Bass Players Get No Respect Until They Do (Brad Foss)

You can hear the exact moment a life changes when someone stops trying to force a plan and starts following the next right step. Brad Foss takes us from Janesville, Wisconsin, where he’s a quiet kid tinkering with early computers and falling in love with music, to a decision that shocks even him: joining the United States Army for a technical career.

We talk through the unglamorous truth of Army basic training at Fort Jackson, the value of focused job training at Fort Gordon, and what it’s like to handle secure communications and COMSEC work with serious clearances. Then Brad shifts from soldier to civilian, sharing the strange feeling of putting the uniform on for the last time and realizing you have to rebuild your own structure. His Germany years near Stuttgart add color and contrast: local festivals, community life off post, and the kind of friendships that only form when you’re far from home.

From there, the story opens up into music technology school in Minneapolis, playing bass, guitar, drums, keys, and singing, plus the messy reality of band life, big opportunities, and hard trade-offs. We also get personal about marriage, divorce, kids, and how reinvention keeps showing up. Finally, Brad explains moving to Arizona for remote IT work, navigating corporate outsourcing, and finding new purpose through leadership and service at the American Legion in Florence.

If you like veteran stories, military transition, Army Signal and communications careers, or the behind-the-scenes life of working musicians, this one hits all of it. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Meet Brad And Janesville Roots

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Today is Thursday, April 30th, 2026. We're talking with Brad Foss, who served at the United States Army. So good afternoon, Brad. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking time out to talk with me today. Not a problem. All right, we're gonna kick it off with the hard questions first. Oof, geez. When and where were you born?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Uh I was born in Janesville, Wisconsin in 1966. All right. And did you grow up in Janesville? I did grow up in Janesville. I stayed there until I went into the Army right around 19.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Okay. And talk to me about growing up in Janesville, Wisconsin. That's one place I have not been.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Uh well, uh, at the time that I was living there, it was probably about the whitest town you'd ever want to walk into. Um yeah, I didn't really realize just how white it was until I went into the army and went, oh my. Right. There's people of other colors.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Well, it's funny because we I talk to people all the time, and um I hear them say things like when I went to basic training, that was the first time I ever met someone who didn't look like me, right? It was black.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Well, other than the fact that we had um plenty, we had uh Vietnamese refugees that you know hadn't relocated to our area. So we knew a lot of those guys, and you know, there was a lot of you know, because of them moving in, we had a lot of the um, you know, Vietnamese restaurants and the you know, those kind of things. And you know, so got to know those people. It was the first time, you know, when we after uh Vietnam that we started getting those people come in, and you know, it was they were they were all great people. I graduated with a few of them. In fact, my doctor was one of them, yeah. So my pediatrician, so you know we got to know everybody pretty well, and you know, it was a pretty tight-knit community, even though it was a pretty good-sized town. I mean, it was about 50,000. And but outside of that, it was a pretty quiet town, not a whole lot going on, two high schools. You know, we had the east and the west side high school. I went to the west side, and you know, yeah, we always have our you know, cross town rivalries every year for the sports games and stuff like that. Uh one stadium in town where both teams played at.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

So how'd you determine like who was home field at that point?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Uh it swapped off per year. Okay. So, yeah. Makes sense. One year the east side, uh, Craig Cougars were the Eastsiders, and the Parker Vikings were the other ones. So I was Parker.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Um now, brothers and sisters. I have one brother, uh-huh, and he's also ex-military.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

He was he went the commission route. Yeah. But he's the one that um when I went in, he decided that, well, maybe I'll go in too. And he actually got me a bump in rank because I brought somebody in with me. So it was like, oh, okay, instead of going in as, you know, E0. Right. Went in as an E2. And I had a little bit of um college credits that helped me with that too. But um, yeah, he went in and he went through basic training shortly after I did. And um then he decided that he was gonna go the he didn't go OCS, he went R O T C.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

But then pay for college and yep, he did all that stuff, and then you know, he got his commission and ended up he was in the reserves, and he ended up uh getting out as captain.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Okay. All right, it's a good rank. Yeah, it's a good rank. Yeah. Yeah, I know a lot of people that like that rank. So is he older brother, younger brother? Younger brother. Okay. Was he the golden boy then?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

No, but he was he was the jock. Okay. He was the jock, I was the nerd. And uh out of everybody that knew the both of us, they I would have been the one that they would have thought would have never considered going into the service. That, you know, that I was gonna be the homebody, I was gonna stick around Janesville, and I'm the one that ended up going the furthest away. You know, and you know, lived in Germany for three years when I was my actually first and only duty station when I was in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

We well, I think we surprise people sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, we did. Yeah. I um, like I said, they thought that you know, I because I was kind of quiet and you know, liked music and just, you know, I was like, eh, whatever, you know, and I was a good student, but my brother was the one that was on the honor roll. Right. Uh I could have been on the honor roll had I decided that I wanted to apply myself. But um, as we were talking about with your brother, I just it was easy for me, so I didn't care.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Right.

unknown 5:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

I think people miss that too, right? Yeah, a lot of times people mistake that for laziness, but you're bored. Yeah. Like when school is not challenging you, you're bored, and that's a great opportunity to drop out or just not do anything.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah, well, I I finished. I wasn't I couldn't drop out because my parents would have hung me up for that one. It wouldn't have happened.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

But uh and talk to me about your parents, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

They're still around and just about ready to turn 82. Wow. And my dad was a hairdresser, my mom was a legal secretary, and they were pretty big in the community as far as you know being known around there. Um one little piece of nostalgia for my family. My mom, at one point in time, I do believe I recall her saying that she dated Bud Sealig for a very short time. Bud's from Janesville. Oh, so yeah. Yeah. So when he owned the brewers, we would get tickets sporadically to go to the county stadium. And they were always down the first baseline.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Clearly, he still had fond memories of your mother, though.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Uncle Bud took care of us. I'm not gonna say anything bad about the man. I know there's a lot of people that do, but I'm not gonna say anything bad about him.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yeah, I guess you can't.

Early Computers And Finding Music

SPEAKER_00 6:15

No. But like I said, they were both worked their behinds off, you know, blue-collar family. And you know, we had them, yeah, I wanted for nothing. So you know, I can't say that, you know, it was a good childhood. I often wish I could go back to it.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Yeah, I think we reach an age where sometimes we're like, oh, that would be great. I would love to have that again. Yeah. So what kind of nerd things did you do in school?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Uh well, I was one of the first ones they had uh a brand new computer class. So I was one of the first ones in the you know, brand new computer courses that we're going through when we were going through high school, and we had our old uh Apple IIEs and we were learning how to program in basic and you know, do all kinds of stuff. So yeah, I would learn some of that stuff and go home on my parents' Apple IIE and make and make all kinds of goofy noises. My mom would be sitting there screaming, going, What why is the computer doing this? He shouldn't be doing this.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Good time was had by all, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, yeah. Learn how to be mischievous at that point in time because you know you know stuff that others don't. Right. You might as well take advantage of that. Yeah. So besides the computer club, I mean, I did a lot of reading and I was, you know, big into music, so I was one of the music nerds. So instead of, you know, I tried being an athlete, I was not good at it. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

What what what like what sport did you try?

SPEAKER_00 7:38

I tried baseball, I tried football. Uh, football didn't last very long because I uh intercepted the pass and got headed right in the lower back. And I was a tiny guy at the time. I mean, I graduated high school at 125 pounds. So I was skin and bones, and I got walloped with a helmet right in the back. And doctor told me after that one, he goes, You take one more shot like that. He goes, You're probably not gonna walk. Like, okay. Tough choice, right? Tough choice. So I was like, all right, well, I gave it a shot. Yeah. But I did basketball, uh, it wasn't good enough to make the high school basketball team, so I was always doing church leagues, that kind of stuff. So it just, you know, me and my friends would hung up together. We would, you know, do games of basketball and stuff like that. And just, yeah, that was seemed like to be the big game right around there at that time. Uh, you know, we would I got my arm broken in our our backyard at the house because we were playing backyard football. And you know, running back to kickoff, took a head right to the arm, laying on the ground going, yeah, my arm's broken.

unknown 8:46

I heard that. I heard it, Greg.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Yeah, so it's not it's not like you didn't try sports because you really did. I tried out, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

I tried, I trust me, I I learned through trial and error that I was not good at this stuff. So what drew you to music? Uh the fact that it came easy. Uh-huh. Uh my grandfather, everybody tells me, was he was one of those guys like your brother who would just pick something up.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

By the way, like my grandfather, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

So my grandfather, he would pick up an instrument, play it.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

And everybody'd be like, How are you doing that? Well, that was me when it came to they would put instruments in front of me, and you know, especially stringed instruments, and it was immediately like, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, I can play that. Yeah. And so it came real easy. And when I wanted to have guitar lessons, um, my parents were like, Okay, well, you you can go in and have guitar lessons if you want, but we're gonna you need to learn piano first. I'm like, no, I don't want, I'm not interested in learning piano. Uh-huh. And then later on in life, one of the bands that I was in, I actually played piano in the band. It was with Brooke. Uh-huh. And um, so we did that, and my mom was like, When did you learn how to play piano? I go, Well, when I went to music school, I says everything that we did revolved around the piano. And you know, so even when we were doing vocal training, you had to know where the notes were on the piano, so you could sit there and sing along with it. And you know, I just kind of got adept that okay, this is how we do it. I mean, not that I was a great piano player, but yeah, I could sit there, you know, do some chords and yeah, show some people.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

You know, I'm a little more talented than you thought I was. Good enough, right? Yeah, good enough. Yeah. Well, and the piano's a really a stringed instrument, so not much different from the guitar. Not much different, but chord progression and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

