Luke Combs

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert.

I'm Dan Rather, and I'm joined by Judas Frasner, our top reporter in Los Felas, California.

This was really fun.

This was one of two interviews we got to do in Nashville in person

in the aforementioned studio that Wobby Wobb threw together in five seconds.

Luke Combs, what a delight this boy.

I got to call him a boy.

He's so young.

Yeah, he's younger than me.

So I get to call him a boy, too.

I know he's younger than you, and he has 600 acres.

Okay.

I feel good about my life.

Okay.

Yeah, I know.

You have a great, great life.

I'm just really impressed with his acreage.

Luke Combs is an award-winning country singer.

Fathers and sons, getting old, growing up.

What you see is what you get.

This one's for you.

And he has a new single out now called Back in the Saddle.

Tasty song, tasty title.

Please enjoy this sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet boy, Luke Combs.

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Dude, the story on that thing is crazy.

I want to hear it.

All I care about is cars.

I had one of the first edition Broncos.

I had a Ford deal for a couple of years.

So when they came out with the Bronco, I asked them, I was like, man, I got to get one of these.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, we'll get you first edition one.

So I bought that, already had it.

And my manager bought one of those Bronco, like Raptor ones, like that one when it came out.

That's sir.

And it was that space blue or some Ford color.

Yeah.

Space blue.

So I'm like, this was last Christmas.

My wife was out somewhere.

I was feeding my son.

at the dinner table in our house and i can like see our gate and i was like why's my manager pulling up and his bronco it's just the same as his like it was blue the raptor package

and he would like never show up at my house unannounced, you know?

Right.

So I was like, man, this is kind of weird that he would show up.

I figured I'm like, well, I guess he's giving me a Christmas present.

Whatever.

So he comes in.

He's like, throws me the keys.

I was like, are you giving me your card?

And like, what is this?

Yeah.

He's like, no, man, Garth bought you this.

Garth Brooks?

Yeah.

And I was like, why?

What?

Did you know him?

Not really.

Whoa.

To be honest.

What?

Amazing.

And so I'm like, for what?

What do I have to do sexually for for this?

Yeah, I'm like, this is a $90,000 card.

I know what are you talking about?

So I guess it had maybe a year and a half before that, he got inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

They did it at the rhyme in.

All these people came.

You picked your favorite song that Garth has written.

So not every Garth song.

He didn't write all of them.

So you had to pick one that he wrote.

So his team asked me to come and be one of the people that sang a song at this thing.

Mine was actually The Beaches of Cheyenne.

It was a hit, but it wasn't like a super hit.

And so he was like, yeah, this is for you coming and singing that one song at this.

Really?

That's so classic.

How did they give everyone who sang?

Well, so here's the thing.

I guess he had called my manager like the following week, you know, what does Luke like?

And he was like, oh, he likes cars.

He has a Bronco and he likes Fords and stuff.

And he was like, well, I'm going to order him a Bronco Raptor.

Well, I guess they were on hold or something.

So it took like a year to get it in.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

And so I didn't talk to him from that night until that thing showed up in my house.

Obviously, I called him and then I had it painted.

Unbelievable.

Okay, I have so many follow-up questions.

How many people came up to perform songs?

I mean, it had to be at least eight to ten.

I haven't heard of anyone else.

I haven't asked.

I was going to like, I like keychains.

Yeah, like be careful what you tell people you like.

I like Arby's.

Yeah.

I just tell people you like cars.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like houses.

I like huge houses.

This is so weird.

I'm really into those.

I love planes.

Planes are cool.

You see a plane.

I've

g5 airplane those are so cool yeah i love those that's so generous it was wild i called him and i was like hey man you didn't have to do this i was like man it's tuesday night and i was home i drove 20 minutes and i was there for less than an hour dude like i said he's like yeah but you could have went out and You could have booked your own show that night and made this much money or whatever.

Wow, what a stand-up guy.

I was just kind of floored by that, to be honest.

You must find out if he ended up buying like nine cars.

we should definitely find out because i don't know okay so luke there's a lot going on for you and i as i research you today number one first and foremost and i have a long history well documented i have two favorite cities in america austin and asheville okay and so you're first brought home as a little baby to huntersville and that's a charlotte suburb yes just outside of charlotte okay and what did mom and dad do there dad was a maintenance man for first union bank no longer around and mom was working hr at first Union at the time.

Did they meet at First Union?

I don't believe so, actually.

So, mom was actually working at more of their corporate office, so they weren't like working at branches, they were in the big skyscraper downtown, like a headquarters

down in the basement, workshop, maintenance man.

And mom was out at their headquarters doing quick question about dad.

What's the most insane story he ever came home with?

Like, someone put a boot in the toilet, or did anyone fuck anything up in a massive way?

Nothing much in Charlotte because when we moved, I was like seven.

So, then we got to Asheville, he was maintenance for Centura Bank.

Okay.

And he was employed by a company called C.B.

Richard Ellis, which was an independent contractor.

So he drove to all the small communities in Western North Carolina that had branches of Centura.

And he was like the one guy that would go fix everything.

So he go from Asheville and he'd drive two hours to Spruce Pine, fix the air conditioner or call the guy that fixes the air conditioner, 10 or 12 different cities that he would travel to every day, pretty much.

So he can do everything is my assumption.

Yeah, for the most part, he had to subcontract out air conditioning stuff.

He would come home and make keys and change in locks.

It was all kind of stuff.

Because my best friend from childhood, he managed like 10 or 12 different places over the course of 10, 12 years.

He started as a roofer, but by the time he finished that job, he did absolutely everything because he'd show up at these places and he'd just have to figure it out.

Yep.

It's just like, oh, this is fucking so I got to drive three hours to fix this toilet.

Nobody that works at the bank knows how to

It's like, you know, it's that kind of stuff.

Did mom also get a job in Asheville?

Yeah, so she stayed with First Union.

She's transferred to Asheville when my dad came up.

So mom actually took the transfer job, I believe, and then dad fell

his job once we got up there.

Okay.

Then was she the breadwinner?

I don't know that either of them really were.

I would say between the two of them, they probably made $60,000 a year.

Right.

But you're born in 1990.

Yep.

So I do think increasingly.

Fuck.

You're three years older, man.

That's so cool.

You're fucking way old.

You gotta go.

This has been really nice, but get in that souped up Raptor and get out of here.

I didn't tell you, but I have a Raptor R.

So it's the F-150?

It's the F-150.

Yeah.

But the R has the V8 instead of the V6.

Supercharged.

It's heaven.

That sounds awesome.

We got to get you in one of those.

I'm going to buy you one of those first.

Give you one.

Do it.

Yeah.

Your manager's going to be rolling up again soon.

You're just going to collect so many cars.

Well, it's funny, I wouldn't really consider myself a super car guy.

I was going to ask that.

To be really honest, that was a gift.

Like something I never would have bought myself.

I mean, the most expensive car I've ever bought myself is a Bugatti Veyron.

No, it's like I've got a 1986 Toyota SR5.

It was before it was the Tacoma.

Okay.

I've got one of those.

Because that was your high school truck?

No, thought it looked sweet.

It's like 12 grand.

Yeah.

I got an 84

Chrysler LeBaron.

You might be the only person with a weirder taste than me.

Chrysler LeBaron.

All praise be to Chrysler.

That is the shittiest car that ever made.

My father-in-law put bullhorns on the front of it.

Perfect.

So why not?

It's a piece of shit.

Do whatever you want.

And it's clean.

It had like 14,000 miles on it.

It did.

It's a lady that lived in Palm Springs that owned it.

Stayed in the garage.

It's never rained.

And she only drove it like to church.

If you are driving, whatever the thing you just said about

Bagoti.

No,

Keith Irvin.

Okay, I was going to ask.

Keith Irvin's the sports car guy.

He's who I look up.

He's rolling up in the Pagan.

Oh, yeah, in the home, bro.

He's freaking spread.

You never know what he's rolling.

Wow, wow.

You'll be at the CMAs and it's like old Bronco, old Bronco, old F-250, $3 million Pagan,

new 250.

Are all y'all like?

Oh, no, yeah.

That's what I was going to ask.

Is it kind of like, oh, that's...

Passing it.

That's IRA.

No, dude, because Keith is the nicest guy on the planet.

Yeah.

He's also Australian.

That kind of gets him out of anything.

that's like so much cooler than anyone else too like you see him like that guy's cool he's a sweetheart

if you're at a restaurant you saw that parked does it read douchey those types of cars nashville's such a quote-unquote newer city for people with money i think about the old country stars and the cars they had it was cadillacs have you seen the car in the hall of fame center console is a saddle and it's got it's all covered in like silver dollars the door handles on it i think it might have been webb webb pierce's car the door handles are cult revolvers oh that are like welded onto the frame dude a million dollar catalog that's the kind of stuff that was going on here i just don't know that in nashville that's ever been a thing so it's hard to say the flex is your bus i think back then there's other ways to flex yeah it was and then like guys that had a planes back then i feel like was big to me owning the plane is the worst investment of all time yeah it might as well just flush money down the toilet exactly in fact i just read an article it was like people who think they can be in the private flight business versus what amount of money you'd actually need really would make no difference.

And it's in the hundreds of millions.

Before it's like a non-consequential amount of money, like you have to be literally a billionaire to like really afford a plane.

When you look at your statement at the end of the month, you have to notice no movement after buying a $55 million.

It can't be a percentage of your net worth today.

That's right.

You're savvy.

You're only 35,

but you're with it.

You get it.

Oh, man.

You know, the bus is a lease.

Like, my bus is not a big, lavish.

I've had the same bus for five years now, probably.

But you have a hot tub in it, I heard.

That's pretty lavish.

You also have a card room, I heard.

Card room, bar.

Beautiful bar.

I've got my bedroom in the back, bathroom, and then I got bunks.

And that's really it, dude.

Who's in the bunks?

My assistant is my best friend from high school.

Okay.

So he lives here with his wife and kids, and he comes on the road.

That's him and my personal security guy who only only ever comes out when we're on the road.

I would like to challenge that guy.

Okay.

Last man standing

as long as you're a security.

Because I can't play anything, but I do want to be on tour for a while.

And I feel like if I could be in.

I just want to come out, you know, but I want to be in the bunk and I want to have a role.

So I do want to be looking for snipers.

You need to be a vibe guy.

Vibe guy.

Yeah, we don't have a vibe guy.

We just need to set the tone.

No, just vibe guy.

Okay.

You're around and you're like, man, this guy's chilling hard.

I like this guy.

Right.

He's kind of anchoring the hole.

Maybe you're the tip of the spear If we have guests out and they're like, dude, Dak Shepard's just chilling hard, dude.

This is going to be a fun time out here.

If that's a role that's all good, dude.

It's vibe guys.

I'm a thousand percent in.

Vibe guys, dude.

Yeah.

Okay, let's go back to Ashville.

So seven years old, you moved there.

Do you have siblings?

No, only child.

Okay.

We don't get many.

Yeah, there's nothing.

I like that.

Yeah.

Do you do weird, only child shit?

Like my wife, who is tricky to do that.

She'll say she's an only child.

I know.

She'll kill me.

She does have sisters, but she saw them on the weekends.

You know, they were from her dad's second marriage.

She's a very only child.

And our friend Eric, who's here right now, he's only in child too.

Both of those two, they'll be like a party and they'll go upstairs and read a book.

And they don't even care.

No, I'm a friends guy.

Okay.

I'm in the mix.

I feel like you can go kind of two ways on the only child thing.

So I have a ton of friends.

The only child thing was not like my parents wanted one kid.

They were being financially responsible.

And they're like, we can only afford it.

And let's be honest, we can't afford you.

Yeah, they were like, really?

You're putting a bit of a strain on us.

Yeah.

I had a bunch of really, really close friends, man.

I still do.

So you were always a social kid and you got along with everybody?

For sure.

So what was elementary and junior high like for you?

If you came into the class, it would be like least likely to succeed guy would have probably been me.

You've just been like, look at this guy.

He's not going to do it.

