Chapter 1: What experiences shaped Bryan's misspent youth?
Miss Magic Maggie here from the House of Bliss in San Diego. So this is a public service announcement. I used to use tanning beds because I felt inadequate because I'm a Native American with white skin due to my Druid ancestors. But when I was in the tanning bed, I spread my legs so that I wouldn't have lines. And now I've got two moles on my hoo-hoo on each side.
And so I would not suggest using tanning beds. Be blissful. Miss Magic. Boo! On this episode of The Commercial Break. I was just kind of a mess. And when you leave the house at 17 fucking years old, you don't know anything. No, you think you do, though. Oh, I did. Oh, yes, I did. I got this. Yeah, I got this.
I got this mattress I'm going to take to my stripper's house, my stripper girlfriend's townhouse. And we're going to live there. Little did I know they were running a little side business out of the house. It was called escorting. People were sneaking in and out of the back door. They were. They were opening the sliding glass door at like three in the morning.
The next episode of The Commercial Break starts now. Oh, yeah, cats and kittens, welcome back to the commercial break. I'm Brian Green. This is my dear friend and the co-host of this show, Chris and Joy Hoadley. Best to you, Chrissy. Best to you, Brian. Best to you out there in the podcast universe. Happy to have you back in studio here with us. Day number two. How are you feeling?
It feels great. Settling back in? Yes. Feels like a... Warm, snuggly blanket. It does kind of, yeah. That I just got back into. It's our cavernous cave here. It is very... The tree of trust. The tree of trust, as you might. You're in the little nest with the birds in the tree of trust. Yeah. And again, thanks to Tina for hopping in. Absolutely. She did a great job. Fantastic. Just a great job.
It was wonderful to sit and have a conversation with her. I actually was responding to some text messages because people were like, love the episodes with Tina. Who is Tina? I don't think I ever explained to those who are new to the show who Tina was. So there must have been four of those messages. Who is Tina? And how did she get there? Tina is... She's a little birdie.
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Chapter 2: How did Bryan's early living arrangements impact his life?
She's another little birdie that flew into the mask. She flies around the show. That's right. I have been friends with Tina for over 30 years. I have known Tina. She's a family friend. She's a good, dear friend of mine. A little story about Tina that I probably should have told when she was here, but we'll tell it when she's not. When...
I was living, did I ever tell you this story about how one night I thought I was getting cocaine and we got crystal meth and then we thought we were crystal meth dealers. So we were, okay. Tina may or may not have been around me at that time.
And I was living in an apartment with a dude who had a job in construction and he was sober, like hardcore sober, had been an alcoholic and a drug addict for many, many years. And his rules of these houses, this house was insane. How did you get hooked up with him? I was traveling around couches because I was a real fucking shithead.
I mean, I wanted to be the next Eddie Vedder, but that's not gainful employment, wanting to be the next Eddie Vedder. That doesn't pay very well. Do you know what I'm saying? Especially not when you have a voice like I do. So I was just like couch hopping and some, eventually I said to one of my friends, a guy who was also in AA, listen to this story. This is crazy. Okay, here we go.
Brian, story time with Brian. I was at a house where everyone was—it was the weed house. Everyone was smoking weed. It was like a real white man—the white men who didn't think they were white. The Bob Marley? Yes. White Bob Marley? Well, more like drug dealers, hardcore, one too many, you know, Snoop Dogg albums, Notorious B.I.G. hanging on the wall. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
And they were dealing, you know, $10 bags of weed out of the window at the shitty apartment complex. But we all were friends with them, Tina included. And so we would always go to this house. There was always weed around. There was always like drugs, alcohol, all this shit. It was like a den of iniquities. And the crazy shit, I could spend a whole episode just talking about this house.
But let me get here. In the afternoon, I was couch surfing somewhere. I probably didn't have a place to stay that night. The guys told me, ah, come crash on our couch. It was a house full of people, as it always was, of weird people in and out of the house. You know, hold your wallet really tight, like that kind of scene. The land of the misfit toys? The land of the misfit white people.
I mean, that's what it was, right? So I never forget. We're watching TV. They're passing around this joint. I'm hitting it. And I start to get, I go super para, like super para. I remember those days. I'm just in my head. It's all spinning around. I can't breathe. My heart's racing too fast.
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Chapter 3: What led Bryan to live with sex workers and in halfway houses?
