ClarkCast Chapter 15: Robert St. John Is Awesome!

Robert St. John is a chef, author, philanthropist, father, husband, and much more

St. John has spent four decades in the restaurant business. Thirty-six of those years have been as the owner of the Crescent City Grill, Mahogany Bar, Branch, Tabella, Ed’s Burger Joint, The Midtowner, and Loblolly Bakery in Hattiesburg, MS, and Enzo Osteria in Ridgeland, Mississippi. His Gulfport spot, The Downtowner, is set to open soon.

St. John is the author of thirteen books, including An Italian Palate, which was written in Europe while St. John, his wife, and his two children traveled through 72 cities, in 17 countries, on two continents for six months.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Clark Cast is on the air.

SPEAKER_02 0:02

All right. Robert St. John. I know you're a big fan of music. You're you're very open about that. Post about that a lot on social media. What are three songs? They don't have to be the three songs, but three songs that have greatly impacted your life that you never get tired of hearing.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

I think I froze up there. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

We'll start back over. You want to do it again? Yeah, man. Because I'm going to use this as the real. The rest of it will just be audio and Spotify.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Robert St. John, you're uh you're a big music fan. You you post a lot about music, write about music in your columns. What are three songs? They don't have to be the three songs, but three songs that have greatly impacted your life that you know you never get tired of listening to.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Um it's great, man. That's so hard. I love man. I am a music fan from way, way, way back. Um golly. So it's it's like picking a favorite child or something. But I'll I'll say, so I'm a huge Beatles guy. The very first 45 I ever owned for anybody under 60, a 45 is a small vinyl uh record that's a single. First one I ever owned was I Wanna Hold Your Hand by the Beatles. And so I became a Beatles fan early, but that didn't that wouldn't be one I chose. I would chose because probably my favorite Beatles song, Strawberry Fields Forever. Um I love that song. Um if you if you dig into the the history of of how that song was written, it's just it's pretty amazing, and it's worth a deeper uh dive after after somebody watches or listens to this podcast to to go into all the you can find on the Beatles anthology albums the different um incarnations of that song as it as it came about and and what they ended up doing, you know, and and all Beatles stuff was four tracks, you know, obvious, obviously nothing digital, but four tracks analog, and and for them to be able to pull off what they pulled off, especially in that song, which is actually two songs, and they had to slow down the tape on one to blend it into the other. And uh it's pretty amazing. Then there's a whole drum like Ringo and Paul, I think, went into the studio one night and just messing around on drum tracks. That got added in, which was in a whole different tempo. So just that song, um, I've been to Strawberry Fields, was which was an orphanage uh in Liverpool, that um where where Paul and John grew up in that neighborhood. Uh Paul wrote kind of a similar song in this at the same time, Penny Lane, which was about growing up in Liverpool too. And um, you know, though I think both of those examples, if you look at them, are very Paul and John. John is that introspective, um, you know, no one is in my tree, which is, you know, is I'm I'm the only one like me kind of thinking like that. And and Paul's all the happy, you know, the barber and the you know, the the selling poppies on a tray, all the upbeat stuff. So uh one of my songs would be Strawberry Fields Forever. Uh it's hard to even choose a one Beatles song, but that one is my favorite. Something more recent, uh, really, I guess recent for me, is in the last 10 years. Uh, Jason Isbell wrote a song called Dream Cickle, right? Which to me is is maybe the one of the most perfectly written songs ever. I'm a writer, I'm a restaurateur by trade, but but I'm also a writer for the last 25 years, and and efficiency in writing uh is so important to where every line and every word and every sentence counts. And in that song, every line, every word, every sentence counts. And it's it's it's by it's autobiographical about his youth. And it, you know, his dad was pretty bad alcoholic and a terrible example, and and how he tells that story so effectively and in that song is is is pretty amazing. So there's number two. Um man, I wish I would have had more time to think about this because it's really it's so hard. But so I've got a I'm a huge Led Zeppelin fan, and I want to pick a Zeppelin fan, but also I I think maybe I should pick some because do you know who Bob Schneider is? Bob Schneider's a singer-songwriter from Austin. Okay. Uh I'm a huge fan of his. Uh I'd I'd like to pick one of his, but man, I got I think I'm going with.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Dude, you this is torturing. No, this is the fun stuff, man. This is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Do the people you have on here, do they have this much trouble?

