#2504 - Skylar Grey

The Joe Wilgen experience This is the power of music. I told my wife that you were coming on and she said if I die on my funeral I want her song. I'm coming home really? Yeah It's like that's a heavy thought and then I listened to it in the gym. I was like god damn I listened to the version where you were on the piano. It was like a solo concert. I was like god

That's such a it's such a great song, but it's such a such a crazy thought. Yeah Wow a very specific song Anyway, but that's you know, that's the emotion of real music Yeah, like you send me a text message about a I you know because you sent me one of your songs and you're like a I is never Gonna recreate this I said something like I don't think it's capable of writing stuff with this much emotion. Yeah, what's not real You know, it sounds cool. That's what AI does They there's cool songs that come from AI, but there's always gonna be and I completely agree with you There's always gonna be a thing We know a person wrote it that they sat down and they wrote it and there's this connection with their their spirit and their creativity That comes out and that's what people love about music other than stuff that sound I like I like AI music because it sounds cool, but I know what it is. I know it's just a robot

I mean I think it's you know sometimes it's good for certain things, but the type of music that I make personally It's like very therapeutic for me to write I always I'm writing from like a true emotion. So Yeah I think AI is an interesting it's just like another tool I feel like that you know when auto-tune first came out people were bitching about that and even like my first Problems I recorded with my mom when I was a little kid we did it on two-inch tape, you know So there's no computer involved so then computers got an introduced and people are bitching about that like this isn't real music Yeah, you know it's just like all these technological advances to me I see them as just tools that creatives can use to get their vision across What was what was Peter Frampton using back in the day? It was like a tube or something right? I have no idea Do you remember like you you know what that stuff is Jamie?

It's like a tube you put in your mouth or something Yes, it's like a straw and like the microphone picks up the sound so the sound would go through the tube into your mouth And then I can't pick that up and you're using your mouth because I remember people hating that like way back in the day People were hating that like that's on this real voice like what is he doing? I put it through that thing, you know But there's always I mean look there's always gonna be tools that people use to enhance creativity But right the thing that's weird now is that they're making entire song they can make a total Skyler-grade category and they sound pretty good They sound really good. You know, that's what's crazy. Yeah, it's your voice. It's your voice. It's your hat. You know, it's so new. Yeah

So those entire podcast with me that I never did really yeah, there's a whole conversation with me and Steve Jobs I never met Steve Jobs. This means Steve Jobs talking about stuff. Is it the visual too? No, it's not the visual This one's just an audio one, but eventually I'm sure there'll be a bit of visual one Yeah, and there's definitely ones of me talking to people I've never talked to yeah, people pretend they've been on the show and all good for fun Yeah, yeah, I was with me very very strange, you know very strange. Yeah, we're living in a weird blurry time Yeah, like the lines between real and not real or getting very blurry like it's an introduction to the Matrix Like we're getting like the first whispers of the fog of the Matrix as it envelopes us. Yeah getting just these little clouds

Like oh, this is weird and eventually just gonna be whoa We're gonna just be in the full cloud of the Matrix, but I see people questioning everything now They're like is this real everybody's sussy about everything now you should yeah I mean there's people like prominent news people who have reposted stories with videos in it that were like straight out of a video game Yeah, it's very very weird time. We're in very you know, but I think it's also exciting. Oh, it's definitely exciting. You know, it's fun Yeah, well, it's weird anytime things are weird anything things like yeah, but that I think it makes you really appreciate actual things like real Physical things yeah, I agree with that real connection with people real art Mm-hmm, you know, I think that's what's gonna happen a lot with AI like people's actual artwork like getting something like this Chimps called this is made with thimbles symbols with zilgens. Oh, yeah, this guy shane against the machine He makes yeah, he's an artist makes cool stuff I like I know I got made that yeah like when I'm fucking around with this like this guy made it Yeah, I think it'll make us a value real human made art more and Value like nuance and mistakes and things not being perfect, you know, yeah

I mean that's part of what's relatable about art is it and it's part of what makes us appreciate that it did come from a person You know like when you look at a really cool painting like that painting like that doesn't sound perfect. Yeah, it's supposed to be perfect I'm just supposed to be an expression. It's like a person's work. It's like there whatever they are their thing their essence is in that canvas Mm-hmm. Yep. How'd you start doing music? How old were you said you recorded with your mom and your little yeah?

How old were you I was six when I did my first show Wow? Yeah, so she was in like folk bands and stuff and she also plays Celtic Arpegg and my dad was in a barbershop quartet My great grandma's an opera singer so I just like born into it with an extremely musical family and um when I was like two We were singing happy birthday to one of my aunts and I started singing a harmony and my mom was like what is going on I was a two-year-old singing harmony I wasn't even able to like say all the words but the notes I was singing were like the harmony part and Then with all her bands that she was playing with all the time I would be at the rehearsals and chiming in and then they would like bring me up on stage to do little guest appearances and It was just very clear that that's what I wanted to do Wow and so when I was six We put together our first like hour long set and I played at a library we were mom together And it was a Mother's Day show Madison, Wisconsin. I'm from Maison, Maine It's like a 1500 person really small village basically in Wisconsin And so then I just loved it and so we started touring around the Midwest and played a lot of really random venues like

Elementary schools libraries women's health conventions. I think the one of the biggest shows I ever did was actually a Boy Scouts thing And it was like 1500 Boy Scouts. How old are you? I started this from the time I was six till I went solo. I think when I was 12 or That's crazy. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats hockey seasons here and Uber Eats is delivering game-day deals on

Favorites like wings pizza fries and snacks and you can order more than food like gear to rep your team or fresh batteries for the remote When your watch party gets hungry or you just need anything Order in and keep everyone's attention on the ice score great deals on Uber Eats all season long because hockey is for the hungry Terms apply product availability varies by region see app for details This episode is brought to you by Squarespace if you're thinking about building a website you should try Squarespace I know because I use it. That's right Joe Rogan dot com is powered by Squarespace It has all the features that you need to create a standout website like an AI enhanced website builder SEO optimization tools and seamless checkouts with mobile pay links Head to squarespace.com slash Rogan for a free trial And when you are ready to launch use the offer code Rogan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain That's an interesting life though to have your path carved out or at least the direction. Yeah at a very young age Yeah, and it wasn't like I was like a Disney star or something so it wasn't like a big scale

It was it was small and but I made it decent money and I mean for a kid I saved it up and then when I was 12 I bought my first grand piano with the money I'd saved up Oh, wow Yeah, and so then I started writing songs at the piano like pop songs and stuff solo And it wasn't cool at that time to be singing with my mom anymore Like you know kids get really mean in middle school and they would like make fun of me because we were singing the silliest like Like we are the colors of the rainbow and never spoke tobacco and my grandma slid down the mountain These are some of the song titles so it was very silly and I got my fun of and so I wanted to sing pop songs And I went solo and my mom was not stoked about that because like it had become her career Oh wow, like we I would miss like I would miss so much school Sometimes I had six shows a week So it was like a lot But Look at that

So we say your mom wasn't stoked about that really real friction between you guys no I mean she was really supportive, but like like I said, I had become her career singing with me so it's like She had to adjust her whole lifestyle and everything for that. You know that'd be a hard decision for you then knowing that that's gonna bum your mom out Yes, and no, I just like I was so driven at 12. Oh, yeah Yeah, well, what was the feeling like we say you're so driven like what was it inside you that made you want to I just loved Making music and performing and writing and I knew I just there was no like option of anything else I would do with my life and I knew I wasn't gonna sing with my mom my whole life You know so Well, yeah, it's so crazy God I hated school so much and I begged to be homeschooled and We couldn't figure that out. So I ended up dropping out when I was 16 Why did so much?

Because I was so focused on music. I felt like I was wasting my time in school. Wow Yeah, there was a teacher that my algebra teacher She said something to me that kind of lit a fire under my ass in a good way She told me music is in a career and I was like I'll show you bitch And so I dropped out and I never went back after she said that there's so many teachers that have Influence over children that say things like that and it's such a crazy irresponsible thing to say Yeah, cuz I had I had missed or I hadn't done my homework because I had a show The night before this and then we had a test and I ace the test. I was a good student. I'd like a 3.9 But I used to test and but she was like but you gotta do your homework Just like everybody else in this class and I had a show I couldn't I didn't have time and she was like well music's not a career That's such a crazy thing to say because it's clearly a career Why do you listen to music who's making it? I know when you go to a concert people are paying is there someone is there someone on stage?

Is that a career? No, like small town small town in West. It's like I mean I guess everywhere. It's everyone people push the go to school You know get a good job And I just wasn't on that path ever It's very wild to be that focused at such an early age, but it is there's it's something fun about those kind of like I'll show you bitch Sorry, yeah, like I could have taken that and been like I could have gone the other direction with that comment You know right you could have said oh my god. I don't want to be a loser. Yeah, I'll be homeless

Yeah, okay, she's right and she's an adult so she must know right You get older and you realize like there's a lot of people that are teaching they're like they're just teaching because they need a teacher It's not because like we found this magical person is really good at educating children really good at like shaping their minds their futures. Yeah, no There's some good teachers. I have a lot of them I had some really good teachers. She was not one of them. It's hard to find someone that's really good at a job It doesn't pay very well. It is that's part of the problem. It's almost like

You would think that if the future of humanity is very important one of the most important things would be education It's one of the most important things would be finding the best teachers and how would you do that you would pay them? Yeah, really well. Yeah, like if we really cared about the future of earth We would spend a ton of money making sure that these teachers are really well educated and that they really understand psychology They really understand how to motivate children You would think yeah, that would make a lot of sense right We're it's so odd how intelligent and capable and innovative we are and yet so fucking foolish at the same time that we just allow that generation after generation Shitty teachers not getting paid good teachers not getting rewarded Mm-hmm, you know and then they retire and they're like who's that all for yeah? Nobody cared nobody?

