Ben Vaughn: That '70s Show & 3rd Rock Composer

Welcome to Music Matters Podcast with Darryl Craig Harris. Talking about all things music, this is a leveraged artist's music business insiders and more. Mr. Ben Vaan, how you doing today? Hello, I am great, I'm great. So you're coming to us from, I think you said the Mahavi Desert, you're out in the middle kind of the middle of nowhere, is that correct? Essentially isolated, is how we cool. Yeah, I'm in the Mahavi Desert where I am right now in my house is about one mile before electricity ends for another 80 miles. I'm at the very end of the grid. Yeah, and that's it, that's very isolated out there, but it's actually, it's cool. You know, if that's what you want, if you want that lifestyle, it's awesome. That's a great place to be, it's very pretty out there actually too. That was beautiful, yeah, it was beautiful. So you have a big story, you've been on composer for several big shows, music, a music person for the third rock for that 70 show, we'll talk a little bit about that, but also you have a podcast that just started on January 22nd, you and a co-host Laura, and I'll let you pronounce your last name. Okendo, Okendo, there you go, who is also a Nashville music industry professional Radio DJ. I think you've done some Radio DJ stuff yourself. Yes, yes I have. So yeah, so tell me about the new show and a little bit about your background and how you got into not only podcasting, but being a musical, music working in music on those kind of shows, that's a big deal as we know. Well I was discovered, well I guess the way I got into doing TV music is pretty simple. For some reason, during a time when surf music couldn't have been more dead, it was a dead language. I decided that like age 15 to become fluent in surf guitar. I love surf music, starting with Joanne Eddie which is not really surf, but then going into day on everything else. I spend many, many hours perfecting surf guitar which had no value in the marketplace at all. Until until pulp fiction. Ah right, yep. Over night I had the coin of the realm. I had a talent that everyone wanted, so I came to Hollywood and I got hired almost immediately to do the music for third rock from the sun. They wanted something different outside of typical sitcom music and I arrived at exactly the right time, fluent in the right sound. So it finally paid off. Yeah, and I, you know, one of my gigs I've had a lot of gig is I used to play Frank Yavlon and the beach music stuff and I'll replay, yeah, and I play with the champs too, the group of the de Kila. Whoa, I love the champ. They were all old guys, I was the young kid, but I kind of grew up and also being at something California. Can I grew up with surf music, really hearing a lot of that, I guess, Dick Dale and all those guys. What really drew you to surf guitar? Was that just something that just kind of captured you or? Well, sort of with Joanne Eddie, when I was six years old, my uncle worked at, you know, I come from Camden, New Jersey. And Camden is where RCA Victor started. And Victor actually owned almost all the entire town. It had something like 35 factories there at one point. And then they RCA bought Victor. And so I grew up in an RCA Victor environment. Everyone on both sides of my family worked there and some capacity or another, and my uncle worked there. And he, at the end of this shift, when you worked there, they would, they had a box of free records, RCA records to take. And he grabbed a Joanne Eddie album and gave it to me. I was six years old. So it was the first album I ever owned and I played it a million times. And it's all guitar instrumental. So it started there. And this is before the Beatles, 1963, 1962 maybe. So I'm a rock and roll fanatic at age six, but instrumental music, like vocals and lyrics didn't, I didn't care about them yet. So it started there. And then when I first time I heard surf instrumental music, I thought, wow, they're adding reverb to it now. A lot of reverb too. Yeah, that was sort of the sound, right? The big reverb hall of the, yeah, as much reverb as you can put on it. And I fell in love with that too. So that's it was kind of, I almost don't remember life without that sound in my head or in my life, you know. Yeah. I mean, obviously too, it's kind of known as a Southern California, you know, sound, I guess, in a way. But yeah, so guitar, it led you into doing, moving the Hollywood, doing music, getting into music, doing doing the TV shows. And they were looking at kind of for that sound. What was it like working on those shows? Because those are both very popular shows. I'm sure you've done others as well. But how did you get specifically like with the 70s show? How did that happen? And they just call you out to the blue or? Same creators. Ah, so, so we're working on third, rough in the sun. And then they say, we have an idea for a second show and you're already the composer. So start coming to the meeting. So I was there from the very first meetings about what that 70 show was going to be. I was there for the cat, some of the casting sessions and the table reads that they wanted me to be part of the team. Awesome. Because you know, 