Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Link. And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, yeah, we’re back at the round table of dim lighting. Yep. We’re gonna be talking about what really happened at MythiCon. Yeah, this is- As if there’s a secret that we’ve been holding onto. There’s not really. Well, I think there’s- It’s just a sensational introduction. I mean, there’s definitely some behind the scenes. Oh yeah. Like, I mean, there’s things that we haven’t talked about, about our experience that, you know, I think it’s good to just put it down, put down our experience, to tape or whatever type of digital ones and zeros we record things to, for posterity. Yeah, because it’s very fresh right now. So fresh. We just got back home, just a couple of days ago. The wounds are still open. So the experience is very, very fresh on our minds and in our hearts. I would say that the general feeling right now, both the general feeling while we were at MythiCon, and then as MythiCon was coming to a close and in these days after, is that it was a success. Like, we’re feeling really good about the way that the Mythical Beasts responded to it, the work that the Mythical crew put into it. I mean, the thing that we said all along is that if we can create a positive experience for the majority of people who were there, then we have succeeded. Because when you go out and try to do something for the first time, that hasn’t been done before… A convention? Especially. … at least by us. Yeah. And, you know, something like this specifically hasn’t been done in creatordom. This sort of more boutique event or whatever you want to call it, at a place that wasn’t a convention center. Boutique immersive two day experience. We’re feeling good. I’m feeling good. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t things that went wrong and there weren’t things that could have been done better and there’s not constructive criticism floating around, which we can talk a little bit about. But yeah, I mean, my first thing was nobody died, was maimed, or taken away on a stretcher. Honestly, yeah. So, I was just so glad because, like, these conventions have a reputation for, like, really going south, you know. There’s documentaries made about them. Well, as the days approached, I mean, that is one of the things I wanted to talk about, was just the way that we were feeling about things as the date was approaching. Right, and I’ll say, I also wanna talk about, like, we will talk about what does this this mean for the future of MythiCon? What are our plans? What do we know? We know some things already, so we can talk about that. Yep. So yeah, so you can go back to your feelings now. I will say, ultimately, before we start stepping through it, I kind of feel like I’m basking in the afterglow of a milestone career moment. Like, just being able to experience MythiCon was extremely positive for me personally. And I’m just so grateful that we have a relationship with the Mythical Beasts, such that, like, we can all get excited about creating something like this. And it was really special. Like, there were a number of points where I was like, I think this is the peak for me. This is my favorite thing about MythiCon. And that happened probably five times. Well, the way I described it on Twitter, I guess on Sunday, you know, or Monday, right after it was over, it represented a culmination of this relationship that we’ve been building for many years. I think that that is, that’s why I’m taking away, despite some of the things that were like lessons learned, that we will take into the future, which we were fully expecting, it’s like, you do something for the first time, you’re like, oh, this, this and that, these are things that we would change, these are things that we would do differently. You go into a new venture expecting to learn those lessons. But the thing that I was really hoping would be the core experience of the event would be that this relationship that we’ve been building with the Mythical Beasts, and for some, that’s a over 10 year relationship. For some, that’s a 10 week relationship and everything in between. That it would feel- Some are like 16 years. That the relationship that had been building and had been cultivated was being expressed, almost in the way that if you think about you’ve got somebody, you have a long distance, and I don’t wanna make this, it’s not like a romantic thing, but a friendship, let’s just say. You meet somebody. A pen pal. And actually this is the case with a lot of people that we ended up talking to in the meet and greet and then in the brunch, we got to interact a total of eight hours over the course of two days, two and a half days. We ended up having, I don’t know if you thought about it like this, eight hours of direct interaction with Mythical Beasts. Like one on one, one on two, one on three. Oh wow. When you count your James and the Shame set? No, no, I’m counting- No, if you count James and the Shame and your DJ set. For you and then my DJ set. And then I’m talking, that’s 10 hours. I’m saying- Yeah. A two hour meet and greet on Friday, a two hour meet and greet on Saturday and then a four hour brunch on Sunday. I don’t know if you realized, we were there from 10 o’clock to two o’clock, interacting with people individually, going around going around to each table. Like it was a wedding reception. Yeah. And in one sense, it was emotionally draining because to have, sometimes, intense interactions with people who are, you know, they’ve got a lot of things that they’ve been feeling and thinking for years that now they have an opportunity to tell you. But for the most part, including those things, it was ultimately very energizing. I agree, yeah. It’s like you’ve got this pen pal that you’ve been talking to for years. Who never writes you back, but you know they’re reading all of them. Yeah. And they might post things publicly. And then the relationship is kinda consummated. Don’t do it. In person. And that’s the funny thing is we kept seeing people who are like, yeah I’ve been, this is a Mythical Beast that I have a friendship with and now we’ve been hanging out all weekend. There’s that that was happening, which was beautiful and which was why we wanted to do it in person and bring people together. But then there were the interactions that we could have, and not just with us, everybody got to interact with the crew both in a meet and greet setting, but also just because it was this little town. And I think that that was the peak of it for me, was seeing that this relationship that has been building for so long can kind of be expressed in a way that you can only do in person. And, yeah, when you describe it as, like, a boutique immersive experience, that was what was so exciting to see come together because that was part of our original idea. You know, it could have been two years ago, right? When we first hatched the idea of MythiCon, in the throes of the pandemic and lockdown, in our opening speech from the rooftop where, man, I could have fallen off that roof. Yeah. Well the one instruction that was given to Link, and there’s gonna be a number of things like this that come up, I’m sure. But the one instruction that was given to Link, at least five times, was when you step out on this roof, there will be a rug that’s big enough for the two of you to stand on. Don’t step off of that, because at that moment you’ll be on just like a tin roof that may have condensation on it, it’s not, you know, it could be slippery. And literally the first thing you did was step off of the rug. Well I took a step and then I took a second step and then I was looking at all the people down there and then I looked down at my foot and I remembered I’m supposed to stay on the rug. And when I looked down at my second step, that foot that was out there, I was like, there’s no rug at all. Where’s the rug? And I realized, I had already stepped over the rug. Yeah, it was the first thing. It was just- There’s only one step of the rug. I pictured a rug going from the window that we stepped out of onto that rooftop, like, it’s like a red carpet going right to the edge. Well, that’s what you would picture. And then when I looked down, I was looking all around for the rug. Then I looked behind me and saw the rug and I saw you standing on it. If you had… I took a step back. If you had slipped off and, like, I had to, like, go out there and, like, hold you up, that would’ve been, Would’ve been so awesome. first of all, everyone would’ve thought, no, they wouldn’t have thought that it was planned. They would’ve known. Because the other thing that was