In this episode, we're thrilled to have Phillip J Kriz join us as we explore his debut crime thriller fiction novel, "The Roadie Cartel," and his remarkable journey from life on the road as a touring audio engineer to becoming an author. While many envision the roadie lifestyle as glamorous, Phillip sheds light on the dark, winding path that can ensnare anyone, prompting unforeseen choices both in reality and within the pages of his gripping novel.
We delve deep into Phillip's narrative craftsmanship, marveling at his ability to strike a delicate balance between providing intricate details and leaving ample space for the imagination to roam freely. Drawing inspiration from personal experiences touring with legendary bands such as KISS, Justin Bieber, Paul Simon, and more, Phillip seamlessly weaves these encounters into the very fabric of his characters' journeys, blurring the lines between reality and fiction.
Join us as we discover how Phillip's book transcends its audience beyond fellow roadies, captivating readers with intricately constructed characters who linger long after the final page is turned.
You can learn more about Phillip Kriz and purchase The Roadie Cartel here: https://www.phillipjkriz.com/
Follow Phillip on Instagram
Check out his former podcast mentioned in the episode Backyards & Bevvies
The Loose Connection podcast is Hosted by Chris Leonard & Kyle Chirnside
email us at looseconnectionpod@gmail.com
Follow us on Instagram , Facebook,
In this episode, we're thrilled to have Phillip J Kriz join us as we explore his debut crime thriller fiction novel, "The Roadie Cartel," and his remarkable journey from life on the road as a touring audio engineer to becoming an author. While many envision the roadie lifestyle as glamorous, Phillip sheds light on the dark, winding path that can ensnare anyone, prompting unforeseen choices both in reality and within the pages of his gripping novel.
We delve deep into Phillip's narrative craftsmanship, marveling at his ability to strike a delicate balance between providing intricate details and leaving ample space for the imagination to roam freely. Drawing inspiration from personal experiences touring with legendary bands such as KISS, Justin Bieber, Paul Simon, and more, Phillip seamlessly weaves these encounters into the very fabric of his characters' journeys, blurring the lines between reality and fiction.
Join us as we discover how Phillip's book transcends its audience beyond fellow roadies, captivating readers with intricately constructed characters who linger long after the final page is turned.
You can learn more about Phillip Kriz and purchase The Roadie Cartel here: https://www.phillipjkriz.com/
Follow Phillip on Instagram
Check out his former podcast mentioned in the episode Backyards & Bevvies
The Loose Connection podcast is Hosted by Chris Leonard & Kyle Chirnside
email us at looseconnectionpod@gmail.com
Follow us on Instagram , Facebook,
I wanted to show the other side to touring as well. It's like, yeah, there is the fun, there is like all the amazingness and the venues and the audiences and the bands, you know if that's what you're into. But then there's also all the dark shit that no one kind of thinks about, and I mean paragraph one. You know, I say some pretty like deep shit, like right there and people have. I've actually had to feel people reach out like thanks, I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to be anything better, but I'm glad I was maybe a small voice. ["dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"].
Speaker 2:Hey, this is Kyle Chernside and I'm Chris Leonard and this is Loose Connection man. We're gonna have a fun one tonight. I've never talked to an author before. I mean, we've had people on the podcast in around a set of rote books, but not like this dude.
Speaker 3:Especially not a fiction novel, at least. So this is definitely different, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it involves our business, what we do, rodis.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, philip Criss. He was a you know touring auto engineer, rodi, just like we were, and you know, the pandemic hit our industry, shut us all completely down and many people like him had to decide what is next. What am I gonna do?
Speaker 2:But do you think you could ever be like oh, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna write a book.
Speaker 3:No, I'm lucky that I actually read this book, let alone having written a book for sure.
Speaker 2:I just think it's amazing. We go into a couple different discussions about like how you continue the story, like how you forecast the story and how you write for so many different characters. And the book is called the Rodi Cartel. It's basically a crime fiction novel about Rodis that sell illicit things while on the road and it tells their story behind it. It's kind of it's. I'm only so far into it, but Philip is an awesome conversation for sure.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, you know he's got a pretty stacked resume. That you know. It's funny. I've heard him talk before. He likes to play it off. It's like, oh yeah, you know how's the Rodi. But when you look into it, you know, and you know he's worked with KISS and Paul Simon and Justin Bieber and you know just to name a few artists that he's worked with.
Speaker 2:I've heard a few of those.
Speaker 3:Now, philip is pretty cool. I got to meet up with him about a year ago as he's on his journey, the book recently released as we record this and then coming out soon as the audio version of the Rodi Cartel. You can actually hear a sneak peek of about five minutes of that book at the end of this episode. And I say sneak peek because, depending on when this comes out, the audiobook may or may not be out, but it should be out soon, if it's not already. So we encourage you to go support him, go to Amazon or wherever you buy books and get the Rodi Cartel.
Speaker 2:Definitely check out our socials on Facebook, instagram and TikTok. Loose Connection pod, let's go, let's go, let's go. So you said, you put the jersey on, you came downstairs. What position would you play if you were like Coach Kyle, coach Chris?
Speaker 1:let's go. I'd be fucking Ricky Vaughn from Major League. I have his jersey upstairs. I would slap that 99 on. Come running down the stairs.
Speaker 3:See, I didn't think you were going to say that. See, what I didn't tell, kyle, is that you're a major soccer fan too, or football? So I thought you so I didn't know and you don't know, phillip, but Kyle is. He's a coach. He still plays on like a men's league. He's big into soccer.
Speaker 1:I got swindled into liking soccer from touring and now I'm just freaking hooked. I can't get enough of arsenals in my team and I just I know, I know.
Speaker 3:We need to hang up, kyle.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no no, everyone's got their pre. And see, that's what's cool is, when you ask somebody about who their soccer team is, default is a Premier League team, always.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Always, always. It doesn't matter what kind of soccer fan you are. If you're from Argentina and someone asks you what your favorite soccer team is, they don't go oh the Argentine national team. They say, oh fucking man City, man city Like. Oh, ashton Villa, yeah, whatever the case may be, my neighbor's a Tottenham fan. So I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry about that too, but hey, what a great game. And I think of more Americans, that's all these listeners that we have. We only have one person from Turkey. I think that listens to everyone. So while he's he was like.
Speaker 2:Cricket, yeah, and he's like fuck this Cricket's where it's at. But I think if people watch, it's like when I went on tour, everyone was watching F1. And I tried to get into it and that's another big touring thing. Like, if you watch sports on the bus, it's going to be something like F1 soccer. Like when I'm in Australia, I watch bowls. Have you ever watched bowls, Chris? You ever watch bowls? You know what that is.
Speaker 3:No, like Aussie rolls football.
Speaker 2:No, it's bowls, it's fucking croquet balls that they roll around this huge field and it touches each other. And it's crazy, it's like bocce ball, but huge fields.
Speaker 3:And my pinky's not up like yours, Kyle.
Speaker 1:Dude See, and I will follow Messi. So, if anything, I'm truly a Messi fan. Like. That dude is just I don't know. I like the guy, I think he's like. I like Miami now just because Messi plays for him now, but at the same time I didn't grow up watching soccer so I kind of became a fan in the middle of all these greats, careers and stuff.
Speaker 2:So, Chris, for the record, so to fill you in Messi's like this great soccer player, I know who Messi is. So check this out On YouTube, and all these clips that come out now show how much Messi walks during a game. Like he'll score four goals, but he'll walk for 70 minutes of that game. Like the game's 90 minutes long, he'll walk for 70 minutes of it and still end up scoring four times.
Speaker 4:His little legs, just kind of do-do-do-do.
Speaker 2:He is a great soccer player. It's great for MLS, but it's not going to work out for long. Conkauff Cup starts here soon, so I don't even think Miami's not even in that.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I don't even follow that much. I'll just watch whenever I like. I'm like a fair weather fan with him. If he's on the big screen I'm like, oh, messi's on. Let me check this out now.
Speaker 2:I love soccer. Welcome to the soccer podcast of Lose Connection. Yeah whole new point. Everyone turned off right now.
Speaker 3:All right, phillip, I want to go back to October 27, 1992 in El Paso, texas. You're nine years old yeah, I was young, and obviously we're going to get to your book. But as I was thinking about this, I truly think this is where your book started. Regardless of you maybe telling the story of when you put pen to paper or when the idea came, this is where the book started. So take me back to that day, what you experienced and how that changed your life.
Speaker 1:Man, and what's crazy about that is I was already interested in music, but maybe a few months before I was supposed to go to my first first concert I was supposed to go to actually Guns N' Roses, metallica, faith no More and my mom won't let me go, and I don't know if this was like a. Well, let me make it up to you, but she took me to go see you two and Public Enemy that night at the Sun Bowl and I didn't really think much of it. I wasn't like a big YouTube fan and I had no idea who Public Enemy was. I mean, I might have seen him on MTV, but I wasn't rocking a boombox, walking down the street playing their greatest hits. You didn't have a big clock on your chest Didn't have a big clock.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If anything, I was more into like freaking, who knows. I think I had a Bon Jovi like a little nine-inch record that I would play over and over at that time in my life. So, yeah, that guy went and I didn't know what to expect. And here is this giant, massive stage with these cars with lights that would light up in the middle of it, and it blew my mind, man. It was one of those moments in my memory that I'll never, ever forget. Just being there, I couldn't tell you what songs they play it. I couldn't tell you I could.