Appreciated what I was doing you have to fight for your pension like Oh Mess up but the education system so crazy. Yeah, because I mean essentially I mean when you go down the tin foil hat road It was essentially designed to make factory workers I mean, you know there wasn't really formal schooling like we have now where children go at an early age and show up and you know And leave their parents all day That's like the fairly recent thing in human history and the reason why they got people really early is because that's how you can brainwash them Right you get kids when they're 14 15 years old they kind of already have their own view of the world It's hard to shape them but you get those little five-year-olds six-year-olds And then if you get preschool, you know, it's a lot of people have to work You know parents both parents work so then you can get the kids real early and then you can make little workers out of them Mm-hmm like walking a single file line and yeah, like control everything sit in class sit straight ahead Pledge of allegiance. Yeah, and if you can't pay attention you must have a disease so we're gonna give you some medication

Exactly I probably should add some of that medication to be honest probably not no no I definitely think I'm an undiagnosed ADHD case. I feel like almost everybody else well anybody that's any good at anything I we had this conversation yesterday with my friend Eric I was like I think it's a fucking superpower. Yeah, I really do I don't think it's negative at all Yeah, there's a lot of shit. I can't pay attention to if it's boring right if it's boring. I check in I'm super hyper focused on things that you're in sense with right? Oh, yeah, like I don't need to sleep

Yeah, I could stay up for days if something is really interesting if I get focused which is why I have to stay away from video games and stuff Like that. Oh, yeah, it's locked in for hours Yeah, it's problem, but but it's not just video games like anything that I really love but things that I'm not interested in It's like I can't absorb it just goes in and that's what high school was like for me It was like I'd be in class like this is torture But then I'd find something I really loved and I'd be like fully locked in yeah It took a while for me to because I just thought I was gonna be a loser. I'm like clearly I can never hold a job I'm not I can't take direction. I'm not I can't pay attention like it's something wrong with me Like I'm not I'm just gonna be one of those people. That's just kind of a fringe person. That's never you know

Never fits in anywhere. I'm like, okay, this is where I am. I'll just get some weird odd jobs to feed myself with like I was literally how I was thinking about my future. I'm like, you know, well Things are unconventional But there's so many children out there that are told like hey music is in a career, you know Hey, you know whatever acting writing books whatever it is comedy There's somebody who's there telling you because they didn't do it that you can't do it. Yeah Yep, it's a bummer. Yeah, like I was an artist when I was young

I wanted to be a comic book illustrator when I was really young and I had one shitty high school art teacher who was just such a Twat he was so bad and I just quit art my senior year I was like I don't want to go to this guy's fucking class like because it wasn't a big high school And he was the only art teacher so I quit what what did he do? He was just negative Oh, he was like you can't because I just wanted to draw what I wanted to draw right now I was into comic book stuff like Conan the barbarian and superheroes and stuff like that and he was like You're not gonna make a living doing that you're most likely gonna have to do like advertisements for like diapers like diaper ads And I was like fucking what I'm like that's his explanation that he used diaper ads and I would look at him And he just looked like he looked depressed he was like this skinny guy with a pot belly He's probably an artist that didn't make it as an artist and had to become an art teacher instead So he's like bitter and yeah, well we realized that too. We looked at his actual art That's not very good. That's how inspired there's not a lot of fire in that belly, you know He's just a boring dude who's just like depressed and sad he probably drank a lot We see a skinny person with a big belly usually that's like booze. Yeah

This episode is brought to you by arm wrote every week There's some new wellness hack that people swear by and after a while you start thinking why do we think we can just outsmart our bodies? That's why arm wrote colostrum caught my attention It's something the body already recognizes and has hundreds of these specialized nutrients for gut stuff immunity metabolism, etc I first noticed it working around training especially workout recovery most of falls off But I am still taking this if you want to try armra is offering my listeners 30% off plus two free gifts go to armra.com slash Rogan I mean there's a lot of people like that even in like the music industry I feel like a lot of the experts in the game are just like people who were artists and didn't make it another bitter And then they try to tell you how everything should go how you should do everything and oh yeah That got me for a while when I was really young and I feel like those people are like weights that you have to carry You know it's build up resistance you build up strength from dealing with those bullshit people because they're stupid ideas They get they actually get in your head and you have to wrestle with it for sure especially when you're super young

Like I was when I first moved LA I was 17. Whoa by yourself. Yeah, whoa Yeah, that's crazy. I was like very green small town Midwest girl whoa just dropped in LA and like and really pretty That's a terrible combination. Oh, it's weird really pretty 17. It was weird. It's Midwest. Oh god. Yeah

Move you now shaped head tattoo on it Yeah, yeah, you came out on the other end good though But isn't it true though? They're like like those kind of experiences like Experiencing like oddity and uncertainty and just like the the weirdness of like moving to a place like LA when you're 17 Like when you get through it on the other end. You're a different person. You're a stronger person for sure I mean every experience makes you stronger, right? So Yeah, I just threw myself into this Crazy mix in LA and it was culture shock like so what year was this when you moved to LA?

So I was 17 so and I was in the graduate where I should have been in the graduating class of 2004 so 2003 yeah, yeah, yeah, and I lived with them the guitar player from culture club really Roy hey Wow, yeah, he had a house in venison. I crashed in on his couch and It was wild culture boy George. Mm-hmm. Do you hang out with boy George? No never? No, he wasn't there

You ever meet him on the phone? Oh, yeah This was wild. There was a Murder next door the first month I moved in Yeah, there's like a bloody mattress in the little alleyway between the houses and they taped they cotched and taped off all the Houses and they had a question us about like they'd be here screaming and So I was just like sitting there on the steps Not allowed to leave while they were taking the body out and Then the coroner after he put the body on the truck he came and sat next to me on the steps and started like hitting on me He was like he was like You're a very beautiful girl. I'm like you were just touching a dead body. This is so weird. Where am I? Oh God?

Yeah, welcome to LA. Yeah, you got over that dead body real quick. Yeah, where you from? Yeah fucking blood in his fingernail. Yeah Gross Wow, that's a movie. Mm-hmm. Well, LA in 2003 was still okay

Yeah, it was like not bad, you know, it was still traffic and everything but it hadn't gone completely sideways Now it's so weird when I go back. I'm like this is unrecognizable. It doesn't seem like the same place Every sign has a for every building has a four lee sign on it. It's like this is nuts Like it's hard to believe that this is that you're like when you see things like Detroit You're saying that movie Roger and me. It's a great movie. It's a Michael Moore and it's all about the collapse of the Detroit

automotive industry and how they moved all the plants to Mexico and When they did that the entire economy of Detroit and Flint, Michigan and all these areas just collapsed like Tens of that hundreds of thousands of people out of work instantaneously with no prospects the industry was gone and it's a horrific depiction of what can happen when greedy people decide that they'll they'll completely sabotage an entire city so they can make You know X amount more dollars and move all the factors to places where you can pay people a dollar a day or whatever the fuck they pay them and You know, I had seen that but I was like oh that was you know 1980s or 1960s Whenever when the when the place was booming like Detroit was at one point time. I think the third richest city in the world. Well, yeah See that's true. I appreciate it's true, but It was all just because the automobile manufacturing. I mean everything was made there for Chevy Chrysler all of our big cars

And it just yeah, you know like a ghost town and you know and when I visited Detroit to work I'd be like wow this is crazy You see trees growing through the middle of houses the houses are collapsed and literally nobody took care of the house It was abandoned so trees grow through the roofs and they're reclaiming these homes You see you go by these gigantic like buildings like industrial buildings all the windows are broken Yeah, everything no reliable historical source shows Detroit as the third richest city in the world the common claim is actually Detroit Was the richest city in the world or at least the US was one of the highest living standards around 1950s not third Oh, so it's not richest well, it's not that's the common claim what it actually was very high medium household income Around 20% above us average and it's all because the automotive industry one of the highest homeownership rates in the country because of this many commentators and locals Histories describe Detroit as the wealthiest city in the US and by some accounts having the highest standard of living in the world in that era Articles and tours about Detroit repeatedly referred to it as the wealthiest city in the world in the 1950s not as the third wealthiest

So is that true then that it was the wealthiest city in the world? Tours about Detroit's history the third richest city in the world line seems to come from its memes social posts Okay, these posts are often mixed or exaggeration of real facts Detroit truly was exceptionally rich by US standards But rankings like third in the world are not backed by clear clearly documented global per capita income comparisons from that period Well, so it was rich it was very wealthy either way and when you think about the rest of the world You know, like, you know people have to use that term the 1% like the top 1% do you know what that is like for the world? No, no, what is it? No, no, no, no, no, yeah, 34 a thousand dollars is the top 1% of earth. That's crazy crazy That's crazy. What is it for the US?

