The What Podcast
Bonnaroo Shake-Up: Brad Parker Departs, & Kyle Hollingsworth on New Album, String Cheese, and Beer
Season 8, Episode 34
Published August 15, 2025
https://thewhatpodcast.com/episode/bonnaroo-shake-up-brad-parker-departs-and-kyle-hollingsworth-on-new-album-string-cheese-and-beer

The thing I've always talked about is like the band is like a beer.

Maybe the bass is like the drums.

The bass is like the water and the drums are the malls.

The guitar maybe is the hops because it can go to 11.

And then the lead singer, I would say lead singer is like the yeast because it doesn't always show up.

It ruins everything if it doesn't grow properly.

Exactly, exactly.

Good morning.

Welcome to a special edition, a breaking news edition, if you will, if such a thing can happen on a podcast.

Can you have breaking news on a podcast?

I think we just did.

You know, it's funny, we had this interview, which you're going to hear later in the can ready to go.

We thought, you know, and obviously, Brian's not here.

He's taking a trip out to the Pacific Northwest.

And we just thought this is a good time.

We're in the low season as far as news.

Yeah, we can take the week off and just kind of go out and mow the grass, go out and mow the grass, which is why I look.

I made fun of me as farmer Bill last week.

Now I look even worse.

This is quite an upgrade.

Yeah, forgive me.

So, yeah, I was out mowing the grass and we got news like everybody.

I'm sure we're not breaking news, but we felt like we needed to comment on the fact that Brad Parker is leaving C3.

And for us, that means he's leaving Bonnaroo, which is a big deal.

And Russ, I was glad to see the reaction from some of our discord people.

Brad's been a huge part of this event, been been a huge part of our lives, right?

Yeah, I was looking it up.

The you know, as far as on the show, the first time we had him on was talking about Moon River.

Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, I do.

Yeah, he came over to Songbirds with Drew to talk to us.

And I actually met him probably the year before at the festival site.

For those of you who don't know, Moon River was a festival in Chattanooga on a piece of property on the river that had never had a gated,

ticketed event before.

And so Brad and his crew came over and created one of the coolest venues that I've ever seen.

And I remember the first time I met him, we were standing there in the field looking across the river.

You've never been to Chattanooga. It's a gorgeous setting.

But across the river was the Tennessee Aquarium, which is a triangular shaped building.

But they light it up at night.

And he said, man, I'd love to put the colors of the festival in that in that space.

And I said, well, I know a guy and made a phone call and they did it.

So that was my first introduction with Brad.

And then, like you said, he came on the show with us at Songbirds to talk about Moon River, I guess the next year.

Anyway, he replaced pretty much Jeff Cuellar, another friend of the show who's been on many, many times.

I was thinking about that this morning, how important that has been and how important.

Yeah, important because Jeff loved Bonnaroo as much as Brad.

And I had that sort of why can't we or dream stupid attitude.

I mean, that's what I call it. Dream, stupid, dream, dumb, you know, bring.

Why not? Big, big.

He was part of Team Idiot, you know, we had Corey and Brad on.

Good pull. Good pull.

But, yeah, he surprised a bunch of us. We had no clue.

We had him and with Corey Smith, which is the reference you just made about Team Idiot, what it cut just a couple of weeks ago.

And Brad announced on Thursday that he would be leaving his position with C3 next month and was going to start his own record label.

Yeah, he's moving into artist management, which I think is something that he's wanted to do for a long time.

I think this has been in the works for quite a while.

I don't think this has anything to do with what happened at Bonnaroo this year at all.

So, yeah, he didn't just start this two weeks ago or a month ago.

I mean, if he did, if he did, he's a bigger man.

Yeah, Track Record is the name of the I guess the business or the label that he's starting and pretty exciting.

I think it's going to be neat to see how far he gets with this and what he's able to do.

And I think it's great.

Yeah, just to follow up. So Quaer, Jeff left.

He left Bonnaroo to help run those cruises, the Rock and Roll cruises.

And forgive me for not having the name in front of me.

But Six Man.

Six Man. There you go.

Those are the ones where you and two or three hundred or whatever number of your closest friends hang out for several days on a on a cruise ship with a bunch of rock and roll bands.

And sounds pretty cool. So this is the next step for Brad.

What does it mean? We don't have a clue.

No, we don't have a clue. You know, we don't have any other information other than just what's out there.

You know, I think his replacement, everybody's wondering about that.

But I think it's going to be somebody that's within C3 that's, you know, worked alongside this for a long time.

So I'm not too worried about, you know, who not too worried about whoever it might be.

I think it's Bonnaroo is going to be in good hands either way.

Yeah, obviously, the timing is what's the word?

The timing is raised eyebrows.

Timing makes people talk because of what happened, you know.

Yeah, there's been some talk like that.

But yeah, I don't think this has anything to do with.

I don't think his exit has anything to do with this past year.

Yeah, I just got confirmation via text.

I don't know if this came as a surprise, but there's no official word from our official channels.

And obviously, we reached out to the people we usually reached out to from from C3 in the event and basically no official word.

So, yeah, I'm sure something will come out at some point.

And when it does, we'll have it.

And obviously, we will do our very best to have whoever is Brad's replacement on the show to talk about his or her plans for the future.

Yeah, I think whoever it is, they need to come on the show ASAP and introduce themselves and kind of just set the stage for what's happening for next year.

You know, there's a lot of changes coming and this is just going to be another big change.

Yeah. Unsolicited advice.

Yes.

Brad and Jeff both were extremely forthcoming, extremely open, love.

I can't say they love talking to people like us, but they were very good at talking to people like us.

Let's put it that way.

They were very upfront and especially with Brad and Corey the last couple of years, you could just tell the passion and their their willingness to be all over social media and listen to people and answer questions and all that.

I mean, clearly was a not just for you and me.

I mean, we got that we've gotten that for a long, long time, but I can't tell you.

It tickled me to hear people, everybody, everybody, I would say Brad and Corey as if they were best friends.

You know, yeah, I noticed that, too.

A lot of you know, we hear it all the time.

People would act like, you know, oh, Brad and Corey said this.

Yeah, I heard Brad and Corey and they were blah, blah, blah.

It's funny. Yeah, because it is.

It's like it's they're just our friends.

And I think I'm going to tell you, I've done this a long, long time.

It's very unusual.

Yeah, it's extremely unusual.

I mean, absolutely.

Name another festival where you're on a first name basis.

Name any company at all.

Whatever your high school team.

It is.

Yeah, there's always been that person like a you or me who, you know, likes to name drops.

Oh, well, Brad told me, you know, the yeah.

But when it gets to the level of everybody says it, it's a whole nother world.

So, yeah, obviously, reached out to Brad, not heard back from him, just said, you know, good luck.

Congratulations.

You know, made fun of him a little bit.

Clearly, he's still he's still on the the payroll at C3 for a month.

So I don't expect to hear a whole lot from him.

Yeah, I mean, there's going to be a transition.

I'm sure he's working with whoever his replacement is to get them up to speed.

And, you know, so it's it's not a quick exit by any means,

which I think also just speaks to the fact that this is plans that have been in works for a long time.

And yeah, obviously, we wish them the best of luck.

I think it's very exciting.

I'm pleased to see him pursuing something that he's really passionate about.

And it's exciting to see what he's going to do next.

Yeah. And obviously, he's welcome on this show any time and every time.

And I've already that part of my note to him was, you know, his first job needs to be able to get to needs to be to get his artists on our show.

Yeah. Whoever he signs, you know, we've got an end.