Well, you said, I heard you on 60 Minutes saying you were lazy or you're younger.

Oh, big time.

Big time.

Yes.

Massively lazy.

And what do we think that's about?

I don't know, to be honest.

I think there's some innateness to it.

Well, I was like just generally.

But obviously you're not.

My business manager is a really close friend of mine, and he obviously wasn't before he's my business manager.

I didn't know him.

Yeah, if there's ever a role to assign to a friend from childhood, business managers, business manager's not it.

No, lawyer's not it.

No, no, manager is not it.

Surgeon.

Yeah, it's not it.

But we've gotten really close over the years and still sometimes fight feeling that way, you know, and he's like, it's insane that you still kind of feel like you're lazy given what you've achieved.

I'll rephrase it.

Not that I feel like I'm lazy, and this is also going to sound insane.

It's like I feel like I haven't done anything hard.

Does that make sense?

That's interesting.

Music is not hard to me to do.

Like it is not hard to go write songs and sing them and play shows.

We're not busting up concrete here, dude.

Like, what are we talking about?

I mean, obviously, I didn't finish college.

I was a semester and a half away from finishing that.

I was like, wow.

This is hard.

So I'm not.

That's sweet.

But I was also getting into music.

So I was like, well, this seems to be working out good.

And I'm like making more money than making.

I was working two jobs.

It's weird because working two jobs, that sucks.

And being in college.

I mean, obviously that's hard, but I didn't really enjoy it.

So maybe I've just always chased enjoyment to some extent.

Well, it sounds like maybe nothing turned you on.

You weren't really on fire for anything.

And then when you found the thing you were on fire for, you showed up and you did all the things you had to do.

That's a very ADHD thing I've heard.

I sang forever.

When did it start?

As soon as I could talk.

You were just like a natural thing.

I didn't know I was any good until probably high school.

Because you were in choir.

You did the play at school and stuff.

Yep.

I did all those.

I did four years of that.

And how big is the school in Asheville?

Because it's a tiny town.

I have some fantasy where going to school there might have been a little more peaceful than other places.

It very much was.

I remember when me and my wife got married and we didn't have any kids yet and we weren't expecting.

I'm like, our kids go to public school.

And she was like, no.

And I was like, what are you talking about?

She went to private Catholic school.

I'm like, why not?

I'm like, public school rocks, dude.

Like, there's all kinds of different people.

I mean, you learn to deal with every kind of kids, great.

So the school I went to is a 4A school.

My graduating class was 400.

Maybe it's a good size.

Just a decent size.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They might be 3A now, but at the time they were 4A.

I don't know that terminology.

Do you?

Yeah, it's a sell.

Yes, my school is 5A.

Where'd you go to school?

Georgia.

Okay.

Let's say North Carolina doesn't have any 5A schools.

Oh, really?

What is 5A?

It's basically like the size of the school.

It's a classification.

So I believe now there's some 7A schools

in like Texas and Florida.

Whoa.

Here's my question.

Why do we need the A?

If A is consistent throughout all these, why don't we just go a six, a five, a four, a three, or a seven?

No, it probably means, I don't know what A stands for.

I might have to look it up for the fact check.

I know he sound like a real Yankee right now.

But that is the thing.

So that's how they classify like our school was a good football school.

So it's like when you go to the playoffs, you only play other teams of that size.

Right.

Because we only play other 4A teams or other 5A teams or other 3As.

That makes sense of why.

Actually, you're right.

It's kind of based off

It's basically based off of football.

The 6A team's not going to play the 1A team for the state championship because it's not fair, dude.

Because there's 400 kids in this school and there's 5,000 kids in school.

Yeah, onesa university.

Yeah.

Okay, so yours was a good size school.

It was good size, and I didn't know this at the time, but we had state-of-the-art performing arts center at my school, too.

Yeah, which kind of makes sense for Asheville.

For people who have not been there, it's an incredibly artistic, hippie-like little beautiful town.

But our school was not in downtown.

I'd say downtown is for sure sure that vibe.

There's obviously a lot of outdoorsy, free spirit people that flock to Subaru drivers.

My mom had a Subaru.

They had a Subaru.

And my freshman year, man, they opened up a whole performing arts wing of our high school.

Wow.

So my band teacher and my chorus teacher were married.

And they met in college or something.

And so they taught there forever.

They're retired now, but I'm still in touch with them.

They come to at least a show a year.

Oh, that's cool.

So he was my music theory teacher, the band director, and then my chorus teacher.

And she was like my second mom at school.

They forced me out of my laziness in my pursuit of music.

They weren't like, oh, you're so good.

They weren't those people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They were like, hey, man, what are you doing?

My senior year, I was like, I'm not going to do the musical this year.

If you wanted to be a quote-unquote lead in the musical, right?

Like there was auditions.

Obviously, I had to audition to be in the musical.

You had to have some level of talent, but to do the acting, there was like these specialized auditions.

And I'm like, that sounds like a whole thing.

And I was like, I'm just not going to do it this year.

And they were like, okay, well, whatever.

So just don't do it.

You know, and I'm like,

okay.

Wasn't expecting that answer.

You wanted them to fight for like, yeah.

So my first three years, we had a drama teacher that had been there for 25 or 30 years.

And my senior year, we got a new drama teacher.

Our former teacher retired.

So we had this new woman who had come in, kind of like fresh out of college, gal.

It was going to be her first play.

And it came down to the day of auditions.

And I went to my course teacher and I was like, I think I screwed up by not wanting to do this, you know, and she was like, yeah, you're telling me too late now.

I was like, what do you mean?

Like, you're not going to let me try out, you know?

She's like, it's not up to me, pal.

Like, you're going to have to go down and talk to the dramatist.

I didn't know her at all.

Right.

Yeah.

So she's like, you need to go down there and have a conversation with her.

And then it's up to her.

I'm not going to call her and say, this guy needs to do it.

Nothing.

If she wants you to do it, you can do it.

And if she doesn't want you to do it, too bad.

You should have signed up.

Thankfully, she let me do it.

I ended up getting the lead role and people were.

How'd the acting part go for you?

You know, it's not my thing.

That's almost better in some weird way if you're watching a musical and he's not very good as an actor for a while and you're kind of like you've given up on him.

And then the song comes on and then he fucking blows your hair back and you're like, hold on now.

It might have been that fun experience.

I still don't feel like I have.

much memory of dude like the lines thing like it would still give me as much anxiety now as it did then because I'm like how am I ever ever going to remember all this stuff?

Obviously, I did it.

There's a DVD of it somewhere at my parents' house.

Rob, start the performance.

Put it on.

I'm glad they did that.

They always pushed me to keep going with music.

But it doesn't sound like during any of this period, you haven't set your sights on this at all.

No.

Because you go to college and you study business for a minute and then criminal justice.

You want to be a homicide detective.

I did, yeah.

Me and my dad always watched cops, first 48.

I was always just intrigued by it.

I remember asking my course teacher, I'm like, last semester of high school, I i was in chorus every day of high school so a fourth of my entire high school career was spent in chorus class so then my last semester first period was chorus last period i was miss bryant's teacher assistant and that was her period where she didn't have a class so i'm just like making copies which was awesome because i didn't have to like be in class she never really gave me preferential treatment of like oh well just do whatever you want do your homework right you're gonna it wasn't an independent study for you

no you're gonna be my assistant like doing stuff i'm gonna go eat lunch and you're going to be printing out lesson plans.

And I was like, oh, brutal, you know,

signed up to something like, oh, this will be cake.

She'll let me do whatever.

Didn't happen.

So I remember asking her, like, hey, should I do music in college?

I've always hated the technical side of music.

The theory part was always really confusing to me.

I'm not the smartest guy in the world.

Math has never been real easy for me either.

It's the same part of the brain to me.

That's doing music theory and math.

That's always been my complete worst subject.

So music theory was always really difficult.

And she told me, don't do music if you can see yourself doing anything else.

And so I took that very literally because I'm thinking, oh, well, she means like being a music teacher, which is obviously not what I wanted to do at all.

I was like, I'm never going to be a choir director or like a band teacher.

So that was my cue to just go, well, I'm just not going to do music.

It's an interesting test she put in front of me.

Yeah, I love that.

For sure.

You probably interpreted that, or maybe you did, as, oh, I guess I shouldn't do it.

For sure.

Where she was like, there's only one answer to this question if you don't have that answer you're not gonna make it yeah yeah she's like if you

have to do it you will do it oh for sure and I mean now it definitely is I guess just growing up you know in a decently small town with blue collar parents you're not like well maybe I'll be Garth Brooks yeah exactly no same same it's like saying you're gonna be an astronaut yeah you're like it's not gonna happen I just wanted to like pay bills I just thought you had to kind of hate your job yes and like I just thought that was what life was like it was like oh cool like my parents work they hate their job they work for the weekends and they work for the weekends and they take care of me and that's just what life is going to be like and that's just how it is because i didn't know anything else well no wonder you now think you aren't doing anything hard because that was your idea of hard not liking it exactly like not liking it was my version of like well i got to do something i don't like because that's just how life is right i have the same thing when kristen and i first walked through this house we're just taking it in and i said out loud a couple times like I just didn't work hard enough for this.

It's hard for me to integrate this because I should have a lot more calluses and I should have a lot more body injuries and I should be 68.

Yeah.

And it's confusing because no one got to fast pass like I got to.

It's complicated.

There's a lot of guilt associated with it.

You know, all these great people you grew up with.

Like when I'm looking at the house and it's like, I can think of six or seven dads that killed themselves.

And they couldn't get this.

And I'm like, those guys were better than I am.

You know, they worked harder.

They were tougher and they went went through more.

And I feel a lot of guilt about it.

I do too.

So we have a really close group of guys from back home that we text every day, pretty much.

You know, there's like 10 of us maybe.

I didn't realize how rare that was until my wife was like, you have 10 friends from high school that you still talk to like every day and you guys been playing fantasy football together for 15 years.

Like, that's weird.

Yeah.

It's just not normal.

By the way, I'm going to be saccharin right now.

That's weirdly the biggest gift in your life.

It's not even the success in the mouth.

Without a doubt.

Because I know a lot of rich, lonely people.

That's the big win right there.

Yeah.

But I feel the same way.

One of them's a pharmacist.

One of them's a doctor.

One of them's a CPA.

They've all got MBAs and doctorates.

They work their ass off.

Oh, dude.

It's like I would have been the most scum.

They would have been buying your dinner every time you got it.

A million percent.

But I see those guys like, man, they went to school for a decade.

I got all this stuff from doing what I like to do.

And you feel real guilty about it.

There's no sympathy for it either.

No, no, no, no.

I feel real bad for you and your big

you're having a hard time integrating your mansion into your

I wish you luck with that, brother.

By the way, let's talk about that because that's interesting.

It's kind of a double woman because you feel this guilt.

And then you have exactly what you just said, which is then you feel guilty for even having that problem or being guilty about it.

There's just layers of madness in your head about this thing that is what you dreamt about and what you want.

If I buy into it, if I'm like, oh man, my life's great and I have all this great stuff and I deserve all this stuff, then you feel like kind of a bad person a little bit.

If I am like, I got this great house, then I'm a dick.

I think for me, the fear is it'll all go away.

The second I think I deserve all this,

I'll find out real quick I didn't it.

So it's like there's superstition too, that the shoe will drop the second I think I deserve that.

I think it's just being appreciative is the thing.

That's the answer.

And giving back to people.

Helping other people.

That's the only thing you can do, man, is trying to like

give stuff to people who don't have as much as you.

And just being thankful that you're in the position you're in.

I mean, that's always been my answer to it.

Yeah.

I mean, this concept of deserving is very silly.

No one deserves.

anything.

No one deserves the good stuff and no one deserves

the bad stuff.

That's without it.

It's not an appropriate word.

I think you're right.

Just having gratitude for the things that have come your way and just be like, oh my God, what a gift.

And then giving back.

We were just talking about this recently.

The only thing that I feel actually I can feel about money is when you give it away.

Having money feels good because you can help other people.

