Episode 470 - Ron White
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck aristas?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:We are doing it.
Marc:Today's a big day because I got Ron White on the show.
Marc:Ron White from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.
Marc:Some of you may know him.
Marc:He is the dark, honest one.
Marc:on uh in that batch a great comic and a guy i've been trying to get on the show for a long time he's i think a lot of uh my ilk or the alt ilk or the ilk of people that don't necessarily pay much attention to comedy may may pigeonhole that crew as uh something that they just across the board don't like but i'm here to tell you that ron white's a great fucking comic and i'm thrilled to have him on the show is a good talk and
Marc:He's a hard liver and he's been through some stuff, but he is one of the great long form comedians that is working out there and has been for years.
Marc:I was thrilled to have him on the show.
Marc:We'll get to that in a second.
Marc:I'm going to be doing a series of dates.
Marc:at the trip any house here in la at the steve allen theater i will be doing uh february 18th these are tuesdays march 11th and march uh 4th so feb 18 march 4 and march 11th at the trip any house uh these are these are small shows these are just for me to ramble and flounder and wrestle with myself they're eight bucks
Marc:uh all the proceeds will go to benefit the theater i just uh i need a i need a supportive ear folks so if you want to see me do that i mean certainly some of you uh witness it here every uh twice a week but to see it in person and you know i'm not going to make any guarantees these are workshop shows and i'm looking for i'm looking for trains of thought i want to try and jump on some trains of thought and figure out what it is i need to be talking about if you want to be part of that process i might even need you i might need to talk to you
Marc:So that's the Tripany House.
Marc:You can go to Tripany.org, February 18th, March 4th and March 11th.
Marc:I will be doing these Marin Flounders evenings.
Marc:So Valentine's Day is tomorrow.
Marc:Now, you know, I want to tell you the story.
Marc:I want to tell you the long form story of the relationship I am in now.
Marc:I told you that I was seeing moon, but I don't know if you really know just, you know, the evolution of that thing, I think is romantic.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:You know, I'm a 50 year old man.
Marc:I've had a lot of life experiences.
Marc:I've been a lot of weird places.
Marc:I've had my heart broken a couple of times.
Marc:I've broken some hearts, you know, but I seem to still get up and keep trying and
Marc:To find love and to to be in love and to deal with it and to accept it and to and to try to to nurture it or make it work.
Marc:And it's not easy for me.
Marc:It doesn't.
Marc:I'm not a natural.
Marc:For whatever reason, it hasn't worked out for me in the long term.
Marc:But I no longer look at my past marriages or my past relationships as I don't I don't regret them.
Marc:I have to see them as some sort of growth.
Marc:And they're all very painful.
Marc:But I mean, what are the choices?
Marc:I mean, do you just get your heart broke and then close it up, nail it down, close the door, and just sort of slowly smolder through life with a certain amount of bitterness and fear about just being in relationship at all?
Marc:Do you just spend your life having angry sex with strangers and hookers and yourself for the rest of your life?
Marc:Is love worth it?
Marc:All of you know that I went through a difficult breakup this year or last year.
Marc:It was heartbreaking for me, even though I was the one that decided to do it.
Marc:And about three months after that or so, you know, I went out to dinner with my old friend Moon Zappa, who many of you have heard on the show.
Marc:Now, this is sort of an I don't know.
Marc:It's a romantic story, I guess.
Marc:Now, the backstory of this romance, this grown-up romance that I'm finding myself in and deciding to talk to you about.
Marc:Is that, you know, I met Moon Zappa probably in 1994, 95, maybe a little before that, but I didn't really know it.
Marc:I may not have registered it, but she was living in New York, doing work for VH1, doing some other stuff.
Marc:And she was coming out to comedy shows.
Marc:And when I first met her, I was like, oh, my fucking God, there was just this attraction.
Marc:There was this chemistry.
Marc:There was something undeniable.
Marc:But I was out of my mind.
Marc:I was a sweaty, drugged up wild man.
Marc:just sort of like what what who is this moon yeah what is what i want this and you know i was just paralyzed and and completely into her and i was with somebody else but at that time given the nature of who i was and what was going on that that didn't necessarily stop me i've been a bad man in my past
Marc:So I tried to make it work.
Marc:I would go on the road.
Marc:I remember we had, I remember getting, she faxed me pictures she drew once.
Marc:So we were talking and we were engaged in a dialogue and I was beside myself.
Marc:I was basically in love with her.
Marc:94, 95, this has got to be.
Marc:But there was nothing I could do about it.
Marc:I wasn't quite married to my first wife yet, but I was close and I was out of my mind.
Marc:I was falling, horizontally falling through life.
Marc:And I wanted to grab onto Moon Zappa because I felt it.
Marc:There's a few people in your life and you know who they are.
Marc:If you're lucky, you're with them.
Marc:But there's a few people in your life and it doesn't necessarily happen once.
Marc:I do not believe that there is only one person out there for everybody.
Marc:And I know I'm not the only one that doesn't believe that.
Marc:That's ridiculous.
Marc:There's always people out there for you.
Marc:It's just sometimes hard to find them.
Marc:And sometimes it depends on where you are in your life.
Marc:But I have been in love a few times deeply.
Marc:And and she was one of them at that time.
Marc:But there was nothing we could do about it.
Marc:She couldn't handle me.
Marc:I was with somebody else and I was not ready to leave for somebody that couldn't handle me.
Marc:I think we made out once.
Marc:Didn't go very far.
Marc:And that was it.
Marc:And then I went off and did my life and went through that marriage.
Marc:And I don't remember seeing her much during that time.
Marc:The next time I ran into her, she was married.
Marc:to paul her her ex-husband and i and i saw them both and i was like i just had that pang and i you know when you see a couple or you see somebody that you had a thing for and and they seem to have found the right person or that it all makes sense in that moment you're like oh boy you know this this kind of hurts but you know i guess you know this is what happens and and it seems like it's going to work out and they seem groovy and but i just still had that heartache about it you know
Marc:And then I had her on the podcast, and I think I ran into her.
Marc:The reason she was on the podcast, I ran into her at a show at UCB, and I was in a relationship again.
Marc:I saw her at UCB, and it just happened to me again.
Marc:I'm like, oh, my God, I should be with her.
Marc:I should be with her.
Marc:Why am I not with her?
Marc:I can't.
Marc:I'm seeing somebody, and I love this person, and I'm in it.
Marc:And she wasn't.
Marc:She was divorced and she wasn't with anybody.
Marc:Moon wasn't.
Marc:I was like, okay, okay, this is just life.
Marc:This is the ache.
Marc:This is the ache of life.
Marc:You don't always get what you want.
Marc:You don't always end up with the people that you were in love with necessarily.
Marc:I mean, you may love them and you may be in love with them, but there's always going to be that one or two people that just fucking knock you the fuck out.
Marc:And for whatever reason, you can't be with them.
Marc:For whatever reason, it just doesn't happen.
Marc:And that was how I felt about Moon.
Marc:There was an ache there, but it was just sort of like, well, destiny is not on my side.
Marc:So then, you know, I have her on the podcast and some of you heard it and there was, you know, the same old juice, man, that was just, you know, we just, it was a shorthand.
Marc:There was a, there was a click, there was a chemistry there, you know, and I was just, I'm just beside myself, you know?
Marc:And I just had to accept like, well, there's just, again, one of those things in life.
Marc:And that happens in life, man.
Marc:I'm an old guy.
Marc:Well, I'm 50.
Marc:You know, this happens, you know, if you get around, you live in a few cities, you're going to have some of those things around.
Marc:So then me and Jessica hit the wall and that was devastating.
Marc:And then a few months after that, I'm like, all right, I got to get back out there.
Marc:I'm going to call Moon.
Marc:I'm going to ask her out to dinner.
Marc:And I don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:I don't have any expectations.
Marc:Uh, but I do need to do this.
Marc:I do need to see her.
Marc:I need to talk to her.
Marc:I need to, you know, see where she's at and what's going on.
Marc:I want to talk to her.
Marc:I want to see her.
Marc:And so I asked her to dinner and we go to dinner and I really don't have any expectations.
Marc:I just, I want to see what's there.
Marc:I want to see what it feels like.
Marc:So she agrees to have dinner with me and she's in a relationship and I'm like, Oh my God, damn it.
Marc:Are you fucking kidding me?
Marc:you know i'm i'm out i'm done i'm beat up i've learned my lesson you know i've always been in love with you i didn't say that you're fucking kidding me i'm gonna play it cool man i'm like what's up with this relationship turns out it wasn't that great she was having some trouble and i related my troubles and and what i had been through and and and she heard me out and then she started thinking about her relationship and and we got along fucking beautifully and it was just crazy it was crazy and
Marc:But I'm like, okay, well, you're in a thing.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:Good luck with it.
Marc:If there's anything I can do to help you, you know, let me know.
Marc:And I walk away from that thing and I'm like, God damn it.
Marc:You just got to be cool, man, and see what happens because that felt like it was on fire.
Marc:You got to be cool.
Marc:Don't freak out.
Marc:Don't push.
Marc:Let her fucking do what she's going to do.
Marc:But God damn it.
Marc:I, in my mind, I could not let it go.
Marc:I did not want to let it go.
Marc:I'm like, I've waited half my life to be with this person and I want it more than anything.
Marc:I don't know what to do.
Marc:So we ended up talking again and being casual and just being friends.
Marc:And, you know, and she was going through a hard time with this relationship she was in.
Marc:I was supportive.
Marc:I was not, you know, pushy.
Marc:And the miracle happened.
Marc:The miracle happened is that, you know, she got out of that relationship, not for me, but because I seem to had shed some light on some dynamics and whatever.
Marc:I mean, I'm sure I helped it along, but it was not for me.
Marc:And she was on the level, man.
Marc:I mean, you know, she, you know, we didn't do anything when she was in the relationship.
Marc:It was all on the level.
Marc:But then all of a sudden it's like, okay, you're out.
Marc:So where are we?
Marc:What are we doing?
Marc:And then we went out a few times as friends and it was like, what are we doing?
Marc:Is this a date?
Marc:Where are we at?
Marc:Do we want this?
Marc:I have love for this person.
Marc:I have always felt connected to her.
Marc:And I cannot let this fucking slip through my hands.
Marc:I can't fuck this up.
Marc:I got to do whatever's necessary here to give this a go.
Marc:And so we were both...
Marc:Stubborn people, somewhat angry people, but we'd been through a lot and we were both willing to do it differently and we wanted to do it differently.
Marc:So that's what we're doing.
Marc:We're fighting the good fight and we're having a blast.
Marc:And that is the best Valentine's Day story that I can tell you.
Marc:I mean, 1994, 95, 2005, that was 20 years ago that this woman struck me right in the goddamn guts and soul and heart.
