Ep 498: Hunting, Singing, and Going Dry with the Turnpike Troubadours

This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast, you can't predict anything.

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Holy smokes. We're joined today by Evan Felker from Turnpike Troubadours. Hello, thank you for coming on. Man, glad to be here.

I gotta tell you just to start right out. Max here.

You know what Max told me before you got here. He liked you before it was cool to like you?

Really, when was that you didn't know about this era this time? Yeah, Honest asked me, He's like listening to the Turnpike and I was like, yeah, I did before it was cool.

Yeah, I saw him in twenty eighteen, So I guess you got me beat.

There was a window there that we weren't very cool at the beginning, and now I think we're pretty cool.

Oh oh, you hold it. You went from cool to uncool to cool again, I think so oh yeah, no, I got what you're saying. Been there, well, thanks for coming out these a lot of people.

So so this is a Hunter Spencer, he's a fan, Turnpike fan, doctor Randall, Randall Williams.

He doesn't like, doesn't like. He doesn't introduce himself as.

I've never Oh, I was gonna say, I've never liked anything before it was cool.

So I'm still waiting for that to happen. And of course Max he's a fan and Joannie is a fan. Fact when we came in, y listened to the new album.

Thank You, enjoying all the Hunting lyrics that Yeah dropped in there.

Phil can you can? Can you speaking the lyrics? Do you have the thing I sent you? Yeah?

Yeah, I've got it pulled up, I can.

So just for a little background, this part of If you want to check your text messages and stuff, you can do all that, but this is a little part of the show where we have to talk about a couple of things unrelated to our special guests, but you just might be of interest to you. Yeah, because some time ago there, some time ago, there was a incident

Yeah, outhouse structures. Yeah.

Well, there was a high profile news story that happened here where a woman where a dude went down in there to get his phone and got stuck in the vault, and so we had the people that rescued him on the show.

Evan didn't catch this story, No.

No, he does need to them in.

So then they became a whole rash of incidences of people retrieving things in.

Vault toilets and get stuck.

And then we had a cop right in he rescued someone out of a vault toilet that was retrieving her Apple Watch, and he knew how to rescue her based on having listened to the podcast, because the other rescuers didn't realize that you could remove the whole pedestal. They thought the victim had to come out of the hole, had to come so he gets there and the cops and firefighters that are there think that she has to come up.

Through the hole through the seat.

Yeah, and he says, you know what, I was listening to this podcast and they had a guy on there to conduct her vault toilet rescue, and he was saying that you can actually jack the whole pedestal out of there, so they removed the pedestal and conducted the rescue. Then Krin find is this. This is a guy that this is fascinating. Here's the guy that does the news. He does the news and music. So if you don't like reading the news, this gentleman sings it. Sings the news

He played this film. This is amazing.

I dropped my watching some public excretion.

That's no for me, don't that's good bye.

Felicia The Tones of Life and Her Lady Stuck in the can. This is covered in that blue stuff?

What's this is for?

Really?

Her playing?

She ain't got a watch, she can't.

Tell the time, I know twenty four cent.

She's out of her mind.

Timing in an our house pit, putting her whole self and in digging through fifties strangers lunch and then she likes.

Her apple products a bunch.

That's a branch too. That's good, Bila housing. This guy more popular? I don't know. I feel like he should be, like, like, he should be more famous than weird out. What's this deal? We can't we can't do that without lately saying who he is? Who is he? I got it? Look him up? He should be way more famous.

That'd be a good show, as a show. Not where you don't have a morning show and I have famous people on. There should be a morning show where have people who ought to be famous on?

It's reads piano news. That's the Instagram.

But does it reads like r e E R E E D.

His name is read like he's.

Read.

His name is reads well, read's piano news. If you're out there, big admirer, I'll be getting all my news from you.

He's only thirteen hundred followers. I know, that's all my news from now on. Man, I wonder if he's covering the crisis in Israel. I was wondering what he would think about that, is.

He Are they on the same or does he does does he experiment in different genres, have one tune that he plays.

Everything got to be on the piano well unfortunately.

So I don't know yet because I only found out about him this morning. And you know, in the morning, you wake up like my garage is a mass. My kids set their alarms early to play in the snow. They're a mass, like everybody's lay. And I was in a bad mood and then I found that, and then I walked around the.

House with a little chuckle, a little grin on my face. So he really, he really helped me out reads Piano News, Ladies and Gentlemen and other show business news. Phil.

I didn't know till I'm going to see Phil's special play this weekend.

I didn't know.

Thank you m the way.

I didn't know that you can my whole family's going.

Yeah, it's lovely.

I was telling you my kids are mistaken and think they're going to some kind of Halloween thing.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I mean, you're gonna be ruining their night. I just want to get the Halloween play.

I'm like the Halloween play. Yeah, my I got tickets. You kissed somebody in this play?

Oh yeah, yeah.

No.

I was telling Karin the other day, I think I've kissed more people on stage than in just real life.

Yeah, huh, that's just as the thing.

Uh. Do you know that it made Krinn uncomfortable? Yes? I think I think she said that.

She she kind of covered her eyes. Which can you come over.

By when you come over by the mic and walk us through what.

Happens like watching your brother kiss someone who's number one and then kiss someone who's not their wife, who your friends?

Oh so you so your lack of your uncomfortability was on behalf of his wife.

Well it was, it was.

It was dual.

It was more like watching your brother kiss someone passionately. And I was like, oh, also, that's not Yeah, it was it was multi time.

You're doing it passionately, Phil, No, I'm getting I'm getting uncomfortable.

I mean, I wouldn't call that passionately.

I mean, like, you know, there's it's it's it's relatively brief and say in the grand scheme of of like the you know, the spectrum of kissing.

So but okay, and I gotta ask you something. You got to promise me to be honest or well you tell me that you can't.

Okay, Well let me hear the question.

No, it's not what you think. It's not what you think.

You think I'm gonna I'm not going to ask you that. But here's what I am going to ask you in the in you're married, I am.

Yeah, okay, this has to have come up.

Well, we my my wife and I met during a play where I was kissing someone there every night that a person who wasn't her.

She was like helping out.

On the introduction.

Yeah, and then the next play I did the next thing I did, I made out with someone else, and she was there too.

She just kind of used to it. Yeah, it's it's part of the agreement.

Yeah, so there's never she's she never expresses any no, I mean yeah, if if she, if she has any sort of trepidation, she's keeping it in.

And I don't know, I never it's it's kind of just the foundation of our relationship was built on me kissing somebody else. So in theaters in a theater with with no emotional attachment.

Correct, gotcha?

Yeah, it has been going good or not good, it's been great.

Yeah, I've been having a lot of fun.

I haven't watched it, but people seem to enjoy it all right, so that's it's been nice.

Uh.

We recently had David Chang on the show, and David Chang talked a lot about hama.

Was he talking about that? Remember how can you remember?

How?

Yeah? Uh? What what's the word?

E k g m hm.

We talked about that a bunch with David Chang. Okay ek gy if you missed the episode with the chef j David Chang. E k jami is his practice where it's a way of dispatching of fish and a lot of fishmongers and high end restaurants.

Will require uh their their anglers to do this. And it's that you so magice. You catch fish, you right away.

Sever the fishes, like imagine that you're cutting off its caudal fin.

Who can tell me what a caudal fin is? Tail tale?

Imagine you're cutting his tail off, and you cut his tail, you cut through the bone, the end of the spine of the fish, bend it back, so you now have opened up the the spinal cord and then they'll take a brass rod, a copper rod.

Remember doing this with with Helen Show.

I wasn't there for that, but we've talked a lot about it with her.

You weren't there. This is a I don't have it as bad anymore. But Yanni and I used to not do anything apart. So when he was everything that happened me, I assume he was there.

Yeah, that was a brief moment of meat eater pre be honest.

And really that long ago. Anyhow, you then take this this wire and run this wire through its spinal cord and the and it alters how the fish goes.

Through rigor mortis.

I was observing him that I had seen this done in South America with a giant river turtle, because when you kill a turtle, if you chop a snap and turtle's head off, he'll flex up. When I was a kid, I'm married like mile Mann, A chopp turtle's head off and then hang it by its until it relaxed, and then you clean it. But these guys took that turtle flop and then took a long skier and down the back.

That's not the noise it made.

Down and this turtle just melted and then they could promptly clean it. But this guy was listening to this conversation with David Chang and says, there's a dish called.

