475: With Much Wisdom Comes Much Sorrow. The More Knowledge, The More Greif. With Oliver Anthony Music, Chris Lunsford
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January 29, 2025
TLDR: Christopher Anthony Lunsford (Oliver Anthony) is a working-class musician from Appalachia, struggling with mental health issues and creating raw songs about his experiences. Now living modestly in Virginia, he rejects fame and focuses on his authentic music that advocates for unity, values, faith, and community.

In episode 475 of the Jocko Podcast, titled "With Much Wisdom Comes Much Sorrow," host Jocko Willink, along with his co-host Echo Charles and musician Oliver Anthony (Christopher Anthony Lunsford), delve into themes of wisdom, struggle, and the healing power of music. In this insightful discussion, Anthony shares his journey from a life of working-class struggles to the profound impact of his music that resonates deeply with fans who feel marginalized.
Main Themes
The Struggle of Knowledge and Wisdom
The episode opens with a thought-provoking reflection on the book of Ecclesiastes from the Bible, highlighting that increased wisdom often leads to more sorrow. This idea is echoed in Anthony's songwriting, where he addresses the pain and difficulties faced by ordinary people in society. He describes his music as a raw, honest reflection of personal struggles with mental health, emphasizing a societal need for connection and understanding.
The Impact of Oliver Anthony’s Music
- Authenticity in Songwriting: Anthony’s music is a gut feeling transformed into melody without the polish of the music industry. His debut single "Rich Men North of Richmond" struck a chord with many, bringing attention to issues of hardship that working-class people face daily.
- Connection with Fans: Anthony describes how his songs have helped listeners feel seen and heard, creating a sense of community among those who relate to the struggles presented in his lyrics.
- Grounding Effect: He emphasizes the necessity of finding emotional grounding in music, illustrating how it serves as a vessel for individuals to process the complexities of life.
Navigating Fame
With sudden fame, Anthony discusses the challenges he faces in maintaining his identity and relationships. He notes how becoming a public figure brings about mixed feelings, from admiration to an overwhelming sense of exposure.
- Pressure of Expectations: As his music gains traction, the expectations weigh heavily, even to the point of impacting his mental health. He recognizes the paradox of being in the spotlight while simultaneously feeling isolated.
Connections to Broader Social Issues
Community and Support
Jocko and Oliver discuss the importance of building community connections through music and mutual support systems. As Anthony shares his plans for community initiatives, he emphasizes:
- Rural Revival Project: Aiming to create spaces that foster genuine musical experiences while addressing financial and social challenges in underprivileged areas.
- Empowering Veterans: Recognizing the need for veterans and everyday people to be given the tools and opportunities to thrive in their communities.
Real Conversations
A significant portion of the talk centers on the potency of real, human connections in today's digitally dominated world. Both Jocko and Oliver advocate for returning to meaningful, face-to-face interactions that strengthen community ties.
- Combating Digital Isolation: With increased social media usage and digital technology, they remind listeners that navigating life's complexities necessitates human touch and interaction rather than algorithms.
Practical Takeaways
- Pursuing Authenticity: Embrace your genuine feelings and experiences, allowing these to guide your creative outlets, whether through songwriting or everyday interactions.
- Building Community: Seek ways to connect deeply with those around you. Simple acts, like reaching out to neighbors or engaging in local events, can foster a more supportive environment.
- Engaging with the Real World: Spend less time on digital platforms and more time experiencing life—nature, community events, and meaningful conversations can lead to emotional and mental healing.
Conclusion
The podcast reveals profound insights into the intersection of music, wisdom, and community, showcasing how Oliver Anthony's journey exemplifies the struggle of many. With relatable themes and actionable lessons, the episode encourages listeners to reflect on their paths—both personally and collectively—aiming for connection and understanding as catalysts for growth and healing.
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This is Jocko podcast number 475 with echo Charles and me Jocko willing good evening echo good evening Everything is meaningless What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the Sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever
The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north, round and round. It goes ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearism.
more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again and what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, look, this is something new. It was here already long ago. It was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind. I have seen all things that are done under the sun. All of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief.
And that right there is some scripture from the book of Ecclesiastes, one of the wisdom books from the Old Testament. And it contains reflections and guidance on the meaning of life and of labor and the pursuit of happiness.
And it can be found, of course, in the Bible. But some of it can also be found embedded in the tracks of a country folk, Western, honky, Tonk, gospel, Americana album.
called Hymnal of a Troubled Man's Mind by Oliver Anthony Music. In the album, like that book from the Bible reflects on life, work, pain and happiness, Oliver Anthony Music is the creation of Christopher Anthony Lunsford.
He was the first and only person in history to debut with a number one song on the Billboard charts without any prior chart history of any kind. That song was called Rich Men North the Richmond is released in August of 2023. And the song struck a chord with people.
help people feel heard. And Chris has continued to be heard himself. He's released a dozen singles.
And in fact, he was the first male songwriter to chart 13 songs simultaneously in the top 50 digital song sales while alive because Michael Jackson did it and Prince did it, but they were both dead. And he released this new album. It's not that new now, but him know of a troubled man's mind. He's torn all over the world.
Obviously, his music, more popular than most people would have predicted. And about that music, he said, I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they're being sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung. No editing, no agent, no bullshit, just some idiot and his guitar.
with that. It's an honor to have Christopher Anthony Lunsford of Oliver Anthony music here with us tonight to share some of his wisdom and lesson learners. Chris, man, thanks for joining us. It's good to meet you finally. I know you and I were trading text for a while for a long while trying to make this happen. You've been a little bit busy. I've been a little bit busy. Welcome.
just a little bit busy for both of us. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get into it, man. Let's talk about just growing up. What was that like? Where were you at? Man, you've just listening back to what you, well, that, that verse you read and then what you just said kind of took me back a second because I've been so,
the last three or four months I've been so like engulfed in all this and all these sort of crazy escapades I've been on that I guess we'll touch on later in this episode but it was like I remember that quote and and what was
Yeah, well, just to touch for a second on that, that original catalog of music that charted was so crazy that it charted because they were literally all off an Android phone. They weren't even from a studio, but I would write those songs and then that video that ultimately, the MP3 version that I got uploaded, that was right after I wrote the song. It was more or less like the tangible medium, they call it. It was just supposed to be something so people couldn't steal the song if I wanted to go play it in a bar or something like that.
And so going back to what we kind of talked about before we started this episode, like the fact that it was able to reach that kind of achievement, it's because I do genuinely believe in that. Like I said, that purpose we talked about that I guess we'll get into later of what hopefully all this will end up. But it's just to me, it's just shocking here to be reminded of that. And yeah, that it all happened so crazy like that at the very beginning.
Before you got here, I was talking to Echo Charles, and Echo Charles doesn't play any musical instruments. I, of course, play guitar. But I said, hey, you know, I was talking about a little text conversation that you and I were having. I said, look, dude, I'm a GCD guy. That's where I'm at, you know.
And you said, hey, Richmond's only four chords, right? And then I got in here. I was kind of telling Echo that story. And I was telling him, like it's true. You know, three, four, five chords is what songs are made of. And then he pulled up a video. What was that video you pulled up?
Axis of awesome the four chords and he's showing me this video where this guy's just going from hit song to hit song hit song and he's playing the same four chords, but just singing this the song over him and It's so true But you think about you know, I think about like right now AI
Because you would think, OK, well, what do I want to do today? Oh, I know what I want to do. I want to make a hit song. So you know, chat GBT, write me a hit song, and it's going to kick out, you know, GCDE. And cool. Now start playing that and you and make some lyrics. Now you have a hit song, but it doesn't work that way. Like there's a it's almost like, you know, they can't recreate life, right?
You know, they can't recreate. Like, they know what's in a cell. They know all the little chemicals and atoms and molecules that are in a cell, but they can't make that thing come alive. And that's what I feel like for music or for art. You can put all those chemicals in there. You can put those parts in there, but there's some thing. There's some spark that if it doesn't have it, it ain't going to work.
Yeah, and I pray that we can maintain that level of discernment in the long run because I do think now that it's been, there's been multiple generations of people being just so immersed in digitalization, whether it's like when we were, you know, I was born in 1992. So I grew up in the cell phone, the developmental age of cell phones and computers becoming more available. And then, you know, now it's to the point where most kids, they learn off a tablet in school.
I fear that there may come a time and we may be close to it to where we may not have the cognitive ability to discern true human, human created art from. A great example is as much as Randy Travis was one of my favorite. That was my grandma's favorite country singer and I can remember riding in the car with her as a kid and she would just be jamming Randy Travis.
But you know, they did an AI, they had an AI generated Randy Travis song that I think actually charted in everything. And a lot of people didn't know the diff, you know, it's, it terrifies me to see where maybe it's going to go. It's like, where did they source it from? It was a song that was written, I think in the eighties and they, they, they, AI generated Randy Travis's voice over it or AI aided the voice, you know, but, um,
So I don't know. I don't know if we can count that because even that right there has like a little bit of there's a little bit of human in there. There is. Yeah. Right. And yeah, it's definitely interesting to think about. Generally speaking, it does work. You know, I agree with you about that. Like, um, it's, I think, I think that we have this sort of, we're very complex creatures, you know, like more complex than anyone ever tells us and probably more than anyone even really realizes, but
I mean even to your point with the verse that you read at the beginning like with more wisdom There's more suffering and it seems like the more the more that we know about ourselves that only it seems only destroy us more than it does strengthen us in certain ways, but I do think there's like this and you know Maybe it's not even that we would lose the ability to discern But just that we're we just start we've become we have become almost disconnected even with our own selves if that makes sense like We seem to be so immersed in something here or out. It's like we never
how many people really take the time to, to like, you know, there's so many little things going on. You have, we don't know how to grow our own hair and, and you think about like our gut biome and how many little things there are alive in there that, that affect our whole nervous system and how we think in our emotional state and all of that. And it's just, it's, we're very complex creatures that we, yeah, you got to be able to tap into it too. I know I've, um,
I talk about this thing squeezing your brain. Okay, so if you want to, if you want to make something, sometimes you have something that just kind of, it just bubbles to the surface. Maybe that's what it's like for you when you write a song and it just kind of bubbles to the surface and you have this spark, this idea and you go, you go write it down and it's cool.
But I would venture to guess even with that. So like I've written books, right? And the books obviously the nonfiction books are are not the same thing, but like right now, even the kids books are a novel.
You have this little idea that truly is like a spark. It's just something that comes from nowhere. But in order to make it into something, you gotta squeeze your brain. You gotta squeeze, you gotta squeeze out frosting out of one of those things that they have in a bakery. Or toothpaste, like getting that last bit of toothpaste out. You gotta take work. The song isn't...
the song isn't going to write itself. So it takes some level of work to get that song out. And it takes level of work to get a book out or to get a screenplay out or to create an invention. You know, you have some idea in your head that you think it's good.
But man, you've got to squeeze your brain and make it work. Where do you think that idea comes from? It's funny you say that guy. I like the squeezing analogy and I think about, it seems like there's so many things that maybe we, I don't know if we understand them in our subconscious and it just takes that time for it to come into realization, but it seems like, well, in the same way that when you have a problem, you don't understand if you go and talk to somebody about it, it's almost like you're able to
you're able to squeeze it into your, into your, into existence almost, but it's there somewhere already. It's almost not, in some cases, it seems like you're not so much creating it. You're just, you're, you're able to observe it or you're able to, to extract it, if that makes more sense. Yeah, I think that you're definitely writing that from my opinion, writing about stuff is a way to kind of organize your thoughts. And I've, I had the,
unfortunate experience of writing a lot of eulogies for guys that died and I realized kind of after or maybe in the middle of writing eulogies for guys that died that it was very helpful. It was very helpful in processing the grief and the sadness and the anger and like taking those things and kind of like okay let me write about
how I'm feeling and it was beneficial. And I actually did that. One of my friends died who was very close with my whole family and my son, who was probably like 13 or 14 at the time, he got a little bit, you know, he came home one day and he said, you know, I can't.
