Andrew Hagar

Episode Transcript
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Chuck Shute (00:00):
All right Andrew Hegar is my guest today he is a
singer songwriter and guitaristand former underground MMA
fighter trainer. He's nowfocused mostly on his music is a
new single out called systematicmines and more is going to be
released along with some liveshows lined up so this was a
really fun chat. I previouslymet his brother Aaron and he was

(00:22):
really cool dude and had greatstories and Andrew was the same
just a cool dude with an easy tochat with you guys are gonna
love this stick aroundknow Yeah, so yeah, the jujitsu

(00:43):
and stuff. So the celebrities Sodid you ever come across Rogan
then because he's really intothat he's into that world?

Andrew Hagar (00:51):
Yeah, we Okay, so back in the day, especially,
there was definitely like a,like a ganged up squad mentality
to Brazilian Jujitsu,especially, because like the
sport really didn't startexploding until like the mid to
late 2000s. Like after theUltimate Fighter had already
done that. And like kind ofstarted to gain some popularity

(01:12):
on Spike TV and stuff. And thenobviously now, you know, the UFC
is like a staple on ESPN. But itwasn't always like that. And
when I was coming up in thesport, there was a like, very
tribal mentality to all thedifferent gyms and all the
different jujitsu schools. A lotof the jujitsu guys who came
over from Brazil, brought withthem like a kind of weird beef,

(01:35):
like. So yeah, I didn't train at10th planet, which was where
Rogan was training, I knew someof the guys there. I've like met
a lot of those guys and havesubsequently trained with a lot
of them now that you know, thecommunities a little closer
together, but I neverencountered Rogen. And it's
funny because like one of mybest friends and training

(01:56):
partners coming up was reallygood friends with him. And he
would come train stand up withme and do MMA at the school that
we trained at. And then he wouldgo train jujitsu specifically
attend planet with with Rogan,and he Bravo and all those guys.
So I was like, one degree away,and I never met him. And it's a
shame because like, he's, Imean, obviously, he's been under

(02:17):
fire a lot in the media, but Ithink he's a really interesting
guy. Like, again, one of thesepeople that's like, kind of a
classic renaissance man does somany interesting things. And I
would love to just have aconversation with him, you know,
not even on a podcast about, youknow, just his path, you know?

Yeah, I find it fascinating. I love his
podcasts. I mean, I don't listento every episode, but some of
them because he has suchinteresting guests, like
scientists and doctors, and thenalso comedians and some UTMC
musicians. And I just listenedto like, the Pauly Shore one
that was really an

eye on that one, too. Because being a, you know,
like somewhat of a 90s kid like,yeah, I grew up on Pauly Shore
movies. And it was reallyinteresting to hear what he had
to say about same thing. Like,that's a guy that's accomplished
so much that kind of just theworld forgot. And now he's
finding, you know, morerelevancy through like, jam in
the van and stuff. But yeah,it's it's interesting. I like a

(03:10):
lot of his guests. And again,people pile on a lot of
criticism to that guy,especially over the whole, you
know, whatever, shall not benamed thing. But but you know,
just in general, I do find a lotof his guests incredibly
fascinating.

Yeah, well, I feel like the people that don't like
him, don't listen to him on theshow, because he's this like,
he's this like, all right wingguy. And he'll he'll tell you on
the podcast is like, I've nevervoted Republican. He's like, I'm
liberal. And so that's why it'sso funny that people are like,
Oh, he's, he's right wing. Idon't like it. I'm like, he's
actually not right wing. And

it just people, you know, listening to the
media, and formulating anopinion based on someone else's
opinion, as opposed to actuallytaking the time to look at
what's being said and formulatetheir own opinion. And that's a
massive problem in the worldtoday, in general, that's a
problem I've had to deal with,too. There's plenty of people
who love me without ever knowinganything about me or my music,
and plenty people that hate mewithout knowing anything about

(04:06):
me and my music. And both ofthose kinds of people are all up
in my DMs on social media, andit kills me. Wow. So

we might have to, I understand why people would like
it, because it's like, they wantto get into that world or
whatever. But why would peoplehate you?

Oh, because of the whole Van Halen feud. I mean, I
have people who are massivedaily rock fans, or people who
think that you know, my fatherruined Van Halen, that just
direct all that ire towards me.
Like I've blocked a lot of thosepeople now, so it's not as bad
as it used to be. But for a longtime, I would get crazy messages
every day, many messages everyday. Usually going into my you

(04:43):
know, whatever that other folderis and Instagram for people you
don't follow or people thatdon't follow you. But yeah, it's
just It blows my mind thatpeople have that kind of time
and want to spend that kind ofemotional energy, just trying to
completely This random strangerwho may or may not ever see what
they're saying this is.

Yeah, no, I can't imagine. I mean, I get a little
bit of trolling here and there,most people just don't give a
shit what I do, but so I can'timagine to be in your shoes, and
you can't help who your familyis. So it's like, that's what I
don't understand. Why would theyblame you? I mean, that has
nothing to do with you. That'sreally

nothing to do with me. But that's what I'm saying
people in general, I just don'tknow that a lot of these folks
who interact on social mediahave much better to do with
their time, and they spend itbeing overwhelmingly negative.
And it's unfortunate, you know,it's like, I people get mad at
stuff like that, like, myfriend, Trevor Luthor deals with
a little bit of that, too. Like,there's people that hate on him,

(05:43):
for, you know, reasons,unbeknownst to him that have
nothing to do with him. And, youknow, it's like one of these
things where you can waste yourown emotional energy getting mad
at those people, but it's like,I just feel sorry for him. You
know, it's like, again, like, Ihope you get a hobby or
something, like makes you happy.
So you don't have to do this,you

know? Yeah. Do you ever respond to them? Or you
just block and ignore?

No, I just usually block and ignore. I mean, unless
somebody takes the time to puttogether an actually well
thought out like constructiveform of criticism. Like I see
that a little bit on my Youtube,like, I get, you know, I don't
post much, I only post reallyvideos and lyric videos and
stuff. But um, you know, there'salways someone in the comments
section that has like somethingreally stupid to say, but then

(06:26):
there's the people who havesomething negative to say, but
it's like, well thought out andconstructive. And I'm like,
Okay, well, those are the kindsof people I will respond to.
Because, again, your haters arejust secretly your biggest fans,
right? There are people that arewatching your every move, and
they're one interact away fromactually becoming a fan. So

right, yeah, there's a thin line between love
and hate. There's the oppositeof love and hate is not you
know, it's not love and hate.
It's like love and hate tothinline. The opposite of both
is apathy. Like where you don'tcare?

Exactly. And there's a lot of that a lot of
people don't don't give aflying, you know, F about me,
which is fine. I like that, too.
So that's an opportunity tomaybe do something to make them
start carrying, you know what Imean, it's an easier battle than
taking someone who really hatesyou sometimes. Because again,
that's just, it's allmisconstrued. I'd rather work
from stuff than negativenumbers.

