[SPEAKER_04]: Let's how I lost my virginity.
[SPEAKER_04]: They drugged me and the group of them did what they did.
[SPEAKER_04]: Over night, everything I thought I knew about the world was kind of exploded and the one thing I knew for certain was that men couldn't be trusted.
[SPEAKER_04]: Every piece of shit finds God.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we are way too forgiving of the antagonist.
[SPEAKER_04]: country music for a period of time, especially after 9-11, was a way to control the group think for people in positions of power.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it went from being rebellious music, Johnny Cashin, everyone else to like, boot, looking central.
[SPEAKER_04]: Music is one of the ways, that's one of the easiest ways to control the masses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you really think there's not that many people that align with them?
[SPEAKER_04]: I truly don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know that not all people can see through him and not all people can see through Kenneth Copeland, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, our political system is going to collapse.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, voting isn't where your action should start and end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where should your action start and end?
[SPEAKER_07]: If ain't nobody safe In the Bible, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Prejuice podcast for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually got on a plane, flew to Nashville, and sat down in person with today's guest.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've been listening to the show over the last couple of months, you've heard that I have a new intro track called Bible Belt that starts every show, and I mean it when I say, I can't imagine the Prejuice podcast without that song now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, when I hear it, I go, this is preachable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw it was so excited when I locked it down, but I was also excited because I'm a huge fan of the artists behind the music.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her name is Lou Ridley.
[SPEAKER_00]: She is a performer, actually based out of Nashville.
[SPEAKER_00]: She writes some incredible music, and you could check her out over on her social media.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we had a really long conversation about her music career.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about growing up in the Bible Belt and what she saw that kind of turned her off to some of the commoditized religious brands that exist out there in that orbit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talked about the importance of being active when it comes to speaking out about political or social issues and we talked about just the songwriting process.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that is so foreign to me and getting to talk to a creative and understand that process was really, really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a great time in Nashville, grabbed my obligatory pictures by the Southern Baptist Convention.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shook my head as people drove by, so they knew I didn't agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also went over and visited the sort of Lord and grabbed a picture by the sign there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Head over to the pre-choice social media pages and you can see some of the photo dumps from Nashville.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for now, here's my conversation with Lou Ridley.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm excited.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a it's a weird thing sitting across from you because I was so scared to message the first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been listening to Bible Bell on loop for like, I feel like a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: And every time I listened, I would crank the volume like to the max, and that would tell my wife like they should be the theme song for the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this is breach of voice, and then I was like, but if I reach out, it was that dumb thing where it's like if I reach out, the worst case scenario is I still don't have that as my intro, but I was just like, now that's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: My show's not big enough for like whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept going through all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I finally message like, yeah, that'd be awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me connect you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, okay, you could have had it on the show for a long time.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you could have, but timing is everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually have a thank you card for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, I have a thank you gift for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We both walked over and were like, we have a gift for you now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess, I mean, I heard you want to show, and it's not anything like super creative or fancy.
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I heard you want to show, say this is a tour bag essential.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you remember what you said.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I black out my bottle of coffee.
[SPEAKER_00]: Super hype, 20 set up.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm ready.
[SPEAKER_05]: I can nervous.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could jump up to my angle.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, are you serious?
[SPEAKER_05]: I feel seen it's a lush gift card you know that's I was just talking to one of my boyfriends today on FaceTime and I was telling you my need more lush there you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you and I'm very excited about these because I've been wanting to get Crocs forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is your time and I'm like this is it this is it I'm gonna read the card later because I want to be by myself.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just start reading it pop a bath bomb you know get ready for the emotion.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, for your daughters
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: She was so much gonna be a stickers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need you to sign one of these so I can, uh, I will.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You have one little one or two.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have one.
[SPEAKER_04]: One.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know why in my brain you had two.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, more for her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just one more for her.
[SPEAKER_04]: More for her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I gotta ask you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you were born in Texas?
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So first question, because every time I go to Texas, I go to Google to see how far I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: How far are you from where they film,
[SPEAKER_04]: Where did they film it at?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, you're from Texas.
[SPEAKER_04]: Texas is so big.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you Google that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a gas station where they filmed all the gas stations in the movie in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And every time I go like Google, how far I am, and I'm always like, it's Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like when I go to New York, four or five, the last one was eight hours, and I was like, okay, I'm never gonna get to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they have like the house from the movie and the gas station renovated, like a gift shop and a barbecue place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's all my list, so I need to know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm such a little freak, so I'm surprised I don't know the actual distance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you said you're, I wasn't going to ask, because I was like, that's kind of a weird first question.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then you said you were a horror fan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, well, she's been.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I want to go, but I'll be honest with who, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because a lot of my people over there are a little bit more like how about we don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: How about next interview?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the, okay, first.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, when the album comes out and we're Grammy-NOM and we do our second one.
[SPEAKER_00]: You won't be doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, we will.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I will.
[SPEAKER_04]: I will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as we're talking about horror, do we have a new textist, a new tattoo?
[SPEAKER_04]: I need to look up where Newt is because it's going to be in the middle of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to lose this jacket.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me see.
[SPEAKER_04]: Newt.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the middle of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_04]: Newt or Newton.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a popular city when it auto-corrects to another city.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like it's not this one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, if it's where it's saying that it is, it's way down south.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm only finding newton.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not finding newton.
[SPEAKER_04]: in EWT, in EWT.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, but it's probably four or five hours if I had to get a bit more any closer I would have done it already.
[SPEAKER_00]: So speaking of horror in Texas, your music has a lot of religious themes, but also a lot of political iconography.
[SPEAKER_00]: How much of that comes from your direct upbringing like with your immediate family versus it's just Texas culture and like growing up in areas that are super conservative.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, so religion wise, my parents never forced it on us.
[SPEAKER_04]: We did go to church, but, and they believe in God, but they weren't.
[SPEAKER_04]: unbearable about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: My grandmother spoke in tongues and she was very very close to God, but she was also not like I grew up my immediate family like I always say if there's anyone on the world that could have made me believe in God it would have been my grandmother because of how she went about her faith and what that meant to her and like who she was in the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: So directly know, but you know, I mean, they would make me go to church on holidays and I'd be like, I don't fucking like these people.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is weird.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's like 12 year olds like, oh, I want to love them.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, this doesn't, this is psychosis.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what are we doing here?
[SPEAKER_04]: I obviously couldn't articulate that at the time, but I just always felt weird, but we grew up in it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we started out in Keller, Texas, which is like a lot of little ranches and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we moved into the city into South Lake, Texas.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's where I really started to see the like,
[SPEAKER_04]: boisterous Christianity, the performative faith.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's when I started to really notice discord between like how I had been brought up and how these people were behaving.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that also is when I started to understand the political climate a little bit better because it was so bigoted there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know, like you grow up in a vacuum, it was before the internet.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm like something's off, but I don't know quite what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just looking at measured against.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing to measure it against, and then as I got older, I would be like, this just doesn't feel right, and then as soon as my dad died, we left South Lake, and we never looked back, and then in college, I really, really started to familiarize myself with kind of how a lot of the things that I had been taught socially growing up, we're not correct.
[SPEAKER_04]: side of thing and I use all things that were weird, but like did you have like a personal like this is what God means to me at like an early age or my grandmother okay she just was God she was just she had a horrible childhood and she treated my mom and her siblings
[SPEAKER_04]: the opposite of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: She was the kindest woman on the face of the planet, and she cared so much about other people.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she just like everywhere she went, she just had a light around her.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's when I understood God to be real, but maybe not in the performative sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's super weird because like on the show, I'm pretty open like I'm kind of agnostic.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what I think about anything and I'll talk to certain people and I always make a point to tell these people because I think it's a nice compliment to give but it's if it's true but there's certain people I talk to them like if Christianity was what you're saying it is and it was expressed by the majority of people who say they are
[SPEAKER_00]: but those people are, I don't get that compliment out very often because there's not that many people like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious in your music, like the Sankt Daddy's girl or all of your religious theme songs,
[SPEAKER_00]: That is more culture that you're speaking to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a specific thing where you go like seeing this really stoked, you know, a fire in me to talk about like these issues?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because sometimes people go like, if I don't have a deep connection to it who cares, I'll just kind of look the other way and go do my own thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But obviously there's something that's really like,
[SPEAKER_00]: bothers you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you want to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, growing up, I mean, my grandparents helped raise me and growing up, we'd always have been in on TV.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I always thought that shit was so weird.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then Kenneth Copeland, and then the TV in mansion wasn't too far from where we lived.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it never sat right with me.
