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Ryan Bingham is an actor and musician. See Ryan Bingham and the Texas Gentlemen on tour this year, and look for their next album, “They Call Us the Lucky Ones,” on May 15. https://www.youtube.com/@ryanbingham https://www.ryanbingham.com
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Steven Rinella, American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon
Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
What's happening, man? Good to see you.
Yeah, good to see you, man.
Hold on up to that microphone, sir.
All right.
You were fucking great at that McConaughey thing last year.
I really enjoyed that.
That was my first time seeing you perform live.
It was really cool.
Thank you.
It was very cool.
You're so relaxed up there, man.
So it was like you brought everybody into a nice, like, comfortable, chill vibe.
It was cool.
I'm glad you guys felt that way.
Sometimes it takes me a minute to get into the groove, you know?
Yeah, but it felt like that, you know?
It felt like you were in it.
Like it brought the whole crowd into it, too.
That event that he does, the two events, the one, the singer-songwriter one,
and then the other one with the auction and everything, they're so cool.
Such good events.
Yeah, they're good people, too, you know?
I've really grown to just appreciate the community around here in Austin and
the Hill Country area and all of that stuff.
I definitely wouldn't have the career, I don't think, if I wouldn't have been
for the community around here.
Just supporting songwriters and music in the way that they do, it's pretty
incredible, you know?
When they get behind anything, it's just like, it just feels so good to see
that many people come together and, you know, have that support.
It's a really good place, man.
Austin is a really good community.
It really is.
A very positive place in a lot of ways.
Yeah.
I mean, nothing's perfect.
There's no perfect places, but it's really good.
I like it so much better than when I was living in California.
It just feels like real people.
I miss it, man.
I mean, I'm in the process of moving back to Texas as well.
Where are you at right now?
Outside of Dallas, Texas, out by Tyler.
Okay.
I've been in Topanga Canyon in L.A. for years.
Oh, Jesus.
You know?
So I've been in the middle of it.
Doing that Hollywood thing.
Every time I get across the state line, it's just like that weight comes off.
And you're just like, oh, man, I'm home, you know?
So, yeah.
Dude, you had the coolest fucking character on Yellowstone.
It must be so fun to play.
It was so much fun, man.
I laugh, I always talk about it.
I felt like I had one of the easiest jobs there, you know?
It's because the character was kind of a smaller role.
You know, most of the time I'd work like one or two days a week.
And then the rest of the time I'd just be like fly fishing and get lost in the
mountains
and just disappear out there.
Yeah.
It was awesome.
God, Montana's awesome.
That show made so many people move out there, though.
I know.
You're going to take your license plate off your car before you go.
Right.
You better not have a California plate.
Better not.
They will fucking write things on your hood.
Run you off the road.
Yeah, they get upset.
It's very interesting.
They're very proud to be from Montana and they want to keep it to themselves.
Like, let it go, motherfucker.
We're all Americans.
All right?
If you've got a good spot, you should be happy that people from California
figure it out.
Yeah.
Don't be a dick.
Like, you're American, bitch.
You're not, it's not the United States of Montana.
Shut the fuck up.
I guess it's kind of anywhere, right?
You know?
Not that much here.
Yeah.
Here's pretty inviting.
I've never had that experience here.
Yeah.
Not really.
Texas is a pretty friendly place.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's so many different walks of life that have been here for so long,
you know?
I think up there.
Yeah.
And Montana and stuff, man.
If you were tough enough to survive those winters and stake a claim up there
back in the
day, you had to fight for it.
And they're still fighting for it now, you know?
That does make sense.
I mean, and that's also one of the things that's highlighted by the whole
series, all
the different Yellowstone series, the older ones with Harrison Ford and, you
know, they
really do explain a lot.
I mean, it's kind of a cool chunk of history to see like how this all got
started, how the
kind of people that had to survive out there when, you know, all you had is a
fireplace.
Yeah.
That's it.
You got a fireplace.
You just know.
I love all those mountain men stories, you know, Jim Bridger and all that stuff.
It's just like, man, and there is something.
You get up there in those mountains, they get into, it gets in mountains, get
into your
bones, it gets into your blood and it's a, it's a different thing, man.
I, it's a spiritual place.
It is.
And it's also, it's like the most potent art.
Like it's, it's nature's art and you don't think of it as art, but God, it's so
beautiful.
It's like stunt, like sometimes when you're up there, you just have to stop and
look like,
God, this is gorgeous.
It's overwhelming if you haven't been up there.
It has a, it gives you a feeling.
There's like, it's a, almost like a drug that hits you because of the beauty of
it all.
Like you take it in with the blue sky and you see the clouds and the mountain
and maybe
there's a lake below you in the canyon.
You're like, God, this is gorgeous.
It's like you're, you feel it in your, your DNA, man.
It's like your, your body knows like this is a fertile, beautiful place that's
filled with
life and this should excite you.
So all your natural human reward instincts are all like, this is a place I
should be.
Yeah.
Like, look at the sky, look at the lake, look at the mountains.
This is fertile.
This is like life giving.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Several years ago, um, I went to a guide school up there, like a hunting guide
school.
Hunting guide?
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, it was a whole pack squad.
Part of it, I grew up cowboying and ranching, but I've never really been up
there in those
mountains like that.
And I'm, my dad would always fantasize about that.
We'd talk, you know, one day we're going to go on like a pack trip up in
Montana.
And, you know, we'd watch all those movies like Lonesome Dove and all of that
stuff.
So it was always just kind of a daydream.
And, um, years ago I was just kind of overwhelmed with music stuff and all that
and didn't know
what I was going to do.
And I ended up, I just wanted to go up there for a trip, you know, maybe go on
a pack trip.
And I started looking up places and I found this, uh, place called Royal Tyne
Outfitters.
And they're like, yeah, you know, we'd come up and you can take, take you on a
pack trip
or there, but we also have like this six week school, you know, that you can
train to be
a guide.
It's all a mule pack and all kinds of stuff, you know?
And so I was like, man, I'm going to sign up for that, you know?
And it was life changing.
There's only six of us in the class and, um, you know, spent weeks back in the
back country
packing mules and horses.
Oh, wow.
And we just tie a rope between two trees with a tarp for sleeping at night and
always post
up a couple of guys to watch over the horses at night.
And I remember one morning I woke up and it was in June, you know, but we were
way back
in there and, uh, I woke up and the snow was coming down and I just kind of
raised my head
up and I was looking out at the horses and the snow was just falling down on
their backs.
And there was that moment in me.
I was like, I don't know if I'm ever going back, you know, this is right where,
this is
where I need to be.
Right.
It was, it was tough to come back to a civilization after that.
I think we're doing something with ourselves to ourselves with civilization
that we can't
really fully appreciate because we're wrapped in it.
And it's not until you get to nature where all that weight just gets lifted off
of you and
you feel more normal and you're like, Oh, this is where people are supposed to
be.
Yeah.
You know, no phones.
There's no nothing, no distractions.
And it's just like you, all your senses heightened, your eyesight, your hearing,
your sense of smell,
like all of that stuff.
And, you know, I remember going into it, you know, I didn't know what to expect.
Really.
I've done some camping and things like that and grew up ranching and all that,
but this
was a way different deal.
And I remember I just had this like backpack full of gear, you know, and by the
time I got
out of there, like, I just felt like all I needed was a pair of scissors and
some way to
start some fire.
You know, that was about it.
Yeah.
I follow this one dude.
God, I'm trying to remember his name.
Clay.
Let me, let me pull it up because I really enjoy his, his videos.
But this dude, he lives, I believe he lives in Alaska, but he does a lot of
trips in America,
like all over America in the lower 48.
And he goes and like lives by himself in some kind of harsh environment.
Like he's done it in the swamps.
Clay A's.
That's it.
Does he like take his kid out there?
I believe he has.
He's taken his dog.
But a lot of times he just goes entirely by himself.
And they're very, very interesting.
Like he starts his own fire.
He'll figure out how to get food.
He figures out how to purify water.
He's taken salt water and made his own thing that kind of distills it into
fresh water and
removes the salt.
Yeah.
Like very slowly by using a piece of bamboo and fire and boiling the water in
the bamboo.
So that like the water evaporates and then drips down and it doesn't have salt
in it.
Apparently.
I love that stuff.
I love it.
Just to have those skills, just to know how to do it.
Like whether you'll ever need it or not, just to know how to do that.
It's just so cool.
I remember in that guide school, there's a lot of different parts to it, which
was so cool.
It was like we did a whole week of like back country, like wilderness first aid.
You know, he had a paramedic come in and teach us all this stuff.
And then there was a whole week of just like leather work.
There was a whole week of shoe and horses.
There was fly fishing and entomology and all these just kind of little skills.
But one thing that really stuck with me was a fire building kind of drill when
we started.
It was kind of right when we first got there.
And it was pretty wet and it had been snowing.
And there's only six of us, you know, and we're guys from kind of all over the
country.
And I grew up in New Mexico and West Texas where it's pretty dry, you know, and
you kind of build a fire.
You can kind of just take some little small twigs and get a little fire going,
you know.
And so he goes, all right, you got two minutes to build a fire and you need to
have, you know, like a flame to be three or four feet high.
And man, I'm running around grabbing like little sticks and twigs and I'm just,
we have a lighter too, you know, I'm just struggling.
It's just smoking and they can't get it going.
And I look over and there's a kid from Alaska in the class and he just runs
over to this big dead pine tree and just breaks off the biggest branch of dead,
you know, pine needles and takes his lighter and just within like five seconds
has this massive fire going.
And I was like, okay, that's how you do that, you know, and it was so just the
littlest things, you know, to have that knowledge, you know, and part of it was,
you know, he was explaining to us, the instructor.
He's like, yeah, you know, if you're out here with your guidance, somebody that's
hunting, maybe he's an elderly guy or somebody gets hurt and you get caught
back in the mountains and it's snowing.
I was like, you better get a fire going and keep them warm real quick, you know,
so it was always a, you know, a reason and a purpose behind it, which was
really cool.
And I'll never, those are some of the things I'll never forget.
Did they teach you how to start fires with like a piece of metal and like a flint,
like, you know, what is that, a striking rod?
Yeah, we did some flint stuff and with like the pitch wood from some of the old
pine trees, you know, you can find that pitch wood and we did some bow and wood
drills.
So it's not a whole lot. That fucking shit is hard. It was so hard. I did that
in the Boy Scouts and it took like hours to start a fire.
Yeah. You have to fucking keep sawing. And if you're doing it with your hand,
you're going to blow your hands up.
Yeah. You better get a bow. Get your technique down. You know, you better
practice it.
You got to have the stick on the top and the stick that goes all the way to the
base thing and you cut a little hole in the base thing so that like all the
little embers can fall into your kindling and you got to saw the shit out of
that fucker.
And imagine trying to do that, you know, in the snow or it's wet. Right. It's
like, man, it's just very, very unlikely. You know, what's really good for kindling?
Fritos.
Really? All the oil that's in it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of shocking.
Yeah. We were in Alaska and it was raining all the time.
And there was one day where it stopped. I was with my friend, Steve Rinella,
took me up there with my friend, Brian Cowan and Ryan Cowan and all these guys.
So we went up there and when we got one day, like a 10 hour stretch where it
was not raining, we're like, we got to start a fucking fire because it was
raining every day for like five days in a row and we couldn't find any deer.
It was a nightmare. It was tough hunting. Yeah. So this one day and we were
trying to figure out things to light on fire because everything's soaking wet.
And so we got some pieces of wood from like underneath the bottom of trees and
shit and dead trees that were covered by other things that were kind of sort of
a little bit dry.
And we used Fritos and Fritos when you light them, man, it's crazy how much oil
is in those things.
Yeah. They just and they stay lit for a long time like a candle. Yeah.
And so we started like piling little things. When we got that fire, I was like
the happiest I've ever been in my life.
I bet. Soaking wet.
Just cannot get once you get that kind of cold, too. It's just like there's
almost, you know, nothing to get you wet.
It wasn't that bad cold wise. It was like in the 50s or 60s. Yeah, it was just
the wetness. The wetness was impossible to get away from.
I thought once you get in your tent, you'd be dry. You get in your sleeping bag,
you'd be dry.
But I had to take a piss in the middle of the night and I had to turn on my
headlamp in the tent.
And when I did, it was all just mist. Yeah. Everywhere. It was moisture. And I
was like, oh, my God, I'm never going to be dry.
I had to just accept like there's no drying here. How long were you guys back
in there? About six days.
We had to leave. We were supposed to be there for seven, but we had to leave on
the sixth day because the storm was coming in.
I was like, I could get stuck because you can get stuck up there. Yeah. We were
on, I guess, Prince Edwards. Is that what the island is?
Yeah. You get stuck up there. And I was like, I got to get back home. I got to
work. Did y'all get fly in like on a puddle jumper?
A little bush plane. Yeah. We landed in the pond. And you could drink right out
of the pond. So they had certain windows to get you in and out of there, huh?
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And you could drink right out of the pond. Like the pond
was all rainwater and there was no, it was too high for beavers.
So you didn't have to worry about Jardia or anything in the water. You could
just drink right out of the pond. Like this is crazy.
Yeah. It's the best. I've never been, I've been to Alaska only like in the
winter on a like skiing thing, but I've always wanted to go up there to hunt
and fish.
The people are extraordinary. Those are rugged people. Like when I did a gig
with my friend Ari in Anchorage and one of the things, and it was weird because
you get there, it's 11 PM, it's bright out. Like this is weird.
One of the things that we talked about after was like, those people were
fucking cool. Like there's, there's something about living up there. Like where
you could die going outside like a good six months out of the year.
There's fucking bears everywhere. If you look sideways at a moose, it'll stomp
you to death in a fucking Walmart parking lot.
Yeah. Like it's, it's. You better have your shit together. You better have your
shit together. There's bald eagles everywhere. The salmon are as big as your
thigh.
I mean, the people there are, they work together. There's like, they're very
friendly, but they're very rugged, but they're also like, they realize you need
each other.
Like there's a sense of like community and coolness. Yeah. You need each other.
If your fucking car breaks down the side of the road, you could die.
Like someone's not going to let you die. They're going to pull over. In
California, they're like, someone will get them. They just keep driving. So you
just lose this sense of community.
Yeah. You're not calling, you're not, that's, that's who you're calling for
help in times of need is your neighbor.
Exactly.
I mean, even if like the bridge washes out, it's like, here comes your neighbor
with the backhoe and the tractor and like, you just do it yourself.
And that makes a cool friendship when your friend helps you out or when you
help your friend out.
That's what I miss about living in Texas too. You know, it's just like, just
some of the small things or whatever that you like, even up at my place in Topanga,
you know, you want to build some fence or whatever.
Like I do, I feel lucky. I've got a couple of really good friends up there and
neighbors that, you know, love to come, you know, work with their hands and, or
you get their hands dirty and we'll build stuff.
And like, man, in Texas, you want to like weld something or you need something
with a tractor, some heavy equipment thing, you know, like you're not getting
that done in California.
Right.
It's going to cost you a fortune to, you know, get someone with a skid steer up
to your house to help you move some dirt around, you know, but here in Texas,
it's like, oh man, just call Frank down the road.
There's people that have a long tradition of doing stuff. You know, it's like,
it's a real place.
I grew up like that too. You know, um, you know, people cutting hay and stuff
like that, especially when you're young, like, man, we would go stack hay for
everybody around.
You know, it's like, that was the summer job. You know, it's like, let's just
go.
That makes a strong person. People that throw hay around. Those are strong
mother, like that term, like farmer strength. That shit's real.
Yeah. You better say that. I was always a little guy too. So I had to use some,
learn how to use leverage real quick.
Yeah. Roll those bells up on your knee. I think one of the last times I did
that, I remember is, uh, I was going to school in Stephenville, Texas and had a
good friend over in Glen Rose.
And it was the middle of July and, and he's an older man and asked us to come
help him stack hay in his barn.
And it was, you know, we're stacking it in the barn, you know? So, and it's
just like, you're inside the barn.
It's just hot. It could have been 110 degrees in there, you know? And we're
talking hundreds of bells of hay.
And it was just all we could do. And of course we're hung over and we're, you
know, in college, you know, we're trying to do, we're stacking hay.