planned. We should have done that. The other thing that was planned, a little behind the scenes here, is that we were also told multiple times, but unfortunately we weren’t told right before we did it, that someone was planning a proposal and that really, our only job was to… Recognize this guy. Welcome everybody to MythiCon, cover some logistics that actually we didn’t even need to cover because they were covered elsewhere. And then just throw it over to this guy, Wesley was his name, Weatherholtz, Wesley Weatherholtz. Still is his name. Great name. Throw it over to Wesley Unless he’s taken her name. and then Wesley would take it from there. He was like in a light, you know, like, there was a basically, like, he was under a light so everybody could see him. And he was going to propose He was waiting. to his girlfriend. He was waiting our entire speech. And our other job, I will say, was to give a kick-ass welcome speech after Cotton Candy Randy introduced us. And I think we delivered man. Yeah, agreed. We had one microphone, we had to share it. We didn’t get in a fight. Almost did. I didn’t go too off the rails. Yeah. I didn’t weep. You wore a pink hat. I found the pink hat, up there in the attic. But yeah, he was waiting for our kick-ass speeches to be done and you know, just imagine you’re gonna propose, like, I was so nervous when I was gonna propose and I did it two weeks early by accident. You know, this guy was like, I’m about to do it. All they gotta do is say my name and then we go through the whole speech and then we’re like wrapping things up and then we like say, “Tata for now”, and we go back in and he’s just standing there. I felt so bad. I feel so bad for him. Like, what we put him through by accident. Yeah. We just forgot. And the moment we duck our heads back into the door, Jenna’s like, “The proposal! Get back out!”. So we, like, turn around before everybody disperses. It was like that quick. No one started moving yet. But then you started talking into the microphone, which had been cut off. And the microphone was off. The music was playing. People are dispersing. Now we’re yelling, “Don’t leave! Don’t leave!” “Please don’t leave!” And that’s like, so we ended up handing it over to him. I did say at that moment, do not let this be indicative of how MythiCon’s gonna go. Because, thankfully, we’re actually not in charge of the details. Like, this is one of the things that we were supposed to remember, but our team is better at remembering those kinds of details. I don’t want to dog anybody, but it kinda was indicative of MythiCon, we’ll get into that in a few ways, that like some things don’t go exactly as planned and you have to roll with it and make the best of it. But back to what I was saying when I was giving the speech, what I told them there, that I was saying again here, is that like we hatched MythiCon in the throes of the pandemic. We missed that interaction with fans. You know, we had two years of on and off touring and we were like, let’s do an event. Let’s make something that is an experience and we need to make it something that is not just called a convention. And it’s not just where people show up to see us do a show alone or just watch people record their podcast. Like, I just was kind of, we were immediately averse to just creating what we had already experienced at VidCon honestly, but only for Mythical Beasts. We wanted to do something that was a holistic experience and we thought the venue would have a lot to do with that. And it turns out we were taking a lot of risks when we picked a venue that was outdoors and a lot of those things. But, like, we did it because it was so charming and unlike any other place you could go. And once you showed up there, I mean, it was kind of like being at a very preliminary version of Disney, if it was just us, you know, like, on like a small primordial scale. But that was kind of the idea. So when fans, actually a couple of fans were like, this is kind of like a Disney experience. Because the team tried to think of all the details along the way and you know, if you read the fine print on things, you would see that there were jokes on them. You know, that’s kind of an example of, you know, yes this sign says ‘do not enter this particular building’, but then it also makes a joke about that. I can’t remember the jokes. A lot of them had to do with you not being allowed in the building. Right. Which I found very funny. Yes, yes to that. And I think that, incidentally, most of the challenges and lessons learned are related to the fact that we chose such a specific venue that was isolated, that required shuttling people to it. That all your food options and everything, you’re there, right? You’re kind of isolated on this island. We made a decision, because we were going for this more memorable, unique experience that created challenges that obviously, and we knew this going in, but challenges that you wouldn’t have if you were at a convention center where you’ve got- Hotel rooms. A convention center is designed to have a convention at it. And transportation to a convention center, a lot of times is just walking from your hotel room, which is somewhere. If you want other options for things to do, you can just step right out and go to things in a metro area, that kind of thing. So we understand that those are things that created challenges, but a convention center is a convention center. I’m not saying that if we, you know, do this again, it won’t be at a place that can accommodate those kinds of things. Which I guess, this is a good time to go ahead and talk about the fact that we were planning on this even before MythiCon, just so you know. We had made a decision in the months leading up to MythiCon 2022, that we were not going to do a MythiCon 2023, because we wanted more than 12 months in order to learn the lessons that we learned in 22 and be able to apply them in 23. Because there’s things like selecting a location, taking into account the amount of the work that our team did and how do you divide that between the Mythical team. And then we worked with, on location, a great company that does festivals. So, in order to give ourselves more runway for lessons learned and planning and moving forward, we’re just gonna go ahead and tell you that there’s not a MythiCon 23. We already knew that going in, but it’s worth mentioning now as we’re talking about this. Again, because if we do it again or when we do this again, we want it to be done even better and be a step up from where we started. Yeah. So at this point, kind of, everything’s on the table in terms of, like, how we follow up MythiCon 2022 with something that, the earliest it would be would be 2024. Right. In terms of how we do it. But I would, I just really, I just consider the whole thing a success. You know, I know that, you know, it wasn’t about the money, you know, I’ll also be honest about that. You know, we, you know, we didn’t make money. I’m just, you know, I think we broke even. I don’t think we broke even. Oh, okay. Well, I’m gonna think that because it makes me feel… We’re still working through, we’re still working through the finances, but as of right now, all indications are that we paid to make MythiCon happen. Which again… I’m over here fixing my hair because I don’t want to hear. Well, no, but again… It was worth it. It was totally worth it. But also it wasn’t a surprise. Every single festival that I’ve ever heard of cost the people who threw the festival money the first time they did it. We went in saying, “Listen, this is not gonna be a money making venture. Maybe one day it will be, but this is not”. And people are probably thinking, “Man, for the money I paid for my ticket”. Yeah. “You still didn’t make any money”. But, like, yeah, like, that’s all part of it. There were lots of comments going around about another money grab by Mythical, which again, it’s not the kind of thing we’re gonna come out and say, “Guys listen, we are paying to do this”. But that is the fact. Yeah. Is that it was not a money grab. There’s lots of ways that we could do a money grab, if we chose to. But it was starting, it was beginning something, just like in the book of Mythicality when we talk about pick a direction and go, just start doing something. We have a tendency, and listen, we do a lot of things that don’t work because we do a lot of things. And if you do a lot of things, you’re gonna do a lot of things that don’t work. And we knew going into this that it’s very unlikely unless we score like, again, because, like, the, you know, we called Liquid Death a sponsor. They were a sponsor in that they gave us the water. Which was huge. We