The LoCo Experience

EXPERIENCE 248 | Innovation at the Digital Workshop: Insights from Stu Crair

• Ava Munos • Season 5 • Episode 248

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 In today's episode of the Loco Experience Podcast, I sat down with Stu Crair, the founder and executive director of the Digital Workshop Center, a musician as well as an adjunct professor at CSU. Stu shares his history, balancing professional commitments and musical pursuits, offering insights to his roles, kind of creating a job at CSU and Elsewise, and the evolution of the Digital Workshop Center from his garage to now a nice office in downtown Fort Collins.

We also discussed his journey from Ohio to Fort Collins and how music brought him here, the changes in the music industry and how one can make a buck in today's music world, as well as the diverse music from Dead Floyd, Musketeer Gripweed and Ruby Stew. Stu also shares kind of a pivot in his later life becoming a husband and then now a father over the last few years, as well as the impact of that on his day-to-day existence. He's also got a great loco experience that you'll have to tune in for with a little bit of mobster action.

So please tune in and enjoy my conversation with Stu Crair.

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Music By: A Brother's Fountain

Speaker 5:

In today's episode of the Loco Experience Podcast, I sat down with Stu Crair, the founder and executive director of the Digital Workshop Center, a musician as well as an adjunct professor at CSU. Stu shares his history, balancing professional commitments and musical pursuits, offering insights to his roles, kind of creating a job at CSU and Elsewise, and the evolution of the Digital Workshop Center from his garage to now a nice office in downtown Fort Collins. We also discussed his journey from Ohio to Fort Collins and how music brought him here, the changes in the music industry and how one can make a buck in today's music world, as well as the diverse music from Dead Floyd Musketeer Grip Weed and a new Ruby Stew. Stu also shares kind of a pivot in his later life becoming a husband and then now a father over the last few years, as well as the impact of that on his day-to-day existence. He's also got a great loco experience that you'll have to tune in for with a little bit of mobster action. So please tune in and enjoy my conversation with Stu Crair.

Speaker 4:

Let's have some fun. Welcome to the Loco Experience Podcast. On this show, you'll get to know business and community leaders from all around Northern Colorado and beyond. Our guests share their stories, business stories, life stories, stories of triumph and of tragedy. And through it all, you'll be inspired and entertained. These conversations are real and raw, and no topics are off limits. So pop in a breath mint and get ready to meet our latest guest.

Speaker:

Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. My guest today is Stu Crair. Stu is the Executive Director of the Digital Workshop Center. He's an adjunct instructor at CSU, and he's a band member of some of Fort Collins finest Loco bands, dead Floyd Musketeer Grip Weed, and a new one. Ruby Stu, STEW. Mm-hmm. Not STU. You got it. Thanks. Where do you spend most of your time?

Speaker 2:

Um, well, you know, I balance things. I I kinda have like two lives. Yeah. So, um, running the workshop, daily Day job is what I would consider that. Mm-hmm. Um, that's most of what I'm doing, you know, Monday through Friday during the daytime, and then the evenings I'm, I tend to be playing music or hanging out at home with the family,

Speaker:

but, and where do you fit the CSU stuff in? Just kind of, that's just a one class thing. It's a

Speaker 2:

one class thing. I've been doing it now, this is 11 years. Wow. Which is nuts. Uh, it's probably about how long you and I have known each other close to it, something like that. Um, and, uh, it's, it's, it's always been one section. It was Mondays and Wednesdays from like two to three 30. It was very easy to fit in. And then last year they came to me and said, uh, it's been full for a long time. Can you do a second section? And I said, sure, I can use a little extra income. Show me the money. Yeah, you got a kid, right? They made, I got a kid. They made it worth my while to buy some diapers. Uh, so now I do two sections. So basically it's like my Monday, Wednesday afternoons kinda get eaten up by it. Yeah. But, um, uh, but yeah, so I I fit it in. It, it, it's, uh, that's not the hard part. The hard part is the grading afterwards, but Oh, sure. Yeah.

Speaker:

Well, and, and with a, a music lifestyle that is here and there and sometimes not, you know, and, uh, yeah, I'm sure there's busy seasons and slower seasons in that world.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Summers tend to be, I mean, all the way. Through the summer into now. Yeah. You could say the couple weeks before Thanksgiving it tends to die off. And then through the winter it can be very quiet.

Speaker:

And now Musketeer Grip weed has been around for a good long while. Right. Like when I first came to town, I, um, some of our mutual friends knew Ben pretty well from your Yeah. From your band there. And that must've been what, like 20 years? 20 years? That's what I thought. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I haven't been involved since the beginning. So Ben and Jason met 20 years ago, started it, um, and they had a couple different rotating lineups and I was then playing with Dead Floyd, where Matt, the keyboard player was also, um, a part of, and he was also, he was in grip weed. He came, started playing with us. Very ancestral in music. Yeah. He was like, especially Locoly, Hey,

Speaker:

we need a drummer. And it turns out Stu is. Not as bad as our last drummer. So yeah, their,

Speaker 2:

their drummer at the time had a bunch of legal issues I won't get into. And so he was out and they had a bunch of big gigs coming up, including like the big stage, the New West Fest Oh, right. And some other big ones at that time. And, um, uh, yeah, so I played one, like small something with him, and then it was that new s festival in front of a, you know, 10,000 people or something. And they liked you and, and we, we were all like, friendly enough, but, um, strangely, I, I met Jason, this Louis singer, like pretty early on when I moved here. I, I lived with a guy named Alan. Alan was one of these kinda like, connector guys in networking, as I'm sure you can relate. I might be one of them. Yeah. And you, I think you're one of them. Um, and, uh. He just was like, great at bringing people together in different ways. Cool. So, um, Jason showed up at his house one day. We were all just hanging out, just like very casual, but he had his, his son holding him in his like forearm, which I very clearly remember. The football hold, the football hold. And that's the first time I met him and fast forward, you know, and then I, I kind of met him and, you know, whatever. But, uh, ended up playing with him. His son is now 20 to put things in perspective. Oh wow. And so, yeah, he now plays bass and you all that. He, we can hang out, you know. That's cool. That's cool. But, uh, so anyway, yeah. Group weed's been along around a long time. My, uh, the other marker for me is that, uh, Ben's first daughter, he was, they were pregnant with her when I played that new fest kick. So it was like two weeks after I'd been playing with him and as we finished, he got a call from his wife, like, I'm going into labor. Oh, wow. And so that day, that's a memorable way, maybe the next day, but I think it was biggest stage ever, perhaps for Musketeer, for one of, yeah. Bigger shows. We walked. And then, uh, he's like, I gotta go. It was his first kid. He was all like, you know, a little paralyzed with like, what's happening. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so she is. 14 if I'm doing my math right. Very cool. So that's as long as I've been playing with them. There you go. So that's a long story for that. All good.

Speaker:

Let's, uh, your day job. Yeah. Let's talk about the workshop center a little bit. Yeah. Um, that is, has it always been at the location where it is now?

Speaker 2:

Uh, we bounced around a little bit, so, um, you know, my background's in education. I, I worked for, uh, a couple community colleges and adult ed centers, uh, when I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. And I had lived in a couple places, moved back there and I was working there, uh, and then up moving out here. So I worked at Front Range and I worked at, um, I think like a couple things at ames and I was like a contract instructor. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I was working other jobs, but um, I always got frustrated with what they were doing with Yeah. You just saw gaps in what they were providing kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of gaps. There was a lot of just, um, very slow moving to technology changes. Okay. They were always way behind the ball, which is still a problem. It's just. And now that I know more about why they are, it's, I, I understand it. Right. But, um, but a

Speaker:

smaller, more nimble organization can really adapt and provide the training that you really need.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly. And we could do it very customized and very like personal.

Speaker:

Yeah. Pretty affordable. Too affordable. I sent my staff, took some of your classes down there and made a big difference.

Speaker 2:

Try to, and, but I think the, the, the niche and why we blasted so long is just really the in person and the kind of customization piece. So it's like a little more like having a mentor to learn these technology

Speaker:

tools kind of guide through the process instead of here's the information, learn it if you want to, don't learn it if you don't want to. I don't care. I'm just

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Here to deliver the goods.

Speaker 2:

Here's, and, or, you know, watch a video and figure it out. Right, right. Like those, there's like a massively, uh, I shouldn't say massive, but the massive open online course. Sure. Rate of of completion is like less than 3% or something. Oh, really? People don't finish those. Oh, they're, you're not held accountable to anything. You're not even graded on a lot of those. Right. You know, they're just kinda like, pay for it, 10 bucks and then, or free or whatever. Or you've got a bit of

Speaker:

a relationship with somebody and you're paying a, a more appropriate price. You can walk you through it and get you over those hurdles

Speaker 2:

and you tend to see like way higher results, satisfaction, all those things. And I think that's held true for 19, almost 20 years now of doing that. Cool. Um, and uh, and what was

Speaker:

the start like, talk to me about the, the inception, right? Because you're, you're hustling, you're, you know, you're in a band already, probably was Dead Floyd around yet, or, um,

Speaker 2:

not yet at the time I moved out here for music. Okay. I, so I was in Columbus, I was teaching there. Playing music, but I moved out here with a, a mutual friend and um, uh, I just wanted to play more. Fort Collins was

Speaker:

kind of an up and coming music town at the time I moved here Yeah. In 99. And it was really,

Speaker 2:

yeah,

Speaker:

it was really catching traction at that season.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It was kind of exciting. And, and I've been to Denver and I've been to like Southwest Colorado, but I moved to Fort Collins without ever, ever actually stepping. Same here. Foot here in the area. Same here. That's awesome. Yeah. Sight unseen. And I just had kept hearing so many great things and I was like, well, if I don't like it, I'll just go to Denver. Right. Like, I, you know, that's the plan B. That's the plan B, or I'll keep going to California, like something. Right, right. But I was 23 or 24 or something like that. Uh, maybe 25. But, um, you know, I just figured like, what's the harm? I was not happy with what I was doing in Ohio, ready for a change. So I moved out here. Like I said, I worked at these different schools. I worked at, uh, I was a network operations manager, like very nerdy, terrible corporate job. It monkey it monkey. I was terrible, uh, for this company Love and I won't name. And then, um, uh, I, so I, again, I was working at these schools. I, I thought there was a niche. I started this ad of my house, just, uh, so this is, uh, oh six. Okay. You know, and so social media really hadn't taken off, right? Um. You know, I didn't have a huge budget for anything at the time. Right. So it was a lot of like, uh, hanging posters, gorilla Marketing Walls poster. Yeah. And posters, like poster Craigslist. I think

Speaker:

wherever you hang the band flyers you also hang the digital Workshop center. Exactly. That's

Speaker 2:

exactly what I was doing. And, but I was like meeting people like left and right and I was gonna a lot of networking groups chamber. Sure. Uh, there's one called Blue Lions I was a part of for a while. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker:

Bob, uh, Bob Flynn from Green Ride was, yeah. That was a big part of their startup way back in the day. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

I, I do remember him. Um, and um, and so I just kind of got a little bit of traction and. That just, you know, I didn't, I wasn't making much at the very beginning, but I would just kinda like put it back into the business. Yeah. And, and I was still, I was bartending here in town Okay. Playing music. That was really how I was making like, a living. Right. But this was like, oh, I think I could pursue this. And I had really never done anything like that. Was it classes? It was already training classes. You'd

Speaker:

get six people signed up for this class that's coming up in a few weeks kind of thing. Yeah. And then you're bringing'em into your garage? Uh, I had,

Speaker 2:

I had something like this. It was like a, an add-on to my house. Okay. It was like a, like an office with a separate door. Yeah. And it was easy for people to come in. I put a little tacky sign on the front chairs, blackboard. I had a couple, I had two desks in it and a little whatever, um, whiteboard and, uh, it was like, it was, I think I could fit three people in there, but it Oh wow. Was usually like two or three at the time. Mostly it was PRI private training, you know, and Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and everyone was looking for like similar things of like excel and, and uh, coding, which I knew and graphic design, which I know. And these like things that I personally knew. Yeah. And I just kinda made a list and I kept making this list and the list kept growing. And I was like, well, now I could, I could teach you WordPress, I could teach you how to do web development. Right. And the list got like, and I could teach you this

Speaker:

if I teach myself

Speaker 2:

how

Speaker:

to

Speaker 2:

do it first. Well, and, and I have been doing that for so long with like working at these schools where like I'm good enough at like learning programs where I could like sit down and learn one for the most part, even if I don't know it. I remember learning like 3D animation software, like fairly quickly as in like a couple weeks or something. Yeah. But like to make something really dinky, move around. But, uh, I just made this list. There was probably like 20 different things I could teach on. And then I, I start, I built my own website, I did my own marketing, I did my own graphics.'cause I knew how to do all that. Right. So I didn't spend any money on that. Yep. I was very low budget to get started. And then, you know, and then social media hits, right. And then social media comes. Yeah. So the first year and a half really was like. Does this have, you know, can this work? Is there anything here? Just figuring it out. And then I think a year and a half to two years in, I was like, you know what? I think I gotta go for it. Like, there's something there. Yeah. I started meeting with like the SBDC people and getting some ideas and, um, I, I took out a little bit of money from my own savings and put it in, and then I was kind of off and running and so we went, um, I was, I was a bartender at, uh, cafe Vino. Okay. And I don't remember if I'd met you there or something. Didn't you work in the building or am I thinking No,

Speaker:

I was in that building from time to time. Yeah. Uh, I don't know. I thought I met you there. I might, might have. I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I don't know. Um, and I would, um, uh, I made a deal with the owner who's not. We're not necessarily friends anymore, but, um, I won't say anything bad, but, um, everybody knows who does anyway. Yeah. He's a character. Um, but he needed a lot of website help and I said, sure, I can. I do a little trade, I'll do your websites, I'll your website, gimme a place to, and he had this classes, these great classroom conference room areas in the basement. The basement, yeah. So he would give free space. Nice. You know, I was for trade, so I set up these classes, then I started getting like, contracts with the city, Fort Collins that came, er county, um, a bunch of Loco agencies. They're like, we keep

Speaker:

hiring these people, but they don't know how to do anything. Yeah. Uh, can you fix'em up for us? Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I mean, it was like, so mom and pop at this point because, um, I, the first time I got hired and it was like, city for Collins. They're like, yeah, we have 12 people. They wanna learn whatever it was. I don't know. Excel is, say just an example. And I was like, great. You know, so I was a teacher. But I also didn't have 12 computers, so I went to CSU surplus. Yeah. Have you ever been there? Oh yeah. Yeah. It's fun. But have a website. I'd actually never been to the actual accident. It's like a garage of old junk. Right, right. People. But, but they have old computers. Right. So again, I know how to build computers, so I just kinda like grabbed the parts. I put together 12 computers for very cheap, um, 12 old CRT monitors, the big ones. Right. I lugged all the stuff downstairs into that basement of the Cafe Vio and set it all up, did the training, took it all with me. I did that like a handful of times and then I got real annoyed. It was like, this is dumb, right? I need my own space. I spent two hours, like setting up and tearing down every time. It was like ridiculous. And I remember,'cause I was still working upstairs, so like some of the other people who I worked with were be like, what the heck are you doing? Carry all monitors. I like carry, I'm like, literally, you know, I've got a cart. I'm like, don't, don't worry about it. I'm doing something else. And I'm like, I gotta deal with, with, you know, so and so downstairs. And, uh, but I started making like real money and then I was like. All right. See you cafe. You know I'm out. Yeah. And, uh, you know, music has always been a part of my life, so I still play. Uh, and I was still able to, you know, piece together enough to make pay the bills. But, um, that was the beginning. And then we moved to 3, 2, 4, or, um, sorry, 4 1 2 House, which is where like the US Bank, there's across the parking lot from US Bank. Yep. Yep. We were there for a while. That was an interesting experience. The, there was a psychologist above us, and it's a very old building, and you could hear everything through the, oh gosh. I was like, how is this possible? But,'cause we were there first and then she comes later, six months after year after we were there, and she moved in and she's very loud voice and I could hear everything she was saying. And I kept saying, I, I, first day I was like. This is, well, I don't wanna hear it. I heard, you know, there's women crying about their person lives. Right. And

Speaker:

this counselor, of course, telling the women to divorce their husbands.'cause that's what they do do. Pretty much.