1% if I had a guess let's guess I bet it's like $500,000 a year. Do you think what do you think it is? 250 250 what do you think it is? That's my guess that another 150. 150 top 1% Wow Throw that in perplexity What I say half a million top 1% of the US 700,000 Yeah, yeah, closest. Mm-hmm. 700 800,000 or more depending on the data source in year. That's pretty crazy

So for the United States 700 to $790,000 per year most analysis and then for the rest of the world 34,000 Wow crazy. That's wild. Yeah, that's capitalism. Yeah But I bet there's probably some truth to in order for the United States to have such a high income is other countries have to get bucked over Globally you only needed annual income on the order of 60,000 to 70,000 to be the top 1% Oh, it used to be 34 One widely side analysis found in 2012 annual income of 50,000 was enough to be in the global 1% So where's that 34,000 come from?

Oh fucking memes might have been kind of true, but Someone very intelligent. I looked it up before but I think it was a meme Either way I get those memes get me all the time And then you go to the comments and it's like oh, I'll fake. Yeah, there's a lot of that But you know, that's the the dirty thing about what they did was at Troy like they decided that they'll take advantage of these people that are Ultra poor that are working willing to work with and it's not just that they get paid a dollar a day or whatever they get paid It's there's no health care. There's no benefits. There's no retirement. There's no dental

There's no nothing you just get that money and then figure it out on your own and then you know You buy a forward car and you think it's made in America commonly repeated claim the annual income about $34,000 US puts you to the top one percent of the world but this comes from rough older viral estimates It's not based on current rigorous global data more careful tools and data sets now suggest at $34,000 Places you well above the global median but likely closer to roughly the top five to ten percent worldwide rather than the top one percent Okay, so it appears 60 is still like right you're barely getting by if you make $50,000 in America like you fucking struggling. Yeah, that's your super young You don't have any teachers That's a good question like what's the average yeah public school teacher salary in America. Let's guess I think it's like 60 grand. I think it's about that. I bet it's about that. Yeah

I guess Actually was it? 74,000 Public school teachers now average 74,000 to 75,000 per year, so that's like you know, you're okay You've been where you live. Yeah, well you live in New York. You're fucked. Yeah, if you live in New York you live in a box Yeah, yeah, that's pretty good for Wisconsin Okay, um state averages lowest paying states to above $90,000 in the highest paying ones like California, New York So California, New York $90,000 Starting teacher pay significantly lower than the overall average oh national estimate the average starting teacher salary about $48,000 Wow meaning it takes years of experience and often advanced degrees to reach or exceed that 74,000 average So if you get like really intelligent people even if they love children, they're like I can't do this I can't live like this. Yeah, you start off at $48,000. You're the fucking bonkers

That's not even a thousand dollars a week and then you have taxes and then you have an apartment and then you have food and then you have a car Oh, yeah, oh, oh, huh How many people do I was just weird that we put our priorities In strange places like the amount of money that goes through you know various corporations and NGOs and amount of loans that All this different fucking shit that where our tax dollars go and you look at that and you're like that seems so short-sighted Very yeah, no politician runs on that No politicians like we need to really find the best teachers and pay them the most amount of money that we can afford to make sure that We get the best and the brightest everybody's like fuck you Weird yeah, it is people are strange. Yeah, I wish you could like check boxes of where you want your tax dollars to go Oh hundred percent. Yeah, I want to go to education or whatever Yeah, imagine if that was an option if when you voted you could actually vote on where your taxes went. Yeah, yeah Like not even voted it should be actually individually. He might have to pee

He's acting and I know yeah, let let him out because generally he would be chilling by now and when he huffs like that He's usually trying to let you know something. Yeah, like that's what he does when he has to eat he huffs He comes around like My dog does that when she senses something outside like a coyote or something she starts huffing we guys are saying you have a one of them giant Caucasian shepherds Yeah, it's a central Asian Shepherd. We have an alibi. I guess there's a lot of different like breeds under the central Asian Shepherd They're all hurting dogs, right? They're like protect. It's a protection. Yeah, wolves. Yeah

Pull up the image of an alibi dog. Just Google wolf crusher. Is that what they call them? Yeah How much is it way she's actually on the smaller side? She's like 105 pounds or something. Oh, that is smaller

But she her head is so massive They get they get really big that one can't be real, but they are massive like So that's what she looks like yeah, pretty much She's all white But those dogs are great for just like keeping track of the property. Yeah, look at that image This is wolf crusher in the bottom the bottom right there right left of the wolf grinder thing Yeah, that one right there. So that I think is like a Turkish kangal Which is I think the next dog we're gonna get because we need another one Our our alibi and all that she I'm just like such an animal lover. So she really should be outside living on the ranch But she sleeps in bed So I need an outside dog that's actually watching the livestock because this past couple weeks we lost them 12 chickens and Four sheep to what coyotes Wow? Where do you live? Napa Napa Valley? Wow? You have that many coyotes out there?

Oh, they are invading our property right now It's been the last few weeks have been really rough once they know that there's food there. Yeah, it's very they taste the blood they come I every night. Yeah, I lost all my chickens in California. Yeah, we lost a couple of them every now and then I had a dog His name is Johnny Cash, and he was a massive and he was a sweetheart of a dog, but he was huge he was like 140 pounds solid muscle and These coyotes made friends with them and so they would come by the fence and hang out with them and then eventually he got like Custom to them and then one day the pool guy accidentally left the gate open and so he went into the area where the chicken Coop is and the chicken coop is like completely protected, but we had one of our chickens was brooding. Do you know?

Yeah, yeah, of course you do So when you take chickens when they're brooding you have to take them away from the other chickens and you put them in a smaller Coop and they have to perch so if they perch then they don't think that they're sitting on an egg and then they get over it after a while Yeah, and the coyote tricked Johnny into smashing that little chicken coop so that he can get the chicken What do you mean? I don't know how this motherfucker did it, but it couldn't break down the chicken coop because it was only like 30 pounds And so it was over there with Johnny and all of a sudden me and my wife and my kids were playing some sort of like monopoly or something in the living room And someone yells coyote and one of my kids yell coyote and we see the coyote running across the backyard with the chicken in its mouth And then leaps onto the top of the fence. I thought we have like this fence It was probably like six feet tall or something like that like wrought iron fence. I'm like I'll keep the coyotes out No, it leapt like a ballerina Oh my goodness toes to the top of the fence and then off with the chicken in its mouth And part of me was like so impressed that I wasn't even mad but apart. I was like what the fuck

I was like how did he get that so we go outside and there's Johnny standing there in front of this destroyed chicken coop Which clearly he did yeah, because the coyote gonna yeah, and so then he realized that chickens are to be killed Oh, no someone left the gate open again And he decided to just go right through the big chicken coop and he killed nine of them before one of my daughters was screaming Johnny's in the chicken coop. No. Yeah, he made a mess out of it. That's awful. Well, he didn't know My chickens are like my pets. I like snuggle with them and stuff. We lost one to a bobcat last week

Yeah, we had some bobcats take some of our yeah, and we lost one to a fox We lost one of our fox a couple weeks ago. Do you free range your chickens? Yeah? I'm out of the cooper today. Yeah, they get out of the coop and then we bring them in at night But you know fucking animals they figured out yeah So like last week because we let the chickens out every morning it was 6 30 in the morning and this coyote came and killed 12 Like back to back just one time. Well on the cameras. That's we only saw one Wow. Yeah, so it was like surplus killing

Yeah, thrill killing well, they don't they kill and then they leave them there and then they go back and get them later You know they do that with cats. You know, I mean mountains do that for sure. Mm-hmm Yeah, it was weird. They just killed them all and then took like a few of them with them left some of them It was awful I was broken cuz it took my favorite chicken and her name was big cheeks She was sweetest she would like come like a dog you can like call her name and she would come to you and do you eat chicken? Yeah, my chickens I don't know you might check it's always weird because my wife treats the chickens like their little babies like hey girls Hey girls like she takes care of them and all that stuff and and then we'll be eating chicken. Yeah, it's odd

Yeah, it's odd. I mean we have cows too and I I beef do you eat your cows? Well, they're not technically our cows So we have like an arrangement with a makow guy and he just uses our property to graze them Okay, cuz we need the cows because we have a biodynamic vineyard and so we use the cows in the vineyard Like for a few months out of the year just because it creates like a great ecosystem And also like their footprints make little puddles and the water gathers because we're also dry farmed and so what's I mean? We don't water our grapes really? Yeah, so why is that?

I'm not the win expert, but I think it's because you get like a better flavor profile if you like it's more concentrated If you don't like overload them with water And also it makes the vines struggle in a good way So it makes them reach deeper like the roots reach deeper into the ground and so you get more like flavor I guess and so this is your own wine so we don't make the wine we sell the grapes to We have five different winemakers now. They're all doing single estate wines from our property So they're not blending it with anything So you can drink the wine from our property But it's not our label cuz I don't want to go out there and sell wine and make people taste my wine and I don't want to go down that whole Marketing it's like I have a whole other job. I don't need that. We just handle the farming That's cool though. Well, if somebody wanted to buy wine from your property like what are the wines?

