Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Brandon Webb, former Navy Seal and founder of
Speaker 1: the Create Club, the number one tactical and survival gear
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Speaker 1: support the military community and give the gift of Create
Speaker 1: Club today at Create club dot com. That's c R
Speaker 1: A t E Club dot com. If it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: you're just not using enough. You're listening to software, radio,
Speaker 1: special operations, military names, and straight talk with the guys
Speaker 1: in the community on the show for the first time,
Speaker 1: a guy we've wanted to have on for a while.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we'll get him in studio soon, but I know
Speaker 1: you're always all over the place. Man uh C. J.
Speaker 1: Ramon most known as being the basis for the Ramons
Speaker 1: from six but now it does his own solo work
Speaker 1: former marine as well, which is kind of how we
Speaker 1: can acted with him. Of course, also just a mutual
Speaker 1: friend of Angel Will Cows and so you're about to
Speaker 1: tour the UK, so it's it's great to finally have
Speaker 1: you on man. Yeah, you called me a good time.
Speaker 1: We just finished up five weeks and uh in Europe
Speaker 1: and then come right literally we landed at JFK. One
Speaker 1: of our crew guys showed up at the airport without
Speaker 1: van pact with gear. We got right in advantage FK
Speaker 1: and started two weeks through the States with a great
Speaker 1: bank called the Aquabats and finished that up about a
Speaker 1: week and a half ago, and now we're taken off
Speaker 1: on the twenty three for the UK. So right in between,
Speaker 1: weren't you also? I saw because you and I follow
Speaker 1: each other on social media, but you're up at You're
Speaker 1: up to your dad's and then you got the phone
Speaker 1: call and that literally yeah, on those on those East
Speaker 1: coast states, we had a day off between Boston and Montreal.
Speaker 1: So I said to the guys and said, hey, let's
Speaker 1: let's stop and see my my old man. He lives
Speaker 1: up in me um retired up there about ten years ago.
Speaker 1: My mom fell and broke a hit. Recently, some my
Speaker 1: my owd man's just been hanging around the house on
Speaker 1: his own and he lives in a beautiful spot right
Speaker 1: on a lake, right on Lake Morinico. And so we
Speaker 1: we stopped up there to see him, and uh turned
Speaker 1: out the other band had nothing to do that day,
Speaker 1: so we threw a big barbecue with his house. Alcohol
Speaker 1: was flowing. We went down by the beach there at
Speaker 1: the lake. We had a good time and got up
Speaker 1: the next morning to leave. I said to said to
Speaker 1: my own man, I said, a bunch of jump in
Speaker 1: a band and come with us. So he came out
Speaker 1: with us for the last couple of shows. We drove
Speaker 1: back to New York afterwards. She spent a week here.
Speaker 1: I drove him home at seven hours to his place
Speaker 1: eight hours. Just as we walked in the door, I
Speaker 1: got a friend of call from a friend of mine
Speaker 1: in um Panama who was a promoter over there. He
Speaker 1: does h organize a festival for Budweiser every year, and
Speaker 1: he called me up and said, Hey, our headline had
Speaker 1: dropped out for the festival. The show is tomorrow. Do
Speaker 1: you think you can get on a plane and make
Speaker 1: it to Panama? And I said to him, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: what the heck? So I got back in the car
Speaker 1: over to seven eight hours back to New York, got home,
Speaker 1: packed my bag, through my bag at my base in
Speaker 1: the car, Drove over to the Newark Airport, jumped on
Speaker 1: a plane, flew to Panama, got off the plane, had dinner,
Speaker 1: I had a couple of mohitos, got on stage playing
Speaker 1: the show, came off stage, packed my bag up, went
Speaker 1: back to the airport, down on a plane, and flew home.