Absolutely, no, yeah, I've watched some of the
stuff on on YouTube. Yeah, youonly have like four videos or
something, though, I think, Idon't think you have a you have
a video yet for the new singlesymptomatic, mais

a lyric video, you know, visualizer like, one of
the things about the modern daymusic industry is again, like,
it's very expensive to make avideo and there's pretty much no
return on it, like, a lot ofpublications to that you would
use to get maybe a little bitmore traction, but in my
experience, they don't evenreally help much. Like, if you
spend whatever, 1015 20 Somepeople spend $100,000 on a music

(07:52):
video, which just blows my mind.
And then you know, they get awrite up in some, let's say,
Rolling Stone. And it's like,you might get an extra couple
1000 views off that. And that'sit, it really doesn't move the
needle in any meaningful way.
And there's really no returnunless you already have a big
YouTube and you're monetizingthe videos on YouTube, which
again, I haven't really donemuch on YouTube. I've released a

(08:14):
few music videos, from myprevious projects that weren't
self titled. And they're ondifferent YouTube channels. But
yeah, I don't know, man, it'snot really worth it these days,
the next release will have aproper music video, just because
it's something a bit moresubstantial. But I'm not gonna
like, you know, blow a ton ofmoney on that for like I said,
zero return.

That's interesting.
Yeah, because I see so manybands with music videos that are
perfect. I mean, they look to meto be professionally shot. And
I'm wondering, are they going indebt making that video? Or is it
a thing where like, people helpout? Like, I know, like, some of
the bands that I love from the80s and stuff around like
frontier records, which is asmaller label. But yeah, make
good videos. And so I mean, tome, it looks professional. I'm

(08:56):
like, I wonder, are they makingmoney off this? are they losing
money? I don't know.

Well, I mean, a lot of times when you're working
with a label to they're givingyou money to make a music video.
And then the label also willhave, you know, connections
sometimes to differentdirectors, different editors and
stuff, and they'll put it alltogether themselves and bank
roll it. And then that's arecoupable cost for you. So when
you go on tour, and you'remaking money, they're basically
garnishing your wages that youwould make on tour, because you

(09:23):
have a recoupable cost. And alot of that stuff is
contractual, I'm sure you andeverybody else has heard about
like 360 deals where they'retaking a small or sometimes very
large piece of everything youdo, including your own merch
that might exist outside of thelabel scope. And there's a lot
of stuff right now, in theindustry that is just incredibly

(09:43):
predatory. That's why I haven'tsigned a deal yet. I've had a
bunch of different record deals,especially when I was doing the
more folk and Americana projectstuff. And, you know, I had some
like sync deals on deck threelabels and other things, but
they wanted pretty much all ofmy publishing, and they weren't
willing to Give me anymeaningful traction. It's like
again, like, at this point, Ithink it would be better to do

(10:06):
just something like adistribution deal where I could
get out to like bigger channelsand you know, get on maybe some,
some more efficacious playlistsand stuff like that just be put
in front of more people. Butit's very challenging right now
for an independent artists. Andespecially for people that write
their own music and aren't doingjust, whatever kind of copycat

(10:27):
trend chasing stuff because thatreally seems to be all the
labels want to mess with rightnow, especially people that are
developing on tick tock, like, Ihaven't taken a lot of time to
actually carve out a niche ontick tock, and that's to my own,
you know, misfortune, like,pretty much all the labels I've
talked to, all they want is justto see traction on tick tock,
because that's one of the onlythings out there that's actually

(10:48):
going to provide like a one toone, you know, upgrade to the
rest of your stuff, like peopleon Instagram, you know, I have
whatever I think 20 over 22,000legit followers that I've never
paid for boosted or whatever, onInstagram. And when I make a
post about my music, or anythingthat links off of the platform,
I'm lucky if 5% of my user basesees it. And that's just a huge

(11:12):
problem with social media ingeneral right now is everyone's
trying to get you to stay on theplatform consume their content,
if you're an artist or any typeof creator that's got things off
the platform. The only one thatreally doesn't completely crush
your natural engagement is ticktock but tick tock is a
different animals, you know,especially for people like me
that don't really want to sharethat much of their personal

(11:34):
life. You know, it's a littlemore difficult to make content
for that every day.

Yeah, well, but you can post the you can post clips
of the song or can you could youpost a full song I guess?

I mean, yeah, I think they they recently
expanded their videos to includelonger form stuff not really
long, but long enough for a songbut again, I've seen the same
problem on Tik Tok. Like I said,I don't have a huge following on
tick tock, but when I, you know,do a whatever I do out with
another video, or like, takeanother video and make some
content with that, like thatdoes infinitely better than when

(12:09):
I post something to, you know,to my music again, like it seems
like tick tock is kind ofsquashing the engagement on
music based stuff, which isinteresting, because I don't see
that happening for every artiston there. But again, I'm not
super fluent in tic tock andalgorithm on there. Not that I'm
fluent on Instagram, but I'mjust, you know, more used to it,

(12:30):
I guess, in understanding how itworks.

I liked Instagram too. And then it seemed you're
right though. It's like the samething where you post something,
and my posts like went down likebut like, I would post something
before it get, you know, like,not a lot for me. But like if I
got like 100 likes, that was alot and now it's like, there's a
lot of times I'll post them toget like 20 likes, I'm like what
is going on? And it's the samething on Tik Tok, Instagram and
YouTube. Like I'll post a clipon my podcast, and some sort of

(12:56):
blow up on YouTube and sometimesTik Tok rarely doesn't blow up
on Instagram, though.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I think what
happened recently with meta, thefact that they started allowing
people to like pay forverification badges, yeah,
versus that are starting to comewith that, too. Like, I got my
checkmark before all thatstarted happening. But I looked
into what they were kind oftrying to push. Because I was
just interested based on whathappened with Twitter, like on

(13:22):
Twitter, it was a completelyunmitigated disaster. And people
were like, posing as real peoplebuying a blue check, which was
very easy to get and then usingit to kind of, you know,
dismantle whatever it was thisother real person or account is
trying to build. And I was justlike, oh, man, this is probably
going to be the same thing onInstagram. Thankfully, it
doesn't seem like that startedyet. But I have seen with their

(13:45):
like their business suite of theaccounts, you can, you can
purchase the blue check for theyoffer like expanded engagement
and support team response andall this stuff. And it's like, I
get like a ton of fake accountsevery week that are trying to be
me, or someone in my family,which blows me away because it's
like, Who the hell am I like,Why the hell are you going to

(14:05):
poses me like what and solicittry solicit people for nudes or
for money? Or like, What thehell is that it's crazy. But I
deal with that all the time. Andsupport never does anything I
have, you know, I was blown outof my story and have multiple
people report the account, youknow, tons of people are
reporting it, but then the, thesupport team doesn't do anything
about it, and these accountsdon't get banned. So I guess

(14:26):
buying into this new programthey're doing is supposed to,
like, you know, make your yoursupport requests more visible, I
guess, which, if that's true,maybe that's the move, I don't
know. But the way it stands now,it's basically just an ad driven
attention economy. So like, ifyou want to get more attention
on your stuff, and you want yournormal natural engagement, you

(14:49):
now have to essentially boostthe post and pay them for it.
And they make the all the adtools very, unnecessarily
obtuse. Like I used to domarketing for We're living in
data analytics. So I'm veryfamiliar with all this stuff.
And I can't, I couldn't tell youthe click through rate on one of
my ads if I wanted to. Andthat's arguably one of the most

(15:09):
important pieces of data. Butthey make it so difficult to get
that information. It just blowsme away.

Like how many people are actually clicking on
the link with the ad, like ifyou do an ad for a song, hey,
gentleman's new single, youcan't tell how many people
actually click the link todownload the song.