[SPEAKER_04]: That, um,
[SPEAKER_04]: My grandmother would give all this money, and she'd get like a budgified, fake Bible.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just like, she meant good with it, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: But seeing all of that, and the mega churches, I mean, we went to mega churches, because they have a lot of them in Texas.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I went to Billy, I went to see Billy Graham in a fucking stadium.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, well, this is, everyone else was so moved by it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And, and I,
[SPEAKER_04]: Billy Graham isn't the worst thing in the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I just was like, are we praising God?
[SPEAKER_04]: Why are we doing it like this?
[SPEAKER_04]: This feels off.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we, there is, I can't, gateway.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it was called in Texas.
[SPEAKER_04]: I went to gateway a couple times.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, this is,
[SPEAKER_04]: What are you doing?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, why is this so big?
[SPEAKER_04]: This doesn't feel what I know to be of God, how I grew up.
[SPEAKER_04]: This doesn't feel godly to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: This feels commoditized.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think it is in you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because people always ask like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what makes you see through this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's people that obviously go to these crusades, they go to these mega churches, and they're immediately entranced and go like, oh my god, like I'm experiencing something supernatural here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's other people like yourself and a lot of times myself and many people I've talked on the show that sit there and go like,
[SPEAKER_00]: really like why are we following this dude or like why is everyone so taken it back by this thing what do you think is that little switch that's flipped a different way where you kind of see through the bullshit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well a spiritual answer I think is I just feel like I've done life a few times already.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have a knowingness that I there are a lot of things that just don't make sense why no them or why I'm guided certain places so in that way I think it's that but
[SPEAKER_04]: Unfortunately, where we're at as a society, I don't know that everybody has access to enough education to be able to critically think, and I don't put that on the individual person, I put that on the water and the food and the air and the, you know, whatever, but I think people fall into a trap because a lot of people
[SPEAKER_04]: think that they're supposed to be led and they're easy to manipulate.
[SPEAKER_04]: And as time goes on, culturally we're creating an environment for more of those people to exist and people to critically think less and less.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to get into the political side of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's hard because there's religion, there's politics, and everything is so the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the same thing that I'm going to talk about, the church and abuse there, we're going to talk about the government.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, well, they're all kind of mingling together.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do want to go back in your story because obviously on my show, I talk to tons of survivors of sexual abuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know it's a key part of your story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you kind of share
[SPEAKER_00]: that experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because I see that that shaded like a lot of your music and knowing that context, you know, I look at a lot of your work differently and like I see that layer to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you talk a little bit about that and how that's informed you as an artist and like kind of reflecting on that journey?
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's how I lost my virginity.
[SPEAKER_04]: They druged me in a group of
[SPEAKER_04]: did what they did, and then I became completely self-destructive after that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I put myself in bad situations for a couple of years after that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank God, I never got anything, I never got pregnant, but I think I was quite sheltered growing up, and then overnight everything I thought I knew about the world was kind of exploded, and the one thing I knew for certain was that men couldn't be trusted, and
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think the reason I experience those things is because I am meant to communicate certain things to women to people in general and to remove the shame from it because back when those things were happening it was.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was before me too and so like when it happened I didn't tell anybody because I thought everybody would blame me so that's why like hometown and all that stuff I thought that I was going to be in trouble because after it happened the girls at school would call me a slut and I was like I didn't want to do like I knew I knew that I didn't want to do it But you kind of tell yourself you did want to because that was before we talked about these things so like I think it's one of those things where
[SPEAKER_04]: It shapes me in a way of making sure that I speak about it from a place that's not victim and not shame, because I think even now a lot of women and people feel as though what they experience is somehow their fault, whether it's domestic violence, sexual abuse, whatever it is, we're still in a society that tells us to internalize it, and we are way too
[SPEAKER_04]: the antagonist we're way too like they've every piece of shit finds God It's really interesting and then we're all like oh well he believes in God, so there's not like it's Yeah, it's not what we're doing so I think that that's why sometimes I dress the way I dress It's not because I need men to find me attractive.
[SPEAKER_04]: Please don't ever but I
[SPEAKER_04]: I am whole and I am valuable in every iteration of myself and different people see themselves in different iterations of myself and in different lyrics and in different songs.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just try to be authentic at all times and not again just not do the shame of it all because growing up religious, growing up in the south like there was such shame around what I had been through and that's I carried it for a long time and I could have lost my life at certain
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like every day of my wife showing me like a different post.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, did he's reading his Bible in the courtroom or like, there's, there's so many and Russell Brand are like down down the list.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you mentioned our responsibility placed on the victims, which most times the victims are women.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things you said on the podcast I listened to,
[SPEAKER_00]: that I wish you could have drilled down on more, was the reason it didn't say anything was because of the cultural shame, which is a very common feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone I talked to, it feels that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you also mentioned something about your dad had said, if someone ever did that to you, he would kill them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said the weight of responsibility that that added was another thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you talk about how we support survivors in a way that doesn't put more pressure on them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think sometimes,
[SPEAKER_00]: someone touched you like I'll kill him and we feel like that is the way to go like I got your back But you expressing that of like that's why I didn't want to say anything like that's a scary thing to hear so you can kind of just drill down on that and and talk more about I just think that
[SPEAKER_04]: We're still losing our autonomy in this masculine protection response, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So like my dad would have taken one of his guns and probably shot these guys and that would have ruined my whole life.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I knew I couldn't say anything.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that obviously the response to something like this is rage.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's still, again, it takes, it still takes, it's a different
[SPEAKER_04]: autonomy that you're taking away from us when you decide how a person should be punished for what they did to us instead of just saying okay thank you for telling me how do you want to handle this you don't have to know right now because some women want to go to court some people just want to forget it happen and they want to go to therapy and I think that it's up to the person who experienced it to decide how to handle it and I and I think that we we
[SPEAKER_04]: the victim in the context.
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't empower them to choose.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like when people talk about dating, they're like, why did these women wait 10 to 12 years?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, some women don't want their entire identity to be that diddy raped them.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've never come forward with names of any of the men who've done anything to me, not because I'm scared, but because...
[SPEAKER_04]: Rose McGowan did it and that's her entire identity now.
[SPEAKER_04]: She's the lady who went through XY and Z and how brave of her to do it but how unfair of us socially to then package her as that.
[SPEAKER_04]: As women especially and in the queer community, when you are willing to say something, then you just sort of get pigeonholed.
[SPEAKER_04]: Everybody's so quick to sort of throw us in one bucket or another.
[SPEAKER_04]: God forbid we have dichotomy at all.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I think that the safe way to do it is always tell me and know that I won't move forward with anything until you tell me what feels safe for you because we're already unsafe.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't make it worse.
[SPEAKER_04]: And of course, my dad's a country guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't, he's just doing what he would do to protect his daughter, but he died not knowing it happened for that reason.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I think even on his deathbed, he would roll out of there and fucking.
[SPEAKER_00]: the one more day.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just in the labels that we had, like, your victim or whistleblower or like, you're not you, like, it's just that thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I was curious about, like, from the artistic side, and I'm a huge movie buff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, like, I've read so many things about, like, you know, gender in horror and a huge horror fan.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, gender in horror and
[SPEAKER_00]: you know sexual assault depicted in media and like all these sorts of things and I am really fascinated when Rovey Wade was overturned like you did a music video that like depicts sexual assault in the beginning and I'm curious like from a survivor perspective and then also an artistic side how how how did you weigh out like how like whether you should do that whether it was something that's like
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, crossing some boundary in terms of like, you know, making people feel something like, what was the process thinking through that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I was usually when you see assault depicted, it's from a male perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, you know, if you're watching an 80s movie, it's from a male director that wanted to sneak something in, like, how did you approach that someone who's experienced sexual abuse is now dealing with cultural ramifications around abortion?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what was going through your mind during that time?
