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All right, we are live.
Welcome, gentle pioneers, to this lightning-laced airways of, what is it,
Club Chain Radio episode 138.
This episode, our guest is none other than Sam Means,
aka Lightning Store, Wave Lake, also a musician, father, husband,
and a pleb I call a friend.
I just want to remind you about listening on Fountain
and to subscribe for access to bonus episodes.
This show is streamed live on zap.stream, which means it's also on other Nostra clients that support streaming, such as Amethyst, Nostra, Fountain, Primal, and probably more.
It's an ever-evolving space, and we continue to stampede any of the airwaves.
This week, Culture Corner is focused on two things.
Number one, my co-host Avi, he's across the pond in the UK.
He's actually attending the BitFest Nostra Shire, the three-day event.
Basically, it's a three-day event, November 21st through the 23rd in Manchester.
Three days of Nostra Bitcoin film and art, even some music there.
So if you are going to attend, you got two days left.
Use the code, discount code, PlebChainRadio for 10% off.
a bigger, bigger announcement. And congratulations to my co-host Avi Burra. His new book,
July 18th, just dropped. That's the sequel to 24. I noticed it comes in soft, hard,
and all forms of books. So July 18th is the title. I have not purchased it. It literally
just dropped on, I think, yesterday, two days ago. So look into it. And if you haven't read 24,
please do. This week's sermon, Time is the Cocoon. When we were young, we're all momentum and noise.
We move fast, love hard, bet big, speak louder than we listen, and treat every open door like
it's built for us. Fear feels optional. Consequences feel theoretical. We think boldness
is the same thing as strength. Then life starts swinging. A startup collapses and takes your
savings with it. A marriage you swore was forever ends in paperwork. You watch a parent fade. You
get passed over for a promotion you deserved. You make reckless calls that cost people jobs.
You wake up at 35 or 45 or 55 and realize the script you were following was never yours to
begin with. Each punch lands differently than you expect. It doesn't hurt. It rewires. The swagger
gets tempered. You stop needing to be the smartest voice in the room. You start measuring twice before
you leap once. You feel the old version of you folding inward, getting quieter, heavier, less
shiny. Most people call that getting old or losing your edge. It feels like shrinking. That's the
cocoon stage. It's misunderstood. Inside that pressure, something deliberate is happening.
Every regret is being distilled into pattern recognition. Every apology that you had to
choke out is turning into empathy. Every plan that blew up in your face is becoming calmer,
clearer sense of what actually matters. The ego that once needed constant feeding starts to starve
in the best way. You start confusing motion with progress, volume with authority.
Years of that compression do predictable work.
You develop a kind of night vision for bullshit and for opportunity.
You can sit in ambiguity without twitching.
You know which bridges are worth burning and which are worth dying on.
You've taken enough hits to understand the resilience isn't never falling.
It's mastering the art of controlled crash and the quick recovery.
Eventually, the shelf ends.
It's one ordinary morning you notice the wait is gone.
You speak less, but when you do, the room listens.
You take bigger risks than you did at 25,
yet they feel safer because they're chosen, not chased.
You're no longer trying to prove you belong in the sky.
You just inhabit it.
The reckless, noisy caterpillar has been liquefied and rebuilt.
What emerges is a quieter, stronger, almost weightless.
It doesn't announce its arrival.
It simply flies higher, longer, truer,
carrying the memory of every crawl in its wings.
That's the butterfly time that has always been building.
Not a louder version of who you were, but a freer, wiser,
finely finished version of who you were meant to become.
The cocoon never killed you.
It completed you.
And speaking of beautiful butterflies, let's welcome to the show Samuel Thomas Means.
Well, hello there.
I found your full name on Wikipedia.
