E500 Zac Brown

Theo Von
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That's t h e o. Order using doordash today. Terms apply. All right, I've got some new tour dates to tell you about. We've added a second show in Belfast over in the United Kingdom on June 6.

Tickets are available now for that show, and we're gonna do more shows in Europe or white Europe, and we just haven't had the chance to get them on, so it'll happen in the future. This is just a brief time that we're visiting over there as well. We have shows in Boise, Idaho, western Valley city, Utah, Dublin, Manchester, London, Las Vegas, Halifax, and Vancouver. I think we're going to add a St. George as well, utah.

All those are at theo vaughan.com tour. And if tickets, if you're, if it's sold out and you're getting something on a secondary market, don't overpay for tickets. We'll come back through another time, and I appreciate the support. Today's episode is our 500th episode, and that's unbelievable to me. And I I'm just so grateful that we have been able to keep doing this.

So thank you for showing up for us and checking out some of the podcast. We'll talk about it more on a solo episode in the near future. But thank you so much. I love you guys. And yeah, dang, bro.

That's wild. Today's guest is a musician from Atlanta, Georgia. He's a three time Grammy winner, the writer of countless hits over the years, and I can say, first and foremost, honestly, one of the best live shows around. He's about to kick off a big summer tour. We just got to hang out recently, and I'm fortunate to get to spend time with him again.

Today's guest is mister Zach Brown. Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you my story shine on. Me and I will find a song.

I left my phone somewhere yesterday, and. I don't know if you've done that. Used to find my. Oh, I didn't. I didn't have any of that set up.

And, yeah, for 2 hours, I didn't have my phone.

Zach Brown
It's a scary thing. It was scary. And look, here's the crazy part. I was. Okay.

Yeah. That was the kind of feel your pocket vibrate. Oh, I felt. Yeah, I kept. Well, I kept feeling my pockets.

Theo Von
I was like, well, did I make sure I felt my pockets? Which was kind of a crazy thing to do. When I have. When I run out of Zen, or I don't have my can of Zen in my pocket, bro, I'll pat my pants, like, every 15 seconds. I'm like, it's the worst feeling.

Zach Brown
Like a fucking crackhead chasing a pebble, dude. I'm like. I'm, like, digging in the carpet. I'm like, oh, shit, I don't have any zen. Yeah.

Theo Von
I was even feeling on different parts of my pants I'd never felt on before, too. Like, could it be like, is it in my cup? Yeah. Like, where. Where did I put.

And it is crazy. Yeah. It'd be like, oh, maybe I didn't feel my pockets well enough. That would be the thought that would come to my head, and I would go back and do it. And those cicadas are coming.

Do you know about it? No. The cicadas, bro, are on the horizon. They're coming. So it's an insect.

Zach Brown
I know a cicadas are. Okay. Beautiful insect. Really. The El Camino is of insect kind of, if you look at them, very unique, appreciated, and do their own thing.

Theo Von
But they have. This year is a special year where this year they have two broods. And they usually don't happen at the same time. And this is the first time since the 18 1805 or something that they are both happening at the same time. So there will be some parts of the country, I think it's just like in Illinois, where that'll get both of them at the same time, and it'll be so loud you won't even be.

Zach Brown
Able to hear, like, the locusts are coming. It's like Alfred Hitchcock shit. Where people are, like, running around hiding in their bathrooms and shit. Yeah. Awesome.

Theo Von
Yeah. So if your spouse goes missing during that time. Right then that's on Mother Nature, I think. Yeah. But, yeah, that's coming up pretty soon.

I think it's in May and early June, so. Zach Brown, man, good to see you, dude. Likewise. Thanks for having me. Thanks, bro.

I appreciate you coming in, man. How are you? I'm doing great. Yeah. Awesome.

You got a new song. Really doing well. Yeah, I got a new one out, summertime song. So we did a summer ep. You never really put together, like, just a bunch of, like, this kind of songs before.

Zach Brown
So we had the one we did for Jimmy Buffett to the pirates and parrots, which just came out. So that was part of. That was kind of the slower one, but the other ones are all just kind of upbeat, just like lake or beach music stuff. So. Yeah, tops the one that's out right now.

And it's good. Shit, man, it's always fun. It's like when you write a new song, it's like having a new baby, you know? It's like just. You excited to get it out and play it live and hear people sing it back to you.

So it's a good time. Fun time for that. Yeah. Well, I guess. What's that like?

Theo Von
It's like you get that song out there and then the first time you get it out there and you start to see that people know it. Yeah, yeah. And usually if you see people, like, taking their shirts off while you're playing it, you know it's gonna be a good one. Yeah, yeah. Out in the crowd, so.

Especially if those people are women, I think. Yeah, yeah. But normally the ones that the women that want to do that are not the ones that you want to see do that, but it's still out there, you know what I mean? Yeah. You get to see what their R and D is.

Zach Brown
Like, the relative nipple diameter. Oh, is that a relative to the size of the person breast itself? Oh, yeah. So if. Is it like a mortadella, like a big salami slice, or is it just like a little tiny olive or something?

I don't know what it is. Like a little pimento or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Oh, dang. I didn't think about that.

Theo Von
I wonder who has the largest breast and the smallest nipple. You know? That's gotta be a Guinness thing, man. Somebody's had to be recorded on that. You'd think it would probably be somebody that maybe be like, kind of swedish, Vietnamese, maybe.

I feel like. Yeah, that's a good cross that'd leave, like, where there's no areola. It's just a tipple. Yeah, that's it, brother. Yeah.

Annie Hawkins Turner, actually better known by the stage name Norma Stitts, is a website entrepreneur and fetish model. Her pseudonym is a wordplay on enormous. Tits as a gigantomastia. That's the proper word for giant. Yeah, for having big breasts.

It's actually called gigantomastia, and she holds the Guinness World record for largest natural breasts. Wow. But no talk of the R and D. Mm mm. Yeah, yeah.

We're not getting really stats on her. I want to get. Yeah, I want to get some BTS stats on that lady. Yeah. You've had success, man.

When did you start to, like, you've had a lot of success, right? You've had a long time of success. I've been blessed, man. Been blessed, but worked hard to get there, you know, just grinding, man, grinding for years and years to get to the beginning of the success. Oh, that's interesting.

Zach Brown
Yeah. Do you remember, like, your first definition, kind of. Of success, and then do you feel like it's kind of changed over time? Some. It does, man.

I think, you know, you constantly, every few years, have to redefine what success means to you. But, you know, back in. Back in the early days, it was like, I want to get a gig or play some music in a bar, you know, and have them pay me and want me to come back. You know, that's kind of the first step. And I was playing backup for this guy, just playing guitar for him and, like, singing backup for a dude.

And I was making $100 a night doing that and missing my early classes and college because of it, but that was the first time. But even back, man, when I was a kid, like, I was in choir, like, first grade through, you know, all the way through college and. You little songbird, huh? Yeah. I just.

Music was my first love, man, and it's still, like, one of my biggest loves that I have. You know? It just moved me, man. And it's always been, like, my safety blanket as well. Like, when I had my guitar with me as a kid, like, I carried it to school every day.

I was that kid, like, had a guitar with me, like, football practice. After football practice, it actually kept me getting hazed and playing football. It's like when I went to high school and was playing high school ball. If I could play some pink Floyd, if I could play some wish you were here or something the guys would want to do, then they wouldn't rub Bengay on my nuts like they would all the other freshmen, you know what I mean, yeah, you can't beat up. The guy if you need him to do something for you later.

Exactly. Exactly. That worked out good. That's a great thing. That is such a great survival skill.

Theo Von
You're like, I have to be of value to these people in some way, shape or form. Where was that? In Georgia, where you were at? Yeah, Forsyth County, Georgia, which was pretty wild growing up. Was it there?

Zach Brown
Because when I was probably eight or nine, you go to Walmart and there'd be a full, like, KKK rally happening in the parking lot. No way. Hoods and robes and beating on windows and handing out flyers and, you know, I mean, that was like, it was not that long ago, but Forsyth county was pretty, you know, well known for that. For that. You know what I mean?

Theo Von
And. Yeah. Figuring out what to do with that. And then I remember later, you know, when I was. Yeah, when I was a freshman, we had the first ever, like, african american kid in the schools there that came there.

No way. Yeah. And he was fast, too. He was fast. Well, he had football with us and.

Zach Brown
But, yeah, it's wild just thinking, man, it wasn't that long ago that. It's like, back back then, you know, it wasn't that far back. Yeah, it is kind of crazy. Well, I remember growing, when I was growing up in our town, like a lot of black folks didn't have. You couldn't even have like the one of the kind of top jobs you would have would maybe be like a teacher.

Theo Von
Like, they didn't have like black doctors and stuff in our town. You know, when I was a kid, I've talked about that on here a lot, but, you know, it's crazy to think that a part of that was alive in your life, you know, exactly. That it was that, you know, straight up hoods, you know what I mean? That's crazy. And where would they meet?

At like a dollar general or whatever. Dude, I don't know. I don't know. But. But up in Dahlonega, where I ended up moving for and graduating from high school up in north Georgia, where I'm from, there, like, the dude we knew, like the grand wizard, lived in that house.

Zach Brown
I was like his house. And it was. Did y'all go trick or treat there? No, they'd give out like razor blades and m eighty's or something, you know? Yeah, I would think he would def.

Yeah, I don't know what. Yeah. Cause I actually shared a fence with David Duke, actually, who was a part of the. I think he was like one of the assistant chiefs or something of, like, the. Of the Ku Klux Klan at one point, dude, they had a restaurant I remember called Ku Klux Klams, dude, in Houma, Louisiana.

Theo Von
For a while, it was kind of like a little bit of, like, kind of racial seafood kind of spot or whatever. But, yeah, I mean, it's definitely crazy to think, you know, I never saw David Duke do anything racist, but, you know, obviously he had that in him, in his past, you know? Yeah, I think a lot of it, too, is, you know, it's kind of based on just not being exposed to good people of all different kinds, you know? And that's like. You know, and I'm sure you feel the same way, like, getting to travel with what we do.

Zach Brown
Like, I've been on the road since I was, you know, 17. Like, just all over, everywhere. And so if you have. If all. You know, if your granddad told you stories about these things, he's like the boogeyman, right?

Like, you should be afraid of these things, or you shouldn't do this or whatever. You're like, yeah, you know, screw those guys or whatever. But, you know, when you travel, man, it just, like, that ignorance gets gone, and then it's kind of like you still see people hung in it. Cause I go back, like, I went back to my. I think my ten year high school reunion, and the people had been doing the same thing every day since I left.

And they might go to Panama City beach or, like, vacation once a year, like we used to do on spring break, but they're still kind of in that capsule, you know what I mean? So that's one thing, and that's another thing, too. I'm sure we'll talk about later. But, you know, being a camp kid, like, going to summer camp and being around kids of all different backgrounds and ethnicities and abilities and, like, that just opens you up for living with people for a week that you might not normally get to do in your own circles, you know? Like, we're kind of limited to what our experience is, to what our environment provides, and then if you don't make an effort to go, get out, and then you're kind of stuck in that thing, you know?

Theo Von
Yeah. And it's kind of easy for it to happen for a lot of people, I think, when you come out of high school, because a lot of. In a lot of places, there's a lot of tradition, right? And it's like, okay, well, you kind of go to the same place. Maybe your family win or something like that, and it's great.

You know, I think tradition's super important, but then sometimes you don't realize you can be stuck in some of the same, like, your area can get stuck in a lot of same traditional patterns, you know, of, like, of just thought, you know, for sure. But, yeah, I'm trying to think of, like, my first time when I would go to camp. I think one thing that was good about camp was you would. People came from other schools, so it was like, suddenly your world was a little bit bigger, right? Even if they came from a different town.

Like, I remember one time I met somebody and they told me they were from, like, a different. The place had a different name than the town I was from. And I was like, what are you talking about? Yeah, I didn't know that, like, if you kept driving, you got to other places, you know, I just thought you would just, you know, you just got to the end of the street, and there was just, like, this unwell kid out there yelling about Def Leppard all day, you know? I didn't know you could really just go out into the world.

And you went to camp, you said. Yeah, I went to camp. And the camp that I went to and worked at as well was like an inclusion camp. So you'd have kids in your group that might be on the spectrum, and you'd have kids that come from, like, inner cities, like, you know, kind of impoverished areas, and. And then you'd have, like, rich kids that just sit around and play Nintendo all day, and then you'd have, you know, all.

Zach Brown
So you put everybody together, and I remember, like, the transformer thing, for me, there's just like a rope spider web, right. And you get there the first day, and you're kind of in a group with these kids, and you're like. You're kind of talking to them or kind of not really. You're like. You're not really down with them.

But the first activity you gotta do is every single person has to be passed through this spider web without touching it and get to the other side. So when you got to grab a kid by his cankles and pick him up and pass him through the thing, after you do that, it's like a low ropes course kind of activity, but after you do that, then that's kind of the best icebreaker. Cause it's like nobody's ever, like, everybody puts two fingers underneath and lifts you up off the ground. You're like, you had never been picked up by other kids, necessarily, unless you might have been bullied or thrown around by them. But it's like you gotta get everybody through the other side without touching the spider web, and then you can move to the next thing.

Theo Von
I've never seen this game. Camp game. Yeah. It's just like a camp activity, like an icebreaker. But once you realize.

Yeah. See the picture right there of him holding them up over their head, you have to, like, pick kids up and pass them and hopefully don't drop them on their head. But it's. Oh, it looks very egyptian, almost, based on this photo. Yeah, yeah, we would, like, we went looking.

Some kid went missing bus, and we looked for him for almost two months, I remember. And they're like, well, that's camp. And we're like, we find Jeremy, dude. And they're like, whatever. You know, when I was a counselor, we had a girl.

She. Oh, wait, so you ended up being a counselor at that camp? At that camp. Okay, so that camp had a big effect on you. Yeah.

Okay. But I realized as a kid, like anybody that's really different than you from that point on, after you live with them for a week and you pick them up off the ground and you. Gotta figure out touching somebody and you have to. You realize, like, you're not that different. It's just like, people have different things.

Zach Brown
Like, you know, some of the kids that I worked with, I worked with Special Olympics in high school, too. And, like, you know, some of the kids that I work with that had down syndrome, they were like the sweetest, most optimistic. They just had a lot of parts of life figured out that mainstream kids maybe wouldn't. So it's like, bro, once you're around that, and then you become a champion for those kids. And so if somebody else is picking on somebody that's different, you want to stand up because that's like your boy that you were in camp with.