70s music, you can't do that 70 show without, you know, you know, without caring about the music. Right. And I forgot to show that that's titled that obviously the music's he component to what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. And I have the same love for rock cliches that the creators of the show did. Like, you know, I believe that creators of the show are the ones who wrote that skit with Will Farrell with the Cal Bell on Saturday Night Live. Oh, okay. And they also, they wrote for Saturday Night Live and they were teamed up with Mike Myers and Dana Carvey and they helped them create Wayne's world. And then they co-wrote the Wayne's world movie. So that bohemian rhapsody thing that was Bonnie and Terry Turner's idea to have the kids singing along to a hit record in the car, which led to that 70 show they wanted a song in the beginning of the one of the theme song that the kids could sing to. And I pitched in the street by big star and they loved it. And we did a re-record with Chew Trick and that became the theme for like, I guess it was eight seasons. I think we won eight seasons on that show. Yeah. And a much beloved show. I mean, both of those shows are great show. Yeah. They have a long, they have long legs. The temperature is good for roll. I hope. But, well, you know, like, you know, I don't need much money out here. I do. But when I do, yeah, it's, it's good to have. What's, what's the, you know, not to just focus on the show, but what's the, a lot of people are curious about how that works. What's the schedule on a show like that? It's got to be very intense. Grolling would be the word episodic TV. You are on real deadlines because especially if there's a specialty scene where they want you to underscore something, you know, I would get the cut, the final cut of the show on a Tuesday. And then we would be doing the final mix on Thursday. And then it would be on the air within a few days. So we, and both shows I'm doing two shows like that. It was intense. But the great thing about it is any neurosis I might have had as a composer or as a writer are gone because your first idea is the only idea. Yeah, you don't have to eat it at that time, right? Right. It's like, it's like your job, you know, like, like, you know, if you're writing for a newspaper or you're on episodic TV, you don't have time to think, you know, to second guess anything. It, you're, they fire you if you do actually. So yeah. And what do you find to like, I mean, and obviously we're going to, with the podcast, we're going to talk about that. But do you find it's important to build a good team around you to make that, to make that happen? And obviously, making the connections has been an important part of that process. Yeah. Well, I had, you know, I built my own studio and I had a staff of people around me, engineers and music editors. I got so busy at one point I was doing three shows at once and I had music editors leave my studio with, with hard drives and they would go to the mix down sessions because I didn't have time, I didn't have time anymore. Right. You can't be everywhere. I was in a building with no windows, just hacking out music, you know, and I loved it. I loved it. It was romantic because, you know, as a creative person, I always create a, I always created from inspiration. And which meant it was sporadic, like there might be a month goes by where I'm not inspired to write a piece of music and it was cool, you know, nobody cared. I had a record deal, but I didn't need to deliver more than 12 songs per year, you know, and that's actually after what you're doing. That's actually easy, easy part of the day, right? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And when I got into TV, what was really cool about it is I found out that I, I'm not not only a creative person, I'm also a craftsman when necessary. And I was curious about, I was curious about whether I had what it takes. One of the reasons I came to California to do music for TV and film is I wanted to see if I had it, if I had that talent because I admired all these composers, you know, and song writers, brill building songwriters, you know, they're locked in a room with an upright piano and they're trying to, trying to write a follow up for the drifters, you know, it's like, it's like a magical scene. If you're a songwriter, that whole like, you know, that whole thing. And also to being able to, like you mentioned, to be able to deliver one after another consistently for years. It's not just one album. It's the grind for eight years, however many, if you're lucky. Yeah. If you're lucky. If you're lucky. Exactly. I worked on a lot of shows that only made it like one season or a season and a half. Sometimes they didn't make it out of the pilot. Like we do a pilot and then that was it. It didn't get picked up. So working on two shows that had longevity, it's every composer's dream, really, you know. Now, and we kind of talked about this before we started. It's working on shows that you're proud to say, hey, that's my show. Yeah. And because not everybody can always say that. And those are both those shows, particularly are very, very loved, right? Oh, they're funny. They're really funny and they're really funny and a smart way and they hold up. Yeah, they're timeless, actually. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you're new podcast again to start January 22nd straight from the hat with Ben Vaughan. Tell me how you came up with that idea and what motivates you to just jump into this crazy podcasting thing. Well, I was brought in to do a project for Sun Records. It was the 70th birthday of Sun Records and I was brought in to compile a collection to put out on vinyl. And I was teamed up with Laura Poca-Dello who worked at the label. She was helping me through a lot of this stuff. And we started talking and we realized we had the same taste in music. Like we really loved the same music and had similar record collections, even though she's much younger than me. Her record collection is very, very similar to my eerily similar, like people like Rod McEwan and Bob Lin. And then we realized that we both really love Sonny Bono. You know what? Yeah, exactly. Because he's such a legend in many ways. Not just the singing thing, but yeah, go ahead, sorry. Yeah, yeah, no, like we both, and this is not ironically like, oh, it's a joke, it's a catch kind of thing. Like, oh, Sonny Bono, you know, no, he had a career before Sonny and Cher that lasted probably, you know, he probably had like a decade of experience. And you know, with a lot of really great R&B stuff, Don and Dewey and Larry Williams and any work with Phil Spector and all this. And he was always starting labels. I actually played with Don and Dewey. Did you really? I really do. Yeah. I was a lot of, not that this isn't about me, obviously, but yeah, I used to, well, when I was 18, when I was 18 years old, me and my buddy Tracy, who lives in Finland, he's a songwriter in Finland. We got hired to play with Danny Flores, who was the guy that was a sax player, the guy that says tequila on the record. Tequila with their shoes. And so Danny knew everybody in the world. He was an orange county guy and there was a lot of artists that lives in Orange County, lived up in obviously an LA. So he would do like a Thursday night gig where he would bring all of his buddies. So we played with all these old guys that were still living in LA and Don and Dewey was one of the, was one of the, yeah, one of the groups that we played with. And he was really best. He was great friends with, you know, the Richard. He was, he just knew everybody, the righteous brothers. So I kind of got, I got exposed to that music first before I ever did like anything with rock and top 40. I was playing all these stuff. We were, and that's when P. Mearmus movie came out. So we were, we were, you know, the tequila was a theme song. So we were doing all these huge fair dates, all these shows and we're like 18 years old. We're kids playing with these guys that are like 65. So that was that, that's almost identical to Pulp Fiction coming out. When P. We Herman used tequila, boom, that was the song and you had the guy. Yeah. And it was just, you know, because I grew up, I mean, kind of like you, it probably in a way, I grew up with my mom having a huge singles collection. She had boxes and boxes of singles. And I listened to that stuff first, which was like La Bomba, which was all that stuff. My dad was, what, my dad was a, you know, kind of a hillbilly for markets. So I also got the, I got the tabby wine that I got the, you know, so that, that's my weird story. But anyway, no, no, it's very, very similar to mine. I grew up in a do-up neighborhood. Okay. Yeah. Right. There were guys singing on the corner like it's, the shot not out did not invent that. It actually happened. There were, there were four guys singing on the corner in my neighborhood. I grew up with, with do up in the mashed potato and all that stuff. Come because Philadelphia was the dance capital of America because of American bandstand before they moved to LA. And so everyone in the country looked to fill it and see what dances are happening. And, you know, the records were broken on that show and, and dances were invented and caught on based on that show. So I grew up in an environment where what people call oldies acts now, you know, they weren't oldies acts then. And in fact, in Philly, on the radio, you could turn the radio on and hear a record from 1959 and this jockey would not call it an oldie. It was just a favorite song. Well, you know, Gens and Roses now are, are you saying oldies classic rock band? Yes. It's as hilarious because I mean, I guess that's, that's kind of a universal story. You know, people like, I remember Janice Jafflin. I'm like, it's someday, they add down the road. If you live long enough, you're able to say that about your favorite bands when you were a teenager. Well, I'm already nostalgic about bad money. You know, I'm ready. Because that was a couple, that was a couple days ago. So that's, that's an oldie, you know, yeah. Well, hey, you know, as fast as the world works these days, yeah, exactly. I know. Yeah. Yeah. So you're doing the show, you're doing the podcast and part of the idea with the pod pass is you put a bunch of names. I, well, I mean, this is my