[SPEAKER_04]: I, artistically, always choose to do the thing that I know that people don't want to see, but probably should see, especially the people who have the power to help change it.
[SPEAKER_04]: We love to turn a blind eye in the south.
[SPEAKER_04]: We love to look away.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our culture is riddled with sort of turning the other cheek, especially as it relates to things like this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Being that I'm in country.
[SPEAKER_04]: while I know that CMT isn't going to post it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know that I thought about it any deeper than let me artistically show you what happens because you need to, sometimes we have to,
[SPEAKER_04]: see it in order to understand the gravity of it and there's not a lot of depiction of it outside of very specific films that like a Christian Southern woman isn't going to watch, but she might stumble upon me and then she'll do a rabbit hole and she'll see that I did this and she'll go is that what people were feeling when this happened.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think the the same way that I said
[SPEAKER_04]: I think you need to spoon feed what you're trying to say.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if I'm trying to say this, I'm going to depict it the same way.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to worry about the ramifications.
[SPEAKER_04]: If I were worried about ramifications, I'm in fucked already.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like the country music genre specifically?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I got a little education because we went to the country music hall of fame.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, okay, that's who that is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, do you feel like that genre specifically is more difficult to express like more progressive ideas?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a total miscalculation on my part as someone who doesn't know it deeply?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, because I see some of the mainstreams, and I see like a Jason Aldeen, and I go like, in my brain, sometimes like, that's mainstream country.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I listen to other contests like yourself, and I'm like, I can get behind that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: do you feel like the genre in general is like not welcoming to that or do you have you found it's extremely welcoming and there's a huge world of people like you that are talking about these issues head on.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are plenty of people talking about them, the industry is not wanting to let go of control.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of very old, very traditional values that are sort of.
[SPEAKER_04]: blast into our genre.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, like, look at how hard we're holding on to radio, most of their genres have accepted that it ain't a thing anymore.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not.
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, no, unfortunately, I mean, I love the radio, but, you know, it's a dying art.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we just have a tendency in this genre and in the south to sort of,
[SPEAKER_04]: white knuckle certain ideals.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that country music for a period of time, especially after 9-11, was a way to control the group think for people and positions of power.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it went from being a rebellious music Johnny Cashner when else to like boot looking central.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it did
[SPEAKER_04]: they could.
[SPEAKER_04]: Music is one of the ways that's one of the easiest ways to control the masses.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they saw an opportunity and they took it and it is, it's going to change because they'll have to if they want to have a genre anymore because their market is getting smaller and smaller and the market for countries getting bigger but the market for Jason Aldeen rightfully so is getting smaller, not like his waist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Smaller like is biceps, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But looking central is a great name for a radio station.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a really, I could be a really good one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was curious, because I used to, when I first heard in life, she was like a lot more in the country.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was always the guy that's like, I don't like everything but country music.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't like country music.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, I started listening and then I'd be like, oh, I like this song, and there's this song, and I started
[SPEAKER_00]: And um, but I was kind of talking to her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, I like a lot of old country because it does feel rebellious.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like, you know, fight the man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I said exactly what you just said, which is like, you listen to some of the new music.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm boot looking at such a great term for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was just like, it really is like,
[SPEAKER_00]: The thin blue line and like, you know, try that in a small town, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's when I stopped, you know, I really held space for Jason Alten because I have some friends who him and his wife have been very good to in times of need.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, but he's the way that he uses his platform and the way that his little Dinguist wife uses her platform.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, y'all got to miss me with this.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is so.
[SPEAKER_04]: We are in dire times, it is our job as creatives to stand for the people.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have access to people that they don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: You really have to stop trying to be non-confrontational.
[SPEAKER_04]: In the case of someone like Jason Aldeen, try that in a small town like, what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Jason Aldeen has some bangers, but that's the thing too is there's there's quite a few complicit very big country artists and that's part of our issue as well as like their voices are being lifted up because they're complicit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you think
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to say, I don't want to say, I don't want to say, I don't want to talk trash about Jason Aldenol.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not white true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am open to doing that.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I have some other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: If do you think that like a lot of artists are leaning into that, because they think that's going to sell albums, or do you think it's because they truly believe it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And which of those is more problematic?
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I think the same way that, I mean, we reflect society, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: We're part of society.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think for some artists, they just want to feed their family.
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't care how they do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't care about the rest of the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think some voters feel the same way.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think some XYZ feels the same way.
[SPEAKER_04]: So sure for some people, it's just a cash grab.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't consider those artists in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's an entertainer, which I think are very distinct.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think too many people put them together when they're not supposed to be together.
[SPEAKER_04]: And artists isn't someone who doesn't write any of their own songs.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, you said so much with that look as you were saying, but you know, I mean, I think it's both.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's both.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think like the kid rock of it all.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we all have that kid in school who can't tell the difference between good attention and bad attention.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's, but whatever's going on at home for them, they, at school, they're so irritating because they just, they don't care how they get attention as long as they get it.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's some of those, too.
[SPEAKER_04]: Kidrock doesn't know what he's even talking about.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's just saying stuff and his, strands of hair are just swinging with him.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's fine.
[SPEAKER_04]: But like, again,
[SPEAKER_04]: that's not gonna last.
[SPEAKER_04]: People don't want that anymore.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I try to be diplomatic about how I speak about it, even though, you know, obviously I have opinions about using your platform that way, but no matter whether they're doing it purposefully or not, you affect people with music.
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you get to be mindful of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's our job.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm, this is totally for me question, I guess they're all for me, but this one specifically I've been thinking about where right before we came on the trip, you know, I'm seeing there I'm talking about ice and talking about all these things that are happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, some of my advice said it's frustrating because, you know, I can post about something.
[SPEAKER_00]: and have a larger impact than somebody that has a smaller platform.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then sometimes it feels like just talking about it is not enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel that way ever with like music?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're like, you know, I can really be doing something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like we all do that with whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I talked to lawyers, we're like, I can really be helping if I was doing something like with a bigger spotlight and just doing these little things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, do you ever feel like, man,
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's in vain or like I'm trying to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to push something and, you know, is this the best way I can like turn the cultural conversation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you wrestle with that or like, is that a mummy thing?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I believe that one millisecond can change the course of the future of the world for everyone.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I believe in the ripple effect.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I try to do as much as I can while also balancing my well being and I do it with the knowledge that if I'm too aggressive as a woman, they're just never going to let me in the door.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if I can't get in the door, I can't make significant change.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm okay with the ripple.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll make a comment at a round.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I have a round tonight.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm gonna make some comments.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, and yeah, maybe only one person.
[SPEAKER_04]: Here's it, but that one person.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe if they see something in the future because I has been here, if they see something in the future, maybe they go, I remember that and it made me think and and I she's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: I do need to go out there and do my part, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: I always say Jesus is outside.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I guess in theory, but also when you're two grandios too quickly, they just shut you down, then you end up not alive anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I sit there tonight and feel that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I go, you know, because I thought that when I was doing the show like early on, I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I should go get a lot of agree and go, you know, actually help people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, Kim Kardashian.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, she hasn't yet, or what did she get in?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I didn't she fail the bar?
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, blessed.
[SPEAKER_04]: I guess she did, huh?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, well, she's okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, and then I thought like, do I pursue like, how do you become a detective?
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, works on these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, it's going through all this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And but in my mind, it was like, how do you actually do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: What if I actually help people and then you reframe it and go like, okay, I could be helping one person in a really important way, or I can be helping tens of thousands of people, like you said, take one thing and then someone that can has done those things, can go take it into their workplace or into their environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know if that was just a eric overthinking thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably creative.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody feels that way all the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I feel that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I just don't think the thought serves me.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't hold on to it because like Brian Andrews and I talk almost daily at this point and we support each other.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I know that sometimes when he may not
[SPEAKER_04]: feel good about something or whatever our conversations can help him and then he's millions of people are seeing him and sometimes vice versa with he and I like all go viral for something it's a conversation we had and I feel like at this point I advise quite a few of my more famous friends and like how to navigate these waters.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's just one singular conversation.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not advertising that I do these things.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: But I've seen some of my friends with very large platforms see me consistent.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm now seeing them little by little start to use their voice.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I am impacting millions as are you.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's you may just not.