Speaker 3:What record are you holding there, Kyle?
Speaker 2:Fear of a Black Planet, the one that my parents threw away twice on cassette. This is the 180-gram one. I have at least 12 public enemy things within ArmsReach and they're not all albums either. I have like a dressing room sign. I have a set list. I have One of the clocks, dude, I wish I used to One of the old bands I worked, I played for when I was a kid. We did Channel Zero, which is a public enemy song where they sampled a Slayer riff and during that song I wore the clock.
Speaker 1:I was like, let's go, let's do this. That's rad. Yeah, I never pictured myself ever being at a public enemy show because, like I said, I wasn't a fan and I never pictured myself at a U2 concert being my first concert. But I think my mom took me there as like, oh, you didn't see the bands you really wanted to see. Let me make this up to you and show you Bono. And I was like all right, but I wasn't blown away. Like I said, it took me to a place where I'd never seen a roadie before, and then there was dudes just standing on the side of stage with long hair. I probably ended up working with some of those dudes later in my career as well, but that was.
Speaker 1:It was a magical moment. And what's crazy is the sunbowl where you sit. You can look past the stage and you can see Mexico. So if you've never been there, it's not like a dome or anything, it's just this open stadium. And if you look where they typically put the stage, yeah, you'd look right over into Juarez, mexico, where some of my book takes place too.
Speaker 3:Nice. What I found fascinating, so I to jump around here for a second right. So I learned of basically who you are through the pandemic. You and your wife had a podcast called Backyards and Bevvies. I don't know at what point I found it within, when you guys were doing it or during the pandemic, somewhere in there. I found it and I was, I was gravitated to it just because, like anything in the pandemic, something different and more people of our industry kind of talking and doing a thing. But you, you did something different with it in that you know you didn't do what I don't know what we were doing, but we I mean Colin, I don't know a pandemic of talking on all signals of noise or other industry related things you and your wife took a different path of just talking about life out loud and processing life together and I was just really fascinated by that. But thanks, I just.
Speaker 3:You know, knowing that we were going to jump on here, I would jump back to like an early episode and you were talking about that and you and I had a chance to meet up in Nashville about a year ago and as we're talking and I had always wondered like man, so you made this jump out of being touring. You know, touring as a roadie, touring as an audio engineer, and most people who are audio engineers they're in it because they have this deep passion for doing audio, yeah, and so like. And when I would hear you talk you would always skirt. You wouldn't actually really talk about audio, you just talked about like touring and stuff. But then it made sense when I went back to this first episode.
Speaker 3:You talked about the why you got in the industry and it's like you actually kind of got in the industry for the cliche sex drugs rock and roll side of things, as opposed to hey, I want to do audio, yeah, and I find the interesting cause, like I'm sure there's plenty of people who do that, but I would say by and large, people are in there because of a passion, as opposed to pursuing the actual cliche lifestyle that's the backstage lifestyle. So can you maybe talk about, like, what drove you into the roadie stage and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Well, I think I mean, and we all grew up in the same kind of time, like where music videos also portrayed the backstage or the roadie life as such, this cool touring thing because, like Molly Crue had, like their music videos would show the stage and the crowd and then the buses, and then there's Journey playing, the stage, the crowd, the buses and all these great acts made touring look so fun. They didn't show any of the work. They didn't show any of the like oh, you got to run cables. Or oh, there's feeder in the morning. Oh, hey, by the way, these speakers have to go up. No, they showed girls and then they showed booze and it just looked like a party.
Speaker 1:And so I grew up riding dirt bikes and skateboarding and being a pretty rowdy kid. So when all of a sudden, I was at a concert and I saw that there was just people standing there on the side of the stage doing nothing, I was like well, that's freaking amazing, like I don't know who that guy is. And I remember going home and telling my family like oh yeah, I had a blast. My stepmom, years later, reminded me she was like you came home and you were like just chatting, chatting, and I asked, like, oh, like, did you have fun? I was like, oh, my gosh, that's what I want to do. She's like, oh, you want to be like a rock star? I was like, no, there was like these dudes just standing on the side of the stage and like I don't know what they do, but it looks amazing. I want to do that.
Speaker 1:And whatever that brain dart was it like stuck in my head right, and I don't think it was that day that specifically like set me on that trajectory. But years and years of being by the sun bowl and watching other tours come through, I'd watch these buses come in and out of town and the only people that got off of them were dudes that I wanted to look like. They had tattoos, they were on wearing shorts to work, they had t-shirts and dressed in black and I was like this is I don't know who these freaking guys are. That's cool and I want to do that. And they're all smoking cigarettes, you know. And years of that throughout my childhood, I think, just kind of, especially my teen years, right, very, very vulnerable as a teen. Sure, that was like the trajectory that I think, that I thought my life would have the most fun at, and sure enough, I had a ton of fun being a roadie, so none of it was doing audio.
Speaker 2:So so, going back to your teen years, when you're a recluse, were you kind of driven by the art and the magic of it. It like you skated and rode dirt bikes, so like it, it was like a magic. Art to you was music.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and I think the music to me was always Rowdy. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I always love the soundtrack to your time, yeah, yeah like punk rock was like All every dirt bike video and every skate video had music in it, right. So it like went hand in hand. And then, like the Vans Warp Tour right came out when I was maybe 16, maybe 15, 16, I don't remember but when the first one was, all it was was extreme sports and music and it was like, how do I get on that tour? That is the one that I need to be on, because they're back flipping dirt bikes and Riding the penny wise. I'm like how, this is music, this is touring to me. And then I got on like a real tour. I was like, oh wait, what? This is not what I signed up for.
Speaker 2:Did you ever explore like being a musician or just being around it?
Speaker 1:No, when I was younger, my I was in the orchestra, I played the violin and the bass and I gave that up for dirt bike riding because I figured I could get way more chicks that way. So lo and behold, like wow, I probably should just stuck to like a garage band, moved my way into like a small you know club, and then club to arena, arena to stadium, and then my life would have been way different, way different dirt bikes, dirt bikes, dirt bikes and skateboarding.
Speaker 2:Writing back then.
Speaker 1:Did you were your writer back then in school, no, but when I was in high school. So this is pretty funny. A lot of things that I guess I Said I wanted to do and I have done them, which is kind of funny. I told my best friend that I wrote a book and he goes oh man, like in high school, you said you were gonna write a book one day. I was like, oh shit, that's wild. I did. He goes yeah well, you didn't write it, the book that you thought you're gonna write.
Speaker 1:I was like I did not write that book. Think thankfully, because that book probably wouldn't sell that as well as this one. Hopefully, yeah, no, that was that. That was my only writing experience was saying that I wanted to write a book. It's an answer, that question.
Speaker 3:Well, let's uh, what's uh, let's maybe jump, jump, jump forward. I assume, like many people Pandemic hit, you know, are the touring world shut down, as we all know it you is. It was that the launching point to be like, hey, what am I gonna do rest of my life? Had you already been working on the book, like what was what?
Speaker 1:was actually that shift. So, knowing that I always wanted to write something and knowing, like you said earlier, that I didn't get into the music business because I had any passion for consoles and preamps and microphones and all that stuff, at One point in my touring career I started writing a screenplay and I had called it a roadie Friday and it was like a American pie nice, yes, it was a. It was a rowdy, fun, stupid dick and fart joke like just a giant big one. But I started writing that in like just a little journal one day and it was fun. I got pretty pretty deep into it but then I realized, like it takes passion and time and, like a way, way more things than I wanted to give and plus, at the time I really didn't care to become a better writer or better at grammar or work on my vocabulary. So it kind of fizzled out and I just put it in my backpack and then that got stored with all my old laminates, forgot about it, and so then, yeah, like when the pandemic hit, it was I didn't have anything. Man like it. All.
Speaker 1:Everything that I thought, that I was like, everything that I had in my life kind of went away and I was like, oh shit, like I didn't see touring going away ever. I thought I was gonna die in a bunk making decent money and writing on buses and Eating. It was like I was in jail right, like three square meals a day and and a Place to sleep every night. It was great. But, yeah, when all that got ripped away, it was kind of eye-opening and so, yeah, the book. It was always in the back of my mind, I think. Just I wanted to make money outside of touring and I never knew how, because it would have it meant that would have had to dedicate my time to something else, and I never had that time while I was touring, right.
Speaker 2:So so did you have to revisit all those things that you said you Weren't get at your grammar or your my gosh linguistics, everything, oh my gosh, I'm sure I could have barely sent a text message to you.
Speaker 1:Led a legible text message At version one, you would have been like holy cow, this guy's not writing a book.
Speaker 2:What did? What did you do to get that stuff? Did you do it over the pandemic?
Speaker 1:Every day. I just typed man, I just would work on my. One thing that I will say that I credit my wife For with this book is when she said do it. I said okay, well, here's the deal. If it sucks or anything I write sucks, you have to tell me it sucks like I don't want this. Like oh, it's like so good, you're such a good writer. I was like no, like be honest with me, tell me like this makes no sense. And she was.
