Blind Faith...

We welcome a dear friend of mine to the After Show.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, after show Army. Hello, I am here justin.
It is Monday, June fifteenth. I have a big podcast planned.
I mean to say that first off, if you were
listening last week, you know what's coming. We'll get to
that in a moment, but I want to say I
hope you had a great weekend. I had a fantastic weekend.
Lots to cover there Tomorrow there is no guest on

(00:21):
the podcast. I'll break down a little further what went
down this weekend. But if you listening to the show today,
then you have a little bit of a tease on
what happened, especially last night at Big Night Live. It
was quite the scene. So we'll get to that. But
as far as today, I talked about this last week.
You know what's great about this after show podcast is,
you know, it's raw, it's unfiltered, and it's really unpredictable.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
And you know, I've talked a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
About my friends and people in my life, especially in
the recovery world, a lot on this podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I've had guests on the podcast before, but last.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Week or the week before, you know it came up
on the show about a good friend of mine, Robbie,
who you know has been like a mentor to me,
really good friend, really has helped me tremendously. And you know,
he's blind essentially, And it came up on the show
kind of naturally with Billy, Lisa and I and they
couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
They go, you have a friend that's that's blind. He's
in recovery and he was an active, he was an addict.
He is an addict. And I said yeah, And then
wouldn't you know, the after show, Army started messaging me
and dming me like, you've got to get Robbie on
the podcast, like we got to hear this guy's story.
And so I called him last week and and asked
me if he would come on, if he would make

(01:33):
time in his busy schedule, and now here he is. Robbie,
what's up, dude? Thank you for coming.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Before anything, I want to say, it's an honor speaking
on your podcast. I know you have a past similar
to my own, and we'll get into that a little
bit more later, but you've come a long way, brother,
and I'm proud of you.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I just wanted to say that right off the bat.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well, you played a huge part in that huge part,
mister humble. You're humble about it.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
I'm still waiting to get paid.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Bro oh man. We have so much to cover, We
have so much that we want to talk about. But
first before we get there, before we go back in time,
how are you.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
I'm good today?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
You good today?

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Okay? Everything good? Okay?

Speaker 3 (02:15):
In your life overall in general doing pretty good.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
So, as we'll talk about more of the biggest issue
is not being able to see much. And that's something
that's something that stays. You can't shut it off, and
it is what it is.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
So some of the questions that I that I got,
you know, and I know we'll get to that, get
to the kind of the whole history of it. But
some of the questions I got, Robbie is because I
mentioned on the podcast that you are blind, but you
could see when you were born.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
You had a vision problem, but you could see a
little bit, right.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, I was born with bilateral atrophy, atrophy of the
optic nerve. It's I was born breach and that hard
time getting me out. And they suspect that they might
have hit that part of the brain with a you know,
a tool or something, and possibly that could be what
is the cause of it. And so my mom started

(03:05):
noticing when I was about one and a half that
something wasn't right right, and she brought me the children
to a massion Air whichever hospital in Boston back then,
and she used to stay late. They'd try to kick
her out and she'd sneak back in because I had
to stay over, you know, I had to stay for
a few days. But anyway, Yeah, so I have my

(03:26):
vision now is I'm totally blind in my right eye.
That happened about twenty five years ago, and my left
eye is getting worse. So things are real glory. So, yes,
I had more vision when I was younger than what
I have today. And mobility was much easier back then
than what it is now, as far as you know,
I didn't have to use a stick and all that stuff.

(03:48):
Now I carry it with me just so people would
get out of my way and all that.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, I guess you're right, because I remember early on
when we started hanging out together. You now granted a
lot of play that we went to, like recovery meetings,
out to dinner. These are places that you were familiar with,
so you could move around kind of easy. It was
really noticeable if you went to a new place that
you weren't really familiar with, then you would notice it.
But and I know you resisted the stick for a

(04:14):
long time. Yes, you know, I know that was a
tough thing for you. I know, I know you came
in with it. You're like you had to go in
the bathroom, like, hell, hold this thing.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, I've been I've been carrying it for probably three
years now.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
So the little bit of vision that you had when
you were growing up, what could you see? Could you
see colors? Could you see?

Speaker 3 (04:34):
How my colors are now are pretty pretty dult, dull.
I can't see much color at all anymore. And yeah,
colors were more vivid back then, for sure. Uh. They
took me off braille in third grade because if class
I was in shutdown and they forced me to read
large print with magnifiers, binoculars, TV screen, you know, closed

(04:58):
circuit TV.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Were you in a regular school?

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was in a class
that was for people that had impairments, and when that
class shot down, they mainstreamed me. But I was upset
at the time because they made me stay back in
third They made me stay back in third grade even
though I passed, and to try to switch me over

(05:24):
from braille to lodgeprint. It's a shame too, because I
read Brail real good back then, and then I haven't
read Brail in years now. I remember a couple of letters,
that's about it. I have never had an interest in
going back to it. So yeah, So back then that
put a lot of stress on me, trying to look
at books with magnifiers and the binocular look at the

(05:45):
board with binocular. It was it was real bad. I
used to get headaches from it. So to describe exactly,
to answer your question what I could see back then
compared to now was very difficult because I never had
twenty twenty vision, so to gauge it, Like I can't
even believe that somebody can see, you know, a sign

(06:05):
that's on the other side of the block, Like I
think of that, and I'm like, man, I have no
idea what that's like.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
I have good vision, that's one thing. I have pretty
good vision.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
I can see pretty well, you know, so I can't
even imagine, like I try to picture, you know, can
you see faces?

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Could you see faces.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
A little better than now, but never detailed in a
strong way, Like if somebody had, say someone had a
mole on their neck or you know, hypothetically or something,
I probably wouldn't I wouldn't notice that right away. So
I was, and I still am, in a different world
than a sighted person. Absolutely. My other sense is a

(06:48):
way shopper because of it. You know, I'm a musician.
I'll get into that more. But I have a really
good ear, and all my other senses are probably heightened
because of lack of.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
You have probably the best memory of anybody I've ever met. Now,
do you think that has to do with the lack
of vision?

Speaker 3 (07:09):
What was the question?

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Memory? No, he's a comedia absolutely, yeah, but you do
have a very good memory.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, I do. I have to utilize it a lot
more than the average person.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Right, So it does have to do with that.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
And another thing is and we'll go back. I won't
go off path, but I have offered I've been offered
training to use a smartphone and I haven't done it yet.
So I should look into that because I love using
my memory and keeping it, you know sharp. Yeah, but
you know, it would be good if I learned to

(07:44):
use Internet or learn to use touch screen. Stuff is hard.
Anything digital. I'm not trained with yet right, you know,
throw analog stuff at me. I can remember, you know,
being a musician. I remember every knob on every item,
my own mixing boards, amplifiers, all that stuff. You know,
I can memorize all that. But the digital world, the

(08:05):
new did well, it's not new anymore, but recent years,
you know, everything switched to Obviously we're in a digital
world now. Well that's something different. Well I was growing up.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Well, the advancement in an AI too, you know, absolutely
I could that could probably be beneficial to you.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
I think, yep, you know.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
And supposedly Elon Musk is working on a chip to
replace the optic nerve.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Is that is that neuralink? Is that has Neuralink company.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
I don't know much about it yet, good question. I'm
going to research it more. I heard about it recently,
and that would be something something incredible if it happened
before I died.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Oh my god. Well that was what I asked you
when I first met you. I'm like, can they can it?
Can you know science develop where they make you see again?
And you said no, No, You've told me many.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Times russel experiments and would stem cell stuff, you know,
researching that and trying to see what they can come
on with trying to formulate ideas what I should.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Say, Robert, to go back to when you were born. Now,
could that have been a malpractice lawsuit?

Speaker 3 (09:07):
You know, it's funny you say that because nowadays people
sue for anything and everything, and my mom back then didn't.
You know, she didn't push that, but yeah, I could have. Definitely,
I'm sure could have at least ended up in court,
that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah. Yeah, Now your mom. I knew your mom, your
mom VICKI.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, she passed away in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, what an amazing woman, your mom.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
I remember going to your house for Thanksgiving?

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Mother, Yeah, remember that? Yeah, Well, because you used to
go out. You used to go out to restaurants. I
remember every year you would go out to a different restaurant.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, most of the time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
And then a lot of people do that.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Actually, yeah, I mean for years of my life we
had family Thanksgiving. Then a lot of family started dying off,
and then my mom's health started to decline a bit,
so she stopped cooking as much. So a lot of
times I would say, hey, let's just go out to eat.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, and you came to the house. So Rob I'd
like you to tell your story. You can start when
you're younger. Before you do, I just want to first
say that, you know, Robbie and I met in two
thousand and the first time I ever saw Robbie was
in two thousand and five. Okay, Now, he had come
into a detox that I was in and I was

(10:18):
gonna leave that day because you know, I have a
disease that wants me to go, and you know, I
wanted to get high and use and I was in
the detos.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
They asked me to stay just for the commitment.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
And the commitment came in and it was you and
a couple of other guys, and I remember you told
your story and you talked about you know, active addiction,
being a musician, and I remember, you know, your message
was so powerful because I remember thinking to myself, here,
I am like thinking, oh, you know, I have it
so bad and all this pity, and I just watched

(10:47):
you tell your story as someone who can't see, you know,
and staying clean, and it really inspired me. I ended
up staying and that was the first time that I
met you, and then we reconnected later on in two
thousand and eight, when I finally two thousand and seven,
and when I finally got clean, I had remembered you,
and that's how we got together. But you first heard
about me before two thousand and five, before you came

(11:10):
into that detox.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
Right about you in nineteen ninety nine, and your mom
asked me to pray for you because you were a
teenager that was on the streets pretty much homeless. And
even though I'm very much you know what people call
an m path nowadays, I'm an empathetic person. I have
a lot of compassion and the stuff that I've been through,

(11:33):
you know, like addiction for example. You know when I
heard you were struggling, I remember I did pray for you.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, well, that's that's kind of what That's a big
part of what we do to stay clean, you know,
is you know, we have a we find a higher
power and something bigger than ourselves, and you know, praying
and spirituality and meditation kind of all go hand in
hand in what we do. And you know my mother,
you know, she she left my dad in nineteen ninety eight.

(12:00):
She ended up leaving for a different relationship. She got clean,
and she moved up into the area that Robbie was
in and she ended up getting with a guy that
you grew up with, Robbie.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yes, right, knew him from when I was a teenager.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, so now you had no idea who I was.
I was a younger kid.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
I was holmost like you said, And then I found
this out later when I met you. But yeah, my
mom would tell you at meetings and stuff that you
would see you at, you know, please pray for my son,
and you prayed for me.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
I did. You prayed me into the rooms in a sense, right, in.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
A sense that could be true. Yeah, I have a
very high level of faith, and I know a lot
of people out there struggle with that. And I can
understand that because it's hard to fully grasp why so
many things happen, why things are certain ways. And you know,
I was brought up, you know, around people that had faith.

(12:51):
My grandmother was very faith driven. My mother had drug
problems when she got back from a prison in West
Virginia around that same time that in third grade, when
they switched me from Braille to regular print, my mom
went away to prison for a year and a half
for drug charges and stuff that had to do with that,

(13:13):
and because she wanted to tell on certain people. It
was a federal case. And so my point is when
she got back from that was very traumatic by the way,
and going to visit her on a train and having
to leave to come home and back. Then they didn't
know how to explain to kids what the heck was
going on. There wasn't much out in those days about

(13:35):
addiction and how do we explain this to a child.
So when she came back, she worked at it. It
was actually a Christian halfway house type of a thing
and called Prodigal House, and a lot of guys in
there played guitar, and that's when she bought me my
first guitar. I was nine and a half. She could
tell I was really interested in it. And my grandfather

(14:01):
he owned a record store before I was born. But
get this, he was a manager of Cannoby Lake Ballroom
they called it in the old days. Is that he
was a co manager?

