Jason Walsmith of the Nadas | The Vance Crowe Podcast | Episode 44

Jason Walsmith [00:00:01] But, so all I wanted to do was be a National Geographic pho photographer. And I was in Africa in a tiny village in the most beautiful, you know, on the equator. And it was just, it was amazing. But I was so closed off and culture shocked and fearful and angry because I, you know, I didn't, I didn't know how to process that stuff that I sat in this house for weeks and read National Geographic Magazines. This is Kort Winneke, a marine surveyor living in Seattle, Washington. And you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:31] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. This week we are interviewing a singer songwriter Jason Walsmith of the Nadas. I had never heard of Jason, I didn't know anything at all about him. I just thought he was a really great photographer, somebody that could snap a shot that told a whole story just inside of his one photograph. And I was particularly interested in it because he was photographing an event that I was at. We struck up a very quick conversation and we ended up staying in contact after I left the Land Expo, which is where we met. And very quickly I started having this poll, this voice in my head that said, something is different about this guy. You should invite him on the podcast. And when I did, what you will find out right from the very beginning is I did not know that Jason is actually a famous musician with fans that number tens of thousands all over the country, people that love him, that show up to see him and his singer songwriter co-part all over the country. And they've been singing songs for a huge amount of time. And so this conversation caught me off guard and I was delighted by what I learned, by how much Jason and I actually have in common, and how we both think about things from a different angle, but actually kind of helped illuminate what does it mean to put some form of art, a song out into the world and let other people write themselves into it.

Vance Crowe [00:02:04] So you may be thinking, what do I have in common with the singer songwriter that I've never heard of? But Jason has a profoundly interesting outlook on life, and I think a lot of it came from the way that he writes his songs and the way that he's thought about his life over time. I think you will really enjoy this. So I'm very glad he came all the way down from Des Moines, Iowa to do this interview. Just a couple of things before we get going. For people that are regular listeners to the podcast, you know that the, as the Crow Flies Book Club is in full effect for the month of March, we are reading the book, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And you may be like me, you may be one of those people that thinks, I know I'm supposed to have read that book, but I never actually picked it up. I don't know anything at all really about it. I know the general story that there's a guy and he has these two personalities, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but I don't really know which one is which and which is bad. And why is he bad? When you get the book, I am guessing that you will have the same feeling that I did, which is you'll say, wait a second, this book is so small that it seems like it's a children's book. How is it possible that something that is so famous in our culture is so short? And then when you go to open it up, you realize that I had no idea who the narrator would be or what the structure of this book would be, or how the mystery would be revealed. But it is so compelling and so hard to predict that even though I thought I knew the story, I'm coming to the realization and I'm maybe 35% of the way that I did not understand this book.

Vance Crowe [00:03:43] And it's really quite interesting when you think, you know, the cultural role that a book plays in your life or in the life of society, and you actually go to pick it up and you realize actually it's way deeper than what society has led on. So I think this is an excellent book. I hope you will join us. If you are into Twitter, you can always look up the hashtag pound A TCF book club and that will bring you into the conversation that we're having with dozens of people that are just getting the book, starting it now, and know that the last Sunday of the month at seven 30 Central, I will sit down with Lyle Benjamin to to host a discussion of the book. You'll be invited in on the chat group and just having a general conversation, but I find that a lot of people really enjoy the conversation that goes on on Twitter and a little bit on Facebook. So if you're into that, please, please join us. Everyone is welcome. You'll make it better if you read the book and you have an impression you wanna share it, we want to hear it. Another interesting and exciting piece of news is that the Vance Crow Podcast has been able to hire a producer for our videos. The audio and the conversation that I have is something that is difficult to do and you requires a hundred percent focus. But the added things that go into trying to put this podcast out in video form and get it sliced up in ways that make it so you have digestible content that was really time consuming and really difficult.

Vance Crowe [00:05:14] But because of your interest, the massive growth of the podcast, the sponsorship from St. Louis Bank, I am very excited to be hiring a producer to try and make the video get out further and wider and see what we can do to keep improving the quality of the podcast. If you have any recommendations on things that I can do, or if you have a way to help us make sure that the video and and cutting it into clips is used maximally, please let me know. I am so happy to be able to invest into this podcast. It has brought returns to me that are indescribable. And from what I hear from you, from what people write me on direct messages, whether it's on Instagram or Twitter, it means a lot to you too. So I am so glad to be making this investment and we'll see what happens. I hope you'll give me some feedback and, and give me a little bit of wiggle room as we work out the kinks to make this happen. I didn't wanna bring this up right in the beginning, but I think it's worth noting something that's kind of on everyone's mind. In fact, every phone call that I've had over the last week, somebody's brought it up, every meeting I've been in, and of course I am talking about coronavirus because I am recording this in the beginning of March of 2020, coronavirus has pervaded people's thoughts and minds. Their social media feeds their conversations. And we are now getting to see the collective unconscious unveiled, because when people become afraid of a foreign invader, something that can cause them sickness, something that they don't understand, you watch the individual give themselves over to the group and the group has a will, some sort of ideas, some sort of way of processing what is happening, why is it happening, what lessons should we learn and how should we behave?

Vance Crowe [00:07:08] And so if you are watching this and you are feeling that sense of existential dread, you're worried about, am I washing my hands enough? You're starting to get nervous about your neighbor on the airplane, or people that you see at work. I want to offer you a way to make this more constructive. And the way that I think you make it more constructive is that you use this as a mechanism to dive into your own unconscious mind and to explore how are you feeling about this thing that sits out on the horizon? You probably don't know anybody that's been impacted by coronavirus. You probably are far away from the epicenters that this is all going on in. And yet you have this sensation and it's making you make changes in the real world. So what I think that you should do, what I am doing is to sit down and to write what you think is happening, what you are afraid of, what you have watched your family and your friends do as they react to these problems. What reactions are the, is the news giving you? And also write up what you think is going to happen, not what you want to happen, not what you are afraid will happen, but what do you think will happen? I mean, you can write those other two things, that's perfectly fine, but you should make a prediction. And the reason that you should make this prediction is because you can then put that down. You can walk away from your journal and in two weeks, two months or two years, when another event comes up like this, you'll be able to go to your journal, pull it up and say, what did I learn from the last experience that we had with a disease that people were afraid of and you're learning, maybe I should have prepared more, I should have taken it more seriously.

Vance Crowe [00:09:00] Or it may be there was a lot of hype here and these were the core things that people should have done, and this is the way that it all manifested in the world. I think this is important, and I think it's really the only way that you can get your hands around the chaos of which you have no control over. And that's to try and use this experience, which can be frightening. It can be something that fills you with dread. It can be something that makes you worried about the future by writing it down and thinking about it deeply. You pull up your unconscious thoughts, bring them to consciousness so you can deal with them, and then you can keep moving forward. I think it's really important that we recognize that disease is one of those things that drives us apart from the people around us, from the people that we're closest to. We become afraid of them. We become afraid of foreign things, we become afraid of things that are different in outside. And once that happens, weird things can start happening in society. So I believe that everybody in our tribe, everybody that's trying to think through things more deeply, should just spend some time exploring how do they think and how do they feel about it. And then, you know, maybe go talk with somebody about what you put down in your journal. I'm gonna finish off before we head to the interview with a shout out to my close friend and mentor, Dwayne Faber. Many of you know Dwayne as d Faber 84 on Twitter. He is an internationally known comedian and dairy farmer, and he was one of the guests on the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:10:32] He actually reached out to me after I started my podcast and said, how can I help? What I'd love to do is get you some more audience, some more people that are interested in what you're doing. And he ended up flying from Washington state all the way to St. Louis just to be on the podcast. And that sort of adventurous spirit willingness to help desire to be connected is what has made Dwayne and I very close friends and I have been encouraging him to make his ideas more available, get out there and do more speaking. He's been doing his standup comedy and it is going awesome. It's fun to be around him. He and Jared McDaniel and I all went up to an event called Aggravation. You can find that in the, in the past episodes. But now Dwayne has put forward a website where he's gonna start writing out some more of his thoughts and some more of what he's working on. I believe people will start booking him for speeches. But one of the things that is maybe overlooked by many people is that Dwayne Faber, in addition to being a comedian and a really standup guy, is actually an excellent businessman. He has very sophisticated way of thinking about the future, about how to make multiple things work at the same time, about how to get people to work together. And I am very excited because I think most of the world knows Dwayne as a comedian, but because he's doing this, people are gonna get to see a deeper side of him and actually start to utilize his wit and his ability to spot patterns to maybe make sense more of their farm business or just their business in general.

Vance Crowe [00:12:06] So if you're at all interested, go check out dwayne faber.com, that's D-W-A-Y-N-E, Faber, FABE r.com, and go check him out. He's a great dude and I am excited to see where he goes with this. So remember that you can be reading the book, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for this munch as the Crow Flies book club. We've hired a producer for the videos. You should sit down and write out your thoughts on the coronavirus just so you have it. And if you get a chance, go check out dwayne faber.com to see what my buddy is up to and if he has any ideas that you would want to learn more about. So without further ado, we are going to head out to Jason Walsmith. Jason Walsmith, welcome to the podcast.

Jason Walsmith [00:12:57] Thank you. How's it going?

Vance Crowe [00:12:58] You are the most random of all the podcast guests I've had. We met at the Land Expo and you were the photographer there, and your photography is awesome. Thank you. And so when you and I started talking, I was thinking, I actually really like to get to know how somebody hones their art so closely on something like photography, capturing a moment. Right. And I liked it 'cause you were capturing a moment that I was in,

Jason Walsmith [00:13:22] But

Vance Crowe [00:13:22] Then when we started conversing, I found out you were in a band. And so I was like, oh, you know, two for one deal. I'll invite him in and we'll talk about that. And I have to confess, I didn't actually go look up your music until today. And so you're like,

Jason Walsmith [00:13:38] This guy's showing up at my house, what are we gonna talk about exactly?

Vance Crowe [00:13:40] So I was like, I'll, I'll throw this on there. And I all of a sudden realized that you have a, I don't know, 20 volume set. It's, I don't know, 18 volumes of deeply soulful, thought provoking, idyllic stories. Can

Jason Walsmith [00:14:01] I jot this down?

Vance Crowe [00:14:02] Crammed into, well, like, and, and I, I realized like, it was like I was showing up to PhD Spanish class, and I, and I didn't even think to open up the book on day one. And I am so excited that you're here. Good. 'cause I think you've, you have a lot that your music is saying, and so I think you probably have a lot of things to say about other stuff.

Jason Walsmith [00:14:22] I hope so.

Vance Crowe [00:14:22] When did you start doing music that you could do this?

Jason Walsmith [00:14:26] Well, started doing music like as a child basically, you know, like church choir and school choirs and musicals and things like that. So that's when I started singing. And then I think that's important actually, because I became comfortable with my voice and being in front of people and things like that. But college is where I started, like playing, playing music on my own, I guess. And yeah, brought a guitar with me, me that I didn't really know how to play and then just, you know, sat in my loneliness and tried to figure out what to do with it. And then playing it, you know, made friends.

Vance Crowe [00:15:02] That's the weird thing about music. You know, the other day I was talking, I have a buddy named Nick Cizik and he's this Stanford physicist, so I just kind of expect him for math and science. But the other day he made a really hilarious point to me, I'd never thought of, he's like, when you teach a child to use a musical instrument, it's like teaching them how to do a magical charm

Jason Walsmith [00:15:22] That

Vance Crowe [00:15:22] Makes people pay attention and move their bodies in certain ways. And like, that's

Jason Walsmith [00:15:26] True.

Vance Crowe [00:15:26] You, you taught yourself this magical art. How long did it take you to move to the point where you weren't just like doing music for its sake, but you realized I can impact other people by, by doing, by, by performing in this way?

Jason Walsmith [00:15:40] Yeah. I, I genuinely did start for myself and it was a, like a therapeutic kind of thing, and it was a way of ex expressing things and creativity and, but it didn't take very long before it sort of had that effect. And then that effect is intoxicating, you know? And so then I started playing for other people. I, I think the, the funny part is I, I learned a couple songs and I learned how to play guitar by learning songs that I liked and knew, but then I ran out of those songs and it seemed easier at the time to write some so that I had more songs. And that's, that's the counterintuitive thing that actually doesn't really make that much sense. But luckily that's the path I took. 'cause that's what's led to my career.

Vance Crowe [00:16:28] When you say that singing these songs is intoxicating because of the way you're interacting with people, say more about that. Because I could watch a video of being the guy that's a front man on a, as a rock star or something, but I don't have any idea what it's like to see people.

Jason Walsmith [00:16:43] Yeah. And I guess when I was talking about it then, and even, and even now, I'm, I'm really not so much referring to like the magic of a stadium full of people screaming. I'm more referring to that like immediate barrier that it breaks down and it creates conversation and, and makes new friends and opens up doors and, you know, whether it's playing with a band and collaborating with these other musicians, or whether it's just hearing other people write songs and sharing those songs back and forth. It's that kind of intoxicating thing, I guess is what I was referring to at that point. I mean,

Vance Crowe [00:17:17] That's a lot more humble. I, I guess I only can see of it as the, the

Jason Walsmith [00:17:22] Part of it, but I've actually, I've actually sort of multiplied that for, we've built a career out of that. So like, even these days, and this is hard to, it's hard to comprehend and maybe even hard to believe, but like when we play a show, our summer outdoor amphitheater show in our, in our hometown, and I look out at the thousand to 1200 people that are there, I know 'em all, like I know them all. I've, I, I rarely see people that I don't know, and I play all the time in front of normally hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, and I know 'em all. So it's, so it's that thing that started as just this little thing that made friends and, and all of our fans are like that now. I mean, it's really, it's, it maybe even sounds cliche, but it's totally true. Like these people we are connected to, you know, and it's, and making music and having people listen and sing along and, and having those songs affect people, that's like this total symbiotic thing. So I don't know if I, I don't even know if I could do it in a, in a U2 level sort of version because that connection and that interaction's sort of important to me.

