#2489 - Ryan Bingham

The Joe Rogan experience. >> Join my day Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. [MUSIC] >> What's happened to the band? Did you see it?

>> Yeah, see it. >> I look to the microphone, sir. >> No, right? >> Um, you were fucking great at that McConaughey thing last year. I really enjoyed that.

That was my first time seeing you perform live. It was really great. >> That was very cool. >> You're so relaxed up there, man. So there was like, you brought everybody into a nice,

like, comfortable, chill vibe, it was cool. >> I'm glad you guys felt that way sometimes.

“It takes me a minute to get into the groove, you know?”

>> Yeah, but it felt like that, you know? It felt like you were in it, like it brought the whole crowd into it too. That event that he does, the two events, the one, the singer songwriter one, and then the other one with the auction and everything. >> They're so cool, such good events.

>> Yeah, they're good people too, you know? >> Yeah, it's a really grown to just appreciate the community around here and Austin and the Hill Country area and all of that stuff. I definitely wouldn't have the career, I don't think, but it wouldn't have been for the community around here

that this support and songwriters and music and the way that they do,

it's pretty incredible, you know?

When they get behind anything, it's just like it just feels so good to see that many people come together and have that support. >> It's a really good place, man. Austin has a really good community. >> It really is.

>> It's a very positive place in a lot of ways. >> Yeah. >> I mean, nothing's perfect, there's no perfect places, but it's really good. >> Yeah. >> I like it so much better than when I was living in California. >> It feels like real people.

>> I miss it, man, I mean, I'm in the process and moving back to Texas as well. >> Where are you at right now? >> Outside of Dallas, Texas helped by Tyler. >> Okay. >> I've been in to paying Ukrainian in LA for years. >> Oh, Jesus, you know, so I've been in the middle of it and.

>> Through that Hollywood thing. >> Every time I get across this state line, it's just like that weight comes off and you're saying, "Oh, man, I'm home," you know, so.

“>> Did you have the coolest fucking character on Yellowstone?”

>> It must be so fun to play. >> It was so much fun, man.

I had the, I laugh, I always talk about it.

I felt like I had one of the easiest jobs there, you know, it's because my, the character was kind of a smaller role. You know, most of the time, I'd work like one or two days a week. And then the rest of the time, I'd just be like fly fishing and get lost. >> Oh, really?

>> And just disappear out there, yeah, it was awesome. >> God, my 10 is awesome. That show made so many people move out there, though. >> I know. >> You're gonna take your license plate off your car before you go.

>> Right, you better not have a California plate. They will fucking write things on your hood, run you off the road. >> Yeah, they get upset. It's very interesting. It's very proud to be from Montana and you want to keep it to themselves.

Like, let it go, motherfucker, we're all Americans, all right?

“>> If you got a good spot, you should be happy that people from California”

figure it out, yeah, don't be a dick. Like you're American, but you're not, it's not the United States of Montana. Shut the fuck up. >> I guess it's kind of anywhere, right, you know? >> Not that much here, but here's pretty inviting.

I've never had that experience here, not really.

>> Texas is a pretty fat friendly place, yeah, and there's so many different walks of life that have been here for so long, you know, I think, yeah, yeah, and Montana and stuff, man, if you're tough enough to survive those winners and stake a claim up there back in the day you had to fight for it and they're still fighting for it now, you know?

>> That does make sense. I mean, that's also one of the things that's highlighted by the whole series. All the different yells don't series, the older ones with Harrison Ford and, you know, they really do explain, and a lot, I mean, it's kind of a cool chunk of history to see, like how this all got started, how the kind of people that had to survive

out there when, you know, you know, oh, yeah, there's a fireplace, yeah, that's it. You got a fireplace. >> You still love all those mountain-end stories, you know, Jim Bridger and all that stuff. >> Yeah. >> It's just like, man, and there is something.

You get up there in those mountains, they get into your bones, they get into your blood, and it's a different thing than I, it's a spiritual place. >> It is, and it's also, it's like the most potent art, like it's nature's art, and you don't think of it as art, but God, it's so beautiful, it's like stunt, like sometimes in your up there, you just have to stop and look like God, this is gorgeous.

>> And it's so overwhelming if you have it there. >> It has a feeling, it gives you a feeling, there's like, it's almost like a drug that hits you because of the beauty of it all, like you take it in with the blue sky, you see the clouds in the mountain, and maybe there's a lake below you in the canyon, you're like, God, this is gorgeous, it's like you feel it, and you're DNA, man, it's like your body

knows like this is a fertile, beautiful place that's filled with life, and this should excite you, so all your natural human reward instincts are all like this is the place

>> Yeah. >> Like look at the sky, look at the lake, look at the mountains, this is fertile, this is like life-giving. >> Yeah, yeah, several years ago, I went to a guide school up there, like a hot-and-gown guy and it was a whole pack squad, part of it was a group cowboy and ranching, but I've

never really been up there in those mountains like that, and my dad had always fantasized

about that, we were talking, one day we were going to go in like a pack trip up in Montana, and you know, we'd watch all those moves like lonesome dove and all of that stuff, so it was always just kind of a daydream, and years ago I was just kind of overwhelmed with music stuff, and all that didn't know what I was going to do, and I ended up, I just wanted to go up there for a trip, you know, maybe going to pack trip, and I started looking up

places, and I found this place called Royal Time Outfitters, and they're like, yeah, you know, we'd come up, you can take, take you on a pack trip, but we also have like this six-week school, you know, that you can train to be a guy, this all meal pack, and all kinds of stuff, you know, and so I was like man, I'm going to sign up for that, you know, and it was life-changing, it was only six of us in the class, and you know, spent weeks

back in the backcountry pack of mules and horses, and oh wow, we just tie a rope between

two trees with a tarp for sleeping at night and I always post up a couple of guys to watch

over the horses at night, and I remember one morning I woke up and it was in June, you know, but we were way back in there, and I woke up and the snow was coming down, and I just kind of raised my head up and I was looking down at the horses and the snow was just falling down on their backs, and there was that moment and it was like, I don't know if I'm ever

“going back, you know, it was like this is right where, this is where I need to be, right?”

It was tough to come back to a civilization after that. I think we're doing something with ourselves, to ourselves, with civilization that we can't really fully appreciate because we're wrapped in it, and it's not until you get to nature, we're all that weight, just gets lifted off of you, and he's feel more normal, and you're like, oh, this is where people are supposed to be.

Yeah, you know, no phones, there's nothing, no distractions, and it's just like, all your senses heightened, your eyesight, your hearing, your sense of smell, like all of that stuff, and, you know, I remember going into it, you know, I didn't know what to expect really, I've done some camping, and things like that, and grew up ranching, and all that, but this was a way different deal, and I remember I just had this, like, backpack full of gear, you know,

by the time I got out of there, I just felt like all I needed was a pair of scissors, and some way to start some fire, you know, so that is. Yeah, I followed this one dude, I'm trying to remember his name, Clay.

“Let me put it up, because I really enjoy his videos, but this dude, he lives, I think,”

believe he lives in Alaska, but he does a lot of trips in America, like all over America, in the lower 48, and he goes and, like, lives by himself in some kind of harsh environment, like he's done it in the swamps, clay-a's, that's it, does he like take his kid out there, he's with me, he has, he's taken his dog, but a lot of times he just goes entirely by himself, and they're very, very interesting, like he starts his own fire, he'll figure

out how to get food, he figures out how to purify water, he's taken salt water, and made his own thing that kind of distills it into fresh water, and removes the salt, like very slowly by using a piece of bamboo and fire, and boiling the water in the bamboo, so they're like the water evaporates, and then drips down, and it doesn't have salted apparently, I love that stuff, I love it, and just I have those skills, just to know how to

do it, like whether you'll ever need it or not, just to know how to do that, it's just so cool, I remember, in that guy's, because there's a lot of different parts to it, which was so cool, it was like, we did a whole week of like, backcountry, like, wilderness

first aid, you know, you had to have him here and come in and teach us all this stuff,

and then it was a whole week of just like leather work, there's a whole week of shoe and horses, there was a fly at this thing, an antimalde, and all these kind of little skills, but one thing that really stuck was me with a fire building, kind of drill, when we started, when it was kind of right, when we first got there, and it was pretty wet, and it had been snowing, and there's only six of us, you know, and we're guys from kind

of all over the country, and I grew up in New Mexico and West Texas, where it's pretty dry, you know, and you kind of build a fire, you can kind of just take some little small twigs and get a little fire going, you know, and so because all right, you've got two minutes

“to build a fire and you need to have, you know, like a flame to be three or four feet high,”

and man, I'm running around grabbing like little sticks and twigs, and I'm just, and we have a lighter too, you know, I'm just struggling, and it's just smoking, and the can't get

to this big dead pine tree, and this breaks off the biggest branch of dead pine needles and takes his lighter, and just whore, and then like five seconds, as this massive fire

“going, I was like, okay, that's how you do that, you know, and it was so just a little”

of things, you know, to have that knowledge, you know, and part of it was, you know, he was explaining to us, and struck trees, like, yeah, you know, if you're out here with your guidance somebody that's hunting, maybe he's an elderly guy, or somebody gets hurt, and you get caught back in the mountains, and it's snowing, it's like he better get a fire going to keep

a warm real quick, you know, so it was always a, you know, a reason and a purpose behind

it, which was really cool, and I'll never, other than some of the things I'll never forget. Did they teach how to start fires with like a piece of metal, and like flint, like, you know, what's the striking rod, like, yeah, we did do that stuff, and with like the pitchwood from some old pine trees, you know, you can find that pitchwood, and we did some bone wood drill, so if not a whole lot of that. That fucking shit is hard. It was, that's hard. So hard.

“I did then the Boy Scouts, and it took like hours to start a fire. You have to fucking”

keep saw, and if you're doing it with your hand, you're going to blow your hands up. Yeah, yeah, better take, but get your technique, yeah, you know, you're going to pop the stick on the top, and the stick that goes all the way, the base thing, and you cut a little hole in the base thing, so that like all the little embers can fall into your kindling, and you got to saw the shit out of the fucker, and imagine trying to do that, you know,

in the snow, or yeah, it's wet on site, man. It's just very, very unlike the, you know, it's really good for kindling, free dose. Really, yeah, it's kind of shocking. Yeah, we were in Alaska, and it was raining all the time, and there was one day where it stopped, I was with my friend Steve Renella took me up there with my friend Brian Cowan, Brian Cowan, and all these guys, so we went up there, and when we got one day, like a 10-hour stretch

where it was not raining, we're like, we got to start a fucking fire, because it was raining every day for like five days in a row, and we couldn't find any deer. It was a nightmare. It was tough hunting. Yeah. So we, this one day, and we were trying to figure out things to let on fire, because everything so can wet, and so we got some pieces of wood from like underneath the bottom of trees and shit and dead trees that were covered by other things,

were kind of sort of a little bit dry, and we used free dose. And free dose, when you light them, man, it's crazy how much oil is in those things. Yeah. They just, and they stay lit for a long time like a candle. Yeah. And so we started like piling little things. We got that fire, I was like, the happiest I've ever been in my life. Oh, I bet. So good work. This cannot, once you get that kind of cold tooth, it's like there's almost, you know, that bad cold wise. It was like in the

50s or 60s. Yeah. It was just the wetness. The wetness was impossible to get away from. I thought once you get in your tent, you'd be dry. You get in your sleeping bag, you'd be dry, but I had to take a piss in the middle of the night and I had to turn on my head lamp in the tent.

And when I did, it was all just missed everywhere. It was like, oh my god, I'm never going to be dry.

“I had to just accept like there's no drying here. How long were you guys back in there?”

About six days. We had to leave, we were supposed to be there for seven. We had to leave on the six day because the storm was coming in and I was like, I could get stuck. Because you can get stuck up there. Yeah. And we're on, uh, I guess Prince Edwards, is that what they're all in this? Yeah. Um, you get stuck up there. And I was like, I got to get back home. I got to work. Did you all get fly in like on a puddle jumper? I was playing. Yeah. I landed in the pond.

Yeah. And you could drink right out of the pond. Like the pond was all rainwater and there's no, it was too high for beavers. So you didn't have to worry about Jardia or anything in the water.

You could just drink right out of the pond. Like this is crazy. Yeah. It's the best. I've never been.

I've been to Alaska only like in the winter on a skiing thing, but I've always wanted to go up there to hunt and fish. And the people are extraordinary. Those are rugged people. Like when I did a a gig with my friend, Ari and Anchorage. And one of the things, and it was weird because you get there. It's 11pm. It's bright out. Like this is weird. One of the things that we talked about after was like, those people were fucking cool. Like, there's, there's something about living up there. Like,

where you could die going outside. Like a good six months out of the year. This fucking bears everywhere. Uh, if you, you look sideways at a moose. It'll stomp you to death in a fucking Walmart parking lot. Yeah. Like, it's better. It's shit together. There's bald eagle everywhere. The, the salmoner is big as your thigh. I mean, the people there are, they work together. They'll, there's like, they're very friendly, but they're very rugged. But they're also like,

If you, if you're fucking car breaks down the side of the road, you could die. Like, someone's not going to let you die. They're going to pull over. I think California, they're like, someone will get them. They just keep driving. So you just lose this sense of community. Yeah, you're not, you're, you're not, that's, that's who you're calling for help in times of need as your neighbor. Exactly. Even if like, the bridge walks is out. So I hear comes your neighbor with the

backhoe and the tractor and like I do it yourself. And that makes a cool friendship when your

“friend helps you out. Or when you help your friend out. That's what I miss about living and”

Texas too. You know, it's just like, this, some of the small things or whatever, it's like, even up at my place and to paying you know, you want to build some fans or whatever. Like, I do, I feel lucky. I've got a couple of really good friends up there neighbors that you know, love to come, you know, work with their hands and get their hands dirty and we'll build stuff. And like, man, Texas, you want to like weld something there. You need something with a tractor.