Well, our property is called glass rock and so pill crow glass rock Tansy glass rock. Oh, so they all say glass rock. Yeah, they have like a their brand name or whatever and then underneath It'll say like the vineyard site. So if you get it from a glass rock, I'm gonna buy some wine from your farm Oh, I'll send you some. Do you like wine? I do. Oh, okay

I'm gonna just mill you a package of all of the wines from our property. Okay cool It's all cabernet But we're taking like an old world approach to it because Napa cabs are like super powerful tons of alcohol And that's not really my style. I like like French and Italian wines usually and so all the winemakers We're working with our taking that approach and so we're picking a little bit earlier lower sugars lower alcohol It's really delicious delicate beautiful wine. How did you get involved in this? Well, I got really into wine like in my 20s and then I Took a trip to Napa for a birthday and it's so beautiful there. Have you been to know? Yeah, it's gorgeous

So I just like fell in love with the area and then I met the love of my life at the grocery store there as Buying watermelon and he has to be a carrier my melon for me and that was this pick up line Down though, I said no. Yeah, but we Carlo Mandavi is his best friend. Do you know Mandavi? Yeah, so he's grandson of Robert Mandavi And so they're like best friends and Carlo. I was living in parks at Utah at the time and Carlo had a house in my neighborhood So that was like our mutual connection friend And so I would just come to Napa to visit Carlo and he would teach me about all the wine stuff and And that's how I met Elliot when we were at the grocery store and Then a year later we got together officially. We just kind of like kept in touch

I was married at the time. He was in a relationship, so it was very dramatic but Long story short. It was very dramatic turned into a crazy divorce by your lawsuit all this week But anyway, those are fun. Yeah, it was fantastic So then I moved to Napa and moved in with Elliot A year after we met and so then we but we lived in St. Helena Which is like a town up the valley from from Napa proper and it was like a 400 acre ranch out in the middle of nowhere And we had like a 400 square foot house like a little tiny cabin basically that we lived in and after a while like getting cats and stuff I was like this is really small and I have like I have to make music after record and like having a studio in the 400 square foot house It was just you know, so then we ended up buying this house down in Napa and we bought it for the house But there was a vineyard there and so we're like we got to figure out what to do with the vineyard and it was conventionally farmed up to that point But we're like like irrigated like irrigated they use pesticides like, you know, like pretty much most of the vineyards

You know, yeah, and but we're very all about organic I mean too because one of the things that we were reading the other day was about glyphosate in California wines They tested a bunch of California wines and all of them. Yeah, I'd glyphosate in it. Yeah, so we don't use any of that That's awesome. Yeah, we're very anti so we transformed the vineyard into this biodynamic organically farmed Did you know how to do that before that or did you read books? How'd you find out how to do it?

No, we hired a farmer for a while from France that That was his like forte basically So we transformed the vineyard and then now Elliot's out there doing a lot of the farming obviously we have help It's because we have like something like nine acres planted a vineyard and so we have help But he's out there running the tractors and stuff. Wow. Yeah, he's always done. He's always done like a lot of like tractor work But not every in your head so it's it's all new to us But it's fun that let that life of like being on a piece of land and growing something there and like living with animals I was like the romantic life. It really is it really is it that cool. Yeah, it's awesome. You gotta come I think you love it

It sounds amazing. I want to do that. I've thought about doing that many times like buying a ranch living on a ranch just like I Get terrified of like adding one more thing to my life that will probably push out some things or eat up time I just don't know where I'm getting that time from that's the only hesitation that I have you know I'm just higher help you have to talk to them and you have to manage it all you have to do like interpersonal drama between the Help like my piece of shit. Look how fuck yeah, I mean yeah It's worth it though. Honestly, it really is it's so peaceful like especially being an Instagram and going out and like touring and Just being in big cities and coming home to this like peaceful serene Yeah, it's yeah, it's the perfect balance. Yeah, yeah

Well, that is probably the key to staying sane as a performer like having a balance I think so because so many of them just fucking just stay on the road and You kind of like lose your roots you lose your grounding. Uh-huh. You're always perfect Well and for me like living in LA really ruined my creativity. How so? I think a lot of it was like I'm I have a tendency to like give everybody too much power So like all these so-called experts like listening to their opinions about what I was doing. I'm just got in my head and so

removing myself being able to remove myself from those characters and personalities telling me what they thought I should be doing like writing about thinking about dressing whatever I just Need to like have open spaces to really hear my own inner voice and like my gut, you know, um, so I left LA when I was 23 and I moved up to Oregon for a while lived in a cabin by itself. Yeah, really? How'd you find it? Well, I had I'd been on tour and I was playing keyboards and singing backups for somebody else So I can back up a little bit so I got my first record deal when I was 18 or something and put out an album That was with Warner Brothers Lincoln Park signed me And I was going by the name Holly broke at the time That's my first and middle name and so I put out an album through that and it completely like flopped and I went broke And you know LA is so expensive and I had spent all my college savings to move out to LA and make demos and everything

so I had nothing left and So then I had taken for the first time in my life. I had to get some jobs like not just performing so I worked in Barnes and Noble I taught gymnastics and I edited porn and then edited porn. Mm-hmm. Whoa That was great experience. That's gotta be a weird. It was weird. How did you take that job?

It was how'd you even find out about that job? Well, it was a Craigslist ad and it was just like we need video editors and I was like, I can I figure that out because I Edit in Pro Tools and stuff music so it can't be that hard and they said they would train so I showed up to the interview in a suit and They were like so you know this is adult content because it didn't say that in the ad That's how they brought it up. You know this is adult content. Yeah, how the fuck would you know? Are you cool with that? I was like I guess so because I need the job and so I just took it and it was a nine to five

Literally just looking at like the most disgusting shit. You can imagine like two girls one cup has got nothing So it was like hard core porn and it was like It wasn't editing feature films It was taking like a feature film and then cutting out all the highlights so that I could make like basically reels or like you know It wasn't Instagram but basically like these little clips that people would search and find like a Comshot or like a cream pie or whatever search term They would use to find this specific little clip and so I would put together these little clips and then tag it with all the search Terms somebody would use to find it. That was the job And so it was all just like watch the whole film and pick out all the most disgusting moments you can find and turn that into a clip And then I started getting this thing called the Tetris effect. I've you heard of that? No So like if you play Tetris for too long you start seeing like the shapes falling you hallucinate basically So you'll just like be making dinner or whatever and you're just like hallucinating like the Tetris shapes But I was hallucinating like gaping buttholes and

Oh my god And so how long did you do that? I only lasted two weeks But it was the best paying job out of all of them that I had because I got paid by how many clips I got done in a certain amount of time and so I was making like 30 bucks an hour Which is great for a high school dropout, you know, and so it was good money, but I am With the Tetris effect thing happening to me There was like a light socket over my bed That I had taken a light bulb out of because it was too bright and every night when I fall asleep I would like stare at that and see a gaping butthole This is not healthy like this is can't be good for me to continue doing, you know And then I also simultaneously got offered to be a keyboardist for this other singer Duncan chic He's like a 90s. He had a song called barely breathing in the 90s And I was a fan and so I was like well that sounds like a better job, you know Music at least so I went on tour with him for a while I don't know if it was like a year or two

But the whole time I was just like I wish I was making my own music and singing my own music, you know I started really eating on me being like the backup musician and so I was like journaling a lot on tour And I wrote I just want a cabin in the woods where I can set up my studio and be away from all these people and Basically I manifested the cabin because like six months after I wrote that on my journal My mom called me and she was like my friend has this property in Oregon She has a cabin and she's willing to let you live there for free You just have to work in her art gallery selling art like twice a week. I was like that sounds perfect Wow, so that's how you want to be Oregon. So that's how I want up in Oregon It's the southern coast. It was in the middle of nowhere But it's basically near bandend you know bandend dunes golf courses. No, I've heard of that No, it's a really cool course, but it was kind of near there and I Live there for like six months So that my studio kind of like had to rediscover my love for music and fall back in love with it because I had like writers

Lock and I was really depressed I also just Before that broke up with my boyfriend at the time and my heart was broken and it was just like I was I was a mess But my cabin was This really small one room cabin with one light bulb and There was no bathroom in it. There was a bathroom outside And so I had to like walk in the middle of the night if I had to walk to the bathroom and I was like terrified Was it an outhouse? No, it had a flushing toilet and a shower But it was like a scandal in the cabin in the cabin and like down a path by itself. Yeah, just a bathroom Yeah Well because the cabin was like an old fire lookout that they turned into a cabin So it didn't have like plumbing or something so they like add I don't know But it was really beautiful and it was also at the top of a sand dune So I couldn't drive up to it so I'd parked it down the hill and hike to it. How far was I like like a quarter mile?

