Are Drummers Natural Producers? - Ben Jackson's Musical Journey :: Ep 219 The Rich Redmond Show - The Rich Redmond Show

Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
Bitcoin is so volatile. Yeah, there are days, there are

(00:03):
weeks that I've lost $40,000 but
then it comes back up. He's gotto keep the faith. It's day to
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not my thing, man. My wife's atax accountant. She's all about
the safe investments. You know,safe, yeah,
store value. Well,
you guys are younger, so you cango a little bit more aggressive.
Yeah, yeah,

(00:24):
yeah, we can still take therisks. Nice. She's a tax
accountant. Yeah, she's
taking on new clients. No, whynot? She? She works
for the business management onthe firm, does
she? Yeah, we know where sheworks and everything. Yeah,
amazing.
Because, I mean, they're indemand right now? Yeah, yeah.
It's they may not be in demandif the IRS goes away, which I

(00:45):
pray for the day that comes, itwould be
nice to save that amount ofmoney in taxes every year. Oh,
god. What would you do with it?You could do home improvements.
You could stick it in your IRA,and
imagine the economy that's takenoff and rip roaring, because I
have to worry about freakingApril 14. But I think you would.
You want me to go on my IRStirade again, I will. I think
it'd be sometime before thatactually happens where we
abolish taxes. It's good, oh,it's not gonna be.

(01:07):
We're not abolishing taxes.We're just changing the
framework of how we get thetaxes.
I know, but I think it's gonnabe some time. I don't know. It's
even with the best joke of it,
of a pen man, he's me. He'smaking changes with that
executive those executive orderspretty quickly. He you're
talking
about anyway, this is the richRedmond show.

(01:34):
Well, I've been doing it, youknow, you're doing the spiky,
yeah, but where it's shavedaround everywhere. Now I'm doing
the, I'm gonna try to do theGrayson or whatever his last
name is, where it's just allkind of like
you should grow a, you should doa neck beard. Grow a grow just a
big old bush shoulder. Startbeing like a competitive

(01:54):
bearder. I think
this would be, did you eat allof your things? Because we can
use these as shakers. Yeah,dude, what do you think
competitive beer, competitivebearder. That's probably already
a thing, it
is? It totally is. There's oneof the guys that works for us,
does it? He's got a big oldbeard. Beards
are so Did
you ever do it? No, I can't lookat me. I
do have a baby face, which isnice. And, you know, the funny

(02:16):
thing, Jim is, I
love the fact you look greatwith the more hair. I think you
should do the, you know, a beardwith the Antonio Banderas. What
you say, I'm making you like mewith the more hair. Yeah,
thanks, babe. You got the morehair, and then slick it back in
a ponytail and look like, youknow, a Venezuelan gangster.
Well, what's
great about growing it out, bro,is that when my band is back in

(02:39):
action one five or six weeksfrom now, I'll be ready, dude,
I'll be like, I tell all thekids, you don't have to get
ready if you stay ready. So Igot the sticks in my hands, you
know, I'm, have
you been, uh, shaking the rustoff? I
mean, I'm busy teaching. So Igot the sticks in my hands. You
know, that's good. Well,

(02:59):
you always got the kid here ifyou need to. You know, don't
want to work and bang on thosedrums all
day. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, I knowI gotta get the studio together.
Why? Because I'm chasing theyouth. Man. Today's guest, I
tell you what we always talkabout reinventing and today is a
prime example of someone who hasthe same background. Of me went

(03:20):
to the same school, studied withthe same guys. Probably had some
similar interests, similarinfluences. We moved to the same
city, one generation apart, andhe's doing the thing. It's
amazing, but then he decides hewants to do something else, and
he's incredible at it. Who am Italking about? Talking about Ben
Jackson. Ben Jackson is ourguest today on the rich Redmond

(03:42):
show, where we talk about musicand motivation and success and
drums and whatever comes upalong the way. He's from
Atlanta. He moved to Nashvillein oh eight at the tender age of
24 he's played for people likeAaron Tippin. Remember building
the bike Frankie Ballard, loveFrankie Ballard, I played some
shaker and tambourine on hisrecords. On that tour, they

(04:04):
opened for Bob Seeger with JohnBrewer from Grand Funk Railroad
on the drum. So he's going totell us how they got to visit
and know each other. Hope theydid. I also played with guys
like Greg Bates, Joe Nicholshalfway to hazard. We share that
credit. Yeah. Ben, how are you?Man, welcome aboard. Man, good
to be here. Thanks for havingme. Man, well,
I tell you what, you deserve tobe here, and you probably win

(04:27):
the award for most traveled.Well, we did have a gentleman
that drove from Chattanoogayesterday, but all the way from
Mount Juliet, that's an hour,yeah, and then we had to kill
some time. I got two tacos, andyou've been so patient, and
thank you all good.
It was sort of my fault. Yeah,we fully blame you. That's good

(04:48):
as you should. Scheduling
is crazy. I mean, all of ourepisodes, I have to send Jim a
Google calendar invite.Sometimes he gets and sometimes
he doesn't, but that's the wholething in life. Is just like.
Realizing it's like sandsthrough the hourglass is we've
only got so much time. Yeah,half my life is scheduling too,
you know? And so you were sayingyou get up early because you got

(05:09):
to be tracking in your own homestudio.
Yeah, I'm in there. I want to bein there way before anybody
else. So I'm up early. So
if the session starts at 10 andsome other players are coming
in. They want to get sounds.You're having your coffee at
eight o'clock. Yeah, I'm in thedoor at eight o'clock, nice. And
you're 20 feet from your house.40 couple 100 but yeah, a couple

(05:30):
100 feet.
Yeah, I want to say that. Hesaid that half of his life is
scheduling his life. Yeah. Doyou actually block out time to
schedule your life? And is it ona calendar
I spend, I do block out admintime. Now, that's not something
I did when I was just a drummer,you know. But like, yeah, yeah,
there's like, AD, would you
like, if you got so busy, wouldyou be able to have your wife

(05:50):
help you with that?
She's got her own job, right?Yeah?
I mean, she would, she wouldhelp. But
my wife's actually helped mewith my schedule in my life,
yeah, which
is she's, she's got her handsfull with the with the kids and
the house nowhere. We're
down one kid, you know? She's,she can come off the bench.
There you go, you know? And wehave the, she's

(06:12):
always busy making, like,incredible sourdough bread and
dinner for you every night. Imean, as she should, this is,
this is, this
is going great already. This isvery
all in the family.
Make sure that she's barefoot,you know, in the kitchen.
Mostly. This
is why we don't have women onthe show. We need to have women

(06:35):
on the show. I'm
so happy to be here on the lastepisode of the
season, the series finale. So,well, Ben was, you know, he's a
very savvy business, businessminded young man. And he says,
yeah, what's the goal of thepodcast? So these revenue, is
it? What is it? And I said, wedon't know. Yes, we just keep
doing it. We just keep doing it,and we're refining it. Okay? We

(06:58):
made it more cash. Now, by thetime this comes out, yeah, we're
gonna have merch. We have tocall the girl today and approve
the coffee mug and the hoodieand the baseball shirt and male
and female and the sizes, andget this stuff happening.
Because we've only been talkingabout it for six years. That's
right. You
know, we get 6000 downloads perepisode per minute, so

(07:19):
advertisers, let's talk, Jim.
Don't give away our secrets.Man, right. But look at some of
these accomplishments. East EndStudio. I like that because West
End, no one has an East End.Yeah. I
put it there because at the timeit was the east end of civil
civilization in Nashville, yeah.And
so you officially built it in2019 and look at these
production credits, man. Andusually I'll have to say, I do a

(07:42):
massive deep dive into ourguests. But um, this is going on
the to do list. I couldn't getto Spotify to pull up today.
We're talking about AT and Thaving trouble getting calls
going out. I know what's up. ATT you too. Yeah, yeah. It's
really weird. I've had to powerdown my phone, turn it back on.
Doesn't matter. What are youVerizon? Horizon. Can you hear

(08:02):
me now? I
think I still can. If we're outhere, I'm still working, yeah,
so
sister, Hazel, San C and crashdebris. I like that. It's a full
length album. When did that comeout?
Uh, into last year. Okay, yeah,so we cut it for it was, it was
about two years that we workedon it, two
years in the making, on and off,on and off. Okay, yeah, and you

(08:24):
got Brian. How do you spreadthat last name DeVoe, silent s
from nine days. That's the storyof the girl. Story of a girl.
Yeah, you know Keith sobroskiwas in that band. You remember
Keith? I did not know Keith wasin that band. He was Miranda's
drummer in the early days. Hewas in nine days. I did not know
if it was an original member,yeah, but single, beautiful son

(08:46):
was like, was it a triple Aradio, modern rock radio thing?
Yeah? 100 Yeah. It was fun todo. It was just me and him that
played everything. Dideverything. Okay? So
between you and him, you coveredall the instruments. Amazing
indie folk artist, Grace days,maybe American dreaming. You
were the producer and musicianmixer. Well, you've always been
a musician at the highest level.Then you started getting into

(09:08):
what would have been next,mixing projects. No producing
first for producing first. Andthen, instead of passing it off
to a mixer, you said, Let mehandle this.
Yeah. Well, somebody said youshould handle this, yeah. So
you're not afraid to just diveinto the deep end of the pool.
Not anymore, yeah, yeah. I usedto be, I mean, that was like,
there was a long time as amusician that doing other stuff

(09:32):
besides what I was already goodat, felt like, felt fake, very
impostery, very not, not okay todo. And it was, and I felt like
it was gonna wreck a reputationthat I had if somebody sees me
do, do one thing, and, oh, andyou confuse the heck out of
people, right? And I was worriedabout that like, like, there's a
thing that, yeah, it's, youknow, the the, for lack of a
better term, the branding of ofwho you are in your career,

(09:55):
right? Yeah, right. I felt likethat mattered a ton. And I've
kind of found out that it, itdoes. And it doesn't, it's like,
you can't be everything toeverybody, yeah, but if you dive
in and get good at something,and you're not afraid to start
over and kind of suck at it fora while, yeah, then you become
that thing for some people. Andthat's, that's kind of how all
that other
thing for other people, yeah,yeah. I for a while, you know,

(10:16):
when I was kind of going betweenNashville and Los Angeles,
people like, do you live in LAor Nashville, I was like, Yes,
right? And they never knew whereI was, so they had to always
reach out and find out where Iwas and if I was available,
yeah, which is good. I always
think it's kind of fun. I mean,in the end, it's like, Well,
wait, are you producing? Are youplaying or on the road, right
now, right? Yeah, just reachout, man, the first time, like,

(10:42):
I ended up doing a production,kind of a CO production thing
where I was also engineering,which was way not something I
put out there much like in acommercial studio. Yeah? And I
got the biggest kick out ofstanding at a console, kind of
trying to get stuff going forthe day, yeah, and seeing my
buddies that I've known forever,that I've played with on

(11:03):
sessions, getting sounds on theother side of the glass, and one
of them in particular, just kindof look up at me and just kind
of squint, kind of going like,well, there's a drummer here,
but you're there. Oh, and thenjust look back down in his
guitar and keep doing his thing.And it's like, yeah, who was
that? Oh, stranger.
Oh nice. Yeah, he was a guy Ilistened to, you know, there's

(11:23):
that studio musician Academy,yeah, I have listened to every
episode, you know, I really,I've really enjoyed that, you
know, getting in inside baseballinsights to all these people
that do the thing every day,sure, you know.
So, yeah, they need to have youon there. Man,
I don't know, those guys love togo on there. Miles, yeah, yeah.

