Oliver Anthony (Christopher Lunsford)

Yeah.

So then they wonder these companies just slowly kind of fall apart and disintegrate because, um,

They're so worried about structure.

And, you know, like, I mean, God, man, even in even in America today, our culture has become because so many big corporations own and manage everything that we live under, like food, agriculture, health care, like social media.

It's all in corporate structures that it's almost like a lot of the problems we find ourselves in now with society, I think, are like.

it's just because of, it's almost like corporate HR has been implemented into our whole thought process of everything.

You know, it's like, I think that's kind of what you're touching on though.

It's like,

It's hard to be a human and be a good little corporate employee at the same time.

And as our whole society moves more into like becoming like basically one big corporation, it's like, you don't want to piss the HR lady off.

So it's a lot easier for me to just beep boop.

We're all sort of just turning, we're all turning into robots.

Do you think that's... Because I'm not...

I'm not super well-versed about all this, so I'm probably dumb to even mention it.

But this guy who's been helping me with doing a documentary, he's been following me around since the very first show, August of 23.

His background was doing promotional videos for Boeing, like for on their new spacecraft to pitch it to whoever.

And so we touched base a little bit on Boeing.

And of course, they're having a lot of problems now, it sounds like.

And he was comparing that with SpaceX.

I think it's exactly what we touched on with that thought process of that sort of dehumanization within companies.

I think that's what ultimately causes maybe – I don't know if there's a connection there or not, but it seems like Boeing is a very – would be more of that.

They don't have that tornado.

They're very like – he was telling me even just with his protocols and some of the people he worked with, everything's just very –

Lightly touch everything.

Don't touch anything too hard.

Yeah, because they don't believe – there's a lack of leadership and if they don't believe in –

If they don't believe in that leadership, then why the hell would they be motivated?

I mean, I remember a while back watching Jocko Wilnick talk about that when he was in leadership, when he was leading his guys.

I think he mentions it in his book.

It's probably where I remember seeing it, one of his books.

And he talks about like –

how important it was for the people under him in rank to believe in what he was, the actions he was giving them, even if he necessarily didn't agree with him himself.

It was like there, it's really hard to take orders and go and like to, to have human spirit and especially in something that's innovative and not, if you, if you work in a company where you just think everybody's

Dumb.

I mean, I can certainly relate with that.

I mean, God, that's all.

And my old job, that's all we did was we spent half our day just talking about how dumb we thought everybody was that was above, you know, it's like it's easy to fall into that in a corporate world.

And so, yeah, the morale gets terrible and.

And everyone suffers as a result of it.

The people at the top who are implementing all that dysfunction suffer and the people at the bottom.

It's like, it's not good for anybody.

I had thought now that I'm doing this, that I could escape away from that.

But that exact same mentality and that dysfunction and that inefficiency,

Like, I still battle it every day.

Maybe one thing that we felt similarly, I would imagine you way more than me, is just feeling like, wow, I have the ability to influence or the ability to...

to, to, to either bring truth or to improve people's lives or, or, you know, every word that you say sometimes matters so much.

And you're just like, man, I'm an idiot.

Like, I don't, like, I don't know, you know, like I would have never guessed.

I mean, we were kind of talking about that before about like, it would have never guessed that it would have turned, that this would have turned into all this, but it's, it is a, it is a, it is a weight that you bear, whether you really even acknowledge it or not, you know, like, um,

Well, you know, you, Lex.

however many years ago, was in a different place in society than Lex is now.

And so it's like every conversation you have or every relationship you have is inherently different, even if you aren't any different.

Friends that you had from before maybe, or even just new people you meet, your interactions with them are gonna be a lot different than if this wasn't a thing.

And so it's like, that can be tricky too.

When you've spent your whole life

you know, from the time you're three years old and you're starting to play with other kids and like developmentally learning, like how to share and how to interact.

And you're on the, you're playing, you know, you're playing on the playground with kids and learning how to like set rules and boundaries and how to like basically fit into society.

And like, so you have this whole learning pattern up until whatever point in time when, um,

when success happens.

And then it's like all that shifts pretty dramatically all, you know, in a relatively short period of time.

And so like, how do you, how do you think like managing your previous, like previous friendships or your life, like, you know, how has that been tricky for you or like, it's been tough.

And I still do it all the time.

It's just a different experience now.

But I'm, like, a Goodwill junkie.

Like, most of even my clothes were from Goodwill.

But, like, I have this...

I have this like addiction with buying paintings from Goodwill, like the $8 paintings where it looks like somebody was following along with like a Bob Ross video and it didn't work out quite right.

Like I love, like I buy every one of those.

I'll go in there and buy like 10 of them.

And so just even, you know, anytime you got into public now, it's just like, you know, it's going to be a little different than it was.

You know, I don't know if that makes sense or not.

Yeah, like saying that I'm not in politics, people are like, well, of course you're in politics.

And I don't know whether I am or not, but just... I do think a lot of people in politics, like, as far as the people who sit on the internet all day and argue about stuff on X or on whatever, you know, Facebook and all, like, I do think their heart is in it for the right reasons.

They observe that there's a lot of things wrong in the world that they'd like to see different.

It's just...

how do you get those people out of a, how do you get those people out of this four by four square?

And like, really, like they're, they're entrapped in a, in a same kind of box that the people at Boeing might be with that struck, you know, it's too, it's the tornado metaphor.

I mean, it's a, but it applies in politics too.

Like there needs to just be a tornado through politics and we need to figure, we need to just like lay all this other stuff aside and just figure out what's really pissing everybody off.

What's really affecting our quality of life.

A lot of times we're arguing over the symptoms of problems instead of identifying the problems, if that makes any sense.

I mean, if Jordan Peterson were here, he would tell us about fire and how important that is and burning.

But it's all the same.

But it's all true.

It's all 100% accurate.

Yeah, that's the crazy thing.