Yin Yang fish. Kern, are you familiar?

Never see krims only half Chinese, so she doesn't know half the Chinese exactly.

This was part of my lack of knowledge.

This is one of the half you don't know about China before it was Originally it was invented in Taiwan. This is a brutal dish man. It was invented in Taiwan but has since gained popularity in China. Vin Yang fish means dead alive fish, and it's that you're processing. You're processing, but then also frying. Okay, you take a live fish, scale it, wrap a head and a towel filled with ice cubes, then fry the fish's body so that when you plate the fish.

Go ahead, after you describe it.

If you want to show the video, Phil has it queued up.

Video. I didn't even know that was I thought it was a screenshot. Oh, click on the link, let Phil do it.

Yeah, do we want to watch it.

Well, I don't know how long is it? If Evan wants to watch it, but watch it. If he does, we're not gonna watch on.

Can we get the rest of the description before we decide?

I don't know? Okay, So the fishes. The fish is then plated and dressed with a sauce. He's adorned with other sides. This is typically done with carp and when served the fishes, Gill's mouth and eyes are still moving. Points out that it's just electrical impulses but still mm hmm.

So is it dead or life? It's dead a life fish. Are you gonna play the cliff? All right, let's watch it. We don't have to.

I want to see it, ready, said go.

Okay. He's scaling it with a cleaver, which I respect. It's still still as a carp still alive.

Scored it. He's hauling ass wam into a walk.

Oh that's the astube part.

Huh, brings it over. Oh, here's another guy doing Is that the same guy doing it? So he's holding it by the head, wrapped in ice and just dipping its body in hot oil.

Yeah, come on, dude, it's moving.

That's like a dish. It does not need to exist. Now then he's plating it out at a banquet. One minute twenty nine seconds.

Oh, it's a contest to see who seems like a contest.

Come on, man, Wow, the fish's mouth has to move or the chef fails.

Yeah, one minute twenty seven seconds from when he started scaling that fish to when it's gasping fried on a plate.

Some fast food. That's good.

You should get him on the show more off. He should be a more frequent guest. Here's a deal, let's say a frog. This just came out in the Royal Society. This is a scientific article that Hefflefinger sent over. Do we still have that helfe Finger song? I do not have a quete up right now? I can have that song?

Go?

Was it like a real fast banjo? I have no clue, but we have a song, right. If we want another one, I'm not gonna do it. Want to write a song real quick, like faster than that. This is a different experience, more of a jingle. I'm not gonna do too much news, but I'm gonna do a little more news.

So Hefflefinger sends us over, and these German researchers are looking at Let's say you have there's a species of female frog. What is this species a female frog? Hefflefinger calls it menaj or frog.

Well, there was a few species that that he said, that do this.

Yeah, So let's say there's a female frog and she gets approached by multiple aggressive males. She might breed with a male, one male, and then I can lay there and play dead for two hours. We'll lay in play dead for two hours until other surrounding males lose interest in wander off playing possum, and then perks.

Back up takes off. I think about that kind of makes me uncomfort I'm a why half a finger? Send it over. It's not my fault, all right. So Aven, you're from Oklahoma, yes, sir, you know I just got to do I just got to do my first uh deer hunt in Oklahoma. But I was not in your neck of the woods.

We were up on the Kansas We were up close to Kansas on the Kansas border, just hunting little chunks of public ground, but had some.

Very good deer hunting. I just got back. Really yeah, it was from Ponka where I don't want to tell you exactly, Okay, not that I would tell I will tell you exactly. I'll tell you very specifically, exactly, but I don't want to there. Today. I was telling my kids if anyone asked you where we just hunted, I was telling them, tell them it's where none of your creek flows into business river. But uh no, I'll tell you. I'll talk about the spots. I'll be curious. You're familiar

I live in central Oklahoma now, but yeah, I'm from around Broken Bow.

Yeah.

What was uh what came first with you? Music or the outdoor pursuits?

Outdoor stuff for sure? At what age little as I could get around with dad, like squirrel hunting and stuff.

Yeah, what was your dad's story? Uh, he's a cowboy.

Uh he my grandpa. We moved back down there to he worked from my grandpa warehouser. Uh at the saw mill and uh it's the paper mill rather, and he.

Worked at a wirehouse or paper mill. Yes, they do pulp down there. They do pulp down there. They had a saw mill too in right city of the town that I grew up. Were they pull uping like pines or sign hybrid love of lolly pine. But that's oh, I see, okay, it's a ton of.

It's a ton of open country there, like it was a half million acres of They were running cattle on it, pigs on it. People still had pig leases when I was like a kid, like thirteen, fourteen years old.

Seriously, Yeah, they pulled the cattle of chamber country. Yeah a pig lea's yeah, h yeah, man, I never even heard of a pig lease. Oh, Magie, what's up. Good to see you. Maggie's a fan.

Hey, Maggie, thank you for writing the soundtrack.

I heard you're going to come in. I heard you're going to come in quiet, but that was real quiet.

It's pretty sneaky.

Or she even get sat down and didn't know she was there.

Welcome, mag I've been working on my stealthiness and the elk was let me, Kyrie cab what you missed?

Stuff about people getting into the mouth houses to get their watches out again, stuff about frogs that.

I didn't even want to get into. And then about eating live cards.

I saw that David Chang sent that over.

Hun Okay, yeah that's what you miss.

We're happy to be here.

You wearing one of those first light stormy chromers.

I am wearing one of those first light stormy chromers.

Jealous.

I couldn't help myself. Do you know.

Yanni's orange Stormy chromer story. So Yanni had a blaze orange stormy chromer, but it was like he had it so long that you tell it, Yanni, what the game warden said?

Well, you had spent a lot of time sitting on my dash in my truck because it's a warm hat, you know, when you're not in the field, I usually take my hats off and put on the dash. And I had actually pulled in behind the ward and he was just off the side of the road doing something I forgetting.

But you were pulling the warden over.

Not really, I just I just went by to say hi, and we were chatting, and he looked at my hat and he goes, you know, you might it might be time for a new stormy chromer. You're not quite blaze orange.

Anymore, you know, you're kind of a.

Wait stormy chromer is really cool about that twice. It's just a thing with that like color and dyeing that wool, that collar that they're aware of it and like every time they're like, oh, yeah, no problem, they send me anyone.

I've had a couple, not stormy chromers, but orange blaze hats. Bleach you out on my dashboard. It's funny. I've never really experienced that, but I'm like very cognizant of it now. When I take off my blaze hats and stuff, I don't put them up there.

Cassie, that hat real quick.

I told that story recently twice actually, and both times people were verre.

That's the first light stormy chromer.

It's a nice hat.

It's way nice. It's pretty cool there, stormy chromer. Oh yeah.

People were mad at the Warden was spending time busting my chops about the faded blaze as opposed to doing.

More Warden things, Upset that he was talking to a hunder and establishing a rapport.

Yeah.

Uh so anyways, from there, mag we went to growing up in Oklahoma and we just are finding out.

Were you here for the to find out there's such a thing as a pig Least?

I was not anymore, but at the time, yeah, I want to make sure.

I want to make sure everybody's getting it so because I might even have a little bit wrong. So Wirehouser at a time. I don't know if they still are, but Wirehouser at a time was one of the biggest private landowners in one of the biggest I think.

It's international paper now. I think they sold it. They bought it from Derek's way back in the sixties or something.

So they had these big tracks and they would raise lob lollie.

Yeah, they had pine and then it had you know, hardwood on it. Okay, they eventually cleared a lot of but it's a lot of pine trees still.

And people would run. So they're raising that, but there's grass underneath it and peopleould.

Run, run some rough cattle in and then yeah, I guess they ran hogs. And they're still you know, faral hogs there now.

But when they ran hogs like that, did they have to put out hog? Were they really just running.

Like loop free?

They were, they were free hogs, but they ate them and stuff.

So like these people had for years, had lived on them, so they go and mark them.

Each year and like catch them, catch them with dogs and like it was like working their livestock. Yeah, but then they got rid of them because they're obviously not great for.

For anything.

I'm not a fan, but so tell me more so you're old man. He worked did mill work but also did cattle work.

And uh, we moved back down there when I was a kid, and so I mean it was just this huge piece of Oklahoma. That's all, you know, the sort of the Washington Mountains and all that stuff on the Arkansas border, and a lot of deer and a lot of squirrel hunting and a few quail and yeah, turkey's and anything.