Yeah, you can help other people without a doubt.

You almost got to train your brain, though, to recognize that.

For sure.

I mean, I've always been a big, I'd rather give a gift than get one.

Even when I was younger, when you're a kid, you love getting gifts because you're a kid.

Man, once I got older, I was like, dude, I don't even want any gifts, dude.

Like, let me give you a gift.

That would be a bigger gift to me.

Like, I'd rather see somebody get something.

Okay, we got to go through a little bit of your stellar career.

So while you were in college, you start bouncing at a bar.

Wait, what college I need to?

Appalachian State.

Oh, nice.

Where's that at?

It's about an hour and a half from Asheville.

They would consider it the high country is what they call it.

Higher elevation than Asheville.

Oh, real quick, did you ever go on Sliding Rock or Looking Glass Falls?

A million times.

What a party.

I have such a sweet spot for Asheville.

I used to go there to do rewrites for movies, and I brought my three-year-old there, and I took her to Sliding Rock, and we did it together.

It was so fun, dude.

Sliding Rock's so cool.

Is it a big rock that you slide on?

Yeah, it's like in the river.

It's like a quarter mile long slab.

No bumps somehow.

somehow.

It's just like the last drop off if you're three is something, but it's fine, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Generally safe, so you're bouncing at this place.

Was it the kind of place you ever had to do anything?

It's really more deal with college egos.

Boone's like mini Asheville, like it's very outdoorsy.

The population of the town doubles when school's in.

It's just all crunchy kids and kids that want to snowboard and fly fish and kayak and hike.

And like, it's a super outdoorsy.

A lot of Subaru is probably still there a lot of subarus

very much so you get to perform there a little bit and then you have your first actual show shortly after that it was while i was there he was the parthenon cafe was the name of it boon's finest screech that's your bluebird that was my grown old oprey at the time no longer there rip all bummers

and did it feel right immediately you know it was really good so i had been messing around with it filming little covers in my apartment for i don't know maybe six months at that time and putting them on youtube putting them on your facebook youtube so i felt like i was ready like man i felt like i could do a show i asked the bar owner actually where i was bouncing at which was a different bar i was like hey man can i do a show here and he was like oh he's like we don't do any live music because there's apartments upstairs like it was a little mini strip malls three buildings yeah there was the bar i worked in a tanning salon and a domino's pizza and there were seven apartments you could have a nice day on top yeah so that's nice yeah get your hair seven apartments on top and he was like it's like in our lease that we can't do live music.

I was like, browser, I live in the apartments.

Yeah.

I was like, I know.

I can go door to door.

We'd all be down here.

And he was still kind of worried about it and didn't want to do it.

And dude, me and him are still in touch to this day, too.

But I played rugby in college.

So we hung out at a different bar, which was Parthenon.

And the owner of Parthenon, his name was Nick, and he was this wild card greed guy.

Just didn't give a fuck about anything.

He was just like wild guy, man.

So I asked him, I was like, hey, man, can I do a show here?

He's like, yeah, yeah just put it on the calendar there was just like a calendar on the wall so i just went and like wrote it on

anything we're doing a truck pull in here

people could have just came and wrote anything and that's what would have been going on there but it worked out man i charged dollar ticket i made 200 bucks man 200 people came oh that's incredible it was not a place that could hit 200 people so it was dependent on the day kind of place there was a football game slammed it was friday night slammed saturday night slammed it was like grimy in the best way you just get wings and you get five dollar picture of whatever's left in the beer lines from the weekend before.

And like, that was just the vibe there.

Not a lot of structure going on, but the place that I lived above and then the place I worked at was a newer place.

There was a local contingency, but there was also a really big student contingency, too.

So the owner was a local guy.

So everybody he knew would come there and support his business.

And then the kids loved it too.

Anytime there was something new in Boone, kids were like,

love that place.

That's a new place.

Let's go.

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So I went back to him when I went back to work.

I was like, hey, man, I just played across the street.

There's a chance you could throw a football.

You couldn't see one from the other, but that's how small Boone is.

And I was like, I played over there on Wednesday night and 200 people came.

And he was was like, really?

And I was like, yeah, so I'll just keep doing that or I'll do it here.

Yeah, yeah.

And he was like, let's do it here.

So then I played there every Thursday.

Every Thursday.

Over a year.

It's been one of my biggest assets.

You know, by the time I moved to Nashville, I'd played literally hundreds of shows.

We were booking shit as a band.

It was just my name.

So, I mean, I was cold calling places and getting shows.

We're traveling all over North Carolina.

We're starting to go to East Tennessee.

We're going northern South Carolina.

And then all of a sudden, dude, we were playing at minimum three shows a week, sometimes five shows a week.

Wow.

In a town that's really small.

Yeah.

So then we booked a place called Geno's.

And I believe that was every Wednesday.

So we did Wednesday, Geno's, Thursday, Tavern, every other Friday at The Rock.

Every Sunday,

Women's Barbecue.

You're full-time musician.

Right.

Pretty much.

And I had pretty much dropped out of school at that point.

So I lived in Boone for a year just doing music.

Were you having any problem doing three, four shows a day?

Not really.

I mean, I was smoking cigarettes then too.

Yeah.

Getting drunk a lot?

Or

at least once a week for somebody.

Okay.

That's not your thing.

You don't struggle with that at all.

No, no, no, no.

Whatever that thing is, I don't have.

Yeah, yeah.

Throw a couple of hamburgers down here.

We got a whole nother problem.

We got a new animal

for sure.

So we start doing that, and I'm realizing now, town tavern, there's lines to get in every Thursday.

We're doing that every bar, man.

And people are coming to see us because we're the only gig in town, really.

And you're building a whole family.

Yeah.

So then, you know, we've got a Facebook page going.

I'm doing cold calls we're riding around in my bass player's chevy avalanche to gigs out of town and i'm making press kits and mailing those out to bars and other college towns in north carolina just anywhere that would book us this is the grimy good stuff that you'd miss out on if you just popped into american idol and then had this record deal like this is the kind of groundlings host your own shows Obviously, I had a lot of success on Vine around that time, too, which was, you know, now defunct social.

You guys probably remember Vine.

Yeah, yeah.

Just short video clips.

Yeah.

The new version of that is TikTok, right?

And I think now a lot of that stuff's over.

Yeah, you can skip.

You skip all the steps.

And not that that's good or bad.

I mean, I think it's really great for the artists to have a platform like that.

There's people that their first ever show they've done is in an arena on tour with someone.

The moment is too big for you, man.

Not that there isn't people that rise above that.

For sure, there is.

Yeah.

But it's like having your first football game at the Super Bowl.

Without a doubt.

That's too much.

Without a doubt.

First car race.

And then it's like if you screw up, then people go, oh, well, you're not any good.

And it's like, well, God, I just played in the Super Bowl.

What are we talking about?

Of course I'm not any good.

Country Radio is still really big.

It was even bigger when I started and even bigger before that.

But like you go and do all these events for the stations.

And the thing they love to do is guitar pulls.

The litany of newer artists will come in and go, hey, we're in the St.

Louis, St.

Jude Jam.

They book a nice theater somewhere in town.

The kind of usual suspects at my time be like me and Midland and Carly carly pierce people that came up at the same time it's usually people that are kind of in that same class but then every once in a while you get thrown on it's like oh well luke bryan's in one there'll be five you're all on stage at the same time and it's just you and a guitar oh wow or you and one person playing guitar can you imagine being in that situation and you've got 250 000 tick tock followers and you've gotten a record deal and you come up and the guy that's played the song right before you is chris stapleton and you've played two shows And also in your shows, you sing his songs.

For sure.

It's like, oh, God.

But like, that would be incredibly intimidating.

It's nobody's fault.

I mean, if anything, it's the industry's fault.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, for that.

Industry's fault.

New market is just driving it.

You have this.

And fans want stuff.

They want new stuff all the time.

They want to be able to see stuff all the time.

And I think the most interesting conundrum.

for us as artists that at least has come in the recent years.

Let's say you're going to put a new song out and you're a new artist.

You might make 20 TikToks that are just this one sound clip of the song.

You lip singing it in your car and then it's you lip syncing it with your dog.

And it's like all these different things and you just do that over and over.

Fans, they want to hear new music, but they want to hear new music that they already have heard somehow.

I want to know that I like it before I've even listened to it somehow, which is in some ways an impossibility.

But it's like if you don't do enough of the PR enough of the promo, your first week sales numbers are going to suffer.

The fans aren't going to be as interested in it because they want to know, I already am going to like this.

It's also unfair because I think it leads to a lot of backlash.

There's an artist right now.

I won't say who I am.

I feel like all of a sudden everyone really doesn't like him anymore.

There's all this backlash and it's because he was thrust in my opinion.

It's because he's also thrust.

He's an incredibly talented guy though.

He's unreal.

He's like Freddie Mercury.

Yeah.

Like his voice is insane.

Oh, that's awesome to hear you say that.

His voice is insane.

It's like ungodly.

Oh, hates him.

No, there's a whole like on the internet.

What it's like co-worker music.

Oh, that's what they call it.

It's like a big thing co-worker music.

Because, in my opinion, he was everywhere all of a sudden, because that's kind of who you have to be now.

You do have to put your songs in all these things and be in this and be in this and be in this.

And then they're like, actually, too much of you.

Goodbye.

Well, this is Ed Sharon, who you did a song with.

We interviewed him in England, and he's like, yeah, man, in England, they love the rise, rise, rise.

But once you're at the top, they have a pretty quick, like, okay, we don't want this.

There's some kind of sense of, okay, you're too big.

Now we're mad about it.

We just had Gerard Carmichael on, and he said something that I thought was really interesting.

He was like, people don't respect you if they made you.

That was his explanation of like American Idol.

It's like, if they voted for you and they made you, they feel entitled to lead where you should be going artistically.

As opposed to you brought them along.

It's interesting.

Interesting.

We're in really international waters of what happens next in the music industry, I think.

It's a very interesting time.

Terrestrial radio, obviously in country, it's still huge, but streaming has been such a huge push.

When I get in the car, I'm putting Spotify on.

I want to hear exactly what I want to hear and I want to hear right now.

You don't hear new stuff.

You aren't exposed to as many new things because you're like, oh, I just want to hear familiar stuff.

It comes back to, I want to hear stuff I already know.

I want to know I'm getting the same breath.

Right.

Because I'm in my car.

I'm only drive 30 minutes a day.

For that 30 minutes, I don't want to have to risk listening to something I don't like.

I want to to listen to stuff that I already know that I like.

That's right.

And that's like a tough place to be as an artist.

I remember when it was fun when someone put a new record, I'm like, what's going to be on it?

Yes.

Is it going to be good or is it not going to be good?

When you get to Nashville, you start self-releasing some EPs.

And then on your third one, I guess, Hurricane's on that.

It was just a single.

It wasn't even an EP.

I just put that one out.

And that one got 15,000 in one week.

I thought that was normal, by the way.

I was like unaware that that was good at all.

it's the same thing as the public school thing this is a bubble that i know this is must be how everything goes yeah so like you go you start doing music your shows are going really good there's lines out the door people always want to come and then they buy your music and that's how it happens for everybody so i get to town and i remember i mentioned it to somebody and they were like How did it sell that much?

And I'm like, people thought it was good.

So then people bought it.

It's like how that happened, you know?

Which is like 10 years ago, maybe.

Hurricane went number one in 2017.

I put it out in 2015.

Yes, 10 years ago.

It sounds like not because it sounds like you were just, as you said, yeah, I put a sign out and everyone listened to it.

That duh.

My guess is you didn't have this.

Were you at all thinking, like, I don't look like the prototypical country star?

Gosh, yeah, dude, for sure.

Especially at that time.

Everybody was hot at that time.

Keith Urban's hairs to die for.

I mean, Luke Bryan,

FGL guys, Sam Hunt, Luke Bryan, Chase Rice.

He went to my high school.

I mean, just 6'4,

college football player.

Like every guy had played college football and was dieseled out, like just good-looking dudes.

