Try That in a Small Town Podcast
In 2023, Jason Aldean's groundbreaking song and video "Try That In A Small Town" resonated with a resurgence of conservative values in America. The writers of the song, Kurt, Neil, Tully, and Kelley, took the opportunity to launch the Try That In A Small Town Podcast. This platform allows them to reveal the true inspiration behind the song and discuss the importance of common-sense values. With a lineup of influential guests, the hosts will entertain you with the stories behind their music, while also addressing challenging topics affecting our communities and country.
Try That in a Small Town Podcast
Unfiltered Truth: Chad Prather on Faith, Comedy, and Cultural Battles :: Ep 74 Try That in a Small Town Podcast
Chad Prather isn't just the fast-talking guy from viral videos—he's lived enough adventures for three lifetimes. In this captivating conversation, Chad takes us through his remarkable journey from humble beginnings in rural Georgia to becoming a multifaceted entertainer, political voice, and man of faith.
With his trademark rapid-fire delivery and Southern wit, Chad reveals the fascinating chapters of his life that most fans never knew existed. From working undercover with the FBI infiltrating cartels to surviving a terrifying encounter with a baboon in Nigeria, his stories are as entertaining as they are surprising. He candidly discusses his transition from television to comedy, his decision to run for Texas governor during COVID, and the personal demons he's battled along the way.
What truly resonates is Chad's raw honesty about his struggles with depression and substance abuse. "I was looking for reality in a bag of drugs or at the bottom of a bottle," he admits, "and I realized there was no reality down there." This journey through darkness eventually led him back to his faith—a recurring theme throughout our conversation that provides powerful insight into his worldview.
The discussion takes a serious turn when addressing cancel culture, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the state of free speech in America. Rather than responding with fear, Chad sees these challenges as opportunities for truth to spread faster and wider. "They never learn on the cancel culture," he observes. "If you do kill me, it just amplifies the voice."
Whether you're a longtime fan or discovering Chad for the first time, this conversation offers a deeper understanding of the man behind the viral videos—a complex, thoughtful individual whose greatest talent might be his ability to wake up each day, as he puts it, "in a new world." Listen now and discover why authenticity remains the most powerful force in entertainment and life.
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I've often said I've been called everything racist, homophobe, transphobe. I mean I had a gay agent for seven years for crying out loud. It was, it was gay as could be. And and I'm like I'm in the entertainment business how can you call me a homophobe? Like my daughter's a professional dancer, she tours with Disney on ice and I'll meet her somewhere in this some city in America. I'll take her to dinner or lunch or whatever, and take, take her back to the hotel and I'll say, hey, let me go in and meet some of your friends. She's like absolutely Absolutely not.
Speaker 3:There's so many duels I want to organize.
Speaker 2:I know the first one, the Music City duel.
Speaker 3:I want to line them up. I got so many people. I want to enter these duels.
Speaker 5:The first one should be Zach Bryan and Gavin Adcock.
Speaker 1:What a bunch of pusses, these guys.
Speaker 3:I don't take either of them seriously, though I don't take either of them seriously as a matter of fact, I'm tired of the whole thing.
Speaker 4:I think that's the first time you've named names.
Speaker 3:You've got to set the bar higher for the initial duel.
Speaker 1:They tend to not want the equality they talk about. They want control. They really want an agenda to be pushed. And that's where it gets dangerous on that, because now we isolate people out of the group and if you're not part of the group, then you're going to get a label. If you get a label now, you're going to be classified. If you get classified, you get put on the shelf. We don't have to deal with you anymore. And if we can label you, if we really want to want to dehumanize you, and now you get to a situation like the tragedy we had with Charlie.
Speaker 2:The Try that in a Small Town podcast begins now. Try that in a.
Speaker 6:Small Town. All right, welcome back to the Try that in a Small Town podcast. We are loose, we are fun, we got thrashash, we got. Introduce yourselves halo or kelly tk. Indeed and I'm kurt, this is the try that a small town podcast coming to you from the patriot mobile studios. I like getting my swerve on power by these faces can be a fun night y'all oh yeah, great night we got chad prather.
Speaker 6:I don't know if you guys know chad prather, but if you don't, you're going to and then you're not going to. Uh, regret listening. This guy is awesome. He's got a lot to say.
Speaker 4:Yeah, sometimes he says it quick, got to keep up, but he's pretty, he's pretty cool the string they pull out at the back of him, off out of his back.
Speaker 5:It goes in slow, he goes in slow, he is full of information and I allocated two hours to get ready, you know, just to do some research on him, because I didn't. I didn't know him and I wish I would have taken eight hours.
Speaker 6:I mean the content he has it's a lot it's a lot it's like gotta ask him about this, because it's not like you can describe him as this. Oh, he is a lot of things. He's done a lot of things. Makes me feel bad about myself I know it, we have one of those guys
Speaker 4:he's one of those guys it's like god, dog, I don't read enough. Yeah, I don't read enough, geez, yeah, I don't read enough, I started thinking about taking a class or something.
Speaker 5:I know it I know it, but where do you start? Because he's pretty good at history and theology.
Speaker 4:I know it. I see a Praetor University. He's a singer, a songwriter.
Speaker 3:On the horizon.
Speaker 6:P-u pray, they're you. Oh my gosh. Let's not waste any time. Let's get right to chad. I think chad is like the most interesting man in the world, because if you look him up like here's what it says okay, that.
Speaker 4:Or somebody else say no, no.
Speaker 6:Well, here's what google says. So you know, it's true. Comedian actor, christian conservative philosopher, podcaster, musician, preacher yeah like where are you reading that? That's cool, I know I just made most of them up the old wide world web. Even tell me this if you're on a plane and you're sitting, unfortunately, next to somebody you don't know, they say what do you do?
Speaker 1:that's a hard one, um, and I've always said I should just lie, right, because I just say I'm in the entertainment business, I do comedy, so I do that, and then people want to go. So do you do the comedy, and then they'll qualify it like stand-up, or are you like a producer or a manager of something? I was like no, I do the comedy, I go on the stage and do it. I just am in the entertainment business music and comedy.
Speaker 6:We kind of lie right, I don't want to say it, because then you know the conversation, you know where that's going to go. We lie yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing is, if I say I podcast, everybody's got a podcast, yeah, and that just sounds like you just have a hobby.
Speaker 4:So I, I, that's, a preacher coming out of you right now. Aye, aye, that's a preacher coming out in here right now.
Speaker 1:A lot of times I will joke and say that it used to be when people would introduce me if I'd go to an event or something, speak at these deals, like I just did, a Folds of Honor event Saturday night, and a lot of times they'll introduce you as an internet sensation and I just say that's a 21st century way of saying you're unemployed but popular.
Speaker 2:Because people look at you like.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're an influencer or you're a creator.
Speaker 6:People say that.
Speaker 1:I try to never say that. Right, Like I hate that phrase. It sounds so nothing. Yeah, Because anybody can try to do that. I mean there's college classes now for that. Yeah, which is strange to me. I went viral. I was doing a television show. I was doing television and radio. I went viral back in 2015 with a video that I was sitting in the truck and I was comparing Walmart to Target and I was just talking about how bougie Target is versus how redneck Walmart is and I called it the blue logo store versus the red logo store, because I was like I don't want to get sued by and, plus, our television network had just gotten a huge donation from Alice Walton.
Speaker 2:Sam Walton's daughter.
Speaker 1:And I didn't want to piss her off. So the thing went viral and my mother called me on the phone. She said are you sick? And I go no. She said. Somebody at church said you went viral and my mother's quick. I said no, mom, she was really asking if I was sick and I said they're talking about Facebook and Twitter. And she goes you're too old to be touching your Twitter.
Speaker 1:So I joke like that. But that stuff really went down. I did three seasons of that television show and then ended up doing social media. I mean, social media went crazy. And then at the end of 2015, a comedian friend of mine he said why don't you do comedy? And I go well, I'm really not a comedian. He goes who gives a shit? They buy tickets. Go do whatever you want to do, like anything on stage. And so I tried to figure out how can I honor the craft of comedy? And so I developed that over the years, did a lot of shows and then the shtick was always the fast-talking thing that I did in the truck but was always the fast talking thing that I did in the truck. But then also I figured why I'm a jack-legged guitar player. So I said if I could tell a joke, I should be able to sing a joke.
Speaker 1:And so I started doing parody songs and writing funny songs and doing things like that, and so I remind people. I grew up in Georgia, down in the woods, and I grew up in a family full of cowboys, but I was the least cowboy of all of them. And I grew up in a family of musicians, and I was the least musician of all of them, but I'm the only person in my family that was ever able to take those two things and make any money. So I say they can kiss my ass. Yeah, I've done enough things. You listed those things.
Speaker 6:I have done enough stuff with mediocrity that I found that if I put them all together it's a pretty solid package.
Speaker 1:It's entertaining Because people are like, before they start deciding if I can play the guitar or if I can sing, then I'm off to talking about my adventures around the world and they're like, oh wow, this guy's interesting, it's just jack-leg stuff.
Speaker 6:Were you an actor? I saw you were on TV at two or what was that about? I don't know why they put that stuff in there jack leg stuff. Were you an actor, like I saw you were on tv at two or what was that about?
Speaker 1:yeah, I don't know why they put that stuff in there. I did television, I was, I was, I had a travel television show, and so then I had a, an equestrian show. Um, because they wanted a funny guy that understood new horses and so they sent me around the country to these equestrian events trying to see if they could kill me.
Speaker 2:So I'd play polo I would.
Speaker 1:I went to walt scott, you ever see, remember, um, you remember back to the future when marty mcflagg grabs onto the back of the jeep and the guy looks back and he's on a skateboard.
Speaker 1:That's walt scott. He was john wayne's stuntman and he's been in hollywood for a million years. So they'd send me out to his ranch to get shot off of horses and and just whatever they could do to kill me, and so then mounted shooting and stagecoach races, and so we did that all over the country and, uh yeah, it was just wild to. So they I guess there was some elements of that but then I wound up getting managed out of la. I was with gersh, with my agency, and then I was with paradigm, which paradigms always been. But they started a comedy division and so my agent moved over there and we ended up pitching sitcoms too.
Speaker 1:I was writing for sitcoms. I was with Lionsgate and so I was pitching to all the networks. Everybody, all the networks, would listen to me. Eric Tannenbaum was the executive producer on all my projects. He had two and a half men for 11 seasons and had two and a half men for 11 and 11 seasons. And so he was. He was dumbfounded because I got told no a lot. And the reason I got told no a lot is because I'm unabashedly, unashamedly and unapologetically a conservative guy, a conservative voice, and so I would go in there and I'd sit down with these guys and you could kind of see where this was going to go real quick and when cbs was telling eric tannenbaum no.
Speaker 1:He was like you know what the why you can't tell me no? And they were like, well, with him we can because we know who he is. So that was an adventure. But we had some success doing that and then I would write with some pretty big writers. Yeah, so that was an adventure. That was something that you know how you guys are in the entertainment industry on a level where you can understand this. When you first found yourself in certain rooms, you couldn't believe you were in. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You know when you're on stages or you're at a place where you're, like man, think about all the people who have sat here or stood here or been in this element, and sometimes you can go long enough that you forget how special that is.
Speaker 5:But you know, hopefully you can always remember that feeling of going.
Speaker 1:Man, I'm sitting in a chair where Mel Gibson probably was rolling on Molly. I wish I was rolling on Molly doing these executives at ABC. So yeah, it was a cool thing, it was an adventure. My redneck euphemism is I say I'm like a goose. I wake up in a new world every day. I just wait to see what's going to come and happen and I get connected with great people like yourselves and you know. We were just talking about Justin Danger Nunley. I was with him yesterday and he was with you guys and I mean I say great people. There's Justin.
