EB 351: Rhett’s Album Listening Party

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 roundtable of dim lighting, we’re having a little listening party. Congratulations, Rhett! It’s finally happened. Your freaking album is out! I mean, not when we’re recording this, but yes, when you’re listening. I’m in celebration mode. James and the Shame, Rhett’s alter ego, where he plays music that is sincerely sentimentized and sincerely great. Oh, thanks, man. It’s my pleasure to sit here and listen to it with you and kinda talk through each song, you know? Yeah, this is like a listening party. I’m gonna take, you know, a journalistic approach at times. Okay, NPR kinda thing? I have a notepad here- Well, that’s intimidating. Whereas I’m going to jot, maybe make some jottings that then will lead to you exposing the truth behind- Whoa. Behind these songs. But also- I just got all the music off of a royalty free site and just sing over it? You want me to admit that finally? What if- Okay, up first. Go for it. That would be hilarious. Again, the album is “Human Overboard”. The whole album is out now wherever you listen to your music. What we’re gonna be doing is listening to all 11 tracks in album order. As you’re listening to this, you’re not gonna hear the full track, ’cause we’re not gonna just play the full song, for every single song. We’re gonna listen to the full song. So, we might reference something that is in one of the full songs that you didn’t hear because we’re gonna play like a portion of the song to give you the feel and the vibe so you can listen to the album on your own time. So that’s what we’ll do. I’m actually gonna take these out ’cause I’m actually not listening to anything right now and it makes my voice sound weird. Yeah, I already had to do that. I’m gonna do what they used to do in the old movies and I’m gonna do the credits first. ‘Cause I don’t wanna just put the people that I wanna think at the end, and you’re just like, “I’ve heard the whole album and then I’m done.” And so you might wanna fast, I mean, if you decide you wanna fast-forward- Play fast-forward through it? No, I’m saying you might decide that you wanna fast-forward, but don’t. Because one of the coolest things about this whole project has been the collaborative nature of it coming to fruition and being what it is. You know, I had a lot of people who made me sound the way that I sound and shaped these songs and shaped the whole project that I collaborated with on different parts of it, so I wanna just start by thanking them. Do you have a list? I do. First of all, I wanna just start with- Now you haven’t won an award, I just wanna clarify. Yeah, no, I haven’t. Maybe you will. Well, okay. What kind of award? I’m just saying, typically you thank people- The Daily Record is gonna be, “Best album of the year from a guy who used to have a studio in Lillington.” Yeah, you could get a Chamber of Commerce award at least for this thing. No, I’m just saying these are the people who made this project what it is. Shout ’em out, man. So, first of all, the person who played the biggest role, Derek Fuhrmann, my producer, who of course we got to know- I love me some Derek. We got to know through Britain, Link’s cousin, because he was recording some stuff with him and he’s done some stuff from the Mythical Society, for, you know, our collabs that we do over there at the vinyl that we do. And, you know, the reason I decided to go with Derek on this project isn’t because he had never done any country or folk music, he’s a pop guy, but because he is so committed to making things work and he was so committed to learning the process. And, like, he told me multiple things like, “I’m learning so much about this type of music,” you know, as we make these songs. And, again, the way that it worked is I would write the lyrics and the music, basically me and a guitar, singing to a certain beat, that bpm. That’s beat per minute. Yeah, and I would send him that and that is the backbone of everything that he then create. If it was one beat per minute, that would be slow. Sorry, go ahead. That’s whale music. But then he would kinda send back, because, again, I have another job, actually several other jobs that I do here at Mythical. So, this has been a side project and a hobby so I haven’t been able to devote the kinda time that typically people devote to this kinda thing. So, I was send him these demos and then he would come back with, like, he’s like, “Hey, here’s what I’m thinking about the baseline. This is kinda what I’m hearing in a drum groove,” kinda thing that then we would then send off to other people to add their pieces. It was like so collaborative and so many steps to finally get to the final song. But he was the one that was guiding that process to kinda be like, “Here’s what,” he would send me a bunch of options and he would send me, but really it was his ear and his instinct with these different musicians that he hired that made these songs go from a guy playing something on a guitar to what you end up hearing on the album. And he was just so intimately involved in making it what it is. So, I just wanted to start, big thanks to Derek Fuhrmann. You would be lucky to have him as a producer on your project. He stays very busy but- You know, if you’ve not experienced it, sometimes it’s hard. Well, in hip hop it’s actually, you know, a lot more credit is given to producers. But, like, growing up listening to music, I really didn’t think about the producer’s role. And so everything you just described is not necessarily something that is just because of your situation and all the different directions that you’ve been pulled in that you needed to, like, give it over to Derek or something, I think you’re describing what a good producer does, which is, you know, something that I didn’t appreciate at first and, like, helping bring shape and cohesion and specific direction to songs that are in their rawest form, you know? A producer can make or break a song entirely with where he sees it. A great producer is also a musical director, somebody who’s like, “Hey, let’s try that again,” and, “Give me a little bit more softness,” or, “Give me a little bit more emotion in that,” or, you know, even a couple of times, this didn’t happen on every song, but there were a couple of songs where he was like, “Ah, the phrasing of that part is kinda bumping me,” and we would sit there and we would try to figure out like, “Oh, I’m gonna use this syllable. I’m gonna use this word here,” and, like, locking it in so there’s not things that bump you throughout the album. So, he was integral in that process. Another person that did so much, Alex Strahle. The first time I talked about Alex, when we talked about “Believe Me”, I mispronounced his last name. I think I said Strohl. Strahle. So, Alex is just a, he’s a multi-instrumentalist musician here in California, in Los Angeles, who’s in a couple of bands, but he’s also kind of a session guitar guy. And Derek knew him. You know, originally, with so much, like, we wanted to do pedal steel, we wanted to do obviously, like, country sounding guitar in places, we wanted banjo, we wanted mandolin. Alex did all of that. So, originally it was gonna be like, Derek was like, “I gotta have to talk to some contacts to get some Nashville guys to do these authentic country parts.” And then he didn’t have any luck with that, but he is like, “Hey, I know a guy in Pasadena. Alex Strahle.” He’s got all these old guitars and old instruments. Like, the pedal steel is a 1946 instrument. Wow. That’s not even a pedal steel. It’s a multi-cord. It is like a predecessor to a pedal steel- Really? That he engineered to be able to, because basically the way the multi-cord, you would hit a pedal and it changes the whole cord that’s being played, right? He found a way to make it where he can, he, like, does all this, he manipulates all these instruments and stuff and he basically engineered this thing to make it into a pedal steel. But that’s not technically what you would see as a lap pedal steel. Oh, a pedal steel. You play the cords with your feet? With your feet. A pedal. How many pedals are there? Is it like an organ? I don’t know. What? I haven’t seen it. Yeah, because when they’re playing, they’re striking- These were remote, in some senses, I think, yeah, they’re, like, on a live session with each other that I could tune into while I was doing my job. But I wasn’t there when they’re actually doing it, right? Did you ever meet Alex in person at all? By the time this podcast is being recorded I will, because- No, we are recording it. Podcast is live because I wanted to go out with Derek and Alex because they were the two, like, you know, they’re also- So, you have plans to meet him, but you still have not met him? I wanna do a celebration, have dinner with them. So yes, we will have done that. But anyway, Alex is, again, he’s not a country guy. He just has great instincts. And I think it ended up bringing this awesome vibe to a lot of the, so the way that I would describe it is if you are impressed by guitar that you hear on the album, it’s him, not me, right? You know, I’m proficient, especially as a songwriter when it comes to, I can do what I need to do on a guitar to write a song and to kinda keep rhythm and do a picking pattern and that kinda thing. But, like, if you’re impressed by it, chances are it was him doing it. All right, who else you got? Gunnar Olsen did all the percussion and all the drums. That’s a good name for someone to do somethin’. And this is just a dude who’s a session drummer in New York, who has worked with a bunch of big stars. He did all the percussion on Springsteen’s “Western Stars” album. He’s worked with Miley Cyrus and, you know, a bunch of people who are more talented and more prolific than me. But, again, Derek knows him and he knew he could do this kind of, like, Americana style and he nailed it. So, thanks to Gunnar. I’ll talk about more musicians once we get into the individual tracks. But, again, I wanna think Anna Weber, who took all the pictures for the whole thing. So, any pictures where I look like I might be a legitimate artist- Or feeling shame. Yes. While the picture’s being taken. That was Anna Weber. Thanks to Anna Weber. The album art for the album, you know, the me in the Water on the front, that was illustrator Greg Newbold who painted that, digitally painted that. And I don’t think he’s done much album art. He’s just like a legit, like, artist/painter who does, like, gallery work and stuff and- That’s cool. You know, Cara helped me find him online and he did an incredible job. Kendrick Kidd, who we used to work with a long time ago, do a lot of- Back in the day. design. He designed the James and the Shame logo. And then Cara, Cara Powers, our assistant- Kendrick designed the first Good Mythical Morning logo. The flame. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, see? Yeah. And the Rhett & Link logo that has us, we look like one chess piece, like two faces facing- Yeah, the two heads, the one head and two faces. Yeah, he also did that. Yeah. And then Cara Powers, our assistant, who spent a lot of her time working on this with me in finding these talented people. So, it was just so cool because I just, you know, we haven’t done anything like this in a while because we have this incredible team here at Mythical that we have an idea, and the team implements that idea, but this was kinda more the old school way we used to work, which is like, “Hey, we need somebody. Let’s find somebody online that we like their work and we can just collaborate with them.” It was really cool just when you bring somebody into a process and they make something into what it is. Well, without further ado, we can start listening to the song. But you know what, I might as well just talk quickly so we don’t break up the album. Let’s talk about We’re Still Good. We’re Still Good. We’re Still Good. This is the party game from Mythical. For all of your friends to get together. You play a card. It has a blank, it’s a crazy scenario that then everybody submits what they think should fill in the blank, person chooses what makes that scenario horrible, and then everybody needs to write a positive spin saying “We’re still good” to turn it into something positive. So it’s like- It’s a very fulfilling game. It’s good for your soul. It’ll make you laugh. It’ll also help you reframe things, if you’re into that therapy. Which is important. I think it’s important. Reframing. Language is important. Stoic philosophy. Yeah, we heard from a therapist that said they were using it in that context. We’re Still Good. Available at amazon.com. It took me a while to figure out what the album order is going to be. And actually this process right now is committing me to the album order. Oh, okay. Well, okay. Yeah, I gave some input into this, so I’m curious how it’s gonna shake out. I uploaded them. I uploaded the songs yesterday. I could technically- I have not listened to them in album order before now. “Believe Me”, the first single, has been out. We’ve already listened to it once, but we gotta listen to it again. All right, here we go. ♪ 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 jaunt ♪ ♪ It may seem too cut and dried ♪ ♪ But I just found some things ♪ ♪ I could not brush 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 ♪ ♪ You say my heart was never true ♪ ♪ That might say more about you ♪ Love it. First single. You know, we’ve already talked about this one when the single came out, so I don’t wanna retread any of that ground. But we have the benefit of, like, you’ve heard the most fan feedback from this song because it’s been out the longest, you know. So, one I’m kinda curious about, like, what’s that experience been like? Are people getting it? Are people, you know, what is it, what kinda conversation is it leading to? Because most of the people who are listening, at this point, listening to my music are people who are already fans of us. We’re getting, like, the reaction to this type of music from people who are just fans of us, which doesn’t mean they’re fans of country music. Now, we have a subset of Mythical Beasts who are fans of country music, but the most common, and, first of all, the response has been so positive from a musical standpoint. I’ll talk about, you know, thematically that response. But surprise. You know, people are like, “Oh,” you know, “I didn’t,” people do this kinda thing all the time, right, and it’s a trope. It’s a trope for if you’re doing this one thing in entertainment, you’re like, you always just think, “I can also do music,” you know. I think the thing that is a reminder to people- I think podcast is the new version of that would be, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is that we started our career as musicians. So, this is going back to the basics for me in a lot of ways. The first thing we ever did professionally as entertainers, it was music based, you know. But people are still surprised because, you know, they come on board at certain points and- Yeah, right. It’s always like, “What? You do this?” I mean, we’ve had fans of our music for years who are like, “Yeah, what about a serious album?” So, it kinda scratches that itch for them. But there’s a lot of people who, yeah, it’s like they never knew what sound it would be, that it would be so country. The most common response is, “I’m not a fan of country music,” or, “I hate country music, but I love this.” And it’s interesting. I’m seeing the same exact thing ’cause, you know, when we’re recording this I just put “Where We’re Going”, the second single out, the same exact reaction in terms of, “I don’t like country, but I like this song too.” And a lot of people are now saying, “Hey, it’s not that you don’t like country music, it’s that you’ve been listening to the wrong country music. You’ve been listening to radio country music. You’ve been listening to what’s popular on the radio,” nobody listens to the radio anymore, but you know what I’m saying, it’s a certain type of sound. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all these songs about trucks and, you know, God and country or whatever. And it’s, like, this is not that. And I think people, it’s like, “Oh, you actually do like broadly country folk, Americana,” however, there’s multiple ways to describe this. Yeah, you’re turning people onto it. Well, I wanted to shout-out a couple of moments. Well, the one lyric early on, when you say, “‘Cause the one I gave you said that that ain’t it,” I like that lyric because you’ve got the you, which is the end of one sentence, the beginning in the next sentence, right? Am I hearing that right? No- “‘Cause the one I gave you said that that ain’t it”. No, “‘Cause the one I gave, you said that ain’t it”. Oh. Oh. But you can hear it that way. I always hear it more colloquially. It also makes sense that way. I gave it to you, you said that ain’t it. Well, I mean, that’s what I’m saying, yeah. It is what you’re saying. But you actually didn’t do what I thought you did. No, I just said ’cause the one I gave, you said that ain’t it. Yeah, that makes more sense. But it’s also the one I gave you, you said that ain’t it. That needs to be how you, you need to take credit for that. Okay. Okay, I did it on purpose. What about, you know, in the chorus you say “My heart was never true, that may say more about you”, Is that the type of thing that it speaks for itself or? I’m curious, what does this say about people? Well, I don’t know. That’s for them to figure out. Okay, yeah. I respect that. But I think that, you know, the reason that this is the first song is because it’s, this is what I explained before, musically, I think it kinda sets a tone. But, thematically, like the album order, more than the musical progression, I leaned into the thematic progression of like, “If you were to sit down with me and I were to begin talking to you about my deconstruction,” which is not even really something that I want to do unless somebody starts asking me about it, especially now, I don’t, you know, I’m not interested in changing people’s minds as much as I may have been at an earlier point, but like, “What is the process that I would lead you through as I was kind of trying to explain myself,” right? This is obviously a super self-indulgent project on multiple levels. But also just the fact that I think I got something to say and that you should listen to it, right? And there is self-indulgent. But if I am talking to you regardless of where you’re at on the spectrum of spiritual deconstruction, Christianity, whatever, this kinda sets the tone of saying, “The point of this is not for you to agree with what I’m saying. The point is just listen.” If somebody is gonna tell you about their spiritual experience, take their word that they’re the closest to it as they can possibly be and that they’re being honest with you in what they’re saying. And so if your perspective at the end of the day is that, “Oh, you never were a Christian,” and you may be committed to that because of some theological perspective that you have, again, that says more about you. In that instance, if you think that I wasn’t a Christian, actually there’s nothing about me that demonstrates that I wasn’t a Christian; it’s you and your commitment to a specific ideology that makes you see me in a certain way. So, when you say my heart was never true, that says a lot more about you than it does about me in my experience. Yeah, and who wants to talk to somebody who’s not gonna listen to, who’s not going to believe what they’re saying, but instead just try to put ’em in a box and, like, mind their true motives. Like, assuming that you’re lying to me, my goal in this conversation is to find the real truth. That’s what I’m gonna do here today, Rhett. Just kidding. No, like, I know how that feels. Yeah, I mean, we felt a lot of that. And I think it’s the perfect start to the album. So, before I move to the next song, I wanna thank Casey Frank. You’re gonna thank people every time, huh? Well, as we get new instrument, instrumentalist. All right, fine. Casey Frank played that organ. That’s a real organ. Like, we had a fake organ in there originally and I was like, man, you know me, I’m not a details guy. But Derek’s like, “You know, we gotta get a real organ,” and I’m glad he did. There’s no fake instruments in any of this stuff. That was recorded by Talley Sherwood at Tritone Recording. And then the music video, the lyric video/music video, again, that was done by Jax Anderson, she makes incredible music on her own and does incredible directing. And so shout-out to Jax Anderson. Buddy System Season One theme song. Yes. That’s right. Yeah. Okay, for the second song, this may be a surprise to you, this is actually responding to some input that I got from you, but also as I really started thinking about what, there was a point at which I thought I was gonna do the first three singles were gonna be the first three songs on the album. But then as I started thinking, there’s multiple things going into this. ‘Cause you’re like, “Who am I thinking about when I,” I’m thinking about the listener, I’m thinking about somebody who’s like, “I like country music. Who’s this new kid on the block,” or, “I’m a fan of Rhett and Link, and I don’t even like country music, but what’s Rhett got to say here?” I couldn’t decide who I was making that thing for, so I just stuck with themes and it just ended up being that we’re still a very in, like, classic country on the second song. I went with “Flash of Rationality” as a second song. And we could talk about it after we listen to it. All right I’m ready. ♪ Sometimes I have a flash of rationality ♪ ♪ But most times I do just what I’m goin’ do ♪ ♪ It’s easy for me to see what I already see ♪ ♪ Ain’t got time for inconvenient truths ♪ ♪ I’m just a man, I ain’t no machine ♪ ♪ I do the math the way it suits me ♪ ♪ Don’t get me wrong, you’re making some sins ♪ ♪ But I think I’ll go before I am condemned ♪ ♪ Sometimes I start ♪ I love that one. I mean, it goes even more country, like- It’s probably the most country. Right down the middle. But, I mean, it’s got this very vintage country vibe. You know, it’s got a Charley Crockett type retro- Well, when you hear something in your mind, it’s one of those things where, like, what I was, that’s my homage to Merle, you know. That’s why there’s a trumpet in there. That’s my homage to my favorite era, and your favorite era, of Merle, late ’70s, early ’80s when he was, like, bringing in jazz. And, of course, once I put my spin on it, it ends up in a different place so you might have to be told that that’s the reference. But the reason I put that song there is, again, I wanna be like, “Hey, this is a country album.” It’s the shortest song on the album, it’s under three minutes, it’s the only one that’s under three minutes, and so I kinda wanna be like, “All right, from streaming perspectives, like, I’m in at this album, I get to that second song.” But from a thematic standpoint, it’s kinda saying, “Listen, first song I told you, you don’t have