Metier Moto Show | Episode 4 With Tim Grisham From The Ton Magazine

On this episode of the Metier Moto Show, Host Brand Columbus sits down with Tim from The Ton Magazine for an in-depth conversation on custom motorcycles across the US, the inspiration behind Rally in the Valley, his experience at Moon Eyes Japan, and the philosophy that drives the motorcycle scene forward.

From growing up around desert racing in Southern California to building a well respected independent motorcycle publication, Tim shares his journey through motorcycles, music, publishing, and community building.

We dive into:
• The origins of The Ton Magazine
• Chopper culture in the Pacific Northwest
• Rally in the Valley and independent motorcycle shows
• Moon Eyes Japan and Born Free
• Art, music, and motorcycles
• Native representation in the motorcycle community
• DIY publishing and independent media
• The Future of the world and AI.


Follow The Ton Magazine:
Instagram: @thetonmag
Website: thetonmag.com

Follow Metier Motorcycle Lawyers
Instagram: @MetierMotoLaw

If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to like, subscribe, and share the video to support independent motorcycle media and custom builders worldwide.

#MetierMoto #TheTonMagazine #CustomMotorcycles #ChopperCulture #HarleyDavidson #MoonEyesJapan #RallyInTheValley #BornFreeShow #MotorcycleCulture #PacificNorthwest

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a fun little ride. Nice and no traffic running up the I5 this morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

That's pretty typical for more a weekend morning. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

So I let's start off. Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself? What's your background in motorcycling and where'd you come from?

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Well, I mean, we only have 45 minutes or an hour, so I'll keep it short. We'll keep it short. Um, I'm originally from the high desert, Antelope Valley, which is like the desert just north of Los Angeles. Okay. Um and so I lived there as a kid. Uh and there I started motorcycles with like um ADCC dirt bikes, you know. My uncle was Charlie Morris, who um was a really famous desert racer for SoCal MC, and he's buried at the Husky Memorial, you know, something like that. And then my cousin was uh tuna, and he was a pro motor crossrider. Um and then my grandfather, my mother's father, um started a pretty famous motorcycle club, and then my father rode with a club, um so and like worked at places like as a fabricator and stuff that um people know our brand names now. So like it's always been around. Um I moved up to the northwest and went to high school here and everything, and I got really into like the mod uh kind of skin subculture, and I uh rode Vespas and and did uh two-stroke stuff, and uh just always have had some kind of two-wheeled thing um in my life. I went to New York for a while to work there um and go to school. I worked at CBGBs and worked in publishing and w went to grad school. I didn't ride there, and then when I came back, like when I kind of got my finances into a place where I wanted to do it because I'm kind of an obsessive personality. Um, I picked up a Harley and started riding um choppers from there.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Cool. Did you just like straight was it was it the draw of the Harley or the Chopper, or was it just well, yeah, I mean I I kinda wanted to do more riding than like touring on a Vespa is not that fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Right. Let's be real, yeah, let's be real. And um, I've always been a huge chopper fan. Um since I was a little kid. There's a lot of photos of me like on like family members' bikes, and then even like my social media profile is like me on a uh Coleco chop and go chopper or whatever from the early 80s. That's cool. Um, so it's like always been kind of an obsession in some way, but um, so I'm not super like brand specific. I mean we're talking about Harley's. I'm wearing a Triumph shirt, I have a Triumph Chopper in that way, but I do think that for the chopper platform, Harley's definitely probably the best bike for it. Yeah, nice, just aesthetically more than anything.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Right. I have that blind loyalty, I guess they say. Yeah, I love all two wheels, but the the bar and shield is my fallback for sure. For sure. So you get into the choppers, start start building them on your own.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

I don't really build them on my own necessarily. Like um, I think my day job prevents a lot of time that it would take. So I do kind of have a good idea of what I want. I do stuff on my own, but then I work with friends. Um, the beautiful thing about having a job that I am not always broke is I could also help friends with their passions, which are running like chopper shops and things like that. And so, like I've worked a lot with Jimmy here at Revmo uh on a bike that um hit the show circuit that was the um 63 Triumph Chopper that a lot of people seem to love. And um, you know, I have a sportster chopper and uh you know it anyway. Um I'm not like a a guy who's gonna go and do everything on his own in his garage. I just don't really have the time for it between that and then like I have like a C10 truck and a G10 van and like I have a lot of other projects I'm always kind of rotating and working on. And so like the kind of um the time to dedicate to focus on just one of those, um, sometimes I need to outsource a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

We were cut from the same clock. So you mentioned day job. What what is Tim's day job?

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Well, I mean it's it's hard to describe in in real short, but I work for an organization that represents every elected county official in the state of Washington, and we do a lot of their education and public outreach to tell people what that like what a coroner does, for example. And then also to train them as like what you you know legally are bound to do, things like that. And then we go to the legislature for them on their behalf to lobby for you know things like to designate post-traumatic stress disorder as a designated um occupational disease, which like cops and firefighters everyone has, corners don't. They touch a lot more dead bodies and tell everyone that their kids are dead, so it's you know a really rough job, right? Um, sorry, I kicked you there, but um yeah, so I do that, and you know, um like in my industry, people joke that I'm the only person they know who's both been in, you know, National Forensics magazine and Rolling Stone magazine for different things. Really? So um, yeah, and in that job I've created like one of the most transparent, accountable, and trained uh medical death investigation systems in the entire country, which I'm pretty proud of. So it's a it's a weird job and it's totally divorced from anything motorcycle.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Really?

