[Music] welcome to ear biscuits I’m Rhett and I’m link this week at the roundtable of dim lighting we have us hey the two of us and you hope you’re not disappointed I picture you in some sort of seat listening to this I think it could be a it could be a moving vehicle seat jogging I mean sitting there you could be jogging I’d but I don’t picture you jogging maybe on a skateboard not that you don’t nuts you’re not in shape is somebody’s joints someone is on rollerblades right now think about that like oh gosh he’s on rollerblades they look cool they look really cool everyone when they go by everybody’s thinking that guy must be to listen in the ear yeah that’s an ear biscuits man see he’s got he’s got those big headphones on and the rollerblades that only means one thing your biscuits okay that’s happening well here’s what’s gonna happen on this year biscuit as you know if you’ve been listening for any time we started doing this thing on a semi-regular basis where we just talked to one another and it’s been fun we’ve learned some things about one another we’ve taken questions from you the ear biscuits listeners and asked them to one another we’re gonna continue in that tradition tonight and we’re gonna talk about is the creative process as it specifically relates to our music because songs yeah yeah and not because but one of the things that’s gonna happen to illustrate this is we’re going to play a lot of music tonight and that includes a lot of tracks slash demos slash maybe even not quite demos that have never seen the light of day that I don’t think anyone other than just the two of us has ever heard never hit any one’s ears I mean there’s some things that I found on my phone that you and you had never heard right voice memo so I mean alright we’re going into voice memo demo level tonight not to not because we think we’re like the The Beatles or something and we’re open up the archives and you’re gonna be blown away but because it’s kind of ridiculous Anna and hopefully in in informative to those of you who are you know trying to yeah there’s nothing creative out if you’re an aspiring songwriter then maybe this give you confidence that you can certainly do better than we can and if you’re just a rollerblader I mean hopefully this is just be entertaining yeah I think it you don’t even have to like music to get a kick out of some of the things that we have tried so we have some questions that we’ve gotten off Twitter that we’re going we’re gonna go through but first I think a good place to start Rhett is with the first comedy song that we wrote together now I mean we were in a band together in high school the wax paper dogs vote and it was comical but it was not intentionally comical there were comedy songs written right so the first intentionally comedic song we wrote I guess it was 2001 I mean this was our third roommate in college Greg it was 2003 jeez it was 2000 it was the year 2000 because yeah you got married you got married in 2000 right no and then Greg and December 2000 so we decided to write a funny song making fun of Greg in at his rehearsal dinner we were going to perform it live at his rehearsal dinner in order to embarrass him in front of not only his family but his fiancee Jenn’s family right so we wrote a song which I I somehow have like the demo recording of us practicing the song yeah before we performed it and I guess we should go ahead and tell him that this song was then adapted well here’s what we realized we realized a song about a guy who you lived with for three years and making fun of him before he gets married is not something that has a wide audience there’s not a lot of broad appeal so we decided to change the words and keep the tune and the guitar part and that became the unibrow song right which I’ll play a little bit of that right now in this awkward position my two eyebrows have formed a coalition [Music] so the universe song actually ended up being one of our first music videos on our YouTube channel that went big it was featured on the homepage of YouTube that’s right back in the day and you can still watch that music video which features rets father as one of the guys in the barber chair that we shave his is unibrow yeah the good-looking one so so to go back to this rehearsal dinner with Greg we wrote this song and the bridge was well I’ll just play it and see if you can you can hear what we said [Music] they know that you were meant for each other the best of friends soon to be the best of lovers we know that you were meant to be together two peas in a pod two okay so that’s a little embarrassing I gotta say a couple of things a note is we sounded like absolute rednecks we were yeah still still are rednecks just kind of reformed a little bit we could not sing well at all I think a dog actually barked as a result of one of your harmonies yeah but the interesting thing we’ve seen Greg naked soon you will too hope you enjoy it more than we do but it was a hit I think the thing I would like to stress at the rehearsal day as as it’s not a nationwide you know as bad as that sounds as embarrassing it as the played for you it was an absolute hit at the rehearsal dinner so much so that one of the most formative conversations that we have had about our careers took place right after that you remember this yes sitting in the car with our water with our wives with my fiance at the time your wife of six months and I was gonna get married to my wife in six months and they it went over so well they said you guys need to do something with this like you can’t just get up there and sing this song and have everybody respond like that and just move on to the next thing you’ve got to keep doing this you’ve got to pursue this and I think that was the beginning of his thinking in first of all I’m so thankful they said that because based on that recording no one should have ever thought there was any promise there was any reason to keep pursuing it yeah I’m very thankful for our wives for seeing the potential they were like our Simon Cowell but I mean in fairness the live performance was much more dynamic and much more practiced the whole reason of recording that was so that we could not forget it but when we started to be like that that was a turn right as we were writing it can give us the benefit of the doubt so we started writing intentionally funny songs after that and I mean it wasn’t like immediate