Episode 13 - Rick Horstmann IV

Segment 1 

In this segment, Cody and Mariah discuss the importance of passion and discipline, share personal stories, and answer listener questions about motivation, relationships, and work ethic. They also introduce guest Rick and reflect on the value of authenticity and perseverance.

keywords
passion, discipline, motivation, relationships, work ethic, authenticity, perseverance, podcast, personal growth

Segment 2

In this segment, Rick Horseman shares his journey from childhood influences to becoming a self-produced guitarist and instrumentalist. He discusses his musical inspirations, learning process, and upcoming projects, offering valuable insights for aspiring musicians.

Follow Rick: 

Instagram: @rick_horstmann
YouTube: @rick_horstmann
Stream Voiceless, Vol: 1: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/rickhorstmanniv/voiceless-vol-1-2/ 

keywords
guitar, music production, self-taught, metal, rock, guitar gear, songwriting, home recording, musical influences, musician journey

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

You are listening to the Liquid Shape Podcast with your host, Cody Perez.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Welcome to the Liquid Shape Podcast, everyone. I am your host, Cody Perez.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

And Mariah Longfellow.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

And we are doing the podcast a little bit earlier this week than we normally do. It is Wednesday night, and I'm getting ready to hit the road because American Overdose will be playing with Drowning Pool this Saturday, the 28th of March in Reno, Nevada at InfernoFest. So Inferno fucking Fest, man. I'm excited. It's gonna be fun. Excited. We don't we don't play that often, and when we do, it's always a big time fucking celebration and a party and a great fucking time because we're not a band that oversaturates. We play big shows and we like to space them out between fucking playing shows. So unless we're on tour. But it's gonna be fun. Uh guys are gonna be out out and about getting into trouble. I feel bad for the van too. I feel bad for the hotels. I feel bad for anyone that has to put up with us on the road because no one is literally safe. When we're out on the road, you know what happens usually is that anywhere we go, whether it's a gas station, a hotel, a venue, a restaurant, anywhere we go, everyone sees the shit show and they're in on the pranks usually. Like they're getting picked on, they're getting trolled, they're getting whatever. Because we're not on our normal everyday job. So we're in full-on goddamn rock star character mode.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

I love it.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

We're just being told jackasses. You think our group chat that you hear sometimes is that we talk shit about each other is bad? That's nothing compared to when we used to brother. Oh brother. It's a lot worse when we're out on the road with each other. So it's gonna be chaos. So yeah, here we are doing this earlier than we normally would. How's your week so far?

SPEAKER_02 2:02

I mean, it's fine. Normal stuff. Not as exciting as yours.

SPEAKER_03 2:06

You're not excited that you're gonna have the boys to yourself and the house to yourself for the weekend?

SPEAKER_02 2:10

I'm excited because I'm gonna plant some uh zinnias in my wine barrel to get those planted from seed so they'll start growing soon.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

That is exciting. And uh by the way, we have the boys here. So what's what's happening from Taz and Lorenzo, and they're licking each other and breathing all heavy like they normally do. So if you hear that, it's the boys being rambunctious. Taz is excited, he's always excited to be on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

If you haven't seen, they got their summer cuts, so they are the official Blockhead brothers now.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Oh yes, yes, they got their summer cuts and they look adorable as fuck. I love it. We'll have to post more pictures up. We need to show the pictures before and after. You've been slacking.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

I'm sorry. You've been home with them.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

Well, I don't have the before pictures, you do.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, but you could still take a picture and send it to me. Or I could send you the before.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

Well, that's not gonna happen. Anyway. Anyways. So this week's guest that we have is my buddy Rick Horseman, and Rick is a killer musician who I got to meet the last time we were out on tour. Uh, we played a venue out in Illinois, and him and his dad came out, and we found out that they're they're gonna be there, so we had never actually met. So we brought him backstage at the forge and took pictures of them, hung out, got to BS, got to finally meet in person and all that. And Rick's been a huge supporter of uh American Overdose for many years, so it was awesome to get to meet him and meet his dad. So I'm very happy that we have him as a guest on the podcast. So on segment two, make sure you tune in because you will get to get you will get to know Rick and hear his story. And to me, it's inspiring and I love it and good dude. So, with that said, we'll move on to the uh question of the week. So this week's question of the week was Is passion enough or does discipline matter more? Passion can get you started. Discipline is what keeps you going. But which one actually makes the difference? Have you ever lost passion but kept going anyway? What's helped you stay consistent when motivation disappeared? Can you succeed without loving what you do? Is discipline something you've had to learn? Do you think passion can be built through discipline? So, one of those questions that gets you thinking. And I got a lot of great responses. So that means that people were digging it and they had their opinions. And I love I love opinionated people. I don't care if I agree with them, I don't care if we do agree, I don't care if we're kind of in the middle. I just love it when someone gives me a good explanation on their thoughts and they stand behind them and they're consistent with their thoughts. That's what I care about. Um, agreeing with me or disagreeing with me, whatever the case may be. Uh just be able to back up your thoughts, make sure that they're your own and that you truly believe them, and you're not just saying it because to be cool or to fucking, I don't know, people people do stupid shit for dumb reasons. But so first response is going to be from our buddy John Would. So we got uh got some reading here. So John says, You have to have both passion and discipline working hand in hand or simp or it simply won't work. But if I had to pick one, which one actually makes the difference, it's discipline. I've lost passion plenty of times and kept going anyway. That's exactly what we do we call a job. We show up and do the work because we have to earn an income. Unless you have another way to generate money, most of us don't have much much of a choice but to continue. Even when we're we've mentally checked out and feel completely uninterested or are unhappy with what we're doing, it's still a necessity. In addition to that, a lot of people lose passion in their relationships too. They'll stay even when the spark is gone and they've fallen out of love, whether because of their financial situation, kids together, or whatever the reason, they feel trapped and refuse to exit what's become a dead relationship. That's for sure. I can 100% agree with that. What's helped me stay consistent when motivation completely disappeared is the same practical reality. Making sure I can keep a roof over my head, food on the table, gas in the car, and the bills paid. Can you succeed without loving what you do? It depends entirely on your definition of success. If success means being able to keep a roof over your head, food on the table, and gas in the car, then yes, absolutely. But if success means doing what you love and feeling passionate about it every day, then no. You're really just existing. I also agree with that. Discipline is one of the hardest parts of anything. It means you have to do it regardless of how you feel, whether you're sick, tired, or dealing with depression. Discipline is what allows you to keep pushing forward and get the goal achieved no matter what. I think Andrew Tate has some really strong motivational videos on this topic and what discipline truly means for hype, hyper competitive, and highly successful people in the world, regardless of how you feel about him personally. And yes, I do believe passion can be built through discipline. Sometimes you're you're put in a position where you have to do something new or different that you're not passionate at all, passionate about at all. But through the discipline of repetition, you can start to enjoy it far more than you ever thought you would. Whether it's at work or you're working on your own home because you don't want to pay someone else's car else else or can't afford to, that consistent effort can turn the activity into something you genuinely, genuinely enjoy, and sometimes even into a real passion project. I think it's very important that people dig deep within themselves and discover what they're actually passionate about. Most people end up numbing themselves just to get through the daily grind. Drinking, smoking, getting high, playing video games, going to the bar, or sitting in front of the TV as a constant distraction. Because of that, a lot of them never discover what they truly love. They get trapped in those distractions and never get to find out what they're really capable of or what could actually make them happy. That is also very true. Agree with that. That's a that's a battle, unfortunately, that many, many, many people get into and they don't even realize they're in that. That's one thing that's super cool about watching what Cody does. He he's he's able to express himself through his music, and now he has a his podcast as another outlet. It's really cool because it lets him get some of that his thoughts out there and get feedback from other people. I don't know how much time you put into planning or creating this podcast ahead of time, but I can see how this could easily turn into another passion project alongside your music. That's awesome. Good job. Thank you, John. And and yeah, it there's definitely a lot of time that goes into this. Uh Mariah can definitely uh can definitely support that. Or because I'm constantly having to either take time out of my day to find people or interact with people, schedule times to meet and do the interviews. And then a lot of the times, sometimes people will be like, well, I can't do it after all. Even I prepared for this and everything, and then within an hour, they're like, Oh, I can't do it because XYZ, let's reschedule. By that point, I'll be honest with you, I might not reschedule. Um, I get annoyed when someone cancels after we've planned on it and we've prepared for it and everything. Um, I probably don't want to get you back on here. It's probably gonna take a lot for me to get you on here. And I'm not saying it can't happen, but I'm just saying it's very unlikely to happen just because it's really annoying. I don't like to deal with flaky people, and unfortunately, with music, I've dealt with that all of my life. I've dealt with flaky people with projects and stuff like that, and it's just like I don't have time for that anymore. Maybe when I was younger I had the time, but nowadays I don't. So that's time consuming. It takes me away from being able to do band stuff, takes me away from being able to do being at home, present with a girlfriend when she's off work and whatnot to do interviews. Sometimes I'll do up to three or four a week, and that's it can be an hour, two hours, three hours, depending on the person and how much we talk. And then editing, editing is a bitch, and then we have to schedule time between us to do our segment that we're doing so that we have more content and then come up with questions. Sometimes I use AI to help me come up with questions or elaborate my questions better. Um, and then editing and then editing the clips. Those clips take forever. Um, aside from editing the shows themselves, and then coordinating with people back and forth what pictures to post, how to describe the show, how to describe they want to be portrayed. There's a lot that goes into the podcast for sure. So, and then you have to edit the actual final work after you do the editing of each segment. Then I have to put them together and all that stuff. So it does take some time, but there's passion behind it. I do love it. I do love that it's something very different than I've done in the past and something new that I'm still learning, and I'm not at a point where I'm annoyed of it. If I become to a point where I'm annoyed of it and it's not something I want to do, I'll probably just pull the plug at that point and say, all right, let's take a break, and then maybe I'll miss it, maybe I won't. But thanks, John. Appreciate it. Uh agree with everything you said there, man. Like I can say for sure that with relationships, there's a lot of people, including myself, that have been trapped in those situations where you've lost the passion, but you're disciplined because for one reason or another you feel like you have to stick to that person. Maybe you don't want to hurt them, maybe you have kids, maybe you're married, your financial situation's gonna be all sorts of screwed up. Maybe you're afraid of change, maybe you're afraid of the unknown. I think we've talked about that before in the podcast where the unknown is scary, but it's also very exciting. There's lots of reasons why people do that. And you know, there's there's um I think eventually if something's gonna fall apart, it's going to fall apart. Yeah. So sometimes it's just best to rip off the band aid. But yeah, once you lose the passion for something, I feel like it does take it's kind of like when you have you have two different types of fuels. Like there's the passion side and then there's the there's the discipline side. And so when one's not working, hopefully the other one will keep the the motor going and keep the the the moment the movement going. And then hopefully eventually, you know, as it's moving, you'll get that discipline or you get that passion back. And then when that other one runs low, you know, you rely on the other one and and hand in hand, like you said. So what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 11:54

No, I agree with everything you said. I mean, it's easy to get stuck in something and then you kind of just lose the passion. But the unknown is scary and you know, but sting can be even scarier. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

So it sounds like you don't have the passion for this right now.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

No. But I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

But you're disciplined.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 12:11

I like it. So that that fits with that. So thank you, John. I appreciate it for everything you said here. And I think that uh you made a lot of great points here. So thank you for uh for sharing. All right, so we will go on to the comments from Facebook.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

The face of the book.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

Right, let's see here. First one is from my buddy Mike Strong. Mike's a badass. Uh, I have a story about Mike. He he showed up at one of our shows um some years ago when we were on tour, I believe it was in Iowa, and he brought me a care package. He knew that my voice was all fucked up for being on tour, and he brought me like honey and tea and like this whole bag of things to try to get better and whatnot. Shout out to Mike for that, man. And he didn't have to do that. He didn't know who the hell I was, he just knew me from online. So shout out to Mike and check out my go check out Mike on on Facebook because he's got his own uh barbecue sauces and uh jalapeno sauces and whatnot and spices. I got a lot of friends that do that, actually, that that do have uh businesses like that, which is cool. I love seeing that. So Mike says, I think the two go hand in hand. Without passion, whatever you're doing is hollow and feels fake. But without discipline, even the most passionate project slash business has no real drive to do the real work that needs done. You can't have one without the other. I do believe that you can lose one and regain it through through the other one. Exactly what I said, yeah. Fuck yeah. I've experienced this I experienced this with my own business. Passion is never ever, is never ever been an issue, but on those long days, those hard days, the days when the money is just not there, but the bills are still piling up, it's really hard to keep discipline. That's when passion saves you. Same thing goes for passion. When you hit that point where you say, Does it even really matter? Discipline can pull you out of that mindset. So in my opinion, you can't have one without the other because both are destined to fail without each other.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Yeah. I think, yeah, I 100% agree with that. And just I mean, whether it's relationships, I mean, think of it like working out too. It's either you kind of start off, I feel like a lot of times like with a passion, and that passion kind of dwindles, and then it just takes your discipline to keep getting you through it, like say you're running or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Yeah, I would say for sure, like he just flat out said what I said earlier too, like a second ago, where hopefully that when one of them is not there, the other one will keep you going so that you build back that other one that you that was not there to begin with, and vice versa. And um it's it's good to have, you know, to keep that in your mind sometimes. Like I think like there's not one that to me, in my opinion, there's not one that's more important than the other. I think both of them are needed. Um so I agree with you, Mike.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Because the passion can definitely dwindle, so you gotta have that discipline.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

