EB 341: Rhett Is Going Solo

Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting. Am I talking to Rhett. I don’t, am I talking to somebody else? Am I talking to an alt alter ego? I don’t know, because we’re about to get into, this is like breaking open the seal on a, on something that you’ve been keeping under wraps my friend. Uh hum. There’s parts of this that we’re gonna discuss today. I’m excited about because, I think we’re gonna discuss it on a level that we haven’t. Well, because here’s the interesting thing is that by the time this podcast, now we’re recording a little bit earlier because we’re about to do some traveling. And I have talked about this, like on my personal social media, right? In the podcast. By this point. By this point. But I haven’t seen that yet. But as I’m talking right now, so few people know about this. It’s just kind of, it’s weird to be talking to you, Ear Biscuiteers about it because– And it is. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. What? I have been working on a solo music project under a name that is not Rhett, but is still kind of my name, ’cause my middle name is James. It’s called “James and the Shame.” And it is a country music project, essentially an album with some singles, the first single dropped on Friday called “Believe Me.” And we’re gonna listen to that. Yeah. And talk about it. In the next episode. In the next episode. Another single coming in August and then there’s another single and the album coming in September. And this is a, for lack of a better word, is a concept album. What’s the name of the album? Well, that’s interesting because am I committing to it right now? What do you mean? You don’t know? I have something. Okay, save it. I have something in mind, but I’m gonna, I might know by the time this goes live, but I haven’t fully committed. I wanna discuss that. You’re playing the marketing game with me. I don’t know the name of the album. No, I have a name in mind. Okay, but you’re not gonna say that you’re not gonna release this. ‘Cause I might change it slightly. You’re gonna release the track list. Like a. I don’t know. But anyway, it is a. That’s what artists do, man. I’ll get into the, I’m gonna get into all the details of why this is happening, how this happened, how long it’s been, whatever. Who the features are. Yeah. Also who the features aren’t. Hmm, yeah. But what I will say. What I’m saying is I’m not featured. It is a. We’ll talk about it. It is an exploration of my spiritual deconstruction through the means of country music. And so I tried to come up with a cool way to describe that like. Yeah. Deconstruction and country, but all I came up with is Decountry, which is. That’s not it, Which is not great so. That’s not it. You’re still trying to figure out how to talk about this project. This is an interesting thing, because this is not like, this isn’t my day job. My day job is what we do. This is my hobby and my side gig. Interestingly, you’ve got this new crazy watch that you’re wearing for the first time. And it’s making all kinds of light. Oh, it’s analyzing everything. But it’s like shy, almost shy. It’s so loose, right? Why’s it so loose. ‘Cause it’s so loose when you go like this, it’s shining in my eye. I’m sorry, Christy said the same thing. I gotta figure it out. I gotta figure out I, if I wanna. Christy said it was too loose. She said it was shining in her eyes too. It’s like a robot. Well, it’s analyzing like my biometrics But it needs to be tightly analyzing it. Not like from a distance. But I feel like if it gets too tight, then my hand will fall off. Well that’s a whole nother episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m not making this about me. But what I’m getting at is, this isn’t something that I’ve been like scheming and thinking about in a really strategic way. It’s a very organic thing that just, so this is actually, a lot of the things that I’m saying right now, the first time I’ve thought about them. First time I’ve thought about, and I actually made the commitment to myself. Like last night I was like, should I think about what I’m gonna say? I was like, no, that’s what this forum is for. I’m just gonna think about it out loud because I’ve just been focusing on getting the music done and being happy with the music and a couple of the things that you have to do. You gotta have album art. Okay and that kind of thing. But I haven’t been thinking about this from a, how am I gonna talk about this to people who aren’t already our fans and already Mythical Beasts, somebody who’s like, I’m just a person who listens to country music. And there’s a new artist out there and I’m gonna check ’em out. Well, they’re not listening to this. What? So this is different. Yeah, well, we’ll talk about that. Who I think it’s for. Yeah, but we know who’s listening to this. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Just Mythical Beasts. If I may make a suggestion about like formatting of this thing. I would like to talk about the project and really get into the details of it and kind of to the point we were just making for this audience and for this venue, what I don’t wanna do is, I don’t wanna start making it about like, what does it mean for us first? But I would like to get into that. Yeah, we’ll talk about that. Like I think that, listeners will be interested in like, how has this played out in terms of our dynamic for you to be doing this solo project? Yeah. Rhett going solo. What’s my take on that? What are both of our experiences with you doing the first bonafide solo project? Even if it is a side project and a hobby thing, I think that’s something for us to work out, not work out, but something for us to just talk through. Yeah. We talked through it a little bit, but I think that would be a good edifying, conversation for us. And it might answer some questions that people have. Like what is it, because I’m sure. Actually that wasn’t one of my worries in doing this thing. We’ll talk about that. We’re gonna say, like you said, you’re gonna save that for the second half of the conversation. Let’s talk about how this happened. That that’s exactly what I’m saying. Let’s save it for the second half of the conversation after we’ve just talked about the project in and of itself. Okay. Okay, so how did this happen? How did this happen? And can I just make a quick plug? Yeah. Because it’s very timely. As of the release of this episode, I’m doing an AMA, every month we do an AMA on the Mythical Society. It’s on Discord. But you’re going solo to this AMA. I’m actually going solo, but I’m bringing on another guest, Lily. So Lily, my daughter and I, are doing an AMA on the Mythical Society today at what is the day’s date? Today is July 18th in the year 2022. Yep. At 3:30 Pacific, 6:30 Eastern on the Discord of the Mythical Society. We’re doing an hour long AMA. So tune into that. And if you’re listening to this later, all the AMAs, the ones we do every single month and the one I’m doing with Lily today will be archived. So you can like read through all the questions in our answers and so that’s today. So let’s get into it, James. Should I call you James the rest of today? Yeah. Call me what you want to. I say, yeah. James is the name I use when I order food from any place, including Starbucks, ’cause it’s a name people can understand. But now it’s your. But now it’s my, I wouldn’t call this an alter ego because an alter ego is you purposely tried to disassociate yourself from, and this is just like Rhett James McLaughlin, who is me, has a solo music project that is called James and the Shame. I’m still working on the best way to explain that. But we’ll talk about why I’m not just, hey, why aren’t you just Brett McLaughlin? We’ll get to that. So how did this start? So obviously, I have a guitar let’s let’s start there. I don’t think I know the answer to this by the way. Yeah. I’m very, very interested. So the two of us have written and recorded, I actually, it’s funny ’cause as I was putting together the bio that’s gonna be like on Spotify, etcetera, you and I have written and recorded over a hundred songs, easily over a hundred. It might be close to 150, but like. Wow. And so because I wrote something like a stark departure from his over 100 multi genre comedic songs written and recorded as part of the duo Rhett and Link. Should have said a Lonely Island. That would’ve helped you. I think we’ve written and recorded way more songs than Lonely Island. Maybe not as good, but a lot more. We’re more prolific in certain way, in terms of the number of tracks, but we’ve written a lot of music and you know, the majority of that music was written in a way where it was like I had a guitar somewhere and I would like come up with some rhythm and structure and just like put it in a voice memo and then show up and we would write to it, right? So it has been a habit over the past 20 years. I’ve got a guitar in every place that I go. I’ve got a guitar in the office. I got a guitar in my bedroom, but we tend to get really busy with things and I’ll go months without picking my guitar up. And we just get so deep into some new project that may or may not have music. And if it doesn’t have music, it’s just like, I’m not picking my guitar up. My fingers start, I was like, ah, I don’t have callouses anymore on my, like they wear off. But I think it was 2019 and my guitar is in my bedroom and I pick it up and I’m kind of like just diddling around on it. And the next thing you know I’m. Diddling yourself. I’m beginning to write and this is unusual because I’ve never done this. In the past 20 years, if I start playing something and start singing something and start writing something, it is always exclusively what I would call a business decision. Hmm. Okay? It means I am writing this song as part of the mythical thing that me and you have built together. And it is obviously going to be for the purpose, it’s comedy song. We could use this in something or whatever, or I need to write a song for Buddy System soundtrack or something like that, right? Right. Which I think is the last time we were