Every day. Yeah. Yeah, and so and I didn't have like internet or anything up there Wow, but it was great, but I was terrified of mountain lions the whole time And so I was like, you know walking up that hill at night if I came home from whatever I had my flashlight was like looking all directions like and I actually made a mask to wear on the back of my head because Apparently like I contact with a mountain lion like they won't attack and so because they attack you from behind So like we're a mask on the back of my head. Whoa That's who told you to do that. I don't know Google There's um, I don't know if it's real but I did it. It's real for tigers

There's um a group of people that work for the government in the Sundar bands So the Sundar bands is this area in India that's notorious for tigers eating people and apparently Over the let's just Google this number because I'll fuck this up too I think over the last 200 years something insane like 300,000 people have been killed by tigers in this area Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, well, there's a lot of villages there and then there's also typhoons and apparently when the storms happen sometimes people die and they wind up in the river and you know They get washed away and the tigers apparently developed a taste for human and Then there's also this thought about The water the water is not fresh. It's brackish So the water is a high salt content in it, but they still drink it because it's the only salt water So they're probably constantly irritated The Sundar bands usually prone to attacking sometimes eating humans causing dozens of deaths every year, but not every tiger there's a man Eater, ah sweet it's working report suggested in the band tigers regularly killed 50 to 60 people per year with some estimates over a hundred

Especially including unreported cases most recent expert estimates put the average about 22 to 23 human deaths per year in the Sundar bands far lower than the popular Perception well, there's like clusters of attack. Oh, yeah, here it is local news reporter clusters of attacks multiple fishermen craptetchers killed Within a month showing that risk and spike in certain areas or seasons I had a bit in my 2009 commie special about this attack that happened in the Sundar bands where there was four guys in a boat and This tiger swam out to the boat killed a guy dragged him to shore dropped his body off jumped back in the water Swam to the boat killed another guy jumped back in the water did it with three guys before he got tired and the last guy just fucking Shittness pants on the boat by himself one guy lives. Yeah, so these are the people that would walk around with these masks on the back of their heads Oh, wow. Yeah, so I did the right thing. Yeah, you do the right thing well at least for tigers But there's I mean all crazy These people all living around there these are honey collectors in the Sundar bands to prevent tiger attacks Like you got to know there's a lot of tiger attacks when you wear a fucking mask on your head when you're going to work

Yeah, that's creepy. Yeah fucking scary. It's a crazy way to die to you know, especially a tiger probably quick though I guess once they get a hold of you. It's just mush to get the back of your neck. Yeah, I mean it probably happens fast Yeah, mountain lion probably take a little longer. I don't know. Yeah, probably twenty minutes 15 depending on what you scream

Yeah, we've had to do look those two. Did you have a gun or anything when you're up there? No, no Think about getting one. No, I didn't actually I had an axe It's better than nothing. It was I was just chopping wood because I really afraid of mountain lion talking me didn't get a gun. I

Don't know. I didn't even think about it. I don't know why wow that would be the first thing I thought of It was not fucking chance in hell. I'm walking around there without a gun. Yeah, I don't think at that point. I was in the guns yet

Are you into them now? Yeah, yeah, we've a gun range in our house. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, Elliot's very into them. I have a carry permit good for you Yeah, good. Um, have you ever seen a big cat in the wild? Oh, yeah, I'm online. Yeah, it was the biggest one you saw like a real big one

Um, I don't think the ones I saw were huge. They were like a hundred maybe 150 the first one I ever saw was just in Colorado I actually want I'm getting one of my dogs and this was I got your dog. No. Yeah, yeah, I lived in a Place called Gold Hill. It's like north of Boulder. So it's like 3000 feet above Boulder. It's fucking beautiful gorgeous. I would stay there but

It's very high altitude is like 8500 feet above sea level and my wife got pregnant and when you are if you're Pregnant at very high altitude and you're not accustomed to that. It's like you have the flu every day It's horrible and we want to go back to LA But so that was the first one that I saw and then I saw one in Santa Barbara I saw one in an actually in Montecito. We were driving and I saw this thing running across the road I was like I was at Coyote and I saw the tail. Yeah, the tail's like oh, it's a fucking mountain lion That's wild, but that one wasn't even that big that was like 70 pounds and then a couple of years ago I was in Utah with my friend Colton and we were driving around this corner and he goes to look under that tree Look at that cat and we see the glowing eyes of this cat because it was like just starting to get dark out And I was probably 30 yards from this thing in the truck with the binoculars Just looking at its head its fucking head was massive like a pumpkin like the muscles the mandible muscles were like these things around its head Just a crushing machine and these huge forearms. That's what I remember about it the most is forearms were massive

And we're just sitting there under that tree staring at us and I was in the truck Like I wasn't you know we were armed and we were in a truck and I was still shit in my fans like that thing is so big How much do you think I weighed? At least 180 pounds maybe 200 It was a big tomcat like that one that we have out front like that like that size Wow Yeah, I was like that one was one my friend Adam Greentree killed and he killed that in Colorado And that one they had a depredation permit because it was targeting this rancher's cows and They they had tracked it and that day as they were tracking it It had killed one of these cows and just it was still alive. They just gutted it It basically took it down and just started eating its organs while it was still alive. Yeah, so they do yeah It was pretty rough. Yeah, we had that we had a nice sheet with mountain lions up at our other property in Napa We had sheep and um I was actually on tour with Eminem and Got a text from my neighbor that our sheep had had babies on Valentine's Day And so I was like so excited to get home and take care of these lambs and

I guess one of the lambs was rejected by the mother and so we had to bottle feed it So which is the best thing ever? I love that You know some people think it's like a unnecessary chore to take care of bottle babies But I love it so like three times a day feeding this thing and she became like a dog like she would follow me everywhere She slept on my front porch Pretty much Valentine I got tattoo over actually here and um but so like a few months later we had had like Maybe 10 lambs at that point little babies are so cute And like one morning oh Well, so the property was like 400 acres and so in our house was so small We had like other little buildings on the property So I'd set my studio up in one of the other buildings And so I would drive up there like a half mile up the driveway and I was driving one day up to the studio and I saw this mountain lion like crossing our field and I'd like rush to get my phone out to take a video of that of course

I didn't get a very good shot by the time I got the video and I turned around and went back to the house. I was like babe there's a mountain lion on the property and I showed him the video and I was like kind of blurry you can really tell and we called our neighbor and I think the sheriff and Showed them the video and everybody was just like well nine times out of ten when people say they see a mountain lion It's just a bobcat or like whatever and I was like no I know this is a mountain lion like I know what I'm looking at you know I saw the long tail the whole thing and they didn't nobody believed me like it's big for something Yeah, like I'm like no I swear it's a mountain lion and Elliot believed me So we went up and took a little hike up the ravine where I'd seen it walk off to you and I swear that like the lion must have been tracking us back to the house because it that night we were Because we didn't see it we went up the ravine and we didn't see the lion anywhere But we went back home and then that night we were like

Watching TV and scrolling through Instagram or whatever and he showed me this You know how the Russians they like become friends with all these crazy animals like bears and whatever So there's like this video of this like Russian guy like in bed with his mountain lion like cuddling with it It's always Russian. I know right there psycho They are not regular white people. No, and so he's like he showed me this video. He's like I could never kill one of these Unless they fucked with my family Yeah, that next morning. I take my coffee out onto the front porch Like I always did look down at the sheep pen and I see this mom sheep laying with her baby That's not moving. I was like this is something. It's not right and I go down there and sure enough

There's like the thing marks, you know the deep thing marks in its throat and it's like stomach eaten out and The mom would not leave it side And so I go back to the house and I'm like babe We lost it a lamb to the mountain lion. No, we believed that I saw and So we called fish and wildlife and they came out and confirmed that it was amount like kill and so they set up they were they put traps in our sheep pen and you know to see if you'd like trap it and relocate it and So they stayed on property that night and I can't even remember all the details But basically in the middle of the night we heard this big bang and we thought oh the trap closed and we opened the door And it wasn't that it was like one of our sheep had busted through the fence trying to escape the lion It was standing in a driveway like right in front of the house. There's like oh fuck So then Elia goes down to the sheep pen and he sees the lion and it's like just like those glowing eyes, you know And and then it darts off into the woods and it had killed another lamb and

Didn't the trap didn't go off and so then the the guys the truckers they came down and they were like okay, let's like hunt this thing like take the dogs so they had like six dogs and Basically for the next like week Tried to get this lion and couldn't like the dogs were getting all mixed up They were like wandering off one direction and then going another direction and they were like the trackers were like This is never happens like they usually get it like what the hell's going on there were the dogs are just getting all confused and We basically oh and then another night Elia was out there thinking that he heard the guy's whistling But I guess it was the cats whistling so Mount lines whistle, you know about that. Yeah, it's a crazy sound You can probably look it up. I mean you hear that yeah But he heard whistling and he thought it was the trackers like saying like we're here And he like was just standing out there and then 20 minutes go by and the guys aren't there and so then they finally pulled up and they're like

Are he was like were you guys whistling at me and they're like no like did it sound like this and he was like yes And they said that's the lion's they whistled to communicate with each other Put the headphones on so you can't oh Whoa? Yeah. Oh that's and that's to hone ranch that I go to that place. That's in California That's outside of Bakersfield El Conte there before that place to hone ranch. They had one pond where they set up a camera trap They set up a trail cameras. They found 18 different cats on one pond. That's crazy. That's not normal

Oh, yeah, well California doesn't do anything. I know they're kind of nuts Texas has the complete opposite approach. Yeah, you just shoot them Yeah, you don't have to have a permit they we got permits we got permits because they came back and killed every night And then they took my valentine and I was like so hard broken There's nothing you could do to like lock them up and well I tried to bring Valentine into the house and put her in a kennel in the kitchen But try sleeping with a screaming lamb It was like not a thing we put her back out and she was fine that night, but um The trappers just kept saying no We gotta just leave everything as is and we'll get him but then I go after a week of hunting them and nothing It was like what are we doing like we should move these sheep like I was fighting for that But they were just like no we gotta keep everything as is because if you move them and change the what's going on It'll come like the cattle just like maybe not come back for a while, but then it'll come back You know and so they're like we're gonna get this thing. We gotta leave everything as is but anyway, so they um

finally Got the cat one night. I actually had to leave town into a show and Elliot called me and he actually he actually was the one that shot it but they got the cat and I felt like this huge sense of relief and I came home and I thought everything was fine and we weren't gonna lose anymore lands and then like a few days later I woke up and took my coffee outside and there was a mom sheep dead now and she was dragged under the fence and I was like What the absolute fuck so turns out there was two cats hunting together and that's why the dogs were getting confused and couldn't follow the trail and I guess like in the spring a lot of times the moms will like teach their children how to hunt and so they weren't even like eating the lambs They were just killing them And so it was like basically them learning how to hunt I guess I don't know I don't know but we got another permit and we got the second lion and then everything was peaceful But we went down from like 20 to 3 sheep. Oh god. Yeah, it was awful. It's 17 sheep. Holy shit. That must be terrifying