Speaker 1:And so by the time I turned the book in, I was on version 19, put a T that way. So it had been through that many different edits and by that point I had a Pro editor. Like that was really, really close to me and we worked hand in hand. Like every day we would just work and work and she would, and she showed me too I went to some writing classes as well. Yeah, so it was. It was the first time in my life that I think I had a passion for something Because, like I said, I didn't really care for audio. I just it was a way, for it was an easy way for me to be on tour and make money and have fun.
Speaker 2:That's what I hear. A lot of people I mean, I don't know a ton of people that have written books, but that's the first thing they talk about is, is the writing classes in the storytelling and why the classics are the classics and how it was written, how to draw the picture, and I think it's super interesting. It's something I probably want to approach eventually, but I don't even know what I write about.
Speaker 1:I think, honestly, imagination is so, it's in everybody. But I think it like a lot of people, unfortunately, get told to like mask it, like, hey, dumbass, pay attention. Or date. What are you doing, daydreaming over there. And I think that that's sometimes the issue.
Speaker 1:It's like we're all artistic in our own weird way, and I didn't write the book Because I hope everybody would like it. I wrote what I I liked. I wrote exactly what I wanted to write, and every time that someone told me, oh, you should do, oh, you should add this, or you should do this, I was like, no, I'm not going to. Or, oh, you should shorten it, or oh, it's this. I'd be like, okay, that's cool, but it was all my artistic Thinking. It wasn't. I didn't let anybody influence me because I wanted it to be my imagination, and so Riding to me is that it's, it's, it's whatever is deep inside of you that you've.
Speaker 1:I Wasn't able to tour, so I was like let me tell the most fucked up touring story that I could ever create in my brain, perfect. And I did, and it was, and it was wild man, like some people are like holy shit, you're dark, or like there's parts that are really dark and they're like and and my, my wife's friends read, was reading it, and she got a text message like hey is Phil? Okay, it Was a kind of a joke. But at the same time, you know, when you read it You're you're thinking that like if you knew me and you'd ever tour to me, you wouldn't think that that's what I wrote. But I mean, that's the cool part, is it's?
Speaker 3:I let my imagination take it to a Place where well, and part of that has to do with the fact that it is fiction. And the funny thing is, anytime I've tried to tell them about this book, they're like the ready cartel, you know, hustling cocaine with, with, with, with the touring industry, like wink wink. Oh right, it's a fiction novel, right, but you had to like, be like. No, this isn't a autobiography. No, this isn't. I'm not the main character in the story. No, I'm not like.
Speaker 1:And that that was big, that was like clutch for me, like especially changing the main character To who she is. Because I was like I don't want the attention to be me because everybody is already assuming I'm writing a, an autobiography. Everybody's like, oh, here's another roadie telling his his stories at which bar he went to and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Look with, I'm not gonna lie, we all have great stories, we all have amazing stories. But let's be real, like I'm, my stories aren't any better than anybody else's and I'm not gonna be that conceited to be like. But me write my story. So I figured the fiction way was wave way more fun because I could put stuff in there. I could take touring to a level that would still make people question like if it happened, oh, what if that was really a thing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, which, which you the thing, and part of this I Said it's you. I was able to finish the book recently, right, and so that we were waiting to record this until I could at least finish the book and I didn't give college chance to finish.
Speaker 2:I am ten pages in.
Speaker 1:They're ten messed up pages right oh it's.
Speaker 2:It's intriguing, to say the least, because I Can say this, because this is the beginning of the book like you're just sitting there talking to yourself, basically for a while and it's interesting because you and and I have to ask you, like you get inside of the head of this person and it's female, and it's a tour manager, and like you could just like the creative options just to be weird at any moment. It's first ten pages. It's creative and weird, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it like you're just talking you're not writing at any point, you're just talking to yourself in your head a lot, and it's, it's a real conversation. When you read it You're like oh okay, I get it, I'm in my head.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, cuz, everybody does it, though Like I think that was one of the the beauty. When I when I started to really, really really take it, because I got one critique Come in about version four from a TV and film agent, mm-hmm, and I asked her to she goes do you want me to be brutal or do you want me to just give you like a nice version? I was like no, be brutal. And she started told me, like she was like you have no focus, focus it somehow. And and it was really I didn't. I didn't get it at first. I was like, hmm, I had to go back and kind of read and I was like, ah, I'm all over the place. And she had told me to like this doesn't make sense, this doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:And the one thing I remember being on tour and and doing a lot was talking to myself. As strange as that sounds, I mean, you're just by yourself some days in your room and you're like the fuck, what the hell's matter to me, what the hell's going on? Like, what am I doing? My wife or you know, like whatever, you had a bad day or you had a really rough week, or we've all been there and To say that we haven't.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to, I wanted to show the other side to touring as well. It's like, yeah, there is the fun, there is like all the Amazingness and the venues and the audiences and then the bands, you know if that's what you're into. But then there's also all the dark shit that no one kind of thinks about, and I mean Paragraph one. You know, I say some pretty like deep shit, like right there and people I've actually had to feel you people reach out Like thanks. I'm like, yeah, like I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to be anything better, but I'm glad I Was maybe a small voice, you know.
Speaker 3:I. So part of my experience in reading this and I told you this is that I feel I have a Probably a different, visceral experience of reading this, in that I've known you, I've listened to your journey through you know the podcast and and becoming an author and Knowing that at some point we're gonna talk about the book, right. So like I had this like duality while reading the book of like I'm Processing this, of like what questions do I want to ask? You know Phil, but how did he get to this point? Why did he have to put this much detail into this? Or not, why I was like, oh, he went to this level to put this as much detail in this section. So like I would stop and think about how and why you wrote something in a certain section, just because I was invested in the art and time that you put into it.
Speaker 3:So that was a kind of fun experience, as opposed to just being a reader, because you know, I'll just be honest, like I don't really read that much. This is the most I've probably read in a decade and it's like no joke. Like I'm just I'm a consume podcast. I'm just not a reader, especially amazing though I was more. I was more of a nonfiction reader, so I'm sorry, yeah, not fiction reader, but so one of the things I did is I I Talking about Going to dark places and or realistic things. You know, the first page that I like a bookmarked that. I was like, oh, that Hit.
Speaker 3:And you actually I think you said this was like your favorite, one of the favorite sentences. It said the mind and self-doubt can be an evil, dark, twisting road where anyone can get lost and so many never return from that unforgiving place. And that really stuck out to me because a that like that wraps up the, the main character in the story, wyatt Like that's a synopsis of her headspace throughout this entire thing, actually probably some of the other characters as well. And I related with that with things that I've gone through, either recently and or you know, through the years, what so, and one thing you told me and and to jump further out and then come back in is that like Because I knew you, a new your story, I've been able to see you sprinkle parts of you throughout the book, simple things like you and the character share the same birthday, or you know, the El Paso thing right, like a lot of you know, there's a lot of these things right, and if you didn't know, you might not know, as I wouldn't mean as much.
Speaker 3:Um, exactly, so talk to me about, like, when you come across like that section, like how much, how much of that was you pulling that out of you versus the story in the moment. What did that like put those words down on paper mean to you?
Speaker 1:Well, like I Guess this is a crazy thing to think about, but like each one of those characters, I had to become in a, in a way, right, like I had to be. Why did I had to be the murderer? I had to be everybody, right? But one of the things that they all, I think, inherently shares, like just human nature in general, and when I think humans go through stuff like Something catastrophic, like a job loss, you share the same emotions, right? You share that same self-doubt, like what am I gonna do? Like this was me, this was my identity, this was everything that I was. Every person that I know only knows me as this person. How am I gonna like recoup my Self identity? Or how like is, will people still like me the same way? And so I think, like a lot of me was in this book, but a lot of it, I think, also grew In the characters as well, because as I started, right, it like yeah, it was, like the pandemic was deep in I like I had in quick Claire, yet I had still.
Speaker 1:I was working at a Really shitty warehouse driving a forklift for a minimum wage, because I wasn't sure how long money was gonna last with the, the free, the money that was coming in from the government, and you know, all these self-doubts. It's like, holy shit, do I? Like I'm married, like we had a kid on the way at one, like I was like holy cow, what am I doing to myself? All the self doubt. But then all of a sudden it was like, oh well, we made it another month. Oh shit, we made it a year. Oh shit, like we keep making it.
Speaker 1:So I think, as the book grow, as these characters grow to, and they go through stuff so did I, was going through stuff so it's easier to write other things as well that were of calibers of like happiness and Sunlights coming out. Oh shit, like that old saying, like it's always darkest before the dawn, right, there's a lot of like metaphors, I think, in that kind of style of writing, in that Self-doubt or in that Hero-esque way, like the Like there is. It's everything that we go through in life, but sometimes it's cool to see it through someone else's eyes and that Character being someone going through something hard, harder than we're going through maybe, and, in my opinion, why it's going through something pretty fucking hard.
