Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain | Lex Fridman Podcast #469

The following is a conversation with Oliver Anthony, singer songwriter from Virginia, who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit Rich Men North of Richmond. He became a voice for many who are voiceless with his songs speaking to the struggle of the working class in modern American life. His legal name is Christopher Anthony Lansford. Oliver Anthony was his grandfather's name. And so Chris used this name as a dedication to his grandfather and to 1930s Appalachia where his grandfather was born and raised. Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times. As Chris says, he's happy to be called either one, by the way. I've gotten to know Chris more since the recording of this conversation. He truly is, as he appears online and in his songs, down to earth, humble, and a good man who deeply feels the pain of the downtrodden. This is a Lex Freedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Christopher Lford, or as many of you know him as Oliver Anthony. So, I was texting you uh last night uh sitting at an open mic listening to a guy perform Great Balls of Fire. Uh like I told you, he was giving everything he got for like five people in the audience plus me. Well, you were there. I'd been I'd have been doing it, too, if you were out there like, "Oh, that's Lex Freeman." No, man. He was uh this big dude on a keyboard just everything. Sweaty, long hair. You could tell like he was there in his own little world. I love the courage of that of just giving it everything. I don't think he wants to be famous. I don't think he wants anything in life except to be there and to play like his heart out. That's why I love open mics. Like some people still aspire to be famous when they play open mics, but some people maybe they've given up or maybe they never wanted to be famous. They're just there for the pure artistry of it. So yeah. And you said you started out playing open mics. What at Shady Bars? What was that like? Well, yeah. Real quick before I forget to a great example of a of a guy who had that same mindset and was able to maintain it really well is this mandolin player named Johnny Stats in West Virginia. to me he's one of the best and he's won all these awards and stuff and he still works for UPS full-time and like he could go out and tour with play man for anybody he wanted to but he but man when you meet Johnny like you can tell he's just got this um this joy in him that I don't think he would have if he but as far as me with the open mics um yeah it was just it was a lot of them were really a lot of them were embarrassing there was couple I remember there was times where I'd go up and try to do I do like one song I get like halfway through the next song and I'd be so nervous by that point. I didn't I couldn't remember any of the words. And there's a couple times I I remember there was one time in particular that I just I just walked off halfway through the song, put my guitar in the case and just I just left. I didn't even like couldn't even stay in there. Just total, you know, just total freak out. Just embarrassment. And I never drank in bars either. Like I'm not a I wasn't really a social drinker. So I was just there to try to do the mic. So it was it was kind of I was a little out of place anyway. I feel kind of out of place in a bar to start with. So yeah, this back when you could smoke in bars. There's a whole vibe to it. People smoking, drinking and Yeah, definitely. You know, bombing in a place like that when the audience there's like five people and they're bored. Yeah, there was one like that. It was in Moka. It wasn't that far from where I lived. The place is gone now, but uh it was about as big as the room we're in here, if that. You know, like the the ceiling tiles were yellow from where everybody had smoked in it since the beginning of time. And but like Yeah, that was my little spot. Those little type of spots. You did covers. What' you play? What was your go-to back then? It was like uh I don't know, Fishing in the Dark, Nitty-Gritty Band or like um any of those old Hank like Hank Jr. songs like any of those bar type um David Allen Co like You Never Call Me By My Name, any of that kind of stuff. And I haven't even played any of those in forever now. But that was any of those ones where you get people singing along and stuff. That's what I'd always try to do, you know. Yeah. That song you performed, Take Me Home, uh, Country Road, How's That Go, West Virginia. Yeah, it's a good song. John Denver was just uh, one of those guys that it's who knows where he would have went long term if he wouldn't have passed, but you know what's a fun song that I love? I shouldn't, but I love is uh, what is it like? Thank God I'm a country boy. I think that's what I liked about John Denver was he was a little bit like he let himself be a little bit corny in the spirit of like having fun with it. Like um great example, there's this old older guy that not a lot of people have heard of named Roy Clark, but um my farm is like a mile down the road from Roy Clark's old farm, but he he used to be on Hehaw. I don't know if you ever heard of that old show from like the 60s or whatever, but crazy dude. He could pick any instrument up. Like there's videos on YouTube of him, but he would just sit there and just pick anything up and just rip it to death. But he would always just be real silly about it. He never had he never took it too never took himself too seriously. You know, some people go to the fun place. Some people go to the dark place. Yeah. It's a you know, country can do both. You you more often go to the dark place to to the to the pain. Yeah. Well, especially some of the new songs that are coming out that they'll be probably not I mean, I don't know what they'll be. I don't know what is country anymore anyway. I don't know that many people who listen to the type of music that I grew up listening to probably listen to country radio anymore anyway. Like I think there's there's quite a lot of people who don't who sort of disowned that space. You know, in commercialized country, you only really get what sells, which and a lot of what sells isn't necessarily what matters. Well, you had that whole experience where they take what you recorded and polish it, quote unquote, try to make it perfect and in so doing destroy the soul of the thing. And so probably that happens with these big artists. They're so famous. It's like a machine. And so what the machine does is it overpolishes things. And so the raw like power of the person, the uniqueness of the person, the soul of the person is gone if you do that. Yeah. Well, prof I think professionalism in like applying the tactic the tactics of corporate America to anything that is yeah baseline artistic is not going to end well. They're all individually brilliant but together this corporate speak comes out. Yeah. Just the soul of the people dissipates. It like disappears. Why are you all pretending that like life is not terrible and beautiful and like you're both scared shitless and excited and this guy's going through a divorce. This person just fell in love. Like you're getting the intensity of life with this corporate like 9 to5. Like hi John, it's great to see you today. Oh, you too. you as well. You as well. But when I look at it, I'm like, why am I whining? I I feel like a Bukovski type character because like they're all really nice. They're all good people, but like something is gone when you have this corporate machine. Well, they're they're there to fill a role contractually. And if they I think if they bring too many of their human elements into that, then they jeopardize losing their sense of security. And it's all just out of fear. It's out of fear of losing your job. I mean, it's the reason why all the songs say Oliver Anthony and not Christopher Lunford on them, you know, like it's fear of it's so difficult to especially now it seems and I mean, who knows? I didn't I was never around in the 40s or 50s to work a job. I'm sure they were probably pretty miserable back then, but you know, they talk about now like how difficult it is like the the impossibility of having a single family household or anything else, but like when you find a decent paying job that you can do without it just torturing you every day, that's that's a pretty important thing now, you know, like and so it it's pretty easy to just it's pretty easy to kind of turn yourself into a robot for eight or 10 hours a day out of fear of it's like you don't want to be yourself too much because maybe part of yourself isn't something that's accepted in this like dystopian nightmare that you go to work at every day. And so you just got to do your best to just not step on any toes or do anything that that makes you stand out too much, you know? And now it's like now like when you scroll through some of these videos of people like the big even when I was still like when I was still working my lame job it was like there was this whole big thing of people talking about quiet quitting or something like that where they were just going to go to work but not really do anything. But that hurts me so much. That hurts me when you just stop when you're there but you're not really there. That makes me so sad. Yeah. So then they wonder these companies just slowly kind of fall apart and disintegrate because they're so worried about structure and you know like I mean god man even in even in America today our culture has become because so many big corporations own and manage everything that we live under