Speaker 1: So pretty well two days. Panama is still on my list.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to get down. I've been
Speaker 1: to Columbia of it. I'd love to get down to Panama,
Speaker 1: just see more of South America in general. It's really
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what it's in Latin America. Panama City
Speaker 1: is probably the most beautiful, since it's unbelievably gorgeous, real modern,
Speaker 1: you know, not hard to find, good food, It's easy
Speaker 1: to get around. It's it's a really nice place. I'm
Speaker 1: sure the lady there smoke smoke shot Hunt. If you're listening,
Speaker 1: I apologize, but yeah, it's pretty. They ain't lacking in
Speaker 1: good looking girls either. Yeah. Both of you got in
Speaker 1: on on Cuba pretty early too. I know that you
Speaker 1: visited just probably a few months before Brandon did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: were September, I think that was two fifteen. We got
Speaker 1: in there, we got contact. You know, Uh, Cuba gets
Speaker 1: a lot of their music through South America, so the
Speaker 1: Ramon is a huge down in South America. So the
Speaker 1: the head of the cultural department over that happened to
Speaker 1: be a Ramones fan, and he reached out through a
Speaker 1: mutual friend in Argentina and they said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: we can offer you a cultural exchange. Okay, you're set
Speaker 1: up with a hotel room in a van and and
Speaker 1: somebody show you around the city and uh and uh
Speaker 1: we set up a couple of shows for you. So, um,
Speaker 1: I've been I had been trying to get to Cuba,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out a legal way of doing it,
Speaker 1: and was having no luck. So it was I was
Speaker 1: pretty excited. I'm a huge Hemingway fan. I grew up
Speaker 1: read everything by hemming Away from when I was pretty young,
Speaker 1: so I always had a bit of a fascination with
Speaker 1: the place. So um we uh we actually did a fundraising,
Speaker 1: you know, uh crowdfunding campaign online to to raise the
Speaker 1: money for the flights and and all the costs of
Speaker 1: getting out gear there and everything, and uh it worked
Speaker 1: out pretty good, so we we got to get over
Speaker 1: there and do a couple of shows. It's pretty neat,
Speaker 1: pretty neat. You know. It's funny too, because I've been
Speaker 1: to I've been to Cuba, and I've been to Moscow
Speaker 1: in St. Petersburg and I was talking with my kids
Speaker 1: one night and and it got to be a little
Speaker 1: bit of a joke. I said, you know, back in
Speaker 1: the eighties, the only way I would have seen uh,
Speaker 1: Havana or Moscow would have been at Fixed bayon next
Speaker 1: you know, that would have been the only way I
Speaker 1: would have knocked down those doors. But I said, you know,
Speaker 1: in my lifetime, it's pretty cool that it went from
Speaker 1: that to me being able to go over and play
Speaker 1: music for people. So it's pretty Uh, that's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: Did you get to the Hemingway House. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I did. Yeah, Okay, I did the same thing.
Speaker 1: We um pretty cool. Yeah yeah, And I've been to
Speaker 1: the one in Key West two I have. I've been
Speaker 1: to that one as well. I'm a Hemingway fan also.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, so hey, what's I want to ask,
Speaker 1: what's the craziest show you've ever played? Our craziest experience
Speaker 1: you had on tour, we did. You know, the last
Speaker 1: Remon show was a pretty wild one. We played in Um.
Speaker 1: We played in l A at the Palace. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh during that show, um, you know, like we
Speaker 1: had the guys from Ranted came up on stage and
Speaker 1: played with us. We had Letty from Motorhead came up
Speaker 1: and played with us, the guys from Sound Guarden jumped
Speaker 1: up and played with us. We had like a whole
Speaker 1: whole list of like all the biggest artists from the nineties,
Speaker 1: you know, And that was probably like the as far
Speaker 1: as star quality goes, that was probably the wildless event
Speaker 1: I've done. But we did. We did other great stuff too.
Speaker 1: We we played with YouTube for two shows in Spain.
Speaker 1: We um, we did uh like we put in UM
Speaker 1: in South America. We did our last show that was
Speaker 1: a soccer stadium forty five or fifty thou people or
Speaker 1: something like that. So yeah, I've seen some big, bad shows. Man,
Speaker 1: It's really really high end stuff. But you know, it,
Speaker 1: to me, the the ones I always liked the best
Speaker 1: with ones where we played in smaller places where the
Speaker 1: crowds were just insane, and you know, it was the
Speaker 1: energy level in the room is just unbelievable. It's kind
Speaker 1: of neat. At those big shows, you look at these
Speaker 1: people as far as you can see. It's impressive, you know,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing like being in a small room where
Speaker 1: you can smell the alcohol and people's breadth and right
Speaker 1: in front of you. The energy in the room is
Speaker 1: just unbelievable. It's really It really gives you a change,
Speaker 1: It really gets your motivated. That's cool. I was. I
Speaker 1: don't know, um if you've ever played with with no effects,
Speaker 1: but I got into this is an epic argument. My
Speaker 1: friend John and John Bush, who has been on the
Speaker 1: show before. He he was a photographer for Rolling Stone.