(11:46):
I've listened to his Yeah.
So it also makes you realize howfast these engineers are on big
tracking dates when, say, in ademo session where you got five
songs to do in three hours, soyou're at the average song just
every 35 minutes, right? Andthey have got so many inputs,
and everybody's asking to bepunched, and they do it so fast

(12:08):
that is, like, I don't know if Icould ever it's time in the
trenches, obviously,
yeah. And I did a lot of that,like the Pro Tools, part of it,
keeping up that way. Yeah, I dida lot of it on busses, like I
did, which, you know, you're notpunching people in on busses,
but you're doing all thisediting and learning all your
shortcuts. Yes, and I was doingthat in the front lounge of
busses while I was still kind ofgoing in and out on weekends and

(12:28):
subbing, sub dates and all thatstuff, and getting getting to
where I could so how did
you get yourself these DAWs ProTools and Ableton, is it like
pulling up YouTube Universitykind of a thing? No,
I mean, I didn't. Then I do thatstuff now a lot. I'm a YouTube
junkie now, but at the time, andI don't even know if I how,
well, I remember how I taughtmyself Pro Tools, but I, you

(12:49):
know, I had come up doing someof that stuff even in high
school, playing with like cakewalk and Sound Forge and stuff
that was
out in the late 90s, right?Yeah, yes. I never played
software audio workshops. Saw,Oh,
I never did, but yeah, I know Iknew about it, cue based, yes,
and I never used that. Thatstill exists, apparently, but,
but I had done that, and I putall that down when I went to
school and was just focused onthe music thing and for years

(13:11):
and touring and all that, andwhen it came back around, there
was enough familiarity, plus Idid all the Ableton stuff, you
know, for the road. Okay,
so now that's another skill setthat a lot of people like to
tout, and it's a great way to,like, have a side hustle or
monetize. I mean, Matt Payne hasthat amazing, yeah, he was one
of my first guests on the show.And he has, I forget the name of

(13:32):
the company, but I know thatJeff Marino probably works with
him a little bit, you know,Darius Rutgers drummer, right?
And they put these giant showstogether for people and the
tracks and everything, so youhave that skill set. Yeah, you
did that for a lot of people,like even Gary Allen, right.
I did it for Gary Allen. I didit for Houser for a long time. I

(13:52):
did it for Steven Tyler solothing. Oh, wow. And my rigs were
not as intricate as some of thestuff that's especially going on
now, yeah, but I got it. It waspart of the getting the tip. And
gig is they were moving from,this is what, oh eight. They
were moving from a like, taskcam, you know, port, a studio
for track, for to run theirbacking tracks. Ouch. When I was

(14:14):
auditioning for the gig, like wewere supposed to use a laptop,
and they say it's good on Mac.Do you know how to use that?
Said, sure. You know how tobuild track rig? Absolutely. You
made
yourself so valuable. I had noidea how to do
it. Oh, you said, Yes. Then
you faked it. And I called, Icalled Riley because he was
doing it with the flats, and Iknew they were using Ableton. I
said, Hey, how do you guys dothis? And this is what we use. I

(14:36):
don't know a whole lot else. AndI just dove in and figured it
out. Wow. What do you thinkthey're gonna think when they
hear this? What depends guys,yeah, they're like, Oh, you
didn't you. You completelymisled us. Oh
no, they they've been told,yeah, okay, you came through.
Yeah, it worked out fine. And atthe time, that wasn't such a
prevalent thing on like, midlevel touring acts, middle of.

(15:00):
The middle of the bill acts,yeah. And so we'd go out and
play these festivals, and peoplewould ask, you know, hey, who
built the rig? Me, Oh, I did.Doesn't everybody have to do
their own because that's what Ithought. That's why I was on the
guy. No. So I did like some workfor with Tracy Broussard, for
Shelton, and I can't rememberall of them now, but yeah, they
just kind of would come in. Soyou're,

(15:20):
you became a kind of a go to guyfor that, and will you still do
it, knock it out
very rarely, like, I actuallygrew to really dislike it,
because it's if you're not goingto do what Matt does, where it's
like a full service thing thatyou're really building out to do
that. The the downside of ofdoing something like that is
you've got to be willing to kindof be on call when they have

(15:41):
issues on the road, yeah, and inthe studio on the middle of a
session, I can't, can't helpyou, if you're on the deck for a
festival on a Thursday andsomething's not working.
So Matt, a team of people thatare available kind
of okay, I would think so, youknow. And now probably it's been
a long time since I've donethem, I would imagine now the
the band leader, the guys on theroad know way more about that,

(16:06):
then it's not as new as it waswhen I was doing, yeah, because
when
I had the sub for like, MarkPOIs, you know, and he had to go
get married. I, you know, he'slike, Hey, man, here's the SPD,
SX. This is how you forward tothe next track. This is how you
started. This how you stop it?If Tyler is going to extend this
section, hit this thing, thenyou got to get out of it. And it
was like, I had to, you know,work that stuff to orchestrate

(16:27):
right into my DM
for drummers that have donethat, like, because Nashville,
the drummers almost always firethat stuff. Yeah, it's like,
that's the that's half oflearning the gig. It's not just
the learning the tunes. It'slearning how to play and play
that thing. Yeah, and, and,
but are you? Are you? Are yousignaling it while you're
playing? Or you just startstopping? It

(16:48):
depends on the rig. But a lot ofpeople would have, you know,
something would run for acertain amount of time, and then
you trigger the next section. Oryou it would go to the bridge
and loop the bridge, and thenyou'd trigger out of it. And so,
yeah, there's a lot of and itdepends on, again, the artist.
There's a couple artists there'sa couple artists that I won't
name, that really didn't likethey wanted the tracks, but they
didn't want to be constricted bythe tracks, and the drummers

(17:10):
were just chasing them all overthe place all the time, you
know? And so it's just reallydependent on the gig.
Yeah, Harry, Harry Myrie gotreally exceptionally good at it,
too, I believe, on a couple ofhis gigs that he had. And, you
know, I, I don't want to soundlike the old, you know, get off
my long guy. But I mean, there'sa lot of legacy acts that
there's, there's no there's notracks. Yeah, you know what I

(17:31):
mean, very basic, no tracks onseekers gig, that's right. So,
did you get to visit with DonBrewer? A ton, yeah. Nice. Cat.
Great. So, so Jim Don Brewer wasthe drummer with
Grand Funk. Real
nice. Really? Wrote that songtoo. I believe he wrote it so

(17:54):
you need more cowbell. So hegoes to the mailbox Like Bill
Gibson all the time. Does he tocollect a check? How
many other songs did they have
some kind of wonderful is thatthat's right, but that wasn't
theirs, though. That was acover, right? That was a cover,
but that was a song from the60s. I want to say there's
another one I'm getting. I'mgetting closer to my home.

(18:17):
That's right, nice. That's agood one. Very eerie and
mystical. Yes. Great drummer.Yeah. We played all those had
some big hair back in the
day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big oldTommy Aldridge, that's
what I love about obviously, youhad a preference. You know,
you're a family man, you know,you work the road, but then
you're like, No, I'm gonna builda studio, I'm gonna produce, I'm

(18:39):
gonna do sessions, I'm gonnastay home. Did you enjoy it when
you did it, or do you miss it?No,
you're good on the barbecue. Idon't.
Yeah, I don't, yeah, exactly.The best barbecue you've ever
had every day. I love, I loveddoing the road, and I still like
going out. I go out a coupletimes with hazel a year, usually
for Mark, and that's, that's,that's more like a, it's more

(19:02):
like going out of town to seeyour uncles and cousins and
buddies now, like they were soclose. But yeah, it's a I liked.
I loved playing on the road, andI love learning stuff. I didn't
love sitting around as much asyou sit around on the road.
Yeah, I really wanted to beactively involved in making
music a lot of the time. And Ithink the production thing for

(19:24):
me was kind of twofold. It wasone of one, one of the reasons I
did it was because I reallywanted to be more involved in
the creative process of recordmaking. And I had done enough
demo sessions to know that thatwasn't really what you did as a
session player so much you'remore, more of a you're in
service to that production team,you know, which is great, yeah.

(19:45):
But, and, and opportunity, therewas a, and I just talked to
Justin shipper steel playerabout this not long ago on a
session, because he, he kind ofmade a pivot from guitar to
steel. That's worked out okayfor him. I think he's done
pretty good. Yeah. Uh,recognizing sort of when, when
there's a an availability forsomething else that you do, and

(20:09):
do you want to, you know, Icould have kept on the road and
stayed and played drums andtried to work my way into
sessions that way forever, or Iwanted to be in studios and
making records sooner. And thisthere was, there's more of an
open door over here, and so Iwent through it,
you saw the door open. And
it seems like a lot of drummersdo that, you know, Tom Reeves

(20:30):
quit, totally, yeah, yeah. Well,not quit, but they become
octopi, you know, we're, I was,you know, me being a drummer
coming up and having that kindof an identity throughout my
teenage years, and then gettinginto radio learning, you know,
multi track production andthings like that, eventually
getting into video production.It just seems those skill sets

(20:53):
just make sense for us. For somereason, I agree. I see that a
lot getting behind the radioboard and flying faders and, you
know, pulling carts and firingthings off as you're talking,
that's a that's a skill. It'sall percussion.
Did you do it on purpose?Because I didn't necessarily
know I was doing it. I just
always knew that it's like whenI saw when I first got into a

(21:15):
radio production studio inConnecticut, at the home of rock
and roll. That's where we 95 allthe Grand Funk Railroad tunes.
The production director, at thetime, he had the job I wanted. I
saw what he did, sitting in theproduction studio and putting
all these things together. Andit was the first time I heard a
radio station imaging voicewithout all the stuff around it,

