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Episode 19 - Blackened Whiskey Master Distiller Rob Dietrich
24 Plays1 year ago
This week, Blackened Whiskey Master Distiller Rob Dietrich joins us for a pairing of Blackened Whiskey with Blackened Cigars from Drew Estate! We get to know more about Rob, and both the cigars and whiskey from Blackened.
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Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
00:00:19
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back to Let's Get Pairing.
00:00:22
Speaker
As always, I'm your host Tripp here in the Casa de Monte Cristo studio in Florida.
00:00:25
Speaker
Tonight we're going to be smoking the Blackened from Drew Estate.
00:00:28
Speaker
This is the S84.
00:00:30
Speaker
I was going to remember that number.
00:00:34
Speaker
Shade to black.
00:00:36
Speaker
Dennis, how are you doing this evening?
00:00:38
Speaker
Hey man, it's a happy Mother's Day weekend to everybody.
00:00:42
Speaker
I think it's grayed out for most people to hang out if you can smoke now.
00:00:47
Speaker
Weather's beautiful out here.
00:00:48
Speaker
So, man, I'm happy.
00:00:49
Speaker
And I'm excited for tonight's episode.
00:00:51
Speaker
Me too.
00:00:52
Speaker
Got something special cooking.
00:00:53
Speaker
It's going to be a good one.
00:00:54
Speaker
So grab yourself a drink.
00:00:56
Speaker
Grab yourself a cigar.
00:00:57
Speaker
Let's get pairing.
Rob Dietrich Joins the Show
00:01:13
Speaker
All right, and we're back.
00:01:15
Speaker
As always, I'm your host, Tripp.
00:01:16
Speaker
This is episode 19 of Let's Get Pairing.
00:01:19
Speaker
Here with my co-host, Dennis.
00:01:21
Speaker
But tonight, we're not just pairing as usual.
00:01:24
Speaker
We've got a special guest.
00:01:26
Speaker
Our special guest, Mr. Rob Dietrich.
00:01:27
Speaker
Rob, how are you doing tonight?
00:01:30
Speaker
I'm good, Tripp.
00:01:30
Speaker
How are you guys doing?
00:01:31
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:01:32
Speaker
Excited to have you here.
00:01:34
Speaker
I always look forward to Sunday nights when I get to drink a little whiskey, smoke a little cigar.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:38
Speaker
Have a little camera out of focus, you know.
00:01:42
Speaker
Solid.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, same.
Weather and Gardening in Colorado
00:01:44
Speaker
I'm here in Denver, Colorado.
00:01:47
Speaker
It's about six o'clock and it's, you know, the sun's going down.
00:01:50
Speaker
We've had these crazy rainstorms like lightning, thunder all last night.
00:01:54
Speaker
And everything was like, you know, just crazy wet.
00:02:00
Speaker
And it was perfect because I did a lot of planting today.
00:02:03
Speaker
In Colorado, Mother's Day is the day you plant your garden.
00:02:06
Speaker
So that's when I was planting.
00:02:06
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, I was planting tomatoes because of the altitude and high desert climate here.
00:02:13
Speaker
We always just, this is kind of the go-to day to start planting.
00:02:18
Speaker
So got some plants in the ground today.
00:02:21
Speaker
I bought some plants for my wife and mother today, but no planting yet.
00:02:26
Speaker
I dug a big hole last week to plant a tree, so I was off this weekend.
00:02:31
Speaker
Of course it was for a tree and not a body.
00:02:34
Speaker
I mean...
00:02:35
Speaker
What better place to hide a body?
00:02:36
Speaker
You know, I did think as I was digging this hole, like I was like, holy shit.
00:02:41
Speaker
Digging a hole to put a body in must be so difficult because just digging a hole big enough for a tree is pretty hard.
00:02:49
Speaker
Like two feet wide.
00:02:50
Speaker
Man, a six foot wide, six foot deep hole.
00:02:53
Speaker
How's it possible?
00:02:54
Speaker
Serious root ball.
00:02:55
Speaker
I mean, if you're getting a depending on how big the tree is, obviously, I mean, the root ball that they come in is pretty massive.
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, and you have to dig extra wide because you have to aerate all that soil around them so that they can get roots out.
Creation of the Blackened Cigar
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:03:12
Speaker
So we'll start by talking about the cigar we're smoking.
00:03:14
Speaker
Dennis is not smoking one of these because it's selling pretty well in his area, which is a good thing.
00:03:20
Speaker
Very popular, yeah.
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, that is the that's the blackened S84 shade to black, which, you know, just to give a little background on the master distiller for black and American whiskey.
00:03:32
Speaker
And it just seemed like a really good.
00:03:36
Speaker
This was kind of an idea that was born in COVID during COVID.
00:03:42
Speaker
So I'm good friends with Jonathan Drew of Drew Estate Cigars.
00:03:46
Speaker
I've known him for over 15 years.
00:03:48
Speaker
And during COVID, I was smoking a lot of cigars with James Hetfield, the lead singer for Metallica.
00:03:56
Speaker
He lives here in Colorado as well.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I just had the idea.
00:04:02
Speaker
And I was like, hey, man, what do you think about making a cigar?
00:04:05
Speaker
And he thought it was a cool idea.
00:04:07
Speaker
So I reached out to Jonathan Drew and I was like,
00:04:10
Speaker
Jeff Bullas, Ph.D.: Heffield thinks it's a great idea.
00:04:10
Speaker
I think it's a great idea.
00:04:12
Speaker
So they started sending us a bunch of different cigars, different types of tobacco that we could smoke and then keep a journal of what we're tasting, what we liked, what we didn't like.
Differences Between M81 and S84 Cigars
00:04:22
Speaker
This one's too spicy.
00:04:23
Speaker
This one tastes too green.
00:04:26
Speaker
So we narrowed it down to, well, the first edition, which I think Dennis is smoking is the M81.
00:04:33
Speaker
M81, you know, stands for, you know, the year Metallica was formed, 1981.
00:04:38
Speaker
And then the S84, we just launched like two months ago.
00:04:43
Speaker
We were at the PCA convention in Las Vegas, and that was our official launch of the S84 shade of Blackwich.
00:04:52
Speaker
um you know trip you and i are getting to enjoy right now and it's um so i mean you got you know it's it's uh the the m81's a triple maduro so you know you've got a um uh the mexican san andreas uh uh you know uh uh rap rap yeah rapper exactly and then the um sorry i was getting them confused between s84 and then the and the m81 and then we've got the um
00:05:18
Speaker
uh, Pennsylvania broadleaf.
00:05:19
Speaker
And then the, uh, uh, then we got Canadian, uh, not Canadian Connecticut, um, uh, shade wrapper, which is, uh, you know, a little lighter.
00:05:29
Speaker
So it's a little more, uh, it's, I kind of call it the breakfast cigar because it's, you know, you still get that dark filler, dark binder, but you get that lighter, uh, lighter wrapper.
00:05:38
Speaker
So it's, uh,
00:05:39
Speaker
But I love, you know, I love I love both of these for two very different reasons.
00:05:42
Speaker
I think that's what's what's great.
00:05:44
Speaker
Just like whiskey.
00:05:45
Speaker
There's so many types of whiskey, every whiskey for every kind of mood.
00:05:49
Speaker
And I think cigars are the same way.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:52
Speaker
And this it is a breakfast cigar to me.
00:05:57
Speaker
I really enjoy it with like a cup of coffee or.
00:05:59
Speaker
You know, just when I'm getting my day started.
00:06:02
Speaker
Red Fruit Loops.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:06:06
Speaker
Big bowl of Fruit Loops.
00:06:07
Speaker
Why not?
00:06:08
Speaker
Great pairing.
00:06:10
Speaker
But I will warn people that it may not be for everybody because it is a very intense Connecticut.
00:06:17
Speaker
I know that's what most people love, but there are some people who, you know, they really want that very classic Connecticut.
00:06:24
Speaker
This is the opposite direction.
00:06:25
Speaker
This is a Connecticut for people who...
00:06:28
Speaker
don't necessarily love that classic connecticut shade very mellow uh kind of flavor this is a
Rob's Journey in Whiskey
00:06:34
Speaker
real punchy connecticut which i love yeah same i i like um i like it when a cigar lets you know it's there just like a whiskey like i want to taste you know that's why i tend to charge higher proof whiskey um i like more intensity like darker tobacco in a cigar and you know and i think that
00:06:52
Speaker
This delivers in a much lighter sense, the S84 does.
00:06:55
Speaker
And then if you're going full steam ahead, that triple Maduro on the M81, it's the perfect amount of kicking you in the nuts.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:07:09
Speaker
I had a couple people tell me, man, that cigar is so strong.
00:07:13
Speaker
which is why I think the perfect companion is the Connecticut to offset for people who maybe the M81 is too strong for them.
00:07:22
Speaker
The S84 should be right up their alley.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:07:24
Speaker
I think that it just it's that next level of like bringing it bringing it down a little bit.
00:07:29
Speaker
I remember the first time we finally had the blend finalized on the on the M81.
00:07:35
Speaker
And I sat there with with Hetfield and some of his buddies up at up in the mountains up in near Vale.
00:07:41
Speaker
And, you know, we're probably at like eight thousand feet above sea level.
00:07:45
Speaker
And, you know, we're firing these things up and it was a it was a toro size and we were
00:07:51
Speaker
I was feeling a buzz.
00:07:52
Speaker
Like, you know, I was like high altitude and, and I was like, Ooh, this is hitting, this is hitting hard.
00:07:58
Speaker
And his buddies were doing the same thing.
00:07:59
Speaker
We're like, Oh, this is, this is no joke.
00:08:01
Speaker
This is, this is letting you know it's there, but it's so delicious.
00:08:04
Speaker
That's why, you know, it's like we, um, that one was named, uh, number seven, uh, in the top, um, I can't remember it.
00:08:12
Speaker
Well, cigar aficionado last year.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:15
Speaker
In the top 25, it was the number seven, um, which was, which was pretty awesome.
00:08:20
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:08:22
Speaker
It's a big honor.
00:08:23
Speaker
Congratulations.
00:08:24
Speaker
That's huge.
Military Service and Influence
00:08:25
Speaker
Thank you.
00:08:26
Speaker
And of course, as you mentioned, I failed to mention it when I introduced you somehow, but you are the master distiller and blender for black and whiskey, of course.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:35
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:36
Speaker
But you mentioned knowing John Drew and that just made like a little light go off in my head.
00:08:40
Speaker
The first time I ever had Stranahan was on Cigar Safari in Nicaragua.
00:08:45
Speaker
John brought out a bottle of Snowflake.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:49
Speaker
That must have been how you met him because I know he was, I mean, he still is a huge fan of Stranahan's.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:08:55
Speaker
Well, I met him at Stranahan's when I was the master distiller there.
00:08:59
Speaker
So I was at Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey for 12 years.
00:09:03
Speaker
Started there in 2006 on the bottling line.
00:09:08
Speaker
Back then we were doing volunteer bottling, so we just bring our friends in and run the bottling line.
00:09:14
Speaker
And, and I just, I was in love with, you know, distillation.
00:09:19
Speaker
I want to learn how to, how to, you know, I was, I was in music business before I had a great career in the music industry before I switched and jumped over into, into making whiskey.
00:09:28
Speaker
And, and I started, started out working the night shift, actually convinced the owner, Jess Graber to create a third shift, the 1am to 9am shift.
00:09:38
Speaker
And I worked that for four years straight.
00:09:40
Speaker
And, and doing that.
00:09:42
Speaker
That's gotta be rough.
00:09:43
Speaker
Chris Wacker, It was brutal I was I was working horses during the during the day my girlfriend my girlfriend at the time had a had a horse ranch north of boulder and so I had a 40 mile commute to work.
00:09:55
Speaker
Work the night shift 1 AM to 9 AM, 40 miles back, sleep for maybe three hours, then muck stalls and clean.
Life After the Army
00:10:04
Speaker
I didn't sleep much during those times.
00:10:06
Speaker
But obviously, I learned a lot.
00:10:08
Speaker
And getting back to Snowflake, I really kind of perfected with us.
00:10:15
Speaker
Not perfected, but I don't think you can ever perfect anything.
00:10:18
Speaker
You're always seeking the next best thing.
00:10:22
Speaker
I hope not because once you perfect something, you can't make it better, right?
00:10:25
Speaker
Like always be improving.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah, you always have to.
00:10:29
Speaker
And that's the way I – someone asked me once how to – how does one become a master distiller?
00:10:34
Speaker
And for me, it's being a master distiller is knowing that I know just enough to know that I don't know everything.
00:10:39
Speaker
And that I will – that I'll always keep learning.
00:10:42
Speaker
There's always something to learn.
00:10:43
Speaker
There's always something to learn.
00:10:45
Speaker
And with Snowflake, that was only a limited release at the distillery.
00:10:51
Speaker
I did all these different cask finishes with the single malt whiskey, and I would blend those cask finishes together, and it would be that specific release for that year.
00:10:58
Speaker
And people would camp out for days on end around the distillery until we would release the whiskey.
00:11:05
Speaker
And that was in December in Colorado.
00:11:07
Speaker
People were camped out on the sidewalk.
00:11:08
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:11:09
Speaker
you know, in order to buy just two bottles.
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:12
Speaker
I've seen the pictures.
00:11:13
Speaker
I've heard the stories and it's, it was like a rite of passage to get a bottle.
00:11:18
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:11:19
Speaker
And, uh,
00:11:21
Speaker
So JD, John Drew, when he came in, he was doing the tour.
00:11:25
Speaker
He was interested in getting into the spirits industry at the time.
00:11:27
Speaker
And he was coming through on the tour.
00:11:32
Speaker
And I saw his dad first.
00:11:34
Speaker
And if anybody knows John Drew, they know Gary.
00:11:37
Speaker
And Gary is a character.
00:11:38
Speaker
He looks like he's one of the Rolling Stones.
00:11:40
Speaker
He's just got that book to him.
00:11:42
Speaker
And I saw him and I, and I, you know, I, like I said, I was in the music biz for 10 years and I was like, that dude's a musician.
00:11:47
Speaker
And so I immediately looked up like, who's playing at Red Rocks tonight?
00:11:50
Speaker
And, you know, I was like, he's, he's gotta be like, you know, just like tooling around, um, playing Red Rocks tonight, but just, you know, checking out some distilleries.
00:11:57
Speaker
And, uh, so I went over and talked to him.
00:11:58
Speaker
I was just like, Hey man, how you doing?
00:12:00
Speaker
And, you know, just started asking him and he's like, I'm here with my son.
00:12:06
Speaker
And I said, oh, my name is Raman, Master Distilled.
00:12:08
Speaker
He goes, oh, he wants to meet you.
00:12:09
Speaker
And so that's it.
00:12:10
Speaker
So Gary was the one who introduced me to JD.
00:12:13
Speaker
And I mean, we just struck a great friendship like immediately.
00:12:19
Speaker
And we've been, you know, like I said, it's been 15 years that we've been friends.
00:12:23
Speaker
I've got a, I've had him in my sidecar.
00:12:25
Speaker
I've got a motorcycle with a sidecar.
00:12:27
Speaker
I've had him in the sidecar.
00:12:27
Speaker
That's great.
00:12:30
Speaker
I've been down to Nicaragua with him.
00:12:33
Speaker
And he's just such an incredibly creative and artistic dude, man.
00:12:41
Speaker
And just good people.
00:12:44
Speaker
Yeah, we know him fairly well.
00:12:46
Speaker
We've met him on many occasions.
00:12:48
Speaker
And one time, I'm trying to remember what event it was.
00:12:53
Speaker
There was some event that I went to where JD was.
00:12:56
Speaker
It might have been one of the barn smokers or something like that.
00:13:00
Speaker
And, you know, it's hard to spend much time with JD at one of those things.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yes, he is.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:06
Speaker
Everybody knows him.
00:13:07
Speaker
He remembers everybody's name.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:10
Speaker
I spent about an hour just sitting there talking to Gary.
00:13:13
Speaker
He's great.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:15
Speaker
It was a blast.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, Gary is awesome.
00:13:19
Speaker
His family's good.
00:13:21
Speaker
JD just had a, he's got a son now.
00:13:24
Speaker
So he's like proud Papa, which is just awesome to see.
00:13:28
Speaker
He's just got this vibrancy about him now that he's, you know, he was always vibrant, but now he's got this like Papa vibrancy.
00:13:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:37
Speaker
That's great, man.
00:13:39
Speaker
So yeah, it's been, it was pretty good, you know, getting to,
00:13:45
Speaker
And the fact that he busted out a snowflake down to Nick, you know, Nicaragua, cause I sent him, I brought down when I went down there, I brought six bottles with me.
00:13:54
Speaker
Um, so the fact that there was anything left, uh, is, was amazing to me that there's, you know, this was one, uh, we, we were with a group who it was my second or third time ever even meeting him.
00:14:06
Speaker
Um,
00:14:07
Speaker
But some of the other people in our group knew him very, very well.
00:14:10
Speaker
So I think that's why he brought it out.
00:14:13
Speaker
I'm trying to remember which one it was.
00:14:14
Speaker
I know it was in a blue bottle, but I don't remember whether it was the dark blue or the blue.
00:14:19
Speaker
It would have been a silver label.
00:14:22
Speaker
Oh, maybe the silver label then.
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's a silver label.
00:14:25
Speaker
If it was Snowflake, it was definitely a silver label, you know, diagonal silver label.
00:14:30
Speaker
Well, I always named them after we have 52 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado.
00:14:36
Speaker
So I was naming them after the peaks.
00:14:38
Speaker
I was like, okay, well, I got 52 versions of this that I can do.
00:14:41
Speaker
And then I'll start naming it after Colorado rivers or something.
00:14:44
Speaker
If I get 52.
00:14:46
Speaker
So it was a lot of fun.
00:14:48
Speaker
So it would have been named after a mountain.
00:14:51
Speaker
Whatever you had there.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:53
Speaker
I don't know what it was, but it was a great night with some great whiskey.
00:15:00
Speaker
Dennis, do you have a question?
00:15:01
Speaker
I feel like Rob and I are doing all the talking and you're Ed McMahon-ing a little bit.
00:15:06
Speaker
If you want to bring something up, get free to jump in.
00:15:10
Speaker
So I wanted to bring up Strana Hansel.
00:15:12
Speaker
You answered my question fantastically.
00:15:14
Speaker
I was very curious.
00:15:15
Speaker
And Tripp, you make a really great point.
00:15:17
Speaker
I also didn't make that connection until you said something between JD and that one bottle that we had, the only bottle that I've ever seen or touched or consumed.
00:15:26
Speaker
And that's the kind of special connection you can have with people without even realizing that in some sense, you know, your hands were on that bottle before the three of us ever met, even had a conversation.
00:15:36
Speaker
And here we are all these years later.
00:15:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:39
Speaker
Right.
00:15:40
Speaker
And here we are connecting on that old memory, which is great.
00:15:45
Speaker
I think that's what I love about whiskey.
00:15:48
Speaker
I had a quote that I said one year and somebody made it into a poster at Stranahan's.
00:15:53
Speaker
It used to be on the tour.
00:15:54
Speaker
I don't know if it's up there.
00:15:55
Speaker
I haven't been in there for a while.
00:15:56
Speaker
But it was, you know, whiskey is the original social media.
00:16:02
Speaker
Before there was social media, whiskey was that vehicle that brought that social aspect together.
00:16:08
Speaker
Food is always that as well, obviously, but if you're kind of taking it to the next level, it's about whiskey.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, whiskey is the one thing where you go into a bar and just sitting there by yourself making a drink, you meet somebody or having a drink.
00:16:23
Speaker
You meet somebody who's sitting by themselves next to you and suddenly you have a best friend.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yes.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:28
Speaker
Like, that's what can happen.
00:16:30
Speaker
And whiskey is part of that.
