Pat Monahan of Train sits down with Bobby to trace the band's journey from being rejected by record executives to creating some of the biggest songs of the last 25 years. He shares how “Drops of Jupiter” came to him in a dream, why it was the final song added to the album and the moment the finished version brought him to tears. Pat also opens up about the period when he wanted to leave Train, the accidental story behind the band’s name and why the strangest songs often become the biggest hits. Plus, he talks about ticket prices, getting mistaken for Jason Bateman, apologizing before playing new music and the one career he absolutely does not want for his kids.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
See, that's the best part of my life. I have
famous songs, but I'm not a famous guy, so I
can be anywhere I want and nobody cares. So the
fact that you even recognize me is odd.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm really excited about this one because I love Train.
Pat Monahan is here, the lead singer, multi Grammy Award
winning They are Drops of Jupiter. Hey Soul's sister Drive
By Meet Virginia, Calling all Angels. I mean, I could
keep going. They've sold more than ten million albums. They
have diamond songs. Like you've heard platinum, that's nothing. They
(00:44):
have Diamond certified songs. And Train's been around for more
than thirty years. Patrin making music for a long, long,
long time. They're celebrating the twenty fifth anniversary of Drops
of Jupiter with a huge summer tour. They are releasing
a brand new album at the end of August, call
Mad Dog in the Fog, and we'll talk about that
as well, and so we'll even talk about a musical.
(01:06):
The Pat's been writing music for so here. He is
the lead singer of Train. Pat Monahan Top five in
order Train songs of all time.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Drops this number one because of its relationship to my mom.
Number two would have to be Hey Soul's Sister because
the band was pretty much toast until that song brought
(01:38):
us back. Number three could be Marry Me because I
wrote it in front of my wife sitting on our
kitchen counter with an acoustic guitar, and I really would
marry her every day.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
You wrote it and I just played it for her.
You wrote it in front.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Of and I was like, what about this? And so
that was important. Calling All Angels is a pretty important
song for me because drops a jup Butter was out.
I was really in a bad marriage, sober life, totally
(02:20):
good everywhere but in my house. And I got this
amazing therapist in Marin County, her name is Judy Bell.
In my first day in there, I explained why I
was there. I was like, I've never been less happy
and I've never been more successful. So she made me
(02:44):
stand up. She's like, I want you to put your
hands on your stomach, and then I want you to
bend towards your shoes, and then she started going like this.
She said, you just took your first bow. So now
we're going to talk about out all the things that
you should be congratulating yourself for instead of punishing yourself for.
(03:07):
And she said, the problem with humans is that we
are built of angels and traders, and you have to
call your angels. And I said, bitch, I'm stealing the
shit out of that. I didn't say those exact words,
but Judy is a really important and that song was
(03:27):
really important. So those are four. And then you know,
I wrote the song drive By for James Blunt and
they didn't want it, and so it was a pretty
important song for us. And I would say it's between
that and a song called Don't Grow Up So Fast,
which I actually wrote here in Nashville about watching your
(03:49):
children grow up wanting them to like really understand that
you wanting to look like you're twenty one when you're
fifteen so you can get a beer is the opposite
of the total outcome of your life, because you'll you
really want to look fifteen when you're thirty, You really
(04:10):
want to look thirty when you're sixty. It's the one
time in your life that you just wanted to speed up.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
What song for you was the most surprising that it
became a massive hit.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Uh, Soul Sister was that was pretty weird? Why because
ukulele and like it was like what that was a
And then you know, the internet was pretty hopping at
that point and texting. I remember being in Australia and
no Americans were texting and all the Aussies were texting.
(04:44):
And then years later we caught up to it and
Soul Sister became part of like the fabric of like
teenage life, like, hey is Soul's sister? And then right
back is that mister, mister? Like it was like weird
lyrical connections between kids, and that was the moment that
we were like, this is this is culturally big?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Did you suggest the ukulele? In that beginning?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
You know, we wrote the song. I wrote it with
a couple of guys, Norwegian guys in New York, Almond
and Espin, who were lovely guys. They call themselves Espionage.
I'm not sure they still work together anymore. But we
we wrote the song and I sang it and it
sounded really good and I was like, yeah, it's good,
(05:31):
but it had a guitar on it.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
It was like even the beginning, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
It was like an electric guitar. It's good. I don't,
I mean, it sounds fine, but it doesn't have the thing,
and then Almond or i mean Espin picked up a
ukulele and it's like and it just like all went,
that's it. You just found the thing.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Have you ever spoken to mister mister No, But there were.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Texts or like email or not emails. They were like
Instagram posts or whatever. Like somebody was like, those guys
owe you every day. They owe me everything. They wrote
amazing songs. You know. I love that somebody thinks mister
mister rows me everything. It's awesome.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I don't think a lot of people know that they're
a band. If they weren't alive, then they just think
that's words in a song.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, maybe because I.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Don't know that I would.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And there's no way to ever find out. I mean
there's no devices or anything that you could look it
up with.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Why would you just jamming out?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Do you need any sort of reminder of your words.
It's a very word heavy songs.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Most of them are, and you know them all doing
doing a show these days? Ninety minutes is man, I
have to be fit. It is hard. It's hard. Everything's
way up here saying all the original keys, and it
(07:02):
is a lot of work. So being here talking to
you for this long, you might be the reason why
I have to cancel tonight's show.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Or is it the perfect warm up and tonight No,
it's a cancel Or is it perfect?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Because you're vocal, I'm leaning towards you ruining my life. Okay,
I knew you were going to ruin my life. I
just didn't know it was going to be today.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Fair enough, fair enough when Hey, Soul's Sister becomes a
hit and it was unexpected. Were you also surprised that
it was a single because you say you let the
others choose things, like me my manager?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
So the first this is the first album he managed.
I was with a manager that I was like, we're
going nowhere and I need help so bad. I can't
manage myself. I can't do this. This particular guy was
not as hands on as Jonathan Daniel and Crush, but
at the time they didn't have anyone like us. They were.
(07:58):
They had panic, fallout, boy girls like boys, boys like
girls and other things like that. And I was writing
songs in the studio that their management company was in,
and they had a studio in the back that my
friend Sam Hollander was a writer and Sam and I
(08:18):
wrote Save Me San Francisco together, and so we was
back there working and I would go to the water
cooler and see Jonathan sometimes, and he saw that first
show that Columbia passed Honust in New York, like he's
hipped to everything. Don Hills was the name of the club,
and so we would chat about things, and I told
(08:40):
him like, I have eighty two songs and I don't
know what I'm gonna do, and I need somebody to
manage me. I haven't let go of my manager yet.
I don't know what to do. And he was like,
if you get a Pete Wentz haircut, I'll manage you.
And I was like, I love Wentz, but I don't
(09:00):
look good in that. So anyway, he said, seriously, let
me let's listen to your eighty two songs. And Soul
Sister was on there and he was like, that's weird.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
He listened to eighty two songs.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, he listened to all of them. And let me
tell you, if you heard those eighty two songs, you
would consider jumping out a window. And he found that
one and a few others and he was like, so basically,
of those eighty two. There were probably six songs that
were like made the album, and then I built around that,
(09:34):
like save Me San Francisco was the last song to
be written because I needed to. I needed to put
the period on it. That was the name of the album,
and the whole vibe was I need my band to
go back to San Francisco and be a part of
that community. So that's how that whole thing started. So
he thought it was special or weird, which is special sometimes.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I was talking to my wife and I was like,
why we should go to the show. She's like, we can't.
We have a four month old, and I said, she's
twelve years younger than I am.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
We took our kids to every concert since they were infants.
So this is on you, bro. This is where you
have to decide if you're a real parent or you're
just a half ass.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I'm that. I'm that, and in fact, we named her
son half ass. I said we should go and she
said I don't. I don't know if I know many
Train songs. I'm a massive fan. And I said, I
would bet you would know at least three. She goes, Okay,
let's go down the list. She knew six. Almost every word.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah, she knew. See, that's the best part of my life.
I have famous songs, but I'm not a famous guy,
so I can be anywhere I want and nobody cares.
So the fact that you even recognize me is odd. Me.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I'm a massive fan. You talk, Are you talking to general?
Speaker 1 (10:59):
But I'm saying, just recognized in general? Because it was
the same and AT and T that Actually, no, it
was a different one. I was in an AT and
T once and Jason Bateman was there. I was asked
to sign Jason Bateman pictures the whole time. I'm like,
even one time I went through TSA in Seattle and
(11:21):
this guy in TSA looks at me and he goes, man,
you look just like Justin Bateman, and I go, I
am Justin Bateman. Because he didn't even know the guy's
name is Jason. It's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
What about Richard Marx? Do you ever get that?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Never get Richard Marx. I think Richard Marx is in
much better shape than me, so we don't have that
that issue.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I was running down the list of songs with my
wife and I could just say that she's back in
the air. She got hmmm, she knew everywhere. She knew
that one.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
How old is she?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Thirty four?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Cool?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
She knew drive by Great, I'm gonna do the whole list.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Play that song. Maybe she did play that sister.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Marry me, You're gonna make it easy for me? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah. Does she know fifty Ways sy Goodbye?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
No, she knew me.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
But that's interesting because fifty Ways of Sigabye really blew
up on TikTok a few years ago, and it's blowing
up again. What's the melody teenagers? She went down in
and a airplane? Help me, help me? Uh, it's a
story about when a girl broke up with me, so
(12:33):
I told my friend she died. It's a love song.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
You know a record I really liked with your solo record. Uh,
Last of Seven. I may mess a name up, like.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
You know what. That really did well in Europe.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So that's a real thing where it just oddly does
well and other odd kids.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yep, and you go over.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
There and say and they all scream along.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yep. There's an interesting We wouldn't do many of them,
maybe one from the record, but that song resonated with Europeans.
