Episode 1571 - Chris Robinson
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I'm Mark.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Mark Marin.
Marc:I'm in personal crisis management.
Marc:Mostly imaginary, mostly my own, but I'm getting business cards.
Marc:Yeah, I'm working it out.
Marc:It's a new... I finally found a context, a psychological explanation for the life I lead, and I've decided it's crisis management, personal...
Marc:I primarily work in imaginary crisis, and they're usually my own.
Marc:There is room, and I do welcome other people's crises, but many times I'm limited in what I can do.
Marc:But I try to help, but mostly it's ongoing.
Marc:What is going on?
Marc:Today on the show, I talked to Chris Robinson from the Black Crows, and we're talking, you know, Black Crows, you know, the Black fucking Crows.
Marc:We talked about how the band is back together.
Marc:They put a new album out earlier this year called Happiness Bastards, and they're heading back out on tour this fall.
Marc:Initially, when the Black Crows first had their time, I was so dug into the stones, I just couldn't accept it.
Marc:But, you know, they're a good rock band, and that's that.
Marc:And he's a chatty guy, knows a lot about a lot of stuff, had a lot to say about things, art and music and otherwise.
Marc:It was nice.
Marc:It was a good talk.
Marc:It was nice to talk to him.
Marc:Also in the music zone...
Marc:My buddy Alejandro Escovito hit us to this situation, to this event, to this album.
Marc:The guitarist Jesse Mallon suffered a rare spinal stroke last year and is dealing with the health consequences of that, including paralysis from the waist down, which is obviously awful.
Marc:If you don't know Jesse, he was in the band's Heart Attack and, more famously, Degeneration, a lot of solo work.
Marc:He's collaborated with a long list of music industry heavies over his
Marc:And a benefit album was recorded to help Jesse out with medical and living expenses.
Marc:It's got 26 Jesse Mallon songs covered by his friends and collaborators like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Little Steven Van Zandt, Mike Watt, Billy Joe Armstrong, Elvis Costello, and a lot more.
Marc:Alejandro has a track on there.
Marc:And the Springsteen single, She Don't Love Me Now, is actually out right now.
Marc:And the full album is out later this month.
Marc:It's called Silver Patron Saints, The Songs of Jesse Mallon.
Marc:And then Jesse will appear with a few very special guests at New York's Beacon Theater for his first show since January 2023.
Marc:He'll be performing with Lucinda Williams, Ricky Lee Jones, Jacob Dillon, Jay Mascus, and a lot more.
Marc:You can get tickets through the Beacon Theater.
Marc:Some rock news.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:What's the difference between vestiges and memories?
Marc:Personal vestiges.
Marc:Vestiges of what I was.
Marc:Everything around me, even if it's only a year old.
Marc:Stuff.
Guest:Vestiges of previous obsessions.
Marc:I was thinking about that today when I was flipping around on reels, cutting down, and I saw John Bryan
Marc:And Elliot Smith covering a kink song.
Marc:And I was like, I remember that month period where I needed to have everything the kinks ever did.
Marc:And now I have them.
Marc:And I know that.
Marc:Vestiges of my kink obsession, which was not kinky, but kink as in the band Kinks.
Marc:And yeah, I think that's almost what most large record collections are.
Marc:Vestiges of who we were and what brings us back.
Marc:Where am I?
Marc:I'm going to be in Vancouver for the final stretch of the golf show situation.
Marc:But I'll also be in Tucson, Arizona at the Rialto Theater on Friday, September 20th.
Marc:Then I'm in Phoenix at the Orpheum Theater on Saturday, September 21st.
Marc:The rest of my fall dates...
Marc:of the All In Tour have been rescheduled for next year.
Marc:We just moved the ones in Skokie and Joliet, Illinois.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour to get the new dates and get tickets for all upcoming shows.
Marc:It will be a new world then.
Marc:And we'll be dealing with it, maybe happily, maybe with extreme stress, terror, paralysis and despair, which, you know, I guess actually is probably a better audience for me.
Marc:But look, I'm hoping for the best and I can certainly, you know, I can infuse joy and celebration into my set.
Marc:I can do that.
Marc:I'll work on that.
Marc:I'll work on it with with a little bit of hope.
Marc:But I'll also be naturally prepared for the other one.
Marc:Despair, fear, anxiety, paralysis, anger.
Marc:Yeah, because I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:I'm in crisis management.
Marc:Mostly imagined, mostly personal, but I am prepared for most cultural crisis and ready to be there to help out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Maybe I should call my next special crisis management colon personal.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:What is going on with my brain?
Marc:It's, you know, there's a whole new portal opening for me around vestiges, personal vestiges and crisis management.
Marc:And my brain, where do we, how do we turn it?
Marc:Like, what's going on in my head right now?
Marc:Okay, let's break it down.
Marc:Because I believe...
Marc:That other people are like this.
Marc:I mean, you can shut stuff off sometimes successfully, but there's nothing not to be stressed out about or anxious or worried about.
Marc:I mean, it takes a lot of effort, sometimes lazy effort where you just kind of lock in and turn your brain over to your phone.
Marc:to get out of it.
Marc:But that can, depending on what you're watching, could cause more worry and panic.
Marc:But let's just break it down.
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:Let me check in with my brain right now.
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:Does Buster have diarrhea?
Marc:How come he hasn't shit in the last couple of days?
Marc:Does he still have diarrhea?
Marc:I know the other two don't have diarrhea.
Marc:I need to get a key made.
Marc:Will that leak detector I had put in for insurance reasons, will...
Marc:Will it just shut the water off in a glitch?
Marc:Because when I didn't program it the day I got it and I waited until the next day, it shut my water off.
Marc:Is that going to be a problem while I'm gone?
Marc:I mean, what does biotin do?
Marc:Do I have a biotin deficiency?
Marc:Is that why my hands are tingling?
Marc:I don't think my conditioner is working the way it used to.
Marc:Do I have to switch shampoos?
Marc:Maybe that wasn't a good shampoo, but it was pretty good for a few months.
Marc:Am I pudgy?
Marc:Do I have cancer?
Marc:Will they...
Marc:Will they cancel my flight?
Marc:Is kid okay?
Marc:She's okay.
Marc:Should I text her?
Marc:Does my dad still know me?
Marc:What was that fake cheese?
Marc:It was weird.
Marc:Oh my God, I need to get some blood work done.
Marc:What am I going to eat later?
Marc:What are my choices?
Marc:I'm going to be, oh man.
Marc:So there you go.
Marc:That was just a taste.
Marc:That was all going on simultaneously.
Marc:It was all happening in real time.
Marc:This is how I stay in the present.
Marc:This is my meditation right now.
Marc:It's a meditating style called yammering endlessly.
Marc:Just keep talking.
Marc:Until, you know, you've reached some other zone where you don't know what you're saying and it's not really attached to anything.
Marc:That's not really the case here.
Marc:But you just keep doing it to avoid everything else and you get a frequency going.
Marc:It's just a sort of, you know, kind of constant kind of rhythmic yammering.
Marc:A lot of people do it.
Marc:They just have to find people that'll fucking put up with it and listen to it.
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:So let's talk about...
Marc:Fake beer for a second, and then I'll bring on Chris, Chris Robinson from the Black Crows.
Marc:You know, I never was like a guy who had to, you know, have a fake beer after I quit drinking beer.
Marc:I never was that guy.
Marc:Like, I just want it because I thought it was dangerous.
Marc:You know, when I have that bottle looking like that, I mean, you know, it's just one jump to real beer, right?
Marc:And you can taste it.
Marc:You want real beer.
Yeah.
Marc:But now they got all these good fake beers and I got to admit I was drinking it and I am drinking it.
Marc:I enjoy it.
Marc:I like tasting the beer.
Marc:Do I feel closer to a real beer?
Marc:Not really.
Marc:But why am I enjoying so much fake beer?
Marc:It's dubious.
Marc:I think it's dubious.
Marc:I always think back to one time when I was in rehab.
Marc:The first time, the one time, didn't stick back in the late 80s.
Marc:And there was a guy who...
Marc:He was a heroin addict, and he had such a deep relationship with the needle, the apparatus, the paraphernalia, that even if he needed to take aspirin, he'd shoot it up.
Marc:I don't know what that means really, but, you know, it's just a relationship with your delivery systems, you know.
Marc:It's like vaping.
Marc:That's not good.
Marc:You know, it's like this dumb fucking snooze stuff.
Marc:Even if it's no tobacco, it's just a, it is kind of, it's not triggering, but it's just like you're addicted to a delivery system, but you aren't getting it though.
Marc:But fake, I think fake beer is a better example of that.
Marc:It's not real beer, but I like the taste.
Marc:But does it mean that I'm going to get an appetite for real beer?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't think so.
Marc:Not feeling it.
Marc:Don't want to be fucked up.
Marc:Not on that anyways.
Marc:I'd rather just be fucked up by what's going on in my brain.
Marc:Chris Robinson is...
Marc:The front man of the Black Crows.
Marc:They're kicking off their fall tour next week in New York.
