Brandi Carlile

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm Joy and Billily Padman. Hi. My voice broke there. Oh, let's leave it. It's very, because it's a ding, ding, ding. Oh my gosh, it's a ding, ding, ding to the episode. It is. Her voice breaks in one of her most famous songs. Ah, really good job. Brandy Carlisle. Brandy Carlisle is an 11-time Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and producer. Her albums are, by the way, I forgive you. In these silent days, the story, returning to myself, currently on the human tour. For dates and tickets, go to brandycarlyle.com. Guys, I loved her. This was such a fun episode. Yeah, I really, really loved her. And she sings for us. Yeah, she sings for us. Please enjoy Brandy Carlisle. He's an object. He's an object. He's an object. He's an object. He's an object. He's an object. He's an object. He's an object. He's an object. He's an object. He's an object. So happy to have you. And I'm really excited to talk to you guys. This is awesome. My purpose was not around, because I knew the stakes were really high. You just met Anna? Yeah, yeah, she was great. OK. She was so nervous to meet you. She's never asked in eight years to meet anybody. She was like, I have to. She's a huge fan. Oh, man. Well, I have this thing called Girls Just Want a Weekend every year. Yeah. Mexico? Yeah. It's like life changing for a lot of people. Yes. Because you get lured into it thinking it's a festival, but really it's like a whole experience. You got to come. OK. You got to have the girls come. Well, right, it's all female performers, right? Yeah. Are men welcome? Men are treated like absolute celebrities. Oh. Oh my God. The way that we basically hoist you onto our shoulders. You carry you down like a trophy. Wow. That is human. If you come to our festival. Oh, wow. OK, now I want to go. I love the idea of being. Just men that says like, I survived Girls Just Want a Weekend. Oh, that's great. We sing, let's hear it for the boy. Yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Let's give these boys a hand. That's right. OK, I think you do great there, Dax. Well, I just think when men will leave the country to attend a festival with all women or non-binary headliners, it's like, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those men are rad. Yeah. OK, good, good, good, good. I love that. I was reading about it and you must know that we heard the most sincere and authentic review of this festival from Anna. Oh, yes, she had. She got back. She had so much fun. And I had a million questions. I'm like, is it a lesbian festival? And she's like, yes and no. Not overtly, but yes. Yeah, a lot of gay men are starting to come too. Which is really cool. There's this whole contingency of really sapphically focused gay men that are really enjoying. OK. This sounds like the happiest group imaginable to be honest. I think that's why it's life changing. Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, that's awesome. Kristen has described it. She's not Ben, but just given all the feedback from Anna, she said, you know, it's the polar opposite of Woodstock 99 if you're trying to think of an event. It couldn't be anymore. In one way or another, it's a response to that. Yeah, but you saw Lilith Fair when you were a kid. Yeah, you went to the Lilith Fair Festival. Yep, that's actually what I think got me wanting to do this was that. Yeah, what age were you when you went to that? 17. So, so formative. Yeah. I had this one experience in particular where I was just this little scallywag kid all sunburned and drinking Mountain Dews, like these big refillable Mountain Dews all day. And I like took my bucket of Mountain Dew to have it refilled to the Mountain Dew stand. And there was this lesbian standing in line behind me and she goes, honey, what are you getting to drink? And I was like a Mountain Dew. And she goes, you need some water and your sunburned. And she put sunscreen on my shoulders. And you're going to die in a couple hours. She made me fill my bucket up on one hand. I was like, hmm. But then I got older and I was like, I need a festival like that. Yeah. That's like we're taking care of each other. Looking out. That is the opposite of what's done. Exactly. It does make me think what you tell your children when you have children, which is like, okay, if you're alone, you find a police officer. Yeah. You cannot find a police officer, which you likely will not find a woman with kids. Yeah. We say, find a mom. Yeah. Go to a woman. A single woman. Keep going down the list. Find a lesbian if you can't find a lesbian. And last is like finding a dude in a Corvette with his shirt off. Yeah. You might as well just run into the street. Where was the Lilith? Was it in Gasworks Park? Good question. You know Seattle. I'm drinking a lot of 40s at Gasworks. Okay. Yeah. I dated a girl for nine years that was from Marysville. Okay. No, it's at the Gorge. Oh, perfect. In fact, that's where it started in 1997. Perfect home for that. And that was the year Tracy Chapman was on that line. Sarah and the Indigo girl. And it was amazing. Erica Badu was on the year when... Oh, wow. Oh, wow. ...Shaneid O'Connor was there the year I was. Oh, my God. I love Erica Badu. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Ravens. Dale. Ravens, Dale. A lot of dales in that area. There might be a dailer too. Yeah, there's a dailer too out there. Couple of dales. Now Ravens, Dale, it seems almost impossible because it's 28 miles from Seattle yet it has a population of 500 people. Well, Seattle's like that. It's a bit like Anchorage in a way where you can land in Seattle and get yourself like the most delicious silky cappuccino you've ever drank and then a half an hour later see a bear. Yeah. It would be potentially lost in the middle of this. Yeah, that's what I love about it. That is cool. The history of the town fascinated me because it's a coal mining town. You don't associate Washington with coal mining. You kind of can. I mean, it was one of the first in terms of that. Ravensdale is a bit of a subsidiary of another town called Black Diamond, which is a neighboring town and actually Loretta Lynn lived there. Oh, wow. Yeah, for a time. Yeah. When I was a kid, we would run around. There's coal mines everywhere. You got to watch out for mine shafts and everything. Yeah. I got my last spanking for playing in a mine shaft. Oh gosh. I'm so jealous. I would have loved a mine shaft when I was a kid. We liked rock quarries because there was water in them. And mine shafts, they got water in them too. I bet. But they're bottomless. Okay. So you like to flirt with danger. If you're playing over there, you're rascal a little bit. I would stand far away. I think Farrell's the right word. Farrell. Okay. So I grew up in a rural area too. And I will say, that's not necessarily what I wanted for my kids, but boy, do I cherish the amount of, we were just lighting stuff on fire. I mean, we were allowed to do whatever came across your mind because there's no supervision and there's no one around to catch you. What parts of it don't you want for your kids? I, again, this is probably rooted in all my own personal stuff, but it's like too much privacy out there. Too many places to hide. Just like I couldn't get caught lighting shit on fire, adults were getting caught for stuff and there's a general, that part of it I don't love. Yeah. No, you're exactly right. Look, and again, I would love to see dad on this, but where I was from, we had to have over indexed. We had a serial killer in a small town. Every single person was molested. I know. I just feel like it's safer here. Yeah. We don't do sleepovers. Yeah. A lot of people don't anymore. It's amazing. One thing about our generation having realized that maybe we all had too much freedom, whether we lived in a rural area or not. Yeah. I was trying to explain that to my kids. I would be like, we would get on our bikes. We'll be eight o'clock in the morning and we would maybe come home at some point after dark and no one knew where we were, how we were getting money or candy. We're even curious. Didn't even ask you what your day was like. Nope. Yeah. It's crazy. And back to what's dangerous about it is like, I know you know, because I had it a million times. I always run into somebody dicing on the street, which they do. It's LA. There's a bunch of homeless people. They always have someone in sight they could yell to. How many times when you're a kid and you're out in the woods or you're somewhere and you come across an adult, like a sold adult and it's freaky. You know, there's nobody around in this weird adults in the woods for some reason too. You have a lot of those moments when you grow, I think rural. I do. And I didn't experience any significant traumas, but I can see the near misses now. How many times I got close to my battleship. Yeah. It was crazy. Like I remember getting in this guy's truck that was like the town scary guy, but he told me that there were trout biting in this quarry. And I was like, no, that's an empty pond, this full water. And he's like, no, there's a stream that's dumping coconut into it. I'll show you right where they're biting. And I was like, I shouldn't get into your truck, but I want those coconut. I can't imagine what they fish in the map. That's what you people do to go get drunk. I don't dress this guy, but fuck, I do want coke. Coke and he, coke and he, no, I did. And it was fine, but I mean near miss, right? Or even that the guy would put a 13 year old girl in his truck is horrifying without our parents permission and then totally innocuously take her to shore where to catch trout. It's kind of unbelievable. You got lucky. I got lucky every time, but a lot of folks don't. So I actually know what you mean about that. Yeah. It's just that element. And again, I love it cause I got through it and I feel like I got all my confidence from that because I was navigating these weird situations and dangerous ones and kids were getting hurt and all that. I think you enter the real world and you're like, I got to get a job and pay for bills. That's fine. The question is how do you recreate those kinds of experiences for your kids without exposing them to the possibility of real trauma? You want them to have the street smarts we have. You want them to understand that not everybody is upper middle class or privileged in a way, but you can't falsify or recreate. I know I'm coming across as the kind of parent. We're actually quite free range. Really? Oh yeah. Like we were in Denmark and we're like, cool, this is Travoli's gardens. It's huge, but it's all encapsulated. We're like, have fun. We will see you in six hours. Here is a credit card. You know, like go. And they're 11 and 13. Am I right? At the time they were nine and 11. Yeah. With other kids too though. Right? Well, they were split up. So yes, Lily went with maybe Lincoln, but Dolly and Delta got it in their mind. They were going to set a record on a roller coaster and they wrote it, you know, 60 times in a row or something. So they did split up. There weren't another country. I was like, yeah, it'll work out. They're smart. So I do have that side of me too. Wow. Yeah. And that's how you do it. You set up those situations of kind of controlled chaos. It's within reason. Yeah. Okay. What were mom and dad like? What were they up to? I think we share an attic father. Yeah. We may share the actual one. We don't know. We don't know. I think I'd be cuter, but yeah, I got this bum end of that stick. That would be huge. What a revelation. I mean, this would go so viral. Well, here's a car salesman. Dave Shepherd. Yeah. So I grew up in that kind of house. How old were they when they had, you're the middle? I'm the oldest daughter and I'm the oldest grandchild on both sides. So I have all that superiority complex going for me and this enormous sense of responsibility to balance it out. So they were young. They were like 19 and 20 or 20 and 21, like right around there and they got married while they were pregnant with me. And I'm not sure how long it took for my dad to sort of succumb to pretty severe alcoholism or if he kind of was already always drinking. I may actually know this, but I'm not recalling it off the top of my head. But yeah, he had a really, really bad drinking problem. Most of my childhood. Was he employed? He was employed initially at the Boeing. In Tacoma. But you got to build airplanes, you got to stay sober. Yeah, you do. Of all the jobs we have, people do. That's a big one. Yeah. That's high on my list. You know, he would go and recovery and he would go to rehab and he would get to the point where he would even be somebody else's sponsor, like he'd be cleaned that long. It made it that much more heartbreaking when he would fall. And would you see the signs percolating up? Did you ever feel like you had a sense of when those times were coming? No. It always surprised me. And I actually think maybe now that I'm an adult, that's why I never let anything surprise me ever. I don't even like getting a birthday present. I'm like, tell me what it is and we'll talk about it. When he was drunk, what version of a drunk was he? Just unpredictable. He's really smart, hyperarticulate, kind of a victim of an overactive mind. And alcohol is obviously something that he used to sort of quell that. But because he's so naturally, he would not like this, but quite dogmatic and smarinating and rhetoric all the time. His sobriety would become a family religion. So we would be in Alenon, Alatine. We would be learning that we'd have the slogans, we had the one-liners. And then he would fall off the wagon and it would feel like we fell off a skyscraper. Well, yeah, your identity, all of your identities. The whole friendship group is all members of AA, I'm sure. I wish. I think that's part of the problem. Okay. Is that you kind of described that small town situation. No, they were not. And my dad, he doesn't have like an ego, but he's kind of self-important in a way. And just if what is needed in theory for an addict to stay clean is a positive friend group, he doesn't believe that applies to him. He's the one guy. He can do it on his own. I'm always like, when I entered recovery, they're like, you know, here's six things that work for people. And I'm like, let's see if I can do it with one. Get three months, relapse, and then come back. I'm open to doing two of the things. I mean, literally, I had to get worn down over a year so far. So I was like, okay, I'll do all the fucking things. What? I have to believe in God. Okay. I need a sponsor. Well, it's still all about acceptance, acceptance that you have a real issue. Obviously that cliche or that acknowledgement is the hardest hurdle or problem is real. All of that is just to get to, yeah, I have a real problem because until then you're like, I have a little problem. I could probably just do with one of these things. There's an arrogance. The normal people need all this, but I'm exceptional. So what will I need? Maybe three of these things? Yeah. If any of them, and then there's to your point, like, have you seen that Leonardo DiCaprio meme? I love it so much where he's got that kind of face and he's holding a martini or whatever. The meme is like, how wine drunks look at regular drunks. It's like, oh, we drink wine. There's always someone worse. There's always someone worse. And then there's that cliche of the rock bottom thing. It feels like only time I've seen people get sober and like stay sober. This is just a theory from a person who's not an addict, by the way, but is that the shit has to really hit the fan. Oh, the saying in AA is like, you won't change until your hair is on fire. And then the other great things, which describes your father and myself is like, you can have terminal uniqueness, which is I'm so unique and I'm going to die because of it. Like I'm so special and different and unique and I'm going to die of that uniqueness, but I don't care. I'd rather be that unique. Yeah. It's almost romantic. Yes. And it feels like it has autonomy. You're in control and it's not. Yeah, you're just unwilling. He's sober now though. He is. That's awesome. For how long? For a long time. That's awesome. 