The Nautilus Studio M31 Files interview Van Hagen

Recording studio owners Yves LF Giraud (Studio M31) and Mr Bill (Nautilus Studio) interview the Mancos based band "Van Hagen".

* Extra footage by RJ McKay

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Alright, so what do we do now? How many takes we're gonna do?

SPEAKER_06 0:37

Whatever it takes.

SPEAKER_05 0:41

So, welcome to uh Naughty Little Studio M31, the interview files. And today with us we have a band, a local band from Mangus, Van Hagen. Welcome guys. Thank you. How are you doing? Cheers. Very good. Um, I'd like you to maybe take turns and introduce yourself first. Start with that, if that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

My name is Hagen McDonald, and uh I'm a singer and songwriter. I play rhythm guitar.

SPEAKER_06 1:12

How many strings on that guitar? Twelve strings.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Oh, wow. One of those guys. Indeed, I have two of them, just in case you want to borrow one. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Alright. And I'm Mike Wingo, and I'm the drummer.

SPEAKER_06 1:31

Percussionist, maybe?

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Totally.

SPEAKER_04 1:34

Yeah. And I'm Jeff Hitchman and the bassist. Bassist, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Jason Miller, and I play guitar.

SPEAKER_05 1:42

Alright. Alright. So uh as far as I know, I know a few things about you guys, obviously, because we know each other, but Hagan, um, you obviously one of the things you guys do is it's all original music. Correct. Right? Yeah so you write the songs if then.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

I do.

SPEAKER_05 2:00

I have.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Okay. And uh some of them are from the 70s. Okay. 71, 72, and then some of them are the rest of them have written since uh 2018 when I started getting back into music.

SPEAKER_05 2:16

And tell me about that. So how did you style music?

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Well You know, at at 15, uh my parents finally gave me a Christmas present and I really wanted, which was a guitar.

SPEAKER_05 2:27

Oh, that's not okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

And uh so that was actually a six-string. And uh not long after that I joined the Navy, and uh when I got out of the Navy I bought a 12 string and played for two or three years in California. Okay. And uh wrote some songs. Uh got to travel then and had a couple kids, and but uh yeah, and then I finally retired when I was 62 and uh got back, bought a guitar. Alright.

SPEAKER_05 3:01

Alright, so so now you're uh you're the singer, songwriter, and Van Hagen. Okay and uh very quickly can you tell us what the name came from?

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Sure. Uh when uh uh before Jason came aboard uh and uh we were starting to play some music and I was thinking about a name and then I didn't know uh if if my name should be in it, and uh uh the person who's no longer in the band actually said, Well, how about Van Hagen? He plays with a lot of distortion, but it just sounded right. And the first couple of questions I've always gotten asked is, Well, what Van Halen song do you do? Well, yeah, you could you could pretend you get it, right? But now, and that's the beauty of the s local scene, is because people know that I play my originals. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_05 3:59

Yeah, yeah, you don't have to explain that much anymore. Just a joke more or less. Yeah, that's where the name came from.

SPEAKER_07 4:05

Okay, okay, cool, cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:08

Well, Mike I like to ask you the same thing. What made you start playing music and when was that and all of this stuff?

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Uh well, I uh uh always showed a strong interest in music from the time I was young, and then I started playing uh drums when I was about nine. Okay. And um Were your parents happy about that? Or yeah, my uh my dad was a uh uh kind of a frustrated musician himself. He was a he was a businessman, but he loved playing music, um, country swing. He actually had a band for a while in Southern California where I grew up. And um so no, he was happy about it. Okay. And uh um so I actually studied music in college and uh um did it full-time for about five years back in the 70s and um and then I uh when I went to grad school I they were starting to um computerize the electronic music studios at that time. This was in the early eighties, and uh I um got fascinated with computers and so I took a programming course at a local junior college.

SPEAKER_05 5:45

What were you at the time, California?

SPEAKER_03 5:47

I was on Long Island, New York, actually. Um I went to grad school at Stony Brook on Long Island and was just doing music on the side during that period. And then I retired a few years ago and uh traveled around for a while looking for a place to settle, and uh and we ended up here. We love we love this place, it's a great music scene, and um Jeff, uh same thing.