Yeah, and I mean I'm like out there. I'm scared for myself even yeah living out there and then going into my studio and stuff like It was really scary and really heartbreaking Yeah, imagine 17 is crazy. Yeah It was really bad when you shoot the cat you have to bring it somewhere and then they have to like register it was well They took them the fish and wildlife took the bodies that yeah the dogs you know treat them and Because people eat them like they taste good really yeah Yeah, I had some wouldn't be kind of like tough because they're like so musly eat the loin like the loin like people eat the roasts It's it's like pork. Yeah, my friend Steve described it as a superior pork Yeah, a lot of people eat mountain lion interesting. I know it sounds crazy, but I try it Have you ever had bear bear bear's good really? Yeah, believe it or not people like go

It depends on what the bears eating like if you eat a bear that's eating a lot of fish It's gonna be kind of funky or if you catch a bear that's been like eating a dead deer for like a couple weeks That's not good. Yeah, yeah, that's Yeah, it'll smell rotten, but if you catch one that's been eating blueberries. It's like some of the most delicious meat Yeah, yeah, my friend Steve Rinella He has a show called meat eater and he was hunting black bears in Alaska over this blueberry patch So he shot this blackberry and he's cooking it and as he's he's butchering it He did it all on camera as he's butchering it like the fat from the bear is purple Whoa blueberry and so like the flavor of blueberries was in the meat itself. That's interesting. It's like it's the most insane meat It's delicious. I try that. Yeah, it's good. I like Alco is my favorite

Where you guys live in Napa when you guys going back tomorrow. No tonight. I've got some I'll give you some really Yeah, I got freezer bag. I have a commercial freezer out here. Oh sick. Oh, yeah, let's go

That's my farm my favorite. Yeah, oh, it's delicious. It's the best for you to like you feel different when you eat it It's like it's got so much nutrients in it that you've done the access here hunting in why we want to do that so bad Oh, it's first of all if you use a rifle, it's a hundred percent guaranteed really you can't not get a deer There's so many of them. You have to kill them. There's a line in particular. There's 30,000 deer and 3,000 people

Holy shit. Yeah, and so in La Nye you guys stay at the four seasons So you stay it's like amazing resort and then you go hunt. That's awesome. Yeah, so I went with Well, we've got a few years, but I went with a whole group of friends one time It was like seven of us we went there and we we have the best time We hunted and then we ate Access deer and it's like you're you're overlooking the oceans. It's gorgeous paradise. Yeah, that sounds like a great

But there that's a deer that evolved around tigers and they are so fast like unbelievably fast Like if you shoot at one that's 30 yards away and it hears that the bow go off It'll be out of the way before the arrow gets to it They what's called jumping the string they just duck down and take off It's not like they know in arrows coming at them They just know to run and the way they run is they load up their muscles by getting low and then springing forward But they do it so fast that okay 30 40. It's like 40 yards. So 40 yards. You've got an arrow That's going 290 feet a second and from the sound of the bow going off the top of the bow going off They're gone. Yeah, what is the same? Can you can you hunt with rifle out there? Oh, yeah?

Oh, yeah, that's how they do most hunting. Okay, then we went and I went with a bunch of like very experienced bow hunters like top of the food chain Bow hunters and we all got access to here, but it was a struggle It's like a lot of them jumped the string a lot you got it We wound up realizing that the best time to go was at night Not at night, but in the afternoon because in the afternoon It's much windier and so it hides your sound because they're just on edge because they get hunted 365 days a year There's no off season and they have to hunt them because there's so many of them like you'll like driving at night You'll stop and turn the headlights to a field and you see thousands of hours like they're they're infested Fested with delicious animals and there's no predators There's zero predators other than people so they bring in snipers and people with night vision and they shoot them at night And they use headshots and when you go to like the restaurants in the four seasons they serve access to here. Oh, that's cool It's also delicious. It's so good. What does that place Malibu farms? I think it is they have insane venison sliders from access

Dears are so good. I mean, it's it's one of the most delicious game animals but when we went we did a podcast from there and you know, we call it podcast for paradise real having a good time and Because after that a hundred and fifty different people went the next year and only one of them was successful with a bow Oh, wow, every other one was like fuck this I'm getting a rifle This is ridiculous These things are so fast like but it's an animal that evolves like I said around tigers. Yeah King Kamehameha in Hawaii was given access to your as a gift from the leader of India in like the 1800s. That's how they got there And then they just took over. Oh, yeah, they took over there everywhere Yeah, Maui has a lot of them too, but they also have this is a company called Maui newe So like if you love game meat, you can actually buy game meat So wild game meat in America, you can't sell so if you buy like say if you buy elk like you go to a restaurant You buy elk you're getting it from New Zealand. Oh, wow most likely

Yeah, most most I think most of the elk that they serve in restaurants in America is coming from New Zealand because New Zealand is a similar situation No predators and they brought in all these animals and then they're just infested and most of it's probably not even really elk It's probably stag which is super similar anyway But when you get like farm raised elk, that's you're probably getting it from somewhere else I mean they probably have some places that are allowed to sell farm raised elk in America I don't know what which won't that would be but wild game like that you hunt you cannot sell Because that's how they almost went extinct in this country in the turn of the century in the beginning of the I guess like the 1800s They brought elk to the point of extinction almost and the same with white-tailed deer because they were market hunting So because don't have refrigerators you'd have to get meat all the time and so they were just shooting all of them. Yeah Yeah, but in Maui you have so many of them and then they set up a company called Maui Nui and Maui Nui

You can buy bone broth venison bone broth They have like meat sticks and you could buy actual venison and they'll freeze it and then ship it to you So if you want wild game, it's like one of the best place and one of the most delicious wild game to yeah, yeah Axistears delicious. Yeah, we want to do that. Oh, it's a great hunt Yeah, because you can't first of all you're in paradise and you you're gonna see them It's not like if you go on an elk hunt like you could be in the mountains for days before you find any elk because you know You got to find out where they are you got to listen for pugels you got a you know You got a glass a lot you look around you might not be successful if you if you bring a rifle to linai you 100% Are gonna be successful and you can kill a bunch of them, you know, you know, you can Like package it for you and sit at home to yeah, there's a guy named Bob the butcher shout out the Bob He'll butcher room for you and package it for you and all that jazz and you know if you give it enough time They'll freeze it and we actually brought it back to the four seasons and they put it in their commercial freezer They froze it for us and then we you know put it in these big yetty coolers brought it back on the plane nice Yeah, and you could like literally get a year supply of your meat in like a few days if you want to do that

Just eat venison for the rest of your yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, usually try to get a deer every year of a napa too Do you guys go deer hunting? Well, I don't I help him clean it though. I've been doing that since I was a little girl Really my dad taught me when I was a kid and I would like he hunted a lot and I would just he would send me on these like Routes to kick the deer out to him, you know Oh, I would like to do the hiking and kick him out and then yeah, and then we would uh we would all gather It was usually around Thanksgiving. We'd all gather in the basement and like cut the cut the meat up and skin and all that Wow, I like doing that part. That's cool. It's a great way to be connected to what you're eating. Yeah, exactly

You have a different appreciation for it. Oh, yeah, you know, then something you just like buy at the store or in a restaurant like It's totally different appreciation. Oh 100% and also it's like you know, it's organic It's a actual wild animal and it's the best life that this animal is ever gonna live and including the best death because especially if you if you're good With a rifle if you're accurate you practice like it's dead like that and it's not like getting it's guts eaten out by a mountain You know or anything else it's gonna eat it or old age or winter all the horrible ways that animals die Yeah, you know their teeth grind down to nothing and they essentially start to death or yeah, yeah, it's rough. It's a hard life You know, so how'd you wind up leaving Oregon?

