Figure Eights (A Music Podcast) - Episode 61 w/Thomas O'Keefe (Tour Manager: Weezer, Whiskeytown, Train, Third Eye Blind, D Generation)

Thomas O' Keefe is a tour manager musician and author, best known for his work with Weezer, Antiseen, Whiskeytown, D Generation, Mandy Moore, Train and more!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 2 (00:39):
You are listening to the figure Age podcast, I'm your host,
Nick Leak from the vand High on Stress out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
And we've got some High.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
On Stress or acoustic antics coming up here soon by
the time of cer release, A long already played it
with March ninth acoustic duo show with Jim sol at
the Black One Brewery in Around Lake, Illinois, Friday, April
twenty sixth, will be at the Lift in Youths, Iowa. Saturday,

(01:09):
April twenty seventh at Montrose Saloon.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Is part of the International Pop Overthrow Festival in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Sunday April twenty eighth is Cole's Bar in Chicago, with
Matt Derda.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
And the Highwalks.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Saturday May eighteenth, I'll be playing solo acoustic at Taco
Jed in Rochester, Minnesota.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
And Friday June seventh.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
And Forge Brewery full band show in Rochester, Minnesota. And
I think I actually missed one in there as well.
It's let me just see April tenth at the Finnish
Pistro solo Acoustic in Saint Paul with my pal Scott
wool Bridge.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
So that is what's coming up.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
So on today's episode, we've got Thomas o'keith. He is
a tour manager with the likes of Wheezer trained, Third
Eye Blind Whiskey Tone Up.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
But he's an Oak de generation Mandy Moore Tonic sings.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
He's been around, he's seen some things and.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Uh oh see it.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
He also a dramatic su so great conversation with him
to get a little bit of a low down on
some behind the scenes Sananigan's.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Specifically with h Ryan Adam's character.

Speaker 4 (02:28):
So stay tuned from that and without further ado it,
I give.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
You Atomics o keey. He's got my hat on work
please cab.

Speaker 5 (02:41):
Yeah, I had to.

Speaker 6 (02:44):
Put all micropath in one place, so we kind of
you know, yeah, exactly, you get it as.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Time moves on, yours to have a little home and
then yeah, thrust of your home becomes less of the crap.

Speaker 6 (03:01):
We actually, you know what, honestly I started this. There's
a new thing, or not a new thing. But there's
a thing I heard of called the Swedish death cleans
and what it's apparently I guess they do it in Sweden.
But the idea is that when you start to get
way older, you start to get rid of your shit,
so you don't leave your family with a pile of shit,

(03:22):
you know. Yeah, for example, where is it up there?
I have a Queen album signed by Freddie Mercury and
Brian May and Roger Taylor and the other guy right,
my daughter, another guy and the other guy who's Taylor,
all the four of them.

Speaker 7 (03:39):
I like the other guy.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
You.

Speaker 6 (03:41):
My daughter doesn't give two shits about that record, you know,
So maybe I get rid of it someday. I don't know,
we'll see.

Speaker 7 (03:49):
She might someday. How old is your daughter?

Speaker 6 (03:51):
She's sixteen, But unless your name's Taylor Swift, she's not interested.

Speaker 7 (03:56):
Yeah, or Olivia Rodrigo got that going on?

Speaker 6 (03:59):
I took her. She went to Japan with us, and
I introduced her to Dave Grohl, and she didn't know
who he was.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
So you're like, yeah, yeah, here's the old generation divides that.

Speaker 7 (04:13):
That's hilarious. So how how is Dave?

Speaker 2 (04:16):
I actually met him briefly, was twenty four years ago
at this point, and how I thought he'd be.

Speaker 6 (04:24):
Yeah, you know what who he is? I figured this out.
He's just the richest one of us guys.

Speaker 7 (04:31):
That makes sense.

Speaker 6 (04:33):
He loves music more than anybody. He'll sit there and
talk to you. I mean, the food fighters are there,
I always thought originally I have seen them several times.
I really didn't start having interactions with them until I
started working with Weezer and we did a bunch of
several tours with them.

Speaker 7 (04:48):
Oh that's right, And so recently.

Speaker 6 (04:50):
Yeah, we played with them recently in Kentucky, but years
ago we played with them in Australia and New Zealand
and did South America with him, a bunch of shows
in the US. And you know, they're a classic rock band. Yeah,
they're not a nineties grunge rock band. They've morphed into
this classic rock band, and those guys that's all they

(05:12):
care about. I mean, they sit around and they practice
for they have a room set up and they're backstage
with amps and drums, like basically a small setup, and
they'll go in there and play Alice Cooper and Kiss
songs for two hours, then they go eat dinner, then
they go play a three hour show. You know, it's
just their super music nerds and they just, like I said,
they're just Dave Grohl just he's like me or you

(05:35):
and can sit around talking about music all day long.
He's just you know, has probably has more money in
the bank than than both of us. But other than that,
he's he's he's and he's always been nice to everybody.
It's by anyone you meet that anyone that you meet
tells you he's super nice, and he's always it goes along,
you know. The thing is people remember if you're super

(05:56):
nice or if you're a super.

Speaker 7 (05:58):
Dick, you know, And I feel like in music it
could go either way, and.

Speaker 6 (06:03):
They certainly can go hither way. I've seen both sides
of that coin.

Speaker 7 (06:07):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
No, my five minutes or so interaction with the guy,
he was humorous, funny, nice, And then there was this
girl girl was just freaking out and treating him like
he was, you know, God, And he totally was like, Okay,
calm down, like he was totally right. He kind of
made a joke about it, like it was making him uncomfortable,
but she was treating him like that.

Speaker 7 (06:28):
Yeah, it was nice to see.

Speaker 6 (06:30):
He's a nice guy. I always work the best for them.

Speaker 7 (06:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
So, well, where where's his start? You're you're in North Carolina.

Speaker 6 (06:40):
I lived in Nashville, Tennessee.

Speaker 7 (06:41):
You're in Nashville. Did you grow up in Tennessee or
did you kind.

Speaker 6 (06:44):
Of no, No, no, I moved. I grew up in Connecticut,
and then I moved to North Carolina as a teenager
many years ago. And then I mostly lived in and
around Charlotte, North Carolina, and then for a very long time,
I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. Lived in New York
City once for a year, but then I moved here
to Nashville about almost twelve eleven twelve years ago, eleven years.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Gotcha, and you were a musician starting out right because
you've been in multi Yeah.

Speaker 6 (07:09):
Yeah, my whole career started playing in the punk rock
band anti scene, which still exists a n T I
s E E. N. And I actually just played the
forty year anniversary show with them just a few months ago.
So I still I'm sort of on the board of directors.
I'm not really in the band anymore. They have they

(07:29):
have another bass player, but like for the events and
the reissues and the anniversary shows, I show up for those,
so I'm still happy to do that.

Speaker 7 (07:38):
But I repased player.

Speaker 6 (07:39):
Yeah, and I retired from that band in nineteen ninety
September ninety five, and then I started tour managing in
spring of nineteen ninety six, and that was Whiskey Town No.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
No.

Speaker 6 (07:50):
The first one was a band called Luster. They were
on A and M Records, And it's actually a funny
story of Anti Scene had decided that we weren't we.
We came home from Europe in ninety three and he
didn't want to He didn't want to tour anymore that

(08:12):
year and it was like May and his younger brother
had just moved to Charlotte to play in the band.
So his younger brother was pissed. He was like, why
did I move here to play in this band if
you're gonna, you know, not play any shows. So his
brother goes home and starts a band with his roommate
and they want me to be the bass player. So

(08:32):
I'm like, I don't know. I'm working two jobs. I'm
still playing an anti scene, I'm trying to hang out
with my girlfriend who's now my wife, you know, a
tiny bit, and I just don't have time to play
in a second band. So they go and get another
bass player, and then about six weeks later, they're about
to get a record deal, and I was like, fuck,

(08:54):
I just blew it.

Speaker 7 (08:57):
Obviously they knew that that was on the rizzon.

