SPEAKER_04: 0:41

And we are coming at live. I am Jay Frenzy, and with me tonight, the Robins, my Batman, my beautiful co-host, Miss Tiffany Mason.

SPEAKER_01: 0:52

Good evening.

SPEAKER_04: 0:53

If you are new to the show, this is your storage for the latest news, reviews, and interviews. So if you would like to join in, comment, or fire off any questions, please head over to JFrenzy and dot com. All right, my friend, tonight we have a very special guest with us. We have a very special guest. We have a country music recording artist. Hailing from the great state of Indiana, we have Johnny James. Johnny, sir, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Although she told me you were the Robin to her Batman before we came on. Either way, I get to wear tights. Okay. Cool. I don't have any pants on, so disturbing. We're disturbing. We've taken a left already, folks. That's all right. Okay. Sometimes you gotta wear tights. There you go. All right. Let's just jump right in, my friend. We know you played football. Can you make a correlation between football and your career now?

SPEAKER_05: 1:48

Yeah. Big, big, bright lights. Yeah, I played football all through college. Uh, I played at North Alabama and Wingate, North Carolina. So I always thought that football was going to be my living one day, and found out I wasn't big enough or strong enough or fast enough for any of that. So I picked up a guitar again. So I started playing guitar when I was probably 15 years old, semi-seriously, in some bands around Jacksonville, Florida, pop punk bands, surprise, surprise. And um yeah, kind of fell in love with it, got away from it when I was in college, and then came back to it not too long after.

SPEAKER_04: 2:27

You have to be very disciplined to participate in football. So do you find that you can take that discipline and apply it to your music career?

SPEAKER_05: 2:34

Yeah, I have to because uh nobody, just like on the football field, nobody's gonna believe in it like you do. So we have a lot of people that work for us, which is great. Um, you know, we've got multiple booking agents and all that kind of stuff. Um, but I still do a lot of my own booking. Um, we've been independent from the beginning. We've talked to a few smaller labels, but just nothing ever stuck. I still to this day design our own merchandise. We record a lot of stuff back here. We still record some in Nashville, we go back and forth, but there's a lot of discipline involved in all of that. And the booking, the tour routing, the song releases, all of it.

SPEAKER_01: 3:10

Did you make your logo?

SPEAKER_05: 3:12

I did. All of them. Everybody always asks me where this one came from. This is my Heartbeats to the Radio logo, which you can't really see it, but there's a guitar and a heart in there.

SPEAKER_03: 3:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 3:23

My mom, my mom's a nurse. That's kind of where I saw the first one that I thought was really cool. And then when I wrote Heart Beats to the Radio, I'm like, that's the logo. So it just became the thing. And honestly, these hats sell more than any hat that I have because I wear it on stage all the time.

SPEAKER_01: 3:38

Oh, sure. Love it.

SPEAKER_04: 3:40

You mentioned you do recording at home, not necessarily in your home, but in Indiana. So where do you record in Indiana?

SPEAKER_05: 3:49

So the last song that we released, uh Worth It All was actually recorded on it's actually called Yellow Brick Road. But um, my bass player, his neighbor Ron, has a studio. He's awesome. And we go in there, and that's actually where we do a lot of our even demo takes, anything that we're working on, and we're in the process of. So, like this whole album right now actually is being recorded there, and then it's being shipped off to Texas to be mixed, and then it'll be mastered by Ted Jensen in in Nashville. So it'll be mixed by uh Taylor Kimball in Texas. He does a lot of the red dirt stuff. So I'm a huge Co. Wetzel fan. He did all the Co's early stuff, and then Ted Jensen, obviously, he does everybody's mastering, so he's just we're lucky enough to be able to get that done. So how do you make those connections? So the first connection I made in Nashville, Tennessee was Brian Bonds. He was a lead guitarist for Florida Georgia Line when they're when they were on their meteoric rise. So if you're looking, the blonde mohawk, that's that's Brian. But my guitar player, I met him in 2017. He got brought in by the producer of that first EP that I cut. Who was that producer? So that producer was Jonathan JP Parker. He toured with Wilco and a few different acts. He actually owned seven spin studios here in Valparaiso, Indiana, and that's where we recorded the first EP. But he introduced me to Tyler, who's my lead guitar player, and he's been my guy since, like I said, 2017. And I had written Smoke in 2019. Him and Brian were close from time that they spent in Nashville together and just kind of running around. And he was like, Oh, like I sent that song to Brian, he wants you to come down and like maybe track it down there or whatever. And I thought he was full of it from jump. I'm like, you don't know Brian Bonds, and he's like, dude, I swear, like, he, you know, we'll go down there together or whatever. So Ty and I get in the car to drive down to Nashville, Tennessee. And I tell everybody, like, you cannot get in a car with Tyler. He's the worst driver ever. He works in Chicago, so he's that offensive driver, not my style. He's a sucker. He's like the calmest dude anywhere else, but in a car. Um we made it down to Nashville in about four and a half hours with him driving. We pull up to this condo, and I'm like, I'm still like, I the whole drive there. I'm like, dude, I do not believe you. We pull up to the condo and Brian walks out and he's like introduces himself and shows me all the gold records, all the platinum records on the wall, and I'm like, all right, dude, like this is legit. So no, no, no, not just so. How did you feel at that moment? It was insane. It's it's so crazy. Like, even to this day, there are things in your life, no matter what it is that you're doing, that like it it's a door that opened for sure. And it was like that was a door that got kicked down. Like just meeting him and the people he introduced me to, like Jake Summers, he's Luke Combs drummer. We talked to him a bunch. Kurt Ozan, who's Luke's pedal steel player, he played on our second EP. Sancho is what he used to be Ash McBride's bass player, he played bass on the first EP that we did in Nashville. The list is crazy of the people that were on that first, the first EP that we put out, which was the Heartbeats CD, was the first one we put out down there. But when we put smoke out, I don't know. I still don't know that I consider us country, not country. Like it's so hard with the genres, how crazy it is these days. So I grew up in the rock world, I love rock music. Eric Church is like my dude when it comes to like bending the rules and all that. I think we bend the rules a lot. But that being said, when we put smoke out, it got picked up by 80 stations, I think, in the US. And like for a northern Indiana boy that has no connections to radio, no connections to anything, it was pretty cool for us. And I mean it hit a million streams pretty quick, and it's still obviously our number one kind of banger, I guess.

SPEAKER_04: 7:43

What genre do you think your music falls under?

SPEAKER_05: 7:46

I don't know. The thing is, I listen to everything.

SPEAKER_04: 7:48

So Eric Church is country. Eric Church is country.

SPEAKER_05: 7:52

And so like I I think we fall into the red dirt country. If I had to pick something that we were, it would be the co-wetzels of the world or the some of the Eric Church stuff, but like I'm kind of all over the place. So I think this next album is very much like Mocking Bird and the Crow Hardy thing, where it's like there's some real country stuff on there for sure, like old school country, I like it. Or we're going back to like the subtle acoustics and like nothing crazy, all the way up to Worth It All is pretty. Like I said, that's the one we just released. Like that one's pretty heavy. It's about makeup sex, so that's cool. I I it's not Metallica, Tiffany. Relax. I was I was told two rules when I got to Nashville, and it was the songs have to be about either the F word. I'm not gonna say it on here, but the F word or fighting. If it's not one of those two, it's not worth writing, is what I was told.

SPEAKER_01: 8:43

So wow, yeah, you got both into one.