And when I moved to Nashville, there was a lot of like, I don't know what the artist thing is going to work because you're just not what works.

But the guy that kicked that door open was Stapleton.

He was a bigger guy.

I mean, if you lived in Nashville, the guy was already a god before he ever got discovered.

He's got 200 and something cuts as a songwriter.

He's the best voice ever.

Is he the king?

You're among a few country people we've talked to.

They are growing up.

I'm dying to have him on and talk to you.

He's so talented.

He's like Vince Gill or something.

Vince Gill is just A1 songwriter, A1 guitar player, A1 singer, A1 producer, can just literally do it all.

There's not many guys that can truly do it all.

Like if you're Clyde Drexler, you're great.

And then Jordan shows up and you're kind of like,

I'm good, but fuck, that guy's real good.

And not that if he's in it right now i'd tell you i'm a better singer

i'm not but it's like you have to have that confidence right yeah it's like there's just some guys well some people are undeniable yeah i mean the talent level is just so high

so back to knowing that at that time people are like look man you've got all the things but you don't have the package that's going to work that's going to sell millions of albums how are you dealing with that yeah that's information i'm just going to keep going because probably now if that teacher asks you the question now you have the answer which is like i'm not going to do anything else whether that's the case or not definitely i had so much confidence at that time in my ability you're coming from boone right so you're big fish small pond i had made one or two trips to nashville and met some people and written some songs with folks that when i got here i was like dude and this is not a cockiness thing this is a true gamer mentality for me i was like dude these people can't hang with me dude like i would get in rounds and i'm like duh i will sing this guy out i mean he won't even show up yeah yeah yeah yeah it's never a competition i think that's good But it was just a confidence in like,

I won't be denied because I feel I have the ability like, okay, I can play in the league.

Yeah.

It's like you get in the NFL all of a sudden and you're like, I don't know, I was pretty good.

I played at a smaller college.

Maybe I don't have the combine numbers that this other guy has.

Yeah.

But put me in the A gap and he's on the other side and I'm coming out.

I'm walking out.

He's not kind of thing.

And that was a little bit of my mindset when I got here.

But also, I was already so happy with everything that was going on.

I'm living in Nashville.

I'm not having to work.

You're making a living.

I'm making enough money with no publishing deal, no record deal, writing songs five times a week, getting better every day, making progress.

And I'm paying all my bills.

And to me, that was the definition of making it, man.

Like, I just wanted to be happy doing what I wanted to do.

You can support yourself doing something you love.

Forget it.

That was it.

Then I was like, well, man, this is my cheat code.

I don't need anything else.

I live in a nice apartment in a hermitage.

What's better than this, man?

Like, I get to write songs all the time, sing all the time.

I got great friends.

I feel like I fit in.

You know, like people want to write with me.

And again, that's a very intoxicating timeline.

And so for me, I just wanted to make a living doing music.

You had probably already accomplished kind of the standard of living your parents had raised you under.

Definitely.

I can do this, no problem.

There's no debt collectors calling me.

This is all good.

Hurricane kind of blows up.

And then from this, Sony does sign you.

And then they release this one's for you they passed to me the first time i always call it the nashville no which is like well we'll be in touch we're not going to be in touch we're not going to be in touch which is the southern thing it's like just tell me no i'd rather just tell you right right we'll be in touch and by that i mean we will not be in touch by that i mean it's a no for us right

Okay, so what happens, though, is Sony does sign you and then they release this album and this album stays at number one for 44 weeks.

That's nuts, man.

It's a little shocking that you're not completely fucked up because, yeah, you release your song on your own and 15,000 people get it in a week.

You're like, yeah, of course.

You do your first studio album and it's fucking number one for 44 weeks.

This is where I argue you're not lazy because a lot of people would put it in neutral at that point.

Like, I don't have to try at this too hard.

It comes pretty natural.

It comes pretty easy.

And, or you could have become completely panicked that your follow-up album is not going to.

You could have been burdened by that.

Definitely.

So, how did you take that kind of crazy success?

First five singles are all number one on that album.

Dude, it's 19 or 20 now.

I haven't had one not go number one.

Oh, my God.

I haven't had one not.

You got to prep yourself.

It's going to happen at some point.

Yeah, I'm aware.

But then again, there's no pressure because it's so beyond what you even think's possible.

First time I ever played Hurricane, I played at the 40 watt in Athens.

That's where I went to UGA.

I think it was Labor Day weekend

and 86 people came.

And I remember being like kind of bummed because we had been playing decent shows in that size venue.

What's that place hold?

Probably 500 people?

Yeah, it's smaller.

It's pretty small.

We had kind of been rocking those.

And my manager was like, it's Labor Day weekend.

It was in school.

I remember this conversation like it was yesterday because I was really bummed out.

And that was the first night I'd ever played Hurricane in a show.

And he said, dude, I saw Florida, Georgia line here like five years ago and 17 people came.

Oh, wow.

And he was like, you got 88.

And he's like, and they're doing pretty good.

You know what I mean?

And I was like, oh, okay, that makes me feel a little bit better.

It's been wild.

But yeah, we did everything from the smallest place you could play to stadiums.

My favorite thing he did is Fast Car.

Your version of Fast Car is so great.

That was one of my very favorite songs growing up.

Interestingly, it was one of your favorites.

What a fucking beautiful song.

Oh, gosh.

Were you afraid to tackle it at all?

It feels like such a female perspective, right?

The dad's a drunk, the husband's abusive.

I think maybe I was just too naive to even be aware of that.

Think through all that.

Yeah.

Then again, man, that song's been covered like 1300 times wow there's like 1300 covers for sale

incredibly prolific song in a lot of people's lives so again i was not like man there's just gonna be a lot of eyes on this thing we had some throwaway time at the end of the studio like it was never a plan to do it i just always played it at shows and i hadn't since i'd gotten you ought to have known from the shows though that it was a big winner yeah it was just the college shows it wasn't like we were doing it on the arenas or at the club i would do it in college and i really always liked doing it it.

And so we had an hour of studio time left that, you know, we had paid for, but we had recorded everything we needed.

And I was like, what if we just recorded it?

We did it, ended up putting it on the record and we didn't promote it at all.

I mean, we didn't put any marketing budget behind it until it was top 10 at radio.

Really?

I had another single out that was climbing the charts that went number one.

And by the time it went number one, FastCar was like number 12.

Wow.

For whatever reason, man, it just struck the right chord at the right time.

Well, it's a beautiful combination of a great song and then a very wonderful interpretation of it.

Yes.

So when you guys sang together, first of all, answer this for me because I'll be working out and that comes on my liked songs.

And I do go.

What was her journey?

Did she choose to lay back?

Yeah, I think she just kind of stepped away.

The cool thing about her is nobody really knows.

She's kind of an enigma.

Yeah, for sure.

And I remember when there was whispers of that happening, my team was like, well, I I think the Grammys are thinking about maybe wanting to do this.

And I was like, dude, that ain't happening.

Yeah, she's never doing it.

I was like, bro, that ain't going to happen.

Like, I remember just thinking like, it's not going to happen.

She just doesn't do anything.

She's J.D.

Salinger of the Country World.

Yeah.

So they were like, would you be interested?

And I'm like, well, fucking, obviously, I would be interested.

I was like, it's not going to happen.

But I would be definitely interested.

So, you know, it's three, four months go by.

And I remember I was sitting in the tree stand at my house and Carla called me, who works with Asha and does PR.

And she was like, Hey, Tracy's going to call you tomorrow at seven o'clock.

I presume you've never met her at that point.

Oh, no, no, no one's better.

No one's met her.

Yeah, she hadn't commented in any way.

My cover had already been number one, and it's like the run was kind of over.

There's no whispers at all, right?

Which is fine.

I wasn't expecting to.

Maybe she was expecting you to call her.

I'm telling you, dude, you can't get in touch with her.

Yeah.

Because I remember when they were trying to figure it out, they're like, there's not a team.

There is no one, which is also the coolest thing.

It is the coolest thing.

It's the coolest thing in the world.

So next night, I'm like doing bath time with my kids and it's chaos, whatever.

But I told my wife, like, hey, seven o'clock.

Your boy's off the clock.

Yeah.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, man.

It's just like sitting there with my phone on the table because I'm like, I have a feeling she's going to call like on time, man, like prompt.

And she did, man.

It was like on the dot.

Phone goes off.

It's unknown.

Like an I'm known.

Number, whatever.

I have a butterfly.

And I said, like, pick it up.

It's just her, man.

And I was like, fuck.

I was like, this is crazy.

Man, we talked for probably 45 minutes.

Oh, really?

Did she say I like your version?

She did.

She was like, man, I think you did a really great job.

Oh, my God.

What more could you want?

I'm such a big fan.

And I'm nerd now.

I'm like, why did you do this thing when you recorded this song and this record?

And like, I'm just getting deep.

She could tell I was a real fan.

You know, I really cared about the records.

She didn't say this, but I think that was her trying to figure out if she wanted to do it or not.

Sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's like, I don't want to go up with this guy if this guy sucks.

You know what I mean?

Pretty much.

Which I got respect for.

It was crazy that it happened.

When the call ended, did she give you a, I'm going to do it?

Or did you hear later?

No.

She wasn't like, yeah, I'm definitely doing it.

She was just like, it was great talking to you.

And how long after that call do you find out?

It was probably like a month, I would say, before I heard anything.

I mean, obviously, incredibly thankful that moment happened.

It was so cool, not just for me, but I feel like for so many people to see her back out.

Unbelievable.

That to me was the coolest part.

It's just like her being out.

I loved seeing her sing so much.

If I could have, I wouldn't even have been up there.

I would have just been like, cool.

Can I just watch?

Of course.

She's so great.

I love watching that.

But the moment for me is she starts the duet.

She does her couplet.

Then we go to you or whatever we'd call, not a couplet, but you do yours.

And then when you throw it back to her, you look at her.

Whatever facade you might have had, it came down.

You have this smile on your face when you look back at her, like your turn.

That's so palpable.

It was so palpable.

I rewound it like four times this morning.

I just look at you, look at her, and I'm like, I think he's present for this, which is almost impossible to do.

It was like, were you present as fuck for that?

Yeah, it was just so surreal doing that song with her.

You know, I've been listening to that song since I was a kid.

So one of the first songs I remember.

It could have been almost too much to compute, but it does seem like you're there in your body experiencing that.

The best part about that was

she was really adamant about rehearsing a lot she hadn't played in like 10 years dude she came in just so confident it was all the players from that record like when she recorded it she asked me to bring my steel player so there was steel on it so it was all the guys that played on the original record we rehearsed for like three days oh wow Did you become friendly with her in those three days?

Yeah.

And so there was this full confidence.

There's no question we're going to nail it.

Yeah.

You'd work through all the butterflies in this.

It's like, dude, I didn't rehearse three days for my whole tour.

Right.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, she wanted it to be perfect and she wanted to have that confidence.

It paid off.

Yeah.

Make sure it was great.

And so that allowed us to be able to just enjoy the actual performance and not be swept up and like, oh, we're at the Grammys.

And like, what if we mess up?

Like, there was none of that.

So here's an interesting thing.

You have anxiety.

Oh, big time.

It's interesting anxiety, isn't it?

Because you would think someone with anxiety performing would bring that out.

But my guess is that's not where your anxiety lies.

No, mine doesn't make any sense, man.

It's a form of OCD.

You have a very specific form of OCD.

Yeah, so it's called puro OCD, which is like, there's no outward compulsions.

Oh.

So you're not doing any behaviors that are observable.

Yeah, the behaviors are all mental.

It's just rumination.

Yep.

Mental rituals.

So did you have tics when you were a kid?

No.

I would say 99.9% of people who have it, no one would ever even know.

I'm not.

But in theory, I could be be having it right now and having this conversation.

And it's like, there's almost two

almost the subconscious is having the conversation, but the real focus is on

the internal compulsion.

Is it something specific?

Yeah.

There's a lot of themes that are very recurrent for people that have this.

Religion is one.