Some heavy equipment thing, you know, like you're not getting that done in California. Right. It's got to cost you a fortune to, you know, get someone with a skid steer up to your house to help you move some dirt around, you know, but hearing Texas is like, oh, man, just call Frank down the road. He's got his people that have a long tradition of doing stuff. You know, it's like, it's a real place. I grew up like that too. You know, you know, people cutting hay and stuff like that.

Especially in your young, like, man, we would go stack hay for everybody around, you know, it's like, that was the summer job, you know, and it's like, this is go. That makes a strong person out. People that throw hay around, those are strong, mother, like, that term like farmer strength,

that shit's real. Yeah, he bare said, I was always a little guy too. So I had to use and learn how to

use a leverage real quick. The rose bells up on your knee. That's, I ain't going to the last times I did that. I remember is I was going to school in Stevenville, Texas and had a good friend over in Glenrose and it was a middle of July and he's an older man and asked us to come help in stack hay and it's barn and it was, you know, we're stacking it in the barn, you know, so and it's just like your inside the mind. It's just hot. It could have been 110 degrees in there, you know, and we're talking

hundreds of bells at hay. And it was just all we could do. And of course, we're hung over

“in the city. You call it, you were stacking hay and I was like, I think this is my last hay haul in job right now.”

Yeah, those jobs, those are good for letting you know that this is not the life you want. Yeah, like get a good rugged manual labor job. It'll knock some fucking sense of this. I got the guitar, man. I learned pretty quick that the guitar felt a lot better in my hands than that shovel this. Yeah, I know that feeling. I spent one summer doing insulation in an attic. It was all that fine. I had it in all my skin. And you know, you're sweating because it's hot in summer. So it's

getting into your pores. And you're always itchy. You feel like it's on you. All that's also like it's

got terrible to be breathing that shit in. Oh, the worst. Yeah. And I don't even think we were using equipment. I don't think we used any safety equipment. I didn't have a mask or anything. I don't believe so. I think we just installed it. Just on a roll that shit stumped it into the into the rafters. Using paint with lead and then back then the gasoline had led to drinking out of the water hose.

“Right. Oh, yeah. I think it makes a resilient person a drink out of water hose. Yeah, you get”

tougher die. You get extra minerals. Copper on the faucet. Yeah, it's those jobs are really important for a young person to figure out what they don't want to do. Teachers your work ethic. Teachers you like, hey, like this is, you can get some satisfaction out of a hard day's work. And a hard week, like you did it, you put it in, feel good about yourself. You know, it was difficult to do, but don't keep doing that. Yeah, figure out a way out of this. You've got to understand

it. You understand it. You've got to feel for it. You know what hard labor is, but don't ruin your life.

Yeah, I feel real grateful. My granddad was always a real hard worker. And even when I was

12 and 13, you know, in the summers, I spent a lot of time living with them. And he always had a job lined up for me. You know, I was like, yeah, you're going to go over here and we're going to mo sew and sew as long this morning. And we're going to go over here. We're going to send you out to kids and you're going to build some fence this weekend. And I always enjoyed it, though. I enjoyed those guys, I was around and, you know, I'd work all day and then we'd sit around and they drink beer

and afternoon, tell me stories and, you know, and even now like on my own place, you know, it's like, I don't want to be building somebody else's fence, but I'm glad I know how to build my own right now or things like that and how those skills. I still love working around the house and doing little projects and things like that. I meet a lot of younger guys and kids that

right. I want to come over to the house and help us and projects and stuff. And I'm like, oh yeah,

cool, we'll just, you know, I dug those holes and set up a string line and we'll set these posts and they're like, okay, and then after about a half hour I'll look around there, just kind of looking up the ground. I'm like, what do we do here? You know, they're like, I don't have a clue what you want me to do. You know, that's not hilarious. Yeah, that's hilarious. But yeah, it's wild. That's change, man. Kids ain't out there moving lawns and no more, it's for sure. No, well, there's

something about that kind of work like putting in fences and all the stuff that you see the cowboys doing on Yellowstone and then hanging out together afterwards, that's so like viscerally appealing to people. There's something about watching that life. Like it's, you would say it's like a simple, difficult life. Maybe, I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, it's like it's so appealing.

“So many people wanted to be cowboys after they watch your show. I think it's something goes to”

you're talking about that guy living off the land and stuff like that. It's just something that's been ingrained in us over thousands of years of survival and like we all have that in us still today and we just unfortunately lose in touch with it because we're not doing it as much. And so when you get the opportunity to even just go plan a garden or something like that, I think that's it's in us. You know, and it's wakes up something within that's just been a little bit dormant

for a while, you know. I think you're right. I think that's exactly what it is. I think it is, like it's in our memory, like the memory of our genes that this is like a pleasing life. This is a satisfying life. It's like that mama bear energy, you know, kids' Congress is like, oh man, you know, yeah, yeah, it's there, you know, it's like, I realize that having kids is just like,

all of a man, it wakes something up within you. That's always been there. Right. I know that you were born

“to have, you know, that survival instinct and all of those things. And I still, that's what I still love”

about it. Like I even at home, being on the road and being in big cities all the time and you're just surrounded with information and screens, man. As soon as I get home or get outside or get into nature, it just wakes that stuff back up in me and it, I feel like it puts that spark back in my eye, you know, yeah, I try to stay in tune with as much as I can. Well, it's clearly so appealing to people that don't experience it. I mean, how many people that are watching shows like yellowstone

never go into those areas? But they're watching like, oh, yeah, I want to live like that. You see, like, prices of horses, it just skyrocketed. Like five grand and now you sure. It's like 50,000 bucks for a trail horse, you know, which is cool. You know, I hope people are enjoying that and getting something out of it. You know, I still, I mean, I'm not running a bunch of cows these days, but I keep a few horses around and especially for the kids, you know, and whether they want

anything to do with them or not. Like we enjoy so much and after names go up and feed them some carrots or brushing their tails and just being around that energy, my youngest little boy. He's just got, he's got some kind of mojo with the animals. You know, and I've got this old mule in her name's honey and she's got these big ears and she's massive, you know, and I remember when he was like three or four, I'd be looking around for him in the backyard and I'd look out in the pastor and

he'd be out there with that mule and she'd have her head down and he's just out there petting or ears, you know, and just like his connection with those animals. And then, you know, getting kids up to the house or, you know, from the city that aren't around those animals,

they're first time around horses or maybe even dogs and stuff like that and you can see they're

they're so anxious or, you know, not maybe so scared but this is nervous, you know, this is big animals and stuff and what they're like 20 minutes of just sitting on their back or petting on them and they you see them relax and you see that energy kind of slow down and

“I just I love that, you know, I think it's so magical to watch and yeah, that's another relationship”

that's like primal, the relationship between people and horses. They do that with addicts. They do equine therapy, where they just have like people that are like heavy anxiety and depression, they have them hang out with horses. I think even me, I still do, I mean, I, I have get depressed and stuff like that right now and then and I love being around them, I can walk out to the barn and just being around them and laying their backs and it's just like, oh yeah,

all right, here we go. Just touching their head makes you feel better. Like hey, yeah. How are you honey? What's happening? Hey, look at me. Yeah. Can I? Yeah. I get eye contact with them. I think it's just looking into your soul and ancient thing. I mean, they helped us survive. We and, you know, and we took care of them and it's like this ancient relationship and then when you're around them,

just think about like how many generations of humans had to survive on horseback before anybody

invented anything else. Like if you wanted to travel faster than you could run, it had to be a fucking horse. Yeah. So that was probably thousands and thousands and thousands of years just cooked into our DNA. And when you're around them, it's like, oh my friend, this is my friend. It's waking it back up. Yeah. It's weird. It's weird. Yeah. It's weird. That stuff is in you.

“That nature stuff is in you. I mean, that's why we like watching shows like this clay guy.”

I love that too. I love that Steve or Noah show that meat eater. I like watching that in my kids. Aren't you friends with Rimey Warren? Oh, yeah, I remember. He ended up being my neighbor when I was in Montana working on Yellowstone. Oh, really? Yeah, that's great. And, you know,

what I really liked up there was where they filmed the show, you know, kind of way out there south,

Western Montana. And a lot of folks that were working on the show would go back to Missoula in the cities, but I was like, man, I want to go get as far away out there as I can. And so I kind of went down this west fork area, this on the right on the edge of the most massive wilderness areas, out there, it goes into Idaho. And the road I was on, you know, it was paved dirt, then it did in and it turned into dirt road. And then I got this cabin. It was just way back up. And there was

no Wi-Fi, no nothing, you know, and I just just disappeared out there. And ended up meeting some folks in Remy, it was just right down the road going towards Sule. And so I got the chance to just go there and hang out with him and go stomp around the mountains with him, such a cool dude. It's like, Remy's the best. Just, you know, like you're talking about going to Alaska, you know, I love going into those places, but like you want somebody like that with you when you go. Yeah. Yeah, he knows how to

get around. Yeah. And he used to have a great show. Well, first of all, he had solo hunter, where he'd go and film everything himself, which is so much more difficult than just hunting.

“Yes. Set up the key with character iPods with him and shit and set it up to make sure the”

cameras on the animal before he would shoot it and then film himself, film himself moving up to there, set up different cameras that could show them executing the shot. Like, oh, that's so complicated. And he's a beast, man. Just try, that's trying to keep up with him. You know, just walk around the mountains with that guy, I'm like, I'm man, where'd I if I'll be? I've come in. Yeah, they get that mountain cardio. Yeah. He's like a mountain goat. But, you know, he hunts probably 200 plus days a year.

Yeah. On top of that, he does a lot of guiding. And what he's doing guiding is like, always in the

mountains, always hiking. It's like, you just get conditioned to it. Yeah, he's fed. I went to Hawaii with him and did a access hunt over there. Cool, cool things I ever did. And I got this buck and we're loading up in the truck and all that. And he was like, man, I'm going to, I'll meet you guys back at camp. You know, those dark already. And like, I know, you know, during the day we were hunting, which is steep mountains up and down. And so you're just going to

meet us back. He's like, yeah, I'll meet you back. And he just put on his backpack and just took off running. And we, you know, drove down this mountain road to go back and he'd be just there, but like a half an hour. And that was his workout. He's like, yeah, I'm just part of my workout. I'll meet you guys back there. I was like, oh, you're an animal. That's fun. Access to your in Hawaii is very interesting. Because they were given to King Kamehameha in like, I don't remember what year it

was. And find out what year they're going to introduce there. But they're everywhere now. I've gone to Leni a bunch of times. That's where we went. No one thing. Yeah, it was wild. There's thousands of them everywhere. And you're trying to sneak up on a group of 10. And then you don't even realize there's like 100 right here land down that you didn't even see. And then they get up and spooked the rest and stand. Well, you know, you've been there. Okay, it was in the 1800s. A gift to King Kamehameha

from India. And there's 30,000 of them in Leni and only 3,000 people. It's crazy. We are the only place

“where you can go hunting, bow hunting, and you stay at the four seasons. Right? I think Rampie said”

you got kicked out of there. Because he was hunting so much. And you know, they all that red clay. There, you know, around your boots and stuff. He said so the whole hotel was just like red clay everywhere. The fridge is just full of meat. You know, the like blood dripping out. They keep them around there. Oh, I don't know if they'd kicked me about that. Like he was like, well, maybe we ought to go find somewhere else to stay. Well, just take off your boots before you

come and see. Yeah, that's all this. But yeah, it's that weird red clay. And it all used to be part of the dull pineapple plantation. So when you're around there, when the things you notice is like, there's layers of dirt. But then there's like almost like a plastic bag underneath it. Like a garlic, a hefty bag. From all the farm. And yeah. So I guess they had a layer of like that kind of whatever the fuck a hefty bag is made out of whatever the plastic is. And then the dirt was on top of

like that in the ground. Yeah, I would imagine. But it's it's disconcerting because it doesn't feel like nature feels weird. It's like it's weird. There's plastic everywhere in the ground. Yeah. It's also in the mountains and like those old world were too turrets and stuff that

are up there. Yeah. And we come across any of that. I mean, it's just like, first of all,

like hunt and access deer in La Ni and like you get up on the top and you're surrounded by the ocean. I mean, what a trip, you know. And now you're seeing that and then coming across all those little relics and just all the history there is just something to take into. And we are laughing because obviously they're trying to like control the population of the access deer there. And I think somebody somebody mentioned like, man, just get a couple of bangled tigers out here. Exactly.

I don't know. I don't know if they're not the population. They're not the population of people too

“unfortunately. The thing about them is that they did evolve around tigers. That's why they're so”

fast. Like they'll jump a string faster than any animal I've ever seen in my life. I have a video of me shooting at an access deer at 80 yards and it's a we have a slow mole of the arrow. So as the arrows coming, it's a perfect shot within 10 yards of him. He hears it and fell and he's gone. It's the craziest thing. Like you look at it. You're like, how the fuck did he move that fast? This thing's going at least from the actual like leaving the bow

it's going 275 feet per second. And he gets there with 10 yards. Within 10 yards he's hearing it coming and he's like, say yeah, and nowhere near him. Like he was a foot in front of it was the arrow landed a foot behind his ass. That's how fast they moved. Yeah. It's crazy. How long did you go there for a while or just kind of like a few times. We found that the best time to hunt is actually in the afternoon because in the afternoon it's really windy. And when it's really windy, it covers your sound a

little bit. Okay. The morning's rough. Yeah. The morning's rough. Like the morning, I got a couple of them in the morning, a couple of times, morning hunting. I got a deer, but it's a lot of blown stalks. You got to walk super slow. You got to be real cautious and again there's a lot of high brush and you don't know where the fuck they're hiding. Yeah. You got to kind of find a pinch point. Yeah, you jump one and then the rest of the sound off the way they bark and all of that's pretty crazy too.

