Frankly Drinking With Friends: The Swell Frank Sinatra and Bourbon Podcast
A fun and relaxing celebration of Frank Sinatra, bourbon and more. Join your hosts Luke and Chris as we explore the music and legacy of Ol’ Blue Eyes while sampling multiple tastes of American whiskey. Most episodes feature three songs and three bourbon pours. Sit back, settle in and enjoy our toast to two American classics!
Frankly Drinking With Friends: The Swell Frank Sinatra and Bourbon Podcast
Friendly Drinking With Dusty (Wild Turkey)
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In this special episode, Luke and Chris are joined by Luke's longtime pal Dusty Edinger, a multitalented performer and songwriter now finding fans on college radio, streaming and YouTube. The guys also discuss three tasty Wild Turkey pours and legendary master distiller Jimmy Russell. He started at Wild Turkey in 1954, the year after Sinatra joined Capitol and Elvis debuted on Sun. For more on Dusty, visit dustyedinger.com. (Podcast produced by Luke and our friends at www.soundofarose.com.)
Ah, good evening, folks, and welcome to Frankly Drinking with Friends, the Swell Sinatra and Bourbon Podcast. And speaking of friends, I'm once again joined by our resident bourbon boss and whiskey whisperer.
SPEAKER_08What's his name? We know his name. His name is Mr. Booze. Mr.
SPEAKER_03Booze, Mr. B double O C. Don't ever choose to tell you what. Any game you play with him, you lose no mess with Mr. Booze. Not Mr. Booze, but Dr. Booze, my buddy Chris. Welcome back. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_06I'm doing awesome. Yeah. I just got back from doing some research in Louisville. Ah. Went to a few distilleries. You know, always in the library. Always in the library. Always, always researching. Your work is never done. No sacrifice. Too small. Yeah. How about you? Yeah, doing good. Doing good. So. So tell me about the uh intro music. You switched it up on me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That was Dusty Ettinger with Broken Soul Survivor from his 2025 album Handsome Bully Level Headed Zombies. It's not the easiest thing to say. Handsome bully level-headed zombies. So if you think something is up, you're right. We have a total musical takeover by my dear friend of many years, and he's here with us tonight, my pal, Mr. Dusty Edinger. Dusty, welcome to tonight's episode. Hi, hello. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. It's great. It's great. We're calling this friendly drinking with Dusty. The format busting visit. Yes. Yes, totally. Taking the show to new heights. The chairman has handed the microphone to you. He did. He did.
SPEAKER_08How are you this evening, Dusty? I'm excellent. Thank you for asking. How are you? I couldn't help noticing that Chris said Louisville right. Uh-huh. Are you from there? No, but I've been there many times during briefing. My family is from there. And then if you if you say Louisville, you are not from there. You say Louisville. Uh-huh. And you did it right. All right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. There's this stamp right there. Yeah. Proving that you've been to Kentucky in the middle times. And spent a good deal of time there.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. I mean, the DUI court date is also proof you've been there.
SPEAKER_03We've avoided that stuff. Responsibly, always. Dusty, it's great to have you on the show, be able to talk about your music, your creative process, you know, what drives you, all that kind of stuff. And we we go back a few years.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, we were just talking about in 2027 will be 40 years. We've we've known each other. That is I don't I haven't known my family for 40 years.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we met at Russell Hall at Georgia when it was still called the zoo. They hadn't brought women as residents of Russell at that time. That's a thing now. So yeah, yeah. They have the ladies there too, officially.
SPEAKER_08So that was back when UGA would let anybody in. I don't think I'd be as welcomed today.
SPEAKER_03Neither of us. I got there coming from Georgia Tech with my tail between my legs. So uh anyway, but you were always playing the drums. Yes. And you've been in multiple bands. I remember doubts even here from college. Yeah, but I mean now the repertoire has gotten a lot bigger as far as the instruments you play and your role in making music.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I've been a drummer my whole life since I was fifteen. I bought my own drum set. I took out a line when my parents wouldn't buy me a drum set and totally self-taught. And played all through college and got out of college and kept playing, and everybody I know has stopped being a musician except for me. They all came to their senses, except for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_08So original bands, cover bands, tribute bands, played at Muddlesome Live Band Karaoke in Atlanta for 12 years. I've played just about everywhere you can possibly play.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. And you had to get that drum kit in a Carmen Ghia back in the day. That was we put the kick drum on the roof on a bike rack on the roof. You could put the snare in the front boot, is that right?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, because they injured them in the back. We had stuff on the front. It was loaded down. The kick drum in the in the passenger seat if there was no passengers. But if girlfriend or you know, somebody like that wanted to tag along, then one of them had to go on the roof.
SPEAKER_06Oh depends on how uh soon the next show was, right? That's right. How careful you had to be. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Good deal. Well, it's awesome. This is great. We're gonna have uh we're gonna have a great chat tonight.
SPEAKER_06And uh so we're gonna be listening to Dusty's music throughout. Yeah. So that was the tease with the intro. That's right. Okay, gotcha. So the baton has been handed for the evening. That's right. That's right. So I should tell the audience I'm not handing over my baton. I'm still coordinating the brown liquor.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Good. Good. Yes, neither Dusty nor I are equipped to do what you're doing.