Speaker 3:So yeah, for sure, for sure the next one that I had tabbed down was Rode's are a different breed when it comes to executing tasks. They come in under the cover, darkness, and some days pull off the impossible without being seen it. It goes on more beyond that. But I mean that's like, I mean that's easy for us to like, know, you know, but that's I don't know. It's not something that like the average human who doesn't tour or whatever. But there's always those jokes of like when natural disasters happen. It's like why are the politicians doing this if you just hired some brodies? Look, look what like Don't.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't go down the conspiracy theory of like vaccines and stuff like that, but like that I know in our industry we're like just let the roadies handle this vaccine roll out and we'll get this shit out there. Why, what are you all messing around with? Right, like that was the thing we're talking about, because we know how to get shit done.
Speaker 1:It's? It's that all like, if you give a roadie, like you know, 20 hours to load in a show, he'll take 20 hours, but it's like they had to do it in five. Somehow magically they would do it in five. Yeah, so it'd be on time. I mean, I Grew up around let's just say cartels, like I'm not gonna say that I was in one because I was never in one, but I knew enough to know that I. There they are them, and roadies are very creative people, right, like let's be real. Some of the stories you hear just think about the stories you don't hear because they're working right, like the shit that they do that makes Drugs appear in the United States. You're like how we've been fighting this war for how long and they're still getting through. Hmm, I guess it's not working. Whatever they're doing, they're figuring it out, right, but this is a fiction novel.
Speaker 3:Right, this is a fiction novel.
Speaker 1:This is a fiction novel, but but I had to be okay, so there's there's part of that creativity right in in. Okay, telling a normal roadie day is kind of boring.
Speaker 1:Like right, like yeah, but there's some really cool aspects about it. Like no one knows that roadies show up at like 3 am Sometimes and start chalking the floor. But would I write that specific scene in there? No, I'm gonna write something a little more, you know, imaginative. So people are like, oh shit, like what do they do at 3 am? Right, it is that that Hollywood. Right, it's, it's the smoke and mirrors, it's all the stuff. But, yeah, roadies are super, super, some of the most creative people in the world I've ever seen, and it's and it's because you're.
Speaker 1:I think it comes from the breed and the idea that we're blessed now that companies can send you something in a and overnight oh, you forgot your cable, let me ship it to you. Probably in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, when you know, all that stuff was not as Easily or readily available. Yeah, like roadies had to be freaking MacGyver's Mm-hmm, and I think that that's the coolest way that I could pay homage to them is say something like that, you know, because just because I don't, I'm not in the industry anymore that or maybe I didn't love it the way other people loved it. I. I think that it's beautiful on some of the stuff that roadies and Engineers and techs do that. It blew my mind being out there for that long and seeing some of that stuff. Certainly, yeah, man, it was red. I mean, let's be real, like some of the stuff that you see, people do you're like hmm.
Speaker 2:So what does it feel like now that this is out for you?
Speaker 1:It is. It's like having another kid. To be honest, it's like my babies out, um, it's. All I want to do is scream to the world go read my book, like I. Go check it out, go have fun. It's amazing like it's like pushing my kid out the door to go to school, like, ah, go tell everybody about you know, yourself.
Speaker 1:Um, I personally I don't think it's truly, truly hit me on how I Truly truly hit me on how cool it is. Like people still like, will be like, oh man, it's amazing, you wrote a book. I'm like, yeah, it is pretty cool. But then we'll just like go into talking about something else. But they'll be like yeah, but like man, that's pretty rad. Like how did it happen? Then they'll they'll start asking me more questions. That's when I realized that it's a bigger deal than I think, than I. Then it's hit me still.
Speaker 2:Do you ever? Do you ever think like, oh man, I should be. I'm not even thinking about that anymore, I'm right in the next thing, I'm on the next thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, and that is exactly it right now. I've already started working on the second book.
Speaker 4:There is like and the audio.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I should have really I tried to release the audiobook with this, but I was a little behind because this is the first time I ever did any of this, and so when I found the audiobook company to do it, they were like, eh, we're gonna need a little more time because we have to. We have to find actors, and it was a little bit bigger of a process. But now that I have two actors locked in, I'm like, ah, I know how I can, how this works and how the process works now. So, um, it's, it's right, it's right. I have no. The only word I can ever say is I'm so blessed that I've been able to write a book, stay at home with my kids and and do this and it's uh, rad man. I just hope it's cool that chris read a book. Like I mean to me that when people tell me that, I'm like yes, yes, let's, let's make reading freaking rad man.
Speaker 3:What, um, what you know, it's interesting, um, as we've talked to different people in industries right, it was one thing for Kyle and I to talk for so long to audio humans and we knew what like the pinnacle of a day was like the downbeat of a show and that music flow into your, your fingertips At the faders, and like there's an adrenaline rush. You're you're feeding off the audience. It's like, okay, cool, we've heard that story over and over again. Now We've talked to some backline texts and stuff we talk about, okay, what fuels them or what you know, whatever fuels someone like what's that the the pinnacle of your day, so like. But almost most of those things are like these instantaneous things, like let's, this is like years of a product and of these highs and lows and like, so what was it like to make? Like versions?
Speaker 3:Yeah 19 versions, right, so like what was it like, um, what were the? What were the highest points, the most satisfying parts of the process? Like um, because there had been grind, had been difficult parts. So, like, what was the? What was the gratifying parts that you kind of kept latching on to through the process?
Speaker 1:I mean right off the bat, chap, getting one chapter done. Every time I got a chapter done, it was success. Um, not success that it was perfect, it was just oh, holy shit, I got another chapter like this is cool, like this is starting to flow.
Speaker 3:How I read. Oh my goodness. Thankfully I got one more chapter done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, okay, like, let's be real, I had a big, I had a big dream. The goal, like, was to write a book. Right, like that was the big goal and I've heard this a million times and it's been said, probably you know just as many times but, uh, I guess to achieve something great, right, you should break it down into little Details and little, little or smaller goals. And so I think that Through those three and a half years because that's what it basically took me to get it to here, um April would be four. So, yeah, like well over three and a half years, um, it was all little goals and and it was character developments, it was Edits like holy cow. We had deadlines too, like I remember the first big edit we did, I hired this girl I've known for almost 25 years and she's an English major like teaches. She's taught English like like almost 15 years, um, and I remember I asked her and she was like, yeah, I'll help you out, like I love fiction. And then she blew my mind, because then she was like, oh, this you're writing in this style, like she had all this stuff. I was like, okay, so I'm good though, but we're like we're moving, and I think one of the biggest wins was she at the end of it was like Wow, like I really don't have a problem with your story, like you're, you're kind of have a very good flow, like everything lines up pretty well. I was like all right, cool. That was a giant win to me when I started to realize that when we would send the book off to people who were actually in the industry, that I wasn't just the imposter syndrome, wasn't, it was just me. I was the only, I was my biggest critic and I was my biggest enemy, because other people are like oh no, this is really rad.
Speaker 1:And then I think the the biggest, biggest win was when my publisher, julie. We gave it to her and she read it in 24 hours. She was like I love your book, I want to, I want you to be, and she even told me one month. She's like I don't know if my small publishing house can. I don't know what this is going to do. It's not going to hit right away, but I don't know what it's going to do and I don't know if, like, if you want to go, someone bigger. I was like no, you're in, like it's you and me, girl, let's do this. And so that one was a big win was finding Julie like she was just a big promoter of me, like Really believed in my story, and I think that helped me, um, get over that imposter syndrome and all the other stuff explain, explain to us a little bit what Julie as a publisher does, so people kind of understand yeah.
Speaker 1:So it it's really rad. There's three different styles of publishing nowadays independent, you could write a five page book, go on to kdpcom, which is amazon. Go through their publishing process. They'll size it up, they'll tell you dimensions, they'll even help you to create a cover and everything. Um, hit, publish and you can start making money on kdp or amazon that afternoon, if that's what you wanted to do, right? Um, and that's self-publishing in a nutshell. There's like a few different houses too, that you can go through. Um, and then there's traditional, and traditional is Penguin.
Speaker 1:Random House picks up your book. Uh, simon Schuster, any of those big five are basically considered traditional publishing. And they take your book and they pick it apart and they tell you Well, you can put this in, we like this, we don't like this. This is how, actually, we want you to write it like this. So I think there's a little more like a tradition there. Like you don't have as much leeway to be exactly who you are until you have a name, like a calling Hoover or you know, jack Carr, one of those guys now. Then they can write basically anything, but that's yeah, you have to have 100,000 followers, you have to have an audience already, because they're not gonna pick you up because they wanna make money off you For the record this is just like a record label.
Speaker 2:Yeah, record producer.
Speaker 3:The record label is not going to do the work for you. You have to do the work, so they just wanna take money off of the followers you already have. They're not there to get you more followers, absolutely.
Speaker 1:This is. There's so many similarities in the record in that business and my wife's my manager, so she's in the bad side of the business and so she's like this is very similar to, yeah, the music industry, and it's true, and so I don't have a following, so that one was gone. And Julie is what's called a hybrid publisher, so she can be as little to me as a mentor, like hey, you can hire me, I'll help you, mentor you into your self publishing, or she can be where she is helping me, where she fully takes on everything and I'm basically paying to play, like, so I pay her all the public, I do all the things, I pay for everything up front. It's all me. For the most part, she does pay for some things and then she, for now or forever or as long as I'm with her, will always get a fraction of my book, but not anywhere close, as if I went with like a top five. So those are the three and that's what Julie does For me. She does all the stuff that I don't wanna do.
