Episode 1: Beekeeping with Granger Smith

collecting retro Barbie dolls to three D printing. Tell me about what you love, why you love it, how you got into it, what makes it awesome, and really why someone else could get into it too. Each episode is presented in three chapters. In chapter one, my guest and I will go deep diving on whatever they're passionate about. Chapter two is a game I call trade jo, where my guests and I turned each other onto one thing

that we've just discovered. And Chapter three closes the show with me talking about music that I'm currently geeking out on and why I believe that curiosity is contagious and that life is better with a soundtrack. So let's go Chapter one. This week's guest is Granger Smith. Granger is my label mate at Wheelhouse Records. Whose debut album, Remington's,

featured number one hit back Road song. You might know him better as his alter ego Earl Dibbel's Jr. If you're not already a member of the Nation, you're about to be. Because I'm always moving around and I can't always predict where my perfect next guest will appear. I'm sometimes on location. So here Granger and I are talking in the lobby bar of Hilton Garden Inn and Charleston, South Carolina, after a show that we played together for

the local radio station. You can hear us occasionally laughing with our band at the table, or uh talking to the waitress, or enjoying that old time tradition of a last drink before bedtime. Enjoy I mean with a Granger and I'm eating French fries. Awesome. Yeah we are, UM, so welcome to the podcast. It's good to be here. I like this podcast. You know it's on location. We're in a lobby about us. Say they're not even paying

us to say not yet. You know what, I like your entrepreneurial spirit and that's one of the things that really bonds us, you and me. Besides we're on the same record there. Um Okay, So you know, the reason that you're here, or at least I'm putting you on podcast, is because I'm interested in what you're into right now, what you're kind of geeked out on that has nothing to do with your job. The first thing comes from my mind because I was just dealing with this yesterday.

But I'm into bees. I'm a beekeeper. It feels awesome to say that. By the way, I'm a I'm a beekeeping. I am a new beekeeper. Your new beekeeper. Huh. Aren't like people from Brooklyn that are like hipsters into beekeeping? Probably so? Um, but so are farmer type guys too, right. So there's because my bees are not garden bees. They actually have you know, space country country are these are? These? Are these free range bees? Free range country? Somebody asked

me one time when I first brought this up. They said, so, how do you get into their area? And I said what area? And they said, you know what the net like the little house with the net. And I said, man, they just go everywhere. How they know when to go back? Well, I don't know. That's its nature's mystery. They know how to get back. They travel five miles every day. Bees travel every day. They will go miles in their life,

and they only lived thirty five days. Let's facts keep coming. Okay, how did you get into Okay, I it's probably started with me with fruit trees. I love trees. I love planting trees, I love established trees, I love planting new trees. I like planting seeds. I just for some reason, I think my dad was into it. It's in my mom's side of the family too. There's something about it. In every house I've ever lived in, I've planted a tree at some point in my life. I got into fruit

trees about four years ago. I got two peach trees, two plum trees, um pomegranate. I have BlackBerry bushes and a fig tree, all kind of this one little area. And the number one way to really escalate the pollination is beats. There's number one pollinator for any I mean, there's there's butterflies, there's other things, but birds, But the biggest pollinator of anything is bees. And so I thought, Okay, what do I have enough bees? I don't know. I

don't know. How does anyone know if they have enough bees in their area? And I've seen bees, But but then I started thinking, what if I brought in beat A lot of people do that, I could bring in bees. So I started researching, looking on the internet, typing in bees. How long ago with this? This was about? This was the right around two years ago. And the reason I

know that is because I went to a show. I was a show and a friend of mine from high school shows up and we were just talking and I'm happen to mention I was interested in bees, and he goes me too, I'm actually about to buy something from my house And I said, wow, that's incredible. I said, I wish I could do that, but I'm touring all the time, so there's no way I could go buy bees, build the hives and paint them and get them. I would love to one day, ten years down the road,

and love to do that. And he goes, tell you, what, whyn't you just give me your credit card number, will buy a couple of hives for you, and then I'll go buy a couple of homes from me. We'll deliver them all to my house. I'll set it up for you and I'll get the bees going at my house. That way, I'll get the hard part, the really, you know, the extensive work that it takes, the early be years or tough years. And I was like, that's awesome. Yeah, so he did it. This was so he got he

ordered him. He got him in about six months later. So he had him at his house about a year and a half. And then this was the year when they're established strong, ready to go. And he called me. He's like, hey, your bees are ready. So I got them in March this year. Um so so now it's June. So I went down and to San Antonio. I'm in Austin. He was in San Antonio, drove down and uh, he put them. We put them. We took them out of their hives and put them in nukes, which was really funny. Yes, yes,