And I was like, I think, I think this is my last hay hauling job right now.
Yeah. Those jobs, those are good for letting you know that this is not the life
you want.
Yeah.
Like get a good rugged manual labor job. It'll knock some fucking sense of deal.
That's why I got the guitar, man. I learned pretty quick that the guitar felt a
lot better in my hands than that shovel, dude.
Yeah. I know that feeling. I spent one summer doing insulation in an attic. It
was all that fiberglass insulation.
Oh, man. Yeah. I had it in all my skin.
Yeah. In your nose and your eyes.
Yeah. You're sweating because it's hot and it's the summer so it's getting into
your pores and you're always itchy.
You feel like it's on you all the time. Also, like, it's gotta be terrible to
be breathing that shit in.
Oh, the worst. Yeah.
And I don't even think we were using equipment. I don't think we used any
safety equipment.
Heck no. You didn't have a mask on or anything.
I don't believe so. I think we just installed it. Just unrolled that shit and
stuffed it into the rafters.
Using paint with lead in it.
And then back then the gasoline had lead, too.
So drinking out of the water hose.
Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it makes a resilient person to drink out of
water hose.
Heck yeah. You get tough or die.
You get extra minerals from the fucking copper on the faucet.
Yeah. Those jobs are really important, like, for a young person to figure out
what they don't want to do.
It teaches you work ethic, teaches you, like, hey, like, this is, you can get
some satisfaction out of a hard day's work and a hard week.
Like, you did it. You put it in. You feel good about yourself. You know it was
difficult to do, but...
Don't keep doing that.
Yeah.
Figure out a way out of this.
Yeah.
You got to understand that. You understand it. You got to feel for it. You know
what hard labor is, but don't ruin your life.
Yeah. I feel real grateful. My granddad was always a real hard worker. And even
when I was 12 and 13, you know, in the summers, I spent a lot of time living
with them. And he always had a job lined up for me. You know, it's like, hey,
you're going to go over here and we're going to mow so-and-so's lawn this
morning. And we're going to go over here. We're going to send you out to Ken's.
And you're going to build some fence this weekend.
And I always enjoyed it though. I enjoyed those guys. I was around and, you
know, I'd work all day and then we'd sit around and they drink beer in the
afternoon and tell me stories. And, you know, and even now, like on my own
place, you know, it's like, I don't want to be building somebody else's fence,
but I'm glad I know how to build my own.
You know, or things like that and have those skills. I still love working
around the house and doing little projects and things like that.
I meet a lot of younger guys and kids that sometimes I, I, I guess I have an
expectation that they know how to do that kind of stuff. You know, I want to
come over to the house and help us in projects and stuff.
And I'm like, oh yeah, cool. We'll just, you know, I already dug those holes
and set up a string line and we'll set these posts and they're like, okay.
And then after about a half hour, I look over and they're just kind of looking
up the ground. I'm like, what are we doing here? You know, they're like, I don't
have a clue what you want me to do.
You know, that's hilarious. But, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's wild. It's, it's
changed, man. Kids ain't out there mowing lawns no more. That's for sure.
No. Well, there's something about that kind of work, like putting in fences and
all the stuff that you see the cowboys doing on Yellowstone and then hanging
out together afterwards.
That's so like viscerally appealing to people. There's something about watching
that life. Like it's, you would say it's like a simple, difficult life. Maybe.
I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, it's like, it's so appealing.
Like so many people wanted to be cowboys after they watched your show.
I think it's something goes to like you were talking about that guy living off
the land and stuff like that. It's just, uh, you know, something that's been
ingrained in us over thousands of years of survival.
And like we have, we all have that in us still today and we just unfortunately
lose in touch with it because we're not doing it as much.
And so when you get the opportunity to even just go plant a garden or something
like that, I think that's it. It's in us, you know, and it's a, it wakes up
something within.
That's just been a little bit dormant for a while, you know, and I think you're
right. You know, I think that's exactly what it is.
I think it is like, it's in our memory, like the memory of our genes, that this
is like a pleasing life. This is a satisfying life.
It's like that mama bear energy, you know, kids come. It's just like, oh, it's
like, oh man, you know, yeah, yeah, it's, it's there, you know, and it's just
like, I realized that having kids.
It's just like, oh man, it wakes something up within you. That's always been
there, you know, that you were born to have, you know, that, that survival
instinct and all of those things.
And I, I still, that's what I still love about it. Like I, even at home being
on the road and being in big cities all the time and you're just surrounded
with information and screens, man, as soon as I get home or get outside or get
into nature, it just, it wakes that stuff back up in me.
And it, I feel like it puts that spark back in my eye, you know, I try to stay
in tune with that as much as I can.
Well, it's clearly so appealing to people that don't experience it. I mean, how
many people that are watching shows like Yellowstone never go into those areas,
but they watch it like, oh, I want to live like that.
We see the like prices of horses, it just skyrocketing. Like buying old answers
for like five grand and now it's like 50, 50,000 bucks for, for a trail horse,
you know, which is cool.
You know, I hope people are enjoying that and getting something out, getting
something out of it.
Like, you know, I still, I mean, I'm not running a bunch of cows these days,
but I keep a few horses around and especially for the kids, you know, and
whether they want anything to do with them or not.
Like we enjoy so much in the afternoons, go up and feed them some carrots or
brushing their tails and just being around that energy.
My, my youngest little boy, he's just got, he's got some kind of mojo with
animals, you know, and I've got this old mule and her name's honey and she's
got these big ears and she's massive, you know, and I remember when he was like
three or four, I'd be looking around for him in the backyard and I'd look out
in the pasture and he'd be out there with that mule and she'd have her head
down and he's just out there petting her ears, you know, and just like his
connection with those animals.
And then, you know, getting kids up to the house or that are from the city that
aren't around those animals, their first time around horses or maybe even dogs
and stuff like that.
And you can see they're, they're so anxious or, you know, not maybe so scared,
but this is nervous, you know, this is big animals and stuff.
And within like 20 minutes of just sitting them on their back or petting them
and then you see them relax and you see that energy kind of slow down.
And I just, I love that, you know, I think it's so magical to watch.
Yeah, that's another relationship that's like primal, the relationship between
people and horses.
They do that with addicts.
They do equine therapy where they just have like people that are, they have
like heavy anxiety and depression.
They have them hang out with horses.
I think even me, I still do.
I mean, I get depressed and stuff like that every now and then and I love being
around them.
I can walk out to the barn and just being around them and laying on their backs.
Weird, right?
And it's just like, ah, yeah.
All right, here we go.
Just touching their head makes you feel better.
Like, hey, how are you, honey?
What's happening?
They look at me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I get eye contact with them.
I think it's looking into your soul.
An ancient thing.
I mean, they helped us survive.
We, and you know, and we took care of them.
It's like this ancient relationship.
And then when you're around them, that connection like immediately rebonds, reestablishes.
I think it's in our DNA.
I mean, just think about like how many generations of humans had to survive on
horseback before
anybody invented anything else.
Yeah.
It's like, if you wanted to travel faster than you could run, it had to be a
fucking horse.
Yeah.
So that was probably thousands and thousands and thousands of years just cooked
into our
DNA.
And when you're around them, it's like, ah, my friend, this is my friend.
It's waking it back up.
Yeah.
It's weird.
It's there.
Yeah.
And that nature stuff is in you.
I mean, that's why we like watching shows like this clay guy.
I love that too.
I love that, uh, Steve Rinella show that meat eater.
I like watching that with my kids.
And, uh, uh, aren't you, are you friends with Remy Warren?
Oh yeah.
Real good friends.
He ended up being my neighbor when I was in Montana working on Yellowstone.
Oh really?
Yeah.
And, uh, I, you know, I, I, what I really liked up there was where they filmed
the show,
you know, it was kind of way out there, Southwestern Montana.
And a lot of folks that were working on the show would go back to Missoula on
in the cities.
But I was like, man, I want to go get as far away out there as I can.
And so I kind of went down this West Fork area that's on the, the right on the
edge of
the most massive wilderness areas out there that goes into Idaho.
And, uh, the road I was on, you know, it was paved dirt.
Then it dead ended and it turned into a dirt road.
And then I got this cabin that was just way back up and there was no wifi, no
nothing,
you know, and I just, um, just disappeared out there.
And, um, and ended up meeting some folks.
And Remy was just right down the road, uh, going towards Sula.
And so I got the chance to just go there and hang out with him and go stomp
around the mountains with him.
It's such a cool dude.
It's like Remy's the best.
Just, you know, like you're talking about going to Alaska, you know, I love
going into those places,
but like you want somebody like that with you when you go.
For sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He knows how to get around.
Yeah.
He used to have a great show.
Uh, well, first of all, he, he had solo hunter where he'd go and film
everything himself,
which is so much more difficult than just hunting.
Yeah.
Set up the key would carry tripods with him and shit and set it up and make
sure the,
the cameras on the animal before he would shoot it.
And then film himself, film himself moving up to there, set up different
cameras.
They could show them executing the shot.
I'm like, God, that's so complicated.
And he's a beast, man.
Just trying to keep up with him, you know, just walking around the mountains
with that
guy.
I'm like, oh man, wait up.
I'll be, I'm coming.
Yeah.
They get that mountain cardio.
Yeah.
He's like a mountain goat.
Well, you know, he, he hunts probably 200 plus days a year.
Yeah.
And on top of that, he does a lot of guiding.
And when he's doing guiding, he's like always in the mountains, always hiking.
It's like, you, you just get conditioned to it.
Yeah.
He's fit.
I went to Hawaii with him and did an axis hunt over there.
Cool.
One of the coolest things I ever did.
And, uh, I, I got this buck and we're loading up in the truck and all that.
And he was like, man, I'm going to, uh, I'll meet you guys back at camp.
You know, and it was dark already.
And like, I know, you know, during the day we were hunting, we're just steep
mountains
up and down.
And, uh, I said, you're just going to meet us back.
He's like, yeah, I'll meet you back.
And he just put on his backpack and just took off running.
And we, you know, drove down this mountain road to go back.
And he beat us there by like a half an hour.
And that was his workout though.
He's like, ah, it's part of my workout.
I'll meet, I'll meet you guys back there.
I was like, oh, you're, you're an animal.
That's funny.
Axis deer in Hawaii is very interesting.
Cause they were given, um, to King Kamehameha in like, I don't remember what
year it was.
Find out what year they got introduced there, but they're everywhere now.
Um, I've gone to Lanai a bunch of times.
That's where we went hunting.
Yeah.
It was wild.
There are thousands of them everywhere.
Crazy.
And you're trying to sneak up on a group of 10 and then you don't even realize
there's
like a hundred right here laying down that you didn't even see.
And then they get up and spook the rest and stand.
Well, you know, you've, you've been there.
Okay.
It was in the 1800s, a gift, uh, to King Kamehameha from India.
And, uh, there's 30,000 of them in Lanai and only 3000 people.
Yeah.
I mean, it's crazy.
Weird.
It's the only place where you can go hunting, bow hunting, and you stay at the
Four Seasons.
Right.
I think Remy said he got kicked out of there though.
Cause he, he was hunting so much and you know, like all that red clay there,
you know,
on your boots and stuff.
He said, so the whole hotel was just like red clay everywhere.
Then the fridge is just full of meat, you know, like blood dripping out.
They kicked him out of there?
Oh, I don't know if they kicked him out.
Oh, that's hilarious.
But like, he's like, well, maybe we ought to go find somewhere else to stay,
you know?
Well, just take off your boots before you come inside.
Yeah.
That's all it is.
But yeah, it's that weird red clay.
And it all used to be part of the Dole pineapple plantation.
So when you're around there, one of the things you notice is like there's
layers of dirt, but
then there's like almost looks like plastic bag underneath it.
Like a guard, like a hefty bag.
From all the farming.
Yeah.
So I guess they had a layer of like that kind of whatever the fuck a hefty bag
is made out of.
Whatever that plastic is.
Yeah.
And then the dirt was on top of that somehow.
And then the pineapples would grow up through it.
I always keep moisture and stuff like that in the ground.
Yeah, I would imagine.
But it's disconcerting because it doesn't feel like nature.
It feels weird.
It does.
It's like this is weird.
There's plastic everywhere on the ground.
Yeah.
And then you get in the mountains and like those old World War II turrets and
stuff that
are up there.
Oh, yeah.
Do you come across any of that?
I mean, it's just like, first of all, like hunting Axis deer in Lanai and like
you get
up on the top and you're surrounded by the ocean.
I mean, what a trip, you know?
I know.
You're seeing that and then coming across all those old relics and just all the
history
there.
It's just something to take into.
And we are laughing because obviously they're trying to control the population
of the Axis
deer there.
And I think somebody mentioned like, man, just get a couple of Bengal tigers
out here.
Exactly.
That'll thin out the population.
It's thin out the population of people too, unfortunately.
Yeah.
The thing about them is that they did evolve around tigers.
That's why they're so fast.
Like they'll jump a string faster than any animal I've ever seen in my life.
I have a video of me shooting at an Axis deer at 80 yards and we have a slow-mo
of the arrow.
So as the arrow's coming, it's a perfect shot within 10 yards of him.
He hears it and and he's gone.
It's the craziest thing.
Like you look at it, you're like, how the fuck did he move that fast?
This thing's going at least from the actual like leaving the bow.
It's going 275 feet per second.
Yeah.
And he can get out of there within 10 yards.
Within 10 yards.
He's hearing it coming.
And he's like, see ya.
Yeah.
And nowhere near him.
Like it, he was a foot in front of, it was a, the arrow landed a foot behind
his ass.
Jeez.
That's how fast they move.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
How long did you go there for a while or just kind of like a few times trips?
Yeah.
Um, we found that the best time to hunt is actually in the afternoon because in
the afternoon it's
really windy.
And when it's really windy, it covers your sound a little bit.
Okay.
The morning's rough.
Yeah.
The morning's rough.
Like the morning, I got a couple of them in the morning, couple of times
morning hunting,
I got a deer, but it's a lot of blown stalks.
You got to walk super slow.
You got to be real cautious.
And again, there's a lot of high brush and you don't know where the fuck they're
hiding.
Yeah.
You got to kind of find a pinch point.
Yeah.
You jump one and then the rest of them sound off the way they bark and all of
that.
That's pretty crazy too.
Weird.
It's weird noise.
What you got to kind of do is like find where they're going to be and just wait
because
they travel so much.
They do so much moving.
You think I'm just going to go, you know, still hunt and spot and stalk and I'll
find one.
You're almost better off just staying put.
Yeah.
Just staying put and wait for them because they're moving all over the place.
There's so fucking many of them.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
But it's amazing how unsuccessful people are bow hunting them.
Mm-hmm.
Rifle, it's a done deal.
Yeah.
If you want meat, and it's the best meat in the world.
It's so...
For the people that live there, it's incredible.
I mean, they have access to the best meat in the world.
100% they're going to get a deer.
And so if you have a...
But if you have a bow, we went there and then...
So I went with Remy.
I went with John Dudley, Cam Haynes, and Adam Greentree.
They're like all seasoned bow hunters.
Yeah.
Everybody got a deer and we made a podcast about it.
We had a good old time.
They had 150 people go over the next year and one was successful with a bow.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Take your chances.
Yeah.
That's how hard it is.
Yeah.
Because it's like these fuckers are...
They're dialed in, man.
And they move...
A lot of people chasing them, too.
Yeah.
They know the game, right?
365 days a year they get hunted.
There's no season.
Yeah.
And then they have snipers that are after them at night because, you know, they
use it for
meat for the restaurants and meat for people and they just have to control the
population.
There's so many of them and no predators.
Yeah.
And still can't thin them out, right?
I know.
It's crazy.
I think they got a good head start.
They eradicated them from the Big Island.
Oh, did they?
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
Somebody tried to reintroduce them or introduce, I should say, to the Big
Island and they're
like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We know where this is going.
He's going to destroy people's crops and destroy people's gardens.
Just take over.
And they already have plenty of wild pigs on the Big Island, so they just, they
whacked them
all, unfortunately.
It's kind of like the pigs here in Texas, right?
Crazy.
And it got wild.
I don't know.
You know, growing up here when I was younger, I never remember them being like
how they are
now.
They don't stop.
They have three or four litters a year.