I'm looking forward to. Well, he could have the show, you know, we could just give it to him.

You know, he and Corey both threaten that they can have it.

If they want to come on, he wants to come on and come do it.

Yeah, we'll take the week off.

All right. So, like I said, this was a special because the breaking news type of thing, if such a thing is possible for a podcast.

But next is our interview with Kyle from Strings Cheese Incident, which we recorded weeks and weeks and weeks ago.

I think it's pretty cool and he was really awesome and hope you guys enjoy that.

And if we hear anything else, I don't know, we may have another breaking news.

We may have to convene again. Yeah, I mean, I don't really know.

We don't really have anything planned for the next couple of weeks, do we?

I mean, Brian's going to be gone for a little bit.

And, you know, we've got, of course, next month, we've got Shaky Knees coming up.

We've got the Bluegrass Festival here in Chattanooga.

Then we've got Cave Fest at the Caverns in Pelham.

That's in October. So things are happening.

I mean, there's going to be more coverage and more interviews and more stuff to talk about for sure.

Yeah. I mean, you you mentioned the Bluegrass.

It's it's a big deal.

IBM, Steve Martin and Allison Brown are going to be the.

Co-hosts. Yeah, Steve Martin, obviously, we're trying to get on as a guest.

So we're going to have a lot to talk about.

We thought we weren't.

Yeah, but, you know, we thought we were moving away from Bonnaroo News.

And here we are speaking of Bonnaroo.

You know, this past week, do you remember Tuesday?

We got quite a bit of flooding in Chattanooga.

Oh, yeah. Did it give you any flashbacks to Bonnaroo or?

Oh, worse. I.

As Ernest T.

Bass for Andy Griffith fans used to say whenever Darlene Darling would ask him about the

storm last night, he said, I was right there in it.

I was right there in it.

I was, too.

I literally was.

If if I had been on those same roads by the freeway five minutes earlier,

I I would have been the one floating in my car.

I could have been caught in it easily.

It was awful.

Trying to get home was took about two hours.

There was a lot of detouring and trying to figure out the best way to get around.

Just like everyone else, traffic was awful.

Roads were flooded.

We got about six or seven inches in like two and a half hours.

Officially, I think it was seven.

Seven. OK, wow.

Seven inches in two hours, three hours.

Two and a half to almost three hours.

I've never seen anything like it.

No, none of us have.

I saw I remember the flood of 73.

And obviously, we've talked about that, you know, my coworkers.

And that was a gradual, if you will, flood.

You know, it rained for a long, long time for a couple of days and a lot.

This one was, like I said, seven hours, seven inches and two and a half hours.

And man, oh, man, there's just no place for it to go.

That's kind of what I was thinking.

I mean, it made me think of Bonnaroo because it's not just a Bonnaroo problem.

This happens all over the place.

And, you know, anytime people are like, well, they should just fix the drainage.

It's not that simple.

Yeah, I kept thinking about your comment talking about Bonnaroo.

Where's that water supposed to go?

You know, put drainage on the farm.

Well, that just pushes it down, downfield to somebody else's problem.

Someone else's problem.

Yeah, exactly.

And obviously, it's a complicated issue.

I mean, Chattanooga is going to have to figure out how to do something, too.

I mean, it's not that simple.

No, and not to take them off the hook, which was my initial reaction,

because a lot of people said, well, it's the city's fault for paving everything.

But then I thought further about it.

And it is kind of the city's fault.

We've paved over a lot of our wetlands and a lot of concrete and a lot of neighborhoods

that literally take their water problem and push it down to somebody below them.

Sure, and just the amount of growth that we've had.

I don't think they've really addressed stormwater.

Well, I will say this.

I made about three really stupid decisions and got lucky.

That whole, you know, don't drown, go around.

Turn around, don't drown.

Yeah, I got lucky.

That's all I can say.

But I wanted to get home.

And I'm sure that's what most people are thinking when they do it.

But man, oh man.

Yeah, I hope to never have to deal with that again.

Me too.

Anyways, I just thought it was worth mentioning just because it happened.

Had three, two mother and father and child die and then somebody got

sucked into a creek walking along.

So four fatalities, I think that's all we've heard of.

Yeah, unfortunately that did happen.

And I'm sure you guys have all seen it on the news.

It was worse than what you saw.

Yeah, it really was.

Anyways, fortunately, Bonnaroo wasn't that bad.

It got flooded and rained out and there were some bad situations.

But I think for the most part, everybody got out okay.

There was nobody stuck for too long or anything like that.

So it could have been a lot worse, which is I think what Brad was hinting at was,

you know, you've seen the documentaries.

It doesn't take much for all those people to,

then you've got a Woodstock 99 situation.

So luckily that didn't happen.

And I hope it never does.

All right.

This could be a long show.

Wasn't intentional.

All right.

I don't know when we'll be back, but thank you guys for listening.

As always, please like and share.

And if you want to keep sending us your thoughts on the info line,

you can find it on the website or the phone number.

That's been a lot of fun.

I love hearing from people.

It has.

Yeah.

Got a lot of great calls.

So if you want to call in, share some thoughts.

423-667-7877 or, you know, Discord.

We've been keeping up with a lot of people on there.

A lot of great comments there when the news broke about Brad.

You know, we all kind of jumped in there and had a conversation real quick.

So yeah, love to keep up with everybody while we're still trying to figure all this out.

All right.

Until we meet again.

See you guys.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks.

Here's our interview with Kyle Hollingsworth, string cheese incident.

That was one of my great Bonnaroo experiences was playing with Steve Winwood.

It was probably one of the early Bonnaroo.

Oh, four maybe?

Maybe four.

Whenever string cheese played, played like two or three times.

But it was early on and Steve Winwood somehow connected through our record company

because we had, we have our own record company.

And of course, that was always been a big fan.

So we went down and went to his house.

He has a place around there somewhere with his wife.

And he said, come on in.

And with his big British accent and we walked in and there's gold records all around the walls.

Yeah.

Blind faith, you know, with the Spencer Davis group.

I don't know what it was, but.

That's what happens when you start when you're like 12.

Exactly.

Right.

Right.

The amazing.

And so then we're like, okay, cool.

So he had an organ set up and a piano in his living room.

And I started playing.

He was playing and we were both, he was playing great.

But then all of a sudden he started singing and then we're like, oh my God,

that is the jewel right there.

So we got, he was singing.

We did, I'm a man.

He'd written, I'm a man.

Yes, I am.

Yes, I am.

And then we're like, oh my God, this is insane.

And so then he came out and played with us and then he played with widespread after us.

So whatever year that was, but that was a great Bonnaroo moment.

It was either three, four or five.

It was somewhere right in there.

Wow.

Yeah, for sure.

What year is it now?

Yeah, right.

I don't know.

Don't remind me, Kyle.

Don't remind me.

Let's do this.

Let me just sort of recap because.

Typically, Kyle, we do this show and I have this sort of inner clock that says,

you know what?

I'm done.

We're bored.

We're moving on.

I have a feeling this is going to be one of those shows where you're going to have to say,

guys, I got to go.

So I'm going to go ahead and give you that pass.

All right, great.

That's good.

Because we have so many things to talk about.

We have what you just started.

I don't know.

Brian works for a beer company.

You've got a, you're brewing your own beer.

You're not drinking a new record out.

We'd love talking songwriting.

So, I mean, I feel like take a minute.

I don't even know where to start.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

So where do you want to start?

You want to talk about the new record?

You want to talk about the beer?

You want to talk about past Bonnaroo's?

I don't know.

Your own festival.

You started your own festival.