didn’t get any money. We would have to get a number of sponsors the festival world where we learned, is an interesting thing and so now that we’ve done it and it was a positive experience for the majority of people who were there, next time maybe you can begin to introduce those kinds of things that help support it financially in a way that it becomes a money making venture. Which again, we would want it to be, because we don’t want to pay out of our own pockets and lose money every time we do something like this, regardless of how special it was. But totally, totally fine for that to be the case in the first one. Yes. And just take a quick aside here, speaking of things that we’re not charging Mythical Beasts for, but that are amazing and edifying experiences, I want to invite you to go over to sporked.com. It’s the website that we created where all of our taste tests of anything you can buy in the grocery store are reflected in ranking form and in articles. And if there’s, like, new types of snacks or grocery store items that you can try, our team has tried it at Sporked and they’re writing about it, so you can be exposed to what’s the best thing to buy and what’s the new fun things to buy. Go to sporked.com. You don’t have to pay a dime. Oh, you just came up with a little jingle. It’s free. I never got back to talking about how I was feeling in the days approaching. Yeah, get back to that. But I gotta say, with every year that passes, I feel like both of us get better at just dealing with increasing amounts of pressure to perform or for something to be pulled off. And eventually you just get to this point where you’re like, there’s, I mean, I’m doing everything I can to make this everything that it can be and everything that we want it to be. But there’s a number of things that are outside of our control. And just, you know, the larger that Mythical gets and the more things that we try, the more kind of impervious you get to just stepping into another experience that you feel completely unqualified for. I feel like every single year, I’m just doing something else that I feel unqualified for. My life has almost become doing things that I feel unqualified for. And so I’ve actually gotten better. Oh yeah. At not being nervous about things. Definitely. But there was a lot of, I think, hidden stress that was popping up in certain ways that I wasn’t, you know, I was trying to talk about them in therapy. There were things like, and I know this is the case for both of us, in addition to MythiCon and everything else that we continually have going on, just, you know, running Mythical and everything else that we’re doing. There was these special sort of inaugural events, in their own right, of me performing as James and the Shame and you making your DJ debut and doing the dance party. Kind of what we were calling the bookends of MythiCon, of me kind of opening things up on night one and you closing things down on night two. That I was very nervous about because, you know, while I have performed music in front of crowds for years, I’ve never done music like that. And I was performing my whole album, which I had never performed live for anyone. And Jessie was joining me and Jessie was super nervous because she hasn’t been in front of an audience in a very long time. Right. It was the new thing that took a lot of your focus, you know, because it was, that was a big deal, you know, and you hadn’t done it before. Yeah, I definitely felt that way about the DJ set. You know what, I have so much that I want to talk about, about my DJ premiere and some things that happened afterward that I haven’t told you about. Like, there’s so much, people are asking, how did I come up with the name. And, like, the entire experience was so surreal. Like the costume, everything that went into it, went into the persona. I’d love to just table that until, like, next episode. Because I have so much that I want to unpack and tell you about. We can just have a ElkHound SnuggleBaby unpacking Episode. Episode. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. I have so much and I want, there’s so much I want to hear from you that I haven’t asked you about. Like your vantage point of the whole thing. Oh, I had quite a vantage point. So next episode, we’ll talk about the ElkHound SnuggleBaby of it all. But yeah, I was talking to Jessie about, I was like, “You know what, I can help you be less nervous because, like, you’re kind of doing something that I have a point of reference for, you know. In terms of, like, singing with Rhett, showing up for sound check, performing songs that you rarely perform”. And then we didn’t get to talk until we were, like, on the way to the airport together. And she’s like, “Where is all this advice you’re gonna give me?”. And I thought I had some really good advice. I was like, “First of all, you’re gonna be nervous”. Like, I don’t get nervous about a lot of things, the point you were making earlier, because you just have to do something a lot to get to a point where you’re not nervous about it. Like, to do something big, that you’ve never done before, in front of a crowd, or maybe for you listening, you’re taking your own risk. It might not be crowd oriented, but it’s something that you’re, like, putting yourself out there. You’re going out of your comfort zone. Absolutely, you’re gonna be nervous. And that’s gonna keep happening until you do it so much that you actually start, you need to look for something else to make you nervous. That’s a great thing about James and the Shame for you and the DJ set for me and MythiCon was, a lot of my emotional energy was geared towards those things because they were so new. So I just, you know, I was like, “Yes, you’re gonna feel nervous. It’s totally, it’s part of this, it’s part of it. Trying to find a way to have some fun in the moment, is kind like a north star. It may not happen”. But I was like, “The only practical advice I can give you is when you’re singing, when you go up there and you sing for the soundcheck, don’t worry about what any crew or anybody thinks. Like, you’re not trying to sound good for anybody. So don’t even worry about that”. I used to be fixated on that. Like, let’s write a song called the Soundcheck song so that we can not seem so stupid out there for soundcheck. That’s how self-conscious I used to be about soundchecks. I was like, “Don’t worry about that. This is about you getting comfortable. And for me, when I sing with Rhett, and I’m on a mic and in a place that I don’t know what it sounds like, I sing the melody, I sing in unison before I break into any harmony, just so I can tell”. And then I was like, “I thought this was, like, gonna be the best advice ever”. And she’s like, “Yeah, that’s not gonna work for me. Like that would totally mess me up. I would totally lose my harmony line”. Well, because like me, because she is not a typical harmony singer, she has a tendency to begin singing the melody. The way that she screws up is by singing the melody by accident. Well, that’s a lot worse than going flat. Anyway. So that was a big moment. So just to go to that, I mean, that was the first night, we did the welcome. I think there’s a lot of things packed up in this that kind of speak to MythiCon broadly. Yeah. So the first thing we did when we got there on Thursday, so we arrived on Wednesday night, but then Thursday mid-morning we show up at Star Hill Ranch, is where we had it. And what we knew was that, rain, first of all, it had rained on Monday pretty significantly and it was supposed to rain on Friday morning. So, everybody’s arriving at 3:00pm on Friday. The first, now Paisley. Nothing’s paved here. It’s a ranch. Well, yeah. Everything’s dirt. There’s gravel and there’s dirt. But so Paisley kind of gives us the tour of the stuff that had already been set up. There’s still a lot of things that were coming together, you know, on that day, because people are getting there, setting everything up, but kind of takes us through, these are all these little, there’s basically houses and structures, buildings all along this thoroughfare. And each one had been themed in a certain way. It was, you know, here’s the Mythical movie house where they’re constantly running, you know, sets. Different programming about… Yeah, there’s the Mythical Museum. Which was awesome! Which was super cool. The attention to detail for that was awesome. Kind of baked into the meet and greet hall. There’s the merchandise area, there’s the saloon. The VR experience. There’s a VR experience, there’s the Cotton Candy Randy House. Where you can, like, see an accurate representation of the entire GMM set and pick up