[SPEAKER_04]: It just how you look at it, I think.
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, I mean, sometimes if I feel like I've been a little lazy, I'll go to the mission and all.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I'll just check in and see what I can do to be of service to people and they go, we don't need you.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many churches in Nashville.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's taken care of.
[SPEAKER_04]: So many churches like close their doors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to say this too.
[SPEAKER_00]: For earlier you were mentioning like the
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, some was watching on your music videos like the older lay that wouldn't watch, you know, maybe a movie that depicts some of these things or like, you know, read certain books.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might come across a piece of art that makes them rethink something.
[SPEAKER_00]: do you think like in a post-truth kind of world where like you can show someone facts and data, do you think like going the route of getting them through their emotions first with something like music can do in a way that few things can.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that's kind of the key to getting the people?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the nice with conversation you go like, I can't reach this person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am trying to tell them like, here's a video or here's this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: do you think it's like hitting that emotion first and then having the conversation might be like the shortcut or the secret to kind of getting in there?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I think it's the same with comedy.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are a lot of comedians that I really admire that have said things at times that people immediately were like oh my god we got to cancel them and some comedians are assholes but like
[SPEAKER_04]: when you trigger their emotion, then they're still, then the message comes after like Dave Chappelle, I love Dave Chappelle.
[SPEAKER_04]: I understand that he made some distasteful comments and I don't agree with them, but Dave Chappelle's one of the only comedians with the balls to talk about the actual climate of our world and what's going on in our country.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we need him even if he doesn't do everything according to whatever, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's because he pushes on people's emotions.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then after he tells the joke, he gives context to the joke, and I love that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that we are, they've put us in a place as a society where we're angry or we're scared.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's like a lot of people's base level.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why everyone's depressed or anxious.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, they have created an environment where people don't know homeostasis.
[SPEAKER_04]: So because we're also emotion-driven, yeah, there's no other way to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I want you to see it and go, I don't like her, but wait, more voice is okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: And whatever you're what, maybe guys, oh, she's got tits, whatever men do.
[SPEAKER_04]: But then maybe after where do you go, she did have tits.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to look again, and then you hear me say something.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you go, maybe I shouldn't be a weirdo to women at the bar.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The third replay, like, oh, she's saying something.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, like if you keep listening to it, maybe it'll stick or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, well, while we're here, I should ask about, but you see mentioned Chappelle, you know, like, and there's some things that he said where he's something that you're like, I wish you hadn't said that, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, you've mentioned this on a couple shows of listening on where you go like, you know, there's, you know, we go through many phases.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've said like, I've gone through many stages in my life and you know, sometimes I'm a different one on a different day.
[SPEAKER_00]: or there's people I know that have done this thing that was incredible, but there's also another thing that gets a little bit off where I wouldn't do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think about the conversation on like purity tests for like, there's the big bad things that we are fighting all the time when it's like a battle for, we just walked down a Tennessee and you see the suffragette statues, you're like crazy that we're having these conversations again.
[SPEAKER_00]: for people that leave like high control religious groups or really extreme political positions, like how much margin or grace should we give to people who haven't figured it all out yet, or haven't come to a place where they're going like, you know, they're not as pure as we'd like them to be in this fight, like how do you navigate that?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think pure people can fight.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that,
[SPEAKER_04]: If you want them to represent us, then they're probably going to fuck up like us, and also too, I don't, we seem to gravitate toward the worst people, but then the people that are well-intentioned and may fuck up, it's like, oh my God, the world is ending.
[SPEAKER_04]: But then a pholonious pedo is our precedent.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's like,
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think there is a purity test that needs to be in order.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think we need to learn how to understand people's intention and stop being so closed eye closed ear to everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like we just blindly follow these people because they lied to us.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: use your noggin and read intention and that's what goes into my feeling that all society should be matriarchal is I think women are innately capable of reading intention in a way that men aren't and that doesn't mean men should be deleted right you guys are super important in necessary like really big deal I'm cutting that but
[SPEAKER_04]: But it should be matriarchal because I think we have a more clear and divine connection to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about that, but I ask about the purity test thing because I see, I grew up hard core, I don't know how much you know about my background, but I grew up super hard core fundamentalists.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we would have looked at Pentecostals and been like, they don't want to hell.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, that's not, it's nice to do for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think it was like, suits and ties and hymns and like, you don't go to the theater, you don't do, you don't smoke and drink and hang out with those that do, kind of, you know, a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I get scared because I look at who I was 10, 15 years ago, and the journey that I've been on to like get to where I am now, which is not by any means pure and perfect and like I figured it all out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I was asking a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, you know, the people have figured it out like nobody, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: But I get scared when I see progressive Christians or people that are pushing in really good directions, turn around behind them and look at really well-intentioned people they get a few things really wrong and they go like, oh, you're not one of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's that weird, like, colt-e feeling to like, oh, you're not in the fight as hard as I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're kicking you out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, we need everybody to kind of talk about these issues, whether it's sexual abuse,
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I always wonder when people go like, you know, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just go like, would you let yourself 10 years ago be in your club?
[SPEAKER_00]: And for most people, if they answered honestly, they'd be like, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be screaming at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you mentioned the main charcoal society, talked to me a little bit more about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've mentioned this on a couple shows, so I know you deeply mean this when you talk about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that look like for you and what do you see as missing right now because we're a little patriarchal right now There's a lot of guys running things.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a little you know What does that look like for you in terms of like allowing female voices to you know not just be placeholders and not just be on a website But like actually speaking to power what would that really look like?
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, our political system is going to collapse.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, we're reaching a point.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that on the other side of it, people are going to need to be nurtured.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think our leadership will need to be nurturing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't think men are capable of nurturing by default.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that men can learn it, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure a great dad, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's
[SPEAKER_04]: It just looks like allowing women to set the tone and women to make the hard choices.
[SPEAKER_04]: With your advisement, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Men nearby, not a White House full of only women, there should be some men, but it looks like undoing what we've done.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, by a bunch of people who think with their penises, um, it looks like a female president if presidents is something we have in 10 to 15 years, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: I've always said after a certain point in music, I'm going to run for office.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know what office is going to look like, but, uh,
[SPEAKER_04]: Kanye did it, why can't I do it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: So whatever it looks like, it looks like dismantling it from the top down and rebuilding it in a way that is truly across the board completely different.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I joke with my wife all the time because my show has brought a lot of stress in over last five years and you know get good death threats here and there and you know all the fun stuff and sometimes I'll choke when things are really calm.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I've been thinking about running for office.
[SPEAKER_04]: For a woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: She used to just be like, no, that's like the one thing don't and now she's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, make sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not add that to the plate, but I don't think I would ever do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It draining.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you run for something like, if you had the guess, what you'd run for, what would it be?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, would you just shoot for the stars and like, one for, one for President, I'm throwing my bid in.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're letting anybody do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So why can't I?
[SPEAKER_04]: And especially once the platform grows and people already know who I am, because of something else.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to pivot.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to, they're going to try to end me before I'm sure because of what I'm going to do when I get there, but I'm going to pivot.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to politics and music are one thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not separate.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Trump put plaques under everybody's picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: What plaque would you put under Trump's picture?
[SPEAKER_00]: It has words on it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would say the ball sack of that, like 110-year-old, whatever countries from, that's Trump to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's like a man who's very old, these over 100 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can we just hold that up, is that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he's over 100 years old, and his ball sack to me is a representative.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was joking, don't put that up.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is gonna get you monetized.
[SPEAKER_00]: Show me after that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would do that, and then he's no see just right underneath it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right there.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's just a little, also, too, like, it's not even, like, Trump is horrible, yeah, sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have, you know how many people this had to go through for Trump to do the thing, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, I don't, and I'm gonna get in trouble for this, I was talking to Brian about this a couple days ago.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know that our votes actually matter at all anymore.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think we're,
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think we're in a democracy, and I know factually that Trump was not voted into office a second time.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's been so much information that's come out about tampering in all these things, but we just, there's so much other stuff happening that we overlook it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't believe that that many people in this country voted for him a second time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I truly do not.