Speaker 1: There was a bartender in East Village and started a
Speaker 1: bunch of bars and restaurants. Now he's he's got his
Speaker 1: uh empire gone, but but he is close friends with
Speaker 1: with Fat Mike and man he was. He found out
Speaker 1: I was former military, and he's like, who'd you vote
Speaker 1: for in the election? In the election, I bet you
Speaker 1: voted for Trump. You're such a fucking asshole. And I
Speaker 1: was like, time out, dude, Like I just met you
Speaker 1: and you're a asshole. We just got into it, and
Speaker 1: then he eventually apologized to me. But I had the
Speaker 1: same conversation with a brother. He called me up and
Speaker 1: and uh. I had taken my son to um to
Speaker 1: the Trump inauguration yea and uh and a picture of
Speaker 1: it went up online and I got a phone call
Speaker 1: from when He's like, did you vote for Trump? And bumpa?
Speaker 1: And I told him, I said, because I did not.
Speaker 1: I said I did not vote for Trump. I didn't
Speaker 1: tell him that, like I hand wrote in Jim Matt,
Speaker 1: I see, but I uh, you know, I said, I didn't.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't vote for Trump. He's not my guy.
Speaker 1: But he was like, you know, there's pictures are you
Speaker 1: up on there? He's like, you know, at my label,
Speaker 1: we don't, you know, we don't. We don't want that.
Speaker 1: We don't want to see that kind of stuff going up.
Speaker 1: And I was like, hey, I get it, it's your label.
Speaker 1: I said, but you're you're bucking at the wrong guy.
Speaker 1: Well I did vote for him, but yeah, he is.
Speaker 1: He's hardcore anti hardcore anti. You know. The thing is
Speaker 1: that the punk rock scene in general, it mostly comes
Speaker 1: from that side of the fence. It's you know, in general,
Speaker 1: it's mostly like very very left cleaning but you know,
Speaker 1: for over here on the East Coast, especially in New York,
Speaker 1: it really wasn't about politics and stuff like that. It
Speaker 1: was about people who did things their own way. That's
Speaker 1: what punk rock was about, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: what it wasn't about, That's all I was. It was
Speaker 1: just when he was, it was just a amcratic party
Speaker 1: in the political process. And that's not punk rock, not not,
Speaker 1: not what I grew up with anyway, Right, Yeah, he's definitely.
Speaker 1: California has always been on the on the left side
Speaker 1: of on the left side of things out there, or
Speaker 1: even going all the way back Black Flag and all
Speaker 1: the the earliest punk bands. Um. But yeah, so I
Speaker 1: had the same conversation with Mike. Yeah, okay, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: got heated. Man. I thought we were gonna throw down
Speaker 1: for a minute there and then here, to his credit,
Speaker 1: he was like, look, you know, I apologize, You're right,
Speaker 1: and I just my My whole thing was, look, if
Speaker 1: we can't sit down and have a conversation and we
Speaker 1: if our opinions differ and have a civil conversation and debate.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's the problem in this fucking country
Speaker 1: right now is knowing everyone's screaming at each other, like
Speaker 1: let's just you know, like talk and share a different
Speaker 1: perspective and maybe you know, you you change your opinion,
Speaker 1: I changed mind, and we see things from different point
Speaker 1: of view. And it was actually I forget that that commercial.
Speaker 1: I think it was a Heineken commercial where they they
Speaker 1: basically they show these videos of like there's a guy
Speaker 1: on there saying how anti gay is and he's just
Speaker 1: going on a rant, and then there's someone you know
Speaker 1: on the political spectrum, and it's all all these people
Speaker 1: these opposite ideas, and what they did was they paired
Speaker 1: him up for this Heineken challenge and they had to
Speaker 1: tackle this problem together. And then when they finished, they
Speaker 1: were like high fiving each other. And then they sat
Speaker 1: down when they were done, and they showed him the
Speaker 1: video and it was like, so there's like a black
Speaker 1: girl and this guy, and maybe the guy was talking
Speaker 1: about affirmative action or something like that, but they showed
Speaker 1: the videos and then they got really uncomfortable, and then
Speaker 1: it just said, look, you have a decision. You can
Speaker 1: crack open a beer and and put aside your differences
Speaker 1: and get to know each other, or you can leave
Speaker 1: the room and and it was just like really cool
Speaker 1: project that they did, you know, and of course you
Speaker 1: know they were like, fuck it, let's have a beer
Speaker 1: and and shoot. That to me is what it's all
Speaker 1: about and what this country sho about anyway. Absolutely, we're
Speaker 1: not advertising on usself. Yeah, that's a big joke about
Speaker 1: about being in the military. To right, you're working with
Speaker 1: people that chances all before in your everyday life and
Speaker 1: you hanging out with your buddies you might not have
Speaker 1: wanted to have anything to do with, but you're get
Speaker 1: into the military and you ain't got a choice. They
Speaker 1: no way around it. Whether you like that guy next
Speaker 1: to you or not, you're gonna get the job done
Speaker 1: with them. So that's exact and and that you're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: that's what the country was built on, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And in fact, it's one of our strengths too.
