#189 - Brian Dowd chatting through 46 years in this crazy but wonderful biz! (and lots of BBQ talk too!)

0:00 Thank you for joining Geezers of Gear Episode #189. Today's podcast is brought to you by Stratum Productions, bringing clarity and order to the chaotic event industry. Stratum is your single source pro AVL rental and design resource, proudly servicing shows and special events throughout North America. Founded in the heartland, the company's Midwestern values, relentless pursuit of perfection and relationship driven customer focus help separate them from the rest. From the first downbeat to the final curtain call, the Stratum Pro team of industry Titans are committed to providing the best gear and Technical Support available to help you create immersive events that will leave crews thankful and crowds speechless.

0:50 To learn more about this great company, please visit stratumpro.com. Also please visit www.coffeecult.com and that's Coffee with a K and Cult with a K coffee cult.com and search for Geezers grind. It's a killer new blend that I drink every day. It's not too strong and it will definitely get you going in the morning. All proceeds on this blend go to Robi Backstage to support people in our industry with medical or other challenges. So please visit Coffee Cult with K's Coffee cult.com and find Greek geezers grind and place an order Order to because shipping is free over $50.00 and you will not be disappointed by the coffee and you will be supporting a great cause. Robbie backstage.com Sorry not Robbie backstage.com, just Robbie Backstage.

1:48 Thank you very much. Well, hello again and thank you for coming back here for so #189 one 88. Just yesterday was Eric Todd from BML.

2:32 Sorry from Blackbird. BML or BML Blackbird, I like Eric a lot. I've known him for the better part of 30 years and just a really good guy was a fun chat. He's so knowledgeable and I like that Eric has taken such a different approach to most companies out there and I feel like his generic brand, his generic Co business is going to be $100 million company one day. So watch out for that and thank you to Eric. And if you haven't heard it yet, definitely take a listen. It's a good one and I think you'll probably like it. And so it's funny that today we have another New Jersey guy. It must be a New Jersey theme with Eric Todd yesterday. And now today we have a gentleman named Brian Dowd, who most of you probably know, if you were born and brought up in this industry in the last 40 years in in America, you probably know Brian.

3:31 He's also from New Jersey. And so please welcome the undisputed king of the Grill, Brian Dowd. Well, hello there, Mr. Dowd. How are you today? I'm fantastic, Marcel. How are you? I'm pretty okay to you know, it's 84 degrees today. I think it's warm and nice here in sunny Florida. I. Woke up, I woke up to like 3 1/2 inches of snow that was not forecasted at all. Yikes. You're in New Jersey, right? Yeah, I live in northwestern New Jersey where the bears are. I live in a semi rural lake community. So we got foxes and coyotes and bears and deer and yeah, that's that's crazy. So do you.

4:13 Do you hunt? Yep, I'm an avid to hunt there. Yep, I'm an avid bow hunter, and I can literally walk out into the woods without even having to get in my truck if I choose to. That's right. It's right there. It's state land, so like, what animals are you able to hunt? I'm able to hunt whitetails. I'm able to hunt turkeys, but I don't anymore because the population's gone down so bad it's kind of not worth the time bears were. Prohibited for quite a while, and they just reopened it this year. But it was postponed from a lawsuit. So by the time it kicked in gear, I was, I was away working, I was traveling, so I missed the whole process. Have you ever bagged a bear?

4:57 No, no, My dad used to. When I was a kid. I remember eating bear meat. We'd have, I'd like. I've eaten bear meat before, yeah, But I've never. I don't really remember it well. Like I seem to remember, it was one of the more gamey and tougher ones. It is. It's kind of stringy, yeah. Yeah. I don't remember really liking that like we used to, you know, growing up in Western Canada, we used to have a freezer that would have elk in it and moose in it and and sometimes bear. Either my dad would get it or or friends of his and and they'd give it to him. Bear has trichinosis as well, so you have to cook it. Well done. And you have to like, really cook bear meat. And yeah, maybe that's why it was like. That like venison.

5:44 I just want to, like, whisper flame to it. Yeah, but you can't do that with bear meat. Ah, interesting. Yeah. So you must be a Big Joe Rogan guy too, right? With the, with all the game. Yeah, he's cool elk and he's a good. He's a good. He does a good job. Yeah. Yeah, he's a, he's obviously a big advocate of that. So, you know, I want to talk a little bit about you and your meat and your grilling and all that stuff because you're you're like next level with that stuff, right? I'm I'm a carnivore, that's for sure. No, but I mean with the cooking side of it, not just the eating side of it. Yeah, I'm a I'm a huge foodie. I'm a I'm a very, very chefy type person.

6:25 I've even gone as far as to build build my own chef knives and wow, why? Actually, my my daughters are like the greatest gift givers in the world and they gave me a kit one one year for my birthday and it's it's like a Damascus steel chef knife. It was a pretty awesome experience. That's pretty cool. But yeah, years, years ago. So I guess growing up, my mom was Irish Catholic from New England, which meant everything was boiled until it was Gray and tasteless. That's just how that's how we ate. And so I knew from an early age there had to be a better way.

7:08 And I started cooking when I was tall, you know, basically tall enough to handle the stove. And I just kept at it my whole life and somewhere in the mid 90s. Because I moved back up to Jersey in 96, so it was somewhere, you know, 9697 I tried to smoke a Thanksgiving Turkey in my gas grill and caught the grill on fire and melted the vinyl siding of the shed and all that kind of stuff. So at that at that point I decided to to get real about it and start figuring it out. And years later, I was, you know, doing the competition BBQ circuit in the Mid-Atlantic in the Northeast. That's cool.

7:51 So what what's that about? Like you just sign up for these things and you go out and is there prizes and? Yeah, all of the above. I was a member of the of the, you know, the big major BBQ association. You go to these competitions, you pay money to to compete, and your average team is like four or five dudes that all hang out together. They all share in the work and they all share in the expenses. And other than occasionally my girls coming along to help, I was always by myself. So that was kind of hard. Financially it was hard and and it's just taxing physically because you're up all night long and if you win, what's that look like?

8:34 It can be. It depends on the comp. It depends on the size of the comp. It could be a couple of grand in. There's big comps out in the Midwest and and like Texas where there's some, you know, twenty $30,000 prize. In the Northeast, you're just looking at like maybe 15102 thousand dollars or something like that. And it's almost like the plastic trophy in racing though, right? Like you're spending 5000 to maybe win $1000 prize or something. Correct, correct. And we call them hard trophies because you can get ribbons and stuff like that and then when you're getting a hard trophy that's that's when you got something really cheesy and awesome and but during during COVID.

9:18 I sold my competition rig and got out of it because years ago, thanks to some very successful dudes, one named Myron Nixon. He's a super famous competitive BBQ guy. They started using things like Wagyu briskets and Berkshire pork shoulders, and once enough cooks started doing that, you were never going to place unless you were using the same stuff and it just became very, very costly to do. I mean my, my. Briskets were costing me like $230 a piece. Yeah, So it was just kind of time to move on. But the competition thing really upped my game. And then that led to a marketing advantage to the companies I was working for, starting with ACT.

10:09 And so I started cooking for customers and for customer events. And I've legendary cookouts all over, all over. There were a lot of fun. But I've cooked all over the country. I've cooked in Canada and I've had some attempts to cook in Europe, but I've never. It's just so hard to try and find all the stuff over there to do it. But there is some discussion about trying to do that in Paris at some point. When I heard you're being pulled out of retirement too. Because I remember last time we talked about this was probably at LDI or something, and you said, yeah, I'm done, I'm not going to do it anymore. It's over. They they can't for walk on me into it again and one of the things cuz last year when I did it, which last year I think was the 10th year and the most I'd cooked for before was 450 people.

11:01 And keep in mind, I have no professional catering background or anything. I'm just wait, I'm winging it. But I'm winging it successfully. I guess you're not cooking hot dogs and hamburgers either, are you? No, I'm cooking briskets, pulled pork, ribs and chicken, and they pay the food costs, I hope. Yeah, in in all of the events that I did, usually it was, it was ACT or GLP that was paying for everything because it was a, you know, it was a customer appreciation marketing event. But when it came to the four wall thing, they've always, because it's not, it's their event, it's their vendor. Yeah. So they they've always paid for that.

11:41 And that started out the first year they ever did it. It was like a couple of celery trays from Costco. And then they started cooking burgers and dogs and Jimmy Cannon. The late Jimmy Cannon came to me one day and said, can can you come sort this out and do this right? And I look back at some pictures from back then and it's mind blowing what a ragtag pile of crap that I had and and the guys helping me. And then it just grew and grew and eventually ACT bought me a significant offset cooker that's it's a company called Meadow Creek that's made right outside the Lititz, PA so.

12:25 And yeah, and it just, it grew and and grew out from there. And I even ran into a time, a lighting crew chief out of Ireland and we were up at at Antoine's house up at in Solitec up in Montreal, and everybody's speaking French and there's me and this Irish dude. And so we're talking and somehow cooking came up and he went, you're the BBQ guy. Oh really? That's hilarious. And he doesn't even live in the States. That's pretty funny. So last year I had to cook for 700 people. Oh my God. And that that almost killed me. I mean, that was really, really hard. And my main sort of right hand guy, Sean Sack, he left the industry during COVID and didn't really have any interest in coming back so.