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Every anybody who takes it deeply always has as much trouble, you know. Yeah, absolutely. I asked the singer for Sticks the same question, or the same the singer for 38 Special, and it was like, oh my god, how can I pick a Beatles song? How can I, you know, I get it. I'd hate to be in that spot.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

So I'm going. I'm cheating right now because I'm looking at my Spotify list of favorites.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

I know, man. That's it. Use your refund.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

And then there's too many on there. So um, okay, let me just come down. This is this is terrible um podcasting with all this m ums and uhs. So I'm gonna I'm gonna my favorite Zeppelin song is Immigrant Song, which is a rocker. And uh that's on Led Zeppelin 3, which came out probably when I was 10 years old. It was the hardest thing I had ever heard. Um I I first heard it, and my my mom, I was raised by a single mom, and she uh she would go visit friends and they would have cocktails and drinks, and she didn't want to couldn't afford a babysitter, probably. So I would go along, and they just end up sticking me in in you know, in one of their teenagers' rooms, and I'd get free reign on the record collection. That's where I heard a lot of stuff. I can I can drive around Hattiesburg today and point to a house, actually to the room. Third, that second floor room right there on the end is where I heard Led Zeppelin III for the first time. And this house is the first time I heard uh George Harrison sing this, and there's where I heard Steppenwolf. And you know, my my musical history goes all around town around here, but I'm going with Immigrant Song, although I love uh when the levee breaks as well, but that's a cover, so let's let's go with uh immigrant song.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

And Leg Zeppelin 3, I'm sure the edition you had as a child had the great dial cover on it where you could spin it, you know, amazing.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Yeah, and I still have it.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

I still have the the original awesome My guest today needs no introduction, but he certainly deserves an introduction. Robert St. John, he's a chef, an author, philanthropist, lover of music and life, father, husband, world traveler, restaurateur, cheerleader for Hattiesburg, advocate for South Mississippi, and just a general lover of Mississippi in general. And that's reducing you way down. I could I could make your intro a lot longer. But man, thank you so much for taking time to do this.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Oh man, this is look, this is I could do this really for an hour. I could I could break down every that that um I've got a if anybody wants to hear this, you can go to my Spotify's R W S T J O H N, which is Robert St. John with the W in the middle. But um, there's if you look up R SJ favorite songs, you would see that's why it's so hard for me to choose. I don't know how many are on there, but man, I love music. Uh I always have. It looks like a hundred and no. Yeah, 286 songs.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

