Kelce Tahoe Tales, Zac Brown on Sphere Residency, His New Album and Why We’re Pro-Nagging | EP 148

Speaker 1 Thank you to our partner, Boarshead. Ooh, a little meat.

Speaker 1 The end of the season is in full swing, and you know what that means. Time to eat meat.

Speaker 1 Millions of fans are turning their homes into game day headquarters every weekend. Gosh, and whether you're hosting a watch party at home or tailgating before a big game, you got to feed the crowd.

Speaker 1 You got to feed the crowd. That's where Boarshead comes in the clutch.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Their platters are literally a game changer. We're talking premium meats, cheeses, dips, and more.
What's your go-to deli platter, Jason? I mean, any of them.

Speaker 1 Dude, anything that combines crackers, meat, cheese, and mustard, it doesn't matter what kind it is. You got Pepper Jack.
You got Provolone.

Speaker 1 You got cheddar. You got beer cheese.
You got salami. You got kielbasa.
There you go. Don't be all archy with me.
Ritz crackers.

Speaker 1 Maybe you could do some of those like whole grain thick boys that are around. Those are kind of nice too.
If you want to be kind of different, you go with like a wheat thin.

Speaker 1 If you really want to elevate your game day spread and score big with your entire home gating, that's tailgating at home.

Speaker 1 Visit your local Boarshead deli. They'll hook you up with a ready-made platter.
Ooh. Or you can build it on your own.
There you go. Either way, you're upgrading your game day with some serious flavor.

Speaker 1 Boarshead, committed to craft since 1905. How about it? It's just a great name, too.
Over 100. Yeah, you know what you're getting.
Boar's head.

Speaker 3 This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers.

Speaker 4 We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew.

Speaker 1 I got to sit in the driver's seat.

Speaker 4 I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.

Speaker 3 That's Andrew, a real United pilot.

Speaker 4 These small interactions can shape a kid's future.

Speaker 1 It felt like I was the captain.

Speaker 5 Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever.

Speaker 4 That's how good leads the way.

Speaker 1 Thank you to our sponsor, KFC. Thanks, Tanny's coming up, and KFC's starting a little holiday debate.
Turkey or chicken? Not much of a debate, if you ask me. Yeah, let's be real.

Speaker 1 It's the you need gravy to survive a bird.

Speaker 1 Let's be honest, is it really worth spending eight hours cooking a turkey when you could just get something better, especially if it just causes you to go through a drive-through and get a bucket of it, maybe?

Speaker 1 How about KFC's extra crispy chicken? Juicy, crispy, and always finger-licking good, baby. Extra crispy does sound good.
This is the underdog choice for all your holiday gatherings.

Speaker 1 KFC is saying cluck turkey this Thanksgiving. That's right.
We're inviting all of you to give dry turkey the bird. It's time to ditch the dry, boring bird this holiday and order KFC instead.

Speaker 1 You can't go wrong with a bucket of chicken, a good game or movie, or just some good times with friends and family. This year, skip the turkey and celebrate with KFC's extra crispy chicken.

Speaker 1 What I respond to is nagging. Please nag the fuck out of me.
Tell me to get my lazy ass up and take the goddamn trash out.

Speaker 1 I like the nagging and I need it because I get caught in my own thoughts and I forget to do things. I'm like, oh, I'll get that later.
I'll go do this. Big procrastination.
I'll do it in an hour.

Speaker 1 I'll do it in two hours. It's the Kelsey wave.
And I am constantly telling telling Kyla, like, please like, just tell me to do these things.

Speaker 1 And she's like, Jason, I don't want to tell you to do these things. And I'm like, I get that.
I'm just like, you know, it's not going to get done unless you tell me to do it.

Speaker 1 Like, okay, yep, you're right. I should go do this.

Speaker 1 So I am pro-nagging. If you have like a spouse that is against nagging, you got a shitty husband.

Speaker 1 Welcome back to New Heights, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, a wonderful show produced by Wave Sports and Entertainment and brought to you by General Mills' favorite cereal brands.

Speaker 1 All of them wrapped into one. You know which ones they are.
They're your favorite. We're your hosts.
I'm Travis Gudson and my big brother Jason Kelsey out of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Speaker 1 Shout out to those Cincinnati Bearcats. We're getting

Speaker 1 one week closer to the cats taking on the corn hustlers at Arrowhead, baby. Subscribe on YouTube, Wondry Plus.
That's what I'm talking about. Or wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 1 And follow the show on all social media at New Heights Show with 1S. Jason, tell the people what we got coming up.
We got another amazing episode for United Centers.

Speaker 1 Not a lot of football to talk about right now, but we can't talk about some golf because Travis and I were out in Tahoe. That's right, Lake Tahoe, California, the American Century Championship.

Speaker 1 Well, we're on the Nevada side. We were on the California side for a little bit, but we were on the Nevada side for the most part.
Is Edgewood in Nevada?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 That's on the Nevada side? I thought that was on the California side. No, that's the west side.
That'd be the side the sun sets on, Jason. I didn't pay attention to which side the sun was setting on.

Speaker 1 We're also going to get to another edition of relationship advice from the Heights Hotline.

Speaker 1 You guys have submitted some requests to, for some reason, have Travis and I talk about what we think a positive relationship looks like,

Speaker 1 which we will try and do our best. Hey, whoop.
And we've got another incredible conversation coming with the one, the only, we've wanted to get him on for so long. We're so happy he's here.

Speaker 1 Zach Brown. That's right.
Sure, Lil Catch Fact. One of our favorites.
We had a great conversation. We already had it.
I don't know if you guys know that sometimes we, anyways, you'll see.

Speaker 1 We'll change outfits. It'll be fun.
But you're not going to want to miss it. He's fucking amazing.

Speaker 1 Looking very much forward to these shows he's about to put on, as well as the new album. So stay tuned for that.
Dude, he's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 But first, we're going to start with what we always start with. New news.

Speaker 1 New news. New news is brought to you by General Mills.
That's right.

Speaker 1 Parents of some of our favorite cereal brands. Yeah, let's dive right in.
All right, now we've got some very important, breaking news from the cereal world. General Mills cereal training camp is back.

Speaker 1 Oh, nice squad.

Speaker 1 The squad this year is bringing some serious heat to the breakfast table. As everyone knows, we had our moment in the cereal spotlight last year, a little Kelsey mix.
Come on now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's see who's taking the snap this year. Hello, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, guys.

Speaker 1 Is that Justin Jefferson?

Speaker 1 Oh, my God, Justin Jefferson.

Speaker 1 Oh!

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. This is the

Speaker 1 receiver I've ever played the game. He was ready to see some tasty touchdowns.
Me, I want to see Mark Chase.

Speaker 1 Justin Jefferson, Ron Ra. There we go.
It's crunch time.

Speaker 1 Okay, crunch time.

Speaker 1 They've pretty much taken the exact Kelsey mix, but instead of it being Reese's Puffs, they've gone Honey Nut Cheerios. I mean, it's not a bad mix.
Not a bad mix.

Speaker 1 It's not a bad mix, but I mean, come on, have some creativity, guys.

Speaker 1 Kelsey mix, that's a creative mix. This isn't that creative.
We got to try it. We got to have this mix versus our mix.
I want to have a side-by-side comparison. Should we do that on the pod?

Speaker 1 I think we should do it on air. I'm in.
I'm down. I mean, the course was fantastic.
Well, yeah. You get three of the best receivers in the entire NFL.
You're going to have a good commercial.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Whose was whose? Do we have that information? The The word on the street is that Justin is going all in with his own custom combo this year called Jeddah's Mix.

Speaker 1 Jetta's Mix actually has, I think, frosted lemon Cheerios and cinnamon toast crunch strawberry. Well, now I'm very intrigued.
Look at that. Oh, look at that.
Look at that.

Speaker 1 Oh, really cool box. With the chain and everything.
You already know he's chain swing and he's icy.

Speaker 5 This is the coolest cereal box I've ever had, honestly.

Speaker 1 So there's two mixes. Correct.
There's two mixes, and we should compare them to our mix. It's the only logical thing to do on this show.
Yes, you know it. Wait, time out.

Speaker 1 It's saying here that it's the exact same as ours. No, no, no.
The difference on this first mix is that it is Lucky Charm, Cinoto's Crunch, and Honey Nut Cheerios.

Speaker 1 It's absent Reese's Puffs, so it's different. They changed one cereal.
All right. But then the Jeddah's mix, which is,

Speaker 1 I mean, these are just new creations.

Speaker 1 He's gone into a different realm where he's actually being way more creative than us and inventing his own cereals. Frosted lemon Cheerios.
I don't think that's ever been a thing, right?

Speaker 1 Has that ever been like a product that they've ever come out with? Never heard of it. I don't remember it.
If it is, I'm sorry, I missed that one. Cinnamon Toast Crunch Strawberry.

Speaker 1 So you got lemon and strawberry along with cinnamon and frosted. I like strawberry lemonade, so maybe this hits.
I mean, I guarantee it's going to be delicious.

Speaker 1 If they're, I mean, all right.

Speaker 5 They did send you guys boxes.

Speaker 1 They're somewhere in your homes. Okay.
Well, we're going to wait because we're going to try all three of them on the same show, one at a time, and have our review on which one we like best.

Speaker 1 We know that Travis will participate in this food challenge, which I am always excited for. Big fan of cereal.
I can do cereal all day. Mayonnaise flavored cereal.
Kind of sounds delicious.

Speaker 1 Just disgusting. We just invented another Kelsey cereal.
Mayonnaise and milk

Speaker 1 in milk. Mayonnaise and milk.
That's what it'd be called. Mayonnaise and milk.
Listen, all I know is that I've had, it's like a mayonnaise sandwich. What else would you put?

Speaker 1 Well, like, maybe have like some little

Speaker 1 dried tomatoes in there.

Speaker 1 You're basically just having a mayonnaise and tomato sandwich. Is that supposed to be good? I mean, to a lot of America, I think it is good.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Let's get back to this new news. If you guys can't tell, we're excited to try these mixes.
I hope you guys are too. Hell you know.

Speaker 1 That does it for new news brought to you by General Mills' favorite cereal brands. All right, now.
And we'll be back to try some of the new creations in a coming episode. Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 Let's get to out of the house. We were out of the house this last weekend at the American Century Championship in Tahoe.

Speaker 1 The lake up there in California and Nevada splits right down the middle of the lake, the old state line. Is that technically Sierra Nevada? Is that what that is? No, it's Tahoe, Nevada.

Speaker 1 I think somebody said it was Sierra Nevada. I have no idea.
Brandon, can we, is that the Sierra Nevada area? What is Sierra Nevada? You want me to look up the mountain range? This is so funny.

Speaker 1 We were actually on the California side the majority of the time.

Speaker 1 I thought we were. The golf course is on the Nevada side.
You sure? I'm positive. I'm staring at it right now.
So then how the hell were we on the

Speaker 1 California side?