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Is that sale Hamps?

Speaker 3 (14:14):
I was Salem Beyond they had They used to have,
you know, big plays kind of like I don't know
if it was as big as a Hampton casino, but
it was good size and it was a lot of
the famous jazz people and some of the rock guys
you know, people rock players who would come through there,
and so all my life growing up, I would always
hear stories about music, music, music, music, and it really

(14:38):
caught my attention. But let me, I kind of took
a left turn. So your original question.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Was are you asking? Yeah, I don't remember. I think
it had to do with see mister memory.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Yeah, I know, it'll definitely come back to me. Yeah.
So no, we were we were just talking and I
was telling you.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
About I was talking about my mom and and yeah,
and asking you to pray for me before I met you.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Oh yeah, yeah. Faith. So that that's that was how
I got initially introduced to you know, observes people changing
when she worked at that house, and it got me
interested in the guitar, which is really cool.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah, so let's just start right there.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
So so nine years old, you got your guitar. Now,
you were into music, listening to music before that.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah, and when I when she worked at that that
you know, that house that was based on faith and
you know, having a higher power to help and all that.
It was that's what they were teaching everybody. And it
wasn't a twelve step thing or anything like that. It was,
but it was back. This is a long time ago,

(15:51):
but it was definitely built on you know, lean on
Christ really is what it was that particular place. And
uh so, yeah, I was listening to music. I heard
all those stories from my grandfather about what he all
the famous people he met. And my dad was also
a musician, but I didn't know him. He cheated on

(16:11):
my mom when I was a baby. They split up.
He went to Canada and he called me right before
he died to connect me to some half siblings in Canada.
And I was about twenty five years old at that point,
and I never got to meet up with him, and
he passed away unfortunately at a young age. Same thing addiction, alcoholism, diabetes.

(16:32):
He had a stroke, and incidentally, my sister half sister
from Canada passed away in twenty eighteen from this illness
from addiction. I mean so yeah, yeah, so music was
probably in my blood given the fact that my dad
was a musician and my grandfather was always telling me

(16:52):
stories and it really really caught my attention all that,
even at a young age. I loved tearing those stories.
And then my mother working at that place, and she knew,
thank you, Mom, she knew that. Yeah, she knew that.
I think, this kid, I'm going to buy him a guitar.
And I remember going to my first music lesson, you know,

(17:15):
nine and a half, and I was all nervous and
all this stuff, and never I haven't stopped playing.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Since you are a very well accomplished guitar player, I
will say that, and been in a lot of years. Yeah,
so would you say you were natural at it?

Speaker 3 (17:30):
Well? I think I don't know if it was in
the DNA. You know, that's so controversial, the whole thing
with DNA and all that, but I definitely think that
I took to it really fast, and I definitely think that,
you know, we'll get into it more later. But it
gave me a place to rest my head, and it
gave me a sense of purpose, and especially being blind,

(17:52):
it gave me a place. It gave me a like
I said, a sense of purpose, a place to rest
my head, and goal, a goal to achieve. And I
left school early, you know, but I did get a
ged later on.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
And yeah, what what grades did you drop out in?

Speaker 3 (18:09):
You want to know? For real? Se grade?

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Really?

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, because they were torturing me, forcing me to read
and all that, and my mom worked it out where
she just said, Okay, I want my son to get
a ged when he's ready, and that's extremely an extreme
young age if we leave school. And I still can't
believe we even got away with that.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
You're not pretty intelligent though.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am learned, and I definitely you know,
I listen a lot, and I listened to tons of audiobooks,
and uh, you know, the stuff we learn in school,
some of it we don't even end up using in life.
And a lot of depending on yeah, exactly what, depending
on what our career is and all that and what

(18:53):
we do. You know, how much of it are we
going to use. My buddy Brian Sobern's in nursing school
now and he shares with some of the stuff that
he's learning, and he looked, he explains, he's like, am
I ever going to use this as being a nurse?
You know, it's just a lot of extra added stuff.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
I'd say ninety percent of what I was taught in school,
especially college.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
I did not use. I learned everything in the field.
I learned everything as an intern.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
That's how I got to where I am today, you know,
learning through on site, not what I learned in school.
You know, absolutely, but school still is important, I will say,
but so you dropped out in seventh grade.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Incidentally, I remember how nervous you were when you want
to do your first radio interview, and I remember you saying,
I don't know if I'll get it. And I remember
saying you, I think you are going to get it.
You know why, dude, because you have the right personality.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
You know, you believe more than me.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah. I remember that like it was yesterday, exactly where
we were and exactly you saying that and then me
rebuttling with that because I had faith. I thought I
thought for sure you'd end up in radio.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah. See, I did not have the confidence.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
Because of your persona or your personality.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, you remember every conversation we've ever had.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
I feel like I know I bring up stuff to you.
Remember the freaking nineteen o three, and.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
I mean, Robert, we spent so much time together. Think
about that every single day, like I'd pick you up,
we go out to eat, we go do things. And
think about all the hours that we spent of me
just talking to you. Are you talking to me? Talking
to each other?

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah? Right?

Speaker 3 (20:27):
And it was a funny story. Justin was bringing me
to recovery meetings for years, helping me with a ride.
And one day he he was getting a little burnt
on driving from Harol to Lawrence, and I remember him,
you know, the thing was ending, and he yells out, hey,
anyone going to Lawrence.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
I remember that.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Yeah, it was funny.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
And I didn't even take it personally. I got your point.
It was just like, I'm tired, I want to go home.
Maybe someone else could give you a ride back right tonight? Anyway,
right right now?

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Remember that?

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah? Ok So where do we leave off? Nine years old?

Speaker 1 (21:02):
Well, so what I want to know is, Okay, so
you mentioned your mom and your mom, so obviously your
dad was an addict. Your mom was an addict, so
you grew up around addiction absolutely, you know. So when
did you first you picked up the guitar at nine?
When did you start using Let's go from there?

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Okay, let me go before I go there, I want
to say my grandparents also picked up a lot of
the slack when my mom was struggling and they were
still married. But they didn't get along good. So there
was a lot of argument in the household. In the household,
and I didn't realize so later on in adult life
that that's not how you act. You know, if you
have a problem with someone, you talk it out. Don't

(21:39):
tast someone's head off herbally, right, You know a lot
of it that stuff rubs off on you when you
were a little kid. But my yeah, great grandparents though
they loved us, and I don't mean that to sound
to talk bad about them, but they just did not
get along with each other. But anyway, Yeah, So my
first band was when I was thirteen and my grandfather

(22:02):
saw a thing in the paper that this guy's aunt
was holding for younger people that was it had a
weird name too, like the Merry Music Makers or something
like that. And so I went to this thing and
here I am twelve years old and there's a drummer
there playing and we're talking and I couldn't believe it.

(22:23):
He told me, yeah, I'm also legally blind. I was like, what, okay?
And he heard me play and he was blown away.
And he played very well too at a young age.
You know, he was a couple of years older than me,
but he was still very young then. And I started
going to his house in Jamming, and then he introduced

(22:44):
me to some people He lived in Salem, New Hampshire
at the time, and he introduced me to some people
that played and we ended up getting together and you know,
it formed into a band and the name of that band.
The name of that band was Sparkle Drive and I
we Barkle Yeah, we named it. We named it after

(23:08):
It'll get it. You'll find out more of my story later.
A famous band that I played with around here that
had really good following. One of the guys lived on
Sparkle Drive and self Lawrence at the time, and I
used to go watch them rehearse when I was like twelve. Uh,
And that's where the name came from. And then years

(23:30):
later I brought that bass guitarist that lived on Sparkle
Drive to this drummer's house that I spoke of a
few minutes ago, a minute ago, and they look at
each other and go He looks at him and he goes,
you look like my uncle Roland. He said that to
the drummer. He goes, but that's my father. And they
went upstairs. They went upstairs and everyone's hugging, going, Oh

(23:53):
my god, Rick, how are you doing. So the short
version of what I'm trying to say is that these
two guys were cousins. So I named the band after
this guy's street. Right, bring him to that house years later,
five years later, and they discovered their cousins.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
What are the chances?

Speaker 3 (24:15):
And I go, whow we named the first band after
the street. He already knew that, and he's like, man,
I can't believe this guy is my cousin. We're jammin
and stuff.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Sparkle Drive is not the best name, I must.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Say, No, it's pretty sparkly.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, like, where'd you play Pride events?

Speaker 3 (24:31):
What is hey? Listen, dude, you have people listen. No,
But anyway, in all seriousness, yeah, that was the name
of the street, and those guys were my mentors.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Well you mentioned the guy from the big band. What
band was it?

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Okay? So I had that first band when I was thirteen.
It lasted for a year or so, and that seemed
like it was forever. Back then. The year seemed like
a long time. You know, Mathematically years you get older,
a year is a smaller fractional ratio of time, so
years go by quicker. That's just how that works. So
after that band broke up, I didn't quit playing, but

(25:11):
I wasn't in a steady band. And then when I
was sixteen, the guy that lived on Spockle Drive and
so his band broke up and I called the I
I talked to one of the guys that let me.
Let me give you backstory. First, when I was eleven,

(25:32):
I had been playing guitar for a year and a
half and I lived on Athwin and this guy on
there lived two houses down from me. He saw me
walking by with a Gibson guitar case and he was
he yelled up down from the second floor window and
he said, hey, buddy, what what do you got a
Gibson there? What kind of it? I said, Oh, it's

(25:53):
a Gibson SG guitar and he's like, bring it up.
I'm gonna meet guitar player.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
So I go up to a random guy at a house.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, I live right next door him, and daught to
him and this is how it led to the other
band later. So so I go up to this house
and he's talking to me, and another point of interest
is he told me my friend, just my friend Steven
Tyler that I used to be in a band with,
just got signed to Columbia Records. And I'm like, oh, okay,

(26:23):
I had no one knew who they.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
Were yet, you didn't know who Steven Tyler was.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
No one did, I mean not no one. Obviously people
knew it, but you know they weren't. They weren't a
famis yet.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, yeah, uh, and he he was.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
He didn't grow up around here. He grew up you know,
New York and stuff. Then he had the summer camp
in New Hampshire and stuff with his family, which is
where he met Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton and those guys.
So I'm up, I'm at this house and this guy
sometimes he gets choked up thinking about it, thinking about this,
and I and I thanked him for it. Recently. He

(26:58):
took me under his wing when I was eleven years
old and he's and then I would go to his
rehearsals and he happened to rehearse back to that name
on that street. He rehearsed at the bass player's house
on Sparkle Drive. So now moving it up to I'm
sixteen years old. Their band breaks up, and I joke

(27:19):
only said to him, you know, I was on the
phone with him and I said, you should audition me.
I already know parts of the songs and I'm thinking
to myself, I'm probably too young and it's probably not
going to happen. Dude. He called me the next day
and he's like, yeah, I talked to Rick about it,
and we want you to come down and an audition.

(27:43):
And I was floored. You know, when you're sixteen, stuff
like that is huge.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Now, how old are they? Like, how much old are they?