(21:35):
like just the raw track. And Iwas going, and I remember,
that's actually a real guy thatit just dawned on me. I was
like, 22 years old, 23 yearsold, going, Holy crap. I never
thought about it. That's, that'sa real person, dude. He paid
taxes, right? Yeah, and he's gotthis big voice in the home of
rock and roll. I know, you know,he's the big imaging voice. And
he would always the guy who's,his name was rich Conway. He

(21:58):
would sit in the studio and waslike, it was like, Candy Land,
yeah, you know, sound effectsand zip zaps and booms and
explosions and all thesedifferent things. And I was
like, This is me, you know, Iwas either gonna go into radio
or I was gonna go, Dude, how ifI this happened, you and I would
probably would never have met,no, you'd be so ingrained in
radio. I was in rate, but I wentinto radio thinking I wanted to

(22:21):
go into ESPN. Did you know that?Well, it's a Connecticut
company. Yeah, it was inBristol. Yeah, I was at my
holdout. Was like, well, I'llhang out in radio for a bit
until they're hiring up in
Britain. Did you know Did youknow enough about sports no
sports ball, you don't reallyneed to no no. So I basically
you have to have an opinion.It's like, you sound like you're
like, when you're a news anchor,you really do. It's not like

(22:42):
you're just reading copy. You dohave to have somewhat of an
opinion, possibly,
yeah, well, it used to not bethat way, but that's a whole
separate topic. When I saw thecontrol room for live
television, and you saw the guy,I can't remember what role he
had, but he was like, you know,you know. Okay, ready was,
camera two goes. Camera two.Ready? You know, I'm like, I

(23:05):
could totally
do that. Now, the dudes at MooTV do it in a different city
every day. They set up theirmobile TV production facility.
You know what? I mean, they taketurns doing the show. You do the
opener tonight, I'll do theheadliner. And they take turns
and they Hey, you jump on cameratonight, then these guys are
carrying the big cameras around.
It's just, it's just anythinglike anything else got processes

(23:26):
and procedures and systems andall that systems and processes.
But I knew that when I saw likehe was working on something
called the Fostex Foundation,2000 Wow. And it was a,
basically a four track mixer,but it was eight mono tracks
that you pan to left and right,yeah? And I figured that out,
you know, touch screen, all thatstuff, yeah, scrub wheel. It was

(23:47):
really cool.
It's like being a drum channel,which is in Oxnard, is like a
real TV production facility,right? Yeah? I mean, with jibs
and a producer and guys withheadsets, that's the
same area as drum. Drum you oris drumeo different?
Oh, no, don't say that. No,drama O's is the Canadian
conglomerate now muzzora,because they've got guitaro,
they've got basio, they've got,they got, they got, they're so

(24:11):
smart they expanded. Hey, Jim,do me a favor. Bring my overall
volume down. If you can just alittle bit. Just talk quieter.
What? What?
Like, that's in the recipe.We've
got, we've got some tic tac, you
know, it's funny. Getting backto this doesn't really work.
Let's see. Oh,
we've got checks mix flyingeverywhere, guys. But that's the

(24:34):
beautiful thing about aboutpercussion, is that everything's
a percussion that the chain. Youcould change the sound, no, by
eating some of these. Well, youknow what I thought about doing?
I really thought about becominga DJ, yeah? DJ, you would have
been a great DJ. DJ, Redman, Imean, I can still do it, because
I watched some people do it. I'mlike, No, aren't
you kind of doing that with yourown right? Podcast? Well,

(24:57):
I want to, you want to do thewhat do? No,
we know not like, not like,quest love, like artistic DJing
with vinyl. I'm talking aboutcoming in with the bare minimum.
You got your two laptops, youguys, you got your thumb drive,
you guys, you got your littlewalk out, walk out of thing
there. You got your microphone.You introduced the bride and the
groom say, like, weddings, barmitzvahs, parties, give me my
give me my 10 grand. And thenI'm incorporating a grant, dude.

(25:20):
I'm incorporating my rollingpads and percussion zip code. Is
he
doing these parties? I know.Man, they're probably DJs out
there going, where are you gonnaget 10 No,
I'm telling you, that's whatthat what a good wedding DJ.
Makes sense. 10 grand, really?Yeah, I don't know. That's what

(25:40):
I'm asking for. Actually, Iactually, actually have a, have
a student from my first drummersweekend, right?
That's where I'm starting atthis. I'm not,
I'm not gonna say names, but wegot to catch up. And he was
telling me the ins and outs ofbeing a DJ. And he does. He's a
drummer first, but he makes agreat living as a wedding and

(26:03):
corporate DJ. And I'm tellingyou the numbers 10 grand.
Well, I mean, I guess if youwere to come up with a program
where you, you did putpercussive implements in there
and stuff like that, and you gotthe audience involved with
tambourines. And, yeah, you
could bring, like, a basket ofpercussion stuff, yeah,
interactive DJ,
dude, let's, let's do it, passit out. Yeah, I'm not doing any

(26:26):
of the heavy lifting. I'm justgonna show up and cheer you on.
That's the
beautiful thing is, you don'thave to have, you don't have to
bring in buckets of LPs anymore,like baskets and baskets of LPs.
It's all, well, I bet you didn'tknow that this is where this
interview I
was going. I knew it's goingsomewhere. We
have just a casual, free flowingconversation, yeah, who were?

(26:50):
How did you? How did you getinto, like, really quickly,
doesn't have to be your youknow, Marvel orange story,
origin story. But how did it allwhen did you start playing?
I think I was
10 or 11, yeah, so, so just
started hitting, hittingeverything in sight.
No, I wanted to play my mygrandfather. Short version of
the story is my dad's dad passedaway. He had a couple guitars

(27:13):
that he didn't know how to play,that we inherited, and I was at
the age where that looked reallycool. And then I saw a buddy
playing drums, and somehow Ijust took a left turn, and
that's, that's where it was. Butit was about playing rock and
roll. And, yeah, you know, not,not, not a classical guy to
start
with. What was, okay? So for me,like, you know, 1983

(27:34):
MTV, Martha Quinn, I love her.Um, wouldn't
a 1981 for you.
Okay, so 81 Yeah, leading,that's how it was for me. Yeah,
81 you're right. So what was itfor you? Because your
generation, plus, yeah,
and like, you must have beenborn 8583

(27:57):
8183 sounds like by the time Istarted playing. It was, it was,
you know, the Smashing Pumpkinsand the wall flowers and Dave
Matthews Band. Oh yeah, youknow, all the, all the 90s
stuff, and half the people onthat list over there that I've
worked with now, but yeah, yes,yeah, they were all
on the radio. Yeah, I got tospend a day with him. He's just

(28:21):
a very nice, approachable guy,man,
that's what I hear. Stitzelknows him rich, you know,
because they're both Chicagoguys, yeah and yeah, he's, I've
never met him, but he was my hewas probably one of my first
drumming heroes, him and Carter,
I guess. Yeah, he got, I thinkhe got into tech, yeah, time
take your money, put it intotech. If you're listening to
this podcast, it means you'realready looking to improve your
drumming. Why not level it up?In person with me, when you book

(28:44):
a one on one day, drum, tensedrummers from around the world
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and much more. Of course, weaddress all your questions, and
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(29:07):
ball down the field to be closerto their goals, even getting
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D, R, U, m, t, e, n, s, i, v,e.com. Drum tensive.com.

(29:32):
Jim's got his big book, Bitcoin.You have a whole Bitcoin, but,
yeah, let's tell the world thatthat's fine. Okay,
get the whole the whole Bitcoin.Yeah, it's nice,
but I got an early so then I'mhodling, as they say, you hold
the kids say, actually it is a,I guess it was a misspelling,
but in the Bitcoin unit, the bitthe bitty verse, I would say

(29:56):
it's, yeah, they say it'shodling, holding on for. Your
Life? Oh, yeah, yeah, becauseBitcoin is so volatile. Yeah,
there are days, there are weeksthat I've lost $40,000 but
then it comes back up. It's gotto keep the faith. It's day to
day. Could be so are you gonnaget, are you gonna get into any
of that?
That's not my thing, man, mywife's a tax accountant. She's

(30:19):
all about the safe investments.You know, safe, yeah,
lower value.
Well, you guys are younger, soyou can go a little bit more
aggressive, yeah, yeah, yeah, we
can still take the risks. Nice.She's
a tax accountant. Yeah, she's
taking on new clients. No,
why not she? She works for thebusiness management on
the firm. Does she we know whereshe works, and everything, yeah,

(30:41):
amazing. Because,
I mean, they're in demand rightnow. Yeah, yeah. It's they may
not be in demand if the IRS goesaway, which I pray for the day
that comes. It
wouldn't be nice to save thatamount of money in taxes every
year. Oh, god. What would you dowith it? You could do home
improvements. You could stick itin your IRA
and imagine the economy that'staken off and rip roaring,
because I have to worry aboutfreaking April 14, but I think

(31:02):
it would be, you want to go onmy IRS tirade again? I will. I
think it'd be
sometime before that actuallyhappens where we abolish taxes.
It's good. It's not going to
be, we're not abolishing taxes.We're just changing the
framework of how we get thetaxes.
I know, but I think it's goingto be some time. I don't know.
Even with the best joke of
a of a pen man, he's me. He'smaking changes with that
executive those executive orderspretty quickly. He

(31:23):
you're talking about anyway,
man, that day comes, it's goingto be a, it's going to be a,
make it a national flippingholiday. I cannot stand income
taxes or property taxes. Close
to, this is close to Jim'sheart. I mean, who wants it? I
mean, you want, you do want tohave highways and infrastructure

(31:44):
and all
this stuff. I'm not saying that,but that's where people go off
the rails. They think that'swhat I'm saying. That's not what
I'm saying. No, no, there areother ways to collect taxes that
are not, you know, intimidatingand based on intimidation
tactics. I did this on my ownpodcast with Mercurio. I said
the actual freaking font of theIRS is designed to make you feel

(32:05):
intimidated. It's the
intimidation font, right? Wonderwho get that gig? Like the font
selection. Dude,
dude. Every font has a voice.Yeah, you ever relaxed? Like,
you know? Why did you
choose those fonts for our ourlogo?
I don't know. It just, it's, tome, it's like the rich Redmond
show.
Yeah, it's book ended byhappiness.

(32:25):
We could change it up. I mean,it was, it's just impact.
But every font has a voice. Youever read a sign and derive the
voice from it? There's a voiceto it, yeah? I mean, the first
Comic Sans has a voice, thefirst try at the logo. Jim sent
me out of the park, and I justokay, if the IRS font was in

(32:48):
Comic Sans, would you take themseriously? Which one is that?
Which was comic book?
Oh, God, but the Bible in thebubble font?
People hate Comic Sans. Is whatI'm pretty much.
This is way off the rails.
This is what you know. Thismakes a episode fun. Oh yeah,
people universally hate the IRS,so, yeah, this is a good topic.