And each litter has, I think they can have as many as six piglets.
It's crazy.
They just, and they can get pregnant six months old.
At six months old, they can get pregnant and they're ready to rock.
Yeah.
And they're just spitting out pigs.
And just tearing, tearing shit up.
Yeah.
I, we have a lease out here for a hunting land, me and some of my friends.
And the amount of pigs is disturbing.
It's like, you hear them everywhere.
You hear them in the bushes.
They're all over the fucking place.
It's like most of Texas, probably that's not like city has wild pigs in it.
It's just like taking over, man.
And it's all came over on boats.
Yeah.
That's how it all got here.
Is that how they all got?
Yeah.
It's important to men.
Yeah.
Guys from Europe, they brought boats in the boats.
Some of them brought pigs and then they let them loose.
It's crazy, man.
Tearing stuff up.
Yeah.
I don't ever remember them being as bad as they were in the last 15 years or so.
It's actually bad in California too.
And California has them from William Randolph Hearst.
Well, didn't they take, didn't they like eradicate them off the Channel Islands
out there?
I think so.
They, I think the islands and they had mule deer on some of the islands out
there too, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I forget which island had mule deer, but apparently they had like a, like you
could go hunt on one
of these islands.
Yeah.
I think you, I think you might still be able to like on Catalina or a couple,
but maybe
not Santa Cruz.
Do they really allow those to?
They did.
Cause I know my, uh, my buddy, Matt, he did it like maybe the last year or the
year before,
but I think they're trying to put a stop to it and kind of stop it.
I was, those Channel Islands are pretty interesting.
I remember first moving out there, even just going out there 15 years ago and,
um, seeing
the islands out there, you know, and I'd ask people all around, I was like, man,
what's
the deal with these islands out there?
And half the people that I would talk to be like, what are you talking about
islands?
And I'm like that island right out there.
They're like, Oh, I thought that was long beach.
You know, I'm like, really?
I was like, have you looked at a map?
You know, I love maps.
So I started, you know, doing some research and figuring out all about it.
And, uh, they're really cool.
And over the years I've met some really, uh, cool guys go out there a lot and
spearfish
and just to go out there to them.
And besides Catalina, like Santa Cruz and San Miguel and then, you know, they're
all like
nature preserves and protected.
So it's like going back in time when you get out there and, uh, uh, I love it
out there.
It's such a, such a cool spot.
Did they try to, are they trying to eradicate deer from Catalina?
I think I've read something about that.
Let's see if that's true.
I think they were trying to remove the deer because they said the deer were non-native
to
the island.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's what they did with, uh, with the hogs.
And I don't know.
There's like an, a specific island fox out there.
Yeah.
Here it is.
As of early 2026, California officials have approved a controversial plan to
fully eradicate
the non-native mule deer population on Santa Catalina Island to restore the
ecosystem.
Around 2000 deer introduced in the 1930s for hunting will be removed by ground-based
hunters
to protect native biodiversity.
Come on.
That sounds crazy.
How about just let people hunt them?
What's wrong with you?
Yeah.
Um, so the issue is Catalina Island Conservancy considers the mule deer an
invasive species
that disrupts the ecosystem as they consume native plants and seedlings while
spreading fire-prone,
invasive grasses.
Really?
I have, uh, I just always worry about conservancies and their, their judgments
on things like
that because there's a lot of, they want to eradicate all the pigs from Texas
or from California,
rather.
They think of them as non-native and they want them out too, but you're not
going to.
They want to eradicate the, uh, there's like elk in California that are Yellowstone
elk that
were brought there in like the 1950s.
They want to eradicate them.
Like the, like the Thule elk?
No, they're actually, they're actually Rocky Mountain elk.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, but they're, they're a larger breed of Rocky Mountain elk.
They're called yellow.
Apparently.
Like in the Sierras or down along the coast and stuff.
Tachapi.
Tachapi, yeah.
Up in that area in those mountains.
Um, big fucking elk, like 400 inch elk.
Like a couple of those elk out there that are in the front.
That's what they're from.
That's from there?
Those are massive.
Yeah.
Tohone Ranch.
Okay.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, it's like going up over the grapevine.
Exactly.
That's where you got those?
Uh huh.
Wow.
I had no idea that they were that big out there.
It's all, it's the biggest private ranch in California.
It's like 270,000 acres.
I've heard of the ranch, but I didn't know that they had elk like that up there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the rare places.
Gorgeous fucking place.
But, uh, they also go up.
It's kind of funny.
They go up to, um, there's a golfing community, uh, higher up in Tachapi and,
um, the elk just
hang out on the golf course, like giant elk, like 400 inch elk, just chilling,
hanging out
together on the golf course and dudes are playing golf.
That's wild.
While they're lying down next to them, like 20 yards away.
It's crazy.
I've seen, I saw some one time I was driving up the coast.
I think I was going up to San Francisco to play a gig and, uh, maybe they're
the Tule elk.
I'm not sure what they were, but I was along the coast there and I looked over
in the field
and there was like 30 head of them just laying down over there.
I'm like, oh man, I didn't even know there were elk down here.
It's just, I love seeing, uh, wildlife that in unexpected places, you know?
Yeah.
They recently just found a wolf in Los Angeles.
They're unexpected for me anyway.
Oh really?
Yeah.
See, see if you can find the story about that wolf that they just discovered in
Los Angeles.
There's a mama, a mama bear, black bear with three cubs running around in Topanga.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
There's a lot of those.
A lot of lions running around.
Um, there's a lot of, uh, a lot of bears.
Yeah.
I've seen them in Pasadena and people's pools.
Mm-hmm.
I knew there was a bunch out in Pasadena and like Glendale.
Look at this.
Wolf detected in Los Angeles County for the first time in more than a century.
Crazy.
Isn't that nuts?
Yeah.
You guys can fucking travel.
I had a lady on who was a wolf biologist and she was talking about like the,
you know,
they'd call her some of these wolves and they would track them.
They would go 500 miles.
Yeah.
Like it's kind of insane.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
That's incredible.
Well, that's how they learned about them.
It's really the only way to tell is to like put a collar on them and track them
by GPS.
Mm-hmm.
And you know, they mean, they're extraordinary animals.
Like where were the, where were they originating from in, in Montana, Wyoming?
And how, where were they going?
The ones that they're tracking.
I think the ones that they were tracking were the part of the group that was
brought in,
you know, in the 1990s.
Mm-hmm.
You know, so there was that pack in the subsequent packs that came after that.
There were all the reintroduced wolves.
Mm-hmm.
And so they would, you know, dart and collar some of them.
And when they would do that, they would just track their motion.
They're like, Jesus.
They're covering some ground.
They're covering some ground.
They're covering some ground.
And it's interesting too, that they actually make mountain lions kill more deer.
They're competing with them.
Yeah.
Because the mountain lions kill a deer and then the wolves will steal it.
Oh, okay.
So they'll come up on the mountain lion and they'll surround them.
And the mountain lion will go, fuck this, I'm out of here.
Yeah.
And he'll just go kill another deer.
So he doesn't even get a chance to eat his deer because the wolves keep
stealing his deer.
They keep tracking the lions.
Yeah.
Probably just following them around.
They're smart, man.
Let them do the dirty work.
Yeah.
They do.
They let them do the dirty work and then they steal their food.
Work smarter, not harder, huh?
What does it say?
The wolf that they found?
Yeah.
This is from February when they first spotted it.
Mm.
So the wolf was born in 2023.
Plumas County's, where's Plumas County?
It's traveled more than 370 miles.
Wow.
Including crossing State Route 59 near Tachapi.
There you go.
Yeah.
They had one up in Tachapi, too, that a buddy of mine.
It was actually closer to the city that's down there.
What is that fucking city?
Bakersfield?
Bakersfield.
Exactly.
Wildlife officials now estimate at least 60 wolves live in the state.
Wow.
One crossed over in 2011.
Wow.
From California, from Oregon.
So they find them in the Tachapi Mountains.
Interesting.
Biologists told newspapers that she could encounter a mate in the nearby
regions such as Tachapi Mountains,
potentially forming a new pack or continue to roam.
What was that picture you just had of the elk?
Yeah.
That's that golf course.
Look at that.
Giant fucking elk chilling on the golf course.
Clashing.
On the flag.
Yeah.
Look how beautiful that is.
God, so pretty out there.
Massive elk.
Oak tree country club.
Perfect sanctuary for them, right?
Oh, yeah, man.
And it's just, it adds to the coolness of playing golf.
I mean, you're playing golf around giant, beautiful animals.
I bet those greens keepers love them though.
They probably fuck up all kinds of things out there.
Yeah.
The wolf thing is interesting because they just brought them back to Aspen and
they did a really
stupid thing.
They brought them into an area where it has a lot of livestock and they brought
them in from
a place in Oregon where these wolves had all been captured because they were
killing agriculture.
Yeah.
So what did they do?
They captured them and they dropped them off in Colorado where they started
killing cows again.
In the National Park.
They just do it.
Well, it's on people's, my friend's ranch.
One of them, they dropped three wolves off on my friend's ranch.
That's tough, man.
Who are you so mad?
I've heard that even with the bears and stuff, you know, you get some problem
bears or whatever
and then they go and drop them out where the farmers and ranches are living.
It's like, man, how's that going to work?
Well, it's the people in charge of these things and making these decisions.
They don't understand what they're doing.
They're monkeying around with wildlife, nature, biology, and you don't know
what you're doing.
Yeah.
You have no idea.
Also, like, how the fuck do you in good conscience take a wolf that's used to
killing cows
and put them around other people's cows?
Yeah.
That's it.
It's already programmed, man.
The dinner bell is ringing.
It knows exactly how to do it.
It knows it's easy.
They're all fenced in.
They taste delicious.
Why would it stop?
Yeah.
Why would it go chase tougher prey, right?
Now, these poor ranchers have to have people monitoring their cows 24/7.
They have to have cowboys up all night that are wandering around and on horseback
and just
looking for wolves.
I mean, it's a disaster.
It's tough.
They've killed dozens of cows.
And these are folks that, you know, have been, like, surviving on this land for
generations
and dealing with that and, you know, have a history with managing that stuff.
You know, it'd probably be the folks I'd want to ask.
Yeah.
Is how to handle it, you know?
Well, they would certainly tell you, don't let the wolves in.
Yeah.
And if you do, kill them.
You know, but now it's gotten to the point where I think they're going to have
to do something
about them.
Will they set a hunting limit on them?
You think?
Honestly, that would probably do something, but really what you should do is
hire someone
to recapture them and don't drop them off there.
Don't drop them off in fucking Aspen, you idiot.
Because they're going to eat people's poodles, too.
They don't give a shit.
If they run out of cows, if somehow or another ranchers scare them away from
the cows and they
make it into the town of Aspen, you don't think they're going to eat your
golden retriever?
They're going to eat all kinds of dogs.
Yeah.
They eat dogs in Alaska all the time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I hear a lot of those, like the lions and stuff, man.
They're coming after your kids.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That Malibu Creek Park.
You know, I've heard a couple of incidents there, you know, hit.
It's like, man, they're going to go eat something.
Especially when they're old.
Yeah.
When they get old.
Mm-hmm.
And they can't catch a deer anymore.
Yeah.
And they're hungry and they haven't eaten in a few days.
And then they see a kid hanging around a little too close to the outside of the
woods.
Mm-hmm.
I got a big one that comes right by my house.
I got a little game trail camera set up and I got a little fountain right in
the front.
It doesn't come around when I'm there because we got the dogs, you know, a lot.
But whenever I'm out of town for weeks at a time, I'll come back and that
sucker's just laying on my front porch.
Whoa.
Just massive.
And then the other day, a friend of mine was taking the trash out.
And it was like around lunchtime and it jumped over the fence into the driveway
and had a dead rabbit in its mouth.
Just looking at her, you know, and she's like.
Holy shit.
They're there, you know.
So every time I'm even walking around by myself or with the dogs, you're just
like, man, that sucker just be in a tree looking at me right now.
Yeah.
You're just living with monsters.
Yeah.
Whoo.
You're there.
California spent more than a hundred million dollars trying to make a bridge
over, I forget which freeway it is.
I think it's the 101 then.
Is it the 101?
I think you're right.
So they spent over a hundred million dollars and it's still not done.
Oh my gosh.
For a bridge, a bridge for the mountain lions.
Like you fucking dorks.
Oh, it's like this idea of like it's going to be a bridge, but it's going to
have dirt and grass on it.
So it'll encourage them to walk across so they don't have to go over the
highway and die.
Is it nicer than the roads we're driving on?
Yeah.
Well, a hundred and ten million dollars is crazy and it's still not even done.
Look at this.
Look at it.
It's so crazy.
Yeah.
So that's what it, early 2026.
Oh yeah.
It's like going up to Ventura, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they want to have this, this big dirt mound and this bridge so the animals
can get across the highway.
But it's just like, it's so goofy.
And they never want people to do anything about the population of mountain
lions, regardless of how out of control they are.
They don't do anything about it.
They have to hire people.
The state has to hire people to go and get the bad mountain lions, the ones
that are problems.
Yeah.
And when they capture them, one of the things they find out is they actually
kill them, right?
So one of the things they find out when they examine their diet, it's like 50%
pets.
Yeah.
50% dogs and cats.
That's what your mountain lions are eating.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
And they spend money, like a lot of money going after these mountain lions.
And instead they could make money by letting people hunt these mountain lions
and giving them tags and control the numbers.
In that place, Tejone Ranch, one of my buddies works there.
And they have a trail camera set up on a pond and they found 16 different cats
that were drinking out of that pond.
Oh my gosh, that's insane.
I was like, when I first started going out there too, the coyotes, you know,
and even around like in Hollywood and stuff.
Yeah.
I was like, man, I swear I just saw a coyote running down the street with a
pair of sunglasses on and a gold chain.
Eating better than any of us.
When I went there in 94, that was the first time I ever saw a coyote.
I couldn't believe it.
I was staying at the, you know, they have those furnished apartments, the Oakwood
furnished apartments.
Oh, no, not really.
It's like temporary.
Okay.
Like for people that are like, don't have a house yet and you got to move to
California quick.
They have this place called Oakwood's and you go in there.
It's already got a couch.
It's already got a TV.
It's already got a bed.
You're like, okay.
Like an Airbnb type of thing.
Yeah, almost like you just move in.
Yeah.
And I was driving up to the entrance to the place and I see these little dogs
on the street.
I was like, what the fuck is going on?
He's dog.
That ain't no dog.
I was like, oh my God, they're coyotes.
Like this is weird.
And so this is like 94.
I had never seen a fucking coyote.
I never even heard of a coyote being out just wandering in the street.
I just couldn't believe it that they just wander around on the concrete.
Man, they're everywhere.
I feel like I've seen more there than anywhere.
You see them more in town than you do anywhere else.
Yeah.
Well, they have large populations of them in downtown where they know where
they den up.
They den up in certain warehouse buildings.
Okay.
Like abandoned buildings and under bridges and freeways and stuff.
Yeah.
They live there.
They probably keep the rat population.
Nature will take back over one day, won't it?
Exactly.
Yeah.
I think they probably keep the rat population in check though.
Yeah.
If you think about it.
Yeah.
I keep a lot of other things in check too.
Right.
Cats.
Well, there's a terrible video from Woodland Hills a few years back where a guy
was unloading
his car and his toddler was out there in the grass.
I saw that.
Yeah.
And the coyote grabbed his toddler and tried to run away with his kid.
Yeah.
I saw that, man.
I, you know, I'm always watching around for stuff.
And with my, our kiddos are just people around the neighborhood and stuff.
You got to remind, remind yourself, you know, they're, they're there and they're
not scared
of you.
You know, they're not afraid.
I remember the, one of the first times, um, I went up to Ojai, just north of,
uh, LA
there, you know, and I just wanted to go up there and go hike around and check
out the
area.
And, uh, those, uh, an archery shop up there and had this old guy kind of
looked like Charlie
Daniels, just big overalls, big old beard, you know, and I walked in there and
just to
check out the shop and also just ask him about, you know, some areas to go stomp
around.
And, and I had a, uh, uh, uh, Australian shepherd dog at the time.
And, uh, just asking where, you know, good places go stomp around.
He said, yeah, you know, you go up there.