SPEAKER_06So let's go. All right. So we're gonna take a visit to uh the wild turkey distillery. So they're in uh Lawrenceville, Kentucky, which is what closer to Lexington than Louisville, but kind of in between, but maybe a little shy closer to Lexington. Go big blue. So uh this is uh you know one of the uh stalwarts in Kentucky Bourbon and Rise, but this is one of those old distilleries. The Rippe family founded it in the late 1800s. Interestingly, they sold a lot of their product through the Austin Nichols grocery store. So back in the day, grocery stores were selling beer, wine, and and liquor. Wow. Okay. The Austin Nichols group ended up buying the distillery and then changing the name to Wild Turkey. Huh. So one of the coolest things about Wild Turkey, in my opinion, besides the products, is the guy that's the master distiller has been the master distiller there for 70 years. He's the longest tenured master distiller on any distillery on the planet. Wow. He started there sweeping the floors, worked his way up, was the third master distiller that the distillery ever had. And he is still there, he's still alive. They call him the Buddha of Bourbon. Wow. The Buddha of Bourbon. So we're gonna start easy. One of the flagship products is Wild Turkey 101. So we're doing the bourbon.
SPEAKER_00Whiskey, whiskey, whiskey.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, great. Starting off with a heavy pour.
SPEAKER_03Sorry about that, my man. That's all right. Dusty, you want a nip of this? No. All right. All right, here we go. Cheers.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, 101 is uh Yeah, so 101, this is six to eight year product. 75% corn, 13% rye, 12% malted barley. That is kind of the wild turkey recipe. Okay. So we'll be repeating that as I go through the samples. Yeah. But that's kind of it. They are known for being I would call them quintessential, bold, robust kind of profile. And I I attribute that to a couple of things. One is there's you know, a little higher rye than the average mash bill so the in the teens. Okay. Heavy char on the barrel. So it's a level four, which they call an alligator char. Just means you're gonna get a lot more of the wood sugars coming in. They uh distill at a little bit lower level than most people because they want to keep as much of the grain flavor profile in their product. So you can you can distill up to 160 proof. Okay, but the higher you distill, the more you're kind of taking flavor away. Okay. So they keep it well under that because they want to keep as much flavor as possible. So I think all of that kind of contributes to why wild turkey has a very unique flavor profile, in my opinion. Yeah. So let me take a sample, tell me what you think. It's a classic, too. And I like the fact that it's at one-on-one, which is perfect. Yeah. So there's something in every wild turkey product, in my opinion, that jumps out on my palate. It's very disdainful for me. There's an orange, like a in there. And that's when I'm doing any kind of blind tasting, I can usually zero in on that and know that somebody's put a wild turkey. Wild turkey product in there. That's just how I orient myself. So everybody's palate's different. People may not pick that up as well, but certainly spicy because of that rye that's coming in. But I think some of that boldness, the richness is at the char little as well. So just a great flagship product that is incredibly consistent. Yeah, they haven't changed this thing in eons, and that's part of the beauty of why Jimmy Russell, who is this master distiller, has been there. His deal is we have never changed this product since I've been here. It's the same what you got for 70 years. 70 years? He's been a master distiller for 70 years.
SPEAKER_03I mean, it's like did Jimmy start when he was eight? He swept up the place when he was four. He's an old man.
SPEAKER_06I think he was the title master distiller in 1960. Okay. So his son is uh also a master distiller. So now they're a father-son tandem. Okay. He's been there with him for 20 years already. So it's it's an amazing story about the Russell family and them being stewards of wild turkey. So that's the flagship. Yeah. That's our first one out of the gate.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm a fan of this Wild Turkey 101. Yeah, I think it's a it's a great pour to keep around and it works really well like Manhattan, old-fashioned. Oh, 100%. You know, it's great for making drinks out of it, but it's a good sipper as well. And like you said, it's kind of got a classic, I'd say corn.
SPEAKER_02Is it fair to say corn forward?
SPEAKER_0675% corn is a healthy dose. Yeah. It's the rye piece that's unique, though. That's the spicy part. Yeah. It's a little sweeter too because of that high corn. But if you uh once you empty your sample, if you smell the glass, you might pick up that orange.
SPEAKER_03It's easier to create. I'm gonna keep working on this for a little bit, Chris. But when I get there, I'm gonna check that out. And it's a good value. Oh, no question. I mean, this is I don't know.
SPEAKER_06And you can find it everywhere, so it's accessible. Yeah. So I wanted to start our our journey tonight at step one. I like that.
SPEAKER_03Gobble gobble 101. Accessible, affordable. Yeah, it's great. Great value. Jimmy's been doing this a while. It probably should be Mr. Russell to me. Even as old as I am, you know. Well, very good. So, like I said, Frank has the night off, and Dusty Edinger is here with my buddy. We heard a little of Broken Soul Survivor earlier from Dusty's 2025 album, Handsome Bully, Level Headed Zombies. We're gonna hear another track from Dusty coming up right now. So let's give a listen to this song from Dusty that has an orchestration by Dusty. And he's performing one of my very favorite Dusty tracks. It's called Road to Ruin.
SPEAKER_04Don't fail me.
SPEAKER_03That was Dusty Ettinger with Road to Ruin from his 2025 LP, Handsome Bully, Level Headed Zombies. Chris, what'd you think about that?
SPEAKER_06I think it's a terrific song. Very catchy. Can see myself being in a car, windows down, rolling that. I'd be interested to know where you get your inspiration for music. And I don't know if there are artists that you liked when you were growing up or that you appreciate that's influenced your music. I'd love to learn stuff about that.
