Danny Rocco, AKA Des Rocs, is a New Yorker down to his marrow. In this episode, Des opens up about his self-made path in the rock and roll universe, highlighted by his latest electrifying album, "Dream Machine." It's a tale of passion, artistry, and unwavering determination to carve out his own legacy.
Des also gives us the origin story of his latest single, "I Am the Lightning," and explains the deep-seated source of the band's transformative live energy. Des and Matt also go back and forth on some hilarious hypotheticals: tattoos vs. no tattoos, homeless riffs, squatter songs, and a frozen embryo bank of music. As always, brought to you by Sailor Jerry!
https://www.instagram.com/iamdesrocs/
https://sailorjerry.com
Danny Rocco, AKA Des Rocs, is a New Yorker down to his marrow. In this episode, Des opens up about his self-made path in the rock and roll universe, highlighted by his latest electrifying album, "Dream Machine." It's a tale of passion, artistry, and unwavering determination to carve out his own legacy.
Des also gives us the origin story of his latest single, "I Am the Lightning," and explains the deep-seated source of the band's transformative live energy. Des and Matt also go back and forth on some hilarious hypotheticals: tattoos vs. no tattoos, homeless riffs, squatter songs, and a frozen embryo bank of music. As always, brought to you by Sailor Jerry!
https://www.instagram.com/iamdesrocs/
https://sailorjerry.com
Desperox. What's up, man? How are you? I'm good, I'm good. Brother, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. Thank you so much for being a guest today on the Sailor Jerry podcast. I'm stoked to get the opportunity to talk music with you, my man.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, brother. Where are you at right now in California?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm in California. I'm in Orange County. I grew up in Los Angeles, but I've been out in California my whole life. What about you?
Speaker 2:New York, right, new York brother, new York, born and raised, and I'm the only way I'm leaving is in a body bag, really.
Speaker 1:From the womb to the tomb. I like that. That's 100% 100%. People are constantly talking shit on California and how much it sucks California still rules. To me, I feel like New York gets a lot of that same talk. People are always talking about how New York has gone to shit and it sucks. Now, from what is that? You third, fourth generation New Yorker? I was reading.
Speaker 2:Fourth yeah.
Speaker 1:So that go back to what Early 1900s?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my great grandparents came in here like 1908 or something. Yeah, dude, that's so rad, that's so rad. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's New York? What does New York mean to you? What's modern day New York like? Is it still number one city in the US? Has it changed for you?
Speaker 2:Without a doubt, number one. It always will be. But with regards to what other people say about New York, no one in New York is a ship. No one's paying attention, no one cares With regards to what New Yorkers think about New York itself. I think New Yorkers were always complained about the city, but it's important to remember that yeah, the city's changing a lot and the city always has changed and everything will change and nothing will be like it was when you were 12 years old and have this golden era of something cemented in your mind. So it's a place in constant flux. It's definitely become a lot less affordable for middle class and blue collar people. It's become a lot more corporate and that, to me, is very unfortunate. But neighborhoods change and places change and that's kind of how things work historically. But yeah, the city has a lot of problems, but it's also the greatest place on earth and it never won't be.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah, hell yeah. Before we kind of dive into your latest album, dream Machine, and, of course, the upcoming Final Leg of the Dream Machine tour you got, I kind of just want to go back a little bit, because a lot of our listeners might be new to your music and I kind of want to give them the whole spectrum, because I think when you listen to your music, one thing that you can tell is that you're in it all the way. I mean, you can hear the conviction in your voice, you can hear the love and the intensity that you have for music and for art and it feels like that's something that's been inside you for a long time. So let's take it back a little bit. What was it like for you growing up? Was there any musical influence in the family or artistry in the family, anything like that?
Speaker 2:No, there wasn't a ton of music in my family. I was exposed early on to a lot of rock and roll just with a handful of cassette tapes that were in my dad's car at the time and that was like ACDC, and then some kind of obscure Led Zeppelin concert. And I remember at a very young age seeing on TV Queen at Wembley Stadium and just being so transfixed by what was happening musically, visually. All of the above. And then from a very early age I was also just obsessed with instruments. I was wanting to play them, I was wanting to hear what they sounded like. So I kind of got into music on my own and in a way that was a blessing and a curse, because I didn't have a lot of people in my family who were like oh, here's how you start a band, here's how you do this.