Speaker 2:

But it, it was awful. And so we, we had a big, we were like, it was like so much tension in the building every time I walked in. Like, we hated each other because Oh gosh. I was like, please stop. And she's like, no, I won't stop. Uh, so we were there for a while. It was okay. It was, you know, nice enough space. Yeah. And then we ended up moving to, um, where we are now, so that we've been there 10 plus years actually. Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah. And that was, uh, Jenny and Brett's space for their, and it still is Yeah. Business. Yeah. They're your landlords. Yeah. Um, Jenny was a, a prospect facilitator and I actually did a little bit of consulting business with Brett way back in the day. Oh, cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Super nice people. They're awesome.

Speaker:

They are good. Cheers. If you listen to this. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Right. Yep. Um, always been very good to me. Very nice. Um, they have a nice family. They, they just, uh, are very. Uh, reasonable. Yeah. Honest people, which I actually is hard to find. What's Jenny's

Speaker:

daughter's name?

Speaker 2:

Uh, I

Speaker:

remember she did some of my first marketing materials as a little contract thing. Uh, like a brochure and a flyer or something like that. Way, way back.

Speaker 2:

I should know. And I'm sorry that I don't, doesn't You are listening. I'm very sorry. Uh, she is, I think three kids now. Sam, Sam is the boy. Sam. Sam boy. Hey Sam. If you're listening to this. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, man. Um, yeah, but so they, so I'm in again, really weird way. I, I'm meeting him. He's probably a man by now, actually, I suppose. Yeah. He's like a college 30 ish or 25. He's, yeah, he's, so it goes a grown man, but I was, so, I was also, um. Because of the workshop I was invited to, to write for the Colorado one. Mm. An article about it called like Tech Trends, I think is the type it was. Sure. And, uh, don't wanna say anything negative about that paper, but it was not my favorite. Um, but they asked me and I was like, okay, maybe I could add some value to this paper. You know, maybe egoistical on that one, but Right, right. Um, they were like, yeah, keep to like 400 words. It's like, well that's not a lot. You know, like, I was like, oh God. It was like supposed to be a little snippet column. Right, right. When it was still being printed. And, um, but so I, I just wrote like very entry level stuff that I could think of, you know, like why is Excel important? You know, like what is a website or something? What people would not know that word.

Speaker:

Uh, what's thing? WordPress. WordPress. WordPress. Yeah. That WordPress can do you Right. I, so

Speaker 2:

it was, yeah, it was really aimed at like entry level beginners. But I wrote a couple about like, QuickBooks and, you know, I, I was using that for the business'cause I knew that too. And, um, um. Someone saw that and or, or Brett saw that, or I dunno how he got it. But anyway, and so. I had said something in there about, uh, you know, this is what we do, do classes. You know, it's like a little blurb at the bottom. Yeah. And he, uh, reached out and was like, Hey, if you ever need space, I got all this space here. And it was like the most like perfect. Well, and he was universe, financial,

Speaker:

software, sales kind of world. Yeah. Right. Exactly. E rrp when that was first a thing,

Speaker 2:

I think, and I think, you know, Brad, if you're listening, you could say yes or no, but, um, I think he was maybe thinking there's like a partnership synergy there maybe. Yeah. Like I could send him some business. You do

Speaker:

QuickBooks when they grow big enough, you can sell'em to higher price stuff kind of thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um, which was not true, but, uh Right. Almost nobody graduates from QuickBooks to the next level. Well, the people I was, I'm dealing with are, you know Yeah. Very onesies. Very, yeah. Low level here. Um, maybe in 10 years they'll be buying your stuff, but he probably saw something there. So he reached out to me. But that was right when I was having one those issues with that pest, uh, tenant. Gotcha. I ended up moving in with, um, or going over there. He had all this empty space. So yeah, it worked out great.

Speaker:

Yeah. That's probably like, you probably hadn't been there for too long when you and I. Really got connected. I think you might be right, like we met a little sooner than that, but

Speaker 2:

yeah, I don't remember. I, I started hitting you up

Speaker:

for loco think tank probably circa 2014.

Speaker 2:

Well, I, I think I met you before that. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Um,'cause I know you did the food truck for a minute, and then what'd you do after that?

Speaker:

Um, Loco. Is this, I was a banker first. You, you might have met me when I was still, still just a regular old small business banker out networking in the community. Like you were trying to build your business, you know, maybe Yeah. But, um, or at a, at a muca show. At a show, yeah. Maybe Right. Or something. Or Dead Floyd show, by the way, I, uh, I've got my oldest t-shirt in my inventory on in honor of this Ah, nice. Circa 1994. Nice. Uh, very cool. It's still in very good classic condition. I love it. Yeah. Is that like a tour shirt kind? Uh, no, no. Just a, just a fun shirt from the record store when I was a sophomore in college. Hell yeah. First finding my band legs, weed, smoking interest and stuff like that. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Um, it's Your Honor. Oh, thank you. I have kept a few of my old t-shirts that are like so beat up and my wife is constantly like, get'em outta my house. Like, why? I had the, the, what are you keeping these for? I'm like, nost. Uh, yeah.

Speaker:

Dead shirt from way back in the day when Lithuania made it to the, you know, Olympics and got third place I believe. And they sponsored the uni uniform and they sponsored all their uni unis for'em.'cause Lithuania didn't have any money.'cause they were a post-Soviet block kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Uh, I finally threw that one away a couple years ago. It was, it had so many holes at it. Some of'em are so gross. I,

Speaker 2:

I get why she wants me to throw him out, but like, it's like nostalgia and we have a little kid, I'm like, I wanna give him my, you know, awesome Dead and fish and other tour shirts and stuff. His Zeppelin shirt. That lasted quite a few

Speaker:

years too, but, so it goes. Um, so where did the CSU stuff come in? Was that already going before, like after you left front range kind of, or were you doing dabbling in both? Um, yeah. I guess you said 11 years at C ssu now 11 years. Yeah. Well, 2014 ish too.

Speaker 2:

Yep. A good segue from that exact same reason, which. The, the dumbest Little Tech Trends article there again, like really, it was from that same reason. I know. It's like

Speaker:

you're like that stupid paper with that stupid article of four oh words that I couldn't add any value to anybody, but it changed

Speaker 2:

my life twice. It definitely like did. It did, it did. And it's actually, you know, like a thing I've learned in business, like the dumbest little things you think like that aren't dumb, you know, and they actually are the ones that like somehow come back around. So yeah, I never take those for granted. Uh, but yeah, I wrote one about. Graphic design trend or something, and I don't remember what it was, but it was something about design and marketing, how important it's to learn, design. This 20, yeah, 14 ish, right? Uh, maybe 13, 12 or something in there. But it was enough that the dean at the time, his name was Ken Manning, saw it. Reached out. Right. And was like, Hey, we've been talking here at CSU about having a class on, uh, design for marketing students.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Could you help us put one together? Cool. I was like, yeah, we got this great curriculum at Digital Workshop Center. That would be perfect. It's basically like I have a Photoshop series, I have an Illustrator series. Yeah. And I think what you're asking is you just took those two and kind of mashed'em together. That would be like a college semester of hours. And I think I could like, make something cool for you guys. Yeah. Um, I'll write up a curriculum.'cause I got a lot of experience writing the curriculums. And so we spent a while, you know, six months, whatever, putting this together. He goes, gets it approved as like experimental class of like 4 92 was the original number. Okay. And, uh, I was like, awesome. And he paid me for the time to do the curriculum development. Cool. And, uh, you know, and then I, he said. So are you gonna be the one to teach it? And I was like, no. I was like, I don't wanna teach this thing. And I was like, I got a whole day job. I got all these commitments. I was like, that wasn't what I was expecting here. I was expecting, let's just draw it up for you. He's like, well, I don't have anybody to teach it. Can you do it for one semester? And I was like, all right. And he made it worth my while. Yeah. You know, and as a contract instructor you can get paid. Okay. And, um, and then, yeah, and uh, every couple years I've come back and been like, you need to like, make it more worth my while. Like this is, and they can't do a lot'cause there's like certain limits by Sure. You know, they're handcuffed a little bit. Well, and you're probably teaching

Speaker:

different things a little bit, or at least the technology has changed or is it still kind of that combination of design and

Speaker 2:

it's, it's still, it is still that, but it's certainly changed. It used to be very, um, Photoshop and like Photoshop editing heavy because that was. More fun. The leading edge tech at the time, kind of Well, and just like it, it took more to learn, in my opinion of the, at the time. Mm-hmm. So I had to like pick one or the others like do I wanna spend more time teaching Photoshop or Illustrator? I can't teach you everything about both. Yeah. So I used to pick Photoshop and it has changed. And the fact that there's so much technology around, just like you wanna remove a background, you just click a button. If you want to select someone, you just click a button. Like it's gotten so good. Like you don't need to learn the tools. You wanna remove

Speaker:

your ex-girlfriend from this picture at Cabo. Yeah. Boom, she's gone.

Speaker 2:

And it really is that easy now. And so that's changed the curriculum.'cause now it's definitely more illustrated for this. It's could look weird while you're

Speaker:

standing like this with your arm out here. But yeah,

Speaker 2:

she's gone. I, I think like, you know, Ava was out there using Canva, like you can do a lot with Canva and it's very acceptable for most people. Um, yeah. And

Speaker:

Ava was taking your class, she, I know when she started at Loco, uh, about 18 months ago, or 16 months ago now. Sorry. I'm

Speaker 2:

gonna give her more grief about the Photoshop. How did she do in your class? Was she a good student? Okay. I don't remember. I don't,

Speaker:

she actually had low attendance rates. I got a B plus. B plus. There you go. B plus. Okay. Illustrator got

Speaker 2:

me. It was real Illustrator is harder, I guess, for some, but it's more useful in terms of graphic design. I think. I will say, if you just do the work in that class, every I've, I've heard all the kinds of mixed opinions. Like, it, it, it's a very, I hated those kinds of attainable class. Like you have to that too. Like I, I,

Speaker:

I had a really, most classes I could just sit and listen to the lecture, take the notes, yeah. And then go ace the test. But like accounting and calculus and probably illustrator. Yeah. Are those kind of things where you actually gotta do the homework to learn it proper. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it's, it's, um, it's very subjective, right? So there's it's design. So like I'm saying. Hey, you work for a, uh, you know, a landscape company, go make me a logo and a, and a flyer, whatever it is. Sure. Like I'm, I try to be fairly lenient, but there's like a list of things like you have to do, you know, like you have to kind of get in the right format, the right size, the right this, that. Yeah. Uh, and so in terms of what's being graded, I've heard it's like a harsh grade where I'm like, well, it's like a checklist. I, I do this. You got only seven outta 10. Yeah. And so I can only give you a C do. Yeah. So I, someone just introduced me to rate my professor there. Damn. I'm sure he even knows what that is. How you did you do now? Yeah. Yeah. You got some lists out there. Well, I did and I was, and I, that's some from 2012 or whenever we started at 13, whatever. I don't, and uh, I guess it was 14, but, um. It was like, this class is too hard, too hard. Yeah. Too much grading and this and that. And then like, progressively gets better I think. Right. And there's been some recent ones I think that are like, oh, this is actually really fun, pretty useful. Um, but most of them are, seem like they're like negative. So I guess, I dunno how many people go out there and put positive reviews, period. But

Speaker:

talk to me about, um, trends in tech now. I mean, the last two years of tech has seen us be like, oh, this chat GPT Model three or whatever is actually useful for the first time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Uh, and now we've got like. When are the robots gonna take control, you know?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's, it's a, a wild rollercoaster that I, I don't have any crystal balls on. Sure. I get asked this question all the time, and I did a talk at the Workforce Symposium this year about something similar, like what's the, uh, the future of tech or something, and it's like, well, here's what I see and what I know. Right. But I definitely not, I've got one lens out of many thousands of potential perspectives and go and talk to people who are way deeper in ai. And I think they would've a much different per perspective. But it sure seems to me that, um, a lot of like white collar jobs, repetitive type of jobs, uh, are going to go away because for that exact reason they're repetitive. Right. And anything, anything, going back. A very long time before the buzzword of AI has existed, you go back for, you know. Mm-hmm. So the internet came around in, in mid nineties, let's say. Yep. When things figured, people figured out how to code something in a script to make it go in a loop. Right. That was like the beginning, like, oh, I could be more efficient about, you know, how to make this work. Right. And that's still the trend and lightly

Speaker:

automations, you know, when this happens, then do this thing and that doesn't if this, then that. Right. Right.