I can't stop thinking about Seth and it's I'm having trouble concentrating in school and so I was like okay right right right down you know I actually told him write a letter to Seth's mom and explain what you miss about him what you loved about him and all that and he did it neat and after that he never talked to me about it again and you know he's that's been a long time now
But I think that letting those things out somehow is very beneficial. And I think when you don't let those things out, when you keep men, it can turn bad. But to your original question is, what is the spark? Yeah, I think that's a mysterious thing because I think it's sort of like the fact that we can't create life.
We can put all those chemicals together, but you can't make that cell start to split and divide and turn into a baby. It doesn't work. As much as we know exactly what's in there, we can't make that happen. I think that's probably why it's so valuable. This is actually something that I've had a change in heart of over the last year. I used to tell people, and I still do, and this is still accurate.
is, is that a good idea? I'll say if you have a good idea, but you don't execute that idea means nothing. Right? I've said that to a million people because it's true. Like you can have the best idea for a song or a book or an invention. If you don't do anything with it, it doesn't matter. No one cares. But
The other end of the spectrum is that idea, if it's a good idea, has value because no one can manufacture it. You can't manufacture, you can't manufacture in Sperado. Have you ever watched Tenacious D before? Oh yeah. Okay, yeah. Okay, so that one episode on HBO where they're like,
They have to come up with a new song and for the place where they play open mic night, Echo Charles. The guy, the manager there, is like, yeah, you guys can play again, but you need a new song. And so they go, okay, so they have a week to write a new song. And they're trying to manufacture in Sperado.
And guess what? Echo Charles. You can't do it. No, not it's hard. Straight up. Can't do it. Can't do it. Can't do it. So did anyone after your first song came out was like, all right, make more of those songs. They had to.
Yeah, well the timeline of events with the songs was really that all those other songs were already uploaded from my phone through Distrocade, which is just like a service that anybody can use to upload to Spotify, Pandora, Apple.
There's a few other services beside District Kid, but in the modern age, you don't need anyone to help you upload music. You can just do it right off of your phone. And so all those songs were already there. And then Richmond came after the fact. Even funny enough, I had been stalking the guy from Radio WV for like six months because I knew if I could just get on that YouTube channel with the song. All I wanted to do was just quit my job. I was working in
I was on job sites all day and industrial plants and stuff and like some of the stuff we talked about like the Dodge reports and the like I just all that stuff was just driving me I just wasn't what I wanted to do and so my goal was you know we'd sold we were living I had a nice little house that I bought I had like maybe 15 grand in equity on it was all I could do to buy the place and
Um, my goal was for us to just get my family and go off grid somehow. I kind of like falling into that sort of thing, like everybody else had. This was like 2000, probably 17 when I first started pursuing this. So 2019 I sold our house. Uh, I bought some land with the, with a little bit of equity I had and we, we parked a camper on it. And how long was camper? How big?
It was a 27 foot. Now at the time I didn't have any kids. I didn't have custody of my oldest and I didn't have the two little ones. So it was just, it was just me and my wife. And so it was pretty easy, but it got complicated really quick with kids and everything else. And, but all I wanted to do was just not, I just didn't want to have to work a stupid job every day. And I wanted to be able to spend more time with my family and spend more time like being a real human being and not just getting this stuck in this cycle. So how old are you and this is going down?
Um, I'm 32 now. So it was like probably in my late twenties, you know, and you got to think I'd been the really the moment when I realized that that I was that I needed to figure something out was when I was, um, when I was 19, I was working at this paper mill called rock 10, which is now called West Rock.
And there was a guy in there named Shane who he was working in the position that I had been hired for. He was on first shift and I was on third shift, but he had been working there 18 years and I was 19. And we were making basically the same amount of money. And I had a GED. I didn't have any real practical skill or anything. And I was like,
I'm going to be Shane like for the like this is it like this is as far as I'm going to get. And so that was really this. So that was my motive was just to get out of that just to try to get out of that cycle. But that was when you're 19. Yeah. But and then but then you stayed in that cycle for how long?
Well, when I had a bad accident there, I fell and I had a bad head injury. I was in the hospital. I don't know how long. It was a big blur, but there was about a six-month period where I could hardly walk. I just hit my head on concrete. I blacked out. I don't know what happened. I passed out, I guess. We were working 12-hour shifts. I wasn't getting enough sleep.
It's three. I'm sure there's people that will comment on this that have been in that cycle, but at the time we were working six days a week, 12-hour shifts because we were short-handed and it was third shift. I wasn't getting enough sleep when I was at home.
It's hard to sleep during the day. You've got other things you got to do and all. And so like I was probably running on a few hours of sleep every night. And I can remember, you know, I can remember on our three in the morning lunch shift sometimes, like you start to like see little, you know, you're almost like starting to dream while you're away. I think that's probably something I don't know exactly what caused it, but I passed out of work hit my head real bad. And there was about a period of six months where just it was challenging to walk like a lost my equilibrium and
My short-term memory was just terrible. I had some like inflammation and stuff from the injury and so that's when I got out of that that plant work and I ended up going into the more in the construction industry and I just my goal was just to keep working ourselves up the ladder just long enough until I could figure out something else I could do like we were looking at I'd started to get goats we were gonna get into this land clearing business and like
People will rent goats out to clear their property with and we were like we had started to rent out campsites on hip camp It's like this app like Airbnb where people would come out and camp on my land And I was just trying to figure out whatever I could do to get to break out of that cycle where I didn't have to go work for somebody else every day, you know
So that was really my motivation with the music was like, get the music out there, get it uploaded on Distro Kid to where I had a tangible medium where people couldn't just steal the songs and go claim them as their own. And I would just try to get on Radio WV, get one little song on there, get 50,000 views from it, and then I could at least go to a bar and book a gig and be like, look, I'm on Radio WV. Like, it was just enough of a validation to where somebody would book me at a bar for 300 bucks. And that was, that's, I'd be totally content doing that. That was the goal, you know?
What were you doing to a radio wv or just tagging them like calling every post? I was that guy like, Hey, look at my video, you know, like and and email them and I looked up his business license on Manta and sent him a letter in the mail and like I was doing everything I could do.
And finally, that's called stalking, by the way. I used the word stalking, yeah. But I just knew, I just had this feeling if I could just, and I had no idea, I thought Radio WV was like an organization with like 20 people that work there. And this guy, Draven was just the owner or the manager or whatever. So, so anyway, I never get. It's kind of like this podcast. Yeah, everything, you perceive things to be so much more complex than they really are, you know, because they're presented so, they're presented so well, you just assume there must be this huge team behind it.
So I never forget. Did you have any success with the goats? Did you have any success with the camping on your land? Like, was any of that stuff hip camp was good? Yeah. It stayed. I mean, it stayed packed. So you were. So were you starting to see a, an opportunity to get out of your job that you didn't like besides music?
Well, it was a complicated situation because, um, aren't they all because of my wife being in veterinary met. She's a, of, she's a veterinary technician. And so she had student loans from that. And so we were trying to get like all of her debt consolidated and get every, like that was our, you know, but yeah, I think if we, if we could have got, I think realistically in probably about a five year timeline, I could have gotten her debt paid off and we could have lived, we could have lived off of just probably hip camp and a few other little things and just been very, live, very modest, you know,
Going back to child, when did you start playing guitar? How old were you? Um, so my grandma taught me GC and D when I was like a little kid. Like I said, Randy Travis was her favorite and she was in a little band in the fifties, I think that played on the radio and Hope Well, Virginia, like in the little town where she grew up and
My grandma was like my, you know, like, I've had a close relationship with my parents, but as far as family or just mentorship goes, it was my grant, you know, it was her and my grandpa were like, they were like, you know, they were like my idols, you know, so I wanted to be like them and they were just, she was such a sweet girl. How do we learn GCD?
Five or six years old. Okay. Yeah, like look like early we would do like Like cuz all the rainy track a lot of those like 90s country songs were three or four chords. They're really easy to play and we would do a lot of like like in the garden and Are you know her fit the easiest the first song I learned was three wooden crosses? That's just such a simple little song. I think it's like CG and a couple little chords and
but yes, she got me into it early on and it was just something that we did, something I just kind of did with her just for fun, you know. Did you keep playing when you were growing up? Not really. The only time I can remember really, I would goof off with it every three or four months or six months or something just sitting around, but I never took it seriously. I did, I can remember when I was like 12 or 13, I thought I tried to do this thing called a, what did they call it?
Colgate country showdown and it was like this little lame like country singing competition thing and i tried it twice and never made it past the first round you know i got roasted so i just gave up on it i was probably like twelve or something and i didn't really do a whole lot else with it for for a while it was where was the colgate country showdown.
Well, I think they happened all over the country. It was kind of like a miniature. It was like the same concept as like American Idol. And you got voted off the island quick. It's funny. I can remember. Yeah, it was. It's so funny because we're doing cover songs. It was in.
Yeah, you see you just played one song and like 30 people would get up there and play a song and they would and devote the judges would vote and there was always some little clean cut kid that they're like perfect already in like their little country and Western crap and they always got it and I was like and I suck I didn't deserve to win it anyway, but I do remember back then like I did I guess I guess what I'm saying is I did probably have like that imagine that imaginative Dream of going out and doing you know, I just I didn't take it seriously back then
So then when did you start playing guitar like hey, I'm going to try and make a go at this. Well, um, oddly enough, you know, Brian, who you met, who's a friend of mine, he, I, I would go out and hang out with him like in my
I said, I didn't drink until after I was 21. I didn't touch alcohol until I was, I think I had my, I had like a Bud Light Lime when I was like two months after turning 21. It was the nastiest thing ever. And so I didn't start to drink until maybe 23 or so. I had a friend of mine who was a welder who we hung out all the time and he drank Guinness. So I started getting into drinking. I was just slamming Guinness. Like I was a Guinness drinking machine. And so I met this guy, Brian, who I started to hang out with a lot and
He was the, he's the HOA president of the craziest neighborhood you've ever been in. And so like he, he was like a part, it's a HOA neighborhood, but like the most partiest neighborhood and it's a lot of military families and stuff. So I would go down there and they would have a guitar. And at some point I would pick it up drunk and just start playing songs in it. And like that was probably like 2015-ish when we started to hang. Or no, I think we met in probably a little bit after that, but somewhere in that window of time, it was just like getting drunk and playing at parties and people saying, oh, you're really,
You know, like I never forget it's like it was a run and joke, but anytime I'd play, there was always some drunk old person that would be like.
you gotta get on American Idol every time. Everybody was just like, man, you gotta do something. There's this guy named David Moore who's probably in his 60s, but I can remember, I jokingly to this day, I remember every time we were drunk hanging out, he'd always say, he said, Chris, you gotta do something with that God-given talent of yours. He would get this far from my face drunk, and I was drunk too. When you're drunk, everybody gets like this. He said, you gotta do something with that God-given talent of yours all the time.
It sort of just evolved into that. David was kind of like right about this whole thing. And Brian and a few other people just kept pushing me and I didn't have any original music really. I think the songwriting came. Well, the songwriting is exactly what we talked about earlier. It was just a way for me to figure out how to take all of this and put it into words to where it made some kind of sense. And it was just like in the same way that you're talking about your son writing that letter.
Like it's just I was just writing my letter. I guess you know, it's the same same same concept. What kind of music were you into when you were a kid? Really early on was like 90s country and like I was obsessed with Tony Bennett when I was a little kid Like I love all that like I just love that swing of like that, you know
Um, and then when I got a little older, it was probably, uh, you know, I listened to a ton of stained, um, stained and shined down and, um, and old country stuff. Like David Allen co, Merle Haggard, like just all that, like old, like wailing Jennings, you know, my, going back to my grandma, I can remember as a kid, we, uh,
We used to watch Dukes of Hazard all the time. And so I'd see Waylon Jennings there with that little guitar. And in a lot of episodes, he wouldn't show his face because of the legal troubles and stuff. But that's what I kind of fell in love with a lot of that. When I was a kid, my dad, he got a used car. It was a 1973 Barracuda. And it was actually, if we had that car now, it would be an epic muscle car. It was yellow with a stripe on it and everything.