Speaker 2:I had to figure out a lot of stuff on my own and I had to learn a lot of lessons the hard way and in a way that journey and that marathon kind of defines everything that is Des Rocks.
Speaker 1:What was the first instrument was guitar piano. What was it?
Speaker 2:Oh, it was violin at a very young age. Nice, I remember just seeing the kids in elementary school walking with the little cases and they would pop open these cases and there would be like a little velvet cloth and you lift that velvet cloth up and there would be this beautiful wooden instrument and I was like I just want to be one of the kids carrying the little cases to school. And that's how it started. And then, like in eighth grade, I found a guitar in my attic that had just been sitting there for like 40 years and it was like a real aha moment. It was like some Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark, like pop up in that case and it glows in your face. And then I was hooked ever since.
Speaker 1:How long was it like you said, it was kind of an instant love. How long till you were writing songs?
Speaker 2:Oh, almost immediately Day one. The two really went hand in hand. For me, one of the very first things I wanted to do was start playing and singing at the same time, and really I never really got that good at guitar. I got just good enough to use it as a tool of expression, and that's how I think of it. It's just like an axis of which I emote, and a lot of times I don't even know what note I'm playing. I'll just kind of like put my fingers down and squeeze and emote and just have the energy flow through and I'll be like, oh, that sounds kind of cool. What if I paste that with this and then paste this with that? And then a guitar solo was born.
Speaker 1:Going solo wasn't your kind of first venture into music. You were in a band before, right. How did things kind of step into the first level of like, okay, I got a guitar, I love playing instruments, I love singing, you know I'm writing songs. Now what, you know what I mean. Like, what was the kind of next step for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I just think they remember going to a show in a mini Ola Long Island in maybe ninth grade and there was like this little punk show in the back of a restaurant, like a billiards hall kind of thing. There's maybe like 40 kids in there and the band just killed it and the energy was crazy. And then he hops off stage and he runs to the merch table and he's slinging t-shirts and it was just such an ecosystem. And then the next day I said to this guy I was like you're going to run bass, I'm going to start a band, and I was always just kind of like in the supporting roles and bands. I was always just the rhythm guitarist, but I was always the guy who had like the vision and wanted to go someplace and really do it for real and everybody else just kind of playing in a band for fun.
Speaker 2:And one of me verse four of those. It's just never going to work out. But again, like I was saying, it's all about like learning those lessons and going through a lot of versions of yourself and what you want to say to the world musically before you find your truest self and then you're the most creatively free you could possibly be Right on man.
Speaker 1:That's dope you drop. Let the Vultures in EP 2018. What was that feeling like for you, kind of the first solo EP stepping out. It's an incredible EP, a lot of awesome songs on it. What was that moment like for you, kind of realizing yourself as a solo artist?
Speaker 2:Well, it was definitely scary because it was born out of a really dark period of my life where I had a lot of bands that I was so excited about and they all just kind of fell apart. And it was the first time I was really stepping out of my own and doing my own thing and taking all those lessons that I had learned and just finally being able, free, to just do exactly what I wanted to do. So it was tough man, because I remember being in a band having little success and then I have to take this deep tour in life when I'm doing my own thing for the first time and I put out a song and I've been working on this music for months and months and months. I put up the song and the next day I go on Spotify and it has that little less than math sign like the less than a thousand sign when the streams are so low that they won't even tell you how low they are.
Speaker 2:And I remember just being like, yeah, like I got a lot of work to do. So it was a real like roll up the sleeves moment, sitting on my couch in my underwear, like guessing every single email address of every single playlist there at Spotify, every manager, every record label, every agent, every, everything, and just send that hundreds of those a day while playing shows at night. And it was many, many, many, many months of that before things started to pick up and people started to pay attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, that's the grind sometimes, and it's cool for people out there to hear things like that, because sometimes that's what it takes. In all of that, it seems like your love for music has only grown where there are times in that process where you were just kind of like fuck.