Yeah, the passion comes and goes, man. Like it it does that with music, it does that with everything. I mean, I I think I was telling somebody the other day, I was like, and I was telling you to I always tell you, like, I would love to one day just pull the plug and stop being on social media. I'm just I'm so sick and tired of seeing everything I see. I'm tired of being on there, I'm tired of constantly feeling like I have to post and just stay in the graces of the algorithm. And just it's like I I wake up sometimes, I'm just like, why? Why do I even why do I even bother? Why do I keep doing this? I do this for multiple reasons, not just one, not one one reason. And I think that kind of fuels that my gets my passion going again. And then then I have to kick on the discipline mode for sure and be like, all right, well, in order for me to get where I want to be, I need to push myself even on the days that I don't want to. And then I think in my head, like, why do I do this? Why do I do this? Why do I do this? And then that just recharges my battery to to keep it going.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

It's like work. It's not I don't have a passion for HR anymore, but then I see the smiley faces on my puppies and I get to pay for their life. Makes me want to go.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Yeah, I always tell people that about my job. Like, I love what I do. I mean, and uh do I have passion for it? No, but I love my job. I love the people I work with, I love my freedom that I get with my job, and my my manager's really awesome and shit like that. So, like uh I love what I do, but there's days that I obviously don't want to go in there, but and then I think like, hey, you know what? I had it a lot worse before. Yeah, this is not bad at all. I have no reason to be bitching, and not only that, but this is paying for me to be able to do the things I like to do, which is like the podcast, the band, my family life here with the dogs and you and us traveling and all that kind of shit. So it's it's it's what keeps it going. Next one is from Cheyenne Jones. Shout out to Cheyenne. She says, Discipline all day. Passion is great, but can turn into chaos real quick if you don't have intentions, goals, and routines set in place. Agreed. Well, especially since like nowadays, I feel like everyone now has multiple things they want to do. Like sometimes you want to sometimes you might wake up and you want to be an artist. The next day you might wake up, you want to be a dancer, the next day you might wake up and you're like, you know what, I want to be an accountant, by example. Whatever. Maybe I want to be a podcaster, maybe whatever. With with I think that with all the things that are in our face and how easy it is now for us to be able to do the things that maybe weren't so easy to do back in the day, it's real simple to lose your passion real quick and then have a passion for something else, quote unquote. So Cheyenne, I 100% agree with you on that. That's definitely um very, very, very important. Steve Wilhelmer says, Passion is good, discipline is good, persistence is great. Keep going because slow and steady wins the race. Agreed with you, sir. Um, I think I I did say that I did ask him, I said, agreed. Would you say persistence is driven by passion or discipline, or could be driven by either or both? I mean, then he says, I started playing guitar when I was five years old. I will be 60 in April. 55 years I've played the instrument. It's called playing guitar because it's supposed to be fun. I still play guitar four hours a day because it's still fun. It's definitely passion.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

I love that.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

Yep. Yeah, I agree. I mean, persistence obviously is very important. And uh, without persistence, you'll fall, you're you're not gonna get better, you're not gonna improve. So oh look who responded, my buddy David Ritter. Ritter Ritter's an old uh co-worker of mine and uh good friend. We've had some crazy, crazy times. And Mariah got to meet him, what was it, last summer? Last summer for the first time? Yeah. I think last summer, right? Yeah, five finger death punch show. So you got to meet David, and David's a good guy. He is. Well, we'll have to get together soon. David says, you either have or don't have passion. Discipline can be learned and perfected. Agreed. It helps if the two meet in the middle, but often they don't. I think creativity needs passion, and making a living needs discipline. Wouldn't it be nice if you got to use both for the same thing? Yes. David David's always been very knowledgeable and full of wisdom. He was like when I was when me and him were working together, he was one of the people I would always go to for help. And he would talk me off the ledge with a lot of crazy shit. Not even just with work, but like personal life stuff too. So I've always appreciated uh Dave's wisdom, wisdom or David's wisdom. Um, but yeah, I agree 100% here because like he says, um, for for creativity, you have to have passion, not like the discipline to actually make it happen and whatnot, but if you have passion, you're gonna you're some of your your best stuff is gonna come out. It's gonna, it's gonna show. People can fake, they can fake a lot of things. I don't think you can fake like real passion and and like in even in music, when people hear something, they can tell when something's forced. Oh, yeah or um and fake. I definitely 100% agreed on all that. Yeah. Oh some of my artists, I won't name names, but some of the bands I like have done that. All right. Next one is from Brian Satterfield. Shout out to Brian. I used to participate in false motivation in a bag. I got to a place when the substance was when the substance was starting to be more important than the task, and I wanted to get done while using it. So 15 years ago, I quit and found a new passion and motivation to perform using discipline. I learned in my life to go back to school where I learned to be a drug and alcohol counselor. Hell yeah. Turned it around and made it something positive, Brian. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

I love success stories. Yes, that's that's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

That's great. I love that. That's kind of what has driven this podcast, actually, was exactly what Brian's talking about here. It's like I did so much a destruction into my own life and the people that were around me, I would say, or they had to put up with me, or they came in and out of my life, friends, relationships, family, whatever, band members. And so I think with this podcast, what my hope, hope, and my goal is that it's gonna help people. And if if my podcast, long after I'm gone, someone hears something that someone either participated in, like in these questions of the week, or a guest says something that inspires them or whatnot, I feel like it was worth the shit that I've gone through and the darkness and all that. It's it's worth it if I'm helping somebody. It's it's my goal. I have a purpose here in life, and I feel like that's one of my purposes is that uh to give back and hopefully help others. And so I'm hoping that that this podcast does that.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

I hope so too. I mean, I think uh both of us have wild experiences that hopefully other people can relate to and or take advice from.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

I'll let you read the next one since I've been reading and hogging. And this one's from our friend Stevie Ty, Stephanie Ty, shout out.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

And she says, for me personally, passion, follow through, consistency, and most of all the belief in yourself, which has taken me years of experience and tons of ego deaths. I feel you on that one. Ego deaths are yeah. Plenty of time I have lost passion, but then I tell myself, first, this is probably a time to balance and to remember and relearn patience or other parts of myself. Second, when you feel like giving up, remember why you started. You cannot always depend on others to encourage, push, or even like your work. You are the person yourself needs during those times. I cannot personally succeed if I do not have a passion. I tried that for years, working at a bank, making money, but dying every day because as humans, we are not meant to work, eat shit or eat shit and sleep. We need more in our life. Discipline is something I constantly work on. Also, balance. Passion can be built through discipline because when you have an interest, say art or music, you commit to that art every day or every moment of extra time you have. That is building passion. Passion is the art. Passion in the art is like a muscle and needs to be exercised. Ooh, that's good.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

Oh, I love that. That's a quote right there.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

I think that's, yeah, very, very on point.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

Yep. I I 100% agree with that. And sometimes if you are working somewhere where you're just like, this is not getting me anywhere that I want to be. And and money, I've said this before many times. Money comes and goes, man. I've had money. I've had where I think I've I've shared about like where I was I would be able to put thousands of dollars in my savings account at one point just because I had so much extra income. And it didn't make me any happier. I was partying, I was raging, and I was just being a complete lunatic. And I was very unhappy with my job. Very, very, very unhappy with my situation that I was in at that time. And so you doing a job just because it pays you and that it can be soul sucking, it's not worth it. It's not worth it at all. It's better to have a job that you know what, it doesn't stress you out. You're still able to get your bills paid, but in the long run, you're still able to do your your passion, your job, like your your take out your creativity, whether you're a musician, an artist, an actor, model, whatever. If that job is able to fund that and keep that going and and you know it doesn't stress you out and doesn't add to your any of your problems, then that's that's cool. That always works.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

And that's or when you're in a job that sucks the soul out of you, you learn just to coast, like not let it be that big of a deal.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

Yeah, it's a mindset with with jobs like that. And people always ask me, like, how the hell did you do it to be at a call center for 14 years? And um, I mean, I have a lot of patience. Obviously, I was drinking and partying a lot, like crazy, and it was driving me nuts. But what I would tell myself when I'd wake up, because I I'd always go to work, I was very disciplined and hardworking, is that this funds what I like to do in my life and what I need to do to get to keep the band going and my outside of work hobbies going. So that's what I would tell myself. So it's a mindset that you have to put yourself into. It's just it's a matter of how much are you willing to put yourself into something like that and allow something to control you. Luckily, I got out. I got out.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Just a puppet.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

All right. The next one is from Tyler Sebastian King. Um, he says, Passion is great, but it's like motivation. If you rely on it solely, you will certainly fail. I think a healthy mix of passion and discipline is necessary. So a lot of what's saying for sure.

SPEAKER_03 24:37

Yep, yep. I I 100% agree with that. You can't, yeah, I think you have to have both. I mean, it's it's they're they're both hand in hand, like everyone has said here.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Mm-hmm. Our next one is from our friend Kiris Emberborn. They say passion is the burning desire borderlined on obsession for a thing that can push someone into pursuing whatever that thing may be. Without discipline, a person will likely give up when it gets tough. Discipline without passion will take you further, but without passion, driving that train, discipline can lack focus. I agree with Mike, they go hand in hand. For me, passion to perform and entertain are a core of my being. Growing stagnant, I reached a wall and uh I reached a wall I couldn't overcome, and it facilitated the awareness that discipline was necessary skill I needed to practice. In that interim, however, I allowed my fire to burn down to embers, but never stopped slowly and stubbornly shuffling my feet towards my goal. The deep down desire of wanting to be like my heroes is the only thing that kept that slow and inconsistent pace to move forward. I believe a person can find success without loving what they do. Oh uh, but it will lack true soul nourishment for sure. I don't know if passion can be developed through discipline as I've always known passion. I believe all things are possible though, and would love to meet someone who has done so. That would be a curious conversation. Anyway, while I believe that these two things can equal success separately or combined, I believe it's lacking a thing that is hidden third leg of this tripod that leads to greatness and faith. You have to believe that you are a badass and that you will succeed and overcome any obstacle. Absolutely. Like I always say, you gotta speak great things about yourself and trust in yourself.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

Confidence, man. Competence is sexy, it's attractive.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

It's like I always say, if you don't love yourself and have confidence in yourself, nobody else is going to. And also fuck what everybody else thinks. So love yourself. Each of the three will support and reinforce the others when they waver. With a George Michael booty shake and a Fred Durst scream, I say, You gotta have faith. I humbly request that I request, Cody, that you give me a good fry scream for this part during the podcast. All right, you gotta do it.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

You gotta have I've been screaming a lot lately, so getting ready for for uh the show.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

I'm gonna give you the last one.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

All right, I get the last one. All right, yeah, yeah. Thank you for all that. That's uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Yeah, I mean, every week, I mean, we have so many guests that are constant and they just always have the best advice, feedback, or thoughts. So it's just it's so much fun to uh interact with you all.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

Yeah, I love it. I love hearing from from the same people and I love it when we hear new people too. And and uh it's this this, I hope like I said, I hope it helps others. It helps me because I look at things differently too now. Like when when people respond and say things that maybe I didn't consider, I didn't look at it that way, I'm like, oh that's a good way to look at it. And it makes me think and so it helps it helps shape my my thinking as well.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

And that's why I always think it's good to have people with you know, different thoughts, different perspectives around you versus just everybody thinking the same way. Yeah, how fucking boring. Like I want all sorts of perspectives, cultures, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's come together and just bring experiences together and we can learn from one another.