22 years ago. Oh, that's awesome. I imagine we inherited the same thing, which I was just like, you know, it's kind of dory because it's this thing my dad's super into. And then the spirituality that would accompany it, right? It'd be like a course of miracles and all these other things that tie in with it. What kind of feelings are you having about that whole element? About the spiritual element? The AA and the slogans and all that stuff. Was it like, oh my God, this is embarrassing or? I was already more religious than AA when we entered into AA. I was already really into Jesus. Oh. And were your parents or just you? You found it on your own? It's very weird. My parents were and my dad really was at a time, you know, he's like extremist. So he had extremist moments and is still an extremist. I had my own path with it. Like I have terminally uniqueness. So I almost died when I was five from meningitis. I just got told so many times that I had like a purpose and that I was like saved for something and we were all intense and we were all going to church. And so I was like talking to Jesus all the time. I had a whole relationship with this Jesus thing that was kind of independent. I would elect to go to vacation Bible school and I want us and youth group and stuff like that. I didn't have groups of friends based on it either. You weren't like idolizing some older kid that was super into it or anything? No. This is that maybe that near death experience. Your heart stopped a few times during that. Yeah. Yeah. I was just like riding shotgun with his Jesus character. Wow. And kind of always have been through a lot of turmoil ups and downs in my life and even things about me that would push me away from it and pull me back and recognize with a lot of gratitude that I have a very unique God perspective. And you still do. I still do. Yeah. What kind of problem was this in baptism was supposed to happen? I think like 16. Okay. So 16 were supposed to get baptized. Yeah. And what happened? There was this kind of troubling church actually in our town. Big surprise. In the neighboring town Black Diamond. They kind of looked for troubled kids that were in troubled home situations and stressed out. You know, and at this point me and my brother already dropped out of high school and we were in trouble cleaning buses at the bus barn and this church bus pulled up and told us to get in and picked up my brother and I didn't go. They should have told you Steelhead were running. Yeah. All they had to tell me was Steelhead were running in the green. There's Colin at the church. Okay. I'm like, look at that. I got in the worry guys truck. No, but I didn't go. Eventually I started going to the church, found it, compelling went to one of those camps. You know, they go to these camps. I don't think you guys have ever experienced these church camp things. I've not been to one, but kids went to them. Yeah. A lot of friends were. Okay. Deeply emotional and transformative for young kids, these camps, these pastors, they're cool. They know how to talk to young people. They know how to play on our guilt and our sense of rebelliousness. And so it compelled me to want to get baptized. I felt that there was just too much in the world that I couldn't handle without making my faith official. Yeah. So I did the thing that you do in the evangelical church where the pastor like prays for everybody to close their eyes and then somebody comes forward and I came forward. So I was going to get baptized and everybody's crying and clapping and it's all very charismatic. And you spend like a week taking classes and doing Bible study and spending time with the pastor and everything. And I had done it. I did all those things. And when the day came around for my baptism at the church, the whole town, which is like not many people and my parents, troubling as it all was, we were a unit. We were together. We were all big dysfunctional family. I was out of the closet. I had a girlfriend. I had a short little haircut. Can we do one second on that? Being openly gay where I'm from in a rural area in the 80s, it would have been really hard. Was it different in Washington? No, I was the only one I knew. Yeah. Where did you get the confidence to own that and not run from that at all? It's a really good question. It's just for me. It's always been such an obvious part of who I am when I saw other gay people on TV, you know, like Ellen DeGeneres coming out in the 90s when I saw gay artists like the Indigo Girls and I was a huge Elton John fan and I read all of these biographies. And then there were movies that kind of touched on it, Boys on the Side in Philadelphia. I recognized there was a community or a culture outside of my life. That makes sense. Your heroes were all gay. Yeah. All my friends were going through puberty and they wanted to make out with boys and I wanted to make out with girls. Yeah, yeah. I just did. I wanted to make out with them. I couldn't deny that. But people do. But they do. All the time. So it's amazing. I think when they're not in cities as well, they tend to even more. They definitely do. Yeah. I just have always been pretty oblivious to just not being cool. You know, my favorite pants growing up were like cow print jeans. I didn't know that people were laughing at my obsessions or my eccentricities. And so I was like, yeah, I'm gay. Everybody knows I'm gay. They're not that into it. They're not a popular thing. I'm not taking a whole lot of shit for it, but I'm not being accepted either. And again, kind of oblivious to that. Just listening to the Indigo Girls loving my life. They probably don't mind that you're gay. They're nervous. Is every girl going to turn gay now in the school? I don't think that kind of imposes that. I think that's what happens. If I could have turned a one-year-old gay in my school, that would have been awesome. You're like, I was trying. Yeah. Like when I talk to friends of mine who I adore that live in the South, the way they'll tell me that like Disney's goal is to convince all kids to be trans. I'm like, I think you think that. Like I do think you think that. Yeah. I think that's a real thought. Yeah. And I think similarly, like I think a lot of people back then were just like, yeah, I don't care what she does, but she going to influence my daughter. This idea of a bad influence. Yeah. There may have been some of that. I mean, I remember hearing a lot of words like that thrown around town or in my family or in the 90s, like, oh, she's militant or she's hard or are you going to put it in our faces? These kind of or like love the center hate the sin. We love you, but we don't accept your lifestyle. Right. Right. And that unfortunately just had to be good enough for me back then. Oh, yeah. And I was absolutely fine with that. Yeah. You weren't sweating that too much. I mean, I wasn't. I know it was a counter cultural thing. In your parents, they were cool, obviously. No. Okay. Not really. Same situation. They weren't cool, but they weren't not cool. It was something everybody found kind of quite annoying about me if I'm right. But I have an inner world and I also knew, I can't explain why, but I knew I had this life ahead of me that I was about to be a part of and that I was going to be okay. But I get to this church for this baptism after spending this time with the pastor, having this kind of position in my community that was complicated. I was loved, but not accepted. And just everything was like, okay, but not great. So I get to this church and the pastor takes me aside with this other kid that was going to get like a much younger kid and asks us both as a formality, do you practice witchcraft or homosexuality? And I just laughed. I just burst out laughing because I didn't understand why that question was pertinent and I still don't. But that question seemed so ridiculous to me. And then it didn't take me long to realize that I had to answer yes to one of those things. Right. You're thinking through witchcraft in to make it seem less pointed or you think that's standard. I think that's equal. Those are the same. I'm just curious if he's been a week with you. He probably liked you. He liked me. And you me. You knew my family. And he's about to put you in a situation where he's going to deny you a baptism. I mean, imagine he's human. So did he just throw witchcraft in to try to make it say, I got to ask these standard questions. I think so. And I think I saw this very moment. I just accepted it as such. It just seems like I'm going to sing. I would do you find yourself all the way to this point believing in witchcraft. But whatever. I'm going to ask her about witchcraft and then the homosexuality thing won't. There's a throwaway. Yeah. Maybe the other kid was a warlock. No. Maybe the kid, the boy was a warlock. He's getting you both with the last question. Yeah. So he very well could have been. He's standing there with his staff. Exactly. But I stopped laughing and I looked at him and I go, you know me. I go, you know I'm gay. Everyone knows I'm gay. I'm the gay person. I'm the town. I'm like the town gay. The town gay. You know, that didn't seem like that was a disqualifying factor. And I'm in a swimsuit and my parents are right there. What are you talking about? And he was like, you can't be baptized today. And I had to leave the church in front of all those people sitting there. Run back to my house. How did you take that? Were you heartbroken by that or were you angered by it? At that point, just humiliated. Yes. So embarrassed, which is my nightmare. I cannot be embarrassed. It was about the most embarrassed I've ever been in my life to this day. And my parents came home and a couple of their close friends like Ron and Diane, like they all came to the house and it was suddenly I was loved and accepted. It was this weird thing that happened where then Pastor Dude was the problem and the whole town got mad on my behalf. Oh, that's beautiful. That might be scarier for me though. I don't know if I want the whole town to hate me or love me. I'm afraid of both. I could see why because they might know what you're doing. I just be like, oh, I can't live up to love. I can live up to disappointing you, but living up to love, that's the whole trajectory of this experience of even getting famous. That's still an issue. I'm afraid for you to love me because I'm going to disappoint you. I think more than ever, that is a valid stressor. I can see why you feel that way even without the issues. Yeah, I already had those and then there's some proof now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think that's what I found around for me in a really interesting way. So did they can the pastor? No. They said like, you got to go with the program and baptize. No, that pastor called me every day for a long time trying to apologize. I think it was just upsetting for everyone. Religion and dogma, it's so oppressive. So did you just lose your desire to even get baptized at that point? Like, fuck that. I have my relationship with Jesus and I'm good. Yeah, until much, much later in life. It set me free in a way, I think. I made a lot of people that thought that gay people were militant and insisting on these rights that they're going to take from them realize we really are kind of in trouble out here. We really are vulnerable in a lot of different ways. I don't think they realized. Yeah, you were just like excommunicated from your church. In front of them all. Yeah. Well, that's a lovely end though to that terrible story that they have. It is. I'm so glad. I think so. That's why I look at it. It's like, we don't enjoy seeing someone get shit on or excluded. Almost no matter what. Yeah. And it can change us on a dime in a profound way more than had you bitched out the guy in front of everyone. And won. And won. Something. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Did I read correctly that you wouldn't get married until LGBTQ? So the gay is good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had a lot of gay friends and my analogy was, and this is a crazy analogy, but it feels very appropriate. If half my friends were black and I lived in the 30s, I wouldn't host a party in the front of the bus. Yeah, yeah. It would feel insane. And I was like, well, we're going to invite like eight of our gay friends to watch us have this right they don't have and celebrate us feels bonkers. Wow. Just on that alone, not like a big global, just like this is wrong for me to do this and invite friends that can't do it to enjoy it for me. It feels crazy. It's pretty good. It's pretty great. But then we were stuck in engagement. Perfektory. Perfektory for like, I want to say three years to the point where people would be like, you're still engaged. Like they're getting nervous for us, right? Like you can only be engaged for so long. Yeah, this is a bad sign. We're being like nervous. And it's like, well, this is convenient. You have a cause now. Oh, yeah. What's the guy's idea? You should go to the festival. You definitely should go to the festival. I would. I would. I would. I would. I would. I would. I would. But also that's actually amazing that that's going to always be a part of your legacy and being able to get married changed my life. And when I couldn't get married, it was a major drain on my life. Can we talk about that a little bit? Because I do think we have a friend group and there's something adjacent happening where there's some religious people who are like, well, no, you can be together, but like marriage is a different thing. What can you share about why that's not okay? Why it's not okay to deny that basic civil right? Well, I just don't think that any one religion has the monopoly on two people choosing to spend the rest of their lives together under equal protection of the law. And guess what? Some of us are quite religious. It was kind of wild, actually, because my weddings, we had a lot of weddings. My wife is from London. So we got married in a little church called the Church of the Good Shepherd in Wara, Massachusetts. Her last name is Shepherd, yeah. Shepherd, yeah, in that world. Yeah, it's great. And then we had a civil partnership in England because they didn't have marriage there yet. It was just a civil partnership. So it was kind of weird because we never had a civil partnership here. We had marriage first. And then England for years had civil partnerships and then marriage quite a lot later. So we had a civil partnership there. And the deal was you couldn't have any mention of faith, religious music. I don't even think you could wear like a cross. Like you had to have a totally secular. Interesting. Which was an interesting thing because it gave me this perspective of understanding how it can really be viewed through a religious lens. But really, that's all in the eye of the beholder. That's all in how you feel about it. Also, it just really speaks to like little groups of humans do little weird things. And they have little weird rules so that they're separate from this group. So it's like, this one has to be secular. Doesn't make much sense. This one can't have that. Doesn't make much sense. Yeah, they overlap in these little segments of life and you're going to deal with a civil union and that thing at the same time. I think just normal people out like live in their lives and stuff just didn't realize how many things it excluded us from. We had all kinds of issues. You couldn't visit her in the hospital, right? Like that would be one in a lot of cases. That was a really heartbreaking one and happened to a lot of older couples or just home ownership, like going back to somebody's family instead of their long term spouse. Yeah. Things like that. But then immigration as well. We couldn't get a green card or vouch for cat citizenship or anything like that. Right. Because there was no spousal allocation for me to be able to do that. So we had to renew our visa every couple of years and panic every time we traveled internationally, get detained at the airport. We were always detained at the airport. Oh. And when that changed, it was just immediate. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is what everybody else. You just get to walk up to the counter and say we're married everywhere. You don't even think about it. I don't think I've gotten some right, which I have. That's the problem when people are against it. They don't recognize the benefits of it that they're just inherently getting. That's a good point. Do you like Cideris? David Cideris, the writer. I don't know him. Help me. He's hit me so bad. Congratulations. You just got introduced to the greatest living writer. OK. That's incredible. He's hysterical. But anyways, I was just reading a short story two nights ago. It was about when it got passed. He has a very interest. He's older. He's 60, probably four now. And he has opinions that are of his era in a fun way. And he's very open about them. He was in England and he collects trash in the morning at their house in England. That's like his routine. And he brought with him his iPad because he knew that the Supreme Court announcement was going to happen. And then he lost signal for three hours and then he got to a cafe and he opened it up and he saw it. And he said, I don't think any gay human being in America could have not read that and just felt emotion. Yeah. But then his whole process is like him going home to his partner of 20 years and telling Hugh that they got to get married because there's a great tax benefit. And he was like, I'm not getting married. That's for fucking straight people. I don't give a fuck about the tax benefit. That's a whole thing. And he pastored him for like a month to finally get him to continue. And he said the actual proposal was like him rolling out the tax benefits, bludgeoning him. And then he was saying, fine, if it'll make you shut up, I'll do it. That's marriage. That's hot. Yeah. I'm going like, well, that's not the wedding proposal I imagine. But here we are. Yeah. And like doesn't want to be called husband. You know, like just a whole rejection. That's a whole thing. How old are they? Like 64 or five. I get it. I respect that. Yeah. I really respect that. He hates to work queer. You know, like he's got a lot of things. I know those people too. And he's fun to talk to and he's earned every single opinion he has. But yeah. Oh, I love those folks. Yeah. Those are my, well, ancestors in a way, like those are my elders, man. I've got so much respect for the older gays. Yeah. Yeah. He grew up in a time where he had to leave North Carolina and move to New York City. This is his only shot. Had to. From Lines. And he's almost unsympathetic when he has people ask him questions like, what should I do? I'm in this town. He's like, fucking move. Oh yeah. He's like just get out of there. They're gritty those older gays. They're so gritty. It's brutal. And they're like, you guys don't even know what AIDS is. Oh my God. You know? Exactly. They're pissed. And yeah, in some ways like they have a right to be. He's like, well, they're the problem. Yeah, exactly. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare, we are supported by all state checking all state first could save you hundreds on car insurance, not checking your gas gauge before hitting the road. You genuinely thought you could make it. You were wrong. That's a very long stretch of highway where you learned exactly how far fumes can take you. And it's not far enough. Yeah. Checking first is an excellent plan. So check all state first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds and for fast, reliable help when you need it. Add an all state roadside plan today. You're in good hands with all state potential savings. Very insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions and availability. Insurance provided by all state North American insurance company, Northbrook, Illinois. Roadside assistance plans provided by all state motor club, incorporated in all state affiliate. OK, so mom, was she the breadwinner? I imagine you guys were probably scraping by if they were super young. Dad had his problem and mom, what did she do? Mom was to stay at home. Mom, how did this work? There wasn't a lot of bread. OK, yeah. My dad, when he couldn't be a Boeing anymore, he learned how to do some construction and a guy helped out our family, helped my dad get some tools. My dad's actually really good at construction. He still comes out and does stuff at my house all the time and stuff. And just within that gig, you just get jobs when you can get them. And when you don't have them, you don't have money and that's just how you roll. So we moved a lot. Yeah, I noticed maybe seven places I read or something in some period of time. Me and my brother just got in an argument about this last night. He didn't believe me, but it's 14 places in 17 years. There we go. Wow. But it didn't seem that strange at all at the time. There were consistent things, you know, like I had the same cat that we took to every place that we moved to. I shared a room with my little sister. I'm really tight with my brother and sister. And I'm really tight with my parents. We're just a chaotic unit of dysfunction that just deeply loves each other. We sometimes disagree about history and how it played out and what we're allowed to talk about what we aren't. But I do believe that my life is my story and we'll just talk it through. We'll continue to talk it through like we always have. Yeah. Did you covet money or was the town so small that even though you were broke, was everyone broke or did you covet money and think, how the fuck am I going to get? I got to get money. Oh yeah. I thought about money a lot. Yeah. I still do. Me too. I'm a coyote. Sickness. Yeah, coyote people. Yeah. What do you call coyote people is what we're called? Yeah. Oh, tell me more. Like a coyote, it cannot help but exist for meat. Oh, yeah. And like I'm a coyote for achievement. I'm a coyote for success. I'm a coyote for stability and money. And I do my best. I've got all kinds of philosophies around not hoarding money and things like that because I know where the addiction lies. Yeah. But I used to lay in my bed and dream about all the things I could buy everybody if I got money. And they were dumb things like four-wheelers. Sure, no. Those are great things. Yeah. Like downriggers and crap like that. Once I very first started making money, I did crazy stuff with it. I took out loans like I would finance four-wheelers and get like my dad and brother a four-wheeler. Just new money stuff. Yeah. I wish I were one of your family members. I love four-wheeler. I have a lot of money. I have a free one. I'm a four-wheeler problem. But you started singing with mom at eight years old. Yeah. So mom was a singer, I presume? Yeah, my mom's a really good country singer. And to this day, she can still sing really good like Tammy Wynette. Her dad died of ALS, really young. He died at like 50. And that was tough for my mom because she was really young. Needed a dad. Yeah. And he was special. So he was going to be a pretty important patriarchal figure in our family that we all could have really used. And so he left us and one thing he did was sing country music and play the spoons and sing in a country band with his family. Was he from Washington? He was from Minnesota. Doesn't make much more sense. I was hoping from the south. Yeah, but you can't count out the north. Yeah. Or the west. That's what we call it country and western where I come from. Oh, you're a west. We just not belong to the south. That's true. And so she in a way was able to continue that legacy, pass that on to me and my brother and my sister. And we all do music now. And who was she singing with that she got to get you up on stage to sing with her? There was like a little community theater in town called the Northwest Grand Ole Opry that I dream about all the time, actually. We were acting out the Randall Opry. Yeah, like an announcer. There was like a little Jimmy Dickens mini-pearl thing happening. Oh, that's great. Yeah. And so she would mostly sing with us. But even though she's a good singer, I always got the idea that it was really more about us than her at a certain point. And she thought it was really cool that her kids could sing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. You have kids. Yeah, I got kids. Yeah, they do shit. And you're like, oh my God. They do shit. And you're like, oh my God, I picked a song to play for you later. Oh, I can't wait. Based on this because of the ages. Tell me now, how old? 11 and 13. And you're 8 and 12? 8 and 11, almost 12. Okay. So similar, both girls. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both girls, both girls. Yeah. Yours are both girls also? Mine are both girls. Wow. And do they ride four-wheelers? They do. They both have polarises. Yeah, okay, good. Putting them on four-wheelers is something I'm really happy. And I'm excited. And an arranger, because when they get to driving, yeah, right, choose that coordination and under special reasons, that should really be hanging out. I know, my girls ride dirt bikes and they drive razors and golf carts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, you start singing now without mom by what age? 15-ish? Yeah, me and my best friend, Amber, we started singing background vocals for her dad, who was an Elvis impersonator. And then we would do a song or two set by ourselves and then we learned a couple of indigo girl songs and started trying to teach her harmony, which my brother had taught me. And I was singing in another band with my brother and things just kind of turned into me being in multiple bands and having a lot going on. You got obsessed with Elton John? Talk to yourself piano, talk to yourself guitar? Guitar when I was around 17, 16, 17. Okay. And when do you move into Seattle and meet Tim and Phil? I never moved to Seattle. You didn't? Back to this day, I lived where I grew up. But I did meet them in a studio when I was about 18, 19. I got some money together from neighbors, Coyote, out there doing the Coyote thing. Sure, sure. Got some money together to go make a CD and ended up in a, there's a recording studio there called London Bridge and a guy called Rick Perasher. And this recording studio is very special. This is where Pearl Jam 10 was done, Temple of the Dog, all the Alice and Shane stuff with Kelly Gray and Rick Perasher was involved in all that. And he was the producer of those things. So this felt to me like the center of Seattle grunge. But I couldn't afford like the big studio or the big producer. So like an assistant engineer, let me record with him upstairs in like a little kind of... Satellite room. And it wasn't even really, it was just a room. But Pro Tools was just coming out so you could do that without a big console. And Tim and Phil were in a downstairs working with a big producer in the big room in their own band called the Fighting Machinists. They were like legends in Seattle. They had just gotten the biggest record deal anybody in Seattle had ever gotten. And they were gonna be huge. And I just waltzed down there and again, totally oblivious to what I looked like and where I came from and just was like... You guys like cow pants? Yeah, my... What do you think? Enjoy. Leave this all behind. He comes with me. Put on your bib and pull up a plate. Let's go. I guess it's the beauty of moving a lot. You just have to like put yourself out there. You have to talk to people. You can't really be shy. You don't have time. Yeah, if you're sitting at home, no one's ever gonna knock at your door and go, hey, do you want this spectacular life? No one ever is. And you realize you've got to make opportunities every chance you get. And I was working as a barista at a coffee stand. So I got a lot of social skills that way. I was working at a grocery store as a sample lady. Oh, a sample lady. What was your sample? Oh, every day it was different. It was awesome job actually. And then I was working part-time as a roofing laborer. Oh, I also was a roofer. Really? Yeah, it's quite a job. Same person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think my back is still messed up. Are you doing tear off? Tear off and clean up. And sometimes I would throw down the tarp paper if it was not a slatted roof. Never got to throw any bundles on. They didn't give her money there. I will say though, I was just talking about this with a neighbor in Nashville because he's a builder and we were kind of going through the strata of people in the trades. And I was like, look, you've been doing this for 35 years. Am I not crazy? We are the worst, right? Roofers are just like worst prison records. He's likely to show up and he goes, oh, my far roofers are the most fucked up in the trades. You think? Oh, you got a shit on a roof. In Detroit, we would do rubber roof. You'd be five, six stories up. There's no, even if you went down the ladder, there's nowhere in Detroit to go use the bathroom. So yeah, guys are shitting in buckets on the roof. Everyone's hammered. People aren't showing up. I mean, yeah, it was a mess. Yeah, so imagine being like the lowest rung on that ladder where you literally, you just cleaning up the mess. It was like that. And when you're on a roof and you're cleaning up roofing material, you're never lifting anything properly because you're always trying to keep from falling down. You want to crazy angle the whole time. So I think my back is permanently jacked from it. Your whole day has spent figuring out how to do this ergonomically so you don't get hurt. Cause yeah, you're on an angle that's different from the angle you mastered yesterday. And you're prying these nails out with this fucking weird shovel. This has gotten so niche. Like no one can really. The roofers are gonna love it. Who cares, you and I can't, we know. Six other roofers out there. As our audience. The six roofers who are sober enough to comprehend this right now. Yeah. They're like, ha ha ha ha. To our paper. How do you the woo Tim and Phil? Like how do you go from, they're the hot shit in town. You're upstairs in the attic recording on Pro Tools. How do you convince them we should work together? Honestly, I don't know because every show they had was sold out. I saw them play like they were unbelievable. They were very nice. I almost couldn't believe how nice they were to me because they were so popular and they were so good looking. I had nothing to offer these two beautiful boys in their 20s. And I was just like, you wanna play on my record? You know. How's this sound? And they just did it for no reason. The way I had things going was I would busk whenever I could in the daytime at Pike Place Market. And I had these residencies at night in clubs and restaurants all over Seattle. I'm talking about Duke's clam chowder house, Bill Medine's ravioli station in Bower, the Dubliner bar and the Ballard Firehouse. People are coming for the entree first and then there's music. They have no idea they're gonna get music. But I did have this little PA system that I would go and I would go, hey listen, I got two speakers. I know you don't have music here, but if you let me come in on Tuesday nights, give me like four Tuesday nights. If on the fifth Tuesday night, it's like twice as busy in here that you gotta start paying me. And then I would get my Tuesday night at Saltys and Alchi. So I basically had all these residencies going and then I would get down on my breaks and sit with all these people at their tables and have a beer and say, give me your phone number, give me your phone number. And then once a month I would call them and I'd go, hey, I got a big show at the tractor tavern. Might be some record labels there. Will you pack it out for me? Aw. And all these people would come and then I'd have packed shows. And so everybody was like, what's going on with this girl? Yeah. Wow, you really networked your way into that. That's good. That's how we ended up getting a record deal and that's how I ended up getting the twins to join the band. Don't you marvel, I'll be just reflecting on the odds against everyone to make it in any of these chosen show business careers. And the thing I constantly come back to is like, yeah, it'd be great if talent got you there. The amount of hustle it takes, I think is a little misleading when you're on the outside. You think like, oh, if I'm Bieber and I'm a genius at 13, I'll become famous. And really it's like, I mean, you got to fucking call random people you played in front of at a restaurant. Yeah. And it's really the stuff we've been talking about this whole time that gives you that acumen, like the skills to do that. You can't fake being a coyote. You can't fake coming from nothing. You can't fake the charisma that it takes to rise like a phoenix out of really difficult situations. Yeah. So it does start happening pretty darn quick for you. I would say right, because you've dropped out of high school, that ship sailed. Yeah, that was a bummer. We're not gonna, we're not gonna. I do wanna pause there for two seconds. We're not gonna pursue anything academically. We're just like, I'm done. You had ADHD, right? You were diagnosed as ADHD? I don't think so. You know, something, my folks, the whole thing is a bit inaccurate in terms of like, we're an inaccurate historians. I mean, I'm sure there was a doctor or two that was like, you have ADHD. And now that everybody understands it so well, I'm sure there's some truth to that. But I just didn't do well in school and I just couldn't keep myself there. You were restless there. And I felt too grown up to be there, I guess, because I had all these jobs and all these goals and these plans and I was working it. And I would be working and getting myself places. And then I would go to school and have to raise my hand to use the bathroom. Yeah. I was like, I don't belong here. I'm an adult. I just felt like I can't be here. I'm failing at everything. I need to go somewhere I'm not gonna fail. That's what it was. Yeah. And your parents were like, all right, I guess that's what's gonna happen. They didn't really have a choice. Yeah, me and my brother were just a year apart. We just stopped going and just started working. Wow. I just wonder, Dax, if the girls were like, we're not going to school anymore. Of all the people I know who are successful in working, I don't think any of them went to Harvard. None of them did the right thing. I barely graduated high school. I don't think it's that big of a deal. I think if you want it, you're gonna get it. And if you don't want it, you're not gonna get it anyways. I can send you any school that'll take you. It's not gonna give you that. I hate to say that I feel that way, but I kinda do. I mean, it worked out. If my girls came to me and said, we don't wanna go to a conventional high school, I have the time and the means to help them with an alternative path. My parents, they both wrapped out of high school. No one in our family graduated, not my brother, not my sister, not me, not my folks. Wow, your kids could be the first. So my kids could be the first. They will do it maybe a different way though. I don't see my kids going to a conventional high school and doing that. I don't understand how to speak that language. So I think there'll be alternative forms of their exit from their education. But suffice to say by 2005, you record Brandy Carlisle. That's the first album. So you would have been 24. When it came out, yeah. I think I recorded it in maybe 2002, 2003. So pretty young, just 24. And that works. Like Rolling Stone reviews it beautifully. They put you on the top 10 artists to watch in 2005. After all that grind, did you have a hard time trusting the positive things that were coming? No, I just loved it. I was so happy. Honestly, I was happy before. I've always felt like a famous singer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've always felt like that. So no. You're like, oh, the world caught up. Yeah, I'm more gunshy now than I was back then. Tell me what do you think has caused that? I don't know, maybe just getting older. Being middle-aged, wondering about relevance. The internet, the way people talk about each other, how easy it is to surmise that someone is something that they're not, and those kinds of things to make me question whether this is the gig for me. It's weird though, isn't it? It's like counter to what you would think. If you were to ask me at like 15, let's say you did all this stuff, what would you feel like at the end of it? And be like, oh, I'd feel so confident. But yeah, I was in this movie that people give me a lot of compliments for idiocracy. And I played a role that I know I wouldn't do today. Like it would be too big of a swing. I would be afraid to go try to do what I did in that movie. You're saying that you wouldn't do today? Today, if you offered me that role today, I would be like, I can't do it. You'd be too scared. Yeah, I'd be too scared. But isn't that what we're saying? There's like, that's what's so weird. Well, that's the thing about idiocracy too, that yeah, I could see why. Yeah, I could see why. Yeah, just it was a huge swing, and I didn't mind at all taking it at 30. And I didn't give a fuck if anyone thought it was embarrassing or not. Right, right, right. And now I would. And it would be harder for me to do it now. And that's opposite of what I would have expected. Is it because we don't wanna be embarrassed in front of our kids? Is it because we're like becoming legacy conscious as we get older? I mean, I think those are really good guesses and for probably a lot of people that stuff is going on. I don't think I'm concerned about legacy. I think what it is is in some weird way, I was inoculated by ignorance and naivety. And didn't even consider what if I look ridiculous doing it? What if this is embarrassing? Those thoughts never crossed my mind. Wow. And now they would. Yeah, that sucks. I only get that, I think, for. I'm not as good as I thought I was. That's part of it, right? Like I used to think I was so good. Now I think I'm fine. In some weird ways, I'm more confident. But also it's like I tapped on the bottom and the top. What