success I whether we’re oat the unibrow song pretty much right after that but we also wrote fartin girl which I don’t know why I’m playing some of this but just because it’s so embarrassing okay ended up and this is there’s a lot voices in this one this was many of our friends joined in many who could sing and many who could not sing as you’ll be able to tell it and as you hear the chorus of voices [Music] Xena [Music] [Music] if she first mustered she might have to go every [Music] Oh [Applause] okay so that ladies and gentlemen was fartin girl an international hit from rhettandlink now that actually went on an album that was sold at some point just mail us the Grammy and I don’t believe that is a trunk that is available to be bought anywhere thank goodness no but one of the things that was very much a part of the process at that point in our comedy and especially in our music was as soon as we wrote it as soon as we came up with it a line we wrote it and moved on and there was never an evaluation of hold on what did what just happened what did we just write did we just really write a song that says Tina gets the laughs when she farts in a group have you ever been in a party where a girl named Tina farted and gets the laughs that gets the laugh it was all a setup that’s another thing it was all a setup for poop which is because some group rhyme same link yeah so as soon as we figured out oh listen it’ll be great if we can just say if she farts too much she’ll poop so hey let’s just start it with something about group Oh Tina gets the last thing is we just established that we are married men at this point we’re third grade and we put it on an album I mean my my art 8 and 9 year old sons wouldn’t had more decency now did not write as don’t even know about this so my kids would be singing this song left and right all throughout the house if I were to play this for him but it because I the reason we wanted to play that is not just because we thought you’d laugh and how horrible it was was because the process I will give us some credit over the past 14 years the process has changed significantly and I think for me one of the the things that I’ve noticed is that it’s so much more iterative than it used to be because where it was Oh poop rhymes with group boom let’s sit down let’s record this invite some friends over let’s record this with them it’s so much more iterative when it starts with it with us an idea and that idea and whether it’s the the chorus or whether it’s the melody or whether it’s the muse itself takes a lot of different forms before it takes its final form well okay so I’ve got a Twitter question here and I think we can get into that junus puh puh puh puh that’s what yeah yes when we start a project do we already clearly know what the finished product will be like or does the idea evolve I think he may be talking about like a concept for like for a particular song but I think what you’re saying is that this song does evolve as you go on a perfect example I think we can walk through it’s my belly button one of our most recent songs just to kind of take it to the other extreme [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that’s what the bellybutton song or it’s my bellybutton became but the song started in a much different place than that we actually have the first the demo version that we did right when we came up with this idea we sat down we wrote some music for it and then link recorded a melody of some of the lyrics that hip we had written see if this is in any way similar to the final version [Music] in the same place and recovered in we go to the memory of what was that I mean I think you had I was working on something else and you sat down at like the computer and the keyboard and kind of developed that backing track which was just playing in the room and then I took it and tried to come up with some sort of melody and and we had talked about the concept there saying a few of the lyrics right but the thing that we had talked about was we want to do a song about grown men who discovered their belly buttons they think that they maybe they’ve been shot and they both healed in the same spot and they’ve got a scar in the same spot what are the chances Oh highly improbable that’s highly improbable and we and we wanted that to be what the song was mm-hmm then months later because that we’re in a very weird sounding oh yeah yeah that was in 2013 actually that was an October of last year that we conceptualized that lots of time past and then we revisited it this year and I remember saying you know what I want to take a day and I and I’m gonna you were working on something I was like I’m gonna take a day and I want to revisit this bellybutton song and see if I can move it along and I sat down and listened to exactly what we just listened to and I was like oh this is horrible we can’t we can’t do this right it it’s funny because I pulled it up in order to email it to you so that you’d have it and when I pulled it up and listened to it I was like this is horrible we can’t do this but I sent it to you anyway and I was like this is his problem today well and then you came back and said I didn’t use that and it’s not okay well but the thing is is that I listened to it and I was like you know what we should handle this whole discovery of the bellybutton in the conjecture as to what it might be let’s handle that in a sketch at the beginning of this thing and then let’s just let the song be about celebrating the bellybutton right like post realization and so then I updated it with this version which is a little bit more like the final version but still a little different extra you added a baby you were really reaching I was singing it to a woman it was you were yeah I mean it was very emotional it was very dramatic subversion should be overdramatic like these guys they discovered their belly button and then they seen this really dramatic song but then you know I never played that for you I I cuz I played that this is like the first time I’m hearing it yeah right so I’m like oh oh gosh maybe we should do that one too and so I never played you that version because I listened back to that and I knew that that wasn’t good enough and in another couple of weeks past and then when I revisited it again I said this needs to be this has got to be happier more ridiculous this should be a pop song and then that ended up you can