00:16:33
Speaker
Well, I think, you know, and I love all types of spirits.
00:16:37
Speaker
I think that's, you know, that's the beauty of exploration and discovery.
00:16:41
Speaker
But I think whiskey to me just there's something about it that's old world kind of connection.
00:16:48
Speaker
It's it.
00:16:50
Speaker
there's something that you're tasting history you know by by the time it got into your glass it there's so many so many things that have happened uh on a good scale for it to get to that point to even get into a bottle you know there's a ridiculous amount of work that gets into uh before it even gets into a bottle into your glass and then into your glass and then into that conversation you know and then a lifelong friendship with the guy sitting next to you so i i think it's uh it's a journey
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:17:19
Speaker
All right.
00:17:19
Speaker
So I wanted to talk a little bit before we like get into the pairing and stuff.
00:17:23
Speaker
I still want to talk a little bit about your background.
00:17:25
Speaker
So I know you come from a military background.
Whiskey as a Social Connector
00:17:29
Speaker
We were we talked a little bit in the green room about this, how some of our viewers probably know that we used to be we used to start every show with Welcome to the Show broadcast around the world on the Armed Forces Radio Network.
00:17:40
Speaker
uh first of all thank you for your service oh thank you thank you but second of all you said you have some stories about uh armed forces radio yeah so armed forces radio was um you know i was in the military uh from you know 92 to 95 so it was you know i was in the army uh 10th mountain division we were you know primarily skiing mountaineering troops we were known for being quick reactionary uh being able to be deployed very quickly
00:18:09
Speaker
And the winter of 92, I deployed to Somalia.
00:18:14
Speaker
And during, well, that was my first tour there.
00:18:17
Speaker
My second tour was the, what everyone knows is Black Hawk Down, which we call the Battle of Mogadishu.
00:18:24
Speaker
But there was a, the armed, the armed forces affiliated network.
00:18:27
Speaker
There were, there were two aspects of that.
00:18:30
Speaker
There was the radio station and then what you could get on TV.
00:18:33
Speaker
And we had this little,
00:18:35
Speaker
little black and white TV that we were watching the, the two shows that I remember.
00:18:41
Speaker
One was a 90210, which I couldn't stand.
00:18:44
Speaker
Wow.
00:18:45
Speaker
I was not a fan of 90210.
00:18:47
Speaker
I thought it was just, you know, just not my speed at all.
00:18:50
Speaker
I can't imagine that many army guys will be, but when it's all, it's on TV, maybe.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's all you had.
00:18:57
Speaker
And then the other one that I fell in love with and actually changed my life dramatically was Northern Exposure.
00:19:06
Speaker
Oh, nice.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, Northern exposure.
00:19:10
Speaker
And so, you know, the whole time I was in the army, I was just, you know, I was just like, I am, I am going to, I'm going to go to Oregon, I'm not Oregon, but I'm going to Alaska.
00:19:20
Speaker
I'm, I'm, I'm, as soon as I get out of the army, I'm going to Alaska.
00:19:23
Speaker
That's where I want to be.
00:19:25
Speaker
And it was, and I, I bought myself a 19, six, a 1967 Chevy school bus, half size, the short bus.
00:19:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:33
Speaker
I was the captain of the short bus.
00:19:35
Speaker
And, uh,
00:19:37
Speaker
That was, I bought that after my first tour in Somalia.
00:19:42
Speaker
And I left it in the barracks parking lot.
00:19:44
Speaker
And on my second tour, when I came back, I started gutting it.
00:19:47
Speaker
And, you know, I built it into a really awesome living space in there.
00:19:52
Speaker
And when I left the military, that's where I lived at it for a couple of years.
00:19:56
Speaker
I never did make it to Alaska in that thing.
00:19:58
Speaker
I ran out of money in Oregon.
00:20:00
Speaker
So I just stopped in Oregon.
00:20:01
Speaker
And that's where I stayed for a while.
00:20:04
Speaker
What part of Oregon were you in?
00:20:06
Speaker
Uh, I, I drove all the way to Lincoln city.
00:20:09
Speaker
So Lincoln city was the coast.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:11
Speaker
Um, and I was living there for a while working as a carpenter.
00:20:13
Speaker
Uh, that's where I learned how to surf.
00:20:15
Speaker
Um, not, not well, but I learned how to surf.
00:20:18
Speaker
Um, but the, the other thing that was in, uh, Somalia, the other affiliate network was the radio station.
00:20:27
Speaker
And there was a, there was a, uh, DJ that he kind of, he was kind of embodying, uh, Robin Williams, um,
00:20:35
Speaker
from Good Morning Vietnam.
00:20:38
Speaker
He had a show called Mayhem in Mogadishu.
00:20:41
Speaker
And it was Mayhem in Mogadishu!
00:20:45
Speaker
And that was always pretty incredible.
00:20:51
Speaker
One of the things I think that was probably an incredible memory for me was
00:20:55
Speaker
You know, I was part of the you know the we had the battle of Mogadishu and and it was such an intense firefight and such an intense, you know, there there was a helicopter pilot that we know a couple of helicopters caution night but one of the pilots was was captured by Somali warlords by the Somali.
00:21:14
Speaker
By by one of the warlords and.
00:21:17
Speaker
And one of the things that the at the time, one of the songs that we all loved was Rooster by Alice in Chains.
00:21:25
Speaker
That was just like our song.
00:21:26
Speaker
That was a song like, you know, you think about Vietnam.
00:21:28
Speaker
It's like, you know, paint it black by the Rolling Stones or, you know, there's always these, you know, we got Jimi Hendrix or The Doors, you know, for Vietnam.
00:21:38
Speaker
For us, it was it was.
00:21:40
Speaker
It was Rooster by by Alice in Chains and they the the remaining helicopters the next day, that next afternoon all went up and the guy, the DJ and I unfortunately can't remember his name.
00:21:53
Speaker
I'm sure we could look it up.
00:21:55
Speaker
The DJ for Mayhem and Mogadishu said, hey, this this is.
00:22:00
Speaker
Chief Warrant Officer's favorite song.
00:22:03
Speaker
We're going to play it to let him know that we know he's still alive and that he's still out there and that he's been captured and that we are looking for him.
00:22:11
Speaker
And they played Rooster on the loudspeakers as these helicopters, as the Blackhawks circled Mogadishu.
00:22:18
Speaker
And just remember the dust.
00:22:20
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:22:21
Speaker
That's crazy, man.
00:22:23
Speaker
Playing rooster to the streets of Mogadishu to let him know that we knew he was still alive, that we were coming to find him.
00:22:32
Speaker
What a way to wake up.
00:22:33
Speaker
I can't even imagine just the people that were living there and trying to hide from all the violence and action, everything going on, just hearing that song.
00:22:43
Speaker
Yeah, probably wild.
00:22:45
Speaker
I can't imagine.
00:22:46
Speaker
It's still like one of that song comes on.
00:22:47
Speaker
I get goosebumps.
00:22:48
Speaker
It's like it's just such an intense memory on a lot of levels.
00:22:52
Speaker
And obviously, you know, that was a and I've talked to one of the helicopter pilots who was who's part of that the Mogadishu mile who's who's become a friend of mine.
00:23:03
Speaker
And
00:23:04
Speaker
And he was and he, I, you know, I confirmed with him.
00:23:08
Speaker
I was like, okay, I know I saw this.
00:23:10
Speaker
I know I heard it.
00:23:11
Speaker
You know, like, was he's like, yeah, man, that's what we did.
00:23:13
Speaker
And I was like, it was, it was incredible.
00:23:16
Speaker
It was pretty incredible.
00:23:18
Speaker
I mean, years later, you always have that like feeling like, do I, am I really remembering this correctly?
00:23:23
Speaker
Well, I've been telling that for years.
00:23:25
Speaker
Yeah, but why wouldn't I not remember it that way?
00:23:28
Speaker
Or did I just hear the song that day and the helicopters were circling?
00:23:33
Speaker
And I was like, no, I was hearing it come out of the loudspeakers from the helicopters.
00:23:36
Speaker
And it was always that intense memory.
00:23:39
Speaker
And just a pretty, you know, so it goes back to that Army-affiliated network, Mayhem and Mogadishu.
00:23:47
Speaker
I'll have to look it up.
00:23:49
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:23:50
Speaker
Thanks for the story.
00:23:51
Speaker
Appreciate it.
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah, it was pretty fun.
00:23:54
Speaker
Steve Ludington in the comments says, I need that hat.
00:23:58
Speaker
I may be selling these at some point.
00:24:00
Speaker
I just kind of stuck the patch on there.
00:24:03
Speaker
I got a bunch of these patches made.
00:24:05
Speaker
I'm exploring that option.
00:24:09
Speaker
You don't want to know how many hours of work.
00:24:11
Speaker
I am not a graphic designer by any stretch of the imagination.
00:24:14
Speaker
It's hard.
00:24:15
Speaker
It's actually very hard.
00:24:18
Speaker
A lot of man hours went into designing this logo.
00:24:21
Speaker
Too many.
00:24:23
Speaker
How hard can it be?
00:24:23
Speaker
A piece of paper and a couple of crayons, right?
00:24:26
Speaker
I couldn't draw to save my life.
00:24:28
Speaker
If I tried to draw this, you wouldn't be able to tell what it was.
00:24:31
Speaker
No, dude, you did a killer job on that.
00:24:32
Speaker
Thank you.
00:24:37
Speaker
What were you going to say, Dennis?
00:24:38
Speaker
Because I know exactly what you're going to say about me not being able to draw.
00:24:44
Speaker
No, I wasn't going to make a comment about your crayon skills.
00:24:47
Speaker
No, about this guy.
00:24:49
Speaker
My Undercrown tattoo.
00:24:50
Speaker
Oh, I forgot.
00:24:51
Speaker
I think we, Tripp and I had a drawing contest where we, was it a rat?
00:24:56
Speaker
We had to draw a dirty rat.
00:24:59
Speaker
To get a tattoo.
00:25:00
Speaker
To get a tattoo down at Subculture.
00:25:05
Speaker
You guys got this one?
00:25:09
Speaker
So we had, I think, 15 guys or so.
00:25:12
Speaker
And they said, all right, who's willing to get a tattoo?
00:25:15
Speaker
Dennis and I, we had met.
00:25:17
Speaker
We had known each other for five days at this point.
00:25:19
Speaker
We were the only two that raised our hand.
00:25:21
Speaker
And he said, all right, both of you have two minutes to draw a dirty rat.
00:25:25
Speaker
And whoever has the better one gets a free tattoo.
00:25:29
Speaker
And I won.
00:25:31
Speaker
And then the following year, we were there on my birthday.
00:25:32
Speaker
The other guy had to give you the tattoo, right?
00:25:34
Speaker
No, thank God.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:25:38
Speaker
Jesse from Subculture Studios did it.
00:25:41
Speaker
And then the following year, we were there again, and it was my birthday.
00:25:45
Speaker
And the guys got me this because we raised a bunch of money and built a couple of houses in a couple blocks from the factory.
00:25:53
Speaker
And this is the El Brujito, which is the symbol of Esteli.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:57
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome, man.
00:25:59
Speaker
What a cool story.
00:26:00
Speaker
And that blue on the underground looks great.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah, it still pops, man.
00:26:03
Speaker
I still can't believe how good it looked because the blue and the yellow really shows even though I've had it for 10 years almost.
00:26:11
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:26:12
Speaker
Jesse did a snake plissken on my leg.
00:26:15
Speaker
Nice.
00:26:16
Speaker
Which took, you know, and this is Nicaragua.
00:26:18
Speaker
You've been to Nicaragua.
00:26:19
Speaker
You know it's humid as shit, man.
00:26:22
Speaker
It's humid.
00:26:23
Speaker
It's like I was 95 degrees or 100 degrees during the day, and I've got this giant thing on the side of my leg just oozing for the rest of the trip, just walking around, just leaking everywhere.
00:26:32
Speaker
And sweating into it.
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, sweating into the plastic thing they put on.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:39
Speaker
You know, it's funny.
00:26:40
Speaker
I, so during, during 2020, I had a, I had a really gnarly accident where I crushed my, my orbital socket and I've got three, three plates in here, had 77 stitches here.
00:26:52
Speaker
It was gnarly.
00:26:55
Speaker
And I was, I was sporting an eye patch for a while.
00:26:58
Speaker
Cause my eye was healing up.
00:26:59
Speaker
I couldn't, I couldn't open it for a long time.
00:27:01
Speaker
So I just, I just started rocking the black eye patch and, uh,
00:27:05
Speaker
And one of the artists who does artwork for Metallica drew me a hand drawing of Snake Plissken in a skeleton.
00:27:16
Speaker
And he put the date that I had my accident on his watch, you know, his time watch.
00:27:21
Speaker
That's cool.
00:27:22
Speaker
And it was...
00:27:24
Speaker
um and he sent that to me as a gift which was just super super nice of him and really a lot of fun but a lot of people are like dude you look like snake plissken or you know i was getting a lot of a lot of uh random random stuff and and the marketing she's like the eye patch looks great you need to keep that thing and i was like it's not an accessory like i literally can't see how that eye it's crushed uh
00:27:49
Speaker
Wow.
00:27:50
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:27:52
Speaker
Especially the gift part of that.
00:27:54
Speaker
The accident not so much.
00:27:56
Speaker
No, he was, he's a good guy.
00:27:57
Speaker
Squindo, if anybody looks up his work, he's been making artwork for Metallica for years.
00:28:03
Speaker
He does a lot of their stuff and really talented artists, really good dude.
00:28:06
Speaker
We hit it off of our mutual love of vintage bikes and motorcycles and, you know, just, you know, just general fuckery.
00:28:14
Speaker
Nice.
00:28:15
Speaker
And yet another thing that the three of us have in common is motorcycles.
00:28:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:21
Speaker
What's your motorcycle?
00:28:23
Speaker
What's your go-to?
00:28:26
Speaker
I moved to Florida from Oregon two years ago, and I sold my bike because I drove around Florida enough to know that I don't want to ride a bike when it's 95 degrees out and the sun's beating down and all the roads are straight.
00:28:42
Speaker
That just didn't interest me.
00:28:42
Speaker
So I sold my bike, which was an SV650.
00:28:45
Speaker
I really like...
00:28:47
Speaker
the cafe racer kind of style, high seat, high pegs, low bars.
00:28:52
Speaker
So I kind of got a modern bike and modified it to fit that style a little bit.
00:29:00
Speaker
And it had a V-twin, which can't beat that.
00:29:04
Speaker
I love those.
00:29:05
Speaker
I've got a I've got a 72 Moto Guzzi Eldorado used to be an LAPD cop bike.
00:29:11
Speaker
I got that years ago when I was cool, man.
00:29:13
Speaker
It was it's a fun bike.
00:29:15
Speaker
I've got it actually.
00:29:17
Speaker
I've got it torn down now because I'm doing we store it from the frame up.
00:29:22
Speaker
And and it's it's a took all the cop stuff off of it.
00:29:26
Speaker
I still have all of it.
00:29:27
Speaker
You know, like it was it was which is kind of fun.
00:29:29
Speaker
But I got that when I was on tour.
00:29:31
Speaker
I was the just first for half a summer.
00:29:35
Speaker
I was the tour manager for a country band called Lone Star.
00:29:40
Speaker
And and the sound guy I was looking for, like, a late 1960s BMW at the time because I just love the look and those things.
00:29:48
Speaker
And.
00:29:49
Speaker
Well, I don't have one of those, but I got the 72 Moto Guzzi.
00:29:52
Speaker
If you're interested in that, it's sitting in Nashville.
00:29:56
Speaker
And so I bought it sight unseen.
00:29:59
Speaker
He wanted 700 bucks for it at the time.
00:30:01
Speaker
And I talked to him into 500.
00:30:04
Speaker
Holy crap, man.
00:30:05
Speaker
What an investment.
00:30:07
Speaker
Oh, it was cool.
00:30:08
Speaker
And yes, I ended up going out to Nashville and picking up the bike out of his garage.
00:30:13
Speaker
And it was just...
00:30:16
Speaker
It's a fun bike.
00:30:17
Speaker
The other bike I've got is a Ural.
00:30:21
Speaker
Oh, that's the sidecar bike.
00:30:22
Speaker
I'm a big fan.
00:30:24
Speaker
Big, big fan, man.
00:30:25
Speaker
I mean, it's like driving a tractor a little bit, but it's a lot of fun.
00:30:28
Speaker
I mean, I've got a – I can engage shaft drive between the rear tire and the sidecar tire.
00:30:34
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:35
Speaker
I can do two-wheel drives.
00:30:37
Speaker
They're real fun.
00:30:38
Speaker
Yeah, Colorado snow.
00:30:39
Speaker
I've got key to grips, key to vest.
00:30:42
Speaker
So I can ride year-round.
00:30:44
Speaker
That's my bucket list bike.
00:30:46
Speaker
I grew up with my dad telling me stories when he was in the...
00:30:51
Speaker
in the Soviet army, all the time he spent riding those things around.
00:30:56
Speaker
And I think he hated it so much that he said he's never gonna get another bike again.
00:30:59
Speaker
And he never did after that.
00:31:02
Speaker
I could see why.
00:31:03
Speaker
I mean, it's not easy, but it's fun.
00:31:06
Speaker
Like I bought it originally so I could put my dog in the sidecar and he loved it.
00:31:11
Speaker
He was a bulldog boxer.
00:31:13
Speaker
So he'd just get those slobbering showls going.
00:31:15
Speaker
And yeah,
00:31:18
Speaker
And now, you know, we got my my girlfriend and I recently got another dog.
00:31:24
Speaker
She has she has a 14 year old Husky and we just got another dog.
00:31:27
Speaker
I'm going to start training with the doggles and put them in the sidecar.
00:31:30
Speaker
So we're just, you know, it's a lot of fun.
00:31:34
Speaker
It's great bike.
00:31:36
Speaker
All right.
00:31:37
Speaker
So we're not done getting to know you with like the getting to know you kind of questions, but I think it's time to start pairing here.
00:31:44
Speaker
I've been pairing the whole time, but I want to I want to get into what I'm drinking and learn a little bit about it.
00:31:52
Speaker
Excellent.
00:31:52
Speaker
So let's start with Dennis, because I know Dennis is drinking the flagship blackened.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, actually, let me let me pull the bottle up.
00:32:01
Speaker
Yeah, there we go.
00:32:01
Speaker
So everybody can see.
00:32:02
Speaker
I love this.
00:32:03
Speaker
This bottle is, I'm fine.
00:32:05
Speaker
I'm a Metallica fan, I have to say, right?
00:32:08
Speaker
You could put the word Metallica on an old sandwich and I'll buy it probably.
00:32:14
Speaker
I love it.
00:32:14
Speaker
But this is really exciting.
00:32:16
Speaker
And just from a branding standpoint, super clean, we always talk about what catches your eye.
00:32:21
Speaker
You walk into a store and you have 100 bottles or 100 cans of beer or whatever it is.
00:32:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:27
Speaker
What catches your eye?
00:32:28
Speaker
What gets you excited?
00:32:30
Speaker
And the person behind that idea, how does somebody sit down and say, hey, we're going to make it look exactly like this.
00:32:36
Speaker
This is how we're feeling and turn it into something really cool.
00:32:39
Speaker
So maybe you can tell us a little bit about how the project started, where it came from.
Blackened Whiskey Branding and Sonic Enhancement
00:32:45
Speaker
Yeah, so originally, I've been making whiskey for 17 years.
00:32:52
Speaker
The original collaboration was between Dave Pickerel, who is a legendary craft distiller, kind of the Johnny Appleseed of the distilling world.
00:33:03
Speaker
And he had his fingers in so many projects.
00:33:06
Speaker
He was a former master distiller for Maker's Mark, also Whistlepig, helped countless brands get started.
