The Nautilus Studio M31 Files interview Ancien History (part 1)

Studio owners Yves LF Giraud (Studio M31) and Mr Bill (Nautilus Studio) interview the band Ancient History with Thomas Martin Scott and Larry Easterling (part 1). Follow Tom Scott on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@thomasmartinscott

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Let's let's let's flowers of the night gleaming from the moisture.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

So well, welcome to another amazing interview at uh the Nautilus Studio Studio M thirty one files. That's what we call it. And uh thanks for joining us, all two of you. Can't wait to hear both of you. So we have ancient history with us. This man right here was gonna introduce himself, and that man right here was gonna introduce him himself. Thomas Martin Scott. Larry Schrodinger Mr. Bill. Yeah, Mr. Bill is not in here, as you know. Oh no, Mr. Bill. I'm gonna start by asking you guys, first of all, how you started working together. First of all. Oh well. I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Uh basically at the end of our careers. When was that? When did we start working together? Yeah, obviously. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Wasn't it 2012? Actually, uh Tom and I had been, yeah, um occasionally with with different people. We had a trio for a while with a a baseman, uh uh Richard. And that was 2012. Okay. And we'd played off and on with different people.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

But were you already in this area? Were you somewhere else you had meant here? Yeah, yeah, we were here. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

But we both had already been out on the road and stuff for 50 years uh before we ever even met.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Right, right, right, right. I think uh where we started work we were working so consistent. Well, like I said, we had a trio with one bass paper week. Uh then being ancient, as you pointed out, we decided we should have a young blood and we got a an incredible guitar player and singer, and he plays bass. Jake. Jake Heath. And um formed a group called These Guys, and that probably was when that's when we started working very consistent and steady. Uh that group. What what happened to Jake Heath? Jake moved, he's now living in um these guys. Uh, right, right. Let me see. Uh he's living in eastern Colorado. Yeah. Yeah, that was an album we made. And and he was really good, huh? He is very good. He's he's going to be playing the zoo July the 5th, I think.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

Oh no. That's when uh Lost Highway's playing.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

So he's not gonna hurt anybody. I don't remember the exact one. He does an incredible one-man band thing with drums and his guitar. Incredible guitar. He is and great entertainment. But that's when we really started working solidifying, I think. So when Jake had to move, uh we evolved into the duo, which um Tom can explain a lot better w what what kind of a sound we when we had the trio, uh either I was on bass and he was Jake was on guitar.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Oh, I see. And then we'd switch. He'd play bass, I'd play guitar, and uh I was playing saxophone and uh lap steel and keyboards um and bass, and we'd s just switch off and we had a band. But when Jake left, uh I can't play lead guitar to drums without something. I know. So I bought a uh I bought a here's a plug, they they don't pay me for this, uh boss RC505 loop station. I don't like you anymore.

SPEAKER_03 4:12

You just know what that is, right? If you don't, you can do like multiple.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

It's five loopers all connected in one box. And uh they all sync up and they all uh it's an incre if you can stop one, bring it back in. If you haven't tried it, uh there was a guy um I'm spacing his name now uh in Austria that was using one. I saw it on YouTube and I'm like, oh, I gotta have one of those. And then you saw the price. And then you saw the price. Yeah. It was well it was five hundred bucks, but that's you know, for what it does, I mean um I'll play uh keyboard, uh uh a guitar, a bass, and drums, um, and m maybe uh saxophone and whatever. Uh and kazoo. I love the way you play. Kazoo, thank you. But what instead of going to uh uh less than a trio, we actually went to more than a trio because we sound like a five or six-piece band. And it's it's studio quality, it's you know, CD quality sound.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Uh we use a uh stereo bows uh uh sound system that sounds like a band.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

I mean we you Misterville loves the Bose. Uh I got two for my band. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Sometimes we people think, oh, you're playing karaoke, you're playing on no, it's all armies, everything on there is things that Tom is recording. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

And that's what it was. Every time we play, I have to explain it because somebody comes up and goes, Where do you get your karaoke tapes?

SPEAKER_03 6:02

Take them. And you need to sell them.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

And well, and not only that, but we do a whole lot of original music.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

How are you gonna get karaoke tapes of your music? Where are you gonna buy them?