see that the course was almost there right right lots of things change they’re gonna be in the belly belly button really really something it became to the hook really but it’s just it it that’s how the song got to the sound that it ended up having but let’s talk about how they can the concept change did you have another version though didn’t you I thought you have one more demo to play I would I do I have that I have basically what is the very last version before we change the concept I can’t believe we’ve lived to be this oh and somehow we have never seen this hole I can’t believe we’ve lived to be this oh and somehow we have never seen this hole okay so that that you you it was kind of repetitive at this point that demo that was just okay it’s gonna have more of a pop beat it’s gonna have little beat up beating more poppy that piano and that kind of thing and so then that at that point is when I brought it back to you right and when we were in our office and I was like okay here’s the updated version I think we’re onto something here in terms of the sound and you have a chorus to because that was the best part yes yeah that was you also had that right the course the course was there and then we kind of just added some jokes in and you know added the rap and all of that and started to structure it but we but we had to figure out where the song was going to go I think that that’s always the second question the first question is what’s this song about what’s the comedic angle to guys discover the bellybutton but then it has to go somewhere because I don’t think that concept is enough to support a song and we decided we didn’t have the trees yet right well we had telescopes going into the belly button well that’s the thing that we said was this song has got to go crazier right it’s got to go more into left field and so the first time I do idea we came up with well let’s get to the point where these guys start selling basically a charger look at in their belly buttons with it with telescopes and somehow I don’t know I can’t remember exactly what that what we this how we came up with this but it was we were also going to give away magazines about horse Mane’s horse mane horse mane magazine it was a miniature miniature horse mane mangas it was crazy it was youth you got if you came and looked at the belly button you got a free subscription to a horse miniature horse mane magazine and then we said okay but before we get to crazytown with miniature horseman magazine let’s try some things like we didn’t have the Nugget yet because I made that up later but we had a couple of the other things including trees be dazzling it and and putting a seat in there and a tree growing out of the belly button but then when we revisit it we said hold on let’s let’s keep if we keep running with the trees it could actually be logical we don’t have to go to a horse mane magazines which doesn’t make any sense so we can carbon offset ourselves and then the song kind of it just went from there but you so you can see what we’re saying this is kind of the iterative process of writing a song I mean since last October yeah and so it it’s been it gets to the point where it becomes it’s not just a song about bellybuttons it’s a song about somehow about it’s almost an Earth Day and an Earth Day song kind of an anti Earth Day song almost in an ironic way but it took five steps to get to that point right a couple of other questions sort of Sam asked is one of you more of an idea centered person whereas the other acts as a filter for the ideas well I think that I think that this bellybutton song is the perfect example of how we work a lot of times yeah and that is right and we may I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this specifically first of all both of us come up with all kinds of ideas and both of us help finish and filter lots of ideas our process is incredibly collaborative and I’m not just making this up I it is truly the case that a lot of the time we do not remember who came up with the idea when we think back on a specific idea it’s like I think maybe you’ve said something in a conversation and then I immediately had another idea that built on it and then we’re off to the races and we and we build ideas that’s how we always work but I do think that I’m more forward thinking than you and you’re more detail-oriented than I am we established that when we talked about our personality differences on an episode of good mythical morning and what that lends itself to a lot of times is is I’ll come up with 15 different ideas for songs you’ll help establish what the best idea is and then if we move forward with an idea and I kind of get it off the ground like this bellybutton song I probably would have just been fine finishing the song making it sort of an ode to bellybuttons but we were sitting there in your light we got to take it it’s got to go somewhere else it’s got to go to a new level and that’s when the whole left-field conversation started happening and it became the song about bellybutton trees and carbon offsets I think that it’s I think that’s the answer the question is that a lot of times there’s this I might have an idea but it never it never becomes what it’s going to be until you marinate on it and turn it into what it is because that’s how our brains work as a default but sir but certainly it works the other way as well yeah I have ideas and you make them better Smith Brent 518 tweeted who makes the witty comebacks or do you create your own parts like an epic rap battle nerd geek or manliness or just the original epic rap battle I guess what he’s asking is do we each separately write our own parts of the rap battle and then legit so we’re legitimately rap battling and the answer is no I hate to crush your your hopes I don’t know that’s ever happened rent 518 yeah I mean what it’s still just very collaborative III think until the very last when we’re divided and up we kind of divorce the lyrics and the whole writing of us of the rap from who’s gonna be delivering it because I wouldn’t be fair and it doesn’t matter at least at that point I mean there’s a once the song is written we then we have to determine who’s gonna say what but it’s as we’re writing the lines we don’t know who’s saying what or how we’re gonna divide it up we’re just trying to make the best song ever and write it because we both win if it’s a great song right