Speaker 1:I know, but it's been really cool, you know it's. It's been really cool, you know it's, it's awesome. I got a text message from uh uh, you know you never know who, who you know you go through 10 bottles in one day of redneck Riviera with John Rich and his upstairs deal and then you're like man, I don't like John after that many bottles. I didn't like John after the first bottle. Most people don't need bottles. I mean we love John.
Speaker 1:You know, I always say he's an asshole, but he's ours. And so no, I love John and you know, John sang on one of my songs. He was, you know, great.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:I saw that he did Water Down with me and I just got Neil McCoy texting me yesterday and so it's weird Like that's weird to me still that you have these guys that consider you friends. Tracy lawrence I ran into him in december at the out in vegas for the finals rodeo and you know he walks up and hugs you and that's weird to me because I'm like I sat in my truck running my mouth, yeah, for a minute at a time, so it's just been cool that's good, but you're good at it.
Speaker 4:Are you ever lost for words? No, I should be.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's got me in a lot of trouble. I've got the foot shaped-shaped mouth. It fits right in there.
Speaker 1:And so I get up every morning and I do. I've started. I think we just did the 30. Tomorrow will be the 33rd episode of this. Every morning, monday through Friday, I get up and at 8, 7 central, I do this little devotional thing. Before the election I really felt impressed. I was like politicians aren't going to save us. We need to really come back to God. We really need to get our priorities right, and so I started.
Speaker 1:30 days ago I started doing this little devotional in the morning. It lasts about 10 minutes, just like this. I'm reading the Bible. This is what I think about it and then I'll do my show Monday through Thursday, which is a little more cultural. People blame it, they say it's political. I really think it's more cultural than anything, and so I do that for an hour and then I'm inevitably on Newsmax or Fox or whoever else. I just did Charlie Kirk's show tonight. I don't want to timestamp this too much because I don't want to come out, but I filled in for Charlie Kirk on his TBN show, which is Charlie Kirk Today, which was a humbling honor to do that. So yesterday I started talking at 7 in the morning and I finally finished talking after a dinner meeting at midnight last night and I go, this is too much. Men aren't designed to talk this much. They say what men are only using like what? 1500 words a day?
Speaker 1:I mean, we're a short term paper you know and we just use our stuff up by and musicians are worse Sound and audio guys are the worst.
Speaker 2:They're like computer nerds.
Speaker 1:They've been sitting there. They don't know how to interact with people anyway. They've been pushing buttons their entire life. They've never interacted with humans.
Speaker 5:Is it true or is it not? Except for Jim, though he's an old radio guy. It's true.
Speaker 1:He doesn't know what to say right now.
Speaker 6:He's multifaceted. That's because we took away his mic.
Speaker 1:Musicians are that way. You've interacted with an instrument you know.
Speaker 6:Right.
Speaker 1:Hours and hours and hours and hours on end. But I'm a people person. I grew up down in the woods. We were white trash. My family still is. I got out. But my joke is that we were so country that I got a cousin that got arrested for selling chicken salad sandwiches in a cockfight.
Speaker 4:Oh jeez.
Speaker 1:Because she didn't have a food permit and that's actually a true story. And when I went to the University of Georgia I said I was so naive that they would talk about the fraternity houses being haunted and I didn't know what that meant. They told me it was a ghost, and I didn't know what that meant. When they finally explained it, I said where I grew up, if you died in that mobile home, you weren't coming back.
Speaker 1:You weren't spending eternity haunting that Our houses weren't possessed. They were repossessed, but we grew up in the woods. But I was an extrovert. I was the youngest brother of two other brothers and being an extrovert, that could only relate to the horses, the dogs in the trees and the snakes that we'd catch in the creek. I wanted to get out. So when I turned 18, I hit the road. I packed up my little Pontiac Grand Am went off to the University of Georgia. I had baseball scholarship offers to places like Clemson and I said I'm not going to go to school in a cow pasture, I need to be around people. And so I went to the University of Georgia and kind of never looked back. Did you play ball there? I played some baseball there and had a good time, and try to remember it from time to time.
Speaker 1:University of. Georgia. Back then it was Rolling Stone Magazine had it the number two party school in the nation and I was there for it, Russell Hall, which I lived on the 10th floor of Russell Hall, which was the top. We called it the penthouse up there. That was the number one party dormitory in the nation by Rolling Stone magazine and I always say the grace of God abounds to the chief of sinners on the 10th floor of Russell.
Speaker 1:Hall because it was bad. I mean we did everything we could to kill ourselves and so I went over there. And then when I got out of school I I pursued ministry stuff, I went to seminary, uh, did a lot of animal stuff, worked with a lot of animals and and end up getting recruited, did some little projects for the fbi undercover. I was like uh, uh, you know the, what's the character? The?
Speaker 1:uh, donnie, donnie brasco, or yeah, it was basically that, but not with, except I was with the cartels. I had to go hang out with the cartels in tijuana and arkansas and san diego and upstate new york dealing with horses, and that's back before anybody knew what the cartels were. Yeah, but I, you know, here I am and, and you know, fifty dollar pair of dickies, boots and these guys are wearing wearing $4,000 Gucci loafers and I was like these guys are doing. Well, I had no clue who.
Speaker 1:I was hanging around with. But then I started going around the world. I'd count my money, literally, I would count my money. I would keep change all year long in a bucket, in a five-gallon water bucket, and then Christmas break I'd dump all that change out on the floor of my bedroom and I'd count it up and see where I could buy a plane ticket to. And I'd go to Africa and I'd stay for a couple of weeks or might stay a month. The mother of my children I met her in Africa. I went all the way to West Africa to meet a white girl from Alabama, roll. Tide.
Speaker 5:She roll, tide roll. And she is, she does, she does that she rolls. Hey, didn't you, didn't you lock up, uh, somehow like a gorilla or something like that. And oh yeah, that's a good story. I was in nigeria, okay yankari.
Speaker 1:Uh, there was a that's cool man that you know that story.
Speaker 1:That was the freakiest deal that was one of those, uh, core memories that you're like. I almost didn't get out of that. It was a baboon and, oh my god, we were in, were in a, I was traveling with some medical missionaries and we were in the middle of nowhere. This was January 1996, because I left New Year's Eve 95 and spent New Year's Eve on an airplane brought in the New Year, landed in Lagos, nigeria.
Speaker 1:About a week later we were in Yonkari and you can go into these beautiful natural springs that come out from under the rock, you can swim in them and you can look up and see the baboons and the trees digging in their butt and pooping in the water and it's beautiful. And so the next morning we come out and we got these two Toyota vans. So I'm loading their stuff up and putting all the packs in and in the gear and I uh, but kind of simultaneously pull the hatch on the back down and reach around with my foot and kick the sliding door shut on the side and I go who's in the van? And I look and it's one of those baboons, because it was a bench front seat and then a bench second seat and one of the baboons had crawled in without me knowing it it will rip your face off everything off everything.
Speaker 1:They grab your face is coming off man. Well, I'm going, okay, I'm in a bad situation because these missionaries stuff is in these vans. Like he can start tearing windshields out. He could go crazy, he could rip the seats out, he could demolish everything. So I'm like I gotta did this. I've got to get this baboon out of this van. And so I'm like I've got to come face-to-face with a monkey. That's my only choice.
Speaker 1:I've got to man up and come face-to-face, so I reach around and just real quick I snatch the thing open and pull it back and I jump back out of the way and he comes right to the edge and I get to his and the whole thing.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, what did that look like? The teeth? Oh, they're there.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's just like you.
Speaker 4:It's National Geographic in 3D. They're fangs, they will eat your face.
Speaker 1:They'll get you Right off. What are you doing? So I back off and he scoots forward and it's like we lock eyes and we share a moment. And the missionaries my friend Dr Andy Norman. He's an OBGYN, he was a lifetime missionary in Nigeria and he kept a little bag of hard candy. It would be like you guys have this right here, but he kept it on the front seat in a Ziploc bag and that monkey backs back up and reaches over and grabs that thing and just kind of hops down and takes off. He starts making monkey friends Like he opens the.
Speaker 1:Ziploc bag like he knew what was up and he starts serving treats like the old man at church. Here's butterscotch and one of the doctors. He just runs over there. He's like I, I, I, I. I was like what are you doing? He goes, I want my candy back.
Speaker 4:I want my arm back.
Speaker 1:That's a funny story. That was face-to-face with death. That's funny, Wow. Then it was funny now and then and then the following day, actually that night, that night I got really sick with dysentery. So that's the simple deal. I lost like 20 pounds in four days, no joke.
Speaker 1:In a place called a little Gombe and I was in a mud hut, mud brick hut, two rooms with these missionary couple from older missionary couple from New Zealand. We're a million miles from anything. You know those places where you can just look up and it's like I can grab the stars. It's just dark. But then they had like a snail shell shaped outhouse that was 100 yards behind the house and so every five I mean I'd come back and I'm like I'm trying to not die, but you're kind of wanting to die, You're so sick and I'd not die, but you're kind of wanting to die, you're so sick and I'd have to keep walking out there. It was horrible and they finally got me some medicine the next morning and I slept for three straight days and nights but I did. I lost like 20 pounds in four days. Pictures of me from that. I was like you might not have should have survived on that.
Speaker 3:Is that like from some weird water chicken, it was chicken uh, I had some chicken gotcha and some chicken salad. I.
Speaker 1:Chicken. It was chicken. I had some chicken. The chicken got you. I had some chicken Chicken salad.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I would have had the chicken.
Speaker 3:The chicken will get you that yard bird man. I don't know if I in hindsight knowing what you know now, I would have left that chicken alone.
Speaker 1:Well, and I can't eat curry to this day because the last meal I ate with those New Zealand missionaries was curry, and that is what I spent the evening enjoying again, over and over. So to this day, I just really can't get near curry, and I'm okay with it, I'm not missing it. What about baboons? You know baboons? That was the last encounter that I know of. Yeah, I think that was the last one.
Speaker 1:That's why I have people all the time, who you know. They're like, well, you're going to get a pet monkey. And I was like, no, I wouldn't, I really really wouldn't.
Speaker 4:God dang man, I see a movie in your future, Dude, I've done so much stuff.
Speaker 1:And then we were joking like Matt Lida, who is Justin Nunley's podcast co-host with Nine Line Apparel. He's known me forever and he goes you've lived in 52 years, you've lived like three full lifetimes. You've done so many different things.
Speaker 1:Because, again, I wake up in a new world every day. Like what can we do? I hate the repetition of doing the same stuff. Like people keep saying you can't keep touring for the rest of your life and I'm like why can't I? I enjoy it, I like going to new places. I just I'm. I'm at a point in life where I can be specific about where I go, how I go, what I do when I'm there. Uh, you know, when I got into comedy we'd gotten so big. I say we, like I'm schizophrenic and the voices in my head count as personalities but, uh, I would go to these places and we would do Wednesday night.
Speaker 1:You guys know how it goes I do Wednesday night, thursday night, friday night, saturday night, sometimes Sunday, different city. And this was jumping on, this wasn't tour busing back then, this was jumping on an airplane and having to go. And I've got a guy, partyfile Steve, who's traveled with me all these years, and, man, we saw the world, we saw the country, which I mean I'd seen all of the world, but up until that point I'd really never seen the country. Oh, interesting.
Speaker 6:And now I've seen it.