Speaker 1: It's how how we keep things balanced, to make sure
Speaker 1: that everybody's got got the room to do what they
Speaker 1: want to do. As long as they're not dance on
Speaker 1: somebody else's shoes, it should all be good. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it just seems really weird right now, how polarized, and
Speaker 1: everyone's just like in lock step with what that party does,
Speaker 1: or you know what that what that group says should
Speaker 1: be right. And it's everybody trying to tell everybody else
Speaker 1: how they should be living their lives and what you
Speaker 1: should respect and what you should in respect. So every
Speaker 1: it's like paril everyone's paralyzed and afraid to even say anything.
Speaker 1: And I I did an interview the other day and
Speaker 1: it was said, look, I'm not afraid to be a man.
Speaker 1: Like there's this whole feminism movement, which, look, I am
Speaker 1: all about equal women being equal, but the problem is
Speaker 1: that feminism movement has been hijacked by a bunch of feminazis,
Speaker 1: and it's a female world, females at the future, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm like, look, yeah, maybe in the movie Wonder Woman
Speaker 1: that exists, but you know, we all have to get
Speaker 1: along like trying and existing on your own with meeting
Speaker 1: with males. But the whole thing, it's okay to be
Speaker 1: a man, you know, it's okay to beer, smoke a cigar,
Speaker 1: opened the door for a lady. Like, it's just and
Speaker 1: there's this whole like plassification and demasculinization of men. That's
Speaker 1: when I see it, probably more so in New York,
Speaker 1: but yeah. Anyway, Yeah, I'll tell you, I just came
Speaker 1: back from Europe and I was shocked, shocked. You know,
Speaker 1: they've they've had like a real far reaching revolution over there, um,
Speaker 1: social revolution over there on on on people's roles in
Speaker 1: society and what's acceptable and what's not and it's um.
Speaker 1: It was it was shocking to me how how much
Speaker 1: it's changed over there, um people's attitudes in general. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not saying I'm not saying it it's
Speaker 1: right or it's wrong. I'm not trying to judge it
Speaker 1: at all, but the um, you know exactly what you're saying,
Speaker 1: Like I, it's almost they've almost flipped roles. It's almost
Speaker 1: like they're attempting to turn everything on its head to
Speaker 1: bring about change. And you know, for for me, um
Speaker 1: as you know, my time on the planet anyway, what
Speaker 1: I've learned is that things that change slowly usually change
Speaker 1: for good. Things that you try to change quickly. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like with any revolution that happens through violence,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a counter revolution at some point
Speaker 1: because now you set the bar for what it takes
Speaker 1: to change things. And and you know, you know, my
Speaker 1: opinion if that's what we continue to do if we
Speaker 1: don't learn from the past. That's one great thing about
Speaker 1: being a student of history. If you've studied Waffare and
Speaker 1: all that stuff is you you kind of see and
Speaker 1: and understand the things that work and the things that
Speaker 1: don't work. And the things that work are the changes
Speaker 1: that come around gradually, where people's uh um, where people's
Speaker 1: minds get changed over a long period of time, rather
Speaker 1: than trying to force it down their throat, because there's
Speaker 1: no pushback, you know what I mean. It's a change
Speaker 1: in consciousness, not not in a change, not a change
Speaker 1: in the way they live from day to day. It's
Speaker 1: a changing constant. And that's the kind of change that
Speaker 1: lasts when they just like with the with the communist
Speaker 1: revolutions and all that they can, they hold they held
Speaker 1: onto things for a while, but in the end, you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest ones anyway, except for China, North Korea, pretty
Speaker 1: much they all fail because it's it's it's human nature
Speaker 1: to want to do better for yourself, to want to
Speaker 1: work harder, to to have more things and take better
Speaker 1: carry a family and stuff. And that's a hard thing
Speaker 1: to fight, you know, the hard thing to fight human nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's what slowly happened in Ukraine with
Speaker 1: that revolution of dignity. It's just yep, you know, just
Speaker 1: they got a taste of it, and there was a
Speaker 1: whole promise of joining the potentially joining the EU, and
Speaker 1: then they tried to crack down and those young kids
Speaker 1: just rose up and lock you too. They had a
Speaker 1: had a full revolution. You know. It's just kind of like, hey, look,
Speaker 1: this is what we want, you know, we're just going