And I had a track player that my dad liked country music because he went to college down in Texas. And he had one eight track, one, and it was Hank Williams. And so I, to this day, know every Hank Williams song, you know, but
And that's why when I first heard you, I was like, oh, this dude sounds like freaking Hank Williams, senior. So you did have a pretty good variety of music. It wasn't like you were just raised on Country Western.
Yeah, no, it was just early 90s. And yeah, definitely Hank, Hank, senior junior in the third, I'll listen to like, yeah, all that stuff. Like it just, I'd say after like probably after the 90s, early 2000s, radio country just kind of started to go. And I just, like I don't listen to country at all.
I haven't listened to a new country song that came out other than like Jamie Johnson and maybe a handful of others in years like I don't I Don't care for it. I kind of joke and say it like I don't I don't know that my I guess my music's in the country category But I don't even like to think of that. How do you like my description of your music? What do I say? That was pretty good, right? freaking yeah, it's it's
It's definitely unique. It's weird because it's unique music, but it still sounds familiar in a way. I don't know. I'm really excited for you to hear the neck. We just recorded. So I've only technically put two songs out since two new songs since Richmond, everything else. Like the whole, basically the hymnal album was all the cell phone, the halfway put together cell phone versions like in their complete format, because I just had to do that, did at least get that done.
Well, you know, like I told you, I just I went from being Mr. And I still am Mr. Nobody. But just as far as like when I got I could go to Walmart and I could go to the gas station and all that and everything was just, you know, it was just normal. And so that that original catalog of music was all I really wanted to complete. And then the next song, so basically there was Richmond, the hymnal of a Troubleman's Mind album and then and then
Cowboys and sunsets and Cowboys and sunsets was like my goodbye song and I was just gonna get to the end of that tour and Just call it. Yeah, and I almost didn't get to the end of that tour I like by the time the summer came I was I was Ready to walk away or like when you say you weren't almost didn't make it to the end of the tour. What do you mean?
man I don't like going like just I don't like I didn't I didn't go to concerts because I don't like big crowds I get like it's like I somehow my mom and I didn't used to be like this as a kid Joe Rogan says that it's because we talked about this on on camera and off and he thinks a lot of it's from the head injury but
I hyper focus on everything. So if there's a hundred people in front of me, my brain's trying to figure out what every single one of them's doing. It's just too much. That's why I like to just sit out in the woods by myself. It's just because it's somewhere where I don't have to, if that makes any sense, I don't know. So I don't like big crowds, so I would go see...
I've seen I went and saw Incubus once and I saw And I've seen Jamie Johnson twice I think and the last time I saw Jamie Johnson We had to leave after like four or five songs because I just couldn't be I was just like freaking out I couldn't be in the car I just couldn't be in that crowd of people anymore
So now that I have to be the guy in front of the whole crowd, it's bad. I mean, I felt terrible at the Houston rodeo when we did that because there was all these bull riders and stuff that I was supposed to take pictures with and get to meet. And I wanted to meet all of them and I met a lot of them after the fact.
But I'm in the back room, like, and I'm not trying to beat you. It's funny to me now looking back on it, but I was literally vomiting and like, I was having a whole, like, I didn't want to get in front of 60,000 people on some spin in stage. I was like, that's like my worst nightmare. Like, just cut my legs off or something. Don't make me do that.
I was terrified just total in total fear and these guys are just thinking I'm being a jerk not one and I don't know it's just tough I can just think back to some of that but I got about three quarters of the way through it like by the time the summer came and I was just wait so how did you actually walk out on stage so I want I used to train a lot
It's not a lot, but I trained MMA fighters, and there would be guys, T-Door T's. Before, you know what T-Door T's is? Before like a fight, he would be crying and throwing up. Like he would be that freaking freaked out, and he'd go win. I mean, he obviously did great. When you're puking and crying, because you have to go out on stage in front of 60,000 people, like, how do you overcome that? What'd you do?
Um, I, uh, my, I had brought my kids along with me and I, I can't, I would always just go sit with my kids and just think about that I had, I had to do this for them. And if I could just get through with this, if I could just, if I could just suck it up for just one year and get through all this, like at least I know they're going to be all right. Like they're going to have, I can leave something for them. And like it was just,
It felt like I was doing it. I was just doing it for my kid. But I also... It's also, like I said, I read all these Facebook messenger messages I get and I read my fan mail. I don't reply to all of them, but I do try to reply to a lot of them. There's some really real shit people that... And at these shows, I'll never forget when we went to Europe last year, I think the first or the second show and this...
This guy who looks like he could just pick me up with one hand and throw me across the room like I was He was just sobbing and like like hugging me telling me about how he lost his brother and going through sobriety and all these things and like And just talking about how he related to the music and how it helped him so much and just I was like dude This is like this is real life like I'm this isn't just some little moment like this isn't just some little thing that I like I have to take this a little more serious So it's a multi it's just a
It's a combination of things, but when all this happened, were you already sober? Meaning were you still drinking right before?
Um, July of 23 is when there was a guy who messaged me on Facebook and said, Hey, I know Draven Rife. We used to live together in Missouri. He's a guy that runs the radio WV channel. He's like, I can get y'all connected. So Draven texts me the next day. And then we talked for like less than a week. And it was like, so right, almost right before it was there. I'm trying to like relive this in my head because I'm
it's like all the things that have happened between now and then but sometime in that like in that June window is when I didn't drink I had like a come to Jesus moment so to speak and I just I can vividly remember being on my property and and I just and I remember vividly telling God like or just staying out loud like
I'm sorry that I'm such a piece of shit. And if you can just find something for me to do, I'll go do it. Just give me a purpose. Just give me something to do. And it was like right after that, that happened. Well, before Richmond, there was this song, Dog On It that I put, and it did okay on TikTok.
So two different A&R dudes hit me up. This guy named Sean Stevens and another one named Stefan Max, and they were both with like Warner Republic or something. And this was before Richmond. I was still working my job all that. I was so excited. I called everybody I knew and told them, dude, this guy from Warner Records, you know, I was so excited. Like if they would have signed you, they would have been the heroes of the century for their companies, right? So that's, so that was like almost right after saying like almost within a week of that, that happened.
So then I, so you had a literal come to Jesus. Like it wasn't like come to Jesus like actual. Hey God. It was just like, I didn't know what. Yeah. It was just like, I didn't know. Yeah. I just wanted to figure out what the, what the hell I'm supposed to do. Cause I just didn't, I didn't know, you know, and that's what, that's what made you get sober. And how much were you drinking before that? We drinking every day?
Yeah, well, I make wine. So it's not good to be. But I love making homemade wine. And I would run it strong. I would use the wine yeast that would go to 18%. Full dukes of hazards. Well, it's really easy to make, actually. It's like a lot of college. The reason I learned how to make wine, actually,
from this kid that went to George Washington University in D.C. when I used to go up there a lot when I was younger, like for stupid stuff, you know, like, uh, I got them. We're gonna open a whole can of worms up and like protest stuff and all that when I was younger. And they would make, they'd call it Hooch, which is why I named my white German Shepherd Hooch. But Hooch is like a slang word I guess. What you do is you take Welch's grape juice and you pour a little bit out and you just add sugar and wine yeast and you put a balloon on the top and stick it in your closet. And within a month or so, less than a month, you've got
wine that's like 17%. It's like an airlock. So it allows the gas to escape the bottle, but not the contaminants to come in. So you can make like, it tastes like Welch's juice, but it's like 16, 70% alcohol. So that's how I got into it. And then I started doing it with like fruit. And so I was making my own wine. So I would, I'd go out when I get home from work. I'd have a, like a lot of times I would just put it in like, I would just can it. I would just put it in Mason jars, you know, like the wine bottles with the corks and all that's just,
So a lot of times they're just being a jar and I would drink at least one Mason jar of that a night. Like I'd get just trash like, you know, it wouldn't take much a jar and a half in and you're like, like, at 18%. There's nothing left of you even when you drink every day.
And the problem is that homemade wine doesn't give you a hangover like cheap liquor or anything else does. So you can sort of get drunk on it every night and still wake up at 4.30 in the morning and go to work and you're not totally hungover if that makes sense.
So between that and that and just staying, just smoking weed constantly, like being high at work and stuff, like pulling up at the job site and smoking before I go out to do what I'm doing. It was just like I was just constantly in this state of escapism because I felt like sober Chris didn't like the fact that I didn't feel like I was
I just knew I wasn't the person that I was supposed to be or the person I could be, so it was like it was just easy for me to just stay in that. It's like I almost just wanted to stay in that state, you know, like that perpetual state of being. And so, yeah, so the drinking stopped. And you did that cold turkey scenario?
Like you stopped 100% and was there withdrawals or anything like that? Yeah. Yeah. Affirmative. Physical withdrawals and also like just the temptation of it. Like it was, you know, it's like it was.
But you gotta think, it all happened so quick that I didn't, so all that happened and then by the time July came, the dog on it thing happened. I started going to open mics to try to figure out, because you gotta think I'd never played on stage. What did the A&M dudes tell you? Did they try and get you to sell your soul? Well, at the time, I had,
1,200 monthly listeners on Spotify and 10,000 followers on TikTok I wasn't and I'd never played a gig before but I've been open mics but I wasn't like a real so all they were trying to do is just like like the one guy was the one guy was trying to get me to he was he worked with Zach Bryan and they they were I remember vividly they were in Oklahoma at the time and he was trying to get me to come out and hang out with him and Zach Bryan and like ride the bus and all this stuff and I felt like that was gonna be like
The initiation sequence to get me like stuck in and I just I had this terrible gut feeling about it And I like I wanted to do it so bad, but I just I just felt like I wasn't supposed to do it
So you actually said no. So they dangled the carrot of Zach Bryan tour in front of you and you were like, I don't think I would have been able to tour. I don't think I would have been allowed to play with him. I think he just wanted me to come out and experience it and like spend a couple of weeks isolated with them to where they could work out some kind of, and I think I would have probably gotten a really bad deal. Like they would have. I was looking at a contract lately and this initial contract that came from a group of people and it was for all.
IP intellectual property echo shows sure the the contract was like all and I my lawyer I said hey dude this is all what do they mean by all and he says all and the thing is
Hey, if I wouldn't have had a lawyer look at it, but also if I would have been, you know, if I didn't have a job or I was totally broke, I'd have been like, where's the pen? Let me sign that thing. Yeah, because you're, yeah, and that's where they find people. Like you're very lucky because if you would have rolled down there, they'd have been like, all right, cool. Hey, you know what? All this can be yours. You know, plus we'll give you, you know, three grand right now and you'd be like, where's the pen? You know, and you know what? They will have owned all your soul. He's, he, well,
we never got to any of that point in july talking about money or details it was all very vague it was like it was
Like I said, I was thrilled by it. Like the guy, and he was very professional in Hawaii and there was, I didn't have any bad feelings in that moment. It was just one, when they tried to get, like we had, we had had like a couple phone calls and emails back and forth before any of the bus stuff. It was just like, he was telling me about how he had met, he was telling me the whole story about meeting Zach Bryan and how they were trying to get him out of the military to go to, like he was telling me this whole story about Zach and how they like, develop them. And who knows how much involvement he really had was like, like, I don't know, I've never had the chance to meet, and Zach Bryan's like,
on top of the world, so I don't even wanna try to like, but you know, I hate bother, like even you, I felt like guilty trying to reach out to you to say, hey, like, but so, but it was easy for me to not wanna drink, because now I had this thing, it was like I had this carrot I was chasing, and so I went to this open mic at the seafood restaurant.
Always joke because the name the place is out of business now But the restaurant the name of the restaurant is I always joke and say that's what you say when you wake up the next morning from eating the food there is called I Don't know I'll remember it'll pop in my head in like 10 minutes But that's where I met my guitar player Joey at he was there He never did open mics, but he was there trying this girl out to see if she would work for vocals for his band the two of us met and
and we're sitting there afterwards and he he liked what i had done at the open mic and i liked what he did and i was to and that was the night i was supposed to get this phone call from shawn stevens or no stuff stuff on max the other guy and i was like look this guy's gonna call like i was so excited oh yeah he wanted to quit his job i wanted to quit my job so that was our plan was like we were just gonna do it and then right after that this get the guy from azurey reached out city new driving from radio wv and like that was it i mean
It was like everything just fell, everything just fell into place as soon as I, it was almost, he talked about like a movie character, like we were talking about the main character, like people thinking they're the main character in a movie or whatever, but it was hard for me in that moment to not feel like that.
