I am all in again.
Oh it's just you.
I Smell pop Culture with Eastern Allen and I heart radio podcast.
Hey everybody, Easton Allen. I am in podcasts. What eleven productions? I heart radio, iHeart media, I heart podcasts. It's I Smell pop culture. I smell pop culture. I smell it and now you're going to with it as well. We're so excited this week. This is a huge one. We're talking to a music legend, and before I tell you who it is, I know you can see it in the title. I'm not I'm just gonna pretend like you can't though. I'm going to drag this out a little bit.
This has been such a fun thing to do. I'm so grateful to Scott Patterson for letting me do this. This has just been such a blast. We've gotten to talk to so many great people, so many awesome icons from the world of pop culture referenced in the world of Gilmour Girls.
And we're going to keep it going. Baby.
I've gotten a lot of great and very kind messages from you guys, but here I'm going to ask you to do one small thing for me. This is going to go really far with my boss. Okay, so, can you do me a favor on the podcast reviews on Apple Podcasts. You can leave a review there. Could you give it five stars and then say that Easton's pop culture interviews are my favorite part of this show.
Can you just do that for me? Can you do that for me?
That'd be great, even if you don't believe it, that would be awesome. Okay, but let's get into today's episode. We are talking to Jeff Timmins from ninety eight degrees. That's right, ninety eight degrees. He's not just the lead vocals. This man started the whole group. It all started with him. There would be no ninety eight degrees if it wasn't for Jeff Timmons. We're so excited to get to know him. Ninety eight degrees was referenced twice in Gilmer Girls, two times,
once in season, both in season one. By the way, Season one, episode nine, Rory's Dance. So at the beginning of the episode, Rory and Laura II are in the car and they're talking about why Rory isn't going to the dance.
She's not going to go.
Rory says she doesn't want to go because she can imagine how it will go. It'll be stuffy and boring, the musical suck, and since none of the kids like me, I'll be stuck in the back listening to ninety eight Degrees watching Tristan in Paris argue which of them gets to make me miserable first? So you know clear that Rory's not a ninety eight degrees fan, and that gets cemented later on. In season one, episode nineteen, Emily in Wonderland,
Rory and Lane are hanging out in her bedroom. They're analyzing the voicemail that Henry left for Lane when Emily calls Rory with some questions about what she likes. This is for this bedroom she's setting up for her. Does she like Roses or Lily's? And for music? Does she like in Sync or ninety eight degrees? And then she later says or the Backside boys that made me left pretty hard, and Rory says in Sync. Rory does not like ninety eight degrees. She is not a fan. She
is an InSync girl, at least given that choice. But we are ninety eight degrees fans. We're huge fans. I mean invisible man, I do. Thank god I found you true to your heart from mulan.
God.
I love that song. I love it so much.
We're gonna talk to the guy that wrote it. He is in the waiting room here. It's Jeff Timmins from ninety eight degrees and this is I smell pop culture. Let's get into this. Jeff Timmins, the founder of ninety eight degrees with the legendary ninety degrees. We're such big fans. Thank you so much for doing this. We're so excited.
Oh my gosh, thanks for having me me. Congrats on all your success. I'm excited to do this with you.
Oh, thank you, thank you so much.
Okay, I want to go back to the beginning here at the start, and something that stood out to me about ninety eight degrees that always stood out to me is that the other kind of boy bands that you guys get grouped in with, like in sync backsheet boys, those were all started by like record labels and like producers you got you were started by you, like you started the vand Jeff Timmons.
Well, I appreciate you knowing that a lot of people don't, despite us having done hundreds of interviews. You know, look, we you know it's flattering to be lumped in with such successful acts, and we have a ton of respect for Backstreet in and saying friends with those guys.
But we were started in a different way. You know.
I was a fan of R and B music and really didn't intend on being a musician and heard Boys the Men on the radio and fell in love with Boys to Men and had always had a knack for singing and been in quartets in school, and you know, for some reason, I just gravitated towards R and B pop and started the group at a party with some other guys and you know, quit school and went to La. You know, like the old stories. I mean, you didn't
have stuff like this. You didn't have zooms and social media and to break cuber or you know TV shows like American Idol, So you had to go where the action was. And a group of friends of mine and I went to LA. We drove to LA and just started now basically singing for our supper, dropping the hat
and trying to get discovered. And those guys ended up quitting and then I, you know, auditioned a bunch of people and then aroundabout way got introduced to Nick via a tape, a cassette tape, which is you know, it's an arcade.