Speaker 3 (27:49):
Would you say he was nine or ten years old
than me? Oh bass player was you know, five or six?
I think I was. I was twelve when I met
the bass player at his house on Spoko Drive and
he was nineteen. I know that much. So yeah, six
years diff.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
So they had you audition for what band?

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Seven years different? So the band that broke up was
Links And when I auditioned for this new band there
was didn't have a name yet. Okay, it became Trapper Yeah, yeah,
which got picked out of a hat. And you know,
now knowing what I know, But back back in the
I don't know. Back in the day, a lot of
vands used to end what our billy Squire had a

(28:27):
band called Piper, you know what I mean? There was
there was certain bands. Uh anyway, that was our name,
and I joined that band when I was sixteen.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
Hold on, hold that thought, join that band when I
was sixteen? Remember that missed the memory? Okay, when I
first met Robbie and became friends with them, I remember
I didn't know anything about him, and then I knew
he played guitar. And someone said to me once They go, oh,
you know, Robbie was in Trapper, And I go, what
the hell is Trapper? They go, no, Trapper was like

(28:56):
huge in the eighties and whenever, like they got signed
to a record day or whatever. So that was my
first Like I was like really like he was a
legit musician like that.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
Okay, go ahead, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Join when you were sixteen and we rehearsed.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
We were dedicated. Man. We'd play for four hours in
the day, go home for dinner, and come back and
rehearse at night. And keep in mind, like I said earlier,
these guys were my mentors. So to me, I was
like on cloud nine. The problem is I had already
been using a lot of drugs as a teenager, and

(29:34):
to circle back, it just came back, mister memory, right,
it just came back. What you asked earlier, how old
was I the first time I used probably ten or
ten and a half. I smoked a joint with my
mother's boyfriend, and she found out about it and wanted
to bring his neck, even though you know, she had
her struggles. But and I remember stealing a beer out

(29:56):
of the refrigerator from my grandfather. He never said it
in either. I don't know if he noticed that. He
probably thought, oh, he drank a couple of lecture yesterday
or at least one. He wasn't an alcohol Ten and
half eleven's young. Yeah, it was young.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
It's pretty young.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
So when I joined that band, I remember saying, oh, yo,
the partying's gonna stop. This has to stop. I'm in
a serious band now. And that the complete opposite happened.
And not all those guys were straight. I eventually, and
I'll get into the story as we go, became the
worst of the What I mean by worst was the

(30:35):
most addicted in the person that had uh a problem
with it that you know, it was to the extent
of where my life got ripped to shreds for a while.
You know. Our singer actually uh he was. He had

(30:55):
he quit after a while too, because he had serious
alcohol problems and drug problems. And but Anyway, I joined
that band and the president was singing with us at
that time. Had written a few songs for Aerosmith that
ended up on albums. One of them was Woman of
the World, that ended up on Erosmith's second album, Get
Your Wings, and the other one was You See Me Cry,

(31:18):
that ended up on the third Aerosmith album, Toys in
the Attic. So here here I am in this band
at sixteen, and I'm like, wow, this is cool. My
other guitarist knows Errol Smith. And but and the singer
knows Arrowsmith, you know, and and two of his songs
ended up on Aerosmith.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Is already exploded by this point.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, So when I was sixteen, they were already they
were already uh you know, they were there were they
were already pretty. They were already real popular, right right
this But this is before the first run of popularity.
It was before they bottomed out.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
That's what I was gonna say.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Okay, exactly, And then they had bottomed out and then
they came back. Did all that stuff would run DMC
walked this way, all that stuff in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
So did you did you hold that thought, Robbie? So
when you the rock and roll in the drug alcohol
kind of lifestyles.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
They kind of went together in a sense.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Slowly. I was going to get to that. It was
all around me.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
And another cool story. I was seventeen playing at the
Paradise in Boston. I remember Steve Tyler and the bass
player Tommy Hamilton showed up, and I remember being like,
what the hell They're coming to see me play? And
I was always fascinated by that band at a young age,

(32:37):
and especially because my other guitarists grew up with them
and knew all every single one of the members and
you know, all that stuff. So at that time, another another, another,
another shot, you know what I mean, It was like
it was like, wow, this is so. That was the
first time I hung out with Steve Tyler in the
back dressing room and stuff. One of many times that

(32:59):
I was fortunate enough to hang out with him and
get to know him a bit. Back then, I'll just
say it. He was still using too, obviously, and then
we did reunite a couple of times after he got
clean and I was clean too much later in life.
Uh yeah, So all this stuff was happening. We were

(33:20):
opening up for all these I can give you some names,
but they're old school names that these are people that
were popular in the day.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Look around New England, right.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
No, no, no, Nationals, Rick Derringer, Edgar Winter.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Hold On, I know Rick Deringer. I know that I
know that name.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Yeah yeah, yeah, he sang rock and roll.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Hochie Cooch, Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, okay.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
Pat Travis, Molly Hatchett, The Outlaws, Dixie Dreggs was a
fusion instrumental band, but there was They were and still
are considered phenomenal players. Yeah, so we were. We were
playing with bands that were touring on tour, you know,

(34:03):
having the opportunity to open up for these guys, and
again at a young I keep saying this bit. I
look back at those years at that age and being
blind and not going to school and not planning on
having a regular job. That was it. That was it
for me. I bet before I proceed forward, do you

(34:23):
have any anything you want to ask me?

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Oh? No, no, no, this is good, this is good.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
You're uh so, I know at some point you end
up getting a record deal right in moving.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
To you right on the brink, okay, and a few
things had gotten a few things had come up that
you know, didn't end up working out. But the main
thing that really squashed the band was the addiction problem,
at least as far as I was concerned, you know,
as far as they were concerned about me. And I'll

(34:55):
get to that, and I might as well move to
that now. But you eventually moved to California, right, Yeah,
So that's it. So well, when I was twenty, Okay,
here's what happened. The singer had left the band. We
were doing gigs four piece, and some of the you know,
the drummer that we had, the second drummer we had
at that time was a really good singer, so he
was singing a lot and some of the other the
other two guys, I wasn't singing yet back then. Eventually

(35:18):
I started singing a couple of harmonies and all that,
but I wasn't you know, I wasn't singing lead vocal
at all at that point. And so then the other guitarists,
the dude that knew the Arrowsmith guys, he decided to
move to Colorado. So now we're down the three piece
playing three piece, which was kind of fun, you know,
it was good, It was still good. Then the drummer

(35:42):
decided he wanted to move to California, to Breadbank, and
I'm like, damn, everyone's leaving one at a time. This sucks.
So then me and the bass player we we did
we did this band with you know, we had a
band for about six months months with this guy Joe
de Lally, and but then that ended up falling off

(36:04):
because the bass player decided to move to kill to California.
So I was the last guy standing around here. You're like, oh,
I might as well go too, And they talked me
into I remember the drummer, he's you know, he's got
a he. He's got he especially back then, you know,
he had that aggressive persuasive personalities like come on, Rob,
just come out. What are you going to do over there?

(36:24):
And I went out to California. Uh, we did have
some successes, you know, we played some stuff, you know,
you know, played at in Hollywood. We played at FM
station in off Hollywood a lot, and I met Eddie
van Halen in there. Actually one night, not a night
that we were playing, I met the guitarist from Quiet

(36:45):
Riot and there he was his brother's band was playing
and we were on the same bill.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Now, are you an IVY drug user? At this point
or is it.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
I had started experiment and honestly, yeah, I would say
around the age of twenty. So that was nineteen eighty two.
I'm telling my age, but I'm a young sixty four
I think, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Got it. I remember.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
I remember when you were turning fifty and you were
all all upset about it.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
I'm still upset.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
You are a complaining I can't believe I'm turning.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Fact, my own council event used to say, don't worry
about when the party's going to end. Enjoy the party
while it's here.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
It's right, living today, yeah, living today today.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
So when you get to Telly worded so when you get.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
To California and you're out there, now does it get worse?

Speaker 3 (37:32):
That was nineteen eighty four. I was twenty two and
I brought you know, we call addiction a disease, and
simply because what that means is addicts have abnormal reactions,
you know, and drugs will eventually keep me from functioning
normally if I use them long enough. And that's what happened, right.
So disease, I mean, it's a controversial thing. It doesn't

(37:55):
necessarily mean that it's a disease like can answer or diabetes.
But take the disease of diabetes for example, that's an
abnormal reaction to sugar, right, And if you don't take
care of yourself long enough, eventually you're pancreas will be like, Okay,
I had enough, and now you gotta go on insulin. Right.

(38:18):
So the disease of addiction, what I mean by abnormal reaction.
It started when I was a kid, you know, ten
or eleven years old and waking up throwing up from
a hangover and then saying, yeah, but I want to
do it again tonight. That's not normal.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
No.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
You know, if I ate bad food in the restaurant,
I want to I want to want to go back
every I want to be like, hey, justin, let's go
back to wherever tonight and get the same dish and
same thing with drugs, right, you know, I used and
most people when they get scared, things happen, they lose,
get kicked out from me. It was, you know, getting

(38:54):
kicked out of the band at once. It's a few
times in California. You think that would be enough to
make the person stop, you know, ready to become homeless.
You think that would be enough to make the person stop,
or even being homeless. You know, you think that getting
arrested and having a case or a few cases over

(39:14):
our head would be enough to make us stop. And
so when I throw the word disease around, and that's
what I think of is abnormal reactions, because the normal sense,
sensible thing to do would be like, man, I better
get out of this.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
But it's abnormal what we have.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
You know. The famous guitarist Stevie ay Vaughan talked about it.
He said, you know, you think I'd lost many people
when I first started playing when I was young, And incidentally,
same for me. Many people had died around me when
I was young, that my mom knew and stuff, and
you think that would be enough to make people go, damn,
I don't want to go down that road. So here

(39:56):
I am in the eighties living in California, and I
brought that with me. That's what I was leading up to.
I brought addiction with me, however you want to say it,
and it had nothing that you know, and a lot
of people say, oh, you're living in Hollywood. I was
probably why no, no no. I was already in trouble
before I left. I just brought it to the other

(40:17):
side of the country. I brought myself there with me.
I mean, I brought my addiction with me.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
But would you say it got worse there I'm looking
back on it, or was it just it was bad
here and it was bad?

Speaker 3 (40:28):
I would say that it started getting docker. Addiction became
less fun and darker when I started experimenting with heavier
drugs before I left for California, Okay, And as far
as even iving drugs, I had to have someone help
me because I couldn't see well enough to do it myself.

