May 20, 2025
Strippers, Cocaine, & Parties

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This week on What The F*** , I sit down with my mentor Robb-former head of the Audio Department at the Art Institute of Nashville-for a candid conversation about music, madness, and everything in between.
We get into his time archiving Warner Brothers cartoon sound effects, the Wilhelm scream, and what it was like touring as a drummer with Bobby Goldsboro. He tells stories about bumping into celebrities, having his music stolen, and I confess some sins of late-night studio chaos that only happens when the grown-ups aren't watching.
It's raw, real, ridiculous...and all true.
WEBVTT
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I had one actor who could not say birthday, he
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would say birthday. And you don't want to call
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somebody out and, you know, make them feel stupid
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or whatever, but I was like, okay, can we try
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birthday again? And he'd go, yeah, okay, so we
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were talking, and it happened to be my birthday,
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and I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
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I'm Jake Jacobs, and you're listening to What
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The Fuck. My special guest today, Rob, was the
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head of the audio department at the Art Institute
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in Nashville. And I met Rob not as a 18 -year
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-old, 19 -year -old student, but as a 45 -year
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-old man going back to school for the first time
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in a long time. Rob was very influential on my
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career in the audio industry. Not in a way that
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you might think, though, because the one class...
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that Rob taught that I was able to attend dealing
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with dialogue and editing dialogue and cleaning
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it up. I learned a lot from that. And a couple
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of years after I graduated, after not really
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making it with the music stuff, now I'm doing
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podcasts and I'm editing audio the way Rob taught
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me how to do it. That's awesome. A big what the
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fuck welcome to my friend and mentor, Rob. How
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the hell are you, sir? I'm awesome, Jake. Thank
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you. Thanks for having me. Oh, you're welcome.
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And thank you for those nice words. To be honest,
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it was a class about audio post -production,
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which involved sound for film and commercials.
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Yeah. And then audio books, too, because a lot
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of people didn't realize that that's actually
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a career. Yes. Editing audio books. And then
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podcasting wasn't really a big thing at that
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point. Nah. But the whole technique of editing
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dialogue, making sure the dialogue is clear,
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pacing it the right way, all that stuff, that
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all applies across the board to all the post
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-production. work i used to get a lot of really
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amazing what the fuck blank stares in my class
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because a lot of the students were like i don't
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want to know about i don't care about this i
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want to make some beats and whatever yeah i can't
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tell you how gratifying it is to hear you say
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that you got something out of the class like
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that because as a teacher, you try and do a good
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job and reach people and you know you're not
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going to get to most people. But I think it was
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because you were older and you actually had a
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little bit more of an open mind than some of
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the younger students and more life experience.
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You were one of the few people that you could
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tell the light kind of went on in your head a
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little bit. It was like, yeah, I'll pay attention
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to this. Maybe this might be helpful sometime.
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I wasn't sitting there on my phone playing Farmville
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on Facebook. It was an interesting time. The
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three years that I was there learned a lot. I
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want to go back a little further because before
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the Art Institute, you did some really cool stuff.
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And one of the things I wanted to touch on was
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your involvement with Warner Brothers and archiving
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some of the iconic audio from the Bugs Bunny
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era and that kind of thing. What can you tell
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us? Well, I was living in Los Angeles. A friend
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of mine had called and said, hey, I have this.
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friend in Chicago who's moving to LA. He's a
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new film composer and he just got a gig recreating
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some of the cartoons for like Daffy Duck, some
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of the older Daffy Duck cartoons and stuff. And
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he needs somebody to come over and set up his
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studio. Would you be able to go and do that?
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I had a lot of experience with synchronization.
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And at the time we were using video machines
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and at the beginning of starting to use computers
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for sequencing and that kind of thing and analog.
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tape machines so i was really good at synchronizing
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all those things together so you know they all
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were running at the right time and blah blah
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blah blah so i got him set up got his whole studio
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rigged up and he goes hey have you ever done
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sound effects for cartoons before and this was
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a what the fuck moment i paused a second i said
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oh yeah sure i had complete lie i had watched
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Warner Brothers cartoons since I was a little
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kid, and I loved them, especially Roadrunner
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stuff and everything. Oh, yeah. And he goes,
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oh, cool. I'm supposed to recreate the music,
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but we also need to recreate the sound effects
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for all this. And I was like, oh, cool. Okay,
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yeah. And so he goes, when can you start? Can
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you start next week? And I'm like, yeah, sure.
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So I went home over the weekend and sweated.
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Dragged out all my VHS tapes of Warner Brothers
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cartoons and started watching everything and
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really, really paying attention to the sound
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effects and the whoop and the blang and all that
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kind of stuff. I understood the recording process.
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I understood how to create, record stuff. But
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the challenge was to try and get these sound
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effects to sound like the original ones. Yeah.
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And they were recorded in a certain way in a
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certain space where it was hard to recreate that.
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Just even the sound of the room, like the reverb
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tail you hear on certain things. Yeah. It was
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hard to recreate that kind of thing. So we started
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working on it, and I'm kind of stumbling through.
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trying to get some stuff, and there was just
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a few things I couldn't get together. They had
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arranged to meet with one of the guys who had
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been doing sound effects for Warner Brothers
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for like 30 years or whatever. He wasn't the
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original person. The original person that did
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a lot of that was a guy by the name of Treg Brown,
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who is credited as an editor, but he did the
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majority of all the sound effects and stuff and
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created all that. But this other guy, Frank,
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had been there working, and he... He kind of
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took over from Treg initially and had built this
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huge library. And all the sounds were on film
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mag, mag stock. Okay. Right? Like thick film.
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Yeah. That you have to put through either a projector
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or through a flatbed, which is what you edit
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film on. And so they brought me over and they
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show me this little closet on the Warner Brothers
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lot and said, here are all the sound effects.
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that Frank has curated over the past whatever
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years. And it's all these little reels of film,
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all kind of loosely cataloged, kind of like here's
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some whoops, here's a boings, here's a flip -flop,
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here's a zippity -out and zippity -in, all these
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things. I'm like, cool, because now I understand
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the vocabulary here. Because the names of the
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things sounded like the sound. What is it, onomatopoeia,
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right? They said, well, what we want you to do
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is... We'd like you to listen to these, obviously,
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but we want you to transfer all this stuff to
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digital tape. At the time, it was a DAT tape.
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DAT, yeah. And they said, you can come in every
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day for however long you need, and you'll be
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in this little room. So I was locked in this
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tiny little room. Not locked, but stuck in this
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little room and transferred all of these different
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takes and different versions of sound effects
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onto digital tape. At the time, we didn't really
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have a lot of noise reduction stuff, so it still
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had that. gritty sound a bit to it yeah some
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distortion in it some noise from the film stock
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but i was able to just get everything digitally
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transferred and then we were going to figure
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out how we could clean that stuff up after that
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so that took me i think i did that for three
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weeks It was like seven or eight hours a day.
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The last day I was there was the day that the
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riots broke out in Los Angeles after Rodney King.
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So that gives you an idea how long ago that was.
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I was about to leave and they said, well, you
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know what? We're going to close up the studio
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for the rest of the week. And that was the last
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time I was there. But anyway. I got all that
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stuff transferred. Eventually, it ended up going
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to a sound effects library called, I think it
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was Sound Ideas. They make sound effects libraries
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that you can buy. And they took all that stuff
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and cleaned up some of it and just cataloged
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it and whatever and released them. But there
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are a lot of sound effects that Warner Brothers
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wouldn't let them have that were real iconic
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sounds, like the Roadrunners. That sound? Yeah.
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They said, nope, that doesn't go anywhere. The
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carrot crunch from Bugs Bunny. Wow. That doesn't
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go anywhere. And there's a couple other sounds
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like that. And they said, the only person that's
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going to be allowed to use these is you and any
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of our other editors. And you can only use this
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on Warner Brothers. sanctioned or whatever projects.
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Right. They made me sign a contract and all this
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stuff. So I was walking, I had at home in my
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studio, I had all these tapes of all this stuff.
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I'm like, whoa! But I couldn't do anything with
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it unless they called up and said, hey, we need
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you to work, do some sound for a commercial or
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whatever. That was pretty weird. And that was
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an amazing learning experience because I got
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to hear not only just the sound effect, but what
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they would do to prep before it and after it.
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Oh, that's cool. Where you could hear where they
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would move a mic around a little bit to adjust
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what they were doing. And you could hear how
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the room would change and the reverb of the room
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would change. That's how I got my start doing
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all this stuff. And I eventually went on to work
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with Chuck Jones, who was the original Warner
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Brothers animation directors, who did Roadrunner
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and Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn. And so I
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got to work on a bunch of projects for him for
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like 10 years until he passed away. Was Mel Blanc
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already gone by then? Mel Blanc passed away the
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month after I started working for this composer
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guy. And what was weird is that his son, Noel,
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was starting to try and take over for him. And
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he had most of the voices nailed. But the big
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complaint about him was that he didn't have the
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acting down that Mel had. Mel could just rip
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back and forth between different characters and
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just get into that character or whatever. Yeah.
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Where anyone else trying to replace him kind
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of struggled with it. And they finally, I worked
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on a couple of things that Noel had done some
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voices for. And then they started using a couple
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other people. Joe Alasky was another person who
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started doing Bugs Bunny's voices. But yeah,
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it was interesting. I never got a chance to work
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with Mel Blanc, though. That would have been
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cool because he was just, you know, you go back.
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I can watch some of the interviews and stuff
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with him and it's pretty amazing. You know the
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sound of when the coyote falls off a cliff and
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you hear that whistle? Yeah. That whistle is
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actually, he recorded a, I don't know if it was
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a bomber, some sort of a bomber. Okay. And that's
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the sound. And he had that whole, you could hear
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the plane fly over and then you hear the. And
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so parts of it, you're like, what the heck is
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that? And then you realize as it gets closer
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that that's the sound that he used for him falling
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off the cliff. It was just the way he edited
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it, you know, and made it fit. It was cool. Rob
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is the person that introduced me. To the Wilhelm
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scream. Now, people probably don't know what
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the heck that is. But it is on two commercials
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right now. You probably know a little bit more
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about the origin. I only know the lore. Like,
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the only thing that I know is they were trying
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to figure out for sure who voiced it. And the
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last I heard, it was, I can't remember his name,
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but he was from Sam the Shaman, the Pharaohs,
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the singer. Am I correct in that? I believe so.
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The Wilhelm scream. It started out, and I always
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use this as an example in class, where... If
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one person has a sound effect and they use it,
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and then another person gets that same sound
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effect and they use it, and then that person
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and another person, you start hearing the same
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door close over and over again. You start hearing
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the same car start over and over again. There
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it is in its glory. So the deal was, I think
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the first time it was used was in a Western.
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I don't know the name of the Western. If you
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go on Wikipedia, there's a whole thing about
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the history of it where this guy on the horse
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gets shot and they wanted to put some sort of
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a sound of him falling off his horse and dying.
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And so they found this scream and put it in.
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And then that ended up starting to populate.
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I mean, it started going on everything where
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anyone was flying away or got blown up and they
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flew away or got shot. And you start hearing
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it all over the place. And it became the de facto
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I'm dying scream. Yes. Right. Yep. So years passed
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and eventually people kind of got away from it
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because they're like, yeah, yeah. OK, we've heard
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that we can make new one, different stuff now,
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blah, blah, blah. You know, obviously. as the
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recording process and technology moved ahead.
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But a number of sound editors, and I think it
00:12:43.580 --> 00:12:46.019
kind of started with people at Skywalker Sound
00:12:46.019 --> 00:12:49.000
when they were working on Raiders of the Lost
00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:52.799
Ark and Star Wars. They started putting that
00:12:52.799 --> 00:12:56.600
scream in in various places where you may not
00:12:56.600 --> 00:13:00.740
necessarily hear it or notice it, but it was
00:13:00.740 --> 00:13:03.909
put in as a joke. Yeah. That kind of caught on,
00:13:03.950 --> 00:13:08.110
and every audio engineer doing anything was starting
00:13:08.110 --> 00:13:11.809
to put it in everywhere. And it's still, to this
00:13:11.809 --> 00:13:15.149
day, it shows up in movies. It shows up in movie
00:13:15.149 --> 00:13:18.750
trailers, commercials. I think most people don't
00:13:18.750 --> 00:13:20.529
have a clue what the hell it is. They've heard
00:13:20.529 --> 00:13:22.509
it before, and they think, oh, that's silly.
00:13:22.669 --> 00:13:25.169
But they really don't know where it came from.
00:13:25.330 --> 00:13:26.950
We would have projects that we would have to
00:13:26.950 --> 00:13:28.690
do. Sometimes it would be a musical project.
00:13:28.809 --> 00:13:30.490
Sometimes it would be like a podcast type of
00:13:30.490 --> 00:13:32.799
thing. It was my mission. When I did it and I
00:13:32.799 --> 00:13:34.759
was successful at it. I remember. I put in the
00:13:34.759 --> 00:13:37.259
Wilhelm scream on every single project. And sometimes
00:13:37.259 --> 00:13:39.259
it was super subtle. You'd really have to listen
00:13:39.259 --> 00:13:41.139
for it. Other times I just put it in your face.
00:13:41.240 --> 00:13:43.179
Oh, yeah. But anytime I did that, I would let
00:13:43.179 --> 00:13:45.480
Rob hear it. And Rob's like, okay, where's the
00:13:45.480 --> 00:13:46.919
Wilhelm scream? I know it's in there somewhere.