I'm weird. It's weird noise. What you got to kind of do is find where they're going to be and just wait because they travel so much. They do so much moving. You think I'm just going to go, you know, still hunt and spot and stalk and I'll find one and you're almost better off just stay and put and wait for them because they're moving all over the place. They're so fucking many of them,

it's crazy. Yeah. But it's amazing how unsuccessful people are bow hunting them. Rightful,

it's a done deal. If you want meat and it's the best meat in the world, for the people that live there, it's incredible. They mean they have access to the best meat in the world. 100% they're going to be deer. And so if you ever write, but if you have a bow, we went there and then so I went with Remi. I went with John Dudley, Camhames, and Adam Green Tree. They're like all season bow hunters. Everybody got a deer and we made a podcast about it. We had a good old time. They had 150 people

“go over the next year and one was successful with a bow. That's a take chances. Yeah. That's how hard”

it is. Yeah. Because it's like these fuckers are, they're dialed in, man. And they move a lot of people chasing them too. Yeah. I know the game, right? 365 days a year, they get hunted. There's no season. And then they have snipers that are after them at night because, you know, they use it for meat for the restaurants and meat for people and they just have to control the population. There's so many of them. And no predators. Yeah. And still can't stand on that, right? I know. It's crazy.

I think they got a good head start. They eradicated them from the big island. Oh, did they? Yeah. Yeah. Somebody tried to reintroduce them or introduce, I should say, to the big island. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We know what this is going. He's going to destroy people's crops, destroy people's gardens. Take over. And they already have plenty of wild pigs on the big island, so they just, they whack them all, unfortunately. It's kind of like the pigs here in Texas, right? Right.

And it got wild. I don't, you know, growing up here when I was younger, I never remember on being like,

how they are now. They don't stop. Yeah. They have three or four liters a year. And each

“liter has, I think they can have as many as six piglets. It's crazy. They're just, and they can get”

pregnant six months old. Six months old. They can get pregnant. They're ready to rock. And they're just spitting out pigs and just tearing, tearing shit up. Yeah. We have a lease out here for hunting land, me and some of my friends. And the amount of pigs is disturbing. And it's like,

most of Texas, probably that's not like city has wild pigs in it. It's just like taking over, man.

“And this all came over on boats. Yeah. That's how it all got here. Is that how it got here? Yeah.”

It's important, man. Yeah, guys from Europe, they brought boats, and in the boats, some of them brought pigs, and then they let them loose. It's crazy, man. Terrence stuff. Yeah, I don't ever remember I'm being as bad as they were in the last 15 years or so. It's actually about in California too.

In California has them from William Randolph first. Didn't they take, didn't they, like, eradicate them

up the channel islands out there? I think so. I think the islands, and they had meal deer on some of the islands out there too, right? I figured which island had meal deer. But apparently, they had like a what you could go hunt on one of these islands. Yeah, I think you think you might still be able to like on Catalina or a couple, but maybe do their own Santa Cruz. They did, because I know my my buddy Matt, he did it like maybe the last year, the year before, but I think

they're trying to put a stop to it, and you know, and kind of stop it. Those channel islands are pretty interesting. I remember first moving out there, and you can just go on out there 15 years

ago and seeing the islands out there. You know, and ask people all around, I'm like, man, what's

to do with these islands out there? And how the people that I would talk to, like, what are you talking about islands? And how do like that island right out there? They're like, oh, I thought that was long beach, you know? Like, really? I was like, if you looked at a Matt, you know, I love Matt. So I started, you know, doing some research and figuring out about it, and they're really cool and over the years on that some really cool guys go out there, a lot of sphere fish, and just to go

out there too, and besides Catalina, like Santa Cruz and Sam McGill, and they're all like nature preserves and predicate. So it's like going back in time when you get out there, and I love it out there. So it's such a cool spot. Did they try to, are they trying to eradicate deer from Catalina? I think I've read something about that. I think that's true. I think they're trying to remove the

“deer because they said the deer were non-native to the island. Yeah. I think that's what they did”

with the, with the hogs, and I don't know. There's like an a specific island fox out there. Yeah, here it is. As of early 2026, California officials have approved a controversial plan to fully eradicate the non-native meal deer population on Santa Catalina Island to restore the ecosystem around 2,000 deer introduced in the 1930s for hunting. We'll be removed by ground-based hunters to protect native biodiversity. Come on.

That sounds crazy. How about just let people hunt them, folks around with you? So the issue is Catalina Island Conservancy considers the meal deer in invasive species that disrupts the ecosystem as they consume native plants and seedlings while spreading

fire prone invasive grasses. Really? I have, I just always worry about

conservancies and their, their judgments on things like that because there's a lot of, they want to eradicate all the pigs from Texas or from California rather. They think of the them as non-native and they want them out too, but you're not going to. They want to eradicate the, there's like elk in California that are Yellowstone elk that were brought there in like the 1950s that they want to eradicate. Like the Tulioke? No, they're actually, they're actually

Rocky Mountain elk. Okay. Yeah, but there, there were a larger breed of Rocky Mountain elk that they're called yellow apparently. Like in the Sierra, they're down on along the coast and so touch be, touch be it. Up in that area on those mountains, big fucking elk. Like 400 inch

“elk. Like a couple of those elk out there that are front, that's what they're from. There's,”

that's that's right. That's what they're, that's what they're, that's what they're, yeah. That's to hone ranch. Okay. Yeah. And oh yeah, that's like going up over the grapevine. Exactly. That's where you got those? Uh-huh. Wow. I had no idea about that. They were that big out there. It's all, it's the biggest private ranch in California. It's like 270,000 acres. I've heard the ranch, but I didn't know where it had elk like that up there. Yeah. Yeah. One of the rare places,

gore just fucking place. But they also go out with kind of funny. They go up to, um, there's a golfing community, higher up in touch be. And um, the elk just hang out on the golf course. That just sounded like giant elk. Like 400 inch elk, just chilling, hanging out together on the golf course and dudes are playing golf. That's why. While they're lying down next to them like 20 yards away, it's crazy. I've seen it. I saw some one time I was driving up the coast. I think I was going up the San Francisco

along the coast there. And I looked over in the field and there was like 30 head of them just

“laying down. Oh, man. I didn't even know they were elk down here. It's just, I love seeing”

wildlife that in unexpected places, you know. Yeah. They recently just found a wolf. I'm not expecting from anyone. Oh, really? Yeah. See, see, see if you can find the story about that wolf that they just discovered in Los Angeles. There's a mama bear, a mama bear with three cubs running around in Topanga. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of those. A lot of lions running around. There's a lot of, uh, a lot of bears. I've seen them in Pasadena and people's pools.

Mm-hmm. Well, I knew that there's a bunch out in Pasadena and like the wolf detected in Los Angeles

County for the first time in more than a century crazy. Yeah. That nuts. Yeah. Those guys can

fucking travel. I had a lady on who was a wolf biologist and she was talking about like the, you know, they'd call her some of these wolves and they would track them. They would go 500 miles.

“Yeah. Like, it's kind of insane. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's incredible. Well, that's how”

they learned about them. It's really the only way to tell. It's like put a collar on them and track them by GPS. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, you know, they mean their extraordinary animals. Like, where were they originating from in Montana, Wyoming and and how where were they going? And the ones that they're tracking. I think the ones that they were tracking were the part of the group that was brought in, you know, in the 1990s. Mm-hmm. You know, so there was that pack in the

subsequent packs that came after that. They were all the reintroduced wolves. Mm-hmm. And so they would,

you know, dart and collar some of them. And when they would do that, they would just track their motion. They were like, Jesus. These are covering some ground. They're covering some ground. They're covering some ground. It's interesting too that they actually make mountain lions kill more deer. Good competing with them. Yeah, because the mountain lions kill a deer and then the wolves steal it. Oh, so they come up on the mountain line and they'll surround them and the mountain

line will go fuck this. I'm out of here. And there's a cool killing other deer. So he doesn't even get a chance to eat his deer because the wolves keep stealing his deer. Keep tracking the lions. Probably just falling around. They're smart. They do the, they let him do the dirty work of

“they steal the work smarter, not harder. What does it say? The wolf that they found?”

Yeah, this is from when February when they first spotted it. So the wolf was born 2023.

Plumus counties. Where's Plumus County? It's traveled more than 370 miles. Wow. Including crossing state route 59 near Tachapy. There you go. Yeah. They had one up in Tachapy too that a buddy mind. It was actually closer to the city that's down there. What is that fucking city? Makersfield? Pickersfield. Yeah. Exactly. Wildlife officials now estimated at least 60 wolves live in the state. Wow. One crossed over in 2011. Wow. From California,

from Oregon. So so they find them in the Tachapy mountains. Interesting. Biologists told Newspot, well, that biologists told Newspapers that she could encounter a mate in the nearby regions such as Tachapy mountains potentially forming a new pack or continue to roam. What was that picture just kind of the elk? Yeah, that's that golf course. Look at that. That's just a fucking elk. Chill it on the golf course. Classic flag. Yeah. Look how beautiful that is. God, so pretty out there.

Massive elk. Oak tree country club. Perfect sanctuary for them, right? Oh, yeah, man. It adds to the coolness of playing golf. You're playing golf around giant, beautiful animals. I bet those greens keepers love them though. Right. The front fuck up all kinds of things right there. It's the wolf thing is interesting because they just brought them back to Aspen and they did a really stupid thing. They brought them into an area where it has a lot of livestock and they brought

them in from a place in Oregon where these wolves had all been captured because they were killing agriculture. Yeah. So what did they do? They captured them and they dropped them off in Colorado where they started killing. And they just do it. Well, it's on people's my friends ranch. One of them, they dropped three wolves off on my friends ranch. That's tough, man. I don't know even with the bears and stuff, you know, you get some problem bears or whatever and then they go drop them out where the

farmers and rancids are living inside. Man, how's that going to work? Well, it's the people and charge of these things and making these decisions. They don't understand what they're doing. They're monkeying around with wildlife nature biology and you don't know what you're doing. Yeah. You don't you have no idea. Also, like how how the fuck you and good conscience take a wolf that's used to killing cows and put them around other people's cows. Yeah. That's a very

fenced in. They taste the dishes. Why would it stop? Or why would it? Yeah. Why would you have

chased, chased, cut for prey, right? So now these poor ranchers have to have people monitoring their cows 24/7. They have to have cowboys up all night. They're wandering around and on horseback and just looking for wolves. I mean, it's a disaster. They've killed dozens of cows. And these are folks that you know, we've been like, we've survived and on this land for generations and dealing with that and you know, have a history with management and that stuff. You know,

it'd probably be the folks I'd want to ask. Yeah. How to handle it, you know? Well, they would certainly tell you don't let the wolves in. And if you do, kill them, you know, but now it's gotten to the point where I think they're going to have to do something about them. Well, they've said honey, honey, honey, limit on them. Thank. Honestly, that would probably do something, but really

“where you should do is hire someone to recapture them and don't drop them off there. Don't drop them”

off and fucking a haspin you in. Because they're going to eat people's poodles, too. They don't give a shit. Well, if they run out of cows, if somewhere another rancher scare them away from the cows and they make it into the town of Aspen, you know, think they're going to eat your golden retriever. They're going to eat all kinds of dogs. Yeah. Dogs in Alaska all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I hear like the lions and stuff. Maybe coming after your kids. Yeah. Yeah. There's been a stuff that Malibu Creek

Park, you know, I've heard a couple of incidents there, you know, hit. It's like, man, they're they're going to go eat something, especially when they're old. Yeah. When they get old, you know, they can't catch a deer anymore. Yeah. They're hungry and they have an eat in a few days. Then they see a kid hanging around. We'll too close to the outside of the woods. I got a big one that comes right by my house. I got a little game trail cameras set up and I got a little fountain

“right in the front. It doesn't come around when I'm there because we got the dogs, you know,”

a lot, but whenever I'm out of town for weeks at a time, I'll come back and that sucker's just laying on my front porch. Just massive. And then the other day, friend of mine was taking the trash out and that's like around lunchtime and it jumped over the fence into the driveway and had a dead rabbits in it, dead rabbit and it's mouth. Just looking at her, you know, she's like, "Oh, sure." They're there. You know, so every time I'm even walking around by myself or with

the dogs, you're just like, "Nah, it's sucker. This being a tree, you're looking at me right now." Yeah, you just live in one of the monsters. Yeah. Woo! They're there. California spent more than $100 million trying to make a bridge over, I forget which freeway it is. Is it the 101? I think you're right. So they spent over 100 million dollars and it's still not done. Oh my god. For a bridge, a bridge for the mountain lions, like you fucking dorks.

It's like this idea of like it's going to be a bridge, but it's going to have dirt and grass on it, so it'll encourage them to walk across so they don't have to go over the highway and die. Is it nicer than the roads we're driving on? Yeah. Well, 110 million dollars is crazy.

“And it's still not even done. It's so crazy. So that's what it early 2020. It's like going into”

being true, right? Yeah. So they want to have this big dirt mound and this bridge so the animals

can get across the highway, but it's just like it's so goofy. And they never want people to do

anything about the population of mountain lions, regardless of how hard a control they are, they don't do anything about it. They have to hire people, the state has to hire people to go and get the bad mountain lions and ones that are problems. Yeah. And when they capture them, one of the things they find out is they're, they actually kill them, right? So one of the things they find out when they examine their diet, it's like 50% pets. Yeah. 50% dogs and cats. That's what

your mountain lions are eating. That's crazy. Yeah. And they spend money, like a lot of money going after these mountain lions. And instead they could make money by letting people hunt these mountain lions and giving them tags and control the numbers in that place to home ranch. One of my buddies works there and they have a trail camera set up on a pond and they found 16 different

cats that were drinking out of that pond. Oh my god. That's insane. I always thought what I first

started going out there too, the coyotes, you know, and even around like in Hollywood and stuff. Yeah. Man, I swear I just saw a coyote running down the street with a pair of sunglasses on. A gold chain. Eat in better than idioms. When I went there in '94, that was the first time I ever saw a coyote. I couldn't believe it. Staying at the, you know, they have those furnished apartments, the Oakwood furnished apartments. Oh, no, it's like 10 per

area. Like for people that are like, don't have a house yet and you got to move to California

got a TV. It's already got a bed. You're like, okay. I can hear me and be telling me. Yeah. I was driving

“up to the entrance to the place and I see these little dogs on the street. I was like, what the”

fuck is going on? He's done. That ain't no dog. I was like, oh my god, they're coyotes. Like,

this is weird. And this is like '94, I had never seen a fucking coyote in there.

