Continue reading "Enormocast 289: Smith Curry – A Climber Boy Can Survive"
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You are listening to the a normal cast.
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Man alive did summer ever show up. And
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what's a climber to do when lounging at
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the lake. Slash river slash beach gets mind
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numbing boring after a couple dips and half
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a chapter of that classic you've sworn to
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A ahab, what's this about whale anatomy again?
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waiting to suck the life from you like
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And now back to the show.
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Hello, and welcome normally cast this is your
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host, Chris Cal. It is 07/22/2024,
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about 11AM. You here in Colorado, and this
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is episode 289
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of the enormous cast.
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A conversation with climber and musician
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Smith Curry.
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Have you guys heard a Smith Curry?
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Did you guys order some Smith Curry at
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that little Asian
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American
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fusion bi str downtown this weekend?
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No. Smith Curry is not a dish.
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Unless you really like mustache,
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He is in fact 1 of the most
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sought after Do and pedal steel session musicians
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in Nashville.
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That's hard to say,
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session musicians in Nashville.
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He also has a deep and varied and
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long climbing resume.
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Including first sense in the Us Canada
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as far south as Peru.
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So, yeah, this is 1 of those podcasts
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that's gonna span.
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Away from climbing away.
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If you've been here a while, you know
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I like to do these. Do you remember
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Alexis K, Bradley Carter,
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Chris Parker, our friend Harvey Wright.
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Probably for forgetting some other ones. Did Mason
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play? I can't remember if Mason played on
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his podcast, but He's an amazing musician.
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And, you know, I see the criticisms, not
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just of the enormous cast but of all
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climbing podcasts that they all just sound the
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same.
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It's the same stories, guys sending
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pulling hard.
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And you know, I get that. I understand.
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Right? Podcast we put out content,
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frequently.
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I do twice a month. Some podcast podcasts
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do 1 a week for Christ's sake.
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So, yeah, maybe it kinda runs together. I
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mean, think about it, like, In January, I
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put out a post
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interview with royal Robins, 1 of the great
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climber in America of all time. From the
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golden age and beyond. And then I followed
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it up with Natalia Gross,
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1 of our current Olympia, she's about to
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compete in a couple weeks. I mean, if
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you close your eyes
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You'd had thought there was a same damn
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person talking. I'm sure. Right? I mean, a
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70 something year old guy and a 20
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something year old girl same thing.
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Blah blah blah, climbing climbing climbing.
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And then on the heels of talking to
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tie leggings, a black kid for Memphis,
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I followed it up with a conversation with
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emma t. A white lady from Wales.
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I mean, could that be more similar?
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Tennessee
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Wales,
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black kid, white lady. I mean, talk about
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cookie cutter,
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and then there was that story about Did
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2 disappearing into a monastery for 13 years.
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I mean, if we've heard that story once
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we've heard it a thousand times, Am I
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right.
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So to combat all that same ness that
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I've been putting out. I thought I'd talked
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to Smith Curry.
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A lot about climbing, but also a lot
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about music and about the music industry.
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If you are super into country music,
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or maybe even casually than you've probably heard
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Smith without even knowing it.
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He's played on a lot of music, a
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lot of hits
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Plenty of number ones.
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He's played with or 4 most of the
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country people I've even heard of, not being
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a big country fan myself.
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You know, the giants,
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folks like Willie Nelson, Dolly Part,
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Randy Travis.
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I mean, Dude was on stage with Merle
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Fucking H.
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He's currently all over the radio because there's
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this song
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by someone named Shi,
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He's 1 of these sort of rap country
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crossover guys, a trend that I think really
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took off with little Nas x's Old town
00:07:43
Road.
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Last year or a couple years ago whenever
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that was.
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Shi song is called the bar song Tip,
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and because I listened to a very, very
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nerdy
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music podcast called Hit parade. I happen to
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know that it is currently
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number 2 on Billboards song of summer list.
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In contention with another kinda crossover
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country song. And Smith plays on that song.
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So, yeah, if you heard it, you heard
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Smith
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Isn't that cool. And you probably did hear
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this song even if you don't know it.
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And I got to talk to Smith online
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because I knew he was a climber, but,
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of course,
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my thing is I was more interested in
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the music stuff, and actually didn't even realize
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how
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experienced
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of a climber he was until we did
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this podcast. And it it goes way deeper
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than I thought. First the sense here and
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there. He's an a. He's a big wall
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climber.
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Deep in it, and he still loves it
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and instill into it even though he worries
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about his hands because of course, they're are
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his money makers.
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Yeah, all here. I love this interview. I
00:08:44
could've kept talking to Smith for much longer.
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So we'll move on here from my earlier
00:08:50
pitching. But I think a lot of you
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guys come for. It's kind of my brand.
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It's kind of a brand. I don't think
00:08:55
most of the other climbing podcast get as
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cranky as I do do they?
00:08:59
Anyway, this is a super fun interview. I'm
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really excited to present it to you guys.
00:09:03
So let's get to it.
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Conversation with Climber and musician Smith Curry.
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Hey, guys. It's me again.
00:09:12
That's right. Your toes,
00:09:14
and I'll tell you if there's 1 thing
00:09:16
us toes hate more than ice climate. It's
00:09:18
crack climate.
00:09:19
So if you gotta do it, and I
00:09:21
know you gotta, then Sport has some cool
00:09:23
choices. Peter climb hard and still give us
00:09:26
toes a smooth ride.
00:09:27
Of course, the v Tc pro can't be
00:09:31
beat on those bigger crack sizes and multi
00:09:33
pitch tread.
00:09:34
But what about the thin stuff? Well,
00:09:41
And I don't even think sp,
00:09:44
the Cub.
00:09:46
That's right. It said it. The cub.
00:09:49
Is Sport ultra comfortable all around her, but
00:09:52
it also happens to be a thin crack
00:09:54
ultra tech super shoe.
00:09:56
More support than a slipper, but just enough
00:09:58
rubber and all the right places to get
00:10:00
in and get on with the type of
00:10:02
jamming you need on the thin stuff.
00:10:04
Don't believe me. Then buy the Cub
00:10:07
for its edging, smear and comfort that's like
00:10:10
a hug from a warm fuzzy puppy. You
00:10:12
know if a puppy had arms and it
00:10:14
wasn't 1 of them stupid once at eats
00:10:16
poop.
00:10:17
And then give them a fling on your
00:10:19
thin crack project.
00:10:21
You'll come around to the Cub, or my
00:10:23
name isn't, a what? Oh,
00:10:26
we're late for a pedicure.
00:10:28
Okay. I gotta go.
00:10:30
Check out the Cub and all the other
00:10:31
great shoes at sp dot com or your
00:10:33
local shop, and, of course, tell your toes
00:10:36
sent.
00:10:40
60000 dollar vintage tube microphone
00:10:43
into a 300000
00:10:44
dollar vintage desk and to this into that.
00:10:47
And then finally, at end, it's, like,
00:10:49
into, you know,
00:10:51
99 cent MP3
00:10:53
into 10 dollar earbuds.
00:10:55
Right. It's like we do all this and
00:10:57
then it just gets totally wrecked at the
00:10:59
back end.
00:11:00
Yeah. Isn't that Neil Young jack? Doesn't have
00:11:02
some? For big problem about the way. He
00:11:05
was a big proponent of...
00:11:08
He came out with some kind of hardware
00:11:10
strip. Device like an ipod but like super
00:11:12
high res and bandwidth. Yeah. Yeah. No 1
00:11:15
cared because we're all cheap and this doesn't
00:11:17
really matter.
00:11:19
Gaming
00:11:19
Yeah. Either other anyway. But, yeah. It's funny.
00:11:22
Cool, man. Thanks for doing this. I really
00:11:24
appreciate it. Yeah. Tight. Yeah. I me, too.
00:11:27
I just...
00:11:28
I had kind of this, like, rough night.
00:11:30
I I went climbing yesterday, and
00:11:34
Like, I did a pretty hard kinda go
00:11:36
on this route. And I came down and
00:11:37
I just was, like, sitting there, like, feeling
00:11:40
like I'd gotten run over by a tank,
00:11:42
you know? And these days, it's like not
00:11:45
uncommon to feel that way. But
00:11:47
I was like god, this feels really bad.
00:11:49
And then I just kinda, like,
00:11:50
I had my ear hurt a little bit,
00:11:52
and I think I had, like, a little
00:11:54
minor ear infection because I got home and
00:11:56
I was, like, chilled and and
00:11:59
I Like, I didn't really have a fever,
00:12:00
but I had that feeling of having a
00:12:02
fever, you know, like, I felt cold and
00:12:04
my ear hurt and and went to bed
00:12:06
and
00:12:07
I feel much better this morning though, but
00:12:09
I was little worried. I was like, oh,
00:12:10
man. How old are you doing?
00:12:13
52. I'll be 53 in 10 days though.
00:12:16
So I'm okay. I turned 57 10 days
00:12:19
ago. So... Okay. Right. Yeah. So you know.
00:12:22
You know what I'm talking about about the
00:12:23
being hit by a truck thing, every time
00:12:25
you know I.
00:12:26
I went kinda hard Saturday night. Though Yeah.
00:12:30
Big rock band extreme. Do you know they
00:12:32
have that big hit more than them Yeah.
00:12:34
No? III
00:12:35
just went on a new no Benton court,
00:12:37
like, rabbit hole,
00:12:39
not too long ago, on Youtube. Like, check
00:12:41
it all, you know. Yeah. So
00:12:44
about those guys. Yeah. So Nun was actually
00:12:46
a friend of mine. He reached out about
00:12:48
4 years ago about me
00:12:50
collaborating playing a showcase. For this country artist
00:12:53
that he's producing this girl. And so we
00:12:56
got to do bunch of rehearsal and then
00:12:58
play a big show at the exited in
00:12:59
together, and
00:13:01
he's So I hit him up and was
00:13:03
able, to, see the show Saturday night and
00:13:06
went backstage and hung out with him in
00:13:07
the van and stuff afterwards. So that was
00:13:09
really fun, But he... Is, man, he's a
00:13:12
deep cat too. He's not just a, you
00:13:14
know, shredder. He's he's a really, you know,
00:13:17
he's been Rihanna family. Leader for the last
00:13:19
15 years and so, oh, really? Yeah. And
00:13:23
we've worked collaborate a few other ways to...
00:13:25
He reached data out, there's this guy Owen
00:13:27
that he's producing, who's 1 of Taylor swift
00:13:30
dancers.
00:13:31
And I think he's done some dancing
00:13:33
for Rihanna two's. He's like, a tall about
00:13:36
skinny black guy with a killer voice. And
00:13:39
so
00:13:40
I played on this record for Nun, kinda
00:13:42
long distance,
00:13:44
remotely. And then
00:13:46
it was during pandemic. And so he... For
00:13:48
his single release, he wanted to do a
00:13:51
video
00:13:52
where it's just Nun playing acoustic nick owen
00:13:54
singing and then me playing pedal steel. And
00:13:56
so each filmed ourselves, I filmed myself out
00:13:59
in my side yard of my house, and
00:14:02
he cobb a to together they're for a
00:14:03
cool video that accompanied with the the release
00:14:06
with it, so that was pretty fun.
00:14:08
That's awesome. I mean, Yeah know, I've been
00:14:10
thinking about this thing, you know, I've just
00:14:12
kinda followed you on Instagram, and, you know,
00:14:15
we occasionally exchange comments and stuff like that.
00:14:17
And and, like this, you like that story
00:14:19
you just told,
00:14:21
and and, you know, referencing some of these
00:14:23
people that we've heard of and stuff. It's
00:14:25
like, door I mean, we could do that
00:14:27
for the next, like, 6 days. Straight. I
00:14:30
feel like, Honestly. I mean, you know, like,
00:14:32
looking at your your music resume, it's it's
00:14:35
it's kind of...
00:14:37
I mean, it's staggering. And I think it's,
00:14:39
you know, it's just added up for you
00:14:41
over the years. Like, I Nightly... I read
00:14:44
this thing Like, oh, you played on 20000
00:14:47
country songs or some something like that. I'm,
00:14:49
like, and that... It just, you know, I'm
00:14:51
sure your dreams as a as a, you
00:14:53
know, a a starting musician
00:14:56
never really,
00:14:57
like placed you there. But yeah slowly, but
00:15:00
surely, you've just, this accumulation, it's kinda fantastic.
00:15:04
Yeah. So looking back. It's, like, holy shit.
00:15:06
You know, I've probably worked with over, like
00:15:08
00:15:10
signed artists. I mean, that's Mh the people
00:15:12
with deals and stuff instead of just random
00:15:14
dude.
00:15:16
But... Yes. It's like, well, that's you know,
00:15:18
over the last 30 years. So, you know,
00:15:20
if you do a few cool things every
00:15:21
year, it adds up for sure. Yeah. It's
00:15:24
all the same with climbing too. Right? You
00:15:26
know, I mean, you know, you look back
00:15:28
at anybody's climbing resume that's been in the
00:15:30
game a long time and it gets a
00:15:32
lot more impressive.
00:15:33
Yeah. For sure. I mean, I kinda feel
00:15:35
like
00:15:36
you know, there's a part of that and
00:15:38
in this a normal cast thing because that's
00:15:40
when I started it.
00:15:42
I was like, you know, it was like
00:15:43
the dawn of podcasting kind of thing and
00:15:46
I was like, you know what? I I
00:15:47
know enough, like, quote unquote famous climber, you
00:15:50
know, kinda talking about your signed musicians. Like,
00:15:53
I could probably do something like this. And
00:15:55
I've just... And it was the same thing.