SPEAKER_04 6:17

I know a little bit of your best. Well, my mother was a musician in the house, great singer, played the organ, and she was very insistent that I learned to play an instrument. Oh, okay. So I think as a fourth grader I started playing the flute because there wasn't enough trumpets to go around in the little town where I grew up. So a year afterwards there that the trumpet showed up. So I played trumpet for about four years and got very good at it. Uh in the high school band, I got tired of playing college fight songs and you know, pomp and circumstances and all that stuff. And my teacher was a he had a three-piece Dixie line jazz band. I said, I want to play some jazz. You know, I'll hurt uh anything anything like that. I knew Miles Davis was probably out of the question, but he wouldn't do it, so I said, Well, my friends want me to learn how to play bass guitar. So I started learning how to play bass guitar in 1966.

SPEAKER_07 7:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 7:12

Had my first gig at a YMCA camp, uh, a lot of girls, made five bucks, big money for a kid. Thought, oh, this is great, this is for me. Oh my little bat, you were. Yeah, yeah, I was. So yeah, dove right in. And uh the local band we had, we were pretty well known because we had a well-known disc jockey in San Bernard, California, out of a station called KFXM that he got us some great gigs. And you know, as a sophomore in high school, we're we're we were playing to like a thousand people at the you know state colleges uh California up in California. Uh gosh, I did that. Uh in the meantime, started my construction business. So uh I was a licensed B general contractor in California, in Big Bear Lake, my hometown. Uh I was playing, playing weekend gigs. Uh I had the energy to do that as a young man. Uh then came out to Colorado in uh 87, I guess, to cross it to boot. But uh I I had started to play upright bass. I think I've been playing upright for probably 35 years. I started playing guitar in 71 and mandolin probably about 30 years ago. So I became very involved in uh Western Swing, bluegrass, the bluegrass world. Uh playing a lot of great bands, you know, uh Tell You Right Contest winner back in 05, playing with another one. Uh yeah, but I like all kinds of music. You know, love it all. So I mean I I'm glad to be here. Gosh, it's a great music saying. Yeah. And uh great.

SPEAKER_05 8:46

And uh um, well, Jason, you know the question.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Uh what uh what made me interested to start playing music? Um I started taking guitar lessons at the Catholic school that I went to when I was nine years old. Oh my wow. The the um orchestra guy came around, showed you all the instruments, then a guitar guy came in, was like, here's the instrument. And I think there's a picture of me being about three or four years old, and I'm holding, standing up, holding a plastic guitar with you know, plastic strings, just this toy my parents had got me. I think the Bee Gees faces was on the front of the plastic guitar. Uh but I'm holding it, how you're supposed to hold it. Right. And so by the time the guy comes around at the Catholic school, I'm uh I'm already a guitar player, and so I'm like, oh yeah, I'm gonna play this. Parents were cool and uh took lessons until I graduated eighth grade.

SPEAKER_07 10:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

And uh that's what got me into it. I just the my mom talks about just playing music all the time when we were in the womb and then out, and it was always Motown and all this stuff. Yeah, yeah. And so that's basically I was given the opportunity and I took it, and then it's I it's been music ever since.

SPEAKER_05 10:28

Awesome, awesome. Okay, w how did you end up here? And where were you at the time, actually?

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah, um, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.

SPEAKER_07 10:38

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Uh, and and I played professionally in Chicago, playing a lot of jazz, um, or mostly uh then I was given the opportunity to move here uh through some friends and I stopped everything that was going on in Chicago or wrapped it up basically, like wrapped up my music career there.

SPEAKER_05 11:03

And what was the incentive to to come here, if I may ask?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

What what was it that uh made you feel like yeah, uh I'm gonna I had been traveling here over the few years to visit friends. Okay. So I knew of this place, and uh at the point when I was able to basically confront, oh, I've had this 25-year music career. Um what else do I want to do? And it was sort of like how I got into music in the first place. There was an opportunity, and I said, Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna take this. So satisfied with the musical life that I've had, and uh a little change is good, and I didn't even think I'd be playing music with people this soon. Right. And I'm playing in this super fun band playing original music, so it's no, and that that's wonderful. It's the highlight for me being able to play original music.

SPEAKER_05 11:59

Yeah um so I again to go back to you then um if i I may be mistaken, but I think in the 70s you actually had a friend you were playing with occasionally, right? Can you tell me about that?