has changed that? Do you think you've let some of the outside in a little bit? Yeah, or I've seen stuff I did that I thought was one thing. And then upon reflection or years away, I'm like, oh, it wasn't as good as I thought it was. I wasn't as good in it. I've more come to the feeling like, yeah, I'm fine. I can do this job. Not, I'm gonna be Will Ferrell. At that point, I was like, I'm gonna be Will Ferrell. No, you have stuff to lose now. That's really what it is. You get to an age where you have stuff to lose. When you're starting out, there's nothing to lose. You're able to put yourself out there because it's like, well, what's the worst that can happen? Yeah, I didn't have a mortgage when I did that. Exactly. And you have a reputation, you have children. There's a ton to lose, actually. Exactly. And you're a little bit dumb. The beauty of not having a fully developed frontal lobe, actually, it helps you. I put out album after album after album without ever even knowing when the Grammys were. And now I'm thinking about the Grammys before I write the song. I don't want it to be that way. And I push it out. I do it. I get rid of it and I do the thing and I go in. But to not know the things I know. I made an album with Elton John. Elton's incredibly encyclopedic about numbers and the charts and how things do. And he knows everything. And I knew nothing. He would call me and say, hey, the record is coming out at this or it got this or this thing is gonna happen. And I'd be like, oh my God, tell me about that. Like, what is that? Yeah. Once you learn too much about how you're being received, it can definitely go in. But I think there's ways we can erase it. I don't know how, but I think there are ways we can get rid of the knowledge. Well, because we have examples of people who have avoided that. So minimally there are mentors that exist that seem to have never succumbed to that pressure. But yes, if you've never been nominated for a Grammy, who cares? Once you get nominated for one, now we know you can do it. It's yours to not do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what fucks you up, I think. It's yours to not do. In the climb, we talk about this all the time. It's counterintuitive, but it's so much scarier once you're at the top of the mountain. Climbing the mountain is hard. And when you're in it, you're like, all I want to do is be up there. But then when you're up there, there's one way to go. There's one way to go. There's no way to go. Scary up there. No way to go. And you're more self-conscious because of it. You're right. Yeah, and they say, what's that Miley Relyerick? There's always going to be another mountain. Yeah. There's no need to be another mountain. I need another mountain. I need another mountain all the time. That's my addiction. They're there. Yeah. Okay, in 07, the story comes out. How did you end up working with T-Bone Burnett? And is he as magical as I'm led to believe from film and television? He seems very special. Yeah, he is very special. When I started recording our songs, me and the twins' songs, we had like 40 something songs, 42 songs maybe, over the course of doing these residencies together and working together and practicing. And who we met first was Rick Rubin. Oh, wow. Okay. And Rick Rubin tried to sign us to American recordings, but there was a lot going on, like the Johnny Cash stuff had just come out and he was moving in a bunch of record label stuff. Didn't work out. But what he told me was, these are your good songs and these are your not so good songs. He divided them in half and he goes, this is a really great record. This is something you can record if you need to make money and find a way to get yourself through the next couple of years until I get settled in at my new record label. Did you agree with that assessment? Yeah. Then I was really open to suggestion at that point from him. So I divided those things in half and I went in and recorded what became Brandy Carlisle as my own collection, basically of demos for me to sell at my shows. And then later on, I got the record deal in 2005 and they said, well, okay, we know your good record is the story, this album you have set aside. Mythical yet to come out. Let's put this other one out in the meantime while you kind of get your chops and get out on the road and get good. So we did and that became Brandy Carlisle. That was my not good songs. That was my- Oh wow. Rejects. And you toured for two years on that, right? Toured for like several years on that. And then it never really worked out with Rick Rubin and I met D-Bone Burnett in a hotel bar in New York City and we got to talking about country music. We hit it off and we agreed that we were gonna leave the country and make a record together in some other country. That record was the story and the whole thing is recorded live in one room with one band to tape. 11 days or something? Something really quick. Yeah, you can't get T-Bone Burnett to stay longer than that. Yeah, he moves quick. He moves quick. What was going on with T-Bone? Live was a departure from what was being done normally, right? It was, but it was a recent departure because like I was saying, Pro Tools was only kind of new and there were certain editing techniques that are second nature today that you hear all the time without realizing you're hearing them that we didn't really have refined or have a lot of access to back in that exact moment. You couldn't have used auto-tune or melodyne and not heard it. You'd hear it. It wasn't as finessed as it is now. Compression too, everything was in a time when you're hearing like really unaltered human voice and not a lot of isolation. Your voice cracks on one of the tracks, right? Yeah, on the story in a significant way. And a lot of times I'm playing guitar and singing at the same time and those things can't be separated in those recordings. So we recorded to tape, which is another whole other cumbersome but beautiful sounding way to record. And to add it on it is so much more time consuming. Yeah, they actually splice it and cut it. So you have to make big decisions about accepting imperfection. Yeah, so how about that moment with the voice when you first heard it, we were like, we can't have that? Or were you like, oh fuck this somehow has a magic to it? It felt and sounded so wild to me when I made that sound that I almost laughed and just ended the tape right for everyone. But I knew that everybody was playing so good and I didn't wanna throw it for the drummer. And so I just sang through it thinking, well, if they love the first half, they can splice a second half on from another one. When I ended the song, T-MOMONET comes running through and you know, he doesn't run. But he comes up and he throws the door open on my isopod and he goes, that was the moment of the record. That was the moment of the record. Oh wow. And I go, what are you talking about? He goes, wait till you hear it. Wow. Powerful. That's cool. That is so cool. So that album, the story really changes kind of everything, yeah? No, at the time it really didn't. I think it didn't break the top anything. Well, you get songs on Grey's Anatomy, they see. That started happening. Yeah. So Grey's Anatomy started showing up really early, like during the Brandy Carlisle thing. And this sort of relationship happened with them where they found that my music was going well with their programming. I even recorded a couple of songs just for them. Wow. Yeah. In one season they had three year songs and then their musical episode, they sang one of your songs. Yeah, the story. It helped everything. It helped pay the bills, it helped our band and what an iconic show. Oh my God. I was obsessed with it and specifically the muse, just picking out every song. They were like Maureen becomes eclectic. They were like a gateway to great music. Exactly like Maureen becomes eclectic. Exactly like Garden State. Yes. There was this kind of really cool thing that happened around sync licensing at that time. And I just happened to be a part of it. I still feel the ripple effect of that. And I love that show. It's a great show. What size venues were you playing on that two years of touring with Brandy Carlisle? Theaters? Dude, tiny. Or bars? Well, if I got to open for somebody theaters, but a lot of bars and clubs and just kind of standing rooms and stuff like that. Loved it. Saw all kinds of fun stuff, I bet. Saw all kinds of fun stuff. I never got on a plane until I was 17 years old. So I saw the whole country with these two twins in my own van. We should take our kids to more bars. All right. That actually teaches how to get by in a bar. Yeah. If you can survive there. Litmus test for the whole world. Yeah. Every weekend with my father, I was spending the entire day at the Dirty Duck Saloon from like 8 a.m. till 2 in the morning. Dirty Duck. That was his spot. Tell me you met Doug. The Dirty Duck. Oh, Doug. It had a duck motif. I'm like, I got enough of Doug is. Dirty Duck. I was owned by a Dirty Duck. Yeah, sure. Okay. So when you finally got to work with Rick Rubin, how was that? That could go either way. If he met you years before and saved this and these are great, this could go either way. I found it tense. I'm intimidated by him a bit. We interviewed him and I was like, he's got some mojo, but the mojo for me is intimidating. I think I found it like that. If I had to really unpack it on the spot, I would say that him being the deciding force between whether something was great or not great really rubbed me the wrong way. He actually used the word great all the time. And I felt that that word was subjective. I was young enough to where the punk rock artist in me needed that word to be subjective. And I needed to be the determining factor between what I was making and whether it was great or not great. And I think if he were sitting here today, he would probably giggle and tell you that that's probably what he doesn't like about working with young artists is that they have to be the determining factor of great or not great. At the same time, I wouldn't take that from myself for anything. So we butted heads really bad. And then later on in life came back together and now our very good friends. But I still think he's a complicated man and tough to work with on that level. Yeah. I only hung around there for a minute when the Avets were recording there because I'm friends with Seth. Oh, cool. I'm really good friends with those guys too. Yeah, I noticed you guys have played together. But if I had to really isolate, like what insecurity in me is triggered by him? Yeah, tell me. There's something almost religious about him. And I'm like, oh, I'll never grasp his thing that he's got. And therefore he doesn't value me. You know, whatever. He's got some toehold on something I don't even believe in. And so there's a chasm between us. And he'll never think I'm special and I'll never think he understands me. I don't know. Well, that's the same thing. His like serenity and his knowledge of what's great and not great is almost religious. It's like an aggressive serenity. Dude, dude, that's it. Well, it's serious. That is it. It's an aggressive serenity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just also knows himself. And I think the dude's a genius. Let me be clear as day. I think the dude's a genius. Yeah, he knows himself very well. In the middle of our interview, he was like, it's cold in here and we need to turn down the, he didn't say can we. No, no, no. It was like very, we were like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. He really rattled us for the next, like however many minutes. Cause it never happened. It never happened. He like really just knows what he wants. He says it. He's not scared of you. Not a people pleaser. No, like what we would say is, hey, are you guys cold? Exactly. You know what I mean? We would like, we would ask for the peanut gallery to like chime in and make the group decision. But there's merits both. I have to admit that the first thing I said when I walked in here today was, can we turn the air in? No, yes. Oh, okay. It's totally a fair thing. It's totally fair. I guess she passed some of it on to me. You know, it's a legit thing to say. It's just the manner in which he rolled it out was unlike any version I had ever heard someone advocate for themselves. One time I went up to, okay, and this is the other thing is when we were making that second record, he didn't come to the studio not one time and I live in Seattle and I had to live in LA to make this record. So I could be near him, but then I would have to take the record, which we recorded on to tape up to his house once a week, sit there and play for him all the work I would done. And then he would make suggestions. And so at one point he asked for me to double a guitar solo in length. That sounds challenge. In this song, impossible. Narice impossible. So I said, oh, well, we were cutting the tape. We can't do that. And he goes, I'm sure you'll find a way to make it happen. Yeah, did you? No. Okay, okay, okay. It's going to be done. But it was like that. Aggressive serenity was such a descriptive factor. Anyway, I don't think it's that way anymore. In fact, I worked with him recently on something. And yeah, he was very direct, but I enjoyed it. Yeah, it's cool. Something about him triggers some insecurity in me. The dude's fine and he's a genius. And he knows it. Yeah, quietly, silently. And I may be jealous of that too. Yeah, maybe. If you ask him because he doesn't play an instrument or know how to run any of the equipment, what qualifies him as being the guru that he is. And he just says very confidently, my taste. I gotta respect it. Yeah, I know what I do. And the results, he has them. And tonight at that. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. 2014, you sing the national anthem at a Seahawks game. You've performed at this point a thousand times in front of people. Oh yeah. In my mind, I'm like already Celine Dion. Oh, right, right, right. But do you get nervous when you go perform there? For some reason though. Good, I like that. Yeah, and I actually sang the national anthem a lot in the early part of my career for different sporting things in Seattle. I sort of had like a program. I knew a key, like I had a key that I do it in. And I knew a way to keep the key in my head. So I didn't lose it when I got out there. I knew how to manage delay in the stadium. I knew how to use that song as like a wrestling move. It's a complicated song, no? Like there's something about, it can get away from you that song really easy, right? People start too high and they got nowhere to go. Is that what it is? Then the fear in their eyes. Like just like look at their eyes. They're out of octaves. Don't even listen to where they started to just look at their eyes. Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay, so let's go to the Firewatchers daughter, 2015. This is the first Grammy nomination you get. Yeah. You've been at it now for 10 years. What do you think you picked up between Brandy Carlisle, the first album and the Firewatchers daughter? Do you think it's all the same? They just slept on you before? Or do you think you learned something at some point that made that illogical conclusion? Lots and lots of live experience, lots and lots of road time and people skills, understanding how to interact with people but hold on to myself. A lot of production know how because I had worked with T-Bone Burnett and Rick Rubin on two separate things. And then also all these ancillary producers, like I had gone in with John Goodmanson and Tony Berg and I had done a lot of projects with other really big producers. And me and twins we came from big producer, Rick Prasher. So I had like a lot of production ideas and a lot of beliefs about leadership. And when we went in and made Firewatchers daughter, it was for better or worse self produced with a really powerful and amazing engineer called Trina Shoemaker, who was really co-producing when I look back on it now. And so I felt that we were like almost an indie band. We were living like an indie band and operating like an indie band and just fine with it. Doing really, really well and believing we were doing really well. So when you got that nomination, were you shocked or did you feel that coming? I was shocked. Nobody had ever even talked to me about the Grammys. I thought it was like a TV show that my mom would let me stay up late for because Whitney is gonna hit that note line. Yeah. And so basically I was on a airplane and I got a text message from ATO, the like indie label. We were on at the time of the sky, John he texted me, congratulations on your Grammy nomination. I was on the label with Brittany Howard and I knew she was always getting this stuff. So I thought, oh, this is brandy. I said to him. It's been a mix up. I was speechless. I had no idea even when they were when the nominations are coming out. Did you cry? No. Didn't mean to insinuate you were a little baby. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm just thinking about it because the Grammys have made me cry a couple of times but at this point I didn't cry yet. But I was just like, oh, that's a level of making it that I hadn't even considered. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you end up somewhere bigger than you dreamed. Yeah, so I went. It was awesome. Well, you've been back a bazillion times. Just wondering after you've already had them, does the reaction turn to more like relief? I think it does. Isn't that weird? It does because the team works so hard for it. You so want to be able to bring that home for everybody else and then there becomes an expectation. And if you don't get it, does that mean that something's over? Like when Elton was involved in this last one for Elton, I've never wanted acknowledgement more in my life than I did for Elton. Like he hasn't had enough acknowledgement. But on his behalf, you very much wanted that. I couldn't sleep for like two days. Yeah, and then we woke up and we had it and it was like, oh, we didn't win. And you got nominated for Academy Award from that song too. Yeah, yeah. That's exciting. And you want two Emmys. Yeah, two Emmys. You're on your way to an E-Guy. I see this coming. Do you? Yeah. Come on, exciting. What's the other thing she's not involved with? A Tony. You need to figure out Tony. We can figure that out. I have an idea for it. Oh, good. That's a good idea. Okay. The other fun thing you've done other than create nine albums that are all great and 111 Grammys and two Emmys and Academy Award nomination, you've also got this side career as someone who has been obsessed with people and you get to work with these people. I think this is the zone of your life I'd be most envious of, more than the other stuff. To have people you love for an eternity and then to get to enter their orbit and then even get to work together. So is Tanya the first person or is Joni? Where does this start? Where you become this collaborator of people who have been humongous. Where did it start? Because you have Tanya Tucker, you have Joni Mitchell and you have Elton John. You've spent years with these people. It started in some of the places that you don't read about and that you can't imagine it. Because I am a fan. Like I am a wait outside your tour bus for an autograph fan. I'm that kind of girl. And so a lot of these folks that I followed around when I was young and went to all of their shows and bought every single thing they did and worked to get closer to before I had this job. I got to work with them early on, like the Indigo girls and listen to Williams and Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kim Richie. Some of my like my favorite most iconic Bonnie Raid. And then it starts to get bigger and the artists are like getting bigger. And it's like, I'm getting a call returned from Dolly and then we're singing together. And then me and Elton, we're going on vacation together and we're writing songs. And then Joni Mitchell that turned into a whole other world. I mean, I'm just guessing, but I feel like of the other two, I feel like Joni, you needed to pull her into performing again. Yeah. I may have thought of that at the time, but I remember, you know who Russ Kunkel is? He's like this iconic drummer. He played on blue and he played on all this James Taylor like all the early, I think he's even on tapestry. He's the dude and he's still killer in doing it all the time. But I did this concert where I covered blue and I wasn't even that close with Joni yet, but she came. And I had just had my first Joni jam with her at her house. For anybody that doesn't know what the Joni jams are, it's something that we started at Joni's behest six, seven years ago, recovering from an aneurysm. Doesn't play music anymore. And we wound up in a situation where we had dinner. And she was talking about her house and her instruments and her living room and saying, I don't do music anymore. I don't wanna hear it. It's not a problem. I don't want you to think that that's sad. I'm a painter, I'm a this, I'm a that, but my house misses it. And these instruments should be played. Wow. What do you think about bringing a few people over every now and then and doing these nights? Yeah. So that we, I just had my first jam. And at the very first jam, I won't walk you through the whole process, but Joni decided out of nowhere to open her mouth and sing. Wow. Wow. With nobody expecting it. Wow. It was, Herbie Hancock was sitting at the piano. Oh, get out of here. Herbie Hancock was tickling the ivory. Exactly that. Oh my God. And he was hovering over this diminished core that I didn't know what it was. Nobody knew what it was. She did though. And she just goes, summertime and the living is easy. And people burst into tears. Herbie burst into tears. All the people that have been taking care of her. And as she recovered from her aneurysm, she wouldn't do music, but then suddenly just decided to sing that line. So I'm telling Russ Conkel this. And he goes, she sang. I go, yeah, she fully sang. And I go, yeah, maybe, you know, maybe it's this or maybe it was because of that or it was just this. And he goes, one thing I want you to remember if you ever think that you're spearheading this, Joni Mitchell always has a plan. Joni's always got a plan. Yeah. And so I am convinced that she actually was the architect of everything from that first line to the Hollywood Bowl. She's Kaiser Sosa. Wow. Yeah. She let you believe this was all your idea. This is genius. I mean, you don't have to let me believe something's all my idea for me to just go ahead and believe it. She didn't say it wasn't, but I do feel like she orchestrated an incredible recovery for herself. I got to be the one in the passenger seat watching it happen. Oh, cool. That did escalate into you guys playing at the bowl. How many shows did you guys do? We did two nights at the bowl. Two nights at the bowl. Surreal experience for you, are you able to in moments like that be super there and taking it all in or are you like, yeah? I mean, you want to talk about welling up. I let a few of the Joni things take me by surprise, but that one I was like ready for. And I remember just sitting next to her on the second night while she sang both sides now and just openly weeping. Kind of knowing it was the last time I was going to get to do it. And also thinking these are the some of the most powerful moments in music history listening to this woman sing this song, especially from a perspective of recovering from this aneurysm being 82 years old and really having looked at life from both sides now. Yeah. It's like, how did I get this seat? Yeah, exactly. You must believe it. I guess you believe in God, but I was going to say you must believe in the simulation. The simulation? Explain. We're in a computer model being run. Oh, like there's no way this is real. Because our lives are too good. It's too good. Literally too good to be true. It's suspicious. That night with you, with Joni Mitchell, it was highly suspicious. That's highly suspicious. Right? Yeah, yeah. That doesn't happen for people. No, it doesn't. When it does, you've got to go like, wow, God's really smiling on me. Or we're in a simulation. Or what's going to happen? Exactly, exactly. Or what shoe is going to drop you. How long had it been since Tanya had recorded an album when you guys worked together? I think a long time. Something like 17 years. That album gets nominated for a Grammy. One. One, sorry. One country album of the year and country song of the year. Yes, after a 17 year. And she'd never won a Grammy in her life. And she is a country music, way paper icon. Yes, yes, yes. When you were imagining your own success and visualizing it, and you thought it was going to feel like blank, I want to know how much that delivered or didn't. And then I want to know the difference between being a part of something, when you can help someone else do something, contrast those two experiences. Well, it's over delivered, way beyond over delivered. There's just things like, you know, headlining Madison Square Garden or winning a Grammy. Or anything that happened with Jonah, or Dolly, or Elton, or Tanya, or Annie Lennox. It's unbelievable. And then if you take that part of my job, and you actually backtrack it, it's why I'm married to my wife. It's why I have my daughters. It's why I have my brothers, the twins, and why we live together. It's why our family is okay. It's given me everything. And so to say it over delivered is such an understatement, because it has woven the fabric of my life. Now, in terms of when you get something from it, like success, or you learn how to do something, when you share that, for me, it's always, as soon as I figure out how to do it. So when I figure something out, whether it's how to throw a festival, or run a successful tour, or maybe make an album that is good enough to where it garners the respect of winning a Grammy, I immediately want to do that for, or with someone else immediately. I'm already bored with the me part of it. Right, right, right. And so when, by the way, I forgive you, did what it did, somebody mentioned Tanya Tucker, and I was like, that's next. Let's get Tanya Tucker here now. And then we get Tanya Tucker here now, and then you hear about the next guy, and you're like, yeah, yeah, let's get the door open for them too. And that is just sort of how I've seen it. As soon as I figure out how to get in the door, I'm trying to find a way to prop it open. Yeah, that's really nice. That's the next mountain we were talking about. That's what it is. Yeah, once you do get what you want, before you sit there and marinate in it long enough to let it change you, get right on to doing that for somebody else. Yeah, because that's where the elation, I mean, I think selfishly you can pursue that. It's so exciting. It is so exciting. It is, right? Yeah. It's like the number one. Like I'll pull up to this house, and I'm like, God, we're so lucky we have a great house. But I look at Monica's house, and I'm like, oh yeah, look at Monica's house, that's fucking awesome. That's so funny. I remember when me and the twins, even early on around maybe the story or give up the ghost, anytime they would like move into a nice house or get something like I would go to their house and I'd be like, hell yeah. Yeah. That's because of this job. That's because of this music we're making. Like we're winning. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if I'm like superstitious and I'm afraid if I let myself experience that, I'll lose everything. And then I can just enjoy it for them without any of those fears. I don't know what's going on, but something so much more joyous about that. You can see it objectively when it's not yours. Yeah. True, yeah. It's quite stark when it's not happening to you. So Phil, one of the twins, married her little sister. That's fun. Yeah, is it fun? Isn't that fun? It's really fun. Okay, I was gonna say. Yeah, yeah. Could also get complicated in making family. Were they trying to hide it from you at first? Maybe a little bit. Okay. It was really awkward at first actually. Yeah, I can imagine that. Because she was so young. And he was like, not young. He was already older than you as you. He was already older than me. She's my baby sister. Yeah, you're protected. I wanna say she was like 18. Oh shit. And he was 28, 29. And we were already in a band. We'd been on the road together. We were kind of bros in a way. And I was like, are you serious right now? And I mean, I thought to myself, it could definitely be the end of anything with me and the twins. Because you do not cross my brothers and sisters on my watch. He has that too. Yeah. I mean, everyone has it. Some of you guys have it more than others. I'll kill you if you hurt my sister's feelings. Oh my God. My brother and sister like, no. Yeah, but if they're in a relationship, they're gonna be some stuff. But he's been quite gallant. And honestly, she has really, I don't wanna say something demeaningly. Like, well, she's really grown up because she's like 40. But like, she has grown up. Married to that man. That's lovely. And in this band. That is how she has lived the second half of her life. Yeah, yeah. And it's been incredible. Yeah, I'm so delighted it worked out. Yeah, that's awesome. Cause they've been together for a long time now. 22 years of years. Wow. It's a long time. You've been with your wife for 13 years? We've been married for 15. Wow. And we've been together for like 16, 17. And so how'd you meet her if she's from England? We met actually, she was working for Paul McCartney. Oh, right. She was doing his philanthropic work. Yeah. And I had like a campaign running in Seattle called the Fight the Fear campaign. We were teaching the self-defense courses to women and people in at-risk communities for free because there was like a terrible string of like violent crime that had happened in the city that year. And when it kind of culminated in this really awful thing. And so it traveled across to England and she was reading about this in the newspaper and basically called up and was like, okay, what can Paul do? What can I do to help you with the Paul thing? And I thought to myself, well, I just started this foundation. I need some mentorship. Looking out foundation? Yeah. I had a lot of principles that maybe I was getting in my own way a little bit. So I wanted to have this mentorship thing with her and we got to talk it. And so for like a while, I thought I was talking to somebody Paul McCartney's age. Oh wow. I thought I was talking to a 70 year old woman. Okay, wow. That's interesting. That's almost like a reality show. Like you can't see the person. There is a sketch. It didn't occur to me that she wasn't 70. It did not even occur to me. And she was saying 70 year old shit too. Because she's English? Yeah, stuff. Yeah. At least she took the lift or something. I don't know. She was doing 70 year old stuff. She was listening to 70 year old music. Her and a girl from we're traveling like 70 year old people. It just had this vibe. Did you have any moment where you're like, I feel like I'm becoming attracted to a 70 year old woman. No, I just called her the charity lady. I'm like the charity lady. And then one time I was playing in New York city and I was like getting ready to go out with all the baby dykes. We were all gonna get on our Vespas and drive to the gay bar and drink tequila. And I couldn't wait. And she came to the show. And I remember the tour manager being like, oh, you gotta have to say how to the charity lady. But I was like, oh. Really grateful to her. She's a real cheer. Yeah, exactly. She had to walk her. How'd you get her backstage? And now 70 is like, that's my age. I love like that. It's been barely old enough for me to date. But I walk backstage. It's a 27 year old, 28 year old. She's hot, I imagine. Absolute knockout. Smoke show. She ain't no granny. I mean, and oh my God, she was so charming. And I loved her accent. She had black hair and bright blue eyes. And she was wearing this blazer. And she just was like hip. And I was like cancel my plans, order me a pizza. I've got to stay with this woman. Yeah, forever. Yeah, forever. Forever is a pizza. Did she already have a crush on you if she came to the show? She knew you weren't 70. She had that advantage over you. I don't know if she had a crush on me. She will say no. She will say no. But I think, yeah, she probably thought I was pretty cute. Yeah, you come to the show. You're going to the show. Okay, now here's another little bit of overlap. What are you smiling at? Well, she's there. Oh, that's you. Oh my God, I did not put that together. I don't know if you, I was like, should we ask her what we're pretending? I thought you were like the Pablo sister or something. Let me look at these blue eyes. Look how beautiful she is. And now I can say it was theoretical. You are a fucking smoke show. She is a smoke show. She's absolutely. I didn't know what you were doing. I was like, you knew. Yes, yes. I know where we're pretending. No, that's my wife. And she manages to me now. Okay, so I wasn't terribly all face. She's got an official capacity in her mental. Well, we can ask them, did you have a crush? She's going to say no. Yeah, when you came to that show, did you have plans? Well, I had my girlfriend with me, so. Oh. I understand. Listen to her talk. I'll say that. Yeah, the moral intrigue by your voice. Listen to that voice. Do you see what I was going to do? Yeah, that's sort of pizza time. Yeah, let's not go like that. Get this girl for that here. What is this? Does she have some errands to run? We ordered pizza. You can't eat pizza, right? I heard you're gluten intolerant. You don't eat cheese. Yeah, the cauliflower crust is in the twin dressing room. It's in the fucking down the block. Okay, our other overlap is we're both boat owners. Yes. You have the captain fantastic. Gorgeous vessel. I saw some video of you piloting it. And you have a pontoon. I have a tritone. Yeah, yeah. So is a tritone less redneck than a pontoon? It is. It's the newest iteration. They're more stable. Okay. I have a 400 horsepower V10 on a pontoon. So it moves. Oh, wow, that really moves. It really moves. I was just on it this weekend. Mercury or Yamaha? A Mercury. Wow, this language you guys are speaking. Yeah, you got dual 350s out back. Dual 400s. Dual 400s, girl. Get it. Okay. And a big ass kicker. I need a second engine. Yeah, yeah. You've got me doubled in horsepower. Do you just check out? Yeah, me too. Yeah, we could get into it. She really checks out. Captain fantastic, named the boat after Elton John. Yeah. And just congratulations. Looking out foundations, giving away 9 million bucks. I think that's incredible that you've raised that amount of money. Doing a lot of different things too. Yeah, what's... The thing about the foundation is I started the foundation in 2007 when GM wanted to use the story in a television commercial. Right. And I was really young and idealistic. They offered me like $100,000. And you know how old I was. That's a very big deal. Oh. And I made all these calls to all my friends and I called the Indigo Girls, which if you want to do a television commercial, never call the Indigo Girls. And all my friends were like, you can't do that. GM is one of the biggest contributors to pollution and they've caused all these problems. It is rumored that they've squashed patents and that they're really restricting the progression of the electric car and the hydrogen engine and the things that could help the environment. You can't work with GM. So who knows how much of that was true. But I said no. And so like the VP of advertising at GM was like a 20 something year old kid can't say no to $100,000 unless we're getting a really bad reputation. And they called me and they said, what can we do to convince you to let us put your song in the Olympics and give you $100,000? Yeah, I'm going to make this even better for you. Yeah. And so I thought about it and I made some demands and they acquiesced to all of them. And it was really cool empowering moment for me as a young girl. Yeah. And then I took that money and started the foundation and that's what we used