00:15:57
I've just been around long enough that I
00:15:58
was lot I've climbed with these people and
00:16:00
talk to him and know, and it's a
00:16:02
different... You know, there's a different wall between
00:16:05
even someone like Hon and someone like Taylor
00:16:07
Swift, but
00:16:09
you But, yeah, you know, it's it's kinda
00:16:10
of the same vibe in a way that
00:16:12
I started this thing on on a very,
00:16:14
you know, minor level compared to what you
00:16:16
do. Yeah. I didn't wanna get Taylor. I
00:16:18
didn't wanna get Twitch kelly swift in here
00:16:20
for for good Seo,
00:16:22
because I did see a video you on
00:16:24
stage with her.
00:16:25
More back when she was not quite the
00:16:27
the gigantic,
00:16:29
you know, astronomical
00:16:31
neutron star that she is now.
00:16:34
But nevertheless.
00:16:35
Yeah. Well, you know, it was funny is
00:16:37
that was when she was first... And that
00:16:39
was her first C fast.
00:16:41
And she's the country artist still. Yeah. And...
00:16:44
But, you know, it was... That she her
00:16:46
first singles out and that really took off
00:16:48
for her and so it went on. And
00:16:49
then...
00:16:50
I played on her speak now album, which
00:16:52
is maybe here for the record. I'm, I
00:16:56
think... But, you know, my climbing french have
00:16:58
a great way of keeping me grounded. This
00:17:01
is a pretty fun story. I had gone
00:17:03
over to Over overdo at the producers homes
00:17:05
since studio.
00:17:06
It was like, on a Sunday randomly.
00:17:09
And
00:17:10
I was driving home in 1 of my
00:17:11
long time studio you know, Yosemite friends, Kendra
00:17:15
K called me up randomly just to say,
00:17:17
hi. Like, what do you? I was like,
00:17:19
I was all psyche brag. I was, I
00:17:21
just playing on Swift records, she goes, who's
00:17:23
Taylor Swift?
00:17:27
Yeah. Right. Put me right back. In my
00:17:30
place. You know. Yeah. The climber are sort
00:17:31
of will fully... A lot of times are
00:17:33
will fully, like, you know, blunt to any
00:17:36
sort of pop culture. In like, as as
00:17:38
kind of a sign fire of their, you
00:17:40
know, of their cr kind of the things.
00:17:42
It's like when you... When someone pretends to
00:17:44
not, you know, know who, like, you know,
00:17:46
Steph Curry is because they so, like, in
00:17:49
the mountains that they can't possibly,
00:17:51
you know, pay attention sort of stuff. That's
00:17:54
awesome. Yeah. That's still awesome. I I wanted
00:17:56
to ask you kind of a question. I
00:17:57
mean, we're already kind of into it. But,
00:17:59
I was just like, that
00:18:01
thinking... Like, when was the last time you
00:18:03
rock climbed? Like, literally, like, was it... I
00:18:06
think it was just like weeks ago it
00:18:07
seems like. Yeah. Just like maybe a week
00:18:09
and a half. I was
00:18:11
we're to go. Let's see. Everything's like 2
00:18:14
hours from Nashville. There's nothing good in town.
00:18:17
So I went to the Ob,
00:18:19
like, 3 weeks ago. And then
00:18:22
I went to Denny Cove who just ran
00:18:24
foster falls just like a week and a
00:18:26
half ago. Trying to get out more, you
00:18:28
know,
00:18:30
so stave off the old age. You know
00:18:32
what I mean, part of it's part of
00:18:34
its, you know, definitely
00:18:35
the d
00:18:36
of getting older, but a big part is
00:18:38
just trying to get work, weather. Mh. Partners
00:18:43
and family stuff to all line up, Just
00:18:45
always harder and harder. Yeah. Yeah. Totally So.
00:18:48
Well, let me ask... The my question really
00:18:50
was, like, I kinda wanted you to
00:18:52
recount. So you weren't climbing about week and
00:18:54
a half ago. I kinda wanted just to
00:18:56
get a picture of your life because it's...
00:18:58
I think it's just it's really cool. And
00:19:01
then then we'll get in your climbing in
00:19:02
your... In your in a little bit more
00:19:04
some other stuff, but, anyway, like, recount your
00:19:07
your week since then. Like, because it I...
00:19:09
You know, we've been chatting in the last
00:19:11
week, like, trying to get this thing going
00:19:13
and and there's just been some cool shit.
00:19:15
Besides this thing you just talked about, which
00:19:16
was, like, hanging out with with, you know,
00:19:19
Nun and backstage and things like that. But
00:19:21
there's been, like... A red carpet thing, like,
00:19:23
I'm sure you more forgot about that. Yeah.
00:19:25
Yeah. Exactly You forgot about that.
00:19:29
And if we go back 2 weeks. Can
00:19:31
brag and name drop even a little more.
00:19:33
Okay. Go back 2 weeks then today. I
00:19:35
was doing my morning
00:19:37
trail run or hike... Depending on how I'm
00:19:40
feeling and what I'm up for. I go
00:19:41
every morning the last 9 or 10 months,
00:19:44
there's a partner nearby that's great. And I
00:19:46
got a 10 from Terry Clark, who is
00:19:48
a big country artist, especially in the nineties,
00:19:51
but yes, she's been doing cool stuff since
00:19:53
then. And she's like, hey, do you wanna
00:19:55
a text played Do on a song for
00:19:57
me. I said, you know, well, course. And
00:19:59
then she's like, yeah. It's said do that
00:20:01
with Kelly Clark
00:20:02
like, well, talk about Barry the league. You
00:20:05
know, You Kelly Clark is 1 of the
00:20:06
biggest pop stars in the world. And then,
00:20:09
I did that. The next few days after
00:20:11
that, and she's like, yeah, that went, great.
00:20:13
You wanna play on this other 1 I
00:20:14
did with Cody Jaws and who's, like, the
00:20:16
biggest 1 of the top 3 country artists
00:20:18
right now. So that was pretty fun.
00:20:21
But... Yeah, you asked about the red carpet
00:20:23
thing. There's a film called the Neon Highway,
00:20:26
and I it stars Bow bridges, you know,
00:20:29
Jeff Bridges older brother, famous American actor.
00:20:32
And this guy, Rob Maze, who...
00:20:35
Is an actor that I've produced a bunch
00:20:36
of songs for.
00:20:38
So it's a country music movie
00:20:41
about, you know, raw plays up in and
00:20:43
come country star in Bow bridges it's the
00:20:45
g old old veteran who's been out of
00:20:47
the game for a while.
00:20:50
And Rob kind of, you know,
00:20:52
got me involved on the project. We filmed
00:20:55
it, like, 3 years ago and just for
00:20:57
whatever reasons it took this long to come
00:20:59
out.
00:21:00
And it was... At the height of the
00:21:03
height of the pandemic stuff, and it was
00:21:06
crazy. We filmed the scene in a crowded
00:21:08
bar, I'm, like rocket out. On lab steel
00:21:10
on the scene. And so that's pretty fun.
00:21:11
They used the actual audio for when we
00:21:13
were filming, which is rare.
00:21:15
And they had everybody all the extras in
00:21:17
the crowd on wear masks and face shields
00:21:21
for, like, 3 hours straight while we were
00:21:23
setting up the band and getting audio, doing
00:21:26
the film blocking and all that stuff. And
00:21:28
then for the next 5 hours while we're
00:21:29
filming they had them take all that stuff
00:21:31
off.
00:21:32
I was just, like,
00:21:34
you know, with the hell. Yeah. Right? It
00:21:36
was red. I I got to rock out
00:21:38
with Libra rice big country guy
00:21:40
in the film. And then I have a
00:21:42
second scene where I'm playing poker around a
00:21:45
pool table with Libra rice and Bow bridges
00:21:49
and,
00:21:49
Dave Rowe,
00:21:51
legendary country guy, old friend of mine, play
00:21:54
base for Johnny Cash for years. Ice he
00:21:56
sadly passed several months ago.
00:21:59
But I had a few lines in the
00:22:01
movie, like, in a close up scene with
00:22:03
1 of the most iconic actors in American
00:22:05
film,
00:22:06
you know, bow bridges.
00:22:08
I was pretty nervous, fortunately, it didn't look
00:22:10
that way in the film. So it had
00:22:12
its premier and I've walked the red carpet
00:22:14
and stuff just a few days ago. And
00:22:16
I that was pretty fun. I had to
00:22:17
do a few interviews, which is a little
00:22:20
unusual for me. But her Yeah. Is... Yeah.
00:22:22
Saw. You're like, a... You're, like a side
00:22:24
man and and stew in studio guy. You're
00:22:26
supposed to be sort of in the background.
00:22:28
Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah. There's been a couple
00:22:30
times where I'm forced to actually speak or
00:22:33
whatever I got asked by the country music
00:22:35
hall of fame to do the musician spotlight
00:22:38
a couple times. And, times I brought a
00:22:40
couple friends to sing some of these songs,
00:22:42
and I've, you know, had to talk about
00:22:44
my career in Nashville and play some of
00:22:46
the hits that I played on.
00:22:48
Yeah. Little nerve wracking actually having to
00:22:52
speak in public.
00:22:54
Yeah. That's that's that's pretty cool. Yeah. Like
00:22:57
you said, like I said, you're you're used
00:22:58
to you know, being on the on the
00:23:00
album and in the background and stuff. Like,
00:23:02
although, you've you've been on stage in front
00:23:04
of tens of thousands too, so that's that's
00:23:06
pretty heavy. But let let's just keep a
00:23:09
little bit of faith to the climbing podcast
00:23:11
end of this thing because otherwise, I mean,
00:23:13
as people know from listening when I... And
00:23:15
and this is something I do. I'm unlike
00:23:17
a hack musician,
00:23:19
you know, just a just a hobby kinda
00:23:21
dude and but I love having people on
00:23:24
who have... Like, a toe in this world.
00:23:26
And and I mean, you have, like, you
00:23:27
know, you're up to your knees at least,
00:23:30
if not if not thighs in this way.
00:23:32
So... But you... But you're a caught and
00:23:34
you're you're a series climber and you've spent
00:23:36
a lot of time doing that. And it
00:23:38
is kinda sometimes strange to to find someone
00:23:41
Timer who doesn't just dabble, you know, in
00:23:43
in both, and you're committed to both. And,
00:23:46
so tell tell me a little bit about
00:23:48
your climbing as far as
00:23:50
far as your history and kinda prompted you
00:23:52
by thinking about how you think about some
00:23:54
of the sort of big important in your
00:23:57
mind things that that kind of formed you.
00:23:59
As a climber, But, I mean, where did
00:24:01
you grow up? Like, how how did you
00:24:02
end up
00:24:03
being this climber musician? Yeah. So... Was Till
00:24:07
I was 6, we lived in Massachusetts, and
00:24:09
my dad, even when I was really young
00:24:11
took me on pretty
00:24:13
legit backpack packing trips. Like, really having a
00:24:15
hike and camp out in the white Mountains
00:24:18
of New Hampshire and stuff. And for a
00:24:20
year just to test the waters we moved
00:24:22
to Palo alto, California,
00:24:24
to see if that's what my dad wanted
00:24:26
to... He was teaching at Mit,
00:24:28
and he wound up working for Nasa in
00:24:30
the Bay area. But when we were there
00:24:33
when I was 6, we went to Yosemite,
00:24:34
and my head just exploded.
00:24:37
I said, I got a climb. I got
00:24:38
a climb, and my dad went to the
00:24:40
Yosemite Mountain School and said my son wants
00:24:42
to take a climbing lesson and they said,
00:24:44
no, nobody under 18, and I kept pest...
00:24:47
Him and they finally re and Wayne Mary,
00:24:50
who was with Warren harding on the first
00:24:52
descent of the nose gave me and my
00:24:54
dad climbing lesson. And over there on the
00:24:56
Swan slab, you know, care for. And that
00:24:59
definitely, you know, set the hook.
00:25:03
I dabble as a teenager a little bit,
00:25:05
it. And then when I... In my early
00:25:07
twenties, I started climbing harder.
00:25:09
A little before that, I tried to get
00:25:11
back into it it I didn't know how
00:25:13
to train properly and I was just cranking
00:25:15
out pull ups on door jams and stuff
00:25:16
and got pretty bad tendon night, and I
00:25:19
thought, well, I guess I can't climb and
00:25:22
bm musician, but I just didn't know how
00:25:24
to... I mean, there wasn't that information wasn't
00:25:26
available back then. And that's been
00:25:29
obviously a constant source attention in my
00:25:32
you know, for the last
00:25:34
40 years, you know, the a broken finger
00:25:37
is climbing twice,
00:25:40
yeah. On 8 climbing falls, both times randomly.
00:25:44
I broke my ankle sport climbing and as
00:25:46
a pedal steel plan, you know, your feet
00:25:48
are really important.
00:25:50
And just, you know, all of finger tweaks
00:25:52
and stuff, which to an regular person wouldn't
00:25:54
be a big deal or you know, that's
00:25:56
definitely a thing.
00:25:58
But, you know, growing up outside the Bay
00:26:00
Area, I started climbing in the valley in
00:26:03
my twenties, you And you know, kinda each
00:26:06
thing is like a gateway drug, your tread
00:26:08
connie,
00:26:09
then your big wall climbing, and then your
00:26:12
ice icon, then optimism and then feel like
00:26:16
Alpine climbing is both.