But when you're looking at a piano, you're looking at both the high end and the low end. Yeah. So I mean, you're cording, but you're also running the bass line as well as running a potential guitar line at that point too. So you got the melody line, you're keeping the bass with one hand and doing the melody line with the other. And you know, I can see where a lot of people give up on it after a while because it even for me when I was sitting down with it, it it got kind of frustrating for a while because it was like, oh, geez, I'm not used to, you know, this hand does this and this hand, oh, because I'm used to this.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Right, right. The strum hand just strums. Yeah, the strum hand. I just look at me. Monkey play string. Yay! Right, right. Well, that's the thing. Like, my brain doesn't work that that way. Like, I've always thought drums were cool until I realized that you have to your foot has to do one thing, your left hand's doing something, your right hand's doing something else, and your left foot's doing something else.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

The funny thing about it was I've never had a problem with drums. Really? I sat down on the drums. My uncle was a drummer, uh-huh. And we would go over to his house and I would sit down on he had a ginormous kit. So I would sit down on his kit, and he he used to like to set his stuff up like what Cozy Powell used to set his up. All the Toms were flat. So when you went around the kit, you had to be up and go flat around everything. So I actually learned the Cozy Powell method of doing this kind of stuff before I went, oh, you mean you can turn those heads? Like, oh, that's so much easier. Right, right. More like the rush method. Yeah, more like the rush method. But I found when I sat down with it to be able to have my foot doing the kick drum and my hands doing whatever they needed to do. It was like, oh, okay. Well, it just that one came naturally. So in the bands that I've been in, I've played mostly it's been bass, but I've played guitar, uh, played drums, played keyboards, and I've been lead singer of most of the bands that I've been in.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

So I don't get ahead of myself. Yeah. But I got to ask this question because I see it all over the internet. What's the deal with bass players? Like they get no respect.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yes, but we bring some of it on ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

I mean, you do get respect, but you like get no respect.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

We get no respect. Most of it is because we're very self-deprecating, because we're, you know, we're more of a rhythm instrument. Right. We're we're supposed to lock in with a kick drum. And you know, the the the deal is how do you know it's you've got a good bass player? Nobody knows you're there.

unknown 13:15

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

You like salt, right? Like if the food didn't have salt, you would know something was missing, you just wouldn't know what it was.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Right. Okay. So yeah, or were that little bit of spice that you know you know if it was missing, but you wouldn't know exactly what it was. But you know, and you know, so many people say that bass should be felt and not heard, which you know is another way of looking at it. And I've been mixed both ways, but right when the last band I was in with Minnesota, I was uh I was a little more um controlling over my tone because I was like, nah, I I don't want to be one big low-end rumble. I want to be, I want people to hear what I'm doing as well as feel it.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

So I actually taken control of all that stuff from the stage and just fed them online and said, you know what? You might want to run that flat.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Good for you. Good for you. Well, okay, so let's uh go back to school though. I don't wanna I don't want to leave anything out here. So you uh were you in the school band then? I was in jazz band. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

I didn't play any of the like marching band instruments or any of the rest of that. I was I just played guitar at the time, and there was really nobody else in our class that played guitar. So it was me and one other guy.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Were you the cool guy at the party with the guitar thing?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

No, no, I wasn't. No, I I did that a couple of times, and it was like uh, you know, you're gonna end up like John Belushi and him. No.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Right, right. Or there's like I see I've seen the commercial where the guy's getting ready to play the ukulele at a party and his friend takes it away from him and like, don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Yes. That would yeah, I learned real quick that people who play guitar parties are not the most favorite.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

And at the time, I mean, I was I think I was a little more interested in drinking. When I get there, I was like, hey, where's the alcohol?

unknown 15:09

Right.

Jobs After School And Hitting A Ceiling

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Not gonna play guitar, I'm gonna get drunk. Yeah, I could see that. I could see that. So uh you get through high school, you graduate. Yep. Um, now did you you did you join the military right after high school then?

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Nope. I graduated in 84. I didn't go into service until 87.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Okay. So what happens after high school?

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Uh right after high school, I got a couple of jobs. I had right out of high school, I had a um uh warehouse job that was somebody that um my parents knew and they were looking for part-time help. It was they were liquidating like uh an old insurance company or something like that. So they had all this paperwork that had to be done. So originally I'd started in the front area where they were doing the processing of all the the paperwork, and we had to go through that. And after a while, um people would come and go because it was a temporary position. I stayed there until the very end of things.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

And so by the time that ended up, I had gone from in front to in back moving the cases around everything. So I was more warehouse work at that point in time. But I stayed there until they closed the doors on that project. And after that, I got a job with the big grocery store in town, Woodman's. And I started working there, and that was a real good position at the time because they were a union shop and we got more than what everybody else got.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

And um, so I worked there for four years, three, four years. Yeah, it was 84 to 87. So oh yeah, so it was three years before I went into the service, and when I left there, I didn't leave. I went on military leave of absence.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

So I you know, I decided early on in 1987 after I'd been through a year of college. I was going that we had a uh UW extension college where you could get your basics done right there in town. Yeah. So I was going to night school during that point in time, and I got through a year of that and realized I I'm just not into this. And I this, you know, the schooling is just not for me. I gotta do so, I've got to be doing something. Right. And so I after looking around and realizing, because the Woodman's at the time, they well, they still do, but they have a liquor store as well. So I was at the time I had made it up to assistant manager of the liquor store. And I knew that there was a glass ceiling right there because the manager of the place had been with him since the get-go and he wasn't going anywhere. Yeah, so it was like, I'm never gonna be the manager of this place. And um, you know, if I have to move up anywhere, I'm gonna have to move out of the liquor store. So I'm looking around for things to do, and you know, the army commercials came on TV and uh you wanted to be all you could be, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:09

All that you could be.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yeah, well, I don't know if I was everything I could be, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

That's the other one. Uh uh, we do more before 6 a.m. than most people do all day. Yeah, which to me wasn't really a selling point.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

No, it really wasn't because I'm not an early riser.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

No, no. I yeah, I guess not. So you just doesn't you were like, okay, I gotta do something. So you so why the army?

Choosing The Army And A Tech MOS

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Um I went in originally and talked to the recruiters. Just it I started out with the army. I was gonna go check out some of the other services. I pretty much already ruled out the Marines because I knew that you know those were the tough guys, and I just wasn't a tough guy. Either you're a Marine or you're not a Marine. That's just all that was. You either have that mentality or you do not. And the Marines that I served with, great people, lunatics, all of them. Necessary, but still lunatics, absolutely necessary, and they were the greatest people ever, but God, they were lunatics. And so I was gonna look at Army and the Air Force and the uh Navy as well. My best friend went into the Navy right out of high school.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

And you know, he was telling me all about it. And so that's why I was probably gonna go to the Navy last because I'd heard you know what you have to do for the Navy, and you can't have you gotta have so much sea duty while you're in. And I'm just like, well, I don't know how well I'm gonna do on a ship. I just I don't know. And went into the army recruiter and talked to them and took the ASVAB tests and all the rest of that stuff. And um they told me what I qualified for. I guess I scored pretty high on things, and they told me what I qualified for because I told them I was like, I want something technology related. Yeah, I want a technical role. And it came about that, oh, okay, well, we've got these you know, 29 Fox positions here that you know you could be a fixed station secure Comsec equipment repair. In English, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Sounds cool, but what does it really mean?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Yeah, well, it sounds cool, but it what it really meant was that you you're a glorified phone repairman.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

But I was good with that. It was both phone voice and data networks. So I was like, yeah, that sounds interesting enough. I think I'll take that direction. Uh I'm sure I probably could have gotten something similar from the Air Force and maybe gotten, you know, gotten up in rank a little bit quicker. With a little cushier, too. Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah. So you um how long from enlistment to boot camp then? How long were you in delayed entry or were you in delayed entry at all?

SPEAKER_00 20:54

I was not delayed entry. So you just shipped right away. I shipped out, I signed the paperwork, I was at the MEP station the next week.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

And I was out of town.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

And where'd where'd you take your basic?

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Uh Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Oh, lovely. Yeah. What time of year was this? Uh that was I went in in April, so I got done in June. Oh, the chili season then. Yes, the chili season, yeah. Uh did have, you know, a couple of people didn't make it because uh well, one of the guys was uh from Alaska. Uh huh. And he was in the Alaska National Guard, and his body would not adapt to the heat.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Oh, no, I can imagine. Yeah. I mean, you were lucky Wisconsin still kind of kind of got a hot summers.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

So yeah, we got some really hot summers, but yeah, especially down there in southern Wisconsin. Right. You know, people don't think it gets warm there, but it's muggy.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Yeah. So talk to me about getting to basic training, uh, that first couple of minutes that you that you're there. What was that like for you?

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Well, here's the funny thing about it. I had just watched Full Metal Jacket, not a couple months before I went in.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

As and I don't mean to interrupt you, but so I I joined the military in the 80s. You had to watch that before you went to basic training.

Basic Training Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 22:13

You had to. And what was bad about that, I mean, it was great because it kind of clued me in. Well, this is what was going on. What was bad about that is I started hearing the same lines from the drill sergeants that I heard from Arlie Ermi in the movie that were like, oh God, don't laugh, don't laugh. And oh my God. But yeah. It was yeah, getting off and getting herded around, you know, being in the cattle cars and all the rest of that stuff, and you know, walking in and getting your head shaved. And oh yeah, lots of fun. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

So in high, I'm I'm just curious. So when you were in school and after, did you did you have longer hair then?

