Episode 243 | Josh Caterer of Smoking Popes

On this episode we have on Josh Caterer from Smoking Popes.

We talked about being an empty nester, feeling like there’s gotta be a better name instead of empty nester, reflecting on how fast time goes, driving a school bus, leading worship at churches, thoughts on his upcoming tour, and wanting to be around for defining the next phase of life with his wife.

Make sure to go to Smoking Popes Music . Com or their instagram smokingpopesmusic to find their tour dates and how to get tickets!

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This podcast is part of the Never A Phase Network, follow them on instagram at @neveraphasenetwork and check out their podcasts like Emo Kids Anonymous  Wasting Time Podcast Certified Fangirl and The Ska Mailman

Transcript

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Welcome to the Imperfect Dads Podcast. This is your host, Devon. We believe dads care deeply about their family and kids, but they don't always have a space to discuss what their life looks like. Our podcast is a space for dads to discuss the ups and downs of fatherhood and how they feel like they're holding it together or how they're not. Thank you for joining us for this episode. This podcast is part of the Never A Face Network. Make sure to follow him on Instagram or go to the website neverface network.com. On this episode, we have on Josh Caterer from Smoke and Popes. We talked about being an empty nester, feeling like there's gotta be a better name instead of empty nestor, reflecting on how fast time goes, driving a school bus, leading worship at churches, thoughts on his upcoming tour, and wanting to be around for defining the next phase of life with his wife. Make sure to go to smoke and popesmusic.com or their Instagram, Smoke and Popes Music, define their tour deeds and how to get tickets, and go catch one of their shows this summer. Just like one more thing. Oh, my bad. Josh, welcome to an episode of The Imperfect Dads. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Devin. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Of course. Well, let's start with like a very easy first question is how many kids you got, ages, all that good stuff. I have two kids. My son Elliot is 25. My daughter, Phoebe, is just turned 21. She is in her junior year in college, and Elliot is he lives up in East Troy, Wisconsin. And he's a contractor, carpenter, kind of does a lot of uh rehabs of, you know, if you need your kitchen redone, he's the guy. If you need new beams put up in your house or whatever, he's he does a lot of that sort of rebuild somebody's basement. He does that sort of thing and loves it. Both our kids are moved out. A couple years ago, we entered what is known as the empty nest phase of life. Although my my wife does not like to call it that because there's something inherently negative in that description of it. Like there's like it's worded in such a way that there's like something missing from your life. Then so uh but she hasn't come up with a better term for it, but I usually try to avoid the term empty nesting because of that. But that's that's where we're at in life. Our kids have moved out. Well, I guess this doesn't feel complimentary if you told me something was empty about me. I wouldn't consider that. Like I can't, I'm trying to think of where a positive thing would be in which like this is empty about you is like, uh, that all seems like a veiled insult of some sort. Right. Like you're supposed to be a glass half full kind of a person. So then why would you embrace a label on your life that has the word empty right in there? Mm-hmm. But I've always I don't know, I appreciate that philosophy, but uh I also I dig the I dig this word picture of like you're you're a bird, you're a couple of birds, and your little fledgling birds have all grown up and flown away, and now you have the nest back to yourself. And uh you can kind of decorate it however you want. You can put the twigs where you want them finally. You don't have to pick up stray little feathers all the time from other people. You can eat all the worms yourself, you don't have to give them the little gaping mouths all the time. This is a positive thing, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I am so fascinated to know what our grocery budget is gonna look like when all three of my kids are out of the house. Because like right now, it is like pretty big because we've got the friends coming over for snacks and all that stuff too. And I'm like, in 15 years from now, like, what's our what's this gonna look like whenever I'm not cooking for five, maybe six people, depending on who's around. Huh. Yeah. Huh. Oh yeah, I remember, and then when when our son was a teenager, our cereal bill was ridiculous because he would find like this huge uh salad bowl and dump like and put like half the box, literally half the box of cereal in there, so that an entire box of cereal was only two sittings for him. And so I don't know. We just were like, you know what? I think no more cereal. We're cutting you off. Yep. At least now there's like protein cereal. Because like I feel like my kids will do those like spaghetti noodles where they will just inhale like a pound of spaghetti like in five minutes. But if I'm like, hey guys, it's protein, so it'll fill you up differently, they then will like back off a little bit like that scares them or like makes them be like, oh, I better respect the noodles. And now sometimes like don't buy the protein noodles, but still tell them it's the protein noodles, and then they back off a little bit. So little little tricks here and there. Lying to your children as a parenting strategy. Nice, really nice. No, I mean I'm fibbing. It's like it's playfully fibbing. Yeah, it's lying, it's straight up lying. Yeah, yeah, without question. Yeah, I mean, don't sugarcoat it. Call it what it is. What was your what was your son's favorite cereal? Because I remember eating a ton of like cinnamon toast crunch as a kid, and now I'm like, I will never let my kids eat cinnamon toast crunch because it's just cinnamon sugar disguised as nutrition. Right. I mean, it's tasty, but it's not although I do remember, you know, looking at the box and thinking that that cereal doesn't have as much sugar in it as you would think. It has less sugar content than some other ones that we've eaten. But his go-to was honey bunches of oats. That's kind of what we would mostly do around here. Honey bunches of oats. So, you know, there's a little bit of fiber in there. That's a little bit of it's kind of good for you. You know, some health value. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I my mom always told me whenever I'm the youngest of three, and whenever I went off to college, she always told me like the moment where it hit hardest that we were all gone were like Sunday night dinners. Like that was a moment where she would be like, for her weekly rhythms, be like, oh man, all three of the kids are like out of the house. Are you guys still finding moments where you're like, man, all the kids are out of the house, or is it kind of like normalized now since your daughter's like a junior in college? When we first took her to college, we had kind of a sad week. I think, you know, we it was like a rough transition for about a week. We like we dropped her off. Her college is only a half hour from our house or 35 minutes away from our house. So it's like it's not like that far away, but she did, she moved to campus. So she officially, you know, was moving out of our house for the duration of the of the school year. And I remember when we when we took her, we dropped her off, we came home, and like the I don't know, we were just sort of like uh there was a there was a feeling of malaise that set in. And uh it like lasted for a week. And it wasn't like any particular activity. It it mostly was kind of missing. I think probably the thing that we missed the most was that our daughter sings a lot. Like if she's in the house, you'll hear her just singing. If she's off in her room or in some other part of the house, you'll just hear her singing. And it it sort of creates this lovely background atmosphere. And so the house just seemed unnaturally quiet. So we were sad for a week, but then we we got into this rhythm of of doing other things, and we sort of, you know, developed, you know, ways of filling our time that we otherwise couldn't. Yeah. And you know, it didn't take long before we were like, this is nice, actually. Like, yeah. And we both of our kids, I mean, our daughter is, like I said, only 35 minutes away, but our son is only like an hour 45 away. So we see him pretty regularly. So our kids are still part of our lives, but we have this kind of uh nucleus of of protected space and time in our home where we can just do what we choose to do with it. Which is nice. Yeah. No, I was just gonna just wax poetic about how this is like all of life, where like whenever some sort of a change happens moving forward in time, like you're you're mourning a loss, and then you're also excited about a new chapter that has uh, you know, aspects and opportunities that the last one didn't have. That's certainly, I think, true of parenting. You know, like uh what your your kids are little and you're like exasperated because they're they're running you ragged and you're not getting a lot of sleep and um you're going in a million directions, and it's so like, oh man, I can't wait till I can settle down. But then then you move into the next phase, they grow up a little bit, and um and then the next thing you know, you're like there was something really special about having little kids. There was a tenderness to that amid all the chaos of it. That I mean, those those people are still here, but they've changed. And so you're there, there is a particular kind of parent-child relationship that you have when your kids are little that you don't have anymore. And then so that it's a loss. You know, I'll see sometimes a dad like walking in in the store with like a three or four-year-old kid holding their hand, and I'll it'll make me nostalgic for that period, and I'll get a little wispy. But you know, like I miss that. But then like, would I trade my current relationship with either of my kids for that? Uh no, because then I'd really miss talking to them now. I I have a much obviously more fully orbed relationship with the adult version of my kids, and I love the people that they've become. It's just that there's like a there's a special little thing about having little kids that you just and it makes you feel a certain way to have a kid like look up at you and be like, Dad, you know, they trust you. Mm-hmm. Yep. They eventually learn they can't they can't trust you completely. Because you're because you're lying about cereal and protein and noodles. That's like exactly. Yeah, there's a certain sweetness to it. Like my four and a half year old still is like in the moment of um, like going to the zoo with him is amazing because everything is exciting, everything is magical. In our backyard, we think there's two baby bunnies that are living underneath our porch. So he'll like go to the window and be like, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. And I'm like, what is it? He's like, baby bunnies. And like I know full well when he turns, whenever he's even like seven, he won't care that much. Like, so it's like this constant tension of really loving to see his excitement and the simplicity and the beauty of it, but with the full knowledge of like, I'm gonna love him also whenever he's a teenager and he's like the he's finding out who he is and stuff. So like it's a lot to hold at once, and it's all out of love that you're constantly interacting with in very like unique ways. True, true. Your son, did you guys like, did you do home improvement stuff around the house a lot? Like, what made him want to go into like trades? Because that's a I think that's really cool and that's a great skill set. But like I feel like usually people who do that are because they grew up working on houses and doing stuff like that. He didn't get that from me. It really just was I I think it was just a a God-ordained thing. He was just made that way. Because first of all, I'm not handy and I don't really do home repairs, so I didn't teach him really anything. But I remember from the time he was relatively small, he would just build things like uh when he was maybe six or seven, he started building these elaborate forts like in the backyard, he would build forts where he would um, you know, take plywood and set it up and put a roof on it. And I think it was when he uh somehow obtained hinges and he put a door on this fort that was hinged. And he like put the screws in there and everything. And I might have shown him like this is how you hold a screwdriver at uh initially, but I didn't like I didn't take him through any building projects, he just sort of figured it out. Yeah. But when I saw those hinges, I was like, there's something going on here. And that's that's his thing. And then he would build he built a uh volleyball net like out of strings, like he took twine and like wove it together to make the net of it, and then he made the frame and stuck those into the ground, and he just has always had that impulse to build. And then uh, you know, our our daughter has always had the music thing where she just started singing when she was really, really young, like maybe even three or four. Like she started making up songs. That's so cool. Where she like the so the songwriting gears were turning in there. So I was like, also, like, obviously, I'm a songwriter, but it's not like I sat down and said, like, okay, here's how you write a song. I think you just either have that or you don't, and you can refine it. Any kind of musical talent or creative talent is like you can develop your technique and sort of get better at it, but you you have to have a divinely instilled nugget of creative talent and inspiration to begin with. And some people don't. A lot of people don't. I remember I like thought everybody did until I was maybe in my 20s. And I would encounter people who I would try to show them how to play something and they just like couldn't. And I'm like, what's wrong with you? That's really difficult to know though. I I run into the it's uh it's fascinating to realize like the stuff like come easy to you, it's like part of your DNA. And then whenever we encountered people, we're like, it's just not part of them to be like, hey, that's actually like you guys are both have special gifting and it's beautiful. But in my head, I'm like, how does this not make sense to you? And it's like because they're different than you, man. Like, and that's beautiful, but yeah, like 20-year-old me also was like, how can you not do a bar chord? Like, what's wrong with you not being able to do a bar chord? And it's like they suck. That's why they're fun to do, so that's why. Yeah, they're hard. They require some finger strength. Yep. The barred B minor chord is it's I think an F. I think an F at the top of the neck is my least