Speaker 2:So how many design versions were there?
Speaker 1:That was the, so that tape is actually on my desk right here.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, first time I wrote actually. No, that might've been the second time. We went to Claire and shout out to my boy Bull, he let me go into the rehearsal room and take a case down there. And me and my wife just took my iPhone, a Sharpie and some white gaff tape and we wrote it on a Pelican and that became the cover. So that cover is the first person. Oh, it is a Pelican.
Speaker 2:I can see the ridges now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, we actually had this. If you could read Pelican on there and we actually had to edit that out. It's funny you and I talked about that a little bit.
Speaker 3:I was like how did you get a? You say B-Rig.
Speaker 1:It does say something like B-Rig or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, there's actually. You have a shot of like someone walking into a tour bus like pulling that Pelican. You can see the full Pelican in that shot.
Speaker 1:So I actually am wearing their hoodie. Funny enough, maggie was coming home from tour and we had reached out to him. I'm like, hey, don't you have a tour bus? Like, are you guys using it this weekend? Is it parked at the lot? And she's like actually, we're rolling down Music Row right now, if you guys want to come meet us.
Speaker 1:And so we hopped in the car, shot down to Music Row here in Nashville and we just started taking candid shots of me standing. I had a radio I borrowed a radio from Claire and hooked it onto my belt. I was like I don't know what I want to do with this, but I had all these crazy visions because I was like, well, people know what roadies are for the most part, but they really don't. They just know that we're dudes that walk around with like hoodies and a laminate, and there's usually a radio After that, like it doesn't matter. So I was trying to cater to at least the look right. Yeah, and we didn't use any of those shots for too much promo, because I just use them for my Instagram, because they're funny.
Speaker 3:I want to go back to building the characters in the story of your book. So how quickly did you have all the main players? What did it look like to outline who the characters were and maybe who you thought the personalities were? Did you start with a baseline? Did you have to build that? Did you have to like, okay, because there are these siblings and then there's other people and these and a sale at the, say is like there was other, like research involved, because you had to line us up chronologically, so like because you have the three siblings, and then the timeframe that you wanted to, because you actually put times of like actual dates, so like the age of that person had to correlate with the backstory of can this person be a kid of this person or not, you know, and actually timeline map out and or logistically, are these cities and so like I'm curious, like research wise, like how did that just come after time? Did you outline this stuff? Like how did that work?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like well, version one was a lot of that, so I started. Here's a big question that I'll answer because this will start. This will maybe give insight how I wrote the book. I started with the last chapter. I wrote that last chapter first. Okay, so I had a place-.
Speaker 3:Wait, the last chapter as it stands right now, like the way it okay.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, no, no, so not that, actually that's. That was like chapter 14. We moved that to the. That was one of the things that we had like, and that's the cool thing about having Julie in my life is she's. She used to work for some of the big five, so she knows how books should be laid out, and that one character where I had it was really cool, but it also threw the entire book off a little bit, and so actually chapter 19 used to be the last one.
Speaker 1:Okay, that makes sense. So I wrote. Yeah, I wrote that one first.
Speaker 3:I'm not trying to give anything away because, like any good book of story, there's a lot that happens at the end of the book. Yeah, you know, it is a cliffhanger, you know, so it's oh, definitely.
Speaker 1:And this and chapter 20, even if I just said that I moved it, it gives nothing away. It just that character is inserted. I inserted him in a weird spot because I liked it. It was very Quentin Tarantino, okay. And so as I was writing, you know like I was envisioning all my favorite movies too, like what do I like in a movie? Like what do I wanna? What makes me watch a movie seven times, you know, and it's twists and turns and things that you're like oh, I didn't even know that I need to go back and reread that. So, yeah, I wrote chapter 19, used to be the last chapter. I wrote that first.
Speaker 1:And then, as I had about four characters the four main ones, right, actually, five I was like okay, well, I know where I need to start, but how do I give a little bit of backstory? And so then I had to add in some parents and then grandparents, and it was like and then I was like, well, this is too much backstory. So I had to like, take some of that down right, cause, though that backstory is important, it doesn't play anything really too much further. There's like a there will be more, but it's not like I had to go into the most extreme detail.
Speaker 1:So some of the character building was like I wanna add this scene in, or I wanna add this action in, but I can't add it without adding a person. So then I had to think how does this person, how would they come about being in this person's or in one of the character's lives? Or how would they like the best friends, right? How do I introduce two best friends into the scene, right? And so that was a fun one, because I got to think about my two best friends, like how did we meet, like how did our interactions go some of those first times. And so a lot of the characters are loosely based around people, I know, but no one is like a specific no one's came forward yet Everybody's like who is that?
Speaker 3:me All right. Going back to that sprinkling of your experiences, I wanna see if this connection that I made after going back and listening to that episode and something you wrote about in the book is the same experience in a different way. Ivan older person brings his kid out on stage. Why? And it's like, hey, you wanna experience something cool, and you're out in front of a crowd and you raise your hands and the crowd lights up. And that was that moment of like, oh my goodness, like we were able to move this body of people's experience. Now, what I think you were channeling is the first time you did a mic check with Paul Simon at.
Speaker 3:Glastonbury. Am I right? Is that?
Speaker 1:That is, honestly. That would be the closest thing to that experience that I could ever write. And, yes, as you were saying it in my mind, that was one of the first times I experienced moving a crowd in a way, that All right, we'll tell that story.
Speaker 3:So what's the story I'm talking about there? That way, I don't want to retell it for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So what do you want me to tell the?
Speaker 3:not the book story, but Glastonbury no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Paul Simon story, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, I wasn't sure. If you want me to ruin the whole thing, no, so it was Glastonbury. I was with Paul Simon. It was like 2011 maybe, and we were in the and what's crazy is Paul. I always knew Paul had a lot of hits, but until I toured with him, I was like holy shit, this dude has a lot of hits. And it blew my mind and that's where I I think that was one of the names that was kid, because everybody on that tour was like 40 years older than me, or not 40, but like 20 years older than me. You know, I was definitely the youngest person on that tour.
Speaker 1:And we get to Glastonbury. Beyonce's the headliner. I'm like I mean cool and all, but it's Paul Simon and we were playing like middle of the day, but it was a beautiful sunny day, everybody was in a good mood and this like bald stage manager comes over to me and he's like really pulling out the grand piano today and I'm like it's not my fucking choice, but sure, yeah, I got everything. He wants everything. Dude, it doesn't matter if we're playing the 930 club or we're playing fucking Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 2:Paul fucking Simon Paul wants everything it's.
Speaker 4:Paul, just let him do it, dude, just leave me alone.
Speaker 1:He's like, well, yeah, but you got like 100 inputs and 17 wedges and are you gonna get everything up in time? And you know, coach is out at front of house. I got Bob Lewis in monitoring. He would help me sling wedges but Bob had to get over there and start, like you know, getting packs ready and testing all this other stuff and Paul had, so, whatever, there's a bunch of inputs.
Speaker 1:I remember the guy was like giving me hell and I was like patching some of the last things. But Paul it was. He was on two hardwired 100 foot Mike's XLRs and those are the last things that would run out there. And yeah, I remember getting all the way out there to I like ran the spare and then I ran the main and I was about to walk away and either in my ears or maybe through one of the wedges, coach was like hit the microphone for me and I think that I had like 20 seconds left right, like the dude is like on the side of the stage, like cause it goes like live right Across the BBC or across one of those you know channels over there and I was like, oh, I was like a barrier to sprint off stage. I was like I fucking did it. I did it.
Speaker 1:And coaches like hit that microphone. So I walk up to it and he unmuted me right as I started saying like Mike, check one, two. And it blew across this like 140,000 people and they all started cheering. I just was like holy shit, this is insane. And then I just like like trailed off into the freaking side of stage. It was one of those moments that I could take a photo or I could video it, but it would never hit the same to anybody else. It just was all for me. And so writing that one scene yes, it was very, very reminiscent of my experience, my personal experience, with a lot of people in front of me, cause I was never really a monitor guy for Claire Very, very shortly, so I didn't spend a lot of time on stage.
Speaker 3:So I heard someone talk recently about the difference of committing words to writing versus speaking and how much more effort thought has to go into the writing versus speaking. So I want to pause with that setup. In terms of you spent, you know what, two, almost three years doing the podcasts with your wife, you know, and it was one thing to come daily and like speak and in you know, kyle and I, over the last four years, we've been like speaking and it's like you're going to say some dumb shit or sometimes you might say something goal whatever, but like it doesn't matter, you know, right. But then so, with that being said, did you ever wrestle with that? Or the thoughts of like man, I'm putting something down on this book that like, once it's out, I mean you're going to do revisions, of course, right, but like processing the difference of like committing words to paper versus just talking about something, that's a radically different experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at some point you're just like I hope no one listens to that episode and then you're fine. And then you're fine. But you can't like call everybody and say skip chapter seven, or whatever.