SPEAKER_01 6:16

So is this is this a that's why I was in Salem to help the motorcycle political action committee learn how to better interact with the legislature.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Okay, so is this full-on suit and tie job? Oh yeah, like Tim's in a suit all day, every day during the week.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Not not during legislative session, I because there's actually rules of decorum to get into certain parts of a legislative building. Yeah, that are just really old kind of vestiges of you know the pomp and circumstance of it all. So yeah, I have to wear a suit and tie a lot. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

I'm gonna have to after after this uh pick your brain and stuff. My my wife has a uh master's in criminal psychology. Oh, okay. And she's real into all of that that you were just explaining. Yeah, I'd love to talk to you, actually. She'd she'd enjoy the heck out of it.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

But yeah, I I've had a lot of jobs over the years, but that's kind of where I've landed for the last you know decade or so.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Okay, so you so when you went to school, did you go to school particularly for doing what you're doing now, or did it just be a good thing? No, not at all.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Life just took a turn. So like I did have uh my undergraduate was like political economics with pre-law. Okay, and so that that was good as far as what I do now. But I went to um, I have like a master's of fine arts and a master's of sociology, and I went to school for film at NYU, and then I did like a um film, like helped start up a nonprofit film school in the Bronx when I was at Columbia, and um, and so it was totally different. But my father lived in Olympia, he went blind. We came back here, there was no kind of industry, film industry jobs or anything. So I ended up in in government because I had previous experience from when I was in college before in Washington, and kind of just life just takes these weird kind of turns sometimes. And so I've always viewed what I make money with as like totally different than what I follow as passions, and I think that's a vestige of like from when I was 13 until COVID when I was 41, I was a touring musician, so all my vacations and stuff were kind of wrapped around like going out on the road and doing that kind of thing, which you know your buddy here, Chris, would know all too well about how to balance like a real job with being a touring musician.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yeah, I've heard I heard a lot of stories from him about that. So so you're in doing that and you're riding, you and what uh you have the Tun magazine. How did that all come about in all of this? Was this a pre-COVID thing? Or what when did you get it?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yeah, well, the ton is pre-COVID. We're we've been around, we've been published for eight years now, something like that. Um, but uh Susan, my my partner and wife and the like partner in the magazine, um, the publisher, we went to the first Paradise Road show, and there's you know, good bikes there and everything, but we were just kind of like, man, there's just so much more going on in the Northwest than like the one bike from the Northwest that was down there. It was the first one, I think, um, in 2017 or something like that. Um and we were like, we should just do a magazine to show people, and the expectation wasn't necessarily to like do a ton of magazine, like a whole run of it, um like in perpetuity, but it was like we should put something together, show what's going on. Um because at the time, I I I think people need to think about in Washington and Oregon uh 2017 and stuff, there was a lot going on, but there were like unconnected pockets in a lot of way. There wasn't a really good methodology for pulling it all together. Yeah, there was one Modo and stuff, but that was Portland, and it was a lot smaller then than it is now, and um, that was a totally different vibe than Chopper Guys, right? Just totally, just like your show's a totally different vibe than my show's or anything like that. So it's like, how do you document that and pull it together in a way? It was during that transition away from the blogs and into Instagram, so a lot of people were doing Instagram, so you knew ways to gather people. So we spent about eight months like formulating everything, and we realized like it can't just be like one issue or one thing, it has to be kind of a rolling thing, and so um, yeah, we put out that first issue, which had Jimmy from Revmo's bike in it and things like that, and kind of just started rolling from there. And before we even had that issue out, we'd set like we know it's gonna be quarterly, we know kind of we had all the mechanics kind of started to work out um for the most part, and kind of went from there. Like the the concept was more about like community gathering and like community response than really just like about the bikes, right? Well, it's about the bikes, but it wasn't about like making a ton of money, like it would be stupid to go into print to make like a business where you're like making uh yeah a big money thing, and even for the first year or two, we didn't even do merch, like we were like it's a magazine, we're not doing merch, and um that changed.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Yeah, it always does the nature of the beast. Yeah, so how how where'd you get the name? Where did the ton come from?

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Well, I mean, the ton is like a really common, especially in cafe racers in England, it's for going a hundred miles or over, but um okay, but naming a magazine is difficult, yeah. Because like, especially a motorcycle magazine. So you're like, okay, let's do low site, oh that's taken, let's do high side, that's taken. Let's you kind of go through all these names that are taking, and you need to find one where you can get the URL, you could get the social media, you could register the trademark, right? Like all those are like real like core business assistants because someone could just say, No, I had it first and you're screwed, right? Well, you might have had it first in some small form, but I have a um registered trademark for it. So now like now it's mine. Like, I mean, you're gonna have to um pay a lot of money for litigation to overturn a registered trademark. And so um, it really is like finding something that works within all those kind of business kind of areas, and even like a business name, your you know, a state or something will have it. So we went through a bunch, and we also wanted to keep them as short as possible, like two words monosyllable. So that's why I use like low side, high side, things like that. Because that um as far as memory goes, uh sticks in people's mind for forever. I mean, um, monosyllable one or two words is is the best branding for any kind of like marketing venture because it just stays there, and so that kind of is the unsexy way we got out of it. And then you kind of go, it's like, okay, well, you know, it's Washington, the bike's way it's okay. Okay, you know, there's all these like stupid puns that you could do with it, um, which we kind of joke around with, but the real reason is every other idea was taken. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

So I was flipping through a couple of magazines, and what what's the yardbird thing all about?