It essentially preys on the antithesis of who you are at your

but it focuses on questions that are unanswerable, which is like,

do I really love God?

Do I really believe in God?

Yeah, what percentage have?

And then you spend over 90% of your day thinking about that.

And that could happen for months on end.

Oh, my gosh.

That's maddening.

Is it too private for me to know what your themes are?

No, I've had a ton, man.

Like, people have violent ones.

Am I some sort of serial killer guy?

We had an OCD expert on, and it was very illuminating that the kind you see in movie is the lowest percentage of OCD.

It's mostly people who are like, they're afraid they're a pedophile.

They're afraid they're a murderer.

You can touch all of them.

And there's some that, for whatever reason, if you weren't really religious you wouldn't really have the god one because that wouldn't be as important to you it's things that there's never an answer to there's people that are like am i gay am i a pedophile am i a serial killer if i'm driving down the road am i going to just swerve into this traffic and it's like you're not ever going to do that i know it's like seeing a grizzly bear come out of the woods but it's in your mind yep yes it identifies a threat but that threat's not there and then it just presses on the bottom and then it's like but it was real because i thought that for a second.

People have those kind of thoughts all the time, and they just like, oh, well, that's weird.

It's like a bird flying by.

Yeah.

You just go, oh, there's a bird.

And then you're like, what was that bird?

Why did that bird fly by?

And then the more you wonder why the bird flew by, the more it starts flying by.

Your brain's like, I need to send that thought again because you're worried about it.

And you being worried about it must mean something.

Yeah, yeah.

Really, it doesn't mean anything.

Then the more you think about it, the more it starts showing up and it starts going by and by.

And then you start wondering more and more and more.

And you do things mentally

ritualistically to alleviate the anxiety of the bird showing up so what's one of the rituals you can do mentally say for example you think in your mind you're like i'm gonna swerve my car into traffic one could be and this would be i guess technically an outward one it doesn't happen it's like reassurance seeking is a big one let's say me and you are really close friends yeah we will be i could be like you don't think i would ever plow my car into like the sidewalk and you'd be like dude what are you talking about no and then you're like thank god Well, I obviously would never do that.

Right.

But that reinforces the importance of the thought to you by me asking you that.

Interesting.

So the alleviation, the reassurance seeking of me wanting to like quill the uncomfortableness that the thought gives me makes my brain pay more attention to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because then I'm caring about it.

You're giving it power.

You're using that attention.

So the real trick to overcoming that is going, yeah, I think I will plow my car into a bunch of people.

Letting your brain go there.

Or just being like, maybe I will plow my car into a bunch of people.

And when that happens, we'll deal with that at that point.

Whatever.

Maybe I am, you know, insane.

Gay pedophile, murderer guy.

And you know what?

That's fine.

Right.

Because if that happens, then whatever.

That's what happens.

That is what it is.

It's just being like, yeah, whatever, man.

It's like, it's all good.

But I would say definitely the course of my life kind of has been dictated by that at certain times.

For me, when I was in my early 20s and I just moved to California, I was was super lonely.

I was ruminating quite a bit on it.

I thought I was going crazy.

Mental illness is one.

Like, am I schizophrenic?

And I don't know it.

That's right.

What if I'm in this podcast and you guys aren't even real?

And I'm sitting somewhere in someone's garage going, well, yeah, I'm a famous country singer and blah, blah, blah.

Oh my God, I've had this thought.

Imagine thinking that.

And like the normal person might be like, man, that's a really strange thing.

And they think about it for one minute.

Right.

But imagine that thought comes and it's like a nuclear bomb goes off in your head and you can't stop thinking about it for six months.

Oh my God.

And you never, I won't say never, but for the most part, I would think in my experience, you never have two themes at one time.

Oh, interesting.

Right.

There's not room for two themes.

Right.

Like it's almost too much bandwidth.

Let's say you're worried about religion and it's the most important thing in the world to you.

And then one day you have the car driving thought.

Instantly, you think about the religion.

We're like, bro, how dumb was that?

Oh, wow.

I can't believe I wasted three months of my life worrying about this thing that's now is so inconsequential, but then it could come back in five years.

It's whack-a-mole.

People always reach out to me about it because there's not a lot of people who've talked openly about that particular form, which a lot of people have.

And I would say 99.9% of people suffer in silence with this thing.

Because how do you tell your parents when you're 12 years old that you're worried about being a pastor?

You think you're going to stab someone with a kitchen knife?

Yeah.

Like, people will think you're insane yeah you're very afraid that they will take the the judgment yeah they'll be like hey man something's wrong with my kid and not his a mental illness it's like my kid is psychopathic

some clarity right i'm like i think i am slowly kind of going crazy here but then i also have moments where i'm like no you're not everything's kind of groovy right and you're afraid if i give over this information someone's gonna assume the worst we're gonna have a defcon 5 reaction to it and i do at times realize i'm not that's the thing is none of it ever makes any sense.

If you told someone you were worrying about it,

but there's nothing about you that would make that true.

Even telling people that is counterintuitive to the healing process.

If you are or not like that, it just doesn't even matter.

I know right now that I could get in my car and it's an hour drive home and I could have a spike that sends me into a three-month spiral.

But also, I'm just not afraid of that at all.

You just have to know, maybe at another point in my life, I'll have another one of these and that's okay.

And I'll deal with it when it happens.

And I think that's the freedom.

I mean, it took me five years to even figure out what it was.

Yeah, I was going to say, you seem to have a lot of awareness and tools.

Did you receive these from therapy?

Yeah, the behavioral therapy part of it is huge.

It's having the toolkit to combat it and knowing what's right and what's wrong.

You can never solve it.

It's like addiction.

It ain't going away.

The big key is knowing that you'll never have an answer to any of these questions.

You answering the question will never cure you.

Or you trying to find out the answer is never

figure it out.

Right, because if it was two plus two equals four, you wouldn't have any anxiety about it because you just know.

Yeah.

And you could know an answer and you could get a test and that's the answer.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert

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Yeah, so how did you learn all this?

I'm better at that probably than I am at country music, to be honest.

I mean, just from years of experience.

Experience.

I mean, just 10,000 hours times a million of

it.

Or did you got help?

I never really had a traditional CBT therapist, honestly.

It was just once I found out what it was,

that probably happened at like 21, which is the same year I learned guitar.

Oh, this is what it is.

There was a lot of relief in that.

Yeah,

of like, oh my god,

other people have this?

Like, what are we talking about?

Yeah, the isolation of it is sometimes the worst.

I can't be like, I must be crazy.

Nobody understands.

Obviously, my parents were really worried, but they're like, we don't even know.

I went to therapy in high school and it was like, oh, you've got generalized anxiety disorder.

And I'm like, okay, well, that must be what it is.

But it just didn't feel like specific enough.

This feels different than that.

Once I found the Pure O thing.

It was like, oh my God, this is the thing that I have.

Yeah.

Do you think this could potentially be one of the reasons when you say you were lazy quotes in school?

Like this was happening in your brain.

It was pretty distracting.

As a kid, how could you be doing all these things at once?

So many times in my life, I feel like I was on the cusp of like figuring out or achieving something.

And then I would have one of these spikes and it would be like, well, there goes everything because I don't care about anything else now because I'm so worried about I'm crazy.

I hesitate even saying these things because I feel like sometimes people are going to watch this and they're going to seek reassurance from hearing me talk about it.

Like it'll trigger the wrong reaction.

Yeah, like they'll go, oh, gosh.

Well, then he said this thing and that made me feel better for 10 minutes.

And so I'm fine for 10 minutes.

But it preys on everything you're not.

Right.

And it makes you feel like you are that.

When in reality, in some ways, your deepest fear is being something that you're not.

And that's rooted in this.

Another big one is relationship OCD.

One of the themes of Pierre O is like, do I really love my wife?

I really love my kids.

Oh, yeah.

And there's no answer.

Obviously, you wouldn't be worried about it if you did.

That's right.

And that's the thing, but but telling people that is giving them reassurance.

People who don't love people are worried that they don't love them.

Yes.

Well, you look at the list of people I don't love, I'm not sitting around worried that I don't love them.

Do I love them or do I not love them?

No, it's quite evident.

I think this is so interesting.

Explaining it's actually bad.

That's a catch-22.

This is good for everyone to hear, even if you're on the opposite end of it.

What we shouldn't be doing is be like, oh, but you shouldn't worry about that because you're not that.

That's actually

makes it worse.

Yeah.

Which is so confusing.

It's such a confusing hamster wheel.

Getting out of the loop is so

confusing.

Until you know how to do it, you can't do it.

The research on it has come a lot farther in the last 14 years than it did even when I was 21.

There was basically one doctor that even was doing anything on it at that time at 21.

Yeah.

Now there's a lot more people who are saying that, oh, yeah, I've got this thing.

And do you think it's nature or nurture or a combination?

100% nature.

It's like having bipolar.

It's just wired that way.

It's just how your neurons fire.

Have you come to find an upside of it?

So for me, I very much think of I'm an addict across the board and it kind of works in most domains until I get to that one.

But my obsessive nature and my ruminating on how to make this show better, how to do a better job, like that's all the same package that makes me mean.

Sure.

Do you think there's been an upside?

Do you think it's part of your success as well?

No.

No.

I don't think it's part of my success at all.

If I just never had it, that would be awesome.

There's no good part of it.

That's a good answer.

There's no good parts of it other than when you don't have it.

Yeah.

Maybe like you recognize it.

When you don't have it, you're like,

bro.

You feel it.

Life is just incredible.

I will tell people this, man, at least in my experience, it's been something that's gotten better for me.

Do you think kids help?

Certainly.

Yeah.

I mean, there's less time to worry about that kind of stuff.

But kids could also easily be a trigger.

OCD people think they're going to hurt their kids.

They're going to kill their kid.

They're going to molest their kid.

They won't change that kid's diaper.

For sure.

It's a unique experience in each individual, I would say.

Obviously, there's patterns that are recognizable in people that have OCD, you know, especially this form.

But I think knowing that you have it is a big part.

Anybody that has it should definitely do their research on it.

But I don't even have to tell those people to do it because they have.

Right.

Because they're sitting on their computer all day going,

what's going on with this?

Imagine being in fight or flight mode 90% of the day.

Yes.

And you're actually bizarrely now almost going to manifest some health condition.

Sure, because you're going to be under stress all the time.

Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you're talking about that.

Me too.

Oh, for sure.

I think it's harder if you're a country star.

Yeah, actually, probably.

Every actor I talk to, they've all been in therapy.

We've talked to all the country stars.

No one's going to therapy.

There's like some cultural.

I think for me was finding out how can I make this happen less?

Not from.

the therapy side.

Obviously, that helps a ton.

But for me, it was like, man, how can I just change what I'm eating, what I'm doing?

My life revolves around preventing it.

Right.

So, like, I mean, I don't eat gluten anymore.

Me neither.

That was for sure somehow involved in my inflammation levels were really, really high.

Yeah.

And obviously your brain is really inflamed.

That's been a big one for me.

It's a wild journey.

Luke, you're a very sweet, talented person.

I'm really delighted I got to meet you.

I'm really grateful you're willing to come over today and chat with us.

And I just also want to give you a big high-five for fucking raising $24 million for Asheville, this town I love.

Yeah.

$24 million they raised.

Congratulations on everything.

I mean, you're so young.

I'm excited to watch you continue to

do radical stuff.

Is there anything we got to promote specifically?

I got a new single coming out.

It's called Back in the Saddle.

It's coming out.

Okay, so Back in the Saddle's coming out.

July 25th.

Oh, yeah.

July 25th.

And tell me, where are we going?

I think we're going backwards in a good way.

You know, the last record I put out was Father's Day of last year.

So it's kind of more of a niche project for me.

You know, it's more of a personal

endeavor.

You know, I got two little kids at home.

So it's been two and a half years since I put out a record that was meant to be heard by a lot of people.

That's kind of where the back in the saddle thing came in.

We'll see.

We'll see.

I'm excited.

All right, Luke.

Well, I hope I bump into you a bunch while we're in Nashville.

