The 1099 Side Hustle: How Music Paid for My First House

In this episode of the Blue Cup podcast, host Russ Scheider welcomes his long-time friend Brooks Ferrett, reminiscing about their 37-year friendship. They share humorous anecdotes about their college days, including nicknames and memorable moments, while also discussing Brooks's journey as a drummer and paralegal. The conversation flows from their early days of friendship to the evolution of Brooks's music career, including his current band, The Six, formed during the COVID-19 pandemic. They delve into the importance of friendship in music, the dynamics of band life, and the joy of performing together. Brooks also shares insights into his career transition from music to becoming a paralegal, highlighting the unique aspects of his job that involve business background checks and UCC filings. In this episode, Brooks Ferrett and Russ Scheider reminisce about their college days, sharing humorous anecdotes about their band rehearsals in unconventional locations, including a motorcycle dealership attic. They discuss the evolution of their lives, including Brooks' recent decision to adopt a dog at 55 and the joys of pet ownership. The conversation shifts to their experiences with music, including participation in Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp, where they had the chance to play with rock legends. They also touch on their thoughts about retirement, real estate investments, and the changing landscape of work post-pandemic, emphasizing the importance of flexibility and breaking out of traditional routines. The episode wraps up with reflections on the value of music in their lives and the importance of maintaining a good quality of life as they age.

Takeaways

It's astonishing how much has happened in 37 years of friendship.
If you have a good time, getting together with your friends over the weekend, that's what matters.
The bands that really made it liked each other as humans and liked making music.
I didn't want to get myself that deep in debt to get a job that I wasn't crazy about.
It's all about the friends in music. "I was gonna get a dog at 55 years old."
"We rehearsed at so many crazy places, like the attic of a motorcycle dealership."
"We don't want to wait until we're 70 to retire."
"I used to break a lot of drumsticks because I had a really cheap snare drum."
"The goal is to not die cold."
"We spent our Saturday afternoons in our friend's rehearsal place, making jokes and playing music."
"You can work from anywhere now, so why are we paying what we're paying to live here?"
"I bought the last piece of real estate inside the Beltway under $200,000."
"I wouldn't have anything if I didn't have real estate."
"It's a good quality of life statement."

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The goal is to not die cold. Why are you still doing it at this age?

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Because it's fun and it's lucrative. This is how it goes.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

There was an old microphone and tried it out for himself. His name is Russ. And now he's got a podcast show.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Welcome to the Blue Cup Podcast. And I'm eternally thirsty, so the Blue Cup stays with me. And I have a very special t-shirt on today because I have a very special friend on today, with whom I've been friends for a pa approximately 37 and one half years. So let's talk from the very beginning about why I'm wearing this silly shirt. It seems impossible that long.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

It's fine. It seems impossible. It's like two times as long as how old we were when we met. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Yeah, we were 18 or 19. Yeah. And we are um now old and grays. Brooks, ferret, and I have been great friends, and um Ryan can edit, so you can say just about anything. You just can't throw hand gestures. Brooks has many nicknames, and I've I'm so upset with myself. I have a set of your drumsticks on display, and I forgot to bring them where it says Brooks Ferret the Anvil. Where'd that nickname come from? They didn't say Brooks effing Ferret. Oh Brook Brooks fucking Ferret was that was that was what uh David and I came up with for you. Yeah. But the anvil is one that you came up with later.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Yeah, that's just a silly one. It seemed like a good drummer nickname. Right. And I'm a big fan of uh Jim the Anvil Nightheart.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

He was uh Bret Hart's tag team partner.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Okay, on our next and I debated, and uh I promise you I can take a picture when I get home that's on my bed to wear my Viking. It's just a picture of a face of a Viking because of the Nordic thing. Okay. And you used to wear an anvil on a necklace during shows. Yeah, you know, I almost put it on.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

I had to take it off when I got an MRI. Yeah. And then I bought another one on eBay for $12. You okay? Yeah, yeah. My knee was all screwy, and they kind of did the whole full body though. Oh, okay. They didn't want it moving around and being magnetic, although it's like cheap pewter. Yeah. So I and it was on so tight on the string we just cut it off.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Yep. Remember it's Brooksy in every everyday life because you're you're a sweet man and a loving man. And then Brooks fucking ferret when we needed to do a rock and roll intro, which is also BFF, so that you know that works well. Best friends forever. It's all yeah, very cute. Yeah, it's it's astonishing how much has happened in 37 years of friendship.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Well, we were we were far apart for so many. We owe it all the uh Facebook and Dave's 50th birthday and all that kind of stuff. It makes it a lot easier to stay in touch. Do you remember the first time you wrote me on MySpace and you wrote me from somebody else's account?

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Probably probably Natalie, my ex-wife's account, because I didn't have an account.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

So the story there, to my shame, is she was 11 years my junior, and she was always on the computer, and I was still like playing my guitar in the corner or reading a book, or we didn't have smartphones. It was right before smartphones. But I'm like, We're off work, because to me, a computer was an instrument of work because we worked, we did CAD drawings and estimations and for construction all day. And she's on there at night. I was like, What are you doing? And I she showed me, Well, this is my friend so and so. I said, Oh, this is bubblegum teenager bullshit. And she said, Give me the names of three of your friends. So I gave her three, and you popped right up, and I was like, Move over. Let me see. I have to spell it right. So I sent you a message from her account and said, I apologize. This is fucking cool. And she showed me how to set up my own MySpace account. Yep. So I could connect with all you idiots from from the right time in the right place.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

That's how I became reacquainted with my wife, which is uh the famous story about us. Famous.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yeah, so you dated in college, right? We didn't date, we just knew each other. You just knew each other, okay. And she lived across each other in college, and you started dating at about what age? Which seemed like a long time then. Yeah. You married at 36 or started dating at 36?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Started dating at 36, got married uh at 39, two weeks before my 40th birthday. Gotcha. There's a running gag that it's like a uh rom-com or something where it's like, he's gotta get married before he turns 40 or he loses his inheritance. Grandma's gonna cut me out of the will. So did you lose your inheritance?

SPEAKER_02 5:10

No, I got everything I I got everything I deserved. So my my introduction of Brooks Ferret seriously is paralegal by day, drummer by night, and you've always to me been been a serious drummer, meaning you took joy in the the technicality and the of the time signatures and the dynamics, but then you play with joy as well. It's fun to watch you play.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Well, to me, it's all about the friends. I got a really nice email from one of the college friends who included me in like a a drummer to like an email to like eight or ten drummers, so many of which I like didn't know or I just kind of knew of. And he was like, Oh, you know, my band's not going anywhere, and I'm not sure if I should just stay in it, and all this kind of stuff, you know, and wanted everybody's opinion. And I said, It's all about the friends, if you have a good time, yeah, you know, getting together with your friends over the weekend. Because every time I leave a band, I just go to another band.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

If we can go kind of big time with that, people like the Rolling Stones. I've read interviews with them, and they're never like, let's play the music, and then fuck you, I'm walking. They I mean they're it's not that they hang out at the pub every night, but they're friends. And Rush. Rush is a great example. Yeah, they're they were great.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Famously great friends.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Yes, great friends. Um, and I think Aerosmith, they're um the bands that really, really made it to your point, liked each other as humans and liked making music.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

And and people ask him, why are you still doing it at this age?