00:33:13
Speaker
And, you know, when Metallica came up with the idea that they wanted to create a whiskey, they knew that they didn't want to just go to a
00:33:22
Speaker
um you know like a someone that was already making whiskey and just slap a metallica label on something and say hey make a metallica line they wanted something they could own outright stand on its own and uh and they and they you know so initially they they created that initial blend of bourbon and rye which is what you're uh what you're drinking dennis um uh bourbon and rye cask finish in brandy casks
00:33:44
Speaker
Now, this is where we started to get into some innovation, which I absolutely love.
00:33:49
Speaker
When I was working at Stranding Hands, I knew everything from mashing from grain to bottle.
00:33:55
Speaker
We were getting our grain, our malted barley.
00:33:57
Speaker
We were milling it.
00:33:59
Speaker
We were sparging it.
00:34:01
Speaker
We were doing mashing, then fermentation, closed fermentation, distillation, double distillation, then
00:34:09
Speaker
you know, then barrel aging, you know, there's all those nuances.
00:34:12
Speaker
But when we started talking about the innovation that we're doing with black and whiskey, this is where
00:34:18
Speaker
This is where we really turned kind of the whiskey world on its head, I think, is that we started to apply what we call black noise.
00:34:26
Speaker
And black noise is our sonic enhancement process where we are playing low frequency music to the barrels while it's cask finishing and the brandy casks.
00:34:35
Speaker
Now, that low frequency, if you think about any time you've been to a concert and you walk in front of that wall of speakers, you're getting that friction, that
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah, that movement in your chest, almost in the pit of your stomach, that vibration.
00:34:49
Speaker
That's exactly what we're replicating inside the barrel.
00:34:51
Speaker
So natural aging, if you are aging whiskey, you have a number three char on the inside of a white American oak barrel.
00:35:00
Speaker
The pores of the wood during the heat of the day are going to open up.
00:35:03
Speaker
And that spirit is going to interact with the wood.
00:35:05
Speaker
It's going to pick up all the natural sugars and flavors.
00:35:09
Speaker
So that char, when you char the inside of a barrel, that creates a caramelized band of sugar and flavor, all those natural things.
00:35:17
Speaker
You're looking for nine different flavor profiles that are extracted from the barrel.
00:35:22
Speaker
That's called the oak aroma panel.
00:35:25
Speaker
Those nine flavor profiles are all driven from the barrel.
00:35:28
Speaker
So when the pores of the wood are open during the heat of the day, the spirit interacts with the wood.
00:35:33
Speaker
It picks up all that flavor, picks up 100% of the color.
00:35:36
Speaker
All that color that you see in the whiskey, and the reason older whiskey looks darker is because that's minuscule amounts of wood particulate.
00:35:44
Speaker
So that wood particulate is all your color in the whiskey, but you're also picking up all that flavor.
00:35:48
Speaker
And then when it's cold at night, it's expressing the whiskey back into the barrel.
00:35:52
Speaker
So natural, almost like a natural breathing rhythm with aging.
00:35:57
Speaker
Now with sonic enhancement, because you're creating vibration and you've got, you know, you've got that, that, that, you know, that, that sound wave there.
00:36:06
Speaker
That's, that's, you know, that's a physical representation of peaks and valleys.
00:36:11
Speaker
Right.
00:36:11
Speaker
So that's movement we're seeing that's physical movement so that what that's doing is interacting with the wood at a much rapid pace through vibration.
00:36:19
Speaker
And so we did we did some science on that initially because we wanted to know what was going on inside the barrel.
00:36:25
Speaker
So we took three barrels of whiskey, all the same age, same batch of whiskey.
00:36:29
Speaker
We took two barrels and we put them in a room with the sonic enhancement.
00:36:32
Speaker
We worked with Meyer Sound, who's the sound company that creates that wall of sound for Metallica.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:38
Speaker
And they helped fine tune down the frequency that's going to give it the proper vibration to get that motion.
00:36:44
Speaker
And that's exactly what we did.
00:36:45
Speaker
So that over the course of 75 days, we had those two barrels that we had sonic enhancement applied to it.
00:36:51
Speaker
And then the one barrel that was not.
00:36:53
Speaker
And we pulled, you know, we'd taken samples in the very beginning from all three barrels.
00:36:57
Speaker
So we had a control sample.
00:36:59
Speaker
We knew where we were starting.
00:37:00
Speaker
And then from there, every week, taking another sample, another sample, sending it out to the lab.
00:37:04
Speaker
And at the end of that 75 days, we're able to see what changes were happening in the barrels that had the black noise sonic enhancement.
00:37:12
Speaker
And that sonic enhancement, every single one of those nine
00:37:16
Speaker
flavor profile markers were elevated in our Black Noise sonic enhanced barrels, which showed us that we were able to prove that we were able to make a unique change in the whiskey.
00:37:28
Speaker
Now, we're not claiming that we're advanced aging.
00:37:32
Speaker
I'm working on that.
00:37:33
Speaker
I'm working on new make spirit, fresh spirit in the barrel.
00:37:39
Speaker
And keeping sonic enhancement constantly 24 hours a day.
00:37:42
Speaker
And then the other barrel that has no sonic enhancement.
00:37:45
Speaker
I want to see at the end of one year if this has elements of a two year instead of a one year.
00:37:52
Speaker
And then over time to see if that gap is starting to widen and there's a margin there where we're showing, hey, we can advance age with sound.
00:38:00
Speaker
And that's, that's my goal.
00:38:02
Speaker
That's not what we claim right now.
00:38:03
Speaker
We claim sonic enhancement because it is adding an enhancement to an already aged whiskey.
00:38:08
Speaker
But, uh, I'm, I, I have, I have a loftier goals.
00:38:11
Speaker
The mad scientist in me is just going, that's amazing.
00:38:14
Speaker
You answered about three of my questions during that.
00:38:16
Speaker
I same.
00:38:18
Speaker
I love the innovation.
00:38:19
Speaker
I love the fact that this is, you mentioned old world earlier.
00:38:23
Speaker
A lot of the things don't change.
00:38:26
Speaker
You're taking something raw and you are doing some alchemy to it in a sense.
00:38:31
Speaker
You're manipulating a raw material in some way to get something else out of it.
00:38:34
Speaker
And that's a process that's as old as time.
00:38:37
Speaker
And you're taking it and you're innovating in a really cool way.
00:38:40
Speaker
And for me, that's really exciting because you'll see people say, oh, well, we added a different kind of grain or we added a, what's the hybrid, the rye and the wheat hybrid?
00:38:50
Speaker
Try it, tetra kale?
00:38:56
Speaker
It was, I think, developed in Scotland in 1970 or something like that in a lab.
00:39:01
Speaker
But people are making whiskeys out of that stuff.
00:39:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's so many different grains.
00:39:06
Speaker
There's people out there making it out of quinoa.
00:39:10
Speaker
I don't even like having quinoa in a salad, but I think that anything that has a fermentable sugar that you can extract flavor from,
00:39:20
Speaker
You know, that's, you know, that's why you see vodka made out of beets and, you know, anything that's got a dense amount of sugar that you can, you can turn into something you can ferment.
00:39:28
Speaker
You know, there's, there's countless possibilities.
00:39:31
Speaker
And then you can start blending those whiskeys or blending profiles, change your yeast profile, and you're going to get a different flavor.
00:39:37
Speaker
That's why beer, you know, beer has so many different kinds of, of yeast, you know, so you can, you know, you're going to get a different flavor profile out of it.
00:39:46
Speaker
I think, I think it's just fascinating what you would, what you can do with all that.
00:39:50
Speaker
You know, so kind of going, you know, going back to that history, you know, so Dave, Dave passed away only three months after the brand launched.
00:39:59
Speaker
And I was actually at the event that he passed away at it was at whiskey fest, San Francisco.
00:40:04
Speaker
And you know, it was a huge blow to our industry.
00:40:05
Speaker
That's, that's a, that's a big thing.
00:40:08
Speaker
It's a big blow.
00:40:10
Speaker
And, you know, we held a moment of silence for him before we opened the doors and, you know, Whiskey Fest and and and I happen to have in my hand at the time I had a Mezcal because I love Mezcal.
00:40:19
Speaker
I'm a big Mezcal fan.
00:40:20
Speaker
I love smoke.
00:40:21
Speaker
Us too.
00:40:22
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:40:23
Speaker
So I, you know, I'll drink the hell out of Mezcal and.
00:40:28
Speaker
And about a month later, I ran into the director of sales and just went over and gave him my condolences.
00:40:38
Speaker
I said, Dave's a friend.
00:40:39
Speaker
I'm really sorry about your loss.
00:40:40
Speaker
And he said, look, I know this may seem sudden, but we love what you're doing at Stranding Hands.
00:40:46
Speaker
Would you consider coming over?
00:40:48
Speaker
He said, you got your rock and roll background.
00:40:49
Speaker
To me, it seems like it'd be the perfect fit.
00:40:51
Speaker
Would you consider being the master distiller for Blackened?
00:40:55
Speaker
And I said, yeah, let me, you know, hit me up.
00:40:58
Speaker
And I actually was in Oaxaca, Mexico, touring some Polenques down there when I got the call to come to do my first interview.
00:41:05
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:41:07
Speaker
So it was kind of a full circle.
00:41:09
Speaker
And so I've had a lot of chance to do a lot of innovation since then.
00:41:12
Speaker
And, you know, I did shift.
00:41:14
Speaker
I did change the recipe on the flagship, adjusted some things.
00:41:19
Speaker
There were five components at the time, which were a little...
00:41:24
Speaker
It was difficult to continue to get all five of those components.
00:41:27
Speaker
So I really, I knew I wanted to narrow it down and create something that was always going to complement the original recipe, but to move forward in the growth of the brand.
00:41:38
Speaker
That kind of actually leads me into one of my other questions, which is about how similar cigar making is to whiskey making in the fact that you're blending a product that is supposed to be consistent all the time.
00:41:51
Speaker
But you're dealing with nature.
00:41:52
Speaker
Like, oh, yeah, the aging of whiskey, as anybody who's ever had a couple of single barrels knows, you can have whiskeys that have been next to each other for the same amount of time in similar barrels, same batch, and they can taste different.
00:42:07
Speaker
And, you know, multiply that by the size of a rickhouse.
00:42:11
Speaker
And you've got a lot of variations.
00:42:14
Speaker
You know, if I'm doing a batch at 5,000 gallons, all those barrels, you've got to blend in and, you know, there's always consistency.
00:42:21
Speaker
So what I'll do is I'll take a control sample from the last batch.
00:42:25
Speaker
And as, you know, as we're putting the blend together for the next one, tasting it against that to make sure that the quality and consistency is the same.
00:42:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:33
Speaker
You know, and that's part of the artistry of blending or continuing to maintain a blend.
00:42:39
Speaker
And so I think- We call that maintenance blending in the cigar business.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:43
Speaker
Sure.
00:42:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah, it was.
00:42:45
Speaker
Whiskey's the same, but that's the term it's used.
00:42:48
Speaker
And to your point with tobacco, I mean, you're dealing with the elements, you're dealing just like you would with grain.
00:42:53
Speaker
If you're growing two row barley over five row barley, you know, that it's two row barley, you're going to get bigger, bigger husks because you only have two row in the same area that, you know, a five row would just, you know, be dense and smaller husks.
00:43:08
Speaker
So you're going to get a lot more, a lot more fermentable sugars, starches out of out of a two row.
00:43:13
Speaker
You know, with with with cigars, it's the same way you've got to you've got to worry about the elements.
00:43:17
Speaker
You've got to worry about pesticides, pests, insects.
00:43:21
Speaker
You've got to worry about then you then you got to ferment.
00:43:23
Speaker
You got to you got to throw all those things into fermentation.
00:43:26
Speaker
Those leaves have got to be perfect.
00:43:28
Speaker
You know, just like, you know, the amount of time it takes to get to a final product.
00:43:33
Speaker
is an incredible amount of work and luck of the elements for one.
00:43:38
Speaker
And that's where there's a lot of skill sets that are brought to the table.
00:43:43
Speaker
The guys are out there farming those fields and being the caretakers of those fields, and then getting into the fermentation and caretaking, making sure that you have the right, that you're not
00:43:54
Speaker
you know, getting everything moldy.
00:43:55
Speaker
And, you know, like there's, you know, there's, there's, there's just ways, there's so many elements that I, that I feel are simple.
00:44:01
Speaker
And then just like blending, you're blending this type of tobacco with that tobacco.
00:44:04
Speaker
And that wrapper is going to taste different with, with, with that filler and that binder.
00:44:09
Speaker
It's pretty fascinating how the two worlds are very, very similar.
00:44:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:14
Speaker
I see a lot of parallels between the two.
00:44:18
Speaker
And also, actually, that makes – where did my video go?
00:44:22
Speaker
There it is.
00:44:23
Speaker
I don't know what just happened.
00:44:26
Speaker
Where was I?
00:44:27
Speaker
Oh, I was going to say the movie business is another thing that people talk about in the same way, which is that so many things have to go right to get a usable end product.
00:44:36
Speaker
Like every single step of the process has to happen correctly, and the person has to be doing their job, and they have to be having a good day to end up with a good product at the
Whiskey Making as an Art Form
00:44:44
Speaker
end.
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah, and a lot of times you have to kill your darlings, as they say.
00:44:49
Speaker
There might be something, I love this scene so much, but it doesn't support the story.
00:44:53
Speaker
So you've got to trash something that you thought was incredibly beautiful, but just doesn't fit.
00:45:01
Speaker
and how a story will change as you're filming and as the actors you're working with who are the ingredients and how they're playing out for each other just might change the entire direction of the direction they wanted to go.
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:17
Speaker
i love filmmaking that was one of my uh passions was was was filmmaking and um you know that's why i was in the music industry my passion was into music and then into film worked in a few few films here and there and and uh you know when i was doing
00:45:34
Speaker
you know, when we were doing acting, it was, it was during, it was a much harder time.
00:45:37
Speaker
You had to film with film and you had to film with sound separately and you had to sync the two.
00:45:44
Speaker
And, you know, so there was a, you know, one of the, one of the show, we created this show here in Denver.
00:45:50
Speaker
You know, this is before YouTube, before you could just, you know, throw anything out there.
00:45:55
Speaker
You had to, we had to go through public access TV and we had a, we had a TV show called Hog Butler Presents.
00:46:02
Speaker
And I was the host of a TV show called Insult My Intelligence.
00:46:07
Speaker
And it was a blast.
00:46:09
Speaker
I had this big aluminum foil bouffant that we molded.
00:46:14
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:46:16
Speaker
And we spray painted black so it had all this depth to it.
00:46:19
Speaker
Come in and insult my intelligence.
00:46:24
Speaker
We'd have guests on there like Cthulhu, Lord of Darkness.
00:46:26
Speaker
And we had a giant blow up penis with a hat on it one time that was a guest.
00:46:33
Speaker
It was, it was, it was a lot
Filmmaking Experiences
00:46:35
Speaker
of fun.
00:46:35
Speaker
You know, it was our, it was like, it was a good time, but you know, we had, we had to do real time editing in, in at, at, at the PBS studio.
00:46:44
Speaker
That's, you know, that's how, you know, how you were doing things.
00:46:47
Speaker
Now you can do it on your computer.
00:46:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:48
Speaker
Now you do it on your phone and your computer.
00:46:50
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:46:51
Speaker
So yeah, it's a, it's pretty fun, but yeah, it's changed like that.
00:46:57
Speaker
Right.
00:46:58
Speaker
Well, and like, you know, what you're talking about, Tripp, is artistry.
00:47:00
Speaker
You know, everything is an art form.
00:47:02
Speaker
I look at making whiskey and blending whiskey as an art form.
00:47:05
Speaker
You know, the same with cigars, the same with music.
00:47:09
Speaker
You know, if they had changed one rift or they left one thing out, it wouldn't be the same song at all.
00:47:15
Speaker
You know, and I think that's what's incredible.
00:47:18
Speaker
You know, like Metallica is such an incredible live performance band, but they're also incredible studio musicians.
00:47:26
Speaker
You know, they do a lot of layering to get all the effects that they want to get to that place and point of the vision that they had.
00:47:33
Speaker
You know, I love that stuff.
00:47:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's so cool.
Metallica's Artistry in Music
00:47:36
Speaker
A lot of people don't realize that about Metallica either.
00:47:38
Speaker
It's strange.
00:47:39
Speaker
They've been around for so long.
00:47:41
Speaker
Fans that I grew up with Metallica, a lot of other people grew up with Metallica.
00:47:45
Speaker
They go, yeah, that's really cool.
00:47:46
Speaker
The album sounds great.
00:47:47
Speaker
And they don't realize that album took so many hours of not just playing the riffs,
00:47:51
Speaker
Like, you know, you can I learn to play guitar and I a lot of riffs I try to play and they all suck.
00:47:56
Speaker
They all sounded.
00:47:57
Speaker
This doesn't sound like Metallica.
00:47:58
Speaker
It's the same.
00:47:59
Speaker
I'm playing the notes.
00:48:00
Speaker
Why doesn't it sound like Metallica?
00:48:01
Speaker
Well, it's because all that artistry that goes into it to make it really special and make it exactly what it is.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah, they've layered it.
00:48:08
Speaker
You know, they've layered it in there.
00:48:09
Speaker
And then, you know, doing a live show, you know, they've got to do that live.
00:48:12
Speaker
They've got to run around performing that live.
00:48:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:16
Speaker
It's impressive.
00:48:17
Speaker
It's an impressive thing.
00:48:18
Speaker
I've spent a lot of time around different members of the band at different times, but I've spent a lot of really great time with Rob Trujillo.
00:48:28
Speaker
And Rob Trujillo, I'm a huge, I love his history.
00:48:33
Speaker
He came from infectious grooves too.
00:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:48:35
Speaker
Suicidal tendencies.
00:48:36
Speaker
And then he played for Ozzy.
00:48:39
Speaker
And he was telling me he'll be playing something and he'll write down at the top of the sheet, oh, this is for Ozzy.
00:48:48
Speaker
Or he wrote this down.
00:48:49
Speaker
He's like, this is Stone Temple Pilots.
00:48:53
Speaker
Or he'll write down what band he thinks that rift should be.
00:48:59
Speaker
And so he'll flip through and just be like, oh, yeah, pull this out.
00:49:02
Speaker
I'm like, oh, I got this.
00:49:03
Speaker
ozzy kind of sound and riff that we can play that's cool over here and i think that's again you're always creating something and then and with those guys they're always got something like you know spinning around in their head that that they're writing down or they're playing and just recording it wow so it's it's pretty fun yeah that's awesome uh all right so just to update everybody on what i'm drinking uh this is essentially the same whiskey right this is a cask strength
00:49:32
Speaker
of Blackened, but
00:49:33
Speaker
I mean, this is essentially the same, but cask strength, right?
00:49:36
Speaker
Am I right
Understanding Cask Strength Whiskey
00:49:37
Speaker
on that?
00:49:37
Speaker
Correct.
00:49:38
Speaker
Yep, yep, exactly.
00:49:39
Speaker
So cask strength, you know, just for anybody out there, is the proof that the whiskey comes out of the barrel.
00:49:44
Speaker
So once I've taken all those barrels and blended it together, whatever that final proof is, that's the cask strength proof.
00:49:52
Speaker
So, you know, that's what you're going to get.
00:49:56
Speaker
What's the proof on that one, Tripp?
00:49:58
Speaker
This is batch number 121, and it is 114.73 proof.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah, so a higher proof, you're not chill filtering.
00:50:08
Speaker
So you're keeping all the viscosity in there.
00:50:09
Speaker
You're getting that mouthfeel.
00:50:11
Speaker
And also the flavor of the whiskey is going to attach to those aminos, basically the fatty acids in the whiskey.