Quails gone now though there's there's still a few. Are you seeing them? It's yeah. And then you're so your old man introduced you to but he he didn't. He wasn't a musician. No, yeah, but you got did you have to? Did you you have an aunt or have an uncle that plays?

He played in some rock and roll bands and stuff, and h definitely was a was an influenced to pick up a guitar.

He's pretty well he was a rock and roll guy. Yeah, like a bar like a bar rock and roll guy or black cover band guy. Heavily influenced by Nirvana, rock and roll like and like yeah, yeah, like pretty neat. He's a really neat guy.

He was in the Marines for a really long time and and then uh, he moved to Seattle and stuff after the Nirvana stuff was going on, and like there I think, so yeah, i'd have to ask him, but I would assume, Oh, does he still way? Yeah, yeah he still plays. He plays gigs and tolsa and stuff still.

Seriously, yeah, oh how did uh?

Like?

What was your dad's hunting program? You know? I mean, was he like, was he fanatical? He is hunting right now? Or he is getting ready the bus season right now? And I'll tell you this.

He's he's down there.

So we know he lives in central oaklhom and he still travels well and stuff. So he just got off of a job and I was we're doing a fall work on instead of cows.

And he's, man, I want to get horseback. I want to go do this stuff.

But after muscle that season, you know, and so like we did all this stuff and he's down at the We have an old bus body down the Glover River and he's down there camping like where they've been camping forever you have.

But what it's an old bus oh literally said bus body.

Yeah, oh okay, yeah, I thought that was I thought that was something meant something just like a bluebird got you keep it's like you keep it as a camper.

Yeah. Yeah, they've been keeping it up for years. So you okay, but you have a cattle ranch now, I do, But that's not a that's not a property you grew.

Up now now I moved back there. So I went down to southeast Texas for a while. I had some friends down there that farm drives, and there's a lot of a lot of cowboys and stuff down there, and with duck hunted a lot like that's Steel Central and alligators and you know, it's just this cool part of the US. And so I really got heavy into this heavy like day working cowboy in and learning about that kind of stuff. And age at what age, like thirty five thirty nine?

Okay, so yeah, I just got obsessed with it and that's what I like. But you were exposed to it when Yeah, I knew a little bit about it all, you know, and I've been doing it my whole life, but not to a very serious degree. You know. So who was the who was the friends you were down hanging out with.

So it's a guy named Justin Jenkins who it's got an old family farm down there. They raised a lot of rice and.

And that's what the ducks around.

Yeah yeah, teal blueing teal like crazy. And it was just like the first time everybody had hung out with was like really great at calling in ducks and training dogs, and you know, it was waterfowl Central and really a.

Cool place to be. Did you bring your old man down there to hunt?

I haven't yet. No, No, it's it's like eight or nine hours from home. So you know, we haven't hadn't made it. We've tried to, but we haven't yet.

Old your kids. I have a two year old and a one year old. Oh yeah, I'm quite old enough.

Now now my little girl almost she's almost old enough to go with me dove hunting.

But huh yeah. So when I was saying down there, I mean like down there, like in that state.

But so you you then got into that and then got a ranch. Now you're actually spending.

Doing that the second time that sohen we found out we're gonna have our second kid, we decided to move back to Oklahoma because I was a long way from all of our family and everything.

And then well so you guys had moved all the way to Texas, I got you, know, so when you were say you're hanging out down there, you were living there. I was living there. Yeah, okay, that's what I was asking about the kids and all that. Yeah, hanging that kind of hanging out. I got you. So when you got into that and went back and started doing your own deal, and I'm bad. I'm not good at it.

The second one mostly, but it's got to be somewhat solvent, you know, or else just lose a lot of money.

So what like, what what sort of operation is it?

It's just a cow calf operation and we run some yearlins plant some wheat. But uh huh yeah, just just raising calves every year.

Do you guys do you have to irrigate for wheat? We don't know, not yet.

And then when you do the Kyle kaf deal, you but you keep your own Kyle's over the winter and.

Feed them, yes, yeah, lots of feeding.

I got a buddy that moved down and to help me, and he helps me out with the feeding and stuff when we're I travel still too.

So oh, That's what I was curious about. Yeah, so he runs runs things for me.

What's the what's the like? How much your time do you spend on that? How much time you spend on music?

So all my time when I'm home is like that and the kids, and then when I'm gone, you know, so.

You write when you're gone. Yeah, if I or I set aside time for it. Huh when did you use to write? Oh?

Man, you know that was That's all I did when I in my twenties, Like when I was you know, just hung over later around the house or whatever. I didn't have bigger aspirations. I wanted to like write songs and play music.

Do you remember, Uh? You remember that that John album that he had. It was all that live stuff. Mhm nah, it's like a big double album he had. It was all live stuff. But he's talking about when he went once he went to Nashville.

He s talked about how he'd always written, like you're saying, just you know, whenever and he moved and he tells his story and he went to Nashville and he had an appointment to write a song at ten am.

On a Monday morning. Yeah, it's just how like strange it fell through and be like, okay at ten on Monday, write a different approach to the craft. Yeah, I don't do that, but like.

I, I take a pretty organic approach to it and try to keep inspired ideas like written down and have some stuff to work off of when I do get time to fool with it.

I was, uh, chrim was showing me this thing, an interview you'd done where you were you were talking about one of your muses or an influence being at those old tunes by Johnny Horton.

Yeah, yeah, Jimmy Driftwood stuff, and yeah, but I didn't know until I read that.

I didn't know that John I didn't know that he was doing someone else's stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, well nobody, I mean nobody does. But I always say that because it's it's kind of neat because he wrote like Tennessee stud and like all these other songs too.

But hey, Phil, can you cue up real quick battle in New Orleans just so people know what we're talking about?

Yeah, give me a sack. That's why people know what we're tom about.

I had no idea that there's a Johnny Horton is playing the music of Jimmy Driftwood.

Yeah, like just oh it's so nerdy. Phil's got no but I love that stuff. Oh, man, did you do battle to Greenbrays? I don't know about that one. Hey, hey, hey, with the green beer Rays.

It's always weird because I always thought Doc Watson was Tennessee stud.

Yeah.

He the best version of it, yeh is the one with vaster clements and him on that yeah on will the circle being broken.

So here's what we're talking about.

See fook. Good little trip along mcclonel Jackson down to mine in Mississippi.

We took the little bacon and we chok the little beans, and we caught the bloody British in the town in New Orleans.

Don't cold, badass. That's good Bill.

There you go, Okay. I just wanted to give people a little taste. I've tried to turn my kids down to this stuff. It just doesn't click.

Man. The American brain, you know, is just different now. Man. I don't know what happened to it.

I don't know why, but those story songs always seemed really cool to me. I mean I knew it was like hokey or whatever, and I never got past it.

Well then, because he puts in these kind of like like real loocid details, you know, like it winds up being like it's a legit story. Yeah, and that's kind of his greatest hit. Yeah, but I think can can can you see? Did he do? Did he do Battle with the Green Bereys?

You don't know?

So now Phil saying he doesn't know Ballad of the Green Breys. I don't know, Phil, you're doing great.

Thanks, Randall. It doesn't look like it.

No, So I don't know if you remember, but you you explained this in an interview, But talk about.

Who Garry and Uh Sadler, Barry Sadler and Robin Moore wrote Ballad.

Of the Green Yeah, but did he perform it?

Oh, now you're asking who performed?

Yeah, because I'm only just now finding out that he's not the writer, the jit that what's his name, Johnny Horton, what's Jimmy Driftwood? No, No, I didn't know. Johnny Horton didn't write this stuff.

He was kind of like an almost like an Elvis contemporary, something like a singer like that that wound up doing these sort of country songs.

Sergeant Barry Sadler.

He's saying, saying, I feel like, well, if I had some better people who better at internet searches, we'd find out if this is true.

Randall figure that computer. Unfortunately, No, I'm good. I'm good. So a PC guy, big PC guy.

Either way, you got influenced by like you kind of like the you like that story.

Like Marty Robbins and I remember that one being a big one. But that was all sort of the same feel the same thing for me, you know, feel the same slot.

And you got into trying to you got into like.

The story, trying to write those kind of things because it's not easy.

No, and then you you uh doing dialogue within a song, yes, which like well, people will tell you.