SPEAKER_00 22:49

I could not have longer hair when I was in school because my dad was a hairdresser. I was often a model for him. And I'd actually done some you know modeling for other people before I went into the military. Uh but yeah, I got it.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

You got the real deal when you went to boot camp, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:09

I got the real deal when I went to boot camp. Yeah, I was, you know, I'd never seen myself with that short a hair. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

It makes everything look different, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Oh my God, yeah. And you know, look, I in fact, I still have the picture from basic training. Uh-huh. And I look at that and go, oh man, not a good look.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

These are things I don't want to do again.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Yes. Exactly. I realize just how oddly shaped my head is. Right, right. That's why we have hair. Well, and that's the reason why I have long hair because how goofy my head is shaped is the way I feel it is. That I was like, you know what? I look better with longer hair to cover up all that mess.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Probably a perfectly normal head, but we're we're all harder on ourselves. So so how was boot camp for you? And the reason I I really want to know is because um you were clearly not an athlete in high school. So now you're in basic training, which is all about physical training, right? How was that for you? Hard, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

It was very difficult. Um, I ended up in you know, sick call a couple of times and ended up having to have them give me a prescription of uh ibuprofen because my body was not responding well to the exercise. Yeah, and then one of the other times I went in, I had one of the army doctors ask me, do you really want to be here? They were gonna chapter me out.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to be out. I came here for a reason. And I pushed myself, you know, I probably harder than I should have, but it it was a good thing. You know, I look back on basic training with a little bit of fondness, actually, because you know, there was the discipline and just figuring out how far you could push your body.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

And you know, to this day, I mean, I'm not too long ago just had contact with one of my drill sergeants from basic training. How was that? That had to be kind of cool.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Yeah. And actually, we after we graduated from basic training, a bunch of us uh since we were just down the road in Augusta for training, uh-huh. Uh we had gone back to Fort Jackson afterwards and talked to this one drill sergeant. He's from Minnesota. Oh, okay. Heffelfinger. Geez, can you imagine that?

SPEAKER_01 25:30

It's a fine Irish name.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Yeah. And uh, oh yeah, and he was the whitest guy you'd ever want to meet. My gut, when he's called Cadence, uh-huh, it was the whitest thing you've ever heard in your life. It just you and you know, he would do it for a while, and then you'd get drill sergeant booth, who's black, and he's got rhythm. And boy, we were flowing then. He Hamelfinger come back in. He was like, What are we doing? What are we doing? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Stepping on your own feet and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

But he was a blast. We came back and visited him after we were in uh school, and we had actually been his first rotation of men. He had had two rotations of women before that. He had was a newer drill sergeant, and uh oh, he was just so keyed up to see us and you know, took us down to the PX and you know, got us beers and everything. We sat there and shot the crap for a while. But yeah, we kept in touch with him. You know, occasionally here and there, I'll remember to send him a message, but yeah, he doesn't approve of this, obviously, but but you can get past it, right? We got past that. Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

You just say, look, my head's shaved funny. I need this. Yeah, I gotta cover this up because yeah, it's an image thing. Right, right, exactly, exactly. And go out on the internet and check check out Brad's pictures, by the way. It is an image for sure. Um, so yeah, so uh you're in basic training. Um in that how long was basic for for the army.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

At the time it was eight weeks.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Okay, so you did your eight weeks. Did you did your family come down for graduation?

SPEAKER_00 27:04

They did. My parents came down for graduation. And during the whole time I started out um just being the guide on for the platoon. And as the situation went on, uh, as I was talking about that one guy from Alaska that didn't make it through, yeah, it was uh we were actually going through the roll call, the low crawl exercise live fire. Yeah, and he was ahead of me as we were going through underneath the barbed wire, and uh sudden he stops and was like, Jack, Jack, come on, gotta get moving, gotta get moving. He wasn't moving. And then girl Sergeant Heffelfinger, Sergeant Heffelfinger, he's like, What Jack's not moving? I'd never seen anybody move through barbed wire so fast as that. He it was like it didn't even exist. Yeah, he leapt through all this stuff, all this meth, ripped open the barbed wire, got him out of there. Uh, you know, when they had one of those big blister bags full of water, uh-huh. A bunch of us ended up taking the whole thing off the clips and just dousing them down in water as uh Sergeant Hefinger was just sitting there, you know, don't you die on me, Jack, don't you die on me? I'm like, oh I didn't, you know, I had no idea at the time just how dire the situation was. Oh, you know, he had actually just physically collapsed. And so I ended up, he was assistant squad leader for the second squad. I ended up taking his spot in the second squad during that whole situation while I was still the guide on. And the squad leader for second squad just happens to be one of my best friends now, still to this day. Uh-huh. He lives up in Minnesota, uh, Steve Furstenberg. And yeah, when I moved up there, you know, we reconnected and everything. But yeah, he was great guy. But the one thing about Steve was he was a little too easygoing to be a squad leader. Um, I was more of the foot in the ass for second squad.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Get things done.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Get things done.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah. So you were the so how long were you you were you were the guide on bearer for the whole platoon?

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Yeah, for basic training. Yeah, I was the guide on for the whole platoon.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

So anyone listening to this who did not serve in the military, that's a physical job. Yep. Guide on bearer, especially if you're doing like a company run or you're doing a ruck march, because you're not just up front. A lot of times you're circling around and you're doing all kinds of crazy stuff. So you must have been in pretty good shape by the end of basic training. I was, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to stick around with the whole thing. You know, even though the doctors were asking me, you know, if I really wanted to be there or not, yeah. No, this was something I really wanted to do. And uh so I it with a lot of things, you know, if you're interested in it, you jump in with both feet, right? And you, you know, you get out of it what you put into it. And I was going to put in 110%. You know, I certainly wasn't forrest gump and could put my uh weapon back together in record time, but you know. Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

You got it done, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:23

I got it done and felt pretty good about it.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

So when your family came down for graduation, uh uh how'd your dad feel about your haircut at that point? Was he like, what did they do to you?

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Oh no, he thought at that point in time that that was the best haircut he'd ever seen me have. Okay, very nice. That's a fine-looking haircut, yeah. Yeah, he was one of those that you know believed that if you had long hair, you were never gonna find a real good job or anything. Because nobody's gonna hire you if you got long hair. Right. Well, you know, dad, things aren't that backwards anymore.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

The 1940s anymore.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Yeah. Even it's not even Vietnam very, it's not in the 60s.

unknown 31:03

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

And now people have tattoos and get jobs. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Yeah. So you after graduation, was your AIT right there at at uh Fort Jackson then?

SPEAKER_00 31:11

I was uh down the road, 60 miles down the road in Augusta, Georgia. So I was at Fort Gordon.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Oh, okay. All right. Lovely Fort Gordon. Lovely Fort Gordon. So out of the fire, really into the fire or out of the firing pan into the fire then, because it's pretty hot down in Georgia.

AIT At Fort Gordon And Learning Fast

SPEAKER_00 31:25

It was pretty hot, but we didn't do a whole lot outside. Uh-huh. I mean, you know, outside of PT in the morning. We didn't do a whole lot outside. It was, you know, you'd do your PT in the morning, come back, get you know, cleaned up, go to chow, and they'd march you off to school, and you were in a building all day long.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

So was your AIT experience a lot different than basic? Because I know a lot of people go right from basic to AIT, and it doesn't seem like it's any different at all.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

It was different because it was just more relaxed.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

There was still drill sergeants there, but they were just there as, you know, babysitters, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Right. Keep you out of trouble.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Keep you out of trouble. And, you know, they were there to watch over everybody. Uh and uh, but outside of that, I mean, no, it was we'd go in, we had civilian instructors for the most part, and you know, the most of them were obviously ex-military. So they're right. And I remember the one that we had uh was a big knife guy. And if people were falling asleep in class, he had one knife that he had greased up really nice, but it was, you know, had a lock blade on it. And so if people falling asleep in class, just all of a sudden, clack! We'll wake you up, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Right, probably couldn't get away with a whole lot because they were prior military.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Right. Yeah. Well, at that point, I mean, I was actually really interested in the stuff that I was doing. So, I mean, there wasn't there wasn't a whole lot of goofing off for me when it came to that kind of stuff. I was, you know, it we got to the, I mean, it that was one of the things I was actually interested about being in the military, was that they took you in and you actually started doing they trained you for your job right there, and you started doing stuff immediately. It wasn't like college where, oh, you got to take this class. Well, I don't what do I need this class for? I don't need why do I need English?

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Why do I need right?

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, why do I need this liberal arts degree? Uh exactly. But no, for with the military, and that was my goal, was the fact that, you know, I wanted to be more like a technical school. I want you to train me what I need to do, and I want to go out and do it.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

And that's what they did. But I ended up uh school went much longer because they gave me a couple extra added skill identifiers. So I had to stick around Fort Gordon for a little bit longer. It was me and a couple of guys, one other guy from Wisconsin and one guy from California that we were kind of all together. And when we got stationed, we got stationed together for some reason and we got out at the same time, all the rest of this. So it was like one of the guys I still talk to.

SPEAKER_03 33:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

And uh, but yeah, so we got our additional skill identifiers, and we were there down at Fort Gordon for probably close to nine months, which is you know odd for a lot of people going through AIT because normally their AIT is a couple months and you're shipped off. Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

In this case, you get in trouble anywhere for a long time, or you or you do really well.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

You do really well, or you you know don't do real well and you get kicked back a couple of courses and they have to retake things.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Uh you know, we did run into a few of those guys, but yeah at that point in time they usually got involuntarily reclassed. If you you couldn't pass some equipment sometime, it was like, ah, you might want to be doing something else.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Well, that's the kind of nice thing about the military school, too, is you find out rather quickly whether or not this is the skill set that you have, right? Whereas in college, you could go four or five years and not figure out that this isn't where you're supposed to be.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Yeah, it's pretty immediate.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Those of us who were, you know, went through with us. I mean, we were all pretty sure and we were all good at this stuff. So, I mean, it was we came in and the stuff that I was doing was going to be limited maintenance anyway. So, I mean, I didn't have to go down to you know component level on any of the boards or any of that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

So I remember those days troubleshooting down the circuit board and then toss it, go get a new one. Well, I guess it was some of you had to exchange in because yeah, we'd have to exchange them.