You're delightful.

Get that Raptor R down here and we'll find some trails.

Bye.

I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs.

Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong.

Smells different in here.

Oh, God.

Because of me?

No, it's not a human smell.

It's like a...

Musty.

Yeah, musty old air-conditioning smell or something.

Well,

it's been musty in here.

It might be me because.

Are you musty?

Well, I'm wearing a vintage shirt.

Oh, and it could have some must stank on it.

Yeah, sometimes vintage comes with a little must.

I don't think it's that.

Although I came in here earlier to set this down and I didn't smell it.

Should I smell?

No, it is smelly.

We must find out now.

Well, it is smelly musty, but I can't, I don't think it could be that strong that you smelled it coming in.

Let me see if it's the same.

It's not this piece, right?

No, it's not.

Yeah.

No, that doesn't smell bad at all.

That's not it.

Are you sure?

Okay, well, I smell it.

Like, you know, when you put on clothes that aren't your smell?

Yeah, yeah.

Because I have, this isn't washed.

Oh, I'm outing myself.

Way more common when you're young.

Right?

Like, you're at a friend's house.

You didn't intend to sleep over.

Yeah, I can sleep over.

Can I borrow something?

As an adult, I'm not swapping clothes with many people.

Are you?

Yeah, you're not.

You're not a girl.

Yeah, you're not.

Like, girls borrow each other's clothes still like at inner 40s.

Yeah, of course.

I mean not like on a daily basis, but if I'm if I am when's the last time you borrowed an item of clothing?

I mean, I'm sure I've borrowed something from Kristen upstairs like

many times.

I'm sure.

You don't remember the last time.

Like, probably I'm over and it's like, oh, I need to wear a baby.

This is a hypothetical.

Do you remember the last time?

Oh, my God.

Should we call her?

She won't remember.

Are you kidding?

You're just so particular about your clothes.

I'm finding it a little hard to believe that you're in your friend's clothes a lot.

Okay, do you want me to like really peek behind her?

I do.

Let's go all the way.

Okay, so like sometimes we record two.

Back to back.

Yeah.

And then I, we, you change shirts because your closet's here.

And then I'm like, oh, fuck.

Like, I probably need to change shirts too, but I didn't bring any.

So then I'll like go borrow something.

I've done that recently.

So I'm very unsure of when this happens.

Well, I don't write it down.

I agree that this seems hypothetically plausible.

I agree you're like, I need another shirt.

Kristen's got a bunch up there.

I'll grab one.

Also, I do a lot of closet clean out.

Yeah.

A lot.

And then I'll make big heaping piles of clothes.

And then people come and they take them.

Yeah.

And

so then they're wearing my clothes.

Sure, that I

so women are taking other people's clothes.

Okay.

So you don't have an exact memory of the last time you were walking around town and in one of your girlfriend's clothes.

Not a precise memory, just more of a hypothetical memory.

Next time I'll write it down.

Okay, keep a journal.

A log.

I'll keep a journal.

Okay.

But vintage clothes and shopping.

I don't normally wash it immediately.

That's gross.

People are going to probably be gross.

I don't know that I have either.

But vintage is a little trickier.

It is, but also, what do people think they're getting from?

Like, you're moving around, you're in a Starbucks.

There's 35 strangers in there.

Everyone's coughing and sneezing and talking loudly.

There's spittle everywhere and airborne contaminants and contagions.

Legionnaires.

Yeah.

What do you think you're getting from someone's t-shirt?

There's no, or well, we know your skin's a large disorgan, but it's not like anything's like

they're not using it as a tissue or toilet paper.

Psoriasis is not contagious.

But you wouldn't want it.

Like,

okay, we have to be realistic.

Aren't there people in the world?

We don't have to name names.

I have psoriasis, so go ahead and name me.

No, I'm not.

I moved on from psoriasis.

Oh, you did?

Okay, I'm still there.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

It's a large accusation to levy at someone.

I was just thinking about the guy from Armchair Anonymous, where he had his skin across the entire.

No, he had psoriasis, and it was across the entire apartment.

Remember, the whole apartment was covered in skin?

Yes.

So you probably wouldn't want to borrow his shirt.

And it's nothing against him, but like, I think we could agree.

I agree that it would be gnarly, and I don't want to do that.

But also, you won't catch anything.

No, you're not going to catch anything.

But I think people have more, it's more of a, it's not like he's going to get a disease.

Yeah, it's cooties.

I was just more objecting to people thinking that's like gross, like you're going to catch something.

And I just don't think you're going to catch something.

Unless you're borrowing someone's old used underwear that has a current STD

or bacteria because you get a UTI

yeah

I imagine that I think they wash it

that's hopeful it is hopeful I do think that's the express policy but you're just putting a lot of faith in whatever

these are express hourly person that day was like you got to wash all those before you open the register and they're like you got it I mean that's a real

oh my god at the end of the day it's humans it's humans i know

that's what that's the harsh realization of the world our pilots are humans my father-in-law sent me an article this morning from the godfather of ai now a lot of people have this moniker so you don't really know which one is the truth we know the godmother of ai faif hei lee But this gentleman worked at Google.

He has since left.

He does have a Nobel Peace Prize.

Oh, who is it?

I don't remember his name.

I could look it up real easy.

Why wouldn't I honor and credit this person?

But what

he's urging people to do

is design AI

with a woman's instincts, basically.

Joffrey Hinton.

Okay.

Okay.

He says, listen to this.

Well, first of all, did you hear that an AI model tried to blackmail an engineer about an affair that it had learned about from email?

No.

Yes.

What the fuck?

See, oh my God.

Okay.

Hinton presented an intriguing solution, building maternal instincts into AI models so they really care about people, even once the technology becomes more

powerful and smarter than humans.

AI systems will very quickly develop two sub-goals if they're smart.

One is to stay alive and the other sub-goal is to get more control.

There's good reason to believe that any kind of agenic AI will try to stay alive.

But there's one sentence in here that's really incredible.

Oh, he noted that mothers have instincts and social pressure to care for their babies.

The right model is the only model we have of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing, which is a mother being controlled by her baby.

That's a fascinating framing of it, isn't it?

That is.

The baby is in control.

In control, and they're just,

yeah.

But you're fully committed at all times to sacrifice whatever you needed to do for them.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's wild.

Yeah.

That's cool.

It's like the most distinct in a mother-child relationship.

Yeah.

But also

probably a human-to-child relationship.

Like if there's a kid around and you're alone with them and you're an adult, like an instinct does kick in that you have to help that kid or take care of that kid or, you know, you're not just gonna walk away from a kid up by itself yeah we're susceptible we're hardwired to respond to things that are cute yeah when the eyeballs are disproportionate to the size of the face we we get really nurturing and empathetic that's neat yeah that's what ai needs

ai needs to look at humans and think they're so cute look at them they're gangly and they're walking on two feet no one else is yeah but what are they going to do about the fact that humans like kill people and are really mean and bad so do but you know babies break break things on accident and they do not.

On accident though.

Or on purpose, sometimes they slap their mom in the face.

We know that.

Sure.

You've seen that video of Delta attacking me over and over again.

You're in trouble.

Yeah.

She's leaping at me.

In that case, though, you were in trouble.

I was not in trouble, as I made very clear in the video.

I did nothing.

You were in trouble because she decided you were in trouble.

And that means you were in trouble.

You were in danger.

But then she wanted to give me a necklace and she decided decided I was not in trouble.

You're not in trouble anymore.

Yeah, it was very nice to get

back to my little sweeties last night.

Were you happy?

Yeah, yeah.

How do you feel?

You're back home.

I feel dicey.

I feel like I'm on re-entry.

Yeah, sure.

Do you feel?

You didn't feel that way.

This, I think, this is the longest I've been gone from LA since

without a paddle, maybe.

Or when in rome maybe we were gone for two months long time ago yeah 56 days that's really long almost two months yeah time is wild walked lincoln the first day of school today oh today was first day of school yeah oh my gosh seventh grade i mean i try not to jinx her but i'm so excited for her oh that was a big year for you best year of my life oh

Yeah.

I don't think you have to knock if it was already the best in your year of your life.

They can't take it away.

Okay.

See, I'm taking care of the child in this situation.

Because you're like AI.

You're agentic.

Yeah.

Seventh grade.

We,

our friends have a child who just turned 16.

And we were at her birthday party and I was like, and this is a kid we've known her whole life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like, I really held her as a tiny newborn baby.

Yeah, I didn't know her that little, but

she was like five, probably.

Yeah.

And that was so weird.

Was it?

Yeah.

Is she getting her license?

Yeah, she's like driving.

She is.

Oh my God.

I know.

How exciting.

Obviously, you know this and all parents know this, but

when you get to be an adult, time is just kind of stagnant, right?

Like, unless it's your birthday, I guess, but like you're barely even that.

You're not really whatever.

You feel the same age and then you're kind of doing the same thing every day or whatever, you know, you're living your life

and you're not as aware of the passage of time, but kids make you so aware of the passage of time.

It's like a non-stop

sense of like, oh my God, they're getting older, which means time is passing.

I'm getting older.

It's like, it's really intense.

And she's 16.

She is going to be an adult in two years.

When we're done with this contract, she will be an adult.

Oh, my goodness.

She can.

That's wild.

She can do what?

She can vote.

She can vote.

She'll vote.

But, like, that's crazy.

It is crazy.

She'll go to college.

I had that moment this morning.

I was like looking at the school and it has the

established date.

on Lincoln's school.

And I was doing the math and I was like, oh, this school year, when we hit 2026,

your school will have a 120-year anniversary.

Oh, cool.

And then I was thinking, that sounds so old.

Yeah.

But it's only two of my lifetimes, which makes it feel not old.

Exactly.

I get so confused when I start doing time as multiples in my lifetime

because

I'm only six of me away from the revolution, basically.

Yeah.

But isn't that crazy?

It is crazy, but also think about six.

Like you've, a lot has happened.

I mean, it just goes by so fast.

Exactly.

This stuff is all like five minutes ago, is what I'm saying.

I'm feeling very nostalgic right now.

Or like currently, not today, but just in the past couple years.

You're in a nostalgic era.

Yeah, because, well, my birthday is coming up.

So maybe that has to do with it.

Yeah.

And this child turning 16.

That really sent you for a loop.

And I re-watched girls.

I watched the whole thing in a week.

How many seasons were there?

Six.

Six.

Ten episodes each.

Six.

Pretty much hour-longs.

Okay.

And you loved it.

Oh my God.

Better this time around.

For me, it's so much better because

the first time I watched it, I think I couldn't really watch it.

Like I was, I was their age.

I was, yeah, I was like their age.

I was in my 20s.

I was stressed out.

I didn't know what my life was going to be.

I was them.

Yes.

And it was, it was too much of a mirror and it made me feel flaily and anxious.

Yeah.

So I don't don't even think I finished it.

Okay.

Watching it now.

What is the big accomplishment you think of it?

Just how authentic it is?

It's so funny.

Like she's so funny the way she writes.

It's just, she just has my number.

Like the way she writes and storytells is, is so, it hits like such a chord.

There are so many moments.

This happened in too much also the show that she created, the new show, where like, I'm like, gonna cry, but I feel like if I start crying, I'll never stop crying.

Wow.

Like she has that, there's like this ability to like untap and then I'll just leak out for the rest of time.

Like I won't, it's what, it's just and is it a feeling of sadness?

It's such a specific feeling.

It's It's nostalgia, I guess.

Well, there's a layer of that.

There's a nostalgia.

There's a like life is so

beautiful and hard

and complicated, and relationships are so complicated, but they're so

beautiful that we get to, we get to engage like this in life.

Like, it's, it's so intense.

Like, it's such an intense feeling of the reality of being

and

how

messy

it is.

And she's just so funny.

Like the first time I watched it, I wasn't in,

I hadn't hit that stage in life where I watch everything with subtitles.

Oh, uh-huh.

Which I do now.

Even American shows.

I watch everything with subtitles.

Okay.

And so I'm not missing any jokes.