It's it's an ancient form.
Of a medium which you put into a tape player and press play and you know all that stuff. But Nick on a tape and didn't know what he looked like and convinced La and and joined my group that we were gonna, you know, hopefully be world famous one day.
That's incredible.
So you you were already before you left Ohio, you were kind of you wanted to start a group, like a vocal group.
That was already on your mind.
Well, it actually wasn't you know. I was. I was bouncing from school to school.
I come from a small town in Ohio that's a football town. It's not arts well, not discouraged. It's not cool, you know, uh and it and I always had an act for that. But I went to small college to play football, and of course didn't have the size, the skills you know in the above to be a good
football player. And after bounce around in failing and not doing well a small colleges, I was at Kent State University as a student and I was at a party and some girls were talking about these guys as they saw they weren't paying attention to us that they saw these guys that were singing.
And I was like, well, I can do that.
And I found three guys at the at the party with me that I ended up had gone to high school with before, and we parted out my girl and sang at a cappella and they paid attention to its literally as shallow as that sounds, That's how I started.
This whole thing. I called my mom up. I only had a.
Less than a semester left before I graduated school, and I called my mom on the phone and said, I'm going to start a singing group and I'm going to quit school.
And she, obviously she didn't believe me.
She thought I was drinking, which I had, But you know, there was something about the way it sounded that night that it just it kind of I had an epiphany and I wanted to do it.
And that's that's how it started.
I'd never aspired although that stuff came to me naturally and I had a knack for it, I didn't think i'd be doing it for a career at no point in my life.
Zero percent chance.
And I mean, and you guys like really influenced like an entire generation of music just from that moment.
It's incredible.
It is weird that one single, slight decision can can change the course of the universe, you know, your own universe. I mean I decided that, Oh man, I got to finish school. I mean, who knows what would be going on? You wouldn't I mean, Nick wouldn't have joined my group. I mean, who knows what his destiny would have been.
But there's a lot of things that you're going Well, if I didn't go to this place, I meet this guy and then do this, you know, the whole course of a lot of things would be different.
Yeah. Again, I'm wondering if you can clear something up for me. The name ninety degrees. I love it so much. It's so cool. I love that it's stylized with the little degree symbol. That makes me so happy. I read two different origins for the name, and I want to know if you can clear this up for me.
So one's probably true, So okay, okay, which ones you're gonna tell me?
I read that you uh seeing a temperature on a hot tub was one of the stories, and the other one is just the average human body temperature.
Well, I hadn't heard either one of those whoa.
But you know what we used to say in interviews was our music is our love. Songs created an atmosphere of heat and sexiness, and so that's why we came up with ninety eight degrees. No, that's not how we really came up with it. We we had a bunch of bad names. When I started the group, we were called just us. Actually the first group was a spoof name called four Tools, like four goofballs then it can
jump us, which is totally boring and unmemorable. And then you know, right before we got signed, people were like, look, you guys got to come up with a cooler name, and so we we we all scratched down names on a piece of paper.
There were some terrible ones.
Next issue, you know, new edition, you know, yeah, you know verse four fourte you know, all the names with four in it, and then we, you know, none of them stuck in. Our manager at the time had a really pretty girlfriend and she and her friends walked up to us and here we are, fresh off the boat from Ohio and see gorgeous New York girls telling us we should be called nine.
NB eight degrees. And so we were like sure, and that's how we came up with the day.
Believe it at very very deep thinkers we were back then.
I mean it clearly stuck.
Wow.
Incredible. Anyway, thank you for clearing that up for me. Something I'm always really interested in with bands, groups that get to this level is like, what are some of the early shows you guys played? Do you remember something like did you ever play like a county fair or like that's.
A great question. Nobody really ever asked us that.
We started off playing cheerleading camps and driving ourselves around in a window bago that we had wrapped with our pictures on it. Yeah, and we went from cheer we sang It's Something acappella and met somebody that ran a big cheerleader organization, and so we thought we would gain a fan base by driving around to these cheer leading camps in the summertime. We played gymnasiums and sometimes we had a boom box was the sound system, and we literally were collecting a mailing list.
There wasn't an email list.