SPEAKER_02 6:35

And they're not yeah, because it's fun and it's lucrative, and um what do you can do? Get old?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yeah. So tell me about the band The Six.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Okay. This is the the band that I'm currently in that I do the most stuff with, and I'm in it with my wife. Yes. And what happened was when COVID hit. Well happened was what had happened was, I've been informed it's how it goes. At the beginning of COVID, you know, a group of, we I mean, all this group of cats all knew each other, knew each other already. And if you watch like on YouTube, you see these groups, they'll throw a they'll put a group together and they'll say, Okay, we're gonna learn this Chicago song or this Steele Dance song, and we're gonna make it great and overdub it and make it sound as as good as it possibly can. So it kind of started off as a group like that. We started doing things virtually, doing recording stuff and doing video, and then, you know, COVID passed its course, and we were like, well, let's let's, you know, do some gigs. And we've kind of moved away from the super ambitious songs, and you know, we want to do songs that we can do live that people will enjoy and hopefully people will dance to. So it's that same conundrum and same question, okay. Well, you you know, you kind of have we did Hong Kong Women and it went over so well, it's hard not to do it. But we're like, I kind of want to play Reel It in the Ears, and I want to play, you know, we just added this uh Omen Brothers song that it just killed, and then we did um right after it, we did uh traveling Wilberries.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

And I'm like, ugh. So you're going from Steely Dan, which is extremely complicated, to the Wilburries, which is basically a four beat, three chord with beautiful harmonies, and yeah, um, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Right. So we have uh three guitar players in this group, a bass player, Trish on vocals and keyboards, and me on drums. And somehow I've gotten out of singing backup vocals because so many people are sing so well in this group, because that's always the thing that makes me nervous. It's like, give me the list of 40 songs to play on, I'm good with it. They're like, Okay, you know, you're gonna sing the third before here and on this harmony, and then you're jumping down to there. And I was like, I don't want to do all that. Yeah, I can't learn it fast enough. So, well, you know, uh also kind of along with that, my wife ended up joining because they called me and asked me, and I was looking at this going, I know all you guys, but I'm not seeing a lead singer. And sometimes it's the trouble. You know, you have you know, four or five people who can all play very well and sing pretty well, and that lead singer is super important. So Trish joined to be a lead singer and play keyboards as necessary, and it ended up being she's playing a little more keyboards than she wants to.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

But luckily we have um some very good singers, and we have a funny story about this group is we have a new bass player, new he's been with us at least two years, new bass player, and he is our cousin by marriage in that Trish, our bass player's name is Lance, and Lance's wife are actual cousins from North Carolina. Oh, wow. And Lance and I uh, you know, married these cousins, and we're very good friends, and I always say, I feel like we're two guys who married sisters and and get along fine. And he's like weird.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

And where's Lance from?

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Lance is uh from well, he's from around here, weirdly. And here's the um funny thing about these two cousins who married two guys. These two cousins married, randomly married two guys who are huge, huge, huge fans of the band Egypt. He's a big Egypt guy. So he's actually from around here. He went to Annadale High School, and we know all these people.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Did you say Egypt or Raging Lopes? Egypt, the band. Egypt. So do you remember who introduced you to Egypt with all humility? I did. You I did. You did. We went you called me. Brooke, Brooksy, you gotta they were playing at Mr. Chips or on the hill on our calendar. You were playing and said this amazing band is playing. Because I said, just walk with me and we'll get a soda at Mr. Chips and walk up to the hill, and I need you to see this band. They were reggae, funk, ska, and a little bit rock, but they're they're pretty reggae heavy.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Yeah. Well, they became heavier, but at the time they were like in the early 90s, kind of your chili peppers, fishbone, shorter up tempo, fast.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

They became heavier and and changed. But and as you might know, Andy, their bass player, uh played guitar at our wedding. Which was like a hundred yards from that hill. We got married uh there at James Bass.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

I have to say it. We had some great college bands around around us. And you and John and David and I, and we've already had John on, um, but we'll have David on. And then I want to do uh an episode with the four of us. Okay. And then we can do the reverse interview, however you want to do it. But you and David and I were just out to have fun. I mean it was it was strictly about fun and at least being able to play well enough not to embarrass yourself or to sing and perform well enough. And you are very technical, but you love the fun aspect. And I teased John about this. John is like, stop, stop. No, no, this is how it goes. And I said, you know, that never bothered me, and it doesn't bother me in my professional life. I just said to a client two months ago who was who was really picking at some details of a contract that 95% of people would just accept without question. And he said, I'm sorry if I'm being a pain. I said, You're making me better at my job because I now understand this contract. And and that's the way I felt that John fit into our band. And then, you know, we would just bully him and say, Fine, just play. It's gonna be messy, and we'll tighten it as much as we can. Russ and David aren't, you know, the kind of musicians you are. David has a great voice and a great stage presence. And, you know, I'm just tall and handsome and can make some noise. So that's it. So tell me, let's talk about where you grew up. I remember Church, Maryland. Churchville. Is that right? Churchville, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Churchville. Churchville, Churchville. Yeah, it's in Hartford County, outside of Bel Air, outside of Baltimore. Okay. So about an hour from Baltimore in the suburbs.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Yes. So we're gonna talk about spring break in Florida in a minute. But one of the things that we would do as close friends is take weekend trips home to the family home. And I went with you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

We I had come down for that second year of school or whatever it was, but I hadn't brought my drums, and I didn't know if I was gonna be in a band or whatever. And week two, we were like, okay, well, we're gonna get a band together. I'll have to drive home this weekend and get my drums. And you said, Can I come with you? Just hang out and go, we'll go get the drums. I said, That sounds great. Yes. And that ended up being a real fun weekend.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

And your parents threw a beautiful clam or not clam, they um did crabs for us.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Crab feast, yeah, Baltimore area.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

I think that was just happening. Yeah, I mean, I felt like I showed up and there was the picnic table and all these beautiful steam crowds at mouths watering right now. And your dad cracked me up because he was kind of a little guy with a beer belly. Yeah. And in the garage, he would go in the garage and he had cases of beer stacked up about head high, just just in reserve. And it was Schaefer beer, which I had never heard of, and I'm not sure I could find it now, but it was a really regional, super light beer, like like a Miller High Life.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yeah, I think it was just whatever beer was cheap. It was the local equivalent of Milwaukee's best or Keystone or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Right. And it was no better, no worse, but that was like his brand, which I remember that. And I just remember your parents being very kind and and jovial and kind of enjoying a laugh the way you do.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Yeah, I think my dad had had retired from the Department of Defense. Yeah, I think so. He was an engineer with the Army.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

So he was an engineer with the Department of Defense. Sorry, what? Did you say he was an engineer with the Department of Defense? Yeah, he worked for the Army. I mean the Department of Defense. So he worked for DOD. So what does a DOD engineer do?

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Well he worked at uh nearby was Aberdeen Proven Ground, just a huge army base where they tested tanks and tested all sorts of things. So he was a mechanical engineer. I couldn't really tell you what he did from day to day, but he would break shit and then figure out how to put it back together. Maybe. I know we do a lot of tank stuff and um a lot of gun stuff and smoke bomb stuff. Well that doesn't sound like any fun at all.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

I don't know. It would be a great job playing with tanks and guns and smoke bombs.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

They had a um tank destinant not too far away, so if you just happened to be driving down the right road at the right time, you'd just see tanks driving along on dirt roads.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Did you ever get to ride in a tank?

SPEAKER_01 15:47

No. No, it's very protected. They had kind of a nice museum where they had a lot of them set up so you could go look at them up close. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

My dad was a helicopter pilot in in Vietnam and then later in the Vir Virginia National Guard. I didn't know that. Yeah, he was a helicopter pilot for about 20 years. I just knew him as to being a cabinet guy. And he flew from I'm gonna get the story wrong. No, he so we had we had eight acres of land in Weir's Cave outside Harrisonburg. Nice. And he flew from Richmond and landed in our cornfield. You know, it was winter time, so the cornstown. So he landed in our cornfield. And I was begging for a ride. He said, I can't, you know, just it's army, army equipment. I just take my kid up. Right, I can't take my kid up, but but it was still kind of fun to watch him. He just came and said, All right, we gotta go back. We gotta go back to Richmond. Excuse me. So that's cool. Your dad was in the DOD. What did your mom do?