It was an interesting time in my life that you
did the record. Yeah, there are two records we don't
really perform anything off of. For me, It's You, which
is a train album, and Last of Seven, which was
(13:18):
my solo album. Because the solo album, I really wanted
to not be in the band anymore, and the only
way being a solo record being a solo recording a
solo record. Had I had Crush Management as my management,
they may have allowed me to do it, but that
would not have been the record that they would have
(13:39):
wanted me to make because it wasn't different enough. And
I get it, you know, in hindsight, you learn, you know,
you know everything. But I loved that record and I
loved making that record because I got to do that
by myself, but it didn't help me, didn't help the band.
(14:04):
And then when I went back to the band, we
made some changes and Soul Sister kind of was our rebirth.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
When you write, are you writing from you just full
melody first and then you attach lyrics to it? Are
you writing concept?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
What is the process? Because your songs are very distinct.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, they're weird, weird wins And I never really knew
that till a guy named Jonathan Daniel became my manager
like almost twenty years ago, because he was he's such
an analyzing, you know, an analyst in music that before
he started managing me, he was taking a look at
(14:51):
the songs that were successful. He's like, meet Virginia, weirdest
song you ever could have put out at that time,
and then Jupiter even weirder like at the time. And
the reason that song I think was successful is because
it was very close to almost famous the movie. So
(15:12):
people were loving that lush string thing that Elton John had,
and in fact, Paul Buckmaster, who arranged his strings, did
the same thing on drops. The process of writing is
always different, like this particular album, this new one, Mad
Dog and the Fog was It all stemmed from a
(15:32):
musical that Jerry Becker MD and Matt Musty, my drummer,
and I wrote all the music for a musical and
have been in the process for six years. It finally
opens in September at the Old Globe in San Diego.
It's called Beginning Again, based on a movie, and our
process was those guys would go write thirty musical tracks,
(15:58):
you know, just verse, chorus, just even, and then I
would write all the melodies and lyrics and then we'd
make changes and then complete the song. And everything in
a musical has to be the story about the character.
It's brutal, really really hard work, because then after you
think you've accomplished something, then it goes to a committee
(16:18):
of people that I'll give you their opinions, and then
you just want to kill yourself. I quit three times.
So that process we learned a lot about each other.
And then the album process was different, where the ideas
started with me. So I would sit at a piano,
sing something into my iPhone and send it to these
(16:40):
guys play something on guitar. There would always be a
melody and sometimes a lyric, and then they would build
from that. And so the process for those two things
were different but similar.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Did you ever do the cover band?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
And that's what I did in Eerie, Pennsylvania when I
was a kid and we were performing. We did three sets.
We kind of did the easy songs, then we do
like the popular songs at the time, and then the
third set would be all led Zeppelin and Chaer and
(17:31):
her band were performing at an arena in eerie, like
three blocks from the bar that I was at, and
her bandmates came to have a drink during our Zeppelin set,
and a guy named David Shelley, her guitar player at
the time, called me over to his table and he
gave me his phone number, and he said, you got
the stuff, so call me. I'm in La. You got
(17:54):
to go there, and so I did, and we never connected.
We connected years later. He passed away a few years ago,
but he got me there because you you know, I
needed I needed somebody to say what I thought that
was important enough for me to believe them. And what
(18:14):
you thought was what I thought was I got the stuff.
But to hear that from somebody who just played an
arena two blocks away, that made all the difference. Like,
I owe him so much for giving me the courage.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
So when you moved to La, what's that?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
It was awful. I mean, living in the worst apartment,
you know, helicopters. It was during you know, early nineties,
late eighties. I graduated high school in eighty seven, so
it was like a eight. And then I moved back
(18:50):
to Pennsylvania and moved to San Francisco with a couple
of the guys that I met in LA.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
So the LA trip didn't work.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Back years later to trip back years later to try
to pursue acting. I'm not sure if you've ever seen
me in anything, but I'm not very good. But I
got a great acting coach and I realized, you know,
I've done some TV and stuff, but what I realized
is acting is hard. It's as hard as music. And
(19:20):
like it was, it was really which one are you
going to go after?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
So when you moved to LA and then you moved
back to Pennsylvania, was that a tuck your tail between
your legs or was it I'm going to go back
and regroup, save some money.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
It was because I was going to have my first child,
so we went back and did that. It was not
a great relationship that I was in, but it was
you know, doing the right thing comes in a lot
of different packages, and I thought that was the right
(19:54):
thing to like get married and figure stuff out. Doing
the right thing can be a lot of different ways,
but at the time, you know, I was raised at
a Catholic environment where there would have been a lot
of judgment, and I would rather do the right thing
(20:14):
and not be happy than to have the people in
my life not be happy with me. I don't feel
like that anymore because I've learned enough and I don't
want that for my children. And so that was it
wasn't the tail between the legs as much as we
can't afford to do that here, and so I went
(20:36):
back to Pennsylvania and then moved to San Francisco because
then it was like, I don't have a choice in
my soul. I can't stay here and like hang wallpaper
and paint houses, I have to go. So I hung
wallpaper and painted houses in San Francisco, and then every
night I did it was like the only trade I knew.
(20:57):
And then we'd go play for free. And one of
those places that we played for free all the time
and then until we got paid was Mad Dog and
the Fog. It was an important place for us.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And so the guys you met in LA on your
initial trip, did they move to San Francisco to meet
up with you.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yes, they so, one at a time. A guy named
Rob Hotchkiss I started it with, and then Jimmy Stafford
was his guitar player in a band in La. He
moved and there was the three of us and we
would go do everything. And then their old bass player,
Charlie Coleen had a friend in Colorado because he had
(21:34):
moved and he was a drummer, Scott Underwoods. So then
it was the five of us.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And were you surprised LA didn't work?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
No?
Speaker 1 (21:42):
I mean, and you know, I wasn't ever in their band.
I met them through different ways, but at the time
there was a lot of magazines you would just put
your ad in for free and hope that somebody would connect.
It was a music connection, was what it was called.
And I met some really cool guys. I met this
really cool guy named Kevin. I don't remember Kevin's last name,
(22:04):
it's been a while, but he turned me onto Alison Chains.
That was the grunge band that I was like, this
is great because grunge was not my thing, but it
was definitely the era of grunge. So to come out
of that and not be a grunge band was probably
the smartest thing that I ever did. But we were
definitely pursuing you know, my hair was down to here
(22:26):
and we're pursuing that lane. But it did. It's it's
not really who I am.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So you guys are almost an alternative band, almost what
an alternative band like, Oh yeah, in a slightly different timeline.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Oh yeah, you can still hear it. Like we do
a song from the Drops album every Night called Whipping Boy,
and it's that it's that era. It's like jo like
all that shit.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
It's so different though than the first song that I
knew you from was listening to the radio in Arkansas,
which was Meet Virginia. Yeah, because you know, not a
lot of pace with that record, and hear all the words.
There's there's no distortion. Yeah, did you guys have success locally?
Regionally first? And where you train? Then we train.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
We used it as a working title until we found
out that it was not taken, which we were all shocked,
like how not some you know, there's a lot of
different trains, uh, steel train and whatever, and so yeah,
as we play all these places for free and then
we can start to play bigger places and then sell
(23:34):
tickets and then fill rooms. We were pursued by Columbia Records.
They were like, we got you know, these demos are
great bands, great live. We're gonna fly or New York.
Instead of Mohammed coming to the Mountain, the Mountain went
(23:55):
to Mohammad I think I'm allowed to say that you
are and H and Muhammad did not dig us. And
his name is Donnie Einer and he saw us and
was like, I didn't see anything special. So we flew
all the way back to San Francisco with nothing. And
that was the time that I was painting houses with
(24:15):
this guy who was very philosophically smart, and he said,
do you guys have a common goal? And I was like,
I don't know, I've never asked, Like we weren't friends
from growing up. So I went nest and said, we're
going to on this chalkboard. We were using Counting Crow's
storage room to rehearse in we had a chalkboard and
(24:36):
I started writing down what each of us had in common.
And we had one thing that we wanted, and that
was to make a record. So we borrowed money from
friends and family, found a guy to engineer it who
wasn't worried about getting paid because he was independently wealthy,
and we made that record. Columbia Records comes back and
(24:57):
they disguised the project as Project at because they have
to bring it to Donnie again in a different form
because he's already said no. And Donnie he's like, Okay,
let's put it on Aware of Records, which is underneath
the umbrella of Columbia, and then they signed the band,
and I consider Donnie he was right both times, like
(25:20):
we got our shit together after he said.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
No, you don't think you had it right the first time?
What's that you don't think you had it right the
first time? When he said no, no, like I got.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I got sober for seventeen years during that period because
when somebody at that level said I don't see anything special,
I have to go correct any anything that could make
him right. So I was like, I'm going to be
a straight laced and I'm going to work harder than
(25:51):
anyone's ever gonna work to prove this guy wrong. And
I did. And we're still friends. We'll play golf once
in a while.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
So you were there at the same time, count and
Crows were there.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Well, Counting Cruise was a little before us, and they
were never on Columbia. They were on Geffen.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
But it's San Francisco. Oh yeah, you guys.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Were, but they were much bigger and their stuff was
blowing up when we were just getting going.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Were they warm to you guys?
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Well, some of one of the guys in my band
went to Berkeley with a couple other guys. So, like
David Bryson mixed that first album. He's the guitar player
for the band. But like, I still don't know Adam.
I know, I know Dave Bryson really well. I know
Jim Bogis the drummer, and the other guys in the band.
(26:42):
I know Jim really well. And yeah, I mean Meet
Virginia was based on those guys. Like we were playing
a softball game against the count and Crows guys, and
my bass player was at a wedding and he shows
up with his girlfriend and she's wearing heels, playing softball
(27:03):
better than everybody else, And I was like, somebody's got
to write a song about her.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
So when you're writing that song, and I'm gonna go
for memory, but just a line like Daddy Russell's alligators
Mama works on carburetors. Do you find the alligator part
and then rhyme the carburetor part? Or like can you
reverse engineer that?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Probably you know, everything is a work in progress, and
you know I was so limited. I hadn't done my
my ten thousand hours probably, so like when I listen
to these albums and their entirety, I don't get excited.