Speaker 2:

There's a website to that. Zapier is built to that. It's totally like, that's, that's been around for a while. monday.com. But yeah. Uh, it's now being, uh, marketed differently so people are like absorbing this differently. Mm-hmm. And it's also becoming available to the masses where that wasn't necessarily true or you had to pay a subscription, which is crazy

Speaker:

that it's still kind of largely free or a light subscription. Yeah. Um, but the cost of doing like a grok query versus a Google search. Is like 10 times as much per second. Right. Or something like, or the medium for them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, like the, the, the, the, the compute power necessary to run those AI engines is, it's insane. 10 times as much as running the Yeah. Simple algorithms that Google's been running off forever.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. And, and so there's a, a breaking point coming, I think where I, I do think those jobs are at serious risk that's already been kind of shown and is already happening, and white collar, repetitive work, white collar, repetitive work. So that could be all the way up to like, you know, the C level, like executive assistant and well even like people who are, uh, more in um, yeah. Chief Information Officer, right? Yeah. Yeah. Something like. I, I think anyone who's doing monitor the,

Speaker:

the, the, yeah.

Speaker 2:

If you watch anyone and you look at your tasks and you're like, you do the same thing all the time. It, it, it, there's a, and I've been saying this to my staff for forever of, if you're repeating yourself, please tell me. Right. Let's find a way for you not to. Right.'cause there's probably a way, and that's been going on for 20 years of, of me being at the workshop. Yeah. Um, but now with generative ai, you're certainly seeing content being created and that's what's like, wholly different, right? Like the automation pieces, the, the intelligence of automation has been around for a long time. Totally. That's not necessarily new, but it's, it's bigger and better, um, to come up with content, like the language models can do. Totally. Is, um, yeah. I could totally a wild west of

Speaker:

like, you've probably read my blogs, I just suspect you're on my newsletter list, right? Yeah. Occasionally you read my blogs are usually too long. Yeah. Um, but I could literally just say, Hey, grok, or chat, or whatever. Write me a 4,000 ish word blog, uh, with the title of this. And I want the content to be something along the lines of this and read all my past shit. Yeah. And put it in my voice and give it a tone of whatever and, yeah. Yeah. And I've so far refuse to do that because it just seems,

Speaker 2:

it's like cheating.

Speaker:

Cheating.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I've certainly done it to find out like, how good is it? And it's shockingly good. Yeah. It makes a ton of mistakes. So let's put a huge asterisk. Like you'll be Yeah. Better have really dumb Yeah. To just copy. Don't say published. That would be stupid. Um, I haven't found that kind of used to be as effective, but like today I was, I was using it because I've been redoing different phrases of just like on, on our program pages, on our website, you know, so again, I still do all the website stuff for Okay, digital workshop. And, um, on each certificate program page, there's like a little tagline of, you know, whatever. And they are just, they, I felt like they needed a refresh. Some of them felt outta date. Yeah. So I put it in there. I was like, gimme five variations and why? And, and yeah. Four seconds later, many of them were very good. Yeah. And they were, it gave like, this is people centric, this is design focused. Right. This is corporate focused. And it was like, that's pretty spot on with the way you're using the language, but they're, we're talking about like a sentence or two. Right. So I felt like that was actually really helpful and it felt like a little assistant to like, bounce ideas off of. But

Speaker:

actually writing an original 4,000 word blog is probably less. Thoughtful, well,

Speaker 2:

less thoughtful, and it's gonna be very generic, right? You're gonna come across a lot. Although again, it keeps getting better'cause it can do the research, right. Uh, but the, but it'll make mistakes. And so I think there, there's that. I, but I think writing as a, as a general students, I mean, I, I don't have a class that people can do that as much. There's, um, definitely a generative AI piece to the Adobe tools. Sure. You can do that and say like, build me a logo for a landscape company. Right. And it will spit something out that's probably not bad.

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 2:

But it also usually isn't great. Right. You know, and so, uh, that keeps, it just, it keeps getting better at this like ridiculous speed. Yeah. So I think that is the, the, the best thing I've heard is really from like, people like Mark Cuban who have talked about how if you're coming outta college as, you know, a younger person, right. Learn everything you can about all the AI tools, right? Because if you're competitive, you know, these, these jobs are going away. Yeah. So should be smaller markets of, of potential jobs. Um, but if you can leverage those tools, if you can leverage those tools and you're going after a job and you are here saying, I know all the traditional skills and I know the, the new AI tools Yep. Next to someone who doesn't, you're just a way better candidate. Right. And that's, again, been true for a long time, but how to leverage those tools is pretty key. It's still being discovered. Still being discovered, and every industry has a different one. Right. That's, that's seems to rise to the top now. Like chat GBT gets all the, uh, headlines and credit because of how much it's kind of taken popularity. Um, it's got the best like open ai, uh, language model. Right. Right. So people are like basically using that and Yep. Yep. Um, but, but it also

Speaker:

is. Like kind of woke kind of weird, you know, it's given us black George Washingtons and shit like that. And like, it's bizarre. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so truth matters.

Speaker 2:

Uh, yeah, I think so. And

Speaker:

the sources and the, well ultimately does the AI love humans,

Speaker 2:

uh, uh,

Speaker:

you know, and think we're awesome. I,

Speaker 2:

well, you know, or annoying. That's, that's getting way deeper into the weeds on that topic, but I think as a language model, it's, it's going to be able to speak as good as we can at Yeah. Already age for sure. Really. But, you know, I was

Speaker:

thinking the other day, like I saw the post recently about, uh, Elon posting about how the optimist robots will soon be better surgeons than the best surgeons that we have. And so, yeah, like cost of medicine should be way down. You can just, well have a robot to treat your village or whatever. Yeah. We'll, they'll find a way to make, keep us surf somehow anyway. Um, but. You know, like, uh, I listen to Mike Rose podcast pretty regular, and he's all about the trades and mm-hmm. You know, building more roofers and htt and, but if, but if optimist robots can be surgeons, certainly they can also become a plumber.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Right. Well, you would think so. There's so many variables in that particular scenario. Whereas if you think about a surgery room, and I can speak to this a little bit, not like this much because my wife's an OR nurse and they, they use robots like crazy. Yeah. And so, but think about it like a surgery room. It's so prescribed. Right. It's always the same personally here. They,

Speaker:

and they do this, it's not this plumbing system that somebody built in 1907 that got remodeled in 1933. Exactly.

Speaker 2:

But like, um. But angles. Or angles, but like building a new one

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Possible. You know, and there's already the ai, or not ai, but the, um, uh, uh, what's the 3D printers Sure. Is what I'm trying to think of. Yep. Uh, that can build whole houses. Yeah. Have you seen those? Yeah.

Speaker:

Put a 3D printer on an optimist robot. You can just create the plumbing Yeah. Turn that you need. Exactly. Uh, right there. Just you go this many steps this way, this many steps this way. We have the blueprint.

Speaker 2:

We know exactly where the hole like Yeah. If you could prescribe it that well and have it be that like, uh, perfectly dictated. Yeah. I would imagine it could do a pretty awesome job. A little 3D printer

Speaker:

coming out the end of your index finger. Just Yeah. And it doesn't care. It just sits there goes, yeah. It has no

Speaker 2:

brain, has no concept of time. It does not care how long it goes. It is just gonna keep going until the job is done. That's the amazing part. Whereas humans, we, we need breaks and we need, you know Right. There's so much time involved, which you should be paid for. Yeah. So, um, I don't know that, I think the trades are pretty safe for a long time, for 20 years at least or something. Yeah. I, I, it's only those really high value things

Speaker:

like surgeons that are maybe get more robotic stuff, but,

Speaker 2:

but even that, you know, just think about the variables of every human body. Like if you just kind of throw a robot at it, like you kind of need a human to direct it and like, look Mm. And be like, Hey, that's, that's a real problem. Or that's not a problem. Or Right. Like, maybe we shouldn't, here, maybe we need to move, but maybe not for long. Yeah. I don't know. So, yeah. They, they, the mapping, the way they do surgery now is crazy. They, they like do a full on like 3D map of your body. Wow. And then they can feed that into the robot. And then the, the tools, like tools that are be infinitely small so they can go in and make the incisions that are crazy small. Sure. So you don't have as much. Yeah. Um, yeah, recovery had

Speaker:

a, I had a hernia, uh. Surgery, I guess back. Gosh, it was like 2 0 0 8. Yeah. And it was early on in that laparoscopic thing and they could just like put a little cut in there and then Yeah. You know, I was pulling weeds the next day in my garden. Yeah. You know, isn't a while was fine. I

Speaker 2:

mean, yeah. So, yeah. Um, Laura, my wife does that a lot. Yeah. Years

Speaker:

before, you know, five years before that it would've been like a big cut. They got rip up the side of me and they, you know, getting in there. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's nuts. Yeah. So I, I don't know. I think in general business technology, like productivity technology, yeah. It, it's already been really good. Which is kinda like what people I think are often overlooking when they're talking about like how, you know, automation stage Yeah. A leverage on Yeah. Yeah. But it's just keeps getting better. Um, I think the, um, uh,

Speaker:

will there be traditional softwares and stuff? Like we've got a little, uh, hobby project on the side that Ben and I have been working on. Mm-hmm. The other staff are here that. It's really just talking to an AI and saying Build this, do that, do that. Um, and so is there like even a place for QuickBooks or maybe not QuickBooks, because that's a very, it's systematized, right? Yeah. And it's got a lot of reporting to do and different and, uh, different connectivities, you know, here's how your payroll thing gets figured in, and you can pay the, pay the tax man right through here and stuff. But yeah, like, like website building is gonna be a whole different ballgame, I reckon.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's all about, um, what is automated and standardized, right? So QuickBooks would be like, again, I, I mean, I dunno if you use it, but Yeah. We, they have AI pieces, they keep like promoting Sure. AI pieces that are like in there. Yep. But they're not really that great and they're not that different than what they had before. They're just rebranding how they're like selling you this stuff. Yep. And because everyone wants AI builts into their stuff, you know? It's like now they're using that term and kind of packaging it different. Yeah. It's like Intel

Speaker:

inside ai inside. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it's the same engine and model. It's just like, oh, now it's called the AI Assistant, where it's like, oh, it's the same thing it was. But um, the number of variables that go into a QuickBooks file for every company is so, so wide. Yeah. Gotcha. That I couldn't see there, there, there would always have to be some need for someone to keep track of that. Right. Yeah. You have to keep, but uh, it's already pretty automated. It just pulls from your bank feed and spits it in there. Yeah. And does that, that part's automated, but it really has to be. Um, so, so I used to spend hours. Yeah. But there isn't any language

Speaker:

around it. Right. There isn't that much. Thinking it's kind of more about Yeah, sorting.

Speaker 2:

Sorting and Yeah, exactly. It's like rules and matching and all these things, which is repetitive. Yeah. So again, that makes sense. Uh, website development has also become so standardized that most websites start to look the same. Mm-hmm. So, you know, that's why the rise of, um, of those boxed ones have come Squarespace and different things like that. Yeah. They become so popular because like, well, you know, if Joe Schmo doesn't know anything about web development, you wanna build one, right? Go for it. Yeah. You just sign over this thing, it spits one out and you're like, well, let's good enough for me. Yeah. Do I care? No, you don't care. Uh, but anyone who needs, again, like something with functionality that is more than just a brochure, you'd probably have to pay someone to do it because there's some amount of variable in there. But, but that person would have to, would most likely go and use an AI tool to do the coding. They would have to know how to use that in their industry. But even,

Speaker:

I'm thinking like a Shopify or something. Um, if you've got a thousand products on your Shopify page, but you need to update them all, like AI could probably do that pretty good. Here's

Speaker 2:

if it was the same update. Right. But is that, how often does that happen? Every single update is the same, like every product. I mean, maybe,

Speaker:

but well put a, put a current description of this product, including the updates on the page, you know, or Yeah. I mean, take the price to increase the price by 20%. Well, yeah. That

Speaker 2:

kind of thing. Yeah. If everyone's like the price increase or I, I suppose it could go out and write a blurb about every product. It could be smart enough to read what's there if you had something. Right. But, but if it didn't exist, I don't know that it could, well,

Speaker:

I could read all the stuff I've written about that product. Online everywhere. Yeah, that's, yeah. I mean, it could, and gimme a paragraph about it. Yeah. You know, the, the whatever the, the, the Sony MT seven camera is dah, dah, dah. Yeah. And it's on sale now for only XI

Speaker 2:

mean, I had a good friend, um, uh, I'm, you know, uh, McKay, but mugs Yeah, sure. Yeah. He started community funded. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My good friend Matt, um, was the one who did a lot of the custom development of their Okay. Their platform. Yeah. That would be like a great example of like a Loco crew. Anyway, that Right. Um, that, that is like really custom software as a service, right? Like you go through a website to get it and you use it, but it's very customized to each individual donor group. And Yeah. So there's like this whole element and the code base behind it, I'm sure could be, you know, automated and repetitive, but a lot of it is. As far as I know, and I don't know all that much. Yeah.

Speaker:

It's gonna be half have to be custom stitch. Yeah. Some human has to come in here and figure out Yeah. Make it work. So yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

Um, I think that kind of thing is not going away. And

Speaker:

so for kids, like get good at the AI tools, but don't expect them to bet complete problem solvers anytime soon. You're gonna still have to be creative, thoughtful, intentional. I

Speaker 2:

think, I think there's a huge human element that will never go away and uh, yeah. You, you constantly have to know, kinda know the purpose of like what you're doing and, and why, and why am I building this and AI stuff. I, you know, can't know that to a degree, but Yeah. Um, it's, it's, I just think right now people are so enamored with it, like, wow, it can, you know, make me a song and it can make me a video. Right. And like fun things, but practical business uses, um, really depend on the role and the company and like if you're a marketing person, you got these tools. If you're a totally account person, you're gonna have some other tools and so that will, I think keep getting better just in the same, that like. Uh, there's a, you know, how many million of apps are out there? Mm-hmm. And every one of us is like, well, I use this app because it works for me. Right. And the engine behind it, you know, is built by a bunch of people in a, in a basement somewhere. It doesn't matter, but it's something I want. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it'd be the same thing, like, well, there's an AI built app, but it's only used by this small niche. Right. Or just me. Or just me. Yeah. And you, and now there, there are tools that AI can go build your own apps. Right, right. Like, you know, so, but how, uh, how, how can you scale those and all that? I, you know, that's a different story.

