjoy that?
Speaker 2 (22:22):
That cow still calls me, I'll tell you that hilarious.
I think the bull had a pretty good time too,
to be honestly, yeah, are you kidding?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Man?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Dirty Jobs showed people the truth of work.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
The first season was a rumination on feces, from every species. Right,
We just we just showed you the reality of cleaning
up all the crap the world makes. And season two
was artificial insemination and the miracle of modern agriculture. And
you know, we put things on TV that nobody had
(23:04):
ever done before, and we did it with humor and honesty.
You know that show, And this goes to humility too.
We never did a second take. Everything you saw on
Dirty Jobs was happening in real time. And so if
you're not humble and you're making a TV show that
doesn't do a second take, you're going to be because
(23:27):
you are not going to be at your best ever,
but you'll always be at your most actual.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
And that's what we tried to do. I was going
to say, you'll be the most real, You'll be the
most authentic, for better or worse. Yeah, I get that.
I get that because Undefeated. When those guys left Memphis
with five hundred and fifty hours of film to make Undefeated,
(24:00):
you know, the first time I saw the hour and
fifty minute movie that came a result of those five
hundred and fifty hours of film, it dawned on me.
I was never asked to say anything or repeat anything.
Or stand in anyone place or anything, and they crop
together an hour and fifty minute movie out of five
hundred and fifty hours of film. And I will tell
(24:21):
you something, when you see yourself in the most authentic
space on film for everybody to see, you better have
some humility because it's a it's an eye opening thing
to see yourself in those type of positions when you
sound and act and react and look and feel differently
(24:46):
than you think, you present yourself to the world, and
it is an eye opener and you will get the
humility from it. That's a fact.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, you know what I mean. It's funny. Every time
you think you've really learned learned that lesson, you relearn
it in a new way. At least I do. And
I spent three years after the opera selling things in
the middle of the night on the QBC cable shopping channel,
and it was it was another world. It was a
(25:18):
strange world. It was another experience that came about as
the result of a last minute audition. But it was
probably the best training I ever got for the industry
I'm in today. And the funny thing was they fired
me three times from that gig. All justifiably the third
(25:40):
time it stuck in nineteen ninety three, and so when
I left Bill, I didn't talk about my time at QVC.
It wasn't a thing I even put on my resume.
But years later, like I'd say, nineteen ninety nine, two thousand,
maybe eight years later, to my horror, when the Internet
(26:03):
first became a thing, I found this thing called YouTube,
and on YouTube, somebody had started posting clips of me
selling things in the middle of the night on QBC
right when I was like twenty seven, twenty eight years old,
like the Health Team infrared pain reliever and the Amcore
(26:24):
negative ion generator and collectible dulls and diamondique and all
this stuff. And the sensation of watching yourself on a
computer screen just like this one doing something years before
that you have absolutely no recollection of doing, but nevertheless
(26:44):
can't deny having done because you're watching yourself do it.
That's chilling and very instructive and very humbling.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
It is. It is chilling. Mike. I want to tell
you how much I really appreciate you joining me and
taking the time and most importantly, you know, tell us
a little bit about what did support the things you've
done great. I know that Dirty Jobs is just completed.
I think season ten. I guess you're back for season eleven, right,
(27:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Honestly, thing's been on twenty years. Deadly's catch has been
on twenty years, hitting no, no joke, unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
And you know you got your whiskey, you got everything
going on. But ultimately what defines you is none of that.
Ultimately what defines you is your grandfather's humility, your scout
master's toughness, and your music teachers challenge of challenge of
you to think of yourself in a different way. And
(27:48):
I think that can't be a better example and illustration
of what it takes to support greatness is take the
best of all the people that have a positive impact
on your life and culminate them into who you are.
And you sharing that story with us is really cool.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Well, thanks, with your permission, I'd like to share one
more thing.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
It's real quick.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I don't know who in your audience that this might
pertain too, But I run a foundation today and we
award work ethic scholarships every year.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
In fact, we do it twice a year.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
We'll be giving away a million bucks in a couple
of months for people who want to pursue a skill
that doesn't require a four year degree. This was the
real legacy of dirty jobs and the real legacy of
my granddad. It's the foundations called microworks. We started it
on Labor Day in two thousand and eight and we've
(28:49):
helped about two thousand people so far get meaningful careers
in the skilled trades. So it's something I'm passionate about,
and it's something that's actually moving the needle. If you
or anybody listening wants to pursue a career that's actually
in demand, that won't require you to sign on to
(29:11):
a mountain of debt, then think about a career in
the trades. If that's for you, we can help at
microworks dot org.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Microworks dot org. Do they just go on that thing
and apply or tell you about themselves or raise their
hands on virtually.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah, you got to jump through some hoops, right, Yeah, look,
full disclosure, and this ultimately is the best tribute I
can pay to all the men we've discussed. Our scholarship
program is called work Ethic Scholarships, right, so yeah, I
need to see some references. I ask you to write
(29:47):
an essay, I ask you to make a videotape and
make a persuasive case for yourself and tell us why
we should spend the money that we raise on you.
But I'll tell you something, Bill, the success stories are
amazing so many people now, because we've been doing it
a while, I circle back now and I see how
(30:10):
people are doing, and I hear from welders and steamfitters
and pipe fitters and electricians and plumbers and so forth,
and they're all making six figures. They're all leading balanced lives.
So look, I mean, if you really want to land
the plane back with noble, that's where it was for me.
My pop went to the seventh grade, wound up being
(30:31):
one of the smartest people I ever met, one of
the most competent people you'd ever want to know. And
so my foundation today is you know, that evolved from him,
just as surely as dirty jobs did. And it's nice
for you to bring it up and let me talk
about it. I appreciate it. If your listeners can benefit
from it, that's why it's there.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Well, I'll tell you what I hope one day you
and I can meet up and toast a couple of
noble Manhattans to your grandfather.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
That would be a very, very civilized way to us
spend a warm afternoon in Memphis.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Well, the invitation always stands, my friend. Thank you so
much for joining us, and we will continue to watch
what you do and continue to listen to and appreciate
who supported your greatness. Mike appreciate it. Thanks and thanks
to all of you for joining us this week. If
(31:27):
Mike grow, Mike's music teacher, his grandfather is scout Master,
or any other guest we've had on has inspired you
in general or better yet to take action, please let
me know. I'd love to hear about it. You can
write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us. And
if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends
(31:49):
and on social subscribe to the podcast, rate and review
it all of the things that will help grow an
army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you
ex week. Do mhm