Speaker 6 (08:59):
No, it was like in the very infancy, it wasn't.
But this was around ninety four ninety three, and what
had happened was the record companies had signed all the
Nirvanas and Sound Gardens and Pearl Jams, and they dumped
all the hair metal bands that were in the pipeline,
and then they were signing any band in the world
that was slightly alternative. These guys were barely they were

(09:22):
still in the garage. They could count the shows they'd
played on one or two hands, and next thing you know,
they have the presidents of record companies flying down to
Charlotte to see them play a bar. So I'm like,
so for like about a month, I'm walking around just depressed, like,
oh fuck, that was my chance. I blew it up.

(09:42):
So they go and they make their record, and the
band's Lustre Luster. It's on A and M Records. The
records actually amazingly good. It was produced by the guy
that did the big famous Goo Goo Dolls record and
Loe somebody and oh.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly that guy.

Speaker 6 (10:02):
So the record sounds amazing, the songs are great well,
but you know, we had no basement to start from,
so we they we went. So basically it was time
for them to go out on tour, and they wanted
me to be the tour manager. So I was like,
I don't know how to do that. What the fuck
is that? And they're like, oh, you've been doing it
in anti scene all along. You just didn't realize that

(10:23):
that was what you were doing. Because when you're in
the van in the punk rock band, somebody has to go,
oh shit, dude, it's an eight hour drive to Albuquerque.
We better go, you.

Speaker 7 (10:33):
Know, damn it.

Speaker 6 (10:35):
I was that guy. I don't know why, but so
I ended up becoming the tour manager of Luster and
then LUs we went out on tour in nineteen ninety six,
and the whole thing within six months, the whole thing
was flopped and was over. They just they just you know,
they were they had no fans. Most of the records
they sold were in and around the Carolinas, and it just,

(10:58):
you know, there was no basis to start from. They
were starting from. They didn't do any of the beginning
leg work because they got signed eight weeks after they started.
So so they went home and I went home and
didn't have a job. And then I fought hard, and
I called everybody in the world that I knew, and
I called people that I didn't know, and I stayed

(11:20):
on the phone every day, and I finally got a
second job in the spring of ninety seven, tour managing
a band called D Generation from New York City. Dens
Allan's bad exactly.

Speaker 7 (11:30):
I've opened for him before.

Speaker 6 (11:32):
Well, he's a great friend, a great brother. I hate
what's happened to him, but hopefully he'll make some progress.
He he's a great dude. I love him like a brother,
and he is a brother. And uh I became great
friends with them. I was the seventh I was the
seventh tour manager of D Generation on the No Lunch
Tour because they were just plowing through these people, churning

(11:54):
through them, and I loved them. I thought, they're still
one of my favorite bands I've ever worked with. And
so I did a tour with em, and then I
came home and then I get a call from Austin,
Texas and it was this guy named Chris roll Dan
who was managing Whiskey Town, and he they need what
had happened was Whiskeytown had rent had a handful of

(12:15):
dates with the Old ninety Sevens this would have been
early ninety seven, and they hated they Now. Part of
it was Ryan wanted to Ryan Adams wanted to make
up a pretend feud between the Old ninety Sevens and
Whiskey Town, like the Rolling Stones versus the Beatles. And
he would always say stuff like they wear white pants

(12:36):
and I wear black pants. I don't have to say
anything else, you know, He's just constantly trying to churn
up shit. And part of it was for show, and
part of it was for real. And they would fight
over the parking space, like where's their van closer to
the club than ours, you know, and all that kind
of shit. So basically. So they had one of their

(12:57):
old band members out was with them to suppose was
the lead tour managing them, and the band decided they
just didn't want to finish the tour, and they got
in the fucking van and drove back to Raleigh without
calling anyone or telling anyone, And the next day they
just didn't show up at whatever show it was, and
people start calling and we didn't have barely have cell

(13:19):
phones back then, or didn't have cell phones, and they're like, oh, yeah,
we went home. Fuck that tour. So they were like,
oh god, so they were. And this was right before
Stranger's Almanac was getting ready to come out, so they
really somebody of course his best work to date, Yes, agreed,
so they needed someone. So quite honestly, I think I

(13:41):
only got the job because I lived in Raleigh, because
they were in Austin, Texas. Ryan was in the band
was in Raleigh, and they needed somebody on the ground
in Raleigh to drive over to Ryan's house at four
o'clock in the afternoon and wake them up to do
a fucking radio station interview or to do an interview
on the phone or something. So I honestly believe if

(14:03):
I had stayed in Charlotte, or if I lived in
a different city, you know, you would be talking to
someone else about this. But so I took the job
and I started doing shows with them, and I quickly
realized that, you know, Ryan has a ability, natural ability
as a songwriter that's that's unmatched. I mean, there's just

(14:26):
no one can do what he does, you know. And
then I ended up tour managing that band from probably
April May of ninety seven all the way to the end.
Probably in to that, I mean, I went out. I
got a different job with a band called Train from
San Francisco in late ninety nine. But basically I wrote

(14:47):
a book about that time period. It's called Wading to Derail.
It's on Amazon, and it basically covers it's only it's
a book about Whiskeytown, but it really only covers May
ninety seven to October of two thousand, has a very
tight narrative because I didn't want to first of all,

(15:07):
there's another Whiskey Town book that was written by kind
of a super fan rock critic in Raleigh called Losering,
and it's actually a really good book, but it covers
like nearly like a ten year time span, and so
if you want the overview from the very beginning all
the way into the Solo years, the Losering book is
really good. And the guy that wrote it saw Whiskey

(15:31):
Town a million times, you know, back in those days.
So you know, if you have not read it and
you're interested in that band, I certainly would recommend it.
But it's my book. Is is everything I saw with
my own eyes, you know what I mean. Like, for example,
the two hundred and fifty one pages of my book
fit into nineteen pages of Losering, you know, So it's

(15:55):
I didn't want to dilute the credibility of what I
was saying. I talking about stuff that I didn't see.
So this book starts the day Chris roll Dan that
story of me standing in my front yard on Lane
Street and Raleigh and I get my cell phone goes
off and I get a call. It starts that day,
and it ends at Caitlin's wedding in Raleigh in October

(16:19):
of two thousand and then that's it. So I lit
everything that happened in there. I lived and saw and
I remember, So that's why. And I was the only
you know, I saw that band more times than any
human being that ever breathed there on earth. You know,
I sawways he'd held one hundred and seventy four times.
So and I have an elephant memory, and I kept

(16:41):
some notes, so I wanted to hurry up and write
it down before I got too old and forgot it all,
you know. So I was donating the money from a
book to a women's shelter in Raleigh, ironically, And the
book came out in June of twenty eighteen, and it
got a lot of good reviews. Super fans loved it,

(17:01):
and it sold pretty well. And then, of course the
bad news about Ryan came out the New York Times
in two thousand and February nineteen, and the book stopped selling,
like stop selling, like you driving your car into the
side of Mount Everest and trying to push it. Like
that's how hard it stopped. So the books still out there,

(17:21):
and I guess, as Ryan makes, you know, there's some
fans that probably never read it. So occasionally it will sell,
but you know, it's it's very it's over. I mean,
I think one it might have sold a couple hundred
copies last year in the whole year. So but it's
on Amazon and it's it's a good it's the truth,
it's what happened, and it's it's kind of the story.

(17:44):
It's not negative against him, because it's really more the
story of a young genius and the first people who
tried to help him out, because, you know, we realized
he was a genius, but he was such a young
kid and such a dumb ass, and so worried about
what people thought, very thin skinned. Actually, still to this

(18:05):
day that seems to be true. And then you know,
people just don't you know, I read somewhere. I wish
I know where I read this. I'll tell you. But
they say, if you're twenty and you have some personality
trait about yourself that you don't like, there's still time
to change it, right. But by the time you're like

(18:26):
twenty five pushing towards thirty, the cement is completely hard.
You know, if I if I got up from this
computer and walked away and hung up on you and
called you back in twenty years, I would be the
same dude. I would have the same mannerisms, the same
way I speak, the same way I think. All my
mannerisms and personality would be the same. I would just

(18:47):
be an older version of this. I believe that people
don't change once they're in their late twenties. That's kind
of it. So, you know, I think what happened to
Ryan that I knew was a young broke kid who
was sleeping in my extra bedroom in my two bedroom
apartment that my wife and I shared.

Speaker 7 (19:07):
You know.