Speaker 2:Like I don't know For sure, man, it's all like the financial worries you have of really trying to make it work and make it happen. And you're talking about the grind, man. Yeah, and the grind is not just a one or done. You know, the grind it's perpetual. And I'm thankful enough that there's something in my head, 50 years from now, of Des Rocks and it's like this crazy spectacle and I'm just an old man and that's the vision I'm thinking about all day long. That makes the grind worth it, it makes it worth fighting for, because I don't wanna leave this earth not having realized that vision and it really is in many ways my life's work. You know, it's such a struggle, it's such a journey, but that struggle and that journey actually end up defining the music itself in the moment and kind of become the inspiration for the music. So it's this weird like symbiotic chart of pain and art.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, man, absolutely. It all feeds into each other and it's rad to see, you know, how deep you are in it. You know, and how like it's cool to talk to artists about their vision and their goals, because a lot of times that might not be, you know, the coolest thing or the thing they wanna talk about or put on front street. You know, but having that drive to see yourself, as you know, the old artists that you wanna be, with a discography, a lifetime of work that you've created and you can look back on and be in a spot that you envisioned you know you're gonna be in right now, it's just, it's a cool thing and it's so important to like keep that healthy. You know creative, fun, drive in yourself, you know, to do all the things you wanna do, to accomplish all the things you wanna accomplish.
Speaker 2:Amen, brother. Yeah, it's definitely. It's not easy, you know it's, but like it's that rare moment when you get to write music and it just like or that rare moment when you're on stage, it just makes everything worth it. You know, like the 90 minutes on stage make the 22 and a half hours of tour during the day that are hell. Like it makes it all worth it and like that moment you're sitting there alone and you're working on an idea and the heavens open up and down beams this song into your soul that you think is the greatest thing that you've ever heard in your entire life. Like it makes it all worth it and like that's just enough spark to keep the relentless forward movement of all things.
Speaker 1:That's rocks you know Hell, yeah, man, hell yeah. So you know three EPs. Then you say enough, it's time for the full length. Real good person in a real bad place. Awesome album, by the way. Awesome album. What was you know? How did it feel stepping into a full length?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's funny, like you say three P's in an album, like it was kind of all part of the vision. Like even before I started making the first music of Des Rocks, I went away upstate. I had like $500 in my bank account, probably, and I went away with a typewriter, a guitar and a big muff pedal and just for a couple of days I sat down and I was like what do I want to say to the world musically, you know? And I planned it all out. I kind of just typed out in this cabin exactly all things Des Rocks, like what I want it to look like, feel like five years from now, 10 years from now.
Speaker 2:So I said, okay, I want to do three EPs and I want each one of those EPs to have like a very kind of distinct sonic identity. And then I want to do three full length albums. So the first full length album was like a real departure musically for me. But it's important for me also to like for that first record to build in flexibility where I can adapt to the time I'm in. Like I always think it's Nina Simone Quote where it's like art should reflect the time. So I made that record in the depths of COVID, and that record is very much the sound of me sitting alone in a room kind of losing my mind. It's like one long inner monologue so leaping into a full album. It was like kind of half planned, where I always knew after the three pieces was an album and then the other half of it the time I found myself in. That I couldn't have prepared for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's the, you know, the COVID era of music, creatively speaking, and so many people that I know had, you know, so many different experiences. You know there were so many people that you know wanted and expected to make the record of their lives and then, you know, had the hardest time like channeling any sort of like creative flow.
Speaker 2:COVID, to me, was such an uninspirational time. I feel like you had every single manager in the music industry saying to every single artist, well, what should I do? And they're going to say, well, you should write. You got to write right now. And I think anytime you tell somebody that they have to write, they're going to do their absolute worst work they've ever done their entire life. You know what I mean. Say, oh, right now, all of a sudden we're going to pivot, you're going to start writing right now, and then you're not going to get anything good.