Like there, I'm still.

But are you missing any visuals?

Because that's my issue with subtitles is I have to concentrate quite hard to read the subtitles and I'm missing a lot of the visuals.

Yeah, I.

And if they're there, I'll read them, even if I'm understanding it perfectly.

Yeah, I understand this dilemma.

Comment on whether you watch with subtitles or not.

Dax, we'll read them.

I think I'm just so used to it now.

I don't think I'm missing any visuals.

Okay.

And I'm not missing any

nuance or jokes.

And I think I could have before.

Okay.

So you're kind of reading the script and watching the show to see.

Kind of, yeah.

And it's do you wish they put the description of the scene on there, too?

They're doing a great job.

Sparsely decorated one-bedroom New York apartment.

Yeah.

So anyway, that show is making me feel very nostalgic.

And

so I'm just in like a wispy mood.

And are you,

what do you have feelings about summer ending?

Yeah.

Are you ready for fall?

I love fall.

I'm really glad fall is after summer.

Okay, and not spring.

Yeah, because I don't love spring.

Okay.

Spring's fine, but fall's cozy.

It's sweaters.

It's warm drinks.

Yeah.

Old fashions.

I was thinking about the service that football provides for a lot of Americans.

Yes.

You're so sad summer's over.

Yeah.

But for so many people, like tens of millions of people, the excitement of like, oh, football's back and I know what I'm doing on Sundays and Mondays.

Exactly.

I don't

indulge.

Yeah.

But But I get it.

Yeah.

Maybe you should get into that.

I think they like deserve, like, they're pacifying a nation.

They're really,

they do provide a service to bring out of the summer blues.

Yeah, it's true.

Yeah.

But even just like then, Halloween is coming and that's on the horizon.

And it's like, what are we going to dress up as?

And there's a lot of giving.

I'll talk about the costumes already.

Okay.

I'm out of the loop, but I'll do whatever.

It's best that you're out of the loop because we're going through many iterations, I think, before we land on it.

Okay.

So it's just a lot of pitches right now.

And I'm such a stick in the mud.

I'm basically like, you know, when you guys decide, tell me what I am.

And just stay out of some of the pitches because they seem impractical to me.

Okay, can you mind throwing some out there?

Well, what I got kind of nervous about is.

Lincoln's now interested in doing puns, kind of bringing back what everyone loved from the 2010s, I guess.

Yeah, Kristen used to do this, right?

Yes, yes.

Like I for Burt Reynolds rap or whatever, you know,

stuff like that.

And so they already have like really complicated ones

where someone's a human and they're a toothbrush.

And it's me, I'm just like, whoa, we better start fabricating all these if we're really doing this.

Yeah.

Okay.

But again, this isn't my domain.

This is one of the domains I just pop in and out of.

I'm on, I'm on payride duty.

Yeah.

Did you drive the bus back?

No.

Oh, okay.

So the bus is staying there.

The bus is there.

So he's going to stay there.

Yes, until January if I come back, bring it back to go to Sunday.

He should come back home because, like,

what if we want to like hang out in him?

I know.

I would, I feel safer if Big Brown's here, but Big Brown is in

covered in that.

in the baking sun in LA for it likes the sun.

Some people like the sun.

Brown people like the sun.

Nobody likes to have that much direct sunlight rotting in the front yard.

You can't say nobody when I'm sitting right here.

But you have rejuvenative properties.

You can replace your dead skin

and stuff.

Big Brown's just going to get duller and duller.

So I think it's best for Big Brown.

Okay, well.

You're bummed that the bus isn't here.

Yeah, it was the only other brown thing

on this property besides me.

I felt seen.

Okay.

And now I'm back to being the token.

Is there nothing brown here?

Just me.

Just little old me.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

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I have a confession.

Oh, wow.

I love a confession.

So I got this necklace.

Okay.

For the listener, it's gold.

It has, it's really pretty.

It has like what kind of looks like a paper clip or safety pin hanging from the chain, but with a little diamond on it.

And then it has a little pendant.

Now, the pendant

has a unicorn on it uh-huh

and

i feel weird about it because i love it i saw and i was like i need this but then i decided i was going to tell people that somebody else bought it for me oh come because i think it's weird if you buy yourself a pendant that has a unicorn on it oh really

I'm a little

what do you think it says I'm nervous it's arrogant oh wow arrogant

Like I'm saying, I'm a unicorn.

Oh,

I don't know if anyone would think that.

I just want to get ahead of it.

Okay.

Yeah,

I don't think anyone's going to think that.

I mean, just, I imagine the comments are going to be like, oh, my God, she thinks she's a unicorn.

When you wear a La Costa shirt, you don't think you're an alligator.

Or do you?

Okay, I don't.

And you don't think you're a local shirt.

That's the brand.

This isn't the brand this is the charm do i think i'm a hawk or a crow you well you do think you're a crow you say that on the show i am a crow but i'm not a hawk yeah but that's your dad you said yeah that is my dad see

it's like if i had if you were a hawk charm well if you got a huge tattoo of a big american eagle on your chest american eagle's in some trouble right now but why

you haven't heard this you're so out of the loop i probably am what

Because

they did a campaign with Sidney Sweeney that really got people in a tizzy.

About what?

Is this what I saw a clip of her crying talking to camera about her feelings being hurt?

Oh, maybe.

I bet her feelings are hurt.

Okay, what happened?

The campaign was about genes, obviously.

But it was, remember the Brooks Shields Calvin Klein commercial that they did American Eagle Sidney Sweeney has great jeans there's a voiceover there's a whole thing about

her jeans and how your genes are passed down and it predicts your your

eye color and your hair color

and

she says something like I have great jeans.

My jeans are blue.

I only half paid attention to this.

I only was, so I'm definitely missing pieces.

And I think there's longer ones and shorter ones, whatever.

But there's a like

backlash against genetics or blue genes?

Genetics.

About what it's saying about

her genetics being the right genetics.

Because she's blonde with blue eyes.

Right.

And the Calvin Klein one is not like that.

It's more like...

Nothing gets between me and my Calvin.

That's right.

She's also 13 or something.

Yeah, that's problematic in a much different way.

But anyway, I don't, I'm not obviously, I'm not going to levy an opinion on that.

I do think

people,

you know, I help Kristen with some.

You have so many specific looks.

You're like, okay, that's the same.

I saw the whole thing.

You're like, okay, that's the sentence I want to say.

Oof, that's going to be, that's going to sound rough.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm going to start with an analogy.

Do you remember when I help?

Listen, this is a ding, ding, ding, what I'm about to say.

People need to think.

Okay.

They need to think before they speak and before they put things out.

They need to edit what they're saying.

They being American Eagle or the people being critical of American Eagle?

Or just American Eagle.

Like

I help Kristen with commercial stuff, right?

And if you're working with Kristen on a commercial and I'm involved, you're probably going to be annoyed at me

because I am very picky.

I am like, we aren't going to use that word.

We shouldn't use this.

We got to do this.

And it's like, to them, they're like, this is all the same thing.

This is not.

I'm very similar.

And as you know, I'm always on high alert for like

condescension, triggering people feeling less than.

Yeah, like there's.

You have to think about everything if you're doing a campaign.

Yes.

And you do.

You have to think about across the board everything.

There's a lot to think about and things make a, it makes a difference.

Words make a difference.

the delivery makes a difference and it requires a lot of thought and so when i see something like that i'm more just like

like why who let that happen

sydney sweeney's person should not have allowed that and also american eagles should not have allowed that someone should have said like hey i don't know let's just be careful here Yeah, I wish I knew more about the controversy.

If the controversy is just that she's saying she has good genetics, what's interesting about that, let's just say that's what it is, that she's saying I have good genetics.

An American Eagle saying.

She has a best genetics.

An American Eagle is saying she has great genetics or the best genetics.

That would be an important word.

Does she say the best?

She says, I have the best genes.

I don't know if she said that or not.

I don't either.

Yeah.

So,

but what's interesting is let's say it was just, I have the best genetics.

It's funny that that's more offensive to people than what I earned how I look.

Is that what they like?

The counter, which is

I looked this way.

I didn't earn it.

I was just born this way.

I hit the genetic lottery.

People like how I look.

No, no, no.

No, it's to me, it seems less arrogant to say I'm just the recipient of great genes.

But it's talking about, it's talking about blue eyes and blonde hair specifically.

It's so, so that is the problem.

Well, here's where they might have got a little murky on their analogies.

They're like, oh, we're going to play the

jeans jeans.

Exactly.

But when she says, I have blue jeans, we mean J-E-A.

J-E-A.

I know.

And it got a little murky.

No, they knew what they were doing with that.

That's like, her eyes are blue.

So her jeans are blue.

Like, that's, that's what they're doing.

But it's also like, then they need to probably what they should have done is ran two campaigns, one with her, one with someone with brown hair or skin or something and then made a brown pair of jeans yeah just blue jeans versus brown jeans

or black jeans i love black jeans they could run a campaign with multiple people with this theme the problem is you have this like beautiful very aryan girl talking about her blonde hair and blue eyes and her and having good jeans and it's kind of like e let's maybe not do that but again i don't necessarily i i don't actually blame her i think she needs someone in her camp i'm not a veil

right now right um maybe down the line okay just putting it out there yeah just putting it out there kind of a consultant do you think you could go through like 10 or 12 a day yeah like maybe go do a volume play like have 12 of these clients that you're overseeing

remember i majored in pr this is where some of this comes in Yeah, you may have the

pleasure I've had in life of looking back and like seeming like it all makes sense.

Now, like I was so into driving, and then I was a host of Top Gear, and it's improv and driving fast.

And you're like, well, how did these things intersect?

So it might be that

where your PR education finally is like, I knew there was a total reason.

It's, it's at play every day.

It's at play all the time here.

I notice it all the time.

I'm like, man,

meant to be.

I need to know more, but it sounds like people are overreacting, in my opinion.

You always think that.

I do.

I think people in general are trying, are looking for ways to be offended.

Because

you could say, I love my blue eyes and blonde hair.

That's not saying,

that's just saying that's one version of being beautiful.

If she says, I like my blonde hair and blue eyes, they're hearing, I don't like brown hair.

No, she's not saying, I like that.

Or I, I, I like that I got these.

She's not saying that.

Okay.

That's the problem.

That's what I'm saying.

Words matter.

If she, if, if, if it was phrased like that, like, I like my blue jeans.

that is different than I have

good jeans.

My jeans are blue.

Like, it's so, it's so nitpicky, but it really does make a difference.

And I will say, as someone who doesn't have blue jeans, I mean, I have blue jeans, but I don't have blue jeans.

I have brown jeans across the board.

No, you know, almost exclusively blue jeans.

I have brown jeans.

I have, I don't have any brown jeans.

Brown jeans are not popular.

They're not a popular shade of they're not a popular wash brown jeans.

They just aren't.

Whether that's black jeans are, though.

I have brown corduroys and they are so cute.

And they're

yeah.

When you get into corduroy, people really embrace brown, even orange.

Whatever.

Yeah.

So I, I, as someone who doesn't have these Aryan jeans that you do, yeah.

Um, if you

said, like,

yeah, I have great jeans.

I have blue eyes.

I'd be like,

probably don't say that to me.

Right.

Like, you know, even and not like, cause I'm trying to be offended, but just like, yeah.

Are you serious?

Like, that's so stupid to say.

Yeah, I guess for you, blue eyes is really synonymous with white.

Cause now what's interesting.

Well, she's white.

She is white.

Yeah.

If she said, I'm so happy I'm white, I'm with you.

Right?

That's, yeah.

So I'm trying to understand.

So I do understand.

I'm trying to figure out what the stickiness is here.

And I think maybe that's it, which is blue eyes are so associated with being white and blonde that you're basically saying I'm happy I'm white.

Yes.

So I'm happy I have this package.

Blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin.

And by the way, I don't blame you.

You guys get a lot of shit.

You get a lot of shit in this life.

So you should be happy about it.

But we just don't need that.

Some white people,

some brown people have blue eyes.