00:26:18
I've been able to bring everything I've learned
00:26:20
over the years from these their disciplines to
00:26:22
to climbing. And then it just kinda plays
00:26:24
my natural strengths. I've never been a strong
00:26:27
finger guy. I can train them a bit
00:26:30
and get their better, but it's not great
00:26:32
for my fingers either just to be whale
00:26:34
away at the gym 5 days a week.
00:26:36
But, yeah, It's been cool. It's been, no,
00:26:39
back in the day, when I was a
00:26:41
touring musician, I'm mostly doing recording work these
00:26:43
days. The country tours would wind up, usually
00:26:46
around mid December for the year, and you'd
00:26:48
have, like, a month and a half or
00:26:49
2 months off.
00:26:51
And they would encourage you to collect unemployment.
00:26:53
Your tour manager and say, yeah, Good the
00:26:55
obviously call it redneck retainer.
00:26:59
Right? So the big tours would actually give
00:27:02
you a retainer year round but out you
00:27:04
know, the average tours, you know. So you
00:27:07
go out and collect unemployment and then I
00:27:08
drive out West for a month and a
00:27:10
half, and Ice icon and colorado, auto and
00:27:13
then go to the southwest or wherever,
00:27:15
you know, man do love the desert towers,
00:27:18
you know, done a bunch of that over
00:27:20
the years. Auto it's also led me to
00:27:22
do, like, a lot of stuff in the
00:27:23
winter where normally you wouldn't do it, you
00:27:25
know,
00:27:26
did Devil's tower in the winter 1 year,
00:27:28
like, first week of February.
00:27:30
But definitely off season.
00:27:32
And then
00:27:33
did that for years, and then now married
00:27:36
with a kid.
00:27:37
It's harder to get, like,
00:27:40
Hey, Honey. I'm gonna take 12 days off
00:27:42
and gone a climbing trip and not making
00:27:44
bunch of money we need and risk my
00:27:46
life on a big frozen mountain and while
00:27:48
you're here with a kid by yourself. Off
00:27:50
and my career that makes the money. Yeah.
00:27:53
Exactly. But what's been cool now is I
00:27:56
usually get called to fill in for somebody
00:27:58
once a year in the summer for a
00:28:00
few shows out west or suns even just
00:28:02
a show. And then I'll tack on a
00:28:04
bit of a climb onto to the end
00:28:06
of that. So it's been pretty cool like,
00:28:09
summer I went out to do the Ac
00:28:10
awards in Vegas with Rod Atkins 1 year,
00:28:14
And so I got there a couple days
00:28:15
early and did some stuff in Red rock
00:28:17
canyon and, you know, Dark. Shadows and stuff
00:28:19
like that classics like that. I was touring
00:28:22
the the big British since pop Band,
00:28:25
and we were over in England for a
00:28:27
while, and I managed to do some grit
00:28:29
stone climbing with somebody I've, like, connected with.
00:28:31
People have always been super cool, Like, kinda
00:28:34
go into the local climbing shop and ask
00:28:36
around,
00:28:37
and people will take you out. I was
00:28:38
in Stockholm,
00:28:40
with Pam Till,
00:28:41
just and went into the climbing shop and
00:28:43
somebody took me boulder.
00:28:45
It's been like that, you know, over the
00:28:47
years more recently. I was out West this
00:28:49
last summer filling in with this guy, Stephen
00:28:52
Wilson Junior. Who's amazing.
00:28:54
And,
00:28:55
went and solo
00:28:57
El dorado peak in the North Cascade in
00:28:59
slack just kind of a fun, you know,
00:29:01
non technical,
00:29:02
mountain near
00:29:04
John,
00:29:06
year before did Lizard head with my... 1
00:29:09
of my oldest client partners. I was out,
00:29:12
doing some shows with this girl Jesse James
00:29:14
Decker. And my buddy, Rob H and Duran
00:29:19
met up with him. And I was just
00:29:21
been... Went from sea level the day before
00:29:23
to 13000 feet that day. That's always been
00:29:25
a challenge too. You're, like, in the middle
00:29:27
of a tour,
00:29:29
not in shape.
00:29:30
Else hungover over and still try to get
00:29:32
up something good. You know?
00:29:35
Yeah.
00:29:37
Yeah. I mean, it's it's
00:29:38
think it's pretty cool and not and and
00:29:40
again, I sort of follow your
00:29:42
your socials and and interact and I don't
00:29:46
know. I was kinda wondering about... I this
00:29:48
sort of side man thing,
00:29:51
you know, this this person who's on every...
00:29:53
It seems like you're on everybody's speed dial,
00:29:55
to have
00:29:56
to to bring in to to to play
00:29:59
on their album. So that speaks to 2
00:30:02
things in my mind talent
00:30:04
because they can count on you to to
00:30:05
do a good spot on whatever they're recording,
00:30:09
and also your... You know, you have these
00:30:10
per... Do chops, so they can count on
00:30:12
that. And you know what you're doing. You...
00:30:14
I'm sure you walk in, get it done
00:30:16
and walk out, like, you know, Eddie van
00:30:18
Hale un beat it or whatever.
00:30:20
But then there's gotta be this, like,
00:30:23
you seem like... Yeah. You're all good. You're
00:30:25
you're, like, yeah I'll do it, and and
00:30:27
I'll I'll I'll...
00:30:29
You know, promote you, and I'll... You know,
00:30:31
you're always like, yeah, This guy's amazing and
00:30:33
this guy's amazing. So you you bring this,
00:30:35
like, really good positive energy. I started to
00:30:37
think about how that probably plays into your
00:30:40
being a good climbing partner as well? Like,
00:30:42
do you ever think of sort of the
00:30:43
crossover of, like, who you are as a...
00:30:45
And as a person and why you bring
00:30:48
these certain things to the table that have
00:30:50
made you successful kind of on both ends
00:30:52
of things.
00:30:53
Well, I think the common thread there would
00:30:55
be just grit and
00:30:57
determination. Like,
00:30:58
I've never been that strong of a free
00:31:00
climber, but I've gotten up... A lot of
00:31:03
pretty cool stuff over the years. You know?
00:31:05
Right. And it's the same thing. I feel
00:31:07
like some of the people I work with
00:31:08
musically have more natural,
00:31:11
gifts, more natural talent,
00:31:14
but, just, you know, just
00:31:17
busting your ass and paying attention and never
00:31:20
giving up up, you know, go a long
00:31:22
way for both these pursuits. You know?
00:31:25
You know, there's tension between the 2 Ira
00:31:28
out touring with kid rock and up I
00:31:30
mean, I think you can imagine what that
00:31:33
tour would be like. And I was trying
00:31:35
to trade because I had an opportunity we
00:31:37
had, like, 2 weeks off, and I was
00:31:38
gonna go to peru.
00:31:40
To the Court Blanca and try to climb
00:31:41
him there. And I remember we're playing the
00:31:44
Big Jones Beach Amp theater,
00:31:46
and I like I'm out, like, you know,
00:31:48
to all day trying to run as far
00:31:50
as I can just to get in shape,
00:31:52
you know, And
00:31:54
I headed to prove. Actually, I... Just as
00:31:56
a traveling partner, I grabbed the guy who
00:31:58
shot the
00:31:59
For us on that tour because there was
00:32:00
a lot of, you know,
00:32:02
huge p on that tour. That was 2003
00:32:05
00:32:06
kind of I kid rocks Heyday.
00:32:08
He had had that single with Cheryl Crow
00:32:10
just a year or 2 before, and he
00:32:12
was, like,
00:32:13
Hitting it. He was 1 of the world's
00:32:15
biggest rock bands at the time.
00:32:17
And,
00:32:18
yeah. I mean, I probably I can't tell
00:32:20
some of those have to take those to
00:32:22
the grave, but, you know, he's definitely holding
00:32:24
the torch for this, you know, big rock
00:32:26
tours, booze blow,
00:32:28
pills, Bro porn star stripper. I mean, all
00:32:30
that shit. So trying to train for, you
00:32:32
know, a mountain nearing an Alpine trip. But
00:32:35
sure, shit. We got down there and
00:32:38
4 It was cool. I noticed that the
00:32:40
duty free shop. They had 2 for 1
00:32:41
with Jack Daniels and I thought, you know,
00:32:44
this would be good.
00:32:45
But it was just these big jugs. I
00:32:46
was like, god, that's too much, but whatever
00:32:48
I can't pass up the deal, But I
00:32:50
got to high camp and that stuff is
00:32:52
worth it's weighing gold. I mean, they don't
00:32:54
have that peru. You know? So I was
00:32:55
able to trade it for not am and
00:32:57
for other stuff like that. Really And
00:33:01
Yeah.
00:33:03
I mean, word After leaving Nashville. I was,
00:33:06
you know,
00:33:07
on top of a 19000 foot peak, so
00:33:09
that was amazing.
00:33:11
Who are you climbing with just the deposit
00:33:13
Ir guy.
00:33:15
He actually made it near the top of
00:33:17
1 of the mountains, but it got a
00:33:19
little technical and he waited for me while.
00:33:21
So like... Ir I saw it an easy
00:33:23
1 and then climbed that another 1 with
00:33:25
him, and then... There was a a rage
00:33:27
that I was pretty sure was un climbed
00:33:29
on Ur as Day. I think it's, like,
00:33:32
18000 in change. And I found a guy
00:33:35
who wanted to decline it. And that morning,
00:33:37
I went to go get him to go
00:33:38
up there, and he was gust the left
00:33:40
a notes, hey he was gonna solo something
00:33:42
else. I was super pissed. I was walking
00:33:45
back to my 10. I ran 3 guys
00:33:46
from Salt Lake City. I was, like, on
00:33:49
wanna go up and try this thing, and
00:33:50
this guy Jason foot, strong climb too, man
00:33:53
it's good because it wound up being
00:33:55
pretty in your face and pretty good.
00:33:58
Serious mixed, you know, steep mix con at
00:34:01
18000 and plus,
00:34:03
and he had been in country for a
00:34:05
while, and
00:34:06
we did the first descent just right off
00:34:08
the bat like that.
00:34:11
I've been something on my website about it.
00:34:13
In, like, 2 or 3 years later. I
00:34:14
felt bad. Some climber from the north used
00:34:17
ain't gonna... He,
00:34:19
him and his partner had scoped the line
00:34:21
and gotten money from their client in club.
00:34:23
And what down there, and they had climbed
00:34:26
it, and they got packet. And he saw
00:34:27
this, like, several year old account of it
00:34:30
on my website.
00:34:32
Alright.
00:34:33
Oops sorry.
00:34:35
I should written it up in the American
00:34:36
Alpine journal.
00:34:38
That... Yeah. That's that's pretty funny. Yes.
00:34:42
Especially too It's like, yeah, You're big your
00:34:44
big thing. I just like, you know, took
00:34:46
a few days off from this giant tour
00:34:48
and set set your pledge project. That's cool.
00:34:52
Awkward.
00:34:54
You know, the 2 world's colliding kind of
00:34:56
thing that it's kinda interesting to me too
00:34:59
because, you know, us climber,
00:35:01
you know, the more you dip into kinda
00:35:03
quote unquote real life, you
00:35:05
I mean, with me, I decide I decide
00:35:07
not to really talk about it too much
00:35:08
with people who don't climb, like, I have
00:35:10
to because they're like, oh, I heard you
00:35:12
a climber like, have you seen free solo,
00:35:14
you know, that that whole conversation.
00:35:17
I tended like just kinda stay away from
00:35:18
it as much as I can. And I
00:35:21
think it'd be pretty
00:35:22
interesting like, you know, you resumed to that
00:35:25
tour, presumably right? Because you said he had
00:35:27
2 weeks off. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, like,
00:35:29
I mean, do you ever... Do you talk
00:35:31
to the folks that you run into in
00:35:33
in your world in the music world about
00:35:35
this thing or do they know?
00:35:37
Or is it like, kind of... Is it
00:35:39
kinda like a parts
00:35:40
situation where you you... You know, you put
00:35:42
your glasses back on and and your you
00:35:45
know,
00:35:46
kinda slip back into the other world.
00:35:48
I... You know,
00:35:49
obviously, something Probably thought I was just, like,
00:35:51
hiking or o you go to Machu p
00:35:53
picchu, you know Right.
00:35:57
I've I've been friends for many years with
00:35:59
Mary Brock. On and, you know, yosemite Fame
00:36:02
And Sure. She told me if she sent
00:36:05
some climbing pictures of her to her mom
00:36:07
of his elderly Japanese woman. And she would
00:36:09
hold them sideways.
00:36:14
She didn't
00:36:15
believe or understand somebody could be, you know,
00:36:18
cleaning up like that. Right. But I think
00:36:20
it was shortly after peru, was playing,
00:36:23
red rocks, you know, the icon Venue
00:36:27
with Kid rock. And, 1 of my climber
00:36:29
buddies who lives in Lead came out to
00:36:31
hang
00:36:32
and
00:36:33
Sonic There's boulders all around outside the venue,
00:36:36
and there signs everywhere saying 10000 dollar fine
00:36:39
for climbing on the rocks. So, of course,
00:36:41
we climb on.
00:36:43
Many of the boulders as we find.
00:36:46
You're yeah. I'm a Vip. But yeah. Holding
00:36:48
me a alone. Show my Ama. You know,
00:36:50
if they try to arrest me.
00:36:52
I'm I'm with the band.
00:36:54
Yeah. That's that's cool. So let me ask
00:36:56
about the the, you know, the early days
00:36:58
of B musician. You mentioned something a moment
00:37:00
ago about. Like that... Even when you started
00:37:03
climbing, you were already a musician. And did
00:37:06
you already have sort of dreams of that
00:37:08
as a career as something that you would
00:37:10
you would pursue pursue at that level. Because
00:37:13
plenty of climber, you know, like myself, we
00:37:15
play guitar. We str around the fire and
00:37:17
everything else, and It sounds like you were
00:37:20
pretty serious about it even in your early
00:37:21
twenties about pursuing it as a professional. But...