like food, agriculture, healthcare, like social media it's all in corporate structures that it's almost like a lot of the problems we find ourselves in now with society I think are like it's just because of it's almost like h corporate HR has been implemented into our whole thought process of everything. You know, it's like um I think that's kind of what you're touching on though. It's like it's it's hard to be it's hard to be a human and be a good little corporate employee at the same time. Um and as our whole society moves more into like becoming a like basically one big corporation, it's like you don't want to piss the HR lady off. So, it's a lot easier for me to just beep boop. We're all sort of just turn we're all turning into robots. you know, and that's I've talked to to great engineers about this. Jim Keller is a legendary engineer. Elon Elon Musk is another example that you need that I don't know what's a nice term for it, but you need the asshole because you you want to get to the ground truth of things to the first principle of things like how do we simplify? How do we make it more efficient? How do we move faster? How do we get shit done? And that has no place for this kind polite speak. And then, you know, other great team members swoop in and like repair the damage that the tornado has done. Do you think that's cuz I'm not I'm not super wellversed about all this, so I'm probably dumb to even mention it, but um this guy who's been helping me with doing a documentary, uh he's been following me around since the very first show at the August of 23. He his background was doing um promotional videos for Boeing like for on their new spacecraft to pitch it to whoever. And so he was we touched we touched base a little bit on Boeing and of course they're having a lot of problems now it sounds like and he was comparing that with SpaceX or with you know like that that I I think it's that exactly what we touched on with that thought process of that sort of dehumanization within companies. I think that's what ultimately causes maybe I don't know if there's a connection there or not but it seems like Boeing is a very would be more of that they don't have that tornado they're very like h like he was telling me even just with his protocols and some of the people he worked with like everything's just very you know lightly touch everything no one you don't touch anything too hard so it's not just HR it's also it's just this managerial class where it's like Bob from this department has to schedule a meeting with John from this department and Debbie like they have to have a meeting 2 and 1/2 weeks from now and then there's paperwork and then that bureaucracy that's created in the managerial class just slows everything down. And one of the things that slowing everything down does is it really demotivates the people that are actually doing the shit. Like the people on the ground, the engineers that are building stuff. It's again soul-drenching to like be excited, show up, and now you hit this wall of paperwork like you can't you have to wait for John and Debbie and I forgot the third guy's name kind of imagined in my head uh to have a meeting. It just and then you kind of slow down and you disappear in terms of that fire, that passion that's required to create big things. So yeah, because they don't believe there's a lack of leadership and if they don't believe in if they don't believe in that leadership then why the hell would they be motivated? I mean I remember um a while back watching Jaco Wilnick talk about a um talk about that when he was in leadership when he was leading his guys. I think he mentions it in his book is probably where I remember seeing it. Um, one of his books and he talks about like how important it was for the people under him in rank to believe in what he was the actions he was giving them even if he necessarily didn't agree with them himself. It was like there it's really hard to take orders and go and like to to have human spirit and especially in something that's innovative and not if you if you're working for a company where you just think everybody's dumb. I mean, I can certainly relate with that. I mean, God, that's all and in my old job, that's all we did was we spent half our day just talking about how how dumb we thought everybody was that was above us, you know? It's like it's easy to fall into that in the corporate world. And so, yeah, the morale gets terrible and and and everyone suffers as a result of it, you know, like the the people at the top who are implementing all that dysfunction suffer and the people at the bottom. It's like it's not good for anybody. I had thought now that I'm doing this that I could escape away from that. But that exact same mentality and that dysfunction and that um that inefficiency like I still battle it every day. That's why it takes it takes unique characters to lead the way. Such unique characters are very much needed in the music industry to revolutionize everything. Cut through the bureaucracy, the bullshit that ultimately is just a machine that steals money and doesn't get any anything done really. Uh we'll talk about it. By the way, all the love in the world to Jaco. He's great. I've been going through lots of ups and downs in life, lots of low points for myself over the past uh shit, three years really, but um uh recently especially. And he always texts in this in this very high testosterone way of like of like, you good, bro? Just checking in. I mean, he's a good man. He's a good man. He's obviously an inspiration to millions of people but also just um is a good human being himself. So maybe one sim one thing that we felt similarly I'm just I I would imagine you way more than me is just feeling like like wow I have the ability to influence or the ability to to to either bring truth or to improve people's lives or or you know every word that you say sometimes matters so much and you're just like man I'm an idiot like I don't like I don't know you know like I would have never guessed I mean we were kind of talking about that before about like it would have for guess that it would have turn that this would have turned into all this but it's it is a it is a it is a weight that you bear whether you really even acknowledge it or not you know like um yeah and I think is like you know the the songs you've created they uh speak to the human condition to the struggle of uh everyday working people in a society that has the elites that try to take advantage of those working people and You're just speaking through your music those truths of how life is. And then that has a huge impact on a lot of people. That's really positive. But then you also get attacked and misrepresented and lied about from different angles. And just the turmoil, the intense chaos of that, it disorients it. It disorients me like to be attacked by very large number of people to be lied about to be just the it because I love people and just have I have a general optimism about humanity. It just disorients me like um it gives me this feeling like I generally just like you said think of myself as kind of an idiot not really knowing what I'm doing. And when a lot of people tell you that you're correct, you don't know what you're doing, you start to like want to hide. You want to hide from the world, hide from yourself. And then there's also just the the chemistry of the brain. It's like you shake up the brain a little bit. It starts getting it starts getting weird. And so it can get on many uh fronts, it can get real lonely when you're getting attacked, when you're kind of fucking things up. in many ways it can get lonely. Yeah. So it's been so you get a text from Jo like you good? Yeah. Yeah. And then I mean I have good friends. Andrew Huberman's been great. Rogan's been great. Well, you know you Lex, however many years ago was in a different place in society than Lex is now. And so it's like every conversation you have or every relationship you have is inherently different. Even if you aren't any different. friends that you had from before maybe or even just new people you meet, your interactions with them are going to be a lot different than if this wasn't a thing. And so it's like that that can be tricky too at when you've spent your whole life, you know, from the time you're three years old and you're starting to play with other kids and like developmentally learning like how to share and how to interact and you're on the you're playing, you know, you're playing on the playground with kids and learning how to like set rules and boundaries and how to like basically fit into society and like so you have this whole learning pattern up until whatever point in time when when success happens and then it's like all that shifts pretty dramatically all, you know, in a relatively short period of time. And there so like how do you how do you think like managing your previous like previous friendships or your like you know how has that been tricky for you or like how does that it's been tough. I you know I value deep close long-term friendships and Yeah. But I mean I have amazing friends but they certainly do treat me a little different. They they bust my balls noticeably less. Yeah. And you need you need that sometimes. I need I not sometimes all the time. First of all, it's how dudes show love is making fun of each other. At least my friends. Yeah. Like you know when you watch Man I'm going to get in trouble but when you watch like women interact they're often like really positive towards each other. Like oh you look great this watch dudes interact like close friends. There's