We can.

I mean, where do we want to go?

You know what we could do is talk a little bit about Cheese maybe first.

Let's talk about Cheese.

Yeah, please.

And then we can kind of work our way into the new album.

But you guys ask me.

You tell me.

I have a specific question.

I can start with this if you would like.

If we're starting with Cheese.

Let's do it.

I got one too.

Early on, Kyle, you joined in the late night, mid to late 90s, right?

Sounds about right.

Yep.

Six-ish, 97.

So early on, they're the Blue String Cheese Band.

And they're primarily a mostly traditional bluegrass band.

And they were making the transition.

I don't know when the decisions were made or how it went.

But roughly in that time, 95, 96, into a more, I'll call jam friendly, a little more

outside of the traditional bluegrass box.

And around that time, you find yourself moving east to west towards Colorado and Boulder.

How does that come together that you are one of the very integral pieces of changing that

bluegrass traditional sound into what string cheese became then and went on to be

quite well known for for the next couple of decades?

I'm so glad.

Can I jump on that one?

Yeah, go for it.

Because that is my question too.

Because about that time, if I'm correct,

Grateful Dead is their own universe, right?

And so...

It's the furthest kind of thing more and all that.

They are literally their own universe.

And so my question is, did you guys feel like there's this question out there about

who's going to be next?

You know what I mean?

Because that's what it felt like to me is like somebody's got to replace Grateful Dead.

Well, there's two questions there.

Two questions, yes, sir.

I moved from Baltimore.

I had been listening.

I got my jazz piano degree and I discovered someone called Bela Fleck and the Fleck Tones,

the Cosmic Hippo album with Howard Levy playing keys and the harmonica.

And I saw the first Hoard tour and they were on that Hoard tour.

I was living in Maryland still.

So at that point, right around that point, I was also...

I had been coming out to Colorado to work on the Colorado Trail.

To help building it.

So I decided to come out and just spend a real amount of time, maybe just a summer.

And at that point, I hooked up with some...

I already had my degree about some Liquid Sunshine or some kind of like Grateful Dead band here.

And Dave Watts, who's a great drummer from the area, introduced me to Michael Kang.

So Michael Kang then persuaded me to join String Cheese.

Actually, my band, Dirt at the time, opened for String Cheese.

So as I joined String Cheese, it wasn't completely out of the...

It was kind of out of my wheelhouse how to play bluegrass, but I had been turned onto it via Bela.

It wasn't... Bela at that point wasn't super traditional, especially on that album.

And then once I met Billy, I started really in playing Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

I started understanding the depth of the music.

So we started playing around the area.

We started heading to...

We did this big infinity sign across the United States.

We played 320 shows a year or something for the first four years.

And to answer your question, we didn't...

There was... There wasn't that...

I guess there was a hole, but there's a lot of jam bands still.

You think there's a lot now, but back then there was definitely a lot of jam bands.

So who was going to fill that void?

Fish obviously was already there.

Fish obviously was already there.

They were young, but they were definitely powerful.

I've always said that there's been a East versus West, kind of like the rappers thing.

East Coast was a little harder edge jam.

Widespread, fish, a little harder New York raw.

And the West Coast was like Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, a little bit more trippy this.

And so we kind of fell into that because of the way we were jamming.

So when we went to the West Coast, we started connecting with some of that.

We knew Barlow and Mountain Girl and some of the Zen Tricksters.

So they kind of brought us into the fold from there.

But we were definitely more in that zone.

So I think we kind of got pulled into their world more so than maybe Widespread would have

been pulled into their world.

I don't know if that answered everything, but that's how it was.

It kind of did.

I didn't really think about it.

Bluegrass is sort of the tipping, right?

Maybe.

Yeah, with Jerry, right?

There's the trippy, but then there's bluegrass and it's maybe more East Coast.

Maybe.

Maybe, or I was thinking more bluegrass in the fact that

it didn't hold in the way and Jerry was playing banjo, right?

Yeah, Jerry was the bluegrass guy at the band all those years.

Maybe that was somehow worked it way.

And I don't know.

Yeah, that's why I'm guessing now one of the most popular covers of any bluegrass outfit

is generally Grateful Dead music.

It translates so well.

Yeah.

You talked about in a quick interview, I just did some searching around.

I didn't dive too far in anything, Kyle, but you talked about when you were first moving

or traveling East to tour the Eastern seaboard-ish in that area and thinking nobody knew who you guys

were.

So I'm thinking about the same time frame, late 90s.

And you talked about that to me it was a different version of tapers because I was online trading

tapes.

We weren't going to shows setting up microphones and taping, but we were gathering the tapes

and then sending them to our friends.

And we were doing that all the time.

94, 5, 6, I'm 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.

You found that same kind of phenomenon as you showed up to shows in the East and Boston

and Massachusetts, Maine, wherever you were.

And people were sitting around with cassette tapes of your shows.

Could you talk about that?

Yeah, that was the first that blew me away.

I mean, of course, I knew about the tapers, the taping tree, the generation.

Sure.

But to me, this feels like a new age version of the 90s version of taping.

So I knew going into it when I moved to Colorado, I had all the killer cassettes from Dead and 74

and all that stuff.

And then but then we started playing with string cheese that went next generation and

ended up bringing fans to the show for the very first time who had never seen us were

traveling, like I said, 320 days a year.

And we get to Burlington, Vermont or Boston and they're still selling 100 tickets.

We're like, you've never even heard of the band.

I said, no, my buddy sent me a tape in the mail.

So yeah, the tapers thing was so part of who we became.

You know, that really helped.

What was that universe like?

Because it was for us, I mean, we're so involved in the internet.

I mean, we're so social media.

But that what you guys are talking about, it was way underground.

Right?

I mean, it was like you could show up at a town and everybody already knew who you were.

You had to be like, how?

How do you even know who we are?

I mean, yeah, I was also tapes, but how can that be enough?

And to me, like I was already nervous.

It was my first tour with a random band with a terrible name.

What?

Who thought of string cheese?

And it's on the record, but I'm not the only person who thinks that.

I say I never thought of a horrible name of our podcast.

But anyway, I was like, OK, I may all try this.

And then we've gotten this bus and we're traveling around in an old ski bus.

And I was like, man, this may or may not work out, but I'm getting paid.

And it's better than like working at a shipping store in Boulder.

But then we started getting there and having fans already on site.

And it was, yeah, that was amazing.

And then, of course, you sign up your physical address and we send you a mailer.

No emailers.

So at the back of the bus, we'd be like writing, you know,

John Doe, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And the next time I was one of the kids guys standing around trying to make sure

you get my whatever my street address to my favorite bands.

And exactly, exactly.

The mail, the snail mail or whatever.

That was absolutely me.

It's why I find it so fascinating.

Didn't know it was a cultural phenomenon across the country.

I couldn't have known because AOL would only let me talk to a certain amount of people.

Did it kind of freak you out when you played Denver and there's Bryan Stone

wanting an email or an address and then you go to like Knoxville and there he is again.

I mean, that had to be kind of crazy.

That started happening, you know, and then I was like, OK, something's there's a bus.

When that started happening, when people started following us around,

the first thing we did is we hired them.

Boogie.

Brooks.

It's 25 years later.

I could still use a gig.

Boogie makes a good girl cheese sandwich, apparently.

Our guitar tech Boogie Brooks.

Parlo has been with us since the very beginning and he

he would follow us around the country in ninety nine ninety eight.

And then we're like, dude, just help us.

Like, so we put a terrible job.

We're going to rent a rider truck and you follow us.