You know, I'm glad you said that because I I was researching that earlier. I was like looking for you on Spotify so I could be like, hey, I saw you like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah but thank you for for sharing your handle, and I'll definitely uh check that out. You know, man, I I want to start with one of the the things that I love most about you and what you do, and that's extra table. Like, I I want to start right there. We could talk about the music and and all the other things, but you know, man, I've known Martha Allen, Martha Allen Price now, you know, since she was uh working for the chamber in West Point and I was working for a newspaper up there. Lovely person, amazing human being. But like tell me about Extra Table. I I know you've been doing it for years now. Uh like what what what what made you want to do that and how successful it's become, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Well, so here um right uh I'm in my office right now, which is right across the street from a lot of the restaurants that we have, and and right over there in this room is a desk with a telephone on it. I was sitting there one day about 16 years ago, I guess, and I got a call from a place called Edward Street Fellowship Center. That's a food pantry, and they're at the time they were feeding about 800 families a month, and they had completely run out of food. I mean, they were totally out of food, and they asked if I could help, and I thought, sure, I'm happy to help. Um, it's run by the Methodist Church here in Hattiesburg, and my church is uh one of the churches that sponsored it and happy to help us. I figured the quickest, best, easiest way to help them would be uh call one of my broadliner uh food suppliers and just put together an order and have them drop ship it to Edward Street, which I did, and they did, and then they ended up getting food, and and that's kind of how it started. I thought, well, I you know, I bet if there were an easier, more efficient way to get food to these agencies that they wouldn't run out of food. But to be honest with you, I was a little skeptical that there was even a hunger problem at all in Mississippi. I thought, you know, this is America. I can see some third world Central American country having a problem serving their citizenry, but not here. And so I went on kind of a fact-finding mission. Um I was going to go across the state and just research this and see if it was a problem. If so, I would help. And I didn't have to go far before I learned it's a huge problem. And um and so I came up with this idea of what if every business and every home had an extra table where they could feed those in need. And if so, what would that look like? And and so I founded extra table 16 years ago on two founding principles. Number one, 100% of the money we raise for food is gonna go to purchase food. I didn't want to be a part of any charity where all you got all these big extravagant travel expenses and high-paid salaries at the top, and all that is like nothing. 100% of the money we raise for food goes to purchase food. So I started a whole separate 501c3 to take care of the uh administrative costs and travel and which are very minimal. None, none for me. I'm I'm never taking a dime. I only only give. Because when I went on that fact-finding mission, uh looking at other food pantries and and soup kitchens, uh, what I saw were a lot of them were surviving on uh food drives, like canned food drives, which they won't tell you and they shouldn't tell you, but are the most inefficient way to feed the the hungry in any place. And because unfortunately, it's an opportunity for people to just what they do is they just empty their shelves. And so I was going through these places and I was seeing things like blueberry pie filling. And some kid who's getting out of school that's not gonna eat again until the next day doesn't need blueberry pie filling. So, number one, 100% of the money we raise for food is gonna go to purchase food, and that's still the story today. Number two, it's gonna be healthy food. So low-fat proteins, low sugar fruits, healthy grains, low sodium vegetables. And that's how it started. And it started with that one center, and today we're we're serving over two million meals to over 70 agencies across the state. It's a great thing. And those agencies pay zero. We ship all that food at no cost to the agency. So we go, it's a simple formula. We raise money, we use that money to purchase food below wholesale, then we deliver it free to agencies uh across the state. And so for those listening or watching, um, Mississippi uh used to be number one in food insecurity. We are not number one anymore, which is good news, but we're a relatively small state, 2.9 million people. Out of that 2.9 million people, 670,000 are what the government calls food insecure. So that's like 20 percent. Um out of that 670,000, over 200,000 are school kids who eat a school breakfast and a school lunch and don't eat again until the next day. That's a real thing. Uh over 125,000 are senior citizens who right now are trying to figure out can I pay my light bill or can I go to the grocery store? It's like a real thing. There's there's so many veterans. And so I grew up with a single mom. She was a public school art teacher. We had no money, but I never missed a meal. And so I was just ignorant to the fact that this is a real thing. And and people you know, people you encounter every day that you would never suspect um don't have enough food to lead a healthy lifestyle, or you know, and there's so many people across the state. We're also number one in obesity, or used to be. I think we're off that now. And I had a problem with that too, because I'm like, well, somebody's eating something. How can this happen? And what I learned, and the more I researched, is those two always go hand in hand. Because if you don't have enough food to lead a healthy, proper lifestyle, you're basically living out of a convenience store, drinking the drinking the cheapest sugar-laden soft drinks and eating snack foods. And that's a real thing, too. And and some kid in school who needs to be learning, you know, math and English and history, if if his stuff, his or her stomach's growling, they're they're not worried about anything else other than where where's my next meal coming from. It's our most basic human need. Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Um, you know, another thing that I'll that I'd like to talk to you about is, you know, before I moved down here and started working for the Sun Herald, uh I lived up in North Mississippi. So my uh familiarity with Robert St. John was uh especially when I was working for the Cupelo paper, the one in Amory, uh once a year, the Amory Chamber, Monroe County Chamber of Commerce, or had a would have a benefit like a gala thing, and the the headlining rock show act would always be you and and Wyatt Waters. Um so I was talking to uh to Mary Ryan Brown, who's a friend of mine and a longtime friend of yours, and uh she was telling me that her grandmother, the you know, extraordinary Dr. Francis Carnes, like kind of played a role in putting that John and Paul relationship together of you and Wyatt, you know?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yeah, yeah, and it's funny you said it because Wyatt is a huge Beatles fan too, and that's kind of how we connected originally. But yeah, I'll give you that story. So Francis Carnes, who was the uh founder and leader of the gifted studies program here at USM in Hattiesburg, uh, was a not a frequent customer, an everyday customer in the former fine dining restaurant, Purple Pearl Cafe, which was 32 years we were open. She was she was literally in here every day. And the way she was, she was always um instigating something. She was always Robert, you ought to do this, Robert, you ought to do that. And one day she just got on this kick. She said, Robert, you need to do a cookbook. And I was like, Francis, I don't have time to do a cookbook. I'm writing this food column. You know, I've got a couple of restaurants open. Uh, maybe my daughter had just been born, I think. I don't know. Next time I'd see her, Robert, you ought to do a cookbook. This went on for weeks. And then one day I went out to chase. She was at a table in those days. I was working in the kitchen every day cooking, and I walked out to a table. She had a gentleman with her. She said, Robert, come here, sit down. This is uh Barney McKee with Quail Ridge Press. Tell him about your cookbook. Well, I didn't, you know, I'd never even thought of having a cookbook. And so, but I was like, okay, I gotta, I gotta think quick. And I said, Okay, uh, Frank, if I were to do a cookbook, I would have recipes I developed here at the restaurant over the years. Um, I would have stories like what I write in the newspapers about uh growing up in the south, food in the south, life in the south, and I would have watercolors by Wyatt Waters. And this man said, without missing a beat, really, he said, Well, if you got Wyatt Waters, you got a book deal. They had published a book by Wyatt that was very successful, and I had seen that book, and uh, but the problem is I didn't know Wyatt Waters, I just liked the work. And so I went up the next day. I drove to Clinton and uh went into his gallery, shook his hand, said, Hey, you know, uh I'm Robert St. John. I've got an idea for something that would be like a coffee table cookbook with my recipes and and your art with stories in it. And we talked about that for about 15 minutes, then we talked about the Beatles for about the next four hours.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Right on.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

And um the the that's how that book uh and that relationship started. We ended up doing four books together and a lot of traveling around and had a TV show uh called Palette to Palette on PBS. We did five seasons of that tours over in Europe. I mean, just great relationship.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Do do you still get together? You still put the band together occasionally?