Speaker 1 It's literally the Harris and everything is on the California side. No, you got those reversed.
No, that's the other way around. Hairs have got to be on the

Speaker 1 property. I'm telling you right now.
I don't need you to tell me. I know for a fact the Harris is on the Nevada side.
I mean, all right. Okay, here.
Okay. About to find out.
I have a map.

Speaker 1 Do we want to look at a map?

Speaker 1 I've been looking at the map stating this.

Speaker 5 So there's your state lines right there, South Lake Tahoe.

Speaker 1 You are in California. No, good.
It's

Speaker 1 keep going in there, bud. Keep.
I'm going. Keep going.

Speaker 1 What am I looking for?

Speaker 1 Keep going right there on that state line. You'll see Edgewood.
Oh, you're Nevada. There you go.
We got it. We nailed it.
And then Harris

Speaker 1 is literally right across the

Speaker 1 state line.

Speaker 1 I don't know if this is the most accurate line then, because I'm pretty positive that all those casinos are... Are you questioning Google Maps?

Speaker 1 Well, I'm questioning that when we were there, they told us that all of that was there on the Nevada side.

Speaker 5 Golden Nugget is on the Nevada side. Bally's is on the the Nevada side.

Speaker 1 Harris's is on the Nevada side. Harris, no, I mean, not all of them, but yes, Harris's, yes.
Okay,

Speaker 1 well, yes, I guess you got to be right.

Speaker 1 That's why they're on the Nevada side, Trevor.

Speaker 1 That's what I imagined. That's why I was talking to Gamble the entire time.

Speaker 1 Can you? I think you get anywhere with this. I think you can, Gamble.
Apparently, we were just in Nevada all week. We weren't in California at all, except for when we went on this lake.

Speaker 1 I should have trusted my gut. Oh, the blue's the water.
All right, keep going.

Speaker 1 We're heaping all of that in.

Speaker 1 Lake Tahoe is in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. All right.
Yeah. Okay.
Back to your original question.

Speaker 5 Yes. It's part of the mountain range.

Speaker 1 Oh, the mountains, the Sierra. All right.
Yeah. I thought the highest.
The Sierra Nevada region. Yes.
Yes. All right.
My bad. Yeah.
We were up there at American Century. Shout out to Edgewood.

Speaker 1 Shout out to everybody at American Century. It's always one of my favorite

Speaker 1 events. Dude, it's so well run.
It is very well run. Shout out to NBC for hosting it and making it the production and how big it is.

Speaker 1 And shout out to everybody that came out. It's always fun to see all the fans and everyone go crazy over, you know, the people that we grew up watching and then having fun with them ourselves.

Speaker 1 I got a little update with my caddy, my good friend from my childhood, Patrick Bacon. He was not blue on Friday because he made his weight.

Speaker 1 The weigh-in was Thursday. As soon as we landed, he looked at me.

Speaker 5 He's like, can we get this over with?

Speaker 1 I'm starving. So my guy had been,

Speaker 1 he had been cutting weight and making sure he got his weight down so he didn't look like an absolute idiot carrying my bag as the blue man group. Not to say that the blue man groups looks like idiots.

Speaker 1 They put on a very unbelievable performance and they look great while they did that. But I don't think a caddy in

Speaker 1 the state of Nevada would

Speaker 1 look good as a Blue Man group. No, Bacon, he absolutely killed it as always.
And shout out to Bakes for Make It Wait. Another Bake, my guy, Baker Mayfield,

Speaker 1 had a little clip being interviewed towards the end of the round by Kira Dixon, our good friend at NBC. And here's this clip.

Speaker 6 Best part about Travis's game is when he gets into an argument with his caddy Bacon.

Speaker 1 He was just just asking about what club they should hit here.

Speaker 6 It should be Peyton TV to watch them bicker back and forth.

Speaker 1 Dude, it's so true. And I turned to Baker.
I was like, dude, this is the best.

Speaker 1 When Travis is kind of struggling a little bit, him and Bacon just have this confrontational relationship where they're each shitting at each other.

Speaker 1 I think we should mic both of you up next year and put that as like a part of New Heights. We'd have to cut the vast majority of it, but the stuff that would make it in would be gold.

Speaker 1 It is so funny listening to you go back and forth.

Speaker 1 It's top-tier tier caddy and player work we're just trying to figure out what club to hit and what the fuck the greens are doing because even when bacon has the green sheet

Speaker 1 he has no idea what's going on on the green and the the biggest thing that he loves to tell me is that it's like if if i was putting it it'd go in

Speaker 1 like why don't you help me figure out how i should putt this he loves to tell me how he would play the hole.

Speaker 1 But my strengths are completely different than his strengths on the course. He threw me.
Here's what we need to do. Here's what we need to do.
Next year,

Speaker 1 we go and practice round. Bacon actually golfs Tahoe.
He's done this before. See, that's the thing.
If you put me in a practice round before I go out and have fun at Tahoe, I'm shooting in the 70s.

Speaker 1 The challenge with Tahoe is the amount of celebration that you have with all your friends and the people that you see up there. And all of a sudden, you know what I mean? There's

Speaker 1 drinking games at the casino that night. And now you wake up a little hungover.

Speaker 1 And the first thing you do is have to get back onto the train because you just want to get back into a groove of feeling good and getting, you know, the dehydrated like shakes out. Yeah.

Speaker 1 For those of you that don't know, we're not just playing golf.

Speaker 1 It's a full-fledged party pretty much every night. We saw our guy Matthew Kachuk and Kachuk just won the Stanley Cup.
He did. Second time in a row.
What am I not supposed to have a few beers?

Speaker 1 What am I going to celebrate with my guy? Yeah, well, you weren't partner. You weren't teammates with Matthew.
I was. And I just want to say, he's also a reigning baseball champion.

Speaker 1 I think he won last year. Did he win last year? I don't remember if he won last year.
No, we didn't win last year. Well, he won this year when I was on his team.
And guess who was the MVP? Niger Zizz.

Speaker 1 I might have sucked ass at golf. I was Kyle Schwarber on that fucking baseball.
I was lead off

Speaker 1 home run right away. I don't think he's been leadoff this year.
Maybe. I can't remember.
But I was fucking dialed in on that baseball game. I was preventing people from stealing, getting home runs,

Speaker 1 being very risky. And it paid out.
And Schwarber are kind of built the same. We have similar faces.
I think.

Speaker 1 We're both from Ohio. He's got a great vibes.
I'm a big fan of the Schwarber vibes. Schwarbs.
Can I get my trophy? Should I bring my trophy in? No. I'm going to get my trophy.

Speaker 1 I had a feeling he was going to do that, whether I said yes or no.

Speaker 1 I might not have taken home the trophy for the American Century Championship this week, but I did get the Oshis Table 2025 most valuable thrower trophy. That's right.
Our guy TJ Oshi took it up.

Speaker 1 Shout out to TJ. He took it up a level this year.
Had trophies made for the back table at the Harris Casino where we have some fun back there. Dude,

Speaker 1 I think this is going to get

Speaker 1 some legs. It's going to get some legs.
It's so much fun back there. And honestly, TJ and

Speaker 1 his buddy made like a video pumping up this year's like baseball game. Dude, it is fucking hilarious.

Speaker 1 Our guy Miles Teller was back there with you.

Speaker 1 I had my guy Colin Yost,

Speaker 1 The Miz.

Speaker 1 We were over there fighting for our lives,

Speaker 1 trying to make some damn cups, man.

Speaker 1 And shout out to TJ. It was a fun day.
Awesome time. Not our best golf, but it was our best person out.
I mean,

Speaker 1 we were killing it from an energy standpoint. And I think everybody who golfed with us was like, Man, that was a really fun day.
So, we, as far as I'm concerned, that's a win.

Speaker 1 Yeah, nobody said they hated playing with us. Exactly.
Can't tell me I didn't win.

Speaker 1 I think Miles, like, Jason, you remember when you almost stabbed yourself in the eye with your T? That was hilarious.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we lost the karaoke contest, and it was a shame because we had a lot of fun up there.

Speaker 1 I thought we did good. We kind of screwed up the ending.
I thought the band was done. You stayed up there.
Either way. Yeah, no, that was on me.

Speaker 1 Shout out to Jay Demarcus, everybody, everybody that plays live for us

Speaker 1 as a bunch of Jamokes go up there and do our favorite renditions of our favorite songs. But it was fun.

Speaker 5 Dad came up to us afterwards, like he just saw Bruce Springsteen.

Speaker 1 That was very exciting.

Speaker 1 The crowd, it felt like it was into it.

Speaker 1 I don't know. The crowd felt like it was into it.
So,

Speaker 1 all I know seemed like they were enjoying it. There's no chance we stood a chance when Ray Marmano is doing Lose Yourself by Eminem.
I mean, you can't compete with that.

Speaker 1 How do you compete with that kind of offbeat, authentic,

Speaker 1 bad MM rapping? I mean, you

Speaker 1 sent it, but he sent it.

Speaker 1 So fucking good.

Speaker 2 But he keeps on getting it when he wrote down. The whole crowd talking so loud.

Speaker 7 He's choking out. Everybody choking out.

Speaker 2 The clock's so loud.

Speaker 7 Time to move.

Speaker 7 He's old man, but he won't. He's upside and he knows.
He's up and down and he loves. The old side to your broke.

Speaker 2 The young guy.

Speaker 2 He's upset.

Speaker 1 All right, all right, all right, all right, all right.

Speaker 1 He's so fucking good.

Speaker 1 I'd say it's just an epic scent. He's good.
You just have to, you gotta get it. You gotta give it to him.
It's an epic scent. It's unpredictable, like unexpected.
Unexpected, like a motherfucker.

Speaker 1 Fool sent it. So, you know, listen, I think old-time rock and roll is great, but that's unexpected karaoke.
So we got to come next year with a more unexpected song.

Speaker 1 Something that is just like, I can't believe these guys are doing that. But we're so versatile, Jason.

Speaker 1 I don't know if there's anything that's like, what would be unexpected that we go up there and like do like an opera? Like, what, like, what do you, what would be unexpected? I don't know.

Speaker 1 I mean.

Speaker 1 Dude, Cisco.

Speaker 1 What, Thong Song? Thong song, probably be unexpected. Probably be, but at the same time, expected.
You go, My Neck, My Bear, by Kia.

Speaker 1 I would just do, ooh, ooh, Laffy Taffy would be a favorite too. Laffy Taffy.
I mean, that's expected for me from people that know me. They know I like that song.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. All right.
All right. We'll figure it out.
We'll figure it out next year. Either way, great job, Ray Romano, for killing it.
We're going to the karaoke.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Ray and his and Ray and his kids, the Romano family killed it, man. Big shout out to Pavelski, Joe Pavelski.
Yeah, Joe. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Joe ran away with

Speaker 1 a big Eagle putt on 18. Absolutely electric.
And shout out to Big Wood, Baker Mayfield, and Miles Taylor, man. We love you guys.
Always a fun round when we get to play 18 with the boys, man.