(27:43):
There's always like, well, those three songs were great. Had
I had more time, or if I had more cap
if I was better at it, we could have made
a better album. The Drops album is the most disappoining
to me because I feel like drops at you, but
it was last song that got written. Had that been
the first song, that album could have been magical, because
(28:08):
because I was just getting to it and we thought
we had the greatest album ever and it was called
something More my mother passed away. Donnie Einer once again
was like, you don't have a single. So three months
of working on everything and trying so hard, and we
(28:29):
had a rule within the band at the time which
was crippling, which was we have to write within the band,
which crippling for me because I'm writing all the words
and the lyrics from day one and I have to
incorporate all of their music and sometimes it's not the
music that we need. But I didn't have a choice
within that rule. And Donnie called me, He's like, you're
(28:50):
coming to New York. He was going to give me
the speech, like you're writing with other people and I
had a dream about my mom swimming through the planets
in her after life and felt like she wrote the
song with me and recorded the song the next day.
I wrote the thing in fifteen minutes. It was weird,
and sang it into a dictaphone, recorded it the next day,
(29:12):
went to New York the day after that with this demo,
and by the time it got to Plain Old Jane,
Donnie Einer's eyes were closed and he just goes, fucking
song of the year and he made it that.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Did you feel that way once it was completed, even
though you were living inside of it?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I think when I remember crying while the strings were
being put on it and Paul Buckmaster was directing the
orchestra and just thinking whether this song is important to
anybody else? This moment means everything. I don't know if
I thought. The first time I ever heard it on
(29:52):
the radio is driving home from something in Eerie, and
it was on a college radio station and it was
nothing like anything that they were playing. It was four
minutes instead of two minutes and forty seconds. I was like,
there's no way. And then it worked.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
When you wrote it, were you imagining the piano and
the orchestra and the strings and the arrangement like that,
or was it just you and a guitar piano?
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Piano I definitely thought was the main key instrument. And
Chuck Levell, who is an Atlanta guy who plays with
the Stones, he turned it into that percussive, duned and
then all that, and he's such a drummer in the
(30:43):
way he plays piano that it was that feel was
all Chuck.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Do you ever feel so possessive on a song though,
on an idea that when they do something that's different
that so you're okay with them going in and changing.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
How are you going to find out if you don't
let people search. Like to me, I don't even like
naming albums. I don't like naming songs. It's like I
did in my part. What does this mean to you?
What do you think it should be called? And which
is great? Like I don't ever put the order of
albums together because I don't That's not what I think
(31:16):
my strength is. You know, Brendan O'Brien was a producer
for several albums, including The Drops, and he said something
smart to me once. Because we were all pretty you know,
we took care of our bills, but we were not
wealthy at all, pretty busted. And he said, you know,
I haven't mowed my grass in fifteen years, because if
(31:45):
I go spend time doing what I'm great at, I
can make a lot more money and pay somebody to
mow my grass for fifteen years. And at the time
I probably took it as arrogance, but as I've found
out how smart that was, I realized it was wisdom.
(32:05):
So if my time can be spent writing songs instead
of agitating the piano player, like if I don't like
it when it's done, then I'll say we need to
fix it. But I don't want to interfere with what
he's great at, because he didn't interfere with where I'm
good at.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Do you feel like that was your mom or do
you feel like you were just reliving and thinking of
your mom in that inspire?
Speaker 1 (32:29):
I mean, obviously we're going to raise our children right.
They will live, they will experience their things, and hopefully
I don't care about my name being passed down. That's
like a young man's desire, and when you get older,
you're like, I just want my kids to figure out
how to have some joy once in a while, how
(32:50):
to pursue virtue as opposed to money, how to pursue
joy instead of fame, and then hope that they can
keep that line going. But when I'm gone, I don't
really want to think that I'll never be able to
experience my grandchildren like that's dark.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
The Bobby Cast will be right back. This is the
Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
It's interesting you talk about your kids and your name.
I always felt like I want to pass down something.
Now that we've had a child, I don't care about
that anymore. It's it's the least important thing.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I think having children, for men is pretty important. You
learn a lot about yourself.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
I just want her to have the ability to find
what makes her happy, and that's kind of it. Yeah,
when it comes to goals and I'm.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Unless it's picking her nose, then you want torect.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
If she's great and a great nose picking influencer, you
don't want that.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
That's you know what. You know. What I do specifically
want for my children to not pursue is to be
the greatest hot dog consumer on the planet's I don't
want them to dip a hot dog in water and
chug it.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
So competitive eating you don't want them to be.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I don't want any of my children to be competitive eaters.
I don't find there to be much joy in that.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
It's odd you choose that of all the things to choose.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Hey, look, I've seen some great dancers. There's some pride
in that never watched a cupcake eating contest or a
donut eating contest, And I'm like, it's a kid.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
With this record you guys are putting out at the
end of the month, do you feel because we can
talk about the drop the Juber album, do you feel
better about this full project or is there a certain
point in this record where you felt like we kind
of really got into it midway through?
Speaker 1 (35:05):
No, this is a great question, because I there are
a couple of songs that I really didn't want on
the record that my managers are like, these songs are
some of all of our favorites. So I'm like, Okay,
I'm going to surrender to this. And then he made
a good point. He's like, this is not the life
that you grew up in. Musically, If you want to
(35:26):
add songs to this later, we just do it. It's
called the intro net, and we just put it there
and add it to and I was like, oh yeah,
the intront I forgot And it's different. So now if
I write a song, I don't have to go like,
oh I wish this could have been. It's just a
cany and so it's much simpler.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Do you do any social media because I went to
your Instagram but they are no posts.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Oh yeah, a lot.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Our Brabi was TikTok. There was no posts. I went
to one of them.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
It is we posted.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
There was on your personal page.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
What's my my personal pages? Like nineteen of me out
there and I think they're on a scam. Twenty four
year old girls.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Instagram at Pat Monahan. Oh no, I don't mess with
that zero it has zero posts.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, because you know, it's like I used to I
used to do solo shows as Pat Monahan, and it
got to the point where I'm like devouring my own
brand of being trained. You know, like I'm the one
remaining original member of the band Train and people call
me Train all the time. What do you mean offended
(36:32):
by that?
Speaker 2 (36:32):
People call you Train?
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, hey, mister Train, And I got that yesterday at
a barbecue barbecue joint. This girl is like I was
behind you in line I realized your train and I
was like, thank you. I realized you were behind me.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
So Mad Dog and the Fog has meaning because it
goes all the way back.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, the whole album is about me being from your Pennsylvania,
getting the courage to leave, making a brief stop in
La hence the song City of Angels, and then getting
to San Francisco and all of the relationships and the
experiences that that period possessed where difficult long relation long
(37:21):
distance relationships like what if we try Pennsylvania Turnpike which
was my trip in a car which was literal, but
I never got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It doesn't really
run through eerie, but it's a poetic license and there's
just there's relationships within the whole thing that are just
(37:42):
real about what I personally went through. What is you?
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Guys's the role of your role about playing new music?
Speaker 1 (37:49):
When you play a show, We do one new song
at night because the album's not out, and so Mad
Dog and the Fog came out yesterday as a song,
play it tonight and Matt Nathanson is performing with us,
and he's on that track, so he'll sing it with
us tonight.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
What about when the whole record comes out.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Then we'll probably be off the road and we'll get
a really good indication of what people are gravitating towards.
Maybe we'll go do I think we're going to have
a release party in San Francisco, so we'll play many
of them. I just don't think it's fair to an
audience to go play more than one song. We played
(38:33):
two for the first week, and it just wasn't It
didn't seem fair.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Can you tell when people are going, oh, new music?
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Okay? Well, the first show and I've always done this
is I apologize for it and say we're going to
play a new song. I know that's the worst part
of everyone's night, but you might like this one. And
my manager was at the show and he's like, yay,
doing anymore. He goes, how are you supposed to get
(39:03):
these people excited? If you're bummed out?
Speaker 2 (39:08):
That's funny, but it's true.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
I mean, you go to the people play four new songs.
Y're like, dude, play pour some sugar on me and
get over with the shit.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
I agree there. It's sometimes I have to remind myself
that I'm a consumer too when I'm creating things. I
have to put myself in the mind of the consumer
as well, and they don't always match, but I always
try to fall back towards the consumer because that's that's
how I make Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Well, you know, we were all kids who sang along
to our favorite bands, and I want people to have that,
you know. It's like I want I want to go
seek some comedian's best jokes sometimes even though they've moved
past it. Twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
When I met you, I met you because I'm a
big fan of you, and I was also feeling real
good about myself today because I was like, I'm a
big fan, but I just I just want a heat
at Pebble Beach of that Part three and it's cool.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I saw you so you play.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah, so this is how we met, and you brought
it up, and I thought, I don't know if I'm
gonna bring it up because I'm just a random arkle
looking white guy that you probably get approached by all
the time. That's my mindset, right. So I'm playing in
the Pebble Beach pro am and they have that Part
three competition, yeah, and they have like different heats, and
(40:26):
then you and I won my heat. I was closer,
so cool and jim NANTZ is there many times?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Have you played it?
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Just one? And I win my heat. Then I see
you standing there and I go up and I'm feeling
good about myself and what a day for me. I'm
gonna meet Pat Monahan and then you're real nice.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
That's so nice.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
At the end of the story.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Golf brings all the most unusual people together.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
You play a lot.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
It's my favorite thing about golf. I haven't played in uh.
I played nine holes like three weeks ago, and other
than that, it's been a few months and it's killing me.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
I haven't played. I have a baby though. We have
a new baby, so I've played.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Babies make it tough.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah, we have a four month old, so I've played.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
My fourteen year old sons out on tour with me,
so that makes it hard. I do have a day
off in Chicago, so I'm going to play in Chicago
on I think I don't know what the day is,
maybe Wednesday or something.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Do you lose track of days while touring?