00:50:20
Speaker
And the higher the proof, you're going to get a lot more flavor.
00:50:22
Speaker
So the way I always enjoy a high proof whiskey like that is adding just a little, sipping it a couple of times, let your mouth acclimate and then a little drop of water open up the whole thing, let it bloom.
00:50:32
Speaker
And, and then you're, you're, you're going to be able to taste it with a little less heat.
00:50:37
Speaker
And, you know, and part of, I think a great whiskey, enjoying a great whiskey is, is, is nosing at first too.
00:50:44
Speaker
So when you're, you know, so you're, you know, keep your lips slightly parted, breathing through your nose, your mouth at the same time.
00:50:49
Speaker
And you're getting all those incredible nuances of the whiskey before you even take a sip of it.
00:50:55
Speaker
You know, it's already going to lead you down a path of like, you know, your, your old factory is tied to your, your memories and your memories of,
00:51:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:51:02
Speaker
You know, so whatever, wherever you grew up, whatever, you know, your environment was, you know, I think I think it's important that, you know, you know, to remember, you know, like everybody's grown up in different, you know, or they they their their grandma cooked, you know, a certain dish that only she cooked.
00:51:18
Speaker
Right.
00:51:18
Speaker
And you're going to like, oh, that reminds me of, you know, that, you know,
00:51:22
Speaker
My grandma was from Ohio and she she always made these things called Buckeyes, which is like basically peanut butter covered in chocolate.
00:51:30
Speaker
And and those things are so delicious.
00:51:33
Speaker
You know, so anything you these flavors that you're always associating with memory.
00:51:37
Speaker
So you get that from your old factory and then tie that into your flavor profile, what you're drinking.
00:51:42
Speaker
Let me let me talk a lot about that on the show, actually.
00:51:45
Speaker
uh i've never heard of a buckeye actually well so my mom made them she called them martha washington's they didn't have the the you didn't see that little circle of uh peanut butter like you do with a buckeye it was just chocolate uh yeah did she use wax yes what yes yeah that always weirded me out but uh you don't get the chocolate the right consistency without putting paraffin wax in it
00:52:10
Speaker
Yeah, so she used it.
00:52:12
Speaker
It's going to look shiny.
00:52:14
Speaker
The Buckeye is going to look shiny.
00:52:15
Speaker
It has a little bit of the wax paraffin in there, which is edible.
00:52:18
Speaker
And it keeps the chocolate from just melting into goo.
00:52:22
Speaker
Yes.
00:52:24
Speaker
As it's sitting out in a bowl for everybody to eat at Thanksgiving or whatever.
00:52:28
Speaker
I got to check some of those out.
00:52:29
Speaker
I got to find some of those.
00:52:30
Speaker
And to your point earlier, I was really, I was thinking about this and I realized that, yeah, I really, a lot of the things that I drink, I'm a big fan of mezcal.
00:52:41
Speaker
Both Tripp and I are huge fans of mezcal as well.
00:52:44
Speaker
And that process of nosing it before is you're really preloading your palate.
00:52:48
Speaker
You're getting yourself...
00:52:50
Speaker
ready for what you're about to consume and try.
00:52:53
Speaker
And we always talk about how it's so, it's so subjective and so personal in that way, where it reminds you of a time and a place.
00:52:59
Speaker
Same thing with cigars.
00:53:01
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:53:01
Speaker
It's that like, I remember, you know, that time I was traveling somewhere and it, it, it just, it's that perfect.
00:53:06
Speaker
I smelled that taco stand from the bus.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:53:11
Speaker
And this reminds me of that taco stand.
00:53:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:13
Speaker
That kind of thing.
00:53:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:15
Speaker
And it is pretty incredible where, you know, where that can lead you.
00:53:18
Speaker
And, and, and again, with whiskey, you're not only your, your finished product, you're using
Impact of Local Water on Whiskey Flavor
00:53:24
Speaker
local water.
00:53:25
Speaker
So Kentucky, Tennessee, it's water running over limestone, Colorado, it's running off, you know, running, coming out of the Rocky mountains.
00:53:32
Speaker
It's all that, that snow melt.
00:53:35
Speaker
It's always about your, your sources and your, your ingredients.
00:53:39
Speaker
for your final flavor profile.
00:53:41
Speaker
I mean, look at Scotch.
00:53:42
Speaker
I mean, there's so many, you know, you got Highlands, Lowlands, Speyside, you know, whether it's super peaty because the water's running through a peat bog before it even gets to the distillery or, you know, or it's, you get, you're getting, you know, fresher, cleaner water that doesn't have the peat and a little, little leaning more into the profile of the barley.
00:54:02
Speaker
I think that's what's beautiful about like Scotch whiskey is the delicate notes because they're using secondary cask
00:54:08
Speaker
You know, age and and it takes a lot longer to age.
00:54:11
Speaker
You know, that's why that's why when people say, oh, what's you know, how old is the whiskey?
00:54:17
Speaker
It's it's relative because, you know, in the United States where we're aging a brand new white American oak first use.
00:54:23
Speaker
So just like.
00:54:25
Speaker
Yeah, it gets so much more influence from that wood.
00:54:28
Speaker
In those first, typically like four-ish years, four to seven, right?
00:54:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:32
Speaker
And that's, yeah, that's a perfect age.
00:54:34
Speaker
So for me, it's like, you know, like equated to like a cup of tea.
00:54:38
Speaker
You put a bag of tea in the hot water and you're going to get all that color, caffeine, flavor.
00:54:43
Speaker
If you took that same...
00:54:44
Speaker
bag of tea dried it out and put it into another cup of hot water it's going to be weaker in color weaker in flavor um you're still going to get something out of it but it's going to be a little bit different so i think with whiskey uh and a secondary use that's why those delicate notes of making scotch um are it's really the reliant on that second use to to keep it a little more delicate whereas you know american whiskey we like to just dive into like full depth of intense flavor you know yeah we like bold
00:55:14
Speaker
Yes, yes, we do.
00:55:16
Speaker
I wanted to circle back to the, what is it, the black sound?
00:55:23
Speaker
Black noise.
00:55:24
Speaker
Black noise.
00:55:27
Speaker
Have you ever thought about doing an unplugged series where you don't do the process?
00:55:33
Speaker
Because I always love A-B testing, stuff like that.
00:55:37
Speaker
So I would be very curious just what it would be like without the black noise.
00:55:41
Speaker
But I don't think there's much of a market for that.
00:55:44
Speaker
No, you're still going to get this.
00:55:45
Speaker
You know, at that point, it's about the blend of the whiskey.
00:55:49
Speaker
It's still going to be delicious.
00:55:50
Speaker
It's still going to be great.
00:55:52
Speaker
You're just turning the volume down a little bit.
00:55:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:55:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly it.
00:55:57
Speaker
So you're still going to get a great whiskey, but I think you're adding that extra element of the black noise.
Curating Black Noise Playlists
00:56:04
Speaker
know and we get asked a lot you know do you play anything other than metallica music to it and we we don't because metallica owns our discography so we can actually publish the playlist of the of the you know the the metallica playlist that was used to sonically enhance the whiskey that you're currently enjoying so we've we've we've leaned into that um i've been able to pick some of the playlists which was a lot of fun that's cool i i got um
00:56:30
Speaker
A really big honor for me was the band asked me to select 12 Metallica songs and send them off to Lars.
00:56:40
Speaker
And Lars was going to curate them down to six songs.
00:56:43
Speaker
And we were going to release a one vinyl record
00:56:46
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:56:47
Speaker
Of that bottle.
00:56:48
Speaker
But Lars liked every single song that I picked.
00:56:50
Speaker
Every single one.
00:56:51
Speaker
Every club.
00:56:52
Speaker
We released a two-record vinyl box set.
00:56:55
Speaker
And they're all songs I picked, and I was able to dedicate them to different people in my life.
00:57:00
Speaker
I dedicated a song to my army buddies.
00:57:05
Speaker
We were listening to Injustice for All in Mogadishu, along with Alice in Chains.
00:57:11
Speaker
But we were...
00:57:13
Speaker
And I was able to dedicate it to my family and to my metalhead friends from high school.
00:57:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's so cool.
00:57:22
Speaker
It was a lot of fun.
00:57:23
Speaker
And I was like, well, technically, I got to make a record with Metallica.
00:57:28
Speaker
Kind of.
00:57:29
Speaker
I mean, you got closer than most people.
00:57:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:31
Speaker
So I'll lean into it.
00:57:33
Speaker
But it was a lot of fun.
00:57:34
Speaker
And again, just using the Metallica songs.
00:57:37
Speaker
And one of the things that occurred to me was I did a lot of live tracks, live recordings.
00:57:43
Speaker
Because if we're looking at those sound waves in there and
00:57:48
Speaker
those sound waves are representing the sound of the music that they're playing.
00:57:53
Speaker
Well, the voices of the fans as they're just screaming, cheering and everything, that's part of it too.
00:58:00
Speaker
Those are depths of peaks and valleys in there.
00:58:02
Speaker
So it's not just Metallica in that whiskey.
00:58:06
Speaker
It's also the voices of everybody who was at that live show for that song.
00:58:11
Speaker
Once I had that, I was like, ooh, this is going to be fun.
00:58:13
Speaker
I'm going to have to look that up because I want to know what your 12 songs were.
00:58:17
Speaker
I wonder if I'm going to look.
00:58:18
Speaker
Yeah, I need to get added to my vinyl collection, actually.
00:58:22
Speaker
Yeah, I've got the vinyl out in the other room.
00:58:26
Speaker
I didn't even think to bring it out here, but it's a picture disc.
00:58:30
Speaker
So they got, you know, pictures of myself and the band, different pictures from the studio, different elements of the black noise.
00:58:39
Speaker
So it was a really, really, really cool and, like, you know,
00:58:45
Speaker
honoring and humbling experience.
00:58:47
Speaker
Like I just, I was pretty, pretty stoked about that.
00:58:51
Speaker
Oh, damn.
00:58:52
Speaker
That's a, that is nice.
00:58:54
Speaker
Holy crap.
00:58:55
Speaker
That's, that's really good looking.
00:58:57
Speaker
Oh, you got it now.
00:59:00
Speaker
I found a picture of it.
00:59:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:01
Speaker
So the box set had a, it was batch 100.
00:59:04
Speaker
So you had a bottle, a bottle.
00:59:06
Speaker
We had a zine in there just like you used to have back in the, you know, the eighties and nineties, you know, they had the Metallica zine, which is where all the dedications were.
00:59:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:13
Speaker
We had some recipes in there, worked with bad birdie out of, she's a incredible bartender out of LA.
00:59:20
Speaker
and a mixologist.
00:59:22
Speaker
And I think just how fun it was to put that thing together.
00:59:26
Speaker
There was a sticker in there, a guitar pick.
00:59:29
Speaker
Yeah, it was pretty exciting.
00:59:32
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds incredible.
00:59:34
Speaker
I'm looking at it.
00:59:34
Speaker
I might have to pick it up.
00:59:36
Speaker
Oh, I mean, I'm amazed if there's any still out there.
00:59:40
Speaker
I think the only place that actually probably still has a place called Spirited Gifts, if that's a website you're on.
00:59:47
Speaker
No, this is a bourbon liquor store.
00:59:50
Speaker
Oh, cool.
00:59:51
Speaker
Oh, so it's out there.
00:59:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:53
Speaker
I mean, there was, there's, there was a, it was a limited release, so it's, it's a limited edition.
00:59:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:59
Speaker
There's only a certain number of them, right?
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:03
Speaker
Man, that's, that is so cool that you got to do that.
01:00:08
Speaker
It was a huge honor, man.
01:00:09
Speaker
I couldn't be, I couldn't have been more stoked to get to do that.
01:00:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:14
Speaker
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
01:00:16
Speaker
And, you know, again, this is all about collaboration.
01:00:19
Speaker
I think, you know, the band has collaborated with countless other musicians.
01:00:23
Speaker
And, you know, they did the re-release of the Black Album.
01:00:29
Speaker
And they had...
01:00:30
Speaker
different artists from all over the world over their songs.
01:00:33
Speaker
So you had like Elton John, Miley Cyrus and Yo-Yo Ma singing on the same, or they all played on the same album or the same song.
01:00:41
Speaker
Nothing else matters.
01:00:42
Speaker
They, you know, Miley Cyrus singing it and, uh,
01:00:46
Speaker
The first time I heard it, Hetfield had it on his phone and he and he brought up, he's like, listen to this.
01:00:52
Speaker
And he was like sitting there and he goes, I'm getting goosebumps.
01:00:54
Speaker
Like he was getting goosebumps because he's like, I never would have thought to sing it like that or play it like that.
01:00:59
Speaker
He goes, well, look what they're doing with something that, you know, it was it was a really, really cool experience to to see what they were doing with that.
01:01:07
Speaker
I really enjoy, like, I'm a huge fan of covers, like, unabashedly.
01:01:12
Speaker
I love covers.
01:01:13
Speaker
I have a playlist that's only covers on my phone because I constantly listen.
01:01:18
Speaker
I was so excited when I heard about that album.
01:01:20
Speaker
And while not all of them are songs I love, the end product, I love, like, I just love the idea behind that, behind having all of these
01:01:31
Speaker
artists who are huge through decades of time, like spanning 50 years of artists, and all of them are coming together to give their own version of these Metallica songs.
01:01:42
Speaker
I just thought it was so cool.
01:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool as hell.
01:01:45
Speaker
I mean, and that kind of collaboration, I think, is what we kind of embrace with with not only, you know, with them as musicians, but also with with, you know, creating that album with with with the band, you know, being able to do that.
01:02:00
Speaker
And then also, you know, our Masters of Whiskey series.
01:02:03
Speaker
You know, we've got our Masters of Whiskey where.
01:02:05
Speaker
You're great at this transition thing.
01:02:11
Speaker
Well, you've done this before once or twice, I guess.
01:02:14
Speaker
I have, but I also like one idea will spark to the next idea.
01:02:18
Speaker
And I start thinking about that and this idea.
01:02:19
Speaker
And, you know, Masters of Whiskey was, you know, we were talking about Snowflake.
01:02:25
Speaker
And I think that's what kind of sparked it was that Snowflake.
01:02:28
Speaker
was uniquely only at the distillery in Colorado and you can only get it there.
01:02:33
Speaker
So, you know, we were sitting around and they're like, well, can you come up with your own version of Snowflake?
01:02:38
Speaker
Like, what would you do for Snowflake?
01:02:39
Speaker
I was like, well, we don't, we don't have a distillery that you can go to right now.
01:02:43
Speaker
So what can I do?
01:02:44
Speaker
That's a special release, different cask finishes.
01:02:47
Speaker
And, and that's, you know, that's when I started talking, um,
01:02:51
Speaker
came up with the idea to start working with other distillers, other people that I respected in the industry, because I was inspired by musicians, by Metallica doing collaborations with other musicians.
01:03:02
Speaker
So it seemed like a natural thing for us to do the same thing with whiskey.
01:03:09
Speaker
So the very first one that we did, that was in 2020, was with Willett.
01:03:14
Speaker
So we did Black Index Willett.
01:03:16
Speaker
The second one started out as Angel's Envy.
01:03:21
Speaker
And Wes Henderson was the co-founder of AngelZenby, a good friend of mine, good friend of Dave's.
01:03:29
Speaker
And he retired at the time from AngelZenby.
01:03:33
Speaker
And so we were kind of, we kind of, so we just leaned into like, well, this is who I'm doing the collaboration with.
01:03:38
Speaker
So it was with Wes Henderson.
01:03:40
Speaker
The bottle that you've got there, Trip, is a...
01:03:43
Speaker
Um, that's a six year old Kentucky bourbon that we did a cask finish in white port barrels.
01:03:49
Speaker
That's kind of a nod to angels envy, right?
01:03:51
Speaker
Cause they use port barrels.
01:03:52
Speaker
If I remember correctly.
01:03:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:54
Speaker
They tend to lean into, to port barrels quite a bit.
01:03:56
Speaker
I've used them historically in the past for some of the snowflake, uh, you know, uh, blends that I've done, but the, uh, the, the white port, uh, which I felt was like, you know, a different kind of approach than a regular port.
01:04:08
Speaker
Cause I, I love port.
01:04:09
Speaker
Like you have a nice,
01:04:10
Speaker
awesome dinner and have like a, like a 12 year old tiny port after, after dinner that, that really thick kind of liqueur, kind of not necessarily liqueur, but it's just that rich richness.
01:04:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:25
Speaker
Like very sweet, intense version of wine for people who have never had it.
01:04:31
Speaker
It's a, it's hard to explain.
01:04:34
Speaker
It is, but it makes incredible cask finishes.
01:04:36
Speaker
You know, like I've,
01:04:38
Speaker
You know, I've done a variety of cast finishes, a white port where you're like, okay, it's going to take only a little bit of finishing here, you know, because that's the thing, like when you're finishing a whiskey, depending on what kind of used barrels you're finishing in, you know, if it's super overpowering, you know, you could blow out an entire batch of whiskey and then all you can taste is the finish.
01:04:58
Speaker
not the the layers of of flavor in between so it's a it's a really careful to the moment to the day kind of process like okay that sucker's ready pull it out now how do you test that uh like are are you doing something at home to figure out what barrel's gonna work are you filling a barrel and whiskey thieving it every couple days until until you feel like it's at the right point
01:05:24
Speaker
Yeah, so to kind of create the blend, I'll play around with different finishes by putting eyedroppers of whatever the liquid is in that barrel.
01:05:33
Speaker
But I'm going to show you a process that I do for testing, whether it's done or not.
01:05:42
Speaker
And just bear with me.
01:05:44
Speaker
So what I do is I put it in a glass.
01:05:48
Speaker
I nose it.
01:05:51
Speaker
I taste it.
01:05:53
Speaker
and it tells me when it's ready.
01:05:56
Speaker
Very complicated.
01:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, this is very scientific.
01:05:59
Speaker
Very similar.
01:06:00
Speaker
Again, very similar to cigars.
01:06:02
Speaker
You hear people say the tobacco will tell us when it's ready.
01:06:05
Speaker
And that's exactly.
01:06:06
Speaker
You know, when it's fermented, you know, when it's ready to when that cigar is done aging and can be smoked.
01:06:11
Speaker
I say exactly the same thing.
01:06:13
Speaker
When the whiskey is ready, it tells me, you know, it'll let you know when it's done.
01:06:18
Speaker
And as you're tasting it, you never really know what it would have tasted like in the future.
01:06:24
Speaker
If you just let it ride another week.
01:06:26
Speaker
you know, maybe it would have added another element, but there's a certain point where like, I can't, you never know where the, the, the U-turn point is, right?
01:06:33
Speaker
Right.
01:06:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:34
Speaker
So I'm like, I'm like, it's perfect right now.
01:06:36
Speaker
And it could be even more perfect next week, or I could just completely blow the whole thing.
01:06:40
Speaker
And so it's like, I, you have to,
01:06:42
Speaker
You have to be willing to just say, okay, it's done.
01:06:45
Speaker
And it tastes perfect.
01:06:46
Speaker
It tastes great right here.
01:06:48
Speaker
You know, you kind of like wonder what it could have tasted like another week or another two weeks.
01:06:53
Speaker
But generally you're going to know, you're going to taste it.
01:06:56
Speaker
You're like, holy shit, that's perfect.
01:06:57
Speaker
That's good.
01:06:58
Speaker
We're good.
01:06:58
Speaker
Take it out of the barrels now.
01:07:00
Speaker
And that's the huge scramble.
01:07:02
Speaker
It's like being poised to like ready to dump those barrels out from finishing and put it in the bottom.
01:07:09
Speaker
So it's, but that was my scientific approach.
01:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, very scientific, very to the point.
01:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it is a lot of fun.