favorite. It's just, you know, it's still I get I I get up there and I'm like, I need to, do I need to like stretch out my pinky? Like, I can't getting older, man. Does your does your daughter sing with you like on stage? Does she ever like come out with your band or if you guys are playing shows around town? Sometimes. Yeah. She hasn't gotten on stage with the Popes, but she we've done solo stuff together. Mm-hmm. We recorded and released a song together a couple months ago. It's uh it's called All the Way Crazy. We co-wrote it. She wrote pretty much all the lyrics. She wrote a complete set of lyrics, and then I came in and helped kind of tighten up certain parts to make them fit the music that we were writing. But it's like mostly her lyrics, and then we collaborated on the music, recorded it, released it, played a show, like a release show here in Aurora where we live. And you can find it, it's just under, it's, you know, it's under Josh Caterer and Phoebe Caterer. So she has uh that's her first, you know, artist credit on Spotify. How did, since you've, you know, dedicated your a lot of your life is about being a songwriter, making music, what was that like as a dad to have watch your daughter want to join in with that? Like, how'd that feel to your what was your experience like that with that? Like singing with her is such a joy. And it it is like physically satisfying to to to harmonize. Anytime you can lock in with somebody on a harmony, it like it feels good. This is something that yeah. I heard an interview with uh Sussie Roach of the Roaches. Are you familiar? I'm not sure. They're great. You should check them out, the roaches. But uh, they're like sisters who have these complex, tight harmonies and uh great stuff. But I remember uh hearing an interview with her where she was like, Well, something that people don't really talk about is like how good it feels to harmonize with people. It's like you can almost feel it, it just like is gratifying and it just it's sort of it equalizes your serotonin to do that, you know. And uh that's that's kind of how it feels to to harmonize with Phoebe because you know she we've been singing together for most of her life just naturally without even necessarily noticing that we were doing it or or working on it intentionally, it just has been happening so that by the time we start saying saying, Okay, let's let's write a song together, let's perform together. Like we were already so locked in, it's like that blood harmony thing. So it's it's great. My son also is a musician, he's a really good drummer, and he's played shows with me. He has mostly played with me in church settings. He was he started becoming a drummer at the church we were attending when he was 11, and then kind of blossomed from there. And he's talented, but he doesn't have that thing where he has to play music, you know, like he could just not play for months at a time and he would be emotionally okay, whereas I wouldn't. And you know, if you have it wired in there to like must make music, and I'm glad that he I'm glad that he doesn't have that because it frees him up to have a more productive life where he can become a contractor and actually make money instead of being like enslaved to this thing that is becoming like increasingly impossible to make a living off of it. Yep. But you have to do it because it's wired into you. Yep, pretty much. Whenever so I currently, my kids are all like, yeah, 10, 8, and 4 and a half. And so the way I know how to still keep music as part of like a daily rhythm is just leave the instruments out. So like in our front room, I've got like a bass, a mandolin, and a guitar hanging, and like we've got a piano in there. Because I know the second I put them in like a case, then I'm going to not play it anymore. Do you remember like whenever your kids were younger? Did you I know I know you're a songwriter, so it's part of your career, but would you do anything like that of like, hey, I've just got a guitar in the room, so if I feel the need to do it, if your kid wants to strum on it, it's there and it's available? You know, I've never uh I've never left my instruments out as much as I should. Okay. I think I think that um you know, there there's like times of flurries of activity where the bands are on tour or I'm working on some project and I'm just always I've always got a guitar in my hand and then I'll like I'll just sort of put it away. I've never had guitars hanging on the wall in my house, but uh our daughter does. She hangs, she she put uh a guitar up on the wall in her room. And uh that's cool. I don't know why I never did that. Yeah. Obviously, I failed as a parent. No, you haven't. I think it could be like mentally, I mean, like, if that's your career, it's how you've made money and stuff. Like, if I look at a guitar hanging around, I'm like, I'm just gonna strum some chords on this and see what comes out. I could see if it's part of your career, then you mentally could go somewhere else of being like, all right, well, crap, where am I? Do I need to write an album? Where am I? Like, you there's so much more to it than just the casualness of uh I'm gonna just kind of strum some chords and see what happens. Maybe also it has to do with, you know, when your kids are growing up. Depending on how you look at it, like, you know, you if you're if you're intentionally saying, I want to have instruments out to encourage the free use of these instruments, I I guess I have always felt like because there's activity here and parenting and life and family stuff happening here, this isn't a place where I can work on stuff. Yeah. So I'm gonna p put my guitar in my case and put it up in whatever, you know, little room that I'm gonna go off to. Or a lot of times, you know, when uh my kids were littler and uh I wanted to write, I would uh go in the car sometimes. And so I would it would it's more convenient for me to have the guitar in the case and I could just like carry it out to the car, drive over to the park or the parking lot of the grocery store and just like park there, get the guitar out, sit in the back seat, spend an hour, you know, and then and then go back home. But I don't know. I mean, like, do you if you're working on music or writing anything, can you do that when there are other people in the house who might hear you doing it? It's I just I feel like a uh noodle more than anything. So like I'm never like writing something to be like, I want to turn it into like a song, I will then perform. It's kind of like what's a riff I like, what's something that's like connecting in that moment? And then if it sticks later, then I'll come in down into like the space, like in this podcast room and everything, and then I'll record it. But like, yeah, for the most part, it's just like, all right, cool, let me strum. Because reality is yeah, the second I start strumming or I want to plug in an instrument, like actually plug in the bass, then a kid walks over and puts their hand over the bass and says, No. So like it is like it is so you're not gonna be able to do that. That's another thing, is that I became aware a long time ago that people don't necessarily want to hear me noodling around. So even if I'm gonna do that, I gotta go in the car and do it, or you know, go to if I happen to work somewhere where I have an office, I can go in there and do that. If your office is remote from other people, I've always had this thing where like I just don't want people to hear me doing it. Um, because if I'm like noodling around, it's like I'm working on stuff. I'm like