Speaker 1: to do it inpecially and they got it. They made
Speaker 1: it happen. Yes, So c J really really interested, you know,
Speaker 1: as I'm starting this new podcast, The Power of Thought
Speaker 1: and just dealing with a lot of people's fear um
Speaker 1: and overcoming adversity and just wondering like how what your
Speaker 1: personal experience performing in front of a live audience and
Speaker 1: and you know, is there any issues that you had
Speaker 1: to overcome being a live performer and in front of
Speaker 1: a crowd that you can are share with people and
Speaker 1: so they can maybe help them deal with their own
Speaker 1: fear of public speaking or talking in front of a crowd. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: no problem, Um, I just tell the story. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love it. Okay, So the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the leap from from going from playing you know, playing
Speaker 1: in club bands and whatnot and uh, and then moving
Speaker 1: into playing with the Ramons where we played you know,
Speaker 1: in front of the crowds even some some even bigger
Speaker 1: than that. I mean, really a wide range of audiences
Speaker 1: anywhere from five hundred to you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: and higher. Um, it was it was kind of a
Speaker 1: trial by fire for me because I had no experience
Speaker 1: in playing in front of a cloud more than more
Speaker 1: than a couple of hundred, and definitely, uh, the expectation
Speaker 1: from the crowd was nowhere as near as what it
Speaker 1: was for Ramons. And because I was such a huge
Speaker 1: Ramons fan, I just it was not gonna happen that
Speaker 1: I was going to get up on stage and not
Speaker 1: be completely prepared. So um, uh you have to keep it.
Speaker 1: When I got to the band, I got I only
Speaker 1: had five weeks in between when I got out of
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps and when I did my first uh
Speaker 1: show with the band, So I had five weeks to
Speaker 1: learn forty songs and and five weeks to the day
Speaker 1: I did my first show. So um, I have I
Speaker 1: just developed a a method, really form for practicing and
Speaker 1: preparing that really helped kind of put a lot of
Speaker 1: the push, a lot of the fear to the side.
Speaker 1: And that was just a really strong um practice schedule,
Speaker 1: a really intense practice schedule. I literally lived in my
Speaker 1: in my room for five weeks straight and did nothing
Speaker 1: but play bass. And when I wasn't playing my bass,
Speaker 1: I had it in my hands. I ate din is
Speaker 1: sitting sitting down with my bass. I even slept. I
Speaker 1: had read somewhere that Jimmy Hendrick slept with his guitar
Speaker 1: because he felt like it helped him connect with his guitar.
Speaker 1: I slept with my bass in my bed. I still
Speaker 1: lay on my back and just like you're doing boot
Speaker 1: camp sleep you right for the portals. That's how I
Speaker 1: sampled my bass. And I'm not joking that just that
Speaker 1: kind of preparation really um set me up for uh
Speaker 1: for a good first experience. Now the night of the show,
Speaker 1: of course, the first show, I'm standing in the wings
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to go over my head everything that
Speaker 1: I've done. The trick with the Ramones songs is is
Speaker 1: that a lot of them are so similar. At practices
Speaker 1: I would play, I would be playing like the verse
Speaker 1: from one song and break into the chorus of another
Speaker 1: one because some of them are structured so closely, uh
Speaker 1: that it's your mind just kind of they will kind
Speaker 1: of bleed into one song at some point. But I
Speaker 1: had I really had to like go over in my
Speaker 1: head before we went on stage and try to like
Speaker 1: separate eight songs. And if you've ever seen a Ramones
Speaker 1: concert or watched one, the songs go one to one,
Speaker 1: one right into another. Every time a song stops, I
Speaker 1: would have to count off one too three for them
Speaker 1: we would saw it to the next one. So even
Speaker 1: separating the songs was was difficult once the set started rolling.
Speaker 1: But that but rehearsal, practicing the way I did, and
Speaker 1: the rehearsal schedule we kept with the ramones um technically
Speaker 1: prepared me for it. Mentally, it's really a whole other thing. Mentally,
Speaker 1: there was no way for me to prepare for being
Speaker 1: a Ramon and stepping on stage and taking the place
Speaker 1: of one of the most legendary bass players and songwriters
Speaker 1: in in punk rock and rock and roll history. There
Speaker 1: was no way I could prepare for that. I was
Speaker 1: a d D fan. When I heard d D left
Speaker 1: the band, I said to my buddy. We were riding
Speaker 1: a car together. I turned on and I said, I'll
Speaker 1: never go to another Ramon show because it ain't the Ramones.