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Well, so there's uh um, there used to be a a small chain of sh of grocery stores and vent, like not vintage, but grocery stores and like Army surplus and department stores that was in Shahalas, Olympia, and Shelton called Yardbirds. And the Olympia one eventually was sold to the workers and was like beloved. And it it was open until the 1990s, and then the building itself burnt down. So, like people, especially people among like the punk community and the alternative community in Olympia really have an affinity for this. Like it's what we grew up with. Like for me, it's where like I got my uh McGregor like shoes and shit, you know, because it was like where the kids who didn't have a ton of money went shopping, and so it's been around as something people utilize for a long time, and so we um actually took one of the logos or drawings from it and redid it to kind of fit ours, and then asked there's several artists who um had done yardbird logos over the years, asked one of the widows of one of them if they would be offended. They said, no, everyone's doing it, everyone's ripping it off. There's yardbirds everywhere. And it was like it's not an original idea anyway, because there was J Birds and all these other ones like, oh, okay. So as long as I'm not making someone mad and there's enough precedent out there to where it's super legal, and it's also uh um cut like covered under a lot of different kinds of esoteric copyright roles. So, anyway, no one needs to know that crap. It's just uh it's it's a local grocery store chain that no longer that everyone loves. We changed things about it and kind of went from there.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

So a little Easter egg. Yeah, it's a it's an if you know you know kind of thing. Exactly. I I think that's cool. Stuff like that's cool. It gives people something to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Well, and it kind of loops back to our like trying to really focus on the Northwest a lot rather than just be like something that's focusing on whatever the next cool thing necessarily is, is we always try and loop things back to the Northwest.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

So the ton's been in print for how many years now then? Eight. Eight years. Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

And that's no breaks, no, you guys went right blew right through COVID and everything kept it going.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Yeah, I mean, we went through COVID and then we went through um our office was above the old Revmo, which um this is the new one, and our both our office and their shop, everything burnt down on us um like around 2001 or 2021, sorry. So like we were fortunate at that time that we had an issue at the printer that wasn't in um in stock in the office. So like we were able to go right into monetizing to help dig out right away, and of course, this community supported us and everything. We might have been a little dumb of doing a GoFundMe that's like ridiculously low, like $7,000 or $6,000 or something like that. Because we lost 70 grand. Oh my goodness. Wow. Like I I lost crazy stuff in that because I also had some personal things in there. Um, so yeah, I mean, um when when you your boss man remembers our office.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah. What when you're when you're going to do the next um, I want to say episode, not the next magazine, the next next do it monthly? Is it is it monthly? It's quarterly. Quarterly. Yeah. Well what do you look for in a in a because you you feature a a bike like a traditional magazine, or uh it really depends on what's like going on.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

So like sometimes I will have just hit something like like I go to Moon Eyes in Japan, right? And so um, you know, I did an article on Moon Eyes in the last issue, but I have other content from that chip to Japan. So like the next issue, for example, we'll have like Simba Motors, which has been around since 1947 in Japan, and Revolt, which is a great fabricator. Um uh so I pick up things like that and then try and figure out what kind of complementary um bike to feature is like a cover bike or a cover story and kind of build it like that. We we do like concept issues very infrequently. Um, I think like we did one art issue, which was like not bikes but art. We have another one coming up soon that's kind of concept-y, and we had an all-native issue, um all-native American builders and writers issue. So we do kind of do those periodically, but really it's like what is on the flow for us, and it makes it really kind of um the goal is to be like responding to the moment, but also make it timeless so people will look at a magazine years down the road and not feel like it's date stamped explicitly to a time. Okay, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Yeah, uh, so you mentioned the Native American um bike or issue, you said. Yeah, yeah. Tell me a little bit more about that. Is that something that is like personal to you?

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Yeah, um, so I'm I'm a passing native man. So my mom, half native, um, lived on reservation, went to school on reservation. Um sadly, she was murdered five years ago. I'm sorry about that. Um it's it's okay. I understand. Like it's hard to say that and then like you know it's coming right away. Right. But like I'm saying it just for background context. Um, so yeah, and uh, you know, so it's a Montana tribe, and this uh and you know that covers a lot of issues. There's a lot of like baggage with it, but there's also a lot of good, you know. My cousin was the first native representative in the state of Missoula, right? Things like that. So um there's highs and lows to that. But what I noticed is that um bike culture has a real tendency to tokenize native culture. I mean, you have a whole company built around tokenizing in a in a somewhat empathetic way, but you know, capitalizing on uh native culture, and um there are great builders and riders out there, they're not just you know bagger bro club riders, which a lot of people kind of pigeonhole all natives into. And so I um mainly as an homage to my heritage and my love uh and my friends, I I did a native issue. We featured um, you know, uh Silversmith who also builds, and my friend Manny, who built his own bikes in his garage on the Navajo Reservation, who translated Star Wars into Navajo. Yeah, and my friend uh Jimmy Dean Horn, who's uh artist, and so it's like to really show kind of different aspects and different representations, whether you're like as far as white people consider like clearly native or someone who's passing, like you know, there wasn't um a lot of uh like pigeonholing into it, it was to show kind of a wider idea of of Native America through through the magazine.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Cool, that's really cool. I'll have to check that out. Is that if a guy wanted to go back and say I wanted to find that I don't know why I keep saying issue? I cannot think of the word. If somebody wanted to go back and find that issue, is there a way to do that? Like if I want to go look up that one or issue one, yeah. Is there is there a way to do that?