so we take the frames of their brood box. This is getting crazy. But the brood boxes where the bees. As you could tell, I'm am obsessed with this, But the brood box is where um that's where they live. That's where the queen lives. That's where she makes all her larva. That's where they make all their their food. That's going to supply him for the winner. At my house, I need a brood box bread box. My favorite new

indie band yes, bread box is amazing. So what you take the brood box and then you put a queen excluder on top, which is a screen that allows all the rest of the bees to go through it. But she can't because she's too big, so it traps her in the brood box, which is fine. She needs to be busy making her eggs, layer eggs. And then you you put these supers on top. A super is essentially the same thing as a brood box. It's got tin frames in it with a little little uh manmade honeycomb

replica that they go. They are attracted to and they build out their comb. So when you put a super on top of a broodbox, you never touched the brood box. That's their food, that's their supply, that's how they live. But the super on top of that is what you can harvest for your own honey. You can pull that out, Yes, they don't need that. You can make two supers on top of that per hive. So we take the brood box frames out. You've seen the frames on everyone's seen

the frames. You take the frames out and we put them in this little, this little nuke, which is basically a cardboard box that you put the frames in and then close it seal it. So I take those so I put all the bees in there. It's crazy, seal it up. Put them in the back of my truck. Is it like a kid? Like a kid's on board. I'm gonna dry fifteen thousand bees in each hive, and I had two hives. I had thirty thousand bees in

the back of my truck. I had to pull over and get gas on the way there, and I was like, oh my gosh, you know, because because not all of them made it into the into the sealed box. You know, some of them are just kind of around and there. But they're just gonna keep up. So I get to my house and I put on the suit and I'm following the exact instructions that he gave me. I build the hive just like it was at his house. And then my wife and I, luckily I had her with me.

We're smoking him too. You smoke him with a little little smoker because it chills him out. It disorians. This is not like a Washington State. It's a little bit different. Is a different kind of smoking, but essentially the same the same effect. It chills him out. M out distorians, Can we stop? Are you actually stoning the bees? You're stoning the bees totally? I love it. Yeah, cedar chips, that's what we want to call it. Yeah, yeah, So my wife and there we are. We're, you know, smoking

them like crazy. We open up the site of opening up that that nuke for the first time and seeing them in there, fifteen thousand bees and you've got to reach in there with your hand, gloved hands. You've got to pull out a frame and they're just coded on each side of the frame, and then walk it over and put it into their new box, like here's your home. It is the biggest rush I've had. I was. I mean, my heart's pounding. I'm holding YouTube. Yes. So then you

have super is built on top of right exactly. So what happened is the queen. Everyone's attracted to the queen. She's the leader. And I didn't see her. I could have, but I was preoccupied. But she was somewhere on one of those frames, crawling around. You could see her because she'd be bigger than all the REPSOD So I put him, I put him into the food box and then I cover it with the being the queen excluder, and then I put the um. I I didn't put a super

on yet because they don't need it yet. They needed to fill out the rest of their frames, right, But I did put on a little a little feeding box on top, so that feeding boxes half sugar half water mish. Yesterday, for the very first time, I went in there and added a super because they had filled out their brood box. So when I took off the feeding box, they had been building comb all under the feeding box on top

of their brood box. So I just was like, hey, I gotta I got a spoon and a tupperware and I just pulled off all of this comb with a big spoon and put it into the tupperware and got back and I had a whole bowl full of honey. Okay, So how often do you think about the bees now that you're out on tour. I think about it all the time. I'm texting my wife that you feed the bees? You know, the strangest, the strangest text. And do you

have children? I do? We have three little ones. You do you like worry more about the bees than the children. Since I'm a man, probably not to be honest. Let's be honest, probably not, but I do think about him a lot and my kids. I would think that bugs are kind of icky to some kids. But they want to put on the suit and they want to go right up to the box. And if you look right at the entrance, they have a little entrance. It's it's an inch long entrance and they they go in there.

And these bees constantly going in, constantly going out all day long. And the ones going in got the little pollen sacks on their legs and they're going in. They deposit the nextar and the nectar and pollen they head to right back out. The funny thing is, if you watch it close enough, there's these guards. There's bouncers, but guard the outside seriously. They check i'd ease, and they'll find a little robber by that tries to get in there. He's either a local bee or he's one from next door,

and they will kick his ass. Kid, they will kick the ship out of Have you slow mode your bees yet? Have you gone to the SlowMo setting on your phone? I phone? That's a great idea. I should do that. Okay, I have not done it. That's a great idea. Yeah, when when when when we do when we post this podcast, we need to have at least a SloMo of your bees.

