ITS Home Edition: Jason Mraz

his life, I felt that big time. But then when he followed it up by by talking about feeling a bouncing positivity is people try to learn how to make you feel their smile behind their mask, I felt that too. Jason's got a lot of interesting things to say. And even if I'm not a hundred percent sure about disadvice to start every day by making your bed, I did try it this morning and it definitely didn't make things

any worse anyway. If you enjoy this episode, be sure to listen to the I Heart Radio podcast hosted by our Quarantine correspondent Jordan run Talk. It's called Rivals, Music's Greatest Feuds and it's available wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody, my name is Jordan run Talk, But enough about me. My guest today is a singer songwriter, and when he's not doing that, he's growing food on his ranch in southern California's uplifting summer jams like the Remedy and I'm

Yours are just as sunny as his disposition. And now he's putting some badly needed positive vibes into the world with his latest release, Look for the Good. It's a collection of original reggae tracks and bued with messages of optimism and gratitude, as practiced by his hero Mr Rogers. He's also backing up his ideals with action by dating proceeds from the record to charities promoting Black Lives Matter causes. I'm thrilled the welcome, Mr Ada z Jason Mraz Jason,

It's such an honor to speak to you. God knows I've spent so much of my my teenage years playing your songs two girls on guitar, trying to impress them. So I owe you a belated apology for for all of those times I've massacred your songs in the name of love. Oh, I don't mind. They're your songs. I mean, when we record them and put them out there for you to do what you wish for good or bad, for for awkward or for romantic heroism. I don't know,

it's all the above. In that one, i'd say, yeah, exactly. Oh well, how does life in quarantine find you today? Totally weird, man. I've just this has been the weirdest year of my life and probably for everyone. Probably for everyone, just what was normal has been changed, and then we're now being normalized into some really radical, far out and painful things as well. During it all, we're just asked to kind of stay away from each other, stay home,

keep your keep your mouth covered. I mean, it's just Twilight Zone all over the place, you know who it's not. It's not. But what's very What I find is interesting, and that's it adds to the weirdness, is that I've

experienced an increased level of politeness and cooperation. Like even though we are being we are seeing a lot of negativity in the world, Like America is getting an education, But if you go to the grocery store and you're at the gas station, you're doing the things we have to do to interact in the public working environments all that. I've just found an overall sense of like, we're going to get through this, and hey, how are you? And I want to make sure you can feel my smile

behind this mask. I really am getting that so and that's weird too, you know, it's like, Wow, everybody's being really nice. What's going on? It's definitely like I've noticed to trying to like smile with the eyes more, which is like, I guess, like what Tyra taught us. I suppose it's the smizing. It's like you want people to see it. I do that too. I agree. Wow. Thanks Tyra.

You've said on many occasions you are such an EmPATH, and I know a lot of my friends and myself for it's so hard not to to get bogged down with the feeling of just just taking on everybody else's pain. How do you try to keep your own head above water and look out for yourself first without taking everything

else on? Well, they do tell you on the aircraft to secure your own mask first before you help the others, right, Maybe that's a metaphor for something, but definitely I've always found that world peace begins within So anything I do when I get up in the morning, make my bed, brush my teeth, do a little yoga stretch, that short little routine is sort of my mindfulness and my alignment

in my balance. So when I step out into the kitchen where I have a shared space with roommates, or I flip on my phone and I see the entire world exploding, I can at least observe that from a balanced in a calm place. I can observe the world, the always changing world, the uncertain world. I can observe it with a with a grounded sense of like, I know who I am and I can handle this. I can make calm decisions out of love, not of fear.

Whereas if I skip the bed making, if I skip my yoga practice, if I don't brush my teeth and I just run into the kitchen, I just look at my phone, I don't have any I don't have any place to stand on, and that whole world, uh can overwhelm me, and then it's harder to even get out of bed and get on with my day or be productive. Uh. So it's it's small practices of mindfulness that I truly do believe begins with making your bed when you wake up.

There's something to that. Also, you're you're correct me if I'm wrong on an avocado and coffee ranch. Right now, at the moment, I can't think of a place that's better than being a farm. Just being connected to the earth. Does that help keep you centered? Absolutely? Absolutely. Now, farm work, as much as of an ideal it is, it's still a very challenging thing to maintain and sustain, especially in California.