SPEAKER_05: 8:47

I got both into one. It worked out great.

SPEAKER_01: 8:48

I mean, it's gotta be platinum.

SPEAKER_05: 8:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 8:52

Straight to the top, baby.

SPEAKER_05: 8:54

Yeah, I don't know that it's ever gonna get played on radio, but it's gonna get played on Spotify a ton, hopefully. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 9:00

Well, going back to your connections and everything, I mean, I've always heard, yeah, it's who you know, but it's really who you know that knows who.

SPEAKER_05: 9:09

Yes, yeah. Yeah, so we, I mean, like I said, I used to crash at Jake's place when I would go down there. He was awesome to hang out with, and a lot of those guys, like you would think that like the bands are like super interactive with each other, and I'm not saying they're not, but it's like even knowing some of the like offshoots of Luke's guys or Eric's guys or Ashley's guys, like you're still six degrees of separation. So, you know, we've done a ton of openers, and I love it. The only person I actually went on the road with for like a consistent period was Sam Grow. We've done like three or four shows with Chris Jansen, and I'll be jumping back on with the Oak Ridge boys here in Canton, Ohio in December. I just opened for them last week. That was a blast, like that was such a throwback. The last two openers I've had was Terry Clark and then the Oak Ridge Boys, and so he called me two days before the Terry Clark show, and he was like, Listen, I know you don't usually ask the artist for like a picture or whatever, but like you have to get a picture with her for me because that was my first crush ever.

SPEAKER_01: 10:11

Oh my gosh, that's so awesome!

SPEAKER_05: 10:14

Yeah, he's like, it can be my birthday gift, and I'm like, okay, so I almost missed the opportunity because we were at the uh guest city performing arts center, which is an awesome place to see a show if you ever get a chance to get out that way in Indiana. But got done, got off stage, or I was getting ready to leave stage, and I saw a bunch of people like clearing out. I said something about going to the merch table and I was gonna sign stuff and whatever. And I was supposed to take my picture with her and then go do that. Well, once I saw the place kind of clear out, I'm like, I gotta go sell stuff. Like, I can't I don't want to make people wait, I don't want to make people miss her show to wait for me, whatever. So I went out there fully expecting that I was not gonna get my picture with Terry Clark, and my dad was gonna not be happy with me. So, anyways, I go out there, do the whole thing, come back, watch her show, end up backstage, and she comes off. She came off, she's just like, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. And I'm like, for what? And she's like, I I just forgot to mention you on stage, and like, thank you for opening. And I'm like, you know what? You can do me a favor right now.

SPEAKER_01: 11:11

So I will play that to my advantage and I will take a photo with you.

SPEAKER_05: 11:16

Exactly. So we got the picture taken, and actually, funny. So I was wearing that Eric Church shirt, and uh her tour manager just jumped on Eric Church's team as the production manager on his tour this time around. So she was like, I don't love that shirt. And she was like, she just kind of laughed, was joking about it. But it's so funny how many of those guys bounce from show to show and different people. But her whole team was so cool and laid back, and it's always fun to have that when you have a super. I mean, that's she's a superstar. That's not even right, that's not some you know, flash in the pan. Like she's been around a while, and uh her whole team was super awesome to talk to and hang out with. Oh, she is awesome.

SPEAKER_04: 11:57

No, that's a great one to open for, but the Oak Ridge Boys, we've had them on the show here, and we love them, they're great people. Oh, yeah. And I've had an opportunity to go see them several times now. And I've taken my daughter Lucy, which you just recently met, I took her to the Oak Ridge Boys, and they were so nice to her. It was just like you were very nice. Came up to her, talked to her. But I'm hoping to go see them when they come back through town again. So having that opportunity to see you again. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the Canton thing is gonna be fun. Yes. However, all the the country talk aside, yeah, what was it like opening up for Night Ranger?

SPEAKER_05: 12:38

Dude, I'll be honest. So, like that one kind of made me nervous, only because I didn't know. I mean, I you know, I I know a bunch of their stuff, but it's like I know how far out that is from like the rock stuff that I'm talking about. So when I'm talking about makeup sex and songs and stuff like that, like it's like I you you gotta know the crowd. We kind of did go back to a lot of that. We did Heartbeats of the Radio, we did Smoke, we did some of those, and it was an awesome show. I mean, it was a great show for us, it was a great show for them. I couldn't believe those dudes still throw down. Like, I mean, their stage setup was sick, their whole thing, like it blew my mind how much they were getting around and like just doing the thing. Like they could have been 25, like they were still doing it, and it was awesome.

SPEAKER_04: 13:26

So how does it differ from when you're opening up for a country act?

SPEAKER_05: 13:31

Um, I mean, we it's just song selection for us, so you kind of got to see it, I guess, a little bit at Lori's, but I'm usually super interactive with the crowd, and like I run around all over the place if if I have the opportunity. Like, I just don't like standing still. So, like the Terry thing, I played acoustic, the Oak Ridge Boys thing, I played acoustic. So, like, I'm just standing behind a mic, and it's funny because I still get that weird like twitch in my leg. I get like it's not it's it's almost like nerves, but it's not. I don't I don't know how to explain it, but it's like just standing still for so long makes me nervous. So I don't like standing behind a mic and just holding the guitar. I need to I gotta run around and get the energy out. So yeah, um, that's kind of my style. So the yeah, the the Night Ranger thing was just me being me. It was cool. Is there any difference backstage? Uh no, not too much. I mean, we've so we got to see them a little bit. Most of the time, a lot of those guys, like they've just been doing it so long, they're kind of hanging out on the bus doing their thing, and they have their own routines, and I just stay the hell out of the way. Yeah, that's what it's like with the Overage Boys. Yeah, we well, and I get to I get to actually eat dinner with those guys. But for the most part, it's like I just yeah. I mean, I know people have their own plan, their own thing, their own it's superstitious like baseball. Like you have to do the same thing every day, every show, otherwise something's gonna go wrong. So do you have any of those? Uh I don't really have any superstitions. I mean, I did for a long time. We would have to take a shot of smoke whiskey before I got on stage, and obviously I told you I've been doing the 75 hard thing for 51 days now. So I've played about 14 sober shows, and it's uh it's new. I like it though. I've I've told the band already we will do the the pre-show shot, and then I won't have a drink on stage until I get off again because I I feel like I I put on a better show, I sound better, I can sing the next day. If we want to party afterwards, we can party afterwards, but I want to give the crowd the show that they deserve and they paid for to see.

SPEAKER_01: 15:29

So feels like a solid, a solid plan.

SPEAKER_05: 15:33

Yeah. Oh, like I said, listen, I promise you we're gonna throw it on after the show. I don't have to throw it on during the show. We're gonna throw it on after the show. Yeah, it took a little bit of getting used to as far as like crowd interaction goes. You know, I'm I'm pretty introverted usually, so getting on stage, throwing on the cape, doing the Johnny James thing was was different when I actually was fully sober on stage, but but like I said, I do enjoy the shows better. I know I sound better, I know I sing better, and and I want to give give everybody the best of what we got.

SPEAKER_01: 16:03

Okay, I don't know about this cape, so I'm gonna need to know more about the cape, and then I'm gonna need to know the origin story of the cape. Please invite you.