Speaker 2:When you're like consciously trying to write, as in my experience, I'm going to speak for myself. But like, even like my saddest songs in a strange way come from a place of like happiness and enthusiasm, where I'm like really excited about the art I'm making. But when you got to kind of just like go into an empty room every day all alone, like it wasn't the depth of COVID, and then I was in New York City. So I'm like literally walking by multiple outdoor makeshift moorings on the way there, like it is really a dark, dark, fucking time and like the music reflected that. Like the music on that album is not the sound of me being like really pumped about making music. You know what I mean. It's a much weirder shade of Des Rocks. It doesn't really come out that often.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, right on. And then 2023, dream Machine comes out. You worked with Alan Johannes, queens of the Stone Age, on this album and Alan is he's just an awesome guy. He's an incredibly talented musician. This album is so good, man, and it's so there's so much attention to detail without it sounding overproduced you know what I mean. Like it just sounds really, really good. It sounds good on speakers, it sounds good on headphones. There's there's layers you can get into if you, if you want to listen to the intricacies of each song. You know what was it like working with Al. What was it like making that record? I've seen a couple things you talking about. You know what a big record this was for you and I know that you've expressed concern in the past with working with producers and how kind of sometimes that can be limiting if they're trying to like, force their type of song on you, or you know that type of thing. So how was you know, how was making Dream Machine for you?
Speaker 2:Oh it was. It was amazing. Like I feel like this record is the record that I was born to make. Aljohannis is fucking amazing. He was such an incredible cheerleader every step of the way.
Speaker 2:Historically speaking, I've gone on with some of the biggest producers in the world and I've really blown it not consciously blown it, but like I just am not. I just don't play well with others that well. You know what I mean. Like I'm very opinionated and maybe it's a New York thing, but I don't really pull punches like if I don't like something, I don't like it. I'm just gonna gotta say that.
Speaker 2:And I feel like there's a certain amount of game playing that these people are used to With regards to creative process. But for me it's like my life and it's my art and I can't be anything but absolutely blunt all the time. So you know, it was great to have a team of people around me making this album who just kind of like all understood where I wanted to go and could challenge me and and subvert my expectations, but at the end of the day, we were all on the same page and heading towards the same place and Everybody like really played a role and a part, and now that was really cool for me. You know, I love that. I love that process that the end of the day there wasn't anybody trying to like Like steer the ship, you know I mean, and like be like you gotta go in this direction, you gotta go pop on, because that's, you know, there was none of that, you know, because I very much do think that a lot of art kind of needs to be a creative dictatorship.
Speaker 2:You gotta surround yourself with the right cheerleaders and the right people. They have, like like Andrew Hannes has this infinite wisdom of studio techniques, guitars, instruments, and Matt Wallace, who I made the record with as well, that I wouldn't get in a thousand lifetimes. So it was really beautiful process made. It was. It was a. It was a challenging process making that record. I remember like falling asleep in the studio a few times just because I was there so much and I was just so in it and we had a small budget and a limited amount of time to make it. But I couldn't be more proud of that album.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, it's great and it came out August last year. But I know you're still, you know, still doing a lot of touring on it. You know, the latest single, I'm the lightning I, you know it's kicking ass all over rock radio as we speak. I think it's. It's moved from 15 to 12, you know, in in the charts so congrats on that, man, because that's you know, thank you. That's a great feeling, man.
Speaker 1:That's really cool and I wanted to kind of focus in on that track just a little bit, if we could. You know, usually when you're writing an album there's songs that come right away, there's songs that require a little bit of effort and there's songs that are, just, you know, the bane of your existence. And you know, sometimes they don't make the record, sometimes they come at the last fucking minute. Where, where did I'm the lightning? Kind of fit on that scale. And if you could just kind of maybe expand on writing that song a little bit yeah, that song we just took a riff I had for a really long time.
Speaker 2:And I just tried like copying and pasting this riff into other songs and it was disastrous and I struck out so many times. But we had just gotten back from tour and, as you know, often when you ship drums across the country, you'll often like take the heads and tune them all the way down yeah. So the difference is that you know the heads and tune them all the way down yeah. So the drums show up in my studio, they get set up and I just sit behind the kit and I just start like laying down this beat and I was like, oh, this sounds kind of cool with the heads all fucked up like this.
Speaker 2:Um. And then I just like stuck the s m 57 in the room and I just recorded it real fast and I was like, let me try that riff over this. And I put that riff over there and I was like done, and you know, when you like find a vein, like you finally find a vein and it all opens up, yeah, and then just immediately it all the whole song opened up. I was like, ah, there you are. Like that's where you've been hiding. Like um, you're like like the classic renaissance sculptors used to envision their sculptures as already in the marble Right.