It's it's more difficult to get that
information than it needs to be.
Like, I would have to go intoFacebook and go through several
layers of you know, analytics,several different pages, it's
like that should be the thingthey're displaying right at the
front of the top, because that'sthe most important thing is the
conversion, right? Like whenyou're talking about any kind of
sales funnel. So again, we'regetting into like the nitty
gritty of what I findfascinating,

though, because I deal with the same thing with
the podcast. It's like, I'mtrying to promote a podcast and
stand out. Every Harry Dick andJane has a frickin podcast. So
it's like, how do you stand out?
And so yeah, I used to, I don'teven really do that stuff
anymore. I used to when I firststarted though, I would boost
posts on more on Facebook, alittle bit on Instagram. I was
like, I don't think this ishelping. I don't think this is

(16:09):
doing anything like that. MaybeMaybe I'm getting more Facebook
followers or whatever. It'slike, I don't think it really
means anything. Because thenwhen you post something like you
said, you're lucky if 5% of yourfollowers even see it? Oh, yeah,
let alone like like it orcomment and interact with it. So
I'm like, I'm just gonna focuson making content and hopefully
people will find it. I don'tknow.

Yeah, and that's pretty much all you can do these
days is just do your best to beauthentic and present something
that means something to you andhope other people see it and it
moves them. You know, that's, Idon't know. I mean, you see a
lot of up and coming artiststhat are with labels or have
development deals too, that havelike, you know, excessively
large followings, but then youlook at their actual numbers.

(16:54):
And it's like, if you have50,000 followers, and you're
making a post, and it's gettinglike four comments, like that's,
it's pretty easy to see what'sthere. Yeah, there's, there's
so, so much like smoke andmirror action going on in the
music industry. And in thegreater entertainment industry,
right now, it's very difficultfor someone that's not literate

(17:14):
like that, to see what's realand what's not. But again,
that's probably just anextension of how it's always
been, whether we're talkingabout like, you know, pay to
play, like Clear Channel stuff,or, you know, even like, the
history of like, buy on tours,you know, and how a lot of bands
that are being pushed by labels,you basically just have to fake

(17:36):
it till you make it and they'respending an excessive amount of
money, making these guys look alot more popular than they
actually our that stuff stillgoes on very clearly all the
time. So it's it's a battle forattention. And like, you know,
people that look cooler areclearly going to get more
attention, I guess, especiallythe way that our social media
algorithms kind of, you know,the behaviors is predicated on

(18:00):
people to generate moreattention, I guess.

Yeah. Well, I do think some of that stuff can
help get you noticed, but I feellike it doesn't have a lot of
staying power. Like, if you buya tour. It's like, okay,
everyone knows your name forthat tour. But unless you do
that every tour, which I thinkis expensive, like eventually
people forget about you, if youdidn't make an impression, which
if usually if you're buying on,it seems to me a lot of those

(18:23):
bands. They did they weren'tgood enough to get the spot.
They're not that great. Theydon't have the same power.

Right? Exactly.
And you see that a lot withwhat's happening with Tiktok
bass music and stuff too. Likethere's plenty of artists who
broke via Tik Tok that have oneor two big singles because it
was popular on Tik Tok, and thenthe rest of their catalogue is
just, you know, DOA. So, it'sinteresting. For an independent
artist, it's difficult to knowkind of what to focus on. And I
think really, the only answer isjust to authentically Be

(18:51):
yourself, present yourself theway that you are, make music
that's meaningful to you. And ifother people, you know, invest
their time and emotional energyinto checking it out, that's
great. If not, well, at leastyou did something that matters
to you. Because that's reallyall accounts, you know,

yeah. Well, I think to like doing podcasts and doing
some do it like just workinghard, like doing shows, like I
know, I talk to so manymusicians who they don't tour or
they don't do shows, they'll puton an album, and they'll want to
come on my podcast and talkabout and then I'm like, Okay,
so like, are you doing a tour?
Are you in show? Wow. Yeah, likeone show. It's like what, like,
You got to get out there andpromote it like podcasts, but

(19:29):
also like shows, you got to goto towns and like, you know,
play small venues and make fansof the people I think in real
life. I think that, in some waysworks better than social media,
like actually meeting peopleface to face, they're gonna
remember it.

I completely agree. But again, that comes
back to costs. Like if you havea label or an independent
investor, that's helping youwith all these costs. It's more
expensive to tour now than it'sever been before. And for
independent artists that aren'tmaking money via Spotify, or
aren't making money off of async deal. You It's like, you
have to be pretty muchindependently wealthy to go do

(20:02):
this or you have to be, youknow, it's like one thing as a
solo artist, if you're in a bandwith like four people, you're
all sharing publishing on songs,you're young, you don't have a
lot of other things going on inyour life. Yeah, everybody can,
you know, cram in the stationwagon and go out and just hit
the road and live on, you know,ramen and Dollar Store

(20:23):
vegetables, you know what Imean? Like, if that stuff works,
yeah. And I do think thatthere's something to be said,
for going out and promotingmusic, the old fashioned way,
just hitting the road, you know,pounding the streets, like,
that's great. I love that. Butagain, it's very cost
prohibitive. These days, evengas, whether we're talking about
plane tickets, like, Oh, youwant to do an East Coast tour,

(20:43):
you live in California, cool,you either schlep your gear all
the way across America, in avan, which is not easy. It's not
glamorous, you know, or you flyout there, you rent instruments,
you rent a van, you do all thisstuff, it just everything adds
up. And without a label,providing tour support, it can
be really, really difficult forsome of these smaller bands to

(21:05):
do any meaningful tours outsideof like, their immediate area,
you know, and that's probablywhy you don't see more people,
you know, playing moremeaningful stuff than just like
one or two off tours and showslike, it's just really hard now,
you know, very difficult.

What about if you if you team up with other bands
that are, you know, in a similarsituation, like if if you got
like three or four or five ofyou guys together? I mean,
you're saying like, piling thestation wagon with, with a band,
but what if it's like fivebands, does that make it even a
little bit more cost effective?

I mean, if, let's say, let's just posit something.
So let's say mean to otherbands, that's what maybe
generally for 812 people, plus,you know, a driver, some sort of
tour manager, production guy guycan do it all, you know, that's
at that stage, you kind of needa tour manager who also is going
to, you know, be working soundor front of house, who's going

(22:02):
to be, you know, going to talkto the promoter after the show
to get your money and all thatstuff. Like, you can certainly
do it all yourself, but it'svery difficult when you're out
there. I've been in thosesituations before, but let's
see, you got 12 people, it'slike, you're going to you're
going to rent like a massiveSprinter van, have all 12 people
crammed inside, get a you know,get a trailer, like tour with

(22:22):
everybody using the sameequipment, you can certainly do
that. But again, like it's gonnabe really difficult unless your
merch game is incredible to evenbreak even on that tour, just by
the kinds of guarantees you'regonna get from promoters,
especially at that level, it'sjust again, like, I don't think
a lot of people reallyunderstand and realize how
difficult it is to tour. And thethe more you're stretching it,

(22:46):
the more difficult it is for thebands, which again, touring is
not easy, no matter what, evenif you're in a tour bus. It's
still very challenging to get upthere. And do you know the best
you can every night? If you'renot sleeping? If nutrition is
not good? People do it. And it'sgreat. And like I've been there
as well, like I've you know,I've toured the bus, I've toured