SPEAKER_08A billion artists. So I grew up listening to music. I was a black sheep of my family. Nobody in my family likes music. My dad was a banker. He wouldn't know anything about Frank Sinatra. He would just know nothing about it. But I grew up listening to American Top 40, Casey K some every Sunday. We had at that time very good radio stations in Atlanta. C93 comes to mind, 96 Rock, you know, and I listened to everything. I mean, everything. You know, classic rock, pop, hollow notes, Carol King, James Brown, Funkadelic, Led Zeppelin, Beatles. I mean, I was just all over the place. There's just nothing that I didn't and I steal from all those people. I mean, I just have no, I made no bones about it. I steal from a million places. And when I think about Road to Ruin, when you you told me this is one of the ones you wanted to listen to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_08I absolutely stole this from Christine McVeigh, Say You Love Me. I knew this was a Fleetwood Mac song. And as soon as I had the inspiration for it, I was just like, I'm going full Fleetwood Mac on this one. And that's what we did. We put three-part harmonies all over it. We put a great guitar solo in it, and it's piano-driven, mid-tempo classic rock song. And I'm sure if she was alive, I would owe her some sort of ranties on the song.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think your album work, both of your albums, shows a lot of that the depth and breadth of your musical experience and what's influenced you, you know, because there's there's a lot of different sounds. It's not one sound over and over again.
SPEAKER_08Well, for me, you know, I was thinking about this too. I come from so many different directions. I can write a song from a guitar riff or a piano riff or even sometimes a single chord. I can write a song based on a lyric that I came up with, Broken Soul Survivors are putting a good example of that. A drum part. There's a song here called Fallen Angel. It's first track on the record. That was drums first. And I wrote the song around the drum part. So I wear like a badge of honor because I just I do not have a my pattern, is that there's no pattern. And I think when somebody like Tom Petty, for instance, sits down to write a song, it's always Tom Petty. It's an acoustic guitar. He starts drumming, he comes up with something, and that's every Tom Petty song starts that way. And that's not what happens at my house. It's I'm in the shower, I drop this, drop the shampoo bottle, it makes a clunky sound, and I'm like, hey, I can write a song to a clanky sound. I just I can start a song from anywhere. So and the biggest compliment that my producer gave me on the first record was all your songs are different. They're all different, but they all sound like you. And I think that's true. I think that's absolutely true. I get bored of people whose songs all sound the same. I don't like to throw shade at people, but the smithereens bore me to death. That sounds like the same song over and over. So I strive to have different tempos, and I strive to have a piano song and a guitar song, and an ACDC song, and a Pat Boom song, and a you know, uh uh Stevie Wonder song strive to to keep it interesting for me because I think that's the secret to other people liking stuff is you've got to convey that you're enjoying it yourself. Right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So well, I think that really comes through. And this song, this song Road to Ruin, is just a real favorite of mine. Everyone, if you've listened to the show a little bit, you know that I'm a little bit of a word person and I pay attention to the lyric. And I played Road to Ruin over and over one night when I I was doing dishes and doing other stuff, cleaning up in the kitchen, and Laura had moved on, she was doing something else, and I must have played it ten times in a row, just one after another after another. And I think to me, lyric speaks to something about the moment that we're in, our contemporary world, with everyone having an opinion about everything, with phones and algorithms, social media, all of that. And I love your your lyric I've got nothing but this jacket on my back and these brown leather boots and this pistol I'm refusing to shoot. It's just as hard as it looks, but I'm trying to make a difference. And you you mentioned a solution, which sounds to me like just not jumping into it, you know, walking away or standing where you are without engaging maybe quite as much.
SPEAKER_08It's funny that that exact lyric is the one that my wife said, That's a great song, but that lyric is terrible. And I just was like, I totally disagree.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_08And I like visceral reactions to things. If you don't like something, I'd rather hear that, you know. Yeah. That's more interesting to me because I want to know why. But the song for me is, you know. It's gonna sound cliche, but it's about man's eternal struggle against against everything. Yeah. And then there's tiny little snapshots of my life and my struggles in there. And this is a theme throughout my songwriting. There's a lot of relationship talk, you know, and none of them are about my current relationship. I I just I don't drag my current relationship into this. And I and I won't say I'm going down the road to ruin Jeff. You know, I don't ever get specific about talking about because that ruins it. That takes the ambiguity out of it and the relatability for everyone else. So sure. You know, I don't mention dates, I don't mention I have this thing that I don't talk about cell phones because I think that's like the least rock and roll thing. Oh, yeah. You know, yeah. I'll say pay phone, but I won't say cell phone.
SPEAKER_03I know, I know. I like your use of you know old school linear ways of listening to music and communicating. You you mentioned those things, you know, like pick up the phone and call me, things like that, or she's gonna cross the room and turn the record player up, turn the radio up.
SPEAKER_08I don't recall, but well, you said LP earlier, and I really admired that. And you know, yeah, we don't have LPs anymore. I couldn't fit this on an LP because you can actually for a few thousand dollars, you can print these things on vinyl, but this this thing has got too much music on it. Right. So I would have had to drop sonnels off to do the vinyl version.
SPEAKER_03But yeah. So one more thing about this, I just feet don't fail me now. I love that calling up everyone, don't care who you are, what you did. I think, and you know, and just the whole thing feet don't fail me now. That to me, this song to me sounds a little bit like a prayer. You know, it's it's a hope, it's a wish, it's kind of a prayer.
SPEAKER_08Well, I I I'm not sure that I would say prayer, but I like that you say it because if that's what it means to you, then that is my whole purpose is for somebody to listen to this and take something for themselves out of it. For me, it's like I said, it's about struggle, it's about it's about getting mad at the world. And um I'm a big picture person, you know. I like to do the 10,000-foot view. Yeah. And I'm also a decision maker. I've always been a decision maker in my family, you know, when it comes down to it. And, you know, Sophie's choice, you know, everybody knows that. The biggest example of the worst decision that's ever had to be made in the history of the planet. And I'm just saying that I'm probably a person that wouldn't have struggled in that moment at all. I just am good at making the choice and living with whatever the consequences are.