SPEAKER_01 16:48

She um actually went and got a four-year degree from the University of Massachusetts, you know, in the 60s, and then married my dad and didn't work out of the house until I was maybe, you know, ten or eleven. Then she went to nursing school at the community college and became a nurse um at the local hospital.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Okay. And your parents are both past, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yes, okay. They both died in their early eighties.

unknown 17:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

And and you know, happy. Yeah. It wasn't the sad, sad thing.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Oh, good. I mean, I I remember it being a very happy household where it felt like everybody enjoyed each other. Yeah. And your parents were very hospitable to this kid that just showed up.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

No, and my sister Sally was there too. Sally was there. Sally was there. I can't remember if my other sister Susie was there. Uh Sally was there. I don't know if I have met your other Yeah, she's in she's in Richmond.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

But I remember Sally was there because she really liked your shirt. You were wearing the JMU Bill the Cat shirt that said JMU five or six of the best years of your life. And it it was like one of those fraternity-made shirts. It was not official. Right. And I think that we had to uh find one of those for her at a later date where we tried. She really liked it.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Well, I lost that shirt to a former girlfriend along the way somewhere, as it happens. Good shirt. I forgot about that. I had a whole collection of those, like JMU shit happens. Just like I mean, that's not even really a thing, but it was funny.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Hey, hey, speaking of that and JMU, like Atricia and I go to the football games, and we know we've made the big time when they have bootleg t-shirts that they're selling outside of the game.

SPEAKER_03 18:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Because there's one that uh she liked it, and I'm just like, oi, and it says like James F and Madison, and then on the other side it says, I'm a Duke bitch, and I'm like, it's not really for me. And she would never wear it in public, but she likes it. So uh on the way into the stadium at one of the games, she she bought it from you know, this guy who had a dozen of them, and then when we were leaving, one of the last games uh we won and we were it meant we were gonna go on to the playoffs. So somebody was selling whatever the appropriate shirt was that was like such and such champions, you know. We were the uh Sunbelt champ, and then we went on to go to Oregon to lose. So the one of the members of Tweed Sneaker, the ska band. Yeah. Another great local band.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

They were a great local band. Jimmy Pennington. What's that? Their CD, it holds up, it's really good. Yeah, I mean listen to it today. You you'd you'd want to jump around. I mean, it's a good Jimmy Pennington Pennington was their trumpet player. Yep. And I dated his sister senior year.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Really?

SPEAKER_02 19:42

Beth Pennington?

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Didn't know her. But but his name comes up because he went on to be in another band called Boy Oh Boy.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

And one of Trish's really good friends from high school and singing stuff is a guy named Shivani McGee. And he and Pennington and a variety of people were in Boy Oh Boy, which became embarrassed, I can't remember. Fighting Gravity. Yeah, Fighting Gravity.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

See, I didn't know him until relatively recently. So a lot of our listeners will recognize Fighting Gravity as a huge band in the I would say 2000. Alternate Rock Seat. So Jimmy and the guys from Tweed Sneaker came apart, and then Boy Oh Boy was also a fun band, and then all of a sudden Fighting Gravity's song on the radio every fifth song, and the way they evolved. I thought of another great band while I was talking, but we'll we'll keep going. And it wasn't the furlies, because fuck the furlies. Fuck a bunch of furlies. So that's an inside joke. We played uh played a four four band series, and I think we were the worst band, so we're number one or two. But no, it was a battle of the bands. Battle of the bands. Battle of the bands. Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Battle of Furlies won.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Yeah. The band called the Furlies won. And then we just walked around for a week saying, fuck those furlies.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Fuck a bunch of furlies.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

Juvenile humor, how I love it. Um, what did you do immediately after college?

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Okay. So I went to James Madison specifically to be part of their music industry program. Right. Which is uh, and you know, our friend John Fashel, who we met, went through the same program. He was a little more in the recorded technology department. Right. Um so everybody starts taking the same classes as the music majors. You take ear training and singing and um theory and those sorts of things, and your lessons and the basic music classes that you all start with, and then you sort of branch out. So some people uh so instead of finishing the music program, uh music educator, like I did do music ed classes. Right and I didn't take I took a semester of conducting, but not a year of conducting. I didn't take arranging, composing, those things. I took music industry classes within the music department and then also in the business department.

unknown 21:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

So we took accounting and marketing and

SPEAKER_02 22:00

It's a super cool program.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yeah. Because it melds music and business. Right. Yeah. So I never tell people I have a music industry degree. I'd say I have a a music degree with a business concentration. It just seems like people can wrap their heads around that a little bit better. Yeah. Um and uh John, who you talked to, so he he um ran the recording studio and got deep into the recording technology when other of us did other stuff. And uh so I got out and I did it in four years 'cause I took general studies during the summertime. Yeah. So I ended up It's the best five or six years of your life at JMU. I don't know why we were in such a hurry to leave. Because I left, you know, Harrisonburg to go to Bethesda to work for $17,000 a year. And while it was a long time ago, that was never a lot of money. No, right. I I would have made more money if I worked at Giant. Yeah. I would have been in the union and I would have, you know. Anyway, let's not go into that. So I worked at a music store, actually a drum-specific music store called Drums Unlimited in Bethesda, Maryland, and rented a tiny little house with three other guys, which is the only way you can afford to live um anytime. Then uh 91, me and uh Scottie Dog, who was a year ahead of me with the same degree, who worked at a different music store called Washington Professional Systems, where they did pro audio. We uh said, I I wrote him and I said or called him and said, Hey, you know, I I interviewed for this job at Drums Unlimited in Bethesda. If I get this job, do you want to share an apartment? And he said, Yeah, I I had to get an apartment too fast when I got my job up here. He had to, you know, take and he shared an apartment with this lady who was getting ready to get married, and that particular apartment was um, I don't know if she was staying or she was moving out or what. So uh we had that plan. So we ended up answering an ad in the post for a house that ended up needing two guys, and we took over that house, and as other guys moved out, we moved our friends in. I don't think you went to that house in Bethesda.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

Don't remember it out of pure serendipity. Scotty Dog Magnet and his beautiful wife, Rachel Len Boydell. We called her Len in College. She goes by Rachel now.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Yeah, we called it Lynn. They live about as a crow fr flies or the wiener dog walks. A mile and a half from here. That's amazing. Not from my office, not from the studio here, but from my house. Uh-huh. They're choosing to sell their houses and do something different. And called and said, We see all this real estate stuff and you're a trusted friend, and it's like, well, here's the paperwork. Yeah. Yeah. So pretty cool the way serendipity brings us back together.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah. He used to have a blog that I used to keep track of, and it was uh all about Catholicism and playing the bass. So he'd talk about Catholicism and he would talk about yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Well, and and not to be too personal, but in their house as I'm walking through, he has this beautiful bass with offset frets, which boggles my mind. I think that's great.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Yeah. And their son just looks like him. Yeah. Curly hair and the marching bands. Whole bunch of what? Curly hair and in the marching band. Yeah. I just know what I see on her Facebook wall.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

Oh, I've forgotten who I was talking to the other day, and they said, Where'd you go to college? And um I said, JMU. And they said, their football team's gotten really good, but their marching band was always good.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Which I think is true. You guys are crazy now.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Great. 500 people.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

So then I explained that the only cool part of the marching band is the drum line. The rest is just noise, right? Right. The drummers are the cool ones.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