Speaker 2:You just had to free it from this cube of marble and like that was that song. Like that song was like buried in the musical marble and I was just like, oh, I, you're in there, I've got chills of you out right now. Um, so that was. It was cool how that one came.
Speaker 1:That's awesome man, that's really cool. I love, I love when that happens and I love the story of just having, you know the, the, the homeless riff. You know the riff with that's got nowhere to go, the riff on the streets.
Speaker 1:You know that, just it, just you just want, you just want to to live a good life. You know, and, uh, and, and you found it and it came together. And that's always cool, man, because I know, like when you you know, when you're writing an album or you, you got parts that are in like the boneyard and you're trying to squeeze them into all these different songs, and especially when it's a riff or a lyric that you really love, and you know it's special and you just want it. You know, you just want it to happen, and there's no greater feeling than when it all comes together. So that's really fucking cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't know how it is with you also, but like homeless riffs, but also I think of them as like squatting riffs, like they'll stay in my brain and and I wish they could just go. Um, but I can't stop thinking of them. They're like kind of like ex-girlfriends and you just like you kind of have them there and they don't really go away permanently. And in making an album, you're trying to build this big jigsaw puzzle but you keep just adding pieces to the puzzle that have no place to go and you're going to drive yourself insane. Um, like you still think about musical parts that you haven't yet used, or are you able to forget them easily?
Speaker 1:No, I don't like. Okay. So like, for example, we're just starting to write a new album right now and I, lyrically speaking, I go through like I'll go all the way back to like, you know, along with stuff that I'm writing now, I'll go through all old stuff that I've written, that I've always loved, that I haven't found a home for yet, and I I'm still like trying to like the cool things that that I wrote you know to me that are cool. You know, 10 years ago, that I haven't found a home for yet. Wow, that I know I could write a song around, or even just like whole ideas that I had for songs that just kind of turned into a poem because I never found the right Way to put it into music. Like I'll always be searching for for those, for homes, for those things you know Like because you know they're good and you know I mean that's like if you're looking at your career as not just this album but it's A, it's your life, is a whole body of work.
Speaker 1:You know you got a lot of songs to write, man. You know you got a lot. You got a lot of songs to write. You got a lot of lyrics right, you got a lot work to do. So you know, I hold on to everything, everything that feels good. You know, most times if I, if I, if I'm writing something and then I look back on it and I'm like, eh, I'll hold on to it for a little bit and then if I look back on it again and I'm still not feeling it, I'm not gonna say I delete it, but I'll move on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but isn't that such an interesting process? Because you're simultaneously writing and looking towards the future while also kind of being like a musical historian curating the museum of yourself, and you're like let me be the archivist for my own ideas and then also marry that with the future, and that's such an interesting idea. It's like the musical equivalent of like when you freeze an embryo and like 1992, and then that kid gets born like 30 years later and technically exactly 30 the day he's born. I don't know, it's like it's a musical version of that and that's interesting to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is Well, because then another thing too is I think, at least for me and I think for most artists when you start writing for an album, it takes a while to kind of get to the good stuff, especially if you're on album 234.
Speaker 1:It takes a while to kind of you go through kind of your same tones or your comfort notes or comfort lyrics or you kind of go through that kind of familiar territory first, and sometimes, as a way to kind of get to the good stuff faster, I can go back to lyrics that I wrote in a process where I know I was in a zone where I was already in that place and I can go back and like read those and try to like apply that to you know a demo or something like that.
Speaker 1:And then it also kind of helps spark like just you know new, like a new process of writing or new ideas, or maybe I can expand on an old idea. But if I was like, if you wrote something that you feel is like you were inspired when you wrote it, like maybe you come up with a riff at the end of writing an album and there's just no way to make it into something in time that's going to make the record. I mean, you're going to hold on to that thing and it's going to happen Eventually. You're going to put it, you're going to take it to the frozen embryo riff bank.