So you realize in one week, by dropping somebody into this situation, now they've been around all these different things and now they're gonna. And also at camp, you get to be, like, courageous for the first time. You know, like, everybody has to do a skit, right? You gotta get up on a stage and you have to, like, do a stupid dance or whatever. Like, whatever to make people laugh.

Theo Von
Oh, dude, I remember we had to do Michael Jackson. Sorry to cut you off, but I'm not. Did I interrupt you really bad? No, you're good. Okay.

Sorry, man. But I never. I never. I forgot about this. We had to do.

Oh, another one bites the dust. Who was that? Michael Jackson Queen, bro. Almost Michael Jackson and, yeah, we had. And I had never heard the song.

I didn't know what it meant or anything. You know, I thought it was about drug use or whatever, and. But, yeah, we had to get out there and dance in front of the other camp. I forgot about that. Yeah.

Zach Brown
And so if you just go get up in your class at school and do that, dude, you're gonna get picked on forever. But being in that environment where you can be kind of brave for the first time and other people are, like, celebrating it and you kind of learn to be a little bit more confident. You learn about other people and different kinds of people and you learn. So I realized, like, in one week of taking a kid and putting them in this, and some kids, like, have a raw deal. If they don't have any mentorship at home, if they don't have anybody that shows them how to be or how to treat people or why or whatever, it is unreal.

Then they leave camp with this new. Like, there's like you were talking about, like, you just keep driving out of the town past the kids screaming about Def Leppard. Like, until you get out of that and you realize there's another world, then they look forward to coming back there the next year and that changes their mental capacity where they're like, hey, if I make the right decisions, then I can get to a better place than where I'm at. Rather than just being stuck there and, you know, watching people drink forties and, you know, impregnate everybody in the neighborhood. Oh, God.

Theo Von
Yeah. People should not be allowed in some areas, and I'm gonna say it. They shouldn't be allowed to have sex within probably 90ft of themselves.

Zach Brown
That's a safe border, bro. Cause you'd have to land it perfect. Well, yeah, no, I mean, you'd have. To be up on a building to get it 90ft to landing at the right spot. Yeah, I think.

Theo Von
I'm not saying this well, I think they shouldn't be allowed to have sex. I don't know how you would phrase it. We obviously need a legislator to help with this, but, yeah, I think, yeah, there should be, like a life. Yeah, we need some. We need some better zoning in some genetic way.

Zach Brown
You're talking about not breeding within 90ft of where they're at or you talking about actual physical touch of it. Cause that presented a whole nother problem to me. It's like, I gotta figure out how to get with this girl that's like 30 yards away and succeed. You know what I mean? There would definitely be a great form of birth control, because the people that would actually hit the bullseye is gonna be, like, super small.

Theo Von
Yeah. I mean, maybe an archer, I guess. I don't know who would have. Yeah, some other means. A lacrosse.

Yeah, that guy. Oh, that guy would be. It'd be messy, but he would get the job done. No, dude, you were just talking about something. Oh, well, you were talking about, like, kids with down syndrome and stuff, right?

So I was, like, really humbled recently. I went on this show. It's called beautiful. Tasty. Beautiful, right?

And the guys. It's these fellows, Sean and Marley. They're australian, right? One of them has down syndrome. One of them, I think, is just, like, kappa Sig or something.

So here we are right here, right? Go to that beer chicken right here. I'm a huge fan of these guys. Right? Been a fan for years.

And so when I was in Australia, I got to go. Do I watch some of them cooking? Oh, yeah. You have? Yeah.

Oh, I got to go do their show. So, dude, here's the craziest part. At the end, they're having a beer. I can't drink, right? That comes out in my life, right where I'm at in my life.

And I'm thinking to myself and the guys, Marley's like, you know, have a beer. And I'm like. I'm trying to explain to him. I was like, I can't. He's like, have a beer.

And I'm like. I'm like, I can't. If I ever thought someone was, like, negative about these guys, they can drink beer. I can't even. They have down syndrome.

I can't. And they can have beer. Like, they're more reliable person in the community. They have crazy gifts, man. Right?

But it's like, I can't even have a. Like, that's the strata I'm on now, right? It's like, when you are an alcoholic, you are outside of. Considered by society, outside of the web of people that even have down syndrome. It's like, God, I was like.

I just felt like such a lame o, man. But, yeah, these guys are broke. Unbelievable. I don't even know if they have down. They were so.

I was like, these guys are way cooler than most people I've ever spoken to. You know, it's like, there's a. There's a. You find this with kids, too, that have been given everything, and, like, maybe their parents don't pay attention to them, or maybe they don't really, whatever. But there's, like, a poverty a spirit that people have.

Zach Brown
So it's like, you can live in a nice house and have this or whatever, but you don't know really how to appreciate anything that you have. But that's one thing with the people I worked with, with downs. They have this incredible spirit about it, and it's like, you can't teach that. You can't teach that to mainstream kids. That might not be able to do it, but it's kind of infectious when you get everybody in the same group, you know what I mean?

So we'd have, like, two kids that are on the spectrum or have downs and come from the part of camp called Sparrowwood, which I worked at that spot also. Sparwood Sparrow wood. Okay. And I was on staff one full summer living at Sparrowwood. Like, different group in every week, and I'd have two campers that I'm responsible for, for having them shit.

Showered and shaved and ready to, like, come join everything. And you never know what it was gonna be, but. So you start off as a camp attendee, and then you. How many years? Then you got counsel, and then I started counseling.

I was 15, actually, a year earlier than I was supposed to, and I counseled til I was 17. Okay. And then for three years every. So I lived the whole summer at camp, working as staff. So living there, different group coming in every week for nine weeks or ten weeks out of the summer.

And what that taught me about myself was invaluable. Like, you know, I learned more about me than I ever thought that I would. But. So that was the thing. When I was, like, 14, I was like, I want to play music, and I want to build a camp.

Like, that's what I wanted to do. So I wanted to. My impact that it had on me made me want to dedicate my life to building a place that does the same thing that I kind of experienced. Like, a summer camp. Yeah, summer camp.

And then we do, you know, we built an amazing campus. It's called Camp Southern Ground. And you have a camp now? Yes. Camp southern ground.

Yes. Okay. Yep. Wow. Yeah.

Theo Von
So. So you're able to make this happen. What happens with music? And you have to obviously stop being a counselor once music got busy. Yeah, I had to stop being staff, but then I was like, my dream, well, first of all, was to be a successful musician.

Zach Brown
Like, just get to where. Cause I worked at. I worked at this place in Dahlonega, not far from the KKK dude's house called the wagon wheel. And it was like a catfish fry house place. Right.

And I washed dishes there. So when you take a whole pan of catfish grease and you lay it in the dishwasher and you have one of those sprayers, you grab the handle, bro, and you spray that, dude, 80% of it gets on your face. And so I was washing dishes in this catfish fry house place for, like, months, and I was like, dude, there's gotta be something better than this. But the food was good. Oh, the food was good, yeah, fried catfish and hush puppies and all the shit, but.

And then I'd clean the grease machine at the end of the night. You gotta filter all the grease. And then take the filter, put this filter on there that has all the cracklings and all the stuff in it. And then you spray that, bro. And it's like.

So I would come home, like, half soaking wet, driving my granddad's old, like, oldsmobile or whatever it was, had the blue, like, plush seats, like, giant ass heavy door. Like, when you shut that door, bro, it was like you could hear it two blocks away, man. Oh, it was like when the tomb opened for Jesus. Some of those doors, when you open. It, it was same thing.

But I would come home being soaking wet. And, like, I wore glasses back then, too, bro. Why? Because of the grease or because of the nose? Because I couldn't see.

I ride bad. Who would let a guy who can't see go into a dang grease? I mean, he kept it out of my eyes, but I definitely wore the catfish on my face. And then I worked as a cook at McDonald's for a while, too. I was grilling at McDonald's, bro.

Theo Von
Really? And did they have a grill at that time, or. What's the actual problem? It's a flat griddle thing. And then you put them into a warmer, you know?

Zach Brown
But I got fired from McDonald's cause I had this manager at the time, and her boyfriend would come up in, like, a blue 50 mustang, and with his, you know, he had the hair. He had the whole thing. And she'd fill up a whole bag full of fries for him, just, like, a whole scoop, and throw it out the window to him or whatever. So one day, every hour, they throw away all the sandwiches that we made, right? So every hour it's got to go in the trash.

So I was taking a chicken sandwich that was going to be thrown away, and I. And my buddy was there. He was walking, and he was like, I'll eat that. And I was like, cool. I slid it across the counter.

I wasn't trying to hide it or whatever. So I got fired from McDonald's with possibility to rehire. First of all, that sounds like something that happens in a prison system, dude. It's like, with possibility of parole, like, yeah, there's a chance you're good. You can come back.

Theo Von
What the hell? And what was it? A mcFish? Yeah. Oh, it was.

Zach Brown
It was a mcchicken. Oh, mcChicken. Yeah. Well, that's better. If you slot a mcFish to somebody, first of all, you're obviously a dirty sorcerer, okay?

Theo Von
Because who even eats mcFish? Except sometimes your mom does. When your dad left, that's the only. Person that ever ate a milk the rock bottom sandwich. Oh, it's so sad.

My mom would get it sometimes, and. Every, even times were hard for her then, right? Times had never been easy for my mother. And the wrapping paper on it was a little different. It had a little more adult yellowish color.

It was a little more pastel than, like, the kind of electric, kind of. The color of agony. Yeah, it was a little bit. It had. Yeah, it just had more.

It had been through a little more. Right. You know, it had been recycled, maybe. And I would see my mom get the mcFish, and I'd be like, oh, things aren't gonna go well at home, you know? Yeah, but that's life, man.

But, yeah. I can't believe you worked with them. And then did you hope to get rehired or what? Had. No, I was pretty much after.

Zach Brown
After cleaning grease and then doing McDonald's and everything, I was like, I don't want to smell like old food anymore, you know? And I was like, there's gotta be a better way to doing it. And me and my buddy in high school, so we were singing together. He's my best friend. And dude, his family is the stories of his family, bro.

Like, you would not even believe some of the stuff that his seven brothers and sisters, all their names start with r. All of them have seven letters in them. All of them. But, like, the life story behind all of them, dude, that's a whole episode of, like, 3 hours of talking about the stuff that happened with his family. Really unbelievable.

But he was my boy, and so we sang together. And we had a quartet in high school, so we sang, like, barbershop, right? There were three guys that could sing and choir, and the other dudes were just in there because their girlfriends were in there and they were tone deaf and couldn't sing. So we'd have, like, we do literary meets and compete against these kids that are like, everybody can sing. One dude can sing like, bass like a grown ass giant, man.

Yeah. And then. But we always had one dude that was awful. Like, me and my two best friends in high school, Tyler and Radford, we would all sing together and we could lock in, but that. We always had one dude that was awful.

And we never had one other dude that could ever sing that was in choir. So we always had, like. It was like the bad leg on the chair, right? So. But me and Radford sang, like, coffee houses and stuff together and.

Theo Von
And you all have a little band at that point. It just me and him just playing guitars and singing. And that was. When were you a good guitarist? I would practice, man.

Zach Brown
My brother took me to a bluegrass festival when I was ten, and they had a guitar competition where kids would compete against each other. Oh, wow. And there were kids that were like eight years old, dude, that were just ripping the shit out of the guitar. And I was like, fuck, if that kid can do that shit, I can, too. So I would go sit on my porch in Dahlonega and practice.

Theo Von
Isn't it crazy how seeing something that's. It's like. It's so crazy, the value of getting to see something, like, even if you're talking about whether it's another culture, a skill set, you know? I remember the first time I saw somebody do something. I was like, damn, dude, I could do something, you know, it's just like.

It's unbelievable. Or if somebody takes you to see, like, yeah. Oh, this guy plays music, and then he show you, like, that's how little seeds get planted. But it really is. It's like.

It sounds ridiculous, but that's just the way it works. I remember that a guy showed me how to do one day I was at YMCA. I was at summer camp. So we go to just YMCA camp, and it was good, you know, but it was just a lot of people that would get hay fever, and we'd all be like, kind of in one building, you know? And so I think it was just kind of safest way for the city to have us be in the summers because.

Yeah, it was back before they had, like, claritin or whatever. Right? And your eyes would just, you know, you would just like, yeah. And just. Just weren't doing too good out there.

And they give you a soccer ball. It'd be like 97 degrees. You can't even see Moldy. First summer camps I went to super early, you'd be in a cabin that didn't have any air conditioning, and it's like Georgia in the summertime. It's like you'd have the old denim mattresses.

Zach Brown
You remember those? They had denim pattern on them, like stripes on the mattresses. And they're all moldy, and the pillows are moldy, and there's no things. So the first four days, you just get used to sweating. Yeah.

And then about day five or six, you kind of get used to it, and then it's time to go home. Dude, isn't there something nice, though, about. There's something nice, like, sometimes I'll be on vacation, and the place I'm staying at won't have air conditioning. And the first night, it's kind of like pain in the butt the second night. But then you almost get, like, in sync with the universe a little bit.

Theo Von
Like, I feel like my dreams pick up and, like, I feel like I'm a lot more in tune with things when I get to that point. Does that make any sense to you? Yeah. Yeah, we adjust. That's one thing that's weird.

Zach Brown
I think that's why our immune systems go nuts as, like, humans, because we're made to live out in freezing cold or super hot or be scraped up. Like, all that stuff builds our immune system. So when we sit inside at, like, 72 degrees every day, all day, and then something hits our system, then it's like the faucet turns all the way on because it doesn't really know what to do. Right. You're just like, you don't have an iPad, so your system thinks it's just time to make your nose run off, like, you know, all the way down onto your.

Down your pants. But it's like, we're made to adjust and adapt to those things. So, like, being uncomfortable is actually what makes us, like, our systems, like, work, right? In a way, yeah, I gotta do better. I think I can do well.

Theo Von
I don't want to, like, be upset at myself about it, but I think I can do a little bit better at trying to be a little more uncomfortable at times with a lot of things. For me, it can be in a relationship. It could be like, George Kittle was on here, and he talked about how he goes and gets in his ice bath every day, first thing in the morning, and I'm like, you are a person from the beginning of time, you know, like, you're not doing well, George. But he's just like, I like to start my day off with something that's uncomfortable. You know, Mike Tyson, I just heard him talking about it in an interview about, like.

Because that's the only way you start to see what fear is, and you start to get a little look at fear. You might just think, oh, I don't want to do this, but really, a little bit of that's fear. And he's like, and that's how you start to get to work with fear. I just thought that was kind of interesting. Have you heard that the flavored air category is quickly becoming the fastest growing alternative to vaping and smoking?