Speaker:

Do you have a, like visions for a significant amount of change with Digital Workshop Center? Or you kind of plan to do more of what you've been doing? Uh,

Speaker 2:

well, uh, on the AI front, I mean, every certificate program we offer has some module about. Exactly what I just said. The AI tools that are specific to that career. Yeah. So the marketing AI module is very different than the, um, yeah. Accounting project management or the accounting project management. Yeah. There are tools that exist that can be helpful, but you need to learn it for your career. So that's been a change. Um, we've been trying to, you know, you know, a lot of the things that have become maybe a little bit less relevant, you know, like, like graphic design is becoming less relevant because people can use Canva. Totally. So they don't wanna spend the money to come to school to learn it. Yep, yep. Um. We're trying to just kinda like follow where the careers are constantly. So, um, any, there, there's lists by the government, there's lists by the, uh, public, uh, so you're like looking at some of those

Speaker:

unfilled role kind of things and just trends. Trends, hiring trends. Where are

Speaker 2:

there actual jobs gonna stay and remain, you know, and, you know, we don't want to teach people on things that are dying industries per se. Um, but that's really what we're doing. So it's, um, right now we're looking at a lot of like the comp stuff, if you know what that is. It's, um, it has everything range from like how to like entry level. It positions as like a very generic term. Okay. Yep. You know, but there's a certification of like, um. And, and a very common scenario for us would be someone who's been working manual labor. They've been a plumber for 30 years. Yep. They can't do it anymore. They got a physical disability, they just don't want do it anymore. So they looked to say they need some competency in the arts. Yeah. They say, I wanna be, well, not even the arts, they just say, I wanna work in it as this like blanket broad statement. Yeah. So the first place that usually they would start is something like the coal

Speaker:

miners, uh, when they Yeah. Said learn to code. Yeah. And now coders are useless. So, and now Yeah. Whoops. Do something else. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um, but you know, but so they would start with like, uh, a certification and Comp T is a great organization that does these kind of, uh, upskilling certifications. Cool. So a plus is the kind of. Initial one. Okay. Uh, entry level IT positions you can get like Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, help desk and IT support that kinda stuff. Sure. But then that's like a gateway to many others. So like network technician, cybersecurity. Totally. Um, uh, yeah, so there's a huge list of ones that, but generally you start with that, like a plus one if you're new. I was like to technology,

Speaker:

I was like good at computers when I was in like seventh grade through 10th grade. And then I kind of lost interest in some respects, even though Yeah. Uh, early in my banking career, for example, people are like, can you fix my computer? They're like, well, I can turn it off and turn it back on again. Yeah. Try that. But tech support 1 0 1, you know, I've never, you know, either knock on wood or dumb on me for not developing that skillset, but it just hasn't been as interesting to me as a lot of other areas. Yeah. Well, but, but if I got fired, you know, I would probably think to myself, upleveling my own skill. And I'm, I'm, I'm competent. I can use Excel. I've built some kick ass spreadsheets over the years and stuff like that. I'm not just terrible. Yeah. You not chicken pecking at the keyboard. But if I, if you put me at the health desk, I'm gonna struggle.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. You know, I think, um. Uh, like, like a lot of people, you know, the, the reason I got into using computers was kind of the, um, the cause and effect of, of being able to like, put in a line of code and like something came back, you know? Mm. It was the same thing. It's funny, like, you know, having a three and a half year old, like his, his favorite things to do are when there's a, a, a response, right. So, you know, if he can do something where he can build a tower so he can knock it over, right? Like, that's fun and dad or mom goes, wow. Yeah. And well, he can see the response, even not, I can see the tower fall over. Um, anything that involves that kind of level of response he's gonna be into. And I think on some level, most semens are wired that way. Like if I can see some Totally. I can see the effect of what I just did. Totally. So, so computers are like this lazy, cheap way of doing it where like, Hey, I just hit a, a chair and I just type in some words Yeah. And then gives me something, stuff happens. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas, you know, you don't have to go out and break rocks in a coal mine or whatever. Right, right. Or I'm a farmer's kid. Yeah. And so

Speaker:

like when you, when you. Till a field. Yeah. You know, you know, results, you go back and forth and you, you turn it from gray to kind of black the whole way until you're done and you can see every action that you made, you know? Right. Yeah. And, but you know, like the outcome, your work, I made a difference today. Yeah. You made a difference. I harvested a field, you know, I took all this, I did with my work, took crop and put it in the trucks and they hauled it off, you know? Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 2:

And I think computers have always been that way to me, especially, it's just like, whoa, I can type this in. Look, something came back and then you just kind of got, I just snowballed and got better and better at it. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, I could come up with something different. But I remember doing it on the, you know, dos prompts and like making the little Pacman move around. No, way back. Way back. Yeah. Yeah. And that, but that was so cool at the time. How old are you, by the way? Uh, 47.

Speaker:

Okay. I'm 51, so I'm just a little ahead of you that, that, uh, tech space, by the way, everybody gets a gift for coming on, and I, oh, I, I'm, I'm picking up a, uh, uh, a thing from the Sean Ryan show. I've been leaving him out to the table, but he does it like right as part of the show. And so here we have, oh, you're. Thank you. Vintage Loco. Think Tank. This is awesome. Party cups. Yeah. Oh, some hot sauce from, uh, the crooked cup, uh, crew. Zoe's kitchen. Okay. Gabe are no longer crooked. Cup. Some Loco experience. Sunglasses. Sunglasses, which totally custom. Very few of those running around the community except for actually look

Speaker 2:

like decent sunglasses.

Speaker:

I mean, they're, they're, they, they cost me like$3 and 20 cents a piece when I were 500. They call that decent, but they're cool looking. Yeah. Yeah. And some stickers.

Speaker 2:

Thank you as well

Speaker:

as a nice note, which I thought you would find perhaps entertaining. You can read it if you like.

Speaker 2:

Oh, thanks for making time to share your journey on the Loco experience. May your classes and your joys be full. Thank you. And your tradition transitions be tight and groovy. Thank you. Yeah, very thoughtful. Thank you very much. Someday when I'm

Speaker:

famous, you can put that on your wall and be like, I was episode 2 47 of the Loco Experience Podcast.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's good timing'cause I think we were kind of very low on hot sauce. So we've just talking about that. We were at the farmer's market a couple weeks back and we would've bought things, but our kid was running around, couldn't corral. I might have some

Speaker:

leftover hot sauce, uh, I could give you from our hot nugs conversations. Did you see those coming across? I saw in September, October.

Speaker 2:

I saw, yeah. Like you were talking about the mayor Mayoral, was that the right one? Yeah, the mayoral candidates. Candidates. Um, yeah. Um, and we dipped

Speaker:

nuggets into the hot sauces from Matador Mexican Grill and from Old Town Spice Shop. Oh, that's cool. Were like, I was, one of the last things Shirley Peele said to me in her conversation with me is. Oh my God, you were so sweaty. And I was like, yes, I am.

Speaker 2:

I, I would, I would wiss out on that real fast because I, I can't handle too hot that that's more of a medium. Medium, yeah. Medium's where I usually, I stop

Speaker:

my next, uh, my next batch is gonna be much crazier because it just feels like, you know, I kind of went for a crowd pleaser. Yeah. And it, and it's good. It's a nice hot sauce. It's great. But when you got something called the Loco Experience, hot sauce, it should probably be a little crazier. It be crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So you,

Speaker 2:

you made this in the test kitchen or the, well, Gabe made it, it's Zoe's kitchen for me. Oh, cool. And he sells

Speaker:

it to me a hundred bottles at a time or something like that. That's awesome. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Thank you. Um, yes, you're quite welcome. I want to hear about like, the music industry. Yeah. That's changed a lot since you moved here pursuing music. Yeah. Also, yeah. Um, talk to me about like the dynamic in that kind of what, I guess too big to quit, but too small to actually make any real money on it or whatever. I suppose that's kind of the space that. Most of those bands are in.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. You know, um, uh, certainly the music industry industry has changed. Um, it used to be where you would make your money by recording, putting a CD out, right. People bought the cd Right. And you then you had some merch, even a hundred thousand copies.

Speaker:

You got real money, you made real money, you had a real

Speaker 2:

career, and then you would tour to support the selling of the cd.

Speaker:

Right, right. That was the revenue engine. That was if you broke even on the tour, that was great.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly. You were trying to sell albums and CDs, um, and Spotify and streaming and all that have completely ruined that. Um, where you make nothing on the music you make really, which is wild to think about. Like, so as the creator, like literally nothing, nothing. Zero really 0.0, 0, 0, 0, 0. Like that, you're

Speaker:

like, you're welcome. Yeah, for us to put this on here so people can find you when they want to see you tour. Exactly.

Speaker 2:

So that's exactly how it works now, which stinks. Um, what was that first file shoot? Am swear on here. Yeah, you can say that fucking sucks. Shit. Okay. Um, yeah, it so it, it just like is so, uh, demoralizing as a musician. You're like, right, why the fuck am I doing this? I wrote a book about it, you know, I wrote

Speaker:

a song about it and nobody pays it.

Speaker 2:

And nobody's, nobody's reimbursing me for the content that you are, you know, Spotify taking and going to make the money, but I'm the one that gave you the thing to make the money. You know, like, and obviously we're not that big, so like, not that Yeah. Essential. But, um,

Speaker:

but you'd have

Speaker 2:

sold

Speaker:

a hell of a lot of CDs if it was the

Speaker 2:

nineties. Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah. It would be a totally different ball game. And, and we did, I mean, for the longest time when I, so. You know, going back to when I really started playing, um, CDs were everything and, and press kits were manual and paper and all, you know, you know, and that's dating me. But like, that's how things were done. And then when email came around, it was like, I can email you my press kit. What a glorious thing. But I would still print CDs for the purpose of making money. Yeah. And every band I was in, we would, we would play the shows to make the money for the purpose of printing the CDs, selling more CDs. CDs. That's how we would actually make a living. And that really, you know, we did like, okay. You know, I never made it big obviously, but, um, and even grip weed, you know, when I first got involved, like, we printed a ton of CDs and we sold a lot of'em. Like, you know, yeah. We, we made a good amount of money, but that was right. You know, as things started to kinda shift to digital. And, um, what was that first file sharing? Service. Uh, well, there was, uh, Napster. Napster, yeah. I had that and I thought it was the greatest. I was like, I can download Metallica, don't sue me. Uh uh. Right. They actually sue people. Um, I could download real, uh, like amazing content, you know, it was like live shows of bands I loved and totally just, you know, full CDs or whatever, but like, it was all just like random stuff and it was just the wild west of downloading. You know what Bit Torrent are? Yep. I remember that too. Yeah. Yeah. So movies and, and whatever. Right. Um, and I was like 19, 20 when that was happening, so it was like, wow, this is amazing. Right. I can't believe I can get this for free. I don't have to spend any money.

Speaker:

Yeah, yeah. But later little did you know that it was actually nibbling at the foundation of your real love of music and the ability to ever. Really make any money on that, really

Speaker 2:

make any money at it. And so now the only way to make money is to tour. And you know when that shift happens. I remember my like favorite artists, you know, the, the David Byrne and the Radiohead and the, you know, these guys are like putting out music however long ago, not that long ago, like 10 years ago or something. Yeah. Um, they said it, it's free. They put it on their own website and they're like, I remember Radiohead was maybe one of the first ones were like, interesting. We're not gonna charge you. It's free. Yeah. And like, everyone I knew was like mind blown of like, how could, how could they, the biggest people do that one, it was being pirated underneath through Napster and whatever. Anyway. Yeah. People were stealing anyway, so why not find it? So might as get it to all the masses. And then the streaming kind of started taking off and I think they were just. Ahead of it and that like, um, we're, we're not gonna make money on this anymore. Yeah. So they could afford to do that and go out there and, and I was so reluctant. I remember being very adamant, like, we have to print CDs. Like, who doesn't print CDs? That's how it's done. That's, that's how you make money. It's very old school way of thinking now. Totally.

Speaker:

And well, nobody's even got a CD play or hardly

Speaker 2:

No. Yeah. There's no point. Right. It's like, and every album I've done in the last couple years. Because we're all like, of the same age, you know, late forties, early fifties, I guess everyone involved is like, well, we gotta print something. And, and really deep down, like, no, we don't. Right. Nobody wants this. Right. Nobody wants this. Five people in the country want this. Right. You know? Totally. Uh, and you can't print five. So like, it's just dumb. And it, it, it is a very hard way to go now. Um, so you, so you have to tour and touring has always been a part of being a musician, but, um, do you, do you actively tour? Um, dead Floyd stays really busy and we, we used to do more, you know, since kids, it's more like weekends and stuff. Right. You'll roll

Speaker:

down to Colorado Springs or somewhere. Exactly. Whatever. Salida another show, a couple flying

Speaker 2:

shows here and there. Okay. Where like Arizona or. Um, Montana or Chicago, we've got some following in the little pockets. We've got some following. And so the venue, we, we can get paid enough to cover getting flown there and they have the gear there. So it has to be like the right mix of situations and big enough venues. So you can sell enough tickets. We can sell enough tickets. Yeah. So, so the, the strain on the whole industry at this point is like, well why are ticket prices so high was'cause that's how artists make money, right? Uh, yeah.

Speaker:

We used to be able to buy tickets for 20 bucks.'cause they wanted to sell you a CD thing too, and wanted a cd. They make an extra$9 on that cd.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Now they know when you walk in there, like maybe you'll buy a t-shirt if it's someone you like. But most of the money they're gonna make is at the ticket. Yep. And that's it. And so the venue has to make the money and the

Speaker:

venue makes the money on the drinks and the food and whatever else, but

Speaker 2:

they still, you know, they're in, they gotta make their money. Right. So they're, they went off a piece of the ticket. Totally. Management on all sides takes a piece of the ticket. So it's, it's like, as an artist, you spend 150 bucks on a ticket now, and, and, but to the artists, I mean, they're getting like 30% of that. If that, I mean, that's probably being generous in a lot of cases. The, the number of times it gets diced up is crazy. Yeah. Um, and so it, yeah, it's a hard way to go. And I think the, uh, for us, you know, we are able to kind of make it work within this Loco area.