Speaker 6 (19:08):
He never had any money the whole time I knew him,
because it was the early days and his career was
on a very long, slow boil towards the top, you know,
and of course it was about to boil over when
that news came out. Like if you could think about
what would have happened had that news not come out,

(19:29):
had that story not been published. I mean, he had
three he had a show on hold at Madison Square Garden.
He was getting ready to head up. Yeah, yeah, he
had a headline show at Madison Square Garden on hold.
He had three albums about to come out that were
all going to be critically acclaimed. To me, I think
he was in the same spot where Bruce Springsteen was,

(19:50):
right after Nebraska, right before Born in the USA. I
think that had that story not come out, or had
he not done the things in that story that caused
the story to come out was probably more appropriate. Say
I think he would be a household name today.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, it's I think for a long time people really
excused his behavior beyond this because all that stuff came out,
and then it was like, oh jeez, But.

Speaker 6 (20:14):
Like, well, you know what, there's two things. It's not
against the law to be a dick. It's not against
to be a cree. It's not against the law to
be an asshole. But there, you know, I could I
always use this analogy. I could loan you my car,
and you could drive in around the block and you
could wreck it and you would be all right. The
airbags would save your life and you would be fine,

(20:34):
and my car would be totaled, and my car insurance
company would buy me a new one, and a year
from now we would be sitting around having a beer
at my house and me and you would be laughing about, oh,
remember that time you wrecked my car? Oh right, right,
we're still friends. I'm not mad at you. But there's
two things you can never do. You can never steal

(20:55):
the money, and you can never fuck with somebody's underage.
Those are the unforgivable things. Even the superist of Superfan
can't forgive you for that. And if that's allegedly that's
what happened.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
So and I'll tell you, like, I think a lot
of his behavior was was people just kind of ignored
it for a long time. There are people that were like,
I still listen to his records, but he's a dick
and then but I think a lot of people excuse
it for a long time because the work was so
damn good.

Speaker 6 (21:28):
Well, I mean, it's just yeah, I mean. And also,
you're talking about super fans. If you go on any
every band has super fans. My punk rock band has
super fans. You know, these are people, These are not
the normal group of people. These are very diehards. You know,
if you go on there and say anything negative, if
you go on the Taylor Swift website and say anything
negative about her, you'd get hundreds of thousands of people

(21:51):
trying to have you killed, you know. And I like
Taylor Swift. I think she's I'm very happy for her,
and I think she's the greatest. I think she's where
he should be. But so of course, super fans are
going to stand up for the band that they love
because they're super fans. But if you look at jasonal
Dean's career has kind of exploded at the same time,
and I sort of I'm not a hippie at all,

(22:14):
but I sort of feel like there's a certain number
of spots and I feel like Jaysonal Dean, who I
don't know and I have nothing against him. I have
friends that worked for him and every I'm sure he's
a great guy. I have friends and I don't listen
to him or I'm not unfamiliar with his work. But
I feel like all Ryan's fans, kind of the pedestrian

(22:34):
Ryan fans, the non super fans, which is the bulk
of the fans. I think most of those people moved
on and went to Jason, you know, Jason Isbell or
a couple other people like that.

Speaker 7 (22:44):
I think there's a little bit of that.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
I you know, I would I would put myself in
the category of I listened to him weekly for years,
like he was always in rotation. It was always kind
of like, ugh, we all know he's a dick, right,
that was kind of that was a story I was.

Speaker 7 (23:02):
I was done at that.

Speaker 6 (23:04):
And it's hard to you know, it's hard to defend that,
you know, and it's hard and also you know, quite honestly,
I mean, I feel like he the he handled it
very poorly. Afterwards, I think that he could have if
he had handled it correctly. I feel like he could
have already been on the other side of it by now.

(23:24):
But I feel like he You can't pretend there's not
a you can't pretend there's not an eight hundred pound
elephant in the room right there.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
I'm in Minneapolis, so when he came here, you know,
just out of curiosity, I looked at Ticketmaster to see
the open seats, because whenever he would come here is
a big deal.

Speaker 7 (23:42):
He even played at First Aveny one time.

Speaker 6 (23:45):
Yeah, I didn't show it him at Seventh. I did
show the Whiskey Town at the sidebar the Seventh Street entry.

Speaker 7 (23:51):
Yeah, I may have a bootleg of that.

Speaker 6 (23:54):
It's fine. I was the guy trying to make people
not Reford that. But it was only because and you know,
it's so funny because now I meet all these kids
like well to record that show you were at hohaha,
And I was just like, you know, the whole reason
that I did that, and I told Ryan this back
in the day, was he the guy was churning out
so many songs and churning out he would play. It

(24:15):
was not uncommon for him to write a new song,
play it, write it in the dressing room an hour
before they play, and then play it that night. Then
some kid records it, and now we have some new
Ryan Adams song that hasn't even been fucking written down
yet or published, and and it's on the tape, and
now anybody could steal it. You know, I'm like, I
don't want somebody to steal one of your songs from you.
You know, you should. We got to protect this a

(24:37):
little bit. So that's why that was my sole reason
for you know, me attempting to thwart the tapers. But
we were at Seventh Street Entry and Wilco was playing
First Avenue the same night. So Whiskey Town played early
in the in the early evening at the seventh Street Entry,

(24:58):
and then everybody went next door and watch that's.

Speaker 7 (25:01):
A hell of a night. Yeah. Well, then he came back.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
It was the Rock and Roll Tour and he played
First Avenue and was apparently hammered. I tried to get
tickets and I couldn't because they were a hot item.
And uh, around that time, Paul Westerberg had made a
joke about kicking his teeth down his throat. Yeah, and
he apparently brought that up during the show and was like,
come get me, old man, and people were filing out
because like, you're going after the hometown hero even you know.

Speaker 6 (25:28):
You know, if you listen to Avenues on Strangers Almanac
and then go listen to Skyway by the Replacements, you're like, eh,
you know, you can kind of sometimes hear where it
came from, which, of course, you know.

Speaker 7 (25:41):
Like anything everybody's got. You know, I'm sure that hurt him.

Speaker 6 (25:45):
Artists imitate great artists, steel or whatever quote is, you know,
it's the same thing.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, but I think, you know, I'm sure that hurt
his feelings because he's such a Westerburg guy. Yeah, so
I'm sure he was pissed and probably came out and
is a drunken state at that show. But even after that,
he still kept selling out bigger venues here. So even
with the reputation about that show, it didn't stop him.
But when he came back here the last time and

(26:11):
he played the theater that the Awys plays, I looked
at the tickets.

Speaker 7 (26:15):
That place was half empty, Like.

Speaker 6 (26:20):
They're the only people that are left are the are
the superist of super fans. You know, there's just those people.
And unfortunately, I don't see a way for him to
maintain a living just off that small group of people.
And every time he seems to go out on tory,
he just manages to do something wrong and piss people off,

(26:40):
or people canceling meet and greets, or you know, pay
charging somebody a bunch of money to take a photo
with him, and then lumping ten people into a photo
and taking a one photo just you know, oh look
here's me in twelve people. I don't know, I don't know.
I paid two hundred dollars for this photo. It's kind
of a ripoff. I mean, don't do I work with
some bands. They've done to me the paid meet and

(27:00):
greets before, and you know what, if the band doesn't
want to do it, don't fucking do it. You know,
take But if you committed to doing something, you gotta
you gotta do it.

Speaker 7 (27:10):
Yeah, people paid, you gotta you gotta do it. You
gotta do it, and then don't do it later.

Speaker 6 (27:15):
And then yeah, and then if the next tour you
don't want to do it, don't do it on the
next tour whatever, but don't sell people something and then
don't deliver it. That's people get mad when you do that.

Speaker 7 (27:24):
So how was it working with Caitlyn?