to agree with me. And in the second song, I’m telling you, I also don’t know what I’m talking about.” You know what I’m saying? Yeah, it’s self-deprecating. I’m, like, I don’t think I got something incredible to say. I don’t think I’ve got some incredible insights into this. I think that I’m smarter than I actually am. I buy a lot of books, I don’t finish reading them. Sometimes I think straight about this stuff, a lot of times I don’t. I’m just being honest with you. This isn’t some treatise that you’re supposed to, like, be aligned with what’s going on here. I’m just guessing it the same way that you are, you know, it’s kind of the thematic message and that’s what I wanted it to be at this point. And that trumpet. Yeah, I mean, it is a surprise first time you hear it. Like, I mean, I heard it a lot later in the album before. It was, like, maybe four from the end when I heard it, and I was like, “Oh, you gotta move this up.” Especially when that trumpet came in, it’s like, “Oh, you give people this surprise.” Well, I got a funny story about the trumpet. So, I knew from the beginning that I wanted a trumpet. And the way that I indicated that I want a trumpet is when I sent Derek the demo, which is just me playing a guitar and singing, it got to that part of the song and I just did a mouth trumpet. Yeah, as you would, I guess. And nothing like a good mouth trumpet. And he told me, he was like, “Hey, trumpet players, it’s tough.” He’s like, “We can get guitarists all day, but trumpet, brass players, they’re harder to get, they’re more expensive,” whatever. And I was like, “Really?” Okay, and you knew you wanted trumpet, not sax, because I mean, Merle he traveled with a sax player, not a trumpet player. But he had some trumpet solos. And more like the Spanish, you know, influence songs actually. I was hearing trumpet more than I was hearings sax, like, you know, like, muffled-like, but the thing on the end- Yeah, definitely makes sense. So then we actually talked to, I talked to Ward, our friend Ward Roberts. You know, he’s actually pretty connected in the music world and his dad’s like a jazz player. So I was like- Trombone. “We can’t find,” and he goes like, “I know,” and he sends me, like, a list. And Chris Bautista was the first person that we contacted and he was down to do the project. And he was like, “What do you want me to play?” And I said, “Well, I’ve already done a mouth trumpet of the melody.” And I was like, “You can play that, and then play some other stuff.” And then at the end of the day, we just all liked just him doing exactly what I did with the mouth trumpet. So, you got him to play a mouth trumpet. That sounded like a real trumpet to me. I’m gonna play you the demo. This is the only demo I’m gonna play because I want you to hear the final songs and I don’t wanna be here forever. But I thought this was funny enough. You don’t wanna be here forever? Where you gotta be? To play you the demo. The demo trumpet, all right. I’ll play a little bit of the song to see just how, what I do ain’t as good as what we do collectively once it gets in the hands of a producer. ♪ I know just enough about enough stuff ♪ ♪ To not when you bring somethin’ up ♪ ♪ Talking out of my ass is my MO ♪ ♪ I’m trying to learn to say I don’t know ♪ Yeah, he did better than you, man. His mouth trumpet’s a lot better. He made that sound awesome. And then he added the like . Yeah, yeah, a little ending. Yeah, so that’s “Flash of Rationality”. I mean, the melody was intact, though, you know. He played the same thing. I’m talking about your singing melody. Oh yeah, that one, and this was the second to last song written, by the way, the “Flash of Rationality”. ‘Cause I wanted that theme of like, I started realizing that, as you get into the album, I’m flirting with, the whole thing is flirting with self-importance and self, you know, indulgence. But I just wanted to remind you that, hey, I don’t think I’m some smart-ass, I am a smart-ass, I’m more of a smart-ass than a smart guy. So, just wanted to remind you. Yeah, I appreciate you moving it to a disclaimer placement in your album instead of burying it. Yeah, right. And also the fact that it’s one of my favorite songs on the album. Yeah, it’s a good vibe. You can walk down the street to it. You can walk back the other way down the street to it. Third song is the third single that just came out a week before the album dropped “Give a Damn”. Okay, yes. So, I put this one early in the mix as well and it’s pretty big departure. Let’s listen. ♪ Ain’t it funny how some guys who lived ♪ ♪ Well before your time ♪ ♪ Make you think what you think ♪ ♪ God thinks about wine ♪ ♪ The kind of thing will draw you in ♪ ♪ And you are like me ♪ ♪ Why live for the here and now ♪ ♪ When you’ve got eternity ♪ ♪ They say your life unexamined ♪ ♪ Is a life that’s not worth living ♪ ♪ But I’m pretty sure I grayed my beard ♪ ♪ With all these fucks I’ve given ♪ ♪ I can’t help but give a damn ♪ ♪ But damn, sometime I wish I didn’t ♪ ♪ First time I heard of the great beyond ♪ ♪ I was surely smitten ♪ ♪ I could be one of the chosen few ♪ ♪ Be on the front lines ♪ ♪ I’ve got something in my pocket ♪ ♪ That’ll give sight to the blind ♪ Woo! Yeah, that’s a good one, man. Yeah, I had already heard “Believe Me” a lot early. I heard the first two singles- Really early- So by the time I listened to the album this is the one that was, like, let’s see, we were on a plane. We were getting on a plane. You were listening to the album and we were in the airport. Yeah, it was one of those things where I had to leave my phone off airport mode, airplane mode, even though we were taking off ’cause I was trying to get the last song finished. And I’m like, “Man, what’s gonna happen,” all right? Somebody gonna come up to me and, like, kick me off this plane? Yeah, they threw you right out the door. You know, I had to get started to finish. But then my first, you know, I leaned over to you. You happened to be there. It was such a coincidence. And I was like, “That was the ‘Give a Damn’.” I was like, “Give a Damn”. Whoa, that’s the one right there. I mean, listening to it again here, I’ll tell you what’s my favorite, but that was, like, the first one I wanted to talk about. So, let’s talk about it. I mean, the guitar hook right off the bat. Did you do mouth guitar for that? Nope. My guess is that was part of the solo and then you retroactively moved the second half of the solo to be the intro, but am I getting too in the weeds here? Well, actually I don’t know exactly, I don’t know what that process was exactly. Because, you know, obviously this is the one demo that when I sent it over I added, you know, I record and logic, and then Derek is the pro-tools guys, but I did a beat, I was like, “This is a rock song.” This is like, in my mind, like an Avett Brothers rock song ’cause you’ve got that kind of like, no, but they don’t do lead guitar in the same way, but that’s what I was hearing. Usually. And so- It’s got that banjo in it, okay. So, I dropped a beat in there really so I could play with the groove and it gives me the energy that I need to sing in the demo. It’s the only song that I did that on. And I was just like, “Listen, I want,” there’s a couple songs where I was like, “I want Alex to let loose on this because we need something powerful and hooky on this.” And, you know, typically Derek was semi something and give me a couple options to this that he sent over, and I was like, “That’s it. That’s that hook that it needed.” Oh yeah. I mean, it’s interesting that you said it was rock because it did not turn out that way. I mean, it’s quite a jaunt to use the word that you used in the first song, but- Folk rock. Yeah, okay. The Avett Brothers, if you, like, go to the Wiki, it doesn’t say they’re a country band, it doesn’t say they’re a bluegrass band, it says they’re a folk rock band, you know. And I think this is a folk rock song. Like, the chicken pecking of that intro, actually that was very Merle to me. But I’m talking more ’60s, which I liked. I don’t know if you even felt like that was a connection. But it was like “Workin’ Man Blues”. I hear that. I also hear a hint of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Yeah, the slide lead. Slide guitar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, you could hear Jackson Browne in that too. I’m just saying it’s interesting- I’ll take a little Skynyrd. I mean, when you add that banjo and then you add a bunch of fucks given, This is the explicit lyrics song. Is it gonna have an E on- Yeah. Oh yeah, you playing the Mumford and Sons card. When I uploaded the song- There’s an explicit track on this. Is this Mumford and Sons album? It doesn’t mean as much as it used to. No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean as much as it used to. And also I’ve noticed that, like, certain artists in this genre who, like, if Father John Misty says the F word in a song, he doesn’t put explicit lyrics on it. Interesting. It was like, “Well, I’m gonna do it. Okay, I’m gonna do it.” One last thing about the production, the gang vocals. Like, yeah, it just felt like it was, it was such a relief when that showed up. I just felt like- A relief? Yeah, ’cause I was like, “Oh, that’s where this needed to go,” you know. In a good way. Yeah, and that’s just me and Derek standing in his studio 12 feet from the mic. Just me and you have done gang vocals a hundred times, where you’re trying to do multiple voices and stuff. Did you do any Muppet voices? I didn’t hear any Muppet voices. I said I’m not gonna do the high voice because that makes it sound like the Muppets. I was like that’s one thing that I’ve learned from me and Link- Yeah, it was more, you know, friends in low places- People at a bar. Kind of a vibe. Kinda thing, yeah. Yeah, bar sing-along. Yeah, definitely that sealed the deal for me, between the guitar at the opening and then the gang vocals at the end. But this song, I mean, is about evangelism, right? Yeah. But you can be an evangelist of anything. It’s just that we’re very steeped in a church that had the label because it was such, so key to our- And as I talked about a lot of times, my personality is evangelistic. I like to persuade people, and I don’t necessarily like that about myself, and this is a song about, man, I can’t help but give a damn but sometimes I wish I didn’t, you know. It doesn’t make your life easier when you like to change people’s minds. When you first heard about the great beyond- And also yeah- You were smitten. I think there’s something about people who feel like there’s gotta be some purpose. They’re naturally drawn to religion. And really when they’re involved in a religion, they really go for it. Like, I became a missionary because I thought that this is the most important thing in the world. Like, this is so much more important than every other earthly thing that, “How do I go all in?” Well, you do it full-time. And so that’s why I became a missionary. And so- Okay, go ahead. I have another question. And then so what? Yeah, but then when you switch teams, you become an evangelist for that team. Well, the second time you say it it’s not the great beyond, it’s- The first time I saw someone’s eyes- Someone’s eyes light up. So, is that, like, catching the bug of converting somebody? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, if I can sit down and talk to you, like if you’re a conservative Christian and I can have a conversation with you and make you question some fundamental things and it seems like a light bulb goes off, there’s something, you know, incredibly rewarding about that. It’s the same part of your brain that lights up when you’re evangelizing someone and they come to Christ. You think that you’re doing it, and you might be doing it out of love and belief that this person’s soul is being saved, but it’s incredibly, personally rewarding. If you were to scan somebody’s brain who was having, was doing evangelism and someone was converting, the serotonin, you know, would be, whatever the brain chemical is, you would be getting that reward, you would be getting the reward that you get from, you know, winning at a game. Dopamine, you know. It’s a dopamine rush. Okay. And that is in my personality- Hit the dopamine molecule. So, when I go to the other team, I, and, again, the music video for this is out, the music video for this is currently not been finished being made. It’s an animated music video from- You’re telling the future. From Micah Buzan, who is this incredible animator who made that music video. You know, the song is a departure musically and so the visual is very much a departure. And it’s kinda symbolizing this in sort of, as an analogy in a different world kinda thing. But the whole point just being that, again, the reason this is the third song is multipurpose. Number one, it’s like, hey, this is another place that we’re going on this album. It’s not just country. We’re getting into some different stuff that is broadly country, but this Americana, folk rock, whatever you wanna call it. But thematically, it’s like, hey, I just told you that I’m not, don’t take me seriously ’cause I’m not taking myself as seriously as I might seem sometimes, but also, hey, I don’t even like the fact that I wanna change your mind. I don’t even like that about myself. It’s making me age more quickly. But, you know, I’m processing it through music. The gray in your beard started under the ears almost. And in the middle and. And now in the middle. Yeah, and that’s, you know, there’s multiple reasons for that. So this section of the album, three songs, where now that I’ve sort of thematically sort of tried to position myself a little bit as like, this is how I want you to kinda take what’s about to come out, before I start preaching at you because I am gonna preach at you before the end of the album, now I’m directing my process towards people I love, starting with my parents, then going to my wife, and then going to my kids. Because spiritual deconstruction, which is an overused term, but you know what I’m talking about, basically moving away from traditional beliefs or reorganizing the way you think about this, reorienting yourself, and in my case deconconverting, is very complicated for the people that you love, especially if they are still in that faith, right? And so this is a song that was written as I process the way that I feel towards my parents and my parents feel towards me. It’s called “Sorry”. ♪ I never set out to do ♪ ♪ Something to disappoint you ♪ ♪ Approval was sorta my thing ♪ ♪ Took your book and made it mine ♪ ♪ Never colored outside the lines ♪ ♪ And made my own peace with the king ♪ ♪ But then the integrity ♪ ♪ You’d poured deep inside of me ♪ ♪ Started to burn a hole in my heart ♪ ♪ I grabbed on that scarlet thread ♪ ♪ And pulled ’til there was nothing left ♪ ♪ And then my whole world fell apart ♪ ♪ You did nothing wrong ♪ ♪ And I did nothing wrong ♪ ♪ So why do I feel like I need ♪ ♪ To say sorry in a song ♪ ♪ I know you ♪ What’s the answer? Why do you feel like you need to say sorry in a song? I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. I think this is something that anybody in this similar situation, like you love and respect your parents, you were a good kid, you know that this is a disappointment to them, in spite of how well your life has gone or how well things are with your family and your career and all this stuff, if you disagree on this fundamental thing, it’s a disappointment. You know, I think about my kids and I try to explain this to Locke to kinda get him to understand the dynamic here. Even though my parents really, really love me, because I have deconverted and publicly deconverted, it’s kind of a double whammy. Not only am I no longer a Christian, but I’m this public figure who talks about it. You know the world that we come from and you know how those kids are seen, right? You know how people see me, and that impacts them. And the thing that I’m trying to say in this song as well is that like, well, to finish that thought, I was like, Locke, if, you know, we’ve kinda raised you according to a certain worldview, it’s a much more permeable worldview than the one that I was given. I’m not telling you exactly what to think, but there are certain values and there are certain things that we hold, you know, leading with love and being kinda the main value. And I was like, if you were to, like, go off and become some guy who is, like, contrary to this, you know, in some way, there’s multiple ways that you could do that, like, that would be difficult for me. But, multiply that times 10 when I would become worried about your eternal destiny, that’s what my parents live with, and that’s what the parents of many people who’ve deconstructed and deconverted live with. Thankfully, we still have a great relationship and we love each other. And love trumps everything else, right? The love is stronger than the faith, which that’s what Jesus himself said, right? Faith, hope, and love, the greatest of these is love. If you lose the love, you’ve lost the plot. But I feel bad. Like, the idea of my mom crying about me in my eternal destiny, that hurts. Yeah, it hurts you because it hurts her. You know, you broke their hearts. And you didn’t do anything wrong, but you certainly don’t, you know, the sign-up sheet to break your parents’ hearts is not something that people are lining up for, you know, especially with the type of relationship that you have, you not only had, but have with them. Yeah, so you’re able to say, “You did nothing wrong- And what I mean by that- But it’s hard for you to say, you know, they’ve done nothing wrong either. The reason I say they’ve done nothing wrong is because, again, I know what it’s like to be an evangelical Christian. And when your kids depart, not only do you, like, it’s built into that community that you become responsible for it. The Bible basically implies that in a couple of places that, like, your kids’ outcome, I mean, it’s a gray area for sure, there’s ways to interpret and get around it. But, like, regardless of what the Bible says, the evangelical community blames parents for what their kids end up doing. And so that’s the feeling. It’s like, “You didn’t do anything wrong,” like, when I talk about the fact that, that’s why I did that Instagram post like, “You guys taught me the gospel. I understand what the gospel means. I understand grace by faith. I’m not legalistic. You guys were never legalistic,” I didn’t miss the boat in that way. I mean, yeah, it kinda- You didn’t do anything wrong. Parents get bad rap across the board, you know. It’s like, “Why is so and so guilty of this crime or now in prison?” It’s like, “Well, how did their parents fail ’em,” you know. And I’ll go a step further and say not only did they not do anything wrong, they did a lot of things right. And this is a very difficult thing that I’m saying in this song that I can’t, you know, I haven’t- The integrity that they gave you burned a hole in your heart. My parents’ concern with truth, especially my dad because he thinks a lot like me. My dad became a Christian in his early 30s, so a later life conversion, right? So, it was a very strong conversion that was immediately, like, impacted him in so many different ways. And my mom as well. They both became Christians at the same time. In his concern, his lifelong concern with truth and putting truth above everything else, my personality’s exactly the same way. And the thing that I want to be able to say is that, “Hey, the same thing that got you to suddenly wake up in your early 30s and realize that life has got to be about more than just going through the motions, like there’s gotta be more to this life, and that led you to making a profession of faith in Christ,” that was truly life-changing, I believe. That same instinct is what brought me to the conclusions that I came to. So, it’s actually what you did right, ironically, to make me really concerned about truth and like, “Hey, if this is the most important thing, I wanna understand, is it really true?” And I came to my conclusion that I am at right now, I always leave room, I say right now because I leave a lot of things open, is that it’s not true, fundamentally. It’s not true. Christianity is not true. If I thought that it was true, I would still be a part of it. I don’t think that it’s true. I think that there’s a lot of things about it that you can’t know. But what I’m saying is like, even though I made a lot of these decisions because of the good things that you passed along, I know it still deeply disappoints you and I’m sorry about that. So, the part of like, why do I feel like I need to say I’m sorry, like, yeah, I think that, I know that resonates, that totally makes sense. But let’s talk about the in a song part. Why do I feel like I need to say I’m sorry in a song? You know, are there certain things that you’re saying in this song that you couldn’t say to their face? I think that applies to this, this song and many other ones. I don’t talk this way to people directly, you know, even in the next couple songs we’ll listen to. It’s the same thing. It’s like, I can say it a lot better in a song than I can just sitting down and saying it to you. Specifically with my parents, it’s complicated by the fact that it’s so emotional and I can’t have a real conversation about this, you know, without, especially my mom. Like, she’s heartbroken, right? So, we just don’t talk about this stuff directly. We talk about the things that, you know, moms and sons talk about, about life and what are the kids doing and that kinda thing. And maybe we will get where we can talk more directly about this stuff, but it’s too hurtful. Yeah. I mean, you saying the song that, like, we’re probably not gonna change each other’s minds, right? Yeah. So then you’re left with just kind of, it becomes this emotional thing that, you know, it is still may be really raw. Yeah, yeah. So, did you feel afraid to even, to put the song out there? Are there hopes attached to it in terms of how you can process it in that relationship? Or is that none of the listener’s business? Yeah, I would say that. I don’t know. I don’t know, you know. I think a lot of these songs are just as much for, you know, the reason I didn’t just write this song and sent it to my parents and I made it a public thing is because I think this will resonate, you know. This is happening. This is a worldwide cultural movement of people moving out of these types of belief systems that their parents hold very sacred and it’s difficult. And there’s no solution in this, other than like, “Hey, I’m just identifying with the emotion that this stirs in people.” I think it’s absolutely beautiful song in the way that it resonates even beyond the context of, like, changing your religious beliefs, you know. And I think we’ve talked about this before, you know. Your relationship with your parent, parents, guardians, like the people who, you know, people who are older than you, as you grow up and you become an adult yourself, it’s like the nature of our relationships change. And sometimes if they don’t, that’s weirder than if they do. But the changes that you go through in that, you know, people who love you and were there for you your whole life they’re making different decisions, they’re landing in a different place, it’s a scary thing to navigate a relationship where you have a fundamental disagreement, you know. You talk about issues of identity, you know, that whether it could still be religious, it could be, you know, relational, sexual, whatever the case may be there’s so much that you have to navigate. I think it’s your story and I think that it will resonate with other people’s stories in a way that it just kinda, it sprouts wings. And that’s why I think this is a beautiful song. Even if you’re just doing the spiritual exploration, I think it’s a great album. But this is a standout because it’s so relatable, sadly, to so many people. And the irony is, is that, yeah, you don’t have a lot of the baggage, like, from your parents. I mean, we all have baggage, but, like, you- But it’s a lot worse for a lot of people. You have an active relationship where, like, you know, you still wanna spend time together at holidays and, like, you care about each other and it’s not, a wall has not been built up. You still have a relationship. Yeah. You know, listen, I give them a lot of credit for that. Because in the system that they’re in, it would not be, there are certain biblical passages that you could decide you were gonna follow that would mean you would cut off a relationship, just to be honest with you. And they’re choosing love. Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t deeply emotional and difficult for you and for them. It’s like kind of, you know, it’s under a best case scenario that it happened and you’re still illustrating the depth with which, like, there’s parts that you can only express in certain ways and, like, you’re not able to get into it still. It’s like, I just think about the people who is, like, everything else, you know, to add onto it. So, I think it’s a big one, man. And I wanted to put it there ’cause, you know, that’s one of my favorite songs on the album. I just love the way that one came together and to kinda start that section. Of course, the next song is the second single, which is me writing a song to my wife. It’s called “Where We’re Going”. ♪ Picked up on it first thing ♪ ♪ You weren’t like the ones I’d known ♪ ♪ Might have been from the same place ♪ ♪ Coming from somewhere all your own ♪ ♪ A few hours on a wooden bench ♪ ♪ That’s all it took to do me in ♪ ♪ Knew then I had to make it quick ♪ ♪ Before I made us fall into sin ♪ ♪ I don’t know where we’re going ♪ ♪ But I know I want you to go with me ♪ ♪ Don’t care much about the destination ♪ ♪ As long as you’re there that’s where I wanna be ♪ ♪ Talking took a different tone ♪ ♪ Started to ♪ You know, it’s amazing for a song that is so sweet to be about going through so much difficulty, you know? I mean, especially when you throw that, like, classic country, and I don’t mean in terms of time, I mean just the way that, you know, the sweetness of a sweet country song, especially when you go to that bridge at the end or whatever you call it, where it’s like, “Now I’m gonna put this all in perspective.” It’s like you followed this template, which is like, “I’m telling you a story about a relationship. You can see the music video in your head.” Typically, the country music singer would be singing- And you’d see the couple. And you see the couple and it wouldn’t be them, but you did the right thing. You put yourself and Jessie in the video. Right, yeah. Yeah, that was, if you didn’t know, that was Jessie singing. Yeah, and Ben Eck here, who’s been at Mythical for almost a decade, you know, I wanted the whole thing to be outside of Mythical, but he was so excited when he heard about the project. He was like, “Hey, whatever I could do to help. I just wanna be a part of it.” And so we collaborated on the video and he brought it to life. But, yeah, getting Jessie to sing, again, I wrote this song for her for a Valentine’s Day two years ago or 2021, and that was back before this album was a thing, it was before I even knew that I was making an album really, or that it was a country album, right? So, this song wasn’t even conceptualized as a country song the first time I wrote it. You couldn’t help yourself, though. Yeah, I remember. Yeah, you talked about singing this song to her on the podcast. You alluded to that. This is the first song you wrote for the album. You didn’t even know it. Well, it’s not the first song I wrote ’cause I was just writing songs- What’s the first? As a process. The first song I wrote is the last song on the album. This may be the second song that I wrote. But, again, there was a number of songs there in the middle that were, I didn’t know I was making an album. I’m just writing music and, like, recording demos. I mean, we’ve talked about it a lot when we talk about the deconstruction, in the deconstruction episodes. But I mean, it brings it into sharp focus how when your relationship is built so strongly on the rock of Christ, right, that whenever you decide to move your home base somewhere else, that is a scary prospect. And if you both don’t make that move together, and, again, we didn’t make the move at the same time, you know. I kinda moved first. And then Jessie was, you know, obviously scared, resistant, crying, that’s what I talk about in the song, it’s just like when I started having these like, “This is what I’m thinking. I really didn’t wanna tell you about this ’cause I know how much it’ll upset you,” she would just cry, you know, it was tough. It’s one of the reasons it was such a long and lengthy process. But we eventually got to where we’re not in exactly the same place spiritually, it isn’t like she wants me to be anywhere or I want her to be anywhere, we both are like we’re untethered from orthodoxy, frankly. But there’s so many couples where that is not the case. You’re in very different places fundamentally. And not only is that just intrinsically difficult, but you’ve been told, if you’re from a conservative evangelical background, that you cannot be unequally yoked, that it doesn’t work. And you’re also told that everything that you have in life, every good instinct that you have comes from God, comes from the spirit of God; and everything bad comes from you. Again, I’m not speaking for all your evangelicals, but this is sort of the perspective that I had. All your good instincts are from God, all your bad instincts are from you. And what that means is that the moment that you begin thinking that this God thing may not make sense in the same way, you’re just naturally programmed to think that only bad is now left. And now what are we gonna base this marriage on? Love? I thought we had to base it on Jesus. So, this is an example of some of the things we were warned about turned out to be pretty good, you know. There was a lot of trepidation. Like, I definitely relate with me and Christy in our spiritual journeys. Like, the trepidation of everything that you realize you believed, if it wasn’t, I mean, it was overtly taught in a lot of ways, like you’re talking about the unequally yoked thing, but just how it permeates everything you don’t even know you believe. You can feel it as fear before you can state it logically. And when you’re in a deconstruction process, it’s like, yeah, you’re in this state of fear a lot of times and you can’t articulate it. But to get through that with anything that you get through as a couple and if you do come out stronger on the other side, then you can say, “Oh, wow, maybe it was worth it,” you know, right? Can’t you say that? I think that when you strip away the ideology that was holding you together and it really becomes about just love and this commitment, and, again, I know I give a lot of these disclaimers, I’m not saying that people who are Christians, who are in a relationship, that it is all about, like, it isn’t about love, it’s just about their ideology. The thing I would say, that I would challenge Christians on is I actually think that, you know, a lot of guys in Christian circles, this is what you hear. They’re like, “Man, if I wasn’t a Christian, I’d be cheating on my wife.” This is a very common sentiment. And I’m like, “Dude, that’s some up fucked up shit, man.” Like, “Think about what you just said. Think about what you just said. What if the reason you don’t cheat on your wife is because you love her?” And here’s what I would say, “I think the reason,” ’cause here’s the deal, infidelity happens a whole lot with inside and outside of the church. It seems like that commitment actually doesn’t play much of a role. And so if you are faithful, I think it actually means that you’re faithful. You don’t have to constantly give credit to some external source for every good thing you do. Maybe you’re faithful because you have the ability to be faithful in yourself. So that is an example of like, “Oh, this relationship that is,” and, listen, I’m not perfect, Jessie’s not perfect, I’m not saying that it’s always gonna be great, it has continually gotten better over the years for us as we’ve grown together, but who knows what challenges we’ll meet, you know? But when the rubber meets the road, I want our relationship to be based on mutual love and respect and a commitment that is independent of our worldview and ideology, you know. And I think that that’s actually the case in most relationships, even the ones where the ideology is present. What do you mean by “More than a savior we needed help”? ‘Cause, you know, I think from the, I don’t know, that’s more of a head scratcher. What I meant by that is in the evangelical circles that we ran around in you get a lot of help from a spiritual perspective, right? And even when you go to therapy or you go to couple’s counseling, it’s always run through this very specific biblical grid. And it’s just like, “If your relationship with Christ is intact and flourishing, then everything else in your life will be okay,” is kind of the implication, right? And I think there are sometimes when you just need help, you just actually need somebody to help you navigate your relationship, navigate your own emotional and mental well-being, you know. It’s funny ’cause I know Christians who prefer, for their therapists, to not be a Christian because they don’t want it run through this biblical grid, which a lot of times is more hurtful than helpful. So, I think that the point there is that like, “Hey, it isn’t just about getting saved and having this Savior,” this saving knowledge of Christ, it’s like, no, like couples need help. They just don’t need to be right with God. They need to figure this . They need to figure out how to navigate a relationship. And I think what we needed, each individually in our own circumstances and situations, but also as a couple, like we needed to work on us apart from just getting our worldview straightened out. Like, that’s just not the case. It’s just not true that if you get the right belief, you know, so much of conservative evangelical Christianity is about believing the right things. You go to church on Sunday, and what do they talk about? Well, hold on now, we’re not to the preachy- I can’t help myself. Preachy songs yet. We’re getting there. And that’s our experience, is that, hey, when we actually started thinking about our relationship and thinking about each other rather than God, things got better. What’s next? This is the third in this three-song section to