They've heard of a coyote being out just wandering in the street. I just couldn't believe it. They just wander around on the concrete. I'd man, it's there everywhere. I feel like I've seen more there than anywhere. You see them more in town than you do anywhere else. Yeah, they, well, they have large populations of them in downtown where they know where they're done up. They're done up in certain warehouse buildings. Okay. Like abandoned buildings and under bridges and we freeways and stuff.

Yeah. They like, they lived there. They probably keep them. Make sure you take it back over one day, won't it? Exactly. Yeah. I think they probably keep the rap population in check, though. Yeah. If you think about it. Yeah. I keep a lot of other things in check too. Right. Cats. Well, there's a terrible video from Woodland Hills a few years back where Guy was unloading his car. It is toddler. Was out there in the grass. Like right next to that. Yeah.

Yeah. The grab is toddler. Yeah. I run away with his kid. Yeah. I saw that, man. I, you know,

I'm always watching around for stuff. And with my art kid, those are just people around the neighborhood

and stuff. You got to remind yourself, you know, they're, they're there and they're not scared of you.

“Yeah. They're not. They're not afraid of. I remember that when the first time I went up to O'Hye,”

just north of L.A. there, you know, and I just wanted to go up there and go hike around and check out the area and those, uh, an archery shop up there. And I had this old guy kind of look like Charlie Daniels just big overalls, big old beard, you know, and I walked in there and just to check out the shop and also just asking about, you know, some areas to go stomp around and, and I had a Australian Shepherd dog at the time. And I just asking where, you know, good places to go stomp around.

He said, yeah, you know, you go up there. He goes, but I wouldn't take your dog with you. I was like, really wise. Like, man, those lions are real deal up here. You know, he's like, you, he goes, you won't see them, you know, until they're on you. And I just, yeah, I need their lion to stuff like that, but hearing it from from that guy, you know, maybe he's trying to scare me a little bit, but you know, there's, I, it's, uh, it's real deal. It's real. It's real. They try to

downplay it because the, all the wildlife lovers, all the greenies, they don't want you, like, center fair and long and killing them. Yeah. But their goal is to have zero hunting. Their goal is to have all the animals just balance each other out. I think I'll have them. Yeah, it's not humans in them. No, the humans have interrupted that whole idea, right? So if you've got a city and then you've got wild giant predators, like 170 pound cats that are killing dogs, and they're like,

you got to control them. Yeah. The manage one without managing another, right? And so the first wet, the first thing they did to stop people from doing it is they ban hunting with dogs. So if you ban hunting with dogs, guess what? You basically, you're killing most of the hunting because the reality of mountain lions, as you can't find them, they're really hard to find. Really hard to catch,

“really hard to find. And the best way to control their population is to treat them. And you get”

dogs, because that way you know if it's a Tom or if it's a female, you know if it's mature, you know what size it is, you have a really accurate estimation. You could look up at it. Oh, that's a mature Tom. Yeah. That's what we're looking to kill. And then you can control their population. Yeah. That's the only, it's same with bears. Yeah, see what it is and decide if it needs to go or if it needs to stay, right? But they do little things to stop the effective hunting first.

So California, you could still hunt for black bears, but you can't use dogs anymore. And so as as soon as they stop the use of dogs, the amount of black bears they harvested went way down. Yeah. So the amount of bears in the population went way up. Yeah, I don't think they, I mean, I know they've been around in Pasadena a lot, but I don't think there's been one in Tepenga for a while. I mean, I've been up there. She would almost 15 years and hadn't heard of one.

This is the first time that one's kind of made it over. And then that air that I know of anyway, maybe up, you know, around the Malbe Creek in those state parks. But in Tepenga, there's probably people feed them. Oh, 100%. Yeah. I've got berries for you, my friend. Yeah, you have them weed.

Some berries. Depangues great, but it's always catches me out of a fire catches.

Oh, man. We got hit hard last year as you know, the Palacades stuff. And man, that was kind of it

years, but I've got horses up there now and stuff like that. And luckily, I had like a, I always keep a

“big truck and a trailer just in case. And I've got some friends down in Burbank that have some”

stables, you know, that I have like as a backup plan. But this was just a different deal. As a crow flies, I could see the smoke from the Palacades, you know, it's like a mile away. And we were actually working in our arena there and smoke came up and I was like, let's just go, every time I see the smoke, like I don't wait. I'm just like, we'll be the first ones out and beat the beat the mad roast of everybody that's going to decide to try to stay and load it up the trailer and the truck

and the camper and the dogs and all that stuff. And I was like, let's go and my wife went down to Burbank. And I know we were driving through the night and the wind was just howling like I've never seen before and power lines are snap and it's just like trees are coming down and it just felt like the end of the world, you know. And we get to Burbank and we pull back in these stables and there's a kind of a big, sender block wall. And I just got as close to that as I could because it was

“blocking the wind, you know, from hitting us. And the next morning I woke up and I was just my throat”

was sore and hurting. I could hardly breathe. And I opened the camper door and the altered deenifier had started and it was right there until the system. Mount the black smoke coming over the top of the seren. So like, let's go, let's get out here, let's like head north and had some friends in more park, you know, up in that area going towards the venture that had horses, just trying to find some places to go with some horses. And they're like, yeah, come on up here. So we went up there,

stayed there and night and then they cut all the power off up in that area because the winds were snap and power lines and they were worried about fires. And you know, after doing that a few nights

and I was like, let's just head east and go to Texas, you know. There's always so many friends

you can like show up with five horses at a bunch of dogs, you know, like, hey, we're going to stay for a while, you know, especially in California. Yeah, we're like, let's just get out of here and head

“back and you didn't know when we were going to make it back and they, you know, closed in definitely”

or whatever. I was just like, man, I'm I'm over it. I got evacuated a bunch of times when I lived there. But the last one was 2018 and when the last one we got out early, I came home from the comedy store and we saw fire coming over the top of this hill and it was probably like one o'clock in the morning and me and my wife were sitting there and I go, what do you think? It's just like, let's get the fuck out of here. Well, let's get the fuck out of here. Let's just grab some shit and maybe it'll

come this way, maybe it won't. So it didn't burn the house down, but my neighbors, the front, front three neighbors all lost their house and my next door neighbor, his, his roof caught on fire, put my friend who refused to leave. He stayed in the neighborhood and protected his house and guided firefighters. He brought the firefighters to that house and showed them that it just started on this guy's roof and they hosted down the storm in his tracks, but it was pretty fucking bad. But it's

wow, because you know it's going to burn and it's not a matter of, you know, if it's just a win and I mean, that that's canyons have been burning like that for thousands of years and the two masks were setting a mum fire on purpose to get ahead of it, right? Control and all of that stuff. And now there's just so many houses and communities back up in there. It's just a tough thing, but when they hit, man, they're just, they're rolling to how fast they come through. Those sand

and winds are blowing like that. It's just very surreal and personal. You can watch them in the news and you kind of get a feeling of it. But when you're there and you're driving down the 101, and you look at the side of the highway and you see like these hills and the distance are just covered in fire. Hundreds of yards of fields of fire just making their way over the top of this hill and burning houses. And we saw it when the palace that, you know, the palaces thing was

start, you know, from our house, it was kind of a little mountain that comes up on the back and I hyped up there and was watching it and you can see the smoke and then you could like start seeing little flickers of the flames. And then it was just like somebody don't gasoline on this thing. And I mean the flames shot up hundreds of feet into the air and my wife was on the balcony, you know, the house and I'm kind of up on this little mountain. I'm looking over looking in her eyes

and like start packing up. It's up. I'll go hook up the horse trailer. I'll be up and say, let's load up and just, and you know, the wind was blowing like offshore then, you know, so the fire's like on the coast, you know, and it's dependent on where that how that wind is blowing, you know, that the beginning was blowing offshore. And then within a half an hour, it just shot up the coastline

and just ripped up through Malibu and burned all that coast. Like that's the stuff that you always thought

blows it back towards Burbank, you know, going back up like the force up that way. And then the winds are shifting again and then coming back across, you know, so I was amazed at the, I've did some of the fires that I've been through seeing the firefighters up there. Those guys

are incredible. And those helicopter pilots, the airplane pilots, seeing those tankers fly through

there. I mean, it's just incredible what those guys can do. I mean, if it hadn't, I mean, they saved that whole canyon, you know, of depending, at least, you know, it's like, man, there's so much brush in there that probably needs to burn. It's been accumulating over years, you know, and cutting those fire breaks and seeing them drop the retarding on the ridge lines and stuff and watching the wind. It's just like, man, I've hats off to those guys. Absolutely. I mean, think about

the amount of damage that was done in that fire and how much more would have been done if it wasn't

“for the firefighters. That's how crazy it is. Yeah. Yeah. It is. I met one of the helicopter pilots.”

I was on a flight somewhere and we just have to be sitting next to each other when you're talking about it and just, you know, learning from him, you know, about, you know, the thermals that come up from underneath and trying to hold those helicopters and, you know, information and all that stuff and how heavy they are when they're full. Right. I mean, as soon as you release all that water, whatever is in them that, you know, all the sudden that the power that they got,

you know, throttles full throttle, you know, when they're loaded down and then they drop all that

water and, you know, trying to get back a hold of it and I never even thought of that.

Yeah. And then you got, then you gotta be a normal different 90 mile in our winds blowing and, you know, and you, I could see them from the house, you know, there'd be like two or three helicopters that would come in, start dropping water and then they would move out and then the tank that planes would come in and then helicopters back in and then you had the guys on the ground, you know, trying to contain it as well. Just the, the coordinated effort between them, you know,

I can imagine the conversation. Yeah. Hey, man. He's so crazy that they didn't have the reservoirs ready. Oh, dude, he's so sad. Oh, I had Spencer Pratt on, you know, he's running out

for mayor now, he was explaining it like how bad it was. Yeah. How do you fuck that up? That bad.

It's devastating here that it's like, you know that that stuff's coming and it's just did not be prepared for that. It's completely acceptable in confidence. Yeah. It's just complete total incompetence and yet they still are there. Like, you're definitely not good at the job and yet you don't take any personal responsibility and blame everybody else and the problem. It's just fucking, it's a problem that happens every few years. Like, you're going to get fires period. The fact

that you don't have a full reservoir is crazy. It's crazy. But don't all your resources into fixing that

“fucking reservoirs that get the residents are more prepared than anybody, you know, because I think they”

just got to where they, you can't depend on it, you know. I know our neighbors and stuff have a pretty good program in place. We all all get together and talk about, you know, who's got fire hoses and swimming pools with access to water and where, you know, evacuation plans or, you know, there's some folks that have horses but they don't even have a horse trailer up there and, you know, like, okay, I'll come get yours too or whatever, you know, we need to do and you kind of just

have to have that mentality, I think, you know. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. It's, you know what's really freaking me out about, like, the power of the AIDS is, what is in the ground now? You know, it's how much toxic shit you got melted into the ground because think about how many people have electric cars now? Well, the how those old houses too, you know, the materials that they're made out of, you know, as best as they're led. I mean, the stuff in the air that was even if you,

you know, you were several miles away from the actual fires that the wind and blowing all the ashes and the smoke and all that stuff over. I remember going back up in there, you know, weeks and just trying to get stuff out of the house or whatever when they let us back up and you could still, it would just make your throat hurt, you know, breathing that air and stuff. Right, that bad stuff. It's not just wood fire. Yeah. No. No. Like chemicals. Yeah, wood fire is hard enough,

but the chemicals burnt TVs and computers and hard drives and electronics and refrigerators treated lumber. Yeah. All that shit's going to get in your groundwater. Like it's, it's, it's

“almost surface. It's going to rain. It's going to see through, like, what happens to the water?”

Is anybody checking the water out there? No, you got to imagine. I doubt it. Especially, like,

it's definitely all like on septic up there, too. You know, I mean, all of that building code

“stuff's got pretty crazy up there. I don't know. It's just a mess. I would just worry about even”

breathing the air that has the dust of all that shit in it. Like, I probably wouldn't want to live there anymore. If I was in a place where all the houses burnt to the ground or I knew there was toxic shit in the ground, I'd be like, hey, let's get that fuck out of here and sell our house to China. Oh, man. Because that's the other thing Spencer said, they're the ones who are the number one land buyers in our house. It's, it's trying to, it's going to be, is it going to be a golf course

resort of there for we know it? Who knows? Yeah, or affordable housing. Yeah, one of the other out of that area there. I don't know, but it's just, I really wonder what the long-term damage of all those chemicals in the ground is. It has to be pretty high. Got to be, you know, I don't know. You know, I was talking to some friends of mine out there day that have grown up there, lived out there, their whole lives and, you know, going over the channel islands, you know,

they got those oil platforms out there and the water and there's been oil spills, obviously, throughout their through history. And, but also like when you're surfing and stuff like that, there's oil that's been on top of the ground. It's just like so surface level that's been there for millions of years. Yeah. And so I don't know, you know, it's like I'm sure at all the toxic stuff that happens. How long does it take for it to delude? You know, it's not much rain.