13:20 Not only was it yeah, I was by myself. I have help from from other people, but not like that kind of help. It wasn't knowledgeable help, even though it's well meaning. Yeah, some schmuck from the warehouse. So this year they're they're, they've got me two cookers which will help a lot. These are 250 gallon offset cookers and that having a second one will help me enormously. Yeah, little little bit. And there's no stress that you're going to screw the whole thing up and like destroy 3 thousand $5000 worth of brisket or something. Sure. There's stress. Yeah. That's a part of it. Yeah, I mean, I worry about that. When I got more than two lobster tails, you know, I'm like, oh Jesus, what's going to happen here, you know? I I'm the same way and I I always get all tripped out about stuff and it always works out.

14:10 Yeah, it just, it just always does. That's amazing. I mean, I would absolutely love to just sit there and watch one time when you when you're going through that stuff because you know, I'm your basic dad, BBQ guy, right? Like I make a decent steak because I had a one of my neighbors probably 20 years ago was a chef at the Breakers steakhouse down here. So way overpriced steaks like $200.00 steaks and stuff right. And corporate gigs of Breakers years ago. Yeah. But the Breakers steakhouse has it's legendary. Like they have one of I think 2 master Semulnier's in in the area and you know like just it's it's legendary. But he was, he was the chef there. And so he showed me how to make steak. And so, you know, people always go, Oh my God, that's one of the best steaks I've ever had, you know, every time I make it. So that's sort of my go too.

15:08 But other than that, I don't really have much, you know, Like, I don't. I don't. People don't invite me over to their house to cook for them or like you, you know, or especially to their shop. I I would screw up. If I had to cook 700 burgers, I'd screw up 400 of them. Probably people would be eating hockey pucks. It was a challenge, that particular the 700. Parson Cook. Just to put it in perspective, it was, and I'm doing this for memory, but I think it's right. I cooked 26 pork shoulders, 18 briskets, 60 racks of ribs and 200 pounds of chicken thighs. Good God, that's a lot of food. Brian Luftig who works at 4 Wall, he's now the the de facto chicken cooker.

15:55 He's got it down and he he cooked all the chicken. So he was an incredible help and and he's been, he's been there with me since the beginning of the four wall stuff. I gotta say the whole carnivore thing must be must be good because you look very thin like I don't know if you've lost a bunch of weight or something. I'm looking at you on We're recording this on Zoom, and I'm looking at you and you look thin as hell. So it all started with that cook and and this had nothing to do with the cook. The cook, just the stress of it brought it out in me. But I ended up, I ended up in a pretty bad way, you know, while I was in that cook, I was in enormous pain. Internally, I had no idea what was going on.

16:35 And so after that was over and you know, I'm home, got sorted, I went to the doctor and I was diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. So I had it's a it's a whole combination of things, all basically brought on by a lifelong of of too much drinking and eating the wrong kinds of food. Naughty, as my girlfriend would say. So I yeah, it was. I cut out all beer, which I drank copious amounts of every single day for 30 years. I cut out sugar and I went on a keto diet and I did that hardcore the whole summer.

17:18 So this was like early July 7th I think was the day I was at the doctor and by the fall I'd lost. A lot of weight and inflammation was gone, joints didn't hurt anymore and I went back for my 6 month blood work and my liver markers had gone from 56 down to 23. I was no longer prediabetic because my goal was to do this without medication. I I was not going to go on diabetes meds, I just didn't want to do it and I've lost £35. I walk several miles a day, workout with kettle bells and. I'm not doing 100% keto now, but I'm still eating a really low carb diet.

18:03 You know what? You look 20 years younger. You look a lot thinner. And you know, I've gone through similar transformation. Mine wasn't quite as severe or anything. It was just eating like a pig, eating wrong, eating all carbs, you know, not paying any attention to anything I'm supposed to be doing. I've never been a heavy drinker. Well, never if you go like from 40 until now. I've never been a drinker pre pre 40 anything went right. But but you know, like I lost £35 as well and just how that makes you feel is unbelievable, like you just feel like a different human. Those ankles that used to hurt when you woke up don't hurt anymore. Your feet don't hurt anymore.

18:47 Your knees don't hurt. You know it's. If we could take sugar and seed oils out of. Our diets as a human species, we could probably, you know, have the biggest change in in the world. You know, cancer probably wouldn't even exist. So have you ever heard of a doctor called Mark Hyman? No. So functional medicine. He's a doctor. I follow pretty religiously, like I've been following him for I don't know, four or five years and he's one of these life hacker kind of live longer, live forever to 150 kind of guys, right?

19:30 But he's got a new book out that that I would recommend to anyone but you and me. I'm just about completed the book. It just came out a few days ago. But it's called Young Forever and highly, highly recommend it. And it's it's all about. It's not about even necessarily living longer, even though longevity is is the goal for most people. But it's about living healthier long, right? You know, it's you don't want like even if your last year is going to be when you're 85, do you want the last 10 years or five years of your life to be total shit where you're bedridden or in a wheelchair? Or do you want to be up playing tennis every day and die in your sleep without any problems, you know?

20:13 That's kind of where where I want to be, You know, I just want to skip the cancer, you know, heart disease. I want to skip all that stuff and just die in my sleep. So yeah, I'm really into that stuff. I'm. I'm so happy that that you went through the good parts of that. Not the bad part, but and you know the lifestyle change, so many people in our industry, I think we talked about this at LDI, but I fear for a lot of people in our industry, you know, sadly. Yeah, it is. It's it's, you know, none of us are getting any younger. And it it catches up with you and you, you don't think about it. You think you're invincible. You think everything's fine, and then you go get some blood work done. Yeah, it's like hello, but when you're when you're cooking meat at home or you like, obviously game is about as, as great as you can go. Like, you know, wild game because it's not just the meat you're eating, it's what that meat ate. You know, it's, it's what those animals ate. So you're the food is basically coming through them to you. And if that is garbage and grain and and corn and antibiotics and all of the terrible stuff and and pig shit or whatever else they're eating, you know, then that's that's what you're consuming too.

21:28 You're not getting this beautiful piece of red meat that you saw sitting in the grocery store, but when you get the wild game or grass fed or any of the really high end meats that you're now able to get through some of these sellers, it's totally different. You're eating the wild stuff that they ate. Yep, I go out of my way to to buy grass fed and grass finished beef. I must say I don't like it as much. And you know grain fed stuff definitely has a flavor profile that you're more used to. But but yeah, I still, I I still go out of my way. We buy as much organic vegetables as we can, and so where do you buy your meat from?

22:13 There's a couple of different grocery stores around that actually have, you know, like high end grocery stores. It's a place called Wegmans. That has it. I can get it at my just my local grocery store. Not in steak form, but I can get grass fed in ground form, yeah, yeah, I mean same down here. I I don't trust the stuff at Publix and and all of that. Like it says grass fed. And I don't know, it looks like it's been sitting there for a really long time in that package or whatever. So I usually try to at least go to Whole Foods. Whole Foods has the stuff behind the counter that looks pretty good, and according to the guys that I talked to there, the butchers, they say it's good. I've tried butcher block.

22:54 I've I've done butcher block for a while and it's a bit packages they force you into and it's a bit expensive. I tend to do filets. I don't I'm not really into the and you'll hate this because you're a proper meat eater and a proper barbecue and all that stuff. But I I don't like all the the fat in there and the I just like really, really lean cuts of meat. And so I'll do a filet and and I just want to buy 12 filets, Give me 12 filets and they don't do that. You got to get bacon and all this other stuff with it and it's like, I don't want all that shit. Well, you got to get it. You know what I found in Canada? So I have a house up in in Banff.

23:35 Actually, Ben came up and visited me for a couple of weeks last year. But up there they've got like, you know, these little trucks that come out to your neighborhood and sell you stuff. So there's a guy up there, it's called seafood something or other. I can't remember what it's called. I just have his number in my phone. But he turned me on to these Bovette steaks. Have you ever done Bovette steaks? No, I've never eaten anything like it. I mean it's it's just a certain type of, I don't know if it's a marinade or a curing or whatever you would call it that they do. But I mean, literally, you almost have to hold it together on the grill because the meat just wants to fall apart. It's so tender And it they are unreal.

24:19 I mean, the only thing is they're kind of small. They're like they're probably 6 ounces or something and they're not medallions. They're like a proper steak, but it's a tiny one. So sometimes you might want to get 2. But I mean, in Canadian dollars, I think I'd buy. I think I buy 12 for like 140 bucks or something. So they're like around $10 each Canadian, which is like $757 each US. So good. I mean, literally no knife needed, so flavorful you barely have to cook them. And so, yeah, I've been eating a bunch of those. I'm going to make ground lamb for dinner tonight.

24:59 I make a ground lamb and cabbage dish with the chickpeas and onions. It's pretty good. Chickpeas and onions and ground lamb. And it's Curry. And cabbage, it's it's not a Curry. I use a Burberry, which is an Ethiopian spice in it. Oh, interesting. I just, I really like. It's so funny. You hear people talk about cooking venison, for instance. Yeah. And all these recipes and all. You soak it in this and you do that to get rid of the gamey flavor. It's like, that's why I love venison. I love the gamey flavor. Yeah, yeah. So I like stronger. It's like though. Lamb and goat and and any kind of wild game. Yeah, interesting. So I'm guessing the four wall thing this year is not going to be smaller. No, it's going to be.

25:46 It's every year it's grown. I don't think there's ever been a year that there were less people, and because last year was the first one since COVID. They that and the fact that four wall keeps growing as well. They just knocked it out of the park. I mean 700 people. I told them I could, I could do my best to cook for 600 and at one point W Bailey, the CO4 wall. You know, stop by to see how he's doing. And I was kind of stressing that I wouldn't pull this off and he was like, you know, F them. If they didn't show up in time and there's no food left, that's their problem and. And I ended up so there was 700 attendees and I had one plate of pork and two plates of ribs leftover.

