Dennis Quaid

Speaker 1 Dennis Quaid is one of the most famous actors in the world.

Speaker 1 He's been in about 150 movies spanning almost 50 years and he is at the same time a really interesting and engaged person with a lot to say who thinks a lot and thinks freely.

Speaker 1 He's also an accomplished musician. But he has a project coming up that you probably ought to know about.
We thought it was definitely worth telling you about.

Speaker 1 And so, we're grateful that Dennis Quiddit is joining us on set right now. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you, Tucker. We're so glad to be here.
So, I mean, I could ask you a million questions, but

Speaker 1 I want to get right to the project that's coming up right now about our power grid that you did. Can you just give us a quick overview of what this is and why did you do it?

Speaker 1 It's called Grid Down, Power Up. And it's about an issue which concerned me really for quite some time.

Speaker 1 They did a little segment on 60 Minutes about this, but basically

Speaker 1 there is a 100%

Speaker 1 probability that our sun generating what they call a GMD,

Speaker 1 which is a solar storm, that

Speaker 1 hits our

Speaker 1 Earth and the magnetic field that we have around the Earth and can fry everything that is electric. above the ground, including our entire grid.

Speaker 1 And this would happen organically, naturally? That's just what what the sun does? It has happened. There was a, they call it a Carrington event,

Speaker 1 which happened in, I think it was 1859.

Speaker 1 And at that time, basically, we had telegraph lines, as far as electricity goes. And it fried our entire telegraph system that was set up, had to be replaced.

Speaker 1 The entire thing. The entire thing.
And so

Speaker 1 imagine what that would do now with a very large storm,

Speaker 1 which there's a 100% chance of it happening.

Speaker 1 That was a 100-year event, they call that one.

Speaker 1 And I'm not going to math, but it's not going to be a good idea. The trillions of dollars that it would take to replace all that, plus

Speaker 1 we wouldn't even get to spend those trillions of dollars because

Speaker 1 it would take out not only the electricity, but all of our entire infrastructure and our society runs our electricity.

Speaker 1 We don't know how to live without it.

Speaker 1 There wouldn't be any water in your tap.

Speaker 1 You couldn't get gas for your car because the whole system is broken down. Everything that we rely upon would be gone.

Speaker 1 The food would melt in our refrigerators. There would be

Speaker 1 And they predict within a year, about 90% of the population would be dead from starvation, disease, or

Speaker 1 people

Speaker 1 it gets back to the Stone Age again. Killing each other.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, that's shocking. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it really lifts your day, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I'm adding that to the Armageddon file that's growing.

Speaker 1 Nobody's really talking about it. And

Speaker 1 in fact, President Trump actually

Speaker 1 signed an executive order to

Speaker 1 harden our grid to protect ourselves against an event like this happening. Obama tried to get that going as well.
And

Speaker 1 it's stuck in these regulatory agencies that, you know, and lobbyists because money needs to be spent.

Speaker 1 Most of our grid power companies are privately owned, and you can understand them not wanting to spend money on something that might occur. But this is definitely going to occur.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 it would mean, and this is not from a foreign adversary. This is just a solar cycle or a solar system.
Well, we'll get to that in a minute.

Speaker 1 Okay, but this is, but we're starting with just what nature might be. Yeah, this is not what you call an enemy.
This is, you know,

Speaker 1 the sun that we rely upon every day. And these solar storms that happen.
And they happen with

Speaker 1 frequency. And

Speaker 1 you've seen, everybody's seen, you know, pictures of the sun where the storm is happening, these flares come out, and they're ejected out into

Speaker 1 the solar system. And we just, you know, like in packets.
And

Speaker 1 we,

Speaker 1 I think it was 2014, we barely missed one by

Speaker 1 five days that went across our path of orbit around the sun.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's going to happen. And then, you know, once it hits the Earth, there's a 50%

Speaker 1 probability of it either being us or the eastern hemisphere. Who's ever exposed to

Speaker 1 the sun?