Speaker 2:You're going to find a surrogate and you're going to implant that and you're going to have that little baby is going to be born.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, yeah, awesome, well, okay, so you've got a massive tour headlining. Okay, april 15 starts in Jacksonville, florida. What? Okay, this is. This is like the worst question ever. But what can people expect? Okay, who haven't seen you live? What's it all about?
Speaker 2:I would say a tremendous amount of passion and chaos and intensity and also gratitude.
Speaker 2:You know, we're just so happy for every single second that we get to be on stage because we've all individually spent a lifetime just like really trying to make it. You know, like in a real classical sense, like just like flinging some awful day job in New York City during the day, taking the Q train downtown, unbuttoning your shirt like some Clark Kent Superman shit, and then running into a little punk dive basement and playing a show to 30 kids, and not just doing that for a couple of weeks like some cosplay shit, like living that life for years and years and years and years. So all of that just pours through every single member on stage and each and every one of us would live and breathe for every single lyric and every single note that's up there. So it's really important and spiritual experience for us and the show very much feels like you're taking part of the sacred ritual of rock and roll, and that's that's a very long word way of answering your question of definitely check out the show, Hell yeah.
Speaker 1:Rumor has it, dana White's going to be at every show. Is that true? Do you know about that? No, just 90, just 90% of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean Dana drops into a ton of shows in a lot of markets where you might not expect someone of that stature to drop into. So he's an amazing fan and champion of the music and it's been unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool man. Shout out Dana White for those who don't know if there was a bottle clip going around that he's a big fan, a big fan of the band, and he's seen you guys a bunch of times and he had nothing but big words to say about you on the Theo Vaughn podcast. So any sort of outlets out there that are artist friendly. There's so many people out there that are doing cool stuff and that are making money and that might not go the extra mile to really bring people up with them along the way, and it's always super cool to see people champion artists and doing what they can to help out everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, it's unparalleled. I feel like there's been so many institutions over the years that have been like we're going to partner with bands and we're going to help break bands. Dana and UFC have just like communicated what I do to the world in a way that very few people ever could, and just been ride or die homies with the expectation of nothing in exchange. It's simply just for the passion of the music, and for that I am constantly humbled and profoundly grateful.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah, man. Alright, I don't want to take up too much more of your time here, danny. By the way, danny Rocco. Ultimate New York name, ultimate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a little too on the nose for an artist project name so I had to go with an alt. There you go, but thank you.
Speaker 1:Alright, here we go. We're going to pick one here. Alright, you got Lover or Fighter, lover Van Halen or Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin, muse or Queens of the Stone Age.
Speaker 2:Muse, that's a tough question for me.
Speaker 1:ACDC or Kiss, acdc, nirvana or Oasis.
Speaker 2:Nirvana. I know three Oasis songs.
Speaker 1:Metallica or Guns N' Roses yeah, Guns N' Roses Strokes. Or.
Speaker 2:White Stripes. You didn't say Jack White, you said White Stripes. I'm going to go with Strokes.
Speaker 1:Alright alright, fair enough, you found a loophole. Bob Dylan or Elvis, elvis, alright alright. Let's see Roy Orbison or Johnny Cash, oh shit.
Speaker 2:Roy Orbison. Just not like a technicality, yeah, roy Orbison.
Speaker 1:Bo Diddley or Brian Setzer.
Speaker 2:Bo Diddley.
Speaker 1:Nice. Okay, let's go, brian Adams or John Cougar Mellon Camp.
Speaker 2:Oh man, that's such a. The way that people are comparing is funny to me, because I'm seeing where your insight is coming from. Let's go with John Cougar.
Speaker 1:John Cougar, alright, chuck Berry or Little Richard.
Speaker 2:Little Richard.
Speaker 1:Guitar or vocals. Vocals oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:Vocals make me cry more than guitar.
Speaker 1:Awesome man, alright. A couple hypotheticals here. So if you got, okay, you're in New York, manhattan, okay, you got a budget. You got $50,000 cash, okay, you can spend the night partying with the devil, or you can spend the night partying with Jesus. Who do you pick Devil? Definitely that's a rock and roll test. No rock and roll person would ever say Jesus. So good, you passed the test. Good job Partying with Jesus. I was boring, yeah, yeah, it can't be good. Alright, so you get into some trouble with the law, alright. Hypothetical number two your manager says hey, you know, danny, you got to lay low for a while. You can either go to Canada or Mexico. Where do you go?