So he started driving the rider truck full of I think was lights at that point.

And then all of a sudden he's been, I don't know,

he's been with us probably thirty two years, thirty one years and crazy.

I often ask this to a lot of newer bands getting into the jam scene

because it feels like they don't want to be called a jam band.

And I'm just curious as to what they think.

Do you consider the music that you make with String Cheese Incident as a jam band outfit?

Yeah, I've embraced it.

Good.

It is.

I think so.

I think it is, too.

I know it's I think we can tighten this good way to kind of go into my new album.

But there is a bit of everybody who is discovered and gotten famous by

or gotten discovered by a certain genre that they want to break out and be like, man,

I don't want to be in the jam.

And so I think a little bit of people holding back on labels.

Maybe it's not as hot because it's not as popular now.

When you were getting into it, it was hot, hot, hot.

It still has got its niche, but it's not as hot as it was when you were getting it.

Is it more about having a label or about jam band?

I think it's a label.

Yeah, I played with that.

Nobody likes to be labeled.

Exactly.

And then you feel like you can't do your thing.

I played with Taper's Choice, which is a new band, and it's these indie rockers,

a guy from Vampire Weekend and some other indie rockers.

And they said, hey, what do you want to play?

And we were all open to playing whatever you want to play.

I said, great, I want to play Vampire Weekend.

I want to play Death Cab for Cutie, blah, blah, blah.

And they're like, no, no, no, no.

That's what we do all the time.

We want to do the Almond Brothers and Grateful Dead.

I'm like, dude, no.

When the two worlds come together, they wanted to break out of their box.

And I wanted to break out of my box.

But you had to figure out a way to meet in the middle.

It was really interesting.

So I think even those guys don't want to be...

I'm glad you brought that up because that was one of my questions.

Because you have played with so many people.

How does that happen?

Is it you reaching out to them?

Do they reach out to you?

And if they reach out to you, is that what they come and they're like,

we want you to bring that jam band thing that you do.

We want you to bring your thing.

And you're like, no, I wanted to do what you guys do.

That fascinates me.

Well, in the bigger picture, if you're talking about playing with

within string cheese and playing with all the incredible artists we've played with,

that's always been our management putting us together outside of a box.

Well, not really like Doobie Brothers.

That kind of fits in our world.

But we did a lot of strange collaborations.

And it's usually management that puts us in that situation.

And then we feel a little nervous about it.

But then it always works out.

Who do we play with?

I'm trying to think.

From the Fugees.

Killing me softly with his song.

Lauren Hill.

We did a Lauren Hill incident.

Good pull, Ross.

And so that was like, whoa, totally different worlds.

But that came together really well.

When I can't sleep, I get on YouTube like everybody.

And so this morning, I stumbled across Warren Haynes

and another interview with Jimmy Webb.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable with Mike Piotto.

Yeah, right.

Of course.

Yeah.

Rick Piotto.

Rick.

Excuse me.

I knew I wasn't right.

Unbelievable interview.

But he goes into this.

He's talking about the whole when you're playing with this group

and when you're playing with that group.

And I know I've had several opportunities to interview Warren Haynes.

And it always fascinates me how he could go from one band to the other.

How he could go from Dave Matthews to his own band to the Allman Brothers

and know where he was.

But he's always kind of in his lane.

He's Warren, man.

He's incredible.

He's the force of nature.

But that's sort of when I was...

So when I knew we were going to do this interview,

I was thinking about that to talk to you again.

I mean, you've been with Turquoise, Crung Ben.

Did you ever play with Crung Ben?

Or no, I know it's Turquoise.

Well, Crung Ben sat in with us.

No, I didn't play with Turquoise, but we sat in...

Crung Ben sat in with us, the guitar player, just recently, Electric Forest.

That was great.

Trying to find the right music that would work with his style.

That's what...

There it is.

That's what I'm asking.

Who leads that movement?

Well, we think about who we play with.

We play with Mike Posner, who was a DJ the night before.

So it's just a matter of kind of connecting with them, a band.

Sometimes management, like I said, kind of puts this together,

but it comes down to the artists speaking to each other and being like,

that doesn't really work.

Let me try something new.

So it's a really back and forth between the artists.

All right.

So that leads to your new record.

What was your intent?

What were you...

Why now?

What the heck was I thinking, right?

What were you thinking?

And I can't wait to ask about the song about your daughter.

Like, what were you thinking?

Because I mean, that had to...

That's a touchy one, man.

She doesn't know it exists yet.

So...

You heard it here first on the World Podcast.

So it was...

So after I had an album called 2020, which came out, which was...

I was like, this is going to be a great year.

2020.

Not so much.

We all thought that.

So then I started kind of stepping back and doing some more writing,

and I was going to do singles.

I was like, this is fine.

This is a great time.

I'm not on tour.

I'll just drop some singles here and there.

And I did.

I dropped one or two.

But then as I was writing, I started seeing like the horizon of a whole album coming together.

I didn't know what the album was going to be called.

And I had kind of jumped around different styles.

Like you mentioned a little Paul Simon, you know,

I was thinking a little Almond Brothers on a couple of tunes.

But then I wrote the song All We Are, which was the title track.

And because I was listening a lot to Death Cab for QD,

and like I said, a little bit more indie bands.

And that's a great title for an album.

Let's Forget Away to make all these songs kind of be the breath

or just speak to all we are throughout the whole album.

And it took a while.

I had to kind of redo some lyrics.

I had to think about how it all would tie together.

And the funny thing about All We Are, it was so different that I said,

OK, let's push this to the end of the album.

Then the management and all the record company was like,

no, that's cool and so different than what a lot of jam bands are doing.

Different for you.

Why don't you lead with that?

I was like, that's kind of scary.

You know, but they decided, I decided in the end to

try to do something out of the box.

So All We Are is a little bit more longer breath.

I wanted something that was sonically interesting.

I wanted something with long vowels.

Less patter like I want to sing quickly over funk songs.

I wanted long eyes wide, like long open vowels.

And then I wanted the rock in the middle.

And it's not going to focus on keys.

It's going to focus on songwriting more.

Yeah.

So then that's kind of the scope over the album began.

That's a lot of thought process into just some new music.

I love it.

Overthought, yes.

No.

Well, I'm the king of overthinking.

I'm curious when you mentioned about your producers and the A&R guys or whoever it is

that are in your orbit.

Certainly a lot different nowadays than when Tom Petty wrote that song back in the day.

You know, I don't hear a single.

But how much do you trust and rely on the people around you, producers and those types,

when you're putting together an album that, let's face it, you didn't write this expecting

to be number one on the billboard.

Exactly.

But you did write it expecting it to be liked by people who are fans of you and cheese

and all of that.

How does that collaboration work?

Well, that's it.

So let's talk about that.

So yeah, the rest, like the first track, I was thinking that could be cool.

Let me build, get some plays on where Vampire Weekend gets plays or some a little bit off

the track gets me noticed outside of the jam world.

We were speaking of that earlier to kind of help me bridge and bring some new people in.

But the rest of the album was very friendly to the cheese fans.

I answer your question, I guess I'm influenced by what they say, but I have the final say.

It's different for string cheese when string cheese writes an album.

We all have to have this.

We all have our opinions and then we have to fight it out for whoever's right.

No, that's great to have a producer there.

In this case, I was the producer for the album.

So I decided what was going to happen.

But it was curious for them to bring that up.

I'm fascinated by this.

This has been a conversation I've had with artists for 40 years.

How do you write a song?

Do you go in knowing?

Do you go in and it just happens?

Do you have intent?