We give the horns a hard time, but they're so good now. Yeah. They're ridiculously good. They have this huge brass sound. They're tight for sure. So off subject to the the subject was what did I do after college? So I worked at a music store. And uh the music store, here's a great story, had a a a different business. The music store, as I mentioned, was called Drums Unlimited. And the owner had this other business called Drums Unlimited Rentals and Rehearsal Spaces. And they're still in business in College Park. Okay. And the story goes, the owner of the store who was uh you know a jazz drummer, but he played like Timpany and Vibes and all that stuff, music department through uh Boston U. And somebody called him and said, Hey, can you um come play vibes for this gig? And he was like, Well, what does it pay? And they said fifty dollars, and he's like, It's it's not well they mean this is probably you know 1974. Right. It's fifty dollars is not worth me putting my vibes in my car. Right. Even back then. So they're like, Okay, well, we'll we'll call some we'll look into it and see if we can find somebody else. We'll let you know. And they call him back and they said, Can we rent your vibes? And he said, Sure, it's fifty dollars. But he doesn't have to do anything. Right. So this is this is um kind of before they had all this professional cartage. Like if they had it, maybe they had a New York in LA, but not Washington. So he built this business called Drums Unlimited Rentals, where if you need a set of timpani, if you need vibes, if you need, you know, some special gongs for the National Symphony to do some weird, you know, uh varice piece, they go through them. And uh Trish, my wife, she uh was singing with the Choral Arts Society of Washington, which is one of these huge choruses you see at the Kennedy Center. She stopped that during COVID, and she'd look at the orchestra and on the back of the gong it'd say drums unlimited, it was painted on there. And uh they would like bring in all this stuff for all these events on the 4th of July on the mall. You know, you don't ask your timpani player to bring a four timpani and a giant gong, it all goes through a rental company. Right.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Well, let's let's slow down because I know what some of these things are. So a timpani are the kettle drums, big drum, kettle drums, yeah. You're typically in an orchestra. Right, right? And what what's a vibe drum? I'm not sure. Is that just a vibe drum?

SPEAKER_01 28:16

I think you said vibes, it's a vibrophone, a mallet percussion instrument. Okay. A metal marimba.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Okay, a metal marimba. Okay. And a marimba is kind of like a xylophone, but not. Yes. Yeah, okay. It's not a drum at all. It's a percussion instrument.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Something from the orchestra, though. From what? Something from the orchestra.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

You know, one day the guy who was running the rehearsal spaces, rentals and rehearsal spaces, comes into the this music store and he's so excited that he bought a harp for for $10,000. You know, it's thinking $10,000 is a lot of money. But apparently it's not for a harp. Right. And they can rent it out because if you ever, you know, ha need a harpist for an event or I don't know, wedding or something, or you know, an orchestra, they pr might not have a harpist in the orchestra because they don't need it.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

But they hire somebody and you know they don't wheel their own harp in, they they show up expecting a harp to be there.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

So you can charge a lot, say five hundred bucks a day. Yeah, and then and then that pays ten thousand off pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Yeah, and you got you have guys with trucks who bring all that stuff. Yeah. So I always thought that was a very interesting business. And all these years later, that you know, 30 years of me being out of Drums Unlimited Music Store, yeah, um, they're still over there and they're up in College Park. And they have, as I as part of that uh rehearsal spaces, if you have an event, you can, you know, like they had James Brown come through because he wanted to whip his band into shape, you know, the day before his gig. Um so they have all sorts of people in there.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

Yeah, fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Famous story that came out after uh Charlie Watts from the Stones died. Mm-hmm. They wanted to, you know, rehearse a tune, you know, on a tour where they're playing at um, you know, in stadiums and hockey arenas or whatever. So they said, oh, we just need a couple hours at the local rehearsal facility, so all that was arranged. And you also like the stones don't carry their gear in, you know, they just might probably just carry their guitars in and they'll have amps to certain specs waiting for them. And Charlie expected a a Gretch drum set from the fs to certain specs.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

Because everybody has one of those lying around.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Right, right. Well, they run a places do, or they know somebody they can borrow one from. So uh he shows up and then uh they did the rehearsal and he said, I really like the drum set. I want to take it with me, you know. How much is in it? And it doesn't really matter. And a tour guy wrote a check and they put the drums in the van and disappeared. Oh wow. So he just he just wrote a check and took the drums. Yeah, he doesn't care. This Southern's corporation paid for it.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

So, what's the wetch drums factory is? I know it's in Carolina somewhere. It's in the middle of nowhere in cotton fields and cornfields, and we used to drive by it on my grandparents' on the way to my grandparents' farm, and it's in a little town that's just like I can't even remember the name. It's nice that they're making close. You know, the Gretsch I have a Gretsch guitar. I'm pointing like this is my house. I'm not at home. But I have a Gretsch guitar in my living room, and I like playing it, but I really like looking at it. It's yeah. It's just beautiful the way they do their styling. Sounds great, but it's and their drums are the same way. They sound great and they look really nice. So they're built probably 50 or 60 miles northwest of Charleston. So fun, fun music stories. And then after music.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

So they're at the music store working 47 and a half hours a week.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Working every Saturday, right, and having Tuesdays off, which was kind of fun. I said, Well, this is going nowhere.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

I mean, it's fun for a couple years after school. So I saw an ad in the local city paper, it's called, and every city has a a free free weekly. They're all pretty much out of business now because there's no advertising, it's all online. But uh it was called the Washington City Paper, and that's kind of countercultural stuff. Excuse me. And all the entertainment, if you want to see where all the bands are playing on Saturday night, or if you're looking to buy a used something or other, I used to fax the ads to them.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

You used to fax ads to them?

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah, before email. Oh my god. Send them a fax, you know, looking to sell a snare drum I was trying to sell.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

So sell musical equipment.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Right. So there's an ad in there, a quarter page ad for uh George Washington University, which is you know pretty heavy-duty private university in downtown DC. And they have all sorts of like certificate programs in the evening, and one was a paralegal certificate. So I said, well, that that sounds like something, you know, because I was thinking about law school, and I'm like, and this kind of goes back to the subject that we're really supposed to be talking about, you know, career stuff, is I didn't really want to go to law school. I didn't want to get my work that hard and get myself that in deep in debt to get a job that I wasn't crazy about, to pay off my law school debt. So I said, paralegal, that sounds good. So I mentioned it to my parents and they're like, you do it, we'll pay for it, no problem. So it was like not quite as many classes as a master's degree. I think it was like 21 um credit hours. And you could do it all at night. So I did it at night, you know, and cost over I and I, you know, took class one semester and took a semester off and took one one semester. I didn't want to do it in the summer, and it took you know two and a half or three years, and I did it. But in the meantime, I got the paralegal job was that I had a friend who owned a research company in downtown DC, and he actually hired me. I always say, because he knew he could trust me and he knew he could train me.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Yeah. So I what's the research company do?

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Business exactly what I'm doing now, which is sort of business background checks and in corporations. What's a business background check? Well, let's say I always say, let's say one business is getting ready to do business with another. Um, they want to check them out and find out if they have something called a UCC financing statement, which is on the list of things to talk about. It's basically a little mortgage. It's something that when there's a loan being made that's a little more heavy duty than a credit card loan, but not as big as a mortgage. They might be there for something like a company's just doing business and they need to buy some servers and have some servers or need to have a photocopier, like you don't think about it, but a really nice photocopier is 15,000 bucks. Right. So that piece of machinery needs to be secured and attached to the business. So just because you have one, it's not bad that you have a loan. It just means that you're doing business. But it also means that, say, should you go out of business, that there's a recording in public records that says this photocopier is really under lease to Koneka Minolza.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

So I'm a little bit confused. Is this a law firm or is this something different?

SPEAKER_01 35:15

It's a service company. It's a service company that helps law firms and other service companies. Because if somebody in Seattle needs something specifically out of DC, they might call me. And if I need something out of Seattle, I call them. So our business is probably more service company than law firm. Okay. So is a law firm will send me an order and say, search these names and search these names in DC, Virginia, Maryland, California. That's what I'll do. And I'll look and see if they have any DGCC financing statements, if they have any federal tax liens or judgments, and if they have any suits if they're being sued or being sued all the time. Or if they have federal tax liens, as you I'm sure you know from your business, the tax man always comes first. Yes if somebody is owed money. There's a whole hierarchy of of who gets paid first, and that's also why we put UCC financing statements in land records, is it puts you up higher in the food chain of being paid.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

Yeah. So this is fascinating to me because it's pretty different from excuse me, any service that I've heard of. Is there a CPA involved to look at what I do? What's up?