and and I’d say that you are you’re more of a student of rap than I am you listen to more rap and so typically what we do and I think this has become and it’s also a detail or anything for me to kind of take write to craft a rap but so is something like the text Burt I’m at expert rap I’m one of our most recent reps what I’ll do is I’ll sit down and I’ll just write a lot of concepts like this would be funny or be just there there was a joke about texting with your feet it would be funny if there was a joke about a masseuse a Swedish masseuse giving you thumb shiatsu and I could have a yogi but I don’t think about the rhyme scheme I don’t think about the flow just come up with these different ideas and then kind of you take it all I move on to something else yeah we’re always working on something I’ll move on to something else and you’ll kind of sit there in the office and kind of toy with the lyrics until you kind of landed something then bring it back to me as a demo and then I’ll kind of you say well I think I’d rather say it like this or maybe it would be funny if we did it like this or it would be a better foot and then way the final version is a collaborative again so the typical process is and I think this is probably typical of lots of people who work together which I would say that one lesson learned or I don’t need I don’t even know what it would be like to to create things apart from you apart from link we is such a collaborative process of handing things back and forth like two guys working on the same project and kind of all right you take this for a while I’m gonna go work on something else give it back to me when you’ve moved it along I would say that’s an encouragement to if you’re having trouble creatively you come to creative roadblocks find somebody to work with because I think so many of the creative breakthroughs that we’ve had have been related to the fact that we hand things back and forth until it becomes what it’s going to become and only recently I think in the past year have we determined that we should spend more time on writing jokes and coming up with funny concepts and we’re at the beginning middle and end of a song before we start crafting the song itself especially for a wrap I mean it’s there’s somewhat many more jokes crammed into a rap we learn to write as many jokes as we could and then you kind of have things to choose from to kind of make your rhymes in the second half whereas before we would just start at the beginning to start writing and rhyming as we went and you would end up with filler and things that didn’t work well related question to that says Ellie brash ex asks do you write lyrics first or compose the music first by the way love you guys you are going to say that I mean but it’s in the tweet heart to actual icon hearts there for me I think hearts for me that I don’t get a hard-on well I think one of them for me says you guys you know I’m gonna take one of those hearts I don’t even know this girl Megan I’ll take any hearts I take you can have all the hearts mind a wife what they were both for me anyway I’ve got I think when it’s a wrap like like link was saying a lot of times it’s very much jokes even lyrics first and then I can’t write the lyrics without music I actually tried that because I tried I thought it I tried to change the music on text but halfway through and I was like what can’t I can’t change the tempo it’s not working yeah so well so usually we do have the beat that we’ve gotten someone to make for us that’s another thing with with raps we a lot of times we have a producer create something and then we kind of help guide that process with our songs we always write the the music for those so we’re not you know we’re writing the the music for that for the songs and then trying to come up with the melody / lyrics and a really funny example something that we found when we were going through all these old yes demo levels this was on my phone yeah it was another voice memo when we were working on the my hair song which I remember how that one worked I don’t remember whose idea was but I know that you came up with a hook like the the piano hook for the way that goes I think it goes from the verse in through the chorus my hair goes up my hair goes down the beginning of the idea yeah was I was like I got an idea about a song for hair going up in here going down because my hair goes up your goes down all I got is this and it was just the chorus and then we played a little bit away well but the the the the verse could be something like this but I have no idea what the lyrics are gonna be I have no idea what the melody should be but we had this little we had a beat and we had a chord progression and then and that was all we had and you had that on on your computer yeah and then you started working on the second caption fail and I said alright I’m gonna work on this melody and then I kind of had something I kind of worked on a melody and recorded as I went so I wouldn’t forget it because what you learn when you’re writing the songs is you get something great and you know like I’m never gonna forget that you go to lunch and you come back and you do not remember it so that’s why we have so many voice memos on our phone was because we forgot things that we thought were genius actually you’re just documenting proof that what you came with really was a genius as you’ll see so this is the my hair goes verse melody I was just making up words off the top of my head and trying to come up with the melody something that was catchy check one two testing testing this is my hair goes up and if I wrote the song and you sing it with me would to people their bedroom and if we went down like this and up like this and middle fall around the world then everybody would be singing the song and passing it on the girls yeah I’m trying to remember this way to sing so I can sing it with these new words and when I add in two words and you sing along it’ll be like two floating turns and if floating turds are cool and we are cool then we can float along with them and you can vote for different weirdo roofers in the room oh my goodness Rufus it’s like if Bill Cosby were like that got his wisdom teeth out like what that was the funny thing about it is is the melody that you came up with there was actually better than the melody we landed on you were like it was a very our Kelly thing you kind of fact we