SPEAKER_00 35:25

We'd take them to the full maintenance facility and they would do the component work.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

Some smarter person there would do the hard job. Smarter person that could have done that. Thank you for the air quotes because that's what I was thinking over here. Some smarter person. I have my own opinions on that. So um, yeah, so you're there for nine months, and then what happens after AIT?

Germany Posting And Secure Comms Work

SPEAKER_00 35:44

I got shipped off to Germany. Oh in true military fashion. Here, here's our military intelligence story. Well, they ask you when you come in, do you have any additional skills? Do you speak any extra languages, that kind of stuff? And at the time, I spoke fluent Spanish. And I'm thinking to myself, well, you know, there's a lot of I know we got a lot of guys going down to Panama. I'm probably gonna end up going down to Panama. Orders came down. Germany.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

That's a huge Spanish-speaking country, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Yeah, yeah, a lot of Spanish speakers over there. So I ended up learning German. It was a good thing I learned uh languages pretty easily, even though German's not exactly the easiest language to get your head around.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

I feel like you have to be angry to speak German. It's it seems like a very angry language. It helps. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

It helps, but the way they form their words is, you know, for somebody who speaks English, it's kind of odd, but then any unfray and any people that speak other languages, they probably look at us and go, why are you doing that? Yeah, I know. Exactly. But yeah, with German, I mean, you know, they run their words together. Oh my you see this word that's like 15 characters long, and you're like, how do I even go about pronouncing that? But you learn when I got over there, yeah, they put you through a couple week course right away once you get in country to you know get you acclimated and you know get you into conversational German at the least. Right. So you can at least you know, if you go into a uh restaurant or something like that, you can converse with people enough to do it.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

You can order food, you can do the things you need to do.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

And where were you at in Germany? Stuttgart. Okay. And you're doing your job now, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Yeah. We got in there and pretty much from the get-go, you know, you're assigned to a team. Uh, we had uh because everything was secure, and we also some of us had to wait a little bit longer for our security clearances to come through because we actually we were TS SBI. So we had the same security clearance as the four-star general on post. Uh because we were in his office quite often.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

And uh so, but they would assign us two-man teams as we went out for every shift. Uh, there was an A and a B. So one person had the outside the A combination, the other person had the B inside combination.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

So were you an A or a B?

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Uh it all depended on what year. Oh, so it when we get people leave or you know, new people come in, whatever, they would decide, okay. Well, Foss, you're gonna be a B this time. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And then, you know, they wouldn't because they changed the combination to the A combination. You know, new people come in, everything changes. Right. You know, and because we were the holders of the all the crypto material.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

So all that key mat went through us.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Very top secret stuff, actually.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

It is very top secret stuff. And our facility was a secure facility. We had two doors, uh you didn't get in there and there was no windows. Right. You didn't get in there unless somebody was gonna let you in or you had to badge.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

You knew all the right stuff, then you could go in, right? Right. Yeah. So how did you like Germany though? Was it loved at all? Did you loved it?

SPEAKER_00 39:16

It was a great time. You know, I actually I don't think I could have gone anywhere better.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

And where Stuttgart sits, uh, it's just far enough off the Alps that you're kind of in a little valley that it's really temperate there. So it never really got above 70 degrees and it never really got below 30. Wow. I saw snow three times in the three years that I was over there. Outside of that, it was beautiful weather and you know, good food, great beer. Uh, you get I lived off post, so I got to know you know, our neighbors were not military, so I got to know uh some of the Germans over there, and you know, they would take us down. Our city during the summer would have a festival every two weeks during the summer.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Oh, every two weeks, not just one.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Every two weeks, yeah. Wow, you would go down and it was sponsored by the local brewery and go down, get some beer, get a half a chicken, and sit there and listen to the umpah band for a while, and you know, swing your beers around and it was a blast. Nice. And just hang around and commune with people for a while. And you know, it was close enough to our house that we didn't have to drive. We just walked down, it was like three blocks down from our apartment and go down with half the neighborhood and sit around and listen to some good umpa music.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

So, was that pretty typical that you would the people who live off post then?

SPEAKER_00 40:46

No. Oh, it was about half and half, but yeah, because because I was lower in rank, I didn't get to live on post.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

The uh on post housing was mostly for senior people.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

So, and they did have some military billet style, you know, apartment buildings and stuff like that in other areas. They weren't available when I came in. So I was able just to get an apartment off host.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Nice way to nice way to do it though, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Yeah, and they paid my rent.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Yeah. Darn. So when you think about uh when you think about Germany and your time there, um, you know, other than the beer and the umbo music, uh uh what really sticks out in your mind? Like what what's something that you really like think about when you think about your time in Germany?

SPEAKER_00 41:36

The just the land. Germany is a gorgeous country. And I live just off of the Black Forest. So just the terrain over there with the rolling hills, and you know, we're driving down uh you know closer to the Alps and go and see the Alps. I had never seen mountains that huge before in my life. You know, got to go down to um Fusan to see you know Neuschwanstein and take the tram all the way up to the top of the uh mountain up there where they have the uh ski resort and everything. I was up there during the summer though. Right. And it's weird taking the tram up there and you go up past the clouds as you're going up. Next thing you know, you're looking down going.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

That's pretty high up. That's really high.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

Oh, yeah, it's very high. And uh, you know, got to do a and the time that I spent outside while I was over there, um, they had so many awesome uh trails that you could walk. And a lot of times I live close enough to post that I would just ride my bike in the post. Yeah, there were trails that went, you know, the off-roads from everywhere, and it took you right to our post. I was like, cool. That's awesome. Yeah, and the the people over there were really nice. I mean, I love the people, uh, love the area we were in. There were some people over there that were not too fond of Americans, but for the most part, we got treated really nice. Yeah. And you know, it was we became members of the community while we were over there. And it was fun.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

Did that make it difficult to leave, do you think? Or was that an easy?

SPEAKER_00 43:26

Made it kind of difficult to leave, but by the time I'd been over there for three years, I was ready to get back to the states. Yeah. I was just when I was thinking about it, I think, yeah. I I remember all the good times about being over there, but I also remember, boy, when I was getting ready to leave, it was like, yeah, I'm ready to go.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

And now you so you ETS'd out then as you left Germany, or did you come back to the States and then get out?

SPEAKER_00 43:51

I ETS out from Germany. Okay. So they uh I got out just shortly after the Gulf War. So I was held over, uh, but I ended up getting out two days early.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

Okay.

ETS Decisions And The Roads Not Taken

SPEAKER_00 44:05

Because I was in the massive flushing after they said to everybody, well, okay, any of the holdovers, you're not re-upping, you're out. So I had all those household goods and everything that I had to schedule to get shipped out and everything, you know, and all the army furniture and the rest of the stuff that had to go back. Right. But yeah, literally it was I hadn't, I think they gave me three weeks to out process over there, and I was hoofing it. And uh yeah, I got over there, they sent me back. Oh, I remember that too. They we didn't end up going out from Stuttgart. We ended up going out through Frankfurt and there was a chartered jet, and I believe it was Delta, that they had us sitting out on the tarmac for eight hours because oh well they're there's something wrong with the plane. We can't figure out what's going on. They wouldn't let us get off the plane. So that was me and my wife at the time were just sitting there going, What the heck is going on here? Never been in a situation like that where you know they pull us back from the gate and just had us sitting there on the tarmac and we couldn't leave. And finally they were like, Okay, well, we're gonna have to pull back in. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Yeah, eight hours. Wow, thanks. So, did you get married when you were in Germany? Did I miss something?

SPEAKER_00 45:32

I did get married when I was in Germany. I didn't, she was from closer to my hometown. Okay. So it was American. I flew back, we got married. Okay. And that was one of the reasons why I could live off post. Because I was married.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

Sorry, forgot to say that. Oh no, no. I was you say you were married. I'm like, wait, wait a minute, we missed something here. So um did you know her from before you came in the service? Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

We we'd actually been dating before I went in. Yeah. And we had broken up before I went into the military. And then uh after I came home on leave one time, we we hooked back up again, and it was like, well, this might work.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's like a I don't know, it happened to me too. Like you get home and you're like, oh, well, this feels kind of nice, and I'm kind of lonely. Let's get married, and then you're married.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

Well, I I talked to her about that before actually made any moves on getting married, and you know, tried to gauge her interest in potentially because she was in college at the time, she was going to UW Milwaukee.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

And uh, you know, I was like, well, I don't want to derail your college education or any rest of that stuff. I mean, if you're not, you know, but if we get together, I'm gonna be moving around a lot. And she seemed to be okay with it. And then, you know, she found out I was going to Germany. I'm like, okay, well, but yeah, I proposed we got married in a small ceremony before I actually shipped out for Germany and then came back later on that year for the big wedding. Right. And then she came back with me at that point in time, and I had already secured housing and all the rest of that. So right.

SPEAKER_01 47:19

Well, and you got to enjoy Germany with someone who you cared about too, so which was kind of nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Yeah, even though that didn't last very long. First marriage trial run. It happens. We call it a starter marriage. Yeah, starter marriage, yeah. We got back. Well, she told me before I was getting out, she told me that if I re-upped, that she was gonna divorce me.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

And I'm like, okay, so I'm not gonna re-up. And I had already been accepted to music school by that time. So music tech. I was accepted there, so I knew I was gonna be moving up to Minneapolis to go to school. But then I got up there, we went to school, and she divorced me anyway.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Nice, yeah. Nice the ultimatum, either way.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

It was ended up being that way. I didn't really know, but she had her own issues going on, which I didn't really know about. And but yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 48:40

So I'm curious, you know, I know you were in for three years. So the or four years, I'm sorry. Um, so that I know the answer is different for different people, but what was it like for you when you knew you were getting out and you're putting on the uniform for the last time and you know this is kind of this is it, like I'm not gonna do this anymore. But what was that like for you?