We would collect physical mailing addresses from these cheerleaders so we could spam them with our letters and mail with our new material and our new songs and stuff like that. But I mean we've played everything. Man, We've played a cornfield in the middle of nowhere, in the mud. I mean, you name it, we've done it. Malls, you know, car lots, I mean, and also the other side of things, stadiums and race tracks for one hundred and ten thousand people.
But we've done it.
When I tell you we've done it all, we've done. We've done it all. There's nothing left for us that we haven't done yet.
And let that be a listen to everyone listening. You know that grind, that motivation, believing in what you're doing. It's so inspiring to hear that. That's kind of story. And when you guys were when you first hit the scene, your style, I think you're style is so markedly different from the other boy bands that again you get grouped in with, Like you're so distinctly different from in sync from Backstreet Boys. How did you develop that sound? Like, where did that inspiration come from? Well?
I appreciate you knowing all this stuff. It's very nice because look, we were inspired by good music. And not to say that those groups don't have good music.
We love pop, but.
We're more r and B influenced, you know, we boys demand and vocal groups like Take six, which are these these guys with an amazing blunt but also do wop groups from the fifties and sixties and Temptations and the Four Tops, but also classic rock groups like Foreigner and Journey and Boston and all these groups that have these really lush you know, four five part, six part harmony with a lot of soul, and so was our That was the sort of the gestation and beginning of what
we kind of craft that as our sound. And I'm very thankful you you recognize that.
Yeah, it really drew me in. I mean, so when I was growing up, the only boy band I listened to was the Beach Boys. I loved their harmonies. I love the Beach Boys. But then when I heard True to Your Heart on the Mulan soundtrack, I was like, who are these guys? Oh my god, this is awesome. How, I mean, how did you get hooked up with Disney with Stevie Wonder? Can you tell me how that came together?
It was amazing. And you want you talk about Stevie Wonder. I mean, he's one of our idols. I mean, you're talking about those old motown groups like Stevie and Smokey Robinson, and you know, we were signed a modetown h and so we were on the road and we had gotten approached by Disney, you know, and and here, you know, Disney wanted us to do something for a soundtrack, and we all know what that means. That means, that's a
huge opportunity. And so we of course said yes. And they said, well, how did you feel about Stevie wonder, you know, playing harmonica?
We said, are you kidding you?
Of course, And what we did is we went in the studio and recorded the record, all of it without Stevie on it, and just his harmonica part. And and Christina Aguilera was there, Yeah, reflections wow. And it was in the beginning stages of her career as well. And then you know, I guess Stevie decided it. He heard it and said, hey, you know, I'm going to take take a verse on this. And of course he took the song to a whole nother dimension and that that stuff was like a pinch me moment.
You never you know, I'm a year.
And a half, two years removed from sitting in my basement in Ohio listening to this guy on the stereo and then next thing I know, we're doing this soundtrack for Disney with him and then performing on the Tonight Show with him. So it was, it was it was quite an experience for us.
Wow.
So would you say that was the moment when things started really like going to the stratosphere for you or.
It's hard to say because you know you went back then it was such a grind and you literally worked all the time. You didn't have social media to proliferate your brand and touch your fans every day of the week. You had to constantly be out into the public, sort of like on a campaign trail for your career, doing live shows, free shows in stores where you sign autographs
in stores. A lot of people are like, one, are those you know doing all kinds of stuff where you know, we didn't really you know, we would see these different milestones, but we're such a bunch of blue collar guys.
We were going, all.
Right, what's next, what's next? And you'd go, Okay, this is cool. I think the Tonight Show with Stevie was one of them. I think hearing your song on the radio for the first time is another one.
You're like, oh, man, kiss FM.
I was in La working security and I was going, man, I want to be on Kiss FM someday, you know. So those are there are so many of those moments, but it takes it takes them innute to step back, which we didn't have and go wow, we're on the
right trajectory. And then all of a sudden you're doing different things, performing at the White House on a ward shows and things of that nature, and you're going, wow, we're still we think we're still in the right direction, but the milestones you really couldn't take a break and take it in. We enjoyed it, but we probably could have enjoyed a lot more.
I love hearing that.
As we record this, I'm sitting two doors down from the KISSFM studios, so that's that's exciting to hear at that station.
Man.
I mean, those guys were instrumental in helping break us, so big fan.