backed off on the art Kelly nature that because it was almost too over-the-top and we also didn’t include lyrics about turds if the turds are cool oh gosh that’s embarrassing well I know that that existed again I I’m hoping first of all you if you know us you know that we result a resort to bathroom humor it’s a natural that was a perfect example of it just it’s in your brain now conscious the turds are gonna come out that brain turds are you gonna come out you can’t help it but I’m hoping that you know something about girls I said something about girls the girls are share it share it with the people we’ll share it with girls thank you sir which doesn’t mean that’s great we want people to share our music with girls yeah guys but I do hope that you know I remember when we were first getting started I mean I started playing the guitar when I was 17 in the band we had already started we’re because we were two lead singers and then I was like when one of us needs to play an instrument and in it that what Patricia Joyce 94 ask you how long did it take you to learn to play guitar what was your favorite song to play I don’t know what my favorite song to play was but I do know that I learned in a matter of weeks I remember I got the guitar you learned you bought you bought a fake book that’s what their car right where they tell you how to play guitar that’s got a fake book I don’t know why but I think that’s where it’s just you mean where it just has forward just got the fakes in it yeah and you got the Eagles one and you got Lynyrd Skynyrd yeah and it was kind of the the egos one was great because the Eagles have so many just chords that makes pastrami yeah but the Lynyrd Skynyrd was just I had I had all these electric guitar riffs for like give me back my bullet yeah that kind of thing the point I am making though is that I think about that process of trying to learn how to write songs and we kind of felt our way through it and we didn’t have a whole lot of people telling us what to do but these little tips like you know if you come up with a melody sing it immediately so you won’t forget it if you don’t have what the song is gonna be about go ahead and record yourself singing about turds or whatever because you’re going to help establish what the song is going to become obviously we didn’t write a song about turds not that we’re above it we started this thing off talking about the girl that farts in a group and then ends up pooping so we’re not above it but I think for anybody out there who is aspiring to be a songwriter those are some tips that we that we would throw your way is that just get something out there open it up don’t wait until you’ve got it completely formulated in your mind adain 0 9 ask us how do you come up with the premise or concept for your songs I you know I think we’ve got the three or four different ways that we come up with the concept I mean something I as we’ve already established obviously just an idea will pop in our brains I don’t know how you came up with the idea of writing his song about two guys discovering their belly buttons what what 30 it was a sketch I thought it would be a funny sketch but how did okay but how did you come up with the idea for that period no idea you like you’re like looking at your belly button I think I think I may have seen something about I know what it was I saw something on television about self-awareness and how at a certain age babies realize that their bodies are like they they have some sort of sort of them part of them right like what if what if the grown men realize that oh they might find their belly button right you know Jim then it just from there okay yeah I remember coming up with a I’m a thoughtful guy I mean I was I was driving into the Fatburger parking lot I was gonna get me a fat burger and there was an ad on the radio it was a dating ad on the radio and it’s something about I’m a thoughtful you know if you want to meet a thoughtful guy and I was like well I’m a thoughtful guy but I’m like well I don’t need a date but that’s kind of funny could also just mean it I think you think about and then I just jotted that down and then two weeks later I was I was looking through a list when we were talking my song ideas and it came up but I mean yeah I don’t know I’m not gonna say it’s a sad fact a lot of the ways we come up with our songs adain oh nine is through sponsorship I mean all of our rap battles was started with a sponsor dentine wanted to they wanted to do something that it that tied gummed together with confidence confidence to start a relationship and that led to epic rap battle and then when we put we put epic rap battle manliness to a sponsor and then same thing with Tiger Direct and nerve versus geek right so a lot of it has to do with somebody just saying we want something that speaks to a certain thing approach that kind of like a math problem and I don’t want to talk about too much because it’s really boring well I think it’s nice to have a constraint or two we allotted we were reactive sometimes and I think that’s a good thing as having something having somebody request that you write something for them can help you come up with ideas that you would not have come up with if it was just you writing along listening to the radio and hearing a commercial about a dating website well I mean that’s why why we came up with the five word song title idea I mean the any machines guys are friends they came up with the idea for films and they gave us permission to use it for songs too but and really when we first started making YouTube videos we were already doing that not five word song titles but just submit a song title the fear of frog song one of the first songs on our channel after unibrow and that’s part of the West sea boom right no it was after that but it was a submit a song idea within our some you know fanbase someone submitted that idea and then when we came back with the the idea to do five word song titles we made a video we said hey we’re gonna we want to write a song based on your suggestions the first one that we wrote was nil away for top hat time we saw that we said okay surely there’s a song in Nilla wafer top hat time wrote a very quick and easy song and did a live performance of it for our music video but then a number of months passed and it surprisingly we asked people to submit five word song ideas and there might be i remember