Episode 2: Martial Arts with Bryan Frasher

remodeling airstream trailers to collecting Game of Thrones bobbleheads. Tell me what you love, why you love it, how you got into it, and what makes it awesome. Every episode is presented in three chapters. Chapter one, my guest and I talk about what they're obsessed with. Chapter two is a game I call trade jo, where my guest and I turn each other on to one thing that we've 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 can tageous and the life is better with a soundtrack. So let's go chapter one. Today, I visit with Mr Brian Fraser. Brian spent most of his life in the music business, first as a musician, then as a powerful record company executive and now as an artist manager. I recently worked with him when I produced one of his artists, Lindsea Yell, who you just heard.

In working with Brian, I was taken by his personality, his knowledge, and his excitement about the entire world around him. Also, it should be said that Brian is very tall. He's fit, with a full head of blonde hair, and has likely had to bend down to hug everyone in his life, So I mean with Brian Fraser. Hey, hey, welcome to the podcast. So I have to be here. Podcast is currently happening in my home in Nashville, which is awesome, by the way, would you like to describe it for podcasters.

I'm on the second floor, right near where the stairs come up from the entryway, and I'm looking at a wall of vinyl records and I don't think there's one up there that came out before h S admin and it's probably eight thrillers. What he was explaining to me how whoever comes in can rotate out whatever records they want to play. They just put new ones up every time. I think it's just such a great fun concept and just awesome. Thank you. It was a way for me

to avoid decorating my place. So you you've heard the rules of the podcast. You I was briefed on the rules by Whitney. Okay, good, Whitney's here actually in the Yeah, we love having Whitney around. Um, we want to talk about what you are totally geeking out on right now. That is not your job. So first of all, you might want to just say what your job is so people can understand the distance and well, I mean, I mean currently in my third career. My first career was

as a musician. My second one was as a record label guy. I was the vice president promotion of B and A Records, which was has since become Columbia Records Nashville under Sony Music. And I now am at Red Light Management and I managed Lindsay l and I co managed Craig Morgan. And I do radio promotion and marketing for whoever else on the Red Light roster might need it in terms of country radio. What are you geeking out on right now? Well, I'm geeking out on jiu

jitsu martial arts in general, Brazilian jiu jitsu currently. Uh. But I have studied martial arts since I was twelve years old and I'm fifty two. Uh and uh it's something my brother and I started when we were kids. My father got us into it. I found out later his logic, which was incredibly sound for about as much

of a redneck as you can get in West Virginia. Uh. He he told me when we were older, he said, I knew if I could get you boys into the martial arts, that you would always take care of your body and you always maintain a healthy lifestyle. Uh. If I could get you into this and you would fall in love with it, which both my brother and I

did fall in love with. My brother actually has a school in Columbus, Ohio, and he's a very high ranking black belt in the Chuck Norris system, and like literally goes to Chuck's ranch and he's hold on the Chuck north system. Yeah, it's you found Unifighting Arts Federation of America, United Fighting Arts Federation. Chuck Norris's UH system is called Chun Cook Dough and it is based on tang Pudo, which was a Korean martial art, and it's a it's

it's kind of like a taekwondo. There's a lot of high kicking, a lot of you know, punching, kicking, that kind of thing, and it's uh. There originally was a big point karate circuit that both my brother and I did. Uh. When we were younger, I fought in tournaments all rather than to my mid thirties, I was always training for or fighting in some kind of tournament of some sort. Norris system coming before the movies or did the movie. Well, here's the thing a lot of people don't understand about

Chuck Norrith. Chuck Norris is the real deal man, I mean he is. He he was doing that and then got put into the movies because that's what he was. A world champion competitive karate uh fighter and and a kickboxer and he was for real all the way around. And he Bruce Lee picked him to be in the movie. I think it's Return of the Dragon that he's in and they have this fight in the Colosseum, and Bruce Lee had he had written the movie. Uh, and Bruce actually hand picked Chuck to play the guy the his

his opponent. His Chuck is a bad guy in the movie. Huh. Right, So so there there's an incredible scene and as a musician, you will love it that this is the thing about martial arts for me is especially with jiu jitsu, it's so so many of the principles applied directly to music and your everyday life. And it's the principles and the concepts behind the techniques that work that make them work.