perception of it. You put a bunch of names of people that you worked with in the past and, and, uh, Laura will pull out a name and then you basically just go and just start talking about your relationship with that person. Is that kind of the idea? Yeah. Yeah, because we were talking and, uh, when she was getting to know me, she realized that I had met and worked with a lot of these people in her, in her record collection. You know, how? Yeah. Awesome. So she's like, you hold a gene, pitney, what, you know, and, and so it kept happening. And then finally, together we came up with the idea, you know, let's throw these names in a hat. And you pulled them out and I'll react and we'll see if we have something. So we decided to record a demo. But we ended up recording for three hours and pulled like 21 names out of the hat. Wow. So we thought we might have something here. And then we played it, uh, the results for some other people and, and we were encouraged. They were, they were all like, oh, yeah, if you edit this down into, into episodes, you know, you have something here. So that's what we did. Right. And the thing is, and kind of it's similar for me too, like what I found is if you don't keep those stories alive, that history gets lost. And it actually is music history, especially when you're interacting with people that that are much beloved, like, you know, like a little Richard or those guys. Do you find that that's an important part of what you're doing with the show is kind of memorializing some because some of these guys are not with us anymore. Oh, yeah, that, and also, you know, my interaction with him is one more piece of information about those people. If you're curious about those people, you know, here's one, one more element to who they were. And, and also I think what surprised Laura and I was, you know, we went in, you know, whimsical, but it got deep. Pretty quickly because we're talking about creative people when it's not easy being a creative person, you know, the intersection of art and commerce is really hard to navigate for sensitive people. And most people, most people who make great music are sensitive. So we quickly realize that some of these stories are really funny, but some of them are actually emotionally deep and it's. It was a surprise how. Sympathetic to the artist, the episodes ended up being. Yeah, there's a lot of people that, one of the people I used to work with actually I worked at Billy Preston, but we did a tour with Phil is Hyman. I don't know if you remember Phil. Oh, she was, yeah, she was much beloved and she's not necessarily a household name that a lot of people would know, but in the R&B world, she was a huge legend. And you know, we worked with her and we worked with her right before she, she passed and she was having a lot of problems. And I had a lot of, there was a lot of super fans that wanted to know her history that they didn't really know that stuff. And I thought I actually, somebody was doing a book on Phyllis and they contacted me to talk about that. And I was thinking as I was talking to him, I'm like, you know, this, this history, unless it's recorded, unless it's kind of immoralized, it gets lost. Yes. So they don't, they don't know the history. What's a person that you've worked with in the past or you've had an interaction with that, that comes to mind that, that, that it's important to tell their story that maybe you've talked about on the podcast. Well, before our podcast was released, no one knew that Lalo Schiffrin had a stalker. Oh, okay. Wow. I believe we broke that story. We have an exclusive on that. No, I guess, you know, someone like Alan Vega, you know, of suicide, a misunderstood person because of the aggression and anger in that music, you know, you would think that he was maybe a different person than I knew. So me telling his story or, or, you know, the story of, of he and I, you know, our relationship, Alex Chilton, very misunderstood person. I'm trying to think of who else. Charlie Feathers, the Rockabilly Memphis Rockabilly genius or some genius. He, knowing him and working with him, that episode is coming up and that's a really interesting one. I loved all these people, you know, we're not addition dirt or anything. I love meeting and working with all these people. And circumstances sometimes get odd. As you know, you know, there's just something odd about show business where you're going to have certain moments where you're like, wow, this is a bizarre situation. You know, you know, show business or at least rock and roll. You know, I'm a rock and roll musician. I started playing drums when I was 12 and was good enough to get work. And then I learned how to play guitar. So I played in a lot of bar bands. And music is the only occupation where you're encouraged to drink on the job. Yeah, exactly. And not only that, it's assumed that you will accept a case of beer in lieu of payment. Or like a ball of pasta. Exactly. Right. Yeah, free food from free food from the kitchen and a case of beer and you'll play. It's the only job where they actually any other job. They do drug testing on other jobs, but in rock and roll. It's almost a currency rock. Yeah, it encouraged it. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Like you kind of mentioned to like you meet these people that are really famous and you have a perception of who they are. And then when you meet them, you go, oh, they're completely different. It's, do you find that that has happened to you many times? Well, I think this thing is we as fans, listen to records by our favorite people. And we feel like we understand them. And we don't realize that they're actually human beings. Right. And they're human beings. And all human beings are flawed. Every single human being is flawed. And so, you know, I, I, I think that what, what you're kind of alluding to is, is the surprise that they're human. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And they are. They're human beings. Yeah. And you know, like sometimes they don't want to give the autograph. Maybe they're with the family and they want to be, they want to be left alone eating dinner. Doesn't make them a bad person. It's just like, hey, they have a life. And outside of show business, which is sometimes it's challenging for fans to deal with that. Right. And it's challenging for the artist too, you know. Like I was joking with a great example. Big star means so much to certain, there's a certain audience for that. The big star records saved their life. Whether they were an awkward teenager or they were going through a relationship and that, they put big star on and that. And when they would meet Alex and start telling him and that, he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, that's, that's too much for me. That's, that's too much. It's too much. It's too much. It's heavy, right? It's, it's heavy. And if you're not in the mood, you know, you're just like, you know, having dinner or, you know, you just did a gigging and come off stage and somebody wants to come up and tell you that you saved their life. Yeah. It's, it's a shift. It's really hard, you know, to make. And Brian Wilson had to deal with that too, pet sounds. Seeing that kind of fanaticism, emotional fanaticism for that music and there were other artists, I'm sure, you know, like Leonard Cohen probably got that all the time. I'm not saying. Yeah. And important, important artists that we've all grown up with and love, like you mentioned, when you listen to their music, you kind of feel like you have a personal connection with the artist. And you know, I'm sure you've had this too, where people walk up to you like, hey, I know, you know, I know you from so and so I know you from social media. And I feel like they know you and it's like, it's nice to meet fans, but it's also it's a weird boundary deal issue to deal with, right? It is a strange, it's strange. Luckily, I'm not famous enough for it to be an inconvenience in my life. It's just a, well, yeah, you're, you're a well-known guy, but that's what I understand. And it's a surprise when it happens, which takes me out of wherever I was, you know, if I'm walking down the street by myself, all of a sudden, I'm taking a selfie that is immediately being uploaded to the cloud or on, you know, over live Facebooking, like when I was just looking in a store window, only a minute before that. Right. Do I have something on my face? I was like, yeah, I should have shaved. I should have shaved. Yeah. I shouldn't have went out in my pajamas. No. Exactly. Luckily, you know, I have a great balance. The amount of that in my life is perfect for me, but other people, especially if you're introverted and your art, there's just an imbalance. It's like, you know, you're sitting, you know, it's, it's, it's tough for people. And that's what, when we started going through these names and pulling them out, you know, it seems like every third one, there was some kind of emotional element or some kind of sympathetic, you know, sympathy with their plight that would come up. Yeah. It's interesting. I, you know, we spent some time with the Richard actually speaking about Don and Dewey. Dewey came and got us one day and took us up to the, the, where I was used to be known as a riot house up on, I guess, Hollywood Boulevard. And little Richard was actually living there. He lived at the hotel. He had, he had kind of a ranch and he gave it to his family. He liked living at hotels. So he had this room set up with all of his photos. I know it was really weird. Wow. All of his photos and stuff. We spent three hours with him one afternoon and him just telling stories. And I was sitting there thinking, even at a young age, I was 18. I'm thinking, man, this is gold. Yeah. Like these guys all have, it's essentially something like that. Um, you know, um, Karl Perkins, those kind of guys that they have such deep stories. You find like the podcasting format is at a great place to kind of, to, to share that with fans and kind of like your personal stories with them. It seems like that would be so interesting to hear that. It's great. It's great. And I've never done a podcast before. I have a syndicated radio show that is available as a podcast, but it's, it's recorded. You know, I, I do the show for a terrestrial radio and then it becomes a podcast, an archive podcast out