Marc:You can go to theblackcrows.com to see all the upcoming tour dates.
Marc:And you can get Happiness Bastards now on all music platforms.
Marc:Chris brought me a vinyl.
Marc:I'll put that in the stack.
Marc:I'll listen to it.
Marc:I listen to it.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:All right.
Marc:This is me talking to Chris.
Marc:So you know Spaceman 3?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I'm not sounding arrogant.
Guest:It's just at a certain point in my life and the people in my life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:My brother's second oldest, Quinn Robinson, is here in L.A.
Guest:as a musician, and he just got into Spaceman 3.
Marc:It's one of those... It's weird with records, because we were just in the house.
Marc:There's never... There's no...
Marc:There's no too late to the party.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Because, you know, this was kind of a jarring thing this morning.
Marc:I found out you're younger than me.
Marc:It bothers me.
Marc:I'm like, can't he be at least the same fucking age as me?
Marc:It's not a big difference.
Guest:Those 35 years on the road have kept me so youthful.
Marc:Yeah, but like every day you can find new records.
Guest:Always.
Guest:I mean, it's been that... You know, it's funny.
Guest:Books, movies, records, comics.
Guest:I've been able to culturally inject other my interests.
Guest:It's funny because I work a lot in L.A.
Guest:with some younger bands and stuff.
Guest:And I'm impressed with... Some things I'm confounded by.
Guest:The youth.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Their lack of...
Guest:There's a lack of that killer instinct or something like... As artists or just in curiosity?
Guest:I think they're curious.
Guest:Maybe a little.
Guest:I've met some that are that way, but some just seem they have all the talent.
Guest:And again, you can just go get what... You can algorithm your way into a cool record collection.
Marc:Sure, but there's no historical context.
Guest:And there's no representation of what...
Guest:Again, the hardest lessons in life are the ones that you have to live through.
Guest:And going to record stores.
Guest:I used to laugh like, you know, hey, there's a guy down the street who has 50,000 records.
Guest:I mean, he's a pedo.
Guest:So if we all go in there as a group.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Marc:where did larry go oh my god he went to the bathroom and maybe we learned something well i had guys like that in my life this guy there was a record store next the restaurant i worked in albuquerque where i grew up when i was in high school and that one guy this guy steve larue who was into like the residents brian eno fred frith you know uh uh john hassel all that shit yeah and he's hipping me to that and i'm like what the
Marc:fuck is this?
Marc:And then the other guy was all R&B.
Marc:Took me to his house.
Marc:He wasn't a pedo.
Marc:But he introduced me to Sam and Dave, Otis, and all that shit.
Marc:And this is like the late 70s.
Marc:And I wouldn't have never had it.
Guest:It's amazing, too, because as a dyslexic person from the Deep South, I was always ill-prepared for anything but...
Guest:but everything with a poetic construct.
Guest:And whereas I would never have a pencil or paper or whatever, for some reason, if I'm with... I would write down records all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hang out... Same thing.
Guest:Hang out in record stores.
Guest:In Atlanta, we had Fantasyland, Wux Tree, Wax and Facts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we had friends back then.
Guest:It was...
Guest:You know, early mid 80s, late 80s, you could still hit a junk store and find.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I still have like a monocopy, pristine copy of like the Trogs first record.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:The second, third, and fourth Kinks records.
Guest:Like things I found in La Grange, Jordan.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Some ill-fated attempt at the university there.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So that was all, like, yeah, you can't find that anymore.
Marc:You can't find it like a real kind of grail find.
Marc:Everyone knows what they have.
Guest:I have a good friend who actually does it sometimes.
Guest:Well, there's guys who do that.
Guest:But I asked him, my dear friend, Michael Klausman, who used to be the record buyer in New York at a music, what was it called?
Guest:Other music.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Great record store.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm like, dude, you know, and he's the guy who finds records that end up being like the super coolest.
Guest:$10,000.
Guest:Or they reissue them, you know, like the cool labels will go, what have you found, you know.
Guest:But he's like, man, you have no idea.
Guest:For every cool record I find, it's hundreds of thousands of nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've nothing of dreams.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of absolutely.
Guest:A lot of people.
Guest:How many Herb Albert albums can you dig through?
Guest:Right.
Marc:And that guy made a fortune.
Marc:And he was cool.
Marc:I'm not backing.
Marc:I interviewed that guy.
Marc:He was like 80 or something.
Marc:But like those guys who like figured out the record business.
Marc:I mean, whether you like their music or not, you got to be like, holy fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Especially when that business meant what it meant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I feel lucky that way about life, that we were one of the last, because of my age and because of the nature of what we were doing, we were one of the last people to be in that old world.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:Of the music business.
Marc:Well, you're like a little younger than me, but we grew up in that crashing wave of the 60s.
Marc:So even like we missed Zeppelin in a way.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's the weirdest thing because when I was in high school, it was all fucking Zeppelin, but that was already eight years old.
Guest:I mean, by the time I'm in high school, I was like, why can't I see Echo and the Bunnymen?
Guest:Oh, they never are coming to Atlanta.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:You live in Atlanta.
Guest:You're never going to see Susie and the Banshees.
Guest:Just forget it.
Marc:But they were doing those.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, Atlanta was pretty hip at one point.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:Atlanta, I mean, my...
Guest:I mean, also, like you said, while we were talking about you, and this is another thing, like, if you saw someone in a cool band or, you know, that guy's, you would talk to, you would go, hey, my name's Chris, what other records do you like?
Marc:What's the secret wisdom, man?
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Guest:What did you find?
Guest:It's like one of us.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:One of us.
Marc:You were looking at that Spaceman 3.
Marc:I remember the guy who turned me on to Spaceman 3 was in Boston when I lived in Boston in the 80s.
Marc:This guy, Jay Dobis, who claimed to be Jonathan Richman's best friend from childhood, takes me and my girlfriend to his house.
Marc:No reason to doubt him.
Marc:No.
Marc:Why would you pick that guy?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Takes us to his house, gets us stoned as fuck, and puts on Spaceman 3.
Marc:And I'm like, what's happening?
Marc:What is fucking happening?
Marc:But you need those guys.
Marc:They define your whole goddamn life.
Guest:Oh, I, you know, David Macias, 30 Tigers Records.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, when he was kind of like our very first manager.
Guest:And Dave Macias, if you're out there, this is for you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he gave me the Madcap Laughs, Sid Barrett.
Guest:He gave me my first Big Stars.
Guest:He gave me Big Stars 3rd.
Guest:That's a life changer.
Guest:And he gave me GP, Graham Parsons' record.
Marc:Holy fuck.
Marc:I mean, that's a good selection.
Guest:Alex Graham and Sid, that's a big part of my musical thing.
Marc:Yeah, well, it seems like the music that you play with the Brotherhood versus the Crows is different.
Marc:Yeah, it was totally different.
Marc:But that was more tending towards psychedelic shit.
Marc:Much more, yeah.
Marc:And so that's a whole part of your fucking brain that you don't do a lot with the crows, right?
Guest:I mean, I think one...
Guest:So it's funny about that because I think... And Grant Parsons, too, with the Brotherhood.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But Grant Parsons has been big in the... In the Crows, too.
Guest:We used to play GP songs all the time.
Guest:We used to play She... I will have people come up to me in the Oslo airport and say, oh, I didn't know who the Flying Burrito Birds were, but thank you.
Guest:You're a missionary.
Guest:But we did that with... You know who did that for us?
Guest:Like, REM.
Guest:REM, like...
Guest:would play, you know, like we, oh, this is my point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like the Velvet Underground.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Everyone knows who the Velvet Underground is.
Guest:Well, there's actually some squares out there who might not know.
Guest:There's a lot of them who've done, especially kids, right?
Guest:But at the time, like R.E.M.
Guest:talked about that Velvet Underground.
Guest:We liked the Lou Reed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, punk rock.
Guest:And then the Velvet Underground are always mentioned with the Stooges and the MC5 and the New York Dolls.
Guest:All this stuff we're into and can find pretty easy at the record store.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, I mean, in 1981 or whatever, when I went to the record store and bought the Velvet Underground.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:The first one.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And took it home.
Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Go to the party and bring that to impress a girl.
Guest:They're like, oh my God, you're like a mental patient.
Guest:Yeah, what's with side two?
Guest:It's like one song.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But now you take it for granted because it's like, oh, it's cool.
Guest:The Velvet Underground are always cool, but...
Marc:Dude, that whole thing, that whole Velvet Underground thing, that whole Kale-Lou Reed trip where Kale was coming out of that high art, weird noise music scene in New York that no one knows about.
Marc:Lamont Young and all of those people.
Marc:And then he hooks up with Lou.
Marc:Did you watch that doc?
Marc:I did, I did.
Marc:It's crazy.
Marc:Because that's the same kind of thing in New York where you get these two guys, because of the way New York was structured at the time, they come together and make this whole new thing.
Marc:And that's how music works.
Guest:And...
Guest:That's a good segue to what I, about the music business today.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No one wanted, people would say, you know, no one wanted to hear that.