SPEAKER_03 6:18

It's it's easy. You go to talk to AI, it does everything out of it. Yeah. But no, uh, so and actually you guys just did uh a festival. Yes, uh, this past weekend, a few days ago, and uh you were looping, you were using that looper with the with all the tracks and everything that you had built, and you were playing uh you had a drum set there, you were playing over it, harmonica, all of that. It was a really nice combination of of um of a full sound uh right off the bat, you know. Thank you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

You're one of those bands that has two drum two drummers. Yeah, yeah. Which which is a little bit of a challenge. You don't want to interfere with you've got to fit in with what's already on there, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Yeah. Well, I uh a lot of what uh I have in the looper I had already made because I was doing a solo show for 25 years. So yeah. Um when I wasn't playing with a band or doing a show show, you know, six nights a week. Uh the weekend I'd be doing uh a solo show. And it so I was using a a looper, had a duo looper, no one didn't have the five, but I've heard about that problem, that duo looper.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

They have shots for that now.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hopefully they're gonna fix that problem for so Larry, tell us all about you, where you styled it, where you were born, all of that. Like really way back, go as far as you can remember. We were in this cave.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

You know, I uh I'm I'm a country boy, uh grew up listening to mountain music by people from down in Kentucky. Um you were born in Kentucky, you know? No, my my f all my my folks were. Uh oh. And then they moved up to Ohio, and my brother, who's about uh nine years uh older than me, um was a musician, a drummer, and he introduced me to a lot of a variety of music. I'm grateful to that. I uh he I I used to that's funny sound of music. And then I listened to it and began to enjoy it. So I I had an interest in music, but I didn't start playing music. I was always wanted to be an entertainer and as a kid I started doing magic and ventriloquism. Right. You know, and my dad would have to take me to the to the show because I was too young to drive. But uh in um in uh my think my sophomore year, I I played around a little bit on drums, my sophomore year uh I joined a band, started playing drums, and was working on clubs when I was a junior in at high school. Uh so I really enjoyed playing uh a lot. Uh and I m when I left uh after I graduated and went to Dayton and was playing there with the band. And when that fell through, I um joined uh a show, a magic show. Back then magic didn't sell illusions and so much. So we had what we call a spook show, which was an illusion show with kind of the horror theme to it. And we had a portable stage, and that that's when we had a thing called, for those of you who too young, it was called Drive in Theaters. No way, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:39

You just drove right through the front doors of a big theater, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, yeah, and let the the stage down. So I worked with that for a while, and um uh then uh uh the the guy had to get off the road and so I took over the show and I started doing for the rest of that time I didn't play music, I worked uh eventually uh all kinds of things, uh school assembly shows, um uh certain th some theaters or uh live stuff, but eventually got into Grandstand Attractions. Uh and I had another portable stage we pulled up next to the big stage and and I was performing ventriloquism and magic illusions. And that gave me a chance to go down even to the West Indies for a couple of winters. There was a uh it was actually a carnival that traveled from island to island by by ship, by boats. And uh they always booked an aerial lac, they had several different good aerial lacks and in the back end and what you would call the sideshow. I'd do ventriloquism in the English speaking countries and and illusions. And so that was a great experience. Sure. Uh I was doing that when I received a nice letter from the government saying they needed me desperately in the defense of the country. And it was called the draft. And it always started with greetings. Thank God they are you. Yeah, no. People felt very safe. Uh so uh that last year I I got an extension because I had some grandstand attractions to work and and went into the military thinking everything's on hole for now. But I did get a chance, uh they s didn't get to do it the first year, but uh uh when they used to have in uh uh all uh in uh competition around every base in the world, but they would always have entertainment contests at each one of the uh uh uh bases and the winners of that would come together and in I was in the Fourth Army area, would put together a show and travel around to the different bases, and it was it was really interesting because most of the people were professionals who had gotten drafted, you know? So I was uh uh working with some really great people and great musicians and really missed playing. So while I was still there in the military, started playing, um uh got my own drum set back and mostly country at that time. And then I was at Fort Sill when I uh got out. I just stayed there. We're working it was interesting. We were working clubs just outside of town. They didn't start we didn't start playing until the ones closed downtown. So we started about 12 o'clock playing to the morning seven days a week. It was really interesting. Uh uh where was that?

SPEAKER_03 12:27

I'm sorry, what was that?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

That was in Fort Sillton, Oklahoma. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

I was in Oakie. Well can you give me an an um an idea of the the era, the the 70s?