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Not in what I do. I'm I'm a glorified title searcher.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Because I know you know what that is. Okay. Well you can probably do the basics of it yourself.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

I know what a title searcher is from real estate. Yeah. On every single deal, you do the we typically do a limited lien search, and if that's clean, then you go to the 40-year chain of title in real estate. So I'm sure you have similar procedures where you start with the dumb shit first. Like, are there tax liens? You said it. I mean, that's that seems pretty parallel to what we do is you start with all the like in Sling Blade, it ain't got gas in it. It ain't gonna start. So start with the dumb shit first. Um, I love it, or simple, the simple things. So explain the UCC to me again, because I don't quite understand though.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Okay, it stands for universal commercial commercial code, which you probably know. Okay. And it's a as I always say it, because people ask me about it all the time, I say it's like a little mortgage. A little mortgage, okay. Yeah. But it's it's important enough that it's recorded it in the land records with the mortgages.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Interesting. So it would be easy to miss if you didn't have a professional research firm. Yeah. Like like you digging into all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Well, people use, you know, varying things as collateral for loans. Right. So they want to, or if they're you know trying to get a loan, they'll say, well, we have this cash and we have this and we have this, you know, these assets. You know, you can look for a a lien uh on a car or a truck, but you can't for what we call general documents, cash, um royalties, just any kind of income incoming.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

So are are those recorded? Can you find them? Yeah. And the records? Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Another example for all that is what we call a fixture filing. It's uh a UCC filing that's specifically associated with a piece of property and attached to the property. And the example I like to give is uh, you know, we've got a buddy who has uh a Tesla car and he's got the whole Tesla system with the um solar panels and like a generator.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

A battery. So let's say he's selling his house and they're all going, sweet house has got the pool, he's got the hot tub, he's got this and that, and he's got this whole Tesla system. Should you want to, you know, you can charge your electric car. Well, it turns out he's probably leasing that whole thing from Tesla and paying a couple hundred dollars a month rather than just buying it.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

So in the real estate transaction, they need to know, well, that whole solar system doesn't come with a house. Or it can, but you need to know about it and maybe assume the lease or make sure it's paid off in the in the whole transaction, in the in the closing process. Because you don't want to buy a house and then all of a sudden you're getting a letter from Tesla saying nobody making their payments or we're gonna foreclose on this. Right. It should go to the previous owner, but you don't want that kind of thing on your on your head.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

We run into that all the time with just basic solar panels is on the roof. Are they paid off or do you have twenty-nine more years of payments before you own them? And what um what am I inheriting when I buy those? Well, um our friends John Fischell was fifty or fifty-one with the first kids with the twins. Twins. What's that? Twins. Twins. Yeah, twins. And then Mark Brown, rest in peace, man. Um we lost lost a friend there. He was the same. He was 50 or 49. Yeah. Twins. Twins. So you got a dog. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I love it.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

I'm petting her now. I mean, uh, I don't know what it looks like I'm doing here.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

So we we did attend college together, so we need some funny college stories. What comes to mind?

SPEAKER_01 40:17

We rehearsed at so many crazy places, in particular the attic of the local motorcycle dealership. That's right. That's right. It was like the most metal thing ever. Like if we were Jewish priests wearing leather outfits and motorcycles everywhere. And there was a real old one up in the attic, like an old Triumph or an old BMW. I just loved, I love the old ones.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Because it was a new Honda dealership.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Shank Honda.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

We lived right right behind it. And David worked there. Yeah. And David's brother ended up buying that dealership not long after and owned it for many years, and he moved it out to the motor mile and made it huge. But where we were rehearsing was a dirty little dank, dusty motorcycle shop. It was so cool.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

Not the cold place.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

And it was cold. Stories.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

That's a there was one place that was right near Cloverleaf, which was nice.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

And then there was another place that was kind of near the apartment that you shared with him.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

That was really cold.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Yeah, that was Shankonda, the one that well, he had two, but the one I'm thinking of, it was like motorcycles on the first floor, parts on the second floor, and just weird open space at the top.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

As you said, with like a triumph on display.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

And that is funny. I remember you always loved playing in that spot.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

That's more of it was very shelled at the guitar swing and busted the guitar.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Oh, and broke the neck off his PV guitar. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

Yep. I used to break a lot of drumsticks there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Well, we could you could play as loud as you want in that space. Um after hours. So that was a fun story. Well, I realized I think it I I think it came up with John. Were you at the party tonight? Mike Clayton stripped to his boxers and put a keg of beer on his back and ran through the snow.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

Because he wanted to look like Lens Up on Four. Because he wanted to look like the front the cover of Lens Up on Four, where the guy's got the bag of sticks on his back and like a Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

See, that's why I asked you this. Because to add these bits. I didn't remember that detail that that's why he did this idiotic thing. I just wanted to went, what the hell is happening right now?

SPEAKER_01 42:35

One more thing about the rehearsal place. I used to break drumsticks, and I broke drumsticks because I had a really cheap snare drum. And I would hit it hard, and not very much sound was coming out of it. So a couple of years later I got like a really nice deep dish Ludwig snare drum. And uh when I got a better snare drum, you don't have to hit it as hard, you know, a lot of sound comes out of it. Right. And um I pretty much don't don't break drumsticks anymore. I whittle them down to little little chopsticks and and all the turn them into sandpaper and little bits of wood and uh but but that'll break them. Yeah, particularly. I haven't broken a pair of sticks in tw twenty years.

SPEAKER_02 43:14

Well, very briefly we need to talk about spring break nineteen eighty eight. Eighty eight or eighty nine. Eighty eight or ninety eight.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

We hopped in Dave's Jetta and we went to visit our friend John Boris in Florida. Yes. We went was it Court Lauderdale?

SPEAKER_02 43:28

Fort Myers. Fort Myers.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Yeah, Myers is on the west coast and further north, but and they he shared a house with his mother and then his mother vacated the house for a couple days so we could sleep on his floor.

SPEAKER_02 43:42

Yeah, she went to stay with his sister. Like, I don't want these boys and I don't want you around these boys.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Do you remember we went to uh a place that was there was uh interesting legal and not legal drinking going on. Two things in particular happened. One was we went to a place that Was like Hooters, but was it Hooters? It was called buckets. That's right. And and we sat down and the ladies said, So what kind of beer would you all like? And we said, uh, you know, well, you know, because we were all like 19 or 20. Yeah, we were not of age, and we acted cool enough that she didn't immediately become suspicious, and we and we drank some beer. Yeah. That was that was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 44:23

It was beer and wings and girls in very short shorts. Yeah. And it was called buckets, and it was a direct knockoff of hooters.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Sure. And this was, you know, before Hooters was really big. I think. I think. I don't know when they became big. I know that they're struggling.

SPEAKER_02 44:37

We were ridiculous driving my beat-up car. I had a diesel car. Remember? We spent the night with from Virginia to Fort Myers.

SPEAKER_03 44:46

I mean, that's like a fifty pants.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

That's where my granddaddy and your mom. So we spent the night at the farm. Or did we just stop at the farm and say hi?