Not a lot of people say, don't do dialogue, don't quote any correct or bad songwriting.

Explain how cool it, Explain how dialogue would be in a song. I do, like think of one of your songs as dialogue in it. How do you how you delivered?

I mean Dan says hell of a shot or something like that, like in The Bird Hunters. You're just trying to sneak it in and change change the narrator quick enough so it doesn't sound like an insane person is the narrator.

It's like, and that's it never occurred to me. That's uh, that's trick or frowned upon. But then I was trying to think of my head, like you don't hear people say that often someone They don't quote uh thing that often.

Yeah, I'm wondering what some other red flags and songwriting are that would have never occurred to me.

Yeah, yeah, do you have a list explains why my act has never gone anywhere? There's not like a don't do this list. You're keeping your wallet. I need to I need one, probably, but no I don't.

There's got to be some famous songs that have dialogue.

Romeo and Juliet by Mark.

I guess that there is plenty of like duets that would have dialogue.

Right ninety nine Problems by.

Jay Z.

He said that, so just the dialogue.

But but well he's almost like she said, she said, a song that has a.

He said she He said, he's talking to the officer. The I mean, never mind, I think maybe.

Oh, you know what one for sure? You know what the one I'm thinking of that really has a lot of it. In one Bourbon, one Scotch, and one beer by George Thorogood. There's a very detailed conversation uh that occurs between him and his landlady.

It says like, I ain't got no rent money.

Yeah right, and she says, she says, uh a word that doesn't mean anything. But I've used it my entire life because I've always been I've always liked one bourbon, one Scotch and one beer as uh, he says. He goes to explain that he does not have his rent money and his best I can tell, and George Thurgood is not one to enunciate its best I can tell. She says that don't befront me. Yeah, as long as I have my money by next Friday.

And growing up like I'm not gonn like in high school, that was that became so interwoven.

It was like two words. There's a bunch of words, but uh to say like it just doesn't befront me. We just use that word and it was the only attribution be that it came from third ago. There's another like another word that came up as we would play

Thing to have dialogue, yeah exactly, But you do like you do like the narratives, and the bird Hunter is a great narrative song.

Yeah, yeah, I like those kind of kind of songs that you're trying to flesh out of an actual story that's bigger than what the song has to tell.

Maybe in sort of what you.

Don't that can do more than the time that you have there, You know, what does that song to tell a bigger story or to allude to some things that might sort of underscore the narrative that's going on. That's because, like in a song, you only have a finite amount of words that you can say to tell.

A much larger story. Have you ever conned them up? No? But it's not very many.

No, because you know it's it's shocking. I want to you to continue what you're saying. But coming up in the magazine world, you'd be contracted by word count, okay, so be like give us eight hundred words on this, fourteen hundred words on this. If they come in it's like three thousand words, and you're like, oh sweet, So you'd sign a contract like two bucks a word, and then you're kind of waiting and we're thinking like four thousand words.

You're like king, you know.

But then sometimes you'll have there'll be a song that is really moving, you know, and you feel like the song unpacks a lot and does a lot, and you look at the word kind of be.

Like, that's some bitch did that like sixty words, which is not that much. It'd be interesting to count how many words when the record of the Edamin Fitzgerald, Yeah, there's a handful in there. Yeah. Well it doesn't have a U. It doesn't have a chorus either. Does it not have a chorus? I don't believe. So believe it's all just verse rolls verse, verse, verse to verse.

So you're gonna get more word count just because he must have been getting a high getting.

Getting three bucks a word and not giving a chorus at all, like no course, oh yeah that song. Yeah, you're right, there's no chorus in there.

But anyway, continue what you're saying about, like how to get more done in brief periods of time.

Yeah, I mean, so you have a chorus that is obviously sort of like underscoring your main idea. But you're trying to tell a pretty like a lot of those songs, I'm trying to tell a bigger story than I have. You know, it's two or three sentences really that the verses wound up being. So yeah, that's the that's the tricky part.

You know. You remember obviously Norm McDonald, Yes, well Nor McDonald had a talk show, and it was a running gag in Norm McDonald's talk show to ask comedians where do you get your ideas? And then the comedian would just immediately deflate the interview because it's like a sin to say that to somebody.

So I'm trying not to say where do you get your ideas? I'm recognizing that that's a sin, but I'm trying to get at that. So I'm trying to offer up like, Okay, cal our buddy Callahan is not here. He's like the bird Hunters is the greatest. He thinks it's better than Country Boy Can Survive and Fred Baer.

Now, Steve.

Evan, I heard you mentioned in an interview that a lot of your ideas for songs come from this time before you had cell phones.

Yeah, I kind of technology time period when I was like, well, I didn't get a cell pone until I was like nineteen, so so.

Long you weren't allowed one or just didn't get one. I just don't think I got one. I don't know.

It was another place like we were. We were behind the times, pretty pretty bad where I grew up. But yeah, I liked that, and I still try to like put everything in that sort of that's a romantic time period for me or whatever.

So yeah, oh.

I said, Okay, So you mean most of the stuff you're doing is based off these interactions and experiences that occurred.

Sure, yeah, and what would be pre cell phone simpler times? Yeah, simpler times.

So what the burdenars? I'm not going to ask you where the idea came from, but you know what I mean.

So there's a Hemingway short story called The Three Day Blow that part of that comes from, and then parts of it are from real life, and parts of it are just the stuff I made up from my experiences.

But if you get a great deal, like if you get a great deal, like you go to Hell and I'm going home.

I would picture that. I would be sitting there and I would overhear someone. I'd be like in a parking lot, and I'd overhear someone say, you go to Hell, I'm going home, And then like that would always live in my head, and then I would start adding things.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah, give me a thing that's stewing in your head right now. Oh, I don't know. I can't. I can't do that. You don't have like a burning thing stewing in your head right now. I tell somebody, they'll steal it. Yeah, but they won't know how to fly. Like, listen, if somebody will, if I told you, just whisper it.

Don't you remember our conversation with the Isabel brothers and uh Luke about how they just get together and then just churn and churn like a machine pumping the music out. That's all it takes.

I don't think one of those. Yeah, if those guys get a hold of this stuff, I think I'm gonna get a piece of it. I actually got him. I actually got him on here right now.

He's like, I imagine that cowboy in is ripe.

Yeah, it's it's.

It can be definitely in Southeast Texas, there's a lot of it's. It's easy to for it to be silly, though, you know, you got to watch out like trying.

I don't want to sound like that right now. Current Evans life just constantly giving.

You Oklahoma does not offer up a lot of ideas all the time. No, it's not as man as you think.

You want me to give you a shipload of ideas right now. Sure check this out. This is like you don't know if you know Krin's a really good producer. I don't doubt it at all. Listen to this.

So this is like so unfunny I had there's a very unfunny thing that happened. I'm gonna give you a bunch of song ideas in a minute.

Here.

What state are all these song ideas from the family that has all the sayings? Okay, I was trying to come up with an old time saying and I'll just tell you it's it's so stupid. But I was observing if you send your kids out to pick pole beans, and I'll be like, there'll be how many all of them? And they'll come in and I got them all. Then you go out and they definitely did not get them all. Then you send your visiting friend out and she'll say I got them all, and you go and be like,

It, and this is taking off like wildfire. A fresh set of eyes will always find more beans.

Now.

A guy wrote in that Anna pod Dotton. There's a word and atan is a rhetorical device in which a thought is intentionally expressed, intentionally expressed incompletely because you know that people know the other half. So when someone says when in Rome, that is a yeah of a feather.

Yeah, you're you're engaging somebody to fill in blanks. So they're part of the storytelling.

What do you say? Different strokes? Those are all this is good stuff. So this isn't the ship for your song, Phil cut this out.

If Dan Reid isbel listens, somehow it can't come. They can't come to their I P address. A guy's like, you're because you're saying, is you know, he's pointing out that it's kind of dorky, but a fresh set of eyes.

Yeah, that works, But it's also just so literal at that point. Yeah it is, I guess mighty literal.

Beans like the beans is what makes it sort of funny to apply it to a fresh situation. But if you just find a deer that's been out there that no one's seen, and he just say a fresh set of eyes, there's nothing really to fill fit in.

People have written in dozens of variations. More eyes on the vine, leaves less behind, more beans you will find with the fresh set of eyes. It's these rhymes.