Speaker 1: And those words just rang in my head like as
Speaker 1: a standing there. But um, the the best way for
Speaker 1: me to describe the mental state that I was in
Speaker 1: before we went on stage was just I just had
Speaker 1: to let everything go. I had to I just had
Speaker 1: to let it go. I knew I couldn't go out
Speaker 1: on stage with all these worries and all these fears
Speaker 1: in my head, and then I had a lot of them.
Speaker 1: I really did. It was it was a scary, scary situation,
Speaker 1: you know, the we had the good to band and
Speaker 1: the ugly that thing played before on stage, and I
Speaker 1: had been to so many Ramon shows. As soon as
Speaker 1: I heard that start, I got butterflies, like forget it.
Speaker 1: And but I stood there and Johnny looked at me
Speaker 1: and he said, and he looked me right in my
Speaker 1: eyes and he said to me, are you ready to go?
Speaker 1: And I just smiled and I said I'm ready, and
Speaker 1: I just I just had to let it go. I
Speaker 1: just had to let it go. And because at that
Speaker 1: point there was nothing I could do, I had practiced
Speaker 1: as much as I could. I had rehearsed with the
Speaker 1: band as much as I could. I lived eight slept
Speaker 1: everything with my base that whole time, and I felt like,
Speaker 1: if I'm not ready right now, I'm never going to
Speaker 1: be ready. And that's pretty much how I stepped out
Speaker 1: on stage. And let me tell you, it was not
Speaker 1: a graceful, you know, perfectly played set. I got hit
Speaker 1: with boots, bottles, all the coins. I was so covered
Speaker 1: with spin. At the end of the set when we
Speaker 1: walked over the encore, I pulled my shirt off because
Speaker 1: I just smelled like mucus so bad. So not not
Speaker 1: only did I have to, you know, just kind of
Speaker 1: let everything go and and fall back on my training,
Speaker 1: but I had to, you know, I had to fight
Speaker 1: all of that stuff at the same time. And I
Speaker 1: had people right up front holding up a sign that
Speaker 1: said we want d D and cursing at me and
Speaker 1: everything else, and is it okay to drop the F bomb?
Speaker 1: Yeah you can, cur I can curse on you. I
Speaker 1: had this girl sitting on her boyfriend's shoulders right in
Speaker 1: front of me, giving me the thing of the whole time,
Speaker 1: holding up a sign that said we want D D.
Speaker 1: I walked out to the end of the stage. I
Speaker 1: was like, fuck you, I fucked the cleaning the ass
Speaker 1: and just giving it right back to them. And at
Speaker 1: one point I got so piste off I walked back
Speaker 1: to my aunt. I grabbed the water bottle off the
Speaker 1: top of my aunt and hit this girl right in
Speaker 1: the check us to knock the rule for boyfriend's shoulders.
Speaker 1: He turned around and looked at the stage and put
Speaker 1: both his fists in the end was like yeah. And
Speaker 1: at that point I realized like I was winning the
Speaker 1: crowd old because I didn't stay at the back and
Speaker 1: hunkered down a little scared. I went right out to
Speaker 1: the end of the stage, took everything they threw at
Speaker 1: me and still played decent and and got through the sentence.
Speaker 1: And that's how it went. That was the first one
Speaker 1: that was kind of a repeat of that every night
Speaker 1: for the first year. Every time we went through a
Speaker 1: new territory, pummeled with stuff and spin on. But it's
Speaker 1: like anything else. Wanted to go through it once and
Speaker 1: you know what to expect. There's no more fear in it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and that that's something that hit me just
Speaker 1: listening to your story and I've seen it. When I
Speaker 1: was on the sniper instructor, we would do these five
Speaker 1: hour stalking exercises and you know, and we'd have two
Speaker 1: instructors observing that the students were sneaking up on trying
Speaker 1: to get within two in meters and set up first shot,
Speaker 1: and we'd have walker is in the field. And when
Speaker 1: I remember being a walker, and you have this forest
Speaker 1: and orange hat and a radio and the and the observers.