It was supernatural the way everything fell together. And you got to understand like, so that happened. I met Dre, I talked to Draven on the phone and texted back and forth. And Draven's like, Draven wasn't this guy that ran this big radio company. He was literally flagging on the side of the highway for his buddy's company. Like he was on the side of the highway with a stop, slow sign. And I'm in a plan, we had to keep putting the phone down because we had shit to do and we'd come back and get on the phone again. And so like that was on a Wednesday and we recorded that weekend.
And I wasn't going to record Richmond. I wanted him to record all my other songs. Richmond only had half of Richmond done. I posted the first half on TikTok, but I didn't have the rest of the song finished like that whole second, the whole second verse. So it was like this last minute thing about we talked on a Wednesday.
I finished writing the song. We recorded Saturday and Sunday. We recorded like seven songs Saturday and Sunday. And I think he uploaded like maybe the next two. What do you have two cameras working? So Draven, Draven runs like a laptop, a little scarlet solo that you plug your guitar into with a microphone. And then he's got a camera. Usually what he'll do is he'll put a camera on a
Well, back then, the original set of videos, we did two takes, because he only had the one camera. So he would film me. Because I was watching, I was like, oh, there's two cameras here, because there's two different angles. Yeah, well, he's got to do it twice. I don't want to tell. Well, yeah, we've upgraded a little bit since then. But at the time, he only could. It was just the one camera. It's expensive trying to buy all the stuff.
All of his sessions up to that point were one camera and then like he would go back and have you play the song a second time, just so he could film it from another angle and then he would just cut the two together. Now there's like another camera guy, like a real mic stand that we don't have to have a cinder block sitting on so it'll fall over and like things are like a little more proper now but back then it was like.
But yeah, I just quit the drinking and the weed, and he had just quit the weed. He didn't really drink. And the two of us smoked a CBG joint and that tent that I had on my property that night after we filmed Richmond, and we were like talking all about life and all these things we wanted to do. And like, that man's like my brother now. Like we talk, not every day, but we talk a few times a week. Was he able to quit his job? Draven?
Yeah, so and we we've kind of like Well, there's something like 150 million plays of that song that right there is pretty good money, right? Equitrals? Yeah, well, and he had he had had a few other good ones prior to that too that it was just like
, and
When you're writing songs, so you were writing songs. Did you did you like mass produce songs once you got sober or were those songs kind of already in the hopper? They were already there. Yeah. And but that song you finished Richmond, basically when you were sober, because you wrote it that that you finished it that day.
The second verse, yeah, we talked on Wednesday and we recorded Saturday. So I had like Thursday, Friday to try to finish that. And how big of a channel was Radio WV? It was big enough where I was stalking him. I mean, he had what was special. But it wasn't big enough for him not to be flagging. What's special about Draven wasn't the size of his channel. It was, it's Draven and the way that he
I don't know if you look at some of his other recordings he had done prior to that like Logan Halstead for example like just the way he's able to bring out like There's a song Logan Halstead has dark black coal and that's the that's the best version of the song that you'll ever hear for the rest of your life He can Logan can go record it a million more times, but just you can just feel the I don't know like a good director Draven really care Draven really cares is what it is like he's Like he's not in it for any other reason except that like he really like it's
We're talking about this because he he helped me produce my album now so we are like producing like real music now with full instruments and equipment and all that we've invested in the we kind of have this dream now of like finding artists like the ones that he puts on radio wv that don't have a following and figure out
How can we, how can I take somebody like me, how can I find somebody like me who just kind of is, is brought into the space and how do we keep them safe from like all the vultures and how do we get their music recorded correctly, get them a good attorney that's not going to screw them over.
help them with their publicist work and their social media and getting all their accounts verified and like, you know, I had dudes claiming that they wrote all my songs. I had this guy. Um, there was this guy in the UK that had went to, he had registered all of my work in parliament for Canada, the UK and Australia. I had to get an attorney to like, take care of all that Robert Beckley's his name, I think. And, uh, he was saying that he had wrote Richmond North or Richmond about this suburb that's like in London somewhere called Richmond and like they had like,
like how can and my my angel really was Jamie Johnson like he came so after everything blew up. The farm market right down the road from where Brian was in the neighborhood on the reason I asked you about how big radio WV is you getting on radio WV.
is not like, oh, now you're set for life. You know what I mean? I just knew if I could get on there, he would be able to record me in a way that I could get. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. It was just like I knew I needed to get. I mean, I tried for over a year to get a hold of him.
But making it on the radio V at the time wasn't like, for lack of a better word, like making it big time. Not at all. No, no, no. That's what I want to convey. No, like I said, it was just like, like I said before, it was like if I could get on there and get 50 or 100,000 views and it was just something so like when I emailed all these bars and all these like, because you got to think like to just go play, like to give an example, like to just go play, to go play the little bar in Farmville or the one in Richmond or whatever, like,
There's a million people just like me who were trying to go book that for three hours for 300 bucks a night and there and I had no gigging experience I had no equipment I didn't really even know more than probably an hour worth of cover music if I was lucky because I wasn't You know what it means like I didn't have anything to stand on but I had these I had put out like I think ain't got a dollar was the first one and I had like maybe three or four songs I want to go home a few of those I just knew if I could get radio WV to record a few of those and put them out there then I could at least I could at least have something to show them
like, look, I have a little, I've got 1200 monthly listeners and I got this song like, just let me come play your bar. Like that's, that's what I, that was what the goal was, you know, to, I just wanted to get away from my job. I was so miserable being there and I just felt so stupid that I was just spending every day making people that I didn't like money and like wasting what little bit of valuable because life goes by so fast, man. Like,
like you can just look in the mirror and just watch yourself age it's just like it just happened so fast and I just didn't want to get stuck you know I just didn't want to get stuck and I didn't want to be that I didn't want to be Shane like I didn't want to be that guy who was 60 years old like I just I know what else am I going to do I can't do anything like I'm
I'm about stupid otherwise it's not like I can go I couldn't go and like I can't figure out how to how to wire something as an electrician or do HVAC or you know it's like I was just either gonna be doing dumb labor jobs or I was gonna be trying to figure out how to do something on my own you know and
So you record Saturday Sunday when does he upload it like I think it was like the next Wednesday it was quick I remember I went into work Monday and The guy at work that I was real close with I I remember telling him like dude this song is either gonna
because Draven was insistent that Richmond was the first one we put out and I didn't want to put I knew the song was controversial and I didn't want I didn't want him he was he had already pressured me into recording it like I didn't even want to record it because I was I pictured I was telling him before we went on the camera but the whole Oliver Anthony music thing was you know
Christopher Lunsford couldn't upload ain't got a dollar on YouTube because Christopher Lunsford is on Dodge reports and on stuff where if you were to Google Christopher Lunsford Like and that song pop up like I'm not I'm not allowed to go into DuPont or Gerdow or any of these like facilities and plants on THC They have like a THC policy, so I can't have a song about smoking weed like I would have lost my job I've got three kids I'd have been totally so I so everything was under that name to kind of disguise myself anyway, and so I
Just with that, you know, it's just, and it's so crazy now to go back and think about it all because this whole timeline of events led to us having that very first show at this little farm market right up the road from the neighborhood where I'd been getting drunk for years and hanging out with Brian and all of them. And Jamie Johnson shows up who like,
The whole mind end of it all was just in the last couple months, I still have my truck from high school. It's a little 99 Tacoma, five-speed manual. I bought it when I was 15. My dad helped me put the down payment on it and all. It's still got Jamie Johnson CD and the CD player from like...
It's like you just can't make it up, man. So you were about to say when you rolled back into work. So I'm sorry. I'm so scattered, right? It's a lot. It's a lot of like you can. I haven't talked about any of this since it happened. So it's like a lot. All that I just remember. Yeah, I remember I went back into work and I told him I was like, dude,
I was like, this song's talking about Epstein Island and all this stuff. I was like, I'm totally losing my job. I was like, they're going to fire me next week. In my mind, I'm picturing that the song is going to totally flop and I'm going to lose my job because of it. So I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm panicking freaking out and I'll never forget right after he uploaded the song. He called me right after it went up and it had like a thousand views if not even that.
I was sitting in my parents living room and we played it on the TV like with their Bluetooth speaker like their TV speaker the bar and I called him back and I was like dude I think we should take it down I don't think it needs to be on there like I didn't I was so scared I was just so terrified of it being up like I and I didn't I don't know I just
this whole thing even now, even with what I'm doing now, I'm terrified, because I know what I'm doing, I need to do, but I know that even, I know anytime, even if you're doing something that you feel like is right and something that you are called to do or supposed to do, it's like, sometimes it's hard to be brave when you don't wanna, it's like, it's hard to, like you know that there's consequences that are gonna come with that, like,
Yeah. You know that there's risk. There's always risk in anything you do. Like anything that has purpose behind it also sometimes has inherent risk. And I was just, I had to really figure out, do I really want to do this or do I just want to keep working my stupid little job and try to get my debt paid off in 10 years and just, you know, like, do I want that song out? How long did it take for the song to get traction? Didn't it get like 5 million views in three or four days or something like that?
Yeah, I don't really know the numbers because I didn't, I didn't look at it, but I just remember looking at my, I remember my TikTok account went like crazy all at once. Like, cause I still have my notifications turned on. You know, I was, there's a ton of people like, if you look on my TikTok account now, I don't know how many people I follow, but I was following back everyone who followed me. And when they would message me, I would message them back. Like there's a lot of, I still have friends now that I've now gotten to meet at shows and all who were people I was talking to on TikTok. Like,
before everything went crazy. But yeah, it was like this little tight knit group I had on there. And then I was like, the phone was just dinging all day and going crazy. And then people had somehow gotten my number. And I remember there was a guy from a booking agency who was trying to get me like that next weekend to go open for Hank Jr. and all the stuff. And I'm still at my job. And I'm just like, what am I going to do? It all went nuts at one time. It really did. And people at work were catching on to it. And when I go places, people were in like,
Don't know how long I work it was less than two weeks that I worked there before I quit It was probably about a week and a half I put my I put in a two-week notice and I left on good terms actually with my boss and even it was really good So me and him are actually really cool now and I um but he actually told me he said well if you ever cuz he didn't know he had never even looked at it He's like well if he's like if this doesn't work out and you need to come back He's like you have a job here. Yeah, and I was like that's so solid. Yeah, it's like that's so cool, you know that he
but it just all happened so fast. When did you realize, okay, so it took you two weeks to quit your job, but you knew almost immediately, like I could quit my job now. Yeah, I think the first two shows, I remember for sure those first two little shows I did, it was Morris Farm, that was the one like Jamie showed up and all those big crazy first show. And then when we did Eagle Creek the next weekend, I remember I was still at work then, but it was probably like right. It was probably within about two weeks. How many people came to Eagle Creek?
We don't know because they were free shows. I just showed up and played, but we estimate they estimated like 12,000 is what they thought was at the farm market show. So and that farm market usually has like up until then it would have like a couple hundred people there at the most first. You know, it was a farm market on the way to the beach in North Carolina. It was just like this.