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Sure. So uh I I actually got out of the military in 71 and uh in Southern California, and then I moved to the uh Las Gatas, Santa Cruz area, and I I had bought a guitar, a couple of little things that happened, but i I ended up basically in Las Gatas, California, uh and I had my 12 string and I uh was g going to go oh that I was going to go to the University of San Jose. Okay, and I rented a house downtown, and uh I put an ad out for uh a roommate and Roger showed up. Right, right, okay and uh so we played music right away and uh so he played solos, you know, and we both kind of wrote songs. He wrote some songs, I wrote some songs, and so that was a two, three-year deal, and at the end of that we actually we both lived uh mobile in bands. We started off with Volkswagen bands, each of us, and then we had stepped up to a UPS thigh. Oh wow, and then so one one uh we I sold mine, hopped into his with his dog, and we went to the East Coast. And uh played in different places. We actually we got stuck in Boulder because his dog uh had puppies. So we had to stay there for like eight weeks. But uh, you know, but at the end of that trip when we got back east, uh we stopped playing kind of, we got real jobs, you know, and then he got homesick and he headed back home, and I was with him. And what was his name, Roger? Roger Nicholas. Roger. He's still alive and he lives in Globe. I'm sorry, I just once in a while. That's that's old Roger. And then after that, we I stopped playing. I just started uh my other interest actually was motorcycles, and uh I just ended up doing that you know for 40 years.

SPEAKER_05 14:27

So yeah. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Well, cool.

SPEAKER_05 14:33

And uh uh so right off the bat you were you were already kind of writing songs, really back in the 70s, too.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

You know, that's the interesting thing, and and uh we did do that, and we admired, you know, like Laga the Messina and stuff like that. Not necessarily the uh the biggest names out there, but it's definitely that kind of a a groove, you might say. And uh yeah, I don't know why we started writing something. I mean I don't even know today why, right? I just do sometimes, you know. It's nothing plain.

SPEAKER_05 15:04

Well there's just certain pleasure to that versus doing covers that it both are great, but it it there's a different it's a different thing.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

The the the gift is having somebody else so uh enthusiastic about oh yeah, no, that makes a big difference for sure, and and you get that right now.

SPEAKER_05 15:21

Definite high. Milk it, milk it. Well, and you know Mike, if I'm not mistaken, you are involved or were at some point in this area in Durango with a music school. Okay. Can you tell me? I don't know much about that except what I just said, so I love some of that.

SPEAKER_03 15:43

Uh yeah, I teach uh one day a week at Stillwater Music in Durango. Um Stillwater is a non-profit organization that um does music lessons at all levels on all instruments and also does bands um for kids and adults. And um they get a lot of um local funding from wealthy folks and uh institutions in Durango, uh which allows them to do um scholarships for kids and people that want to do lessons or play in a band and they don't have the funds to do it. So it's a great organization and pays pretty well for teachers, um uh compared to a lot of those sorts of arrangements where you're teaching out of a music store. Yeah, you know. Um so very cool.

SPEAKER_05 16:47

So, Jeff, um you are a man who seems to be everywhere when it comes to playing bass in the area. Right. How how how do you manage that? How do you work that out?

SPEAKER_04 16:59

Very carefully with a calendar that I have to remember to enter dates. But yeah, so yeah, I started doing that actually at a young age, going I was doing some work down in the LA area too. Played in any other clubs down there? No, let's see the Ice House and Pasadena. Okay played in a trio there, but I played mostly guitar in a trio there. Okay. I forget some of the other clubs. There were some of the beach places we used to play. I used to play with some guys in some great bands, you know. There was one band with a horn section. I mean, that was like an eight-piece band. You weren't gonna make a lot of money, but boy, was it fun. It was fun. Powerhouse. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 17:39

What was it called? I forget the name of the band. Oh, I thought I thought you said Powerhouse. Because that was a Southern Cal band that my uh neighbor Steve was the singer for. Yeah, all right.

SPEAKER_04 17:52

Yeah, but anyway, yeah, I heard that wrong. Yeah, so uh I think Hagen and I have a pretty similar background with motorcycles because I race pretty competitively in AMA District 37, off-road racing, you know, hundred-mile desert racing and motocrossing. We always had three or four in the basement working on them. And you know, I was playing rock and roll, I had my rig, and then I would take off after Sunday gig to make it to a race on Sunday. Every Sunday they had a race. And basically, which meant I didn't sleep that night. Right.