Marc:And we've just been missing each other for 20 years.
Marc:And now we're in it and we're wiser, we're older, we're humbled and we want to change and we want to make it work and we want to be open and honest and experience happiness and all those things.
Marc:But, you know, we're used to the other way.
Marc:So it's been very exciting.
Marc:I'm sorry this isn't a funny monologue, but that's my Valentine's Day story.
Marc:Somehow or another, this thing with her came around, and I am amazed and grateful and very much in love with her.
Marc:And that's the God honest truth.
Marc:But every day I'm like, I don't want this to go bad.
Marc:I don't know what I would do if this went bad.
Marc:I will keep my heart as open as possible.
Marc:And anytime I begin to do what I used to do that was destructive, I fucking try to put a kibosh on that and be as honest and open as possible and show up for this thing.
Marc:It's a lot of crying involved.
Marc:There's a lot of crying to keeping your heart open.
Marc:Because when it comes right down to it, what are you going to do, man?
Marc:What are you going to do?
Marc:Are you going to cry or are you going to yell?
Marc:Cry or yell?
Marc:Try crying.
Marc:She's crying and you didn't cause it.
Marc:So how about everybody cries?
Marc:And maybe that's just the way feelings feel when your default is anger.
Marc:Maybe that's what's under it.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:Just cry a little bit.
Marc:Just cry with each other until you start laughing.
Marc:Love is a fucked up funny thing, but I tell you, it can be amazing if you let it in.
Marc:I'm not necessarily great at that, but happy Valentine's Day.
Marc:All right, so let's talk to Ron White.
Marc:Ron White, I've been trying to get you on this fucking show for a long time.
Guest:Yeah, I got that 125 city a year thing that kind of stands in my way of doing fun stuff.
Guest:And I've wanted to do it for a long time.
Guest:We've tried to set it up a couple times, you know, you're...
Marc:The last time I saw you, let me think now.
Marc:Years ago, you and I were at Montreal.
Marc:We were on the same showcase.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:The Remember These Old Guys showcase.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:Maybe something will happen for these guys someday again.
Guest:Maybe it will, right.
Guest:Yeah, the masters is what they were calling it.
Guest:Right, yeah, something like that.
Marc:But what they meant was the old guys.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Right, and we both got deals out of that.
Guest:Yeah, I got a deal with Fox that...
Guest:that built my hopes up so high for the future that I thought it was going to be rosy from there on out.
Marc:What was that show, though?
Guest:Do you remember the show that you did?
Guest:Yeah, it was called Senor White, and it was about this time in my life where I'd said, fuck comedy, and...
Guest:and uh i moved in uh down to mexico and uh opened a pottery factory did you do that yeah i did it oh boy we got we're gonna have to get the timeline right right it's it's all quite a while ago but i'd been doing well whatever right around that time uh
Guest:Blue Collar was coming out, and so I had that big development deal with Fox with more money than I'd ever seen.
Guest:And then Warner Brothers just committed $12 million to advertising Blue Collar, and I'm like,
Guest:well, this looks great.
Guest:Surely I'm going to have my own sitcom because there's no way they would spend this much money and throw it in the trash, right?
Guest:That's impossible.
Guest:And then this movie's coming out and they're going to spend $12 million saying my name.
Guest:And then they changed that to $600,000, which is way less.
Guest:and uh and then they didn't pick up the sitcoms a couple weeks later i'm back at des moines at the funny bone telling jokes doing the comedy and i'm like well i had a chance and uh it just didn't work out but uh turns out in dvd and all that stuff it all worked out yeah you've done fucking great you're you're one of the best there is in my mind and then the time i saw you after that that was at the improv bar
Marc:and um you were uh you were sitting there having a few cocktails that sounds like me and uh you were uh you you had given me like i had just gotten divorced and i was a wreck and you were in the middle of it and you've seemed perfectly fine it was an inspiration to me i guarantee i was not perfectly fine during that divorce i was getting kicked in the ribs on a daily basis yeah and i was expected to just like it and shut up and uh
Guest:That was just, you know, I'm friends with Dr. Phil.
Guest:I play golf with him every once in a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And not only does he not give unsolicited advice, he doesn't give solicited advice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we're playing golf and I'm like, Doc, this divorce is killing me.
Guest:He's like, keep your head still when you putt.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Yeah, right, thanks.
Guest:No help at all.
Guest:No, what I'm saying is, I feel like I'm dying on the inside, Doc.
Guest:I don't think keeping my head still is going to fix that.
Marc:Yeah, watch your knees.
Marc:Watch your knees.
Marc:Bend a little bit.
Marc:I don't know anything about golf.
Marc:But the first time I think I started seeing you or like when I met you, I think in Montreal was the first time I really met you, but I'd seen you on TV.
Marc:But then like I remember seeing pictures of you at the old in Houston at the what was that comedy club there?
Marc:laugh stop at laugh stop yeah right but these were pictures that go way back a younger ron white no gray hair longer hair in in my recollection way longer uh tater salad was on what was in the name at one time absolutely absolutely so where did it's all i could do to get it out of the name i don't need it anymore
Marc:Yeah, well, it was gone.
Marc:It was gone.
Marc:But at some point, that was part of the title.
Guest:Yeah, I thought it would be my closer for the rest of my life.
Marc:So it was based on a bit?
Guest:Based on a story.
Guest:Yeah, a true story.
Guest:It's my legal alias is Ron Tater Salad White, if you look up my police record.
Guest:Or actually, it used to be.
Guest:It's not anymore because this Texas Supreme Court justice expunged my record.
Guest:I was talking to him on...
Guest:i got to have a ron white day in the state of texas and that's a real day yeah well it had a year attached to it so it doesn't happen every year they don't bring it up but they did that one time and and uh i met this texas supreme court justice and he said yeah i was looking at your police record the other day and i thought ah this is bullshit and apparently there's just a button they can click and it's just gone i'm like hey my road manager's name steve cook is there any way you could take a look at his because i'm having a hard time getting him into canada the
Marc:Yeah, because you hit that magic button for Canada, too.
Marc:Yeah, I'm flagged in Canada for bullshit, and it's very difficult to get your name off of that shit.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Marc:For bullshit, for nothing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, you know, I got a plane, and I got busted with weed on it in Florida.
Guest:How'd that happen?
Guest:Oh, these guys that were pilots I fired, and they were just the biggest dickheads in the world.
Guest:The guys who flew you around.
Guest:The guys that flew me around.
Guest:So I fired them for just being incompetent, you know, fucks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so they start calling the police in towns that I was going to and tell them it was a drug smuggling plane.
Guest:And so I land in Vero Beach, and I look out the window, and there's fucking cops and dogs and guns.
Guest:And I'm like, oh, I wonder what's going on.
Guest:Then they like stormed my plane.
Guest:You're going on.
Guest:And it was the weirdest thing because they told him it was a drug smuggling plane.
Guest:So, okay, you got some way to detect that kind of stuff and narc on these guys that are moving meth or whatever or whatever.
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they come out and they do it.
Guest:They find less than a gram of weed that I have a prescription for in my pocket.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and they took me to jail.
Guest:It's like they were looking for a rabid pit bull, but they couldn't find one, so they just shot a poodle.
Marc:Yeah, they made the trip.
Marc:There was a lot of cars involved.
Guest:Somebody's going down.
Guest:They drove by three meth labs and a dead hooker just to get to the airport.
Marc:They had a big tip, man.
Marc:They weren't going to be hung out to dry.
Guest:So I actually felt sorry for the guys because the cops were fans and they were like, oh, this is bullshit.
Guest:And then some guy, some lieutenant or something said, bring him in.
Marc:Yeah, the one guy that didn't know your work.
Guest:Right, the one guy who needed to know it.
Guest:So I was actually two hours late to the show and not one person left.
Guest:they were telling him you know they were going hey he's in jail but it looks like he's getting out and did you open with it oh sure did yeah right right yeah for five years yeah that that was a good that was a good story and i should have realized that when it was happening right you know that it was a good thing yeah yeah yeah my fans would find it completely ridiculous that they did this yeah most of the most of the u.s would
Guest:I think there's probably a better way to spend their time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On a random tip.
Marc:Random tip.
Marc:Without any fucking research whatsoever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Alex Ramundo was opening for me.
Guest:And I was on the plane by myself.
Guest:And I don't know how he got there.
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:But the next week we were going into somewhere in Mississippi.
Guest:And so now we've got a more conservative approach.
Guest:So we're not taking any more herb than we can swallow.
Guest:And we're smoking out of an apple.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We get there.
Guest:Same thing.
Guest:The cops were there?
Guest:Cops, dogs, everything, searching the plane.
Guest:Alex got a big old jaw full of weed.
Guest:He's eating an apple.
Guest:And it worked.
Guest:They didn't do anything to it.
Marc:How did you stop these assholes from doing that to you everywhere?
Guest:There was nothing I could do to stop them.
Guest:This guy was crazy, crazy.
Guest:I mean, crazy, crazy.
Guest:But you would never know it to talk to him.
Guest:He seems real smart.
Guest:He was a good pilot.
Guest:But he just went whacked on me.
Guest:And I couldn't stop it.
Guest:He was a crazy person that will continue to fuck with you as long as he possibly can.
Guest:The sheriff in Gwinnett County, where I live in Atlanta, his son was in jail, and that guy's jail, in the sheriff's jail.
Guest:And he opened up a website called rednecksheriff.com, or whatever it was, just to fuck with this guy.
Guest:And he flew for Reba McIntyre for a while, and when they fired him, he would send them...
Guest:you know boxes of shit and oh so he's fucking nuts yeah fucking nuts and you can't do a restraining order any of that kind of right no no no no no he's kind of quit yeah but before we need quit i would send him a text says oh you got motherfucker let's you know because i can't just let it go you know i can't just well why don't i just let it die down that's not one of your things no i like to kick it once before i walk away and
Guest:Make sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:See if it's still got any fight in him.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So you started in Texas.
Marc:You grew up in Texas.
Guest:Yeah, I was born in a little dirt town in northwest Texas called Fritch.
Marc:What's that near?
Marc:Anything?
Guest:No, it's north of Amarillo, about 60 miles up in the panhandle.
Marc:Why was your family up there?
Guest:My father worked for Phillips Petroleum, and Phillips, Texas is up there, which is where their original refinery was.
Marc:Was he working on a drilling rig or in the factory refinery?
Guest:Oh, no, no, in the refinery.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, they went there as ditch diggers.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Your folks did?
Guest:My dad did and his family.
Marc:Like the Dust Bowl business?
Guest:Pretty much, yeah.
Marc:Like digging ditches for what?