(40:49):
There were times I had overdoses. There were times I
had cocaine seizures didn't stop, still didn't stop.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Was it was it now as somebody who's blind, Okay?
And on the chase as they say that, like you
had to depend on other people to get you things
to move around, right, Like it must have been a
fucking challenge.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
Yeah, And I'm sure there's times I might have got
burnt or ripped off. But I was pretty good with
my money, though I don't ever remember giving I think
I gave a guy twenty at a liquor store once
and realized when I get home, and I thought it
was a five and I called him, and he tried
to pretend like, oh, it really was, come back and
I'll give you a proper change. But other than that,

(41:31):
me being me, I'm kind of like OCD.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
I wasn't an OCD about the way I lived back then, though,
that's for damn sure.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
But it really goes to show you too, like, you
know this this disease that we have, we'll do whatever
it takes to get what we got.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
That's what it was. When I lived in California. I
took so many risks. I was taking buses and you know,
taxis and busses and walking for miles all by myself
to go score drugs. And I was hitting up, you know,
literally probably as many doctors as Michael Jackson. I wouldn't

(42:03):
doubt it. I was going doctor create Like. You can't
get away with that as easily now because of the
computers and stuff. But back then, especially in California, man,
it was easy to get stuff. And I was going
in lying saying, oh, I get migraines because I can't
see and oh my back, you know all this stuff.
And incidentally, I mean I did get hit by a

(42:25):
car once and it wasn't even my fault. The guy
was looking at my girlfriend on her ten speed not
gotten a big brawl because she was I didn't help
her life. You know, she was like kind of a
recreational drug user, smoke a little weed maybe, you know,
sniff a few lines here and there, whatever, right, But

(42:46):
I didn't help her life because she didn't want to
become like me to that extent. But I wouldn't stop,
and it was affecting her and it was unhealthy for her.
So we're in a big fight. One day, go to
the a drug store. The guy wanted to cash my
prescription and I was having withdrawal drawings, and I was
all pissed off. And I'm walking down you know, a street,

(43:10):
Alameda in Burbank, which is you know, kind of like
a big Broadway type street. And I and I and
I did carry your stick with me out when I
was walking around California, just just to I had no clue.
I had no business, I mean, being out there in
traffic like that, not being able to see lights. But
I went to any links to get my stuff. So

(43:31):
I'm crossing this off ramp. So me and the girl
are in a fight. She left the car her car
at home were in an argument. She comes out on
the ten speed to harassment. She's like, I was like, oh,
go away, take your bike and go home. I was.
I was already in a bad mood that the pharmacy
wouldn't you know, catch fill my prescription. You brought us out,

(43:54):
Get out of here. And this guy's looking at her
because she was a hot girl, you know, nice then,
petite California girl in the eighties, you know what I mean.
She was a hot girl and they were. And that's
another thing too. A lot of my friends would get
pisched at me, going, you can't even see how do
you keep getting hot girls?

Speaker 2 (44:12):
I've seen the pictures.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
Yeah, like I'm met this. I was playing the Paradise
in ninety one and I met this girl and went
out with her for a while. She was doing modeling
and stuff like. This was later on, but anyway, Yeah,
so that day I got hit by this car and
it wasn't even my fault. He was looking at her.
So I go up to I go up to his
window and now I'm ripping mad. I'm like, what the
hell's wrong with you? And you know, like sticking my

(44:38):
head in his window, in his window practically and chewing
him out, and he's like he was shaken too. He
was like shaky. I could feel his hand, like my
hand accidentally touched his hand and I could feel it.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Yeah, I know where this is going.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Yeah, so I go, uh, what the hell's wrong with you? Man,
I'm the one that can't see he I was looking
at a girl on a bike and I go, that
was my girlfriend, and uh, that's my girlfriend. And now
he's shaking even more. And so then I go home
and I'm all, he gave me his info. I go home,

(45:15):
I'm scraped up and all this stuff and all cut up,
and thank god I didn't get hurt seriously, but people
around me like, you know, you should sue, you should sue,
you should, you know, and and people were pushing it.
And I got I got like four thousand dollars out
of that case. And you know where most of most
of that money went. Oh yeah, yeah it was to

(45:35):
a drug. Some of it didn't, but a lot of
it did. But he told me he was diabetic and stuff.
And because he was like real shaky, and part of
me kind of felt bad, and like even even still
to this day, like I know he did that by accident.
I almost wish I didn't even bother pursuing the legal
stuff because I wasn't I wasn't injured.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
That's what that's what we do, you know.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
Yeah, and that's a contract that's right on the line,
you know, because he did hit me and I am
blind and it was his fault. But at the same time,
I probably could have let it, let it ride.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
See, I thought I thought you said when I said
I knew where this is going, I thought you were
going to say you hit him up for money right there?

Speaker 3 (46:18):
No, No, no, he was what you got. It's funny now
I go, that's my girlfriend. He's looking at her.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Yeah, one time he hits me.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
One time your mom came with some pictures of ould school,
pictures of you in the rock and roll days, and
she said, oh, this was this is Robbie's ex girlfriend.
Oh this is another one, I mean, smoking hot models.
We were all like, we said the same thing as
your friends were, like, what the hell?

Speaker 3 (46:42):
Yeah, the girl I met at the Paradise And this
is not an eagle thing for me. This is just stories.
I was playing the Paradise in ninety one with a
band that I had when I moved back from cal
and this dude I knew from not Danover said to me, Hey,
this girl wants to meet you. And I thought he
was messing with me because he kept trying to give

(47:02):
me beers. And I'm like, dude, how many times do
I have to tell you I don't drink anymore? And
so I go, all right, go get her. Then so
two girls come in and I jokingly go, all right,
which one is it? And they go they're all over me,
going oh, listen to miss siego over here, and we're
all joking around. I go, no, no, no, I didn't
mean it that way. And so anyway, the girl that

(47:26):
I did like me was actually in the Miss mass
pageant and because she was doing some modeling at the time,
and yeah, Lisa, she was Lisa Mazzarella back then, and
I spoke to her recently. She actually lived closer to
my area. She moved from East Boston, but she was

(47:50):
ten years younger than me at the time. You know.
We went out for a year and a half and
she got a little restless, but we still remained friends.
And like I said, I did reconnect with her recently.
It's really good to stay that I can stay in
touch with her now and be friends with her.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
So anyway back to California. Yeah, things got doctor and
Docker and Docker and by the late eighties, I was
kicked out of the band for the third or fourth time.
And I used to I used to. They would say, Rob,
we got to let you go, like you're stealing from people.
You stole from my girlfriend again. You know, you're lying,
You're not showing up for rehearsal, all this stuff, and

(48:28):
it killed them to do that. And they were calling
my mom, going, your son's gonna die, and is.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Your mom clean at this point? A is she still using?

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Yeah, my mom had a because she.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Was kind of off and on. She had long term recovery.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
She was drinking a lot of that. Yeah. She always
had a hard time like sticking with it. Yeah, you know,
she always struggled with, you know, staying on the path, right,
But she was her. Me and her were close though.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Oh yeah, your mom was when I got clean, she
was around, she was she was going.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Yeah, she was around. It was clean. So anyway, connect,
are you gonna get to you get arrested in California?
Are you gonna tell that story?

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Yeah? I know, I gotta move on. Man, there's still
more to go. There was. There was a few times
I got arrested. One time I got arrested for climbing
in the neighbor's window. I took the screen off to
take some I had a camera in my hand, and
the two girls came in and they they knew me,
and they're like, what are you doing? To get the
f out of here? Right? And they go, what are

(49:36):
you doing here? And here? I remember I had a
pair of white shorts on and the camera was like
in my pocket. I'm trying to stuff it in my
pocket that I don't even bother and I just flung
it on the floor and ran out. And by the time, dude,
almost by the time I got to the top floor
because I lived on the top floor, it was a
It was a Burbank apartment complex that the band the

(49:56):
other two band members managed, which wasn't good. I literally
heard a helicopter. I literally, I mean, my heart, my apartment.
They didn't, you know, the cops don't know. I'm blind
and where am I gonna run? But I'm in there and.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
I hear was the helicopter for you?

Speaker 3 (50:15):
I'm like, oh no, yeah. It was like a swat copter. Well,
because you're in a people's house, and back now, that
would be home invasion, you know. Back then, I think
it was trespassing with intentive theft and uh. But they
came in when I was there, and I didn't hurt anybody,
but I was just trying to take something, you know,
and the good addict, the you know, the addict's mind

(50:38):
is like, oh, put a bark later, you know, I'll
get it. I'll pawn it, and I'll put a bark
later and throw it in the open the screen and
throw it and everything. Yeah, okay, I said that once
with a guy's bass guitar, and I got arrested and
the thing got By the time I got released, the
guy that I some jerk that I pawned to a
guy that I just met, He's like, oh, I sold it.

(51:02):
And the guy that owned that guitar I wanted to
wring my neck. Now that would be considered a nice
old vintage gentryment. It was a Rickenbacker base. So anyway, Yeah,
I did a lot of shady stuff, and so I
never did long jail time, but I had seen I

(51:22):
had been on the inside of La County jail a
few times. For a few weeks, Sana, Nana, that was enough.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
Weren't you in the same jail as Richard Ramirez? Yeah,
I watched The Nightstalker.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Damn. There's this guy in Burbank that was climbing in
people's windows and raping women and killing husbands and stuff,
The night Stalker Richie Ramirez. Yeah, And I remember this
story was he walked around wearing an ac DC cap,
you know, a hat like a baseball cap, and eventually
he got caught. A bunch of Mexicans caught him. He
was going from one side of the state to the other,

(51:54):
and the cops were all confused, and eventually a gang
of guys, Mexican dudes beat the crap out of him
in l a and they called the cops and he
was thrown in jail. And uh yeah, I remember walking
by his It was a stealel door with bulletproof glass,
and you know, everyone was making faces at him and stuff,

(52:16):
and I'm like, wow, that guy's like on the other side,
this guy that I was literally afraid of because I
lived on the first floor with a girl in Burbank
with my drummer's girlfriend. I lived on the first floor
at that time. That he was out there.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Oh so you were part of the panic. That was?

Speaker 3 (52:33):
That was I was, I was right there because no
one knew hit houses in burbank.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
But he also had no he had no what do
you call it type? He was. He climbed anybody's window
like any age and.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
Oh yeah, ladies, he was. It was really bad.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
It was a syriacle killer, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a special unit in
the prison though, right, because they put you on especially
because they can't put you in gen pop. Right.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
They only had me in gen pop population. And the
first night I got there and I was naive. I
had never been to prison, to jail other than like
a local police station for a couple hours and then
they kick you out, right, But I'd never been in
a county prison in La County jail. Is it is

(53:18):
where it is, man.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
It's a rough place, it is.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
Yeah, And many prisons are. And incidentally, through the years,
I've gone back and done a lot of work in prisons,
either with my church or with recovery programs, and had
the opportunity to speak in many prisons. One funny story
is I was at Northfolk Prison and I got up
to speak once and I joke only because I can't see. Well,
you know, I joke only said, am I fishing the

(53:43):
right way and the place? For two minutes, dude, they
wouldn't stop laughing. I took forever for everyone to calm down. Yeah. Yeah,
But so anyway, I was in the La County jail
and I the cops were messing with me. You know, oh,
you're blind. What do you do swing? You can't you
stick around and look for metal? How do you steal stuff?

Speaker 2 (54:03):
You know?

Speaker 3 (54:04):
They were, they were, they would, they would would. They
were messing with me hard, just busting my balls. Yeah,
which theoretically is not the best thing to do with
a handicapped person. But I knew even then. I knew. I, well,
this is what we get robbed, you know New York.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Essentially you were a criminal.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
Yeah. Well I went into someone's else that time, right,
tried to steal some and I had a warrant come
up in two thousand and two. I was clean and
it was from California for those charges.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Yeah, didn't you have to go back there?

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Yeah? So what happened was I did prison work in
the nineties. Nothing ever came up, so I figured because
I had had the letter in nineteen eighty nine. I
had a letter sent from the detox in nineteen eighty
nine to the court system, and I thought they dropped
it because anytime I had done work in prisons, nothing
ever came up. And I'm like, okay, they must. So

(55:00):
now here they are in two thousand and two, cleaning
out file cabinets and putting stuff on the computer hard drive,
and I get a letter and my buddy was reading
my mail for me, and he's not no longer whethers
he died from drugs, he relapsed one of many, one
of many. So he looked at my mail and he went, oh,

(55:27):
sit down, Like what are you talking about. I don't
want to sit down right now. He goes, you need
to sit down, and I was like why. He goes,
you are not going to like this. So I sit
down and he reads me in the letter, and what
it said was your social Security benefits are now cut
off until you turn yourself into the You know I'm paraphrasing.