SPEAKER_01 44:55

I think we stayed over.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Yeah. So we spent the night at my grandparents' house and I had a diesel car. No, we took David Jetta. It was a farm. So in the morning we're about to get on the road, and granddaddy was like, Well, let me fill you up. Go pull around the back of the barn. And he had a big tank of diesel fuel and just stuck it in the in my car and hand pumped until it runs out. And John Fichelle being city boy that he was, and you two kind of were jaw on the ground, like you have this 500-gallon tank of he's like, Yeah, two big diesel tractors. We need this fuel. So he gave us a gave us a boost. Okay. So I remember that. I thought I thought you might remember that detail.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

It's all blur. I do remember meeting your mom. Yes. And your mom introduced herself, and I thought that her name was Dale. D-A-L-E. Dale. Yeah, it's D-E-L-L. Her name's Dell. But I mean, Dale D-A-L-E is a perfectly acceptable name. Right. So I didn't think much of it. Your mom was super sweet. And also they had they had new dogs. They had hunting dogs. Yeah. They were like baby, you know, whatever they were, retrievers or something.

SPEAKER_03 46:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

And they were like, watch this. And they did like something where you like throw a stick and the dogs immediately like point at it. And they were just like, you know, weeks old. Yeah. And they knew what to do.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

It was insane. Yeah, we dragged you city boys into southern life for a week or so. And then we did some. There was corn behind our house, not in our yard, but on the other side of the plants. We all got very sunburned and you became obsessed with this beach mat made of grass. And you would say, It this used to be living. Look, I'm lying on the beach on this thing that used to be living. I was like, We're not high, we're drunk, or even anything remotely. And you're and so what did I bring you when I came to visit you?

SPEAKER_01 46:54

I had whole forgotten all about that, and then you brought you found a mat and brought it to me. Can you get those at like wings at the beach, those places? So I had forgotten, you know, I I have a good memory for the absurd, and that I had somehow slept on. But you know, I've done things where I like sat the mat behind the drum set and sent pictures to you saying, I came downstairs and the Matt is here. He's trying to usurp me. You came downstairs and what? And the Matt was behind the drum set, and say this Matt is trying to usurp me.

unknown 47:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:28

So where is your house that's north of Myrtle Beach? What's the name of it?

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Sunset Beach, North Carolina, which is as far south as you can be in North Carolina without being in South Carolina. It's near Calabash, if you know Calabash.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

Yeah. It's like two miles from there. That's where we go for bagels.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Yeah, I've been to the house. Yeah. It's very cool because you have a freshwater lake full of gators. There's a roadway, and then there's a I think it's part of the intracoastal waterway. There's a little marshy area, and then there's the intercoastal. So introduced. And then on the other side of the dunes, you have the beach. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

So it's the island of Sunset Beach.

SPEAKER_02 48:05

We could sit and drink coffee on the porch and look at the gators and the lily pads, walk across the road and watch the boats go on the intercoastal, walk across a bridge and be on the beach. Yeah. Um, you and Trish plan to retire there? We're thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

Or part-time? We we hadn't been. And then we were like, yeah, that's what we're gonna retire to. And now we're kind of like, gee, you know, we d because we don't really know anybody there. So we do we really want to retire to somewhere we don't know anywhere. And so we'll see. Yeah. But we did decide we don't want to, you know, people wait until they're like 70 to retire. And we're like, well, we we we don't want to wait that long. You know, living in Washington is so expensive and you know, there's lots of going on, but you know, there's something to be said for you know, country living, beach living. Especially with the way people work from home now over the um pandemic.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

You can work for Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

So we're like, well, you know, why are we paying what we're paying to live here 'cause we were paying what we pay because of conveniences, and that's not necessarily true anymore.

SPEAKER_02 49:15

Yeah. Well, I mean, I have friends who Airbnb a house in one city and they'd figure out their year and say we're gonna live here in these months and we're gonna live here in the others. And then you just rent it out, but but you have to really you have to create a owner's closets, maybe lock the basement because of all your music equipment and that sort of stuff. So that would create a lot of freedom for you because you can be where you want to be where you want when you want to be there if you plan it out, and the income's tremendous. Yeah. So it might be something to think about. And I know Chris's Trish Trisha's career factors in of as well.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Yeah. Now she had been working from home like three consecutive jobs, starting from the beginning of the pandemic, and she switched jobs like at least twice. Yes. And then, you know, she was in the nonprofit area. Yes and she was involved in a lot of that in human resources, so she ended up going over to the private sector. And uh, but now she goes into the office. So I think that like a lot of offices, once you sort of make yourself indispensable, they may change their mind on the work from home there.

SPEAKER_02 50:26

I have a I have a great book for both of you called The Four Hour Work Week. Yeah. Writing it down by Tim Ferris, and he just describes kind of what we're talking about. And four hours a week is extreme if you only work four hours a week. But if you take the principles where he actually did it and he applied it, and one of his suggestions by being an entrepreneur, so Trisha's an entrepreneur, and you're an entrepreneur. I know you both well enough to know you're creative, you're independent, but that that paycheck is awfully nice. And sometimes I and sometimes I envy you the steady paycheck, believe me. On the other hand, the freedom to do dumb shit like this and hope we make money on it, but maybe we won't. The four-hour work week talks about what's it's come come to be known as quiet quitting, but it's in an honest way, saying, I'm gonna automate and and outsource, even within the entrepreneur entrepreneur world, just come up with creative ways to make it more efficient. Or do you ever use anything like virtual assistants overseas or anything for research? Yeah. So read the book and maybe just pick a couple of ideas to go from maybe not a four-hour work week, but maybe twenty. And then as you say, it's pretty easy to work from home. Why drive to the office? Yeah. Because think I know how much time you spend in traffic in DC. I mean it's I've recently Charleston's an hour from Charleston now, by the way. We're not we're not quite as bad as DC. The joke is Charleston's now an hour from Charleston. Right. Yeah. So I I interrupted you, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

I've recently given up the um the drive and now because I work downtown at Metro Center, and we live right near the metro station. Oh, yeah. Which I never took, almost never took. And then her new job is really not very far away. It's in Old Town Alexandria, and she has free parking at her work. Oh, okay. So what we do is we go to her office and take her car or my car, park it for free, and I literally walk across the street to the metro and take the metro to downtown. It's about 35 minutes. That's what I'm talking about. 35 minutes, about five bucks. And it's just so much better than the drive. Because the drive was like an hour and fifteen to an hour and a half. And I'm like, why am I doing this? And it's because just my personal thing is I just end up in such a box, I always do things the way I always did. So it's a good switch. Say that again. Say it again. I live in a box and I don't change these things that I'm comfortable with.

SPEAKER_02 53:02

Right. Yeah. And I mean, I envy you the public transportation. We simply don't have it because Charleston wasn't planned that way. However, we're making some changes, and I can't wait to break out of that box of I have to drive my truck everywhere and honestly risk getting in a wreck. I burn more than five dollars worth of fuel going across town. Um the time on the train when we traveled in Europe, what I loved is you could you can read a book. Yeah. You can work on your laptop, you can scroll bullshit on your phone. I mean, you you can enjoy that part of your day. And then when you get to work, it's like, all right, let's get to work. Or you get to work and say, I've already completed, you know, a little section of my day. So that mindset of breaking old habits is hard for all of us, regardless of age or upbringing, is we get programmed to a certain way, like your dad was an engineer at DOD. So engineers think in a very linear direction.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

How do I solve this problem?

SPEAKER_02 54:01

Yeah. Yeah. And your mom being a nurse, I think is a little more also everything's sort of prescriptive. Yeah. You know, if this if then then that, and here's how you handle. But I love what you just said about breaking out of the box.

SPEAKER_03 54:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:15

Because I know that traffic thing has been a struggle for you ever since you guys moved. How long have you been in that house? Uh this house around 13 years. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 54:24

And we lived in my little townhouse for about seven or eight before that.

SPEAKER_02 54:28

Yeah. So you've been there 13 years and you've been grinding an hour, hour fifteen each way to work. Yeah. Now you can hop on the metro.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Well, I had I had my own things that was because Trisha and I commuted together.

SPEAKER_02 54:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

Even though we were going to different places.

