Bonus: Life, Lifting, and Music Update

Bonus episode!

Nick shares a quick update from half of the Dynamic Duo on taking a hiatus, having a 2nd child, and releasing new music. Expect to hear about:

• Where have we been for the last few months?
• The Wiley Bros.' new band - Token Sacrifice - releases a new single "In Memoriam" on November 15, 2024
• Pre-save the new track at music.workingmansweightlifting.com
• Plans for future episodes

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Working Man's Weightlifting Show, the show where working men talk about weightlifting. I'm your host, nick Wiley, and I'm not joined today by my younger brother and permanent co-host, mr Stephen Wiley. Today's a little bit of a special, really quick bonus episode, and he just doesn't happen to be here with me this afternoon to record, so I'm going to try to get you through it alone. If you've been a fan of the show for some time, you will have noticed that we've been absent for a number of months, which is not something that we're new to. We've taken breaks in the past and we took yet another break after, I think, maybe, february of 2024. We do have a number of episodes in the hopper that just need to be finalized, edited and released, and we've got a lot of big plans, but in the meantime, I and my wife had a second child, so we are now about three weeks into the journey of having two kids.

Speaker 0: 1:08

Leading up to that, as you can imagine, that just takes a lot of your time, and also, especially for me. Weightlifting just became something that I was not able to prioritize as much as I wanted, and, being a part of this show, I always want to put my best foot forward, so I wanted to be. I find it difficult to like be super engaged in making this type of content when I am not myself also doing what I'm telling other people to do, for better or worse. So, anyway, went through a bit of a period there where we were not recording. That said, we do have a lot of plans to revisit and I'm doing the very best I can to stay as healthy as I can while we're in this super, super busy period of having both a toddler and an infant in the house, and that's something that you know I want to explore a lot in the future and we'll be talking a lot about hopefully have some episodes on some guests to talk about that kind of thing. I feel like that's something people are interested in. I'm certainly interested in it and I'm also feeling my way around and learning in real time. So we're going to bring you into that kind of catch you up on what we've been up to this year in the very near future. But in the meantime, I did want to make good on a promise that we've been making for going back four years, when we started this whole thing, which is that if you're a fan of the show, you'll know that Steven and I, in addition to just being good friends and working out together, we also have played in bands together for something like 20 years.

Speaker 0: 2:39

At this point, we have shared maybe a little bit of that material with you guys in the past. But we haven't maybe a little bit of that material with you guys in the past, but we haven't had a whole lot of new stuff to talk about. I think we've put out two singles in the last four years. We just now have uploaded a brand new single for release, so I wanted to loop you into that and hopefully build some excitement. This is a track we're super excited about. The name of the song is In Memoriam and the name of our band, which we've renamed, is called Token Sacrifice. Just felt a little bit more serious than our previous band name. So you can look us up on your favorite streaming networks. You can also go to musicworkingmansweightliftingcom and I'll have a link there where you can pre-save this new song if you're a Spotify user. If you're not, it's not that big of a deal. Just, you know, I'll send a reminder out on release day, which is going to be November 15th 2024. And I just wanted to, you know, shoot out a quick episode today to announce that and tell you just a little bit about the song and hopefully get you excited about it, as we are.

Speaker 0: 3:43

So In Memoriam is a song that we've worked on for about five years. At this point at least, the music, the instrumentation of it, and then the lyrics came together much, much better. Lyrically, the song is about losing loved ones. Uh, steven and I have lost three grandparents in the last several years and it's brutal, uh, and we never really processed it artistically and finally it just felt like the right moment to do that. So this song is very sort of ethereal sounding, um, and that was very intentional on our part to kind of have a moment to zoom out and think about your place in the cosmos and, you know, just thinking about the lineage and the legacy that was passed down by these amazing grandparents that we have lost, and we wanted to kind of stamp that in time with a song. So that's what the song is about. We really hope you enjoy it and I'll, you know, I'll let you in on one one tiny little technical secret as well.

Speaker 0: 4:42

This is going to be interesting to a small handful of listeners, but I also enjoyed the opportunity this time to once again use this instrument that I purchased, called a hybrid guitar, which is a really unique instrument. It literally has three bass guitar strings and four regular guitar strings on it, and it has two outputs so that you can essentially play the bass through one output and the guitar through the other at the same time. And the whole reason we bought it is because Stephen and I wanted to be a duo, like we are on the show, without having to have a third or fourth band member, at least for the time being, and that way we could sort of have a complete sounding rock band in the room. There are a lot of guys that play hybrid guitars. The most prominent name you might have heard of is a guy named Charlie Hunter. He's like a virtuoso blues jazz guitar player and he's the guy that basically invented this style of playing or more or less, where you have this sort of independent bass and guitar play.

Speaker 0: 5:41

It literally sounds like two people, but it's really one person, and I am nowhere near the talent level of a guy like Charlie Hunter, but I wanted to see if I could take that instrument and apply it in a sort of hard rock context, which is the kind of music that Steven and I make, and that's been a really, really big challenge, a lot of fun, but it has also required a lot of purchases and equipment and a ton of time just dialing in like how to route signal and not have a ton of noise and do all those things. So this song is is. All the guitars and bass that you hear on this song are that instrument and I'm really proud of that. It was a challenge but I hope people like it. And you know, I'd actually be really interested if anybody can tell. I think it sounds like more than one person, but it would be kind of funny if someone else was there like no dude, just sounds like you with a guitar, and then I'd be like, well, I guess that was a worthwhile endeavor. So, anyway, thanks for sticking around for a few minutes Again.

Speaker 0: 6:43

Go to musicworkingmansweightliftingcom and pre-save that link if you're on Spotify. Otherwise, just be on the lookout. Look up Token Sacrifice on your favorite streaming platform. We're not doing a physical release at the moment, but if we decide to do any merch or anything like that, we will let you know. Otherwise, also be on the lookout for episodes of the show, the actual episodes talking about fitness coming up shortly. Like I said, we have a lot of plans, a lot of energy coming back in. It's just taking me getting through, you know, bringing on second child and figuring that out, but we're really close to hitting the go button on that, so we'll be back in the near future. Thanks for sticking around. I've been Nick and I'm one of the two working men that talk about weightlifting on this show. We'll catch you next time.