Yeah, we love you over here. So I told you before we started recording this. This show is about Gilmore Girls, and we're exploring all the pop culture icons that grace. The words of Gilmore Girls and ninety degrees is brought up twice, and there's one part where Rory, the daughter character, she's asked by her grandmother what music do you like
in sync or ninety eight degrees? And then she also references she calls them the Backside Boys, but the Backshe Boys, and Rory chooses in sync over you, guys, I'm sorry to say, hey, look again.
To be first of all on such an iconic show, we used to like, well, we would hear that kind of stuff. We were like, wow, that's amazing, even if it was a jab at us. You know, if the La Times reviewing one of our records, it gives us the thumbs down, We'll like, hey, guys, La Times. They reviewed our record Gilmore Girls, Okay, in sync they sold you know, forty million albums. I don't mean by coming in second place to them on a hit TV show.
That's yeah.
I was gonna ask, like that must happen all the time, Like where you're like watching TV and like a character brings or like or you see like a ninety degrees poster in the background of a movie or something like how does that feel?
Does that happen to you?
It does feel? You know, Look, it's it always felt cool.
It feels cool now when I mean, we're thirty years into this, right, so yeah, still, you know, mentioned on relevant TV show someone I can't remember the show that it was on, but somebody just referenced us on a show the other day, And of course immediately my phone starts blowing up, Well did you see this? Then the other And I'm like, I don't even know what show that is, but reference very recently and I can't. I wish I could have remembered the name of the show, but I can't.
Right now.
Yeah, I mean again, you guys, and we're all talk about your new album here in a second. But still in twenty twenty five, still such a huge band. Now, in two thousand and three, you went on hiatus. You guys took a break for a bit, and but you reunited in twenty twelve. You kept your promise that you'd be back. But I'm curious if you're open to talking about this. During that break, was there ever a point where you were like, oh, we might get back together, this might be the end of ninety degrees?
Well, yeah, the entire break, you know, the entire break until the very end.
I mean, you know, for us, it was abrupt, so we ended up stopping you know, September twelfth of two thousand and one, we were in New York City on September eleventh.
We were on the grind for pretty much five years straight.
We did the Michael Jackson Special in New York City on September tenth. The next day was September eleventh, and we didn't know what was going to happen.
But in the world we.
Were due for a break for our last couple of shows because obviously, you know, we didn't know if there was going to be a war or we were away from our families.
We all went to our families.
I had two little kids at the time, and I just just you know, I went in that direction. Nick ended up doing a TV show, you know, Justin ended up running for may or. Drew ended up started and performing art school. So we all went in different directions. We didn't officially break up. We just kind of went in weird trajectories for about a decade.
And so I never thought, you know that we you know, we.
All had so many different things we were doing and it's and they were all so different that we're like, how are we going to make this a line? And then you know, look in twenty eleven, we said, well maybe we should get back together.
I mean, it was so weird.
I called Justin and like, don't you think it's time to get back together? And he said yeah. I mean, it wasn't like some weird fight that we all sat down at the table and hashed out our differences. Were all like, okay, should we get back together now? And then everybody said yeah, let's get let's get back together, and that's what we did. We came back and we
decided to come back, couldn't find the right timing. We end up doing this big show in Pennsylvania that was popular called Mixtape, and we were like, look, here's what we'll do. We'll put together a little show for this and if the fans like it, maybe we'll consider, you know, doing it more and coming back. And if they don't, well,
look we'll go back and do our own things. Fortunately for us, they liked it, and so we've been around ever since then, and it's been the second time we've been together and at it twice as long as we were the first run, and so owned by we have.
So much more fun.
We're so blessed to do it, and we never thought I thought we would be doing it this long and have such a loyal fan base, so you know, we're thrilled and excited about you know, what we've been able to do and that they're still coming out for us and supporting us.
I love it.
Jeff Timmins from ninety degrees is with us. We're going to take a quick break here on the IMLON podcast. We'll be back in one second. Hey, it's the imlone podcast. I smell pop culture. We're hanging out with Jeff Timmins from ninety eight degrees, the legendary ninety eight degrees. So something I read that we're gonna talk about your again.
You new I'm here in a second. But Nikolache said that when you guys were recording I do cherish you, he had a cold and he was eating lazed potato chips till help code his throat or something like that. I thought that was such a wild I had never heard that before for a vocalist, and I was worrying, if you have any weird vocal tricks that you do that you can share with us, Well.