[SPEAKER_04]: And for that reason, it's like, I don't like Trump, but I don't like the system much more than I don't like Trump, because he's just one guy, and if he were doing anything,
[SPEAKER_04]: that they actually didn't agree with, he wouldn't be here anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you, I've heard people say similar things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you really think there's not that many people that align with them?
[SPEAKER_04]: I, the first term I think so.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think he had, he's a narcissist.
[SPEAKER_04]: He had people, you know, they were like, oh my god, I don't want to be a apprentice.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be a apprentice.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, I want to be the apprentice, but you're over 12, so he doesn't want you.
[SPEAKER_04]: But now, the second time,
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I truly don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't believe that our society is that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that they benefit from us thinking that that many people voted him in.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the entire political system is a joke.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that people on the left are corrupt as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: This isn't like a right versus left thing for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is like I said, this is a fucking rip it at the root and rip it at the whatever and undo it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just always feel like I push back on it because I, you know, I think it's because I grew up with like so many and at the time they weren't this, but the maga brain, you know, kind of, and it's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: The weird thing for me, I was just being interviewed for something recently, I said, what's weird is all the things that we were taught in Christian school and in chapels and in church that we were taught like, this is such a niche position and this is so contrary to society that like they'll pull our license for our school and they'll all this kind of stuff, they'll try to shut us down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, now it's mainstreamed, and I just go, and again, I'm looking at someone who grew up inside that bubble where I go like, we wanted this, and we propagated this for so long and now it's here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't seem that far fetched to me that like, there's a lot of little pockets like that that grew.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I also talked to people that say like, oh, which I agree the system's messed up, but I also go,
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have a hard time believing, either way.
[SPEAKER_04]: But either way, it's like, does it matter which one, you know, it just helps me fight the good fight to believe that most people could see through him.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know that not all people can see through him and not all people can see through.
[SPEAKER_04]: Kenneth Copeland, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: But it helps me.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's more people outside of the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: And also to even if we did vote for him if they didn't want him there, he wouldn't be there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, I think that we have, we have to let go of the idea that we're this democracy.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not, and I'm not saying don't vote.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, and continue to involve yourself in vote.
[SPEAKER_04]: But like voting isn't where your action should start and end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where should your action start and end?
[SPEAKER_04]: whatever you think your community needs to be a better functioning community.
[SPEAKER_04]: Whatever that looks like, it can look like anything you need it to.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's the thing, if we all just do what our capacity is within what we're capable of, we'll get there.
[SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't need to look the same for anybody, like for someone who's struggling, maybe it's just sharing a granola bar with someone else who's struggling for someone who has money paid for the groceries behind you if they pull out an EBT card like do whatever you can do by this if you want to go to Starbucks by the coffee behind you it's these little tiny teensy wincy things for most people these things ripple.
[SPEAKER_04]: that's all you got to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just like, it's not everybody has to become country's biggest star and then run for president.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, let's just for some of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't see.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what should be what Starbucks actually really quite.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, they found it the IDF.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, is it?
[SPEAKER_04]: And their beans are disgusting.
[SPEAKER_00]: That this is really funny because there's so many things growing up that we hear about that we don't support.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like now it's funny, there's like a, there's a perfect collection of things that fundamentalists and like progressive or liberal people both hate.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like J.K. Rowling was not cool when I was growing up because witchcraft.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we're still not fans of jakey really, you know, Starbucks, you know, Starbucks and but it was Starbucks for the war on Christmas, not the war on actual people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, right, right, right, right, right, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny now actually was time spent a day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, it's kind of funny, like, imagining.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I had a joke, and I was gonna say like a lot of people feel really free to explore after they leave fundamentalism, you know, some people go and explore, you know, doing X, Y, and C, and then have some friends rehearse, and maybe they use to be fundamentalist.
[SPEAKER_00]: another a drag queen, and I said it would be funny to think that someone would like be out of the Baptist world enough to be comfortable doing that, but also making sure their skirt is below the knee.
[SPEAKER_00]: You make sure they're really tall and lying.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were worried about how canceled the joke I was about to say, well, I don't care.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is your podcast, I think it's super crazy.
[SPEAKER_04]: I support it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can picture that being like a very small niche group, it's like we're very modest though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, like absolutely, I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, in terms of the album you're working on right now, like, obviously in the past you've done, you know, really heavy, like themes of religious trauma, you know, things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's all coming from, again, real-life experience, perspective, things you've seen, is the new album stepping out from that, is it a layer of this, like, what is the main overarching themes of the album you're working on currently?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I wrote a lot of it during a significant heartbreak and during a deep depression.
[SPEAKER_04]: So a lot of it is romantic and existential rather than like so pointed as some of my past stuff, but as things develop, I find myself writing the same themes again and I'm not married to every track on the project, so things will continue to shift as we go along.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like cool now to do that even though when I put out Bible Belt everyone was like, well, the fuck are you doing?
[SPEAKER_04]: But I, it's like everyone being your like, like people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I mean, it was like, it was ahead of its time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was the, the concepts were a little bit ahead of their time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: When, when did that album come out?
[SPEAKER_04]: Bible came out in 23.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Which was just just just a little too soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It still did fine online.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, it's not that it wasn't received by some people, but I think like now I'm seeing songs like that be like corporate promoted.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: Whereas for me, everything I had was just organic reach.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now we're sort of...
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I mean.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that guy that just did the fucking ice song was on like foul and or something.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's awesome song.
[SPEAKER_04]: That guy's so sick.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: they're embracing it more now than they were when I put that out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's so funny because then when I was a student, I was like, pump this in my veins, this is like the coolest thing ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but it was like so perfectly tied into everything I talk about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, this is, this is awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I want to ask your pin on this as like again for a musician perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I find musicians fascinating because like, of all the creative outlets I have like music has never been one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just don't know how you think.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like,
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people like to spread the idea, like your best art comes from your biggest pain or your best work comes from this struggle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think sometimes there's an idea that you have to be the tortured artist to put out good stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, do you find that true?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like, no, that's kind of bullshit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's some stuff that's there that's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can create great stuff when you're really happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do you kind of interpret that and how much truth is there to that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, if you're happiness is mania, yes, but every great artist I know is not, we're not every artist I know that I admire struggles with mental health stuff, because I think in order to really open your mind to be a conduit like Rick Ruben says and make your offering to God, I think that you have to be a little unwell.
[SPEAKER_04]: to be brave enough to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think people can make just fine music living a just fine life.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think life-changing, impactful, future altering music comes from not necessarily only pain, but just rather like a lack of of wanting to
[SPEAKER_04]: a lack of being normal, a lack of being normal, and some capacity, anxiety, depression, whatever it is, BPD, whatever your thing is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think it's also because you just see more?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think you have to be a little unwell to see.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like,
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think that people that have a normal life and have a neurotypical mindset, I don't think that a lot of times it's easy for them to see because what are they looking for?
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't know, it's not their fault, but it takes the freaks, it just does.
[SPEAKER_04]: Freaks make art.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what do you think of it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you've seen this, but a lot of people have been sharing this meme that like, fundees can't art or like,
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's this whole idea that like basically like fundamentalists whether we're talking politics religion can only create propaganda like they can't create true art and I I read that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on the one hand, I was like, immediately, I was like, yeah, you know, and then I was like, well, I've been inside a lot of Catholic churches that have incredible art, like, you've been to some of the greatest, like, what do you think of that trope if you've seen it, and I thought we can see that, but what I will say is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I.
[SPEAKER_04]: How I receive art as I want it from someone who's mentally ill because I am, but can it still be somewhat impactful on its own?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I don't like it's art.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are no rules.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think for music specifically, I do truly like poems, like poetry, music, some of that stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just feel like you gotta be a little cookie cookie, but like
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think that's true of a sculptor.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think you can be a brilliant sculptor or what a painter and maybe not maybe painting too.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some sculptor listening like no.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to be a freak too.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I mean, I, we, anyone who even pursues art, I think, is a little bit of a freak.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but like it's in a way that I love them not in a bad way.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not it's not negative But it's like what's kind of the thing of like to want to sing in front of people You know, what's wrong with you?