You know, the wind or like what, you know, I'm not an expert on it, but I feel like mother nature takes pretty good care of herself. You know, we're, we're the ones in trouble, right? Right. Mother nature has sorted out over time, but I just don't know how good it's going to be for the people that live there. It can't be, it can't be the long term, you know. I have a buddy that has a house out there and he lost his house and burnt down and I asked him about it and he said,

“"Well, I think what they're going to do is take all the dirt out of their backyard and then replace”

the dirt." And I'm like, "Oh, okay." I don't know if that's enough. Like, because what about his dirt? What about your neighbor's dirt? What about the all the toxic shit that's in his dirt, it's going to get down into your ground, as soon as it rains and also they hear all the round up and everything else is coming down. It's sad, you know. It's sad, that's just the kind of the state of it. It's like it seems like just it's so far of a mess that

even the folks that do have answers that do want to fix stuff that just kind of becomes impossible for any solution, you know. It's like all the red tape and all the hoops and things and all the permits or whatever you're like, "You can't even, you know, the roads blocked." Okay. Well, before we could even get somebody out here with a tractor to move the rocks, you got to call 10 other people to get it approved and in the process and then it's not and it's like,

that's the part. I'm just like, man, I wish I could just call Frank down the street with the bulldozer if we just go, what's going to do this right now, you know, and it's like, you know, well, government has increased so much in California and they just want more regulations, so they could justify more government and so they just regulate themselves to a place where people just want to leave and let's go, what can't fucking do this anymore, and get out of here.

And it's expensive, man. It's so expensive. Yeah, and while it's beautiful, it's such a great place. They fucked it up so hard. It's paradise. It's proud of the mountains within like two, three hours. You can be in the Sierra. It's a good beach. Or else it would be nice to go. And then swim in the ocean on the same day. It's gorgeous. Yeah. Beautiful places I've ever been. You'll send me to you and then

get out of there. Yeah, you know, incredible weather. Current river. Yeah. And it's beautiful. But

they got ruined. They got ruined with progressive politics and bureaucracy that just ramped up all the control. They have over people to the point where you can't even buy flavored zins. They banned blackjack. You can't have blackjack anymore. They just stop blackjack and they can see knows they stopped flavored zins. They just they just regulated into oblivion. They're all these people that want to be they want to be the mommy of the world and tell you what to do like

fuck off. Yeah. Like fuck off with all your goddamn rules. You're just making your government bigger so you can justify all these fucking rules and you need the rules for the government to sustain itself. So you just keep adding more rules and adding more government. Yeah. We were reading about it the other day. Like what was the number of the California's government went up by like 24

percent and their population went up by like 1 percent. I know and I run it kind of we're running

“out of places to go. I remember the actual numbers were that we found but it's yeah I'm always”

looking for hired out you know to kind of get away from it's like man you find this spot to go to

hard about Montana you know I don't know first started going up 30 years ago. I mean it's just such a

“and still it's a paradise it's just you know and I think that's by way a lot of people are upset”

about lived up there it's like man that's the secret got out a little bit and I can understand that but I get it. I get it from the perspective where's the next place you know. The thing about Montana though or like Wyoming another example is that winter will thin the herd. It's like West Texas like that's funny same kind of like you know Marfa and that area you know I grew up all out there going to junior rodeos and all kinds of stuff and it was just ranches you know and

look you know local diners and stuff like that and you know I hear people go out there and buy in houses and you know all the stuff then they go out there for like a week and they realize that they only thing open at nights the dairy queen and they're heading back to New York pretty quick you yeah but the you're right about month that was winter. Winter gets you the winter's rough it's cold we were uh the first time I went hunting was with Renella that's where I got that meal deer that's on the

table right there and um it was nine degrees in October and we're camping and so we're sleeping on the ground and nine degrees I'm like bro how did these fucking people and you also you go buy these old homesteads so they were giving land out there for people you just you can get a chunk of land just start farming on it and the government was encouraging to prove it but yeah it's all this like muddy ground like the ground is like mucky like when you hike in it after you know a while your

boots are so heavy because you're thinking with this clay yeah just muck all over your boots and so it's not fertile it's not good like in the Missouri brakes like that area it's not good for growing things so you find these abandoned homesteads it's really eerie yeah and you just think like this family they came out here and like the 1800s and they tried to set up shop and maybe

“got killed by Indians and you know maybe all the way I think about my family I've got stories you”

know I love them settling in New Mexico and um you know coming out on a with a on a covered wagon with maybe a steer and a pig and they're like yeah here's a bunch of acres and you got to prove it up you know and um dig a hole in the grounds with their living in a dugout you know and dig a hole

in the ground that's where you're living and you try to build a ranch out of it and always last

I was talking to family or my grandparents like why did y'all stop here? He just like you were so beat down you're like oh this is the driest flatest place you know yeah but we're here the most roughest you know it was like it's only maybe another thousand miles out the California or just keep going there like nope this is it we're done you know yeah I guess Peter didn't know what they were going to find if they kept going either like you want to keep going for like another month oh yeah this miles

miles of the board desert and no water yeah I mean how long would that wagon trail take a week and you know even just like Missouri Texas and then out to even like just going through West Texas to get to you know southeast New Mexico and all that and then you're you know that's just rough

country and the people have always been tough out there and you decide that yeah you're sitting

duck you're slow moving with a wagon pulling the horse and you got all your shit in the wagon and they just looking at you from the hills yeah what in glamorous no I know my you know my granddad was pretty tough old guy and his real cowboys you'd ever want to know or meet you know but he wasn't really one-to-ever bragher you know tall or fantasize or romanticize about the cowboy stuff you know because it it wasn't romantic then you know it was survival and it

was rough and it was work and you know had no running water and I remember him having a conversation with this guy and he was like something like a tech guy you know he's been at all this website shit or whatever and he's asking my granddaddy said you know what's the most you know

“important invention of your lifetime and I think he was expected my granddad to say like the”

computer or the internet and my granddad said refrigeration was the most important invented you know

yeah he was growing up he was like they had no way to keep their food cold you know other like reed seller you kept it underground you know so it was just a perspective you know I think everybody was surprised to hear it you know well I think people are so accustomed to electricity and so accustomed to things like refrigeration yeah just like a running water yeah yeah I mean when there was no refrigeration you had to eat what you had you know like that day and then the next

day you have to get something else yeah and unless you knew a place that was an ice house

cool things like you're fucked yeah you're on your own yeah well you had to learn how to dry meat that was a lot of it make pemicin dry meat make things that that'll survive and last

“and you know that's how also how market hunting almost wiped out all the deer in this country”

because people needed fresh meat every day so they were just shooting everything that existed

yeah and then finally they started looking around and going hey we lost all the elk there's no

more deer left like let's explain some fucker regulations on this shit and they stopped market hunting I didn't know that yeah interesting yeah beginning of the 1800s by you know the time I guess when did they start doing regulations in terms of hunting regulations in this country because obviously they wiped out almost entirely the American bison there's not their arms gone completely and you know a lot of that was just for tongues no that's crazy yeah they send them back

against their pickled their tongues in Steve we're now I have a yeah so show one of my buddy was telling me it's got a great I haven't seen it yet they said really interesting you

“saw about the history of the bison and yeah yeah yeah I think is a book's called American Buffalo”

but it's really good um first hunting regulations appeared in colonial laws in the 1600s mainly as seasonal closed seasons for certain game like deer in terms of nationwide U.S. law the first major federal game protection statute was the lacy act of 1900 which targeted commercial and market hunting and interstate trade in illegally taken wildlife yeah there was elk in every state and they we wiped them out and there was deer in every state but now there's more deer than

there ever has been before which is interesting Congress passed the lacy act when modern regulations start so the 1900s most states had game and fish commissions hunting seasons bag limits in licensed requirements all reinforced by federal laws like lacy act and later

migratory bird protections well it's amazing that they did that we have an amazing system too like

the the fact that the United States has so much public land you know there's so many different places where people can go and they can hike they can white water raf they can fish they can hunt they can camp I mean we're unlike any country when it comes to that it's like the amount of land that we have it's available to Americans that every it's public for everybody yeah it's fucking incredible yeah I mean being up in Montana any Mexico's like that too in California

in the up in Montana what I look you know staying in that wilderness area like that little cabin that I stayed in you know probably didn't have much land with the cabin but man there's thousands and thousands of acres of wilderness public land with dirt roads everywhere man I would know on those days off that I had I would just drive back in there from miles man and just see the most beautiful country you know and and I'd haul my horse back in the way that it trail heads

and just go explore stuff you know and you had go over one bridge into the next and there's a waterfall and there's another drainage and it's just like you know this is the wilderness area too this isn't even a national park you know right man this is is beautiful country is I've ever seen

did you run any places? I never did you know I was always on my toes about it and I talked you

know and ran me up there you knew that area really well so I'd kind of ask and spots to go check out and about bears and stuff and he said man there weren't too many grizzlies back in there but you never know you know especially coming over from Idaho and stuff like that so I never did I run into some black bears never ran into any wolves and all that but you know I don't know maybe being horseback to I don't know a lot of those places that I did but I definitely had my eyes

open yeah that's another animal then want to list again and make them available for hunting particularly in Montana and Wyoming they just have a lot of grizzlies yeah they have a lot and people don't want you to shoot them think of it as trophy hunting or whatever it is like just tough man man he lived like you say like those folks that live back up in there you know that they all they have is their neighbors and people to depend on you know and it's like man he

“get mulled by a bear taking your trash out or something like that that's what you you're”

experiences with them and you know everybody wants to keep them as pets until they're in the backyard with you they don't play by the rules they don't play by the rules they're 900 pounds that 900 pound giant fucking wild animal that eats everything you can yeah you might have that

down the road you know yeah I don't need you in my backyard the thing is that you can't do anything

about it either in time since you could just shoot them yeah and yeah we don't have that problem

“yeah that's how it should be yeah like you shouldn't have wild monsters living in your yard now”

you should have you should have the right to decide that for yourself oh 100% not only that they're going to be fine they're still going to be plenty of them yeah okay but it'll probably be a more healthy number if they get whacked whenever they eat someone's dog yeah and have a healthy respect for coming in your backyard coming after your anxiety your kids yeah they they should understand that but just like we're so goofy we make laws to protect them that don't protect us

like help me out like do you love animals more than people like I love animals but I'm I'm on

team people yeah 100% yeah everybody else is cool but team people first yeah you know oh we got

monsters in our neighborhood and then and then and then we got killed the monsters so the kids can play outside you don't have to worry about them getting eaten yeah me too I mean growing up ranching or farming and what I mean that's your job is to take care of animals you know yeah animal husbandry it's it's that's your job I mean to take care and provide for these animals to provide food for your family you know and and the wildlife that's around it you know it's like in to take

care of the land and the dirt and then the water and the grasses and all of that stuff has to be supporting each other to make it all work you know and at the end of the atmosphere like we've just

lost touch it's cities you know it's urban environments it's a natural environment sort of giving

people this delusional idea of what our relationship is with nature and you know people just think food comes from restaurant yeah and you know the ground is for streets and you drive sidewalks it's paved it all it's all just this delusional perspective that comes from that sort of urban

“existence and I just think that's why people that live in the country and live in you know”

environments where like Alaska where you're confronted by nature like more interesting people they're they're more robust they're cooler were you singing out there earlier that you wrote bulls yeah dude how many times she I started when I was a kid you know riding stairs when I was like 10 and the junior rodeos and then you were working years old and someone let you ride a fucking steer really that's it's like it was like little baseball you know like so a steer

is a bull that doesn't have nuts yeah and so how much less do they kick when they don't have their nuts oh they're a lot they're pretty dumb oh how old are you here this is I was like 17 this is in a Monterey Mexico actually wow why in Mexico look at you dog damn that's crazy damn dude you're good and you got off without getting stomp too is it just knowing when to release yeah you got to know you got to know when to get off that's for sure and right there uh you're like

that's a wrap yeah he kind of bucked me off there he kind of had me over to the side the area you know but that's a good time to check out there's like that gray zone you know either that or you hang on you end up underneath him you started out when you were 10 years old though how wild are your parents like yeah that's a good age yeah they you know my they branched and grew up out there and my uncle rode bulls professionally and yeah and that's kind of how I got into it to I looked

up to him a lot and see pictures of him riding bulls and then it was just around and I was like I wanted to try that you know and and then I just got the bug for it like super young I was like just ate up with it just wow from 10 years old that's nuts yeah and so how do you teach someone how to fall off of a bull without getting stomped when they're 10 when you're riding those little steers you know a lot of time that they cut bulls and turn them to steers yeah it makes you

say a little so steers are you know typically like six hundred pounds six seven hundred pounds you know compared to fifteen hundred pound bull that's aggressive and you know back that wide and horns like that you know

“they're like a little steer you know I remember my dad or uncle would get in the shoot with me”

and hold their horns you know and like either time they just kind of run out there and jump and kick and not fall off on the side yeah not too bad and then you kind of graduate up and like the junior bulls and then the bigger bulls and then all and then the harder they buck you know so there's kind of different levels you can progress as you as you go but it was a lot different

there was no vest there was like none of that stuff is just old school rodeo you know but at the

“same time I say that but you know it's it's an evolved in such a sport now like the bulls are just”

so much ranker now than they were back then you know it's like now they're breeding them like race horses and the genetics where everyone of those bulls you know buck you know and like you got to go to get on three or four of them and tonight you know back when I was doing it we'd go to the they were still kind of full rodeos with all the other events and you know out of fifteen or twenty bulls there might be one or two in there that were like bad to get on they would hurt you

you know the rest of them were we're pretty rideable you know just to say so and you know we're smoking cigarettes and drinking beer back behind the shoot so you know that kind of the thing you know

we weren't training and doing yoga and like all these guys out of day you know but I loved it

I had so much fun and I loved the road part of it you know getting the truck with your best

“buds and go down the road in the weekends and there's always a band plan and you know”

it was just it was so much fun I loved the culture of it and it's just a good time you know how many times do you think you rode bulls? I mean I rode till I was about twenty three from ten to twenty three and wow that was all I ever wanted to do when I was like really yeah I wanted to just ride bulls yeah and you know I rode in high school and rode junior rodeos rode bulls at high school and then I went to Tarleton State and Stevenville and rode bulls for Tarleton

and then I got my pro cards for a couple of years and that was when like the PBR was like starting up and all of that and it got intense if you backwards on a one what Jamie was one of the pictures lost he was backwards on it oh yeah I was probably getting it that's probably getting dusted oh no that's not that's not that guy is about riding backwards in his words I don't know if it's doesn't purpose it seems like a really good idea what a terrible choice yeah it was cool though