Speaker 3:yeah, you know what I mean you guys can appreciate this.
Speaker 1:People say what's your favorite town to go?
Speaker 3:to. There's not one. Every day. We wake up everybody, I'm telling you, every day we get in a ride to go somewhere during the day and the runner will be like where's your favorite place? You know, like man, you wake up.
Speaker 6:You don't even know where you are. It looks the same. Yeah, it looks the same for us. Yeah, you're. I don't know it's an arena. They all kind of look the same. It looks the same. I don't know it's an arena. They all kind of look the same. I'm not being an idiot, but we don't see the city.
Speaker 1:You don't see it, you don't have time to, and then we got to a point where we were using a bus, because I do have people that travel with me. I've got an opener that's been with Jesse Payton. He's been with me for six years. He huge, massive comic, he's doing it, doing an incredible job. Um, he spent nine years in prison and then decided he was funny and that's. That is actually a funny story. He graduated from high school on a thursday, went to prison on monday so that, and then he spent the next eight and a half years in prison.
Speaker 1:What?
Speaker 1:did he do, uh, he beat the hell out of a guy, almost killed him, uh, in defending his brother, and they, yeah, country that kind of deal. But we, you know, tour. And then I've got the music guys and I'll tell you that story in a second that travel with me. I've got some really great Texas musicians that go all over the country with me. But I'd say, if you get off the bus or you get off the airplane, you get off the airplane, you go from the airport, you go to the hotel, maybe you go to the green room, you go to the stage, you sound check you hotel, maybe you go to the green room, you go to the stage, you sound check, you go back to the green room, you go out, you do the show, then you go back to the green room and then you go back to the hotel, you go back to the airport and you go, yes, to the next place. I mean, that's it, you're not hanging out, no, you know. So I don't know. I'm taking the time now, lord, willing in these days to go places that I can actually enjoy a little bit and and, like I said, I'm being a lot more strategic with where I go.
Speaker 1:Covid changed everything for everybody in the way live entertainment was being done. What were you?
Speaker 6:doing during? Oh, I know what you were doing. What Running for governor? I did do that, yeah, because of it, because of it. Which is why.
Speaker 1:Well, because I was in South Dakota, we were getting ready, for Trump was going to speak the next night. Well, it was July 2nd of 20. Trump was going to speak the next night out at Mount Rushmore. That was going to be the first time they shot fireworks off in 17 years, and so I was there for that.
Speaker 1:So I was having dinner with Don Jr Kim Guilfoyle and my phone lights up and says that Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, is about to well, he's going to increase the mask mandates, he's going to reinforce that. More stuff's going to get shut down. And so I always say jokingly, but I think it's true, I don't know if it was the wine or because I was sitting with a Trump, but I got on Twitter and I said I'm going to run for governor in Texas in 2022. And it blew up. There was no looking back. People thought it was a stunt. They thought I was going to. They thought it was a way to increase my popularity.
Speaker 1:I was like I didn't need that kind of popularity. I really didn't need that kind of popularity. It was, it was. It was ruination. In a lot of ways, depending on how you look at it. It was a blessing, because I think we did some good with it. I mean, I didn't have the money. There was no way to compete in that. I think I spent like a million bucks on that deal and there's 254 counties in Texas. If you ever run for statewide office, don't do it in Texas. Go to Connecticut.
Speaker 1:I mean 1,221 miles alone with the border of Mexico. It's a stretch miles alone with the, you know the border of mexico. It's a stretch, I mean it's a stretch you think you think about where longview texas or marshall texas is to el paso. I mean, that's the distance from there to freaking atlanta you know it's insane but I did it.
Speaker 1:That was 18 months, 19 months of hell. Um put some of my people through some really hard stuff. We had some tough go of it. But hey, you know, I came in fourth out of four, you're in for governor.
Speaker 3:I came in fourth out of nine.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I came in fourth out of nine but for what I did I was taken seriously by the end of it. I was legitimately taken seriously as a candidate. A lot of people still want me to run again. I ran then because there was a purpose to it. Not A lot of people still want me to run again. I ran then because there was a purpose to it, not because I wanted to be in politics.
Speaker 1:I can do far more good doing the podcast, the Chad Prather Show, my reach doing that. I can do far more good like this, having influence over politicians and with politicians and being friends with people in the statehouse than I could actually being in that situation. Greg Abbott's powerful. He's about to do his fourth term and he will, and I always have said that the three most powerful people in the universe are God, the President of the United States and the Governor of Texas, and that's arguably true. Greg Abbott hasn't been my favorite guy. He's kind of waffled around on some things over and over and I don't like that.
Speaker 1:But the perception of how texas is is not how texas really is. If you're inside texas, people think of it kind of like they think of florida, like oh, it's a conservative bastion, it's a stronghold, it's everybody's well, it's not the. The fortunate thing with texas for them to be conservative and remain red uh is they've got a lot of big small towns. So whether it's your Abilene's or Longview's or Waco's or Tyler, amarillo, lubbock, those kind of places, but then you've got the blueberries in the Chili's, so you've got Dallas and Fort Worth and you've got Austin, of course, and San Antonio and El Paso and Houston. Those are, arguably, they pull consistently blue in regards to that. So there's a struggle that's in there. And then we've kind of got a mamby-pamby statehouse in terms of GOP representation.
Speaker 1:So I've been pretty involved in it. You know, like right now, with the thing that happened with Charlie Kirk, I was friends with Charlie, friends with TPUSA. We're working real hard to try to get some memorials done and built and maybe some statues put in some places. We're trying to move quick on that and try to ride that wave while it's high. So I'm pretty involved in that. And then, you know, I've got back during COVID. When that was going on, I finished an album, a comedy album. I finished a book called Am I Crazy? Yes, spoiler alert yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I had a bunch of musician friends who couldn't go to work At the time. I was riding a big wave of huge crowds wherever I went, 3,000 or 4,000 for comedy. That's a big crowd. 3,000 or 4,000 people, 1,200 on a comedy night a small night for me. At that time I was living in this downtown brownstone house in downtown Fort Worth. It had 20-foot ceilings. The acoustics were fantastic in there.
Speaker 1:I called a couple of my buddies Steve Helms, who's a guitar player and songwriter, and Ben McPherson, who's an incredible fiddle player there in Texas. I called him and said come over here, I've got an idea. I said let's do this thing called Songs from the so, where we just sing harmonies we don't you know, just do it on an iPhone and put it out there and see what we can do. Well, then hit me. I was like you know, if you boys want to go on the road like I can do comedy stuff, then we come out and do harmony music stuff and we can throw jokes in the middle and banter. And I said because I can go to places where they've never heard of COVID, Like we can go to Cheyenne Wyoming. You know we can go to Casper.
Speaker 1:Like they'll still show up out there, they're not scared. And so that's what we did, and now, however, many years later, I can't get rid of those guys. They discovered a good gig.
Speaker 1:They don't have to worry about booking, they just come with me. So yeah, it's an interesting show, it's a good variety show. I've always looked at the pattern of what I wanted to do, like the old Will Rogers type doing the follies with his humor, which was a variety show. And Will Rogers family actually reached out to me years ago and they said we do see you carrying that mantle of a modern Will Rogers which.
Speaker 1:I always, which is an honor. I always look at more like Mikeowe being that type of humor voice, being that deal, and he gets told that a lot too, but it's been. I'm like I couldn't carry. I don't know if Will Rogers wore a jockstrap, but I don't think I could carry it if he did.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and now and then I was on the Blaze Network doing the show for five or six years the Chad Prather Show, and that network doing the show for five or six years the chad prather show and that's of course glenn beck's historic network that he's done there and then I went independent a couple years ago. Everything I'm doing now just independent after you no more representation out of la no more.
Speaker 1:You know, we some friends of mine, uh, chris wallen, who you know, songwriter um, who wrote things like don't blink little little tiny song you know chris called couple of years ago and he said Chris talks so slow you get him on the phone. It's like this is going to take a minute, but they wanted to start a record label called Based Records. That was going to be a non-woke, uncancellable record label and they are all those things. Putting out songs has been their challenge.
Speaker 2:What makes your hurdle?
Speaker 1:unbeaten I mean dude, you've got the cultural and political side down but the song thing it takes a little. It's a labor of love. But yeah, I mean I had some great guys. We came out here we wrote a pile of songs and me and Chris and Ira Dean jumped in on some of that, and I want to say Jeffrey Steele jumped in a little bit on some of it.
Speaker 6:Just one of your most received or viral music song videos. I was going through some of them today and I saw the one where the women's sports ones.
Speaker 1:That's the one. That's the one.
Speaker 2:We can do it.
Speaker 4:Play it.
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Speaker 1:I'm starting to remember how to start this off. Turn this down a little bit right here, guys. That one went crazy viral, and this was back when William Thomas, who started to identify as Leah Thomas, decided to start beating the hell out of girls in women's sports or in swimming. And so I was listening to the news and I thought, man, this guy just went to sleep with Shania Twain on repeat and woke up and man.
Speaker 1:He felt like a woman, and so I was like I'm going to write a song and I was coming out of Galveston going up 45 to Houston and by the time I got to Houston I was like I got this song down. So I sat down in the kitchen and I said I want to be a woman and compete. I may have two balls and big feet. Don't you question why I can't keep up with the guys. I want to be a woman and compete. I'm going to get a scholarship, win myself a championship. I'll swim and I will paddle. Just don't mind my Adam's apple. I'm going to get a scholarship. They'll change the rules for me.
Speaker 1:Even though I stand to pee, my legs still get hairy and my boobs give no dairy. That don't bother me. That's a brilliant one. I may be tall and lanky and still have a little spanky, but I want to be a one-hander. I'll tuck my little guido in the pocket of my speedo Things you just can't unsee. Then it goes on, but I like it. It says I may still have old Frankie wrapped up like pigs in blankies. I don't want to be a woman and compete. Oh yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be your woman, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:As you're singing that I'm saying to myself. We used to sit around the bus and have a coffee in the morning 10 years ago and be, like you know, what would be crazy Is if a dude, like Pretended he was a girl and went and like Played Sirius Williams, and then see what that would be like we should do that. We should find a guy and went and like played siri williams, yeah, and then see what that would be like. We should do that, like we should find a guy, and we're laughing about it.
Speaker 6:We want to manage this guy, we want to marry that.
Speaker 3:We're ahead of our time and we're sitting here unbelievable still that that's even happened yeah it's happening still, unfortunately, but it was really happening, you know, a while ago.
Speaker 1:It was like it was insane, it's crazy and here's the thing I don't know if you guys ever in your travels, did you ever like come upon or be around like a me too rally? You know, when the girls were wearing the pink hats? Did y'all ever see?
Speaker 1:that out in the streets. You know you get a big try to avoid. Yeah, I tried to avoid it too and so I went to one. I did not mean to go to one, I was having breakfast. We'd done a show in Grand Junction, Colorado, having breakfast that morning. Walk out on main street we're in a parade and I didn't know what it was all about, but I liked their hats. And so I go, let's see what this is about.
Speaker 1:I discovered fellas in the space of three minutes. They didn't like me and they didn't like my penis, which I thought was unfair because they'd never met either one of them and I don't have an aggressive penis. And it's certainly not a threat to the Me Too deal but. I'm like where were these girls Like? Where are these girls now? Because they're out there walking and they're dressed up like vaginas. You know, their men are dressed up like Like. Where do you get a vagina? Costume. First of all.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I mean, you was weird Arby's and you're sitting there going. But the weirdest thing, the ironic thing, was they're walking their dogs on a leash. Their dogs have vagina hats on and the irony of walking a wiener dog Out of me too, Riley Well done. But I'm like where are those girls now?