Speaker 1 So is there anything that you can do? I mean, could you harden our electrical? Yes,

Speaker 1 there are simple things that we could actually do

Speaker 1 that could be built in that would, you know, not only for the military, which we'll get to, but just

Speaker 1 civilian infrastructure to protect it that

Speaker 1 relatively inexpensive compared to what it would cost if

Speaker 1 an event like this happened. And overall, over time, it'd probably be about $100 billion,

Speaker 1 about the same that we just gave to Ukraine

Speaker 1 to protect them from the Russians.

Speaker 1 It'd be money spent, plus also

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 process of doing this,

Speaker 1 it's like a space program. You find out all kinds of other things that actually

Speaker 1 help society and advance us and our technology. But

Speaker 1 they're basically relays,

Speaker 1 protective relays that could be put at our substations and transformers that an event like this happens.

Speaker 1 kind of similar to kind of a surge protector that you have in your computer that since that you know there's a surge like that and cut it cut it off to protect it frying our transformers.

Speaker 1 Would and pardon my total ignorance on this topic, I'm embarrassed,

Speaker 1 but would such a solar storm hurt people or just electrical components? No, it doesn't hurt people.

Speaker 1 In fact,

Speaker 1 it's only like the

Speaker 1 transistors

Speaker 1 and anything electrical. And

Speaker 1 you can melt it. These transformers that we

Speaker 1 I think there's,

Speaker 1 you remember the blackout that happened in New York not too long ago

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 it was trees that were hanging over a power line just like that, which caused a surge of power and upset the balance. And it all relies on these transformers that

Speaker 1 get overheated and

Speaker 1 if you need to replace one, you you don't just replace one they weigh about 500,000 pounds to begin with to get them it takes if you want another one it takes two years to get one we just don't have them sitting around

Speaker 1 just ready to replace either they're it's really difficult it takes time and if you had a situation where you're your supply chains cut off and you know we get some of them from China by the way and uh it's it's just tough to do

Speaker 1 if I can just ask ask you a dumb question, so this, an event like this happened in 1859 and it took out our entire telegraph system.

Speaker 1 So this has been known for

Speaker 1 quite some time.

Speaker 1 And yet we've built a system that's vulnerable to it. How did that happen? Well the storms, the storms come in varying intensities.
That carrying Tingen event

Speaker 1 must have been upwards of like

Speaker 1 85 volts per meter, I think. that's what the the figure is the way they measure it

Speaker 1 and our system is built to take on like eight volts

Speaker 1 per kilometer I mean eight kilometers

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 it it won't handle it that's what

Speaker 1 Obama wanted That's what Obama did when he,

Speaker 1 by executive order, wanted to harden our system,

Speaker 1 what it had brought up to that. And the regulatory people, the NERC and FERC, took it and

Speaker 1 had wound up just protecting our

Speaker 1 infrastructure to eight volts.

Speaker 1 And so it's like 10 times less.

Speaker 1 There was because of these other storms that came through, you know, one I think was like 12, another one was this or that. And so they,

Speaker 1 it wasn't a worst,

Speaker 1 worst case scenario in other words that they prepared for

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 that's what you need to prepare for of course of course you're describing what we used to call when we believed in God acts of God yeah probably are acts of God but whatever but things that no human can control right but there's a whole majeure

Speaker 1 exactly so there's a whole other category though of attacks from adversaries or terrorists yes that's the other thing

Speaker 1 another

Speaker 1 I think, you know, the world as far as

Speaker 1 the danger in the world today is much greater than when I was growing up. I grew up at the height of the Cold War where, you know, we had duck and cover.

Speaker 1 I lived in Houston, which was within that circle during the Cuban Missile Crisis of getting hit and probably would have been hit

Speaker 1 by the bomb. And

Speaker 1 it's scarier today than it was then. At least we had

Speaker 1 mutual annihilation and we had deterrence based on that, that we wouldn't pull the trigger because

Speaker 1 your adversary was going to destroy you too.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 today,

Speaker 1 that club has grown to where it's not only Russia, the United States, it's North Korea,

Speaker 1 that everybody knows, Pakistan, India, Iran,

Speaker 1 which

Speaker 1 they believe

Speaker 1 they already have the nuke. They just don't have the delivery system for it that could reach the United States.

Speaker 1 Do you believe Iran has a nuclear weapon? I think they do.