And if you understand the principles of why something works, you can apply all across all areas of your life. You can apply it in music if you understand why, you know, this certain chord works over this harmonic structure or vice versa, then you can apply that in any key. Right, What's the same thing with a with a martial arts technique, if you understand it, you understand the principle of why it works, and your practice to a level that you can execute it, then you can you just create on

the spot. It's a whole world of creation and immediacy that happens when you're when you're when you're actually doing it, you know. So. Uh. But anyway, so back to the musician part with Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee. They had at the end of returning to the Dragon, there's this this,

and I believe it's returning to the Dragon. There's uh, there's the fight scene, the final climactic fight scene between Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, the characters, and they're in the Roman Coliscene during the coliseum room, and you see, you can you can see this developed. At first, Bruce is his character is trying to fight the Chuck North style fight, and the music sounds a certain way. It's very stiff. It's very staunch, you know, it's it's very

very um um. It's predictable. The music is predictable, right, and then so Bruce takes a couple of shots and then he realizes, I've got to fight my own way. You can, if you know the concepts behind it, you can see the wheels turning in the movie. Because Bruce

Lee directed this, he shot the whole thing. And when he starts realizing that he needs to fight his way, his own and and express himself his own way, the music changes to it, and then it's a real improvisational kind of like funky jazz, like that early seventies progressive jazz kind of sound. It goes the music changes to that, and Bruce just starts he's stopping every punch he's hitting it. And then you see him defeat Chuck and he's upset that he has to kill him in the end because

this was such a worthy opponent. You know, it's it's you know, if you understand the philosophy behind this, it

is incredible to understand how that that. You you need to watch that movie and even if you fast forward to the last like ten fifteen minutes to the Colosseum stuff and watched that scene understanding the concepts of how it was why all I mean the and now that was at the time period in Bruce Lee's life when he was he had he had just written the kind of the philosophy, the Tao of jeep Kundo and jee Kundo was his style of martial arts that he developed.

It's called it's a way of the intercepting fist and based on based on oh dude, everything, I mean, there's been movies made so but it's uh. It's The beautiful thing about uh Bruce's art je condo was that he he took all of the things that he found practical and worked from all the different fighting systems. He took a boxing stance before you put your hands in boxing stand.

He took that from boxing. He took Filipino collie, which is a scream a stick fighting and knifefighting, and he applied that to empty hands so that you had trapping and a lot joint locks that he brought from jiu jitsu, and he studied with all the masters of these different things that he studied with Wally j who was when I first started taking jiu jitsu. Uh it was small circle jiu jitsu, which is what Wally j Is was

famous for. And that small circle means up um using the smaller joint locks like finger joint locks, um um, you know, wrist locks being able to if you can, if I'm gonna lock out a finger, then I would. I'm trying to describe it so people can understand what the podcast. But if I haven't in your hand, if in my hand and I push, I push on the top and I pull under the bottom, and I create a small circle here, then I get right into the joint of it, and it causes pain, causes extreme pain,

but it didn't break it. It doesn't hurt me. It just hurts me for a while. So I can control the person. Right, So me have your hand just so, and we're gonna take two figures right, so you just you can feel it, so you can feel. It just filled out my interest today. Okay, you see you feel that. You see the push and here's the pool. So I'm here and I yeah, I'll do what you can feel. You feel the pain, but now you're fine, You're okay,

not hurting, but you could move my body around. I can make you do what I want you to do. How many people that you work with on a day to day basis even have any idea that this is what you do? None? Really, I don't really, I have never talked about it. This is the first time I've ever talked about it in any kind of form bigger than one or two people before we we we sat down today. I did the least amount of research I could because I wanted you to teach me as well

you should that's the way, Well, it's it's. It's because I want to be just like my listeners, which are you know, turned me onto it. And the first thing I did is I and the only thing I did was pull it up on Wikipedia and jiu jitsu, my saying yeah, there's there's it's and it seems like that's a it's a family tree. Yes, the branches come off

and the leaves come off, the branches. That's right. So jiu jitsu is originally about combat against someone who is in armor and may or may not have a weapon and the person who is performing jiu jitsu does not. You know, it's close hand combat for people who are armored, yes, from someone who is not. Yeah, basically, yeah, that's that is correct. It's uh true combat jujitsu. Now, my first black belt in jujicsu is in combat jujitsu. I'm a

fourth degree black belt in combat jujitsu. I'm a fourth degree black belt and issuary karate, and I'm currently a purple belt in Brazilian jujitsu. Combat jujitsu is really is kind of a Japanese style jiujitsu, and it was based off of actually goes all the way to India. There are wrestling styles in India to thousand years ago that migrated into China and then migrated down into Japan, and the samurais developed jiu jitsu as you would know it as you read about it. They developed it because of

the armor. So if you are striking somebody and you're hitting armor, you're hitting a face mask, You're gonna hurt yourself too. You can't strike against this armor. But The things that you can control are the joint the joints of the risk, the joints of the elbow, shoulder, the knees, the ankles, the hips. There's all kinds of different where

the body is flexible. Um so if somebody has on a suit of armor and they're wielding a sword or a bow and arrow or whatever, they still have to have the mechanics to bend their arms and swing them and all that stuff. So the joints are free. So that's why they developed the system of joint manipulation. Two. That's that's when I say lock, I mean I'm locking your wrist out in a certain way that it causes