(55:49):
That's the letter was written more professional professionally actually, obviously,
but it basically said, until you turn yourself into the
to the Burbrank Court, your your social Security terminated and
I couldn't believe it, so I called the court. I'm
kind of glad it worked out that way, though, because
I would have dragged my feet longer. Probably what was

(56:12):
the case it was the original charge of trespassing would
attempt of theft. And what happened was I came back
to Massachusetts in nineteen eighty nine, so I missed the
court case, and so then I had default of court
and there was also a violation of probation in there.
And so now here I am. I come back here

(56:35):
in eighty nine. Now here I am in two thousand
and two, thirteen years later, whatever, And I get this
warrant and somebody I know said to me, Rob, I
know you're afraid to go back there because they wouldn't
let me take care of it from here. But they said,
look at it like, they were like, I know you're

(56:57):
a spacial guy. Look at it like you're going to
make amends to the state of California. And I was like, wow,
that's an interesting perspective.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
That's a great way to look at it.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
Yeah, they were like, look at it like you're going
to make amends. And you know, I know you have
strong faith, God's on your side, is going to help
you either way. Because I'm thinking, I don't want to
go to prison. I'm clean. I want to have what jars,
but I don't want to go to prison clean either.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Right, they do have they do have clean seals for
addicts clean.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
Yeah. So I go there and basically they slap me
on the wrist. And it was a female judge, And
I was armed with a lot of letters. One from
my pastor, one from my sponsor twelve Steps sponsor. I
had one from my therapist. I had one from a
detective that I know that can't wait to quit the

(57:51):
force right now because it's so corrupt. He says he's
getting ready, he's getting ready to retire. Yeah, I'll leave
it at that. I'm not going to give any more details.
Oh boy, yeah, he's he's ready to retire. And he's
like this, this is not good. I want to get
out of here. I'm trying to live an upright life
and that they're making it higher or arder. So anyway,

(58:12):
his letter saved my ass. The district attorney looked at
his letter and said, you're on a his a letter
here from law enforcement saying that this man's been in
zero trouble, no trouble at all. So she said to me,
if you stay out of trouble for the next two years,
we're going to expunge your whole entire record. And so

(58:34):
obviously I felt that I was going to stay out
of trouble, and I did. And so now I don't
have any record shown at all anywhere, which is good.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
That's huge.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
Yeah, so that's the Warren story. But yeah, that was
that was scary. As soon as the plane took off,
I'm in the plane by myself, and I'm like, damn,
what am I doing?

Speaker 2 (58:54):
Like, am I even gonna come back?

Speaker 3 (58:55):
And I stayed at the drummer's house, the one that
I used to be in the band with California.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Well, see didn't so afterward, so you when you came back,
did you get clean here or did you get clean
in California?

Speaker 3 (59:07):
I got clean here. So those guys were upset with me.
They kicked me out of the band, and I used
to I was hearing them rehearse with someone downstairs from
my apartment, and I'd literally be up there with my
eyes water and going, oh this hurts, this hurts, this hurts.
And then they were feeling it necessary to evict me
because me and my girl were fighting and the cops
were always showing up there for different things. And they said, Rob,

(59:31):
do you know how hard it is? Because they managed
the apartment building in Burbank. This is we're talking nineteen
eighty nine. They knew, they knew that I was killing
myself and it was hard for them to watch. And
they said, well, we're gonna let you. We can't even
have you be a tenant anymore. And that killed them

(59:51):
to do any all of this and to let me.
We were bros and for them to have to do that,
and then asked me to leave the band again. And
one compliment that I took as a compliment was one
of the times they had kicked me out. They auditioned
like eighty guitar players and they said the chemistry still

(01:00:12):
wasn't the same. There were some great players, unbelievable players,
but the chemistry was different, you know, And that's something
that was big in the old days. Bands had chemistry.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
You know, things weren't digitally created with a computer, and
you know drum libraries and program drums and all that.
You know, you listen to those old bands. You could
tell it was Led Zeppelin, you could tell it was
The Doors, you could tell it was Queen. So chemistry
was everything back then. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
They were in the same studio, same room, creating these songs.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Yeah, and you could tell, you know, by voice, by
guitar players styles, yep. And now AI can recreate. It
blows my mind what AI can do. My friend created
some songs and you listen to the singer and the
guitar player and the whole thing, and it sounds like
that it was together by the best producer in the world,
and the guitar players smoking good and the singers singing real,

(01:01:06):
soulful and great, and you're like, who's that band? And
my buddy tells me, no, that's AI, And it's like, wow,
it's pretty pretty crazy. It's incredible technology, but it also
bothers me because it's taken the human element out of it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Yeah, the AI impact is very real.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Right, and going to continue to absolutely, And it has
pros and cons just like everything else. That's all how
you use and what your goal is. So anyway, Yeah,
nineteen eighty nine and I decide my mother had my
friend Jeff Raymond come out there and got me. She
gave him two plane tickets and she said, I don't

(01:01:42):
care if you get to break his army. He has
to come back. He's getting evicted, he's gonna die. People
are calling me. So him and I are still friends
to this day. He's like literally a brother to me.
I was at his house last Sunday, actually, And I
have so many people that have helped me in my
path that I could mention on this podcast, but I

(01:02:04):
don't have time, say ahead of my sponsor, Reggie. But anyway,
my sponsor too. Yeah, So anyway, so he helped get
me back here, and at that point I went into
my second t talks. I tried to come back here once.
I stayed here for three weeks in nineteen eighty seven,
went into a detox, but I went back to California

(01:02:25):
and picked up again for a year and a half.
So now here it is nineteen eighty nine. I get clean,
I stay clean. I got very deep into twelve step programs.
And you know, we have this whole thing and traditions
about personal anonymity and all that, and I'm trying to
be vague about it, but I feel it a little

(01:02:47):
more necessary to divulge a little information, so that that's
been a part of my life. Twelve Step fellowships have
been in my life since nineteen eighty seven. And I
ain't can clean right away, but I am now.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Well i'd like you to talk about, you know, your relapse.
I think, yeah, so long for I'm part of your story.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
So what happened was I got cleaned in eighty nine
and I started doing what you know, we sometimes called
the drill. You know, I got a sponsor, I started
working the twelve Steps. I started sponsoring other people, and
the first guy a sponsor died of an overdose, and
it freaked me out and everyone had to teach me, Rob,
you did nothing wrong. You were ready to answer your phone.

(01:03:31):
You didn't give him the money to get high. Know
that it's not your fault, because I was kind of
new then and I'd like, did I do something wrong?
And that wasn't the case. You know, It's just he
didn't want to follow what he didn't want to pick
up what we were putting down, you know what I mean.
So now years go on. In nineteen ninety eight, a

(01:03:54):
girl that I was that I loved. I was with
him for three and a half years and she wanted
a kid and I don't want a kid, and we split.
She left, and I still feel it a little bit
if I think about it. You know, there's still that little.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
Bit of wait, is this is this Matthew's mother?

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
No, no, no, this is a girl named Jamie.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Okay, Jamie little because you do have a son.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Uh she's married now she has yeah yeah, yeah, anyway, yeah,
so so we we break up and I'm devastated. I'm
all heart broken. Then then I found out I had
hepatitis see, which has gone by the way. I got
rid of that in two thousand and eight around the
time I want you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Oh, I went through the treatment with you. I didn't
do the treatment, but I was there always.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
Oh yeah, checked this and checked. I gotta take my pills.
I got to take my pills. That was the old
treatment that it sucks, but I got there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
I ended up doing the treatment, but the newer one
where you feel nothing.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
Yeah yeah, what do you do ninety pills for? And
the pills are like a thousand dollars each of you
don't have an or something.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Right, yeah yeah, but there's no side effects.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
People go to Canada to get that stuff. Oh yeah,
But I was. I was in a study and I
was in two thousand and eight. I I had to
do a shot once a week, yep, and the fat
in my stomach.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
And you felt like shit.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
And I had to take like freaking seventeen pills a
day because it was ridiculous. I wonder still to this
day what that crap did to me. There was a
story of and I won't mention names or the place,
but they gave me the wrong dose one day when
I left and I went home and did it, and

(01:05:36):
it was a dose that was for the guy twice
my weight. So he got my dose and I got
his dose.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Got another possible lawsuit. Okay, you could be rich.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
Yeah, And somebody said somebody said that to me, you
should steal. And I'm like, you know what, I didn't
end up at.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
R R oh Man, God, you could be living in
a mansion right now.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
So the girl, the woman that gave me that, the
worker at the hospital, called me from Italy five days
after I did six days after I did the shot, right,
she called me from Europe. She was on vacation and
she was all shaken up, and I go, what's the matter,
Why are you calling me? You're on vacation because it
made a horrible mistake. Oh my god. And she was
probably thinking that too, we're gonna get sued, you know,

(01:06:20):
And I said, listen, I know it was an accident.
And both of our names began would be our last names.
My name is Robbie Barton. Both of our names began
with be our last names. And she just for whatever reason,
had a moment of being dyslexic and gave me the
wrong gave me the wrong medicine.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
But you didn't feel anything from it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
No, The day after I did the shot, I did
feel a little bit more tired and stuff than usual.
And then after she called me, I'm like, oh, no, wonder.
And I put off that treatment for years because another
guy I knew was on it and he's like, oh,
you're gonna get blisters and you're gonna be sweating and
in chills. And I didn't really, I didn't. I wasn't
affected to that extent.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
No, it did affect you, though, I mean, the anti
furon it was did affect me. Rough. It was rough.
I remember picking you up every day every week and
you didn't feel great.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
Yeah, yeah, maybe you remember better than me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
I do I do remember because I had I had
too so I needed to get it done. But I
think because I was younger than you, the doctor were
telling doctors were telling me to wait. They said, we're developing.
You know, hepatitis C is the most widely advancing, you know, disease,
like for treatment for it is advancing at a rapid rate.
So I waited, which was a good thing to do.

(01:07:37):
You suffered. I'm sorry exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
So let me move forward because I know we don't
have a lot of time left.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
You know, we have all the time in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:07:45):
How long did you podcast us?

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
There's no limits, but go ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
I'm just I want to tell you my David Allen Bouchet.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
We'll get to that, don't worry.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
And he told me, he said, tell your buddy nor
to make his podcast an hour and a half. People
don't have time to listen.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
No, they liked the long podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
I know. I just wanted to tell you that. He
told me that the other night. I was laughing.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
My oh yeah, we'll tell that. That is one of
the all time classic stories. But just just to get so,
you have a son, Matthew.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Hey David, if you listen and don't beat me up.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
Oh god, I thought you were leading into what year
was your son born?

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
Okay, so the girl left in ninety eight, I'm devastated.
This is bringing it back to four minutes ago. Yeah,
and then I found out I had HASI and I
go in for this medical procedure. Backtrack, sorry, two months
ago after the girl that one of the kid left.

(01:08:43):
I'm devastated. I didn't want a kid. Two months later,
I hook up with someone way too soon and gave
into the temptation and we ended up having sex, and
I was in his cast was a should have been
and I take all the blame. She got pregnant and

(01:09:06):
we had a son. He's twenty six. Yeah, she's dead
now from an overdose. She died before his high school
graduation in twenty seventeen, which really sucked sitting there and
realizing I'm here and she's not. But anyway, so what
led to the relapse. I wanted for a liver biopsy

(01:09:27):
in ninety eight? Was it ninety eight?