But I'd been going to that farm market since I was a kid and I had and I was like sentimentally attached to it and I just wanted that to be I Don't know just felt like the right place to do the first one to do my very first show I don't know but It was nuts and we didn't meet and greet after I remember I was there for like four hours after the shit like meeting every And that's when this whole it just I don't know I still can hear like what those people were telling me about like they were just so excited like I
that's the thing like it's not it's not me at all like as like i was telling you before dude i'm trash i know like seven chords a lot of those original songs i don't think even sounded all that the new the new album that i got coming out is like the first piece of work that i've done where i'm like man this rocks like before that i wasn't even a big fan of my own music it was really just the fact that somebody came along with
was saying, you gotta think I had been working with real people for my whole life in factories and going in the steel mills and the power plants and the air conditioning factor I worked at. And even when I worked at McDonald's, you can't
It's hard for anyone to have real conversations with people when like you can't just go to a jobsite interview people and ask them about like what they're struggling with and like their finances and their depression and like what they're dealing with with their wife and like how their company has screwed them over or how this policy that went into place went into place will like affect the quality of life for them because of that like they you get the real story from people when you're there with them and you're in like
You're part of the same ecosystem. It was almost like maybe the only way that Rich, like maybe that song was just inspired by a decade of just listening to everybody say like the exact same thing almost, you know, like, and now, and now to have been to Europe and Australia and it's the exact, it's like almost the exact same, it's, it's to your point earlier about
you know, when you, you don't realize what other people are going through. But in many cases, they're going through the exact same thing you're going through. But there is no hotline, especially like what, like what is a 25 year old guy supposed to do? What are you going to do? Are you going to call some hotline number and get put on some list? Like I, like I'm, I'm not going to, I don't, I didn't feel like even if I could find a psych, how do you even find a psychologist or some or a therapist to talk to? And how do you even trust him to talk about like,
You know to talk about like these dark things that you're dealing with and like I don't know it's We're so again in my mind a lot of it goes back to the fact that we're just so immersed in this all day long It's really difficult for us to have real conversation And I think that if anything proves it It's the fact that people are willing to listen to people talk in front of a camera for three and a half hours and be glued to every word of it like people need We are we are all so lonely and we just we don't realize how lonely we all are like we
Go find an uncontacted tribe that is discovered and when they show even the way they live, which has no outside influence theoretically with the rest of the world, what do they do? They're all super in these super tight knit communities and they sing music all day long. It's not something that we're taught culturally. It's part of our operating system. We need it. And that's what makes me so like, I guess that's now. That's why I'm on this
That's why now I'm willing to risk all of it again, I guess, and go on this tangent that I'm going on to try to do something different, because to me, with music specifically, I look at that music that I wrote that was crap, that was on my phone, and my guitar is out of tune, and I'm out of key, and the song's not in time, and they just...
By every textbook definition those songs suck and if you go on the original I've got to get sober YouTube video and look at the comments from where I'm sitting under the carport at my camper playing it like read those comments like you just you can't make that up like Those people felt something out of that and that's that's the kind of music that we need to be putting out and but but It's like like with everything else medicine education you name it things that we really need people have found a way to pry themselves in the middle of and
It's like a little toll road they set up and they can collect a check every time, but they know. It's like a big toll road. They know people are they know people need it. Yeah. Well, you know, again, before we started recording, we were talking about some stuff. And one of the things I was saying is I think one of the things like what you just said, the appeal of your music is that people go.
Oh, other people feel the same way as I do. And this reminds me, you know, I used to have like seeing new guys going out on missions and the SEAL teams, like a new guy could see his real nervous before he goes out on his first mission. And I'd be like, do you, are you nervous? And of course he'd be like, no, but you go, Hey, man, well, you've gone to the, you've gone to the bathroom four times in the last 15 minutes. So something's going on.
And basically to say, hey, dude, yup, it's totally normal. It's totally normal. You're gonna be nervous. Of course, you're gonna go out and freakin' combat somebody trying to kill you. That's fine. It don't, like, that's normal. And as soon as people realize, like, oh, okay, so what I'm feeling is the same as what a lot of people feel. And I think that, you know, your music is, hey, what you're feeling right now?
You know, you got financial issues, you got freaking drama at work, you got the girls, you know, causing problems, you're like, you're drunk again, like all these things, like, oh yeah, other people are going through these things. And I think that's, that's very common. And then what you mentioned about, you know, you being out of key and out of tune, your guitars up tuning and all that stuff, you know, I was, I,
Let's talk and I have a company called echelon front where we do a leadership consulting and There's an opportunity like we speak to a lot of people and there's an opportunity when you speak to people to clean things up to a point where it becomes sterile and As we were kind of moving in that direction
I, a few years ago, I said, Hey, who here listens to the white stripes? And people like, maybe a little bit, whatever. And I said, and I, cause I heard this interview with Jack White from the white stripes. Yeah. And he was talking about how when like a modern pop musician, when they make music, when they make, they take, they sample like a snare drum. Yeah. And they'll, they'll hit it a hundred times and they'll find the perfect snare hit.
And then they'll take that, that snare hit, the high hat, the snare hit, the high hat, the crash symbol. They'll take the perfect one that they want and then they put it into the computer. And so every snare hit is absolutely perfect. And then they do the same thing with their guitar solos. Like they'll play that thing 13 times and they'll make little adjustments. They'll get it to auto tune like they do all these things. And so you hear something that's clinical and quote unquote perfect.
But going back to what we were talking about earlier, it's almost like it's not human anymore. It's not. So for you to be like, Oh, this is just me. My guitar is a little out of tune. My voice is what my voice is and you're going to have to deal with it. And people go and they can feel that that's a human there. And that's so much more relatable than something that's been synthesized by a computer in my opinion.
Yeah, so that's my, yeah, I agree with you. And that's my realization is that there are thousands of people who can do all of that better than me. And part of this drive that Draven and I have talked about with producing music is we want to, like we want to do that for like,
There's a million more Oliver Anthony musics out there like I I'm one of many that could just go and do that like there's not it's just like even with my own music so This last album. We just recorded I've recorded it once in Nashville in November and It was with two big producers who were very good like good-hearted nice dudes and I'm not saying it's not anything negative about them when I say this and
But they we went into the studio they brought all these Nashville recording dudes in that were and we just sat there and we did all the songs just so perfect and they went and then they went back and dubbed all this crap over it trombones vocal background singers all these little ran ran ran all these weird little noises and all the stuff and when they
and I hate I'm just being transparent but I'm not proud of this but when they sent me the songs back and I was listening to him and I was I'm still I've still got my trusty blue suburban that I was talking about on the Joe Rogan at the time on the Joe Rogan podcast it had just gotten dropped off the back of a rollback and so the truck got totaled out but I bought it back so I'm still driving the turd and uh
I punched the radio out on it when I listened to the first song because they wouldn't let me listen to any of the rough mixes. They were like, no, no, no, give us a few weeks. We want a month went by and they sent me these fully mastered mixes, mixed songs and they were terrible. They were that. They were perfect little. And then it just, I don't know, it's just like,
I don't know what I just felt violated by it almost, but I was so upset that I just like punched the radio and luckily you can buy a radio for a 2007 suburban for like 50 bucks. So it ain't like it's like it wasn't really an expensive mistake, but I was like furious by it. So we just we just literally went so I caught so driving listen to him. We both agreed that they all sucked.
So we, I've walked away from the project and we went and bought all the equipment that we needed. Now, how did you walk away? You can't walk away from a project. That's got to be freaking legally complicated. I don't do contracts. I just do handshakes. And I'll cover all the costs associated with the original recording. I'm going to lose.
You know, I'll lose 50 grand or something, but I'm not gonna put a song out. That's not my song either, you know Yeah, but we but we and they were and they were trying to bully me like they were like they were sending emails to my attorney like That weren't very not like they weren't being very nice. I guess is all it wasn't them is their attorney not being nice to my
So I said, Draven and I talked about it. And we were like, well, let's just try to do it again and just see what it sounds like. And if it's better, we'll just go with our, well, let's just do it. Let's just go back to doing it the way we did everything else. And so we bought all this equipment. This was just a couple of weeks ago. This was a.
I can't remember the dates, but it was literally like two weeks ago. We just went and recorded all this. At my house, and I've got a little place near just north of Bluefield, West Virginia now, where I stay most of the time. And we brought everybody in. It snowed like six inches. The power went out.
So we're literally in my house. Luckily, I got a wood stove in the house, but we're literally in the house with the whole band. You know, we got every room is set up with something. So the fiddles in the one bedroom, I'm in the other bedroom, the drums are in the basement. We just recorded the whole album in my house. And it sounds so much better than the original. Like it is so real and vibrant and chaotic. And like, you know, there's probably one of the first songs off of it that I'll put out is, um,
Well, like when you get to the solo parts, there's a part where I wanted it to. I wanted the solo to feel like the emotions that I'm feeling in the lyrics. So it's like it's anxiety at the beginning and then it builds in the anger. And so it's like just this most chaotic solo that it goes through that the fiddle and the guitar go back and forth on. And you would never be able to replicate that having them go back and play over me. You would never overdub that. Are you playing lead? For most. Yeah. Hell yeah.
Well, yeah, Joey, Joey does like the crazy. I'm usually just rhythm and slide stuff and he's like, he does the solo stuff here. Um, but it's, you know, when's the album coming out? I have no idea. Um, I'll probably just start dumping. Well, that's the thing now. Like I don't have, I don't have a management company. I don't have a publicist. It's just like, I just, whatever. It's just me. I'll just, I don't know like that.
Usually there's a, usually there's this whole, you know, in music, when new music, that's part of what was so funny at the beginning with like, with all those songs charting is that like most songs to chart have a lot of money invested in them. Like, I don't know if you know, like, I didn't know this until all this happened, but it's very common for a label to spend like up to a million dollars buying their own song essentially on the chart, like to get it up to a certain level.
There's there's a there's a ton of marketing and like it's a it's a business like anything else and so But with these will we'll come up with some kind of release strategy and we'll get you know We'll put them out probably in the night There'll be a song out within a month for sure the first one and then we'll just because I've only I've only put two two new songs out since Richmond and I did that because like I said I thought I thought it was just gonna be kind of done and over within it and
And it's like I tried to let the flame die out and it didn't. And I realized that like I was being really, you know, I had this moment, not that long ago. And it was, it was a ride around the time that we had to put Hooch down. And I realized like, man, I'm really fucking up not doing this. Like I, like I went back and I remembered it's like I just kind of forgot for a minute about how everything had happened up to that point. And like, and like what I told God that I was going to do at the beginning, you know,
And like, here I am, I've got, it's like, I just felt like such a coward. It's like, here you are, you've made, you've made your three or four million dollars and you can just go live your stupid little life in the woods and like, like what a coward I am, like, Joan and the whale, you know, like running away from what I'm supposed to do. And so yeah, it's just, I don't know. So yeah, so I just, I got, I,
I had to walk away from a lot of the professional companies that I was using because I was trying to accomplish tasks with those companies that was that they almost physically couldn't do because it would jeopardize relationships that they already have with the people that I'm effectively trying to compete against if that makes sense or trying to circumvent. I'm not trying to compete against them. This is a this thing that I'm going to do is non-profit. It's another way. It's another way of doing it. But it it wasn't like they were even being malicious. I don't think I think it was just that they couldn't do it because they had other business arrangements that were
that were prioritized over mine, you know? How long was it? I'm wondering how long it takes for Vultures to attack. How long was it when Richmond came out? How long did it take before you got like a phone call of someone saying, hey, this is, I'm a big studio exec. Oh, the president of record labels were at the first show.
Like the, I don't want to speak out of context. I don't remember. I don't know what his job role, but there was, there was big, very high level people from Republic and Warner and a few of the other ones at the very first show that Jamie was at. Do they, do they just, do they give you an offer on the spot? Are they like walking up to you like, Hey, I'm going to make your dreams come true. I got it. Here's a check. What does this need to be?
Is it that kind of thing? Well, there was only one that gave me a verbal amount of what an advance would be off the guy. A lot of them just wanted it. They were all very polite. They're just like sales representatives is all they are. So I never, I never, there was a, yeah, there was a few offers that went out. Like it, basically what they'll do is offer you an advance, which is just
It's like what it is is it's just alone more or less. They'll give you three million dollars up front, but then they own your intellectual and they're going to make all that money off the back end. And then like that album that I've recorded in Nashville, I would have had to put that out. Like I wouldn't have had a choice. They would have owned it. Then this whole catalog of music is going to be out for the rest of my wife that I don't even want out. Like that'd be tortured me.
And that happens to a lot, there's a lot, and there's other artists that have spoken out about how that's happened to them, but it's a common, it's not like any of it. Yeah, that's the story of, did you know that story? Like, I've always known that story that guys like Meatloaf, you know Meatloaf? Yeah. Like Meatloaf, he made however many albums and the original album Meatloaf was such a huge, massive, like triple platinum, whatever, and he didn't make any money from it because somebody came and he signed some contract that said, you know, what do we own? We own it all.