Speaker 1:Because this is where they ought to be pissed off when girls are getting their butts kicked by men or going into their spaces, locker rooms, and then they're going to say that if we say these things, we're the ones that's filled with hate. No, I mean, actually we're the ones filled with compassion.
Speaker 3:They really don't know what they stand for they don't have a clue, they just waffle back and forth, they do whatever they feel is moving them at that moment, and they don't know why. They're just very, very confused.
Speaker 1:Well, and any movement that's out there and I don't want to take you guys into a political thing Again I think this is a cultural deal but this is just, historically and philosophically, where this stuff ends up is anytime you have a movement, whether it's BLM, the LG, whatever the alphabet thing or the feminist, all these different deals if you look closely at any of these movements and it's not just the ones that you're against, it's all of them, even the ones that sometimes we're approved of, that we approve of they tend to not want the equality they talk about, they want control. They really want an agenda to be pushed. And that's where it gets dangerous on that, because now we isolate people out of the group and if you're not part of the group, then you're going to get a label. If you get a label now, you're going to be classified. If you get classified, you get put on the shelf. We don't have to deal with you anymore.
Speaker 1:And if we can label you, if we really want to dehumanize you, and now you get to a situation like the tragedy we had with Charlie. So now you, my friend Chad Robichaud. He posted something the other day and I thought it was just so profound. I've been saying it every day since he said it. He said they don't kill you because you're a Nazi.
Speaker 1:They call you a Nazi, so they can kill you, and that's that's, that's's human nature, and so if they can label you, then they can do whatever they want to and they can justify it because you're subhuman. What happened during covid was the same deal. You know, if you weren't and I don't like saying the word, the v word, because we still if you put this on youtube, you never know they're gonna- say oh, he said that word I called it the blah blah, that medical procedure, you know.
Speaker 1:So you go get the medical procedure and if, if you didn't get it, well then you know we're going to have a winter of darkness and death. That's what the president said, and so it was the haves and the have-nots. And if you weren't wearing a hazmat suit and rubbed up with antibacterial goop in the airport and you didn't have on a mask, you know, in your car, while you were driving along listening to Linus Morissette, then you were one of those people that's filled with hate. I just didn't want to go to the back of the Walgreens and have somebody jab some untested goop into my arm that's going to cause me to have blood worms. And I was like this doesn't make sense. I was sitting there going how in the hell are we justifying this? You want me to have a medical Salina Kansas, of all places, salina Kansas. I had a show scheduled there, sold out, deal a month out. And they said got to have a passport to come in, you got to be able to prove your status. And I said we're not having that show. Not having that show.
Speaker 1:My most supportive state historically is California. I can go out there and do 16, 17 shows a year, and I'm talking about, yeah, the Bakersfield, the Redding, the Visalia, the Chico. But we can go to San Jose, we can go to Thousand Oaks, anaheim, we could do San Diego, ramona, la Jolla, I can do all those places. They're packed. I can do multiple nights there, they're packed. But once all that hit, it was done, and now it's rare and the reason it was so successful is because there's good people in california.
Speaker 3:Oh, you know this we love playing california, it gets it. It's like I'm from way upstate new york and and the mountains of around adirondacks and it's, it's beautiful, it's it's low income but they're good, hard-working people. Yeah, um, california, new york, it's a bad rap as a whole state because, agree, city california. The same thing happens california. They're great people. It's just they get a bad rap. It's not all like because they're big blue cities.
Speaker 6:Right, exactly that's the way they're known we used to fly into buffalo.
Speaker 1:And uh, we'd fly into buffalo. Do that in buffalo rochester, syracuse, albany. So we'd go across upstate. We'd count into Buffalo. Do that in Buffalo Rochester, syracuse, albany so we'd go across upstate. We'd count the barns, and you wouldn't think about being in New York. We were just at the Trump in Westchester, above White Plains Gorgeous up there.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You've got to remind yourself you're in New York because, again, people don't think about that.
Speaker 3:Well, you just think it's New York City, which isn't even attached to the state. So you get in the state and it's farm country, it's mountains, that's beautiful up there.
Speaker 4:It's gorgeous.
Speaker 3:I love it up there it's really it just gets a bad rap and unfortunately, the people like where I'm from. They pay the heavy price for the politics. Yeah, especially during COVID they got destroyed Small businesses and it's crazy leadership Well and now folks are getting taxed if they try to move out of California.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're seeing a lot of people come into Texas, which is good and bad. It's a huge boost for the economy. But we've got people coming from Silicon Valley not by choice but because Elon and those guys are moving businesses there. So you've got these woke progressives that are coming into Texas and they really are changing things, because now they're running for school boards and they're doing all these different things. But a lot of people they can't get out of California. There's really good people over there. I was just out there, I don't know. A couple of weeks ago. I was in Downey, california, where my wife grew up.
Speaker 4:No kidding, yeah In.
Speaker 1:Downey yeah, wow, she got out, but no, there's good people out there and they're stuck, they, they're, they're getting screwed by the bureaucracy that's out there. So I love you know I I'm kind of an outspoken guy and obviously I am, but on the things that I have convictions about I back in 2015 I said I'm not going to do political humor or comedy. But then I'm watching the debates with the primaries and like 23 people running on the republican side and hillary and her crew are all running against each other on the Democrat side and back then I knew we didn't want, I didn't want Hillary and I didn't understand Trump. He made no sense to me whatsoever. My mother just loved him and I was like, are you serious? Like what do you love about this guy? You're the church piano player.
Speaker 7:And you're telling me the real estate mogul playboy twice, three times divorced, you know billionaire, that's the guy.
Speaker 1:The mogul, that's the guy the host of the apprentice, that's the guy you're pulling for. Because I was like I like ted cruz or whatever, I like ben carson. I didn't know what I'd like, but I know. I did a video where I said trying to figure out which candidate to vote for is like trying to figure out which venereal disease you're most okay living with for the next four to eight years.
Speaker 1:And so I went into the voting booth and there was hillary clinton and then the box next to it that said non-hillary clinton and I voted for that one and we got trump. And I had no clue. The uh roller coaster ride, god knows, y'all have lived it I mean put out the wrong song or the wrong video and it ain't the wrong freaking video I mean the song had been out. I'd love to. Y'all are here to talk about me, but I'd love to talk about that. But anyway, that's whatever.
Speaker 6:Now, believe me, we like getting other people's point of view at that time, because there were a few people that kind of stood up for us and, believe me, we know that. But we hadn't experienced something like that. We've seen how the media can manipulate stuff. We hadn't experienced something like that. We've seen how the media can manipulate stuff, but when you are a part of it, it was different.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was like oh shit, we stay under the radar out here. I mean, we just write songs and go to the house, we don't go out there. You know, and that was the first time- and we're not on the news. Yeah, we made the news. That was the first time that you know we were called racist by Whoopi Goldberg and we were like, oh man, this is different. This is a different deal.
Speaker 1:Well, I can remember going to the Music Row our bass records office is. You've got to walk between the two offices, which was Jason's, I guess, publicist and then the other office across the hall and it was like, well, now the publicist has parted ways after 17 years, but they've got to go to the office and see the people that are still repping Jason over here on the other side and I was like, fine day at the office. That's a fun, water cooler conversation. That's awkward. But I mean that right there you're going to take a decade and a half relationship that you've got. You know this person, you know who he is, you know how he conducts business and how he does things. You know this person.
Speaker 1:I've often said I've been called everything racist, homophobe, transphobe. I mean I had a gay agent for seven years For crying out loud. It was gay as could be. And I'm like I'm in the entertainment business. How can you call me a homophobe? My daughter's a professional dancer. She tours with Disney on ice and I'll meet her somewhere in some city in America. I'll take her to dinner or lunch or whatever, take her back to the hotel and I'll say, hey, let me go and meet some of your friends. She's like absolutely not.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, not Absolutely not, I go.
Speaker 6:what do you think I'm going to?
Speaker 1:do she goes. They know who you are, there's just no you don't have to do anything absolutely not.
Speaker 1:And so you know, you get called everything and I go. You got to look at it like if it was somebody that was close to me, like one of my friends called me that I'd sit down and take an analysis of my life. What am I doing, saying being that's not right. But when strangers are doing it, and they do it to the point because again we, you got boycott culture, you got cancel culture. Boycott is is bottom up, cancel is top down. And that's what happened with you guys, with that is. It was the powers that be up here that said nope, we're gonna squash their voice. They're filled with hate. Whatever you read it, you saw the headlines, all the crap. And then when Bud Light does what they do, or Tractor Supply did what they did, or even John Deere did what they did, or who was the recent Cracker Barrel.
Speaker 1:Cracker Barrel did what they did Now it's the people at the bottom, the organic, grassroots people, that says, eh, we're with that. So that's a boycott culture, which I don't like either of them, to be honest with you. But I also don't like spending money with people I don't share their values with. And when you've got a corporate value that is very plain and written, then I go. I'm not going to curse you, I'm not going to burn your buildings down, but I'm not going to go eat your crappy chicken fried steak either, because it really became crappy. I quit cracker barrel long before they went woke.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah I just needed a reason it wasn't the streamlined decor the biscuit sucked, so they've got.
Speaker 5:They've got decent bathrooms.
Speaker 4:You know, the opinions of this program are not necessarily so I don't know, scratch them off for a potential sponsor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're out.
Speaker 3:You mentioned Texas. Texas I've got to be honest with you has been so good to us since the very beginning, like you know, for a Nashville-based act, like we'd go down to Billy Bob's and 05, and we'd play two nights there. Oh, it was amazing right they always took to us.
Speaker 3:We played Texas everywhere in Texas a bunch Love it. We were back in Austin. We played Austin a bunch back in the day, always had a good time in Austin. It's different now. We started noticing it a couple years ago. We went back, we played the Moody Center. What two months ago Austin's way different? It just is Walk into and it's we austin's way different. It's it just. It just says walk into our dressing room and we're sitting there and starting to do some work and we look over and there it is the gender-neutral bathroom right britain is playing as like kim yeah yeah why do they gotta do?
Speaker 1:why can't they just say restroom restroom is the bathroom it is come on.
Speaker 3:What are we doing? But?
Speaker 1:then everybody will start. You will you have gender you have gender neutral bathrooms in your house? I'm like, yeah, but I'm the only person in there. I'm like I'm not peeing next to you. Know, it's just the justification for that. Stuff is crazy. You want to have that? Okay, have these. And some restaurants do it. Okay, here's a single bathroom next to a single bathroom next to a single bathroom and if it says vacant you go in there right.
Speaker 3:Here's the thing no woman that I know of wants to share a bathroom with a man I've never got a woman to agree to pee with me?
Speaker 1:I've never unless I'm out in the woods somewhere.
Speaker 3:I mean it's okay to have our separate bathrooms. Yeah, I don't know the women want that. Yeah, I know they do. They don't want to be during a man in the bathroom.
Speaker 1:It's okay to have spaces. It's okay to have places, it's okay to have roles.
Speaker 1:These days, they want to tell you you can't have that. Everything's got to be this homogenized, androgynized deal where we're just some primordial goop, that's not any difference in terms of. I mean, you say, well, sex is biological, but gender is a cultural expression, not historically. It's not, it never has been. That's just something you guys came up with, a political invention. Just like Pam Bondi came out, and I don't like that. She said it. She said we're going to go after people for hate speech. Well, there's no such thing as hate speech. There's free speech. Now, if you want to talk about defamation or threats of violence, we already have laws against that. When you start saying everything that you don't like is hate speech, that's a slippery slope. Now you're in the uk and you're going to prison for putting up a meme. That's not good. So you know, I I call those things out, I, I try to, and I catch a lot of crap for doing it, but I don't have anything to lose no, I think you have to call those things out.