SPEAKER_05 18:29

So now you were not sleeping after the race or you were not sleeping after playing. After playing and just race.

SPEAKER_04 18:38

Well that was me, Mr. Red Ramblin' Rush. Well, you made it, you didn't know but uh yeah, I predominantly have been playing a lot of bass. I was doing uh some lessons at the Old Canyon Music on 2nd Street in Durango, probably 2003, 2004, flat picking guitar lessons intermediate in advance. That's what I could really flat pick the guitar. But uh it was kind of tough because I was driving from Bayfield and you know I'd have people cancel out and it got to the point where it just really wasn't worth it, you know, and I was doing my construction business too, so it was pretty hard to schedule all that. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:16

But you uh obviously you're used to uh having a busy schedule.

SPEAKER_04 19:19

Oh yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 19:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:22

So I told them, you know, don't you know just schedule things that a couple, two or three a month, maybe, and because I have my other projects going on. Yeah, sure. Van Hagen, I don't want to mess that up.

SPEAKER_05 19:32

No, you can't otherwise this interview is for nothing. I won't have that. Uh Jason, tell me a little bit about Chicago. Tell me a little bit about what you've done in Chicago, uh band stuff, uh places maybe you've played at, uh stories, I don't know whatever.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Yeah, it's um I'm gonna pick up from where we left off with uh uh inspiration to play. Okay. Um I think I was about twenty-three or so, twenty-three, twenty-four, and I was out of college. I did composition music composition in school. Um and then um I'd be playing a little bit here and there, but I was just meeting people in Chicago at the time, kind of like trying to see where the scene was, trying to see what I would do, who I would play with. Um and I got in a car accident after going to a jazz show one night. Someone ran ran the stop sign, T-boned me and my buddy. And uh and pretty much I stopped driving for a month. I went to work only about three days a week. Well you well you uh I wasn't hurt, but my my brain was a little bit that was it was it was odd. And at that point I decided um I'm quitting this job that's making me money to live. I'm going to uh follow the thing that I've been loving ever since I was a kid, and I'm gonna do music, and I don't know what that means. Uh and me and my buddy got in the car and drove to California where we had another friend living, and was there for a few months. Um we played a gig in Marin County for there was like a senator that was uh the party was for or something. Okay. So we did. And um I basically decided at that point, oh I'm gonna go back to Chicago. There were a couple bands playing Django Reinhardt type stuff. There was a guy who was on the scene and stuff. And I was like, okay, I can do this out here, but I think I want to go back and do with this dude in Chicago. And I went back and little time passed, got into that band. I was about twenty-seven and we started playing weekly at the jazz one of the jazz clubs in Chicago. Do you remember the name of the band? It's still there, the Green Mill. Green Mill Cocktail Lounge. Um and that's basically as soon as that started up until now. Probably traveled to Colorado the most to play. Uh different different places over the years. But out of all the places that you know you'd go to play, Colorado was one where I returned to the most, it seemed like over the years, you know. Um so that feels good uh being here now.

SPEAKER_05 23:00

And uh let me ask you just one thing. Uh style-wise, so jazz apparently from what I understand has been kind of a predominant music style. For you have you done other things, played with different style of music over the years as well?

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Yeah, I started in uh heavy metals, bead metal, head of band. Um but I I sang in that band or growled or whatever it sounded like. Um but my brother was in the band, and we both play guitar and we would play harmony guitar solos and we wrote all our music. Um ended up selling one of the songs to uh advertising agency in Chicago uh for um a Nintendo commercial, the background music. Oh yeah, so it was like this we were mixing somewhere, and somebody walked by and we're like, oh, we got this account that this would be great for. It was great. Yeah, yeah, but that was kind of the yeah. Um uh when I was 19 did a cover band thing with some other friends, uh where we played all the good songs of the day, you know, back then it was uh the Black Crows and No Doubt and Jacob Dylan. Yeah, all this kind of um, you know, I guess it'd be uh you know 96 uh times, you know, around there. Um so yeah, that was sort of and then basically after that it was a bunch of years of me being like, I don't even know how to play guitar because I was around enough music um when I was going to the university that I realized that there were just insane musicians everywhere. That's what I was saying. And that's when I had a s that's when I was like, oh, I have to really start practicing and like got into jazz because it was because it was technical, but still um there was all this information like in heavy metal where it's like classical music distorted. Oh, Vay is an example, yeah. So that's yeah, that's kind of it. But I mean always played when I was doing the jazz shows, my other friends were singing John Prine stuff and Tom Waits and all this other kind of so I I'd play with those guys and try to do um try to play things that I would want to play, but I was so interested in all these other things that I'd be playing Django Reinhardt lines over when the guy's playing John Prime stuff, and it was just it was just I didn't just blew Jeff's mind. I didn't I didn't have a lot of stylistic regard for what was going on.