Well, here's the thing that so this guy rolling in and he goes, I got a lot of old fashioned sayings that don't are family invented, and these were the songs are lying.

Let me know if anyone's heard he's before. That's a damn thin shingle. Then ain't got two sides, man, a shingle. Your shingles on your roof have gotten so thin, so thin, it doesn't even have two sides anymore.

It's your little red wagon. Sorry, it's your little red wagon. You can push it or pull it.

I haven't heard it.

Okay, Well I wear a nine, but a nine and a half felt so good. I got a ten.

Well, it's bigger than a butter bean, and you eat those one at a time.

I think you.

Started with the better ones.

Yeah, if Junior is fishing in the mud puddle with a broomstick, don't call him stupid until you ask how many he has caught. I like that one. I could picture that being a song. It's kind of a long Yeah, none of this is grabbing you. We need to get instead of taking, instead of having, instead of having having Pelgram, we should have got that. Damn guy read from the news he'd have fifteen songs written.

I fear we might be setting your songwriting back a few weeks with this.

I don't know. Yeah, he's pretty good. We're gunking up the works here. It's like actually counterproductive.

Read got turning out stuff. It takes me a year to do an album, six years, whatever.

Do you feel You guys done five albums we have and you did an album that wasn't really an album.

Yeah, we did one kind of in a garage and Duran, Oklahoma. That didn't sound The sound quality was not.

Because you because you guys were touring but didn't have anything to sell.

Yeah, we were playing bars and stuff like right around, like really crappy bars in Oklahoma Originals though, Yeah, we were playing original songs. We were playing like songs off that record and then whatever else they made us play, and.

You wanted to have a thing to Selsey made it the album, and then later you had to be and well not really.

That album exactly what happened to that? Is that album still alter kind of maybe? I don't know, And what form was it back then?

It was a c Yeah, it would just not No, it's.

Not want not really what year was that, five.

Two thousand and five? It could be, I'm not. It just wasn't like most of the guys that play that we or all the guys pretty much that we play with now, weren't on it, Like Kyle wasn't in the band back then, and it was a pretty like young iteration of what we are now.

Yeah, did you ever go back and fix any of that stuff up and redo it? Yeah?

We did a few songs off of it on the On the Turnpike Troubadour's record we did in California.

You guys have had. I mean such a long, long, long run in years. Yeah, yes, it's crazy.

But then, uh, you're not worried about putting out an album every year.

No, no pressure to do that.

There really isn't, honestly, I mean it. Uh, for a while there we were touring so so much and then stepped away from all of it for X amount of time, and it was still like five years and some change was the longest we've gone putting out a record, you know whatever. Two and a half three of it weren't weren't even playing or thinking about playing. Yeah, you know, but no, there's not any pressure.

But I do.

I do like, you know, having having songs, having something to promote, keeping things new, having new songs, you know, because without without a record, it's hard to play new originals in the shows too.

So you become your own cover band. Yeah exactly.

Yeah, you guys broke up for a while. I'll sick of talking, Like on a one to ten, how sick of are you talking about this?

Not at all?

Whatever? Yeah, I don't. I don't mind talking about it at all.

You know.

Yanni Yanni here texted me this morning and he's like, hey, can we talk about drinking on the show.

Oh yeah, I said, I imagine so he said, it's quin drinking. Yeah, quitn't drinking. He said, it's a lot in the album. There's a lot in the album.

What were you thinking about Yanni's Yanni's periodically quits drinking. Really he did a whole year one time?

Really?

M hm?

Well, I think the older I get, the more and more I think about it more and more. And you think about, you know, being present for people in your life, and if you're on the sauce, even just a little bit, you're not one hundred percent there, you know. And I see other people close in my life that battle with it, and.

I see it all the time too, you know, And I'm it was the the best thing that ever happened to me was getting sober.

I've been.

I'll have four years or so in January, total sober, completely sober.

Yeah.

Do you even do you drink an a beer? I do.

You're not supposed to talk about it, but Heineken zero zero is pretty good.

Why were we I supposed to talk about it?

I don't know.

It's just not a good example. You're not a good role model if you just hold home like a recovered. Like if you're like, if you quit drinking, yeah, it's bad form drink. It's not good form.

To like if you're helping people quit drinking, to propose that slamming some a beers. You know, man, it's just not great. Dude, I cannot if you're going to work or something.

Disagree. I so completely disagree with it.

Actually has was a cool thing and like it's it's nice to be able to drink a beer, like after an entire life of you know, that being a sort of cornerstone.

Of what what people did? You know, you guys all know, and like, man, cool subject. This is so off subject for us. We usually talk about outdoor stuff, but I'd talk about this kind of stuff all day long.

There was a time like you had a quote and that in a I think you were in a Rolling Stone profile on you, uh, you know quote like if you didn't drink like that, you weren't our kind of people.

Yeah. When I was in for a lot of.

Years, I was suspicious of people me too.

They made me uncomfortable. And I was joking before you came in. We were joking. I was joking if someone you.

Know, specially the people that didn't drink.

Oh yeah, like when I was in graduate school, and if someone was, you know, if someone like invited, like some folks you went to school with were getting together to play a board game or watch a movie or something, and you sounded got the sense that they weren't all gonna be totally wasted.

And he'd be like, I don't know, it sounds uncalled, it sounds awkward.

Yeah, it was as you couldn't what are we going to talk about?

Well, yeah, I'd be like I'd either like to be if I if I was out in the mountains or out in the woods, I like that. And if I was in town, I was drinking. Hm, i'd write in the day and I was gonna drink at night. And if not, I've always knew that I was gonna go hunting your fishing. If I was hunting your fishing, I didn't. I didn't even like barely had a thirst, barely had a thirst. But I could not be in a social arena without having because it was just so it's just

Did a month?

Still do did a month?

Yeah?

Did a month?

Did a year? Where are you at now?

Like, I don't know, five days, like specifically right now?

Yeah, yeah, five days.

I haven't been drunk since the last time I got drunk was in well.

No, that's a different story, since I last had a beer.

Versus No, what was the last time he got drunk?

Oh, I don't know.

I've been drunken years and years months again, you got drunk couple months ago?

Well, again, that depends on what the definition of that is, Like drunk enough to be like I'm not going to drive, Yeah, a couple of months ago. Yeah, but that doesn't take much.

The last time I got drunk, we were at Shot show in Las Vegas and we were out with Kent and Karuf and I remember having like five six vocatonics vaka sodas hung over for forty eight hours.

No thank you, and I I never ever again because the thing I say this all the time, the thing that got me, the thing that made me quit drinking, and I never like, like I didn't struggle to quit drink. When I have to talk about drinking, I talk about like drink drinking. It wound up not being hard because uh, I got too sick of the hangovers. But the thing that happened to me those most impactful was having young kids.

Being annoyed at them in the morning, yeah, because they're up and ready to rock so early. Being hungover it doesn't help that.

Yeah, and you and so you're kind of like irritated or you'd hear them, you know, you hear them they're up, and you know they're up. You learn how to be a very light sleeper as a parent, and so you'd be like you hear Annoise, you know, and you're like.

I just remember thinking like, seriously, you know, more minutes please.

Yeah, and catch myself in that annoyance and then having the realization of being like these people did not ask to be born. Yeah, they did not like asked to come live in this house. You did this, you know, you created this scenario.

You did this, And if anyone can learn anything from reading Corn McCarthy, once you do something, you should not pretend that you didn't do it. And that little bit of guilt about just not being ready to rock in the morning, it was the thing that like ultimately did it and I've gotten to the point now I just don't.

But I have found if you get an NA beer and put really spicy bloody mary mix in it, about it one to four ratio spicy bloody mary mixed one part three parts and a.

Beer, you think because there's a burn.

The spice, there's the fizz of the beer and the spice of the thing, and there's a burn in the back of your throat that makes your brain think that you're like social.

Do you know what I'm saying? If I'm doing that, I can look converse. Your brain's starting to tell you everything's gonna be okay. Yeah, you know, it shuts off and then all of a sudden, there I am talking to some guy I don't know, and I'm like, well, actually I was born in Michigan. Ye oh, you're from Tulsa, you know, Bob, you know all that kind of ship and us. There I am talking to some guy I don't know very well.

It's funny, which you don't like doing, not.

A ton I like talking to him. I don't know him heaving. But uh so, I just am surprised about it that that na thing is regarded as not positive.