Anything in agriculture in California is is not native. It was planted here because the weather is great, and we can be able to produce a lot of food and flowers and grains and all kinds of things that are made in California. But the irony is it requires irrigation and it requires a lot of farmer's footsteps. There's not a whole lot of just natural food forests happening it. It really is all designed I guess through generation generations

of agriculture. Um. So that's the boring part of the answer. Um. But what it means is living out here is it's challenging. It's it requires us to do some work as what puts a lot of energy into it, and most the other farmers I've met do have second jobs, They have multiple loans and leans on their properties, they have mortgages

because farming itself just doesn't make any money. So I always like to stress that when we're talking about this, because a lot of people want to go and live out on a farm and what not, just be mentally prepared that it is hard work to live the farm dream. I've been very blessed because I have music in my life, and I've been very successful with my first six albums too to be able to afford a beautiful ranch. And now we're trying to turn this little ranch into its

own sustaining business. So let's say that should the music industry collapse and we we no longer are selling music because everything is free, right, or we no longer are doing concerts because there's a pandemic and we just can't breathe, hopefully my little fruit farm will figure out a way to sustain itself. And what I mean is will the fruit ever actually pay for the labor, or will my other jobs and my other loans have to pay for that labor too. So living on a farm is exciting,

it's romantic, it's beautiful. Who everything you've just said right now is just so tinged with optimism. You know, it's I can't tour right now, and the music industry is really weird, but I'm gonna do this amazing beautiful thing. I mean, And that brings me to this album you've just made, which it's an album of hope, of optimism, and yet you've self identified correct me if I'm wrong as a pessimist, Like, how is that? I don't I don't believe you teach me your ways? How are you

this this hopeful and optimistic? Ah? Yeah, So the album is called Look for the Good, and I sit down and I will write a song like that, And in fact, almost every song I've ever written is kind of through that filter of like look for the good? How can I look for the goodness? And it's usually because I'm I'm sitting in either insecurity or lack of confidence or sort of not really knowing what the future holds, And so with that you can kind of feel out of balance.

And so I'll sit at an instrument piano or guitar, and I'll try to sing breathe life into a more stable future, or breathe life into love. Romance poetry breathe life into um just security, self confidence, things that I'm missing. So I use music too basically fill those I guess voids in my life. And if it works, if I really feel the uplift and the song itself just by the use of language, shifts my perspective into one that's

more confident, more optimistic than I know. I've done my job on the piano, or at least the music has done its potent alchemy on me, which is what I believe it can really do for all of us. In that saying, if I believe it can do it for all of us, that's when I'll take that song and I'll put it on a record, I'll put it on stage because I feel like there there might be some medicine in this music, because it worked for me. And I don't know why it is. I have a lack

of self confidence and insecurities. It's whether it's being rejected in I would is uh not the best soccer player in fourth grade and I remember kind of being heartbroken on the side of the field, and like those little moments when you're seven, eight, nine years old, they have such a huge impact on you and they start to shape what you believe about yourself, and then however your parents may have treated you, or your siblings may have

treated you, or people at school or teachers, etcetera piles on. And then as an adult, I'm still having to basically try to prove myself on the soccer field. Does that make sense? Oh? Absolutely. I mean there's a reason I'm wearing a pink shirt right now. I'm wearing it in

your honor. Thank you? Think um if reminds me of the album's closing track, Gratitude, which you express gratitude for for so many things, including you know, like bullies when you were seventeen, which is just looking for things from such a positive place. Can you tell me about that song? I know what kind of had a long gestation period. Yeah, um again, look for the how can I look for the good in everything? And when I was a senior

in high school, it's especially my senior year. I remember even starting the year going wow, I didn't get beat up because my first year of ninth grade, driving to school with my friend Brad, he said, hey, man, you're gonna get your ass beat every once in a while. It's just part of high school. And so I was. I was terrified of high school. And then in my and then in my senior year, I feel like I'm a pretty cool guy. I've done all the plays and and proved myself to be you know, have friends at

all the different cafeteria tables, you know. And I was kind of gloating, like, wow, I never got my ass kicked. I did pretty good in high school. And then like a week later, Uh, I got a series of beat downs and slams up against the locker. One was off site at school, offside of school grounds. That was pretty bad. And all of it was just jealous guys because I was doing well and I all my friends were their girlfriends, and they just wanted to put me in their place.