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want to speak It's the Seinfeld bit, which again someone with some very problematic things, but no, it's the thing of like you know
[SPEAKER_00]: The number one fierce public speaking, the number two is deaf.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he's like, so you'd rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the idea of wanting to stand in front of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I read a book on narcissism for the show, and it was saying like, it was studying pastors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like, even way to speak in front of people is like, you're somewhere on this spectrum.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not necessarily a clinical narcissist and it's dangerous.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I read the book and I was like, and I overthink everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh my God, I have a podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I an narcissist?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, you've to ask in the question.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, you're asking the question, which is probably a good sign of that you're not, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I've had that conversation with my therapist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, why do I want people to listen to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I need?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, what is this?
[SPEAKER_04]: And she's like, you're asking.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you're not an narcissist.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, okay, thank God.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think like, but I think even like creating something with the intention of it being perceived is cookie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me ask about that because I know one of the biggest frustrations for me podcasting or writing is like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a thing where I'm like, I want to get this point across.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really hard sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I finally feel like I've got no place where I can put it out and I don't take it here.
[SPEAKER_00]: For you, you have so many themes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're so deeply important to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have very clear perspectives on things.
[SPEAKER_00]: How much are you able to go?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this song is Eric listening to it, driving down the road, F full blast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's also so-and-so, you know, jamming out to this sort.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's their interpretation now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, are you comfortable with that or do you think that there's a rival?
[SPEAKER_04]: I've always been comfortable with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't, I think, because when the sexual assault happened, and then everyone was calling me a slut, and I was like, wait, what?
[SPEAKER_04]: I did.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't want this and I had never even seen a man's genitals before that day.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was sort of just this thing we're very early on.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said, oh, people are going to perceive what they're going to perceive and I cannot control it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So once I got into music, which is later, I think I've always accepted that the perception will be according to their life experience and belief system.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the reaction you get to your, like do you get a lot of like hate or do you feel like you've kind of found your, I mean, or the algorithm I guess is kind of found your ideal audience like when you put out music, do you have like any hardcore, you know country fans are like, no, this isn't it or do you have people that come in and go like, you know, why do you talk about these issues that should just be private, you should just be doing me, you know, like, do you get a lot of that or do you feel like you kind of find founder.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but like I hope so because if I'm doing something boring, they're not going to react.
[SPEAKER_04]: So everyone who's a secret pot paid for by the government, who's on my page.
[SPEAKER_04]: Complaining or telling you shut up and saying I got a long message from a guy the other day about how I'm sexist toward men and then in the same breath told me about my cleavage and how I should have less cleavage and I said, Oh, foot in mouth.
[SPEAKER_04]: I get death threats.
[SPEAKER_04]: I get all of it, but I don't care because your gosh darn tuned right.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_04]: Take me out if you want to.
[SPEAKER_04]: I always any time someone gives me a death threat.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, this is where my show will be.
[SPEAKER_04]: Feel free to pull up.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're not going to kill me.
[SPEAKER_04]: And also, if you do weird, but it's like, I don't, I, Lou Ridley is from the term, Lurrid, which is like offensively bright, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: That's where the name came out of in a dream.
[SPEAKER_04]: So,
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm okay with being disruptive.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know what it means, I know like I have my days or sometimes I'll read a comment that's really pointed or something and I'll be like, I'll hurt a little but then I remember that that comment has nothing to do with me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I understand the human condition enough that I don't take most things personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not know it was a stage name till right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how Ignor and I am to the world of the music industry.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always hear a lot of names.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I think I'm going my Eric Squersinski from this long.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I could have done something really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it is cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, it is one of those names.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always tell people, it's like, it's kind of like a Arnold Schwarzenegger or Francis Ford Copa where like, once you make it, it's like, oh, can't do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Squersinski.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for now, it's just like, something I have to stand at the hotel, not like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You sound like a film director.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I always wanted to be when I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was always like, that was the dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, it's really cool once you do something that that's your name.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we'll see.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm working on getting it to be a household name.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're doing great work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do want to go back really quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: to some of the religious teams in the minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because when I do listen, I'm like, it feels so familiar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the things you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then also like a lot of it, like, you know, like Bible about, you get these examples, like the, and people here at every episode, but it's like going to the pastor, and he says it's her to blame, or you go back, and you, you know, you talk about like the dad being the preacher and all this sort of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you were writing that like, did you have any specific like people or situations in mind?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like where you're like, oh, I know someone that this happened to, and like it's kind of like, that's how they're data handled it or this past or handled it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, did you have stuff like that where it was fresh in your mind?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or was it kind of again that amalgamation?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just like us, like us seeing, I think my little brain just opens and I, I've, I'm, I'm either had or been in proximity to enough experiences.
[SPEAKER_04]: I try not to pull directly from anyone, but rather just I, what I know to be a shared experience.
[SPEAKER_04]: So like, I'm sure I knew people.
[SPEAKER_04]: I also have horrible memory.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm sure I knew people that had more direct or less direct experiences, but like,
[SPEAKER_04]: I think part of the whole conduit of it all is I just sort of take this concept and I open my brain up and I allow like whatever message needs to come in to come in and then I
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, share it that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I have a horrible memory too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I had posted a clip of me like two years ago and then and then I was going back to the snow podcast and then I used someone had said what I had said like earlier and I was like, oh my god, I just plagiarized this person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't realize it.
[SPEAKER_00]: but they just say it again later in chat amounts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's what it's saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so beyond music, have you thought about pursuing any other creative ventures, or is there any other ways that you, or even is there a way you do now that people don't know about like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you paint?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you draw?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you?
[SPEAKER_04]: I've ever considered like writing a book or I can draw the side of a horse Okay, and I can draw a left eye with a left eye brow.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, and that's the best for anything else.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be bad.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I love acting.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah It would be my other like if you watch any of my where I had any sort of budget in my music videos.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm I love to act
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I heard you're on a podcast say that if Jordan Peel ever called you, I mean, you're my dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, so amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The character you would probably have to play in a Jordan Peel movie would probably not be great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you'd be in get out to maybe on the
[SPEAKER_04]: I would love it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't care.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll do whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have a photo for a while.
[SPEAKER_04]: Jordan Peel could be like, well, you'd be a rug, and I go, yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll be just rug, and y'all can walk all over me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't care.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I don't know how much that would showcase my acting, but like, whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: Jordan Peel's perfection, but, um, yeah, I love to act.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you want to like write what you act in, or would you just want to be in?
[SPEAKER_04]: With other people.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I've never done it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I would love, I'm not like a, I learned by doing person.
[SPEAKER_04]: So out of the desire for it to be successful, I'd love to involve some people who sort of have done it already.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I mean, I think I could in time once I understood the landscape of what that looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, yeah, I'm always curious that too because like I know I'm starting to kind of venture into some other things and like flexing other creative muscles But then I always feel like it's it's hard when you get good at one thing and then you're like my baby in this I don't know how to do anything Like let's start building again
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I was curious about too, in terms of the music side of it, and like stretching into like visually showing you there's a sound that's unique to you, but like for you specifically do you feel like all your music together is like that's me or do you have a specific like song or music video where you go like that's me like
[SPEAKER_00]: like if so like there's a lot of the people listening they'd love that one but like if I had to say it all boils down to this like do you have a track or like a music video where like altogether that's like that's Lou Ridley like that's me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think blue eyed Jesus is a really good is a really good communication for how my brain works and what I care about
[SPEAKER_04]: But no, I'd say that they're all me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know that there's any one, I just keep evolving and finding new ways to express myself, sonically, visually, whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't know that there's any one thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think different things in different parts of my life have been true of a representation of that time.
[SPEAKER_04]: But like, no, I think it's all in its own way, like the different phases of being a person.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it about Blue Edgesis that like you go like that really captures high be the world?
[SPEAKER_04]: I just I wrote it was written with all women and it was women who understood me.