you pain. And it it either it over extends the tendons or it's the card elage of stuff separates it in the joint. It terms that your elbow or your wrist away that it's not supposed to go and it causes the pain. Now you can break that if you move very fast. I can decide I want to go really fast, hit that really quick and break it, pop it because of the force, the momentum and the angles on the wrist. Or I can choose to hold that right at that point where it hurts really really bad,

and you will stop do them. You know, I can kind of control what you do. I love this because you're one of the kindest men I know. And I just had no idea I had that. So what did it feel like to grow up knowing how to fight and really never having you have you had to fight outside the Oh yeah, outside? Yeah, I mean it never

was competition. I mean, here's the thing, man, after fighting so many tournaments in my early thirties and stuff, when I was competing against trained people, and then you know, just you know, little altercations and ship that happens when you're you know, in your mid twenties and you're drunk in a bar and somebody doesn't something ugly to a

friend of yours. Um. Those After you've done a few of those, you realize that you're you just feel like, man, you just feel like a freaking panther walking among gazelles. You're just allowing it to happen, just let it, just letting that behavior cool man. So But but but what it does, and it is it makes me I don't get freaked out and I don't help. It's helped me in business so much because I can stay calm. I'm not.

I don't. It doesn't I don't get too worked up over anything, you know, in in pressure situations, because you're always in pressure situation issues. Um, and it's beautiful in and when you're training, Like if I'm stressed about something and I go to work out and I'm rolling with a guy that is probably gonna put me to sleep, or is like, really, you know, these guys are so much better than me these days, and they're young, they're twenty years younger. And if I'm not focused on what's

happening in the moment, then I don't. It's not gonna nothing's gonna last very long, and they're gonna kill me, right, So I have to. I have to pay attention. Or what it does is it forces me to let go of everything else has bothered me. So I spend an hour hour and a half training hard, working on technique, sparring and in. The beautiful thing about Brazilian jiu jitsu.

One of the reasons that it makes you so effective is that you can train at almost full speed all the time and not get hurt because it's wrestling, it's it's grappling, it's your your your your body positioning, You're you're trying to work three and four moves ahead to get this guy to give you something you know you want three or four music. It's like chess, and it's like it's like human chess, you know. So it's so

intellectual and it's so physical at the same time. I've never found anything that is it's equal in terms of being intellectual and physical at the same time with such intensity. So when you're done and you're just wasted and you're just you're sitting there and your ass feels about like thirty pounds that che bubble gum and you're just sitting there and you're like, oh my god, uh and you're kind of shaking because you've worked so hard. You're just

completely relaxed. And I just I really believe that people need. They need things that are hard in their life. There need things that don't that they have to struggle to achieve in order to really to really know what that is and what how it can relate to other parts. It will make them better in every part of their life. I mean, man, you know, I've been struggling to learn Brazilian jiu jitsu on top of I mean I've studied marshal arts for years, but Brazilian jiu jitsu is a

freaking mystery to me still. It's just baffling to me. And I've been doing it now for eight almost nine years, and and at this age, you know, and and it's one of those things that my body has to learn it I had. My sensitivity has to be developed to feel this move here and to think three moves ahead, and to to be able to do that, and it that requires time on the mat, and I, you know, if I don't get the time on the mat, then I fall back and I have to start over it

kind of have to rebuild again. But it's it's that struggle of learning it that is so fulfilling because then when you start you start seeing results. It's like, man, you know I did that, Because in especially in Brazilian jujitsu, it either works or it doesn't, and nobody gives you anything. You are either respected on the map because you work hard and you try hard. You don't need to win, but you need to work hard and you need to

try hard. And if you um, if you are are putting in the time and you're working hard, everybody there will support you. And the have your back at every turn no matter what, because they know you're trying. You know, if you don't try, you don't stick around them. It's a really pure, true thing that you cannot um can't argue your way. You can't argue your way. You can't say I would have done this or I would have done that. It's all bullshit and everybody knows it too.

It's either you either can do it or you can't. And if you can't do it, then you need to be working towards the ability to do it the right way or to to find the truth in what you're doing. And I think that that has so much to do with life that that's what I love about. It's just a beautiful thing to have. I mean, there's still a few things in this world that we can count on that are absolutely true, Like I know, black and white truth. When that stuff works, and when it does Chapter two.

In every episode of Geeking Out, I see if I can trade one thing I've discovered with one thing that my guest has discovered, a friendly exchange. I call it trade you. I'm gonna trade you one thing that I've discovered. It just so happens. I discovered it this past week. Um, I came across pillows that are cold. Oh yeah, day pillows have you I have been dreaming. Let me tell

you something, dude. I for like three years ago I went to a showcase during CRS that big machine put on and the parting gift was this giant stakehold like pillow but memory phone, but it's cold on one side pillow. To this day, I thought, my wife, that's my pillow. I've got something for you. They have. The technology has gone one step further. So it's no longer the the gel pillow or the stay phoned the NASA pillow. It's now here's this one here, I'm trady picture of it.