Speaker 6 (27:28):
Oh? She is great. She was the She was like
the uh I always thought in my book she was
kind of the hero, you know, because here she was
really except for the occasional adult moment by me or
Mike Daly, you know, Caitlin was the only adult in
that RV or in that van. And for her to

(27:50):
have to ride around with that vanload of idiots that
were just fighting constantly all day long and she was
just sitting there, I just I just really felt sorry
for her. You know, in a way, she was like
the older sister who was way smarter than everybody. But
she showed up and did the work. You know. She
wanted to sound check, she wanted to play the new song,

(28:12):
she wanted to do all this stuff. And you know,
I do believe, and this is no offense to my
friend Phil Wanasher, but I think he's a great guitar player.
But I really, in my heart I believe the punk
rock spirit of Whiskeytown is Ryan and Phil. But the
magic of Whiskeytown is Ryan and Caitlyn because when Ryan

(28:37):
fired the entire band in Kansas City and I had
to send everybody home. I went to the Kansas City Airport,
runted a minivan and me and Ryan and Caitlyn finished
the tour and played three d shows. It was Louisville, Kentucky,
Nashville and Huntsville or Birmingham, maybe it was Huntsville. And
it was Ryan on guitar and Caitlyn on fiddle and

(28:58):
the Bulthem singing in That was it. And those shows
were magical. You can probably find a bootleg of the
I'm sure there's a bootleg of the Exodent show. And
we showed up in Louisville on like a weekend night
and I pull up in the van and three of
us get out, and the club owners like, what the fuck?
What is going on? You know, where's the band?

Speaker 2 (29:20):
You know?

Speaker 6 (29:21):
And this is? Is this it? And I pulled him aside.
I said, listen, here's what we're going to do. Put
a sign on the door of the club that says
Whiskey Town will be performing tonight as a duo. If
anyone wants their money back, give them their money back.
If anyone comes up to you at the end of

(29:41):
the night and said this sucks. I want my money back,
or I paid to see a band, give them their
fucking money back. And at the end of the night,
me and you will fairly and equitably see how much
we get paid. I'm not going to screw you over right.
So he did that, and we played a big crowd,
a couple of all four or five hundred people, whatever
it was, not one person asked for their money back.

Speaker 7 (30:03):
I bet it was amazing.

Speaker 6 (30:05):
It was amazing. So that's the magic of the band.
So I don't know that Ryan. In my mind, I
don't think Ryan's made a better record since Strangers Almanac,
because it's because the majority of the records he's made,
except really all the records except for one, have been
without Caitlin.

Speaker 7 (30:23):
I here's what I'll say about that.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
I like you.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
I remember you listened because we had talked to emailed
a while back after Phil was on on the podcast here,
and he's a riot.

Speaker 7 (30:33):
He's quite and I've.

Speaker 6 (30:36):
Seen him recently. I talked to him for the book,
but I've seen him out in out West, like in
Seattle or wherever he's living nowadays.

Speaker 7 (30:43):
Oh my gosh, the the guy cracks me up. He's
a character. All I could think about was Phil and
Ryan in this vand together. I'm like, that hadn't been
just it was.

Speaker 6 (30:51):
Well, it was.

Speaker 7 (30:51):
It was funny at first for the first sure, it
was hilarious at first.

Speaker 6 (30:56):
I mean there's a scene in the book where Ryan
got drunk all day long because Phil wasn't in the
van and we were supposed to play We're Out. We
were parked in front of the Double Door in Chicago,
the Big the theater, and Ryan is drunk off his ass.
He's he we made him eat a burrito and he's
throwing up and he's like, there's blood and there's my

(31:19):
throw up. I'm gonna die. And I was like, dude,
that's salsa. You just ate a burrito. And then Phil's like,
I'm going to fix him. So Phil goes and gets
like a can of pepsi and pours like two goodie
powders in it, which is like it's like caffeine and aspirin.
It's like a Southern thing. You know. You can buy
it at the gas station in the southeastern US, and

(31:40):
it wakes you up and your head ad goes away
and power through the day. Kind of thing. He pours
like two or three gooditie powders into a PEPSI shakes
it up, gives it to him and says, drink this,
you pussy.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
I was like, fuck you.

Speaker 6 (31:55):
It was just like the two of them were now.
They would defend each other, you know, like brothers, you
know at times. But but Phil also you know, he
he would call Ryan out on his crap. You know,
these guys. You have to remember, the guys that I
dealt with were not the same people that you're going
to see last summer or whatever. You know, it was

(32:17):
a lifetime ago, and I the period of time I
dealt with was when everybody was twenty something years old.
I mean I think when I started, Ryan was twenty
two years old when I met him.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
So yeah, no, I uh I. Caitlyn was here. Caitlyn
and Skillett were here. They were playing in some band.
I can't remember which one it was, but she put
me on the guest list for it. She actually played
on one of my band's records as well. Wow, lovely person.
So I yes, absolutely so having that, you know, interaction
with her, and you know, knowing the reputation of Ryan,

(32:51):
then talking to Phil, I'm like, what a van.

Speaker 6 (32:53):
So I've had a lot of people tell me that,
you know, that were fans of the band but didn't
know them or anything, and they like read the book
and they were like, oh, I felt sorry for Caitlin.
You know, I've heard that way a bunch of times,
so I'm sure I did there, and they're correct. I
felt sorry for her too.

Speaker 7 (33:12):
So how did that all end?

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Obviously, when you start there with Whiskey Town and that
powder Keg, obviously you're probably set up for success on
any tour manager job begins well, I can't.

Speaker 6 (33:26):
Well, the thing about the thing about tour managing is
that it's a weird job because it's kind of like
it's the old roller skate analogy. You can't have the
roller skates, so you learn how to roller skate, But
how are you supposed to learn how to roller skate
without the roller skates?

Speaker 1 (33:41):
You know?

Speaker 6 (33:42):
And what ends up happening is you end up working
for a few bands that no one ever heard of,
but then eventually you work with someone that everyone's heard of,
and then the jobs come much easier. You know, I've
worked for Train and See Weezer, Third Eye Blind, you know,

(34:04):
I could get another job with an A level band tomorrow,
you know, because of my resume now. But back then,
you know, no one had heard of Whiskey Town. Back then,
no one had heard of Luster back then. So it
was a little bit of a battle. But what ended
up happening was we we did the Whiskey Town did
the first big tour, which we call the RV tour

(34:27):
because we were in a Cruise America RV that they
destroyed and my poor sound man had to return it.
It was cost thousands of dollars to return it. That
was the tour where Ryan fired the band. Then Whiskeytown
Mark two got put together, which was the version of
Whiskey Town with Ryan, Caitlin, Mike Daily playing keyboards and
then Ed Crawford and Jenny playing bass. So that version

(34:52):
of Whiskey Town lasted through ninety seven into ninety eight
for the third US tour and then sort of petered
out before we went to Europe, and then there was
a We went to Europe and did a handful of
a couple of weeks worth the shows where Mike Daly
was actually playing guitar, and then we brought a new

(35:12):
bass player in and I want to say Skillett played drums,
and then then we got the Fogerty tour and Chris
roll Dan, the manager, wanted to up the ante, so
we got John Worster from Super Chunk to be the drummer,
and we got and we got Danny and Brad Rice
from the Backsliders in the band. So that was probably

(35:34):
like the all star version of Whiskey Town.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
And then.

Speaker 6 (35:39):
Then after that tour, Worster couldn't do it, and we
ended up getting Stephen Terry back, who was the RV
tour drummer. So you know, there were people that got fired,
like Stephen Terry got sent home from the RV tour,
but then he got welcomed back, you know, left barely
a year later. And then after that the tour touring

(35:59):
part of town kind of wound down, and then they
started working on the next record and James Eha came
to Chapel Hill and worked with them, and then in
ninety nine we were kind of going back and forth,
back and forth they were trying to record. I actually
ironically went out on tour with Mandy Moore, that someone

(36:19):
who was Lyon's wife, but I knew her when she
was fifteen. I used to do her homework for her,
and I was doing her homework her, helping her with
her geometry homework one day, and I was so excited
because I was like, Mandy, I can't believe I'm remembering
this shit, you know, because I you know, because I
took whatever class it was in high school, even though

(36:41):
it was many years ago. And finally I said to her,
I said, do you want me to explain this to
you or do you just want me to do it?
She said, just do it. So it was funny, and
Mandy was so sweet and I liked her a lot
and her parents. I remained friends with her mom to
this day, and I've run into her a few times

(37:02):
here and there, being out in LA for whatever reason,
and she's always been as sweet as kind. I have
nothing but good things to say about her.

Speaker 7 (37:09):
She seems.