practicing. I always tend to be kind of trying to write something or figuring out a song. And I just don't want people to hear me doing that. Yeah. I I I think it's really intimate. I think it's really vulnerable. I think it and like also like I think you and I probably approach songwriting differently, where it's it's never been a career, it's never been something I make money off of. It's just like me noodling around at home. So my expectations are pretty low of what I'm doing. But like that to me, that's similar. It's like um, I do a lot of baking. And if you came up in the middle of me baking something, you're like, why can't I eat this yet? I'd be like, because there's nothing about this is ready. I haven't, you're like, nothing has set. I haven't put it in the oven. Like, go away until I'm ready for you, is kind of like my energy with that. So like I could see approaching songwriting the same of like, this is nowhere near worth anyone else listening to because it is a mess right now, and it's not up to my standards, it's the reality. So can you come back when this lives up to my standards and we'll see if I get that? Yeah. Oh, the number of times I have written a song and played it for my wife on an acoustic guitar, and she says, I like that. That's a good one. And then we go record it with the band, and she hears the full band version of it, and she's like, No, I liked it better as an acoustic. That has happened enough times where I've learned I'm not gonna play her any acoustic songs anymore. Yeah. Because she's gonna be ultimately disappointed with the outcome. She, you know what? She's just looking out. I think, yeah, she's just like, well, if you go towards just yourself, you know, you've only got to split the paycheck or the ticket sales one way. So she's just trying to encourage you that you're in a band with your brothers, right? She's just trying to cut your brothers out of the band, is what she's trying to do. Well, honestly, the kind of music that she likes is acoustic folk music. I mean, her favorite artist is Gillian Welch. That's yeah. Or like, you know, like old Willie Nelson records, like very kind of stripped-down acoustic type stuff. That's what she likes. So why she married a rock musician who plays in a pop punk band, we'll never know. We'll never know. I'll send you stuck with me. That's right. I'll send you. Um, I just saw Dave and Gillian just played out here at Red Rocks. And so I will send you a couple of videos to, you know, so your wife can like you a little bit more today. So you can be like, look, this guy saw this. Isn't that cool? They're the best. They're just the best. Have you met them? Are you like friends with them as well? Because I've heard I have a friend who works with them at their studio and says they are like the best people to work with ever. That doesn't surprise me. They seem like wonderful people. I've I've seen interviews and stuff. But no, I have not met them. Okay. One day. That's how that's another way to win points with your wife is to be like, hey, I got us, we're gonna go meet Dave and Gillian would be the uh ultimate husband rock star move. Um and I just because of the genre of the smoking popes, yeah, like it would be pretty far-fetched for me to meet Dave and Gillian. Like, you know, I could be, I could introduce her to the guys in the descendants. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. She's not as she's not as impressed with that as she would be with Gillian Welch. Yeah, that's fair. What do you what do you guys do? Like, what's your day job these days? Is songwriter like your main job, or do you do anything else at this time? I drive a school bus. Nice. That's uh a relatively recent uh day job career. I've just been doing that the last year. As I mentioned, I I've been making music in churches for a long time and did that for a living. That was that was my day job for 24 years, actually, was working on staff at churches as a as a music director, and the last 10 years of it, I actually had the title Worship Pastor. Okay. So uh I was that was really my way of keeping the lights on and paying the bills, was working at churches. But I uh eventually got burned out on the pastoral part of that. Love playing in churches, and I still am doing that on a volunteer basis, but I I reached the end of my tenure as as a professional church music guy and was like, I need to find something else to do, something that I don't hate. And so I've got a pretty long list of things that I would hate doing. And so I'm just looking for something that doesn't, you know, that doesn't check any of those boxes. And uh I like driving. I've always when on tour, I've done most of the driving. And especially when we have toured, like sometimes we we've rented a bandwagon. Do you know about bandwagon? No, I don't. What is that? It's this uh it's a company that rents out large vehicles. They're basically giant box trucks that are converted into buses, so they've got bunks and fridges and kitchens and bathrooms in the back. But they're slightly smaller than a bus. So they're they're just under they're just under the weight limit, so you don't need a special license to drive them, but they're they're essentially a bus. And I have driven those cross-country a few times and just really enjoyed the feel of driving huge vehicles. So decided that maybe uh maybe this is the route that I should take. So I got my class B license and started driving a school bus, and it's pretty fun. Yeah. Yeah. I'm into that. What grades? Like, is you uh did you choose like are you like elementary, middle, high school? Because I feel like that's gotta be different driving experience based on the age of the kids you're driving around. Yeah, I do at this point, I do all those. Okay. I do the the high school route is pretty low-key. In fact, in the morning, it'll be a bus full of people who literally aren't saying a word the entire time. Yeah, they're just sitting there like zombies, sort of like barely conscious. And the the middle school kids have more energy, and they're the ones that you have to kind of uh you have to pull over occasionally and be like, all right, guys, cut that out. Yeah. You know, we can't use that kind of language on the bus. Do you do you have a good do you have a good angry dad voice? Do you have a good angry, like, hey, hey, hey, knock it out. Like, do you have that voice ready to go at all times on the bus? I have found that the anger that I would express towards my kids, I try not to use that on the these kids, middle school kids. I uh I want them to, I I kind of wanna like, there's a different fence that I'm trying to walk with them where I like I want them to understand that there's certain things that I'm I'm not gonna put up with on this buzz, but like I'm not gonna be a jerk about it. Uh and I don't need to get angry about it because like if you're getting angry, I think this is part of the the parent thing, is like I'm getting part of what I'm getting mad about is that I'm the one that has to deal with this and like solve this problem. So I have ultimate responsibility for this thing, and I'm not that makes me unhappy. Yeah. As a bus driver, I can tell you, like, hey, you need to stop doing that. And if you keep doing it, that's okay. I'll just write you up and turn that into the school, and they'll deal with that. And they'll tell you, and your parents will have to deal with you about it. So I don't have ultimate responsibility. So there's no reason for me to get mad at you. That makes sense. Unless you're like, you know, punching me. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. Because yeah, as like a parent, like your escalations are something like you and your wife or partner agree on of like, okay, if they don't do this, then we did it. Whereas like, yeah, he's like, cool, I'm gonna write you up, gonna hand you off to this person. And they have an escalation system that they've agreed upon that I this is my partner, and then I'm good. Yeah. Also, to tell me if you agree with this. I'm just I'm just sort of realizing this now, is that a lot of the anger and frustration that you would express towards uh towards a the child of your own is that they're doing something that is sort of messing up some other plans that you had. Like, like I'm trying to do this thing over here, and you're interrupting that. Yeah. Correct. You know, I'm trying to watch TV, I'm trying to write a song, I'm trying to drive the car and just get where we're going. But like as a bus driver, like this is my job to be driving a large container of small humans from one place to another and keeping an eye on them. And so whatever they're doing, and the extent to which I need to manage that and intervene in that, that's like part of my job. That's that's what I'm here for, right? Yeah, so they're not interrupting me. It's not like I'm trying to listen to the radio and they're interrupting me. It's like there's no radio in there. It's me listening to them to make sure that they're not abusing each other and you know. Yeah, right. Yeah, using good fellas like language. It is different because, like, yeah, right now, if I'm home with uh all three of my kids during the summer, and it's like, okay, we need to go to the grocery store because we ate all the food. There's always one kid it's a negotiation with. There's always one kid who's like, but I don't want to go. Then I'm like, well, do you like eating? Because if you want to keep eating, then you're then I'm like, well, that sounds I'm and how do I say that where it doesn't sound like aggressive and I'm like making them feel shame because I'm like, we can't eat food unless we go do this. It's like, no, that's not. So you also have to like know what your control level is with your kids to get them to go do the outcome that the entire family wants, but also not make them feel dumb because they don't want to do it, but also they don't want to do it. So yeah, that's what you're managing at home with kids. Whereas like on a butt says, I have to stop doing that or else I'll write you up. It's much maybe I should institute. Can I do a write-up system for my kids this summer? Should I do that? Right. I think that's the equivalent of like sometimes my wife would adopt an almost bus driver-esque mentality where she's like, I'm gonna tell your dad that you've done this. Yeah. And, you know, you don't want that. Because, you know, I don't know. It's not like I've been this super threatening presence, but um, it's just like dad, if if dad gets pissed about something, like it's it's just gonna be a little more unpleasant. Rather than, you know, if mom gets mad, they've almost found it amusing. Yeah. Like they're trying to get mom upset because they like how she sounds when she gets gets mad or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I also my mom, my parents didn't do that. My mom was like, oh no, I'm not, I'll take care of this myself, was kind of her mentality. And like, as the as a dad, I also don't like I I'm not a fan of that because then like you walk in a door and someone's like, you need to take care of this. And you're like, I don't even know what happened. I don't know the context. I just know you're really mad. It seems like they did something to make you mad. So like I want to do right by all parties involved. And like me just coming in and telling the kids, how dare you do this is like it's usually more nuanced than that. Or sometimes your kids are just being a jerk. So I don't, I hate, I hate that setup because it I would never want to do that to my wife. There's like, you need to come in here and fix this. It's like, well, that's okay. Just say, hey, I need help with something. Let's figure this out together. That's different. That's a very different tone. Yeah, it's very complicated. It is. How's uh with you driving the school bus as your main gig? Whenever you like, I know you're going on tour this summer. How does your like regular job line up with like you going on tour, or how do you manage all of that? Well, that's another great thing about the about driving a school bus as a career is that you can take your whole summer off and you can just schedule all your tour stuff for the the summer months. Whereas before, when I was working at churches, I always had to um I was always vying for a little more time off and see them seeing if I could work with them to get a few extra weeks off, like unpaid or something, so I could go and do a West Coast tour and stuff. And now it's just built in. That's awesome. So it's great. Yeah. That's I've talked to a couple other musicians like Todd Bell from like uh Hey Mercedes slash Braid. Yeah, he's a special education teacher who's like, yeah, if you notice, we tour basically just during the summer. It's because of that. It's the when's Todd available? June and July and like early August. So let's get it done. Yep. Yeah, that's no, those aren't good months to like go on tour in, say, Florida. No, yeah, yeah. But uh, it's good to have that kind of flexibility where you know that you can do a certain amount of touring without having to jump through a lot of hoops to get the time off. So it's great. Yep. Like, what's your relationship with touring with being a dad now that your kids are grown versus like whenever they were younger? Um, for most of the time that they were younger, uh, I would tour like a few weeks out of the year. I I think I was dealing like there would be maybe because a lot of the churches that I was working in is like I would get two weeks paid vacation. And I, of course, I would I would use that all up on a on a West Coast tour. And then I would try to see if I could get like another week off to do like you can squeeze in like a little Northeaster tour and go up to New York and Philly and stuff, and you can do that in a week and come back to Chicago. So it was never like an amount of touring that was really cutting into my family life that much. There have been there was like a a season in there where like I was trying to push a little harder and two or more. When I was it was like right when the right when the Popes got back together in 2005, and then into 2006, it was like uh it seemed like there was a certain amount of momentum surrounding the reunion, and we were like, let's kind of see if we can turn that into something. And so I was doing some extra touring, only like working basically part-time at my church, and I had plenty of flexibility to do that. Yeah. But that just wasn't great uh family-wise. It made my wife feel like kind of like she was uh a a single mom a a a lot of those times if I was gone for, you know, two or three weeks at a time. And uh I just I I felt like that wasn't right. Yeah. And she felt like that wasn't right. And and we, you know, there was tension between us because of it. Yeah. And also like I could just sense in my relationship with the kids that there wasn't the kind of presence that they needed to have from their dad. So that was relatively short-lived. Then just uh a couple years ago when our youngest moved out, I started ramping things up again. And we started doing a lot of touring. Like in 2024, we you know, we we were gone for I don't know, we did we did the whole country with uh opening for the get up kids on their big uh something to write home about. Yeah. So we were gone for like it was maybe like five weeks we were out with them. Yeah. And uh I don't know. It was like, yeah, the kids have moved out, but then also that just that just kind of sucks for the for the relationship between my wife and I to leave for that long. So I I discovered that like I don't know. I mean I love playing shows and I like getting out to the West Coast every now and again to do that, but like the whole full-time touring thing just it sort of isn't worth the price that you pay relationally at home for you know to have the kind of connection with the people you truly love. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean like if right now I was like, hey, I'm just gonna go leave for a month from my family, like it's that's a lot. And that's a lot to ask of my family. Like it's it's it makes a ton of sense. It's always interesting to me whenever you are like a creative type. It's like an expectation of like, oh Josh, you should be willing to go tour for five weeks. And it's like, what about your day-to-day life? Like, what about like that stuff is it takes a hit. People are accommodating for it, and it's um all something to navigate. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. I mean, we we recently like we are doing some summer touring, but there was a a West Coast, there was a West Coast leg of our tour that we booked and ended up canceling. Like part of it was it was financial as we watched like fuel prices just creep up and up and up. And it was like it became evident that like financially it was making less and less sense to do that tour. But also that tour was like three and a half weeks long. And I just was starting to have regrets about that. Like I I kind of sort of was realizing that like I shouldn't really do that anymore. It's like you just it's it's hard on um it's hard on my marriage uh to do that. Um it's just to to kind of have the the closeness um between my wife and I that I feel like it just becomes more and more important to me, even though like we're through we're through the we're through the years where we're like raising kids together. But um I don't know, I just feel like it's as far as where we're at in our lives, you know, we're like in our fees now. And and I don't know, there's just there's there's a kind of a I don't it's it's hard to describe, but there there's something about the I keep talking about rhythms, you know, like the the rhythms of our lives, but like the way that we have built kind of like rhythms together relationally that seem like we're we are building a life together in this season that is like we're sort of discovering things about ourselves. And like supporting each other in ways that we like haven't before. And it's really cool and it's kind of precious. And it's even more meaningful to me than some of the things we shared together when we were younger. And it's it's like I have less and less of a desire to like leave that behind for basically a month to go off and play shows. It's like, I don't even think that's a good idea. So that was like definitely a factor in like playing those shows. Uh like to canceling that leg of the tour is like, I think that's just too long to be gone from home. So, you know, I don't know if anybody listening to this had tickets to see us in Portland, Oregon. But like, yeah, right. If you did, sorry, though those were some of the considerations. Like, I think I booked too long of a tour and started to regret it. Yeah. You know. I think that's extremely human. Yeah, because I mean it is like you and your wife are in this next chapter of your life and of your relationship and your marriage, of like, okay, we just raised kids. We guess we were successful parents because they went to college, they left the house and stuff. Like they're independent and on their own is usually like the standard definition of like a successful parent. And now it's like, okay, exactly. And so now you and your wife, like, genuinely, I think it's beautiful. And I hope my wife and I enter into that phase at some point in time too, of like, okay, now we get to like rediscover each other. We just went through like a marathon of raising kids, figuring all this out. So, like, who are we now? What what experiences do we get to have now? Like, what do we get to like start our next journey on together? And it's hard to start the next journey with someone you love dearly if you're not around. So that's a lot to balance with also a lot of your career being performing, being on and about for yeah. And like, uh, you know, part of that, there's there's there's a lot of layers to that. Like, part of it is like having somewhat recently retired from professional church ministry. Part of that was that we decided to leave that church that I was working at because it didn't feel like a great fit. Um, and to find a different church that sort of resonated with us, a church that neither of us were going to be employed at, a place that we just felt genuinely drawn to. And we have found that place and just about six months ago started going to this new church. And like we love it and feel like we're sort of getting spiritual roots down and kind of like taking a spiritual journey together in this really cool way where we're like growing in our relationship with God together, yeah, and in the process growing closer to each other, and like it's a beautiful thing. I like that. Yeah, I like it. It's like not uh so far. I'm enjoying my 50s a lot. Good. I used to run sound for churches or like do because I went to Belmont, studied audio engineering, and like once you peek band that curtain or you do more work at a church, it is very difficult to be a member of that church as well. Because you just you know too much. You you you look like I would look at everything from like, oh, they didn't turn that mic on correctly, oh, they didn't do that. And I'm like, you are completely mentally out of the entire purpose of going to a church service now. You're your logistics, you're thinking of it from all this vantage point. And then I'm just like, oh, well, now I'm only going to associate this church with working it. So like, how do I sometimes just a new start going somewhere else is the best way to just get a clean slate and know that that and like just start something new. Yep. Yep. And like joining a worship team as a volunteer and not being in charge of it is like so refreshing. Yeah. And I'm I'm so much more blessed by it. And like attending services that I didn't have a hand in planning them. Yeah. And I wasn't at like I wasn't at the staff meeting that week to see what how the sausage was made. I'm just like there experiencing it like everybody else. Like, at least at this season in my life, it's uh it has a healing quality because I think I got really like Yeah. I I got uh I I I mean I used the phrase burned out, but like part of it was like I just felt like my whole concept of of going to a church got sort of skewed by by working at at one for so long. I actually worked at a few different churches, and I'm not down on people who like get paid for ministry, but like in my particular case, I felt like I I needed to take a break from that. I don't know. This is a different rabbit trail that we're going down. This is a very rabbit traily kind of a conversation that we're having. You're welcome. Now, man, that's uh as someone who has volunteered, helped out at churches and stuff, is