I loved it man I loved it how do you go from that to anything else like how do you stop riding bulls and eventually become an actor in a singer it was all very much and kind of a natural

progression you know since I was a kid at the junior rodeos it was always a dance after

were in a band playing you know and it's a very much a family community deal you know like you go to these towns and nails of the junior the rodeo was going on and in the dance the street dance and food and music and you know growing up listening to bands play especially in Texas you know

“yeah all guys like Gary P. Nun and I remember he always played the dance halls and you get”

Robert O'Keean and some of the you know growing here in those bands and I moved to La Raido Texas when I was like 16 or 17 when my dad and my mother bought me a guitar and I didn't know how to play it much and walked into this place my dad was living at and he's playing dominoes with these guys and this guy saw my guitar and he's like yeah you know how to play that thing I said no and he said well let me see it and he picked it up and he played this killer like Mary Otsy song

called La Malaghenia and I was just fascinated with it I was just like wow I can't believe he made that guitar sound like that you know I've been dragging that thing around for a couple years I didn't know how to tune it up and he's like you learn how to play this guitar and I said yeah he said let me show you this song and he taught me that La Malaghenia and I had a couple of little parts you know a finger pick and part it's a strumming part and I really kind of gave me the

that foundation you know just kind of those few little tools and then I went up to Stephenville to ride bulls at Tarleton after that and a couple other friends that I'd met there that really would could play the guitar a little bit and they had bands that played every weekend in the town as a little bar there called City Limits for all these bands would come play like Jason Bolin and the cross Canadian rag we guys and Pat Green and Robert O'Keean like all the Texas guys

would come play you know so I was like I went from being on the border and just kind of just mostly like the careers and Tejano bands that I would see which was really cool but when I got up there I was like oh man there's all these like cool kind of song you know guys right in the original music and songs and planning bands and would we'd go watch them all the time and as I was still a rodeo and they only song I knew was that Malagangitun so I was like I got

to come up with some new stuff it's all I know how to play you know so I went and got a book of chords to teach myself some new chords on the guitar and we just learned one or two at a time and I'd start making up songs about our adventures on the weekends you know a lot of it was a sitin in the back of the truck and being in places where you didn't have radio signal or you know

whatever town we would get to my buddies but I can't play that song you were singing in the

“back seat you know and so that's how the whole songwriting thing started and then I ended up getting a”

job working for a guy named Mack Altizer he had a rodeo company called bad company rodeo and Del Rio and I'd ridden bulls at some of his rodeos and knew him on my uncle and you know over the years and so it's kind of familiar with that whole thing and started working for him on the ranch and helping with some of the rodeos stuff and still riding bulls and he found that

that I could play the guitar and sing a few songs and he always had a party at the rodeo he was

kind of notorious and things for having like just awesome parties and he's like man all right being him get your guitar you're going to play like the after party you know and pull the flat bid trailer up there for the hospitality tent for all the contestants after the rodeo and those are like the first he really encouraged me to like start playing for people and doing that

“and then it would just spill over into the bars afterwards after the rodeo everybody would end up”

going to the bar and there was like being in bringing a guitar with you and I started getting gigs in the bars the bars it would ask me that if I wanted to come back and play and just after you're like I feel like a few years of that is just like you know I was kind of a weekend where

riding bulls I was definitely not making a living doing it always had to have a day job during the

week you know they're working on the rancher doing something and I started getting to where I could go these bars and make like a hundred bucks and tips you know within a couple of hours and get free beard free food and I was like man this is almost as much as I made all day digging holes the shovel you know that's it it had taken me long to figure out that that was pretty cool and I was just like I'm not stick with it you know what an organic sort of a journey you know like a

natural progression yeah and I didn't have high expectations you know but I just like and I was talking about kind of community in this austin area in Texas in general it's just like man people were so supportive then I was just like if you had a song to play it people live live music like yeah get up and play you know like mac with the rodeo company and all the guys that worked there Dave Jennings and Casey and smart others a whole crew of the bad company

crew from those days and they always had kind of the bad company house band too where everybody

would get up and try to play a song and it's just like man we don't care if it's any good or not just get up there and play we're all we're all in it together and there were so many like places that were like that that I don't think if I was in that environment I probably would never pursued it you know that's had so many people you know supporting you and encourage me to try it and it took me a long time you know to work stuff out and learn because I didn't have any really

formal music musical background or lessons or training under really just learned it on the road and playing in bars and from other musicians yeah yeah so no lessons at all just now figuring out along the way yeah well they got you know they got taught me the Lamala gain you there but then after that it was just you know anybody else who had a guitar might know a song you know like oh what cool how do you play that chord you know all you play it like this you know wow

so how many years were you doing that before you got Yellowstone oh gosh for a while I mean

“I think my you know I was 22 or something like that in Stephenville you know Ryan Bowles”

starting to play songs trying to play gigs after you know ended up moving down here to new Brahmphos and the Austin area playing music for a while and then going out to Los Angeles and playing and then hit the road with a band for I think I had four or five albums or so you know out you know and been touring for five or six years I think a how old was I like when Yellowstone started like 36 37 so yeah I'd been playing the music stuff for a long time

and so how did the yelstone how'd you go from music to yelstone like how'd you even did you do any acting before that no I've been one I've done a film with Jeff Bridges years ago called Crazy Heart and wrote some songs for that movie now it was really not the thing that was good movie that's pretty cool you know I was just like Jeff Bridges plays a musician in the show and I and we're like the backup band at the bowling alley for one of the scenes you know which was

really cool and then written some songs for some other films and some TV shows since then and I met a game at named John Linson and I'll say I was a producer in his dad art linson I did like sons of anarchy, bunch of shows and a bunch of great movies and he introduced me to Taylor and Taylor

talk about music and stuff and he wanted me to write a song for win river and I'd given it a

shot a couple times never really had anything that fit for what he wanted me to end up using a song

that I'd already written and then we just kind of kept a touch and then when the yelstone thing came up he got in touch again about writing some songs for the show and then he learned that I used to do all the rodeo stuff I think in the group ranching and he's like well shoot you can do a lot of this stuff I got to find a way to get you in the show you know and it literally went from the conversations like well I don't know what I'm gonna do with you but I'll find something

to do with you you know and he literally said he's like you know if you do good you know you guys if you suck I'll kill you off if you think I'll keep you on something like that you know

“I'm like yeah you know formal acting like training or is that no not at all that's what's amazing”

do you know really good oh I appreciate that you know I get to kind of play a cowboy and be a little bit about of myself but it's that roles got some complexity to it it's not just a cowboy it's like you've got some complicated scenes you know some emotional scenes some deep scenes and you're really good man thank you it's impressive I appreciate that it was I enjoyed it you know I hadn't done much acting at all and I got to give a lot of credit to the actors that are on the show too you know

that those folks that have really studied it and paid their dues learning that craft you know they really create the environment you know especially for me not knowing much about it you know just kind of being a part of the scene like they're so good that they make you react in a certain way you know they know how to get it out of you you know coal and you can all those folks you know they they know how to set up the scene they know what they're doing so they already kind of have

the whole thing set up and so when I walk into a scene and they say they're lying to me it's like oh okay yeah I got to answer right I'm just like kind of like naturally answering that you know right right yeah it's like if you work with a really good actor sometimes you forget they're acting like oh oh yeah we're acting like you see like this is really happening yeah yeah yeah for me like I got there was moments when I thought it wasn't really happening yeah how long did it take for you

got comfortable like doing that on camera still not really yeah still not yeah way played off good

“with thanks you know I think some of it comes from the riding bulls you know you learn how to channel that”

anxiety or fear and just like okay it's go time let's just like pull it together and channel that you know

if you were at a bull I think you could kind of do basically anything man I you know that's one thing

Michael taught me when I was young you know he he was really quick to be like man it doesn't matter how strong you are you know it's not about it's all mental it's all in your mind and it's all it's not I think I can it's I know I can and I will you know and he goes if you don't if you you don't believe that every time you go put your rope on one of those while in their backs he's like it ain't gonna happen yeah it says you you don't it's not being cocky it's just being confident

you know and believing in yourself and and having that that power of mind over matter you know yeah if you could do that acting is easy and take that in anything in life yeah and I and I did because I I definitely have moments where you know like oh okay take deep breath right let's go time let's go

you know what's basically having more than a decade of doing that with bulls like that that's

so uncontrollable like it is like you're at the mercy of fate and how this plays out yeah and you have this enormous beast and you've chosen to scare the shit out of yourself because of this they could try to ride it you chosen to join the dance yeah if you do that if you can

“do that and be successful with that I kind of think you could do anything I think that I mean I”

wouldn't want my kid to do it at 10 but fuck it's probably if they could survive pretty valuable I love I really picked to the easiest professions you know riding bulls play in music like right you they'd have the list of out of success ratio impossible task right well you did you going to ever get in these serious injuries uh you know I was fortunate like not serious serious but there was one of the worst ever I got knocked all these teeth out and I got jerked

down one night in weatherford and took my lip off my teeth went through down here and these are all fake up here and then my lip was just hanging right there what was what it didn't knock me out which was wild though I got on this bull and I remember it was in weatherford Texas and it's got

muley and I easily can go up to the guys that own the bulls and a lot of the bulls have patterns you

know that they that they'll do over and over you know so you can kind of talk to the stock contractor the guys that don't want to be like hey you know what's this bull that genuinely do and he's like I almost time they'll take two jumps out and they spin to the left or they take two jumps and they go to the rider all they just you know they'll jump kick around and make a circle and he goes man he goes I don't know he's like the last two times the buck he's not he hadn't been

ridden he'll usually jumps out there and just spins right in the gate and he's like nobody's really ridden him past three or four seconds so he goes I don't know what he's going to do after that

“and sure enough that's what happened I got on him and it jumped out and just got it on right there”

in the gate just spinning right there and I rode him through it like three or four rounds and after I rode him like I think the bullie didn't know what to do next you got a little frustrated he just stopped

and just stopped dead still just below and it just you know just mad and you never really want

to jump off of him when they're still like that because you just you'll fall right beside him you know so you want him to have a little momentum so when you you know you're checking out they can you can get away from him and so I spurred him a little bit to get him to jump so when he jumped like a jump off but when I spurred him it just jumped off straight up off the ground like a cat off all fours and when he came cracked and when he jumped up like that I you know kind of

rotten me back on back like that my hands still tighten the rope and then when he came down he just brought all that jerked me down with the fours and I came forward and he threw his head back and I just head buddy didn't oh and and when he did and then my hand was still caught in the rope and then he took off running around this drug me around and just stomped the crap out of me

you know for a bit and I finally got this and I remember running over to the fence and I just you

know it kind of had my arms on the fence and I could see all the blood just kind of pouring down all over me and one of the bullfighters ran up and he looked at me and he goes oh buddy he's like woohoo so they have to stitch your lip back on yeah you know and the shock was just yeah I didn't feel anything like I was just like in shock and I was like oh man you know I remember my girlfriend was there from high school and my buddy and we drove to the little you know they're

like what's going on this was like I don't have health insurance and I call my ambulance and got my buddy's car and we drove her over to the emergency room and weather fern that going in the nurse she's just like oh man she's like we can't do anything for you here you're gonna have to go to like Dallas to like trauma you know you're gonna have to get like a oral surgeon to put you back together and she goes you want me to you know get you an ambulance there and I was like now

“I think we can make it you know she's like she gave me some pain pills she goes don't take these”

now she goes hold on to these and then when you get to Dallas then take them because you're probably gonna have to wait you know before they can because three or four in the morning before they can get somebody in there to see is sure enough we got to Dallas and I'm just sitting there in the weight room and I had a rag and I was just holding my mouth together and the shock wore off man and then it's you know I was starting to feel it took those pain meds and then Dr. Cayman and

held me back and gave me a big shot in the roof of my mouth trying to know everything and this I think it took a longer to clean it all up you know pull all the hair and dirt out there and sew me up and it was an ordeal for sure for months after that you know getting the dental work done on that crap so how was the lip hanging off it bit it all it would have came all the way off it was just hanging on right here by side so it was just hanging down and so they just had

a stitched the lower part of the upper part and put it all together yeah just all the crap right through the middle and kind if I shave I got a big scar that kind of goes down there and then they went through down here so I got some stitches down there and then most of the stitches were all in my gums and all of that so they had to put like posts and implants and all that stuff wow yeah that shit takes forever huh kind of knocked the front four out and it just dominated the rest of

me out of this rotting bulls with no health insurance is wild that's crazy man that's crazy yeah that was just life back then for me you know if they'd go into the music stuff was like I don't know I just wasn't really scared about it or even the expectations of making it or I mean to me at the time I had a truck and a camper on it and I was like man I was like I got no bills I got no responsibilities I'm just like go make a hundred bucks a night playing music in a bar I was like

“this is the dream you know I'm like I mean I made it yeah yeah well I think when you've done”

something super super difficult everything else seems easier and if you've done what you did with

even the travel part you know like you know in the early days of playing when I really decided

I was going to try to make a run and play you know and it was like oh what we got to get in the van and go driver on and play in bars you know I was like we're doing that rodeo for years you know he's sleeping the back of the truck or whatever and it was fun for us we loved it yeah so the idea of like starving on the road playing in a band playing music I was like let's go you know and