26:30 And that was it. Oh my God, really? So you somehow like did you plan the? I just winged it, man. I just did. I did what I thought was gonna work and it did. That's unreal. That's pretty amazing. There's no. That there's no sign. Yeah, I mean, I've been doing it a long time. So it's a good calculated guess, Yeah. But I would have had more leftovers with eight people, you know what I mean? Like then you had for 700 people. That's pretty incredible. That's awesome. I wish I had any desire to be in New Jersey in June, cuz I'd love to. I'd love to be there and more than anything, just to watch what you're doing. You know, cuz I'm not like a huge cooking buff or BBQ buff or anything, but you know, I am interested for sure. I'm I've made a promise to.

27:18 Matching Mimoto and Harrison Lippman to do something. They want to do it this spring at their new shop. That's cool. There may be an opportunity there. So did you ever think of making your passion your business? Yes, about 1000 different times and my exwife's one of her brothers was a restaurant tour and. A long time ago he had purchased a restaurant in Cape May, NJ down the down the shore. He asked me if I would be interested in going into business with him. I went to the library because I'm dating the time frame now. But I went to the library and got every book I could find on owning your own restaurant and came back to him and said no I don't.

28:04 I don't think this is for me. And then over the years, especially with the BBQ thing and and my daughters have always said like, oh, we should go do this. We should do this and you think about I could be. You know, I could be providing a financial legacy for them if I pulled it all off. I even had he's a very powerful realtor who is well known in the Jersey end of our industry because everybody from T, MB back to production arts for while everybody's used this realtor and he came to me straight up and said you just name it and and we'll.

28:45 Will finance this and get you set up and you know, that stuff runs through your head. But at the end of the day, you know, this is sort of who I am, this business in this industry and remarkably a little safer than the restaurant business, you know, Yeah, I mean, the restaurant business is one of those places where, you know, what do they say? How do you, how do you make $1,000,000 in the restaurant business? Start with 2 million or whatever. Yeah, it's just tough. I mean, if you hit, you can hit real big. If if you don't, it can become a life of hell and misery and long, long, long days that are pretty thankless.

29:25 I watched diners, driveins and dives religiously on Friday evenings every single week and have been forever. That's cool. I can't get enough of that show and you just see all these people and you have so much respect for him and it it makes me so happy to see people who are successful and happy and but I don't. I don't. I don't live my life in a rearview mirror, so I don't have any regrets for not, you know, there's somebody turned me on to something called Master class, which you get it on like Apple TV and so I bought it. It's 200 bucks or something and. Franklin's on there. Yeah, I mean there. I'm not a cooking show guy, but there are some really great master classes, including, what's the Hell, Hell's Kitchen Guy?

30:12 Gordon Ramsay has a really good master class on there that, you know, we've tried a few of his dishes. Like, you'll hate this because you're a big meat guy, but we tried it. He does a cauliflower steak that is unreal. I mean it's it's it doesn't taste like meat. It's not supposed to taste like meat, but it's a it's a piece of cauliflower, like, you know, two inches thick and and the whole size of the cauliflower and just loads of spice and cool stuff on it, but really, really good stuff. And then there's some business stuff and there's, you know, you want to become a playwright. Here's how you do it, you know? But it's pretty cool. I recommend. By the way, back in the 80s, I was a vegetarian for eight years. Were you Really? What happened?

30:57 What life, life experiences, whatever. You just, you know what's so funny? I just thought of this right now. So your role at Ayrton is what? I'm the designer relationship manager for North America. And so the person before you was who? Chris Lewis and and what's his favorite steak? Exactly. Yeah. I would think a cauliflower steak, which by the way, I've made and they're quite good. Yeah, somewhere in the world right now, Chris, is browbeating someone overeating chicken wings or something. He's he's a great dude and I do. He is a good dude. I do respect his conviction. So do I I don't know if you heard it, but I had him on my podcast and.

31:40 I did. We actually spoke about it a little bit, and I don't agree with him, but I accept I love anyone's conviction and passion towards something. And I respect that, even though I may not agree with you. You know, and the thing where it gets a little big is is, you know, like he's got one going right now where he twisted a story around online and said that Dave Grohl was feeding dogs to homeless people. He was cooking up dog meat and feeding it to homeless people. And it wasn't dog meat. It was brisket. And it was a very nice story. He's feeding homeless people, hundreds of homeless people, but they turned it into dog to make it much more like, he's evil.

32:23 He's a horrible person, killing dogs to feed these homeless people. And I just felt like, before, you know, why are we doing this? Like, right. Why start an argument over something so crazy like this? But again, for him, it's a religion. You know, it's it's what he believes. And I respect that. I'm okay with it. Moving on. So at the start of this podcast, you had been in the business for about 46 years. It's probably 46 1/2 now because we just spent half a year talking about BBQ. I mean 46 years, That's hell of a long time. I'm kind of like the mold in your crawl space. I was there before anybody else got here kind of thing. I I guess I look at myself as like a tweener. So you have like the the original people that founded this business, one of which I was fortunate enough to work for a gentleman by the name of Bill McManus and you know I worked for him.

33:22 I I knew Bob C very, very well. I knew Tom Fields very well and. I was not of that generation. I was the next go round, yeah, basically the same as me. I started really early in in 1975, well to to go all the way back. I think you're a couple years older than me, but we're we're the same generation I started a little later in the business than you did a few. And my family. I was born and raised as a kid little kid in South Jersey and then my family moved to Delaware. So my formative years like. Junior high high school, all that. I grew up in Delaware and my this best mate at the time played drums.

34:05 He ended up getting a band with his two older cousins. And so my entire junior high and high school years were spent in the basement rehearsing. And I used to joke and say I played the couch because I was just always there. So that started in 73. So by 75 I built my own homemade lighting rig out of, you know, my console was, you know, wall dimmers and switches and stuff and R40 Park cans. But I was smart enough not to use like colored light bulbs. I actually went and bought gel somewhere. I found a place where you could go and buy gel and but then in 1977 it was August the 77, so it was right before I would have gone into my senior year in high school.

34:48 I got an opportunity to work for a very popular local band that played the club circuit. So I liberated my older brother's birth certificate, went to motor vehicle and got a driver's license with my picture and all his. That's awesome. And I went to to school every day and worked at bars every, you know, at night. I was making $75 a week and I did that. All the way through my Senior High School and then we went on tour all up and down the the Mid-Atlantic in the Northeast that following summer. So that was the beginning of getting paid. And yeah, there you go. That's, that's interesting. So, I mean, was it just a burning desire that this is what you wanted to do for some reason or you just were the one guy that couldn't play an instrument? So they say you're the lighting guy. It was a it was a combination of things. It started out as my friend wanting me to be the lighting guy because he wanted lighting.

35:45 And obviously I was just always there and I just wasn't taking it seriously and we're just kind of dabbling and all that. And then I went and saw Rush and that was that was life changing, I mean jaw-dropping, life changing. And I was like now I know what I want to do for the rest of my life and and ironically many, many, many years later, Howard and I became really good friends. So that was kind of cool and but. Yeah, his. I just thought his work was so awesome. And you know, it's just PRT of a C l's. But man, what he did was amazing. And granted, Russia's music was built for lights for sure. Oh, hell yeah.

36:27 And yeah, and it just, it just went from there. And and the the the experiences over the next 18 or 19 years were incredibly varied. So I heard something and I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard you were like employee number one at main light. I was the OG. You were the OG at main light. We so me and my buddy started hearing these rumors. There was a sound company in Delaware called Wonder Sound and we started hearing these rumors that a lighting guy had set up shop there. There was a bar band in Baltimore at the time called Vanessa. Really super super talented prog rock band. You know female backup singers, multiple keyboard players and all that.

37:14 And this guy was their lighting guy. And so he started this lighting company. So I went up and met Itis Gimbatas and he was sitting in a chair in a little tiny corner of the sound company and he had five Altman #65 for nails and that was his lighting company and and I just wouldn't leave and I would just show up every day and hang around and. He didn't have any money to pay me but he would buy me lunch at Burger King every day because Itis always ate at Burger King every day and yeah and it just evolved out of there and in that was that was late 78, early 79 I think and in like 80 or so there was a whole big thing between him and the sound company guy whatever and and Itis was getting sucked into some places he didn't want to go so he he.

38:04 Got his own building and changed it was Wilmington Stage last and changed it to Main Light. So I got to tell you a funny Ida story. So you know when I first went to work for High End I didn't know. I just I didn't know Main Light. I had never done any business with them. And so Craig Burris takes me to to meet Idas and of course he doesn't tell me that Idas has Tourette's before. He takes me to meet him. And we decide to meet him at his golf course and we're going to play a round of golf. And I'm a fairly terrible golfer as it is, but, you know, no problem. I'm looking forward to meeting this guy. I've heard a few stories about him already and great guy and good company and everything else. So we're on the first Friggin tee box and of course they make me go 1st.

38:53 And so I'm standing there doing my little, you know, club waggle thing and getting ready to pull back the driver. And every time I went to go back, he'd go, you know, and I mean, I'd stop and didn't say anything. I don't even know the guy, right? So I'd put my club back down, do the little waggle, go to go back and finally I turn around and I go, what the fuck is wrong with me? Like, are you messing with me or something? And and he's like, no, no, you don't know. I got Tourette's. But he was fucking with me. Like he was just doing this on purpose thinking I knew he had Tourette's and you know I love the guy. From then on I I just, you know, I was like this guy is my kind of guy.