Speaker 1 The Russians have been helping them out.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 if they don't have one, they're going to have one within six months to a year. And it's really,

Speaker 1 we've been approaching it. Well, they don't have the delivery system.
They don't have the

Speaker 1 ICBMs that can deliver that all the way to the United States. They definitely could hit Israel, though, who they're committed to destroying.

Speaker 1 But they also have their terror organizations. And it's gotten to the point now where it's so condensed.

Speaker 1 You know, these suitcase dirty bombs, whatever they are, you could definitely rig one of those up and hook it to a Scud missile, missile, put it on a cargo ship just off the United States

Speaker 1 coast,

Speaker 1 send it up to a certain altitude, explode it,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 how that would what they call a super EMP, which is electromagnetic pulse, which is the same thing as a geothermal event with the Sun. It's

Speaker 1 if you

Speaker 1 send

Speaker 1 up

Speaker 1 a missile, a nuclear,

Speaker 1 a nuclear bomb on it. It exploded at 400 kilometers above the Earth in space, basically.

Speaker 1 You won't see it. You won't see the explosion because it's in a vacuum of space.

Speaker 1 You won't hear it. No people will be killed.
But the gamma rays which are thrown out from that would encompass most of the United States and take out

Speaker 1 this very same grid

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 within, which could cause a power outage all across the United States up to

Speaker 1 months, even a year.

Speaker 1 And we'd have the same scenario that we described in the US.

Speaker 1 I mean, you hate even to game it out, but like if that happened, if huge parts of the United States had no power for a year, I mean that that would be an extinction event for a lot of people.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they'd done a study and 90% of the population would be dead within a year.

Speaker 1 You know, in 18, during this Carrington event, I mean, one thing, we didn't rely on electricity, you know, and everybody had a cow if you wanted milk, and you had a horse if you wanted to drive.

Speaker 1 Your car wouldn't work.

Speaker 1 What do you do? Your telephone doesn't work.

Speaker 1 There's no way to inform the public about, you know. Anything.
Anything.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 You kind of messed up.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, that in some ways seems far more effective than nuclear weapons.

Speaker 1 Not only that,

Speaker 1 you're not killing people.

Speaker 1 And so that makes the decision to use them

Speaker 1 a little,

Speaker 1 you know, it's not,

Speaker 1 you don't have to wrestle with your morals. Right.

Speaker 1 There's no smoking hole at Hiroshima. Yeah, exactly.
And just like, because there are so many actors doing this, and

Speaker 1 they're terrorist subgroups as well,

Speaker 1 who do you retaliate against if

Speaker 1 it's done from a cargo ship and you don't even know where it came from? So who was the perpetrator?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 who do you retaliate against? And

Speaker 1 yes,

Speaker 1 the military has hardened

Speaker 1 most of their infrastructure when it comes to this, but they get their electricity, 90% of their electricity comes, 99% of their electricity comes from civilian infrastructure.

Speaker 1 So how long is that going to last?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so do you think

Speaker 1 one of magnified EMP attacks would take out a lot? I mean, what, like most civilian power plants?

Speaker 1 Yeah, just one, what they call a super EMP, and that has to do with the altitude where it is exploded, you know, from the center of that covers a certain area, whereas if you were lower down, you would only be able to cover that much area because it spreads out in a circle.

Speaker 1 So, and it just fries everything. So, why, I mean, I know there are a lot of things to worry about.
Yes.

Speaker 1 A lot of things are failing at once, obviously, but this seems like you might want to move it toward the top of the list of things to worry about. Yeah, I would think so.

Speaker 1 I really would think so, but it's

Speaker 1 and indeed

Speaker 1 the Russians and the Chinese have done so much more to harden and to protect their infrastructure than we have. And so

Speaker 1 it gets down to that whole thing about survivability,

Speaker 1 being able to survive an attack and

Speaker 1 to attack someone and then being able to survive

Speaker 1 when they retaliate. And they've got that going for them.
And it also makes somebody like, you know, Iran, who

Speaker 1 it's a fraction of what their military budget is, and they know they can't defeat the United States. But I mean, even a simple terror group, you can get their hands on a scud missile and

Speaker 1 a nuclear device. You can really do some damage.
And I don't know why

Speaker 1 that our government has not been informing us more about this. Back during the Cold War, when I was a kid, I was, you know, in the fourth grade.