And so, as as I continue to write songs in my adult life, how can I look back at those moments and see them as beneficial to who I am today? So I have to say thank you for those experiences. I mean, here we are still taking time on this podcast to talk about those little moments. So those moments

are still contributing to my life today. And the song Gratitude UH actually began out of that um that instant, those instances in high school and when I have a little seed like that, then I can't wait to turn something into a song. Um. So I also thought about the rejection and the song also used to have other verses in it. And that's the typical of songwriting, is I'll overwrite a song or I'll do multiple rites and things just kind of end up on the cutting room

floor eventually. But this, this song actually began even probably when I was first starting to write songs for love as a four letter word, and unfortunately just it wasn't fully realized ten years ago. And when I was in the studio last year working on this new reggae album with Michael Goldwasser and Raining Jane and some amazing musicians,

I still have this gratitude song idea. Um. Another great songwriter, Matt Morris, and I had gotten together maybe in twenty fIF and spun an idea around the gratitude song, but again it never never saw the light. So it had just been kind of hanging around one of the many posted notes on the wall about potential song ideas someday. And this album Look for the Good was just the perfect final like package that Gratitude finally fit in and it finally found its home, you know, I was thinking.

I was thinking of the title, and I knew it sounded familiar, and then it finally clicked. It reminded me of Mr Rogers, sort of looked for the Helpers. And you've actually seen that Mr Rogers was a big influence on you morally and spiritually, at least as you made

this album right. Absolutely, And you know, I always knew the guy was onto something, but the lad a couple of years, there's been some great documentaries about the man and books and articles, and I kind of got reacquainted with him over the last five years and was very inspired by how he chose to use the power of television, how he chose to use that to get to people's feelings. And about five years ago, I was visiting a middle school and I met the counselor and I said, Hey,

what do you need. What's a common request that you would have to make your life better or make the students lives better? And she goes, you know what, we don't have Mr Rogers anymore. And by the time a student gets even to elementary school, if they have emotional problems, it's almost too late to start to address them. In the old days, Mr Rogers would address those from a very young age and basically give kids counseling before they

ever showed up in school. And she was right. So anyway, very inspired by him of the last couple of years. I really do believe it has affected my work from the No album with the Habit All track and what we're trying to do on that album to look for the Good and the messages we're trying to do here, and you're right, look for the Helpers is exactly what what inspired this song. Um Nelson Mandela's famous quote it

always seems impossible until it's done inspired this song. Uh. Michael Goldwasser sent me the song title look for the Good after he'd heard it sermonized at his synagogue by his rabbi, who said, look for the good and you will find the good. Look for the bad and you will find the bad. So how do you want to spend your time? You know? And Uh, that to me

is like that's songwriting. That's what we do in the song is we want to highlight those little moments in life so that we can cherish those moments forever and really make them feel big. Using the song for good, I mean use it for the theme for the Food for Heroes program in New York City, which provides food for essentral healthcare workers and an essential personnel. How did have that come to be? And what's been that that's

experience been? Like? That was that came right out of the gates, because apparently someone in the Mayor's office of New York is a big fan. So the minute we put the song out there, like, oh my gosh, this is so in alignment with what we're doing right now. Can we use this song? I said absolutely, So we all signed off. Just play the song, do what you need to do. Let's raise some awareness and money for your your essential workers. They're feeding feeding healthcare workers, which

was pretty awesome. You released the album on June this year, obviously a very important charge day. Tell me a little bit that decision. Yeah, man, so you know, I had honestly never even heard of Juneteenth. That was not something that was taught to me in my high school government or Civics or history classes about I don't know. Six months ago we decided, yeah, we'll put the album out in the summer June Nineteenth looks great. We'll do Today's

show on June one. Like when you're putting music out, you lay out a whole schedule of promotional events. Well, the world's had its eyes opened, America started getting education, including myself, and we realized, oh my gosh, our album is scheduled on this very historic day. And I said, you know what, I don't I don't want to not put my album out because I feel like the lyrics and the songs of this sing about the kind of world we're working towards, a more equal and just and

fair world. And I can't just have an album about these lyrics and these ideas without doing something. So I reallocated my royalties that had already earned through the advance that I got um with BMG, and uh, six different organizations received the total sum of two or fifty dollars already, which makes me feel great because I feel like this album now also serves that purpose of advancing a quality. You know, you've been hearing about reparations, You've been hearing

about redistribution of wealth, You've been hearing about socialism. I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter, and who am I if I'm not actually donating and volunteering and doing that work to help society breathe easier. I'm beautiful thing that I want to read the names of the organizations you donate to correct me if if I if I miss any, just