everything and, like, hear us talking in your ear about everything that you’re interacting with and darts that you’re throwing. Yeah. So we took a tour of all that, getting increasingly excited. Then we go down to the main stage. There’s a barber shop! There’s a barbershop, tattoo parlor. People were getting their hair cut, their head shaved, their beard trimmed. Well, okay, there was a tattoo parlor and we did not anticipate the literal several people who wanted tattoos. Waiting for hours. So we actually had to… To get an appointment. People got turned away because, it’s one of those things that, we had it in mind from the beginning. We want to offer people tattoos, we want people to get tattoos at MythiCon. And we were like… Everybody wanted one, apparently. What percentage of like 2,300 people would want to get tattoos, right? Apparently 50%. More than you would think. So anyway, so we’re getting excited about it, but then we go down to the main stage area, which is an amphitheater, sort of, you know, outdoor amphitheater, sort of grassy area. But the first thing we kind of notice is that there’s a lot of mud amongst this grass. I don’t know the logistical history of exactly how we got to this point, but we were kind of alarmed and they were bringing in, like, gravel, like, you know, crushed granite and stuff and there were like trucks coming in and the guy who owns the place is, like, in a, you know… Bobcat. A bobcat, like, moving stuff around. And we’re like, okay, this is a little disconcerting. They’re like, “It’s gonna rain on Friday, we’re gonna cover the whole thing with plastic, baseball field style”. But getting a little nervous about that because that was where three very important things were happening the first night, James and the Shame performance, the live Ear Biscuit that we were gonna do on Saturday morning, and then of course the main stage show on Saturday night. And for each thing there was like a separate stage presentation that we had prepared. Right. So that we weren’t stealing the thunder from our, like, main performance on Saturday night. And it allowed everybody to sit down in the amphitheater and, like, lounge. And it was kind of, like, our vision was like picnic style hangout, a lot of space, and even monitors setup I think. So it was like, it went from that to like, “Okay, we’re just trying to keep this thing as dry as possible”. And there’s no, we were like, “There ain’t no way it’s gonna happen”. You know, I’m a civil engineer by degree and at least by training for a couple years. And drainage. Drainage and grading and sort of, you know, pervious, you know, permeable surfaces. That was my specialty. So this is your fault. So, I actually, the first thing I said was, “This is not, I don’t feel great about this. I don’t feel great about this being okay by Friday”. The first thing I said when I showed up on Thursday. But you weren’t wearing a hard hat. So no one listened to you. Hard hat! So I, and this is really what represents, we talked about this on stage at the show and also at the James and the Shame show. This sort of captured, our rehearsal on Thursday night, I think is a perfect encapsulation of what Mythical is. And what Mythicality is from a creative perspective. Because Jessie and I get up there to sing these songs for the first time live and also for the first time on an amplified system. Which, you know, there’s a difference between sitting down in your living room like Jessie and I have been practicing these songs in our living room. It’s strange. That’s what I was trying to tell her. And we were hoping that we would have time to maybe play a show somewhere in LA on, like, an amplified system. Of course we don’t have time for that. So the day approaches, it’s like, here we go. So the first thing I noticed as I started singing into this giant sound system that’s being broadcast through the whole place is that I sound horrible. That’s the first thing you think because your ear has to tune into the way that everything is happening and the monitors and the PA. You practiced. You did that rehearsal The whole album. For an hour. I played the whole album and I played the songs, Jessie performed on three songs, we played those songs at least Multiple times. three times each. Until the point where I’m like, “Okay, I feel good”. So Jessie leaves. And then you walk out of a building and come down and without, like, changing clothes or anything, we immediately go into the main stage show rehearsal. And at that point is when you can kind of see, like, these confused looks on people’s faces. Because here I’m up there playing these serious country songs about religious deconstruction, which is so out of the blue and then all of a sudden. And all the crew and people who are just hired to make everything happen. They don’t know what they’re there for. They’re just like, okay, I can understand this. Then the next thing you know He’s a country artist? Another guy shows up and we’re suddenly riding on a double bicycle, rehearsing our route up onto stage. Right. At which point we rap, ♪ Everything’s okay ♪ ♪ Cause I’m on vacation ♪ And at that point you see people leaning over and talking to each other and actually, after that rehearsal that night, I walked past a guy and he was trying to explain what was going on and I heard little bits and pieces like, “They do YouTube and they’ve got fans that are showing up here”. Yeah. And so, the fact that… Other than that I can’t help you. And then if they stuck around for the ElkHound SnuggleBaby reveal, it’s just the same guy that you saw, now in this outfit doing this. Yeah. But the thing I told the crowd at the James and the Shame show, and maybe at the main show, that’s the beauty of Mythicality. That’s the beauty of Mythical. We’re well rounded individuals, you never know what you’re gonna get. Because, to everyone who was there, it makes complete sense that there’s this guy and his wife singing these serious country songs and then… That are making people weep. Yeah, and listen, I’ll tell you about how I got through that set without crying in a moment. But then, he and this other guy are doing this crazy show where they summon an alien and we’ll get into that. And then it follows up with the other guy, who joined him on stage, is now in this outfit that I’ll let you describe at a later point. Thank you. He calls himself ElkHound SnuggleBaby and he’s DJing a party. To any outsider, it makes no sense at all. But to a Mythical Beast, it’s like, “Yeah, of course, this completely makes sense. It all fits together in this world”. I loved it. And I love the fact… I love it so much. that those people get it. And that’s why we did it, because they do get it. And that’s what I told Jessie, I said, “The reason you shouldn’t be nervous is because this audience will be the warmest audience and most supportive audience that you could possibly imagine”. Oh yeah. So much so, that when she comes out, they go nuts when she comes out. And she was trying not to cry. She was, you could see it. She was like trying not to cry. And I was like, I was thinking, “I told you, I told you you had nothing to worry about”. Now it’s impossible to tell somebody to not be nervous. And she started singing and she was like No, she sounded great. Let me tell you man. So that was, just to talk briefly about that and we can move on. Well, there was just the one part of the story you can’t leave out, is that we’re driving to the venue Friday morning to then, like, get ready for the whole thing. Yeah. And we get a phone call from Stevie who’s like, “I’m already here. We’re moving. Nothing is on the amphitheater stage. Nothing except for your main show. No Ear Biscuits, no James and the Shame tonight”. “We’re moving it all to the big tents”. Because we have to do everything we can to try to preserve the grounds so that people can see your main show there. So all of that practice you did and acclimation, you got to that sound system. Forget all of that. Because now James and the Shame is performing in the big tent. And the big tent, the reason James and the Shame and Ear Biscuits were not originally scheduled for the big tent, is because they’re not big enough for the amount of people that we anticipated being at those two events. Right. So… We made the best of it. Everybody had to stand. That wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t ideal. From my perspective… But you know, everybody made the best of it. From my perspective, I didn’t let it affect me. Because I was like, “Of course, of course I’m gonna have to…” You can’t let it affect you. I spent all that time getting ready on this particular sound system