Speaker 1 Kids were informed about what could happen, what to do if something happened. At least that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 also,

Speaker 1 let's get something done.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't think the average person has any idea that this threat exists. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, they don't.

Speaker 1 The majority, the vast majority of the people don't.

Speaker 1 Where is the climate lobby on this?

Speaker 1 I mean, they're very involved in trying to remake the grid and

Speaker 1 change our sources of energy and they're energy experts.

Speaker 1 But is this something that they're taking up?

Speaker 1 No, not to my knowledge. No.
Or windows.

Speaker 1 Well, they would be affected too,

Speaker 1 of course.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it's, you know, it's

Speaker 1 that's all about the fuel that comes to the power agency,

Speaker 1 whether it be coal or wind or whatever it is. But if you knock out these relay stations,

Speaker 1 the power can't go anywhere. It just fries everything.

Speaker 1 So this does suggest, I mean,

Speaker 1 our country's population is clustered in cities. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Those probably aren't going to fare as well. No.

Speaker 1 It'd be easier to live in a country, of course, and people who live in the country would probably have better ideas, better knowledge of how to survive after an event like this.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it's a scary proposition. I mean, there needs to be education, and there needs to be something done about it.
And

Speaker 1 done about it pretty quick. I mean,

Speaker 1 these protective relays that could be installed in the transformers, starting with that, I mean, we have the technology. We know how to do this.

Speaker 1 It's not something mysterious that we have to get involved in. What we do need is something like a Manhattan project that we had back during World War II, where

Speaker 1 the Germans, we knew that the Germans were trying to develop a bomb, and so

Speaker 1 we got there quicker. And somebody to cut through all the bureaucratic red tape and be vested with the authority to

Speaker 1 just to get this done.

Speaker 1 We could do it in a couple of years. So you mentioned FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Yeah. I mean, that would be, wouldn't that be the agency that would be thinking about this?

Speaker 1 They are, they,

Speaker 1 yes, you would think that, but that's not the way it works. You know, Obama

Speaker 1 sent this to Congress

Speaker 1 to get it done. And then it gets caught in FERC and NERC because they're controlled by

Speaker 1 the lobbies, you know, the lobbies of the energy lobbies that

Speaker 1 it's about they'd have to spend money and

Speaker 1 which they don't necessarily want to do because you know it costs a lot yes it would cost a lot I think the government should should

Speaker 1 help in this and there's so many of them too scattered across the United States you know they're locally owned most of the energy companies

Speaker 1 There's an energy company in South Carolina that is really doing something about it. And there have been some cases where

Speaker 1 we've had energy companies that are making moves to protect the grid, but that's only one little part of the grid.

Speaker 1 When it comes down to it, they depend on

Speaker 1 the one next door to them and the one next door to them.

Speaker 1 It would cure the AI problem pretty quick, though, right?

Speaker 1 You'd have no AI within electricity. Yeah, exactly.
But you wonder, there's all these, I mean, a huge part of the American economy is based on digital commerce, digital innovation.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is being

Speaker 1 financial system is going to break down. Exactly so.
Transportation breaks down. Your water doesn't work.
Food delivery is gone.

Speaker 1 Your telephones don't work.

Speaker 1 You go back to, basically we go back to that Carrington event. The world goes back to 1859 and we're all in the dark and the lights are out.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you would think that all these other sectors of the economy would be lobbying, because they all are dependent on electricity. Everybody's dependent on electricity.

Speaker 1 So if I'm Google, or if I'm Microsoft running AI or whatever, like I need

Speaker 1 to, I would be lobbying. Especially you, you've got to have that.
And

Speaker 1 plus also just the effects of the gamma rays

Speaker 1 upon these microchips that

Speaker 1 they're melted.

Speaker 1 Actually, you know who the largest manufacturer of vacuum tubes is? Russia. Vacuum tubes.
Vacuum tubes. Russia and China.

Speaker 1 They are still in the business of manufacturing vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes like

Speaker 1 they are far more resistant to

Speaker 1 these gamma rays. Are you serious? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Than the microchips.

Speaker 1 Do they make it? The old analog technology

Speaker 1 would

Speaker 1 work

Speaker 1 with internet dial-up, you know. Are they making horse carriages, too? They probably should be.
They probably should be, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, okay, well, you just blew my mind. Yeah, I want to go out and join the cavalry, I guess.