It's so rare, Dex.

It's so

rare.

I mean, wow.

It's probably more rare.

Oh, this is a good segue into something, but this, it's probably more rare for a brown person to have blue eyes than green eyes in general.

Like, definitely, actually.

Speaking of that, when we were watching Tom Cruise's Cruises,

and

what movie were we watching?

Where there was...

Oh, he had green eyes and his love interest.

Yeah,

I think it was one of the the mission impossibles

or no was it demi moore in um

in few good men it was it was demi more

green eyes tom had green eyes and we were

shocked that they both had green eyes because they're the rarest of eyes and then we started to look into how many co-stars have the same green eyes together couldn't give us an answer for that

yeah

so um

anywho so i guess it's fine that i wear this this or yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Cool.

No, I don't think anyone, when they have an animal on their locket, the person's like, you think you're that animal.

I think they just think you like that animal.

Hmm.

You like unicorns.

Not, I think I'm a unicorn.

I actually disagree.

Like, if somebody wore a fox or like had a little fox, like they're kind of displaying that that's who they are.

Okay.

So it sounds like you might be critical of someone wearing a unicorn pendant.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Which makes sense.

All the things we fear

and worry about others attacking us for are the things we, right?

Because they make logical sense to us.

I wouldn't care if someone was wearing it, but I would want someone to have given it to them.

Okay.

Like their mom or their boyfriend or their girlfriend or their someone who thinks they're a unicorn.

Yeah.

I guess it's like self-love.

Like like i have

no one's giving this to me no one thinks i'm a unicorn but i interestingly this is my same i'm the same pushback i had on the jeans commercial which is anyone who's got a problem is overthinking it like you saw it you liked it you bought it that's really the story everything all the other stuff though this bitch thinks she's a unicorn she's gave herself a none of i don't think any of that

And if you are engaged in that kind of thinking, you're doing too much thinking.

Also, if you're engaged in that, you probably just already don't like me.

Like, that's sort of how it works, right?

And if you're watching that commercial, they go like, oh, yeah, Sidney's Winnie's hot.

We've all agreed.

And she's got good jeans on.

That's it.

No, that's not what that's much different.

That's much, much different.

Anyway,

I hope she hears my defense of her and agrees to come on.

This is not against her.

This is, I'm actually, you're critical of the team.

Not her.

I wish she had someone who told her.

American Eagle,

I feel like they probably knew a little bit more about what they were doing.

I don't think they could have gone that far down the line without somebody saying,

I don't know.

Maybe we should change up the verbiage a little.

And maybe they wanted to be controversial, which if they did.

Look what we've just talked about for 10 minutes.

American Eagle jeans.

Look what they got.

All right.

Well, let's do some facts.

Yes.

This is for Luke Combs.

Ah, sweet Luke Combs.

Very sweet boy.

He hasn't texted me.

He asked for my number, but he hasn't texted me.

And then

I got paranoid.

I put my wrong number in, but really probably I did put my right number in.

He just hasn't text me.

It's like a Nicholas

situation.

These young boys are hard, man.

I know these older women.

Okay, so the car in the Country Music Hall of Fame, he said Webb Pierce.

So the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville features several iconic vehicles, including Elvis Presley's 1960 solid gold Cadillac limousine

and Webb Pierce's 1962 Pontiac Bonneville convertible.

So he was right.

Oh, also it says Jerry Reed's 1980 Pontiac Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit 2.

Oh, wonderful.

I mean, look,

the original Smokey and the Bandit was a 77 Trans Am with a big block 400.

1980, we went to a 4.9-liter turbo.

That's a bummer.

But we love Jerry Reed.

Got a long way to go, a short time to get there.

We're eastbound and down.

Okay.

Yeah.

We love him.

We love Jerry Reid.

And I'm happy he got something from the movie, but I do wish he would have gotten the 77 big block.

Right.

That's what I'm saying.

Now, if you saw Jerry Reed at East Sody, I'd be like, well, that's wild.

Yeah, I agree.

Okay, we talked about 4A, 5A schools, something that was new to you.

Never heard that.

Yeah.

And

you asked what the A stood for.

It doesn't stand for anything specific, but rather serves as a classifier for schools based on factors like enrollment size.

High schools are often grouped into different classes, 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, et cetera, to ensure fair athletic competition.

So I bet it actually stands for athletics.

You'd think, I mean, otherwise, there's no reason to put that A in there.

Since they don't do 1B and 1, 2C, since we're only using A, then it's completely unnecessary.

You could have just said one through 5.

They're classified one through 5.

Yeah, but

if the A never changes as you're going up, there's no point in having it.

It's not telling you anything about the school.

No, it's not telling you anything, but they probably just wanted to give it a little something.

Make it more techie sounding, five A.

But I'm just saying five is the operative integer in there.

The A is doing nothing.

So why do we have?

Well, it's probably written out with five A's.

I don't think so.

You think so?

Yeah.

I bet it says the number five and then A.

But you're looking at it.

Are there five A's in a line?

No, no, I mean like when you're like at the school and it says the school, then it has, I like, in my head, I've seen multiple A's.

Okay.

I don't know.

All right.

I don't know why.

Let me text my friend Kirsten.

She works at my high school.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Great.

Give her a text.

We're going to give her a text on air.

Hi, Kama.

I have a weird question for a fact check.

Period.

Do you know what the A stands for in 5A

schools?

Question mark.

Also, is it spelled out number five?

Also, is it spelled five

A

or

one, two, three, four, five?

Yeah, I've seen A's like this.

Oh, I added the yeah on accident.

I got to edit that.

Okay.

How many people in Asheville drive Subarus?

It didn't, it wouldn't tell me, but it does say nationally Subaru makes up about 1.6% of the overall automotive market.

Side note, on our drive to Dollywood, we had two different single dudes in cars that were driving at a very high rate of speed, high velocity.

I won't mention whether I was driving slow or fast, but they were both in Subaru Foresters.

Whoa.

And Aaron and I said, this is weird.

That's not the car I would expect speed freaks to be drawn to.

But boy, we never saw a Subaru Forester that wasn't doing 20 overs.

So just file that where you may.

Wow.

Okay, but it does say that Subaru is over 11% of the state.

I'm sorry.

In Vermont, Subaru is over 11% of the state's overall automotive sales.

Oh, wow.

So 5x the national average.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cause 1.6%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have a confusing fact

because he said that the student He said that in Boone County, North Carolina, the population doubles when school's in, which, which, you know, makes sense.

But I am confused because the student population of Boone in 2023 was 21,253.

That includes Appalachian State and some other schools.

But then if you look up the population of Boone, North Carolina, it says 20,000.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

So there's 20,000 permanent residents and then another 21 000 arrive to go to school making it during school time 41 000 but 21 000 aren't residents so he got that almost exactly right it's a little more than half of their population so you're saying these these people aren't residents i guess that makes sense i guess yeah they're not on a census hmm I guess it depends on where they register.

Yeah, you don't fill out a census in college generally.

That's like the homeowner.

But isn't it where you're registered?

Like I registered in Athens.

So I

like I got like jury duty summons there and stuff way past when I was supposed to.

Like I was considered a resident there.

I would hearken the guess that 99% of people do not switch the address on their license from their childhood home to their dormitory.

Yeah, it happened because I was registering to for the election.

Like, I think if you maybe, if you want to vote and you're in college, that's the way.

Okay,

let's see.

Is pure O O C D nature or nurture?

Purely obsessional OCD, pure O O C D is thought to have a genetic component with family history significantly increasing the likelihood of developing the condition.

Studies have shown that pure O is five to seven times more common in individuals with relatives who have OCD, suggesting a genetic link.

So, yeah.

Oh, okay.

So, she's Kirsten, my, my friend, she responded, here's what my athletic director just said when I asked: A is class.

So, single A is small schools.

We are regent.

Wow, Duluth.

Wow, my school is now 7A.

They had to invent new ones for your school.

She said, biggest classification.

She said, and the A means nothing, kind of like with batteries.

His words, not mine, she said.

But that's not a good analogy because the A's in battery do mean something.

Because if it's triple A, it's very small.

If it's double A, it's bigger.

So as you change the A's.

Yeah, but that's what this is too.

This is the more A's, the bigger the school.

If you're writing it out, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven A's.

But it sounds quite like all they need is the seven.

The seven tells them how big the school is, not the A.

Whereas in the battery, the A actually tells you the size well no they could just call 2 a it's double a or triple a so it could just be double triple single but you can't because you have c and d batteries whatever oh i see what you're saying you're saying the a is the type of battery because

the a is the operative piece of information the a has no operative impact on one through seven a whatever it is written out with a's it is she write when she has to say the size of her school, she writes seven A's in a row.

She wrote seven and then a bunch of A's.

Okay.

So you would like them to keep the A, it sounds like.

Yeah.

I'm pushing for them to just

ditch the A.

It's completely extraneous.

Okay.

I don't, I think it's stupid to say the school is seven.

I like that it has something else added to it.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, that's it for Luke.

That's all the facts for him.

Okay.

I really adored him.

Hopefully he'll text me one day.

Hopefully.

Keep us updated on that.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe he'll need 20 bucks someday.

Something.

Or a motorcycle.

Yeah, maybe he needs to borrow some eggs.

Do you know they make a little tiny motorcycle named a Dax?

Wow.

See, that

is a big coincidence.

Yeah, I got one today.

It's a little tiny motorcycle that says Dax.

It's so cute.

Oh my God, cute.

How tiny?

Like, you can ride it or is it for kids?

I can ride it, but you wouldn't know this but you know my grom that little tiny black motorcycle i have in la yeah it's just a 125 like my ducati the big one is 1200 cc's this is 125 so it's a little tiny motorcycle and it's um retro and it's got this steel frame and it says dax really huge on it wow honda makes it it's super adorable i'm going to send you a picture very retro cute did did you also buy the dax chair i need to you need to i got to be honest though Like, I would want this Dax

mini bike, whether it's a Dax or not.

It's just super cute and retro looking.

That chair does not look comfortable, the armchair, the Dax armchair.

Yeah, but

it's significant.

It looks torturous, but.

Hmm.

God,

that's deep.

You know, it's like.

Are you comfortable in your skin?

Sometimes you're not.

And this armchair reflects that.

That's why I don't love the chair.

It's not on brand with my personal brand, which is I am max comfort.

You know?

Yeah, you're comfortable in your skin, but you're also an addict, which means by nature, you're kind of uncomfortable.

But I sit in a lazy boy at work.

Like to me, comfort is like top, you know, it's, it's

what you're looking for.

Exactly.

So it's like what you're looking for.

So the Dax armchair is not what you're looking for.

It's who you are.

Just so you know.

Oh, a rigid

poly

injected mold.

Like it's a mold.

There's no care individuality.

It's in a museum.

It's obviously special.

It's an accomplishment.

I just think it's a terrible chair.

Oh my God.

Actually,

this is funny because when I was in New York, I went to this place called Superiority Burger, great restaurant.

And on the menu, they had these pictures of chairs, and then the drink names like went with the chair.

And we did play a game for a long time where we were figuring out who was what chair.

That's fun.

It was fun.

I'll post it.

People can play the game.

Okay, okay.

Post it all.

Yeah, I will.

All right.

I love you.

I love you.

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Hi, I'm Monica Lewinsky.

Welcome to Reclaiming.

I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours.

Something you possess is lost or stolen.

And ultimately, you triumph in finding it again.

Miley Cyrus, welcome to Reclaiming.

My 2013 is your 1998.

I lost everything during that time in my personal life because of the choices I was making professionally.

Chelsea Handler, welcome to Reclaiming.

I did have a teacher who instilled in me that I was going to do something special.

And she was like, you're going to have an impact.

Sophia Bush, welcome to Reclaiming.

You went all the way, you committed, and if it wasn't for you, you have the courage to tell the truth and get out.

And I had to say that to women in my life, and I had to learn how to say it in a mirror to myself.

This last decade for me has really been what I consider my own reclaiming.

My own journey, my own reclaiming story is in the bones of this show.

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