Speaker 6 (37:10):
Of course, that's probably not that's not true in the
superfan world because they all, you know, they have to
hate on her because you know, she's on the wrong
side of the superfan fence. But so, yeah, then Whiskey
Town and then you know what happened was I got
a call. Whiskey Town played a handful of shows on
the West Coast and we end a band called Train

(37:30):
opened for us, and I don't really remember much about
them except they the singer was really good and had
a bald headed guitar player, and you know, we hung
out that barely. I just fleetingly remember meeting them. But
later in the in the summer of spring, early summer
of ninety nine, I got two calls from two bands

(37:53):
that were playing the radio show at the Amphitheater in
Raleigh where I and both these bands were looking for
a tour manager. So I was going to the show
to visit with two different bands that were potentially both
trying to hire me, and one of them was a
band called The Marvelous Three that I absolutely fucking one

(38:15):
of them. I just loved them so much.

Speaker 7 (38:19):
One of the best live bands you'll see your life
ever and ever.

Speaker 6 (38:22):
Just saw Conner Buch who I remained friends with all
these years and I actually worked with years later, and
I loved them so much, and actually I went to
go see them when they got back together recently in Atlanta,
and it was one of the five best shows I've
ever seen in my whole life. Like I just could
not believe how good it was.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
I saw them three times between like ninety nine two thousand.

Speaker 7 (38:50):
Just unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
And then I went to the first Chicago show, which
was October last.

Speaker 6 (38:55):
Yeah, yeah, that was just a week.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
That show was.

Speaker 7 (38:58):
That show was arguably better than they were then. But
I cannot believe it. I just saw.

Speaker 6 (39:05):
I could not believe what I just saw. I felt
the same way like I was shocked. I was watching
a video of it the other day and I still
couldn't believe it. So love, I mean, I love those
records so much. I mean I actually went out on
tour with Butch a couple of years ago. He was
doing a short tour and I went out and did it,
and we just playing clubs. I was just going out

(39:26):
to hang out and tour manage it for whatever. And uh,
you know, I was standing in front of house and
he came out and he played acoustic and he plays
like three songs and a couple of marvelous three songs,
and I thought to myself, he just played three of
my fucking favorite songs on the planet, you know what
I mean. They're so he's there. Just I can't say
enough great things about him. And he's a he's a

(39:48):
good dude, and I would love to see the Marvel's
three again someday.

Speaker 7 (39:54):
I've got a hard times.

Speaker 6 (39:58):
Yeah, me too. And but then the other band trying
to hire me was Train, and I you know, they
were a little hippie dippy back then with the bongo drum.
So of course, you know, I see what. I'm not
a hippie. I'm a punk rock dude. So I see
the hippie band playing a bongo drum, and I see
the fucking greatest rock band currently in existence playing the

(40:18):
other side. I was like, ooh, I love the Marvelo's
Three a lot. But I ended up, you know, I
ended up going I couldn't do either because I was
still busy with Mandy. And then they called the Train
guys called me, and I got them somebody. Then they
called me again, so finally I quit the Mandy tour
and I went out with Train in October of nineteen

(40:41):
ninety nine. And of course that was a one hundred
percent different learning experience from having been with Whiskey Town
for several years, because you know, I would tell the
Train guys, okay, lobby call is at five thirty in
the morning. I would come down the elevator at like
five thirty one, and the five of them would be

(41:02):
sitting there and looking at their watches, like where the
fuck have you been? I was like, who are these people?
Because I would have to go. I had to threaten
the whiskey. One time we were somewhere, we were somewhere
on the West coast and we were stopping over spending
the night and we had to leave early the next morning,
and I told them, And I'm not a mean or

(41:23):
physical dude or like try to be a badass or
any of that kind of shit, but I was pissed off.
So it's very uncharacteristic of me, because I'm usually this guy.
I said, we are leaving tomorrow morning at eight am,
and if you are not in the fucking RV at
eight am, I am coming in your room with a
cup of water in your face. And there's nobody in

(41:46):
this van that can beat my ass. So you are
getting up, And I mean I had to threaten them
just to get in the vent, to get back in
the RVV and go back to sleep, not drive it.

Speaker 7 (41:57):
Yeah yeah, right, just get in it.

Speaker 6 (41:59):
So we walk out of the room, out of the
hotel room, get in the RV, lay back down and
go back to sleep. So I mean, so when I
started working with Train, these guys were so punctual. I
just couldn't It was I was like, shit, I got
to step my game up. And you know, they these
guys were were fucking crazy workaholics because they knew this

(42:24):
was their one shot and they were going to work
as hard as they could, whereas the Whiskeytown people had
a very delusional sense of entitlement. You know, like one
time Phil and Ryan decided to have a band meeting
with me, and they said, listen, it's not cool that

(42:45):
you're waking this up like two in the afternoon to
do a radio station interview. I said, listen, I'm sure
you didn't past geography, but there was four time zones
in the United States, right, So when it's two o'clock
in the afternoon here in Oregon, it's three four or
five o'clock in New York, and mister rock critic is

(43:08):
sitting at his desk, he wants to go home and
eat dinner and see his kids. He's not gonna sit
here and wait a few more hours to talk to you,
especially considering you've only sold about forty thousand records. You
need him way more than he needs you. Right, And
then Phil said to me, well, you know, if they

(43:29):
want to talk to us, they can talk to us
on our time when it's convenient for us. And I said, you, dude,
you haven't sold any records. You really need these interviews.
He goes, the label didn't sign us to sell records.
They signed us because they needed a cool band on
their roster. And I told the president of the record
company that and me spick coffee out of his nose.

(43:50):
But so, these guys were very entitled. Unfortunately, I'm just
being honest. They can be mad at me if they want,
but they they know it's true, and I know it's true.
And the Train guys were one hundred and eighty degree
is different. They were very insanely hard working, insane. You know,
if I said, if we got back to the hotel

(44:10):
at two in the morning, and I said, you have
to be in the lobby at five thirty, they were there.

Speaker 7 (44:14):
They didn't care a cup of coffee at five thirty.

Speaker 6 (44:17):
Or their singer, the singer of that band. You know,
a lot of times people dis miss Train as secretary
Rock or think, you know, oh, it's that Hay Soul
Sister band or whatever. But there was no harder working
band than they were during their early days and during
the days around Hay Soul's sister. And he could sing.

(44:37):
The singer Pat had perhaps one of the most powerful
voices of anybody in modern music. And I say that,
I mean someone's listening to say that, Oh yeah, right, No,
I'm saying that understanding the full ramifications of what I'm saying.
This guy could sleep two hours and wake up at
seven in the morning and sing the national anthem. He

(45:00):
could sing, and he could sing. When he's singing, he's
singing like Robert Plant or Steven Tyler, like full on,
just just he has an amazing voice that has so
much power. And we did seventeen shows in fifteen days
in six time zones once. Wow, we did five shows,

(45:21):
five or six shows in twenty six hours once with
no sleep to do it. And he never fucking bitched.
None of them ever bitched. They never complained. They were
happy to do it because they knew this is our record,
this is our chance. We're gonna if this is really
gonna happen, we're gonna have to do the work. These

(45:43):
guys came from a lot of them came from small
towns that bread, that kind of work ethic in them.
That was from Erie, Pennsylvania of all places. And these
guys just worked really, really, really hard, and there was
never any one out of entitlement or feeling like something

(46:03):
was owed to them. And I know, like I said,
I know, people that don't know them, or benign fans
that hear them on the radio might think it might
be dismissive of them, but they were. They also did
the work. I mean in two thousand and ten when
we were we you know, Train had three albums in
a row that went platinum, and it was one after

(46:27):
the other. The first one went platinum, the second one
had dropped to Jupiter on it, which was the essentially
one of the most played songs of the two thousands
of the entire decade. It was the first or second
most played song of that decade.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
You know.

Speaker 6 (46:40):
The third album had Calling All Angels and three or
four other singles, really three or four more singles. It
spawned the fourth album Tanked, and I believe they picked
the wrong single and it was the wrong time. The
song was kind of a wintery kind of song, and
they put it out in summer and it just didn't mesh.
But the singer put a solo album out that tanked,

(47:01):
and this was kind of it, you know. So when
the hayes Ol Sister record came out, you know, we
had to go back into work mode and we killed
ourselves to earn all that back. You know, in March
of March. From March till Christmas of twenty ten, I

(47:22):
was never home for one week straight. Wow. We went
to Europe twice, we went to Japan, Australia twice, we
went to South America. We did the US over and
over and over again. We played every radio station at
six o'clock in the morning. We just did all the work.
And of course the song, you know, hayes Ol Sister
wasn't a hit. It was like a phenomenon almost, you know.