Speaker 1 So what kind of reaction are you getting when you tell people this?

Speaker 1 A mouth's agape, kind of like you. Yeah.
Yeah, because nobody hears about it. And it's,

Speaker 1 it's something we don't like to think about. But it's, yeah, I think people think of it in terms of

Speaker 1 an asteroid which is on its way to destroy the Earth. You know, that seems like a very remote, in fact, is very remote.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 but this is, you know, whether from the Sun or a bad actor, this is something that

Speaker 1 100% chance it's going to happen.

Speaker 1 And we are just no.

Speaker 1 nowhere, no way prepared for it. It's absolutely terrifying.

Speaker 1 So of all the projects you've done, 150-ish,

Speaker 1 I mean, this has got to rate among the most significant.

Speaker 1 Yeah, David Tice,

Speaker 1 he was a producer, he produced SoulServer that movie episode, and he's a patriot and

Speaker 1 really smart individual. And

Speaker 1 he was... He called me up because he created this

Speaker 1 movie, Grid Down Power Up, that's that's the name of it. And

Speaker 1 asked me if I wanted to be involved. And I'd seen that 60 Minutes episode about the geothermal event happening like that.
And I just said yes, because I remember it

Speaker 1 really frightened me when I saw it. And I, like everybody else, had just gone on and forgotten it because

Speaker 1 we have so many threats that are right in front of us. Right.
Yeah. That

Speaker 1 this gets pushed to the background.

Speaker 1 It seems like a pretty obvious one, though. Yeah, and

Speaker 1 it's always the one you don't see.

Speaker 1 That gets you.

Speaker 1 It gives us feet of clay, basically.

Speaker 1 We may be the big, bad,

Speaker 1 great,

Speaker 1 greatest nation on earth, the United States,

Speaker 1 but in some ways, all of this technology.

Speaker 1 this highly industrial

Speaker 1 complex that we've built has feet of clay because of

Speaker 1 this little simple thing. It's kind of perfect though, isn't it? Yeah.
I mean, it is Tower of Babel stuff like people build this. Yeah, it's the Trojan horse.

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Speaker 1 looking back on all you're talking off air about all the movies that you've done what are the ones that you remember most vividly well the right stuff is my favorite why period because it was uh when i grew up in houston i wanted uh you know john glenn went up, I was in the second grade and rolled the TV, and everybody that replaced wanting to be a cowboy, everybody wanted to be an astronaut back then.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so, you know, I grew up wanting to be, and then along came the book,

Speaker 1 and I read it like in two days and wanted to play Gordo Cooper because he was my favorite astronaut back then. He was the youngest one.
He was like the rock and roll astronaut.

Speaker 1 And then, couldn't believe it, I got the part.

Speaker 1 And then it turned out Gordo Cooper lived three miles from me in L.A. No way.
So I called him up and we became good friends. And

Speaker 1 he turned me on to a flight school. And I learned to fly.
I got my pilot's license from that. And still

Speaker 1 fly jets now, in fact. But it was like the ultimate boyhood fantasy.

Speaker 1 that role. And it took nine months to do it.
And Chuck chuck yeager legendary chuck yeager

Speaker 1 was on the set every day so it was it was a great time it sounds unbelievable yeah so you said you were saying off camera that um when you started i think your first movie that you were in or around was 1975

Speaker 1 it like how long did it take to make a movie then

Speaker 1 it was at least at least three months you know,

Speaker 1 to make a movie back then.

Speaker 1 Because of the cameras, you know,

Speaker 1 you shoot one side of a scene, and then you got what they call turnaround, and shoot the other person going the other way and seeing the background the other way.

Speaker 1 And the lights and the cameras that we had at the time meant that

Speaker 1 it was at least a two to four hour turnaround. So you just sit in your trailer and wait for that to happen.
Now all that happens like in 15 minutes. And so movies just moves.