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Like, how. How do you start to pop off for you, Zach? So for ten years, me and a drummer, well, six years, me and a drummer, we just made our first CD. And we were called far from Einstein. And so just leaving college to go and do this thing, and a friend of mine who works with us now loaned me like six grand to make the CD.

Zach Brown
And so we make this record. We found this dude that worked at guitar center, had like a home studio, and we went in and recorded it. Yeah, that's me on the left there. No way. Yeah.

So we made this record far from Einstein. And so me and my drummer, we were like, dude, so we're gonna go to Panama City and we're gonna make it. And next year we're gonna be huge, bro. Dude, everybody in the south, if you could, the way to make it was through Panama City, dude, it was like the natural light New York. Yeah.

So we had a van. I sold my insurance policy and my dad had bought for me for like 1200 bucks. And I bought an old dodge good times van. Like, had the bubble windows. It was a v eight, but I'm pretty sure only like four of them worked.

And you could smell the gas just running out of it, like in the car. And so I had. We made a thousand CDs. Wow. Yep.

It's the bubble window right there. Right there. It had an orange shag carpet in it. I still have it. Nuh uh.

Yeah. And so me and my, my dog, I had a Jack Russell at the time. And then my drummer, we got in there, we had like, our instruments. We had what we call shits on sticks, which are just the speakers, like a powered Pa system that had throwing two speakers. Yeah.

And we went down to Panama City and we're like, man, we're gonna. We're gonna make it, bro. So we, we drove around and we found this dude that had a daiquiri shack. He had a trailer that had like a little rv that had a daiquiri shack in it, but he had, he had power. We saw like, extension cords going to it.

So we're like, hey, man, will you let us plug in out here and set up? So we plugged in and we'd set out and we play for like 8 hours afternoon and a nightmare for this daiquiri shack and playing. And we were sleeping. There was a house that had been hit by the hurricane and, oh, yeah, those are free. This is right on Robert's drive, right where like spinnaker and lavila and all.

Theo Von
That stuff was trash, dude. So where tone low cooked up with my girlfriend, too. I'll say it, dude. That's a true story.

But anyway. Sorry. No, no, we. So you guys play right out there. And people showed up.

Zach Brown
We slept on the back. Cause we had our van. We were sleeping in the van. It wasn't that great, but we found a house that was kind of abandoned, but the porch was intact on the back. It would have been, like, wrecked.

So we sleep on the back of this porch, and then the sunglow motel was across the street. So we go get in their pool, shower, and, like, take a shower and sleeping out of the van. And I remember this is, like, we were just trying to make ends meet, right? Like, just make enough money to buy something to eat, you know, just to be able to hang out. So it didn't cost anything to sleep on the porch of this house.

And I remember they were giving away barbecue Doritos. That was when that flavor just came out. And some dude was walking down the beach and giving out sample bags, and he was like, dude, do y'all want these? I don't want to have to hand them all out. So he gave us a case of Doritos, bro.

But I was like, somebody giving you a million dollars back then? Cause it was like, dude, that's like, a dollar a bag times whatever for us. Yeah, probably 36 bags. And all I had was a gas card. So we get white bread and bologna and mustard and natural light, and that was our diet, bro.

But then we added Doritos to the sandwiches, and that changed the game. Living la vita loca. Yeah, dude. Welcome to friends. So while I was swimming out in front of this sunglow motel is right on the beach, you know, right at this abandoned house.

I was swimming, and I met these older ladies that were out there, and I was, like, walked up to them. They were just standing out in the surf, and I was like, what are y'all thinking about out here? Whatever. Ended up making friends with them. Their mom owned a badass house that was down the road on Roberts Drive, and they had a garage that had a bed in it and a bathroom and everything.

So we made friends with these people, and it was Muriel and JB Ellis was their names, and they were. They were super old. She was, like, probably 79 or 80 at the time, and he was probably 76. He wasn't at home first, so it was just her. But she just, like, led us in her house, and they had a badass, like, stereo system and 9 million bottles of liquor.

Everywhere you open a cabinet, it was full of liquor. So this is the senior citizens home you guys are in now. This. Yeah, this. And so she was like, oh, yeah, y'all can stay here, whatever.

And so we were looking for. So we had a place to stay, right? So now we had air conditioning and this badass house. And basically, if you want to come in and have drinks with them or whatever, and they go out dancing, they'd go to, like, this place called Salty's, and they'd get up and dance and shag and get down, you know, but super amazing people. But I was wondering what the husband was gonna think.

Like, she just brought in, like, two stinky dudes. Two stinky youths. Van youths. Yeah. Okay.

Theo Von
At a motel pool. Yep. Okay. Who have just. Okay, who have luckily come into 36 bags of Doritos.

You know, we had a big Doritos. Yeah. So we were worried about him coming home, and, you know, we hung out with her for, like, a few weeks or whatever, and we'd sit and play music for him in the house. And he finally came home, and he was cooler than she was. They were both just amazing, dude.

Zach Brown
So. And they supported us. So then we found out there was a new restaurant that had opened that was run by the israeli mob. Oh, yeah. And it was called Joey's and called America.

It was about one of their guys, their brothers that had died or whatever, they named it after him. But this was down right on front beach road, you know. And so we got a. We got a gig. We auditioned for him, and we set up on the deck.

They had a little, you know, outdoor deck. And we played outside, and that was the audition. That was the audition to play for them. Right. So we set up and we played, and they're, like, high fiving each other, whatever.

They drove lexuses. They had the, like, gucci belts and the slick back hair and all the thing. But we started playing, and they loved it. Like, they were, like, high fiving each other, whatever. So they gave us a chance.

So we played the first ten nights for $150 a night for 6 hours a night. So that was our first gig at this place, Joey. So we did the 15 or the ten nights in a row. We made 1500 bucks, and we were like, fucking poor rich. Oh, you know, I went and bought some new skechers, bro.

I was like, yeah, I think he bought some Doc Martens. We were, like, some sandals or whatever. Yeah. And so we ended up like. So then we ended up keeping the gig there six nights a week.

And then after that, I negotiated to get $300 a night, let's talk business. So then this dude from Illinois, this mattress salesman dude, was in the bar one night, and he looked a little bit like John Candy, but more awkward and more really weird. He'd get really drunk and put his hat on backwards and roll his sleeves up and like, he was interesting. But he just had a brand new condo and he's super lonely. Cause he's pretty awkward dude.

Right? Yeah. So he let us move in his condo. So we're living in a brand new condo now. That's like middle beach road, just one road off the back there.

And we slept on air mattresses. And, like, we were making cash and, like, doing what we're doing. I remember calling my dad and like, being like, I got a job or whatever, and he's like, go. You know, go, go do it. You know, dad, I'm living with an.

Theo Von
Older guy from Illinois, you know? Exactly. If you need a magnetic mattress pad. I got the guy now, dude. Wow.

So and so we just climbed that. Ladder in Panama City, bro. We were doing good, but we were grinding, dude, 6 hours a night, man. We played from eight till two in the morning. Oh, yeah.

Well, it takes so long, especially then when you think this probably before social media. Oh, 100%. Then it's think about the only way for something really to travel. You know, people had to tell you, hey, you gotta hear about these guys. I mean, unless you got to, you know, through the gates to radio play.

Zach Brown
Yeah. And we were set up there playing six nights a week, 6 hours a night. And we did that for, you know, the whole summer. And then we go back to Atlanta, and I played some bars in Atlanta. And so we did a circuit for, like.

And so I had to create a business model, right? This place didn't have loud music. So if I had grown up in Nashville and I was, like, trying to go get a gig for $60 a night to play, play somewhere I wouldn't have fucking been able to survive. So what I do, I go to sports bars like a wild wings that didn't have live music. And I say, you know, I'm gonna come play here every Wednesday night, and I just want the door, right?

So it didn't cost you anything to have me here at first. Like, let us come in and prove ourselves. Give us a tab. Like, give us like a $100 tab. And so we come in and play there.

But fuck, after like, six months, dude, on a Wednesday, we'd have 300 people coming on a Wednesday night. And I was making $5 at the door. So we were making bank then. So we did that three nights in. Oh, that's cat.

Atlanta, two nights in Panama City, and two nights in Birmingham. Every week. Every week. All like seven days a week for a long time. Six days a week.

I had to hire a dude from Mississippi State. Like, this old football player. Dude who'd get bad road rage, man. Really? Was it TJ Mulweny?

Theo Von
Was that his name? His name was Keith Lozier. But he drove us, dude. I hired him just to. Just to hang with us and drive against the window in my truck.

Zach Brown
I had a. My brother co signed with me to get, like, a 1500 silverado. Like a red God. Like the mini extended cab, like the little baby. Extended cab.

Theo Von
Yeah, that little sex launcher baby. I'd get that thing. Yeah, beautiful. Yep. So I had that and a covered trailer with my gear in it.

Zach Brown
So we were, like, stepping up, right? We were out of the good times van, which got like 4 miles to the gallon, bro. It's like, it was. So we graduated. That's a big step.

Yep. That's a big step up, man. And we could get around, and we were just hustling, man. But six years, we grinded like that for six years. Just, like, playing the same house gigs in three states.

Just grinding, grinding, selling those CDs for $5 apiece and then gaining tip money and whatever drugs people would throw into the tip jar at the end of the night, you know? And at that time, were you, like, crossing paths with other musicians? Like, trying to think of Jason Mraz was coming? I think he might have been out of. Or, like, John Mayer.

Theo Von
He was out of Georgia. Was there any, like, did you cross paths with any of those? There was nobody in these circus. Cause the places we played, no one. They never had live music.

Zach Brown
So I didn't know. I didn't know there were, like, a rule or way anybody else did it. I didn't know how anybody else did it. Cause we just fucking created it ourselves, right? So we didn't know, like, what we're supposed to do.

Cause we just figured out something that worked for us. But we add value to the places. Cause if you own a restaurant, if you make bank on a Wednesday night, that's all cake. Cause you lose your ass through the week. And then Friday, Saturday, you make it up.

So these places were stoked. And I remember when we had outgrown playing the sidelines up in Kennesaw, Georgia. We'd outgrown it, and it was time. And we moved on to playing theaters and playing honky tonks and stuff like that bigger places. The manager, when I left, because they were making good money there.

The owner, whatever, left me a voicemail and I saved one of my old phones. But it was like, after all I've done for you and all this shit and whatever, I hope you fail. Nuh uh. And I. And I saved that voicemail and it's just.

It's just funny, but what a negative. Kind of outlook, huh? Well, he was making a lot of money off of. Yeah. But still, he could have just thought also, man, yeah, I'm glad for you guys or whatever, but I guess, yeah, maybe that's us.

That made it even more, like, kind of entertaining to us. And also just like, you know, I didn't know where I was going. All I knew is that I just wasn't gonna quit. But it got, you know, it's that law, like 10,000 hours. Whatever you do for 10,000 hours, you're gonna get good at.

Right. So playing so many nights, so many hours. But I also taught me the appreciation of, like, loving all the people, like the dudes cleaning up the bar or the waitresses and whatever it is, like, I was connected to those people. They became like family in those places. So for me, just treating people good was like that.

It taught me those people are sometimes the only people listening to you at the end of the night when you're playing, you know? Cause I played some shitty gigs, dude. Like the worst, really? Oh, the worst. Like, no one there.

You drove 8 hours to go play a show and you set up and it's just like, you know, do you. Ever play during a fight? Any fights break out and you have to keep playing? Yeah. And I've had to join fights, like, in the middle.

Cause friends are involved in it. Really? In the middle of it. Why? Because y'all don't have a good percussionist.

In the area, dude, there's some stories, man. The amount of bar fights you've seen when you play in bars for ten years is lot. And your friends are bartenders and stuff like that or whatever, and you'll see some shit about to go down. There's like three dudes that came in from one of the nights. So this is at Dixie Tavern, right?

So I ended up when I was at in Jackson. It's in Georgia. It's in Marietta, Georgia. Okay. It's right on Cobb Parkway.

You're right where the brave stadium is now, the new brave stadium. It's right down the road from there. But that was where I cut my teeth. So as we got out of that circuit of, like, Panama City, Birmingham, or whatever. Then we started playing around Atlanta more often, and I had, like, three or four house gigs around Atlanta and actually talked them into building the stage that was in there because they didn't have loud music, so they built the stage, and we would play there.

And one of the nights, these two dudes from Miami had come in, like, one tall, skinny dude and one kind of heavy dude. And so one of my buddies was bartending at the time and ended up having words with him or whatever. And so the tall, skinny dude called one of the female bartenders who was married to another bartender that was there, a different guy, a really bad word. Called her the c word. Oh, yeah.

And so it was off. And so the bouncers. So, you know, all the bouncers, you know, like, nobody's. You're not gonna get sculled. You're not gonna get curb stomped.

Cause nobody's, like, looking out or whatever. So it was a little safer place to fight, you know? Yeah, yeah. And then we had off duty friends, off duty cops that would come in and hear us play and stuff like that. So they're.

They're about. So they. We come in, and I remember this. This night especially, because somebody had given me, like, a little chocolate mushroom, right? Yeah, baby.

Theo Von
So it's like, love you, baby. So it's like, right before, like, two or three songs before the end of the night, right? So I ate a little piece of chocolate, right. So, whatever. And so we get done playing the song or whatever, and things getting a little hd, you know, it's looking good or whatever.

Zach Brown
And then these two dudes from Miami called her that name, and the bouncers are trying to throw him out or whatever. And one of my buddies has the big one, kind of. He's got his arm pushed up on his neck, holding him against the wall. And this other dude, this tall, skinny one, who. I think he's on meth.

Cause he was crazy strong. Yeah. So he's, like, swinging at everybody. So when I was in college, I did judo at West Georgia. So this dude's swinging at everybody.

There's, like, six dudes in a circle, and this dude's just, like, swinging and just trying to hit somebody, right? Oh, yeah. So he's turning around, he swings one of my buddies and misses whatever. So I get on his back, I get him in a rear naked choke, and I'm starting to be special cause for my chocolate, right? So I've got this dude, and I remember the feeling of his warm neck, right?

And so. And I was bigger than. I was probably, like, 250, you know? I was bigger, boy. No, just.

I mean, I was strong, but I was not thicker. Yeah. So. So that this dude, he goes down to the ground with me on his back, and then this dude is meth up enough. Got that super strength.

Stands up, picks me up with me on his back, and gets up. And so then I. Then I started using my back. I full on. Just, like, cranked it out right?

So I kind of felt my feet were off the ground. Yeah, he picked me up. Oh, my God. This is like. He was like cowboy meth strong, like.