in case anyone listening also wants to contribute. San Diego Young Artist Music Academy, Rise, San Diego Grassroots Law Project, Center on Policy and Initiatives, and Equal Justice Initiative, and Black Lives Matter. I leave those are the six that's right. Doing so much. I feel sort of almost bad asking you this question, Uh, what else are you doing? Let me let me rephrase that. What are you working on that? Musically? I read that you have a second reggae project in

the works. Yeah. So when we made this new album, we assembled a phenomenal band, some guys that had toured with me, some guys that have been working with Michael Goldwasser in the past, and I just I want to play more music with these guys. We're gonna tour next year on this album, and we thought, heck, let's do another session before we hit the road, just so we can continue to build our catalog of some great songs, old and new using these these new reggae arrangements. So

definitely working on that. I've been working on some some holiday musical comedies for a holiday coming soon. Uh. And then recently, this bizarre gig I got during quarantine came from PBS and the creators of The Masked Singer. Uh. This weird reality show which I do not like the show title at all, but it's called Celebrity Show Off and it's about different households competing for the best television

show that you can produce in a week. And we you know, we compete and if you know, if your show is not great, you get kicked off the air. Uh I. I I kind of rejected it at first, like, yeah, maybe I'll do one or two episodes, And now I'm shoot, I'm six episodes deep into a full season almost, and uh, but it's cool. I've learned a lot about film production and how to make movies on an iPhone and uh.

And in that I get to write short, little musical comedies as well and try to be a goofy Mr Rogers character, which you know we were just talking about. You've said that this Quarantine has been a gift in some ways. Why is that? What's been the silver lining of this for you? Oh man, I've never been home this much, and that is a gift because I just I'm such a transient. I've been living out of a

suitcase since I was by eight years old. That this year, I mean ship man, I'll probably home for most of the year. I've been here since March and doesn't look like I'm going anywhere anytime soon. I've learned how to play the piano this year, which feels great. I mean, I could cheat it a little bit, but I'm I feel like I'm finally in confident um and that's been a gift because I've been stuck at home and at

piece of advice. Right at the beginning of all this is someone said, hey, man, just master whatever's in front of you, and if you're impatient, master your patience. All right, For me, I was afraid or or I couldn't imagine myself just sitting at a piano bench and practicing scales and things that to me was always boring ever since I was five years old. I didn't want to do that, and here I am almost forty five, and I still don't want to do that. So this year I said,

I'm gonna master that. I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna learn something. And that's how I have to look at it as a gift, you know. I I like to also hope that the piano is getting a little bit of mitigation and remediation through our being at home and are traveling less and are consuming less. But I don't know if that's really true. You know. I think we're also still drilling in the Arctic, and the Arctic is

on fire, and we're all still ordering from Amazon. Uh So, I don't think the world's any better that we're at home. But I can skitterly do you a piano song before before we explode. Uh So, I guess that's a gift. I was gonna say. I noticed a lot of like Fender Rhodes runs and stuff on this new album. Is that you playing that? I feel felt more keyboard having. Who I gotta tell you, it's not It's not me. Um. I I can I can slowly fake you a solo

on the roads. But my friend Daniel Mandelman played the Rhods on this record, and he just crushed crushes anything he plays. He's a one tape guy too, man. He'll he'll whip you up a solo or a second or do it, do what you take for you and we'll say, hey, man, do you want to give us another one? He's like, nah, that's that one's pretty good, and well listen to it, like yeah, that's pretty amazing. Where I think we're done. It's so it's so wonderful. So I aspire to be

like Daniel. Thanks Daniel. It's gonna say. It sounds like you're getting there. Oh that's so you got piano. That's that's a wonderful thing. What are some of your other favorite distractions during this time, the things that you know, kind of get you out of yourself for a minute. Weed good answer. Thank you California for legalizing recreational cannabis, because um, that's they dispensaries were one of the um

businesses on the essential list right away. They never closed and in the strip malls where we have dispensaries, they are slammed. I mean business in and out all day long, I guarantee it. And it's so sad because you know, the little sandwich shop next door or the nail salon next door, etcetera just shut down and the weed businesses are just cranking. Just goes goes to show you how many people are self medicating and or having a pretty