Guest:People still say the first time they came to Los Angeles, Cher was like, I mean, this is coming from Cher.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:She didn't like them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I mean, look, everyone, she didn't like the Velvet Underground.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, hey, everyone, you know what I mean?
Guest:This is a real story?
Guest:It's true.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just read about it again recently in something else.
Guest:Oh, and Dennis Hopper's.
Guest:It's funny because you have Lenny Bruce in there too.
Guest:And it's so weird.
Guest:Dennis Hopper was at the gig in L.A.
Guest:the first time Lenny Bruce was arrested for obscenity.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Like, wow, that's cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, you were there at that gig.
Marc:Everything was a small town then, man.
Marc:Could you imagine fucking, what, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and it's just MC5 and then the Stooges?
Marc:Yeah, of course the cops knew.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:Those assholes that live in that house who are naked and eating, like, egg rolls or whatever, you know?
Marc:And it all came off of that Mitch Ryder thing.
Marc:Like, it's...
Marc:The regionality of some sounds is kind of crazy.
Marc:But I like the fact that I always thought... It was crazy.
Guest:I think it's like accents, like... Yeah.
Guest:Colloquialism, humor.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:A cultural thing.
Guest:It's starting to be stripped away little by little.
Guest:And it's funny because I think some things... I'm from the deep south.
Guest:Where?
Guest:I'm from Atlanta.
Guest:Well, okay.
Guest:It's a big city, though.
Guest:Well, yeah, but it's still... It's still in the south, yeah.
Guest:It wasn't as big of a city when my father was born there and when my...
Marc:And there were fewer Peachtree named streets?
Marc:No, there were always shit tons.
Guest:90 Peachtree streets.
Guest:That used to be the only reason you went, you know what I mean?
Guest:But that, I mean, Atlanta now, I mean, I left in 1990 when the city just like clicked over to 3 million people and everyone was like, what?
Guest:Now it's getting close to 8 million people in Atlanta.
Marc:And it's like, it's show business now.
Marc:They've put together their own Hollywood there.
Marc:There's nothing going on here show business.
Marc:Got to go to Albuquerque, Atlanta, or Vancouver.
Marc:So when you're wandering around as a kid, you grew up in the city?
Guest:We grew up in the city until then we ended up in Charlotte for a couple years.
Guest:What, as a family?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:How many are there?
Guest:My dad, it's just me and my brother.
Oh.
Guest:My dad, he was like Willie Loman.
Guest:He was a schmata guy.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:His dad, my— Hustle and clothes?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were in children's wear.
Guest:My dad was in women's wear for a while and then got into—after Isaac Rabinowitz, my grandfather, Ike Robinson, born in Atlanta in 1907.
Guest:Same year as this house.
Yeah.
Guest:Are you Jewish?
Guest:Well, I would be more if he didn't have a shiksa wife and my dad didn't.
Guest:We've been whittled.
Guest:The shiksa whittle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've been whittled down to 20%.
Guest:You've been genetically cleansed.
Guest:Yeah, well, by the way, I mean, there's 11 Jews on the planet.
Guest:You might want to rethink about, you know what I mean?
Guest:It might be 20% on paper.
Guest:You might want to give me another 40.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Believe me, I had Jewish grandparents, and it was like the idea that you wouldn't marry a Jewish woman was, you know, they knew that we needed to make more, but there was something about a generation of Jews that's sort of like, but we're in America.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, my grandfather, they're Polish Jews living in the South, so we had a refrigerator with gefilte fish,
Guest:Dr. Brown, celery, and barbecue, though.
Marc:Celery and ribs.
Guest:That's my new pop-up.
Guest:I can't believe it's not doing very well.
Guest:Celery and ribs.
Marc:I think they still make celery.
Marc:Yes, of course they do.
Marc:For those nine people that enjoy it.
Marc:Fifth generation.
Marc:That's the sad thing about deli and shit.
Marc:There's now enough generations that didn't grow up going there with their grandparents.
Marc:They don't give a fuck.
Marc:And if they went, they don't know what to order.
Marc:But Katz's is still pretty good.
Guest:You remember, you know, the food thing is probably the biggest Jewish thing.
Guest:You know, the great Albert Brooks movie, Real Life.
Guest:And he has that argument with the psychiatrist Ted Cleary or whatever his name is.
Guest:And he goes, they have a big argument.
Guest:And he says, and then it goes nowhere.
Guest:There's a stalemate.
Guest:And Albert says, let's just get something to eat.
Guest:And he goes, Albert, I'm not like you.
Guest:Food doesn't make things better.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:But it does.
Guest:Of course it does.
Guest:By the way, I just got back from London yesterday.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went for the weekend with my son to go to the opening of the Premiership football season.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It was fantastic.
Guest:But I always laugh.
Guest:And my family, we're mostly English in our DNA.
Guest:We're Georgians.
Guest:I've been in Georgia since the second wave of debtor's prison or whatever.
Guest:But when you see something like Dunkirk or that documentary, you know, English people are incredible.
Guest:And one of the things, besides their humor, but one of the things that...
Guest:I like about them is, okay, so could you imagine the horrors of Dunkirk?
Guest:You've already been on the run, so now you're in a flea.
Guest:Everything is dramatic.
Guest:You end up on this beach.
Guest:No one can help you.
Guest:The Germans are bombing you.
Guest:You're seeing your friends disintegrate all around you.
Guest:The flotilla comes.
Guest:You make a dramatic...
Guest:retreat back to England.
Guest:And when you get there, they're like, cup of tea?
Guest:Oh, that's nice, isn't it?
Guest:Toast, toast, auntie?
Guest:Oh, well, thank you very much.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And you see the documentary, and they've just been through the world, and they're like, whoa, it's all right.
Guest:And you're like, really?
Guest:And by the way,
Guest:Now that I'm older and I've been through nothing as traumatic, well, maybe.
Guest:1995 might have been my dunker.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:A little toasted tea goes a long way to keep your soul good.
Marc:Dude, sometimes it's the only thing.
Marc:When I'm on the road, all I'm thinking about is coffee and where am I going to eat?
Marc:Yeah, I mean, the eating thing is...
Marc:It's just the whole day.
Guest:We just did Europe in May and June, and one of my best friends in the world is a chef and restaurateur in New York.
Guest:Who's that guy?
Guest:Frank Fossinelli from Frankie Spuntino.
Guest:And he sets you up.
Guest:Well, it's funny.
Guest:We've been friends forever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he was like, I was like, look, this is my days off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like, so he helped me and it was got finished.
Guest:I called him up and he was like, and we finished.
Guest:My wife and I went to Sicily for eight days.
Marc:How was that?
Marc:I've never, I can't even imagine it.
Guest:It's, to me, I have to, you know, I'm like, I want to relax.
Guest:And it's about food.
Guest:And so he, in his olive oil business, is Salanute, which is to the west and the south of Palermo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was insane.
Guest:It was insane.
Guest:But he was like, out of all 35 years of constant touring.
Guest:And food has always been a big part of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even when we were kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:authentic culinary experience.
Guest:That's the whole thing.
Guest:Like, if you're in a place, go eat what the place has.
Guest:And I have some of my dearest friends for 30 years I met in the, like, music business.
Guest:Like, you want to go to a club?
Guest:You want cocaine?
Guest:What do we want?
Guest:I was like, where does your family eat on Sunday afternoon?
Guest:That's what I want to do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's the best way to spend time on the road.
Guest:And the best way also to really start to have, I think, any sort of understanding of how a culture feels.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And how it interacts with people, interacting with people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you said that was some part of your life as a musician from very early on?
Marc:It was always a big part of the adventure out there.
Guest:Figuring out where to eat?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But also the romance of food.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like A Movable Feast, Hemingway.
Guest:That book really played in me.
Guest:Even simple things like when I was a kid and would read...
Guest:I don't know, Steinbeck in Dubious Battle, a lesser of his known novels.
Guest:There's like a scene in a greasy diner and the way all the food is prepared.
Guest:And you can have this.
Guest:You know, it's really funny.
Guest:Out of all the weird drug stuff that I've done, I told someone the other day the weirdest trip I've ever had.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I know this is like talking about your dreams.
Guest:But out of all the things, one time I accidentally had a nitrous tank by my bed in Topanga Canyon for a couple weeks after a party.
Guest:You knew a dentist?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I watched YouTube.
Guest:I was going to take my wisdom teeth out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I woke up.
Guest:This was getting near 20 years ago.
Guest:I took a big thing and I hallucinated.
Guest:But my hallucination was I was in Salinas, California in 1927.
Guest:Dust bowl of stuff?
Guest:But it was real.
Guest:I could smell the onions and the chopped ground beef steaks and the gravy and all the workmen drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
Guest:But it only lasted a few days.
Marc:Yeah, because nitrous, it's like you have the moment, then it's like... It was so weird.
Marc:It was like time travel.
Marc:It probably was time travel.
Marc:It was definitely some type of travel.
Marc:Nitrous is like... I remember when I was in college, some guy got a tank, and everybody got a garbage bag, and it was kind of a sad party.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, completely sad.