Speaker 1 Really quick. But if you're on, if you're taking, you know, months out of your life to go to a location far from your home and you're in this like biosphere with all the other actors, then

Speaker 1 I mean that's like its own world, right? Yeah, that's

Speaker 1 exactly. And

Speaker 1 it,

Speaker 1 you know, it's real time consuming. That's the reason, I mean, now you see actors, you know, doing maybe like three, four movies a year because it

Speaker 1 doesn't take that long.

Speaker 1 It's not that they're so picky.

Speaker 1 You must get to know the other people on set pretty well. Yeah, you do.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it becomes your world.

Speaker 1 It's a gypsy life, basically, being an actor.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I still work a lot,

Speaker 1 but spend a lot more time at home now.

Speaker 1 For decades, you must have spent no time at home. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But that's your life.

Speaker 1 Huh. You know? What's the most fun location? It's better than working for a living.
Oh, you can put it that way.

Speaker 1 What are the coolest locations to shoot a movie at? Oh, I've been everywhere. I did one in Svalzbard.

Speaker 1 This was a television streaming series. Sfalzbard has the northernmost airport in the world.

Speaker 1 It's up there, Longyard, and it is where Admiral Perry is last stopped before the North Pole. It's above Greenland.
It's 400 miles from the North Pole. Like

Speaker 1 the North Star, which...

Speaker 1 If you're, you know, here in our,

Speaker 1 where we are in our latitudes, you know, it's about like right there, about 45 degrees there. It was up here.

Speaker 1 And we were inside the Arctic Circle, which means

Speaker 1 the northern lights, you see a complete circle of it.

Speaker 1 It was like being on another planet. So the Earth is round, you're confirmed.
The Earth is completely round. Okay, so, but you know that.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes,

Speaker 1 I could

Speaker 1 confirm that.

Speaker 1 They had a great little hotel there. It's kind of a tourist spot for people to come.
There were 1,500 people there and 3,000 polar bears, they like to say. And

Speaker 1 that's an interesting community, actually, because it was started by an American,

Speaker 1 which is Goodyear. Goodyear tires.

Speaker 1 That guy went over there because they had a lot of coal. there on that island.
And

Speaker 1 he started a coal mine, and people from all over the world

Speaker 1 came there because it was guaranteed work.

Speaker 1 And that

Speaker 1 was extremely diverse within that and it still continues to be that today.

Speaker 1 It's where a lot of people would come there to get like

Speaker 1 an EU passport. So he had like, at the time that I was living there,

Speaker 1 there were like 800 people from Thailand there, and you can only stay there like two years, and you're not allowed to die there. Really?

Speaker 1 Because you can't be buried there. They're pretty strict on the bus.
There's no such thing as, yeah.

Speaker 1 It's supposedly kind of owned by Norway, but it's also

Speaker 1 the same place where we had our listening post, observation post during the Cold War, if the ICBMs were coming over from Russia because they come over.

Speaker 1 And then two miles from where we had ours, the Russians had theirs.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that little town is like a ghost town. That's another little tourist spot there.
It's a fascinating place to go. And no dying.

Speaker 1 No dying allowed. It's a death-free.

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Speaker 1 So you brought a guitar. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Tell us about your interest in music. I've been playing guitar.
Music was first for me, really, you know, from the time I was 12.

Speaker 1 You can't act alone in your room. I guess you can.

Speaker 1 I guess you can. There's no one to act with.

Speaker 1 Acting is re-acting for me. But music is a thing that your friend

Speaker 1 as a kid,

Speaker 1 I was kind of like music acting, music, acting.

Speaker 1 I didn't know. And

Speaker 1 it became acting. But music has always been laced in there and I've always had a band and I knew I was never going to shred a guitar, but

Speaker 1 so I took up songwriting to go with that. How hard is that? Songwriting?

Speaker 1 It's not a question of being hard. I think if you ask any songwriter,

Speaker 1 it's like an affliction. It's something that you either have or you don't.
And you get an idea that's a song or whatever and you...

Speaker 1 It just,

Speaker 1 it's going to bother you until you finish it.

Speaker 1 Do you have some working their way out of you right now? Yeah, at this moment.

Speaker 1 Can you play one? It has nothing to do with EMPs.

Speaker 1 No, good. I need a rest.
I would say that was dark.

Speaker 1 Play a song. I tell you what, I'll play you a song that I think probably applies to you, Tucker.
All right. As well.
I wrote this because of Chris Christofferson, who's...