SPEAKER_05 26:11

Well, I mean there was something to say about being you, you know, as musicians, as you said, there are so many of us just playing out there in every single little town, you can find people and their grandma is playing the banjo too, you know. And so in the end you you realize what's the point, right? And so the point uh in my opinion now too, you the pleasure of playing as as you know, it's something that you can't replace. And if you can have a voice, if you can have an identity, uh a personality in what you do. That's I think those two things are we can't forget that.

SPEAKER_03 26:54

Um uh you know, Jason and I both having a fairly extensive jazz background.

SPEAKER_06 27:02

Yeah, because you do too.

SPEAKER_03 27:03

That's right. Um are kind of layering these different things onto Hagen's songs and um and it's and he's cool with it, which is amazing.

SPEAKER_05 27:21

When somebody writes songs and and they let you do whatever you want to them is is in my opinion the best way for all of them. Yeah, you know, the musicians, the person that writes you're gonna do something he wouldn't expect, and that's gonna take it to a place that's so interesting.

SPEAKER_03 27:36

Right, right. And Jeff here is can is fluid in so many different styles. He just goes right along or does something a little different, and then we're like, oh yeah, that's just about anything. So it's really fun. It's a really fun group to play in.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

I guess that's the through line, like with all of our different, you know, Hagan's not a jazz guy as far as what he writes and puts out, but the way that his vocal line the way he presents his vocal lines, um that makes it, you know, for guy for guys like us, we're like, oh well that's a rhythm that also suggests all this. Like, yeah, it's folk music, yeah, it's maybe a little rock. But in all these other countries and all these other people that play music, when this rhythm comes up, you can do this too. So it's not just like our ideas wanting, you know, us wanting to be like, I we want our idea in here. It's it's that it's it's that we've carefully asked ourselves, does this fit? And yeah, we're stretching things, but it needs to we need to make sure that the song is awesome. And so that mixed with Hagan's openness to us going to these places that other people might not go.

SPEAKER_05 29:04

When you're young, everybody wants when's when's my solo? I've got to open the channel. I've been practicing this all week. You know, and Hagan, since you're you're the songwriter, tell us how how how you feel about all that.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

You know, it feels great, actually. And uh the thing is, is uh uh when uh we did start Van Hagen, uh it was very regimental and very much I had to really outline where Derek would play per se. Right. And it was so restricting to all of us that you know I I finally just had to change things around, and that's when when Jason came into my life. And uh it just uh he allows us now to be free, which is a new thing for me. Right. So they're used to that kind of a thing. And me, I'm used to mostly just playing by myself, which isn't necessarily on time sometimes and some of the you know, the uh measures and stuff. I'm the I'm the least schooled uh uh musically, but I I uh been blessed with uh the songs I have written. And then now I I feel that freedom too. It's like when when I first met Roger, I played rhythm. He played lead and we both sang. And then by myself I'd do a little extra uh flat picking to make it more interesting, I'd play by myself. So now I can go back to playing rhythm and exploring rhythm. You know, that's what they let me do too. It's like a two-way street. It's a lot more fluid. You know, communication is there, it's just I don't know. I think we're all hooked up by the same ubiquitous chord. It feels like okay, that's a good analogy. Yeah, it's just like hooked up without that much.

SPEAKER_06 31:02

Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the songs are different all the time, right? You're not playing the same leads and uh we weren't.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

And then um when we were we played a couple three hour spans of time. Uh and with jazz it works really well to never want to play the same thing. Right. It it really it really fits. Um but after a while I kind of didn't feel like we were giving Hagen songs the right do. Uh huh.