Guest:Filling up those bags.
Guest:That's horrible.
Guest:Looking back, it's a hippie crack, man.
Guest:I'm not doing that anymore.
Guest:You couldn't pay me to do it.
Guest:I think it's a real brain killer, that one.
Guest:It took me a minute to remember other music.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was trying to remember because I remember I went to Atlanta one time and I was trying to find indigenous food, you know, outside of just greens and cornbread and stuff.
Marc:And I remember there was, I can't remember what the hell it was called, but there was like one thing from Atlanta.
Marc:It was some sort, it was something stew or.
Marc:Brunswick stew.
Marc:Brunswick stew.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So I'm like, where do I get Brunswick stew?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it wasn't easy.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:It's delicious.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:But it was like at some fucking diner.
Marc:And I'm like, this is the only place that has it.
Guest:Yeah, it would be synonymous with like barbecue places.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's funny because at a certain time, we were making a record in winter of 95, 96.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we made it in Atlanta.
Yeah.
Guest:And somehow my brother was still living there, and he met this guy who would come down from North Georgia to deliver barbecue.
Guest:But he would bring homemade Brunswick.
Guest:We would get a big gallon thing at a time.
Guest:I haven't had it in 100 years.
Guest:It's like peas, potatoes, and some corn.
Guest:And it's kind of a little bit tangy, kind of a vinegary kind of barbecue way.
Guest:Yeah, and I knew nothing about it.
Guest:The real Brunswick stew, from what my dad told me, was always squirrel meat in it.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I don't know if I have the authentic stuff.
Marc:I mean, you wouldn't know, would you?
Marc:No.
Guest:They weren't advertising that.
Marc:So when you were growing up in Atlanta, like, so you're a few years younger than me, but, like, were you hip to, like, Vic Chestnut and all those cats that were over there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Athens was its own world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, Athens was really—we were—
Guest:The scenes in Athens and Atlanta were closely connected by proxy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, of course, we all knew the B-52s were from there.
Guest:And in Georgia, there's a band called Pylon.
Guest:I know.
Marc:I got the records.
Marc:Pylon is...
Marc:One of the great unsung great bands.
Marc:Of bands of all time.
Guest:I mean, that's another one.
Guest:Whenever, if we DJ appropriately, my wife and I, the Captain and Camille, if we put on a Pylon record, people, if they don't know it, they run over and they're like, what the fuck's this?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This groove.
Guest:And it's just post-punk, weird, hard school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very Southern as well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Love Tractor.
Guest:And then, of course, in Athens, we had REM.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There were lots of other, like... Wasn't Chilton from down there, too?
Guest:He... Alex is from Memphis, originally.
Guest:Okay, all right.
Guest:And he would have been older.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think by the time Vic and that scene's going on, we have already kind of...
Guest:immersed ourselves in more of a rock scene and had left kind of the indie rock punk scene that we started in you started in that though yeah yeah that was our and what was it just you and your brother yeah we were called mr crow's garden then mr crow's garden yeah and then we had we left the e in the name because it was a uh an english book yeah children's book called mr crow's garden
Marc:Well, what was the decision?
Marc:What kind of music were you playing before you committed to rock?
Guest:I think that... I mean, it was rock music, but it wasn't... We weren't...
Guest:Like our roots side of music would be more like, we would sound like the gun club.
Marc:Oh, fuck, dude.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like that kind of, we liked LA things, X and the gun club.
Guest:X. But then we had like the, I have an X tattoo.
Marc:Dude, John is like, he's been on here a few times.
Marc:He's a fantastic man.
Marc:I just went to see them.
Guest:Like they sound as good as they ever did.
Guest:Billy Zoops is one of the best guitar sounds in the world.
Marc:And now he just sits there and smiles as opposed to stands and smiles.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was crazy, man.
Marc:And she's like, as out of her, like I was trying to do a bit about it, like the benefit, you know, in order to keep your vitality, like seeing Exine now, because she's got to be our age, you know, ish.
Marc:I think, I mean, that band starts in 1977.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think they're in their mid-60s.
Marc:60s.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, like, she's still, like, lit up and, like, right on it.
Guest:I saw her a few years ago in Petaluma when we were living in NorCal, and they were unbelievable and full of fire and passion.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:The teeth are still in it, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's what I like.
Marc:Well, that's what I said.
Marc:I said there's a benefit to being out of your mind and never, ever getting any help at all.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I mean, she's a true artist.
Marc:I know.
Marc:She's a true poet.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Guest:I mean, some, you know, people, you know, we love to...
Guest:You have William Burroughs.
Guest:William Burroughs famously said, I don't really trust anyone if they haven't been in the bug house.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:You're talking about some people who you had to have a lot of bohemian perspective to be able to deal with freedom of mind.
Guest:And, you know, let's face it.
Guest:Before art was just commerce.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it was for, you know, I don't get anywhere without being able to connect to the outsider-ness of the, especially beat poets and beat writers.
Guest:But I have my influence in, you know, the writers that influenced them.
Marc:And then also then you got the blues.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The cursed poets for Lane and Rambo and Baudelaire.
Guest:I loved that growing up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they're out there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You don't probably want Rambo at your house.
Marc:No.
Marc:At the edge of sanity on purpose.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And.
Marc:That was the whole thing.
Marc:William Blake.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fucking out of his mind.
Guest:Well, I mean, we have this thing now where, you know, you can some shaman from Switzerland can give you some medicine.
Guest:And I'm like, have you ever done any research about real shamanism?
Guest:And like, what?
Guest:No, you should work at Starbucks.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, a real shaman would be the person in a tribal situation, a community living outside of how we live, that was completely deranged person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you know what I mean?
Guest:It's the same thing like, oh, everyone that you love is bipolar.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:How does that happen?
Guest:The most talented people, the ones that... That's my point about my comment about bohemia.
Guest:Can you allow them this trespass of their own destructiveness or their own mental brilliance?
Guest:And...
Guest:depravity or whatever.
Marc:I don't know how you want to frame that.
Marc:It's the idea, the essence of beat.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, but like, with your brain working like this, I mean, the blues must have held you together somehow.
Marc:The blues, it's funny because...
Guest:Being in Atlanta, in black Mecca, in a city that, you know, in a racial history of Atlanta, is very unique in the United States.
Guest:It has never been perfect.
Guest:It never will be perfect.
Guest:But I would say a lot of the advances of race relations in Georgia—
Guest:The ripples of that are still being felt in America.
Guest:And I think around the world sometimes because people will look at race in America.
Guest:It's so vivid.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Because of our proximity to slavery.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But my father... And it's a young country.
Marc:That's like also the difference between England.
Marc:In the last hundred years, they were bombed into almost non-existence.
Marc:And that's in their current memory.
Guest:And they think German people are funny because of it.
Marc:But yeah, race in America, the implications and institutionalization of it and everything else, it's never going to be gone.
Guest:But like you said, it's funny that...
Guest:Being a child in Atlanta and going downtown with my grandmother on the bus and someone's housekeeper, this lady, would sit there and just hum gospel music to herself, in my world, would be... Now, when I'm older, I realize, oh, there's...
Guest:how does music and vibration play a part in African mysticism?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it does.
Guest:Rhythmic things, harmonic things.
Marc:Yeah, if you go back through Skip James, you're right there.
Marc:Completely.
Marc:I mean, it's crazy.
Marc:I had Taj Mahal sitting in here once, and he picked up a guitar he didn't want to play, but he picked up this old K guitar I had.
Marc:But you're like, I'm forced to...
Marc:Well, it was just sitting there.
Marc:And I brought up Skip James, and then he starts going at it, and those notes that Skip would play go all the way back.
Guest:And then Skip James learns to... Have you ever heard Skip James play piano?
Guest:Because he plays like piano that would have been taught to somebody who taught him from the 18th century.
Guest:He played a real archaic form of piano.
Guest:But my father was a folk singer, so...
Guest:He was a rock and roller in the 50s.
Guest:He had a top 40 record called Booma Dip Dip.
Guest:Did you guys ever cover it?
Guest:No, but it's a great song.
Guest:He has another one called Start to Jump that would be better for us to cover, but it wasn't a big hit.
Guest:So way to go, Dad.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But he had rock and roll dreams.
Guest:He did have rock and roll dreams, and he was talented.
Guest:But I think when that kind of thing didn't pan out for him, he immersed himself in traditional folk music.
Guest:And he knew he was a very good...
Guest:you know he had a great finger pick yeah yeah he knew a lot about you know he and when he would come home he would play the get out the guitar my brother still has that guitar it's a 1953 martin d28 oh wow um that that martin just made a beautiful reproduction of uh-huh for anyone who wants one of your brothers of my dad the original one yeah oh really yeah it's called the appalachian that was the name of his folk though the appalachians
Marc:So they're doing classic, like Gaelic?
Guest:They would do, yeah, everything from Woody Guthrie songs to Broadside, things that, you know, Shady Grove, you know, a lot of the...
Guest:a lot of the canon of that era.
Guest:The records he made were... What, mid-60s?