and now we’ve gotta go do a sound check, a short sound check, on this completely new system and just be ready for it. So Jessie and I show up, we do our sound check in the tent, you know, completely different sound. It feels completely different but readjusted pretty quickly. And so I was like, okay. And I was like, “I hate the fact that people are going to, there’s gonna be people who can’t see because there’s only so many people that can fit in here and we’ve got these TVs” and we did what we could in a very- Shout out to the Mythical team. And also Gary and Matt who, you know, produced the show from an acoustic standpoint and beyond that, you know, basically just made the technical aspects of the live events happen. Very quick adjustments. But that was unfortunate because people did have to stand and some people couldn’t see and it just wasn’t planned, it wasn’t how wanted to, it was inaudible. The energy was great though because everybody was so jammed in there. And, like, at the beginning of your set, from my perspective, I was like, you know, we kinda had to hide. Like, I was literally looking through a crack in the tent watching your set. And then later on, they found a space for us to go up to the front, like, be right next to the stage, which ended up working out. But, like, even from that vantage point of like looking through a crack, it was just, it was electric. The heat, the body heat and smells that were coming out of that tent. I was like, man, everybody’s excited. Well, especially at the final party. Oh God. We can talk about that next time. So it was a wonderful experience. I mean, I said it on Twitter the next day. One of the most special nights of my life. I completely believe that, the whole thing was special. That performance because it was being able to sing these songs to a group of people who, you know, I didn’t know. You never know, like, how many of these people who are Mythical Beasts are listening to the songs. I don’t know. But when I start singing and they immediately start singing along. That’s awesome. And so I was closing my eyes for pretty much the whole time. You may have noticed if you watched me perform. For two reasons, number one, because I was trying to remember the lyrics. Because when you haven’t performed these songs live, it’s another part of your brain that you have to turn on in order to remember 11 songs in a row. Yeah. Chords and lyrics. And also try to stay on tune. And also trying not to cry. Because I was like, “If I really take in what’s happening right now and the way that these people are being supportive” and God knows if I look at anybody on the front row, every time I kind of peeked down there, people are weeping. I’m like, so if I did open my eyes, I looked above them, like my dad taught me to do in public speaking. You gotta look above the crowd, so you don’t get distracted. Just the feedback from people in all of our meet and greets. By this point, we had already done one, two hour meet and greet. Right before, yeah. That was before our welcome. So it was kind of cool to, like, because we couldn’t walk around. It was kind of cool to have that meet and greet and to hear from fans and their first reactions. But then the second meet and greet, on the second day, is when people were able to talk to you about the James and the Shame experience. And people just had so many heartwarming, moving things to say about our deconstruction stories, their identification with it, even if they ended up in a different place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were grateful for it. And then the people who connected so much with the music, it’s like, your album has become this, in their own words, like a lifeline. A lifeline, like, something they can hold onto that’s, like, they have this shared experience in music that, like, a lot of couples were talking about how they connect over this album because it, a lot of people were saying how, it expressed the things that they couldn’t put into words, much less music. And I was really moved to just, you know, just to witness everybody come up and say how much they connected with that. Obviously, it was happening during the concert, but, like, the stuff they had to say after… It was very moving. So special. And it was so special for Jessie too. I mean, first of all, we almost didn’t perform ‘Kill a Man’ because it’s so guitar driven and I didn’t wanna sell it short by just doing an acoustic version, but we put an acoustic version together. I’m so glad we did it because it was the highlight of the concert. Because Jessie, you know, which a lot of people didn’t know, that she’s the one singing the opera on that part of ‘Kill a Man’. Yeah. And she did it and… Jaw’s were dropping. She brought the house down. Yeah, it was crazy. The length of applause when she was done with it, I was like, “I don’t know how long this is gonna go on”. Oh yeah. It blew people’s minds. She felt so good. It was such a good experience for her so much so, you know, where she was like, “Okay, I feel like if we have to do that again, I can think about it in a way that actually I can anticipate it in a positive way”. I will take this, just to quickly move on from James and the Shame, I did wanna say, because I don’t wanna forget about it. I announced it at MythiCon, and I’m gonna announce it right here, that a lot of people asked about having a physical album for ‘Human Overboard’. And so, that is on sale right now. We’re gonna have, sort of, a pre-sale window. I’m selling a record and yes, also a CD and a cassette, because people, we were selling smaller quantities of the CD and the cassette, but there was was enough people who asked about it. So it’s a pre-order. You gotta like, say, you gotta make an order and then that way you know how many to make. Yeah, and you know, you’re gonna have to be patient, obviously, because vinyl production is very slow right now, but there’s a pre-order window. We’ve got a really cool design. We’re kind of taking, being inspired by the album art to actually make a record that has this cool, like, color splash. You know, we’re not just doing a black record. It’s this blue and green, sort of, tie dye color mix thing that’s happening on the record. Really nice interior sleeve with lyrics. And then the CD’s probably gonna have this, like, poster fold inside, it’s got lyrics on it and that kind of thing. And also there’s some exclusive merch that’s being, you can bundle with it, or you can get it, just kind of as part of the ‘Human Overboard’ physical album. Got a t-shirt that has, like, a cool bluegreen, kind of, tie dye pattern that’s coming off of like the ocean inspiration from the album cover and even a sweatshirt with lyrics from ‘Give A Damn’ on it. So, you can bundle that together, you can get them individually. Again, jamesandtheshame.com. This stuff’s not gonna be available for long. And also the first few hundred or so copies of the record that I sell, I’m gonna have a signed exclusive postcard that goes inside those, so it comes with a signature as well. So jamesandtheshame.com, appreciate your support. You know, we were well taken care of in terms of planning, you know, even when it comes to like security, that was a big unknown. When you hire an event production company to work on something, they don’t know our fans and it’s like, okay, as part of this you gotta have security detail. You gotta make sure that, you know, for any event, you want everybody attending to feel safe. And then also as, like, talent on this thing, they wanted us to feel safe. So, like, there was security that were assigned to different things, including us. And, you know what I’ll say, the Mythical Beasts were, like, super chill. It was like, it felt in a lot of ways like a family reunion, you know, it’s just like some people wanted pictures, a lot of people just wanted to give a friendly hello, you know, if they happened to see crew, the crew had great experience in interacting with fans. And so, you know, credit to Mythical Beasts and how grounded they were. So many people came up. And we’ve heard this before when we do, when we tour, people, the venues are like, “How are your fans so cooperative? And they don’t cause trouble and they’re not rowdy and they’re not rude”. That was what everybody at Star Hill was saying. Yeah. They were talking about, they were like, “They don’t litter”. And then when somebody, like, they were telling a story, there was a time when somebody took a trash can, a trash bag out of a trash can, in order to throw it away. And there’s that moment where you don’t have a trash bag in there. Yeah. And, like, one of the fans came up to somebody