SPEAKER_01 20:49

So I mean we have a couple of ways, and the best way is on Amazon for that stuff, like we collect issues one through four and then like five through eight, like the like sets of four, which is a year, into collected books, which you can buy on Amazon. Okay. We have a collected book of just women builders all together, which we feature women builders in every issue uh in a book. We also have um PDF, like you know, for your Kindle or PDF downloads of a lot of issues on it, including uh issue 17, which is the native issue, that's on Amazon for your Kindle PDF. And it will be in like I think the next book, which comes out just before Born Free.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Okay, okay. Do you I be honest? I've flipped through a few tons. I've never really sat down and read one. After talking to you, I think I'm gonna not not our niche. No, you know what? It we're both brothers of the road. We both ride love two wheels, we just have different niches, whatever. Um where was I going with this? Uh born free. I love born free. Um, would you say, would you do you normally do an issue about born free and say a bike from born free or just

SPEAKER_01 22:00

I mean we we've done Born Free as an article.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

But we would never do it's the most heavy covered show in America, probably. Correct. Like we're there as vendors. I've had a bike in it.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Like I cover it from that perspective in one issue. If there's a bike I really like and I know it's not coming out in the next issue, choppers or dice, I'll run that. Like, because I I really try and work, especially with Carrie, to not do the same things at the same time. Cause we're kind of me and Carrie are on a really similar release schedule and we're at the same kind of his issue 24 or my issue 24 come out right around the same time. We've tried to work out maybe doing issue release stuff together. Like we get along really great. So it's just trying to make sure I'm not doing the same thing at the same time or someone's not sending me the same photos that are in another magazine. Like all that kind of goes into that kind of decision, but like to do a whole born-free issue, um, it's just it'd be tough. It's it's been done, it'd be tough because then you're competing with other like it's not just like dice and choppers, but then you have like you know, easy riders and uh you know plus competing with all the social media.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Hot bikes is back, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:14

And all the social media platforms, the great Japanese magazines, like you know, Ripper Roller, um vibes, like all that stuff. So there's just so much media around that specific event. Yeah um that like doing a whole issue on it, like I don't know if it's in my vibe.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

I got you like totally, totally.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

I don't like doing stuff that everyone's doing.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Right. Tell me a little bit about more, a little more about Moon Eyes, Japan. I it's on my bucket list. I watch and read about it every year, and I just it's on the bucket list to go to that.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

I think it should be on anyone who likes a car or motorcycle bucket list. That's because it's not just like one show or the other, it's all integrated really well. Thing people really have to realize is like it's a one-day show. Really? It is one day, and so they have a setup day before, but it's like in and out, right? And they build a whole city for that, I swear. Like they're the booths are all not all of them, but they're like built booths, right? They're not just pop-up tents and everything. Everything's flawless. The cars are perfect, the bikes are perfect, great vendors. Everyone there from all over the world, you'll go there and uh, you know, of course, Japan, Indonesia, it used to be China, not so much right now because of political issues. Um, Australia, Germany, France, like all over the world, and they're all there because they like the same shit you do, right? So, how can you not want to go?

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

How can you not have fun with people from all over the world who all you have to do is like point at something and go, that's cool, and then you start a conversation. Like it's it's I yeah, it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

I want to go so bad.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Um, I always say like uh Born Freeze like the Disneyland of like chopper shows, you know, because you just you can't not have fun with something you love.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

I I would concur with that.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

But like 100%. But Moon Eyes is like the Disney world of because it also has the cars and everything, like there's a little more to it than just choppers and and um and you know performance Harleys, right? So it's like Disneyland's the smaller and the other one's bigger. I mean, Born Free might have more bikes and stuff like that, certainly. And it's a uh you know, Mike and Grant put on an amazing, amazing show, but they're the first to say that they were inspired by Moon Eyes to put on their show. And that's that's the compliment you want to kind of think about.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

On the show subject, you put on how many how many shows do you host? Uh what is it, one well sponsor couple too.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yeah, yeah. So we do we have Rally in the Valley, which this year is our fifth, August 1st. Um, and that one was born out of Dilly Dally in the Valley, so it's really like the sixth event with uh our main organizer with us is Drew Baddock, who's one of my close friends. Like, so he's the kind of through thread through it all. Um, so we do that one, and then we do the invitational, which started out at the armory, but they're remodeling that. So right now it's at the fairground, but it'll go back to the armory, and that's in its fourth year this year, and that's October 10th, okay, which is the feeder for the final verdict, which is your guys' online show. That's right, we'll be there. And then uh I also um we were asked to do the like Chopper sub show for Northwest Bike Week this year, which is uh July 12th. Um, and then yeah, we sponsor Hot Pipes. Okay. Um we've sponsored other shows and we work with other shows. Like we we're working with Biltwell for their Northwest uh Moto Fest thing. Um, not I don't know if we're a sponsor or something. We're working with them in some capacity. I'd have to ask Bill exactly. I can't remember what the off the top of my head what it is. But we are working with them with that, and we'll be there. Um, you know, we do as much as we can, but it's capacity because at the end of the day, I also want to have some weekends in the summer to be able to ride. I was gonna say, do you ever get a chance to ride your motorcycles, man? You're busy. We did cut down on the number of shows we did. Um I touched the mic, I'm sorry. Um, we we did cut down on the show, number of shows we did because that was a problem. And so, yeah, I do ride. Um the my day job, I have some flexibility during some parts of the week. So, like afternoons, I could rip out to the ocean and back and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