That's interesting.
So we you know, I'm sure you know vocalists, and you interview vocalists when you're in the studio, you're a head case. Vocalists they're superstitious. They always think they're not warmed up. They always there. They're hypochondriacs. They think they have a cold when they don't have it. We somehow
psych ourselves out. And you know, for me, this is probably not going to be the best advice because I like to have a couple of beers before I go in this, right, loosen up and relax a little bit before I go in there.
I'll have a couple of drinks.
Now, vocal coaches purists will tell you that that's bad for your voice, it dries out your vocal cords, which could be true. But for me, that little inner critic, if I have a couple of beers or a couple drinks, the inner critic shuts off.
You're a little bit more relaxed. Even if it's a placebos. Probably someone could give me non alcoholic beer and put it in al and I would go, oh, I feel loose. You know.
It's that kind of a thing to where you're not afraid to try things. You have a little bit more confidence. And so that's I mean not to encourage people to drink alcohol, but that's when I'm in the studio, I like to have a couple of drinks. Now, Nick did do that with the laze potato chips, specifically lays Keith Thomas, the producer, gave him because they had more salt and more oil in it, and supposedly that made him, you know, sing such beautifully on that song. It's like a legendary
song that he crushes. But I don't know that those potato chips. Actually, I think Nick psyched himself out, and he sounds amazing, even if he has a cold, he always sounds amazing.
Oh yeah, a voice of an angel, that guy.
Do you have any like formal vocal training, because you're telling me like it seems like everything starts so organically for you.
Yeah.
You know, Look, I grew up in the musical, theater and choir. My parents had us in everything. We played a lot of sports. We were in speech and debate. We were in theater, we were in musicals, we were in the band. You know, they had us doing everything. Now, you don't have time as a kid, you can do one thing. Yeah, but we did everything, and so I had some training. But you know, like I said, we came from it wasn't cool, so I.
Never really took it seriously.
I mean i'd go and excel in that area or get lead parts of things, but I never practiced. I never did any vocal exercises. I mean, to this day, we'd kind of warm up about three minutes before we go on stage. I don't walk around with the thing on my neck and turn the temperature down in the room.
I don't do any of that stuff.
So once in a while for your horse, maybe some hot teat a little bit of honey and lemon, and sometimes that'll get it going.
But you know, look, I wish we did.
At one point, Motown put us with a vocal coach, and we were paying for this guy to go see him once a week, twice a week. But we get there and before like the month was over, we realized we never did any vocal training.
All we did was tell us stories about his career.
So we cut that off after it cost us I don't know twenty thousand dollars or something, but yeah, I mean, it's a little off the beaten path that we don't have those kinds of things. And I wouldn't encourage people not to take care of their voice and you know, it's your instrument, you know all that stuff. But we you know, we probably could be better at that.
I mean just personally.
I think it really comes through in the music though, because like, like you guys just are your friends. You're such good friends. I can hear that relationship in the performances, and like, I just think it's the purest form of like of music. It's this guys getting together singing. It's great.
I'm glad you see that.
And it's hard to find guys to BLENDND with the blend is everything right, the feel and the blend, and and that's why a lot of people are good groups. And you might have a couple of two three lead singers in a group, but when they can't sing acappella, well, we didn't have any tracks or ability to create tracks or any instruments.
We just had our voices.
So we had to really kind of figure it out a whip way to make them blend really quickly. And fortunately, you know Nick and Dree brothers, so they have a similar tambur to their voice, and you know, Justin had been working with Nick in another band, so they all were familiar with themselves, and you know, it just had to be be getting in there and kind of fitting
in when I could. We've been fortunate enough that that's where we're That's probably our strongest suit is singing our a cappella, but you can't put out complete albums anymore acapella and actually new tracks and R and B tracks don't even like you to stack stack too many harmonies anymore, make it too complicated. So you know, uh, you know, we that's why we like Christmas music so much, because you can you can showcase everybody's voice and the dynamics of a quartet or even more harmony.
Sometimes when you were doing those early shows, you were playing those like cheerleader camps and stuff. What were you singing original songs that you'd written or were you singing covers?
Where were you guys?
Well, we were doing a combination of both.