00:13:48.679 --> 00:13:53.519
I remember that very well. Sometimes audio editing
00:13:53.519 --> 00:13:56.220
and doing sound for certain things can get kind
00:13:56.220 --> 00:13:59.379
of tedious. Oh, yeah. How many times do I have
00:13:59.379 --> 00:14:02.799
to hear somebody get punched? And sometimes you
00:14:02.799 --> 00:14:04.960
just got to stick something in there that people
00:14:04.960 --> 00:14:08.159
may not notice, but you know it's there. Oh,
00:14:08.159 --> 00:14:10.019
yeah. And it just kind of makes you smile a little
00:14:10.019 --> 00:14:12.340
bit every time you hear it. Yeah. Yeah. It's
00:14:12.340 --> 00:14:14.759
pretty crazy. Pretty fun. Something else I wanted
00:14:14.759 --> 00:14:17.919
to talk to you about. Rob, you are a very talented
00:14:17.919 --> 00:14:20.679
drummer. And I knew that. Used to be. Talented
00:14:20.679 --> 00:14:23.440
enough to where you actually went on tour with
00:14:23.440 --> 00:14:25.500
Bobby Goldsboro for a little bit. Yes, I did
00:14:25.500 --> 00:14:29.340
for almost 10 years. That was after the Art Institute,
00:14:29.500 --> 00:14:32.259
correct? It was during. We usually went out over
00:14:32.259 --> 00:14:35.379
the weekends. Older artists will tend to do that,
00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:37.059
you know, especially if they're getting up in
00:14:37.059 --> 00:14:39.399
age. And that was cool because, you know, I could
00:14:39.399 --> 00:14:42.000
leave on a Friday. We'd do a show maybe Friday
00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:44.899
night or do a show Saturday and then get home
00:14:44.899 --> 00:14:47.850
by Sunday. And so. When I was still teaching
00:14:47.850 --> 00:14:50.450
at the Art Institute, I was able to leave and
00:14:50.450 --> 00:14:52.870
go and do that kind of thing. We did a number
00:14:52.870 --> 00:14:57.330
of shows in Vegas and Laughlin and Reno, you
00:14:57.330 --> 00:14:59.970
know, all of those hot spots. Plus then we would
00:14:59.970 --> 00:15:03.509
hit the Florida circuit and all over the place.
00:15:03.610 --> 00:15:06.389
Yeah, it was fun. I got the gig from a mutual
00:15:06.389 --> 00:15:08.929
friend of mine, Michael Stanton, who's a pedal
00:15:08.929 --> 00:15:11.210
steel guitar player, but he's also a keyboard
00:15:11.210 --> 00:15:14.429
player. He had worked for Bobby for 40 years.
00:15:14.649 --> 00:15:18.279
He originally helped Bob. score the show Evening
00:15:18.279 --> 00:15:21.779
Shade with Burt Reynolds. Remember that? Yeah,
00:15:21.860 --> 00:15:23.460
I remember that. Bobby did all the music for
00:15:23.460 --> 00:15:25.500
that. And so Michael worked with him on that
00:15:25.500 --> 00:15:27.820
and a whole bunch of other stuff. When their
00:15:27.820 --> 00:15:30.820
original drummer decided to retire, they asked
00:15:30.820 --> 00:15:33.320
if I would be interested. And I said, yeah, you
00:15:33.320 --> 00:15:35.679
know, it was the kind of gig where I was like,
00:15:35.759 --> 00:15:38.620
I can still play, but I don't have to deal with
00:15:38.620 --> 00:15:41.980
sitting on a bus. You know, I don't have to do
00:15:41.980 --> 00:15:44.340
all that kind of thing. Right. What was nice
00:15:44.340 --> 00:15:46.820
is I always used. backline gear meaning that
00:15:46.820 --> 00:15:49.399
i didn't have to cart my drums around with me
00:15:49.399 --> 00:15:52.320
so i was able to use you know they always were
00:15:52.320 --> 00:15:54.899
able to rent good equipment for that and so that
00:15:54.899 --> 00:15:57.879
was cool it was kind of a low stress gig and
00:15:57.879 --> 00:16:01.769
it was it was fun it was an older audience Here's
00:16:01.769 --> 00:16:04.049
a good what the fuck. We were playing in the
00:16:04.049 --> 00:16:07.649
Villages in Florida, which is a huge retirement
00:16:07.649 --> 00:16:10.610
community. They have their own theater and they
00:16:10.610 --> 00:16:13.929
would bring in Bobby and other groups like Tommy
00:16:13.929 --> 00:16:17.029
James and Hermits Hermits and all of the nostalgia
00:16:17.029 --> 00:16:19.730
kind of things. And so we came in to do a show
00:16:19.730 --> 00:16:22.509
there. We're driving into the main entrance and
00:16:22.509 --> 00:16:26.559
I see like six. ambulances in the front of the
00:16:26.559 --> 00:16:29.019
building in the parking lot. Okay. I'm like,
00:16:29.159 --> 00:16:32.779
what the hell's going on? What's going on here?
00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:35.820
So we go into the stage door and I see the stage
00:16:35.820 --> 00:16:37.740
manager go, hey, man, what's the deal with all
00:16:37.740 --> 00:16:40.919
the ambulances out front? And he goes, oh, don't
00:16:40.919 --> 00:16:43.860
worry. It's just there for emergencies. He goes,
00:16:43.879 --> 00:16:45.899
you do understand this is a really old crowd,
00:16:46.100 --> 00:16:51.059
right? And I'm like, yeah, but what? What the
00:16:51.059 --> 00:16:54.539
fuck? You mean these people are going to be dropping
00:16:54.539 --> 00:16:58.200
dead? What's going on here? Oh, my God. What
00:16:58.200 --> 00:17:01.080
kind of audience is this? Wow. There were times
00:17:01.080 --> 00:17:03.779
where we'd have to hold the show for 10 minutes
00:17:03.779 --> 00:17:06.000
because they were still bringing people in in
00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:10.079
wheelchairs and walkers and like, okay, I guess
00:17:10.079 --> 00:17:12.599
that's cool. Whatever. Still a good crowd. They
00:17:12.599 --> 00:17:15.380
enjoyed hearing Bobby, and it was fun. You're
00:17:15.380 --> 00:17:17.500
like, Rob, no Ronnie -style stuff on the drums
00:17:17.500 --> 00:17:18.880
tonight. We don't need anybody having a heart
00:17:18.880 --> 00:17:21.420
attack. Yeah, basically, yeah. Rob, let's cut
00:17:21.420 --> 00:17:28.299
that drum solo. Yeah, yeah. The front row is
00:17:28.299 --> 00:17:31.019
full of 80 plus, and I don't think it's going
00:17:31.019 --> 00:17:33.000
to go over well. One of the things I noticed
00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:34.900
when I first moved to Nashville was the amount
00:17:34.900 --> 00:17:40.000
of celebrities that lived in this area that you
00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:43.700
would accidentally bump into, like at the grocery
00:17:43.700 --> 00:17:46.940
store or Starbucks. Coming from L .A., was it
00:17:46.940 --> 00:17:49.339
a little bit different? When I first moved to
00:17:49.339 --> 00:17:51.569
Nashville, people were like... And I moved here
00:17:51.569 --> 00:17:55.490
in 1995 from Los Angeles. So I had this jaded
00:17:55.490 --> 00:17:58.769
L .A. view of anybody that you see famous, you
00:17:58.769 --> 00:18:00.910
know, stay away from them. They're going to be
00:18:00.910 --> 00:18:04.490
assholes to you or whatever. And when we got
00:18:04.490 --> 00:18:07.089
here, I have a number of what the fuck moments
00:18:07.089 --> 00:18:10.460
I can talk about of people I've met here. By
00:18:10.460 --> 00:18:13.079
accident, most of the people that live around
00:18:13.079 --> 00:18:16.460
us here in Nashville that are famous, there's
00:18:16.460 --> 00:18:18.900
no problem in them going out and being normal
00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:21.339
folks like they really are. And a lot of them
00:18:21.339 --> 00:18:23.819
are happy to talk to people and just say, if
00:18:23.819 --> 00:18:26.339
you go up and say, I'm a huge fan. Now, if you
00:18:26.339 --> 00:18:28.480
act like a complete asshole or you're losing
00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:33.839
your mind. Yeah. In fact, here's a great story.
00:18:33.940 --> 00:18:36.779
I was in Walgreens up the street from me in the
00:18:36.779 --> 00:18:40.039
checkout line. Luke Bryant walks in with a friend
00:18:40.039 --> 00:18:43.599
of his. And this woman dressed in orange and
00:18:43.599 --> 00:18:46.759
white Tennessee volunteer outfit walks in. And
00:18:46.759 --> 00:18:48.740
right in the middle of the store, she goes, oh,
00:18:48.900 --> 00:18:53.170
my God. you're luke bryant oh i love you and
00:18:53.170 --> 00:18:55.650
she's screaming it and everyone's around there
00:18:55.650 --> 00:18:58.450
looking around he just stops dead cold in his
00:18:58.450 --> 00:19:00.490
tracks he's like oh and you could look on his
00:19:00.490 --> 00:19:04.210
face he's like oh shit but he was cool he turned
00:19:04.210 --> 00:19:06.849
around and she ran up and wanted to give him
00:19:06.849 --> 00:19:09.250
a hug and it's like he was really cool about
00:19:09.250 --> 00:19:12.190
it and i just i was you know and then he's walking
00:19:12.190 --> 00:19:17.450
by and i'm like yeah i wasn't gonna go oh my
00:19:17.450 --> 00:19:20.720
god Yeah, look, Brian, if you're cool, everybody's
00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:23.079
cool. You know, it's just that's the way it is.
00:19:23.339 --> 00:19:25.140
One of the things that draws people to Nashville
00:19:25.140 --> 00:19:27.480
is everyone wants to be a songwriter. Apart from
00:19:27.480 --> 00:19:29.940
doing the sound effects for Warner Brothers and
00:19:29.940 --> 00:19:32.359
playing drums for Bobby Goldsboro. Did you ever
00:19:32.359 --> 00:19:34.900
get into any of the other sides of the music
00:19:34.900 --> 00:19:39.220
business? My first foray into starting my own
00:19:39.220 --> 00:19:42.680
business when I was still in Los Angeles, a friend
00:19:42.680 --> 00:19:44.900
of mine and I decided we were going to start.
00:19:45.339 --> 00:19:48.960
We wanted to write music for sports programming
00:19:48.960 --> 00:19:51.680
and news themes and stuff. Oh, cool. I've never
00:19:51.680 --> 00:19:53.740
been a songwriter. I've never been able to sit
00:19:53.740 --> 00:19:56.920
down and write a four -minute song with the lyrics
00:19:56.920 --> 00:19:59.099
and all that stuff. I never just could do that.
00:19:59.200 --> 00:20:02.460
But if I have a picture in front of me or moving
00:20:02.460 --> 00:20:05.420
image or whatever, for some reason, I can write
00:20:05.420 --> 00:20:07.279
to that. That's interesting. It's weird. And
00:20:07.279 --> 00:20:09.480
I've tried. I've really tried to sit here and
00:20:09.480 --> 00:20:11.059
I'm like, I'm going to write a song. And I'm
00:20:11.059 --> 00:20:15.460
like, forget it. This sucks. I get real focused
00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:18.660
on trying to do stuff to images and everything.
00:20:18.920 --> 00:20:21.940
And so we were like, okay, let's try this out.
00:20:22.059 --> 00:20:24.400
And so he and I, he was a keyboard player and
00:20:24.400 --> 00:20:26.359
good at programming and all that stuff. And I
00:20:26.359 --> 00:20:29.819
was playing drums and a little bass here and
00:20:29.819 --> 00:20:33.200
there. And so we... We wrote a couple of sports
00:20:33.200 --> 00:20:37.960
kind of themes, like energy pumped up. With lyrics
00:20:37.960 --> 00:20:39.839
or just the music? Just the music. Just kind
00:20:39.839 --> 00:20:42.680
of to be like intro music or play underneath,
00:20:42.819 --> 00:20:44.359
you know, one of the announcers or whatever.
00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:47.619
A mutual friend said, hey, I got a guy who works
00:20:47.619 --> 00:20:50.279
for this brand new cable company called the Z
00:20:50.279 --> 00:20:53.440
Channel in Los Angeles. And they just got the
00:20:53.440 --> 00:20:56.480
contract to broadcast all the Dodger games. And
00:20:56.480 --> 00:20:59.859
I think they're looking for music for their opening
00:20:59.859 --> 00:21:01.599
and for all that. that kind of stuff. And I'm
00:21:01.599 --> 00:21:04.839
like, no shit. Okay. So we contacted this guy
00:21:04.839 --> 00:21:07.660
and he came over and we had this tiny little
00:21:07.660 --> 00:21:11.819
studio in my apartment. With him, we worked on
00:21:11.819 --> 00:21:14.059
some stuff. He gave us specific, I wanted to
00:21:14.059 --> 00:21:16.400
build up here for the first 10 seconds and then
00:21:16.400 --> 00:21:18.079
we want to cut down there and blah, blah, blah.
00:21:18.220 --> 00:21:20.720
So he guided us through all that. We recorded
00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:23.480
a bunch of stuff, gave him big mistake. First
00:21:23.480 --> 00:21:27.259
dumb ass mistake I ever made was gave him a DAT
00:21:27.259 --> 00:21:30.980
tape with all of our music mix. on it he walked
00:21:30.980 --> 00:21:34.660
out and didn't hear from him like two weeks he
00:21:34.660 --> 00:21:36.599
was like oh yeah they're gonna love this this
00:21:36.599 --> 00:21:38.980
is the fact that i'm working on it with you we're
00:21:38.980 --> 00:21:40.900
getting it tailored to what i think they want
00:21:40.900 --> 00:21:45.000
two weeks go by I don't hear back. You know,
00:21:45.039 --> 00:21:47.180
what's the deal? And it's starting to get closer
00:21:47.180 --> 00:21:50.059
to opening day for the Dodgers, right? And I
00:21:50.059 --> 00:21:52.180
would call the guy, finally got a hold of me.
00:21:52.180 --> 00:21:53.779
He goes, oh, well, you know what happened? They
00:21:53.779 --> 00:21:55.319
decided they were going to go with something
00:21:55.319 --> 00:21:59.200
else. And I'm like, oh, well, okay. Thanks. Thanks
00:21:59.200 --> 00:22:02.000
for giving it a shot with us. That's cool. I
00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:03.680
hung up the phone. I was just like, okay, well,
00:22:03.819 --> 00:22:05.980
whatever. We'll try to, you know, keep going.