really intensely writing songs was Buddy System Season two. And it was so. Actually it was the music for the tour. That’s right. We wrote the few songs. We came back and we wrote. The few new songs that we like, Why I Travel, Kyle, The Shirt Song. Which interestingly enough, like, so Buddy System season two, it was very collaborative. It was very last minute to the point where we were going on separate vacations, right before filming. And we had to divide up songs, something we had never done. Yeah, ’cause we were so under the gun. We were so under the gun. I had to write one song. You had to write another song. And we had to commit that we were both gonna bring them back basically done. Yeah. Which was unusual. And then for the tour, the Rhett and Link Live Tour in 2019, you wanted to start playing piano. And so then you were like, you made yourself write Why I Travel on the piano. That really wasn’t. I didn’t add too much to that song as much as I recall, I don’t recall doing much to it. And then in the other ones like Kyle, that was a little more collaborative. And The Shirt Song just isn’t memorable. I mean, it had memorable. The Shirt Song is a performance art. It’s not really a song that you wanna listen to. Yeah. It’s a song. But those. It’s a song you might wanna watch after. You just kind of went away and wrote those, ’cause again we were in this divide and conquer mode and music, and the tour was kinda like get in where you fit in kind of thing. Yeah. So there was a little bit of, even in that yeah. You would sit, you started more and more initiating Rhett and Link songs on your own. Yeah. But this time in 2019, you sat down, you weren’t thinking about a business move, you weren’t thinking about an obligation, a creative obligation. I was like, I’ve got this idea. And really it wasn’t like I’m going to sit down and write a song. It was like, I’m playing the guitar. And I kind of like what I’m hearing here and I’m just starting to kind of sing a melody. Usually I’ll sing a melody that is nonsensical. Words that just sound good and I’ll make a voice memo just so it’s just like, oh, I wanna remember this melody that I came up with. And you sing words that sound good, that don’t make sense, right? It’s a very common songwriting technique. And so, but I was like, I was saying words that did make sense. And I realized that I was writing a song to God. Okay? So writing a song to God. Oh. And when I say writing a song to God, as someone who doesn’t necessarily believe in God at this point, I was writing a song to the idea that I had of God in the past. And you know, basically writing a song like I had a relationship with you. So if you don’t know. Do you remember the first line that kind of came out of it? I still remember when we used to talk, you never said much, but I knew what you thought. Hmm. Huh. So that was the first line that came out. And so I was like, oh, this is kind of like, if you don’t, if you’re not a Christian or a former Christian or a spiritual person, maybe you wouldn’t pick up on the thematic imagery here. And you might think I’m just writing a song about a lost love, because it’s about a relationship that you had. I’ve got these old letters, it’s called Old Letters. I’ve got these old letters that you wrote to me. And I sit down and read ’em, the Bible, you know? I don’t like giving all the, I want you to listen to the music and interpret it for yourself. But this one’s pretty obvious, I guess. But I was writing it and I was like, I don’t know who this is for. I don’t know why. I don’t know. I’m writing a song because I’m going to have a music project one day. It was very much just like, oh this is coming out of me in a very easy way. And I’m not, it’s interesting ’cause I’m not trying to be funny. There’s no jokes in this song. It’s very serious and it’s very sincere. Hmm. And it happened very quickly. That’s one of the things about almost all, there’s 11 songs on the finished album and all of them. The process between beginning to write and then record or like fine tuning the lyrics, that may have been a months long process. But with rare exception, the writing of the music and the first pass of the song is usually something that happens when I just sit down and do it in about one to two hours. And then you go, I’ve got a song, right? I’m gonna come back, I’ll change that lyric. I’ll work on that, whatever. But they usually come out really easy. If I sit down and it’s this hard I’m like, I’m doing this for fun. It’s not a business decision. It’s not a job. So there’s no forced creative. So this first song. Letters. Yeah. It pretty much came, it formed in that sitting. And then what? So I sat down and like recorded, I recorded a demo of it, but I wouldn’t have called it a demo. I was just like, oh, I’m gonna record this. And I actually recorded it in like the Evernote audio record. I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but like Evernote has, you can press add audio and it, so it is so low quality. It sounds like something like out of the twenties compared to like, if you just do a voice memo and attach it, interestingly. And I was just like, okay, I did that. Now this is 2019. At some point after that, I would say months after that, I just kind of told my therapist about it. I was like, yeah, I wrote, we were having lots. Can you pull it up? Play a little bit of it. I don’t wanna do that. ‘Cause that’s not, that’s not the. That’s not the single. Okay. It’s actually the last song on the album. Okay. Maybe I’ll play that when, ’cause you can see how different the final version ended up being, or maybe, That’s fair. Or once the album comes out. But I I’m talking to my therapist about it. And we were having a lot of broader conversations about me getting into a place where I was in creative flow and him just making rec, just recognizing like seems like when you are, you’re healthy and you’re thriving and you’re experiencing joy, when you’re in a creative flow. Now obviously I’m in a creative flow a lot with what we do for a living, because this is a creative business. This is a content business. So that I’m doing lots of writing. I’m doing a lot of creative things, but it’s also a very sophisticated business with a lot of moving parts and those business parts, which I do think, that both of us are really good at, isn’t necessarily life giving and doesn’t breathe a lot of joy. It’s kind of like, well, if you wanna do this right, you gotta do this right. So you gotta answer these business questions, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. For other people business can get ’em into flow, but that’s not really our thing. Yeah. And so he would, my therapist without giving specifics was just like saying like, yeah, you should just, I’m telling him about writing a song, he’s like, when you talk about that, I kind of see you light up a little bit. So I would just encourage you to continue to just express yourself creatively and move towards things where you can express yourself creatively. He wasn’t being like, go do an album. So it wasn’t like, okay, yes, I’m gonna do that. It was like, yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed that. Maybe I’ll do it again. Pandemic roles around, 2020. Oh yeah. And our lives changed drastically like everyone else’s. We were obviously still really busy. We were doing everything that we were doing with Mythical and trying to keep all our content streams going, but you know, less travel more time at home. I got this guitar in my bedroom. I got a guitar at the Creative House. I got a guitar here. I got guitars everywhere, right? And so I just found myself as a way of sort of like passing the time, picking up my guitar and beginning to play. And I just started finding that every time I did that, a song would come outta nowhere, right? Hmm. And so then, before I knew it, I had written a song to my parents. I had written a song to my children. I had written a song to my wife. I talked about the song that I wrote for Valentine’s D.ay We talked about on the podcast. Yeah. That I played for her, which is a song that I ended up writing for her. Oh yeah. You’re talking, you’re not talking about when you were dating. You’re talking about like. I did it when I was dating too. I’m talking about like. You did a 2020. It’s probably 2021 Valentine’s Day is when I probably talked about it. Okay. What was happening was is without any real calculation, all the songs that I was writing were more like, it was a cathartic sort of therapeutic way of thinking about my deconstruction. So I point out those songs and one to my parents, one of my kids, one of my wife as, what was happening with me is I’ve had this very long process of deconstruction. And as I’ve talked about many times, my spiritual deconstruction on its surface is it was a very intellectual thing, right? I wasn’t wronged by someone emotionally. I didn’t have a pastor do me wrong. I wasn’t like, I didn’t have the rug pulled out from underneath me. It was just a very slow process of access to new information that was increasingly more difficult to reconcile with my Christian worldview, to the breaking point. Right? But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t incredibly heavy emotional things happening, relational things, like deconstructing from a faith that your parents gave you. And they still have. Being a father to kids when they were born. You’re taking them up in front of the church and dedicating them to God and then no longer believing in that God in the same way and no longer adhering to a biblical or Christian worldview and still wanting the best for them. Like what is that? So what I would find is that the way for me to process all these emotions was to write a song about it. So I started talking more and more to my therapist about this. And he was like, this is bringing something out in you, and just started talking to Jessie about it. And she was like, it’s not, anyone who knows me well knows that it’s, I am a very emotional person, but on the surface you don’t see that, but there’s a lot going on. You gotta kind of tap