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, I know today's Friday.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
You guys do standard touring, right, you stay on the road,
like if I'm doing stand up, I do weekends that's it.
You guys stay out though.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Right, A lot of country artists, a lot of Nashville
are like Thursday through Sunday.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
That allows you to remember what day. It is much easier.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah, I would assume where if.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I'm out all the time, every day feels like it's
We've done.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
A lot of like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday shows this tour.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Are you guys having any trouble with what they're calling
blue ticket fever or blue dot? Do you know what
that is?
Speaker 1 (42:02):
No, but if you tell me about it, I'm sure
that it's affecting me. It's kind of like if you
mentioned a disease. I think I got that luckily, not
an illness. Concert tickets generally across the board, hard to move,
just in for everybody, like all the way across this
is this is the best selling tour we've ever done. Wow,
(42:24):
it is bananas. And the craziest part is like many
of them are sold out and they hold you know,
sixteen twenty thousand people, and we'll be like close to sellout,
and then we'll sell a thousand tickets the day of
because young people who are smart are waiting to see
(42:48):
what the weather's going to be like because these are amphitheaters.
My wife told me she read an article that these
young people are affecting young artists' careers.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Because they're not buying tickets on are.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Not buying until and so some of these guys are
canceling tours because we're waiting for a weather. And I
don't blame them, like I get it. Like we played
in New York about two weeks ago. I've never I'm
from Erie, Pennsylvania, and I live in Seattle. I've seen
every kind of rain you could think of. This was different,
(43:22):
and we played an outdoor theater or outdoor venue that
I love called Jones Beach. That same day, there was
an artist in the Baseball stadium, the football stadium, other amphitheaters.
The weather was so bad across New York. We were
the only thing that performed in all of New York
(43:43):
that night. We just found a window and did it.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
What will it take to cancel the show? How hard
does it have be raining or is it just lightning?
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Lightning and thunder are the real parts that affect us
because rain people some people love the rain, and I'll
get out if it's raining on our audience, I'll get out.
In the rain with them, because we should all be
part of that. But it's safety, it's not about vibe.
(44:14):
You know. I don't want anybody to stick around and
get hurt. But if it's stick around and get wet,
it might be a memory for all of us.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
What about instruments though, if you play through a safe
rain storm, do you lose twenty five percent of your instruments?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Uh? No, they figured it out. That's not really a thing.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I think about wet guitars, wet amps, shorten out.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Oh my guys wouldn't jump in the rain. They'd be like,
this guitar is way more expensive than that stupid replaceable microphone.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
They just stay back.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah, they'll be way in back underneath the yawning.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
That's interesting about day of sales because there are a
lot of artists. Yeah, they're calling that blue dot fever
because if you go to the map, there's so many
blue dots for seats that haven't been sold. Talking real,
it's the blue dot. I see real big artists that
are selling a lot, that are like really hitting right now.
So it's not someone just like my grandma used to say,
with their eyes are bigger than their belly. You know
they're not picking a venue too big. It's just there
(45:13):
are so many people doing shows at a time.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
There's a lot of things to go see. It's a strange,
you know. I watched this a year or two ago.
My son who's fourteen, really big into metal, like heavy music,
so I would take them to all these things, and
the resurgence of metal is two years ago, and I
(45:37):
think still now it's big. And it's big because it's
familiar and it's it's bringing back memories and it's it's
part of the human experience. Like I think we're having.
We have more young people at our concerts now than ever,
(45:58):
and I think it's because they learned train music from
a car seat and they're like, I know every song,
let's go see if it's any good. And then they
have a blast. And I see videos of teenagers dancing
out in the grass and it's just so cool.
Speaker 4 (46:14):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
When you go to these shows with your son, these
metal shows, do you enjoy the music or do you
enjoy just being at music and watching your son enjoy
the music?
Speaker 1 (46:38):
It's all of it. Like there, I took him to
the last show we went to. Uh was not as
enjoyable for me, but I realized it wasn't as enjoyable
for him either, but it was really enjoyable for his grandmother.
And so just having someone in my crowd loving every
(47:00):
second of it is enough for me. But like I
took him to Metallica two years ago and Pantera opened
for him, and when he saw Pantera, who he didn't know,
he was like, I just found my thing. That was
super fun for me. And then we've seen Pantera. I
took him to see Ozzy Ozzie's last show in the
(47:23):
UK when we had a day off. He was touring
with me then, and so seeing him move into these
places because as a kid, I loved metal too, and
then I just grew out of it because pop music
was I wanted people to sing along to it and
I didn't play guitar well. But he plays guitar well
(47:44):
and he sings great, and just watching him love all this,
like you know, he does Stone in Love every night
with us, plays guitar, rips on it, sings like an
angel like Neil Shan from from Journey. He started following
on following him on Instagram two days ago. There are
(48:05):
like celebrities that are following my son that I just
think he's the coolest thing because he's influenced by all
of this old music that we're hoping, well, you know,
he'll turn it into a new wave of what he loves.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
So if he sees Pantterian goes well, I found my thing.
What was that band for you when you saw it
and said that's my thing?
Speaker 1 (48:25):
It was led Zepplin. He loves led Zeppelin too. But like,
we just bought him a guitar that has a Floyd Rose.
You know what a Floyd Rose is. It's a floating pickup,
so it's like an Eddie van Halen thing, so it
can go and where most WHAMMI bars just go? When when? When? When? When?
(48:49):
This thing can do tricks and there are possible But
we just got him one because it's very metal and
it's what he loves and he's going to try to
figure out how to be a master at it. His
work ethic is weirdly good.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Did you have a specific led Zeppelin concert you went to?
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Were you then never went to a Leeds up on concert?
I was too too young, But I did see Robert
Plant when he was singing Zeppelin songs and his new stuff,
and that was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
I saw him at Whole Foods twice here no Austin
lived in Austin.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
Did you approach him?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
I went to him. I said, are you mister Train?
He was not, He was mister Zeppel.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
And what did he say?
Speaker 2 (49:31):
I didn't, I didn't. It was wild to see him though,
just outed like because he at the time was with
another artist and they were living in Austin together, and
you I just see him with that's it's royalty, it's
music royalty, holding a little green basket with the two
handles with lettuce, just walking up.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Do you know the movie Animal House?
Speaker 2 (49:53):
I do, because I can.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
I can imagine you seeing him over by the cucumbers
and looking at him and saying, bigger my cucumber. I did.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
I respected him so much. I didn't want to, Yeah,
take a second out of his day.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
He probably appreciated it. But I can tell you if
you just would have been nice to him and it's
been like thank you for the most amazing music ever,
he would have been like, cheers.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Mate, what's a great fan interaction to you?
Speaker 1 (50:28):
In public anything like today's somebody sew me getting to
my bus and she was like, oh my god, it's
such a big fan. Can we take a selfie? I
was like, of course, it's you know, brief interaction is
just lovely. It's like more human beings, like you live
for that. And I don't travel with security. Like We've
(50:49):
debated about traveling with security this year, and I was like,
security is a magnet for problems, and you have to
add the personality of a security guy, and I can't
imagine they're that great, you know what I mean. You're
never gonna have a security guy be like, hey, look
(51:10):
I could do this. You know you think. I've seen
security guys for other bands become celebrities, and it's fucking
the most annoying thing you could imagine, because that's their access.
That's a fans new access to get to the people.
And and the joy that comes from these security guys
(51:35):
to be so popular is gays, What.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Song do you guys play where the crowd goes the
craziest right now? Uh?
Speaker 1 (51:44):
Fifty ways A second Bye is Big, drive By is
Big Soul Sisters Big, I'm Robert Platt, bro Uh, there's
just a few moments that are really big and drops.
Always we close with drops because I don't know, we've
(52:06):
never been able to follow it.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Have you tried to play it earlier on this.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, it's a huge mistake. The only time we ever
did it the right way is we started the show
with drops and then finished the show with drops.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
I think that's awesome. I love when artists.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
But that's early. You don't want to do that when you're.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
But why why won't you do it now?
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Because it's so special of a four minutes for somebody
that that should be their time to link reminisce about
what it means to them. It's like it's old enough
now that there are moments attached to it. That's something's
theirs for. However, many reasons you don't want to play
(52:48):
it once, and then later you played it and they're like,
I think I like the first one better, you know,
like I was thinking about my grandpa, and then the
second one I was like, you know, just looking at
the guitar player. There's a lot of reasons why it
just would be weird.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Are there any songs you'd rather not play anymore? But
you know, the fans want to hear the song not
really you still have joy and something like meet Virginia.
That's yeah to me, the first song, that's what was
I was introduced to.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
I guess that's still people's favorite album from us. You know,
it's like thirty years old. And I hate those people
that they think it's our best album because I've done,
you know, thirty more years of shit. But uh, but
I get it.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Is it still fun for you to play?
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Yeah? But it's work man, It's it's hard to work
out there. It's like it's like athletic.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Well, I'm a big fan of your music, and I
love Valerie when you were on Yeah, and then the
Harper Family when you're Valerie left.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Ozark You're excellent and Ozark I was good on Ozark.
I will say it's kind of the relaunching your career.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
It really did Yeah good and I think I stole
the show.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
You did, massive fan. Thank you for the time.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
Seriously, I love being here with you. Thanks. Uh, you
got your own sign here and shit, I don't have
anything like that.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
Well, if you're from Mountain Pine, they actually like that one.
You know what you mean to sign it. I send
him home with the sign, just a big signed hometown sign.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
It would be pretty great.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Pat, thanks for the time. Man, and we talked about
the record before you got here, and again, you can
always add to it. I think, I think that's a
great advice. You can add one hundred songs to it.