He goes, but I wouldn't take your dog with you.
I was like, really?
Why?
And he's like, man, those lions are real deal up here.
You know?
And he's like, you, he goes, you won't see them, you know, until they're on you.
Yeah.
And I just, you know, I knew they're lying to stuff like that.
But hearing it from, from that guy, you know, maybe he's trying to scare me a
little bit,
but you know, there's, I, it's, uh, it's real deal.
It's real.
It's real.
And they try to downplay it because the, all the wildlife lovers, all the greenies,
they
don't want you like selling the alarm and killing them.
Yeah.
But their goal is to have zero hunting.
Their goal is to have all the animals just balance each other out.
Ain't gonna happen.
You can't, it's not.
Not with humans in the mix.
No, the humans have interrupted that whole idea.
Right.
So if you've got a city and then you've got wild giant predators, like 170
pound cats that
are killing dogs and they're like, you gotta control them.
Can't manage one without managing the other.
Right.
And so the first wet, the first thing they did to stop people from doing it is
they banned
hunting with dogs.
So if you ban hunting with dogs, guess what?
You basically, you're killing most of the hunting.
Cause the reality of mountain lions is you can't find them.
They're really hard to find, really hard to catch, really hard to find.
And the best way to control their population is to treat them.
And you get dogs to treat, cause that way, you know, if it's a tom or if it's a
female,
you know, if it's mature, you know, what size it is.
You have a really accurate estimation.
You can look up at it.
Oh, that's a mature tom.
Yeah.
That's what we're looking to kill.
And then you can control their population.
Yeah.
That's the only way.
Same with bears.
It's a great way to control bears.
Yeah.
See what it is and decide if it needs to go or if it needs to stay.
Right.
Yeah.
But they do little things to stop the effect of hunting first.
So, California, you can still hunt for black bears, but you can't use dogs
anymore.
And so, as soon as they stopped the use of dogs, the amount of black bears they
harvested
went way down.
Yeah.
So, the amount of bears in the population went way up.
Yeah.
I don't think they've, I mean, I know they've been around in Pasadena a lot,
but I don't
think there's been one in Topanga for a while.
I mean, I've been up there, shoot, almost 15 years and hadn't heard of one.
This is the first time that one's kind of made it over into that area that I
know
of anyway, maybe up, you know, around the Malibu Creek and those state parks.
But, uh.
In Topanga, there's probably people feeding them.
Oh, 100%.
Yeah.
I've got berries for you, my friend.
Yeah.
Come.
Giving them weed.
Some berries.
Topanga is great, but it's always sketches me out of a fire catches.
Oh, man.
We got hit hard last year, as you know, the Palisades stuff.
And man, I didn't, that was kind of it for me too.
I was like, I'm out, you know.
It's terrifying.
Yeah.
I've evacuated out of there several times over the years, but, um, I've got
horses up
there now and stuff like that.
And luckily I had like a, uh, I always keep a big truck and a trailer just in
case.
And I've got some friends down in Burbank that have some stables, you know,
that I'll
have like as a backup plan.
And, uh, but this was just a different deal.
So I, as a crow flies, I could see the smoke from the Palisades, you know, it's
like a
mile away.
And we were actually working in our arena there and smoke came up and I was
like, shoot, let's
just go.
Every time I see the smoke, like, I don't wait.
I'm just like, we'll be the first ones out and beat the, beat the mad rush of
everybody
that's going to decide to try to stay and loaded up the trailer and the truck
and the camper
and the dogs and all that stuff.
And I was like, let's go.
And, uh, my wife and I went down to Burbank and I remember we were driving
through the night
and the wind was just howling.
Like I've never seen before.
And power lines are snapping and it's just like trees are coming down and it
just felt like
the end of the world, you know, and, uh, we get to Burbank and we pull back in
these stables
and there's a kind of a big cinder block wall.
And I just got as close to that as I could because it was blocking the wind,
you know,
from hitting us.
And the next morning I woke up and I just, my throat was sore and hurt and I
could hardly breathe.
And I opened the camper door and the Altadena fire had started and it was right
there.
And so it was just a mountain of black smoke coming over the top of us there.
And, uh, so like, let's go and let's get out of here.
Let's like head north.
And I had some friends in Moore Park, you know, up in that area going towards
Ventura that had horses,
trying to find some places to go with some horses.
And, uh, they're like, yeah, come on up here.
So we went up there, stayed there a night, and then they cut all the power off
up in that area
because the winds were snapping power lines and they were worried about fires.
And, and, you know, after doing that a few nights and I was like, let's just
head east and go to Texas, you know?
There's always so, so many friends.
You can like show up with five horses and a bunch of dogs, you know, like, hey,
we're gonna stay for a while, you know?
Especially in California.
Yeah, we're like, let's just get out of here, uh, and headed back.
And you didn't know when we were gonna make it back and they, you know, closed
indefinitely or whatever.
I was just like, man, I'm, I'm over it.
I got evacuated a bunch of times when I lived there, but the last one was, uh,
2018.
And, uh, when the last one we got out early, I came home from the comedy store
and we saw fire coming over the top of this hill.
And it was probably like one o'clock in the morning and me and my wife were
sitting there.
I go, what do you think?
And she's like, let's get the fuck out of here.
Like, let's get the fuck out of here.
Let's just grab some shit.
And maybe it'll come this way.
Maybe it won't.
So it didn't burn the house down, but my neighbors, the front front front.
Three neighbors all lost their house.
And my next door neighbor, his, his roof caught on fire.
But my friend who refused to leave, he stayed in the neighborhood and protected
his house and guided firefighters.
He brought the firefighters to that house and showed them that it just started
on this guy's roof and they hosed it down.
They stopped it in his tracks, but it was pretty fucking bad.
But it's wild because you know, it's going to burn and it's not a matter of,
you know, if it's just when.
And I mean, that's, that's canyons have been burning like that for thousands of
years.
And even the Chumash, we're setting them on fire on purpose to get ahead of it.
Right.
And control and all of that stuff.
And now there's just so many houses and communities back up in there.
It's, that's just a, it's a tough thing, but when they, when they hit, man, it's,
they just, they're rolling through how fast they come through.
And those Santa Ana winds are blowing like that.
And it's just very surreal in person.
You can watch it on the news and you kind of get a feeling of it, but when you're
there and you're driving down the 101 and you look at the side of the highway
and you see like these hills in the distance that are just covered in fire.
Hundreds of yards of fields of fire, just making their way over the top of this
hill and burning houses.
And we saw it when the, the palace, you know, the palisades thing was start,
you know, from our house, there's kind of a little mountain that comes up on
the back and I hiked up there and was watching it and you could see the smoke.
And then you could like start seeing little flickers of the flames.
And then it was just like somebody dumped gasoline on this thing.
And I mean, the flame shot up hundreds of feet into the air.
And, uh, my wife was on the balcony, you know, the house and I'm kind of up on
this little mountain.
I'm looking over, looking in her eyes.
I'm like, start packing up.
I'll go hook up the horse trailer.
I'll be upset.
Let's load up and just, and you know, the wind was blowing, uh, like offshore
then, you know, so the fire is like all on the coast, you know, and just
depending on where that, how that wind is blowing, you know, at the beginning
it was blowing offshore.
And then within a half an hour, it just shot up the coastline and just ripped
up through Malibu and burned all that coast.
Like that's the stuff that you always thought was the safest.
Right.
You know?
Yeah.
And then the next day the wind shifts coming back on shore and it blows it back
towards Burbank, you know, going back up like the fourth up that way.
And then the winds are shifting again and then coming back across, you know, so
I was amazed at the, through some of the fires that I've been through, seeing
the firefighters up there.
Those guys are incredible, man.
Those helicopter pilots, the airplane pilots, seeing those tankers fly through
there.
I mean, it's just incredible what those guys can do.
I mean, if it hadn't, I mean, they, they saved that whole Canyon, you know, Topanga
at least, you know, it's like, man, there's so much brush in there that
probably needs to burn.
It's been accumulating over years, you know, and cutting those fire breaks and
seeing them drop the retarded on the ridge lines and stuff and watching the
wind.
It's just like, man, hats off to those guys.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, think about the amount of damage that was done in that fire and how
much more would have been done if it wasn't for the firefighters.
That's how crazy it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
And I met one of the helicopter pilots.
I was on a flight somewhere and we just happened to be sitting next to each
other and we were talking about it and just, you know, learning from him, you
know, about, you know, the thermals that come up from underneath and trying to
hold those helicopters and, you know, in formation and all of that stuff and
how heavy they are when they're full.
Right.
And then as soon as you release all that water, whatever's in them that, you
know, all of a sudden that the power that they got, you know, throttles, full
throttle, you know, when they're loaded down and then they drop all that water.
And then, you know, trying to get back a hold of it.
And, you know, I never even thought of that.
And then you got, then you got 90 mile an hour winds blowing and, you know, and
I could see them from the house, you know, there'd be like two or three
helicopters that would come in, start dropping water and then they would move
out.
And then they would move out and then the tank, the planes would come in and
then helicopters back in.
And then you had the guys on the ground, you know, trying to contain it as well.
Just the, the coordinated effort between them.
You know, I can imagine the conversations there.
Yeah.
Hey man.
It's so crazy that they didn't have the reservoirs ready.
Oh, dude.
It's so sad.
It's, I had Spencer Pratt on, you know, he's running for mayor now.
He was explaining it, like how bad it was.
Yeah.
How do you fuck that up that bad?
It's devastating to hear that.
It's like, you know that that stuff's coming.
Yeah.
You know, to not be prepared for that.
It's just unacceptable.
Incompetence.
Yeah.
Just complete total incompetence.
And yet they still are there.
Yeah.
Like you, you're definitely not good at the job.
Gosh.
And yet you don't take any personal responsibility and blame everybody else.
And the problem, it's just fucking, it's a problem that happens every few years.
Like you're going to get fires, period.
The fact that you don't have a full reservoir is crazy.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
You should dump all your resources into fixing that fucking reservoir stat.
Get that shit filled up.
I feel like the residents are more prepared than anybody.
Yeah.
You know, cause I think they just got to where they, you can't depend on it,
you know?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I know our neighbors and stuff have a pretty good program in place.
We all get together and talk about, you know, who's got fire hoses and swimming
pools with
access to water and where, you know, evacuation plans or, you know, there's
some folks that
will have horses, but they don't even have a horse trailer up there.
And, you know, I'm like, okay, I'll come get yours too or whatever, you know,
you know,
we, we need to do.
And, um, you kind of just have to have that mentality, I think, you know?
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
It's, you know, what's really freaking me out about like the Palisades is what
is in the
ground now?
You know, like how much toxic shit got melted into that ground?
Because think about how many people have electric cars now.
Well, all the house, those old houses too.
You know what I'm talking about?
Right.
You know, the materials that they're made out of, asbestos or lead.
I mean, the stuff, the stuff in the air that was, even if you, you know, you
were several
miles away from the actual fires, the, the wind and blowing all the ashes and
the smoke
and all that stuff over.
Um, I remember going back up in there, you know, weeks and just trying to get
stuff out
of the house or whatever, when they'd let us back up and you could still, it
would just
make your throat hurt, you know, breathing that air and stuff.
So it's bad stuff.
It's not just wood fire.
Yeah.
No, no chemicals.
Yeah.
Wood fires hard enough, but the chemicals burnt TVs and computers and hard
drives and electronics
and refrigerators treated lumber.
Yeah.
All that shit's going to get in your groundwater.
Like it's, it's, it's on the surface.
It's going to rain.
It's going to seep through.
Like what happens to the water?
Is anybody checking the water out there?
No, you got to imagine.
I doubt it.
Especially like Topanga.
I bet a lot of folks have wells.
Don't you think?
I think there's some, you know, it's definitely all like on septic up there too,
you know?
Right.
All of that building code stuff's got pretty crazy up there.
I don't know.
I would just, it's a mess.
I would just worry about even breathing the air that has the dust of all that
shit in it.
Mm-hmm.
Like I probably wouldn't want to live there anymore.
If, if I was in a place where all the houses burnt to the ground and I knew
there was toxic shit in the ground, I'd be like, hey, let's get the fuck out of
here and sell our house to China.
Oh man.
Because that's the other thing Spencer said.
They're the ones who are the number one land buyers.
All right.
It's China.
Is it going to be a, is it going to be a golf course resort up there before we
know it?
Who knows?
Yeah.
Or affordable housing.
Yeah.
One or the other.
I don't know either.
I don't know, but it's just, I, I really wonder what the longterm damage of all
those chemicals in the ground is.
It has to be pretty high.
Gotta be, you know, I don't know.
You know, I was talking to some friends of mine out the other day that have
grown up there, lived out there their whole lives and, you know, going over the
Channel Islands, you, you know, they've got those oil platforms out there in
the water and there's been oil spills obviously throughout there through
history.
And, um, but also like when you're surfing and stuff like that, there's oil
that's been on top of the ground.
It's just like, so surface level.
It's been there for millions of years, you know?
Right.
And so, I don't know, you know, it's like, I'm sure all the toxic stuff that
happens, how long does it take for it to dilute, you know?
Right.
There's not much rain or the wind or like what, you know, I'm not an expert on
it, but I, I feel like mother nature takes pretty good care of herself.
You know, we're, we're the ones in trouble, right?
Right.
Mother nature will sort it out over time, but I just don't know how good it's
going to be for the people that live there.
It can't be, it can't be the long term, you know?
I have a buddy that has a house out there and he lost his house and burnt down
and I asked him about it and he said, I think what they're going to do is take
all the dirt out of their backyard and then replace the dirt.
And I'm like, okay, I don't know if that's enough.
Yeah.
Because what about his dirt?
What about your neighbor's dirt?
What about the, all the toxic shit that's in his dirt that's going to get down
into your ground as soon as it rains?
Yeah.
And also the air.
Along with all the roundup and everything else is coming down.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, it's, it's just, it's, it's sad, man.
You know?
It's sad.
That's just the kind of state of it.
It's like, it's, it seems like just, it's so far of a mess that even the folks
that do have answers that do want to fix stuff, it just kind of becomes
impossible for, for any solution.
You know, it's like all the red tape and all the hoops and things and all the
permits or whatever, like you can't even, you know, the roads blocked.
Okay.
Well, before we could even get somebody out here with a tractor to move the
rocks, you got to call 10 other people to get it approved and in the process.
And then it's not, and it's like, that's the part.
I'm just like, man, I wish I could just call Frank down the street with his
bulldozer.
We'll just go, we'll just go and move this right now, you know?
And it's like, you know?
Well, government has increased so much in California and they just want more
regulations so they could justify more government.
And so they just regulate themselves to a place where people just want to leave.
Yeah.
They just go, look, I can't fucking do this anymore.
Let me get out of here.
And it's expensive, man.
It's so expensive to live there.
Yeah.
Meanwhile, it's beautiful.
It's such a great place.
They fucked it up so hard.
It's paradise.
It's paradise.
The mountains within like two, three hours, you can be in the Sierras.
You can be in Joshua Tree National Park.
You can go skiing and then swim in the ocean on the same day.
It's gorgeous.
Yeah.
Beautiful places I've ever been.
Yosemite.
I mean, get out of town.
Yeah.
Incredible weather.
Kern River.
Yeah.
Man, it's beautiful.
They got ruined.
They got ruined.
They got ruined with progressive politics and bureaucracy that just ramped up
all the control they have
over people to the point where you can't even buy flavored Zins.
They banned blackjack.
You can't have blackjack anymore.
They just stopped blackjack in the casinos.
They stopped flavored Zins.
God.
They just regulate it into oblivion.
They're all these people that want to be the mommy of the world and tell you
what to do.
Like, fuck off.
Yeah.
Like, fuck off with all your goddamn rules.
You're just making your government bigger so you can justify all these fucking
rules and you need the rules for the government to sustain itself.
So you just keep adding more rules and adding more government.
Yeah.
We were reading about it the other day.
Like, what was the number that California's government went up by like 24% and
their population went up by like 1%?
I know.
Now you're kind of running out of places to go.
I forget what the actual numbers were that we found, but it's...
Yeah.
I'm always looking for hideouts, you know, to kind of get away from.
It's like, man, you find a spot to go to, you kind of don't want to tell nobody
about it.
I know, right?