Like a bull riding meth dude. Yeah, let me lasso that pipe, huh? Yeah. So I'm squeezing this dude, and I finally. I finally feel him start to go limp or whatever, and my feet touch the ground, so I just let go of the dude at that point.

And this dude's standing right like this. And so there's a planter, a brick planter that's right outside Dixie Tavern. This dude fell like a tower, bro. Hit his forehead on the bricks, bro. Cut his head open.

I'm tripping. Dude hits the ground. Pool of blood starts coming out from this dude's head. And when you try to put it back, and I take. And then.

And then I think at that point, I just kill this dude, right? Oh. So I run. I run in the back, and I go get. I go get in the beer cooler where the kegs are, bro.

And I'm in the. I'm sitting in the cooler with all the kegs are. I was in there. The cops can't find you or something? Yeah, that.

They weren't going to find me with a thermal scan because I was getting hypothermia in there, bro. And so everybody's looking for me or whatever, trying to find me, are using. A depth finder or something. So I'm in this. I'm sitting next to this.

Theo Von
Cool. And after about 30 minutes, bro, and I just keep seeing this blood coming out Steve's head. And I'm sitting there, and I'm shivering or whatever, and somebody finally comes in, and it's like, are you okay? Whatever. And they're like, just stay in here, or whatever.

Zach Brown
So I'm like, fuck. So then I get really cold. So I'm like, you know, I'm at, like, 35 degrees by then, bro. So I'm like. So I come out, and I walk out, and I look outside, and there's ambulance, fire truck, police.

Like, the whole place is crawling with, like, you know, yeah, federal rallies. Yeah. So my buddy Mike was an off duty cop and he was there. He told the cops that he hit the dude and knocked him out and he hit the thing. So I was off the hook or whatever, but that was Mike is a wild trip.

So this dude's on the ground and right when they start to pull a gurney up or whatever, to put this dude on a gurney and move him. Cause they didn't touch him. Cause they. They thought his neck was broken or whatever, he woke up and he runs to this bush. Cops are all out there at this point.

He runs out to this bush and starts shuffling around in this bush and cops are fucking pulling out their guns and shit and whatever. The dude pulls a gun out of the bush. Nuh uh. Grabs a gun and the cop fucking knocks it out of his hand, grabs him, puts him in cuffs and all this shit or whatever. But that dude, that dude was close to pulling that thing out and shooting somebody.

Theo Von
But he could have shot somebody earlier if he hadn't exactly had that opportunity to ride on his back. Exactly. Yeah, that was wild, bro. But there's a lot of nights like that that I've had planning. And what song were y'all playing when this happened?

Zach Brown
Dude, it was over. Cause I had just gotten done and it was like they were just did last call and they were kind of clearing people out and I don't think that they were ready to leave. But that's kind of the most dangerous time. It's that weird time when the bar is like, you know, it's kind of closed. People are like, if they've been talking to a girl, they're trying to get in their last words or something.

Theo Von
It's almost like the final round of like a dating show. Someone's violently drunk, someone has been abandoned by their friends or spouse. Some guy's just been doing coke and is just chewing off the last few inches of his face in the corner somewhere. He finally shows back up. That's why I never want my kids to work in a restaurant or a bar.

Zach Brown
Cause I've seen all that shit firsthand. And what happens after all that and what people do to keep bartending and drinking shots. Nobody can drink 1000 shots a night without doing a bunch of blow. Yeah. And so it's around everywhere.

It's cash money. And people are, you know, were people. Ripping it pretty hard? Were you guys partying pretty hard? I wasn't, but as soon as I saw that the first time, then I started seeing it everywhere.

Theo Von
Isn't that crazy? Every bar dude, it's just like that was all going on the whole time, and I had no idea. Yeah, it's kind of like when you buy it, when you get a car, then you see them all the time. Exactly, exactly. It's like the first time you see somebody do coke and you're like, oh, I see everybody doing this everywhere.

People aren't just kind of casually touching each other's hands like that in the bar for no reason. Yeah, well, my bass player, early on, I get done playing him, and people come up and go, hey, man, let me holler at Donnie, you know, or let me holler at Jimmy or whatever the dude's name was. And I was like, why do you need to holler at him? And so it turns out he was dealing blow at my shows, so I had to fire him. Oh, yeah.

Zach Brown
He could play fast, though, bro. He could play fast, dude. And I had no idea this was happening, right. So I let go. But that's how I met John Hopkins, who was the first guy that was in my band that I have now.

Theo Von
John Hopkins. Yeah. And not the lymphoma guy. Is it the same. Same name?

It is. John. John Hopkins, yeah. Oh, I met him at Jimmy. Jimmy John's.

Zach Brown
Yeah, yeah. You guys played a special event there. So hop. Oh, yeah, hop's the first one that was in my band. But I was recording with him, and I told him about my bass player, and he was like, well, I can play a little bass.

I can sit in. So, you know, in February, it'll be 20 years of him sitting in. Wow. But he's one of the best singers, dude. Best fucking background singer, period.

But he had a band called Brighter Shade, which is like this kind of heavier metal band that was badass. He could scream and, you know, was legit. So that was the beginning of the band that I have now. He was the first member coming into that, but because it wouldn't have happened if my bass player hadn't been dealing blow. Damn, that guy could have still been with you maybe.

Yeah. I don't know, dude. His tics would've. I would have found out with the ticks. Eventually, all the ticks made sense after.

Theo Von
That, he had that pentameter on him. Huh? Some people get a little iambic, bro. If you have a little too much blow cane, baby. I've been there.

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Terms and conditions apply. Yeah. One thing I noticed about when your band plays, dude, it's not just you. Yeah, it is, everybody. It is a chorus.

It is a. It's like. It's a super ensemble vibe. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Brown
And I think if you're doing it right, you're the worst dude in the band, right? So you have people that are in your band that could do all this amazing shit, and you want to show them off, man. You want to let them do what they're best at and let people see that, you know? But I think what I'm good at is just figuring out how to make that accessible. Like, being able to just, like, find the things that I feel like are gonna be the most impressive they can do.

And just letting them do it, man, letting them do their thing, you know, that's really what makes our band special, is the musicianship of the people that I have. Everybody in my band's a ninja, man, and I create things. I'm not really, like, a theory guy. I definitely had my party days when I was supposed to be studying theory. Cause I went to West Georgia university.

I went there on a vlog, voice scholarship, to sing classical music. But then my roommate that I was with when they put me there in the dorm was this dude that smoked weed every five minutes from Tennessee. So I'd never been around that, really. I saw it twice in high school or whatever, but then this dude, and. Then he's just sitting there, just puffing and rolling out.

Theo Von
Yeah. Then there was acid around, and then there was all this shit. So I was supposed to be learning about theory in music, but I never liked the rigidity of that. Like, you can turn music into math, but it's not that to me, like, I want to make you feel something. So I got all these amazing people in my band that can tell you, oh, here's the math.

Zach Brown
Right, right. Like, my bass player can listen to a song and write the chart for it as he listens one time down all the notes, the timing, the thing, just. But that's not you. That's not me. Because I want to be able to try to transcend a feeling.

And then they can tell us what the math is and they'll make a chart and then everybody can play it. Like, I can play a song for him on my guitar and then he gives it to my band and they have a chart. And then the first time we ever play it, it's a song, like, everybody playing on it. But I never had a class in school that taught me how to use my creativity. Never had a class ever.

It's all, copy this shit. Copy what Beethoven did, copy what Mozart did, copy Bach, copy all these things. And it's like, what would it have been like for me if I'd had a class that was like, here's how you write a song, here's how you take what you feel and put it into something like that? Like, it was never, there weren't classes for creativity. There was art class.

You can make some shit with some strings or like, string some macaroni and shit together. Oh, yeah. Or make a. Dude, we had a class one time, we had to make. This was insane casts, right?

Theo Von
Like body cast or whatever. And they had one girl put hers on, didn't take it off for like 14 weeks. Dude, this lady, everybody at a certain point forgot that we'd even made it for class, right? Cause it was just one small thing we're doing. Weekend people thought she was handicapped for like three months, dude, I bet it.

Zach Brown
Smelled awesome in that too, bro. I bet she had big hairs. She had those, like, caterpillar hairs growing in her legs too. And she got that thing off. Never had a hair on her leg.

Just took it off. Had full, like, bush all the way down her leg. It had a little bit of, I don't want to say Fern coming out of the edge of it. Yeah, but it definitely. She had her own.

Theo Von
Yeah, she was making her own little land before time over there. It felt like, you know. Yeah. Growing an ecosystem. Yeah, she had a little bit of ecosystem going on.

What else was I thinking about?

Did you guys open up for some bands when you first started out? Yeah. So that was like a big bucket list thing for us. Cause, like, I'm still just a music fan, so, like, getting to hang out with people that were heroes to me musically, like musicians that I love were, like, superheroes. Yeah, but they're real life, you know?

Zach Brown
And so if you run into them somewhere, you're like, oh, my God, there's Superman. There's, you know, whatever it is. So, for me, that was some of the craziest milestones for me, when we started having success and going is, like, we're just chilling with our heroes, you know, and playing on stage with them, and then you get to be friends with them, and then it's. That's even more weird. It's like, that's weird.

Somehow appear with it, but then you realize that they're just normal dudes, too. And then it's like. And the greatest ones are always the coolest ones, man. They're always just, like, down to earth, really? And cool.

Yeah. Like, I know you guys had this song for about Jimmy that was kind of in the Jimmy Buffett vein recently, you know?

Theo Von
Did you. Did you have a relationship with him ever? Yeah, I was good friends with Jimmy. He was a mentor for me, and he was. He was incredible, you know?

Zach Brown
And I've had him on some of my songs, too. We had a song knee deep, and we did. He was on same boat. We did a version of that with him just a few years ago. But there aren't many people that I could call and ask certain questions to that could give you, like, a real answer to that question.

You know what I mean? I'm sure it's, like, your friends that are big stand up comedians and people like that that understand the lifestyle that you live, that have done it and done it on such a big level and built an amazing brand. You know, we did crossroads with Buffett, too, when we first got going, but, yeah, Jimmy. Jimmy was. Here's the kind of guy Jimmy was.

One of my buddies was trespassing on his property, fishing. Standing on the rocks on the back of his place in Key west, fishing on the thing. Jimmy saw him out there. They're, like, watching a game inside or something. Jimmy walks outside to where the guy is and says, you need this kind of lure.

Gave him a lure, and he's like, and you need to throw it over there. And he went back in his house. So he didn't kick the guy out for fishing in the back of his yard. He's like, let me help you succeed at what you're trying to do, even though you're trespassing on my plates. Cause the guy wasn't there trying to, like, mess with him, you know what I mean?

But that's. That's a good example of Jimmy and his spirit, man. He was such a. Such a baller. And dude, in the seventies, dude, he was a gangster, bro.

Theo Von
Really? Gangster, flying drugs from Cuba and fucking had operations flying shit in his plane. I wish I could do it, dude. Mac McAnalli told me a story. They were flying, I think he said, from Jamaica or somewhere, and they.

Zach Brown
They had. They didn't have a seat in the plane for one of the roadies, right? So they gave him an eight ball in trade for letting him ride where the luggage was. Cause they were just flying a couple hours to get to where they needed to go, but they needed to get him there, and they ended up picking up somebody else that needed to sit inside. So they're like, look, bro, if you ride where the luggage is, man, here's a.

Here's an eight ball. Yeah, yeah. If you'll sit back over here with this samsonite. Yeah, yeah. So he's.

He's in the. He's in the cargo bay, right? So the plane. The plane takes off, and the dudes cruising in there and. But they didn't tell that dude they had to land real quick to clear security.

So the plane takes off, and then it lands again, like in 20 minutes, right? And then he's looking out the crack in the fucking door because he's in the luggage bay, and he sees dudes walking with fucking machine guns and shit outside. So the dudes like, fuck, they're gonna catch me with these fucking drugs in here. So the dude just toots the whole fucking bag. Sorry, dude.

Theo Von
Go on. Snorts the whole fucking eight ball eats it, whatever he does. Fucking down the hatch, bro. And then the plane takes. Anybody do that?

Zach Brown
And then the plane takes off again, and it's in the air for like an hour and a half, right? And Max said when they landed, dude, and they opened this luggage compartment, that this dude crawled out of there, and he looked like a bruised banana. This dude had been fucking tweaking in there, getting bashed by roller suitcases and shit. Like, you know, not a lot of oxygen or whatever. True nature's child, we were born and be wild.

Theo Von
Pull up that TikTok of that bear. Getting out of that. Coming out of hibernation, dude, you seen this deal? This bear, I think, has just got out of hibernation. Beautiful animal killing this army.

Just roll. He's like Ron White getting up after.

Yeah, that looks like Ron White after some good ayahuasca. God, he just lost a sideburn right there. Shaking it out, man. God, dude, that's fun, man. That's fun, bro.

Zach Brown
Stories, man. That's a great story. And one of my buddies, his dad, went to prison for a long time helping with one of those operations that he had. And so for 20 years, Jimmy raised him. And so.

And then he ended up being, like, the artist that made all the stuff in the margaritavilles, like, built the planes and were crashed into the things, painted it all, did it or whatever. Like, that whole, like, there's a world in Key west that Jimmy was responsible for. And once you know the local people there and you know the people, like, it's such an extraordinary thing. And so when Jimmy. When I heard that Jimmy was about to pass and his main guy had texted me and said he's about to exit the stage, that hit me hard, because I realized, like, all of his crew, all of his family, all of his business, everything, there was this hole that was there, and it hit me hard, man.

I was at home and it was like, midnight or something, and I got up and I had to walk around and I just started writing. I just had to write. I had to, like. Cause I felt that hole, you know? If something happens to me, there's a lot of families that depend on me to be solid and me to be there.

And then without me there, there's all of these things that are necessary. I can't do it without them, but they can't do it without me the way that it is, the way that it's set up. So it's like, man, I just felt this hole there, and that's when I was writing about it all and ended up meeting up some other guys that had started a tune, and that's. We wrote this last one called Pirates in Paris. But that's about Jimmy.

That's about, you know, saying goodbye to him and what he created, but, yeah. Yeah, I was listening to this yesterday. Wow, man. Yeah, it's. That's so crazy to have one of your heroes become a friend and then they are gone, you know?

Yeah. I mean, it's just, like. I don't know. Life gets scary to me. Like, that.

Every day is precious, man. That's why it's hard to, like, sacrifice. Like, the people you keep in your circle is, like, directly reflects and results in, like, whether you're successful or where you're going and what you're doing. Because if you just hang out with this dude. Cause you used to, you know, shoot natural light together and whatever because of this thing, it's like you're not hanging out with expanders.