SPEAKER_05: 16:11

So there's there's no real cape. I have a jersey, I have a Johnny James jersey. So actually, they're baseball jerseys, which is super funny because I didn't play baseball, I played football. But when we when we got into the designing of the merchandise, so like I said, I've done all of my own stuff. When we got into the designing of the merch, I'm like, dude, like nobody's gonna want to wear a football jersey to a show. Like, even if you buy it from the merch stand, like we'll have people put the t-shirts on right away or whatever. But I'm like, let's just do like a button-up baseball jersey. And the first one I did, it was like uh it was a custom just for me. Like I was gonna have one just for me on stage. Like, sure, this is my my getup, whatever. People just started asking constantly, like, where can I get it? Where can I get it? I'm like, dude, these things aren't cheap. Like, it was expensive for me to get one made, you know. So now I have to gamble and hope that people buy them. And we sold out of them pretty quick, and so now people are asking for more. And I I always said that was limited edition. So we're gonna end up doing a different style, I think. We'll probably do a smoke whiskey one or something like that. And I think I want to do like a pre-sale on them so that everybody can kind of pick their own number. It won't have to be all 83 on the back. You can pick your own number and and have it'll still say James on it, obviously, and it'll have the smoke whiskey on the front or whatever. But I think if we pre-sell them, then uh everybody can have their own customer.

SPEAKER_01: 17:27

Jay, you can get one with an eight on it.

SPEAKER_04: 17:29

I can, and just so you know, double X, just throwing that out there. All right. Double X, double eight.

SPEAKER_05: 17:36

What's the eight about?

SPEAKER_04: 17:37

That's always been my favorite number, and as far as I can tell, I trace it back to Carly Scremski playing for the Red Sox. Okay. So then back to 70s, 80s. I was thinking like Troy Aikman or Yeah, it's gotta go back to Red Sox, but well, you know, you might have missed the boat.

SPEAKER_01: 17:54

I I I'm just saying, because my daughter went to the Morgan Wallin concert and came home, and he's got a picture of like a football jersey on. I was like, what why is this country kid wearing the well and he was a baseball guy?

SPEAKER_05: 18:07

Right. Swappity back. We just switched it out.

SPEAKER_04: 18:13

A lot of people grab the jersey from the area they're at. So whatever city you're at, they'll just grab the football jersey or the baseball jersey from that city.

SPEAKER_05: 18:21

Yeah, which is dope. I uh I've thought about that too. Like we do we do so much in the Midwest, so like we're in Wisconsin. The problem is I'm a huge Ohio State fan, so I'm not putting on a Wisconsin jersey or an Illinois jersey or a Michigan or Michigan jersey. I'm from Minnesota. Go blue.

SPEAKER_01: 18:36

I spent a lot of my married life in Minnesota and no Green Bay, no Green Bay.

SPEAKER_05: 18:41

I'm a Saints fan. It's a sad, sad thing to say out loud these years, but ever since Drew's been gone, it's been rough.

SPEAKER_02: 18:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 18:50

Well, being a Bostonian, we're not allowed to like anything that doesn't come from Boston.

SPEAKER_01: 18:55

That's true.

SPEAKER_04: 18:56

That is true.

SPEAKER_01: 18:57

We don't have a football team.

SPEAKER_05: 18:58

Patriots. I was gonna say, they absolutely have the the football team of my childhood. I hate the Patriots because of it. Everybody does, I hate franchises.

SPEAKER_04: 19:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 19:07

Well, like I told you, my I'm taking my little boy to the Kansas City Jags game on Monday night. And he's a Kansas City fan, of course, because he's eight and he doesn't know any different. Taylor Swift. I'm like, bro, I can't. I just the bandwagon thing. And I told him, I'm like, listen, I was a Cowboys fan when I was your age too, so I get it. Cheerleader.

SPEAKER_01: 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 19:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:25

I remember all the kids had the cowboy big winter coats. Uh huh. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04: 19:30

We're getting confused here again.

SPEAKER_01: 19:32

Yeah. This is a throwback show. Cheerleaders and calendars.

SPEAKER_04: 19:37

I don't know where you're coming up from these jackets. Starter jackets.

SPEAKER_01: 19:41

Yeah, the starter jackets. They were cool. All right. All right. Let's talk about Johnny. Let's talk about Johnny.

SPEAKER_05: 19:48

Do we have to? I was gonna say, I was gonna ask the same thing. We could talk about anything else.

SPEAKER_04: 19:53

All right. Well, let's go back to the early influences. So you you mentioned rock being an influence of yours. Let's talk more about those artists. What artists from the rock world are you drawing influence from?

SPEAKER_05: 20:05

So I I mean I was a big Ataris fan, which I don't even know if you know who that is. Probably not.

SPEAKER_01: 20:11

I thought you said Atari.

SPEAKER_05: 20:13

The Ataris. So Chris Rowe was from Anderson, Indiana. And I always thought it was the coolest thing on the planet that some dude from Anderson, Indiana like got out and ended up on MTV.

SPEAKER_02: 20:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 20:23

Um, so that was a big one for me. I loved like Green Day. I any of the pop punk stuff was like kind of my my world. We opened for a lot of cool act, like red jumpsuit apparatus. We opened for when I was in high school, yellow card. We opened for when I was in high school.

SPEAKER_01: 20:40

So what was the name of your band in high school?

SPEAKER_05: 20:42

I don't want to say. I'm kidding. I will tell you. Uh we had multiple names. One of them was high school heroes. Uh, the other one was another losing streak, five-man army at one point.

SPEAKER_03: 20:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 20:55

What else? High School Heroes. I think we actually cut. Like there is a CD roaming around Jacksonville somewhere.

SPEAKER_01: 21:01

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_05: 21:02

That we sold like five or six hundred copies of.

SPEAKER_01: 21:04

Okay, well, I'm local. I gotta find it. High School Heroes. These does will you sign it for me if I see you in a side?

SPEAKER_05: 21:09

I'll sign it for you if I can scratch the back of it up so you can never listen to it.

SPEAKER_01: 21:15

Fair.

SPEAKER_05: 21:16

You could look at it, you're not allowed to listen. I think there was a song on there called You Broke My Heart, so I killed your boyfriend. Like I legit think there's a song there like that.

SPEAKER_02: 21:25

So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_05: 21:28

Well, going back to the styles of music, so I yeah, I mean, I listen to everything. Dallas Green, he's uh the singer for City and Color. He used to be in Alexis on Fire, he's Canadian. I just love his songwriting style. So, like when I started writing my own stuff early on, um, I really started paying attention to just the lyrics and the stories and like how things intertwined and play on words, like you know, love or hate Morgan Mullen, Love or Hate Hardy, any of that stuff. Like, those dudes' word game, it's crazy. Like their play on words is crazy. Luke is his stuff is the same thing. Like, you don't have to necessarily like their music or their musical taste or whatever, but like when you actually listen to the words that they're saying and how they can twist it and tell the story in such a weird way and give you a movie scene, but in a song, like I love that. I love musicals, like I'm a nerd, so I think it's the coolest thing on the planet that people can take a three-hour show and put it to nothing but music. Like, I think that's so awesome. I do not have that talent, but I appreciate people that do.

SPEAKER_04: 22:30

My daughters are into Hamilton, and they're constantly singing and around the house, and I listen to these songs, I'm like, how could anybody write this stuff? Right? It's just amazing.

SPEAKER_05: 22:42

What was the one? There was one when I was in high school, it was probably the first musical I ever saw, and I cannot think of the name of it right now. I wish I could because it's like a total throwback, but yeah, it it was the one that was by the way, just throwing that out there. That's yeah, that's more old school than me. No offense. Yeah, well, I'm much older than you. Gotcha, I wish I could think of what it was called. I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna find it. It was honestly like an autobiography about this guy's life, and it was just like him chasing this music world, and like he went all over the place, like he was in Amsterdam and he was like all over the place, and how he left his family behind and whatever, and like it was the one thing he missed the most and ended up coming back, and like it was just but like I said, to be able to tell a whole story, a life story like that.