39:38 You know, I loved that he did that and and I've always really enjoyed doing business with itis. He was a he's an awesome mentor. We were for for a long, long time. We were best of friends. I was in his wedding party. He was in my wedding party and and he would. For years, not only was I the first employees, the only employee for for many years and he'd go golf for like 3 days, I wouldn't see him. I'm like a 20 year old kid opening the shop and closing the shop every day. Yeah, but. You have to be there for those really early, like Richard Bellavue high end days and stuff, when those two were collaborating. All kinds of funny stuff. Yeah, so this is a long and twisted kind of thing.

40:22 So there's this dude that. I knew from a band that I used to be involved with called the Dead End Kids. It was really cool band, but drugs did them in and he had created this wand strobe and ended up through Great American Market. It became the star strobe if you remember that barely. The difference is the star strobe was wimpy and Gabe's were not. Well, Gabe and I ended up in a bit of a. Business arrangement that he owed me some money and he didn't have the money to give it to me. So he ended up giving me a bunch of these unfinished strobes and he wasn't doing anything with them at the time. At that point in time it was like a long, long gone away thing.

41:14 So we started making them at main light. We called it the Pulse Star and it was It was a random triggering wandstrobe and they were bright as can be. And we were doing really well. This was still in the heyday of the disco era and so nightclub, disco, nightclubs and stuff like that. And there was a company in Austin, TX that did club installations called Blackstone Audio Visual and they were they were our best customer. They were buying 500 a month and on average we're 500 and back order and. Yeah, so I knew that, you know that's who became high end. That's wild. I did not know that story about the you guys had the original strobe and then so tell me the next part of it like that they just copy it and screw you and stuff.

42:00 Not at all. So then we evolved into a digital chaseable one, like a controllable one. And it was cool. It looked like a miniature eyes, like a par 36 size V L2. It was pretty cool. It was really powerful. I actually I built. The very first system into a stage at Tate when I was in my 20s and for a Judas Priest tour, and I I'm pretty sure that it was Mickey Kerbishley's very first gig as a crew chief. And so I went up there and I built him into that. I debuted the product in High Ends booth at the very first LDI, and at the time I didn't even think it was called.

42:40 No, it was in Dallas. I don't think it was called high end at the time. It was light wave research and the high end thing was kind of wasn't Dallas the second year? I think Dallas was Nashville was the first year and Dallas was the 2nd year because I went to the Dallas one, but I wasn't at the one. Before that and maybe it was the one in Nashville, it was, but it was the very first one and they they had a booth and the product was really, really, really well received itis is. A lot of what I just did, he was first generation Lithuanian. So a lot of what he did came out of that Lithuanian community. And the engineer that we were using to work on this was a family friend, Lithuanian guy. And he had, he just had one family crisis after another and he had a he just had to step away.

43:25 He could no longer work on the project. And then I think financially you know the the loss of that and then probably financially so yeah itis and Bellevue got together and and. And he handed it over and it became the data flash. That's incredible. I didn't know. They made it much, physically, much larger and all that. But that's where. That's where the genesis of that all came out of on the data. Flash was such a game changer. I mean, it changed strobes forever. Really. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I never got a chance to see the show, but I remember thinking it was the coolest thing. This, I think this was the AF1000 level, you know is the the next level up? But, and I don't know who the LD was that did this, but it was White Zombie Tour and they were using prerig lamp bars fitted with 6AF1 thousands with scrollers on them as big fat washes.

44:18 And he would just hit it until it was thermal and then he'd hit some others until they would thermal. It just sounded like that was really, really cool. But at that LDI they debuted, was that like Las Upton or something? It might have been laser. That's something he That sounds like something he would do. Yeah. I thought he worked with Zombie back then. I don't remember. It could have been, yeah, Laser's. I mean the the to me. The thing that blew me away was Michael Jackson. Dangerous with the whole back way, a back wall of them, you know, it was just like wow in your face. I don't even remember how many it was, but it was hundreds of data flash or a F. I had to do a video to for a flying rig for the Victory tour, the Jacksonville Victory Tour, and Bill McManus had this ground support flying rig and we, you know, we'd set it all up and he was shooting a video using the office receptionist because she was a cute young lady. And I just kept saying, this is pathetic, man, because she looks like a sack of potatoes.

45:21 Come on you. And he was like, all right wise ass, if you can do it better get in that harness and do it. So I was flying around in this thing. So we saw that people and it got on the tour. That's really funny. That's a good one. So what are, what are some of your, like, really memorable early gigs? Not just rock'n'roll gigs, but any kind of gig. Okay, This is really this. This goes to the Way Back machine and this dates, dates, my age, big time. I did a gig at Penn State for a one hit wonder band called Frankie and the Knockouts. I remember them and their. Drummer.

46:02 I can't remember it. I wish I could. I can't remember it. The drummer is Tito from Bon Jovi. Really. And the reason he was the drummer and Frankie in the Knockouts, because there wasn't Bon Jovi yet. It predates all of that. And this will be Bon Jovi's 40th year, that this year is his 40th anniversary. So this was before that. That was kind of a cool gig. When I was 23 years old, I was standing on the stage at JF, now long gone JFK Stadium in front of 90,000 people. For the synchronicity tour, like throwing frisbees and beach balls back out into the house because it was something to do with it. Because it's a lot.

46:47 Lot of cool gigs. I lit a lot of stuff when I worked at McManus for Why World Sports? Because that was a thing that he really had dialed in at the time. And I've lit title fights for Larry Holmes and Marvin Hagler. I lit pool matches for Willie Moscone in Minnesota Fats, which is really cool boxing and oh really? And it's sort of fat. Yeah, and I I stood next to Johnny Lee Hooker while he's drinking a Budweiser out of a brown paper bag. That's awesome. It's really cool. Lot, lot of cool. Different stuff. Fight lighting was so different back then, right? It was just yeah. It was metal halide. Yeah, like just metal halides. Now it's 1000 moving lights. Yeah, yeah. It's totally different but but the the boxing package that that Bill created was.

47:36 That was that was a money making machine. I mean, you know, we were all over the place doing that stuff. And yeah, just a lot of a lot of cool stuff, a lot of, you know, fashion shows, corporate gigs, trade shows. Tim ISON did a whole bunch of stuff for him, for Engelbert. And yeah, you did some skating stuff too, right? Yeah, that actually, the last official gig I ever did before I evolved into sales was in 1996. And it was for Billy Brennan, for NBC's broadcast of the World Figure Skating Championship. And we're sitting there having meetings and you know, we're going to run like 800 miles of Truss and put up thousands of park ends. And I just said, you know, I think there's a, I think there's a newer way to do this.

48:27 And I used 54 cyber lights and nothing else. And I remember, I remember after we talked about it and discussed it. Before we went into the meeting to pitch this to NBC, he said, if this works, I just want you to know that I'm going to take all the credit and if it goes wrong, you're going to take all the blame. And I was like, I was like, I'm in, dude, you know, let's, let's go. Let's do it. And it worked. It had some holes in it. It it it consecutive gigs after that because I that was it. That was my last gig. But Randy Mulligan, who's the CEO of Main Light currently? He, he took that and ran with it and he pumped up to like 74 units or something like that to fill in some of the holes. But it worked great because for all the bumper stuff we had all this cool color and gobos and for the gig itself, it was beautifully lit and it was, it was the experience of all the sport lighter stuff at McManus.

49:23 That gave me the idea because that's what, you know, the cyber light was just a huge, huge beam of light. Yeah. I mean it's becoming more and more common for that kind of thing to happen where people are using moving lights as area lighting, you know, because it's just, you know, as a temporary, like, you know, racing is is one of the areas I've seen it done where they're setting up temporary tracks. And it's just it's more flexible and it's easier to do with moving lights than it is to do with large either LED's or metal halides or whatever they are. So, and I actually think, isn't there one, I think I just read on social media this morning that Ayrton's doing something with the Singapore one. They're lighting up the because the Singapore Grand Prix is going to a night race this year and they're lighting it. So that'll be interesting.

50:18 Speak of the devil. Speak of the devil. So why and when and how was the transition to the dark side from from lighting to lighting sales? It was it was staggered because it it, it went operational first and then into sales. So in 96 I just wanted, I was, I just wanted something. I wanted a bigger pond to play in I guess I could say. And so I left Main Light. And went and opened T MB's East Coast shop, something that they had wanted to do for a long time. And we had been talking about it for about two years. Colin and Tommy myself had been discussing it for a couple of years.

51:07 And so finally it happened and sometime in the latter part of 96 or during the summer or something and I mean I literally, you know, found the building. Got the phone system, the alarm system, the fork truck, the pallet racking. Opened the bank account, you know you you name it every bit of it and and hired all the people. Started a cable shop and and the rest is history. Sounds like one of those, you know, Tommy conversations where it was like okay. Brian, we're going to do this, but you know, you got to deal with everything you, you know, we're going to agree to do it, but you got to do everything. All right, All right, all right. Let's have a beer. Kind of, yes.

51:51 And so, yeah, it was good. And it it was a, it was a great learning experience. While I had a lot of experience dealing with a business because of of working closely with itis, I'd never done anything like that on my own before. And so a couple of years into it, Colin realized, like, this is, this is silly. Like you're. You're so much more valuable to us with the customers than you are operationally. And so I evolved into it at that point. So it was a couple years into it that I evolved into that. It's I love the people, I love being with people. And the one of the coolest parts about being in this industry is like over 90% of everybody I've ever met in this industry school.