SPEAKER_06 31:43

You kind of found what works.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah, and so we're still kind of doing that, but each song sort of has its sounds that what it wants like the that want to be with it. Yeah. That wanna be with those vocal lines.

SPEAKER_06 31:59

Yeah, so it's probably kind of just narrowing into this is how this song really feels the best. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Sifting through all that improv that we've already done and being like, what are those good ideas that stick? Um, but still there's a lot of improvisation uh because we can't help it. Yeah. That's perfect.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Even though all the songs are basically uh you know the same, but not. So they have different spots. Mike does a drum solo in this specific spot, but then yeah, the last time we played, I think he had three extra spots.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

The other night we were doing um jazz uh treatments of songs, which was like we would trade I would play uh four measures, and then Jeff would play four measures, and then I would play, Mike would play four measures, and we kind of do this trade and four trade and fours, which you won't get. I mean, bluegrass, yeah, you'll get this kind of stuff. But all of their musics have they don't entertain this type of stuff, right? And so doing that where we're just like, we haven't practiced doing this here, and all of a sudden we're just like doing it.

SPEAKER_04 33:26

We're doing it.

SPEAKER_05 33:29

It's awesome, man.

SPEAKER_04 33:30

I was always an old school bassist, you don't take solos, right? And all of a sudden I started, well, I did a gig of three or four gigs with a Windham Hill jazz keyboard player. I was playing fretless bass. Okay. And he demanded that I take it breaks. Yeah. So I thought, now how am I gonna approach this? Well, what about horn lines? Trombone, you know. So yeah, you're back to I just started doing that. I it's fun now, you know, and I do a lot of solos on the up right now with a few, this definitely this band up in junction. So it's kind of fun for me. Sure.

SPEAKER_05 34:03

Step out a little bit. Present and future. Um there are any gigs lined up? Anything happening that you can tell me about?

SPEAKER_02 34:14

Vacation. Actually, uh they all might have some gigs. I mean Van Hagen. No, Van Hagen, I think uh we're we're open to gigs, but uh Mike's gonna take off for most of a month, and we just don't have anything lined up yet. We just kind of kind of had that goal of uh doing that um the basically opening gig for Van Hagen as it is at the brewery. Fantastic. It turned out much more interesting than I ever thought it would. That went real well. Yeah, and so that went real well, and so that was kind of like for me, it's just like okay, because I'm also doing other stuff. And so if a gig comes along, we should we talk about re uh get together anyway, just because we have fun. So that's what I was thinking of.

SPEAKER_05 35:09

Yeah, yeah. And you um so in this area we have a a f a few different places, like you know, Cortes at some places, uh Mancas, obviously, where we are. And uh so we we've I've been lucky to see you guys play at uh Mancos Brewery uh recently. But also um hang on, you actually put a festival together a year ago and you did it again this year.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Yes, yes. So that's a Woodstock of Mancas. And uh it's the last weekend in June, and it's all um local artists, musicians that uh do not get paid. It's a free festival. So it's been very building every year. This will be the third year in next year. We just had it.

SPEAKER_05 35:58

So you guys play there. Do I get to play there?

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Oh yeah, we played there. Yeah, yeah, there'll be some something else come out. I guess we have to go, you know, knock on some doors.

SPEAKER_07 36:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:11

No, but then that comes often, you know, by doing a little bit of knocking, but also a little bit of you know, people knowing oh yeah. Right. You know, so maybe you're just to need to do some recording. Recording too.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Yeah, it'll be good.

SPEAKER_05 36:26

Yeah. We've talked about that.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Yes.

unknown 36:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

We may have something for you guys to do. Yeah, we're just at the baby stage. Yeah, yeah. Could be as far as the future goes. So yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:40

Well then we'll we'll we'll thank you so much for coming. Yeah, yeah. We appreciate it. We'll do it again. I'm sorry. I wanna bring people back.

unknown 36:48

Yeah, you get that helping on a regular basis. Where'd you get that then? I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Before we even have it running. Thank you very much, Billy.

SPEAKER_06 37:05

Yeah, and if you want another drink, we can do that. Let's finish our physical setup.