(23:06):
in the van, I've toured in myfriggin Subaru, you know, it's
like, I was playing whatever,over 100 shows a year for years
before the pandemic. And sincethen, the costs have only gone
up, the barriers to entry haveonly gone up, the spots that are
available have shrunk. It'sjust, it's a very different
animal than I think a lot ofpeople realize. And that's why
maybe some of your favoriteindependent artists don't get

(23:28):
out and tour much, you know, now

it makes sense.
You're right. I mean, it is itis very difficult. I know
another thing that some peopledo, is they'll just do like
acoustic to them with anacoustic guitar that

I was playing whatever 100 shows a year with
either just me acoustic guitarharmonica, sometimes a
tambourine on my foot. And thatstarted bringing out a guitar
player with me and we would dodo acoustic stuff. And that
wasn't the style of music. Youknow, I did like kind of a folk
rock EP, it was like apsychedelic folk rock EP, the
SLS EP and I had my buddy Scottcome out with me to tour that

(24:06):
it's like, we didn't write thesongs acoustically, you know, to
be performed acoustically. Butagain, I couldn't afford to put
a band together, pay them andthen go out on tour and, and
have all of that stuff. So Itook what I could get, which
meant me and Scott were drivingaround and my Subaru, different
ships and stuff. And we took itall the way from, you know,

(24:28):
Northern California to thebottom end of the Gulf of Mexico
and stuff to play festivals. AndI mean, we've, you know, I put a
lot of miles on my own car, justtrying to get it done. But
again, like thankfully, I had amerch company at the time and we
were selling shirts and so I wasable to make a little bit of
money on top of what we weredoing. But all of that was by
keeping our cost down just doinga two person acoustic show. I

(24:51):
didn't need to bring a front ofhouse guy you know we were going
to collect after the showourselves and dealing with all
that stuff ourselves. We didn'thave a tour manager we didn't
have a product Should managerwe'd have anything. So, you
know, it's it's a, it's adifferent kind of thing that a
lot of people expect. It's notglamorous at all.

Oh, yeah, it's crazy. I just saw I just went to
a show and I drove to Vegas,because I'm a big fan of ugly
kid Joe there were like that 90sMan, you know. And they had
Fonzie with them, which is likeChris Jericho. And then pistols
at dawn opens was three bands.
And the tickets were like 20bucks, which was insanely cheap
to me. But I bought a hat, a tshirt and a poster. And so I
think I helped out, I think Idid my part that's meaningful.

And that's what I'm saying. If you really want
to support an artists, likeyeah, go to their Bandcamp go to
their show and get some merch,like, do things that are going
to actually put a little bitmoney in their pocket. So you
know, whether they're gettingsome lunch at Lowe's or
something, you know what I mean?
Like our loves, you know, likesomething, some truckstop
somewhere, like, it all makes adifference, when you're actually
putting money in the band'spocket, like going and streaming

(25:56):
their song on Spotify is great,too, obviously, because that's a
bigger part of the whole, youknow, interaction. But that's
not going to really do it for anartist, you know, if I get
whatever 100,000 streams, it'slike, I'm lucky to make whatever
1000 bucks if that I probablymake five 600 bucks off that
which is seemingly a lot morethan most people are getting

(26:18):
these days, like stream wise,but money wise, it's like I
couldn't even pay my rent, youknow. But then again, I live in
California. So maybe that's mybed.

Most expensive places in the world, maybe New
York, London, I don't know. Butyeah, it seems like bands have
to get more creative these days.
I mean, it's not like back inthe 80s. And 90s. It was like
you put out an album, you to oryou sell some T shirts. And it
was just every band did that nowyou're seeing like, bands coming
out with like, coffee and hotsauce and like meet and greets,

(26:50):
and like doing TV shows and likeall this crazy stuff. Because
you kind of have to. And thensome also musicians are just,
they're in like 30 bands. That'sanother thing that you got,
okay, well, I can't this one manis going to pay the bills. So I
gotta be in all these otherprojects and cover bands and
tribute bands and side projectsand guest appearances.

Yeah, challenging.
But like, at the end of the day,the thing that should be the
most important when we'retalking about music is the
music. And, you know, this hasbeen something that's stuck with
me for a long time, even in thedays of MTV, take the music was
important. But they werestarting to make people into
like larger than lifepersonalities. And those are the
kinds of people that get over,they get pushed by labels and

(27:30):
pushed by what are now like thelegacy media organizations or
whatnot. And again, likeeverything you're talking about
is cool. Like, that's great ifpeople have you know, different
outside the box merch, andpeople have TV shows. That's,
that's really interesting. Butat the end of the day, they're
musicians, shouldn't they justget out and play the music? You
know? Yeah, it's

just so competitive. Yeah. So like, how
do you because he used to be therecord labels, not everybody can
have an album and stuff. So therecord labels got to pick and
choose? Well, we think thisguy's the best. So we're giving
him a deal and all. And now Ithink the advantages is that
anybody can get a deal, which ina way is good, because there's a
lot of artists that are reallytalented, and we wouldn't know

(28:15):
what's out.

So I would disagree with you, it's harder
to get a deal than ever. And alot of times the people who are
getting anybody

can No, not sorry, sorry, not gonna deal. But
anybody can put out music,upload to Spotify. And so if
it's really good, maybe it takesoff, whereas before you pretty
much had to have a record labelto get noticed. Yeah,

definitely. And now it's, again, I think you
still kind of have to have somesort of advantage, whether it's
a label, or being massivelyindependently wealthy, and being
able to put a ton of moneybehind internet marketing, to
get noticed, like, people thinkthat a lot of these people that
are blowing up on social mediathat it's happening by accident,
but it's not, it's verystrategic. And again, there's a

(28:57):
lot of smoke and mirrors thatgoes into it. They're, you know,
they're boosting, they're usingthird party software. Some of
them are like black Hattingh tomake it look like they have more
engagement, more followers, andthey actually do like

black Hattingh.

You can go to like a third party site on the
internet to essentially havepeople like, a lot of labels do
this. People don't know aboutthis stuff. But there's a lot of
labels that will get phone farmsto juice up major artists
streams. So like let's saysomeone, I'm just again, I'm not
saying she did this, I'm justusing this as an example. Let's

(29:33):
say someone big like Beyonce oran emerging artists like the
Kilroy is acquired by a labeland they get a distribution deal
and they say, Okay, we're gonnaguarantee you a certain amount
of streams a certain amount oftraction, there's really no way
even using their national reachto guarantee that you're going
to get a certain number. So whatthey do is they pay a third

(29:55):
party individual third partysite to go in and use a VPN Then
to get streams. So they canguarantee a certain number of
streams for this person so theydon't lose out on all this money
from a digital distribution dealor from a sync deal. Or let's
say you want to blow somebody upand make it look like they have
a huge following. They've beendoing this for years. And it's

(30:18):
very similar to what they usedto do in the days of radio,
where they would pay for spinson radio stations, so that they
could shard and then peoplewould make money. It's just,
it's a tale as old as time inthe entertainment industry. But
this stuff happens more thanpeople realize. And a lot of
your favorite massive artists,probably anywhere between 30 and
50% of their streams arecompletely washed. You know.