00:37:24
Yeah, Tell me about that path. Yeah. I
00:37:27
kinda dabble it. A teenager, and they got
00:37:29
serious when I was 20
00:37:31
or so. But I I think kinda what
00:37:34
you alluded to before. It's, with also with
00:37:37
climbing just kind of never even believing that
00:37:40
I could achieve any of the stuff that
00:37:42
I've achieved both, you know, I never thought
00:37:44
a cl Capita, you know, when I was
00:37:46
in youngster.
00:37:48
And, you know, I never thought... I just...
00:37:49
I thought, Man Could make a living playing
00:37:51
music just playing shitty bars or whatever. That
00:37:54
would be incredible. You know? I mean, that
00:37:56
was kind of my first goal. And then
00:37:58
I could think kind of, like, with... Climbing,
00:38:00
you keep achieving goals and
00:38:02
either
00:38:03
they aren't as great as you thought they
00:38:05
were gonna be or you just kind of
00:38:07
naturally want the next thing. So,
00:38:10
I started playing Blue grass hearing Jerry Douglas
00:38:13
at
00:38:13
strawberry music festival is a music festival right
00:38:16
outside Yosemite.
00:38:18
And I was there when I was maybe
00:38:20
21 or something. And I have been playing
00:38:22
a lot of Robert Johnson style Delta blues,
00:38:24
you know, with a slide on my finger.
00:38:27
And,
00:38:28
I was there at my girlfriend at the
00:38:29
time when we heard in the campground, and
00:38:31
we heard
00:38:33
coming from the stage. And we're were like,
00:38:34
whoa, what is that? We got down there,
00:38:36
and it was Jerry Douglas Playing Do, and
00:38:38
that just... My head just exploded. You know,
00:38:41
I was like, that's what I wanna do.
00:38:43
So I spent the next few years trying
00:38:45
to be Jerry Douglas,
00:38:47
then stop realistically holistically, I spend the next
00:38:50
few years trying to really get away from
00:38:51
that because there's already somebody that's, you know,
00:38:54
nobody's gonna be him at his own game.
00:38:56
But moved to a few years later to
00:38:58
play Blue grass do. That was my goal.
00:39:02
And the first person I met upon moving
00:39:04
to Nashville Nashville. That was June 94. So
00:39:06
I'm coming up on 30 years now. Hard
00:39:08
to believe. It's been that long. It was
00:39:11
a steel guitar player named Steve Hatch super
00:39:13
cool guy. He's still around.
00:39:16
And he talked me into getting a pedal
00:39:17
deal.
00:39:18
So I don't know if how many people
00:39:21
out there Knicks the nomenclature,
00:39:23
sometimes people even in the industry, you get
00:39:25
the nomenclature kinda bundled. The difference between a
00:39:28
dough... Do is basically like a guitar, oh
00:39:30
with a metal res,
00:39:32
but you play it
00:39:34
flat on your lap with a bar on
00:39:36
the strings instead of your left hand fingers
00:39:39
and then usually picks on your right hand.
00:39:41
It has that cool twang sliding sound. Maybe
00:39:44
I can demonstrate? Yeah. Demonstrate. Let's see what
00:39:46
it sounds like dude this mike, and And
00:39:49
we did we did for for that behind
00:39:52
the scenes, we did try to set up,
00:39:53
like, really special mic and stuff here, but...
00:39:56
Yeah. Then it didn't work because apparently
00:39:58
Smith doesn't know how to deal with Mike
00:40:00
for 30 years and but been.
00:40:03
A lot. That sounds great.
00:40:21
I'm not warmed out.
00:40:26
And then has contrast. Good. Everyone loves the
00:40:29
sound of a dover. Like everyone. I'm getting
00:40:31
this insurance free too it's a amazing part.
00:40:35
And then
00:40:37
pedal steel
00:40:38
definitely...
00:40:39
It's
00:40:40
more of a love, hey. I think most
00:40:41
people look of it. But pedal steel oh,
00:40:44
yeah. So, I'm wrong with you. People... Just...
00:40:47
I think it sounds too country.
00:40:49
You know,
00:40:51
love
00:41:03
But then
00:41:04
to stay modern and current in Nashville,
00:41:07
there's so much of it's really pop you
00:41:09
know,
00:41:17
kinda crazier as
00:41:22
And then, you know, more raw stuff.
00:41:37
So
00:41:38
hunter like some old dudes that would like,
00:41:40
shoot you for putting to
00:41:43
For sure. It's, you know. Yeah. Totally.
00:41:47
Yeah. And, you know, I'm working and those
00:41:49
guys aren't.
00:41:51
So, yeah. It's, you know, gotta adapt. So,
00:41:55
yeah. It takes a certain kind of person
00:41:57
that can, you know, I guess years of
00:41:59
big wall climb kind of has helped me
00:42:01
with the kinda of suffering and patience needed
00:42:04
to, you, learn pedal steel because... I mean,
00:42:07
it's a year or setting sitting down every
00:42:09
day for a few hours before anything sounding
00:42:11
like music comes out of it.
00:42:13
So like, the perseverance thing is is well
00:42:16
because you're pretty sitting I mean, you're pretty
00:42:18
casually talking about, you know, going to Nashville,
00:42:21
and I met this guy and then I
00:42:22
started playing on stuff. And and and obviously,
00:42:25
you know, to get to a point in
00:42:27
your career that you are
00:42:30
is like a... It's like Hollywood. Right? A
00:42:32
thousand musicians a day show up to to
00:42:35
to Nashville and and hoping to have happened
00:42:38
to them what's happened to you. So tell
00:42:40
me a little bit more about that
00:42:42
progression, I mean, to luck perseverance
00:42:45
grit, Like, what were some of the other,
00:42:48
like, milestones and and moving your career along
00:42:51
when you're just, you know,
00:42:53
dragging your your do around Nashville when you
00:42:56
first got there and and your abs a
00:42:58
thing. You're absolutely right. Luck perseverance in grit
00:43:01
totally because... So you know, I just wanted
00:43:04
to make a living at it when I
00:43:05
got here. I was like, I don't care
00:43:07
if I play bars. I would be so
00:43:08
freaking cool. And then I saw some of
00:43:11
my friends starting to get some who big
00:43:13
country gigs with touring gigs with big country
00:43:16
artists. And I had really just started pedal
00:43:18
steel,
00:43:19
maybe a year before
00:43:21
I got the job with Doug stone, who
00:43:23
was a really big nineties country star. I
00:43:25
think his first 15 singles all in the
00:43:27
top 4. But most of his stuff is
00:43:29
valid. So I could get a good own.
00:43:31
I wasn't really a great player by any
00:43:33
means at all yet. I was terrible, but
00:43:36
I could get a good tone and playing
00:43:38
tune.
00:43:38
And the last guy they had kind of
00:43:40
a dick, and they thought I seemed like
00:43:42
a fun guy. I can fool people for
00:43:44
a little bit. You know.
00:43:46
So I got a tour with a big
00:43:48
country artist. And did that for a couple
00:43:50
years, and then I saw friends
00:43:52
getting
00:43:53
few of my friends getting big rock gigs,
00:43:55
and I was like, you know, after I
00:43:57
done a bunch country touring, I was like,
00:43:59
man, that would be so cool. You know,
00:44:01
and then I got the gig with kid
00:44:03
rock. You know, kind of in his heyday.
00:44:05
And I was like, this... Is amazing. You
00:44:07
know, the fun, kinda check that bucket list.
00:44:10
And then, some of my friends were getting
00:44:12
more recording work. This is and,
00:44:14
man that'd be so cool to play on,
00:44:16
you know, big country hits or big, you
00:44:19
know,
00:44:20
and, managed to play on. I guess, my
00:44:22
first 1 was
00:44:24
well, I played on the acoustic version of
00:44:26
3 wooden crosses for Randy Travis, which was
00:44:28
a huge huge song.
00:44:30
But the other 1 was Jason Now the
00:44:32
first number 1. I had a pretty cool
00:44:34
lapse deal cell on that. It's called why.
00:44:36
So, yeah, I was like, okay. Now I'm
00:44:38
getting more recording work.
00:44:40
And recording works kind of
00:44:42
especially later on, you know, your twenties touring
00:44:45
fun. You're on a bus, having fun, getting
00:44:47
crazy.
00:44:48
But musically, it's not very
00:44:51
rewarding. And, you know, further your musicians ship,
00:44:55
playing the same 15 songs every night help
00:44:58
I was on the opening act and the
00:45:00
Tim mcgraw tour where we played 19 minutes
00:45:02
a day, and then just sit around 23
00:45:04
and a half. Half hours a day on
00:45:06
the tour bus. They drove me crazy. So,
00:45:09
you know, staying in town, playing on recordings,
00:45:12
playing all the time, half way better for
00:45:14
your musicians ship and probably your health to,
00:45:16
you know, that touring lifestyle. I think,
00:45:19
you know, The stories are all true. I
00:45:22
guess I would go there and insane.
00:45:24
Well, Yeah. Let me ask you about that
00:45:26
because it... You know, was something I talked
00:45:28
to Alexis K about
00:45:30
same kind of interview about, you know, climbing,
00:45:32
but I wanted to just talk to her
00:45:34
about about music,
00:45:36
Lexus from sleigh bells and And you know,
00:45:38
we talk a little bit about that, like,
00:45:40
the not the clash of the lifestyle too
00:45:42
and, oh, it sounds like, you know And
00:45:44
but but also, like, you know, some people
00:45:46
can go in get into that world and
00:45:49
and have it swallow them whole, You know,
00:45:51
if they if they don't have any sort
00:45:53
of governor on on their ability. Yeah. And
00:45:55
absolutely I on the ball, as far as
00:45:57
you know,
00:45:58
playing, but also as far as, you know,
00:46:00
if you wanna... Like I said, you're training
00:46:02
for Peru with on the kid rock tour.
00:46:04
So tell me a little bit about your
00:46:05
thoughts about, that and maybe your personality is
00:46:08
just such that you can you can keep
00:46:10
it, you know, you can keep it a
00:46:12
little bit under control or or what. And
00:46:14
I'm sure you've seen plenty of people will
00:46:16
flame out on that stuff as well.
00:46:18
Yeah. It's... I mean, it's terrible. And, you
00:46:20
know, seeing
00:46:22
climber as well lose control as far as,
00:46:24
you know, substance abuse. But... Yeah, in the
00:46:26
music industry, of course, it's brutal.
00:46:29
I
00:46:30
absolutely do feel like climbing keeps me and
00:46:33
check as far as tendencies to... You know,
00:46:35
these days it'll gonna probably just be drinking
00:46:37
too much. And
00:46:39
you know, but in the past, all kinds
00:46:40
of other stuff.
00:46:42
I remember, we were on tour
00:46:45
with this artist and we played... There was
00:46:47
a big country music festival on Copper Mountain.
00:46:49
Colorado.
00:46:50
And we stayed up that night, Jamming and
00:46:52
partying with this cool with a bunch of
00:46:55
friends, and I had a date set up
00:46:57
to climb Just the easy route on the
00:46:59
third flat iron in the next day. And
00:47:01
I was so hungover over. I could barely
00:47:04
stand. It was a relief getting onto the
00:47:06
route because I could actually you know, hang
00:47:08
on to something.
00:47:11
You can use all for all 4 append
00:47:14
instead of just too. Exactly
00:47:17
but, Yeah. I mean,
00:47:19
even partying aside, I would say that it
00:47:21
probably... There's a chance I would be...
00:47:24
Yeah a better musician if I hadn't spent
00:47:26
all the time climbing, and,
00:47:28
obviously, it'd be a much better climber if
00:47:29
I had wasted all the time playing music.
00:47:33
But I think each has helped to keep
00:47:35
me sane and healthy too. I feel like
00:47:38
a lot of my friends in music have
00:47:40
had tendon issues, carpal tunnel problems and stuff
00:47:43
like that. And then climbing, obviously, 10 stuff
00:47:46
is a big deal, but I feel like
00:47:49
they're so different. They actually... Have helped prevent
00:47:52
me from having problems with a lot of
00:47:54
that. The way I did it early on
00:47:56
when I wasn't training. Right?
00:47:58
But... Yeah, there's... Man, there's so much give
00:48:00
and take. You know,
00:48:03
I remember when I broke my foot.
00:48:06
Sport climbing brought mike Ti and F just
00:48:08
on a routine fall, just totally regular. Mh.
00:48:10
I had them leave enough tow
00:48:12
sticking out of the cap so I could
00:48:14
press on the pedals on my stealing tire,
00:48:16
so I wouldn't
00:48:17
miss any work.
00:48:19
Right. And man,
00:48:20
I broke a finger
00:48:22
just traversing under a roof on a simple
00:48:24
aid pitch
00:48:26
in North Carolina.
00:48:27
I popped a piece trying to go quickly,
00:48:29
and my other hand was through a cara,
00:48:32
and it broke my peak, like, badly.
00:48:35
And
00:48:36
I had them make the cast kind of
00:48:39
thing to wear... Was sticking up a bit
00:48:40
so I could still play steel guitar.