And there goes Tim on his chopper in his suit.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Con con friends into going uh when I can. But um no, I ride a lot actually, but um I would like to ride more and do bigger rides, and so like a good example is there's a really great chopper show um that's gonna be a first-year. I don't know if it's great, but it's gonna be a first-year one, and the person organizing it is a cool guy in Longview, but I can't do it because I'm riding down to Donner Pass for the Donner picnic with friends there. Gotcha. So like it's like prioritizing the opportunity for bigger rides is kind of um part of that too. And then I'm planning like a longer ride that may be coupled with a fundraiser aspect for missing and murdered indigenous women out to my reservation in Montana. That might be next year, I don't know. Um, so it's trying to balance like my personal passion with like fostering this community and putting it out because I'm not like getting rich off this shit.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

No, none of us are, but I love what you're doing. I like I like we said we're from a totally two different niches, yeah. But we're still motorcycle lovers when it comes down to it. I love what you're doing. I've been following your stuff forever.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

And well, I really appreciate you've actually invited us to your show before. And that's like that's kind of those that's a good thing to kind of talk through. It's like when we cut back, the reason we cut back your show is like there's niches and niches, right? Like so, like there's you're already as a company working within motorcycles, within a niche of automotive industry, right? And then like there's a sub-niche, which could be like the baggers, dynah, like performance, like that's a bigger group of people than choppers. So we're like a niche of a niche of a niche, right? We're like we're the niche of the chopper or the motorcycle industry by being choppers, but we kind of focus mostly on a more almost traditional idea of a chopper. Like, we're not doing the Jesse James bikes or any of those things. So you kind of you're kind of slivering down your audience a little bit to people who really appreciate what you're doing. Um, and that's where I find like the power of the ton in some ways is like you you pick up our magazine, you know what's gonna be in it as far as like style and kind of things like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Do you know? I meant to ask you, do you have you ever met Austin um Marion Metalworks? Oh, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

He's been in he's been in the magazine.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Okay, that's what I thought.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

We did a whole thing on the Eugene Tramps and Issue 8. Yeah. Yeah, uh both I and Liam Kennedy, who's a um photographer out of now out of New York, who's um you know, he's been in the New York Times and stuff like that. That we did stuff. So he did photos of the Wisconsin tramps, and I did the uh Eugene Tramps. We put together an article on that. Cool. And then we featured uh Austin, Jared, and Kyle's bikes.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

That kid's a whiz. He is a whiz. It's funny. I I met them, I live in Dallas, Oregon, and they had a little shop. I don't know if you ever did you ever go to the one that was behind the movie theater? Yeah, yeah. I met them, I met Austin, I don't remember, through the show scene and everything, and he invited me over there one day. He's like, ride your shovel head over here. And everybody's seen my shovel heads, not your typical shovel head, whatever. But uh, I rolled in there and all the kids are in there, you know, with the choppers up on the stumps and stuff. I was like, you guys are really keeping it alive. This is like when I see those guys and talk to them and you, you guys are really keeping that core original chopper life lifestyle. Well, yeah, I mean, I think I think it's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

They're they're a good example of people who are because they're a bit younger than me. You know, I'm in the like time when I'm getting closer to 50 than than they are. So like um it's people younger who really will be the people who carry it through. And they're also the people who they're the decision point that money people have to look at. Like they're going to they're not none of them are buying new bikes, right? Yep, yep. So what what kind of does that say about an industry, right? When a lot of the younger people aren't buying new bikes. So I think that's the thing to kind of watch in that regard, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:45

So looking forward, what what would it take for Tim to come back to the PacWest motorcycle show, maybe do a little side chopper show for me? Maybe someday.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

I think it's just I think it's timing. Timing, yeah. Yeah, I think it's timing because really it's like it has to be a time where I'm not doing other things. Understood. I totally totally get it. And I I like where you're going with the new location, and that's something we've been talking about ourselves, is like small town um kind of integration with shows so that it kind of helps boost kind of smaller town, like empty downtown space economies, you know. Um I mean, we don't want to make it like Hollister or something like that. No, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing that. But we're gonna have to do that. But we want to support a town and support local businesses. That's kind of our whole deal. Um so it's just it's a timing, all of that's timing things and um of as much advanced notice as possible because like once you get towards the end of the year, people are already saying, This is when I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Yeah, yeah. It's so hard to squeeze it all in.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

You gotta pee on the tree, man. Yep. You uh do you go to Mama Tride? Do I go to Mama Tribe? I have not gone to Mama Tride because uh that's typically during legislative session or just before. So it's really difficult to I I have gone to Milwaukee. I spent two weeks there during the 115th anniversary year because of work. I I was there for something else, but then I stayed for the um you know Harley Homecoming. And at then it wasn't like annual, which it was annual for a few years, but back then it wasn't. Um, and so like it's nothing against Milwaukee. I love Milwaukee, it's just and those guys are great. I've met them all, they're all really cool. Um, and all the ancillary people like Geared Science, like that channel, the person who runs it, kind of uh been really good to us. Our buddy Rick, Chicken Rick, um, was a huge early supporter of the ton. Um, you know, so it's not it's just a timing thing, usually, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Um I'd highly recommend. Yeah, you would I think you would love it. The setting, just the setting. I mean, you've seen the pictures. Yeah, I I know it, I know it's where everything is and everything.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