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I got out uh about uh uh uh I got went in in in uh uh uh 54, got out in I mean 64 rather. And and this was around the 70s. I I played there for a while and I went to um to Fort Worth, Dallas Fort Worth area, and put together a uh trio uh that worked a uh motel circuit. Back then it was really pretty great. We could you could get a gig a month at each motel. So I booked everything I could around the Dallas Fort Worth area, then go out on the road. I played such uh exotic places as Clovis in Mexico and and uh that's uh oh yeah, it was a big thing.

SPEAKER_03 13:22

Were you able to to to to deal with the traffic?

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it was the streetcars were the worst part. But but uh uh uh so uh the it it really worked well. We had the trio and I carried the ventilation stacks and we had our own floor show. And I did that for several years until I got interested in um a human potential development course and decided I wanted to teach that, and I literally got out of music and entertainment for several years doing that sort of thing. Went back and got a degree in psych and uh worked a little bit as a therapist. But I always missed playing and uh uh would occasionally uh get I got a drum set and didn't play with him, but I started doing some entertaining again while I was doing that. And when I finally ended up here in uh uh this area in the uh Cortez, I uh uh had to start playing again. So I I I was pretty rough, pretty, you know, it'd been a long time since I brought you to Cortez. Well actually I was um I had friends up in Glenwit Springs. Um one was a former supervisor that I'd had in Ohio. I went back to Ohio where I grew up and was working in an agency there. And um the supervisor I had was a blues musician, a good heart player. And he moved out here and they they needed someone uh uh as a crisis clinician out here. And I wanted to come to the mountains um f ever since I'd seen them as a kid. So I took the job out here and um worked up in Glenwood Springs, the lead job closed, and then I I came down to Cortes, found a job down here as uh same doing the same thing, but eventually ended up working for uh an agency called the uh opinion project, which did a lot of work with people, worked with that until um they decided I was too old. So yeah, you know, kind of no. I mean they said, you know, really it's time to retire. So uh but that was one of the best things that ever happened to me because I got to move back, started playing with some people like this guy, and eventually. But eventually got into these guys, yeah, these guys. Yeah, this guy these guys. And eventually, you know, we yeah, and I was real uh quite honestly, in this trio, I was the the weakest link. But you know, they say you want to get better, play with people better than you. Exactly. I was gonna say that it's actually very often the best place to have because it was like I went back and got a degree in music, you know, with these guys. But uh it's been great, and and I've really got involved in playing a lot of blues, which I've come to really love. So it was uh it was an interesting journey that got me here, but uh but uh I'm always grateful I ended up where I did. And this community playing here with and with with Tom and playing with this m musicians like this. Uh uh this is a great community.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

I I had a uh none of us understand it almost. That's what we're doing this, because we're we're not gonna run out of people to talk to. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

I tell people all the time I'm blown away at this little bitty area, at the seriously, world-class musicians that are drawn here. I'm like, how did you end up here?

SPEAKER_03 16:51

This is done, you know, and then you're retiring, and then Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

This is ten miles past the edge of the earth. We're out in the middle of nowhere, and here's every time you turn around, here's comes somebody else.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

Like, well, and and I don't know about you, but yeah, when I when I go too far, I'm I'm worried to fall off. I know.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

I mean that's I know it's but it's crazy how little this is such a small area, it's almost like half the population is musicians and support, and people actually go and listen to music.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

I mean, you know, when you played enough places where you know people who care less who is playing it, they don't give a right about you and just have drinks. And here people actually make the effort to come and it's amazing. Um and talking uh uh to f to finish, and um, we're gonna go to Tom for a minute and we'll do a few back and forth, but to finish on on you, Larry. The other thing that you haven't mentioned, obviously there's so many things to mention, is you still do venture I can say I want to hear venture pronunciation his dummy actually says it better than he did. What kind of dummy do you have? Uh they don't it's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