00:22:06.339 --> 00:22:08.900
You don't let one door close and keep finding
00:22:08.900 --> 00:22:11.890
the right door. I'm a baseball fan, so. Opening
00:22:11.890 --> 00:22:14.069
day, I decide, okay, I'm going to watch the Dodger
00:22:14.069 --> 00:22:16.650
game. I'm not a Dodger fan. I'm a Cubs fan, but
00:22:16.650 --> 00:22:19.630
I'll watch the Dodger game. Sitting there. And
00:22:19.630 --> 00:22:22.069
guess what comes on? Oh, my God. I was afraid
00:22:22.069 --> 00:22:23.970
you were going to say that. And I said, what
00:22:23.970 --> 00:22:27.069
the fuck? That's our music they're playing. That
00:22:27.069 --> 00:22:30.089
is bullshit. I got up. I'm running around the
00:22:30.089 --> 00:22:32.470
apartment. I'm looking for a baseball bat. I'm
00:22:32.470 --> 00:22:34.390
going to get in my car and I'm going to go find
00:22:34.390 --> 00:22:37.849
this asshole and beat the shit out of him. And
00:22:37.849 --> 00:22:40.450
my friend's like, no, let's not do that. You
00:22:40.450 --> 00:22:42.789
know, I think you need to maybe get a lawyer,
00:22:42.970 --> 00:22:45.990
find out what the deal is. So I called my dad.
00:22:46.130 --> 00:22:48.630
I was hoping he had a good suggestion for me.
00:22:48.839 --> 00:22:51.880
He goes, well, only thing I can ask is did you
00:22:51.880 --> 00:22:55.700
copyright the music yourself? Even if his name's
00:22:55.700 --> 00:22:58.019
on it, if your name's still also on it. I said,
00:22:58.019 --> 00:23:02.500
no, we just gave him the music. And he goes,
00:23:02.599 --> 00:23:06.099
well, I would suggest calling an attorney and
00:23:06.099 --> 00:23:08.559
see what the deal is. And I did that. And the
00:23:08.559 --> 00:23:10.700
attorney said, do you have a way to prove that
00:23:10.700 --> 00:23:12.900
you did this? You know, you hold the copyright
00:23:12.900 --> 00:23:15.460
or part of it. And I'm like, well, I have the
00:23:15.460 --> 00:23:18.400
sequence and stuff, but I don't have the master
00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:21.720
tape of it. I have a cassette of it. And he was
00:23:21.720 --> 00:23:23.660
like, the amount of money you'll get out of them
00:23:23.660 --> 00:23:26.599
is not. The same amount that I'm going to be
00:23:26.599 --> 00:23:29.059
charging you to do this. Right. And he goes,
00:23:29.160 --> 00:23:32.039
I would just chalk this up to don't do that,
00:23:32.099 --> 00:23:34.240
you stupid idiot. A learning experience, yes.
00:23:34.980 --> 00:23:37.680
Exactly. That's unfortunate. And so I never saw,
00:23:37.799 --> 00:23:40.099
never heard from that guy ever again. But man,
00:23:40.240 --> 00:23:42.400
I was just like. Did they continue to use that
00:23:42.400 --> 00:23:45.579
fucking music? Oh, yeah. Wow. But the saving
00:23:45.579 --> 00:23:48.079
grace is there's even a documentary about this.
00:23:48.140 --> 00:23:51.220
A year later, I think the owner of this cable
00:23:51.220 --> 00:23:55.039
company was indicted or whatever for mishandling
00:23:55.039 --> 00:23:57.880
funds or I don't know, something like that. And
00:23:57.880 --> 00:24:00.700
the place was shuttered. So I was like, OK, fuck
00:24:00.700 --> 00:24:06.000
you. Good luck. Here's a weather -related what
00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:07.559
the fuck, and this ties in with the Art Institute
00:24:07.559 --> 00:24:10.400
while I was attending the flood of 2010. Oh,
00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:11.700
yeah. I'm trying to think of who the teacher
00:24:11.700 --> 00:24:13.700
was. It might have been Seth. Seth, okay. But
00:24:13.700 --> 00:24:17.859
we had a project due that day. And I lived in
00:24:17.859 --> 00:24:19.559
Jolton, so I lived at the top of a mountain,
00:24:19.619 --> 00:24:21.500
so I wasn't seeing any of this. And I just happened
00:24:21.500 --> 00:24:23.819
to turn on the news, and I'm watching. The next
00:24:23.819 --> 00:24:26.220
thing I see, I see this house floating down Interstate
00:24:26.220 --> 00:24:29.099
40. Like, what the fuck is going on? This is
00:24:29.099 --> 00:24:30.980
a little bit more serious than I thought it was.
00:24:31.160 --> 00:24:33.000
And I'm like, Art Institute, they had to cancel,
00:24:33.099 --> 00:24:34.900
right? So I turn on the radio. and everything's
00:24:34.900 --> 00:24:36.599
fucking canceling. Not hearing anything about
00:24:36.599 --> 00:24:38.460
the Art Institute. I'm like, what the fuck? I
00:24:38.460 --> 00:24:40.119
know they don't expect us to try to drive to
00:24:40.119 --> 00:24:42.539
school. So I reached out to Seth. He didn't even
00:24:42.539 --> 00:24:44.539
know what was going on. Oh, really? He didn't
00:24:44.539 --> 00:24:46.279
know how serious it was. I'm like, do we have
00:24:46.279 --> 00:24:49.099
school today? He's like, let me find out. So
00:24:49.099 --> 00:24:51.180
Seth had to actually go and talk to one of y
00:24:51.180 --> 00:24:52.920
'all to see what the hell was going on or to
00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:54.519
see what he could find out. And finally, he called
00:24:54.519 --> 00:24:56.380
me back. He's like, yeah, don't even worry about
00:24:56.380 --> 00:24:58.400
school today. We're not. Yeah, because the whole,
00:24:58.519 --> 00:25:01.140
there was that stream that was by the entrance
00:25:01.140 --> 00:25:04.220
of the school, I think. Yeah. And that overflowed.
00:25:04.220 --> 00:25:06.880
It took out half of the asphalt and stuff down
00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:08.720
the street a bit. Yeah. You couldn't even get
00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:11.619
in there anyway. Yeah. Lucky for me because the
00:25:11.619 --> 00:25:13.480
project that was due that day, mine wasn't done.
00:25:13.599 --> 00:25:18.000
But he never knew that. No, he doesn't know.
00:25:18.180 --> 00:25:20.380
He doesn't need to know that. It's a weather
00:25:20.380 --> 00:25:22.819
-related incident. That was my problem. Yeah,
00:25:22.819 --> 00:25:24.849
yeah, yeah. When you've grown up and you've gone
00:25:24.849 --> 00:25:26.750
away from home, you always go back and you tell
00:25:26.750 --> 00:25:28.589
your parents, you know, all the bad shit that
00:25:28.589 --> 00:25:30.170
you did now that they can't punish you. Right.
00:25:30.230 --> 00:25:31.990
So Rob was the head of the audio department.
00:25:32.089 --> 00:25:34.670
And every semester we would get like a set number
00:25:34.670 --> 00:25:37.089
of studio hours that we could go into the studio
00:25:37.089 --> 00:25:40.109
and use it for projects and whatever. Toward
00:25:40.109 --> 00:25:41.789
the end there when it was apparent that I was
00:25:41.789 --> 00:25:46.480
actually going to graduate. I had all my projects
00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:48.779
done. I was booking studio time for the Kentucky
00:25:48.779 --> 00:25:50.519
linemen, and there were some nights where we
00:25:50.519 --> 00:25:52.619
were there all fucking night from like 10 o 'clock
00:25:52.619 --> 00:25:54.480
to like 6 o 'clock in the morning. And I can't
00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:56.380
tell you how much Jack Daniels was drinking that
00:25:56.380 --> 00:26:00.940
fucking controller. Yeah. There's a number of
00:26:00.940 --> 00:26:08.180
projects that that occurred in, and I knew some
00:26:08.180 --> 00:26:11.140
of it was going on, so I was the kind of person
00:26:11.140 --> 00:26:12.819
that was kind of like, uh -huh. That's good.
00:26:12.900 --> 00:26:15.400
Yeah. Okay. Sounds really good, guy. Keep going.
00:26:16.380 --> 00:26:20.279
Because, you know, that is part of working in
00:26:20.279 --> 00:26:24.380
a studio situation with creative people. And
00:26:24.380 --> 00:26:27.420
that's part of the job. And if you don't know.
00:26:28.190 --> 00:26:30.789
How to handle that. You're going to suck at doing
00:26:30.789 --> 00:26:32.769
this. We started loading in and then somebody
00:26:32.769 --> 00:26:34.509
walked in with a bottle of Jack and then somebody
00:26:34.509 --> 00:26:36.150
else walked in with another bottle of Jack. And
00:26:36.150 --> 00:26:38.509
I'm like, at some point, so wait, this is a school.
00:26:38.589 --> 00:26:40.230
Are we allowed to do this? And I'm like, I'm
00:26:40.230 --> 00:26:42.150
not going to say shit. We just got to be cool
00:26:42.150 --> 00:26:44.009
about it. I don't know. There was one night where
00:26:44.009 --> 00:26:46.369
we, it was an all nighter at five o 'clock in
00:26:46.369 --> 00:26:48.049
the morning. We're all like, and we had the studio
00:26:48.049 --> 00:26:50.789
until eight. Right. So we're all like burnout
00:26:50.789 --> 00:26:52.450
by this time at five o 'clock in the morning.
00:26:52.490 --> 00:26:57.560
We're like, let's do a Tammy Wynette cover. So
00:26:57.560 --> 00:26:59.920
we're there, and we pull up YouTube, and we're
00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:01.440
listening to the song, and the song was Till
00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:03.220
I Can Make It On My Own. It's a ballad. Oh, yeah.
00:27:03.680 --> 00:27:06.140
Yeah. And we laid down the bass and the drums
00:27:06.140 --> 00:27:08.740
and the rhythm guitar. And Mitchell, he was tired
00:27:08.740 --> 00:27:11.519
and his voice was cracking. And obviously, he's
00:27:11.519 --> 00:27:13.319
a male. Tammy went at his feet. So he wasn't
00:27:13.319 --> 00:27:14.619
trying to sound like Tammy went at it. Right,
00:27:14.660 --> 00:27:16.400
right, right. But he did this scratch vocal that
00:27:16.400 --> 00:27:17.799
we were just going to, you know, just a scratch
00:27:17.799 --> 00:27:19.039
vocal. It's going to be thrown away. We'll do
00:27:19.039 --> 00:27:21.200
the master vocal later, right? So we did that.
00:27:21.480 --> 00:27:23.500
And then, you know, we cleaned the studio. No
00:27:23.500 --> 00:27:25.759
one ever knew. I mean, no one ever said anything
00:27:25.759 --> 00:27:27.579
to me. Like, you guys fucking trashed the place.
00:27:27.619 --> 00:27:29.259
I was like, no, we left it clean. Drank a lot
00:27:29.259 --> 00:27:30.660
of Jack, but we left it clean. Well, that's,
00:27:30.660 --> 00:27:33.970
you know, that's... To me, that was part of the
00:27:33.970 --> 00:27:36.589
gig. That's part of the, you know. And you would
00:27:36.589 --> 00:27:38.650
do that if you were working in another studio.
00:27:38.769 --> 00:27:42.630
You can't trash the place. I mean, I guess. There's
00:27:42.630 --> 00:27:44.329
some people who probably can get away with it.
00:27:44.390 --> 00:27:46.950
But most of the time, you're in there, and if
00:27:46.950 --> 00:27:48.910
you're the engineer, you're kind of supposed
00:27:48.910 --> 00:27:51.529
to be the grown -up, so to speak, in the room.
00:27:51.910 --> 00:27:54.450
And so, you know, it's kind of your deal. You
00:27:54.450 --> 00:27:56.910
make sure people aren't trashing shit up, and
00:27:56.910 --> 00:27:59.490
you clean up after everybody's done, and that's
00:27:59.490 --> 00:28:03.559
the way it is. I knew certain things, certain
00:28:03.559 --> 00:28:06.039
people were doing stuff, but I wasn't going to.
00:28:06.460 --> 00:28:07.839
Rob's like, you're not telling me anything I
00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:09.500
didn't fucking know, Jake. Come on now. Yeah.
00:28:09.940 --> 00:28:12.819
Yeah. I wasn't going to. I was not going to.
00:28:13.240 --> 00:28:15.799
be that guy, you know? I was like, hey, wait
00:28:15.799 --> 00:28:18.039
a second. The funny thing is, a couple months
00:28:18.039 --> 00:28:20.240
later, we actually went back and Mitchell was
00:28:20.240 --> 00:28:22.420
trying to do a master vocal for that track. He
00:28:22.420 --> 00:28:24.759
listened to that scratch vocal and he did a couple
00:28:24.759 --> 00:28:26.700
takes and I'm in there trying to comp the vocal
00:28:26.700 --> 00:28:28.920
and Mitchell's listening to it. He's like, play
00:28:28.920 --> 00:28:31.160
that scratch vocal back. And he's like, I don't
00:28:31.160 --> 00:28:33.000
know what it is. In a scratch vocal, he sang
00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:35.279
through an SM58, so we didn't even care what
00:28:35.279 --> 00:28:37.059
microphone it was because it was just a scratch
00:28:37.059 --> 00:28:40.039
vocal. Mitchell's like, I cannot get that level
00:28:40.039 --> 00:28:43.349
of pain in the way that I... He said, I can't
00:28:43.349 --> 00:28:45.930
do it. Like, it was 5 o 'clock in the morning.
00:28:45.990 --> 00:28:48.170
So we ended up using the scratch vocal as the
00:28:48.170 --> 00:28:50.289
lead vocal for the track. And then we just kind
00:28:50.289 --> 00:28:52.049
of built it around that. Part of your job as
00:28:52.049 --> 00:28:54.789
the engineer is to capture whatever is happening
00:28:54.789 --> 00:28:57.829
in the moment. And if you had not hit record
00:28:57.829 --> 00:29:00.750
on that scratch vocal, you would have been bummed.
00:29:00.849 --> 00:29:03.450
Yeah. I've learned real quick since that day,
00:29:03.549 --> 00:29:05.569
probably. I hit the record button. Even if they
00:29:05.569 --> 00:29:07.309
ask me, hey, are you recording this? No, no,
00:29:07.329 --> 00:29:09.529
don't worry about it. Absolutely. Yeah, you never
00:29:09.529 --> 00:29:12.309
let somebody know you're in record. chord just
00:29:12.309 --> 00:29:14.569
make sure you are rolling all the time because
00:29:14.569 --> 00:29:16.650
you never know what's going to come out of somebody's
00:29:16.650 --> 00:29:18.869
mouth or what some lick someone's going to play
00:29:18.869 --> 00:29:21.490
or some cool drum fill or oh my god you hear
00:29:21.490 --> 00:29:23.509
about omni studios they fucking tore omni down
00:29:23.509 --> 00:29:27.380
yeah i know absolute Decimation of Music Row.