You have one hundred and fifty song it'd be a
Morgan wall On record. That's what he does. He puts
out one hundred song records. Never heard of him. It's
a new artist, new guy, Yeah yeah, new guy. All right,
there is Pat mon Ahnd.
Speaker 3 (54:38):
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
See, that's the best part of my life. I have
famous songs, but I'm not a famous guy, so I
can be anywhere I want and nobody cares. So the
fact that you even recognize me is odd.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm really excited about this one because I love Train.
Pat Monahan is here, the lead singer, multi Grammy Award
winning They are Drops of Jupiter. Hey Soul's sister Drive
By Meet Virginia, Calling all Angels. I mean, I could
keep going. They've sold more than ten million albums. They
have diamond songs. Like you've heard platinum, that's nothing. They
(00:44):
have Diamond certified songs. And Train's been around for more
than thirty years. Patrin making music for a long, long,
long time. They're celebrating the twenty fifth anniversary of Drops
of Jupiter with a huge summer tour. They are releasing
a brand new album at the end of August, call
Mad Dog in the Fog, and we'll talk about that
as well, and so we'll even talk about a musical.
(01:06):
The Pat's been writing music for so here. He is
the lead singer of Train. Pat Monahan Top five in
order Train songs of all time.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Drops this number one because of its relationship to my mom.
Number two would have to be Hey Soul's Sister because
the band was pretty much toast until that song brought
(01:38):
us back. Number three could be Marry Me because I
wrote it in front of my wife sitting on our
kitchen counter with an acoustic guitar, and I really would
marry her every day.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
You wrote it and I just played it for her.
You wrote it in front.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Of and I was like, what about this? And so
that was important. Calling All Angels is a pretty important
song for me because drops a jup Butter was out.
I was really in a bad marriage, sober life, totally
(02:20):
good everywhere but in my house. And I got this
amazing therapist in Marin County, her name is Judy Bell.
In my first day in there, I explained why I
was there. I was like, I've never been less happy
and I've never been more successful. So she made me
(02:44):
stand up. She's like, I want you to put your
hands on your stomach, and then I want you to
bend towards your shoes, and then she started going like this.
She said, you just took your first bow. So now
we're going to talk about out all the things that
you should be congratulating yourself for instead of punishing yourself for.
(03:07):
And she said, the problem with humans is that we
are built of angels and traders, and you have to
call your angels. And I said, bitch, I'm stealing the
shit out of that. I didn't say those exact words,
but Judy is a really important and that song was
(03:27):
really important. So those are four. And then you know,
I wrote the song drive By for James Blunt and
they didn't want it, and so it was a pretty
important song for us. And I would say it's between
that and a song called Don't Grow Up So Fast,
which I actually wrote here in Nashville about watching your
(03:49):
children grow up wanting them to like really understand that
you wanting to look like you're twenty one when you're
fifteen so you can get a beer is the opposite
of the total outcome of your life, because you'll you
really want to look fifteen when you're thirty, You really
(04:10):
want to look thirty when you're sixty. It's the one
time in your life that you just wanted to speed up.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
What song for you was the most surprising that it
became a massive hit.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Uh, Soul Sister was that was pretty weird? Why because
ukulele and like it was like what that was a
And then you know, the internet was pretty hopping at
that point and texting. I remember being in Australia and
no Americans were texting and all the Aussies were texting.
(04:44):
And then years later we caught up to it and
Soul Sister became part of like the fabric of like
teenage life, like, hey is Soul's sister? And then right
back is that mister, mister? Like it was like weird
lyrical connections between kids, and that was the moment that
we were like, this is this is culturally big?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Did you suggest the ukulele? In that beginning?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
You know, we wrote the song. I wrote it with
a couple of guys, Norwegian guys in New York, Almond
and Espin, who were lovely guys. They call themselves Espionage.
I'm not sure they still work together anymore. But we
we wrote the song and I sang it and it
sounded really good and I was like, yeah, it's good,
(05:31):
but it had a guitar on it.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
It was like even the beginning, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
It was like an electric guitar. It's good. I don't,
I mean, it sounds fine, but it doesn't have the thing,
and then Almond or i mean Espin picked up a
ukulele and it's like and it just like all went,
that's it. You just found the thing.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Have you ever spoken to mister mister No, But there were.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Texts or like email or not emails. They were like
Instagram posts or whatever. Like somebody was like, those guys
owe you every day. They owe me everything. They wrote
amazing songs. You know. I love that somebody thinks mister
mister rows me everything. It's awesome.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I don't think a lot of people know that they're
a band. If they weren't alive, then they just think
that's words in a song.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, maybe because I.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Don't know that I would.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And there's no way to ever find out. I mean
there's no devices or anything that you could look it
up with.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Why would you just jamming out?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Do you need any sort of reminder of your words.
It's a very word heavy songs.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Most of them are, and you know them all doing
doing a show these days? Ninety minutes is man, I
have to be fit. It is hard. It's hard. Everything's
way up here saying all the original keys, and it
(07:02):
is a lot of work. So being here talking to
you for this long, you might be the reason why
I have to cancel tonight's show.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Or is it the perfect warm up and tonight No,
it's a cancel Or is it perfect?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Because you're vocal, I'm leaning towards you ruining my life. Okay,
I knew you were going to ruin my life. I
just didn't know it was going to be today.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Fair enough, fair enough when Hey, Soul's Sister becomes a
hit and it was unexpected. Were you also surprised that
it was a single because you say you let the
others choose things, like me my manager?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
So the first this is the first album he managed.
I was with a manager that I was like, we're
going nowhere and I need help so bad. I can't
manage myself. I can't do this. This particular guy was
not as hands on as Jonathan Daniel and Crush, but
at the time they didn't have anyone like us. They were.
(07:58):
They had panic, fallout, boy girls like boys, boys like
girls and other things like that. And I was writing
songs in the studio that their management company was in,
and they had a studio in the back that my
friend Sam Hollander was a writer and Sam and I
(08:18):
wrote Save Me San Francisco together, and so we was
back there working and I would go to the water
cooler and see Jonathan sometimes, and he saw that first
show that Columbia passed Honust in New York, like he's
hipped to everything. Don Hills was the name of the club,
and so we would chat about things, and I told
(08:40):
him like, I have eighty two songs and I don't
know what I'm gonna do, and I need somebody to
manage me. I haven't let go of my manager yet.
I don't know what to do. And he was like,
if you get a Pete Wentz haircut, I'll manage you.
And I was like, I love Wentz, but I don't
(09:00):
look good in that. So anyway, he said, seriously, let
me let's listen to your eighty two songs. And Soul
Sister was on there and he was like, that's weird.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
He listened to eighty two songs.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, he listened to all of them. And let me
tell you, if you heard those eighty two songs, you
would consider jumping out a window. And he found that
one and a few others and he was like, so basically,
of those eighty two. There were probably six songs that
were like made the album, and then I built around that,
(09:34):
like save Me San Francisco was the last song to
be written because I needed to. I needed to put
the period on it. That was the name of the album,
and the whole vibe was I need my band to
go back to San Francisco and be a part of
that community. So that's how that whole thing started. So
he thought it was special or weird, which is special sometimes.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I was talking to my wife and I was like,
why we should go to the show. She's like, we can't.
We have a four month old, and I said, she's
twelve years younger than I am.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
We took our kids to every concert since they were infants.
So this is on you, bro. This is where you
have to decide if you're a real parent or you're
just a half ass.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I'm that. I'm that, and in fact, we named her
son half ass. I said we should go and she
said I don't. I don't know if I know many
Train songs. I'm a massive fan. And I said, I
would bet you would know at least three. She goes, Okay,
let's go down the list. She knew six. Almost every word.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah, she knew. See, that's the best part of my life.
I have famous songs, but I'm not a famous guy,
so I can be anywhere I want and nobody cares.
So the fact that you even recognize me is odd. Me.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I'm a massive fan. You talk, Are you talking to general?
Speaker 1 (10:59):
But I'm saying, just recognized in general? Because it was
the same and AT and T that Actually, no, it
was a different one. I was in an AT and
T once and Jason Bateman was there. I was asked
to sign Jason Bateman pictures the whole time. I'm like,
even one time I went through TSA in Seattle and
(11:21):
this guy in TSA looks at me and he goes, man,
you look just like Justin Bateman, and I go, I
am Justin Bateman. Because he didn't even know the guy's
name is Jason. It's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
What about Richard Marx? Do you ever get that?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Never get Richard Marx. I think Richard Marx is in
much better shape than me, so we don't have that
that issue.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I was running down the list of songs with my
wife and I could just say that she's back in
the air. She got hmmm, she knew everywhere. She knew
that one.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
How old is she?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Thirty four?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Cool?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
She knew drive by Great, I'm gonna do the whole list.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Play that song. Maybe she did play that sister.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Marry me, You're gonna make it easy for me? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah. Does she know fifty Ways sy Goodbye?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
No, she knew me.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
But that's interesting because fifty Ways of Sigabye really blew
up on TikTok a few years ago, and it's blowing
up again. What's the melody teenagers? She went down in
and a airplane? Help me, help me? Uh, it's a
story about when a girl broke up with me, so
(12:33):
I told my friend she died. It's a love song.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
You know a record I really liked with your solo record. Uh,
Last of Seven. I may mess a name up, like.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
You know what. That really did well in Europe.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So that's a real thing where it just oddly does
well and other odd kids.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yep, and you go over.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
There and say and they all scream along.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yep. There's an interesting We wouldn't do many of them,
maybe one from the record, but that song resonated with Europeans.
It was an interesting time in my life that you
did the record. Yeah, there are two records we don't
really perform anything off of. For me, It's You, which
is a train album, and Last of Seven, which was
(13:18):
my solo album. Because the solo album, I really wanted
to not be in the band anymore, and the only
way being a solo record being a solo recording a
solo record. Had I had Crush Management as my management,
they may have allowed me to do it, but that
would not have been the record that they would have
(13:39):
wanted me to make because it wasn't different enough. And
I get it, you know, in hindsight, you learn, you know,
you know everything. But I loved that record and I
loved making that record because I got to do that
by myself, but it didn't help me, didn't help the band.