SPEAKER_03 27:53

Yeah. I I mean it would be really boring if it was just the same thought process. Like I that would be a fucked up, like, I don't know. It just it would be unoriginal and so last one we have here. This one came from Neckbeard News. If the passion is strong enough, the discipline doesn't matter all that much, in my opinion. I remember when you sent us a friend request to follow your page. Sending Facebook requests to follow is something I do all the time, but I'm also not an established or Torian musician with a huge following. Even though you and your bandmates are much more disciplined than us, you still send Facebook follow requests like I do, which says a lot to me about the importance of passion over discipline. That is 100% true. Here's the thing is that, like we were just saying a second ago, you have to believe in yourself. Otherwise, no one else is going to believe in you. Who's gonna believe in you if you don't have that confidence? And if I see people that are working for something, I instantly want to check it out. I instantly wanna uh I want to learn more about it. When I see someone pushing something, I'm just like, all right, like let's let's take a look. Like this person's putting the work in. When someone does something and then this kind of like just like expects like it, it's either gonna hit or not, you know, they just throw it out there. At that point, I'm like, okay, well, if you don't really care to put the work into it, why do I care to go in there and check it out? Like there's no effort there. Like it may be great, it may be awesome, but if you're not putting in any work, like no one else is gonna do it. And um, I I I think I've said this before, like, people are always like, well, why don't you hire people to do this or hire people to do that for you guys? You guys don't have to handle it. And we've done that, and we've we've done that, but we've had some great people that have done some awesome things for us. There's also been times where I'm just like, you know what? No one is going to do this with the passion that I have behind it and the passion that we have behind it. So it's best what we keep it in-house, it's best for us to push it, it's best for it to be coming from us because we're gonna say it and give the message like we want it delivered, and people are gonna sense that. People will instantly know when it's coming from just like an outside source or it's coming directly from the band itself or a certain band member or whatnot, just by the way that they write certain things or the way they word things. So, yeah, if you believe in something that you're doing and you're pushing for it and you're sharing it, and you know, you're gonna get more people behind that. And I love seeing passion in people. When someone's talking about something, I can instantly tell, like when they're sharing something about something they do, whether that be music or acting or modeling or painting or anything like that, I could hear it in their voice. I don't even have to see the person. I could I could hear it in their voice, I could feel in the energy they give. And I absolutely love that because I hope that when I talk, people can sense the energy of things that I care about and that I'm passionate about. Because I people have always said that about me. They're like, like, you're very opinionated and you're very passionate when you speak and this and that, and it comes off as aggressive or whatever. It's like, no, no, no. It's not that I'm coming off as an asshole or or what it's because I do speak with passion. I I speak with excitement, I speak with confidence, I speak with certainty, and I I'm not you're gonna get full-on Cody Perez, 100% authentic. You're not gonna get a watered-down version of me. That's just not gonna happen. Even at work, man, even at work, I may not have been able to cuss, but I am I've always been that guy that I don't have a problem pushing the buttons, raising the questions that everyone else is thinking, but everyone else is afraid to ask. Um, I'm that person that, you know, will will speak up. I'm not afraid to speak up. I don't care if I'm the only person that thinks that way. I'm I don't care if I'm the I'm looked at as the bad guy, I will do it. And so for me, passion, this is just on for me answering now in my portion, passion and discipline are both needed because I'm, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes you run out of one of them or don't you lose it for a second, and so you need the other one to keep keep it going. Because, you know, so many times I've been in a situation where I'm just like, you know what, this didn't turn out like I wanted it to, especially with the band. And I'm like, why do I keep doing this? And I lose that passion, and it sucks. I only lose it for a second, but I lose it, and then I have to like force myself. I'm like, nope, you know what? You've done this before, and guess what happens? You end up coming back to it. You end up regretting it, you miss it, you're gonna want to do it. And um, when I was partying really heavily in 2000 between 2018 and 2000 what, 23, whatever, uh, I lost the passion for music. I lost it for a long time because I was just putting the focus on I just wanted to get things done so that I had a reason to go play shows, tour, record music and and play shows so I could party, so I could be around chicks, so I could fucking be a raging guy and crazy. And I lost the passion. I forgot completely why I was doing it. And then once I started sobering up and started seeing things differently and you know, changing and finding my purpose again and and getting myself right, um, I got that passion back. And that passion made me even turn up the discipline more than it ever had has been in the past before. Because I've always been a driven person. If you talk to anyone, even from like my high school days, if I like something or I love something, I go full on for it, 100%, full throttle. You will never get a half-ass Cody for anything that I do. If I hate something, I absolutely hate it. If I love something, I absolutely love it, and I'll choke it to death with love or choke it to death for with hate. So I'm I'm I'm a very all in, all out person. You're not gonna get half-assed. And that's kind of what I expect of other people too, when they're when they're passionate about something, or if I'm working with you, I need you all in or all out, or just don't be a part of it. So that's my answer for that question. Let's let's let's have you.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

I mean, I'm pretty similar. I think you need both. I mean, especially if talking about myself personally, uh, just because I mean, I know I always talk about it, but because I have ADHD, I mean, my passion's only gonna last so long before it's on to the next thing, the next thing. So that's why I I have to have discipline. I have to ensure that if this is my goal, okay, it's easy to be all excited in the beginning and have all the passion. Like I'm gonna put all this energy towards it, but that's gonna fizzle. And so therefore I have to have that energy or well, the energy, the discipline, the 10 million alarm clocks, or all sorts of reminders just to keep myself on track. Calendar reminders. I mean, I have to keep myself on track, otherwise I'll just spin and it'll just be a disaster. It'll just be a chaotic disaster. What? Jesus. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:14

Yeah. All right. Well, that that was a great question, I feel like. And I enjoyed it. I thought that was a great question and got got some great responses. You know what got a lot of engagement earlier this week was when I shared a post about a restaurant. I'll read the rest of the the post. Um, it was uh it was a post, I don't know if it was satire or what, but it basically said, end of an era, restaurant industry split in two over no tip movement, owners warn of service decline. And then it the I think the post was saying, Do you guys agree? No tips will be a cause will cause service to downgrade or degrade.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

I mean, it's already shitty, so why would I want to go there? Just close your fucking doors then. I shouldn't have to tip because you feel you're entitled to it. Like, obviously, I'm gonna tip going out, but I just feel like tipping culture has just gotten a little insane. Insane. Um, especially like when you go through a drive-thru and it's all like you want to add a tip.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

I'm like for a drive-thru.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Or a fucking drive-thru. You didn't come and serve me at a table. Like, of course, I'm gonna tip a server or a bartender or something like that that's actually putting effort in, not saying that they're not putting effort, like actual full service, not a fucking drive-thru. Like and then, but then that also goes back on the business. They should not be fully relying on tips, they should pay their fucking employees to do it. Take care of your employees, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

Take care of your people that are taking care of your business. Because here's the thing that I I get heated about this because this is coming from somebody that's worked in the industry. I have bartended, I I bartended, I served tables, um, I helped manage a bar for a long time. And uh so I know how important tips are. And this isn't a knock on anybody that does that that that works in the service industry. I think I think people are are needed for that. And um, but at the same time, your employer should be paying you enough. The tip is just that. It's a tip and it should be a bonus extra if the customer decides. Now, I get pissed off when I see people that like are say, well, if you can't afford a tip, you shouldn't be going out to eat. Motherfucker, if that person decides to say, you know what, I can't afford to go out to eat, but I don't want to go support that restaurant, guess what happens? Before you know it, you're not gonna have a job because it's the customers that go in there, regardless if they tip you or not. It's because they go in there and they're they're buying your product from your from your employer that you have a job. If you had, let's say you had a hundred customers come in through a day and none of them tipped you. Guess what? They still supported that business, which is supporting you and you have a job because they came in there. If that place was not busy, did not have customers, even the non-tipping ones, guarantee you, you would be gone. That business would probably not be around either. So be thankful that you have customers, regardless if they tip or not. If they're shitty to you, that's a different, that's a whole different story. Because no one should take abuse from anybody. But I just I can't stand it when people say that shit. And it's like, I can't, I can't afford a tip. But but when when you're when you're expecting it and you're telling me a minimum or you're adding it as a like, oh well, this is you know, it's already included in your in your in your price for paying. There's restaurants that do that now too. And that's like that's fucked up to me. It's like just like you should be paying your your c uh, you should be playing your employees, not the customers having to take care of them and relying on them for that.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

And then also if you're expecting a tip, I better be getting fucking service with a smile.

SPEAKER_03 37:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

None of this fucking half-ass never coming back over, checking in on you once. Like, no, go fuck yourself.

SPEAKER_03 37:42

Fucking around on your phone. You can see it.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

In that case, I'm gonna treat it like fast food. Like you weren't it, you weren't here. Like we needed things, you weren't there. Food was cold or food was fucked up.

SPEAKER_03 37:52

Many times they don't even listen. Like, that's the fucked up thing. They always so my food always gets fucked up. And my people always say that they're like, they're like, so what exactly do you order? Do you order all crazy? And I'm like, no, I literally, okay, so if I'm ordering something that has beans in it, I'll say, no beans, please, no bean beans. That's all I say. I don't go like tricking them, trying to say anything fancy or smart ass. I'm always really nice. I'm very clear. I'm like, no beans, please. And that's all. If it's something that has like mayonnaise, like a sandwich or a burger, I just say no mayonnaise. It's it's that simple. It's those two things that I mostly only ever ask not to put on there. And they always put it on there. Always, always, always. So what happens is they either A will come back, like, and they'll they'll try to give me the plate back again, like they just wiped it off of it. And I'm like, no, no, no, it was already on there. I can still taste it. I don't want it on there. Like, you have to make me a fresh new patty.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

You really need to just start telling them you're allergic.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

Yeah, I've I've done that, and unfortunately, it's a cause of problems for and the But it's causing problems anyway.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

It gets you pissed off and then it ruins the mood.

SPEAKER_03 38:51

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's frustrating. It's like you gotta listen. When you're when your customer is ordering something, make sure you pay attention and make sure that when you go back there, you're very clear with the cook or if you're putting it on there, wherever you put the the order for them. And then when you go pick up that food, check and see if it's correct. If it's not correct, don't even bother bringing it out to the customer. That nothing's gonna piss me off more than when you bring it out and you're like, oh, I didn't know that they fucked it up and I didn't know blah, blah, blah. Like, and don't argue with your customer. If your customer told you not to put something on there, don't argue with them. That's that's the most fucked up thing to do. There's a restaurant here in town that we I won't name names. I won't name names, but we stopped going there. I gave them so many chances, but they always fuck up, always fuck up, always fuck up. I'm not kidding you. Their service has always been, it's just gone downhill. I'm not kidding you, they fucked up four times. What was it, a chicken sandwich? Or what was it? They screwed up the first time.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

Like it was a happy hour thing. It was like chicken sliders.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Chicken sliders.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

Three tiny little chicken sliders, and they kept putting the aioli shit on it.

SPEAKER_03 39:51

Yep, over and over and over. And there's one time after they kept bringing it to us and dropping off the plate, and I had to re like say, hey, you guys did it again. There was one time when I saw the bartender grab the plate, and I think this was I think the third time. Yeah, he looked like he looked at it and then he realized, oh fuck, not and I could see him, he mouthed it. He's like, What the fuck? Yeah, he like looked at his like he looked at his head like, God damn it, and he took it back there again. And then when he brought back the the fourth plate, and this it was uh it was finally right. I even mentioned it to him. I said, They screwed it up again, didn't they? Yeah, he's like, Yeah, you saw that? And I'm like, Yeah, I I could tell that that was my plate because you looked at it and then you took it back. But it's like, okay, what the fuck is the cook doing back there? Is he not reading? Is he not like paying attention? Is he fucking stoned out of his goddamn mind? Like it makes me so angry. But this whole tipping thing, to go back to it, your employer should be paying you enough. They should be paying you at the very least minimum wage. If you can't afford to live off of minimum wage alone in that job, you either A should get another job, find a side hustle, or B, get out of there and go find a job that pays you more that you can afford, like to live off of. But depending on people to pay you by your tips and all that, no, you should never do that. And like I said, I've worked the job, I know what it's like. I know it can be really shitty. I had a guy that used to never tip, and I had a guy that used to always tip me a quarter. Like, but then I had people that tip me really well. And then there was days that I did really well with tips all day or all night, and then there's days that were really slow, like no one came in, so I didn't make shit. So what what your responsibility is when you're making money like that, it's no different than a car salesman or someone that works off of a commission. You need to make sure you save that money, don't go blowing it like an idiot. Save your damn money when you when the times are good, so that when those times are slower and not as great, you have that money to help you out. Like just you got to be smart about it, man. And they don't teach this shit in school. That's what pisses me off, is like this is something you have to learn with time and and whatnot. So I thought that was a hot topic. I got a lot of people that were responding on that, and I could sit here and uh read all of them, but I don't want to bore everybody with with everything. But it's it's one of those things where I'm also not gonna have a certain percentage that I'm gonna tip you.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

If you came over and you helped me and it was a decent beyond, you know, not saying that you have to come check on me every two seconds or anything, but if you're you know faking it till you make it, like you give a shit that you're there and like can conversate, joke around, like, you know, that type of stuff, check in, you know, not overly, but you know, more than not, you know, I'm gonna tip you well. Like just doing your job, I'm gonna tip you. But if you're coming at me like barely talking, you're barely checking in, you know, the orders are just constantly fucked up, like you're not listening, or I'm not getting my refill, or I'm not getting someone's not getting what they asked for, or the ketchup, or like the little condiments and stuff. That should be shit that you're putting out and to begin with.

SPEAKER_03 42:39

And if you fuck up an order, this is common. Own it and take it off the damn bill. You need to take it off the bill. That should be something that gets I don't care if it's your fault, I don't care if it's the cook's fault. If you fuck up someone's order, regardless of how small it is, if they asked you not to put something on there and you have to take it back, that should come out of your your company or your restaurant or whatever. That should come out of their budget because they fucked it up. And at that point, you know, you've already pissed off the customer. It's very unlikely they're gonna want to come back. But if you fix it, they might give you another chance. I'll tell you that right now, especially someone that always gets my food fucked with. If they take it off my bill, I'm I'm more willing to give them a break and be like, okay, I'll come back. But that means every time you fuck it up, you have to fucking you compensate it. And I'm not a person that expects hands out, handouts. But if you fuck something up, then own it, be accountable.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

And what about the other restaurant that brought you the burnt waffle?