Speaker 1:Very thoughtful in words. I had to be very, I think. When you and me were talking on the phone, I took digs at every department right, yes, oh yes, I didn't leave one.
Speaker 1:I had made fun of audio people and I was an audio guy because we're easy to make fun of, right, like it wasn't. But I think in general if you can't laugh yourself either right, then there's bigger issues. So when I first started writing the book version one, let's just say I remember turning in chapters to my wife and she'd read it and she'd be like, are you sure you want this to be said? And I think a lot of the first two versions were I was a little angry at the industry for the way that it all left people just hanging at certain points. It wasn't just me, I think. I was vocalizing some stuff and it just sounded crass. It didn't come off well. It wouldn't have been a good look for anyone, especially me, if I was trying to do something heroic and write my thoughts out there, and so there was a lot of that.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of editing that came in version three and four that were actually very helpful and actually, I think, really made the story shine, especially by the time I got to like versions like six and seven and eight, where it wasn't about the industry anymore.
Speaker 1:It was like truly trying to tell a story as opposed to tell inside jokes, cause there was a lot of inside jokes that I first wrote in there that my wife would be like yeah, but you get that if you want this to be bigger than just you and your bus, then you're gonna need to be a storyteller, and you're a good storyteller, so tell a story. And things like that really landed with me where it was like okay, fine, let me not just say what everybody expects me to say. Let me go deep or let me really push this character to something that is gripping where people go. Oh yeah, this is interesting. And so, yeah, like words, my publisher, her whole slogan is words matter. It's true, it is such a honest thing, because I could have slammed a bunch of things in there and been that asshole, but it would have done me no good and the person reading would be like oh, I always knew he was a jerk, what was it?
Speaker 2:like going from being a good storyteller, because most of us, you're right, we all tell our own stories, we all have great stories, everyone's story is not better than anyone else's, it's a thing. But most of those stories could be summed up in like 15 or 20 minutes of conversation. You know what I mean. How do you continue? How does it feel to continue a story for three years to fine tune it?
Speaker 2:Like are you looking for like the hooks? You know how in like great crime films or dramas, there's like a hook and before you finish that chapter, you're like oh dude, I gotta put this in to hook people into the next one. Was there a lot of refining with that, since stories are told in 15, 20 minutes, but you're telling a story like yeah, yeah, yeah, it was that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's a lot of also painting. My visual to someone is so, it's in my own technique, it's in my own words, but it's also like I don't wanna paint everything to you. So, taking you to the door, right, I don't wanna tell you what color the door is, because your door might be yellow for all I know, but in my story I want you to feel the emotion, right? So all that refinement, yeah, is trying to get you to be that character, place you with that character, right. So the hook isn't always necessarily some witty line or some generic like oh, I knew this was gonna happen.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's the and I read, and I watched this video, maybe a year, probably two and a half years now, there was this South Park guys talking about how they write and they don't use and like you can build a story and and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened and this happened. And we've all watched that movie before, right, and by the end of it you're like, okay, and then this happened. Of course it did, and you hate the movie, right, and it's true.
Speaker 1:And then it's the same with the book right, and that's probably why people hate reading is because so many times they pick it up and they're just like, oh gosh, this person's just rambling on and then, and then, and then, but they said they use but and therefore, and that but and therefore leaves you wanting that next step Like this this happened, but then this happened. Therefore, this has to happen, or at least you think it's gonna happen, right? So in a fiction it's so cool because I can lead you to where you're going, I see where this story is going and then instantly change it with the way that the character comes out of a situation or something, right? So yeah, the hook wasn't the witty line always, it was more the. Maybe you didn't see that until I got to the next chapter Along that same line Can.
Speaker 1:I answer your question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but carrying that story on for more than like the 20 minutes you know what I mean and at multiple levels, with multiple characters. Like that's interesting how you developed the story, Like if they didn't know chapter three, they're not gonna get chapter seven. You know what I mean. Like it develops that far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that that's I think internally. I love. I love my imagination so much that I really really like fed on. How fun can I make this for the reader at the same time? But how much fun am I having?
Speaker 1:Because if it was boring to me like shit, I would have gone back to being a roadie, like in all and I say that in no concededness, it's just if it bored me to death, then it's gonna bore you to death. So I really tried to choose characters that I could envision living for 40, 50, 60, 70 years and having these crazy things happen to them. Because why not, why not build this like virtual space where we all are curious, right, we all, like we've heard the stories like, oh man, I went down to South America. It wouldn't be wild if we brought a brick of coke back and sold that I could buy like a car. You know like everybody's like kind of had those like weird or like, hey, man, what if we just like got in the business of like taking something from New York to California? Man, it'd be so easy. We just put it under the bay and we can do it. Man, it'd be so much fun. There's all the talk, right, everybody talks about it, so why not?
Speaker 1:I just had fun and I really really and that's what I think allowed me to go in that span of three years and really dive into each character and let myself, when I was writing for that character, let myself become that character.
Speaker 1:Like what would I do in that situation? Like if I had a, if I was making a billion dollars a month. Like what would I do? Okay, well, but then I had to like, but then I had to wrangle it back in, right, cause, let's be real, like to this book is also very realistic. Like I just got a review back and someone was like, though, this is a wild idea, it could happen, right, you know. And so it was. It was a cool review for me and cause this is a professional reviewer, this isn't like a friend of mine reviewing it. This is like someone that this is their job and and so yeah, so like to carry that story on. Like. I think the easiest way to say it is I had to enjoy becoming each character and really have fun with it, not worry about anything other than that.
Speaker 3:Along the same lines of being able to tell that story for the time or that long of a time, and and and figuring out what's actually right to captivate people. I know you have thoughts or desires for this to become a Netflix special or a TV show or movie or whatever.
Speaker 2:That's what I wanted to get into.
Speaker 3:But before we go there, though, all right. So in this this dichotomy world that I lived and I'm reading this thing, here's what I'm analyzing. I'm like I'm going okay, I was trying to, which, I imagine when anybody's reading a book, they're like you put visuals in your head, right, your picture of the story. That's what humans do, right. But then I started thinking about okay, if this were Netflix, whatever it was, a video, right, there's interesting things with video that you would have done, that you don't have to use words for right. You can create a sense, a feeling, an atmosphere, and not one word had to be said.
Speaker 3:However, when you're in written form, you have to create that landscape. So did you find yourself having to figure out like, how? Like you said before, it's like I don't want to tell what color the door is, but I do have to give a sense of like I'm down in the basement of the arena. What might that actually for someone who hasn't been in the basement of the arena, I have to put some level there, whereas if I were just on camera right now, there's no words being said, but the camera's got to move all out of motion. So did you have to figure out how to like process to that degree, how much description that go to like. Where is that line?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, oh yeah, every at any time that I was explaining a smell or maybe a texture or something like that. That's where you really have to kind of use your imagination into best description. And there's a part in the last chapter where I talk about the smell of the rain and it's a very distinct smell and honestly, I wrote it knowing that a very small amount of people that live in the desert will know exactly what I was talking about. But if you read that line as a person that lived in New York, he might be curious as to be like oh, what's that? He says this creosote tree. Like what is this? You might Google it, right?
Speaker 1:I have creosote in my shower right now, by the way, because it gives that same Same smell. Yeah, but a lot of people just don't. They would never understand that smell. So there's moments like that in the book where I wrote things like that that might be very, very to one demographic of people that where they live, or just a group of people like roadies might get a joke in there, but no one else would.
Speaker 1:And I think that that's like taking people to a place is hard and maybe I'm not doing it justice, but I feel like there's another line about tears hitting her jeans. You can only describe that with so many ways, but tears hitting your jeans, you can feel the texture of jeans. You've heard water hit your jeans before and I think that there's points in getting to people to a place. You kind of just get them close enough and then their imagination goes the rest of the way, which that's the kind of the cool part of the thing about fiction versus other forms of writing. Maybe because other forms of writing you have to be very, especially nonfiction. If you're writing an audio book, you can't just be like, well, you know, like the preamp kind of sounds like this.
Speaker 1:You kind of have to be a little more detailed right Like this is what you're looking at, the meter, and this is what's happening on the, this is what it should sound like and this is the Christmas and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In the fiction world, there's that leeway, there's that little bit of like. Oh, this is kind of interesting and I saw it happen with my wife because, like I said, she read every chapter, she read every word, like I've read this book 40, 50 times now.
Speaker 2:Does she like you?
Speaker 1:She surprisingly yeah she does. And I'm probably her worst client. I'm annoying as all can be, but when she would turn to me and say, oh, that was really well put, I was like, okay, good, if you got that, then everybody else would get that. And so there was. I had my test tester right next to me most of the time Awesome.
Speaker 3:Speaking of your wife I. That was a weird intro. Yes, I wanna go back to and I know we are. I mean, we're not gonna have time to get to everywhere. I wanted to go in a reasonable time for it. I can come back. No, no, no. So, but while we're here, though, I do wanna touch on for a minute because I don't know what. I wanna do. This again On the Backyards and Peveys thing. Right, so you spent a couple years across from your wife, every week having a podcast. What I was fascinating is that you could have gone around the route of any of the podcasts, of like having guests on and you had a few, but for the most part, it was you know, your wife.