Vance Crowe [00:18:25] I, it's clear to me that you're doing something to build that connection because I was driving down the road as I was listening to your music and for the first time in my life that I can remember maybe there was some pop song, but, but that there was a song that I thought was kinda like me or like my people or my thing. And you were describing dates and you were saying like, in 98 in 2003, and I was like, whoa, this kind of music that I connected this, this deeply with doesn't normally have my dates in it. It's like Bruce Springsteen singing about, you know, 60, the 68th summer, you know? Right. Whatever. Like, it seems so distant and now all of a sudden I've got this friend there that whatever you're singing about, I can think about those dates in my own life.

Jason Walsmith [00:19:10] Good. I'm glad to know we made a new fan, even if it's a little bit down the road.

Vance Crowe [00:19:14] Oh, that, no, no doubt. It's a, it's a fan. How do you, how do you write these songs? Like what, what is the experience of sitting down and putting instrumentation to words?

Jason Walsmith [00:19:27] So it has evolved over the years and it's, it's evolved. So it's gone in a direction, but it's also just sort of changed and gone all over the place. But nowadays, the Nadas is my band nowadays. It, the Natas has always been a duo myself and this guy named Mike Butterworth. And so when we first started, I would write some songs, he would write some songs, we would get together with, you know, bring in some the band and record them. And after a few albums of that, and we had very, very distinct styles. After a few albums of that, we sort of learned the value of combining those two styles together. And so now we write everything together. And because of that, that process has changed as well. But we really do just sit down in a room with guitars and talk about ideas and, you know, sing little melodies that have been stuck in our head or play little things on a guitar that we've been thinking about, or we both keep notes, whether they're voice memo notes when we're singing while we're driving, or I have a long list of just seeds. I call 'em seeds, just like lines, something somebody said, or a word or a sentence or a paragraph or, or something I read in a book or whatever. It's a seed. And then that seed becomes two lines and then the, then the chorus reveals itself and then it fits with that guitar part. And so it's really just a, it's like sort of like playing with Play-Doh. You know, you throw it on down there and you start messing around with it until it starts to look like something and then keep refining it.

Vance Crowe [00:20:54] It's, it's interesting that you describe it as play because it seems like something that is really intimate. You know, I'm, I'm hearing you describe like, these are the voices that spoke to me while I was driving down the road or taking a shower,

Jason Walsmith [00:21:06] You

Vance Crowe [00:21:06] Know, walking somewhere with my kids. And you're then sitting down and sharing it with another person and, and saying, not only does this make sense to you, but would you be willing to incorporate it into, you know, some amount of time that we're gonna, we're gonna think and explore and they may not like it or see it. So you've gotta have some deep level of intimacy there, it seems like.

Jason Walsmith [00:21:29] Do you mean with the person I'm writing with? Yeah. Yeah. So like with my partner in the band and now I'm, I've, over the years I've written with a few other people too, and I have ano another new little songwriting group. So yeah, I mean, there's an amount of, of trust. There's also sometimes ambiguity you throw out there and you just, you hope that identif people identify it in their own way. Sometimes you like, make it really specific and sometimes you make it be really general and you just, you know, let people, you know, mold it into whatever it works for for them. So I, that's part of the craft, I guess. I honestly try not to be super strict or deliberate with, with those techniques or thoughts because I feel like it would get in the way or limit me or strangle me a little bit. So it, for me, it is still kind of magic and it is play and all songwriters talk about it differently. There are some people who, you know, go to work every, every Monday morning at eight o'clock in the same place and they treat it like it's a, a nine to five job. And there are other people who just say that the songs are floating out there and they just have to avail themselves to them. And then they'll, sometimes they'll, they'll come down and, and reveal themselves. And I'm a little of both. They don't reveal themselves to me unless I'm prepared for it and planning on working on it. But I do know that at this stage of my career, and it's, it's harder and harder to write songs just because, you know, you've written a, you've written the love songs, you've written the road songs, you've, you know, you've written, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:22:54] You don't

Jason Walsmith [00:22:54] Wanna repeat yourself. So it gets harder. But anyway, these days, I know when I sit down I'm gonna write, I'm gonna be able to write a song.

Vance Crowe [00:23:00] Is there a path that, that like, you know, comedians talk about, well, you know, there's the certain types of jokes you say when you're first getting on the road. Do you ever notice? And then they move through a path. And I think Jerry Seinfeld talks about that. Is that true with, with writers too? I mean, you just described, you know, all your lover stories

Jason Walsmith [00:23:16] And Yeah, I don't know that I could generalize it to say that's true for writers, but it definitely has been true for us. And I do sort of miss those simpler times where every, every time something popped into my head it was like so novel and new, you know? And then you just felt compelled to write and now you sort of feel like, oh man, I've written that line, I've written that line before. I have to, I have to rethink how I'm gonna say that. But, so there probably is a path. And it's funny because, you know, we have, we've all gone through these stages of life as well. And so the stages of life show up in the music. And, and if you listen to those that the first album, which I don't think the, the fir the first album is like a secret album. It's not even really out there anymore. It was on CD and it's not distributed anymore. But if you listen to those first albums through and listen to 'em all the way through, you can see the arc of our lives. You know, like the album from, I'm not even gonna get my own years Right. For my own life. But the album from like 2007 was Mike's divorce record and the album from 2009 was my divorce record. But also Mike's a little bit 'cause he still had some stuff to get out, you know, but those, the early albums from the early, or the early 2000 albums, those were like our having kids and everything was, you know, really fresh. And then the ones from before that were when we were still in college and everything was just fun, you know? And so now they might be, the albums might be a little harder. They might be, 'cause we've been through the grind of life, you know, but also our fans have gone through those same stages too. And so hopefully are are identifying with things in the same way. Not that we're purposefully trying to tell this story 'cause we know somebody's gonna have experience that, but we're all going through life, you know?

Jason Walsmith [00:24:52] And so we all have these ups and downs, highs and lows, and hopefully those are on the record and people can connect with it.

Vance Crowe [00:24:59] So as you're talking about something difficult like a divorce and you're saying it's on the record or it's my divorce record, how does that show up and Yeah. How does that show up?

Jason Walsmith [00:25:10] Well, we have a song called Loser. Everybody's Wrong. I'm Not a Loser. I don't know. It shows up in, you know, literal ways, in metaphorical ways in just sort of sa sadder songs or happier songs depending on how you're looking at it. But everybody's

Vance Crowe [00:25:26] Wrong. I'm Not a Loser.

Jason Walsmith [00:25:27] That's one of the songs called Loser. Yeah, man,

Vance Crowe [00:25:29] That's a humble line.

Jason Walsmith [00:25:30] Yeah. I, I think that if you, if we listen to that one, actually it's probably, it's more about Mike's post-divorce, new relationship who he's with now and has kids with now and 'cause Yeah. Anyway,

Vance Crowe [00:25:43] I mean that's something not to dig into happen. That's an experience that many, many people can imagine going through, right? Like, sure, my brother's divorced, I have good friends that are divorced and had to make that a part of their life story. And the interesting thing is, one, there's not a lot of music out there for those people, right? The Romeo and Juliet song that you hear on pop radio right. Is made for the constant stream of 18 year olds.

Jason Walsmith [00:26:04] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:26:05] But there's not really a place on the radio for, Hey, this shit happened and it wasn't the way I planned. And it, it's, it's not a storybook in any way.

Jason Walsmith [00:26:14] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:26:15] That's, I I bet there are a lot of people that are really glad when they find you because nobody else, as far as I can tell, is singing to 'em.

Jason Walsmith [00:26:22] Yeah, that's true. I haven't really, I haven't really thought about it that way, that, that, you know, there's a lot of bands in their twenties that are just, that haven't had a whole lot of the life experiences that we've had. And then there's a lot of bands that have gone all the way through their careers like this. They're like the Rolling Stones or something where they're in their seventies who have, who have done it all, but also had sort of probably a little different version of everyday life from the rest of us. We've been an independent sort of, you know, regular band for a long time that have gone through the same things that, that a lot of people have gone through. Not to, not to generalize and say everybody's the same, but, so

Vance Crowe [00:27:03] When you were doing your, your away, you're on the road, you, did you actually go out on tour and, and go Yep. Live the life of a band?

Jason Walsmith [00:27:11] Yeah. After college I graduated in 96 and we started playing on the road. Mike left college a semester early so that he could do it too. And we've, I dunno, we've put 46 states or something like that. And for those early years we were doing 250 shows a year.

Vance Crowe [00:27:31] How were you getting from town to town?

Jason Walsmith [00:27:33] A series of vehicles? From anything from our first van was a 77 Dodge Explorer van that had orange shank carpeting, and it was, it was awesome. I still miss that van. We had meatloaf sold tour bus that had 3 million miles on it.

Vance Crowe [00:27:50] Oh my God.

Jason Walsmith [00:27:51] And now we're in a sprinter.

Vance Crowe [00:27:53] What's a sprinter? Like

Jason Walsmith [00:27:54] A big van.

Vance Crowe [00:27:56] Okay.

Jason Walsmith [00:27:56] Bunks in it. And,

Vance Crowe [00:27:58] And tell me how did you guys get ahold of the, the first tour, the,

Jason Walsmith [00:28:03] The 77 Dodge Explorer van?

Vance Crowe [00:28:05] Yeah,

Jason Walsmith [00:28:06] We were, we were touring in, I had an 87 Land Cruiser, which is a pretty good tour vehicle too, but it's just a little small. And we just drove by a guy who was waxing it in his driveway and it was pristine. So this was probably in like 95 or something. And, and he was just polishing up this beautiful van, this 77. So it was already, you know, 20 years old or whatever, but it only had 5,000 miles on it, you know, he only did a vacation a year in it or something. And so we just pulled into his driveway and asked if he wanted to sell it. And he was like, well, I was just cleaning it up, thinking about getting rid of it. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:28:39] Wow.

Jason Walsmith [00:28:40] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:28:40] That's serendipity.

Jason Walsmith [00:28:41] So that was good. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:28:43] And when you were doing that, you're in this first couple of things, Hey, let's pull in there and see if he wants to sell it. What did you imagine being a musician would lead to? Were you thinking that far out?

Jason Walsmith [00:28:55] No, I, I was thinking this'll be fun to do after school, you know, when, when I'm done with school, let's, let's just keep doing it. This is fun. And then I was thinking, how long could we do this? And then when we hit our 10 year anniversary, I thought, man, I can't believe we made it 10 years. I wonder what I'm gonna do now. And then now it's been over 25 years. So now, I mean, we're definitely lifers. You know, we've, many years ago we decided that we would be, we would be lifers as we would just do it as long as people would listen. And if they wouldn't listen, we'd, you know, play on our porch.

Vance Crowe [00:29:25] And so tell me about the life of a musician now. You're still touring around, you're going and doing shows.

Jason Walsmith [00:29:30] Yep, yep. You know, nowadays we, we both have, I'm referring to Mike and I, but we have a band as well. We've had kind of several players over the years and a family that's come and gone and, you know, grown. And so we've had a lot of players, but Mike and I are the founding members. And so when I'm, I'm kind of referring to him right now, but we both have families. He now has young kids again. And so we're, we stay a little closer to home. So, but we, we have a tour coming up in April and May we kind of always tour. So like this weekend we play our spring show in Des Moines. And then the next weekend we play in March 7th is the next weekend we play Minneapolis. And then, but then in April we started tour and we hit kind of all of our bigger markets, which is Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Kansas City is kind of, our circuit should be St. Louis. I don't, I don't know why we don't play St. Louis. It's just down the road compared to a lot of places we play. We have played St. Louis a few times over the years, but we've just never really tried, like strategically tried to build it up. But yeah, we'll do that full swing. It's, I think it's probably 15 dates and then we get into the summer months and we play outdoor festivals and street festivals and things like that. And

Vance Crowe [00:30:52] So I had a chance to listen to your music and I will throw some music on here. So maybe in the intro or something, we can figure out a way to do that, but, so that way people have, have an experience. But how do you describe your style of music?

Jason Walsmith [00:31:06] Well, so one thing that's unique, as I've said a little bit already, is that we're a duo. So that's kind of unique. If you think about, I mean, there, there are lots of ver there are lots of duos, but not as many as just normal bands. So that's kind of interesting. But we, we call ourselves like Midwestern Rock. We're very song driven. So the song comes first, you know, and then we, and then we work out the production and the, the sound and the instruments and the arrangement and things like that. But so we're lyrical and melodic, but we're kind of a folk rock duo. A lot of harmonies. We take turns singing lead vocals based on whoever's seed it is, or, you know, whoever kind of feels the most passionate about the song sings lead. And we take turns.

Vance Crowe [00:31:50] And you two have been singing together for how long?

Jason Walsmith [00:31:53] Since 93.

Vance Crowe [00:31:55] In what way are you guys kind of a counterbalance? You'd have to be for being together that long?

Jason Walsmith [00:32:00] Yeah, so like, the way we sound, our voices sort of sound similar nowadays. They've kind of evolved into sounding more like each other. But that's just because you can hear kind of the, the, the age on the voice I think a little bit. And the just, you know, what we've been, what we've put him through. But, you know, he's, he's got a, Mike's got a a, a falsetto that he employs a lot. He's, he's got a quite a range. I'm a little bit more subdued and simple, I guess with my melodies, but work, you work those together and then, like, if you factor in the writing, he's, he's really abstract and sort of, you know, uses a lot of metaphors and I'm a little bit more literal and storytelling style. So we put those together, they work pretty well.