00:48:43
I wouldn't miss any dates on my tour,
00:48:45
but,
00:48:46
or Yeah. Those kind of things really kinda
00:48:49
put the fear of God into you and
00:48:50
make... It's made me, you know, question whether
00:48:53
it's being an idiot climbing, you know, over
00:48:55
the years since... You know, music is, of
00:48:58
course, my passion,
00:49:00
but also my bread and butter. I was
00:49:02
up in Canada doing the show with Pam
00:49:04
Till us about 4 or 5 years ago.
00:49:06
And
00:49:07
went and climb the East ridge Mount temple,
00:49:10
the Canadian classic.
00:49:12
It's a really long out. And by the
00:49:14
time we got up and into the black
00:49:16
towers near the top, a storm had come
00:49:18
in. And
00:49:20
I was at a hang be delay. My
00:49:22
partner was around the corner, and I got
00:49:23
hit by lightning,
00:49:25
and just wall. I I don't know if
00:49:27
his drain or not, but I got wall
00:49:29
I was days out of my mind. And
00:49:32
then for another 45 minutes or so, had
00:49:34
it just kinda sit there at this exposed
00:49:36
hanging b they,
00:49:38
well lying and kept crashing down all around
00:49:40
me and
00:49:42
kinda of mentally apologize and into my...
00:49:45
They sons for not being around for them
00:49:47
the rest of their lives, you know, we
00:49:49
managed to hit the summit and the dis
00:49:51
sandwich is normally just a couple hour john
00:49:54
down, and why out conditions took a lot
00:49:56
longer. And I woke up the next morning
00:49:58
and my fingertips were
00:50:01
painful and ting and it really bad not
00:50:04
great way. I guess they were frost and
00:50:06
for about a month or 2, it's really
00:50:08
hard to play guitar.
00:50:09
Most of my work these days basis on
00:50:11
steel guitar and no and lapse deal. So
00:50:14
it didn't affect me too much, but that
00:50:16
was a real
00:50:18
basis between almost dying and, freezing my fingers.
00:50:21
It was like,
00:50:24
so
00:50:25
maybe not going... Quite as hard in Alpine
00:50:27
endeavors as Used to. Yeah. But I mean,
00:50:29
the thing that's interesting I think about, you
00:50:32
know, your career and climbing and I... You
00:50:34
know, we parallel each other you're a little
00:50:36
older than me.
00:50:37
You started earlier. But nevertheless I mean, climbing,
00:50:40
you know, for all of its... You old
00:50:43
adventure, things, like, it's become so much more
00:50:45
accessible and, like, a person like yourself with
00:50:47
a career and a and in a family
00:50:49
and a
00:50:50
all the things that go with being older
00:50:52
and having a a proper life with all
00:50:54
the pressures and things. Like, climbing is more
00:50:56
accessible for us now. Like, you know, you're
00:50:59
in the age too or there was no
00:51:00
sport climbing when you start climbing. There were
00:51:03
no climbing gyms. Yeah. And so it's like,
00:51:05
you can, like, you can't you can have
00:51:07
time I'm now to go and dabble and
00:51:09
you don't have to risk your life because
00:51:11
that's the other thing about pre sport climbing
00:51:13
is, like, not all tread climbing is dangerous,
00:51:15
but If you're an ab... If you're an
00:51:17
avid climber in the late seventies and and
00:51:19
eighties,
00:51:20
you know, danger was sort of part of
00:51:22
the game. And it doesn't really have to
00:51:24
be, I mean, I know you broke your
00:51:26
your your foot and leg, sport climbing, but,
00:51:29
you know, it's interesting how we... We've... You
00:51:32
know, it fits into our lives a little
00:51:33
bit better because I'm the same way. I
00:51:34
mean, Don't have this, like, massive music career,
00:51:36
but I got the family and the whole
00:51:38
thing. So
00:51:39
is just kinda cool that we can still
00:51:41
be climber
00:51:42
without, you know, these temple
00:51:44
kind of adventures and stuff, stuff like that.
00:51:47
Yeah. And when you're younger and you have
00:51:48
a close call,
00:51:50
solo or ice climbing or in the mountains,
00:51:53
You know, it's all stuff that I... Used
00:51:55
to do lots of
00:51:56
when you're younger and you have a close
00:51:57
call. You're like, oh, shit. That was an
00:51:59
gnarly man. Got fucked up and kinda laughing
00:52:02
about this kind of, like,
00:52:04
into the spice of the adventure. Your older,
00:52:06
like, shit, man. I've already used up 10
00:52:08
of my non lives, you know, this is
00:52:11
added kinda not great. But Man, it's hard
00:52:14
to it's hard to put it down. You
00:52:15
know,
00:52:17
you have, you know, I was out you
00:52:18
know, like I said, 2 2 years ago
00:52:20
I was out West playing some guitar for
00:52:22
Jesse James Decker and went did lizard head
00:52:24
with my buddy. I mean, that's probably. Good
00:52:27
level of adventure for me right now. You
00:52:29
know, this shit loads a loose rock and
00:52:32
exposure, but, you know, pretty. A greasy.
00:52:36
Yeah. It's totally that's... It's... Yeah. Yeah. That's
00:52:39
is that thing is kinda wild. It's like,
00:52:41
just poking up out of that ridge and
00:52:43
it's not even that tall, but it looks
00:52:44
like like gigantic from a distance. So... Yeah.
00:52:47
I'm that summit exposure is pretty rad. You're
00:52:49
like, well yeah. Son.
00:52:52
Well, a couple of other line of questioning.
00:52:54
So you... You know, you... You were this
00:52:56
this West Coast climber to begin with Yosemite
00:53:00
all the other things out there.
00:53:02
And then you... You know, not only did
00:53:03
you want a new music scene
00:53:05
because you wanted to move to Nashville where
00:53:07
it was all happening and where you could
00:53:09
pursue the blue grass style and then got
00:53:11
into country and all that sort of thing.
00:53:12
But
00:53:14
you also, you moved into a different climbing
00:53:16
community in a different climbing vibe, and and
00:53:18
I think just like everything else, it feels
00:53:20
sort of global now. Right? Climbing. But but
00:53:23
there were like, the further back you go,
00:53:25
the more click scene,
00:53:27
kinda different, you know, gunk boulder,
00:53:30
you know, the Southeast. We're all...
00:53:33
In Yosemite in Southeast were kind of, like,
00:53:36
miles apart as as far as thought process
00:53:38
and also finding climber to climb with. I
00:53:40
think, you know, it was definitely more in
00:53:43
these how how haul
00:53:45
you know, guys creeping around in these haul
00:53:47
without really telling anything about it. So tell
00:53:49
me a little bit about moving there as
00:53:50
a climber and, you know, you're pursuing this
00:53:53
this
00:53:54
music things super hard, but also wanting to
00:53:56
climb. So did the did did it... The
00:53:59
integration go well and and found people to
00:54:02
climb. Well.
00:54:03
Actually, I stopped climbing for a year and
00:54:05
a half when I first moved to Nashville.
00:54:07
It was 94.
00:54:09
I had had... I got caught by a
00:54:11
storm solo.
00:54:12
Leading tower in Yosemite,
00:54:15
and it was pretty grim. I, you know,
00:54:17
obviously made it, but it was not great.
00:54:19
A bunch of bling people had to get
00:54:20
rescued off walls in that storm,
00:54:23
but I made it down. And there was,
00:54:25
like, a couple of other things like that
00:54:27
that made me just kinda like, I don't
00:54:29
know.
00:54:30
So when I got to town, I thought,
00:54:31
you know, look, I should be more serious
00:54:32
about it,
00:54:34
about music.
00:54:35
I'll take, like, a... I'll just stop. And
00:54:38
I made it like a year year and
00:54:39
a half, and I was, like, I'm miserable.
00:54:41
So started getting back on it,
00:54:44
and There was a
00:54:45
rock gym down in Franklin, and the classic
00:54:47
rock jim, Bruce Hi was the owner and
00:54:49
there was kind of a cool bunch of
00:54:51
guy. And and a girl, his daughter who
00:54:53
would climbed there, the regulars. And it was
00:54:55
fun to hang out with those folks.
00:54:58
Kirk G, he was 1 of the guys
00:54:59
he's wound up putting a lot of the
00:55:00
hard first to sense up at Tennessee wall
00:55:02
and stuff over the last 15 years, and
00:55:05
I wound up doing a bunch of trips
00:55:06
out west with him.
00:55:08
He's hitting a lot of the 50 classics.
00:55:10
We even did, like, Ship rock and
00:55:13
but also some more adventurous stuff. We did
00:55:15
a first to sentence zion and stuff,
00:55:17
yeah, there... There was no a basically in
00:55:21
Nashville that at least none that I knew
00:55:23
of Mark Kart wright had done some good
00:55:25
stuff and maybe Jamie Dial, our Il is
00:55:28
kind of a legendary guy in the Southeast
00:55:30
and super
00:55:32
great guy. It's been an awesome friend for
00:55:34
years.
00:55:35
Ar you know, he dabble, but he's just
00:55:38
a wicked and strong rock climber and still
00:55:40
it is in his sixties.
00:55:42
But... Yeah. It was different. I mean, My
00:55:44
I love is the long the long climbs,
00:55:46
you know, kind of yosemite stuff,
00:55:49
Alpine stuff, big wall stuff. And so Now
00:55:52
the cl in the southeast is amazing, but,
00:55:54
you know, a hundred feet less basically.
00:55:56
Yeah. I don't know. There's again. There's... You
00:55:58
may be dismissing it. Is luck or whatever.
00:56:01
But there's... Again, I think there's something about
00:56:03
you as as a person that probably
00:56:06
draws people to you again as someone they
00:56:08
want in their band or or they want
00:56:09
on their album, but also as a partner.
00:56:12
And let's focus on the climbing part of
00:56:14
it, Like, what is it do you think?
00:56:16
I mean, You've ever thought about, like, what
00:56:19
do you bring to the team so to
00:56:20
speak. As a question I ask a lot
00:56:22
of people.
00:56:23
Well,
00:56:25
yeah. It gotta have fun, man. Gotta have
00:56:27
fun. Always. I can be prone and things
00:56:30
get a little grim to whine a little
00:56:31
bit, and I've tried to
00:56:33
my music career and my...
00:56:38
So I, you know, always try to keep
00:56:40
an eye out for that. I remember
00:56:42
both maybe 10 years ago climbed Mount Watkins
00:56:46
with
00:56:47
Keith Robinson, and this young girl, Anna, bath,
00:56:50
who you probably, you know, She's went down.
00:56:53
She was pretty green man. Right? And he's,
00:56:55
like, did my friend come, Should we go
00:56:56
awesome and she I she led 1 page,
00:56:59
but it was just kinda a little... Too
00:57:01
much too soon for her. And I'm telling
00:57:03
this because it's a good story, but I'll
00:57:04
get... The lining part in a second.
00:57:07
The third day, I lead off from the
00:57:09
be from the vi, and, she ours up,
00:57:12
and we're both at this hanging blade 3
00:57:14
out and feet off the ground,
00:57:16
and, Keith is taking down camp, and he's
00:57:19
gonna have to clean my aid pitch. So
00:57:20
it's it's gonna take a minute. And I
00:57:22
felt my myself stomach grow. And, I mean,
00:57:25
we're just, like, hanging off these bolts hip
00:57:26
to hip with this, you know, sweet little
00:57:29
20 year old girl
00:57:31
I looked at her as was, like, hi.
00:57:32
I'm sorry. She's like, what? And I just
00:57:34
had to, like, drop trial
00:57:36
and just
00:57:38
exploded and, like, coded 80. And need to
00:57:40
rock below us.
00:57:42
Fortunately, the pitch was pretty diagonal,
00:57:45
so Keith didn't get any of it. But
00:57:47
then, you know, we just had to hate
00:57:49
out there for another 45 minutes. While the
00:57:51
sun started baking in. I remember were she
00:57:54
tore open 1 of her Lara bars and
00:57:56
was, like, sniffing it, you know,
00:57:58
I
00:58:00
But like everybody does on watkins ins, we
00:58:02
ran out of water, and we got to
00:58:04
the top that night in very dry.
00:58:08
Par in the next day, next morning had
00:58:10
to hike out, and I probably said something
00:58:12
1 too many times it has. Like, Smith,
00:58:15
we're all Thirsty.
00:58:20
That reminded me just shut the hell up.
00:58:24
That's a good 1.
00:58:25
Yeah.
00:58:26
So... But so, yeah. I mean, know, in
00:58:28
the 30 years I've been in Nashville of
00:58:30
it's just been finding excuses to go out
00:58:33
west or to Canada or wherever
00:58:36
and climb. I went 1 time This is
00:58:38
pretty good And I went thought down to
00:58:39
Mexico to climb those big volcanoes down there,
00:58:42
and
00:58:43
came back...
00:58:45
This is, you know, pre down cell phone
00:58:47
era, and I got back and my answering...
00:58:50
I phoned into my answering machine. That's how
00:58:52
old this is to get my messages.
00:58:54
And the manager of this artist I was
00:58:57
playing with this is freaking out. We're playing
00:58:59
the Rosie O'donnell show tomorrow morning. Where are
00:59:01
you? And that was, like a huge talk
00:59:03
show back then in the late nineties. And,
00:59:07
they bought a ticket for me, like that
00:59:08
minute for me to fly in New York.
00:59:11
All I had to wear was this whether
00:59:13
I bought on in Mexico city for 2
00:59:16
dollars.
00:59:17
Worn on this big Tv show,
00:59:20
because it was literally like the day after
00:59:21
getting back. So...
00:59:24
Yeah. It's always been kinda of fun like
00:59:26
that.