going through and looking at the suggestions for those five word songs looking at like a thousand in one sitting oh yeah and not being able to find one that i thought we can make into a good song i don’t know what it was was just like man i thought that there would be so many of these that would work but so many of the people’s suggestions were things like purple dinosaur kitten doughnut hole or something like that you know what i mean like it’s it’s not really a concept there and then all of a sudden I wish I knew who suggested this it’s in you know we gave him the credit in the video yeah it’s there we saw rub some bacon on it it’s like that is funny and that’s that’s actually Serge underscore beetee’s question was how did you come up with the rub some bacon on it idea well mmm it was a suggestion that was one of the five word songs now you have a demo of that we had a really hard time right and we rub some bacon on it I definitely remember that is it too soaps you got two things about that first thing is we wrote the chorus for rub some bacon on it at least four times so that Beach Boys style rub some bacon on it that was after we had visited many different courses that we didn’t like over over several weeks then we finally land on that chorus and then we’ve got this rub some bacon on it chorus additional line in the course that we wanted and this is originally what it sounded like just me singing it as a demo well some make in on it Russell Megaton it making on it now I remember as we were writing that and recording that listening to the back of a mountain we just sound like dumb as dirt like knuckleheads singing like either that or like some type of frat guy that you don’t want to hang out with and really I don’t know what to do we couldn’t come up with anything better and then it was the idea was what if a robot synced what if it was a robot voice and we kind of knew we could do that using logic so we changed it to a robot sound effect and it sounded cool it didn’t sound like a couple of numbnuts sing a Rosenberg you know you know but then we thought we’ve got this robot singing in the song what are we gonna do in the music video we’ve got to have a robot in in the music video so the bacon this is this is just an example of how it isn’t totally ever determined from the beginning the bacon bot which is the focal point of the entire music video and ultimately the point they like the application point at the end it was only created because we didn’t like the way we sounded in the chorus and added a robot voice and then needed a robot to sing it and then decided well let’s just build this in Jason ended up building that that robot in my backyard over a number of days because like we got to have a robot how do you build a robot well we can use a trash can and we can get an old phone and then we could put Nick Bishop in it in it and the robot has to be able to fry bacon so therefore let’s make the head a lot of a functioning George Foreman great he ended up not be funk funk tional yeah it wasn’t plugged into anything and now he’s dead he fell off the top of the refrigerator and the whole his whole head busted but he’s still there I mean I think it could be heated yeah if maybe he could be salvaged but I mean those are kind of the ways that we come up with ideas from our brains from sponsors from fans but there are sometimes and we don’t have the luxury of a lot of time just to do this anymore but maybe we never did but I know there were certain points that we would just say you know what today let’s write a song with no constraint so let’s just sit down with a guitar and a notepad and just open our brains and just vomit out whatever comes out hopefully it just won’t be like more poop humor and we found a demo that rerecorded right so this is one we recorded we were at down to the beach this is a North Carolina number of years ago this is before we moved to California so this is probably four years ago and we were sitting there just what link said we want to write something that has no constraints and it was a song about a dream that we had and this is let me let me tell you this is a very early demo this is kind of catching us in the middle of a writing session and trying to kind of capture what we had the song would be conversational and so you would be telling me about a dream that you had last night and I would be responding to it right and then there would be a second verse where I would have a dream and you will respond to it we never wrote the second verse about my dream but we kind of ran with your dream just because and tried to draw a conclusion on the end of it and I think I was like really far back from your iPhone which was recording so it’s hard to hear me it’s not a great recording link sounds like he’s across the room because he was but I you know I actually still like this song you’ll get the idea okay I was selling colored pencils all roadside in a world of black and white and then I noticed I was wearing nothing but my floors and then a big panda bear came out of nowhere holding the key he said didn’t the bear that came a woman but she looked like Bruce Springsteen and she lit up purple man burst in me summon in the committee for the bee urbanization of cities she was given a presentation she invented a two-seater scooter that was fueled by facial hair I shaved my whole face and then I took my trimmer can shave both my legs and what she had oh my were you there [Music] and then she ate it all my and then she went no no no you should go oh that’s what makes it a – more like [Music] [Music] and then she exploded my hair went everywhere in the world we came color I think it means of course it means something go away your face your hair especially if all minutes ago she was a panda bear don’t trust a panda – just ate your body naturally your underwear to end up airless and alone [Music] don’t ride a scooter that runs on facial hair we had a lot of facial hair humor in there we did and we can salvage that song there’s something in there is it’s kind of nuts but it could work it reminds me of that song we wrote a long time ago a tribute to friends with your friends it just it was kind of a story and it was based on nonsense yes well there’s a lot of nonsense there and I think it’s a good answer to this question from Miranda Renee ran three she says can you tell us some of the ideas that you haven’t followed through