into it and you gotta, it has to come out in a certain way for you to be like, oh, this dude was feeling a whole lot of things. Hm hm. And so I just kept going and going. And again, the thought as I was writing these songs was this is a therapeutic cathartic process. Now of course I am a full-time entertainer. And so as I’m getting to like the third and fourth song, I’m like, I’m making something here. Yes, I’m doing this for myself. Yes, it is a therapeutic process. Yes, I do feel like there’s like an emotional release every time I do this, but I’m making something here. It’s kind of, yeah. There’s at tension of, you’re doing something for therapy, but then you’re also, you’re not just a creative person, but you are an entertainer. And so it’s, I mean, there’s echoes of the conversation that we had about like, why you’re growing your hair out like this, it originated in therapy and you were like, it was a therapeutic exercise, but at a certain point, you’re like, I actually think I will look good with my hair like this. I think my wife will like me better. I think that this fits into my brand. These things are things that you can’t help but think about because of the position that you have in life. Well, and not just that, it’s also my personality as an Enneagram three, which I don’t, not everybody, some people get tired of hearing about the Enneagram. I get it. But the Enneagram three, just think about it this way. It just means your performance minded. It means that you find your value and your worth in what you perform for people, in winning, right? Right, so there’s. And it’s very unhealthy. It can be very unhealthy. And it goes with you into every endeavor, even like something that like nothing for anybody is, is like absolutely pure. It’s like, we’re not, you know? Yeah. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be aware of it and still like, I believe that this can be a relatively pure endeavor. Well, it’s funny ’cause I have a song that I’ve already written. I’ve written multiple additional songs that are not on the album that I guess will be for something in the future. But one of them is about this exact process. Huh. That talks about, I ain’t sure what I’m trying to prove or who I’m trying to prove it to. You know what I’m saying? Like that’s the treadmill that the three is on constantly. Which is really me. I wrote it when we, I finished the the album and I’m thinking about this process that I’m in right now, which you know, ’cause I’ve been telling you about it. It’s one thing to write the music and I love the process of writing. I love the process of recording. I love the process of collaborating with talented people who make what I wrote better than it would be if I was the one in charge from the beginning to the end. I love all that. But as I get into the process of like, okay, well you have to like have a bio and you gotta have like, you gotta get pictures taken. Once I started beginning to do these things that feel very performative and marketing oriented is when I started thinking about the built-in irony of doing something that is personal, cathartic, therapeutic, beneficial to me and then turning it into a consumable product, which is checking all the threes performance boxes. So I wrote a song about that, but it’s not on the album because it’s about the process of doing this, right? But just to go back. Yeah. So at a certain point you had amassed a number of songs. Like what was, you made a decision that you were gonna make this an album? Well, when I got to like four songs, I was like, ah, two more songs and I’ve got like an EP. I mean you can do a four song EP, but I was like a six song EP, like that’s respectable. That’s something. I can write two. So, but that process was very much, it wasn’t calculated. It was like, as I would keep talking about this stuff with my therapist and with Jessie, I’d be like you know, I feel like these songs need to be released into the wild. They need to be put into the world. And here’s my thinking on that. So, you know that I’m a big fan of David Bazan Pedro the Lion, he’s probably even more known for his band. That’s his band name. So he is a guy that grew up in a Christian home and was very much a strong, very similar story. And then he deconstructed and he was actually making like Christian music, I think back in the day with Pedro the Lion. And then of course he deconstructed and it kind of, his music evolved with his worldview, but he made an album probably in the late, alts, like 2008, 2009, called Curse the Branches. It was curse your branches or curse the branches. And it was essentially his deconstruction album, right? And it was a little bit of an angry album in that he was kind of like, he was, a little bit angry at the world that he had come from, but also it was just deeply. It was so thoughtful. And so like specifically connecting to what I, now I wasn’t listening to it in 2008, 2009, when it came out, I listened to it probably almost 10 years later. Yeah, I listened to it once. And. It just, yeah, it was a bit of a downer. Yeah, but I was just like man, this is so meaningful to me because of my particular experience. Yeah. And I was like you know, I’d love to make the album that I would want to listen to, right? I’ve heard that before, write the book that you would want to read. So I was like, okay, I’m gonna make this music. It’s the music that I would want to listen to as someone who’s kind of been through or going through what I went through. And so then it was like, this could be a gift to those people who have, who can relate to this story. And not just people who, again, this is a super niche thing. Again, it’s very much a country album, which is not necessarily like the most popular genre of music, but it’s the genre of music that I can personally write and sing in a credible way. Let’s get more into that after listening to it. But it’s also personally my favorite type of music. But the subject matter is very, at least for this, this album is very specific because every song is related to that process. Yeah. And again, that’s when it became this thing like, well, this should be something that is released because it’s so deeply personal and emotional. And I know that there’s so many people out there going. This is a cultural movement. We talked about it many times. People reevaluating their traditional worldviews, whatever your traditional worldview, doesn’t have to be Christianity specifically. But like we’re in an era where you’re bombarded with so many perspectives and so much information that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hold onto any traditional view that requires putting your blinders on and blocking out everyone else’s perspective. And so this is a cultural upheaval, which I think ultimately will be for the best. But so many people can relate that, I hope that regardless of their circumstances, it’ll be like, ah, this, you can connect with this music and it can be a gift to people, you know? So that’s when it became like I’m gonna release this, but that was all that happened. But of course I hadn’t recorded anything beyond demos. And so this is the second piece of the puzzle, because I didn’t know how it was gonna become a thing, right? We developed a relationship with Derek Furman, who was Britton’s producer on your cousin, Britton Buchanan on his stuff. And he started producing our music for the ethical society. The Lionel Richie stuff, the Brooks & Dunn stuff, the Hazel, the Hazel project. Yeah. And just love the dude and just love the way that he commits to a project and just is super technical and just like really gets involved and can do, can execute very well in a number of genres. So I was just like talking to him and I was like, hey, I got these songs that I’ve been writing. What would it look like if you recorded and produced them? And of course, he was like, I love this idea. And so getting someone else involved in the project. Yeah. That light’s a fire. And then you begin moving forward and it moves from just being a hobby and a pastime A production. This is good. This is gonna be a thing. Again, from a timeline standpoint. I made that commitment last year. So that was 2021. Was talking to him about it, like the middle of the year. And I was like, I don’t know when this is gonna come out. Probably 2023. That’s what I told him. I was like, I don’t want you to prioritize this. I cannot prioritize this because I can’t work on this ’cause it’s very, very busy. Have a lot of other things going on. This is a nights and weekends thing for me and if you want it to be a nights and weekends thing for you, then I was like, don’t stop working on something to work on my thing. But I’ll send you things as I have ’em. Send you demos. So that was kinda the process, but he would like turn something around and like, I’d be like, man, that sounds a lot better than my demo, you know? And I kind of got addicted to the process. And I was, why am I only gonna do six songs? I got more songs. And I was like, there’s a lot of different. The thing that sent me to 11 songs was trying to cover the breadth of the experience. I was like, well, there’s this other aspect that I really want to talk about? And then I was like, also, I kind of feel that there needs to be like a thesis statement that is sort of the beginning of the album. It’s the first song, which is the first single and that’s believe me, which was one of the, was written pretty late in the process because it was stepping back and looking at what I had done and thinking about this would be a good thesis statement, a good opener to where I’m gonna kind of take you through conceptually on the album. And so that’s how I ended up getting to 11 songs. Okay. And the last thing I’ll talk about before we actually listen to the single, is why it’s called James and the Shame, right? Why is it not Rhett McLaughlin? So at some point early on, I had this idea that, well, what if this was like a covert thing that I didn’t even talk about, but I just put out there. And then I started thinking about the fact that so much of, if the