You know.
That's what I hear about West Texas.
I think that's hard about Montana, you know, when I first started going up
there years ago.
I mean, it was just such a...
And it still is.
It's a paradise.
It's just, you know, and I think that's probably what a lot of people are upset
about.
I lived up there.
It's like, man, the secret got out a little bit and I can understand that, but...
I get it.
I get it from that perspective.
You got to let that go.
Where's the next place, you know?
The thing about Montana, though, or like Wyoming, another example, is that
winter will thin
the herd.
It's like West Texas.
Yeah.
That's funny.
Same kind of thing.
Like, you know, Marfa and that area.
You know, I grew up all out there going to junior rodeos and all kinds of stuff.
And it was just ranches, you know, and, you know, local diners and stuff like
that.
And, you know, I hear people going out there and buying houses and, you know,
all that stuff.
And then they go out there for like a week and they realize that the only thing
open at night
is the Dairy Queen.
And they're heading back to New York pretty quick, you know?
Yeah.
But the thing...
You're right about Montana.
Those winters will thin them out.
The winter gets you.
The winter's rough.
It's cold.
Yeah.
We were, the first time I ever went hunting was with Rinella.
That's where I got that mule deer that's on the table right there.
And it was nine degrees in October and we're camping.
And so we're sleeping on the ground and nine degrees.
I'm like, bro, how did these fucking people...
And you also, you go by these old homesteads.
So they were giving land out there for people.
You just, you can get a chunk of land, just start farming on it.
And the government was encouraging people to move there.
But it's all this like muddy ground.
Like the ground is like mucky.
Like when you hike in it after, you know, a while, your boots are so heavy.
Because they're just thick with this clay.
Yeah.
Just muck all over your boots.
And so it's not fertile.
It's not good.
Like in the Missouri Breaks, like that area, it's not good for growing things.
So you find these abandoned homesteads.
It's really eerie.
Yeah.
And you just think like this family that came out here in like the 1800s and
they tried to set up shop.
Mm-hmm.
And maybe got killed by Indians.
And, you know, maybe...
All the way.
Yeah.
I think about my family.
I've got stories, you know, of them settling in New Mexico and, you know,
coming out on a covered wagon with maybe a steer and a pig.
And they're like, yeah, here's a bunch of acres and you got to prove it up, you
know.
And dig a hole in the ground is what they're living in a dugout, you know.
And dig a hole in the ground.
That's where you're living.
And you try to build a ranch out of it.
And I always laugh.
I was talking to family or my grandparents.
I was like, why did y'all stop here?
You just thought you were so beat down.
You're like, oh, this is the driest, flattest place, you know.
Yeah.
But we're here, the most roughest, you know.
It's only maybe another thousand miles out to California or just keep going.
They're like, nope, this is it.
We're done.
You know.
Yeah.
I guess people didn't know what they were going to find if they kept going
either.
Like, you want to keep going for like another month.
Oh, yeah.
Just miles and miles of more desert and no water.
Yeah.
I mean, how long would that wagon trail take?
Weeks.
Yeah.
Even just like Missouri, Texas, and then out to...
Even like just going through West Texas to get to, you know, Southeast New
Mexico and all that.
And you're, you know, that's just rough country.
And the people have always been tough out there.
And you're a sitting duck.
To survive out there.
Yeah.
You're a sitting duck.
You're slow moving with a wagon pulling the horse.
And you got all your shit in the wagon and they just looking at you from the
hills.
Yeah.
Wasn't glamorous.
No.
Yeah.
I know my, you know, my granddad was pretty tough old guy and is real a cowboy
as you'd
ever want to know or meet, you know, but he wasn't really one to ever brag or,
you know,
talk or fantasize or romanticize about the cowboy stuff, you know, because it,
it wasn't romantic
then, you know, it was survival and it was rough and it was work and, you know,
had no running water.
And I remember, um, him having a conversation with this guy and he was like
some, like a tech
guy, you know, invented all this website shit or whatever.
And he was asking my granddad, he said, you know, what's the most, you know,
important
invention of your lifetime.
And I think he was expecting my granddad to say like the computer or the
internet.
And, uh, my granddad said refrigeration was the most important invented, you
know?
Yeah.
When he was growing up, he was like, they had no way to keep their food cold,
you know, other
things like root cellar.
You kept it underground, you know?
So it was just a perspective, you know, I think everybody was surprised to hear
it.
Yeah.
Well, I think people are so accustomed to electricity and so accustomed to
things like refrigeration.
Yeah.
Just like running water.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, when there was no refrigeration, you had to eat what you had, you know,
like that
day.
And then the next day you had to get something else.
Yeah.
And unless you knew a place that was an ice house, you know, that would get a
giant chunk
of ice and you could have an ice box and stick it in there and cool things like
you're fucked.
Yeah.
You're on your own.
Yeah.
Well, you had to learn how to dry meat.
That was a lot of it.
Make pemmican, dry meat, make things that'll survive and last.
And, you know, that's also how market hunting almost wiped out all the deer in
this country,
because people needed fresh meat every day.
Mm-hmm.
So they were just shooting everything that existed.
Yeah.
And then finally they started looking around and going, "Hey, we lost all the
elk.
There's no more deer left.
Like, let's make some fucking regulations on this shit."
And they stopped market hunting.
I did not know that.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
Yeah.
Beginning of the 1800s by, you know, the time, I guess, when did they start
doing regulations
in terms of hunting regulations in this country?
Because, obviously, they wiped out almost entirely the American bison.
They were almost gone completely.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, a lot of that was just for tongues.
Nah, man, that's crazy.
Yeah.
They would send them back east.
They would pickle their tongues.
Didn't Steve Rinella have something like a show on them?
My buddy was telling me.
He's got a great book, too.
I haven't seen it yet.
It's really interesting.
He's talking about the history of the bison and the hunting and all of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think his book's called "American Buffalo," but it's really good.
"First hunting regulations appeared in colonial laws in the 1600s, mainly as
seasonal close
seasons for certain game like deer.
In terms of nationwide U.S. law, the first major federal game protection
statute was the
Lacey Act of 1900, which targeted commercial and market hunting and interstate
trade in illegally
taken wildlife.
Yeah, there was elk in every state.
Yeah.
And we wiped them out.
And there was deer in every state.
But now there's more deer than there ever has been before, which is interesting.
Congress passed the Lacey Act when modern regulations start.
So, the 1900s.
Most states had game and fish commissions, hunting seasons, bag limits and
license requirements,
all reinforced by federal laws like the Lacey Act and later migratory bird
protections.
Well, it's amazing that they did that.
We have an amazing system, too.
The fact that the United States has so much public land, you know, there's so
many different
places where people can go and they can hike, they can whitewater raft, they
can fish, they
can hunt, they can camp.
I mean, we're unlike any country when it comes to that.
It's like the amount of land that we have that's available to Americans that
every, it's
public for everybody.
Yeah.
It's fucking incredible.
Yeah.
I mean, being up in Montana, New Mexico's like that, too, and California.
I'm up in Montana, what I love, you know, staying in that wilderness area, like
that little
cabin that I stayed in, you know, probably didn't have much land with the cabin.
But man, there's thousands and thousands of acres of wilderness public land
with dirt roads
everywhere.
And man, I would, you know, on those days off that I had, I would just drive
back in there
for miles, man, and just see the most beautiful country, you know.
And I'd haul my horse back in the way to the trailheads and just go explore
stuff, you know.
And you'd go over one ridge into the next and there's a waterfall and there's
another drainage
and it's just like, you know, and this is the wilderness area, too.
This isn't even a national park, you know.
I was like, man, this is as beautiful country as I've ever seen anywhere.
Did you run into any grizzlies?
I never did.
You know, I was always on my toes about it.
And I'd talk, you know, knowing Remy up there, he knew that area really well.
So I'd kind of ask him spots to go check out and about bears and stuff.
And he said, man, there weren't too many grizzlies back in there, but you never
know, you know, especially coming over from Idaho and stuff like that.
So I never did.
I've run into some black bears, never in any wolves and all that.
But, you know, I don't know, maybe being horseback, too.
I don't know a lot of those places did, but I definitely had my eyes open.
Yeah.
That's another animal that they want to list again and make them available for
hunting, particularly in Montana and Wyoming.
They just have a lot of grizzlies.
Yeah.
They have a lot.
And people don't want you to shoot them.
They think of it as trophy hunting or whatever it is.
It's tough, man.
But, man, you live, like you say, like those folks that live back up in there.
You know, all they have is their neighbors and people to depend on, you know.
And it's like, man, you get mauled by a bear taking your trash out or something
like that.
That's what your experience is with them.
And, you know, everybody wants to keep them as pets until they're in the
backyard with you.
Yeah.
They don't play by the rules.
Yeah.
They don't play by the rules and they're 900 pounds.
Good luck.
That 900-pound giant fucking wild animal that eats everything it can.
Yeah.
Even like that lion hanging around my house.
It's like, man, cool, you're fine, but why don't you go on down the road, you
know?
Yeah.
I don't need you in my backyard.
The thing is that you can't do anything about it, either.
In Texas, you could just shoot them.
Yeah.
Yeah, we don't have that problem.
Yeah, that's how it should be.
Yeah.
Like, you shouldn't have wild monsters living in your yard.
No.
And you should have the right to decide that for yourself.
A hundred percent.
Not only that, they're going to be fine.
There's still going to be plenty of them.
Yeah.
Okay, but it'll probably be a more healthy number if they get whacked whenever
they eat someone's dog.
Yeah, and have a healthy respect for coming in your backyard or coming after
your animals or your kids.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They should understand that.
But just like, we're so goofy.
We make laws to protect them that don't protect us.
Like, help me out.
Like, do you love animals more than people?
Like, I love animals, but I'm on team people.
Yeah.
One hundred percent.
Yeah.
Everybody else is cool, but team people first.
Yeah.
You know, oh, we got monsters in our neighborhood.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
We got to kill the monsters so the kids can play outside.
You don't have to worry about them getting eaten.
Yeah, me too.
I mean, growing up ranching or farming or whatever, I mean, that's your job is
to take care of animals, you know?
Yeah.
It's animal husbandry.
It's, it's, that's your job.
I mean, to take care and provide for these animals, to provide food for your
family, you know?
And, and the wildlife that's around it, you know?
It's like, and to take care of the land and the dirt and the water and the
grasses and all of that stuff has to be supporting each other to make it all
work, you know?
And at the end of the day, I just feel like we've just lost touch.
It's cities.
With that, you know?
It's urban environments.
It's unnatural environments that have given people this delusional idea of what
our relationship is with nature.
And, you know, people just think food comes from a restaurant.
Yeah.
And, you know, the ground is for streets.
And you drive around.
And sidewalks.
Yeah.
Just pave it all.
There's an infusional perspective that comes from that sort of urban existence.
And I just think that's why people that live in the country and live in, you
know, environments where, like Alaska, where you're confronted by nature, they're
like more interesting people.
They're more robust.
They're cooler.
Were you singing out there earlier that you rode bulls?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Dude.
How many times?
Shoot.
I started when I was a kid, you know, riding steers when I was like 10 in the
junior rodeos.
And then...
You were 10 years old and someone let you ride a fucking steer?
Really?
That's so crazy.
It was just like little league baseball, you know, where I grew up.
So a steer is a bull that doesn't have its nuts.
Yeah.
And so how much less do they kick when they don't have their nuts?
Oh, they're a lot.
They're pretty docile.
Is this you?
Oh, you found a video.
How old are you here?
This is...
I was like 17.
This is in Monterey, Mexico, actually.
Wow.
Why in Mexico?
Look at you, dog.
Damn.
That's crazy.
Damn, dude.
You're good.
And you got off without getting stomped, too.
Yeah.
Is it just knowing when to release?
Yeah.
You got to know...
You got to know when to get off.
That's for sure.
And right there.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
He kind of bucked me off there.
He kind of had me over to the side in the area, you know.
But that's a good time to check out.
There's like that gray zone, you know.
Either that or you hang on and you end up underneath them.
You started out when you were 10 years old, though.
How wild are your parents?
They're like, yeah, that's a good age.
Yeah.
Well, they ranched and grew up out there.
And my uncle rode bulls professionally.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And that's kind of how I got into it, too.
I looked up to him a lot and see pictures of him riding bulls.
And then it was just around.
And I was like, I want to go try that, you know.
And then I just got the bug for it, like super young.
I was like, just ate up with it.
Wow.
From 10 years old.
That's nuts.
Yeah.
And so how do you teach someone how to fall off of a bull without getting stomped
when they're 10?
Well, when you're riding those little steers, you know, a lot of time they cut
bulls and turn them into steers.
It makes them a lot more dosso.
When you say "little."
Steers are, you know, typically like 600 pounds, 600-700 pounds, you know,
compared to a 1,500-pound bull that's aggressive and, you know, back that wide.
And horns like that, you know.
They're like little steer, you know.
I remember my dad or uncle would get in the chute with me and hold their horns,
you know.
And, like, they just kind of run out there and jump and kick and fall off on
the side.
Yeah, not too bad.
And then you kind of graduate up into, like, the junior bulls and then the
bigger bulls and then the harder they buck, you know.
So there's kind of different levels you can progress as you go.
But it was a lot different deal back then when I was riding.
It was really before the PBR started, you know.
There was no helmets.
There was no vests.
There was, like, none of that stuff.
It was just old-school rodeo, you know.
But at the same time, I say that, but, you know, it's evolved in such a sport
now.
Like, the bulls are just so much rancor now than they were back then, you know.
It's like now they're breeding them, like, racehorses and the genetics where
every one of those bulls, you know, bucks, you know.
And, like, you got to go to get on three or four of them in the night.
You know, back when I was doing it, we'd go to the -- they were still kind of
full rodeos with all the other events.
And, you know, out of 15 or 20 bulls, there might be one or two in there that
were, like, bad to get on that would hurt you, you know.
The rest of them were pretty rideable, you know, to say so.
And, you know, we're smoking cigarettes and drinking beer back behind the chutes.
So, you know, that kind of a thing, you know.
We weren't training and doing yoga.
I like how these guys are today.
You know, but I loved it.
I had so much fun, and I loved the road part of it, you know.
Get in the truck with your best buds and go down the road on the weekends.
And there was always a band playing, and, you know, it was just -- it was so
much fun.
I loved the culture of it, and it was just good times, you know.
How many times do you think you've rode bulls?
I mean, I rode until I was about 23.
From 10 to 23?
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
That was all I ever wanted to do.
Really?
Yeah, I wanted to just ride bulls, yeah.
And, you know, I rode in high school.
I rode junior rodeos, rode bulls in high school.
And then I went to Tarleton State in Stephenville.
Wow.
And rode bulls for Tarleton.
And then I got my pro card for a couple of years.
And that was when, like, the PBR was, like, starting up and all of that.
And it got intense.
I just saw a picture of you backwards on one.
What, Jamie?
There's one picture I just lost.
He was backwards on it.
Oh, yeah.
I was probably getting --
There it is.
I was like, "Dusted."
Oh, no, that's not me.
Oh, that's not you.
Okay.
That's not backwards.
That guy is riding backwards.
Yeah.
Oh, he is backwards.
I don't know if that's on purpose.
That seems like a ridiculous choice.
He pulled it off if he did.
Yeah.
What a terrible choice.
Yeah.
It was cool, though.
I loved it, man.
I loved it.
How do you go from that to anything else?
Like, how do you stop riding bulls and eventually become an actor and a singer?
It was all very much kind of a natural progression, you know?
Really?
Since I was a kid at the junior rodeos, there was always a dance afterward and
a band playing,
you know, and it was very much a family, community deal, you know?
Like, you go to these towns and the rodeo was going on and then the street
dance and food
and music and, you know, growing up listening to bands play, especially in
Texas, you know,
you got all the guys like Gary P. Nunn.
I remember he always played the dance halls and you get Robert O'Keen and some
of the,
you know, growing up hearing those bands.
And I moved to Laredo, Texas when I was like 16 or 17 when my dad and my mother
had bought
me a guitar and didn't know how to play it much and walked into this place my
dad was
living at and he was playing dominoes with these guys and this guy saw my
guitar and he's
like, "Yeah, you know how to play that thing?"
I said, "No."