SPEAKER_03 43:31

My God. It took them so I won't mention the restaurant either, but it's a pretty popular one here in town. Um, I used to love going to this restaurant and we ordered food, and I all I ordered was a waffle and bacon and toast. And I think yours was way more complicated.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Yeah, mine was just like a fucking omelet.

SPEAKER_03 43:49

And they they brought your like we waited forever. It wasn't even that busy, but we waited forever, and finally, like after like 30 minutes, I think they brought you your your your your meal and he kept saying, Oh, The waffle's coming up, the waffle's coming up, the waffle's coming up. And they brought me my bacon and my toast. So I'm sitting there like watching you while you're eating. I'm like, this is kind of weird. Why wouldn't they just bring it all out together? Like most restaurants will bring out your your food together when you're when you're dining in with someone. And you know, finally, like I think I you might have gotten up to ask them or someone.

SPEAKER_02 44:18

No, I was pissed because you were pissed because you were hangry, so you ruined my mood. Because if you've never seen Cody hangry, you should thank God because don't ever get there. It's not fun.

SPEAKER_03 44:27

Not at all.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

Not at all. And so it ruined my fucking morning because we were having a great day. It was a nice sunny fucking Oregon day. I don't like springtime, almost summer, whatever. So good fucking mood. They bring out yeah, but how do I get a waffle 20 minutes before his or how do I get an omelet 20, 25 minutes before his waffle? Waffles don't take that long. I make them all the time. And the waffle came out fucking as soon as and it pissed me off because the server I knew on his fucking face because he was I was facing him, not you. And I could tell by his face, he was like, Oh, maybe they won't notice. And he sat that down and like walked away real fast. And I looked at that and I'm like, looks burnt as shit. Like it wasn't black, but it was like super, super it was very, very brown. And so I I think I took my fork and I was like, and it was just and put my fork in, it was like and I was so fucking pissed. I stood up, I took it because he was over at the bar at this point. I took it over there. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me with this? And it for one, I mean, I know a lot of you don't know me. It takes a lot for me to even act like that. I mean, I I still wasn't calm, I wasn't like being ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03 45:32

I was surprised you got out though.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

Seriously, you because I was pissed. He fucked my whole day up because then I'm gonna have to deal with you being mad and hungry. And now we gotta go find more food. You're already fucking hangry. Like my morning's fucked. Like, and now your morning's gonna be fucked because my morning's fucked, and I'm the most easygoing fucking person ever. And so I took it right to him and I'm like, I'm like, are you? I just looked at him, I'm like, are you fucking serious with this? And I'm like, take this off my bill and bring me the bill now, please. And I walked away. I was pissed. I was sh I was fucking shaking. And he came over and was like, ooh, ooh, ooh, do you want me do you want me to remake it? No, give me the fucking bill.

SPEAKER_03 46:06

No, what did it what did it did? He say that the the waffle maker was broken. It's like, why didn't you fucking tell us that when we ordered a waffle?

SPEAKER_02 46:13

And I think I said to him, I'm like, you couldn't tell that was burnt to shit. I would rather you have came over and say, hey, we are having an issue. Can we do something else?

SPEAKER_03 46:21

Exactly, exactly. But now I would have gotten something else. I would have gotten a fucking burger or a pancake or something.

SPEAKER_02 46:25

Anybody could tell that waffle was fucked. And he still just tried to set it down and play it off and still charge the fucking$20 or whatever they charge for that bullshit. No, go fuck yourself.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

So needless to say, this restaurant, and I'll just say it's in Oregon City, we'll never go there again. You lost two loyal customers because you suck. Yeah, they've gone downhill. But with all that said, passionate about that one.

SPEAKER_02 46:45

No, I'll ruin it. Look at Taz. Don't ruin my fucking Sunday.

SPEAKER_03 46:48

Taz is still happy. He doesn't give a fuck. But with all that said, thank you guys all. Uh, stick around for segment two with my guest, Rick. That's coming up next. Welcome everyone to the next episode of the Liquid Shape Podcast. We're in segment two here, and today's guest is none other than my buddy here, Rick Horseman the Fourth. Welcome to the show, Rick. How's it going? Doing pretty good, man. How about you? I'm doing great myself. And uh I just want to say right now, like, thank you so much for participating in the questions of the week when you respond. You always have something really good to say. And actually, everyone always does, so I had to had to throw that out there. But uh Rick is someone that uh I've known through the web from just doing the music thing and socializing and and whatnot. And actually, I had the pleasure of meeting Rick and his dad when we played in in was it Bradley? Is it Bradley, Illinois?

SPEAKER_05 47:43

It was uh not Bradley, it was uh Joliet, Illinois. Joliet is uh the forge, like right in the heart of downtown Joliet.

SPEAKER_03 47:49

Yep, Joliet. That's right, that's right. I got I get some of those cities confused, but yeah, we got we got to meet in person finally. That was I thought that was really cool. Pito went down there, my brother and got you, and then we got to take pictures and hang out with you and whatnot and get to meet you a little bit.

SPEAKER_05 48:03

It was amazing, man. Every it was like everything coming full circle, just from me being that you know crazy kid in seventh or eighth grade or whatever it was when I stumbled across your page and heard I think it was Love Hate lullaby off of the self-titled. That's old school. Very old school. I heard that, I was hooked and you know, followed you guys, just became really tight, and the rest is history, man. Wouldn't trade it for nothing.

SPEAKER_03 48:26

Yeah, dude, you've been you've been an awesome supporter, and I I I dare say even you're a friend now because we met in person and you were really cool, so was your dad, and uh it's it's awesome seeing you playing guitar and all that stuff. So go ahead and uh just I'm gonna open it up for you to just tell us about yourself, like let the let the listeners uh know about you. How did you get into music and where did you grow up and things you're into, all that kind of stuff, and then we'll just uh we'll take it from there and I'll ask some questions as they come up.

SPEAKER_05 48:52

Yes, sir, man. So as uh the man himself said, my name is Rick Horseman the Fourth. I refer to myself on YouTube as the human hate machine. I am a self-produced guitarist, instrumentalist, whatever you want to call it. Recently kind of ventured into the world of producing my own mixes, just instrumentals for now because I can't sing for shit.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Liar, you had some screams earlier when we were doing the testing.

SPEAKER_05 49:16

It's like I always joke with my uh my best friend Alex. I always say that my screaming and my vocal style, whenever I do try to practice or do karaoke with my friends, it's like a wannabe Corey Taylor that somehow thinks he can also be Chester Bennington and Lane Staley if those three guys had a bastard love child.

SPEAKER_03 49:33

Let's do those are great influences, so like keep it up. I I I liked what I heard. It's like you just like I told you earlier, you'll you'll eventually find your uh your sound. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:42

Yes, sir, man. And I mean, other than that, like I said, I've been playing guitar for about uh sh shoot. I mean, since I was a freshman in high school, that was when I started. What got you into guitar? So I mean, I'll just I guess I could start really from the beginning because that's really where it began. Um I was obviously born and raised here in Illinois. I've always kind of lived not too far from the city of Chicago, kind of bounced around a little bit from the various uh small towns. Currently, right now, I live about an hour out from the city, so it's perks of uh going to Cubs games, or if I want to go visit the House of Blues, if one of my favorite bands is playing there. But growing up, man, I was always, always surrounded by music. My mom, obviously, she loves country, you know, and just really whatever is popular on the radio. My dad, he's also big into rock, played a lot of Metallica, and even like some well, not so much when I was younger, but as I got older, I started kind of becoming more familiar with the stuff that he grew up listening to, which we can get into that later. But uh I would say when I was in grade school, I like maybe second or third grade, he was picking me up from school just one of those Fridays, plugged in the uh little uh it's not like a cassette tape. It was like one of the I don't know what the heck those are called. You might know what it is. Not an eight-track, it was like those little things like where you plug it in. It looks like a cassette tape, but it isn't a cassette tape.

SPEAKER_03 50:57

Oh, it goes into the uh it goes into the CD player thing that exactly. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 51:01

And then like you just plug it into the aux on your old school iPhone 3 or whatever it was that he had, and he played click click boom from Saliva. That was my first time hearing something that was very loud and very different than what I grew up with listening into my mom's car because I was like, you know, familiar with Justin Timberlake and NSYNC and all the boy bands that she liked and whatever was big on country radio, but I just remember hearing that opening riff of click click boom, and I'm like, this is loud and I like it.

SPEAKER_03 51:31

Hell yeah, a lot of attitude on that. So on that whole album, that album's kick ass.

SPEAKER_05 51:35

I remember when they were first coming out. And the funny thing is, is with uh so it actually wasn't from every six seconds. For whatever reason, that was on the soundtrack for more fast, more furious. So that was like the extension soundtrack for the Fast and Furious movie, the very first one. So that had like I know that had saliva. He probably had some like a couple of rap songs on there. You probably could have thrown Limp Biscuit on there, but he just had click click boom on it, and I just remember hearing that and I'm like, this is cool.

SPEAKER_03 52:03

And then it just kind of jumbled from there. Yeah, I was gonna say, so what what made you of all the instruments you could have picked up, what what got you over to the guitar?

SPEAKER_05 52:11

Um, I would say it was growing up in the age of like at the peak of guitar hero. There's another funny story. So I remember I came home from school one day and walk into the living room and I hear like this loud music coming from the basement. And I'm like, well, what the heck is this? And I see a little uh little box in the living room that says X says Xbox 360 on it. And me and like my third or fourth grade brain, I'm like, what's this? A DVD player going downstairs and it's guitar hero and it's my dad chilling on the couch with a big shit-eating grin on his face, playing uh some Guitar Hero 3 in the basement. Got an Xbox 360 for it and everything. So I love it.

SPEAKER_03 52:47

I had I had the 360 also. That that was a that was a great system.

SPEAKER_05 52:51

Yes, sir. Yeah, I mean, the day the days of Halo, Black Ops. Ooh, you really you really couldn't beat it. But how old are you?

SPEAKER_03 52:58

How old are you? I'm 23. 23. How in the hell? Like, I always thought like the younger generation, it was so hard to like relate to, but like I everything you're saying right now, I'm like, uh, me and this guy are a lot alike. That's crazy. That's so crazy. Because that's the music you're talking about, the the freaking Xbox 360, the video games, that and the movies. I I'm a huge fast and fierce nerd. It's great to see. Like obviously, you have great parents that got you in the right direction because stuff. And shout out to mom and dad for that. That's yeah, big shout out to them. Parenting done right.

SPEAKER_05 53:28

Appreciate it. But it really was like, I would say, like, even with the guitar hero, though, I didn't really pick up on wanting to play the guitar. I just thought this was something cool that me and my brother can do in my off time. Um, and even then, like it really didn't fully get me into like rock and metal, I would say. I would say what really kind of like started pivoting me more towards that was as I got older and um the more music I started listening to. Because then at that point, like fifth grade, maybe sixth grade, I started watching YouTube a lot more and just like watching like whatever videos like were big at the time. It wasn't like as horrendous as it is now with reactionary content and people just basically going on the internet to try and point and laugh at everybody. It was more just a creative outlet for people like the common man to just post a video of whatever art he was doing or find whatever art he liked and then put a heavy track behind it. And I would say what kind of kick-started it for me was a combination of that and then watching professional wrestling, hearing the the heavy theme songs of the wrestlers and saying all the right things.

SPEAKER_03 54:30

I'm a wrestling nerd too. I don't know if you knew that, but I'm I'm a huge nerd of the uh the attitude era from WWF, WCW Nitro days. I don't I didn't really follow it after like 2001, 2002. Like I'm not really I don't watch it at all anymore now, but I watch I still watch and nerd out and geek out to all the old school stuff. So I've got like all the Raws and the SmackDowns and Nitros and all that crap, and so I annoy the hell out of my girlfriend constantly playing that stuff in the background.

SPEAKER_05 54:57

I don't blame you there, man. Just as long as you guys ain't watching the uh the mankind and the rock I quit match. I recently dug that up.

SPEAKER_03 55:06

That's brutal. I watched that when it was happening live. I didn't see I didn't see it in person, obviously, but I saw the pay-per-view. A bunch of my buddies and I um we ended up uh pitching in because I think we were like, I think I was like only like 13, and we used to have these parties where uh when the pay-per-views would happen, we'd all go to one of the friends' houses and we'd all pitch in money and pay for the pay. The pay-per-views were like 30 bucks back then, which 30 bucks was a lot back then. And so we would get together and we saw I remember we saw that one and the St. Valentine's Day Master one, where which was the next one with when Big Show made his debut and threw Stone Cold through the cage. Nice and then we saw the WrestleMania, which was uh Stone Cold and the Rock.

SPEAKER_05 55:42

Mm-hmm. That was WrestleMania 15, I believe. Yep, yep. I'm definitely a mark for the business.

SPEAKER_03 55:48

Oh, dude, me too, man. I trust me. As soon as you said wrestling, my ears perked up. I'm like, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 55:53

Well, it was really because of like a lot of the guys had like the heavier theme songs as their entrance music, and when I got into it, it wasn't because of my mom and dad, it was one of my friends from school at the time, and this was 2008-2009. So this was like the peak of the hype for Jeff Hardy. Yeah. I mean, for any kid who was in grade school and got the chance to watch Jeff Hardy live, my first ever Smackdown that I watched was it was him versus The Undertaker in the main event. I believe it was an extreme rules match. I can't I want to say Undertaker one just because it's The Undertaker, but Hardy, man, like I just saw him do his entrance when he came out to No More Words, and really that was what kickstarted me being a giant Jeff Hardy mark.