with well there’s one right there Miranda I mean we’ve got a lot of these there’s a lot that we won’t play for you but things that we had an idea and we kind of ran with it and then we got to a point where we’re like one of this this probably doesn’t need to go public it would usually the ideas that we develop do find their way onto the Internet right but occasionally especially in the past we would try a lot of different things that might not make it like this dream song I don’t remember exactly why we decided you know what we just open up our brains why do we decide not to do that did not default it’s because we got back from the beach and we had other stuff to do and we never got back to it right I mean that’s how it happens a lot of time okay I found another one that we will never go back to well we’re going to it right now though this is what you get when you listen to your biscuits and we are no one’s ever heard this thing now when I played this for you earlier did you remember that we had done this vaguely this songs got at all people it has it it has it’s a it’s like a it has bathroom humor it has potty humor literally it’s all about the bathroom it is about that awkward situation when you’re in a public restroom that’s like a one person at a time but somebody knocks on the door and you have to figure out what you’re going to say before they like try to like shimmy the door open letting no one’s in there but the genres that we combined for this or I was just messing around like I don’t know why you made the the voice that you made so so horrible it was just crazy we’re like let’s just do the craziest thing let’s throw this drums on there you can sing in a nasal voice I’m gonna try out all these things in GarageBand I’ve never used before as many years ago it’s called public place [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that’s crazy I love the India I I really like where that song oh man that is quite possibly the stupidest thing we’ve ever done I’m sort of liking it a third or fourth time I’ve heard it today as we’ve prepared for this but maybe we should make it into a music video yeah so again things have changed a lot the more things change the more they stay the same well the interesting thing is you know we work in a different way today I mean one of the things has changed about the way we work is we have a team of people we have things scheduled out more in advance and so there’s not just time necessarily for us to sit around and write that but back when that was written it was just the two of us for the fun we just come into the to the office and we say all right well I got an idea for this public place private thing and then it’s like alright well I’m gonna do this weird drumbeat this country thing that you’ve come up with we would never let ourselves do that at now but hopefully I’m hoping there can be a time I do want to do this thing where we like to rent a cabin mm-hmm and go up there for an extended period of time and write a whole album just a whole album and it might end up singing like this and you could do the proof the Russian thing that’d be great what will happen is onra yeah whether people will listen to it is another story or question okay listen I found one more song and this is a complete demo that I found and based on what the song is written about I’m kind of deciphering that it was written free maybe still while we were engineers well but the quality of the demo so good that I think is later but you’re certainly we’re certainly pulling on principles but on the engineering they don’t block my YouTube so it had to be after 2005 that’s true so it would this was but all the humor was based on based on being in the workplace yeah here’s the angle the song that no one has ever heard it’s called don’t block my YouTube and it is written from the perspective of someone like an engineer who works in like a cubicle job and he’s just getting started and his biggest fear is that the boss will block YouTube at his place of work which happens oh yeah they won’t let you look at YouTube cuz you’ll waste your time and not get your job done and we would never write a song like this today because it’s too geared towards the workplace and I you know that’s not yeah that’s not where a lot of our fans are at or care about that type of thing so we’re not going to write cubicle humor but I did think it was interesting that this is like a complete almost it sounded almost produced demo I only start singing at the end I remember you wrote most of song and I wrote this thing at the end and started singing it yeah so there’s like two and a half minutes and uh then there’s light link comes in it’s like okay it’s a surprise I like it well we just spoil the surprise ladies and gentlemen the world premiere of don’t block my YouTube the first thing you’ll notice is that you’re beginning to gain some weight face it dude because you don’t meet your target heart rate on your commute before you know it you’ll be parting your hair and tucking in your business casual shirt because your foe hunk and Miller Genuine Draft t-shirt just don’t work at work at first you will be averse to do a number two in the restroom you think what if my boss comes in he would know me by my shoes but just give it two months you be relishing your precious time in the John because it’s the only time you can have conversations with anyone from circuit level management you go crazy trap there in that queue if your balls ever makes that dreadful decision to put a backup on you two there will be a certain girl at work you would have never noticed back in school but here in the office setting she seems enter pinstripe and suit you’re thinking about asking her out but let me set your perspective right what you think is a 10 on Monday you go crazy cooped up in a queue back and your boss if that sucker decides to put a plaque up on YouTube and don’t forget those me tease me tease once when all these thinking mean he’s leading after you leading your own freakin meeting about meetings me meetings just to make more meetings let’s call the meeting so we can minimize [Music] Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] it took you a while to come in there but you really came in strong and you really finished strong I like that song man I just like a Nickelback record ripoff or something well I felt very weird al’ very nasally you’re very