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
A year or two after that? Yeah, the girl left.
I hook up with the new girl. We have a kid.
She wouldn't stay clean. It was driving me nuts. She
kept relapsing or using mostly is probably a better way
to say it. And then I went in for this
medical procedure and they gave me demoole for the pain.

(01:09:56):
But because I was on bad emotional footing, like I
wasn't round and emotionally I was still grieving the girl
that left, and then I'm in a big mess with
this new girl that wouldn't stay clean. And as soon
as I got to say this, man, and I'm not
saying you can't have medical procedures done successfully, because since

(01:10:17):
then I have, I've had, you know, I had a
couple of hand surgeries for trigger finger and things like that,
and they gave me medicine and I got through it.
But at this time, man, if you had told me
when I got my ten year coin, you know, because
we give out these coins for times of you know,

(01:10:39):
for years of clean time and all that, if someone
had told me that would be using six months later,
I would have told them they were crazy. And uh.
I went to the procedure that got the liver biopsy
and they gave me that demroll and a lot of
it's my own faultcus and I started feeling a little

(01:11:01):
pain and it started even hitting me in the shoulder,
and I probably should have waited a little longer because
I probably could have got through it because I had
other liver biopsies after that where I got through it
without the drugs. Right, But my fear got the best
of me, and I took to demol before I even
left that hospital. I wanted a prescription. I cannot even
believe to this friggin day, I cannot even express in words,

(01:11:25):
right how fast that happened. I remember distinctly saying the
night before, damn, what if they give me medication? I
hope I don't get triggered. And people in the car,
my mother and that guy Jeff Rayman, the one that
picked me up in California. It got me back, brought
me back from kel They were both going, you'll be okay,
don't worry. You know you're solid.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Not so much.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
Here's how I explained, Here's how I explained recovery. It's paradoxical.
It's a paradox because you can have what we call
solid recovery. That means you're doing all the things that
is suggested to you. You know, you're talking to your sponsor,
you're praying, you know, you're in the twelve steps work
on the squad, all the stuff that we were taught.
You know, you're helping other people all these things. But

(01:12:12):
the other side of it is recovery is like an eggshell.
It doesn't take much to crack it. And I look
back at that day and before I even left the hospital,
I was asking for a prescription.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
I woke the disease up. Pardon me, it woke it up,
woke up the monkey.

Speaker 3 (01:12:32):
It woke up the monkey for sure. And I remember
that night leaving and I think the prescription probably said
one every four hours, and I think I took two
that night. And I went to a meeting, and I
already felt the guilt and shame. Here's mistake number two
or or three or whatever. I didn't uh, I didn't

(01:12:59):
address it in the proper manner. I talked about it
a little bit, but then I tried to hide it
a little Also, I wasn't being honest and I and
the reason why is because I lied to myself. I
could have got by without that medication that night. I
would have been fine with multrune.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
And most times you are you can get by with moultrune.
Not always.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
But incidentally, I went to the one of one of
the other and I'll get back to where we were.
So whoever's listening, try to be patient because I know
I'm running in circles with a lot of this, but
I seem to remember where to go back to one
of the liver biopsies. I wanted one of the liver biopsies.
I had it. There was a girl doctor filling in

(01:13:46):
again no names, and I said, I don't want medication.
She said, you have to sign a paper. Then, so
I signed this paper saying no medication. She puts the
nova cane in, didn't wait long enough and then nails
me with the needle and I went, ah. Now I'm

(01:14:09):
in the recovery room after that biopsy, like literally folded
in half like a baby. I'm like, I'm like dying,
going ah. And it was a weird kind of pain too,
because it was internal. So I asked an, here's the time.
I did need medication because it hurt so bad. And
so I said to the nurse, can you give me something?

(01:14:29):
She comes back, she goes nope. The doctor said, the
doctor said, you signed that paper.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
Signed the sheet.

Speaker 3 (01:14:36):
I kind of I'm kind of glad in the sunset,
at least like I did get through it. That just
goes to show you, right. It took like two and
a half or three hours to wear off the pain,
and my buddy's out in the waiting room going where
is he? I'm ready to wring someone's neck around here.
And he finally comes back. My buddy finally comes back
to the room I was in, and I'm like, oh,

(01:14:57):
going oh, He's like, what the hell did they do?
Who to you? So when my real doctor came back,
I said, listen, I don't know who that lady was
hat filled in, but I'm gonna tell you the exact story.
And I told him exactly what happened to me. I said,
you wait, you put the nova cane in. You asked
me if it's enough? You wait, you poke around. She

(01:15:17):
just put that stuff with me and literally came back
sixty seconds later going okay, here we go boom, and
took a couple of snippets out of my liver. Anyway,
back to that first biopsy and the relapse after they
gave me the medication, I found myself full of guilt

(01:15:37):
and shame, and I tried to hide it, and I
wish I had been more honest about it earlier and
put my pride aside. And I don't like to say
I'm humble, because if you brag about being humbled, then
you're not humble anymore. But many people say I'm humble.
Believe it at that. I went for that, being in

(01:16:03):
that space of not all everything, not all about me,
to falling back into shame and guilt and pride. And
it's embarrassing. Man, when your ten years clean and you've
helped so many people and all this stuff, and you
know God has worked through you to help these people,
all this stuff, and then that happens. So, to make

(01:16:26):
a long story shot, I did get clean again. Yeah
in March. Here's another. I got all these cool stories.
I could go on for everyone's stories. I got clean
once and then fell off again because I went back

(01:16:47):
to my kid's mother. And I'm not blaming her, but
what I'm saying is I remember getting yelled at people going,
what are you going back? You're going back to her again?
What are you nuts? That put you in an emotional upheaval?
Less last time, I didn't listen. So this is what
happens when we don't listen to people that love us,

(01:17:09):
you know. And these weren't these were. These were people
who did love me, They were friends and people that
were close to me. So and then so then I
finally got clean once and for all, though in two
thousand and two, and the way that it happened was
this interesting stuff. I was at my mom's house because

(01:17:32):
she didn't want me on the street, but I was
still using. Think about my mom saying that to me,
it chokes me up. She's like, I don't want you
on the street. Come to my house. You know what
she meant by that was She's like, I don't want you.
I don't want you running around and you like, just
come over here, and I mean, I have my own apartment.

(01:17:55):
But she knew me, and she knew that I'd be
out gallivant and looking for more shit. So I was
using that night. Prior to that, a friend told me
to kick cold turkey because none of the beds and
detoxes were opening, and I'm like, what the hell are
you crazy? I can't kick cold turkey. And also prior
to that night, I had begged my higher power, please God,

(01:18:21):
please Jesus Man, give me make me desperate to get
clean again. I remember literally being on my knees crying,
going damn. I want to get clean. I want to
get clean, but I need to be desperate. I gotta
get desperate, like for a guy like me, I'm all
or nothing. I have to be desperate. I have to
want to stop. Well. I'm in my mom's house that night,
and evidently that prayer work because I took a ring

(01:18:46):
off my finger that my son's mother gave me when
he was a baby, and I gave it to this
dude that I was using with. Now we're at my
mom's house and he was gonna give me some drugs
for it, and I don't know what happened. I had
a moment, in a sanity, moment of truth, and I
said to him, give me the ring back, and he's like,

(01:19:07):
he ain't doing me too. He was being a prick.
He was like, whoa, if you don't give me the ring,
I'm Mike, give you the shit. And I'm like, I
don't care. I give me the ring back and I
put it back on my finger right, put it on
my finger, And my son has that ring today. After
his mother died. He asked me for that ring on Christmas.
If I had pawned that ring, my son wouldn't have

(01:19:30):
that ring right now. After his mom died, he one
day on Christmas and my stuff was in storage, and
my stuff was in storage, not all of it, but
some of my stuff was in storage because I was
in the process of moving. He he asked me for that.
I go, okay, we've got to go to my storage

(01:19:50):
and get it. And I remember giving him the ring
he put on his finger, and I remember, is that
part of the reason why the night that I was
gonna put it, I said to the guy, give me
that ring back, like, did God know the future be interesting?

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:20:08):
And at that point I hadn't sold all my guitars.
It was you know, it wasn't like other times when
I was using. When I was in that relapse, I
think it's to the point, to the point of selling
everything yet yet yet well that's what that day. I
was out of money, right, And because that would have
came eventually, I went through my lab. At the time,
I had five grand and I went through the last

(01:20:30):
five grand I had in the bank in like thirty days,
and another guy I was using with had about the same.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
So between the.

Speaker 3 (01:20:40):
Two of us, we spent about ten thousand dollars on
drugs in thirty days. Wow, I'm alive. I should be
dead and God saying no, you shouldn't. But what I
mean by it should be dead is left to my
own resources. And I believe in divine intervention and I'm
just going to say it. And I know again, I
know people I have a hard time with that. Here

(01:21:01):
goes mister spiritual and all that. But I believe that
God answered my prayer when I asked him to make
me desperate enough to get clean again. And so I
met my mom's that last night I was using, I
take the ring back, I go home. I decide I

(01:21:23):
have some paraphernalia hair, I'm gonna take it out to
the dumpster, you know, some drug paraphernilla. And I did
just that. Then my phone rings and I checked a
message because I missed it when it came in. And
this is now Here's a guy I used to sponsor.
He I used to be his sponsor. Right. He calls

(01:21:44):
me and he says, he leaves me a message, and
I might get choked up saying it, but he was
like Rob even He's like Rob's Tom. He's like, even
if you still use and call me like I know
you don't have any hope right now. And I remember
my waterfall, you know, niagara falls coming out of my

(01:22:07):
eyes just happened. And I remember thinking, Man, God, your time,
your timing is unbelievable. I said that to God, like
out loud, because why did I get that call that night?
When I decided to stop? He picked me up the

(01:22:31):
next day for a meeting. And listen to this one.
He happened to be on vacation for three weeks. For
three weeks, he happened to be on vacation, and he
brought me to one or two meetings a day for.

Speaker 2 (01:22:44):
Three weeks while on vacation.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
Yeah, well because he didn't go away. Yeah, why did
that timing work out that way that he could be
The night I put that ring back on my finger
and thought, this has to stop. I can't wait for
a had to open.

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
Higher power, absolutely, higher power, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:23:05):
So this guy leaves me this message. I call him back.
He picks me up the next day. Now here's another
one chucked us out. He shows up in my house.
Another guy, that guy that I was using with for
a month's trade, that had also had five or six
grand I hear a knock on the door, right, I
answered the door. It's the guy that I was using with.

(01:23:27):
He goes, hey, what's op murd I go, I'm all done.
That's what's up. I'm not using it anymore. So now
I have the angel on this side and the devil
on the other. I don't want to call that guy
a devil. I don't mean it like that, but I
believe I was tempted to being tempted by the devil.

(01:23:48):
I literally had one guy on one side of me
that wanted to get me right again, and another guy
on the other side of me that was like, hey,
let's go for youre out to where to get high
even though we both we're an out of money right,
thank you God. I followed the other guy out the
door and I told him, I said, hey, bro, like

(01:24:09):
I'm done, you should stop too. He to this day
is still struggling. Really he had years clean.

Speaker 2 (01:24:18):
Oh my god, he's still using.

Speaker 3 (01:24:20):
He's still struggling with another guy that I know. Oh man,
it had years clean. And I'm not going to say
his name to protect his anonymity.

Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
No need to.