Guest:Yeah, oddly enough, my grandmother moved to the panhandle of Northwest Texas at the turn of the last century in a covered wagon, my grandmother.
Guest:Not my great-great-grandmother.
Guest:My grandmother was in a covered fucking wagon.
Marc:And that was the early 1900s.
Marc:Right, early 1900s.
Marc:Didn't need a covered wagon, but that was the situation.
Guest:That was the situation.
Marc:Do you know where they came from?
Guest:You know, our genealogy is not really well traced on either side of my family.
Guest:They're Cherokee Indian, but on my mother's side.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And she was from Welch, Oklahoma, but all really small-town folks.
Guest:dusty dusty counties in either way oh forsaken by god himself god took time out of his busy schedule to forsake this little town and he forsook the shit out of it too and then he smoted it he smoted it he smoted it and then he forsook it and then he sent in some locusts it was it's people and that's the place and that's where your great grammar said i'm leaving yeah right yeah about about 80 years later but fritch is uh is the same it's a shithole or no
Guest:Total shithole.
Guest:Dirt streets to this day.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, dirt streets.
Guest:Was there a town?
Guest:There was.
Guest:There was a town.
Guest:At one time, there was a little one street thing, 700 people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had a grocery store, which was a big Quonset hut called Pages Grocery Store.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my mother was the cashier.
Guest:My mother was smoking hot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so as a little kid, I would sit on the floor by the cash register, and my mother, who was probably 21 or 22, worked the cash register.
Guest:And I used to love the little pickled sausages, the hot pickled sausages when I was a little kid.
Guest:Yeah, in the can?
Guest:Well, in a jar.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:The ones in a jar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I always wanted that, but we didn't have any money.
Guest:And my mother, I would ask her if I could just go look at them.
Guest:And I would go over to the shelf and find them, and I'd just stand there and stare at them.
Guest:It was a low-end lifestyle.
Yeah.
Marc:Things were simple.
Guest:Yeah, things were simple back then.
Marc:700 people.
Marc:Ultimately, you spent your entire childhood there?
Guest:No.
Guest:What happened was they built a lake there.
Guest:It's called Lake Meredith, which dried up.
Marc:Was that the idea to get some business in, to get some boats?
Guest:So when they did, Piggly Wiggly, the grocery store chain, moved in there with their automatic doors and their fancy highfalutin stuff.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And it ran Page's Grocery Store out of business.
Guest:And then the lake dried up and Piggly Wiggly split and we had no food.
Guest:So I think it's time to move on here.
Guest:That's an indicator.
Guest:Yeah, I was the voice of reason at five.
Marc:Let's blow this dump.
Marc:Can't look at any more sausages.
Guest:Right, I'm getting bored here.
Marc:So how old are you when you left?
Guest:We moved to Deer Park, Texas when I was about six or seven, I guess.
Guest:And that's bigger?
Guest:Well, it's a suburb of Houston, so way bigger.
Marc:And your dad was still with Phillips?
Guest:Yeah, he transferred there, and then I went to work for him, too.
Guest:And then I quit when I was 21 or 22, and I just was pushing a button, and I didn't see it.
Guest:And my father told me, that's the stupidest thing you'll ever do.
Guest:And two years later, the plant blew to smithereens and killed 17 people on my shift.
Guest:What?
Guest:Yeah, leveled it.
Guest:Adams Terminal, Bud Adams.
Guest:That was where his money came from.
Guest:This was a refinery?
Guest:Right, refinery.
Marc:And it blew up?
Guest:Blew to smithereens.
Marc:On the same shift that you used to work?
Marc:The same shift.
Marc:Because of a button problem?
Guest:Because it was a disaster waiting to happen anyway.
Guest:I mean, you could walk through that thing and you'd smell gas fumes and all kinds of stuff.
Guest:They didn't give a fuck.
Guest:They really didn't care at all.
Guest:And so eventually the inevitable happened.
Guest:Your dad wasn't there.
Guest:It blew up.
Guest:My father was transferred to another refinery by then.
Marc:Oh, that was lucky.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:So you stayed in Texas through high school and then you just went to work?
Guest:Yeah, I joined.
Guest:Well, I got kicked out of high school.
Guest:For what?
Guest:More than anything else, an inability to pay attention for very long.
Guest:And then I had some little behavioral problems on top of that.
Marc:Like what?
Marc:Which ones?
Guest:Oh, you know, I was smoking pot at 12, which was pretty progressive back then.
Guest:Yeah, what year was that, man?
Guest:Well, I was born in 56, so 12.
Marc:Oh, so it was about the right time where everybody was like, what is this?
Guest:Well, I don't think so back then.
Guest:Not yet?
Guest:The way I got there was my sister was kind of a whore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that attracted an older group of guys.
Guest:So I had access to people, you know, three or four years older than me.
Marc:But reefer's not like that.
Marc:Reefer's been around forever with everybody.
Marc:I mean, you know, I guess the hippies sort of made it famous.
Marc:But, I mean, with musicians and, you know, beatniks and jazz people.
Guest:Right, it wasn't a new thing.
Guest:Weave was everywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In Deer Park, it was pretty big news.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That the kid was smoking reefer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they had Allen Landing in Houston, which was a big hippie scene.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We used to go down there as a family just to look at them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:With their flower power and their long hair.
Guest:They were starting to look at them.
Guest:Stripping on acid.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I remember seeing them for the first time.
Marc:All I thought was like, I want to be part of that.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:I think they're onto something.
Marc:Yeah, this seems like the future to me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, you're a little, you're like seven or eight years older than me.
Marc:Were you in the forces?
Guest:Oh, yeah, I joined the Navy right after that.
Marc:After you got kicked out of high school.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You go to the Navy.
Marc:Go to the Navy.
Marc:What year was that?
Marc:74 or 5, I guess.
Marc:So we were out of the game by then.
Marc:There was like a pause period in terms of wars, right?
Guest:It was tail end of the Vietnam War, so probably 74.
Guest:Our little boat was called the USS Conserver, which a few years ago they had to spend $100,000 to sink it.
Guest:And that's how useless this boat was.
Guest:It was commissioned in 36.
Marc:You got bad luck with equipment.
Guest:I know.
Marc:Refineries, boats.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:All of them.
Guest:Cell phones, all of them.
Marc:What was your job on the boat?
Guest:I was a quartermaster, and the Navy is a navigator.
Guest:So I tested real high.
Guest:I had really off-the-chart math skills.
Guest:And but outside of that, there was really no other shining light.
Guest:But if you test, you know, you take that test and then it shows you a big list of where your score is, what you can do.
Guest:And mine was fine.
Guest:So I got that.
Guest:I got a pretty good job.
Marc:Where'd you go on the boat?
Guest:I was stationed at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, and then we went on Westpac to the Philippines and all kinds of stops over there, Hong Kong and Korea.
Guest:It took us 31 days to get from Hawaii to Korea.
Guest:That's what a piece of shit this boat was.
Guest:31 days of slow fucking... Did you enjoy it at all, though?
Yeah.
Guest:you know what i didn't mind it uh but by then i was eating acid and on the boat on the boat really yeah and uh and just smoking this unbelievable weed not unbelievable today but back then those maui tops were really off the charts so were the other dudes with you you're just all hanging out on the boat tripping balls we're tripping balls smoking weed try and then eventually
Guest:We got into a little bit of heroin over in Hong Kong, and they did a random drug check on the ship, and I came up positive.
Guest:And back then, there just wasn't any other drug, but in Hong Kong, you could find heroin, and you could take like a tip of a match and split it eight ways.
Marc:Because it was so powerful?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How'd you do it?
Guest:just snorted it yeah and uh so uh anyway i came up positive for that so they flew me on a medevac flight uh in a in a big cargo plane with no windows to from iwakuni japan to uh to guam and then to the naval air station in san diego where they had the naval drug rehabilitation center
Guest:So they put you in rehab.
Guest:They put me in rehab where all the drugs were.
Guest:That's where the good drugs, where we found the really good drugs.
Guest:And so and that didn't work out very well.
Guest:So they gave me an honorable discharge with medical under medical conditions.
Guest:And and so with full benefits and really and kick me out after 18 months and three days of service.
Guest:And you have to do at least 18 months to to get.
Marc:So you got 18 months and three days and you get VA benefits now.
Guest:Well, I don't know what they are, but if I wanted them, yeah, I guess so.
Guest:I could go to a VA hospital or something like that.
Guest:My first house was bought on a VA loan.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:I mean, that's a good story because they didn't fucking- They didn't read the fine print.
Guest:But they didn't rail you either.
Guest:No, they didn't.
Guest:They really didn't.
Marc:And that's I guess that, you know, after Vietnam, the bar had been set fairly high for what a real fuck up was in the sense of drugs and whatever.
Marc:I mean, I can't even imagine what they dealt with during that war in terms of people coming back in terms of drugs, in terms of everything else.
Guest:Well, you know, a lot of those drug avenues were left open after the war.
Guest:There were people that still were running drugs out of South Vietnam.
Guest:Yeah, military operations.
Guest:I mean, they didn't have a genuine flag or anything, but it was the same guys that were there going, hey, well, why don't we just keep on doing this?
Marc:Oh, I see what you mean.
Marc:Once they got out of the forces, they were like, we opened these channels.
Marc:Why close down the shop?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Nobody said anything.
Marc:We can still get on a plane.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, that's unbelievable.
Marc:So then after that, you went to the refinery, and then what was the life plan, Ron?
Marc:What was the life plan early on?
Marc:Did you get married?
Guest:My overall plan was maybe something neat will happen.
Guest:That was my retirement plan.
Marc:I'll wait it out.
Guest:Yeah, see if something neat doesn't happen.
Guest:so you know and it you know turned out by chance that it did you know that uh that it did did it you know it ended up being a oh it's still going i'm still doing 125 cities a year so it's it's you know still working but you started in houston started in no i started in uh dallas or arlington texas what year was that at the funny 86 well what the hell were you doing previous to that just hanging around
Guest:Well, then I had a real drug problem in my late teens to early 20s.
Guest:I was probated to a drug abuse program.
Marc:What was that drug?
Guest:What was that drug?
Guest:That was a mixture of almost anything.
Guest:But I did go through a period of time where I really liked needles.
Guest:I was fucked up.
Guest:I mean, I was lost.
Guest:I didn't know which way to go.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:uh i was having a hard time finding my way through the landscape of life as most people do and the needles are not the they don't help they don't that's not a good journey right no no so i needed to quit and what were you banging uh speed um you know uh yeah yeah more speed than anything else and uh and i never uh started doing uh heroin again and
Guest:which I only did about three times ever in my whole life.
Marc:Well, you're lucky that that didn't take.
Guest:Right, yeah, real lucky.
Marc:Because that's a hard one to kick.