Speaker 2:Mexico, definitely.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah.
Speaker 2:No question in my mind. Yeah, no question in my mind. Now we're going to Manitoba? No way, ha, ha.
Speaker 1:Ha.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No thanks, Manitoba.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mexico City is like the coolest fucking place in the planet. Dude, it's awesome. You're going to compare that to fucking Calgary, you know.
Speaker 1:No way, no, no way.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 1:Alright, last one here, bill and Ted, come down Time machine. They got the phone booth. Anywhere you want to go in history, where are you going first and why?
Speaker 2:Man, I probably go to like 1958 New York City and walk around the West Village and see some crazy beatnik shit and the beginnings of just an unimaginably cool period in music and music history and it's not the 70s or 80s yet, so New York is a bit safer. Yeah, I like that a lot, flow and the shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What do you love about being a musician?
Speaker 2:I love always holding myself to my own standards. You know I have goals for myself, things I want to achieve musically, and I'm not being compared to like the other guy down the hall in legal. I'm being compared to myself and I'm always accountable to myself. And it forces you to kind of impose this own sort of like moral code and a professional code. You have to wake up every single day and create your own destiny, and that, to me, is such an inspiring way to live life.
Speaker 1:Awesome man. What do you hate about being a musician?
Speaker 2:Sometimes you can feel like a lone wolf just kind of going through life while everybody else has a tremendous amount of structure. You at times might crave and it can be lonely and isolating and you can spend a lot of time inside your own head and that can be a tough place to be Damn.
Speaker 1:Coming through with the real answers Unbelievable.
Speaker 2:I just tell like it is, like I told you the beginning.
Speaker 1:Unbelievable man. All right, so this is the Sailor Jerry podcast. Norman Collins, one of the Godfathers of traditional tattoos. I've been looking online. I don't think you got any tattoos. Do you have any tattoos? Zero, no.
Speaker 2:No plans, don't tell you anti tattoo or just not for you?
Speaker 1:Oh, not at all.
Speaker 2:Teach their own. My drummer is fully tatted neck to toe, literally. There's not one inch of blank real estate on this guy's body other than his eyeballs at this point. And you know, for me I'll say that, like the idols I have growing up were like Freddie Mercury, bruce Springsteen, elvis Presley none of them had tattoos. So I never, I never had that part of rock and roll culture sinking into me at that very impressionable sponge age, you know. And then the other thing with me in tattoos is that my tastes change a lot and that scares me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you don't want to be like a lot of these artists. Now, like you know, machine gun Kelly or, or Davey Havoc, may, if I. They have all these terrible tattoos and their only choice is just Does like black out their whole arm, you know, and they just got to do that because they're just so overseeing, like a bunch of pumpkins or something.
Speaker 2:Right. Have a question, though once you go to the very end, right, once you've now effectively become black armed yeah, can you. Then is that a redo? Do you get to start over? And then could you put a white tattoo on top of the black like a Chop board?
Speaker 1:I feel like at that point, I think the black is, I think it's the spinal tap, I think it's. I think it's no more black, I think that's it. I think that's, once you go black, it's over. Yeah Well, you know, I mean, I'm just imagining that's, you know. I just feel it feels like, you know, if you go on top of that, it can't, it can't be good. All right, all right, all right, danny. Last question here does rocks Danny Rocco? What to you is the meaning of life?
Speaker 2:I think the meaning life is is a constant search for the meaning of life, a constant search for your own meaning within it. You know, yeah, the ultimate pursuit of One individual's perception of what life is you know, it's the Easter on its for you to define, and I think that's the meaning of it is for you to make your own sense of it.
Speaker 1:Awesome man, appreciate your time here on the sailor Jerry podcast. Des rocks incredible album dream machine out now. Go check out. I'm the lightning, you know. Check them out on Spotify, instagram. Get tickets for the upcoming tour. You got jigsaw youth supporting Kicks off April 15th in Jacksonville, right? Hell yeah, thanks a lot. There's thank you.