just like I mean busting each other's balls. I'll stop making fun of each other. Uh and so yes, that has been a little bit harder. I I try I try to break those walls like but that's why with the famous friends it's a little bit easier because they can still like Rogan roasts me non-stop. So just it's uh and it just feels good. I just sit there and get made fun of and it's great. It's great. And I still do it all the time. I just it's just a different experience now. But I I'm like a Goodwill junkie. Like um most of like most of even my clothes were from Goodwill, but like I have this I have this like addiction with buying paintings from Goodwill. Like the $8 paintings where it looks like somebody was following along with like a Bob Ross video and it didn't work out quite right. Like I like I buy every one of those. I'll go in there and buy like 10 of And so just even you know anytime you got into public now it's just like you know it's going to be a little different than it was. You know I don't know if that makes sense or not but Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, hey, you I'm trying to deal with it, but all of it when you talk to world leaders, when you step into politics a little bit, and you apparently stepped into politics, even though you never meant to, you're not a political person. That that world is like, what the fuck? It's very intense, especially at an intense moment in history in in an extremely divided country. So, yeah, like saying that I'm not in politics, people like, "Well, of course you're in politics." And I don't know whether I am or not, but just um I do think a lot of people in politics like as far as the people who sit on the internet all day and argue about stuff on X or on whatever, you know, Facebook and all like I do think their heart is in it for the right reasons. They observe that there's a lot of things wrong in the world that they'd like to see different. It's just how do you get those people out of a how do you get those people out of this 4x4 square and like really like they're they're entrapped in a in a same kind of box that the people at Boeing might be with that struct you know it's too there it's the tornado metaphor I mean but it applies in politics too like that there needs to just be a tornado through politics and we need to figure we need to just like lay all this other stuff aside and just figure out what's really pissing everybody off what's really affecting our quality of life. A lot of times we're arguing over the symptoms of problems instead of identifying the problems. If that makes any sense. I mean that if Jordan Peterson were here, he would tell us about fire and how important that is and burning and like it but it is all the same. Water and fire and ice metaphor and there would definitely be a connection to the Bible and then we would receive a three-hour lecture and it's true. But it is it's all true. Like it's all true. It is all it's all 100% accurate. Yeah. That's the crazy thing. But it all ties into that same thing like you um yeah in politics now it's almost like there's a rulebook that you have to follow and if you you can't agree with this unless you also agree with that. You know, it's like and maybe it's like the places the way that we receive information about what's going on in the political landscape is always so biased and it's like the well it's it's contingent upon this algorithm this like al algorithmic system that we live under where we're fed it's like we're almost fed certain subcate and it's and it's easy to fall into that because you don't like hearing things you disagree with and so it's a lot easier to just turn the TV on or go on Facebook and look at whatever page posts things that you know you're going to consist consistently agree with every day and that's not going to challenge the way you think in any little way, you know, or or like expand your thinking at all. It's it's easy to just it's kind of like a it's a cult-like type of thing. It's like, you know, here's this is what we all agree with and if you don't then go and get, you know, like but it it doesn't it we're far too complicated for it to really work that way. Well, this actually relates to one of my favorite things in your conversation with Jordan where you're just where where you're just shooting a shit about like uh playing live music and he goes to Kerkugard. Yeah. She's like Sauron Kerkugard the philosopher. I love Jordan so much. I do too. He just goes to Carl Young Na. Um and there this idea from Kugar that the crowd is on truth. So when you there's elements to the crowd that loses the humanity and the honesty of a an individual that makes up the crowd because the default incentive of the crowd is to conform to some kind of narrative. It's like a it's like a distributed system that arrives at a narrative and the narrative holds control over that crowd as opposed to the individual humans who are thinking for themselves and being honest with their own thoughts and realities and so on. So that he he was saying that as a reason from a communication perspective to speak to individuals in the crowd not to the crowd. M so from the performer perspective the moment you speak to the crowd you're speaking to the lie that is the crowd according to sen ko it's pretty hardcore kagard is pretty hardcore Jordan's pretty hardcore but that is true I mean but spec but specifically in my case I mean really it applies more than it probably does in a lot of cases with crowds and music you know talking about Richmond I wasn't necessarily even excited that Richmond did as well as it did it was Like in a way it was almost like alarming that it did so well, you know, and so those crowds that show up like maybe they do like my music, but I also think they're there for something. There is something bigger about it. I mean I I wish I would have done a better job of having people there at shows to capture some of those crowds I had in 24. Man, you mean the size, the intensity? The intensity like it was revolutionary almost. Song of revolution. Yeah. I think of redemption song from Bob Marley. Like that song, it just connected with people. There's something there. Well, and so many people identified different elements. Like I said, it goes back to when we were kind of talking when we first got here, but it was it was crazy how it was almost like at the beginning with along with the scrutiny and some of the other things. It was a lot of different people like almost fighting over me or fighting over it like cuz it resonated with different it it resonated with people who voted differently than each other which is which is probably a pretty terrifying thing if you're if you're in the business of keeping people divided and angry at each other. So it, you know, it was a, it was one of the fir one of the only times that I can think where there was that that much of a sense of unity among people who otherwise wouldn't. I mean like I mean I think about 9/11 when I was a kid. I was in fourth grade, but God, man, people were just like people just put everything aside there for a little while. And it was kind of it was kind of like there's bigger problems that just aren't in our face. And if we man if they're in your face for just for a second or two, you realize like it's it's hard to it's hard in your mind to create a a graph that's got like all these but you know we argue about a lot of these problems, but if you were to really look at them like if you really to stand back and look at all the problems we spend time focusing about on the internet versus all the things that are affecting us like that really and probably at our core even piss us off. It's it's got to be very disproportionate. And like the reason it got the reaction it did is because we all like no matter what it is that we're upset about or what we think needs to be different in the world or our opinions of things or how we're raised or what our parents taught us, it's like I think we all feel a little bit out of control in this new society. We all feel like we're probably we probably all feel like we're falling into this kind of like corporate power structure where none of us where we are we all are just robots. We're all just we're not allowed to be ourselves and be human almost, you know. And there was enough people feeling that. I mean, people on the left feeling like the people in power fucking over the working class, people on the right feeling the exact same with different words assigned to it. The deep state, you know, fucking over middle America. Yeah. Whatever the narratives are. And they're just when enough of that is happening again with the corporate polite speak, there's something about politeness that's really dangerous. I feel like there's a lot of politeness in the Soviet Union. Yeah. Great example. Yeah. Underneath that, it's like Chernobyl, uh, which is this nuclear power plant that melted down. Um, I feel like the bureaucracy needs politeness and civility. and paperwork to function. And then atrocities can happen underneath that. So everybody, people in power with a smile on their face can just do horrific things. Mhm. And then give propaganda that look, you know, it's rainbows and sunshine and and unicorns. Yeah. So people that are rude, I mean, I'm starting to awaken to this a little bit. Like you need a little like Tom way says uh I like my Tom with a little drop of poison. You need some like some poison, some some swearing, some meanness, some bullshit, some like intensity to shake up a system because when it uh sort of converges towards this polite bureaucracy, the