52:47 And so it just worked out that it's sort of evolved. So tell me, who are the 5% who aren't cool? Never mind. Give me a small list. Come on. No, I mean, it's the cool thing about being in sales in this industry because I've, even though I'm a business owner and have been for years, I've always been a sales guy. And really, it's about solving problems. It's not about, you know, talking people into buying things or fighting over buying things or, you know, sometimes, yeah, there's some real salesy stuff involved, but usually it's just solving problems. What do you, what do you need to do? And let me help you find a way to do that.

53:29 Right. And that's that's absolutely what it is. It's it's solving their issue, solving their problem. It's integrity because that's a huge thing for me. When I was doing gigs, I could walk into an arena and pulling up in the air and say that's all there because of me. When you're doing sales, all you have is your integrity. And if you screw that up, you're done. And, and, and I know people in our industry who are like that. I know people in our industry who I I like a lot. And they've never done a gig. And they're good. They're successful. They're they're counterparts of mine and competitors and they've never done a gig. I happen to be one of those people. I've never done a gig and I've done pretty well in the industry.

54:11 Yeah, and and and that's great, but what I. What I can't deal with is, is the few people that you know that are just dodgy as hell. And it's like I can't, I can't do that. If I tell you I can do something, it's going to happen and I'm not going to let you down and I've over time over this. I'm jumping way ahead now and we can go into that later. But but building sales teams and things like that was a whole another that was like a whole another plateau at a whole another level. And that that was interesting and different too. But the while I kind of always liked being the Art of the Deal guy, I like trying to because that's part of figuring out how to help people to figure out how can we make this work. But there have been occasions where you quote, UN quote, talk somebody into something and that usually doesn't work out well. That usually comes back with no, I mean when it doesn't feel really good to you, like you're selling some shit that you needed to get rid of out of the warehouse because your boss was yelling at you about it or whatever. It usually doesn't end really well, you know, and and it doesn't feel good while you're doing it, and it doesn't feel good after you did it.

55:25 And it comes back to bite you somehow, You know, that reminds me of selling, you know, being challenged by Peter Johansson to sell 500 Martin pals in 1996 or 7 when it came out. And I've regretted everyone I sold since then, you know, because they all came back to haunt me. Like there's one particular lighting designer, Mike Ladesma. Every time. Every time I see him, he's like, hey, remember those pals you made me by that time for Gloria Stefan? And I'm like, fuck again. Mike, come on. So. So the first moving lights I ever used, this is this is a trip. So I was supposed to use the very first Intellibeams, and this is before they even started to sell them. And at the last minute I had them booked on this corporate gig in a in an actual theater and Belleview went to itis and said I can't let you.

56:27 I know I told you could have these lights, but you can't have them. They're not ready yet. So. They supplied me with 12 comar Jupiters. Oh boy, that that thing for for anybody listening that doesn't know that that was a moving headlight that was so large it had to come apart in two pieces before it could go in a road case. And when I turned those things on, once they were hung in the theater and they started to home. It was so loud I thought people were were diving for cover. It was. It was wild, yeah. Yeah. It's funny, I had, I had Fausto from Komar on the podcast a few weeks ago, and Fausto still a very good friend of mine today. But he's like one of the OG's probably the OG of moving light, you know, engineering, developing moving lights in the world.

57:19 And yeah, we talked a whole bunch about some of that stuff. Like he was creating lights that were meant to hang in nightclubs, not lights that were meant to go out on tour, right. And when they ended up going out on shows and being shipped around for multi use and all of this stuff, that's when the wheels kind of started coming off on on some of that stuff and they had to go, whoa, we need to sort of go back to the engineering table and make some stuff a little more robust. But whereas Bellevue seemed to build it knowing that it was going to go out on shows, it wasn't just going to be in a nightclub, Yeah. He definitely built things like a tank. He had a knack. I, you know, I it's one of the things like if I look back with nostalgia at our industry, one of the saddest things is what happened to high end, you know, and I think they're back in the kind of. Book about like the arc of yeah, of everything you know, going from.

58:15 Again you know who they were and and and the all the different elements that push them into becoming a manufacturer and that that's a story unto itself there. But no, but I mean just you know how far they fell and and I mean they're in a good place again with ETC. But it's still like High end is a secondary brand now to ETC. Like they used to be the shit. Like high end was it? And yeah, it makes me sad because I grew up in the industry competing against them at Martin and they were always so much better than us and so much bigger and so much cooler and they had better lights. So we always aspired, you know, it was like Hyundai chasing Mercedes or something, right?

59:00 And we just one day I'm going to be like them, you know? And so I just always had so much respect and and admiration for that company. And yeah, so I hated just seeing where it went. When I was, when I was with GLPI, took one of my younger sales guys out to visit customers. And so we we went and saw Mochrie. And so, you know, Robert's given him the history lesson and he was saying how you know this is something that you'll never, it'll never be recreated, you'll never see it again, he said. But it was basically varolite and moving mirrors and that's all there was. And all this Morpheus, right? But he said we debuted the the studio color and the studio wash or whatever it was in Remedy.

59:52 And he said people would come up to us and say how much is it going to cost And we would say we don't know yet. When's it going to be released? We don't know yet. OK, I'll wire you €500,000 tomorrow. Yeah, and he's like, that'll never happen again. Well, cuz there was nothing you could buy, there wasn't. Yeah, there was. Literally nothing else you could buy. So you know, it's what made Intellibeam so big, and it's what made Studio color just go nuts. And yeah, I mean it. You know, I hate being old, but I like being old enough to have seen the moving light industry from its inception all the way through to where we are today and, you know, today.

1:00:35 I talked yesterday. I had, I actually recorded Eric Todd yesterday, another jersey guys. So this is New Jersey Week on geezers of gear. But you know like today everything is good. That's the crazy thing like I happen to love the brand that you work for Ayrton. They're also a big supporter of my son's racing career and but. You know everything is good. Like you can't really land on a manufacturer and just go. This stuff is shit like it doesn't exist anymore. Even like Cameo and an American DJ and all of those things are are good now. Certainly Ayrton's better.

1:01:21 There's there's products that are still good, better, best, but it but the good so much better than it used to be. You you could buy back in the day. You could buy a bad television. Yeah, you you can't now. Like the worst TV in the world is 10 million times better than the best TV was 40 years ago. Well, and it still shocks me today. And again, I'm, this is an age thing, but I walk into Costco and I see, you know, 50 inch televisions for 199, you know, and I'm like what, a 50 inch flat screen HDTV for 199 bucks? That's ridiculous, you know. And yeah, I mean, it blows me away. I just bought in my house in Canada last year.

1:02:03 I bought a new TVI. Think it's a 75 inch or 80 inch or something. I think I paid like 2 grand for it and it's amazing. It's technology is incredible. This is this is a cool little place and time technology thing about that So when high end and entered into the lawsuit with Varolite there was a school in Itas's town that he lived in that I guess his kids went to and stuff so he always would do free gigs for them. And so one day in the the cafeteria or whatever you call it like in the wings we found this light. It looked like the head of the the dude from War of the Worlds that the thing that comes out of the spaceship and it was like we're talking Bardwell McAllister days. As a matter of fact, I think that's who made it was Bardwell McAllister And it was a little tiny you know fixed focus light and it had three color wheels.

1:03:08 They were manual color wheels that you had to spin with your finger and they were you know dyed glass color wheels. And I guess I just had told Bellevue about it and I had to go up to the school and get it and send it to Bellevue for to to to well to say you know, this is IP, this is this pre predate your IP and stuff like that. Of course it didn't win, but it was a valiant priority anyway. Yeah, that's it. Priority. Yeah, that's that's crazy. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's it. Again, I'm not happy about being old, but I do really enjoy the fact that. Like people today and you know this is going to sound like a real old guy, things to thing to say. But guys, these young kids today, you know, I mean don't realize that people used to program moving lights using faders.

1:04:04 OK, this one's, you know, for color, this one's for gobos, this one's pan, this one's tilt. Oh, we got 16 bit now. Two for pan, 2 for tilt. You know, fine and coarse and. I mean it was just the way you did it, right? Or even before that with the LCD controllers and LED controllers, the high end controllers or the Martin one with the trackball on it. Remember that thing, the 3032 or 2032 or whatever it was called, but it's still going back to T MB. I mean you know we talked earlier about your health and and all of those things. I'm sure that's when your biggest problem started to surface was no my biggest problems when I was around 20 right. But yeah, it it T MB was made for me in some ways. In some ways it was the best place I ever worked in a lot of ways because it was it was just you know awesome and Marshall and Colin you know I'm still really close with I'm I'm going to the Yucatan fishing with Marshall in about 8 weeks or something and smoother and myself and. Oh yeah, they just did that last year and Chaz went to, didn't he?

1:05:18 He did. He's not going this year, but last year. But yeah, it was what? A fun group it it was a it was just a can. You be there without an English accent, though. Like, do you have to make one up that group? No, I'm the outcast. Out of that group, yeah, they bring you because you know how to cook. That's it. But yes, it was. It was just a great. It was a great place at a great time and we had a we had a lot of fun. We, Tommy and I were were bicoastal, kindred spirits for sure. Actually the the the year before I joined T MB was the the only year that Main Light had a their own booth at LDI and that was because of the fiber optic curtain and all that stuff. IDIS Nephew was an aspiring comic book artist and he created this superhero of the main light man and it was really cool and it, you know hit an LCD controller for his belt and. I remember it so well, all that Intel beam sticking off his shoulders and so I built it.