SPEAKER_01: 23:24

I agree with that.

SPEAKER_05: 23:26

Bring it back is crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 23:27

Yeah, yeah. I'm a big fan of The Greatest Showman.

SPEAKER_05: 23:31

I do love the greatest showman too. My kids see that's the one my kids sing all the time.

SPEAKER_01: 23:34

Oh my gosh. When it first came out, I I watched it seven times in one month. Like I just could not get enough of it, and I love the music from it. So but I agree, just when when they have such clever words that you can vividly picture everything that's going on, it's it's magic for sure.

SPEAKER_05: 23:52

Yeah, well, see, my kids are young enough though, where it's like, you know, obviously frozen got played a ton in my house still to this day. On repeat. Yeah, I was gonna say I was just about to say it still comes up from time to time. But all of my kids, like they they all enjoy music. My oldest can sing her butt off. She won't she'll never sing on stage. She did with me years ago when she was my youngest age. So she was probably five or six, and I stood her up on a stool, and she her and I sang some Ed Shearing together, and uh it was crazy. She was it was awesome. I think I got a video of it somewhere.

SPEAKER_01: 24:22

I should and she won't do it now.

SPEAKER_05: 24:24

She refuses. That girl puts me to shame. So I wish she would. Maybe one day we've talked about she's she's in sixth grade now, so we've talked about her joining choir, doing all this stuff, and she's just like, I don't want to stand on stage. I'm like, what's the worst that could happen? You could fall on your face, dad does that all the time.

SPEAKER_01: 24:41

Well, I mean, she could be like the voice of a Disney princess, you know.

SPEAKER_05: 24:45

That's true too.

SPEAKER_01: 24:45

Where she doesn't have to be on the stage, but her talent still gets to shine.

SPEAKER_05: 24:49

Yeah, so my wife actually in high school, she did they call it Sandpipers here, but it was like the theatrical, like it was a lot of that stuff. Um the plays and the music all mixed. She loved it. And our and the high school in town, this town that I live in now, she grew up in all through high school. I grew up here until high school, and then we moved away. I was kind of a troublemaker. But uh now, yeah, I know it's a surprise. Now, but the high school here has a great music program, and so I'm hoping we can slowly work her into that. You know, both my girls do dance, they're both cheerleaders. My son plays baseball, like they're all they stay busy as all get out.

SPEAKER_01: 25:25

Yeah, I saw you had a post and it was about baseball, and then there were about I don't know, 60 tags after, and there was like baseball family, baseball, baseball lover, baseball this, baseball that, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball.

SPEAKER_05: 25:38

Well, like I said, it's so funny to me too, because I always tell everybody, like, so he got a baseball bat for his second birthday. I think it was his second birthday, and it was one of those plastic bats and a ball, whatever. And we were sitting in the front room, and I just threw one at him and he broke it. Nailed it. Oh, dude. And so, like, we just started like we just messed around with it forever. And then when he turned four, he begged forever. He's like, I want to play T-ball, I want to play T ball. And the one in the one in town wouldn't let him play. They said he was too young. So we actually took him to one town over, and he's been playing ball ever since, and he's you know, he's been playing up in divisions and stuff like that. Like, he's cool, he's a beast, but he's a beast because he he works hard, and I tell him that all the time. I'm the dad that just, you know, I'm like, hey, you're you're as good as you are because of the work you put in, not because anything else. God gave you a lot of talent, and that's great, but the work you put in means a lot more. So he's out in the front yard all the time just doing his thing, whether dad's home or not.

SPEAKER_01: 26:32

I love a lot of the um social media posts that you have on Instagram, and it does show that mental toughness. And I think that like my parents didn't talk to me about that. They didn't, you know, come alongside me and be like, you can be anything you want to be, you know, and so I think that that's something that's kind of cool to see when parents are coming alongside their children, and especially you who you know you have to invest a lot and you have to be mentally tough, and you know, you're really showing that to your children. I would like to know. Um, I see a lot of it hashtag rise and grind. What is that all about?

SPEAKER_05: 27:06

Just getting up every day and doing the thing, whatever the thing is. So the mental toughness thing is a huge thing for me. So my uh my parents, I you know, they they loved me. They look and they love me playing football and all that. And I remember the first time I asked for guitar and they were like, Absolutely not. My dad was like very gung-ho about I was never gonna play music, I was gonna uh And now he's getting Terry Clark signatures for that. Yeah, not only that, now he's he's my biggest fan now. So we uh we went through phases for sure through my teenage years and my younger years. So I just you know, I'm one of those people that life's too short, and there's gonna be a million people that tell you you can't do something. So why am I gonna add to that? I'd rather be the guy that's like, why can't you? Like Derek Jeter made the major leagues, right?

SPEAKER_02: 27:53

Like, why can't you?

SPEAKER_05: 27:55

If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Same thing with my music, you know. Like, there's a million people that'll tell me this will never work. Sure. Okay, that's cool. I don't I don't need cheerleaders, I need fans, I'll find them. So yeah, that's what it is.

SPEAKER_01: 28:08

So you had your lead guitar player and yourself, and how did the rest of your band form?

SPEAKER_05: 28:16

Yeah, so there's been a few different renditions of the Johnny James band. Um so it started, like I said, 2017 before I had Thai. We actually brought the studio band out. And here, let me go back even before that. So I was never gonna record music. I I did a lot of cover shows. We did, I mean, I did acoustic shows in a bunch of bars and made a lot of money and just played nothing but covers. And then my father-in-law passed away in 2017, and it was kind of a shock. I mean, not kind of a shock, it was really a shock. So he had he had had cancer, and then he was cleared on a Friday of his cancer, and then had a heart attack on Sunday and passed away. Like shocking. Um Wow. Yeah. And a few days later, I wrote Shotgun in the Sky, and my son was six months old at the time. Um, my oldest was three, my youngest obviously wasn't born yet, and I had written shotgun, and I wanted, I just wanted to like memorialize that. Like, hey, this is who your grandpa was. My my father-in-law, and I say this at most shows when I play shotgun. My father-in-law and I spent more time together than my wife did in the first seven years of my marriage. Like him and I did side jobs together, we drank beer in the garage together, we snuck out and drove the back road, smoked cigarettes, listened to music together. Um, when I got hired in at the mill full time, I'd ride with him in the morning listening to talk radio, which I hated at the time. Now it's all I listened to, but listen to talk radio and just kind of BS and hang out. Like he was he was one of my best friends. And so when he passed away, it was like a huge shock. And I just wanted my kids to know who he was and how important he was to our family and and all that kind of stuff. So I went into JP studio, went into Seven Spin, and I said, um and JP and my dad had known each other for years. They went to high school together, and so my dad's like, Oh, go talk to JP. I'm sure he'd record whatever. So I went in, recorded, I recorded that song. He's like, What else you got? And so we did Why We Fight. We did um Daddy's Arms. We did um I mean, there I don't remember what's on that album. There's six or seven songs on that EP. And like I said, it was all literally just four shotgun. I didn't care what else was on it.