Guest:Early 60s.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So a lot of those records are kind of like that 12-string walk right into the serendipity singers and that kind of more commercial folk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is funny because he was real hard-ass about what... He was the guy who, like, I didn't buy Blonde on Blonde.
Guest:I'm not buying an electric Bob Dylan record.
Guest:You know, he was like that guy.
Guest:Drawing the line.
Guest:I'm not crossing that.
Guest:I'm like, Dad, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule.
Guest:You're not into that?
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Come on, man.
Guest:The ghost of electricity howls in the bone of her face.
Guest:Geez, I can't find my knees.
Guest:But, you know, it was funny.
Guest:I loved... Talk about outsider culture.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I loved those songs.
Guest:When he sang those songs, they meant something to me.
Guest:Not because it was my father, but because the music was very alive and there was stories.
Guest:And I could connect to it in a cultural way even before I knew what it was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But being in Atlanta and also hearing gospel music, hearing R&B music, and just being adjacent to all this beautiful black culture and African, you know, drives from Africa.
Guest:It really meant something to me.
Guest:And then by the time...
Guest:And I played basketball, and I was really into, like, 80s cameo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had Prince, Vanny Six, The Time.
Guest:All the, you know... The first Prince single was Soft and Wet.
Guest:I didn't even really know what that meant, except, does someone have to clean that up?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And then later, Prince would say, yes.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's a big puddle.
Guest:Ooh!
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't touch it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That when... Then I find...
Guest:You know, 96 Rock was like the AOR rock station.
Guest:It was pretty boring.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had to find, like, you know, luckily we, back then on cable, we had USA Network.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is now just SVU.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or SUV.
Guest:I don't know what it is.
Guest:I don't know which one.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Police things.
Guest:Oh, I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Semen retrieval unit.
Guest:Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Dusters.
Guest:Speaking of, ugh.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But they would have programming that was, you know, I would wait for it.
Guest:You know, that's the first, you know, Rude Boy by The Clash comes on.
Guest:I'm like, okay.
Guest:Now we're talking something that I feel.
Guest:Because my taste in literature, my taste in movies are going towards the strange.
Guest:And something different and more obtuse than...
Guest:But the show that really kicks it in is a show with the late, great Peter Ivers, who's an amazing character in American counterculture, if you will.
Guest:And he hosts a show called The New Wave Theater.
Guest:So this is the first time I see the Dead Kennedys, the Circle Jerks, 45 Grave, Castration Squad, The Plugs, Fear.
Guest:Fear, yeah.
Guest:I mean, and as a kid, I think the only other thing like that that talked to me was one flow of the cuckoo's nest, like when they're all sitting around.
Guest:I was like, oh, this is normal.
Guest:That's what my mom used to say.
Guest:You look like you're in one flow of the cuckoo's nest.
Guest:I'm like, I am.
Guest:Why did you move to the suburbs?
Guest:Look what you did to your sensitive son.
Guest:But that kind of...
Guest:put us and our interest in this world of other music that wasn't on MTV, that wasn't on... You had to go to the college radio.
Marc:What's the age difference between you and Rich?
Guest:Two and a half years.
Marc:He's younger?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, he's just kind of following you?
Guest:I mean, he has his own thing, but he said many times, I was the expeditionary that brought records into the house.
Guest:And some things, like, he didn't like.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But he would pick kind of things he... Right.
Marc:And when does he start playing?
Guest:When one, I think he's 15, when I'm 17.
Guest:And you playing too?
Guest:Well, we were kind of bad, you know, kids in our own way.
Guest:And mom and dad, I think we're, obviously we...
Guest:I'm intellectually always very inspired and stimulated, but I wasn't a very good student.
Marc:What'd your mom do?
Guest:She worked with dad, but in the 60s, late 50s, early 60s, she was a flight attendant for Eastern Airlines.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you guys are singing and stuff?
Guest:Well, this is more for my therapist, but dad didn't really... It was weird.
Guest:It was a weird dynamic.
Guest:I would love to try to sing, but he said I was incapable of singing.
Marc:Do you think that came from his own bitterness about music?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:I think it came from a lot of weird things.
Guest:I don't think my dad didn't love me, but I think my dad was...
Guest:threatened by just me, my intellect, my curiosity, also being very secure in the things that interest me and were inspiring me.
Guest:Almost...
Guest:You know, that young man, you know.
Marc:I had that same experience.
Marc:And then they do things where they're sort of like they try to one up you and they can't.
Marc:That's the most sad moment where it's beautiful, but where they like, I'm going to meet you at your level and they can't.
Guest:I remember one time.
Guest:The Black Weaver, like on our second album.
Guest:So we're a big band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:1992, we're a huge band in the world.
Guest:And I was back in Atlanta and it was like my birthday, like my 24th, 25th, 6th birthday.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't really, at the time, all our friends from the music scene don't want to deal with us because we went from being just like them to...
Guest:Not being like them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Fuck those guys.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:Success.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The success shame.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my parents had a party and a couple people came over.
Guest:A guy, a friend, I always remember a friend of my dad's because my dad did a lot of acting and stuff as well.
Marc:Oh, so he's like got a full spectrum of bitterness.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, totally, completely.
Marc:So they're over at the house.
Guest:But I was like, what are you listening to?
Guest:And at the time, I had my first house, and it was funny.
Guest:They bought a house down the street, which I was always bummed about.
Marc:Your folks?
Guest:Yeah, right down the street from my first rock and roll house.
Marc:In Atlanta?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But we would spend a lot of time in that house with my guitar player and our keyboard player.
Guest:And we were really starting to get into psychedelics.
Guest:So we're taking mushrooms all day.
Guest:And I had speakers out in the house.
Guest:But I was obsessed with, and I'm still obsessed with Thelonious Monk.
Marc:I just got two Thelonious records yesterday.
Marc:There's like a lot of brilliant corners going on at my house.
Guest:And I said, oh, you know, Thelonious Monk.
Guest:And my dad's like...
Guest:only an asshole would listen to that.
Guest:I was like, wait a minute.
Guest:What did you say?
Guest:I always remember being one of those things where I was like, I love you, but you sound like an asshole.
Guest:You know what you're saying sounds ridiculous.
Guest:And that was just like...
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:That was the fight, though.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:Colonious.
Guest:Who's arguing?
Guest:He's not like maybe the singularly greatest, one of the greatest American music geniuses that.
Marc:Well, there's a moment like I used to do a bit about it.
Marc:So do you remember the moment you realized your dad was a fucking idiot?
Marc:It's a big moment.
Guest:It was when my dad went from listening to Johnny Guitar Watson, Sly and the Family Stone, and Jimmy Reed, and he had Africa by Toto on in the Mercedes.
Guest:This is over.
Guest:We didn't even know what erectile dysfunction was.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But here we are, 40 years later.
Guest:Now we all know what was happening.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I'm just kidding.
Guest:My dad was all man.
Guest:I could get an erection at any time.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Just like all of us.
Guest:You pull over on the side of the road and beat up someone and then go home.
Guest:And fuck the car.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fuck the lawnmower.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Just get a blowjob from the lawnmower.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't tell your mother.
Guest:But his reaction to your success was... Well, you know what I mean?
Guest:It's funny because it's...
Guest:It's dynamic, to say the least.
Guest:Of course, we loved our father very much.
Guest:He was a difficult guy.
Guest:But he was also, my dad was very funny.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I get all of my social, a lot of my social things.
Guest:I never saw the world through his eyes.
Guest:That's something people do.
Guest:What, empathetically, you mean?
Guest:I just think because of monkey see, monkey do.
Guest:I mean, you know, just I think the psychology behind a lot of our behavioral things are just, you know, we're primates.
Guest:We see someone do it, you do it.
Marc:But you didn't feel like you saw the world from his point of view?
Guest:Most definitely not.
Guest:I've always had a more artistic experience.
Guest:Like I tease, but I'm not teasing.
Guest:If I had to say – if someone asked me what I really am and I know that I'm not a poet in the classic sense.
Guest:But the way I interact with the world and the way I can put the world in a certain context, it makes sense for me.
Guest:It keeps me interested and involved and can deal with this –
Guest:sadness and degradation and the great joy and jubilation is through poetic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And because that's where all of it comes together for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he would be like, who writes a check to the poet?
Guest:You know, where do you pick up your check?
Marc:But that's so odd because like on the other side of it, he was a folk singer.
Marc:You got to be grateful that you had that in the house.
Marc:Yeah, most definitely.
Marc:I mean, I mean, it's, it's a strange.
Marc:Yeah.
Uh,
Guest:But he was also always thinking in terms of the hit record, I guess, or what was... I think his thing was, and he would be right, and again, these were our lessons to learn, is just how disgusting the music business can be.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And it was.
Marc:And you were talking earlier about how you got under the wire of what was left of the old-style music business.
Guest:I'm glad that we survived all of it, and again, I'm...
Guest:Ultimately, the wisdom of seeing it... When it happened, when Shake Your Money Maker happened, and we're just these dudes from Atlanta who, like anyone else...