I will have that done for you. Okay. So, um, now that we understand the full breadth of your obsession, um, and why you're kind of geeking out on this, how would you recommend someone else get into this? Like? What's the gateway drug? Well? How do you start? Um? You know, the internet is so full as of any other subject, it's just full of It's a wealth of knowledge of of ways to use. Yeah to to be able to sit there and watch a YouTube video of a guy

actually setting up it's really easy. You can get everything online, deliver it right to your house. And a musician like me traveling all the time, it makes it tough. But if you're nine to five or this is this is easy you could You could literally do it in your garden. Is it in a morning? Ritual? Is an evening? Like? Well, I have learned that in the afternoon my bees are crazy. In the afternoon, they're crazy, They're they're way more chill in the morning. They're really calm at night, and when

it rains they all go home, they all go home. Yeah, so these bees live thirty five days. This is what's crazy. So the queen is like any other normal bee. She lives longer because she's been fed the royal jelly from not making this up. The royal jelly. It's like straight out of a Disney movie. Now, when she's at the end, they will elect a new queen out of the worker bees. I don't know how they elect one that, but they

all find one. She gets elected and they feed her the royal jelly and she grows to the size of queen. I think, I think I think they're doing that in the UK right now, Chapter two. In every episode of Geeking Out, I see if I can trade one thing I've discovered recently with one thing that my guest has discovered, like a friendly exchange. I call it trade you. So this is called trade you. I'll trade you one thing for one thing. Right, you turn me onto something, I'll

turn you onto something. So I'm obsessed currently a little bit with cold brew coffee. Right, and so this is coffee that is steeped for a whole day. It takes a whole day to make a gallon usually if you do it the right way, and there are there there are a lot like Kraft beers. You know there are people that are making this. And one of the cool things that it does it takes the acid out of the coffee, so that doesn't hurt your stomach. The awkward

thing that it does is it triples the caffeine. So when you pour yourself a cup of coffee, if cold brew that would be normally your regular cup of coffee, it's now like you're on adderall right, you gotta be really, really really careful not to overdo it. So the cold brew coffee that I love is obviously from Atlanta, Georgia. It's called Banjo coffee. But when somebody turned me onto

not just the cold brew, but recently mixing it with lacroix. Lacroix, you know this, uh, this soda that's not a cola, right, and it's a coconut version. Everybody's got there on the rider these days. Yeah, Well it's awesome because it keeps you off drinking dice coke. Right. Um, But the lacroix, or the lacroix that I love now current obsession is

a coconut which tastes like sunscreen. Um, if you could drink sunscreen that's carbonated, or the cold brew coffee half and half exactly into it with ice, a glass of ice, cold brew coffee, and the coconut lacroix, lacroix, however you want to pronounce it. It is the most refreshing summer drink ever. It's like coffee plus it's like a Mound's bar, but coffee but has zero calories. Okay, that's incredible. I don't have a name for yet, but that's that's what

you need to text me. That word for word, what you said, I'm next to that plus that equals joy. Okay, Okay, now you turned me on to Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna turn you. I'm gonna turn you onto something because of you said cold brew coffee. This guy's probably know what I'm gonna say, cold water therapy. It's a lot less enjoyable than cold brew coffee. You gonna put it

that way. But cold water therapy is something I got into because, um in December, I broke a couple of ribs and punctured alone, fell off the stage when I when I got home, I wanted to be able to recover as fast as possible. I just hate sitting on a couch and recovering, and I didn't want anything to slow that down. So I started researching how how would Troy Aikman, you know, recover the fastest he could possibly recover, or how would any you know, NFL quarterback figure this out?

Because I fin I kind of put those guys as the guys that would have the ultimate scientists a lot of money, right, So everything came back to cold weather therapy as that you know, you know, all professional athletes take ice bass and there's a reason. So I really got into this. And this was in December, so it was perfect because I would I would go to my pool and I would measure my pool at somewhere in

the mid fifties. This is in December, so so it's that actually sounds to some people that sounds warm, but that's freaking cold. It's freaking cold, especially when outside. It's in the forties the temperature outside. So I would I would go get in there, and I started in a minute. Then I worked up to ten minutes, but three minutes

is what I preferred. But what's crazy is you go in there and with whatever your whatever your ailment, or maybe you don't have an ailement, you just you just want to be completely what happens is you get completely recirculated with all your blood. Tell me how that works. So you jump in and you have you have the the Caveman brain effect of I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. You do you think I'm going to die, because that's

what it feels like. So every all the blood in your body rushes to your court and it holds there to protect your vital organs. That takes about thirty seconds. Because I had a timer. Every day I would do this and had a timer. It takes thirty seconds for all the blood in your body to rush to your court. When that happens, you hit a euphoria. Ah, this isn't too bad. You're kind of just bobbing in the water like hey, and everybody's like you Okay, It's like it's

not too bad. And at that point you're good. You could wait for ten minutes if you want. Thank you. This is perfect. Anything we need to get out, Thank you, thank you, Thank you for being here. Man. Now we're gonna eat our food. Yes, thanks Buddy Ranger Smith. Chapter three me geeking out on music. Surprise surprise, right, all right. This week I'm diving into a record that was a really big deal for me, and later in life I got to explore it in in in a brand new way.