They don't like the word dummy. Oh wow. Yeah. Well, but then they can't be them figures, yeah. I've got one that was it's interesting, it was made in England. The English are different, they don't have the the slit jaw that drops, they have a lower lip that drops. And it's uh uh excellent figure that I've had since I was a s kid. Uh and then uh some smaller little figures and and I do a couple of things, I do kid shows, Magic and Ventuquis, so I use puppets there. And uh uh if I'm doing an adult show, uh like banquet show or something like that, I use the bigger figure. Okay. But uh I want to say one thing though before we leave this about uh this community um uh of musicians. Uh uh just through quick examples. For reasons that had nothing to do with him, Tom got uh made homeless very quickly by somebody doing things that they shouldn't have done, trying to sell a house that they didn't own. But anyway, he luckily found this fifth goal guy who wanted to get off his place. But it it had really been pretty well uh sandwiched. And amazing musicians helped me get it moved. Yeah, let me tell you about that. They the wheels were not only off, the axles were off.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

And so it's Tom and I didn't why didn't you that was crazy?

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Wow and Tom and I, who are enormously strong, of course, uh and one other guy and his son were there true how are we gonna get this? And about that time a truck shows up with Eve and another musician, Hagin, and and all of a sudden there's all this activity, and the wheels and the axles get back on, and the thing gets in, and the guy hooks it up, pulls it over to my house, and puts it into an impossible spot. In one try. In one try. Uh I had acted in there perfectly.

SPEAKER_03 20:09

No, was that Hagen driving? That was Hagen driving. He's about out.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

He is I had a uh uh emergency surgery, and somebody put together a benefit. All of a sudden, all these musicians come in and start uh wanting to help. They set up an incredible benefit. Uh a friend of ours, a drummer lost his wife. All of a sudden, uh there's a a good good uh guitarist friend of ours, Kevin Fraser. He is, I'm I'm collecting money here, I'm headed down, you know, calls us.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

Because he had to go to uh yeah, and and uh because he had to go up to to uh junction where his wife was, and and he was able to be with her when she passed.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

I mean, those are typical. I could go on, but those are typical of the kinds of people we have here in this musical community. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

No, I see, and and and you're right, this is very important. And and all these people we need to talk to them, they need to they need to be heard because everybody's got a story, and everybody that has come here, I'm blown away with the background that they have that we don't know about. Because everybody's so humbled. Nobody's gonna say, Oh, I'm great, oh you should listen to my album. None of that. But at the end, you're like you you're blown away every time by people, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. No, I agree, it's incredible. And and so, um, Larry, if you don't mind, I'll ask down. Tom, um, please, we would like to know where you style it. Go all the way back. Go back to when you uh go if you can World War I forget about the the first two months of your life.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Yeah, well, you're gonna see now how uh Larry and I are kind of Siamese twins. You're gonna hear He just doesn't have a hat.

SPEAKER_03 21:55

That's the only reason you can tell otherwise.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

We have such an amazingly Parallel background, it isn't even funny. Um anyway, I I started taking piano lessons when I was seven, and then I took drum lessons in the eighth grade, and uh what what was that a parent pressure or was it? No, that was that was I I want to do this. Okay, you know? Um and then when I was 12 I got a guitar and that was it. I was I spent my entire life in my bedroom with the door closed and my guitar and my fingers nearly bleeding and just getting after it. And uh uh when I was 16 in uh 1966, I was born in 50, so it's easy to remember what what age I was at what year. Right, right. Uh when I was 16, my dad worked for Florida Power and Light, and he had a a co-worker uh named Butch that put together a band, and they wanted a rhythm guitar player, and they couldn't find one. And they were talking, he was talking to my dad, and he asked my dad if he'd mind if I played, and my dad's like, no. So he had to sign to get me in because it was a bar, you uh and I was 16. So uh I I I played every weekend for several months with this band. The drummer was 54, Butch was 46 or something like that, and I'm 16. It was just it was kind of like kind of like the reverse of these guys. But uh I I I had a band in high school, and we were playing out on Melbourne Beach in Florida, and this band, this show band walked up when we were playing, and I was playing or uh I had a Vox Super Continental Double Keyboard organ. You know, like John Lennon played, and uh and I was playing that, and they came up to me and said, uh, we don't want to break up anything you got going, but we sure could use you as a keyboard player. And I looked at the guys and they're like, go for it. Yeah, so it was a you know, it was nice. And so for the next nine months, I played six nights a week in a show band. It was uh it was a nightclub, not a bar, you know, tables with with candles and the whole night and a big big band was that a lot of people on the five piece, but had a a floor about the size of this right here, where the comedian would come out, or the ventriloquist, or the uh snake dancer. We had I mean it was a show, and it was like a Vegas style show.