Speaker:

A nichey thing. Well, like the Dead Floyd has kind of its own. Kind of captured. Yeah. Not captured niche, but you're probably one of top three dead cover bands around, at least that I'm aware of. Well, thank you. I'd say we're the best about, maybe, probably, probably the best one, but, but there's, right, and especially you start looking at other regions of the country and stuff, there's, I'm sure there's other,

Speaker 2:

there's tons of popular ones, tons and tons of them, and it's, it seems very saturated and, and it's sometimes I feel like, you know, are we just another, another group doing this? But I, the thing I've always liked about it, why that that's going on 16 or 17 years now of doing that. Okay. Uh, and the thing I've always liked about it is, is a couple things. One, it's different. It's not just playing the Grateful Dead, which I totally, I absolutely love the Grateful Dead, but there's so many people doing it. It's, it's almost like playing jazz standards where you could just, you know, if you go to another jazz club, you're gonna hear a lot of the same stuff, same people. You can go through the motions. You don't really have to put a lot of effort in to get people to show up, and they kind of know what they want and they know what to expect to get it. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but that's why I like Shakedown Street better. Whoa,

Speaker 3:

whoa.

Speaker:

No comment. What's that kid from Boulder? The youngsters have a dead cover band down there. There's tons of them. There's ones all the time. Anyway, they were pretty solid. Uh, I saw them a couple years ago too. Okay. Anyway, I digress. But, um, but your vibe is a little different, but I think we've always

Speaker 2:

been there'cause we do the Pink Floyd mix in there. Yeah. And it's

Speaker:

almost like those long transitions, almost like widespread and fish and stuff like that Yeah. Is a little bit more your vibe

Speaker 2:

of e Exactly. So the, the, you know, the jam more jazzy jam, jamy, jazzy It is. And that's

Speaker:

ja not jazzy music, but. It's way of the jazz, the improvisational part. Jazz musician. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

And honestly, that's the only, I don't wanna say the only, that's, nobody knows what you're gonna play because you don't even really know what you're play. You don't play. We're gonna play. And that's the part that I like. Yeah. You know, so living on the edge of like, this could be awesome. Uh, of course it could be. It might fall really terrible. Yeah. It is really fun. And it's like very much like, uh, maybe you can relate to, you know, running a business, you're just like, well today this seems like the right thing to do. Right. You go for it, you spend some money, you put in all this effort, and then you're like, that didn't work. Right. And then you try something else. Yep. And improvisationally, I mean, you're talking about like every second you've gotta like, you know, come up with, totally flow with it, come up with ideas. But that's kinda like the fun part is like, you just go and every time it is different, you know, it's corny maybe in some ways, but like you truly, when we play whatever popular songs between the two bands, you know, yeah. We can play the two most popular songs, but if we put some transitional part in there that's improvisational, uh, that part. Is ours.

Speaker:

That's the most fun for you guys, especially.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's like, it's ours as in like, we created that. Yep. And that we take some ownership of that. And I, I've always loved that part of doing that band, and I've known those guys for a long time, so they're, you know, some of my closest friends. Um, and they're just good at it. You know, they're good at like, being able to kind of ride through the good and the bad and covering your mistakes. That's super fun to me, is I, I love improvisational living on the edge of like, this could be terrible or this could be good. Yeah. Um, so that's why Dead Floyd, I think keeps going. And, uh, luckily, you know, Charlie, the guitar player, I was playing with him before Dead Floyd in a different band called The Grip. Oh yeah. Um, I remember that. And um, I did a little bit and it was like a, like a. Training time for the Dead Floyd in a way.'cause like we just got better at improv and it was an organ trio. So it, it's all jazzy, funky, instrumental for the most part. And we got better at just listening to each other and me and him a very good job of listening. And then when we got to, uh, when that started, kind of slow down. Uh, I just remember asking him like, we should just do something fun. I've never been in a cover band. I never really wanted to be one. Yeah. I was like, we just do something fun. Like, um, I think I know like, you know, all the Grateful Dead, all the Allman Brothers, like all the Pink Floyd, and he's like, I could tell you pretty much every Grateful Dead song by heart. Like, like, try me. And like he knew it. He did. Oh, wow. And then the other guy who we were like, just chatting with something, we've already got all the skills we need for that. Well, and I remember we originally were gonna say like, we're gonna call it like the Monsters of Rock Show or something.'cause it was gonna be like just the big names of Classic Rock. Sure. But, uh, Josh at the time, he was the bass player. He was, um, I had known him from Ohio Music scene and he had moved out here randomly. I ran into him, I said, oh, hey, me and my buddy Charlie are trying to do this thing and we're just gonna do like Monsters of Rock. He's like, I'm pretty sure I know every Pink Floyd song memorized. And I was like, really? And then he, he did, you know, for the most part. And so we all got in the same room and we were like, well, let's figure a few things out. And I remember, like, we started talking about other stuff, but pretty quickly we're like. Why are we gonna do other stuff? And we know, like the full catalog of two of the biggest bands in the world. Totally.

Speaker:

And the most passionate followers that has a lot of overlap. Besides it, it's

Speaker 2:

something overlap. Yeah. Yeah. Some, I mean, not fully, but some people get confused, but some people get it. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, it became like, it just kind of like, was like a, you know, light on a light bulb moment of like, I think we should just do those two bands. And then Yeah. I remember, uh, like, you know, I, I was always trying to think of like the simplest name possible, and I was like, well, we should just call it Dead Floyd. And, and like, it was just like, thinkink just kept like rolling. We were like, well that's a great idea. And then, and so, uh, I remember not Grateful Floyd, uh, grateful Pink. That one doesn't roll. That sounds little dirty or something. Yeah, a little weirder. Uh, so it just, yeah, it works. And so that one again is like. Drawing on the two largest fan bases. Yeah. Of classic rock. Totally. So, um, you know, we have a nice built-in crowd if you like, either band, you probably like it. If you like both bands, you probably really like it. For those

Speaker:

that don't know Musketeer Grip Weed, uh, how would you wanna Yeah. Describe their uh, subset?

Speaker 2:

The grip weed is just very bluesy driven. Yeah. Bluesy, rock driven with a little bit of soul. Um, mostly originals, occasional covers. Yeah, it's almost all original. Definitely throw a few covers in there for fun on the live shows. But, um, you know, I always had a good message. Jason was always very positive person. Yeah. Um, it's hard to be positive in this times, these times these days, but he was generally, at least back then was more positive and I think he's got more cynical. Well, it's happens to most of us. Really. Yeah. Um, and so again, just having, like knowing Matt from Dead Floyd keyboard player Yeah. Knowing Jason A. Little bit, it just kind of was easy to slide over to that. And, um. He's got a little bit like a, um, a Chris Robinson from Black Crows kind of voice. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like black. I mean these are like things, all things I like. And so just like easy. One of my favorite

Speaker:

shows ever was Chris Robinson, um, with kind of his own thing as Black Crows was kind of winding down and they had a Black Crows concert in Denver.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker:

And then starting at one o'clock in the morning was Chris Robinson and his new trio

Speaker 3:

Oh wow.

Speaker:

In Boulder.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker:

And so we had tickets to the one o'clock show that got out at like three 30 in the morning and I was the designated driver'cause I was willing to only smoke weed, not drink alcohol back in the day and stuff. And uh, one of the best shows actually that I've been to, it was just so authentically, like it was him carving a new path outside of the Black Crows. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It kind of set him apart from his brother who was musically maybe more talented. And yeah. Writing songs, I would think that's probably true lyrically and vocally much more talented. Totally. And. He's, he's fantastic. So it, the sound of grip weed kind of is rooted in a lot of that just bluesy rock. But then we're all like, for the most part, uh, uh, big into, you know, I grew up like listening to Phish. That was like my band of choice. Okay. And then, you know, after high school and stuff, um, I got, I didn't get into the Grateful Dead till like way later and like these jam bands, but like Phish was like the first one I was introduced to. I was like, oh, I love this improvisational part of what you're doing. I had never seen that or heard that. Yeah. Yeah. And it was all live stuff. So I came back around to that later. Um, and, uh, everyone in that band is really into that. We don't do like that part as much. It was just little, like more like traditional songs. Yeah. It's more like classic, uh,

Speaker:

the, the Blues Rock combo.

Speaker 2:

Blues rock. But, but it, it definitely dip into like more soul stuff and bad stuff. You know, we're out some stuff for the, we have a 20th anniversary show coming up. Oh, when's that?

Speaker:

December 13th. This episode probably won't be out before then, but, uh, that's okay. You just missed it. If you're listening. Yeah. We'll see what we'll do. Maybe you personally. Yeah, for sure. I'll come. Where's where? Uh, at the Aggie. At the Aggie. Perfect. Okay.

Speaker 2:

And, um, uh, you know, we got a, at some point the guitar player, his name's Aaron, he had twins, so he left, kind of take care of the family. And then Lance Ruby, who plays with a bunch of people, he stepped in. And so just last night actually Aaron came over and he was playing with us. Cool. He's gonna sit on a few songs. Oh, nice. It's cool. It's, it's evolved like tremendously. And I think when Aaron left it, it was already maybe kind of on this like down slide of doing it for a while.

Speaker:

Yeah. What's new? What's jazz? What's new? Yeah. It's of Lost Bit

Speaker 2:

Energy. Yeah. And then Lance comes around and he's just like a ball of energy with Musically, and he, he's got so many ideas. Gotcha. And instantly he came in and he is like, I think we should try this. And like, it's kind of come back up in a way where it's been really fun to just, um, reinvent some of those old tunes and Yeah. Write, we've written two albums with Lance that have been Oh wow.

Speaker:

Been,

Speaker 2:

you know, great.

Speaker:

Very cool. And tell me about Ruby Stew. I assume that's Lance Ruby and you, or the names kind of a little bit, but yeah. So now Ruby's kind of this fresh energy that's pulling people together. Is that a durable concept or? We'll see, yeah. No. Yeah, it's,

Speaker 2:

we've been having a lot of fun. It, um. Yeah, again, everything's like a roller coaster music, but as group weed, when Lance joined, it kind of went back up for many years and then I wouldn't say it's come down, but it's, we've all just become busier and getting that group together has become very hard. Um, yeah, big group. Like that. Big group and, and just, um, so there's not as much happening there right now. So in the meantime, while that's not actively doing a lot, um, Lance and I were just chatting one day about like, Hey, you know, like I had some ideas. He had some ideas. Yeah. I was like, this would be really fun. Just, just to play. Really awesome. More traditional blues. Cool. And not like full on like boring, like, you know, d uh, sweet Home Chicago or something, you know? But, but in that vein of like, just a little bit more like just Well done. Yeah. Simple. And, uh, Dana, who plays in Dead Floyd, uh, said you went into this idea, right? He's also a great singer. He said, I love it. And then Chris, who plays with, uh, tumble Dun Shaq, which is another dead thing. Yep. He's a great singer and keyboard player. So it kind of just came together really organically where I was like, Hey, what do you think of this idea? I was like, could, like I have, this is no slight on the blues bands in the area, but like, I haven't seen a lot of great blues bands in this. No, not really. Region Uhuh. I don't think they're like doing it as, it's just kinda like, again, back to like, well that whole genre isn't

Speaker:

really, hasn't really been a significant thing in the popular music.

Speaker 3:

Uh, yeah.

Speaker 2:

It, yeah, it isn't, it's been a little while. It's been a while and it's tough. Certainly not popular music, but it, it just is. It's the same easy thing of the jazz standards or the Grateful Dead standards of like, yeah, you can get paid to be a musician, to show up to a blues bar and play the same 1, 4, 5 chord progression over and over. Right? I'm like a million songs and I just wanna shoot myself at the end of that. And at the end of the night, yeah, the singing can be terrible. The guitar playing can be terrible, but, but the band can make a little bit of money and have some fun. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. I've never seen too many, I shouldn't say never, but I've, I've rarely seen too many great blues bands in this region who just crush it and on all those fronts, like really simple things, great vocals, harmonies, and great guitar. Yeah, probably. And that's kinda what we were trying to do.

Speaker:

Oberman. Uh, I dunno, uh, what the heck is his, uh. Band's name. He's a former dentist in town. Uh, anyway, they've got a pretty big bluesy kind of thing and he's been put part of the Greeley Blues Festival thing and stuff. Yeah. And I, and I, again, I'm not like explaining anything, but probably the most known. Yeah. But it's also like one of those really big band concepts where you gotta pull together eight people kind of thing. Yeah. A horn stuff. Yeah, a bunch of stuff like that. I'm reflecting, remembering actually. So a year after I moved to Fort Collins, I moved up to Horsetooth for, and lived in a studio apartment up there just half a mile away from the, the tavern.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker:

And in that year, at least a half dozen times, I got invited to house parties with like blues bands and stuff. And I've sung like improvisational lyrics with a blues background kind of thing and just kind of made it up as I went. And you know, over the years I've. Sung a thousand songs that went down the shower drain. Yeah, yeah. And never wrote down any of'em, kind of, but just kind of get that tune in my head and, and so I think that there's an opportunity potentially to have kind of some of that improv influence from Dead Floyd, but with a Blues driven Yeah. Core that. Is suitable because yeah. Near the heart of Blues is kind of that on the street corner, just singing about my life. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 2:

singing something bad to make you feel good. Right. And, um, I, I think so. I just think, you know, and again, it's not a slight on any of the blues bands in this area, it's just I haven't personally, and I've not seen them all either. Sure. But I personally have not seen a lot of great ones. And, uh, I just thought with that particular collection of people, like, wow, we could do just the blues really well. But already it's, it's, we played three shows. We sold out Vos on our first show. Nice. That was great. You know, or our third show I guess. But, um, uh, you know, there's a, there's a little bit of an interest in demand there, I guess, and people are like, what is it? Yeah. But we've done mostly covers at this point, and it's been a lot of, like, it's, it's branched outside of just traditional blues. Right. We've gotten into some soul and stuff. Put some flavor in it. Still pretty bluesy base of like, how many different ways can we spin the blues? Yeah. And just, uh, what was it last week or the week before we got together and we're like, we're writing some original songs and cool. Very like cool spins on the blues. So probably within the next, I don't know, year or so, we will put out some, put an album together and Spotify can make all the money. You gotta print some

Speaker:

CDs? Yeah,

Speaker 2:

we won't print anything'cause I won't even buy. But I, I love how it sounded, I was listening today actually. Just'cause I, we, we, it's just phone recordings.