(47:45):
It was just it was the biggest song on the planet.
I mean, it was the number one or number two
played song on the radio in Argentina for six months,
like it was one of the most played songs on
the radio in Australia. Ever. It's just there's so many
weird statistics, like it was huge in Italy, where no
one you know a lot of countries that don't speak English.

(48:06):
The song was huge, and we just did the work
and grounded out and grounded out, you know. So, I
mean that was almost like a two and a half
year album cycle.

Speaker 7 (48:18):
How long were you with them?

Speaker 6 (48:20):
I was with them from ninety nine. I quit in
twoenty twelve. My daughter was little and I just wasn't
seeing her very much, and it was just it was
time for a break and we had just we had
really gone full blast for many, many years. So I
stopped doing that and I took a job at a
management company and I moved here.

Speaker 7 (48:40):
Okay, was Brandon Bush and the band when you were there?
Was that after you?

Speaker 6 (48:44):
Of course? Yeah? He he was Brandon started. What happened
was there were there were five dudes in the band
in the beginning, and the second guitar player, Rob Hotchkis,
quit the band during the recording of the third album,

(49:04):
so the band decided they needed a piano player and
a second guitar player. So they decided, well, let's it's
because Rob Hotchkins would play Drops the Jupiter with like
two fingers, you know, just barely get through it. He
was a guitar player. He wasn't a piano player, so
they were like, let's get a real piano player and
let's get a real guitar player and have an extra. Dude,
that's fine. So they did that, and inevitably that's where

(49:26):
Brandon came from, and I became still remained great friends
with him today, love him to death. And he is
just he is just He's just one of the best
people I know. You know, he's I'm a very good,
good person.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
I'm friends with his brother, Christian, but right, and I know, yeah,
Brandon is that guy's a wizard.

Speaker 6 (49:51):
That that is a musician, musicians, a great person to
be friends with and a great person. If you have
to live on a tour bus with him, he's a
He's just a good a dude, you know. So we
had a lot of fun. I mean, I spoke to
him a few weeks. I'm trying to catch up with
him next time he comes here. I mean, so I
remain friends with him to this day.

Speaker 7 (50:10):
Nice, I'd say, Christian next week, I was.

Speaker 6 (50:15):
He's good.

Speaker 7 (50:15):
He does. He was in Billy Pilgrim back in the day.
And do you remember the band Billy Pilgrim.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
He was, of course, yeah, yeah, they so they're coming
up to play in Chicago, and I'm good buddies with
Andrew as well, so I'm going down there to see them.

Speaker 6 (50:29):
You know, it was funny is we had We were
on the bus, we were doing this. We were playing
shows in two thousand and six on the train. For me,
it's you tour, and the album wasn't selling.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
You know.

Speaker 6 (50:43):
It was kind of like we'd had three in a
row and then we're on tour. The shows were really good,
and the shows were being well attended, but the but
the album just wasn't connecting or not doors selling. Like
I said, I think they picked the wrong single, but whatever.
So we were bus and we were doing this trick
where we were hubbing. We were staying in New York

(51:03):
City and each day I would have the bus come
in and get us, and we drive to cities that
were within two or three hours of New York and
we just go back to New York. And Christian Bush
was on the bus with us one day because he
was in New York doing some sugar Land stuff and
I guess he had a day off, and Brandon and
the rest of us like, hey, man, come with us.
We're playing in wherever, you know, a couple hours away.

(51:27):
So he rides with us and we're right, we're all
sitting in the front lounge and everybody's worried about the
new Train album isn't selling, you know, like what are
we going to do? What are we going to do?
Kind of thing, trying to brainstorm, and Christian said, get
a cowboy hat. That's what I did.

Speaker 7 (51:43):
I could hear him saying that. That's amazing.

Speaker 6 (51:45):
Yeah, it was so funny because Billy Pilgrim has nothing
to do with with Nashville country music, and the band
that Jennifer was in prior to sugar Land has nothing
to do with country music. Which it's fine. I'm glad
they're successful. I've met them there. I hope the best
for any of them. But uh, but they did not
come from this world, you know, of country music. They were.

(52:07):
They were doing more rock and roll or type things.
So Billy Pilgrim has no connection to sugar Land at all,
you know, but they were more like one of those
I wish I was in R E M kind of bands,
you know.

Speaker 7 (52:24):
Yeah, no, you could definitely get that. Definitely the same
area as well.

Speaker 6 (52:27):
Yeah, yeah, you're from Georgia, of course you're some college
kid in Georgia. Of course you're gonna worship RM. But
but yeah, So, I mean I did the train thing,
and then I worked at a management company here and
that was fine, and but the management company kind of
went under, and so I went back to tour managing
and I tour mated Cia for a while and uh,

(52:50):
and that was really great. Did SNL with her and
some stuff like that. She was awesome, And then uh,
I did some a bunch of dates with Third Eye Blind,
which was also fun. Even though I know sometimes you know,
Steven has a bad reputation for being like I got
along with him just fine. But I also, you know,
I'm the same age as him, and I was like, dude,
you know, it's that's not going to work on me.

(53:12):
But I have a lot of respect for him and
like him as a friend. He's a good dude.

Speaker 7 (53:17):
And my first record is actually really yeah. I mean,
here's a lot of good songs on that thing.

Speaker 6 (53:22):
I mean, if you think about it, I mean that
first record had like sold like seven million copies. I mean,
that first record is gigantic. You know. I just think
they were just kind of they were the people in
their camp were very mean to people back in the day,
and you just you have to remember that the same
guy that gave me the money at the last Weezer

(53:45):
show in Kansas City is the same guy who paid
Anti Scene, my punk rock band, five hundred bucks to
play the Outhouse in Lawrence, Kansas in nineteen ninety four,
you know what I mean, thirty years ago. So it's
we're all the same. You know, if you're a dick
to a bunch of people twenty years ago, those twenty
years later, those people probably have better jobs today, so

(54:07):
you should have been nice to him. That's Dave Grohl,
you know.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Well, I remember reading a Thing is Right when Butch
Walker went solo and he was doing like a Q
and A on his website this is around left to
self centered. Somebody asked him, you know, if there's anybody
in the industry that he didn't like, and all he
said was mister Jenkins.

Speaker 6 (54:25):
And I was like, I hate that because the Stephen
I know is the older, mellow one. You know, I
heard the stories back.

Speaker 7 (54:33):
In twenty some years ago.

Speaker 6 (54:35):
He's probably yeah, Well, it's just you know, because when
I was sitting in the office collecting the money for
the train show. The promoter on the other side of
the desk is the guy that had to deal with
them last week, you know what I mean. So I
heard all the stories. We all know the stories because
the people I'm sitting there talking to every night or
telling me what happened, you know. And yeah, I think

(54:59):
that would probably be a little bit bigger today had
they not done that, because you know, I think there's
a certain they should be. I still think they should
be a little bit bigger today than they are. But
but you know, he can still sing, and they go
out and play all the hits and everybody still loves them.

Speaker 7 (55:15):
So it makes it not original guitar player.

Speaker 6 (55:18):
You know.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
It seemed like he was a major cog in the thing.
He wrote all the song Yeah, and I think that
was I don't know how that related. You know, bands
have weird dynamics. But I'm like, I started, yeah it
was X side blind or something.

Speaker 6 (55:32):
It was side blind. That's not oh yeah, well, I
mean it's his.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
It was his.

Speaker 6 (55:39):
But he wrote all those songs, you know, like you said,
you forget. You listen to that first record of Theirs
and it's got like five or six hits on it.

Speaker 7 (55:48):
Well, those guitar hooks like that's I actually.

Speaker 6 (55:50):
Got offered to tour manage them in ninety eight, and
I didn't like semi charmed life. I wasn't a fan
of that song, and.

Speaker 7 (55:56):
So it's one of the lesser songs on the album. Actually,
I think I could see why it was a single.

Speaker 6 (56:02):
Yeah, a single, but yeah, and if you listen to
the lyrics, it's wildly x rated. You know, the old
kids are singing this song and it's like pearl necklaces,
easy top. You know, all these old kids singing that song,
and you're like, do you know what the song's about?