SPEAKER_00 49:01

Um it felt kind of weird right away because you know you get so used to being regimented that when you your time is your own at that point, it's almost like, what do I do? You know, I'm yeah, and it took me a little bit of time after getting out to reacclimate myself and figure out, okay, well, if I'm gonna get anything done, I'm probably gonna have to uh work kind of the way that I worked when I was in the military and you know, be a little more regimented about what I do. Um, you know, I when we came back, we moved back to Janesville right away. We the ETS us out from Frankfurt, and then we hit Fort Dix.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Oh, it lives up to its name. Mm-hmm. I'll just say that.

SPEAKER_00 49:57

Yeah. Jiggle the handle. Yes. Um so we flew back from there to Chicago, got picked up, and we lived at my parents' place for about three months before we moved up to Minnesota. So the circle back to the whole thing of Woodman's, I came back and went right back to work at Woodman's for that three months because I had come back off a military leave of absence. Right. And I got all my seniority back and got a nice big bump in pay and all the rest of that, and uh peed a few people off because I got my old position back in the liquor store, which other people were doing that position now, and they weren't too happy with me.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

But it was what it was. I mean, you don't look at him and go, how long have you been here? Oh, well, this is kind of seniority-based, and uh, you know, I've got seven years now. But I had to take one of the guys who was doing the um assistant manager position that he was a little PO'd about getting bumped down. I had to pull him aside one of the times in back and clue him into the fact that, you know, you need to change your attitude because I'm not going to be here for all that long. I'm just working the job until I move up north.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:12

And after that, things got a little bit better. It's like, you know, just cool your jets a little bit, you know, don't be such a panty waste.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

And you know, with me with my military training, I wasn't going to take any BS off of anybody at that point in time. And, you know, being that I was E4P on a PLDC and all the rest of that stuff. So, you know, I did I did get two sets of orders before I got out.

SPEAKER_02 51:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

One of the sets of orders were for Fort We gotcha, Fort Wachuca. Um, I've never heard it referred to as that. That's great. For yeah, for the signal corps, Fort Wachuca is known as Fort We gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

So interestingly enough, my uncle, uh who is 90 years old, was in the army and in the signal corps. He's very familiar with Fort Wachuca. I'll bet he is. Yeah, he's got every anytime I tell him I were I talk to somebody who was signal core or whatever, he's just he gets all giddy. Yeah. But anyway. Oh, hey, signal core. Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

There you go. He'll like that.

SPEAKER_00 52:20

Yeah. Um, the other set of orders that I got was for the White House Communications Agency. And for that, they were the day you walk in, if you're not at least an E5, they're pinning E5 on you. Uh-huh. Because you can't be in a junior NCO in that area. They won't, they don't allow it. Right. So, and I did serve with a couple of guys over in Germany that had been through the White House previous to this. And one of them was already an E7 and he had only been in for seven years. I was like, geez.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

Could be good or could be bad for the career, right?

SPEAKER_00 52:58

It could have been great. You know, I could have made a lot of rank had I stayed in because that would have been my choice out of the two of them. Because I'd heard nightmares about being Fort Wigatcha. So, you know, and I mean, not that you you get better assignments being at the White House, even though you're gonna be TDY all the time. Fort Wachuca, you're gonna be TDY all the time, and they're not exactly the greatest assignments.

SPEAKER_02 53:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

You know, they're gonna put you in the biggest shithole they can, and you're gonna do your job there. Uh you know, leastways with the White House, you're gonna go to where the White House staff is going to be in advance of them. You're gonna set up their communications for them, and then you're gonna stay after they leave and tear everything down, better assignments. But I was like, at that point in time, it you know, I'd already been accepted to music tech, and I was just like, ah no. I yeah, I saw those orders and I was just like, hmm, you know, the thoughts in the back of your head, you know, looking at this paperwork going, What'd I coulda shoulda?

SPEAKER_01 54:05

We don't get the we don't we never get the advantage of knowing what would have happened if we'd have done something different.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 54:11

I mean we just know what happened because of the path we took.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

Yep.

Music Tech School And Going All In

SPEAKER_01 54:14

I'm curious, uh how did you like why music tech in Minnesota? Like, how did you how did that connection happen?

SPEAKER_00 54:23

It was something that I had, it was an ad that I saw in one of the guitar magazines that I was uh subscribed to. And in fact, I think it was guitar magazine. So music tech was advertising and those things, and I just happened to see, hey, music tech, look at that. And I sent in an audition tape to them, and they came back and went, Yeah, you're accepted. I'm like, that wasn't too hard. Right, awesome.

SPEAKER_01 54:56

Here we go in Minnesota.

SPEAKER_00 54:58

I was an average guitar player at best, yeah. You know, and but I guess I knew enough or you know, I had a decent enough knowledge of the instrument that they were like, Oh no, yeah, yeah, come on. Okay, fine. Uh so I got accepted there and we moved up that direction after coming back to Janesville, and really never looked back from there. I mean, I ended up being up in Minnesota for 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Yeah. In fact, you still have a Minnesota phone number.

SPEAKER_00 55:28

I still do. But yeah, that was one of those things that wasn't gonna change.

SPEAKER_01 55:32

Right. Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

I know others who have moved down here that have uh changed and gotten an Arizona area code, but nah, at this point, it's like everybody knows I've had that same phone number for 25 plus years.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

When that comes up, people know people know who's calling. Yep, absolutely. So talk to me about music tech. So you get there and you start school, uh, what's that like?

SPEAKER_00 55:54

Uh well, for me, it was a blast uh-huh because it was again just like with basic training or anything else that I was doing, that I it was somewhere I wanted to be, and I was going to throw everything into that. And you know, I was there sometimes up to 12 hours a day because after classes were over, I would sit there and either work on stuff or work with other bands that were in there, do ensemble type things, and you know, because there were so many talented people there that I was just in such a learning mode that it was like, oh, yeah, I gotta know how to do this.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

Yeah. Soak it up like a sponge.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

Oh, I did. I soaked it up like a sponge. And you know, I was going through as a guitar major, uh, but I ended up playing other instruments more than I actually think I played guitar. Uh-huh. Uh, because while I was there, I mean, there was we had a ton of guitar players. Just a ton. I think we had over 300 people in that class. And the greater percentage of them were guitar players. And so we went, you know, there was always a need for somebody to play bass in one of the ensembles. They always needed a singer, uh, some of them needed a drummer, or you know, because there weren't that many of them. So I was like, give it to me, I'll do it. And so I did, you know, there was one Friday concert that out of the eight bands that played on Friday, I was in seven of them. And the student activities director before that uh show started said to me, He goes, 'Well, you're in almost every band.' He goes, Why don't you host the show? Oh, very cool. So I was the first student to ever host a Friday concert with them. And with me at the time, you know, just coming out of the military, I really had to watch my language because I had a bit of a potty mouth at that point.

SPEAKER_01 57:57

And it happens to the best of us.

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Yes, and I you know unfortunately got called on it a couple of times by the staff that you know, you really need to clean up your language. You know, I'm throwing F moms around like you know and cost nothing. Yeah, why not? Yep. And uh but we I still remember the one because we got told under no circumstances during the show, were we to say the F word?

SPEAKER_02 58:25

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 58:26

Okay. And one of the songs that we were playing was by Wasp, and it was called Animal, quote, fuck like a beast.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:34

So you had to say fuck. Well, we couldn't. So what did we do? We taped to the back of the guitars. School administration was there watching. Everybody in the audience yelled it when we came to that point. You guys didn't say it, right?

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 58:58

We never once said it. That's creative. Oh, yeah. And they one of the guys who was running the school was there, and he just looked at me and was like, Well done.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

We're gonna keep an eye on you.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

Yeah, well, they did. I ended up working there afterwards too.

SPEAKER_01 59:16

So did you graduate and then go right to work for them?

SPEAKER_00 59:20

Yeah. Oh, okay. So I graduated from there and you know, it was just a one-year course.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:26

And so in '92, I started working there, uh doing maintenance. I was teaching some private lessons at the time too, but I was doing maintenance at Music Tech. So I was kind of like the be all do-it-guy. You know, we need these shelves put up. Okay, yeah, we need this wall fixed. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:49

Hey, I could do it.

SPEAKER_01 59:50

Now, were you playing, were you playing in bands while you were working there then?