Speaker:

Can I find it on, uh, Spotify or anything yet? No, these are like idea recordings. Fair enough. So

Speaker 2:

someone puts their phone in the middle of the room, right? Yeah, it captures it. But like, you know, it's, well that it's easier

Speaker:

to relocate it again, right?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah.'cause we're not getting together all that often. Right. You know, every once in a while. But it's, these are great ideas that come

Speaker:

together. I want to call a short break. Um, yeah. Mostly because I wanna pee, but when we come back we will, um, go back to Little Stew in Ohio and find out where you found that love for music and Okay. Distaste for the institutional. Yeah. Sticking it to the man. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Sounds good. Alright. And we are back. Um. We said when we left that we were going to jump in the time machine.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Let, let's And uh,

Speaker:

to Ohio. Mm-hmm. I've actually got some Ohio people from Fort Collins in my world. Do you know Russ or Ned or Andrea Lucas? I think she was from Columbus actually.

Speaker 2:

Um, Russ is in, uh, choice City. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I know Russ through that from after here. Yeah. I think he's, I figured living back, he moved back there like six months ago now. Yeah. They sold their place on the lake. Yeah. I'm not that, never been that close with him, but I knew that about him'cause when I went into Choice City, they would have type of potato chips that I thought only existed in Ohio. Right. And that's the only other place I've ever seen him. Yeah. And uh, so I was asking like, where, how did you know about

Speaker:

this? When I first moved here, I fell in, I didn't know anybody'cause I was sight unseen, so I fell in with, it was kind of a Wyoming group. Mm-hmm. An Ohio group. Yeah. Nice. And, uh, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Um, there's a lot of Ohioans out here. There are, yeah. I,

Speaker:

I, well if Ari especially,'cause that's when Ohio was really becoming the rust belt. Kind of, yeah. And opportunities were scarcer. Yeah, I think so. It's, it's improved since then, I think economically.

Speaker 2:

Well, and like rusts and a lot of people I know grew up in more rural areas. I grew up in Columbus, which is a, you know, the largest city in colo in, in, uh, Ohio. And it's not that far from, uh, uh, Denver, you know, like Right. In terms of population. So it's a huge city. It's got everything. Yeah. Yeah. It's got everything. Um, major sports, major entertainment, major, everything. Um, and what was your

Speaker:

scene like? Were you part small family, big family? Was your dad college professor?

Speaker 2:

No, um, uh, my, my dad is an entrepreneur, well, he's a very good small business owner. He started a, a franchise. Um, he met my mom in Boston. He was working as a salesman for a, a, uh, I forget what it was like, like not a chemical company. It was, I was maybe like, kind of like dow, you know, like, okay, make products, whatever. And anyway, they met there. And then my grandfather, which is my mom's dad. Introduced him to this guy outta Philly who was starting a franchise for a, a business that he had started. And it's called Multi Flow. Okay. And multi flow is basically all the equipment you've seen behind the bars. Oh. So he had the little zapper, the guns for the soda water and the Coke

Speaker:

Squirt Pepsi lemonade, and then everything, you know, orange juice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And like you could get anything on it. Yeah. And the gun and the ice bin and the way the probably rack the zero two powering units and stuff. Yeah. Everything that has to go behind the bar. Okay. Uh, it was for multi flow and so this guy was franchising it out and my mom's dad, my grandfather introduced him and they said, so it's

Speaker:

actually a pretty interesting franchise. Like we think about restaurants and plumbing business and stuff, but in that case, like I've got everything. Your customer, your Wouldbe customers need to have a much better bar setup experience.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And you know, similar to, you know, what I am to the community colleges or universities, you know, it's a. It's a third party alternative. So you deliver the goods? Yeah. You can go to Coke. You can go to Pepsi. Right. It's gonna be bigger scales. So get to buy more and it's gonna be, um, you know, more options of whatever they sell, but it's, uh, cheaper in that regard. Yeah. But you also don't get like someone to come help you have a problem. And, you know, customer service, same thing. And so multi flow is this third party alternative where they have all of the same products. You can buy Coke through them. You can buy Pepsi through them, but then they would have multi flow cola. So if you're a, a shitty college bar like Trailhead here. Right, right, right. I mean, I like Trailhead, but you know, it's whatever college bar. Yeah. We don't

Speaker:

have Coke or Pepsi. We've got Cola. We've got

Speaker 2:

Cola. Yeah. That's what they sell. Yeah. And so if you go order a rum and coke, do you really give a shit? If it's Coca-Cola? No, not really. Most people can never tell the difference. Right. Um, and whiskey, Coke, whatever. It's mixed with something. So that was your, so that's what he did? Yeah. So he started, so he moved, they moved from Boston. Uh, my mom's, uh, whole family's from Cleveland. Okay. Uh, so she was in Ohio and anyway. And so they took the, or started the franchise in Columbus. And so he grew it up to be really big. Um, he, you know, he, he was a great salesman. He still is like such a talker. So he was

Speaker:

selling other people to buy the franchise? Uh, no. To, or or he was just having customers to Yeah. To get the customers selling bars. Yeah. Delivering buy the products. Co cola.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And the, all the equipment. And he was, this is, uh, you know, mid eighties ish or Yeah. Early eighties. And so he was very much all about just walking into bars. How you doing? My name's Jeff. Yeah. And try to sell something. Yeah. And he was good at it, and he really did a good job with that. He was a great salesman. He was a shitty business owner. Okay. And if he's ever listens to this, he'll, you know, he'll be mad I said that, but, um, he probably knows it. Yeah. He, I think he knew that, but he, he didn't know, like talk about like, you know, from where I sit at least today. Uh, as a business owner, I put systems in place and the systems are what the business uses to run. Right? People come and you work the system. He was winging it all the time. He was constantly winging it. He had zero systems, he knew nothing. And this is, you know, computers were barely taken off. Uh, but even paper systems, which existed forever, right? He did not do a good job with that. And so for years he was just getting ripped off'cause it was a very cash business at the time. And well, and he is

Speaker:

taking phone calls to fix things that he could have just had fixed because they had a brochure that said How to fix this your damn self or whatever.

Speaker 2:

So many, so many examples of things that like would've made it a better business. He would've made more money and been more successful. But he did really well and he grew it into like a nice sized business. Yeah. Um, you have siblings and I have an older sister, yeah. Okay. And, uh, she got into more like design, which I kind of follow her a little bit of like being, she's so much better design, but with a lot

Speaker:

more it element of you kind of. Um, yeah, I was just

Speaker 2:

more into the computer side. She was more into like the visual and her. She, she does, uh, branding and identity for, um, some really large organizations. Cool. And agencies outta Chicago, and now she's doing it, um, like independently freelance for the ones she's working on right now is like some, uh, brands of, of, uh, Doritos going overseas. Oh, okay. Uh, she's working on soup, right? Uh, V eight, you know, when the new label

Speaker:

comes out, she's got her fingers on it and sometimes they're like,

Speaker 2:

test market, so they'll make one and they'll send it to like India or something and like, will anybody buy this weird flavor? I met a, a guy,

Speaker:

a marketer the other day that, uh, does Indian motorcycles, but. Only outside of the us. Yeah. So he is helping design the br, the branding and the marketing materials for, for the international, for Japan market. Yeah. And the Germany market and all that. Yeah. And

Speaker 2:

there's a lot in that. And so she's, yeah, you

Speaker:

gotta be consistent with the brand, but you also have to be relevant to the place.

Speaker 2:

And you have to know how to, how to, you know, make that evolutionary kind of change there. Make sure it's like interesting, similar but different. And, um, was your mom, uh. Watch you

Speaker:

kiddos or she do some other stuff too? She,

Speaker 2:

well, she was a preschool teacher. She, she was a French teacher first. I think that's where I get a lot of the teacher interesting. Uh, component from me. Yeah. Um, and then she was, um, so she lived in France for a while and then she taught French and she came back here and she was more of a preschool teacher at some point after we had kind of grown up a little bit. Yeah. Because I remember gonna preschool with her and doing that. Um, and, uh. At some point though, where I was going with that about my dad is he was such a, he was just too trusting, not paying attention. He had a guy named Gary who was running the front office. Very long story, but Gary was a piece of shit. And Gary ripped off Gary. We would sometimes call him Uncle Gary'cause he would come to all of our, our family events. He was that close with us. Right, right. He was ripping him off like crazy. Yeah. And Uncle Gary stole like, you know, in hundreds of thousands. Six figure. Yeah. Like an insane amount for the time. Yeah. And only

Speaker:

50,000 a year. But for 12 years. Yes, exactly. That's exactly what it was. Damn. And

Speaker 2:

uh, it was all cash. Just pushed. Put a here. No. Nah. And my dad didn't have those systems to know it was bad. So at some point an accountant, like pointed all this out to him was like, you're missing like a ton of money. Right.

Speaker:

He started doing all this research figure, according to all these reports, you should have$400,000 in the bank. Yeah. But according to this bank statement, you've got 4,000, got nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And

Speaker 2:

it almost ruined him. Yeah. Wow. And so he ended up, um, you know, he figured out, they got someone to investigate. They figured out it was Gary. Gary went to jail. He got some of the money back, but not a lot. And then, um, at that time, my mom, we were like, uh, I was like a freshman in high school or something like that. Okay. And my mom was doing the preschool thing where she was like, we're not losing the business. Fuck that. I'm gonna come work for you and be like operations. Wow. And I'm gonna do the new Uncle

Speaker:

Gary. Yeah. And we're gonna build some systems. Finally, Frank, we're gonna build systems. Or what's your dad's name? Uh, Jeff. Jeff.

Speaker 2:

And so my dad would go out and sell and my mom would work in the office. So,

Speaker:

and then the business thrived

Speaker 2:

and, and then the business did really well for a long time.'cause she was, you know, way more honest. She's, she's so detail oriented and, uh, she didn't know a lot about accounting and she figured it out. She didn't know a lot about, you know, processes. Figure out She's really your example,

Speaker:

uh, in a lot of respects. Huh? I

Speaker 2:

think so. I think she was just, you know, she's just like one of those people. If, if she needs to do it, she will figure it out. Yeah. And she's always been good like that. Cool. Um, so she, she took over and they worked together my whole high school basically. And, and I saw the good and the bad of that. And what was

Speaker:

Little Stew, uh, like. Five-year-olds do. Were you, uh, sporty? Were you smart all straight a's kind of thing?

Speaker 2:

Um, I don't think I was, uh, I didn't excel at any of those areas, but I was like decent at grades. Yeah. I'd always had decent grades. I loved playing sports. I would never say I was like actually very good at any of them, but I was very into'em. I would play a lot of, uh, baseball when I was young and then tennis.'cause my, my dad liked tennis. I played that with him a lot. Um, bowling, I got to be like decent at, you know. Okay. A couple of these things, but like, what's your high game, high score? Oh, I was like, somewhere around high high school. I think I got like a two 50. I was like the best ever did. Ooh, dang. Yeah. I got a two

Speaker:

15

Speaker 2:

once. Yeah. I never got to 300, but I did really good because I was going like all the time. Oh, two 50 is

Speaker:

almost good.'em all. Yeah. Right. Like it only takes missing a few pins, so it's like Yeah. Like really missed, lose 50 points. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um, and, uh, cool. Yeah, so I I kind of a normal existence.

Speaker:

Big, big schools and stuff. Public school? Um, no, I went a private school actually. Okay.

Speaker 2:

Um, my. Uh, it was when I was very young, my parents put me in it. It's not like I had a choice. Yeah. Um, and I just stayed into it. Like a faith oriented school or just for not faith, just kids private school. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and it was called Columbus Academy. It was just a, uh, independent, yeah, yeah. Private school. Um, but, uh, yeah, I don't know. I did, I did okay. I did fine and I, I was so small. It was, I graduated with like 70 people or something. Okay. Yeah. Um, yeah. And where's the

Speaker:

music hit? The hit the scene?

Speaker 2:

Uh, so my grandfather was always a musician. He's a Your dad or your mom's dad? Uh, my mom's dad. Same guy I was talking about before. Yep. Um, he's an incredible guy. He's like a for Gump background of guy. Okay. And, uh, he was always an amazing pianist. And you go to like, his childhood, so he, he lived to be 103. Oh. So he's got a crazy amount of stories. My

Speaker:

wife's grandmother lived to be 103 as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And his, his life. Experiences are insane. So when he grew up 1910, I think, yeah. I'm doing my math. And then he would lived through all these terrible times. Sure. But he was really into playing piano. So he grew up in Cleveland. He would go to the, uh, it was very segregated at the time. Mm-hmm. And he would go to the black communities to learn from the best people. Sure. And he sat down with some of these like incredible musicians at the time and watched them like Oh, right. A famous guy who was blind and Art Tatum, who's a pianist and Oscar, that's how you do those transitions. Yeah. Well, I mean, but so he, he learned from them. So when I was growing up, he was always playing piano. So I would sit around and listen to it. I never got as good as him. I tried to take some lessons at some point, but, you know, I was appreciated. Sure. But my cousin. In Cleveland, uh, played the drums. And so, okay. Uh, I, once I got a taste of that, I was like, that's the coolest thing ever. Yeah. So then, um, I got a kit back in my house and cu in Cleveland like two hours away, so we'd always be there, but

Speaker:

I want to, I wanna talk about drums for a second because I actually played the drums a little bit. Yeah. Like, until, like I needed to either buy a drum set or quit the band. Yeah. Uh,'cause our school didn't have a drum set for the drummer to use kind of thing. And, but it's a, yeah. Describe that experience.'cause it's such an interesting,'cause you're, you got the, you got the, you got the line, right? Like you're kind of the commander of the vessel in some ways as far as the beat stuff goes and you kind of help to tie the whole thing together. Yeah, yeah. But it's sometimes overlooked.

Speaker 2:

Uh, it should be overlooked. Usually that's the goal, right? Well, yeah. I mean, it's one of those things I think the, the drummer and the bass player. Are are, if they're rock solid, you don't really notice that they're there. Right. So it's like, the best compliment someone can give me is like, I didn't even notice or something. Right. But like, it's just'cause you're keeping time really well and you're being like in the groove. Um, it, you know, it's, to me it's like, what do you love about it? Um, yeah. It's like the most, um, primal connection to like, making music of like, anybody can do it anywhere at any time. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been going on for, you know, since the beginning of man, but like. Um, it gives you an incredible amount of power to make people move and know that, uh, the simplest thing I can, I can make you move this way and if I do something else, I can make you move that way. Yeah. You know, like, like in a, in a broad way of saying that.