Marc:You think you know, but you don't know.
Marc:But it's interesting you chose, you know, those songs, you know, Otis and Elmore and like that kind of stuff, you know.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, so I can't say enough.
Guest:I mean, so the Roots music is always in there.
Guest:I mean, the way I sing today...
Guest:from where we started was very different because I would have been really conscious about, like, I don't know, man, if I want to sound like that.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, I don't want to... What, be a white soul singer?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if that's... First off, I had been... I didn't know I would be capable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, my love of Funkadelic, of Sly and the Family Stone, of Ike and Tina Turner and Peoples, you know.
Guest:So the thing that happens that's really important is this guy named George Draculius comes along, sees our band, gives us a chance, you know, believes in us, sees that we have some talent.
Guest:The only one who did.
Marc:Well, what were you playing when he saw you?
Guest:When he saw us, we played a club in New York called Drums.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was later Scores, the strip bar.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And this is what kind of kids we were.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:My dad would be like, you can take the van.
Guest:He had a van for his clothes and shit.
Guest:Yeah, he's all right.
Guest:We would drive.
Guest:Big Stan was the best.
Guest:Don't get me wrong.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we would like, oh, you guys have, you're the third, you know, there's five bands, you're the second one.
Guest:If you could get to New York on Thursday, it's $200.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we'd get in that band.
Marc:And it's you and your brother and who?
Guest:And the first band, our first band.
Guest:Who was in, who went to that gig?
Guest:Our first drummer, Steve, our bass player, Scott.
Marc:Steve Gorman?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Our first bass player was the guy.
Marc:I've played with him.
Marc:I have a gig.
Guest:Good guy.
Guest:Scott Schamel was our first bass player.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we went up there.
Guest:We played our show.
Guest:I remember the Canadian band Blue Rodeo headline.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we come out.
Guest:And we did some of our originals, but we played Down in the Street by the Stooges.
Guest:And we played No More, No More by Aerosmith in our set.
Guest:And this guy George comes backstage and he's like, hey, buddy.
Guest:Hey, how you guys doing?
Guest:I'm George.
Guest:I like your band.
Guest:I like your cover tunes.
Guest:Maybe we could talk about the originals.
Guest:That's how it starts.
Guest:And he really pushes Rich and I as songwriters.
Guest:The Eternion to shit?
Guest:But that's the thing, like, I was talking about 96 Rock and shit.
Guest:They were playing 38 Special and shit.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:They weren't playing... Not even Skinner'd.
Guest:Yeah, they weren't playing stuff that I thought was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he comes over, so I'm always into this...
Guest:Roots music.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's always been a part of me.
Guest:And now, you know, we have this kind of new punk and this, and like I said, kind of indie rock.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And he drops and he brings over a record and it's a nods as good as a wing to a blind horse by The Faces.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He puts on Miss Judy's Farm and it was one of those, like, the world stops for a minute and I heard the guitar and
Guest:I heard the beat.
Guest:I liked the idea of Maggie's Farm.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:There was something about the lyrics about kicking the poodle and stuff that was a little off-center from just a rock song.
Marc:And also, you know Rod from being a solo artist, so you got him back-loaded.
Marc:Yeah, I know him from if you think I'm sexy or hot legs and young Turks.
Marc:Right, and it almost ruins him in your brain.
Marc:Well, I didn't know.
Marc:But it's weird because he was so everywhere as Rod Stewart and whatever that was, and I didn't get into the faces until later.
Marc:So when you hear the faces, you've got to separate that Rod.
Marc:From that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I hadn't even heard him in the Jeff Beck group.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:That's a whole nother thing.
Guest:And, you know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he drops a needle in the faces in your brain.
Guest:And it's Maggie's farm.
Guest:I mean, Miss Judy's farm.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the guitar and then the beat comes in with the whirl.
Guest:I was like, whoa, whoa.
Guest:I didn't know.
Guest:And then when my voice changed, people say, oh, you know, you sound like, you ever hear Steve Marriott?
Guest:I'm like, I don't know who that is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I would know, like, Itchy Coop Park.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I wouldn't, I knew that was the Small Faces.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't really, you know what I mean?
Guest:This is 40 years ago.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We're getting near.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I'm like, oh, I knew Humble Pie from 30 Days in the Hole.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then I'm buying Humble Pie records and I'm like...
Guest:Okay, if someone thinks I sound like this, this guy is on another fucking plane.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:He's like Tina Turner.
Guest:Yeah, Marriott was like, you watch him.
Marc:Little white English guy who can sing like that.
Guest:Crazy.
Guest:And I think Humble Pie gets a bad rap as people kind of lump them in with...
Guest:fog hat and like the kind of boogie yeah yeah and they had a hard element and a boogie element but no but they were a lot gritty he was a great songwriter totally and he was you know yeah fantastic book all or nothing came out a couple years ago about him oh really
Guest:I mean, you know, he had mental issues.
Guest:But then again, isn't it beautiful that rock and roll is like the last bastion for mentally ill people to actually get through the world?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Hopefully without hurting...
Guest:they always hurt themselves.
Marc:But you guys are, you're, you're, you're magicians, man.
Marc:Because like, I, I talked to a lot of, uh, you know, front men and, and side men and, and, uh, musicians, uh, in general, but the guys who can hold that, that stadium thing, uh,
Marc:How the fuck do you even do that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like, I don't even know how.
Marc:I've been watching.
Marc:I watch Old Stone stuff.
Marc:And it's like, because you guys are kind of the same way.
Marc:You're playing with each other.
Marc:I watch Credence Clearwater in England.
Marc:At the Royal Albert.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's like, Fogarty's just like right next to the drummer.
Marc:They're doing this.
Guest:Yeah, we're very archaic in our way that we approach that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I saw The Stones a couple weeks ago at SoFi.
Guest:My wife and I took my daughter, who was with us for the summer, who's 14 and a bass player.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, you know what?
Guest:First off, I thought it was incredible.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I went because they're my favorite band, because they're always inspiring.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because Mick Jagger's a monkey genius, and Keith has always been my hero, and I wanted to see them.
Guest:And I was blown away.
Guest:The guitar interplay.
Guest:I mean, yeah, they're 80 years old.
Marc:No backtracks.
Marc:80 years old.
Marc:No backtracks.
Marc:The fucking thing amazing about seeing the Stones, I saw them before Charlie died down here, the last tour, before he passed away.
Marc:And they might fucking, you know, kind of...
Marc:fucking plod through the first couple before they find their groove.
Marc:And I'm like, kudos.
Guest:Okay, they did that in the 60s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, they're famous for the band that, like, takes a minute to find it.
Guest:Yeah, and then when they find it, you're like, we're in.
Guest:And the moments of that show I'll remember forever.
Guest:But just like you said, it's just guys on... That's the thing, I think, that people...
Guest:And it's funny, it's as if, you ever see like old, like heavy metal, like hair metal documentaries where I was like, Nirvana came and it was over for us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Really?
Guest:That's what you think happened?
Guest:Like if Nirvana hadn't come, you would still be playing like Wet and Wild Weekend or whatever, you know, I don't know.
Guest:You guys didn't write any songs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You didn't write any songs.
Guest:Right.
Yeah.
Guest:You look cool.
Guest:You fucked a lot of chicks.
Guest:You ran around.
Guest:You had a scarf on.
Guest:You didn't really write a lot of songs.
Guest:All right.
Guest:It's about songwriting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I think it's funny that you think the music business did that to you.
Guest:I mean, the music business is like anything else.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:No one ever.
Guest:I see a documentary.
Guest:The guy goes, I mean, we did so much for the label.
Guest:I'm like, did so much for the label?
Guest:You think it.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:This would be me.
Guest:And again, my outsider.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I knew one thing when our first record was big, and I would come do all the... I was the schmoozer at that time.
Guest:Jesus Christ.
Guest:But I would be like, these fucking people, they wouldn't let you in their house to have a cup of tea.
Guest:We're disgusting to them.
Guest:And you're only as good as... To them, they don't care.
Guest:They don't know.
Guest:It truly was us versus them.
Guest:And I truly...
Guest:could see it and feel it.
Guest:So I'd be, why would I?
Guest:And you know, it's kind of been the story of the Black Crows.
Guest:Even what I did in my solo work was always like, well, you can't do that.
Guest:Well, yeah, we fucking can.
Guest:And it's not because we think we're better or anything.
Guest:It's just because this is the only job we could do where no one can, hey, put that down.
Guest:I don't have to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The guy from the label would say, hey, what do you think?
Guest:I'd be like, great, save it.
Guest:You have 50 other bands that might want to hear your bullshit.
Guest:We have one band.
Guest:And I'd rather make my own mistakes because I can live with my creative mistakes, my personal mistakes.
Guest:I'm not a child.
Guest:I can take responsibility for it.
Guest:But I want to be calling my own shots.
Guest:If I listen to some guy at the record company, then you're like just some...
Guest:People who learn to play music and are being told what to do.
Marc:Yeah, and also, did you ever feel... Did you have... I mean, was there a point where you thought you were getting fucked?