who worked there and said, “We need to get a bag in here so people, you know”. I love that. They didn’t have their own bag. That’s the community. I would have had my own bag. That’s the community that we together have cultivated, is a group of good people. But. I love it. I will, I do have to share this one story. I mean, there’s an exception to every rule and I didn’t tell you ahead of time, but I’m just gonna share it, it doesn’t matter. So, the security that we had, they were, yeah, they were taking care of us. So, you know, I felt safe, but like Christie told me at a certain point that, like, as she was, I think it was the James and the Shame concert, because they got a place, they were ushered to a place, like, Christie and the kids, behind the sound area. And then there was somebody who was making her pretty uncomfortable because they just kept staring at her. And, like, and then she would look over her shoulder and this guy was staring at her and then she started looking more often. And I was like, “Well he probably thought you were interested”. She was like, “Every time I looked back he was closer”. And she said he had like shifty eyes, kinda like, looking at her and looking around. So then she called… Didn’t seem to be enjoying himself. Uhuh. And then so she, but she did the right thing and she got someone to contact security and reported this guy and said, “Okay, there’s somebody here who’s making me really uncomfortable. He’s staring at me, he’s not happy, he’s getting closer”. And the security said, “We’ll get right on it”. And then the guy who was staring at her turned out to be the head of security. Yeah, this is such a Christie story. It’s like, we’re gonna call the head of security right now. And then all of a sudden the person that’s staring at Christie’s answering the phone like, “Yeah, I got you”. You know what, I wonder how that was, it was just like, “Could you describe him?”. “He’s got on a black jacket”. “He’s got an earpiece in”. “He’s bearded with gray hair, khakis”. She turned in the head of security to security. “He’s currently talking on the phone” Yeah, and they were great. I mean, I’m like clueless. I’m like, “Oh yeah, like there’s eight security”. And again, not that the Mythical Beasts are to be worried about, but again, it’s standard protocol. You gotta make sure that, that everybody from Mythical and everybody in our family is protected from somebody who might want to do something. So I think that… And we didn’t get to… They were great. Yeah, they were great. We didn’t get to see everything, like all the stuff that, all the other podcasts that went on, like we could hear it from the stage. And then, like, the Mythical Kitchen, like, baby food eating contest. I saw Josh in a diaper beforehand and I saw that he still had his belt afterward. But we didn’t get to see a lot of that stuff. He defended his title. But everything that we did get to experience vicariously through fans and as they talked to us in the meet and greets or the stuff that we would see every now and again and all the stuff that we participated in, it was still a very fulfilling experience for us. Like getting up there the next day, my dad and I did a live dispatches and I was just, just grinning from ear to ear watching him take in all this fan adulation for the first time. It was so special. Like, just watching his experience the whole time. It was like bringing your kid to Disneyland for the first time and everybody knew your kid at Disneyland. It’s like, that’s what it felt like. But it goes a step beyond that because it’s as if your dad has been preparing for this moment his entire life. He didn’t seem nervous. And it’s not just that he doesn’t seem nervous. And, you know, because people… He was like “Finally!”. People in entertainment get their parents involved for different reasons because your parents tend to be entertaining, not necessarily as entertaining as your dad. But he’s not just this willing participant. He’s more than that. He’s eager. He’s loving every minute of it. And the other thing that he’s done, which he did multiple times, but especially at the end when we were with the crew after the brunch and the crew, basically, this was, like, us signing off of MythiCon. Yeah. And it’s just the Mythical crew who had worked MythiCon, kind of, together in a room. He did this several times, but he did it there as well. He’s like, this is my opportunity to say something. Yeah. And so he gets everybody’s attention and he says this really sweet thing about how welcome he feels. And I looked at Nancy and Nancy’s tearing up as he’s talking. I know! Nancy, his wife, your stepmother is what she is. I know you don’t… Yeah, technically. Consider her that, but that’s what she is. Technically, yeah. They just had the best time. It was so sweet. And they kept talking about the fans, the people that they were meeting. Because you have an idea, as a parent, you have an idea of what it is that your child does, but not really. Not really. Right. And you can talk about it. You can be like, yeah. It’s like, there are these people who have identified with the things that we and our company have put out into the world and they really identify with it. To the point that they call themselves Mythical Beasts and they will come to an event like this. But until you see it and you interact with these folks, you don’t really appreciate it. I think it was dawning on him repeatedly that this is, I didn’t understand the level of just commitment and the nature of the experience. That was cool to see. And, of course, you know, we gave him a special role. Arguably the highlight. Let’s talk about, let’s talk about the main show. So the main show, I’m glad we were able to stream it and then we were able to do video on demand. You know, it’s no longer available but, like, there were opportunities for people to experience it who weren’t there. And I’m so glad because it was the most fun I’ve ever had on a stage of ours, I think. I think it was our most fun show we’ve ever done. Oh yeah. Like, from a personal standpoint, my experience, like, everything that we’ve learned in our couple of years of touring and doing, like, three different stage shows. We’ve done, like, very technical, like, polished presentation. And then with our last, and then we did a Bleak Creek thing, which was like more intimate and totally different. But then like the Rhett & Link tour, where it was just like music and banter is where we really started to learn that the looser, the better, you know. A lot of what we’re learning just with, like, Good Mythical Morning and Good Mythical more in general, is that putting ourselves in environments where we can be ourselves and interact with each other and interact with people is where we do our best work. Right. And just surprise each other. And it’s not about hitting marks or certain lines. However, that all being said, there were from some very important marks to be hit. Yeah. You know, because the show consisted of, I think, five musical performances from everything from, you know, starting out by coming in on the double bike and doing the ‘I’m on Vacation’, to a few acoustic performances, to closing it out with a black light, glow in the dark recreation of our ‘So Dang Dark’ video, that was super fun to put together. Intermingled or intermixed with something we’ve never done before, which is bringing a segment of GMM live on stage in the international dart game. When we sang the “Where in the world do these Mythical Beasts come from?”, and then the doors open and Chase the cartographer came out with that map, like, five times as big as the normal map. They went crazy for Chase. Oh yeah. Like, I was so happy for Chase that, like, he had such a moment, you know? Oh yeah. It was wonderful. And then of course… And Stevie was on the mic. Yeah, so we’ll talk about the alien part, but my point was is that there were a lot of marks to hit and there were a lot of technical things to do correctly. Yeah. That, you know, when we did our tour Mythicality show a few years ago, there was a two week rehearsal where we like rented out a rehearsal space in Burbank, and we, like, literally two weeks of going there on and off over the course of two weeks, getting all the marks down, so you can take this show and take it on the road. This was two hours of a rehearsal on Thursday night to be ready for this show. Now, we knew what we were gonna do and we had scripted it out. The parts that were, you know, outlined, it’s not scripted, but, you know, when your dad showed up at MythiCon, he didn’t know he was gonna be an alien. No, I didn’t tell him. I was like, I’ll find the right