SPEAKER_03 56:36

And did you go to the event or did you watch it on TV?

SPEAKER_05 56:39

I did not. No, I went to the uh I actually did not go to the event. The uh first I w ever event I went to was Judgment Day 2010, which me and my brother both went to was kind of like an Easter present for us. Uh, that in the main event for that show, it was Edge versus Jeff Hardy for the WWE title. Hardy lost. So me and my brother went home. Very upset Jeff Hardy fans. But John Cena won and that worked out.

SPEAKER_03 57:04

Yeah. I never I've never been able to see a live WWF event. Or I see I'm I'm old school, I was still calling it WWF. Never been to a WWE event or WWF event for that matter. And I always wanted to go, but back in the day, uh they wouldn't come through Portland. There was some sort sort of thing that was happening here uh with the government where they wouldn't allow wrestling for some reason. So they only started like I think in the early 2010s, they were able to start coming into Oregon. And by that point, I just wasn't interested. I I go sometimes and see like the amateur pro wrestling that we have for Portland and whatnot. I got invited to go to one this last weekend actually and I was gonna go, but some things came up. But I I'm still a nerd for wrestling, so when I see it happening, I'm like, I stop and I'll still watch. I just don't follow it, follow the new stuff since uh, like I said, since 2001, 2002.

SPEAKER_05 57:51

That's understandable, yeah. And growing up with that, that was really part of what I guess in some ways made me me as a kid. Talk to anybody who knew me at that age, growing up from grade school to middle school. Like I was I I will always say that I was just this dumb, hyperactive kid who was, again, a gigantic mark for Jeff Hardy. And for whatever reason, also kind of slowly started falling in love with music in general, just because that's what I was always surrounded by as a kid. But it really wasn't until middle school that I really kind of started finding out what I liked from a musical standpoint. I played a lot of video games as any kid did, and I would say like it was because of Dead Rising, I would say, that kind of made me start falling in love with more alternative metal. So like the like a nine, like the nine-inch nails kind of stuff, but it was very like smaller artists. It was more or less a lot of like Cell Dweller and Blue Stally that I found myself liking, which I remember those, but yeah, dude, that's that's good stuff there. And it's a shame too, because like not a whole lot of people, I mean, unless you played those games or you listened to whatever you know soundtracks they were on or in whatever compilations they were in on YouTube. Nobody really knows a whole lot about Blue Stally or Cell Dweller, and if they do, that's awesome. Like more power to them. But it was just one of those ones I always liked. I always gravitated more towards the smaller guy, if you know what I mean. But I still really like enjoyed a lot of Three Days Grace, anything off of 1X, I really enjoyed. It was that very like grimy, kind of like snarling guitar tone. That was really what it what did it in for me was just hearing that opening riff for animal I have become that at that age just made me want to get up and just feel ready to kill.

SPEAKER_03 59:29

Hell yeah. What uh what kind of guitar do you got? Or what was your first guitar, first of all? What was your first guitar you ever owned?

SPEAKER_05 59:35

My first guitar was some dingy beat-up squire strat that I I oh man, I bugged the heck out of my dad to buy me. So that was my first electric, actually. I'll go back to my actual first first in a second, but um just some beat up squire strat that we found at like a mom and pop shop not far from uh not far from home. And it, I mean, it was like anything for a typical kid's first guitar. It sounded thin. The high E string, like the tuning peg was broken, so obviously I couldn't string that up. I don't even think I changed the strings on it for as long as I own that thing, which only ended up being about two months. Dang it. Of course, they gave you like that little miniature-size like practice samp that sounds like a jar of angry wasps when you're playing through it.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:18

With with something like that, it's like you're getting this guitar that's maybe not maybe it's not the best guitar, bottom of the barrel. But if you really, really, really are into playing guitar, it's a good test to see, like, all right, I'm gonna I got this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make it work for now, and then once I get better, I'm I'm going to get a better guitar. And otherwise you can find out then, oh I'm not maybe I'm not really that into the guitar. And then you're not wasting all this money on expensive ass guitars. But once you're once you're in there and actually learning to play songs, were you were you starting to pick up on tabs? Are you watching videos on YouTube to learn to play? Or how how were you um how were you learning to to pick up on the guitar to take lessons?

SPEAKER_05 1:00:56

Or I so my first like so my actual first first guitar was uh Fender acoustic again that we bought at the same mom and pop shop. And you know, when we moved uh to a new town, we kind of got out of the um the old neighborhood that we were living in. My mom got relocated for her job. And when we were doing the whole registration thing, because when we we moved out here to where we're at now when I was in eighth grade, I finished up eighth grade at my old middle school. And when we got like the sheet, it said that like you had to take either like a choir class or an instrument class. And there was no way that anybody was gonna force me to try to sing, because no, especially at that age when I when I had no idea how to sing anyway. And by that point, I was very into a lot of slipkn, like specifically anything off of the gray chapter. And I'm like, well, I'll try to pick up the guitar. And obviously, I had no idea going in what they were gonna have me learn. But obviously, we went to the same joint, bought uh bought the acoustic, and just started learning from there. So it was the basic strum and chord song, whatever they had me learn. But deep down I was trying to learn stuff that my dad liked, stuff that my mom liked on this little acoustic guitar, which I still have it and it sounds pretty good, but obviously you could use something a little better. But I was primarily teaching myself just through watching YouTube videos. So I would just put up my little iPad, I would just have it on my bed or whatever, and I would just watch guys as they play it and be okay, are they in this tuning? They're hitting, you know, the fifth fret for this chord, or they're you know, they're barring it or they're fretting it on whatever. And then I would just watch that, trial and error it for hours and just go from there.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:31

That's commitment, man. I that's what it's all about. Like that's that's I always feel that that's the best way to learn. That's how I I taught myself to play guitar was on an acoustic guitar, my dad's my dad's acoustic guitar, and then eventually I got into electric guitar. But I taught myself tabs back in uh back in my younger days when I was 12 and 13 picking up the acoustic guitar. We didn't have YouTube and big dude videos would take like it would take a whole like day of downloading something to get a video. I'm not I'm not even kidding you when I say that. I believe there was no videos of people playing on the internet. So I would just what I would do is I would go find tabs on the internet and I would save them, copy and paste them onto like a notepad. Uh, because back then also we had dial-up internet. We didn't have uh continuous DSL or high speed internet. And the old I remember the old school dial-up sound. Dude, it was it was brutal. And so that's that's how I taught myself, and I feel like it's it's the best way to learn because then you're you're kind of uh chasing after what you you develop your own style. Someone teaches you, you're gonna learn their you're gonna learn the the way they do it, their style, and you may pick up some bad habits, who knows, uh from watching someone else. But at least if you're learning from yourself, you can untrain yourself and I mean you can untrain yourself in bad habits, period. But I just think it builds character by definitely uh teaching yourself, and then with having videos out there like that just makes it that much easier for you to be able to watch someone and just go back and play. I was gonna say you want to save that guitar that you that you your very first one that you had, because that's gonna be a great memory for you to later talk about, you know, depending on what you do with your music career. That guitar is gonna always mean something to you. I still have my first electric guitar that my mom got me, and it may not be the greatest guitar, it's uh it's an Ibanez Axe 120. Ooh, I love it, dude. I love yeah, I love Ibanez guitars and I love Schechter's. Those are my two favorites. I have two two electric guitars. I have one, the Ibanez, and I have the other one that's a Schechter, and then I have uh I have a uh Ibanez uh acoustic electric that I use are always really good.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:26

Yeah. That one needs some work. As you say, Scheckter makes phenomenal guitars. I mean, I mean my my senior year, my kind of graduation present was the Schechter Sinister Custom, which I've there is a lot of mileage on that thing. I've I mean there's there's pick scrapes all over it. Like there's I mean, I'm looking at it right now on my stand behind me as we record this, and I mean there's parts on the on the neck that maybe I guess like my my fingernail marks on it. It's worn in, like a little spot on the body where I probably dented it, banging it into my desk. I mean, that thing is that's crazy, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:01

Do you uh what's what's your favorite tuning to play in? Frickin' A. It just depends on the mood or what like what you're doing?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:07

Yeah, I'd say it depends on the mood. Me personally, I would say drop C just because that's cons that's from a lot of the music that I grew up listening to again. It really just takes me back to a lot of my my middle school middle school days, you know, a lot of three days grace. Um trying to think of some of the other bands I was listening to.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:24

I was gonna say a lot of the yeah, a lot of those bands in that era, like even Mudbane at one point was playing in C. So it's the C was like the C was the the heavier sound back when I was growing up that everyone was kind of doing is a trendy thing, because at first obviously everyone went to D, and then eventually C was a heavy one. And now I feel like it's like people are just tuning so low. Like we we tuned to B, and mostly B because that's the best like key for my for me to hit my vocals on on certain songs and melodies and whatnot. But people are going all like super low in tuning and and whatnot, and it's like, whoa, like something like it's like drop F sharp, like drop F sharp. You can't understand what the guitar's doing sometimes, like you can't hear that.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:00

It's ridiculous. Like, and I remember like I played uh driving home from work one day. I forget what song we were playing. It had to have been either something from Slaughter to Prevails Grizzly, or I mean, maybe, or it could have been Diamond Eyes from Deft Tones. But I remember my dad album. My dad looks at me and he's like, How are they tuning this low? And I'm like, okay, let me explain this to you. Stefan Carpenter's a mad scientist. He uses like seven and eight strings and they tune this low, and then like if you you hear something like Spirit Box, and I know how you feel about Spirit Box, but like something like that, like they're getting even lower than that. And I'm like, all right, why are we using this? Like it's it just sounds like a disgusting filter. Like, I love Mike Stringer as a guitarist, but I'm like, come on.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:44

Yeah, it it to me it doesn't make sense. It's like I want to hear the notes clearly, and I don't know. It just it it sometimes it's to it people take things too far. It's kind of like with drums, like for me, like if if a if a band is just constantly doing nothing but blast beat, blast beat, blast beat, and there's no like there's no dynamics in their playing and and in the music, I just can't I mean it's cool, like it takes talent to be able to do that kind of stuff, but I just can't I can't listen to all screaming, I can't listen to all double pedal and and blast beats. It has to have like a good balance of of both. I like singing, I like screaming, I like heavy, I like melodic, I like it. I like a balance of everything.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:20

100%. And I mean, for an example for that, uh a very underrated song from Mud Vane, in my opinion, who I regret not getting into them sooner. I got into them uh my junior year of college. Yeah, I just woke up one day and I'm like, oh, I want to listen to Forget to Remember and the rest is history. Great song. Um, a song from them off of their self-titled Beautiful and Strange. It's actually one of it's actually my warm-up song.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:44

Nice.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:44

I love I love the chord shapes in that song because from the perspective of the listener, and I've kind of noticed this more as I've started producing my own tracks, even before I learned it, but from the perspective of the listener, there's just something about the way those chords sound, and they're very kind of just odd. They're they don't exactly fit right, but they just sound disgusting. Yeah. It makes you feel like a certain way, like again, it's not like skin crawling, but it just makes you feel like revved up, like you're ready to go. And there's also like as the player, there's something just so satisfying about just hitting those chords right, and you just hear it through your headphones as you're playing it. You're just you're feeling it in the mix. There's just something about it, man, that just makes you just it feels it really, I mean, it it's truly a beautiful feeling.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:30

I love that. That's music does that, man. And what's great about music to me anyways, it's like it puts you in a place, like it puts you in a in a moment and an energy that is indescribable, especially with when you're when you're really into like a band or you're really into a song or a part of a song. Yeah, it it puts you almost in a trance. And I I always tell people I'm like, music is a very personal thing, and uh the people that get it, get it, other people they take it for granted, and they're just like, oh, just it's some background noise, whatever. But for us that like like what you're like what you're talking about, that's what that's what music is to me. That's what it means to me, is like those those moments that just give you chills and kind of make you zone out and just forget about the outside world.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:11

And I mean, it really made me do that a lot when I was younger because I mean, growing up in the early talking about upbringings and whatnot, I mean, I was always again, like I mentioned earlier, just a crazy kid with all kinds of adrenaline as I got older, started losing myself more and more into the music, finding my sound, and just almost in some ways finding myself just staring into a haze sometimes during class and just kind of forgetting about how much I hated school that day or how much I didn't like the kid sitting next to me because I didn't like his haircut or something. Yeah. And it was just something about it that just made me made me escape. You know, and just finding myself finding myself in those bands and you know, with just the the stupid I mean the stupidity of kids at the end of the day. I know that probably sounds horrendous from anybody, but you know, it's like anybody when you know people are growing up. Like you gotta learn to find your way and you gotta learn to see some shit and deal with stupid people doing stupid things, and you just gotta find your way and go, all right, let me stay away from this person or let me try to help this guy out if he's getting bullied or whatever. That's where I kind of and really in some ways it was because of music that uh it allowed me to find my personality and just learn to say, uh hey, lay off of this kid, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:25

Yeah, I love that. That's and and that like you're saying, that that age, usually in like when you're in high school, you are learning so much about yourself. You think like I at least I was I always thought I knew everything and I'm gonna be set this way, this is how I'm gonna be, this is who I'm gonna be, this is who I'm gonna hang out with, this is who I'm gonna, this is who my girlfriend's gonna be, whatever. You think you know it all at that age, but you're really just barely building the foundation of who you are gonna be. Oh yeah. And music for sure, like especially in high school when I was like dealing with all sorts of different from depression to anger to anxiety and things that I just emotions I didn't understand. Um I I think most kids uh at that age they can say they relate to that. I'm sure you experience some of that stuff too, and and um you're trying to find out who you are, who you want to be. Um, and then you have uh you have the pressures of you know, like what college are you gonna go to? What are you gonna do after high school? Like you're gonna have some kids, you're gonna do like all this stuff. And it's like music is one of those things like where you can just uh put like the outside world doesn't matter, and you're just in that moment, and it um almost kind of shields you from having to to deal with that or think about that. Right the way I look at it. It's like yeah in a nerdy way, it's kind of like when you have a shield in a video game and nothing can nothing that's coming at you is gonna get through because you have this music or you have this zone that you're in.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:46

Mm-hmm. And in some instances, the sorry for cutting you off, but uh it almost gives you like an armor in some instances. Like it's just a superpower.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:53

It's empowering. Exactly, exactly. It's empowering, dude. Like music is I always tell people I'm like, it's it's it music is so empowering. No matter people always all often say, like, well, metal's so uh it's angry, it's it's uh negative. It's like it's like no, you're looking at it from a the the wrong lens, or maybe you're that's the lens you're looking at it from. Not not that there's a wrong way or right way to look at it, but like consider it from you know from a different perspective, and you might see that it is it is very empowering. Like it can make someone totally feel like they can take over whatever they're facing in their life. And yeah I find it interesting. So what about what age were you, or what year was it roughly when you were in uh in high school?