01:07:18
Speaker
I mean, it's and I think, you know, I've done other I've done like, you know, whiskeys where we've done I've done multiple cask finishes to that same whiskey.
01:07:27
Speaker
You know, I ride the lightning is same way.
01:07:29
Speaker
I've done a double cask finish with that.
01:07:32
Speaker
I've got.
01:07:33
Speaker
a bottle of that right here.
01:07:34
Speaker
I tried to get a bottle of that.
01:07:35
Speaker
Nobody has it.
01:07:36
Speaker
I couldn't find it anywhere.
01:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's been sold out everywhere.
01:07:39
Speaker
It's so good, I guess.
01:07:40
Speaker
Well, I think they just released it again, right?
01:07:43
Speaker
A new batch.
01:07:45
Speaker
It probably hasn't shown up here yet.
01:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, it just got out there.
01:07:50
Speaker
So, you know, it's hitting the shelves now.
01:07:54
Speaker
So, you know, keep your eyes peeled for it.
01:07:55
Speaker
But this is the second version.
01:07:57
Speaker
This is the 2024 version of Ride the Lightning.
01:08:00
Speaker
You know, it's a little tongue in cheek, but I think we're the only brand on the planet who could get away with calling it something like that.
01:08:07
Speaker
Ride the Lightning is Metallica's second album, which was released in 1984, which is why we call the S-84 after their second album.
01:08:18
Speaker
So M-81 was based off of the year the band formed.
01:08:22
Speaker
And their first album, and then S84, Ride the Lightning.
01:08:27
Speaker
So that was kind of a nod, you know, S for shade, and then 84 to the second album.
01:08:32
Speaker
Well, and it's kind of nicknamed the Shade to Black, which is, again, also a nod to a Metallica song, obviously.
01:08:37
Speaker
Great nod.
01:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
01:08:39
Speaker
And it's, it's just, it's a lot of fun.
01:08:41
Speaker
The Rye of the Lightning, I had a lot of fun with.
01:08:44
Speaker
I did a, this was, the second version was a high rye, so 95% rye, 5% malt barley, and then did a cask finish in Madeira casks, then removed it from Madeira, put it into rum casks, and got the rum cask finish.
01:08:57
Speaker
That's cool.
01:08:58
Speaker
You're getting like a, you're getting a double whammy on, on a high ride, which can be pretty intense.
01:09:03
Speaker
If you, you know, if you don't normally like, right.
01:09:06
Speaker
I love right.
01:09:07
Speaker
Right.
01:09:07
Speaker
And a 95 is like, that's very hot.
01:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:09:11
Speaker
I mean, it's all rye.
01:09:12
Speaker
That's what you're tasting.
01:09:14
Speaker
You have that 5% malt barley in there to help with conversion because rye is a very kind of difficult plant to extract from.
01:09:25
Speaker
So that malt barley helps extract some of the – helps that conversion to – I know this from beer making.
01:09:32
Speaker
I know.
01:09:33
Speaker
I've tried to pump as high rye as I possibly could, and I had to dump a couple of batches because it just – it wasn't working.
01:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, you need conversion, which which which malt barley helps with.
01:09:43
Speaker
So if you are doing another beer, throw some throw some barley in there and it'll help.
01:09:48
Speaker
It'll help convert it a little bit.
01:09:50
Speaker
You'll probably get your flavors out of it that you're looking for.
01:09:54
Speaker
But I think, you know, that's, you know, that double cask finish.
01:09:58
Speaker
There's so many flavors you can pull from a cask finish, but it always starts with the best ingredients first and then layering all those flavors in.
01:10:05
Speaker
The way I always approach a blend is, you know, you want to start with, you know, when you want to draw your palate in and then kind of bring it up to a peak and make a nice long finish and then layer all those flavors in.
01:10:18
Speaker
You know, if you over cask finish something, you could just blow it out, you know.
01:10:22
Speaker
I try and avoid that.
01:10:23
Speaker
All you taste is the cask at a certain point, right?
01:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, yep, exactly.
01:10:29
Speaker
And the third Masters of Whiskey that we just did was the Black Index Rabbit Hole.
01:10:34
Speaker
And Rabbit Hole Distillery, Caves, Amanian, incredible whiskey maker.
01:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, just incredible distiller.
01:10:40
Speaker
If you ever get a chance to go out to Louisville and check their place out, I mean, the place is a work of art in itself.
01:10:46
Speaker
Not to mention their whiskey is just phenomenal.
01:10:48
Speaker
So we actually just found out
01:10:50
Speaker
two days ago that we won a gold medal at the San Francisco world Spears competition for the black index rabbit hole.
01:10:57
Speaker
So we were pretty ecstatic.
01:10:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:59
Speaker
Thank you.
01:10:59
Speaker
That's amazing.
01:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Experimenting with Cask Finishes
01:11:03
Speaker
So again, coming back to that collaboration.
01:11:06
Speaker
But I had something in mind.
01:11:08
Speaker
And as soon as I told it to Kaveh, his face just lit up.
01:11:12
Speaker
And I was like, what if we do a Calvados cast finish, which is basically an apple brandy in the Calvados region of France.
01:11:21
Speaker
So just like champagne is...
01:11:24
Speaker
from the Champagne region, Calvados is from that region.
01:11:29
Speaker
So I really wanted that particular flavor profile as a finishing aspect.
01:11:34
Speaker
So that one we ended up doing, I had a 13 year old Tennessee bourbon that we used and we used their high gold bourbon from the East.
01:11:44
Speaker
rabbit hole the blend just turned out just phenomenal just the balances of the ages um the flavors and then again doing that cask finishing calvados it was it turned out pretty incredible man i i love it and i love your dedication to cask finishing uh we're i mean we we do pairing shows we we drink a lot of whiskey and we big fans of cask we're big fans of cask finishing is there any cask that you wanted to work with that you've never been able to or never had the chance to
01:12:14
Speaker
That's a great question.
01:12:16
Speaker
I've always, yes, I've always wanted to mess around with some heated
01:12:23
Speaker
barrels, you know, so, so take, take a barrel of whiskey.
01:12:27
Speaker
That was, you know, it was first use, probably Kentucky bourbon went to Scotland, um, had an incredible whiskey in it.
01:12:34
Speaker
So now you're getting into third use, which means that cast finishing is probably going to be way longer to get the flavor profile that I'm looking for.
01:12:41
Speaker
You know, generally I'm on a first use cask finished barrel.
01:12:44
Speaker
It's around two to 14 weeks and I never go full 14 weeks.
01:12:47
Speaker
I always give myself that window because I want to know, um,
01:12:51
Speaker
i want to make sure i have all the room i need for for a solid runway for for a cast finishing um i think with a heavily peated scotch it wouldn't take much to to get the nuances out of it and i that's something i've always wanted to play around with i i i did play around with something like that at uh strand of hands where i i had a just one barrel uh it was a hogshead that had
01:13:14
Speaker
had had scotch in it and then somebody had finished a gin in it so it was it was like a gin finished oh man oh i bet i know what gin that is
01:13:25
Speaker
Um, I, I got that, I only had one barrel of it and I threw this, you know, threw the single malt in there.
01:13:31
Speaker
Um, it was definitely like, it was definitely funky cold Medina.
01:13:34
Speaker
I, I, I, I wasn't happy with it for a while.
01:13:38
Speaker
Like I was just like, I don't know if this, you know, so sometimes you just got to let it ride and it'll mellow itself out into something special.
01:13:47
Speaker
So I, um, I had, I had fun.
01:13:49
Speaker
I've had fun with that barrel, but not on a, not on a scale.
01:13:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:53
Speaker
Not on production scale.
01:13:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:56
Speaker
I was in Connecticut a few years ago.
01:13:58
Speaker
I grew up there, so I have a lot of friends there.
01:14:00
Speaker
I happened to be there for a cigar thing with a different company, and then the Barn Smoker was the following weekend, so we ended up going to the Barn Smoker as well.
01:14:10
Speaker
I stayed with a friend.
01:14:12
Speaker
He brought me up to...
01:14:14
Speaker
His favorite distillery, which I'm trying to remember where it was.
01:14:17
Speaker
It's right over the Massachusetts border.
01:14:19
Speaker
So it's like southwest Massachusetts.
01:14:22
Speaker
But this guy, I got to geeking out with the master distiller.
01:14:26
Speaker
It turned out he had grown some tobacco behind the warehouse where he was distilling and was working on fermenting or curing it in the aging room where he kept all his barrels.
01:14:40
Speaker
But he had an American whiskey finished in peated scotch barrels that I was a big fan of.
01:14:47
Speaker
And you're right.
01:14:49
Speaker
Not a lot of people do that.
01:14:52
Speaker
And I think part of the reason is because it can be pretty divisive.
01:14:55
Speaker
But I thought his product was great.
01:14:58
Speaker
I think, you know, just like anything, it's, it's subjective to your own palate.
01:15:01
Speaker
So, you know, whether you, you lean into, I don't always like peated scotch, but when I, when I do want it, that's the only thing that's going to scratch that itch is, is, is a peated scotch, you know?
01:15:12
Speaker
And I, and I, and I think, um, it, it depends.
01:15:17
Speaker
I have a, um,
01:15:20
Speaker
I have a bottle of Lagavulin that my uncle is a mural artist and he was painting a mural in a bar in Telluride, Colorado.
01:15:34
Speaker
And it was a bar that General Schwarzkopf used to hang out in and play poker.
01:15:38
Speaker
And he had his own bottle of Lagavulin in there.
01:15:41
Speaker
And that bottle, well, the bar closed down.
01:15:44
Speaker
And so they had to get rid of everything.
01:15:46
Speaker
And my uncle asked the guy if he could have General Schwarzkopf's bottle of Lagavulin, which he gave to me for Christmas one year.
01:15:54
Speaker
You're a veteran.
01:15:55
Speaker
I thought you would think this, you know, I thought, you know, you might enjoy this.
01:15:58
Speaker
This was his personal bottle for these poker tables.
01:16:00
Speaker
So I every year at Christmas.
01:16:04
Speaker
I take a little nip out of it.
01:16:05
Speaker
I've got about this much left.
01:16:07
Speaker
So a lot of oxygen in the bottle.
01:16:08
Speaker
So, you know, I need to just finish it up probably this Christmas and just be done with it.
01:16:13
Speaker
But that Lagavulin, it's not my go-to, but that's a special bottle for me.
01:16:17
Speaker
So I'll go for that.
01:16:18
Speaker
And that one's a, you know, that's a peat that will kick you in the shins for sure.
01:16:23
Speaker
And then I think- I always describe Lagavulin as kind of the, as balanced as it gets when it comes to heavily peated whiskey.
01:16:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:31
Speaker
They really balance that peat out with sweetness and complexity compared to the Laphroaigs, the Ardbe.
01:16:38
Speaker
Laphroaigs of the world, of course, or even Ardbe.
01:16:40
Speaker
Good point.
01:16:41
Speaker
Yeah, where you're getting all that iodine and some of those heavily peated.
01:16:47
Speaker
Of course, I think the easy ones to go to are like Balvini.
01:16:50
Speaker
I think Balvini Caribbean cask is delicious.
01:16:53
Speaker
Those are delicious.
01:16:55
Speaker
Those are pretty easy.
01:16:56
Speaker
I like Talisker, Talisker Storm 10-year.
01:17:00
Speaker
That's a really good one.
01:17:01
Speaker
That's a great balance of not overly peated, but enough to let you know it's a layered peat.
01:17:08
Speaker
So I think, you know, you're not, I look at some of the heavily peated scotches as being,
01:17:15
Speaker
like taking a really good burrito and just pouring hot sauce all over it.
01:17:18
Speaker
And all you taste is hot sauce.
01:17:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:20
Speaker
That's a great way to put it.
01:17:21
Speaker
I've never thought about it.
01:17:22
Speaker
A little bit.
01:17:22
Speaker
And that, that might be why I'm such a fan of peated scotch.
01:17:25
Speaker
And I also cover my burritos with hot sauce and also hot sauce.
01:17:29
Speaker
Of course.
01:17:29
Speaker
I have about a hundred hot sauces right there.
01:17:32
Speaker
I'm going to dip that burrito in my Lufroy again, you know, in my, you know, in the, in the heavily peated scotch.
01:17:39
Speaker
You dropped a bit of a bomb earlier talking about something else.
01:17:41
Speaker
I'm
Exploring Mezcal
01:17:42
Speaker
curious.
01:17:42
Speaker
I want to come back to that.
01:17:44
Speaker
You talked about Mezcal.
01:17:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:46
Speaker
Let's hear a little bit more about your interest in Mezcal.
01:17:48
Speaker
And is that something that you're considering maybe in the future playing with or are you playing with it now?
01:17:54
Speaker
I've got some future possibilities with that.
01:17:57
Speaker
I was down there working with some Polenkes when I got the –
01:18:02
Speaker
the invitation to come do my interview.
01:18:05
Speaker
And I was playing around with like, I had some really good ideas with Mezcal and some ideas I wanted to roll with it.
01:18:15
Speaker
And as a matter of fact, that's one of the first things I did.
01:18:17
Speaker
I came in and
01:18:19
Speaker
And wanted to, you know, create or work with the family to create and bring in some good mezcal.
01:18:28
Speaker
Because there's so many great mezcals out there, so many different ways to do it.
01:18:31
Speaker
And I kind of had to...
01:18:35
Speaker
shelve that for a little bit because you know we i've got i've got whiskey to to to throw my heart and soul to you right now right i had whiskey to care for exactly and i do look at it as being a caretaker you know i'm i'm not the that the first uh um steward of the whiskey i won't be the last you know and i think i think that's the way i always look at it is that as long as you do a good job and add some innovation to your time as a steward of whatever whiskey you're at
01:19:00
Speaker
you're leaving a legacy for someone else to play around with and continue making.
01:19:06
Speaker
So I believe strongly in kind of that approach.
01:19:09
Speaker
But Mezcal for me is like that deep, smoky, earthy,
01:19:15
Speaker
elements you know like the you're getting the elements of the soil you're getting the elements of the wood they're using the smoke um you know the pinions with i are the piñas the piñas with um i just uh i i there's just something about it that just takes you right to the earth you know it's like it's like rye whiskey you know it's just earthy earthy notes i and i and i and i love um i love where you know and it's mezcal's clean you know there's just something about you could just you could drink
01:19:45
Speaker
You know, a ton of mezcal and not really feel beat up.
01:19:48
Speaker
There's something that kind of is vibrant about it.
01:19:51
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't bang you up like some whiskeys can.
01:19:55
Speaker
Some whiskeys, and there's a certain... There's a life to it that also, again, going back to the artistry, the culture, the history of it, where you're drinking a mezcal, you really can taste that history, and you can taste certainly the artistry of the culture of that.
01:20:09
Speaker
Specific could be just a family that makes it in their backyard, and they've been making it for 100 years, 200 years, whatever it is.
01:20:16
Speaker
It's really cool, and every one of those is going to be distinctly different and unique in their own way.
01:20:22
Speaker
It's pretty incredible.
01:20:23
Speaker
The one flanke that I was, you know, that I'm working with, and I can't name by name because, you know, I want to maintain the secrecy.
01:20:32
Speaker
Of course, of course, yeah, fair.
01:20:33
Speaker
But they, you know, they took me out to an area where, you know, their grandfather had hand-carved pits in the top of a cliff for open fermentation.
01:20:42
Speaker
You know, just like stuff like that is just, you know, it's pretty mind-blowing to me.
01:20:47
Speaker
I think one of the things that's so cool about mezcal to me is, I mean, it tastes great, of course, but...
01:20:56
Speaker
keeping the cash register oh yeah where else but one of the things that i love about it is uh i lost my train of thought with that cash register door slamming um oh i was gonna say that like the the history behind it like you're tasting that place um and it's just so cool and it just how uh
01:21:22
Speaker
Primitive isn't the same word, the right word, but kind of how historic those – Primal.
01:21:28
Speaker
Primal.
01:21:28
Speaker
Primal.
01:21:29
Speaker
How primal those processes are that they used to make Mezcal is just so cool to me.
01:21:34
Speaker
And you're here injecting technology into the whiskey business, one of many people.
01:21:40
Speaker
Technology is all over there.
01:21:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:43
Speaker
And Mezcal is just as old world as it gets when it comes to distilled spirits.
01:21:47
Speaker
Well, and you go there and you see the burrow crushing the piñas.
01:21:52
Speaker
Still to this day, which is amazing.
01:21:54
Speaker
Yeah, and that's just pretty mind-blowing how simple everything can be.
01:22:00
Speaker
Depending on whether they're using clay distillation pots or stills or whether it's copper or whatever it is, it's impressive that you can do so much with so little.
01:22:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:15
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:22:16
Speaker
All right.
01:22:17
Speaker
Rob's lighting up his next cigar.
01:22:19
Speaker
I also recently lit mine, the M81.
01:22:22
Speaker
I got to think about that number every time.
01:22:25
Speaker
I'm not good with numbers, I guess.
01:22:27
Speaker
Well, you know, it's, yeah, it's, I always look at it as like, you know, in the military, there was designations for everything.
01:22:33
Speaker
Even, even the, the, the skill, skill point pen had a, had a, has had its own designation number and its own, you
01:22:42
Speaker
Every, every single piece of equipment in the military and the army has a, uh, a manual, uh, you know, even the skill, the skill craft pen had a manual.
01:22:51
Speaker
Uh, I don't remember what the, what its designation was.
01:22:55
Speaker
Um, I used to know, I used to know, but it even had its own, you know, it had its own manual and, and, and military designation.
01:23:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:03
Speaker
Surreal number.
01:23:04
Speaker
Actually though, that might be the way that I remember this now is the March 81.
01:23:07
Speaker
Um,
01:23:10
Speaker
That might be the way to remember it.
01:23:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think it is a... Someone was pointing out that it's... M81 is also a designation in the Army for... Smoke grenades, I believe.
01:23:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's what it was.
01:23:24
Speaker
Yeah, it was.
01:23:25
Speaker
Yeah, somebody was... I was sitting with some Navy SEALs and they were like, dude, that's a... I thought that was intentional.
01:23:31
Speaker
No, no, M81 was purely Metallica year they were formed.
01:23:36
Speaker
But M81.
01:23:36
Speaker
Oh, it's a fuse.
01:23:37
Speaker
It's a fuse for a grenade.
01:23:39
Speaker
The fuse.
01:23:40
Speaker
Oh, OK.
01:23:42
Speaker
I'm pretty sure I might be wrong.
01:23:43
Speaker
There's some you got some some military folks in here that can remember better than I can.
01:23:50
Speaker
They might be able to let you know.
01:23:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:53
Speaker
But yeah, that's a, so that's why I kind of remembered it's like a, it's a designation, you know, like, you know, it's, it's, it's nomenclature.
01:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, it brings you back a little bit, huh?
01:24:03
Speaker
All right, so back to pairing.
01:24:05
Speaker
I think the, for me, the shade paired best with the cask strength, and especially after your tip of, I kept a little Glencairn of water here.
01:24:16
Speaker
Smart.
01:24:17
Speaker
Just in case.
01:24:18
Speaker
And you're right.
01:24:18
Speaker
After opening that up with a little bit of water, it paired even better with the cigar.
01:24:24
Speaker
I think the M81 is going to work real well with the Wes Henderson collaboration.
01:24:29
Speaker
Well, you're going to get that Kentucky bourbon, that six-year, and then the sweetness of the white port, and then you're going to get this triple Maduro, Maduro to the
Pairing Whiskey with Cigars
01:24:38
Speaker
core.
01:24:38
Speaker
And I think there's some darker kind of chocolate notes in here that I love that I think pair well with that Kentucky bourbon.
01:24:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:46
Speaker
And from the bourbon, I get a lot of there.
01:24:49
Speaker
There really is a lot of like fruit on the palate for me.