Speaker 1: Instructors if they see something, they use you as a
Speaker 1: walker in the field to two. You know, bust a
Speaker 1: student who's not camouflaged properly or using his concealment. And
Speaker 1: I would see these guys, they would get up to
Speaker 1: the to the two zone. They'd be there first, and
Speaker 1: they would spend hours and hours just prepping and prepping,
Speaker 1: and they could not let go and take that shot.
Speaker 1: They could commit to taking the shot. And it's where
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people get stuck in life,
Speaker 1: is you know, they're preparing, preparing. Oh, it is not
Speaker 1: the time, this this field right, it's not good enough.
Speaker 1: I need to prepare more. And eventually you've got to
Speaker 1: just fucking let go. And once once you let go,
Speaker 1: you feel what it's like and then you kind of
Speaker 1: get better and adjust, and but you have to let
Speaker 1: go or else you're just never going to move forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like having buck fever, you know, it's and and
Speaker 1: the worst thing that the worst thing about it is
Speaker 1: is opportunity, real serious opportunity comes up so rarely in life.
Speaker 1: Opportunity is really a rare thing. Uh, if you're the
Speaker 1: average person, if you're somebody that understands that, and you're
Speaker 1: making your own opportunities, you're getting out there and making
Speaker 1: your own opportunities, that's a different thing. But for the
Speaker 1: average person or a younger person who's just kind of
Speaker 1: coming into the you know, coming into the world, kind
Speaker 1: of just finding themselves, they usually blowl a lot of
Speaker 1: opportunity because they feel that they're not ready, they feel
Speaker 1: that they're not prepared enough even if they are, or
Speaker 1: they're just not willing to take a chance. And that's
Speaker 1: something that I that I try to tell everybody I know,
Speaker 1: friends that have wanted to get businesses started, or friends
Speaker 1: that I just wanted to make a big move in
Speaker 1: their life life, I always tell them, I'm like, you've
Speaker 1: already made up your mind, you want to do it.
Speaker 1: Stop thinking that you're prepping, you've already made up your mind.
Speaker 1: That's it. If your mind is made up, you have
Speaker 1: to just go for it. Because the longer you put
Speaker 1: it off and the longer you said, well after this happens,
Speaker 1: well after that happens, what you're doing is you're creating
Speaker 1: a cycle, of repetitive cycle that you're not going to
Speaker 1: break out of, because every time you feel uncomfortable, you're
Speaker 1: gonna fall back into that cycle. And that's a really
Speaker 1: dangerous thing because that's the kind of thing that can
Speaker 1: keep you from doing anything and and not well, not
Speaker 1: only will it keep you from doing big things, but
Speaker 1: if you let that cycle continue, it will even keep
Speaker 1: you from making smaller decisions. And then you're then you're
Speaker 1: in that kind of weird spot where you're paralyzed. You're
Speaker 1: it's like my wife calls it powerless by paralysis by analysis.
Speaker 1: You know, you just you're constantly looking at the problem
Speaker 1: and and and trying to uh and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out every little problem that might come up. You deal
Speaker 1: with the problems on the fly. Sometimes that's how it goes.
Speaker 1: But you've got to take those first steps to make
Speaker 1: it happen. And most people just don't even understand how
Speaker 1: capable they are of thinking on their feet and solving
Speaker 1: problems as they go along. It's almost like you, once
Speaker 1: you make a commitment and you get into something, there's
Speaker 1: like a um, it's like a river. There's a flow
Speaker 1: to it. You're caught in that flow, and as things
Speaker 1: come up on you, you learn to either navigate, navigate
Speaker 1: around them, or you learn to go through them. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, most people will do one or
Speaker 1: the other. The thing that messages messes you up is
Speaker 1: when you come up on a problem and you get
Speaker 1: paralyzed by it, and all you can focus on and
Speaker 1: focus on is the problem and not how to navigate
Speaker 1: around it or go through it. That's what you have
Speaker 1: a problem. But most people know, most people one thrown
Speaker 1: in that situation. They know, Okay, this is coming up,
Speaker 1: this is what what do we have to do? And
Speaker 1: the and the best thing is once you get to
Speaker 1: the level where you have a team and then you
Speaker 1: can surround yourself with good people that when something comes up,
Speaker 1: you say, hey, what do you think? What do you think?