time to tell him. Which ended up being perfect for reasons we’ll explain. Which was at dinner in front of everybody. But what we knew we wanted to do was, of course, we had this idea. And he didn’t bat an eye. Oh no. And I didn’t think he would, but, like, now knowing the way he interacts with these ideas, it’s like we could get him to do anything. Oh yeah. But we knew… Very dangerous. Wanted to play around with this idea that is an idea that some people believe in. I don’t personally or necessarily believe in it, but this idea that you can connect with aliens through meditation. We were like, oh, that’s a fun sort of foil to do this set where we can kind of do some improv music where we’re, like, helping the alien zero in. Now, I’ll just go ahead and say, if you were watching on the live stream and you felt like that segment just went on too long, well, it wasn’t primarily for you. The show was primarily Couldn’t be at that moment. for the people who were there, right? Who were participating in that chant, who were looking to the skies. And we said, listen, this is primarily for the people who showed up to MythiCon, but we’re gonna offer it as a live stream. Because if you wanna feel like you’re part of it, you can. But I can imagine… Especially that moment of, like, you know, group meditation, that’s not something that people like stream on the internet for like thousands of views. And I’m sure people who were there thought it was going on for a long time. But again… What’s your hobby? I like to watch other people meditate live. We were doing, again, none of that was written. The only thing that was pre-written were the coordinates that Jenna had found of the exact spot that we were at, at Star Hill. And they were on my shruti box taped on my shruti box. That’s why I was reading my shruti box. I was playing it. Which is why, when that person, and we both retweeted the thing, like, leading up to MythiCon, somebody tweeted that video of this, like, hippie looking dude playing this instrument and then another dude blowing bubbles on stage. And I was like, this is basically our version, we’ve already planned our version of this. We were already ready for it. And so like, I love the fact that somebody said “This is gonna be Rhett and Link in X number of years”. And I’m like, “No, this is gonna be Rhett and Link in X number of weeks”. Yeah, yeah, just get ready for it. So it was so weird. And we were like, yeah, set it up. Like, listen, you’re here, you’re up for anything. So we just wanna take full advantage of that. So now we are going to contact aliens. And then everybody was up for it. Oh, they were so up for it. Now… It was so ridiculous. When we originally conceptualized this, it was just, hey, we’re gonna do this thing of, we’re trying to contact aliens. Obviously, it’s gonna fail, but then it’s gonna result in Charles, an alien, showing up. Now we wanted it to be something where we might be able to fool some people or give you the emotional feeling of that you have made contact. And so the first thing we looked into was like a drone show. Those are… It’s when you have, like, if you don’t know, like, could be 20 or 30 or hundreds of drones that are programmed. To like make a giant face in the sky. They did it, if you look up ‘drone show, Burning Man’. It’s awesome. There’s a giant face. I mean, it’s like the face of God looking down at you. So crazy. Now, we already indicated earlier that we did not make any money. So we weren’t about to spend the, like, approximately $1 million that it would’ve cost in order to, if you get one of these companies to do the type of drone show that they do for, like, the NBA finals or something. So we quickly downgraded to one singular drone that we rented. And you may think, “Oh, okay”. But if you were there. And if you were really close, if you were like on the front row, the stage is actually too big for you to see it, so you needed to be back, kind of in the middle, then everybody in the back. I went back there during the rehearsal and watched it and I was like, “Oh gosh, this is gonna be great”. Yeah, Ben rented a drone, he piloted the drone. And it had a big spotlight on it. So it was very bright. It was like a search and rescue drone spotlight. Yeah. Well, and apparently, it was so convincing that when we were doing our brunch the next morning, on Sunday morning, we were saying like, “Hey, what was your highlight?”. A lot of people said the show last night, just absolutely loved it. And then one person piped up and said, “Do you guys know that right when you were doing that thing where you contacted aliens, a plane flew over really, really low”. It freaked me out. I thought maybe something we had done had worked. We were like, Really? You sure it wasn’t a UFO that then landed behind the stage? Right, so the way it happened was is that we’re singing the coordinates, chanting the coordinates, then chanting, “We are looking to the skies for you”. At which point Ben kind of brings the drone over the stage and then slowly lowers it down behind the stage. And this is all choreographed with this sound design that Ben has put together, including this really low, if you, again, this is one of those things that, like, why being there was so much different, because they started playing this very low rumble that was shaking the entire place as this drone is coming down, right? Yeah. Then when it lands, there’s this, it feels like this light comes on from behind the stage. And then, you know, it took a while to kind of get things situated. We were kind of waiting there for a while, but eventually the doors open, CO2 cannons, boom, light, and then an alien with a giant fricking head, like an eight foot tall alien with four arms is standing there with a three ring binder. Yeah the alien comes out and just kind of, like, shuffles forward. He lifts his forearms with the tablet in his left hand and he says… Binder. A binder. “Greetings earthlings”. I come in peace. “I come in peace”. I don’t think dad changed his voice at all. I’d say like a 10% change. But this is where… So great. …your dad being your dad really made this segment. And I think the best way to illustrate what it’s like to work with your dad in this context is to talk about the rehearsal. Which, basically, we had… Welcome to your future. We had a little discussion with him and it was essentially, “Charles, you know, the doors are gonna open, you’re gonna come out, you’re gonna say, greetings, I come in peace. Then we’re gonna have a little discussion with you about where do you come from, what’s your name? And then you’re going to say that I brought you a gift, it’s the time gate. And then this big sort of elevator looking thing is gonna kind of come out from the door. And then you’re gonna, there’s an instruction manual that you’re gonna read. It’s a three ring binder, that explains basically why you’re giving us to this and what we can do. And it sets up the next bit”. “You don’t have to memorize how the time gate works, you just read it off the manual”. And the first So, during the rehearsal he walks out, he spreads his arms and he says, “Welcome earthlings”. As if we’re all the ones that showed up. “Welcome to this planet I just arrived at” “That you’re already on”. I was like, “Oh”. Okay, a little twist there. I like that choice. A little twist. And we told him that when we ask him what his name is, that his name is Darrell in our language. Well we said… So then we asked him. It’s too difficult for you to understand it in my language, but it’s the equivalent of Darrell. Is what we told him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then when we’re doing the rehearsal, I’m like, “Well, what’s your name?” And he was like, “Charles”. Which I was like, that’s perfect. Like, didn’t wanna change any of that. So, he got it all right during the show, unfortunately. Because you kept telling me to, like, to help him out, to, like, make sure he had the right lines, which he did. Well that wasn’t… I think it would’ve been even funnier if he didn’t. That actually wasn’t… He wasn’t supposed to say that his name was Darrell. He was supposed to say that, “I can’t pronounce my name in your language”, but he just said Darrell, which ended up getting a laugh, but the funniest part of the rehearsal was when we said, “Did you bring a gift?”