1:06:25 I had Southwest Scenic in Arizona build a 14 foot tall replica of this with real high end gear and stuff built into and put it on the booth. And the day I was setting him up, you know, because he, this is a huge monstrosity goes up in pieces and people were, you know, busting my balls left and right. You know, when we were setting up, the union guys were just like, what the, what is this? And so I had most of them up. I don't think he had his arms on yet. And we come back the next day for load in and I can see like I'm on the other side of the hall and I can see this hubbub going on like, what? What's going on over there? And then I realized whatever it is, it's our booth and I get down there and somebody had had built like a three foot long cock out of Afro State and beer cans and taped it to the statue. Oh my God for a split.

1:07:22 Second Social Security video I'm sure showed that it was Tommy. Well, so for a split second I I thought it was the union guys because they were giving me a hard time. And then I realized that they wouldn't have had the the the ball G to do it. And so then I immediately just marched over to Tmv's booth where Tommy folded like a cheap camera. He just messed up right away. That's so funny. So he did it, Yeah. And then Jackie Tian was so pissed because there's all these, like, Japanese people taking pictures and all and say I have to go take this thing off and I'm like cleaning all the gaffers tape smooth off the crotch of the statue. That is hilarious, yeah. I I've had some funny Tommy moments. I remember one time we were supposed to go see a client, and I think I was with Martin at the time and we were supposed to go see a client and he goes, I got to stop by my house, you know, let's just run by my house, we'll run by my house. We go to his house and it's probably 2 in the afternoon. We ended up at his house till like 2 in the morning watching Fawlty Towers and getting drunk off our asses. And and then I took a taxi to my hotel and we missed the appointments that we were supposed to be at and everything.

1:08:35 And I watched every episode of Fawlty Towers, probably twice. And just a hilarious, hilarious day. I mean, I I think my face hurt from laughing. He was an awesome guy. We, we were at LDI probably the first or second year I was at TMV and there was a it was at the Peabody, it was in Orlando and there was some other you know, corporate type event going on at the same time as LDI. And we're all hanging out at the bar drinking and stuff. And there's a suit and tie guys. And there's this, this woman who is a good bit older than us and extraordinarily attractive in a business pantsuit. And she was getting, you could tell she was getting lit and she's going from one table to the other with these guys. And I guess she finally realizes that these dudes that don't look the same as all the guys she's hanging out with. So she she comes up.

1:09:31 And actually I do this every time I got to back up. So when we get to Florida, we rented a 15 person passenger van and because it's a big group of T MB people and T MB people always did everything together. We traveled in a pack for sure. So Tommy tells the the rental car place I need you to take the back seat and the spare tire out because we needed room to put shit in. Like mainly beer probably. And they said no, we're we're not taking it out. And so Tommy gets in this huge argument with with Hertz and he basically tells them he's going to throw the back seat and the spare tire over a fence somewhere. So that's important later in the story.

1:10:12 But I always forget to start with that. So okay back with the the, the, the lady at the bar. So she comes over and she's hanging with us for a while and I said something to her rather provocatively that I'll leave that little detail out. And she responded in a way that that just made me go, whoa, I am dealing with somebody serious here. And eventually she goes about her way. Now it's like 3 in the morning or whatever. The bar closes and we we decided we didn't have enough alcohol, so a ton of people pile in the van, which we had checked the back seat and the spare tire with the bell caps when we arrived at the hotel.

1:10:55 So why be so we could have room for beer and stuff like that in the back of the van. So, so we go over across the street to the 711 and Jaime Duarte, who's still with TMV to this day, and a young lady named Lilia Hubbard, who at the time was Aaron Hubbard's wife and she was Colin's assistant. So they go inside to 711 to get beer and there's like a a bajillion dudes in the back of the van and I'm in the passenger front passenger seat. Tommy's driving and he said, man, it's really a shame what she said to you. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he goes, well, she she blew you off. And I said, no dude, not at all, just the opposite. You misunderstood.

1:11:37 And I explained it to him. And in typical Tommy fashion, he goes, for fuck's sake, we got to go back. And he throws the van in reverse and just nails the gas pedal to the floor. And the van's not going anywhere. It's just sitting in the parking spot facing the 711. The back wheels are spinning like crazy. Smoke is everywhere. And that's when the cop who was in the parking space next to us put on his lights. Oh. No. Yeah, so it was. It was a whole ordeal. So Tommy has to get out of the van by now. Lilly and Jaime come out and they're holding like cases and cases of beer in their arms. Stay out there. It it was quite, it was quite the ordeal. Have you guys been drinking at all? No.

1:12:19 No. So Tommy has to do Again, this kind of dates things, but he's doing the whole walk in the straight line, standing on one foot, poking his. You know why? Is that data You don't have to do that stuff anymore? Well, they didn't have breathalyzers back. Then oh oh, I get it. And it was a the process took so long, I remember falling asleep in the van at one point. But so it it what started as one cop car ended up five cop cars and a police helicopter with like a sky tracker search. Like at some point one of the cops, I guess called the rental car company, and the rental car company said is the back seat and the spare tire in the van.

1:13:07 And so he asked Tommy that and Tommy's like, well, you're going to have to take a look. But can my friends get out first? And the cops, like, you know, like the record player needle just got yanked off. He's like, excuse me, friends. The cop had never bothered to look in the van. So it was, I mean, we had people from Australia, people from the UK, and it, it was like the clown car at the circus. Like people just started pouring out of the van, the cops. It was a very embarrassing moment for the cop. But anyway, so then he radio back to the rental car company that in fact that stuff was missing in the van. And that's I think that's when the helicopter showed up. And somehow, miraculously, Tommy evaded getting arrested. During all this, Lilia panicked and went back to the Peabody, woke Marshall up, who walked across International Drive in his bare feet, walked up to the cop said what's going on? The cop explained what's going on and Marshall said take him away, turned around and went back. No way.

1:14:07 But we met Marshall. We managed to get away from it all and they towed the van, so we didn't have a van for the rest of the show. And by now, of course, like half the Peabody, LDI Wise is emptied out and is watching this spectacle because of the helicopter and stuff. It was pretty wild. It was a it was a fantastic Tommy story. I don't know how I ever missed that story. That's a good one. I like it, yeah. It was definitely discussed a lot in the days that follow. That's wild. Yeah, one, one time. Do you know Chris Ason? Yeah, I was with Chris Ason in at Remini. Was it the Remini show? Yeah, it must have been the Remini show because we were at, you know, Malpensa airport, just outside of the Melania airport. So, you know, for those who don't know Malpensa there there's the Malpensa Villa Malpensa. That's what it's called.

1:15:01 The hotel there, I don't know if you've ever stayed there, the one right at the airport and it's the only place you can stay. Otherwise you have to stay, you know downtown Milan and it's like a 40 minute ride or whatever to your flight in the morning. So we were at the hotel and we were like I'm hungry and we go in and the restaurants not closed but there's only like us and two other tables and and one of the tables is like a foreign couple and the other table. We didn't know who it was. He had his back to us, I think. And so we sit down and we order a bowl of pasta or something and Tommy comes over and smacks me on the head and goes, hey fucker, you know, and and I'm like, Oh my God, how can we come into a place with two other people and you're one of them. And so he starts, you know, first we were having some wine or whatever and just having a good old time. And he starts telling us this story. About like a stripper in Thailand, at some place in Thailand.

1:15:59 And I won't go into detail because it gets pretty gory, but he he's telling this story and he tells what the stripper did and he's not being quiet. You know, Tommy doesn't have much of A or didn't have much of an indoor voice And so a little while later this this couple goes to leave the restaurant and they walk up and the lady says. By the way, I don't believe that stripper story. And you know, they're American. Like, what are the chances, right in at Milan Malpensa Airport, the one other table. All the people in there at the time were American and he was so embarrassed because he was very, very graphic on his explanations of what this stripper was doing.

1:16:42 But, and I miss that guy, man, I I think our industry got a whole lot more vanilla. It did. When? When Tommy left, Large and loud. Yeah, by the way, Speaking of the unfortunate, untimely passing of people, while we were on this call, somebody text me and told me Bob Roach died. I don't know if you know Bob Roach, but yeah, I've been doing business with Bob Roach in Orlando for 30 years. Really. That's a shame. Worked for Sesco forever. And yeah, yeah, somebody just sent me that message on Slack while we were on the call. So it is happening too much these days. It really is.

1:17:22 Yeah, yeah, apparently you had cancer. But yeah, now it's happening way too much. I mean, you know, Lynyrd Skynyrd's over. Apparently they're still going to tour. I just read Wow. Which is weird. No, no original members on that, Gary, was it? Yeah, I didn't know that until this morning. Ben told me that this morning somehow that I I listened to too much political stuff and I missed that one completely. I think Creech posted it somewhere and and so yeah, that's how that's how I knew because Creech has worked with them for a long time, I think So. I remember one time I was with Bob Looney or was it Robert Roth? I don't even remember.

1:18:08 But they were here in Palm Beach doing, doing Lynyrd Skynyrd and I ended up going out with them and hanging out with all these guys and stuff and. I can't remember exactly what happened, but Leon the bass player was missing and so he just he they did a show the night before, I think in Jacksonville or something and he said, hey guys, I'm going to go hang out with these folks at this local party or whatever. He went to some biker party and just disappeared. Nobody saw him since so. You know, it's it's sound check is at 3:00 or whatever. It's 2:30 in the afternoon and all of a sudden you see Leon walking up bare feet.