And there's a bunch of stories like that with people getting screwed over. I would have gotten screwed if Jamie Johnson wouldn't have come to the first show. And you guys understand I quit my job, but it takes 90 to 120 days to start getting paid for digital streaming sales. So I didn't get a check off of Richmond until
Like around christmas time was when i got my first check so we and i quit my job we had like a few thousand dollars saved up i did the first two shows i did were free so i had no cash flow coming in i have nothing and then yeah people are it's it was easy for people to throw money right so but right out the gate what he did was he he got me in contact with his attorney and his attorney was like
His attorney was really cool. He didn't, he didn't make me pay a dime until I started having, like he worked for me for free for basically three months. But if I hadn't had that attorney, man, like, I mean, I, this is, I, I just want to tell the story. So like this isn't, I don't even want to say this on a podcast, but I do want it to just, I want you to, I want like people to understand like how psyched out I got from the very beginning, but I had a, I had a relative
who owns a couple small businesses. Like he offered at the very, like we're a family and he offered to help me set all of my register. I didn't have any of my songs registered. Like I said, that's how that Robert Beckley guy or whatever was able to get me in the UK. I didn't have anything trademarked. I had the uploads from Distro Kid. Thank God. That was the only thing I had, but I didn't have anything actually registered. I didn't have any of my music published officially. And he went and set all that up for me, but he made himself 3% owner of all my intellectual property when he did it.
And he said he had to do that in order to sign things on my behalf that he would take it back off, but then he wouldn't take it off. So like that same attorney from Jamie, like save me even from my own family, like, like one of my own relatives ripping me off. And like that was within the first two months. So like, how am I supposed to trust anybody then? Like if my, like, if that's ages.
Yeah. And like, I, and I don't know, I've matured a lot from this even thinking about freaking out at those shows and stuff. I don't, I, um, yeah, like I've just, this whole thing is just, if there's one thing that I've learned from all of it is like they, everyone speaks about it. You've spoken about it in Jordan Peterson and other things, but like the only way to overcome fear and develop yourself is to, is like to face it, you know,
And, and I can say that it, like I, I am a much better person right now than I was a year ago from having gone through, like it does in the long run, as long as you can just maintain enough of a level of discernment to not fall into a pit. And if you're just able to just figure out how to get through it, there is a huge reward at the other side of it. Like there's, so there's wisdom now that I would have never been able to have if I had no went through those things, but
Yeah, no, I'm kind of, I'm very impressed and surprised in the fact that like, I can't imagine the money that people were offering you as an advance to say, Hey, just sign this dotted line right here. And you don't have to worry about anything else. And just go ahead and sign this, go ahead and sign this. And here you are, you just quit your job. Like the fact that you came out of that in the position you're in where you didn't sign those things and you don't, you know, nobody owns, owns you or your intellectual property is, is freaking amazing.
So then where did it go from there? So now you need money at some point. Did you guys just set up a tour? How did that work? So Brian was like, all these emails and offers are coming like for doing different gigs and stuff. And so like we just went and took some like sketchy gigs without really knowing what we were doing.
there was one, there was this one bluegrass festival I did in Kentucky where they like just gave me a briefcase full of cash for doing the show. Like it was just like, it was just like, it was the Wild West for the whole fall, but it was enough money to where I could pay everybody and just have enough to get, to get by on. And then I think like I said, the first, the first check from Richmond came through like the first, the first big transfer came over from Distro Kid in December and, uh,
I didn't even know what to do with it. I was able to get a hold of the guy who was the president of Distro Kid. I think he's just now on the board now. I got his cell phone number and called him and told him, don't give this money to anybody. I was afraid somebody was going to hack into my Distro Kid account and take the money out. You got to think, man, I was making 80 grand a year. That first check that came in was 800-something.
It was a paralyzing amount. It wasn't money that I didn't know what to do. I was paralyzing fear from it. And that's from everything from Spotify, from Apple. That's digital streaming, yeah. All digital streaming.
Well, since I write, since I've, since I write all my own songs and technically I'm the label and technically I'm able to collect from all those different avenues. So it is. So like most artists make their money touring, but I, I actually made just as much money off streaming last year as I did touring. You know, just, and part of that's also because my, because I was running my tour at the lowest margin I could to where I knew I could, where I wasn't going to lose. Like, I don't know who does, I,
I wanted a $25 ticket option because I knew what it was like to not only not have any money, but probably have three grand on a credit card. There's people out there who are not only broke, they're broke and upside down. They don't have $200 to go watch a show. If anybody needs to go see music, it's the guy who's got $3,000 in credit card debt. It's not the dude that's got a million dollars in the bank.
And people thought I was just a dumbass for doing $25 tickets. Even the professional people were just thinking it was so stupid. And I was just, but man, there was this, there was this, there's been so many times where I've like doing the meet and greets after the shows where there was people who came up and you could tell like they didn't have any money. Like they're not people that would go to a, like their kids were in rough looking clothes and they were in like a beat or ass car and that, but they were there and they were like, they were pumped. They were, yeah. And in cases like,
I don't know.
He may have used the word burden, but it's not a burden to me, but just when another grown person comes to you as a complete stranger and tells you things that they probably have never told anybody else, even their partner or any like
And they're and they get in that emotional state and they're like, and they're telling you that and they trust you with that. You'd have to be a psychopath to not carry that a little bit yourself. And they're like, and they're not, and they're not feel obligated to try to make some kind of, I don't know, like I, I don't know how you're not supposed to like, I still think about those, some of those people that I talk to, like I just,
I don't know if they're normal. A lot of them are like big tough guys that you would never even think had a care in the world. And they're like, they're one more bad day away from just wanting to end up, you know? I don't know. Yeah, then you're doing that. How many, like how many, what was your touring schedule like? How often were you playing?
Um, well, so I used, I used you. So what happened was was I was, I was with Brian and we were just like cash suitcase in our shows and like winging it. And that worked up until there was one gig we went to book at a place and every show has a contract you signed before the tickets go on sale. And that way I can see like what the tickets are going to be sold out. It has like a, like the payout of what the show will do, estimated costs, what I'm going to make, what the menu is going to make, all that kind of stuff.
Well, we had a show that they sent a contract proposal over. It never got signed. I never agreed to do the show, but somehow the show still got put on sale and tickets were getting sold at like this crazy price that was never agreed upon. And so after that, I realized like, I got to find somebody who knows what they're doing to handle this. And my attorney was like, my attorney is like, you're going to just get burnt. You got to have somebody in the middle that understands.
How like is it it's surprisingly complex? That's why I want to do this thing I'm trying to do because it's right now like just even to be an artist and book a show is like You got to have an attorney to do it basically or a professional agency doing it for you like it's it's a lot of those contracts are like very complex, you know, and there's a lot of money at stake and So I ended up getting a booking agency and they helped me put that put that tour together for this past year. So it was like
It was a lot of weekend runs, which, uh, which this year, when I go out and do runs this year, I'll probably do them more two or three weeks. Like we'll go out. We're going to do a big West Coast tour for 2025. So we'll go, we'll be on the road for over a month and a bus. You know, I've got like a two week run in Canada. We're planning. So we'll be in Canada for like two weeks on a bus. Same way with, you know, this Europe, Europe is going to be a month long run and Australia will be two weeks. Like I'm trying to do them more where they're not.
A lot of artists that tour out of Nashville, my understanding is Nashville is a little more centrally located. You can go out and do weekend runs that way, but everybody that my whole band's in Virginia, the only person that I have out of Nashville is my fiddle player, Billy Contreras, everybody else is just people that live. They're all people I knew from before, you know, my whole, the rest of them.
So it's hard to leave out of Virginia go do two shows in Michigan and Missouri or something it was like we were just All over the place you know home for three days and then right back out again It wasn't very effective the way it was it was kind of inefficient the way we were The way we ran around this year and I also didn't have a lot of control over it because all the venues have waiting lists basically like if you want to play Red Rocks for example
You have to red rocks is an extreme example, but just the one that comes to mind like any of the any that really any of the venues usually already have a couple people in line. So like when you want to book like if I wanted to go play the Pittsburgh amphitheater again, there's probably three or four people that have it all who are already in line for like every available day, especially on the weekends. So it's kind of like.
You're so there's a lot more demand than there is supply right now in the venue world. I would say from what I've observed, at least at the level, at the size of venues I'm playing, like this meat, like I'm not doing any big, the biggest shows I'll do is like 10,000 seats or something like that. You know, how many gigs did you do on tour that first like run? Like how many shows did you do? I don't even know. Was it like, was it like 20 or was it like a hundred?
It was like, in 2020, I don't know how many shows we did in 2024, but it had to have been probably like 50, more than 50, I'd say.
when you walk out like on stage and you're all freaking, you don't like people. Do I love the people? Well, but I'm saying like that's just gotta be the craziest feeling when you walk out or when you have 10,000 people singing the words to your songs. That's gonna be a pretty freaking crazy thing for you. Yeah, I like this.
The first, the first one I visited, well, even I was, I couldn't believe in it that even at that very first show we did, right? Which is right after it's within within two weeks of Richmond blowing up. This, of course, those people who went back and listened to all the other songs, but even at the very first show, everyone there knew almost every song. And I was like, that's when I, you know, and that cat happening. And that's when it started to realize that this wasn't just like, this wasn't just going to go away, like in the next few minutes, which I would, like I said, I was kind of like,
I don't know I don't know what I was thinking part of me is just it was out of it was mostly fear base but part of me just kind of wanted it to go away because I just didn't know what to you know yeah I just didn't know what to do did you get more used to it now I'm pretty now I'm okay with it yeah now it's like I mean I'm still terrified before I go out there but um
It's not like that like the Houston rodeo was the worst right one of the worst ones, but and you can watch like if you watch the Houston radio correctly from wrong, but you look you played you played the guitar at Brian's parties like on the block or whatever yeah, but as far as you you missed an entire M maturing process as an artist of doing like home playing a club with a hundred people the first big gig was and technically it wasn't
I mean, they gave me I think they gave me like a thousand dollars just to cover my costs, but that morse farm show Yeah, that was technically my first gig like that was my first official gig and that was 12,000 people that know the words to all your songs. You see what I'm saying? That's a weird That's a weird place to go from this, but the shows isn't where it's so weird. It's the everyday real life. It's the like like
So Labor Day weekend, every Labor Day weekend, I invite a bunch of people to my property and we all camp out and ride four-wheelers and shoot guns and just fellowship stuff. And I had to go to Farmville Walmart to get hot dogs and like some other crap, you know, and this is right after I go to, I've been in that Walmart a thousand times, but.
That time I had to, the store manager had to come out and shake my hand and I had to take all these pictures and people were following me out in the parking lot and like, that's when it's like, that's, that's the part that feels weird, not so much the show. I can, I can, um, yeah, the shows aren't so weird feeling. It's the every, it's like the rest of it. It's like, and I forget, like I said, I've got, I'll go stay, I'll go stay at our farm for a couple of weeks and work on stuff and, you know, I know, of course, that all this music stuff's going on and I'm involved in it and I'm having to like get on conference calls and emails and stuff, but
I'm just able to be Chris. And then I go out and try to get gas. And I'm like, oh, man. It's like, I don't know. It's almost like, it almost feels like sometimes I'm a fugitive on the run or something. I'm always, I've always got a, you know, because you just don't know. You were talking about earlier about people waiting outside of that guy's apartment to take pictures with him. It's kind of like sometimes,
90% of the time they're like, a lot of times you walk away from those conversations better than you were before you start. A lot of times it's a very rewarding thing, but every once in a while it's a malicious thing. Or it's like, I don't know. Sometimes people are just, they're just like stalkers. It's not good. Yeah, and you're not blending in too. How tall are you?