But it all ties into that same thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In politics now, it's almost like there's a rule book that you have to follow.

And if you you can't agree with this unless you also agree with that, you know, it's like and maybe it's like the places that way that we receive information about what's going on in the political landscape is always so biased.

And it's like the.

Well, it's contingent upon this algorithm, this algorithmic system that we live under where we're fed.

It's like we're almost fed certain subcategories.

And it's easy to fall into that because you don't like hearing things you disagree with.

And so it's a lot easier to just turn the TV on or go on Facebook and look at whatever page posts things that you know you're going to consistently agree with every day.

And that's not going to challenge the way you think in any little way or expand your thinking at all.

It's easy to just...

it's kind of like a, it's a cult like type of thing.

It's like, you know, here's, this is what we all agree with.

And if you don't, then go on, get, you know, like, but it, it doesn't, it,

We're far too complicated for it to really work that way.

But that is true.

I mean, but specifically in my case, I mean, really,

It applies more than it probably does in a lot of cases with crowds and music.

You know, talking about Richmond, I wasn't necessarily even excited that Richmond did as well as it did.

It was like, in a way, it was almost like alarming that it did so well, you know?

And so those crowds that show up, like, maybe they do like my music, but I also think they're there for something special.

There is something bigger about it.

I mean, I wish I would have done a better job of having people there at shows to capture some of those crowds I had in 24, man.

You mean the size, the intensity?

The intensity.

Like it was revolutionary almost.

Well, and so many people identified different elements.

Like I said, it goes back to when we were kind of talking when we first got here, but it was crazy how it was almost like at the beginning, along with the scrutiny and some of the other things, it was a lot of different people like...

almost fighting over me or fighting over it.

Like, cause it resonated with different, it resonated with people who voted differently than each other, which is, which is probably a pretty terrifying thing.

If you're, if you're in the business of keeping people divided and angry at each other.

So it was, you know, it was a, it was one of the first, one of the only times that I can think where there was that

that much of a sense of unity among people who otherwise wouldn't.

I mean, like, I mean, I think about nine 11, when I was a kid, I was in fourth grade, but God, man, people were just like, people just put everything aside there for a little while.

And it was kind of, it was kind of like, there's bigger problems that just aren't in our face.

And if, man, if they're in your face for just for a second or two, you realize like it's,

it's hard in your mind to create a graph that's got like all these, but you know, we argue about a lot of these problems, but if you were to really look at them like,

if you really just stand back and look at all the problems we spend time focusing about on the internet versus all the things that are affecting us, like that really, and probably at our core even piss us off, it's gotta be very disproportionate.

And like the reason it got the reaction it did is because we all, like no matter what it is that we're upset about or what we think needs to be different in the world or our opinions of things or how we're raised or what our parents taught us, it's like, I think we all feel a little bit out of control in this new society.

We all feel like we're probably,

we probably all feel like we're falling into this kind of like corporate power structure where none of us, where we all are just robots.

We're all just, we're not allowed to be ourselves and be human almost, you know?

and hidden away and what's probably the most terrifying to me is that that politeness is just theatrical whereas it emulates the respect that we would normally give each other in society if we were healthy and functional what was the process of writing that song

I don't know.

Can you pull TikTok up on this?

So if you go to my page, so if you go down.

There's some chickens.

Yeah, go down pre-Richmond.

You can see the original version of Richmond where I put it up.

This is so cool to see the evolution.

Man, there it is.

Okay, so that's, if you play that, that's.

I have too many unfinished songs?

Yeah, play that.

Click that and play it.

That's all I had.

Well, that's all I had written at that point.

like that in my mind that's what that's the inspiration for the song was that little bit and i wrote that just because i was on job sites all day and um you know going into like all these just terrible places to work like dealing with different contractors and stuff you were talking about wanting to go and talk to blue collar people and all it's like that's what i did for work basically for eight years was build long-term relationships with people in blue collar

I was in the industrial space, so I would talk sometimes.

I'd talk to 20 different people a day.

When you sit in a job site trailer and talk to a group of dudes, and you're not there with some news camera, you're just there as a random dude.

You hear so much about what really goes on behind the scenes of the structure of what builds this country and keeps it going.

I think that's probably what it was.

It was just a...

it was how I felt, but also how I guess a lot of other, like, you know, it was just, I don't know.

It just seemed like the truth.

I would just keep recording the, I would just keep, you know, like, so if you were to go back to Tik TOK, like, and look at any of those original videos, um,

So like the songs that ended up charting, let's say like the ones that were on there that charted with Richmond, like this, I've got to get sober.

So literally good song.

So literally what I did was this video, I took it my property.

This is my carport where my camper was.

And, uh,

I took this video, I went to some sketchy virus-ridden MP3 to WAV file... Or MP4 to WAV file transfer thing.

I would rip the audio off of this video, put this on TikTok, and then put that on DistroKid.

And that was the song.

But basically, like, this would...

This would have been the first time I played.

I've got to get sober all the way through.

Like I would just keep writing it and working on it and writing it and record myself.

And maybe I would record myself 30 times over the period of like two months.

You know what I mean?

I'm just trying to figure out how to make it.

Yeah.

But that's what all these, all these are like the audio file from all these videos is what's is what ended up on Spotify and all that.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I had about 10,000 followers or something.

What a fucking song.

That's a good one.

And you gotta think, like, this was... Like, that was my... That was when I quit drinking.

You know what I mean?

Like, so...

I just felt like it was a god.

I don't know how to... That's just off my phone.

All that stuff's just there, you know?

Yeah, so this video got uploaded, and then Draven from Radio WV would have gotten a hold of me in between this and that.

he watched this and was like, dude, you got, he said, we got to record that one.

And that like, so I didn't have it all.

I just had whatever was in that video is all I had written.

It was, I think it was just the chorus in the first verse.

Draven saw that video and said, we got to do this one, reach out to me to record.