whole point of this thing is to connect with people who are experiencing something similar or can relate, well, one of the things that has been such a, has brought those people out of the woodwork is me sharing these things through the public forum that I have as the public person that I am. Yeah. And so I was like, it doesn’t make sense to not talk about it or try to make it seem like there’s just some new country guy’s talking about spiritual things. And if you wanna know about it, you can. But I was like, but I don’t want it to be Rhett McLaughlin. I don’t want it to be my name. I want it to be something that is like, hey, this is something outside of everything else that this guy does. When you hear the name, Rhett McLaughlin, you think Rhett and Link comedy. I’m not supposed to take this seriously. When is the joke? When is the first punchline coming in this song? Right? And also, I don’t. It becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly. And I didn’t want it to be a distraction for somebody who stumbles across it in a playlist or something on Spotify to be like Rhett McLaughlin? If what I have put out into the world professionally, which is a bunch of lighthearted, silly stuff to take your mind off things, isn’t your cup of tea. I don’t want you to not wanna listen to this, if this would actually be something you’d be into. Yeah. So that’s where James and the Shame came from. James and the Shame, not only does it rhyme, it kind of roll off the tongue, but again, shame is the dominant sort of emotion of the Enneagram Three, of someone who is performance minded. So the twos, the threes and the fours in the Enneagram are all in the heart triad. And that means that there’s a whole lot going on in here that they try to deal with in certain ways. And the way the three deals with their shame is to try to keep performing for you. Don’t, just keep watching, watch me do cool things. And you won’t have to know who I really am and who I’m ashamed of. Hmm. And so that whole idea of James and the Shame is like, obviously the shame means two things. Number one, this was not a, it is a solo project. I wrote all of the music and all of the lyrics, but the final production includes some other very talented musicians who played different instruments. And so I guess in some ways that represents the other people who collaborated to make these final products, but also more so than that, it’s the shame that follows me around wherever I go. It’s like, you got James you got the shame too. But let’s listen to this song, man. Okay. But first let’s do a quick plug. Alright. Stevie’s podcast comes back. We wanna show some love to Best Friends Back, Alright! Her and Neagheen. Their friendship is. Blossomed. It’s happened. And now they’re branching out into other things. I’m told that they’re gonna be getting Neagheen’s sister who’s a gynecologist. Yeah. On an episode. Yeah. I can always learn stuff from a gynecologist. They’re not just talking about, their high school days now, now that they’ve rekindled the friendship, they’re moving into just the things they wanna talk about. So check out Best Friends Back, Alright! wherever you get your podcasts. Season two, it’s out now. It’s happening. They’re turning another corner. Another corner. Alright, you ready to play this thing? Yes. Okay, so this is. When you played it for me, I listened to it, I think three times in a row. And then at a different occasion, I heard it again. I’ve only heard this song four times and I’ve only heard another song once. There’s only three songs that are mastered right now. Okay. But yes, this is. I’m told there is an album, I just don’t know. So this is the first single. It’s called Believe Me, it was released on Friday the 15th. So you can go to wherever you listen to music to listen to it, but we’re gonna play it right now as well. ♪ I think you want an answer ♪ ♪ I’m not prepared to give ♪ ♪ ‘Cause the one I gave you ♪ ♪ Said that that ain’t it ♪ ♪ Must be something that I want ♪ ♪ Fame and fortune or at least a little dawn ♪ ♪ It may seem too cut and dry ♪ ♪ I just found some things I could not brush off aside ♪ ♪ Now if you’ll oblige ♪ ♪ I don’t think it’s true ♪ ♪ I’m not asking you to agree ♪ ♪ I’m just asking you to believe me ♪ ♪ Say my heart is never true ♪ ♪ That might say more about you ♪ ♪ I know it shouldn’t matter ♪ ♪ If you take my word ♪ ♪ When I say I didn’t leave cause I was hurt ♪ ♪ But there goes my pride ♪ ♪ With his refrain that I be seen as justified ♪ ♪ Likely nothing I could say ♪ ♪ And I’m not sure care for me to explain ♪ ♪ Sure you can pray ♪ ♪ But I don’t think it’s true ♪ ♪ I’m not asking you to agree ♪ ♪ I’m not asking you to believe me ♪ ♪ You say my heart is never true ♪ ♪ That might say more about you ♪ Ha, ha, ha. I love it man. The first time you played this song for me, I was blown away. I don’t know what the look on my face was but. You started smiling really early. I mean, yeah, right at the beginning, because like, I’m a sound guy before a lyric guy. Right, right. And so I was just relieved that it was really good. What did you it was gonna be, ’cause I was telling you about it, but I was pur and this is, we can kind of start getting into the dynamic of like how me and you related about this because. Yeah. I was very much, I didn’t want, I wanted to have something to show you. Well. That was done. I think that was, I’m glad that I didn’t, I didn’t hear anything. I mean, hearing what you just played is the first thing that I heard of it Right. Specifically. No demos, no sneak peeks, no nothing. Right. But I mean the production, I mean I knew Derek was great and I knew he was gonna do something great with it. And you had told me that he was hooking you up with like studio musicians, some in Nashville, some in LA, right? That were like adding, they were adding. I mean it wasn’t, they were adding their stuff and sending it in. Yeah, well, we thought we were gonna go to Nashville because we knew we needed a pedal steel, but then he was like, hey, I got this guy I know, Alex Stroll. Who’s who’s in LA. Oh yeah. He’s like a multi-instrumentalist and he can play a mean electric guitar, but he also can play the pedal steel. He can play the mandolin. He can play the banjo. This dude can play anything with strings. And so that pedal steel is Alex is like, it was passed down to him. He’s got all these instruments that were passed down to him that are so old. Such a great move to have. So it has that like old school feel, which was very important to me. I mean this song, it definitely has this kind of Lord Huron vibe, which I absolutely love. And then, so like from a production, instrumentation standpoint and it, having heard another song from the album, I know that it, it doesn’t just stay squarely in this place, which is also exciting. So I’m just talking about this song, not the album or the other song I’ve heard. But that is true. That the album in itself that this is, there was a reason that this was, again, I wrote this song after I had written almost every song. I think I only wrote one more song after this one. And it was like, I want this to be the thematic and conceptual introduction to what the album is about, which we can get into in a second, but probably more important getting to what you’re saying is, I want this to be a sign to people who care about this type of music, that this is a serious endeavor. And it, yeah. Mission accomplished. I think it sounds great. It’s definitely something that if I stumbled on this song, I would be like, what the hell? I’d have to send it to you. You’d send it to me. Again, that was the thinking. This is something that we would be. In terms of a genre, like Indie Western Folk, which that Lord Huron pocket, there’s other people doing it, but they’re my favorite. So I didn’t say the word country, but then your vocals come in and I’m like, oh . The first thing I thought with the very beginning of this one, and I don’t, I don’t like drawing comparisons, but I was like, this is a nineties country vocal delivery. In the opening line, I was like, I hear Alan Jackson. And I’m like, and I knew neither one of us are huge fans of Alan Jackson, but he’s so squarely nineties country vocal that like, and something about your tone and the melody of that first line, just evoked that, not a specific song, but him as an artist. Yeah, right. And then the whole song is not an Alan Jackson thing. It actually, it goes very much into, okay, this is a really good choice. It’s a really strong choice, for you to say, I’m gonna sing as a country. I’m gonna sing country. I’m gonna sing country vocals. And the juxtaposition of that over the production is really cool. And it’s not a Sturgill Simpson thing, which like some people might try to draw that comparison or whatever, because the vocals are so nineties that I just think that it’s like a really strong, smart, I almost said fun choice. But like, yeah, it’s exciting. It excites me because I feel like it makes it more unique. There’s people, I’m not following country music that closely right now. But I know that like the nineties movement that happens in fashion, it’s happening in country music. There’s like current stars. You played a song for me of a current up and comer who then played a song that was like very nineties, intentionally. Are you talking about Luke Combs doing the Brooks & Dunn thing? Oh yeah, that was it. Luke Combs. Yeah. So I love the song in terms of how it melts those things together. And then, I’m a melody guy, right? I really like that kind of slinky. It’s kind of a sly melody. What key is it in? That song is in G. I love G. I don’t know. Something about the melody line of the verse is like, I love it. Well, it’s funny because you know, again, very little of this was calculated, right? But you had to make a choice to sing country, right? No, yeah. So basically, so this is how that happened, right? So with that first song that I wrote, the Old Letter song, if you take the accent off of the, out of the lyrics and I don’t sing with an accent, then you would be like, okay, this could be like Gregory Alan Isakov but folk. But your demo had the country inflection. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So from the get go, you were just singing country. You were writing a country song. I’m talking about The Old Letter song. Yeah, the demo, the first demo you recorded. Yeah, yeah. But what I’m, yeah. But I made the decision. I was like, first of all, there’s a little bit of country in just the way that I talk. And so there’s a little bit of country in the way that I sing, but you know how you, you usually translate and you make a different decision. Like I’m trying to embody a certain character or whatever, and you gotta have a sound. And so. ‘Cause that’s what we do. It’s something that we very calculated say, okay, I don’t wanna sound like Weird Al in this song. I don’t wanna sound like a redneck. That was one of the craziest things in recording is that in making the decision to be like, how do I deliver this is, me and you have recorded so much music in so many different genres. It’s like, okay, this is a rap song. This is a country song. This is a hair metal song. And we always just adapt to whatever the genre is. And we’re very good chameleons that then you have to be like, well, I gotta, that’s what every artist is ultimately doing. They’re like adopting, you love Cocaine & Rhinestones and now I’ve gotten into it. And it’s fascinating hearing, all the stories about George Jones trying to figure out how to sound like George Jones. Right. And you find yourself doing impersonations of other people. Oh, I really. I’m trying to sound like The Avett Brothers there without thinking about it. There’s an exercise of trusting yourself to be like, no, I don’t have to like try to sound like anyone. And so what is the natural melody and the natural intonation and expression that comes from me, it is a culmination of all the music that I’ve consumed and sung along with all those years. And that’s why when I start singing in country, so much nineties melodies come out. Right. Because that was when I was coming of age. And it’s a safe choice, I feel like in terms of like, if you’re gonna get a comparison, if you’re gonna get analyzed, it’s an exciting choice. So I’m really glad you made it. It’s not, you know, there’s. Well, I guess what I’m saying is it wasn’t a choice. People might. Okay. You started saying nineties and Derek started saying nineties, I was like, you know what? You’re right. I was just like, I want this track to sound as old school as I can. It’s got in terms of chord structure, it gets into a little more, it’s almost like gets into like Roy Orbison. Yeah. Type. That’s what I was really getting at. It’s sort the key question. The sevenths’ kind of drop in there and stuff like that, which I love, there’s sevenths all over this album. That’s it. That’s what I was trying to get at with the G. And that’s not something that you Which was in there. Hear a lot in just your average country song. Yeah. Right? It’s got that and then gunner who did the percussion for this? Who’s like an incredible, incredible musician, kind of brought in that like shuffly rhythm. Yeah. Which is not, when I send a demo over it’s me and a guitar. Yeah. You gotta find the groove. And the woodblock stuff and it’s great. So anyway, those choices and we’re gonna talk, we’ll do another podcast in the fall once the whole thing’s out to kind of talk more about the music, but ultimately what I’ll say at this point is that it was calculated to a degree, but most of it was just like, what do I naturally hear in this? And what sounds good to me and how do I wanna sing this naturally with this much, with as little sort of acting attached to it. Yeah. As possible. And it turns out that that is sort of this mix of old school and nineties country. And then lyrically, I’m not asking to you to agree. I’m just asking you to believe me, you know? And then, it’s very, it suits country because it’s kind of matter of fact, you know? Yeah, yeah, it’s very sincere. There’s a sincere, it’s there, it’s not, you can really read into your experience because it’s kind of on the page in a lot of ways, but I’m not saying that as a critique, I think that fits country music really. And I think it also. Even though I don’t, by the way, I wouldn’t call it a country album based on this song. I don’t know what I’m gonna call the album but. Well, that’s the genre that I checked in the distribution box because it’s. Yeah. It’s good. It’s the only one you can check. Yeah, that makes sense. And then maybe like Americana. Yeah. As a secondary genre. So lyrically, you’re really putting yourself out there. It’s not, this song is not veiled. Very few of them are. And I think that comes from the fact that’s like. Sure, you can pray. That’s the first time I heard that lie. Oh. And I know your experience, but I just think it’s, obviously I relate to it so much, so I just think it’s nice. I do think that people, having shared our deconstruction stories, I do think that this will be a source of comfort to people. Absolutely. That’s powerful, you know? The conversations that we’ve had at this table about our spiritual journeys, I’ve just been blown away by how it’s helped people. And so it’s so cool that this is gonna do that too. And it’s gonna do it in a way that, it’s gonna do it in a different way. Music is so powerful. It’s powerful in a totally different way than podcasts. I keep saying exciting, but that’s just what I keep going back to is that like, I’m just celebrating the fact that you’re putting yourself out there. You had enough experience to know that like, how much of a risk did this feel like for you and on what area? Because when you, this song at least is something that you’ve already said a number of times I felt like. So where is the risk? Where is the fear? Well, I mean, I think there’s, it doesn’t stay this tame. Hmm, you know? There are some, what you might call angry songs where I’m just letting my emotions and the way I feel about. Are you yelling? The church. Not really yelling. In hypocrisy that I see. And those things that get me kind of worked up. But Garth Brooks yelled in Shameless. He did. I’m shameless. Yeah, and I don’t want any Chris Gaines comparisons. Appreciate not doing anything. I didn’t say it. So I think that there’s a little bit of that, but I think Chris Gains. People know where I stand. Every once in a while I toss a little bomb out into the pond, or whatever the analogy, that’s not a good one. I stir things up. I kick the hornets nest a little bit for those people who care to feel offended by the things that I say. Let me ask you this question. It’s gonna stir that up a little bit. Do you, have you felt like it was a bigger risk creatively to like put yourself out there, by doing this project than what, or is it what you’re saying in the lyrics? Is it the message that you’re getting across? Because there’s a creative risk involved in saying, hey, I’m one half of Rhett and Link. This is what you know me for. I’m a comedian, if it were me, I would have to get over this hurdle of like, embarrassment. That would be like, is there risk there? Is there fear there? Has that been part of this. For better or for worse? I just always approach things, just believing that I’m gonna find some way to pull ’em off. And it’s probably. Okay. It’s probably a misguided self-confidence that, yes, I can do this and I can make an album that I would actually, if I were not myself enjoy and like. Well, I’m not embarrassed for you now that I’ve heard it, I’ll say that. But I mean to, I guess. But yeah, that moment when you’re like, for the first time here and on GMM, when you’re saying I’ve released a country music, there’s a little album, is there a sheepishness there? Is there like? I think from a creative standpoint, when one of the things you’re most well known for is like being on your knees and having your best friend pee chocolate into your mouth from a fountain that is next to his penis. I just don’t think there’s a lot of things you can do to creatively embarrass yourself, honestly. And in one sense, I think that gets into one of the sort of unrealized motivations to do something like this is, you know me, I talk about it all the time, is that I do have this chip on my shoulder creatively. There’s lots of things that we want to do collectively to show people what we are capable of creatively. And I think there’s always an element of that in everything that I do. And so I can’t, I’m not gonna be dishonest with you and tell you that I believe in what I’ve created here. And I think it’s good. And I think other people will agree. And there’s a part of my ego that wants you to agree. Okay, well then I’ve struck your ego enough, but I also think I’m projecting, I guess, in that if I were in your shoes, that’s how I would feel. So instead, I think it’s, it’s something that’s inspiring about the fact that you have this confidence, maybe it comes from a chip on your shoulder or whatever, but like, you want to express yourself in this way and you go for it. And that’s something that, I could do more of. So if I am to make this about me for a second, I do feel like, I would be embarrassed at every turn. Even the thing about talking about like being a DJ, I had to make a decision to say, this is kind of a, this is not. I had to decide what my posture was gonna be about it. Right. It’s like, yeah, this is something that I’m into and I’m not gonna be sheepish or apologetic or embarrassed by having some sort of creative outlet or aspirations. So I think that’s where that question was coming from. It’s more about me than you, but. No, but I have thought about it. The the worst case scenario is people are like this YouTube guy thinks he’s a musician now, who cares? Right. Okay. I’ve lost nothing. If you already see me as that, if you see me as this YouTube guy, this hack that just stumbled into fame and isn’t really talented, then nothing. If you already think that, then you thinking that again is not a problem for me. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. Is there bigger, there’s bigger risks content wise in other songs. Yeah, it gets more explicit, literally. There’s a few FBOs dropped on the album, to give a hint of that. Are you nervous about any of the specifics coming out? I mean what. No. Where’s. No, no. I mean you wrote a, you said you wrote a song to your kids. You wrote a song to your parents. Well, yeah, I don’t know how much I wanna talk about the. I have a great relationship with my parents, but the thing that I am conscious of is that because they are still very much strong Christians. and I’m very much a public figure who has stated that I am not, and that I’m critical of Christianity, that makes their life more difficult than I would like it to be, right? Because of the way people in the church are, you know? And so, and just the way people in general are, not to single a out the people in the church, it’s just. If somebody that you’re related to is talking about what you’re all into, then they become a little bit of a scapegoat. And I’m sensitive to that and in some ways that’s kind of what the song to them is about. Well, we can leave that part at that. ‘Cause I do think I would like to, I’m gonna hear the whole album at some point and then if we can kind of, I’m sure we’ll revisit this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, in terms of when we started talking about it, I was trying to remember when that was, do you remember? ‘Cause I think there were like hints of I’m writing some song, I’m writing some songs and I just remember the first time it kinda registered was maybe you had mentioned it a few times, but you had mentioned it in an EP. I think that’s the first time I was like, what? Hmm. You’re gonna, okay. So you’re not just writing songs. You’re gonna release songs, you know? What were you thinking there? Because again, it’s like it, what you just told everybody for the past hour is not, was not the entry point for our conversation. We never sat down and you said, hey, gave me this whole story. Hmm. So to me, my experience was, oh, he’s doing this thing he doesn’t want to talk about, but then he feels like he needs, apparently it’s gaining momentum ’cause he’s talking about making an EP. So now he’s mentioning it to me and I respect it. Like I have an appreciation for it now, given what you’ve said, that is like, it’s a deeply personal exercise that is an, an application of therapy that then you would obviously talk to Jessie about, in the same way that there’s plenty of stuff in my personal journey, in my heart, in my therapy sessions that I process myself, first of all. And then there’s much of that, the vast majority of that, that I’ll bring, that Christy and I will discuss and I’ll bring her into and then. So I recognize that then there’s certain things at certain times that I’ll bring you into it. And it’s not even a calculation of I’m keeping things from you. It’s just that like, there’s only so many hours in a day. And even though we spend the majority of them together, we’re always occupied with the things that we’re doing. Jessie asks me multiple times a week. Did you talk to Link about so-and-so? I’m like baby? No, because we talked about every other thing, you know what I’m saying? Like. but. Because we’re constantly. I recognize all that. Yeah. But my experience with it was, it was just a little thing here, a little thing there, an EP, an album. And so I’m like without having the full story, I think there was a lot of, well, I’m just left to like, okay, how am I gonna respond to this? Yeah, and again, none of that was calculated. If I think back and try to figure out why that was the way that it happened. I think there is a part of my, there’s a part of me that believes, and this is just kind of the way my brain works, Sometimes talking about something. the only thing that is good that comes from talking about something is talking yourself out of it. And so I don’t like to talk a lot about things. I just like to keep doing them. So you’re saying, if you would’ve talked to me about it, you would’ve talked yourself out of it. I think that not, again, I haven’t thought about this at all, but I think that there’s a fear that like, because this doesn’t make any sense, because I don’t have time for this, because this is not necessarily a good business decision. If we start talking about it, to then like talk about it from a strategic standpoint or a positioning standpoint, it may just float away. It may just not be a priority. But for me it was like, this is a personal thing that I’m like, I’m revisiting on my own time. Up until very, very recently, I never did any of this during work hours. This past couple of months, there’s been a couple of days where I’ve been like, I have to go record this or I have to do that. That’s kind of gotten into my regular schedule, but because it was very something that I just kept pushing forward in my free time, so to speak, free time, air quotes, I think it was. There was just this unspoken. I don’t wanna sit down and have a real serious conversation about this because I don’t wanna slow it down, because it’s gaining so much momentum personally. Not that I thought that you would talk me out of it, that’s not really what I’m saying. But I hear you saying that if we talked about it, it would very quickly get to like, what is the feasibility of this? There’s not. There’s not a lot of positives to it in terms of like Mythical unless you’re really talking about, I want to do this as a solo artist and this, if it became some Mythical endeavor from a business standpoint, there’s a lot more questions that all feel like roadblocks to this personal project if we had that conversation. That’s why I took a long time. I didn’t talk to anyone here about it for the longest time, for the same reasons. ‘Cause like, guys, you may interpret this as a selfish act, if I start talking about it. And you’re like, we’re always working so busy and you’re off making your little album. So you know what I’m saying? So you didn’t bring it up because it could be, it could be perceived as like a threat to the business. Yeah, now I firmly believe that it is not. And I have a lot of reasons for believing that it’s not. I think that the way I kind of analyze that is, is funny because what we have is incredibly unusual. I actually can’t think of a entertainment duo where both people are qualified entertainers and literally every expression of that is only in the context of that. Almost every duo that there’s an example of is just like, oh yeah and he does his little thing, his little side hobby thing. It’s like super common, right? But the main thing they do is the stuff that they do together. I always thought that the reason that that hadn’t been the case up until now is twofold. Number one, it’s like, we just never have time for anything. And number two, it just never, I never had an idea that it made sense to go and do by myself until this. So it isn’t like I’ve been sitting around thinking. I find it unusual that we haven’t done anything solo independently of each other for all these years. But I also find it, it kind of makes sense because there hasn’t been, neither of us have had something where it’s just like, I’ve gotta get this into the world. This is the first thing that came along. To me, it doesn’t feel like a threat to what we have, if anything, it feels like, because it’s not a replacement of anything that we’re doing. Well. In some ways it feels like another facet to the Rhett side of Rhett and Link. Do you know what I’m getting at? Yeah, I think that there was, so it was the, was this a threat to the business strategy of what we’re doing, but then there’s another part that’s like, if I bring this up, will Link perceive it as a threat to our creative partnership? And I thought that. Or more, or our friendship, I don’t know. Well, and again, while it wasn’t calculated, if you were to ask me like, okay, well, all right. We’re gonna have to have a really long conversation about this. That is going to, again, I didn’t think this, but I may have been thinking it subconsciously. That’s just like, okay, if we have a conversation about this at a really early stage, it may really just get bogged down. Because now in my mind, what went from being this thing that was gaining momentum, it’s so difficult to get things to happen and bring things into the world. We know that, right? And when I subconsciously perceive that there might be a conversation or some point that becomes a point of impasse, I’m like, I don’t wanna have that. I don’t wanna do that. Let’s this actually begin to become something. And then we can have a conversation about it versus having a conversation about it a year ago. Not that we didn’t talk about it. Not that you didn’t know about it, but it wasn’t like, hey, let’s sit down and literally hash this thing out. ‘Cause in some ways the other part of my brain was thinking, there’s nothing to hash out. Like I’m doing this thing. If you were doing this thing, I’d be like, that’s awesome. That’s cool, man. Do it. Now if it suddenly we can’t do something that we wanna do, ’cause you’re doing this, then we can have a conversation. But if that’s not the case, just keep going. If it’s making you a better, more fulfilled person, then that makes you a better, more fulfilled comedy partner, a business partner and friend, if you’re pursuing your passion and doing something, that’s bringing you joy in life. So I think that’s my, that’s how I feel about it. Honestly. That’s why I feel like it’s a healthy thing for me and ultimately for us, because anything that’s healthy for me is healthy for us and vice versa. Anything that’s helpful for you is helpful for us. Is healthy for us. Yeah, when I hear that I’m like, is that true? There has to be an exception to that rule, right? Could that just be true across the board? I actually, that’s my gut reaction to that statement. I think that, my preference would’ve been to talk about it earlier, but I think it’s, again, this is more about me than it is about you. It’s not like, because I think that that’s true because there’s. If I hear you’re making an EP or doing this