Well, my running joke is that I'm 5'11 on Wikipedia, but I'm like, I'm probably like six. I think my driver's license is six, six. I'm probably like really six, five or something. I don't know. So six, five freaking bright red hair, bright orange beard. Like you're not, you're not blending in anywhere. You know, like people are going to identify you from long range. Yeah. The shows is, you know, the thing at the shows that's crazy, the one thing that,
So like imagine doing the show, you know, being on stage for an hour and 45 minutes in front of five or 10,000 people and then especially towards the end of the show. That's when we really get connected because there's a lot of times towards the end of the show, I'll read something out of scripture and like we'll do a couple of the more serious songs and then, you know, usually Richmond and then we might do an encore after Richmond, but we've, Richmond's always like, you know, Richmond and I want to go home and maybe a couple others. Everybody's always really into him.
so you feel this connection with like thousands of people at one time and then everything goes away and you're just like going to take a shower in the locker room before you go to leave to go and it's like you go from all that to like to to being by yourself that's so very that's so that is an interesting feeling like
That's something that's the feeling you wouldn't experience otherwise. There's no way for a normal person to experience that. Was it feel lonely? Empty? Gratified? Satisfied? What's the vibe when you're sitting alone in the bus after you just freaking made 10,000 people cry?
Hmm well part of it. I feel like
I feel hopeful for the future that because when you're with thousands of people who you feel like are just normal everyday people who aren't like, like I said, even, I mean, that's why like anything sports or anything is so captivating to people or why people will go pay $300 a ticket to go to a Zach Bryan concert because they're in a, they're in an amphitheater with 60,000 other people or whatever who feel the same way they do. At least they all have something in con.
world like said like in a world where it seems like everybody's at on end with each other and angry about something like there is there again it goes back to like the same reason why tribes sing music together and are so close there's there is like a there's certainly a very rewarding experience to be able to be a part of that but i always just feel like i'm a part of it i never feel like i'm
I never really feel like I'm the guy on stage, I guess. I just feel like I'm experiencing this moment with all those other people, you know? Like, I don't ever feel like I'm the guy on the stage, I guess. And it's a weird feeling, but...
Yeah, the loneliness is like, like I said, the difficulty, the challenging part comes when you're not at the shows. Like I said, every relationship you have changes because even though I'm Christopher Lunsford, my friends, my family, my neighbors, the people I've known, 15 years, new people I meet, like I'm Oliver Anthony to them. Even if I am just still Chris to him, I'm different, you know? And I can, it's like, it's kind of the same thing like they talk about
You read about people who win the lottery and then like their whole life falls apart. Cause everybody treats them different. Everybody wants something from them and it's not necessarily anybody wants it. Like I'm not saying it like that. It's just like I'm so, to me, this Oliver Anthony music thing is like a project that I'm working on. It's not me. Like I'm not Oliver Anthony, you know, I'm not like I'm just, I'm just some guy. Like I just, I'm just that guy that wrote that song, you know, and I have a million other parts of my life that like you'd be surprised how little of
the actual music space occupies my head on a daily basis like I'm there's a lot of other things of course a lot of them have been enabled now because of that music project that I'm working on but it's not like I live in that world all the time either so it's been challenging I said it's been challenging it's been challenging re-centering myself in my relationships with people and because
Because it's like I'm almost in a dip. It's like I'm in a different reality. Like everyone's dip. My social interaction, the way I engage with people, the things we talk about, like it's all dip. You know, it's just been a learning curve, but. Yeah, it's like you're in a new environment that you got to adapt to, you know, like. Yeah. And that was that whole process last year. Like I fell apart last year. I gained.
I was up to 280 pounds. I was anxious all the time. I wasn't getting any sleep, just taking terrible care of myself. Like I said, I was just in the whirlwind of it. And now it's like the last two or three months I've been working out every other day and running and eating right. I'm down to 245 pounds. I'm getting my head right again. I've got this whole mission that I'm on now with this thing this year.
I'm through it, like, but it was definitely, but again, coming out on the other side of it, I'm a much better person than I was before. And I feel like now I can, I feel like now I can take on the world and I can do all these things that I wanted to do back then. I just had to like.
I had to like, I had to mature as a, as a, as a, I had to like, it was like, I don't know, you know, Draven and I both joke about it because he's went to a lot of transition to his life now because of what happened. But like, we're like, we're trying to be men now, you know, we were just, we, like, we weren't men before. I don't know. We weren't like, we had, we hadn't like accepted
There's a certain part in your life. And I guess for you, that's probably the beauty of enlisting in the military is it helps you get there quicker. But without that guidance and discipline and without that sense of purpose, there's people who are 50 years old who are still just boys. I'm not well-spoken enough to be able to... I guess you know what I'm saying. No, I know 100% what you're saying. It's very... Because I've explained that or thought about that before from the military perspective.
It's awesome because you enlist in the military and you are now a productive, self-efficient member of society. Self-sufficient member of society. You have medical coverage, you have a paycheck, you have a place to live, and you have food. Which is actually huge. Having all those things organized when you're 18 years old is pretty impressive.
So yeah, for a normal person that doesn't do that, they got to go out and make all those things happen. It can be a lot harder to become a self-sufficient human. And what you're talking about is like when you're avoiding being a self-sufficient, productive human, you can put that off for a long time. And it sounds like
What the place that you were at was like, oh, I know I'm not the self-sufficient human. I should be. I'm going to cover up that with, you know, some free homemade wine. There's, yeah, there's people though that like in my case, I was 18 working a full time job. I had my own apartment. I was renting. You know, I even had some money put away and all like there was never a time if you looked at me on a textbook that my life was necessarily like that I wasn't.
But it was just that I wasn't I was just
I was just doing what I needed to do to pay the bills. And I wasn't pursuing my, it's like, I wasn't fulfilling whatever my purpose was. Like I think, I think. I think you were treading water. Yeah, exactly. But almost making me progress. But most all of us do for a long time, you know, like everyone I know that works a, that works a job like that, they have something like, you know, it's, and this is like, this goes back to just,
watching you and Jordan Peterson videos and other things, but you realize at a certain point in your life that we all do have. We all have this great idea, like we all have the spark, you know, going back to what we talked about at the beginning, we all have the spark that we can light and ignite and run with. And you know, people have the most brilliant ideas, but all they do their whole life is just talk about the ideas. They never actually
It's terrifying to move forward. It's terrifying to move forward with what you believe your purpose is because then if you fail, then like then what are you going to do? It's easier to just be a failure and just accept it and mask it with with whatever it is. If it's food, like for me, definitely if it's, you know, before it was it was alcohol that that I got mask with, but then it's like, but if it's not alcohol, it's food. It's porn. It's gambling or just or just not managing your money correctly and just buying a bunch of shit. You don't need to fill
that it's like there's all a set you know whatever it is everybody's got that void it seems like it I don't know but we all sort of we all certainly have a spark we all certainly have the capability to create a better place and I think I think my fit my vision is is like finding a way to get
to get all those sparks together and get all the get all those people connected it like in the real world and not like we're never going to we're never going to accomplish real change in this world and we're never going to really address all of these problems that we endlessly complain about if we just keep going on X.
Reddit and Facebook and Instagram and talking we can talk about it until we're black and blue in the face, but it's like Just I don't know I think you just got to get all like those people just need to get together in person and the only way I can conceptualize the only thing that I can think
And it goes back to the theory with the uncontacted tribes. But I don't care what uncontacted tribe you go visit. I'm sure music and food are on the list of things that they do. And I think universally, like our operating system, my joke now is that if you don't like music or food, you're probably a robot.
So you know, everybody eats and everybody listens to some kind of music. So I want to, I have this vision of creating this, these spaces, this network, this like, this web of these.
of these spaces where, where there is like genuine music without backing tracks, without, because going back to what you said about in the studio with everything being perfected, like it happens on, like, and it's not, it's bad, you know, it's bad, but it happens more than not probably, like, like, because the labels, the mains, they want everything to sound perfect. And I understand they want, they're more worried about putting on a production than, than
than those people listening to real music. And like, it makes me out my blood, it made my blood boil because I've heard it three or four times now. But when I, when I was talking to people in the professional space about the backing tracks and the drum loops and the, and like some of the vocal augmentation and some of the other things that's like common, like it's a common practice at festival series and even with big bands and stuff.
Oh, well, they don't know the difference anyway. They just, they're, you know, they want to hear it that way. And it's like, I don't think they do. I think they want to, I think they want to hear, like they want to, they're not, they're there to do everything we just, we talked about with music, like that power of music. And so, well, otherwise just what, just listen to the freaking MP3 or go watch the YouTube video, like, no, you want to see a human do the thing and freaking connect. And exactly. Metallica is a great example because, you know,
If you look at any Metallica video on YouTube, there's a few people in the comments that are joking about how they missed a few notes or something about their... But like, they're one of the most incredible bands of all time and still draw huge crowds because they get up there and they play the damn songs with real instruments and they do mess up a little bit because they're human beings and everybody. Like, you're going there and you're really seeing Metallica.
Like you want to see it with a few notes miss like that's it like that's the real thing You know they're just one example of many of like there's a lot of great So like yeah, how do you get how do you get real music into a place without?
How do you get real music into a place without all the augmentation and all the thrills and all the frills? And how do you do it in a way that's affordable enough where the people who really do need that music who are probably, in most cases, not financially well off doing it? Like I would love to see a study. I know there's no way to probably, but like,
Think about, I don't know if we can do a study, but I can give you my opinion. That's for sure. And I know Echo can chime in too. I wonder how many people that go to concerts have credit card debt. It's probably 80%. Like, I don't know. That's just America. That's just America. That's an unfortunate place that people get themselves to. It's like,
It happens, man. Like, you go and paycheck to paycheck and all of a sudden it's Christmas time. And it's like, you want to get that thing for your daughter. It's like, well, I'm going to get that thing for my daughter. You know, people just, it sucks. It's a reality. Yeah, but there's some kind of way that we can, there is some kind of way that we can teach people how to be more financially responsible in real life. And there's ways that we can teach people skills still in real life. Like in my mind,
So, well, they're actually getting taught the opposite, right? Because when they go on to Instagram, what they see is like an expensive watch. And they're like, OK, that's what I need is the expensive watch. OK, let's get out my credit card and get the expensive watch instead of learning that. Oh, no, you don't need that expensive watch. You can just get a time X and you'll be GTG. I was in. So.
When I was eight, you know, when I saw I dropped, I dropped out of high school and moved to Western North Carolina. And that's where I had the kid 18. And that's where I had the injury and all that. And that town that I lived in was one of the ones that was affected by the flood. How can you drop out of high school?
I don't know. It was halfway through my senior year. I just, I just wanted to get it. I don't know. I don't know. I have this like impulsive thing sometimes. Like I have a problem with authority, I guess. All right. Especially back then. I mean, I still do, I guess, cause I can't, I still can't fit in line. Oh, you like percent. Don't get me. Go guess here, man. You like percent got a problem with authority. But I just got, I don't know. The thing that really, I guess the thing that set me off was like, I had this, um,
My history teacher was like this. My history teacher acted like a shit didn't stink and was always and come to ended up having an affair with one of the other teachers there and it was this whole big thing and they like I don't know I just and there's a few other things to it too. But it was very impulsive I just I dropped out of high school and basically ran away from I didn't run.
My parents didn't want me to leave, but I just, you know what I mean? I was just ready to get out of there and go. I just didn't want to do it. I didn't want to graduate. I didn't want to go to college. I just wanted to go figure out who I was, I guess. I don't know. And I don't know. I didn't have a plan or anything. I was just an idiot. You know, it's not like I'm saying, I didn't even, I don't know that I'm saying, even saying I made the right decision doing it, but, um, but,
Yeah, there's no, there's no practical skills being taught to like, like, I guess it was like, what am I going to get out of this? Like, and especially now it's even worse now, but now like in public school, most of the kids, like I said, they're taught everything off of a tablet. Like a lot of it's already like predetermined curriculum and it doesn't teach them how to manage money or like how to fix little things around. Like it doesn't teach them how to like to do any of that stuff. It's like it almost,
They're very people, kids are very vulnerable when they go out into the world. Now, and that's why they are so easily preyed upon by like credit card debt and a lot of these other like influences from social media and stuff. And I think we have, I think that we are the last species alive that knows what life was like before all like.
like kids were so much happier in school in the 2000s and they are now like just watch a bit like there's tons of these videos where it shows like these old like retro camcorder videos of kids in school like in the early 2000s and then they were so vibrant and like they just had so much life in them and now kids just seems and I don't know kids just seem so dead now inside and so they're like and there's studies I mean there's a um
I'm gonna mess the title of the book up, but there's a book about the anxious, it's about the anxious minds of youth. I don't know what the title of the book is, but in it, one of the things it refers to is when they started adding front cameras to phones in that same year.