Speaker 3 (01:24:29):
And if you have a listen, listen to this podcast.
I know that you know I mean well, and I
know I want you know that I want you to
do good, buddy, if you ever hear this. So I
got clean again, and I've been cleaned now for twenty
four years, and I'm still very involved with twelve Step

(01:24:50):
fellow fellowships. I'm very careful when I go to get
medical procedures done that I'm on solid spiritual and emotional ground.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
Well, can I be honest with you something? So it
was that story of you relapsing after because you got
to think about it when I first met you, you know,
to hear that you had ten years clean, that that
is an eternity for somebody it is clean.

Speaker 3 (01:25:13):
I thought crazy, Well, like someone you've been clean for
a year, say, so.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
Your story of what happened really got in my head.
You know. So I've had medical procedures. I had two
knee surgeries, I had breast reduction, and I did it
all without pain medication because I knew and I learned
from you, you know, to be honest with the people
that are around me.

Speaker 3 (01:25:34):
No they weren't, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
But uh yeah no, but I did. I learned from
you there on what to do.

Speaker 3 (01:25:42):
So I wondered, because I know Brian's going to listen
to this one me so oh yeah, my friend Brian. Yeah,
we joke around about anyway, go on, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, that's just I remember that story
and there were so many things that you taught that
you taught me and told me about yourself and your
story that helped me tremendously when I got clean, because
you got to think, Robbie, when I got clean, right,
like I didn't, I had nothing, like I had nothing.
I'd pick you up every single day and we go
out and we'd spend time together.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
You know, now you want nothing to do with me.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):
No, you know I love you.

Speaker 3 (01:26:12):
I know, even when it was serious.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
I joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you know what
you know you have kids.

Speaker 3 (01:26:17):
That's no, No, that was a joke.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
No, I know now, I know.

Speaker 3 (01:26:19):
Now I know where you are. I'm going to come
here every day and hunt you.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
You can come anytime, anytime.

Speaker 3 (01:26:24):
Here and yeah, so so anyway, yeah, that's how it works.
I mean I met you in two thousand and eight,
you know, h seven, seven or eight, and you were
like my mom knows you, and I'm like, damn, dude,
I used to pray for you, like eight eight years
ago or something. Yeah, no, nine years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
What happened was when I when I moved up here,
my mom and her her boyfriend at the time, had
uh when I started going to meetings.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):
He had said, hey, do you you know you go
to these meetings? Do you know?

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
Do you know Robbie? And I said, oh, I know
who that is. He actually came into the detox and
he told me that. So then when I had gone
up to you at the meeting or whatever, and I said, hey,
I think you know my mom and her boyfriend, that's
when you told me that you know, I used to
pray for you, and I almost fell over.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
It's like, holy shit, remember that?

Speaker 3 (01:27:09):
Yeah, Well, the way I remembered is you told me
first that I knew you, that my mom knew you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
Okay, but I could be wrong, no, right, but I
know that what happened. What happened How we connected, well,
you do, I missed the memory.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):
How we connected was I was in a sober house
and there was a guy in there that I was
friends with and you were also his sponsor I was.
And then he relapsed and he caught a pretty bad case.

Speaker 3 (01:27:36):
Six years he went to prison.

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
Yeah, and he went to jail, and I was at
this place.

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
I was at a meeting and you were talking about
how you wanted to go see him. You need somebody
to take you to go, and I there was something.
Now at that time, I was so angry. I did
not want to be there. I just wanted to use Yeah,
you were quiet. I was very quiet. It was very
rare for me to say different. Yeah, and when you
were sharing that, it was like that little voice inside

(01:28:03):
of me just said, go.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):
Talk to him. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:06):
Out of the prison. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
It was in Lawrence. I never forget. I went up
after you after the anding a break. Yeah, and I
sat next to you and I said, hey, I know
him too, and I'll take you. And that's how we
became friends. And we went to the prison to see him.

Speaker 2 (01:28:21):
Yeah. Remember that.

Speaker 3 (01:28:22):
Remember remember we uh we went to see him and
we're talking through him. Was it through glass?

Speaker 2 (01:28:28):
Right? Yeah? Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:29):
And I'm not a musclehead, but and he joking went, hey, Robbie,
been working out. The sad story about that is he
got out of prison, stayed clean for a short time,
and relapse and he's dead.

Speaker 2 (01:28:40):
He passed away.

Speaker 3 (01:28:42):
So here's another story. He had five years clean called
me one day and said, I want to take the
easy route. I said, using is not the easy route.
You're telling yourself it's the easy route, and using is
a familiar route, but it's not the friggin easy route, right.
He didn't want to hear it now, and I called him.
I called him another day and he was being chased

(01:29:04):
by the police. Yeah, he goes, I don't want to
talk to you right now. Click, And I remember asking
him later, what the hell is that? He goes, Oh,
the police would chacking.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
Was that when he got arrested or is that a
different time.

Speaker 3 (01:29:13):
I think it might have been. Yeah, I think it
was when he got arrested, and it was also he
probably when we went to the prison, is one. Or
he called me before he went to prison. I'm sure
I can't remember if I think about it. Yeah, yeah,
he called me saying he had a case because they
arrested him, then they let him out and then so anyway,

(01:29:33):
he told me, he's like, the reason I didn't want
to get talked to you is because that's why I'm
going to court now. That was that night. Yeah, and
he went to prison for six friggin years. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
Yeah, I stayed prison too, well.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
Worried bar Rica Middleton, middle Yeah, and then actually what's
crazy is that he went for six years that was
his pre trial before he got sentenced. Then he got
six years, and several years later I went on a
commitment to Norfolk Prison and spoke up there and he
was in there.

Speaker 3 (01:30:02):
And I can't believe now he's been dead since got
twenty fourteen.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
Or fifteen, that when he died that long ago.

Speaker 3 (01:30:08):
Yeah, because I was still living in my old condo, man,
and I moved out of there in twenty fifteen.

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
Yeah, So just you know, I wanted to have you
come on Rob to tell you a story, obviously, but
also to uh, you know, you've had such an impact
on me in my life and my recovery, you know,
so much so that I wrote my senior paper on you.

Speaker 3 (01:30:27):
You did, Yeah, you wrote a college paper. You asked
me if you could write a paper on me.

Speaker 2 (01:30:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:31):
What did you tell the listeners about that?

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
Yeah? Well I had to.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
I had to come up with a senior thesis on
you know. I forget what the exact topic was, but
I was able to use. I went to the professor
and I said, listen, I have a really good friend
of mine who has this crazy story you know he's
he's in recovery like myself, and he's helped me tremendously
and he's blind. And she gave me the approval. So
I sat with Robbie and I got his whole life

(01:30:55):
story and I called the paper blind Faith, and I
got an.

Speaker 3 (01:31:00):
Yep and funny enough, another friend of mine in the
nineties did a paper Armory and paper Oarmny in college
and he called it blind Light.

Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
My paper was better, No, was it? Say it was?

Speaker 3 (01:31:14):
I got to hear them both again. I think yours
was terrible and his was great.

Speaker 2 (01:31:18):
No, I'm sure he got it's a great story he did.

Speaker 3 (01:31:22):
He did? I think he did do well. Yeah, I
think he's gonna know. Yeah, it's a great thank you
for asking me to remember saying you go, whoa you o?
The second guy that goes to college that asked me,
you know that asked if they could do a paper
army well.

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
Story.

Speaker 3 (01:31:37):
The thing about being blind and being clean is, uh,
I don't want being blind stop me. Like I'm totally
blind in my right eye and my left eyes almost gone.
But I will say, though, there are times I want relief.
And what I've learned in my recovery is try to
get relief in healthy ways. You know, hang out with friends,

(01:31:59):
go call somewhere on the phone, you know, uh, go
to the church, go go play your music. Man, which incidentally,
I mean I do obviously want to put in a
plug for myself. And do you want me to do
that now or at the end.

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
You can do it whenever you'd like.

Speaker 3 (01:32:17):
I'll do it now, I'll actually we'll do it at
the end. We'll do it at the end.

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
Okay. So now you're gonna have the pressure of of
waiting till the end and saying it just perfectly.

Speaker 3 (01:32:27):
I want it, I want no just I want it
to be the last thing people here.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
That's actually that's actually why I want to cure it
for the end. So it kind of stays in my Yeah,
absolutely so, rob So another thing is that you know,
you're you're widely known as because you know, part of
a big part of recovery service, right is helping others.

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
That's how we keep what we have. It's it's for you.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
What's the interesting about Robbie is he's a night out
and I think part of that is because of your
rock and roll and playing music, plays show.

Speaker 3 (01:33:00):
Yeah, and I never worked regular jobs because it'd be
blind and I used to use drugs years ago, so
I've just been in the habit. He stays up late late, yeah,
days late, So I'm like the late guy hotline exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:33:11):
So it's perfect for people that are just getting clean
who can't sleep because they're kicking drugs. That you can
call rob that you can call Robbie, like I remember.

Speaker 3 (01:33:18):
One in the morn, I will probably be awake.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
I'll definitely be awake. So that's kind of one of.

Speaker 3 (01:33:22):
Like, all right, all right, I'll definitely be awake. Yeah, no,
I think I've called it of want to sleep last night?

Speaker 2 (01:33:27):
Yeah, what time?

Speaker 3 (01:33:28):
Two o'clock?

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
That's early for you, that's be honest.

Speaker 3 (01:33:32):
And my buddy Gary here is in the studio with us,
and he he he, he knows. I don't get up early. Yeah,
And and sometimes I struggle. I don't do it intentionally,
but I'm having a problem fixing being ten minutes late
and I'm trying to work, and Justin told me, he's like,
don't be late. I'm a busy guy. Yeah, And uh
So when I went to bed, I'm like, damn, I

(01:33:54):
gotta get up at eight and I'm not a morning
guy unless I have to get up like we do
retreats at Saint Basil, Basils and Methuin. You know there's
a thing there called Christillo. Uh, it's a course in Christianity.
But that's that's what I do. But anyway, so when
I have to get up early six or seven o'clock

(01:34:14):
on those weekends when I help out there, you know
that's what I have to do.

Speaker 2 (01:34:18):
Oh, you must be miserable. But you must be so
miserable when you have to get up early.

Speaker 3 (01:34:22):
It's funny, you know when I do get it. When
I do do it, like even right now, I don't
feel that bad. Yeah, it's more than i'm And here's
another thing. Another point of interest is black people they
claim have this thing called non twenty four. Have you
ever heard of it?

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
I have not.

Speaker 3 (01:34:38):
You never heard those commercials?

Speaker 2 (01:34:39):
No, what is it?

Speaker 3 (01:34:41):
What it is is the brain doesn't get as much
light and it disturbs your sleeps cycles because light.

Speaker 2 (01:34:48):
Oh that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:34:49):
Yeah, you know it goes back to the cave man
right late, Like is.

Speaker 2 (01:34:53):
That like your circadian rhythm type thing?

Speaker 3 (01:34:55):
They didn't have clocks back then. Yeah, that's exactly what
it is yeah, okay, rhythm. They even have a medicine fought.
I think it's just melatonin or something similar.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
I haven't tried to help help you sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:35:07):
But I get insomnia. I have some sleep app near.
It sucks.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
Oh yeah, so what do you do? What do you
do it? Like? When you're at home, are you listening
to music?

Speaker 3 (01:35:14):
I think of you, big boy?