people I love, and this is the song that I wrote for my boys. Okay, buckle up. It’s called “Creek and Back”. ♪ Held you up before God and man ♪ ♪ Swore to raise you according to a plan ♪ ♪ Then the blueprint ♪ ♪ Faded to gray ♪ ♪ Still a lot that I want for you ♪ ♪ Still a lot that I think is true ♪ ♪ It’s just now the path ain’t ♪ ♪ Quite so straight ♪ ♪ The secret I probably should not tell ♪ ♪ Is that I still feel like a kid myself ♪ ♪ Been in over my head since we brought you home ♪ ♪ Biggest thing that I’ve learned is what I don’t know ♪ ♪ But I’m your dad, I know that ♪ ♪ And I love you to the creek and back ♪ Another tearjerker, come on now! So those three together, you just want everybody to cry. Yeah. Yeah, it’s got wings, man. Like I said, in just like I was talking about before, you know, any parent’s gonna say, “Oh God, I know exactly what that feels like,” to just, should I say that I’m clueless. I’m just as clueless as you, but in a different way, you know. It’s extremely powerful to put that out there. And I know it’s gonna resonate with people. And the piano doesn’t hurt. Yeah, I wanted to, you know, do a piano song. And it’s not me playing the piano. I know that I learned how to play the piano for a tour we did, but that’s a real piano player, Edan Dover. And, of course, you know, I wrote it on guitar, but I was hearing it as piano. And also it’s kinda interesting because this is the kind of music that, like, it’s a little more, you know, it’s piano based so you’re kinda getting into, you know, it’s not like a Billy Joel or a, you know, Elton John song, but it’s the most like that of anything on the album, which is kinda like music that we’ve connected, I’ve connected with the boys over. But yeah, exactly. I had written those two songs to, you know, a song to my parents, song to my wife, and I was like, you know, I think that when you have a fundamental shift in worldview, like, again, held you up before God and man, the first, that’s the dedication, which incidentally is a piece of video in the home video footage in the “Where We’re Going” music video- Oh wow. Is meet us up there in front of the church with Locke. Yeah. Which is a ceremony, arguably, just as much, if not, more about the parents than it is about the kid. It’s basically saying you get up in front of everybody and you say, “I promise to raise this kid.” You respond to a series of questions. I’m raising this kid, you know, according to the gospel, and you raise them to serve Jesus and to make a decision. Yeah. I mean, in my church, my kids were actually baptized and there was an added thing of like- Well, that didn’t save ’em, Link. You know, that clinging to this promise that’s open to interpretation, that’s like, okay, they are already saved as long as everybody does their job? Well, you’re kinda claiming them for Christ, you know. To me, this song is more powerful knowing at what stage of fatherhood you wrote it. Because I think there’s a lot of artists that will have a child and then of course they’re gonna start writing songs about their baby. There’s so many songs, like an endless playlist of this artist that you know had their first baby and then they had to write a song about ’em. Sturgill’s whole album, “A Sailor’s Guide to the Universe” or whatever it is, it’s like it’s all based on him having a kid. I mean, Childish Gambino. I mean, but you’re looking at this baby and you’re like, “Ever since the day I brought you home, I’ve been scared shitless,” you know. So for you to say that and, you know, Locke is off at college. Thank God. And Shepherd’s not as far behind as it seems like, you know, so it’s– Meaning that it happened. I don’t mean I’m thankful he’s gone, I’m saying that, like, he got there. So, you see my point, right? I mean, it’s strangely comforting as a parent to hear this, knowing that you’ve got kids that are on the cusp of adulthood. Well, I think it goes back to what we’ve talked about as we talk about relating to our kids that it’s much less about the things that you say and much more about the things that you do. And, you know, I think modeling cluelessness to my children, that’s a harsh way to put it, but modeling humility or whatever or however you wanna say it like, “Hey, man, everything that we’ve done has been motivated by love. But it’s all guesswork, and it’s the best guess that we have at the time. And I know for a fact that you’re going to be processing the mistakes that I’ve made forever.” Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, the song is for them first, right? Hopefully, just hearing that is helpful to them. I’m glad- So you don’t end up with a bunch of resentment, you know. A parent who can’t admit that they made a bunch of mistakes, that is much more trauma-inducing than the mistakes sometimes. Yeah. I mean, it definitely piles it on. I’m glad that you didn’t go, like, cute country and then change “I love you to the creek and back” too in the final chorus saying, “I love you with my creaking back.” Oh, I get it. Like, I’m so old. Got it. “My back sounds like a door.” That would’ve been a bad- It’s not too late. Mistake. It’s not too late. It is too late. Where are we going? Well, “Where We’re Going” is that was the song I wrote to Jessie. You said “Where We’re Going”. From the song title- What song is next? Well, before we move on, I wanna say, so obviously that was Jessie singing along with that song as well. So Jessie sings on three songs. She’s the mother of those children. And so she did an amazing job there. We wanted to the cello and the violin, the strings were, like, a last minute addition because we had just an electric bass in there that Derek had played. You know, I was like, “I’m hearing something else,” and then I heard a song, I was listening to some song and there was piano and cello and I was like, “That’s what we need.” So we got Dave Eggar to play cello and Lisa Fako to play violin. So thank you for that, making that song what it is. Now we’re getting back into, this song is called “Only Thing”, and this is, again, sort of back to the processing ’cause I’m about to move into a place where I’m not really singing two individuals, but I’m more kinda in my own head and then finally directing some things out to the church. Got a couple of songs that are directed at the church towards the end. But this is back to, like, processing. Okay. “Only Thing”. ♪ I could argue with the best of them ♪ ♪ About where we came from ♪ ♪ Convince you over coffee that Jesus was God’s Son ♪ ♪ Take that empty feeling that everybody feels ♪ ♪ And use it against you ’till you were on your heels ♪ ♪ I was sure as sure can be ♪ ♪ I was working for eternity ♪ ♪ There was hell to pay ♪ ♪ If you saw it another way ♪ ♪ Now the only thing I’m certain of ♪ ♪ Is that I ain’t certain about much ♪ ♪ It’s easy to be right it’s not so easy to choose love ♪ ♪ Sometimes I miss that feeling of having it figured out ♪ ♪ Have to fight that temptation ♪ ♪ To know what life’s all about ♪ So sometimes it’s, I don’t think it’s sometimes, you said it’s easy to be right, you said sometimes it’s not easy to choose love. So you’re talking about this- It’s easy to be right, it’s not so easy to choose love. So it’s like that’s the struggle, right? I mean, you’re speaking from experience here. Yeah. This one is just kinda that, I think that it’s very difficult when you’re a Christian. And I would say, when you adhere to any particular religious philosophy and you really adhere to it, like you’re pretty sure that you’re right about, right? Like, being right about it is kind of important. There’s a lot at stake. Specifically, I mean, you know, believing the creed, believing the right thing about Jesus is the ticket to heaven, right? I mean, ultimately when you break it down, you gotta think and believe the right, you gotta believe the right thing. And your eternal destiny depends on that. And I think that is difficult when you’re in that situation, to envision what it would be like to just not be sure about that. That’s one of the scariest things for me when I was transitioning away from Christianity, which is like, “Whoa,” like, “This is so crazy,” to, like, just accept the fact that you don’t have to know what you think about this stuff, that you could be uncertain about this stuff. And it’s really hard. It’s like that’s why it says, in the chorus it’s like I’m trying to, essentially I’m trying to break the habit of knowing what life’s all about, right? That’s a tendency to, like, you gotta know what life’s all about and you gotta believe it strongly and you gotta share it and you gotta, and it’s difficult to be like, “No, I can let go of that. I don’t have to know what the ultimate purpose of the universe is. And I believe that anyone who says that they’ve got it figured out almost assuredly is wrong.” Like, the one thing I know is if you say you know the secret of the universe is and what the purpose of all this is, whatever your particular take on it you’re basically ruling that out from being the truth because you’ve come up, you know, you and some system of man has come up with that, from my perspective. I think when, from my experience, when love takes a close second, like even if it’s a razor edge, like a thin slice just below truth, it’s a problem. It’s a problem when you start to relate to people, when you start to try to empathize with people, you know. It’s hard to love somebody when there’s subservience to what you believe to be an absolute truth. And it always felt weird, and that’s why, for so many years, I would hide, like, my beliefs and my affiliation with the evangelical church, was because I just couldn’t stand by the implied judgment that was the headline. It’s like too many people, I fear, would associate me with judgment, and not love first. And I realized that, like, I related to a lot of people for so much of my life, with love being subservient, and people can feel that . They know it. They know it. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Oh yeah, and it’s like, yeah, I mean, that’s one of the big things that, you know, finally kinda broke me out of that thinking was like, just like, it’s not something to hide, it’s something to break up away from. Well, you know, interesting, I’ve been thinking about this exact concept a lot lately. And the way I’ve kind of, the way I understand it right now is if something about your particular ideology or philosophy makes you necessarily think that someone is fundamentally different, right? So, if you’re a Christian, and if you’re an evangelical Christian, and what I mean by that is if you believe that the only way to be in a right relationship with God is through Jesus Christ, and so if you’re not in a right relationship with Jesus Christ, you are condemned, you’re not really a child of God, right, you’re gonna spend eternity in hell. If I believe that about you, even if I love you, I think less of you by default. I think that I’m gonna spend eternity with God and I think that you are not going to spend eternity with God. Sure, it may be because of grace and it may be because of the gospel. It doesn’t make you a bad person to believe that, but the relational dynamic that that creates is that this person who’s on the receiving end of that judgment, is what it is, it is a judgment, it is a determination, their relationship can only be so deep with you. So, if you’re a Christian and you think that I’m going to hell, again, you may be, that’s your theological opinion, you can’t help yourself believe that, but I’m saying is that I can only have so deep of a relationship with you because there’s a fundamental thing that you believe about me that separates us and ultimately results in me being discarded and judged in a way that you’re not going to be. And that’s just a difficult dynamic, that is a result of fundamentalist belief about things. But the moment you say, “Hey, this is my take,” but I’m not really that certain about it and I’m not prepared to say that you’re condemned, the relational possibilities really open up. That’s a difficult thing to do, though. That’s a very difficult thing to do if you hold to a particular theology. Where do we head next? So, this is the biggest departure, this is the last song that I wrote. And I wanted there to be what I would call a badass country song. And I’ll explain what it means and why it’s in this spot on the album after we listen to it. It’s called “Kill a Man”. ♪ Today I’m gonna kill a man ♪ ♪ Gonna squeeze out his life with my bare hands ♪ ♪ He’s had it coming for way too long ♪ ♪ Only thing he does right is doing wrong ♪ You can just say it, man. Just freakin’ say it. Say what? This was about me. I’m gonna kill you. This is me letting you know that I’m going to kill you. This is a badass blues guitar. You got some Kenny Wayne Shepherd in here. Well, this is- You got the low notes, you got the high notes. Well, here’s the thing. This song was never going to be a part of the album. I thought I was done with 10 songs. Then as we kept producing this thing and Alex coming through, and I was like, “This dude’s really talented.” Oh yeah, he did awesome. And I was like, I just feel like I’ve gotta write a song that lets him just like, “Hey, buddy, I’m taking off the leash. I’m taking off the leash and I just want you to be a badass on the guitar and just do what you can do.” And so thematically, I mean, the message is, and I don’t wanna, let me just say, I’m not gonna say exactly, there’s a principle that was true in my former philosophy as a Christian that is true now as a whatever I am, hopeful agnostic, that I think is an important principle in life that I still abide by. And this song is a sort of an exploration of that concept. Okay. I’ll let you figure out exactly what that is. And thanks to Jessie for lending her- Operatic vocals. Yeah, you know. She’s done that for us before back in the day. You know, Jessie majored in voice, specifically classical voice. So, I knew I wanted that middle section to be like, kind of a weird departure and there’s like some backtrack guitars and stuff or whatever the term is, reverse. What are the backing vocals that sound like a chant say? Are they words? Which part? It’s like a percussive. Oh, they just say “yeah, yeah”. They say “yeah, yeah”? Yeah. Okay, all right. Glad we cleared that up. Yeah, it’s a little bit of a, again, I don’t think there’s Jack White song that sounds exactly like this, but you could imagine him having done something like this. Sure, sure. You know. And that’s Derek doing that percussion. He just did it, like, outside of his studio in Burbank, like on his driveway with, like, you know. Sounds like you’ve killed somebody and you’re draggin’ ’em to the- Well, it’s kinda like you’ve got somebody and you got ’em in shackles and you’re takin’ ’em to kill ’em, you know. Oh, that’s morbid. You know, you could take it however you want to, but that was what I was thinking. Now we get, final three songs, these two that I just put together. Originally, I wanted them to be spread out and then I was just like, I’ve kinda set the stage to, these are my two songs directed at the church. Okay. First one is called “In Vain”. ♪ There’s quite a few things ♪ ♪ You don’t seem to mind ♪ ♪ I’m trying to figure out ♪ ♪ Just where you draw the line ♪ ♪ ‘Cause watching people die ♪ ♪ Seems to be fine ♪ ♪ But god forbid a nipple or a Jesus Christ ♪ ♪ I sorta understand ♪ ♪ It took me quite a bit ♪ ♪ Before I’d let an oh my God ♪ ♪ Exit from my lips ♪ ♪ But maybe that commandment ♪ ♪ About using the Lord’s name ♪ ♪ Is about a lot more than just ♪ ♪ What you say ♪ ♪ So much done in Jesus’ name ♪ ♪ Seems to me to be a god damn shame ♪ ♪ Are you sure the Savior came ♪ ♪ So the righteous would all vote the same ♪ ♪ Tell me who’s the one using His name in vain ♪ See, I feel like there’s gonna be a lot of people, Christians, who are like, “Hey, I agree with all of that, man. I agree with all of that.” I think it’s difficult, though, in practice. I mean, I’m just saying from personal experience, to go from yes, it’s, you know, Jesus’ teachings and the biblical teaching can be, you know, we want to just boil it down to this actionable stuff where we can check boxes, I know for me I wanted to be able to check boxes, and say, “I’m well within bounds. I can feel secure about my approach to life and with rules.” And that’s not how Jesus talked, right? And I was taught enough of that to know, to try to counteract it, but, I mean, with my tendencies, I tended to really, when you boil it down to rules, and even frivolous ones like, “Okay, don’t say damn, but definitely don’t say goddamn,” and like, “Don’t say, ‘oh my God,’” you know, it’s, like, it makes it easier to process, but none of this stuff is that easy to process. It shouldn’t be, you know. But as humans, I think we, at times you just fall back on this reductionist approach. Well, I think it’s, you know, I’ve always been fascinated with how offensive using God’s name in vain. Goddamn, saying goddamn is so, and this is something I tell people from other parts of the world and from other parts of the United States like, “If you get upset about something, you say ‘Jesus Christ’”, like that is like , like, certain evangelical Christians, it’s like a poison, man. It is so offensive to them. And I’m like, so interesting to me that that is the thing that is so offensive but there’s all this other stuff that is actually offensive that you don’t care about. Hey, wait, yeah, I heard it. You listed ’em out, nipples. Well- Having my nipples. You know, just it’s always been fascinating to me- Can I see this music video? This is the one I wanna see. It’s just one nipple the whole time, so. Can it sing? It’s a singing nipple, yeah. Like, where the milk comes out it can actually starts singing? That’s, yeah, the nipple part. So, I don’t know. ‘Cause it’s like you’re right, I take that lots of Christians who would be like, “I agree with this, but were you gonna play it for somebody? ‘Cause it says goddamn it a number of times,” you know. And, again, not all Christians are like this. A lot of Christians have woken up to the fact that like, “Hey, guys, like, cursing,” and even saying like, “Do you really think that that’s what that commandment was about, like, you think the commandment to not use God’s name in vain was about not using God’s name as a curse word, like, you really think that’s what that commandment was ever about?” It’s so interesting that it’s what it became about. But you’re totally right. Most reasonable Christians of all stripes will be like, “Yeah, yeah, completely agree with this,” like, “That’s not what the gospel’s about, it’s not about all these other things.” So, yeah. Yeah, I think ultimately this is all pretty, like, soft stuff. The point of this album was not to condemn. It’s just- The Supreme Court case, I mean, that’s something that I think it, there’s a couple of places where it starts to- Well, and this song was written before the Roe v. Wade that was overturned. It wasn’t in anticipation of that particular case even. There’s always a Supreme Court case that Christians think that God is on the side of an issue and that that’s what Jesus would believe and that’s probably the best one, is that they just fundamentally believe Jesus would be pro-life no questions asked. And it’s just like, “Really, though?” Like, “You really think that? Show me the biblical evidence of that.” So anyway, I think this is, again, it’s not like I’m, like, if you’re a Christian and you’re conservative Christian and you completely, fundamentally disagree with me and you’ve made it to this point in the album, it’s like, okay, these songs may be challenging for you. But, again, this wasn’t about, “Hey, this is a message for the church first and foremost.” It is, but it’s more like when you are deconstructing or deconverting, like, there’s a lot of things that you’re thinking and you’re beginning to see things. You’re like, “Man, like, this was the way that it always was. This is how we thought. We were so offended by this thing, but, you know, all this other stuff didn’t offend us,” and that’s weird and hypocritical. And you just see it and you wanna talk about it, you wanna say it, you wanna point out the hypocrisy. But this next song, “Fruit”, is even more specifically about what I see as the hypocrisy in the church. ♪ Don’t know much about that carpenter ♪ ♪ He lived in a very different time ♪ ♪ But most everything that I’ve heard He said ♪ ♪ Makes me think we might be reading different lines ♪ ♪ There was something about turning the other cheek ♪ ♪ I can’t quite square that with your AR-15 ♪ ♪ He said let the little children come to me ♪ ♪ But you just watched as they were torn from their families ♪ ♪ I don’t feel the love ♪ ♪ I don’t see the joy ♪ ♪ But I’m not sure I got the patience to argue anymore ♪ ♪ I don’t mean to be unkind ♪ ♪ And I’d like to keep the peace ♪ ♪ Just looking for the self-control to agree to disagree ♪ ♪ I remember ♪ This one hits hard, man. Where’s the love? I don’t feel the love. I mean, if somebody honestly says that, I mean, you just can’t, it’s undeniable, you know. If somebody doesn’t feel loved, you know, it’s, what can you say to that? It’s one thing for someone to say, “Yeah, but I love you.” It’s like, you know. I just think even on, like, an intimate relationship, have you ever been in a point when you’re like, someone you loved told you, “I don’t feel the love. I’m not feeling that from you.” It’s like, good luck coming up with a response, you know. The damage is already done. Like, the writing’s on the wall And you can try to explain yourself at that point. And I feel like that just resonates with me so much because it’s, I don’t know, I just see it. It’s frustrating. And I don’t wanna paint with a broad stroke and say like, “Yeah, this is the problem with the church overall,” and like, “Dude, you really put words in my mouth. I think that it’s,” you know, you give some examples in there when you talk about AR-15, when you allude to immigration practices. Yeah, who’s the red-letter crowd, like define that. Because I think at that point you’re talking about in fighting within the church, that’s like you think- I’m talking about my perspective, my former self’s perspective on progressive Christians, right? I used to be like, so red-letter Christians is a thing that, it’s people who identify with the words of Jesus. ‘Cause there are some versions of the Bible where all the words of Jesus are in red and all the rest of the words are just black, right? And so there are people who say I’m a red-letter Christian and what that means is that the thing that I hold the most sacred and the thing I really take seriously is the words of Jesus and then everything else is sort of open to interpretation or not as important. And thinking that way makes you, you know, Jesus didn’t condemn a whole lot besides hypocrisy, right? He got condemn by the religious zealots because He was hanging out with the people who you shouldn’t hang out with, right? And He didn’t come with a really judgmental tone. He was like, “I’m about building