(30:41):
That's crazy. I

do remember seeing some clip of some rapper, I
don't know who it was. But yeah,he was showing, they had all
these phones, like lined upplugins for me and the song on
repeat, I was like, it's dirty,like, but yeah, you're going on
forever,

check it out, this is something that they can do as
well, like, say, you're gettingready to go on tour in Europe,
and you don't have much of a fanbase, say you're going to
somewhere like Stockholm,Sweden, use a VPN to source all
of those things. All of thoselittle phones that are on the
Spotify family plan, you make itlook like they're in the same
household and Sweden, you putyour song in a playlist with

(31:15):
other artists who you want to bementioned in the same kind of
keyword searches with. And thenyou can essentially target a
whole demographic and build awhole demographic for yourself
in the foreign country, veryeasy. Spotify has been cracking
down on the VPN stuff over thelast few years, just like
Netflix did. But people still dothis. And people are very
sophisticated and finding waysaround this now. So a lot of

(31:38):
artists have done this. There'stwo guys, I think I forget what
country they're from, but twoguys in Eastern Europe, who made
a bunch of like, minute minutehalf long songs that were just
like garbled instrumental,random music, and they used kind
of situation setup like this, tomake themselves over a million
dollars, because they streamedeach song like, whatever, 100

(32:00):
million times. And I to thisday, I don't know if there's
been any legal action takenagainst those guys. Obviously,
their music was taken down. Butthrough their publishing entity,
they still made money on thesongs. You can't do that kind of
thing anymore. This was maybeeight or nine years ago when
this happened. But again, theamount of manipulation going on

(32:20):
behind the scenes with streamingservices just blows blows my
mind. And I don't think mostpeople are even aware of that.

No, I think it happens in the podcast world
too, because I swear there'ssome podcasts where I'm like, I
look and I'm like, Hey, we hadthe same guest on your episode
got like, you know, 50,000views, and mine got like 500.
And I'm like, and this is notthe host is not a famous person
or anything. It's like it's verysuspicious. So yeah.

Yeah, well, it's, like I said, it's fairly easy.
The hardest thing to do, one ofthe hardest things historically,
is to fake it on YouTube,YouTube's algorithm for
detecting those things is muchmore sophisticated than some of
the other ones. They're startingto catch up. But you know, where
there's a will there's a way andpeople are always gonna find a
way to game the system. That'sjust how it is whether you're
talking about steroid use inprofessional sports, or watching

(33:11):
streams on Spotify, like thisstuff happens. And that's,
that's how people get over.
That's unfortunate, but that'sthe truth.

So do you feel like you can just you just have, it
makes you rise to the occasionand makes you create better
music that you feel like standsout?

Sure. I mean, like, at the end of the day, for
me, the music has to be thething, because you can pay all
this extra money to, you know,get more attention heaped onto
you. But if the product itselfisn't good, people aren't gonna
stick around, people aren'tgonna care, you're gonna get
more negative attention. So,yeah, I mean, like, I've been on
a journey to be a bettermusician and a better

(33:49):
songwriter, since I started, youknow, and I, I really started
playing music and writing songsin like, 2012 I had played music
before that and I had writtenstuff before that, but I started
taking it much more serious and2012 and 2016 was the year when
I really like started touring,and started putting together

(34:09):
stuff to form like a body ofwork. And ever since then, I've
started releasing, you know, notreally consistently but I
started releasing music and I'veonly in the last few years
started releasing music moreconsistently and under my own
name because I think finallyafter all those years of working
and developing myself as asongwriter I'm comfortable now
releasing this stuff under myown name and having it be you

(34:33):
know, a measure of of who I amas an artist really

well what what was it called before what was the
name you have released?

Different projects there's released I think like
four EPS under different namesthat one of them the last one
before I started doing thisstuff with Trev was SOS I had a
project in between never cameout because it was supposed to
come out right around the timewhen When that new COVID
expansion drops, you feel me soI had a, I had a South by

(35:06):
Southwest spot I had a, youknow, limited Western European
tour with like a, you know, asingle debut show in London I
had all this stuff that was moreof like an indie rock project,
but I believe I don't think I'llever release most of those songs
because they're not reallycongruent with what I'm doing
right now. Maybe somewhere downthe line, I'll release like a

(35:26):
demos collection or something ofthat, because I have like a
pretty much a whole recordalmost done. But yeah, I got
tied up with a label that wasn'treally the right move. And yeah,
it just didn't work out. So butthis stuff happens a lot. I
think if you talk to any artiststhat's been around for a while,
they probably have a reallylarge body of work that most

(35:48):
people will never hear thatmaybe they intended for people
to hear at one time. So

ya know, I just had Kenny Olsen. He's a kid rocks
guitarist on and I had thesinger. I don't know if you
remember there was an Aerosmithtribute band called Aerosmith.
And the singer Chris Van doll.
He looks just like Steven Tyler.
But an album with Kenny Olson.
Kenny Olson left Kid Rock to dothis album was called pack of
wolves. And Chris was talking toyou. It's like amazing. I was

(36:13):
asking Kenny about it. And he'slike, yeah, it's not out like
you can't hear it. I'm like, Iwant to hear it. It sounds like
it would be really cool. So. Butyeah, there's a lot of stories
like that,

you know, I have, I had two songs that were up for
sync that were both part of likethe kind of indie folk indie
rock project. And again, COVIDjust kind of smashed all my
hopes for doing that. But thoseare to this day, two of the most
requested songs that I get frompeople when like, you know,
managers are hitting me up, orpeople hear this stuff through

(36:46):
the grapevine. And they're like,hey, whatever happened to this
song? Did you ever record it?
And I'm like, Yeah, I did. But Imean, I don't know how people
would react to me, releasinglike a, you know, an acoustic
folk ballad, that's like, morelike something you hear from
Phoebe Bridgers than like whatI'm doing right now, you know
what I mean? It's like, there'snot really any kind of overlap
musically. But, you know, whoknows, man, if people are really

(37:09):
interested in hearing some ofthat stuff. And you know, you've
built like a really big fan basethat's diverse, I don't really
see the harm in releasing thosekinds of things. It's just, it
comes down again, like if you'reworking with a label, it might
be a little more difficultbecause they want everything
kind of to tow a certain line.
Whereas as an independentartists, you can pretty much do

(37:31):
whatever you want. But if you'rean independent artist trying to
get with a label, or some othertype of situation where the
really chews you up, then youkind of have to play that game a
little bit and keep everythingkind of between the lines, you
know?

Yeah, no, I think yeah, I just speak as a fan I
would say I like when artists dodifferent stuff, like I know
might not be the most popularbut Guns and Roses the user
illusions I love that shit. Andthey have like Acoustic Singer
Songwriter stuff. And then theyhave like the my old song that
was like synth Nine Inch Nailsstuff and have heavy and
ballads. I love the mix. I lovethe eclectic stuff personally.

(38:08):
But I understand what you'resaying some sometimes management
label says no, it's all got tobe the same.

Yeah, right. I wish that people would just let
artists be artists, because noartists wants to be put into a
box and make the same recordover and over, you talk to 100
different artists, 90 of themare going to be like, Yeah, I
just really don't want to makethe same record over and over.
You might get 10 If you'relucky. They're like, Yeah, I
mean, we made a lot of money onthat record, I'll just keep
making it over and over, that'sfine.