Speaker 1 He and Kenya Tucker and Randy Carlock did a song of mine. It's going to be out.
Did Did you know Chris Chris Offerson? Oh, yeah. He's a great guy.
Fantastic.

Speaker 1 But his wife said that nobody calls Chris because they think he's such a legend. They wouldn't take the call, you know?

Speaker 1 But does he want people to call?

Speaker 1 He wants people to call. So now in my act, when I get up to playing this song, I call his wife, Lisa, and

Speaker 1 we all leave a message where the entire audience says, hello, Chris.

Speaker 1 It's good. But I found that myself, it's about me as well but because when you get to after a certain age after 60 people start giving you undue respect

Speaker 1 for

Speaker 1 for for things you know I look forward to that by calling you yeah by calling you legend right

Speaker 1 legend so I wrote this song for that

Speaker 1 Please don't call me legend.

Speaker 1 A humble life's not through.

Speaker 1 It's got a beginning, a middle, but there still ain't no end to what I might yet do.

Speaker 1 I might just climb all the Himalayas,

Speaker 1 plant a flag on a planet or two.

Speaker 1 But if you call me legend again, please wait until I'm in my tomb.

Speaker 1 Oh, and please don't treat me special.

Speaker 1 It makes me feel alone.

Speaker 1 How can I be the simple person I've always been? If you put me up on some throne, I'm quite capable of making my own mistakes and I'm not afraid of failure.

Speaker 1 So if you call me legend again, I might just have to see you later. One more verse.
Please don't call me legend.

Speaker 1 It makes me feel like I already died.

Speaker 1 that's just a what

Speaker 1 a third-hand story about some has been and it's probably a lie

Speaker 1 so I'll just keep on keeping on trucking

Speaker 1 year after

Speaker 1 year

Speaker 1 and if you call me legend again

Speaker 1 I might just have to box your ears you know I will

Speaker 1 I might just have to see you later bye-bye I might just have to see you later.

Speaker 1 Excellent.

Speaker 1 That was awesome.

Speaker 1 You're welcome, Tucker. I love that.

Speaker 1 I love that kind of music.

Speaker 1 How would you describe that? That, I don't know, Americana, whatever. Exact summertime, that one.
That's amazing. When did you write that?

Speaker 1 About two years ago. Yeah.
In rage?

Speaker 1 That was... Weren't there a threats of violence? That was a sound.
That was after

Speaker 1 meeting Chris. That episode kind of sparked that idea.
Who are your favorite musicians?

Speaker 1 Well, he was definitely one of them. Yeah.
Currently, I'm going through the Frank Sinatra songbook. Really? Yeah.
Because there was nobody could... nobody could sing like Frank.

Speaker 1 I mean, just as a musician, you know, the voice is an instrument and his phrasing and

Speaker 1 incredible. You know, Jerry Lee Lewis was like,

Speaker 1 he was one of my piano teachers when I did the Great Balls of Fire. You knew him? Yeah.
He was my, the whole time we were doing the movie, he's right over my back going, you get it wrong, son.

Speaker 1 So he was really quite

Speaker 1 an amazing human being in all kinds of ways. He was an animal.
Yeah. What was John Prine like? John Prine, yeah, he was just a sweetheart of a a person.

Speaker 1 You know, really extremely talented.

Speaker 1 Such a, like a pure musician. Yeah.
You know, it wasn't about the fame and fortune for him as much as it was about the music.

Speaker 1 And as a songwriter, I mean, nobody could turn a phrase like him. Kind of by himself in that category.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he never really became. a household name.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but a lot of people know him.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's,

Speaker 1 and his music will go on. I mean, you take somebody like Chris Christopherson, you know, I think that's really kind of the measure.

Speaker 1 You know, I think a song like Bobby McGee, they'll be singing 500 years from now. 100%.
You know? But no one will,

Speaker 1 everyone thinks Janice Joplin wrote it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's okay. She didn't.
Yeah. I particularly like songs that sound like they were written by anonymous.