Speaker 1 Not my greatest performance. Yeah, no.
I think I actually am getting worse at the Tahoe in terms of like my actual number. Jason finished minus 51.
It's like Cam Juergens.

Speaker 1 I was just, I'm a big Cam Juergen's fan. Where were you last year? I was minus 51.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 1 I was two spots higher because the field got worse, but Jason Kelsey played exactly the same.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not good. Not good.
Not good. But I'm going to put in time.
I've been putting time in on Reddit trying to fix my golf swing, and we have a video of that, which I think my swing is better.

Speaker 1 Reddit isn't where you go for a golf swing, though. That's the thing.
But I think my swing got better. Either way, we're also going to be, Jason is also going to be taking lessons.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to come back.

Speaker 1 Dude, I really think I'm going to be in the positive next year. How much do you want to bet right now? Next year, I'm in the positive at American Century.
I bet you.

Speaker 1 Do you want to bet the same bet I just hit bacon with?

Speaker 1 What was the bet? If I don't do it, I have have to do a show in a painted in blue. Yeah.
Okay. What happens? And if I win, it's how much money? I don't like winning money.

Speaker 1 Don't do money. Money is no fun.
What do I get? If I win, then you have to do the show in blue.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck. I'm so in.
You're not getting in the middle. I cannot wait.
You're not getting in. I'm going to be playing it all safe, just playing bogey golf, and I'm going to be in the positive.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be sending you blue man group photos all summer, all winter, for an entire year. I am so fucked up.
Just to remind you. I cannot wait to be in the positive next year.

Speaker 1 I fucking can't wait. A 50-point swing, a 52-point swing.
I'm not even worried about it because I see the shots I hit.

Speaker 1 I see the shots I hit, and then I see these other Jamosin balls.

Speaker 1 I fucking know that I am better than these guys if I just try. And I'm going to fucking put the work in.
I have nothing else to do, Travis. This is not my life.

Speaker 1 Okay, you're still playing football. There are other things for you to worry about.
I have nothing else going on. I have unlimited time to get better at this sport.
I'm going to be positive.

Speaker 1 And I fucking can't wait. There's no way.
I can't fucking wait. This will be the greatest swing of golf.
It's going to be like my swing of GPA when Brian Kelly.

Speaker 1 So one year at Cincinnati, I realized this probably shouldn't say this, but I realized I was probably never going to go into the corporate world.

Speaker 1 And I had this thing in my head where I was like, I'm either going to go play in the NFL or I'm going to become a coach. So these classes are kind of useless.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know what I'm going to marketing classes for. I'm not going to go work in the marketing field.
So I got, I just stopped going to class and I failed a bunch of classes.

Speaker 1 And for a quarter at Cincinnati, I had a point, I think it was a 0.6

Speaker 1 GPA.

Speaker 1 They told me, Jason,

Speaker 1 they said, Jason, it's really nice.

Speaker 1 You won't be able to play football this year. If you don't get this thing back into the positive, you'll be ineligible to play football.

Speaker 1 And that's when Brian Kelly, at the next reporting of the end of the semester or the end of that quarter, he said, and in the biggest improvement in GPA that I've ever seen, Jason Gelsey went from a 0.6 to Dean's list.

Speaker 1 I got a 3.8.

Speaker 1 Nice. Because then I started going to class again because I was like, oh, yeah, I probably still need to play football.

Speaker 1 This would be the second biggest comeback of my life if we can get into the positive next year. And I think it's going to happen.
I say we just bring new heights to Tahoe and just get a houseboat,

Speaker 1 have some fun reporting, maybe grab some guests while we're out there. Don't try and set up all this shit to distract me from being in the positive.
I already know what you're fucking trying to do.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying,

Speaker 1 I think it'd be fun. I'm going in bed.
I'm going to be in bed by 10 p.m. Actually, I'm not because I'm still going to go to Ocean's Table because I got to repeat as the MVP

Speaker 1 ultimate thrower. I'm going to win most valuable thrower again, and I'm going to be in the positive.
You know how fucking hard that is? This guy's fired up. We also found out,

Speaker 1 I mean, I found out. I've never tried to snap a football or basketball between my legs.
I'm really proud of this. Dude, you were fucking pumped.
There's Jason Kelsey. Bam, baby.

Speaker 1 That was third or fourth attempt.

Speaker 1 I did the first one.

Speaker 1 I did the first one fucking around. I was like, oh, wow.
I could actually make this thing.

Speaker 1 That is very makeable.

Speaker 1 And this is right in the hot spot of my golf round. The hand me looked good right there.
Well, it was tight. I'm just going to let you know.

Speaker 1 I almost pulled my hamstring again, looking between my legs. The thing is still not healthy.
It's like riding a bike, Jay. It's like riding a bike.

Speaker 1 I actually got my hands on the side and gave it a little flick. So it had that little back spin going on, like I was doing a potty shot.
Potty shot, yeah. We're talking about that, Will Chamberlain.

Speaker 1 That's right. All righty, Trab, you also made some buckets.
There's clips of you shooting lefty. See these.
Yeah, the right, the right-handed jump shot isn't as smooth anymore. I got it.

Speaker 1 So the labrum? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think it's the AC. The AC is the one.
So you just converted the left-handed? Like that's something that everybody else can do? Yep.

Speaker 1 Buckets. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 That was good. That was very good.
That was fucking butter.

Speaker 1 That was so good. It's a lecture.
That's impressive. Shout out to Mr.
Turnbow for getting me to use my left hand as a kid. And all the right shoulder surgeries I've had.

Speaker 1 I've just naturally been using this left arm for all the fun shit. Yeah.
So I know how to throw a baseball and right left-handed, all that good shit.

Speaker 1 Either way, phenomenal time, as always, in Tahoe at the American Century Championship.

Speaker 1 Very excited to come back next year for invited. I don't know at what point they stop inviting you if you're that bad at golf.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. It's not about the golf.
It's not about the golf.

Speaker 1 Nope. It's not about the golf.
Isn't the whole thing about golf? I think we,

Speaker 1 yeah, kind of.

Speaker 1 How many fans can we hit with golf balls before they,

Speaker 1 just from a liability standpoint, they're like, yes, we can't. Did you catch one this year?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You've hit somebody with like

Speaker 1 drives or like two irons before.

Speaker 1 I haven't hit anybody with a drive. Okay.

Speaker 1 I went off a tree and I hit a guy in the neck this year. Sorry.
But blame the tree, not me. I caught one thin and hit a lady in her foot.
I did. I mean, she saw it coming right at her, though.

Speaker 1 There was no reason she shouldn't have got out of the way. Which, by the way, thank you for getting in the way because that was no way I was saving Bogey.
She didn't stop that ball right there.

Speaker 1 So that was a big thank you.

Speaker 1 To anybody who's at the American Century Classic, if you think you can take it, you know, if you're at bat and you, you know, think a walk, like getting guaranteed first base, especially you just kind of sit there and you just let the ball hit you, right?

Speaker 1 You get a free pick. If you think it's coming in with a relatively low like speed, you think you can take it someplace outside of the head and be okay,

Speaker 1 do the celebrities a solid. Just take it and let the ball be closer to the field because otherwise, hitting in the trees are hard.
So, I'll take one for the team.

Speaker 1 If I'm there, I'd stick my ass out and let one of those balls hit me. I mean, you get a pick.
Well, that too. Yeah.
I don't know if that's worth it, but maybe it is. Yeah.
See you guys next year.

Speaker 1 Hopefully.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you to everybody up there.
And that does it for out of the house.

Speaker 1 Let's do some

Speaker 1 Heights Hotline. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Very in on that. Heights Hotline is brought to you by Audible.

Speaker 1 Nice. Right.
If you're sick of reading, just listen. All right.
Let's pick our favorites from this list. We got:

Speaker 1 Can Girls Propose Dating Apps, First Date Ideas, Getting a Partner to Do Chores? I like that one. I like that one.
Let's do four. Four, four, four, four.
I like that one.

Speaker 1 This is like the worst one for me to do possible. All right, good.

Speaker 2 God damn it.

Speaker 1 Do your fucking chores, Jason.

Speaker 8 Hi, Jet Shake and intern Brandon. Also, Travis and Jason.

Speaker 1 Awesome.

Speaker 9 parenting advice question I have for you guys,

Speaker 8 ultimate parenting question, I actually think

Speaker 1 is how do you

Speaker 9 gentle parent your partner and or husband, spouse, whatever, into

Speaker 9 doing chores in a respectful way? Like what motivates you? How have your wife and or significant other

Speaker 9 gotten you to do something

Speaker 9 without nagging

Speaker 9 uh my name is author i am 30 from washington would love to hear how you guys

Speaker 1 have handled that all right the flag will fly let's go from washington yeah there we go i'll say this i think that what i respond to really well is nagging please nag the out of me tell me to get my lazy ass up and take the goddamn trash out i don't like if you tell me to take the trash out i'm not gonna be like oh i can't believe she's telling me to take the trash out of me i'm like yeah you're right i suppose i should be doing that okay i'm sorry i like the nagging and i need it because i get caught in my own thoughts and i forget to do things i'm like oh i'll get to that later i'll go do this i'll do it

Speaker 1 i'll do it in two hours it's the kelsey way we're think we think a lot about shit that kind of doesn't really matter but in our mind uh we wander we wander into possibilities and i am constantly telling kind of like please like just tell me to do these things And she's like, Jason, I don't want to tell you to do these things.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I get that. I'm just like, you know, it's not going to get done unless you tell me to do it.
Like, if you're like, Jason, I got a bunch of trash bags. Can you please take them out?

Speaker 1 I'll take the trash out. And I will have zero.
Like, I can't believe she's making me do this. I'll be like, thank.
Okay. Yep.
You're right. I should go do this.
So I am pro-nagging.

Speaker 1 I think nagging is a great thing to do. If you have a...
like a spouse that is against nagging of things that he should be doing, you probably should, you got a shitty husband.

Speaker 1 I don't know what you want me to say. Like, if he's already had things that he's supposed to be doing and he's not doing them, he's

Speaker 1 not you tell him to do his fucking job. I like coaching.
I've been coaching my whole life. I want people to tell me, otherwise, I need that.
I need that coaching. I need,

Speaker 1 I should be better. We're coachable.
I acknowledge Jason should understand when there's full trash bags on the fucking kitchen floor that I'm supposed to pick them up and take them outside.

Speaker 1 But sometimes Jason says, I'll get to that later. I'll get that in a couple of minutes.
minutes because if you if you have a spouse that is that is you know grew up on sports a big you know

Speaker 1 big believer in being coached yeah just get a whistle get a whistle snap him out of his fucking his his thought process not gonna lie i kind of like this idea i've not included everybody knows a whistle in like somewhere like a house is like an alarming thing like what the fuck is this it's like yo trash yeah i told you about for three times son get your ass ass over there and get the trash.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And a lot of times it's just the first thing.
If you just tell me it's there, that's the cue to me of like, okay, Jason, do your fucking job. Take this goddamn trash out.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's not your job as the spouse at all. Get a whistle.
I wouldn't be worried about being nagging.