“getting a guaranteed paycheck every night you know right the gratitude you must have the”

riding bulls I mean at the time you walked away with nothing right you know a bus to lip nothing you know yeah and no health insurance and your life and it is not a bunch of people that love

you know yeah well that's a great base to start out from you know I mean it sounds like

it's almost like the universe engineered this path for you to go down like if you wanted to pick a path that would bring you to where you are right now it is the perfect set of circumstances I look at it all the time you know just from an outside perspective I guess and just like wow how in the world all this come together and just a lot of luck and perseverance or whatever not I would say I haven't worked hard out of you know I feel like I have and all that but they're

a lot of luck out there and a lot of good people too you know a lot of good people helped me out along the way and gave me gas money and gave me a place to sleep or placed to eat and helped us get other gigs you know I mean remember going from one town to the next and not having gas money to get to the next and having no plan other than like let's just head west or head east and you know he'd go play at a bar and sure enough there'd be somebody there that would be like oh man

“you have to come back to my house we have bonfire and play some songs and he's like oh my brother's”

got a bar and Phoenix and you know he's like call them on your way out you know we'd go there and

and we'd always like chop firewood or wash dishes or wooden mill your lawn or wash your car

on the way to like to get gas money and keep on going you know wow so now it's just kind of hot and always I feel like I learned early if you were willing to help yourself you know those people would help you all day long I think luck is a factor but it's only a factor if you've already had all those other experiences I think about it if you hadn't ridden bulls you hadn't gone through all the ranching all the hard labor all the different things then like you probably wouldn't

have capitalized on that luck the same way no not at all your character wouldn't be the same no you know it's like part part of who you are is the character that you've developed from what you've done it kind of conditioned me to do it in a way and in a big way it seems like it's your life it almost like it's engineered for this to happen the way it happened it's kind of crazy it's been cool man I feel very storybook you know yeah very like movie like a plot in a movie guys a cowboy

“bull rider starts singing songs people like hey you should probably do this for a living and then”

someone's like hey man you should be on TV you know you know you're one of the biggest hits in the world I feel like it's that song you're one day they're gonna put me in the movie yeah buck oh yeah like I was like how about living this they're right now you know it's like I know I meet people all the time they're like oh like you know they just they can't really believe where I'm from or whatever they just think it's some like made up stories yeah yeah all right man you know

well it seems like a story that someone would make up if they wanted to pretend to be a cowboy yeah well I think a lot of people have I bet right yeah a lot of people still do yeah and now funny That's funny. That's like stolen Valor almost Yeah, you know, maybe like you know kind of stuff you know professions or whatever you pretend to be Oh, yeah, what it is

Oh, yeah, we do kind of I went to the restroom Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no - Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

It is sometimes, you know, and it's like, you know, I remember when I really started for, you know, playing music and stuff and I've worked, I've had all the time, it's that's what I wrote bulls and, you know, it's been very much my identity, you know, but note, cowboy stuff wasn't really cool then, you know, I like to feel like in the early

American scene or, you know, any of that kind of stuff, you know, and definitely going to New York or going to Los Angeles and touring around, I would be the only one brand

“of cowboy hat, you know, I remember the first time, once I was in LA, we were out on the”

Santa Monica Pier and it was a guy that had like the one man band thing, you know, out

there and there's always tourists on the pier and I'm just like out there checking out

the scenery and just minding my own business and this guy gets on the microphone and he just points over at me and goes, "Oh, broke that mountain!" And everybody on the pier turned around and looked at me and there just poured on me and laughed it out of me and I was like, "Ah, okay, you know, so I was like, that was the association with the cowboy hat at the time."

That's hilarious. Yeah, they changed cowboys a lot. Now there's a whole new bug game, you're a whole new monkey, right, you know, that legend. But, you know, now playing and man, I'm so stoked to see all these new bands out there and like so many young folks playing actual instruments, you know, I felt like for a long

time there was so electronic and DJs and all that stuff, you know. Well, there's a giant country come back, there's going on right now, kind of nationwide. I'm sure you love open the gates. Is that Brian song? Yeah, that's such a great boy riding song. Yeah, I got some great teams, man. Yeah, that's a great boy riding song. But there's just so many great musicians out there now and also who've lived like different

but very, like Charlie Crocket, fascinating dude that kind of is just kind of performing on the streets and you know, just being kind of a vagabond, traveling around and then finally catches and people like them, this music is fucking great, man. Yeah, like wearing it on

their sleeves, you know, and having the confidence to not think people have always been,

“I think there has been plenty of folks out there, you know, right from the heart and so”

to speak and all that and, you know, having a certain integrity to the things that they're saying and wanting, you know, the truth and their speaking into their songs and things like that and there's just a lot more of a platform to support them, you know, and like people like, oh, wow, there's a bunch of this stuff out there, you know, there's also an appreciation for it because I think we're all fearful that people like you won't exist in the future because

it seems like a guy like you, you know, bull riding, living on a ranch, like the saying songs and bars, like that almost is like a thing of the past. Oh, very much. But it's so romantic to people that like when we meet a guy like you in real life, you're like, oh, keep him around. You know, like, you want to make sure that people like you still exist. It's a very exciting thing for people to have a person who's lived an authentically

interesting life and authentically out of the box life. It's not a normal life. Like,

if you meet a million people, the odds of you meeting one guy who used to bull ride and

then started singing in bars with his friends and was happy living on the road. Now all the sudden he's on a fucking gigantic television show. It's not even one in a million. It's pretty, it's strange to sometimes I, you know, I meet people and like, you know, I'm like, oh, yeah, I grew up just like you, you know, and then I realized, I don't think I did. I kind of have to think about it myself. I'm definitely didn't. People are

a bull. You were fun to tend to do that. Most people when they're tend to play with GI Joe's, you know, they're riding bulls. That's a very unusual set up for the rest of

“your life, you know? I think if you do some things difficult when you're really young,”

you get accustomed to fear, you get accustomed to anxiety and nerves and the thing that, I mean, that that is like the mark of a man, like a man is his ability to be in a very high stress situation and keep his shit together, you know, and to have gone through a lot of that when you're very young, like riding a bull at 10, it's crazy to gone through that when you're very young, it just develops the kind of character that allows you to kind

of do anything in life. And I think most men see that and they wish they were like that. I remember a moment, you know, it was really when I was, you know, riding steers and then I made that transition to the big bulls, you know? And it wasn't like all here, it's like this little steer and then there's an in between and then there's the big, it was like this little steer and then this big bull. You know, it was a junior rodeo and Odessa Texas

and it was my first year to ride junior bulls and I entered the bull riding my uncle was there with me and they started running the bulls up into the shoot and they were big. They

big but they didn't, they didn't buck that hard, you know? They just kind of jumped

down but they're still big, you know? And like I remember like scared and like in tears, you know, kind of, I was scared and my uncle, you know, was super cool about it. He wasn't

“like, you have to do this or you have to be like, man, where do you want to do? You”

want to pack it up? Well, we'll get out of here right now. It's like, this is either for you or it's not for you, you know? And I remember just him telling me, you want to take like 20-30 minutes and just kind of think about it and whatever you want to do, we'll make happen, you know? And I did. I kind of walked around there for a bit and I just had this some kind of like, I knew that I would regret it if I didn't do it, didn't try it, you

know? And there was something in me where like, I mean, because I slept it, I dreamt

about it, you know? It's just I loved it and I was like, nah, I'm going to do this, you know? And I put my rope on him and had all the sport there that I needed in that moment and they opened the gate and this big old high-horn boy, he just turned and kind of jumped out there, real doll-style. And I think I wrote him two or three jumps and fell off and it was just like,

“I'm the king of the world. I was like, I'm a bull rider now, you know? I'm not just the”

steer rider kid, you know? I kind of made that little and I remember after that, I just, man, I just prayed it. Like, just the higher they jump, the faster they spend, the better I like it. Really? Oh, just, yeah, the dirty rank just run them in there. Let's go. And when I was little, I mean, even I was like 14 or 15, you know, the guys were starting to breed the bulls for like the PBR, like they full on sort of these like breeding programs, you know, used to, you could go to a practice

pin and, you know, it's been all farmer that had two or three old bulls that you could get on and practice and they just jump around and just, you know, nothing else were really going to hurt you bad, you know? And then I started breeding these young bulls and man, you go to the practice pin, there'd be 10 or 15 of these like the yearlings that bucked and they needed somebody to get on them, you know, like test pilot. And I was the test pilot. It was a guy named Bradley,

“Rouse Berry, I believe, kind of brownwood. And I remember going to his house and I could ride,”

I could ride, I was pretty sticky when I was younger than I was when I got older, you know, for some reason I just had that no fear or whatever that was. And I'd get on 10 or 15 a day. And they just kept brown on a man there, man. They'd be trying to flip over in the shoe, just, you know, they're young green bulls that were half wild and, and they're just trying to figure out which ones bucked and which ones didn't, and they would, you know, get rid of the ones that didn't

buck and keep the ones that did. And man, I'd just be like, the wilder they got in the shoe, like the more aggressive I got. Like I just, like, oh, okay, that's what we're going to do. Come on, let's go. Let's do this, you know? That's so crazy. That's a crazy way to live your life. You know, wild bulls, you see, wild, like the ones that are out there in the wild, there's some of the most dangerous animals that you could ever encounter. When they're at, like,

they're called scrub bulls, like my buddy Adam, he lives in Australia, or he's, he's moving over America, but yeah, when he lived in Australia, he said that they would encounter these scrub bulls, which is like wild domestic bulls that got out and started breeding and then they, many generations later, they're now completely wild. Like deer out there. Yeah, and they will run after you. I know these three guys from Australia that, uh, several Australian guys that came over,

lived in the Stephenville. A lot of these cowboys of me, the Stephenville, because it was so central, it was kind of cowboy capital there. And the name was Lance Kelly, has some brothers, and they were from up there in North Queens, then somewhere. And once some were, he went back to work, and then when he came back, he wanted, he'd tell me about where he was from all the time. You know, I was

young, curious. I always always fascinated, like, wow, you're from Australia, you know, I've only

seen movies, you know, like, uh, what's the, how, guys, I'm going to go down there. No, man from, uh, uh, man from snow area ever, not which was in any way. Um, that was a fascinating with Australia and, and him and his brothers. And so he went home and he, he videotaped, uh, a VHS, you know, he didn't have phones back then, but it was like the old camp, like VHS tape recorder, and he'd videotaped it around his body while he was walking around, working on the ranch,

and he'd have his four wheeler and they're chasing these wild cow and rounding him up, having his brother, brothers. And he would just like chase him on a four wheeler as long as, you know, keep him running until they got so tired, they couldn't go anymore, and then he had this piece of pipe on there. He could run up behind him and kind of knock him down, and then he'd jump off and tie their legs together, and they would catch a bunch of them like that, and then his brother would

come by, you know, later with a truck and a ranch and went them up into the trailer, and they would

tell me how they were doing it and showing that I was like, oh, that's the coolest thing in the world.

I want to get, when can I go, you know? Australia's such a crazy place, man. It's, I mean, bigger than the United States, and it, or the size of the United States roughly, and it has less people than Los Angeles and everything will kill you. Everything will kill you, every snake, spider, every snake, crocodiles, they have saltwater crocodiles, and giant fucking great white sharks, and like, oh, the hearty people, man. Yeah, hearty mother fuckers come from the

place. I feel like Texas and a lot of folks from Australia are a bit kindred spirits.

“Yes, I think so too. My buddy James McCams on the podcast yesterday, he's a comic out of Australia,”

and he's from there and he spends time here. He was living here for a while, but he had to move back, because he had another kid, and but now he's coming back and forth and trying to figure. He's really talented. He's coming off of Australia. Yeah, he was living in Austin for a couple of years, and living in America for a couple of years, living in Austin for about a year, but, you know, it's why he's about to have another kid, and they just decided to go back to Australia, where

she's got support, but man, he fucking misses it. He was here, he's like, mate, I miss it so much. Yeah. I miss it so much. Like, I think there's any place like this place. It's pretty awesome, but Australia, it's like, it's the same kind of thing. It's like, it's a rugged place in the kind of people that live there. They're fun. They're fun, kind of, and got a super fucked up, a press of government, unfortunately. I think it's a lot about what you say too. You know,

when you survive certain things in your life, and, you know, it puts things in perspective of what you're taking seriously, or what's an emergency, right? What's this life or death, or is it not, and to be able to laugh at stuff? I love the comedians. It's just like, man, to be able to just joke and cut stuff about the most serious things, or whatever it is, like, God, we need that so much. Yeah. It's an important service. It doesn't seem like it is

to people because it seems stupid. You know, like, oh, you just told jokes. Like, not for me, when I go

“and watch a good comedy show, I feel better. It's medicine. And I think it also puts life into perspective.”

With a sense of humor, you can kind of look at things through different lens and go, yeah, we're probably going to be all right. I get a feeling, like, you know, I think a lot of folks have decided that song or writers or where, you know, you know, have much of sad songs or whatever to go to that deep place and you live through stuff that you write about. But, man, I find in comics, man, like, I feel like there's some of the heaviest stuff in the world

that those books have experience to be able to, you know, come up and tell these kinds of jokes and stories and the educational part of it with it. You know, it's so much, I don't know, for me, it seems there's so much more than just the joke. It is for some, you know, some people just do jokes. It really depends on your style. But I mean, if you go back to like Richard prior, his whole thing was like explaining life and telling stories. Yeah. But within an amazing

“sense of humor and that you would leave that and you know, everybody feels like more united,”

they feel better. Yeah. Just like, you look like, whatever, everybody was thinking, yeah, that was everything and afraid to say and also he would look at things from a very wise perspective that was also hilarious. So you walked out of there feeling better. You felt like you were better. I felt like there's, uh, bringing some hope. Yeah. Yeah. There's hope in humor. Yeah. For sure. But there's hope in music, too. Yeah. You know, I don't have any musical talent at all,

but I always think of music as almost like a drug. Because music, when, when a good song hits,

you're like, but like, if you're in the car and a good tune comes on, like, especially back when I used to listen to the radio, you know, and like, you didn't expect what was coming on and also rewind it. Yeah. Also, that's right. I love my golden earing. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Let's go. Yeah. Like you, you feel different. It like changes your mood. Like a good, you hear like, free bird. Like you're flipping through the channels and the fucking guitar so

low for free bird comes on. You're like, you know, you feel better. Like it, it excites all these parts of your senses, your consciousness, your feelings. It's, it's a drug. I mean, it's an amazing thing. Real therapeutic for me. Either very beginning like I. Like I said,

I didn't have high expectations, but I, I knew when I, kind of, wrote some of the first songs

that I wrote and I, like, got some of that stuff off my chest. Like, it changed me, you know. Yeah. It like, it became a tool that all of a sudden I had access to this thing that, like, was helping me heal in a way. Like, I could get, I could get stuff off my chest. Like, the things that I was uncomfortable talking about in conversation with folks. Like, I could put them into a song

anybody in the room. I was just like, you know, but I was getting this stuff out out of me, you know.