SPEAKER_01 19:49

No, not we we don't see each other so much these days, and he's uh still considered him one of my best friends ever. Um, he got remarried, and he and his wife uh work work together. He's a he's happy why at his painting every day, which is really what he wants to do. I think um on you know, when it came to us traveling together, uh he he wanted probably more time to sit and focus and concentrate on a painting and not be as fast as we were, you know, moving or whatever. But no, we um I've got just the utmost uh admiration, love, and respect for that man. He's awesome. And and Francis Carnes is really the the reason we ever did anything together.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

Awesome. Uh, you know, going back to to music we were talking about earlier, Mississippi, like probably one of the you know, one of the richest histories of music in the nation. Um, living Mississippi musician. Who who are some of your favorite living Mississippi musicians?

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Uh uh Mac McInally.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

A lovely man.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Good friend of mine. We had lunch a couple of weeks ago. Um he and I have uh have connected over the years and stayed in touch, and there I got tons of stories there. Uh Carrie Hudson, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Great guy, known him a long time.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yeah, I like Eden Brent, um uh blues lady up in the Delta. Uh Kingfish, I think, is just fantastic. Um Grits and Greens is a group here. Um I don't know. Are you familiar with Grits and Greens?

SPEAKER_02 21:29

No, I'm not, but I'll I'll check it out. They're gonna be something.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

They're a local Hattiesburg group, but they are awesome. Also, there's a group called Royal Horses around here, and both of those bands are stellar, young kids, probably in their 20s, maybe a few hitting 30, but um living as far as living musicians, those those top my list uh as of right now.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

I'm a big uh I'm a big Jimbo Mathis fan. I I like what he does for the state, you know. I f I find I think he's super interesting. Uh Pat Sanson, just a lovely human being. You know, he's he he does a lot to bring you know recognition to music.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Backing up on uh Jimbo is that Squirrel Nut Zippers, that first Squirrel Nut Zippers album was revolutionary to me. It was really if anybody doesn't know Squirrel Nut Zippers, go back. Um, and it's it's almost like 1920s kind of flapper music. Uh that's just a little bit of ragtime-ish thing. It was excellent. And um yeah, check that first album out. It's really good.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

It was great, and then they ended up having like an MTV hit, you know. They they were you know quite hot there for a while. And it was people like like Jimbo and Pat. So, you know, growing up in North Mississippi, I didn't have a brother or sister. Well, I had a sister who's younger than me, but like I didn't have anyone. I got like very pigeonholed, like liked heavy metal because I thought it was rebellious, and now I just the things that I listened to just seemed kind of silly, and I wish I'd been listening to other stuff, some of it, but like it was like Jimbo and Pat and people like that, Glenn Graham, the drummer who's in Blind Melon from Columbus, who who exposed me to things like Big Star and things like that, that just seemed like totally exotic to me when I was in my early 20s or late teens, you know. And I'm super grateful for learning about that music, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Weren't there two guys from Columbus and Blind Melon?

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Well, there were three from the Golden Triangle. So the bass player uh was Brad Smith and then Roger Stevens, the guitar player, and then Glenn Graham. And I went to school with Rogers and Brad, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Those guys still playing music?

SPEAKER_02 23:40

They they they do. Um, you know, they they go out to play a few dates in in the summer, things like that. You know, Rogers, the the guy's one of my childhood best friends, he actually got his law degree, so he practices law now, and then just like where was Shannon Hoon from?

SPEAKER_01 23:56

How did they meet?

SPEAKER_02 23:57

He was born, he he's from uh Lafayette, Indiana, which was like the same place Axel Rose was from. And then so they had all like after high school moved out to LA. I think Shannon had moved out, and like Rogers and Christopher or Rogers and Brad, so people from the Golden Triangle moved to LA and you know, trying to make it because back then in the late 80s and early 90s, that's what people did, right? You moved to Hollywood, you're gonna be an actor, you're gonna be a musician. And uh, I I think Shannon Hoon had that same dream. So he moved, he was out there living with Axel Rose, and then there was just like they all met. And I think you know, Rogers told me these stories, like he came to their first rehearsal with that song change, like completely fleshed out, like and they heard him pull out his guitar and sing that, and they're like, Yeah, that's that's our guy, you know. So really cool. Um, do you remember like the first song you heard or some of the first music you ever heard?