it for. But since then, the foundation has done the things like fight the fear campaign that I was telling you about. We've done a lot to end hunger. We've done a lot of LGBTQ focused stuff. And in recent years, the plight of displaced people and outreach to refugees and asylum seekers, you know, children whose lives have been torn apart by war, immigrants, economic migrants and the way that we navigate the southern border have become focuses of the Looking Out Foundation. And you did COVID relief stuff. We're really campaign based, you know, maybe it's ADHD part of me, if that's a real thing for me. I like you're the only person that's actually been diagnosed and you don't want it. I know. Everyone else has been diagnosed and they want it. You're like flipping the script on us. Terminal uniqueness. Yeah, I feel you. Too many people have it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not punk rock anymore to be ADHD. It's not. No, no, no. So that's the foundation. That's awesome. Okay, so returning to myself is currently out and you are on tour. You have tour dates that people could go look at brandycarlyle.com. And one of the things I want to say before I get to be serenaded, which I'm so excited about. I'm excited to. I think that's it. Everyone listen immediately to returning to myself if you're not already obsessed with it and go see Brandy live. This woman is like the Beatles. She's played as many live shows. You're guaranteed for a good show. I mean, you've been playing. It's kind of crazy right at 44. You've been playing for 30 plus years. Yeah, it's probably like. It's second nature to me by now, but it never gets old. Just like you're saying it's the best job in the world. Yeah. All right, I would love to hear this song that's going to make me think of my children. Yeah, my buddy Marcus on and he did this right with this. Yes, he did. He brought you up. Oh, you don't even need the bottle. Oh my God, this is post-bottle. I've never seen it without the bottle. I hit Marcus to this. Oh, I think he said that. By the way, we loved him. I know you must love him. Right. Oh my God. We are like sips. He brought you up a lot. He's like loves you. Yeah, special dude. I love his solo album. Oh my God. So titled. Such a good piece, such a good piece of music and really important. I love Mumford and Son's too. My God, always have. And keep on with the levels. You want me to sing? You know, it's crazy. We're sitting here talking. You're just so charismatic and special. Before you do this. I know. And then you do this and I'm like, well, hold on a second. You can't have all. Yeah, you're upset. Yeah, I'm a little upset. I'm like, you don't get a superpower on top of having a great personality. You get one kind of one or the other. You guys have plenty of superpowers too. I don't think. And that's a hard one. And you haven't even seen me drive that pontoon. That's gotta be what you're referencing. Yeah. I can just see the wake though. So this song, it's about kids that are our kids age. And it's about these little moments, these little like micro separations where you see them do something that you didn't expect. They're trying something out that they're going to need later on in life, like when they're not with you. It's called like a you without me moment. And I'm wondering what yours was because my friend Ben, when he first heard this song, he had this moment where it was like, they were at this big party weekend thing and Mark Brunson was DJing and he was going to let his oldest daughter stay up late and like dance with him on the dance floor. And they're out on the dance floor and they're silly dancing and they're being goofy and they're doing the thing. But she started to like her own music. So she sees a group of older girls, you know, she's maybe 10 and they're like 14 or 15. And he gets distracted and she leaves him and she goes over to them and she starts trying to dance with them, like the way they're dancing and like relate to them. And he said that he looked over there and he saw her and he didn't recognize her that she was an independent autonomous and she was taking a risk and she was using her body and voice in a way that he had never seen. Yeah. And these are the little like moments where it occurs to you that they're going to leave. They're their own people. Yeah. And they're tiny things at first. And that's what I wrote this song about. It's called you without me. I know you anywhere I lost myself in you. And heavy are the hands that you are. Freedom slip right through. Do what you have to do. And there you are, my morning star. I wondered when you'd show. Give me just a quick thumbs up. A wink before you go. I never heard that voice before today. I remind myself to breathe. And there you are. It's just you without me. I'm late to another game. I guess I never learned the rules. I showed up with a broken name and handed it to you. I'm not sure if you can fix it now. If you wanted to, I would follow you around and carry all your tools. Because I wouldn't know you anywhere I found myself in you. And heavy are the hands that hold the changes you go through. Do what you have to do. And there you are, my morning star. I wondered when you'd show. Give me just a quick thumbs up. A wink before you go. I never heard that voice before today. I remind myself to breathe. And there you are. It's just you without me. Without me. It's as predictable as time and age. And comforting in some strange way. The time makes every one of us an absolute cliche. And when I met you face to face, none of it was true. So who am I to find not you? There you are, my morning star. I wondered when you'd show. Give me just a quick thumbs up. A wink before you go. I never heard that voice before today. I remind myself to breathe. I'm never just a thought away. If ever you need me, you're gonna live a lot of life. You're gonna see a lot of years, God willing. Just you without me. There you are, it's just you. Without me. It's so sad. It's the without me part. That's so sad every time you say without me. The thing, oh no, yeah, you're gonna have a whole life without me. Yeah. Gorgeous, gorgeous. It's bitter sweet, isn't it? Yeah, it is. You gotta go like, oh yeah, and that's a sign I did a good job. That's all you get. They're just like, see ya. I know they're not. Think about how you think about your parents. Well, I know, but there was a moment. I got my 20s to do, girl. I'll talk to you later. My 20s is coming, you know. You gotta do your 20s. That's a whole thing. And then hopefully it comes back around. But they do it. They go and they just do like one little thing. It's one little interaction. You see them do a point they make. And they're like, there you are. Yeah. That's who you're gonna be for the rest of your life. Without me. Sweet. No, take me. I'll carry your tools. I'll run and get coffee. Well, that was beautiful. Thank you so much. Your tiny desk, by the way, is so good. Thank you. Yeah, I fucking love tiny desk. Can you nail yours? I like tiny desk too. No, it's a gray. It's incredible. Or the silk sonic drama. Anderson Pax. Oh my god. We've had him on it when we were just in Saints. What a dude. What a vibe too. Did you watch that? I could talk to you for seven hours. Just side note. I'm gonna wrap this up. But did you watch this Super Bowl halftime show with Dr. Dre? Obviously he's the most memorable one ever. Yep. They were all wearing rich, fresh track suits. Baby blue, powder blue, rich track suits. So cool. Anderson Pax playing the drums this whole time. Of course he is. Yeah, I know. Incredible. That is how stacked that line on the list. And even see Anderson Pax playing the drums. Exactly. 11 minutes in, you're like, oh damn, Anderson's been playing the drums this whole time. Why doesn't everybody call that halftime out? Like everybody says, I mean Prince, and I mean Prince was amazing. Right. Now that's number one. Pretty epic. I think too, if you're a poor kid, I was crying during that whole thing. I mean, the kids are from down the block. And Tipper Gore was saying they were going to destroy America. Yeah. And everyone hated them. And they were the poor kids. And look at them there. And they are the show. Yeah. Oh, I loved it. So you have the vibe that the old gays have now about the young gays. That's right. That's like, that's poor. He like, you got old poor kid thing going on like that. Exactly. That's my gateway and understanding. We're like, let's talk about coming from nothing right now. We're like, what's going on in the world? These other ruggers on the world. Nothing could be better. Well, Brandy, this has been a delight. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, so nice. I'm really glad. Ana's got good taste. She sure does. She picks a mentor, boy. It's few and far between. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming. This has been so lovely. Thanks for having me. I've always wanted to talk to you guys. Oh my God. Please come back. I'll have me back. Oh, we'd love to. Okay. We just ordered drinks from Erowan. Okay. And I'm putting it, I'm trying to order it and it's saying you have to meet at the door. This can't be left. It's like, that's weird. Okay, sure. Then it says you have to show your ID and we ordered you something new. Do you think that's just a standard disclaimer in case you've ordered alcohol? No, because I order Erowan like every day. Or not every day. I mean, I bet you can predict my reaction to this. What? Which is like, fine, Fucky, we won't order from you. Oh. You don't leave it. You got to show ID. It's like, this is my beef with the place that would require the signature, no matter what. It's like our policy. It's like, great. Well, then I won't be using you. Okay. Well, I already ordered it. You didn't predict that? No, I didn't. Because what I of course think is, so you got a new drink. We don't know about. But I think that's the only strange part. Everything else is not new or strange. But like, maybe that is what's requiring it. You got to be an adult to drink, or maybe you got to be a baby to drink. Oh, to show you're under 21? You got to show you're under two years old. Oh, my God. Well, anyway. We didn't anticipate that being the sitch. We didn't, but I think this is interesting that... I do too. You got breast milk in your coffee? There was no... There's no alcohol in it. So why would you need it? Exactly. That's why I... But now I have to check. Okay. I mean, I would detect alcohol immediately. That's interesting. That was in last night's meeting. Oh, tell me. Just people were kind of... One person told a story about ordering a, you know, a Coke and it came. There's always these moments for alcohol. Oh. Inevitably, you're going to bump into some real alcohol. Yeah. My, you know, my second dad and I, we're one time in Wyoming and I ordered a Diet Coke and he ordered a Ginger Ale and our drinks came and we both took a sip of them almost at the same time. And I mean, it was like, oh, this is Jack and Diah. And then he's putting his drink down and he goes, this is what was really funny is he goes, try this. Is there jet, like... He just wasn't really thinking. He was just doing what you would normally do and say something funny. And I was like, I'll take your word for it. He's like, oh yeah, you shouldn't try it. But it was just kind of instinctual. Like, does this smell funny? But it was like, does this taste like... Anyways, they were both laced with Jack Daniels. A Jack Ginger and a Jack and Diah. I have a lot, like, look, I have a lot of respect for food and food staff and chefs and kitchen workers. But that makes me so angry. It does? Yes. That kind of mistake, only that one. Yeah. Is so bad. That is so dangerous. People don't understand what can happen. Sure, sure, sure. I mean, look, we could look at this from a lot of different angles. I would just say right out of the gates, what percentage of people in the restaurant are recovering addicts? It's like a lot to... Yeah, but you have to protect the most vulnerable. Yeah, yeah, I just... I imagine he's got tickets and he, you know, or she, the bartender, got, you know, six different Cokes and Jack and... I got... mistakes happen. Look, I see how it happened. I'm not like... But I do think it is incumbent, is your responsibility if you're bartender because it's a kind of restaurant they got to put in the drink order with the bartender. Yeah, to be aware if there shouldn't be alcohol in the drink. It also could be for a kid. Well, thank you. I just had gotten to that place in my head where I was like, if it's happened to me, and it's happened to Tom, and it's happened to... Well, almost every dude in the meeting had had this. Yeah, surely kids are getting... And do they think like, oh, this just tastes funny, but I still like soda? No, it's too gross. Something's wrong with it. I like to think that some kid just powered through it. And became an alcoholic. It was too robust. Well, again, most people who drink don't become alcoholics. A lot of us do. This is a fun, like, philosophical conversation. Yeah. Which is like, I don't think it's the responsibility of the masses to be changing their whole life because some small percentage of the population has a thing. I just don't think that's... I don't think that's the way it is either, but this isn't changing anything. This is just being careful. Well, no, I mean, even the notion that like, well, you can't have a... If a kid drank, he'd be an alcoholic. Well, it's like, well, that's not true. Most people that drink are an alcoholic. Yes, that's fine. Yeah, but I think that would be a common kind of reaction. Well, no, I think they're just like, don't give my kid alcohol. Yeah. That's bad. I'm so sorry. I have it, I do not disturb, but for some reason it's still... Yeah, do not disturb. Why would you be buzzing? See, it's like my doorbell. It does. You're not supposed to buzz. Oh, it's because it's Kristen. Oh, she has an override? She has an override if she calls, and now I'm realizing she has an override if she texts too. Does she have to call twice or text twice or just immediately as an override? Anytime she calls, it'll actually ring. Oh, that's nice. I remember he was in the interview and his phone rang twice. Once with his wife and once with one of his children. Oh, yeah, that's right. And I was like, I didn't even know you could do that. That's cool. Okay, I did look it up and cold brew coffee with cowboy colostrum. Though, like, what does it mean, cowboy colostrum? But okay, heavy cream and maple syrup. That's all it's saying. Oh, enhanced with lucama, maca, and sea salt. Maybe they don't want kids to have maca because there's a lot of caffeine or some shit. Maybe. I'm just thinking that like it's a policy gone awry. It's like they flagged some certain thing and now this got ensnared in it. I bet it's colostrum, but we need to figure out why. I need it further. Oh my God, what if you get addicted to colostrum now? Okay. I'm gonna get in trouble for this. But it's in keeping with this conversation we already have. I just had read that they're like sentencing someone in between, I don't know what chain of events they were involved with the Matthew Perry overdose. Oh, I've heard about this. And they just got sentenced and I think someone else got sent. Like a doctor, I think, right? Yeah, and my kids and I were talking about it and I was like, no, that's not how it should work. My analogy was Yamaha, Kawasaki, all these motorcycle companies, they all sell motorcycles that go 200 miles an hour. They're for sale at the dealership. A 16-year-old can walk in and buy it. They don't have to prove at all that they've ever ridden a thing. And quite often those kids go out and they die on motorcycles. It's way too much motorcycle. Yeah. That is living in a country with liberty. You do have the right to be a mountain climber to do dangerous activities. That's not the same. Well, no, it's identical if you remove the word legal or illegal. And you just say that there are many products that are sold that are just inherently dangerous. Motorcycles, drugs, guns, alcohol, cigarettes, cars. There are products that are dangerous. And I really believe unless it's a situation like big tobacco where they know it causes cancer and they're stifling that information. I think you should have full awareness as a consumer of what the... I think it should be like, yeah, you're gonna buy this motorcycle. It goes 200 miles an hour and you kill yourself really easily. Okay, now if you want to do that, that's like your life. So, no, I don't think someone that sells a dangerous product should go to jail because someone else used the dangerous product and killed themselves. I think it's the person who used it. It has to have the responsibility. Well, not if it's a doctor. It's a doctor, I think, that got in trouble. I think. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Yeah, but again... I'm not sure if Laura aligned with you, but... But let's just say that what I guarantee is that the doctor hadn't given him a dosage that killed him. What I guarantee is that he had multiple sources or stockpile or whatever and he took on his own a dosage that no doctor would ever recommend. Well, we don't know that. We, I do. How? Like Michael Jackson's doctor also gave him way too much. Like, they're giving what the people are asking for. And that's the whole issue. They have a do no harm obligation. And if it's just like, well, this person's paying me and just wanting more than I really should give but I'm giving it, that's a problem. Yeah, we would need more. But I can tell you from everyone I've known who's overdosed in the last 30 years of sobriety, no one was taking it as prescribed. Right, but this was ketamine. So there is a safe dosage of ketamine. A lot of people in this country have ketamine prescriptions. Yeah. But like if I got a prescription for percocet, right, the the 1.0's, the big boys, and it says take one every four hours and I take that jar and I take eight right away. Yeah. That's on me. No, that is on you though. What he did, what our boy did was he, O.D., he took way more than was prescribed to him, for sure. Well, I don't know if it's for sure because then every doctor who had an O, had someone O.D. would be in trouble and that's not the case. Right. The only thing that makes the, I think this reason this person is going to jail is because A, the person that died was famous. I think a bunch of people of O.D. done ketamine and other drugs and there was not even an investigation. They're like, yes, someone O.D. that's what happens on drugs when they're abused. Because it's him, they're like, well, we got to figure out who killed Matthew Perry. That's not what, no one killed him. Well, again, I don't know that this is, I don't know enough about this doctor or what was being prescribed. I do know that I read what he was on when he died and it was an insane amount of ketamine and it was not what his prescription was. He was a drug counselor that connected Perry to the ketamine queen who delivered him the ketamine. Yeah, I can't. Ketamine queen is tricky. Yeah, I don't know enough about her. But at the end of the day, he did it. No one else did it. He did it. Yeah, but if you're a doctor, you can't. You think ketamine queen was a doctor? I assume. Let me look it up. Yes, this person, British American convicted felon and drug dealer known as the ketamine queen. She gained international attention following her indictment and subsequent guilty plea in connection with the overdose of actor Martha Brayla. Let me see if she's a doctor. She looks kind of Indian. Kind of Indian? Prosecutors alleged that she operated a drug distribution network from her north Hollywood home for several years. Sentenced to 15 years in prison for her role in supplying the ketamine that would cause Perry's death. Just think how many people drink to a fatal level? That happens a ton. Yeah. But you can get in trouble for over serving. I can go into the store and I can buy 10 fits. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we would agree the Jack Daniels company should not be held responsible because someone went and bought. How does she even get the ketamine this lady? She's probably. Right from China or something. It's clearly illegal what she's doing is illegal, so that's why she's going to jail. Yeah, she's a drug dealer. Drug dealer. Drug dealers, you know, but I agree that if you, I think drug dealers in certain cases should go to jail. Oh, you do? Yeah. You're getting illegal drugs off the black mark. I mean, yes, you're engaging in a lot of illegal activity. I think the time that I'd be fine with a drug dealer going to jail would be when the drug dealer knowingly sold someone fentanyl under the guise of it being heroin knowingly. Yeah. I mean, obviously, that. Then they're a murderer. Yeah, exactly. Then the person that got it can't really dose it correctly and they have deceitfully misled this person, which may have caused their death. But if I'm selling you crack cocaine, I go, hey, bro, this is crack. You know, do what it with you. I really don't think it's on the person who sold that. But they got it illegally. No one gets crack legally. That's kind of what I'm trying to have the conversation about is because we labeled alcohol legal in this other thing illegal, yet we clearly think because alcohol is legal that no one's responsible someone drinks themselves to death. And so you're saying that because one is classified by the government is illegal and one is legal that that should make the person who sells it go to prison. Yes, because there are regulations on actual alcohol like you it's labeled 12 percent and blah, blah, like crack is not like it's if crack was legal, then it would probably be under some sort of system where you'd see the amount it would be like supervised in a way and no one would be held responsible. Yeah, right. But that's fine then I am fine. If we lived in a world where it was legal and it was regulated, I mean this was a whole this is the whole debate about marijuana for years and years and years, which now and all these people went to prison and were held responsible for other people's abuse of something. Yeah. And I think we all now agree that was about it. That was wrong. Right. But also because now just because like marijuana isn't a problem. Yeah. But crack is a problem. You agree. Well, let's keep it to ketamine because you can get a prescription for ketamine. There is ketamine therapy. People do use ketamine therapeutically. I personally don't think it's a great idea to use ketamine because why because I've seen it go wrong more than I've seen it go right and not even in death. I've seen a very temporary patch for something that long term wasn't a good solution. Right. And you think it has a risk of addiction? Yeah. Just like cigarettes, alcohol, caffeine most things that Do you think it's more or less? I'm actually asking because I don't know a lot about ketamine. Yeah. I don't. I've never taken ketamine. So I don't know how sticky it is. Yeah. I know how sticky opiates are. Yeah. Exactly. I know how sticky cocaine is. I know how sticky alcohol is. I know cigarettes like yeah. Of all of them, cigarettes are the stickiest. There's a bunch of junkies that'll tell you quitting smoking was harder than quitting heroin. But again, that's why like because it's legal, it says like basically it says on the box like this is going to kill you. But my only issue is cigarette manufacturers were when they knew it was causing something. Yeah. Horrible. And they silenced that. Mm-hmm. And so to me, if you have total transparency I do think I want to live in a country where people get to evaluate the risks they want to take. And then also we, I don't think it's fair to the 90 percent of people or even the 94 percent of people who try cocaine and don't become addicted. I don't think it's fair to those people that because us 8 percent have a problem. You guys can't do it. I don't think that's fair. Well, we can't do it because it's not regulated and there is fentanyl in it and there is like there's so many. It's not or you're saying you think cocaine should be legalized? No, I don't think that. I think that we've seen the experiment run. It doesn't work. That's my opinion on many classifications of drugs. Yeah, me too. I do think they're too addictive and I think the barriers that exist are what help it going from 94 percent of people never getting addicted to you know, the 8. I think if it were $5 for an 8-ball and it was at 7-11, I think you would see a massive uptick. You would. And it would affect every single person whether you're an addict or you're not. So that's one topic. Do I think it should be legalized? And then another topic is do I think people are responsible for distributing a product that's dangerous and someone abuses it and dies? I don't. I don't think the kid who breaks the speed limit on his new Yamaha R1 and is going 180 on the 5 and kills himself. I don't think the dealer is responsible. I don't either. I don't think Yamaha is responsible. But again, the difference is I just, I do think the difference is legality. I know, but that's just really kind of, we would agree that's arbitrary. Like weed wasn't legal two years ago and now it is. Right. And so now we think that. It's like, well that should have been consistent. Because like it doesn't do that much harm. We have enough evidence of all of these drugs at this point to to rank a lethal they are. Exactly. And lethal to yourself and like, you know to society, like what it's going to cause. Then we can get even more fun debate, which is sometimes the ones that aren't lethal are weirdly more dangerous. So like weed and alcohol. Yeah. I think bizarrely, they can take more of a toll on your overall life because they're not so extreme that you can habitually do them forever and lose big chunks of your existence. Yeah. Weeds going to be, I think at some, there's going to be one, there'll be some study at some point when we have 20 years of data on what happened with this experiment. And although I'm in favor of it, we're going to see it's just a more innocuous, it has more innocuous and subtle consequences that are currently being completely ignored. Sure. Like in a way that maybe maybe if someone is addicted to caffeine and then they can't sleep and then they have a bad, you know like, yes, there are consequences for anything you do, anything, you could eat sugar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like where do we draw the line? Yeah. And I think you have to draw it at you have to draw it somewhere, obviously, I think we both agree we can't just have a free-for-all situation. We have the data for it. Back in the early 1900s when these cure-alls, when people went town to town with cure-alls, in 30% of the cure-all was opium, there was a moment in America where like 30% of the country was addicted to opiates. So we have data that when you make it wildly available and it's not illegal, It's bad. You're gonna have a third of the population. So back to the weed. What makes me think we will at some point reevaluate it a little bit? Not to say we're ever gonna make it illegal again or that we should. But my anecdotal experience is I drive Delta to school every morning on my motorcycle. And when I am, well, both directions, but certainly I'm more aware of it when I'm driving home by myself. I smell weed the whole way home in LA. And I have to go like, oh yeah, so now that it's legal, a lot of people have transferred to, many, many people are getting stoned the second they wake up and on their way to work and walking around in the morning. Okay. I'm not judgmental of it, but I am suggesting that's gonna show a little burble. We're gonna see some downriver consequences of people waking up and immediately getting stoned. I mean, my guess is yes, but I also don't know. We have Seth Rogen, you know, he's extremely not affected negatively at all. For sure. This is a hard one for me because I don't like weed. Like personally, I don't take it, I don't enjoy it. So I don't feel like I have a dog in this fight really. Here's what you don't see. I saw it one time, well, I've seen it a couple of times. I saw it in Russia when I was there in 1996, I guess. And it had, you know, the wall had only fallen at that point for what, seven years or something. And driving in the morning from the boat to St. Catherine's Palace, I saw hundreds, if not thousands of men drinking vodka at 8 a.m. on the sidewalk. It's cultural, yep. And you go, hmm, that town has a drinking problem. And then we went to Sweden right after. And then we learned of Sweden's taxation of vodka because Sweden went, we got a drinking problem. And so they wanted to start addressing it somehow. And what I'm saying is if you were driving home from anywhere at 8 a.m. in the morning and you saw one in three people chugging alcohol, vodka or beer, you go, huh, this isn't great. Yeah. But weed, this is what I'm talking about. It's a knock, you, as quality, which is like, yeah, I do believe you can smoke weed and drive your car and smoke weed and probably go to work and do a fine job. I don't think you're gonna do 100%. I don't think. I don't either, but I don't also know. Like I don't know because I just don't. Yeah, it isn't any other, it's just interesting how it's already like folded into our culture and it's kind of like you observe people smoking weed all morning in LA. And you just... It might be because it's still, I mean, not in a, not really new, but kind of, it's still kind of newly legal. And as you said, like we could be seeing one in three people drinking all day and we don't. And I think that probably has to do with just the fact that it's been around for so long and... And you can't function as well. And you can't, if you show up to where you smell like it and socially, we're like, no, no, you can't drink in the morning. I think it's interesting, you can smoke weed in the morning, it's fine. No one really gives a shit. I'm not sure that... I think most people do. I think most people, if they hear that, are like, what, that's crazy. I think some people maybe don't, but I think the majority of people who hear that somebody woke up in the morning and started smoking weed immediately are probably a little concerned about that person. I am. Well, I just saw this, I saw these two ladies, they have a podcast about ADHD, they're both ADHD, and they were talking about why many ADHD people love weed because it's a dopamine dysregulation condition, and that you can get dopamine from the weed. So initially they're talking about it, it's almost like heavily in support of ADHD people using it, or at least maybe not feeling guilty that they're using it, because it is like a good medicine for them, but then they were also very quite honest to say, and 36% of ADHD cannabis users have cannabis use disorder. So it's like, it's over a third, and I also think weed, it has benefited from the fact that we've been saying forever, it's not addictive. It is not physically addictive. You're not gonna go through withdrawals of the physical variety when you stop doing it, but you're going to go through a lot, and your brain chemistry is going to adjust for a while, and so I also don't think we're being totally honest about it. What's not addictive? No, no, many, many people are fully addicted to weed, and their tolerance has gone up and up, and their dosage has gone up and up, and they're smoking, you know, and it's tantamount to weed. A lot of addictions are also mental, like so many are that will kill you, like not just, it's not just like a silly thing to say. It's very, you know, my brother used to smoke so much weed, it was like, it's not addictive, it's not addictive, and I'm like, you are addicted. I can tell because you keep getting in trouble for this. It's having a consequence, and you can't or won't stop. So maybe yes, it's not physically addictive, but mentally you are addicted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you probably won't suck a dick for weed, you probably won't break into a house for weed, and there's like, there is a, even when you're jonesing for it, it doesn't reach the level of jonesing for opiates, or jonesing for, yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. It is fascinating. Yeah, it is interesting. I think though, we'll have a bit of a reckoning. I think it should stay legal. Again, I don't think that the millions of people that are doing it, like on the weekends, or relaxed, or taking a dummy to go to sleep, I don't want those people to lose that. No. They should have that. And also, dickheads like me are going to fuck it up and abuse it. And then there's also gonna probably be some questions about when you start doing it, what age, and what kind of effects it has on your brain development, if you're a heavy weed user in your youth. Well, maybe they will start, maybe eventually they'll be, is it right now, is there an age thing? Yeah, 18. Well, I don't know if it's 18 or 21. It would make sense that it was 21, but I have no clue. I would assume it would be 21 in it. I probably wouldn't get carted, I know that. It's 21. It's 21? Yeah. Wow, that's a really big ding, ding, ding, because I want to- About getting carted? Yep, I was at Chili's this past weekend. Oh, with your mom? He was my mom and dad in Duluth. He was one of our Chili's. We did. Yeah, great. Yeah, it was my idea. Oh, good! Yeah. Did you get the potato skins? I didn't. I got the quesadilla, which is my thing there. Yeah. And the problem is, my mom had made quesadillas the day before, homemade, homemade tortillas, homemade everything, and they were so good. Gourmet. They were really gourmet. And then I had this idea about the Chili's quesadillas, because it's so nostalgic. Yeah. And it was good. It was good. Yeah. It was fine. I kind of had it the next day after these, like, really one-of-a-kind quesadillas. Yes. We were at, obviously, TJ- My mom and I went to TJ Maxx, obviously. I thought you were about to say TGIF. I was like, wow, you guys hit Fridays and Chili's in a week. No, no, no. We went to TJ Maxx, which we always do. We went to Kohl's. We went to Nordstrom Mack. They're all in the same area. Yeah. We're shopping. And then there's the Chili's right there. Our Chili's, where, like, it grew up going. And I asked- Oh, my mom had asked earlier, what do you want to do for dinner? And I was like, I don't know. And then I said, have you guys been to the Chili's? Do you guys still go there? And she was like, yeah, we go. And she was like, do you want to do that for dinner? And I was like, yeah. Yeah. I do want to. So then my dad met us. Okay. Where was he? He was at home. He wasn't going to TJ Maxx. Did he go to work in his retirement? Yeah. No, he was not going to TJ Maxx and Nordstrom Mack and stuff. No, I would rather die. Yeah. He was home. But then he came to meet us and we ate there. And I got carded. Oh, lovely. That's cute. It was cute. Flattering. It was cute. And then the- What was your cocktail at Chili's? It was a margarita. Yeah. I didn't finish. It was bad. Super sugary? Yeah. And I said, can I get a Cosmigos one? But skinny. And those were, you know, two separate things basically. And he was like, oh, I don't know what I have to ask. And I was like, charge me for the expensive Cosmigos one, but just make it skinny. Yeah, no way that's gonna happen back there. It didn't happen. Yeah, I don't know what happened, but it tastes very, very bad. Right, 16-year-old kid made that cocktail. I know. Yeah. So. Was it so beautiful in Georgia? Is it green as hell right now? Spring? It's pretty green. Yeah, it's nice. Okay. It's nice. It's nice, yeah. Any thoughts of moving back while you're there? No. I never have that. Yeah, you never have that. I have, I have like, oh, like I'm glad I touched down here a couple times a year. Like I am glad. Have you ever thought I had in Michigan, which is like, oh my gosh, I could live in the super nice neighborhood now. Oh. Because that's what really fucked me up. That's what had me almost getting a house on a certain lake in Michigan. Really? Yeah, I was just like, oh, I used to drive by the house. You know, I mean, every time I went to West Point Ville, anywhere, which is regular, is one stretch Pontiac Trail. And look at these mansions with these huge yards and they're on Long Lake, I think, lower straights, upper straights. And yeah, the notion that I could live there became very intoxicating. Yeah. And like I could almost not resist. I thought better of it at the end. Yeah. Sure. But I had found a house and I was flying there to get it. So I was just like, I can't believe I can live where the basketball players lived. Yeah. So that's interesting. I don't have that. I mean, I definitely drive around there and I think like. You know one difference I think between you and I as kids, I coveted wealth. I, okay. I didn't covet wealth in the same way you did, but I still did have like aspirations to have a lot of money. Like, and we didn't, we lived in a nice house. That, well, that is the difference. We lived in a nice house, but a modest nice house. Like it, my parents would get mad because they would say like, it's really nice. It is, I've seen it. It's a big, big house by American standards. It's like a 4,000 square foot house. Less than that, but yeah, it is. But it's, yes, it is. In like an upscale neighborhood. It's in a subdivision. Okay. This I was trying to teach Jess about subdivisions. He didn't understand them. Right. Being from LA. Because he was fighting with me about suburbs because I was like, you don't really understand suburbs. Right. And he was like. Tell me about what sub you live in. Well, exactly. You don't even say subdivision. You say sub. Did you say sub? No, cause we didn't say, we said neighborhood. Okay. So what neighborhood do you live in? But I don't even say that to people who don't understand it cause they don't even understand what that means. Right. So I said, you know, cause sometimes I like to do suburban Fridays here, which is us going to a movie on Friday afternoon and then going to dinner at the Americana. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels so suburban to me. Yes. And I was, we did that. We watched double words prod and then we went to the Italian restaurant at the Americana. And you know, they bring out the bread. It's just all so suburban. And I was feeling very nostalgic and I was talking about the suburbs. And he was like, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, Burbank is a suburb. He grew up in Burbank. And I was like, no. And then he of course had to look up on chat GBT where of course it says it is. And sure. Well, Burbank is a suburb of LA. Exactly. Yeah. Technically it is a suburb. But a subdivision is a very specific thing. Well, that's what I said, but you don't have subdivisions. Like a real suburb to me. Someone who lives, grew up in New York. There are three or four streets you enter the subdivision on. And through those three or four streets, a web of streets are connected to it. And it's its own little world. And it's house after house. It's on a main road. And yeah, yeah. And that's how everything was built where I grew up in Michigan. Yes. In my elementary, you'd go, what sub do you live in? And it was either heritage farms, Axford Acres, LaSalle Gardens. There were only four options. Okay. So for us, yeah, what neighborhood do you live in? Okay. It's a huge neighborhood, like 800 houses. Houses. Big development. So it was really exciting for Halloween. You wanted to go in Riverbrook, you know? Yeah, it was really exciting. It was Riverbrook, the nicest sub in... No, so that's what I'm saying. Okay, there was a nicer sub. So many. Okay. So many. So there were St. Ives. That was really, really fancy. Uh-huh. It's also funny. It is so funny. So that's, and like I had friends who lived in these, you know? And sugar... Sugar tits? I can't believe I'm forgetting. This is, that's just cause coffee. But anyway, yes, there are some areas that's like, oh my God, if you live there, like you've really made it. Can I tell you the coveted wealth part? Yeah. So on the weekends, very, very regular activity for us, maybe even every other weekend, we would leave our shitty welfare apartment and we would get mom's pinto and we would drive to Bloomfield Hills. That was a neighborhood? Yeah, it was 25 miles away. Not a subdivision. It is a suburb. It's an area. Okay, got it. And we would pull up to the end of Driveways and stare at the house. And my mom would say, these people went to college. Like, if you want to live here, these people went to college. Then she'd drive to another nice house. This person's probably a doctor or they're a lawyer. You know, like, if you like that, this is how you get it. And we did that all the time. So I do think that compounded my obsession with like wealth in like, oh my God, that's so out of reach and we want that thing. So yeah, the lake with the basketball players houses, I was very primed. That is, that used to be a thing. Like, yeah, when we were going on vacations, we'd just drive around and look at houses. It's so fun. I love it. I still love it. It's weird now that I'm thinking about that. Like, I would never go on a vacation and do that. But we did it all the time. Anytime we went somewhere in a car, it was, yeah, we would go to neighborhoods and drive around and look at houses. Yeah. Strange. See how the other folks live. I guess. But like, I don't know. So funny. It's all so funny. We're watching Zillow Gone Wild. We're now addicted to it. We have a guest coming up. Don't have to deduce who that would be. But if you ever want to see Zillow Gone Wild, it's from the Instagram account, Zillow Gone Wild. So it's these crazy listings on Zillow. And the show goes and visits these houses. And there was the cutest Indian couple last night. Oh. In Orlando, Florida. Oh, a lot of them there. And they lived in a castle. It looked like Excalibur Hotel in Vegas. Yeah. And inside were like swords and all this stuff. And they were. Was it Indian stuff in there? Or like? No, it was all like knights and stuff. Okay. Interesting. And the whole tableau was so cute because they're from India. And the dad is like, clearly he's been successful here. I'm like, look at this. This guy lives in a castle in America. I know. He's so happy. Like you would not want to live in this castle. I know. I want it. But there was something so sweet in life. Because it's the idea of America. This guy's in America. Like five acres in a castle. In Camelot. Yes. And then they show the children. I guess the children talked them into buying the house. And the children, it was on eBay, which I didn't even know they sold homes on eBay. Yeah. It was just really cute. Cause the mom did all the talking. A lot of it was very, and followed a lot of my stereotypes. But in the adorable way, the things I love about. So she handled all the talking. He just kind of sat there. He nodded. And then he got to show his sword. You know, like when it was time to do like this sort of stuff. And then the cute thing was eventually we saw the kids. How old are they? In their twenties. Okay. Taking advantage of their parents. And the son had like a fucking long ponytail, fucking tattoos everywhere. And I was like, these second generation. I know. It's another parent. It's so sad actually. You talking about your brother just made me think of the whole scenario. And I was like, oh yeah man. You got like, if you're emigrating here from India, like you have a lot coming your way. Yes. There's so many challenges for you. There's racism. There's this and that. You got to find your footing. And then the reward is you'll give your kids everything. And they will likely go berserk American style. Well, it's all connected. It's you're going to go berserk America style because you have to be American. Yeah. You have to very quickly assimilate into this culture and be whatever it needs you to be. And you don't really know how. It's just a hard row. They travel and I want to honor them. It's like what an experience. You know, you go through hell and back to make it here and to provide this opportunity. And then they're like, I think dad, I'm going to blow joints and get dead. That's why I'm such a good daughter. Yes, yes. Who you turned out to be. I'm always been a good daughter. Yeah. Oh, you mean because I did do a crazy thing. You did a crazy thing. And you could be, it worked out. It worked out. You could have been moving back at 36 years old and you could have been in this doc about Zillop. No. No, no. Don't do this. That's not in, that was not in my cards. Maybe I wouldn't have had all this, but I would have figured out something. Yeah. We have much different assessments of ourselves. Had this not worked out for me, I would be penniless. That's so crazy that you think that. I know so. I was just talking about it with Kristen when you're talking about somebody. And it was like, just get a fucking job. Like just get a job. You didn't get the management position. Like at some point get a job. Just do it. Yeah. And I was like enjoying that being a little judgmental. And then I was like, you know, Han, if I'm being that honest, like I could not, I couldn't have a job. I could be an Uber driver. What? I could be at 7-Eleven if there's no manager, but I could not at this point have a 30 year old boss who I thought was dumb and was making me do stupid things. I couldn't do it. I'd rather be penniless. I just don't have an image. What if you have a family? You can't just choose to be penniless. You have to support your family. If I have a family, well, luckily there are, I would be an Uber driver. I would be something where I could be an independent contractor. What I'm saying, I really have always been terrible at. And I'm admitting it. I've not been great when I have idiot bosses. And most people have idiot bosses. I'm not talking about good bosses, but your odds are getting a good boss or well. Even if you have a good boss, you're not gonna see eye to eye on everything at all. And you're not gonna be quiet about that. Exactly. But listen, can you work on it? No. No, no, no, no, I know who I am. I'm 51. No, no, now. I don't mean now. I mean, like if this was, well, it would have happened much earlier. It would have happened earlier in life. I think we can't tell people they can't change these behaviors because like you can, you can't. Well, no, I'm telling those people you probably gotta be an Uber driver. You need to be something where you don't have a boss. Okay, yeah, sure. You can be something where you don't have a boss or you can work on yourself and decide like, okay, this boss is fucking annoying. Like I hate him and I hate that he's telling me what to do. And guess what? I need a job and I need to support my family and I can go home and forget about this part. Like you can. You're 100% right. That's how people should be. I completely agree with you. People can. That's how people should be. And they can be. I am not that way. I disagree. You don't give yourself enough credit for change. You've changed a lot. And it's again, as you say, like it's when push comes to shove, but that's what this would require. You would be... I'm just telling on myself. You know, I've got some bad characteristics. I know. This is one of them. I know that. I don't do well with authoritarian presences. But I think you don't. But I think you could in a specific circle, given your life had gone a different way. That's why I couldn't direct commercials. I did a few. I got through them. I know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you were in one. Yes. And I was fine that day. Yeah, you were great. I pissed off the client. You were great. But I didn't like it so much that I'm like, I would rather not direct if that's how... We're already rich. So this is my point. If you weren't. Yeah. And you needed the job. You didn't need those jobs. Well, we have an example. So I was broke when I worked for CPK. I know, but... And I couldn't do it. I couldn't have him tell me I got a six or a seven on my punctuality when I had been early every day. It's rude. I couldn't resist. Yeah. I just couldn't handle the injustice. I know. And I lost that job or I quit it. That's okay though. You lost a job. To me, that's okay. Okay. Listen, that was weird. He told you... I bet Corbert told him to do that. Yes, of course. Not his fault necessarily, but whatever. You quit because you were like, I can't work for this corporation that is gaslighting me. Yeah, lying to me. And I won't do it. So I'm quitting. That's fine. I am fact-thinking in some ways that's noble. Okay. That doesn't mean that you couldn't have gone to a different job and worked for someone. I was so lucky that I had a job for 14 years. Exactly. But my bosses were my mom and my brother. Yeah. But sometimes that's the worst. That can be the worst. Because we already knew how to deal with each other. You're right. A lot of family businesses, that part gets tricky. It worked great for us because my mom knew the more I stay out of his business and the more responsibility I give him, the better he'll be. Yeah, yeah. So she just stayed the fuck out of the way and almost every year I got more and more responsibilities. Where I was, oh. Oh my gosh, the breast, the colostrum has arrived. Did they make you show out an ID? They did. Well, if you take a sip and you taste alcohol, let me know. Okay. You'll know if there's alcohol in it. How will you know if there's alcohol in it? Because you'll drink the whole thing at once, Sid. I'll ask Rob if he can run up and get a pack of Camelites. You mean after you're done with it? And then I'll figure out where to get cocaine. I know. I know. If you did, if there was alcohol and you drank it and you relapsed and then you did cocaine and like we could sue Erwin. I don't think you could. And that would, oh, 100% we would. After the point I just made, I would never sue him. Well, I'm cutting that obviously so that we can sue. And then that will be so exciting. Talk about buying a house in Bloomington Hills or whatever with the sewage. The sewage. Bloomfield Hills. Bloomfield. Sugarloaf, my God, that was gonna kill me. Sugarloaf had really big houses. How's the colostrum? This thing is fucking delicious. Oh, good. I'm willing to show my ID to get it. Oh, see, look at that. I don't know if that's true, but. Okay, I wanna do some facts. Yeah, let's do some facts. So this is like all connected because this is for Brandy Carlisle. And she grew up modestly. And she was a coyote, as she said. Yeah, and she could definitely buy a house on upper straits, middle straits, or lower straits. Or long like. Those are the big boys. I really liked her. I know she was fantastic. Yeah, I really, really, really liked her. What I liked the most, I was talking to Phineas about her. What I love is how unapologetically ambitious she is. And she doesn't pretend she's not. And I love that. And I think it's weirdly a good message to put out there because I think a lot of people think one need only be a genius artist. And that's not, you gotta call all the clubs and get on open mic night. And like, you know, there's just a ton of ambition. Yes, I agree. In the mix too. I agree, yeah. Okay, our civil partnerships, okay, I was looking up the civil partnership and gay marriage timeline in England. Okay, so same sex marriage in England and Wales became legal on March 13th, 2014. Civil partnerships were 2005. And I looked up, cause she said those had to be like very secular. And that's correct. They must remain legally secular. Meaning the registration process cannot include religious words, music or hymns. Oh wow. Will they send a monitor there to make sure that didn't happen in your ceremony? It's just the honor agreement or whatever they call it. Honor system, yeah. Maybe, I don't know, but yeah. Oh, was Ross Kunkel the drummer? Did he play on Tapestry, the album Tapestry, Carol King? Yes. He did. He did do that. He did do that. Does that. He did it and he does it. Oh, you said, you like invented a reality or like a show or something where you don't know the person's age but you hear their voice. Because she was on the phone with her wife, her now wife and thought she was a seven year old lady. That's currently a reality show. Oh it is. It's called Age of Attraction. It's on Netflix. Oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I should watch that. Do you wanna hear the trailer? Yeah, cause we might have to watch this with the kids when Zillow runs out. I have dated guys who are my age because it was the right thing to do. What I did. And it didn't work out, obviously. Here, you'll be dating and even committing without ever knowing how old your partner is. Committing. Are you ready? Yeah. I don't know if these guys are my grandpa's age. But you don't know who the Spice Girls are. I couldn't name one. Best three minute date I've ever had. I'm not gonna lie. I like the mom part. You too, do you have mommy issues? If you're not as hot as my mom, I'm not gonna marry you. Huh. If you feel as if you've found that special connection, all that's left is revealing. Your age. I am. Catch a seat, hold on. Oh my God. I didn't even know there were 60 year olds here. Well, okay, I was gonna say my only issue with this show as I'm seeing it is they get to see each other. So it's like, but. Or leave this experience the same way you entered it, alone. I'm definitely worried. What would my family think? Children? Yeah. And you hated babysitting. You need someone. All right, we got it. Yeah, I guess that shows really more about how well can you hide your age? Because we're seeing the people. We are seeing them, but maybe. So there's a lot of shockers. Like clearly what's gonna be the shockers. A lot of people are much older than they look. Or younger. And a lot of people are much younger than they look. Yeah, but maybe, yes. But I think it is saying like, that is what they look. These are the people, so who cares what their age is. It's just a number, Monica. It's just a number. That's what they're trying to do. Anyway, people are watching that. I'm gonna watch that. Okay. I bet the kids would like that. Report back. And that's it. Really not a lot of facts. Well, I really enjoyed her immensely. Me too. Yeah. I really like her. I love her. I love her. All right, love you. Love you.