SPEAKER_03I want to back up for just a second and ask you about the decision in 19 or 20 when you started working on your first solo record. Tell us about that. Like, what was the spark? What was the genesis of that? Because this was a new thing for you to just start writing songs and recording songs yourself.
SPEAKER_08Recording for sure. I didn't have the means to do that. I was I've been in a bunch of original bands, you know, starting in '96 when I moved back to Atlanta. People didn't have studios in their house like they do now. So I would save up my money, go on to the studio, and record three songs in one day, and it would cost me about six grand. Man. And that took me forever to save up, and none of the other guys in the band would ever contribute to that. So it was all me. And we were pressed for time, so we ended up settling for takes that we didn't like that weren't as good as we would have liked, but that's just the way real studios work. So I was doing it way back when, but the impetus for the first record you're talking about was COVID. Okay. I knew I was gonna have a year off and nothing to do, and I just had all this creative energy, and I'm just not comfortable sitting around for a year. So I didn't have any way to do it with anybody, so I just started writing by myself, and you know, I was I would pull 18-hour writing sessions, I'd never sleep, then I'd sleep for three straight days, and I remember when I knew I think I actually sent you a demo at one point, yeah. And I remember the first demo that I knew was good, and that opened the whole door for me. I knew it just gave me the confidence to finish the record, and it ended up being, I think we started out to record 17 songs, and we ended up with 13. And that's too many. I mean, most records should really be eight to 10 at the most, and I just couldn't, what do they say, kill your darlings? Yeah, I couldn't do it. I the songs were so good to me and important. I wasn't making the record for a record company, a record company would have instantly, you know, chopped six songs off of that and put it out, but I was paying for it. I was doing all the sweat equity, and I wanted 13 songs, and I don't care.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm glad they're all on there because it's a great record, even though I had the utmost of faith in you, and like I thought that your work would be really good. Okay, because I've seen your musicianship and I heard the demo, and then I was still blown away by the result. And uh just a beautiful piece of work that the second album as well, both of them, but yeah, it's great, really, really good. So, Chris, let's see what else we have. Yeah, see what kind of tasty brown liquor we have next.
SPEAKER_06Actually, when it when Dusty mentioned sweat equity, I was thinking about the Russell family and how much sweat equity they put into Wild Turkey Distillery. Unbelievable stuff. Before I jump into the second, just a couple things about Jimmy Russell. So during his time as master distiller, there's quite a few different lines at Wild Turkey. They've got Rare Breed, which came out in '91, which is basically some single barrel stuff. Incredible. Really good. They've got Kentucky Spirit, which is a limited release, also kind of a single barrel concept that came out in '95. It's won a bunch of different awards. Both Jimmy and his son Eddie, who I already mentioned was uh master distiller as well, they co-created what you see on the shelves as Russell Reserves.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Which is delightful. Really? So a lot of new things are attributed to Jimmy and then his son as well. But one of the things that Jimmy did was he was one of the first ones to create a flavored whiskey. Is that right? What's now known as American honey. Okay. And they have an American spiced honey, I think. Let me think about that. No, it's American sting. Okay. That's what it's called. So back in the late 70s, there were a lot of females that were working in the distillery, and they went to Jimmy and said, Hey, can you like do something a little softer that you know we could, you know, start to get used to whiskey? So he made this honey flavored liqueur at the time. Wow. And uh, it was the first anything that any distiller had ever done, something like that. And it was in a bottle that looked like the I dream of Jeannie bottle. For those of you that are up to remember that. But it was kind of shaped like that to you know appeal to a female audience. And that became, they they morphed it into a flavored whiskey. So and the Sting version just has uh ghost peppers in it. So it's a honey flavored whiskey, but with some zip to it. So both of those are still uh popular, but Jimmy did those. So one thing that his son Eddie did, again, Codemaster Distiller, First Father and Son, both of them are in the Bourbon Hall of Fame. Eddie, in his own right, has came out with Wild Turkey, straight bourbon whiskey, wild turkey, straight rye whiskey, rare breed rye. And then one of the things that they did is they hired Matthew McConaughey to be their creative director. So the distillery hired him. Okay. If you go on YouTube and type him in a wild turkey, he's done some amazing videos just talking. I mean, if you listen to one of those, you're gonna become a wild turkey pen. It is amazing stuff. But they got him to work on a new product where he worked with Eddie Russell to create it.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_06So they're both involved with it, the creation of it, and it's called Long Branch.
SPEAKER_00Whiskey, whiskey, whiskey.
SPEAKER_06So long branch uses the same mash bill. So it's again 75% corn, 13% rye, 12% malted party. It's 86 proof, so not gonna hurt you too much. It's an eight-year bourbon. So it's an eight-year, but the the touch that Manton McConaughey, who is from Texas, they refine the whiskey with Texas mesquite and oak charcoal. So they don't tell you what that means, the refining. I'm guessing they may be using the Lincoln County process where they just take the liquid and let it pour through those things to impart flavor. Okay. So I may get that wrong, but they just said it's refined by that. I'm from Texas myself. I was born and raised in Houston. So anything with mesquite is phenomenal. So this is Long Branch influenced by Matthew McConaughey and Eddie Russell.
SPEAKER_01So well done. Dusty's shaking his head.
SPEAKER_08All right. So the liquor that was designed for the ladies, that was probably the first Zima.
SPEAKER_03Something like that, a parallel in the whiskey world.