Speaker 3:What? I guess a couple things, then you can pull it together. A so did you know the book was coming and this was an avenue to hey, drum up your name and get some exposure and to kind of talk some things up, because you didn't talk about the book in the beginning when you started the podcast, it wasn't until later on you're like oh hey, by the way, I'm writing this book.
Speaker 3:And then what did that do for you and your wife? I was actually, believe it or not, I was actually jealous of the experience that you got to have with your wife and actually sit down for this hour every week and like process life together and think about it. It's like, man, that would be a lot of fun to do Like. So what did that experience do for you? Would you learn about you and your wife over that time? How did the book fall into all of that? Like I know there's a lot loaded in there, but what was that experience for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and she works, like I said, in the industry, and she worked with a lady that was another manager at the same management place that she is at, and she broke off years ago, and when we first started this, before we even had maybe, let's say, even chapter one, I actively went back and started reading books that I liked. I read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential again twice. I read this book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and one of the things he says in there is if you're gonna do something, just do it, don't. It's like people that are like I'm gonna go lose 10 pounds, no, you're not, you just go do it. And then, when you come back and I'm like, oh shit, you look like 10 pounds thin, or you'd be like I lost 10 pounds. It's a mentality thing, right, and so one of the things he says in there is like, if you really wanna do something, great, tell a few people, don't go spread it to the world, just sit down, really actively, do it. And so I did that, and with her, though, she went and had this meeting, and this is counterintuitive to exactly what I just read, right, and this girl now manages a very big, I think, christian author fiction maybe, or I forget a big author and she said does your husband have a podcast? And we didn't.
Speaker 1:And so she comes home. She's like, hey, so, and so said you should start a podcast. And I was like, nope, I'm not doing it. She's like what do you mean? You're not doing it? I was like I'm not gonna go sit in a room with a white background and tell stories. She goes yeah, but you have great stories. I'm like, yeah, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell the same drunk story of me falling down the stairs in London or something stupid like that, like no one's gonna wanna hear that. And she's like, yeah, people will probably wanna hear that. And so that went on forever.
Speaker 1:And so I went and I was driving the forklift at that freaking cabinet warehouse place and delivering these cabinets. And I'm talking to this young kid that worked with me and I'm like well, you know what? Maybe I could. And I'm like I guess I could do it in my backyard, but I won't tell all my stories. Like I'll have a conversation with someone, like I like talking. And he's like, oh, yeah, that's kinda cool, like I'd listen to that.
Speaker 1:I was like would you? And so you know, it kind of went back and forth. And then my friend happens to be in the podcast world so I asked her a couple tips and so that's how the podcast started, right, and yes. Then my wife's like well, we need to talk about the book. I was like no, we're not gonna talk about the book because I read that I need to finish it first, and so that was the only. And looking back on it, yes, the podcast was started to help promote the book, but at the same time it led me to a lot of people who now support me with the book, right.
Speaker 1:And even if it's Right here that's why we're having the conversation right Absolutely, and I told myself from the start even if I get one person to enjoy me, then that means that I think that that's the point, Like I don't need to worry about hundreds of thousands of people, Like if it comes, it comes. If it not, then hey, I made a new friend and you and me have become real closer to the years. And it's really rad too, in my opinion, because here we are all chatting. Now I know Kyle. I didn't know Kyle beforehand. We've probably crossed paths somewhere in the world just because of the nature of the beast, but here we are having this awesome conversation. We've gotten to know each other on different levels now, and so the podcast was wildly successful, even though, yes, I didn't mention the book for 60 episodes or something, it was a long time ago.
Speaker 2:Chris and I are on episode 270, something together and we're just now figuring it out. We're just kind of now getting it, but I can. You guys are good, but I can see how that develops. You as a thinker, I mean, chris and I talk all the time offline and 95% of the times we're like man.
Speaker 2:we should record that or whatever, and it's kind of fun because you like open new neurological paths and now that I think about it, I am in VSCU as well that you did it with your wife, because that would be fun to do for anybody, I think. And I'm gonna do one with my daughter too, because I think if I can get her speaking like I speak now before, then it's a win Like I soon, surely. I want to see the development of your book because now when, when Chris mentioned you know, hey, man, this might go a different direction. You might actually try to, you know, put something visual out to it your eyes lit up. So and so that whole thing, podcast book, covid, talking to people learning new paths, like your grammar, your your question and answer format, like you're almost doing that in your head now. So now that you're done with this book, it's out, people are gonna read it and review it in the whole nine yards. Your next step you really are gonna do like a screenplay for this thing, maybe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I. There's a few things in the book that I probably Just can't say, right, this second, because we haven't actually signed any like for solid deals. But there's definitely some amazing things happening and here's to the here's why I think it's happening. Right, when this whole start, all of the start, me and my wife weren't close like we were close. We were married but we weren't close. And so you guys are exactly right, I and and absolutely blessed and so lucky that I had just the ability to leave the road. She told me to. She said do it, let's do it, let's go all in.
Speaker 1:Not a lot of people get that. Not a lot of people have that support. I'm and and and it was. And it was like, okay, fine, let's downsize everything, fuck it, we don't need all this other shit, like let's just.
Speaker 1:If it means that we win 20 years from now, then it's a bigger win all together, because then I'm home, I'm all this stuff, and then, yes, so then we started talking, but it was like from day one we both said, alright, if you're gonna do this, we have to go all the way, all in Everything, to the point where we have a TV show from it.
Speaker 1:Because the second we said the name. We both looked at each other and we're like that's a pretty cool TV show name and Everything that we've done up to this point From the wrapping of the books that look like bricks of cocaine, it everything has been a team and in its and it's really rad and it's really Hard at times. It doesn't make it easy because we've gotten to the point where we're so on, we've been so honest, we're so able to talk to each other that, yeah, like sometimes you know we have to be like okay, way, this isn't manager, and I'm not your manager right now, I'm your wife. So let's, let's, let's have a husband wife conversation about the kids. It's like, okay, yeah, my bad. And then there's, but now we have to lay, but it is cool because, yeah, there's, it's a very open, honest, like. I'll tell her like, oh, we should go do this. She's like pump the brakes.
Speaker 1:We're not doing and it developed like and it's still developing and it is. It is sad that we're not doing it anymore, but we had to actively make that, that choice to say it's either all in with the book now or all in with the podcast, and the chances of us Having what we want with the podcast wasn't gonna be there. So we were like, let's just all in with the book and and yeah, man it. I think it's rad that you want to do with your daughter. I think this, I think I think podcasting is so cool on so many levels because it introduces people to new ideas and so many cool things. So I think what you guys are doing and and future doing, it's super rad. And it's super cool that you have me on your show as a writer, not as as what I used to do. I thank you so much for having me on for that reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, when we first, when Chris started telling me about beers and backyard bevvies like the, yeah, I was like really, really, and I listened to a few. And then I saw your social media stuff about the book, he sent it over and I've kind of been in on it for a while. But, like you said, this wasn't you. Audio wasn't your passion and, to tell you the truth, that's that's probably why I'm sitting here right now. It's not mine anymore either. It really isn't.
Speaker 2:My passion is I'm finding joy other places than mixing shows and making sure that I find the chafing dish line like it becomes a different thing and I, the open and honest conversations that we can have on a podcast with people, is like this is the way this life has been forever.
Speaker 2:We just haven't been able to show anybody or let anybody listen. So, being a writer, like I said, we can find the similarities in all this thing, like how your publisher is, like a record producer, how these things. It's very circular and it always goes back to that stupid loose connection that we have. You know, and it it works, because I leave these podcasts now being a fan of my own shit that we're doing like I don't think it's my own shit. I think I'm like an actor in this thing. And then I go back and listen to it and I'm like, wow, man, we really tapped some people that Needed a platform to say this. Whether it's for a hundred people or a hundred thousand people, like I heard, it doesn't matter and it made a difference with me and you know how I can tell the next one's gonna be better and the next one's gonna be better and like it. Just it just keeps growing, like this thing is kind of amazing.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, I don't know how, and if you're enjoying it, then then that means other people enjoy too, because it's easy to tell and it's it's phoned in. I mean, let's be real, yeah, totally it's like. It's like that I how do magnets work?
Speaker 2:we can sit here, we can figure that out for you guys. We'll figure out how magnets work. We got this.
Speaker 1:But we have been talking for I mean. But that's the thing, though, is like it is so cool to like just open the floodgates, like let's talk about something else, like it's like let's, let's like learn something cool. And I and I think that I commend you guys for taking that step in that cool way, because your, your, your symbol alone is so cool, because it's a brain like almost making a connection, and that's all it takes is like one person to spark one word and One emotion or one little something, and someone goes oh, my gosh, that was me, I was that, or I need to go there, or oh, and and and it and it's, and it's really rad. And I'll say, whenever you're you start riding, don't edit yourself. Like Kyle, if you, if you've ever wanted to write something, just put it out there, because you can always go back and you can always delete something, but you'll never.
Speaker 2:If you, if you're in the moment and you're like I'll have to run it through the boss lady first, just like you did. She is not afraid to tell me how stupid I am.