00:29:27.619 --> 00:29:29.940
I had a critical listening class, or it was an
00:29:29.940 --> 00:29:31.920
assignment or something, and we had to pick between
00:29:31.920 --> 00:29:34.700
three songs, and one of the songs was a Vince
00:29:34.700 --> 00:29:36.720
Gill song, and we had to book the studio time
00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:39.579
and listen to the song through the control room,
00:29:39.640 --> 00:29:41.440
through the speakers. We had to draw out the
00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:43.180
sound field and what you're hearing. It was a
00:29:43.180 --> 00:29:45.220
really cool project. So I had the studio booked
00:29:45.220 --> 00:29:48.099
for like two hours. A half hour before my studio
00:29:48.099 --> 00:29:50.180
time was up, this older gentleman comes walking
00:29:50.180 --> 00:29:52.200
in, and I had no idea who it was. Not a clue.
00:29:52.319 --> 00:29:53.720
So I'm sitting there, and he's like, oh, that's
00:29:53.720 --> 00:29:56.390
a great Vince Gill song. And I'm thinking to
00:29:56.390 --> 00:29:57.849
myself, who the fuck is this guy encroaching
00:29:57.849 --> 00:29:59.809
on my studio time? I had no idea who he was.
00:29:59.890 --> 00:30:01.650
And I wasn't being a shithead to him, but I wasn't
00:30:01.650 --> 00:30:03.829
being as cordial as I could have been had I known
00:30:03.829 --> 00:30:06.289
who he was. It was Bob Bullock. And he had the
00:30:06.289 --> 00:30:07.930
studio booked for 8 o 'clock, so he was just
00:30:07.930 --> 00:30:11.089
there a little early, right? So I had no idea.
00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:14.619
I did my thing and I left and I turned a project
00:30:14.619 --> 00:30:16.480
in, you know, and I didn't think about it again
00:30:16.480 --> 00:30:19.140
until a couple of years later. I booked a mixing
00:30:19.140 --> 00:30:22.000
class and I see this name, Bob Bullock. And then
00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:23.539
I looked at him up like, holy crap, this guy's
00:30:23.539 --> 00:30:25.519
done some stuff. Like he's worked on some stuff.
00:30:25.660 --> 00:30:27.660
One of the sweetest and nicest people you'll
00:30:27.660 --> 00:30:30.589
ever meet too. Oh yeah. Yeah. I walked into his
00:30:30.589 --> 00:30:32.450
class and it was at Omni Studios. That's where
00:30:32.450 --> 00:30:34.410
we had the class. I remember. I'm like, okay,
00:30:34.609 --> 00:30:36.410
I'm going to fail this class just because, no,
00:30:36.509 --> 00:30:38.849
he was super cool. And we were in one of his
00:30:38.849 --> 00:30:41.450
classes and he was telling this story. He was
00:30:41.450 --> 00:30:44.490
doing this part spoken word, part music project
00:30:44.490 --> 00:30:47.309
with Waylon Jennings. Oh. It was basically Waylon
00:30:47.309 --> 00:30:49.410
songs and there was talking in between. And I
00:30:49.410 --> 00:30:50.869
don't know if it was recorded at Omni, but it
00:30:50.869 --> 00:30:53.309
was being mixed there. Yeah. Bob was doing something
00:30:53.309 --> 00:30:55.849
with Waylon at Omni Studios. Okay. So Waylon
00:30:55.849 --> 00:30:57.769
was back in the vocal booth and I think he was
00:30:57.769 --> 00:31:00.000
doing a spoken dialogue part. Bob kept hearing
00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:01.900
this crinkling coming through the mic, and he
00:31:01.900 --> 00:31:03.599
couldn't figure out what it was. So Waylon's
00:31:03.599 --> 00:31:04.859
just sitting there, and they're trying to figure
00:31:04.859 --> 00:31:06.720
it out, and the engineers are trying to figure
00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:08.599
it out. They're swapping out XLR cables, and
00:31:08.599 --> 00:31:10.380
they're swapping out mics, and they'd get everything
00:31:10.380 --> 00:31:12.299
hooked back up and hit record again, and the
00:31:12.299 --> 00:31:14.200
crinkling is still there. Come to find out it
00:31:14.200 --> 00:31:17.039
was Waylon fucking with him. Waylon had a cigarette
00:31:17.039 --> 00:31:19.519
pack and was fucking with the cellophane, and
00:31:19.519 --> 00:31:20.779
every time they would get everything straight,
00:31:20.859 --> 00:31:23.000
oh, let's try it now, Waylon, he would just crinkle
00:31:23.000 --> 00:31:27.480
that fucking cellophane. That's awesome! Bob
00:31:27.480 --> 00:31:29.579
said, I don't know how long that went on until
00:31:29.579 --> 00:31:31.480
they figured out what it was. But finally, he
00:31:31.480 --> 00:31:32.900
said, wait, I said, all right, guys, this is
00:31:32.900 --> 00:31:35.420
this is me messing with you. That's awesome.
00:31:37.389 --> 00:31:40.109
You still are the first person I've ever met
00:31:40.109 --> 00:31:43.289
that was a fan of Kiss and Waylon Jennings at
00:31:43.289 --> 00:31:45.930
the same time. Oh, of course. Yeah. I was impressed
00:31:45.930 --> 00:31:48.589
with the spectrum. We had a studio project and
00:31:48.589 --> 00:31:50.789
this wasn't even mine. This was for a classmate
00:31:50.789 --> 00:31:53.309
and they had hired Cowboy Eddie Long to come
00:31:53.309 --> 00:31:54.950
in and play pedal steel on it. And I had never
00:31:54.950 --> 00:31:57.150
met him. Cowboy comes walking in when I said,
00:31:57.190 --> 00:32:00.289
Cowboy, when I was 18 years old, my dad took
00:32:00.289 --> 00:32:03.170
me to see Hank Williams Jr. in Stabler Arena
00:32:03.170 --> 00:32:05.890
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And I said, you were
00:32:05.890 --> 00:32:07.609
the steel player. at that time he's like yes
00:32:07.609 --> 00:32:10.230
i was wow he's like i probably couldn't tell
00:32:10.230 --> 00:32:11.809
you much about that show he said because i was
00:32:11.809 --> 00:32:16.750
drinking a lot back then but uh we became friends
00:32:16.750 --> 00:32:19.069
we became really still are really good friends
00:32:19.069 --> 00:32:21.869
and after i graduated from school cowboy called
00:32:21.869 --> 00:32:23.750
me up one day he goes uh you're done with school
00:32:23.750 --> 00:32:26.180
right i'm like yeah he goes uh hmm Are you able
00:32:26.180 --> 00:32:28.839
to do overdubs? Like if I brought my pedal steel
00:32:28.839 --> 00:32:30.759
to your house, if we had a track for me to play
00:32:30.759 --> 00:32:33.019
to, could you record me? I'm like, yeah. When
00:32:33.019 --> 00:32:35.460
he's not on the road, people will hire him to
00:32:35.460 --> 00:32:37.759
play steel on their records. And I'm usually
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:39.640
the one doing it. That's awesome. That's great.
00:32:39.839 --> 00:32:41.500
There's a band called Whiskey Myers. I don't
00:32:41.500 --> 00:32:42.140
know if you've ever heard of them. Yeah, I've
00:32:42.140 --> 00:32:45.380
heard of them. We did their White Album. Cowboy
00:32:45.380 --> 00:32:47.269
called me up and he said to, hey. have you heard
00:32:47.269 --> 00:32:48.990
Whiskey Myers? And I was like, yeah. He goes,
00:32:49.069 --> 00:32:51.490
we have eight songs that they want me to do for
00:32:51.490 --> 00:32:53.750
their record. And he said, it's legit. There's
00:32:53.750 --> 00:32:55.349
money involved, you know, the whole nine yards.
00:32:55.509 --> 00:32:57.410
He said, but can we do it in two days? I'm like,
00:32:57.490 --> 00:33:00.470
you bet your ass we can. And we did. To hear
00:33:00.470 --> 00:33:03.589
that you were happy with things and you got information
00:33:03.589 --> 00:33:06.490
out of it that you still use to this day, that's
00:33:06.490 --> 00:33:09.589
the biggest compliment that I could ever get,
00:33:09.730 --> 00:33:12.450
really. Anybody that is involved in teaching
00:33:12.450 --> 00:33:15.349
like that. One of the very first audio classes,
00:33:15.630 --> 00:33:18.380
John and was teaching and this was very early
00:33:18.380 --> 00:33:21.259
on and we had a huge class where they hadn't
00:33:21.259 --> 00:33:24.940
started weeding people out yet right one of the
00:33:24.940 --> 00:33:27.700
classmates in the middle of learning the science
00:33:27.700 --> 00:33:30.339
behind audio he asked when do we see the strippers
00:33:30.339 --> 00:33:32.779
and cocaine and the parties and john's like he
00:33:32.779 --> 00:33:34.859
didn't say it but the look on his face like what
00:33:34.859 --> 00:33:34.980
the
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.560
I had one actor who could not say birthday, he
00:00:02.560 --> 00:00:05.040
would say birthday. And you don't want to call
00:00:05.040 --> 00:00:07.179
somebody out and, you know, make them feel stupid
00:00:07.179 --> 00:00:09.480
or whatever, but I was like, okay, can we try
00:00:09.480 --> 00:00:12.419
birthday again? And he'd go, yeah, okay, so we
00:00:12.419 --> 00:00:14.560
were talking, and it happened to be my birthday,
00:00:14.740 --> 00:00:17.140
and I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
00:00:18.739 --> 00:00:21.379
I'm Jake Jacobs, and you're listening to What
00:00:21.379 --> 00:00:34.960
The Fuck. My special guest today, Rob, was the
00:00:34.960 --> 00:00:37.259
head of the audio department at the Art Institute
00:00:37.259 --> 00:00:42.280
in Nashville. And I met Rob not as a 18 -year
00:00:42.280 --> 00:00:44.280
-old, 19 -year -old student, but as a 45 -year
00:00:44.280 --> 00:00:47.920
-old man going back to school for the first time
00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:51.420
in a long time. Rob was very influential on my
00:00:51.420 --> 00:00:54.520
career in the audio industry. Not in a way that
00:00:54.520 --> 00:00:57.740
you might think, though, because the one class...
00:00:58.079 --> 00:01:00.719
that Rob taught that I was able to attend dealing
00:01:00.719 --> 00:01:03.399
with dialogue and editing dialogue and cleaning
00:01:03.399 --> 00:01:05.640
it up. I learned a lot from that. And a couple
00:01:05.640 --> 00:01:07.319
of years after I graduated, after not really
00:01:07.319 --> 00:01:09.219
making it with the music stuff, now I'm doing
00:01:09.219 --> 00:01:11.959
podcasts and I'm editing audio the way Rob taught
00:01:11.959 --> 00:01:15.439
me how to do it. That's awesome. A big what the
00:01:15.439 --> 00:01:19.359
fuck welcome to my friend and mentor, Rob. How
00:01:19.359 --> 00:01:21.700
the hell are you, sir? I'm awesome, Jake. Thank
00:01:21.700 --> 00:01:23.540
you. Thanks for having me. Oh, you're welcome.
00:01:23.640 --> 00:01:26.379
And thank you for those nice words. To be honest,
00:01:26.540 --> 00:01:28.439
it was a class about audio post -production,
00:01:28.680 --> 00:01:32.359
which involved sound for film and commercials.
00:01:32.680 --> 00:01:35.299
Yeah. And then audio books, too, because a lot
00:01:35.299 --> 00:01:37.359
of people didn't realize that that's actually
00:01:37.359 --> 00:01:40.640
a career. Yes. Editing audio books. And then
00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:43.340
podcasting wasn't really a big thing at that
00:01:43.340 --> 00:01:47.140
point. Nah. But the whole technique of editing
00:01:47.140 --> 00:01:49.400
dialogue, making sure the dialogue is clear,
00:01:49.780 --> 00:01:52.659
pacing it the right way, all that stuff, that
00:01:52.659 --> 00:01:54.840
all applies across the board to all the post
00:01:54.840 --> 00:01:57.140
-production. work i used to get a lot of really
00:01:57.140 --> 00:02:00.760
amazing what the fuck blank stares in my class
00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:03.120
because a lot of the students were like i don't
00:02:03.120 --> 00:02:05.159
want to know about i don't care about this i
00:02:05.159 --> 00:02:08.240
want to make some beats and whatever yeah i can't
00:02:08.240 --> 00:02:11.400
tell you how gratifying it is to hear you say
00:02:11.400 --> 00:02:13.240
that you got something out of the class like
00:02:13.240 --> 00:02:15.539
that because as a teacher, you try and do a good
00:02:15.539 --> 00:02:17.800
job and reach people and you know you're not
00:02:17.800 --> 00:02:20.900
going to get to most people. But I think it was
00:02:20.900 --> 00:02:23.080
because you were older and you actually had a
00:02:23.080 --> 00:02:25.740
little bit more of an open mind than some of
00:02:25.740 --> 00:02:28.719
the younger students and more life experience.
00:02:29.020 --> 00:02:31.139
You were one of the few people that you could
00:02:31.139 --> 00:02:33.319
tell the light kind of went on in your head a
00:02:33.319 --> 00:02:35.039
little bit. It was like, yeah, I'll pay attention
00:02:35.039 --> 00:02:37.259
to this. Maybe this might be helpful sometime.
00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:39.280
I wasn't sitting there on my phone playing Farmville
00:02:39.280 --> 00:02:46.060
on Facebook. It was an interesting time. The
00:02:46.060 --> 00:02:47.900
three years that I was there learned a lot. I
00:02:47.900 --> 00:02:49.680
want to go back a little further because before
00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:52.159
the Art Institute, you did some really cool stuff.
00:02:52.419 --> 00:02:54.699
And one of the things I wanted to touch on was
00:02:54.699 --> 00:02:58.080
your involvement with Warner Brothers and archiving
00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:01.219
some of the iconic audio from the Bugs Bunny
00:03:01.219 --> 00:03:03.400
era and that kind of thing. What can you tell
00:03:03.400 --> 00:03:06.719
us? Well, I was living in Los Angeles. A friend
00:03:06.719 --> 00:03:09.219
of mine had called and said, hey, I have this.