I'm dead. I'm dying. I can't think. Am I thinking? Am I breathing? Should I think about breathing? Yes. I can't move. And I freaked out. And I called the one person, the one person that I thought could help me. And that is a guy from high school who went to AA, who started, who like got sober in high school.
He didn't even have enough time to become a drug addict or an alcoholic, but he went straight. He knits it in the bud. Do not pass go. And still to this day, I believe the guy is sober. Good for him. But, and he was a friend in grade school. He was a friend in high school. So I know his, I have his phone number in my little black book because back then you didn't have a phone.
You had a black book. I open it up, I call him, and I mumble-jumble my way through a conversation. And an hour later, he is picking me up with his AA sponsor, and we are headed to a Waffle House where the AA sponsor is buying me something to eat and asking me a series of questions. Here's some of the questions. Wow.
Do you believe that alcohol and drugs is negatively affecting your life or your relationships? And I'm eating like I've never eaten before. And I'm like, uh-huh. Definitely. Definitely. Can I have more? Can I have more waffles? Yeah. Yes. More syrup. Do you owe any drug dealers any money? Probably. Yep. Definitely. As a matter of fact, I think I still owe the people at that house money.
Okay, we're going to figure that out. We're going to figure that out for you. Are you willing to submit to a higher power? Uh-huh, definitely, definitely. Can I have some more syrup with these waffles and some coffee and a high C orange juice, please? Anything you say. Anything you say. And these guys are so serious. They're just like staring me down and I'm like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
24 hours later, I am in a halfway house. Okay. A halfway house. Okay. For people who have problems with drugs and alcohol. Yeah. This was probably, certainly the lowest point in my young life at that point. I didn't know how I got there. I didn't know why I got there. So you had like a room? I had a room with two other guys. Okay.
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Chapter 4: What was Bryan's journey into music with Chopper Johnson?
In a shitty apartment complex on Buford Highway. Okay. Oh, wow. Where it's an immigrant community. Anybody who's been to Atlanta knows Buford Highway, right? Fantastic food. Fantastic food. Probably not the first choice of apartment complexes. No. And we are in the worst of the worst. And I am now in an apartment complex. And the whole building is this...
organization that is really just ripping people off. But I'll explain that in a second. So I signed my life away. I'm willing to work. All my money is going to go to these people. These people are going to provide food and shelter and all this other stuff. And I'm like, okay, whatever. At that time, you got to understand that I just wanted some kind of stability.
Stability, I was going to say, yeah. I'm probably 19 years old at the time. And I did not have the ability to get an apartment on my own. I don't think I had a vehicle at the time. No, I didn't have a vehicle at the time. Didn't have a vehicle at the time. I just wanted some stability. Mm-hmm. And I felt like this was a way to get some stability.
And then I'll, you know, I could still have my friendships. This was not that. This became like a whole fucking thing. It was like basically I was like encompassed in a cocoon of really old men who had very serious problems with drugs and alcohol. And I was like a young kid in this apartment complex. It was crazy. Okay. Okay. It lasted about two weeks. I flew the coop. I'm sure.
I flew the coop, and I had a friend, and he said, come live with this guy. He needs a roommate, right? And it's $50 a week. You can live with him. It was in Cobb County, which is a much different- Were you working at the Trattoria? I was not yet working at the tutorial that would come about two years later. But so what I do is I go and I live with him.
And then one night, as I've told the story before, we thought we were getting some the girlfriend of this guy. Here were the rules of the house. You can only use this half of the refrigerator. If you touch anything in my side of the refrigerator, I'll break your fucking face. If I hear you after 7 o'clock at night, I'll break your fucking face.
If you turn on the TV after 9 o'clock at night, I'll break your fucking face. If you come in that door and bring friends that I don't know, I'm going to break your fucking face. Come on. You cannot be in the living room when I'm watching TV or I'll break your fucking face. This guy was the meanest son of a bitch I had ever met in my entire life. And he was sober for many years.
But he had learned nothing, but he was sober, right? He had learned the opposite of whatever sober people live.
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Chapter 5: How did Bryan navigate his struggles with substance abuse?
Right. So I live with him. Okay. All right. Tina is around me at this time. Tina and I are spending a lot of time together. You know, sometimes he knew Tina because here's how it goes. I think it was Tina who actually introduced me to this guy because she knew his girlfriend. His girlfriend was the one that was selling us drugs on the side.