And I know that building, actually, in fact. So um, like everything about that, like I've been in every building it's in, like the Pfizer building. Um, I went to the opening event there um because there was like $15. You could see Violent Fems and the Killers. Wow. I'm like, oh shit, and it's like next door to my hotel that I'm seeing. I'm like, okay. So like, yeah, I'll go. Um, and so I've been to like every building that it's so I could vision it really, envision it really clearly in my head, um, and then match up with photos. So it it's just a weird quirk. I haven't been able to make it work out.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

I'm bouncing all around, but I've been collecting information you talked about. You said you mentioned something about the Rolling Stones magazine. You were you were in the magazine?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

I mean, yeah, I've been in that magazine.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

But come on, tell me a little bit. I'm sitting here. I started motorcycle royalty.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Come on, not everybody's in the Rolling Stones magazine. Well, and I've been in spin and like a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. I mean, I started playing music when I was like 13 and touring and putting out records before I was done in high school, and then I did that all the way up to COVID when I was 41. So you get into certain bands that get some hype, you know, and you get like little articles or blurbs. Like it's not like I was on a cover or a giant interview or anything, but like, you know, a good half-page thing with a photo. Actually, the photographer of the photo from The Rolling Stone was just out there talking a bit ago, Andy. Um but uh and we shot it in the Capitol building here in Olympia, which is funny. Yeah, but uh yeah, so like I I've done that kind of for a while. Like, you know, I got to a certain point where I could do it full-time, and I did do it full-time for a few years, but there's no health benefits, all that. You start getting a little older with family, you have to start thinking through some stuff and life choices about that full-time thing. But we always were at the like for the people in the northwest, like the crystal ballroom kind of, or like people in LA, like the Echo, right? Like, or uh, you know, the observatory, or like we were at that level, like, but never could break past that level. And that's really the like for me, the litmus is like if I can't break past this level without going even harder, like it's it's a it's not a full-time thing for me. Okay, I kind of just topped out at that level, which I mean you're doing okay at that level. Let's not knock that's a great level to be at for a lot of people. But you also have to think in 2020, with the monetization of of of bands and like with all the you're not making the same money even touring that you used to. Like it it the money aspect of being in a band started getting worse for everyone. And almost anyone in the industry would talk about the decline in funds, and there there are bands out there who actively go into debt touring, but they're doing it to try and promote songs that that they could license or get streaming royalties or something out of. Um so yeah, and you know, I've been in a couple bands that had tour support from labels and ones who didn't, and I kind of found the ones that didn't, we always did better financially in some ways.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

That's wild. That's that that's really cool. We're we're uh like I said, I'm bouncing all around here, just looking forward. What do you have anything new coming up or what would any ideas? Anything you want to clue us in on?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Or well, I mean, we always have the next issue, right? So like yeah, the next issue, the pre-orders are out now. Um the next event for us would be the chopper show uh down in Callis County, which you can um there's uh on our Instagram where you can find how to register for. And then Rally in the Valley August 1st, which you just have to show up. There's no money involved, you just ride your bike in. And that one is a feeder show for the final verdict. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

I love that. I'm really excited about how that's gonna turn out. So you mentioned you guys came down to the Pac West Pac West, well, it was V Twin show. Uh that was the first year. It was the first year. That was my first year. Yeah, I was I loved it that you guys showed up and everything. What was your takeaway? Any good, bad, uh for putting on my first show on a golf course by any means. I mean, you've been around the show scene.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Well, it was a different, it's a different crowd than what we typically like Dyna Bros don't necessarily gravitate to a chopper magazine, but they did buy shirts and hats. So that's good. Um yeah, no, I don't have any criticisms too much. There's things that are always outside of your control with the show, right? So you can't control a fight, you can't control like who shows up or not, as far as like uh what niche, as we talked about, right? So um, but it was well attended, people had fun, there was bathrooms and food, so you didn't have people mad at you for uh that kind of stuff. Um and garbage cans. And garbage cans, so you didn't trash the place. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

I have this weird thing about shows, like when I go to other shows, I don't pick them apart, but I go, like I went to a couple shows, they didn't have garbage cans. Yeah. And it's like, how can you need garbage can? You see people walking around with their garbage, like, what am I gonna do with this? Like, so I always my mind for setting up my show is like, okay, how can this flow? My things flow. Like, yeah, how can I keep people?

SPEAKER_01 39:19

That's funny you say that because now I remember there was like a garbage can dead center in the middle of the show. Yeah, like because he had it as a like circle, yeah, and he had a garbage can right in the middle.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

We had him like strategic. I think we even my buddy Austin from ADHD Cycles, he he's an engineer by trade and mechanic, but he lays out the show every year in I guess CAD. CAD, yeah. Yeah, every every inch is laid out, and I think that year we even laid the garbage cans out.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

That that that tracks, that makes sense. You know, I I I do think that um it was a little outside of town, which that always like that's something we we kind of always have to keep in mind when we went to the fairground, right? Right, so it's not in the core of a town. That has some considerations to go through, but um, I think moving it to Dallas where it's in the core of that city's downtown, that gives people who want to get out for a minute something to do rather than like oh I have to go and ride like 12 miles to go do something and then ride 12 miles back. Those are all things to that I always kind of try and consider about like placement of a show, and also it's different, different shows are different. Like I say that, but then if your show involves camping, like Dreamroll or Northwest Moto Fest or Northwest Bike Fest, like you know, totally being away from a town is is good, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Right. Yeah, centrally located, not centrally located, involving the community, not involving the community.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Yeah, there's it just depends on like what the decision, like what the concept and the decision really is.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

Yeah, this year's gonna be it's gonna be different, I think, in a really good way. It just uh totally shifting gears and planning in two and a half months. But that's hard. It takes me a year, but whatever. It is what it is. When you put on you said the in the invitational is the first show, the feeder show? Is it called?