00:03:09.599 --> 00:03:12.099
friend in Chicago who's moving to LA. He's a
00:03:12.099 --> 00:03:15.360
new film composer and he just got a gig recreating
00:03:15.360 --> 00:03:19.159
some of the cartoons for like Daffy Duck, some
00:03:19.159 --> 00:03:22.379
of the older Daffy Duck cartoons and stuff. And
00:03:22.379 --> 00:03:24.280
he needs somebody to come over and set up his
00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:26.699
studio. Would you be able to go and do that?
00:03:26.840 --> 00:03:29.099
I had a lot of experience with synchronization.
00:03:29.159 --> 00:03:32.020
And at the time we were using video machines
00:03:32.020 --> 00:03:35.419
and at the beginning of starting to use computers
00:03:35.419 --> 00:03:38.800
for sequencing and that kind of thing and analog.
00:03:38.889 --> 00:03:42.389
tape machines so i was really good at synchronizing
00:03:42.389 --> 00:03:44.750
all those things together so you know they all
00:03:44.750 --> 00:03:46.530
were running at the right time and blah blah
00:03:46.530 --> 00:03:49.389
blah blah so i got him set up got his whole studio
00:03:49.389 --> 00:03:52.270
rigged up and he goes hey have you ever done
00:03:52.270 --> 00:03:55.789
sound effects for cartoons before and this was
00:03:55.789 --> 00:03:58.889
a what the fuck moment i paused a second i said
00:03:58.889 --> 00:04:03.830
oh yeah sure i had complete lie i had watched
00:04:04.509 --> 00:04:06.569
Warner Brothers cartoons since I was a little
00:04:06.569 --> 00:04:08.610
kid, and I loved them, especially Roadrunner
00:04:08.610 --> 00:04:11.030
stuff and everything. Oh, yeah. And he goes,
00:04:11.129 --> 00:04:14.030
oh, cool. I'm supposed to recreate the music,
00:04:14.050 --> 00:04:16.350
but we also need to recreate the sound effects
00:04:16.350 --> 00:04:20.050
for all this. And I was like, oh, cool. Okay,
00:04:20.129 --> 00:04:22.569
yeah. And so he goes, when can you start? Can
00:04:22.569 --> 00:04:24.850
you start next week? And I'm like, yeah, sure.
00:04:25.949 --> 00:04:29.370
So I went home over the weekend and sweated.
00:04:30.139 --> 00:04:33.000
Dragged out all my VHS tapes of Warner Brothers
00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:36.100
cartoons and started watching everything and
00:04:36.100 --> 00:04:38.420
really, really paying attention to the sound
00:04:38.420 --> 00:04:41.040
effects and the whoop and the blang and all that
00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:43.879
kind of stuff. I understood the recording process.
00:04:43.980 --> 00:04:46.980
I understood how to create, record stuff. But
00:04:46.980 --> 00:04:49.500
the challenge was to try and get these sound
00:04:49.500 --> 00:04:52.740
effects to sound like the original ones. Yeah.
00:04:52.800 --> 00:04:55.279
And they were recorded in a certain way in a
00:04:55.279 --> 00:04:58.959
certain space where it was hard to recreate that.
00:04:59.540 --> 00:05:01.920
Just even the sound of the room, like the reverb
00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:04.339
tail you hear on certain things. Yeah. It was
00:05:04.339 --> 00:05:06.920
hard to recreate that kind of thing. So we started
00:05:06.920 --> 00:05:09.759
working on it, and I'm kind of stumbling through.
00:05:10.430 --> 00:05:12.129
trying to get some stuff, and there was just
00:05:12.129 --> 00:05:14.610
a few things I couldn't get together. They had
00:05:14.610 --> 00:05:17.529
arranged to meet with one of the guys who had
00:05:17.529 --> 00:05:20.410
been doing sound effects for Warner Brothers
00:05:20.410 --> 00:05:23.990
for like 30 years or whatever. He wasn't the
00:05:23.990 --> 00:05:25.889
original person. The original person that did
00:05:25.889 --> 00:05:28.490
a lot of that was a guy by the name of Treg Brown,
00:05:28.889 --> 00:05:32.350
who is credited as an editor, but he did the
00:05:32.350 --> 00:05:34.990
majority of all the sound effects and stuff and
00:05:34.990 --> 00:05:37.350
created all that. But this other guy, Frank,
00:05:37.610 --> 00:05:40.019
had been there working, and he... He kind of
00:05:40.019 --> 00:05:43.620
took over from Treg initially and had built this
00:05:43.620 --> 00:05:47.399
huge library. And all the sounds were on film
00:05:47.399 --> 00:05:50.939
mag, mag stock. Okay. Right? Like thick film.
00:05:51.019 --> 00:05:53.680
Yeah. That you have to put through either a projector
00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:56.560
or through a flatbed, which is what you edit
00:05:56.560 --> 00:06:00.639
film on. And so they brought me over and they
00:06:00.639 --> 00:06:03.459
show me this little closet on the Warner Brothers
00:06:03.459 --> 00:06:06.360
lot and said, here are all the sound effects.
00:06:07.019 --> 00:06:09.699
that Frank has curated over the past whatever
00:06:09.699 --> 00:06:13.759
years. And it's all these little reels of film,
00:06:13.939 --> 00:06:16.759
all kind of loosely cataloged, kind of like here's
00:06:16.759 --> 00:06:20.139
some whoops, here's a boings, here's a flip -flop,
00:06:20.139 --> 00:06:23.759
here's a zippity -out and zippity -in, all these
00:06:23.759 --> 00:06:26.600
things. I'm like, cool, because now I understand
00:06:26.600 --> 00:06:29.980
the vocabulary here. Because the names of the
00:06:29.980 --> 00:06:33.800
things sounded like the sound. What is it, onomatopoeia,
00:06:33.800 --> 00:06:36.019
right? They said, well, what we want you to do
00:06:36.019 --> 00:06:37.980
is... We'd like you to listen to these, obviously,
00:06:38.060 --> 00:06:40.600
but we want you to transfer all this stuff to
00:06:40.600 --> 00:06:43.279
digital tape. At the time, it was a DAT tape.
00:06:43.480 --> 00:06:46.399
DAT, yeah. And they said, you can come in every
00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:48.860
day for however long you need, and you'll be
00:06:48.860 --> 00:06:50.899
in this little room. So I was locked in this
00:06:50.899 --> 00:06:53.899
tiny little room. Not locked, but stuck in this
00:06:53.899 --> 00:06:56.819
little room and transferred all of these different
00:06:56.819 --> 00:06:59.680
takes and different versions of sound effects
00:06:59.680 --> 00:07:02.459
onto digital tape. At the time, we didn't really
00:07:02.459 --> 00:07:05.019
have a lot of noise reduction stuff, so it still
00:07:05.019 --> 00:07:08.120
had that. gritty sound a bit to it yeah some
00:07:08.120 --> 00:07:11.680
distortion in it some noise from the film stock
00:07:11.680 --> 00:07:14.459
but i was able to just get everything digitally
00:07:14.459 --> 00:07:16.920
transferred and then we were going to figure
00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:19.060
out how we could clean that stuff up after that
00:07:19.060 --> 00:07:21.819
so that took me i think i did that for three
00:07:21.819 --> 00:07:25.259
weeks It was like seven or eight hours a day.
00:07:25.600 --> 00:07:28.819
The last day I was there was the day that the
00:07:28.819 --> 00:07:31.920
riots broke out in Los Angeles after Rodney King.
00:07:32.060 --> 00:07:34.220
So that gives you an idea how long ago that was.
00:07:34.339 --> 00:07:37.040
I was about to leave and they said, well, you
00:07:37.040 --> 00:07:38.779
know what? We're going to close up the studio
00:07:38.779 --> 00:07:41.500
for the rest of the week. And that was the last
00:07:41.500 --> 00:07:43.939
time I was there. But anyway. I got all that
00:07:43.939 --> 00:07:47.120
stuff transferred. Eventually, it ended up going
00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:49.959
to a sound effects library called, I think it
00:07:49.959 --> 00:07:52.519
was Sound Ideas. They make sound effects libraries
00:07:52.519 --> 00:07:56.240
that you can buy. And they took all that stuff
00:07:56.240 --> 00:07:58.560
and cleaned up some of it and just cataloged
00:07:58.560 --> 00:08:00.920
it and whatever and released them. But there
00:08:00.920 --> 00:08:02.899
are a lot of sound effects that Warner Brothers
00:08:02.899 --> 00:08:05.819
wouldn't let them have that were real iconic
00:08:05.819 --> 00:08:10.189
sounds, like the Roadrunners. That sound? Yeah.
00:08:10.290 --> 00:08:13.149
They said, nope, that doesn't go anywhere. The
00:08:13.149 --> 00:08:16.810
carrot crunch from Bugs Bunny. Wow. That doesn't
00:08:16.810 --> 00:08:18.930
go anywhere. And there's a couple other sounds
00:08:18.930 --> 00:08:20.870
like that. And they said, the only person that's
00:08:20.870 --> 00:08:23.430
going to be allowed to use these is you and any
00:08:23.430 --> 00:08:26.430
of our other editors. And you can only use this
00:08:26.430 --> 00:08:30.439
on Warner Brothers. sanctioned or whatever projects.
00:08:30.699 --> 00:08:33.059
Right. They made me sign a contract and all this
00:08:33.059 --> 00:08:36.320
stuff. So I was walking, I had at home in my
00:08:36.320 --> 00:08:39.399
studio, I had all these tapes of all this stuff.
00:08:39.460 --> 00:08:42.240
I'm like, whoa! But I couldn't do anything with
00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:44.460
it unless they called up and said, hey, we need
00:08:44.460 --> 00:08:46.919
you to work, do some sound for a commercial or
00:08:46.919 --> 00:08:49.080
whatever. That was pretty weird. And that was
00:08:49.080 --> 00:08:51.379
an amazing learning experience because I got
00:08:51.379 --> 00:08:54.379
to hear not only just the sound effect, but what
00:08:54.379 --> 00:08:57.340
they would do to prep before it and after it.
00:08:57.580 --> 00:08:59.399
Oh, that's cool. Where you could hear where they
00:08:59.399 --> 00:09:01.500
would move a mic around a little bit to adjust
00:09:01.500 --> 00:09:03.320
what they were doing. And you could hear how
00:09:03.320 --> 00:09:05.940
the room would change and the reverb of the room
00:09:05.940 --> 00:09:08.320
would change. That's how I got my start doing
00:09:08.320 --> 00:09:10.940
all this stuff. And I eventually went on to work
00:09:10.940 --> 00:09:13.600
with Chuck Jones, who was the original Warner
00:09:13.600 --> 00:09:16.980
Brothers animation directors, who did Roadrunner
00:09:16.980 --> 00:09:20.200
and Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn. And so I
00:09:20.200 --> 00:09:22.580
got to work on a bunch of projects for him for
00:09:22.580 --> 00:09:25.179
like 10 years until he passed away. Was Mel Blanc
00:09:25.179 --> 00:09:28.549
already gone by then? Mel Blanc passed away the
00:09:28.549 --> 00:09:31.090
month after I started working for this composer
00:09:31.090 --> 00:09:34.350
guy. And what was weird is that his son, Noel,
00:09:34.610 --> 00:09:37.470
was starting to try and take over for him. And
00:09:37.470 --> 00:09:40.429
he had most of the voices nailed. But the big
00:09:40.429 --> 00:09:42.990
complaint about him was that he didn't have the
00:09:42.990 --> 00:09:47.090
acting down that Mel had. Mel could just rip
00:09:47.090 --> 00:09:49.590
back and forth between different characters and
00:09:49.590 --> 00:09:52.610
just get into that character or whatever. Yeah.
00:09:52.710 --> 00:09:56.110
Where anyone else trying to replace him kind
00:09:56.110 --> 00:09:58.389
of struggled with it. And they finally, I worked
00:09:58.389 --> 00:10:00.110
on a couple of things that Noel had done some
00:10:00.110 --> 00:10:02.870
voices for. And then they started using a couple
00:10:02.870 --> 00:10:06.110
other people. Joe Alasky was another person who
00:10:06.110 --> 00:10:08.929
started doing Bugs Bunny's voices. But yeah,
00:10:09.149 --> 00:10:11.549
it was interesting. I never got a chance to work
00:10:11.549 --> 00:10:13.110
with Mel Blanc, though. That would have been
00:10:13.110 --> 00:10:15.070
cool because he was just, you know, you go back.
00:10:15.149 --> 00:10:16.409
I can watch some of the interviews and stuff
00:10:16.409 --> 00:10:18.610
with him and it's pretty amazing. You know the
00:10:18.610 --> 00:10:21.750
sound of when the coyote falls off a cliff and
00:10:21.750 --> 00:10:24.090
you hear that whistle? Yeah. That whistle is
00:10:24.090 --> 00:10:27.110
actually, he recorded a, I don't know if it was
00:10:27.110 --> 00:10:30.090
a bomber, some sort of a bomber. Okay. And that's
00:10:30.090 --> 00:10:32.149
the sound. And he had that whole, you could hear
00:10:32.149 --> 00:10:37.580
the plane fly over and then you hear the. And
00:10:37.580 --> 00:10:39.740
so parts of it, you're like, what the heck is
00:10:39.740 --> 00:10:42.080
that? And then you realize as it gets closer
00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:45.220
that that's the sound that he used for him falling
00:10:45.220 --> 00:10:48.440
off the cliff. It was just the way he edited
00:10:48.440 --> 00:10:51.419
it, you know, and made it fit. It was cool. Rob
00:10:51.419 --> 00:10:54.179
is the person that introduced me. To the Wilhelm
00:10:54.179 --> 00:10:57.480
scream. Now, people probably don't know what
00:10:57.480 --> 00:11:00.539
the heck that is. But it is on two commercials
00:11:00.539 --> 00:11:02.279
right now. You probably know a little bit more
00:11:02.279 --> 00:11:04.620
about the origin. I only know the lore. Like,
00:11:04.639 --> 00:11:06.379
the only thing that I know is they were trying
00:11:06.379 --> 00:11:09.100
to figure out for sure who voiced it. And the
00:11:09.100 --> 00:11:11.299
last I heard, it was, I can't remember his name,
00:11:11.360 --> 00:11:13.539
but he was from Sam the Shaman, the Pharaohs,
00:11:13.539 --> 00:11:15.820
the singer. Am I correct in that? I believe so.