SPEAKER_06Trying to carve out some new place in the booze market. So, you know, I try to, you know, tamper my enthusiasm sometimes for for stuff. But this is one of those products that literally the first sip I took, I loved it. I love everything about it. I love the way it smells. I like the mesquite and the uh extra oak. That's kind of my palate. The 86 proof, very, very easy. This is uh what we, you know, in the the whiskey cult call the the daily sipper. Uh-huh. Uh this was this one for the bill. This is one of those bottles that's always in my house. Now, unfortunately, Matthew is no longer involved with the product. So you can see this bottle, which has uh Eddie's name and Matthew's on it. I probably got that backwards. Okay. Yeah. But if you pick up a bottle today, yeah, it just has Eddie's name on it. Okay. Because Matthew is no longer involved with it. So I've still got one of the old ones with his name on it. So I'm gonna cherish going through that. Nothing different with the product, other than I appreciate the label being there. I may buy a new bottle and still fill it in that bottle. I was thinking that. That would be that would be good. This stuff is awesome. I love it. I love it. And I get that orangey thing. It's still in there.
SPEAKER_03This is the first time I've had this. Cheers, yeah. You've never had long bread? No, but I I really like it. This is super, super smooth, balanced. I love the flavor.
SPEAKER_06It is just absolutely smooth, and it's an eight-year, and that is gonna be 40 bucks, something like that. Don't quote me on that. Wow. I mean, for that quality of product, it's ridiculous. So, yeah, very good. Wow, I like that. I may not put the cat back on this one.
SPEAKER_03Keep it, keep it handy in case you need a little bit more, just a little more over there. I mean, an 86 proof. You can have another sip or two.
SPEAKER_06No doubt.
SPEAKER_05No doubt.
SPEAKER_06But again, same mash bill, right? So there's nothing different with the recipe. It's yeah, longer aging, now with the mesquite kind of finished stuff. Charcoal filtering kind of it it said refined with Texas mesquite. Yeah. And oh charcoal. Oak charcoal in it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So it seems like maybe if it's going through it, then maybe that's some of the softness of it, you know, and I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just really rounded off, really rounded off the edges on this thing. Yeah, it's a mellowing.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. And the other thing, as we've talked about on other shows, you know, I like to finish part of a bottle and let it sit. Yeah. So I think that oxidation is in there as well. Anyway, it it's really nice.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. And this bottle, by the way, folks, is about two-thirds utilized. So it's got plenty of space in there for some for some air to sit there and just help mellow this stuff even more. Not that it needs it. Dusty, you sure you don't want to taste this? Thank you. So up next, we are gonna return to another amazing track for tonight's kind of special episode, friendly drinking with Dusty. For this one, we're rewinding the clock back to 2021 and Dusty's first solo LP, Missing Links and Kitchen Sinks. It's another beautiful recording from Dusty. So let's give a listen to him now with a song I Still Love You Anyway. That was Dusty Edinger with I Still Love You anyway, from his jam-packed 2021 album, Missing Links and Kitchen Sinks. Chris, what'd you think about that one?
SPEAKER_06I thought it was terrific. I'm just glad that none of these songs have anything to do with Travis Kelsey. That's that's the first thing.
SPEAKER_07Um 2021. There's some Travis on the way, though. I can promise you that.
SPEAKER_06So you know what I noticed in that song in particular, it is, as you said earlier, all of your songs sound very different. So that one from your first release is very different than uh the few that we've already played here on the show. So you were absolutely right in sharing that ahead of time so that the audience knows. But that's terrific. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08I liked it. Well, I think my voice is the kind of thread, right? You know, you know, and I listen to, I mean, one of the things, I mean with week, we have many musical things in common, but one of the ones we have in common is you two. He's a bigger U2 fan than me. But if you listen to War or Boy, and then you listen to Octongue Baby without the vocals, you're gonna have a hard time convincing someone that that's the same band, right? Yeah. But when you put Bono back into the mold, it suddenly it's the glue that holds the whole thing together. So I don't mind writing a country song or a jazz song or a rock song as long as I can just sing it in my way that I sort of do.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So that's the when do you, as a a a creative musical person, make the determination that I don't want to just play an instrument. I actually want to do the vocals, and I want to be the lead vocal. Is there a decision somewhere?
SPEAKER_08Well, I started singing for the same reason Steven Tyler and Phil Collins started singing. Their singer and their band quit, and I was the only one that could even sing in key. It was not that I was a good singer, right? That I was the only option. So I became the singer by default. And you know, singing and playing drums at the same time is not that many people can do it. And I'm constantly trying to make people understand that to me it's not hard. It seems hard to a person who can't do it, but I'm just telling you, it's just for me, I don't think about it. It's you know, sometimes I have to water my drum parts down a little bit and make them less complicated so that I can do the syncopated, you know, rhythmic lyrics that I like to do. But but I do not struggle to play drums and sing. I just don't. It's just a thing that I can just do. So I don't take tons of credit when people try to give me credit for that. It's just I find it much more difficult to play guitar and sing at the same time because your fingers are actually doing different things on both hands and you're trying to sing. I don't know how I don't know how guitar players, real guitar players, do that. Right. Like when I watch John Mayer, I'm just in awe of this guy who's doing all that at once.
SPEAKER_06So when you were 15 and your love of the drums and you bought your set, you weren't at that point saying, I want to sing too. It was, I want to be a musician, and then that just came afterwards.
SPEAKER_08That came long, long later, I picked up a guitar for the first time in college and wasn't any good at it. I'm still not great at it, but I know a lot of chords, and I have a very good ear, so I don't have any formal music theory training or anything. I think if you went back and read the big book of rock and roll history, you'd find that very few of the people in those books do. Every once in a while, there is a Jimmy Page who has, you know, incredible theory, but there's a lot more Tom Petties and a lot more, you know, a lot more guys like me than there are guys that went through nine years of college to do music theory. It's just it's very common that people don't have that kind of background. School hard knocks, I guess, is what I'm getting at.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes, and so many years of doing this.