atrocities can happen and hidden away. And what's probably the most terrifying to me is that that politeness is just theatrical, whereas it it emulates the respect that we would normally give each other in society if we were healthy and functional. What was the process of writing that song? I mean, it really spoke to the pain of and anger of millions of people. So, there's magic there. Was that what how many how many edits? How many like lines did you write? Were there any lines that you were like tormented by, haunted by, come back? Should I do it this way or this way or that? Do you Do you have a I don't know. Do you Can you pull Tik Tok up on this? So, if you go to my page, so if you go down chickens, go Yeah. Go down pre- Richmond, you can see the original version of Richmond where I put it up. This is so cool to see the evolution. There it is. Okay. So, that's that's if you play that. That's I have too many unfinished songs. Yeah. Play that. Click that and play it. Sell my soul. 724 bullshit so I can sit out here back home. And if you read through this, it's so funny. Everybody's like, "You're about to blow up." [Music] That's all I had. So I had I had just that. You should probably finish this one. Might be real popular. That's a post from a few days later. That was in That was in July. Fuck. That's so inspiring, man. So, that's what I had. That's so inspiring. That's what like a couple weeks before uh you posted the final. Well, that's all I had ver Yeah, that's all I had written at that point. Like that in my mind, that's what that's the inspiration for the song was that little bit. And I wrote that just cuz I was on job sites all day and um you know going into like all these just terrible places to work like dealing with different contractors and stuff. You were talking about wanting to go and talk to bluecollar people and all. It's like that's what I did for work basically for eight years was build long-term relationships with people in bluecollar. I was in the industrial space. So I would talk sometimes I'd talk to 20 different people a day. You know, when you sit in a job site trailer and talk to and talk to a group of dudes like and you're not there with some news camera, you're just there as like a random dude. Like, you hear so much about what really goes on behind the scenes of of the structure of what builds what builds this country and keeps it going. And um I think that's probably what it was. It was just a it was how I felt, but also how I guess a lot of other like you know, it was just I don't know. It just seemed like the truth. So, so you jot it down even to the details like in a notebook like those words? No, it's always just on my phone. I would just keep recording the I would just keep, you know, like so if you were to go back to Tik Tok like and look at any of those original videos. Um, so like the songs that ended up charting, let's say like the ones that were on there that charted with Richmond, like this I've Got to get Sober. So, literally, that's a good song, man. So, literally what I did was this video I took at my property. This is my carport where my camper was. And uh I took this video. I went to some sketchy virus written MP3 to wave file or MP4 to wave file transfer thing. I would rip the audio off of this video, put this on TikTok, and then put that on Drokid. And that's the that was the song. But basically, like this would this would have been the first time I played I've Got to Get Sober all the way through. Like I would just keep writing it and working on it, writing it and record myself. And maybe I would record myself 30 times over the period of like two months. You know what I mean? Oh, but it's when you say writing, you mean in your head, not actually typed out or written in, right? It was just mostly just videos over and over. Just videos. I'm just trying to figure out how to make it. Yeah. But that's what all these all these are like the audio file from all these videos is what's is what ended up on Spotify and all that. You know what I mean? This is It's cool to see these videos before you blew up. So, this is a good song. You're playing up guys. So, what what is this at the end? Yeah. Yeah. These were all Don't sell your soul, brother. This is the best music I've heard in a long time. That's a comment before you blew up. Yeah. Yeah. I think I had about 10,000 followers or something. What a fucking song. That's a good one. And you got to think like this was like that was my that was when I quit drink. You know what I mean? Like so but the troules and the world that were in knock me back off my feet. So that's coming from from from your heart right there. Just imagine the thousands of people you helped with that. Yeah. But it ain't going to happen tonight. So pour them down strong until I drown. And if I wake up tomorrow, when that sun comes back around, I'll be wishing I was sober. It's so crazy how those cicas and stuff come in. Like I just felt like it was a god. I don't know how to like that's just off my phone. All that stuff's just there, you know? and the bowl. They've been saving my soul from the pain that the world's put on me. And Lord, I know that upstairs there's an old man who cares. And one day he'll set me free. I'll go on the hill. That's a genius of song. That's genius, brother. That's genius. It's just crazy to think about. Yeah. And what's this one right before? What is this? Oh, yeah. So, that's like the probably the And this is a nice recording. Got it. Yeah. So, this video got uploaded and then Draven from RadioWV would have gotten a hold of me in between this and that. He watched this and was like, "Dude, you got" He said, "We gotta record that one." And that like, so I didn't have it all, but I just had whatever was in that video is all I had written. It was I I think it was just the chorus and the first verse. Draven saw that video. I said, "We got to do this one." Reach out to me to record and he's like, "Yeah." He's like, "No, we got to do that one." And I was like, "Dude, that's all I got." Tell me about that guy, Draven. He probably is like, you know, he's probably like my best friend now. We we hit it off with this and we're like b we're like brothers now I guess but you talk about like what he's doing for country for music in general for country music for discovering talent for like he's clearly sees something in people. Yeah. He's just this he's a little bit younger than I am and he's he wrote music and played and he's got some of his if you look up Draven Refe. is going to kill me for even saying this, but he's got some pretty dude, he can if he was like a pop singer, he would be like a he can write the most catchy stuff ever. Um, let's go. Yeah. So, click on like I don't know like you go. All right. That's him. Yeah. Where is this from? 5 years ago. I was feeling on my way. I was 10 years old, walking underneath the blanket of West Virginia snow. Then I walked right by. No trespass sign. Did a grass look green across property line. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. You know, he could probably do if he does like he could probably be real famous. Well, he's got a certain look. that dude will sit there and he'll just like we'll just be sitting there at like two in the morning and he'll just all of a sudden do this little thing and he's got like the most amazing first part of this like song or we just started to co-write together like in the last few months. So I'm really excited for that. But if you go to his This is really funny too. I'm sorry Draven I love you man. So go to videos and go to oldest first. This is what's so awesome about Draven. He was originally working for this lady who was trying to develop different types of hair care products, but he thought the market was too saturated. So, he was going to get into beard oil. So, he created RadioWV as like a fake plug page for his burly boy beard brand he was working with. So, like click like if you look at um Yeah. Like that very first video. Yeah. It's like it's got all his beard products and if you look there's a there's multiple ones like that. Yeah. So, he started it just to do this beard thing with and then like I don't know, he just kind of felt called to like keep going with it and it and it just sort of naturally progressed. Yeah, that too is inspiring. Like you start out one way and then you discover something real special. I mean, he's got a he's got an eye for how to bring out I don't know what it is like the both the audio side and the video side. how to bring out the bus in. He says he just wants it to sound like the way he likes hearing it, which kind of makes sense, you know, like it's kind of in the same way talking about when we were talking about setting the cameras up and a professional would tell you you needed three lights and you're like, well, I think it would work with the that he's just kind of like, well, it'll just work like this and and do it in a way where he likes it. Yeah. Just do it for yourself. He does it cuz he loves it and that and you can see it shows, you know. Yeah. You can see it in there. Um, and there's some good talent like you were showing me this new lady, Gabriel. Yeah, she's got it. But not a lot of people would uh record her doing that song. But he's like I don't know. It just was different. I just thought people ought to hear it. But he's man, it was a blessing that he came along when he did. It was like um it really changed both of our lives. We got to talk about that. So you posted the the song Rich Men North of Richmond on August 8th, 2023. I remember I was at work that day when it went