now if I go to a church, I honestly I don't tell them I know how a sound board works. Because I know once I start rolling that ball down the hill, I'm gonna be like, well, you need someone to volunteer. Oh, you need this to be better. Oh, you need then I'm going to take over. And then I've changed my relationship with why I went to the church in the first place because my assumption is I can be helpful here, and but then I'm not like feeding myself. I'm not like feeding my relationship with God. It's I've completely like changed what the relationship with the service is because of a skill set I have that is not a common skill set. So it's freaking complicated and it makes everything messy. So trust me, I am right there with you. It is, man. How I end every episode is ask every guest a series of five questions, learn rapid fire, so you have time to think about them and everything. And the first question is Did you have any backup names for your kids? Like, did you have anything that you almost named them? Okay, with our son, we we ended up with Elliot, but we we wanted something that sort of like had this sophisticated kind of old school British feel to it. So I remember feeling like William or Charles was like a possibility. And I think the reason why those got ruled out was because if you name him William, they're gonna call him Will, which is fine, but it's just like, no, we we don't want that shortened version of it. And if you call him Charles, it's gonna be Charlie or Chuck, and like we don't want that. So Elliot, it's like you can't really shorten that. That's his full name, and that's what people call him, is Elliot. And plus, like, it was like one of my favorite guitar players ever is Elliot Easton from The Cars. And so I got to sneak in a little reference to that. But so William and Charles were there with Phoebe. The other close runner-up was Penelope, and we just felt like her name should start with a P. But again, it was like if we name her Penelope, they're gonna call her Penny. Yeah. And which is fine. For somebody named Penny, I'm not saying that's bad, but like in our case, we just didn't want to shorten it. So her name is Phoebe, and people call her Phoebe. But what we didn't realize is that if you have a daughter named Phoebe, you end up making up a bunch of crazy nicknames like Phoebe's. Just any any kind of variation of that. But, you know, that's all just like sort of in-house stuff. For all practical purposes, we're still calling her Phoebe. Nice. It is fun. We did the same with our kids of like, okay, if we name them this, what are the nicknames? What are the other names that could be called from this? And then going down that list, like uh my middle child's name is Magnolia, and we call her Noli for short. We're always like, never, never Maggie. Maggie implies Margaret. Your name's not Margaret. And it's like, no one's ever like, that's not just stop. Like, I'm already anticipating it, and it's like, stop it, like, calm it down. But I'm I have that, I have that ready, like at all times. And it's like, because you run into that situation so often, man, you know? Yep. You do. Next question is do you have a favorite TV or movie dad? Or one that comes to mind whenever I ask that question? TV dad. Um try and think of my favorite shows. I mean, like one of my favorite movies that I just just re-watched, I kind of almost annually re-watch this, is The Shining. But that's not a very good example of what fatherhood should look like. I will I will give you the Stephen King answer for that, though, because Stephen King's father abandoned him. And at least, even if his father was chasing him with her croquet mallet through the Stanley Hotel trying to murder him, yeah, I'm going accurate, I'm going book, not Stanley Kubrick. He at least had a father there to chase him to his death. So you know, so even Jack Torrance gets dad points. Even he gets he was that you still have to be present to attempt to murder. No, that's awful. I can't even say that. Okay. Um, no, I think movie-wise, like you can't go wrong with like Atticus Finch. Yeah. He's kind of like, man, if you could pick a dad, it would be Atticus Finch, man. Yeah. Yeah, it would be. Uh next question. What's like your go-to replacement curse word? You worked in churches, you've done all this stuff. What would you say whenever super frustrated that isn't a curse word, but you wanted to say a curse word? I guess some variation of frick or freaking. What the frick are you talking about? That's awesome. That also feels especially Midwestern, Dad. To say, oh, what the frick? Um You think that's Midwestern? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I said it with a very stereotypical Minnesotan Wisconsin esque ask accent. So I mean to me, Frick feels very but I'm also from Indiana, so it feels very familiar to me as well. Um man, I'm becoming more and more aware of these Midwestern things that I thought were universal. Yeah. One of those, I just realized this is a regional thing, is that if somebody says thanks, instead of saying you're welcome, you go, Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Now you need to do a head nod with it too. Yep, you have to do I do a head nod too. I'm like, yep, yep, yep. Yep, yep, no, yep, no, yep, yep, yep. Um, my favorite Midwestern, I feel like it's Midwestern, or I've been told it's Midwestern, is the no yeah. Hey, do you want to go do this? Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. It's very like ingrained in me. My wife hates it. She's like, you do it's like you're saying, maybe possibly, definitely. And it's like, those are all different words, those all mean different things. I'm like, well, maybe possibly for certain. And she's like, stop being this person. It's all like you just have to uh it's like in the inflection. Like you have to say it in such a way where like the people know what you mean. Yeah, no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. You drag out the first word you go, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever heard of this before? No. Yeah, yeah, I have. Or like, uh Are you a fan of Dave Matthews? Yeah, no. No, yeah, no. Well, I thought like he's not he's pretty good at guitar, but I don't listen to him. So no. Yeah, no. Like you're you're always like trying to soften something. Like you don't want to just say no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you say yeah. You're trying to not feel like too much of a jerk. Yeah, yeah. Correct, yeah. And then you're gonna you're gonna couch it. It's like a no sandwich. The no is the meat, but you put some a couple of slices of yeah around it. Yep. Yep. Which also feels very Midwest nice to me. If someone's like, hey, do you want to go eat here? I'm like, no, yeah, no. It's a journey. It's a journey. Next question. What's like one of your favorite like activities? You're like, wasn't it like a favorite toy that you would play with your kids whenever they were younger? I had some of the toys that uh that I had when I was a kid. I'd kept them and and like uh, you know, passed them on to our kids. We had quite a collection of matchbox cars and uh and Hot Wheels cars that I that I and my brothers had played with when we were kids. You know, our kids would play with those, and it depends on what sort of like a rug situation you have. If you have like a rug that has any kind of pattern on it, you can like pretend like you're driving the cars around like a little neighborhood or whatever. So always that kind of stuff. And then little uh like when the kids were real little, we