relationships. I’m bringing love into the situation.” And so it’s essentially a way of saying, “Hey, I used to be like progressive Christians or WACC,” because they’re just not comfortable with the whole truth. They’re taking the truth that they’re comfortable with that kinda fits into our cultural context and is cultural acceptable and then they’re kinda minimizing or even rejecting the difficult truths that our culture actually needs to hear that are in the Bible. And I was like, “You can’t just say I want this to be true and this is uncomfortable so I’m not gonna believe that.” I used to look down on ’em. And now I’m like, “Those are the people that I’m rooting for within the church.” It is the ones who were saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am prioritizing love over judgment. I’m prioritizing love over faith even, believing the right thing.” Because it’s not so much like, you know, ’cause you might say, what you said earlier when you were like, “When you say I love you, but,” it’s very difficult. And a Christian might say, “Yeah, I love you, but I think that what you’re doing is sinful, like I can’t not say that. You know, I have to tell you if I think something you’re doing is wrong.” I don’t think we’re talking about situation. That can get complex, you know. I think what we’re talking about is the fact that as a whole the evangelical church, especially in America, has aligned itself with, like, the darkest parts of our nature as a country, right? Like, you aligned yourself with Donald Trump. I mean, I did a whole podcast about this. I don’t care what the outcome was. I don’t care if the Supreme Court case went the way that you wanted it. You aligned yourself with someone who is the least Christ-like politician to ever have been in power in the United States of America. Full stop, not an exaggeration, not hyperbole, you aligned yourself with the least Christ-like politician to ever have been in power in the history of our country. I don’t feel the love. The most reliable indicator for support of Donald Trump in this country is if you are a conservative evangelical Christian. That is the most reliable indicator. As long as that’s true, you guys have lost the plot. You’ve lost the love, full stop. That’s what this song is about. Well, you said full stop. I can’t say anything else. You said full stop twice. Yeah, full stop. Said it three times. We didn’t even talk about the fruit illusions. They can get that themselves. Fruit of the illusions. Right, yes, fruit of the spirit. There’s only one more song. All right. What? It’s called “Old Letters”. And it is the first song that I wrote of all these songs. Wrote it in 2019. ♪ I still remember when we used to talk ♪ ♪ You never said much but I knew what You thought ♪ ♪ ‘Cause You wrote it down for me long ago ♪ ♪ I read Your letters to keep from feeling alone ♪ ♪ There’s not just one thing I could point to ♪ ♪ That began to push me away from You ♪ ♪ All I can say is that I changed ♪ ♪ It was just like You to stay the same ♪ ♪ Stay the same ♪ So, the first song you wrote is the last one on the album. It makes sense to me that the first song you wrote is a letter to God, unless I’m getting this really wrong. No, Link, this is to you. All His letters to you, this is your letter to Him. As you’re starting the journey it seems like that’s a good starting place, like when you told me this is what you wrote first. That’s why it makes sense to me- And it wasn’t written as the first of a set of songs. It was just like, oh, I never write, I never write about complex emotions. We write comic songs, you know. I mean, this might be the first serious song I’ve ever written. Well, maybe, like, back in the day when we were writing, like, Christian music. Oh yeah, that’s true. Yeah, back in high school. But yeah, it was very much just, I’m processing this thing that is this is kinda how I think about God. It feels like a breakup. You think about the relationship that you had and you run things back through your mind and you’re like, “What was I actually thinking? What was going on?” But the reason, you know, this is the last on the album is, you know, I am committed to being open, like I have not closed my accounts with reality, I have not closed my accounts with God. I’m not an atheist. And the reason that I say I’m not an atheist is because I lean into the idea that there’s something else going on here, you know. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what the nature of that is. I don’t know what the nature of God is. I don’t know what the nature of the universe is. But I don’t know what it is, and so therefore I’m not ready to conclude what it is. And it may be that I hadn’t got the first time around when I was in a relationship with God, as I would’ve described it, I had Him wrong, I had her wrong, I had it wrong, I had them wrong, whatever you want, however you want. And who knows what the future holds, right? If the last 20 years of my life indicate anything, it’s that the next 20 years could send me in a wildly different direction than I would’ve ever anticipated. And so the last thing I wanna do is close myself off to, if that God out there, in there, around there wants to be in relationship and wants to reveal some kind of truth to me, I’m not gonna be the one to stand in the way of that God doing that. And so I leave it open and unresolved. I enjoyed the production technique of, like, the pan vocals. But is there irony in the fact that your processing of God’s letters is, like, a conversation with yourself? So, there’s a Jason Isbell song that I love, “Chaos and Clothes” I think is the name of it, and he does this technique of basically doubling his voice and the stereo split of the two voices. And I knew I wanted to do a song like this and I thought that this song was a perfect one to do it because it just represents the possibility. To me, it’s not some, it is interesting that you take it that way, which I’ll take that. I’m not taking credit for it, but, like, is this just a conversation with myself? This is why this is the only song on the album where I did my own harmony ’cause I was like, this is so personal, that it’s like, so there’s two melodies and there’s two harmonies and there’s two guitars and it’s just, like, represents the multiple perspectives and how, where we go from here is something that is just kinda, it’s open, the possibilities are open and I don’t know, I’m not trying to go any particular place. Well, you know, I celebrate the fact that this thing exists, it’s out there, it’s a complete project. I mean, I know, with everything that you’ve been through and how the pandemic, in a lot of ways, gave you the space to make this possible, there’s still a lot of stuff that’s going on and more every day. It’s, like, it’s nice that you followed through on this vision and this is out there and, you know, it’ll outlive you. You mean it’s still gonna be on the internet after I’m dead. Oh yeah. That’s great. I mean, as a project, I think it’s important and I celebrate it. Well, thanks for that, and thanks for listening to it with me. You know, I think that the most rewarding part so far has been the people who, and, again, when I record this- The horrible cover songs? There’s been a lot of great cover songs. There’s only two tracks out at the time that I record this, you know, the first two singles. But the most rewarding thing, and again this is what I said from the beginning, if one person is like, “Ah, I relate to this,” like, you wrote a theme song for my life situation or what I’ve been through in this relationship, that’s been the most rewarding thing, is people giving that feedback and saying that like, “You put into words what I’ve been feeling and thinking and haven’t been able to say,” you know. And, again, I talked about, part of the inspiration for this album being David Bazan, Pedro the Lion, and specifically his album “Curse the Branches”, which obviously different musically and different thematically, but it was like a deconstruction album from way back in the day, when I was in the very beginnings of my deconstruction. And it was just so, like, I kept, I listened to that album so many times ’cause I was like, “Man, people,” I just didn’t, there wasn’t enough music out there that resonated with specifically this very difficult thing that I was dealing with. And more people are doing it. There’s more deconstruction. Again, I hate to use the word. It’s overused, but it’s the best descriptor. There’s more and more music that connects with everybody who’s experiencing this stuff. I just wanted to do my part to get it out there. So thanks for listening. Do you happen to have a rec? It’s your week. I guess if I have to search deeply, I would say that I recommend that you listen to my album. “Human Overboard” is the name of the album. James and the Shame is the name of the artist. That’s me. And it is available everywhere you stream music. And I will ask, you know, it’s funny, I don’t know what it’ll be like by the time this comes out, but I see, like, on Spotify, like, people also like and everybody who they also like is, like, another internet famous person who does music. And so I guess it’s inevitable that that’s what the case is. But I would just say, “Hey, listen, if this album was your introduction to country or Americana, hey, there’s a lot of really good stuff out there,” you know. I’ve put together that playlist a while back that was, like, some of my inspirations. Listen to that music, not only for your own benefit because there’s a lot of great country music that’s out there, but also it’ll start to show up that people also like country music. Not Ninja Sex Party. Nothing against Ninja Sex Party, we love those guys, but I don’t think that Ninja Sex Party is the greatest entry point into James and the Shame. No, it’s not. So, do some listening to train the algorithm, if you don’t mind. All right, as always, you can call us, leave us voicemail, give us your reaction as we play ’em at the end of every episode so stick around for those. 1-888- EARPOD1. #EarBiscuits. Hi, Rhett and Link. This is Natalie calling from Ontario. I went on my YouTube Music today and it told me that I have listened to James and the Shame 987 minutes, which is about 16 hours over the course of two songs. Just wanted to let you know that I love the music and I can’t wait for the rest of the album. Thank you so much for putting it out there. Hey, guys. First of all, love the show. Long-time fan, super stoked to hear your full album. Congrats on it, dude. First three songs were great. Love you guys, thanks, bye. Rhett, in my evening listening to your song “Where We’re Going” and bawling my eyes out. I’m 36 years old, my wife is 35. I have two boys, 10 and 8. This past Memorial Day Weekend she had a stroke and she’s been working incredibly hard in rehab to regain the use of her left side and various mental blocks still. Needless to say, this has been a whirlwind and scary last few months. My days are quite long now, keeping everything afloat and moving forward for my boys and for her, and this song just perfectly embodies how much I love my wife and how much I am still just so happy to be with her and look forward to sharing our lives together no matter what happens along the way. I was just so moved and compelled by this song that I had to share this with you, Rhett, and you know how much your music is impacting people. Thank you both for everything you give to us and everything you share with us. 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.