And he's like, yeah, he's like, no, we got to do that one.

And I was like, dude, that's all I got.

Tell me about that guy.

Draven.

He probably is like,

He's probably my best friend now.

We hit it off with this, and we're like brothers now, I guess.

Yeah, he's just this, he's a little bit younger than I am, and he wrote music and played, and he's got some of his, if you look up Draven Reif, he's gonna kill me for even saying this, but he's got some pretty, dude, he can, if he was like a pop singer, he would be like, he can write the most catchy stuff ever.

Let's go.

Yeah, so click on like, I don't know, like, yeah, there you go.

Well, he's got a certain look.

That dude will sit there and he'll just like, we'll just be sitting there at like two in the morning and he'll just all of a sudden do this little thing.

And he's got like the most amazing first part of this like song or we just started to co-write together like in the last few months.

So I'm really excited for that.

But if you go to his, this is really funny too.

I'm sorry, Draven.

I love you, man.

So go to videos and go to oldest first.

This is what's so awesome about Draven.

He was originally working for this lady who was trying to develop different types of hair care products, but he thought the market was too saturated.

So he was going to get into beard oil.

So he created Radio WV as like a fake plug page for his burly boy beard brand he was working with.

So like if you look at, yeah, like that very first video.

Yeah.

It's got all his beard products.

If you look, there's multiple ones like that.

So he started it just to do this beard thing with, and then I don't know, he just kind of felt called to keep going with it, and it just sort of naturally progressed from there.

He says he just wants it to sound like the way he likes hearing it, which kind of makes sense.

You know, like it's kind of in the same way talking about when we were talking about setting the cameras up and a professional would tell you, you needed three lights and you're like, well, I think it would work with the,

he's just kind of like well it'll just work like this and do it in a way where he likes it yeah just do it for yourself he does it because he loves it and that and you can see it shows you know yeah you can see it in there um and there's some good talent like you were showing me this new lady gabriel yeah she's got it but not a lot of people would uh record her doing that song but he's like i don't know it just was different i just thought people ought to hear it but he's man it was a blessing that he came along when he did it was like um

It really changed both of our lives.

It was all those messages I got.

I mean, you can see it in the comment sections of a lot of the videos after everything happened, but people just like felt this spark, like, wow, like maybe we actually have a chance to, like, maybe we actually do have some kind of power, you know?

like those people put that song there, nobody else.

And like gave me the opportunity to make, even without signing anything, I was still able to make millions of dollars and have financial freedom.

And like, I just, I just felt like, I felt like if I was going to do anything like that, that I'd be, I'd be betraying, like I would be taking those people and, and almost betraying them somehow, you know, like, uh,

Like they, I hate the big machine just like everybody else.

And I, the last thing I'd want to do is be, is ever supported or be a part of it.

Like I want to watch it crash and burn, you know, like.

It was also, you got to think a couple of months before this, like, of course I had, you know, I had a wife and kids that I loved and like, I had a lot of really important things to live for, but I didn't have a whole lot to lose.

Like, like none of this was even really real.

Like it was,

I didn't care about that.

Like, I didn't care to lose this just as quick as I got it.

Like this didn't, this was, this didn't mean anything to me.

It just meant something to me that like, that I could do something for like, you know, you, it's like, even if I'm not smart enough to figure out how to fix some of my own problems in my life, the fact that I felt like I could help fix somebody else's like that meant a hell of a lot more to me than any, that's what I didn't want to lose.

I didn't want to lose those people's trust or like feel, you know what I mean?

And so I've just tried to make every decision around like as best as I can, like what I think the right thing is to do and who knows what the hell the right thing is to do.

But I just try to follow, you know, we all have that little voice in us like that.

We all have some what, and, and I think sometimes we mask, it's hard for us to listen to that little voice, whether, whether it's like, you know, whether it's our gluttony or our lust or our, or our, you know,

You know, we we numb ourselves with medications or with alcohol or we we scroll on YouTube for four hours a night and instead of because we don't want to listen to our conscience.

But there is this like very intelligent, discerning thing inside of us that's able to tell us what's right and wrong.

And it's us.

It's a spiritual thing, I guess.

And I just try to, I just try to listen to that when I can.

I don't know.

I just still feel like I haven't done enough.

Yeah, that's all I got though, you know?

When you lose that, what the hell are you?

Like...

And you see it, like you see these celebrity people that just like fall off the, they fall off this, you know, they go off the deep end.

It's like, you gotta have, you have to have something in your life to, and to keep you centered and to keep you, um,

You know, your whole perception of reality and like your just existence in reality is all contingent upon this sort of like this center that you exist in.

And you have to, if you don't have that, then you're just flying through space.

I mean, we're all just riding on this rock that's going who knows how fast.

I was terrified.

I talked about this a little bit with him too, but I was terrified to even put the song out.

Like I knew I was going to be the subject of scrutiny and judgment.

And I knew people were going to like, you know, I kind of knew all that was going to happen.

I was like going back to that, talking about crowds, like to stand in front of thousands of people and everybody be in some sense of unity.

Like a lot of times when I end the shows, I'll always say,

I'll always end with this statement that just says, you know, no matter what, like no matter how you feel when you go online, you know, everyone feels so small and insignificant and powerless.

But I just say no matter how they make you feel online or when you turn on the TV or when you look at polling numbers or whatever, like when you just look at all this trash that we digest every day, like you're,

there's always, there will always be more of us than them and, and all that.

And, but like to see that, like just to see the light in people's eyes when you say that, but the truth is like, and it's like, who is us and who is them?

And it's like us just represents humanity and like, and, and all the things we talked about so far, like just,

you know, the fire and the chaos, but also like the love and just life.

Life is just such a crazy, complicated, beautiful, disastrous thing.

And then them is like, it is, it's the power structure.