had this Fisher Price barn that had all these pieces in it. It it has like uh a little plastic tractor and little plastic cows and sheep and stuff in it, and a little farmer guy that you can put into the tractor because there's a little hole where he will fit that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. And then last question for you is like, what's like go-to parenting advice? Like, you know, someone you meet someone, they're about to be a dad, something like that. What would like piece of advice that you tell them? What would that be? Okay, I'm going to like looking back on my own parenting experience, like I'm I'm looking at moments that I would regret. Like, if there was a way that I could have avoided those, it was always that if I would get, if I would have let something annoy me, and then I'm I'm acting from a place of annoyance, like you really have to watch out for that. Like if your kid does something, like makes some bad like mistake and it's then uh something big, I feel like it's almost easier to be chill about that because you're like, wow, okay, we have to deal with this. And my wife and I will have a conversation, like, what are we gonna do here? And we sit down with the kid and we they talk, talk through it and come up with some consequences and boundaries or whatever. And like you can you can handle that stuff more easily than if you're just sort of irritated. Yeah. Huh? Yeah. Like you're just like tr like one of those times when you're like trying to do something and your kid kind of interrupts you and you're you're a little bit on edge. Like, look for those moments and watch what you say. Because like, you know, I have found myself being a little short with my kids, like just saying something a little bit like angrily to them to get just cut it off. Um and like I've ended up being like kind of a jerk to them in ways that um that I really regretted. So don't don't let your you you have to watch out for that. And because the things that cause that seem really like trivial and surfacey, you're almost not looking for that. But but watch out for that and don't let that don't don't just like react from a place of being annoyed, because then you'll you'll end up um those moments just just stick with you. I can, you know. Yeah. Remember little times when I turn and was short with my kids in some way. And I was just like, I was jerky. I wish I hadn't done that. And I if I apologize later, they don't think it was a big deal, but it sticks in my memory. Yep. And like, yeah, just watch out for that. Yeah. I think there's it's I think kids make you aware of what like your standard for kindness is, and then they give you lots of opportunities to realize that you weren't living up to your standard of kindness. So it's like I responded harshly. Why? Because I wanted I'm trying to get stuff done, and my efficiency monster is raging. And they're like, cool, well, your kid just heard you be like, stop it. And that's that's the tone of if they recognize that tone of voice with you, that's not being the type of dad I ever hope to be. So how do I live in that energy? And I feel like this is something that people don't necessarily say. When you're having kids, people are gonna tell you, oh, when your kids are a little uh, you're not gonna get a lot of sleep. So be aware of that. Okay, I already knew that. And as they get older, they're gonna make like bad decisions that are gonna like sometimes be, you know, difficult to like work through and that sort of thing. And it's like, you know, all that, but what people don't tell you is that, especially when your kids are like younger, like two and older, like two through 10 or 12, is that even though you love them and you know that they are these precious gifts, they also can be very, very annoying. And just like you you're you're almost surprised at how annoyed you can get at your own kids. Like you're just like, yeah. Yeah. Just give me a second. Just give me one second. Yeah. It's like whatever they're doing, it feels like the equivalent of someone coming up and just like tapping you on the forehead or something. Like, just give Just go away. Just give me five seconds. Go away. Yep. So get ready to be annoyed at the people you love the most. Yep. And if you can handle that and like subvert that annoyance or overlook it and and uh don't react from a place of annoyance. Like that is the best kind of parenting you can do. Yep. It is and then last thing for you is just like moment for self-promotion. So, you know, like uh Instagram handles, how we find out more about your tour, band website, all that good stuff. Uh Smoking Pope's Music. So at Smoking Pope's Music on uh Instagram, on Facebook we had to go with the Smoking Popes because Smoking Popes was taken. Of course it was. So technically there is no the in our band name, but we had to put a the there on Facebook. Um, website is also Smoking Pope's Music. And yeah, we've got some summer tour dates coming up, mostly out east, not out west. Although we are flying in for our LA shows. So if you live anywhere near LA and you want to come see us, we're doing two nights at Zebulon with Nerf Herder. Those are pretty cool. That's pretty cool. And us out here, like in Denver, we'll be sitting here showing up at Lost Lake still, just waiting for you guys, hoping that you show up some. Yeah, you know, who knows? Maybe we could live stream a concert there. That'd be great. I'll I'll go talk to Lost Lake and be like, hey, can we just like live stream a show of the Popes? Can we do that instead? And we'll see see how that goes. Yeah. Hey, we did it during COVID. Why not now? Uh, that's true. That's true. But yeah, Josh, that's pretty much what I've got for you. I'll edit the episode. I'll probably release it like the second Monday in June or something like that. That way to try to get out of there, help you promote the tour dates and all the good stuff. But um, for the most part, I'm gonna go pick up my son from Pre-K and enjoy. And like, honestly, that'll stick in my head is like, hey, whenever it seems like he's annoying you, like, just take a breath, take a beat. And like, hey, these are precious moments, even though they're annoying at the moment. So genuinely, genuinely, thank you for connecting. And that is like, it's it's a good recentering thing. So I appreciate that. And thanks for spending the time to do a call with me. I it means a lot to me. I enjoyed it a lot. This was a great interview. Thank you. The good interviews are the ones that don't feel like interviews. They feel like you're just having a conversation. And that's a skill. It's a skill that not every interviewer has. So you're real good at it. Thank you. I appreciate that. That is also on my list of things where I'm like, oh, everyone can do this, right? And then people keep telling me, like, no, they cannot. Not so. Not everyone can do it. Less than half of the people can do it. Genuinely, that means a lot to me. Thank you very much. That's uh it's nice to be encouraged and seen. So thank you very much. Thank you, Devin. Perfect. Enjoy your day, Josh. I'll catch you next time. You too. Bye. All right, bye. Thank you so much for listening to the episode. Make sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at the Imperfect Dads Podcast. And make sure to give us five stars for every listen to us. Music, editing, and production is all done by me. Make sure to tune in on Mondays and most Thursdays for episodes. This podcast is part of the Never at Face Network. Make sure to go to NeverAfacesNetwork.com to learn more about 'em.