Speaker 1: What do you think? And then it makes your own
Speaker 1: job a lot easier. And the danger, like you said,
Speaker 1: is make is when it becomes a habit and you
Speaker 1: have a habit of not falling through. And that's something
Speaker 1: I talk about with my own kids and I I say, look,
Speaker 1: you have to make setting goals and achieving them, like
Speaker 1: even the small ones. You know. We had that book
Speaker 1: that that's the Admiral Seal Admiral M. Craven. It was
Speaker 1: my first commanding officers, Seal Team three wrote a book
Speaker 1: about and the whole thing was like make your bed
Speaker 1: because that small act of setting a goal for yourself
Speaker 1: and completing it every day is something you develop a
Speaker 1: habit of and then it turns into bigger goals, bigger accomplishments.
Speaker 1: But you're developing that pattern of being able to set
Speaker 1: goals and achieve them and not just give up halfway through.
Speaker 1: And you and I have both had friends that it's
Speaker 1: something you just never finish it, and then they start
Speaker 1: something else and they never finish it, and you're you
Speaker 1: hit the nail on the head, brother with the opportunity,
Speaker 1: because opportunities come around, so there's just so scarce and
Speaker 1: you have to seize on those opportunities and the time
Speaker 1: we just don't have there are time is so limited
Speaker 1: and precious on this planet that you have to use it,
Speaker 1: and you've got to start right fucking now today, right
Speaker 1: because well now now you're talking about now you're talking
Speaker 1: about the big picture, though, is you know of time.
Speaker 1: That's the big picture of appreciating time and knowing and
Speaker 1: and really knowing what your time is worth. There's you know, uh,
Speaker 1: running out of time is my word fear' that's my
Speaker 1: biggest fear is running out of time. I don't want
Speaker 1: to run out of time before I get to do
Speaker 1: everything that I've wanted to do in my life. And
Speaker 1: that's why I move at the pace I do. That's
Speaker 1: why I take that you know, I do the tour
Speaker 1: schedule that that I do. That's why I'm out there
Speaker 1: constantly hitting the road hard. There's things I still want
Speaker 1: to accomplish within within music that I'm still working towards,
Speaker 1: and I worked towards them every single day. I make
Speaker 1: sure I do something small every single day. My wife
Speaker 1: and I had a had a major discussion yesterday on
Speaker 1: I recently took, uh took a couple of tours in
Speaker 1: the support slot for other bands, and you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things I'm trying to do is increase the
Speaker 1: crowds sides in the States. And the only way I
Speaker 1: can do that is if I get in front of
Speaker 1: bigger crowds, and and and and pick up a couple
Speaker 1: of fans. But it can't necessarily be bands that that
Speaker 1: are punk rock bands, because we're pulling pretty much from
Speaker 1: the same the same group of people. So we went
Speaker 1: out on tour with this one band, and I know
Speaker 1: we picked up a good amount of new fans because
Speaker 1: we sold a lot of merchandise on the knights that
Speaker 1: we played with them. That's that's how we gauge um
Speaker 1: how much people really have liked the show is by
Speaker 1: the amount of merchandise that we that we sell. We
Speaker 1: played with the band, most of the crowd was their crowd,
Speaker 1: but we still sold what we usually do, so we
Speaker 1: can say, hey, we definitely picked up some some new fans.
Speaker 1: So we got another offer from them. It's going to
Speaker 1: really fill in my schedule. I'm going to be gone
Speaker 1: for most of the rest of this year, and which
Speaker 1: of course my wife is none too happy about. But
Speaker 1: she was questioning on why why I would take a
Speaker 1: tour a warm up slot with another band when it
Speaker 1: doesn't pay anywhere near as much as it was when
Speaker 1: I play on my own and I told her I'm
Speaker 1: playing the long game. I'm fifty one years old. I'm
Speaker 1: still playing the long game in music. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean that I have a very long view you
Speaker 1: of my wife and my career because there are definite
Speaker 1: things I want to accomplish, and I know how, I
Speaker 1: know how to get to them. I know you know
Speaker 1: what it's going to take to get there, and I
Speaker 1: do whatever it takes to get there. And that's what
Speaker 1: that's always been my philosophy is you can pretty much
Speaker 1: have whatever you want as long as you're willing to
Speaker 1: do what it takes to get there. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: and I talk about the long game and music. I
Speaker 1: just watched that Chicago documentary and I mean, with those
Speaker 1: guys sixty years now there for the long game. Um.
Speaker 1: But hey, brother, I appreciate you taking the time today
Speaker 1: and just a fascinating perspective and I know I know
Speaker 1: the audience is gonna love it, and thanks for having
Speaker 1: but I appreciated that we've been listening to so sly
Speaker 1: new episodes of every Wednesday and Friday. Follow the show
Speaker 1: on Instagram and would that's self rough Radio?