up. Yeah. So it blew the fuck up straight to number one on the charts. tens of millions of views and listens. Uh, and a few days later on August 17th, he made a post that I thought was pretty gangster. I was beautiful and gangster. Uh, so one one of the things he said is, "It's been difficult as I browse through the 50,000 plus messages and emails I've received in the last week. The stories that have been shared paint a brutally honest picture. suicide, addiction, unemployment, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and the list goes on. And then you went on to write, "People in the music industry give me blank stairs when I brush off 8 million dollar offers. I don't want six tour buses, 15 tractor trailers, and a jet. I don't want to play stadium shows. I don't want to be in the spotlight. I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they've been sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung. No editing, no agent, no bullshit, just some idiot and his guitar. The style of music that we should have never gotten away from in the first place. So, huge props for that. for walking away from lucrative multi-million dollar record deals and I'm sure the money that was just coming your way. Huge props. You know, moments happen where you know the world tests you and integrity is what you do in those moments. So, huge props for that. What was your philosophy? What was your thinking behind that? It was all those messages I got. I mean, you can see it in the comment sections of a lot of the videos after everything h but people just like felt this spark like like wow like maybe we actually have a chance to like maybe we actually do have some kind of power you know like those people put that song there nobody else and like gave me the opportunity to make even without sign anything I was still able to make millions of dollars and have financial freedom and like I just I just felt like I felt like if I was going to do anything like that that I'd be I'd be betraying like I would be taking those people and and almost betraying them somehow, you know, like uh like they I hate the big machine just like everybody else. And I the last thing I'd want to do is be is ever supported or be a part of it. Like I want to watch it crash and burn, you know? Like see this is the really important thing is whether it was betrayal or not, we'll never know. But you felt like that it was. And to have the integrity to walk away from the bag of money when you felt that way, that's fucking epic. It was also, you got to think a couple months before this, like, of course, I had, you know, I had a wife and kids that I loved and like I had a lot of really important things to live for, but I didn't have a whole lot to lose. Like, like none of this was even really real. Like it I didn't care about that. like I didn't care to lose this just as quick as I got it. Like this didn't this was this didn't mean anything to me. It just meant something to me that like that I could do something for like you know you it's like even if I'm not smart enough to figure out how to fix some of my own problems in my life, the fact that I felt like I could help fix somebody else's like that meant a hell of a lot more to me than any that's what I didn't want to lose. I didn't want to lose those people's trust or like feel you know what I mean like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I've just tried to make every decision around like as best as I can like what I think the right thing is to do and who knows what the hell the right thing is to do. But I just try to follow, you know, we all have that little voice in us like that. We all have some whe and and I think sometimes we mask it's hard for us to listen to that little voice whether whether it's like you know whether it's our gluttony or our lust or our or our you know we we numb ourselves with medications or with alcohol or we we scroll on YouTube for 4 hours a night and instead of because we don't want to listen to our conscience but there is this like very intelligent discerning thing inside of us that's able to tell us what's right and wrong. And it's a it's a spiritual thing, I guess. And I just try to I just try to listen to that when I can. I don't know. I just still feel like I haven't done enough. I think you I think you did a lot. I think you did a lot. I think you're an inspiration. You have helped a huge number of people. And you're also an inspiration to the other side of it, which is the artists and just to humans to have integrity. I don't think people realize how much of a test of integrity fame, money, you know, power also is, you know, uh Rogan and I talk about this quite a bit. We get to see I mean Joe especially, but I haven't I've had a bit of the same. You get to see people become famous and you get to see how they deal with that and it's not easy. A lot of people will sell themselves a bit, sell the soul a bit, give away a bit of their integrity of the spirit that made them who they are. You get caught up in the wave of it, you know, and so to to keep on holding on to that, that's a powerful thing. That's a really Yeah, that's all I got though, you know? When you lose that, what the hell are you like? And you see it like you see these celebrity people that just like fall off the they fall off this, you know, they go off the deep end. And it's like it's you got to have you have to have something in your life to and to keep you centered and to keep you um you know your whole perception of reality and like you're just existence in reality as all contingent upon this sort of like this center that you exist in and you have to if you don't have that then you're just flying through spa through sp I mean we're all just riding on this rock that's going who knows how fast. You said something uh I think to Jaco that I really liked. Everything that has purpose behind it comes with risk. So there in that moment, I mean, you're taking a hell of a risk. I was terrified. I talked about this a little bit with him, too, but I was terrified to even put the song out. Like I knew I was going to be the subject of scrutiny and judgment, and I knew people were going to like, you know, I kind of knew all that was going to happen. And I was like going back to that talking about crowds like to stand in front of thousands of people and everybody be in some sense of unity. Like a lot of times when I end the shows, I'll always I'll always end with this statement that just says, you know, no matter what, like no matter how you feel when you go online, you know, everyone feels so small and insignificant and and powerless. But I just say no matter how they make you feel online or when you turn on the TV or when you look at polling numbers or whatever, like when you just look at all this trash that we digest every day, like you're there's always there will always be more of us than them and and all that and but like to see that like just to see the light in people's eyes when you say that. But the truth is like and it's like who is us and who is them? And it's like us just represents humanity and like and and all the things we talked about so far like just you know the fire and the chaos and but also the like the love and just just life life is just such a crazy complicated beautiful disastrous thing and then them is like it is it's the power structure it's the it's that same terrible side of us that created things like the Soviet Union and and and is ultimately what's created this mon this like monster that we all live under today which now is not just doesn't just exist within the confines of the Soviet Union but seems to almost be a global epidemic and then that song became the rebel call against that against the power structures that creates that. Yeah. It's like how much fire am I willing to play with cuz I know at some point I am going to get burned from it. I just pray a lot that God I don't have a lot of selfworth in myself anyway. So I don't really care what they say or do to me or I don't care like I don't even care if I die. Whatever. Just don't let just just protect the people I love is all. That's all I ask of God. I have this dream of just creating this parallel system that sits beside all these stupid systems that we live under that are all sort of engulfed in this this thing that we talked about at the beginning. this this type of structure, you know, we're none of us where we're all just robots. And it's like if we hate, you know, if we hate the way music is and all these artists are complaining about the way the venues are monopolized and the ticket sales are monopolized and let's just go find other places to play music cuz there's so many people hungry for music in places that don't ever get it. And if you look at it, there's so many passionate people that are fighting all these different causes like like just in food. It's the word they use for b for more or less starvation. It's a more polite it's called food insecurity. But if you look up just in Virginia, just where I live in Virginia in the rural areas, how much food insecurity there is and how many empty vacant farms there are. It's like this is an obvious problem that we should be on Twitter talking about non-stop. Like this is like everyone has to eat, you know? It don't matter what you vote for or what like what you look like or any of that crap. if you can, you know, like so like let's just like why why are we living in a country where we have why are we living in a country where half of us are obese and eating shit food and don't know any better and then the other half of us don't have like