00:11:16.039 --> 00:11:18.200
The Wilhelm scream. It started out, and I always
00:11:18.200 --> 00:11:21.500
use this as an example in class, where... If
00:11:21.500 --> 00:11:24.340
one person has a sound effect and they use it,
00:11:24.379 --> 00:11:26.879
and then another person gets that same sound
00:11:26.879 --> 00:11:29.059
effect and they use it, and then that person
00:11:29.059 --> 00:11:32.100
and another person, you start hearing the same
00:11:32.100 --> 00:11:35.379
door close over and over again. You start hearing
00:11:35.379 --> 00:11:39.580
the same car start over and over again. There
00:11:39.580 --> 00:11:44.980
it is in its glory. So the deal was, I think
00:11:44.980 --> 00:11:47.440
the first time it was used was in a Western.
00:11:47.580 --> 00:11:49.559
I don't know the name of the Western. If you
00:11:49.559 --> 00:11:52.259
go on Wikipedia, there's a whole thing about
00:11:52.259 --> 00:11:55.759
the history of it where this guy on the horse
00:11:55.759 --> 00:11:59.059
gets shot and they wanted to put some sort of
00:11:59.059 --> 00:12:02.320
a sound of him falling off his horse and dying.
00:12:02.879 --> 00:12:06.759
And so they found this scream and put it in.
00:12:07.279 --> 00:12:10.399
And then that ended up starting to populate.
00:12:10.419 --> 00:12:12.799
I mean, it started going on everything where
00:12:12.799 --> 00:12:16.720
anyone was flying away or got blown up and they
00:12:16.720 --> 00:12:19.179
flew away or got shot. And you start hearing
00:12:19.179 --> 00:12:22.480
it all over the place. And it became the de facto
00:12:22.480 --> 00:12:26.840
I'm dying scream. Yes. Right. Yep. So years passed
00:12:26.840 --> 00:12:29.500
and eventually people kind of got away from it
00:12:29.500 --> 00:12:31.539
because they're like, yeah, yeah. OK, we've heard
00:12:31.539 --> 00:12:34.620
that we can make new one, different stuff now,
00:12:34.759 --> 00:12:36.820
blah, blah, blah. You know, obviously. as the
00:12:36.820 --> 00:12:39.100
recording process and technology moved ahead.
00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:43.580
But a number of sound editors, and I think it
00:12:43.580 --> 00:12:46.019
kind of started with people at Skywalker Sound
00:12:46.019 --> 00:12:49.000
when they were working on Raiders of the Lost
00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:52.799
Ark and Star Wars. They started putting that
00:12:52.799 --> 00:12:56.600
scream in in various places where you may not
00:12:56.600 --> 00:13:00.740
necessarily hear it or notice it, but it was
00:13:00.740 --> 00:13:03.909
put in as a joke. Yeah. That kind of caught on,
00:13:03.950 --> 00:13:08.110
and every audio engineer doing anything was starting
00:13:08.110 --> 00:13:11.809
to put it in everywhere. And it's still, to this
00:13:11.809 --> 00:13:15.149
day, it shows up in movies. It shows up in movie
00:13:15.149 --> 00:13:18.750
trailers, commercials. I think most people don't
00:13:18.750 --> 00:13:20.529
have a clue what the hell it is. They've heard
00:13:20.529 --> 00:13:22.509
it before, and they think, oh, that's silly.
00:13:22.669 --> 00:13:25.169
But they really don't know where it came from.
00:13:25.330 --> 00:13:26.950
We would have projects that we would have to
00:13:26.950 --> 00:13:28.690
do. Sometimes it would be a musical project.
00:13:28.809 --> 00:13:30.490
Sometimes it would be like a podcast type of
00:13:30.490 --> 00:13:32.799
thing. It was my mission. When I did it and I
00:13:32.799 --> 00:13:34.759
was successful at it. I remember. I put in the
00:13:34.759 --> 00:13:37.259
Wilhelm scream on every single project. And sometimes
00:13:37.259 --> 00:13:39.259
it was super subtle. You'd really have to listen
00:13:39.259 --> 00:13:41.139
for it. Other times I just put it in your face.
00:13:41.240 --> 00:13:43.179
Oh, yeah. But anytime I did that, I would let
00:13:43.179 --> 00:13:45.480
Rob hear it. And Rob's like, okay, where's the
00:13:45.480 --> 00:13:46.919
Wilhelm scream? I know it's in there somewhere.
00:13:48.679 --> 00:13:53.519
I remember that very well. Sometimes audio editing
00:13:53.519 --> 00:13:56.220
and doing sound for certain things can get kind
00:13:56.220 --> 00:13:59.379
of tedious. Oh, yeah. How many times do I have
00:13:59.379 --> 00:14:02.799
to hear somebody get punched? And sometimes you
00:14:02.799 --> 00:14:04.960
just got to stick something in there that people
00:14:04.960 --> 00:14:08.159
may not notice, but you know it's there. Oh,
00:14:08.159 --> 00:14:10.019
yeah. And it just kind of makes you smile a little
00:14:10.019 --> 00:14:12.340
bit every time you hear it. Yeah. Yeah. It's
00:14:12.340 --> 00:14:14.759
pretty crazy. Pretty fun. Something else I wanted
00:14:14.759 --> 00:14:17.919
to talk to you about. Rob, you are a very talented
00:14:17.919 --> 00:14:20.679
drummer. And I knew that. Used to be. Talented
00:14:20.679 --> 00:14:23.440
enough to where you actually went on tour with
00:14:23.440 --> 00:14:25.500
Bobby Goldsboro for a little bit. Yes, I did
00:14:25.500 --> 00:14:29.340
for almost 10 years. That was after the Art Institute,
00:14:29.500 --> 00:14:32.259
correct? It was during. We usually went out over
00:14:32.259 --> 00:14:35.379
the weekends. Older artists will tend to do that,
00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:37.059
you know, especially if they're getting up in
00:14:37.059 --> 00:14:39.399
age. And that was cool because, you know, I could
00:14:39.399 --> 00:14:42.000
leave on a Friday. We'd do a show maybe Friday
00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:44.899
night or do a show Saturday and then get home
00:14:44.899 --> 00:14:47.850
by Sunday. And so. When I was still teaching
00:14:47.850 --> 00:14:50.450
at the Art Institute, I was able to leave and
00:14:50.450 --> 00:14:52.870
go and do that kind of thing. We did a number
00:14:52.870 --> 00:14:57.330
of shows in Vegas and Laughlin and Reno, you
00:14:57.330 --> 00:14:59.970
know, all of those hot spots. Plus then we would
00:14:59.970 --> 00:15:03.509
hit the Florida circuit and all over the place.
00:15:03.610 --> 00:15:06.389
Yeah, it was fun. I got the gig from a mutual
00:15:06.389 --> 00:15:08.929
friend of mine, Michael Stanton, who's a pedal
00:15:08.929 --> 00:15:11.210
steel guitar player, but he's also a keyboard
00:15:11.210 --> 00:15:14.429
player. He had worked for Bobby for 40 years.
00:15:14.649 --> 00:15:18.279
He originally helped Bob. score the show Evening
00:15:18.279 --> 00:15:21.779
Shade with Burt Reynolds. Remember that? Yeah,
00:15:21.860 --> 00:15:23.460
I remember that. Bobby did all the music for
00:15:23.460 --> 00:15:25.500
that. And so Michael worked with him on that
00:15:25.500 --> 00:15:27.820
and a whole bunch of other stuff. When their
00:15:27.820 --> 00:15:30.820
original drummer decided to retire, they asked
00:15:30.820 --> 00:15:33.320
if I would be interested. And I said, yeah, you
00:15:33.320 --> 00:15:35.679
know, it was the kind of gig where I was like,
00:15:35.759 --> 00:15:38.620
I can still play, but I don't have to deal with
00:15:38.620 --> 00:15:41.980
sitting on a bus. You know, I don't have to do
00:15:41.980 --> 00:15:44.340
all that kind of thing. Right. What was nice
00:15:44.340 --> 00:15:46.820
is I always used. backline gear meaning that
00:15:46.820 --> 00:15:49.399
i didn't have to cart my drums around with me
00:15:49.399 --> 00:15:52.320
so i was able to use you know they always were
00:15:52.320 --> 00:15:54.899
able to rent good equipment for that and so that
00:15:54.899 --> 00:15:57.879
was cool it was kind of a low stress gig and
00:15:57.879 --> 00:16:01.769
it was it was fun it was an older audience Here's
00:16:01.769 --> 00:16:04.049
a good what the fuck. We were playing in the
00:16:04.049 --> 00:16:07.649
Villages in Florida, which is a huge retirement
00:16:07.649 --> 00:16:10.610
community. They have their own theater and they
00:16:10.610 --> 00:16:13.929
would bring in Bobby and other groups like Tommy
00:16:13.929 --> 00:16:17.029
James and Hermits Hermits and all of the nostalgia
00:16:17.029 --> 00:16:19.730
kind of things. And so we came in to do a show
00:16:19.730 --> 00:16:22.509
there. We're driving into the main entrance and
00:16:22.509 --> 00:16:26.559
I see like six. ambulances in the front of the
00:16:26.559 --> 00:16:29.019
building in the parking lot. Okay. I'm like,
00:16:29.159 --> 00:16:32.779
what the hell's going on? What's going on here?
00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:35.820
So we go into the stage door and I see the stage
00:16:35.820 --> 00:16:37.740
manager go, hey, man, what's the deal with all
00:16:37.740 --> 00:16:40.919
the ambulances out front? And he goes, oh, don't
00:16:40.919 --> 00:16:43.860
worry. It's just there for emergencies. He goes,
00:16:43.879 --> 00:16:45.899
you do understand this is a really old crowd,
00:16:46.100 --> 00:16:51.059
right? And I'm like, yeah, but what? What the
00:16:51.059 --> 00:16:54.539
fuck? You mean these people are going to be dropping
00:16:54.539 --> 00:16:58.200
dead? What's going on here? Oh, my God. What
00:16:58.200 --> 00:17:01.080
kind of audience is this? Wow. There were times
00:17:01.080 --> 00:17:03.779
where we'd have to hold the show for 10 minutes
00:17:03.779 --> 00:17:06.000
because they were still bringing people in in
00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:10.079
wheelchairs and walkers and like, okay, I guess
00:17:10.079 --> 00:17:12.599
that's cool. Whatever. Still a good crowd. They
00:17:12.599 --> 00:17:15.380
enjoyed hearing Bobby, and it was fun. You're
00:17:15.380 --> 00:17:17.500
like, Rob, no Ronnie -style stuff on the drums
00:17:17.500 --> 00:17:18.880
tonight. We don't need anybody having a heart
00:17:18.880 --> 00:17:21.420
attack. Yeah, basically, yeah. Rob, let's cut
00:17:21.420 --> 00:17:28.299
that drum solo. Yeah, yeah. The front row is
00:17:28.299 --> 00:17:31.019
full of 80 plus, and I don't think it's going
00:17:31.019 --> 00:17:33.000
to go over well. One of the things I noticed
00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:34.900
when I first moved to Nashville was the amount
00:17:34.900 --> 00:17:40.000
of celebrities that lived in this area that you
00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:43.700
would accidentally bump into, like at the grocery
00:17:43.700 --> 00:17:46.940
store or Starbucks. Coming from L .A., was it
00:17:46.940 --> 00:17:49.339
a little bit different? When I first moved to
00:17:49.339 --> 00:17:51.569
Nashville, people were like... And I moved here
00:17:51.569 --> 00:17:55.490
in 1995 from Los Angeles. So I had this jaded
00:17:55.490 --> 00:17:58.769
L .A. view of anybody that you see famous, you
00:17:58.769 --> 00:18:00.910
know, stay away from them. They're going to be
00:18:00.910 --> 00:18:04.490
assholes to you or whatever. And when we got
00:18:04.490 --> 00:18:07.089
here, I have a number of what the fuck moments
00:18:07.089 --> 00:18:10.460
I can talk about of people I've met here. By
00:18:10.460 --> 00:18:13.079
accident, most of the people that live around
00:18:13.079 --> 00:18:16.460
us here in Nashville that are famous, there's
00:18:16.460 --> 00:18:18.900
no problem in them going out and being normal
00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:21.339
folks like they really are. And a lot of them
00:18:21.339 --> 00:18:23.819
are happy to talk to people and just say, if
00:18:23.819 --> 00:18:26.339
you go up and say, I'm a huge fan. Now, if you
00:18:26.339 --> 00:18:28.480
act like a complete asshole or you're losing
00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:33.839
your mind. Yeah. In fact, here's a great story.
00:18:33.940 --> 00:18:36.779
I was in Walgreens up the street from me in the
00:18:36.779 --> 00:18:40.039
checkout line. Luke Bryant walks in with a friend
00:18:40.039 --> 00:18:43.599
of his. And this woman dressed in orange and
00:18:43.599 --> 00:18:46.759
white Tennessee volunteer outfit walks in. And
00:18:46.759 --> 00:18:48.740
right in the middle of the store, she goes, oh,
00:18:48.900 --> 00:18:53.170
my God. you're luke bryant oh i love you and
00:18:53.170 --> 00:18:55.650
she's screaming it and everyone's around there
00:18:55.650 --> 00:18:58.450
looking around he just stops dead cold in his
00:18:58.450 --> 00:19:00.490
tracks he's like oh and you could look on his
00:19:00.490 --> 00:19:04.210
face he's like oh shit but he was cool he turned
00:19:04.210 --> 00:19:06.849
around and she ran up and wanted to give him
00:19:06.849 --> 00:19:09.250
a hug and it's like he was really cool about
00:19:09.250 --> 00:19:12.190
it and i just i was you know and then he's walking
00:19:12.190 --> 00:19:17.450
by and i'm like yeah i wasn't gonna go oh my
00:19:17.450 --> 00:19:20.720
god Yeah, look, Brian, if you're cool, everybody's
00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:23.079
cool. You know, it's just that's the way it is.