That's usually too that's usually like the drummer
or the bass player, somebodythat's just like rhythm guitar
guy that's just kind of lettingthem do their thing. And they're
a part of it. But yeah, theperson actually creating it.
Usually they don't want to keepcreating the same thing. So

no, you're you're you're constantly evolving as an
artist. And as a person. It'slike, what you like five years
ago is probably vastly differentthan what you like now. And
especially as you're writing andcreating and getting better at
what you're doing, it's alwaysgoing to be changing. So I like
that too though. I like seeingan artist that you kind of have
learned what to expect from comeout with something that just

(39:08):
completely changes your opinionof what they're, they're capable
of doing. I love that kind ofstuff. Like one of my favorite
modern bands. For a long timenow has been king gizzard and
the lizard wizard because everysingle record they put out is
completely different and it'sall really good on its own. But
it's disappointing for fans thatget in on one record and they're
like expecting Oh like that wasa great thrash metal record. And

(39:31):
then the next record is like anelectronic weird cynthy record
and they're like What the hellis this? Like? It's not what I
signed up for, you know, off the

check them out.
What's it called, again? Kingwhat

gizzard and lizard wizard. Yeah, they're, they're
pretty much like a staple in thekind of psych world right now.
But they have so many differentI think they have like 15 or 16
studio albums at this point andevery one of them is very
different. They all have kind ofthe same gizzard feel You know
what I mean? But yeah, they'rethey're a great psych rock band

(40:02):
out of Australia.

Okay, yeah. What else are you listening to?
Because the stuff you'rereleasing it has a kind of more
modern rock feel that but it'salso you said like psychedelic,
a little bit garage rock orstone or rock, but I think it's,
it's more melodic, I think,

yeah, it's more melodic than that. I'm just
talking about like, what I whatI was doing before I had more of
like a garage. Yeah. With mygood friend, Trevor William
church, who's big in theunderground metal scene with his
band haunt. But, um, no, I mean,like, in general, the stuff I
listened to, I listened to a lotof garage, a lot of psych music,
a lot of folk. And for the mostpart, I mean, like, anything.

(40:44):
That's really like, I likesongs. A lot of the modern music
industry is obsessed with. Hey,I'm doing an interview man. Who
is it?
15 minutes. Somebody? I'm at thestudio right now. Love you, too.
I'll see you soon. I'm sorry.
But yeah, that was random. Butno, anyways, I really like

(41:12):
songs. Most of the modern musicindustry is like, you know, like
vibes. And it's like, cool. It'sgreat. It's great vibe. But
like, what's up with the song?
Like, would you write it on? Doyou write it on guitars? You
write it on keyboard? Like youwrite it on saxophone? Can you
sit there and play it for me andsing it just by yourself? You
know what I mean? Like, that'sreally what it comes down to.
And I really appreciate it whenit's when it's an actual song.

(41:32):
And not just like 15 people thatsat in a room together. And
like, like, wrote something, youknow what I mean? Because that's
what a lot of modern pop musicis about. And it's like, if it's
got, you know, 10 differentwriters on it. It's like, what
are we? What are we doing here?
Guys? You know, on Yeah,

isn't it a lot of that stuff written by the same
people? Yeah,

the same Writing teams, I used to be before the
pandemic started, I had startedto kind of like, carve out a
niche for myself in thesongwriting community as a
lyrics guy. And so I'd be in aroom with, you know, three or
four other people on artistswould come in, you'd have a
conversation with the artist,almost like a therapy session
and talk to them about like,what they're doing, what they're

(42:14):
working on, what they're goingthrough in their life. And then
you'd be like, okay, cool.
That's a cool idea. And then youtake, like, a little idea, come
up with like, a melodic hook,fit some lyrics in there. And
then just like, you know,whittle it down until it's till
it's something else. And I thinkthere is a magic to that as
well. But I just, I vastlyprefer. See, like, look, take

(42:37):
somebody like Elliott Smith,everybody loves him. Of course,
everybody. That's a songwriterloves Elliott Smith. Elliott
Smith didn't sit there in a roomwith 15 people, he sat in a room
by himself, probably just sad asshit and wrote a bunch of
beautiful lyrics that yourelate, because they're coming
from his heart. You know, Iappreciate artists like that,

(42:59):
more than people that have beenput together by like, you know,
the, whatever, the Hollywoodmachine or the music industry
machine, like that, sure,there's value to like, really
catchy, you know, hooky songs,but like, I just appreciate it
when it's when it's a humanbeing writing it not a team, you
know, so, but that's, uh, yeah,I really love there's some some

(43:21):
great bands coming out rightnow. And like the Psych and
garage scene bands that I'vebeen listening to, for a long
time to they're doing newthings. Gonna see this Canadian
band wine lips pretty soon. AndI love them. If you're into
like, garage and punk and psychmusic, they're like, I think in
my opinion, one of the coolestnew bands, and they've been
around for a while, but they're,again, they're kind of starting

(43:42):
to break out a little bit. Ifeel like another one team
mortgage is really good. I thinkthey're based out of DC. And
same thing. It's like a grittierkind of more punk inspired kind
of garage psych aesthetic. Butum, I'm a huge fan of like the,
you know, the second wave ofpsychedelic and garage rock came
out of kind of San Francisco,people like Ty Segal and OCS,

(44:04):
and some of those bands. And soKing gizzard kind of like
continues that tradition out ofAustralia with their own little
spin on it. So

would you be a good fit to tour with any of those
bands?

Not with my current style of music? No. But
like I said, I did have aproject Shortland project with
my buddy, Trevor that I mightcontinue in a spiritual way with
with a different side projectjust for me, in which case, I
would go out and tour it withbands like that, if I could get
on the same tour, that would bea dream come true. But with the
current stuff that I'm doingwith Trev, like you said, it's a

(44:40):
more modern interpretation ofsome classic sounding rock and I
love it, that stuff is close tomy heart as well. Like I've
listened to a lot of grunge andalternative music growing up in
the early 90s and whatnot, andwe tried to bring all of those
inspirations forth on you know,this record that we did Get
together. And I'm really proudof the music. I've just been

(45:02):
sitting on it for, you know, afew years now. Like dealing with
different managers that haddifferent plans for things and
failed label deals and stuff.
And now I'm at the place whereit's like, I'm just releasing
this stuff doesn't matter how itdoes, I just want to get it out
and let people hear it. And theright people will hear it. And
eventually, something's gonnahappen, you know?

Yeah. Would you too are like, I think Did you? Did
you tour with collective soul?
Like is this this would be agood fit for them? I feel like
that would be a good package.

For sure. I know those guys really well. And I
opened for them. Cowboys, 2018,I think I opened for them on a
pretty big tour that year, andwe had a good time. And all
those guys are great. But yeah,I think you're right, like
getting on with a, like a morekind of 90s oriented band would
be really cool. But as itstands, like we're working on

(45:55):
getting the right booking agent,you know, I was working with a
booking agency for a while thatwasn't really doing much with
me. Because again, I'm not likea huge artist or something. But
I got, I gotta hope for thefuture that things will move in
the right direction. Becauseagain, it all comes back to the
music and this is objectivelygood music. So yeah, it's

also like some of the connections and stuff to
like, are you? Are you so you'refriends with Trev? Because I
think I had the band. Are youfamiliar with the band slaves to
humanity? Because that's like anLA man. Yeah. Like, like those
guys and stuff. Like, it'd becool to see like you tour with
like them? And like, yeah, like,they did a show with butter
side, which I don't know ifyou're familiar with them. And
I'm like, why can't we get someof these bands together and tour

(46:35):
that's like what I was sayingearlier, like, if there was a
way to make it financially makesense, I would love to see
something like that, where it'slike, you know, three or four
bands. But and I know that it'slike with the money and stuff.
It's hard to get all that stufftogether.