You know what I mean? Like, being around people that are expanders and that you fucking share energy with and you can lift each other up. Everybody has hard times, but, like, that directly results in your success. And as you trim that circle down and keep it tight with people that you just, you know, you resonate that. It's like minded.

Like, keeping like minded people around you is, like, directly related to your success. Cause you hang out with sick people, you're gonna get sick. Or you hang out with people that aren't motivated. Where'd you learn that lesson? Did you learn that lesson?

Theo Von
Or is it something that you always kind of had? I learned that lesson, dude. Everything I've ever learned I learned the hard way, bro. Punching myself. Punching myself in the face the whole way.

Zach Brown
Doing it, man. And then finally, like, oh, wow, maybe I shouldn't punch myself in the face anymore, you know? And. But I'm always. I'm a curious person, man.

I'm always curious, like, how things work, how things operate. Like, you know, I brought some knives, actually, for you. I brought. Last time I gave you a little one, right? Yeah, you did, man.

We got it kind of one for the yard. Oh, my God. As well. But making things and, like, you know, finding a rabbit hole, man. Finding something that there's always another level of, you know, and figuring out how to.

Theo Von
Oh, my God. So you just push with your thumb to pull that thing out. It kind of locks in right there, that little tab. Just push that. Yeah.

Zach Brown
Oh, yeah. So I have a knife company called Southern Grind. It's all production knives, but that's kind of like the replacement for a hatchet or, you know, cutting limbs and things like that or. Oh, yeah. You know, whatever.

Somebody reaches in your car trying to carjack you, too. Yeah, whatever you. Whatever. Finger for Shamey, homie. That's right.

Theo Von
I'll freaking take a knuckle off of some little cat if he's trying to get my watch. That's right. Wow, this is. You have a company that makes these? Yeah, yeah.

Zach Brown
Southern grind. This is a real knife. Oh, yeah. Sharp. Oh, yeah.

Boy. Those also throw really well, too, if you, like, throw knives. Yeah, dude, one thing at a time, man. I just got ahold of this thing. I have to register this online.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Thanks, bro. Yeah, man. This is really cool.

Theo Von
You know, one thing else that I got really nice one time not to take your gift and talk about another one, John Popper one time gave me a harmonica, and I thought that was pretty cool. Did he leave some grease in it? Had he been sucking on it. It looked like it had a little bit of work, you know, like it had a little bit of lung. Killed on the harmonica, bro.

Zach Brown
He was so good. Yeah, he was so good. But, wow, to say that, that I have that and Zack Brown's knife. Yeah, that's cool, man. Yeah, I guess I can use it in the yard.

Theo Von
I just got a couple of bird houses, so I'm sure that nature is going to be flaring up back there a little bit more. What do you consider success now? Like, what's kind of your view of success? You've gotten to have a lot of, like, commercial success, you know? Like, what do you think about success?

Zach Brown
My first main thing is my family, man, my kids, you know, just showing up and being there for them. I get them half the time, and I'm a wasben, so I live ten minutes away from their mom, and we just rock co parenting together. But when I have my kids, man, and it's a great thing, it's just like, humbling and whatever. Cause I'm basically like the house bitch when I'm home, man, I'm there to help, like, take him to school and, you know, pick them up and hang with them. And I just.

That's my first priority is making sure that the time I have with them is, like the greatest that it can be. So that's half my life. And the other half is like, I tour, I adventure, I spearfish, you know, I bow hunt, I do things that really fulfill me, but it's really about just being out in the wild. Cause that's what refills my cup, man. That's really makes me feel like if I'm doing something that's so engaging with me that I have to.

There's no other chatter, you know, I don't have any noise that's happening or whatever. So success for me means, like, obviously being there for my kids and then trying to be creative, trying to still write good songs, trying to take care of myself, take care of my body. Like, I want to be able to do that stuff when I'm super old. You know, investing in it, like, being a little uncomfortable every day will save you from being uncomfortable and miserable your whole life, from being all bound up and. And not feeling good.

Theo Von
So, yeah, I did yoga today. I didn't want to. God, I didn't want to, but I did. But that's, that's what, that's what it takes, man. But, but you know how you feel and you kind of get momentum in those areas where you feel good so anything that I can do, I work with an amazing, like, regenerative medicine doctor, and he, he's got me on a good, like, peptide regimen.

Zach Brown
I take nad. I take, I do a iv every month with exosomes in it, which is like, really? Wait, were you telling me about that? I think so, yeah. Were you telling me?

So, basically, stem cells create exosomes when they, like, go to an area to heal things, but they have. Oh, it helped your shoulder. Were you telling me that? Yeah, completely healed my shoulders up. Getting some stem cells and getting things like that.

Like, you know, there's a lot of controversy around stuff like that for people, but, you know, you can't argue with results, you know, and you find people that you can trust, and they're like, hey, I think you should try this. So, yeah. Exosomes are extracellular vesicles generated by all cells, and they carry nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and metabolites. They are mediators of near and long distance intercellular communication in health and disease and affect various aspects of cell biology. So I don't know what that means.

Keeping your cells really healthy. And, dude, I noticed from my voice, like, once a month, I get an iv, they draw blood. They keep do testing on me and stuff, and then they give me about six vials of those little exosomes, man. And, dude, that thing, it's like, and. What can you even, can't put them in, like, a vape pen or something, can you?

You can put them in a nebulizer, actually, and you can inhale them in a nebulizer form that way for your voice, but you can. Getting them this way has made my voice stronger, man. So I just want to be able, when I'm like 80 years old, dude, I don't want to look like I'm 80, man. I want to feel good. I want to be able to run up and down mountains.

I want to be able to pole vault just the things that are that normal 80 year old people can't do. Yeah, I love that, man. Now that's a good definition of success, being able to spend time with your kids, being able to still be active and do the things that you want to do. I think that seems like a really good definition to me. Oh, tell me about this one thing I'm thinking.

Theo Von
Why do sometimes bands do covers and sometimes they don't? Some of this may seem like novice level questions to you, but I just am curious about that because sometimes audience members, like, do a couple more, you know? But then sometimes we're like, oh, that's too many. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Brown
I don't know, man. I love other people's music so much that when we get to, like, reinterpret it and do it our way, like, I love every show that we play, we're gonna play three or four cover songs at least, you know, because it's kind of like tipping the hat to people that you really love and does something. And also, you can read the crowd, man. When you start playing, you start a good cover, and they know it's coming, and they start going crazy. I love that, but I love trying to do it in a different way, like, trying to figure out some way to make it special, make it your own.

And I think that comes from me just being a music fan. It's like, I got 3 hours to keep these people engaged. What can I do? Mix them with our songs that are going to make it the best night possible. And so every time we come to a city, we have new covers that we worked up to do so we don't get the same show twice, you know?

It's competitive, man. It's like, if people are gonna buy our ticket, and the next time we come buy our ticket again, you can't be half drunk on stage. You can't be, you know, slurring and whatever. It's just a waste. It's like you don't respect those people enough to give them everything you got.

So for us, it's like, we're like athletes. Like, we go after it. Like, we're gonna be ready, bro. We're gonna come back, and we're gonna give them every inch, you know? Even if it's two?

Theo Von
Yeah. That's all you got, man. Hey, that's a lot in some regions, you know, fruit by the foot. Do you have to ask another band before you play their cover or not? No.

Zach Brown
Once the song's released, you can cover it, record it, you can do whatever you want with it. But sometimes we'll get hit by those people. They're like, I heard this cover, like, james Taylor sent me a text and was like, we did sweet baby James, and he sent me a text and was like, great job on sweet baby James. But he talks in license plate things, so he'll text you, like, nine letters, and if you read them, it sounds like a sentence. So he texts me like that, and it's like, it takes me a while to figure out what he's saying, you know?

Cause he talks in license plate letters sometimes. Oh, he does? And just like, acronyms or something. Yeah. Pretty much.

But it's, you know, it's like, be as you are. Be as you are. Or you are in NML, like you're an animal. Oh, wow. Those kind of things.

And it's kind of a thing he does. And then he told me that he has a song. He has a song called be as you are. And literally the whole sentence of the chorus is all a license plate thing. Wow.

Theo Von
So they just had. Did you see that song that, um, cha ho. What's that guy's name? Korean dictator Ho Chung. Oh.

Kim Jong. Kim Jong un released this song, friendly father. It's really him about. He. Oh, he is great and friendly leader.

Yep.

Zach Brown
Exactly like Naomi park talked about, bro. Everybody. Everybody's happy and having a good time.

If they didn't throw those flowers up in the air right. They were going to definitely cut all their legs off. You kind of wonder. Show a little bit more of the video first, brother. It's really.

Theo Von
It seems like. I want to say this from the video. Seemed like they're having a great time. There's alligators underneath there, all around her. Looking right at the lady.

Let me. I'm gonna read some of the lyrics. There are. There's one awesome part where he hugs a couple of children. Hold on.

She even get to that, and it's just so crazy. And I'm making. I don't know firsthand. I'm just. By what I've heard.

Yeah, it's. You know what I mean? I don't know. So I don't want to be getting hit up by. Look, I think it's safe to say the guy's kind of a risky landlord.

Okay. I would say. I think that's safe to say. Go. Yeah, there's a part.

No, it's. Yeah, there it is right there. Just a lot of it. There's him with a lot of children. And the song is called breastfeeding.

Zach Brown
Right there. He could have been. The song is called friendly father. He definitely has a bit of a her him. He definitely has a bit of a her they vibe.

Theo Von
I feel like he goes, let's sing about Kim Jong un. These are the lyrics. Our great leader. Let's boast about Kim Jong un. Our friendly father.

Warm hearted like your mother. Benevolent like your father. He is holding his 10 million children in his arms. Is he holding 10 million children in his arms or he's holding 10 million children's arms? That's a good question.

Wow, he is. That's so kooky. Could you imagine being in a place where you just have to. It's almost like Disney world, probably, but you know where you're just like, as. Soon as that scene's over, you gotta go back to real life, man.

Zach Brown
You gotta go back to. Of what it's really like. I want to go. I want him to come on the podcast so bad. He's probably one of the top guests.

I would love to hear that. It'd be wonderful, you know, I would love to see. Cause he could be doing a great job. It's like, we don't know. A lot of what we see is intel.

Theo Von
A lot of what we see is bad. AI, this reminds me of the naked gun. It's like, remember that naked gun was so good? Remember how good naked gun was? It's funny when you go back and watch those things and you remember, it's not exactly as you remember it now, but still.

They're horrible now. A lot of them are. You talked about fitness, man. Yeah. When I look at even just pictures of there from when you had your first band, Farran, what was it called?

Zach Brown
Far from Einstein. Far from Einstein to now, you have a different. Your fitness is more. Yeah. And that, I mean, that's really just in the last probably five or six years, man.

Just really trying to dial myself in, man. I'm trying to be, you know, after I went through my divorce was like the darkest, craziest, like, time ever for. Was it really just because did you want to get divorced or not? It. I didn't.

Theo Von
Sorry if it's an uncomfortable question, you don't have to answer it. I did, but it was one of those things I didn't, I didn't want to.

Zach Brown
It's one of those weird things as a man where you feel like you can't leave and you can't stay and you can't because of pressure and things that you put on yourself. Like, the kids don't know what it means, you know, I mean, like, they don't know. The kids don't know what it means that you're getting a divorce, they're kids or whatever it is. Yeah. And it's horrible.

Yeah, that, that part. And so knowing that it's leaving the wake of those type of things, but knowing whatever. But I had a couple friends of mine that had, that had taken their own lives, and it made me realize, like, that ain't ever gonna be me, man. I gotta. Whatever you caught in that space and not knowing what to do, well, yeah.

And whatever was eaten at em that they couldn't face it enough to, like, get out of the situation, regardless of whatever judgment it may cause, regardless of whatever it is, man. So for me, that was like, a sign that I saw of, like, okay, I gotta get. I gotta get out of this or whatever, but the place that it put me in and even my own choices through the last few years of it, like, before that happened and things like that, like, just darkness and coming out of it and feeling like, you know, I can't be like this anymore. And it was weird. Cause I'm not one of those people that goes and, like, gets my cards read and shit like that, but I ended up getting my cards read at some lady in LA, like, some older lady who read my cards and was, like, showed me a picture and it was like, it was a card that had, like, a nice house and a lawn and, like, kids running around.

It's like, this is what your life looks like from the outside to other people, but that's really not what it is. And if you don't get out of this, you're gonna get a serious physical illness and you're gonna die. So if you don't. And I felt that because I'd carried around all this weight and guilt and shame and shit. Like, it felt like someone was squeezing my heart.

Like a hand was around it. Like, physically felt like it was clamped down on and I could feel that. And I was just. So I came out of that and just, like, whatever it takes to get to the other side of this river that I'm in right now, that's just beating my ass right now. I gotta keep swimming.

I gotta get to the other side of it, and then I gotta figure out what's going on with me. Like, what do I need to do to be there solid for my kids and to be there for their mom and, like, to provide and to be able to do those things. Like, what can I do to try to get myself on track where I feel, like, find myself again? Cause I think in the middle of it, in the middle of the codependency, around all of it, I had lost who I was, around all of the stress that was around that and all the businesses and all the other shit, it was literally, like, just taking fire from all sides. So coming out of that, I sounds exhausted.

Theo Von
Even. Listen, I mean, even just. I can't even. It sounds like a lot. It's.

Zach Brown
It's hard, man. And it takes a, you know, it takes a lot of grace, but you find out who in your circle, like, is really there for you and who really wasn't there but was around and then. But coming out of that, man, I was like, I want to, you know, I quit drinking the year before I actually got divorced. Just to be clear, you know, I wanted to be clear and know exactly what was going on and see the thing. So that was, you know, six and a half years ago, and I had to get clear and I had to see the pattern and see what was going on, and I realized that it wasn't going to work.

And, like, the only way out of this is through it, so just go through it and do it. Was it hard to go through it? Is it hard to go through something like that with grace? Like, how do you do it and best honor your partner, like your spouse and stuff in it? Cause it sounds like that was something you took into consideration.

Yeah. You have to. I just had to ask her, you know, what do you want? What, you know, obviously, other than us not getting along, like, you know, what do you need? And just what she asked for, I gave her and just did my best to try to do that.

And it's taken time to heal the relationship and things, and she's an amazing lady, you know, and I'm blessed to have her as the person that helps raise our kids and to have that, like, a solid human, to be there to help me to do that. And, you know, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for everything. Like, in the rear view, everything hard that's happened has, like, served us somehow. It's just really hard to see it at the time.