(33:11):
So with your wife being in thatposition, you guys probably pay
on time. It's like, boom, noextensions. Oh
no, everything's extendedbecause she's working on
everybody's stuff. Ah, yeah.
So this is a stressful time ofyear, kind of like from like,
March to May,
yeah, yeah. And then again,September, October, because it's
the extension deadlines. Oh,man, yeah. It's just I learned
all kinds of stuff I never

(33:32):
wanted to know. Yeah, when isthat? When did you guys meet?
And you said you married 12years we met at
North Texas. You're, you guyswas, she had music, uh, she was,
and then also she ended updouble majoring in business, and
then did the accounting thinghere.
Smart, yeah, so what was yourdegree in performance,
education, Jazz Studies, dude,like, a, it's like a philosophy
degree, yep, basically, but,but, man, it's good to have that

(33:54):
in your back pocket.
Yeah? And, I mean, it was thepath that that for me. Let me
focus on what I want to do themost, right? All the other
options were gonna limit my timebehind drums, yeah,
and if you can't play jazzdrums, I mean, it's like,
there's a lot of fantasticpeople that have never even
dabbled it. They think theynever even tried being spang a
Lang but, you know, I alwaystell the kids it the reason why

(34:17):
we have a drum set is because ofan American art form known as
jazz, and it gets you used toworking in a triplet subdivision
and tons coordination, yeah,yeah. And
the the melodic phrasing and theimprovisation stuff that doesn't
it still applies to all theother styles, just kind of, you

(34:38):
know, it's all derivative. Sothat was
your favorite, some of yourfavorite jazz drummers? Haines
was okay, yeah, probably mystill favorite, playing
to the end. He was playing up tolike, the last couple months of
his life.
I saw him in like, 2017,
or 18 in New York, at the BlueNote. Wow. And yeah, I mean, I.

(35:00):
Uh, yeah. I mean, Haynes,obviously, Tony Gad, really? I
mean, I mean, yeah, I alwayslove Gad, because it just the
vocabulary stayed the samewhether he was playing with
Chick Corea or Eric Clapton, andit somehow worked for both.
So sad about his son, yeah,yeah, terrible. That's terrible.
That is terrible, yeah, youknow, the older we get, it's

(35:23):
like we're, I'm in, I'm in thisseason. I don't know if you're
starting to notice it, butpeople are, oh yeah. People are
fading, yeah, you know, yeah,yeah, yeah. The one thing that
is certain
is that and freaking taxes,yeah, and the damn iron
callback,
yeah. Now, now, what about yourpop guys? Now, before you moved

(35:43):
to Nashville, did you say, Hey,I better do a deep, deep dive, a
little bit on, like, Eddie bearsand Lonnie Wilson
or totally, absolutely, yeah,yeah. Uh, did a bunch of that.
And I started playing with,like, the Texas country artists
and stuff. And, oh, he's doingvan tours out there across Texas
and Oklahoma and all that. Anyguys we know that probably not,
yeah. Most of them aren't doingand doing it anymore, you know,
wow. But like, you know, openingfor the burgeoning Eli young

(36:06):
band, oh yeah, you know, theywere at it for some time before
they pop. Yeah. And some aroundthe guys like Stoney LaRue and
Kevin Fowler and guys that havejust been the staples out there
for a long time. Kevin Fowler,Fowler, that's
Ken to Andre, yeah, our buddy,yeah.
And still, I'm still workingwith Aaron Watson now, but from

(36:26):
the other side of the glass,yeah. And so, yeah, it's a did a
bunch of that, but yeah, beforeI moved here, absolutely, kind
of dug in and studied hard howto do that, and even took
lessons outside of UNT with somelike Sean McCarthy, some of
those Dallas guys. So what wOJ alittle bit like, Hey, get me my,
like, commercial chops together,a little
bit. So, what it was so, so JimDan wojowski was kind of like,

(36:49):
uh, he's so great. He's like, anurban legend. I mean, he was
basically in the unit, you know,University of North Texas, lab
bands in like, 8283 84 kind ofaround there live in Australia,
like
right after Bissonnette,probably right after
business. And he was just, he'sjust, is still an amazing
drummer, and he kind of ruledthe roost in Dallas for a long

(37:10):
time. And now he's playing withPeter Frampton. He lives in the
Pacific Northwest, but when youstudied with him, um, what did
you What do you guys cover? Man,I
think I took, like, half alesson with Dan. He was
impossible to nail down, becausehe was always on the road with
always on the road with withFrampton. But we he would, he
had a practice room over in thisplace off 75 that I was taking
some lessons with McCarthy andand occasionally some other

(37:33):
people, and he would just be inthere. So it was more of a, just
a those were like life lesson,gig lesson, hallway, discussion,
lesson, kind of things which aregreat, you know, off of 75 off
of, like, Mockingbird Lane overthere, I think so, yeah, it was,
like a really colorful place,yeah,
like planetary murals on thewalls and stuff. Yeah,
yes, to rehearse there with allof my top 40 bands. Yeah, yep,

(37:56):
that's the spot. Now, when youwere in Dallas, did you ever
play with the Dallas press andelectric, or the bill Tillman,
or the project, or randomaccess, or did
some of those as sub things. AndI did, there's a guy named Jeff
Taylor that did a lot of thatcover band. Yep, I was a
founding member of front line.Yeah, yep. And Tin Man Band, and
some of that stuff play withJeff a good bit. And yeah, did

(38:19):
weird like country gigs. Iremember playing some it was
this huge Honky Tonk in FortWorth that I did for about a
year, white elephant, Sloan, noway bigger and way not in the
middle of anything like that.Billy Bob's no way off the
beaten path. Wow, I promiseyou've never seen this place,
but it was down there, and itwas huge. And there'd be like 30
or 40 people in there on aWednesday night, we'd be playing

(38:39):
old country songs, yeah? And,uh, some other drummer at UMT
handed me the gig. And come tofind out that all the people
that were there were swingers.
It was a way, as in, upsideupside down, pineapple Swingers,
yeah? Or actual Spanx bangalangswinging on music. No, the first
thing, yeah, like,
Shut Yeah, really, yeah, yeah.

(39:01):
Just a intro to country music.
I'm thinking, like, yeah. Like,you know, swing, yeah. Do
you ever think about throwingyour keys in there? No, were
they attractive swingers? Arethey? You
know, that's the thing you learnin life, is that those, those
things are not as portrayed onTV. Usually, yeah, usually
nudist colonies are full ofpeople that shouldn't be new.

(39:22):
That's kind of but they theyjust love it. Yeah, they do.
They're so free. Yeah, have youever done that? Just walk around
naked? No, on a beach, like, youknow, specifically on a beach,
no, well, you know, nude beach.Never been to a new beach. Would
you ever want to do it?
Okay? I want to ask them. Idon't
think that was just the setup,not the question. Okay, great.

(39:45):
All right, I'll make a note ofthat. He
was gonna invite me thisweekend.
Well, yeah, you go to a lot of,you go to a lot of I don't go to
nude beaches, but you go to thecamps, the campgrounds. Well,
yeah, we used to go camping, butnone of them had that. Kind of,
did you get rid of your camper?Yeah,
we sold it. So I produce, Iproduce the try that in a small

(40:07):
town podcast. Try that in smalltown.com. And homosexual, yeah,
one of the guys, Courtney and I,went to a trip al tapasa Robles,
to do something that was a canaligned with the podcast, and
Neil and kaylo went with theirwives as well. And on the way

(40:28):
back from one of these events,we were in a limo all together,
and we were telling stories. Andwe happened to tell our story of
when Courtney and I went to abrothel, grand opening of a
brothel in Pahrump, Nevada, whenwe lived out in Vegas,
did they have one of those, likethings that just does out front?
Yeah,
inflatable crazy arm wavy guy,whatever they call that, a
family guy. They did not havethat. It was, it was a grand

(40:50):
opening that our radio stationwas invited to, to do a remote
broadcast there, and, you know,on the way there. I mean, we're
probably 2625 years all thetime. And my wife's like, you
think they're going to be naked,you think it'd be walking
around. You think that they'regoing to talk to me. You think
they're going to do that. She'sasking me all the questions. I
said, Do you think if I knew theanswers to these questions, you

(41:10):
might be slightly worried? Shegoes, good point. I said, I
don't know. I don't know what toexpect. So we told them that
story, and, you know, it was anamazing night one for the
memories and all this otherstuff. Apparently they came away
from it, kalo and Neil thinkingthat we had done this recently,
not 20 some odd years ago. Oh,wow. So amongst their group,

(41:32):
they're like, yeah, they're,they're kind of adventurous. I
mean, you know, don't, don'tjudge them from the outside.
They Jim and Courtney. They'rekind of living it up. And
they're like, looking at theiryou know, if they're doing it,
ladies, I mean, you know, whatare those things? And they
brought him, like, Have you beento any brothels lately? Jim and
I'm going, Dude, that happenedover 20 some odd years ago. Oh,
total misunderstanding. You justlet him keep going with it.

(41:56):
Yeah. But never been to aswingers club or anything
yet. Jimbo, you're crazy. WhatFort Worth? Honky Tonk, the
drag. So what do you what areyou listening? What are you
listening to nowadays? Like, youknow, I always talk about the,
you know, keeping up with thekids, and, you know, you don't
want to be the Get Get off mylong guy. What? What are there

(42:17):
some bands or artists that arelike, light in your fire, or
drummers you're following, or,man,
I don't know. I mean, I'm bad atthat now, because everything's
so focused on the work you'redoing, focus on the work and the
references that we're workingon, and but I've been doing,
I've been listening to a lotmore like indie artists stuff
and indie pop stuff, and justkind of just diving into

(42:39):
different things, and I keep abig playlist of that around, but
I'm, I'm nowhere near as good asI used to be about, like, living
with records for a long time.Yeah. And I don't know if that's
just the nature of what I'mdoing, or the nature of how the
world is, or me just being lazy,but that's, it's just different.
But, uh, I mean, a lot of thelike, the the anything now that

(43:01):
I think sort of challenges myideas about production I'm
pretty interested in. So I lovelistening to stuff that, you
know, anything that JackAntonoff worked on is really
kind of interesting. He justthinks super differently than I
would on anything. So a lot ofguys out there that I can go up,
okay, I see how you got frompoint A to point B. I might get
somewhere similar and not thatguy. I would not have gotten to

(43:21):
that same place from the samestarting point, I don't think.
And you know, a lot of theBillie Eilish stuff is really
cool and interesting, and justanything that, to me, just kind
of feels really cool and feelsinventive and fresh. You
could buy a laptop and havelike, a MIDI keyboard, and
you're a brother and a sister,and you could create Grammy
Award winning, career definingrecords in your bedroom.