Speaker 7 (56:16):
A catchy song about sex and mess.

Speaker 6 (56:19):
Right exactly, that's what it is.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (56:24):
And then you know, while I was out with Third
Eye Blind, I was at a venue in San Francisco
and I got a call from a buddy of mine
and he goes, hey, do you want a tour managed Wheezer?
And I said, of course, I fucking want a tour manage.
And uh, you know, I bought the blue record when
I was, you know, driving around Charlotte playing an anti
sceam delivering pizzas. So I started with them about eight

(56:48):
over eight years ago, probably pushing nine and and they're
great and we all get along and we're busy and
it's all good.

Speaker 7 (56:55):
So we have a great They tour a lot. How
many dates do they do? I mean it's full. No,
we do.

Speaker 6 (57:02):
We go out a lot, but it's not relentless. You know,
we're not out there. You know, it's just it's it's
I wouldn't call it a part time job, but but
we're busy and they and also remember they continue to
make albums, you know, so they're constantly recording and constantly.
I mean Weezer's had three songs on the radio in
the last couple of years. You know, they've had modern

(57:24):
hits that have been on the radio recently. So yeah,
I mean it's it's a good thing. And you know,
I'm getting older, we'll see.

Speaker 7 (57:31):
Did you ever meet Monty Lee Wilkes by chance?

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Do you know him?

Speaker 1 (57:35):
No?

Speaker 6 (57:35):
I don't think so.

Speaker 7 (57:37):
Okay, he was. He passed away a handful of years ago.
But he was a Minneapolis guy.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
I think he's from Dluth originally, right, but he he
ran sound for the replacements and he had right like
his his resume was pretty pretty amazing. But one of
his first his first tour managing gig. He's the same
sort of a thing where he wasn't really a tour manager,
but somebody called him and said, hey, there's this new

(58:02):
band and then need a tour manager to bring him around.

Speaker 7 (58:04):
He's like, I'm not like you can do it. Come on,
it was Nirvana, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
So he was tour managing the never Mind, you know,
tour of the US before it exploded. And one night
he was telling me, this is this story cracks me
up to this day. I remember him telling me. He's like,
we were in a hotel and he goes, it was hell.
It was absolute hell. I couldn't get them to do anything.
And he goes, one, they kept destroying hotel rooms, kept
getting phone calls from the hotel. You're paying for damages,

(58:32):
and they're all pissed. So finally, after they destroyed another one,
I sat them down and I said, you know, Kurt's
on the bed and Dave's over here, and I said
we're having a conversation. And he's kind of like what
you were talking about where you're like, you're getting in
the damn van or important one right.

Speaker 7 (58:47):
And he goes, this has to stop. I have to
deal with this, This is not how you need to act.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
And he's just trying to like talk some sense to them,
and he said, all of a sudden, Kurt started laughing,
and he goes, what's so funny, And he goes, well,
we were gonna throw the TV out of the window,
but we couldn't get the window to open all the way.
And then Monty told him a real punk rock band
would have threw the TV through the fucking window.

Speaker 6 (59:11):
Right yeah, he heard. It's you know, and of course everybody,
we all as kids, you know, we all read those
rock and roll books and those stones through the TV
out the window of the riot house in Melwa and
all that stuff, and you want to do some of
that stuff. I get it. I mean, it's just but
you know, it's just a bit of a different time now.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
So you know, And and much to what you were
saying earlier, I think we forget because Nirvana has become
this thing.

Speaker 7 (59:42):
Right yeah, that they were.

Speaker 6 (59:44):
Kids, everybody was everybody, you know, everybody that you you know,
that's the crazy thing about this whole rock and roll
thing is that.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
You know.

Speaker 6 (59:57):
It's it's you're in it. Like I would say, I'm
in it, like I'm a part of it because I
made records with my band. So there's people I look too.
But then there's kids that look to my old band,
you know what I mean. And it's weird being on
both sides of the fence like that. And I think,
you know, you forget that Giddy Lee was twenty six
years old or twenty eight years old when they made

(01:00:19):
Moving Pictures and he had made six albums before that
or more. You forget that Angus Young was fucking twenty
six when he recorded Back in Black and had made
all those records before that. A lot of these guys,
a lot of these people we looked to, they were kids,
you know, the lot the guys in the band Live

(01:00:39):
went right from high school right into being famous. Those
guys were super young, like.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
They were all high school classmates, weren't they.

Speaker 6 (01:00:48):
Yeah, they had to pay their parents, had to drive
them to shows when they first started. So but then
here's a crazy statistic. The singer of def Leppard is
only about four years older than the singer of Third
Eye Blind. Now that doesn't make any sense, but it's
because it has to do with when you started. The

(01:01:10):
Third Eyeline singer was nearly thirty when they got big,
or in his early thirties when they when they got big.
The singer of Beards started when he was seventeen.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Pat from Train was a little older as well, wasn't
he If I'm not mistake, Yeah, he's he's he's younger.

Speaker 6 (01:01:25):
He's the Stephen is the same age as me. Pat
is five years younger than me. He's a bit younger
when I when when Train hit, uh, he was probably
thirty and he is probably thirty. Yeah, so the old
had slugged it out for years, you know, so you

(01:01:46):
know the guy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:01:47):
The whole story about that is that Pat was in
Eerie in a cover band, in playing playing shows as
a kid, and Cher played a show at the Eerie
Civic Center and when the share show was over, her
band went out, you know, they wanted to go out
and have some drinks or whatever before they went to

(01:02:08):
get on the bus and go somewhere, go to whatever
the next city was. So they all went to a
bar and Pat's cover band was in there playing, right,
So all share band guys see Pat and playing in
his cover band and one of the dudes, I think
it was Scher's guitar player, but it was somebody in
her band went up to him after they finished took

(01:02:30):
a break or whatever and said, dude, you are a
real fucking singer. You know, you really could do this.
You're a like I just listened to you saying you
are a fucking world class singer. You should you should
fucking move to LA or whatever and make a go
at it because you have the voice to do this.
And that guy that's really what kind of gave him

(01:02:52):
the final push to make the move, you know. So
it's pretty amazing how you know, one person giving you
a little bit of advice, one person giving you a
little bit of encouragement can make that big of a difference.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:03:06):
It's pretty crazy. So, which ironically amazing segue here. I'm
currently working on a second book, and that's kind of
what this second book. It's still in the oven and
it's still cooking, you know what I mean. So I'm
not it's probably still years away from coming out. But

(01:03:27):
that kind of stuff I've always found very intriguing, you know,
because sometimes sometimes you know, there's a period of time
in your life where you are trying to get your
shit together, and every rock band does this every but
it has nothing to do with rock music. It has
to do with everybody. Everyone does this. You try to
get your shit together, you get it going when you
figure out what you want to do. But then when

(01:03:48):
you get older, you want to help the kid who
reminds you of you. Go watch that movie Wall Street
and watch the end of the movie where Gordon Getko's
yelling at Bud Fox in Central Park and he said,
I looked at you, and I saw myself. You see
what I mean, Because in a way, when you're older,

(01:04:08):
you want to help. You want to you want to
right the wrong of the injustice of the help you
didn't get. So you see the kid with the gleam
in his eye that you recognize, and you think he's gonna,
he's gonna. He's you thirty years ago. You want to
try to help him. You see what I mean. So
I think that's kind of the premise of what my

(01:04:30):
book hopefully will turn into. We'll see very very I
worked at this band years ago, and they didn't want
to sit with each other on the plane, right, So
there were there were like twelve or whatever the number
of us was that traveled, I can't remember, but there
were four of us in the front of the plane.