SPEAKER_02: 30:26

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05: 30:27

And then we got invited to play. I think JP was one of the promoters on a on the Popcorn Fest show, which is a big thing in Valparaiso. If you don't know what Popcorn Fest is, look it up. Herbal Reddenbachers from the area. So Popcorn Fest is huge.

SPEAKER_01: 30:42

Yeah. Um it looked like it.

SPEAKER_05: 30:44

Yeah. So he ended up getting us on. It was a side stage thing at Popcorn Fest. And I'm like, hey dude, I don't have a band. He's like, well, we'll just use we'll use the studio guys. And then that's when he introduced me to Ty. So fast forward after that season, Ty introduced me to David, my other guitar player, and my neighbor actually was playing drums for me for a while. His name's Pete, but he played drums for me for a little bit. And as we grew and got bigger and started going to in-ear monitors and click tracks and like taking things more seriously, like Pete was like, I'm not really digging it. He's like, I you know, it was kind of more of a jam band thing, which I get it. It's cool. Like we were taking it more seriously, and he was more like, Hey, I don't want to drive to Minnesota and play a show.

SPEAKER_01: 31:26

I'm like, I do. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 31:29

So he ended up stepping away. My bass player stepped away at the same time. And then Nick, my bass player, during that time, kind of during that transition, was actually playing pedal steel and banjo for me. So he does. I mean, that dude's he's just a beast on everything. So he can play, he can play it all. He plays dobro, he plays bass, he plays guitar, he plays pedal steel, he plays banjo. So he was my auxiliary guy. And I'm like, hey dude, we need a bass player. He's like, okay, jumped in, played bass, and he's a beast at it. Um so then I had the three-piece, and I was just looking for a drummer. And Joey, my drummer, the last not last year, but the year before, two seasons. I had Joey. He was from Fort Wayne, so it was just a it was a hard, you know, if we're gonna have rehearsal, if we're gonna add songs, if we're learning new stuff, if we're tracking things, it was just a pain. Um he's a great drummer, and I think he's actually touring with, or not touring with, but he's playing shows with another buddy of mine, Jared, and they're kind of doing the Indiana thing, which is cool. But my wife actually introduced me to Elliot, my drummer now. And she was just like, Hey, like, have you ever and I've known Elliot for a long time. I didn't know he was still playing drums. And she was like, Have you ever thought about like talking to Elliot? And I'm like, Yeah, like I'll I'll call him. I never called him. So she three-way calls me and him, and she's like, Hey, Johnny's looking for a drummer, you're a drummer, like come do or like come try out. And Elliot was all about it, and he came over to the house, came down to the basement, saw the setup, and was just like, Oh, like this is like legit. Like, yeah, I mean, if we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it. So we had the light rig set up and all the everything going, and uh he jumped in and best drummer we've ever had.

SPEAKER_01: 33:07

So oh wow, yeah. So the group I have nice in Indiana to have a basement. We don't have those here in Florida.

SPEAKER_05: 33:14

Yeah. Well, you listen, I you would you would think that it's nice, except for my father-in-law and I built this house seven years ago. Well, like I said, right before he passed away, actually. We finished this house, and him and I built it. We had some subcontracting, but we did most of the work ourselves. This actually, this ceiling behind me is my pride and joy.

SPEAKER_01: 33:32

I was gonna say it looks nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 33:34

It was a pain in the ass. Um, but uh yeah, so the basement is flooded like three times, so it's a nine-foot basement, and the sump the sump pit sucks, and so I'm like, it scares me. But one of these days, and like I said, none of my equipment's ever been ruined, so that's good. Okay, that's always a fear.

SPEAKER_04: 33:54

I fear that all the time.

SPEAKER_05: 33:55

Yeah, dude. Well, so I ended up, I just bought like a$750 some pump to uh alert me if anything remotely goes wrong. Like we have a generator, we I have a full house generator, all that kind of stuff. So, and that's the only reason why I have a generator and all that is because I don't want my basement to flood.

SPEAKER_01: 34:12

So good for you. But also, I mean, you are in the tornado area, so it's nice to have the generator in the event.

SPEAKER_05: 34:20

That is true. I have a little bomb bunker in my basement too. It's all concrete, it's pretty dope. I'm not I'm not necessarily a prepper, but I can be.

unknown: 34:27

You can be prepared.

SPEAKER_05: 34:29

I am prepared.

SPEAKER_04: 34:30

You can't see in front of me. I got uh you know, the typical studio set up here in front of me with console and monitors and everything. And directly to my left is the hot water heater on the other side of that wall. So my fear is that blows one day and I'm screwed. Or the shower that's right above my head with my kids that don't know how to close a shower curtain. All these things kind of freak me out a little bit.

SPEAKER_01: 34:55

Y'all seem to kind of play in playing the game, huh?

SPEAKER_05: 34:58

Well, that's it. Well, the thing is this too. Like, I'm like, you know, I have buddies that are like, oh, like I live in an apartment or like they're you know, they're early 30s, single, whatever. And they're like, I'm looking at houses. I'm like, don't. Why? What are you talking about? Like, bro, if I was single, I would not have any of that stuff. I would have somebody mowing my lawn. I would be living in an apartment, like eating peanut butter jelly. I don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_04: 35:19

That's what I told my wife. I'm like, why are we gonna get a house? Why? Let's just go live somewhere, have someone else take care of things, and we'll just go on vacations.

SPEAKER_05: 35:27

I was gonna say, yeah, we'll just bounce around from place to place. We'll call it home. Right.

SPEAKER_04: 35:33

All right. You mentioned your influences in the songwriting ability and what they did with lyrics. Can you tell us what your practice is when it comes to songwriting?

SPEAKER_05: 35:43

Um, it kind of depends. I mean, so every now and then I'll just have like a weird moment where things just come to me. So like I'll literally I'll wake up in the middle of the night. I'm one of those people that has a notepad by the bed and just write some stuff down. More times than not, I've woke up to like just scribbling and there's means nothing to me. Um and I've forgotten, I've forgotten more great ideas than I remember. I always tried to have the recorder with me. I was about to say from time to time, now that I got an iPhone, I have the little recorder app or whatever's on it. And I'll just I guarantee there's probably 250 on there right now, and most of them might be trash, but there's definitely a couple gems, so yeah, it's usually just like a melody going on in my head, and I so is it melody first, lyrics first? It's usually melody first. Okay. Almost always, actually. In high school, I was really into poetry, like really into poetry, and uh I tried to turn a bunch of those into songs, and it just felt weird and like backwards to me. So I stuck to the melody.

SPEAKER_04: 36:44

You mentioned the importance of the story of these people you were taking influence from. So I didn't know if you wrote lyrics first, but even melody is close to lyrics first. You start with your melody and then you craft that into the lyrics. So do you do that always before music?

SPEAKER_05: 37:00

Um, not always. I mean, it like I said, it really does depend. Like every now and then there'll be it'll just be a line. Like there'll be one thing that I'm like, oh, like that's a hook of a song. Like, I need to write that down. I'll put that in the notes in my phone and then come back to it 10 years later and write the song.

unknown: 37:16

Nice.

SPEAKER_05: 37:16

That's the other thing. It like it's never convenient, it's never a convenient time to write. So the band and I have talked about this winter where I talk about going off to Michigan for a week and just like sitting down jamming together, catch a couple not in Michigan, but um catch some big screen TVs, um, watch some Ohio State. Listen, Ohio State's gonna win the national championship this year. I don't think anybody's fighting that. Yeah, no, there's a I my wife has a girlfriend that's got a lake house up there, and she's like, Oh, we don't, they don't Airbnb it or anything. I'm like, well, I will Airbnb it from you and we will yeah, we will use that because I think I you know, I always tell everybody too, like I run out of ideas. I'm I'm the least talented musician in my entire band. So if they can come up with some cool stuff for me to write to, that would be great.