Marc:I mean, speed, you know, you're usually exhausted by the time you have to stop.
Guest:Yeah, and I never really had a budget for cocaine.
Guest:It was my lack of money that kept me alive because if I would have had unlimited cash then... Who the fuck knows?
Guest:Right, yeah, it would have been over.
Marc:So you're doing that shitty biker speed.
Guest:Yeah, well, yeah, for the most part.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was some pharmaceutical stuff, but I just can't remember the Placidil.
Guest:No, the Placidil was a barbiturate.
Marc:Painkiller.
Marc:Yeah, barbiturate Placidils.
Guest:I used to call the dents in my car Placidents.
Marc:So you fucking, you were a warrior.
Guest:Yeah, you know, I had a, you know, I was taking a run at it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Taking a run at it.
Guest:So I was in that program for like three years.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that was a state program kind of deal?
Guest:It was called the Palmer Drug Abuse Program.
Guest:It was independent.
Guest:Kind of a 12-step deal, but like one different step.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That they were taking credit for the whole thing.
Marc:They took one step out?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's an 11-step program, yeah.
Guest:so uh no they added one was that your folks doing i mean did they you know were they no no it was the courts doing the court made me go to it too many placidants uh yeah too many placidants and uh so i got out of that and uh you know i went back to smoking pot but never went back to anything else and drinking and uh uh which i've kept up a thorough uh yeah yeah yeah yeah you're still hard at work at that right somebody i did an interview this morning somebody said well there's a big rumor that you quit drinking i said well
Guest:Go on YouTube, and you can see footage of me fully dressed in a suit with a cigar and scotch diving into a mermaid tank.
Guest:So you're not real sober when you start diving into the mermaid tank.
Guest:You got some bad information there.
Guest:Right, you got some bad information.
Guest:Well, do you ever think about stopping?
Guest:You know, I did for about six months a few years ago.
Guest:I was going through the divorce, and right before I got into that divorce.
Marc:That's the second divorce.
Guest:i was uh second or third there was that there was that tall chick i can never remember her name and jennifer or betty do you have kids something i do i have a 23 year old son named marshall who's even married two or three times and you got one kid that i mean i've been married three times but another relationship that was pretty long that i never uh married so now i'm married to uh alex ramundo's uh do you know alex uh i think i met him yeah probably he's been around here for a while and
Guest:It's his sister.
Guest:He and I started stand-up together.
Guest:His sister's just a beast of a singer, as good as it gets.
Marc:And you think you got this one right now?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It seemed like it until earlier today.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:she walked out of the door crying and slammed the door so i'm like oh this isn't going great is it it's a day-to-day thing no i love her to death and i really believe in her and uh she i've just never met a more uh talented human being and that's beautiful she buses around here uh doing uh voice work but her band is stellar and uh she's got a set of pipes that uh i we spent our holidays with uh brian johnson
Guest:From ACDC?
Guest:From ACDC.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We got to be friends with him and his wife, Brenda.
Guest:Where were you?
Guest:In Fort Lauderdale, where they live.
Marc:Brian Johnson lives in Fort Lauderdale?
Marc:Huh.
Guest:No, no, he doesn't.
Guest:He lives in Sarasota.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Sarasota.
Guest:And I watched her make him cry.
Guest:uh brian johnson big old tear running out of his life from her singing just singing a jazz standard in his living room oh that's beautiful so that must be a hell of a living room acdc money's got to be pretty large it's got it yeah you know it's a nice spread they've got over there uh it's got just this killer bar that uh that's a pub you know just a big english pub in the house and
Guest:above it in stained glass windows above the door it says for those about to rock i'm like i love this place man i love acdc yeah me too and i like and i i don't think i could even i don't know that because of his hat that i could identify that man i think i've only seen the lower part of his face yeah he's uh he's not a very big guy none of them are is he british uh yeah yeah he's australian yeah i think so so were they all hanging around were you hanging around with angus and
Guest:No, they really, you know, they really don't like each other very much.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:It's like that?
Guest:But Brian is a great guy.
Guest:And, you know, I can't understand much of what he says.
Guest:He's like, run me, my fuck, my cunt, my... But we're...
Guest:We were having dinner with him in this restaurant, and there were like eight of us at our table, and we were loud and drunk.
Guest:And there were two other tables in there, more tables than that, but they take care of Brian.
Guest:They love him in that town.
Guest:Everywhere he goes, people just go crazy about it.
Guest:Fucking royalty, man.
Guest:Right, he is.
Guest:And so we're over there.
Guest:We're being loud.
Guest:there was a couple over there and this guy who pretty big guy comes over to us and he goes very very huffy with his chef puffed out he goes i'm on uh i've taken my girlfriend out for her birthday and i would appreciate it if you'd quit using the f word and brian goes what if i quit using the f word how would i tell you to fuck off
Guest:How did that play?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Well, the guy got a little loud, and then they threw him out for questioning our language.
Guest:Yeah, don't fuck with Brian.
Guest:Yeah, don't fuck with Brian, whatever you do.
Marc:So when he started in Dallas, who were the guys?
Marc:I mean, so you got cleaned up and you bounced around.
Marc:What was the incentive to do stand-up?
Marc:I mean, where'd that come from?
Guest:You know, they built a comedy club between where I lived and where I worked, selling windows and doors.
Guest:And the guy that I worked with at the time, Sam Bartholomew, he went to the first open mic night and he came down to the office the next day and he goes, hey, you're funnier than these guys.
Guest:You should go do this.
Guest:And so...
Guest:Here we are, 27 years later.
Marc:So who did you start out with in Dallas?
Guest:Oh, Ed Yeager was there.
Guest:I mean, I don't know anybody that was still around.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Ed is a big TV writer out here, so he would be the most successful.
Guest:Gene McGuire.
Guest:I don't know if you know any of these guys.
Guest:Most of them really were only...
Marc:maybe only one or two guys that ever even did it professionally and it was a bunch of guitar acts and back then there's a lot of guitar acts around well in dallas there was now they wouldn't tolerate it in houston uh-huh uh that's because there was a that was a higher bar for way higher bar that is they established that early on at the uh what was the the workshop right workshop right and so you're in dallas how far that's like three and a half hours from houston
Guest:Something like that, yeah, I think so.
Marc:So now, and this was the 80s, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:86.
Marc:86.
Marc:So things were happening in Houston, right?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Hicks and Kennison and Shock and Greenlee and... Pineapple.
Guest:Jimmy Pineapple.
Guest:Jimmy Pineapple.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Kennison was around.
Marc:So when you're in Dallas, did you feel like something was going on up there?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I knew really early on that that I was going to be that I was very comfortable there, you know, on stage doing stand up.
Guest:And and I had done other stage related things before, because when I actually went to work for the drug abuse program and so I became their primary public speaker.
Guest:And so I would go around every day to high schools full of kids and tell my life story of addiction addiction.
Guest:And it got funnier and funnier and funnier.
Guest:And I was so comfortable doing it.
Guest:Were you killing with the high school kids?
Guest:I was.
Guest:I could make them think.
Guest:I could make them laugh.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:So when I started doing stand-up years later, when I was 29, I wasn't near as afraid of it probably as a lot of guys were.
Guest:And I got to where I could kill.
Guest:I only had four minutes, but the four minutes, I figured out how to make it go.
Marc:Was it one story?
Guest:I think it was four stories in the four minutes.
Marc:Because you were always long form, right?
Marc:You weren't doing jokes.
Guest:Oh, no, no.
Guest:It's always been hard for me to take off and land quickly.
Guest:I've always prepared to do and still do.
Guest:I'm always a little out of my element whenever I pop into a comedy club to do a 10-minute set because I'm just so used to getting into it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:There's no way to establish yourself.
Marc:And, you know, it takes it's going to take about five.
Marc:Even if I imagine even though you are this huge act now, I mean, for you to to get started, it's about eight minutes, right?
Guest:Yeah, I just wind in it pretty slowly.
Guest:And so but more than anything else, it's just, you know, I'm just used to.
Guest:Just big venues and with, you know, with just full of my fans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that that'll let me get away with.
Guest:I mean, you still got to bring it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But but, you know, they're there to laugh at me.
Guest:They paid to do it.
Guest:So, you know, they're they're usually pretty soft.
Guest:so when you did uh houston i did i mean when you would go up there to work at that did you work at the workshop and at the uh i know i went there and did sets and then i ended up working at the uh the last stop i never worked at the other one i went in there and did a set one time really early on and and uh they just stared at me really and uh yeah well why it was mostly the other comics
Marc:Well, what did they think you were doing wrong?
Guest:They just thought I was a hack, which I was.
Guest:I mean, just kind of a new guy, just trying to figure it out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So they gave you the stink eye?
Marc:They gave me the big thing.
Guest:The back wall?
Guest:And they gave it to everybody, too.
Marc:Who was in that group?
Marc:Was it Riley and Tracy?
Guest:Yeah, all those guys.
Guest:Jimmy Pineapple used to drive all the way across the city to ignore me.
Guest:So he'd go to a club I was working in to sit at the bar and not pay attention to me.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Isn't that weird, man?
Guest:Yeah, it is weird.
Guest:But, you know, Pineapple's always been crazy.
Guest:But they're all crazy.
Marc:You're crazy.
Marc:Yeah, the ones that are still around.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But when I saw pictures of you at the last stop, it was long hair.
Marc:You had a mustache.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I've had more looks than Madonna.
Marc:But you leveled off.
Marc:I mean, this has been it for a while.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Well, you know, I was always a rock guy.
Guest:And they were always trying to kind of push me into a country thing because of the way I talk.
Guest:But, you know, I came up.
Marc:Who was trying to push you?
Guest:Well, it just seemed like that the crowds were more responsive if I put it on a little bit.
Guest:And so you have all kinds of temptations, you know, when you start doing stand-up to find an easier way to do it.
Guest:My manager there, a guy named J.P.
Guest:Williams, who's as big a prick as has ever lived.
Guest:He's Foxworthy's manager, Larry the Cable Guy's manager.
Guest:He was, and Bill's, and mine.
Guest:But he prefers a lapdog type of client.
Guest:He doesn't like anybody that tells them what they think.
Guest:So we got in a big fight.
Guest:But he was trying to get me to be more like Bill and Jeff and Dan.
Guest:You've got to be corporate clean.
Guest:And I'm like, I don't think I do.
Guest:I think the only thing that matters is that I'm true to my nature.
Guest:Because that's what they make a connection with, when I'm myself.
Guest:And there's plenty of people out there that smoke and drink and like to go listen to live music and all the shit I like.
Guest:So I'm going to be myself and see who dances.
Marc:So that was a discussion you had when you started in with those guys.
Guest:With him, that was the direction he wanted me to go.
Marc:So before that, though, were you friends with Bill, with Hicks?