But I came out of that phase of my life, like, wanting, okay, what can I do to make myself be better, feel better. I did, like, three years of plant medicine journeys. I did. Oh, did you? Lots of therapy.

Anything that I could do to try to just, like, shed these feelings, you know, shed this, like, weight that I carried around and, like, reprogram my belief system, reprogram myself so that I could be present and so I could be. I could find my love for myself and for my creativity and for these things again. So where's been the last six years? Wow. Where?

Theo Von
Yeah, where did you go try plant medicine at? Did you go to other country? I did. I've done it in different places.

What's something you learned from it? That might be a better question. Yeah. Cause I've done it a few times and I've learned some pretty cool stuff or things that have been helpful for me. I hired a life coach, and I worked with her for six months, like, intensively.

Zach Brown
And, you know, she incorporated the plant medicine into our program. So because I'd had some experience with those things before, it wasn't just a normal thing. We started off the six months, like day two of doing it with a psilocybin journey, and it was the most transformative of anything that I've ever done. And it was like a hero's dose. Like 7 grams.

Theo Von
Oh, yeah. All aboard, huh? And like an hour into that, I was like seated in a chair and I had to revisit lots of things and I had to breathe my way through a lot of things. Cause there's like, subconsciously there's things. What was the most amazing to me is the intelligence that exists that the psilocybin has finding our trauma.

Zach Brown
Cause it found it, bro. It found it. And like subconsciously working through pulling that stuff out. Like, there's moments where it sucks and you gotta breathe through it and you gotta take and stay in gratitude. Like, if you're in a mental space where you're ready to accept whatever it shows you, like good, bad, or ugly, whatever it is, and just stay in gratitude, even for like the painful parts of it, then you can stay in gratitude if you're mentally in a place to do it.

I think it's the most transformative thing that I've ever done. After that journey, it was like 5 hours long. And I came out of that with more gratitude than I could hold in my face, dude. Like tears rolling out of my face. And I had visited, like, my children being born again and I had seen.

But I had that bowling ball that I carried around in my chest and in my gut. After that 5 hours, that whole like 40 pound ball of shit was gone. Really? It was gone. And it hasn't been there since then.

Theo Von
Man, I gotta do something. It was. It was the most transformative out of everything that I've done. I've done cambo as well. Oh, have you?

That you've done toads as well? And that's like 20 not smoking it, but like they burn you with the vine that comes from the area and then they put your. You mix your saliva with the venom and put it on and it makes. As soon as they put that on, bro, your hands feel like they're vibrating like the fastest you ever felt anything in your life. Like the minute it touches, it's like.

Zach Brown
And then that's only lasts like 20 minutes. So you can like breathe through the uncomfortable part of that. But that's like a spiritual and, you know, physical detox as well. Yeah, booby. And then I went to Peru and I did a ayahuasca journey in Peru for ten days.

A dieta. God, ten days. So every second day you would take the medicine and you're out in the jungle and being who was out there with you? And I took one of my boys, Jake, one of my best friends. You met him the other day.

He was on the plane. Jake Dodar. I did meet him. I gotta set him up with Chelsea. With Chelsea Lynn about doing some cool.

Theo Von
Dude. Jake's one of the funniest, amazing dudes that I know. He's just one of my favorite people, but he went with me and. But you're isolated, so they put you in these tambos. So you're by this river, like, big muddy river, and, dude, you're in the jungle.

Yeah. It doesn't sound like there's, like a Hampton. It's not a Hampton inn or anything. No. You take a big boat up to, you know, a thing.

Zach Brown
Your car goes on a ferry across the river over a thing, and then you get in a boat, like a panga, a long one where you're all lined up, like 13 of you in a row with, like, your bag, and you go down, and then you get to this creek, and you turning off the big river, and you go way up there, and then there's, like, this hut with a kitchen set up in it or whatever, and that's where the plants grow. That's where they come from. And how many people are out there? On that trip? There were 16 people.

Theo Von
And is it kind of a pretty social group, or is it a lot of people that are like, I need some help. I'm out here. They were pretty social, and we were the only people that had never done it before, because I didn't know this, but to do the Dietza, which is like the five. Yeah, yeah, you gotta have the thing, or whatever. They were like, well, how many times have you, you know, done it?

Zach Brown
And I was like, I've never done it. They're like, you chose this to come as your first thing. But I was open, man. I was in a place where I was just like, anything that's gonna help me heal, help me be better, like, let's face it, bro. Let's jump in and living in this thing.

So you basically have a little hut. It's about as big as this part of this roof right here. And then there's a hammock, and then there's a bed with a little mosquito net and a little desk. Like, one chair and a desk. Oh, my goodness.

Theo Von
So who's the desk for anybody. Or it's just a. No, it's just. That's your spot. Okay.

Zach Brown
So in about every, like, 300 yards down the river, there's another one. And so you have your own place. And so for 48 hours, you're just sitting in this thing, chilling. I mean, you can get out and walk around the jungle or can you. Go talk to a neighbor or you stay by yourself.

You don't talk to anyone until you gather every other day for the ceremonies at night. So you're basically. And these people, I'll be, like, walking by, there's dudes in, like, full linen shirts and pants or whatever, meditating for like 8 hours a day, just sitting there just like, breathing it up or whatever. And I'm like, thank God I brought a guitar because there's no phones. You can't use toothpaste.

You can't use deodorant. You can't put any chemicals on your body. You can't eat any salt or sugar. You eat just what they give you. They give you a tea to drink, and you drink this tea.

It kind of makes you sleepy, which was great. Cause I would just nap the day away. And then I napped the first day, like, super hard. And the second day, I was, like, probably the most well rested I've been in a long time. So then I couldn't really nap anymore.

And then I was, like, trying to, like, figure out what the deal is. Cause I brought, like, some larabar, some stuff to, like, snack on, you know what I mean? And I was like, there's no way I'm gonna be starving. But the lady told me on the way there. Cause you take, like a few three hour cab ride, like, in a bus to get there.

Theo Von
I'd bring some pistachios, I bet. But you can't eat. You can't eat anything except what they give you. So she was like, do not break the contract like you're entering a contract. That's why they call it the diet, because you only consume the things that are from there.

Zach Brown
And, like, so they give you a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. Nothing but just water and oats with, like, a bowl of potatoes stuck in it. And that's your breakfast. And they bring your tea and then. And what's in the potato?

Theo Von
Anything? Or is it nothing? Empty? No, no, it's empty. No salt, no sugar.

Zach Brown
You're drinking this tea. They make you. They bring you like, a little thing of tea. It's really red. I would drink all of that foods right here to avoid before ayahuasca and usually before ayahuasca is called the dieta.

Theo Von
Please abstain from the following foods and activities. Two weeks. It says pork sexual activities. That's not a food. They snuck it in there.

Alcohol, marijuana, all street drugs, spicy foods and ice cream. That's ice or ice, too. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Zach Brown
So you're basically going and just like, getting rid of everything extra in your body. Refined sugar. Sorry, is that just a. No. Red meat junk food of any kind.

Theo Von
Salt and pepper. So you can't even listen to push it. That song. Oils, animal fats, carbonated and fermented drinks, dairy products, fermented foods, caffeine and other stimulants. Oh, my God, dude, what the hell?

You can have, like, breast milk, you. Can have water, basically. Yeah. So you're out there and you brought your guitar. Now.

Is your guitar bothering the neighbors or anything? You get anything, you're not close enough to hear anyone. You're far enough away, and you're basically isolated. And the more that you write stuff down. Yeah.

Zach Brown
At a journal. Thank God. Isn't it crazy how a journal becomes your friend? I remember when I was on ayahuasca, I reminded myself how much I even used to like to write. Like, oh, I forgot.

Theo Von
I used to love to write. You just don't do it that much anymore, you know, and it's like, man, I just really loved it. So you were out there for that long? Yeah. So here's what happened.

Zach Brown
So the first couple ceremonies were like, positive ones. The third ceremony, it was the hard one, like the death of ego. One where you're just like, you know. And I didn't know you're supposed to interact with this being or this thing that you're experiencing when you're in there. The people didn't tell me this till after that night.

Cause I was like, it just beat my ass, the whole thing. But something weird that happened. My dad, like, appeared in one of my visions I was having. And I went to put my hand on his shoulder, and he vanished. And I had this, like, weird feeling, like something was wrong.

So we get through the ceremony that night. It was a tough one. I spend the night, I get up first thing in the morning, and I'm thinking, something's wrong with my dad. So I hike out in the river, which is muddy. And, you know, I've been getting a bucket.

They give you leaves that smell a little bit like garlic that you in a bucket. So you take the bucket and get some water. No. Or not. No, but you use them as, like, soap, okay?

You scrunch them up, and then you smell, like, body odor and garlic at the same time. I remember one night I was doing the ceremony, and I had a tank top on. Bad idea. And I remember putting my arms over my head and just smelling that garlic and my body odor, too. Cause you didn't wear deodorant at all.

Forget about it. I've been at the gym. It was awful. Awful. But in that river.

So I went out in that river, and I brought my sat phone with me, which I always have whenever I'm out in the woods or wild or whatever, in case you get stranded somewhere. So I go out in the river and I call my daughter, and she picked up, and she said. The first thing she said to me was, did you hear about papa? Uh uh. And my dad had just been put in the hospital.

But what's weird is the medicine told me that that night. So I ended up having to, like, call my pilots and get them to relocate. So I didn't make it for the last two ceremonies, but I made it, like, seven days into the journey. But it was good that I made it to my dad because he needed to eat some good stuff and needed to, like, get back. They had botched a catheter going in, so he'd had, like, blood clots that kept him from going to the bathroom.

And, like, little mountain hospitals, bro. You know, where they put, like, you know, hog mauls on stuff when they get hurt. Oh, in Georgia? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Theo Von
It can get really rural. A lot of people just rub some cracklings on that. Yeah. People think whispering behind your back. Just curious.

Something, you know, like, just. Yeah, people think gossip helps cancer or whatever. Cause you'll see people out there with signs, gossip for cancer. And you're like, that ain't gonna save nobody in this small town. That's a dang lie, dude.

Bro. But the power of that kind of stuff, of being under that medicine and the things you hear and learn in the moments you have, it shows you a connection in the universe that's almost. It's unbelievable. I mean, just that the universe knows what's going on too much, dude, even to go back to cicadas. So.

Cicadas, right? They get born. The parents meet. The sound you hear is the males, right? Whatever the, like, you know, is a males.

And they're trying to get s e x. I won't say it, but. And then they get with the ladies. Then they. The eggs.

The lady has them and puts them in a tree, makes a little slit in trees puts them in there. Then after a certain number of weeks, they fall out of the tree into the ground. They turn into nymphs or something I think it's called, or lymphs. You find that for me? Oh, it turned into nymphs.

They fall to the ground and go into the soil, and they stay in the soil for 13 or 17 years. And then after that amount of years, when spring comes and it hits 64 degrees, they bloom and come back. So that's why all your buddies that eat a lot of dirt when they're little, bro, they could be eating as cicadas and they're just making a village in there somewhere where you don't even know what's going on. Oh, definitely. I mean, I think you definitely want to get their, you know, I would probably get their BMS tested, you know, to be honest.

I would test their bowels, but just unbelievable. Just. But just to think the things that, like, that's what I learned from ayahuasca was, wow, there's some connection going on that is beyond. I think it's because we're so void of it. Same thing as the 72 degrees thing.

Zach Brown
Like, we're made to be interacting with the earth. We're made to be digging up stuff out of the dirt and pulling things out of the ground and getting scratched up and being out in the wild. And because we're so void of that, we lose our connection to nature and those things. Like, I resonate a lot with, like, native american theology around, you know, like, nature being what they called God or whatever. Like, I.

That's where I find church for me, is out in the wild, because seeing the sunrises and sunsets in a hard rain or a storm or in the ocean, like, those things, for me, and we're so void of nature, everything around. I mean, it's like we have things that look like nature, but it's really not. But we're not interacting with the earth, and we're not having to adapt to the environment and figure out things. And because of that void, then we're left. We're left without that connection.

Right. We don't have a connection. But I believe the native Americans had that connection because that's where they were living and that's where they got their food. They're. I have some friends that are native that do sweat lodges.

This guy, Tom Blue wolf, it's incredible. If you ever done a sweat lodge, dude, you should go to Georgia. Do a sweat lodge. Really? It's unbelievable.

Theo Von
You've done it before. Unbelievable. I've done it several, several times. Uh, uh, yes, he. He is amazing.

Zach Brown
But the way he sees the world and talks about it and whatever, he's like, if you're living a good life, then the food shows up, you know, deer will show up. Things will happen where life provides for you if you're living a good life. Wow. That's him. But that's his sweat lodge right there.

So that's in talking rock, Georgia. That's not far from where I grew up. But it's not like there's no hallucinogenics or anything like that. But you're just going in this hut and sitting on the floor, and they're bringing in these rocks that they heat up. They only heat them, use them one time, and they bring them in like they have a huge fire out front, and a guy's tending the fire.

They have a fire keeper and these huge river rocks, they heat them up, and these things are like, glowing orange, right? And before you go in, you sit and you make your intentions, and they give you little pouches, little things of tobacco and little pieces of fabric. And you write, you put your intentions in there because the natives believe that tobacco is where your memories are whole. Like, the great spirit remembers whatever was put into tobacco. So, like, if someone dies, they take tobacco and they float it out into the river in remembrance of that person or whatever.

But that was the plant for them that they smoked as a ceremonial thing for memories. So you put your intentions in there. Put your intentions in, and you take your intentions into the thing with you. And you sit there. You're, like, on a cold, sandy ground.

And they bring them. They call the rocks grandfathers. So they take a shovel and they lift this thing out, and it's dark in there, and they bring it in and set it in. And he takes Palo Santo and, like, sprinkles it on there, and it looks like a constellation, like almost inside there, and the smell of it. And then he has sweet grass.

He brushes it with that and smells it. And so you say, welcome, grandfather. When they bring the stone in, it's like your ancestors basically coming in. And so they get a pile of grandfathers. And then he closes the thing, and he's got a drum, and he starts chanting.

And then he'll take water and pour it on there. It's just like being in a sauna. So you're in there and it gets hot, and I love those. And then he opens it again, and then he brings in more grandfathers. So by the end by, like, round four or five, bro.

There's a lot of grandfathers in there, dude. And it's like, it's. It's so hot that some people have to, like, lay down close to the ground, like a VFW. Yeah. But if you.

If you sit there and through the ceremony, as it gets hotter and hotter and hotter, you'll start seeing things. You'll start seeing visions and seeing shapes and seeing things like that. And you purge. You're just sweating, man, sweating everything out, but he's leading you. You know, that was the thing I would say about plant medicine.