It's the, it's that same terrible side of us that created things like the Soviet Union and,

And it's ultimately what's created this monster that we all live under today, which now doesn't just exist within the confines of the Soviet Union, but seems to almost be a global epidemic.

Yeah, it's like, how much fire am I willing to play with?

Because I know at some point I am going to get burned from it.

I just pray a lot that God, I don't have a lot of self-worth in myself anyway, so I don't really care what they say or do to me, or I don't care.

I don't even care if I die, whatever.

Just protect the people I love is all.

That's all I ask of God.

I have this dream of just creating this parallel system that sits beside all these stupid systems that we live under, that are all sort of engulfed in this thing that we talked about at the beginning, this

this type of structure you know we're none of us we're all just robots and it's like if we hate you know if we hate the way music is and all these artists are complaining about the way the venues are monopolized and the ticket sales are monopolized and let's just go find other places to play music because there's so many people hungry for music in places they don't ever get it and

If you look at it, there's so many passionate people that are fighting all these different causes, like just in food.

It's the word they use for more or less starvation.

It's a more polite, it's called food insecurity.

But if you look up just in Virginia, just where I live in Virginia, in the rural areas, how much food insecurity there is.

and how many empty vacant farms there are.

It's like, this is an obvious problem that we should be on Twitter talking about nonstop.

Like, this is like, everyone has to eat, you know?

It don't matter what you vote for or what, like what you look like or any of that crap.

You can, you know, like,

So, like, let's just, like, why are we living in a country where we have, why are we living in a country where half of us are obese and eating shit food and don't know any better?

And then the other half of us don't have, like, how just, it's just, it's lack of leadership that's caused dysfunction.

And so if we're tired of that, then...

Then let's just fix it.

Like, we don't need anybody's permission.

Like, that's the whole beauty.

Like, that's the whole beauty of what America is, is like, we don't we don't need some greasy haired corporate schmuck to give us permission to go fix all these things that are wrong.

Let's just go do it.

And if they don't like it, fuck them.

And that inspiration that created this country was from years of people living under tyranny, like...

we forget the story of the people who really created this country.

It's funny, one of the statements I made at the very beginning that got taken way out of context, but I wasn't in a position to even begin to have a conversation about it, is I made this comment early on in one of the shows about

about how our diversity is a strength.

But that term has been hijacked now to mean something a lot different than what it really means.

But it's like, think about how many different people came together just at the founding of this country.

Like people who spoke different languages, different cultures, religions, ways of thinking.

So many different people came together to even create this place now.

And like, we've just forgotten about all that.

They didn't all come here because they wanted to ride on some miserable boat ride and risk their whole lives to go to live in some crazy jungle.

Essentially, they had no structure, like no infrastructure, no medicine, no like they didn't come here for like some glorified camping trip.

It's because they were tired of like generations of being persecuted and living under tyranny and not being allowed to practice there.

You know, it's not like they wanted freedom of religion and they didn't want separation of church and state because they were a bunch of goody two shoes and they love going to church every Sunday.

It's because they weren't allowed to believe in what they believed in because some asshole king or some hierarchy told them they couldn't and they were just tired of it.

That's what we're losing now is like we've forgotten that we're those people like the same structures that have plagued this country are their multinational corporations and their and it's just the ideology behind them and their and their structure is what the problem is.

Taking that leap forward really took a lot in an age and a time when it probably sounded, and it's not like they just made a statement and put it on Twitter.

Like they, like think about how much, just think about the insanity.

Like I can't even conceptualize the insanity of what took place from the time that...

Like even from the Revolutionary War until now to try to preserve that idea.

You know, so like so much has happened and so much sacrifice has been made in just so many hours of labor and thought and intensity.

Even the 20th century has got two world wars.

when I got all those messages at the, we were talking about early on earlier in this, like so many of them.

And even now it's even since I, even like in the last couple of days, I've gotten some where they start with, Hey, I'm a nobody, but like, that's how a lot of those start, you know, like the nobodies of the world, if you want to call them like that's,

It's frustrating that the people who literally have built and preserve and maintain the structure of society that we all comfortably live in, those people have the least amount of representation.

They're ignored just because of the way the social hierarchy exists.

But some of the most dim-witted, irrelevant, terrible people

are put here and are idolized and spotlighted and they're all over television and they're all over the internet and we act like they're kings and queens and like that they're royalty.

And then all these people who do jobs that,

Most of us would be too terrified, either wouldn't have even the ability to do.

We'd be like, how many people are going to go underwater and weld?

But if we didn't have underwater welders, like one of my best friends, whose name is also Jocko, funny enough, the dude worked 70, 80 hours every week.

He's on the Chesapeake Bay tunnel job now.

But the dude's gotten on heights that I couldn't get on.

He's went underground places I wouldn't go.

And

Nobody will ever – like, nobody even knows those people's stories or what they went through or, like, the kind of lives they lived.

And they're, like, the people who create the fabric of society and even the waitresses and the waiters and, like, all these factory jobs that I worked in.

All those people – like, talk about the craziest place I ever worked and the craziest people I ever met was this little place called Perfect Air in Marion, North Carolina.

And it was this commercial air conditioning factory, which is, I think, closed now, but –

They didn't pay very well.

And so everyone they hired was either people that had criminal backgrounds who couldn't get jobs elsewhere or idiots who dropped out of high school and couldn't work elsewhere like me.

And so I was 18 years old working in this place with people who are mostly in their 50s and 60s.

But you want to talk about being exposed to just a whole nother world of people like and just the stories and the just...

Those people are far more interesting than many of the people that we consider to be celebrities.

Like most people who are celebrities are just pretty boring and airheaded and don't really even know what real life is about.

They're pretty unrelatable to the rest of the world.

And so it would be really cool.

I mean, that's the whole reason that I want to go out and do these shows in places that haven't had music in them in 10 years, because those people like that is America to me.

you know, how many people in Pittsburgh have been an hour outside of Pittsburgh?