(14:04):
And then when I went back to the band, we
made some changes and Soul Sister kind of was our rebirth.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
When you write, are you writing from you just full
melody first and then you attach lyrics to it? Are
you writing concept?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
What is the process? Because your songs are very distinct.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, they're weird, weird wins And I never really knew
that till a guy named Jonathan Daniel became my manager
like almost twenty years ago, because he was he's such
an analyzing, you know, an analyst in music that before
he started managing me, he was taking a look at
(14:51):
the songs that were successful. He's like, meet Virginia, weirdest
song you ever could have put out at that time,
and then Jupiter even weirder like at the time. And
the reason that song I think was successful is because
it was very close to almost famous the movie. So
(15:12):
people were loving that lush string thing that Elton John had,
and in fact, Paul Buckmaster, who arranged his strings, did
the same thing on drops. The process of writing is
always different, like this particular album, this new one, Mad
Dog and the Fog was It all stemmed from a
(15:32):
musical that Jerry Becker MD and Matt Musty, my drummer,
and I wrote all the music for a musical and
have been in the process for six years. It finally
opens in September at the Old Globe in San Diego.
It's called Beginning Again, based on a movie, and our
process was those guys would go write thirty musical tracks,
(15:58):
you know, just verse, chorus, just even, and then I
would write all the melodies and lyrics and then we'd
make changes and then complete the song. And everything in
a musical has to be the story about the character.
It's brutal, really really hard work, because then after you
think you've accomplished something, then it goes to a committee
(16:18):
of people that I'll give you their opinions, and then
you just want to kill yourself. I quit three times.
So that process we learned a lot about each other.
And then the album process was different, where the ideas
started with me. So I would sit at a piano,
sing something into my iPhone and send it to these
(16:40):
guys play something on guitar. There would always be a
melody and sometimes a lyric, and then they would build
from that. And so the process for those two things
were different but similar.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Did you ever do the cover band?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
And that's what I did in Eerie, Pennsylvania when I
was a kid and we were performing. We did three sets.
We kind of did the easy songs, then we do
like the popular songs at the time, and then the
third set would be all led Zeppelin and Chaer and
(17:31):
her band were performing at an arena in eerie, like
three blocks from the bar that I was at, and
her bandmates came to have a drink during our Zeppelin set,
and a guy named David Shelley, her guitar player at
the time, called me over to his table and he
gave me his phone number, and he said, you got
the stuff, so call me. I'm in La. You got
(17:54):
to go there, and so I did, and we never connected.
We connected years later. He passed away a few years ago,
but he got me there because you you know, I
needed I needed somebody to say what I thought that
was important enough for me to believe them. And what
(18:14):
you thought was what I thought was I got the stuff.
But to hear that from somebody who just played an
arena two blocks away, that made all the difference. Like,
I owe him so much for giving me the courage.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
So when you moved to La, what's that?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
It was awful. I mean, living in the worst apartment,
you know, helicopters. It was during you know, early nineties,
late eighties. I graduated high school in eighty seven, so
it was like a eight. And then I moved back
(18:50):
to Pennsylvania and moved to San Francisco with a couple
of the guys that I met in LA.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
So the LA trip didn't work.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Back years later to trip back years later to try
to pursue acting. I'm not sure if you've ever seen
me in anything, but I'm not very good. But I
got a great acting coach and I realized, you know,
I've done some TV and stuff, but what I realized
is acting is hard. It's as hard as music. And
(19:20):
like it was, it was really which one are you
going to go after?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
So when you moved to LA and then you moved
back to Pennsylvania, was that a tuck your tail between
your legs or was it I'm going to go back
and regroup, save some money.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
It was because I was going to have my first child,
so we went back and did that. It was not
a great relationship that I was in, but it was
you know, doing the right thing comes in a lot
of different packages, and I thought that was the right
(19:54):
thing to like get married and figure stuff out. Doing
the right thing can be a lot of different ways,
but at the time, you know, I was raised at
a Catholic environment where there would have been a lot
of judgment, and I would rather do the right thing
(20:14):
and not be happy than to have the people in
my life not be happy with me. I don't feel
like that anymore because I've learned enough and I don't
want that for my children. And so that was it
wasn't the tail between the legs as much as we
can't afford to do that here, and so I went
(20:36):
back to Pennsylvania and then moved to San Francisco because
then it was like, I don't have a choice in
my soul. I can't stay here and like hang wallpaper
and paint houses, I have to go. So I hung
wallpaper and painted houses in San Francisco, and then every
night I did it was like the only trade I knew.
(20:57):
And then we'd go play for free. And one of
those places that we played for free all the time
and then until we got paid was Mad Dog and
the Fog. It was an important place for us.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And so the guys you met in LA on your
initial trip, did they move to San Francisco to meet
up with you.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Yes, they so, one at a time. A guy named
Rob Hotchkiss I started it with, and then Jimmy Stafford
was his guitar player in a band in La. He
moved and there was the three of us and we
would go do everything. And then their old bass player,
Charlie Coleen had a friend in Colorado because he had
(21:34):
moved and he was a drummer, Scott Underwoods. So then
it was the five of us.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And were you surprised LA didn't work?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
No?
Speaker 1 (21:42):
I mean, and you know, I wasn't ever in their band.
I met them through different ways, but at the time
there was a lot of magazines you would just put
your ad in for free and hope that somebody would connect.
It was a music connection, was what it was called.
And I met some really cool guys. I met this
really cool guy named Kevin. I don't remember Kevin's last name,
(22:04):
it's been a while, but he turned me onto Alison Chains.
That was the grunge band that I was like, this
is great because grunge was not my thing, but it
was definitely the era of grunge. So to come out
of that and not be a grunge band was probably
the smartest thing that I ever did. But we were
definitely pursuing you know, my hair was down to here
(22:26):
and we're pursuing that lane. But it did. It's it's
not really who I am.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So you guys are almost an alternative band, almost what
an alternative band like, Oh yeah, in a slightly different timeline.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Oh yeah, you can still hear it. Like we do
a song from the Drops album every Night called Whipping Boy,
and it's that it's that era. It's like jo like
all that shit.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
It's so different though than the first song that I
knew you from was listening to the radio in Arkansas,
which was Meet Virginia. Yeah, because you know, not a
lot of pace with that record, and hear all the words.
There's there's no distortion. Yeah, did you guys have success locally?
Regionally first? And where you train? Then we train.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
We used it as a working title until we found
out that it was not taken, which we were all shocked,
like how not some you know, there's a lot of
different trains, uh, steel train and whatever, and so yeah,
as we play all these places for free and then
we can start to play bigger places and then sell
(23:34):
tickets and then fill rooms. We were pursued by Columbia Records.
They were like, we got you know, these demos are
great bands, great live. We're gonna fly or New York.
Instead of Mohammed coming to the Mountain, the Mountain went
(23:55):
to Mohammad I think I'm allowed to say that you
are and H and Muhammad did not dig us. And
his name is Donnie Einer and he saw us and
was like, I didn't see anything special. So we flew
all the way back to San Francisco with nothing. And
that was the time that I was painting houses with
(24:15):
this guy who was very philosophically smart, and he said,
do you guys have a common goal? And I was like,
I don't know, I've never asked, Like we weren't friends
from growing up. So I went nest and said, we're
going to on this chalkboard. We were using Counting Crow's
storage room to rehearse in we had a chalkboard and
(24:36):
I started writing down what each of us had in common.
And we had one thing that we wanted, and that
was to make a record. So we borrowed money from
friends and family, found a guy to engineer it who
wasn't worried about getting paid because he was independently wealthy,
and we made that record. Columbia Records comes back and
(24:57):
they disguised the project as Project at because they have
to bring it to Donnie again in a different form
because he's already said no. And Donnie he's like, Okay,
let's put it on Aware of Records, which is underneath
the umbrella of Columbia, and then they signed the band,
and I consider Donnie he was right both times, like
(25:20):
we got our shit together after he said.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
No, you don't think you had it right the first time?
What's that you don't think you had it right the
first time? When he said no, no, like I got.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I got sober for seventeen years during that period because
when somebody at that level said I don't see anything special,
I have to go correct any anything that could make
him right. So I was like, I'm going to be
a straight laced and I'm going to work harder than
(25:51):
anyone's ever gonna work to prove this guy wrong. And
I did. And we're still friends. We'll play golf once
in a while.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
So you were there at the same time, count and
Crows were there.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Well, Counting Cruise was a little before us, and they
were never on Columbia. They were on Geffen.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
But it's San Francisco. Oh yeah, you guys.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Were, but they were much bigger and their stuff was
blowing up when we were just getting going.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Were they warm to you guys?
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Well, some of one of the guys in my band
went to Berkeley with a couple other guys. So, like
David Bryson mixed that first album. He's the guitar player
for the band. But like, I still don't know Adam.
I know, I know Dave Bryson really well. I know
Jim Bogis the drummer, and the other guys in the band.
(26:42):
I know Jim really well. And yeah, I mean Meet
Virginia was based on those guys. Like we were playing
a softball game against the count and Crows guys, and
my bass player was at a wedding and he shows
up with his girlfriend and she's wearing heels, playing softball
(27:03):
better than everybody else, And I was like, somebody's got
to write a song about her.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
So when you're writing that song, and I'm gonna go
for memory, but just a line like Daddy Russell's alligators
Mama works on carburetors. Do you find the alligator part
and then rhyme the carburetor part? Or like can you
reverse engineer that?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Probably you know, everything is a work in progress, and
you know I was so limited. I hadn't done my
my ten thousand hours probably, so like when I listen
to these albums and their entirety, I don't get excited.