00:19:23.339 --> 00:19:25.140
One of the things that draws people to Nashville
00:19:25.140 --> 00:19:27.480
is everyone wants to be a songwriter. Apart from
00:19:27.480 --> 00:19:29.940
doing the sound effects for Warner Brothers and
00:19:29.940 --> 00:19:32.359
playing drums for Bobby Goldsboro. Did you ever
00:19:32.359 --> 00:19:34.900
get into any of the other sides of the music
00:19:34.900 --> 00:19:39.220
business? My first foray into starting my own
00:19:39.220 --> 00:19:42.680
business when I was still in Los Angeles, a friend
00:19:42.680 --> 00:19:44.900
of mine and I decided we were going to start.
00:19:45.339 --> 00:19:48.960
We wanted to write music for sports programming
00:19:48.960 --> 00:19:51.680
and news themes and stuff. Oh, cool. I've never
00:19:51.680 --> 00:19:53.740
been a songwriter. I've never been able to sit
00:19:53.740 --> 00:19:56.920
down and write a four -minute song with the lyrics
00:19:56.920 --> 00:19:59.099
and all that stuff. I never just could do that.
00:19:59.200 --> 00:20:02.460
But if I have a picture in front of me or moving
00:20:02.460 --> 00:20:05.420
image or whatever, for some reason, I can write
00:20:05.420 --> 00:20:07.279
to that. That's interesting. It's weird. And
00:20:07.279 --> 00:20:09.480
I've tried. I've really tried to sit here and
00:20:09.480 --> 00:20:11.059
I'm like, I'm going to write a song. And I'm
00:20:11.059 --> 00:20:15.460
like, forget it. This sucks. I get real focused
00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:18.660
on trying to do stuff to images and everything.
00:20:18.920 --> 00:20:21.940
And so we were like, okay, let's try this out.
00:20:22.059 --> 00:20:24.400
And so he and I, he was a keyboard player and
00:20:24.400 --> 00:20:26.359
good at programming and all that stuff. And I
00:20:26.359 --> 00:20:29.819
was playing drums and a little bass here and
00:20:29.819 --> 00:20:33.200
there. And so we... We wrote a couple of sports
00:20:33.200 --> 00:20:37.960
kind of themes, like energy pumped up. With lyrics
00:20:37.960 --> 00:20:39.839
or just the music? Just the music. Just kind
00:20:39.839 --> 00:20:42.680
of to be like intro music or play underneath,
00:20:42.819 --> 00:20:44.359
you know, one of the announcers or whatever.
00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:47.619
A mutual friend said, hey, I got a guy who works
00:20:47.619 --> 00:20:50.279
for this brand new cable company called the Z
00:20:50.279 --> 00:20:53.440
Channel in Los Angeles. And they just got the
00:20:53.440 --> 00:20:56.480
contract to broadcast all the Dodger games. And
00:20:56.480 --> 00:20:59.859
I think they're looking for music for their opening
00:20:59.859 --> 00:21:01.599
and for all that. that kind of stuff. And I'm
00:21:01.599 --> 00:21:04.839
like, no shit. Okay. So we contacted this guy
00:21:04.839 --> 00:21:07.660
and he came over and we had this tiny little
00:21:07.660 --> 00:21:11.819
studio in my apartment. With him, we worked on
00:21:11.819 --> 00:21:14.059
some stuff. He gave us specific, I wanted to
00:21:14.059 --> 00:21:16.400
build up here for the first 10 seconds and then
00:21:16.400 --> 00:21:18.079
we want to cut down there and blah, blah, blah.
00:21:18.220 --> 00:21:20.720
So he guided us through all that. We recorded
00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:23.480
a bunch of stuff, gave him big mistake. First
00:21:23.480 --> 00:21:27.259
dumb ass mistake I ever made was gave him a DAT
00:21:27.259 --> 00:21:30.980
tape with all of our music mix. on it he walked
00:21:30.980 --> 00:21:34.660
out and didn't hear from him like two weeks he
00:21:34.660 --> 00:21:36.599
was like oh yeah they're gonna love this this
00:21:36.599 --> 00:21:38.980
is the fact that i'm working on it with you we're
00:21:38.980 --> 00:21:40.900
getting it tailored to what i think they want
00:21:40.900 --> 00:21:45.000
two weeks go by I don't hear back. You know,
00:21:45.039 --> 00:21:47.180
what's the deal? And it's starting to get closer
00:21:47.180 --> 00:21:50.059
to opening day for the Dodgers, right? And I
00:21:50.059 --> 00:21:52.180
would call the guy, finally got a hold of me.
00:21:52.180 --> 00:21:53.779
He goes, oh, well, you know what happened? They
00:21:53.779 --> 00:21:55.319
decided they were going to go with something
00:21:55.319 --> 00:21:59.200
else. And I'm like, oh, well, okay. Thanks. Thanks
00:21:59.200 --> 00:22:02.000
for giving it a shot with us. That's cool. I
00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:03.680
hung up the phone. I was just like, okay, well,
00:22:03.819 --> 00:22:05.980
whatever. We'll try to, you know, keep going.
00:22:06.339 --> 00:22:08.900
You don't let one door close and keep finding
00:22:08.900 --> 00:22:11.890
the right door. I'm a baseball fan, so. Opening
00:22:11.890 --> 00:22:14.069
day, I decide, okay, I'm going to watch the Dodger
00:22:14.069 --> 00:22:16.650
game. I'm not a Dodger fan. I'm a Cubs fan, but
00:22:16.650 --> 00:22:19.630
I'll watch the Dodger game. Sitting there. And
00:22:19.630 --> 00:22:22.069
guess what comes on? Oh, my God. I was afraid
00:22:22.069 --> 00:22:23.970
you were going to say that. And I said, what
00:22:23.970 --> 00:22:27.069
the fuck? That's our music they're playing. That
00:22:27.069 --> 00:22:30.089
is bullshit. I got up. I'm running around the
00:22:30.089 --> 00:22:32.470
apartment. I'm looking for a baseball bat. I'm
00:22:32.470 --> 00:22:34.390
going to get in my car and I'm going to go find
00:22:34.390 --> 00:22:37.849
this asshole and beat the shit out of him. And
00:22:37.849 --> 00:22:40.450
my friend's like, no, let's not do that. You
00:22:40.450 --> 00:22:42.789
know, I think you need to maybe get a lawyer,
00:22:42.970 --> 00:22:45.990
find out what the deal is. So I called my dad.
00:22:46.130 --> 00:22:48.630
I was hoping he had a good suggestion for me.
00:22:48.839 --> 00:22:51.880
He goes, well, only thing I can ask is did you
00:22:51.880 --> 00:22:55.700
copyright the music yourself? Even if his name's
00:22:55.700 --> 00:22:58.019
on it, if your name's still also on it. I said,
00:22:58.019 --> 00:23:02.500
no, we just gave him the music. And he goes,
00:23:02.599 --> 00:23:06.099
well, I would suggest calling an attorney and
00:23:06.099 --> 00:23:08.559
see what the deal is. And I did that. And the
00:23:08.559 --> 00:23:10.700
attorney said, do you have a way to prove that
00:23:10.700 --> 00:23:12.900
you did this? You know, you hold the copyright
00:23:12.900 --> 00:23:15.460
or part of it. And I'm like, well, I have the
00:23:15.460 --> 00:23:18.400
sequence and stuff, but I don't have the master
00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:21.720
tape of it. I have a cassette of it. And he was
00:23:21.720 --> 00:23:23.660
like, the amount of money you'll get out of them
00:23:23.660 --> 00:23:26.599
is not. The same amount that I'm going to be
00:23:26.599 --> 00:23:29.059
charging you to do this. Right. And he goes,
00:23:29.160 --> 00:23:32.039
I would just chalk this up to don't do that,
00:23:32.099 --> 00:23:34.240
you stupid idiot. A learning experience, yes.
00:23:34.980 --> 00:23:37.680
Exactly. That's unfortunate. And so I never saw,
00:23:37.799 --> 00:23:40.099
never heard from that guy ever again. But man,
00:23:40.240 --> 00:23:42.400
I was just like. Did they continue to use that
00:23:42.400 --> 00:23:45.579
fucking music? Oh, yeah. Wow. But the saving
00:23:45.579 --> 00:23:48.079
grace is there's even a documentary about this.
00:23:48.140 --> 00:23:51.220
A year later, I think the owner of this cable
00:23:51.220 --> 00:23:55.039
company was indicted or whatever for mishandling
00:23:55.039 --> 00:23:57.880
funds or I don't know, something like that. And
00:23:57.880 --> 00:24:00.700
the place was shuttered. So I was like, OK, fuck
00:24:00.700 --> 00:24:06.000
you. Good luck. Here's a weather -related what
00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:07.559
the fuck, and this ties in with the Art Institute
00:24:07.559 --> 00:24:10.400
while I was attending the flood of 2010. Oh,
00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:11.700
yeah. I'm trying to think of who the teacher
00:24:11.700 --> 00:24:13.700
was. It might have been Seth. Seth, okay. But
00:24:13.700 --> 00:24:17.859
we had a project due that day. And I lived in
00:24:17.859 --> 00:24:19.559
Jolton, so I lived at the top of a mountain,
00:24:19.619 --> 00:24:21.500
so I wasn't seeing any of this. And I just happened
00:24:21.500 --> 00:24:23.819
to turn on the news, and I'm watching. The next
00:24:23.819 --> 00:24:26.220
thing I see, I see this house floating down Interstate
00:24:26.220 --> 00:24:29.099
40. Like, what the fuck is going on? This is
00:24:29.099 --> 00:24:30.980
a little bit more serious than I thought it was.
00:24:31.160 --> 00:24:33.000
And I'm like, Art Institute, they had to cancel,
00:24:33.099 --> 00:24:34.900
right? So I turn on the radio. and everything's
00:24:34.900 --> 00:24:36.599
fucking canceling. Not hearing anything about
00:24:36.599 --> 00:24:38.460
the Art Institute. I'm like, what the fuck? I
00:24:38.460 --> 00:24:40.119
know they don't expect us to try to drive to
00:24:40.119 --> 00:24:42.539
school. So I reached out to Seth. He didn't even
00:24:42.539 --> 00:24:44.539
know what was going on. Oh, really? He didn't
00:24:44.539 --> 00:24:46.279
know how serious it was. I'm like, do we have
00:24:46.279 --> 00:24:49.099
school today? He's like, let me find out. So
00:24:49.099 --> 00:24:51.180
Seth had to actually go and talk to one of y
00:24:51.180 --> 00:24:52.920
'all to see what the hell was going on or to
00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:54.519
see what he could find out. And finally, he called
00:24:54.519 --> 00:24:56.380
me back. He's like, yeah, don't even worry about
00:24:56.380 --> 00:24:58.400
school today. We're not. Yeah, because the whole,
00:24:58.519 --> 00:25:01.140
there was that stream that was by the entrance
00:25:01.140 --> 00:25:04.220
of the school, I think. Yeah. And that overflowed.
00:25:04.220 --> 00:25:06.880
It took out half of the asphalt and stuff down
00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:08.720
the street a bit. Yeah. You couldn't even get
00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:11.619
in there anyway. Yeah. Lucky for me because the
00:25:11.619 --> 00:25:13.480
project that was due that day, mine wasn't done.
00:25:13.599 --> 00:25:18.000
But he never knew that. No, he doesn't know.
00:25:18.180 --> 00:25:20.380
He doesn't need to know that. It's a weather
00:25:20.380 --> 00:25:22.819
-related incident. That was my problem. Yeah,
00:25:22.819 --> 00:25:24.849
yeah, yeah. When you've grown up and you've gone
00:25:24.849 --> 00:25:26.750
away from home, you always go back and you tell
00:25:26.750 --> 00:25:28.589
your parents, you know, all the bad shit that
00:25:28.589 --> 00:25:30.170
you did now that they can't punish you. Right.
00:25:30.230 --> 00:25:31.990
So Rob was the head of the audio department.
00:25:32.089 --> 00:25:34.670
And every semester we would get like a set number
00:25:34.670 --> 00:25:37.089
of studio hours that we could go into the studio
00:25:37.089 --> 00:25:40.109
and use it for projects and whatever. Toward
00:25:40.109 --> 00:25:41.789
the end there when it was apparent that I was
00:25:41.789 --> 00:25:46.480
actually going to graduate. I had all my projects
00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:48.779
done. I was booking studio time for the Kentucky
00:25:48.779 --> 00:25:50.519
linemen, and there were some nights where we
00:25:50.519 --> 00:25:52.619
were there all fucking night from like 10 o 'clock
00:25:52.619 --> 00:25:54.480
to like 6 o 'clock in the morning. And I can't
00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:56.380
tell you how much Jack Daniels was drinking that
00:25:56.380 --> 00:26:00.940
fucking controller. Yeah. There's a number of
00:26:00.940 --> 00:26:08.180
projects that that occurred in, and I knew some
00:26:08.180 --> 00:26:11.140
of it was going on, so I was the kind of person
00:26:11.140 --> 00:26:12.819
that was kind of like, uh -huh. That's good.
00:26:12.900 --> 00:26:15.400
Yeah. Okay. Sounds really good, guy. Keep going.
00:26:16.380 --> 00:26:20.279
Because, you know, that is part of working in
00:26:20.279 --> 00:26:24.380
a studio situation with creative people. And
00:26:24.380 --> 00:26:27.420
that's part of the job. And if you don't know.
00:26:28.190 --> 00:26:30.789
How to handle that. You're going to suck at doing
00:26:30.789 --> 00:26:32.769
this. We started loading in and then somebody
00:26:32.769 --> 00:26:34.509
walked in with a bottle of Jack and then somebody
00:26:34.509 --> 00:26:36.150
else walked in with another bottle of Jack. And
00:26:36.150 --> 00:26:38.509
I'm like, at some point, so wait, this is a school.
00:26:38.589 --> 00:26:40.230
Are we allowed to do this? And I'm like, I'm
00:26:40.230 --> 00:26:42.150
not going to say shit. We just got to be cool
00:26:42.150 --> 00:26:44.009
about it. I don't know. There was one night where
00:26:44.009 --> 00:26:46.369
we, it was an all nighter at five o 'clock in
00:26:46.369 --> 00:26:48.049
the morning. We're all like, and we had the studio
00:26:48.049 --> 00:26:50.789
until eight. Right. So we're all like burnout
00:26:50.789 --> 00:26:52.450
by this time at five o 'clock in the morning.
00:26:52.490 --> 00:26:57.560
We're like, let's do a Tammy Wynette cover. So
00:26:57.560 --> 00:26:59.920
we're there, and we pull up YouTube, and we're
00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:01.440
listening to the song, and the song was Till
00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:03.220
I Can Make It On My Own. It's a ballad. Oh, yeah.