You clearly had intent.

You knew what you wanted and you, as Brian pointed out, you collaborated with people.

It's so different how art gets made.

Yeah, for sure.

Sometimes it comes like this.

But other times, like in the title track, I had it, but I wanted a feeling.

I wanted a sound.

And I wasn't sure what the lyrics even mattered at that point.

One of my go-to questions, and it's a total crutch go-to questions as a reporter who did

37 years with a newspaper, is did it come out the way you heard it in your head?

And it sounds like such a stupid question.

And it is, unless you get a good answer.

But I'm going to guess it.

So it's on you, Kyle.

Save the dumb question.

Pull me out of this one.

But I'm guessing you had, to my point, you had something in your mind going in, right?

Well, right.

When you guys write or when you guys are in your creative space, I think it takes a minute.

There's a seed.

And then for me personally, I ruminate at least two years.

So the process is I'll go in, I'll play.

Thank you.

That's my point.

I'll play for the band, my solo band, which is an amazing band.

I go in there and say, here's three chords, and the melody is probably going to be this.

Let's jam.

So then we'll play.

This is during COVID.

So we all had masks on, and then we would just jam.

And I would take 16 hours of music or jams, and I'll go home.

And I spent 18 months cutting and pasting them, kind of turning them into my vision.

So it does take a while to answer your question, but it's always there.

And when it's done, you think you're ready?

I can tweak one more thing.

Wait.

That's when the record company comes in and says, no, you got to stop.

Like example, again, I'm going back to the YouTube and the fact that I can't sleep.

Brian Wilson, meticulous, knew exactly what he wanted.

Miles Davis, I understand, with Bitches Brew, no idea.

Went into that studio session, nothing.

Hit record, let's go.

And both are absolute classics, right?

All right.

How does that happen?

Explain that to me, Kyle.

Extraordinary talent in different ways.

Well, I think Miles...

Break that down in 30 seconds.

No, I think that Miles had been playing music for so long, and with those particular players

for so long, he probably walked in, similar idea with this like a chart of some three chords,

and trusted that they could make great music out of it.

And then he walked away.

And there's no sense of like, oh, we can edit this and move this here or that.

Versus I think Brian Wilson was more, knew exactly where parts are supposed to go.

So I don't know.

It's a matter of just trusting, trusting your musicians.

Oh, fascinating.

I mean, I've heard the story countless times from just people over the years of just,

I wrote that song in two and a half minutes.

Yeah.

As long as the song is, that's how long it took me to write it.

And then you've got others that's, you know, six months, a year, two years.

I mean, I understand all those levels of, it can be frustration, but it could also be

quite rewarding, I guess, at the end, putting all that kind of work into it.

What about writing with the band?

I'll bring it back to cheese just for a second.

What about writing with the band?

You've got a big band of world-class musicians that are all celebrated in their own way within

the ethos of the cheese fandom.

How does that songwriting process go?

You kind of hinted at it that, you know, you fight it out, you know, but

curious as how that comes together.

Well, in the beginning, the early days, it was a lot of Billy, Billy's bringing a lot of music in.

And so we were kind of just falling in line with what we do as it kind of

supported Billy's vision.

And then as I started writing more, I write in a different way.

A lot of times I would finish a song and bring it in and then everybody would fill it out.

I think these days, it's been a bit more like that.

Travis, our drummer, has been doing some writing.

So he'll come in and be like, this is how I want it to sound.

And we'll kind of emulate and support him.

Does it make the best cohesive album?

I don't know.

I think our last album, Let Me Hand, was very cohesive because we had a producer.

And he was able to cut through all the stuff and be like,

these four songs make sense in an album together.

These other four don't.

Which is a rough call for some people.

But yeah, that's how we write now.

Of the bands I've followed most of my life that have been around and stuck together,

it seems to be a recurring theme that more members get more involved with the creative

process as it goes along, which I think is an excellent formula.

I just don't think one guy or two guys can, only a couple people can do that.

And so I think that's a really excellent way to do it.

Let me, one more before, I don't want to get too, we're going to leave string and

start talking beer and other stuff too here shortly.

Before we do that, I wore the beer hat for a reason and I wore this for a reason.

You guys, I went to Woodstock 99, I was 19 years old.

It's one of my favorite things in the history of my life that I've done.

It was awful, horrible.

Everything was terrible about it.

One of my favorite things ever.

You guys played Woodstock 99.

I watched the footage.

It didn't look AI.

It looked like it was on YouTube.

Yeah, we played it.

We played it there.

We were on our way.

How could I not know this?

Because we played the Thursday.

We were the warmup.

There's a bunch.

It was like us.

It wasn't cake, but it was a couple other bands.

I'm trying to think where they were all on the Thursday warmup party thing.

I figured that out as I was looking.

I was like, hold on.

Something's not working out here.

Saw the dates.

I was like, oh yeah.

Wasn't there the early day?

And that's still all the same shit was happening.

It was the people like, you know, show us your tits.

We were like, whoa.

So it was even starting on Thursday.

It was really super negative energy.

And we said, let's get out of here.

So we got in Bussey and took off.

And then three days later, it burned down.

Bussey's the name of that bus you were talking about.

That you guys have traveled across the country.

And so that is the extent of your Woodstock story.

Is that it was starting to build.

You could see the place was going to be awful.

Let's get out of here.

You didn't actually see it burn.

No, we were in and out.

Wow.

Before we jump into beer, I do want to jump back for the album

for one second.

Yeah, no, no, yeah.

Sorry.

I wanted to jump into the song you mentioned.

It was Lost in the Mirror.

So my daughter, I wrote a song for my daughter, the same daughter,

Izzy, called Can't Wait Another Day, which has become kind of a staple string cheese song.

And it's kind of happy, Paul Simonese sort of thing

about the days leading up for her birth.

So this was a little bit of the B side because now she's 13.

And we seem to have lost her to her mirror every day.

What is the line?

Bleshing and brushing, concealing the day away.

So she's always, she's a teenager.

And for me, it's a song about her growing up, but also the loss of me being her dad

in that same way as she was when she was eight.

And so it's not mean in any way, but to the point.

She's lost in the mirror.

Stern, maybe.

Stern, maybe.

It's Stern.

Yeah, we lost in the mirror.

We hardly see her.

Belle in Wonderland.

Strange obsession with her own reflection.

I'll never understand.

So it's a little, you know, a jabs here and there, and I'm hoping she won't know that

it's about her, but it's one of my favorite songs.

I can read it.

When she does notice it, it'll be when she could appreciate it at like 22 years old.

Yeah.

Look, that's the reason I brought it up.

I mean, Brian and Russ are not married and don't have children.

I do.

So that's why I, I mean, when I saw that, I was like, oh, been through that.

You know, she'll come back.

She'll come back about.

That was it.

So that then was like mirror.

And then that was, okay, great.

What's in the mirror?

Okay.

How about Alison Wonderland through the looking glass?

So then each line of the verses is an homage to Alison Wonderland as well and my daughter.

So it's kind of like she fell, falls into the mirror

and all of us are falling through the rabbit hole with her.

It's the classic joke.

I can't believe how dumb my dad was when I went away to college

and how smart he got when I got back.

I had not heard that.

That's great.

Oh my God, brother, it's coming.

Buckle up.

Exactly.

Because you were about to be stupid.

So that's one song.

And then I moved through the second song and there is called

Waiting on Time and I kind of wrote that in all my brother's.

Oh yeah.

Look, when the eye rolls start, when the eye rolls, just walk away.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

Walk away and count to 10.

The loudest eye rolls you'll ever see.