Vance Crowe [00:32:52] We talked a little bit before about where your ideas come from or the structure that you have to be in, but what is that that's coming out of you? Where, where are those ideas or those one-liners coming from?

Jason Walsmith [00:33:06] Everywhere and, and you just, you just have to kinda stay open to the possibility of it and just pay attention, you know, and, and it used to be,

Vance Crowe [00:33:17] I think those are the words of a master that if, if somebody was listening, they wouldn't know how to employ it. And it would almost sound like, it would almost sound like a trick or something. When you say, you know, you basically, you're saying relax, but also pay attention. Hmm. How, how do you do that? I

Jason Walsmith [00:33:34] Mean, I, I imagine you do it too. You just don't think, oh, I gotta write a song about that. What's funny is, and you've probably done this yourself or have you heard people say it, you wouldn't believe how many times people say to me, oh, there's a song in there. Or you should write a song, you should write that song. People say that to me all the time. Like, they hear something or they think about something and they're like, there's a song in there. But I, I would imagine you hear things and you think, oh, that's, that's really interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:34:00] Well, you actually got to see a series of my that's pretty interesting. Yeah. Which was my talk at the Land Expo, right? That that whole talk is a song lyric here and a song lyric there compiled together to be like, this is what I think described using other people's imagery.

Jason Walsmith [00:34:16] So you are a songwriter?

Vance Crowe [00:34:18] No, I, I couldn't sing and I don't like telling jokes. Right. Like, well, I do like telling jokes.

Jason Walsmith [00:34:22] Yeah, you do.

Vance Crowe [00:34:23] That's that's

Jason Walsmith [00:34:23] An important part

Vance Crowe [00:34:24] Of your

Jason Walsmith [00:34:25] Delivery.

Vance Crowe [00:34:25] Yeah. Too afraid to lean into that. That's, I think, I think I feel a lot of confidence around you that you exude it because, and I think you'd have to, if you got to the point where you were able to sit up and vocalize words in front of other people with so much emotion,

Jason Walsmith [00:34:44] But that is what you do. I really don't see, I don't see any difference except for I play guitar at the same time. But the playing guitar at the same time is sort of, that's just for me, that's like a little blanket, you know, that's just a security blanket to make it feel a little bit more comfortable. If I had to stand up there and sing the same songs without a guitar, I would feel really uncomfortable, so. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:35:05] Wow. Yeah,

Jason Walsmith [00:35:06] So I mean, I feel like they're the same thing, which is why I, why I'm like kind of taking this foray into public speaking, because I've already been on a thousand stages in front of thousands of people. And so it's a very natural thing for me. And I already tell stories between songs and I engage with the audience and I react when the audience reacts. And, you know, it's this symbiotic thing. I, so I just feel like it's a na a a natural evolution for me to be able to do the same thing and just play a little less guitar.

Vance Crowe [00:35:35] So I am, I am well aware that this is an impossible question to answer because I, I know if somebody asked me this, I wouldn't be able to answer it. But I'm interested to see how you react to it. When you imagine getting up and speaking, what is it that you have to say?

Jason Walsmith [00:35:53] Well, I don't know yet. Well, I do know, I do know that I have lived a, a very interesting and unique life, and I've had a lot of experiences. I've been a lot of places and met a lot of people and, and I have a lot of stories from that. So I do know that I, that I enjoy telling those stories and that people seem to enjoy hearing them. And so I feel like my public speaking career, this path that I'm heading down is rooted in me telling those stories. So just, just telling the story of being in a band and, and what I've seen in the world and how I've seen the world change. But I also, I think there are valuable lessons in there that relate to lots of different audiences. So that's what I'm hoping to craft.

Vance Crowe [00:36:46] When you think on your stories, what are, what are one of the earliest ones you, you wish? Because stories are really about, I used to think this way, then I encountered this problem and failed, and this is then what I learned. What's your earliest memory of being on the road and having a story? Like, if I could go tell young me a story, that's the one I'd tell.

Jason Walsmith [00:37:06] Yeah, I, I think there are a lot of 'em, but I mean, I think one, one way to think about that one very early one. So I think about the very earliest ones. I talked about the fact that we had a 77 Dodge Explorer van, and we've had a series of not mechanically sound vehicles over the

Vance Crowe [00:37:27] Years, you know,

Jason Walsmith [00:37:28] And that's what you, you know, you're, when you're a band, you, you get the best you can get.

Vance Crowe [00:37:32] Yeah. You

Jason Walsmith [00:37:33] Know, and then you hope it gets you there, but it has to get you there because that's how you get enough money to get to the next place, to then get something a little bit better next time. But we've always had a series of not mechanically great vehicles and that, so much so that we, we used to have AAA until we got canceled from AAA because we used it so much. So that's,

Vance Crowe [00:37:53] That's one of our songs.

Jason Walsmith [00:37:54] But, and I've had, you know, we've had probably, if we really like, were able to sit down and count 'em all up, we've had hundreds of flat tires. Oh really? It just has to be, it has to be over a hundred. We'll say, I mean, fires and you name it, it's happened. Right. But in the early days, there was that panic that would happen when you get a flat tire or when something would break. There was, there was panic, there was anger, there was, you know, flustered ness. And that never helps anything.

Vance Crowe [00:38:30] No uhuh

Jason Walsmith [00:38:31] But ever, but that's the normal reaction. Right. And so what's fun now is when that stuff happens, now, even with our 2018 sprinter with, you know, 8,000 miles on it, stuff still happens. There's zero, zero panic, you know, 'cause you know it's gonna, we, we've, we've never

Vance Crowe [00:38:49] Is that because your margin is larger? I mean, I know. So I had a 1984 Ford Thunderbird when I was trying to work at this radio station and help renovate this ship with my buddies. And the thing had like, brake problems and I was like, I think I can wait another couple weeks. And then I talked myself into waiting longer and longer.

Jason Walsmith [00:39:08] So

Vance Crowe [00:39:08] I definitely know what it is to live on that edge. And now I'm able to be a lot calmer about it because I have a bigger buffer. You know, if my bank, if my, if my breaks go out, I can go get them fixed. Whereas there I was, I was delaying because I didn't have money. Are you more comfortable now because you're more comfortable? Or is it because you actually learned that lesson? I

Jason Walsmith [00:39:31] Like to think that it's just wisdom. I, I would prefer to think that it's wisdom. I don't think it really has anything to do with more money, but maybe, but I think it's the, the reason that I use this story, because it's not like it's the best story, but it's, it's one of the earliest ones is because it is something I learned over time that the only thing you get out of being agitated and excited about the fact that something like that happened is agitated and excited. It doesn't make any, doesn't make it go away, doesn't make it get solved any faster. And so it took a, I just think that's something I learned in life that if I could go back and tell myself, just relax, it's fine. You're gonna get to your gig. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:40:10] I'm a hundred percent with you. And I think the, I I didn't learn until I was maybe 36, I'm 38 now, that it doesn't matter how angry you are with another person,

Jason Walsmith [00:40:22] It

Vance Crowe [00:40:22] Doesn't make the situation any better. It's like holding a hot coal in your hand and like hoping that it burns them if you're angry with them. But I, I see what you're saying. Like, yeah, e even though my buffer is bigger, I think it's 'cause I figured out that yelling and, you know, stomping my feet. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to hear you do that. Yeah.

Jason Walsmith [00:40:41] So you have the wisdom too.

Vance Crowe [00:40:43] You, I mean, I, I think we both learned it on the, on the road of being like, how, how the hell are we gonna do this? Yeah. It's interesting to me because your description of your path sounds a lot like one that I went on that that you, you weren't directed, you didn't know where you were going. Right? I feel that same way. But what do you, how do you decide what to do next, right? Like, if you're not guided, you don't have some 10 year goal out there that's, you know, you're hard charging for what, how do you think about, hey, this is the next step?

Jason Walsmith [00:41:20] I guess I still, I still am on that same path of the goal, which is a very simple one, which is continue to make music and hope that people and do things that, that you hope people will listen. So it, it's a very simple path at this point, you know, if we're back talking about when we made the decision to kind of do this for a living, it was a hard decision at that point. But now it's been a very simple one. And I've had these sort of parallel paths all, all along because I, I also do commercial photography as you know, that's how we met. And, and much like, I think public speaking is just another parallel version of this photography is that I feel like they're the same job with just different tools, you know? And so I've just, I'm always on this same path doing these kind of variations of the thing

Vance Crowe [00:42:11] This is That's fascinating. I've never considered that. Is it, is it that they're art? I mean, I, I don't,

Jason Walsmith [00:42:19] I hope there's some art there. Yeah, I think it's art, but it's also, I I think my, my root of what I do is has become now cliche even though it's been what I've always thought of myself as, which is a storyteller. And, and for the longest time I just told my own story, which I think maybe is, it's a little shallow and, you know, not, not as rewarding. And then along the path I learned that those same skills can help other people tell their stories and that that's valuable and that that's what people wanna pay for that can help me make a living and continue to tell my own story. And also very rewarding, you know? So like in, in the late nineties, we took everything we did for our own band and our own records and started a record label and then released other people's records and Oh, no way. Helped other people set up tours and opened their doors. And, and so that was me helping other people tell their stories, you know? And then I learned and along the way doing the same thing with commercial photography for brands and for, you know, editorial stories for magazines and things like that. I was just using those same skills to help other people tell their stories. And, and so that's been really rewarding. It's been a way to continue to make a living as the music business has sort of shrunk and, and devalued. That was a way to kinda supplement and make ends meet, which is a song off the first record.

Vance Crowe [00:43:54] I mean, it's probably because you've had a lot of deep introspection in order to be able to write a song that you're able to articulate it so well. But that, that is a, a really important thing. And you know, I, I have a lot of friends that I think if they're not on the spectrum, they're very, very close, highly logical, very detail oriented, want to be extremely precise in what they say. And you see that for how precise, the more precise you are, the less understood you will be by a more generalized audience. And I think that that's one of the reasons why I have these friends that are so talented and capable. It's because they have some deep knowledge and I'm able to hear it

Jason Walsmith [00:44:33] And

Vance Crowe [00:44:33] Explain it to other people on, on their behalf. Right. And that's, you're, I I hadn't thought of it until you said that it's far more rewarding for me to talk about Kate Crosby or Jared McDaniel than it is for me to talk about what's going on. I mean, my story's the easiest,

Jason Walsmith [00:44:51] But

Vance Crowe [00:44:51] It's not the most rewarding. I've never thought about it like that.

Jason Walsmith [00:44:56] You're a liaison. What

Vance Crowe [00:44:58] Do you mean?

Jason Walsmith [00:44:58] I don't know. I, I sometimes, sometimes think of myself that way. Like you have these people who have great ideas or have, are incredibly intelligent, who have trouble, who have sometimes trouble communicating that to someone, to either the person receiving it or someone they're trying to work with or someone they're trying to accomplish something with. I've always felt like I could just say, well, what this person's trying to say is this, and they're not hearing you because they think you're saying this, but if you just hear this, then you're gonna know what they mean. I mean, that's, that's sometimes what I do in photography. I can't honestly say that's what I do in music, but it's probably a part of what I'm doing in music.

Vance Crowe [00:45:31] Wow. That is really insightful. I think that the

Jason Walsmith [00:45:35] Liaison's probably not the right word.

Vance Crowe [00:45:36] I, I think that the, The thing that I was struck by, I'm listening to music and I've had friends that are musicians, but not on the level that you're at. You're the first person I've ever been like, Hey, this guy's coming over and look at his dis discography. Like, I thought you were gonna share with me like two albums you put together. Not the volume, the depth, I was on iTunes, I could find all kinds of stuff that you've put out. And all a sudden it hit me that music is a symbol. Right? It's like the containment of an idea that is way bigger than just the words you put there or just the notes that are there. It's something all together different, we both hear it, we both hear the same thing. We have an experience that puts us in, I don't know, some kind of a wavelength, right? But there's more to it than that.

Jason Walsmith [00:46:25] Yeah. There definitely is magic even after all these years. Like I know there's the practicality of the notes and these chords go with these chords and, you know, I have to sing within this key or it's gonna sound bad. I know those practicality things, but there's definitely this magic where it's, it's more than just my voice and, and my guitar that's making someone feel like, and I don't know that everyone feels that way about music. I think it's unfortunately getting less and less with, you know, younger generations. But I know that music makes me feel that way when I hear an artist and I hear something being played like it's unexplained, it's physiological, unexplainable how it like, makes you feel. And it's just words and notes, you know? So there is magic, I guess is what I'm

Vance Crowe [00:47:09] Saying. Yeah. And it, and it'd be different if I was just sitting here looking at it or reading it versus like, experiencing it. And if you're just listening to it by yourself versus you go to a live performance and you feel the energy that's right there.

Jason Walsmith [00:47:23] And if you just, and if you're just listening to it and you experienced this in your life or you're listening to it and you experienced this in your life, so it's gonna be a completely different thing for you. You know? So that's why it's like you, you have to have some ambi, you have to have some ambiguity in what you're putting out there so that people can react, react way,

Vance Crowe [00:47:43] Attach to their meaning to it too way. Wow. There's gotta be a lesson in there in storytelling in the same way. Yeah. Where you leave enough open. Because I had a friend in, in, in high school who really snapped something into place with me that I'd, I'd kind of always known but never heard of it. He said he wrote an essay and it was about why is it always better to read the book than watch the movie. And he, and he says, like in the movie, if you talk about like green meadows and a castle, well they have to manifest an actual picture of those things and

Jason Walsmith [00:48:18] There's only one version of what that could be.