Speaker 1:You have to yeah you have to um, I got three daughters. Um, you know, I I got. I told you I mean my daughter that's the professional dancer. Um, not on a pole. She's not like aunt shirley, did it? Not like aunt?
Speaker 2:shirley did it I don't know if you've ever seen a stripper with gout.
Speaker 4:You're better off just saying yeah. I don't know if you ever seen a one-armed stripper with gout. She's saving for college. You're better off just saving for college.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've ever seen a one-armed stripper with gout but Aunt Shirley she got the job done. She was busy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, she had that icy hot patch on her back.
Speaker 1:She put that prosthetic on that pole and locked down channel lock pliers and kicked that swollen foot out there and swing she's very strong. Strong lady she came out.
Speaker 2:She came out the deaf leopards pour some sugar on me, which we knew that that's every white girl's fantasy stripper song, if they got to get naked in public.
Speaker 1:It'll be, and and we know that because we learned when we were 16, 17 years old they'd send me and my cousins down with a covered plate on holidays so she could eat because she used to let the other dancers go home so they could be with the illegitimate kids.
Speaker 1:So every now and then we'd peek through the curtains and see, and you didn't want to come out there with Aunt Shirley and the boa constrictor. We honestly wish Def Leppard had written a song called Pour Some Clothing on Aunt Shirley. Wild Makes me miss home. But people, you know, they don't. You know we, we've just lived in this weird world where it's just contextually, it's. We've built this construct where everybody I say you a slip of the lip get you hung by the tongue. You know, if you, if you say the wrong thing on twitter 10 years ago and they dig that back up, happened to joe ro, joe Rogan. I don't know what y'all's experience has been on this. I'm sure you've seen it, but it seems to me like every time cancel culture comes after you, you just get bigger.
Speaker 3:They're never going to learn.
Speaker 1:You just get bigger and bigger. You kill Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's voice amplifies by the millions. You can't shut that up. You tried to do it with Joe Rogan, didn't work. They tried to do it with Kevin Hart Didn't work. You name your person, they get bigger. You're just giving them a bigger voice. There are people out there who are going to churches on Sunday. Now they're getting involved with campus chapters of TPUSA. People who 10 days ago had never thought about who Charlie Kirk was are now going. What happened? Who's this guy?
Speaker 1:Oh, I actually like what he's got to say, because they're taking him and they're listening to him in his context without these out of you know, pulled out of context lines or whatever well, even if you don't like what he had to say, though, you, you gotta like what he was doing what he was doing, because that that's what it's all about.
Speaker 3:Right, he would. He would have these open conversations which, for some reason over the last few years, people don't like, and he was doing it right. No matter what side you're on, what he was doing is healthy for everybody, because that's how it used to be Maybe the disagreements and the conversations. That's healthy.
Speaker 4:You can hear the effect he had, though, when you see clips of a Morgan Wallen concert, a Jason Aldean concert, and the eruption when they talk about Charlie Cox.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and he shares the gospel every time.
Speaker 4:I know, and the roars are just getting louder.
Speaker 1:And the crazy thing was, if you notice, we talked about it on my show yesterday. Coldplay did it. Chris sticks his hands up. We're going to send love, we're going to whatever weird stuff that was, but if it works, it works. I've been sending love with you, I've never sent love like this. I've tried to send love a lot of ways.
Speaker 4:You look like a baboon. When you do that, don't say baboon. Thank God I still got two arms.
Speaker 1:Two arms to raise, but you can hear where he's like send sin love to sadan, sin love to whatever. I don't know why I'm giving him that accent, but um the uh I'm not gonna say what I'm about to say but uh, then he. Then he says you know charlie kirk's family and you can hear the crowd get louder at a co-play concert. They're probably just happy that they didn't get caught cheating but, they uh, people are waking up to it.
Speaker 1:And you know charlie and I. We knew each other for a long time. Obviously I'm a good bit older than Charlie. I've known Charlie since he was 18, 19 years old. I've done a lot of events with Charlie. Charlie endorsed one of my books. He's been on my show numerous times. We did a lot of stuff. I used to speak at his events and he's a good dude and he and I didn't agree on everything, but I good dude and and he and I didn't agree on everything, and but I don't agree with everybody on anything. There's no way. Nor should yeah, you shouldn't. I mean that if you're a free thinker, if you're a critical thinker and you have common sense, you're not going to agree. Because, even something, because I don't think pam bondy meant what she said about hate speech, but she, she again. She said it wrong. She tried. She needs to walk it back. Probably won't, but I think pam bondy's under a quota to say one wrong thing at least once a month.
Speaker 2:And so she's been good at that so.
Speaker 1:But you know, our country was founded on this idea. We're unique, right? We're not like most civilizations of the world. Everybody always had a king or a czar or an emperor or a big boss. They told you what to eat, when to eat, when to grow your plants. They told you who you could have sex with, who you could marry. They told you all these different things. You were in a caste system and we pulled out our powdered wigs and our little hats made out of squirrel skin and we said, no, we're not going to do it that way we gave the middle finger to the biggest superpower of the day in 1776.
Speaker 1:And then we engaged in guerrilla warfare for the next four or five years and said we're going to build a whole thing that's different. And so that freedom was going to be built on ideas. And so we have the idea of America. And so they built this republic and Benjamin Franklin. Of course you know what has happened. The lady says in the street what have we done? And Benjamin Franklin says well, what do we have? You guys are a republic, if you can keep it.
Speaker 1:De Tocqueville said that America will cease to be anything if it ever ceases to be good. John Adams said that America's foundation has to be dependent on a moral society, a moral people. When you lose that, you got a problem because the standard is being taken away. To me, the standard has got to be God. I do believe that our country was founded on that. Because people say, well, the Constitution doesn't mention anything about God. Well, they didn't, because all of the states' constitutions already had that nailed down. If you read the first 13 colonies and states, their constitutions were God, god, god, god, god. So when they wrote the Constitution of the United States, they said all right, states' rights are what's more important. They got that covered. So let's talk about the unalienable rights, now that the providential hand of God has given us life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, so on and so forth, and then the holiest truths to be self-evident with the Declaration of Independence and the preamble of the Constitution. So we had these ideas and I say God is the standard, because if you don't have God as a standard, then you don't have a standard for good.
Speaker 1:Now more relativism takes over, humanism becomes the religion of the day and we've got our feet planted firmly in midair and we're worshiping at the altar of me myself and I right. So I make the rules, I determine what's good, I determine what's bad, what's right, what's wrong, what's evil. I got to have another standard besides just me, because that's too arbitrary and our founding fathers knew that. So they said, okay, let's discuss this. Well, john Adams and Thomas Jefferson hated each other. John Adams' last words on his deathbed, which they died the same day, just hours apart, on July 4th, by the way, john Adams' last words were Jefferson outlives me. They hated him, hated him, and so they didn't like each other. But they still got along In their old age. They still were able to come back together and found these founding principles, like the Constitution, like the Declaration that said we can disagree, we can debate, we can dialogue, we can duel if we have to, but at the end of the day I kind of miss those days.
Speaker 3:We need a good meeting for our duels.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you how badass those dudes were back in the day. Talk about duels.
Speaker 3:I just love the idea of a duel Not with me personally. I want to host some duels.
Speaker 1:And I think those guys it was all about saving face.
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton was one of the biggest duels and Hamilton lost his life because of that, because Aaron Burr wasn't messing around, he was there to kill him. And I think a lot of times those guys they did it and they missed but they were able to say we did it and they were like, well, I wasn't trying to hit you and I'll tell you that. So y'all's former governor here, a guy by the name of Andrew Jackson, by the time he became president, when you had a duel back then you had what was called a second. That was your fill-in, that was your understudy. So a lot of times Sam Houston, of course, who went to Texas, sam Houston was best buddies with Andrew Jackson. He would fill in for Andrew Jackson if he ever needed to. Andrew Jackson, by the time he won the presidency, had been a second, not just the duels he'd been in, had been a second in a hundred duels, oh my God.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine how bad you got? I mean, I'm going to go fight somebody else's fight and get shot at for that at 15 paces? Hell, no, that was a different breed. But I'm like why don't we bring some of that back where you take off that cotton glove and slap somebody in the face and say let's get this shit on?
Speaker 3:I want duels, but I want it in the original guns, I know.
Speaker 4:They shoot those balls. You're not sure if it's going to come out with zero ballistics.
Speaker 3:It's crazy, I think if we do that, there's so many duels I want to organize.
Speaker 5:I know the first one, city duel and it's like I want to line them up. I got so many people. I want the first one should be uh zach bryan and gavin adcock.
Speaker 2:What a bunch of pussies seriously though, I know, but I don't take either of them seriously as a matter of fact, I'm I'm tired of the whole thing I think that's the first time you've named names on the podcast I love it.
Speaker 5:No, it's a current story.
Speaker 4:It is, and I love that you named them.
Speaker 5:He climbed the fence, he was ready to go. Those guys couldn't shoot.
Speaker 1:Oh my, they can't shoot.
Speaker 3:It's just. I'm going to tell you this We've got to set the bar higher for the initial duel.
Speaker 1:You know to my country boys who sometimes ain't too country. You're going to try to play that game. If you climb over a barbed wire fence, a razor fence, to get to me, I'm whipping your ass before your feet ever touch the ground. I'm catching you while you're tangled.
Speaker 1:We're going uh-uh, and Adcock was like I don't know, I've got to go to the stage. Oops, and Zach's doing what he's doing. But I remember I was fishing with my buddies Randall King and Josh Ward in Texas. We were fishing out on a friend's golf course at Eonson and Randall King kept. He was fishing with a spinning reel and he kept tangling out. You don't tangle up a spinning reel. How do you do that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's backlash. If you put the string on wrong, it will.
Speaker 1:And then I got to go over there and fix it for him. And finally, I'm like Randall listen buddy, mr Mirror, mirror on the wall. If you do this again, I'm telling everybody. We're taking your country card away boy. You got to quit with this. Now I'm getting your own bird, Now I'm fixing your mess over here. So I laugh about those guys with Adcock and that's a good call right there.
Speaker 3:They don't have enough in the bank yet to make that a legit duel. I mean I need deeper.
Speaker 6:Yeah, that won't make paper I could care less about either of those two guys, but they've got some good hate.
Speaker 3:I've heard Adcock on stage and he goes out there and just swears at the audience and says a lot of bullshit. And it's like that's fine, but I guess I'm old school about music. But there's many duels I'd like to see yeah maybe try to organize some like do you have anything like on your mind? I've been thinking about it since we've been talking about it and I've got john rich would be, one. Oh, john rich, yeah, john would be a great a duel for our side, I think I'm taking john.
Speaker 4:Well, no, I am. I'd rather see john and garth, john and somebody you need people that don't like each other maren morris maren morris, let's do that.
Speaker 3:That's a good if you can't have john versus maren morris yeah, let them play.
Speaker 4:They can play in that men's sport I mean maren.
Speaker 1:I knew maren when she was in fort worth, coming up and doing her thing and then she came out of national, lost her freaking mind and I was like what is going on with this girl? Because I know she had some beef with britney and a whole. They're just like what is your deal?
Speaker 3:now britney and marin. That's the duel britney and marin that would be. That's a good one.