how just it's just it's lack of leadership that's caused dysfunction and so if we're tired of that then then let's just fix it. Like we don't need anybody's permission. Like that's the whole beauty. Like that's the whole beauty of what America is is like we don't we don't need some greasyhaired corporate schmuck to give us permission to go fix all these things that are wrong. Let's just go do it. And if they don't like it, fuck them. You know, in all domains of life from from food to the music industry honestly to education also to government itself all of it. And that, you know, your music is also just the soundtrack to that spirit that makes America great of just constantly trying to revitalize itself. When the bullshit piles up a little too high, there's that revolutionary spirit that says like, "We need to fix this shit." And and that inspiration that created this country was from years of people living under tyranny. like we forget the story of the people who really created this country. Like it's funny, I one of the statements I made at the very beginning that got taken way out of context, but I wasn't in a position to like even begin to have a conversation about is I made this comment early on at one of the shows about about how about about how our diversity is a strength. But that term has been hijacked now to mean something a lot different than what it really means. But it's like think about how many different people came together just at the founding of this country. like people who spoke different languages, different cultures, religions, ways of thinking. So many different people came together to even create this place now. And like we've just forgotten about all that. They didn't all come here because they wanted to ride on some miserable boat ride and risk their whole lives to go to live in some crazy jungle essentially that had no structure, like no infrastructure, no medicine, no like they didn't come here for like some glorified camping trip. is because they were tired of like generations of being persecuted and living under tyranny and not being allowed to practice their, you know, it's not like they wanted freedom of religion and they didn't want separation of church and state because they were a bunch of goody two shoes and they love going to church every Sunday. It's because they weren't allowed to believe in what they believed in because some asshole king or some hierarchy told them they couldn't and they were just tired of it. That's what we're losing now is like we've forgotten that we're those people. like the same structures that have plagued this country are they're multinational corporations and they're and it's just the ideology behind them and their and their structure is what the problem is. Yeah. I mean it's uh multinational corporations. It's nation states that uh are deeply corrupt and are authoritarian and ultimately abuse power and yes create uh elements of tyranny and from that the the human spirit rises uh like I said with w with with with songs like the ones you write or at the founding in this country you know that's why all these diverse outcasts come together and write something as crazy as all men are created equal. What a gangster line. Like that's not an easy thing. We take a lot of that stuff for granted now. That's not an easy thing to come up with. That's a really gutsy thing to to see to see the value in all people equally. And of course, they also were uh suffering from delusion. You know, they didn't see black people as equal. They didn't see women as equal. But even that first leap of like all men are created equal. That's like a gigantic fuck you to the past. Taking that leap forward really took a lot in an age in a time when when it probably sounded cra and it's not like they just made a statement and put it on Twitter. Like they they like think about how much just think about the insanity. Like I can't even conceptualize the insanity of what took place from the time that like even from the revolutionary war until now to try to preserve that idea. You know, so like so much has happened and so much sacrifice has been made and just so many hours of labor and thought and intensity. Even the 20th century's got two world wars and uh you know especially in the second world war the United States played a very crucial role and there was a lot of ideological like battle of ideas going on at that time. Yeah. Of the role of war and peace of the role of the United States as the as the center place for the ideal of human freedom and human rights. Yeah. We continue to innovate. So, I'd love to get back to talking to blueco collar people you mentioned. Um, those are some of my favorite people. So, it was actually really cool to find out that for many years of your life, basically the way you made a living is talking to blueco collar people and getting their story. So, I'm traveling across the world for a bit. But of course, the world I I love the most and I'm most curious about is the different subcultures and towns of the United States. So, I I I took a road trip across the US in my early 20s for for several months. And that was like a transformative experience for me. And and that's something um one of the luxuries I have is to the to have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want now. And So, uh, I wanted to take a road trip across the United States for several months. And one of the things I wanted to do is to just to to talk to to people in in small towns in middle America. I don't know what words to put on it, but to talk to the very people that you talked about that that uh you know, construction workers, plumbers, waitresses, oil rig workers, just people that do something real, people that are real, that don't make much money, that struggle, but have a, as you talked about, have like a richness. to them that's not often revealed, that's not often talked about. So maybe can you speak to that to your to your time with blueco collar folk when I got all those messages at the we were talking about early on earlier in this like so many of them and even now it's even since I even like in the last couple days I've gotten some where they start with hey I'm a nobody but like that's how a lot of those start you know like the nobodies of the world if you want to call them like that's it's it's frustrating that the the people who literally literally have have have built and preserve and maintain the structure of society that we all comfortably live in. Those people have the least amount of representation. They're ignored just because of the way the social hierarchy exists. But the some of the most dim-witted, irrelevant, terrible people are put here and are idolized and spotlighted and they're all over television and they're all over the internet and we act like they're like they're kings and queens and like that they're royalty. And then all these people who do jobs that most of us would be too terri either either wouldn't have the even the ability to do. We'd be ter like like how many people are going to go underwater and weld but if we didn't have underwater welders like one of my best friends whose name is also Joo funny enough the dude worked 70 80 hours every week he's on the Chesapeake Bay uh tunnel job now but the dude's gotten up on gotten on heights that I couldn't get on he's went he's went underground places I wouldn't go and nobody will ever know like nobody even knows those people's stories or what they went through or like the kind of lives they lived and and they're the they're like the the people who create the fabric of society and even the waitresses and the waiters and like all these factory jobs that I worked in all those people like the you talk about the craziest place I ever worked and the craziest people I ever met was this little place called Perfect Air in Marian North Carolina and it was this commercial air conditioning factory which is I think closed now but they didn't pay very well and so everyone they hired was either people that had criminal backgrounds who couldn't get jobs elsewhere or idiots who dropped out of high school and couldn't work elsewhere like me. And so I was 18 years old working in this place with people who are mostly in their 50s and 60s. But you want to talk about being exposed to just a whole another world of people like and just the stories and the just those people are far more interesting than than many of the people that we consider to be celebrities. Like most people who are celebrities are just pretty boring and airheaded and don't really even know what real life is about. They're pretty unrelatable to the rest of the world. And so it would be really cool. I mean, that's the whole reason that I want to go out and do these shows in places that haven't had music in them in 10 years because those people like that is America to me. You know, how many people in Pittsburgh have been an hour outside of Pittsburgh? And even in Virginia, if you lived in Northern Virginia and you drive two and a half hours southwest, you're in a whole another planet. Like the people, the accents, the culture. And so I feel driven in the same way. Like I would love to I would love to find a way to to try to bridge that cultural gap to make those people relevant and to make because they are like some of the most and like and it's funny because we emulate a lot of those pe like you know modern country music is a bunch of people emulating those people you know and there's also like uh I love people that have a skill and become masters of that skill also so that element is also there even if it's like insanely