Like, if you have somebody that's intentionally guiding you, taking you on the journey, and they know what they're doing, you're going to have an amazing experience. So it's not just, you know, let's go see fish and eat a Sack full of mushrooms. Like, there's nothing. I mean, that's nothing wrong with that. If people want to do it, but.

It'S a different intention, right? 100%. I've had two experiences. I've had one where a guy was a good shaman and let us. I've had another one where a guy played, like, Ed Sheeran for 3 hours, you know, and it was, like, still fun.

Theo Von
Little different, you know, I've had one where they made, like, a real altar in the middle with all these different deities and candles and everything. I've been to one where they just lit one candle in the middle of this dark room, and at first, you're like, that's never gonna light this room, but by, like, the second day, you're like, it's like, all the light you need. Like, you slowly adapt to how much light you have, and you're just like, oh, that's everything we have is right there, you know, but, yeah, so definitely the ambiance, and if you have a shaman, like, leading you, it can be. And the sound, the life coach is, like, managing the sound and playing music and playing different, like, drums or things that help the do that. So if there's intention behind it and you're doing it for healing, but I would say out of the things that I have done, the guided psilocybin journey for me was unbelievable, dude.

Zach Brown
I can't explain how much that helped me to let go of things, but they have an intelligence. They're going to go in and find. Ayahuasca felt a little more, like, chaotic, almost like I'm trying to figure out what it's trying to. And it showed me some things that were very, like, it showed me that at one point, I was, like, hugging myself, and I was like. And I didn't realize that I'm separate from my mind.

Right. My mind and my spirit is a separate thing than my body. Right. Our body is our own company. But I never thought about it that way.

Cause I'm like. I'm by myself. But then I never really relied on. Just being alone is okay because you have yourself. You have your body.

You can actually. I hugged myself, and I was like. It felt like I was holding another person. And I was like, wait a minute. I am my own person.

Like, I know that sounds weird. No, but I know what you're talking about. It's like realizing that you have yourself. Yes. Cause you're so.

I'm so cerebral, always thinking about stuff. I don't think, like, my body's something different than that. It's just kind of waiting on me to tell it what to do, you know? No, it's powerful, man. That's a really.

Theo Von
I'm really glad you said that. It's just such an important thing to. Yeah. To realize. Yeah.

Cause sometimes I'm thinking, like, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. I need somebody else. I need some help. I forget that I am. I can be there for myself.

I have myself. Yes. You know? And to have a really strong moment like that is pretty powerful. But that's interesting that it's a little more chaotic, that mushrooms would be a better.

That a. That a psilocybin showed me everything hard. Every weird betrayal, every beautiful thing, every. It started with the hard things. And you just got to be.

Zach Brown
If you're ready, like, if you're open and you're ready, I think it can be the most transformative thing that you've ever done. Because we sock away shit all the time. We just stuff. Stuff under the rug, man. You know, the kid that stole the baby Ruth from me, you know, or pushed you off your bike.

You know what I mean? You don't even think about that until you get put back on, you know? I don't know. It's. That, to me, was the most transformative of everything that I did.

So if somebody was gonna do it for whatever it matters, for what I think. I think that's the. That's the one to start with and have someone that's really great and make sure they know where they're getting it from and what's happening and having a guide to do it. Because since I've been better for myself and for my family and for everyone since I did it, and so I don't care what other people really think about the idea of doing it as much as I do. A result, if somebody's doing something and you get a good result from it, and it helps.

I'm in. I'm in. Yeah. Amen to that, man. What's your fitness regimen?

Theo Von
Like? You got a good regimen? Because now you see guys, it's like, do 40, like, walrus tusks or whatever. Do seven, like, salami bridges or whatever. Do two ex wives.

I saw somebody just wrote that. Some guy wrote that on the board. It's like, that's just personal information there, dude. You're just writing stuff in there. You know, do 50.

You know, it was like, do 50, like, ball, you know, bareback ball warriors or whatever. It's like they're always the crate, like. What are we fucking doing, man? I like, is anybody in shape? Is everybody.

Am I a Harlem globetrotter now? Like, what are we now? My trainer that I've got now is all about taking care of your joint mobility, stretching, making all the little muscles strong so that you have your stability so you don't get hurt doing other things. So I'd say 80% of my workouts is stretching. Foam, rolling posture balls, lacrosse balls, trx bands, like, stretching with them, not even, like, working out on them, really.

Zach Brown
And he started with that for me. I'm only, like, close to four months in with him, and his wife is a gold medal Olympic swimmer, and she's a nutritionist, so she tells me what to eat, he tells me what to do, and he sends me a sushi menu. But he was with the NFL for 18, and I'm actually working on a project I'm gonna do. I did a cookbook a long time ago that was just about soul food, because I love to cook and stuff like that. But I'm working with them on creating a new book that's basically on just how to be.

Well, how to. How to feel good, how to be able to move good, how to do those things. So, his name's Luke Richardson, and he was NFL strength coach for 18 years. Like, was with the Broncos when they went to, you know, won a Super bowl with Peyton Manning. He was the one in charge of their strength and flexibility and all the things through these times, but he's gotten to work with the best.

Theo Von
Luke is his name. Luke. The best physical therapist in the NFL for 20 years, he's worked with him, so he knows what to do. But it's like, when you finally. It's just like, same thing with my life coach.

Zach Brown
Like, she took me on the guided psilocybin journey, transformational. Same thing with him. He's taken me on what he learned through all of that to help me to get my body feeling good and where I'm looking the way that I want to look. And I'm getting myself healthy in my range of motion. Cause gravity will whip our ass as we get old.

Yeah, I feel people's diets, man. People make themselves sick with diets. I mean, type two diabetes is self inflicted. It's like, it's everywhere. God, I hope it's not around here.

I feel bad for people that don't understand. So we're just trying to make, like, a cliff notes version for people of just, like, here's a step toward getting started, and here's even try to make it as simple as we can. But then if you go on our app, like, then you'll be able to figure out, like, here's the rabbit hole of what it is and why and all these things. If you really want that deeper dive with information. Yeah.

Theo Von
So you guys gonna have a cookbook and an app? That's the goal? Oh, that's. Yeah, we just started working on it, but working with them, like, the last three months, dude, the first month, I lost 30 pounds. 30 pounds.

Zach Brown
And then my joints feel good. My back feels good. Seems so. Yeah, you're. You seem super present.

And a lot of that comes from diet, too, man. I mean, even if you didn't do all the stuff I'm doing with Luke to work out, just getting your diet under, like, the amount of inflammation you carry, just eating box food and fast food and junk and stuff. But it's not that hard. You just have to follow it, and you gotta be willing to just, like, do the work, man. Just.

Just, like, don't eat the shit you're not supposed to eat and do it. And then I carry, like, a snack bag. I got a bag here of shit that I can eat if. In case I can't get something that I'm supposed to eat, you know? So.

But it's all the beginning. Like, where do you begin? Like, if you want to feel better, where do you begin to start with? So that's what I want to do in the first, like, book app thing is, like, it's a good call. Yeah.

Theo Von
Where do you begin? Especially as we age and we trying to figure out, you know, looking at that second half of our lives and feel, you know, how do we want to feel? How do we want to approach it, you know? Yeah. What do we still want to be able to do?

Because if we prepare ourselves now, we don't know what the future will allow for. For us. If we show up with the best scenario, the best of ourselves to the future. We don't know if it meets you halfway, then who knows? You know?

The possibilities there are squared, practically. So if you're in pain and you're hungover and you're. Whatever it is, man, the way you see life is different. I mean, you know, after being sober, it's like the way that you see the world and you see yourself and all that changes, man. It just changes.

Zach Brown
I. Well, I have to look at myself. Yeah, that's. You have to live with yourself. You gotta.

You can't get away from yourself. You gotta be there, you know? I know, dude. God, I wish I could just put myself on a dang shelf for a half hour. I would fucking just have a party if I could.

Theo Von
You said you're gonna play the sphere, man, I gotta go to that, dude. Man. Still. One of my favorite shows was you were doing a. I think it was a private event.

I guess it was at Jimmy John's summer camp. Jack Pine. At Jack Pine summer camp at Jack Pine Lodge over there. And, man, that was. And just seeing your whole band show up.

Clay? No. Who's Clay? Clay? Yeah.

Just you guys. Whole band. And the energy, man, it was like. Dude, it was exceptional. It was a fun time.

That's what I felt like I had. And I felt kind of bad. Cause the night before, I'd heard that, like, Vince Neil and Kid Rock had gotten in a fight or something. Oh, yeah. Kid rock shoe at Travis Trent.

Zach Brown
Oh, okay. I don't remember what happened, but I. Was like, damn, I. Wait, I missed that shit. Which, hold on.

Theo Von
I will say was awesome, but not as good as you guys. Ensemble performance, dude. Yeah, I think kid rock was a little more kid than rock just couldn't handle. And he tossed that. Yeah, he just.

He hummed a loafer at him, you know? And I see people do it all the time. You just can't handle anything. They just take a loafer off and just. Yeah, those weegens will hurt people too, man.

Zach Brown
They got that hard leather sole on them. Oh, it was a damn penny. Yeah, those penny loafers, though, it was like. It got an edge on them on the leather thing. This thing was a sperry.

Theo Von
It was a sperry. I think it could have been a lance bag. Yeah, it was something. It was pretty nice, I thought. But you remember when a kid, like, when I learned how to tie the little, like, honeycomb thing on the end of my, like, on my sabago, bro.

Zach Brown
Did you ever wear those? No. Pull them up, please. Sabagos, brother. So you learn how to tie the knot, and it looks like a little honeycomb.

So you don't have to tie your laces. You just had these two, like, little honeycombs on either side. But I remember feeling very accomplished as a kid when I could tie that. That knot. I could probably still do it if I had to.

Theo Von
I believe you could do it. Yeah. Um. Oh, wait. I think I do know what you were talking about, dude.

Oh, first of all, let me show. Pull up the green, blue, brown one down there. If somebody had that on, dude, they were rich. Looks like my buddies. Yeah, my buddy's beach house.

Zach Brown
Yeah, like, back in 1984. That dude was rich, bro, if he had them. Look at the salmon one, bro. Salmon and gray. What is that?

Theo Von
Yeah, that dude ain't. Yeah, he ain't eating at our house, dude. That guy's. We're eating at his house, bro. Dude, remember when you got a rich friend, you went over to their house, dude, and their mom was like, home or whatever and fucking making something.

Zach Brown
Yeah, it wasn't ramen noodles. Yeah. What the fuck is going on here? Yeah, we gotta get in. We gotta get some help in our area.

Theo Von
The sphere, man. That's crazy. Have you been to a show with the sphere yet? Yes, I've been to. Just saw fish there.

Zach Brown
Just saw you two on opening night. Saw the movie there. Been going. Oh, that's right. Whenever I talked to you, you had just taken your children to see.

Theo Von
They had. Yeah. You guys had seen. It was a nature film or something. Yeah, it's the movie that they made for the fear to kind of show off what it is and what it does.

Zach Brown
A lot of. They traveled the whole world with that 16k camera set up and filmed all over the world. Amazing, though. But that's the greatest canvas that's ever been created, and it's so far. And it's to get to be one of the first bands that goes in there to do it.

So this is our masterpiece, man. This is our chance to really show what we can do as a band and to get to look at that dude, Zach. That's crazy, bro. You guys are going to be in there. What if God comes back and picks it up and takes it home, dude?

Theo Von
Then you win. That's great. I'll fly away, bro. We'll miss you. And congrats.

Those are the things I would say to you. That fish show was unbelievable in there. It was cool. And then what they did conceptually is cool because they played four hour shows, four of them, and they didn't play the same song twice, or they didn't use the same content twice. So wave any of that content.

Zach Brown
None of that was going on the same, but it's different. So they use it kind of as a big backdrop for what they were doing and for their shows. And their fans loved it and did it. I got some glimpses of what was fully possible with the building when U two was there because they played the same show pretty much every night. Cause you pay to create all this content and make it this, like, thing where they put you into something.

But I've got a team put together for this thing, man. And it's gonna be. It's gonna be the best, the biggest spec we've ever done. And I'm very excited. Cause this puts it.

This puts us in another league. And the goal is for our band to just keep going, man. To be like the Rolling Stones or like the Grateful Dead or like Jimmy Buffett. Yeah, Jimmy Buffett. Like, being that legacy acts thing.

So this is really our first thing that I'm putting, like, a year plus of working and making one show. Wow. It's going to be one show. No, it'll be that show whenever people come. Right.

You know? Yeah. Because if you go see it, then does it. Did it change your perspective on what you can even. Even do with the background and everything?

That's why I'll see every show, everyone that's playing there between now and us, I will be there to see it and see what they're doing, what's working, what's, you know, could be better, maybe from my perspective, and, you know, it's. But there's never been a venue created like that. When you're watching the sunrise in there and they have a wind generator, you feel the wind on your face and you're watching the sun come up. I mean, you feel like you're outside and you feel like you're in a. You can't tell it's not real.

And that's the first thing that's been created on that scale. That's like that. Oh, my God. We have to do that in, like, homeless shelters or whatever. Or, like, make it like, the nice.

Yeah, make a whole refrigerator box, bro. Like 400ft tall. You're in the biggest frigidaire box that's ever been made, dude. Yeah. And, like, fresh half sandwiches.

Theo Von
Oh, God, just smell that. Chicken caesar salad. Yeah, I bet some secondhand Caesar would be pretty. You know, I wonder how much soft lettuce they have to eat to stay on, bro. And to stay street regular, as they call it.

Oh, you know what I'm saying? I heard if you're homeless, if it rains, then it makes you have to go to the, like, do number two or whatever. I don't know why that is, but I think it's you just, your body just really becomes, like, street legal or whatever. But I don't know. What if you marinate in your own solution long enough, if that, like, somehow makes you more durable?

That's a great idea, and that is something we got to explore as a community, okay? Yeah. We're not. Yeah, well, look, I'll be honest. I urinate on my feet in the shower sometimes because I think it helps them out.

Somebody told me that once. Yeah, it's like a little ammonia supply. Like little. Yeah, Windex in your toes. Yeah, dude, it's like, it's like if that guy came over to my car on the corner of a street and was like a.

Let me piss on your feet. I might be like, all right, dude, whatever this guy's got in him is probably been through a lot. Going to help me out. You know that clear coat? Yeah, yeah.

Zach Brown
So my homie, Neal. So Neil Kamamuro is a good friend of mine. He's a knife maker on Big island. But he didn't make this in Hawaii. No, no, that's made in our shop.