And even in Virginia, if you lived in Northern Virginia and you drive two and a half hours Southwest, you're in a whole nother planet, like the people, the accents, the culture.

And so I feel driven in the same way.

Like I would love to, I would love to find a way to, to try to bridge that cultural gap, to make those people relevant and to make, because they are like some of the most, and like, and it's funny because we emulate a lot of those people, like

you know, modern country music is a bunch of people emulating those people, you know?

intricate like nuanced problems in the physical world so coal mining oil rigs like you mentioned welding that's a fascinating line of work and and those are trades that are in many cases dying because we don't because they aren't popular in culture anymore for everything from agricultural to plumbing and electrical it's like those are all areas i think if you were to go out and talk to some of those people and shed light on it it would

Like you could change the you could change the entire landscape in America of how of how it's perceived and like and make it cool, you know?

This was another one of the things early on that I had an idea about and I thought was getting done and it wasn't that I've got to go back and try to figure out is doing...

prison shows and doing rehab shows and all that.

But I am really intrigued with like going into those places and trying to immerse myself and just the, the mental state that those people are in.

And like, it's not talked about a whole lot, but.

Yeah.

And a lot of those people at Perfect Air that I worked with, they almost all were in some form of legal trouble.

Like there was a lady that worked on the assembly line beside me named Denise.

And her and her husband had been manufacturing methamphetamine and he took the fall for most of it.

She only had to go on probation.

He was still in prison.

But man, like Denise was a very sweet lady.

And like, aside from the meth manufacturing, like she was like great, you know, like, and just such a character, like in such a good way.

And so it's like, yeah, just.

Denise, lexfreeman.com.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be that – we don't all have to be that decentralized either.

Like, if there is that much commonality among people, which I do believe there is, like, just innately in suffering and in –

Yeah, there's a guy in West Virginia that I talked to that he's got a piece of property beside of mine that he was interested in selling, but the reason he's got this dream of putting some cabins there and renting them out for people to come Airbnb.

He works at Lowe's full-time, but his son's got this...

His son's like 19 and has got this heart surgery he's got to have.

And so he's trying to sell the place for that.

And just like just that guy and all you'd ever see him as is the guy that works at Lowe's like pulling lumber or whatever.

But he's got this very insanely complex life he's trying to manage.

He doesn't want to lose his son.

Like he's just going to sell everything.

And like at one point in time, maybe the church served that role of like when people really fell off track and they didn't have a support system and they were like on this tiny boat out in the ocean, they figured out some kind of way to rally it.

in my mind that's like the dream of all this if i if i die and there's any like legacy left or anything done it's like finding a way to take all the people that fill that role and organizing them and empowering them and protecting them it's rebuilding the community but in a real way not in like this fairy tale bullshit everybody's gonna love each other and we're all just gonna be one big happy family like everybody's still gonna get mad and hate each other in certain ways and

That's good.

We need those tornadoes.

Like you said, we need people pissed off and angry, and we need people to feel like they can be angry and open about things that are wrong.

People should be able to speak their mind, and we shouldn't all just kiss each other's ass, and we shouldn't all just pretend to be overly polite and say, hey, Debbie, you have a good weekend?

Like you said, we need all this controversy and this turmoil, and we need the hell of what that side that the internet brings out in people, but it just needs to be in real life, and it needs to be in a way where we're all like...

We all are at least chasing the same common goal, which is probably that we don't want to starve and we want to have decent health and, and we want to be able to like provide a decent life for our kids, or at least we just don't, you know, we just want to live a decent life.

Like, um, I think it's somehow that, that fixes like.

that fixes what you describe, like the people who fall in despair and are isolated.

It's a terrifying world to live in.

It's that principle.

Again, I need to phone a friend thing where we can just keep calling Jordan for all these things.

But he explains, there's this principle in the Bible about the more you have, the more you'll receive, and the less you have, the less you'll receive kind of a thing.

And it's just a universal law in society where

It seems like the lower you get to the bottom, it's almost like the more like the less resources you have available and the less the less friends you have.

And it's like you just the further you go snowballs into where it's like people just hit rock bottom.

And then and then what?

It's like when you get out of prison, what do you what are you supposed to do?

Or when you're a veteran with mental health, like what are you supposed to do?

Like, in my mind, that's what the church is supposed to be there for is like.

But obviously it doesn't fill that role anymore.

it's sometimes it's not even, you know, it's funny, but it's almost not even where you're at in life.

It's where you perceive yourself at in life and what your, what your goals are moving forward.

And I think like, you know, I was, I dropped out of high school at 17, basically ran away from home.

I just, I couldn't, I have always had this authority problem.

And so I just didn't want to listen to my parents.

I didn't want to go to college.

I just wanted to go move into the mountains and

I was running away from responsibility, I guess, is what I was doing, you know?

And so got this girl pregnant, had my first kid when I was 18 or just about to turn 19.

And like I said, I'm working in an air conditioning factory with a bunch of convicted felons.

And so from there, everything was just reactionary.

I never really had a plan.

I would jump from job to job, just like most everybody else.

I don't know.

I just got to a point where I guess I just quit believing in myself.

And I knew that I wasn't doing...

I just knew I wasn't doing, I wasn't feeling my purpose and I wasn't being the best version of myself I could be.

And so the alternative to like facing yourself in the mirror and accepting that, that I'm not a shitty person.

I've just let myself fall.

You know, it's like, it's so hard to accept when you've had that fall that it's just easier to just.

just to get drunk and, you know, just do the bare minimum you can to keep everything sort of kind of moving along.

But you don't really care if you live or die.

You don't, you don't really care about much, anything like your whole, you know, I don't know.

Life is just so beautiful when you're a child, you're so imaginative and exploratory and you're learning all these things and you just, you just can't wait to be an adult because you're just going to go out and do all these incredible, you know, and then you face the reality of it.