So we had we had our own couple originals of our own and you know, we're probably not very good that we did covers. You know, we did some Boys to Men covers and you know, I had a song we would do that sometimes and some other ones. But we actually did a demo with Montel Jordan. Montel Jordan, who wrote, you know, produced and was famous, most famous, had a lot of hits.
But this is how we do it.
How we do it.
Yeah song And when.
We had gotten discovered at Avoye the Men concert, it was by his road manager and wow, you know kind of took us under his wing and Montel did our demo. So Montel crafted like three or four songs for us that never weren't out yet. So we were just basically singing these new songs to girls in the crowd that didn't even had never heard those before. But a couple of them ended up making our first album.
Oh amazing.
And so you you just released a re recorded edition of I Do Cherish You, ninety eighth version. I love that, you know, taking ownership of the masters.
You know, Taylor Swift is the one that made that popular, right, She had dispute with Scooter Braun and he took her masters, so she re recorded her master's. But what artists don't know is if you're not under recording an agreement, you always have the ability to do that. And we've had that opportunity to do that for years. But you know, people didn't understand why you would do it. Now you do it, you know, for us of course, we want
to have ownership and make money from your stuff. But for us, it was we'd like to own our own material that.
Made us popular.
So we took some time to go back and re record those songs, and we didn't want to record them differently than what people remembered them as because that's what made them successful. So it was challenging for us to go back and try to sound like we did back then and make the track sound like they did back then.
But we feel like we've.
Accomplished that and it just feels good to own your own stuff, you know, control your own stuff.
Well, I mean, I imagine you know, you sing that song at your shows like every every time, but like getting back in the studio to record it in that setting, was that weird at all? How did that feel?
Well?
It was weird because one, you know, those modules and those synths and those sounds they were they came from you know, physical instruments, and to go to find those old things to recreate those sounds were hard to do. That was a tough challenge initially because we wanted them to sound identical because eventually we'd like them to replace the old ones, you know, so play our versions, So that was a challenge.
But to go back and sing.
You know, back then, we didn't use auto tune every time on our voices, right, you just sometimes sing.
A little bit out of tune.
So early we're going, well, I got to sing a little autitude here, and I gotta sing with less soulfulness here, and I gotta be choppy and have less feel here.
And so after your years.
Of habitually singing the songs and flipping them your own way on stage, you got to go back and go, oh wow, I really did it totally different than we So it was challenging, but it was really really fun too.
I never thought about that because you know, I'm think abou all these artists, like we recording these songs and thinking like, oh, you know, you just do it again, but like there's little imperfections that you want to recreate to make them sound is soone.
Wow, that's fascinating. Thank you for sharing that.
It was fun. Well, look, we wanted people to We wanted them to.
Be so close that people won't be able to tell the difference, and we feel like they're pretty they're pretty close. I mean the mixes are better now because you have better technology. To mix like at Most and all this other. Yeah, spatial, but but we feel like we were like, let's make them so undeniably close that, you know, people won't be able to tell the difference, because that's what they fell in love with.
You know, so we wanted to be true to that.
And I Do as part of your new album, Full Circle come in May ninth, can you give us a sneak peak of what else is on that album?
Well, we've got the you know what, we think still are our five biggest hits, and then we recreated all those Una Noce and I DO and an Invisible Man and and you know, because of you Hardest thing. But we've got five new ones that are pretty cool. They kind of sound true to our sound.
You know. We went had a little bit.
Of a departure here and there because you start to go, oh, I need to be relevant and I need to sound current.
And you know, do this and that.
But we decided, well, let's go back and sing songs that sound like when people hear them, oh, it sounds like a ninety eight degree song. So we have five new ones, one of which Nick wrote with a bunch of group, a group of great talented writers called Got You that's also out right now and that as soon as that came out and everybody said, sounds like.
A ninety eight degree song.
Drew pet one that's really cool called Same Mistake, and it's really really it's sort of a it's sort of a sequel to the Hardest Thing, and that's you know, a couple of other ones tremble stranger things. In this one we did with a Filipino artist called Mona Lisa that our label, our label partner, Adam h Road with his wife, So you know, we have we're really proud of this one.
You know, I can't wait. That's May ninth, Full Circles coming. Are you guys gonna you have a tour in the works.
Or you can hit the road? Yeah?