SPEAKER_08Well, the reason Aerosmith is great is because they did it for 60 straight years, 325 nights a year. That's why they're great. It has nothing to do with a Mel Bay introductory to music theory book that they got. It's just Joe Perry doing it over and over and over. And that's you know, that's just how it is.
SPEAKER_06What was the book where they said 10,000 hours or something? You could be at anything took so many hours.
SPEAKER_08I think that's the drumming thing. The thing I was saying was so easy. I don't think about it because I got well past 10,000 hours of winning drums. Yeah, I've got 10,000 hours in the last decade, and I've been doing it for four decades.
SPEAKER_03So yeah. So I think to me, this song, I love everything about this song, and there's some some interesting things that you did in terms of the production coming in with the saxophone solo in that. This is interesting in that it's not it's not a straightforward love song at all. It's you know, there's this up tempo, upbeat, kind of even sunny side to the music. And then the lyric, there's there's a big difference between mismatch.
SPEAKER_08There's a big difference between I love you and I love you anyway.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_08That's right. That's sort of the fun of the thing.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes. Yeah. I still love you anyway. Yeah, that's great. I like when you ask that question or the lyric. I don't want to personalize it to you because I mean you wrote the lyric, but that question of, you know, would you want to be the one to make me begin to lose my faith in this world? I like that.
SPEAKER_08That's a great line. Well, yeah. And my lyric writing is changed a lot even since 2021. I mean, we're four years after that. But essentially, I think you'll see, maybe not every time, but I think you'll you'll see that at heart, lyrically, these are blues songs. These are, you know, my girlfriend left me. Yeah. And now everything's gone, you know, gone downhill and now it's stuck. I mean, that's essentially what a blues song is. You know, I lost my job, my dog bit me. You know, it's I lost my girl. I lost all my money. I tend to like the cheekier lyric writers. I like Paul McCartney a lot. I certainly like Stephen Tyler. I think about guys that, you know, it's one thing to write, like we were saying before. I love you. That's easy. Yeah. You know, I like to just stab you in the toe just a tiny bit to make it just more interesting. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's because I don't know if you've heard, yeah, but sometimes people break up.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Love doesn't always last. Uh for sure.
SPEAKER_08I'm the product of 16 divorces in my family. So I'm the only one that's still married.
SPEAKER_03So wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah, that's good. Stick with it. How long now? It's about 24. Wow. Congratulations. That's awesome. No, but that is a long time. We're getting there. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Good. I had to wait for Ashley to be born. That took a little bit of time. She's a little bit. She's a little bit younger than you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_08People my age are on to me. Like, yeah, that doesn't work anymore.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Shook them into this. Your stick doesn't work. So as far as like when you're doing like the process of music, what's your favorite part? I mean, because you can work on songs, and then there's a lot of things that go into production, and then the recording process. And what do you what do you like the best?
SPEAKER_08I'm into the recording part of this now out of necessity again because my longtime relationship with a producer, we decided to go our separate ways. And so I sort of had to pick up that ball as well. So, you know, I originally just wanted to write the songs and have someone else record the songs. And, you know, way back when I really I also wanted someone else to pay for the songs to be recorded. Oh, okay. So I wear a lot of hats. But as far as my favorite part, I love to write. I'm very uninhibited. I can write about anything, and the impetus can start anywhere. And I know a lot of people who can come up with good ideas but can't finish them. So finishing is if someone asks me what's the hardest part, it's actually finishing the thing. I even know people who can get things to the 75-80% mark, and then they can't get them across the goal line. And that to me has been the thing that's the hardest. Because once it's done, you can't change it. I listen to these songs from the first record, you're playing them right now, and I'm hearing things that I'd love to change. I'd love to have that just a little louder. I'd love to have that just a little quieter. I would love the tempo to be three beats a minute faster. You guys don't hear any of that. All I hear is the regret. Yeah. But at some point, it's like you gotta let the bird leave the nest and it's out of your hand at that point. So finishing is hard.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Finishing is that's the one thing I don't have a problem with. Finishing.
SPEAKER_03My glasses is amazing to uh well, very good. I mean, speaking of empty glasses, what do we have what do we have up next, Chris? All right, let's wind out our uh a trio of samples here.
SPEAKER_06Um, Wild Turkey has lots of different lines. We are just scratching the surface of what they have. But one of the things they do are limited releases, and so those are harder to find, they're not widely available all around the country, so you gotta kind of be lucky if you get your hands on one of those. But one of the ones that they did was in honor of Jimmy Russell and Eddie being master distillers together. So they called it Father and Son.
SPEAKER_00Whiskey, whiskey, whiskey.
SPEAKER_06It's a 13-year wild turkey product. Wow. And it was limited edition. Some of these you may only find in the travel stores at the at the airport. Okay. Yeah. But this is an amazing pour. And again, it's a limited release, so it's not a regular product. You can't go out and find it. It's kind of when they arrive, if you can get your handphone one, great. And if you can't, then you hope when they come up with a different limited release that you're around for that. But this one was brought out in 2020. And I actually did get this at a travel store in an airport. So I just happened to walk in when I was traveling abroad, and I said, Oh, I've never seen that. And got a bottle, and it's amazing. So I didn't know the backstory when I bought it or anything, and then I kind of filled in the blanks afterwards, but it's uh bottle, right?