But the artist name are the Police, and the album in question here is Ghost in the Machine, and when you look at it, it is a black album with like a digital read out looks like a digital clock, but each of their faces the way they did it with the you know, sting of spiked hair and and Andy Summers hair is going to the side and stuff like this, and it's it's a very enigmatic record for them. But what's most interesting to me is the second single off of this album was called every Little Thing She

Does Is Magic. And I was always obsessed with this song for a very specific reason. I at the time that this came out, or at least by the time I heard it, I believe I was let's see what year did it come out? In? Eight one? So by the time I really dug into this record, I was twelve or thirteen, and I was learning to write songs at the time, and um, you know, these Police songs were complete thoughts and complete statements, and they they sounded

like nothing else on the radio. Is some sort of strange British reggae rock and every little thing she does is magic. Is exactly like you know, a squared off, well written pop song, or even a country song to that matter. And what was fun to me about the recording is that there's just very little going on until, of course, the drums sort of take over in the courses. And the obsession that I had was kind of these beautiful melodies in the verses and here that's what they

sound like. Okay, So the way this kind of works is I had suddenly been listening to Adam and the Ants and a couple of things that probably a kid from East Tennessee just had no business listening to. And I realized that you could put things on top of each other. And I was trained as a classical musician, so it made sense to me. Counterpoint, Uh, you know, one one part of the score layered with another part of the score later both that had appeared individually earlier.

And what happened so at the end of this song,

there's what's called a fade. And nowadays, you know, we just kind of draw a fade on a computer, but at the time you had to actually physically have your hand on the fader, the master fader on your counsel and then you would slowly fade it down right, and depending on how much coffee your engineer had had that day, your fades were quick or you know, depending on how much of a I don't know, a stoner or something that they were, that they would if they would fade

it slowly right, and it would be the perfect timing on how to close the conversation of a song. So, this particular song has a fade in it that um has always always perplexed me. I was the kid who as the song faded on the radio, I would turn the radio up and up and up to try to

counter the engineer turning it down. I kept turning it up and up and up because what Sting had done and the guys and the police had put one part of the song of the melody over a different part of the music, and it only happens on the fade. And I thought to myself, man, it is the coolest thing I've ever heard. So here here's that part, all right.

So fast forward, let's see, almost eleven years or twelve years, I end up as my job getting a record deal with my my friend Andrew Hira and Billy Pilgrim and now we are literally in London and we get to work with Hugh Pagam, the man who produced a lot of these police records, and I can't help but ask him when I finally get the like one social time moment to say, Hugh, please tell me what does it What did it sound like for the rest of that song?

Because the ending of that song, and I know you produced it, was one of my favorite things of all time, and I always wondered what the tales out version of that is, tails out being you know, we all recorded on on actual tape and the tail of the tape if if you hadn't have faded it down on the fader, what how long did that song go? What could I hear the rest of that song? And uh, he laughed and he told me the story of it. He said, well,

that song was actually the demo that we had. The drummer played to the demo that Staying had already made and literally the end of the fade is where the tape runs out on the machine. So um, at least I know that, uh there there was nothing that happened after that, so I don't have any fear of missing out of what's there. But it is in its entirety one of the more formative songs in my life that taught me how to reimagine the music that you're making. Maybe all of it can squish on top of each

other and work out so here it is. Every little thing she does is magic the Police. I hope you enjoyed the first episode of Geeking Out, and we are already hard at work on the next one. Are you obsessed with something amazing? I want to tell us about it? Right to us at geeking Out with KB at gmail dot com and you might be a guest on an

upcoming episode. Come find out more about me and this podcast at Christian Bush dot com as Christian with a K. Follow me at Christian Bush on Twitter, Christian Bush on Instagram, Christian Bush on Facebook, Christian Bush everywhere except for Snapchat. It's Christian M. Bush. Thanks to Bobby Bones for the opportunity to build this podcast, Brandon Bush for making the soundtrack, Tom Tapley for audio wizardry, and Whitney Pastrick for being

a great produce sir, making this whole thing possible. This is Christian Bush Seeking Out. Thank you for listening. H