Oh my God, dude.

Yeah.

Screaming at you, eye rolls.

Yeah.

My dad is the dumbest human being on the planet.

Again, I want to get to the beer, but before we do, talk about-

I got a couple other things too.

Sorry.

Talk about a little bit the difference between doing a solo album and an album with Cheese.

It's great in that I have control over many aspects when I'm doing solo.

Production, sounds, songwriting, lyrics.

But then it's a double edged sword in the fact that then it's just me.

If one of the band members has said, hey, that line is a little cheesy,

or if String Cheese guys have been like, that doesn't work.

It's nice to have somebody to bounce off ideas.

And I do with my solo band, but at the same time, it's always me.

And it's nice to have the firm hand of who I call the mothership, which is String Cheese,

to bring me back a little bit.

Ross, did you have something?

Yeah, I just want to say next to Bonnaroo, our next favorite place is the Caverns.

We were there for Cave Jam last couple months ago.

That was my first time seeing Cheese live.

Just wanted to hear how that got set up.

You guys did two sets.

It seemed like you were the driving force behind this event.

It seems like somehow it became, I don't know if that is the case.

We are just one of the headlining bands.

It isn't necessarily String Cheese festival.

But yeah, we always heard about it.

In fact, apparently Billy played the other one, which was down.

McMinnville.

Yeah, deeper in the cave.

The other cave.

So this one is more like, my wife was so excited.

She's like, what's the cave like?

It's actually just a big mouth of a cave that you can see the stage when you walk in.

It's still a cave, but it feels more like an underground stage.

Just like a room.

It feels like a room.

A big room surrounded by 20,000 year old rocks and stuff.

But your overall thoughts on the venue and your time there and everything at the Caverns?

The best part was the first year we played it, they took us on behind the scenes.

There's another way you can sneak down and go behind the...

So the stage ends, but we were able to get behind...

So the stage ends into a wall.

But we were able to get behind and climb through all through the cave system back there.

Which is so amazing.

Put your hard hat on, walk through, crawl through.

Oh, wow.

I didn't realize you could do that.

Yeah.

And so I think we ended up on the other side of the wall somehow at one point.

But then we had to walk through the cave again.

So that was great.

Playing down there is always awesome.

And we met the guy, he was also the runner who also maybe owns the property.

But he's also the person who built the hill.

So the stage is here and the hill that goes up with all the rocks.

Yeah, the amphitheater.

The amphitheater.

He cleared it all out with him and his dad.

And yeah, this is a close personal friend of ours, by the way.

Yeah, you met the excavator guy.

He's like, we can do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Todd told us about that guy.

I forget what his name is.

George or something?

I forget.

But anyway, he's great.

I love it.

I love it.

Before we get too far away again from where music you've done in the past,

this is not necessarily with cheese.

Speaking of Woodstock 99, the first time I ever saw a Grateful Dead member

was Mickey Hart and Planet Drum at Woodstock on Saturday night.

And long story to that one.

Tell you another time.

I won't waste any time with it now.

But I noticed that you were not a Planet Drum.

It doesn't appear, but you were a touring member with the Mickey Hart band.

Yes.

Correct?

Correct.

I didn't know that there was a Mickey Hart band.

I always thought it was just Mickey Hart and Planet Drum.

Can you talk about that for a moment?

Yeah, it was Mickey Hart.

And I forget what it was called.

It was actually a really great lineup.

It was me on keys, George Porter from the Meters on bass.

And Steve Kamach on guitar.

Yeah, I didn't print the list off.

But it was an incredible lineup.

It was a lot of fun.

It was many, many years ago.

The drummer from Bruce Hornsby.

I forget his name.

Yes, that was great.

It was great.

A lot of fun.

Nice.

Did you do any writing with him or was that more of just a...

No, it was more of like...

It was once again that connection through the late 90s, through that whole circle.

And I also did a tour as Phil Lesh's keyboard player in the summer.

Oh, wow.

And I did.

And we all played.

It just all made sense.

One last dead reference.

You did some writing with Robert Hunter.

Is that an accurate statement I got?

That is an accurate statement.

I wrote 45th of November with Robert.

Yeah, we did that via email.

That's got to be an incredible life memory.

The Robert Hunter who wrote most of the lyrics with Jerry Garcia during the day.

Yeah, Jerry.

Totally.

That's amazing.

You said the label sets some of the stuff up.

Is there anybody that you want to play with that you haven't played with?

And on top of that, do you reach out to the label and say,

hey, I'd really like to record with so-and-so, make it happen?

Yeah.

For the last album, last string cheese album, I wrote with Sam from Iron and Wine.

Iron and Wine is a great band.

Well, mainly Sam.

And so Sam and I wrote a couple of tunes.

So I reached out to my label and asked about that.

Yeah, I mean, I have been from Death Cab for QD.

The new album has some rock tinges to it for sure.

And so I'm feeling that little bit of a sense of wanting to rock out a bit more.

I was late to Death Cab for QD, but I love them now.

And I'm starting to feel this kindred spirit with you over this.

So anytime he wants to hang out, that's great.

Like I said, man, you're going to have to cut us off because I have so many questions.

But I'm going dad mode now.

You've got a 13-year-old.

Yep.

When my daughter was 13, all I wanted was to be cool in her eyes.

So I was listening to whatever music she was into.

Were you trying to keep up with her?

Absolutely.

I mean, we did a Taylor Swift song a few years ago at Red Rocks because they were playing.

She was playing against us.

She was our competition.

Oh, I've seen you wearing Taylor Swift gear.

I've seen images of you wearing the gear.

She was at Mile High or something and we were at Red Rocks.

And I was like, okay, so listen to this whole thing.

I'll dress up as a different guy and I'll call myself Carl Washington.

I'll have the wig somewhere in my studio here.

And so I played the entire first set as a different person.

And because I said, Kyle isn't here.

He had to go see Taylor Swift.

So I went in with that big mustache and then Carl Washington's blankies.

And some people didn't get it.

They're like, why would he do that?

And then it came back second set.

And I think we did a Taylor Swift song in the middle of one of my songs.

And when I came back, I was like, oh, that was great.

I was like, oh, what a great show.

Does she even know or care?

Oh, yeah, she's all, yeah, they love it.

We need to play Electric Forest, another festival we helped foster.

And so she's all about getting dressed up for that.

And so yeah, we have Red Rocks coming up next week.

Nice.

Good for you.

Good for you.

That's awesome.

There's nothing better.

All right.

Tell us about the beer.

You make beer.

How long you've been making beer?

And you should know Brian, as I said, works for a beer company.

So he's going to have lots of questions.

At least some thoughts.

I started home brewing when I was like 16 or 17 because my brother was doing it.

And that's back in Baltimore.

And so you go back then, you could just buy like little canisters of malt.

And the idea is you wouldn't actually do any of the malting yourself.

But you get this can and pour it in water and then you, you know,

sand size, sorry, bottles and you put the caps on and then it would taste like shit.

So, but, you know, but you're 17, you're like, oh, cool.

I made beer and, you know, he kind of gives you a little buzz.

But then as I started playing music and I got more into craft beer and more into the process,

I get a really big system at home.

I did.

My neighbor has it now, but my brewing partner.

And I started seeing some connections between how I brew and how I take chances with my music.

I felt like once I got the basics under my fingers for music,

I was willing to improvise knowing that that was probably going to be okay.

So once I got the basics of brewing under there and knew like,

I know I can make something that probably would be good at this point.

Now let's go crazy.

Let's do some orange peel.

Let's try some nutmeg.