SPEAKER_00 59:55

At that time, yeah, I did have my own band. It wasn't really doing much at the time. We weren't playing too many gigs. The entire time that I was over in Germany, I played in a band while I was over there.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

So my off time I was spent off. We played the NCO circuit and we were in a fairly popular band over there at the time. And like I said, we hit just traveled all around Germany, hit all the NCO clubs, and had a blast with it. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, when I send in my audition tape, well, I was pretty well rehearsed at that point in time, but yeah, there was nothing special about what I did. It was just, you know, I am playing a bunch of rhythms and here and there, you know, throwing a couple little short leads, not letting them know that I suck as a lead guitar player. I know this, that's why I play bass now, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

Good point. Well, I'm I'm curious about something. I mean, you know, music by basically music's been a part of your life. Do you do you ever remember like where there was a point where you knew that you just loved music, like that it was just a part of you? Did you like was there ever like an aha moment where you realized that that was kind of your passion?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:04

Yeah, yeah. I remember watching uh believe it or not, hee-haw. I love hee-haw. I love I love hee-haw, but Buck Rogers and that red, white, and blue guitar, yeah, and watching you know, Roy Clark go at it and I won't see that, and you know, just the aha moment where your eyes open wide and go, I want to do that. I want to know how to do that. And and after that, it was I think I was like six, something. And there, my parents did get me the the toy Buck Owens red, white, and blue guitar. So I was there.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

Which could be purchased at any dime store.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:48

Yeah. And then after that, that's when I told mom, I said, Yeah, I want to get some guitar lessons. Yeah. That was the whole, oh, we're gonna learn piano verse. No, I don't want to learn piano. I just want to learn guitar. And they got me a nice big fat uh acoustic, flat acoustic guitar. It was a K. I remember the brand name was a K. In fact, I just had it up until not too long ago. But yeah, I started learning on that one, and then a couple years after that, I got my first electric guitar. Uh-huh. And it was just downhill from there. That was a game changer, huh? Yeah. Well, yeah, getting the electric guitar and then learning the do's and don'ts. What you know, we were working with electric guitar and you know the feedback issues and how you dial in your distortion and all the rest of that, you know, because they not only did I have my nice little tiny, you know, tiny little guitar, my little tiny little practice amp, and my uh again, another K guitar because the uh music store in town that's all they sold was K guitars. So it was a um Gibson SG rip-off.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

So it was red and almost well, it looks similar to Angus Young's guitar. So I saw that and I was like, yeah, I want that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:16

It's got your name written all over it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:17

Got my name, you know. At the time I was a huge KISS fan. I you know, still love KISS, but yeah, Ace Freely was the reason why, you know, I wanted to play guitar because I wanted to be the spaceman. So hey, you know, I was but we were looking at all the you know, if you looked at like Gibson guitars at the time and stuff like that, try to get a Les Paul. Uh, mom and dad were not going to afford a Les Paul at that point in time, even back in the 70s when it was you know much cheaper, that was still a lot of money. And you know, my little you know, hundred dollar K guitar was okay, that's in the budget.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:51

It got you there, it got me there. Absolutely. Why is KISS so polarizing? Because I feel like there's no fence sitters with KISS. People either like KISS or they don't like KISS.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:02

Well, it's a situation of you either get it or you don't.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:05

Yeah. I mean, I grew up on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:07

Yeah. I I I love KISS. I love the whole you know, makeup gimmick and everything on the rest. The music, you know, I still love the music and everything like that, but it's cock rock. Yeah. You know, they're singing about their conquests and stuff like that, but you know what? That's what I wanted to hear.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

Right. What what what preteen teenage boy doesn't want to hear that? I mean, I remember Detroit Rock City playing on an eight-track tape player on my front porch. Like I remember those days.

unknown 1:04:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:37

And those were good.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:38

I remember wanting to play that song, and now I pretty much every time I fill in, I play that song. You're obligated to obligated to play that one in rock and roll all night.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:47

Oh, yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of great kiss songs that that are you know B-sides and buried deep in an album somewhere that people don't even know. They're just amazing, too. You play that at a at a concert, people like, what the hell is that?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

Yeah. Who did who did that song? Yeah, that's an old kiss song. No, deep cut. No, they didn't do that. That almost sounds like music. They don't do that. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:09

Yeah, their stuff's a little rudimentary, but it was great. It was great music anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:13

Yeah. So when I was growing up, I mean, I literally to the time I hit high school, I I didn't listen to anything but kiss. I my first album was uh it was uh Andy Gibb Shadow Dancing. Oh, that's the first one I ever bought on my own. And then I bought ABBA the album, and then I was introduced to Kiss by my next door neighbor, and from there on out, nothing but kiss.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

Right, right. My first album was Blondie Parallel Lines. There you go. I still have it. Yeah, I still play it on the old turntable.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

Some of my vinyl is still sitting in my parents' attic.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:53

One of these days I should see if it's still there.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:56

Because nothing sounds better than that. I don't think no.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:58

Well, I don't even have a turntable any longer.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

So yeah. But we digress. So we're in the mid-90s now, and you're we're in the mid-90s and I'm working in Minnesota.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:07

Yeah. I'm working in Minnesota. I got uh my band going and which was named Bones Gang at the time because I took that from the fact that my nickname was Bones, uh-huh. And I was bringing together the people, so it's my gang. You know, I would had to explain that to a number of people. Where do you get the name? Bones Gang. It's dumb. It's you know, it's out there though. It's out there, it's it was Bones Gang. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And um it was a three-piece band, and uh guitar player, what one of my good friends just he he had hurt himself at his job and was not gonna be able to continue on with the band. And that's our drummer Blake came in and said, Oh, yeah, he was still going to music tech at the time, and said, Oh, I know a guitar player. It just happened to be your brother. Yeah. And that's where we started playing together. And we did that for almost a year and a half. We did Bones Gang together. We had some success with it. It was really hard getting any footing in the area. And then I got an opportunity to join up with an established band up there. And I moved on, just folded my band. And uh about nine months or so after joining that band, Brooke gets a hold of me again and says, Hey, um, I got an opportunity with this other band. He goes, and they're they're gonna need a bass player. I okay, well, I'll talk to them about it. So I was with Hitchhiker for one year, and that's where I got to do all kinds of stuff. I we were signed with an agency in the area. These guys, the guys that were in Hitchhiker were big names around the Minneapolis area in the 80s. So 90s they were still going. And uh, so we got to open up for a number of national acts that year, just in that year alone. Opened up for Quiet Riot, uh Fog Hat, Nazareth, um, Kansas. Uh I can't even remember which other ones, but it was Fog Hat. Yeah, well, Fog Hat was great. And those guys, it was hilarious because you know we got to sit down and eat with them and everything. And um, they were just tickled pink that anybody would remember who the heck they were. Because they're from Scotland.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:41

And they didn't think anybody in the States really remembered who the heck they were. It was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And they were so much fun. God, what a blast. We had so much fun with those guys. I wish I could have done it again at least before Lonesome Dave finally passed. But yeah. So, and then at the end of that year that I was with him, that's when Brooke was, you know, trying to throw the fishing hook saying, Hey, come here, come here, come here, come here, come this way. So we would ended up being both together in a band called Bad Jack after that.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:11

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

And that unfortunately only lasted probably about nine months before uh the guy running the band. Um, just pretty much couldn't stand Brooke anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:24

It happens.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:25

Uh, it does happen, unfortunately. Um so we didn't, you know, that one folded that was not doing anything for a while, went into uh one of the other one of my instructors from Music Tech was had a band called the Kilowatts, and they were in need of a bass player. So I hopped in with them for a while. And who come knocking at my door again? But Brooke. Hey, I'm gonna start my own band. He goes, I really need your help. Okay, what? Uh and yeah, so he he had another friend of his, Chris Morehouse. He had another friend of his that was gonna do the bass at the time, and I don't he never really told me what went on. Just that they must have had a spat.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:18

I'll bet it was a great story.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:19

I'll bet it was a great story, and I bet you he probably could have made it into something that was you know took three hours to tell.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:26

But uh so he Chris was out, I was in before they even got uh any gigs on the books and everything. So I started doing that.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:36

And um So what band was this?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:37

It was Novicane Tongue. Okay, the band that eventually became Hairball. Okay, so I was their first bass player.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:45

Who was their front man then?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:47

Uh Jack was the at the time I was in, it was Jack.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:53

And he was the first singer, and they got it, they had one, I think, one guy after that. I was like number one of like eight bass players uh that went through that band in the time, you know, just in the couple of years they were Novicane tongue before Chase. Well, you know, it the way Brooke ran things, yeah, it was kind of hard to keep up with, and I was working a day job. That's the reason why I quit. It wasn't because of anything that Brooke did, it was because you know, we were running so much and we were traveling so much that I was working a day job, and it was like, dude, I can't keep going like this.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:29

You had to be in or out.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:30

Yeah. I had and I wasn't I couldn't fully commit to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:34

So I was like, uh no, we gotta move on here. And then I ended up back with Bad Jack again after that. For another couple years, we uh did we did one album during that time, and then that all fell apart. And the guys from Bad Jack, we moved on. There was the guy who owned the name Bad Jack didn't move on with us. We had some issues with him, he had some alcohol issues, and it was like, I'm I've got to be out of this. Yeah. And the other guys were like, Well, we're gonna come with you. Okay, take us with you, please. That is exactly what my guitar player said. He was take me with you. Yeah. I'm like, for what? You know, what have we got? Well, we got you know, a three-piece band. Okay, great. So went on Bones Gang again, resurrected Bones Gang, and we were Bones Gang for probably about close to eight years.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:34

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:35

And ended up that we got hired on with an Aussie tribute. He wanted the entire band. And actually, Brooke had, and during that time, Brooke had come back into Bones Gang.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:48

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:48

He the whole thing with hairball went south, and he didn't do anything live with anybody for a while. And then we were, I was about ready to switch out guitar players. We did have a second guitar player for a while, and he just wasn't working out. And he got, I know he had gotten angry at me before when I hadn't asked him to do certain things. So I was like, this time I went to him first and go, Well, I'm looking at changing guitar players. Would you be interested in doing this? Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, I'd like to do that. So he was in for about a year and a half again before we decided to do the Aussie tribute. And we did the Aussie tribute for a couple years and then I quit and went back to school. And I ended up after that playing with Brooke again in Toy Box.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:38

I haven't even heard of that band.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:39

Uh well, that was northwestern Wisconsin. Okay. And he, our guitar player, I would play with him for a year, and their guitar player decided he was out. And I said, Brooke.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:55

So when you went back to school, I was just curious, when you went to school, did you go back to like school school or you go back to music school?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:02

I went when I left the band, when I left the ultimate Aussie band, I went back to college.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:08