1:18:48 Same clothes he was wearing last night for the gig. And he's like, I'm here for sound check guys just walking up. Nobody knows how he got there. He had no shoes on his feet and. Yeah, so my girlfriend was saying to me today, Oh my God, why? Why are people dying at 70 and 71 in in you know the music industry? And I said you don't have an it's any. It's because we live in 70 and 70. Yeah, I mean, that's a long time in this business. You know, people, people put themselves through massive pain and then some of us like me and you apparently catch it early enough to sort of reverse some of the damage I did. I did find out that the only organ in your body that can repair itself is your liver, and it can't repair itself like completely.

1:19:36 But it has the only ability to to regenerate to a degree if you need it, right? Well, I think, can't they, like, cut away half your liver and it grows back? I don't know. Like I thought that yeah, liver actually is an organ that can grow back and but. Yeah, I mean, you know, again, following all these doctors and stuff that I follow now, longevity doctors and functional medicine doctors, you can reverse a lot of things, you know, diabetes and heart disease and all kinds of things. You can reverse, You can reverse aging. Aging is easy. To get new glasses because of that. Because my eyes got better. Yeah, that's I was, I was actually. I was in a in a tree bow hunting this past fall and a deer walked out and I I drew back on it and all I could see was a brown BLOB and I had to let down. I'm not.

1:20:26 Hopefully it was a deer and not like a freaking game officer or something, but I'm not, you know, I'm not going to take a like a bad shot. But you know, looking through my peep site, I had no ability to focus on the animal. So the next day I go get my eyes checked and she said, your eyes, the reason you're having trouble is your eyes have improved, so your glasses are causing you a problem and. That's wacky. She's like, is there anything different? And I explained what was going on and she said, well, that's it. She said just like people lose their vision with diabetes, eventually, she said if you significantly correct where your glucose level are, your eyes can get better.

1:21:07 So. So do you wear like a glucose monitor now or anything? I just took it off yesterday after three months I had. I've been wearing them for for three months. Oh, OK. Like the levels one or something, it was it's actually a company called Nutrisense, OK. And it's a it's a libre OK. But I just did it out of pocket for three months just to see and. I've always wanted to try one just to figure out. What does and doesn't spike glucose on me. Like I've never had problems with being diabetic or prediabetic or anything, but typical of guys our age, anything sugar and anything made of grains. Yeah. But I mean typically of guys, guys of our age are like insulin resistant to some extent, right? Correct.

1:21:51 And because it's just an aging thing, it happens. But. Yeah, I've always just thought, you know, because some people apparently get glucose spikes from an apple, some people don't. Some people get glucose spikes from this and other people don't. And so, yeah, I've always thought about putting one on just to see. But they're also frigging expensive. I probably won't. Yeah. This was like 250 bucks a month for three months. Yeah, that's not hideous, but it was. It was a good experience. Yeah, so your your Airton gig. Seems to be a great like full circle kind of fit for you. It it's fascinating when when the opportunity came about, which I have to thank Ben Saltzman for because he's the one that brought the opportunity to me.

1:22:35 Which is pretty cool considering you guys had a bit of a divorce. And then we did, yeah, but it's all good. Like I said, he's one of my closest friends. I think something I had said to you in in some previous exchanges, I have a bit of a, I have bit of itchy feet sometimes. And yeah, the the the late morning to Rudin used to bust my balls and say I've had one job for 25 years, you've had 25 jobs in 25 years, which is not correct, but it was funny anyway. No, but I can understand. I mean, sometimes it's not even that you're disloyal or any of those things. It's just my job's done here. You know what? What can I do next? You know?

1:23:15 And that that's happened to me. Like, you know, I went from Martin where I worked my ass off, made X amount of dollars. You know it it was a thankless thing where I just worked so hard, traveled like a lunatic, made so little money to high end. Where I made this much money, I had no real function. I had the wackiest title. I can't even remember what it was. VP of something or other that meant nothing. I actually asked Lowell Fowler, So what do I do? You know, if I take this job, what am I going to do? And he goes, well, apparently there's some people that don't like us too much and, you know, just talk to him.

1:23:58 And I'm thinking that's a job. Like, really? That's what you want me to do? And so, I mean, I did that for a little while. I I played golf. I I hung out. I. Was bored to tears. And finally I went to Griff, who was the VP of sales at the time, and I said put me in coach, you know, I'm bored. I can't just keep doing this, you know? And so I did sales for a little while for them. And again, it was just like, yeah, I can't. This isn't satisfying to me. And I feel like I'm collecting too big of a paycheck from you to be unsatisfied for me. And I don't think I'm bringing you enough value. So it's time to go. And really, that was it. But anyways, sorry.

1:24:40 Yeah, so that Oh no, it's okay. So when this opportunity came around, people are like, man, that's like the perfect gig. And in a way it is because I can harness the amount of years I've been in this business because eventually you just end up knowing a lot of people and sort of apply my background and all the all that I've learned and all that, the people that I've learned from. But in some ways it's the hardest job I've ever had. Because when you used to be in the Art of the Deal guy, you walk away with that PO in your hand. And this is a much more, I don't know, fluid kind of a situation where my job is to to work with the designers Dr. the specifications help them achieve their vision and and that whole goodwill thing like you were talking about. Designers are like herding cats even even people that I'm really, really good friends with. They just it's not like a rental shop owner who you could always talk to.

1:25:44 You're busy, they don't want to be bothered and so it's it has its challenges, but it it is, it's a good time and place for sure. Well, the other challenging thing is you're no longer brand agnostic. You know you're you're tied to 1 brand and Ayrton's an amazing brand and you're fortunate to be tied to an incredible brand. But you're still tied to 1 brand. And so it's almost like you're not allowed to be friends with those guys on the other side over there. You know those guys at the Robi booth. I don't. Did I see you talking to Craig Burrows? What were you guys talking about? You know, the best part of this industry though, is that for the most part, I am friends with almost every competitor I can think of.

1:26:28 And you know, Craig and I go back 40 years. Yeah, yeah. You know, Marty Postma was one of the first people I ever brought to Clay Paki when he was Alice In Chains designer. And so, yeah, it's good. Yeah, yeah. No, that's cool. So you your territory is what, the US or North America? Yeah, my title is North America, but in in all reality it's it's the States because there's the majority of any kind of high level design stuff in Canada comes out Of Montreal and that's Quebecois. So Fabian, who is my counterpart in France? Handles my He handles a lot of that. Yeah, and then you got a J Penn.

1:27:17 Where's he? He's in Toronto. He's in. He's in your side. I think he's Western. Well, actually, isn't he in the US now? He's in Portland OR something. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah, but. I think he's from Toronto, if I remember correctly. But he spends most of his time in in Portland I think. But yeah, now that's that's cool. I mean I'm, I'm happy for you. I think you're a great fit. Again, nothing against Chris Lowe's. I I think Chris Lowe's is a great guy. He's a really good designer. Not positive he had exactly like you got to have a certain thing to be in your role.

1:27:59 And there's a certain hardness to it. And you need to want the crumbs on your side of the table. Sort of, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a good way to say it. You know, it's it's it's definitely a challenging gig. It can be a really, really challenging gig and but it can certainly be very, very rewarding when you're standing in front of house next to the designer going ah, you know that's exactly how I thought you were going to make my stuff look And and it is, you know, it's great people, great company. You know Yvonne is just an amazing individual and he really frante and altels and altels and I've known each other since, you know back at the MA days. So yeah it's it's all very good.

1:28:40 And Jared Garza, who is the the North American account manager, I knew him when he worked at Gemini way, way, way back. Yeah. So there's a lot of interconnectivity. Jared's the North American account manager. What's that he handles he handles act but he he also deals with Mexico and and all of the Americas actually North America, South America everything like that. He he handles all the. He's like the. Regional Sales manager for the manufacturer, basically, correct. I don't do. I don't deal with any exchange of paper like I don't, I don't quote anybody. I don't get P O's. What a great gig.

1:29:23 You don't have a sales target now. Years ago my daughter said Dad, what? What exactly is it that you do now? And I said I get paid to take people to dinner. I was just being sarcastic at the time, but. There's kind of big part of the gig, you know, It's really just doing what you love to do, which is having really great relationships with the people out there. Yeah, you know, I I heard a quote and I think you probably told it to me, but. Somebody said that your hobby is having hobbies. Yeah, that was Ryan Hindinger at ACT. Is that true? That was, yeah, because I got too many hobbies. Like what? Hunting. Fishing. Fly tying?

1:30:04 Cooking. So the fly time guitar. So I have a house up in Canada that we already talked about in. My house is in a place called Canmore. I tell people Banff, because most people have heard of Banff, but nobody's ever heard of Canmore. Canmore's a little town before you get to Banff. The reason I have a house there is because Banff is in a National Park. You can't own land there, and you can only buy a house there if you work there. So you have to physically live there and work in Banff. They don't want foreign owners, basically, whereas in Canmore they don't give a shit. They sell me a house, they'll sell anybody a house, right? But my neighbor in Canmore.

1:30:47 Is, and you might. You're a football guy, right? You know who Gary Anderson is? No. Gary Anderson, I believe to this day still has the record for the most points ever gained in the NFL. He was a kicker and he I think he played for. I know Minnesota for a long time, I think Atlanta. But Gary Anderson's my neighbor, and he's a fly fishing. Guide He's got a guide business that he brings in rich guys from all over the place and take some fly fishing and stuff. But where I'm at apparently, is a pretty big fly fishing place up there, the the Bow River going through Western Canada.