Yeah, and the pressure and the fear of failure.

I think maybe even my own fear of failure is what drove me.

But yeah, you think negatively about yourself for so many days and weeks and months, and you don't even have a real self-awareness of what you're doing or how destructive you've become, but you always have that discernment in you, that conscious, that little voice in your spirit that,

He's letting you know you're messing up, you know?

I was almost like, you know, I was wrestling with myself, you know?

Like nothing that mattered before really matters anymore.

I guess that's probably, to me, the definition of depression is when all the things you love and care about are just meaningless.

And you really can't find meaning or purpose or excitement in anything.

I think, especially with men that commit suicide, it's a prolonged period of that.

It's not like they just wake up one day and they have a bad day and they kill themselves.

It's like...

you self reflect negatively about yourself and your life and you don't do the things that you're supposed to do every day for a long enough period of time.

And it's like pretty soon you've built this whole mountain of, of, of, of mismanaged, neglected, uh,

stuff for lack of a better word, like this mountain that you have to climb back up in order to fix all these things that you should have been doing all along.

And then the, and then on the other side of it, it's like, well, I could just die.

Like that seems a lot like it's almost like for, I think from a man's perspective, maybe the friends that I've had that I've lost, it seems like a lot of times you think, you'd never see it coming, you know, like, I don't know, maybe that's a general thing with, it seems like a lot of times men mask that better and you don't pick up on it as much, but.

Um, I think it's like, you just dig yourself into a point to where it's like you have a mountain of responsibility in front of you that you haven't faced that you don't know how to face and you ha you haven't been able to do so for a long time, but there's this really easy detour and it's just, you know,

Putting your big toe on the trigger.

And it's like, which one of those are... I don't know.

Like, they're both seeing... But at that point, your perception of reality is so distorted that, like, you don't... All the things that would normally compel you to move along, like your love and joy and, like, your drive to be that...

none of that really, it's not there for you to even contemplate, if that makes sense.

It's like that part is almost like, at least for a little while, invisible.

And all you see is fear and responsibility and just this, like I said, I just envision it like a mountain that you don't really know if you're even able to climb.

And then the other option is just

So I think that's probably where a lot of people go and that's probably where I was, was just like, you know.

That was what was so powerful for me about just beginning to open my mind back up to reading just a little bit of stuff, like a little bit of stuff from the New Testament that Jesus said and some different perspectives and teachings.

But like, you know, an apostle would be in prison, like basically being tortured and facing death, but like just overjoyed in writing about talking out.

It's all about your perspective of things.

Like I said, like, that's why I never could understand why.

you know, like celebrities or professional, I mean, giving one example of many, like a Kurt Cobain type scenario where you have a guy that's just immensely talented, just will always be loved by plenty of people.

Like I never could understand why that guy.

That's why blue collar workers have such a high suicide rate in all too, and why it is so important to talk to those people.

Without trying to open up too many doors, I think that's probably the best way I would describe it is just a series of really...

There's a series of negligent decisions and also just misperceptions.

I think this was an Andrew Huberman thing where he talks about medications and how it's a lot more likely for somebody to keep their dog on their medication schedule, but not themselves.

You love your dog and your dog is just this great little thing and you don't see the flaws and the faults and the sin and the disgust in your dog that you do yourself.

So it's much more likely for people to make sure their dog has their medication every day.

But there's this alarming statistic with just the amount of people that don't even fill their prescriptions they need filled or take care of themselves the way they do.

And then that also, over time, if you quit taking care of yourself and...

you're not in good health and you're, and you're, you're not in a good routine.

You're not doing, you're not like a series, a long series of doing enough of those things.

Like you do, it's easy for you to just think that your self worth is zero.

Cause if you're not even willing to like,

If you're not even willing to have basic hygiene and eat decent food and try to take care of yourself, it's like, how on earth are you going to go face all these things that you need to face to get your life better if you don't even care enough to do that?

It's just like, but it is.

It's a long, tragic road to get to that point, I think.

at least in my case, the idea that there was something bigger than me that loved me, even despite I had all these flaws and problems and just that I was just such a wretched person.

That's what, at least in my situation, that's what I think helped put, you know,

more than anything.

Like I said, that's certainly where the motivation to quit the, once I quit the drinking, it helped a lot.

Cause I was able to, even though it was a pain, it was difficult.

I was able to actually be able to be honest with myself and reflect on a lot of things that were, and you know, you got to think, like I said, we watched the, I mean, it was like with, of course in my case, it was a little unfair of an example.

Cause within a month, all this stuff had happened like after I quit, but yeah,

You know, I see it in my friends that have quit and have tried to turn things around.

And it, you know, it's like it's it is the most beautiful thing in the world to see somebody like come to life again after being in one of those situations.

You're able to like, sort of like escape this shell of, of all those terrible things.

And even if you are still in a bad position and you're still, you got 30 grand worth of credit card day and you're working some shit job and your car doesn't start half the time.

And like, you know, your girlfriend left you for some other dude and like, don't matter what it is.

Like if at least that little glimmer of hope that like that faith that there is a chance, uh,

It's something greater like that can that'll push people.

You can put you can push you can push a mountain aside with that, you know, like you can do anything with that.

And I think it's also good.

I think it is important to have a good support structure.

Like when you get to that point, I don't think you should.

I don't think anybody should have to face that stuff by themselves.

And there's plenty of other people out there that are in the same position.

And I think that's, again, I think that's why it's so important for us to try to get reconnected on a personal level and not just through digital communication, because like we don't really, we don't, all we see of each other online is the good stuff.

Yeah.

Very rarely are people posting on Facebook talking about, you know, how could you even, it's like, all you see is the best of people, but I don't think we realize that we're all going through a lot of the same things anyway, you know, the low points and stuff.

I've had good friends of mine I've seen get in destructive relationships and they'll start to date a girl.

And then within a year, they're just like a shell of what they were.