Let's do some sassafras root.

Let's jam.

So I started jamming with my, my brewing process.

Well, let me ask you this.

I started brewing beer for a couple of years when I was 17, 18, and then 19 years old.

And I did the math on your age and I knew that the time frame was roughly 17 or 18.

And you just said 16, 17 or 18.

The, the laws were changing in 1984.

Officially, I think it was when it was signed for by Ronald Reagan for 18 to 21 year old

drinking age in America.

It wasn't federally at first.

And then eventually it was, or I don't know where it stands at this point,

but it's, it's blanketed across the country.

The main reason I wanted to brew beer was I was a curious semi creative guy,

but I also wanted to drink beer.

It was a lot easier to just buy the stuff, try to make it.

And didn't matter if it tasted like shit.

It had alcohol in it.

Does that story overlap with you at all?

Did you see that Ronald Reagan terrible signature coming that made you say,

I got to start brewing before I get to 18 or 19, cause I won't be able to drink.

No, for me, it was just about,

Okay.

Ah, damn it.

I thought we had the same story.

I think my brother could have gotten me like, what was it back then?

Coors was here in Colorado, it was like Bush lights and Milwaukee's best.

Yeah. Coors hadn't made it here yet.

You're right.

Smoking the bandit.

Exactly.

So it was just out of the, the, the experimentation, the creativeness.

And my brother, my brother was doing cool shit.

He saw the great for that.

I saw the great for that.

He smoked pot.

So I smoked pot.

Everything he was doing was cool.

So he brought beer and I said, all right, let's do it.

So you picked that up at 18 and you pretty much doing it, been doing it ever since?

Um, here and there, I think recently has been less.

But I have been doing a lot of collaborations with breweries around the country.

I've done one with stone.

I probably made like 40 plus collaborations with Sierra Nevada, with stone.

Some of them become national beers.

The one with stone was me and Alice Cooper's guitar player got together

and made a national beer called collective distortion.

Stone is a good brand.

It's out of San Diego.

Am I right?

Yeah.

On the East Coast, we did arrogant bastard brand.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

On the East Coast, we made it with these.

Don't hate me.

They're out of Atlanta.

Terrapin?

No, they're not out of Atlanta.

That's Athens.

I had Atlanta sweet water.

Sweet water.

How can I?

So sweet water and I and relics magazine made a beer with off my last album.

And so it's I jump around and it's a fun.

I noticed you've done a lot about six, seven, eight years ago.

You had some cruises.

You have Halloween.

You had a special kind of exhibit kind of thing.

It's been my kind of hook for the brewer slash musician slash brewer.

And it's been a passion of mine for a while.

It's been the new albums coming out.

We're making something with four hands, which is out of Chicago.

And I have a brew coming out with them.

That's going to follow us around the East Coast and in Chicago for my tour dates coming up.

I could dominate this for a minute.

I'll step back if you guys want to go.

Well, no, I was just going to say going back, I mean, to the music creation again, some,

you know, some songwriters, they like to go in the studio and see what comes out.

But as a beer brewer, you you kind of want to know going in what it's going to come out like.

Right.

So, I mean, is that am I putting to find a point?

No, no, I think that's that's a valid point.

So I guess I'm thinking as far as what my base beer is going to be.

Most likely for me, it's going to be an ale.

It's going to be probably hoppy.

But then you can start doing adjuncts on top.

So let's say like the thing I've always talked about is like the band is like a beer.

Maybe the bass is like the drums.

The bass is like the water and the drums or the malt.

The guitar maybe is the hops because it can go to 11.

And then the lead singer, I always say lead singers like the yeast because it doesn't always show up.

It ruins everything if it doesn't grow properly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

He's the wild card.

You know, it may not show up.

So I think there's I'm just talking about the adjunct part of the process.

No, that's I love that.

I love that.

So what if you said to pick out your favorite style?

I mean, just what is your go to style, whether you made it or not?

I mean, where's your palat?

It's probably still IPA's.

It's an undefeated brand, isn't it?

Exactly.

I'm just now kind of, you know, slightly addicted probably to hops.

You know, you're like, oh, I kind of miss the bitter if I don't have it.

But yeah, I mean, Saison's are great.

Well, Hopps lagers great.

I'm doing my my beer festival and CD release party at a place called Wibby Brewing Company

in September, September 6th.

And they are only they only do lagers.

Really?

I'm going to do a collaboration with them and figure out how to make a hoppy lager with them.

I'm very glad you said that because that's not exactly what I wanted to ask, but it's close.

Why is it because lagers closer to a light Pilsner American style beer.

From my experience of understanding how to make beer, which is very primitive,

and a lot of people I know who have done it for a long time who don't have any

interest in drinking light beer, you know, piss water to them.

A lot of us back in my drinking days, I loved a good classic American light beer.

Why is it so hard to make that in a home brew setting?

Or is it not hard and the people I'm talking to don't care and I just didn't know how?

Is it the massive amounts of filtering processes, maybe?

No, no, it's it's once again, it's the lead singer.

It's the yeast that is the okay, there's an alias in a lager.

So the way they ferment out gives you the cleaner, crisper taste on your palate and the lager.

The challenge is that you have to have more time for that process to occur.

So a lot of times if you're you have it in the big cardboard, you know, like you did in your basement,

the alias will get it done in seven to 10 days.

Lager use is two weeks. I don't know the exact time.

So it's a patience process.

And I think I don't really know.

There might be a bit more to the process of making lagers that it's just not that many people.

It doesn't feel like that many people are trying to make that.

But the temperature.

Yeah.

Yeah. And if the answer is patience, when I was doing this, I didn't have it.

Exactly.

I didn't have any.

But if I wanted to make a heavy, really flavorful, whether it was a good flavor or not,

IPA or something like it, it seemed like it was a lot, quote unquote, easier.

Again, I don't know if it was any good or not, but relax and have a homebrew.

I would have my book somewhere.

The joy of homebrewing.

How big of a snob have you been over your lifetime of craft beer consuming and producing?

Have you gone through waves?

Were you insufferable for a while?

And now you're kind of like, hey, I drink what you like.

But when 15 years ago you...

I'm still a snob, man.

You gotta be, don't you?

Yeah. It's not worth the calories.

It's not worth anything.

So you're just like, okay, I'm going to have a beer at night.

So what is that going to be?

So a lot of times there will be...

People will give me beers.

And they're like, try this, try this, try this.

And so I have a fridge full of beers I get to taste.

And I'll open it and I'm like, this is not great.

And so I'll just put it down and I'll search for a beer that is good.

Might take two beers and then the other beers go in the drain.

So are you condescending to the people who give you the beer?

Absolutely not.

It can be lots of things.

I could have gotten an old batch.

The batch could be off.

It could be sitting in my...

You know why I ask that?

Because that's what the craft beer people do sometimes.

Yeah.

Oh, you drink that?

Exactly.

You're one of those.

Okay.

That explains a lot, buddy.

Kyle, we haven't talked about your festival.

When is that?

You're talking about the one I mentioned, the Wibby Festival?

In Colorado, your own festival, Kyle's Brewfest.

When is that?

Yeah, I've been doing it for probably 10 years or so.

But this time it's circling around my CD release party.

So it's a beer festival at a place like I mentioned called Wibby Brewing Company.

And it's September 6th.

And the best thing about Wibby Brewing Company is that it's...

They have a wonderful venue outside where there's pools.

The pools are probably three or four feet deep so you can watch the music and swim.

And I'll have probably 20 or so breweries there.

Plus I'll be doing collaborations with some of them as well as Wibby Brewing Company.