SPEAKER_01 41:11

No, no, no, it's the rally in the valley. Rally in the valley, sorry. And the the the final verdict is is the invitation.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Okay, okay. So Rally in the Valley, do you put that on yourself? But you said you had a friend that helps you with that, or it's me and Drew and Susan and Drew's partner, Lucy. Okay, and you guys, you're you're the you're that show. You that you guys do all of that.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Yeah, I mean we do all the shows we do, we all that's the that's the show crew. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, best food. Really?

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Yeah, Rally in the Valley is at the Valley in downtown Tacoma, Pewlet Valley, and their food. The reason it started there is um the Tacoma and Olympia Breakfast Club, we used to meet there for breakfast. Really? And so then when the Breakfast Club decided to do Dilly Dally and Valley, and you know, Drew and them did that, and we just donated stuff, you know, whatever. Um it was because the you know, we were raising money there. And then that kind of was like, Oh, let's do it again. COVID happened, we didn't do it again, let's do it again, and then then it was like, Oh, this is gonna be bigger than we we want it, like you just take it. And so then we changed the name, okay, kind of took it and had Drew um involved and and Aaron and other people who are part of the Breakfast Club, like it kind of morphed out of that. Cool. Um, and like we wouldn't have approached the valley or thought of it or worked with it if it wasn't for like the nexus of those people doing the dilly-dally and then saying let's do it again, and then kind of how that morphed over time. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

And you said that the rally in the valley, there's no entering a bike or anything, you just show up, and if somebody likes your bike, it's well, it's I mean, there's judges, but it's it's it's a classic ride-in.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

You just if you have a chopper, or even there's a swing arm category, but you just show up and then um yeah, we have judges who select the winner. There's there's no I'm not actually this is probably controversial, so this might be a clip. Teaches them, bro. I'm not a fan of uh people who are in the in a crowd voting for a bike. I I there's people who stuff ballots for it. Oh, some people vote for a bike. I'm with you on the topic. Some people be like, oh, yeah, well, that guy's brother died. What's that guy's brother have to do with the bike? You know, things like that. Like, there's just so many different kinds of factors around it that actually I rather have either builders vote for it or you have judges who you trust.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

100%.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

And uh so like at Rally, you'll we'll get people who's like, Well, how do I vote? I'm like, you don't. Well, I want to vote. Like, well, too bad. You didn't pay for anything, so like free.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

I know exactly where you're coming from, and that's not to me not controversial at all. I've witnessed it at other shows, I witnessed it like people's choice, for example. I mean that's I've seen hey hey go vote for my buddy or uh seen people grab handfuls of the you know wallets and stuff like that. It's just there then you you literally lose control of it.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

So I mean yeah I mean I I think I respect how they kind of whittle down to people's shit. So like by the time you get to the final of that one, like they're they're all cream of the crop bikes.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Correct. So true, true, true, true.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

But on a ride-in show, yeah, no, I think that's cool. Like you know, I I don't want the the clapped-out meth iron head to win over something that someone spent all this time and effort into, you know.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

I think uh this year because we had to change everything up and we're gonna be out in the open environment, and we've always had a a two-day show where everybody I tried to get everybody to leave their bikes overnight. You know, it's tough to get somebody to leave their show bike, you know. So this year we're gonna do, which we're also a feeder for the final verdict. Um, we're gonna do all our awards on Saturday and submissions this year. It's always been an open show, but I can only take a certain amount of bikes. We're gonna do submissions this year. For Sunday, I I'm working on it right now. It's gonna be a thing, and I don't mind saying it on here, but I'm gonna do a ride-in show on Sunday for anybody that obviously didn't make the submissions for Saturday, but I think we'll do like a I haven't really come up with an amount, or we'll say 10 bucks to get in. Winner take all, but whoever has your bike in the show votes and that's it. So winner takes all of that entry money. So 10 bikes show up, and that's the winning but we get 50 bikes, there's the there's the pot. Yeah, just kind of make it fun like that where they can vote for themselves, yeah or vote for each other. Yeah, so yeah. Make it fun. Um make it not all about yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