Speaker 1 Now, if you're nagging about things that you shouldn't be nagging about, then yeah, that should probably get a little annoying to the husband. But if it's this is things that he,

Speaker 1 her boyfriend, or whoever you got going on, or girlfriend, I don't know what your situation is, lady. But I think that

Speaker 1 i mean i don't think it's nagging when you just remind somebody that they should be doing something i i say this though i have never ever and i will never ever tell kylie to do something around the house because it's like i don't know she does enough so it's like yeah if something doesn't get done it's like yeah well i should be helping out on this tell me what i can do because i am worthless unless you tell me that oh man that was great thank you i gotta thank you for that call get a whistle i like this whistle idea i really I'm going to get Kylie a whistle.

Speaker 1 I'm going to start to get it for my kids, too.

Speaker 1 The girls would just use it as a toy. They'll be like, oh, nice.
We are allowed to make obnoxious noises in the house. That's, I will know.
I'll shut that down real quick, too.

Speaker 1 But they, they're so bad. Like ADHD, right? Our whole, like, the way TV is set up, games, all this stuff.
It's set up to like, these kids are on like crack nine times, like all day.

Speaker 1 They're just like, boom, boom, boom. They're eating sugar all day.
You know know how many times I have to tell them when I'm talking to them, look at me.

Speaker 1 And they'll look at me for a second and I'll start talking to them. They'll start to avert their eyes.
I'm like,

Speaker 1 right here. Look right here.
Do not look away. I am fucking talking to you.
Stop it. Stop this right now.

Speaker 1 If these little shits,

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't know what kind of medication they're giving these kids today.
I'm giving them the Ed Kelsey medication. Look at my goddamn eyes when I'm talking to you.
Boom. Lock in.
Bam.

Speaker 1 Stop hitting your sister. You hear me? You do it again.
You're going on the stairs. All right.

Speaker 1 Where are we at? I don't know where

Speaker 1 this goes. Thank you for that.

Speaker 1 That does it for a heights hotline brought to you by Audible. And let's get to our convo with the man, the myth, the legend.
Zach Brown, baby. Yeah, baby.

Speaker 1 Thank you to our presenting sponsor, General Mills' favorite cereal brands. Remember when we crushed it with the cereal training camp last year? Oh, yeah.
Well, this is wild.

Speaker 1 We actually got to create our own cereal, the Kelsey Mix. I don't know if you guys had it.
It was out there. I've signed a bunch of those boxes, seen a bunch of people that had it.

Speaker 1 And if we do say so ourselves, I think pretty successful. I thought it was pretty damn good.
I still

Speaker 1 enjoy the mix myself, actually. What's your current go-to cereal? It's always Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs.
I mean, it was. It always will be.
That's what I'm going to.

Speaker 1 Are the girls in on Reese's Peanut Butter Cups? They like Reese's Puffs, for sure. Nice.
We were huge Cereal fans as kids.

Speaker 1 We had our own mix last year, and we're passing on this mix-making to some new playmakers this year. Justice Jefferson, Amon Ross St.

Speaker 1 Brown, and Jamar Chase are bringing the End Zone Energy straight to your breakfast table. Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 Starting this August, you'll see the stars lighting up boxes of cinnamon toast crunch, Lucky Charms, Honey Nut Cheerios, and Reese Puff Cereal.

Speaker 1 And not only that, Justin's not messing around this year.

Speaker 1 He's got this insane Jeddah's mix that combines frosted lemon Cheerios with cinnamon toast crunch strawberry available for a limited time only.

Speaker 1 Be sure to score them all at your local grocery store this August.

Speaker 1 We got to talk about this elite romance collection Audible's stacked with. So we're doing romance.
Yeah, Audible's got. I mean, the past couple of weeks, we've been doing some self-awareness.

Speaker 1 First of all, Audible's got what you need in any category. They got a bunch of books on there that you can listen to.
But yeah, we're talking a little romance.

Speaker 1 What's your favorite romance novel, Jason? I'm not going to lie, I've never read a romance novel. Harry Potter is very romantic.
I guess everything kind of has a little bit of romance in it, but

Speaker 1 I'm not against it. I've just never done it.
There's a lot of unmatched romance novels out there in Audible. You want hysterical stuff with Dukes and Carriages? Boom.
Got it.

Speaker 1 Need a billionaire CEO who's absolutely crushing it in a boardroom? They got that too. What about a hockey goalie who scores your heart? That is something I could get behind.

Speaker 1 Once they said hockey, I'm in now. And if you can't find any of these regular,

Speaker 1 you know, romance novels amusing to you, there's so many others. There's a whole world of romance on Audible where we're talking dragons and magic and the whole nine yards.
I do like dragons.

Speaker 1 The options are endless. You'll be cracking up with these rom-coms from Lily Chu and Allie Hazelwood.
Need something with a little fantasy? Sarah J. Mas.

Speaker 1 Rebecca Yaros. I'm bringing their A-game.
You already know about Bridgerton and Outlander. Straight-up legendary status.
If you're into romance novels, I love you. I mean, Audible is the best.

Speaker 1 Let's be honest. You get to listen to it.
A lot of things you're doing, whether you're driving in the car, working in the kitchen, working out. There's tons of times to get whatever genre you want.

Speaker 1 Audible is where romance fans are listening. Sign up for free, 30-day trial, and get your first romance audio book free.
That's right. You can listen to people falling in love for free.

Speaker 1 Visit audible.com/slash new heights. There's more to imagine when you listen.

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Speaker 1 Our guest today is from Lumpkin County High School in Georgia. He's a two-time Academy of Country Music Award winner.
Two-time. A four-time CMT Award winner and a three-time Grammy Award winner.

Speaker 1 Best New Artist, Country Collaboration with Vocals, and Best Country Album. Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 You know him from his hits, Colder Weather. Toes Knee Deep, a little bit of chicken fried.
I just call it chicken fried. I don't know why it's in there.
Is that it? Nothing.

Speaker 1 Please welcome from the Zach Brown band, Zach Brown himself. Yeah, baby, we got him.
We got him.

Speaker 1 Thank you, fellas. My dog.
Dude, so excited to have you on. Likewise.
Thank you, brother.

Speaker 1 Appreciate you giving us the time, man. And a football guy.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Football guy. That's right.

Speaker 1 Can you let the people know that don't know the story of your football journey and how you got into music real quick?

Speaker 5 Yeah, for sure, man.

Speaker 5 I started playing football when I was five, like Pop Warner leagues.

Speaker 1 Damn, Lord, yeah. Down there in Georgia.

Speaker 5 I played 11 years

Speaker 5 till I moved up to

Speaker 5 Dahlonega. You know, I played in South for Scythe and

Speaker 5 Mashburn growing up. And then,

Speaker 5 like, one of my favorite movies of all time is The Water Boy.

Speaker 1 Come on now.

Speaker 1 Come on now.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 when I moved from South for Scythe up to Lumpkin County and started playing ball there, like South for Scythe had like great facilities, great everything.

Speaker 5 When we moved up to Dahlonaga, man, it was like the water boy.

Speaker 1 It was like,

Speaker 5 there was no grass, no grass on the field. Like you're running in dirt clay, you know, dirt devils, like running laps.

Speaker 1 Oh, gosh.

Speaker 5 And so I only did that for

Speaker 5 a couple years in that kind of scenario. But, you know, as far as music goes, man, music was my first love.
I was like two, three years old, like hearing jingles on TV, singing along with everything.

Speaker 5 I was the kid that everybody was like, my brothers were like, shut up, stop singing, you know. And then I started playing guitar when I was about seven.

Speaker 5 And I carry my guitar every day at school with me, every day at the football practice. But it was great because

Speaker 5 when I got into high school, you know, I'd sit around and play for the guys and that kept them from like rubbing being gay on my balls and stuff too.

Speaker 5 Everybody.

Speaker 5 Everybody else that was freshman getting hazed, but I could play some Pink Floyd and sit around with him. And so it kind of kept me out of trouble.

Speaker 1 That's epic, man. It's actually killer.

Speaker 1 We got to hang out with this guy more. That's awesome.
We got to keep him happy. We got to keep him happy.
You know what I'm saying? We got to keep him happy.

Speaker 1 Keep him real comfortable. Dude, that's absolutely epic.
Yeah, yeah. Did you start on guitar? Is that the first instrument you took to?

Speaker 5 That's the first one, yeah. I mean, I was about seven, and I was just found my love, man.
And anywhere where I was, if I had my guitar in my hands, I was at home. I was comfortable.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah.

Speaker 5 The guitar has been a really good, you know, friend to me for a lot of years. My dad played a little guitar like around the campfire.

Speaker 5 I would go to hunting camp with him and his buddies on the weekends, every other weekend during the hunting season.

Speaker 5 And then my brother, who's 21 years older than me, my dad, my dad was older when he had me. I was like the last hurrah.

Speaker 5 But my oldest brother was 20 years old.

Speaker 5 And he got me into like 70s music and got me into bluegrass. And like, so all of that like big singer-songwriter era from the 70s, like James Taylor, Jim Croce,

Speaker 5 Sam Fogelberg, Gordon Lightfoot, like to the Eagles, to Pink Floyd, to the Allman Brothers, to Steve Miller band.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Pops has some taste. I wanted to say this.
I mean, I'm a huge fan of your music. I'm a huge fan of your albums and the music that you've

Speaker 1 went and done. But one of the things I love about going to one of your shows, to be honest with you, is that love of music really comes across.

Speaker 1 At each one of your shows that you do live, you have like different musicians come out with you guys. You're doing songs that I've never heard.
It's the best, man.

Speaker 1 You could tell that you guys are actual lovers of all these genres. It ain't just country.
It ain't just this specific spot. Like, you're very, very talented, man.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 Pulling in covers from left and right, and everybody gets a chance to be the lead singer and have the moment, man. It's so cool.

Speaker 1 It's one of my favorite shows to tell people to go and see, man. And

Speaker 1 actually, I think that leads us into our next segment, a little new news. Okay.
All right.

Speaker 1 Good transition. There's a good transition right into this because you got a new gig out in Vegas that we want to talk about.

Speaker 1 But we start off every new news segment by hitting everybody with the new news call. It's not going to go well.
This is not going to happen. This isn't going to go well.

Speaker 1 But Jason usually starts it off. Then I hit it.
And then our guest hits it. All right.
We have tried to harmonize. Travis and I, we cannot harmonize to save our asses.
We can't. I watched it.

Speaker 1 Jason's the only

Speaker 1 music. He's the only music talent in the family.

Speaker 1 There is a bit of like a delay.

Speaker 1 So you're the musical expert normally we'll hit it with like a new news is like the melody or the chime okay what is the best way to try and harmonize this if we were going to try and do it all right so if you want to get a triad which is a three notes in a chord that harmonize it's something like this it's like one so whatever you end on the last note

Speaker 5 so one

Speaker 5 three five so if one of us is holding down the one one's holding the three one's holding the five we're gonna have some three-part harmony all right i'll do the one

Speaker 1 you hit me the one. What's the one? What am I hitting? So, if we went like new news, and the next would be new news, and then new news,

Speaker 5 whoever's holding out that first one. So, you hold out the first one, yep, and then I'm gonna tell you what your part is,

Speaker 5 and then you, you sing this, you sing the second one, hold it down, and then I'll jump up on the fifth.