there. So this is my first time. And I love it because the idea of getting these stories down in a book is something I would never do. I just, I'm not a writer in that, in that kind of way where I would. And also, uh, being co-hosted by Laura is great because she knows as much about all these artists as I do. So there's a, she, she, she really knows when to ask a question and kind of prod a memory out of me or point out that something I just said is weirder than I know. You know, she's just kind of taking for granted. She's like, no wait, stop. Yeah, I'll tell you something. And she has to go hold, hold, hold it. And then I'm not going to have a free wine for a second here. What did you just say? And, and, and then I'm aware, oh yeah, that is not normal because it all feels, it all feels normal to me. You know, your, your memories are your memories and you don't realize that, uh, an outside perspective might be able to shine a light on how unusual or unique, you know, that memory is. And it's I mean also to podcasting is a more of a long form long form content It's not you know at a 30 second one minute blurp on a story Yeah, so you're able to really dive deep and explore things that are kind of in a different a different way So you have so much experience what some advice that you would give to people Not only just I mean obviously doing if they want to get into the whole TV show Music thing but also just Interacting and building teams and connections and life how important this is that wow My career. Yeah My career is so customized and odd that You would almost have to be me for any of what I did would work I don't know how else I explain it because I was told that I was too weird for the record business You know like my first goal was to be a Recording artist who wrote his own material and and perform on stage that was it and I got a record deal in 1985 or 86 and I made albums and I was on tour a lot and I was always being told that I was Too weird for the record business that I my my taste like I I needed to pick a lane and become one thing And I and I just couldn't do it. I was incapable of it and I had a lot of sympathy for the record label wasn't like you know They're killing art. I was like no, I'm weird. I know it. I've been told I've been I know my I know my lane Yeah, I've been told this my whole life and I know it's true and and and it looks like I'm not playing ball But it's actually in capability of playing ball. I'm not doing it in an arrogant, you know Anti capitalism way. I'm like I've and I had sympathy I had real sympathy for the record labels like I wouldn't know how to market me either so I'm gonna be mad at them and then network TV Decided that I was not too weird. We're talking mainstream NBC must see TV in 1996 They said no your perfect don't change So The only advice I would give someone is stay true to who you really are and someone in a position of power Will recognize that and value it for exactly what it is and that's what happened with me Surf guitar like I'm over there. It was like speaking the Latin not even just reading Latin I was walking around speak I would show up, you know In a band I would join the band and I would start speaking Latin on my guitar and they're like no no no no no no For years for years that went on and The president of the production companies that her name was Karen Mandabok She heard me on the radio and decided that I had the sound that they needed for third rock from the Sun and no one could talk her out of it and It so someone out there is gonna recognize who you are but my advice would be stay true to yourself Don't keep trying to change your style of music or your haircut or your clothes or you know whatever it is You know because when I was coming up I played with a lot of musicians who were better than me, but they were willing to Who narrow things down we are a heavy metal band. We sound like little feet We're country rock, you know Whatever it is and and they would buy the clothing and write the songs and buy the musical gear and pose You know in the photos that necessary for that one lane and And I couldn't do that I couldn't do that I and every time I would play with musicians I would get booted out of the band because when one of my songs showed up we sounded like a different band So I had to be a solo artist And I stayed true to myself through a lot of poverty actually, you know just staying true To the sound I heard in my head and the expression that I knew that I was naturally meant to To express, you know and And it worked out for me. So now I don't know if that would work out for other people or not I really don't know but that's how it worked with me. I didn't have a master plan on how to Uh have a Hollywood success. That was a total surprise to me A complete surprise to me that they were fine with me Exactly as I was and that's that's what that's Everything changed for me Uh, you know in my career once the right person heard me I think that that's you know such an important advice and I you know through my music career adventures I've seen that I've seen guys chasing it chasing it willing to do anything to chase it And it's sort of like I created