1:31:27 It's a beautiful part of the world, for sure you. Should come on up sometime and go fishing? Absolutely. So what else? Fishing. Hunting. Fishing. Hunting. Cooking BBQ, I build my own arrows. I tie my own flies. Jesus, who's got time for that? I had my own hobby fly tying business for a while and built an e-commerce website back in the in like 2000. I had no idea what I was doing and and it worked. Now you could have probably sold it for a billion dollars. I know and instead I just stopped. Everything is a billion dollars on the Internet into right. It is in 2002 the the main fly fishing magazine publications called Fly Fisherman magazine and they awarded me the best fly of the year for the saltwater category and and that kind of killed my business because I'm working at T MB I'm raising girls who at the time we're we're little kids.

1:32:21 I'm traveling all the time and it I couldn't keep up with it so I stopped doing it. I still tie all the time for myself, but I stopped selling them. I've given flies to Allen Branton before and people in our industry like Roger Waters is a big fly fisherman. Eric Clapton's a big fly fisherman. There's there's some people out there, but Colin and Marshall are the ones that got me into the fly fishing end of things. And I just started tying and all of a sudden discovered I had this weird knack for it that I I just got really, really good, really fast. And I used to tie it at fly tying shows all up and down the East Coast.

1:33:03 I've got lots of articles, you know, published. I used to get paid by magazines to write articles about myself. I'm like, yeah, that's a gig I could do. No shit. So that was pretty cool. That's very cool, I thought. I thought Colin and Marshall were both like like. Big game fishermen, like offshore fishermen. No, it's it's saltwater fly fishing. And that's my passion as well. Like, I do the trout thing and I fish for bass and stuff like that with a fly rod. But it's it's the flats you're fishing for. Tarpon permit, bonefish, snook. You know these these fish that inhabit very shallow Clearwater in beautiful parts of the world. I can't do it as much as I would like because it's expensive, but it's, you know, I I fished in the Bahamas in Mexico. I fished in Canada, I fished in California all over different states, in the United States.

1:33:56 Yeah, it's it's a huge fabric. Well, and you used to be able to buy a place in the Keys for pretty cheap, but not so much anymore. So much anymore. Yeah, you couldn't buy, you couldn't buy a place in Homestead. Cheap. Yeah, I know. Well, Nick Freed had a. Place in the Keys in in Island, Colorado. And you know, I I know what he paid for it and I think he made almost $1,000,000 selling the place. I fish with him down there before. Like, you know, whatever, 10 years later, less than 10 years later maybe. And yeah, it's just gone crazy down there. I've always talked about buying a place in the Keys. I actually did at one point.

1:34:40 Like, I signed a contract, I paid a deposit, and then I backed out of it because I couldn't even get down there to meet like somebody to do an inspection. And I hadn't even seen the place yet and I didn't have time to go see it. And I was like, you know what, this is a sign. If I can't make the time to go meet the inspector, I probably can't make the time to use it so. And now I kicked myself because I would have accidentally made $1,000,000, right? But I never would have sold it If I ever bought a place in the keys. I can't imagine getting out of there, but Nick's place was cool. Yeah, I went. I went down there one time and and fished with the Three Amigos. We went offshore for black fin tuna and rotten and I had a really good time. I think Noel still has a place down there. He sold his one place.

1:35:28 Whether he's he rebought again or not, I don't. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I know Gary's in like a condo in Fort Lauderdale or something. Nick went up to Port Saint Richie, Port Richey, Port Richey, Port Richey. I think that sounds right. I get it confused with Port Saint Lucie, Port Richey. I think it's called our New Port Richey, New Port Richey, That's it. Yeah, it's north of Tampa on that coast, on the left coast. But he says it's great fishing and lots of musicians live up there and he got a big place with lots of land and he's pretty happy. So I usually do this with designers and you're more of a designer relations guy, but I like to do this go to gear section where your your top five go to pieces of gear that you got to put on a show. So no matter what show you're going to do, what's what are the top five things in your toolbox?

1:36:24 And. They can't all be heriton all right. I have to say the domino long throw just to give give props to to. It is a pretty cool fixture that is an awesome. Awesome light, by the way. Just to change subjects here again. But you know, I kind of chuckled when I saw the wash light coming out, the domino wash light. And I know that that's a Chris thing. Chris is a big fan of wash lights and he thinks there's a huge spot still in the world for wash lights. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But I've seen some of the images of stuff they're doing with that wash light. Like there was a demo video of where they lit that big building in Europe. I was blown away.

1:37:06 That thing is just like a beast there. There is a there's a spec out right now in the United States for a significant amount of them. So we'll see where that goes. It's it it it really is a very nice light. It's beautiful. Everything. Everything is so well done there. So anyway that would be that would be domino long throw would be good. Obviously an MA desk would be 1. In two mode or three mode, 03 mode all the way by the. By the way, this is coming from somebody who cannot program and. Like it makes a real difference to you? Yeah, exactly.

1:37:49 A good hazer and I'd have to give a shout out to an ace to to a C L's. I still think that's like an awesome. That's awesome. Look. Yeah, And so I got one more. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying to. Well, you have a hard edge and you have an ACL. You're going to need some sort of an LED wash or something or other. You need a wash light, son? Yeah, I know I do. Right now you got a hazer, a spot, and an ACL. It's a pretty shitty show. All right, then the Zonda 9 effects. There you go to keep it in the family. How are those things doing?

1:38:31 Because I think it's an incredible looking fixture, but they're doing well. We had some, we had some slowdowns and shipping, yeah, which kind of stalled things for a little bit. The threes out now, which is really cool. Yeah. Is the three out selling the 9:00 or the nine out selling 3? Yeah, the nine is still the the the one that's selling the most of, but it's yeah, it's doing well. There was just some some corporate gig for Delta Airlines that had like 136 of them on there. We're going to have 200 and some on our booth at Pro Light because our booth's not that big. There's like 100 Cobras and and a couple of 100. Wow, yeah. Jesus.

1:39:13 Yeah. I mean, I loved how. It was shown at LDI like that. Is it called liquid effect? Yes. Is, you know, I think everybody's got their different version of eye candy, what eye candy should look like. But to me, that was super cool. Just a really, really cool look. It is. It is not as as one high profile person put it in a demo is doing, they said. This is not a gag. No, no. It's something that you'd actually use. Not just once either. Yeah, it's it's definitely very, very cool. Yeah, I like it. Did I miss anything, Brian? I don't know. We've been an hour and a half. I'm sure you probably have lights to go get spect.

1:39:57 No, it's just the whole, well, the ACT component. We can't like we can't not, not. Talk about Ben and how, Yeah, we didn't talk about Act. Yeah. So after the whole T MB thing kind of ran its course for me, which was 10 years, I opened. Backed East Coast in 2006 just like I did for T MB in 1996. Ben joined about a year later and and that was a great ride. That was a really good ride I got to. I got to really step into a leadership role. I ended up being the VP of sales and marketing and I built a sales team from scratch that didn't exist. It was just Bob.

1:40:38 It was just Bob and me really at that point and. You know it, it was a great, great experience. And after the investors, when Ben bought Bob out a couple years later, it was again, it was just time for me to do something different and I was the sales director for the USGLP for for two years until COVID put an end to that. Yeah. And again, more BBQ happening there and no, but I, you know what the cool thing is? You've you've done a great job. You've built a unbelievable network, probably an enviable network from, you know, in our industry. And that means you're never unemployed, you know, you know, God forbid I were ever to lose my company or anything, I would never be unemployed.

1:41:31 I just know way too many people and I'm effective like you are. And so that's a that's a great trait. Like I, you know, my son's 18 years old and he's a racing driver and and I try to teach him to make time for every single person that he meets when he's at the track, whether it's a mechanic or it's the guy putting the tires on your car or it's, you know, the guy rolling tires down the thing to take him to the garbage. I don't care who the person is, you know, Treat the janitor the same way you treat the team owner, and you're going to get pretty far in life. And you know you're only as good as your network, right?

1:42:12 And your network's going to keep you employed forever. Unfortunately, you're not going to get to retire anytime soon. I'm I'm not interested in retiring right now. It's not good. Well, I want to invite you to Florida to come and BBQ for me, but I don't know 700 people, so I can't. I'm going to have to find a reason to drag you out of retirement again and and make you cook, but I can't figure out what that is right now. Maybe in Canada. Maybe we'll do something cool in Canada. There you go. Yeah. And it'll be a small group, Not 700, maybe 10. Yeah, which is much better. I like that too. All right, Brian. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

1:42:52 I appreciate it very much. Thank you for the opportunity, man. Good luck with your good luck with your 4 wall thing. I wish I could be there, but I'll actually be up in Canada. I'd leave in May this year, so it'll be pretty epic. Yeah, well, it sounds like it. I can't wait to see pictures and stuff. That'll be cool. All right, my friend. Have a good. One. All right. Take care of myself. I'll chat with you later. Bye. All right. See you.

1:43:44 Sweet 16 A better picture from a warm, wet dream. Come on over for rendezvous competitivism is a fuel you like. Back out in the God old band y'all. Where are the one that stands that don't bother a girl like you. You get your cake and you eat it too. You're my sweet sweet thing. You never buy But you always think you're my sweet sweet child. Come on over and drive me wild.