00:59:27
I got a chance to play out in
00:59:29
Switzerland on with this wellington Danny Lee, like,
00:59:31
right around in the late nineties. And the
00:59:33
band was all friends of mine. They took
00:59:35
all my gear back home with them, and
00:59:36
I went up to Grindelwald and The root
00:59:39
on the munch next to the Ig and
00:59:42
then went to mont blanc, down to Cha
00:59:44
and saw that a root on the north
00:59:46
face triangle.
00:59:47
So it's been a lot of just use
00:59:49
music to get out to wherever the cool
00:59:51
climbing is and then do something fun.
00:59:53
Yeah. That's a mate... I mean it's like
00:59:55
sounded. A lot, like, when I started, and
00:59:57
I said, oh yeah, he's, like, slowly, but
00:59:59
surely, you know, played on 20000
01:00:03
country songs, and it's, like, Yeah. The... It
01:00:05
sounds like your climbing career is the same.
01:00:07
Like you've just slowly, but surely kinda climbed
01:00:10
everywhere. It's Yeah.
01:00:12
Yes. It's they're good. You know,
01:00:14
first to set in Alaska,
01:00:16
some other stuff like that. And, you know,
01:00:18
with you, let's say, just when you look
01:00:19
back on it, you know, you've had Andre
01:00:22
Sharma, you know, I love the mark twice
01:00:25
stuff, you know. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. He's
01:00:27
a big fan of his. That era. Yeah.
01:00:30
Yeah.
01:00:32
Of course.
01:00:33
Climbing for... You don't go climbing for fun.
01:00:35
You go climbing to, like, you know,
01:00:38
destroy your inner world or whatever all.
01:00:41
But it's very, you know, why affirming when
01:00:43
you... You, when you go hard. So mh.
01:00:47
So let me ask you then about your
01:00:48
own creativity. It's know, I've been talking about
01:00:51
you as a side man as this as
01:00:52
this guy who, you know, is this ace
01:00:54
in the hole to get get some some
01:00:57
do bro or some laps steel on there.
01:00:59
You or some pedal steel rather on their
01:01:01
album and stuff like that. Where do you
01:01:03
express your own creativity as far as, are
01:01:06
you a Song as well? I know you're...
01:01:08
You probably...
01:01:09
Do it a lot in your own production,
01:01:11
because you've been producing bands as well. So
01:01:13
tell me a little bit about expressing that,
01:01:16
and, obviously, I mean you play a solo
01:01:17
on a on a on an album that's
01:01:19
yours. You know, you... That came out of
01:01:21
you. So, talk a little bit about that.
01:01:24
I think it's like,
01:01:25
you know, there's those people who wanna be
01:01:27
the front man super famous guy and and
01:01:30
those that...
01:01:31
Really don't you know, and wanna express their
01:01:33
creativity elsewhere. So tell me about your own
01:01:36
creativity. Well, it's... How you express it? It's
01:01:39
a bit h by the fact that I'm
01:01:40
in. Awful singer.
01:01:44
Yeah. Me. But 2 of my favorite artists
01:01:47
are awful singers, Neil Young and bob dylan
01:01:49
are terrible singers. But they're also amazing singers.
01:01:52
Right? Because they were able to find their
01:01:54
voice and just really sing from the heart.
01:01:57
I
01:01:58
Man, I've just been so busy doing other
01:02:00
people's music. I was working on some solace
01:02:02
stuff about
01:02:04
10 years ago, and I guess I had
01:02:05
about 8 songs in various stages of completion
01:02:10
when my house burned down.
01:02:12
And I lost it all. And I had
01:02:15
same... Like, backed up to a couple different
01:02:17
hard drives, but they're all in that. They
01:02:18
melted it. Yeah. Right.
01:02:21
And same both the music community and the
01:02:23
climate community were amazing when that happened. I
01:02:26
mean, especially the music world where I just
01:02:29
know so many. People over the last bunch
01:02:31
of years, but
01:02:33
my phone didn't stop ringing, you know, any
01:02:35
rates you wanna borrow, because, I mean, I
01:02:37
was at a recording section, so I had
01:02:38
a few my day to day things, but
01:02:40
I lost, like, you know,
01:02:42
20 instruments
01:02:44
bunch probably 15 Tires, tons of recording gear.
01:02:47
I mean, the do played my do, I
01:02:49
played on my first number 1 with, I
01:02:51
mean, stuff like that. It was really heartbreaking.
01:02:54
10 and tons of climb mean slides and
01:02:56
pictures that I didn't have digitized. I really
01:02:59
bummed about a lot of that too from
01:03:01
all over the world. You know I But
01:03:03
the music community is amazing.
01:03:05
They was, like, go fund me, couple benefit
01:03:08
concerts,
01:03:10
even the companies, you know,
01:03:13
Bmi,
01:03:14
the musician Union,
01:03:15
the Grand Aubrey,
01:03:17
Music care, which is an amazing
01:03:19
organization, all contributed, like, 5000 dollars.
01:03:22
Stephen King has a foundation. He doesn't like
01:03:24
to talk about it or anything, but for
01:03:27
artists lose their tools. I thought that was
01:03:29
pretty cool. Yeah. So... And the music... I
01:03:32
mean, the climb community helped too, you know,
01:03:34
the local climbing shop Cumberland transit. So, like,
01:03:36
just come in and buy anything you want
01:03:38
for half off, just I mean, I lost,
01:03:40
like, fuck. I don't know. 10000 dollars worth
01:03:42
of climbing gear, so many, like, extensive aid
01:03:45
gear, you know, because So many offset cams,
01:03:48
p pee toms, you know, I mean, tents,
01:03:51
all the stuff portal alleges everything, you know.
01:03:54
And Black Diamond helped too. They let me
01:03:55
do a big order.
01:03:57
So
01:03:58
that's awesome. Yeah. Outdoor research, I used to
01:04:00
do gear testing for them. They send me
01:04:02
a bunch of stuff. Yep. Yeah. Both amazing
01:04:04
communities. You know, I told my dad with
01:04:07
all the help I got, you know, it's
01:04:08
was like, seeing my funeral without having to
01:04:10
die.
01:04:11
You know
01:04:13
people that you had no idea knew who
01:04:14
you were or cared or whatever. You know.
01:04:17
Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. Nashville is amazing like
01:04:19
that. I mean, really. It's it's pretty cool.
01:04:21
Well, that's interesting because, I mean, you then
01:04:23
you have this whole or
01:04:25
you have this whole image of it being
01:04:27
music in general being sort of cut, you
01:04:29
know? And, like, that... That that's... I mean,
01:04:31
I'm sure that's probably part of that movie
01:04:32
you just made or we're just in,
01:04:35
not you just made it, but you were
01:04:36
in. I mean, there's probably some theme in
01:04:38
there about, like, just how cut throat it
01:04:40
can be. So
01:04:41
It's goal to hear that deep the trenches,
01:04:44
maybe it's not, you, among the working kinda
01:04:46
musicians, it's not it's not so much like
01:04:48
that. I Absolutely. You hit the nail on
01:04:50
the head. And I think Nashville is very
01:04:52
different from La
01:04:53
also.
01:04:54
But, yeah, The players usually really try to
01:04:56
support each time. I mean there's some competition
01:04:58
for sure.
01:04:59
Yeah. I mean, definitely so much pie to
01:05:02
go around.
01:05:03
Absolutely. You know, and the pot if it
01:05:05
keeps kinda getting smaller every year. Right. You
01:05:08
know, there's been, you know,
01:05:11
new... I keyboard programs and also plug in
01:05:13
the emulate steel guitar and that's kinda of,
01:05:16
taking a chunk out of it and then
01:05:18
has some the music gotten more pop, you
01:05:20
know, steel guitar over are being feature less.
01:05:23
And then live band sometimes they run tracks
01:05:25
instead it's using a guy and that's become
01:05:27
pretty commonplace in place. But the players here
01:05:29
are really good to each other, Man. I
01:05:31
feel like there's a sense that we're all
01:05:32
kinda in it together and kinda us against
01:05:35
the
01:05:35
establishment or the industry that probably helps as
01:05:38
well. So tell me then, you know, back
01:05:41
to this creativity thing about this little
01:05:43
or, I don't know what size it is,
01:05:45
but
01:05:46
you know, this... It seems like you have
01:05:48
some sort of program
01:05:50
where you you do production, like,
01:05:53
online and, like, kind of,
01:05:55
or how how it works. You know, for
01:05:57
sounds like for up and coming people or
01:05:59
people who wanna get a good... Court. So
01:06:01
tell me a little bit about that because
01:06:02
that sounds like like, kind of a little
01:06:04
bit of,
01:06:05
kind of given back to the community so
01:06:07
to speak and trying to help people
01:06:09
get their own foot in the door. Yeah.
01:06:11
Well, so, first of all, people
01:06:14
started sending me stuff to play on, you
01:06:16
know, over the inner internet at, email, whatever,
01:06:19
to play my instruments on. So people from
01:06:21
around the world that don't have good do
01:06:23
players or steel guitar players could get a
01:06:25
national that pro to play on their project.
01:06:28
And then I started putting together what they
01:06:29
call a slam session and doing the Smith
01:06:32
slam,
01:06:34
doing it pretty much every Friday,
01:06:36
and I just get a studio. There's, you
01:06:38
know, 1 or 2 of my favorites that
01:06:39
I use all the time, and
01:06:42
hire 5 the other, like, Friday top, you
01:06:45
know, session players in town, and it'll be
01:06:48
a... It's, like it's like forrest gum said,
01:06:50
it's like a box of chocolates. You know,
01:06:52
we'll have 2 songs that somebody emailed me
01:06:55
that we just run through, and we record
01:06:57
them in 30 minutes each.
01:06:59
And
01:07:01
any 1 of those could be on the
01:07:03
radio the next day they also sound because
01:07:05
it's all the guys playing on the huge
01:07:07
hits that are in there. Right And like
01:07:09
the old Moto town, saw many of our
01:07:11
moto town favorites were recording 15 or 20
01:07:13
minutes, you know? Right. Yeah.
01:07:16
You know, I mean, the music's pretty formulaic,
01:07:18
a lot of time, these players are just
01:07:20
that good. And most of those guys are
01:07:22
putting down 2 separate parts, 2 different electric
01:07:24
guitar parts.
01:07:25
Acoustic guy might do acoustic guitar and then
01:07:27
Ban joe or then man in. And, we'll
01:07:30
run through. Then maybe an artist that I'm
01:07:32
probably will come in. We might slow things
01:07:34
down a bit for them and do a
01:07:35
song or 2, and then, maybe a song
01:07:38
writer will come in a local song writer
01:07:40
that wants a good demo of a recording.
01:07:42
And so just coming knock out anywhere from
01:07:44
6 to 15 songs in a day. And
01:07:47
it's been great and people from anywhere in
01:07:49
the world can just send me a guitar
01:07:50
vocal, kinda work tape and we'll knock out,
01:07:53
you know, a big production of it. And
01:07:55
it doesn't have to be country. We love
01:07:56
doing another stuff. You know? A very few
01:07:59
of national musicians grew up listening to in
01:08:03
playing country music ago. Yeah. What were you
01:08:05
into?
01:08:06
Well,
01:08:07
growing Jimmy Hendrix, some sled evelyn. You know,
01:08:11
because I
01:08:12
the first Van Hale record came out right
01:08:14
before I started playing Guitar.
01:08:16
Yeah. Me too. Well, I didn't come out,
01:08:17
but I started playing Guitar because of Van
01:08:19
hale. Yeah. You you quickly realized is probably
01:08:22
a mistake.
01:08:23
Ain't never gonna... You ain't no. Yeah. I'll
01:08:25
be able to do it. And so I
01:08:28
was, like, 13 and the second concert I
01:08:30
see saw, my parents dropped me and my
01:08:32
buddy, Henry Holiday off at Oakland Coli and,
01:08:36
Van Hale Fair warning tour.
01:08:38
And it was like, saw so loud, and
01:08:41
people are throwing M eighties in the crowd.
01:08:43
Girls are taking the shirts off. It me
01:08:45
and my buddy were, like, equal parts just,
01:08:47
like, verified and, like, fuck is this fucking
01:08:50
amazing. You know,
01:08:51
it was a life changing. I mean, they...
01:08:53
That was done at their prime too. There
01:08:55
was I was sick, 6 8. Air But
01:08:58
I did have a cool,
01:09:00
full circle moment in My first show, Greg
01:09:01
up in the Bay area, this is like
01:09:03
an embarrassment of riches for concerts. Right?
01:09:06
My first show was rolling stones with Jay
01:09:09
Gil and George T opening.
01:09:12
And then later when I was out on
01:09:13
tour with Kid rock Peter Wolf from Jay
01:09:15
Gil. So saturday with us. We did a
01:09:17
couple of this giant hits, so that was
01:09:19
pretty fun full circle moment for me. But
01:09:22
yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. So you're you're into
01:09:25
rock and roll. That hardcore in then. Yeah.
01:09:27
Part that moment, seeing that that lab still
01:09:29
you're a guitar player.
01:09:31
Guitar player there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So switched
01:09:34
it up to Do.
01:09:36
Yeah. Exactly. And then pedals. You get called
01:09:38
to play guitar anymore? Yeah. It's pretty fun.
01:09:42
And, you know, I mean, call the guys
01:09:44
who doing 24 cylinders. So un unbelievable. So...
01:09:47
But... Yeah. I... Yeah. Yeah. It's been fun.