Speaker:

But, um, I bet you've been a part of a few drum circles over time. Uh,

Speaker 2:

drum circles. Yeah, sure. That's an interesting

Speaker:

experience as well, right? Yeah. Because that one out of six people or whatever can kind of change the tone and it moves from there. I always, and it becomes this organic Yeah. Improvisational

Speaker 2:

thing.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I always loved being the guy. I would, if I came to a drum circle, I would sometimes have a conga or whatever, but then I would, I would always have other percussions.'cause I was kind of into drums at a young age. So I remember always bringing like a, a, a, a, uh, cowbell or a wood block or something. Yeah.'cause. Talk about being effect to the change. Like, because everyone's playing the same ba ba and then you like have this really high pitch thing and everyone's like, oh, what's that? And they, everyone can hear it and they like, follow you. And I always just liked that, you know? And I enjoyed really cool. The power it kind of gave you Yeah. Um, dig it and, and so yeah, drumming has always just been really, um, natural, but at the same time, like I, I probably wouldn't have gotten into it if I didn't have an awesome music teacher. Yeah.'cause she kinda like gave me the school's kit at the time. Okay. She was like, if you wanna go learn, go learn. She, and do you

Speaker:

share in songwriting vocals? I think you sing along sometimes. If I remember. Not too much. Not much. No. Not singing. Um,

Speaker 2:

yeah, I mostly my contributions to the grip weed would be like the, um, just, just ideas, musical ideas. I think, you know. Have a good enough ear on some of what we're playing and listening to that I can contribute Yeah. Quite a bit. Um, I don't have as much theory or, you know, that kind of melodic knowledge. You're not a music major in college necessarily, but you classes, but I, I sit down and play again, back to like piano. I can play the piano. I know all my chords, you know, you know. Yeah. You know, most of my chords, all my, and, and, uh, I can kind of hang, if you put like a bunch of chord, put a chord sheet in front of me, like I could probably play it. Yeah. Slowly. Um, and I used to be better and now I'm, you know, I don't do it as much. Right, right. But, but I understand it and, and so I can contribute that when we get together now. And with Ruby Stew, I had like, I've had a few lyrical ideas that I threw out and I think they liked them hopefully. And so that's been fun. Might hear about

Speaker:

that first album when it comes. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so, but normally in every band I've ever been a part of, it's very collaborative and yeah. Um, there's never even the with grip. We, like Jason pretty much does write all the lyrics. Sometimes we'll give him little notes, but like he's writing all that, but he's not writing, he's flowing with

Speaker:

ideas about lyrics anyway,

Speaker 2:

lyrically, but he's not really writing it. Music, uh, instrumentally, right? I mean, he did earlier on. He doesn't as much now. Right. Um, so it's the band kind of coming up. The band. What if we come in with a lead in like this or, and like, here's the main riff. Here's like the groove. Here's the, the structure. And then give him a couple days and he'll come back and be like, all right, here's like my idea for words and Oh, really? So you bring

Speaker:

the music first a lot of times and then put some words onto, or both ways?

Speaker 2:

Almost. Almost university. Yeah. The music comes first. Really? Yeah. Interesting. And for that band, because when I

Speaker:

write my blog, I always come up with the title first and then I fill in the rest later. And in some ways, I guess that's similar, like, here's the music and put some words in there.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, I think it works well if you come up with a melody and you kind of can comment along and then you know, like what you're totally dealing with,

Speaker:

if you're good. Those shower songs I was talking about, it's usually because I'm humming some kind of a. A, a tune Yeah. First that I put together. Yeah. And so I'm putting the, the words to the song that's already running in my head. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then you're just branching off and forth your own thing. Interesting. And I think, you know, um. Melody is, well, if you're a really good singer songwriter, you can do both, right? You can play the acoustic guitar, play the piano, and you can sing and like the idea kind of goes with it. But most people I know fit into one of those two camps that like if you just write a cool melody on your guitar or you, or your piano and you're like, this is just sounds interesting and fun. Yeah. Now what does that sound like to me? Like, what does that make me feel? Or what does that like? Yeah. How did I, well, what I want that to be about. Yeah. It was the emotions around

Speaker:

this. Is it a angry bluesy song? Yeah. Is it a love song? Yeah. Is it a monster ballad? Yeah. Okay. Now we need some words that fit that team and, and now

Speaker 2:

we come up with words that kind of go with it. So, um, that's how it's always worked for stuff I've been in. I did that and that was cool too.'cause, because one of the Ruby's two things was an idea of, it was, it was Lance and, and Dana had come up with this cool thing and so recorded on a phone. This was months ago or something, and then I had just been like, it'd been like bouncing around in my head. I was like, and I had this other thing. When Graham, my son was really young. Yeah. I had a lot more time of being with him, like just holding him in the middle of, you know, 3:00 AM And so I would sometimes just like say something on my phone like, oh, that's a cool idea, kind of shower song. But, you know, 3:00 AM delirious song. Yeah. Yeah. And I had just read all this stuff out and all the cool ideas. Cool. So, um, uh, so yeah, anyway, one of'em kind of fit that and I kept like hearing it. I just, it just, the structure of it fit. So, so do you

Speaker:

have, uh, like. Writing poetry or things like that in your background at all to Um, I've certainly done that. Yeah. Dabbled, but Yeah. But

Speaker 2:

not like, you know, for anyone else to read. Just love poems for your wife Yeah. When you first met her kinda stuff. Yeah, exactly. Let's, uh, can we talk about her?

Speaker:

Sure. Where'd you, where'd you find her? Uh, and when,

Speaker 2:

um, we met in Denver through, um, I was living in, so I lived here for a while, got kind of burnt out being here and just felt like I needed to, especially with like the dating scene at the time. I, I was, you know, dated on and off, but never really had found the person. Yeah. So I moved to and sme, this is when, um, this is this. Uh, uh, 17. 2017. Okay. Something like that.

Speaker:

Oh, I didn't realize you had moved away for a while. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

I guess I did actually. I think I did know that. But like everything I was doing was here. Yeah. The bands, I was in the digital workshop. I, I just went on a different social life to see like, what would Denver be like? And, and I kind of missed the big city of like, Columbus. Yeah. Interesting. Um, the access to better restaurants and culture. So you were commuting up to Fort Collins every day? Denver, I was commuting. Not every day, but a lot. A lot. A lot. It was interesting. It was, um, it was right before remote work was really right. Like it would've worked a lot better if I had had that structure set up. Right. Like, I would probably not have left, to be honest. Yeah. Because I could, I didn't need to be here as much. Yeah. And we were doing all in person classes, all that stuff. And so we were right in this, like, transitional time to get into online classes. Um, but if the timing would've been different, I probably never would've left. Yeah. Um, and uh, so I met Laura and then, and, and we met through, um, um. Uh, what is it called? Bumble, you know, it was like the dating app in Denver.

Speaker:

Yeah. Like the one that lets girls choose kind of thing. Yeah. Which is basically all of dating. Yeah, right, exactly. Just formalizing the girl's. Always a decider. Yeah. I mean, guys are creeps, let's be honest, most of us. But it makes like average guys like us like stand out as pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And, and I had dated a handful in Denver, hadn't found a lot of, you know, any success. It was like, you know, but, but you meet so many more people. So I had gone on days outside of Bumble, but I'm saying like, I'd gone on a couple bumble dates and like Yeah. Um, you know, it was just like, it felt like the new way of meeting someone.'cause I was also, um, I wasn't drinking bartender. Yeah. I wasn't bartending. Downsizing your alcohol consumption. Exactly. So I just didn't want to be out as much. And anyway. And so we met, we hit it off pretty much right away. Um, she had had been on a bunch of bad Bumble dates too, and she's like, she's like, I don't know, I can't, she is actually my chance. Yeah. I think he's actually like semi-normal. And I was like, ah, I think she's not, I semi my normal. I think she's not like obnoxious. Like this is gonna work out. Okay. Uh, so we, um, yeah, we dated and, and I was

Speaker:

How old were you when, when you got married?

Speaker 2:

Um, uh, when we started dating, um, when I was 38. Wow. And then we got married when I was, uh, uh, after, sorry. We got married after we had Graham, so, so came first. So, yeah. But,

Speaker:

so after, and your grandma was, uh, you were, you were 44 or something already by that time? I was 43. Yeah. When I four three. Yeah. So, yeah, that's like, uh, is is, are you older than Laura or is she Very late. My mom, year and a half, two. But she's pretty old too. She is, yeah. Yeah. So you guys will have a kiddo geriatric until you're 16. Yeah. Are you gonna try for another No, no. Call it, we're good. Talk to me about, uh, where, where did she come from and, and what was it that you guys really vibed around?

Speaker 2:

Uh, she's from Philly. My dad's from New York. I think I always liked something, some sort of, that aspect of that personality. She was always just really easygoing, like very go with the flow, but also. Wouldn't take any shit for me, wouldn't tolerate bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I like that combination that, yeah. Jill does that for me too.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And, uh, similar taste in music. Not exactly, but enough. Yeah. I remember when I was younger, I was, music was everything to me and still is in a lot of ways. But yeah, it was like, if you don't like this, this, and this band, I cannot, we can't be friends. I can't date you. I would like exclude people for that reason. And I know some people who still do that, they're like, well, you don't like, you don't like Phish. Like, I can't, I can't be

Speaker 3:

friends with you. Right.

Speaker 2:

It's like, no, that's that I, this is not gonna work. That's not what I was really looking for. But we had enough in common musically where like, like we would go to shows. We had fun. Um, and, uh, and she, and why you stay down there, you know, she's a nurse, an or nurse. She's really smart.

Speaker:

Yeah. Why didn't you stay down in Denver? Or did she wanna come here to you? I

Speaker 2:

was already, yeah, I mean, I was already kind of making that, um, transition back. Oh, really? Okay. So this was towards the end of being there. I, I was there two years, two and a half years. So it's towards the end of that. And I was just getting really sick of the commute. So I think I had, I had a friend up here who lives pretty East Mulberry, that weird neighborhood back there. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and they had an extra room a couple times a week. Well, they, yeah. The room in the basement. And, uh, they said, you can rent it out for real as long as you need. And so I, I didn't renew my lease in Denver. And then I had that kind of set up, and then I met her and I was like, boom, you could stay with her when you wanted to. You could. Yeah. I was like, boom, boom, boom. And I was like, well, maybe I should get another lease in Denver. But then like, I, I didn't, I just didn't wanna do the commute. Yeah. And so it was so fresh and new. I was like, well, yeah, I can just do this commute the other way. Maybe this will work out. And, uh, you know, I, I can stay with her if I, you know, as we start dating longer and, and it started working and when it got down to it, I was still of like the opinion of you can kind of get a job anywhere. Right. You're an no earner. You're no earners. You can go anywhere. And I am really. Sort of saddled to Fort Collins in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. And so she was, was that a tough sell for her? Um, not really.'cause she's been a travel nurse. She's, yeah. She's traveled to like, if you can tolerate that life lifestyle,

Speaker:

living in Fort Collins ain't too bad. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

She was like, she just liked the, the, the adventure, you know? And so she's like, let's do it. You know? Does she still do travel nurse or She works Locoly now? Yeah. But much easier with a, yeah, it's with a kid. I'm sure someone does it. But yeah, so she's been at hospital, so she got, she got stationed in Hawaii. She got stationed in Vietnam. She got stationed in That's pretty cool. Yeah. All these different places. Opportunity and like she yeah. Saw so much of the world. So then she got stationed in Vail, lived there for many years, then trickled down to Boulder, Denver. So that's where she ended up kind of Denver. Gotcha, gotcha. So she was totally cool with moving up here. Yeah. And I think she really does like it. I think it's. Um, one of the smaller areas she's ever lived in. Probably, yeah. She's lived in not big cities. Tell me

Speaker:

about, uh, your little future golf program.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Uh, he's awesome. He's three and a half. Um, you know, he's just all about, well, I mean like all three and a half year olds. He's just all about play. All he wants to do is play all day long. All and he's,

Speaker:

well, I'm 51 and I, yeah. I kind of, all I wanna really do is play too, but

Speaker 2:

yeah. It, you know, people say it's supposed to keep you young. I'm not so sure about that, but 47 now, so yeah. We're older parents. We're not having another one. We were, we, we had given up, we, we had tried for a couple years. Oh, okay. We dated three years or something, and then we were like, you know, if we're gonna do it, we gotta do it now. Right. And we felt like this was Pull the goalie. Yeah, exactly. We felt like this was a thing and we're, and we're gonna be together a long time. We're, you know, yeah, we're gonna stay together. So she was like, let's go for it. And it didn't happen. It took like another two years and still hadn't happened. And, uh, we had, and at that point we were like, let's try a couple of these fertility drugs, not IVF, but yeah, the other ones offered just to

Speaker:

juicy up a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And, uh, and, and we again, ba bing, ba boom. Uh, well, no, it, nothing worked. Still nothing, nothing worked. So then we were supposed to go to like Tahoe and we were like, we said that she was kind of the driver's like, that's it. Yeah. I wanna stop. I'm 41, right? I think she just turned 41 and she's like, I don't want to be an older parent and I don't wanna keep trying and being disappointed. And there was like, there was a miscarriage in there and it was like all kinds of sad things. But, um. It's stressful. Totally. And this whole, like, trying to get pregnant is more stressful than fun. Right. Sounds fun. But she quit trying, then she got knocked out and then, yeah. So, so we went. So we were supposed to get a, Tahoe. Tahoe had a massive fire. Okay. They, uh, were like, you know, nothing was really usable where we were supposed to be. And the Airbnb let us out of it. Um,'cause the plates was burning down and she had, um, uh, all these friends in Hawaii'cause she had travel nerves there. Right. And um, and we had a bunch of points saved up. So we ended up getting there very cheap, staying very cheap. Had an amazing vacation is still one of my favorite vacations. Yeah. And

Speaker:

she got knocked up and there's something about sea level. Just relaxing. Yeah. And just relaxing, body relaxing. And not, you weren't, you, you quit trying. You quit trying. You're not mentally stressed and physically stressed and just relaxed. The strength, I actually. Uh, started running in, in Costa Rica. Hmm. Because I, we went to Costa Rica and I was like, I'm gonna run barefoot on this beach'cause that looks like a badass beach and I'll just run until I get tired. And I was like, shit, I'm not getting tired. Yeah.'cause I'm at sea level, you know? Yeah. And, uh, and that really kicked off for being You were smoking a cigarette while doing that? I did after, yeah. Uh, but it kicked off kind of a, you know, I eventually did the horse tooth half and the wild west relay a few times and, you know, slimmed down from my 200 pound banker weight to a trim 180 or, or whatever. That's awesome. Yeah. Good for you. Um, and, but it was, it, it was all kind of founded on that super strength from a beach trip.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's definitely something to it. I think the, the, what is it? The, it's the negative ions when you're around water make you feel positive. Totally. Yeah. Like, and there's just so much there of just like positivity. Hawaii is amazing. We had such an amazing setup and yeah, very cool. And luck. And so it just kind of, the, the, Jill and I went there for our

Speaker:

20th, uh, like two and a half years ago. Oh, cool. Which part? Uh, we went to Kauai and to, uh, wahoo. Okay. No, not Oahu. Uh, what's the one that burned? Uh,

Speaker 2:

uh, Maui.