SPEAKER_01 24:50

That oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. So um the like I said, the first 45 uh there I had two 45s that my babysitter who lived across the street uh here in Haysburg gave me one was Herman's Hermits, Mrs. Brown, you've got a lovely daughter, which as a five-year-old or whatever I thought was just cool. And the other was I Wanna Hold Your Hand by the Beatles. Right. First albums I ever bought. Um actually they were cassettes. I had in 1968. I I never, my brother was an eight-track guy. I never had an A-track. I had cassett starting in in 68, and the two uh first uh those I bought was Magical Mystery Tour, which is still my favorite Beatles album. And I can talk to you forever. I was just thinking about it earlier today, where Sgt. Pepper is always considered like the best Beatles album, and Rolling Stones, a Rolling Stone magazine, I'll put in the top two or three all-time or whatever. But to me, and I can make the argument that Magical Mystery Tour, Song for Song, is a better album than Sgt. Pepper, but I bought uh Magical Mystery Tour in '68 and Wichita Lyman, the album from Glenn Campbell, which to me may be the best song ever written. And I'm a little ashamed I didn't pick Wichita Lyman now that uh we're sitting here talking about it. But that's a Jimmy Webb classic, and I love that song.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

I think, you know, I I I think people should talk about Glenn Campbell more often, honestly. Like, you know, I saw him at that uh the casino in Philadelphia a few years before he passed away, and just incredible, right? Like amazing guitar player. Roy Clark was the opening act, so it was just incredible musicianship.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

But like, you know, sick I didn't see that, man. I was he um, you know, he was he was in the wrecking crew out in LA, so a studio musician for people like Frank Sinatra, even and then toured. I think when uh Brian, you know, he toured with the Beach Boys uh at one point, maybe when Brian was out, and you know, just uh the real deal Glenn Campbell was could could pick a guitar, man.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

I mean, we I love Alan Tucson. Like I I think he wrote some of the greatest songs ever, but but Glenn Campbell kind of owned Southern Knights.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Southern Night, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Just like and there's a video you can you can see on YouTube of uh Glenn Campbell and uh Jerry Reed, like in coaching shorts with trucker hats on, may or may not have been into the substances. I have no idea. Yeah, just playing. It's it's an it's great because Jerry Reed's also awesome. Um, you know, one thing, another thing that I admire about you, and this is something I I I admire, you know, like Mary Ryan Brown's this way, Nick Saban. There's a lot of people like I like people who are have a process who are live results-based living. And I talk to my son, my son's 11, and I talk to him about that all the time. Like, if you will do X and Y and continually and do it at a high level, that hopefully Z will happen for you. And I feel like, you know, that that that's you. I mean, you you have a lot of restaurants, you're opening one here on the coast soon, you're an author, big puzzle, a lot of pieces. So, like, what's your process? How do you how do you keep it going on a daily, day-to-day basis?