SPEAKER_01: 38:02

Well, I think you saying uh it's not convenient timing or whatever. I mean, when you're the man of the household, you know, you're worrying about the kids and your wife and your equipment getting ruined, and has the house flooded and is everything protected, and you know, there's a lot of responsibility, and your brain is being pulled in a million other ways. That doesn't really allow you to be creative. You know, you're not you're not calm enough, you're not still enough, you're not in that creative space long enough to fully get into creation.

SPEAKER_05: 38:32

Well, and that was the great thing about, and that still is a great thing when I go down to Nashville, like we're there for a week, we don't go out, like I'll go out one time. I always say, I'm like, listen, we'll go out one night. It's usually the last night we're in town. Like we'll go hit Broadway, we'll do the thing, unless we're taking going with somebody that has never been. Because if they've never been, like it's a lot more fun. Right. I've been a million times, it's the same thing. You're gonna hear the same songs on Broadway. If you have a favorite bar, which obviously I do now with Chiefs, then cool, like we'll hang out at that bar. But for the most part, we don't we don't go out every night when we're down there. We get to focus on what we're doing. So when we record here, if my wife's got an issue with the house, my son's driving her nuts, she can call me and I'm 10 minutes up the road. So it's a little more of yeah, you get pulled out of it. But also, I still work at the mill full time here. Uh my my bass player is still at the mill full time. They let me do what I want as far as my show schedule goes. I mean, I've taken way too many days off in the last month playing shows. Um but they give me that freedom, which is great, and I'm beyond blessed to have that for sure. But I mean, I still put in usually between 46 and 60 hours a week there, and then I'm coaching little league baseball and running girls around to dance classes and cheerleading. My wife's in real estate, so she's you know, her schedule's crazy. So it's like yeah, trying to trying to figure out all the things at once is is always fun.

SPEAKER_01: 39:52

Yeah, and you guys have three kids?

SPEAKER_05: 39:54

Yeah, so I have uh my my oldest will be 12 in November. Uh my son is eight, and my youngest daughter will be six in December. So they're all officially in school full time now, which is a plus. Ooh, that's a fun one.

SPEAKER_01: 40:08

I mean, gosh.

unknown: 40:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 40:10

Well, we talked for a long time about having another one, and our kids all want us to have another baby. And I'm just like, I I listen, dad's dad's not 40 yet, but I'm pushing it, and I don't uh yeah, yeah, we're good. Yeah, family of five is this is the thing. When we had one, I I always tell everybody this when we had one, it was you know, two on one defense. That's easy. We go to man defense with two, not a huge deal. We're in zone defense now, and it's like they all want to do everything, right? Like my girls want to cheer, they want to dance, they want to play volleyball, they want to. My my youngest is doing like four different dance classes right now, and she wants to do cheerleading. I'm like, bro, like that's a lot. Jamma wants to play baseball and he wants to play soccer, and he's in basketball. And I'm just like, hey, dad wants to be a rock star, so you guys gonna have to calm this down a little bit. Let me chase my dreams first, and then nice. One of us is past our prime, all right?

SPEAKER_01: 41:04

That is tough though, I think. You know, like I think as parents we sacrifice a lot and put a lot on the back burner, and then I know like in my community of women that are in their mid-40s, a lot of them are talking about like second chapter, you know, and like they're like, Okay, now it's time to focus on me. And, you know, I mean, why can't we chase our dreams while the kids are pursuing their interests, you know?

SPEAKER_05: 41:27

Yeah, I think there's a happy medium to all of it. I mean, I uh, you know, summertime is obviously a crazy season for music, it's a crazy season for baseball. And so I try to as much as I can, I try to make shows work together with wherever he's at. So if I mean, you know, he's playing most of his stuff. It's kind of local, it's not crazy. Usually, like I said, we play so much in the Midwest. Like we're the furthest we I mean, we've done Colorado, we've done Florida, obviously, we're gonna be back in Florida, but like we've kind of been all over the map. But for the most part, our season stay in Illinois, in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, like we're not going too, too far away. And my drummer loves to drive at night. That's not true, I'm lying. But um, but he does it anyways for me. Who else who likes to drive at night? So we well, we drove back from Lori's that night and got home at like 4 30 in the morning. Here's a story for you when it comes to being a dad and being a rock star thing.

SPEAKER_01: 42:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 42:27

He had uh he was supposed to have a game in Crown Point, which is like 30 minutes from me. It was a tournament, so it was all weekend long, and we were supposed to be playing a show in Hobart, Indiana, which is like 15 minutes from the venue, or 15 minutes from where he's playing baseball. Sweet.

SPEAKER_03: 42:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_05: 42:44

I can coach him all day, go play the show, come back, we're good. The game got moved to south of Indy, and it ended up being like a five-hour drive. So I took him, the show was Saturday night. I I had the girls. My wife was on a girls' trip with one of her girlfriends, and so I had all of them. My dad ended up flying, flying into town to meet me because he wanted to he wanted to see JMO play baseball anyway, so it was good. But he flew into town, flew into Indy. We played the games Friday night. He had two games Saturday afternoon. I left Saturday at two o'clock, drove straight back to Hobart, so the four and a half, whatever it was, five hour drive back, played the show at eight o'clock, played from 8 30 to 10, whatever it was, and then drove straight back down after the show, and then coached a baseball game at eight in the morning. So and we lost, so that sucked.

SPEAKER_01: 43:41

Probably the coach was not at his prime.

SPEAKER_05: 43:44

Coach was not awake. I'm the assistant coach. Uh, remember the mental stuff we were talking about? That's my job on that team. I I am not the baseball guy for sure. I mean, I love baseball because my son loves baseball.

SPEAKER_02: 43:54

That's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 43:56

You mentioned Lauri's. Do you remember that night? There had to be over a hundred bikers. Yeah, it was like 150 bikers. Right. I mean, I thought that was insane. We pulled up the entire parking lot was full of bikes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 44:08

So I they were doing uh it was a benefit. I don't know what the benefit was. It was like a there was something with it. Because I remember when Jess called me and she was like, Hey, like we're doing this benefit thing, and I'm like, Oh, cool. Like we just wanted to get back. So we did uh Battle of the Bands, whatever it was, a few months ago, and the old promoter moved on to another spot. And I don't know what he's doing now, but either way, it was like we had talked to him that night about like, oh, you know, he's like, Oh, we're gonna get you back out here for sure and we'll make it happen. And then he ended up leaving, and Jess came in, and uh we had reached, I just reached out to her and she was like, Oh, yeah, like we'll we'll figure something out. And then this thing came up and she was like, Absolutely. So yeah, it was crazy though. There was at least like I said, I think they said there was at least 150 bikes there that night. I'm like, it was awesome.

SPEAKER_04: 44:51

I mean, I was I spent more time in the parking lot looking at bikes as I was trying to leave. My daughter's like, look at all these bikes. She wanted to go play pool with everybody. She's like, Look, they're all over there playing pool. Can we go play pool?

SPEAKER_05: 45:04

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 45:06

What's the craziest thing you've encountered on your trips around the the country?

SPEAKER_05: 45:12

Craziest thing. I don't know. I don't know what's what's good and what's not good on here.