Because sometimes...

I do think you have to be careful with your self-validation and the way you perceive yourself and making sure that it's you giving yourself that and not somebody else.

Because I do think, too, it's like, yeah, how are you supposed to... If you can't even keep a woman around to love you right, how are you supposed to love yourself?

It's easy to think about that.

I've seen a lot of men get wrecked in bad relationships and stuff, too.

It's tough, you know?

I mean, man, of course, like I said, in all the experiences I've been through, I'd be a fool to deny it.

But I do think there is God there that's always there.

But you certainly can self-isolate yourself too, even from that.

Even the best of us have terrible parts of us.

Like, we are all flawed inherently because we're human.

And so...

There, there'll never be a, there'll never be another garden of Eden on earth, like figuratively where, where we all just live harmoniously and everything's great and happy and wonderful.

But it is, it's those basic principles that you talk about, like love and our, and those relationships and those connections that we have, they, they make it all.

Cause the thing about, I mean, like in a lot of cases, it's like, what even, that's the position you get in when you get to, when you get so depressed and you get so low, it's like, what's the point in even doing all this?

Like it is everything.

It is just for anyone is just so crazy, overly complicated and exhausting to live.

Isn't it like even in this modern society where we have all these wonderful little conveniences and we can just have food delivered right to our door if we want and all this kind of crap, it's like.

people are still like more depressed now than they've ever been.

And like all the mental anxiety and all the mental health stuff is just probably just as prevalent as it's ever been.

It's, it's people talk about money, not making you happy.

And, you know, it's like easy when you're, it's easy when you're broke to think, man, if I had some money, I've, and of course, financial freedom is what you're really looking for.

Not like an abundance of wealth, but

The things that we talk about that make life worth living aren't things that you can buy.

They are things that you obtain through relationships and love and, and life.

And so it's a, it is just an infinitely complex and crazy thing to think about, but it's like, uh, that human component of us is what, is what we, is what's so important to our, to our long-term existence, like our, our ability to, to have connection with each other and,

the joy we find in that the purpose we find in that is it's not, it's not anything that's replaceable by with anything, you know?

Dude, I have zero self-confidence about anything.

I mean, just about anything.

But when I say that, I'm not being funny.

I'm like...

You get nervous when you, like, get on stage?

Yeah, like, I can think about shows coming up and my hands will sweat thinking about them.

Well, dude, like, think about how, like,

you know, I can't, I'm not going to sit around and play.

I've got to get sober for fun.

Like, and like, you know, so you feel, you feel the songs when you play them.

Well, you were there.

A lot of musicians talk about that kind of thing though, right?

Like about this.

I'd have been doing it too if you were out there.

I don't know.

I've heard about that with people like about hating to play songs.

Cause, uh, that side of it, but yeah,

Yeah.

And I do have some, I do have some lighter hearted ones too, that, uh, that I'll, you know, I mean, I've, the thing is, it's like, I've only put out, I I'm a little funny about like, really like, God, I don't know how many songs I have written that I will probably never do anything with.

Like, I mean, probably at least 20 or 30 of them that are just like, they're just not, I just don't know why I don't want to put them out, but just.

Yeah, I've got my old phone.

Even just that old phone that I recorded all the stuff for TikTok and all on, it's got loads of little... Just like the way that Richmond one was, where it was in the bathroom facing the... And I had that.

That's all that...

Even that one I showed you on there, it had been sitting on my phone probably a couple months before it.

That's why I said I have too many unfinished songs.

It's exactly what I meant.

I've got all these little snippets of things, like a little blip here or there.

But the writing process is... Well, it's a lot different than I thought most people write, because in the...

there's a lot of people that do these writing rooms and stuff and they'll have, or, you know, these co-writes where they'll have people sit down and they like sit on the couch and smoke a joint and they're like, all right, let's write this song.

And they just like start plugging away.

And they, to me, that's like, I can't do that.

I have to just, it's like almost the, it's like a lot of times the songs come when I'm not prepared for them.

You like to be alone.

Well, alone in my head, I could be out and I could be anywhere in it.

You know, some of them I'll just be in the shower and they'll just like, and I'm like scram.

Because the thing is, is like, Hmm.

It's a certain part of your brain, I guess, that creates that stuff or picks it up or does whatever.

But they come and they go just as quick as they come.

It's like when you wake up.

It's exactly like when you wake up, you've had this crazy vivid dream in your head and you wake up and it's all right there.

And then you stop thinking about it for like half a second and then it all goes away and you'll never remember it again.

You know, like you can't remember your dreams like that.

It's exactly like that.

It's like it'll be there forever.

it's like perfect.

Like it's all right.

It's like, it's, it's almost like given to you, like just perfect, like parts of it or the whole thing or whatever.

And then you get into this flow state to where you just like, it's all there in front of you and you just figure it all out.

And it's like, you've, it's like somehow you've like unlocked this little part of your brain that you don't even really know how to get to, but you just get to, and it's all there and you figure it out.

But man, if you don't get it, it's gone.

Like you'll never, you'll never get it again.

Like you'll never even be able to replicate that song ever again.

It's like, it'll just go away.

And typically it's like, it's only maybe the first half of the first verse is what I'll get.

Or it'll be like the chorus line I'll get.

And then I'll build the rest of the song around that, if that makes sense, I guess.

The emotion, I guess, the words.

Sometimes it's a phrase like...

Like one thing I will do is like, especially out in the country, people say the craziest, people say the craziest things.

And so sometimes I'll like jot down a little bit of some, like I will sometimes on my phone, take a little note.

If somebody says something real crazy that I've never heard before.

And then maybe one day it'll just pop in my head.

Like, Oh, you know, I don't know.

It's very random though.

Like I don't sit and just try to write songs.

That's why I haven't put out, like, that's why I haven't just been dumping out.

even though I have been writing a lot of songs, I haven't just been like dumping out all this crazy music.