Speaker 1 All right, I'm gonna pull it over there. I got a big okay.
Let's see if we can do it. Come on, okay,

Speaker 1 new news,

Speaker 1 new news, new news,

Speaker 1 are we doing it? Yay! You did it.

Speaker 1 Hey, that was good. That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 5 Travels is right on the third, man. He's got an ear too, man.
That's good.

Speaker 1 Come on now. I got a little bit, baby.
Let's go. I just needed somebody to actually help me out with this kid.
That was fun, man. Thank you for that, dude.
Musician to help me out.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Not your brother.
All right. Well, let's get into the new news.
Jason, go ahead and hit him.

Speaker 1 So the new news is, Zach, you're starting your Love and Fear residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas the first two weekends of December 2025, as well as you guys have a new album coming out, Love and Fear, which is going to release night one of the Sphere Residency.

Speaker 1 Ooh,

Speaker 1 baby. Wow.
And all this is announcing July 15th. Am I correct? Yes, sir.
That's right. Perfect, perfect.
Dude, congratulations. This is epic.
How excited?

Speaker 1 First of all, I'm assuming you have, but have you been to a show at the Sphere?

Speaker 5 I've been to everyone that I can make it to. I've been to five shows

Speaker 5 so far. Just seeing what's really working and

Speaker 5 what maybe could be done a little bit better or, you know, just the way that it's utilized in the building. But so for the last like three years, I've been looking for something to do.

Speaker 5 I've been looking like to create a spectacle. Yeah.
Like to do something where the production's so big. Because if you think about a couple moments, like when Pink Floyd came out with The Wall.

Speaker 5 And they went on tour with it and their production was just massive. It wasn't just like a little video thing in the middle.
It was like all the way stretched around.

Speaker 5 Or when the Eagles came back with their Hell Freezes Over tour, it revived everything. So, this is like, this is my baby.
That's what I've been working on.

Speaker 5 And so, like a year and a half of trying to figure out what this spectacle was going to be, my agent, Rob Light, was like, You need to see this place in Vegas that they're building.

Speaker 5 And so, I went to see it while it was being constructed. And I was like, This is the home for the spectacle.

Speaker 5 And so, we've been working on it for 14 months already, making all the content, making everything. And it's like, it's literally like making a movie as well.

Speaker 5 Hell yeah, it's putting the story together, writing this album, threading it together, having a real story inside of it. We filmed a 40-piece orchestra.
We filmed a 20-piece choir.

Speaker 5 Lots of stuff, man. I've been a stunt man.
I've been jerked around on stunt wires and drug across the ground and thrown up in the air.

Speaker 5 It's going to be wild, man. But this is like the greatest canvas for creativity that's ever been made.
The sphere is

Speaker 5 four. They have to measure the video in acres.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's four acres of video.

Speaker 1 That's insane.

Speaker 1 I knew they had to create like a new bite. Like, there's, I forget what the bite is, but they had for the amount of data.

Speaker 1 Well, it's not even a terabyte, it's another one past a terabyte. It's like something.
Yeah. The amount of data that's going through that thing just at one moment, right?

Speaker 5 Well, it's exponential. When you go from four to eight, it's exponential.
And then eight to twelve, then it's to 16.

Speaker 5 So 16K video is all.

Speaker 1 So it takes a month to render 30 seconds of 16k video a month whoa for one computer it's nuts that's crazy but everything's gonna get faster you know the computers will get faster over time and kind of catch up but this but right now this is like a marvel like this is like a three billion dollar video audio system crazy thing it's insane man i love that you're a student of the game too man you're like no i want to go see what's capable how i can make this thing the best when i come in here that is it that that's how you know it's going to be an amazing show not just because of your catalog and how amazing your music already is, but I can tell right now how excited you're getting that this is going to be a masterpiece, man.

Speaker 1 I'm fucking.

Speaker 5 This is my baby, man. A lot of people that might know our songs on the radio, like our band is a hard one to understand until you see it live.
So y'all have seen it. So we love the curveballs.

Speaker 5 We love throwing things in that nobody would ever expect. And then over the years, we've done some...

Speaker 5 some really cool stuff with costuming and black lights and like huge like inflatable things and things like that but this is our first masterpiece it's our first time to really

Speaker 5 lay our

Speaker 5 nuts out there. And just, I mean, it's all self-funded.

Speaker 5 So we had to pay for making everything completely ourselves, renting the venue, and be off of touring because you have to, the contract means you can't tour.

Speaker 5 So it's like you're missing the whole year of touring. So I did a little spring tour, which is like in off

Speaker 5 in smaller markets, you know, like in Maine and New Hampshire and

Speaker 5 around everywhere. But we're staying out of major markets.

Speaker 5 You know, when this gets announced, I've pulled every favorite from every human that I know that's a part of a company or part of everything like hey we need we need some help so i'm hoping everything comes together like we got we got a new song uh with snoop oh

Speaker 5 let's go that's on this album and that's getting ready that'll that'll be released too oh i can't wait to hear it man yeah it's called let it run and that's that's that's gonna be awesome like so July 20th, we're filming the music video for that one.

Speaker 5 And then I got a song with Dolly on this album.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah, baby. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 5 Yes, she murdered it, man. I sent her this song, let's go, and I was like, I just want you to sing whatever you feel like.

Speaker 5 And I sent her several songs, and she was like, This is the one, this is the one that I want. She said, Don't you give that song to anybody else, honey.

Speaker 5 We got us a big hit here, yes, so good. But she got, I got back, you know,

Speaker 5 the stem of her vocals, of her singing on it, man. And it was just like chill bumps down in my toenails, man.

Speaker 1 She's just awesome, man.

Speaker 5 Absolutely murdered it. So, there's some great surprises on this record.
I'm super proud of it. I produced this album myself.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah, man. And

Speaker 5 we're doing all independent. So there's no labels.
There's no, it's just all betting on ourselves this year and just pulling every favor.

Speaker 5 So I appreciate you guys letting me talk about it on New Hampshire.

Speaker 1 Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me, man? It's a fucking honor, dude. This is awesome, man.
I cannot wait to go check this out.

Speaker 1 So I tell you.

Speaker 1 I'm keeping it in the holster. I haven't gone to the sphere yet, dude.
I'm fine. This was just my first experience, dude.

Speaker 1 And Travis knows this because I've seen, I saw YouTube when Trav played in Vegas, the Super Bowl. And this is what it had just started.
And I'm like, dude, the opportunities with this place are wild.

Speaker 1 Like the visuals and the way they kind of did it, like the first half of the show was very,

Speaker 1 you know, it's crazy. It's like a lot of patterny things and it's kind of very trippy.
And then the second half of the show, it's very scenic. And then all of a sudden, it feels like you're outside.

Speaker 1 So like, it's it's nuts. Like at one point, I remember just looking around and like, dude, it feels like we're at an outdoor venue and we're inside this thing.

Speaker 1 That's how, that's how crazy the technology is. And I can't wait to see what you guys do with that thing.
That's going to be awesome, man. Cooking it up.
Congratulations. How many shows?

Speaker 1 How many shows is this residency? Do you know?

Speaker 5 Well, we're going up for sale with four. And as those sell out, we'll be adding more.
So,

Speaker 5 you know, depending on how everything goes, hopefully we'll be able to come back later next year and do another batch of and do another round because they got a big, some big releases and stuff coming up that are coming in in February.

Speaker 5 But it'll be December and January. Man, I'm so excited.
It's a lot, though, from like crazy wardrobe to the choreography to where we're moving to how we're interacting with the screens.

Speaker 5 There'll be parts where we're actually able to like, you know, if I can like literally lift my hand up and take and move a giant wave up behind me on the screen. to the, you know, what?

Speaker 1 It's wild. Yeah.
Dude, this is insane, man. Trap, wait till you check this place out.

Speaker 1 That venue, there's nothing like that thing in the world. I think they're building another one like in London or something like that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, they're talking about London and Dubai, a couple other spots, man.

Speaker 1 But it's nuts, man. And dude, you want to talk about toes in the water, ass in the sand.
You're going to legitimately be in that shit.

Speaker 1 I don't know what you got planned, but it's going to be epic. Yeah, man.
That's awesome. It's going to be great.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 I'm stoked to have you guys.

Speaker 1 Congrats on it, brother. I can't wait to fucking get out there and see you do your thing and see the masterpiece you put together.
Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 So you started your uh music career um were you you were playing bars or how'd your music career jump off yeah so i started playing at coffee houses when i was like 14.

Speaker 5 so i was playing you know because you couldn't really be

Speaker 5 you know playing in bars and stuff when you're that young so um i started playing at coffee houses but i was in choir since first grade so music programs in schools is a big deal man because that's for sure that's really where it was reinforced for me you know learning harmony learning vocal arrangements and stuff started when i was in first first grade and then as i got up in high school you know i was i was playing um coffee shops and a couple different buddies of mine kurt thomas i was playing with him and my buddy radford windham that i went to high school with um and then as soon as i graduated from high school i i went straight to west georgia so that's where i went to to college and then i started playing in bars so i got a gig at like the taco mac like playing you know, backup for a dude for like 100 bucks, playing guitar for him.

Speaker 5 And then I started like singing. They let me sing every once in a while.
And they're like, oh, wow, he can sing too. So, um, so I was, I was hustling bar gigs.
And then, man, I

Speaker 5 never graduated from college. I took off to go play.
I got a gig in Panama City. Me and my drummer took off.
We had, I sold my life insurance policy my dad had bought for me.

Speaker 5 I bought a like an old 78 Dodge Good Times band, like Bubble Windows.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Dude, yes. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 you're living the dream.

Speaker 5 Me and my dog, I had a Jack Russell puppy at the time. I think I was 19.
We took off for Panama City and me and a drummer, we were playing as a two-piece.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 5 we just set up drums and guitar, but we got a gig.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 So we were down there playing at this place called Joey's and we were, we play out on this deck and we auditioned for the guys.

Speaker 5 But our first auditions was six nights a week, six hours a night for $150 a night.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 5 We were so stoked. we've been like setting up at some dude's daiquiri shack trailer that he's selling like

Speaker 5 you know stuff out of anybody that would give us a power outlet to plug in so then after that when i when we left panama city we did that for a few summers and then what i figured out is i could go to a sports bar that didn't have live music and i'll just tell them i'm gonna come in and play for free and let us and let us have the door once we start bringing people in then let us just take so it didn't cost him anything so like you're betting on yourself you're like you know what we're gonna get people in here yeah we created a we created our own business model.

Speaker 5 Cause if you go try to get a gig somewhere where people already do, like in Nashville, you can make, I mean, a hundred bucks a night is a decent gig in Nashville.