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Um, you know, I've never really spent any time thinking about that. I've just uh I think uh I'm I've always been fairly creative. And uh I'm man, had they had a name for it when I was a kid, I would have been the poster child for ADHD. I mean, really seriously, you know, they all they died back then in the early 70s, I guess they diagnosed me as hyperactive. That's all they had. And so I had a teacher in the fourth grade, Miss Smith, and I'm sure I'm just bouncing around all over class and you know, not paying attention, can't focus, you know, all hopped up on fruit loops, you know, which wasn't the best thing to feed me in the morning before heading to school, you know, all the sugar. But she would she recognized that that I had a little bit of writing talent. She would really set me aside partially, you know, so I wouldn't disrupt the class, but also she and and she had me, and I would write plays. And there were plays about like monsters and things like that. And I would cast my classmates in these plays, she would let us put these things on or whatever. And and then I had a high my two years of high school English teacher um who also said at the time, I didn't believe her at the time, but she says, Oh, you you have a talent for writing. And um, and she kind of fostered that in me. And then after I graduated high school, I never even thought about it again until I was almost 40, I guess. I was so focused and tunnel vision on restaurants. And and, you know, I wanted to open a restaurant, wanted to open more and more and more. And uh, and then when the newspaper called in the late 90s and said, we want you to write a weekly column, I said no. And and they kept calling and kept asking. And finally, you know, I said, okay, I'll do it. And it was pretty bad at first because I was basically writing like an 18-year-old as a as a 40-year-old, because I hadn't written anything. It was a labor to me at that time to write a letter to someone. But after a while it got a little better, and then uh then it started getting good. Then other newspapers started calling, and you know, I've never uh I think the first column was maybe 1998, a thousand words a week. I have never missed a week since 1998. I'm like 1.3 million words later. So I think that you know, that 10,000 hours rule finally kicked in with me, and I and I got I got a little better, but um, so my process is different because I do so many different things. So writing, I'm early in the morning, like first thing, when I'm still in a little bit of sleep fog, um, I start taking notes on my phone. And when I first started writing that column, I used to, I would think of something. Oh, I need to write about that. And that's all I would do. I was just think about it and then I'd forget about it because I'm off to the next thing or whatever. And then like three years later, it would come back. So, oh yeah, I was gonna write about that. It made me so mad. And so now what I do, I'm in my phone, you know, anytime I think of anything, I open up the notes feature and I say column and I just speak, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And and if I I probably, if I just search column in my notes feature, it's probably no life, 400 things there. And I'm uh the problem is I never get right, I haven't yet on a knock on wood, gotten writer's block. So I usually Monday morning when I write, I usually know what I'm gonna write. I finish it up by I I I just spit it out, you know, not thinking of form, not thinking of punctuation or anything. I just, I just go, you know, boom, just get it out, get it out, get it out while my mind's fresh. And then I I sometimes I tighten it up then, but I always I like to come back a day later and look at it with fresh eyes and and and I see so much stuff. And so that's my process for writing. Uh for businesses, uh restaurants. Um, I am uh so I've been in the restaurant business 45 years, uh 38 as an owner. And um my job in our company, I'm the founder CEO, but really I mean I'm I do marketing, imaging, branding, vision, um, that kind of thing. That's that's my air. It's really the creative stuff. I'm blessed in my life today to have a hundred percent creative control pretty much in everything uh that I'm associated with. We've founded this uh Institute for Southern Storytelling with Anthony Thaxton up at Mississippi College. We produced some documentaries, won a couple of Emmy Awards and stuff, and and we, you know, it's just uh the creative nature of things. I think I I'm I'm I'm either cursed or blessed with a mind that never stops. I just never really I never stop. I don't I don't rest well, I don't relax well, I don't vacation well. It's it's I'm not I'm not saying that bragging. I probably should do it more, but um I I'm just always working on restaurants either. That's that's what I do. Restaurants, travel, family, not in that order.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Um obviously it takes uh a lot of people who you have a large team, a lot of people who help you be successful, who who who help keep this this car between the ditches. How do you motivate them? Like how how what's your method for how you get the best out of your team?

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Well, it's a you're 100% right. The textbooks will say location, location, location, but success in the restaurant business is management, management, management, which is leadership, leadership, leadership, really. And we've got uh it's about 450 people that work for the company and almost everyone in leadership position for uh for all of the years. We've had over 10,000 people work for the company over the years, and probably I don't know, 600 people who were in leadership. I hired four managers in 1987 and really hadn't hired a manager since. We just promote from within. And and uh today, right, two offices down, two doors down in this office is Jared Patterson, who's been with us 18 years. He started as a waiter while he was in school. He's a COO now. And and I'm the very first employee we ever hired, Beverly McCurdy, is over there prepping in the kitchen right now. So it is people. And I'll I'll tell you a story that the early on, you know, I was in the kitchen doing about 90 hours a week for the first four years, and we started getting some press, and people were writing about us, they were writing about me, and you know, it probably went to my head and blew my ego up a little bit. I'm like, you know, I'm looking me, look at what I'm doing. And this thing happened one day, and somebody called in. We were getting ready for lunch, and somebody called in and had a flat tire, you know, you get a lot of that, and then somebody else called, and their grandmother, you know, had died. And and we were faced with lunch, and it was like me and and one or two other people, and it hit me right there. You know what, bud? It ain't you. We're you know, we we need these people here to pump out this lunch. It takes a full team. And my buddy Bill Latham, uh, rest in peace, uh, great Mississippi restaurateur, used to say the most important person in a restaurant is the dishwasher. She said, You try to get through a Friday night without a dishwasher. And he's absolutely right. So it's it's every absolutely everybody. And we hire in our company, we hire for attitude. Anytime we're hiring people, you'll always see now hiring happy people. And and if we can hire happy people who are you know fairly intelligent and sharp and will show up on time, we can take care of the rest. We can we can train how to serve and we we can train how to cook, but we can't train somebody to have a positive attitude at all.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

You know, you mentioned in that about you know being humble about stuff kind of getting to your head. You know, I know you've been sober over 40 years now, which you know I I admire. I'm I'm 15 in it myself. Hey, you know, um, but what I admire about you and like you know, another person that had this thing, Art Alexis, who's like the singer, guitar player in the band Everclear, he's been sober a long time as well, like you, and y'all were able to do this before your success, right? Like I uh I spent a long time, you know, my wife and my son know nothing about that part of my life. They've never seen that. Like the great things in my life have happened in the last 15 years. Are you grateful that you were able to to put that behind you or start working on it before you had all this success?