SPEAKER_03 24:58

So I I cut my teeth on that, learning how to was the band also a uh a show in itself, or was it like a backup?

SPEAKER_02 25:06

No, the band was a show in itself. Okay, okay uh we did uh we we would play and we did comedy and we did this, that, and the other thing, but uh about every uh 20, 30 minutes we'd bring out the comedian or the snake dancer or whatever. And uh um, and I'm 17 now. Uh and the Sax player had to sign to get me into the club because I couldn't get in there. And so uh uh with about six months or so into that, our bass player quit. And the guys are like, Well, we've got to have a bass player. We can we can do without a keyboard. Would you play bass? And I'm like, uh sure. I went the next day to a pawn shop and bought a bass for 50 bucks. Yeah, and I spent that entire afternoon figuring out all what we figuring out the show. Okay, what do I play on this song and that song and da-da-da-da-da? And my I spent the next uh months uh all day, every day, playing bass, just getting getting it down. And uh the crazy thing is Rusty, the Sax player who signed to get me in there, had friends in the number one band on the west coast of Florida, the Mirage. They were opening for everybody that was anybody that showed up there. And they came over to visit Rusty and saw us, and their bass player had just quit. Okay, and they said, Would you be interested in playing bass with us? And I'm like, uh, twist more. Yeah. And so I moved all the way across the state, and like Larry was saying, I was the weakest link, I was the worst musician in the show band, the bad habits that I had just left.

SPEAKER_03 27:19

You can never learn by moving around in the next one before you are.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

I know, and now I'm the worst one in the mirage, and I'm and I'm the bass player, but I I continued doing what I was doing just all day, every day, just working on learning new songs. It was a completely different band. We were playing uh Enagata Davida, you know. We were playing um the rock hits of the of the times, yeah. Of the times. It was a it was a cover band. Okay. And uh we opened for the Almond Brothers. Oh boy. We uh uh we opened for Smith, we opened for Frigid Pink. I don't know if you remember Frigid Pink. They did a psychedelic version of uh House of the Rising Sun.

SPEAKER_03 28:08

I never heard that one.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

And we opened look them up. They they uh we opened for them in the Tampa Coliseum for 16,000 people. Oh wow. And I so I went from this nice, quaint little club to this, you know, uh whatever you want to call it. Right, right. And uh I kept I was still writing songs. I started writing songs when I was 12. And I was writing songs and writing songs and writing, and I'm I'm like, guys, could we do one of my songs? And they're like, no, they're not people won't like it, they don't know it, they don't want to hear it, blah blah blah. So I got frustrated with that, and uh about uh about a year later I quit and moved to New York City and with an acoustic guitar uh went to Greenwich Village and started doing the folk scene.

SPEAKER_04 29:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

And uh I my first album I ever bought was Live at the Bitter End, Peter Paul and Mary, live at the bitter end. I went to the bitter end and I auditioned and they they gave me a small spot in the middle of the week. As a single as a single and uh now I'm hooked. I'm like, okay, this I can make this work. And uh I wound up opening for Mom's Maybelly. You remember Mom's Maybelly?

SPEAKER_04 29:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

She was a you no? Mom's Maybelly was a uh black lady comedian who was in movies and uh all kinds of things, and she's she was great. Anyway, I wound up opening for her in uh uh just off Broadway there in New York. And uh the city started eating me alive. I don't know how to describe it, but the village of stuff, man.

SPEAKER_03 30:11

The old old village, man. Yeah. New York. Were you down there? Did you? I spent uh some time in there. Did you really? In Greenwich Village? But we're talking about them. Yeah, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, the Yafa Cafe, all those places. But you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

It kind of envelops you. Yeah, it I was 19 years old and I couldn't remember being anywhere else. That's what I mean by it enveloped me. Wow. It was like uh I I was living in a loft, and I went out, I smoked at the time, and I went outside to smoke a cigarette, and I saw a car pull up and stop, and the person leave. And all of a sudden, two cars pulled up. About eight guys got out and stripped that car down to a chassis and took off with every bit of it, except the chassis. While you're watching it while I'm watching before I finished one cigarette, I'm like nice neighborhood. Uh yeah, I'm like, I gotta get out of here. This I can't, yeah. So I wound up uh meeting a friend who was funny as can be, and we we we had an impromptu comedy team that we just harassed people. And we hitchhiked from New York to uh Des Moines, Iowa, uh uh on to across Highway 80. Uh I'm spacing the towns now, um, but through Nebraska and all the way to Boulder, Colorado. And there I met a guy who was a songwriter and wanted to do his songs, and I'm like, yes, a man after my own heart. I want to do my why am I writing these songs and playing playing everybody else's music? So uh he had a quarter to f of school to finish back in Ohio. Like I said, we've got parallel.