I was actually going to try to finish up, at least ways, get my associate's degree. Yeah. And I did almost two years there. And I took one summer off, and when I came back, they had raised the tuition to the point that even my uh GI bill wasn't covering. Wow. So I was like, no, I'm you know, I had all these student loans out and all the rest of this stuff, and I'm like a few credits short of getting an associate's degree, and I've never needed it. Because with the training that I got in the military, once I got out, I mean, I had all that electronics training, all the rest of that stuff. I mean, they pretty much set me up for life.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:52

And I've from there on out, I've never needed a college degree unless I wanted to be management.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:00

And so I went back because I was thinking, oh, maybe I'll, you know, try to finish this off, you know, make my parents happy and maybe, you know, get a chance at maybe doing something other. But as I was going through and doing all that stuff, I realized, you know what, I don't want to be management. I like being the guy that does stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:20

I I'm, you know, and I'm a systems engineer. I like being the guy that does stuff. So I build stuff now, and you know, it's all remote access solutions and it's fun. I have a good time doing it. So I gave the college a try, and oh, here's a good one from the college. I had one college instructor that did not realize who he was dealing with. Oh, okay. And he was a huge liberal. Uh-huh. And I had made a crack at one point in time, I had cracked a joke. The the line for Ferris Bueller, Bueller, Bueller. He took offense to this because of who said it. Because he was a bit conservative. Oh, yeah. Ben Stein. Yeah, Ben Stein. Okay. And he started giving me the riot act about Ben Stein. And I'm like, do you realize who you're dealing with? I'm not one of your 18-year-old just out of high school college students.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:23

I was 42 at the time. And look at him, I go, How old do you think I am? And he goes, Well, I imagine you're in your early 20s. No, I'm early 40s. I go, I'm ex military. And you know what? I look in the face, I go, I'm paying you to teach me this stuff, not to give me a class on liberal economics or whatever the heck we get. This is an English class. Just teach me English. And I ended, you know, I kind of cussed him out in that situation because it's like, listen, I'm paying you. Yeah. This is coming out of my pocket. And it kind of talked him down from all this stuff. And I still ended up getting an A in that class.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:13

Sounds like he respected you.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:14

I think he didn't respect. Uh well, I think he actually, it was respect after I kind of put him in his place and just you know, because yeah you hate having to do stuff like that. But when people go that far off the deep end, you're getting PO'd about, oh well, I don't like this person. He was a character in a movie. Right. He was you know, I don't care what else he did. He was a character in a movie. I'm doing the line from the character in the movie. Just smile.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:41

Right. That's when you could have said, lighten up Francis. Give him a whole different movie to be pissed about. Yes. So you um, so you uh you end up so the last band we talked about was Toy Box. Toy Box, and you're still but you're still living in Minnesota at this time?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:58

I am still living in Minnesota. Okay. I that was right around the 2011 time point. Okay. All right. And Brooke was back with us. Um we that one with Brooke again only lasted about nine months. And that that had nothing to do with Brooke, actually. That one had to do with the fact that there was a married couple in the band and they were breaking up, so the whole band was done.

Marriages Kids And Starting Over

SPEAKER_01 1:18:24

So speaking of married couples, we're in 2011. Are you remarried yet?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:28

I had gotten remarried in 1994. So when I first met Brooke, uh-huh. He he had come over to my house in Brook, Brooklyn Center, and that's where we started, you know, talking about the band and you know him sitting down and jamming with us and everything. He got to meet my second wife. Okay. So he never most people that know me never knew my first wife.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:53

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:54

So how did you meet your second wife?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:56

I want to hear this story. Like, I don't want to skip this part because I think it's important. It's a dating service.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:01

I went through great expectations after I got divorced.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:03

Oh, that's did you do a video? I did. Oh my god. Do you still have it? No. Oh, I would love to splice that. Oh my god. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:10

Uh how about this? If I had it, I'd burn it. It was horrible.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:14

Do you remember SNL did a takeoff on that called Lowered Expectations? Yes. So before before internet dating, there was video dating or uh I went the video dating route.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:27

And yes, I'm by the time we ended up getting married on that whole thing, she thought that it you know, you see the videos and all the rest of that stuff, and then you make your choices.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:41

And then you're given a phone number and you're expected to call. Well, I hadn't called her after she had said yes, and I hadn't called her for a couple weeks after that. Well, it just so happened I got pneumonia.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:56

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:56

I was sick as a dog. I was down on my behind for that long. And finally I gave her a call after I got healthy again. And she's like, Well, I didn't think you were ever gonna call. Like, well, yeah, I told her the situation. She goes, Oh, well, you know, and I just felt told her about all the medical bills and everything that I run up and all that stuff. She goes, Oh, I'm a I'm a medical biller. Oh, well, maybe you can guide me through some of this stuff. And at that point, I I don't know if it was just because she was she was seven years older than me.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:33

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:34

And clock was ticking, and she really had never she'd never been married before. And she wanted to get married.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:42

And so we moved on, got married, and had kids a couple years later. So we got two kids. Now oldest one's gonna be 29 in June. Yeah, June. June 22nd, he's 29. So I got one that's 29 and one that's gonna be 27. Wow. And we but that unfortunately was not to make the long haul either. So I ended up divorcing her in 2015. So it was almost 21 years of marriage.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:16

Okay. And you got two great kids out of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:18

I got two great kids out of it. Well, I got one great kid, I got one daughter who's gone off the deep end loony antifa liberal. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:28

So I'm yeah, we'll just move on from that. So so you were still in Minnesota 2011, you're still married to my second wife. To your second wife. Um, and then uh so what goes, what happens from from 2011? I just want to get the story on the second wife.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:48

Around 2011, I hooked up. I once toy box and all that fizzled, I was also with another man where I was just the lead singer.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:58

And I didn't want to do that anymore. I wanted to get back to playing bass. Uh, so the I started looking around and found a band that was needing a bass player. And um just so happens that it was the band that changed my life. So I ended up my it was ends up that my third wife was the one that hired me for that band. Okay. So she was the lead singer of that band, and I got hired to play bass in there, and it ended up that after a while I ended up becoming the co-lead singer with her. Um but and then I was out of that band for about six weeks, and Brooke wanted me to do something again, so I was gonna, we were setting this whole thing up, and I got the call from my Leisha again from Ladyluck saying, Well, the bass player that they had hired to replace me had torn his Achilles tendon working on his car. It was rolled off the ramp, and he tried to catch it. Oh, and he caught it, ended up tearing his Achilles tendon. That time he couldn't stand up anymore. So they asked, Well, will you come back? Just you know, temporary to take the you know, take the show. And I was like, Yeah, sure, whatever, just as long as it's temporary. Well, I did about a month's worth of shows with him, and then he called a meeting and said, We want you to come back full time doing this. I was like, oh boy, because I had already been setting up this stuff with Brooke, right? Doing the stuff with the guys that with the drummer that we were playing with in Toy Box, uh-huh, and his son, who was a singer, that we were gonna do this whole thing up there, and I had to back out of it and go, Well, I'm I gotta go back with Lady Luck because they've already got the gigs and they need me. Yeah. And that one, again, one of those situations with Brooke that he was rather irritated with me and he didn't speak to me for about six months after that. And then after that, he calmed down and we got back to recording. Right. So, and we were recording right up until about early 2015. And that's when he finished up with the Project Killer Bees album. And then all of a sudden, you know, we were we were talking about doing another album, and all of a sudden he's like, Hey, we're I'm I'm moving to Arizona. What? You're closing down we you're closing your business down and you're going, what, huh? It is just for me, it came out of the blue because he never discussed moving anywhere. Right. And he was, you know, of course, in True Brook fashion, he was like, Yeah, this place sucks. I can't stand Minnesota anymore. I'm out of here. I'm out of here.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:57

So Project Killer Bees got one album out of the gate, and then that was that was it.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:02

That was it. Yeah, we had done on some um spot gigs here and there, just the two of us. We did have a two-man show going on while I was still in Lady Luck that we would go out and you know, just croon. Yeah. And he had all the tracks backing for us. So, you know, before anybody else was doing the you know the karaoke thing or the rest of the stuff, we already had backing tracks and all the rest of the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:27

So we're oh yeah, there's a million guys out there now with a guitar and a backing track. Exactly. And they're singing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:32

Yeah, we were trailblazers, yeah. Once again, once again, once again million dollars idea that we just stolen from us.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:40

Yeah, so he splits in 2015, and then you're still with Lady Luck, though. I'm still with Lady Luck in more ways than one, apparently.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:47

Yeah, and I had, yeah, at that point in time, I early 2015 I had asked my wife for a divorce. Right, the second wife for a divorce, and the way it all fell together was crazy. I I keep telling everybody there was divine intervention on this whole thing because I had no idea what Leisha, my current wife, felt about me at that point in time, anyway. But we had been riding together for close to four years uh to all of our gigs, and we were playing quite often, so we were in the car for long periods of time together and we got to talking a lot. Yeah, and ended up that once I told her on one of the rides that it says, No, I'm asking my wife for a divorce. I can't take this anymore. And immediately the floodgates kind of opened at that point in time. She's like, Oh my god, oh my god. And boy, I tell you what, she put that hook out right away. Yeah. And we ended up moving in together in September. I got divorced in July. We moved in together in September, and then we got married three years later. So, and then we moved down here to Arizona in 2021.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:07

So, what brought what brought you to Arizona?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:09

I gotten hired. We were we we were looking at other places that you know potentially like say after I retired, where are we gonna move when we retire?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:21