(27:43):
There's always like, well, those three songs were great. Had
I had more time, or if I had more cap
if I was better at it, we could have made
a better album. The Drops album is the most disappoining
to me because I feel like drops at you, but
it was last song that got written. Had that been
the first song, that album could have been magical, because
(28:08):
because I was just getting to it and we thought
we had the greatest album ever and it was called
something More my mother passed away. Donnie Einer once again
was like, you don't have a single. So three months
of working on everything and trying so hard, and we
(28:29):
had a rule within the band at the time which
was crippling, which was we have to write within the band,
which crippling for me because I'm writing all the words
and the lyrics from day one and I have to
incorporate all of their music and sometimes it's not the
music that we need. But I didn't have a choice
within that rule. And Donnie called me, He's like, you're
(28:50):
coming to New York. He was going to give me
the speech, like you're writing with other people and I
had a dream about my mom swimming through the planets
in her after life and felt like she wrote the
song with me and recorded the song the next day.
I wrote the thing in fifteen minutes. It was weird,
and sang it into a dictaphone, recorded it the next day,
(29:12):
went to New York the day after that with this demo,
and by the time it got to Plain Old Jane,
Donnie Einer's eyes were closed and he just goes, fucking
song of the year and he made it that.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Did you feel that way once it was completed, even
though you were living inside of it?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I think when I remember crying while the strings were
being put on it and Paul Buckmaster was directing the
orchestra and just thinking whether this song is important to
anybody else? This moment means everything. I don't know if
I thought. The first time I ever heard it on
(29:52):
the radio is driving home from something in Eerie, and
it was on a college radio station and it was
nothing like anything that they were playing. It was four
minutes instead of two minutes and forty seconds. I was like,
there's no way. And then it worked.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
When you wrote it, were you imagining the piano and
the orchestra and the strings and the arrangement like that,
or was it just you and a guitar piano?
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Piano I definitely thought was the main key instrument. And
Chuck Levell, who is an Atlanta guy who plays with
the Stones, he turned it into that percussive, duned and
then all that, and he's such a drummer in the
(30:43):
way he plays piano that it was that feel was
all Chuck.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Do you ever feel so possessive on a song though,
on an idea that when they do something that's different
that so you're okay with them going in and changing.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
How are you going to find out if you don't
let people search. Like to me, I don't even like
naming albums. I don't like naming songs. It's like I
did in my part. What does this mean to you?
What do you think it should be called? And which
is great? Like I don't ever put the order of
albums together because I don't That's not what I think
(31:16):
my strength is. You know, Brendan O'Brien was a producer
for several albums, including The Drops, and he said something
smart to me once. Because we were all pretty you know,
we took care of our bills, but we were not
wealthy at all, pretty busted. And he said, you know,
I haven't mowed my grass in fifteen years, because if
(31:45):
I go spend time doing what I'm great at, I
can make a lot more money and pay somebody to
mow my grass for fifteen years. And at the time
I probably took it as arrogance, but as I've found
out how smart that was, I realized it was wisdom.
(32:05):
So if my time can be spent writing songs instead
of agitating the piano player, like if I don't like
it when it's done, then I'll say we need to
fix it. But I don't want to interfere with what
he's great at, because he didn't interfere with where I'm
good at.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Do you feel like that was your mom or do
you feel like you were just reliving and thinking of
your mom in that inspire?
Speaker 1 (32:29):
I mean, obviously we're going to raise our children right.
They will live, they will experience their things, and hopefully
I don't care about my name being passed down. That's
like a young man's desire, and when you get older,
you're like, I just want my kids to figure out
how to have some joy once in a while, how
(32:50):
to pursue virtue as opposed to money, how to pursue
joy instead of fame, and then hope that they can
keep that line going. But when I'm gone, I don't
really want to think that I'll never be able to
experience my grandchildren like that's dark.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
The Bobby Cast will be right back. This is the
Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
It's interesting you talk about your kids and your name.
I always felt like I want to pass down something.
Now that we've had a child, I don't care about
that anymore. It's it's the least important thing.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I think having children, for men is pretty important. You
learn a lot about yourself.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
I just want her to have the ability to find
what makes her happy, and that's kind of it. Yeah,
when it comes to goals and I'm.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Unless it's picking her nose, then you want torect.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
If she's great and a great nose picking influencer, you
don't want that.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
That's you know what. You know. What I do specifically
want for my children to not pursue is to be
the greatest hot dog consumer on the planet's I don't
want them to dip a hot dog in water and
chug it.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
So competitive eating you don't want them to be.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I don't want any of my children to be competitive eaters.
I don't find there to be much joy in that.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
It's odd you choose that of all the things to choose.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Hey, look, I've seen some great dancers. There's some pride
in that never watched a cupcake eating contest or a
donut eating contest, And I'm like, it's a kid.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
With this record you guys are putting out at the
end of the month, do you feel because we can
talk about the drop the Juber album, do you feel
better about this full project or is there a certain
point in this record where you felt like we kind
of really got into it midway through?
Speaker 1 (35:05):
No, this is a great question, because I there are
a couple of songs that I really didn't want on
the record that my managers are like, these songs are
some of all of our favorites. So I'm like, Okay,
I'm going to surrender to this. And then he made
a good point. He's like, this is not the life
that you grew up in. Musically, If you want to
(35:26):
add songs to this later, we just do it. It's
called the intro net, and we just put it there
and add it to and I was like, oh yeah,
the intront I forgot And it's different. So now if
I write a song, I don't have to go like,
oh I wish this could have been. It's just a
cany and so it's much simpler.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Do you do any social media because I went to
your Instagram but they are no posts.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Oh yeah, a lot.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Our Brabi was TikTok. There was no posts. I went
to one of them.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
It is we posted.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
There was on your personal page.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
What's my my personal pages? Like nineteen of me out
there and I think they're on a scam. Twenty four
year old girls.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Instagram at Pat Monahan. Oh no, I don't mess with
that zero it has zero posts.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, because you know, it's like I used to I
used to do solo shows as Pat Monahan, and it
got to the point where I'm like devouring my own
brand of being trained. You know, like I'm the one
remaining original member of the band Train and people call
me Train all the time. What do you mean offended
(36:32):
by that?
Speaker 2 (36:32):
People call you Train?
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, hey, mister Train, And I got that yesterday at
a barbecue barbecue joint. This girl is like I was
behind you in line I realized your train and I
was like, thank you. I realized you were behind me.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
So Mad Dog and the Fog has meaning because it
goes all the way back.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, the whole album is about me being from your Pennsylvania,
getting the courage to leave, making a brief stop in
La hence the song City of Angels, and then getting
to San Francisco and all of the relationships and the
experiences that that period possessed where difficult long relation long
(37:21):
distance relationships like what if we try Pennsylvania Turnpike which
was my trip in a car which was literal, but
I never got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It doesn't really
run through eerie, but it's a poetic license and there's
just there's relationships within the whole thing that are just
(37:42):
real about what I personally went through. What is you?
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Guys's the role of your role about playing new music?
Speaker 1 (37:49):
When you play a show, We do one new song
at night because the album's not out, and so Mad
Dog and the Fog came out yesterday as a song,
play it tonight and Matt Nathanson is performing with us,
and he's on that track, so he'll sing it with
us tonight.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
What about when the whole record comes out.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Then we'll probably be off the road and we'll get
a really good indication of what people are gravitating towards.
Maybe we'll go do I think we're going to have
a release party in San Francisco, so we'll play many
of them. I just don't think it's fair to an
audience to go play more than one song. We played
(38:33):
two for the first week, and it just wasn't It
didn't seem fair.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Can you tell when people are going, oh, new music?
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Okay? Well, the first show and I've always done this
is I apologize for it and say we're going to
play a new song. I know that's the worst part
of everyone's night, but you might like this one. And
my manager was at the show and he's like, yay,
doing anymore. He goes, how are you supposed to get
(39:03):
these people excited? If you're bummed out?
Speaker 2 (39:08):
That's funny, but it's true.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
I mean, you go to the people play four new songs.
Y're like, dude, play pour some sugar on me and
get over with the shit.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
I agree there. It's sometimes I have to remind myself
that I'm a consumer too when I'm creating things. I
have to put myself in the mind of the consumer
as well, and they don't always match, but I always
try to fall back towards the consumer because that's that's
how I make Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Well, you know, we were all kids who sang along
to our favorite bands, and I want people to have that,
you know. It's like I want I want to go
seek some comedian's best jokes sometimes even though they've moved
past it. Twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
When I met you, I met you because I'm a
big fan of you, and I was also feeling real
good about myself today because I was like, I'm a
big fan, but I just I just want a heat
at Pebble Beach of that Part three and it's cool.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I saw you so you play.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah, so this is how we met, and you brought
it up, and I thought, I don't know if I'm
gonna bring it up because I'm just a random arkle
looking white guy that you probably get approached by all
the time. That's my mindset, right. So I'm playing in
the Pebble Beach pro am and they have that Part
three competition, yeah, and they have like different heats, and
(40:26):
then you and I won my heat. I was closer,
so cool and jim NANTZ is there many times?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Have you played it?
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Just one? And I win my heat. Then I see
you standing there and I go up and I'm feeling
good about myself and what a day for me. I'm
gonna meet Pat Monahan and then you're real nice.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
That's so nice.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
At the end of the story.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Golf brings all the most unusual people together.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
You play a lot.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
It's my favorite thing about golf. I haven't played in uh.
I played nine holes like three weeks ago, and other
than that, it's been a few months and it's killing me.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
I haven't played. I have a baby though. We have
a new baby, so I've played.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Babies make it tough.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah, we have a four month old, so I've played.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
My fourteen year old sons out on tour with me,
so that makes it hard. I do have a day
off in Chicago, so I'm going to play in Chicago
on I think I don't know what the day is,
maybe Wednesday or something.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Do you lose track of days while touring?
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, I know today's Friday.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
You guys do standard touring, right, you stay on the road,
like if I'm doing stand up, I do weekends that's it.