Speaker 1:Britney, britney, britney's gonna take marin down instantly close I think you got people who think about why they believe the way they believe, and I respect that. Like a bill maher gets on his podcast and I'm not going to agree with most of the stuff Bill Maher says, but it's fair-minded, it's critically thought out. I think so too. Now it also gets kind of stupid sometimes because somebody will put him in his place pretty quick because they're not logical thinkers all the time with that. But again they're in Hollywood, they've lived in an echo chamber, they've lived in a bubble for so long they don't know any different. They've never been challenged on any of that stuff. So but then you got the progressive rereads out there. You got the people out there whose brains fell out, never had one, their prefrontal cortex just never developed. I mean, they're just not with it and they're. They are the feelings over facts.
Speaker 1:I said 30 years ago we're about to to enter into a postmodern society where how you feel about something is going to take precedence over what you can logically deduce from it. And so we got into that and now people can't even define what postmodernism is. But it is. As I said earlier, as the philosophers used to say about humanism, you got both feet firmly planted in midair. They don't have any leg to stand on. Their history has become revisionist. Planted in midair, they don't have any leg to stand on. Their history has become revisionist. Their talking points come from headlines or bullet points on the internet. We've got this great sociological experiment called social media, which is neither social or media. And now you have AI, which is really effing up the mix, because people are in that and they don't know what's real. That drives me crazy. These older people on Facebook that share this. Did you see?
Speaker 1:George Strait went down to Kerrville and he hugged that man in that lunch line after that flood of the Guadalupe Look George. It's AI.
Speaker 2:Don't even look like.
Speaker 1:George.
Speaker 6:George ain't that tall.
Speaker 1:No, he's definitely not that tall George doesn't touch other humans. Oh gosh Back when Irv Wolsley was alive.
Speaker 3:he's a great story, irv was awesome man.
Speaker 1:We used to do this event over at Tapatio Springs where George has got that big mansion on the hill and George I guess he finally sold it. The HOA wouldn't let him fly his helicopter in there and that pissed him off. So he's trying to sell that deal. Beautiful golf course down there. We do this thing.
Speaker 1:And george insisted on, uh, coming down drinking tequila with us at least one night and we'd get that. Cody go out there and and he, but he insisted on driving back up through the canyons to his house so a cop would be in front, cop would be in back, be like 10 miles an hour up through the deal. Erv's out there. And we had a guy who was traveling with us, music guy, and he said you think george will come, as he's usually we have this event. He'll show up one night and he's like I can't believe I'm gonna meet george. I get to meet george. I mean I'm gonna get meet george and herb goes. You know, let me tell you something, buddy. He said I'm pretty sure george is met. Just about everybody wants to meet. I miss that guy.
Speaker 3:He was so good to us back in the day when he didn't have to be. We were idiots and young and on tour with George and not behaving. Yeah, and he comes up and goes boys, you're going to have to settle down. We just walked back to George's room and we were just talking to George and he was like boys that's funny, yeah, he was, but he was great, he was great, he was great.
Speaker 1:People are, people are dying, man, it's, it's, it's insane. Um, we, we're seeing a generation go away at this point. I mean, well, you know that it's like every day you don't wake up. I mean, robert redford died. I, he's 89 years old. It was time. I mean, god bless him.
Speaker 3:He was always older than I thought he was. He always was I never. Every year he'd it was the hair.
Speaker 1:Great God bless you, boys, if you can keep it.
Speaker 3:I think y'all have done good so far, I mean.
Speaker 4:I wear a hat on purpose, me too.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you, I can't grow it in the back, I can't even grow a mullet. Mine grows up this back of my head. That's another thing of therapy, um, uh, but yeah, I mean, yeah, the Aussie thing like I caught hell over the Aussie thing, just because I'm like, well, I hope he was right with God. I mean, you know, the guy called himself the prince of darkness and he did all these kind of things. People like how dare you?
Speaker 2:and I was like I really wish him well for eternity, like that's kind of where my mind and heart was and people like how dare you say anything about it?
Speaker 1:and I was like god, I didn't mean to get into this controversy, I wasn't an aussie fan. I wasn't not an aussie fan hey, aussie was smart, aussie knew his brand. He knew his brand. I mean, he knew how to do what he did, and I think the guy you know. You don't get to that level and do the things that they do. You don't become an icon and a legend without knowing who you are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ozzy, what's he going to do? Clean his act up. That's boring. It's Ozzy Osbourne. I remember we opened for him in Sturges, like 10 years ago. We opened for him and I couldn't wait to go out there and watch him and there he was older and still singing. But he was Ozzy.
Speaker 2:And it's like, oh, I'm kind of scared, but this is great. Why?
Speaker 3:am I scared?
Speaker 4:of ozzy. He can barely move, but I'm petrified.
Speaker 1:Right now I can take him swear to god I could take him he probably has some powers and principalities surrounding him.
Speaker 3:But yeah, you want to take that. I don't want to duel with swords.
Speaker 1:You know I'm afraid of swords I would never want, I don't ever want to think everybody would be afraid of swords I'd rather get shot with the the ball.
Speaker 3:I don't dig it out of me just don't get shot in the ball.
Speaker 5:No, no, I think I think ozzy did have uh, read somewhere that he had had conversations with god and everything and he felt like he was. There were those yeah and the and the whole thing about the prince of darkness. That that was like you. You said that was his character he created a persona and he would just say, hey, it's rock and roll.
Speaker 1:I need to do something, you know, and I look at that and I'm like man, I hope he did. I mean, you know, alice Cooper did that. Same thing, yeah, alice Cooper's been very outspoken about his faith.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Alice Cooper.
Speaker 1:I mean, he was terrifying, but take alice cooper seriously, because he he's like terrifying, but then he's like you know playing 18.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, he's out there in golf shorts.
Speaker 3:His face looks like he's melting with mascara and he's wearing peter millar I'm not gonna be scared of you when you're getting your shin wedge out you know, I mean I got alice cooper in the bunker on 17. It lost all weight for like a Flirting with the cart girl. Yeah, I mean he's got his shoes on and pitching a wedge.
Speaker 5:I'm not intimidated anymore he still sounds good and he does a lot for St Jude. Like he does a lot of those things, which is golf-related too, you know, but he's always been real nice to me and everything. He's nice to everybody.
Speaker 3:Again, it's his brand. It's like these guys are smart.
Speaker 4:It's like nobody can judge people like that. That. You can't. Nobody can. I mean people. You get accused of judging people like that.
Speaker 1:But I'll always go back to the thief on the cross, man that's true, and you got people out there who are very passionate about you know, somebody influenced my life in this way and that was began. It was a core memory and I'll always protect that memory and you associate that memory because I said this about Charlie when he passed. I said I said grief is not about proximity, it's about meaning Uh, you can, you can really care about somebody and not even know them, and that's where the grief comes from. And that's true with all these guys, I mean musicians. There's nothing, in my opinion, that unites people more than music and humor.
Speaker 1:Humor is under a lot of attack. Music is too. In a lot of ways, it depends on what the message of the music is. Obviously, people are catching a lot of flack. You put the wrong song out. I mean ask and dancing. You know lap dancing with the devil or whatever he caught, whatever it's his brand, right, I don't know. Gay it up with satan, I don't know. And then I'm like you know what? It doesn't make sense to me. But okay, uh, it's art.
Speaker 1:And then, but humor, now, people are so thin-skinned, they're offended by everything. And with comedy, you're supposed to be challenged, you're supposed to be offended. They, they hold the. I always say, the two most offensive places that you should walk into with the expectation of being stretched and challenged is the church house and the comedy house, because both of them are supposed to hold a mirror up in front of you and say this is you, are you, you laugh at it, change this, but we're going to make fun of it or we're going to challenge you to change it, and both have been watered down. So you know, in comedy they're looking for applause instead of laughter, and then in the church house they're doing more TED Talks and inspiration and motivation rather than they are preaching the gospel, because they don't want to offend anybody.
Speaker 1:They want to make sure the coffee is the right flavor and the right temperature out in the lobby and the fountains are working in the parking lot and the music sounds great and the thermostat's set right.
Speaker 4:Don't get me started. Yeah, it's frustrating.
Speaker 1:And, having grown up in the church, having been a part of the church and being frustrated by the church and being in big ministry from time to time myself, it's a frustrating thing, because that's I feel like that's my people you know and uh, yeah, it's a crazy thing, but that's what we're living in, and if you try to make sense of it or you try to bring people along, you really do catch a lot of persecution for speaking up about it, and I just miss the days when you could just everybody could say what they wanted to say, and it's okay to disagree and, yeah, it's okay to be offended now and then yeah it's fantastic.
Speaker 6:So you know it's like okay, they shot president trump last year and it's like okay, they shot the president. You can't relate to that because he is the president and a well soon to be president and polarizing figure. They shot charlie kirk yeah, who is any of us? And you know you're there talking every day about your beliefs. Like, what does that do to you? How does it make you feel it?
Speaker 1:doesn't change anything for me, like it didn't cause my phone blew up. I it was. That was a grievous day, okay. So the 10th of september, the day charlie got shot.
Speaker 1:My sister-in-law called me that morning uh, from augusta, georgia, where I grew up, and uh, my niece unexpectedly passed away at 38 so that was a hard day and I was already dealing with that and and weeping on phone with her my sister-in-law and then I go in there and I shoot my show, which is live, and as soon as I get off, one of my sales guys that sells advertising for me says Charlie's been shot. And immediately I jump on Twitter or X, whatever, and I'm running upstairs and I'm looking at the TV and I'm trying to text people that are on the inside, people that are close. What's going on? What happened? I'm like there's no way he survives this shot. I mean, if this is what I'm seeing, if this is real, especially the closeup, I was like, yeah, there's no way and I know his security guys, I've known them forever and I'm like there's nothing to do. They're in this situation.
Speaker 1:So I was waiting on the news. I probably were like there's a pulse, but it's touch and go or they're stabilizing. I was like there's no way, there's no way. And I walked outside that day and I just looked up at the sky, man, and it was just in that moment that I just looking at the sun and just kind of praying, saying a prayer for Charlie, saying a prayer for Erica, and I felt in at my phone and my road manager texted he's dead and I went in there and, sure enough, they'd confirmed it on the news. It was a weird, eerie thing and I go, okay. So what are we going to do now? Because we can back off. I can go back to being the funny guy or I can keep challenging people and trying to disciple people and help people understand these things critically. And I said there's no fear in me blowing up because I mean listen, you guys, you guys were there in vegas. I mean you know what it's like when bullets are raining down on the stage and and you know, and literally you know, your mortality is right there. You see your life flash before your eyes. Um, but my phone was blowing up.
Speaker 1:People going hey, I'll. I mean some cia guys, dod guys, navy seals, uh, army special forces guys. I mean a bunch of guys. I know they guys Navy SEALs, army Special Forces guys. I mean a bunch of guys. I know they're like we'll come do security for you for free. I'm like, hey, take it easy, take it easy, we're not going to walk in fear. We'll analyze the situation as we come. Then everybody's like I want you to stop doing what you do. I don't want you to be out there. I want you to be out there, I want you to, and I'm like I'm not going to do that Because you can't shut me up.
Speaker 1:I firmly believe that our hands are in the. Our time is in the hands of God. So if God's done with me tonight I could walk out there in the parking lot and a tree limb fall out and hit me in the head and that's it. I can't prolong my days. I get on an airplane tomorrow morning. I think it'd go down, could go down.