[SPEAKER_04]: and women who also experienced religious trauma, but even more extreme, way more extreme than mine.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it, but it also, it just calls out the fault.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, up is who would have false prophet of it all?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that the danger in politics in music, in anything, is the false prophet of it all.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if I had to, like, summarize the fight I'm fighting, it's the blue eyed Jesus that I'm fighting,
[SPEAKER_04]: So, my life's purpose I feel is to leave this place better than I found it and I think for me as an areas with my rage, I think that
[SPEAKER_04]: those are the exact people that I target to poke holes in their theories.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to kill a bunch.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not trying to, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just like, I'm trying to, let's get rid of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's, you go somewhere in Arkansas and you can do whatever you want to do, but like that to me represents
[SPEAKER_04]: what I want to see shift in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my Arkansas listeners, like, why are you sending them to us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they don't have to.
[SPEAKER_04]: They can go wherever you guys want.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just feel like Arkansas is such a vibe and there's a lot of open land.
[SPEAKER_00]: I drove through there, you know, very remote.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very remote.
[SPEAKER_04]: We could put all these people in like a really high-fenced area and they could just do it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for you, it's like the, it's like the, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's write word counterfeit kind of like we're going to use this image to gain more power.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the the Jesus figure the religious version like in your brain like with because you're spiritual now like when you see when you see like the religious right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you look at them as like misappropriating scripture and Jesus or do you sit there and go like it's because they're falling scripture and do you like how do you parse that out I think that the Bible has been manipulated to the point where a lot of people interpreting it.
[SPEAKER_04]: have an agenda.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I, like, managed on that lie with man was always intended in the beginning of the Bible to be about pedophilia.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's now been like twisted into this thing about gay people.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's gayness in nature everywhere.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like being gay is absolutely not against.
[SPEAKER_04]: God, and God wouldn't have made people that way if he believed that that were the case, and I'm saying he for the context of the listeners, I don't believe God to be of a gender, but either way.
[SPEAKER_04]: It would only be a man, because they're like so good at everything, but
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that it's, I think that it's misinterpreted severely.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that, I mean, Scripture now is just, I had some of the other day be like, it's actually not that much of a departure from the, which I'm like, girl, if I told two people in this room a secret by the time they repeated it back to me, it would be fucked up.
[SPEAKER_04]: like, and you're talking about languages and agendas and all these things, like, they're just really deeper than has faded paper that has faded and also like a white dude who's like, this is what it means.
[SPEAKER_04]: And also, can you pay for my private jet?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, it's the writings on the wall.
[SPEAKER_04]: That guy probably does not.
[SPEAKER_04]: He wouldn't know God if God came down from the sky and did whatever because God is brown.
[SPEAKER_04]: God is brown and look how we are treating brown people in this country even if God were here right now those very people who tried to preach the word would be the same people to condemn and abuse him and put him right back up on the cross with or Jesus whoever was up there.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_04]: To me God and Jesus is like it's all one big mush but it
[SPEAKER_04]: We wouldn't know it if it slapped us in the face.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm not going to let that person tell me what scripture means because it doesn't make any sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was curious that too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's so many things like.
[SPEAKER_00]: You and I, if we both sat down and went like, this is what God means to me now, and I would write very different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like anybody in this room or beyond, like in the city of Fiasse, everybody, it would all look different, which kind of speaks to it, we should probably hold our definition a little bit more loosely.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guess for me, it's a really weird thing for me to now someone who doesn't know what I believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still feel like an anger,
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what I ingested of who Jesus is and what God looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a reason, it's part of that's the reason I do what I do now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of the reason I get so mad about that being taken over and like sexual abuse being done that name.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was trying to explain this to my other day, it's like, it's weird that I am angry about a God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I still believe in him, you know, but it's like the new see people
[SPEAKER_00]: That, you know, and it's like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a weird emotion if you like this like, like you feel like possessive of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it's not that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever God is, it's not dragging someone into a van and struggling, you know, like it's not, it's not abusing a woman and then saying you cheer up all the people here.
[SPEAKER_04]: God's not there, and that's like, I'm God, your God, everything is God.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have,
[SPEAKER_04]: we have a connection to the divine all of us.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Jesus is God.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's all God until we fuck it up.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then it's the absence of God.
[SPEAKER_04]: But like what you do when people are, they want people to join their religion or whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: go out and be God and see how quickly someone joins versus going out and wagging your finger and telling people what they're not doing right.
[SPEAKER_04]: God is everywhere all the time, but it's not this overlord white dude who's like don't do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the desire that you and I both possess to leave this world better than we found it.
[SPEAKER_04]: That is God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's like the the prayers like your kingdom come, you know, that will be down on earth as is in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're reading, you know, pure undefault religion is caring for orphans and widows and it's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of the thing, again, I was talking about with the other day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, it's my friend just told me today that I always say I was telling my wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, well, that's why I talked to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's sweet, I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was just trying to, to me, it's like, I'm still all about bringing God's kingdom here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it looks a lot more like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: then it does like let's clear out everybody that doesn't look like us yeah and let's see like and that's where i was like on some level like i'm more Christian that i was when i was you know it's just like the the values have just shifted to be better like it's not just like oh let's make everyone like us and kick everyone who isn't out you know i don't know but i'm always curious for people that
[SPEAKER_00]: didn't come for that same background like how they process all of this and like whether it is like a you know the Bible got us into this mess or we need to reclaim it or you know what that looks like and everyone's got their own like
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's just go with our, let's get back in our bodies and let's be in service to other people.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I promise most of the Bible we'd be following anyway.
[SPEAKER_04]: The correct Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: The good stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: The stuff that matters that we're supposed to be doing, even if even if your means to an end, which it's always crazy to me when people think there's a specific way to live in order to get to heaven,
[SPEAKER_04]: Which then basically says that this entire life is not really of importance as like you just need to do the thing to get to the next place without any guarantee that it exists and I'm like I feel like
[SPEAKER_04]: you're supposed to be God now so that God won't sing out with you later.
[SPEAKER_04]: If there is heaven, you know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like God doesn't want to hang out with you if you're an uptight finger wagging little last hole who judges everybody and supports abusing other humans.
[SPEAKER_04]: God won't sing out with nice people who care about others.
[SPEAKER_04]: Someone's like darn.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know, surprise.
[SPEAKER_04]: No one that listens to this is going to be like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I have a lot of people listening out of spice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe really.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'll give you all my address then.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it's kind of, um, I had Hillary McBride on the show who's a great, um, great author and psychologist and she talks about embodiment all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's one of the things that can't put our conversations like so much music that's been written in the Christian realm has been
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, I'll fly away, you know, or, you know, one short day, it's all going to be over, or, you know, in Bula land, and everything is about what's next, and there's nothing about now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's, you know, she was talking about it in terms of health, but it's like the amount of people that neglect
[SPEAKER_00]: They're physical pain or the emotional pain they're feeling because like your body's temper You'll be on streets of gold right and around in no time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but beyond that like when you look at the scale of Okay, well the earth is burning to a crisp
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not our final place.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're just passing through, or someone's in pain next to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't need to ease that because, you know, everything was focused on the eternal and not now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, again, it goes back to being a conversation, like, so much makes sense when you think about people looking at the world through that lens.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like it's all about, you know, be comfortable till you die, and then you get the good stuff, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't have to worry about making now better.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I can't like the idea that God made all of this and created all these seconds in a day and all of these other human beings around you, just for you to spend the entirety of it, keeping your head down and proving your value for later.
[SPEAKER_04]: How does that make any sense?
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
[SPEAKER_04]: What are you talking about?
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't create us in sin.
[SPEAKER_04]: what are you like how how the fact that they've sold you that you basically need to be a soldier for a different life later and you need to follow a set of rules for later maybe and you go, yeah, probably.
[SPEAKER_04]: What?
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm doing this now because I'm here now and I don't know what happens next.
[SPEAKER_04]: I believe in God, but I don't know what happens next, but I can make a difference right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why would I wait?
[SPEAKER_04]: Why wouldn't I see every beautiful place that is made for us to go see?
[SPEAKER_04]: Why wouldn't I save every life and help every person and love every animal?
[SPEAKER_04]: And why wouldn't I do those?