So it's nice.

It's nice to kind of be the host of my own beer festival plus play my own music.

Now, are you, as far as you know, like is there a whole group of musicians that are brewing

their own beer?

Or do you guys get together and compare?

Or is...

Right.

Wouldn't that be fun?

We should.

I was one of the early ones that started Hoopla, which is a...

A pioneer of this stuff in the 21st century.

Well, actually, I was the only other than Landshark.

Was it Landshark or something shark?

That's what Jimmy Buffett ended up putting his money behind.

Yeah.

So Landshark was what he was the first real musician that did it.

And then I was like...

Yeah, but he didn't brew any of that beer, Kyle.

You know, Jimmy Buffett didn't have any to do with that.

They kept calling me like the brew-rew because I was the musician who really cared about

the process.

A lot of bands are making beers now.

But not many of them are getting...

A lot of celebrities have gotten into tequila, but they're just buying companies.

Yeah.

You're actually making yours.

Let me jump off that a little bit because there's...

Dogfish is one of my favorite brands.

I just think they market it very well.

I don't know.

The liquid in the bottle seems to be pretty good too.

But there's a Flaming Lips beer.

I've got a Pearl Jam release from 15 years ago.

Dead everywhere.

And they're beautiful, wonderful packaging.

I collect all of it.

But they're not making any beer.

It feels like you've cornered the market on the guy who makes the beer and collabs.

So when you're with Sierra Nevada or you're with Sweetwater down here in Atlanta,

that's not just we want your endorsement.

That's we want your expertise to make this beer.

Exactly.

And it's a two-way street for the beer I'm making with four hands.

There's going to be a label on there where you can scan and get the new single that's coming out.

But they also want to have my input.

And sometimes, you know, I did one...

Where was it?

Recently.

And the best I can do is get on the phone and we can just talk through the recipe.

What I'd rather do is show up the place, actually shovel all the grain out of there.

Drop the hops.

Be there with the recipe, writing it down.

You know, trying this, try that.

We'll do a couple pilot batches first.

But, you know, in the end, I'm a musician.

He's pretending to be a brewer and they're a brewer, right?

Sometimes pretending to be a musician.

Well, actually, that's funny with the Stone.

Greg, who's the owner of Stone, is also a guitar player.

So when we went there, we had this big jam session and like all the bottling people were bass players for some reason.

Then all the truck drivers decided they were drummers.

There was like nine drummers, ten bass players.

I was playing keys and guitar players here and there.

And so everybody got to jam as well as play music, which is fun, as well as brew.

I would like to quickly, Barry, sorry to be just taken over here.

No, it's fine.

I feel like we're keeping Kyle so long.

I thought it'd be good for a little bit more.

Well, my list is just about over here.

And I wanted to talk to you about more from a macro view of craft beer.

I've worked in a beer distributorship here in Chattanooga for 20, almost five years.

From loading trucks to hot shots to now just doing more admin and inventory and invoicing and that kind of stuff.

So I'm not on the ground selling products.

So this isn't coming from a salesman.

But back in 2014, 13, 14, 15, the craft beer movement was hitting this side of the country,

especially Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina.

It was picking up things that you knew more in Colorado was just moving its way slowly over the

across the country.

And so all the distributors, they lost their minds over this and they oversaturated markets

and they overbought these products.

Dogfish.

When we got dogfish in Tennessee, I was on the phones one day.

We were still answering the phone as a company.

Just ding, ring, ring, ring.

Where's the dogfish?

Where's the dogfish?

From all over the state.

But that has slid the other direction really bad to the point that it's a dead,

dead category in a lot of portions of communities and areas.

I'm talking bigger.

Yeah.

I think COVID had something to do with that.

I think people started having less excess.

Maybe.

Yeah, that's a good point.

So that and anything else you want to jump on that.

But also, too, one more thought on that before I hand it off to you is that the

big conglomerates were buying up things like Ballast Point,

which I'm sure you're familiar with out there in California.

Dogfish might have been a casualty of this too.

Terrapin.

Lagoanitas.

Lagoanitas.

Yeah.

Right down the line.

We've got that too.

And it's already and they're doing what corporate America does.

Buy up and then push it to the side so we can sell more Blue Moon or we can sell more of this.

Wow.

That's really cool.

I've not thought about that.

I personally think it's a mixture of things.

I think my 17-year-old is like, no, I don't drink alcohol.

I just that's.

Well, that's a whole other conversation that children aren't drinking.

They aren't drinking.

So that's part of it.

And then I like your idea of maybe then just grab it, pull it out of the way so we can

focus on what we have.

It's a common thing that a lot of industry does buy up the smaller stuff and then just

kind of bury it.

And they've they Terrapin just quickly Coors Light and Molson Coors had a big stake in

Terrapin from Athens, Georgia, had a big section at the Braves game.

It's the big partners, the Terrapin station, whatever.

Right.

And they got rid of it and it's now the Blue Moon Lounge or whatever.

And it's just they're all but eliminated Terrapin, which I think is the East Coast

version of something like a Sierra Nevada or something.

I think it's a great, great brand with great branding and they're burying it.

And I wonder, does that bother you as an over as an overall industry at all?

Are you only focused on the on the small batch?

I would say I know I know it's right away because people we knew because I've been in

it for 20 years or something, but people I knew in the industry were getting major buyouts,

like billions of dollars over and over.

Yeah, it was Dallas Point was like almost all of a sudden like, well, we can't really

make a beer with them anymore because they've got bought out and they the owner psyched.

He's like, come out.

So that but I never feel like I was worried about the quality of the product.

I haven't noticed that that much because then I kind of moved into the smaller places.

I stayed away from some of the big places now and I'm finding the small breweries here in town.

Every I do something called hop on tour.

Every city we go to, not every city, most cities I go to, I'll do a meet and greet

with fans after the gig and you get a golden ticket.

If you buy like something for a conscious alliance and every few posters has a golden

ticket and then you come back and then I'll invite a local small brewery to come and have

their wares backstage and then you get to do a meet and greet with me and then we talk about

the brewing process with them.

So it's really fun to kind of showcase the smaller breweries, which I still think are

kicking butt.

Well, I hope so because the whole concept of the craft idea was we're not macro.

We don't do this like this.

And then all of a sudden over the course of 10 years, it's like, well, now you're all

doing what you said you didn't do.

And so maybe that's a part of the regression of their progress.

I don't know.

I just wonder about you.

That's the state of the industry.

It ain't selling in the South.

I can tell you that it's not selling.

It's all I know is it all proves that Russ is 100% right.

Stick with your PBR.

They only wanted to win a blue ribbon and disappointed.

How dare you, Russ, not having your blue ribbon award winning beer in your hand right now?

I drank them all last weekend.

Yeah, he was camping.

Yeah.

He was camping.

Oh my god.

Kyle, man, I cannot thank you so much.

I knew this would be fun.

I knew we were going to go down so many lanes and it was awesome.

Thank you guys so much.

Yeah, no, thank you very much.

Thank you, especially on a Sunday morning.

Appreciate it.

Good morning, exactly.

And I don't know if you know Romy, but if you haven't actually met Romy, I hope you

will.

She's your agent there at Big Hassle.

She's awesome.

We love Romy.

Have you worked with her in the past?

Three years.

She is our, what are we, this is going to sound wrong, but she drives the golf cart

that takes us to the beer exchange at Bonnaroo.

Yeah, we go to a craft beer exchange.

She drives us to it and anywhere else we ask her to.

She's super cool and she hooked this up.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you guys.