Walking quarter mile every day by yourself flashlight trying to avoid being eaten. Yep Well, I figured out that I needed if I needed to find a way to make a living in music And so I reached out to the only person I had left in my corner musically because like at that point I had lost my record deal my lawyer dropped me my manager dropped me but I was still technically signed to umpg publishing and So I reached out to my like point person there who hadn't spoken to you in years And I said help me figure out how to make a living in music I gotta figure this out Because that's the only thing I really know how to do and I'm a dropout so I can't really get a good job and I don't want to do that and so I Met with her in New York I flew to New York and we just sat down had like this long conversation and I had like ever since I was like 13 when I first heard a stand by Eminem I'd always been like I love that combination of like a pretty you know female vocal with hip-hop

And so I'd always wanted to do something like that And so I said I think I could write hooks for hip-hop songs like that was kind of like my what I told her I wanted to do and she was like well we just sign this producer named Alex Kidd and That's kind of like his wheelhouse. So you guys should meet and So I flew back to Oregon and She connected us on email And I would go down to the little cafe to get internet and so I would just I emailed him and he emailed me back some beats that he had just made and I would just sit there with my headphones in the cafe and like home little melodies into my computer and send them back but the first one I did was called Love the Way You Lie and A month after I sent Alex that hook It was a number one song. Wow What was that like? I was crazy going from like broke and living in the woods in this cabin and then writing a song that

Literally took over the world Yeah, so that's kind of what took me out of Oregon because after that I started getting phone calls, you know from everybody wanting songs from me M had me and Alex come out to work on detox for Dr. Dre and Puff Daddy wanted a song that's we're coming home came in to play Yeah, it was just crazy suddenly I was went from nobody caring to everybody trying to get us on That's gotta be such an insane experience To be like what am I doing? I'm out in a cabin. I got to go outside to pee. I gotta walk quarter mile to the house You're like completely isolated. Do you have any friends out there at all? Yeah, I had a couple friends

I made a couple friends when I was out there and then Also, I know I was yeah off to the races. Mm-hmm. It's crazy. How did you adjust to that? I had to be very strange. It was and I also felt so much pressure

but it was like I definitely had a little imposter syndrome when I wrote that song because I was just like that was too easy It took me 15 minutes to write the hook and I sent it off and suddenly everybody wanted to get a song for me And I was like that must have been a fluke like this never gonna happen again. I'm never gonna write another one like this or whatever And so so many people were just wanting songs and I felt so much pressure to deliver a hit song every time You know and I was always so hard on myself that it that became even worse Just I would just wait too much pressure myself I got invited to do so many songwriting sessions But at that point like I had pretty much only ever written by myself And so being like thrown in rooms with songwriters and producers and stuff I was so shy I just felt it was always so hard for me to open up creatively in front of strangers So I would just like walk out of sessions crying and just be like I suck I Can't do this, you know, it was hard. That was the hardest part for me Just performing in front of a bunch of people. Yeah, just like yeah, just trying to like create hit songs every time

I go into a writing session I just felt like there were some such high expectations on what I would deliver and I can't force creativity It's like it just happens or it doesn't you know? But I felt like I had to deliver a hit song every time and because I put that pressure myself It kind of shot down my creativity and it made it really hard for me to do that so then I ended up like just leaving a lot of sessions and feeling like a like I didn't deserve to be where I was and Not good enough. How'd you get over that? Um, I didn't really Yeah, I don't think I ever got over that I like I did a lot of these sessions for a while because I felt like I had to and then I just kind of stopped taking them I stopped agreeing to do them because it was just too much. It was too hard on me So explain these kind of sessions so you go to studio with producers and like and they essentially say okay Let's try to create something ready go

And then you're in there and your creative process is you by yourself Like trying to connect with emotions and thoughts and ideas and also in your around people and also you're a little weirded out because you've been living in a fucking Cabin yeah by yourself, you know that and you're editing porn for two weeks and it's like That and I just had this like hit song that was huge was massive and I just felt like there were such high expectations on me, you know, right? So it was very hard Everybody that I've ever met who's really good has imposter syndrome. Yeah, I think it's a part of being genuinely creative because I think like genuinely creative people don't have that kind of weird ego we're like yeah, finally I'm getting mine because some people do have that Where they feel like they deserve this but I feel like at least most genuinely creative people that I've talked to when something big happens to them They're like this is fucking crazy Like all of my comedian friends when they start to hit like when something happens when they get like a viral clip

And then they do a Netflix special or something like that in the beginning like bro. I'm kind of freaking out I'm like we all are it's okay like this is the thing like you're gonna feel fucking weird. Yeah, that thing whatever it is that Impostor syndrome, I think is a good thing. I think it's a sign that you have a healthy mind or at least maybe not healthy Maybe that's right the right word you have a creative mind, you know, and that you you're in also everything Completely changes you have hits on all of a sudden out of nowhere number one like what the fuck like that kind of shift in paradigm Like that is not normal to get adjusted to you have to be a complete psycho to go to be like alright is perfect This is what I've been waiting for you know, yeah Because everybody like sees people either on television or you know in you see him in the media and you think that's a different kind of thing Than me. I'm not I'm not a famous person. I'm not popular. I'm not successful

I'm just me like and then all of a sudden people know who you are and love you and you're like, oh my god I'm a fraud. Yeah, they don't know about that shitty songs. I read exactly They don't know that like 99% of the songs that I write suck Oh, and then the one you know, I think that's the case with everything though You know I talked to all my friends that are comics also the same thing like out of the jokes that they write like 10 of them suck And then one one one pops through it But the thing is like you just gotta keep cranking keep keep trying to find whatever it is That was the hard part for me was to keep going and keep trying. How would you do it? How do you how did you like what is your creative process?

My creative process well now a big part of it is not living in LA. I have to be out in the middle of nowhere And I like to be alone in the room even if I'm writing to somebody else's beat or something like that I just like to sit with myself and do it And I just try to focus on how it makes me feel you know I spent some time trying to write what I thought other people wanted to hear and I feel like those songs always sucked and so just like Letting it flow almost like I'm not writing it like I'm channeling it or something That's better the songs that like take less effort tend to be the better songs and the songs that I slave over to try to get them Perfect and overthink they end up doing nothing John Mellencant told me he wrote I need a lover that won't drive me crazy in the shower. Yeah, like that done. Yeah You know it makes total sense I write stuff in the shower I write stuff when I'm cooking dinner It's not like go into a studio from this hour to this hour and write a song like it never works for me to do that

So it'll just be random like this new album and putting out There's a song called motivation I remember it came to me when I was standing outside the vet's office when my dog was getting surgery on her ACL or whatever They called in dog world. I was just like pacing outside during her surgery and this like song started coming to me Did she have to do that thing where they cut the bone? Yeah, I had a dog She had to have both her back legs on that way. She blew up. It's brutal the recovery was brutal. It's horrible

Yeah, she was also a puppy so she had like puppy energy and it just okay to sedate her and it was awful Yeah, and so do you take specific time to just like sit and try to write or do you just like let ideas come to you? I usually just let ideas come to me. I like take a lot of voice notes in my phone Or I'll write down lyric ideas that come to me and then I need to be better about making time for it because when I do make time to like go in and be creative It usually does there's a balance. It's like I can't force it But I also can't be lazy and like just avoid it completely, you know, so I try to balance that. I've ever read the war of art I started I started it. I started it. I have copies out there. I'll give you a copy if you don't have one

I think I started the book on tape. I have a copy of book. It's a very small book It's very easy, but it's all about that and press field was you know kind of like an underachiever until he was like 40 And then somewhere along the line He realized that what he really has to do is be a professional And so he developed this methodology of like channeling the muse and instead of thinking of the muse is being you know Instead of thinking of creativity as being sort of abstract thing He thought of it as a thing that you summon like like legitimately show up every day at the same time in front of your computer or your notebook or whatever however you do it and Literally say I am here to summon the muse like I'm here respectfully to call upon you for your gifts And if you just show up every day and treat it like that it will work Which is a really crazy thought it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, do you do it? I do it? Yeah

I don't do it every day, but when I do it yeah, I I just sit there and I don't say I'm summoning the muse I think he does yeah, what I do is I go here. We go. I just say here we go I say here we go and then I start typing and a lot of times it's like almost like working out like in the beginning you like You know you gotta warm up you gotta get things going you know you get on the bike a little bit crack a sweat start stretching You know I'm typing in the beginning. It's just like well fucking suck. These thoughts are useless. It's not

Yeah, I got something yeah I figured out a way to do it with it is more organic for me because I used to try to write things that were funny And now what I do is just write I write on a subject like a thing and then I'll let it like if I'm writing about Whatever fucking global change global warming fucking earthquakes whatever I'm writing about I'll let it shift to what I don't try to stay on subject Yeah, you let it just it might completely change to something totally different a completely different subject I just let it and then I just try to get out of my own way and write as much as possible And then I go over it and try to extract things from that and I take those and I copy and paste them into something else And then I'll expand on that idea like I'll start fresh with this idea and it's it's just a numbers game It's just a numbers and time game the amount of numbers and the amount of time that you spend thinking about stuff You get these little gifts. Yeah, and that's where the concept of the music comes from It's because it's almost like it's like some sort of a divine entity Yeah, it feels like that it does feel like that Everybody says that whether it's authors or musicians or comedians or anybody creative They say it feels like it's not even my idea. It just came to me out of nowhere

Right, which is the weirdest thing about the creative process. It's not like like a structure You're putting together like a house, you know like I know how to do this I lay down the foundation and I put up the girders It's like this thing like this spiritual weird entity that you're in contact with Yeah, for sure and it's not you because you're like empty when the ideas come they just like make their way into your head You're like whoa, well, fuck that but then you're responding to your emotional like how it makes you feel yeah like reading what you're channeling or listening to it and then for me like I focus mostly on that like how does it make me feel Is it causing some type of like emotional response?

You know, yeah, and then those are the magic moments So weird to do it in a studio with a bunch of people you don't know with under pressure Yeah, for me, it doesn't work. I don't know how some people are like thrive in that environment. I don't know how yeah I get it a lot of rappers. I just do it I think they feed off of each other, you know and like a lot of what rappers they tell me that like like they're doing it for their Boys so like as they're like hitting like new lines and coming up with new rhymes and new wraps It's like they're they're fucking around with our friends and like having a good time like impressing them with like Strong lines and great bars and I mean I've definitely had some moments like that Especially like you can find people you have really good chemistry with then it can work, right?