Vance Crowe [00:48:19] That's right. And so while we all agree that that's the castle in the meadow, it's, it's not as imaginative. Whereas when you read what an author wrote, you are now painting the picture that they described for you. So whatever you think of as rolling Green Meadows or the, the high walls of the castle, you know, gleaming, you paint that with them. So it's

Jason Walsmith [00:48:40] A dance which makes you be invested in it. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:48:42] Yeah, that's right.

Jason Walsmith [00:48:43] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:48:44] And when the author doesn't write it in a way that you can catch that wave with them, it doesn't matter how important the ideas are. They didn't, they didn't get you on there.

Jason Walsmith [00:48:52] Yeah. That's interesting. I haven't thought about that. Mystery solved. Now I know why the book's better than the movie.

Vance Crowe [00:48:55] Yeah. And, and, and we've probably just solved why music is no, I we haven't solved why music has that magical energy over people. I think it's because of a thing called the Edge of Chaos, which I think I talked a little bit about at the Land Expo, right? It's between the ordered something that people can hear, a pattern, a tune,

Jason Walsmith [00:49:14] And

Vance Crowe [00:49:14] Then the chaos, something that they don't expect. And when you put those two things together in a live environment and people can witness it.

Jason Walsmith [00:49:21] Yeah. That's, that's interesting. I, so I listened to that talk and I never thought about how it applied to music, but it totally does. Whether it's like within one song, you know, which the order is, the, the chorus or the hook or the thing that repeats the thing that sticks in your head. But the chaos is the part, you don't know where that's gonna go next. And the, and the improvisation of, of musicians working with each other and reacting to the dynamic and things like that. So that's, that's pretty cool.

Vance Crowe [00:49:49] How do you continue to push out on the edges of your capabilities?

Jason Walsmith [00:49:54] I don't know that I do very well, but I'm aware of that to the point where I want to more so I've been doing this so long and for so many years it was a little bit like Groundhog Day where it was the same thing over and over again. I don't really remember 2002 through 2009, I don't really, it was all the same. Wow. And I had children during that time too, so I remember those parts. But you know what I'm saying, it was very repetitious.

Vance Crowe [00:50:24] The work became the work

Jason Walsmith [00:50:25] A little bit. But I will say that my 16-year-old son has in the past couple years gotten into music without even me sort of pushing it. Like I, I wanted to play piano 'cause I thought it'd be good for him. But now he's playing guitar and taking bass lessons and he's surpassed my guitar ability in a year because he's just really excited about it. And that's making me want to now be a better guitar player. Like my guitar serves my needs for the, the what I've built out of a career, the level of which I do it. Once I got to that, I didn't really get much better except for maybe, you know, maybe better at that version of what I do. But now I want to learn more. So he's helping me get to the point where I wanna learn more.

Vance Crowe [00:51:15] I think that that's the mark of, of a man oriented upwards or man or a woman, right? When you see your child and they start to surpass you, rather than feeling some form of envy or, or, you know, resentment that they're moving past you. To use that as, Hey, I wanna take what I've learned and level up and try and keep up, man, that is refreshing and, and wonderful to hear.

Jason Walsmith [00:51:41] Good. Well, it feels, it's, it's wonderful to be feeling it too. So yeah, I'm just trying to, recently, I'm trying to improve those guitar skills and my knowledge of that instrument that I've chosen to make a career with that, that I'm ultimately a pretty simple player of. And I'm not ashamed of that. Like, I'm really proud of the sound we've created and, you know, the work we've done, but I realized the, the, the limits that I'd hit, and so now there's no reason that that has to be a limit.

Vance Crowe [00:52:08] Well, and it's interesting to think about you wanting to move also into the storytelling or the speaking world, because who knows how that will impact your, your playing or your stage performance. Like as, as you build on a skill, the one you have mastered or the one that you're really good at, you get to just keep stacking those skills up while you're out here searching and doing new things. So

Jason Walsmith [00:52:29] Yeah, that's, I'm, I'm really, and, and thinking about doing something new like that and really just employing a lot of those same skills that I've already had. So, so not having to start from scratch where you feel clumsy, I've, I've never been good at that. Learning something new where I feel inadequate or clumsy with it. That's, that's where, you know, I get shut down. But because I get to start something new that I already feel really comfortable with, I'm, I'm really excited about that.

Vance Crowe [00:52:56] When you think about people that you'd like to go speak with or help tell their story, who, who are, who are people in groups that come to mind?

Jason Walsmith [00:53:04] Well, I've, so I, I started getting inspired to do this, I don't know, maybe four or five years ago when I was photographing events. Much like the land expo that you spoke at. I've shot that since its inception.

Vance Crowe [00:53:17] We should give that group a shout out real quick. Yeah. If you've been around, that is the coolest conference I have been to in the six years. I've been out doing conferences. They, they are pushing the edges of like, what can you talk about who can come here? And

Jason Walsmith [00:53:31] He does it very purposefully, you know, you can see that with the lineup as, and he knows his audience really well. And, and most of them fall into, you know, kind of one segment of the population. But he brings in the opposite people to, to speak to them in some, you know, I mean, he was taught your, in the very basic terms. You're talking to farmers for the most part, and he brings in them the meatless burger guy.

Vance Crowe [00:53:54] Yeah, that's right. And it was

Jason Walsmith [00:53:55] To shake it up Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:53:55] On the, on the lunch sponsored by Iowa Pork, and there's a vegan guy doing lunch. And you know what, that was the most valuable thing that everybody in that room could have heard during their lunchtime Iowa pork, whether you guys knew you were getting a vegan guy during your lunch, that was the most amazing talk I've seen during a lunch because it was so thought provoking. Yeah. And so those guys are champions. Yeah, I, I think they're great. So,

Jason Walsmith [00:54:22] Steve Brewer is the guy that started the Land Expo and he owns people's company and it's a, it's a, a land real estate company, land development company. And it's branched out into so many different things now, but when I first started working for him, they basically brokered farm sales. That's, that's what he got started doing. And, and I would go out and photograph that land and I'd photograph land all over the Midwest for him. And he's a great guy, and I, he's a great friend, even though I don't really see him very much anymore because he's busy and I'm busy. But, but yeah, so I've photographed that land expo for, for many years and seen all these great speakers, but I've also photographed some other conferences and seminars and workshops and things, and I'm always seeing these people speak. And as the photographer, I, I feel like my job is to understand my audience, understand the people who hired me, you know, the people putting on the presentation, what their objective is and what they're trying to communicate to this audience and what the audience needs to hear. And I don't, I honestly don't think that, that a lot of event, event photographers think about it that way. And maybe I'm making it over complicated, but I think that's part of what I bring to the table. So when I'm listening to these speakers deliver their messages to the audience members, I'm just quite often thinking that in my past experience, I won't even say what conferences they've been, 'cause I'm not trying to disparage anyone, but I feel like they don't even know who they're talking to and they don't understand what they need to hear and what they'd like to hear and what they're curious about. And, and I thought if I, if I know this as a photographer, just photographing

Vance Crowe [00:55:55] Instagram, yeah, man, hell yeah. You know, good for you.

Jason Walsmith [00:55:58] Why, why can't I del deliver that in the same way, you know, and or how would I do it differently? And so I started thinking about that a lot and, and that's what, that's what planted the seed a few years ago. And so I, you know, I photographed dozens and dozens and dozens of those and seen dozens or hundreds of those speakers and thought, I really feel like that's something I could do. And I have other friends kind of in the, in the industry, people who, who book speakers like that for their industry functions and things. And, and they've talked to me about what, what the message they want to get, you know, they want to get to their audience. And, and so that's what I'm developing, but I, I don't have my full, and that we, this is what I'm, I'm curious to talk to you about, really at some point is like, I, I'm not sure how to get from this life experience and these things to say and, and even successes of helping people tell their story and get their brand out, develop their brand, all those things into a package that then somebody might want to hire me for one of those.

Vance Crowe [00:57:03] So I'm not, I, I won't have any like, clear silver bullet answers, but because of the way that your experience singing has gone and the way that you've described it, I think I can put it in metaphors that maybe we will Yeah. Maybe I, I, I haven't really thought about how I did it, so, but I think there might be some parallel. So the way that I got into speaking was I knew that I wanted to do it. So when I moved to St. Louis a few years ago, I just started going to every speaking thing that I could because I, I didn't know what I, I didn't have something to say. I just knew I wanted to do it. So I did Toastmasters and I did rotary clubs, and I went to anything where I could get invited, I would do it. And then eventually I, I met a guy, Travis Liebig, who paid me the first time to come in and give a talk, and he wanted it to be on anything that would keep his audience interested for a little while he'd seen me get one

Jason Walsmith [00:57:58] So that I could probably do

Vance Crowe [00:57:59] Yeah. That and, and that's the open mic night almost, right? That's the, it's one step above open mic night. It's, it's like, Hey, come on in here and, and do something. And all it took was somebody to give me a chance.

Jason Walsmith [00:58:10] And

Vance Crowe [00:58:11] Once I had that chance, then I had evidence that I could say something interesting. And it really did come down to, you have a group and you need to keep them busy, or you need to get them thinking about a problem that they have. I'll sit down and figure out of my life experiences, how can I apply a solution or a story or something that makes them think about it in a different way,

Jason Walsmith [00:58:35] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:58:36] And people say, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll buy that. I've never done the stuff with the event planners or anything like that. I just find people that have an audience.

Jason Walsmith [00:58:44] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:58:44] And we talk about it. And if you have all this music experience and the overcoming fright and dealing with problems along the way and pursuing your dream, like these are all things that, there are lots of conferences that want that answered, because those are the questions of the human experience, really.

Jason Walsmith [00:59:01] Yeah. I think I, I think one of the things I know I want to talk about is, is creating your narrative. Like every time we write a song, we're creating a narrative and, and all these brands or companies or or individuals are struggling to figure out how to tell their story. And so to me, that's like an almost natural thing to do. And so I think I can help people do that. One thing that I, we haven't talked about, but I think that would be fun, would be to talk to people about culture shock. Because a lot of companies, I think experience culture shock. And I, I would imagine knowing your history that when you went did your Peace Corps things, there was a lot of discussion about what culture shock is Yeah. And how to overcome it, right?

Vance Crowe [00:59:40] Yeah.

Jason Walsmith [00:59:41] And so I have some international experience and learned the hard way about culture shock when I was young and, and had no idea what I was experiencing, and then learned how to get through it. And that exact same, those exact same techniques, I think would work for people in companies, whether that's the culture of a company or whether it's people, companies sending people to different countries or even different cities, and then how those people fit in and adapt, you know, assimilate to those cultures. So I think those same things apply, and I've done that as a guy in a band from city to city, night to night in little, you know, microscopic ways as far as how do you assimilate quickly and, and overcome culture shock, because you could just get on stage and, you know, kind of come out from your closed space where you're safe, play your show and then go away. But then you don't have that same connection with the people. So I would purposefully overcome that culture shock by just diving in, you know, and like getting into the, getting into the heart of a city and experience everything and saying yes when people ask me questions and that kind of thing. And so that's another thing I think I can speak from a band perspective that will apply to companies, corporations, brands, that kind

Vance Crowe [01:00:54] Of thing. Man, that's fantastic. I mean, it's, and that speaks to my soul. Yeah. Because I, I was so moved by culture that I went and got a graduate degree in cross-cultural negotiations because I was like, most of the time when people are fighting with one another, it's not because they actually disagree, it's that they don't understand that the things that they want could come together in some, some mutually beneficial way. But I had never really thought about the thing that you're saying here about you can take that and really speak about it. And because really those

Jason Walsmith [01:01:29] Same little tools, I think apply. Yeah. Whether it's, whether you're diving into a completely different country and, and way of life is sort of the same thing as you just moved into a different department. And that department has some different sort of basic rules that people un un unspoken ways that they operate. You know,

Vance Crowe [01:01:47] Did you have to develop a pretty thick skin traveling around to different cities? And

Jason Walsmith [01:01:51] So a little, a little bit, but my culture shock, I think my culture shock sort of knowledge and came before, well before I was out of college. So like I, my degree's in anthropology and I spent a summer in Nigeria, which whoa. Which is, which was a wild place in 1994, I think it was. Yeah. Still is a wild place, you know. But I was 18 and, and I think my professor really, that I went with, I went with a few students and a professor to this tiny little village, you know, like one generator power, two hours a day kind of thing for a summer. And I think that it was his sort of entertainment to see how we, instead of say, here's where we're going and here's what you're going to experience, and here's the way you get through this. I think he was just like, let's go. And I, I don't remember there being any sort of prepared

Vance Crowe [01:02:49] Preparedness for it, you know?

Jason Walsmith [01:02:50] So I think for him it was an experiment of I wonder how these kids are gonna do with this. And so that's what I learned about it, you know, and I learned about it by hitting rock bottom and then like hitting

Vance Crowe [01:03:01] Rock bottom

Jason Walsmith [01:03:01] Crawling out. Yeah. And yeah, I suppose it's different for everyone, but I think there are some commonalities with when experiencing those things. You probably never experienced this because I think the Peace Corps trains you for Oh, prepares you for,

Vance Crowe [01:03:14] I, I mean, you definitely make mistakes because if you're living there, it doesn't matter how much class you went to. Yeah. 10 weeks isn't gonna prepare you for

Jason Walsmith [01:03:23] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:03:23] So make oil salesman rolls into town or something.

Jason Walsmith [01:03:26] So when we, so when we, when we got there, people were overwhelmingly nice people who had one shirt, one to give it to you. You know, I, I don't know if the same for you, but probably similar, but your culture shock reaction to that is, why would I want that shirt? Or Why are you doing that? What are you trying to get from me? Or are,

Vance Crowe [01:03:45] Are,

Jason Walsmith [01:03:46] Are, is this some sort of game where you're going to hurt me? Or, you know what I mean? When it's just, it's not that. So what I had to learn was that just because it's different doesn't make it wrong, which is a very simple thing. Like, I even say, just saying it makes me feel a little like, maybe this is not worth talking about, but

Vance Crowe [01:04:04] No, it is, but is fascinating.