Early teenage girls, they're self-reported, like self-harm and suicide rates shot at like, there's a direct correlation with youth anytime that technology advanced and negative side effects with youth, whether it's like ADHD or if it's depression, suicide, like, and in its app, it negatively affects us as adults too, but now that it's went on for at least two generations and we're on to like the third generation,
You know, there was a study that was talked about on Andrew Huberman about how like, I think the example given was, I'm speaking all that, I'm just speaking out of thin air here, so I might miss something up, but our DNA and our sperm can change from life experience.
Like if you were to have had a kid at eighteen and then go off the war and experience trauma and come back and have another kid. The DNA in your sperm. That develops that second kid and to my understanding is different than the first our experiences literally change the DNA and our sperm because it's almost like our body's way of protecting our stuff you know it's a it's a survival mechanism is all it is.
And you read about things like the taxi drivers in London that have to memorize all the roads, and they can take an MRI scan of their brain before and after. And it's visibly different. And there's tons of other studies like this. I've seen one of cops with that, where after a cop's been a cop for a long time, there's some part of your brain that
like is signifies trust and over time like cops, they're just not trusting anybody anymore because constantly they're dealing with people that are, you know, trying to freak and screw them over and attack them or whatever. So we should really have we should as a like as a species like this isn't even an American problem. This is a this is like a global epidemic, but we should look at
We should think about the average screen time that the average human person in the digitally connected world spends on their phone and their tablet and their computer. That's changing. It has to change us. If memorizing roadways in London changes us, or being a cop changes us, and it can literally change our DNA and stuff.
What, what does multi-generational digital immersion do for us as a species? Like I fear that we'll come to a point soon if we aren't, we're so dependent on these phones. I bought a flip, I bought a Verizon flip phone from Walmart like in November when we, when we, when I had to put my dog down, I just was, I didn't want to be on the phone. I didn't want to do conference. I just,
I just needed some time to like get my head straight and so I was pretty much on a flip phone for a couple months and Man, it was like it was like quitting drinking. It was just like that difficult, you know like it's highly addictive it regulates our mood it regulates like When you get on YouTube shorts and scroll for an hour think about all the different things all the different experiences your mind believes it's went through and all the different all the different levels that are affected by that like the big ones we talk about is serotonin and dopamine, but there's all these different things that are
And so doing that, do that for two or three generations, like we are going to, we're gonna become, I believe, like dependent on these devices in order for us to, you can see it all, like the writing's on the wall. I believe that somebody smarter than me could look at most all the symptoms that we're currently experiencing in society that we're trying to fix. Like all these things that have popped up in the last 20 years that are just destroying us in our family.
our households and our marriages and the way our kids and the way they, and it's like, it's obvious to me that our minds are not made to be, like they're made to live in the real world and be immersed in it, but as the real world continues to become more dim and dull and hopeless and like,
It seems like so many people do have a very hopeless perspective right now about the future. As the world becomes a more dull and dim place, the internet becomes more vibrant and exciting and immersive and real.
We need that cognitive, we need like that attention and that time and that bandwidth that we're spending here. We need it here. Like the reason this is all falling apart is because we're all spending our time. Like... Well, it's like junk food. I think you made this up, Echo Charles.
It's just junk food right junk food for your brain, you know and junk food tastes good and it feels really good at the moment and you really like it and after you have some Fudge rounds like by the bags over and over again, and then then actually like maybe a steak Doesn't taste as good anymore, you know even though that steak is
the apex food to eat. Now that you're addicted to the sugar with the fat on it, all encompassed with the flavor and the salt that do everything perfectly in a fudge round, you're like, Oh, this is what all I want just just poured into my mouth just
You know, I'm going to, my brain's always all over the place. We'll go back, I'm not trying to deter, but real quick, because I like the little fudge round thing in there. So I told you that I had to write the second verse of Richmond after I talked to Draven, and we had like two days to do it. So I was in the Dollar General on Hoffheimer Road in Denwoody, and the buying stuff, and there was a lady in front of me who was like morbidly obese with her grandchild, and their whole cart was full of junk food.
And that was one of the things in it was fudge rounds. And that's like where that verse, but like, but it was funny because I had to go back and explain myself with that verse because it wasn't like I was knocking that lady for buying all that junk food. It was just like that lady has an EBT card and like, this is all she can like, this is all she can even like they don't they just don't even. Yeah.
who nobody teaches us even what to eat. Like I guess that like even what to eat. We don't even really know. We don't really know what's in our food. Like as soon as I started, as soon as we started slaughtering our own pigs and meat birds and stuff and eating that food and then go to Walmart and buy chicken, like Tyson chicken is not like, you'll never catch me in Smithfield or Tyson again. Like it's almost fake. But anyway, I thought this thought that was funny. I wanted to just bring that up briefly, but
But in our like, yeah, I think that it's, I think a lot of our dysfunction and a lot of the symptoms that we're experiencing are just simply because our minds cannot run long term on this system of like.
And also, it's more complex than that, too, because with the introduction of AI, like we talked about, it's like these devices are learning. AI is learning from us as we stay so immersed in it.
AI, I mean in theory it's like if these if these phones do what they say and you know that it's like in theory this like very intelligent operating system can watch simultaneously where millions and millions of people go and where they eat and how long they sit in a parking lot after they do this and they're talking on the phone with something like
It's able to study. It's almost like playing God. It's able to watch like the behaviors and the conversations and the the thoughts almost of like millions of people simultaneously. So like we're, I don't know, we're almost like.
I don't know. I don't think I just don't believe that we can survive as a species unless we find a way. And the only way that will ever, I mean, like you can ban TikTok and you can demonopolize something else and you can, you can change porn, like Virginia changed the law. So porn hub, you have to be over 18 to get on the platform.
I mean, what 13 year old isn't going to just download a VPN and get on porn. Like we're trying to like correct all these issues like we're on edge. Like we're like the way a parent would try to discipline their child and the child knows 10 ways to get around it. Like, you know, like if it's like the gun laws when they make a gun law, you can't have a quick reloading magazine. And so you got to put this thing on and the gun makers go, okay, cool. Here's a way to get around that thing that does this exact same thing. Yeah.
So we'll never fix, we'll never fix it that way. Like there's all, we have to make the real world more appealing than Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. And we have to find a way for people to be able to constructively talk about all these things are important that are important without just doing it on Reddit or on X. Like, so, so this year, like my whole, so this is your thing. So my thing, this is your thing right now. This is the, this is the rural revival project, right?
Yeah, like it, which is also your tour, right? So they're the same kind of, they're intertwined. Yeah. The rural revival project and all over Anthony music tour, this go round, these things are kind of intertwined. It's kind of a launch point.
Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, we've only done one show so far in Morgantown, and it was like last minute thrown together. We've only officially done one show. But even at that, it was the best show I've done since all this happened was that Morgantown show. Just even the way I walked away from it, I felt better. I felt fulfilled from it. I mean, we baptized people there, and everything was crazy. It was like nuts. But yeah, I envision this. I want to take my platform and my audience and the people who
who also want change in the world, like who also have sent the people who have sent me all these messages that I've read and like who like don't even like the fact I just knew I just know we're in trouble if people are just counting on some idiot like me to try to figure out how to make it like I know we're in trouble if somebody's like thinking that up but knowing it
Yeah, I'm going to start, I'm going to start finding these places to do shows that haven't had mute. I'm going to find these towns like instead of doing the Pittsburgh amphitheater, we're going to find a city within 45 minutes or an hour of it or a little town or whatever that hasn't had music or traffic or any kind of economic stimulus brought into it in 10 years or whatever.
I'm gonna find these other bands and these other artists that I've met along the way and I'm gonna see if because a lot of them are tired of the live nation ticket master monopolies and they're tired of like and you see people on the internet all the time musicians like I mean going back to sack Brian I'm not trying to keep bringing him up but like I think he has an album or something about tick like I think one of his albums is or one of his tours or something was like negatively about against tick like he doesn't like ticket master either and he's at the top of the Take the tickets out in hierarchy
I want to create this festival series that it's a nonprofit and it can go it can end up becoming anything it's just a model like people could we there could be 10 other people to start a festival series to and like it doesn't just have to be this one but it's going to a town within an hour of where the.
monopolize music menu is are they going to be outdoors? They'll be both like one of the ones we're looking at doing indoors is in Bramwell West Virginia. It used to be a town with the most millionaires per it was the town with the most millionaires in it I think in the whole country at one point like coal millionaires it was a rich it was like it was a very rich town at one time in West Virginia now it's like totally dead like half the like um
Yeah, it's like it's terrible with those it's terrible poverty Wyoming County right beside it is one of the poorest counties in the whole country right now Like it's terrible. So we're that's from the coal mines getting shut down. Yeah, so there's a yeah and drugs and everything else. It's just it's a comp but
We're going to, there's an old school there that's been closed for a while and we're going to, we're trying to set one up in May to do in this, in the old gymnasium there. And, and the idea is, is that we could like this gymnasium, for example, we'll figure out how to do the ingress, egress, figure out how many people we can set up in there, get a stage going. The equity and the infrastructure that we obtain by doing the show will stay with the venue.
and then a town that is literally owes back taxes to the federal government right now because they're like they owed I think they they just paid it off but the town of Bramwell owed like over a hundred thousand dollars to the federal government like and taxes because they had a mayor and bezel money and stuff and they don't have any income coming into
That's the whole reason I got connected with them in the first place, but now the dream is like Bramwell will have a gymnasium that they can go book anybody at any time and Because it's because the center it because the venue space itself is not for profit There is no incentive for them to sign a contract with live nation and become another one of those venues and if I can do a
If every show I do from now on is that, and I bring other artists in and other people, then it's like, imagine this network of all these places that have long-term economic stimulus and also have a place where people can go and do all these things in the real world where we don't have the opportunity to do them now. Like we're talking about
So when I was in, when I was in Western North Carolina, I met this group of people, um, through savage freedoms. Is that ring a bell? I think I have heard of that before. Yeah. Uh, they were running the, basically they were there doing what
Agencies weren't like they were pulling bodies out and it was really it was tough but I was able to connect with those guys and Actually rode on an airdrop with them and spent a lot of time with those Most of them were special forces vets who had jobs and families and everything that they had just like
They still came anyway like one of the guys there was he thought he was gonna lose his job because his boss Needed him to come back to work, but there was like they had pulled a dozen bodies out of a pile of debris that day and so on I know and he's like I can't go home like I've got to be here doing and Like they were there for free doing it and I believe that it's actually our I believe that one of the ways that we solve all of this in this country like the lack of leadership the pro like
It seems like so complex. It seems too complex. We want to vote once every four years and we hope that that's going to fix everything. But there's all these little things that we can do along the way. Part of this festival series, I hope to find a way to help empower the Special Forces FETs.
there are a lot of them are are proven capable leaders that can if they were put in a position of leadership and empowered to be able to make change they would and that's and it and it's the proofs in the pudding like they were there they were there like sacrificing everything to try to help a town that they had never even been in because they felt called to do it because there was the town needed leaders and they came and did it and like I want to go to all these towns I've there's a gentleman there I met named Justin Neil and a few other guys who I've
who I've gotten involved now on this board for this real revival thing, but every town we go to before we go do the show, we're going to have like an investigative journalist go find out what corruptions going on there, what problems there are. Is it just things that the town needs? Like, is it things that the people there need? Is there a story there that needs to be told?
We want to find the veterans that are there who you'll have a freaking miniseries out every town you go into. You start looking for the corruption and what's going on with the locals. What's keeping these people from living a fulfilled and good life in these towns? What can we do to make their life better?