But now yeah, I've actually talked to some of the
guys from slaves humanity,because trade have produced a
couple of tracks for them aswell. And they're really cool
guys are young kids that arelike really hungry to get out
there and do it. And I reallyadmire what they've been doing
already, you know, they'vealready got a pretty decent
little amount of traction with,you know, the just the local,

(47:08):
like Southern Californiacircuit. They've been playing
that with the House of Blues andall these other bigger venues,
which is awesome. And a lot ofcool stuff in LA. And yeah, like
we've we've talked about playingshows together, and I would
totally be down to play showswith them. It's just a matter
of, again, finding somethingthat would work for everybody.
So I'm totally, you know, I'monly

in Phoenix. So if you didn't two or maybe I just
drive. They did a show and itwas like it was butter side
slaves humanity and violet.
Saturday, I was like, Oh, I'vehad members of all three of
those bands on my show. I waslike, I want to come to the
show, but couldn't make it. Somaybe the next one and maybe you
can jump on and do it. That'd beI think it'd be fun.

We'd love to Viper Room ever. I've never played the
Viper Room. I've been to plentyof shows there though. I was I
was on a different circuit inLA. You know, there's a couple
different circuits but I wasplaying monthly review shows I
like a residency at the hotelCafe played Gold Diggers a lot,
you know, Canyon club, all thatstuff. But I didn't really play

(48:05):
the Viper Room or any of thosekind of more rock shows in LA
because I was doing a differentkind of thing different kind of,
yeah,

now you're doing the rock style. I mean, like
it's it would be a good fit.
It'd be cool.

For sure. Yeah.
Shout out to like dirty Monday'sthey're doing some cool stuff
with the Viper Room and mme Sam,we were supposed to play a show
for them. And there were someweird complications that
happened on our side of things.
And we couldn't make the show.
But yeah, I'm looking forward toplaying a show with them pretty
soon. So we'll probably not.

So the singles that are out now, you said there's a
full album, so there's going tobe more coming. Yeah, there's

a lot more coming, I'm probably going to split the
album into two EPs, because itjust doesn't make sense to
release a record right nowagain, without, you know, a
label push or a little bit moresignificant kind of capital
contribution. It just doesn'tmake sense to do it. But I've
been releasing singles prettysteadily now from the record,
and I the plan is to release thefirst EP in June. I haven't set

(49:02):
a hard release date yet, or Ihaven't announced it yet at
least. But um, we do haveanother single coming to kind of
bookend that. And I think thisis going to be a really fun song
for people that have been payingattention to what I'm doing.
It's kind of like red lightappetite. Part two. It's a big,
bombastic rock and roll anthemthat I think people really

(49:25):
enjoy. And there will be a musicvideo for it as well. So yeah,
we just put out systematicminds, which is my favorite song
on the record. It's more of aslower tempo like mysterious
almost, you know, Duran Duranish kind of vibe. It's really
cool. And like I said, slightlypsychedelic in parts. And it's

(49:46):
the first song Trevor and I everworked on together back in
December of 2020. So it'sreally, really exciting for me
to finally get this out becausesince we like, literally since
maybe 15 minutes into us sittingthere and writing together I was
like, Oh, this is sick, like youjust know like, it's a good one,
you know. So I was really cool.
The

red light appetite is cool. And then there's
Judgement Day is available andcold life karma. Tell me about
life karma just because I'm, I'mjust curious what that's about
because that lyric like coldlife karma, you can't run from a
cold hard fact called life karmais that your back like, that's
kind of a cool lyric.

That song was about somebody, or something
that I had dealt with that hadstabbed me in the back kind of
significantly in my musiccareer. And we wrote that that
actually came out of somesessions where I was writing
music for other people with mynow guitar player, Joey Ariana,
who's a fantastic songwriter,and producer as well. Joey

(50:45):
produced that song. And like Isaid, we were part of a team
writing for sync stuff. And wewere writing some stuff for sync
briefs, which are like theselittle sheets that come out that
sink managers get, it'sbasically like, like a little
like mysterious, enigmatic blockof stuff. They're like, okay,

(51:06):
like, there's a TV show that'sgoing to be on amazon prime that
needs a song. And then it haslike, vague keywords and themes
that they want you to writeabout. And we were writing some
stuff for other artists for syncprojects. And out of that, we
kind of got an idea for coldknife, and then we just kind of
took that we're like, yeah,we're not going to use that for
sync, I'm just going to use thatfor me. And, yeah, and Joey and

(51:29):
I put it together during thepandemic, because we had done a
demo for it, prior to thatstarting, and then everything
just kind of like, you know,went off the rails, and we came
back to it later. And the lyricschanged a little bit. Because
obviously, my perspective onthat event that I'm writing
about had changed after time,more time had passed, you know,

(51:51):
but yeah, just in general, Ilove that song. Because it's
very applicable to a lot ofthings in people's lives, just
in general, like, I'm not gonnasit here and say exactly what it
is because, again, I I wantpeople to put whatever meaning
they have on the song forthemselves and not be colored by
my meaning. But when I wrotethat song, I was definitely not

(52:14):
too happy about someone orsomething in my life that I felt
like I could trust and that Ifound that I could not trust. So

that's got to be nice as a musician, to be able
to have that outlet to be ableto kind of like release those
emotions in a healthy way.

Totally. It's therapeutic. I'm all about
releasing the negative emotionsthat are piled on you by the
world in it in a healthy way,whether like, that's how I found
martial arts, it was a means toexpress some of the darker
energy I had inside of me in apositive way that was
therapeutic, and allowed me to,you know, get physically fit and
mentally fit and all thesethings. But songwriting is just

(52:52):
like that, as well. It's anoutlet for people that not only
can be like a positive force inthe universe, but can provide
connection as well which I thinkis ultimately one of the best
things you can do as a humanbeing is just connect with other
people.

Yeah, I think it's cool just as a fan to listen to
songs like that and just be ableto connect with the song
emotionally. God you know, it'sit's funny actually, the mammoth
song i that song distance islike, I mean, it almost makes me
cry when I hear that song. It'sso powerful. I'm like, Wow, this
song is really good.

Yeah, it's a beautiful song. And I mean, like
Wolfie is a great songwriter anda great artists as well.

Yeah, that's really cool. Um, are you speaking we
were talking about TV shows?
You're gonna be on some TV showfamily legacy is that

came out last week. It's on Paramount plus
streaming. Our episode isavailable free on YouTube and
Paramount plus for anybody thatwants to watch it. It's called
MTV family legacy. And to show ashot last September, I think I
did about seven hours ofinterview. And yeah, we got to
we got a pretty funny little 15minute segment on on the

(54:02):
episode. It's cool though. Theybasically interviewed a bunch
of, you know, second generationkids and famous MTV adjacent,
like pop and rock and rollstars. And it was cool. It
turned out well it turned into ashow basically just about MTV,
old MTV, archival clips. Solike, our episode, for instance,

(54:23):
they have a lot of footage of melike watching the VMAs you know,
my dad won that DMA for rightnow and some other stuff and
some old music video clips. Andyeah, it was it was just a fun
little project, but they syncedred light epicyte And the music
videos while they licensed. Sothat's cool. Got a little bump
in streams from that and someextra traction and engagement on

(54:43):
social media. It was a funproject to be a part of.