Jason Walsmith [01:04:06] Everyone, everyone I think has this same reaction to something they're not familiar with, you know, which is to close off like, and make, and like hold onto the thing that you, that you know as if it's right. And then that's what makes what you like what you're saying. That's what makes this conflict, you know, people

Vance Crowe [01:04:23] Think, right. And the emotion that you feel of I feel unsafe ends up getting internalized as you did something wrong.

Jason Walsmith [01:04:31] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:04:32] And, and the other person is sitting over there being, I remember one time I offered my mother the, the, the of the home stay that I was at, she was coming to me to do like a kindness. She was like, I noticed that your pants are dirty. I'll have my daughters wash them for you.

Jason Walsmith [01:04:48] And

Vance Crowe [01:04:48] Instead of just saying like, oh, thank you, like, that's so helpful because I didn't have time to do it. I said, oh, that's great. I'll give them each some money. And she was like, what? And then I thought she meant like, oh, that's not very much. You should say how much. So I tell her, I'll, I'll give them the equivalent of five US dollars, which would be the equivalent of like four days of work out in the fields. And it's like, you just offered to give my daughters like, what would take me 2, 3, 4 days to earn? Like, that was the most offensive thing I could have done. And I just couldn't understand why she was getting mad at me. Right. For offering money.

Jason Walsmith [01:05:26] Right. Yeah. And unless you, unless you worked through that, unless you thought through that, talk through that, and you did it with sort of a smile and an open mind that just turns into a conflict that, that then never gets better. I, where I was, people would keep, they kept coming in the morning, like before the sun came up and knocking on the door with a tray full of food that had like, you know, chilies on top, like super hot peppers. And I kept thinking, are they trying to poison me? Like, why do they keep bringing me this and waking me up?

Vance Crowe [01:05:55] Like, how rude are

Jason Walsmith [01:05:56] They to wake me up in the morning and gimme this stuff that makes my stomach hurt? Like, what? But, but they were just being kind, you know, and like it, but your immediate reaction is it's sort of like fear-based, you know? And so, yeah, my, my example, and when I say hit rock bottom, I'm like, I spent my whole youth thinking I wanted to grow up to be a National Geographic photographer. And I, and I know your, one of your other guys talked about that too. But that was my dream. That was what I said I want to be, when I grow up a National Geographic photographer, that's like saying you want to be, you know, an NFL quarterback. But at the time I thought that, and I even had a high school teacher who was like, this is what you should do. And that's why I went to school for anthropology, you know, like I was doing this path.

Vance Crowe [01:06:36] Oh wow. That makes so much sense. Yeah. And

Jason Walsmith [01:06:39] I had a visual emphasis, so like, everything I did, I, I photographed and, and I, you know, shot for the paper and things like that. And so my anthropology degree, it was really a photography degree, but, but, so all I wanted to do was be a National Geographic pho photographer. And I was in Africa in a tiny village in the most beautiful, you know, on the equator. And it was just, it was amazing. But I was so closed off and culture shocked and fearful and angry because I, you know, I did, I didn't know how to process that stuff that I sat in this house for weeks and read National Geographic magazines because oh

Vance Crowe [01:07:15] Man, that was the

Jason Walsmith [01:07:16] Comfortable thing. And that was the, it felt right. And that was what I thought was supposed. And it wasn't until like halfway through the trip that I like broke out of that and like learned that if I just like opened my mind, if I just dove in, if I just took advantage of the opportunities that were there, that that's when the experiences happened. You know? And that's when, I don't know, I gotta develop this

Vance Crowe [01:07:39] A little bit. You were, you were blowing my mind because I, I had never actually thought about what my coping mechanism was in Kenya from this culture shock, which I had. And what I ended up doing was finding one person that was working on something intently and asked them to teach me that. And so, like, there was a guy, I had to stay at this hotel 'cause I was really, really sick. And he was downstairs building his own weight set out of concrete and like these like barrels.

Jason Walsmith [01:08:07] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:08:08] And another guy in my little home village was, he made furniture. So I said, you know, I'll come an apprentice under you. And he could barely, we could barely communicate, but it allowed me to then meet all the other people around me. But that was entirely my coping mechanism.

Jason Walsmith [01:08:22] Yeah. So that's you using those tools, I think that that brought you, you know, that kept you safe from that sort of culture shock. That was your remedy. And I had people like that too eventually. You know, like, I met this guy who was making little talking flutes by hand, carving 'em. And, and I still have a bunch of 'em. And I just sat with him and photographed him and learned how to learn the whistle, which then, you know, sort of taught me a little bit more about their language. 'cause it was a ton language, you know? And like, so it was an amazing thing. But like one of the pitfalls, I I was already playing music and I was, I was, you know, feeling really inspired to, to write songs. And I was, I was in love with someone that I left at home who didn't really want me to go. And there was all these emotions pulling, you know, and, and I had this song that I wanted to like, finish and then give to her. So she knew that I was, that I was serious and I missed her, you know? But I couldn't find a guitar anywhere. And it became like a real obsession to like find a guitar in the middle of Nigeria where it wasn't an, an instrument that, you

Vance Crowe [01:09:24] Know, and, and I

Jason Walsmith [01:09:25] Made it be not only my obsession, but like everybody around me's obsession. Obsession. It was all I talked about. Like, oh, you're going to that town. Can we go there and see if there's a guitar in that town? Oh, you might've heard of a guitar in this other town. Can I hit a ride to that town? And so everybody was trying to help me find a guitar, you know? But really, that was just another way I was trying to like, that wasn't helping my culture shock because I was just staying in my own world and my own version of Norm Normal, you know?

Vance Crowe [01:09:53] But it helped you walk out, right? Absolutely. You're going to visit other towns. Like that's, and it's kind of funny that the metaphor of the guitar is the thing that covers over you on stage as well. Yeah,

Jason Walsmith [01:10:02] That's

Vance Crowe [01:10:03] True. Like there's, there's, there's

Jason Walsmith [01:10:04] Something, there's my security blanket again. I, I wrote the song, I finished it and, and I still probably play it from time to time today, but I faxed it home. 'cause this was, you know, this was 94, I think it took like eight hours to get to a town where there was a fax machine Wow.

Vance Crowe [01:10:23] To

Jason Walsmith [01:10:23] Fax it home. And I faxed it home. And I don't know, every once in a while I run into this rolled up piece of paper that's, that I open up and it's completely blank because the faxes, you know, faded away. But, but that song, she like, she still had that,

Vance Crowe [01:10:40] You know, I, I remember like when you're traveling and you're, you're, there's, there's like a love interest. It feels so much more powerful because you're completely alone and isolated. And so it's, you know, it's, in some ways it's not all that different than you're in prison and the far away. Yeah. And you're not in an actual prison. But like in my case, I know I had created it in my mind. And so this becomes so much more important to you than other things probably because it's easy. Yeah. It's easy to focus on. It's easy to let your heart be natural. I bet there are a lot of soldiers that have that experience.

Jason Walsmith [01:11:18] Yeah. And I wonder, so when, when were, when were you in the Peace Corps?

Vance Crowe [01:11:23] 2005.

Jason Walsmith [01:11:25] So when I, when I was on this trip and some other international stuff I've done, there was no internet or anything, you know, and really almost no phones. It was weird that there was a fax machine, but we, we had to travel so far to get on a phone and then we would wait in a line for hours to get to that phone. And then when you got to the phone, you had, I don't remember, maybe four minutes or something, you know, whatever it was. Yeah. 'cause there was a line. And, and I remember having one of those conversations where like, and there was a huge delay, you know, like a ten second delay or something. You'd say something and then we, we like got in an argument on the phone and it was like, no, that's not what I meant. And then there'd be a delay. And it was just total breakdown of communication. And then it was like time's up and then it was end of the line, but we didn't have time to get into the line. 'cause we had four hour drive to get back to our town. So then it was like two

Vance Crowe [01:12:15] Weeks later before

Jason Walsmith [01:12:17] I could get back on the phone and be like,

Vance Crowe [01:12:19] And when and when person is living back in regular land, they cannot possibly comprehend No.

Jason Walsmith [01:12:24] What you

Vance Crowe [01:12:25] Have done to just get to this point. Yeah. And then to be like,

Jason Walsmith [01:12:29] Yep.

Vance Crowe [01:12:29] Popped away from it.

Jason Walsmith [01:12:30] Yep. So, so wild.

Vance Crowe [01:12:32] So as you spent time abroad and then going from different bars and clubs, and what did you learn about making friends with people or, or putting yourself in a position where you got, were you were in a good position by the people that you knew?

Jason Walsmith [01:12:49] I mean, I, I suppose there is a potential element of danger here, but I, I think my general philosophy is just like, say yes, go with the flow. Well

Vance Crowe [01:12:58] That's why you're here, man. Experience

Jason Walsmith [01:12:59] All the way down. Absolutely. And so I, I don't know. I think that's, that's one of the most important things that I've, that I do. Whether it's from any little town or playing gigs or any little venue. Last year I got a chance to play in, in Beijing, China for, at the US Embassy there. Oh my

Vance Crowe [01:13:17] God. Which

Jason Walsmith [01:13:17] Was like the same, the same sort of thing. It was like this huge cultural bridge where I'm singing these songs. They don't necessarily speak my language. So they don't necessarily mean to them what they're supposed to. But yet somehow I felt a connection. They felt a connection. And there was this. So, you know, so whether it's Beijing, China, or Kearney, Nebraska, it's the same approach. It's a, it's a smile, it's a nod, it's an openness to things that are different. Not necessarily, you know, right or wrong, just different, you know.

Vance Crowe [01:13:52] It sounds like your guitar became your camera to become your National Geographic.

Jason Walsmith [01:13:57] Well, yeah. Yeah. And I've kind of done those, those careers parallel, like I said, in the same way. So I guess I, my guitar and my camera in my mind are weirdly the same. I mean to the point where both jobs require the same amount of travel and interaction and, and setup and pre-production and cable wrapping and, and then focused time of communication and interaction, collaboration, and then cable wrapping, packing up. And, you know, they're, they're kind of the same job for me.

Vance Crowe [01:14:34] When, when you think about listening to other people's music and going to other people's shows, how do you, how do you do that? Like, is it something you enjoy? Do you have

Jason Walsmith [01:14:43] Fans? Fans? I love it. Yeah. It's, it, it fuels me for sure. Like, it's, it, I think I am a singer songwriter because I'm a fan of music. So I, I remember the first time I saw someone play with a guitar in a small little bar before I was even in college. But I was going to this little bar 'cause I knew this, that they had someone playing. I don't remember what made me, I, I was by myself. I think his name was Larry Meyer. And he's still touring and playing. And, and I thought I saw that guy. And it was like a revelation that a person could sing their own songs. I, I, this stuff seems so simple now, but back then, I just remember being this revelation, like, this guy is singing his own songs. People are clapping and then he is being paid. And I was like, before that I thought it was just something that people did on tv or if they're, if they're famous or something, you know. And so that was my revelation. Like, this is something you can do. So

Vance Crowe [01:15:43] I, I mean, that's the power of How old were you

Jason Walsmith [01:15:46] At at that time? I was 18 maybe.

Vance Crowe [01:15:49] I, I, I have the same, so I, in the last podcast I talked about this concept called intersubjectivity. And it really is kind of the concept. You know, my buddy Rob Long says it's the, it's maybe the meaning of life. It's that I can create something and put it down and you can pick it up and you can know or have that same sensation or, you know, we both had this experience together. And so we're not alone, we are together. We understand one another. The world is somehow connected. And to be 18 and realize like that your life's passion is somehow to make that inner subjective experience with these fans.

Jason Walsmith [01:16:28] Well now it took till just now that I realize that, 'cause you just said it, I mean, I've spent the time doing it, but I didn't unders understand what was occurring. But that is exactly what's occurring. And it, and it's, once you reach the level where I'm doing it, where you're doing it with speaking, 'cause you were, where I saw you were in front of a thousand people, you're taking that occurrence and like multiplying it by a thousand. It's just powerful. You know, like, it's almost scary that as I think about, you know, down the road. Like, I'm, I'm constantly multiple times a week being patted on the back by hundreds of people and like, applauded. You know, like what happens when that goes away ever. You know, if it does, I don't know. Have you thought about that? Have you felt that? Do you feel that sort of, does that affirmation fuel what you're doing?

Vance Crowe [01:17:19] You know, the affirmation is something that comes and goes all the time as far as whether or not I want it or I crave it. And I think that that's what comes down to this thing that I sent you a video about the Damon, right? Like the, which is this inner voice that you have that, that wants to speak in some way, or at least in me it wants to. And, and I think other people view it as like, it's my guardian angel. It's my conscience, it's my something. And when I hit the vein where I'm saying something that I think comes from the, the idea of the Damon, it's that it's the, the, it's like a painter, maybe like a singer. I'd never really thought about that. And the expression of it, just the ability to get it out and have people accept it or understand it, or at least comprehend it. That to me is maybe the meaning of life. And like, I think the biggest challenge is to remain humble enough that you keep finding things that are worthy of all these people's attention. And the thing that scares me is not the lack of their, you know, connection or admiration. I think that will be there. It is. Can I keep finding things? You know, you actually said something in here that made me kind of scared, which is you were like, I don't know that I am getting better at my guitar. And then you, you followed it up by saying like, my son is inspiring me to do something else, but that's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that you, I'll get to some level and I'll think, well that's as far as you can go and my creativity will run out.

Vance Crowe [01:18:51] And that that's

Jason Walsmith [01:18:52] But yours, yours comes from your curiosity and observation, right? Do you find your, do you think you're gonna get to a point where you're like, I don't care anymore?