It depended on who you were talking to. But it's just so close to the line for some people that it would be easy to step over it.

And you know what I mean.

For there's certain people at certain parts of their sobriety that it's not a very strong thing, you know, And so it's good to set a better example.

So this is my buddy Jimmy Dorn's bar Radio Bars is messing with you that they got this bar shirt on.

No, I don't care. You're like, You're like, where exactly is that bar?

Yeah?

I got a plenty of bars. What how old were you? Did you start drinking really young? Yeah, pretty young, like probably fifteen or so. That's how it was.

Yeah, we didn't. Yeah, where I grew up, we didn't. There wasn't not that there wasn't drugs were not. Alcohol was the thing. Yeah, pretty much for us too, in high school and stuff. It was like, I'm sure there was. I'm like, you know, there's probably stuff I didn't know about. For the most part. Where I grew up, you had we we would develop in our community. We would develop very serious drinkers by seventeen eighteen years old. We would

It's like a lot of weed now. But it's not like that in those rural areas anymore, you know. But I don't know.

Starting young, yeah, everybody drink and drink all day, like drink, like it was not uncommon for people that I know to drink beer all day and work and stuff like.

It's I mean a lot of it.

I guess it was probably their days off that I was around them. You know, probably my days off too, But it seems so much like a lot of day drinking.

Would you probably not even gotten into music if it wasn't for drinking, nocuse they could go hand in hand, man.

I don't know, Probably not, maybe not.

I mean, I wouldn't take for anything I've you know, I wouldn't do it again, but you know I wouldn't.

I wouldn't take for it.

I'm really happy with where I'm at. But yeah, I think that partying and stuff like that would have had a big impact on me playing.

I mean, I just because you would.

Have never gotten you'd never gotten drawn into the you wouldn't have gotten drawn into the nightlife, like like starting out in music, it's a nightlife.

And then the nightlife would have been intolerable if you were just a straight, lace sober guy. You know, it's not for it's for other people.

I don't mean the reference nor McDonald's twice, but Norm McDonald has a whole bit about going out to the bars after you quit drinking. Oh yeah, exactly, and.

Then he like talks about hooking up and how awkward it is when you're not drinking. Well, man, I'll be putting on my trousers now. Just how hard it is the goal of life with all your drinker bodies. Did I when you got to where you didn't want to play anymore?

What was going on?

That was kind of so I was kind of trying to figure out life in general, and I mean I was burnt out on playing. That was all I had done from the time I was you know, from the time I was twenty four or so, until the time I was about thirty four, for about ten years. I mean that's all I thought about all I did and playing, not just performing, but just like on the road. Yeah right, So okay, so for you, playing is the road? Yeah correct,

And so when you you.

When you walked away and went down, you walked away and like literally went down and started working. Yeah, yeah, what was your what was your financial situation though you were set or not?

Said?

I was good enough. I didn't have a lot of bills, so yeah, I was good enough. I didn't have kids at that point in time, and so jesus, Yeah, and.

You guys like deleted all your social media stuff and everything. I think, I don't know. I wasn't part of that you did. Yeah, So and then what happened down there.

Then I realized that I wasn't drinking too much because I was on the road. I was drinking too much because you're drinking because I was an alcoholic.

Oddly enough, God, Yeah, so it wasn't the bars after all.

No, they certainly had their hand in it, but it was time to make another big change. And so so once I realized that I couldn't, you know, control that I went to. I had a buddy of mine, like a somebody that I look up to, a BRONC rider guy. And he was the first person that I'd ever known that actually went to like any kind of treatment and had success in that, and like his life just immediately got better and he was a happy dude and was

And was that ninety day deal just done? Like you walk in the door and you're not gonna drink yep, yep. You sit out the parking lot for a minute. No, he's walked right in yep yep. And uh and you stay there, m M, what do you do for ninety days? It's so fun.

Uh, it's just a lot of classes and learning about addiction in general. And uh so they tell you what it is. Yeah, and for an kind of halfway analytical guy like me.

That's what it took.

You know, that helped me to understand sort of some physiology stuff and the understand what habits are and.

What's going on. And uh yeah, so it was.

It was pretty boring, but it's but it's also like you have to rewire your entire being because I'm like this maniac who's coming out of the bars and can do ad for ten years, could do anything you wanted to at any given time of any day. So I have to learn responsibility. And I'm very lucky that I got to do that before I had kids, because now I got two little ones and they do annoy.

Me in the mornings.

But it's but you know, at least I'm not hungover and Matt Adham, you know, so it's it's lucky.

Are you familiar with that long running show Fresh Air with the host Terry Gross.

I'm familiar. Have you ever done that show? I've never done it? Like to.

She had a neural she had a neuroscientist on or like a I don't know, does that mean a brain scientist Randall? Randall's got a PhD in history, that means a brain doctor?

Yes, yes, Well a neurologyst A doctor would be a neurologist. A neuroscientist, I think would be like a researcher.

That's what this person was.

They studied addictions, and they studied the effects of different chemicals on your brain. And she said that she was talking about the ways that things were what they do in you. And she talked about it like cocaine is has a like a laser intensity what it does, and the chemically is doing a very specific thing inside your head, right, like a very precise specific thing cocaine does. And then she said, so it's like a laser burning in there.

And then.

We she described it as spilling paint on something. And then she said, alcohol is someone in there with a hammer.

How it's affecting a lot of a lot of parts.

Yeah, and then the physiology part of it too, you know you see, Yeah, it's it's a and it's such an ubiquitous thing, like it's just everywhere and and so widely accepted that that being addicted to it has its own name, Like you're an addict, right, it's just a drug, but you're an alcoholic because it's more accepted sure culturally.

Yeah, if someone says, someone's a drug addic. I hope you don't shoot me. Yeah, Oh, it's just an alcoholic. That's cool.

It's the world over. You can be in a small village in uh South America and guess what someone's brewing up some booze.

Yeah.

I was talking to a woman there day we were camping, not the other day. I was talking to a woman a couple months ago, camping and she had.

Done seven years in the Federal penitentiary and h she was on the laundry crew. So she was a laundress in prison. And they would get they would they would get fruit juice from the cafeteria and they were able to put they'd get these I don't know what they were using for containers, but they found out how to put that fruit juice by the dryer event because that dryer is running around the clock and it is real warm. A minute.

Yeah, she was saying, man, we were able to from that, we were able to make booze into jail behind the dryer.

Wow, it's like you need some booze, bad dude. Evan, what was your drink of choice back then? I drank beer.

I drink Mexican beer a lot of the time, but for years it was just cheap beer whatever, like keystone or whatever.

Did you uh did you have to relearn how to come up with stuff? Oh?

Yeah, everything, I had to. I had to learn a lot because like so much, so much of your developmental life you were relying on alcohol. You think about drinking when from the time you're fifteen on and how much you actually developed physically and mentally with that chemical kicking around in your body.

You know this person I'm talking about, this neuroscientist.

Can you hold your thought?

Yes.

That's the other thing that really surprised me is when you if you start if you start really boozing hard before, if you start boozing before eighteen, your whole mental map is different because when you think of little kids, like you're still trying to establish not kids at whatever, hell high schoolers. Your brain is still trying to establish a baseline, right of all this hormonal activity and like how much of this to produce and how much of that to produce?

It's built on that pedestal.

And so people if you look at like later you look at alcoholism rates. When you start drinking as a teenager, you're creating a much greater likelihood of being a drunk later in life because you've set your like you've set yourself up for she was about there are very few You can't find cases of people who don't drink and start drinking at forty and become an alcoholic.

Yeah, it don't happen. Got you gotta develop it like a fine wine.

It's a long journey.

What's funny about that too, is that there was a period of time like after I quit drinking that I like, there's so much emotional maturity, like you you still develop, it's neat Like, so I spent these sort of very formative years in my thirties like learning sort of how to be a man whatever, you know, like be trustworthy and do do these things correctly, and to sort of be the guy that you know that I want to be now around like those people in Southeast Texas that

Post became an adult post alcohol. Yeah, it's so strange. So you wait, you raided your trustworthiness and found it to be low.

Oh sure, yeah, yeah I guess so. I mean I was a like now, if I say I'm going to do something, I typically unless something falls apart, I do it, even if it's hopefully, even if it's something small. But back then I didn't care. You know, when I might show up, I might not.