Guest:I mean, to be honest, I... Maybe... Because that second record was so fucking big.
Guest:But you know, the thing is, I... Again, it's no excuse.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I... And Rich and I, as different as we are, have always felt that there's...
Guest:I couldn't really start to think about it.
Guest:Number one, because of the way my mind works, I really have no relationship with money, finance.
Guest:I have no idea how it works.
Guest:That's just what it is.
Guest:It's not for a lack of trying to figure it out.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But again, the one thing I did have an innate understanding and a deep relationship with is my creative process and what I wanted to do and what we wanted to do and how it should look and smell and feel.
Guest:And there was a weird side of me that even if I knew more about the business side of things, I know a lot more now.
Guest:But at that time, it would have taken any...
Marc:smidgen of energy away from the vision of what we were trying to do as a band and in terms of like growing the the vision like you know what what how do you see that like after the first three records right so you're you're thinking because i listened to new one it's a different kind of record
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think we've always, it's a different record, but it's a record that we've allowed ourselves the joy of what we feel real essence of rock and roll is.
Marc:Right, and it's all varied.
Marc:All the songs are varied, and there's a thickness to the fucking guitar that's a little different.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And there's a couple of drivers on there that are almost punk rock.
Guest:Well, we wanted to, you know, the whole, when we got this thing back together...
Guest:You know, I was doing my CRB.
Guest:I was in—every day was Woodstock.
Guest:Every night was Altamont.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:I'm just kidding.
Marc:Well, when did you get hip to that kind of—like, was it hanging out with Lesh?
Marc:Or, like, when did you start to get trippy?
Guest:Well, I think the—you know, the—
Guest:I think, you know, one of the things we were never... For whatever reason, we ran away from Shake Your Money Maker.
Guest:And then we ran away from Southern Harmony.
Guest:And we... I think there's a line through it all that is very much my brother and I's voice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we...
Guest:we felt like, you know, we know the record company wants us to play some riff rock.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But we weren't interested in it.
Guest:We have all these other musical interests and ambitions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we're in a very punk aesthetic.
Guest:Hey, everyone's doing this.
Guest:We're not.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Everyone looks like this.
Guest:We don't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Part of the art is... Fuck you.
Guest:And, you know, and there's a contrarian thing.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:Some people would call it shooting yourself in the foot.
Marc:Other people would call it freedom of expression.
Guest:I couldn't walk.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I wouldn't even have kneecaps at this point.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:They'd be like, on lead vocals, stumpy Jim.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But again, those I, you know...
Guest:I laugh, and I see with the release of Happiness Bastards, I start to see things where people, you know, by the time we make Amorica, okay, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, they're fucking Smashing Pumpkins, Grape Bands, Cleaning Up, and we're over here fucking around with some psychedelic, we're like Hawkwind or something, you know what I mean?
Guest:We look like Hawkwind, you know?
Guest:Drugs and crazy, you know.
Guest:But now, you know, people start to look at your music in a different light.
Guest:They start to be able to see these records in a different thing.
Guest:Like, well, that record's not what I thought it was when it came out.
Marc:Of course not.
Marc:Of course not.
Marc:Because there was expectation when it came out based on what the record company had sort of contextualized you as.
Marc:And certain fans like certain things.
Marc:Like when we talk about radio rock and about all these different things we were talking about at the beginning, is you and I were both brought up in a way where you had to fight mainstream music or you would be stuck in it.
Marc:It's like your dad listening to Africa.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like how the fuck did that happen?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:From the radio.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So in order to find your way around that shit, you got to take those chances.
Marc:Completely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, we took some, you know, but like I said, it's funny.
Guest:We're still here, and we're doing better than we ever have.
Guest:I mean, I think the record we just made... You know, that was the other thing, too.
Guest:Then we start to splinter off after the first 10 years, and, well, I'm writing songs, and I want to interject my songs.
Guest:But looking back at that, I'm glad I did.
Guest:There are some moments that the fans really like, and I think that I wrote some quality songs.
Guest:But...
Guest:Now, where I am today, I know the Black Crows, what we are is Rich writes the music, I write the lyrics and the melodies, and we put them together and we work it out.
Guest:And that's what you hear on our last record is there's no shooting ourselves in the foot.
Guest:There's not even a moment of, hey, working with a producer like Jay Joyce, who is one of the most sought after guys, super successful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, even Rich and I, when the old ways come back, we're like, look, man, if we're going to work with this guy, we got to let him do his thing.
Guest:And to our great...
Guest:Astonishment and surprise, it was a symbiotic thing.
Guest:It worked like boom.
Guest:I'm more chaos in the studio, just like Rich and I are completely different personalities.
Guest:I like things fast.
Guest:Boom, try this.
Guest:It drives people a little crazy probably.
Guest:I'm very...
Guest:hyper creative that way and Rich is a little more subdued and wants and so here we are all these years in records later but we found a guy in Jay who could pick up on both of that and interject when he had to and that communicates to the whole
Marc:ensemble it's kind of interesting with all your sort of like the the broad spectrum of what's coming through you musically and this sort of like it seems like uh rich is kind of grounded in in those riffs that he fucking likes and those you know those uh some of that three chord stuff and open tunings whatever but in the new record there's a couple like i could tell like um what is it wilted rose that's like classic black crow's song
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Ballad, ballad.
Marc:And then there's other ones on there that there's not a lot of chord changes.
Marc:It's just dry.
Marc:Well, that was the other thing.
Guest:We were like, you know, getting back together and doing Shake Your Money Maker was important because that was another thing we never thought we'd do.
Guest:Play the whole album, start to finish.
Guest:But then we did it, and it was great.
Guest:And I was like, oh, this is what we are, though.
Guest:It also helped me...
Guest:focus and define something that i hadn't thought about a long time and that's like look i'm a front man you know what i mean and i you know in my solo band i'm just a guy playing guitar and singing folk songs kind of right i'm i think this is what i'm supposed to do i'm supposed to feel good about who i am on stage and what i'm giving you my energy my my vocals the lyrics and my the way i dance yeah but i have to feel that from these guys and i have to get it back from them yeah
Guest:But more than ever in my life, I realized I really like what I like it.
Guest:And I have the perspective of saying no one fucking does it.
Guest:If Steven just retired for real, well, there's one gone.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:He's not going to go out and shake it anymore.
Guest:Mick Jagger is probably the...
Guest:archetypal front man yeah people like me and steven i would say even maybe robert plant in some ways yeah i'll tell you he's an amazing front man and who i look at as someone who i really think is is dave gahan from depeche mode oh yeah his i saw him last year and i was like oh my god uh
Guest:Different than me, a little bit more theatrical.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But I'm, you know, and I see that.
Guest:I'm like, well, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like that's a show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can feel it's something else.
Marc:You're almost like a born again entertainer.
Marc:In that kind of way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You realize the full arc of the fuck you-ness has kind of leveled off, and you're like, well, this is what I do.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not like other guys.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I'm going to get there, man.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But in between then and there, I think it's exactly what a rock and roll band should be.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:There's highs, lows.
Guest:There's...
Guest:The fucking purgatory.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But thank God you had the brotherhood to blow steam off and do something that enabled you to embrace that more poetic trip that you're on.
Marc:Completely.
Guest:And to be, I mean, on just a sheer physical level, to take those years in the CRB.
Guest:I mean, we were doing 200, over 200, 250 shows a year.
Yeah.
Guest:Two sets a night, five nights a week.
Guest:That was a CRB.
Guest:But doing something with my voice that was not what I do in the Black Crows, I think gave me such power and strength in my vocals today.
Guest:But also makes you a full person.
Marc:Because then you don't have to spend your life going like that.
Guest:Fuck, I'm stuck.
Guest:You said take the steam off.
Guest:And I've used that description about, look, man, if it hurts anyone's feelings or whatever, okay.
Guest:I had to get out of that.
Marc:I was miserable.
Marc:Is that the Dunkirk?
Marc:Is that 95?
Guest:Yeah, that's where it starts.
Guest:But as you know, the war goes on for quite a while.
Guest:And then you know the worst part of any war is the Reconstruction.
Marc:Well, how bad did it get?
Marc:What was the fucking thing?
Marc:Did the drugs get bad?
Guest:Yes, but I love drugs, so I'm not going to blame it on that.
Guest:I mean, I think, especially the first 10 years of the band, every fucking band, whether it's the Spaceman 3 or My Bloody Valentine or whatever, any band.
Guest:I think would say, oh, if we had just stopped for six months.
Guest:But you'd never do.
Guest:You never do.
Guest:And I was resentful and depressed and lonely by the end of the 90s.
Guest:And that...
Guest:is represented in my drug use.
Guest:Although I was kind of teasing, but I will never... I don't look back at any of that with any regrets.
Marc:But what about the emotional strain on your relationship with the band and with your brother and all that shit?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But again, without it, I'm not here.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:These are hard lessons to learn.
Guest:And to be honest, I'm definitely not here today
Guest:without meeting my wife when I did and forging our partnership and relationship.