And he said, "Well, let me see it."
And he picked it up and he played this killer, like, mariachi song called La
Malagueña.
And I was just fascinated with it.
I was just like, "Wow, I can't believe you made that guitar sound like that."
You know?
I've been dragging that thing around for a couple of years.
I didn't even know how to tune it up.
And he's like, "You want to learn how to play this guitar?"
And I said, "Yeah."
And he said, "Let me show you this song."
And he taught me the Malagueña.
And it had a couple of little parts, you know, a finger picking part, a strumming
part.
And it really kind of gave me that foundation, you know, just kind of those few
little tools.
And then I went up to Stephenville to ride Bulls at Tarleton after that.
And a couple of other friends that I'd met there that rodeoed could play the
guitar a little bit.
And they had bands that played every weekend in the town.
There was a little bar there called City Limits where all these bands would
come play, like Jason Bolin and the cross-Canadian ragweed guys.
And Pat Green and Robert Earl King, like all the Texas guys would come play,
you know.
So I was like, I went from being on the border to kind of just mostly like the
Carrillos and Tejano bands that I would see, which was really cool.
But when I got up there, I was like, oh man, there's all these like cool kind
of song, you know, guys writing original music and songs and playing in bands.
And we'd go watch them all the time.
And as I was still rodeoing, the only song I knew was that Malagueña tune.
So I was like, I got to come up with some new stuff.
That's all I know how to play, you know.
So I went and got a book of chords to teach myself some new chords on the
guitar.
And we'd just learn one or two at a time and I'd start making up songs about
our adventures on the weekends, you know.
A lot of it was just sitting in the back of the truck and being in places where
you didn't have radio signal or, you know, nothing to really listen to.
You're tired of listening to the same old stuff.
And I'd make up songs and then whatever town we would get to, my buddies would
be like, man, play that song you were singing in the backseat, you know.
And so that's how the whole songwriting thing started.
And then I ended up getting a job working for a guy named Mack Altizer.
He had a rodeo company called Bag Company Rodeo in Del Rio.
And I'd ridden bulls at some of his rodeos and knew him.
My uncle knew him, you know, over the years.
And so I was kind of familiar with that whole thing and started working for him
on the ranch and helping with some of the rodeo stuff and still riding bulls.
And he found out that I could play the guitar and sing a few songs.
And he always had a party at the rodeo.
He was kind of notorious and famous for having like just awesome parties.
And he's like, man, all right, Bingham, get your guitar.
You're going to play like the after party, you know, and pull the flatbed
trailer up there for the hospitality tent for all the contestants after the
rodeo.
And those are like the first he really encouraged me to like start playing for
people and doing that.
And then it would just spill over into the bars afterwards after the rodeo and
everybody would end up going to the bar.
And I was like, Bingham, bring your guitar with you.
And I started getting gigs in the bars.
The bars would ask me if I wanted to come back and play.
And just after like, I feel like a few years of that, it was just like, you
know, I was kind of a weekend warrior riding bulls.
I was definitely not making a living doing it.
Always had to have a day job during the week, you know, either working on the
ranch or doing something.
And I started getting to where I could go to these bars and make like a hundred
bucks and tips, you know, within a couple of hours and get free beer and free
food.
And I was like, man, this is almost as much as I made all day digging holes
with the shovel.
It didn't take me long to figure out that that was pretty cool.
And I was just like, I'm going to stick with it.
What an organic sort of a journey, you know, like a natural progression.
Yeah.
And I didn't have high expectations, you know, but I just like, and I was
talking about kind of community in this Austin area and in Texas in general.
It's just like, man, people were so supportive then of just like, if you had a
song to play it, people love live music.
They're like, yeah, get up and play, you know, like Mack with the rodeo company
and all the guys that worked there, Dave Jennings and Casey and Smer.
There's a whole crew of the Bad Company crew from those days.
And they always had kind of the Bad Company house band too, where everybody
would get up and try to play a song.
And it's just like, man, we don't care if it's any good or not.
Just get up there and play.
We're all, we're all in it together.
And there were so many like places that were like that, that I don't think if I
was in that environment, I probably would have never pursued it.
You know, I said so many people, you know, supporting you and encourage you to
try it.
And it took me a long time, you know, to work stuff out and learn because I
didn't have any really formal music, musical background or lessons or training.
I really just learned it on the road and playing in bars and from other
musicians.
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Just kind of figuring it out along the way.
Yeah.
Well, they got, you know, the guy taught me the La Malagaña there.
But then after that, it was just, you know, anybody else who had a guitar and
might know a song, you know, I'm like, oh, what, how do you play that chord?
You're like, oh, you play it like this, you know?
Yeah.
Wow.
Wow.
So how many years were you doing that before you got Yellowstone?
Oh, gosh, for a while.
I mean, I think my, you know, I was 22 or something like that in Stephenville,
you know, riding bulls, starting to play songs, trying to play gigs.
After, you know, ended up moving down here to New Braunfels and the Austin area
playing music for a while and ended up going out to Los Angeles and playing and
then hit the road with a band for, I think I had four or five albums or so, you
know, out, you know, and been touring for five or six years.
I think how old was I like when Yellowstone started, like 36, 37.
So, yeah, I'd been playing, doing the music stuff for a long time.
Hmm.
And so how did the Yellowstone, how did you go from music to Yellowstone?
Like, how did you even, did you do any acting before that?
No, I'd been one, I'd done a film with Jeff Bridges years ago called Crazy
Heart and wrote some songs for that movie.
And that was really my own thing.
I remember that movie.
Yeah.
That was a good movie.
It was pretty cool.
You know, I was just like, Jeff Bridges plays a musician in the show and I, and
we're like the backup band at the bowling alley for one of the scenes, you know,
which was really cool.
And then written some songs for some other films and some TV shows since then.
And I met a guy named John Lentz and out in Los Angeles, a producer and his,
him and his dad, Art Lentz.
And they did like Sons of Anarchy, a bunch of shows and a bunch of great movies.
And, um, he introduced me to Taylor and Taylor was, uh, I think it was that
movie Wind River, his first movie.
You know, I'd met Taylor and just kind of talk about music and stuff.
And he wanted me to write a song for Wind River.
And I'd given it a shot a couple of times, never really had anything that fit
for what he wanted, but he ended up using a song that I'd already written.
And, and, um, and we just kind of kept in touch.
And then when the Yellowstone thing came up, um, he got in touch again about
writing some songs for the show.
And then he learned that I used to do all the rodeo stuff, I think, and grew up
ranching.
And he's like, well, shoot, you can do a lot of this stuff.
I got to find a way to get you in the show, you know?
And it literally went from the conversation.
He was like, well, I don't, I don't know what I'm going to do with you, but I'm
going to, I'll find something to do with you, you know?
And he literally said, he's like, you know, if you do good, I'll, you know, he
goes, if you suck, I'll kill you off.
If you do good, I'll keep you on.
Something like that.
You know what I'm like?
So you had no formal acting like training or anything?
No, not at all.
That's what's amazing.
Dude, you're really good.
Oh, I appreciate that.
You know, I, I get to kind of play a cowboy and be a little bit of, of myself.
Yeah, but it's, that role's got some complexity to it.
It's not just a cowboy.
It's like, you've got some complicated scenes, you know, some emotional scenes,
some deep scenes and you're really good, man.
Thank you.
It's impressive.
I appreciate that.
It was, I enjoyed it.
You know, I hadn't done much acting at all.
And, um, I got to give a lot of credit to the actors that are on the show too.
You know, those folks that have really studied it and paid their dues learning
that craft, you know, they really create the environment, you know, especially
for me, not knowing much about it.
You know, and just kind of being a part of the scene.
Like they're so good that they make you react in a certain way.
Right.
You know, they, they know how to get it out of you.
Yeah.
You know, Cole and Kelly and Luke and all those folks, you know, like they,
they know how to set up the scene and they know what they're doing.
So they already kind of have the whole thing set up.
And so when I walk into a scene and they say they're lying to me, it's just
like, Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I got an answer.
Right.
I like, I'm just like kind of like naturally, you know, answering that, you
know?
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
If you work with a really good actor, sometimes you forget they're acting like,
Oh, like, Oh yeah, we're, we're acting like you seem like this is really
happening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For me, like I think it was the moments where I thought it was really happening.
Yeah.
How long did it take before you got comfortable like doing that on camera?
It's still not.
Really?
Yeah, it's still not.
Yeah.
Well, you play it off.
Good.
Well, thanks.
You know, I think some of it comes from the riding bulls, you know, you learn
how to channel that anxiety or fear into just like, Oh, okay.
It's go time.
Let's just like, pull it together and, and channel that, you know, if you could
ride a bull, I think you could kind of do basically anything, man.
I, you know, that's one thing my uncle taught me when I was young, you know, he,
he was really cool.
He was really quick to be like, man, it doesn't matter how strong you are.
You know, it's not about, it's all mental.
It's all in your mind.
And it's all, uh, it's not, I think I can.
It's, I know I can and I will, you know?
And he goes, if you don't, if you don't believe that every time you go put your
rope on one of those, on their backs, he's like, it ain't gonna happen.
Yeah.
He says, you don't, it's not being cocky.
It's just being confident, you know, and believing in yourself and, and having
that, that power of mind over matter.
You know?
Yeah.
If you could do that, acting is easy.
And take that in anything in life.
Yeah.
And I, and I do cause I, I definitely have moments where, you know, I'm like,
whew.
Okay.
Take a deep breath.
Right.
It's go time.
Let's go.
You know?
Especially having more than a decade of doing that with bulls, like that, that's
so uncontrollable.
Like, it is like, you're at the mercy of fate and how this plays out.
Yeah.
And you have this enormous beast and you've chosen to scare the shit out of
yourself, get on top of this thing and try to ride it.
You've chosen to join the, join the dance.
Yeah.
If you can do that, if you can do that and be successful at that, I kind of
think you could do anything.
Yeah.
I think that, that, I mean, I wouldn't want my kid to do it at 10, but fuck, it's
probably, if they could survive, pretty valuable.
I laugh.
I really picked two of the easiest professions, you know, like riding bulls and
playing music.
Right.
Two that have the least amount of success ratio.
Right.
Impossible tasks.
Right.
Well, did you ever get any serious injuries?
You know, I was fortunate, like, not serious.
There was one of the worst ever.
I got knocked all these teeth out and I got jerked down one night in Weatherford
and took my lip off and my teeth went through down here.
And these are all fake up here.
And then my lip was just hanging by a thread.
What was white?
It didn't knock me out, which was wild though.
I got on this bull and I remember it was in Weatherford, Texas, and it's got a
Butler arena there.
And he had this little Angus bull there.
Didn't have horns on him, little muley.
And usually you can go up to the guys that own the bulls.
And a lot of the bulls have patterns, you know, that they, that they'll do over
and over, you know.
So you can kind of talk to the stock contractor or the guys that own them and
be like, hey, you know, what's this bull generally do?
And he's like, ah, most of the time they'll take two jumps out and they spin to
the left.
Or they take two jumps out and they go to the right.
Or, oh, they just, you know, they'll jump, kick around and make a circle.
And he goes, man, he goes, I don't know.
He's like the last two times I bucked, he's never, he hadn't been ridden.
He'll usually jumps out there and just spins right in the gate.
And he said, nobody's really ridden him past three or four seconds.
So he goes, I don't know what he's going to do after that.
And sure enough, that's what happened.
I got on him and I jumped out and just got it on right there in the gate, just
spinning right there.
And I rode him through it like three or four rounds.
And after I rode him, like, I think the bully didn't know what to do next.
He got a little frustrated and he just stopped and just stopped dead still and
just blowing and just, you know, just mad.
And, uh, you never really want to jump off of them when they're still like that.
Cause you just, you'll fall right beside them, you know?
So you want them to have a little momentum.
So when you, you know, you're checking out, they can, you can get away from
them.
Right.
And so I spurred him a little bit to get him to jump.
So when he jumped, I could jump off.
But when I spurred him, it just jumped off straight up off the ground, like a
cat off all fours.
And when he came crack and when he jumped up like that, I, you know, kind of
rocked me back on back like that.
My hand's still tied in the rope.
And then when he came down, he just brought all that jerk beat down with the
fours.
And I came forward and he threw his head back and I just head butted him.
Oh, and then when he did, and then my hand was still caught in the rope.
And then he took off running around and just drug me around and just stomped
the crap out of me, you know, for a bit.
And I finally got loose.
And, uh, I remember running over to the fence and I just, you know, I kind of
had my arms on the fence and I could see all the blood just pouring down all
over me.
And one of the bullfighters ran up and he looks at me and goes, Oh, buddy.
And, uh, so they have to stitch your lip, lip back on.
Yeah.
You know, and the shock was just, I didn't feel anything.
Wow.
Like I was just like in shock.
And I was like, Oh man.
You know, I remember like my girlfriend was there from high school and my buddy.
And, um, we drove to the little, you know, they're like, you want to call an
ambulance?
I was like, nah, I don't have health insurance.
And I called an ambulance, you know, and, um, got my buddy's car and we drove
over to the emergency room and Weatherford and I go in and the nurse.
She's just like, Oh man.
She's like, we can't do anything for you here.
You're going to have to go to like Dallas to like trauma.
You know, you have to get like an oral surgeon to put you back together.
And, uh, she goes, you want me to, you know, get you an ambulance there?
And I was like, nah, I think we can make it.
You know?
And she's like, she gave me some pain pills.
She goes, don't take these now.
She goes, hold on to these.
And then when you get to Dallas, then take them because you're probably going
to have to wait, you know, before they can, because it'll be three or four in
the morning before they can get somebody in there to see us.
And, uh, sure enough, we got to Dallas and I'm just sitting there in the
waiting room and I had a rag and I was just holding my mouth together and, uh,
the shock wore off, man.
And then it's, you know, I was starting to feel it.
I took those pain meds and then doctor came in and held me back and gave me a
big shot in the roof of my mouth, try to numb everything.
And just, I think it took them longer to clean it all up, you know, pull all
the hair and dirt out of there and sew me up.
And the tea, oh, it was an ordeal, you know, for sure.
For months after that, you know, getting the dental work done and all that crap.
So how was the lip hanging off?
It, uh, it bit it all, it would have came all the way off.
It was just hanging on right here by side.
So it was just hanging down.
And so they just had to stitch the lower part to the upper part and put it all
together again?
Yeah, just all across, right through the middle.
And kind of, if I shave, I got a big scar that kind of goes down there and then
they went through down here.
Um, so I got some stitches down there and then most of the stitches were all in
my, my gums and all of that.
So they had to put like posts and implants and all that stuff?
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
Yeah.
That shit takes forever, huh?
Kind of knocked the front four out and then it just dominoed the rest of them.
Riding bulls with no health insurance is wild.
That's crazy, man.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Yeah, it was just life back then for me, you know.
I think going into the music stuff was like, I don't know.
I just wasn't really scared about it or even the expectations of making it.
I mean, to me at the time I had a truck and a camper on it and I was like, man,
I was like, I got no bills.
I got no responsibilities.
I'm just like, go make a hundred bucks a night playing music in a bar.
I was like, this is the dream, you know, I'm like, I made it.
Yeah.
Well, I think when you've done something super, super difficult, everything
else seems easier.
And if you've done what you did with riding bulls for that long, like the music
business is like, that's the worst that could happen.
Yeah.
Even the travel part, you know, like, you know, in the early days of playing,
when I really decided I was going to try to make a run and play, you know, and
it was like, oh, what?
We got to get in the van and go drive around and play in bars, you know?
And I was like, we've been doing that rodeoing for years, you know, where you
sleep in the back of the truck or whatever.
And it was fun for us.
We loved it.
Yeah.
So the idea of like starving on the road, playing in a band, playing music.
I was like, let's go.
And getting a guaranteed paycheck every night, you know?
Right.
The gratitude you must have.
The riding bulls.
I mean, half the time, you know, you walked away with nothing.
Right.
You know, a busted, a busted lip, nothing.
Yeah.
And no health insurance and you're risking your life.
And there's not a bunch of people that love you.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's a great base to start out from, you know?
I mean, it sounds like, it's almost like the universe engineered this path for
you to go down.
Like if you wanted to pick a path that would bring you to where you are right
now, it is the perfect set of circumstances.