SPEAKER_03You got it duty free as well. Yeah. Not free, but duty free. Definitely not free. Yeah. Well, that looks I mean, 13 years.
SPEAKER_06That is ridiculously smooth. Really nice. It is it's 86 proof. So it's you know, a typical bourbon. It's got that boldness that's I associated with wild turkey. A lot of oak, leather. Certainly you get the vanilla and the toffee notes. Yeah. I still get the the orange. The orange, yeah. It's a regular thing. But it's got that the wild turkey flavor that I've come to depend on when I open up a bottle of any of their products, right? It's there. But this is wonderful.
SPEAKER_03Really, really nice. Is this a single barrel product or so? This is some kind of a blended thing that they've put together in 13 years. So that's gonna be the youngest juice they've got in there, is 13 years old. There could be a little bit even some older stock that uh that is correct. They put in there.
SPEAKER_06So they do some regular releases that are what I would say hard to find. Uh there's one they call generations, which is not blends, but special selections that they make and release. They've got a line called Masters Keep. Those are all kind of high-age uh products that they come out. Again, very hard to find, and if you can get your hands on one, they're always worth getting. But I thought this was a treat, and what a way to finish at least our show for today on Wild Turkey. You know, you start with the flagship, you get the long branch, which is kind of a a step out with Matthew McConaughey, and then you get the father and son special release honoring two guys that have been dedicated their lives to this place, and both of them are in the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame, which is extraordinary. So, not too many father and son teams are in there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, and just you going through all the names of the products reminded me of how many different bottles from wild turkey are at my house. Yeah. You know.
SPEAKER_06The other one that I'll I'll usually have is the Russell Reserve. Yeah. It's a 10-year-old and they I have that too. I have that as well. Evil Rare. That was the original intention of that. And it won a double gold medal at the San Francisco Wine and Spirits competition when it was released, when it first came out.
SPEAKER_03I don't know what I would think if I put them side by side. Oh, they're different, but I can tell you that I've had Russell's reserve on my shelf, you know, over the years more often than Eagle Rare. Not to take anything away from them, but there's something about the flavor profile of Russell's that is really nice. I totally agree. Yeah, it's a great product. The two Russell men doing some continuing to do some great work there at Wild Turkey. Okay. So up next we have another song for this unique episode, which we are calling Friendly Drinking with Dusty. Um and this track is brand new. It's just been released as a single, and now let's give a listen to Dusty Eninger with Sometimes People Collide. Sometimes People Collide. It is rocketing up the Spotify and Apple music charts. As we speak, Chris, what'd you think of that one?
SPEAKER_06Probably the favorite song that I've listened to as getting myself oriented to Dusty's music. Yeah. There's something about it that's just I don't know, catchy. I like the well, obviously the drums in the back there, so the drums.
SPEAKER_03The drums are great. That crazy the organ toward the end that kind of I don't know what it what is that like kind of uh but is it like treated or kind of like I don't know, does it well it's has some it's hammered, but it's r run through a bunch of distortions. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_08It's that way out.
SPEAKER_03It's it's yeah, yeah. It's very cool. I like this song. Tell us about the song, and you put it out as a single, didn't put it out with a whole album this time. Yeah, I've decided to do singles for a little while.
SPEAKER_08I'm gonna release three singles at a time, and this is the first of the three. I'm gonna release the single every two months for six months. Okay. So this is the first one, the next one will be released on December 15th, and then the next one will be released on Valentine's Day. Nice. So instead of recording the whole record, I can wrap my head around this a little bit more. So this is the first of the three. Okay. And incidentally, this song, I have a promotions team at Tinderbox Music, and they promote my music to non-commercial college radio stations, okay, things like that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_08And there is a chart called the Music Meeting Directory chart that is sort of like it's kind of like a a billboard version for that. And I got an email today that this song is number 14. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Congratulations. Fantastic. So this is so that means it's being picked up by these college radio stations? That's right.
SPEAKER_08Well, I've tried to get it on W-R-E-K and W R-A-S, but so far we've not had any luck getting them on the radio in Atlanta. But out of town, there's a lot of big college radio.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Oh, well, you heard it here first, folks. Frankly drinking with friends. We're breaking some news about Dusty hitting number 14 on what's it called, Dusty?
SPEAKER_08It's called the Music Meeting Directory Chart.
SPEAKER_03Music Meeting Directory Chart. Wow, that is that's fantastic. Now, I like the video that you put out for this. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, our good friend that we have in college. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Mr. Doug Baker. He's a photographer, he's a videographer, he's done video games. He's got his hands on anything where there's a keyboard involved, computer-wise. Different kind of keyboard. He's trying to get into this video making medium. And he came to me and said, I want to make a video for this song. And honestly, I immediately said yes, I don't have a problem in the world. Right. I have nothing to lose. Yeah. Literally nothing. JP terrible. And I've got some, you know, on my YouTube channel, we've got some videos for some of the songs that I've done in the in the past. And, you know, they're AI videos, they're not very good. They're lyric videos, which is what Tinderbox asks me to do as part of the promotion part because people need to be able to find your music. They need to be able to know where the lyrics are, etc. So lyric videos are very common. They're simple. Sometimes it's just a static image. Sometimes it's a very simple movie video going along with it. So Doug came to me saying he wanted to do something for sometimes people collide. And I said, without even thinking, I said yes, because it could be absolutely terrible and it would still be better than what I've got.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think it's safe to say, I think, I mean, it's obviously it's not terrible. It's a really fun and interesting video, I think.