. And he holds up the binder and he’s like, “I brought this book”. And it was, the gift is the book. We’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, no. The gift is the time gate”. And that’s the instruction manual. The book’s the instruction manual. And it seemed like it was difficult for him to get. To restore that information in his brain. But he did, he did by the time we got around to the show. I’m just glad he didn’t trip and fall. You know, like bust his brain open and I’m talking about that huge alien brain that was, like, his whole face was in the mouth of the alien. So funny. I was so proud of him, he did awesome. He loved every second of it. Yeah. It was great. And then Jordan… Was in the time gate. Of course, the bit was you can communicate with your past selves, your present selves or your future selves. And so we kind of brought in what Jordan has really done a good job with on GMM, which is putting his mouth up to a hole. And saying something hilarious. And so he played young me and young you and then old me and old you. Yeah, but we each played present us. And then whatever the other one of us was as well. It was fun. It was a good ending for, I mean, that was fun, that was a nice bit. And then we, like, sang ‘Lonely Sad Little Water Dispensing Tab’, did a little singalong. And then we went away, we put on our suits and we did the encore. Did ‘So Dang Dark’. I almost stepped off of the stage. I will say that, because during the encore we had to go back and change. And again these are… That would’ve been bad. There are these little things that you work out doing a rehearsal, even a second rehearsal, that we just didn’t, we didn’t have time, because we got there and here’s the stage and all the stuff’s coming together, this stuff has just been built just in time. So when we go back to change out of our clothes into these skin tight clothes that have black light reflective paint on them that mimics exactly the way we looked in the ‘So Dang Dark’ video. There were no lights. And so there were steps down to this area that we were gonna change and I kind of knew that there were steps there and I didn’t know that there were, like, they were kind of not that wide. And so when I stepped down, I stepped completely down to the next level. And, I mean, that could have been catastrophic, but it just happened. You could have broken your hip. I caught myself and that was the only moment that I felt unsure about this. Again, nobody left on a stretcher. Success. Not even us. Success. And, you know, after that was my DJ set to the close the thing out, which we’ll talk about next episode. And then the next morning, yeah, we had a brunch with, like, people who had that ticket and like you said, we went around and talked to a bunch of Mythical Beasts as they were eating, wedding reception style. And also, the Mythical crew was there for that, our wives were there for that. Really the first time that Jessie and Christie have interacted with Mythical Beasts in that way, I think. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the fact that, you know, Lily and Lincoln and Lando were also there was very special to me. I know Locke couldn’t make it because he was, you know, just getting going with school. But Shepherd was there. And I’m just so glad that they were there it was a big part of it. Like, Lily posted a picture of, like, me getting ready for my DJ set, when we’re like hanging out on this bed, like, in one of the places the day before. It’s just like, you know, these are all these, like, great memories for me that the moment I took that initial tour and walked around right when we arrived, I was like, I’m so glad that my family’s showing up for this thing and experiencing this because you know, whatever we do next will be different. You know, that’s how we are. So it’ll be enough the same, but enough different to still be exciting. But to be the first one, for it to be so special, you know, special for everybody who was there and to have, like, our family there to have so many of the Mythical crew there. And that they had good experiences. It was, it all just, you know, it was hot stress and people had to work themselves to the bone. I acknowledge that, but like, in my opinion it was all worth it, you know, from my perspective, I’m just so proud of what everybody did to put into it and that we got to experience it together. It was just, yeah, it was awesome. It was absolutely a career highlight for me. Oh yeah. Yes, thank you to everybody who was able to make it. We know that, you know, in the scheme of things, it was a relatively small percentage of Mythical Beasts. But you know, many of you, who are some of our most active Mythical Beasts who, you know, make their passion for all things Mythical known on the internet on a regular basis, a lot of you were there. People that we’ve met before, previous tours and meet and greets. And a lot of people we haven’t met before. Obviously, we couldn’t do this without you and you made it a very, very special thing that we’re gonna take everything that we learned and all the things that made it really special, made it unique, all the best parts of it and try to find ways to replicate that moving forward. What that’s gonna look like, like you said, we don’t know. But we always love to start something, learn from it, keep moving forward and there’s nothing like when we all get together like that. And we say it every time we tour. Yeah. But it’s just, it remains true that there’s nothing like being in the same place with a bunch of Mythical Beasts. Especially after everything that, like, you know, with the pandemic of it all, you know. Yeah. It’s really, it gave us a renewed appreciation for being there and having the ability to create something, have people show up and collaboratively make it an experience. Yeah. You know, so very grateful. I feel like we took our own advice, we stopped, we celebrated. We’re gonna do more of that in the next episode too. Kind of. Oh yeah, speaking of, you said you wanna know my perspective. I have a lot of thoughts about the birth of ElkHound SnuggleBaby. But do you have a rec today? I do, it’s just the same thing I’ve already talked about, which is the physical album ‘Human Overboard’. Oh, just more self-promotion. Yeah, right. I just wanna make sure you know. Not what recs are for, that doesn’t count. Okay. I thought that was against the rules. I think in this case it does. Yeah, James… Oh you know what? I’m glad I talked about it because if you go to jamesandtheshame.com or you just go to any one of my social media profiles and click on the linktree there, you can join the mailing list. Look at you and your mailing list. You know, hey, musicians man, gotta have mailing lists. I don’t know why, but they do. You can get a discount code that you can apply to the album. Oh. That’s something I forgot. So that’s worth mentioning. So if you want to get, I think we’re doing a 10% discount code, join the mailing list. I’m not gonna send very many emails, trust me, because I’m not doing a whole lot that needs emails sent. But if so, when there is something special that you need to know about like a physical product or a discount or whatever, you can join the mailing list, but mainly to get that discount. Okay, I get it. Jamesandtheshame.com We’ll holler at you next week. Let us know what you think #EarBiscuits. And of course, you can always respond to anything that we’ve talked about, give us your take on it, 1-888-EARPOD1 for the voicemail. Hi, my name’s Victoria. I’m a nurse from Ontario, Canada. And I just wanted to let you guys know that most pills are both swallowable and chewable, but a large majority aren’t, especially those that are extended release. So if you have questions, please speak to your pharmacist before chewing any old random pill. Thanks. Hi Rhett and Link. I went to MythiCon this year and it was very cool to see Jenna and all, like, the women that you guys have on your crew and your team. My work in production, you know, very rarely has women on, like, set and productions. And I just wanted to make a note of how rare it feels. That’s all I wanted to say. Like, y’all are wonderful. And you’ve surrounded yourself with such wonderful people and you seem to have, like, a really awesome eye for that. So love y’all. Hi Rhett and Link, this is Jade from Claremore, Oklahoma. And I’m just curious how you came up with the name ElkHound SnuggleBaby. Love it. Hey Rhett and Link, this is Mallory from Boston. And a friend of mine actually turned me on to you guys during the pandemic and I am forever grateful to that friend. I was listening to your episode from MythiCon, which was A+ by the way, and I really liked what you guys had to say about friendships. So I thought I’d provide a rec of my own, since you guys are always providing such great recs to all of us. And it’s a book called ‘Big Friendship’ and it’s by Aminatou Sow. Check it out. 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.