It's called a hydrolux air and it is a straight up feather pillow, right, and it stays hold And I don't know how it does it, but it has to do with pressure, right. It really works like you put your head on it, and I do you have to do anything to prep it first? Nothing? Just to fill up? No, I'm like in my mind, you you know, like remember how we used to have to put the rice things in the microwaves or maybe the cold packs when you

hurt yourself while you're jiu jitsuing? Right? Is that? Because it's a verb and um, you would crack it and put it on your shoulder. This stuff you literally lay on it and it gets cold. It is so important to me now that I'm thinking of replacing more than just one. You let us send me a link to that so I can I can get one. It's amazing. Hydro lux air is what it is. The one I tried. This sounds silly, there's no such thing. Well it makes I don't know. Do you ever spend any time on Pinterest?

You know what? Um? I when Pinterest first started, I tried, and I do. I love it. I swear to god, I love Pinterest. There's so much cool guy stuff on there. There's like rate motorcycles and just and I will go down the rabbit hole if I'm really just kind of want to veg out and I just want to kind of just I just want to kind of do dumb stuff. You know, what are your searches? Like? I mean, I

would tell you what, but here's the thing. It's weird because it's an intuitive website and and I know Pinterest is a thing that people know about it. I don't know but for me, I've only in the last month or two become just enamored with it. But it's a you it after you've searched so many different things, it picks stuff for you and it just feeds you the things that you it thinks that you will like, and and it's usually so right. It is so right with me.

I'm like, and I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh my god, if somebody saw my pinter stage, what kind of person would they think I am? Because there's just all kinds. There's like survival gear on there, there's jeep stuff, there's motorcycles or tattoos. That's the one thing I do because I've started working on this tattoo I've got going on here this sleeve. I have three lions on my arm and it's uh, my myself, my wife and my son, and it's just about the connection between

three of us. And then there it's the religious thing with the trinity. And it just come from pintris No. But I got the idea of putting the red overlay on the black from Pinchers. I found it. It's called it's called trash. Polka art style was started in Germany and if you look that up on Pinters. There are the coolest tattoos. Trash trash polka, t R A s H. I love the O l K A trash polka and you look that up on Pinter's and there's just the

coolest stuff. I accept your trade because I'm That's what I use Pinterest for us to look for tattoos. We'll look up trash polka and you will see some of the coolest freaking tattoos you've ever seen in your life. Well, thank you for being here, man. I think I love hearing about your life and I now know a lot more about jiu jitsu, and I will keep you near me in a bar. YEA sounds good. Chapter three The Clavinet.

Because Brian Fraser was our guest today, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about a track from his artist, Lindsay L's album that I Love. I produced Lindsay's album The Project, and I actually have the individual tracks here to her song Mint, and I'd like to use them to tell you about one of my favorite instruments, the clabnet. What is it, Well, it's a keyboard. It's a vintage

keyboard that makes a unique sound. You probably know what it is because you've heard it play in your whole life. At the beginning of Stevie Wonders superstition, the clavinet or clave. While it looks and plays like a keyboard with white and black keys, the sound that comes from it is

actually exactly like an electric guitar. That's because it actually has guitar strings in it, and it gets plucked, and every time the keystroke comes down, there's a pick up there, just like an electric guitar, so it can distort and feedback and do all the amazing tricks that a guitar player does. Why you ask, would you put a clavinet or in this case many clavinet's on a song where the artist is such an amazing guitar player. Well, the answer is because it sounds so cool, also because it

might make you dance. Here, let me pull up the tracks, let's listen. The idea was it was so groovy that we just had to have brand and play clavinet kind of in the Stevie Wonders style. There it is and your left ear, and then that's a guitar, and you're right here, and there's Lindsay in the middle playing lead. And then the whole band comes in. See how they all bounce off each other and make you kind of dance. There,

you see why we use a clavinet. Go out and pick up Lindsay L's album The Project downloaded, stream it, buy it, give it to your friends. It makes great gifts. Also thank me later because this lady is incredible. Black Crisman Man Fresh Up Baby with All Black a clap song. It's hell, we may scratch, we may win. Condition of love, It's one condition to it. I hope you enjoyed this 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, Christian with the k People, follow me at Christian Bush on Twitter, Christian Bush on Instagram, Christian

Bush on Facebook, and Christian M. Bush on Snapchat. Thanks to Bobby Bones for the opportunity to make this podcast, Brian and Bush for making the soundtrack and assembling the pieces, Tom Tapley for audio wizardry and Whitney Pastrick for being a great producer and making this whole thing possible. This is Christian Bush geeking out. Thank you for listening.