SPEAKER_04: 45:16

Whatever you want.

SPEAKER_05: 45:18

I don't even know. Craziest stuff. Um well, we were playing a show down in southern Indiana, northern Kentucky, and it was probably three years ago. So before we bought the the transit van, so I bought one of those 15 passenger vans. We have the trailer, we pulled the whole thing, whatever. Before I had that, though, probably three years ago, I had a Ford Explorer that I used to pull the trailer with, and we blew that thing up on the side of the road halfway to a show, and there's pictures of that too. I think my hands are filthy, like I'd look filthy digging through the hood of this uh Ford Explorer. And we ended up getting picked up by a couple people and had somebody else pull the trailer to the show. So that worked out good. That was one of the shows where like we didn't all ride together, thank God. But I'm also one of those people that has to be super early. Whenever they tell me I need to be there, I'm usually there an hour before that because I just don't like stressing about all of it. Like I'm just like, I want to get there. Like, once we pull into the parking lot, there's no rush, it's all like super chill, you know. 99% of the time, especially when we're opening for somebody, like their sound check's not done until 10 minutes before the doors open, anyways. Like, we may not get a sound check. I don't care, but I want to be there just in case. In case we get one. Do you have a routine when you are there? With the 75 hard stuff, I usually do my five-mile run as soon as we get to the venue. I'm kind of running around outside, hoping people don't recognize me too much because I'm sweating and looking gross. But I usually do that, and then no, I mean we kind of hang out backstage. I can't eat before a show, like it's really weird. There's like a time frame, and I still haven't figured out what it is, but I don't like to eat before a show.

SPEAKER_04: 47:02

No, especially if you're singing and running around, no way.

SPEAKER_05: 47:05

Yeah, it's like I'm yeah, I'm afraid I'm gonna burp into the microphone or something to not be able to breathe. Nope, I understand that entirely.

SPEAKER_01: 47:12

Yeah, yeah, I don't think I don't think fans dig that.

SPEAKER_05: 47:15

No. So I usually I usually tell the venue I'm like, hey, like if you're gonna close the kitchen at like 10 and we're not gonna be off till midnight, like it's cool, just like leave me something back there. I'll heat it up later, we'll call it good. I don't, it doesn't bother me. So it's usually pretty good. Man, see that's the thing, but this 75 hard, I choke down stuff I hate all the time.

SPEAKER_01: 47:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 47:37

Like, I'm like, I'm not, I always tell everybody I'm not picky about food because I don't, I'm never really hungry anyways. Like I never have been. When I just went and had I I just had blood drawn and a bunch of like stuff, just like getting prepared for the 75 hard thing. They did all these tests, they did like a resting heart rate test, they did an active heart rate test, they did the blood work, and she was just like, Hey, you don't eat enough. And I'm like, I'm just never hungry. Like, I don't, I'm and we're running around all the time, like I said, between the mill and the baseball and the like I just I eat like once a day. She's like, That's not enough. So I've been choking down like oatmeal. I hate oatmeal. It's great. I don't like textures.

SPEAKER_01: 48:12

You better be getting your protein in.

SPEAKER_05: 48:14

That's the thing. So, like protein shakes, I'm good with. I don't mind that. I've always been a super carnivore, so I like I like a good steak, I like burgers, I like bacon. I mean, I'm yeah, I'm definitely a red meat eater. I have no problem with any of that stuff. But for a while there, that's all I was eating. And so I was like, you know, I was taking in like 1,500 calories of all red meat, and she was like, Yeah, that's still not enough. So yeah, that's honestly probably been the hardest part of the 75 hard. I thought the not drinking my own whiskey was gonna be the hardest part, and it ended up being the fact that I have to eat more food.

SPEAKER_01: 48:49

I have had the same thing. I have not been doing 75 hard, but it's basically the same thing, and a lot of meat. And I'm like, man, I just want like I'm a vegetable person, so I can eat vegetables all day long, but I gotta get the protein in to build the muscle.

SPEAKER_04: 49:04

You heard that, folks. Tiffany's a vegetable. Tell us about your whiskey, sir.

SPEAKER_05: 49:10

Yeah, so I uh we've had the whiskey out for a couple of years now. It's been off and on because when we first started, it was during COVID, and we were sponsored by Bud Light. We were sponsored by we were talking to Jack Daniels about a different whiskey, uh, or not a different whiskey, we were talking to Jack Daniels about using Jackfire and kind of using them as like promo stuff. And then the world went mad and everybody went crazy and canceled everyone and did the whole thing. Although I don't do politics, I don't do any of that stuff. I hate all of it. So uh I avoid it like the plague. So I wanted to just get away from the big corporation stuff. We cut a lot of our sponsorships. I mean, we're still sponsored by like PRS, my guitars, all that kind of stuff. We still have some. Yes, I love PRS. But we've been sponsored by them, by JH Audio for our in-air monitors, stuff like that, and they've all been great. But as far as like the external stuff, the stuff that doesn't benefit either one of us for me to actually be involved in, we pulled the plug on a lot of it. And I had a booking agent at the time. He did kind of some of my booking and he did a little bit of my management stuff. But him and I sat down and I was like, hey, like there's this distillery in town. Like, let's see if they just want to have like a conversation. And he's former military, they were military-owned, and so he went and sat down with them. They loved the idea, and they were like, Yeah, like let's sit down and talk. So we went in, we went through like 18 different tastings of whiskey. Uh, I don't know if you know how this is supposed to go, but when you do a whiskey tasting, you're only supposed to like sip it, like it's not they're not taking shots. Well when you're with a band of Kentucky, we have a lot of distilleries here. Yeah, when you're on yes, when you're in a band with a bunch of hoodlums, uh you take them like shots, and we did. Like it was, I mean, the first the first night we were there, I'm like, dude, like I somebody's got to drive me home, and I'm like three miles up the road from my house. Um, but we did like so I guess flavor profiles really worked out that night. Exactly. So we went through a bunch of different tastings, and then he was like, uh Vern owned Dunland Distillery. He was like, Well, do you want to try an old like a smoked old fashioned? And I'm like, Yeah, like I'd never had one smoked, like I, you know, whatever. Like I always tell everybody I'm not a kind of sewer of whiskey, I just know what I like. And so he smoked this old fashioned with uh cherry and applewood, and I'm like, dude, if we could get that smoke in a bottle, like it would be what I want. And uh it's got a little hint of cinnamon because I was a Jack Fire guy, and I always told him, even when we started, I said, Listen, this can't be fireball. I hate fireball, I've never been a fan, it's too like thick, and I didn't like the texture of it, and like whatever. So, anyways, we get through the tasting, get to the one that I'm like, this is absolutely it. I love it, it's perfect. He had a mason jar over off to the side that just said control on the side of it. And he's like, We'll take a shot of that and see, you know, what just compare them. And so I took a shot of it, and I'm like, dude, I said, Is that fireball? Because that is disgusting. Like, I can't, like, I told you I couldn't drink this stuff, like I'll be hung over tomorrow. And he's like, No, that's Jack Fire. And I was like, Okay, well, we got it right then. So we were with them for a year, and uh we ended up sitting down January 2020, no, January 22, and we were talking, and he's just like, Listen, we can't keep up with the demand right now, like we can't there's we have 42 stores that we can't put enough in stock, and he's like, I think you need to find a bigger distillery and see what you can do. So Journeymen Distillery, I don't know if you've heard of them or not, but they're a pretty big deal. They have their first distillery was in Three Oaks, Michigan, and then they just opened up one in Valparaiso.