(01:04:50):
Three guys in the band in me that were sitting
in business class. Well, the one guy didn't want to
sit with the one, the other guy didn't want to
sit with the one, and I didn't want to sit
with any of them because I want to fuck. I
live with them twenty four hours a day, so I
would when I booked the flights, I would put one here,
one here, one here, one here, So we're the four
of us are separating. You all get a break, that

(01:05:11):
we all get a break from each other, which was
smart thinking, I think hard it is so anyway, about
five percent of so I was always sitting in a
window seat with some empty aisle and some stranger was
going to sit next to me. And about five percent
of the time some beautiful woman would sit next to me,
but that was very uncommon. Most of the time it

(01:05:31):
was like a gray haired sixty year old dude attorney
or something, right, and you know, just to pass the
time on the flights. I always ended up talking to
those people, and I learned an awful lot because you know,
if you're sixty years old and you're buying yourself a
fifteen hundred dollars business class seat, you must be doing

(01:05:52):
something right. And I learned a lot from talking to
those people. But I also learned that parent traits of
successful people are very similar. It has nothing to do
with rock and roll. Some of the you know, some
of the hardest working people I know are singers in
rock bands and songwriters in rock bands. Some of these

(01:06:12):
people work relentlessly, are just really grinded out. They're not
laying by the pool with you know, a bunch of
bikini models and you know, doing whatever like you might
see on some MTV video. These these people, a lot
of these people work really really hard. So that is
sort of in that sort of weird ball of That's

(01:06:37):
what I'm hoping that book turns into. We'll see it's
still many many years away, because it's still cool. It
would take a while to get a book deal. I
have a literary agent from the last book, but I
mean I would have to get a book deal and
go through the whole process, and it takes years. You know,
it took two years to get a book deal and
write my book, and then it took almost three years

(01:06:59):
from the day that I decided to start doing it
to the day that I opened the box of books.
In my living room and look here it is, you know,
which is exciting. But so it's a long time away.
But I'm not promoting it in any way because I
don't even know what it's going to be. It's going
to be something like that. I hope if I don't change,
we'll see.

Speaker 7 (01:07:19):
Oh, I appreciate you jumping on.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
I do want to ask you one more question before
we end, because you've you know, you've got you've got
a long, long history.

Speaker 7 (01:07:28):
And you've obviously seen a lot on the road and
all that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
But if you're looking back, because you're a big music guy,
is there one moment that sticks out to you that
was magic? Like?

Speaker 7 (01:07:38):
Wow? I yeah, I'm sure. What's what's the first one
that comes to mind where you're like that was a
magical moment?

Speaker 6 (01:07:47):
One of them would be seeing the Marvelous Three in
fucking Atlanta a couple months ago. That was fucking absolute
magic and like I said, probably one of the greatest
shows I ever saw in my whole life. I saw
Johnny Cash play at Spirit Square in Charlotte, which is
an old church with three hundred people in it. That
was pretty magical. I was standing at front of house

(01:08:08):
with train's old manager who had the guy that basically
pulled them from the bar and took them from the
garage to the Grammys, And I stood in front of
house with him while they played Drops of Jupiter to
a sold out audience in two thousand and one, and
the entire audience was singing along and we looked around like,
holy shit, it's happening. I watched Ryan Adams one time

(01:08:32):
reach in his pocket and pull a napkin out at
one o'clock in the morning, and he said to me, hey, man,
I wrote a new song. Do you want to hear it?
I said, yeah, sure. He pulled, unfolded the napkin, put
it on table, picked up an acoustics, started playing it
and played the most magical song you ever heard in
your whole life. And I said he finished it. I

(01:08:52):
was like, goddamn, dude, that was fucking amazing. When did
you write that song? And he's like, I wrote that
song at the bar fifteen minutes ago. And I said,
what guitar did you play? And he said, I played
the guitar in this side of my head while I
sang the song on this side of my head. Nobody
does Bob Dylan doesn't do that.

Speaker 7 (01:09:11):
Do you remember what song it was?

Speaker 6 (01:09:12):
No, No, he probably got thrown away. It probably got wasted.
That was the problem is that if he went to
the studio with ten songs, he would get to the
studio the next day be so excited about being there
he'd write ten more songs, and those songs were forgotten.

Speaker 7 (01:09:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:09:26):
One time, one time, he me and him were we
were It was early January ninety eight. We were practicing.
He wanted to go practice. No one wanted to practice,
and he goes, man, let's get the drummer and me
and you will practice. You play bass. Okay, cool. So
the three of us go over there and we start playing.
We start making up these stupid songs, and well, I go, man, dude,

(01:09:50):
our band is called cat Box. I can see the
t shirt with the the cat turd and the cat
Box done. Cat Box. Oh, we just started a new band. Okay, great.
So Ryan's singing, playing guitar, I'm playing base I think
Skillett was playing drums. So we write like a bunch
of stupid songs, drank a few beers, smoke some SIGs,
and finally I go, hey, man, Catbox needs a hit.

(01:10:10):
He goes, what do you mean. I said, you know,
it's nineteen ninety eight. We need an alternative rock radio hit,
kind of like the Stone Temple pilots are the Foo Fighters.
And he said, what is the name of the song,
And I said, okay, the song is called I Don't
Want to Be Like You. I Don't want to be
like you. He put his finger to his forehead for one, two,

(01:10:33):
three four seconds, he goes, I got it. He played
the song all the way through first take. It needed
to be arranged, so I rearranged it in kind of
verse chorus, verse chorus anthem like rock and roll, and
I kind of format like rock anthem format. Played it
the second time. I swear on my sixteen year old

(01:10:55):
daughter's big toe it's that song is as good as
better than Monkey Wrench by the Foo Fighters. And that
song is and it's lost in the wind. I could
maybe play the chorus of it if I tried really
hard to try to remember it, but it's lost and

(01:11:16):
he was just he just shot out so many songs
one after another. You could say, right, a Beyonce song,
but it needs to have Neil Young singing it, and
he would go, h and there it is. I mean,
if he just moved here and wrote songs for the
entire country music business, he could be a trillionaire. I bet,
I bet that's probably the best way to make the

(01:11:38):
most amount of money for sure.

Speaker 7 (01:11:40):
So basically what you're saying he needs to get a
cowboy hat.

Speaker 6 (01:11:44):
He should. I think it's too late for the cowboy
hat maybe, but or me needs to get a different
name and a cowboy hate anonymously, maybe Bobby Willson or
there's plenty of stupid country names you could think of, right.

Speaker 7 (01:12:00):
Well, he could probably writing under a pseudonym.

Speaker 6 (01:12:05):
Yeah, probably, Yeah, yeah, all right.

Speaker 7 (01:12:10):
Yeah, thanks for coming on. I know we've actually talked
about doing this, even a couple of years ago, and.

Speaker 6 (01:12:15):
Yeah, you know, it's just you never I hate. I mean,
I don't book haircut appointments because I don't know when
I'm want to be home, you know what I mean.
I can't like my I go to Dennis and they're like, oh,
you want to book your six month appointment. I don't
know where I'm going to be six months from now. Yeah,
is part of the part of the hassle of the job,

(01:12:35):
I guess.

Speaker 4 (01:12:39):
Thank you for listening to the figure Eights podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
Appreciate you tuning in listening to my conversation with Thomas o'keef,
musician tour manager. It's kind of fun to get a
different perspective on what it's like on the road trying
to keep musicians from.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
Getting in their own way, especially certain ones.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
Anyway, thank you again. I figured I would end this
episode with we'd mentioned on here. Caitlin carry actually played
violin on one of the High on Stress tracks on
our album Living as a Dying Art.

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
So enjoy This is High on Stress with Caitlin Carrey
on biob a full minute ride.

Speaker 8 (01:13:16):
I think he's taking the end of the trash, depending
on the day he's had the trash.

Speaker 5 (01:13:33):
If it's not how you want it is, yes, all
I could see it's.

Speaker 4 (01:13:49):
It's no matter, believe.

Speaker 6 (01:13:53):
Less.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Pulled me out of my head, pull me out of.

Speaker 5 (01:14:05):
My head, pulled me out of my mind.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
And I feel dumb.

Speaker 5 (01:14:35):
Never expected that much, No God, more than I thought
a cook.

Speaker 4 (01:14:49):
Now satisfied.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
What I'm cheat.

Speaker 4 (01:14:57):
It makes no sense to me.

Speaker 5 (01:15:01):
It's so audiblylie. If it's not talk you want it me,
I can't.

Speaker 3 (01:15:18):
All I can see it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
Is forgive me.

Speaker 5 (01:15:25):
It's nobody believed less a.

Speaker 7 (01:15:32):
Me.

Speaker 4 (01:15:35):
Wrot me out of my head, Throw me out of
my head, Put

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
Me out of my mind.