SPEAKER_02 54:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

And I had free parking at my previous job. Right. So we would drive in, I'd drop off her near her office, swat her on the fanny, drive twelve blocks, park for free, do my work, turn around, do the same thing on the way back.

SPEAKER_03 54:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

But now I don't have free parking downtown anymore. But she has free parking at her new job. It just happens to be conveniently right across the street from the metro.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

So let's talk about we just established the entrepreneur thing, the fact that you've broken a box. I gave you a book that really recommend you even either you can listen to it or read it. It'll work either way. So the four-hour work week. And what I admire about the way you guys live is you play music at least once a week with some band somewhere.

unknown 55:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 55:29

Once a week we're at least doing a rehearsal. Yeah. And then we do gigs maybe every other month. Okay. And then I pick up so that's six a year, and I would say I probably pick up about four to six, sort of as pickup jobs.

SPEAKER_03 55:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

From reputation and playing, you know. I'll play with people I played with years ago because they're like, well, we need somebody for Saturday. You know, I that's my favorite thing, is they get that call on Tuesday. Is can you play Saturday night these 50 songs? And I'm like, well, I already know 42 of them. So I sit down and make notes. Like I did a thing with a really cool band, uh, what do they call it? Wildflower Dreams. And they're sort of a a tribute band, but they are a Tom Petty tribute band, but also a Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks tribute band. Well that tribute band, they don't dress up, but that's what they play. Okay. Like sometimes tribute bands is like, do I really need to listen to you know three hours of Foo Fighters? And but you hear a band that are like, well, they're all Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks's solo songs, and they actually do a couple of Sheryl Crow songs too, so it's focused sort of in this sort of area. So I did I did one with them, you know.

SPEAKER_02 56:48

You know what they're calling that now, right? Grandpa Rock.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Grandpa Rock? Oh, Grandpa.

SPEAKER_02 56:54

Grandpa Rock.

SPEAKER_01 56:55

Grandpa Yeah, you know, my nephew who's 30. That's my music.

SPEAKER_02 56:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

My nephew who's 30 calls it a dad band.

SPEAKER_02 57:03

And that's okay. Ryan furiously nodding behind the camera.

SPEAKER_01 57:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:06

Young Ryan is like, yes, dude, that's grandpa rock.

SPEAKER_03 57:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:11

It's the good stuff. So my my point is that you and Trish have the freedom to take that time. Yeah. And set up the drums and do the rehearsal and play the gigs and and still show up for work on Monday.

SPEAKER_01 57:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

And do the intrapreneur thing.

SPEAKER_01 57:27

Well, Mike, running joke is some people play golf. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we spend our Saturday afternoons, you know, in our friend's very comfortable basement recording studio, rehearsal place, chatting with our friends and making jokes. Yes. And you know how, you know, guys in bands make jokes. Yes. And um and my wife is there, and she's uh generally a very good sport about uh, you know, band jokes. Yeah, she is a she is a good sport for it's kind of you know what happens in the in the band, it stays in the band. You can say things that you wouldn't say in polite company.

SPEAKER_02 58:03

We have a few minutes left and I want to talk about some of the fun things that I know y'all do, like the We didn't touch on any of this stuff. What what about the I want to say monsters of rock, but what's the rock cruise that you do?

SPEAKER_01 58:16

Okay, there's two things that are separate things, but they're sort of together in our lives. And it started off with rock and roll fantasy camp.

SPEAKER_02 58:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 58:25

And rock and roll fantasy camp is basically like any other fantasy camp, like you know, Yankees Fantasy Camp. Yeah. You go away for a long weekend and they have sort of A-level and B level and C level rock stars, which is something they don't really isn't very well explained to you. And you have they put a band of, you know, you guys together, and every band has a camp counselor who's a rock star, like a B level or a C level rock star. And um, you know, you learn songs associated usually with the A-level rock star, and then the A-level rock star comes in, and you get to, you know, you get five minutes to play your song with them.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

That's awesome. So it's like playing basketball with Michael Jordan.

SPEAKER_01 59:12

Yeah. Well, I always kid with like you can have Yankee Fantasy Camp and they teach you, we're gonna spend an hour doing double plays, and you're there with you know, ex-Yankeys and Yankee coaches and all this stuff, and then Derek Jeter comes in for five minutes. Yeah, yeah. You're not gonna get all day with Derek Jeter. So, like the the example is the first one that we did, our headliners were Joe Perry from Aerosmith. I mean, he's an A-lister, he's uh Oh yeah, he's a real guitar hero. And um oh, that guy from the Dixie Drags who was in Deep Purple. I can't remember his name right off the top of it. Steve Morse. Steve Morse. Right. So he was in the Dixie Drags and the Drags, and then he ended up just being in Deep Purple for 20 years. He was in Deep Purple at the time, you know. So you learn a deep purple song, and and he stuck around a little bit more than the rest. And who's our our our CL? You're going through my vinyl collection right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

Sorry? I said you're going through my vinyl record collection right now. I have a Dixie Dreggs album where the corners of the cover are worn off. Nice because it's so old. So you get to play with real rock stars. Yeah. And I love the structure of it where they build you up to it and they they say, Okay, here comes Joe Perry.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:25

Yeah. Play. Right. Cause because they don't they're not going to be there. Because they're going to play with eight bands. So our third one for that one was uh was Lou Graham, the singer from Forewarner. Oh, wow. So you know where you learn a Foreigner song and you get to and those things go by very fast, but your B level and C level good rock stars who are your counselors are like, you know, you can get a lot out of them. Sure. Like my counselor was Vinny Apesy, the drummer from Dio.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:54

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

And he was in uh late era Black Sabbath. That's where he met Dio and he came over, and he seems to be have made a career of that. So it was nice to talk drums and pick up some stuff from him. And uh Trish, we did a we did a couple, and Trish went to one, and uh Billy Sheehan was her counselor, and she was like, I want to really for a bass class? Yeah, and he was but she he was her counselor, and she got a lot of time with Billy and got to be friends with him. And like, so he wasn't a headliner, he was what I would call a B-level counselor, although he's an A-level rock star and musician to me and you. Yeah, he's not to the general populace.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

That's crazy. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:35

So Billy and she, you know, she did another one with Daryl Hall and um Gushram Tesla and Nuna Betancourt on her. Nuno didn't want to play extreme songs with everybody. He had like a list of rush songs and Zeppelin songs and stuff. And um, you know, you can pay a thousand dollars to shake Steven Tyler's hand backstage in an Aerosmith concert. You know, she paid more than that, but she we have a video of her playing Purple Rain with uh Nuno Betancourt. Oh wow. And Nuno's playing the guitar, and he was like, Can I sing the second verse? And she's like, Absolutely. So she started off and he sang the second verse. And that's a pretty neat thing to have.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

And not just shake a hand and take a picture. It's like here we are doing a song. To actually get on stage and play with them. Yeah.

unknown 1:02:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:21

This was in a rehearsal place, but well, yeah, but yeah, I don't mean a performance.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:27

Well, because sometimes it happens too. Like they'll have they'll like rent out a nightclub. Like she did a journey thing, and uh every band got to play in a rehearsal place with Jonathan Cain, the keyboard player from Journey, and the next night they went to a nightclub and did their journey song with Steve Smith, the drummer from Journey, but that was at an open to the public nightclub. So if you're in the right place in Nashville, you can just pay twenty dollars to see Steve Smith or you know, one of these people play at Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp with all these amateurs.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:58

That's such a cool concept. I love that y'all do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:01