And we had three choices laid out. We were either gonna go Orlando, Phoenix area, or Las Vegas, and we really liked Vegas and uh Phoenix. We're like, ah, cool, you know, and then just put feelers out there. Next thing you know, I had two job offers from Phoenix. The first one I couldn't take because they want to be down there in three weeks, right? And I was like, guys, I gotta sell my house, I gotta move all this. Isn't gonna work. The second one was for Circle K. And they were like, no, no, take time. Okay, so it took me about three months to get down here, but we got our and and I again the divine intervention on all this stuff. We were looking for houses, and we had real estate agents on the ground down here looking for us, and they were doing video tours for us because it was, you know, during COVID.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:18

And it just so happened the house that they were walking, it was like probably the first house that we were looking at. Take she takes us through walkthrough tour and the video and all the rest of the stuff. The workers were still in there working on it and everything. By the way, this house has no offers on it. We're sitting there at my wife's desk and she's looking at it and just why giving it the long and I go. She goes, What? I go, so put in an offer. Right. For how much? I go, asking. You know, right off the bat, put in an offer offer for asking. And they're like, okay, good. So they took the offer. And they said, All right, at that point we're going to um give it till the end of the week. And we'll let you know on Saturday.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:08

We put the offer in like Monday night, something like that. And they said, Oh, we'll let you know on like Saturday. We get a call on Friday. Yeah, you know what? Um, it's yours. What? They they I guess it was two other offers that came in, and both of them they lowballed it.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:27

And it was like, well, you know, and I got money off for being a veteran. So another good thing that the military had done for me. Absolutely. And um right. It was so we went from one house to another house. There was no jumping into an apartment or any of the rest of that stuff. We only had to move once.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:42

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:43

Yeah. Got down here and it was like, this is super. Uh I love this. And uh, you know, that one again was a almost a hundred percent remote position. I had to come into the office once a week, and the offices were in Tempe.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:56

Yeah. Yeah. Florence isn't that much of a drive.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:59

That's about an hour, but yeah. And from there on out, like I said, I noticed saw the writing on the wall. I was only there for two years, and I saw the writing on the wall that uh the um higher-ups didn't appreciate um American workers. There was a whole lot of talk going around, and just the with the meetings and everything that were going on, you really got the impression that they thought that um American workers were overpaid and lazy. Yeah. And they didn't, they really didn't like us. Well, I got the opportunity to jump ship and go with who I'm with now with Common Spirit Health. And um I got out of there in like two months after I left, they outsourced everyone in IT. And I was like, my old boss was like, Yeah, you got out of here at the right time. Like, yeah, I did. Another, another divine intervention here. I was told to move on. I moved on.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:57

Yeah. And now you're living your best life.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:59

I am living my best life. I am really enjoying, I enjoy the team that I'm working with. I kind of refer to it as semi-retirement. Because you know, I work from home 100% of the time. Uh, I get as pretty much as much time off as I want. I mean, they give you PTO and stuff like that, but for you know, stuff days like today, I'm gonna go to this. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:24

Sounds like a great place to be.

American Legion Leadership And Community Pride

SPEAKER_00 1:31:26

It is a great place to be. The the team is awesome. Um, I don't think I you know, hopefully it's the last place I ever work. But you know, being down here and then you know, being part of the Legion. Um, you know, we I transferred over from my post back up in Minnesota where I was first vice and came down here and we I transferred my membership down here and we really didn't do anything with it for a few years.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:54

And finally, just this past year, I decided to get more involved in it. I was telling my wife, I go, Yeah, I'm paying for this thing every year. You know, I didn't go to the paid up for life, but I, you know, enjoyed. And we we come down here, we used to come down here and sing karaoke and drive everybody nuts because you know, you got two pros coming down here singing when everybody else is karaoke singer. And you're making everybody look bad for that. Yeah, they literally there were times where we walk in uh and you we heard in the background, oh god, they're here. Sorry, guys. Not really the welcome you were looking for. They all know us now and they're yeah, they like us. So yeah, I I get where they're coming from because you know you got two ringers coming in, and everybody else is right.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:44

It's like being in the golf tournament and having some champ PGA champion on your team. It's not fair.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:49

Yeah. So in the commander before that now in here was not the greatest. In fact, we'd been through probably a couple of subpar commanders. The commander we have now is doing a lot for this place. And when he came up to me and asked me if I wouldn't take on an officer position down here, I was like, yes, yes, because I see what's going on, and yes, I will be very happy to help you out in this. And of course, uh because I'm an IT guy, all the IT work goes to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:25

So anything technical, even if it's not technical, goes to you, right? Pretty much, yeah. And when you say he works, he works because when I came in, you were telling me he's doing some maintenance here.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:33

Like he's in back in the market, he's yeah, we've been doing there's been a lot of stuff going on around here. And you know, and like I said, I chip, I chip in um every Friday because we do you know, we have the big Friday dinners and everything down here. And I'm out there in back cleaning up the area, making sure everything is policed up out there. We don't have any cigarette butts on the ground, all the garbage picked up, the leaves are you know, the turf looks nice again. So there was the commander was doing that before I took over. And you know, finally one of the meetings he asked, Hey, I I gotta farm this out. Somebody's got to do this. And it was like, I'll take it.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:11

Yeah, one guy can't do it all.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:12

Yeah. So it, but you know, this has been being for this post. I I really enjoy this post.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:19

Well, it's a great post, too. Yeah, been to a lot of legions. I'm there, they're all great, but this is uh, I don't know, this has got the Wild West feel to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:27

It does. Well, yeah, and I love Florence. Yeah, the the city is really cool. I mean, you know, it still retains that old West feel, and there's a lot of cowboys around here and stuff. And you know, you even and you know, Fridays when we come in, you know, they come in for dinner, and you know, you got a lot of guys coming in, cowboy boots and hat and everything like that. You know, they're ranchers, they're you know, they work out here, and it's fun to see it, and I love having them. And just you know being around here now, yeah, the the people are super nice. Everybody was very welcoming.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:03

Yeah, and you know was that a concern though, coming from like a uh coming from Minnesota out here. Were you concerned at all that maybe it wouldn't be welcoming?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:15

You never know what to expect. Yeah, you hope for the best, uh plan for the worst. Right. Um, but when we started coming in almost immediately, even you know, when we were just coming in for karaoke, we really didn't do anything. Um we were always welcomed pretty well.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:33

And then, like I said, since the turnover in leadership here, it's gotten very welcoming. And it, you know, it's I don't know, this place is truly done a 180-degree phase shift, and this place is running like a well-oiled machine now. And the little stuff that needs to get done is getting done. Um, when you're done here, you know, you can walk out to the side of the building and see the mural that's just getting posted uh painted out there. Uh we just got the entire building painted and they're doing the mural out there, and you know, we actually got people working on the building. You know, it's a hundred-year-old building.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:11

Right, right. You know, sounds like a lot of pride in it, though.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:15

There's a lot of pride in it. I mean, there's still a lot of work to be done. I mean, you know, obviously, we got floor work and stuff that needs to be done in here, but it's things are getting done.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:27

And the commander leading the way, which is funny that you know, talk to him about what he did when he was in the military and what his rank was and everything. And turns out, well, he got out of an E4.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:41

No, imagine that.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:42

I was an E4. Like, oh, okay. So here we go. We got the uh junior NCOs here running the shop.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:48

Ah, the enlisted people get crap done. I mean, that's how it works, right? It would not, we it would never operate without him. Right. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:56

Yeah, so this is, I mean, like I said, I I now spend a quite a bit more time down here, uh-huh, especially with my duties as adjutant down here. So it's but most of the work I do is on my computer at home anyway. But you know, there's been certain situations electronically and stuff like that. Like an old commander uh essentially held out all the passwords for all the old accounts that we had. So uh guess who's spun up new accounts, new email accounts, and I'm doing a new Facebook page for them. And you know, or me and the wife, my wife now is involved in all this. She's part of the auxiliary, and uh, she just got elected president of the auxiliary.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:39

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:40

So we have you know officer and another officer.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:45

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, maybe you sing a little more karaoke in you.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:48

Uh well, actually, they probably want us to come in and just do our own show.

unknown 1:37:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:53

Right. So we have covered a lot. I've learned a lot about you uh in the last hour and a half that we've talked. Um, and as we wind down our conversation, uh before I ask my left my final question, I'm just curious, is there anything that we haven't covered that you wanted to talk about as part of this?

SPEAKER_00 1:38:12

Not that I can really think of. Okay. I mean, you know, it's I've done so many things. And it was one of the things that I guess, you know, my life, how I operate. Not a whole lot of it's planned.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:27

Right.

Final Message For The Future

SPEAKER_00 1:38:28

I just do stuff and end up okay, this is the way I'm heading now. And that's what I've done. I mean, when I went into the army, okay, this is what I'm doing now. Got out, went to music school, okay. This is what I'm doing now. And you know, ended up getting back into IT because of the you know, what I'd learned in uh in the army, and okay, and from there on out, it was like I just kept progressing into different areas, you know, started out in the refurb warehouse, you know, overhauling machines, going to desktop support. Next thing you know, I'm in desktop engineering, next thing you know, I'm doing the server end of things, and it just kind of progresses from there, and I get to the you know remote access thing and they're working with Citrix, and that's where I've been for over 20 years now.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:13

And it, I don't know, didn't plan it, it just happened that way, but it's working.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:18

Yeah, that's that's what matters. Yeah, so it's really a great segue into my final question, and that is if someone is listening to this a hundred years from now, right? Neither one of us are gonna be here, but no, but the internet's forever, so this will be here. But somebody's listening to this story and hearing about your life, what message would you like to leave them with?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:37

Oh wow, that's a tough one.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:40

Um listen to God and nothing's over till it's over. Just if you feel like you're swimming upstream, turn around.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:57

All right. Well, thanks again, Brad. I really appreciate you taking time out today.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:01

Yeah, thank you.