SPEAKER_05 1:12:30

Um so that was I'm trying to think. I graduated in 2020, so I probably started in like 2016.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:38

So there was there was I I find that interesting that you were listening to all these bands from the era much further before you were like like before you were actually in high school. So what kind of bands were popular around that? I I'm trying to think of the bands that were that were hitting around that time. So it's between 2015 and 2020.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:57

It was very much like a lot of like the radio rock, like that everybody kind of rips on. I think they the new age term. The octane core. Yeah, they call it octane core now, but like at the time, I guarantee you there had to have been like a lot of like like your nickelbacks or I mean I'm trying to like think simple plan, maybe all those bands people call dad rock now, which is crazy. Yeah, like the theory of a dead man's five-finger death punch, that kind of thing. But for me, like it was just like a spur-of-the-moment thing where it happened where growing up, again, going back to Guitar Hero, growing up playing those games and whatnot, and listening to the bands that were in Guitar Hero, like one of my first ever songs that I just really fell in love with, of all songs, especially at that age, was Bulls on Parade. And I was like blasting that in my dad's car coming home from school on some days when I was in fourth grade. And I will admit this, like, because it was kind of like odd with the kids that I grew up with that I was always the one like wearing the wearing obviously the WWE t-shirts, but then coming to school wearing slipknot shirts and Metallica stuff when everybody else at that time was either A, more than likely listening to Nickelback, or B listening to whatever slop was being produced on the radio at the time that like for whatever reason I just couldn't I just couldn't get into. Like I was more into like again, Blue Stally, Power Man 5000, and just whatever I was hearing in video games at that point.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:20

Hell yeah. That's f that's cool. Was there a lot of metal heads in that tale that you were that you grew up in? Like a lot of like people that liked rock in general, or was it uh not really.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:28

I mean, I had a handful of guys that they would listen, they would kind of dabble in three days grace, but a lot of my friends that I was tight with, they were more into like your countries and your rap and whatnot. Like my one buddy, my one buddy Jar, I remember he kind of got me into some of the more like aggressive rap elements that were coming out at the time. Remember, he was really big into Shell Shock from the TMNT movie. That was one of his favorites. But I was always just kind of like, you know what, I'll just do my own thing. I don't want to be I don't want to be a follower. I don't want to listen to what everybody else is listening to. I just want to do my own thing. And even then when I tried to listen to whatever song a buddy of mine or somebody in passing recommended to me, I would try to listen to it and I just I just couldn't relate to it. Like to me, it just sounded like just noise at that point.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:11

I love that. I love that you're not a follower and that you, you know, you're you're kind of uh just doing your own thing and that's that's what it's all about, man. Following making paving your own path and setting your own trail, as I I always say.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:24

That's why I enjoyed listening to you guys during uh middle school, man. Like and that's where I I always remember it, and like I always kind of like to give the proverbial middle finger to those who were like, Oh yeah, who's American overdose? Because kids are stupid. Like I like I said earlier, and kids will always be just kids and also stupid. But like when I would I would go into school, I'd have my headphones in, and I'd just be you know, vibing to you know Dead Girl on the Dance Floor, or you know, trance because that was way before The Great American Dream came out. So I didn't remember. Um, I would just be vibing out to that, and you know, you'd have kids who'd be like, Oh yeah, he listens to Power Man, uh, he's just he's a whatever. And you know, yeah, you'd get you'd get some shit for it, but I was just kind of like, What's the problem?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:09

Like you I still get shit for it, dude.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:10

I like that's gonna hate on our game, like come on.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:13

People people always like whatever I listen to, like because the new metal to people is cheesy, it's fine, whatever people think what they want. But then when they show me something that they listen to, I'm like, okay, but you're making fun of me, but you listen to this. Like, I it doesn't make sense to me. I think it's hilarious, but yeah, music is is a personal thing like we were just talking about, where each person has a reason why they listen to what they listen to, I'm sure, and it means something to them. Yeah. Um, so I I think it's funny when people critique you for what you listen to. I'm the same though. I will I'll make fun of a band sometimes, but I I try to I try not to make like I try not to give too much attention to to that anymore. I'm trying to kind of push myself away from that just because at the end of the day, it's like if someone likes something, it's what's it my business to tell them that it sucks or whatever. Yes. To each their own. Have you been in any bands or are you just kind of starting to do your own thing right now as far as because I know you said you're you're producing your own your own uh instrumental album. Have you were you ever previously in bands with other other kids or I was not no.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:10

So again, I kind of like really started taking guitar more seriously when I was a sophomore in high school. That was when I finally decided, all right, I'm gonna just upgrade from this that I want to I don't want to call it junk, because obviously it's the gear that made me want to become the musician I am today. Me and my my best friend Alex, shout out to Day Alex on Twitch. Um, him and I kind of bounced around the idea of wanting to form our own band, like form our own, you know, cover project or just do our own songs. But it was just one of those things that growing up in a town where it was also very like sports-heavy and not, I mean, very musically rich, I guess you could say, because the place where I used to work at, they would always have, you know, live bands coming in every weekend. So there's obviously a love for it, but there wasn't exactly a market for the kind of music that I was listening to at the time, and especially, you know, my sophomore and junior year, junior year of high school. That was when I started getting really heavy. So that was when I first got into corn and really dove down the rabbit hole of the late 90s, early 2000s New Metal. Because by that point, I think what was popular at the time was the more reactionary content that you would find on like YouTube or Instagram or whatever. Whereas like me and my buddies and the kind of clique that I ran with, we were just more into no putting our headphones in, walking the hallways, going to our next class, and just blasting sing Iowa and just ignoring everybody.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:31

Oh yeah, that's that's so cool to hear that that like a record like that, for example, is still killing it with the young crowd. Like that is it's amazing to think about, but it's that just goes to show you that some bands are just timeless. It's like Metallica when you think about it. Metallica's still like their albums are still their people are still blasting them and and loving them, and especially for Slipknot. Slipknot's that band that really like hit me hard because I got to see them like right as they were coming up before they blew up. It was they were still playing small clubs and no way. Yeah, I got to see them at a small little 1200 seater, and it was I don't even know how they fit on that stage. When I when we played, when my band played at the on that same stage uh much, much, much later on. I was just standing up there, I'm like, how in the fuck did Slipknot play up here? Like, how did they fit their like all their members up on here? With nine guys, yeah. Nine guys. It's like what and then they have their crew and all that stuff that they have, their instruments. It's like how the hell do they get up here? But it's just it's so awesome to see like that's what that's another thing where music is it's your thing, and I love seeing bands, like when you're talking about the underdog, I love seeing bands that go from the underground and then all of a sudden just become I love it and I hate it. I'm not gonna lie. So I still wish that I could see Slipknot be at a level where I could go see them and I might run into them or I might I might uh get really close to the stage. Now, if I see them, they're playing in front of thousands and thousands and thousands of people where I'm always in the way back, and chances of meeting them are gonna be slim to none.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:01

Um but at the same time, it makes me happy because I got to see that band when they were just barely starting out, and I knew I had a feeling in my heart they were gonna be massive just because of the impact that they were doing. I I remember I was in middle school when I first found out about them, and my friends and I would like dress up in jumpsuits and go to school wearing the jumpsuits and do our hair all weird and that's awesome.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:21

Oh yeah, the Liberty Spikes, if I had to guess, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:23

Dude, yeah, with Liberty Spikes, we'd dye our hair, uh weird colors. Back before it was a political statement. I always laugh now because I'm like, I'm like, well, the metal heads had the blue hair first, and now it's like now if you have blue hair, it's like you're a certain party or whatever, and it's like Well, what's wrong with the Liberty Spikes? I mean, I No, the not the Liberty Spikes, the blue hair. So like the blue hair was like a metal punk rock thing for like the longest time, and now I feel like it's more like a political statement that people are trying to make with it. Yeah, it's not so much like the metal bands that are that are doing. I mean, there's there obviously still are some here and there that will do it, but I just remember like people would look at us all weird because like we're wearing we're wearing these regular jumpsuits to school, and they're like, what in the hell is this shit? And like yeah, we're blasting slipknot non-stop in our dismans. And I remember when they played on the they played Wait and Bleed on Conan O'Brien. That was the first time that I had ever seen what they looked like because I didn't know what they looked like. Right. I had no idea at that point because I I I heard about Slipknot through a mixed a mixed CD that they were on. It was called the Hard and the Heavy. I can the songs.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:24

I feel like I've heard of that like at some point.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:25

Like it had the Machine Head, Cold Chamber. Yeah, it was a multi it was a double disc, and it had like I remember had like um Machine Head, it had Cold Chamber, it had Puya. Wouldn't surprise me if Loco was on there that uh I I'm not sure who was all on it. Like it had just a shit ton of bands.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:44

Yeah, probably like a lot of the big names from Roadrunner, if I had to guess.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:47

Yep. And so I heard spit it out, and I was I instantly was like, whoa, what is this? And then so I'd always blast that song, and eventually I got the CD. Well, I first watched them on Conan O'Brien, and when I saw them on Conan O'Brien, I was like, what the fuck? Like, because they played Wait and Bleed and they had their jumpsuits going crazy. I immediately the next day I went and bought the full-length album, the the self-titled one.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:10

Did you get it before uh before Purity and Frail and Nursery was removed?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:14

Purity was already removed from it.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:16

Damn.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:17

But man, that one always messed with my head as a kid.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:20

I say as a kid, but a couple months later they came through town and my my first concert was Slipknot Mudvane and One Minute Silence. And Mudvane didn't even have LD50 out yet, but that was Mudvane's first US tour that they were doing. Ooh. And that was really cool because I had heard of Mudvane through the Napster days. I downloaded Dig and I want to say internal primates and Death Blooms. Nice.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:42

They had internal primates.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:43

That's a good one. And that was the de the demo of a of it. Um once I saw Mudvane, I was like, holy shit. Like I just couldn't believe it. Like I was like, who is this band? Um I need a friend of the card.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:53

That was very much like me too. Because especially like growing growing up with like a lot of the Blue Stally and you know, Cell Dweller and Three Three Days Grace, I mean, and even Jeff Hardy's own music that he was coming out with at the time, because he did his own entrance music. I knew who the artists were. Like I could put a name to a face. Like I could go on, I could go on Google, type in Cell Dweller, and I would see Clayton's picture, and I would go, okay, yep, that's Cell Dweller. With Slipknot, there was of course that mystery. And then because when I got into them, it was I think the great chapter, yeah, the great chapter had already come out, but I didn't like really fully get into them at the time. Like I knew about Before I Forget, and then um I'm trying to think of what else. Psychosocial was in one of the guitar hero games. But then when I heard The Devil and I, it was actually from a video that you posted when you were in the Knotfest video. I heard the chorus wreath, and I'm like, oh, this is sick. And then at that point, like that was pretty much like right then when I found the music that spoke to me the most.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:50

Oh yeah. That was uh the knot fest that they did in 2014 when they were it was the first time Jay, um Jay and um V-Man V-Man were that was the first performance they did. So the first they played two nights, and the first night I think they played a mix of things, and then the second night they did a whole different set, but they played a couple of the songs that they played from the previous night, and it was it was so badass. Like I can't even put into words how cool that was. Like I I've seen Slipknot a number of years now, but there was something in the air that night that or that festival, I should say, that uh really stood out to me. And I think it was because they were they had been gone for a while and they were coming back with a new energy and a new life to them. And so um bad badass to see Slipknot uh at that at that festival. So back to you playing music, you so you didn't play you haven't played any bands um that you've had put together. Uh what dis what made you decide, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna start a solo project. And do you have a name of the project?