Guest:No, I knew him, but I was just a goo-goo-eyed fan.
Marc:But he was a kid, right, when you met him?
Guest:Well, no, he was maybe twenty seven or eight.
Guest:I met him.
Guest:I mean, his legend had been along around comedy more than longer than that, for sure.
Guest:But by the time I met him, you know, I probably didn't know him for six years before he died.
Guest:And so I would just come out to every time he'd do a set.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:and uh like all the other comics yeah and sit back there in wonderment yeah i'm i suck i just i'm the worst what am i doing right yeah he must have been something to see then i can't i i would have liked to have seen him in texas really because that was really uh i mean that's where it all sort of uh started for him right and he and he that's probably you know where he had the biggest following uh-huh uh but he used to do really really well at the last stop in austin
Guest:yeah i've worked that room i've worked the front room and the back room depending on the size of the crowd right i i tell you what i could i always worked there and i always did well there but i couldn't draw 40 people i mean it just i and and now they can put a just a little thing on the uh on their website saying there's going to be a special guest and if they know i'm in town because i won't let them use my name if i still got tickets to sell over here yeah i'm really just trying to work out some new stuff yeah
Guest:And so they, you know, then they get 150 people and we couldn't beg 150 people to come see me at one time.
Marc:And that's a good feeling, isn't it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's great.
Guest:And then I get to, you know, I'm working, I'm doing the shooting of the salute to the troops for, which is something I do on the 18th on the 18th, February 19th.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's going to be live on CMT.
Marc:It's not going to be live, so thank God.
Guest:I did something live for them this year, and it was nerve-wracking and unnecessary.
Marc:Why?
Marc:What happened?
Guest:Oh, it was just a stupid award show that they asked me to do.
Guest:You hosted it?
Guest:I hosted it, and they wanted to do it live for some reason.
Guest:And the day before, the monitor went out five times.
Guest:And I'm like, well, if this happens tomorrow, I'm fucked because I'm not off book with any of this shit except the monologue.
Marc:You mean the prompter?
Guest:The prompter, right.
Guest:Just wouldn't go completely out.
Guest:And so that just made me tense and feel anxiety and stuff.
Marc:Did you drink more?
Guest:You know, well, I drank.
Guest:I don't know if I drank more, but I drank.
Guest:And...
Guest:they you know i i'm really i don't hate country music yeah but i but i really just don't listen to much of it right oh so the new stuff forever yeah the note the new stuff at all yeah and uh but not because i mean basically it's rock and roll i mean screaming guitars on every song it's all changed into pop music right yeah into popular music exactly right so
Guest:So when they ask me questions, they really think that I have this deep knowledge of country music when I do have a deep knowledge of rock and roll, but not country.
Guest:And they ask me, what country tunes are you playing these days?
Guest:And I'm like, well, the Allman Brothers, is that it?
Guest:Is that a country band at all?
Guest:Or what is that?
Marc:Well, that's the weird thing, man, because I grew up in New Mexico.
Marc:And, you know, there's this assumption that there.
Marc:And it's interesting to me that when you had the first conversations with your manager about about, you know, country fans is that most of the great southern rock and a lot of great American rock music comes all out from there, comes out of the south and out of Texas and everywhere else.
Marc:But there is this weird separation that there is a type of consumer, a type of fan that, you know, country music fans have gotten this weird kind of redneck-y reputation.
Marc:But most of them are rock guys at heart.
Guest:Oh, what, the bands themselves?
Guest:Of course they are.
Marc:And even the fans, though.
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:There's nobody.
Marc:I can't imagine there are people that only listen to fucking country music.
Marc:Is that true?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, definitely.
Marc:There are those.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Tons of them.
Guest:It's the biggest.
Guest:They sell more country albums than they do rap albums.
Guest:That's the biggest demographic of music, the money they make.
Marc:And those people, you're telling me they didn't listen to Bob Seger.
Marc:They didn't listen to, you know, I don't know why I picked Bob Seger because he's a big crossover.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:They must have.
Guest:you know i well i guarantee the bass player paid played for him you know that because all those guys are session guys that came from from rock right couldn't make a living doing rock so they moved to nashville they changed country to rock right so that's right they made a transformation the place they fit yeah get a job and uh isn't that something man and and just mega talented guys i mean i know a lot of them i have a lot of respect from them we're
Guest:good friends with the guys from rascal flats just because we end up at the same place a lot and they're great guys yeah and uber talented uh that uh they're you know gary lavox or whatever his name is is just one of the best singers where do you live alive uh montecito oh you live in town i thought you had a place in atlanta or something i do oh you do you like georgia
Guest:I like it.
Guest:Yeah, I like Georgia fine.
Guest:It's pretty.
Guest:It's proximity to the eastern seaboard is good.
Marc:So it's just practicality while you're there?
Guest:Yeah, because you just can't.
Guest:It's hard to hit all those cities from over here.
Guest:You've got an extra day of travel going and coming if you come out of L.A.
Marc:right so now okay so you did stand up for how long before because you know i did one of my first middle weeks for foxworthy before long before uh the the red net thing right he was just a guy telling stories i remember he closed with some bit about you know someone i don't know if it was dad if it was his dad or him he was you know all fucked up on a boat that was on a trailer right i don't i don't know how far back those that goes long way
Guest:Right.
Guest:A long way back.
Marc:But he's always a sweet guy, and he's become something very different, but he was just a comic.
Marc:The redneck thing had not taken hold.
Marc:How long were you doing straight-up storytelling stand-up before these guys approached you, and how did that happen?
Guest:Well, I met Jeff the first day I did stand-up.
Guest:Jeff was the headliner in the Arlington Funny Bone that week, and he was at the Fort Worth Funny Bone in 86.
Marc:Yeah, so I met him in like 89 or 90, and he was the headliner.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, he was the headliner that week, but you couldn't fly home.
Guest:You had to do both those clubs.
Guest:They weren't going to fly you back home, and you weren't going to fly yourself back home, so he just came out to open mic.
Guest:and i went up there and did my four minutes and uh and he came up to me afterwards and goes hey man you're really funny but you need to put the punch line at the end of the joke and i was like wow how do you do that and uh so this is how generous the guy it takes a brand new comedian yeah i don't have much of this in me yeah uh and and restructures instead of you say this part here and this part here then the funny parts last and then you can stare at them and uh they'll laugh and
Guest:And he was right.
Guest:He was totally right.
Guest:I mean, it's just a way to structure a joke.
Guest:It's kind of hard to know.
Guest:Remember now how to do it wrong.
Marc:What were you doing?
Marc:Burying the lead?
Guest:Yeah, I just whatever I would say that was funny.
Guest:I still had more information to give you.
Guest:So I'd step on the laugh.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:He just showed me how not to do that.
Marc:So he changed your way of thinking.
Guest:Yeah, as far as joke structure goes.
Marc:But your bits are, like, usually, you know, I mean, I imagine you see them as jokes, but I mean, there's several tags, you know, in the course of a story.
Guest:Yeah, they're, you know, really they are jokes.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And that's just the only way I know how to do it, is in story form.
Guest:I just can't write another way.
Guest:And that's where most of my stuff comes from, because I just don't have the...
Guest:attention span to sit down and really try to write you got to talk through uh yeah i got to talk through it i work i don't even have a notebook never have so i just work it wanders into my head and the funny stuff and and then i keep doing it and uh and that's one of the reasons i do a
Guest:an ass load of shows because it's hard to do this part-time and stay sharp at it you know it's hard for me i gotta keep all that information floating at the top right oh yeah because the longer i go but the deeper it sinks right or you lose hours i mean you know you see if you because i do it the same way i'm just a conversationalist so then you know if you're not having the conversation you don't know what the fuck you're talking about
Guest:Exactly right, right.
Marc:So, okay, so you meet Foxworthy in 86.
Marc:So how does that relationship, I mean, you still had a build, so how did you evolve into this blue-collar comedy thing?
Guest:Well, you know, my big early break was I got to open a show for Sam at the Dallas County Convention Theater.
Guest:For Kenison.
Guest:For Kenison, which was a make-up date that he had missed.
Marc:What year was that?
Guest:I'd say, yeah, I'd say 89, uh, maybe.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I knew him just before that.
Marc:You know, I was at the comedy stores at doorman 87.
Marc:So he, by 89, he was way gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, but he was, uh, I get there and it's me and, uh, uh, he, and he's not there.
Guest:So his brother's there, Bill, but he's not.
Guest:And, uh, and so there's 2000 people out there, just all rabid Kenison fans and, uh,
Guest:And so we're just sitting back there, and Bill goes, hey, listen, sometimes Sam's opening act is a bit of a sacrificial lamb.
Guest:So if they start screaming just because they want to see Sam.
Guest:But I went out there and had the best set of my whole life.
Guest:They loved me.
Guest:That was great.
Marc:What do you think it was?
Marc:I mean, what did you do?
Marc:I mean, that's a hell of a warning.
Marc:I mean, was there any sense that they were against you when you walked out?
Guest:There was a sense that Bill didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.
Guest:Or maybe they weren't really into LeBove at the time, but I've always thought was funny.
Guest:He's great.
Marc:He went out there and he... No, he didn't.
Guest:He was in rehab or some rehab or something or his wife was, but he couldn't make it.
Guest:So they called me literally the day I did it.
Guest:And you were in Texas.
Guest:So yeah, I didn't have time to fret it.
Guest:I just went down there and did it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:and then i got it up there were some people there that don't comedy clubs and they offered me uh basically a job working 50 years weeks a year on the road as a middle act really uh which clubs were that funny bone and uh punchline no kidding yeah so that was it so you were like uh on the road yeah at a job yeah easy to book and uh making 500 bucks and yeah yeah but you got you paid your dues you got the time in
Guest:Right, so I took off down the road in a little Nissan pickup truck, and like everybody else, I'd drive 800 miles to make no money, almost, and was pumped about it.
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:Absolutely pumped.
Marc:But you weren't carrying any, were you married at the time?
Guest:I was.
Guest:Oh, so that strained it.
Guest:Yeah, right, so I'm tagging around some regret, which gets heavier and heavier.
Yeah.
Guest:So, inevitably, she's the one that didn't want to be married to somebody who was always going to be on the road.
Guest:Tricky business.
Marc:Is that the mother of your kid?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:And she was just at my show in Charlotte.
Guest:I mean, she's been a great mother to my child, and I just really do love her.
Marc:Oh, you guys are okay?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We're totally solid.
Guest:Totally solid.
Marc:That's fucking good.
Guest:I even like her husband, who I'm the luckiest man in the world to get this guy for a stepfather for my son.
Guest:Good guy.
Guest:Because he's a solid motherfucker.
Guest:That must be...