01:24:55
Speaker
I'm trying to think of how to describe it.
01:24:58
Speaker
Candied.
01:24:59
Speaker
Candied.
01:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's like the Belgian candy sugar, but it's it doesn't have that that cloying sweetness that you normally would associate with the Belgian candy sugar.
01:25:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's I think.
01:25:12
Speaker
Sorry.
01:25:12
Speaker
No, I was going to say, like, suddenly I got chocolate out of this whiskey just out of nowhere after after taking a draw on a cigar.
01:25:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think, well, Kentucky bourbon tends to be pretty sweet.
01:25:28
Speaker
You're kind of leaning into that, that sweetness of the corn.
01:25:30
Speaker
Then you add the, but now you've got the depth of age of wood, so you're going to get more darker flavors there.
01:25:36
Speaker
But you're bringing it back around with the white port, so you're going to get those sweet notes where you're getting some of those fruitier notes.
01:25:42
Speaker
And I think this is like,
01:25:44
Speaker
uh this is like chocolate on uh you know with with you know with dessert um you know the the cigar itself um m81 cigar with uh with that uh it does pair well i i actually don't have the the i don't have that um with me right now i meant to ask what you were drinking uh we've seen you take a couple sips here yeah yeah uh uh fireball uh so i you know
01:26:10
Speaker
whiskey by the way uh it's it's it's whiskey according to the the label um according to the label and i look i'm not gonna throw shade at anybody you know if i i know a lot of people like that that cinnamon kind of thing and it is more like a liqueur it's like a whiskey look at it um but i always i always kind of joke around i am i am drinking uh the blackened original um with that
01:26:34
Speaker
I've been called out on that fireball.
01:26:36
Speaker
I've made a comment like that before.
01:26:39
Speaker
Somebody, because I'm not a good fan.
01:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, somebody just so they bought me a shot, a round of fireball.
01:26:47
Speaker
Oh, boy.
01:26:48
Speaker
And I was like, fuck it, I'll drink it.
01:26:49
Speaker
You got to own it at that point.
01:26:51
Speaker
You're like, okay, I deserve that.
01:26:54
Speaker
I'll drink it.
01:26:56
Speaker
I mean, I hate this stuff, but I'll drink it.
01:26:58
Speaker
Don't get me wrong.
01:27:00
Speaker
I don't want it.
01:27:05
Speaker
It's not for me, but I know a lot of people enjoy it.
01:27:07
Speaker
I mean, but everybody goes through phases, right?
01:27:09
Speaker
Like I went through a Jägermeister phase for, you know, early 90s.
01:27:14
Speaker
I think I'm still in a Jägermeister phase.
01:27:16
Speaker
Tell you what.
01:27:17
Speaker
No, I haven't actually had it in a long time.
01:27:20
Speaker
I did try Jägermeister's whip at the Great Smoke.
01:27:22
Speaker
I love Jägermeister's whip.
01:27:24
Speaker
That stuff was solid.
01:27:25
Speaker
I was really surprised by it.
01:27:27
Speaker
My buddy works on that brand, and when he told me about it, I was like, oh, that's pretty cool.
01:27:32
Speaker
It's Irish.
01:27:33
Speaker
I haven't had it yet, though.
01:27:35
Speaker
I haven't tried it.
01:27:36
Speaker
It reminds me of, like, Jack and Coke in a bottle.
01:27:39
Speaker
Jack and Coke distilled down to a liqueur.
01:27:43
Speaker
You know, maybe it's the whip, like Shanky's whip.
01:27:45
Speaker
I just immediately think whipped cream.
01:27:47
Speaker
Me too.
01:27:48
Speaker
So I was just thinking that it was like a softer – I wasn't even thinking –
01:27:55
Speaker
along the lines the actual the actual whip yeah yeah I was just thinking it was like yeah it's an actual whip but I was thinking you know my mind goes right towards whipped cream that's what I thought until I tried it yeah there is some vanilla to be fair there is some vanilla to it some caramel vanilla notes it's not bad
01:28:13
Speaker
I mean, you're not going to put it in your Glencairn and you're going to have to sit there and put some water in there and really explore the profile.
01:28:20
Speaker
But it's a great thing to just sip on after dinner if you want something light.
01:28:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:24
Speaker
Well, not every whiskey is designed for that.
01:28:26
Speaker
Exactly.
01:28:27
Speaker
Not every whiskey has to be designed to be that high end or...
01:28:30
Speaker
you know i i think everything again every whiskey has its place right and it's time and it's enjoyable uh experience so i again i won't i won't really knock anything if anybody likes something then you know more power to them because it's you know we're all adults right we drink what we want to drink we have we have that luxury to be able to choose what we'd like to drink what's great is also educating yourself to learn more
01:28:55
Speaker
about how how different whiskeys uh can can taste and why you know so i think you know part of that learning process for me is like you know how do i you know how do i know what's good in a whiskey we have to know what's bad too right you have to know you have to know just as much as you know what tastes good um we all know what we don't like and you know like i can't stand cottage cheese freaks me out uh but like you know
01:29:20
Speaker
Like it's my wife too.
01:29:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:22
Speaker
There's something about it.
01:29:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:24
Speaker
It just freaks me out.
01:29:25
Speaker
It's texture.
01:29:26
Speaker
It's like, you know, and people like, ah, but if you add this to it, it's like, yeah, you're trying to add something to it.
01:29:29
Speaker
Cause it tastes like shit.
01:29:31
Speaker
Um, you know, like the kind of cheese tastes terrible.
01:29:35
Speaker
Um, but I think, um, you know, but just like anything, you're always learning.
01:29:39
Speaker
by tasting other things you know and i i knows everything right i'm like i'm always like now i'm if i'm sitting down i i i knows every every every drink that i have i know the same thing like any drink that i'm having i smell it yeah doesn't matter whether it's a cocktail or a diet coke yeah yeah you knows it i i remember um
01:30:02
Speaker
Well, I was, I was, I was, we were, we were backstage at a festival and in the catering area, there was a, I hadn't had a Yahoo in years.
01:30:10
Speaker
I couldn't remember what a Yahoo tasted like.
01:30:12
Speaker
So I was like, Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to, or you who are you who not?
01:30:15
Speaker
I was going to correct you, but I didn't want to be that guy.
01:30:18
Speaker
no no that's all right correct me correct me i'm not i'm not always right about everything at all you know like uh uh you know correct way uh yoohoo and i so i'm like oh you know so i i noticed it and uh one of my co-workers was like did you just nose a yoohoo and i was like yeah like i i want to add that experience yeah you're adding it to the portfolio right uh a tasting note i talked about a lot on cigars that uh
01:30:43
Speaker
I've gotten a lot of shit for over the years is rocks.
01:30:47
Speaker
I don't know what point in my life this happened.
01:30:49
Speaker
Oh, licking a rock.
01:30:50
Speaker
But at some point I must have licked a rock because I have that in my Rolodex where this tastes like licking a rock.
01:30:58
Speaker
I don't know if I've ever actually licked a rock, but it tastes like exactly what I think of licking a rock would taste like.
01:31:04
Speaker
Well, I think it depends on where that rock was.
01:31:06
Speaker
If that rock was in a horse pasture, it's probably going to taste a little salty.
01:31:10
Speaker
So it depends on where that rock is from.
01:31:13
Speaker
So that's how they make shiny rocks, huh?
01:31:15
Speaker
Just people licking them over and over until they get shiny.
01:31:19
Speaker
smooth well you know you think about it iron is a rock right it's in it's in a rock so you're going to taste iron in a rock so if you know i mean i haven't i haven't i haven't looked many rocks but i think i would agree somewhere in your life you definitely you know we probably all looked a rock at some point yeah exactly a kid you're like i don't know what that tastes like wow this rock looks delicious all right
01:31:42
Speaker
oh yeah so rocks so interesting so when you say rock or rocks what what's the like what do you think that element is mineral uh it's it's a little bit salty a little like just a hint of metallic um and kind of dry and earthy that's how i would describe that flavor more precisely
01:32:06
Speaker
But some Dominican cigars especially, I get that mineral quality that I can only think of as licking a rock.
01:32:15
Speaker
Well, that makes sense because –
01:32:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, well, it's, you know, like Colorado, we got the Rocky Mountains here.
01:32:21
Speaker
Water's coming through, you know, filtering through, you know, granite and whatever, you know, whatever rocks up there.
01:32:29
Speaker
I think I'm going to have to go out and like collect a bunch of rocks and like I'm going to be lining these things up and licking them in the future.
01:32:35
Speaker
I'm going to go out and like, I'm going to put a little label in front of each one.
01:32:38
Speaker
I'm like, all right.
01:32:39
Speaker
all right oh it was limestone that i was tasting yeah limestone there we go see limestone so you know that it is a good point like when you say rock that is minerality um i i think you're i think you're onto something i mean just like we always talk about water going across rock i've just never just licked the rock yeah you know drink the water that was again like you don't always remember where those flavor notes come from uh
01:33:02
Speaker
It's just kind of the word that it triggers in your head kind of.
01:33:07
Speaker
Sure.
01:33:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:09
Speaker
Well, again, I think it goes back to
01:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, memory, your olfactory.
01:33:14
Speaker
I think one of the worst experiences I had on the bad end of the spectrum was my girlfriend had a skunk problem at her house for a while.
01:33:24
Speaker
And we know what skunk smells like.
01:33:27
Speaker
We've all smelled one at some point.
01:33:29
Speaker
But one of the things I started looking at was like, how do you get rid of skunks?
Humorous Anecdotes and Cigar Introduction
01:33:32
Speaker
And coyote urine is how you can go out there and you can buy spray bottles of coyote urine on the internet.
01:33:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah, because then the skunk is like, no, I'm not going there.
01:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, there's a predator around.
01:33:43
Speaker
So you spray it where the skunk's hanging out.
01:33:45
Speaker
And of course, you know, the bottle shows up and I'm like, I gotta know.
01:33:49
Speaker
So I just meant to kind of do a quick pass and whip it.
01:33:56
Speaker
And whatever, you know, my muscle memory just kicked in where I'm like,
01:34:01
Speaker
You know, doing a good job.
01:34:02
Speaker
And I did a big old draw with of coyote urine.
01:34:07
Speaker
It is the most wretched, gnarly stuff I have ever smelled.
01:34:10
Speaker
It's spicy.
01:34:11
Speaker
There's a lot of ammonia going on.
01:34:14
Speaker
Very heavy.
01:34:15
Speaker
Gnarly.
01:34:16
Speaker
And I remember my girlfriend watching me and just going, no.
01:34:19
Speaker
in slow motion like seeing you go in for the dive yeah yeah she's like no he's he's gonna go in for it i just meant to whiff it but i uh but i i took a good old nose nose full of that and uh i know what that smells like now so that's that's on the that's on the don't make whiskey like that yeah scale yeah uh and knowing is half the battle as we know yeah yep exactly um
01:34:44
Speaker
Let me see.
01:34:44
Speaker
I got to find my notes here because there was a question I wanted to ask you.
01:34:50
Speaker
Oh, how did you get into cigars?
01:34:53
Speaker
How did you end up as a cigar guy?
01:34:54
Speaker
Because obviously you were a cigar guy before the Metallica cigar happened.
01:34:57
Speaker
Metallica cigar.
01:34:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:35:02
Speaker
I got into it in the military.
01:35:04
Speaker
I was a cigarette smoker in the army.
01:35:08
Speaker
Everybody I knew were running six miles a day and then you're smoking a pack a day back in those days.
01:35:14
Speaker
But it was harder to get the brands I wanted.
01:35:17
Speaker
And I remember smoking a cigar in Mombasa, Kenya.
01:35:24
Speaker
And I don't know where I got it, how I got it.
01:35:25
Speaker
I think I was drunk.
01:35:26
Speaker
I was drinking a lot of tequila back then.
01:35:28
Speaker
And we were on R&R.
01:35:30
Speaker
And realizing that there's something about cigars that I really liked.
01:35:34
Speaker
And I think, you know, I smoked, you know, I think just out of high school, I was smoking, you know, like Swisher Sweets.
01:35:40
Speaker
It had a little bit of sweetness to it, a little kind of candiness to it.
01:35:44
Speaker
And I think you always kind of start like that.
01:35:46
Speaker
You know, I think you always start with like,
01:35:48
Speaker
you know, you start with whiskey and Coke.
01:35:50
Speaker
And until you realize, wait, I want to taste the whiskey.
01:35:53
Speaker
I don't want to just, you know, kill it and crush it with with all this sugar on top of it.
01:35:57
Speaker
And so I think that's what how I kind of evolved out of smoking flavored, I think, you know, flavored cigars to smoking, you know, bigger and kind of heftier cigars.
01:36:09
Speaker
And I think it was also like
01:36:11
Speaker
you know, the size of a cigar and just like what you're drinking, you're drinking whiskey, like you want to enjoy a good cigar.
01:36:15
Speaker
So it started in the military started, I think my, my first recollection was, was in Kenya smoking, smoking a cigar.
01:36:22
Speaker
Nice.
01:36:22
Speaker
So, yeah.
01:36:24
Speaker
So I don't know.
01:36:24
Speaker
That was going to be my next question is what your first, first cigar memory was.
01:36:29
Speaker
You're great at this.
01:36:31
Speaker
That's a great, that's a great memory.
01:36:33
Speaker
I think certainly better than a lot of us have.
01:36:36
Speaker
My, my first memory was,
01:36:38
Speaker
Not good.
01:36:39
Speaker
It was one of those things like, oh, I want to try it.
01:36:42
Speaker
Everyone's smoking cigars.
01:36:42
Speaker
Let me try a cigar.
01:36:44
Speaker
And I picked up whatever some crappy cigar at some gas station that's been sitting there for probably 12 years.
01:36:48
Speaker
Dry as hell.
01:36:49
Speaker
Crispy.
01:36:50
Speaker
Dry as hell.
01:36:51
Speaker
Awful.
01:36:52
Speaker
And I thought, man, why are people spending 15 bucks on this thing?
01:36:56
Speaker
It's awful.
01:36:57
Speaker
I hated it for a while.
01:36:59
Speaker
And then somebody, I forget what it was, somebody gave me a cigar that was actually properly kept, right?
01:37:04
Speaker
And that started, started the, well, what does that taste like?
01:37:07
Speaker
Why does it taste this way?
01:37:08
Speaker
What's in the tobacco?
01:37:09
Speaker
What kind of tobacco is in there?
01:37:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's a cool process.
01:37:15
Speaker
I think, I mean, that's exactly it.
01:37:17
Speaker
Like, you know, I think, you know, even then I was probably, I was probably a pretty crispy cigar that I, that I had.
01:37:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:23
Speaker
But I, you know, I recognize it as being, oh, this is, this is a different experience.
01:37:26
Speaker
And I, and I had a very, very quick learning curve on, cause I was a cigarette smoker.
01:37:33
Speaker
Like, yeah, you don't inhale it like a cigarette as you very quickly.
01:37:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:38
Speaker
Yes, it does.
01:37:40
Speaker
As long as you're open to learning.
01:37:41
Speaker
Yes, it does self-correct.
01:37:44
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I have met stubborn people who just go for it anyway and keep going for it.
01:37:49
Speaker
Ron Perlman is one of them.
01:37:51
Speaker
Is he a cigar inhaler?
01:37:54
Speaker
He exclusively inhaled.
01:37:56
Speaker
He stopped smoking, but he was inhaling every cigar he smoked for years.
01:38:02
Speaker
That's incredible.
01:38:03
Speaker
I mean, that's a big guy, though, too.
01:38:04
Speaker
He's probably got some pretty steely lungs.
01:38:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:09
Speaker
But wow.
01:38:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't do the French inhale.
01:38:14
Speaker
I know that a lot of cigar guys like to experience that and get the full, but mostly because I'm protecting my olfactory for whiskey.
01:38:22
Speaker
Yeah, you have to.
01:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's part of your job, right?
01:38:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:26
Speaker
If you pull out your sinuses, it's going to be a problem.
01:38:30
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:38:31
Speaker
I don't want to get a creosote nose and not be able to smell whiskey.
01:38:34
Speaker
It must be awful when you get sick, like when you have a cold.
01:38:38
Speaker
No.
01:38:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:39
Speaker
I mean, that's, you know, that's a, I mean, that's, that's, that is literally my job.
01:38:44
Speaker
And then by the time you get over it and like you get your pallet back and get your, you know, it's, it takes a while.
01:38:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:51
Speaker
I mean, do it just doing this.
01:38:54
Speaker
I like, once I'm sick, it's like, Oh no, it's coming.
01:38:57
Speaker
I just try to get over it as quick as I can and then deal with it, you know?
01:39:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, I I know some friends who got covid really bad that were master distillers and chefs, you know, chefs are like, I can't taste anything.
01:39:12
Speaker
So they got they have other people tasting for them like, hey, you know, they know they know how to put the ingredients together and, you know, by by by.
01:39:20
Speaker
you know, years of practice, but, but, you know, at the end of the day, like you, someone's got to taste that thing and say, yeah, off on it.
01:39:27
Speaker
So, um, yeah, that's, uh, that would, I would, that would be devastating for me to lose my, lose my palate.
01:39:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:35
Speaker
For sure.
01:39:37
Speaker
Um, I once be a forest ranger or something.
01:39:40
Speaker
I know a guy, I won't say who it is in the cigar business who smokes cigarettes also.
01:39:45
Speaker
And I know who it is.
01:39:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:47
Speaker
You know who it is.
01:39:49
Speaker
Uh,
01:39:50
Speaker
I saw him at a cigar event and we went out to dinner and drinks and stuff and he started smoking cigarettes and I was like, dude, what are you doing?
01:39:57
Speaker
Like, you're a cigar guy.
01:39:59
Speaker
And he said, listen, this guy, he said one of his teachers in, uh,
01:40:06
Speaker
Man, I can't say what it is.
01:40:07
Speaker
I'll say whiskey making.
01:40:09
Speaker
One of his teachers in whiskey making.
01:40:10
Speaker
Yeah, we call it that.
01:40:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:40:13
Speaker
Smoked cigarettes and said, I can't quit because if I quit, my palate will change.
01:40:18
Speaker
And then I can't trust it anymore.
01:40:19
Speaker
Oh, great.
01:40:20
Speaker
And I was like, wow, I never thought about it that way.
01:40:24
Speaker
That makes sense.
01:40:24
Speaker
That's your base.
01:40:25
Speaker
That's where your base that you start from.
01:40:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:40:28
Speaker
Yeah, and if you've already been making quality cigars based on that palate, then why change?
01:40:36
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:40:37
Speaker
Very good point.
01:40:38
Speaker
I don't know if he still smoked.
01:40:40
Speaker
He may have quit by now, but I just thought that was a really interesting... I thought that was just a really interesting point that I never thought about.
01:40:48
Speaker
A different viewpoint.
01:40:52
Speaker
You know, and it's interesting because you...
01:40:56
Speaker
I, I, that sets the tone, you know, like your, you know, your base, your base palette, but also, you know, like, you know, you look at the different style of smoking too, like Europeans or, or Japanese, you know, like, uh, I feel like they smoke differently than we do.
01:41:09
Speaker
And the tobacco is different.
01:41:10
Speaker
You know, we're using a lot of, you know, um, tobacco that's grown close to, or in America.
01:41:17
Speaker
Um, and you know, I think it's, um,
01:41:22
Speaker
It's just interesting when we use different kinds of filters and that's what I love about a cigar.
01:41:26
Speaker
Like there is no filter, you're smoking directly, drawn directly.
01:41:29
Speaker
And that sweet spot's when you start getting like right close to the end and you get all the oils all built up and you're drawing, you got a nice hot draw and the oils are just like- Yeah, you get all that intensity.
01:41:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's the sweet spot.
01:41:43
Speaker
That's what I'm always looking forward to.