SPEAKER_05 1:24:47

It's just under my name, uh Super Corsman the fourth. I end up me and a handful of my friends, we kind of bounced around different projects, and then obviously we kind of just ended up falling out. At one point, we had a project together, it was just me and a couple of uh kids that I knew from high school called Significant Other, where we just we didn't produce anything. It was primarily gonna be a limp biscuit-based cover band, and maybe we would throw in some like seven dust or whatever. But obviously, I would be the guitarist because at that point in time it was my junior year, and I was really big into Limp Biscuit. I was really big into the sonic experimentation that Wes was doing, and also just his stage makeup was just a work of art in and of itself.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:29

Limp Biscuits the shit. I fucking I love those guys. They're I got to see them for the first time a couple uh was it last year?

SPEAKER_05 1:25:35

Ooh, and they were you got to see him with Sam before he sadly passed away.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:39

Yeah, and they dude, they did not disappoint at all. I was just like, oh, it took me so many years to finally get to see you guys. Because I I had flown out to uh the Blue Ridge Rockfest um a couple years ago and it was they they canceled because that I won't even go into details about that festival, but I got you.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:57

Wasn't that like a huge headache and a half if I remember?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:59

It was, it was. I think they had lawsuits and all sorts of stuff. I won't I won't go too far into that, but if you if anyone googles uh the Blue Ridge Rockfest 2003, 2023, sorry, uh you can find and read all about that um that craziness that happened there. So you uh so you were jamming with some friends and then finally you were just like, I'm I'm ready to do my own thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:19

It really wasn't a like a combination of that. Obviously, as you know, time goes on and people just kind of find their own things, they find their own niche in life, the project just kind of faded out. And I mean, even then at the time, like we were just a bunch of kids just jamming basically pretty much like over like FaceTime calls at that point, and all of us were just like get together, poorly record our instruments, and then just throw them together in whatever program my buddy had, and it was just a combination of that. And even then, at that time, I was like looking at my setup, which is like a very makeshift pedal board, and I was just kind of like thinking in my head, like this something about this just ain't working. So then you go back to that, basically just go back to the well, I start doing my own thing, and this was way before I had my own professional setup or anything, where I got my own microphone and started micing up my amp cabinet to fully produce covers because by that point I was just setting up my phone just on my bed with a Bluetooth speaker in the background, just playing to the songs live like you would on if you were a stage. So then I would obviously be manually switching pedals, like for example, let's use Nookie, for example. I would obviously be switching from the clean channel then to go into the high gain distorted tones. I would just be doing that all manually on the fly, and you flub a take, stop the camera, reset the song, go again. So that was just kind of my thing, and I would just do it not only for myself, but also like for my friends and family to see, hey, here's what I'm doing while the world world goes insane due to COVID and whatnot. And that was obviously what kept me sane during COVID as well, was just playing music. But it was really recently, actually, where I kind of just got the idea after a couple of my friends that I bowl with, they had suggested to me, hey, we saw your cover of Underneath the Tree. By Kelly Clarkson, in my opinion, the best Christmas song of all time. Not named All I Want for Christmas is You. Sorry, Mom. I just w I came home from work one day and I was just like, I want to write a metal riff over this. So I literally just put my headphones on, fired up whatever plug-in I was using at the time, and I just started playing. And I just thought to myself, okay, this sounds good. Let me go back and do this. And at that point, I'm like, all right, I think I got something going here. So then at that point, and this is when I had already figured out the basics of home recording at the time. I'm like, this might actually be something that I can roll with. And I had already started putting YouTube videos up at the time once I was kind of getting the basic gist of home recording. Like obviously, you know, anybody who starts out, their tones are gonna sound like very either bass heavy or very brittle. So it was just a lot of just trial and error before I finally realized a couple months ago where I'm like, okay, I think I'm finally at a point where I've watched enough videos, I've listened to enough advice from guys, you know, like Josh Middleton of Silosis and Glenn Fricker from Spectre Sound Studios. Let me try to get some plugins and see what I can do in the rest is history.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:09

I love that. That's yeah, that's what you gotta do, man. And you know what? You're you're a very uh very wise young man, I'll say that.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:15

Because I appreciate you, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:17

Start starting starting your own project at you know, especially at your age, at a young age, it's is very smart because here's the thing. You're gonna start the you're gonna write the music, you're gonna get to build it how you want it. If things don't work out with other members and whatnot, you can keep going on with the name, with what you're doing, with your songs and all that kind of stuff, and you don't have to start from scratch. Because as someone that's came from playing the game of playing in bands with with folks that already had established bands, or people that, you know, where we all came together first and just kind of threw ideas and then it not working out because people, like you said, people change and they their their priorities change and they may not want to take it as serious as you do, or they just want to be weekend warriors or whatever the case may be. That happens a lot, man. It's it's it's crazy to each their own. When I when I decided I was gonna do music, I I knew that it's gonna be it's gonna be full volume because no matter how bad I want it, I know that there's a million other people out there that want it just as bad, if not more. And you know, I j you gotta you gotta fight for it, you gotta you gotta work very hard for it. And it's very discouraging when you have a band, you put all your your eggs in one basket and then it falls apart because of uh people's attitudes or people's egos or or whatnot. But you starting your own band, you can work at your own pace, you can not have to worry about starting from scratch, then you're gonna learn a lot because I'm sure right now you're learning uh because you're you're doing all the recordings that within your own uh setup there.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:40

Yes, sir. So it's basically so I use plugins for my bass and drum tracks, because again, I do all instrumentals, just a covers covers guy right now, because I gotta try to find my own way. I mean, I can't read music to save my life.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:53

I mean I can read tabs, but I was gonna say you don't you don't need to know to read music to to uh to write your own stuff. I mean I'm sure you know this if you're playing a riff of let's say you're playing a three days grace riff, a lot of musicians what they do is they'll play along to a song, and then next thing you know, they're like, Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna mess with these notes, and then they start writing their own stuff from there, and then they come up with their own stuff. That's what's gonna be. That's you see, that's what you gotta do, man. That's and that's smart. I mean and the cool thing is, I was gonna say, you it may be instrumental now, yeah, but here's the good thing with you having your own setup and you having your own um recordings, if you want to experiment with vocals, you can put all the vocals you want. No one ever has to hear it. You don't have to worry about someone else hearing it, and then until until you're proud of it, until you're like, you know what, I develop something that sounds good, or you can test it out with some of your your close family members or friends that you have that you trust that will listen to it and give you some feedback. But that's the cool thing is that you have now your own setup where you're able to do that and you're gonna be able to to practice if you want to do your own vocals. Uh yeah, definitely do that to your own music.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:57

And the biggest thing for me, and what I enjoy doing being a being primarily a covers guy, because I I forgot to probably go more in depth on this. My buddies from bowling, like I mentioned earlier. My one buddy, his name's Drew, he's a fantastic bowler and an even better human being. So I'm probably more likely to send him this. He sent me a couple of songs, and he's like, hey, try to throw some metal riffs over these and see what you come up with. And those songs in question were Speechless by Dan and Shea and Eyes on You by Chase Rice. Now, obviously, those have his those have his own, they have his own meaning for him. But uh so what I would do is for speechless in this case, I just picked up a guitar, just any guitar, and I'm like, all right, let's see what I can come up with. So I just fired up a plug-in, played a song, and I just kind of just noodled around a little bit. And I found that the best way for me to write, especially writing, you know, over something somebody else originally made, but making it heavier, you have to just trial and error it until you eventually find something that sticks and it sounds like you. And what I noticed was that I almost felt like my guitar kind of acted as more like a synth in some ways, that it would like mimic the vocals kind of. So, like in the chorus for speechless, it's like I'm speechless, I would do a descending line where it's just like a bunch of bends, and obviously, in the full context of a mix with guitars panned full left and right, it gives it this kind of not really like a drunken stumble, but again, going back to the grime feeling, there's just something about it, like it kind of like gets under your skin, and it's like, oh yeah, this song like feels like granted while it's like a very happy song, it still kind of has that like dirty feeling, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:33:33

Yeah, I like that. Well, that's a that's a smart way to do it. That's a smart way to just kind of mess with it and not limit yourself to doing certain things. So you like it sounds like you're experimenting and you're trying different things, and that's important as a musician to do that because I always tell people, like, because people are always like some some musicians they limit themselves and they're like, Well, I have to play all technical because I want to make sure that if I play in front of other musicians, they're gonna respect me and they're gonna think this and that. And I'm like, those musicians aren't gonna buy your music, bro. Like, they're worried about their own music, they don't care. They may critique you if they do whatever.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:05

They're gonna listen to their stuff in the they're gonna listen to their stuff in the context of how they would do it, like and how they would produce it. And it's just like, come on.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:12

And you gotta play, you gotta play for the the majority of the audience, not for the musicians, because the musicians are not gonna buy your music. Don't worry about them. Worry about what sounds good to you, what sounds good and the great thing, I don't know if you do this or not, I'm sure you do, but the great thing about having your own recording setup is that you're able to record things, and let's say you just like hit a wall and you're like, you know what, I'm done for now. You can walk away from it, you can listen to it on your break at work, you can listen on the car drive to go run some errands or whatnot, and you can pick it apart and you can listen to it and live with it for a few days, and then come back to it. Yeah, and then you come back to it and you're like, you know what? I know what I after listening to a few days, I know what I like, I know what I don't like, I know what I could need to experiment with, and then go back in there and you can record it. That's the cool thing about having your own setup at home. Like I I love being able to record from home. Once I got my own little recording setup here, it made things so much easier um to be able to just come up with ideas and be ready for it.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:07

Just hit just hit hit the books and just start going.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:10

How many um I was gonna ask, how many tracks you plan on doing on the solo of them?

SPEAKER_05 1:35:13

Ooh, so currently I have 11 planned, but I had like I have like four backups just in case that for whatever reason, if I play it in the context of the mix and then I just don't like the way it sounds, like whether this drum plug-in sounds good or you know, this one doesn't sound as good, sometimes like I'll just say, Yeah, you know what, whatever, and I'll just I'll put it off to the side, maybe I'll work on it later, maybe I'll use it for another uh maybe like an EP or whatever. But right now I've got ten of the eleven tracks finished. It's just a matter of I have to kind of finalize how I want the bass to sit for uh this next track.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:47

I love it. Are you uh so what what style of music would you like? What kind of style of instrumental are you are you say would you say that it fits under?

SPEAKER_05 1:35:55

So with the covers that I'm doing on this one, because it's a lot of it's a combination of big name songs that people know. There two of them the two of the songs are three, I guess, because I got one coming out on Friday, a cover of Cedar's Failure off of Civus Possum Parabellum. It's a kind of a combination of, you know, just mostly rock and metal. Just a lot of the songs that I not I don't want to say grew up on, what's partially of what I grew up on, but also songs that shaped the way that I look at guitar and the way that I look at mixes. So it's really just a combination of hard rock and heavy metal. But down the line, I would I would like to try to branch out and do covers of some pop songs. So like really challenge myself. I actually have a mix of uh of no scrubs by TLC that's kind of a side thing that I'm working on. I did a guitar cover for that, just threw a guitar track right in front of it, and um just said, hey, why not? Let me just send this to a couple of my buddies, see if it makes them laugh. And they're like, Rick, why in the hell did you write a sludge metal riff to no scrubs? And I'm like, because I felt like it.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:00

Yeah, dude. I mean it it I like that you challenge yourself and that you're trying to do different things, and you know, you're you're building your own. You're building your building, it's it builds character, and you're you're putting your twist on on these songs that you're it sounds like you're you're putting together. And yeah, and it sounds like you like you said, you're you're adding your personality to these, uh the mixes and all that stuff, and you're gonna learn a lot from it. I can't wait to hear them. Make sure and whatever whatever links that you want to have, we'll make sure and have them in the show description so that people can follow you and can check it out and your Spotifies and all that stuff. So I love that you're doing that, man. That's that's really cool to see that you're you're it sounds like you're excited about it. Um and it sounds like you're you're doing you, and that's what's important. I think I always tell people, I'm like, don't worry about what other people are doing, just focus on what you're doing, and that's that's you know that's all that really matters at the end of the day, because you put my best foot forward and just doing, you know, whatever I can.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:53

And it's it's very funny, you know, like listening to those songs in context, because obviously I just do it with the original track kind of just panned down a little bit. It's just kind of like odd. Like I remember I sent it uh sent the finalized version of just this basic guitar cover of you know, if no scrubs was metal to a female friend of mine. But she's like, Can you just imagine like having like the same vocals from you know left eye, uh freaking A. It's gonna drive me nuts if I forget the names of the of the member names of the members. T-Boz and I got T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chili, I think. Yeah. And just imagine like hearing their vocals going in the background to a sludge riff as they talk about, you know, I don't want no scrubs.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:34