SPEAKER_03 32:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Uh so he and I hitchhiked back to uh Columbus, Ohio, where he fin was finishing his quarter of school, and his brother lived in Dayton. And we both went to meet or see his brother, and his brother wrote incredible songs and played keyboard. And Terry and I played guitar and he played keyboard, and we're like, we got something here. We we we sounded like Crosby Stills and Ash. I mean, we had that tight harmony, you know. And uh I don't think we did a single song that didn't have three-part harmony somewhere in it, you know. So we hitchiked back across when he finished his school. We hitchiked back across to Boulder and wound up down in Vale, and as a trio, right at the bottom of the lift, we played uh the entire ski season.

SPEAKER_04 33:21

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

And oh that was you know um, but that was starting to eat me alive too, because we did nothing but party. What what year were you there in Vail? This was 72. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

Not far from uh I I was in Breckenridge in '74, and we uh went to Vail a lot and everything. So I wonder if you remember the one guy that you would see at the end of the the ski lift? I thought I thought maybe we might have heard your band and did a little too, you know. You never know. Maybe you never know.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Uh one thing that I just remembered that I left out was I I couldn't remember the name of the town in uh Nebraska, but uh Lincoln was where I stopped and went over to what's the what's the capital of Nebraska? I am spacing it. Anyway, it's a Wikipedia or Google Map. Yeah, went anyway, went there geography, went there and put together a band. And uh this guy, we were playing, we're practicing in this house, and we were pretty loud, and all of a sudden there's a knock on the door, and we're like, oh crap, we've we've pissed somebody off. There's they're they're upset, we're too loud. And we open the door, and this guy goes, uh, I've been listening to you guys for about the last 15 minutes, and I like what I hear. Uh I'm putting together a show in Norfolk. Uh would you be interested in opening for Ricky Nelson? And we're like, we're we're dumbfounded. It's like we just knew we were gonna get chewed out. We just knew we were gonna get chewed out, and instead we get offered a gig opening for a major. And we're like, I mean, we were stunned. We're just like, uh Yeah? Yeah. And so we did. We went and opened for Ricky Nelson at the Kings, I think it was called the Kings Ballroom Kings something.

SPEAKER_04 35:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

There in Norfolk. Anyway, then we went on and and was in uh uh Vale and all that, and uh I was getting really uh too too into the partying. Oh, if if if two will do, fifteen will be better. Oh yeah. And uh I was doing you name it, you I was doing it. You if you came to a party and said, uh, want to try this, I wouldn't even ask what it was. It could have been a Tide Pod. I would have I I'm ready to do it. And uh one night at a party, uh it just got too crazy for me, and I'm like, I'm listening to the party, and I I had done like 13 shots of tequila and a whole bunch of uh mescaline and uh I'm sitting there just listening to the party and it sounded like insanity. It just it was just you know, just and I got up and went into the bedroom uh where the coats were all on the bed, yeah, and I pushed them out of the way and I crawled in the middle of the bed and I s I started crying. I started sobbing like a baby. I'm like I'm never I'm not like like Rodney Crow said, ain't living long like this. Uh I gotta do something. Help me, God, help me. I'd uh if if you don't help me, I'm gonna die. And uh I spent about, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes in there just praying. And when I walked out of that room, I was stone cold sober. And I'm like, whoa. Uh it was about two weeks later I quit the band and found a group in uh Albuquerque that was doing missionary work, do working with addicts and and alcoholics and what have you, and helping people in that way, like I told you. Very parallel lifestyles. And uh uh later on I went back to school and became a nationally certified therapist.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Really?

SPEAKER_02 38:02

And you see what I mean? We're we the more we shared our uh stories with each other, we're like, am I looking in a mirror? Who are you?

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Let's let's listen. Flowers of the night gleaming from the moisture.