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was 21 when I got clean and so that's amazing. I had my I was I I was on the fast track. I was really on the fast track to to a you know cemetery, but I had my first beer at 14, and by 19, I was sticking needles in my arms. I mean, I was hardcore. And uh and at 21 and May 25th, 1983, had you been in Hattiesburg, Mississippi at 2 a.m. on 4th Street, you would have seen me driving 90 miles an hour with my lights off, with three cop cars behind me with their lights on. And uh, you know, that was the end. I I ended up with a DUI and ended up in rehab and a halfway house. And the thing about it, at that time in my life, I had pretty much resigned myself that I wasn't gonna live to be 30. And I was okay with it. It's very sad. But truth is, I probably wouldn't have made 25 the way I was going. I it was uh it was hard. I was pretty much, I had been couldn't hold a job, you know, uh lying, cheating, stealing kind of guy. I had got evicted from this ratty trailer park and would have been living under a bridge if not for a loving grandmother who took me in. And you know, it was um I talk about that person today uh almost like it's a different person. But what I know, and as I'm sure you know too, that person's still in there, right? And all it would take is is one drink and boom, I'm you know, I'm off and and running. And so far, uh since May 25th, 1983, uh, you know, it's the only thing I've done perfectly is just not not drink or use drugs. But you know, it's a um it's it's really a blessing. I don't I can't remember back then, you know. I I I don't think I really made an early conscious decision to really stay sober and live a healthy lifestyle. I think I probably would just wanted to get my ass out of a pinch. And so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna lay low for a little while, then I'll go because I was thinking, how do you have fun if you don't drink or use drugs? The truth is the fun had been over a long time uh when I when I stopped use using and drinking. But I don't remember if I was like, man, you know, I'm never gonna get to drink again, or I'm an alcoholic, or you know, whatever. I don't, but today uh I don't I don't look at it that way. I'm like, you know, I've got this disease of alcoholism, it's a recognized disease. Some people have psoriasis, some people have diabetes, some people have cancer. People with psoriasis rub a cream on it, people with diabetes have to take insulin. People with cancer go through chemo, you know, or radiation therapy. I mean I've got alcoholism, drug addiction. My brain processes alcohol and drugs different than normal people. Yeah, that's my lot in life. Um, you know, like they say, I'm the man, I'm like the man who has lost their legs. I'm never gonna grow new ones, you know. That's that's what I got. So, you know, people with you know uh psoriasis, they they have what do I do? I you know, I'm in a 12-step program. I have a little spiritual program that I practice, and I don't, you know, in the in the in the big scheme of diseases you could have, it ain't so bad.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

Right, sure. Um absolutely I got a couple more things for you because I I want to stick to our schedule. Um, what do you love most about Mississippi? If you can article even articulate that, you know, right.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