Speaker 5 But we would go to these sports bars and we play there every week. So after a couple months, we'd have like two or three hundred people coming in on a Wednesday night, like college towns.

Speaker 5 And then we're making three to five bucks at the door. So we were making like 12, 1500 bucks.
So I could pay a good drummer. I could pay a sound man.
And man, we did that.

Speaker 5 We rocked that circuit for seven years.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Playing like three nights in Panama City, two nights in Birmingham, two nights in around Atlanta. And we did that for like 10 years, man.
So 10 years of grinding, five, six nights a week.

Speaker 5 And I was playing anything I could put, anybody people pay me for, like a bar mitzvah or a birthday party or whatever it was, man. I was, we were, we were hustling, man.
And that's really,

Speaker 5 that's really where we learned to appreciate people. Sure.
Every single person, the person cleaning the bar at the end of the night. Sometimes they be the only person listening.

Speaker 5 And so I love that we cut our teeth doing it that way. And it wasn't just like overnight, we just became successful.
We thought we were. We had our CDs and we went to Panama City.

Speaker 5 We were like, we're going to be big next year. Like, it's, but 10 years later, we finally made the right album.
We got Chicken Fry was on the radio. That took off.

Speaker 5 And then I was able to travel on a bus after that. And I could lay down and sleep while we're traveling.

Speaker 5 And that was back in the days when we were pretty rowdy, man. We were sponsored by Jaegermeister.

Speaker 1 It was like, oh, yeah. It was, it was wild.
It was wild.

Speaker 5 That was my hustle, man. So we hustled like that for 10 years.

Speaker 5 And then all while we're traveling, riding together, being together, and a lot of my crew, man, from like seven years in is still with me.

Speaker 5 You know, it's like that album's like almost 20 years, 20 years ago, man, which is crazy because I don't feel any different, man.

Speaker 5 And I look in the mirror, I feel better now, actually, than I did then because I'm running clean now. I eat clean.
I exercise.

Speaker 1 Here we go. I think I might

Speaker 5 on the program now. But it's been a blessing.

Speaker 1 Jaeger isn't in the diet anymore. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 5 i have my share man i had a great career yeah i had a great

Speaker 1 there we go i had a good run at it yeah you're right

Speaker 1 it does not feel like that long ago that foundation came out i still remember when chicken fried first came out we were at cincinnati travis were you at cincinnati you were at cincinnati you were still in high school i think i was just at the tail end of high school yeah but i remember

Speaker 1 And I think Spotify had just like started to take off too. And I remember showing all these guys, like, bro, have you heard this fucking song?

Speaker 1 Like, this thing is like the dopest thing I've ever come across. Like, and it was like the anthem for a number.

Speaker 1 I mean, and that whole album and everything since then, you've just continued to kill it. But it feels like that was just yesterday, but it wasn't.

Speaker 1 Like, that was, I just had a whole NFL career and you're still releasing songs and still doing live shows.

Speaker 5 Well, at the same time, I'm such a fan of you guys too, man.

Speaker 5 I watched the journey of you guys as well. So it's

Speaker 5 much props. I know the amount of discipline it takes.
And, you know, I mean, you look lean now too, Jason.

Speaker 1 I'm still on it. I'm still doing the alcohol, but I've definitely cleaned up the diet a little bit.
Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. It's less, though.
It's less.

Speaker 5 It's less. I knew that there would be a day.
You know, I was like, there'll be a day when it's time to, you know, put it down. And my warranty ran out when I turned 40.

Speaker 5 And I was like, you know, it was a couple years before that when I decided, but I'm like, man, if I don't invest in feeling good, then because I love to, you know.

Speaker 5 I love to be out in the woods and on the water, under the water. You know, spearfishing is my favorite activity in the world.

Speaker 1 Spearfishing?

Speaker 1 Spearfishing? Free dive. cool.

Speaker 5 So I do that all over the world. I want to be able to do that when I'm old.
Well, dude.

Speaker 1 Dude, sounds like I need to be talking to you. Exactly.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'll be back in some of this stuff. Yeah.
This is great. But we can't just let spear fishing just slide by like this.
Hold on. So, how far down is like the furthest you've ever like

Speaker 1 spear? Like, you like, because you can get down to like 50 feet, maybe even further. I don't like how.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I've shot stuff down to 80.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 5 Yeah, but I got homies, man. Like my buddy Justin's, my buddy Justin Lee, who's like, Justin, Russian holding your breath and going down 80 feet.

Speaker 1 Trevor's, you know, I'm a terrified of sharks. You know, the number one thing to like get those sharks over there is spearfishing.
Blood in the water.

Speaker 1 There ain't no fucking chance I'm doing spearfishing, but this is. The sharks are very jealous.

Speaker 5 They're there every time, man.

Speaker 1 It's just part of it, man.

Speaker 1 I'm cringing.

Speaker 5 It's part of it. And when you're in an area, when you start seeing sharks, you know there's going to be other good fish around too.

Speaker 5 But you got to watch their body language it's like a dude in a bar that's like kind of antsy he's like you can tell if somebody's like spun up you watch their body language most times they're just chill man they're trying to get some bait you know i don't really i don't spearfish where there's great whites very often where there's like things that are used to eating things our size so most of like the the caribbean and the gulf mexico like most places that we go and even in hawaii you know they're not they're not eating sea lions and seals because that's what you look like in a black wetsuit so

Speaker 1 a great white would be a thing.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 you also have a weapon. So, if they keep coming around and they have a body language that you don't like, then you just kind of go down and you poke them in the nose.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you swim at them and poke them, and they're like, well, I know that's yeah, well, that's

Speaker 1 it. They come up under you, you don't see him coming, though.

Speaker 1 You can tell Jason has a lot of dreams. He has a lot of

Speaker 1 things happening.

Speaker 1 I'm terrified.

Speaker 1 I'm very jealous, though. That's so badass, though.
80 feet.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I can make, I don't have a lot of bottom time once I get down, but like my buddy Justin Lee, who's my hero doing it, he can free dive 200 feet down and hunt something.

Speaker 1 Free dive. Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 5 It takes him a full minute to swim back up 200 feet. So he's got like his timer on his watch.
And so I go with guys that are, you know, he can hold his breath like seven and a half minutes.

Speaker 1 Seven and a half minutes? So he goes down.

Speaker 5 chills for like five minutes and then comes back up he can he can go down well when you're exercising it's it's a little bit different but i think he can he can easily get like four minutes of bottom time no problem no problem that's way but he's like

Speaker 5 yeah he's one of the greatest dudes ever man great fan

Speaker 5 working on my lung capacity yeah and there's technique too man i've been doing it i did it wrong for my first 10 years of doing it but the last the last 10 years i've been doing it i've been going with him i've been going with cameron kirk connell who's another guy but these guys are legends man they they hold a bunch of world records so dope but going with them has been a whole like life-changing thing but dude it is an avatar world world under there.

Speaker 5 And there's no telling. Every time you go, you see something that you've never seen before.

Speaker 1 Aliens, dude. Aliens, though.
You can't convince me it's not. Do you have a fish that is like, I want to get one of these? Like, what is your ultimate fish you want to get spearfishing?

Speaker 5 One that I haven't gotten a Marlin yet.

Speaker 1 Oh, my gosh. That's a beans.
That's one.

Speaker 5 And in Hawaii, I just have to be able to put in the time in Hawaii to be able to do it, to get a big blue Marlin. That's on my list.
I did get my big dogfish tuna, which was like my bucket list.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 There you go, baby.

Speaker 5 Hang on. I'll show you a pic of this one.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, she tastes good or what?

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah, they're delicious.

Speaker 5 They're delicious, but

Speaker 5 there's one.

Speaker 1 Oh, my gosh. Look at how monstrous that thing is.

Speaker 1 Dude, no way.

Speaker 1 That's insane. That's amazing.
I don't even know how you even get something like that back up to the top. Shit.
Well, they float a little bit. You know, you

Speaker 1 that's so fucking badass. God damn.

Speaker 1 I didn't mean to get off

Speaker 1 topic, man, but that is so goddamn cool, man. Hello.
That's very interesting to me.

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Speaker 1 Have a great day.

Speaker 1 So I've messed around with music. I've played saxophone growing up.
I'll mess around on guitar. I do not consider myself a musician, but I like messing around with music.

Speaker 1 What goes into writing a song for you?

Speaker 1 Do you have like a process? Do you start with the melody? Do you start with like some type of lyric or theme?

Speaker 1 What's Zach Brown's methodology?

Speaker 5 Man, it happens all different kinds of ways. Sometimes it's a melody that you...
put words to. Sometimes it's like a guitar riff that you're playing and something kind of a sound or a melody pops out.

Speaker 5 Sometimes it's just like something that you hear you'll hear somebody say something or you'll hear something that's like that's a song and so that can happen in the middle of the night like i can i can literally wake up from a dream and like and i got to write it down like right then kind of work on it then but but just capturing it and then for me it's like really don't not settling for anything because i can hear on the radio there's a lots of songs that you can tell it just they wrote that because it rhymed

Speaker 5 and you really don't want to mail it in so i have songs like goodbye in her eyes is one of my songs it took 11 years to find the right bridge for that song.

Speaker 5 So I knew it was good, but I didn't want to just throw something in there to get it down.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but some songs you'll write in an hour. Like, it just happens.

Speaker 1 It's so quick. It just happens right now.

Speaker 5 It happens fast. But the deeper, like philosophical songs and really trying to put the poetry into it to make it poetic.
There's lots of different ways to say something.

Speaker 5 And I love the collaboration of writing with people that are really talented too, and where there's no ego involved, where when the right idea pops up, whoever said it, it doesn't really matter who said it it's you both can agree like that's the one that's the one we've been missing and and i used to be able to test them out live you know i'd i'd play at a bar full of people and i'd play a song and you could tell by how they reacted but these days because everybody's filming everything so yeah if you play a shitty version of the song that you just wrote The first time you play it, it's on YouTube and then it's out there.

Speaker 5 Like that song is released, you know? So we had to sit on them.

Speaker 5 So like right now, sitting on all these babies that I made for this new album for Love and Fear, we released the first one a couple weeks ago. I ain't worried about it.
It's the new one, new jam.

Speaker 5 And then the one with Snoop's coming out next. It's called Let It Run.
My kids are older. They're playing music now too.
I'm sitting and playing guitar with my kids.

Speaker 1 That's awesome.

Speaker 5 It's fun. I got five kids, too.
So half the time, I'm just there. Like, I'm their house bitch, and I love it.

Speaker 5 I'm taking them everywhere, going to their games, going to their events, doing their things. Like, that's

Speaker 1 like a great dad, man.

Speaker 5 That's half my life. So that's priority one.
And then after that is like being creative, obviously connecting with my band, writing songs.

Speaker 5 And then the rest is adventuring, you know, being in the mountains or under the water and exploring. But I've been so blessed to do what I love to do, man.
I know you guys have to feel the same way.