Speaker:

Maui. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we spent a week at each of those

Speaker 2:

islands. So yeah, I've done Oahu and Big Island.

Speaker:

Okay. Yeah, the Big Island will be next. Yeah. That's cool. It's fun. It snowed there the other day. We did it. Interesting.

Speaker 2:

It hasn't snowed in Denver, but it snowed on the top of the mountain. Then

Speaker:

the, uh, the closing segment is the Loco experience, and that's the craziest experience that you're willing to share. But I want to give you a chance if there's, if there's something else you wanna make sure you mention. I know you said you've got a show coming up December 13th, but this will probably publish after that, so that's not

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Won't worry about those. Uh, dead Floyd's playing like January 23rd at the Aggie. Okay. Uh, and then 24th at Boulder Theater. Dig it. Uh, so you can Yeah. Promote those. Um, c Mini Tour. Yeah. Yeah. Weekend Warrior, right? Um, yeah. I don't know, other than, I mean, digital workshop center.com. If anyone wants to learn more about whatnot, the programs. But, um, happy to talk to everyone too if they ever just wanna Yeah. Call and call. Talk about'em. What we do, and especially for like team training, that's something we're just getting back towards more of is pushing for that.

Speaker:

Like internally have a, a group. Yeah. Hire you, bring some in-house training, come full circle. We

Speaker 2:

got away from that because it was less popular, but coming back to it where we're getting more teams and like employee training as we would call it, of um, yeah, soft skills and different things that people need. So if anyone needs that, lemme know.

Speaker:

Well. The loco experience is the closing segment. That's the craziest experience of your lifetime that you're willing to share with our listeners.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Um, you know, I, well playing music, I could go through a long list of crazy experiences, but I'm sure Plus

Speaker:

you were drinking heavily for

Speaker 2:

many of those years, drinking, and there's other things involved there that I, you know, you've done drugs too. Oh, yeah. That's right. What? But I'm not gonna, I think I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna say this as my, I, I, I, when you say that, you know, it's like what pops in your head first? Yeah. Um, and I'll try to keep it brief'cause it's sort of long story, could be a long story. I will try to keep it as short as possible because I know we got things to do and, um, okay. I went to college at University of Maryland in, outside of DC Okay. Yeah. We didn't really touch that chapter much. Yeah. And, uh, so I wanted to get out, get the fuck outta Columbus, Ohio State's in Columbus. I was like, get outta here. So I go to Maryland and my best friend, um, terrapins. Right? Uh, terrapins. Yeah. Oh, nice. I, my, one of my best friends, I, I say my closest friend I grew up, I've known him when I was two. Okay. You know, so since like my kids' age, right. We've been friends our whole lives. We've gone different ways. We've kind of come back and at the time he was living in Phoenix. And he had gone to Ohio State with a guy named Pete. Pete worked, uh, his first family business selling textiles to casinos. Okay. And he was the biggest story, um, close Atlantic City. Atlantic City, yeah. And, um, he, but he did, he was very wealthy. His dad's business was very successful. He sold all of the carpets, the drapes. Oh yes. Everything to almost all the casinos in Atlantic City. Damn. And they were like, you know, repeating, they're always, uh, uh, doing things. So he was very wealthy. But Pete went to Ohio State. He met my friend Adam. Uh, I, I'm in DC in Maryland, and I invite Adam to come spend the summer with me, one of my closest friends. And so he drives out, he's living with me for the summer. He gets a call from his buddy Pete. Pete's like, Hey, I heard you're out here for the summer. I'm right not that far down the road. I'm in Atlantic City. Why don't you come down? And we're like, uh, what are we barely 21. I mean, honestly, I think we were. Underage and had fake adsd. Maybe only 20. Yeah. I think we had fake adsd. Pretty sure. Um, and uh, and we were just like, no, I, I can't afford it. Like, we both love playing cards. I love blackjack. Yeah, I love poker. But, uh, I was like, dude, I can't afford to go to Atlantic City and the amount of money in the hotel and everything in car. Right. And Pete's like, I got you. And we're like, well, what does that mean? He goes, I'll pay for your hotel. We're like, uh, that's awesome. Still can't do it. He's like, I'll pay for all your food. We'll get it all comped. He's, he's, he's such a big gambler, this guy Pete. He's like, I can get that comped and, and keeps going and going. And we're like, oh my God. Well I don't know how this I'll your drinks. I'll buy your, and we, and we were still pushing back a little'cause we were just both like, I don't want to go blow, you know, however much money gambling right now. Even it afford even a hundred bucks. Yeah. You know, with all the other things. Tope goes, look, I'm gonna send a limo from Atlantic City to the University of Maryland to pick you up and drive you. And however many one of your friends, you all can come. You can stay in a suite at uh, one of the hotels there at a very nice hotel, and you can hang out with me and I'll get you the show. I'll put everything on the room, shows everything is calmed. And, and so finally we're like, let's do it. So we get a group of friends together, smoking a bunch, drinking a bunch, two and a half hours, three hours down the road to Atlantic City. First of all, it picks us up and like outside the crappy apartment I lived in, you know, like this pimp, pal limo. So drives us there and, and like a group of six or more? Yeah, it was about six. Yeah. The girlfriend I was with at the time, Adam, two of their, two of my other buddies. And then maybe like one of their girlfriends. Something like that. Um, so we we're rolling down the road and this is, you know, pre-social media and whatever. We, I don't even, I think there's like one picture of this whole, these experiences. Okay. But, um, we get there, there's a spread of like Dom Perignon cigars, caviar, like the most expensive shit you can imagine, right. And the most expensive liquors in a suite in this gorgeous hotel. So we had our own, I had my own room. Adam had his own room, you know, and, and, and me and my girlfriend were like, this is amazing. Right? So we go to see shows and we see like Tommy Chong and we see, uh, a bunch of, you know, decent Vegas acts. Yeah. So the, I'm trying to speed up the story. So the, the, we did the, so it was so much fun. Everything was comps, right? You know, I always spent like a couple hundred bucks on gambling and I think I won. So I was in a great mood. Yeah. So then we did it like. Three more times. Okay. So this is the first of a series within a summer. Yeah. So this happened like a couple weeks later. He's like, let's do it again. Pete is a, I should have said at the top, he's like a degenerative gambler. Yeah. He's a ton of money. Doesn't know what to do with it. And so he's spending money like crazy and he was playing like in the high limit rooms. Whoa. And he's just blowing through money. And he, he's definitely got comped because he has such a high bankroll Right. That

Speaker:

the casinos are making 20 grand a weekend off of him. Exactly. So they're happy to give him a couple rules. They, they know him from,

Speaker 2:

from business. Yeah. But they also know him'cause he spends a stupid amount of money. Right. And so they're happy to comp his shit. And so we did a couple times, had a blast then like the fourth time we did it, um, he's like, my buddies are gonna meet us in the room. And when you guys get there, there might be some like friends there. Um, and we got there. There's nobody there. We go down, we gamble, we're getting pretty drunk, you know, and, and then we go up and now it's like one in the morning or something. And, and we like, we hadn't seen Pete that much, that much this time. He was up at the high roller table. He was at the high roller table. Exactly. And we get up to the room and there are like the most mafioso looking dudes. His lone sharks or what? Like legit mafia. Okay. And it was like jarring. Yeah. And intimidating. It was all hell. And I was terrified. Yeah. And um, yeah, I remember looking Adam and I was like, we should go. And, but Pete's like, oh, come meet my friend Ernesto. And I'm like, Hey. He goes, it's Ernesto Gambino or something. I was like, yeah. Who are you hanging out with? Pete. Right. And why? I was like, where am I right now? Why are you doing this? Well, he was high rolling with these guys and he was spending enough money that he was like becoming friends with these guys who were also high rolling, I guess. And there was a group of like eight to 10 people in there that were the most Italian. You guys had a bunch of 20-year-old

Speaker:

freaking punk kids from Ohio and elsewhere. Yeah. Hanging out at University of Maryland. I had

Speaker 2:

no business being hanging out with these guys Right. At any level. Uh, I was like smoking to joy, playing$10 tables. These guys are playing like 50 grand a roll on roulette. I'm not joking. I watched them do it. Wow. And, and a couple of'em, uh, one in particular was so fucking scary. Like he like just, he didn't say a word. Just didn't know if he was gonna hurt you. I was terrified of that guy or something. Right? Yeah. Like straight out of a TV show. And I was terrified of him and I didn't say a word to him. I was just like shaking. And then another guy, uh, you know, I sat down right next to him. We like sitting in a circle. Everyone's smoking and they got all this expensive stuff in the middle and you know, everyone's getting loud. And this guy, I sit down and we just, my normal thing to do is like, Hey, how you doing? My name's Stu. He goes. I'm not telling you my name. I was like, nice, nice, nice to meet you. And I was like, holy shit. And I just kept like getting really nervous and uncomfortable. And, and Adam, if Adam, my friend Adam had not been there, no one would believe me because it was, it was the most scary thing I've ever a part of Pete, um, wanted to keep gambling and me and Adam were like, yeah, we're gonna go somewhere else. And we just like left.

Speaker:

Yeah. You're like, Wendy's is open. And then, and then

Speaker 2:

later I come, we come back to the room, they're not there. Then Pete comes in frantic. Okay. And, uh, he's like, I lost a lot of money. And we're like, okay. Like how much? And he's like, I'm not telling you, but it is a lot. And, uh, I kind of owe those guys some money. And we're like, what the fuck are you doing, Pete? I was like, this is insane, right? Like, do you not understand who you're playing with right now? Right. And he's like, I need you guys to go down there and like, tell'em I'm good for the money. I was like, I am not fucking talking to any of these guys. Like, and he was like sweating bullets of like. Damn. Within however many hours he'd lost, like, I dunno, figure figures of dollars

Speaker:

probably.

Speaker 2:

And uh, ultimately I didn't, I definitely did not do that. And then, uh, he talked about later how he, he, he worked it out. He is like, we're gonna go to The Bahamas together. I was like, don't do that Pete. I was like, that's a terrible leave you there underneath the. Fishes. But, um, I did watch him gamble and I watched him 50 grand a roll, like, you know, wow. People's salaries a roll. And he would, he went up so much money, it was like, like 600,000 bucks. Right. And then I watched him

Speaker:

lose it, lose it all, and be down to yeah, to zero. And then he'd do

Speaker 2:

it again. And I'm like, that's so much money. So anyway, that, that's one of the craziest stories. Uh, just that crazy, just the mafia, like legit mafia. That totally. Ernesto Gambino. I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't say that up. Hopefully Yeah, he's gonna be calling on you. And then, uh, yeah, the other guys who wouldn't tell me their names,

Speaker:

if there's a new series we just started watching on Netflix, maybe a limited series Black Rabbit. Have you seen that one yet?

Speaker 2:

Uh, I think I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it.

Speaker:

It's a, it's, you'd probably enjoy it'cause it's kind of that it's New York. Restaurants and mob stuff and loan sharks. Yeah. And the juices loose and whatnot.

Speaker 2:

Um, it's, that's real. Yeah. It's very real. You see that whole thing about the, the, the rigging games for, uh, sports players, you know, for Yeah. Professional athletes. These

Speaker:

guys

Speaker 2:

making$30 million a year and, and, and betting some, I think they got like 20 grand duped into it. But then you gotta think it's the mafia and like if they come in, you're doing this right, or I'm gonna kill your family or hurt you or whatever. You're, I think intimidated. I think that whole sports

Speaker:

betting thing is probably gonna go back the other way. Like, I don't think there's any way to uncorrupt that once that corruption. Well, for baseball,

Speaker 2:

like, especially baseball. So that's who the mostly they've gotten so far. Yeah. Basketball too. They used to be able to like, uh, put a prop bed on a pitch. Right. So if they could signal to like the pitch, the inning. Right. Or make this pitch a ball, then like you could easily rig the game. Totally. Right? Totally Not, not necessarily lose the game of like losing the game of baseball, but like rig, how the people are gambling, especially all those prop beds. Yeah. So they did clamp down on that. I know baseball is like, trying to make that not as easy and like the max is like$200 now, or it wasn't a max before, but Yeah. Other stuff, like I know basketball guys got pulled in and um, all you gotta do is have a prop head of like, he's gonna miss his first shot. Yeah. And even

Speaker:

legit easy players. And that one coach Chauncey VI think was,

Speaker 2:

oh, and him I think is more on like the mafia side because he got, like, he got paid to be a celebrity sitting at a table. Right. He didn't know the table as far as I've heard. I don't right know, but I don't think he was necessarily, oh, he in on like the scam. But he was on it by proxy. Just sitting there, sitting there and they're like, you're going like, you're, yeah, you're going to sit there, we'll pay you, but you're good. You're gonna sit. And he's just like, okay. You know, and like, I'm sure he likes playing cards or whatever, but like you, he. Kind of bad. Wrong place. Wrong time.

Speaker:

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's been fun. I hope you had fun.

Speaker 2:

Had a great time. Thank you. Good. How long did we talk for hours? It feels like two hours. Hours.

Speaker:

Oh wow. That's a long time. Pretty much that me? Not quite, but pretty close. All right. Yeah. Well, thanks. Are you gonna, yeah, thanks for all you do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah,

Speaker:

thank you for, I don't really have a custom sign on or anything like that. You need like a tagline. Did you want to do a, a little drum, uh,

Speaker 2:

uh, little close, embarrassed everything here, but we can do a drum roll of like, what's your tagline? And then you could be like, oh, and here's Kurt. Here goes Stuy. Thanks for leaving. That's the opposite. Um, yeah. Thank you. That's cool. I, I love what you do with Think Tank. I'm sorry I've never officially been apart. You still could. I, I know I still can. Uh, I just need time and all these things we just talked about. Yeah. You can see why I have none. I understand why. Um, but yeah, I love it. I think the, the idea is awesome.

Speaker:

Well, I appreciate all that you do and uh, keep up the good music and work. Thanks. Alright guys. Speed.

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Curt Bear

Host