(43:46):
Amazing. Yeah. And
I kind of got way into the, thetread lightly on this, the synth
thing, in a way, but as asupplement to I've like, I've
started really liking puttinginstruments on records that
weren't traditionally thought ofas being on those kinds of
records. So sneaking a Moog intoa country record, or moving some

(44:07):
Americana singer songwriterstuff and some pop stuff
together. So I kind of look forstuff like that, where people
are just kind of taking somechances and doing something
different, like a patchworkquilt, yeah? Like Maggie Rogers
stuff has been really cool. IanFitch did the last one, oh,
yeah. But even the one beforethat was awesome. Uh, there's
just been a bunch of stuff outthere like that. That's kind of
like, Great songwriting, andthen really kind of cool and

(44:29):
invented production. Has been so
many new producers in town,yeah? You know, new
whippersnappers that I, youknow, I'm not running this down,
yeah, it's interesting. Peopleare going to be chasing you down
because you know you're havingsome success, and they're like,
You got to get on that guy'sradar. It's
been fun to stay busy and workwith different people, and
that's been a big focus. Wastrying to work on different

(44:54):
types of music that I findchallenging still, even though
that might might not be themost. Direct path to to one, one
outcome. It's been a lot morerewarding. And I feel like in
the last couple years, really,maybe the last two it started,
I'm looking at the calendar andgoing, Oh, I like all the stuff
I'm working on. Like, I like allthe people I'm working with. I

(45:16):
like all the stuff I'm workingon. I don't feel like I'm having
to take stuff to fill in nice
the gaps as much, yeah, you turnthe corner. Because in the early
days, you take everything as,first as a drummer, you take
everything and then you startedtaking everything as a Yeah.
Start all over. Yeah, producer.And then are you trying to write
with the artist?
I'm doing that a lot more nowtoo. Yeah, yeah. And so I just

(45:38):
had a an admin go through all mycatalog to upload it, because
I'm terrible about that stuffand and they sent me this list
back of like, did you write andproduce this? This, this, this
holy crap. I've written a lotmore than I thought I had. And
so, yeah, I've been doing a lotmore right, probably last five
years. A ton of the stuff Iproduce, I'm writing some of
with them. That's great. Sobasically,

(45:59):
you're in the studio as aproducer, like, mixer, yeah,
first, right? Yeah. And then, soI had a question about, and
it's, it's like, as you'retalking, it reminds me a lot of
how I kind of progressed inradio, immersing yourself, uh,
emulating people that you, youadmire. Did you surround
yourself with producers andmixers engineers and watch that

(46:20):
what they were doing, becausefor me to make a radio
commercial sound, not local,yeah, and make it sound agency
was a big thing for me when Istarted out, and I learned all
the different tips and tricksthe hard way. Did you have
somebody pouring into you toshow you? Okay, here's how you
go from making it sound likeyou're in a garage to an actual

(46:43):
polished, you know, sweetenedalbum?
Yeah, that's a good question. Ithink because I came at it from
already having been a player, Ididn't come in as a 24 year old.
Let me intern with this producerand learn everything and be the
assistant. For a long time, Ihad to make money like I had to
figure out how I was going toplay and start doing that and

(47:05):
make the time work. And so I didlearn a lot, but I learned a lot
of it from relationships andconnections I built with with
producers that were older thanme, that would let me glom onto
something, or that would come inand if, even if I was producing
it, I would call them and hirethem and go, Hey, can you
engineer this? But, you know,make sure I don't fuck this up.

(47:25):
Like, right? Like, make it soundgood. Like, can I? Can I
basically pay you to apprenticeme through this a little bit
amazing. So I did a lot of that,and then a lot of my buddies,
like, you know, Bobby Hollandwas a huge help, who's got a
studio in Berry Hill, and weworked on a lot of stuff where I
was kind of producing, and so Iwas arranging with, you know,
finding the artists, workingwith the songs, and arting the

(47:46):
project, arranging the music,and he was doing all the
engineering and mixing. I alsoworked with Jeff Braun a lot,
who I believe works all yourstuff. Yeah, now, and Jeff was
on, he was singing merch on GregBates' bus for a summer, wow,
just to get out and see what wasgoing on. Did a bunch of indie
records together. And he was a,he was great because he was

(48:06):
already so talented, and he wasreally young, and he was walking
me through all sorts of stuff,Pro Tools, stuff, mix stuff. He
was kind of the guy that pushedme to start mixing eventually.
Was like, Hey, you should just,you should just be mixing this
stuff. You know, you know how todo that. And so I learned a lot
from the peers too, you know. Sono formal background. Education

(48:27):
is all real world, absolutely onthe job training, yeah, just my
one of my buddies also here.I'll credit him with this
statement, whether he likes itor not. Jonathan Roy is a great
mixer in town. Yeah? He says allthe things, yeah. People get
kids ask me all the time how toget good at mixing, and I just
tell them, you just got to ruinpeople's indie records for two
indie records
for 10 years. You got to get anear for it, yeah. And know what

(48:47):
to listen for. I mean, even I'mthinking about putting together
a curriculum for voiceovertalent, aspiring or otherwise,
on how to produce their ownstuff, yeah, so they could spec
projects and make themselvesstand out amongst on the crowd,
which takes an ear. It takes,you know, okay, I need to fit
this music bed in the context ofthe voice and, you know, maybe

(49:08):
pull certain Sonic frequenciesdown or pump some up, that kind
of a thing. At what point didyou realize, Okay, I've got,
I've got an ear for this. It
wasn't the early part. Wasn'tthat I had an ear for it. It was
that I didn't want to stop untilI got it right. Like I have a
passion for it that I discoveredI was super obsessed with making

(49:28):
the record sound like what Iheard in my head, and so I just
kept asking questions and keptfailing until it's it now, it
gets much closer to what I'mhearing in my head than it used
to and and then there's the, thecommerce part of it comes in
where, you know, it's, you dofigure out, okay, well, this is,
this has to be done by thisdeadline. So you get comfortable

(49:49):
with, how surgical do you get in
terms of, like, well, I'mimagining a certain kind of kick
sound. Do you get that precise?
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, Ithink it's a big, giant puzzle,
and it's got to fit. Together asmuch as possible. So there's
like, there's this two it's a,it's a really like double edged
sword. May not if that's theright term, but it, on one hand,

(50:10):
I want the whole thing, everylittle piece and component, to
sound exactly the way I want itto, to fit and be a unique
record, and not something thatwe could pull up really quickly
and just go, yeah. But on theother hand, you do also have to
sort of accept what's happening.You have to be open to going
like, oh, well, that's notreally what I thought, but
that's kind of working. Andthere's a, there's a little

(50:31):
curriculum in the back of myhead, a little little checklist
of like, hey, is this, is thiscool? Is this, like, a good
surprise, or is this going to besomething that we have to get
rid of later, or we have to weregret. You know, is this
pulling us in the wrongdirection? How
often you got to reset yourears?
I should do it more than I dobecause I sit there for too
long. Yeah, but yeah. I meanpretty frequently, and it's good

(50:52):
to reference stuff, you know, asyou're going I do, we do more
referencing in pre productionand early production than we do,
like, at some point in theproduction process. For me, I
want to stop doing that, and Iwant to just go with whatever
we've got. Do
you ever come back into it likefrom a night before and listen
back and be like, What the hellwere we thinking? Oh, my. We
were tired infrequently anymore,but early on all the time. Yeah,

(51:15):
you know, yeah,
it sounded so good last night.What were we thinking? Right?
You know how you ginger is apalette cleanser. You know
you're eating sushi or whatever.So for your ears, you know,
you're probably got thisbeautiful chair, beautiful desk,
you have your speakers, and thenyou might go listen to it, car,
yeah, on the phone. I mean, howare the crazy kids listening to

(51:38):
music? They're listening to iton their phone.
Yeah? I mean, I get mixedrevisions sometimes where
somebody just listened to it ontheir, like, their phone. And I
don't mean like earbuds on theirjust, I mean speaker phone,
like, sounds great, man, it'slike, no. So I always listen to
the mixes there. You know,that's the sound we used to do
that in radio in order to test aspot. Once we were finished.

(51:58):
Obviously, it's, you know, not afull mix production. It's a
couple of tracks, but we had acue speaker in the actual
console, so we would turn allthe speakers down and just play
it through the cue speaker, andif I could hear my voice cutting
through, that meant it wasextra. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. You know the guy, PeteColeman, that engineers all of
our records. He listens toplaybacks soft, yeah, very soft

(52:22):
when we were, when we wereactually using real percussion
for the first, I don't know,nine records or whatever. There
is a shaker buried on everyAldean track, and it is this
little glue. It's amazing,because you could tell the
difference, even if it's buriedin the track. And he will listen
to my execution so softly hegoes, it's, it's just easier to

(52:43):
hear soft. I'm like, wow, yeah,
the detail comes out bettersoft. And you're not exciting
the room and getting lied to bywhat's going on there
interesting
you have when it comes tocompression and stuff like that.
I know a lot of the tracks overthe past. I don't know, 20 years
you look at, you know, thewaveforms, brick, a lot. They

(53:03):
went from like to brick, nuancedin the 80s, little, you know,
dynamics, and now they're just,
yeah, is it still like that? Arewe getting back to nuance? We're
getting
back to nuance, I think, in alot, and it's genre dependent.
Still, some genres are expect tobe, to be that, like metal,
yeah. And even, I mean, a lot oftimes I feel like, like modern

(53:24):
country, like radio country,there's so many tracks on modern
country, yeah. So those are,those are pretty, those are
pretty loud, you know, but youget into the the indie stuff and
the Americana stuff, and thoseare really, a lot of those are
cut with vinyl in mind. Sothey're, they're a lot more
dynamic, and they kind of keepthem that
way. Have you ever gotten into aproject where you're like, 30
plus tracks deep and thecomputer crashes,

(53:46):
yeah, without a save. So yousave frequently?
Yeah, it auto saves. I've got,like, I'm the guy that, I mean,
remember that was Ableton guyfor a long time, too. So I'm the
guy that people go, Hey, whatshould my backup system be? And
I tell them, and they never doit, but it's, I have my backup
system. That's, that's, it'scloud and and physical, yeah,
smart,
that's crazy. That's how I wouldreceive my years. You

(54:07):
think about it, you're met,you're messing with, like, yeah,
you know, some of these peopleare spending $100,000 on a
record or more if there's alabel involved. I mean, this is
like, I tell, I've told otherproducers that don't do it. I'm
like, You got to think about itlike you like you're walking
around with a suitcase full ofcash, yeah? And the longer you
work on that project, the morecash is in that suitcase. And if