thing, the first thing I’m gonna think, the first thing I did think was not, I’m so excited for you. I want to celebrate this. It’s like, what does this mean for us? Yeah. And you know, and it taps into some insecurity. And I know that there’s, I don’t wanna overblow this whole abandonment issue thing, but it’s there, right? That’s part of my process but, we had had conversations about this related to other stuff. So actually this project didn’t bring this to a head as much as like, when I don’t, we don’t have to get into the details of it. But my response to this project, this album of yours, was shaped by the experience that we had on Ronstadt. Hmm. Because that was the, the Genesis of that project was messy, right? Like literally like the first email and slacks, and stuff that was going around about analyzing the opportunity to partner and work on Ronstadt and be attached to it. The way that, that started was just messy. And it was something that then, we had to work through it, right? Well, and meaning that, when we were first approached about that, the ask was can Rhett play Ronstadt, which was not a thing that we had, like we don’t. Right. We don’t go out pursuing opportunities. Now we may do. We both, we haven’t done a lot lately, but we both auditioned for roles that if we were to, we’ll never get one, but we do it kind of for fun and maybe one would come and we would, oh, Link’s gonna be on this show or Link’s gonna make a guest appearance. And he is not going in as Rhett and Link, he’s going in as Link and vice versa. So that’s been a conversation, but that was being brought into Mythical as a Mythical project. Oh Mythical is gonna actually help produce this. But the ask was for Rhett to play Ronstadt. Right. And so how do, what do we, how do we make this a Rhett and Link thing? And that became the conversation as opposed to, it’s gonna be a Mythical thing that Rhett is doing. And then the way that it became a conversation was just not smooth, you know? Yeah. That we would, we’ve talked about it and we have learned that we would’ve done things differently, right? Yeah. So I don’t wanna, I just feel like that gives context to this because I feel like by moving through that and growing through that, we were able to articulate our desires. Like you were able to articulate some of your desires for. Do we have to do every single thing together? We started having conversations about this. I think there’s a whole other podcast in here, I’m just gonna allude to it. And then yeah, and then I’m bringing to the table, well, very early on, we made this choice that we weren’t gonna, everything we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do together. So it’s like, okay, now are we revisiting that? And what does that mean? And how far does that go? Well, it turns out it’s still, it’s not that drastic. It’s just that because of my makeup and what I’m bringing to the table, it’s scarier for me. And I think there is a, in me giving off that energy, I think when it comes around to this project, you’re probably gonna have this sense that I’m gonna be more concerned about it than excited first. But we benefited from going through, getting on the same page on the Ron Step project, getting on the same page about just our approach to things at Mythical and how, there’s so much in this that I just, I know I’m flirting with it, but I guess the point I’m making right now is that we really had a series of good conversations that got us more on the same page. The mantra of saying when in doubt, talk it out, is something that we really benefited from. So when, and ironically, a lot of you doing the songwriting and stuff was happening in parallel to all this, but when it came to a point of you were ready to talk about it, then I was in a much better place to receive it. Hmm. And that was even without the benefit of the entire backstory that you just shared of like the personal process of it, but seeing it as, not seeing it as a threat to what we’re doing is something that I can say with, to the 98th degree that I can. And that’s saying a lot. And I do think that it’s, if it hasn’t been obvious up until this point. So this is not me saying that I want to go and be a full-time musician. Right. I’m not touring. I don’t have time to tour. Even if I wanted to go around playing these songs, I’m not saying I’ll never play these songs for someone for a crowd. I’m just saying that that’s not, the intention isn’t like, now I’m a musician. And that’s what I do. It’s more like, hey, this has always been very much a hobby of mine. And it’ll be cool to have this sort of ongoing thing. ‘Cause I expect to release more music because it’s like, hey, I wrote a song. Let’s record it. Let’s release it. It’s something that I can responsibly fit into my schedule and not drop the ball with what we’re doing here. But just so that this isn’t like I’m going to pursue career as a musician and that’s what I do. It’s more like, well I was already a musician and now I’m releasing some music that is just mine. Yeah. And I also started to realize that over the course of the pandemic, when I started the listening party broadcast on Instagram, to like take my personal creative outlet of like listening to music, making playlist and turn that into something that involved our audience, it was something that I didn’t calculate. And then at the moments, when I talked to you about it, I had that sheepish like this is not really a thing. ‘Cause, first of all, it wasn’t, but I felt like we didn’t have like just a clear conversation about it. It was more like, yeah, I’m doing this thing. It’ll be fun. Oh, I’m gonna do 21 of these, you know, as it turns out. And I think you’re different than me in that I do think you were more inclined to be encouraging about it ’cause you were doing other stuff to, you saw a parallel. I mean, did you? I mean. I see a parallel now and that’s helpful for me. I guess, ultimately what I’ll say is that like a lot of these things don’t cross my mind unless someone else brings them up. Okay, yeah. My disposition is different. And so like, I haven’t thought about the fact that you are also doing your own podcast. Right. And you know what you saying that doesn’t hurt my feelings because I know you. Yeah. But I think there was a point when it could have hurt my feelings and it might have just been two years, three years ago. You’re saying. Two years ago. the fact that it doesn’t cross my mind that you’re doing. Yeah because. For a project. Right. Yeah because. ‘Cause you’re like, well, I would care if you were doing a podcast. Exactly, right. Right. Yeah, and I think, I just, I think ultimately for me, it’s like, I just have, I know that we both have so many independent interests and desires and things that we want to do and accomplish that if those things can happen and not sacrifice all the things that we want to do together, then that’s a beautiful thing. I mean, these things aren’t, this is different because your podcast with your dad is a Mythical production. Well, I was talking about the listing party. Yeah. Which I think the thing that’s the same is also like me saying, oh, you know what, I’m pursuing the skill of being a DJ. If that means I’m gonna actually get a gig, being a DJ somewhere sometime, on my own time, I’m sure it would be something that you would celebrate and you wouldn’t think twice about it in the way that I might have thought twice about your album, because it’s just like, it’s a hobby, it’s an outlet, it’s a side project, that who knows still might lead to something. I do think we can talk about that. But the thing about the like, just to put a finer point on me and being inspired by your exercise is that in a way that we’re different, like I haven’t given myself permission, like you say, we both have all these aspirations, but we do not have them to the same level. And that’s something that I, I am drawing inspiration from, that I could grow in that area. Like the podcast with my dad is, is a great outlet. It’s been a highlight of my week whenever we get together and do it. It’s a creative outlet. It is part of Mythical. It’s something that we are doing that, we split it down the middle, you know? Well. But it wasn’t my idea, as far as I can recall it was Stevie’s idea. And I was like, well, this sounds like a great idea that I’m never going to do was my first reaction. And then when she kept talking about it. Definitely, you. Then my next reaction was this still sounds like a decent idea that I’m never going to do. You had to be kind of dragged into it. Yeah, and even it’s like when, even once my dad was on board and it was happening, like I was like, this isn’t really, we’re not really gonna do this. I didn’t give myself permission to say, do I want to do this? Or I do wanna do this. And it might fail. We might fall flat on our face, but I’m gonna do it because I’m excited about it. I think your encouragement and like following this journey for you has been, it’s gotten me, it’s gotten me off the dime a little bit, not in a, oh , if he’s gonna do something, I gotta do something. But actually in a creative outlet, just tapping into my desires kind of way, in like a mostly pure motive kind of way, you know? It’s not like a tip for tat thing. Yeah. So I’m actually like listening to that song and like being able to celebrate it and celebrate what’s happening with this project is, is something that I’m proud of for me. So it’s not something that I’m conjuring anymore outta some sense of obligation. Right. And to clarify the James and the Shame project is not a part of Mythical, but the reason that it’s not a part of Mythical is because I did not want to make anyone here, have to work on it. Cara, our personal assistant has been helping, but beyond that, very few people have been involved and every single expense has come outta my pocket, which I am reasonably certain, I will not make money from this project. Yeah, you didn’t want me to lose money, but then hey, if this gets wildly successful, you’re probably gonna have to cut me in somehow. We’ll have to talk about it. So that’s the