Speaker 1 You know it, man. Absolutely.
You know it. It's a wonderful country, man.
You've gotten to work with a lot of artists. I mean, just to name a few, we got some here.

Speaker 1 James Taylor, Blake Sheldon, the Vicci, Alan Jackson, Kenny Chesney, Jimmy Buffett, R.I.P. The Legend.
Who is like the,

Speaker 1 one of your favorite artists that you've collabed with, or one of your favorite collabs that you would love to do again?

Speaker 5 All of those are so weird because I was such a

Speaker 5 like people that I was a big fan of their music.

Speaker 1 Same thing with like football.

Speaker 5 Like you idolize somebody and then all of a sudden you're on the field with them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 5 Like, yeah, and you climb on a stage and I'm like, I'm singing a song with one of my musical heroes. So they're, they're literally like Batman to me.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 5 Hell yeah. And so those moments for me have been some of the most surreal things.
Like playing on stage with James Taylor was like, how did I, how did this happen?

Speaker 1 Dude, one of my favorite songs by you, brother. I don't mean to cut you off, man, but Jason introduced this one to me.
I didn't even know it was, it was a song. Overnight with a trombone shorty.

Speaker 1 Dude, I was thinking of the exact same song, Travis.

Speaker 1 I love it. I don't know where this RB, like super smooth song comes on in.
Smooth as shit.

Speaker 1 Such a groove. And you got the trombone back there going crazy, dude.
That was one of my favorite collabs ever. And it's just the range that you have.

Speaker 1 You can tell you like to show your creativity, you like to show just your enjoyment of music and everything like that, man. It's just so fun.
And I cannot wait to see. I mean, you said Snoop Dogg.

Speaker 1 I'm just like, man, you just keep coming with surprises, man. It's badass.

Speaker 5 Well, I love that about Snoop too, man, because he's always relevant.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Always.

Speaker 5 Always, dude. He just keeps going, keeps stepping in, keeps going.
So so much respect for people like him that hold up their relationships and their vibe.

Speaker 5 And, like, everybody's stoked to see Snoop, man.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah. Yeah.
You can't go wrong with Snoop.

Speaker 5 It doesn't matter. So, this, this is, this is definitely a, an herb-themed song.
And I was like, I got to get Snoop on it, man.

Speaker 1 Dude, what's it like living on a tour bus? We never got to experience like life on the road. You talked a little bit about it with the van, and but like, what, what is that like?

Speaker 5 The first five years, uh, we were on a 12-bunk bus. So, there's 12 of us living on one bus with one bathroom and like one little spot in the back to, you know, to change or whatever.

Speaker 1 Okay. Oh, wow.

Speaker 5 You got to learn how to kind of internalize your BS, you know, or whatever you're going through.

Speaker 5 Cause I don't know if y'all are like me, but some days I wake up and I'm like, I can hold all this shit up. You know, I'm like energizing.

Speaker 5 And then some days you wake up and just your chemistry's off and like everything. You're just like a little bit.

Speaker 5 But learning how to like really live in such tight, confined spaces, it's like being an Aztec or a Mayan where you're like living in one of those places.

Speaker 1 It's like dug into the bank, like stacked up on top of each other.

Speaker 5 But you got to learn how to

Speaker 5 manage yourself and your own, whatever you're going through, and then holding space for everybody. Because your drummer and your percussionist is normally just walking around tapping on everything.

Speaker 5 So they're just like middle of the night, they're tapping, banging on things. So for me, like having a noisemaker, a white noise, I use the white noise app.

Speaker 5 But I use, I also got a company called Demerbox that makes these. I was going to send y'all some.

Speaker 5 It's a dry box, like a Pelican box, but it's got two silicone speakers in it so it's completely waterproof but it holds all your stuff in there there's a battery charger for your phone inside oh hell yeah so i plug that thing in when i'm in a hotel or on the on the bus i plug that thing in and i just that thing just rips like brown noise super loud so it drowns out everybody's like yeah here's one right here

Speaker 5 oh hell yeah that's all you need right there yep so that's all you need like when i'm traveling or whatever All your gear goes in here.

Speaker 1 I was about to say that thing keeps some beers cold or what, dude?

Speaker 5 So anyway, that's, that's part of it. Having the white noise and being able to drown everybody out is a big part of being able to sleep.

Speaker 5 Or if you're in a hotel and there's Ferraris going by, if you're in LA or, you know, construction or whatever it is. But the culture, man, it's all led from the top, man.

Speaker 5 You can't buy culture and momentum and you got to create it and you got to lead it from the top.

Speaker 5 And the people that I travel with and the people in my band are unbelievable human beings first, and then they're incredibly talented.

Speaker 5 You have to really learn how to how to like support each other and how to, you know, if you're having a rough day to kind of, you know, squash it a little bit, you know, kind of, there's a lot of emotions in 12, 12 people in one bus.

Speaker 5 And then, and then there's, and then there's 12 of those, you know, there's 12 of those, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You mentioned playing with like your heroes.
My first guy I ever snapped the ball to was Michael Vick. And that was like a moment when I got to the NFL.

Speaker 1 Like, dude, I can't believe I'm freaking playing with freaking Michael Vick. Like, what the heck is going on right now? I'm snapping the ball to this dude.

Speaker 1 I know

Speaker 1 you've sung at all these venues. You've, you've got all these musics into

Speaker 1 all these genres, but what's it like to sing a national anthem?

Speaker 1 How different is that?

Speaker 5 Well, normally as soon as you sing a word, you're hearing that word back like two seconds later.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. So it's

Speaker 5 before I did it with In-Air. So the first time I sang an anthem, it was at a Braves game.
I was 14.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. 14?

Speaker 5 I was 14.

Speaker 1 It's crazy.

Speaker 5 In high school. And me and my buddy Radford used to sing together.

Speaker 5 I would sing the bass harmony and then he would sing the lead and um and as soon as you sing a word you're hearing the next word back to you that you just sang and so it's hard from that standpoint there's a lot of echo but once you kind of get past that so now i put my i have my inner monitors in so now that blocks out a lot of the the wash so but man i like singing it just kind of og man i like just singing it singing it up high enough where you can you know get up on the high notes but not really like changing it a whole lot yeah and when me and me and my band are um we're doing some coming up here soon getting to sing like four-part harmony with my band, kind of like barbershop style.

Speaker 5 I sang in barbershop quartets all the way through.

Speaker 6 Let's go, the court.

Speaker 1 Let's go, damn. The courts are so fucking badass.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 But I love this country, man. And

Speaker 5 there's a lot of people that I don't think really appreciate the amount of sacrifice that it's taken from

Speaker 5 for us to be able to have what we have here.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 5 so we have a big mission supporting our veterans. We got the camp that we built, it's actually right over there.
You know, we do 34 weeks of veteran programs

Speaker 5 throughout the year and working with such incredible people, man, people that have real servants' hearts and do whatever they're told so that we can keep our freedom and be able to pursue our dreams and live the American dream.

Speaker 5 Like we owe a lot to them. So that's something, you know, every night we get a soldier to come up on stage when we do chicken fried and come out and

Speaker 5 do a salute and just remind everybody, you know, what a blessing.

Speaker 1 it is. Got it pretty good.
All right. We got our last segment.
We got to ask. You don't have to answer these.
You can tell us to, you know, fuck off if you want. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
Here we go. Is it true that you have 11 siblings? Is this accurate? You said you were the youngest.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Well, growing up, I had four stepsisters.
I had two stepsisters from my dad's side, two stepsisters from my mom's side. I had two half brothers, two half sisters.

Speaker 5 And then from the time I was three years old, I've had brother-in-laws or sister-in-laws that have been like, parents to me. Like my brother, my brother David, he's actually my brother-in-law.

Speaker 5 But since I was three years old, he taught me how to ride a bike. He co-signed with me to get my first truck and trailer, like first loan that I ever had.
He was like, he's been a dad to me.

Speaker 5 I've had, I've been adopted and taken in by a lot of people over the years, by a lot of different

Speaker 5 people. And

Speaker 5 yeah, so that, so I don't have any that are full mom, full dad. So I'm the only one from my mom and my dad, but I grew up in the middle of all of them.

Speaker 5 So it's, you know, it's seven sisters, and now I got four girls.

Speaker 1 I got four, four daughters. Hey, I'm right there with you, sir.
Yeah, baby.

Speaker 5 And a son. I got the son last.
He's 11, but my girls are 14, 15, 17, 18.

Speaker 1 We're in a similar spread right now, but we're way, we got five, four, two, and we just got a newborn.

Speaker 5 I've been there, man. I've been there.

Speaker 5 The change table, dude. The change table is still sitting where,

Speaker 1 right there, bro. There you go.
There we go. It's still out.
It's still out.

Speaker 5 18 years later, man.

Speaker 1 18 years later.

Speaker 5 That's great. But I can relate, man.
But it's beautiful. And every phase that kind of feels like it might be wearing you out or whatever, man.
You'll miss that the most.

Speaker 5 You got to just like soak that in while they're little, man, because they grow up so fast.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I appreciate it.
Yeah, man. We were just on the beach today.
It was a freaking, it's a trip, man. But yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to being out of diapers.

Speaker 1 There's no question about that.

Speaker 5 Diapers and brushing their teeth every night, like wrestling them down and brushing their teeth.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But that, honestly, man, like that was hard. But I miss it.
I miss all those things. I miss every one of those things that

Speaker 5 feels like a struggle at times, just the groundhog day of all of it, bath time. You know, it's, it's nuts, dude.

Speaker 1 Throwing off, throwing them all.

Speaker 1 Every night is chaos. Like, I don't know how long it's going to take.
It could be 30 minutes. It could be two hours.

Speaker 1 And they're like puppies, too.

Speaker 5 You get, you get them out of the water and dry them off, and they want to take off, dude. They're just like little naked bodies running around the house.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 aquarium, dude. It's wild.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 I miss all those phases, man.

Speaker 5 It's such a blessing to get to

Speaker 5 be a parent and get to be around for that.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Back to a little bit of music.

Speaker 1 I want to know, who was your first

Speaker 1 concert that you went to when you were younger where you were like, oh, yeah, this is what I want to do this?

Speaker 5 So I was 14. We had opened up for Sean Mullins and Matthew Kaler.
They were like two guys that were like troubadours playing by themselves. And

Speaker 5 when I was 14 and I saw them perform live, I was like, and I love music. I love to sing, but watching them play, and I was like, this is what I want to do.
So same thing with the summer camp thing.

Speaker 5 I would go to summer camp. When I was 14 at camp, I was like, I want to build one of these one day.
I want to build a camp and I want to play music. And I knew that from the time I was 14.

Speaker 5 And that's a blessing because a lot of people have like four degrees and they still don't know what they want to do. Like, I had a path.
Like, I knew what I wanted to do.

Speaker 5 And so I was able to follow what I loved and then figured out how to, you know, hustle enough to make a living doing it.

Speaker 1 So you got a camp too? What, what is it? Is it over? Is there any limit on this camp?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you could come. You could come counsel or drop in anytime.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so it's called Camp Southern Ground.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 nine weeks of summertime, we have about 115 kids that come in to sleep away for a week at a time. Damn.