I mean, you asked kind of because I travel a lot and I work with government, what I think where we are as a mankind, and you know, we're in one of those dark valleys. Um, and it's not just America, you look at the rise of um extremism in a lot of countries. But the thing that people have to look at if you know despair despair kind of clouds everything, right? Um the the length of time that these valleys last is not a lot of a lot of years, right? So if you want to talk about like the the you know World War II era, right? So you're talking 1933 is night of the long knives, which is really the real start of um Nazism as people know it, and then you're going till about 1945, 46, depending on how you calculate it. That's that's not really a terrible amount of time compared to the the span of time of of like kind of modern politics, right? So there will be a time when things look brighter for those who look brighter and th and tides do shift, but um, we're definitely worldwide, whether you're in America or Japan or you know, Hungary or Italy, Hungary is like the kind of bright spot of some kind of movement away from uh darker times. So there are these these kind of signalers, even with a kind of closing of uh um like totalitarianism or jingoism or any of those isms. So I I think that we'll pull out of it, but it doesn't mean you take the eye off the ball and fight for what you believe. And uh that's the beauty of democracy is you have a voice and a vote, and if you're ceding that voice or vote to other people, then you're you're kind of have no space to complain one way or the other. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Yeah, so I the reason we kind of brought it up was it seems that the the driving force behind the ton is art and the expression of and how that's yeah, I mean I think the driving force is like the marriage of community and art, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Like um it's not necessarily just to make money or anything like that. The commodification of it is just to be able to fund it to kind of keep going. Right. Um, and my personality type is like everything I do, um, there's an art to it. Like even approaching the legislature, there's certainly an art to public speaking and things like that. But um, you know, I come from an arts background, you know, a master's fine arts, all that kind of stuff. Um, and I've been fortunate to uh be a punk rocker and be punk rock and uh do it myself and also live in a community. I moved here in 1988 that is all about kind of community and um about utilizing music and art to put forth uh what you feel is right and just in life. And so that expression and influence really informs how we go about things with a ton. So our driving purpose is to uh get more voices out there and to diversify the voices. Um you know, the kind of white motorcycle bro voice is well represented, and I'm not saying that it needs to go away or anything like that, but it's well represented. But you don't have, even though they're you know close to 25% of the riding population now, a uh as robust of a voice with women represented. You don't see 25% of your media having women riders or builders, you don't see um a robust representation of people of color, you don't see a robust representation of people with different ideas on sexuality and gender. And so we want to offer a forum to have um it be about motorcycles and to be about the art of motorcycles, but that other people's voices can be represented in that discussion, and that that way we're a global community of people discussing our love of motorcycles from very different points of view in a way that is not antagonistic towards each other, but sharing in our love of the thing that we're all talking about.

SPEAKER_00 50:05

I I like that, I like that a lot. That's yes, 100%. Okay. So uh uh man, we're approaching an hour here. So we're talking about art and stuff. Uh what's your opinion on AI? AI and art.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

Well, I mean, I I've made no bones about my hate of it. Um I hate when I see a a show poster and I could tell it's AI because that there's certain telltale signs and it's lazy. Um, it's also theft, and people don't think about it this way. The reason AI art exists is because they're gathering aggregate data from other people's art and then taking that aggregate data to create something out of it. So if it wasn't for artists' actual work who are underpaid, who are working hard, this wouldn't exist. And so rather than spending little effort and little time stealing from someone, get like 50 to 100 bucks together and get a tattoo artist or your friend who knows how to draw or anything, it I rather see fucking show flyers that are MS paint look like stick figures, like yeah, yeah, it could be the worst looking flyer as long as it's done by a human hand, I wouldn't mind. Um, I you know, we have this flyer for um the uh the ride-in show, Rally in the Valley 5, and uh and it's also we have a like a tour shirt we're making out of it, and it's on our Instagram and stuff, and it's you know, a really well-drawn Mount St. or Mount Rainier erupting, and then this creature on a motorcycle coming down from it. Uh Travis Stanley did the art for that, and it it took him forever. And the background is like Rum level detail, like really, really detailed. And some guys like, too bad it's AI. And it's like, Motherfucker, that's not AI. Like, you don't even know the difference. That's how bad AI is getting. It is that is hand-drawn, and then I did all the layout and font work and all the like graphic design over it. It took forever, it took two individuals. We did it on the cheap, but we did it ourselves. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

Like, and exactly like, come on.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

Like AI. It drains our water resources, it pollutes the earth, it raises our cost of everything, and it steals from artists. Why would you support that?

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Totally feel you, brother. Totally feel you. That's my soapbox. Yep. Um well, if you are on board with my friend Tim and myself here and you want to support the Ton and any of the shows that he puts on, why don't you tell us where we can find you and how we can get a hold of you, my friend?

SPEAKER_01 52:50

Yeah, I mean, you can find us through most like common channels, but like the Tun Mag on Instagram is our main info, external info uh thing. We're on Facebook as The Tun Mag as well. We have a website, thetunMag.com. The only wrench in all of this is uh our YouTube is YouTube.com at the TunMagazine because someone who likes guns already took the ton mag for some reason.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. And uh sounds like we're probably gonna see each other a few more times this year. Yeah. Uh for sure at the final verdict show. I'm excited about that. That's gonna be that's gonna be fun. That's gonna be really fun. Maybe I can build a chopper in that time.

SPEAKER_01 53:32

Well, you'd have to get it into another show. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 53:35

That's right. How's this gonna work? Maybe next year. Maybe next year.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

I don't think it has to be a chopper for that show, though, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Oh, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

That is true.

SPEAKER_00 53:43

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 53:43

Well, if it's not your lame. Kidding kidding.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

Oh, oh, what watch an well, I'm not judging at my show and what you watch a non-chopper a win or something, and you're like, you lame. I just appreciate the art on that note of motorcycles. I like you said, we're from different niches. Yeah. And I, you know, it's uh if it's two wheels, it's art to me. And so, yeah. There you go. There you go. Thanks again, Mateer. We love you guys. Thank you very much.