(54:31):
it's all just in that onesuitcase and it's unlocked and
you just leaving it on thefloor, that's, I don't feel good
about that. Yeah, whoa, yeah.
It's, yeah. I would reset myears when the computer crashed,
and I'd freaking go, the worst
thing that I ever did
is I, but the backup system wasmade it fine is I was I put in a

(54:54):
new drive to make a a copy forthe artist of the sessions at.
For mixing was done aftereverything was done, and you
have to initialize the drive,which means you have to erase
it. And it was the same name asthe drive they had given me to
work off of, oh no, and I didit, Yep, I sure did you erase
the entire erased the entiredrive. But I had it backed up on

(55:17):
my archive local, and I had itbacked up in the cloud, and I
just pulled it right back overand set it over. It was, it was,
did you?
Did you soil your pants? Oh,god, yeah. There was, like, that
moment of your heart justjumping into your throat, cold
sweats. Like,
I mean, I think I jumped up inthe studio and screamed like it
was the scariest thing that'sever happened. And it took me
about, it took me about twominutes of just sheer panic

(55:39):
before I really, like, I knewimmediately. I'm like, What's
fine. It's in these otherplaces. But I've never had to
use the backup before. I neverhad to restore anything. It's
like, it's there. I know it'sthere. I don't want to look what
if it's not there, and it wasthere, and it took one second to
just Boop. Boop.
Okay, cool. Recording fourcamera feeds at some of these
podcasts I produce. It's like,I'm constantly monitoring to

(56:01):
make sure everything'srecording, yeah, just, you know,
it's, it sounds good. We got,you know, okay, you know, if
something goes out, or maybe Irun out of space on a card, for
some reason, it's like, okay, Iknow that's feeding into there,
so I gotta back up there, sothat should be good. Yeah?
Oh, it's like, no matter howcareful you are, because I'm
super careful, I have thosesystems in place. It just takes
one time. It wasn't a lost. Itwas me. I did it like I made a

(56:24):
mistake and it it that wouldhave been a huge mistake if I
hadn't. It's a miracle you'llnever make again. Oh, God no,
yeah, because it's like, howmany times I've shot video and I
forgot to turn the camera onright and hit him record? Oh,
get this.
I have never messed up with 200and something episodes of this
show, but the same drummer thatI'm a fan of, Mike Miley from

(56:48):
the rival sons, we had a 60minute gorgeous, flowing,
beautiful conversation. Neverpress record. So I remember that
I apologize to him. We set upanother one, and then the audio
was corrupted, and he's like,I'm like, twice, and then I am

(57:09):
so happy that he reached out.He's like, Should we try this
again? He goes, I love chattingwith you. Bucha. Like, we're
gonna do it. I just got to makesure that I get to
call you up and say, okay, am Ibeing punked? Ashton Kushner,
come out, poor guy, yeah. Imean, twice. I mean,
it's technology stuff happens,and it's like, you know? And so,

(57:29):
yeah, that was, that was the oneI had not told that publicly,
that I did that, but it's been along time now, and but you know
that it doesn't happen to thebest of the best had, had to,
yeah, you know? I mean, thinkabout all the stuff that's on
tape that's been lost overyears. You know, it's just gone
well even. But even when you'rerecording on tape, it's pretty
obvious if the reels aren'tmoving right, you're
not recording, yeah, yeah. Well,you know, we had, I remember us

(57:53):
all going to a lunch at
those Jackson's, wasn't itJackson's before I moved to
town,
and Steve misomo was there, andI had Steve misomo as a guest,
and he was talking about, youknow, how he got paid all those
years to work at Sony tree andtransfer all those audio

(58:14):
recordings physical to a digitalformat. Oh, so he did. That was
his job. Yeah, like, eightarchiving that stuff. And he got
to basically hear the history ofcountry music coming through
Nashville in the 50s, 60s, 70s.Pretty, pretty amazing. Yeah.
Chris Mara does all that out.And welcome to 1979 like they do
all kinds of tape transferstuff. It's amazing. Yeah. How
many studio, commercial studiosdo you think are in Nashville?

(58:38):
We're talking hundreds, right?Yeah.
I mean, and far less than thereused to be. But if you count
now, the all the private stufflike mine that's popped up to
make records, yeah, probablymore than there used to be.
Yeah, no, but yeah, yes. So
an operation like yours is heavyman and the financial and you
got to have the insurance andall that kind of stuff. But if
somebody wants to start doingwhat you're doing, what's the

(59:01):
minimum that they is gonna theycan have a powerful laptop,
right? Some nice microphones,
yeah, 20 grand,
small interface. I mean, you canget started for five grand
virtual like a little Mackieboard and, yeah, you don't need
that. You need Apollo twin and alaptop and I'm in one good mic,

(59:22):
wow. And you can, you can startmaking music talented. You can
learn a lot, yeah, or don't betalented, just suck and work
hard. Yeah, yeah, suck first,yeah. So
what's the schedule when you isit artist to artist? Or do you
like to have a particularschedule? Like, Hey guys, we're,
you know, 10 o'clock, latest?
No, it does. I mean, I have,yes, I have that, like that

(59:43):
ideal schedule, and that getsshot to hell frequently, you
know, but it depends on theartist. I try to run it sort of
the same, the same hours thatthat all the sessions work,
because we're using the same.Players, and they're on the same
schedule, and so we're, youknow, we need to kind of keep

(01:00:04):
that going. And, yeah, I try todo mostly morning, afternoon
sessions. The night thing is, isokay, but because it's usually
just me by myself out there,it's, it just turns into a very
long day of me. There's only somuch concentration juice in the
in the can over here, so, but wedo them, you know, like, a lot
of the Hazel stuff would be,would include evening sessions,

(01:00:25):
because they would come in andthey would do their sessions on,
like, front and back of tourdates. And so they come in work
a day or two, go out and playthree shows, come in work a day
or two. Maybe not all of them.Maybe it'd be, you know, Mark
and jet on the first two days,and then they'd come back in and
and, you know, Ryan would comedo guitar stuff for a day, yeah?
And a lot of times it's like,you've, you've got to get a

(01:00:46):
certain amount done before theyleave town, so we can kind of
keep on schedule here, whichmeans, yep, we're out here until
10 or 11 or 12 o'clock, youknow? And that's fun, though,
when that happens, becauseyou're also, you're like, that's
like camp, like you're dug in,focused on one, one thing and
one thing only, yeah, and it'slike coffee and making a record,
and that's, that's, that's allthe world's your coffee intake

(01:01:08):
is high during the day, duringthose days especially, yeah. I
mean, I give myself a score, youknow? I just, I'll do it, do it
with a smile on my face. It'sjust a thing in the studio. No,
it's gonna stay away from thebagel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got
a really good bagel place out byus too. It's dangerous, yeah,
yeah, when you
were talking about songwriting,and I guess by app, by accident,

(01:01:32):
getting into it, you know, whilethey're making adjustments to
the song right there in thestudio. I mean, there's like,
steps of Moxie. I guess that hasto happen. I know it did for me,
where you'd kind of like, Okay,I'll try that. You know, your
little stair steps to where youwant to be, you know, even like,
hey, I'll adjust the fader foryou. And that's how you get into

(01:01:53):
mixing and stuff like that. I'vealways wondered,
I've always wondered,
you know, I've always wondered,like, if you walk past somebody
writing a song and they're like,hung up on a phrase and it's
like, right in your head, youjust blurt it out, and you're
like, co write, credit.

(01:02:14):
Is it worth the old word for athird?
Is that what that's called? Yes,no.
I mean, I think especially, morethan almost any other aspect of
of the creative process, fromwriting to the the final
product, the writing is notsomething I insert myself in
without being asked, asked andinvited, and I'm totally cool to

(01:02:38):
produce and mix records that Ihad no writing on I'm not I'm
not a writer producer that wantsto write the song and then
produce it to make sure it getsout. But I have found that
writing with artists is a reallygreat way to develop a rapport
with that artist and develop arelationship and a trust factor,
and it's just a good way forthem to get to know me, and we

(01:02:59):
can demo things in the process,and they can kind of see what
it's like to work with me onsome stuff, and just a good way
to try stuff out beforeeverybody's on the hook. Are
there people in
that like that in the business?Oh, there's bug. The word you're
looking for is, indubitably, Iregret it. Well, you know,
you're not really gonna be inthe room on like, just a sole

(01:03:21):
writer session. But, I mean,there's more hanger ons when
you're working collectively likethat in the studio. But usually
you know, you know the etiquetteis to be, I mean, every cut that
I ever had with my five littleyears of writing songs, I was in
the room with the artist, yeah,and now I was talking to
somebody. They're not evenpublishing companies aren't
signing down the middlecorporate songwriters. They're

(01:03:49):
hiring artists to develop, yeah,you know, they're not just, you
know, hiring guys that just singOkay, and they can get the
melody across, and they know thecraft of songwriting. They're
hiring just
straight up, artists, staffwriters are in, yeah, not as
much of a in
decline. And demos are indecline. And there are demos
that are done, but they'reusually done by two people, a

(01:04:10):
track guy, and somebody that'sgoing to sing it, right? And so
for us guys that that was, thatwas an outlet. There was there
was the demo scene as a drummer,there was the custom record, you
know, Tex may hand is cominginto town, and he saved $10,000
and we're gonna crank out songsfor him, and boom, he's gonna
cover lunch for us. It's gonnabe a great day. And then there

(01:04:31):
was the low budget masters, andthen there was master recordings
that get end up on records atWalmart and Tarjay and all that
kind of stuff. And now the demothing completely gone.
Pretty much gone. Yeah, prettymuch gone. So when I met you,
and you were doing all, like,three sessions
a day every Monday, Tuesday,Wednesday, it was a lot of

(01:04:52):
demos, publishing demos. It wasa lot of custom doesn't happen
anymore, not the demos, really.
No, they do them in the rightsmost of the time, you know. And.
And so the the that's part of,that's more of a scratch
track. I would think, not
anymore. Virtual instruments,yeah, they sound so they bang
out a lot of stuff pretty quick,and they get the idea across.
And I do it a little. I mean,I've seen people that, you know,

(01:05:14):
they're, they're, yeah, theirtrack guide demo that happens in
the right maybe gets finishedthat afternoon, or whatever,
sounds kind of like a record. Imean, I don't do that because I
want there to be a bigdifference between that and the
record that we're going tohopefully make. And also want
to, I don't want to pigeon holeus in with two hours worth of
ideas that we have to now livewith forever, but, but a lot of
times it makes sense to do itthat way. And yeah, a lot of

(01:05:36):
times I'm filling in as awriter. I'm filling in whatever
the room needs. If the two, ifthere's three of us and two of
them are lyric people, and theyare just, they're they're moving
like I've learned to get verycomfortable just sitting still
and doing nothing. Sometimesit's just, it's my place, and
I'm here to help where I'mneeded. If it's turning on a

(01:05:58):
microphone at the end andgetting a scratch vocal, yeah,
that's fine. If it's building alittle bit of a track for you
guys to get going on. Great. Ifit's lyric writing with you,
that's great. But I don't, Idon't try to, like, wedge myself
into that
role, and I usually go right forarrangement and lyrics. Yeah,
when I, when I was the Lyric, Imean, I guess it's like, a Neil
appear thing. You know, what

(01:06:19):
percentage of the time do youguys come across something where
you're like, oh my gosh, greatidea. Just gold. What's the
pretty rare, right? Yeah.
I mean, yeah, yeah. I think it'sgonna be huge. Yeah, yeah. I
mean, if you write with goodwriters, hope most of the time
you you can get somewhere thatyou're happy with at least. Then

(01:06:39):
How often
are you saying myself,
this is just garbage. This isawful. Sometimes,
for sure, a lot of times, a lotof times, and a lot of times
you, I mean, there are timesnumbers game, yeah. And
sometimes you get an hour and ahalf into a three hour right?
And look up and everybody justgoes, Yes, isn't happening.
Let's reset our ears. I've got,I'd make the computer crash.