And he had no idea that his girlfriend was a drug addict. Right. Oh, no. So one night, Tina and I are doing whatever we're doing in the room. Quiet as mice. Probably three o'clock in the morning, you know, whispering to each other. And you think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. Whispering to each other. And we're looking through the creative loafing.
And in the creative loafing in the back, it's musicians wanted, right? And there's one, you know, a rock band needs singer, you know, send tapes to this address or call this phone number. So Tina circles it, and she says, call this phone number. So the next day, the first thing I do is I call that phone number.
And they say, yeah, come on and drop your shit off, drop your tapes off at this address. So two days later, at like 8 o'clock at night, 9 o'clock at night. Did you have the 33 tapes? I had the tapes in my bag. I had all of my lyric books, which are embarrassingly embarrassing. You found those a little while back. I found those a little while. Well, Chelsea found them.
My best friend's wife found them in the back of her car. That's right. And laughed and laughed. And you were going to do the AI stuff to some of them. And we did. Yeah, we did some of it. And I'll do more of it. It's bad. It's all bad. Teenage angst. So I go to the front door of this office building. Like it's an office complex.
You know, the offices that kind of look like houses, you know, like two story houses, right? Brick, the whole nine yards where you might see a doctor's office or a small lawyer's office or an accountant or whatever. OK, so we go to one of these in Buckhead.
And Tina drives me there and she waits in the car and I go up to the front door and I knock on the door and the guy, one of the guys from the band answers the door and he's like, hey, what's up? And I'm like, yeah, I'm Brian. I talked to one of you guys on the phone and, you know, and he's like, cool. You're like early. We're still up here practicing with another guy. So just drop your tapes off.
And, you know, we'll get back to you. And I'm like, yeah, actually, I kind of drove all the way out here. So can I just like, maybe like... Hang out? And he's like, I go, can I maybe get like some of your music so I could put something to it? And he goes, uh, yeah, okay. Come upstairs, sit in this room. And then when we're done, we'll talk to you. And I'm like, okay, cool.
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Chapter 6: What insights does Nacho Red share about his podcast journey?
So I do that. But I never say another word to Tina. And when I... What happens is... They get done with auditioning another guy. I go in. I spend the next two hours talking and auditioning for them, just right into it. They play music. I start singing. I grab my lyric book. I start singing. By the end of that two hours, I'm in the band. I'm in the band. Do you want to live with us?
And I have a place to live. Sweet. When I come outside, like four hours later... Tina is still sitting there. There is no comunicado because there's no way to communicate. There are no cell phones. There's nothing. I never thought that she would just sit there and wait for me. Well, she probably, I mean, if it would have been me, I would have thought, well, he's making headway. This is great.
This is it. Yeah. She thought I'm going to ride his coattails all the way to fame and fortune. And she still thinks that to this day. That's Tina. Tina is still waiting outside of the commercial break for all of this. She is a great friend. And she was wonderful when she was here. But Tina and I go so far back. She is intertwined in so much of my history in my misspent youth. I mean, honestly.
I was just a shithead. I was just like, I don't know about a shithead. I was lost. I didn't have any direction. The parental situation was pretty bad, not because they were bad people, but because they just were also in shitty situations themselves. And so I was... I mean, four boys is a lot. It's a lot. And I was the first of the boys.
And so you know what they say about firsts is that you bang your head on every wall, right? Every rule is more strict for you. That's so true. You're trying to figure out how to parent with the first one so that the ones behind them get the benefit of some experience. So I feel bad for my first because I know he's getting the worst version of parenting.
We're trying everything and seeing what sticks, you know? You know, being firm and being nice and being empathetic and not giving a shit and all this other stuff. And that was my parent. That definitely happened with me. But then in combination with some things that were going on at the house that were not...
And he's having anything to do with being good or bad parents, just sickness, illness, mental illness. And so I was just kind of a mess. And when you leave the house at 17 fucking years old, you don't know anything. No, you think you do that. Oh, I did. Oh, yes, I did. I got this. Yeah, I got this.
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Chapter 7: How does Kevin's talent compare to Bryan's?
I got this mattress I'm going to take to my stripper's house, my stripper girlfriend's townhouse. And we're going to live there. Little did I know they were running a little side business out of the house. It was called escorting. People were sneaking in and out of the back door. They were. They were opening the sliding glass door at like three in the morning.