You guys stay out though.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Right, A lot of country artists, a lot of Nashville
are like Thursday through Sunday.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
That allows you to remember what day. It is much easier.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah, I would assume where if.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
I'm out all the time, every day feels like it's
We've done.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
A lot of like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday shows this tour.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Are you guys having any trouble with what they're calling
blue ticket fever or blue dot? Do you know what
that is?
Speaker 1 (42:02):
No, but if you tell me about it, I'm sure
that it's affecting me. It's kind of like if you
mentioned a disease. I think I got that luckily, not
an illness. Concert tickets generally across the board, hard to move,
just in for everybody, like all the way across this
is this is the best selling tour we've ever done. Wow,
(42:24):
it is bananas. And the craziest part is like many
of them are sold out and they hold you know,
sixteen twenty thousand people, and we'll be like close to sellout,
and then we'll sell a thousand tickets the day of
because young people who are smart are waiting to see
(42:48):
what the weather's going to be like because these are amphitheaters.
My wife told me she read an article that these
young people are affecting young artists' careers.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Because they're not buying tickets on are.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Not buying until and so some of these guys are
canceling tours because we're waiting for a weather. And I
don't blame them, like I get it. Like we played
in New York about two weeks ago. I've never I'm
from Erie, Pennsylvania, and I live in Seattle. I've seen
every kind of rain you could think of. This was different,
(43:22):
and we played an outdoor theater or outdoor venue that
I love called Jones Beach. That same day, there was
an artist in the Baseball stadium, the football stadium, other amphitheaters.
The weather was so bad across New York. We were
the only thing that performed in all of New York
(43:43):
that night. We just found a window and did it.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
What will it take to cancel the show? How hard
does it have be raining or is it just lightning?
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Lightning and thunder are the real parts that affect us
because rain people some people love the rain, and I'll
get out if it's raining on our audience, I'll get out.
In the rain with them, because we should all be
part of that. But it's safety, it's not about vibe.
(44:14):
You know. I don't want anybody to stick around and
get hurt. But if it's stick around and get wet,
it might be a memory for all of us.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
What about instruments though, if you play through a safe
rain storm, do you lose twenty five percent of your instruments?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Uh? No, they figured it out. That's not really a thing.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I think about wet guitars, wet amps, shorten out.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Oh my guys wouldn't jump in the rain. They'd be like,
this guitar is way more expensive than that stupid replaceable microphone.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
They just stay back.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah, they'll be way in back underneath the yawning.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
That's interesting about day of sales because there are a
lot of artists. Yeah, they're calling that blue dot fever
because if you go to the map, there's so many
blue dots for seats that haven't been sold. Talking real,
it's the blue dot. I see real big artists that
are selling a lot, that are like really hitting right now.
So it's not someone just like my grandma used to say,
with their eyes are bigger than their belly. You know
they're not picking a venue too big. It's just there
(45:13):
are so many people doing shows at a time.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
There's a lot of things to go see. It's a strange,
you know. I watched this a year or two ago.
My son who's fourteen, really big into metal, like heavy music,
so I would take them to all these things, and
the resurgence of metal is two years ago, and I
(45:37):
think still now it's big. And it's big because it's
familiar and it's it's bringing back memories and it's it's
part of the human experience. Like I think we're having.
We have more young people at our concerts now than ever,
(45:58):
and I think it's because they learned train music from
a car seat and they're like, I know every song,
let's go see if it's any good. And then they
have a blast. And I see videos of teenagers dancing
out in the grass and it's just so cool.
Speaker 4 (46:14):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
When you go to these shows with your son, these
metal shows, do you enjoy the music or do you
enjoy just being at music and watching your son enjoy
the music?
Speaker 1 (46:38):
It's all of it. Like there, I took him to
the last show we went to. Uh was not as
enjoyable for me, but I realized it wasn't as enjoyable
for him either, but it was really enjoyable for his grandmother.
And so just having someone in my crowd loving every
(47:00):
second of it is enough for me. But like I
took him to Metallica two years ago and Pantera opened
for him, and when he saw Pantera, who he didn't know,
he was like, I just found my thing. That was
super fun for me. And then we've seen Pantera. I
took him to see Ozzy Ozzie's last show in the
(47:23):
UK when we had a day off. He was touring
with me then, and so seeing him move into these
places because as a kid, I loved metal too, and
then I just grew out of it because pop music
was I wanted people to sing along to it and
I didn't play guitar well. But he plays guitar well
(47:44):
and he sings great, and just watching him love all this,
like you know, he does Stone in Love every night
with us, plays guitar, rips on it, sings like an
angel like Neil Shan from from Journey. He started following
on following him on Instagram two days ago. There are
(48:05):
like celebrities that are following my son that I just
think he's the coolest thing because he's influenced by all
of this old music that we're hoping, well, you know,
he'll turn it into a new wave of what he loves.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
So if he sees Pantterian goes well, I found my thing.
What was that band for you when you saw it
and said that's my thing?
Speaker 1 (48:25):
It was led Zepplin. He loves led Zeppelin too. But like,
we just bought him a guitar that has a Floyd Rose.
You know what a Floyd Rose is. It's a floating pickup,
so it's like an Eddie van Halen thing, so it
can go and where most WHAMMI bars just go? When when? When? When? When?
(48:49):
This thing can do tricks and there are possible But
we just got him one because it's very metal and
it's what he loves and he's going to try to
figure out how to be a master at it. His
work ethic is weirdly good.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Did you have a specific led Zeppelin concert you went to?
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Were you then never went to a Leeds up on concert?
I was too too young, But I did see Robert
Plant when he was singing Zeppelin songs and his new stuff,
and that was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
I saw him at Whole Foods twice here no Austin
lived in Austin.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
Did you approach him?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
I went to him. I said, are you mister Train?
He was not, He was mister Zeppel.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
And what did he say?
Speaker 2 (49:31):
I didn't, I didn't. It was wild to see him though,
just outed like because he at the time was with
another artist and they were living in Austin together, and
you I just see him with that's it's royalty, it's
music royalty, holding a little green basket with the two
handles with lettuce, just walking up.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Do you know the movie Animal House?
Speaker 2 (49:53):
I do, because I can.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
I can imagine you seeing him over by the cucumbers
and looking at him and saying, bigger my cucumber. I did.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
I respected him so much. I didn't want to, Yeah,
take a second out of his day.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
He probably appreciated it. But I can tell you if
you just would have been nice to him and it's
been like thank you for the most amazing music ever,
he would have been like, cheers.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Mate, what's a great fan interaction to you?
Speaker 1 (50:28):
In public anything like today's somebody sew me getting to
my bus and she was like, oh my god, it's
such a big fan. Can we take a selfie? I
was like, of course, it's you know, brief interaction is
just lovely. It's like more human beings, like you live
for that. And I don't travel with security. Like We've
(50:49):
debated about traveling with security this year, and I was like,
security is a magnet for problems, and you have to
add the personality of a security guy, and I can't
imagine they're that great, you know what I mean. You're
never gonna have a security guy be like, hey, look
(51:10):
I could do this. You know you think. I've seen
security guys for other bands become celebrities, and it's fucking
the most annoying thing you could imagine, because that's their access.
That's a fans new access to get to the people.
And and the joy that comes from these security guys
(51:35):
to be so popular is gays, What.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Song do you guys play where the crowd goes the
craziest right now? Uh?
Speaker 1 (51:44):
Fifty ways A second Bye is Big, drive By is
Big Soul Sisters Big, I'm Robert Platt, bro Uh, there's
just a few moments that are really big and drops.
Always we close with drops because I don't know, we've
(52:06):
never been able to follow it.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Have you tried to play it earlier on this.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, it's a huge mistake. The only time we ever
did it the right way is we started the show
with drops and then finished the show with drops.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
I think that's awesome. I love when artists.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
But that's early. You don't want to do that when you're.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
But why why won't you do it now?
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Because it's so special of a four minutes for somebody
that that should be their time to link reminisce about
what it means to them. It's like it's old enough
now that there are moments attached to it. That's something's
theirs for. However, many reasons you don't want to play
(52:48):
it once, and then later you played it and they're like,
I think I like the first one better, you know,
like I was thinking about my grandpa, and then the
second one I was like, you know, just looking at
the guitar player. There's a lot of reasons why it
just would be weird.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Are there any songs you'd rather not play anymore? But
you know, the fans want to hear the song not
really you still have joy and something like meet Virginia.
That's yeah to me, the first song, that's what was
I was introduced to.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
I guess that's still people's favorite album from us. You know,
it's like thirty years old. And I hate those people
that they think it's our best album because I've done,
you know, thirty more years of shit. But uh, but
I get it.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Is it still fun for you to play?
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Yeah? But it's work man, It's it's hard to work
out there. It's like it's like athletic.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Well, I'm a big fan of your music, and I
love Valerie when you were on Yeah, and then the
Harper Family when you're Valerie left.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
Ozark You're excellent and Ozark I was good on Ozark.
I will say it's kind of the relaunching your career.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
It really did Yeah good and I think I stole
the show.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
You did, massive fan. Thank you for the time.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
Seriously, I love being here with you. Thanks. Uh, you
got your own sign here and shit, I don't have
anything like that.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
Well, if you're from Mountain Pine, they actually like that one.
You know what you mean to sign it. I send
him home with the sign, just a big signed hometown sign.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
It would be pretty great.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Pat, thanks for the time. Man, and we talked about
the record before you got here, and again, you can
always add to it. I think, I think that's a
great advice. You can add one hundred songs to it.
You have one hundred and fifty song it'd be a
Morgan wall On record. That's what he does. He puts
out one hundred song records. Never heard of him. It's
a new artist, new guy, Yeah yeah, new guy. All right,
there is Pat mon Ahnd.
Speaker 3 (54:38):
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
Hosts And Creators
Bobby Bones
Amy Brown
Lunchbox
Eddie Garcia
Raymundo
Mike D
Abby Anderson
Scuba Steve
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