Guest:Kind of the different end of the spectrum than me, which is fine.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And my son went on the road with me from the time I had joint custody, so he's three years old.
Guest:Me and him are in a van driving down the road doing gigs.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And I don't even know what to do with a three-year-old.
Guest:What did you do with him?
Guest:I was waiting for him to get old enough to eat McDonald's so I could get some trans fats down in my layer.
Guest:Taste this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We'd sleep in the van.
Guest:It's weird because I get a lot of comments that I shouldn't talk about the success part of it.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:To act like you didn't make money doing it.
Guest:Almost to talk about somebody else's life.
Guest:Some lady attacked me after a show in Dallas last year.
Guest:She told me she was a social worker and she didn't appreciate all the
Guest:all the bragging i did about all this stuff and i'm like hey it's not my fault i didn't buy one ticket i didn't buy one album and uh and and i used to do it for almost nothing and and nobody seemed to care about that what do you mean what is she talking about you when you talk about the way you raised your kid or taking on
Guest:no no no if i mentioned the plane or and i used to i'd have a plane that you guys bought me because i would tell a story about it right it's still part of my life so i still have to you know there's nothing else to write about but your life that's it and uh so whatever that is you gotta that's where you're at so but you got flack for that even foxworthy say you gotta stay keep common well that was you know he certainly never gave me any flack about it but he said didn't never ever mention the money you know so
Marc:Isn't that interesting?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I thought kind of people like a small town boy makes good stories.
Guest:It goes either way.
Guest:It goes either way, right.
Marc:You know, I think that's interesting because ultimately what I learned recently is whatever they're coming at you with, they're projecting it onto you.
Marc:Like, you know, you're still an entertainer and you're talking about your life, but if you're going to represent the thing that they don't have and they're going to say, fuck that guy, you know, then that's the way they're going to be.
Marc:Exactly right.
Marc:I thought you were going to say the social worker got on you for driving your three-year-old around in a van.
Guest:No, she had no problem with that.
Marc:And the kid turned out all right.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He's a great kid just out of college.
Guest:Got a degree in recording arts, which is almost useless.
Guest:And I mean, it's just the recording arts jobs, recording arts and the engineer jobs, they don't exist anymore because anybody with a...
Marc:garage band yeah right but it must feel great to you know to to come from like that to you know having this this custody situation where you got to go do a shit gig in middle and bring a three-year-old with you and find a waitress to watch him while you're on stage i imagine or whatever right and then uh and then to be able to send the kid to school and to be supportive and let him do what the hell he wants to do and and i and to hear you say that you know the stepfather was a good guy i mean that's an important thing right
Guest:Oh, that's everything.
Marc:I mean, you don't know what the hell is going to happen with that.
Marc:You've got no control over that woman anymore.
Guest:Absolutely none.
Guest:Absolutely none.
Guest:And it worked out.
Guest:Yeah, it worked out great.
Guest:And he's a great kid.
Guest:He works for me now.
Guest:He works for me.
Guest:I got a VIP experience where people can come back and take pictures and ask questions and sing songs or whatever.
Marc:So when did you start touring with the blue collar thing?
Marc:Because this is what is interesting to me, because in my mind, you know, your comedy is not doesn't need to be pigeonholed.
Marc:You know, you're a guy that does funny shit.
Marc:You tell funny stories.
Marc:You got some darkness in you that all the good stuff is there for great comic.
Marc:uh which you are but i think that some people of my generation or some people of my ilk you know will sort of set the blue collar thing in a different place like they'll assume it's not for them but even the young guys that are in that world are great comics i just don't think that there's a enough crossover if ron i'm trying to trying to bring your gonna get the alt kids on the ron white bus right um
Guest:you know that uh the i was kind of a counterbalance i think to dan and uh dan whitney larry the cable guy and uh so i think it worked and we all were friends how'd they pull you in though what was the what was the plan i was already opening for jeff okay i i remained jeff friends with jeff that entire time and when he basically when he got big enough to take somebody with him he took me with him right
Guest:So he kind of pulled me out of the clubs.
Guest:And you were strong, too, man.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:He wasn't... Wasn't afraid.
Guest:He wasn't afraid.
Guest:But also, I played by his rules, because he's always been a clean comic, so I would never do... You know, I would never say fuck.
Guest:I would try to do... Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and not that he ever said anything about it.
Guest:But you knew.
Guest:Yeah, I knew.
Guest:I knew that there's no sense in him doing a show, because he likes to sell tickets to... He's from the Leno school.
Guest:If you do a clean show and sell tickets to the grandparents, the parents, the kids, and...
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I'm more of a don't bring your fucking kids to my show.
Marc:Yeah, I don't want to be responsible for what goes in his head.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do that at your own risk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, so I just, you know, saw it was a good job to have.
Guest:He paid me really well.
Guest:And so I thought, well, I can just do it.
Guest:You know, if my stuff's not...
Guest:Blue for the sake of being blue.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's just who I am.
Guest:So I write stuff that's perfectly clean, too.
Guest:And so I just picked those jokes and, you know, did a show in front of them.
Guest:And then the Kings of Comedy got real huge.
Guest:And Bill was traveling with...
Guest:Bill Ingvall?
Guest:Yeah, Bill Ingvall was traveling with Craig Hawksley out of St.
Guest:Louis.
Guest:And so they just put those two tours together.
Guest:And it worked like a charm.
Marc:The blue collar tour.
Guest:And that guy did 20 dates with us, and then they fired him and brought on Dan, the Laird the Cable guy.
Marc:Why'd they fire that guy?
Guest:You know, he was on some kind of medication that made him just get all up in Jeff's face and just jabber nonstop.
Guest:And Jeff just didn't like it.
Guest:I'm trying to pee, dude.
Guest:What are we going to do next?
Guest:We should be making more money.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So anyway.
Marc:So they brought Dan.
Marc:So you were in the beginning.
Guest:Yeah, I was the original three or the original four.
Marc:And Larry or Dan Whitney came in later.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And then that became huge.
Guest:Huge.
Guest:It couldn't have been, you know, I don't know.
Guest:And I know Dan has got, Larry's got some flack from other comedians.
Guest:About what?
Guest:Well, because he made an ass load of money.
Guest:Because if he wouldn't have been successful, nobody would have cared what he was doing.
Marc:I kind of remember him when he was just Dan Whitney, kind of, like at the comedy store in the late 80s.
Marc:And he just had that kind of long, permy hair, and he was just a comic.
Marc:And he was a nice guy.
Marc:But he got some flack for it.
Marc:I don't know if it was hack flack or that they didn't like the character.
Marc:I mean, I never felt it, really.
Guest:uh you know he's got he's got pretty good jokes and you know he didn't the whole thing works i i never had that but i i guess there was some backlash for some reason yeah but you know overall you know he's a he's a great pace rhythm and timing comedian yeah i mean i couldn't figure out a way to make all that stuff work so he you know he sells it he mugs it and and uh
Guest:uh but hicks did the same thing hicks did pratfalls mug you know sure no we all use the tools right yeah yeah he did have some moves yeah yeah some movements right a cadence yeah right so uh you know so i i you know i admire what uh what uh dan does and and uh is it exactly my cup of tea no but i'm not either right so
Guest:You're not exactly your cup of tea?
Guest:Not exactly.
Guest:No, I'm not.
Guest:Who is your cup of tea?
Guest:You know, the funniest thing I've ever seen is a play called The Doyle and Debbie Show, which is a three-person play out of Nashville.
Guest:Uh, basically it's a two person play.
Guest:There is a third, but very small role.
Guest:And, uh, and, uh, my wife rats with John Oates.
Guest:And, uh, so we were there visiting John.
Guest:They were writing together.
Guest:They live in Nashville.
Guest:John Oates Hall and Oates.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And, uh, so he was just asking this.
Guest:He goes, I don't know what you guys do at night, but if you want, if you like shows, we can go see this, uh, this, this play.
Guest:We're like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I laughed so hard.
Guest:I didn't think I could laugh that hard again.
Guest:I really didn't.
Guest:Because we're all so cynical.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:And this guy, the guy, it's a guy and a girl, and the guy wrote it all, and he just caught me from an angle I didn't see coming at all and just beat me to death.
Guest:I mean, I thought I was going to fall out of my chair.
Guest:I was laughing so hard.
Guest:Feels good, right?
Guest:Oh, it felt amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It really did.
Guest:And now I've seen it...
Guest:Two other times, and then my wife and I got married, and we opened the ceremony with an hour and 40-minute play.
Guest:We brought the Doyle and Debbie show into the wedding in front of 350 people.
Guest:Because I always want people to see it, but you have to go to Nashville to see it, so nobody ever does.
Guest:And I thought, well, fuck it.
Guest:You're going to bring it to the wedding.
Guest:We're bringing it to the wedding.
Guest:It was quite a production.
Guest:And our friends from here were going,
Guest:What the fuck is this?
Guest:It just makes no sense at all.
Guest:But it's really insider.
Guest:And you think it's going to be a parody thing.
Guest:And they're both such good singers that, you know, I was okay with that.
Guest:I'm like, all right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's not.
Guest:It's a dark, twisted tale.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just brilliantly put together.
Guest:And I don't know what he'll ever do with it.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:I was trying to get him to go to – because he plays Zaney's on Tuesday night.
Guest:That's where that play is.
Guest:It used to be a place called The Station Inn, which was a 100-year-old bar downtown.
Guest:But he should be in Vegas with it, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you ever drop into Zaney's?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I did a set where we did Salute to the Troops.
Guest:We went in there and ran it.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's a good club, man.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, it is.
Guest:I've been playing it for years.
Guest:I used to play it two or three times a year.
Marc:You played all those clubs.
Guest:Oh, every one of them, man, forever.
Guest:For 16 years, 17 years of straight up, you know.
Marc:Was it mostly the Southern Circuit, or you did all of it, right?
Marc:I mean, because I...
Guest:Well, wherever the reach of the Funny Bone chain was.
Marc:Well, that goes all the way up to Ohio, too, right?
Guest:Yeah, Pittsburgh.
Guest:But I never did Yoder gigs, which I think are one-nighters up there.
Guest:I never did any of those.
Guest:And then the Punchline at one time had six clubs, and so I worked those twice a year.
Guest:And then Funny Bone had 21 clubs.
Marc:So you were set.
Guest:Yeah, until they figured out that I had nowhere else to work and they cut my money by a third and took away my airfare, which is when I quit comedy and moved to Mexico.
Guest:You said fuck them.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:Eat a steaming bowl of fuckers.
Marc:And you'd been at it how long by that point?
Guest:Oh, I don't know about 15 or 16 years.
Marc:And that was, so that was when the boom crashed.
Marc:They said, these guys will do it for anything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And you said, fuck you.