“And it's also a way for people to hear it where it's not annoying. You know what I mean? Like,”

you'd be just tell some sad story about, you're a lot of people at road, geez. Like, here we go. Come here every kid, everybody's got a story. But if you have a sad story in a song, it's like, fucking, it's kind of, it's beautiful. Like, I love a good sad song. You know, a song that has, like, real emotion in it, whether it's a real story or whether, like, one of my favorite culture wall songs is Kate McKannon. Yeah. Jamie turned me on to that song.

Yeah. So it's a meetman and cold there's a gem. He was fucking 21 when he made that song, which is crazy. Yeah. You listen to that song? It sounds like a 58-year-old man who's been smoking cigarettes this whole life. Yeah. And that dude is interesting too, because he still works on a ranch. Yeah. He's a great guy. He's one of my favorites of the younger guys that have come up

and been doing this. He's just, um, I same way when I first heard those first songs, I was like,

fuck is this? Yeah. Yeah. You know, and then you saw that, I saw like a picture of him on my almighty kid. You know, crazy. And I just, uh, a fabulous race on the news of our good bird. You hear that? You're like, what is this? Yeah. What, who is this guy? And I couldn't believe he was 21. I'm like, that makes zero sense. Yeah. He's got it, though, man. And there's a bunch of them out there now that I'm hearing too. There's just like, I'm like, man, how cool? Yeah.

How cool. I'm so glad that they're getting a shot at it or just getting the support. I don't know if it's ain't getting a shot at it. But it's like getting the love and support that they deserve for the good music, man. Yeah. It's great. It's great music. And there's a thing now with the internet where it's so easy to share or something. You know, someone's got a good song and it's on YouTube or Spotify. And then you just send a link to your buddy. Yeah. You go, bro, check this out.

Like, I got to say, like, have the songs that I find out about my friends just send me.

“And then all of a sudden, I'm like, oh shit. Yeah. And then I'll add it to my playlist. You know?”

Yeah. It's like, it's easy to share things now where you don't have to go to the record store and pick up the record. And you know, now it's just like within seconds of you getting it in your phone, you're listening to it. Yeah. And it's easier to record the stuff, too. You know, it's like you don't need to half a million bucks in a studio and all that stuff. It's like, man, have the stuff you can record on your phone. We'll look at Oliver Anthony. Yeah. One fucking song. Yeah. One song and the first

show he ever does is like 18,000 people does the first show that do ever perform that. I feel

for my, I would never have been able to do that when I started, you know, like, I would not prepare

for anything like that. You know, I don't know, maybe they're not. But that's a lot of he's settled in. He settled in pretty easy. He figured out he's a smart cat. Yeah. He's a really smart dude and he settled in really easy. Like I say, I have to, you know, and I always think like, you know, gosh, it's changed so much since I started out, you know. I mean, we didn't even have like, you know, if you wanted to learn how to play a song, you kind of had to go listen to the record

and just try to figure it out. You know, and I rewind it. Now that it's like, oh, here's a guide of the show you ever know. Yeah, it's a guide on YouTube that'll show you exactly how they're doing. Yeah, that took me years to figure out, you know, and, you know, maybe that is like today, you know, these guys, they're learning how to do it. That's such a quicker rate and like, they know how to handle the crowds and do all the stuff and it's just like, oh, Mary, there you go.

“Well, that's what everything today. You know, I think that's also why like, I mean, in martial arts”

and like UFC, there's a reason why the guys are so much better today and it's because they get to see everything that everybody's ever done and then they practice it and improve upon it and they get it out of your early age. You could essentially just on your phone watch every fight that's ever taken place ever in human history that's been recorded. I did that on the road a few years ago. I mean,

I've still, I've always been a pretty rudimentary guitar player. You know, I can't solo all over the

place and all of that stuff and, um, I think it was like 2019. I put out a record and I was going on a tour and my friend Charlie Sexton produced album. He's a wonderful guitar player and Charlie Sexton, the guy from the, from the 80s beat so long. Yeah, play with, uh, I remember that Dylan played Arc Angel. He was like really young when beats so lonely came out, right? Man, he's, yeah, legend and I remember calling him though. I was like, man, I really want to get better at the guitar,

you know. And he's like, well, just listen to all the stuff that you really like. You know, he's like, don't try to play it all note for no. He's like, I just keep listening to it and like, you'll start eventually finding those places and develop your style. And, but it was the one that I got on the road as well. Man, I had access on YouTube. Right. All of my favorite musicians

just breaking down and giving simple blues guitars lessons for kids. And I was like, man, this is

great. Never done anything like this. And just like, went through, I went back, you know. Right.

I got to memorize all the notes on the fretboard and I knew, you know, and it was just, it was so much fun doing it. And, you know, I also give confidence to get up and jam with other

“musicians and play and kind of know what key you're in, what you're doing and, uh, you know,”

I went years, you know, without having any kind of lessons or training and then I'm just like, with them three weeks of being on tour and watching YouTube videos of it just stepped it up so much. Like, how'd you learn how to do it? I just 20 years later, my career. I decided to learn how to play the guitar on YouTube. It is amazing. I mean, that's the positive part of the internet. You know, if you can avoid the negative parts, there's a lot of great positive stuff in the internet

and the access to stuff like that. It's amazing. Yeah. If we all get to this point of negative of

everything, all right. Right. Well, unfortunately, there's a lot of people that don't have good lives and they do have a lot of extra time because they're not really investing in their own life, so they just spread a negativity online. Yeah. And it's just human nature, but wild, wild, wild world. It is, it's a wild world, but it's also a wildly positive world, too, just what you just said about the guitar stuff, or with the Oliver Anthony stuff, this guy standing there with a

guitar in front of a field, with no production value at all, but has a solemnly singing from the heart. How many views does that shit have on YouTube? It's got to be like 100 million views or

“something nuts. But that song was fucking gigantic. Yeah. Rich men north of them. I remember my”

wife playing it for me for the first time. I was like, what is that? She's like, oh, I'm going to check this out. And I was like, that's so fucking rad. Yeah, I got a chance to see him perform live to his band. They're fucking fantastic. I mean, he settled, he's completely settled into being famous. Now he's, he's cool with it. Yeah. He's still the same dude. I met him real early on and I actually talked to him on the phone. How was it got at 236 million? Holy shit. Why? When you say like he's

settled it was he, I didn't know it was he had an hard time with it. He was freaking out and I contacted him early on and he said, hey, can I ask you some advice? And we talked on the phone and I said, yeah, sure. So I called him up and he was just telling me that he was getting hit up by all these different people that were trying to give him money to sign a contract. This, then I go, hey, hey, don't sign nothing. I go, you don't need nobody. You don't need to be locked up in any contract with

nobody. And he was like, they're all telling me I got to strike while the iron's hot. I'm like, fuck them. I go, you got talent, dude. Talent is the number one thing. You already have that. You're going to be fine. You just keep making songs like that. You can't fucking lose, but what you don't want to do is be tied with some legal contract to some assholes just suck and you like a vampire. Yeah. And they're going to be stuck with you for years and then you're going to have to go to court

and get stuck with them. Exactly. Yeah, whatever the opportunity like like said, you're writing good songs. You're doing good stuff. And you have a way to give it to the people. But he's getting more of your names. 7 million dollars to sign this. I'm like, don't do it. I know it sounds like, but that's 7 million dollars. They're giving you that because they're going to make 14.

“There's not a chance in hell. And you don't need them. You should get all the money. You should”

get all all. You shouldn't give any money to anybody else. You don't need it. You can make your own

records. You could put it all together yourself. You don't need nobody. I guess I always got a member.

They're going to buy for one cell for two somewhere. Exactly. There's no way they're going to give you that money unless they're going to make a lot more. And then you're going to get stuck with them. Don't do it. And he's like, they're all telling me I got to do it now. He's going to miss this opportunity. I'm like, you ain't missing shit. Yeah. You ain't missing it. There's not a chance you're going to miss it. Especially when you're that young. Yeah. And good. Yeah. And just fucking good.

Who knows what they're going to be writing in the next 10 years? Yeah. Have you heard that song Woman Scorned? I haven't. Is that one his new one's? Yeah. He wrote that one after a breakup. It's just woo! You hear that fucker. It just gets you right in the bone marrow. Yeah, it gets you. Yeah. It's fantastic. It's so good. It's just like, you know, it's a beautiful story. And I love a story like that. And it was like selling. He was selling like heavy equipment. Like it was salesman.

Just like fucking machinery and shit. And then writing songs and he gets fed up one day and he puts this song. Let's make a video that's fucking song. Yeah. And all of a sudden boom. Many people ask me all the time. They're like, man, he thinks, you know, the best young song right around there, you know, musician or guitar player. And like, man, I don't know. It's probably some 16-year-old kid in the garage that nobody's heard of. That's probably the best guy out there,

Yeah. They're out there. It's just, but that's the thing that I was saying about guys like you

that people look at guys like you and it's such a romantic story. They worry that there's not going to be any more of you. You know what I mean? Like, this weird digital world and AI and just the strange fucking life that we were all living like now that are not, I don't want to say simple because it's not simple, but it's unencumbered by all the bullshit of the world that we think is fake and unfortunate, like to have this pure life in this wild romantic story.

When people meet a guy like you like, oh, man, it probably ain't going to be many more of them. Oh, no, man. I mean, I mean, look at this guy. You know, guys are kind of, I feel so fortunate too. When I did come to Austin, like in mid-20s, you know, I met guys like Joe Ely and Terry Allen and guy Clark and these little Steve Earl legendary kind of guys that I looked up to and I remember being young and then I mean, I'm like, oh, man, these are the last guys left, you know, right? And so,

you know, I don't know, there's so many of these young folks out there, they're doing it. That I think

“crave it, and that's what they're interested in. They wouldn't want to, he played that music,”

you know, they want to feel that stuff. So I'm optimistic about it, but I can definitely is a different world out there these days, not even for myself, you know, just going with the flow and like, oh, where are we going tomorrow? You know, how's this? Like, I have no idea how so much of this social media stuff is working or what, you know, and how you put out an album or songs, and it's like, don't worry about all that jazz, just like, just keep writing. Just keep writing,

keep making it, and just be on the level. And at the end of the day, if all of that stuff disappears,

you know, you can always go sit on the sidewalk and put your tip jar out there and play a song

for people who are walking down the street and I guarantee there's going to be somebody who's going to stop and appreciate it, you know. Well, that's what got Charlie Crocket started out. Yeah, I had plenty of gigs where like, you know, you're going to some bar and, you know, my wife always says, go where you're celebrated, not where you're tolerated. You know, you're going to some bar and they kind of, you can tell they don't really want, you know, they're

not excited about you playing or like, you know, shit, I'll just go, I'll go park in the parking lot across the street and sit on the tailgate of my truck and play. We'll have a party over there, you know. That's the crazy thing about music. You can just kind of set up anywhere. You don't need all that stuff. You're like, tell 'em up, just sign contracts and deals. And when it's like, man, just like you got that guitar in your hand, you got your song, you know, hold on to it.

Yeah. It's pretty unprotected, you know. That's what's something that's special to you.

“I think when I talk about the therapy of songwriting, that's what I hold on and protect that”

ruthlessly. You know, I'm not just giving that away. You know, and that's more that part of it's way more important than selling an album or a concert ticket or going on the road touring and all that man. Like, what I get out of music is like, where I'm sitting at home and I read them all by myself and letting that stuff pour out of me and I'm just just singing it to the wall and like, that's what's a save my life, you know. That's awesome. And anything in the rest of it.

I'm glad that you articulated that way too because I think this young aspiring songwriters and singers out there that are listening to this right now that are feeling this and they just can't wait to get to a pad right now. Start writing. You can pick up the guitar and start writing. Because it's like stories like yours and the way you express it, it inspires people to get excited about it and inspires people to really dig in. I hope so. You know, I definitely had folks

that meant toward me like that and you know, steered me in the right direction in a lot of ways, Terry Allen, the guy definitely, I've just like, man, just keep writing, keep, you know, and whatever it is, whatever that's making you want to do that in the first place, you know,

like that like hold on to that, you know, and protect it. And the rest of the law will be always

be around and always calm and change and a good song will survive and find its way just like you got, you know, that song you just played me like you said 200 million people in it just, they'll find its way, you know, find it find it find it find it's way into people's hearts, you know.

“Yeah, and like I said, it's just some it's important for people like you to tell your story.”

And it really is. Thank you. It's it's fuel for people. Thanks. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. And tell everybody they want to find you performing anywhere where they can catch you as you got a website that shows where you're going to be at it all over the interwebs.

I do. It's probably just Ryan Bingham.com or Bingham Music.com something like that.

“Got all the dates right there. Yeah. Do you social media at all?”

Yeah, we're on all this. I mean, do you pay attention to it or do you got somebody who does it for you?

Both. Yeah, both. Yeah. Like most like like on Instagram, I pay attention to that when,

“you know, and check in and stuff like that. There's so much of it these days. It's like I can't keep up.”

Yeah, all of it. Yeah, it'll rob your time. Yeah, I'm trying. I'm trying to go get away where all

that stuff's turned off. That's where I'm going to find me. Beautiful. All right. Thanks, brother. [MUSIC PLAYING]