[SPEAKER_04]: What?
[SPEAKER_04]: He made this for us to indulge and enjoy and take care of.
[SPEAKER_04]: and and feel joy.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, you know, maybe again, later with him, more joy, or possibly you come back down because you were a dick and you have to do it again.
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes you meet a dog and you're like, you're a person, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: That could be a guy who the time before it was like an asshole.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now he gets stuck with this family and he has to like relearn all that his soul contract has to redo.
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't really know.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm gonna just do the best I can and you should be doing the best you can, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: not my dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dog was a saint in every life.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but you know like those the golden doodles, those are people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are people walking around those are people on Broadway.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, there's people trapped in those bodies that are learning some things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I got to ask you, you said your anaries and you said you have your full of rage.
[SPEAKER_00]: What makes you ingress right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: As you're sitting here, like what's the thing that you're like?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just peaved about this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I mean, everything going on with ISIS, heartbreaking, everything going on in Palestine and the Congo and all of the genocide that are currently happening that we literally don't even really know are happening because they're not being fed to us.
[SPEAKER_04]: But those are like a part of, I'm just ready to not see the devil win anymore.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm ready to take
[SPEAKER_04]: take it back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Darkness, the devil, whatever it is, right, Lucifer was an angel, choir director at that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So interesting, but sort of past life, maybe you.
[SPEAKER_04]: So like literally me, I'm her, but um,
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that I can always hear your manager just laughing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just like, this light, this light, this light, this is the background.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's like, yes, he has a media training, she's psychotic.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, yeah, I've been dealing with the devil for a while.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm pretty real familiar with the devil.
[SPEAKER_04]: What, you know, and like, fine, but I, I truly do, I'm ready for darkness to have her day in court.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she will.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very lyrical of you.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can't help it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it really is songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but it's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty good.
[SPEAKER_00]: That'll go really well on bootlicker central the new radio station that you're launching very soon.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, sign up everyone.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not deans my first guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and then I don't want to end on a darken up, but what gives you the most hope right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think, and I want to hear this because I could use it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I sit there sometimes and I go, it is hard at the end of the day to be like,
[SPEAKER_00]: let's calm down yeah like let me just relax and have a chill evening because there is so much going on there are so many things that fill you with rage what are the things right now that give you hope that make you smile that make you go things things might get better it might be some sliver of hope left in this world the way um so
[SPEAKER_04]: Even though I'm filled with rage, what I will say is I'm not angry.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just ready for the, I'm ready for the tide to turn and I'm happy to help physically.
[SPEAKER_04]: move it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not really an angry person.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just like, don't fuck with me, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't fuck with humanity.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, don't fuck with my little chickens.
[SPEAKER_04]: But in terms of hope, I mean, people give me hope that I see people being incredible every day of my life.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, people are so good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, they're so much good and so many like most people, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't, I see it every day and I listen to Abraham Hicks and Joe Dispenza and something that I learned years ago was like, you see what you look for, so you used to look for all of the discrepancies and all the horrible things and I saw them and experience them deeper than I was experiencing the joy and I think like at some point it flipped to like I know these things exist I'm happy to be at the forefront of the battle to help shift them but I don't walk
[SPEAKER_04]: with the weight of it because I trust that we're going to get there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that is the hope in itself is I have faith in my species and I know that we'll figure this out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm taking notes because that's the mindset shift that I have.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think yeah, I just always I always lean toward overthinking and just feeling lost in the, you know, it because I always say like the problems that have a solution even if they're really hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like I can deal with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the things that feels so big where it's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I can't go fix that tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those just weigh in way and way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I love that optimism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Things are going to shift at the center of way.
[SPEAKER_04]: They are already.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we can't shift them if we're depressed about them being an existence.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like what you seek is what you see.
[SPEAKER_04]: So like see the good in everything every day.
[SPEAKER_04]: And naturally darkness will lose its power.
[SPEAKER_04]: It has so much power because we're angry and scared all the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: If we stop being angry and scared,
[SPEAKER_04]: What does it have?
[SPEAKER_04]: If it can intimidate us and it can't hold us hostage to feeling unhappy, what does it have?
[SPEAKER_04]: It has nothing, you have no power left.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's the mindset shift I want for everyone.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, I'm full of rage, but I'm not angry.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, let's fucking go.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's see, off-lip cars, I'm fine.
[SPEAKER_04]: Whatever we need to do, let's fucking get there.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm ready to get there.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the very, like, ram areas in me, but like,
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm excited that I live in a place that's conservative and that people get weird every show I have because how awesome that I got to make you feel something and impact you and maybe just maybe you'll think about that later and maybe your mindset will shift and maybe you'll go out and do some, even if it's a spite me, you'll go out and do something caring for somebody else, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna get there.
[SPEAKER_04]: My babies are gonna see it if I don't see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: On a scale of one to 10, how weird is tonight's show gonna be in your mind right now, do you think it's gonna be?
[SPEAKER_04]: I've got some special guests, so I don't think it'll be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not too weird.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not too weird.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's odies, you know, so it'll be fine.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I'm pretty tame, right Matt?
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm pretty easy.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm saying more than the other people on stage typically, but you know, I mean, that's country music.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, and they all have important, wonderful things to say, too.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just, you know, a little bit crazier, but we'll see.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think I'm not angry, but don't fuck with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Might be the title of the episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good summary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And seriously, not to get all mushy and weird, but I really can't imagine the show now without hearing it cut to your music and hearing your voice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know it's not a small decision to allow your voice to be part of something someone else is doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I really appreciate it, and I think your voice is important, both in the song sense and also the things that you're saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for doing this, and I hope it's not the last version.
[SPEAKER_04]: It won't be.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to just do this once a week, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I could sing on one ear, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: Why don't you come tonight and sing?
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm literally leaving my flight leaves at eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty messed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you plan this right next time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next time, you know, I can't sing at all, but I'm happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like all the people in college music can sing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would be really great.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so crazy to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see on the thing I have like six minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is so crazy to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The voices you hear coming out of like bars all over Nashville.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're like all of these people could be the biggest star in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like the fact that there's so much competition and such, so many roadblocks to doing that is like, it's gonna have to people you hear on the radio.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm gonna specifically the men that you hear on the radio, you're like, um, have you ever sang before?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to say this too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the song I listened to the most of yours is your cover of WAHP, which I think is like, It's okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's every one of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the only reason I'm a float right now is my WAHP cover.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't worry about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was showing it to somebody.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, isn't this insane?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, because when you first see your country cover, and you're like, that's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're like, listen, and then these background vocals come in.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like,
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like I was telling I was literally showing to my friends like this is like pure art like this is like incredible Thank you and I was like this should be like billboard like You're like yeah, yeah, please listen Hello everybody, but um, but I was just like it's insane that this exists and that like I have to show you like you should have heard this Sorry, this should be on the radio everywhere So so good, but yeah, um, like what can I ask you that to like
[SPEAKER_00]: obviously covers pop.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, do you ever go like him?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it wap that's like blowing up?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and not this original song?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's funny.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, some of my original songs have a lot more numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: But also too,
[SPEAKER_04]: I knew what I was doing when I did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're doing it for nobody to listen.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, and I sound great in it showcases my ability to vocal stack.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a vocal layer in a way that some of my more recent stuff doesn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: So like fine, whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I have a walk.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's like why would I let everybody know about it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe that's the title of the episode.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have a walk.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has a wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: She does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, on that note, I've never ended a podcast like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Working people connect with you if they're listening and they want to know.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you wear on the internet, Lou Ridley.
[SPEAKER_04]: And my some handles are Lou Ridley X, but if you search Lou Ridley, it's going to be me.
[SPEAKER_04]: You'll see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're Lou Ridley.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you'll find it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not a get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Eric Swordsinski, and there's no others in me as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll see you again next time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to the Prejabois podcast hosted by Eric Swarzinski.
[SPEAKER_00]: The intro music, Bible Belt, was performed by Lou Rithley.
[SPEAKER_07]: To praise the Holy Father, fill the glory of His name.
[SPEAKER_07]: Anyone can worship here so long as you extract, pay your ties and follow rules, even the ones God didn't make.