I had a mattress that I took from my dad's house. I took a mattress. I took anything I could fit in a backpack. And I took the only clothes that I had, which was an orange 33 shirt that And the 33 is kind of always stuck with an orange shirt that has black 33 lettering on it. It was like an old baseball jersey or something.
And my green bell-bottom pants and my blue Doc Martens and anything I could fit in a bag. Your wallet and your chain. That's it. And a mattress. And I took the mattress and we put it on top of a Ford Taurus and we held it down for 17 months. Oh, God, the Ford Tauruses. My family had one. Everyone had a Ford Taurus. You didn't live in the 90s or early 2000s if you didn't have a Ford Taurus.
And we went and we moved in with two dancers who... We didn't know it at the time. We're like four months behind on rent. But they were like, if you pay the rent, it's your place. But then we'll also come in and out of the house and hang out. It was a nightmare. And they had a third girl that lived with them down in the bottom of the townhouse. And so you would walk in. It was a three-story.
You would walk in. There was a balcony overlooking a big living area and a bedroom off to the right. Then there was a bedroom and a kitchen on the middle area with a little dinette. And then you could walk up to the third story and there was a bedroom up there. So, you know, when my friend took the bedroom upstairs, I took the one next to the kitchen.
And then I also happened to be like, I would say dating one of the dancers, but I don't think, I think I would call it dating. I think she would call it, does he have any money available? Can he pay the rent? And he's cute. Yeah, he's cute. That was cute. That was like a little lost puppy dog. So like the second night we're there,
By the way, the second night we're there, there is no electricity because the girls have had the power shut off. That's right. So there's no electricity. And that's a whole different story. There's no electricity. I remember that story. Everything's dark. It's hot because it's like summertime. It's hot in there. You know, all this. Anyway.
So it's like 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, whatever time of night. I go in. I lay down on this bed. Can't remember if this girl cat was with me or not. But that's irrelevant to the story because...
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Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from Bryan's experiences?
I'm not sleeping very well because of how fucking hot it is. And because it's my first time away from home, right? I'm like, and I don't know what I'm doing. And I realized quickly I made a huge mistake. And my dad, the only reason why he's talking to me is to ask for the mattress back. That's all he cares about. He wants his mattress back. I mean, come on. And I hear...
And then they had those big, like, blinds, like the plastic blinds on the back sliding door. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. I had those in one place, too. And I was like, Dave? Dave. And then I hear... And then I hear the door downstairs slam. And I'm like, oh, that must be that girl who I did not know all that well. I only met once. But she was living downstairs. Why was she living downstairs?
I don't know. She's living downstairs. Because you're 17 and you don't know shit. You don't know you should sign a lease and there should be only authorized people in your house at any given time. I don't know. I'm thinking like, I guess this is how the real world works. This is how adults live. They just come in and out of each other's houses at any time.
And so I try to go back to sleep, and then I hear... Oh, yeah. I'll get it, baby papa. This goes on for 10 minutes, and then the door opens and closes, and then... Oh, God. And I'm like, what just happened? Next morning, I wake up, or I'm up, or whatever, and Dave's spinning around the kitchen. He was like, did you hear that? And I go, did I hear it? I think I was involved in it.
It was so close. I don't know. And he goes, I think she's a prostitute. And I was like, what? He goes, I think she's a prostitute. And I'm like, no, she just had a boyfriend over and snuck back or whatever. So then, you know, later on that day, the other girls come over, the other dancers come over, and I was telling the story. I was like, this is crazy, like 3 o'clock in the morning.
And she goes, oh, yeah, that was her client. And I go, oh, she's a sex worker? She's a prostitute? And she goes... Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how she makes money. That's why she's still living here is because she can pay the rent. And I was like, oh, okay. All right. Okay. Well, high times. Yeah. Okay. I have lived an interesting life. Yes, you have. For sure. Yes. No doubt.
Yes, you have. And someday my children will learn about this life through this podcast. Through the podcast. I was going to say, we enjoy hearing about it. And that's why this is the last commercial break episode ever, and it's all going away tomorrow. So download now. Download now. All right. I want to talk about our video. Speaking of Chopper Johnson and 33P.
Yeah, because Chopper Johnson was the band that you joined as part of that last story. That's right. Chopper Johnson was the band that I joined at that time. And I went and I lived with them. And they were already a regionally successful band, but they had some problems with their lead singer. He also had some drug and alcohol issues himself.
So they kicked him out of the band after they had already produced a couple of albums. And I would come to find out that the manager of
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