Guest:And as someone who I ultimately love and respect, who is, you know, an artist.
Guest:She did the cover?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:But also just helping me get back to, like, what's, you know, like, let's.
Guest:Who are you?
Guest:Yeah, let's start stripping.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that goes hand in hand with loving the music again, loving real rock and roll again.
Marc:I mean, I always listen to it, but... But doing that first record all the way through, that must have brought it right.
Marc:That's what it was.
Guest:It was like a fire.
Guest:And then it was like, oh yeah, it's funny on the new record, like Rats and Clowns, the second song.
Guest:I tell people...
Guest:That song took five minutes to write.
Guest:Rich played me that.
Guest:And I was like, oh, you've been seen downtown hanging with the rats and clowns.
Guest:And I was like, okay, we got it.
Guest:And there's a little ACDC.
Guest:There's a little punk kind of attitude.
Guest:And it's very much...
Guest:But it didn't take any thinking about it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was only instinctive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when we record that, I just brought that track up as an example.
Guest:By the time, Rich plays the guitar solo on that track, and we had, that's the most fun I've ever had in the studio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Recording that song.
Guest:It took 10 minutes, and then Rich played that solo, and I was like fucking in his face yelling, yeah!
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he's ripping and ripping, and I'm like, that, but...
Guest:that's what you've maybe get away from.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um, the immediacy of that kind of creation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then and there.
Guest:And this is something that, well, Hey, if it was pretentious, if it was false, it would not, it wouldn't resonate.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No matter what we've done, it has to be sincere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and in those moments are the moments that like, okay, um,
Guest:So we can just finish three years of touring and he and I are in a great place.
Guest:He and I are ready for the next chapter.
Guest:We're ready for whatever happens.
Marc:There's no... I can't imagine how painful it is to have that kind of strain with your brother.
Guest:Well, but again, all families are the same, but every family is different.
Guest:It's like bands.
Guest:Every band goes to the gig and goes to the dressing room and does the show, but in between A, B, and C, everyone does it different.
Guest:It's culture.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But for me also, like I was talking about Camille or whatever, like she's also the one that just put in my mind and my heart like, you know, you're this way and he's that way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and before I'd be like, why is he that way?
Guest:He'd be like, why is he like this?
Guest:But we have a different respect and understanding and also, you know, without, I can put my brother as a musician
Guest:I can really see who he is better now and how fucking talented he is and how he does something that... There's a lot of fucking great guitar players out there, and I've played with a lot of great guitar players, and we love their records, and we go see them.
Guest:And Rich is... I have to put... I mean, he's not the fucking... He's not ripping like this virtuoso soloist, but what he does...
Guest:Is unique.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Finds a space.
Guest:And he has a sound.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he has, you know, his ideas and what he wants to say emotionally through his music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is something that...
Guest:has always affected me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And again, it gets back to songwriting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All this shit, man, rock and roll and rock stars and getting on stage and shaking it, all of that's cool.
Guest:And it's all great.
Guest:But we starred as two kids who wanted to write songs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because that's the only thing that we couldn't...
Guest:We didn't learn Stairway to Heaven.
Guest:We're not playing that.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's like, you know?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's better off.
Marc:The solo to Eruption?
Guest:We're not fucking around with that.
Guest:We started writing our own songs.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, I'm the same way, but I'm never a professional musician, but I'm not going to sit there for three days and learn the solo just to act like you know it casually at a party or something.
Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You're like, cool, Hotel California.
Guest:Great.
Guest:That's what we need.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:God damn it.
Guest:Could we just hear Hotel California once in our life?
Marc:Fuck, I haven't heard it in 12 seconds.
Marc:I just remember I worked at a restaurant when I was younger and this guy picks up a guitar and he's talking to me.
Marc:And he's a guitar player.
Marc:I don't know what he ended up doing.
Marc:But he just starts playing Little Wing.
Marc:He's pretending like it was just casual.
Marc:He's still talking to me.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But it looked like it took so much effort for him to just play that casually.
Marc:That was his big plan.
Marc:I'm going to learn this fucking thing.
Marc:I'm just going to like... Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But it just didn't add no fucking groove.
Marc:It was a great moment.
Marc:Well, you know, that's going on at Guitar Center right now.
Marc:As we speak.
Marc:So what's the plan for the tour?
Marc:You're going to play most of this record?
Guest:Well, we did the Happiness Bastards tour and it was fantastic because we had been doing the Shake Your Money Maker tour and then this kind of subsequent big records.
Guest:So we went to smaller venues knowing that we were going to play a lot of the new record.
Guest:But it also, I mean, we play the hits as well, of course.
Guest:You know, like back, you know, when the Black Crows, there's a time, I can't believe there was a time where we're like, yeah, fuck it, we're not going to play She Talks to Angels.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's like...
Marc:It's almost only any time a band makes those decisions, it's sort of like, ah, fuck.
Guest:We're not going to play the main song.
Marc:We've got to listen to this one we don't know for an hour.
Marc:So you're going to go back out.
Guest:So we're going back out.
Guest:We were supposed to be with Aerosmith, and we'd had a bunch of our own shows booked within the Aerosmith tour.
Guest:And so now that that's not happening, we, yeah, we're going to go finish and get back to this.
Guest:The other thing I was saying is we get to play, we have a few moments in the show where we can play some really deep tracks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we have some moments where we can play like, you know, we've been playing Chuck Berry songs.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Well, we've been playing Carol.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we've been playing.
Marc:You ever play Can't Catch Me?
Guest:I haven't played that.
Guest:I know of that.
Guest:It's a great song.
Guest:We had a giant Chuck Berry cutout on the stage, too.
Guest:But we've been playing, what's it, 40 Flight Rock.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We've been playing High School Confidential.
Guest:We were playing some Bo Diddley songs.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Like Josephine?
Guest:We were doing Roadrunner.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it gives us a cool opportunity to play some covers that we haven't been doing.
Guest:just loosen it up a little and get the new songs in and our band is... We're having such a good time and such a fucking... How's the crowds?
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:Incredible.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's also incredible just to...
Guest:And I know as well, like, we'll always have our people.
Guest:Some people have come and gone, and they come back.
Marc:And then they come with their kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I know, but also, like, now what we do, I really realize, is, like, you're not really seeing that.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like, we don't have any in-ear monitors.
Guest:We have guitars on stage.
Guest:You know, I always think a great rock show should be like an old train in a cartoon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it goes over the cliff and the train rolls all over.
Guest:And it comes back.
Marc:And then you go, oh, you know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that's the way it should feel.
Guest:You know, we don't, it's a little bit different every night.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you, man.
Marc:Yeah, thanks.
Marc:Yeah, thanks for coming.
Marc:Cheers, cheers.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Thinks a lot about a lot of stuff that Chris Robinson.
Marc:Again, you can go to blackcrows.com for tour dates and tickets and get Happiness Bastards wherever you get your music.
Marc:Hang out for a minute, will you?
Marc:People, we have got a special bonus episode tomorrow for full Marin subscribers, one that hasn't been part of any premium WTF subscription for a while.
Marc:It's called Lorne Stories, and it's a two-hour compilation of stories from people who used to be on Saturday Night Live.
Guest:I think he gives good advice, long-winded advice, but good advice.
Guest:He's the kind of guy, if you say, should I move...
Guest:You know, should I buy a house?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's had this crazy life.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I like his advice.
Marc:So does he give you advice about Parks and Rec?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:In terms of your performance in general?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:I don't think he really watches it, but, you know.
Marc:Like, what did he say?
Guest:You know, that kind of thing that, like...
Guest:like buddha like people say which is not really anything right but they like they end up saying nothing and you're like yes that's it you know what i mean but that thing of like at the end of the day it's you and that's what you need to remember it's you there and you're doing your thing and there is where you're supposed to be yeah and you're like yes finally and then you walk like what the fuck are you talking about
Marc:I think it's just an approval thing in a way.
Guest:I think it is.
Guest:And also, he's had to, I have to say, having had the experience of up close at SNL, there's so many fires to put out and there's so many personalities and people with real, you know, there's like the neuroses of the host and there's the cast and everybody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He doesn't always get it right, but the history of personalities that he's had to manage is really, really interesting.
Guest:And I think he's really good at getting what he wants.
Guest:Like, it's just, it's fascinating to watch when someone's like, I'm not going to do that sketch.
Guest:And he's like, no, I know, you're not.
Guest:And when you do it, it will be fine.
Yeah.
Guest:And I'm just like, no, I know what I'm not going to do.
Guest:And he's like, you're not doing it, nor should you.
Guest:But I think when you find yourself doing it, you're going to end up doing it.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:He's incredibly persuasive.
Marc:To get the Lauren Stories episode plus new bonus episodes twice a week and every WTF ad free, sign up by going to the link in the episode description or go to WTFPod.com and click on WTF Plus.
Marc:And a reminder, this podcast is hosted by Acast.
Marc:And here's some guitar featuring some of my favorite major chords.
Guest:.
.
.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Guest:Boomer lives.
Guest:Monkey and LaFonda.
Guest:Cat angels everywhere.