Speaker 1 You know, a lot of those

Speaker 1 American songs that are like written on the frontier that that's you can do with the

Speaker 1 traditional. Yeah, on it.
Exactly. Did you ever know Willie Nelson? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've played with Willie Nelson, in fact,

Speaker 1 on stage a couple of times. What's he like? He's a very generous man.
And I mean, gosh, what his contribution to music. And he's still doing it, man.
He's still doing it just as great as ever.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's like 90 years old. Yeah.

Speaker 1 In the end, looking back on your life, are you more excited about

Speaker 1 making movies or playing music? Living life. Yeah.
That's what it is for me.

Speaker 1 My autobiography is going to be called My Lucky Life because I've really gotten a chance to do so many kinds of things that I never would have thought I could have done.

Speaker 1 And at this point, you know, my movie career, which has been

Speaker 1 so fantastic,

Speaker 1 so fulfilling, really. I enjoy it so much more now, making movies, because I'm not trying to get anywhere.
I'm not trying to attain something. I'm just doing the things that really interest me.

Speaker 1 And, you know, that keeps the joy

Speaker 1 in life. Of course.

Speaker 1 Do you think that

Speaker 1 in 30 years, Hollywood will still be a creative force?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I really don't know.
It seems to be spreading out.

Speaker 1 You know, we're trying to get Hollywood started in Texas, actually. We're trying to bring filmmaking

Speaker 1 there as an industry, not just as a destination for Hollywood, you know. And I mean, the way it is now, not so many movies

Speaker 1 are made in California anymore anyway. And a lot of the ones that I

Speaker 1 see in the previews, they all look like the same movie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, a few really sneak by there every once in a while. Occasionally.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I just, I've got to ask, got to end it with the question I ask everybody, but I'm just interested, like, where do you see the country in a year?

Speaker 1 In a year? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I've really, I'm really tense about next year,

Speaker 1 election year. It seems that, you know, more than any other time, it's

Speaker 1 everybody's got to like pick a side. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 1 both the Democrats and the Republicans. I'm an independent, by the way, and always have been.

Speaker 1 I voted both ways, you know,

Speaker 1 according to what the pendulum of I thought the country needed, but both sides seem to think that our country is going to be doomed.

Speaker 1 Democracy is going to be over if

Speaker 1 one or the other wins.

Speaker 1 And so how do we get to that place?

Speaker 1 where we can have that transition of power like we did not so long ago, where at least people could tolerate it without having to

Speaker 1 basically have a coup in one way or another, a military coup. We really are,

Speaker 1 I'm afraid of us becoming like a banana republic like that. And we're the United States of America.
We're Americans. Yes.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I do believe,

Speaker 1 I mean, things are a little bit more,

Speaker 1 they're scarier than the word 68. I mean, Kennedy, Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy was shot, Martin Luther King was shot, all the riots, you know, cities were burning.

Speaker 1 We knew who the leaders were back then.

Speaker 1 Now it's just this kind of underground, simmering rage on both sides. And

Speaker 1 I,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 setting aside

Speaker 1 who's right, who's wrong, or whatever, I just think we need to find ways to unite.

Speaker 1 And America's always found a way to unite.

Speaker 1 I mean, things,

Speaker 1 back when they were

Speaker 1 forming the Constitution,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 there was a guy, there was, who was it that caned the other senator, in fact,

Speaker 1 in the chambers.

Speaker 1 It got really bitter.

Speaker 1 It was always about to fall apart.

Speaker 1 It's fragile. And Reagan is right.

Speaker 1 Our democracy

Speaker 1 can be lost in a generation. It only takes a generation to lose it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think we need to educate our kids what a great country this is, and that we're, in spite of our

Speaker 1 way, we don't agree

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 we agree to

Speaker 1 that we're we're Americans.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 God bless us. And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I just like to see cooler heads prevail. Do you feel that there are cooler heads out there? Yeah, I think as individuals,

Speaker 1 we can be.

Speaker 1 In general, we have cooler heads. You know, it's...
I guess it's the mob that,

Speaker 1 whether it be on the right or the left or

Speaker 1 somewhere else yeah you know that

Speaker 1 it's it gets confusing you know very it gets really confusing

Speaker 1 well I hope I see you in a year

Speaker 1 I think I will Tucker I think so too

Speaker 1 either here or in Maine

Speaker 1 it's great to see you thank you

Speaker 1 on that note amen thank you very much for having me