Tell me about the cruise. Okay. So it's an unrelated thing. When we went to Fantasy Camp, the music director for the Fantasy Camp is this guy who's uh a regional rock star from uh the New England area named Gary Hoey. So he's somebody you would see in guitar magazines in the 80s and 90s, but he never got to superstar level. But it turns out he's a wonderful guy. He's a great musical director and super nice, like one of these really charismatic guys. And we really liked him and we really liked his band. So as we got to know him, he ended up doing this there's a lot of rock and roll cruises, but this one is called Legends of Rock. Now they're up to like 13. Um he got you know, maybe got in on like maybe number five, and they have like 20 bands on a cruise ship, and everybody on the cruise is there to see the bands, it's not just part of the larger cruise. Super cool. They have two bands playing on one of three stages at any given time, and they have some super headliners. Deep purple was one, Ace Freely, Rick Emmett from Triumph. We love Triumph. Sammy Hagar was the headliner on one, and the other headliner was uh Bad Company. Paul Rogers is playing with Bad Company, and Sammy Hagar walks on the stage and they sang a tune together, and it's like at a 1200 seat theater on a cruise ship. Yeah, I've loved some of the recent videos of what those two guys are doing. It's so cool. So we like that so much. We've gone on it like seven or eight years in a row. And some, you know, some years are better than others, but it's always fun. Some years are better than others with headliners, but it's always fun. And you see new bands or bands you weren't expecting. Like we saw a band called Magna Magpie Salute, and we didn't know who they were. And we found out, oh, it's Rich Robinson from the Black Crows band, where they play Black Crows songs and blue songs and original songs. We're like, we forgot how much we like the Black Crows. Yeah. And and then the crows came back a couple years later, and we've just really been into the crows. I think we've seen them every time they've been in in Metropolitan Washington the last four or five years. They're fantastic. And you mentioned Deep Purple and Paul Rogers and Sammy Hagar. I'm not sure what you lost there, but Paul Rogers and Sammy Hagar were on the same cruise, and Paul Rogers was playing, and Sammy Hagar came out just in between the songs, and then they did a song together. Can I have like a minute to talk about how my music job helped pay for my first house? Yes, sure. Okay. So it was 2003, and I always say I don't have anything if it wasn't for property and my parents and what came before me. So my parents gave me some money to help put a down payment on a house. To put 10% down. And at the time, uh 2003, I was making, I don't know, maybe about forty, forty two, forty five thousand dollars a year. Yes. And it wasn't really enough to buy a house in Metropolitan Washington. And I always say I bought the the last piece. Of real estate inside the beltway under $200,000. And that that figure is long gone. So I bought this tiny little townhouse. Really a duplex, one side of a duplex in a neighborhood with nothing but these two duplexes next to each other. And it was $195,000 because it desperately needed to be renovated. Yes. So I got, you know, what they call an 80 10 10 where you put down 10%. You get an 80% mortgage at a good interest rate, which at the time was like um 578. Okay. And then the other 10% at a slightly higher interest rate. And they kind of expect you to pay that off or refinance it. And that was like at 7.5. And the music job pay for it. But I didn't have that much money. But at the time I was working um in a band, uh a 1099 band. A band that, you know, you call it a wedding band. You might as well call it a 1099 band. Oh, yeah. Because I played weddings and private parties on Bar Mitzvahs almost every Saturday night. Yes. And I did it for a couple years. So I had for the lone man, it's one thing to say, hey, I'm in a band and I make this money much money I had a 1099, saying I made maybe $7,000, maybe maybe, maybe $8,000 a year before on Saturday nights. And that's what we kind of opened the field. Fresh threshold. Um and because none of that money is they don't take any taxes out of it. So while that's bad for taxes, it's kind of good in your in your income. Right. Because it kind of almost was half of my mortgage or close to it. And when you're clever like me and you have that kind of job, you get to write off every mile you drive, every trip to guitar center, your cell phone, rehearsal space, any of that crap. So I don't think I ever paid my own. The band was your entrepreneur business. Exactly. Even if it wasn't my band, I was an employee of Washington Talent Agency where I was one of, say, 50 musicians that they employed. And you know, I worked almost every Saturday night. And if I did W 2 and then the 1099 was a ban, right? Just the 1099 because I was an independent contractor. So they didn't take any taxes out.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:17

Now I had a W two for my your day job, your day job is a W-2. Yeah. Job. And then your fun job, the night job, weekend job was a ten ninety nine. Right. That's interesting. So then the way you blended that, I also like people hearing the interest rates at that time. Yep. That was just a lot of people freaking out when it's 5.75. Yeah. Right now, it's like I mean six percent six or seven percent has been average for, you know, decades.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:47

Yeah. Well, when we bring it into you down in Carolina, and we had that weekend in Carolina, yeah. Like we we right refinanced our house, we refinanced the vacation house, and then we bought an investment property all around the same time. And our and we still have all those and the interest rates like three and a quarter.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:06

What's the interest? Um in the um investment property look like.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:09

It's a uh it's a townhouse in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:12

And you rent it out? Yes. Okay. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:14

Well we rented out to a family member. Okay. So a family member was like, Oh, I need to, you know, I'm moving here, I need to get a house, and this is what rentals cost. And I was like, We can buy a house for that, for that payment.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:28

So that that's the game. You have to be able, if you can't cover the payment, don't make it a rental. Yeah. Because you don't want a rental to cost you money. Right. So the whole point of the whole point of rental properties is your tenant is paying your mortgage. So the house theoretically costs you zero a month. Right. Or or maybe you make a hundred or two hundred. Yeah. And with a family member, maybe you tolerate that. And but we would have but then this the second part of it is that the mortgage balance is decreasing as you make the payments, yeah, and the value of the house is going up. So somebody else is creating that wealth for you. That's how we build wealth with real estate.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:09

Well, the Sunset Beach House were in the same boat, and you saw the house. Yeah. It was Trisha's mother's and grandparents. And when her mother passed and left a third of the house to us, long story short, was we bought her two brothers out by getting our own mortgage on that house. Um, and then bought her brothers out, and now we have a kind of a reasonable mortgage on it at a great interest rate now. And um we have it's rented out by a professional uh real estate company, and they do sort of long-term rentals at it because it's so beautiful. So we found they keep finding people who's like, well, we're gonna move to the area and we're having a house built for people who lost houses to fires and needed place for four months. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:53

So they call those midterm. So anything under a year we call midterm.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:58

And short term is like a night, a week, you know, more like a vacation rental. Yeah. But midterm is sweet. That's a that's a real sweet spot in the rental game. So you have two really good investment properties, as well as a lot of equity in your personal home.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:16

Yes. I wouldn't have anything if I didn't have real estate and if my dad hadn't given me $2,000 in 1998 and $2,000 in 1999 and said put them in a Vanguard Roth IRA. And I put that $4,000, two here and two there because of the years, and it's just been sitting there. I mean, I'm added to it, but it's been appreciating with it. Just a low, load, low, load, low fee, just mirror as a SP 500. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:52

Yeah, well that's the time value of money. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:54

That was 27 years ago. Yep. That's the time value. Even if I didn't put anything else into it, 4,000 bucks in the SP five hundred in 1999 should be worth something.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:06

Yeah, definitely. Should be.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:08

The uh goal is to not die cold. Not die old? Not die cold. Cold? Yeah. What do you mean by where you live now? No, just just like, you know, a lot of people, the li end of their life is a really sad place. Yeah. So not be there.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:26

All right, that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:27

That could be the title for the podcast, Don't Die Cold. It's a good way to talk more about that stuff earlier. Quality of life statement. Talking about translimited rentals and rehearsals. Thank you so much, Ryan. Thank you, Russ. Yeah, thanks for being here. We'll talk more.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:40

We will. Thank you for being here. Thank you to our listeners. Thank you for watching or listening to us. And you can find us on YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter or X or whatever it's called now. We have some websites at Ryan will share that are easy ways to find it. But the most important thing is to comment on the podcast. Uh, if you're listening or watching, what did you like, what did you dislike, what you wish we had talked about, or anything we could do better. And this has been the Blue Color Podcast, Cup Podcast. I'm reading from the thing. This has been the Blue Cup Podcast.