difficult work like being a minor. Like there's skill to that. There's stories there. There's like what it takes to do that. It's what I mean some of my favorite humans are engineers and all they do is solve really hard problems and they develop I mean it's a pain in the ass job. Yeah. Anything in the factories is extremely difficult but that you learn so much about what it takes to solve intricate like nuanced problems in the physical world. So coal mining, oil rigs, like you mentioned, welding, that's a fascinating line of work. And and those are trades that are in many cases dying because we don't because they aren't popular in culture anymore. Everything from agricultural to plumbing and electrical. It's like those are all areas I think if you were to go out and talk to some of those people and shed light on it, it would like you could change the you could change the entire landscape in America of how of how it's perceived and like and make it cool, you know? Yeah. So, thank you what you're doing on that front. I I want to say I wrote it down. Please, if you know people that would be willing to talk, reach out to me. A good way to do that is lexfreedman.comcont. This was another one of the things early on that I had an idea about and I thought was getting done and it wasn't that I I've got to go back and try to figure out is doing prison shows and uh doing rehab shows and all that. But I am really intrigued with like going into those places and trying to immerse myself in just the the mental state that those people are in and like it's not talked about a whole lot. But also people who get out excomvicts, I mean that that's a hard life. That's just a hard life to try to reintegrate back into society. Yeah. And a lot of those people at Perfect Hair that I worked with, they almost all were in some form of legal trouble. Like there was a lady that worked on the assembly line beside me named Denise. And uh her and her husband had been manufacturing methamphetamine and he took the fall for most of it. She only had to go on probation. He was still in prison. But man, like Denise was a very sweet lady and like aside from the meth manufacturing, like she was like great, you know, like and just such a character like in such a good way. And so it's like, yeah, just Denise, lexfreeman.com, let's talk. I mean, yeah, you know, like both both sort of the plumbers and the coal miners and uh Denise with the the old meth habits. I mean, they're walking the line of like, you know, surviving is hard. Yeah. So you have to do a real hard job and then you also have to live life which is in general hard you know divorce kids die you lose like the medical issues and that that can destroy you completely all of a sudden something happens you can't afford it then the the insurance system destroys people all of that. So you have to somehow navigate life while working your ass off in a real hard job. And those people, they have stories. That's a real pain. And from that pain, from that anger, that's where uh Richmond north of Richmond, that was that that you could just feel their pain come through with that song and with your other work. So that like there is a landscape of suffering. Yeah. It doesn't have to be that. We don't all have to be that decentralized either. Like if all if there is that much commonality among people, which I do believe there is, like just innately in suffering and and and yeah, like there's a guy there's a guy in West Virginia that I talked to that he's got a piece of property beside of mine that he was interested in selling, but the reason he's he's got this dream of opening a um like putting some cabins there and renting them out for people to come Airbnb. He works at Lowe's full-time, but he's his son's got this his son's like 19 and has got this heart surgery he's got to have. And so, he's trying to sell the place for that. And just like just that guy and all and all you'd ever see him as is the guy that works at Lowe's, like pulling lumber or whatever, but he's got this very insanely complex life he's trying to manage. He doesn't want to lose his son. Like, he's just going to sell everything. And like at one point in time, maybe the church served that role of like when people really fell off track and they didn't have a support system and they were like on this tiny boat out in the ocean, they figured out some kind of way to rally. In my mind, that's like the dream of all this. If I if I die and there's any like legacy left or anything done, it's like finding a way to take all the people that fill that role and organizing them and empowering them and protecting them. It's rebuilding the community, but in a real way, not in like this fairy tale bullshit. Everybody's going to love each other and we're all just going to be one big happy family. Like everybody's still going to get mad and hate each other in certain ways and that's good. Like we all we need those tornadoes like you said. We need people pissed off and angry and and we need people to feel like they can be angry and open about things that are wrong. Like people should be able to speak their mind and we shouldn't all just kiss each other's ass and we shouldn't all just pretend to be overly polite and say, "Hey Debbie, you have a good weekend like you said." Like we need all this controversy and this turmoil and like we need the hell of what that side that that the internet brings out in people, but it just needs to be in real life and it needs to be in a way where we're all like we all are at least chasing the same common goal, which is probably that we don't want to starve and we want to have decent health and and we want to be able to like provide a decent life for our kids or at least we just don't, you know, we just want to live a decent life. like um I think somehow that that fixes like that fixes what you describe like the people who who fall in despair and are isolated in it. It's a terrifying world to live in. It's that principle again. This is I need a phone a friend thing where we can just keep calling Jordan for all these things. But like he explains there's this principle in the Bible about about those who about the more you have the more you'll receive and the less you have the less you the less you'll receive kind of a thing. And it's a it's just a universal law in society where it seems like the lower you get to the bottom, it's almost like the more like the less resources you have available and the less the less friends you have. And it's like you just the the further you go snowballs into where it's like people just hit rock bottom and then and then what it's like when you get out of prison, what do you what are you supposed to do? Or when you're a veteran with mental health, like what are you supposed to do? Like in my mind that's what the church is supposed to be there for is like but obviously it doesn't fill that role anymore to some people at least religion does a little bit. It gives uh it's at least a foundation of community a foundation of hope for people and when they're really struggling. Yeah. You got thousands of messages like you talked about from people. You gotten to talk to thousands of people about their pain. Through your work, through your music, you've been an inspiration to those people to find a way out of the pain. Can you tell the full story of your own lowest point before before all of this, before the before the music, before you blew up? Uh, can you take me through the story of the depression, the drinking, and just the roughest times in your life? It's sometimes it's not even, you know, it it's funny, but it's almost not even where you're at in life. It's where you perceive yourself at in life and what your what your goals are moving forward. And I think like, you know, I was I dropped out of high school at 17, basically ran away from home. I just I couldn't I have always had this authority problem and so I just didn't want to listen to my parents. I didn't want to go to college. I just wanted to go move into the mountains. I was running away from responsibility I guess is what I was doing, you know. And so got this girl pregnant. Had my first kid when I was 18 or just about to turn 19. And like I said, I'm working in an air conditioning factory with a bunch of convicted felons. And so from there, everything was just reactionary. I never really had a plan. and I would jump from job to job just like most everybody else. I don't know. I just I just got to a point where I guess I just quit believing in myself and I knew that I wasn't doing I just knew I wasn't doing I wasn't filling my purpose and I wasn't being the best version of myself I could be. And so the the alternative to like facing yourself in the mirror and accepting that that I'm not a shitty person. I've just let myself fall. You know, it's like it's so hard to accept when you've had that fall that it's just easier to just just to get drunk and, you know, just do the bare minimum you can to keep everything sort of kind of moving along. But you don't really care if you live or die. You don't you don't really care about much anything. Like your whole, you know, I don't know. Life is just so beautiful when you're a child. you're so imaginative and exploratory and you're learning all these things and you just you just can't wait to be an adult because you're just going to go out and do all these incredible, you know, and then you face the reality of it. Yeah. And the pressure and the fear of failure, like I think maybe even my own fear of failure is what drove is what drove me. And uh but yeah, you just and you you think negatively