Marc:And you moved to Mexico, moved to Mexico.
Guest:And I still work.
Guest:I still open for, for Jeff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:so i would uh how the hell do you move to mexico just move down there man that's it you don't need papers or nothing right now you need a vest but right uh but you know you you can live uh you can live there if you want to and uh and your big idea was what pottery it was me making a fortune at the border but what happened was it turns out my product was uh heavy and fragile
Guest:which is a horrible combination when you got to put it on a truck yeah so uh you bought a you bought a factory from somebody or you know i it wasn't even what it was was it was really a big huge art studio where i would
Guest:uh my girlfriend at the time would teach we basically we did this stuff right here uh and two yeah two two existing pieces of pottery so we didn't make the pottery oh so you got we just did this application type of thing oh you got terracotta pots right and then you put shit on right glute shit on it but it was beautiful i mean it uh and now whose idea was that ron was that her idea
Guest:No, it wasn't.
Guest:She would make this stuff.
Guest:It takes forever to make.
Guest:And then she would go to an art show, and she'd sell it in three hours.
Guest:But then it would take her six months to make another pile of it to go sell.
Guest:So I just thought, well, why didn't somebody go to Mexico?
Guest:A room full of people had to do this.
Guest:And, you know, it was a...
Guest:i won't trade the experience for anything you know and and i still love mexico and my wife is mexican and uh and uh and i think that's you know and you know and laurie my ex-wife and margo marshall's mother was uh i'm like he's five and i'm like we're going to mexico yeah and you're gonna need to just put him on a plane i'll be at the other end and
Guest:He's like, what?
Marc:Kid had a hell of experience growing up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Traveling in.
Guest:But, you know.
Marc:Did you make some money doing it?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, no, no.
Marc:How long were you there for?
Guest:I was there for three years, I guess.
Guest:And when I left...
Guest:The girl went crazy.
Marc:Who, the artist?
Guest:Well, she was crazy.
Guest:She didn't go crazy.
Guest:She was already crazy.
Guest:I just had these blinders on because she was so hot that I just didn't want to see it.
Marc:I know that one.
Marc:I mean, I don't know that girl, but I know that story.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:It's a common story.
Marc:It sure is a common story.
Guest:So she went off the rails or what?
Guest:She went off the rails on a crazy train.
Guest:And so I was trying to get her...
Guest:parents to come get her because i mean because now i feel stuck right i got a girl in a foreign country and she's what kind of crazy crazy uh get trash drunk on red wine and cry okay that kind yeah right really charming stuff but locked into that locked there's no other frequency no no not at that point
Guest:So I remember when I went into Mexico, I went in there with a big custom van that I was touring in.
Guest:And then I had the biggest truck that Ryder rents and the biggest trailer that Ryder rents behind the truck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I left three years later and the exact same equipment just pointed the different direction going, well, that didn't work out worth a shit.
Guest:But they do fine with it.
Guest:I mean, it still operates today.
Guest:They just sell it there.
Marc:Did you sell the business?
Guest:No, I just gave it to them.
Guest:It was a bunch of tools and a bunch of inventory.
Guest:So I'm like, if you guys want to stay here and keep making this stuff, then go ahead and do it.
Guest:And they do it?
Guest:Yeah, they still do it.
Guest:Do you hear from them?
Guest:uh yeah not in a while but uh but i had some dialogue with irma muñoz was the lady that ran it for me and uh she was the salt of the earth and uh you know not good salt like a like a dirty margarita salt yeah yeah but salt yeah so she was uh she's great and you know all the ladies that lived in this little colonia you know who came down there and what part of mexico reynosa across from mccallan is that a beach
Guest:No.
Marc:It's just Mexico.
Guest:No, it's just a dusty little old dried up Mexican town.
Marc:There's an interesting relationship between Texas and Mexico.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:I lost my virginity in Mexico at a whorehouse in Tijuana when I was 18.
Marc:At 18?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you waited a while.
Guest:I'd been telling people I was getting it for a long time, but I really wasn't.
Guest:Let's walk through that.
Marc:So you just go over the border, and you say, where do I get laid?
Guest:Pretty good story.
Guest:I went over there.
Guest:I was like, this is it.
Guest:I got $141, which is my weekly or biweekly paycheck.
Marc:From the refinery?
Guest:No, from the Navy.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And I'm going to A school.
Guest:and uh so i go over there and i'm like i'm i'm doing it i'm gonna do it so we get i get this cab and i go hey you know i want to find a woman i'm gonna and he goes you know you want a good woman ugly woman i'm like no a good really good and so it'll take a little while so we drive and drive and drive all over this i mean forever what the hell is going on here
Guest:so eventually we pull up to this little uh building with a square in the middle of it rooms on the side yeah i was in this room sitting on a mattress that was sitting on the floor and there was a little bucket of water in a corner and uh and uh and a kind of cute girl came in and she was talking to me and then this ugly girl came in whose teeth were had no general direction or color it was just a snaggle and uh and they started having an argument and i was like
Guest:really intimidated was 18 years old i was like i hope the pretty girl wins but she didn't win the other girl did and uh or woman and you didn't have the wherewithal to stay no no no no no but i would now i sure wouldn't have not not you you there you go
Guest:so anyway it uh it was really uh i i walked out of there pretty you know just horrible i felt horrible about myself this you know it was uh i just lost it to a ugly girl that i just paid i think ten dollars or twenty dollars so that was a real good one you really did that drive was worth it i guess absolutely so we so we we go back to the gate and i notice it doesn't take near as long
Guest:to get back to the gate as it did to get there but i did still didn't say anything about it and then i get there and he and he goes uh okay that'll be 50 well the pussy was 10 50 where do you come up with that number 50 so i reach into my pocket and my wallet's gone and i'm like dude they stole my wallet this place is three blocks from the gate
Guest:He did, whenever it came down to money.
Guest:And so now I'm in there yelling.
Guest:Give me back my wallet.
Guest:And there are probably guys in the background with machetes going, keep yelling, honky-tonk, and we'll see if we can stop it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So eventually they came out with a wallet, but it wasn't mine.
Guest:But it did have a military ID in it, but it wasn't mine.
Guest:And so I just went back.
Guest:So now I've lost my virginity.
Guest:I don't have a dime.
Guest:I actually had a dollar in my pocket.
Guest:But a bus from San Diego was a quarter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:25 cents, that's it.
Guest:So I took that back and I just flashed somebody else's ID when I was walking through the gate and I was like, that sucked.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:You left with no money and someone else's identity.
Guest:Right, and someone else's identity.
Marc:It's like the beginning of Mad Men, the series.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You could have started a whole new life as that guy.
Guest:I could have.
Guest:I could have.
Marc:All right, so you come back from Mexico just to get up to date, and you do the tour with the guys.
Guest:Basically, they said, because I was hard to get a hold of in Mexico.
Marc:You're kind of hard to get a hold of now, actually.
Guest:Right, but it was harder then, because there was no cell phone service right over the border.
Guest:They block it.
Guest:I don't even know if I had a cell phone anyway, and the phone lines almost never worked, so.
Guest:They said if I wanted to be part of the Blue Collar Couture, I had to move back to the U.S.
Guest:And that they couldn't have me that far removed.
Guest:And everything was falling apart anyway.
Guest:I mean, the relationship was really trying.
Guest:And so I said, okay.
Guest:And I moved back.
Guest:And they were all...
Guest:you know worried about me anyway because it was a pretty rowdy town and it but it was really only rowdy if you were there to stop the drug trades right if you were just waving them by they didn't really care about you at all but if you didn't we had a sheriff that was uh uh we got a new sheriff in town so uh he was in the newspaper saying he was going to clean up reynosa and i was like oh i wouldn't have said that yeah i would have kept that to myself
Guest:Literally, he's in my favorite restaurant having dinner with the DA and two other guys.
Guest:The two other guys stand up and shoot him to death.
Guest:The three of them walk out the front door, and nobody's ever convicted.
Guest:You were there?
Guest:No, I wasn't there, but it was my favorite restaurant, so it was actually closed for a day or two.
Guest:So they killed the sheriff?
Guest:Yeah, on the front page of the paper.
Guest:Yeah, murdered the sheriff.
Guest:So who's next?
Marc:Anybody else wanted to clean up the town?
Marc:I'm willing to work with local businessmen of any kind.
Guest:Of any kind, right.
Marc:we practice non-judgment yeah yeah it's like you know whoever wins wins all right so so you go back and you do the tour and that was the life changer then everything turned around yeah the uh how many years did you do it uh with the blue collar yeah two or three and a half i think
Guest:I'm not real good with these numbers, but we weren't full-time on either, so we would go on and off of it.
Marc:But right out of the gate, you guys were playing arenas?
Guest:8,000, up to 20,000 people.
Marc:And they were worried about you.
Marc:Was this where you had the conversation with the new manager?
Guest:well yeah that's he was my manager at the time and and uh actually where he and i got into it was he's a prick he's a genuine prick and still your manager no oh no good god no he's still theirs though yeah and uh we were shooting a salute to the or whatever the what it was blue collar two the second one and we were already done with it we shot it in denver and we're all sitting in an after party it's all wrapped up and uh there's all everybody there the cast the crew the whole hee-haw gang we're drinking yeah i'm trashed and
Guest:So he had this really just love to needle me.
Guest:And he was over there drunk.
Guest:And he goes, you're nothing but an overpaid opening act.
Guest:You hadn't earned a dime of your money.
Guest:And I was like, oh, motherfucker.
Guest:And it got real ugly real fast.
Guest:And I quite frankly don't have the energy to hate him as much as he hates me.
Guest:Because I just lose focus.
Guest:Why did he hate you?
Guest:Because he just couldn't believe that I would...
Guest:You know, I actually owe the guy everything because he's the one that got it sold to Warner Brothers.
Guest:And without that, who knows what would have happened?
Guest:Just a big old crapshoot.
Guest:But he's just such a prick.
Guest:He told the president of ABC, he said, I hope your children die of ass cancer.
Guest:And that's just him.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did you beat him up?
Guest:I didn't beat him up.
Guest:We just got in each other's face and yelled a lot.
Guest:And then he got in the car and left.
Guest:And so the next day, he dropped me from the management company.
Guest:But I wasn't really his.
Guest:I was really his partner's.
Marc:got him john mcdonald and uh he dropped you after you made all that cash and you made that i mean you i mean you were essential that tour i mean you were it was almost like you were the id of of of the tour you know you were the guy that was talking a certain amount of truth about a certain you know a way of life that everyone identified with these other guys were were doing that as well but you were the dark part you were essential to it
Guest:Yeah, they never considered kicking me off the tour.
Guest:He dropped me as a client, which was kind of silly because I was generating so much money, which was also why I was no longer willing to take shit from him.