SPEAKER_08When he brought me over to his house to watch it, yeah, my jaw hit the floor. Yeah. Because he came over to the house and filmed me playing drums, and he filmed me playing guitar with my dog and several other things, and there were some still shots. And when he finally dropped the video on us, I could not believe what my eyes were looking at. I mean, it is it is a full-fledged, it looks like I spent a million dollars. It is so good. I can't believe. And I just looked at him and I was like, had I known what you were talking about, I would have taken this much more seriously. I mean, it's just go to my YouTube page and watch it and you'll understand. So I also told him, having nothing to lose, I said, Doug, you do whatever you want. I gave him no direction. I said, if you want to make this about a chicken fighting a zebra at the top of the Infire State Building, you do whatever you want. I'm giving you zero input. Yeah. Save that for the next video. I gave up the song, and this is what he came up with, and it is absolutely to say it exceeded my expectations, doesn't even come close. Yeah. It's just it's literally an amazing video. And so I immediately obviously he's working on the one for the next release, and this one, you better believe, I'm gonna take a shower. You know, take it all, you know. Yeah, I'm gonna give him everything I've got on the next one because it just turned out nobody could believe it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, it's uh it's great fun, and the images are beautiful, it's an interesting story and everything. So definitely check it out. The video for Sometimes People Collide. You have a lot of humor in your work. I mean, I guess it kind of it kind of goes with the territory because you were the you were the funniest guy on my hall when we were growing up at Russell, but but you do have so much humor in your work. I just yeah, talk to me a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_08Well, I like to say about my music that it's very serious music that doesn't take itself too seriously. Yeah. I record the songs, and where most people would be done at that point, I have another tier that I like to do, which is I like to put samples of Lawrence Welk in the song. And I hate who knows who Lawrence Welk is? I mean I mean that's a pretty niche joke that you're making there. There's not a ton of people my grandmother thought it was hysterical, but my mother didn't know who it was. So, you know, I put, you know, there's the infamous pop-tart, you know, yeah scene in one of the songs towards the end. And I yeah, I I just love that kind of stuff. I love to have humor inserted into music. It's very serious music. It's not like it's weird, Al Yankabit or something. It's very serious music, but right this is the kind of thing that that I will remember years and years from now, you know, putting these little morsels in. You can call them Easter eggs, I guess. You know, the thing you were saying about Freebird, for instance. Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the sack solo, and I still love you anyway. Yeah, we very carefully inserted somebody yelling free bird out of the audience. Right. And that is a joke that goes all the way back to my band Star Collector. And we had somebody yell free bird at the end of a solo. So that joke was for me and three people.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_08And they all heard it and loved it. Yeah. You know, it was a 20-year throwback for a free people.
SPEAKER_03And yet it works for the more general audience who, you know, we've all been there. We were all there at live shows where people were yelling out free bird, even if they didn't have it on their playlist at all. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_06And they had to use a lighter to you know get you to see them instead of now they're using a light on the phone.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. Great white room in that for everybody.
SPEAKER_03Oh my goodness. Well, very good. Chris, any thoughts about the bourbon, the evening for tonight's show?
SPEAKER_06Listen, I love the idea of giving uh Frank a night off. He's got to save his vocal cords for other shows. Uh and it's been great getting to meet Dusty and hear some of this uh terrific music that he's putting out. Can't wait to see the next release in two months. Uh-huh. See what the next single is like. So I'm on the track now to listen. And listen, I I loved having a distillery, not quite in Louisville, but close by. Right. As an homage. It's a tribute to the guys that have been doing it for so long at Wild Turkey and doing some great stuff. I don't know how long we're gonna have Jimmy around, but I sure do appreciate what he's done to make sure that nobody changes the great recipes that they've got over there at the distillery. So yeah, good stuff.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for for everything tonight and these pores from Wild Turkey. He really is one of the kind of iconic producers out there, and with good reason. So, Dusty, it's great to have you on the show tonight. Fun to talk about your music. Where should people go to you know follow you or be able to check out your music? What's the best way for it for them to do that?
SPEAKER_08Well, you can search Dusty Edinger on Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere that you can uh stream music. You can go to my YouTube page, Dusty Edinger on YouTube. You can go to my website, DustyEdinger.com. And yeah, I guess that's it. Yeah, all the big places. Yes, it's hard to not find me, which is some people still seem to manage to be skilled at that.
SPEAKER_03Not after tonight. We'll share some links on our Facebook page if you're following the podcast. We'll share some links and some photos and stuff there. Well, thank you very much for having me. It was been a pleasure. Oh man. The pleasure has been ours. It's really, really great. Always good to hang out with you. Not always in this setting, but yeah, always good.
SPEAKER_08Sorry to smart bomb the format.
SPEAKER_03Hey, this is this is fun. The format is there so that we can mix it up if we want. So really good. Quick thanks to our editor, Aaron Rose, out in Texas, uh near Dallas, Sound of a Rose. Everyone who's joining us, thank you, friends, uh, for being here. I hope you'll come back. This is uh frankly, drinking with friends. It's never a real good idea to drink alone. It's much better if you're so inclined to do so with friends, as we're doing tonight, and always responsibly.
SPEAKER_06If you're listening tonight, you're a friend, even if we've never met. Please like, subscribe, and share this podcast with your friends. You can find the podcast on Facebook, follow the page, drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. Again, I'm Chris.
SPEAKER_03And I'm Luke, wishing you health, happiness, and every good thing. And you've been listening to a very special episode of Frankly Drinking with Friends, Friendly Drinking with Dusty. For our outro tonight, we're going to leave you with another track from Dusty's twenty twenty five LP Handsome Bully Level Headed Zombies. Beautiful, poignant recording called Everything in Between. Have a great night, God bless, and until next time, so long, everybody.