only reason it’s not. And it’s also, this is not a core, a funny podcast with your dad is a part of the core, sort of focus of Mythical, a serious country album about deconstruction is not part of the core mission of Mythical. So there’s a number of reasons that it’s not a mythical thing. And that also is one of the reasons that I don’t really work on it here or with the people at this company and I work on it outside of my normal responsibilities here. But we’re at a point in our career when we can do things that are associated with our careers, that don’t involve the other person, but will be a part of Mythical. Of course. So Dispatches from Myrtle Beach is a great example of that. Yeah, and I mean. There may be other things. There should be other things. So one of the things we haven’t talked about, I know we’re going a little bit long, but it’s fine. I think that there, I mean, I’m interested how you feel about Dispatches from Myrtle Beach in regards to this, because one of the things, first of all, I get so creatively frustrated because as much as we put out into the world, there’s a lot more that doesn’t make it out into the world because of limitations, because we’re conceptualizing things that need to be green lit by people and they need to be financed and they have to go through pitch meetings, etcetera, etcetera. And some of the ideas that I’m most passionate about that I feel are most representative of us creatively are things that we can’t just put out on YouTube for free. They have to be financed and it’s a different model. And very few of those things have made it to where people can enjoy them. Yeah. With music. No one else, like if I can get somebody to, I don’t even have to get somebody to produce it. Like I could just record it, at the Creative House and release it. You can just go through Spotify or what, you just distribute your music. There’s been something so freeing and life giving in just something happening, like having an idea. And then it can just be birthed and given to the world. But part of that has been. And, yep. Doing it independently and it not being a collaborative thing. To me there’s been, it’s made me appreciate the things that are collaborative. And I’ve also just, hey, this is on me. I gotta finish this. I have to be the one to make the call. I’ve got to make these decisions and move this forward. And then also like do a bunch of things that I haven’t done in years. Like I designed the artwork for the first single. I don’t design artwork. Yeah, I was very surprised. But I was like, I don’t wanna pay somebody else. I’m paying so many people to do so many parts of this. I don’t wanna pay somebody else to do this. It feels like I can figure this out, but there’s been something very rewarding about just conceptualizing and executing something and putting it on into the world on my own. I haven’t done that in so long. Yeah. There’s been something personally rewarding in doing that. Not because it’s like, oh, finally I get to do something on my own. It’s just like, oh no, I made a decision to do this on my own. And it’s been life giving in a different way than a collaboration. Yeah. I think that fans of ours, Mythical Beasts will ask. Yeah, but I mean, why? There’s backup, there’s harmony. Why didn’t you get him to sing some, why didn’t you get sing some harmony on that, you know? And that was very specifically a calculated decision. Talk about that. Because. ‘Cause we haven’t talked about that, but I I’m reading between the lines and I. Yeah, because when I sing melody and you sing harmony, that’s a Rhett and Link song. that’s a Rhett and Link song. This isn’t a Rhett and Link project. And I don’t want people to think, it needs to be its own thing, right? It doesn’t need to be like, oh, Rhett and Link also made a country album. Right. No, no, no. It’s just not a Rhett and Link thing. It’s a Rhett thing. And that’s okay. And you know what? It’s good is what I’m saying. Sure, you would’ve been great at it. I think that, but I, but even from a Sonic’s standpoint, I want it to feel like its own thing. Me and you singing together is a very specific, great and beautiful thing. But it’s a Rhett and Link thing. I don’t wanna take the Rhett and Link thing and spread it over into this, that cheapens the Rhett and Link thing. And it cheapens the James and the Shame thing, you know? And so I want this to have a signature sound. So like in that song that we listened to today, that’s Derek singing. He’s great vocalist. That’s him singing the backup lyrics. But there are songs where I sing my own harmony, when it makes sense thematically. There are songs were Jessie sings harmony, where it makes sense thematically. But the thing that did, if I had a song about you on the album, then it would make sense for, you know what I’m saying? Then it would make sense for you to sing the song. It was like the, to me, it was about theme. Unless it’s about me being dead. And standing on its own. And it was like, hey, at one point it became almost out of principle. Like, I don’t want Link to hear this until it’s done because it’s not a Rhett and Link thing, not outta spite, but because of all the reasons that we’ve just covered. And it’s like, I don’t wanna complicate that. I don’t wanna complicate that and muddy that. If it really is Rhett thing, then let it be a Rhett thing and something that then I can just kind of present to you and you can enjoy. And honestly, I’ve been treating Dispatches from Myrtle Beach the exact same way. Like I haven’t, I am at the time that we’re recording this, the first episode’s about to drop. And that’s when I’m gonna listen to it for the first time, I’m gonna listen to it as a fan of listening to you and your dad talk, not as somebody who’s a producer and it’s gonna be like, well, let me give you some feedback on that. Do you know what I’m saying? Yeah. And to me, there’s something healthy about that separation. I respect that, I understand that. Is there anything else that you wanted to share? I don’t think so. Obviously, I’ll use this time to say that I am genuinely interested in a lot of people hearing this. And so it gets to the people who it will impact in the way that I would like to see them impacted. So do all the things that you do with the musicians that you like, you know? Listen to it, follow me on those places. I am creating, like. I think you should refer to it in the third person. I’m creating James and the Shame profiles in different places, but only as placeholders. So people don’t steal them, but all updates about this are gonna come through all my initial social channels. So you can go like follow those place, those accounts over there, just so that somebody will be following them, but it’s primarily gonna just be done through all my stuff. But I would like, it would do nothing. It would do my heart very, very well for somebody out there who likes this kind. The only reason they’re listening to what I’m doing is because they like the music. And then they’re like, this guy’s not singing about the stuff that I typically listen to in country music. This guy seems to be challenging. It would be cool if it developed a life of its own. Yeah. And that again is, that’s my desire is that this thing has a home in people who will relate to the story that I’m telling. And so if you think you know somebody who is like, I’ve never sent anything to this person, because I know they’re not gonna like X, Y, and Z, that these guys have done. If you’re like, oh, they might like this, send it to ’em. So that’s what I would ask the Mystical Beasts is just like, give it a chance. Don’t see it as a threat. Hopefully what we’ve talked about today, if that was your concern, that you understand that this is about personal expression and ultimately a healthy thing that is not a existential threat to Mythical or anything Rhett and Link, if anything an enhancement to what we’re doing here, but also share it with people who you think might like it. That’s all I’ll say. Awesome. Alright, I think you’re supposed to have a rec. Are you recking your own single? Man, I can’t. It seems like you kinda have to. Just do it. Just rec your own single. Yeah, I recommend that you go over. What’s it called? It’s called, Believe Me. And at some point, hey, I am gonna have, there’s gonna be some James and the Shame merch. I don’t know if that’ll be the case by the time this goes up. Nipple clamps? There’s gonna be some of that as well. So you can spread the word. G strings? I’ll just say, just follow me where you listen to your music and listen, put it in a playlist, whatever you do with music. Alright. Next week, we’ll talk at you. #earbiscuits. Hi, Rhett and Link. I was just listening to the podcast where you’re discussing keeping the shower curtain open or closed when you’re done with it. I’m very passionate about keeping the shower curtain open because I don’t want a serial killer to be hiding behind it. Just thought I’d mention it. ‘Cause I didn’t know the default was to keep it close all the time. So I’m here to say, keep your shower curtains open so that there’s no serial killers, thank you, bye. Hi, Rhett and Link. My name is Molly. I just wanted to let you guys know that I just had dental surgery and was listening to your podcast while I was breathing in the nitrous oxide. And for a couple minutes there, I transformed myself into the table of dim lighting and I saw you two and also Stevie. So it was a very weird experience, but I’m very grateful for it. You guys got me through the surgery, so thanks. Hey Rhett, hey Link. My name is Jesse. I live in Sugar Grove, Ohio. I’ve been a fan for a long time, but I’m only calling in to say, Link. I think the funniest thing about Dispatches from Myrtle Beach is the pain that you feel when your dad says certain things. I’m listening to episode two and he was explaining the metal fan talking about that metal rock music and your pause was the funniest thing. So I just, I love it. Keep doing what you do, guys. Bye. To watch more Ear Biscuits click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your Mythical Best.