I look at it all the time, you know, just from an outside perspective, I guess.
And just like, wow, how in the world did all this come together?
And just a lot of luck and perseverance or whatever.
And I wouldn't say I haven't worked hard at it.
You know, I feel like I have and all that, but there's a lot of luck out there
and a lot of good people, too.
Yeah.
A lot of good people helped me out along the way and gave me gas money and gave
me a place to sleep or a place to eat and helped us get other gigs.
I mean, I remember going from one town to the next and not having gas money to
get to the next and having no plan other than like, let's just head west or
head east.
And, you know, you'd go play at a bar and sure enough, there'd be somebody
there that were like, oh, man, y'all should come back to my house.
We'll have bonfire and play some songs.
And he's like, oh, my brother's got a bar in Phoenix.
And he's like, call them on your way out.
You know, we'd go there and and we'd always like chop firewood or wash dishes
or wouldn't know your lawn or wash your car on the way to like to get gas money
and keep on going, you know.
Wow.
So that was just kind of how I always feel like I learned early.
If you were willing to help yourself, you know, there's people would help you
all day long.
I think luck is a factor, but it's only a factor if you've already had all
those other experiences.
Like, think about it, if you hadn't ridden bulls, you hadn't gone through all
the ranching, all the hard labor, all the different things,
then like you probably wouldn't have capitalized on that luck the same way.
No, not at all.
Your character wouldn't be the same.
No.
You know, it's like part of who you are is the character that you've developed
from what you've done.
It kind of conditioned me to do it in a way, in a big way.
And it seems like it's your life, it's almost like it's engineered for this to
happen the way it happened.
Mm-hmm.
Which is kind of crazy.
It's been cool, man.
I feel...
Very storybook.
Mm-hmm.
You know?
Yeah.
Very like movie.
Yeah.
Like a plot in a movie.
Guy who's a cowboy, bull rider, starts singing songs.
People are like, "Hey, you should probably do this for a living."
And then someone's like, "Hey, man, you should be on TV."
You know?
Yeah.
And the next thing you know, you're on one of the biggest hits in the world.
I feel like it's that song, you know, "One day they're gonna put me in the
movie."
Yeah.
It's a bucko.
Yeah.
I was like, "How am I living this thing right now?"
You know?
It's like...
I know I meet people all the time.
They're like, "Oh, like..."
You know?
They can't really believe where I'm from or whatever.
They just think it's some like made up story.
I'm like, "Oh, yeah.
All right, man."
You know?
Well, it seems like a story that someone would make up if they wanted to
pretend to be a cowboy.
Yeah.
Well, I think a lot of people have.
I bet, right?
I bet.
Yeah.
And a lot of people still do.
Yeah.
Isn't that funny?
Uh-huh.
That's funny.
That's like stolen valor almost.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
I think like in all kinds of stuff, you know, professions or whatever, you know,
people
pretend to be the...
Oh, yeah.
What it is.
Would you mind if I went to the restroom real quick?
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Not at all.
I totally understand.
I want to keep talking about...
I don't want to stop this.
Let's pause.
Take a leak.
We'll be right back, folks.
And we're back.
Yeah.
It's kind of funny that people would want to fake the life that you've lived.
But that is such a romantic story.
Like, it's such a movie that it makes sense that people want to fake it.
It's got to be weird walking around, like having lived a life that people would
want to fake
and pretend that they lived.
It is.
It is sometimes, you know, and it's like, you know, I remember when I really
started for,
you know, playing music and stuff.
I mean, I wore a cowboy hat all the time.
It's...
I rode bulls and, you know, it's very much my identity, you know.
But no, cowboy stuff wasn't really cool then, you know.
I feel like in the early 2000s and all of that, you know, there wasn't a lot of
big...
There wasn't a big Americana scene or, you know, any of that kind of stuff, you
know.
And definitely going to New York or going to Los Angeles and touring around,
like,
I'd be the only one wearing a cowboy hat, you know.
I remember, I think the first time...
One time I was in L.A., we were out on the Santa Monica Pier.
And there was a guy that had like the one-man band thing, you know, out there.
And there's all these tourists on the pier.
And I'm just like out there checking out the scenery and just minding my own
business.
And this guy gets on the microphone and he just points over at me.
He goes, "Oh, Brokeback Mountain!"
And everybody on the pier turned around and looked at me.
And they're just pointing at me and laughing at me.
And I'm just like, "Ah, okay," you know.
So I was like, that was the association with the cowboy hat at the time, you
know.
That's hilarious.
Yeah, they changed cowboys for a while.
Now it's a whole new ball game, you know.
Throw a whole new monkey wrench into that legend.
But, you know, now playing, and man, I'm so stoked to see all these new bands
out there.
And like so many young folks playing actual instruments, you know.
It felt like for a long time they were so electronic and DJs and all that stuff,
you know.
Well, there's a giant country comeback that's going on right now, kind of
nationwide.
I'm sure you love "Open the Gates," the Zac Bryan song.
Yeah.
That's such a great bull riding song.
Man, they got some great tunes, man.
Yeah.
That's a great bull riding song.
But there's so many great musicians out there now.
And also who've lived like different but very, like Charlie Crockett.
What a fascinating dude that guy is.
Mm-hmm.
Like just kind of performing on the streets.
Yeah.
And, you know, just being kind of a vagabond, traveling around.
And then finally catches and people are like, "Damn, this music is fucking
great, man."
Yeah, like wearing it on their sleeves, you know.
Mm-hmm.
And having the confidence to -- I think people have always been -- I think
there has been plenty of folks out there, you know, writing from the heart and
so to speak and all of that.
And, you know, having a certain integrity to the things that they're saying and,
you know, the truth in their speaking into their songs and things like that.
Yeah.
And now there's just a -- there's a lot more of a platform to support them, you
know.
And people are like, "Oh, wow, there's a bunch of this stuff out there," you
know.
There's also an appreciation for it because I think we're all fearful that
people like you won't exist in the future.
Mm-hmm.
Because it seems like a guy like you, you know, bull riding, living on a ranch,
like singing songs in bars, like, that almost is like a thing of the past.
Oh, very much.
But it's so romantic to people that, like, when we meet a guy like you in real
life, you're like, "Oh, keep him around."
You know, like, you want to make sure that people like you still exist.
Thanks.
I appreciate it.
It's a very exciting thing for people to have a person who's lived an authentically
interesting life and authentically out of the box life.
It's not a normal life.
Like, if you meet a million people, the odds of you meeting one guy who used to
bull ride and then started singing in bars with his friends and was happy
living on the road.
Now all of a sudden he's on a fucking gigantic television show.
Mm-hmm.
It's not even one in a million.
It's pretty, it's strange because sometimes I, you know, I meet people and I,
you know, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I grew up just like you," you know?
And then I realize, like, "I don't think I did."
I kind of had to think about it myself.
No, you definitely didn't.
You rode a bull when you were fucking 10, dude, okay?
Yeah.
Most people when they're 10, they're playing with GI Joes.
Yeah.
You know?
They're not riding bulls.
That's a very unusual setup for the rest of your life, you know?
Yeah.
I think if you do some things difficult when you're really young, you get
accustomed to fear, you get accustomed to anxiety and nerves and the thing that,
I mean, that is like the mark of a man.
Like a man is his ability to be in a very high stress situation and keep his
shit together, you know?
And to have gone through a lot of that when you're very young, like riding a
bull at 10 is crazy.
To have gone through that when you're very young, it just develops the kind of
character that allows you to kind of do anything in life.
And I think most men see that and they wish they were like that.
I remember a moment, you know, it was really when I was, you know, riding steers
and then I made that transition to the big bulls, you know?
And it wasn't like, oh, here's just like this little steer and then there's an
in-between and then there's the big, it was like this little steer and then
this big bull, you know?
And I went to, it was a junior rodeo in Odessa, Texas, and it was my first year
to ride junior bulls.
And I entered the bull ride and my uncle was there with me and they started
running the bulls up into the chutes and they were big.
They were like backs that wide and horns sticking outside of the chutes, you
know?
And they were big, but they didn't buck that hard, you know?
They just kind of jumped, kicked down, but they were still big, you know?
I remember like scared and like in tears, you know, kind of, I was scared.
And my uncle, you know, was super cool about it.
He wasn't like, you have to do this or you have to, he's like, man, whatever
you want to do, you know?
You want to pack it up?
We'll get out of here right now.
It's like, this is either for you or it's not for you, you know?
And I remember just him telling me, you want to take like 20, 30 minutes and
just kind of think about it and whatever you want to do, we'll make happen, you
know?
And I did.
I kind of walked around there for a bit and I just had this some kind of like,
I knew I would regret it if I didn't do it, didn't try it, you know?
There was something in me where like, man, because I slept it.
I dreamt about it, you know?
I just, I loved it.
And I was like, nah, I'm going to do this, you know?
And I put my rope on him and had all the sport there that I needed in that
moment.
And they opened the gate and this big old high horn bull, you know, he just
turned and kind of jumped out there real docile.
And I think I rode him two or three jumps and fell off.
And it was just like, I'm the king of the world.
I was like, I'm a bull rider now, you know?
I'm not just the steer rider kid, you know?
Wow.
I kind of made that level.
And I remember after that, I just, man, I just craved it.
Like just the higher they jump, the faster they spin, the better.
I like it.
Really?
Oh, just, yeah.
Just dirty rank.
Just run them in there.
Let's go.
And when I was, when I was little, I mean, even when I was like 14 or 15, you
know, the guys
were starting to breed the bulls for like the PBR.
Like they full on started these like breeding programs, you know?
Used to, you could go to a practice pen and, you know, it'd be an old farmer
that had two
or three old bulls that you could get on and practice and they'd just jump
around and just,
you know, nothing that was really going to hurt you bad, you know?
And then they started breeding these young bulls.
And man, you'd go to the practice pen, there'd be 10 or 15 of these like yearlings
that bucked
and they needed somebody to get on them, you know, like test pilot.
And I was the test pilot.
There was a guy named Bradley Raspberry, I believe, kind of out in Brownwood.
I remember going to his house and I could ride, I could ride.
I was pretty sticky when I was, I could ride a lot better when I was younger
than I was when I got older, you know?
For some reason, man, I just had that no fear or whatever that was.
And I'd get on 10 or 15 a day and just, they just kept running on them in there,
man.
They'd be trying to flip over in the shoot and just, you know, they're young
green bulls that were half wild.
And they're just trying to figure out which ones bucked and which ones didn't.
And they would, you know, they'd get rid of the ones that didn't buck and keep
the ones that did.
And man, I'd just be like, the wilder they got in the shoot, like, the more
aggressive I got.
Like, I just like, it was like, oh, okay.
That's what we're going to do.
Come on, let's go.
Let's do this, you know?
I don't know why I was nuts, you know?
God, that's so crazy.
Yeah.
That's such a crazy way to live your life.
You know, wild bulls, you say wild, like the ones that are out there in the
wild.
They're some of the most dangerous animals that you could ever encounter.
They call them scrub bulls.
Like my buddy, Adam, he lives in Australia or he's moving to America.
But when he lived in Australia, he said that they would encounter these scrub
bulls,
which is like wild domestic bulls that got out and started breeding.
And then they, many generations later, they're now completely wild.
They're like deer out there.
Yeah.
And they will run after you.
I knew these three guys from Australia that, or several Australian guys that
came over,
lived in Stephenville.
A lot of these cowboys have moved to Stephenville because it was so central.
It was kind of cowboy capital there.
And his name was Lance Kelly, had some brothers.
And they were from up there in North Queensland somewhere.
And one summer he went back to work.
And then when he came back, he wanted, he'd tell me about where he was from all
the time.
You know, I'm, I was young, curious.
I was always fascinated.
I was like, wow, you're from Australia.
You know, I've only seen movies, you know, like, uh, uh, what's the, the, oh
gosh.
I'm on my mind.
Crocodile Dundee.
Man from down, uh, uh, man from snowy river now, which was a, anyway.
Um, but I was fascinated with Australia and him and his brothers.
And so he went home and he, he had videotaped, uh, uh, a VHS, you know, he didn't
have phones
back then, but it was like the old cam VHS tape recorder.
And he'd videotaped or, uh, duct taped it around his body while he was walking
around working
on the ranch.
And he'd have this four wheeler in there chasing these wild cattle and rounding
them up, him
and his brother, brothers.
And he would just like chase them on a four wheeler as long as, you know, keep
them running
until they got so tired, they couldn't go anymore.
And then he had this piece of pipe on there.
He could run up behind them and kind of knock them down.
And then he'd jump off and tie their legs together and they would catch a bunch
of them like
that.
His brother would come by, you know, later with a truck and a winch and winch
them up
into the trailer and they would catch all these wild cows like that.
And, and to be able to see that footage and stuff and have him tell me how they
were doing
it and show them.
And I was like, Oh, that's the coolest thing in the world.
I want to go.
When can I go?
You know, Australia is such a crazy place, man.
And it's, I mean, it's bigger than the United States and it, or the size of the
United States
roughly.
And it has less people than Los Angeles.
And everything will kill you.
Everything will kill you.
Every snake, spider.
Every snake, crocodiles.
Yeah.
They have saltwater crocodiles and giant fucking great white sharks.
And hearty people, man.
Yeah.
Hearty motherfuckers come from that place.
I feel like, I feel like Texas and a lot of folks from Australia are a bit kindred
spirits.
Yes.
Yeah.
I think so too.
My buddy, James McCann was on the podcast yesterday.
He's a comic out of Australia and, uh, he's from there and he spends time here.
He was living here for a while, but he had to move back cause he had another
kid.
And, but now he's coming back and forth and trying to figure, he's really
talented.
He's trying to figure out.
Coming to Austin or what?
Yeah.
He was living in Austin for a couple of years and living in America for a
couple of years,
living in Austin for about a year.
But, you know, his wife's about to have another kid and they just decided to go
back to Australia
where she's got support.
But man, he fucking misses it.
He was here.
He's like, mate, I miss it so much.
Yeah.
I miss it so much.
Like, I don't think there's any place like this place.
Mm-hmm.
It's pretty awesome.
But Australia, it's like, it's the same kind of thing.
It's like, it's a rugged place and the kind of people that live there, they're
fun.
They're fun, kind of, got a super fucked up oppressive government,
unfortunately.
I think it's a lot about what you say too.
You know, when you survive certain things in your life and, you know, it puts
things in
perspective of what you're taking seriously.
Mm-hmm.
Or what's an emergency, you know?
Right.
Right.
Oh, is this, this is life or death or is it not?
Yeah.
And to be able to laugh at stuff.
Man, I love comedians.
It's just like, man, to be able to just joke and cut stuff about the most
serious things
or whatever it is.
It's like, God, we need that so much.
Yeah.
It's an important service.
Yeah.
It doesn't seem like it is to people because it seems stupid.
They're like, oh, you're just telling jokes.
Like, not for, for me, when I go and watch a good comedy show, I feel better.
It's medicine.
And I think it also puts life into perspective.
With a sense of humor, you can kind of look at things through a different lens
and go,
yeah, we're probably going to be all right.
I get a feeling like, you know, I think a lot of folks have this idea that songwriters
are aware, you know, especially, you know, have a bunch of sad songs or
whatever to go
to that deep place and you live through stuff that you write about.
But, man, I find in comics, man, I feel like there's some of the heaviest stuff
in the world
that those folks have experienced to be able to, you know, come up and tell
these kinds of jokes
and stories and the educational part of it with it.
You know, it's so much.
I don't know.
For me, it seems like it's so much more than just a joke.
It is with some.
I mean, some people just do jokes.
It really depends on your style.
But I mean, if you go back to like Richard Pryor, his whole thing was like
explaining life
and telling stories.
Yeah.
It was just an amazing sense of humor and that you would leave that.
And usually everybody feels like more united.
They feel better.
Yeah.
Just like you like what everybody was thinking.
Yeah.
Everybody's thinking, afraid to say.
And also he would look at things from a very wise perspective.
That was also hilarious.
So you walked out of there feeling better.
Yeah.
It felt like you were better.
It felt like there's bringing some hope.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's hope in humor.
For sure.
There's a lot of music too.
Yeah.
You know, I don't have any musical talent at all.
But I always think of music as almost like a drug.