Speaker 1:I can't prolong my days beyond what his times are allotted for me. He knows that, like he knows the hairs on my head. So that's going to embolden me, that's going to strengthen me and that's going to give me the courage to go out there and do what I feel like he's calling me to do with conviction and not walking in fear, because when he's done with me, he's done with me, and when he's done with me I can go hide in a bunker somewhere. He can find me there too. So what's done is done, and if you do kill me, it just amplifies the voice, because now you made me famous. I ain't famous now, my lawyer told me. He said you're the only dude that got famous by pretending to be famous. But I was good at pretending, but you just amplified my voice if you do that. But you're right to your point a little while ago. They never learn on the cancel culture. But these are dangerous times we're living in and it's sad that we're there.
Speaker 3:God's got it, though. You nailed it. I remember watching Charlie and we were texting back and forth all day about this and we had left the road that night. I remember we were talking to me and Kurt and we were like you know God knows what he's doing Since.
Speaker 1:Charlie got assassinated.
Speaker 3:It's changed a lot of people. I think it made people wake up to realize that a lot of messed up stuff has been going on and to get to this point where Charlie, like Kurt said, wasn't an elected official, he wasn't making policy, he was just a guy out there having conversation. If that happens, then I think we've bottomed out and I think a lot of people on that side too are like well, this is crazy, which is that you see a lot of people now who said really terrible stuff after losing their jobs, and I think people are really waking up to it, and God used Charlie in that way, I think, to help.
Speaker 5:To me that's what it feels like. Oh God damn, you got short.
Speaker 4:He told you, we got some of these things.
Speaker 1:Just take it right off the stage.
Speaker 5:God heard of getting a hook hook, but now we're getting famous but telly like like you're saying, he's not a politician, wasn't a politician, but to me he was more dangerous than that to to other people, because he was changing young minds you know somebody said to your point, somebody said it wasn't, they didn't kill him because he was talking, they killed him.
Speaker 1:because he was talking, they killed him because he was making a difference he was getting through to people.
Speaker 1:And I mean I've been at the Turning Point events with 5,000 people out there and I've had the honor of talking to that group and they're passionate. In fact I told them years ago, charlie and I. I joked with him about it. I said you know he goes. I didn't care that you said it. I said I told his group, I said don't become a cult. I said you guys are so passionate about this, don't lose the mission of what it's about, of elevating guys like Charlie to the point where you're thinking this guy can do no wrong. Because he can do wrong and that's why it was actually what makes him great, because Charlie was humble enough to know that he could do wrong, but he was open to having those dialogues and debates and that was the beauty of Charlie. So, yeah, it amplifies the voice in a big way.
Speaker 1:Our churches were filled on Sunday. People were coming out. I mean the messages of men saying I'm going to go give my life to Christ or I want to get baptized again. There were people. They were so cool to watch these people on X making posts.
Speaker 1:It says so, if I want to go to church, what do I do, like when I get in the building, what do I do when I get in there? It was like charming in a way. That was so simple of these, like becoming like a child, of saying, do I just go in and sit? Do I need to check in with somebody? What do I do? And then somebody's like, yeah, you need to go in there, you need to get saved. And they're like what the hell are you talking about saved? You know they were like, yeah, right, what the hell? You're on to it right there. So that was, it was endearing with that. And then I think it's also. I think it's also exposing who is out there in those churches, who's going to preach the truth and who's not, who's watered it down to a point of consumerism and they're scared of being canceled themselves and they want to make sure that they keep putting the spoon-fed pablum out there. So pabloff's dogs keep showing up.
Speaker 4:I've noticed that's happening a lot right now, exposing the churches that aren't Scripture-based. It's happening A lot. It's happening, a lot, it's happening.
Speaker 1:And I heard people say how do I know which church to go to they're like, not one with a rainbow flag yeah.
Speaker 1:Wrong mission, but it's fun to watch that and I've been encouraging people on my show of saying don't go once and quit, keep going. Some of my friends musician friends they reached out and they said, man, I haven't been to a church in 15 years. But I went Sunday and I said go again, keep going, and if you don't like that, I'm finding another one to go to. If you need me to help you, do it. I don't know, but I know people who can help you. I go to church on Monday nights. I watch church on YouTube because I'm traveling on Sundays. Usually, if I'm in town on home on Mondays, I'll do that, but on Sunday mornings I'll watch it on YouTube and try to participate and things like that. But immerse yourself in some truth man, some stuff that's uplifting. Turn Lizzo off for a little while and just read the book of John, which is what we've been doing. Like I said on my Before the Noise thing in the mornings. Just read the book of John and let's see what that's about. Because people say well, I liked you before, you were getting all preachy. I'm like, I don't think I'm preachy now because I'm talking to myself and I'm just letting you guys go on the ride with me. Because here's what happened to me, guys, and I'll just tell you this is something through that wild phase of life too, where I was looking for reality in a bag of drugs or bottom of a bottle and I realized there was no reality down there and I went through destroyed relationships and and I would wake up in a back alley somewhere after closing the bar down because I didn't know how to get back home or back to the hotel and and I was like reno collier uh, reno collier, we were on the road one time and in you know, reno's opened for larry the cable guy forever and and done comedy with blue collar and reno used to weigh 400 pounds. He said I'd get up on the tour bus in the morning and open up a bottle of jack daniels and throw that cap in the corner and say let's get this day started at 7 am. And he said I'd go through four bottles that day and and he goes. He looked at me because he's been sober for California, sober at least for a lot of years now, down to like I don't know 175 pounds. He was in the back seat of the car that day. We were going to the venue and he goes Chad. I got a little bag of cocaine out. He goes Chad, you got to stop, you're going to be dead. Because the doctor told him he said you got five years to live. He goes if you don't quit drinking. He said can I quit in four? You know? And so he's looking at me. I never forget.
Speaker 1:You know, we're in a green room in Dallas and we're sitting there with some comedians or sitting there with some comedians, orny Adams came in. He wasn't with us that night but he came in to visit. I said, orny, you want some cocaine? He's like no, don't do it, don't do anything. I said, you mind if I do it, he goes. I'd be upset if you didn't Go ahead and knock yourself out.
Speaker 1:Those guys would say listen, you're killing yourself, you're looking for reality in a place, because the church guy was the.
Speaker 1:You know what?
Speaker 1:I don't have the courage to shoot myself, but I'm going to kill myself as slowly as I can.
Speaker 1:And then it got to a point where I said no, this is not who you are, this is not how you were designed to be. You know, this is not your identity. Because I believe that if you know where you came from and you know who you are, you know where you're going and you know what you leave behind. So history, identity, destiny, legacy those four elements make a man a man, everybody but a man, a man. And I said this is not your identity and you're messing up a whole lot of stuff. And so I started turning some things around a few years back and just really getting back to my priorities. And about a year and a half ago I was at home alone in that big old house and I was just by myself and I had this just grief and regret come over me of things I'd done in my life and I broke man, I wept, I was like maybe I got too much estrogen going through me. I don't know, I need more pellets in my ass.
Speaker 1:I'm crying, I'm confessing all the things you know. My kids, four kids. I'm like so much of their life I missed, for the things that are being gone, and not just out making a living but just being stupid too, and just the ways that I just dishonored God. And and I felt like the Lord spoke to me in that time and it was like somebody. It was like if you stood up and put your hands on my shoulder and started pressing down and I said God, what is going on? And the Lord said I got a plan for you, you, you, you know this was at a point where I had come back to the Lord. I mean, I was walking with the Lord and trying to hear God and all this kind of stuff. But at this moment God said you've been doing good on your own, but now you need to take some people with you. It's one thing for you to have the message, you've got to take some people with you. I said what do you want me to do? And he goes. I've made a lot.
Speaker 1:It's hard to be a comedian run with some of the people that you do, and because people are going to go, because you got some people out there, they come to a show. They don't know if they're going to a motivational TED talk or a church service or a comedy show, and you go out there and some people think humor in and of itself is offensive, and so I said, okay, let's see what that looks like. I'm on this journey of just saying, okay, I'm going to take people along with me and see what's going on. God hadn't quite fully sanctified my vocabulary completely, I'm not sure he ever will and I can defend that. I can defend that I'm a pretty passionate person. I'm getting better about it. Honestly, I feel a little bit of conviction and I'm like okay, but we're working on some things.
Speaker 1:Brad Stein, of course, is a Christian comedian in various skies. We're talking about putting together some stuff. Nate Bregassi's dad, steve we're talking about doing some stuff with him as well next year. He's a comedian and just going out there and saying, look, we want you guys to laugh, but we want to make some points along the way that make that identity come become real for you as well.
Speaker 5:So you know, that's awesome the goose that wakes up every day when you were going through that, like with the drugs, alcohol and things like that was it. Did you start that because you're depressed or you're yeah, you know something that starts it.
Speaker 1:Usually I had a friend who sat me down in a room about like this, with a conference table in 2009 and said you're depressed. And I said no, I'm just, I'm tired. And they go no, you're depressed, you're clinically depressed, like. I guarantee you go to the doctor. You are chemically depressed and I was, and I drink to, like everybody does, you know, and I'll have a bourbon with you right now. Thanks a lot, fellas.
Speaker 3:We got your back buddy, we're whiskey.
Speaker 1:We didn't know. I love my bourbons, I love my tequilas and I said yeah. I said I could drown my sorrows and try to use it as an escapism to numb yourself, and do that. I got into stuff like cocaine. I was never a weed guy because weed made me lazy and I don't want to be lazy because I'm pretty hyper and I've always said the drug of choice that you like is usually the one that fits your personality. So if you're hyper, there's a reason why people take Adderall, because that actually levels you out. I read a book on it about how cocaine, if you're hyper, will actually bring you down. I'd have all these people to be like you're doing cocaine at noon and I was like you want some and they were like no.
Speaker 6:And they were like we go crazy.
Speaker 1:And I was like I've never gone crazy. I've never been high on cocaine, I've just been normal.
Speaker 1:I'm high without it, so you know what I'm saying so you have that thing where it's like no, I just I never experienced things like but it was depression 100 and it was, and it was, it was wanting to feel something that you, you weren't feeling. I I think the biggest thing that I've wrestled with it's the people who. There's a psychological thing about having an imposter syndrome. You know I joked about being mediocre in so many things and there's a large element of truth to that. But you're like if somebody ever really pulls back the curtain and exposes the wizard, it's going to be a humiliating thing, because we're kind of bouncing this puppet show on some thin strings and you feel that way, whether it's true or not.
Speaker 1:And then you also you know how that feeling when you come home and it's quiet, after you've been in front of 10 000 people and now you're like shit, there's no applause here. Now you get to a point where you're like I welcome that, I want to be home, some people want to be alone, but then there's some people who don't know how to find an identity without the applause when it stops. That's why you got these guys. I mean I was there at um, um, uh, you'll see these guys who do these final shows. I mean Ronnie Millsap was doing a deal out at Bridgestone.
Speaker 1:I mean he can barely get anywhere. But these guys are still coming out there and trying to do stuff because they don't know how to do anything else. They don't know how to be away from the audience, be away from the crowds, the applause, the adoration, and there's a psychological thing to that. And so I found with me I'd gone through phases where I wasn't getting that outlet of being able creatively to put things there, and so it led me to some depression, it destroyed marriages, it destroyed relationships. And yeah, and I realized, you finally realize you're like okay, that's not the way to go Because, as I said, the best way I know to put it, there's no reality down there. You can go as deep as you want to go, there's no reality in that. So that's why I say I encourage people find some truth and read it, listen to it, hear it, expose yourself to it. It's far more uplifting.
Speaker 5:Yeah, just a lot of people want to know that. Thanks for answering that. Just a lot of listeners and even us, you know just kind of want to know, especially in entertainment and even being a comedian. You know, like Robin Williams, right? I mean, it was Depress.