00:27:03.680 --> 00:27:06.140
Yeah. And we laid down the bass and the drums
00:27:06.140 --> 00:27:08.740
and the rhythm guitar. And Mitchell, he was tired
00:27:08.740 --> 00:27:11.519
and his voice was cracking. And obviously, he's
00:27:11.519 --> 00:27:13.319
a male. Tammy went at his feet. So he wasn't
00:27:13.319 --> 00:27:14.619
trying to sound like Tammy went at it. Right,
00:27:14.660 --> 00:27:16.400
right, right. But he did this scratch vocal that
00:27:16.400 --> 00:27:17.799
we were just going to, you know, just a scratch
00:27:17.799 --> 00:27:19.039
vocal. It's going to be thrown away. We'll do
00:27:19.039 --> 00:27:21.200
the master vocal later, right? So we did that.
00:27:21.480 --> 00:27:23.500
And then, you know, we cleaned the studio. No
00:27:23.500 --> 00:27:25.759
one ever knew. I mean, no one ever said anything
00:27:25.759 --> 00:27:27.579
to me. Like, you guys fucking trashed the place.
00:27:27.619 --> 00:27:29.259
I was like, no, we left it clean. Drank a lot
00:27:29.259 --> 00:27:30.660
of Jack, but we left it clean. Well, that's,
00:27:30.660 --> 00:27:33.970
you know, that's... To me, that was part of the
00:27:33.970 --> 00:27:36.589
gig. That's part of the, you know. And you would
00:27:36.589 --> 00:27:38.650
do that if you were working in another studio.
00:27:38.769 --> 00:27:42.630
You can't trash the place. I mean, I guess. There's
00:27:42.630 --> 00:27:44.329
some people who probably can get away with it.
00:27:44.390 --> 00:27:46.950
But most of the time, you're in there, and if
00:27:46.950 --> 00:27:48.910
you're the engineer, you're kind of supposed
00:27:48.910 --> 00:27:51.529
to be the grown -up, so to speak, in the room.
00:27:51.910 --> 00:27:54.450
And so, you know, it's kind of your deal. You
00:27:54.450 --> 00:27:56.910
make sure people aren't trashing shit up, and
00:27:56.910 --> 00:27:59.490
you clean up after everybody's done, and that's
00:27:59.490 --> 00:28:03.559
the way it is. I knew certain things, certain
00:28:03.559 --> 00:28:06.039
people were doing stuff, but I wasn't going to.
00:28:06.460 --> 00:28:07.839
Rob's like, you're not telling me anything I
00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:09.500
didn't fucking know, Jake. Come on now. Yeah.
00:28:09.940 --> 00:28:12.819
Yeah. I wasn't going to. I was not going to.
00:28:13.240 --> 00:28:15.799
be that guy, you know? I was like, hey, wait
00:28:15.799 --> 00:28:18.039
a second. The funny thing is, a couple months
00:28:18.039 --> 00:28:20.240
later, we actually went back and Mitchell was
00:28:20.240 --> 00:28:22.420
trying to do a master vocal for that track. He
00:28:22.420 --> 00:28:24.759
listened to that scratch vocal and he did a couple
00:28:24.759 --> 00:28:26.700
takes and I'm in there trying to comp the vocal
00:28:26.700 --> 00:28:28.920
and Mitchell's listening to it. He's like, play
00:28:28.920 --> 00:28:31.160
that scratch vocal back. And he's like, I don't
00:28:31.160 --> 00:28:33.000
know what it is. In a scratch vocal, he sang
00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:35.279
through an SM58, so we didn't even care what
00:28:35.279 --> 00:28:37.059
microphone it was because it was just a scratch
00:28:37.059 --> 00:28:40.039
vocal. Mitchell's like, I cannot get that level
00:28:40.039 --> 00:28:43.349
of pain in the way that I... He said, I can't
00:28:43.349 --> 00:28:45.930
do it. Like, it was 5 o 'clock in the morning.
00:28:45.990 --> 00:28:48.170
So we ended up using the scratch vocal as the
00:28:48.170 --> 00:28:50.289
lead vocal for the track. And then we just kind
00:28:50.289 --> 00:28:52.049
of built it around that. Part of your job as
00:28:52.049 --> 00:28:54.789
the engineer is to capture whatever is happening
00:28:54.789 --> 00:28:57.829
in the moment. And if you had not hit record
00:28:57.829 --> 00:29:00.750
on that scratch vocal, you would have been bummed.
00:29:00.849 --> 00:29:03.450
Yeah. I've learned real quick since that day,
00:29:03.549 --> 00:29:05.569
probably. I hit the record button. Even if they
00:29:05.569 --> 00:29:07.309
ask me, hey, are you recording this? No, no,
00:29:07.329 --> 00:29:09.529
don't worry about it. Absolutely. Yeah, you never
00:29:09.529 --> 00:29:12.309
let somebody know you're in record. chord just
00:29:12.309 --> 00:29:14.569
make sure you are rolling all the time because
00:29:14.569 --> 00:29:16.650
you never know what's going to come out of somebody's
00:29:16.650 --> 00:29:18.869
mouth or what some lick someone's going to play
00:29:18.869 --> 00:29:21.490
or some cool drum fill or oh my god you hear
00:29:21.490 --> 00:29:23.509
about omni studios they fucking tore omni down
00:29:23.509 --> 00:29:27.380
yeah i know absolute Decimation of Music Row.
00:29:27.619 --> 00:29:29.940
I had a critical listening class, or it was an
00:29:29.940 --> 00:29:31.920
assignment or something, and we had to pick between
00:29:31.920 --> 00:29:34.700
three songs, and one of the songs was a Vince
00:29:34.700 --> 00:29:36.720
Gill song, and we had to book the studio time
00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:39.579
and listen to the song through the control room,
00:29:39.640 --> 00:29:41.440
through the speakers. We had to draw out the
00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:43.180
sound field and what you're hearing. It was a
00:29:43.180 --> 00:29:45.220
really cool project. So I had the studio booked
00:29:45.220 --> 00:29:48.099
for like two hours. A half hour before my studio
00:29:48.099 --> 00:29:50.180
time was up, this older gentleman comes walking
00:29:50.180 --> 00:29:52.200
in, and I had no idea who it was. Not a clue.
00:29:52.319 --> 00:29:53.720
So I'm sitting there, and he's like, oh, that's
00:29:53.720 --> 00:29:56.390
a great Vince Gill song. And I'm thinking to
00:29:56.390 --> 00:29:57.849
myself, who the fuck is this guy encroaching
00:29:57.849 --> 00:29:59.809
on my studio time? I had no idea who he was.
00:29:59.890 --> 00:30:01.650
And I wasn't being a shithead to him, but I wasn't
00:30:01.650 --> 00:30:03.829
being as cordial as I could have been had I known
00:30:03.829 --> 00:30:06.289
who he was. It was Bob Bullock. And he had the
00:30:06.289 --> 00:30:07.930
studio booked for 8 o 'clock, so he was just
00:30:07.930 --> 00:30:11.089
there a little early, right? So I had no idea.
00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:14.619
I did my thing and I left and I turned a project
00:30:14.619 --> 00:30:16.480
in, you know, and I didn't think about it again
00:30:16.480 --> 00:30:19.140
until a couple of years later. I booked a mixing
00:30:19.140 --> 00:30:22.000
class and I see this name, Bob Bullock. And then
00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:23.539
I looked at him up like, holy crap, this guy's
00:30:23.539 --> 00:30:25.519
done some stuff. Like he's worked on some stuff.
00:30:25.660 --> 00:30:27.660
One of the sweetest and nicest people you'll
00:30:27.660 --> 00:30:30.589
ever meet too. Oh yeah. Yeah. I walked into his
00:30:30.589 --> 00:30:32.450
class and it was at Omni Studios. That's where
00:30:32.450 --> 00:30:34.410
we had the class. I remember. I'm like, okay,
00:30:34.609 --> 00:30:36.410
I'm going to fail this class just because, no,
00:30:36.509 --> 00:30:38.849
he was super cool. And we were in one of his
00:30:38.849 --> 00:30:41.450
classes and he was telling this story. He was
00:30:41.450 --> 00:30:44.490
doing this part spoken word, part music project
00:30:44.490 --> 00:30:47.309
with Waylon Jennings. Oh. It was basically Waylon
00:30:47.309 --> 00:30:49.410
songs and there was talking in between. And I
00:30:49.410 --> 00:30:50.869
don't know if it was recorded at Omni, but it
00:30:50.869 --> 00:30:53.309
was being mixed there. Yeah. Bob was doing something
00:30:53.309 --> 00:30:55.849
with Waylon at Omni Studios. Okay. So Waylon
00:30:55.849 --> 00:30:57.769
was back in the vocal booth and I think he was
00:30:57.769 --> 00:31:00.000
doing a spoken dialogue part. Bob kept hearing
00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:01.900
this crinkling coming through the mic, and he
00:31:01.900 --> 00:31:03.599
couldn't figure out what it was. So Waylon's
00:31:03.599 --> 00:31:04.859
just sitting there, and they're trying to figure
00:31:04.859 --> 00:31:06.720
it out, and the engineers are trying to figure
00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:08.599
it out. They're swapping out XLR cables, and
00:31:08.599 --> 00:31:10.380
they're swapping out mics, and they'd get everything
00:31:10.380 --> 00:31:12.299
hooked back up and hit record again, and the
00:31:12.299 --> 00:31:14.200
crinkling is still there. Come to find out it
00:31:14.200 --> 00:31:17.039
was Waylon fucking with him. Waylon had a cigarette
00:31:17.039 --> 00:31:19.519
pack and was fucking with the cellophane, and
00:31:19.519 --> 00:31:20.779
every time they would get everything straight,
00:31:20.859 --> 00:31:23.000
oh, let's try it now, Waylon, he would just crinkle
00:31:23.000 --> 00:31:27.480
that fucking cellophane. That's awesome! Bob
00:31:27.480 --> 00:31:29.579
said, I don't know how long that went on until
00:31:29.579 --> 00:31:31.480
they figured out what it was. But finally, he
00:31:31.480 --> 00:31:32.900
said, wait, I said, all right, guys, this is
00:31:32.900 --> 00:31:35.420
this is me messing with you. That's awesome.
00:31:37.389 --> 00:31:40.109
You still are the first person I've ever met
00:31:40.109 --> 00:31:43.289
that was a fan of Kiss and Waylon Jennings at
00:31:43.289 --> 00:31:45.930
the same time. Oh, of course. Yeah. I was impressed
00:31:45.930 --> 00:31:48.589
with the spectrum. We had a studio project and
00:31:48.589 --> 00:31:50.789
this wasn't even mine. This was for a classmate
00:31:50.789 --> 00:31:53.309
and they had hired Cowboy Eddie Long to come
00:31:53.309 --> 00:31:54.950
in and play pedal steel on it. And I had never
00:31:54.950 --> 00:31:57.150
met him. Cowboy comes walking in when I said,
00:31:57.190 --> 00:32:00.289
Cowboy, when I was 18 years old, my dad took
00:32:00.289 --> 00:32:03.170
me to see Hank Williams Jr. in Stabler Arena
00:32:03.170 --> 00:32:05.890
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And I said, you were
00:32:05.890 --> 00:32:07.609
the steel player. at that time he's like yes
00:32:07.609 --> 00:32:10.230
i was wow he's like i probably couldn't tell
00:32:10.230 --> 00:32:11.809
you much about that show he said because i was
00:32:11.809 --> 00:32:16.750
drinking a lot back then but uh we became friends
00:32:16.750 --> 00:32:19.069
we became really still are really good friends
00:32:19.069 --> 00:32:21.869
and after i graduated from school cowboy called
00:32:21.869 --> 00:32:23.750
me up one day he goes uh you're done with school
00:32:23.750 --> 00:32:26.180
right i'm like yeah he goes uh hmm Are you able
00:32:26.180 --> 00:32:28.839
to do overdubs? Like if I brought my pedal steel
00:32:28.839 --> 00:32:30.759
to your house, if we had a track for me to play
00:32:30.759 --> 00:32:33.019
to, could you record me? I'm like, yeah. When
00:32:33.019 --> 00:32:35.460
he's not on the road, people will hire him to
00:32:35.460 --> 00:32:37.759
play steel on their records. And I'm usually
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:39.640
the one doing it. That's awesome. That's great.
00:32:39.839 --> 00:32:41.500
There's a band called Whiskey Myers. I don't
00:32:41.500 --> 00:32:42.140
know if you've ever heard of them. Yeah, I've
00:32:42.140 --> 00:32:45.380
heard of them. We did their White Album. Cowboy
00:32:45.380 --> 00:32:47.269
called me up and he said to, hey. have you heard
00:32:47.269 --> 00:32:48.990
Whiskey Myers? And I was like, yeah. He goes,
00:32:49.069 --> 00:32:51.490
we have eight songs that they want me to do for
00:32:51.490 --> 00:32:53.750
their record. And he said, it's legit. There's
00:32:53.750 --> 00:32:55.349
money involved, you know, the whole nine yards.
00:32:55.509 --> 00:32:57.410
He said, but can we do it in two days? I'm like,
00:32:57.490 --> 00:33:00.470
you bet your ass we can. And we did. To hear
00:33:00.470 --> 00:33:03.589
that you were happy with things and you got information
00:33:03.589 --> 00:33:06.490
out of it that you still use to this day, that's
00:33:06.490 --> 00:33:09.589
the biggest compliment that I could ever get,
00:33:09.730 --> 00:33:12.450
really. Anybody that is involved in teaching
00:33:12.450 --> 00:33:15.349
like that. One of the very first audio classes,
00:33:15.630 --> 00:33:18.380
John and was teaching and this was very early
00:33:18.380 --> 00:33:21.259
on and we had a huge class where they hadn't
00:33:21.259 --> 00:33:24.940
started weeding people out yet right one of the
00:33:24.940 --> 00:33:27.700
classmates in the middle of learning the science
00:33:27.700 --> 00:33:30.339
behind audio he asked when do we see the strippers
00:33:30.339 --> 00:33:32.779
and cocaine and the parties and john's like he
00:33:32.779 --> 00:33:34.859
didn't say it but the look on his face like what
00:33:34.859 --> 00:33:34.980
the