Guest:So that's kind of the way it broke up.
Guest:I mean, whenever we did like three and a half years together, we still hold attendance records at the...
Guest:Where the Predators play hockey in Nashville, 23,000 people.
Guest:And other people have sold it out, but not with that small a stage.
Guest:And we had it in the middle, which was ridiculous, ridiculously big.
Guest:It was too big.
Marc:And in a general sense, your fans are good people?
Guest:yeah yeah i like them i like them i you know when i first started doing the meet and greet thing i i was not i didn't go into that uh really excited about doing it and uh but it turns out it's you know it's pretty interesting to find out what they what they wonder about me and what is the general thing are you okay ron
Guest:Right.
Marc:Pull out of it.
Marc:Just pull out of it.
Marc:I can't.
Guest:I've tried.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, yeah, they're nice people, and they just want to love on me.
Guest:That's all.
Guest:They just want to love on me.
Guest:And you can handle it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I can let them love on me for a little while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you get to, you know, the wild, drunk chicks that are, you know, your wife's standing there.
Guest:They're still going, come on.
Guest:Carl, let's go.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's great, man.
Marc:So that whole tour established you as a solo act, and now you just do your own thing.
Marc:What are you pulling now, people-wise, consistently?
Guest:well i was in uh houston and uh and uh i think my average crowd's around 2300 yeah i think is about what it is uh but this weekend we did houston and austin to 12 000 people so we did 3 000 seaters uh-huh sold out four shows that's great man two in houston two in austin and but at one time i sold out five of those shows in in uh in houston so by yourself by myself yeah and what what do you think the drop off is you change it up don't you
Guest:I change it up all the time, but it's just the, I'm not the new big thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, so my fan base is huge and there's plenty of them and I, you know, it still goes just really well, but you know, it's not Oh six and Oh seven or, uh, you know, five, I think we're bigger, but it's still, it's good.
Guest:It's still great.
Guest:And do you do Vegas?
Guest:Nine weekends a year at the Mirage.
Marc:That's good, right?
Guest:So I'm actually going.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:I'm going there this weekend and doing my regular show.
Guest:And then on Wednesday, we're doing the Salute to the Troops with Gabriel Iglesias is going to be there.
Guest:Kathleen Madigan is doing it.
Guest:Josh Blue.
Guest:uh roywood jr and uh geechie guy do you know geechie yeah i know the name i don't think i've ever met that guy but i've been hearing his name for as long as i remember right right he's been around for as long as you can remember straight up jokes yeah very old school i mean old old school stuff it's delightful hey oh that's not well yeah you gotta mix it up do you still generate all your own shit or
Guest:I would say I'm my head writer.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I get you.
Guest:But, you know, you can't... I had 16 years to write the first record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you don't have 16 years to write the second one.
Guest:So, you know, there's two of my friends that...
Marc:I think I know him.
Marc:Wait, Todd Sawyer.
Marc:Todd did it for a little while.
Marc:And does Hawkins do it?
Guest:Yeah, Robert Hawkins.
Guest:Oh, he's great.
Guest:He opens for me.
Guest:So we work out the beats on the bus going from city to city.
Guest:Just polish it up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a great comic.
Guest:Great comedian.
Guest:So then Alex is usually on the bus also, and my son's very, very funny.
Marc:And you guys just kind of hammer it out?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's fucking great.
Marc:It's like a traveling writer's room.
Guest:yeah kind of yeah i used to throw these uh what i called writer's retreats but uh that uh that i would rent this place in austin on a lake and we would all go there and for a weekend and we'd bring in a chef and musicians oh yeah and uh just to brainstorm eat a bunch of mushrooms and uh we'd usually walk away with some really good stuff and then there was a bar called pootie's it was owned by willie nelson's uh uh bus driver who died in uh
Guest:But it was just all Texas honky-tonk.
Guest:So we would take that over at night, and I would run through all the stuff we worked on.
Guest:But that group of people has always written together.
Guest:We're the Texas Hill Country Comedy Writers Association.
Guest:So it was a bunch of guys that have been around for a long time.
Guest:And what we'd do back in the day, we would just table anything and help each other put it together.
Guest:and then decide who do it uh no you know it would be your idea that you brought to the table okay and that's yours oh so uh but everybody would look at it and you know and that's a great way to create and you generated a lot of stuff like that tons of stuff that's amazing that's a that's a that's a great way to do it yeah but i you know i i think most things creative are at least somewhat collaborative sure so it'd be really easy for me to go now i write every word of it right next question yeah
Marc:No, no, I appreciate you being honest about it.
Guest:Now, I wish somebody could just write it and work out the beats on it and hand it to me, but that doesn't happen at all.
Guest:It doesn't work that way.
Marc:So now, to finish up, in terms of the reputation and also how you move through your shows, I mean, have there been times where you didn't judge the amount of scotch correctly?
Yeah.
Guest:yeah yeah the last time uh i was at the funny bone i was at the funny bone in uh columbus and uh it was one of my last comedy club gigs and i had been banned from there for 10 years for getting caught making out with the manager's girlfriend in the women's bathroom okay uh that night i drank too much yeah right right yeah and uh made some good choices about location i didn't think he was there or i wouldn't have done it yeah he'd been there all night that's the funny thing right
Guest:Right.
Guest:So anyway, they banned me for a long time, and I was really good friends with that staff, and I fucked up.
Guest:It was my fault.
Guest:It was inappropriate as it could possibly be.
Guest:And I still blame it on her, but still.
Guest:So I come back.
Marc:Give yourself a break, Ron.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:I come back and they hire me back.
Guest:The club's new.
Marc:That one in the mall?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so most of the staff that was there when I was there before was at a wedding.
Guest:So they all came in on Saturday to say hi to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and uh because i was i used to party with those kids like crazy yeah and uh so uh i get there's a three show night and i get there and the bartender is one of the guys that i really hung out with a lot he gives me a big old glass of scotch and i'm jacking with everybody and i've got to the third show the third show i'm i'm like i'm gonna go check and see where he's at so i go in there to look to see where the middle axe at and
Guest:i can't get the two images of him within 10 feet of each other straining i'm like ah that's bad that is horrible and uh i went up there and i was repeating jokes it was just the ugliest shittiest thing and i'm like well there goes the next 10 years so it turns out the guy was doing uh doing the money in the back never saw it so i'm like that was great oh that's good man so that was the third show though right
Guest:that was the third show fuck it on a friday or saturday no it's gonna happen yeah you're there for eight hours yeah you don't know what you've done whiskey right yeah yeah it all blurs together yeah but usually you got you can gauge it pretty well yeah yeah yeah normally you know now it's uh uh i just drink i have a tequila my brother-in-law and i have a tequila and uh and you just do it on one shot
Guest:No, I take it on stage with me and I just sip on it.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:But the tequila's outstanding.
Guest:Smooth.
Guest:It's actually some of the best tequila in the world, I think.
Guest:What kind?
Guest:Might as well sell it.
Guest:The brand is Number Juan and J-U-A-N.
Guest:We make a silver, a Reposado, and an extra Añejo.
Guest:You make it?
Guest:It's ours.
Guest:Well, the distillery is in Mexico.
Marc:So you're a tequila guy now?
Marc:I mean, this is your brand.
Guest:This is my brand.
Guest:I own it with my brother-in-law.
Marc:I don't even know what tequila is made of.
Guest:It's made out of agave cactus.
Marc:So they got a cactus farm down there and agave farm?
Guest:Well, Jalisco, Mexico, this is all tequila is made there.
Guest:It's like champagne.
Guest:If it's not made in the Champagne region, you can't call it champagne.
Guest:So there's a huge volcano, tequila is the name of it.
Guest:And it is gigantic.
Guest:And all the land around it, I mean, hundreds of square miles, is just covered up with blue agave.
Marc:Just by nature of the soil because of the volcanic ash.
Guest:It's always been there.
Guest:Huh, I didn't know that.
Guest:Yeah, so now there's actually a Tequila Mexico in my distilleries in the next town.
Marc:So did you find like a master distiller?
Marc:Did you have to interview guys?
Guest:Yeah, the way we did it, well, Alex had been working on it for four years, and
Guest:and trying to find something.
Guest:And so we found this guy that was a master distiller, a real artisan, and he was making a high-end tequila that they just sold at the resorts in Mexico City under a different name.
Guest:But that's all he did.
Guest:And so it was very expensive, $150 a bottle in the resorts, or $200 a bottle.
Guest:And so that company that he did that for dropped him and opened their own distillery.
Guest:And so he had that distillery, but no place to put this beautiful tequila.
Guest:So we, we came in and, and, and negotiated with him to let us bring it to the United States.
Guest:And, uh, which took a while, you know, because that's their livelihood too.
Guest:And they don't know a couple of, even though, you know, Alex is from Mexico and he speaks fluent Spanish.
Guest:So, uh, but it took them a while to trust us enough with it.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:And then I basically, it was all his project.
Guest:And I said to myself, if he gets it on the shelf, then maybe I'll wait in.
Guest:And so he did and waited in.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So it's fun.
Guest:I mean, it's a blast.
Guest:We were down there.
Guest:Our distillery is so little and dusty and all these big gigantic things are around us.
Guest:But they don't make better tequila.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:That's fucking awesome.
Marc:That's a great story.
Guest:You're in the booze business.
Marc:It makes total sense.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In fact, we were at Specs Liquor in Austin and Specs Liquor in Houston this weekend signing bottles.
Guest:So other comics have book signings.
Guest:I have boo signings.
Marc:It's completely fitting, Ron.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Why not?
Marc:Well, congratulations, man.
Marc:It was great talking to you.
Marc:Hey, thank you very much.
Marc:It was great we finally got together.
Guest:I'm thrilled, man.
Guest:I love you, man.
Guest:I love you, too.
Guest:That's good.
Marc:Aw.
That's cute.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:Again, thank you for listening to my show.
Marc:If you need anything WTF-related, go to wtfpod.com.
Marc:We're going to be getting the ceramic mugs back up.
Marc:You can get them through the actual potter soon.
Marc:T-shirts are there.
Marc:Things are there.
Marc:Chat board is there.
Marc:Whatever you need.
Marc:Whatever you need.
Marc:Justcoffee.coop.
Marc:You can get that.
Marc:If you get a bag of the WTF blend, get a little 10% on the back end of that.
Marc:And, you know, I'm going to try to, you know, stay level.
Marc:I don't want you getting worried that, you know, I'm experiencing something good and uplifting because I'm still crazy and I'm still crazy with panic and I still need to figure out what to talk about on stage and off.
Marc:So if you want to come to the Tripany House on February 18th or March 4th or 11th, go to Tripany.org and come support the floundering.
Marc:the exploratory process.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Boomer lives!