Vance Crowe [01:18:59] Yeah, I, I mean I don't, I, I don't think so. Yeah. But that is my, my deepest fear. And I think the longer that I've been creative over and over and over again, the more that I can trust it. But at the end of the day, like, you know, like you were describing how different people have different experiences for how they grab these songs outta the air.

Jason Walsmith [01:19:17] What

Vance Crowe [01:19:18] Happens if there's a gap or there's just a bunch of static? That's the kind of thing that there's nobody that could help you, right?

Jason Walsmith [01:19:25] You're often

Vance Crowe [01:19:26] On your own.

Jason Walsmith [01:19:26] And the anxiety of that, the, the worry of that is in itself can be paralyzing. So

Vance Crowe [01:19:32] That's actually, that's a great question for how have you done it all these years? Like I see your records, the number that you have. I flip through them randomly. I, I connect with them. How have you done it to maintain that connection?

Jason Walsmith [01:19:46] I guess maybe I just, em embrace the gaps. Because if I would have, I'd have a hundred records if I was just constantly outputting, you know? So, you know, we used to, we used to have kind of a schedule where it was every two or three years we did a record, which was a really comfortable way to do it. But the industry, people's expectations have changed, people's attention spans have changed so much that the life cycle of a record is now, you know, just a few months. So you have to kind of

Vance Crowe [01:20:15] Really,

Jason Walsmith [01:20:15] Yeah, but we, that doesn't mean we do a record every few months 'cause we still have to have this sort of normal pace that we're used to. But we do have, we are getting to the point where we have to do it a little bit more to, you know, keep attention, I think. But anyway, I've just sort of embraced those gaps. Like I've, I've always thought of it as an input versus output. There, there has to be a time where you're, where you're open to it, you're absorbing it, you're learning, you're reading, you're listening, you're in getting inspired, and then you like change to the output part, you know? So I don't think they happen at the same time. At least for me, for me, I have to like consume things for a while.

Vance Crowe [01:20:51] That's, that's actually really reassuring because I describe different times in my life as Renaissance times. And I watch other people go through them too. I don't think there's just me where, where I hit a point where I'm like, oh, I just cannot go deep enough into this youngian psychology and explore all the people around it and, and then ask other people what they think. And eventually I've thought it through and you're right. Then it becomes then the speeches that I 'cause, the speeches I give while I'm learning this stuff. Like I'm just stumbling through it. I'm staggering through it. Right? And I feel sorry for those poor bastards that have

Jason Walsmith [01:21:26] To watch. But you do. But you're, but you're building on and learning from and so you're doing it anyway. That's probably a really important part of your process to be able to deliver it, get that feedback, learn, learn how it's reacted, things like that.

Vance Crowe [01:21:38] And my hope is that the audiences that are there, just like a standup comedian that's working out their material, that the one of the ben biggest benefits they get is that the act of walking through it allows them to see gaps, come to conclusions. Like they're still having a good experience on the, that's the idea that he had, but it wasn't that I made the point for them. They can come to some of those conclusions right.

Jason Walsmith [01:22:03] On

Vance Crowe [01:22:03] Their own.

Jason Walsmith [01:22:04] Yeah, I think you were doing that a little bit at the Land X poll. I remember you saying that. Or, or warning the audience maybe that you were working through it and that maybe that could have been at a different one that I listened to. But, but yeah, I think that's an important part. And I, and I dunno, from my perspective, I like my audience to hear things in, in its in their infancy and then be a part of that evolution. You know, our songs have, that we've written a long time ago have really evolved and changed over the years. And some people have been with it through, through that whole ride, you know? So I like the audience to, to evolve with it.

Vance Crowe [01:22:40] And what's the experience of meeting a fan that's listened to you for a long time, but you never met before? What's that like for you?

Jason Walsmith [01:22:51] I'm probably a little bit, it's probably a little awkward for me, but hopefully I don't show it just because it's a, you know, it's a little, that's not, embarrassing is not the right word, but, you know, I just, I feel a little bit like maybe I'm not worthy of it sometimes the, but it's, I'm always very appreciative of it. So yeah, there, there's definitely been people who have been with us through this whole, that's a long time. And we have fans that have been there the whole time and many of 'em were friends with, but sometimes we don't know them, you know, and they'll come and say, yeah, I, I used to see you in college and, and there was this one time, and sometimes I remember that one time, you know, and it's like, it's pretty amazing that people have stuck with you that long. That's what I always, when people talk about how long we've been, I'm always like, thanks, thanks for sticking with us. You know, because it's easy for people to be passionate about a band that's like rocketing to the top. Like it's easy for people to, to get on that, that train, you know, and, and be a part of that success. But people have been with us through these highs and lows and, and this whole arc, which is amazing to me. And some people have fallen off or lost interest or gone on with other things in life and, and it was just a college thing or, or just a certain period of their, of their life. But there are so many people that have been with it through the whole thing.

Vance Crowe [01:24:20] Did you put together, this may be totally insane, but did you put together a playlist that you published called Cruising on Apple Music today? I was looking at you and there was like, do you listen to a guy named Alex Murdoch?

Jason Walsmith [01:24:33] Yeah. I thought, yeah, I thought it was Alex Murdoch

Vance Crowe [01:24:36] Murdoch, maybe that's it. Yeah. I I've never met him. Yeah. So I was looking for your album and then it showed what music you were listening to. And so I thought, well, this'll be a fun experience to listen to the stuff. I've listened to Alex since I lived in California, and one of his friends gave me a record of his, and I started thinking about this of like how much you and I could have a shared experience, even if I didn't know your music. The fact that you and I would listen to the same music

Jason Walsmith [01:25:04] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:25:04] Is very striking to me.

Jason Walsmith [01:25:05] Which is why sort of like pop music is so powerful to like, when people, you know how it changes culture, right? Because then everybody's having that same experience in much in a big way. But it's more interesting in those kind of,

Vance Crowe [01:25:19] In the niches.

Jason Walsmith [01:25:19] Yeah. That's,

Vance Crowe [01:25:20] Oh, way more.

Jason Walsmith [01:25:21] I don't know what that playlist is. I can't say that I'm active on Apple Music. We do fan, fan cruises usually once a year would, it would usually be this time of year. But, but our next one is gonna be in the fall 'cause it's an Alaska cruise. And I, I have put playlists together for like, the fans that go on that cruise. So that's probably

Vance Crowe [01:25:41] What is, I think that is it because it, it's something about cruising that was on

Jason Walsmith [01:25:44] There, but now I wonder what the heck is is on the playlist. I'll have to check it out.

Vance Crowe [01:25:47] Well, I mean, I guess maybe the larger point is that this inner subjective experience in pop music, I am sitting here regretting that I didn't find a more niche thing. And mostly because the pop stuff faded away, right? The, those bands, if they are still around, they're not, they're, they're not in any way connected with my life and I didn't watch them evolve. So it's almost like if you had a bunch of good friends in high school and then you left them behind. Yeah. You don't get to go back and have high school friends again. Right.

Jason Walsmith [01:26:20] I, I feel like that's the more normal way, I think what, what has happened with us and our fans and the fact that we're still doing it and not trying to do the exact same thing, but just sort of growing and, and documenting and delivering the musical version of our life. I think that's really pretty unique. You know, like I said, there's, there are bands like the Rolling Stones or bands that have had massive, massive success that have then ridden that out for their whole lifetime. But I don't know of any other bands that started when we started that are sort of blue collar bands that, that are still doing it. I don't know of any,

Vance Crowe [01:26:59] Yeah, I I don't either. I'm,

Jason Walsmith [01:27:01] That makes me wonder why we are, but not really. I know why we're doing it.

Vance Crowe [01:27:05] I mean, it's interesting because you probably have fans that are truly like, no, seriously keep going. Oh

Jason Walsmith [01:27:11] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:27:11] Because we wanna see you successful. We want you to come back next year. I wanna bring my kids out here like that.

Jason Walsmith [01:27:18] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [01:27:18] What a mountain to have climbed.

Jason Walsmith [01:27:20] Yeah. Yeah. I don't, and I don't really think about it like this very much. So it's, it's sort of like when I do, then it's sort of, it almost knocks me back a little bit to think about it like this. But,

Vance Crowe [01:27:32] And when you say you don't think about it, you know, like for me, I was so excited there's, you know, rockstar coming over. How do you think about it

Jason Walsmith [01:27:42] More on the, in the moment and the immediate things? You know, we're working on a new record right now that's a duo record. And even though we've done this for so long, and we, and we are a duo and we started that way, we've never done a duo record before. So this will be like our, our first just acoustic two guitars, two voices record, and we're halfway done with that, but it, we're working on it really fast, so we're trying to figure out how to schedule it in and get it done. And, and we have the whole tour booked and they're all duo shows. And I love the band and I love playing with the band. And so there's part of me that's like, oh man, we're gonna be doing all these dates without the band, but then we get to go back and play most of those places again with the band. So it'll all be good.

Vance Crowe [01:28:22] Where do you go for inspiration? Are you a nature person, an art person?

Jason Walsmith [01:28:27] I'm a nature person and an art person and a music person. And yeah, I don't know. I, I mean, honestly, that's a little bit, and this is probably why things dry up for some people, but that's a little bit what's, you know, I, I used to be a much more adventurous person, so it was travel and it was, you know, deep dives into different cultures and just getting lost and like completely new experiences that are foreign to me. But there's less of that now with more, you know, home responsibilities and sort of daily grind and things like that. And so all of that is inspirational though. I mean, I, I think you just have to look at it differently. So it's easier for me to, to think back to how I used to get inspired, which was just go somewhere and do something. You know, it's a little more work to do it with what is sort of normal life. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:29:32] The daily grind. Yeah.

Jason Walsmith [01:29:34] But that's where it is now. I guess.

Vance Crowe [01:29:36] Do you feel like, because you were putting all of these thoughts and emotions and experiences into writing and then playing them over and over and over again, do you feel like you understand your unconscious mind probably better than other people?

Jason Walsmith [01:29:51] No, I think I've, I think I'm have probably what I would imagine the same struggles as ever as anybody else. If you're, if you're diving into that part of what you're thinking about the, well, what, what do you mean by,

Vance Crowe [01:30:04] Well, I mean, I I've only recently just begun to think about the fact that, you know, there are a lot of things that go on in your brain that you don't have any control over, right? The thoughts that pop into your head, even if you try and do a float tank or you try and do meditation, there are ideas that just keep popping in there and you have dreams. And those dreams are some kind of a manifestation of, of something going on in your brain, whether or not it's an accurate representation. But it's interesting to think about, you've probably had dreams or maybe you have had dreams where you're like, I didn't think that meant anything. And then I got a little ways into thinking about it and I realized that helped answer a question that I had.

Jason Walsmith [01:30:42] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:30:43] And so I just wonder if you're so in touch with this thing, this experience of being able to produce and then you have to go over, I mean, not many people even write in a journal, let alone pound it out in a song. Yeah. And then

Jason Walsmith [01:30:56] Listen

Vance Crowe [01:30:56] To it over sing it over and over and over again.

Jason Walsmith [01:30:59] Now you just made me think I, that I probably should write in a journal. No, I don't think I do. I don't think I am in touch with that as, as much as I wish I could say I was. I I did, I think I do use that sort of, I, I, I weighed into those waters. I've written songs, you know, waking up from a dream and used those things in songs for sure. But I, but I don't have control over it or I don't feel like I'm more in touch with it. No.

Vance Crowe [01:31:28] Interesting. Well, I, I think journal journaling is, that's the most hardcore thing I do. It's harder for me to get my mind to do it than it is for me to go lift weights or go run several miles. Because when you, when you first start doing it, you're like, oh, I'm writing down my thoughts and my, you know, what happened to me yesterday. But when you really start grappling with like, what am I thinking about? It becomes really difficult. But then everything that comes out of it, when you go back and peek at it, you're like, oh man, I'm so glad I wrote that down.

Jason Walsmith [01:32:01] Do you? Yeah, I kind of feel like, and I know this isn't true, but I feel like it's too late for me to start journaling now in life.

Vance Crowe [01:32:08] Oh yeah. Bullshit.

Jason Walsmith [01:32:09] I have. So, but I, I, I have so many, I probably have 10 that I could find books with a page that say today's the first day of my journal.

Vance Crowe [01:32:19] Oh, I, I mean, I definitely have those. And then one day, so I had the experience of my mentor, I used to send him thank you notes or notes that about just what was going on.

Jason Walsmith [01:32:31] And

Vance Crowe [01:32:31] One time I went to visit him and he handed me the file of all these notes that I had written him. And I was like, oh my God, I forgot that that even happened. And like, oh, I can't believe that we did this. And we, you know, talked about these things. I'd completely forgotten about that. And I was like, man, it's too bad I can't write myself letters. And then I was like,

Jason Walsmith [01:32:48] Oh

Vance Crowe [01:32:48] My God, that's what you can do. Yeah. And every other time my journaling had been like, dear diary, I just arrived in Kenya, it's so crazy here.

Jason Walsmith [01:32:58] And

Vance Crowe [01:32:58] Then you come back for a few days and eventually you're, you're onto normal world, so you don't need to journal those now. That's not what I'm, what I'm doing now. I am pounding through ideas and while it's as the, one of the hardest things I do when it's done, it's, it's like you finished a five mile run or something like that, you're like, all right, let's go take a shower and get on with the day.

Jason Walsmith [01:33:19] Do you, do you, you di dive into those thoughts and ideas. Do you get to a conclusion and then close your book? Or do you say.dot do to be continued and the next day you pick it up and you start there and you keep going?