I mean usually we you know, our schedules are crazy. We all do sure different things, which we're very fortunate to do. So we haven't been able to do a big proper tour in a long time. So when we find we can do a pocket of fifteen dates or twenty dates, which we've been doing in September and October the last couple of years. But this year we're going to kind of, you know, go overseas for a little bit.
We haven't been overseas to our fans there. You know, we actually Canada and in Southeast Asia broke US before the US, so we haven't been there in a proper way in a long time. So we're gonna kind of target those probably start in May, June July timeframe, and then maybe in the fall come back and do some US stuff, maybe a Christmas tour. You know, we're not sure yet. We're kind of just feeling it out.
I love it.
I love it.
I can't wait.
So this is something I always ask our guests here, and this is a this is a dumb question, but I'm just fascinated by it. But like, is there one moment that, in all of ninety eight degrees since you've been doing this, is there a moment that, like, like when you're kind of just sitting back and thinking on your career, like, wow, that one like rises to the top. Is there a memory you think of It's a big question.
I know, it's not a dumb question at all. We've been blessed, man, We've had so many.
Yeah, but I gotta say some of the stuff in the beginning that was fun, right that I remember doing that and going, man, that was sort of like the innocent time before we came fame.
Is that grind fun?
But I think for me performing with Boys de Men, you know, after being on a hiatus for eleven years and coming back with Boys de Men and New Kids on the Block, touring with our idols and legends like new kids on the Block after not doing it for ten years, I mean, that was pretty amazing.
It was a huge tour, you know, forty some.
Cities, big arenas, sixteen to twenty thousand people a night. I think, you know, every night that I performed with Boys de Men, I was like, man, this is like a dream. I would have never if I could have written this out, which I did. I wrote all my goals down and fortunately all of them came true. But I didn't even pennant this well, you know, I didn't even think of it being this grand. So I think, you know, performing every night with those guys, I literally was going to my own tour with Boys.
De Men like crazy.
So that's probably you know, there are some you ask me a different day, it's probably something else, you know, so, but this that was one of the big ones.
I love.
So you actually had it yet a list of goals? When need you make this list? At what point in your life?
Well?
Well, I like talking about this because I think it's interesting for people. It's I think people should do this because it kind of it kind of sparks your mind to create the opportunity for you. When my original group that I was with quit and I decided to stay in LA, they all went back to Ohio.
I stayed in La.
I you know, I was working, you know, twelve hour shifts in security.
And my brother, you know, I was I was like, man, how am I going to start a new group? But I don't know anybody in LA And how do I do it?
And my brother gave me to Tony Robbins books. One was called Unlimited Power and one was called Awaken the Giant Within. And I had plenty of time to write my goals in the security booth at my security job that I worked twelve hours, and it just said, hey, write out your goals and make them as lofty as possible and as detailed as possible. And and at first it seems foolish that it's impossible, but I wrote them
all down in great detail. And then two years later, every single one of them had come true.
Uh, and so it was. It was funny.
But because we were doing a still in San Diego and here, you know, Tony Robbins, they knock on our dressing room door. Tony Robbins wants to meet us with his son, and I freaked out.
I'm like, hey, man, you're the reason.
You know what, Like, yeah, I know my stuff works, but geez really, but you know, there's something to be said about opening up your imagination, your subconscious mind, and you know, being open to these things and as you write them down, you start to visualize them and feel them. And I know it sounds like cosmic wu stuff, but hey,
every single one of those weird goals came true. And I had no right to really believe it at that time because I had no money, I had no group, and I had no immediate you know, futures or opportunity, future opportunity right there in front of them.
So that's what happened.
Wow, I mean, everyone listening, take ray you wind that part, listen to that again. That is great advice I think for anyone who's looking to improve your life, just achieve a goal. It's it's great. And look, look at works for Jeff Timmons, it can work for you. Thank you so much for your time today. This has been so exciting. We're all such big fans of ninety degrees. We're so excited for the new album and we can't wait to
hear ninety degrees reference in another TV show. So thank you again, Jeff tims You're just like so much.
I'm flattered and honored that you had me on continued success. I've noticed you've been doing a lot of great things for a long time. Congrats on this pet podcast, and I'm excited to see what's next for you. Thanks for plugging the album and knowing a lot about our career. I mean, I sincerely appreciate.
That you're the best. Have a great one, man, Thank you.
Man, appreciate it.
Hey, everybody, don't forget Follow us on Instagram at I Am All In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.