good time, Uh, during quarantine. Uh, you know, that's that's always been my my, my wine. At the end of the day, it's just twist up a little dupe and then um, if I'm not careful, a musical comedy will break out. So I try not to overdo it because I can only write to so many musical comedies per day. Is that something you would ever get into in an agricultural sense, like on on your farm. Uh No, not just yet, because it's not federally regulated still, like, which

is so crazy. At any time, unmarked federal agents could appear in your city. That would never happen, um, and they could destroy your plants, you know, or they could seize your property or something. So it's to me, it's it's not really a safe agricultural bet just yet, even though plenty of huge corporations are making billions of dollars off cannabis, while many small time cannabis offenders still sit

in jail, which is uh, which is totally bizarre. And if I were to have a crop, let's say, I would also need to promote that crop, right like Willie Nelson has a has a weed strain right or a weed variety? Um, I still want to stay in that Mr. Rogers Lane. I still would love to be on Sesame

Street again. So with that, I'm not going to put my name on like a strain of Jason Miraza's purple icky sticky uh titty twister thirty three percent th h C. You know, I'm just I can't see my name and face on a on a sticky butt just yet because I'd rather be hanging out with Oscar the Grouch And you know what I'm saying, And I don't think I don't think you can do both just yet, even though Oscar the Grouch does look just like a nug of weed.

Come on, there's our ad break right now. Is it a conspiracy theory that we just unveiled Oscar the Grouch? Is he really just a weed dealer? Can we get that trending? Please? All right? I definitely just got kicked off a Sesame Street forever. Thank you hashtag Oscar the nug Oh man, Oh you know what, we could have an indocou stran called Oscar the Couch. Are you sure you're not want to go into this business because this

is not good? Yeah? Man, I might have to. Hey, if looks like this year then yeah, forget about I'm definitely gonna just go into the weed business. I get I gotta ask you, and I'm sure you get this a lot. I spent a number of years as a wedding deed jay in college and I can't tell you the number of times that people ask me to play yours is the their first dance. How does that feel to have something so personal like a song? And I

can't write songs. I don't know what that feels like, so I know it's gonna be I imagine it has to be pretty personal to be embraced by so many millions and have it be such a huge part of their lives. I mean, you know, first dance. Yeah, it's crazy because most people don't realize that song is about a breakup and it's about devil worship. No, I'm just kidding. It's not about either of those things. It's about finding love, everlasting love. Um, it's a high honor. Man. You'd ever

know where a song is going to end up. I mean I didn't even know the song would end up on an album when I wrote it, But over time, audiences loved it and it always felt good to sing, so it ended up on an album, and it just kept getting played and played, and um, you know, I didn't really come up with the words I'm yours. It's written on a Valentine's heart. You can eat them. They're

crappy little candies that you eat every every Valentine. But it was written in such an honest moment, trying to um reconnect with the thing I love the most, which is losing myself in a song, like giving myself away to something so hard that I don't even experience myself anymore. It's just saying I'm yours, like I don't I don't even exist anymore because I am now eternally connected to source,

to something greater. And so of course that's what you'd want on your wedding day, is to look into your partner's eyes and say, I am giving myself to you and now we are just going to be one entity and and you are going to source me, et cetera, which is heavy on our wedding day. Also beautiful, but also beautiful. Yeah, man, So I'm thrilled about that. And I've been to some weddings and heard my music come on. I usually step out. I usually go out to the

bathroom or I go get a re phil. It's hard to just kind of sit and listen to something or or even like be on the dance floor and rock out to myself. I don't know why that is. Like I could be on stage and rock it out for you, but I don't want to. It's so weird, right although, I gotta tell you, I'll admit it right now. I could do it with the new album, with the reggae album. If someone put it on, I'd walk into and be like, yeah, turn it up. I just love the sound of this record.

Michael Goldwasser knocked it out of the park sonically, and Jeff Berkeley, who recorded it here in our studio, I want to give him a shout out. Is it true that that your Your Home studio was based loosely on

on Bob Marley's Home? Is that it is? Yeah? In two thousand three, I was touring a lot on my first album, and things were going well, and I was still living in an apartment in Los Angeles, and I'd come home for these little short weekends or two week breaks from tour in my little apartment in l A. I said, Okay, it's time, like I'm i gotta find like a little space, a little house somewhere, just I can't have neighbors right behind mine on the other side

of the wall. And I went to Jamaica to do a track with Sly and Robbie, and while I was there, I took a tour of Bob Marley's house on Hope Road, which is now in a museum. And a fun story about this story is I was working with Grace Vanderwald once, who was an amazing young ukulele player, and I was telling her about the time I visited Bob Marley's house, which is a museum now, and she was waiting Bob

Marley's house is a museum. I was like, yeah, well, when he passed away his estate his family decided they would turn it into She was wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Bob Marley is dead. And I thought, oh my gosh, wait a minute, you guys, I'm the person responsible for telling Grace Vanderwald Bob Marley is out of town forever. Um. That wasn't a great moment. Man. Back to the real story.