But generally speaking just going into a room with strangers. It doesn't doesn't work for me But yeah, there are some people that like I feel super connected to creatively and I can do that with them Well, I'd imagine everybody's got their own different little process But it's just a matter of like doing something like me making the time for it And I would imagine also it's like as you get really busy and successful and there's a lot of obligations It's harder and harder to find that still time Well, yeah, and there's like cycles like right now I'm not writing at all because I'm just in you know album promotion mode and so it's all about like content and all this other stuff So I haven't written a song in a long time So and it's also kind of like a muscle like Songwriting for me once I get into a songwriting zone. It's like coming like way easier all the time But I have to like warm up to get into it and get back in that headspace and you know warm up that muscle again That makes sense like I'm running. Yeah, yeah, yeah, something. Yeah. I think everything's like that

Yeah, you go into like grooves Yeah, so when you are in the middle of promotion like what is the difference and like Do you have ideas to come to you and you just sort of jot them down and go one day I'll go back to that? Yeah, yeah, I just store them. Does this feel like when you're in promotion time? Does it feel weird? Like like you got to go out and sell it and you got a I don't know I enjoy all the different aspects of it You know, I love that it's all creative For the most part like even just like making content and filming stuff It's a art form too. So I feel like I'm still like getting my creativity out. It's just not in the songwriting

So is it like one of those things were in the back of your mind? You're like eventually this will come to an end and I'm gonna get back to it and then it starts to like it's chat. Yeah Yeah, yeah, I get the itch. Yeah. Yeah. I'm already feeling it. I'm ready to write again. Yeah, well

I would imagine that being in a place like nappa where you're like around like peaceful You know beautiful background and you know nature and it's probably like Way easier to get in touch with your mind Be trapped in Manhattan for sure. Beep be fuck you. You know, yeah, that's exactly why I've stayed away from cities Yeah, I guess everybody else I find their own thing because I have friends with thrive off that shit I have friends live in New York City that they can't live anywhere else. I love it. Yeah I mean it's because I grew up in a rural environment. It's not broken. I think my friends are all broken

So I think it's a comfort thing because like I grew up in the woods So it feels like home to be out in the middle of nowhere But if I grew up in the city that might feel more comfortable for me and I might be able to hear myself think better there But you know everybody's different. I think everybody who goes to the woods realizes they need it. I Think it's a vitamin it really do I think it's just like how sunlight gives you vitamin D I think there's something about being in wilderness where you're in tune with all those life forms because it's not as simple as Oh, there's a burr there's a squirrel. No the fucking grounds alive the trees are alive There's energy that all these things have that is being distributed somehow or another in this strange array of Information and of just life. That's all around you that you feel you feel when you're out there. Yeah

Yeah, it's like forest bathing. Yeah, that's real. Yeah for sure And it's also there's no fucking cell phone service So I think there's something to that too because that the earth feels cleaner. Does that make any sense? Like when I'm in a place that has no cell phone servers I swear there's a subtle difference in the way the world feels it's like a vortex. Yeah

Yeah, cuz I think like in this room we have Wi-Fi with all the phones like I think there's signals that are just out there that we can't You know you can't tune it in and go. Oh, that's a video my friend sending me You don't do that But there's something about whatever the fuck that stuff is that I think your body recognizes as a for like they say it fucks with bees Mm-hmm like cell phone signals in particular really fucks with bees and like okay. What fucks a bees? I bet it fucks with us too. Oh, I'm sure yeah Yeah, cuz it feel like if you're in a place with no cell phone service the world feels different And it's not just because you can't check your phone. It's the world the actual the actual

Air around you feels different. Yeah, I definitely feel that too. Yeah. No, I think that's how people are supposed to live I think we're doing some weird shit to ourselves, you know for sure, but the weird shit is cool in a lot of ways You know cuz it's how we meet each other how we talk to each other, you know how we find out about good balance of it All, you know exactly. Yeah, yeah Do you have goals?

Yeah, what are your goals like cuz some people don't some people just enjoy just doing they don't think about like goals Yeah, I mean I have like things I want to do before I die. We don't do Well, I want to be better about putting out more music because Because I do put so much pressure myself It's taking me like five years between each album to make one and put it out I can guess myself all the time and and I think like I put so much pressure on it Like this has to be the you know the sound that the mark I leave on the world And this is what I want to be known for I'm like fuck all that just capture a moment in time Like what am I feeling right now? What vibe am I into and capture that zeitgeist musically and then move on to the next one?

Like it doesn't all have to be cohesive I used to just be like put so much pressure on it being cohesive And having like a certain sound or whatever, but now I'm just like, okay, right like right now this album I'm calling the genre bubble grunge because it's like inspired by the 90s Pop and grunge kind of like combined together But then the next album I might totally flip it and do something totally different And that's okay. Like it doesn't all have to be Like it can be different. I can I can change it up and so I'm My goal in regards to that is to put out an album every year instead of every five years That's a big shift It's a big shift, but I don't want to look back and just wish I would have released more because I have so much music sitting on hard drives and On a Dropbox folder that's never come out because I would like make a bunch of music and then second guess it and Start over and start over again. It's not good enough. It's not good enough. I should have just put everything out

I should have just been okay with like, you know putting out a bad album or a bad song It's okay, but you think that's it's like keep making it out Perhaps a part of the creative process is boiling it down to something that I think so but I think I take that way too far Do you think that that is in part because of the pressure that you experience for your first thing that hits is number one? Which is crazy experience. Yeah, and you were really young. Yeah, you know also boom. Yeah, maybe that was part of it Just made me like extra hard on myself But I don't have more fun and not take it so seriously So how do you plan on doing that? How do you plan on having more fun and not taking it so seriously?

I'm already doing it. Yeah. Yeah. I think I just turned 40 and I think that also has something to do with it because I'm just like seeing the end What am I doing here? Just like torturing myself with all this pressure and not just like having fun and being creative and throwing it out there You know, so I'm already doing that I'm already having more fun. That's great

But that is one of the beautiful things that comes with age. Yeah, you give thing less bucks giving less bucks and just Accumulating experiences to the point we recognize like the flaws in your past thinking and why I did this and I'm not happy I did that and you gather enough of those experiences where you get a better map of the territory I'm like, uh, I think I get it now. Yeah, and then you're really established now, too So it's like you don't have to be as worried about whether or not, you know, yeah It's a beautiful thing that comes with age They're not giving a fuck or not. You know, like one of the funniest things to see an old person doesn't give a fuck Oh, yeah, oh, we'll be blue don't give a fucking just say anything They're fine Well, um, thank you for being here. So I fun. Yeah, enjoy it. Enjoy talking to you and I really enjoy your music

Oh, thank you Can I talk a little bit about the album that I'm putting out? Absolutely. Okay, it's called wasted potential. It's about me wasting my potential But it's an album where I'm telling the story of my like upbringing in small town, Wisconsin Discovering my sexuality and just like it's like a coming of age story and It's a part of my story I don't think a lot of people know they mostly know me from working with Eminem and all the things I did after that But I just felt like it was time I think because I turned 40 recently I was like thinking about my childhood a lot and like realizing I didn't appreciate it enough I had a great childhood and so I just wanted to tell that part of my story Kind of for the first time ever So I'm excited to get that out and it's important for me to get it off my chest and out so that I could like finally I Was depressed about turning 40. Oh, yeah, so depressed about it, but I think it's because I didn't I didn't feel like I was like present during my childhood and I mean I was working a lot and so

It was important for me to get it off my chest and be at a point now where I feel like I can accept that I'm 40 and actually enjoy it and so that was the cold gist of the album Why do you really think that you have wasted potential? Oh, yeah, really? Also, um well when I made music for my mom growing up It was a completely different lifestyle to now making music in LA and the big world of music I didn't realize how much work it would be I didn't realize the grind and I think when I first got into it I was kind of lazy about it because I was like oh honestly I should probably should have been a gen Z Because I was just like fuck this. I don't want to do this, you know, and so a lot of decisions I made in my career I feel like You know, it was all my fault basically all the failures that I've had I realized were my fault for being you know lazy or not putting in the effort and and the grind and

Yeah, so I wasted a lot of potential I had so many huge opportunities when I was younger in the music industry and then I kind of just like it was too much work But that part of like a work-life balance Yeah, I mean That's what Gen Z would say right? They're all about the work-life balance, but in I feel like in my generation the millennials. It was all about like work work work work work You know, hmm, and I wasn't doing that as much So yeah, I didn't I didn't feel like turning 40 I was like I'm not in the place where I thought I'd be I didn't do all the things I wanted to do by this age and It's feeling kind of like a failure and so do you think that that self-critical mindset though is just one of those things that's just like it's It's actually inherent to anybody that's creative and ambitious like you're always gonna be self-critical And that's probably one of the reasons why your music is so good like this idea like it's not good enough

It's not good enough obsessing over things We only release something every five years, but then look at the quality of the songs that you do release that you do love It's like there's a balance in there like a little bit of self-critical a little bit of like I'm not doing enough like it's Let it in there, but don't believe it, you know, yeah life is life. It's like it's not all you know It's not all like leave a legacy because in the end it doesn't matter. I know it's true. That's why I'm just want to have more fun No, that's great. Yeah, both things both things. Listen your music's awesome. Thank you

And it was awesome seeing you with them and them. It was great. Oh, yeah You came to the show. Yeah, and also that's how Marshall's named. He was named after So thank you and best of luck with your album with everything else in the future. This is really cool