Yeah. I mean you I mean there's a lot of apps that now that you can download the uh you could just pull out the vocals and put them on over your um your instrumentals, see what that sounds like. And you might even be able to mess with the vocal to make it sound like in a different pitch or uh add some reverb or something. I don't know. You can get you can get creative with it, I'm sure, that which is which is pretty cool with your with what you're doing there.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:55

There's just there's something about that, uh doing that though, and then like having the desire to publish it that just doesn't sit right with me. It kind of just goes it goes back to the whole AI thing that everybody's been talking about with people using like Chester Bennington, like an AI rendition of Chester Bennington to make whatever. Like of him covering a slipknot song. And obviously there is that whole AI debate. Like I use, I'll just admit it, I use AI to make my album art because I can't draw and I'm la I'm just too lazy to try to find somebody who can replicate the ideas in my head to physical artwork. So that's where that's the thing with that. I'm like, it's like, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 1:39:30

It's like we were mentioning earlier. It's the world that we're in now, and it's like you can either adapt or you're gonna adapt. I mean, that that there's no there's there's a lot of people that are just so angry because they know that it's coming. And it's like I mentioned earlier. Can you imagine if the people that were uh were paranoid about the internet, if they would have tried to stop it, like we're like the internet came and it's done so much for us. A lot of great things, some bad things, obviously, with any technology, with any kind of things, there's gonna be there's gonna be some consequences and all that, but uh you know, as humans we'll we'll adapt with it.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:02

Uh in today's day and age, you know, where it's like going back to the whole thing of people giving giving anybody really grief as a kid. Obviously, I was growing up in that, like obviously that stage where it was like Instagram was starting to become more popular. And you'd have you'd have the occasional schmucks like commenting on not not my post, but I saw it sometimes, sometimes on mine, sometimes on somebody else's. Where it's like they'd be ripping somebody for like their haircut, or they'd reference something embarrassing that happened to them during school. And it's like with how deranged and you know how powerful the internet is now, it's like, come on, man, just just use your brain.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:38

Yeah, I was gonna say, so that's that's one thing that's very different about you and I, our generation difference, is that we didn't really have, I mean, we had the internet, but it wasn't like we didn't have social media and we didn't have like if you had if there was bullies out there, if you had conflict with someone, you know, after school, you didn't have to really face it. You just went and did your own thing, you hung out with your own people. But nowadays, and especially like with your generation, there was there's that whole there's that whole you don't you can't escape it because then the bullies will find you or the people that don't like you go on there and then they start tearing you apart on social media. With it sounds like you saw that happening with with around you when you were uh in high school and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:17

So around that, like m I mean high school it wasn't as bad because the people that I went to high school with weren't completely insane. Um and going kind of back to the whole thing of music kind of shaping my worldview, like I saw like a lot of just kids just being dickheads in middle school, you know, just dickheads to each other in middle school. And then it wasn't like it really like reinforced my belief that humanity sucks, because that's obviously not my belief now, but I saw just a lot of stuff of you know kids just finding just finding an excuse, whether it was like in person or on social media, just to find an excuse to be a dick. There was one story that I always tell people that just really stuck with me when I stuck up for someone was some group of kids, they were heckling this kid in the library when I was in middle school, like in seventh grade or whatever. And not only would they heckle him in the library sometimes, like just out of deranged boredom, they would, you know, go under this kid's Instagram or whatever and just kind of poke and prod him, trying to poke the hornet's nest, essentially, right? And I eventually got tired of it. So I went up to this one kid who I had I had had beef with, and I'm like, yo, stay off. And he's like, Whoa, what are you what are you gonna do, Rick? Typical poor man's bravado, right? Yeah, and I'm like, I just took a page out of my dad's book. I'm like, you wanna find out? And there's just silence, bell rings, these kids just bolt, and so I'm like, all right, well, here you go, and you're gonna get a kick out of this. Obviously, I told teacher, whoever, I'm like, the kid in general kind of wasn't exactly playing with a full deck per se. But um, he was a good kid, very book smart. Kid was a genius, yeah. But I'm like, yo, like someone is always like giving this kid grief. Let's kind of like, I just want to let you know that I kind of told these kids to fuck off. Obviously, I didn't say that, but then using kind of my music brain and just kind of like letting sleeping dogs lie, just let it chill for a minute. Um I didn't tell nobody anything. Wouldn't you know a day later? These kids are going around like who ratted us out. They look at me and they're like, Rick, do you say anything? Say anything about what? And they had and they they just they had nothing. And then my one buddy looks at me and he's like, You said something, didn't you? Yeah. Like, I learned from the best, man. Like, not only did I learn from my dad, who is a master of psychological warfare, I learned from the music I listen to. I love that. Don't fuck with anybody else and don't poke the sleeping giant.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:38

Yeah, no. And you know, sometimes people, there's there's gonna be those people that uh that do, and they have that's the way they learn. They have to learn the hard way, unfortunately. Um, I was also gonna say, like, with your generation, also you guys have the uh the whole thing of you know, everything you do, everything you say is documented uh, you know, online and it's on video, and it's we didn't have any of that. So that had to that I mean that had to be really, really hard. I to be a kid nowadays, it's gotta be really hard because you can't do the things that we did when I was younger where you know we could skip school. Now, like your parents get an email right away, I'm sure, and like they get notification.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:17

Back in the day, they'd try to do a phone call. I think they called once or twice a day. If if mom's at work, I get home like right when school's done and go straight home and I can erase the message from the the phone. Dirty deeds, bro. That's what I'm saying. So it's like we got away with a lot of stuff back then that nowadays definitely would not would not fly, which is I'm I'm thankful that I was in that generation, but at the same time, it's like I wonder what I would have been like if I would have grown up in this era. Who knows? I'd probably be in a lot of shit.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:46

That's where I always worry about the next generation. It's an in-joke with me and my brother. Like, we just kind of like we'll just be sitting around, you know, whether we're like, you know, grabbing a bite to eat, or if we're even at like the bowling alley and just watching, you know, people now. It's like it doesn't have to be kids or whoever, it's just anybody just because everybody's got like a little cell phone on them. Some knucklehead at the bowling alley could be drunk at the bar and you know, babbling gibberish, and somebody will be filming it and then they'll post it on social media and say, hey, look at this guy at so-and-so at this place, acting like a nut nuthead. And it's just like everybody's got a digital footprint now, and it's it's true, truth be told, like when you think about it, it's it's jacked up how the good the technology is now. But at the end of the day, it's like anything, man. You gotta keep your keep eyes going in the back of your head.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:32

Yep, you gotta be careful of what what you say and what you do. That's another thing I was gonna bring up is that I I did notice that you do uh I see you posting bowling a lot. So are are do you do that uh pro style or what like what what is it with with bowling and you are you um on a league or are you doing it for fun or what so uh I'm on a league.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:52

I have been b I have been a uh league bowler for since since 2020, so since I graduated high school. But I started bowling competitively when I was a sophomore, and that was just kind of a thing that me and my family all talked about. Like I like I wanted to play baseball when I was in high school. Obviously, I grew up a very athletic kid. My dad played basketball in uh high school and college, my mom was a volleyball player, but me personally, I didn't have the sort I'm looking for, the endurance for uh basketball and then baseball when you go cold turkey for a couple years and then try to join the high school team, it's kind of hard to join the team. Bowling was the next best thing because my dad had been bowling in leagues with a lot of his friends over the years. My grandfather is also a league bowler, so me and my brother just kind of said, Hey, let's give this a whirl. So it's just been a lot of trial and error for us. And my younger brother, Dale, he is a he's a very dangerous competitive bowler. He's much better than me. Obviously, I consider myself a house hack, which means I'm only good on house patterns. My brother, he bowls collegiately at the highest level, and he is he is a living weapon, that kid.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:58

Hell yeah. What what uh let's see, like what's your best score that you've that you've pulled off?

SPEAKER_05 1:47:03

My best score is a 280. So um for you kids at home, that is basically uh strike in the first frame, air in the second frame, and then you strike out all the way. So it's basically my dad's favorite joke is that it's uh it should be a 300, but it's not a 300.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:22

I love that. I I love bowling. I'm definitely you'd kick my ass, I'm sure. I'd there's no doubt. I suck at it. Like for me, it's like one of those like if we play if we go bowling, I'll I'll bowl, and my girlfriend, for whatever reason, she's really good at it, and she just gets better and better every every game, and I get I get so like frustrated. I'm like, God damn it.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:39

Does she just like take a spit like a six-pound ball and just piss missile it like right up the toilet?

SPEAKER_03 1:47:44

And it goes, and it it's like she just just does it amazing all the time. And it's I'm like, what in the hell? She's good at it, and it's whatever, so we'll we'll do it. But I'm one of those guys that I have to do something for a while, especially that if I don't do it all the time before I start getting good. So as the games go, I usually will get better, but then sometimes I like I get inside my head, I think, my own head, and I'm like, I start sucking even more.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:06

That's the big thing with a lot of bowlers. That happens to everybody.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:09

I was gonna say, have you seen uh the big Lebowski and have you seen uh what's that other one? I know which one you're referring to. King.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:17

Yeah, I've seen I've seen both of them. Those are phenomenal.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:20

Which one's better to you? Freaking hey. Those are tough two of my favorite movies, so.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:24

It's it's a tough, it's a tough ask. I I haven't seen I haven't seen either one in a minute, but I'll get back to you on that.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:31

Alright. Yeah, I was gonna say I constantly reference uh movie lines from uh the big Lebowski. That's just one of my there was a point in time when I first saw that movie, like way back when it first came out. I'm not kidding you. I watched it once a day for a whole month. Like I was annoying everybody around me because I was like, I was so hooked on that movie and just I'd laugh with Walter, I'd laugh with you know Donnie, him telling to shut tell Donnie to shut the fuck up and just Over the line. Over the line, yeah. And the big Lebowski with his uh the dude with his white Russians and that movie is just to me, it's a classic. Kingpin, of course, also another great movie. Like lots of laughs on that one. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:10

Um You'll still get people who are walking, you'll you'll get people who walk over the line, like even in league or whatever, like some knucklehead will you know scrape their foot over the foul line, and sometimes it'll be obvious, sometimes it's an accident, but it's like a guy'll like stand there at the approach after he throws a ball and he'll be like looking down at his foot, like, D I cross over or did I not cross over? And then everybody in the back is just kind of standing there looking at each other, like basically just throwing their hands up in the air, and they're like, Well, I don't know if foul lights edge went off, but if you're like, but if the guy's like two feet behind the foul line and then the light goes off, then everybody's like, All right, clear it, give him a eight count or whatever, and let's start again.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:50

Hell yeah. All right. Well, we are um a little over an hour, which is fine with me. Uh, is there anything else you want to talk about? You want to plug, you want to let people know about?

SPEAKER_05 1:50:07

Obviously, I released uh Failure um this coming Friday as of recording this. Uh February 6th, obviously uh my new single, Failure, cover of Failures Cedars Failure, dropped, and I might as well just let the cat out of the bag now. Coming soon, my first ever instrumental covers album, Voiceless, will be coming out either sometime at the end of February or maybe early March. 11 tracks of my favorite songs. Finally got my foot in the door, and I'm very, I'm very excited to finally put my own spin on my favorite songs out into the world.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:41

That's awesome, man. I'm I'm very proud of you as a friend. I can say right now I'm very proud of you, and I want to keep uh encouraging you to keep pushing forward, keep keep recording, keep doing your thing, and keep growing within music. I can sense the passion in you, and I love that. Same same to you, man. Everyone out there, please go follow Rick. I'm gonna have all the links on the uh the description of the podcast, and uh you can follow him on social media as he provides access to and his Spotify and everywhere you can find him with music. Thank you so much for being on here, man. Thank you for having me, brother. I really appreciate it. Yep, everyone else, you have a great day. And that is the end of segment number two with my guest, Rick Horseman. Thank you all so much for tuning in and listening to that. That was a great conversation him and I had, and then that was some fun we had on segment number one as well, especially towards the end when Mariah was getting all heated. But I want to thank you guys all for uh checking in and checking out the podcast. Uh, shout out to my two monetary subscribers, King John and Eric Sheets. Thank you guys so much. We're making our own effects here. Um, for anyone else that is out there that wants to contribute, we you can contribute money-wise. Uh cost money to make this podcast. If you look, there is an option there to support the show. Otherwise, you can hit me up and ask me how you can do it. No amount is too little. Anything helps because it does uh there's a monthly charge that we have to pay for upkeeping the equipment that we use for the podcast and for editing and all that. And then, of course, to upload these episodes, they do charge you money for that as well. So appreciate that. I appreciate all you guys out there that listen to the podcast. I appreciate all you guys out there that contribute to the question of the week and that spread the word about this. Again, this podcast is the podcast for the people, and I love to hear from you guys. And I really do hope that this is helping people out there look at things in a different perspective. Hopefully, it gives you guys hope for anybody that's dealing with some of the issues that we talk about through the podcast and through the guests. And I love you all. I am gonna be heading out to Reno and it's gonna be a blast. Check out American Overdose.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:48

Let's send it Andrew style. Ready? One, two, three.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:54

Shout out to my buddy Andrew, who will hopefully be a guest on this. And look at Taz, he's all excited. Thank you, everybody. Have a great kick ass week.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:01

Be safe and love, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:03

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