What I was sa on earlier about being in grad school, it's like I was in writing school. So this is everybody just and everybody read drinkers, you know, like yeah, so you know everybody wants everybody's going to be an avant guarde writer.

You know.

I was that kind of like a like a high end writing program. And so everybody read like Raymond Carver and Charles Bikowski and you know, and all the drug addicts and right, and uh so it's super cool to drink. And you talk about like the trustworthiness. There used to be a running joke.

Man at at one in the morning in the bar, everybody was going ice fishing in the morning at seven when you're supposed to meet at my house crickets except for a dude named Ben Block. If you're out there, Ben Ben Block would be.

There him away line, It's like, oh, always do what you say you're gonna do drunk. It'll keep teach you to keep your mouth shut or whatever.

This dude Ben, he was a painter and uh, he didn't grow up doing any kind of serious outdoor stuff.

But I took him out of ice fishing. He was a he's a really good painter, and that took him out of fish and we pulled a big northern up through a hole in the ice and he said it was why it said it was like watching the lake give birth.

Oh buddy, I like that guy.

What uh on? Other eyes are vation?

Because I want to get back into what it's like to write tunes when you gotta do it totally differently. But the thing I miss my wife talks about it too, is how funny everything was.

Stuff is not funny like that anymore. Yeah, but there is funny stuff like that out there. You just have to pursue it. So it's like, oh, tell me, tell me where to find that.

I can.

But you know, like the average stuff is not as fun, but it's stuff that you don't need to be doing anyway, you know, like sitting around on tailgate bullshitting with people that you have know or whatever.

Like, yeah, like that's a lot funny.

That's not good necessarily good to come but he and not good use of your time, right, But I do like like you, you've had some good billy left, like on these big like hunting trips that you go on with your buddies or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, not as many. I get it. But so when you, uh, how did you get back into writing though?

I set a deadline and I said I'd do it because I knew.

Was not your trustworthy anyways. Yeah, I told him, I do it sadly, you said, I pay my bills on time, and uh now I So we.

Decided we wanted to go back in the studio. We played some have we played some shows already Patty before we decided to do the record, or we decided to do the record before.

Oh hey sorry this is uh yeah, this Patty, I'm Turnpike's manager. We we had set out that we were going to we were going to record, but we were going to do some shows before we recorded.

Got it and you had to do, like in the beginning of the Blues Brothers movie, you had to get the.

Band back together. Yeah, it's exactly like that. You had to go around. I found them wherever they were assembled. My crew.

Yeah, No, we were all ready to We stayed pretty close and so we Yeah, we just set some dates and I just did what I could and just hammered and hammered and hammered at it until something felt good, felt like I could be proud of it.

Maybe so you had like I gotta I gotta do twelve or whatever the hell it is.

Yeah, And I just got as many as I could. But I'm in doing that kind of learned how to do it again and learned what I like and what I'm after.

Was it something that you missed after a while of being away from it, Like it built up that you hadn't scratched this this creative itch. I mean, you're obviously focused on other things, but like after a certain period of time away from it, like you felt like you had to go back to it or what was that sort of relationship with the craft?

Like like I think if I'd known it was off the table forever, I would have missed it. But No, it always felt like I'd come back to it. So and there's certain aspects of it that are really really neat, like that connection with a big audience like that and singing singing together with like that many people at once is very very interesting. I mean it's such a Yeah, it's such a neat moment to get to have.

But you uh does it with that with those kind of numbers though it probably loses.

Ah, it's not as.

When when you're with a ton of people, the awkwardness probably goes away because there's nothing super like like if we made you sing a song and here, for instance, I'd be very scared, but.

You wouldn't be one. It's one of thousands of me. Not as much.

No, it's not as And there are even like situations where the you know, the right people in the room with ten or fifteen people would be the scariest to do. If it's somebody wanted to impress or whatever, you know.

Like all your musical heroes. Sure like kick us out a song Evan about yeah yeah. And when you when you went on hiatus, you had done you had done four albums, Yes, you.

Had something like that for four and then Bosuer City I think yeah, first one.

And then uh, I was reading too that you had, Uh when you got back into writing, you'd established like a with one of your bandmates. You were sharing writing prompts.

Is this the thing?

Oh?

That was Jamie Wilson. So she had a book and it's really cool. It's called this Isn't that?

Rolling Stone Interview?

Yeah, she pro talked about it and we Yeah, so it was a series of writing prompts and this and that and you just in a book. Yeah, And so we both got the book and we were both like going through.

It together, just what we will be an example?

Oh, man, i'd have to it's been a couple of years, but I think one of them was just like rite for ten seconds, or not wright for ten seconds, but like right for sixty seconds on this subject in whatever way you can.

And it was just like cyclist and so.

You d a story.

So that's you guys, and that's where we were. That's one example. You know. When I read it, I.

Took it to be that that you guys would send each other prompts that you'd come up with the.

It was like a writing exercise. But that helped you get back into it. Yeah, it did.

Honestly, it's I want to go back and go back through that book.

It's pretty neat.

So where things at? Where things at now? I mean are you are you? Do you picture that you want to do music for twenty more years? Or I mean yeah you do, yeah, but you'll do it as long as you can do it.

Yeah, how was it?

I grew up, you know, listening to my dad's whaling records and then by the yeah, I came into the Shooter. Yeah era, how much did he? Like was the magic in this new LP?

He's a he's just a really nice guy and like he's one of those people that music is it for him, Like he loves it, like he loves he knows every record, he knows who produced it, he knows who played on it, Like that's his like life, life makes sense.

Were about we're talking about Shooter and.

So having somebody like that that that's just that's that, that passionate about it and that well versed and everything.

Was it was amazing. How does the relationship like that come up?

But how did that? How did that come to be? Had you guys always been bodies or.

Something kind of Yeah?

We were, we were acquaintances and we, I mean, we liked each other, and then the opportunity came up and he'd been doing you know, just Tanya Tuckers. Yeah, and you could just there's so much stuff just right there, Handy that you could listen to and say, hey, this is really really great quality. And he got really good performances out of these people, Like why why not work with him?

You know? And uh, what's your like, what's your next project gonna be? I don't know, We'll just do another studio album probably, And now just are you baking on that? Yeah? Trying to, but nothing major first of more beating would probably wind up in one of.

Them down here in Oklahoma. Yeah, but I do have a question on that you mentioned earlier that, uh, you kind of you'd be wary maybe of like the cowboy genre a little bit to be so easy to beat hokey, and I feel like throwing in some hunting stuff into your tunes could probably have some of those same pitfalls, like are you are you mindful that as you're writing.

It could yeah, you have to be like, yeah, it could be. It could come across as silly or like I'm forcing something, but like bird hunting, such a thing for me, Like it's something something that i've I fell in love with, like pretty naturally, and I've I quit. So I coon hunted for a long time and I got tired of being out late, so I sort of just traded that for for a pointer.

Did you train your own dogs? Yeah? You ever on in the woods? Running? You a guy named Clay Nukem. I don't know you guys? Are you guys are border mates? He was right across in the Arkansas oh really using the washtalls. You might have heard his hounds across state line. Probably probably.

I had.

I have both, and I think I want to say I had a red tick dog or two. I never had any real good ones ran. We ran a lot of deer.

We were out late a lot, and we also drink a lot of beer. I was out. We're not quite sure whose place you round some of the times, probably, but you know most of it was was public, so okay, oh yeah, because the warehouse has had a lot of public Okay, I see, yeah, so we had plenty of places to go, but yeah, it was just Now would you ever throw in a coonhound reference? Probably subtle? I have, I did on this record.

Yeah, yeah, I heard that about the place in the bottoms.

Yeah, you know.

We were always raised. We had the shotgun as you come from my mom's dad and.

My dad.

So my mom's dad had had it, but my dad wound up with it. And he had always told people it was Belgium. It was a Browning auto whatever that four. I don't think he always told everybody it.

Was Belgium made. Yeah, because you guys have you have that reference and uh, when you die he looked up the serial number.

Was not.

That's a That's the thing man that I like is uh, it winds up being.

We're talking to We talked to Luke Combs about this once and he's got a song you know, he talks about like a Johnson outboard.

Right.

He'd be like, well, you know, obviously it's not gonna be a right, it's not gonna be at not.

I mean, I own I own five Honda four strokes. I have four stroke jet which I adore and would like I'd rather give up my kid than my Yeahmaha jet. Right, But you have the right song. I thought it was.