I visited Bob's home and for a young kid in his mid twenties who was trying to imagine what a house or a home could feel like seeing this house that Bob that they said all of the whalers would move in and they'd be able to live and rehearse together and eat together and be totally immersed in the music. That little studio in the backyard. They had fruit trees and herb garden. It was a compound. It was a community center. And I thought, that is cool. That sounds

very Zoolander. Yeah, And I came home from that trip and I just started looking around, and I looked on the fringe of San Diego, where in San Diego was kind of the town where I started my career, and I still had coffee shops there that I frequent and lots of friends and songwriters in the area. Still close enough to l A. But I didn't have to do

l A or be in that world. So I found a little fringe farm on the outskirts of San Diego, just a small little property that had some fruit trees, and and uh, I've been here ever since, sixteen years

and a few years into living out here. At first we had the studio in the house and the whole band moved in and we made Mr. A to Z that my second album, kind of mostly in the house, and then built a studio in my backyard and did a lot of the work, shopping and demos for we seeing, we dance, We steal things, And then same every album. I would just continue to chip away at the studio and use it as a workspace and kind of a

workshop where I would build bird houses essentially. But my bird houses are these little songs, and I could come in at all hours and just chip away at at a variety of things. And but this album was the first time I ever did all the tracks here, um, which was very, very exciting. You know. It took fifteen years to finally get to a place where the studio was in a shape where I could support the band feel good about the quality of the recordings. Um, and uh,

yeah we did it. Thanks Bob, Thanks for Bob and the Whalers and Bunny Whaler and and uh the Tough Cong crew for making Bob's home a museum to inspire a young person like me to try to grow up and continue the positive vibes that Bob and his music was making as well. So I see it. I see our effort as a as a tribute to what they were up to. You made your dream. That's incredible. Yeah, man, thanks, it's and I'm trying to make it a dream for

others too. There's a lot of people that get to live and work here that are all doing their version of that dream, whether you're an engineer or a drummer or um into agricultures. A lot of young people that work in agriculture here. So it feels good. And I know this place is gonna outlive me. You know, when you plant a tree, it's going to outlive you. That's just the nature of trees. When you write a song,

it's going to outlive you. All of our favorite song or most of our favorite songs might be by artists who are no longer on the planet anymore. But thank goodness for recorded music. It gets to continue to inspire us. And thank goodness for mother nature who continues to grow these avocados trees outside our studio. They were planted in the early seventies before I was even born, so I can't really take credit for the fruit that's growing. I just I'm just lucky enough to live here. Jason, Thank

you for your time, your music, your avocados. My last question when this pandemic is over you can snap your fingers and have everything go right back to normal. Whatever normally is. What's the first thing you would do? Trips, you would take people, you'd hug meals, you'd go out and eat. What's what's the first thing you want to do? The first thing is organized a big tour. Um he that's what I would do. Call every musician, Call the crew, call my dad, called the bus drivers. Um, Charlie quick,

I hope you do it well. I heard you in a car accident. I hope your shoulders doing better. Buddy, Charlie has been my driver for fifteen years on on tour buses. It's just amazing. Guy. Um, I would call everybody man because that's what we really do. I feel,

um as that's our jobs. We we are a traveling circus, were showmen, were entertainers, and when we go to small towns and all over the country, I feel like we um we stir up hopefully positive vibes and maybe even add some some juice to the local economies when we tour. I asked Willie Nelson once, why do you still tour after all these years? He said, you know, it gives

people jobs. It's it It matters to people. So and plus the joy that you get for those two hours when you just crank up the apps and the sound system and you rock the house and you surf those giant waves of music. There's nothing like it. There's no other job quite like it. So that's the first thing I do. The minute they say we can go back to life is normal. Uh, I'm gonna hit the road. We're gonna go on a long, juicy tour. Jason can't

wait to get you back out there. Thanks Buddy, We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio Home Edition, a production of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio and other shows from I heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.