SPEAKER_01: 52:46

Oh, convenient, yeah, which was perfect.

SPEAKER_05: 52:48

It was perfect timing, everything. And so I'm like, I had reached out to some people I knew, and I was like, hey, like, what are the chances that I can get the owner's number? Everybody's like, Bill's not gonna want to talk to you. Like, he they don't do that, they don't do the you know, consignment thing, they don't do the contracting out thing, like you know, whatever. And I said, Listen, same thing as always, I'm not afraid of a no. You know, I'd rather try and shoot my shit.

SPEAKER_01: 53:09

Isn't it amazing how many people are afraid of the no? Yeah, like what is the worst case that's gonna happen? You're gonna be right where you are right now.

SPEAKER_05: 53:17

Exactly. I've heard no way too many times for that to even slightly affect me. So I agree. Yeah, so literally, we Ben and I went and sat down with with Bill and I showed him the numbers. I let him try the whiskey and he's like, let's go. And so I went through with his like head distillers and we remade Yeah. I mean, so honestly, the second one's better than the first one, in my opinion. It's a little it's got a little more of a bite to it, but I always tell everybody if you liked the first rendition and you don't, you know, you think the second one's got a little too much of a bite, put an ice cube in it, it's the same stuff. You just gotta water it down a little bit. But no, it's it's awesome. I love it. And that's why I said, like, I do miss it. I'm not saying it's not hard to not have it for 75 days. I am saying that uh um it's yeah, I just I love what it is, I love the product, and I'm proud to have my name on it. And like I said to you, anybody that's like a connoisseur, we haven't had anybody like stick their nose up to it and tell me they don't like it yet, but anybody that does, that's okay. Like, I'm again, I'm not a whiskey connoisseur, I just know what I like. So it's 80-proof whiskey. We call it trouble on stage, but how do you market it? So we've been doing the social media thing. Honestly, like right now, I have to I have to figure out the distribution side. So when we were with Dune Land, they did self-distro, which was super easy. Obviously, like we just called stores and whoever wanted to pick it up, we would go in, we'd do tastings, I'd take my guitar, sing a couple songs, we'd sign bottles. But then when we switch over to Journeyman, now it's like a completely separate entity. So it's not a journeyman product, it's a Johnny James Spirits product. So I own it 100% now, which is great, obviously. But the distribution side's a lot harder now because I'm an independent one whiskey company. So we've been looking for distribution. I mean, the sales have been great through just the distilleries themselves, and I think we've actually been selling more in Three Oaks, Michigan than we have in Valpo, which is kind of surprising because we've been doing, I mean, we've been doing solid in Valpo, and obviously it's one town over from me. So anybody that knows me knows where to get it. But I think that speaks to the product too. The fact that it's selling better in Michigan than it is right here in my backwoods.

SPEAKER_01: 55:30

So now is it in Florida?

SPEAKER_05: 55:33

It will be in a week.

SPEAKER_01: 55:37

Okay, good. Because I'm looking forward to trying it. You guys, if you are listening and you're local to Jacksonville, Johnny James is gonna be in our area on Tuesday night in Orange Park at five o'clock at Locals Pub. Mark your calendars, join me. I am so excited to meet you, and I cannot wait to try this smoke whiskey.

SPEAKER_05: 55:59

Yeah, I can't believe how small the world is. Like the fact, like I remember I was looking at your guys' stuff, and I'm like, wait, Jacksonville. Like, oh, okay. So yeah, like I said, I went to high school down there. I went to high school at Orange Park and crazy. Played football there for my four years and then once he went off to college. But yeah, my whole family's still down there, and like I said, I'm taking my boy to the Jags Kansas City game. He's a big Chiefs fan. Sad, sad.

SPEAKER_01: 56:22

Is he gonna be okay when the Jags beat the Kansas City Chiefs?

SPEAKER_05: 56:26

Listen, the fact this could be the year that there's a chance that that happens. Uh, I don't think it's gonna, but I mean three and one.

SPEAKER_01: 56:34

I don't know.

SPEAKER_05: 56:34

I did tell him, I said, my little brother is a huge Colts fan, and I remember back when I was in high school, we went to a game, he was wearing all of his Colts gear. And like I said, I'm a Saints fan, but I I I'm a pseudo Saints fan. Like I love the Saints, but I love good football. I don't care who's playing, I don't care any, like I I'm more of a fan of the players than the teams. So once Sean left, you know, when when he left and when Drew left, like the Saints were kind of just the Saints, but I don't really wear gear to the game, so I'll just wear my normal get up. But he was wearing a Colts jersey to that game, and like we almost got in a fight with Jags fans. Like the Colts won the game. We almost got in a fight with Jags fans. I'm like, man, like with all the crazy stuff going on with the kids these days at sports events, like I may or may not throw down at the Jags stadium if uh things start popping off of my son wearing his chiefs uniform because he's gonna, I know he's gonna wear his jersey.

SPEAKER_01: 57:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 57:30

And I'm just like, man, the world's so crazy anymore.

SPEAKER_01: 57:32

I know, they'll pick on a little kid.

SPEAKER_05: 57:34

I can't stand it.

SPEAKER_01: 57:35

I know.

SPEAKER_05: 57:36

I'm like, you're you're an adult. Like, what I don't I don't know. I don't get any of that stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 57:41

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_05: 57:42

World's gone crazy. World's gone crazy.

SPEAKER_04: 57:45

All right, sir. We do this thing here we call Unsung Heroes, where we take a moment to shine light on somebody who's worked behind the scenes or somebody who may have supported you along the way. Do you have anybody you'd like to shine a little light on?

SPEAKER_05: 57:56

Yeah, my mother-in-law. Tell us about it. I've been super blessed to have as many supporters as I've as I've had. I mean, my wife, the fact she puts up with all the crazy stuff is awesome. My dad finally came around, but my mother-in-law from day one, I remember when my wife and I were dating and we might have been engaged at the time, but she had heard me singing and she was, and I wasn't playing on stages, I was just playing guitar at the house and whatever. And she was just like, What are you doing? Why aren't you playing music? Why aren't you doing the thing? And and her and my father-in-law both were really instrumental in like pushing me to do the thing, like go get on stage, and reminded me what I love about doing this thing. I always tell my wife, like, I hope God never takes it from me. I hope I never have to give it up because I don't know who I'd be without it. And I don't, you know, I don't claim it as like without the music, I'm nobody. I don't think that. I just know that how much it's just brings you that much joy. Yeah, yeah. It's such a release for me, and just pouring out all the things. And and so, yes, I'm grateful to her and grateful to my father-in-law, and like I mean, all of them. I'm surrounded by people that have that have helped me make this thing happen.

SPEAKER_04: 59:06

All right. We have done it. We have reached the top of the hour, which doesn't mean we have reached the end of the show. If you've enjoyed the show, please tell a friend and Miss Tiffany. If you have not, tell two. Tell to. You can reach out to the both of us or all three of us over at jfrenzy.com, where we will be happy to keep this conversation going. John Easter, we cannot thank you enough for being here, and we would like to leave the final words to you.

SPEAKER_05: 59:31

Hey, I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for uh for hanging out with us, and uh, let's do it again real soon. All right, tomorrow night it is bet.

SPEAKER_04: 59:40

All right, folks.

SPEAKER_00: 59:40

On that note, have a good night. Thanks for listening to the Jay Franzi Show. Make sure you visit us at jfranzi.com. Follow connect and say hello.