about yourself for so many days and weeks and months and you like you don't even have a real self-awareness of like what you're doing or how destructive you've become, but you always have that that discernment in you that like that conscious, you know, that little voice in your in your spirit that is letting you know you're messing up, you know? I was almost like in I was wrestling with myself, you know, and so I don't know. I just got to a point where it just I Yeah, just a just a very just a very overwhelming sense of numbness like like it don't like nothing really nothing that mattered before really matters anymore. Like I guess that's that's probably to me the definition of depression is when all the things you love and care about are just meaningless and you can't find you really can't find meaning or purpose or excitement in anything, you know, like like I think especially with men that commit suicide, it's a it's a prolonged period of that. It's not like they just wake up one day and they have a bad day and they kill themselves. It's like you self-reflect negatively about yourself and your life and you don't do the things that you're supposed to do every day for a long enough period of time. And it's like pretty soon you've built this whole mountain of of of mismanaged, neglected stuff, for lack of a better word, like this mountain that you have to climb back up in order to fix all these things that you should have been doing all along. And then the and then on the other side of it, it's like, well, I could just die. Like that seems a lot like it's almost like for I think from a man's perspective maybe the friends that I've had that I've lost it seems like a lot of times you think you you'd never see it coming you know like I don't know maybe that's a general thing with it seems like a lot of times men mask that better and you don't pick up on it as much but um I think it's like you just dig yourself into a point to where it's like you have a mountain of responsibility in front of you that you haven't faced that you don't know how to face and you h you haven't been able to do so for a long time. But there's this really easy detour and it's just, you know, putting your big toe on the trigger and it's like which one of those are I don't know like they both seem but at that point your your perception of reality is so distorted that like you don't all the things that would normally compel you to to move along like your like love and joy and like your your drive you know your drive to to be that none of that really it's not there for you to even contemplate if that makes sense. It's it's like that part's is almost like at least for a little while invisible and all you see is fear and responsibility and just this like I said I just v I just envision it like a mountain that you don't you don't really know if you're even able to climb and then the other option is just so I I think that's probably where that's probably where a lot of people go and that's probably where I was was just like you know yeah I mean there is the it's Not just responsibilities, the immensity of it, the mountain. And I think you're accurately describing how it happens, which is gradually. Yeah. Seeing yourself in a negative light over time slowly suffocates you and then the burden of the responsibility that piles up. And unfortunately, of course, one of the ways out is to pull the trigger and the other way out is the Jordan Peterson back to Jordan sort of one gradual step at a time like make your bed. Mhm. It's like start climbing out like the responsibilities before you one at a time every single day just climbing out and have faith that it will work out. That was what was so powerful for me about just beginning to open my mind back up to reading just a little bit of stuff like a little bit of stuff from the New Testament that Jesus said and some different perspectives and teachings but like you know an apostle would be in prison like basically being tortured and facing death but like just overjoyed in writing about talking about it's all about your perspective of things like I said like that's why I never could understand why you know like celebrities or professional I And giving one example of many like a Kurt Cobain type scenario where you have a guy that's just immensely talented just will always be loved by plenty of people like I never could understand why that guy there's a ocean of quiet suffering in uh in a lot of and I think it is disproportionately in men in a lot of men and they hide it well that's why blue collar workers have such a high suicide rate and all too and why it is so important to talk to those table and yeah it's in you can see it in the eyes and there there there is there is a lot of pain there without like trying to get without like trying to open up too many doors I think that's probably the best way I would describe it is just a series of really just a series of negligent decisions and also just misperceptions you know like I think this was an Andrew Huberman thing where he talks about medications and how it's a lot more likely for somebody to keep their dog on their medication schedule but not themselves. You know, you love your dog and your dog like is just this great little thing and you just you don't see the flaws and the faults and the sin and the disgust in your dog that you do yourself. So, it's much more likely for people to make sure their dog has their medication every day. But like there's this alarming statistic with just the amount of people that don't even fill their prescriptions they need filled or take care of themselves the way they do. And and then that also like over time, you know, like if you quit taking care of yourself and you're not in good health and you're and you're you're not in a good routine, you're not doing you're not like a ser a long series of doing enough of those things. Like you do, it's easy for you to just think that your self-worth is zero. Cuz if you're not even willing to like if you're not even willing to like have basic hygiene and and eat decent food and try to take care of yourself, it's like why? How like how on earth are you going to go face all these things that you need to face to get your life better if you can't you don't even care enough to do that? It's just like but it is it's a it's a it's a it's a long tragic road to get to that point. I think at least in my case, the idea that there was something bigger than me that loved me even despite I had all these flaws and problems and just that I was just such a wretched person. That's what at least in my situation, that's what I think helped put, you know, more than anything. Like I said, that's certainly where the motivation to quit the once I quit the drinking, it helped a lot because I was able to even though it was a pain, it was difficult, I was able to actually be able to be honest with myself and reflect on a lot of things that were and you know, you got to think like I said, I we watched the I mean, it was like with of course in my case it was a little unfair of an example cuz within a month all this stuff had happened like after I quit, but you know, um I see it in my friends that have quit and have tried to turn things around and it you know it's like it's it's it is the most beautiful thing in the world to see somebody like come to life again after being in one of those you're able to like sort of like escape this shell of of all those terrible things. And even if you are still in a bad position and you're still you got 30 grand worth of credit card debt and you're working some shit job and your car doesn't start half the time and like you know your girlfriend left you for some other dude and like don't matter what it is like if if at least that little glimmer of hope that like that faith that there is a chance at something greater like that can that'll push people you can put you can push you can push a mountain aside with that you know like you can do anything with that and I think it's also good I think it is important to have a good support structure. Like when you get to that point, I don't think you should I don't think anybody should have to face that stuff by themselves. And there's plenty of other people out there that are in the same position. And I think that's again I think that's why it's so important for us to try to get reconnected on a personal level and not just through digital communication because like we don't real we don't all we see of each other online is the good stuff. Yeah. Very rarely are people on posting on Facebook talking about, you know, how could you even It's like all you see is the best of people. But I don't think we realize that we're all going through a lot of the same things anyway. You know, the low points and stuff. Guess what happens when you either lose your job or can't quite figure out a good job and you're not making that much money or you're basically broke and you have a girlfriend that's not happy about you being broke, she's going to leave you. or if it's a wife that could face divorce and like the breakups and divorce can break a lot of people even when they're doing well. Yeah. And now when they're not doing well, that's a rough one. And that basically your support system for a lot of people is the relationship is the is the wife and the and so like that's taken the support system from underneath you. And I've had good friends of mine I've seen get in destructive relationships and like they'll start to date a girl and then like within a year they're just…

Transcript truncated. Watch the full video for the complete content.