Speaker 1:And that's and that's brilliant though, but I'm just telling you, never edit yourself while you're writing something, because you'll miss gold somewhere in that like little. That moment, no.
Speaker 2:And I'll take that as dad advice. Like that's dad advice Don't edit yourself with your child, you know. Show them how things really are. Like All these all these things are very applicable.
Speaker 2:I love the quote that you said from the writers, like don't spread it around, just do it and be like yo. If Someone doesn't notice, it's almost like they're not, that doesn't matter. If you don't notice that I did something, then that doesn't matter to me. I noticed like I guy, I completed it, it's done like it happened. Yeah, I'm gonna cool, I'm gonna quit announcing shit. I'm gonna be an ultimate fighter. Oh, I announce that. They're mine. I'm not.
Speaker 1:It was, honestly, if you've never read, think and grow rich. It is not about how to make money, it's about how to grow your mind. Absolutely 100%. It's the coolest, but I've, I've, I've read it like four times now in life, because every time I need to like get a little inspiration in my life. And he wrote it back in like the 30s, so it's not like it's anything new.
Speaker 2:I love the Anthony Anthony Bourdain book. Is is amazing too.
Speaker 1:It sits right next to my writing area and it's actually Signed by the dude Uh-huh. Yeah, man, like one of my biggest inspirations ever. I even have a nod to him in the book. Yeah, I, literally.
Speaker 3:I got to. There's a couple points like I read the book and I would text Philip when I get to something, and that was what's up oh you found a way to get Anthony the bird in in the in the story in the book, or, you know, as a reference or whatever. And I have a cool signed copy too of a book. It's this book, the ready cartel, you know. So I have. You know, mine's numbered Kyle.
Speaker 2:Let's put it out there everyone go pick up the roadie cartel. It's coming out an audio book soon, or is it out now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but but most people have listened to this. It likely might be out, or with. Yeah, then you know, a few weeks. We should probably mention so and I'll. We'll tag us on the front for those who maybe haven't made it this far. But we're gonna drop a Clip and can you maybe just do a quick setup of what people are gonna experience in that clip? Or Just you know the audio book of it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, um, it was really. I had a chance to choose any part of the book that people should listen to, and I figured that the first five minutes of the book is super intense, and so I just went straight from first five minutes of Wyatt being a production manager and she goes into some pretty heavy shit. And so there's, it leads you directly into Her story and where she's at. I I'm pretty sure it cuts off rated a A spot where you're like, okay, I need more now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so to me on the DL and I was like no.
Speaker 1:It's a, I mean, and she does, and so the, the I had seven different actresses read that, the, these five, they, and I think it was the first ten minutes that I would get clips from, and this was the first. I chose her First off the bat. I listened to the other ten just, or seven, just for the fun of it, because I was like I mean I might as well hear them out, but I chose Melissa right away. She's from Jersey. There's just something. Every, every, everybody around me was like I don't know her, she's, she has like this little bit of. It's a little sexy. I was like no, no, wait till it kicks in. And she like curses, or wait till she gets to something that's a little rowdy and sure enough, like her little Jersey comes out just a touch. I'm like yeah, that's perfect.
Speaker 3:Well, phillip. So if you could define your legacy or how you'd want to be known, how would you define that?
Speaker 1:Honestly hasn't? I think at the end of the day now, maybe, philip, 10 years ago I would. I would want to be the biggest you know. I Guess I'm most famous roadie ever. Right, that would be like how I would have thought, but I'll answer this as honest as I possibly can. I hope that I can inspire my children to never hold back their dreams, because doing this book was exactly that. I have only followed my dreams for the last like basically four years, and I've never been happier in life, I've never had better relationships with friends, family, my wife and and so, at the end of the day, I hope that all they can look at is like that I did exactly what I wanted to do, and that would be my legacy.
Speaker 2:I think he's only the second person to mention kids in his legacy, chris yeah 280,000 episodes and you're only the second to mention the kids. I think I was the first.
Speaker 1:That's right. Cheers to you, my friend, hey, man.
Speaker 2:That's what I say. If, like, they can't carry on the name, then you're. You didn't do my job.
Speaker 1:Totally no, man. No, I appreciate you guys for having me on and I look forward. Anytime you need a good dude to hop on, let's do it. We can not talk about the book, we can talk about anything. I'm happy.
Speaker 2:Chris and I talk shit all the time. Let's just hit record and do it right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's so much we didn't get to. There's definitely some good stories. Even though you know you don't want to say maybe talk about Focusing on the past, there's plenty good stories we can tell.
Speaker 1:We can. We can always have one of them you know I Wanted to go there.
Speaker 3:We didn't have time. You know you've battled some like anxiety, depression, stuff that you talked through. I mean there's so many places that we could like go. But thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Pick up his book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go listen to the book and the and the audiobook by the time it comes out, so it will be on spot. I'm putting it on a platform that broadcasts it across Spotify, apple, audible awesome, google, cool. It'll be available at libraries too. So if you get audiobooks through libraries, I'm gonna try it's gonna be everywhere for everyone. So and and we like, are gonna have it like lower than most audiobooks, so hopefully people like hell yeah and we'll definitely give you updates on our socials loose connection pod, facebook and Instagram and Tiktok.
Speaker 2:Here and there there'll be some clips of this. Thanks, philip, dude, I really appreciate this. You're just gonna come back on. We're gonna talk shit. We're gonna talk about El Paso and the chaparral tree.
Speaker 4:You know I'm saying that's where you get the thing from. That smells good and we could talk about a.
Speaker 2:What was it at the drive-in Sparta? Oh my gosh Sparta, I mean we could just have a Lee Trevino episode, if you want, for in your, in your honor.
Speaker 1:There's a road, let's go. I used to eat eat Mexican food on the traviño.
Speaker 2:Lee Trevino Avenue. That's a, that's a fight.
Speaker 1:I'm in man, let's do it, and I hope that everybody that's an audio guy takes my audiobook and starts tuning PAs with it.
Speaker 4:I, october 13th 2009, 1335, the arena, seattle Washington. Sitting alone is something new to me. I sit in my production office, confused and angry, and with a loaded revolver in my lap. Outside these four concrete walls, the world is spinning, but the rotation of my world is quickly slowing down. I have a tough decision to make, facing a pivotal point in my life. I'm either going to face my demons or end it to join my father Without a soul to turn to. With the odds against me, the idea of pulling the trigger becomes Easier by the second. Simply adjust the barrel to the temple and apply a slight pressure to instigate a final click. I Need to escape the constant mental pain that has consumed me since his passing. With the hammer pulled back and ready to fire I Am sorry, father escapes my mouth in a whisper. I shut my eyes. I take one long last breath in and Start to squeeze the. I Suddenly feel pressure, a hand on my shoulder. I jolt around, nothing Freaking out.
Speaker 4:I sit back in my chair as pictures of my father and reflections of how strong a man he was flash in my unhealthy, fragile and fucked up state of mind. Is this how he would want me to reach the afterlife. I'm not sure if there is a heaven, but my father started to believe during his last years on earth. Would he accept my presence on his cloud of eternal peace, with my brain trickling down my neck? Probably not. Besides, I may be alive because he has unfinished business that falls onto my shoulders caused by his untimely death. Barrel pressed to my head and the hammer pulled back, my thought shifted from a cloud in the sky Back down to reality. In all honesty, I'm not sure if I will be ready for what stands against me, but my brains on the floor also send shivers down my spine and tears down my face, since it is in my blood to stand my ground and not run Pressure from my finger on the trigger, softened, though it is not removed, I sit and think of the battle ahead, and it is not a choice. When I fight, the freight train that is my enemy shows zero signs of slowing down. If anything, the fight has already begun. I have only one weapon and something I have used before, a nuisance, but a necessity. It is time. I have waited long enough. I have to make a choice. Like my father always said shit or get off the pot, life or death. I Close my eyes, slide to the edge of my seat and inhale as if I'm ready to plunge into a deep, dark abyss. I hold my breath, I pause, the world around me stills as I hear my tears landing on my jeans below.
Speaker 4:One of my favorite photos of my father and me standing on the edge of a stage suddenly comes to mind. I Must have been seven. We were standing with our backs facing the crowd, hundreds of thousands of screaming fans behind us. I was so scared that day. But he held my hand and said look at me, don't worry about the crowd. One day I will be gone and only a voice in your head telling you to stand tall. But today I will show you that you can move thousands with just one small action Down on one knee. He smiled at me and started to count down as the crowd got audibly louder. Three, two, one, raise your arms to the sky, he shouted. The photo is taped to the wall of my road case. My father, my stuff tiger, me and a sea of people all have our hands up. I think he would want me to stay and fight.
Speaker 4:I Force open one eye closely, followed by the other, and there it sits, on the desk in front of me, a New beginning. With the guns still in one hand, I lean forward and pick up my new weapon. It is lighter. I press the button on the side. The screen shines against my face like a morning light. A Vibration sends a rush of energy back to my soul and a sigh of relief escapes my mouth. Holding this modern-day sword, I run my thumb across the smooth surface and swallow firmly, while my nerves strain to travel from my brain to my fingertips. The cartel will never expect an attack like this. They can't stop me now. I.