01:09:49
I tried to keep it up. I was
01:09:51
working a bunch with this, young,
01:09:54
incredibly talented a girl, Mia Morris. She plays
01:09:57
every instrument, but she would have me... She
01:09:59
would like... We'd write songs, and then she
01:10:02
would
01:10:03
a bunch of time in her studio, putting
01:10:04
down all this drinks herself, and then she
01:10:06
would have me do a big rock solo
01:10:08
on some of those. So that was pretty
01:10:09
cool. Been But
01:10:11
it was cool. She... I had a good
01:10:12
day on Nbc, like, maybe a year and
01:10:14
a half ago. This guy Brian Ruby, who
01:10:17
I'm producing.
01:10:18
He was on the today show in the
01:10:19
morning talking about his song that I produced
01:10:22
with him. And then Mia was on, Em
01:10:24
america's because... America's got talent that evening doing.
01:10:27
Song that I wrote with her. Sick. He.
01:10:29
It's a pretty good
01:10:31
Nbc day for Old Smith.
01:10:33
Nice. Yeah. And so in the finance natural
01:10:36
part of it. You know,
01:10:38
probably in the beginning, it was more of
01:10:40
a feast and famine type of thing. But,
01:10:42
you know, it's like,
01:10:44
how does the finances work with, like, okay.
01:10:47
So you play on the song? You don't
01:10:48
know what's gonna happen to it and then
01:10:50
it goes huge.
01:10:51
But you... Did you get paid the 1
01:10:53
time or do you get royalties? Like, how
01:10:55
does it work for a session musician? Okay.
01:10:57
Well, to unpack that like, early on. Yeah.
01:11:00
I made. Lot less, but I needed a
01:11:02
lot less. I mean, when I first moved
01:11:03
to town, I lived kind of in the
01:11:05
hood, and I had half a duplex for
01:11:07
200 a month,
01:11:09
which rents in Nashville are obscene now. I
01:11:11
mean, 2000 a month is, you know, the
01:11:13
thing now. Right. It's terrible. I feel so
01:11:15
bad for the young kids coming up. So
01:11:18
the other to address the other,
01:11:21
yeah. The Us is 1 of the only
01:11:24
countries in the world that doesn't. Pay performance
01:11:26
royalties for
01:11:28
stuff that's on the radio.
01:11:30
So everywhere else, they'll pay the musicians if
01:11:33
something's a big hit, I get stuff on
01:11:35
the back end. We are finally starting to
01:11:37
get that. It's the sag after fund, the
01:11:40
A and, the musicians union, A sag after
01:11:43
a fund, and it's derived from the streaming
01:11:47
companies and Sirius x m all contribute to
01:11:49
this fund. So if you play on a
01:11:51
can't... Yeah. It's it's getting better. There's something
01:11:53
there for sure. Spotify
01:11:56
declines to contribute.
01:11:58
Of of course.
01:12:00
They Yeah. But but, yeah. So at least
01:12:02
there's that. It's a bit of a silver
01:12:03
lining as kind of a lot of the
01:12:06
industry contracts. There's at least something that's kinda
01:12:08
gotten better. Yeah.
01:12:10
That's really wild because I mean, isn't that
01:12:11
the story
01:12:13
you know, for, like, 56 years because, like,
01:12:16
the Fun brothers and those guys, they all
01:12:17
got the shaft, you know? Well, back in
01:12:19
the day on all those hits. Like, then
01:12:21
it's just now changing.
01:12:23
There's been
01:12:25
something called the sound recording... Special payments fund
01:12:27
that they started in the 19 thirties
01:12:29
when recorded music started taking off. The musicians
01:12:32
got together, and said we're not just gonna
01:12:34
play once and get paid once. So it's...
01:12:37
The fun shrunk as recorded music has shrunk,
01:12:40
but it's just a percentage of every master
01:12:43
recording you play. Gets mh. You get. A
01:12:45
little extra for that. But it's not dependent
01:12:47
on something's a big hit. You don't do
01:12:49
extra l or anything like that.
01:12:51
So do you have any sense? I mean,
01:12:53
this is kind of like
01:12:55
you know, I guess, the magic producers are
01:12:58
the ones that really have this. But, like,
01:13:00
when when you play on something and and
01:13:02
you're like, that was really great and then
01:13:03
it, like, doesn't go anywhere versus, like, something
01:13:07
that gets big. Is there just too many
01:13:08
moving parts to know what what was really
01:13:11
special and what we'll like hit.
01:13:14
You know, Like... It's it's, yeah. A lot
01:13:17
of stuff has to line up for to
01:13:20
do well. If it's a really hot artist,
01:13:21
you know that's stands a better chance.
01:13:24
I mean, and it's a strangely in equitable
01:13:28
industry, like, I remember the same week that
01:13:31
I played on that 3 wooden crosses for
01:13:34
Randy Travis. That was, you know, the biggest
01:13:36
song of the year C song of the
01:13:37
year Ac song in year. And I was
01:13:39
filed low budget because it was a Christian
01:13:41
recording.
01:13:42
Good. Yeah.
01:13:43
I won't comment on that. So I made
01:13:46
a hundred dollars to play on... Arguably the
01:13:48
biggest song of the year. Later that that
01:13:50
week, I pretended to play acoustic guitar with
01:13:53
Ras flats on the C awards
01:13:56
for 4 minutes and got paid 1500 dollars.
01:14:00
What do you mean you pretended the play?
01:14:02
So there's award shows a lot of time
01:14:04
they don't have fans. The fans that just
01:14:06
monitor that. Because if you have, like, 15
01:14:08
bands, they're throughout the course of that. I
01:14:09
mean, each band has, like, 30 inputs, it's
01:14:12
just brutal for the sound guys to try
01:14:14
to keep track of all that. Suddenly you're
01:14:16
just throw smiling and smiling and str away.
01:14:19
Yeah. He. You're up there playing like all
01:14:22
along the watch hour because why the hell.
01:14:25
Yeah. The day before the run through at
01:14:27
the rehearsal me and the fiddle player played
01:14:29
into opposite ends of the same chord.
01:14:32
And the crew goes
01:14:34
Good. That's funny. Don't do that tomorrow. I
01:14:37
don't that. Right.
01:14:39
That's cool. I mean, is there any, like,
01:14:42
is there any cy in you? Like when
01:14:44
you... When... Like, what what are the parts
01:14:46
that make a little bit cynical? Oh, yeah.
01:14:48
I mean, it's it's very part of the?
01:14:50
All have to work very very hard to
01:14:52
not be jade in the music industry. I
01:14:54
mean, Mh. And, you know, you see
01:14:57
some of the most talented people come a
01:14:58
lot and nothing ever happens for them, and
01:15:01
then some other folks that are just ab
01:15:02
invisible wind up doing really well.
01:15:07
He it's I mean, it's it's hard. You
01:15:09
know,
01:15:11
I mean, people hated Taylor Swift when she
01:15:13
was out because she wasn't a strong singer
01:15:15
and her father had money.
01:15:18
But she was, like, an incredibly hard worker,
01:15:21
super motivated, and then a good song that
01:15:24
spoke to her generation, You know? Mh.
01:15:27
I mean, so there are a lot of
01:15:29
ways, and she's, you know, she's gotten way
01:15:31
better as a singer, you know, you can,
01:15:33
you know.
01:15:34
And, of course, with modern technology
01:15:36
to to vocal.
01:15:37
And just beating somebody up in the studio.
01:15:40
You can get anybody sounding pretty good.
01:15:42
But, yeah, I mean,
01:15:44
it's hard to know what's gonna do well.
01:15:45
I played on this record for billing current
01:15:47
and I played on half the album,
01:15:50
and this 1 song called good directions.
01:15:53
I had a big Do of heart it.
01:15:54
But it's just a fun song. Right? And
01:15:57
I randomly... He's a pretty big country star,
01:15:59
Randomly ran to him a couple times.
01:16:02
Like, in the months that followed that. And
01:16:04
I was like, dude, That's the song. And
01:16:06
he's was like, I know I know I
01:16:07
love that song that the label hates it.
01:16:09
And they won't release it. And finally, he
01:16:12
said you have to release the song. And
01:16:14
so they gru put it out, and then
01:16:16
they did not promote it, and it lang
01:16:18
in it and fifties on the charts at
01:16:20
the bottom of the charts, and they were
01:16:22
about to pull it and all of a
01:16:24
sudden it caught fire, and it wound up
01:16:25
being the biggest country song of 2008,
01:16:28
nice.
01:16:30
So me and Billy were right. The labels
01:16:32
are on,
01:16:33
lot of being, you know, ask caps song
01:16:35
of the year and and the biggest song.
01:16:37
And it was fine I have a picked
01:16:38
Do part on it and miss solo alone.
01:16:41
It doesn't always... Yep it's a fun song,
01:16:43
son by a great singer. I my... My
01:16:45
my super super hot in the mix, and
01:16:47
I have, like, the central part of the
01:16:49
whole, you know, thing. So
01:16:52
Let's just say those kind of things are
01:16:54
few and far between where it all lines
01:16:56
something like that. That's super cool. So let
01:16:58
me ask you 1 more question, then we'll
01:17:00
go out on some music.
01:17:02
But let me... What about a story? You
01:17:04
know, you just actually...
01:17:05
It's a good segue. You just said they,
01:17:07
this song lined it all up, and it
01:17:09
turned out really great and everything else So...
01:17:11
You know, I asked you I think in
01:17:12
an email to to think about some of
01:17:14
these seminal climbing, what's the story we haven't
01:17:16
heard that that you go to in your
01:17:19
mind as far as... Is rock climbing as
01:17:21
far as an adventure that you've had that
01:17:22
we haven't covered yet that maybe jumps forward
01:17:25
even even recently if if it is Well,
01:17:28
let me tell a couple more music stories
01:17:30
real quick. I have a couple that I
01:17:31
thought would be fun.
01:17:32
When I was... So I got hired by
01:17:35
Kid rock. Talked to play in his band.
01:17:38
He had me up. He has this big
01:17:39
compound next to his house in the suburbs
01:17:42
of Detroit, and he have me sleep downstairs
01:17:45
in the rug this room in this big
01:17:46
studio. And 1 morning, I woke up, and
01:17:49
I was I was tired, and I went
01:17:50
upstairs and my boss or shorts to make
01:17:52
some coffee, you know, because I was the
01:17:53
only 1 in there. And,
01:17:55
Bob, Kid rock. He goes by Bob, if
01:17:58
any says, yeah. I'm good buddies with kids,
01:18:00
you know, they're full of shape because he's
01:18:01
just always bob. Bob came walking in. Was
01:18:04
this sp
01:18:05
sp old black guy, and he's like, hey,
01:18:07
Smith. Whenever This is d from Run Dmc,
01:18:09
and I'm like, am I underwear holding like
01:18:11
a coffee pot shaking his hand.
01:18:16
So, you know, hanging out on that tour.
01:18:18
There was... It was kinda always something crazy
01:18:20
like that. You know, we played the Iowa
01:18:22
state fair and talk I'm Arnold introduced us.
01:18:25
I was like, man, That seen in Austin
01:18:26
Powers in the bathroom, I was, like, 1
01:18:29
of the great moments of American cinema.
01:18:33
I'm And, like, you know, I did Let
01:18:35
and letterman them in a bunch of times,
01:18:36
so those Tv shows, and it was always
01:18:38
fun. You'd always run into different people.
01:18:40
We were there this... Same day doing letter
01:18:42
in that Christopher Walk was. And
01:18:45
I was running up stage tune my man
01:18:48
at the last minute, and I almost ran
01:18:50
smack into Christopher Walker. I was like, god,
01:18:52
It would hurt me.
01:18:54
And,
01:18:55
always fun stuff like that. And I got
01:18:57
asked to play on the Roger Miller tribute
01:18:59
record a few years ago. And so once
01:19:02
on was Kent roller skate a Buffalo herd
01:19:04
and they just brought in, like, a ton
01:19:05
of old op stars to sing on it.
01:19:07
And then last on wearing lone as me.
01:19:09
They brought Allison K and Dolly Part.
01:19:12
And none of the those were there that
01:19:13
day sadly, They just had a un vocalist
01:19:15
and doing a placeholder for us. Right. And
01:19:17
then the last 1, I felt back as
01:19:20
they sent the guys the rest of the
01:19:21
band home. They're like we already have the
01:19:23
try back for this, but we need Smith
01:19:24
the to his old friends, and it was
01:19:28
Willie Nelson Chris Kristoff Robertson and Merle H
01:19:31
back Hell, yes. 1 of the last things
01:19:32
mer man. I was like, I was driving
01:19:35
home. I was like, fuck, I could get
01:19:37
hip by a bus, and that'll Be totally
01:19:39
cool with it. I just... Quit music right
01:19:40
now, you know. Yeah. I was actually that's
01:19:43
funny because I just thought right before you
01:19:45
said it I just thought about Willie because
01:19:47
let me ask you and I you got
01:19:48
time I hope but well, you know, I
01:19:50
would love for you like to dish on,
01:19:52
like, all the assholes, but that's not a
01:19:53
good professional
01:19:56
professional stance. But who's who's like the... Who's
01:19:58
like the coolest? Like, who... We were talking
01:20:00
about Dolly dolly Look. Yeah. Yeah. Who's we're
01:20:02
talking about Dolly. I mean, she's been in
01:20:04
the industry for
01:20:06
I don't know. Was it 70 years, 60
01:20:08
year. I don't fuck... I don't know, at
01:20:09
least 50 or so. And, you don't, hear
01:20:13
anybody. I've never heard 1. Person say anything
01:20:15
bad about her. That's Right. Insane. Right? I
01:20:18
mean, yeah. And she's, like, done all kinds
01:20:20
of crazy stuff. She, like, s this foundation
01:20:23
that sends books to kids,
01:20:25
done all his dad is a litter, you
01:20:27
know, all kinds of crazy stuff. So, I
01:20:29
mean, she's, like, beyond ledge. She hasn't had
01:20:31
anything on the radio in 30 years and
01:20:33
she's bigger than she ever has been.