Speaker 2 (01:35:15):
Uh like? Can you have YouTube and stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:35:18):
Yeah? YouTube? I listen to audio books a lot. I
love true stuff, like autobiographies or biographies, musicians stuff. I
like psychological stuff. I like, you know, therapeutic stuff. I
liken you know no, no, no, obviously even obviously you know,
for stuff that has to do with my faith, my

(01:35:39):
Christian faith. I love. I love like true stories like
FBI stuff. I'll listen to like FBI files Yeah true. Yeah,
I like and especially you're not seeing well. I get
more out of the audio, not seeing much at all.
It's not like I can watch TV like a normal person.

(01:36:00):
I get more out of audio that's true rather than fictional.

Speaker 2 (01:36:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
Yeah, because we'll be talking about something and you'll be like, oh,
I look it up on YouTube when I get home.

Speaker 3 (01:36:10):
Yeah, I have a Google Home and an Alexa and
I just ask questions.

Speaker 1 (01:36:13):
Yeah, yeah, and it pulls it up and that's cool,
that's cool. I wanted to ask you. I wanted to
end with this before you plug. No orry, the David
alan Bouchet's exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:36:23):
I was going in my head.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):
Yeah, we have to we have to get this in
because this is I can't believe I never shared this
on the podcast. So David alan Bouchet obviously, for many,
many years, was on Magic one oh six seven, legendary guy,
legendary voice, Bedtime Magic, Okay, Bedtime. But the allure of
David alan Bouche is no one knows what he looks like.

Speaker 2 (01:36:43):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:36:44):
So when I started working in radio, people, you know,
they don't understand that different companies, different radio stations, are
different companies. They thought they'd always asked me, hey, do
you know what David alan Bouche looks like? Well, I
don't work at the same company as him.

Speaker 2 (01:36:57):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:36:58):
Now, back probably about ten years years ago, before I
got the job on Kiss Want to Wait? Where I
work now? I interviewed at Beasley, which his Magic is in.
I interviewed at Magic for the morning show. And when
I went there, I sat there for the interview, and
after we were done, she said, the woman said, you know,
if you have any other questions, let me know, just
don't ask what David but alan Bouche looks like as

(01:37:20):
a joke, I said, no, I'm not going to ask whatever.
So fast forward a few years ago Robbie. I see
Robbie and he says, hey, I met a radio.

Speaker 3 (01:37:31):
Guy got ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:37:32):
Now was that that long ago? And you go, yeah,
you won't believe this anyway. Yeah, he said, I was
at a funeral and a guy get you. Oh yeah,
did he give you a ride to it?

Speaker 3 (01:37:43):
Yeah? He was the sign in law of one of
my best friends.

Speaker 1 (01:37:45):
Passed yes, and he goes, I go, who is it?
And he goes David alan Bouche And I said, let
me get this straight. The one person that finally meets
and gets a look at David alan.

Speaker 2 (01:37:59):
Bouche, it's fucking blind, Like, what are the chances? And
now you're friends with him? Right?

Speaker 3 (01:38:08):
Yeah, you know we're not. We're not super tight. But
like he comes to my church. He always always makes
it a point to come up and say hi to me.
He was there last Monday. And funny part of the
story is recently. This is a pot of tell I
don't think I told Justin yet. Is he came up
to me and he goes, hey, you know who I am?

(01:38:29):
When I go, yeah, but no one else does because
no one knows what he looks like. Yeah, so that
was pretty funny. But I always tell him I I
don't like when some people would. I hate when people
come up to me and go, hey, you know who
it is? You know who it is? Hey, guess who
are you? That's just stupid. Yeah, you know what I mean,

(01:38:49):
it's joke in the world. Next guy that does that
to me. If it's a guy, I'm gonna go, hey, Sue,
how are you doing. Oh, I'm gonna go I'm blind. No.
But it's just it's sometimes certain things people do with
with blind people like they don't know better. They people
probably don't mean harm, No, they don't, but especially at
a gig, right, if people are drinking and stuff, they're like,

(01:39:12):
you know who it is? You know who I'm like,
oh my god. And most of the time I do,
but sometimes I'm like, I have no idea, and he'll
tell me I knew you were nudging somebody, dar and
I met you when you were playing at mister C's
Rock Palace, and I'm thinking, I have no idea who
this guy is. I never hung around with him, so yeah,
so it's just how people ask.

Speaker 2 (01:39:31):
I get it. No, I get it. I got it.
But he's cool.

Speaker 3 (01:39:34):
David, he's a great guy. I love David, and he was.
The way he approached me, was it? You know? It
might have for a second got me feeling a little ware,
but I knew who it was. And then and then
I made that joke with him. I go, yeah, no
one else knows who you are because nobody knows what
he looks like.

Speaker 2 (01:39:51):
Now and he's retired now right, Yeah, he's retired. He
left the radio.

Speaker 3 (01:39:54):
He's tired.

Speaker 2 (01:39:55):
Good guy, bedtime match.

Speaker 3 (01:39:58):
Yeah, and Gary, let's go with us here in the room. Me.
He didn't he explain to you what he looks like.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
He hasn't yet, But after this podcast, I will be
asking Gary what he looks like.

Speaker 3 (01:40:07):
Well, he told me he's bald. What do you think?
Five to seven?

Speaker 2 (01:40:12):
Five seven?

Speaker 3 (01:40:12):
Okay, he's what brown eyes? I think? Okayiley kind of guy.

Speaker 1 (01:40:17):
Any any kind of many different guys. It could be Jesus,
what's that It sounds like an any bald guy. Oh yeah, typical, yeah, typical.

Speaker 2 (01:40:28):
Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:40:29):
All right, well, rob thank you very much for coming on.
You talked about being a guitarist and you do have
a business.

Speaker 3 (01:40:37):
Yeah. So for those of you that might have tuned
in late, I'm a legally blind guitarist. I have transportation.
I also played bass guitar well, and I played drums,
and I sing some and uh, I'm currently looking to
broad my horizons, looking for a new project. One of

(01:40:57):
the projects I was in just split up, and things
are really really really way way way too quiet for
me right now. I live in with thew in Massachusetts,
and like I say, I do have transportation. My email
is Robbie with a Y, Robby, So it's Robbie Barton
seven seven seven at gmail dot com. And my telephone number,

(01:41:20):
which is what dial, Yeah, which is what I prefer
because it's hard for me to go on my email
without someone helping me look at it. But you have
to leave a message because I won't see a text.
But anyway, my phone number. If anyone wants any sort
of help with recovery, or if anyone needs a musician,
wants to start something, or anyone needs a player, please

(01:41:42):
give me a call. My phone number is nine seven
eight six nine seven seven zero four zero. That's nine
seven eight six nine seven seven zero four zero. And again,
my email is Robbie Barton seven seven seven at gmail
dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:41:58):
And that's Robbie with a Why Robbie with the wife.
Now you do lessons too, Yeah, I do teach.

Speaker 3 (01:42:02):
Yeah, I haven't been promoting it lately, but even if
someone's broke, I'll still help them out, you know, make money,
he putting on the circumstance. No, no, I mean, I
obviously I need to make money. But what I mean
is I'm not a hard ass. Like like I was
jamming with my friend John Shields. He lives in Kingston
where Gaman in New Hampshire at his house last night,

(01:42:24):
and the bass player loves playing with me because I
show them all kinds of stuff, right, and he'll try
to sometimes give me money and stuff. I'm like, no, no, no, don't.
It's a joy to share what you know in life
with others and it helps me. It helps you didn't recovery,
but it also even helps music because I'll go, wow,

(01:42:44):
I remember when someone showed me that when I was thirteen. Yeah,
you know, or like, holy shit, I don't you know,
I don't even think of that anymore. It's it just
comes natural. It's automatic pilot, you know, the neuroplasticity or
the brain. We learned things and it just it just
we get used to them, and a lot of stuff
just becomes automatic. But when we're first learning, when we're

(01:43:08):
either beginning or you know, a little bit past beginners
with any anything, right, you know, some of the stuff's
not on automatic pilot yet.

Speaker 2 (01:43:17):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:43:19):
Funny story is funny story about you playing real quick, rob.
Remember a couple of years ago, we stayed at the
Sailing Waterfront Hotel. Yeah, family, and I yeah, And we're
down there and I look in to the restaurant and
Robbie's playing with this band or another guy.

Speaker 2 (01:43:33):
And so I'm with my son, Abel and Gemma and
Jen and I go, my god, it's Robbie. And Abel goes,
you know him. I go, that's a really good friend
of mine.

Speaker 3 (01:43:40):
What was your son then?

Speaker 1 (01:43:41):
He was probably like seven? Okay, okay, so remember that
age seven. So I go, let's go upstairs and change.
Coming out of the pool, I go, we'll come down
and say hi to him and watch the show. So
Robbie obviously doesn't. I didn't you know we're walking by,
so you didn't even know we were that. So we
come back down and uh, and you're in the middle
of the songs, like, let's just finish it. When he

(01:44:02):
takes a break, we'll go and say hi. So we
sit down and watch, and there's Robbie. He's singing, ride
in that train, Hi on cocaine. You're doing a grateful deck.

Speaker 3 (01:44:14):
I was singing how many someone else is singing it?

Speaker 2 (01:44:16):
Yeah, it's so funny.

Speaker 3 (01:44:18):
That's I think you tell me maybe you know, but
that might be based off some true story right about.

Speaker 2 (01:44:24):
Oh, I'm not sure the song.

Speaker 3 (01:44:26):
I think it may be not sure.

Speaker 2 (01:44:27):
I don't know. But once you had done, we went
up in the and said, hey, it was funny. Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:33):
So yeah, listen, if you anything, if you you got
Robbie's info, if you need you know, if you want
anything musical, lated, recovery related, anything, And you said phones
better than email.

Speaker 3 (01:44:44):
Right, Yeah, I don't want to say if anyone is
out struggling, if anyone is struggling out there with addiction problems,
I'm no better than you. And it feels like you
can't get out. It feels like you're trapped. It feels like,
how am I gonna enjoy being clean? Even though my
life could be torn to shreds, I was still going home.
I'm gonna enjoy being clean. I'm gonna be bored. There's

(01:45:07):
gonna be nothing to do. Oh it's already too late.
I already ruined my dreams, all of that stuff. Throw
it out the window. It's not true. Justin's a perfect,
perfect example of it. He always wanted to work in radio,
and here he is.

Speaker 2 (01:45:22):
Yeah, so true.

Speaker 3 (01:45:23):
That's what I want to share.

Speaker 2 (01:45:25):
So true. Thank you, Rob, You're welcome and you welcome
back anytime. Thank you, Thank you everyone else. Tomorrow listen,
this is this is Rob. You now hold the record?
You know that?

Speaker 3 (01:45:35):
Right for what?

Speaker 2 (01:45:36):
So?

Speaker 1 (01:45:36):
My wife Jen held the record at I think it
was one hour twenty minutes. Oh no, if you had
to guess how long we've been going.

Speaker 3 (01:45:44):
It's your fault.

Speaker 2 (01:45:45):
No, it's no one's fault. It's a great thing.

Speaker 1 (01:45:47):
How long you think, Lisa and a half? One hour
forty five minutes?

Speaker 3 (01:45:52):
Oh my god, David Allen Bouchet is gonna shoot me.
Oh yeah, you know me, he said, tell your buddy
not to go over now. People don't have time listen
this is I started laughing my ass off. I go.
I'll make sure I relay that from one radio go
to the next.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
This is a different kind of podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:46:07):
I know that they gonna like it.

Speaker 2 (01:46:09):
As always, the talkbacks are open.

Speaker 1 (01:46:10):
If you have any questions or comments for Robbie, you
can leave a talk back and tomorrow we'll do it again.

Speaker 2 (01:46:15):
All right, Bye,