high singing there will be a certain girl at work you would have never noticed back at school that’s harsh that hold it hold logic there that I came up with yeah we would never say that publicly now that’s it’s kind of sexist a little bit but but but still a completely formed song that no one’s ever heard until right now on this ear biscuit because you decided to stick around and hang out with us for this amount of time so we’re truly grateful I think the hopefully one of the things that has been demonstrated here is that if you think that some of our music is actually good which hopefully you do you see that the only way that that even has a chance of happening is a whole lot of bad to happen yeah you know you you have to churn out so much stuff creatively in order to get to the things that you actually want to share with people but you just that you’ve got to get that engine going you’ve got to get the machine working so something will come out of it so then you can say okay I got this out of the way so I could get to the next thing and maybe the next thing or the thing after that’ll be the thing that I actually want to share but I don’t know I spit cinnamon listening to this stuff and kind of being reminded of you know we’ve been doing this a long time it doesn’t think I’m struck with some of the some of these these songs are from I mean were the first ones from the year 2000 yeah that’s about 14 years ago it’s kind of depressing actually I mean the thing that struck me having going back through this is the amount of fun that we had developing this I don’t know if I would call it a skill but developing this practice and this of collaboratively writing a song you know I’ve seen footage of comedy writing duo’s who can just sit down and they can write a script and we’ve we do very little of that but we do very much of that when it comes to a song it’s it’s funny how a song kind of brings out the best and both of us in terms of being able to contribute to something and create something because our brains do work differently and we we care about the same things but then we’re also have the capacity to care about different things at the same time and make a it’s but it mostly I’m saying it’s fun to write a song I mean the best part about high school was being in a band writing crappy music and then you know whenever we would sit down in college and ever since then when you sit down we have to divide things up a lot but there’s there’s a lot of fun and there’s like a magical thing that happens when you can sit down and kind of kind of craft a song that comes together and it’s this cohesive thing that you wanna you can listen to a whole bunch well there’s just something about this is why I really hope and I think this will be the case that music will continue to be a cornerstone of what we create mm-hmm there have been times where we’ve gotten a little bit slack with the amount of songs that we’re putting out right yeah we’ve gone for a long period of time where we’re not putting out songs not writing new music and putting out music videos but there’s just something when you go back and listening to listen to things like this it’s just totally different experience to go back and listen to an old song to hear the iterative process of those five different stages of a song as it was being written it’s something that doesn’t happen when you go back and watch a video you know because that’s not how you know that’s not how you make videos you don’t make the video five times you hopefully and you talk about it and plan it and script it and then you go shoot it and then you edit it and maybe there’s a couple of different edits but there’s just something about music just from a from a creative standpoint that is different is better and talking about these listening to this listen to these old songs that we haven’t listened to some we’re hearing for the first time as we playing for each other yeah makes me want to write more yeah I feel energized let’s go write a song what are we gonna are we going to give them the scoop on something that where the next song we’re gonna write like I can tell you the voice I’m gonna be sing it in I hope that’s okay with you let us know hashtag ear biscuits well not what you think of that I know what you think of that what you thought of this episode again it’s you know there’s an experimental nature to the two of us having a conversation guestlist we’re certainly not going to give up our guests and you can count on that next week but give us some hashtag ear biscuits feedback I will say one thing though as your is your putting like putting together your tweets hashtag ear biscuits or leaving your comment a review and rating on iTunes which again as we’ve established helps a whole lot please do that a great way to support the show I don’t think I want to do much more unintentionally country music hmm I think that’s one of the things that I hear in a lot of what we what we’ve done is that we would write a country song not realizing as it was a country song just because we come from such a country background yes so much of what we listen to is just net for the country and when we start singing the chords that we’ll play and the melodies that we will sing you naturally fall into that country thing we’ve gotten to this place where we have to be like no no guys this is a rock song or this is a pop song or this is a rap song it cannot be a country song now because country’s bad but because when you write a song that you want to be a pop song and then somebody listens to it no it’s not a country it doesn’t work it ruins the comedy because the clarity of the comedic angle that we’re trying to get across is ruined so I don’t think I’m gonna be singing like this haven’t you knew some weird percussion unless we decide to just do a no this is a legitimate country song which I do have an idea for a country song about grilled cheese remember that one I think that’s that’s half written already but you know maybe maybe we shouldn’t go there I can I need to dig up that demo that’s the good one okay thanks for hanging out with us like I said you can count on us to speak into your ears via a biscuit next week and every Friday thanks for leaving that iTunes review and for supporting our musical endeavors yes a great way to do that is by listening to it what else what else do you want to say rap nothing me neither [Music] [Music]