Vance Crowe [01:33:33] Oh, that's a great question. I, I bet if somebody picked up my journal, it would be like reading my dream journal or something. It would be like, and then the rabbits jumped out of the tree and were, you know, as large as elephants. It's not that crazy, but it isn't thoughts that, that you could grab onto unless you already understood the miles and miles of context. So, whereas in your songs you were saying, I need to leave space in

Jason Walsmith [01:34:02] For

Vance Crowe [01:34:02] Other people to see them, my journaling, I have to leave no space for anyone and I don't have to leave any space for how will they feel if they read this or what do they think? It's, it's entirely as close to my inner thoughts as I can get.

Jason Walsmith [01:34:18] Does it still have a, a beginning, a, a middle and an end on these thoughts? Or is it just sort of just continuous whatever you feel? Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:34:28] You

Jason Walsmith [01:34:28] Don't have to, these are,

Vance Crowe [01:34:29] Does it have fantastic

Jason Walsmith [01:34:30] Punctuations?

Vance Crowe [01:34:31] It has punctuation. The beginning probably starts more like a story

Jason Walsmith [01:34:36] Than

Vance Crowe [01:34:37] Anything else because I'm usually like, ah, I gotta write this down so that way I can just be done with it. But then as I go further and further, because the story is referencing things that are deep in my mind, it, I think the story melds into non-linear Point A to point Z. It's, it's much more like, and now I've arrived at this thought, so maybe it would be linear for me if I went back to see it. I mean, I'm making it sound like it's, it's gibberish, it's not gibberish. It's just this thought led me to this thought, which impacted this one. And I try and do it during a state when I'm not overly excited. I want it to be in the state when I am, you know, after, after working out or after gonna jiujitsu or something. I want it to be at a time when I'm flat line.

Jason Walsmith [01:35:26] Okay. Every day.

Vance Crowe [01:35:28] No, I wish it was every day. It's probably four days a week. That's awesome.

Jason Walsmith [01:35:33] Some, yeah, I have a, a blank book in my bag in my car.

Vance Crowe [01:35:40] I mean, you don't, it's not like you have to do it as I, I started off just like two sentences

Jason Walsmith [01:35:44] And

Vance Crowe [01:35:45] Then you just say, I'm gonna write two sentences every day for a week. And then when you do that, then you're,

Jason Walsmith [01:35:49] I just, I just filled, you know, finished out a a bla a book that I've been carrying for a couple years that now has this records songs in it. And I ran outta pages mostly because I have a lot of drawings from my younger son when he was in a drawing phase and he just kept taking those pages. So, but it's full. And so I went and bought a new book about a week ago and thought I'm starting fresh.

Vance Crowe [01:36:13] Wait, how is that different from a journal?

Jason Walsmith [01:36:16] Oh, 'cause it's doesn't have anything journal like in it. It's like lists and I mean, it definitely has songs in it, right? But it's like, I'm gonna write a song on this page and it might take a week or it might take, might take one setting or five settings. So I guess it, I mean it's not entirely different than a journal, it's just that I'm only doing it because I have this task, which is to write this song, to put it on the record, to put the record out, to go play shows, to sell tickets and t-shirts. I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:36:46] I mean, you sound like you are kind of a master of the, of the art as business or art as function, right? Like that's the, who's that guy that wrote the book? The War of Art?

Jason Walsmith [01:36:58] Yeah, I don't know what his name is, but I just heard about it recently. And, and

Vance Crowe [01:37:04] It's really, I mean, you just, like, you're recently describing a lot of it. It's like, you know, you get in, he, he basically says creativity comes when you wrench it free. So you get into a spot, you do the same routine every day. You don't, you don't allow yourself the sympathy of being like, oh, it's just not coming today. Now maybe you only get three good sentences on the page, but that's what you do. You're getting three good sentences on the page and you stay there until it comes.

Jason Walsmith [01:37:28] Yeah. It, it's one of those things, I know I would be better and more prolific if I did it in that, if I did it every day like that, if I, if I made myself do it. But I don't have to make myself do it like that. So I don't, because we write for records.

Vance Crowe [01:37:46] What is the business of music as far as that goes now? Because now I haven't bought a record in a long

Jason Walsmith [01:37:52] Time. Yeah. Who knows?

Vance Crowe [01:37:53] Yeah.

Jason Walsmith [01:37:54] So, so weird that I feel like the business of music, the people, the people who are making money in music, it's more the business of fame I think now, but I could be wrong. I don't know. And there's all, it's all, you know, like hip hop is a totally different business and people are really successful in that. And it's like they have their own way of doing things that wouldn't work for us and I don't know what it is. And then country or Nashville country or that whole sort of music business is something totally different. And they have their own system and it's sort of the old fashioned way, but it still works for them, but it doesn't work for everybody. You know, our our business is playing live and engaging our fans and we thankfully have earned and maintained enough fans that they keep us going, but it's not in a way that's like, you know, it's no Jay-Z and Beyonce. It's like, it's like a, it's like a teacher with a part-time job, kind of keep us going.

Vance Crowe [01:39:06] What do you think is on the horizon? You're going to, you are gonna publish more albums over time or do you think it will?

Jason Walsmith [01:39:13] I hope so. And I, I know that's a little weird, but I, like, sometimes I visualize myself, you know, being like entertaining my nursing home basically, even though I don't intend to, I don't intend to go down in a nursing home. But that

Vance Crowe [01:39:29] Does anybody,

Jason Walsmith [01:39:31] I don't know, I think some people are very responsible and plan for that sort of thing.

Vance Crowe [01:39:37] Oh, you're running off the path so that there's no chance you're going in there. Okay.

Jason Walsmith [01:39:43] No, I, I don't know. Yeah, I hope, I hope we continue to make it. I there's no, there, we're not slowing down now. So we're in our mid forties and we've been doing it, I think this is our 27th year. At 25 years, we, we were inducted into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is no kidding. Which is a lot like the Ohio Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but it's in Iowa. But I, I, I think we'll keep doing it. I mean, it's, it's still really fun and, and it's all about, I mean, there's a lot of dynamics involved and then there's a lot of balance. So there's the balance between Mike, my partner in the band and our relationship, each of our families. He has another business now that he started maybe a decade ago. That's, that's takes a lot of time and attention and is successful and has a lot of employees. So there's the balance with that. I have my other endeavors and things that I do, so there's a balance with that and making those things all work together. But so far, you know, we still, we still do 60, 70 shows as a band a year. And then I do just as many as my, as solo a year.

Vance Crowe [01:40:58] You're a hardworking man.

Jason Walsmith [01:41:01] Well, it's not work, you know, I mean, I, it, I am a hardworking man. I definitely am busy. Sometimes I'm, I make myself so busy that it, that it's detrimental a little bit. Like I don't ever quite achieve some things because I'm busy doing other things, but none of it is work. It's one of those things where, you know, I do, I do what I love and I, and I'm totally fulfilled in doing it. So when you were talking about the, you know, knowing what your purpose is and things like that, what was, what was the terminology you used?

Vance Crowe [01:41:39] The Damon?

Jason Walsmith [01:41:40] Yeah. I feel like I've known that for a long time. So to the detriment of sometimes whether or not the, there's a responsible amount of income or, you know, savings or planning for the future, that kind of thing.

Vance Crowe [01:41:57] The Damon doesn't care.

Jason Walsmith [01:41:58] Right? Well, so I've been in, I've been in touch with the Damon for a long time, and that's what drives me through life. So

Vance Crowe [01:42:08] Did you know it is such meaning, like I, you know, I, when I ask that, I mean like, were you just on the path that was the right one and you were doing it? Or were you like, I'm here and I know I'm supposed to be here?

Jason Walsmith [01:42:22] Well, I mean, I remember there being a, a conflict and a struggle in the early days, but it wasn't that I didn't know what my purpose was. It was that like IU like I've already told the punchline, which is that I feel like this photography and this music and now this other version of storytelling of public speaking are all the same. In the early days, I thought I was supposed to do one or the other, and, and maybe, you know, there's definitely a chance that if I had done one or the other, put all the eggs in that basket or whatever, then that one would've been more successful. Who knows? But the early days, and that's in, in that song you referenced, I think there's a, there's a line, the last song on our latest record is called, I'm Still Here.

Vance Crowe [01:43:10] Yeah. And

Jason Walsmith [01:43:10] It sort of talks about our, our path. There's a line in there that says, tell stories with a camera. Just use my voice. That was like a really, really hard struggle for me, for about a year. Do I do the responsible thing, which is get a job as a photographer for this newspaper, or do I play the, or do I play music? And I thought they were different jobs, you know, I thought, I thought one was like the responsible one, and the other one was the irresponsible one. So I, I made the decision to do the music back then, and I thought, I'll just give it a try. How long could it last? And that was in, you know, the year I graduated from college, and I had these opportunities in front of me, and I had opportunities, but responsibilities at the same time, which path do I choose? And so I decided to do the music just because I thought it wouldn't last very long, just give it a try, you know? But I never let go of the photography. And then I later in life found that when one would ebb, the other one would flow and vice versa. And so there were times where I needed to, or was inspired to, or whether it was needed to, or was inspired to move more into that photography world. I would do that for a while. And they both just sort of complimented each other, whether it was the creative output and how that balanced for me, you know, in my expression, or whether it was the time necessary for one or the other, or the opportunities that presented themselves.

Jason Walsmith [01:44:42] They've just gone hand in hand the whole time. So, so what was once a real internal conflict of what is my purpose? What is my Damon telling me to do? I, it just took me a while to realize that it's not, it's not one or the other that is my purpose, which is this storytelling thing, you know? And whether it's mine in my story, my own personal experiences in song, or me documenting something else to help someone else express what they're trying to do, or creating content for a brand or, you know, launching a company, they're all, you know, that, that delves into the real practical versions of it. But those are all the same thing for me. You know,

Vance Crowe [01:45:28] You seem very in touch with something that seems hard for most people to get to. Do you think everybody has it, Damon? Do you imagine that everyone has some voice calling them to do something?

Jason Walsmith [01:45:43] Yeah, I think so. But it, it doesn't necessarily have to be like a, a crazy rock and roll, you know, fairytale. But yeah, I think every, probably everybody has something that will, is the thing that will provide them fulfillment. But I don't know that it, I think probably the, the problem is people try to put them in this box that is a job, like a list of jobs. Which of this list of jobs do I, does my Damon fit into? That's, that's probably where that disconnect happens. But you can get that fulfillment if you're looking for that fulfillment, that true self within those things. I, I'm not saying it's easy to identify, but maybe it's when we're little kids and they say, well, do you wanna be a astronaut or do you wanna be a football player? You know, like, you just then are then trained to think, which job do I fit into?

Vance Crowe [01:46:40] Oh, that's a really good point. Instead

Jason Walsmith [01:46:41] Of like, what, you know, what bubbles up inside me that brings me joy, that makes me feel like I am doing what I designed to do? I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:46:51] I had never really thought about the, the idea that the, when you ask a child that you are really telling them about the compartmentalization, which, you know, you need to have a job, you need to be able to contribute, but you don't think of it as being like, that may really siphon down how broadly they can see the world. You know, the, the police officer that plays the harmonica or some, something like that. Like some, some ability to express that Damon, but it wasn't ever calling him to be a full-time harmonica player.

Jason Walsmith [01:47:22] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:47:23] That's just a weird example. I actually have a friend who is a pretty serious professional and is actually truly great at the harmonica and is asking himself, Hey, does this mean my calling is to go into, to play the harmonica? So I just wanted to clarify that because that was not me doubting his vision. I just, yeah, it was the first thought that came to my mind.

Jason Walsmith [01:47:44] Well, and, and sometimes I think it, it's probably an easier path for someone to become that professional, find what they're calling is, even if it's being a harmonica player, and get that fulfillment by being a harmonica player without thinking, I'm gonna make a living playing harmonica. You know, like, how many people make a living playing harmonica? Probably, probably just a couple handfuls of people. You know, my, I have two, two boys, 16 and 12. And like, they're at this stage where they're thinking, what do I wanna be when I grow up? You know? And my 16-year-old has been on this, I mean, incredibly smart, incredible ability to like, think about geopolitical issues and find a, the solution that's probably none of these super powerful people have thought about, you know, as a 16-year-old kid, he's been on this track for like, for diplomacy since he was in fifth grade. I, I got him a subscription to The Economist when he was in fifth grade.

Vance Crowe [01:48:43] No way.

Jason Walsmith [01:48:44] And he's been on this track, but now that he's like experiencing this playing guitar and, and this what it feels like, he's thinking, do I want to be a guitar player or actually, and, and I shouldn't even, let's take it outta my world. He got into theater this year, his junior year in high school, and he's, and he loves theater and he loves just the, the teacher there. I asked, anyway, I'm going off subject, but now he's like, maybe I wanna be an actor. And I'm like, well, you absolutely should be an actor as like a thing you do when you're not working because to say that you want to go down this, it, it's just, it becomes the pressure to do it takes away from the fulfill fulfillment to do it, you know, I think in my opinion. Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:49:35] That is fascinating. So

Jason Walsmith [01:49:36] I don't, I

Vance Crowe [01:49:36] Particularly coming from the musician.

Jason Walsmith [01:49:38] Yeah. So I don't know, I don't, I don't wanna give bad advice, but I want to help him understand that he can be an actor and he can do all those things that make him feel good, but it doesn't mean he has to figure out how to pay every bill that way. You know? I, I think,

Vance Crowe [01:49:51] And in some way it might hurt the art.

Jason Walsmith [01:49:53] Yeah. I think it totally hurts the art. I think that's been one of our biggest challenges as a band over the years, is like, how, how would we make this work? How do we, how do we fix the brakes on that car? And, and are we gonna, are we gonna spend some more time writing songs or are we gonna go out and play some more shows just so we can pay some more bills? You know, I don't know. I don't want to give bad advice just because of my own jaded experience in life, but I want him to understand that, that, that you can do those things that fulfill you without having that be your entire existence.