Yeah, it's like a weird choice to throwing that it's a Belgium because it's like there's like about two people who'd be like, Oh, I get that.

Yeah, I think that's.

Just I don't know, that's just like a like what they'd say, what the guy would say or whatever.

No, Yeah, I know. It's interesting when you have something that's like references that are not references that are that have the potential of being missed.

Yeah, the thing it like hearkens back to like a time period, because like what that'd be something my grandfather or father would say.

You wouldn't hear Belgium may as much now?

Yeah.

I feel like there's sometimes when you hear hunting and fishing or outdoor references and songs, it's like something that.

It's so superficial. It's like a T shirt or a.

Bumper sticker slogan, and you're like, Oh, does that person hunter fish or did someone say add a hunting and fishing line in there? Yeah, talk about a big buck or something like that.

Do you tend to go out of your way to put more in or go out your way to take them out?

What's that like? Hunting references?

I typically write about hunting because I've I write about it as like a a background for a transitional thing, you know, for a story like it's just happens to be what they're doing because it's interesting and things are moving around on the album. Now you're talking about going to el hunting.

With the with the booze and the saddle bags, right, remembering, Yeah, it's just kind of coming to a realization or a couple of an a's and the saddle bags.

Yeah, shake them up though, beer and saddlebags don't go where you get together.

When I was asked about do you find taking them out or putting them in? I mean if you get where you got something where it's close to what you want, do you sometimes say to yourself, Man, I need to lighten up. You know, I'm gonna pull a couple of those out. I'm gonna pull some of that hunting fish and stuff out.

Or do you look and be like I need to put more, I need to get heavier. Yeah, so you catch it. It needs to be a little more like Yeah, it needs to be a little more like clear.

Well, it's like if what if the story is just kind of boring and then I just put it in a hunting backdrop and then it's there's more happening so it's more interesting.

Yeah, you know, uh, we've talked a lot about you know how No Country for Old Men feels like, you know, it's like feels like a hunting book for only one reason. When he finds that massacre site, right, he's blood trailing, and he completely forgets about the blood trail.

Yep, there's no reference to it.

We actually hunt or Spenser new Heart did a little work on it, and he was almost certainly poaching.

There's no way he would have drawn that tag.

But either way, it's just like he's like he had to be doing a thing when he finds.

The money, you know, and he's like, I'll have him. I guess what would make sense he was hunting, But it like burns in your head, like that first scene, and then for somehow they could carries with it that it's like this thing about hunting and you look at it and you're like, well, no, it's just it's just like you said, I needed to have them doing a thing. He blood trails himself.

Into you know, the thelp, the murder. You know it's a or a massacre or whatever. But yeah, it's just brilliant stuff and he'd be doing it anyway, or like that. Lou Ellen characters. You know he's going to be out doing something, stayed away from the house, right, you know it's goods.

This story would have felt very different if you found money on the way to work.

Had a job that he really likes and he worked hard for. So what do you guys got? What's your what's your tour situation? Right now?

It's we we play quite a bit. I mean, we're just staying steady throughout the year.

Now.

We some than specific.

If you, oh, we have a show in Oklahoma in January, I think that we are. Yeah, is Bell's playing with us and Charles Wesley Godwin not un till January.

That's in January? Is that? Is that a? Is that part of a big tour or what?

Oh?

Yeah, we're playing Florida this weekend. Oh okay, So was that? Man?

I don't know. You got Knoxville November sixteenth?

I was.

And you guys try to fire So you're not going now. I'm gonna try to get this meal here.

So if you see an empty seat out there, that fella. So you're not you're not on a like a very you're not. You don't have upcoming right now or anything, A very scheduled, like, you know, five night a week.

Now it'll be like three nights here, maybe a weekend off. It could be four or five knights. But it's all pretty haphazard.

You know, how many will you want to, like if in the next calendar year, what would be your guess how many shows you'll do?

Oh, I don't know. Fifty five of course not.

It's a lot, though, it's plenty. Yeah, it's cool to get to be home every week having little kids like that.

Sure. Do you bring your kids out on the road.

Some sometimes now that we have too, it's been trickier so, but not like out on the road like sometimes Stacey brings them to Steve or whatever. Yeah, you bring your family on the bus. Now we're all we got a big crew. And yeah, you'd almost have to have your own setup for that.

Mm hm. The Kren talking about playing something she maybe did, I don't know. I brought a guitar, So you don't mind doing it? No, I don't think so. But it's gonna be all it'll be awkward for you because it's so intimate in here. Probably intimate and warm, yeah and warm. Yeah, but a lot of them concert halls it is sometimes, Yeah, what are you gonna play?

I don't know.

I thought I might play bird Hunters. Do that Okay? People like wonderful? Well cal would like it.

Oh, he's gonna be bummed.

Well, why don't we set us all up, Phil, Phil's probably want to do some little things.

Yeah, Hunter, if we can just get like a mic kind of relatively close to his guitar, and then he can sing into that one. If we can angle that one down. And while we're filling time, here is anyone, here's some Killers of the Flower Moon yet.

No, But I feel like I feel like I'm just getting bombarded by Oklahoma because I was, Yeah.

I saw it this weekend, and it's funny because Scorsese put a bunch of musicians in there, like Isabelle's in there, Surgel Simpson, Pete Jordan, like Jason isbel is incredible. If he didn't know he wasn't a musician, you'd be like, oh, who's this awesome character actor.

But I was just thinking because.

He plays one of the victims husbands or something.

Yeah, and he's uh, he's got scenes with Leo and he like steals the scene. It's really he's greaty, But I was just thinking because Evan would have fit like right in there. He's just got that vibe that I think Scorsese was looking totally.

Yeah, you know, we had the author of that book sitting right where you sit. David Grant was in here, really yeah, he sat right there. Man.

Charlie Crockett wrote the theme song for it too, but he.

Was David Grant was here promoting not He wasn't promoting Killers of the Flower Moon.

He was promoting the wager. Oh man, I don't know if this thing's in tune? Is that okay?

If I wouldn't know, don't you got that app on your phone? I thought I was gonna turn you onto that app.

Covey to wing the shotguns, singing the pun Dog down the old log and road, and Danny got three and look back grinning, fumbled around and tried to reload. The country was old, where the sun and west were sinking. It's good to be back in.

This place.

With my hands around the Belgian may brown and my mind on the lines.

Of her face.

How good does it feel you belong in these heels. It's best that you let it all in. You to married that girl, you to married her family. When you Dard's day bullet, my friend, she said, go on back to chair Key County. Won't you crawl back with nothing butter raiser and cone.

He's a baby.

If you need me, I'll be where you foundly.

And go on the hell honey.

I'm headed home, dancers. Look at old Jim, a dozen decembers behind.

Him, No worse for the wear.

Your time spinning Tosa did not help your shooting. Look at the gray in your hair. How good does it feel you belong in these heels. It's best that you let it all in. You to marry that girl, you to marry the family who you dodge a bullet? My friend, she said, go on back to Chaerkey can. Won't you crawl back with nothing but the razor and calm?

Sad baby?

If you need me, I'll be where you found me, and go on the hell honey, I'm headed home. On hours beginning to deal with it in and the old dog upon it and card me died. Then a flutter of feathers, then a shotgun shoulder. I thought of the poor Jesi. She be home on the fourth July, but we dance on.

The fourth July.

Then says Hella, a shot, looks like you still got it.

That's what we came here to do.

Well, it's live enough still at the foot of the hill. You could kick up a single orch, she said. Co on back to Chairkee County, won't you crawl back with nothing but Raizor and Comb says baby.

If you need me, I'll.

Be where you found me and go on to hell Honey.

I'm headed home, and go on to Hell honey. I'm heading home.

All right. Man, beautiful bang got goosebumps, ladies and gentleman terrifight troubador. It sounds like you have fifty five opportunities to catch them in the next calendar year at least, and lots of albums to choose from. Uh, anywhere you listen to music, go on Spotify and listen to a bunch of you can go on YouTube and listen to a bunch of stuff. You can buy the actual things. Come to show and buy CD, come to show and buy, Dig up that old CD from the old days and

If you're if you're tuning into your to your FM dial, you will likely pick up some tunes as well, but the best thing to do is go check them out live over the next over the next year, and throw some support.

Thank you very much for coming on man, I really appreciate it. That was great. Thanks a lot