I don't want to force it.

I don't want to do truck beer girl songs or like, I, you know, I don't want to force song.

I don't want to like, do you have any truck beer girl songs?

Cause that, that would be an interesting.

Yeah.

I've got this silly one about this guy in West Virginia that, um, he's like the most, he's the most laid back.

Cause I always get in my head and go over analytical about stuff and get real serious sometimes about things.

And he's like, buddy, uh,

You just got to take a drag off this thing.

And he'll you know, he was the one he'd always like, like peer pressure me into taking a hit off a joint or something and like just try to cheer.

And he just didn't take life so seriously.

So I've written this song about it's called Dr. Dan.

And it's about, you know, he's a doctor, but he's not like a he's not like a conventional doctor.

That's a silly one that I'll put out.

So I do have some silly ones like that.

Um, I have a couple of funny ones that I'll, that I'll never, ever, ever probably play to the public, but I did, I played him at the mothership, um, only cause nobody has their phones in there.

But, uh, when I, after, right after we did Rogan, I had, I got a chance.

I got, somehow I got connected with Tom Segura right after Rogan and we went over to the mothership and I got to meet him and I love Adam again.

You know, he, he was on the thing with Norm MacDonald is how I got introduced to him.

That show Norm MacDonald had, but yeah.

He's just, he's an awesome dude.

And so we, we ended up at the mothership.

Uh, I think it was the evening after the Rogan podcast.

And, um, Tom's like, well, they've never had, they've never had live music in here.

He's like, you could be the first one.

And I was like, whatever.

And so, uh, we only had one guitar and I had my guitarist Joey with me.

So Ron White was there.

It was Tom Segura and then Ron White that night.

And Ron took Joey in his car, drove him across town to his,

uh, to his house and grabbed another guitar and came back and we got up there and we did like two really silly songs.

And then Richmond in between, um, in between Tom set and Ron set.

And I was like, again, that was one of those moments in my life where I was like, what,

Like what, what is this?

Like, what is this crazy reality I'm in?

But I do have some funny, I used to, cause a lot of, when I wasn't playing the open mics, you know, the, well, like, you know, Brian that you met, a lot of my guitar playing was spent at places like his house and we were all heavy drinkers and we were just sitting around at a party playing or whatever, you know?

And so I definitely liked the silly stuff too, but.

Well, yeah, real quick before I forget, too, a great example of a guy who...

I was really in my head when we were talking about being low and what I would suggest people to do if they're in that point.

But if I was just to like, not to flip this, but just, it just popped in my head, but probably what I would tell anybody to do if they're like suicidal and thinking about like, if they're to that point is just to go find some, go find somewhere outside, like in nature and go.

Yeah.

That's what, you know, that's,

I kind of missed this step when we were talking about things, but like selling my house and buying that property and putting a camper on it and trying to go into this whole off-grid thing really like,

I don't know.

It does a lot of good for you being reconnected to nature because we are a part of it.

Had that same mindset and was able to maintain it really well as this mandolin player named johnny stats in west virginia To me, he's one of the best and he's won all these awards and stuff and he still works for ups full-time and like he could go out and tour with it play mandolin for anybody he wanted to but he But man when you meet johnny, like you can tell he's just got this.

No comment.

I'm just kidding.

Just trying to escape this dystopian nightmare that we're all living under.

Like, it was just a form of escapism, I guess.

But, you know, my... Well, yeah, I think in such a short period of time, my grandfather grew up, like, you know, they were in a survivalist state, like, trying to make enough money to pay the tax on their land, growing tobacco.

And then here I am, like, in this digital world two generations later, and I'm just like, something's not... You know, I just felt...

just felt called to try to figure out, figure all that out and how to get back into that.

There's just a, there's such a purity to man, if you raise an animal and kill it and eat it, like, and I'm not talking about like, like Ted Nugent style, but just like, you know, raising meat birds and pigs and stuff and being, having the ability to put those in the freezer and cook them for dinner.

Like they taste so much better, but it's just, it feels, it's just, I don't know how to describe it, but it just brings me joy.

Um, being able to grow stuff and, um,

even just flowers and everything else, just watching stuff that's alive like that is just such a, you know, my, what we're doing now is I've bought this permaculture farm that hadn't been operational in like six or seven years.

And they did a lot of herbs.

They had a big orchard, blueberries, you know,

but, um, my dream there is to create this space that, um, it's like the optimal place for humans to go to fix their mind.

So like, like what's the animals and the food that I can have there and the trees that I can plant and the certain types of wildlife that I can bring in and attract, like the noises and the sounds and the smells that are optimal for a human to be in, in order to like fix whatever it is, you know, like, um, I had the opportunity to meet Robert Kennedy jr.

Early on with all this.

And, um,

you know, he actually came out to my property and all.

And we're still, I think the idea is that we're going to

launched this kind of like healing center thing out there.

Um, once he gets, once they get through all the mess that like, they got their hands full a little bit right now with things, but whether I go that route or not, it's like, that's my goal is to basically create a place that people can go and like, and fix their mind and find the optimal thing.

You know, we've got laying birds and meat birds.

So we have, we get our eggs and meat and then, um, we've done pigs and sheep and goats.

And then I'm going to start with cat.

I'm

so we'll start doing like Wagyu and Angus and playing around with, and I want to get some funny stuff too.

Like, um, I just, large animals have a lot of, you know, there's all these like large animal therapies out there for mental health, like with vets and stuff.

It's just something, it's something really relaxing and rewarding about being in that space.

Well, everything in civilization seems so, like everything we've talked about, it seems so like, there's such a level of despair and unorganization and chaos and just like, and all these like terrible parts of life that seem like so unstructured and just so uncertain.

Um this joy in him that I don't think he would have if he But as far as me with the open mics, um

But in nature, everything is certain.

Everything has a system like, even on the microbial level of soil, there's this like intricate system and,