Okay. But he's a handmaker. I've learned a lot about forging for from him. He's one of my favorite knife makers on the planet, dude, just awesome. Dude, Neil.

Theo Von
What, what's his name? Was? Neil Kamamura. Yeah, he's half. He's half japanese, half hawaiian and local, but he's incredible.

Zach Brown
But before he started making knives, he owned a pumping business. Like pumping out grease traps. Pumping out, you know, shit like that. So I think his immune system, dude, I'm pretty sure he could eat a turd and be okay because he, he was, his business was crawling in these grease traps, like old food and stuff. Pumping them out or whatever.

Whatever you subject yourself to. I figure our physiology somehow adapts to it and figures out how to deal with it. Oh, yeah, this guy, definitely. And there's a lot of delicacies over in that area of the world. Anyway, dude, wow.

He's one of my favorite knife makers, and he's taught me how to forge something. So now, when I get done forging a knife, it looks like a knife coming off the anvil, and I don't have to just grind it into the shape of a knife. But that's one of my boys, man. Dude, that's cool. I would like to meet Hawaii family.

Theo Von
He's a knife maker. He makes the best. Yeah, there's, like, a three year waiting list to get his knives. Really? Yeah.

Wow. Neil Kamamura. Kamamura. Unbelievable chef too, man. Him and Flora.

Zach Brown
That's flora right there. That's his baby mama, and she's a brazilian chef. She's made some of the best stuff I've ever eaten in my life, dude. Amazing. Amazing people.

But, yeah. So you got this here. Do you guys know when this fear will be? Is it part of a new tour or anything? Or is.

Theo Von
How is that work? So 2025, that's what we're doing for touring. So 2025 will be the sphere. 2025 residency. Yeah, yeah, let's go.

Congratulations, man. So I'm so excited, and I'm just. I just wanted. I want to make something that people would. People don't know me and know, like, full, like, creatively what I'm capable of, but I've never had a place where I can fully utilize all that and pull favors from all of our incredible people that we know and everything and just, like, pull something together and make something where it's like, you go and see this thing and you leave there and you go, what just happened?

Dang. So that's my baby. That's my dream, and it's happening. So now it's like we just got to grind all the details, like, every single thing, getting it right. Going to film a 40 piece orchestra, bringing them in, recording all the parts with them, getting that made and composed by the right person to help to make sure that's amazing.

Zach Brown
Film all of that. Film the choir. Film the things. Be able to make it like Vegas, too, where you can have some acrobats and dancers and things like that at moments. But the concept and part of what makes something great, like, in movie or film or score or something like that, is when something really creates a lot of tension, when something makes you kind of feel, like, uncomfortable.

Like, it's like. And then when that releases and it goes into, like, something that's really beautiful. So the juxtaposition of everything. So that's the goal. It's not just gonna be, like, this american celebration thing or whatever.

It's gonna be making people uncomfortable and then releasing that and having the series of this roller coaster. But so, really a journey. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Cause some people, it would seem like you just put a dang eagle flying around for, you know, for two and a half hours if you wanted to, right.

Theo Von
If you wanted to. In a cobbler, you know, an eagle making a cobbler. Yeah, but peach cobbler. Yeah. Yeah.

And thank God for it, too. I had it in Alabama for the first time. Couldn't believe it existed, right? Called my mom from a payphone, called her a, I won't say it. B I t c h.

For not telling me it existed. Right? I love peach cobbler. That's how much I love it. I just.

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Zach Brown
Go to your happy place for a happy price. Go to your happy price. Priceline. But, yeah. Cause you could just do it.

Theo Von
Cause you could just do it like that if you wanted to, you know? But, yeah, I love the fact that you. You're a really creative guy, dude. It's inspiring. Sometimes I forget.

I get caught in business sometimes and forget about the creativity. Yeah, I'm blessed, man. I'm blessed. I'm just like a student of the world, man. I learned stuff by talking with you last time we hung out and got to sit and talk about.

Zach Brown
And you're telling me about things that you're doing and what you're doing. I think it's the key is, like, just staying curious, man, and learning from anyone that you can, like, whatever. Never feeling like, you know, everything. Cause it's not about that. It's about learning from each other, learning from each other mistakes.

You know what I mean? Like, I don't. I don't want to do meth for ten days straight and stay up a couple months like you did that time. I don't want to do that. I want to, you know, I want to sleep, bro.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I want you to get a good night's rest, buddy. You have your family, you have your music, you have your creativity coming through.

Theo Von
You have knife making. I know you guys have a wine company and what about. What else keeps you busy? Like what? Is there a part.

What else is something that you're really passionate about? Well, one of the things I wouldn't say I'm a religious person. I started off that way and everything, but I'm definitely a spiritual person, and I think I was given my music for a greater purpose other than myself. I think I was given my music as a gift to be able to pull people together to do things. And so the greatest thing that I've done or been a part of helping to come together is camp southern ground, the place that we built, and it's kind of like a university.

Zach Brown
Pull up a picture of it. Thank you for telling him to do that, too. I always have to be the one to tell the guy. So when you tell people it's a camp, it's not what you'd expect. Right.

So if you. If you go look at a 4.8. On Google reviews, if you go to images, that's great. I've never even seen images. So everything every.

So, first of all, what I feel like I. As, like, the founder of this place, what I feel like I could do is to build a place and build the structures and everything where it's gonna be there for, like, hundreds of years. So, like, the buildings are wrapped in a zinc envelope so that they don't naturally degrade. It's. They're gonna be there.

That's the lodge, the third picture there. And so I spent four years working with a firm to create and design everything, and then now we're about 50% of the way through building the place, and it's really just a really super sturdy, amazing place to host things and do things. So, one of the things we do, we have nine weeks of summer camp, and it's an integration camp. So kids that are on the spectrum are in with. Just like the one you went to?

Yeah, just like the one I went to. So, borrowing from that dude. And so nine weeks of that, and then we do 34 weeks of veteran programs through the year, we have. We just started our veteran family camps, which is six weeks of putting a veteran with their family as a unit and helping them to see each other as a unit. So when they get fractured, sacrificing everything that they've learned how to do and, like, been specialized in one thing, and then they're just like, oh, I don't need you anymore.

And then they got to go back to a normal, you know, sitting in a chair somewhere and, you know, and whatever. It's like, figuring out how to help them transition back home from that and having programs that help them to help with PTSD, to help with things. We run the Warrior path program, which is Bernie Marcus's thing, one of the founders of Home Depot. So we were like, the first or second campus that was chosen to do this, but. My, my, but you've built all these.

Theo Von
Buildings and stuff here. Yeah. So it's more like a university, like camp style campus. But what we do there is we help people to learn how to treat each other, how to love each other, things that matter, help them to dream, help them to believe that they have potential to do things, help them to see the diversity that's around, so they take that out into the world. We help our veterans come back and help them to find purpose.

Zach Brown
We help. We have a warrior song program where a lot of them don't want to talk to civilians about their story, but they'll write a song about it. So we put amazing songwriters in with the veterans, and they learn how to tell their story through a song, and then that's something they're willing to share. It kind of helps them to open up and do things. So 34 weeks of veteran programs, nine weeks of children's programs.

We host things there. Like, Mercedes rents out our tree house. That thing that looks like a space crab right there, that's the treehouse. And it's got a. It's open in the middle.

It's got a table, a circle table that comes down out of the ceiling. Oh, my God. And comes down. And so we put executives. That's where we do all of our vision development.

So, like, for the summer camp, we bring in all the nutritionists, the best nutritionists around that we. That we can find in the nation or around the world. We bring, like, eight of the best nutritionists in. We sit around this round table. We talk and dream about what we need to feed the kids while they're there.

So it makes them feel good, but it's accessible, so they'll eat it and things like that. We got a 16 acre organic farm. We grow the food there. The kids learn how to pull stuff up out of the ground, how to plant things. I love that kind of stuff.

Theo Von
Radishes, I remember. Yep. We would do them. That's awesome, zach. Dude, dude.

Congratulations, man. But it's not really. There's nothing about this place that's about me. This is what I feel like I owe this, and this is, like, a God thing for me, where I felt like I was given the music to help to create something bigger than myself. But it's.

Zach Brown
I was kind of here following orders, man. You, like, you follow orders, and if you make your life about something bigger than you, it's not just about all the shit you can have. And being on a fucking mountain somewhere with all your shit, then that's really where real, meaningful, a meaningful life comes from, is helping other people and doing it. So we have an incredible campus at Camp Southern ground to do that. Wow.

Theo Von
Do you go there each year? Yeah, I spent a week. I lived there as a counselor this last summer, so I was sleeping in the bunks and there, just like I used to do, and being there and had kids that, you know, it's a little rough for some of the kids that are on the spectrum the first day, like, trying to get through to them and help them feel comfortable and doing that. And I have just. Just the leadership we have there and the people we have coming in.

Zach Brown
It's amazing. But we can help other people use their program there, too. Like, if you wanted to do a retreat there and bring people and have people come down, do team building leadership, we feed you good. We put you up and take care of you, and our staff helps you to have whatever experience you want to have there. Wow.

Theo Von
So it's kind of like it's where people can rent out the play or organize their own function there. Exactly. And we help to do that and pull it off without a hitch. Taking care of people, that is cool. Yeah.

I love the idea of thinking about something that's greater than yourself. Sometimes I get stuck too much in the minutiae of my own life, and I know it's important. Cause it is my own life to me. Yeah. Yeah.

But to get so stuck to it sometimes is, you know, I think it's natural. I'm not looking down on myself, but to try and have more of this mindset. I've had more of this mindset at times. Yeah. Sometimes it's tough.

I guess it feels a little tougher than others. I think you mentioned, we were talking earlier about having, or a way that you thought about contributing. You mentioned to me, like, kind of a halfway house or something like that. Yeah, try to get a halfway house going. And we're working on it.

We're starting, like, there's a group, a men's group that we started that is, every week has a meeting. Right now it's just a Zoom meeting, you know, but just the roots of it, you know, trying to look at that and figure that out. Well, I think aligning that mission with whatever you're doing, you know, whether it's your shows or whatever, whatever it is, like, there's something, like, tangible to, like, talk about, this is what we're doing. This is our mission. This is what, you know, zeroing in on what that is and then aligning that with what you're doing and then that naturally, like, honestly stepping off into the dark on stuff like that, like, the road rises right up to your feet underneath you when you start doing it.

Zach Brown
And I've seen the craziest, like, not, I will say miracle, but the craziest things happen that aren't a coincidence. When you start aligning yourself with that, with what you feel like you can contribute to and make a difference in, then those things start. It starts manifesting, like, those things start happening. And so just talking about it, like, you were telling me about it and, like, taking action on it and aligning it with what you're already doing and then having that purpose, like, everything starts to fall and literally stuff falls out of the sky on you, and you're just like, damn. Like, that's another affirmation that just keep going with it.

Like, as we're talking about it right now is one of those affirmations. It's like, but, um. But getting that place, like, and we still got to raise the money for the second half of building it all, you know what I mean? To, like, finish the place out. We have all the basics of what we need, but then the biggest building in the whole place is what we're raising for right now.

And so finding people that realize and it. We're past the impossible point because used to be, I was, like, riding around a field, like, this is where this building's going to be. Right? You know what I mean? So.

But now it's there, and they can see the quality and they can see the impact of what we're doing. Doing. So trying to find the people that have something to give, that want to contribute in some way of doing it, right. To say, hey, look, I love. I see what you've done halfway here.

Theo Von
Let me help, you know, because I have the financial means. Let me help you contribute towards the other half. And it's not about me. I don't care. It's nothing about me.

Zach Brown
It's about the difference that we can make there doing it. And if some people are looking for something to align themselves with, that can make a real impact. Like, we have one of those things and there's other things out there, but finding something that you're passionate about that you want to give back. There's nothing that makes you happier than, like, I knew there'd be a day when I could stand out. It's pretty close to my house where I could stand outside and hear kids, like, singing and laughing through the woods.

And to get to hear that now and to feel it or whatever, it's. Just like, that's music. It lets me know that I'm on the path of where I should be doing and that my life has purpose. Like, it's not just raising my kids and trying to move people with music, but it's like I'm using that as a tool to make a difference. Yeah.

Theo Von
Amen, dude. Gosh, man, I want to come work at that summer camp. I feel like sometimes, do I have to have a jurisdiction or whatever? Like a.

It's a. They're gonna make sure you're not on some government lists and things like that. For sure. Yeah, I'm cool with that. I'm thinking.

Do I? Yeah. I gotta think about what it's called before I ask about it, dude. Zach Brown. I'm just excited to get to spend time with you, man.

I know that we've gotten a talk before and I'm a big fan, dude. And just thank you for all the wonderful music. Likewise, you continue to make and, yeah, just nice to have some inspirational thoughts and thinking about things that are bigger than myself, you know? Yeah. Finding that purpose.

Because, yeah, sometimes there's just this. You're like, then what am I doing? It's funny, I was laying in bed the other night and I was like, what am I doing this for? And I know that sounds crazy. Maybe I'm not trying to sound like woe is me or anything.

Yeah. Yeah. And maybe sometimes the first time a question comes into your head from God or from, like, the light of the world, it comes in confusingly, you know? Yeah. Instead of maybe in, you know, maybe I'll lay down tonight and be like, what am I doing this for?

You know? But interesting, man. Grateful to have spent time with you today. Dude, too, brother, you bring a lot of joy to people, man. I know so many people that you are just a light for and people just making people laugh and making them feel good just being yourself.

Zach Brown
We're all huge fans of yours and what you do, man. We're stoked to get to talk to you and get to visit and hang out more. So thank you. Thank you, Zach Brown. Dude, I saw one of my favorite moments, and I might just add this in somewhere, but you and me were in a car with kid rock, remember?

Theo Von
And the radio was up. He goes, hey, can you guys turn the volume down so we can talk about me?

And you know what? We were crammed in a car. There was, like, a clown car. It was like eight of us in the back of the suburban. He's like, hey, can you turn the radio down so we can talk about me?

It was hilarious, dude. And you had the latches. So perfect, man. One of a kind. And so were you.

Zach Brown, thank you so much for my nice gift, man. And we look forward to coming to see you at the sphere. Yes, sir. Thank you. Now I'm just falling on the breeze.

Zach Brown
And I feel I'm falling like these. Leaves I must be cornerstone. Oh, but. When I reach that ground I'll share. This piece of mine I found I.

Theo Von
Can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take a little.

E500 Zac Brown

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Musical Beginnings

3: Cultural Experiences

4: Community Impact

5: Reflections and Future Plans

Actionable Advice

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