Vance Crowe [01:50:28] My my biggest maybe hurdle here is that I, I almost always default to, if somebody really wants to do something, not even really wants to do it, they start getting an inclination to it. I probably blow oxygen to, you know, somebody tells me they wanna play harmonica professionally. I'm like, all right, let's go figure this out. Let's, yeah,

Jason Walsmith [01:50:45] I should, I should probably be more like that too.

Vance Crowe [01:50:47] I don't know though. Like, I'm not saying my, I I think that there's a balance here, right? Because I know that people are motivated by different things, right? I know a lot of people that are motivated by somebody said they couldn't do something, and so therefore they're gonna prove him wrong and they're gonna do it. I am not motivated that way. For me, if somebody says like, Hey, I can see you doing this. I feel then empowered, I feel excited and I go for it.

Jason Walsmith [01:51:14] I think I want to expand on my thought a little bit because it, what, where I was trying to get with that is I think there are ways for him to bring those skills and that joy that he's finding in theater and acting into the world of diplomacy. And that's just one example. But I like these things that you, that are in you, that, that inspire you to, that are your true self. They exist in all kinds of different facets in the world, you know? So you can, you can use those skills and have, find that fulfillment without saying, I'm an actor and all I do is plays or movies or commercials. Like I'm a, I get the same sort of fulfillment of being a, that when I said I wanna be a National Geographic photographer by photographing, I, last year I photographed an olive oil plantation in Morocco. So it wasn't a National Geographic story. And I realize that's a, a huge dream. But, and, and that kind of dream takes years of focus dedicated, you know, narrow precision focus to be the person that writes, that writes or photographs that story for National Geographic. But the part that I love about it is the, is the experience and the adventure and the meeting new people and the telling that story. And, and even though it was an olive oil plantation for an olive oil company, like I got that fulfillment that I was searching for out of that.

Jason Walsmith [01:52:48] So I just feel like people need to kind of broaden. So find out what that inner thing that drives you is, and then broaden what would accomplish that for you.

Vance Crowe [01:53:00] I am really glad I asked that because, you know, you had already sat here the whole time saying, essentially I turned my guitar into my safety blanket and my camera and my whatever. And if you had been like, no, the only way I pay my bills is by the, the me slamming chords through this guitar,

Jason Walsmith [01:53:20] It

Vance Crowe [01:53:20] Would've really limited the, the view you would've gotten to see in the world, the people you would've gotten to meet the, the adventure that you've been on.

Jason Walsmith [01:53:27] Right?

Vance Crowe [01:53:29] That's

Jason Walsmith [01:53:30] Good. Yeah. So that, that's what I'm trying to express to my kids. I'm not trying to say, no, you, you'll never make it as an actor. I'm not trying to say that. I'm trying to say, you can find this fulfillment when combined with those other skills that you've spent these years sort of developing and you're, and you're really good at in this knowledge that you've accumulated and your understanding of how things, how cause and effect happens in these big global pictures. And I think you can apply these things that you learned in theater class to that, you know, and find that, and I'm not saying I have the, the path, the per, you know, I can't draw it out for you how that works, but I think it works.

Vance Crowe [01:54:06] I mean, if you can distill this thought, this set of thoughts into a talk, people will come from miles around to hear it, man. Like, that's what we wanna know. We wanna know how can I take my passion? How can I pour myself into it

Jason Walsmith [01:54:23] And

Vance Crowe [01:54:23] Then have that result not in the life that I am dreaming of the one that I can imagine, but have it be authored by the Damon inside of me and the chaos that is the world. Like you help people navigate that edge between the thing that they're capable of and where they wanna get. They'll, they'll invite you in. I'd, I'd come see that talk. I'd pay to come see that talk.

Jason Walsmith [01:54:44] All right. Okay. I'll work on that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start writing it in my blank notebook.

Vance Crowe [01:54:48] Yeah, man, I'm, I'm, I'm, I think you are well on your way, man. I will do whatever I can. I, I like, I'd love to see you out there talking about this. I think helping people figure out how to do the thing that they're the best at. That's when you get a diplomat like Ben Franklin, you know, that's, that's when you get people out in the world that are doing things that we need to be, that need to be done, that we don't even know need to be done and can only be done by somebody that has combined their, their Damon and all these other things.

Jason Walsmith [01:55:20] Well, and it sort of relates to the one, it, this is a good, maybe the direction, the one subject matter that I said that I was already working on, which is the crafting your narrative. Like it's your narrative, you know? So it, it is the story, the way, the way that you perceive it, and then the way that you put it out to the rest of the world. So, so a cer so a part of that is understanding it for yourself, you know, and like, and telling your own story, figuring out your own path. So those probably relate in that way. So

Vance Crowe [01:55:51] I wanna wrap up with one last question. And that is, you said, you know, I always say yes, or I'm always, I'm always willing to jump in. Talk about that for just a second. Like, how did you get that philosophy and what does that mean? How should people interpret that?

Jason Walsmith [01:56:06] Yeah. 'cause it could be, it could be misinterpreted and then get people in trouble or hurt. And I'm not intending anything negative from that. I'm just saying be open and positive and optimistic and, and open to the, to the possibility that just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong. You know, that a lot of other people have their normals that are different than ours, but warrant understanding, but much shallower than that answer would be. The way that I met Steve Brewer and the land expo guy was years ago at a conference in, in DC and it's called Des Moines, dc I'm from Des Moines, Iowa. And every year this group of Des Moines people go to DC all at the same time, about 200 people. And they have their conference, even though they're all from Des Moines, they have it in DC so they can be close to the government and they can have meetings with the, you know, legislators and things like that. And Steve was on one of those trips, and it was, it was the first time I met him. And I was there playing music, kind of representing Des Moines, entertaining Des Moines, but also I was plugged into this stuff and I got a lot of energy and inspiration from these people. And he was there and we, you know, did the, did the events and then went to the hotel bar and then closed down the hotel bar and then, you know, took some to go for a, to, to keep the, the evening going.

Jason Walsmith [01:57:38] And there was the National Cattle Con Congress was also there. And, and all those guys were in the same hotel, in the same hotel bar and, you know, closed for them. And so we all just got in the same elevator and went up to a room and, and kept the conversation going. And there was the, the president-elect of the national ca cattle Congress was in the, you know, big hat, big belt buckle, big personality. And we were hanging out and he started talking about how Montana beef is better than Iowa beef. And I don't have a, a dog in this fight really, other than I'm proud of Iowa. But Steve grew up a farm kid and, you know, had raised some cattle. And so they really got to debating about that.

Vance Crowe [01:58:23] And

Jason Walsmith [01:58:24] So he said, Steve said, fine, I'll, I'll buy your, one of your calves, but you have to deliver it to me. And he's like, here's a, here's a down payment. He gave him a hundred dollars, they wrote it on a napkin. And, and the guy's like, all right, I'll bring you, I'll bring you a calf next year. And so he did. And he brought this calf to Des Moines, and, and I was in on this process with them. So I was a partner in the calf, and, and Steve raised it, and then we served it at a, at a party and I played the music there. And, and all that was, there's like no conclusion to this story other than that that guy Bill Donald is his name and Steve Brewer are, and the three of us are, will be lifelong friends because of that, you know?

Vance Crowe [01:59:08] Hell yeah. Yeah, man,

Jason Walsmith [01:59:09] That's, and that's just an example of like,

Vance Crowe [01:59:12] That is the perfect example. So my brother and I found these two guys on, on Twitter, and they're the ring brothers, Michael and Joseph Ring. I didn't know anything at all about 'em. They're just two little circles on Twitter and they have interesting comments. They, they sit, you know, they, they talk about things that I think are interesting. I, I have a book club. They, they, they're involved in it. They, they ding me when my audio is bad, right? They gimme a hard time about it. And my brother had the idea. He was like, Hey man, let's go up and visit those guys. They run a feed lot in northern Illinois. Just the next time you're up in town visiting mom and dad, let's just hop in the car and, you know, go up and do that. So we do, we hop in his truck, we head up there, we go meet these guys. This is this weekend. They were amazing.

Jason Walsmith [01:59:54] They

Vance Crowe [01:59:54] Were 25-year-old guys. They lost their parents when they were seven and nine years old. And like, they had to figure out how to make their way in this world. And you're out there with them talking about their cows and their, what medicine they provide 'em and how they do their work. And we got to see their farm and sit down and talk with them. And you think like, I'm gonna be friends with those guys for the rest of my life

Jason Walsmith [02:00:17] Because

Vance Crowe [02:00:17] You just said yes to an adventure.

Jason Walsmith [02:00:19] Yeah. We've all got more in common than we do than we, than we don't. Even if it seems like we have nothing in common, you know, like that, that's all we have to find those similarities. And then, I don't know, I think there's all kinds of opportunities that come from that.

Vance Crowe [02:00:35] Alright. I, I was gonna wrap it up 'cause I'm afraid the tape's gonna run out, but I have an interesting comment. I'll be interested to see what you say. So around Valentine's Day, there was a tweet that went up. My brother pointed this out to me, and, and it was, if you could change sexes for just one day, you could be a woman, what would you do?

Jason Walsmith [02:00:55] Hmm.

Vance Crowe [02:00:55] And like, you go through the, the quick like lewd answers of like, oh, I'd find out what it's like to have sex with another person. But then you start thinking about like, what does your body allow you to do that you don't even think the other person can or can't do? And one of the themes that came up that, that I observed with a lot of women was they said, I'd like to go out into crowds and not feel afraid.

Jason Walsmith [02:01:19] Hmm.

Vance Crowe [02:01:19] And I was like, my, my mind was blown because I didn't, I don't think about that. Like, that's not something, what do you, what do you think if you were a, if you were a woman for a day, what is the experience or the, the setting that you would use your body for to get you into a place that you can't be right now?

Jason Walsmith [02:01:38] Wow. That's a hard question. I've never, I've never had that question before. I don't,

Vance Crowe [02:01:43] I ask it because I think like, it's easy for us two guys to be like, just say yes to the thing. You know, stay out late drinking beers or go up and visit these random people. But as I'm thinking about it with that question in mind, I don't know, that's great advice for a woman or not, is it?

Jason Walsmith [02:01:59] Yeah. I don't know. That's why I said I,

Vance Crowe [02:02:00] When

Jason Walsmith [02:02:01] I, when I suggest that, I'm not suggesting that you don't use common sense or you do things that are dangerous or you Yeah. You know, so I, I get, I get that there's a issue to be worked out there, but I'll, I'll just give you a simple answer because it's what popped into my head. I think I've always, I've always envied the, like a woman's voice, so it might be obvious since this is what I do is, is sing. But I would love to be able to sing like that.

Vance Crowe [02:02:31] What it, what is it that you perceive to be different? What a great answer, by the way.

Jason Walsmith [02:02:37] The ability to be like, totally beautiful and like, and almost delicate, but also super powerful and loud. And so I feel like more often in women's voices, they have this incredible range and it can be so pretty, but also just so moving and powerful. So

Vance Crowe [02:03:02] That, that was profound, man. I am so glad you said yes. Thank you so much for coming by the podcast,

Jason Walsmith [02:03:09] Man. Yeah. Thank you

Vance Crowe [02:03:09] For inviting me. I, I absolutely cannot believe how great this was. So take a little bit of time. How can people find your music? I wanna play that, that song with the dates at the end of this podcast.

Jason Walsmith [02:03:19] Okay. I'm still here.

Vance Crowe [02:03:19] I'm still here.

Jason Walsmith [02:03:20] So it's sort of written, that song is definitely written for someone who's been with us, like for the long ride. But that's not to say that you can't get something from it if you're just discovering us for the first time. But, you know, it, it's, it talks about our sort of path for this time. But, and that song is on our latest record, which is now two years old, called One Louder. But we have a website, the nas.com, that's generally updated and has two.

Vance Crowe [02:03:45] And that's NAD a.com.

Jason Walsmith [02:03:46] T-H-E-N-A-D-A s.com. Yep. The nas.com. I would say we're, we're way more active on like our Facebook page and Instagram and things. We're constantly putting stuff on there. So if people are into those channels, it's there.

Vance Crowe [02:04:02] Yeah, man, my, like, I, I use Twitter a lot, but I always check in on Instagram. I feel like it's more

Jason Walsmith [02:04:08] For

Vance Crowe [02:04:08] The artists. Yeah.

Jason Walsmith [02:04:09] And we should use Twitter more. We, we do have a presence on Twitter and we have a little bit of action on there from time to time. We definitely check it. We just don't post to it as much.

Vance Crowe [02:04:17] Yeah. I think Twitter is more of like written ideas. I don't know. I don't, but I'll definitely check you out. And, and, and the on Twitter, you're the nadas again.

Jason Walsmith [02:04:28] Yep.

Vance Crowe [02:04:28] Okay man, thank you so much for coming by. Thank

Jason Walsmith [02:04:30] You. Thank you for having me. It's awesome. Woo. 1, 2, 1. Real. I remember clearly walking in the hall, laying down my papers and dropping out. I was in a band. Things were starting to click. That was 1996. I'm still here. I remember clearly having to make a choice, tell stories with the camera, just use my voice. But I play guitar and I stayed up late. That was 1998. And I'm still here. I'm still here after all these years. I'm still here. I remember standing over the sink, saw the plus sign in the back of my mind, I thought maybe I was done.

Jason Walsmith [02:06:25] That was one still here. I remember waiting to get the news clear was true. And at that moment it was about than me. That was the start. I'm still here. I'm still after all to all our friends who fell off along the way. I hope to see you and hear you play, share a drink, share the stage, share some stories about the good old days. And I'm still here.

Jason Walsmith [02:07:59] I'm still here after all these years. I'm still here through the hopes, here through the.