(01:07:00):
There's a cat in town, Dave,Dave Goodwin, and he is also an
artist, and he has this. It'slike pop art. It's almost like
the Warhol Campbell soup can,yeah, and it says, verse,
chorus, bridge, lunch. Chorustwo, verse two, chorus two. And

(01:07:27):
it's true, because verse two isalways a problem. Verse Two is
the always the heart. It'susually always after lunch. Why
is that? It's just coming upwith the next tickets for a
minute there. Like all countrysongs had, like little twists in
them. Remember where they hadthe twists? Yeah, we're
back to kind of like a some ofthose, that double entendre,
yeah, I
can't think of one like

(01:07:50):
homeboy. Let's just take youknow Eric Church, homeboy, yeah,
you think of what the typical,what you would imagine? You
imagine a homeboy, yeah, but hemanaged to, I think, paint three
pictures off that term in thatsong. Totally. That doesn't
really happen anymore. I guess,like, a
chorus is, like a big idea,right? So if you come in with

(01:08:10):
that big idea, sometimes thatfalls out pretty quick, because
you're, you're, you kind of knowwhere you're going. The first
verse sets up that big idea. Andjust like maybe writing an
episode of television or anovel, that second verse is
like, that development. That'swhere, that's where everything
has, like, how are weprogressing? Yeah, from now that
you know this big idea now, howdo we, like expand on it? Yeah,

(01:08:32):
that's, that's why I think it'salways the at least for me,
that's why it's
always challenging. And thatthat piece of pop art is hanging
in about 50 different publishingYeah, companies on the row. And
I bought one from him, and Iframed it up, and it's in my
house. People, songwriters willcome by and be like, Oh my god,
that is so true. Yeah, you
guys want to be a successfulsongwriter. Let me tell you the
secret. Okay, yeah, that bookright back there behind yours

(01:08:55):
pendulum. We're about to gothrough essentially, what was
19? Well, we should be in 1945right now. So anything that's
like culturally significant from1945 to 1955 emulate that
what was going on during thattime? I don't know, gotcha, but
basically, everything happens incycles. Yeah, everything.

(01:09:16):
Oh, okay, I see. I just don'twant corduroys to come back.
They're too heavy. Yeah? And Idon't think the noise for oil. I
mean,
I'm in the studio all the time,the noise,
hey, do you realize we were justtalking about demos, and how
demos have gone away that that Imoved here early enough in 97
that when I started getting intodemos, you know how detailed

(01:09:38):
they are now kick drum patterns,and the drums sound like fully
developed and there's softsense, and it sounds like a
record, right? And so we'rechasing that. Sometimes we're
copying that with our and thenjust applying our own humanity
to it. And but man, back in theday, the artists would come to
the studio, they would strum anacoustic guitar. We tap tempo

(01:09:59):
and on a rhythm. Watch, and theywould say, think this, think
that, think Springsteen, thinkSteve Earl, think Emmy Lou
Harris, and we would have toknow the history of music enough
to think about a kick drumpattern, and we'd have to copy
that tempo. And it would, ittook a while, yeah. And we were
all realizing that on the floordemocratically, of course, with

(01:10:21):
the songwriter having the totalveto, right, power of veto. But
now it's so fleshy. How about
all those times that they camein and they played the song and
it sounded just like Georgestraight, and they said, like,
think Devo and you're goingthat. How am I going to do that?
Oh yes, that doesn't work that.That's not how that works, you
know? But yeah, yeah, yeah,instead of
doing dude, got it in. Say,crazy.

(01:10:50):
But you think that style ofsongwriting, and, you know, Song
making will ever make acomeback, because it's almost
like the evolution of food, youknow, farm to table has now
become very big. I would imaginemusic is going to go through
that kind of an evolution, like,is the music we're listening to
right now, like GMO modified.
I think you're already seeing itin, like, the the the big word

(01:11:15):
is the indie world, but like inthe country world, the alt
country world, the Jason issupposed and those, they're
already, they're already back tothat. It's already very much
humanity, yeah. I mean, youknow, Jason throws his band in
rcaa, and they cut most of itlive on the floor, and they
don't hear the songs, I don'tthink, until right that minute
he plays, which is nice, yeah,you know. And so it's, it's
humanity in it, yeah? And that'swhy those things have a huge,

(01:11:38):
huge fan bases. People feel thattoo. And they, you know, both
stool are they still playingwith a click, though,
I don't know. Depends
on the song, like, if they can'tget the feel or whatever. I
mean, it's, it's a tool, but, Imean, look at Dave Cobbs
production. It's like, so raw.And the, you know, we had Chris
Powell on. He's like, Dude, I'veused the smallest sticks, and

(01:12:00):
hits so lightly, and the freesare just cranked, yeah, it's
like the Joey warrinker thing,okay, you know, we're, we're, if
sounds great, yeah.
He plays literally, like withchopsticks, but they sit on huge
and he just, but the engineeropens up the pres all the way

(01:12:20):
the compressors, yeah, yeah. Oh,the compression, yeah, yeah, and
the priest. It's
back when we recorded the bigalbum for Connecticut, white
bread. Oh,
no, yeah, no. Click, Jim willmention his band from 20 years
ago. Oh, over three
like 35 years ago. Episode,yeah, so
yeah, no, click, just play thesong from memory. It was our

(01:12:44):
demo four song, demo that wespent $600 on. You sound pretty
good, buddy. No, didn't
it was 1995
like a good, you know, rap rockdrummer before it was cool, you
know, yeah, we had very unsavorysongs. Oh yeah,
they were very salacious. I
did not partake in any of thesongwriting. Just gonna clear my

(01:13:07):
name right now, before I getcanceled, Jim,
look up some of those crazyinternet questions and pick two
of them. But in the meantime,what's your favorite
color? Let's go with blue, damnit. There we go. What's your
favorite food?
Mexican food. So because it sayshere on your bullet points. So
you sent me, let's talk aboutthe best place to get tacos,
right? Is it mas tacos? I thinkit's MOS tacos, okay, because I

(01:13:28):
was right there last nightacross the street at lag Lyra,
yeah, Lira, yeah. It'sMediterranean food. And I had
the fish, I had the chicken, andI had the lamb, and we had the
potatoes. We had the the theMiddle Eastern, you know, non
type bread. We had humus. It'snot hummus. Hummus, yeah, and I

(01:13:50):
was digging in with near z. Wehad that we share some hummus
together. And that area isamazing because I also tried the
pharmacy for the first time,living all these years in
Nashville, had never been there,never had a pharmacy burger eat
outside. No, it's cold. Oh,okay, you got to go there when
it's warming up. Awesome, yeah,but that's where so Larry
aberman And I always go to mosstaco, yeah, and they have the

(01:14:12):
fried they had the fried guacand the avocados,
yeah, the fried avocado taco andthe plantains, yeah, yeah.
But what do you like? Just astreet taco vibe, yeah.
I mean, yeah. I mean, all thetime in Texas too. The Tex Mex,
great. Don't you miss it? Yeah?Remember
they have street corn when youwere there in Texas? Yeah, yeah,
that's, it's delicious. You
can get that from, uh, there's aplace. There's a food truck in

(01:14:34):
East Nashville. Now that's doinggreat street corn. I can really
name it, but yeah, yeah. Last
time I had it was in Miami atthe rusty the rusty pelican. And
it was one of these places I hadto do a shoot down there in
downtown Miami. Yeah, and on theway to Key Biscayne, it was
like, it looked like a hole inthe wall. So I'm like, this is
perfect. There's a little bar.Pull up, whatever, have some

(01:14:56):
dinner. I was gonna head back tothe hotel, and I pull up. It's
like. A luxurious gourmetrestaurant, yes? And I'm like,
Okay, I'm not dressed for this.Yeah, people are in black tie.
Put me at a seat at the bar. Ihad a nice steak and street corn
instead of potato. It wasunbelievable,
amazing. I know you're you and Iwere talking about this, but

(01:15:16):
what is your favorite drink whenyou are doing it?
Well, if it was cocktail there,I became quite an old fashioned
aficionado for a while. So youmake them at the house, yeah?
But I kind of got to where justa good bourbon on the rocks is
good. That's it. Yeah, bourbonon the angels envy would be my
nice and they're angels rye. Imean, it's really expensive, but

(01:15:38):
it's, it's really good. Now,what's the
difference again, between thebourbon and the rides, the
treatments, the process, thebarreling or something? Bourbon?
Basically,
whiskey, yeah, yeah. Whiskey,yeah. I think it has to be made
in Kentucky. I don't know thatmight have been right back
shame.
Podcast, no, we need a guy likeJoe Rogan. Hey, he's on the
computer the whole time. Well,his name Francis, sometimes

(01:16:01):
Jamie, sometimes Jim will do it.What's your favorite drummer of
all time? Man, yeah, it's reallyhard because you like one guy,
because he plays ballads greatyou you like, you know, yeah,
this person for this I'm stillgoing with gad. Yeah, best all
around drummer, yeah, in thehistory of the universe, yeah.
Plays everything. Feels greatall the time. 80 years young.