Because music, when a good song hits, you're like, fuck.
Like if you're in the car and a good tune comes on, like especially back when I
used to
listen to the radio, you know, and like you didn't expect what was coming on.
You can't rewind it.
Yeah.
All of a sudden it's Radar Love by Golden Earring.
Oh yeah.
Fuck yeah.
Let's go.
Like you feel different.
It like changes your mood.
Yeah.
Like you hear like Freebird, like you're flipping through the channels and the
fucking guitar
solo for Freebird comes on.
You're like, yes!
You feel better.
Like it excites all these parts of your senses, your consciousness, your
feelings.
It's a drug.
I mean, it's an amazing thing.
It's always been real therapeutic for me at the very beginning.
Like I said, I didn't have high expectations, but I knew when I kind of wrote
some of the
first songs that I wrote and I like got some of that stuff off my chest, like
it changed
me, you know?
Yeah?
It like, it became a tool that all of a sudden I had access to this thing that
like was helping
me heal in a way.
Like I could get, I could get stuff off my chest.
Like the things that, uh, I was uncomfortable talking about in conversation
with folks.
Like I could put them into a song and like sing them to the wall and I was just
like getting
that stuff out.
Like there wasn't anybody in the room.
I was just like, you know, but I was getting this stuff out of me, you know?
And it's also a way for people to hear it where it's not annoying.
You know what I mean?
Like if you just tell some sad story about your life, people are like, Oh geez,
like
here we go.
Crown me a river kid.
Everybody's got a story.
But if you have a sad story in a song, it's like fucking, it's kind of, it's
beautiful.
Like I love a good, sad song, you know, a song that has like real emotion in it,
whether
it's a real story or whether like one of my favorite Colter wall songs is Kate
McKinnon.
Yeah.
Jamie turned me on to that song.
He said it to me.
Coulter's a gem.
He was fucking 21 when he made that song, which is crazy.
Yeah.
You listen to that song.
That sounds like a 58 year old man who's been smoking cigarettes his whole life.
Yeah.
And that dude is interesting too, cause he still works on a ranch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's a great guy.
He's one of my favorites of the younger guys that have come up and been doing
this.
He's just, um, I, same way when I first heard those first songs, I was like,
who the fuck is this?
Yeah.
You know, then you saw that.
I saw like a picture of him.
I'm like, oh man, he's a kid.
You know, crazy.
And I just, a fabulous songwriter, guitar player.
Raven is a wicked bird.
You hear that.
You're like, what is this?
Yeah.
What, who is this guy?
And when I couldn't believe he was 21.
I'm like, that makes zero sense.
Yeah.
He's got it though, man.
And there's a bunch of them out there now that I'm hearing too.
There's just like, I'm like, man, how cool.
Yeah.
How cool.
I'm so glad that they're getting a shot at it or just getting the support.
I don't know if it's saying getting a shot at it, but it's like getting the
love and support
that they deserve for the, it's good music, man.
Yeah.
It's great.
Great.
Great.
Great.
Great.
Great.
Great music.
And there's a thing now with the internet where it's so easy to share something,
you know,
like someone's got a good song and it's on YouTube or Spotify and then you just
send a
link to your buddy and you go, bro, check this out.
Like I gotta say like half the songs that I find out about my friends just send
me.
And then all of a sudden I'm like, Oh shit.
Yeah.
And then I'll add it to my playlist.
You know, it's like, it's easy to share things now where you don't have to go
to the record
store and pick up the record and you know, now it's just like within seconds of
you getting
it in your phone, you're listening to it.
Yeah.
And it's easier to record the stuff too, you know, it's like, you don't need a
half a million
bucks in a studio and all that stuff.
It's like, man, half the stuff you can record on your phone.
Well, look at Oliver Anthony.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One fucking song.
Yeah.
One song and the first show he ever does is like 18,000 people.
That is the first show that dude ever performed at.
Yeah.
I feel for him.
I would never have been able to do that when I started, you know, like I was
not prepared
for anything like that.
You know, I don't know, maybe they're not, but that's a lot of.
He settled in there.
He settled in pretty easy.
He figured it out.
He's a smart cat.
Yeah.
He's a really smart dude and he settled in really easy.
I guess they have to, you know, and I always think like, you know, gosh, it's
changed so
much since I started out, you know, I mean, we didn't even have like, you know,
if you
wanted to learn how to play a song, you kind of had to go listen to the record
and just try
to figure it out, you know, rewind it.
And now they're like, oh, here's a guy that'll just show you every note and
this and that.
Yeah.
There's a guy on YouTube that'll show you exactly where to place your fingers.
Exactly how to do it.
Yeah.
And that took me years to figure out, you know, and then, you know, maybe that
is like today,
you know, these guys, it's, they're learning how to do it at such a quicker
rate.
And like, they know how to handle the crowds and do all the stuff.
And it's just like, boom, there you go.
Well, that's with everything today.
Yeah.
You know, I think that's also why like, I mean, in martial arts and like UFC,
there's
a reason why the guys are so much better today.
And it's because they get to see everything that everybody's ever done.
And then they practice it and improve upon it.
And they get it at a year early age, you can essentially just on your phone,
watch every
fight that's ever taken place ever in human history.
That's been recorded.
I did that on the road a few years ago.
I mean, I've still, I've always been a pretty rudimentary guitar player.
You know, I can't solo all over the place and all of that stuff.
And I think it was like 2019 last, I put out a record and I was going on a tour.
And my friend, Charlie Sexton produced album.
He's a wonderful guitar player.
And Charlie Sexton, the guy from the, from the eighties, beat so lonely, play
with,
I remember that Dylan play the archangels.
He was like really young when beat so lonely came out.
Oh man.
He's yeah.
Legend.
And I remember calling him though.
I was like, man, I really want to get better at the guitar.
You know?
And he's like, well, just listen to all the stuff that you really like.
You know?
He's like, don't try to play it all note for note.
He's like, just keep listening to it.
And like, you'll start eventually finding those places and develop your style.
And, but it was when I got on the road as well, man, I had access on YouTube.
Right.
All of my favorite musicians and guitar players.
And I just kind of made a point of sitting down.
And I even found this guy that was just breaking down and giving simple blues
guitar lessons for kids.
And I was like, man, this is great.
Never done anything like this.
And just like went through, I went back, you know?
Right.
I got to memorize all the notes on the fretboard.
And I needed, you know, and it was just, it was so, I had so much fun doing it.
And, you know, and also give confidence to get up and jam with other musicians
and play and kind of know what key you're in, what you're doing.
And, you know, I went years, you know, without having any kind of lessons or
training.
And then I'm just like, within three weeks of being on tour and watching
YouTube videos of it, just stepped it up so much.
Like, how'd you learn how to do it?
About 20 years later in my career, I decided to learn how to play the guitar on
YouTube.
It is amazing.
I mean, that's the positive part of the internet.
Yeah.
If you can avoid the negative parts, there's a lot of great positive stuff in
the internet.
And the access to stuff like that is amazing.
Yeah.
If we all could just avoid the negative of everything, right?
Right.
Well, unfortunately, there's a lot of people that don't have good lives.
And they do have a lot of extra time because they're not really investing in
their own life.
So they just spread the negativity online.
Yeah.
And it's just human nature.
Wild, wild world.
It is.
It's a wild world, but it's also a wildly positive world too.
Just what you just said about the guitar stuff.
Mm-hmm.
Or with the Oliver Anthony stuff.
Yeah.
This guy standing there with a guitar in front of a field with no production
value at all, but
has a song that he's singing from the heart.
Mm-hmm.
How many views does that shit have on YouTube?
It's gotta be like 100 million views or something nuts.
I mean, that song was fucking gigantic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rich men north of...
Mm-hmm.
I remember my wife playing it for me for the first time.
Yeah.
And I was just like, what the...
I was like, what is that?
And she's like, oh man, check this out.
You know?
And I was like, that's so fucking rad.
Yeah.
I got a chance to see him perform live too with his band.
They're fucking fantastic.
Yeah.
He's settled.
He's completely settled into being famous now.
He's full.
He's cool with it.
Yeah.
He's still the same dude.
Mm-hmm.
I met him real early on and I actually talked to him on the phone.
How many was the guy that?
236 million.
What?
Holy shit.
Wow.
When you say he's settled, dude, was he...
I didn't know, dude.
Was he having a hard time with it?
He was freaking out at the beginning.
Oh.
I contacted him early on and he said, hey, can I ask you some advice?
Can we talk on the phone?
I said, yeah, sure.
Mm-hmm.
So I called him up and he was just telling me that he was getting hit up by all
these different
people that were trying to give him money to sign a contract and this.
And then I go, hey, hey, hey, don't sign nothing.
I go, you don't need nobody.
You don't need to be locked up in any contracts with nobody.
Yeah.
And he was like, they're all telling me I got a strike while the iron's hot.
I'm like, fuck them.
I go, you got talent, dude.
Yeah.
That is the number one thing.
You already have that.
You're going to be fine.
Yeah.
You just keep making songs like that, you can't fucking lose.
But what you don't want to do is be tied with some legal contract to some assholes
just sucking
you like a vampire.
Yeah.
And they're going to be stuck with you for years and then you're going to have
to go to
court to get out of that shit.
And you're stuck with them.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You have the opportunity.
Like you said, you just, man, you're writing good songs.
You're doing good stuff and you have a way to give it to the people.
But he's getting an offer for like $7 million to sign this.
I'm like, don't do it.
I know it sounds like, but that $7 million, they're giving you that because
they're going
to make 14.
There's not a chance in hell.
And you don't need them.
You don't need them.
You should get all the money.
You should get all.
You shouldn't give any money to anybody else.
Yeah.
You don't need it.
You can make your own records.
You can put it all together yourself.
You don't need nobody.
Mm-hmm.
I guess you always got to remember, they're going to buy for one, sell for two.
Yeah.
Exactly.
There's no way they're going to give you that money unless they're going to
make a lot
more.
And then you're going to get stuck with them.
Don't do it.
And he's like, they're all telling me I got to do it now.
If I miss this opportunity, I'm like, you ain't missing shit.
Yeah.
You ain't miss it.
There's not a chance you're going to miss it.
Especially when you're that young.
Yeah.
And good.
Yeah.
Who knows what they're going to be writing in the next 10 years.
Yeah.
Have you heard that song, Woman Scorned?
I haven't.
No.
Is that one of his new ones?
Woo!
Yeah.
He wrote that one after a breakup and it's just woo!
You hear that, fucker.
It just gets you right in the bone marrow.
Yeah, I get you.
Yeah.
It's fantastic.
It's so good.
But it's just like, you know, it's a beautiful story.
And I love a story like that.
The dude was selling heavy equipment.
He was a salesman.
Just like fucking machinery and shit.
Yeah.
And then writing songs and he gets fed up one day and he puts this song.
Let's make a video of this fucking song.
Yeah.
And then all of a sudden, boom!
Man, people ask me all the time.
They're like, man, who do you think is, you know, the best young songwriter out
there?
You know, musician or guitar player?
I'm like, man, I don't know.
It's probably some 16-year-old kid in the garage that nobody's heard of.
That's probably the best guy out there, you know?
And he's ready to jump off.
Yeah.
He's going to hit you with some song that just, you know, crushes you.
Yeah.
They're out there.
It's just but that's the thing that I was saying about guys like you that
people look at guys like you and it's such a romantic story.
They worry that there's not going to be any more of you.
You know what I mean?
Like this weird digital world and AI and just this strange fucking life that we're
all living like now that are not, I don't want to say simple because it's not
simple, but it's unencumbered by all the bullshit of the world that we think is
fake and unfortunate.
Yeah.
Like to have this pure life and this wild romantic story.
When people meet a guy like you, they're like, man, there probably ain't going
to be many more of them.
I don't know, man.
I mean, look at this guy, you know?
Yeah.
I feel so fortunate too.
Like when I did come to Austin like in my, you know, mid-20s, you know, I met
guys like Joe Ely and Terry Allen and Guy Clark and like these little Steve Earle
legendary kind of guys that I looked up to.
And I remember being young then and being like, oh, man, you know, these are
the last guys left, you know?
Right.
And so, you know, I don't know.
There's so many of these young folks out there that I think crave it and that's
what they're interested in.
They want to play that music, you know?
They want to feel that stuff.
So I'm optimistic about it, but I can, it definitely is a different world out
there these days.
And, you know, even for myself, you know, just going with the flow and like,
well, where are we going tomorrow?
You know, how's this?
Like, I have no idea how so much of this social media stuff is working or what,
you know, and how you put out an album or songs.
And it's like, don't worry about all that jazz.
Just like, just keep writing.
Yeah.
Just keep writing, keep making it and just be undeniable.
And at the end of the day, if all of that stuff disappears, like, you know, you
can always go sit on the sidewalk and put your tip jar out there and play a
song for people who are walking down the street.
And I guarantee you there's going to be somebody that's going to stop and
appreciate it, you know?
Well, that's what got Charlie Crockett started out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's one of those gigs where like, you know, you go into some bar and, you know,
my wife always says, go where you're celebrated, not where you're tolerated.
You go into some bar and they kind of, you can tell they don't really want, you
know, they're not excited about you playing or whatever.
Like, you know, shit, I'll just go, I'll go park in the parking lot across the
street and sit on the tailgate of my truck and play and we'll have a party over
there.
You know?
Yeah.
That is the crazy thing about music.
Yeah.
You can just kind of set up anywhere.
You don't need all that stuff.
You're like talking about just signing contracts and deals and all that.
It's like, man, just like, you got that guitar in your hand, you got your song,
you know?
Hold on to it.
Yeah.
And protect it, you know?
That's what's, it's something that's special to you.
I think when I talk about the therapy of songwriting, that's what's, I hold on
and protect that ruthlessly.
You know, I'm, I'm not just giving that away, you know?
And it's more, that part of it's way more important than selling an album or a
concert ticket or going on the road, touring and all that, man.
Like what I get out of music is like when I'm sitting at home in a room all by
myself and letting that stuff pour out of me and I'm just, just singing it to
the wall.
Like that's what's saved my life, you know?
That's awesome.
And ain't any of the rest of it.
I'm glad that you articulate it that way too because I think there's young,
aspiring songwriters and singers out there that are listening to this right now
that are feeling this and they just can't wait to get to a pad right now and
start writing.
You can pick up their guitar and start writing.
Yeah.
Because it's like stories like yours and the way you express it, it, it, it
inspires people to get excited about it, inspires people to really dig in.
I hope so.
You know, I definitely had folks that mentored me like that and, you know, steered
me in the right direction in a lot of ways.
Uh, Terry Allen, the guy definitely, I just like, man, just keep writing, keep,
you know, and then whatever it, whatever that's making you want to do that in
the first place, you know, like that, like hold onto that, you know, and
protect it.
And, and the rest will all be always be around and always come and it'll change
and a good song will survive and find its way.
Just like the guy, you know, that song you just played me, like you said, 200
million people and it just, they'll, they'll find its way, you know, find it,
it'll find, it'll find its way into people's hearts.
Yeah.
And like I said, it's just, it's important for people like you to tell your
story.
It really is.
Thank you.
It's, it's fuel for people.
Thanks.
Thank you for being here.
I really appreciate it.
It was a lot of fun.
I really enjoyed it.
Uh, and, uh, tell everybody they want to find you performing anywhere, where
they can catch you.
Is it, you got a website that shows where you're going to be at everywhere?
All over the interwebs.
Yeah.
It's all out there.
Is it, do you have your own personal website?
I do.
It's probably, uh, just Ryan Bingham.com or Bingham music.com, something like
that.
You got all the dates.
All the dates are up there.
Yeah.
Do you use social media at all?
Yeah.
We're on all this.
I mean, all the stuff.
Do you pay attention to it or you got somebody who does it for you?
Both.
Yeah.
We both.
Yeah.
Like mostly like on Instagram, I pay attention to that one, you know, and check
in and stuff
like that.
There's so much of it these days.
It's like, I can't keep up.
Yeah.
All of it.
You know?
It'll rob your time.
Yeah.
I'm trying to go get away where all that stuff's turned off.
That's where I'm going to find me.
Beautiful.
All right.
Thanks, brother.
Appreciate it.
It was a lot of fun.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Bye, everybody.