Speaker 1:It was all get out and the funniest guy in the world. You know, robin's death impacted me because you know my brand of humor George Carlin-style rants. Bill Cosby for the storytelling.
Speaker 3:And it stops right there, big influence.
Speaker 1:Huh, we're not putting any Bill in the pudding.
Speaker 1:Either we doing it or I'm doing it. But his storytelling. I used to listen to his records about Fat Albert and stuff. You know, when I was five, six, seven years old I had a turntable listening to Fat Albert or Bill Cosby's comedy, and then Bill Hicks for his way that he would approach politics, Robin for his spontaneity.
Speaker 1:And you think here's a guy on top of the world that killed himself who dealt with the Depression. And how do you navigate through that? And you get to a certain point, I think with some guys like robin, because when robin died I made another career altering decision right then because I'd always said I'm gonna go make a living just being myself. I don't like working for anybody else, I like being my own person. And again, because I like doing something new every day. And back in the day I said I'm going to go make a living just being myself. And somebody close to me said what's the street value on your personality? And I was like, well, we're going to find out. And so when Robin died, that was a big deal. I can remember being at the gym. I was at the gym, not at the gym, not in the gym.
Speaker 3:There's a huge difference you were there though, yeah, I was there.
Speaker 1:I was sitting in the parking lot, sitting in the truck, and I was thinking about robin and I go man, this is, this is heavy, because I knew I was dealing with the depression and even at times the suicidal stuff would pop in. You'd be like, well, you know, you could do it this way, you could do it that way, you know, maybe you, maybe you know. And I was like I don't want to mess this up.
Speaker 7:This is too pretty so too, too vain to shoot myself.
Speaker 1:So I was like, well, I could drink myself to death. I mean, honestly, that's what you. You get to that point and you go. I just want to stay in that place and that's been. That's been comes around every now and then. I have often told people and it's frustrating to the people close to me in my life Sundays are very hard for me. Every Sunday is very hard for me because shows are over. I used to say goodbye to my kids on Sunday and get on the road to Sunday night to go, and I can still remember when they were little and they're at the door waving and those Sundays were just it still. It brings up that kind of that emotion inside of me and I go boy, I got to be careful on sundays, you know it's way better than it used to be, but that demon still knocks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy and there's a lot of men out there dealing with it. Men don't want to deal with that. They don't want to talk about that, especially in the western world. They do cowboys? Don't want to talk about it at all and they deal with it worse than um than a lot of anybody. That men definitely don't want to admit it. But if you had cancer you'd admit it. If you had sickle cell you'd admit it. I mean, I mean, but if you got something, where you got a chemical thing going on.
Speaker 1:Why are you not talking about that? And I've done, I've been very outspoken about it over the years. My mother's like I hate when you talk about that stuff to the public and I go mom, here's the deal. There are people out there dealing with, there's men dealing with it and I say talk to god, talk to your doctor, talk to your therapist, whatever order that needs to be in. But you need to have those conversations and get the help that you can get and and it's a, it's a thing it's a thing for a lot of people.
Speaker 4:I could only step forward and move forward the day I realized it's not about me. That's when it all began, yeah, and I still have to be reminded. I still have to remind myself wait a minute, it ain't about me. That's a great point. This whole thing, this whole what's going on, it ain't about me. It never has been.
Speaker 1:Right, that's a good point and whether you realize that there's a sphere around you that's way bigger than just you as an individual. It ain't about me. I mean, I got kids, I got another generation, I've got people that would be devastated and hurt if I hurt myself and these things. And I wrestled with all of those things. I've always been very transparent about it. I have zero shame in it, no reason to have any.
Speaker 6:Yeah no reason to have any. That's right. No reason to have any, that's right.
Speaker 1:It never even crossed my mind to be ashamed of it.
Speaker 6:Well, like you said, it's just probably for a lot of our age too. It's like men just aren't used to talking about it. They don't like to talk about it.
Speaker 1:I have a small penis, I don't mind telling that. I forgot you were there, I think we all might have looked up. She's blushing, but she knew. And then as guys get older, that's another thing. That's another thing as guys get older because, since I've already let that, little cat out of the bag, you got a Manscaped 5000? No, I don't. Sometimes I forget that we're supposed to do that these days. I got one.
Speaker 2:It's in the drawer. I don't know where the charger is. I don't know where the charger is, that's normal.
Speaker 1:At this point I'm at the age where it's just hunkered down like a button in a fur coat. You know, you just let it go. And then we couldn't help myself. He opened the door, we can talk about it. I don't mind. This is good therapy for me too, because I keep reminding myself as we get older, our testosterone drops. My ass is sore Not prison sore, but I got pellets in my butt three days ago, and I mean my ass on the right cheek is as bark as this cowhide right here. And it's just bruised up.
Speaker 1:And I'm like why do we do these things trying to get the testosterone? Because you get to a point in life where, the older you get, I think it's that estrogen hits and you just want to nest and cry. And you know your wife wants to go join the gym or she wakes up horny and you've got a headache. And so it flips, it jumps off in the middle of the night. Two years ago, three years ago, I woke up with night sweats, and you get night sweats.
Speaker 4:We get the flashes. We talked about this last night. I said I'm having hot flashes. Guys, I'm 60. I just turned 60.
Speaker 5:I had a hot flash the other day. Well, the way Chad said it, night sweats sounds better.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 2:You got to play night sweats. With an 18-team staff, we get them.
Speaker 4:We get them.
Speaker 1:But I woke up laying in a puddle of water. Thought I'd pissed. The bed couldn't remember my name, didn't know where I was. I thought this is how Joe Biden feels every day. But I'm too young for life alert, but I still take my phone with me to the bathroom in the middle of the night, in case I have a heart attack.
Speaker 3:You never know. You're just pre-dialing out. We are in the drop-dead years. That's what Bill Burr says dropping dead, dropped dead years.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be found like Elvis. You got 9-1 on the speed dial. I got 9-1 pre-dialed. I just hit the extra one and sinned and they could come find me laying on a cold porcelain tile. And now we got our phone in there. And at our age we don't stand to pee in the middle of the night. We sit down. We've already risked our waddle in there, butt naked, I sit down to pee and I'm like all right.
Speaker 1:Let's go ahead and get everything done while we're here so we don't have to do that treacherous jaunt again. Dangerous midnight walk. And then we dress it up and say well, I got a dad bod You're fat okay, let's just be honest.
Speaker 1:And if you want to know the proof on that, you, because we're honest. And if you want to know the proof on that, you get around somebody that claims to love you and say the words I'm fat. And if they don't respond, you're fat. Okay, and dad, bods aren't sexy. No woman's ever laid there running her fingers through the hair on a man's back and been like, oh God, yeah. I don't know if this is a border collie or Burt Reynolds.
Speaker 6:But roll into me, daddy.
Speaker 1:And we're popping blue pills. I say we just keep treating our penises like Muhammad Ali, like he's laying there like a little three-inch fireman on a sack of balls, looking comfortable, and we got to get him out there so somebody else can beat on him brand new. Like why Quit bringing him out of retirement? It's like Muhammad Ali man, let him die already. He's put in the work. He's put in the work.
Speaker 6:Oh, my God Wow.
Speaker 2:Sorry kid.
Speaker 1:I don't know how you followed that, I don't know. I mean, we went from Jesus to depression, to fire.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I know we cover it all here on the Travel at a Small Town podcast.
Speaker 1:This is why I had to take drugs, oh my God.
Speaker 4:He wrote I'm still a guy for Paisley, he can relate guy from paisley. He can relate, that's the same deal.
Speaker 6:Chad, you are a good man and you, uh, thank you, buddy. This thing could go up a lot longer. Obviously, we appreciate. First of all, we appreciate who you are thank you, appreciate what you do.
Speaker 4:I appreciate your inspiration, man respect your talent? I do not scroll past you.
Speaker 6:I appreciate that and I gotta get better about doing some funny things on there again but people tell people where they find you at Watch Chad right.
Speaker 1:Watch Chad Sounds like an OnlyFans.
Speaker 4:I am my.
Speaker 1:OnlyFans. It could be WikiFeet, watchchadcom. You go to ChadPraetorcom and it's kind of a one-stop shop. We got everything you can actually go like my morning deals that I'm doing before the noise. We'll add that to the site. My bless his heart, my buddy Brent, he's got cancer and he works, does all my tech stuff and he's bless his heart. He's suffering but he's. We'll have that beforethenoisecom on there pretty soon where people can go watch all the videos and things like that and the Chad Prather show's everywhere. We're on Monday through Thursday and stirring it up for an hour.
Speaker 6:Live at 11,.
Speaker 1:We challenge and uh get people to watch because must follow absolutely super much well, you guys have taken a stand and, um, I've often said you know the band guys, they kind of have to go where the head guy's going sometimes and you get lumped in to the stuff. But you guys have made a big stand. I love not only the group but you guys as individuals have done a phenomenal job of just being real. I appreciate you saying that Authenticity is the biggest compliment I think you can give another man.
Speaker 6:I appreciate you saying that You're an inspiration. Thank you for being here, my friend.
Speaker 3:That was awesome.
Speaker 6:How do you guys feel after that?
Speaker 5:I feel smarter a little bit I feel, I feel dumber, yeah, I do, yeah, no, no I learned something one of my favorites um, I mean the guy, he does talk a lot.
Speaker 5:You have to keep up, uh, or get left behind I know, yeah, he he's a, like I said I told, told you guys, but I didn't know anything about him until today. And I started researching him and I think I know he mentioned, like the Walmart and Target video, but the video that blew up also in 2015 was called, Unapologetically, Southern right so and he was irritated because people were, you know, commenting saying you're not intelligent. You know, with that draw and the way you talk and everything, You're not an intelligent guy. And he strung together, you know, and it looked like he was freewheeling it and I was listening to him and he was so fast and the big words. I understood him. I just don't use them, but he put them all together and I thought, man, that dude is sharp.
Speaker 6:Yeah, he is super sharp Things he's done. Man is like unbelievable.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:He sounds like he's just getting started. I know he doesn't even. He acts like he's. Like you know, it went by like that.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking about retirement, I know.
Speaker 6:That guy has just started. That's unbelievable, oh my gosh, it's crazy. It was so much fun and we're so appreciative of Chad. We're appreciative of you guys. If you're on YouTube, leave us a comment, leave us a review, download the episode. We've got to thank Patriot Mobile. We've got to thank eSpaces. This is so amazing. Chad commented on our studio. I loved it yeah uh, we got to think original glory drink it up, we gotta bring some. I don't know why I drink it during the week.
Speaker 4:I gotta bring in here no, I'm gonna drink it all I am well, it's after hours, I'm gonna drink it in here it was at the other studio.
Speaker 5:We got to get it back in here, don't we?
Speaker 6:yep, absolutely, uh, anything else we good.
Speaker 4:Great night god it was a great night. You guys be careful out on the road with jason aldean.
Speaker 5:Thank you, yeah, for sure oh, and congrats on uh having the most added song this week oh yeah, goodbye go. We gotta mention that okay, I can't wait to check it. I haven't heard it yet. I just saw it on the strip it's a good song.
Speaker 4:I heard it. It's a good song. Good song guys. It's great. Thank you, good song, love you. Heard it. It's a good song. Good song guys. I'm sure it's great. Thank you, boys. Good song, love you guys.
Speaker 6:And we love everybody for watching. Yeah, see you all next week. Yeah, yeah, come on, this is a Try that in a Small Town podcast. Okay.