01:41:45
Speaker
I'm like, oh, I'm getting there.
01:41:48
Speaker
Getting almost to that spot.
01:41:50
Speaker
There was a cigar made for you one time, a while ago.
01:41:56
Speaker
Just a little inside joke about the nub.
01:41:59
Speaker
It was a cigar that was supposed to, the whole point was the whole thing.
01:42:02
Speaker
The whole cigar was supposed to taste like that last little bit.
01:42:05
Speaker
Oh, interesting.
01:42:06
Speaker
It was a successful cigar, but I don't know if the claim worked, and they kind of gave up on it eventually.
01:42:13
Speaker
Well, I think it's like that Seinfeld episode where they were trying to do the, the, you just pop the top of the muffin off and you leave the store.
01:42:19
Speaker
Oh, that's right.
01:42:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:42:21
Speaker
Like, you're like, you can't just, you can't just cook the top of the muffin.
01:42:25
Speaker
You got to pop it off.
01:42:26
Speaker
You know, you can't, it doesn't, it's not the same, you know, you're, you're cheating the system, so to speak.
01:42:32
Speaker
And you can't, you can't cheat the system.
01:42:34
Speaker
You kind of, you got to go through the work.
01:42:36
Speaker
Exactly.
01:42:37
Speaker
Exactly.
01:42:38
Speaker
Well put.
01:42:39
Speaker
All right.
01:42:40
Speaker
So the last prepared question that I have,
01:42:42
Speaker
was uh i saw in an interview you talked about your punk days yeah and i'm very interested in being a reformed punk myself i mean not really reformed i still listen to you never really quite leave it i think yeah yeah that does it doesn't leave you um
01:42:59
Speaker
You know, for me, I grew up in Southern Colorado in a rural, very rural area.
Influence of Punk Culture
01:43:05
Speaker
And I was definitely an anomaly.
01:43:09
Speaker
The music I liked did not fit with what I was, you know, and being a kid in the 80s, like you're waiting for somebody who came back from the big city and they're like, you're like,
01:43:20
Speaker
you know you got to listen these guys are called beer and you know like oh you got to listen to you like this is exploited and you know and we didn't have the internet back then so you're just like it's it's on somebody's dubbed tape that was you know you know like somebody put on a dual cassette and recorded it to another recording it's another recording so you got this you know crappy version seventh hand yeah yeah thrash started that was the beginning of thrash it was people handing out demo tapes yes yeah
01:43:46
Speaker
And I think for me, I was like, oh, this is my kind of music.
01:43:50
Speaker
But I didn't have those kind of people around me where I grew up.
01:43:53
Speaker
I was always getting my ass kicked by the Cowboys because I looked weird and I had an earring.
01:43:58
Speaker
And it's funny because now I kind of embody like a Cowboy kind of thing.
01:44:06
Speaker
I think it was based on the kind of the outcasts, you know, the misfits that I was naturally drawn to.
01:44:17
Speaker
Like, I'm like, you know, these guys are fucking weird.
01:44:20
Speaker
I like where they're going with this.
01:44:21
Speaker
Like, that's a style.
01:44:23
Speaker
Like, that dude shaved his side of his head and, you know, pierced his ear and ran a chain from that to over his nose.
01:44:28
Speaker
I'm like, that looks cool as shit to me.
01:44:30
Speaker
Like, you know, like.
01:44:32
Speaker
And I think that's where...
01:44:34
Speaker
You know, and then I moved to Denver the year I graduated high school, which this is going to date me.
01:44:39
Speaker
I graduated in 1990.
01:44:41
Speaker
And there was a there was a punk scene in Denver at the time, you know, Jello Biafra was living in Boulder.
01:44:47
Speaker
Dead Kennedys, you know, he was he was based out of Boulder.
01:44:51
Speaker
Mojo Nixon came through here quite a bit.
01:44:53
Speaker
There was there there were some some punk.
01:44:56
Speaker
There was, you know, there was some some some pretty dark.
01:45:00
Speaker
kind of places in in denver at the time that you could go to 15th street tavern was one of those which um was was just a phenomenal it was just like the place to go see anybody who knew three chords and could scream into a microphone and and and whatever the performance are my uh my my buddy uh diggy diamond had a band called four skin 500.
01:45:20
Speaker
And that's fantastic.
01:45:22
Speaker
Great name.
01:45:23
Speaker
You know, those kind of things were just great.
01:45:25
Speaker
And, you know, like Denver, I think Denver's one of Denver's claim to fame was a band called the Warlock Pinchers.
01:45:31
Speaker
And they were they were kind of a they were punk.
01:45:35
Speaker
kind of punk beastie boys rap style, but they were, you know, they kind of, and they, they did a, they did a reunion tour a few years ago, a few years ago, it's probably longer than that, but, and they, they had some of the guys from the Melvins come and play with them.
01:45:50
Speaker
And it was like, Oh, nice.
01:45:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:51
Speaker
it was a fun uh like kind of mishmash and uh and i just remember and i was in that you know i jumped in the mosh pit and i was like this is the oldest mosh pit i've ever been in look at all these great hairs you know like we were we were all in there just like still throwing down and i and i still love the mosh i mean i'm still you know every metallica show i'm at i'm always in the pit i'm in the snake pit um i i you know i was in the mosh pit all last all last uh last year on tour i was in there every single one uh and last year um
01:46:20
Speaker
I just saw it, you know, like I was used to being in the mosh pit.
01:46:22
Speaker
All of a sudden there was a lot of people who's like suddenly getting excited and I, you know, and we're, we're kind of thrown around and all of a sudden I see this big ass dude get, you know, jump into the mosh pit.
01:46:30
Speaker
It was Jason Momoa.
01:46:32
Speaker
Jason Momoa jumped in the mosh pit with us or I was like, this is fucking awesome.
01:46:37
Speaker
It was, it was crazy.
01:46:39
Speaker
It was cool.
01:46:39
Speaker
So it never really goes away.
01:46:41
Speaker
Like that's still always there.
01:46:42
Speaker
It's part of, it's part of the rebel, you know, you got to have that rebel mentality of, uh, you're not the boss of me.
01:46:49
Speaker
You're not the boss of anything that, you know, I'm, I'm doing, I, I'm going to, I'm going to be, I'm going to be me.
01:46:54
Speaker
Uh, my best friend still, you know, like he, he had, uh, he had, you know, he had the Liberty spike.
01:46:58
Speaker
Uh, I, I spent years with a like 12 inch pink mohawk.
01:47:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:06
Speaker
Were you keeping it, were you using Aquanet or were you using like egg whites or?
01:47:13
Speaker
I'm trying to remember what I used.
01:47:14
Speaker
That's Elmer's glue probably.
01:47:16
Speaker
I never did Elmer's glue.
01:47:17
Speaker
I did about half a can of hairspray because I liked how peaky that looked and how it stayed.
01:47:26
Speaker
And I did Jell-O a lot too.
01:47:29
Speaker
Uh, so clear, clear gelatin worked really well.
01:47:32
Speaker
Cause then you could like head bang and stuff and it would, it would keep its shape.
01:47:38
Speaker
Nice.
01:47:40
Speaker
Yeah, that was a, I always feel like I, you know, we always playing around with like egg whites for like Liberty spikes and, you know, spiking things up.
01:47:45
Speaker
But, um, I think I, I, I never had eggs, egg white.
01:47:50
Speaker
That's interesting.
01:47:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:51
Speaker
That was a, that was a thing.
01:47:51
Speaker
A buddy of mine tried.
01:47:53
Speaker
It smelled weird, but, um, I bet it did after a couple of hours.
01:47:56
Speaker
Anyway.
01:47:58
Speaker
Um,
01:47:58
Speaker
Yeah, we were always pretty ripe back then.
01:48:01
Speaker
But I think I had a...
01:48:05
Speaker
So I get these crazy eyebrows going sometimes.
01:48:07
Speaker
And there was one time I was driving the car and I had the window down and something kept tickling my nose.
01:48:12
Speaker
I was like, what the fuck is that?
01:48:15
Speaker
And then it was my eyebrows.
01:48:16
Speaker
They were just like, I was like, oh, sweet.
01:48:19
Speaker
So I spiked out my eyebrows one time.
01:48:22
Speaker
Just like, it was amazing.
01:48:25
Speaker
It was annoying.
01:48:26
Speaker
It wasn't fun because you're always like, you know, like distracted by this thing.
01:48:30
Speaker
When you move, you have these things sticking out in your face.
01:48:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:48:34
Speaker
But it looked extreme.
01:48:35
Speaker
That's all I cared about.
01:48:36
Speaker
I wanted it to look extreme.
01:48:39
Speaker
But yeah, fun days.
01:48:40
Speaker
I mean, those were good.
01:48:43
Speaker
That was a great time, like late 80s, early 90s to kind of be in that scene was kind of the epitome of, you know, of...
01:48:51
Speaker
of that.
01:48:51
Speaker
And there's, you know, there's bands I still haven't seen.
01:48:53
Speaker
I wish I could have back then, you know, that I never, I didn't get a chance to, cause where I lived and, you know, I've never seen Iggy pop.
01:49:00
Speaker
I've always wanted to see Iggy pop that would, you know, it's Stooges.
01:49:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:04
Speaker
You know, that, that kind of, it would just would have been, would have been great.
01:49:07
Speaker
But, you know, I've gotten to see some, I've gotten to see some pretty good shows when I was,
01:49:11
Speaker
you know music biz days i was um did some tours and and you know festival management band management stage management uh and lighting i was a lighting guy at a theater in denver uh and uh and you'd get anybody from like social distortion coming through to to motorhead um and and you know different bands that would come through there then you also get like george clinton and p-funk all-stars you know so all these different like was it the oriental
01:49:41
Speaker
No, it was not the Oriental.
01:49:42
Speaker
My buddy used to own that.
01:49:43
Speaker
I love the Oriental.
01:49:44
Speaker
Yeah, I used to be the lighting director at the Ogden Theater.
01:49:47
Speaker
Cool.
01:49:47
Speaker
Okay.
01:49:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:48
Speaker
I know a guy at Ogden.
01:49:50
Speaker
That's awesome, man.
01:49:52
Speaker
Yeah, Ogden Theater in Denver off on Colfax.
01:49:55
Speaker
And that was a great time for bands because that was like a 900-person...
01:50:00
Speaker
theater at the time um it's about a thousand maybe 1200 uh and you know and that was people had their regular their regular route like reverend horton he would come through twice a year which i always loved reverend horton he yeah and uh and just different different bands that like every year when they were coming through we knew like they were going to play like guar always played yes uh new year's eve at at the ogden theater so you always knew it was just going to be messy a messy fucking new year's eve every year that's why i used to have a lot of oriental not long ago
01:50:30
Speaker
from GWAR's show.
01:50:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:50:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:50:33
Speaker
That was always a mess.
01:50:35
Speaker
And I think one band I absolutely hated working for when they would come through.
01:50:39
Speaker
And every time they came through, I was trying to get out of it.
01:50:41
Speaker
But you were a house guy, so you had to work it.
01:50:44
Speaker
Insane Clown Posse.
01:50:46
Speaker
I absolutely couldn't stand.
01:50:47
Speaker
I've heard that from people.
01:50:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:50:49
Speaker
Cause it's, there was a time when I was a big fan of that.
01:50:51
Speaker
Very short.
01:50:53
Speaker
They spray root beer over everything.
01:50:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:50:55
Speaker
So you're loading out at the end of the night.
01:50:58
Speaker
You've had a long day.
01:50:58
Speaker
You loaded in at eight o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning, you're loading out, loading on the trucks and your socks and shoes are just soaked in root beer.
01:51:05
Speaker
And you're just pissed.
01:51:07
Speaker
You know, you're just like, you're like, everything's covered in sticky, nasty.
01:51:09
Speaker
I always thought about that when I heard that whole thing.
01:51:12
Speaker
It smells so bad.
01:51:13
Speaker
Like, I always felt bad for the guys at the venue thinking of that.
01:51:19
Speaker
Yeah, it was not fun.
01:51:20
Speaker
So I had a particular loathing for that band just because of that.
01:51:23
Speaker
It wasn't even about the music.
01:51:25
Speaker
It was just about having to load out at 2 o'clock in the morning with root beer shoes.
01:51:31
Speaker
And then you can never wear their shoes again.
01:51:35
Speaker
You have to burn them.
01:51:36
Speaker
You can't wash that out.
01:51:37
Speaker
No, I threw shoes away after that for sure, after working the shows.
01:51:42
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, that was a good era, man.
01:51:45
Speaker
I saw Danzig came through.
01:51:51
Speaker
And it was a fun era.
01:51:52
Speaker
I remember seeing Tool on the side stage at Lollapalooza 3, maybe.
01:51:59
Speaker
Didn't know who they were.
01:52:00
Speaker
And I just remember walking by and I was like, what the hell is that?
01:52:04
Speaker
That sounds awesome.
01:52:07
Speaker
And I was just like, I've never heard anything like that before.
01:52:09
Speaker
And you're just like,
01:52:11
Speaker
You know, that was like Rage Against the Machine was there and they were on the main stage.
01:52:15
Speaker
They were, I think that was like 94.
01:52:17
Speaker
I was in the Army at the time.
01:52:18
Speaker
Yeah, that would have been like mid-90s.
01:52:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it was early.
01:52:22
Speaker
It was before it was definitely because I was in Toronto and I was in the army.
01:52:25
Speaker
So it was 90 is this 94?
01:52:27
Speaker
It was 94, I think, because I was in I was deployed in 92 and 93.
01:52:32
Speaker
I was deployed 94, too, but I went to Haiti in 94.
01:52:37
Speaker
So I was I was deployed.
01:52:39
Speaker
But after Somalia, we called it the Haitian vacation.
01:52:42
Speaker
You know, we're like, we're like, this is this is easy compared to making only imagine.
01:52:45
Speaker
So it was.
01:52:48
Speaker
um yeah i've been to the been to the border of the dominican republic you know whenever but i've never i've never actually spent any time in dominican republic we've been to one city that's it uh we went to the city where they make all the cigars and that's the the extent of the country that i've seen yeah same all of my travels cigar travels uh personal travel it's it's always the same city
01:53:14
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:53:15
Speaker
I could see that because you're going there for a reason.
01:53:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:53:19
Speaker
When I went to Nicaragua with JD, you know, we, of course, you know, we started at Esteli, but at the time he was interested in getting into the spirits business.
01:53:33
Speaker
We were...
01:53:36
Speaker
all over Nicaragua looking for a place to build a distillery.
01:53:40
Speaker
So I was traveling with him to, you know, we went to the mountains.
01:53:43
Speaker
That was my favorite spot because there was a spring.
01:53:46
Speaker
I was like, dude, you have water.
01:53:47
Speaker
That's, that's critical.
01:53:48
Speaker
We got our own water source.
01:53:50
Speaker
And then there were other spots.
01:53:51
Speaker
So I went all over Nicaragua with him and, and checking out, checking out the, you know, the, the area.
01:53:58
Speaker
So I didn't, it was fun.
01:54:04
Speaker
Well, that ends all of my questions.
01:54:06
Speaker
Dennis, you have any other questions for Rob?
01:54:09
Speaker
This has been really fun, though.
01:54:12
Speaker
I think Rob kind of hit it on the nail with knowing kind of what the next topic was.
01:54:16
Speaker
And music was going to be my next thing, of course.
01:54:19
Speaker
I wanted to know, what are you listening to?
01:54:20
Speaker
What are you getting down on?
01:54:21
Speaker
Actually, I was going to ask you, have you listened to the latest Accept album that came out in April?
01:54:27
Speaker
No.
01:54:29
Speaker
Their 17th studio album, I think it's called Humanoid.
01:54:32
Speaker
It's crazy, except they're bigger than ever.
01:54:36
Speaker
They're with a new label.
01:54:36
Speaker
They're on Napalm Records now.
01:54:41
Speaker
And they're killing it all these years later, starting from late 60s to today, which is wild.
01:54:46
Speaker
I will have
Organizing Vinyl Records
01:54:47
Speaker
to check that out.
01:54:47
Speaker
I have a particular affinity for vinyl records.
01:54:51
Speaker
I have about 2,300 vinyl records in my living room.
01:54:54
Speaker
Holy shit.
01:54:54
Speaker
That's amazing.
01:54:55
Speaker
That's a lot of records.
01:54:57
Speaker
It's a – I spent last – not this January, but the January in 2023 going through the entire collection and organizing it by genre and alphabetically within that genre.
01:55:12
Speaker
So I can go to a genre alphabetical in that genre.
01:55:14
Speaker
That's great.
01:55:15
Speaker
I took a lot of work.
01:55:17
Speaker
That was kind of a –
01:55:22
Speaker
an algorithm.
01:55:22
Speaker
I wasn't prepared to, to, to dive as deep as I started it.
01:55:26
Speaker
And then you realized what you were getting yourself into.
01:55:29
Speaker
Well, my living room was just covered because I took every record off the shelf and it was just, and I started to put it into genre boxes.
01:55:36
Speaker
And then I, you know, and then, and my girlfriend helped me for a while there.
01:55:40
Speaker
And so she was like, okay, you're on your own, dude.
01:55:43
Speaker
And it just became a thing where, because I wanted to be able to find whatever I could go to.
01:55:48
Speaker
So I inherited all my parents' vinyl.
01:55:50
Speaker
I got my vinyl from when I was growing up.
01:55:52
Speaker
I had vinyl that I bought other people's collections.
01:55:56
Speaker
It might be 400 records here, maybe 30 records there.
01:56:01
Speaker
So I have a lot of interests, a lot of different interests and moods.
01:56:06
Speaker
But the hard part was trying to figure out what genre something might go in.
01:56:11
Speaker
Like, yeah, there's a lot of where you put Tom Waits.
01:56:17
Speaker
Let me ask you guys that.
01:56:18
Speaker
Where would you put Tom Waits?
01:56:21
Speaker
Oh, man, I don't even know where I would put him.
01:56:29
Speaker
You know, I it's a weird I think my opinion is don't follow this.
01:56:34
Speaker
It's very different.
01:56:35
Speaker
But Tom Waits would fit in the same category as like the Tiger Lilies for me.
01:56:40
Speaker
Only based on experiences that I've had before, like that avant-garde.
01:56:45
Speaker
Not typical.
01:56:45
Speaker
I don't think Tom Waits is – nobody would really call Tom Waits avant-garde in any way.
01:56:50
Speaker
But it just feels good together.
01:56:53
Speaker
I almost feel like Tiger Lilies would be in New Wave, right?
01:56:58
Speaker
Or and they are they are kind of new wave as well.
01:57:01
Speaker
Right.
01:57:02
Speaker
So and that's so what I started doing was I started to lean into, you know, using using Alexa.
01:57:09
Speaker
So I'm like, you know, because I'm up on it.
01:57:11
Speaker
I'm on a ladder.
01:57:13
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm Alexa, you know, like Alexa, what what genre is this record?
01:57:17
Speaker
Because I some of you know, some of them I just don't even know who they are.
01:57:20
Speaker
I just happen to buy the, you know, buy the collection and there's stuff in there that I didn't know where it was going to sit.
01:57:25
Speaker
And and I so I made a decision for Tom Waits.
01:57:29
Speaker
I put him in folk, oddly enough.
01:57:32
Speaker
So I got folk, but I also put Nathaniel Ratliff in folk.
01:57:35
Speaker
Because he's kind of like folk, but he's also a big band.
01:57:38
Speaker
But he's also what I wouldn't consider big bands historically.
01:57:43
Speaker
So, I mean, that's where you start going.
01:57:44
Speaker
You're like, oh, this hurts.
01:57:45
Speaker
This hurts my brain.
01:57:47
Speaker
I've always had a problem classifying music as genre.
01:57:50
Speaker
Because, like, there are so many musicians who...