Yeah, so that I'm gonna have to check that out.
Paramount plus and then you alsoyou got to be a DJ on the Ozzy's
Boneyard. Was that fun?

Yeah, that was pretty cool. My buddy Tommy
London hit me up and asked me ifI wanted to be a guest DJ and
I'm a huge Old School metal fanand like grown up, I was a huge
metalhead. So it was cool to puttogether just a few tracks. I
put together some like probablymore typical stuff that people
would hear. And then a couple ofdeeper cuts that I thought were
kind of funny stuff from like,this silly you know, 80s Hair

(55:16):
Metal band, Grim Reaper, and,you know, oh, yeah, I

had that guy on my show. Oh, yeah, no way. Yeah, he
actually sadly passed awayrecently. Yeah, yeah, I got into
him. And I was like, thisstuff's actually like pretty
cool. Like it's melodic. Andbecause it made fun of it on
Beavis and Butthead, but I butif you do a deep dive, it's
actually pretty good music.

It's actually pretty good music as far as
metal goes that that era ofmetal and yeah, I just remember,
like, growing up, I was friendswith a lot of like, skaters and
pro skaters and shit. And wewould sit around and like, you
know, get stoned and watch skatevideos. And I just remember
seeing like C k y, which at thetime was a pretty pretty big one
for us. And in one of them,there's a really funny clip of

(55:57):
like Don Vito row, I think hewas rolling around on like a
mower or something. And they'replaying see you and held by Grim
Reaper. And it was just like oneof the funniest things I've ever
seen in my life. So that songand that band really stuck out
to me. And so I put it in onNazis. Boneyard. That's awesome.
That was entertaining. That'svery

cool. And then you know, you did you've done the
rock legends cruise in the past,and then you're scheduled for
some in 2024. Also, right? Yeah,I

did it acoustically just by myself, I
had my brother come up and singsome stuff with me, too, back in
2018. And in February of nextyear, I'll be doing it again
with my full band playing thenewer stuff. So it's going to be
a tremendously differentexperience for the people of the
crews. And I'm really excited todo it. Because it was a lot of
fun the first time too. Yeah.
And that's

like a good thing.
That's like, it's profitable,right? They pay you to come on
in and they pay for it. Stay andeverything. And oh, yeah. Yeah,
that's really cool. Do you haveany other shows lined up? Right
now?

Right now we have a couple of dates over the
summer that I'll be announcingsoon. And we're looking at doing
something more substantial inthe fall, which again, I haven't
announced any of that stuff yet.
But there will be more datescoming is just like I said
before a matter of finding theright thing, which I think we
found. So I'm really, reallylooking forward to getting out
there again, and touring withthe band, instead of just me and

(57:16):
a guitar player just being myharmonica. And

so how many people will you be doing like rhythm
guitar, then?

The thought the shows that we played so far with
the band, I'm just singing my myguitar player, Joey REM is
holding it down. Greg cash onbass. He's just an incredible
musician. And then our boy DevinWebb sack, the sack on drums.
And he's a old school metal guythat's just a powerhouse behind
the kids. So, you know, betweenthe four of us, we got a lot of

(57:50):
energy up there on stage andmoving forward, I'm probably
going to be playing a littlerhythm guitar and some of the
songs as well. But as it standsnow, it's a really fun show up
there. We've gotten nothing butgreat feedback from all the
shows we played. So

okay, cool. Yeah, I'm enjoying the music that I've
heard so far. So I look forwardto hearing new music and
hopefully being able to somehowcatch a show, even if it means I
gotta drive somewhere.

We'll be back in Phoenix. Don't worry. Okay,

cool. Yeah. And then I always end promoting a
charity. I know you're a bigadvocate of mental health and
author's mental health care. Doyou want to shout out here or
something else?

Yeah, the American Foundation for Suicide
Prevention, they do great work.
I've had a profound impact in mylife, from unfortunate
situations with friends thathave committed suicide. So I'm a
big advocate for getting helptalking to somebody. Resources
are available. And I think theAmerican Foundation for Suicide
Prevention does a great job ofproviding options for people in

(58:45):
education. But just in general,yeah, that's like, part of the
reason why I started playingmusic was a good buddy of mine
committed suicide. So helping tochange the narrative on that and
educate people as to theiroptions, I think is a huge part
of my mission in life and inmusic. Yeah, it's

sucks because like, Yeah, I mean, I'm a big advocate
of mental health myself. I was acounselor for 17 years,
actually. And I remember in the90s, it was like, you make
anything mental health, it waslike a stigma. Like if you went
to therapy or counseling like,Oh, you're, you're crazy.
There's something wrong withyou. And it's like, I think
they've done a lot better job ofkind of D stigmatizing that, but
there's still people that arejust especially men, I feel like

(59:27):
our shame to seek help. It'slike a weakness or something.
So, yeah,

yeah. Yeah, I agree completely. And I'm happy
that we're living in a timewhere the conversation is
changing. It's becoming destigmatized. And, you know, just
in general, it's becoming morewidespread. The men are talking
about their feelings and theirstruggles with mental health.
And the narrative is changing. Ithink that's a beautiful thing.
Any opportunity I can get tobring a little bit more

(59:53):
awareness to that and helpchange the narrative is, you
know, a really good thing in myopinion.

Yeah, I think it's just like the waste. society has
gone I feel like mental health.
It's, it's like we had to dothis because I feel like
people's mental health isstruggling. I mean, you're
seeing it in the news and themedia and stuff. I mean, you're
seeing the worst of people'smental health. And it's like,
but I think a lot of people arestruggling, that are silent,
that are just struggling insilence that aren't posting it
on social media, or acting outin some in some way, like and

(01:00:18):
then so you know, these kinds ofresources and things and
educating, I think, just goingon YouTube, and just, you can
just type in questions andthings or there's a podcast I
listened to called the mindsetmentor. That's like, it's been
extremely valuable to me more,more so than the counseling
education I had, like, yeah,like that can be. That's, that's
a good thing about the way theworld is with YouTube and all

(01:00:40):
the podcasts and social mediaand stuff. There's a lot of
resources out there. So

Andrew Hagar (01:00:45):
access. Yeah, that's the biggest thing that
needs to change, you know, butthe access to the information
is, is getting a lot better. Sothat's step one, right?

Chuck Shute (01:00:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, thanks so much for doingthis. I appreciate it. And I'll
put links in the show notes. Sothanks so much for doing this.
I'll see you later.
Have a good one. Yeah. Allright. See you later. Bye. Bye.
All right, my thanks again toAndrew Hegar. I really enjoyed
that chat. I hope you guys didtoo. Check out Andrews music on
streaming or download it andcatch a live show if he's in

(01:01:13):
your town. And of course, followhim on social media like
comment, share all that stuff.
You guys know the drill. And youcan do the same to support the
podcast. And also make sureyou're subscribed to the show on
YouTube specifically, becauseI'm going to be posting a lot of
YouTube exclusive content onthere. It's gonna be short
videos about interesting topics.
That's going to be somewhatrelated to things I discussed

(01:01:36):
with my guests on the podcast.
So I think you'll enjoy that. Iappreciate all your support.
Have a great rest of your dayand shoot for the moon.

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