the dating eventually you'll find the right one You just have to give it time and just be like you mentioned be to be who you are And and people will find you and it's going to be way more authentic And it's having success with being somebody you're not is not very fulfilling right No, it could be financially good for you It depends. Oh, how much you care about being yourself, you know Yeah, some people don't so but exactly I kind of I kind of envy them. It's a simple life I mean, I mean no, uh, no compass and whom no morals. It's yeah Just going with the wind but uh, I'm very uh, I'm very aware of who I am And uh, I can't escape it, you know, it's uh, I you know, I know who I am and what I'm capable of and what I'm Naturally drawn to do as a creative person Yeah, and you got you got a very big huge lucky break But then you did the work and that's the thing because some people have yeah get the break the big break They got to be willing to block in and get it done and and not you know like I said it's not just one album. It's years Years of grinding years of getting it done at a high level So that adds an amazing story and I think it's very inspiring I really admire what you do that. I get no shows that you worked on and the artists that you worked with are it's all Quality and it's all people that people that still love they're going to be loving. It's timeless stuff So that's that's really I think very exciting Ben, tell people how they can find you and and find your podcast and and all that stuff You can't find me. I'm out here in the middle of nowhere Well, well, send them all send the team out to get you You'll never find me GP GPS dies right before my house Uh, yeah, I know I don't you mean well the podcast is straight from the hat.com And let me see I have a list here of where you can see here we go Uh, since we're on video. I should do the same thing Yeah, yeah, uh apple pod beans Spotify pocket cast iHeart radio boom play And other places and no ads Which is really which is really important because if you if you listen to podcasts a lot of times You queue it up and it's like three or four ads for everything from from banking to pet food You know sheets or you know comfortable socks and then you finally wow customer socks is important Who they are in for they are in for yeah, but wait no as we just go right into content and it's all content all the way through and we're out so uh um I'm happy not to have ads because it interrupts the flow, you know Yeah, I agree and I don't do either. I'm fortunate to have some very nice sponsors that are our friends so Um, that helps and I have to I have ten just ten other jobs It's so it's not not so important for me But uh, Ben thank you so much for joining me like you have a huge story We could probably go on for hours and I'm sure we actually probably know some of the same people in LA, but Um, what a cool career you've had and like a huge life story and it's not obviously not done yet You got a lot more ahead of you But uh, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate you time now you're your bass player, right? You're right. Yeah, I'm a bass player. Yeah So if I uh funny oldie sacks ask me if uh you need an eleventh job because if an oldie sacks ask me If I know a bass player should I give him you number? Oh, yeah, you know what actually saw what I'm doing these days Music wise as we have a lot of tribute acts that we we do so I was just in Florida with with the Queen show that we have Uh, we had a Tina Turner rods to and all that stuff which has been for me. It's fun because you go out You do a 70 minute show and then I fly back home and and do my all my other stuff So I still got to play but when I play now I look forward to it. It's not just just a job for me Right exactly exactly. That's the best place to be Yeah, and I because I did the I did the Vegas. I was researches away for 10 years. I did a bunch of different things Uh, so these days I'm mainly a lot of people know me as a sports illustrator photographer with the Raiders um, but You know, I kind of I like to do different things. I don't get bored Which is yeah, which is good. Well, I can relate Yeah, totally relate. Oh, I'm sure you don't get bored. You got you got a lot going on But uh, I do yeah, but band thank you so much for joining me. Um, shout out to Laura your co-host on the podcast and I'm sure I actually would be interesting to talk with her because the son record thing is also really fascinating of course, you know Yeah, they just want to Grammy for best blues album. Yeah, I mean, obviously electric and dairy label But they but the cool thing with them is they still they they've re-invigorated that whole thing a whole label They haven't she she is a major part of it too. Yeah, yeah, it's really awesome what they've done So um, so maybe we'll hook that up down the road, but hey have a great day out in majave and the tell all my friends out there if you can find them Did they're hiding too. Yeah, it's under hiding out, but uh awesome. I have a great day and I appreciate your time Great. Thanks. Great talking to you. All right, you two. Thanks. 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