Speaker 1 Okay. And it flips over.

Speaker 5 And then the other 34 weeks out of the year, we do veteran programs and then we do vision development for the corporations and stuff like that. But we got a 16-acre organic farm.
It's farm to table.

Speaker 5 The kids learn how to pull stuff out of the ground. They learn how to plant things.

Speaker 5 We've got, you know, a big aquatic center over there. We've got zip lines.
We've got, we got all the things that camp happens.

Speaker 5 You know, I had transformational experiences at camp when it was like a molded little cabin with no air conditioning. But we built like a university to do this.
Like the buildings are wrapped in zinc.

Speaker 5 They're going to be there for a thousand years.

Speaker 5 But the difference that it makes in a kid's life, a kid that doesn't have a mentor and a kid that comes, we bring underserved kids in that are in the same group with kids that are on the spectrum, with kids from military families that might have lost a parent or had a parent dismembered in service.

Speaker 5 And then you have mainstream kids, which might have a poverty of spirit where they don't even know how to appreciate anything they have. They have everything.
They don't know how to appreciate it.

Speaker 5 So you mash them all together in one group and you help them through a week of like learning how to rely on each other and learning to be like like an advocate for each other.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah.

Speaker 5 And it changes lives. And that's that that's what I experienced as a kid.

Speaker 1 That's what we experienced too, man. I hear everything you're saying.
I'm just like, man, you're doing it right, brother. It's giving me flashbacks.
Hell yeah. And

Speaker 1 we remember those camps and all the different like social, economic, and like racial, like the melting pot that we grew up in and getting all, getting to experience everybody for who they are and their culture, man, is the best.

Speaker 1 We had a Camp R was our overnight camp growing up. Camp R.
Shout out to Camp R. Dude, you want to talk about no AC in the middle of the summer.
Holdy-ass cabins. Yeah, man.

Speaker 1 I had fucking mice and roaches running across my chest that night, baby.

Speaker 1 The stories and the memories that you get. But it was awesome.
It just throws you in the...

Speaker 1 in the woods with a bunch of high school and college kids like like looking as your chaperones man is the best i know yeah so fun zach we learned we learned you make knives yes sir How did this come about?

Speaker 1 How did this even start?

Speaker 5 So I fell in love with knives as a kid. My dad traveled with Coca-Cola for like,

Speaker 5 I don't know, 15 years. And he would go to Mongolia and China and all these places.
And he would bring me back a knife from all the places that he went.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's badass.

Speaker 5 And I started throwing knives when I was about four.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 having, I got an indoor throwing range here at the house. If y'all remember the GA.

Speaker 1 I got a four-year-old. I could not imagine giving her a freaking knife to throw.

Speaker 1 That's amazing. jason was stabbing kids with forks you don't give them a knife yeah

Speaker 5 that sounds like a true story

Speaker 1 it was a sport technically it was a sport

Speaker 5 okay all right doesn't count that kentucky fried chicken uh spoon fork thing man

Speaker 5 i love knives i was drawn to them just like as a kid and then when i was 18

Speaker 5 I lived in a trailer in Carrollton when I was going to West Georgia, and my neighbor's granddad granddad had a knife shop.

Speaker 5 And he was taking like old buck knives and taking apart and making them automatics, like making them switchblades.

Speaker 5 So, I, that was my first experience when I was about 18 working on knives and being in his shop. And then, after that, I just became friends with a bunch of other knife makers.

Speaker 5 And then, so now I've got a shop here at my house where I make Damascus and I forge.

Speaker 1 Dude, you are. Oh, dude, that is so good.
I want to hang out with you so bad. I can't even describe it.

Speaker 5 You're in GA, come on down.

Speaker 1 Come on now. I didn't know nothing about bladesmithing, knife making, sword making, any of it.
And I got, I am such a huge fan of the show Forge and Fire.

Speaker 1 And it's like, all I want to do now is go into a forge and actually make something with some steel. Like,

Speaker 1 I would, that is the coolest thing ever. We could do that.

Speaker 1 All right. All right.

Speaker 5 So Neil Kamamura is one of the Forge and Fire champions. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 5 And so Neil lives on our farm on Big Island in Hawaii. And his knife shop is there on the farm.
And forging with him has made made me so much better, dude. He is an absolute animal.

Speaker 1 That is so fucking awesome, man.

Speaker 5 He's like half Hawaiian, half Japanese.

Speaker 1 I know exactly what you're talking about because I was, I was trying to link up with him if we were going to go out to Hawaii a couple years ago because I'm like, dude, I would love.

Speaker 5 You'd be staying in my place, man. Go, go do it.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
All right. All right.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Neil manages the farm and his family lives there, man.
But just salt of the earth people, man. The people we have in Hawaii are just so sweet.

Speaker 1 Just the lead.

Speaker 5 They got the spearfishes, man.

Speaker 5 You know, that's my Hawaii family. There's nobody better to learn how to forge from.
I mean, I can show you.

Speaker 5 We could make some here for sure. But Neil, Neil's on another level, man.
So he's like my hero in knife making and forging. Sheesh.
But I can show you. I did this basket weave one.
Hang on.

Speaker 5 Let me show you.

Speaker 1 Oh, hell yeah. What can't he do? It is amazing how many things you're good at.

Speaker 5 This is three days of work to fold the steel into the pattern that kind of looks like a basket weave like that.

Speaker 1 Oh, that looks so dope

Speaker 5 cool is that that's art right there and when you smash it all out it um it comes out good man it's it's i i learn a lot every time so this is the step before that

Speaker 5 yeah and you weld all that together and then you forge it together and then you draw it out and then you slice it and that's what makes those little tiles and so making um oh man mosaic is like an art man and there's a guy mareko momasi that i've learned a lot from that that guy is such a wizard at making damascus sounds like you're the wizard, man.

Speaker 5 My wintertime program, man, be able to go out and get in the shop. And it's also cool because anytime I need to make something, man, you know, you got some rebar.

Speaker 5 You can make about anything that you need.

Speaker 1 That's fucking dope. Yeah, just freaking melted down.
As long as it's hardenable steel, you get it done. Damn, it's awesome, brother.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 1 Quick question for you before we wrap with you, brother. We got to ask, we asked everybody with their welcome to the NFL, to the music world, to the movies.

Speaker 1 What was your welcome to the music industry moment?

Speaker 5 Man, the first time that we played the CMAs, they let us play, and I was good friends with Charlie Daniels. He was such a sweet man, dear friend.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 They let us do our version of Devil Went Down to Georgia on the CMAs.

Speaker 1 Dude, I watched this live. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 5 And I remember... Looking out and seeing, like, getting a standing ovation from like Chris Christopherson and all the other country artists and people that were there.

Speaker 5 And I just remember thinking, like,

Speaker 1 wow.

Speaker 5 Because we've just been humping bars, man, grinding, grinding grinding as everything took off like i i feel like some of those moments like on those shows where there's so many artists that are there together and they know who you are and uh you know it's just a surreal surreal moment and then any night i still never get used to going out like i'm literally i'm a servant when i'm at my house and i love it i love it so much And then when I step out on a stage, man, and those people are there, every single night that I step out there, it's not, I don't take that for granted.

Speaker 5 Because I remember what it was like playing to two people in a bar. You know, I remember the journey.
I remember the whole thing.

Speaker 5 But being out there where there's all these people that are singing all the words back and like, I feel a big responsibility. Like I want to be like Willie, man.
I want to be, as long as I can sing.

Speaker 5 I just saw Willie play in Austin like a couple months ago. It was unbelievable.
But just to like. you know, I think the music gives us like this life force.

Speaker 5 And if we can help somebody in one night to just have something they could put in their pocket for a rainy day or to help to make music that helps people get through things.

Speaker 5 Like it's such an honor to get to do that, man. That's my favorite part about it: just connecting and making people feel good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, absolutely.

Speaker 1 You've done that, brother.

Speaker 1 I still remember the day I got to see you live, man. So can't wait to see how the sphere goes.
Can't wait to listen to the new album. And appreciate you coming on, baby.
92% are Zach Rebbin.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 All righty. That does it for our interview with Zach Brown.
Man, dude. Dude, I'm going to love this guy.
I'm going spear fishing. I'm not.
Well, I'm definitely not doing that.

Speaker 1 But I am going to go forge a blade in Hawaii. I guarantee you that.

Speaker 1 Dude, I have always been a Zach Brown fan.

Speaker 1 And one of the reasons I've always loved him, we talked about it just a few minutes ago, but I love, you could tell how great of a musician he is and how much he loves music.

Speaker 1 And every live show I've ever been to his. Like he embraces musicians in that area.
He brings people on stage. He's He's doing different, like, he's just the pinnacle of like what I'm saying, man.

Speaker 1 Well, just what a great artist is. Like, this is a guy that's always trying to get better, always trying to do new things.
I'm very excited to see what he's doing over here at the sphere.

Speaker 1 Cannot wait, man. Dude, he's got all these other things going on, too.
Spearfishing. He's got a ranch.

Speaker 1 He's forging knives. He's got a fucking box that you charge.
I mean, what the fuck?

Speaker 1 I think it's incredible

Speaker 1 the amount of things that this guy's got going on. And it was a joy talking to him.
I hope you guys all enjoyed getting to know Zach Brown a little bit more.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and make sure you get to the sphere and check out his new album, baby. All right, that wraps up another episode of New Heights.
Thank you to Zach Brown for joining us on the show.

Speaker 1 Make sure you're subscribed in YouTube to the New Heights channel and follow New Heights on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 You can listen to new episodes of New Heights early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1 Once again, New Heights, a Wondery Show, produced by Wave Sports and Entertainment and brought to you by General Mills' favorite cereal brands.

Speaker 1 Every single one that you love is always going to be General Mills because they make the best. Follow the show on all social media at New Heights Show with one S for fun clips throughout the week.

Speaker 1 92 percenters. We appreciate you guys for tuning in each and every week and to our production and crew.
We appreciate you guys making us look way better than we are.

Speaker 1 So true.

Speaker 4 Mom and dad, uh, mom and mom, dad and dad, whatever, parents, are you about to spend five hours in the car with your beloved kids this holiday season, driving to old Granny's house?

Speaker 4 I'm setting the scene, I'm picturing screaming, fighting, back-to-back hours of the K-pop Demon Hunter soundtrack on repeat.

Speaker 4 Well, when your ears start to bleed, I have the perfect thing to keep you from rolling out of that moving vehicle.

Speaker 1 Something for the whole family. He's filled with laughs, he's filled with rage.

Speaker 4 The OG Green Gronk, give it up for me, James Austin Johnson, as the Grinch.

Speaker 4 And like any insufferable influencer these days, I'm bringing my crew of lesser talented friends along for the ride with A-list guests like Gronk, Mark Hamill, and the Jonas Brothers, whoever they are.

Speaker 4 There's a little bit of something for everyone.

Speaker 1 Listen to Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.