01:57:57
Speaker
play around with genre, right?
01:57:58
Speaker
Yeah, they cross over a couple of different genres, absolutely.
01:58:01
Speaker
Yeah, they'll do a metal album, and then they'll do an album that's a little more like classic rock kind of vibe.
01:58:08
Speaker
And then you've got some people who have a funk album and a metal album and a folk album and an acoustic album and
01:58:16
Speaker
And a Christmas album.
01:58:18
Speaker
And a Christmas album.
01:58:19
Speaker
Christmas is easy to classify, right?
01:58:21
Speaker
That's its own genre, I think.
01:58:23
Speaker
Well, it is, but if it's a certain artist, then I want that with that artist wherever I classified them from before.
01:58:28
Speaker
I see.
01:58:28
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense.
01:58:30
Speaker
Yeah, it would get weird.
01:58:32
Speaker
But I ended up putting...
01:58:34
Speaker
Tom Waits in the folk because that's what I kept coming back to.
01:58:38
Speaker
And then I realized, well, it's kind of subjective of where, where do I want to find him?
01:58:41
Speaker
Where do I think I'm going to go look for him?
01:58:43
Speaker
You know, I'm just using him as an example, but like, you know, there was, there was just a lot of like, there's dozens and dozens of artists like that, that are like kind of a genre, but kind of on the cusp of that genre that.
01:58:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:58:57
Speaker
Also another genre.
01:58:59
Speaker
Right, like, yeah, like, you know, like, I'm like, ooh, Kendrick Lamar.
01:59:02
Speaker
Well, I mean, you know, like, I know where I'm gonna probably put that, but I like, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of fun.
01:59:08
Speaker
I got, I got a funk, you know, I've got a little funk section in there as well.
01:59:14
Speaker
You know, and somebody, you know, like, I ended up putting, I had, you know, in part of the collection that I bought, I ended up having some, where are those guys?
01:59:23
Speaker
Oh, the Village People.
01:59:26
Speaker
And I was like, okay, where do you put the village people?
01:59:28
Speaker
Because it's just silly music.
01:59:29
Speaker
But it goes into funk.
01:59:32
Speaker
It's funky.
01:59:33
Speaker
I was going to say classic rock maybe, but that definitely doesn't fit.
01:59:38
Speaker
No, no.
01:59:39
Speaker
So there's a lot of fun stuff in there.
01:59:41
Speaker
And like, you know, I, I, uh, uh, in a lot of the records I've had, my punk records are just beat to shit.
01:59:47
Speaker
I mean, they are just so naturally worn out.
01:59:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:59:50
Speaker
And they're just, they, they look like they're punk records.
01:59:53
Speaker
Um, you know, and I've always tried to take good care of my records, but that's, uh,
01:59:57
Speaker
I don't know.
01:59:57
Speaker
I think, I think it's a lot of fun.
01:59:58
Speaker
I love, I love music.
01:59:59
Speaker
I like the visceral experience.
02:00:01
Speaker
I think just like smoking a cigar, enjoying a whiskey, putting on a record is just as part as much of that kind of visceral experience.
02:00:10
Speaker
So I haven't, I haven't set up records out here in my cigar lounge yet because I, I, I don't want to get them smoky as part of it.
02:00:18
Speaker
So I kind of need like, you don't want that kind of sticky film that kind of.
02:00:22
Speaker
The film.
02:00:22
Speaker
Yeah.
02:00:23
Speaker
Yeah.
02:00:24
Speaker
So, yeah, it's fun.
02:00:27
Speaker
And there's a company out there called Discogs that you can type in your serial number of the record and you can put it and you build your database in their system.
02:00:39
Speaker
And you can choose whether you want it to be public or not so people can see what you have and what people are selling, buying and selling on that.
02:00:47
Speaker
So I've had some fun...
02:00:50
Speaker
playing around with, you know, starting to put all that collection in.
02:00:54
Speaker
And then I, and I'm like, okay, well, I don't want to, I can't, I can't.
02:00:58
Speaker
I don't want people to know.
02:01:00
Speaker
Village people records.
02:01:03
Speaker
It's only two.
02:01:04
Speaker
Any logins?
02:01:07
Speaker
Yes.
02:01:08
Speaker
It's probably too, too many village people records.
02:01:12
Speaker
Um,
02:01:15
Speaker
Do you have what's your turntable like?
02:01:17
Speaker
I ask this not because I'm a turntable geek because I'm definitely not.
02:01:20
Speaker
My dad, my parents live in like an apartment that's attached to our house.
02:01:25
Speaker
But my dad is into early 20th century.
02:01:31
Speaker
What would be called vinyl, but they're called records because they didn't have vinyl didn't exist yet.
02:01:36
Speaker
He's trying to buy a record player.
02:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, those are actually used metal needles.
02:01:41
Speaker
And the needle, you're supposed to throw the needle out after one use.
02:01:45
Speaker
You could just get a whole tin of them.
02:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, they come in a little tin.
02:01:52
Speaker
I think you get three records reliably out of it.
02:01:56
Speaker
And you could stretch it to seven or so.
02:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, and then you start to carve.
02:02:01
Speaker
That steel starts to carve through the record.
02:02:03
Speaker
I've got some of those.
02:02:06
Speaker
My dad has probably about
02:02:09
Speaker
a thousand, I don't know, something like that.
02:02:10
Speaker
Oh, wow.
02:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a specialized type of record, and you got to be, and they're thick.
02:02:18
Speaker
I mean, they're super thick.
02:02:20
Speaker
Well, he's looking for an electric, sorry, I don't mean to go down this tangent, but I just think it's interesting.
02:02:26
Speaker
So he has about
02:02:30
Speaker
I don't know, probably about 12 hand crank Victrola, vintage, like 100 years old kind of record player.
02:02:37
Speaker
But he's trying to find one that we can put in the living room so he can listen to his awful music in the whole house.
02:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, the music, and that's the other part of it, is like the music that came out at that time is not necessarily going to be too tasty.
02:02:49
Speaker
A lot of very intense trumpets.
02:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
02:02:54
Speaker
You know, so my sound system, my entire sound system is Sansui.
02:02:59
Speaker
And I bought it on Craigslist from a guy who, he said his uncle bought it brand new in Japan after he came back from Vietnam.
02:03:07
Speaker
So he left Vietnam, stopped off in Japan, bought
02:03:10
Speaker
the, the, the, the amp, the preamp, the, the turntable, um, the, the, the equalizer, uh, the, the dual cassette.
02:03:19
Speaker
Um, no, I don't even know if you had dual cassette.
02:03:21
Speaker
I think, I think I got that separately, but, um, um, and I, I spent a lot of time and money taken to a place here in Denver, uh, to get everything gone through, you know, like all your, uh, you know, everything repotted and, and, you know, when you're dealing with all that old, uh,
02:03:39
Speaker
You know, analog equipment, it just wears out in.
02:03:43
Speaker
And so I spent a lot of money getting all that stuff restored internally to fine tune the system.
02:03:50
Speaker
And it's every time you put on a record, you know, every record was was produced differently with a different.
02:03:58
Speaker
you know and so so you're fine-tuning the system kind of like a hot rod every single time yeah you put on a record you know it's not just like put it on and walk away you gotta you gotta dial it in a little bit uh to to fit you know whatever production quality was you know it was made with and again that's part of the whole art form of it yeah yeah exactly and I think I I enjoy I enjoy that that kind of um
02:04:23
Speaker
Again, I'm an analog guy.
02:04:24
Speaker
I mean, that's why I got the typewriter, like wall sconces back here.
02:04:28
Speaker
I like that kind of analog approach to music.
02:04:33
Speaker
So I still enjoy throwing a record on and flipping the record over.
02:04:36
Speaker
And I've spent a lot of time on that.
Appreciation for Vinyl and Easter Eggs
02:04:42
Speaker
It's a good experience.
02:04:43
Speaker
There's nothing like hearing music in that vinyl record format.
02:04:49
Speaker
Like there is something magical about like the analog nature of it.
02:04:55
Speaker
That it's not like a CD where it's reading ones and zeros or an MP3, which is just ones and zeros packed into a file that barely exists.
02:05:05
Speaker
Yeah.
02:05:05
Speaker
Like you're listening to those grooves, those up and down left, right movement.
02:05:11
Speaker
It's something's really cool.
02:05:13
Speaker
It's a point in time.
02:05:14
Speaker
And that point in time, as that material degrades and changes with atmosphere and everything else, that point in time shifts just enough where if you start listening to that fresh record, 30 years later, you're still listening to that record.
02:05:26
Speaker
You still get something different.
02:05:28
Speaker
And that's really cool.
02:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
02:05:31
Speaker
I think if you've ever looked it up, look it up online, what the grooves of a record actually look like, it's pretty fascinating.
02:05:42
Speaker
That's literally a record that was cut into wax.
02:05:48
Speaker
And then that wax was taken and made into a vinyl.
02:05:52
Speaker
So it's literally vibration.
02:05:55
Speaker
you know, the vibration of that needle as it's bouncing to sound.
02:05:58
Speaker
It's yeah.
02:06:00
Speaker
The fact that it can capture as much depth as it does.
02:06:03
Speaker
Yeah.
02:06:03
Speaker
Fascinating.
02:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, it really is.
02:06:06
Speaker
It is.
02:06:07
Speaker
So, you know, this always comes back.
02:06:08
Speaker
Like I think, you know, with whiskey making me, you know, that's, there's a hand on hands on approach to blending, you know, just like with cigars vinyl just seems it's for me, it's a natural, it's a natural segue.
02:06:19
Speaker
Yeah.
02:06:19
Speaker
You know, for sure.
02:06:22
Speaker
I'm kind of old school that way.
02:06:24
Speaker
I still call people on my phone.
02:06:26
Speaker
It's a good way to be.
02:06:27
Speaker
That's awesome, man.
02:06:29
Speaker
Does your phone have a wire?
02:06:30
Speaker
Does it plug into a wall?
02:06:32
Speaker
No, it does not.
02:06:34
Speaker
You're not that old school.
02:06:36
Speaker
No, no, no, no.
02:06:37
Speaker
Not at all.
02:06:39
Speaker
All right.
02:06:39
Speaker
I guess that wraps it up for the evening.
02:06:41
Speaker
I have one more question that you may or may not be able to answer.
02:06:45
Speaker
Okay.
02:06:45
Speaker
Is this Soundwave a particular song or a clip of a song or something like that?
02:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, it was Blackened.
02:06:53
Speaker
Was it the song Blackened?
02:06:54
Speaker
It's James Hetfield.
02:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, Blackened.
02:06:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's James Hetfield singing the word Blackened.
02:07:01
Speaker
I love it.
02:07:01
Speaker
Okay.
02:07:02
Speaker
That's a very cool tidbit.
02:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, a little Easter egg in there.
02:07:05
Speaker
They didn't want to just throw Metallica all over the bottle.
02:07:08
Speaker
They want it to be kind of an Easter egg in there.
02:07:13
Speaker
So that's a fun one.
02:07:14
Speaker
That's very cool.
02:07:15
Speaker
Yeah.
02:07:16
Speaker
Very cool.
02:07:17
Speaker
All right.
02:07:17
Speaker
Well, that brings us to the end of the show, which, of course, means it's time for our One for the Road segment.
02:07:23
Speaker
We did this with Rob in Vegas, but this time it can include movies, podcasts, podcasts.
02:07:29
Speaker
We did just music then, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's probably music for you, but I'll let you start, Rob, with your media choice for what you've been enjoying recently.
02:07:43
Speaker
Well, I have something that I have not yet enjoyed that I'm looking forward to seeing.
02:07:49
Speaker
I'd say that fits.
02:07:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's a buddy of mine works for Vice.
02:07:57
Speaker
And they just, this last year, did a documentary about Devo.
02:08:03
Speaker
Oh, wow.
02:08:05
Speaker
And, you know, Mark Mothersbaugh, you know, like, so they did a documentary about Devo, went to Sundance.
02:08:11
Speaker
I have yet to see it, but I love Devo.
02:08:14
Speaker
I think they were so...
02:08:18
Speaker
innovative and smart at the time with the way they were doing their stuff.
02:08:21
Speaker
They were quirky, but they were talented.
02:08:23
Speaker
You know, they weren't just being quirky for quirky sake.
02:08:25
Speaker
They were, they were, they were bringing talent in with it, you know, and I thought, I thought, so I'm very much forward, looking forward to seeing the Devo documentary.
02:08:36
Speaker
Awesome.
02:08:37
Speaker
That's all.
02:08:37
Speaker
I'm going to look out for it.
02:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's on my list.
02:08:41
Speaker
So I thought I'd throw that out there because that's the one thing that's just been kind of stuck.
02:08:47
Speaker
I remember, I think it was last year, I watched the documentary about
02:08:55
Speaker
ZZ Top, that little, that little old band from Texas.
02:08:59
Speaker
And it's just, it's always fascinating to me, you know, the history of how, how they get started, how they find their sound.
02:09:05
Speaker
There's a documentary about Leonard Skinner, which is like mind blowing.
02:09:08
Speaker
You know, there's things you just don't think, things you kind of assume about a band until you watch the documentary.
02:09:14
Speaker
It's like, oh, I was totally different.
02:09:16
Speaker
Yeah.
02:09:17
Speaker
So Devo is, that's where I'm going to hit on that one.
02:09:21
Speaker
All right.
02:09:22
Speaker
Dennis, you want me to go first or you want to go?
02:09:24
Speaker
Well, I feel like I kind of went a little bit with mine already with the Accept thing.
02:09:28
Speaker
That was going to be mine for the night.
02:09:30
Speaker
Accept works.
02:09:31
Speaker
I'm going to look them up as soon as I'm going to look up that album.
02:09:35
Speaker
Mine, as almost always, is going to be a horror movie.
02:09:41
Speaker
Rob, you don't know me well, but I am a fiend for horror movies.
02:09:45
Speaker
I'm wearing a Halloween shirt right now.
02:09:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
02:09:48
Speaker
That movie scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.
02:09:50
Speaker
Me too.
02:09:51
Speaker
Me too, man.
02:09:52
Speaker
It's still terrifying.
02:09:52
Speaker
It scared the hell out of me.
02:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think I was probably 11 the first time.
02:09:59
Speaker
I went to a friend's house and they were like, oh, this movie has a boob in it.
02:10:03
Speaker
right at the beginning and that's why we watched the movie and then we kept watching it and i was like man this is freaky it freaked me out man like oh yeah it's just well there's no expression like that could be yeah it was just everywhere and now i've seen that movie a hundred times and i love it yeah it was a william his face will william shatner mask the terror the sheer terror that william shatner's face has inflicted upon generation yeah
02:10:29
Speaker
Yes.
02:10:29
Speaker
Yeah, without a doubt.
02:10:31
Speaker
Anyway, this week, mine is a movie called Abigail.
02:10:35
Speaker
It just came out on streaming.
02:10:36
Speaker
It was out in theaters a couple months ago.
02:10:39
Speaker
It's made by a group called Radio Silence, writer, director, producer, trio kind of thing.
02:10:45
Speaker
It's about a group of six criminals who take on a job to kidnap a 12-year-old girl and hold her hostage for 24 hours for ransom.
02:10:55
Speaker
But oops, she was a vampire.
02:10:57
Speaker
So she starts tearing them to pieces, and it's hilarious, and there's lots of people exploding.
02:11:05
Speaker
It's real fun.
02:11:08
Speaker
It sounds scary, but it's more fun than scary.
02:11:11
Speaker
I've seen it out there.
02:11:12
Speaker
I've seen it.
02:11:14
Speaker
I don't watch a whole lot of horror, but the ones I do lean into are generally more fun.
02:11:21
Speaker
There's a Nazi zombie movie called Dead Snow.
02:11:26
Speaker
That one, I was just like, this is just funny.
02:11:29
Speaker
I've got a recommendation for you, Rob.
02:11:31
Speaker
Have you ever heard of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil?
02:11:36
Speaker
That's my number one recommendation for funny horror.
02:11:41
Speaker
It's two hillbillies who buy a cabin in the woods, sight unseen.
02:11:47
Speaker
They get there to renovate it and turn it into the cabin of their dream.
02:11:51
Speaker
And these teenagers are camping nearby.
02:11:54
Speaker
And through like a series of misunderstandings, the teenagers think that they're serial killers.
02:12:03
Speaker
Like, you know, they're leatherface.
02:12:06
Speaker
or they're Michael Myers that are coming to get them.
02:12:08
Speaker
And they think that teenagers are just killing themselves all around them.
02:12:13
Speaker
And they're freaking out.
02:12:14
Speaker
Yeah, they're just these two innocent hillbillies who are in this terrible situation where teenagers keep dying near them, and they don't understand, and it's fantastic.
02:12:26
Speaker
I've seen it out there.
02:12:28
Speaker
It's been out there for a while.
02:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's like 15 years old now or so.
02:12:34
Speaker
uh worth watching though yeah it's my number one funny horror recommendation okay uh well i'm walking away with a few things to uh to get to dig into you know me too which is awesome yeah
02:12:48
Speaker
Um, all right.
02:12:49
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for your time, Rob.
02:12:51
Speaker
Uh, it's been a blast having you on.
02:12:53
Speaker
We went way over our expected time.
02:12:55
Speaker
I hope you didn't mind.
02:12:56
Speaker
We certainly did.
02:12:58
Speaker
I was going to be out here drinking, uh, drinking whiskey and smoking cigars anyway.
02:13:01
Speaker
So getting to hang out with you guys has been such a treat and, and, uh, and a pleasure.
02:13:06
Speaker
So I appreciate the hospitality.
02:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
02:13:10
Speaker
Thanks for, thanks for spending the time with us.
02:13:12
Speaker
And, uh,
02:13:14
Speaker
Well, we hope to have you on sometime in the future because this has been great.
02:13:18
Speaker
You're great to talk to.
02:13:19
Speaker
Yeah.
02:13:20
Speaker
You're a great interview.
02:13:21
Speaker
And you're just a master of natural segues because you just keep answering questions and accidentally segue into whatever I'm about to talk about.
02:13:30
Speaker
I got to tell you, I like to keep things interesting.
02:13:35
Speaker
I like to be interested in life and things I've done.
02:13:37
Speaker
So I tend to tell stories then like, oh, this story.
02:13:41
Speaker
And like, oh, I'm the same way.
02:13:43
Speaker
So I was like, I hope I'm not talking too much because I tend to get like, when I get into a story, I'm like, oh, but there's this other story.
02:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
02:13:52
Speaker
I do the same thing.
02:13:53
Speaker
And I feel like it drives people crazy because it's like I'm telling a story, but I have to rewind and tell you this other story.
02:13:59
Speaker
You need the backstory.
02:14:00
Speaker
Yeah.
02:14:01
Speaker
You got to fill all the details in.
02:14:04
Speaker
Without a doubt.
02:14:04
Speaker
It's all about the layers.
02:14:06
Speaker
All right.
02:14:06
Speaker
Well, thank you, Rob, for your time.
02:14:08
Speaker
We appreciate you.
02:14:09
Speaker
Everybody out there, check out Blackened Cigars, Blackened Whiskey.
02:14:13
Speaker
Great on both fronts.
02:14:15
Speaker
Find it in pretty much any store near you.
02:14:17
Speaker
I think every liquor store I've walked in has Blackened Whiskey.
02:14:21
Speaker
Every liquor store that I've ever seen that has a humidor has Blackened Cigars, so you shouldn't have a problem finding them.
02:14:27
Speaker
But go check them out.
02:14:30
Speaker
I guess that's the end of it.
02:14:31
Speaker
Dennis, hit him with the catchphrase.
02:14:33
Speaker
We'll be out of here.
02:14:34
Speaker
Thanks for joining us tonight, everybody.
02:14:36
Speaker
And remember, we want you to drink better, but we want you to drink less.