(01:16:23):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing tothink that he's probably one of
these guys that has never rushedor dragged ever in his entire
life. Yeah,
probably when he's young.
I don't know, who just don'tknow. Yeah, maybe he had to
start somewhere. Man, nobody'sperfect. It's always, always
feels very measured, though,doesn't it? Like, so

(01:16:43):
intentional,
so intentional, yeah, becausethe band could be pushing so far
ahead, and he has the ability tojust sit on it, yeah, but not
make it uncomfortable. It'slike, just, you know, it's all
the time in the trenches, the10s of 1000s of hours. I just
think it's great that you'vebeen here for 16 years. I think,
yeah, around 16 years, and you,you have just grown this amazing

(01:17:06):
skill set. And you know, you gota roof over your head, you got a
family. You got the two dogs,yeah, get a life. Have a life.
It's here, yeah, I parents mustbe proud. You still got your
parents. Yes, yeah, Lucky
still have the family. And dothey come visit? They do, yeah,
yeah, yeah. And it's, yeah,it's, it's, I don't know if you
do this, but it's, it's, so Ibet you do, though, it's easy to

(01:17:28):
always be looking for the nextthing and ahead, oh yeah. It's
tough sometimes to look, lookaround and realize, like, oh
yeah, I've been doing this for16 years, and I'm not worried
about paying the mortgage andthe hell that happened. Like,
you know, that's good. And thatlasts about three seconds, and
then it's back to, like, you'relike,
worried about the next thing.Let's get back to let's get back
to securing our relevance. Yeah,yeah. So much fun. It's amazing.

(01:17:48):
Well, it's endless. And, youknow, you know, Jim and I have a
common bond is that we're, we'reentrepreneurs, and you
essentially are too, yeah, youknow what? I mean, it's like,
we're all essentially workingfor ourselves. Yeah, you gotta
have a business mind, and we do.I mean, I mean, yeah, I know so
many creatives that don't Yeah,and many times their career

(01:18:09):
reflects
that, yeah, it's tough to stayin it. It's tough to have
longevity if you don't haveenough organization to keep,
keep the business
organizational skills and some Imean, of course, I take it to a
whole other level. And I'mprobably get tons of shit for
it, but it's just, you know, theidea of, you know, always
shagging the trees,
yeah, you have to. It's calledprosper. You have to. I mean,

(01:18:31):
everything's a hustle. And,like, that's the whole, I mean,
I joked earlier that my half mylife is scheduling. It's not
but, but literally, a third ofmy work is developing new
opportunities like that. That isabsolutely like, that is
intentionally, like, 33% of mytime, yeah, is devoted to,
are you going out, like an A andR guy to check out talent? No,

(01:18:53):
not a
ton. I do a little bit, but alot of mine is, is, is done
through the artists I'm alreadyworking with, the CO writes, and
as long as if I can keep it thatway, I do. And when that starts,
when I feel like the the tide ispulling out, then I start going
out a bunch more. You know, wordof mouth, referrals, that's
always the best, buildingrelationships from that small,

(01:19:14):
little nucleus outward. Yeah,it's too
bad you never heard Connecticutwhite bread. Man, you'd be like,
who says I haven't I missed agolden opportunity. Jim, what's
your question that you wouldlove to ask, buddy, which body
part do you wish you coulddetach and why?
Lately it's been my right foot,because it's been killing me.
So, yeah, really,
yeah. What's the most imaginaryfrom the bass drum?

(01:19:34):
I think so really, bass drumwalking too much. Yeah.
What's the most imaginative,imaginative insult you can come
up with,
oh, that's kind of unfair to putsomebody on the spot for it is
true the most imaginativeinsult, Hey, look.
Cock face, bear, put you in yourplace over there. Cock face, you

(01:19:57):
look like Andy Garcia stuck histongue in an electrical socket.
Oh, my God, it's amazing. I'lltake Andy.
Garcia, you did really goodbuddy. You do great improv
comedy. You got to createsomething out of nothing. Jim, I
thought you were gonna ask himabout his cover band. He told me
to ask the weird questions,tribute band.

(01:20:17):
Okay, what's the tribute, man?What's the tribute
for the rest of your life. Forthe rest of
your life, you can't do anythingelse. Oh, it's the only music I
get to play that to the day youdie, you cannot freaking
vacillate. It's got to be thesame song over and over. Okay?
So
that either means one of twothings. You either want to play
music that you love enough toplay all the time, or you want

(01:20:38):
to play shit you hate so thatyou don't ruin something that
you love, and I'm gonna playsomething that I don't care for
one way or the other. Yeah,really, I'm just like, I'll just
pick something like playing likea Buddy Holly tribute band for
the rest of my life. Becausecompletely, yeah, that way I
don't ruin any music I love byjust driving it into the

(01:20:59):
ground. You're not gonna ruinit. So using your God given
ability to lift this music up,but use the inspiration from the
original drummer as a launchingpad. What is that? Is it the
police? Is it Zeppelin? Is itrush? Is it in steely? Dan, ooh,
yeah. I mean, man, the policemight be on that list, right?

(01:21:23):
Yeah,
because it's, it's super highenergy. Yeah, it's challenging.
It
is, yeah, it has some room to toplay with too. It's not super
rigid, right? Like Stuart'sdoing the thing, but he's doing
different things. So yeah, yeah,
his take on his drum parts now,yeah, 3540 years later, are so

(01:21:44):
different, yeah, because he's adifferent drummer. He's a
different human being. He gotinto production, composition,
orchestration. He's another guythat just went off the rails.
So, so, like I My thing is, Ireally am just so impressed,
because, well, you know, maybe Iwent off the rails a little bit.
I mean, I went out to Hollywoodand expanded my skill set. I do

(01:22:05):
motivational speaking. I do tonsof teaching. Yeah, any interest
in
that? Man, I'm getting moreinterested in it again now,
yeah, I didn't want to hustle itfor a long time because I was
focusing on other stuff. Yeah.And now, I think if there were
opportunities to teach,especially some of what I'm
doing, production stuff, mixedstuff, to other musicians, I'd
be kind of interested. Oh, you'dbe teaching that, not to drums,

(01:22:27):
yeah. I mean, I could teach somedrums here and there, but it's,
I'm not, man, that's likeanything else you're doing all
the time. That's a, you knowthat the good teachers, that's a
skill set they have. That's aknife that needs to stay sharp
for it to be really effective.And I'm not in that, in that
boat right now,
yeah, but you would, even afterwearing an old pair of shoes,
I'd have
to work it up again, yeah,

(01:22:48):
man, I guess I take it forgranted, because I just do it so
much in different settings, likeI do a one on one, I do it in
person, I do it online. I do itat drum shops. I do it in music
schools, due to colleges, it'slike, yes,
you can actually hire rich atthe drum tensive, the one one on
it's one on one. Drum tensor,see, it's a little wordplay.

(01:23:08):
Drum tensive.com, did
you get that yet? I locked itdown, and I just have to build
the page. Let me tell you guys,okay, go to drumtensive.com when
it's available, it's gonna be upthere with our merch page
someday and hire rich the guy isjust only $5,000 a day for you
to come in. Damn Jim, well,you're not far off. That's

(01:23:30):
$5,000 you'll ever spend. He'llDJ for you too. He'll DJ for
you. 10,000 you're gonna go tomoss tacos, right? Oh, yeah. And
no, actually, for the drumtensive, I take him to sushi
steak. I mean, we don't, wedon't fuck around. We
usually go to sushi. That's whatI've been to sushi with you.
Bucha, yeah.
Where do we go? Rousseau's downin the Gulch. It was kind of,

(01:23:51):
wasn't done yet. It was, like,that kind of place. Oh, sorry,
but Jim, yeah, I was promotingyou, I know. But it's like, not
sincere. It's like, really. It'slike, you know, it's fake. It's
like, fake news.
You think I'm being fake China,it's

(01:24:13):
no it is genuine. Come on, youknow, I believe,
do I believe in you? I So, soBen, if people wanted to get in
touch with
you, are you.com? Guy? Are you?Yeah, it's Ben Jackson music.com
Awesome. Yeah,
yeah. And you can hear clips ofyour work. And you got some
stuff with your pictures of yourstudio up there. Yep, there are,
yeah, I gotta drop by some timecome over. I've been invited to
Ray luziers place. I've beeninvited to near these place.

(01:24:35):
I've been invited to your place.Why not officially, but why
don't we do, like, a videoseries of that? We should,
you know what? You'll probablyyou know the ever been on the
working drummers podcast withMatt Krause.
Matt just came out and did thefilming thing. I was gonna say,
yeah, he was just on this,wasn't he? Yeah,
perfect, because he wascelebrating 600 episodes. He's

(01:24:59):
killed that. I did that. Thingforever ago with him, and it's
amazing see what it's done. Iknow just
well. The thing is, is this anendless parade of guests?
Because drummers were just sothick as thieves? Yeah, you
know. And we love hearing eachother's stories, because your
story is completely unique. Wewent to the same university a
decade apart. Had the sameteachers, the same curriculum,

(01:25:19):
the same influences at ourfingertips. We moved to the same
city, and we're doing completelydifferent, yeah, yeah, but I'm
just a big fan. I'm happy foryou, and I'm proud of you, man,
thanks, dude. Yeah, man, thanksfor having me on congratulations
today, and I'm proud of you.Well, thanks, man. Ben Jackson,
music.com Jim, when this comesout, I think we're going to be

(01:25:41):
on the verge of appearing at theMusic City drum show, and that's
going to be July 19 and 20.You're going to be holding down
a booth for us on July 19. Onthe 20th, I'm going to pop in,
yeah, and we're going to behanging, we're going to be
mugging, we're going to havebooks for sale. We're going to
have a step and repeat. We'regoing to have a bunch of merch
for the podcast. You can buymerch. It's going to be great. I
get to field all the questionsof, who are you and where's

(01:26:03):
rich?
This is very just pass aroundthe email list, right? Yeah, and
we'll and we'll push thesecoffee mugs. People have been
asking for these coffee mugs forsix years. I'll put one
in the studio. Yeah, yeah. Okay,good. Oh, you're the
gym on the podcast. Yeah, I am.Oh,
Jim, no. People know all sortsof things. I tagged Jim McCarthy
voiceovers and it's yourshow.co. On every social post,

(01:26:26):
people were like, We get it.You're friends for 19 years. You
know it's good though. Hey,thanks, buddy, yeah, man, thanks
really, really appreciate itcontinued success, Jim, thanks
for your time and talent and toall the listeners. Thank you. We
really do appreciate you. Besure to subscribe, share, rate
and review helps people find theshow until next time. Take care.
Thanks, guys, this
has been the rich Redmond show.Subscribe rate and follow along

(01:26:50):
at rich redmond.com forward,slash podcasts. You.

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Are Drummers Natural Producers? - Ben Jackson's Musical Journey :: Ep 219 The Rich Redmond Show

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Are Drummers Natural Producers? - Ben Jackson's Musical Journey :: Ep 219 The Rich Redmond Show