So Mississippi for me, you know how Texans always are thinking, yeah, I've got pride in Texas and they're known for that. So whatever that is, I've got it like times 10 for Mississippi. I love it. I I love this state. Um and really when you break it down, it's just the people. It's the people. I mean, there, you know, you can go to North Carolina, Virginia, and you get prettier views in the Appalachian Mountains, maybe out in Colorado you get snow-capped mountains, and so it's a little prettier. You know, you go to San Diego and the weather's a lot better than it is here in the summer. Uh, but we've got the people. And and I have friends uh who you know retire and then they move to the mountains of North Carolina or whatever. And I always think, man, yeah, you wake up and and you see a pretty view, but all your friends are back here and all your roots are back here and everything. I just I don't get that. And uh the we've got so much to offer. I can remember years ago, one of the one of the first things I ever wrote that went viral. I I had been uh I would uh I was at some food and wine event in Aspen, and we were seated with uh these two couples from Las Vegas, and one of the ladies asked, you know, where you where are you from? And I said, Mississippi, and she said, What do you do? And I said, Well, I've got a fine dining restaurant there. And she kind of kind of gave me this attitude like Mississippi doesn't have fine dining restaurants. She actually said that, and you know, I I I wanted to I I always had this thing, I reel off, you know, William Faulkner and Edora Welty and B.B. King and Elvis Presley and Oprah Winford. I wanted to reel off all of what Mississippi has given the world and what we have to offer. And right before I did, I had this epiphany. I was like, why would I try and win this woman over? You know, she may move down here. We don't we don't need her, you know. And so um I wrote this piece called My South. And it went viral, like crazy viral. And it was really just because it's maybe not so much anymore, but but even as recent as 20 years ago, there's a there's this stereotypical version of Mississippi that was in the movies and TV. And and granted, we've got a bad past in a lot of ways. But the world has a bad past in a lot of a lot of ways. I mean, the world, no country, state, anybody was perfect for a long time. Maybe, maybe it took a little longer for us to get it right. But Mississippi's a different state now, you know. And I don't I don't feel like I have to reel off, you know, we have more African American elected officials than any other state, not per capita, just more. You know, all of those stats that I used to reel off to people, uh, you know. Maybe there's still people that think, you know, Mississippi is either the barefoot kid walking down a dirt road or big daddy sitting on a front porch drinking a mint julep. But but you know, it's just not that way anymore. I love I'll tell you another one more story. And there I was in Tuscany leading uh with my family. Uh we went, I took my 10-year-old, my 14-year-old, and my wife, and we flew to Sweden, bought a Volvo. Uh this is in 2011, spent the next six months in 17 countries and 72 cities on Tucson, like the best thing I'll ever do. And we were in Tuscany, and we were I was sitting with two ladies who had driven down from Milan, cosmopolitan ladies, and there was a band playing at this place. And that's live music is a different thing over there. It's very a common thing for us, but not so much over there. And you really hadn't lived until you've heard a British cover band singing American rock and roll in Italian. So they're playing Sweet Home, Alabama up there, and this lady saying, Where are you from? And I said, Well, I'm from Mississippi. And and she said, they all say this, like the river. And I said, No, well, it's a river, but it's also a state. And and I said, I live about an hour north of the Gulf of Mexico. Well, she knew the Gulf, but that's a broad expanse. So I said, actually, so I'm trying to find something she would know. I said, I'm out, I'm actually about an hour and a half northeast of New Orleans. I said, Oh, she lit up New Orleans, jazz. I said, Yes, New Orleans, that's where jazz was invented. So I'm thinking music. She knows music. I said, actually, I'm from Mississippi, and I was born uh beside Highway 49 in a hospital. If you follow Highway 49 up into the Delta, and it crosses Highway 61, and that's where the blues were invented. And and that that that's Mississippi. I said, she said the blues. I said, yes. She said, BB King. I said, that's right. She said Muddy Waters, and I said, yes. And I said, if you believe Muddy Waters, and I do, when he's saying the blues had a baby and they named the baby Rock and Roll, you go a couple of hours east to Tupelo, Mississippi, and that's where Elvis Presley's from. And she was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, Elvis Presley. I said, Yes, he's from Mississippi. And I was about halfway down Highway 45 to tell her where Jimmy Rogers was from Meridian when it hit me, you know, and I had seen the signs coming in, Mississippi birthplace of America's music, and I had thought about this and that, but really, probably I was a little sky was that, you know, that's just the state. You know, it's a really thing. But it took me going all the way over to Tuscany to really realize that where it hit home, we are the birthplace of a I mean, we're true, it's not just a slogan. It's not just something on a road sign. We are this, we are the state that has given the world this art form, these art forms. We'll give New Orleans jazz, but blues, rock and roll, country music, Mississippi. So it's the people, it's the arts, it's the culture, it's the food. Morgan Freeman was once asked in an interview, you could live anywhere in the world. Why do you live in Mississippi? And he responded, I live in Mississippi because I could live in anywhere in the world. And then he followed it up with, Hell, I'd live here for the food alone.

SPEAKER_02 47:29

So you know right on. Robert St. John, I asked this uh out of everybody on this podcast. It's kind of the the basis of the whole thing. How do you how do you stay awesome? What's the your secret to success, your method to your madness? What what keeps you awesome and and keeps you going?

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Um when I was 40 and my daughter, my daughter was four, and my son had just been born, you know, I I I think it took me that long to really kind of figure out what life is all about. And I looked for fun in a lot of the wrong places for a long time. But um around that time when I when I got so family-oriented and committed to my family, I I sat down and put it down. I write about this a lot. I call it the five F's. And and what that is, what for to me, what what makes a fruitful, joy-filled, uh productive life in order are faith, family, friends, food, and then fun. And anytime you put three or four of those together at the same time, you know, that that is what uh those that's where you're making memories, and that's where the fun happens and life really counts. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Robert, tell everyone how they can find you, man, how they can find you on Instagram, your website, how they can keep up with you.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Yeah, I think if you just Google Robert St. John, you know, I'll I'll I'll pop up on, you know, I'm on Twitter. I think I'm just at Robert St. John, uh S-T-J-O-H-N St. John. Instagram, I've got underscores between the Saint and the John, and Facebook, I'm I'm there. So, or you just go to Robert St. John.com and have links to all of them.

SPEAKER_02 49:21

So awesome. Man, thanks so much for taking time to do this. It was it was a real pleasure. It was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Let's do it again and let's talk music.

SPEAKER_02 49:27

Yeah, let's do it strictly where we talk about music. You got it.