01:20:35
Right. Yeah. So it's cool played on a
01:20:38
couple things for her. And then, you know,
01:20:40
Willie is a legend. I mean, look at
01:20:41
him.
01:20:43
You know, what was a kid. They would
01:20:44
tell you in school, like, if you smoke
01:20:46
pot, you'll never amount to anything. I was
01:20:48
like, well, I could, you know, the most
01:20:51
successful country singer saw. I all time it's
01:20:54
still crushing it at 90 years old, you
01:20:56
know Right. But, yeah. I mean,
01:20:58
man,
01:20:59
yeah. Our don't wanna dish... There's a couple
01:21:02
really
01:21:02
well known assholes.
01:21:04
Friend of mine was tour managing 1 of
01:21:06
them, and this gotta I threw a fit,
01:21:08
the artists threw a fit and said you're
01:21:10
fired and they happen to be in the
01:21:11
town in North Carolina where my buddy's sister
01:21:14
lived. So you like Texted center her. She's
01:21:16
like, yeah. I'll be there in 10 minutes.
01:21:17
The tour just walked off the bus in
01:21:19
the middle of the tour with all of
01:21:20
the stuff for the next 2 weeks of
01:21:22
shows.
01:21:23
In orders of the no Serious of Ser.
01:21:25
Like... Sorry. See you later. So... Wow. It
01:21:28
has its... You know, being a dick has
01:21:30
its price sometimes and never totally. The notice
01:21:32
Man,
01:21:34
there's been so many great moments, you know,
01:21:37
both in cla and music.
01:21:39
I went,
01:21:41
had climbed zion before, and, my buddy Kirk
01:21:44
was living there for a period of time.
01:21:47
So I said, why don't you try to
01:21:49
us out a first descent for us to
01:21:50
work on. And he found this possible root
01:21:53
in the narrows,
01:21:54
so you like had to kinda wait 20
01:21:56
minutes us the Creek, the river,
01:21:59
and
01:22:00
we started working on it. Kinda... He couldn't
01:22:02
get the start high opened that up, and
01:22:05
then it got to some harder free con.
01:22:06
So I let him get on that.
01:22:08
It was kind of the summer so there
01:22:10
were tons of tour watching us at this
01:22:12
point. And he got up, and there were
01:22:14
2 coleman cooler sized blocks stacked on top
01:22:16
of each other. It was, like, pro. First
01:22:19
try to find a way around them. He's
01:22:20
like, man, there's no other way.
01:22:23
I was like, okay. And I got off
01:22:24
to the side,
01:22:26
and
01:22:27
he, like, hammered them with his hands. He's
01:22:28
like, okay. I'm going for it. He goes
01:22:30
up and pulls off these 2 blocks, and
01:22:33
I hear him go shit. And he's on
01:22:35
coming down and the blocks are coming down,
01:22:37
and then couple them... 1 of them hits
01:22:39
the wall on shatter into a bunch of
01:22:40
pieces, all the stuff comes thunder down. It
01:22:43
takes like a 30 or 40 footer,
01:22:45
and he's like, fine. And the crowd is
01:22:49
just, like shell shocked. They're just, like, gaping.
01:22:52
Like And he just goes back up there
01:22:54
and finish She's like, well, clean now.
01:22:56
Right.
01:22:58
But, yeah. Rock falls a thing, man. Had
01:23:00
a couple problems early on. I was on
01:23:02
middle cathedral really early on, and we were
01:23:05
on central Pillar frenzy. I was still on
01:23:07
the ground.
01:23:08
I This Japanese climber came up with us.
01:23:10
I mean, Japanese tourist came up with us.
01:23:12
And he looks at all the shattered rock
01:23:13
on the ground he says, do ro fall,
01:23:17
and
01:23:18
this My buddy goes, nah. Just the same,
01:23:20
Like, oh, yeah. He was halfway at the
01:23:23
pitch, and I heard just a huge rumbling.
01:23:25
And a bunch of stuff was coming down.
01:23:27
I managed to try to dodge, but stuff
01:23:30
is just s down stuff the size of
01:23:32
basketball,
01:23:33
you know, turning to power. When it hit
01:23:34
next to me. And it stopped. I was
01:23:36
like, fuck we made it. And I look
01:23:38
up, and he's hanging upside down from the
01:23:40
end of the rope blood just gutter pushing
01:23:41
out of his head about 50 feet off
01:23:43
the ground. I managed to lower him but
01:23:45
he was totally disoriented and his neck looked
01:23:47
fucked up too, washing and he's saying, I
01:23:50
can't see I can't see... I had to
01:23:52
make a decision whether to carry him out
01:23:54
with the neck injury.
01:23:56
Or to wait. While he's bleeding, and I
01:23:59
kinda fire and carried him to the car,
01:24:01
and we made it to the medical center
01:24:03
in the valley. They chewed me out for,
01:24:07
moving and neck injured person, but I was
01:24:09
like, yeah. You know.
01:24:11
And they helicopter him to Modest.
01:24:14
And,
01:24:15
I drove and stop by. Was gonna stop
01:24:18
by the hospital on the way home to
01:24:19
the Bay area. And
01:24:21
that highway 99, I guess is 3 lanes
01:24:24
each direction
01:24:25
and shit. A car comes flipping over the
01:24:28
divider of the freeway at me, and I
01:24:30
have to sw and it comes so close
01:24:32
to hitting me head on.
01:24:36
So I come that close to dying twice
01:24:38
in a day. I get to the hospital,
01:24:39
and they're gonna release him. He has 80
01:24:41
stitches
01:24:42
and a huge trump on his back.
01:24:45
And I see the medic that flew with
01:24:46
him and the helicopter. Was like, fuck, man.
01:24:48
You wouldn't believe just what happened to me,
01:24:50
just out ta here. He's was like, oh,
01:24:52
we went and got that guide. You see
01:24:53
him fly out of the car.
01:24:56
Oh, man.
01:24:57
So,
01:24:58
I mean, I don't know what happened with
01:25:00
the guy.
01:25:01
My buddy hugh
01:25:02
did some climbing after that and not the
01:25:04
same, you know. Right. But he was physically.
01:25:07
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. Yeah. Yeah. This is
01:25:09
gonna be... Thought we're gonna know bummer. When
01:25:12
you're getting when you're getting there, I was
01:25:14
like, okay. So then what happened?
01:25:16
Yeah.
01:25:18
I don't know.
01:25:19
Yeah. I guess I could I editor with
01:25:21
a little more upbeat story.
01:25:24
No. That's cool. But yeah. It it... Yeah.
01:25:27
Go ahead. So So any great times, you
01:25:29
know,
01:25:30
a bunch of trips out to the northwest
01:25:32
run I'm out there for music over the
01:25:34
last 10 years. Brad, Carter, who I think
01:25:36
you had on your,
01:25:37
on the podcast.
01:25:39
Done a bunch with him out there. We
01:25:40
did s you on year. Almost got the
01:25:43
chop on that crossing underneath that glacier to
01:25:45
get on to the butt the way I
01:25:47
guess some people have gotten.
01:25:49
I remember 1 time was out there up
01:25:52
and between the flights being delayed and then
01:25:54
playing the show, I think I had slept
01:25:56
3 hours and 2 nights and we went
01:25:57
and did Forbidden peak.
01:25:59
So much fun and get to the summit,
01:26:01
it was so still you could match and
01:26:03
let it burn down, just beautiful.
01:26:05
You,
01:26:07
Canadian Rockies, so many great experiences up there.
01:26:10
I remember leaving National 1 morning,
01:26:13
and then so long the east ridge of
01:26:14
Edith The next morning being on top by
01:26:17
noon the next day, came back and did
01:26:19
the north face of it with a partner
01:26:21
the next year. All love that mountain. Canadian
01:26:24
eat rockies what I'm just like some of
01:26:26
the best seeds
01:26:28
the east ridge of temple saw hide you
01:26:30
know, so many fun experiences up there. Wow.
01:26:33
It's like, I don't know. You just keep
01:26:35
coming at it with all these different stories.
01:26:38
From both sides of thing, but you also
01:26:39
have a family. I mean, you have... Is
01:26:41
it 2 boys? Yeah. An older son, Evan
01:26:44
who's a strong climber. He don. Sites
01:26:46
picture of them on your Instagram. Yeah. Yeah.
01:26:48
He's 35.
01:26:50
U. It lives out Nashville, North Carolina. And
01:26:52
he is great too. Of them. And and
01:26:55
echo is 9, and it's fun to see
01:26:57
them together. I think we're gonna actually go
01:26:59
meet out the Ob this weekend
01:27:01
and do a little father sons camping and
01:27:04
climbing. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, cool, dude. I
01:27:07
mean, I think I've taken plenty of your
01:27:09
time and I appreciate it. Like I said,
01:27:10
I... Getting this for free.
01:27:12
And I actually... I think I did mention
01:27:15
that. Like, hey, I'd love to have you
01:27:16
play some music, but I also don't like
01:27:18
up to ask working musicians to to give
01:27:20
their shit away for free. So I really
01:27:23
appreciate it. But, if you if you have
01:27:25
a feeling about to playing us out. Yeah.
01:27:27
I would I would love it. And, and
01:27:30
again, I totally appreciate it, man. Yeah. Yeah.
01:27:33
No.
01:27:33
Man, gotta keep music fun. Like, a lot
01:27:36
of the time I'll work 60 hours during
01:27:38
the week and then go play Blue grass
01:27:40
on the week. Is for fun, you know,
01:27:42
just because Right.
01:27:43
If you... If it just only becomes work
01:27:46
then that kind of resonates it's the whole
01:27:48
point of it. You know? Yeah. That's like,
01:27:50
the guide problem. Right? Like, oh, yeah. Right
01:27:52
right? Just makes your hate climb and people
01:28:17
About that.
01:28:42
There's a good Hawaiian ending england.
01:28:51
Perfect.
01:29:02
Alright folks. Thanks for listening, and thanks to
01:29:04
Smith for sitting down.
01:29:07
And 1 of the other things I like
01:29:08
about these off pieced quote unquote climbing interviews.
01:29:11
Is that people like Smith don't have any
01:29:13
real incentive
01:29:15
to do a podcast,
01:29:16
a climbing podcast anyway. He's not a pro
01:29:19
climber, and Frankly, this will do little or
01:29:22
nothing
01:29:22
for his music career.
01:29:24
People like Smith do the enormous cast because
01:29:26
they wanna connect with me
01:29:28
They wanna connect with you guys, they wanna
01:29:30
connect with the climbing community, and that has
01:29:32
its own special value. So
01:29:35
if you do wanna follow. Smith, and I
01:29:38
recommend that you do because it'll break up
01:29:39
that climbing content you're so bored with on
01:29:42
your Instagram. You can check them out at
01:29:44
Smith underscore curry
01:29:46
underscore rocks
01:29:47
on Instagram, and I've been actually holding onto
01:29:50
to this interview because supposedly Smith, has been
01:29:53
revamp his website, and you wanted me to
01:29:55
wait. I think he did that. I'm gonna
01:29:57
go check right now.
01:29:59
Yes, he did do that.
01:30:01
Looks great. Go for the mustache. Stay for
01:30:04
the music
01:30:05
at smith
01:30:07
curry dot com.
01:30:08
Yeah. And try connecting with Smith because I
01:30:11
think recording is a lot of sitting around.
01:30:14
While, things get set up and other people
01:30:16
do their takes and whatnot. So He's always
01:30:18
been super responsive.
01:30:20
He loves to talk climbing. Loves to talk
01:30:21
music.
01:30:23
Okay. A small bit of news is I
01:30:25
am likely. Going to be up at the
01:30:27
Art Academy in Sq,
01:30:29
not a thousand percent confirmed, but it's looking
01:30:32
like it.
01:30:33
I'll let you know more on the next
01:30:34
episode.
01:30:35
But in the meantime,
01:30:37
of course,
01:30:38
check your knots. And tune in your instruments,
01:30:40
you are your instruments in tune.
01:30:42
Just like they are on this track that
01:30:44
Smith scent.
01:30:46
So we're going out on a little Smith
01:30:48
Curry.
01:30:49
On Do bro, pedal steel laps steel, I
01:30:51
think, maybe the guitar, it's all in here.
01:30:54
Enjoy.
01:32:20
Get out of here Dewey. What are you
01:32:22
y'all doing in here? We're smoking reef refer.
01:32:25
And you don't want no part of this
01:32:26
shit. You're smoking reef reverse? Yeah. Of course,
01:32:29
we are Can't you smell it? Come on,
01:32:31
Dewey we? Join the party. No. Dewey we.
01:32:33
You don't want this. Get out of here.
01:32:36
You know what? I don't want no hangover,
01:32:38
I can't get no hangover. It doesn't give
01:32:40
you a hangover.
01:32:43
I'll get addicted to it or something? It's
01:32:45
not habit forming.
01:32:47
Oh, okay. Well,
01:32:49
I don't know. I don't wanna
01:32:52
overdose on it. You can't o d on
01:32:54
it.
01:32:55
It's not gonna make me wanna have sex.
01:32:57
Is it? It makes sex even better.
01:33:00
Sounds kinda expensive. Is the cheapest drug there
01:33:03
it is.
01:33:06
You don't want it.
01:33:08
I think I kinda wanted.
01:33:10
Okay. But just this once. Come in.