do you guys want my social security too it's literally on wikipedia your full name
that's birthday first car in high school yeah when when we talked earlier or in different shows uh you
you you did i'm like can i mention your real name like oh i'm fully doxed yeah i don't i don't think
you can get more fully docs than that no no it's yeah somebody my wife posted something somewhere
the other day i can't remember where and there was like our i think our license plate was in it
or something and i was just like aren't you not supposed to do that she's like dude you can just
google anybody and find out like what they paid in their taxes i'm like it's the stuff is out there
thanks yeah it's it's uh it's only going to get worse um you know ai is not going to help this
yeah so i looked you up and now it might be a separate show but we have some stuff to talk about
yeah well school zones i i can't get around you know that you know the routine
yeah you're in trouble man so let's cut to the chase and uh what everyone truly wants to know sam
uh what's your favorite hot dog toppings uh you know just ketchup and mustard and
have you have you done sonoran raw raw onions sonoran uh i guess i'm not really a hot dog guy
well no i mean i don't think first of all i'm vegetarian do you know that about me
yeah that's where the eggs came in yeah that's where the eggs come in but i mean so you know
i'll eat a veggie dog but and it's funny because you know i try not to actually eat a lot of like
the fake meat stuff because it's like what is it but also what's a hot dog it's kind of the same
thing the hot dog is sort of like the og impossible meat it's like it was just it's just like sludge
that kind of gets ground together and then packaged very neatly that's why you put so many
toppings on it because it's literally just sludge yeah i mean there's a place what's that place
short leash um in uh speaking of doxing in our town yeah they i feel like i've had a good kind
of like sonoran style dog there like a like a mexican dog um a spicy some kind of spicy chili
dog or something like that i like you know i like spicy foods so not a lot of people have their own
dog right so like you know you can get a chicago style dog uh sure and and you know i like to think
that arizona at least we have our own like dog yeah sonoran style what i do what i what i do like
about um that short leash place they're a sponsor on this show right so we can keep yeah yeah i like
the merch at uh lightestore.com it's like a don't go there it's like a pita bread or something that
they put those dogs in. It's like a, it's like a, like a Chalupa or something. I don't know. I
don't know what it is. It's not a hot dog bun. It's for sure. You're not really vegetarian. Are
you? I am. You didn't know that? No, I will. You've had several meals together. Yeah. You had
bean and cheese. I just thought you were weird, dude. When we went to the taco shop, you got a
bean, you got a bean and cheese burrito. I'm like, huh? That wasn't like, that wasn't a tip
well no but you ate i i didn't really assume i don't put together that uh vegetarians love eggs
oh well why not they're vegetarian isn't that like an actual animal i'm not a freak okay yeah
but there's like a gray area right shout out to my vegans uh no i'm a vegetarian i've been a
vegetarian for like i don't know 25 years or something but i don't i'm not like a super crazy
one like if there's like i didn't ask if there was lard in those in that bean burrito i would eat i
would eat it all day long i don't care yeah so yeah i'm still just blown away that uh eggs are
part of a vegetarian diet i feel like eggs should be part of a vegan diet i i hard disagree that
eggs um are not vegan they're just out they're just their eggs we always ended eggs in these
well eggs just they show up they're like a gift from the world it's like a place it's it's like
the um i don't know i feel like eggs eggs are cool eggs are super cool in any in any capacity
so now that we got our uh we cracked the egg on the combo here um what what is going on with
lightning store because the last time we spoke and obviously that was a that was part of the premium
uh yeah no one heard subscribers only uh you know you were basically trying to sell me uh lightning
store. I felt like the last time we hung out. I mean, I wasn't trying to, I think I was trying
to give it to you. Putting the leg out a little bit like we're on Van Buren, but what, what,
what is happening with the store? And maybe you knew more at the time because you know what, Sam,
I've never actually talked to you about your old band, your old, I mean, really, I just never even.
What we finding out today is you don actually know me very well do you I know you quite well I done all the research on you i know i know all the trouble you in thanks google but um yeah lightning store and i just
it's on a it's on a um you know like an indefinite hiatus i i haven't really been the perfect perfect
um way forward for lightning store like in your eyes what would you really want to happen
lightning store i've i mean maybe we've talked about it before i mean or i'm certainly i've
talked about it before elsewhere but you know i just sort of started that as an experiment
like a two-part thing it was an experiment to see if i could just start a like a company
from scratch that only ever accepted bitcoin and never accepted any you know dollars so that was
so did that it's great you know worked worked great i did it i think i started that in january
of 21 so just about four years um or five wait five that'll be five years i guess right yeah
wow um so almost five years so that's i consider that to be um a success and
accomplishment there and then but mostly it was to find people in the music space or in the space
that were into music so that I could get something like wave lake built and
that that's that happened. So it, you know,
it sort of served its purpose there. It was a, I didn't know anybody.
I'm not a technical person.
And so it was a really good way of sort of breaking in via something that I
know how to do, which is make merchant and music and, you know,
kind of am very much in the music space now. So even more,
um but and there were also you know just a lot of really early lightning companies that needed
cool merch and so there was that as well and that started to become less and less of a thing
um i haven't done any collaborations with anybody in a long time not that i wouldn't i just haven't
been busy and with other things and um yeah i don't know i just i don't i guess i'm just
at the moment, um, focus on other stuff and there was sort of a lull in its, in it in general.
And so it just seemed like a good time to just, um, hit the brakes on it for a minute. And then
someday I can bring it back if I want to, but, um, maybe I will, maybe I won't, I don't know if
I'm inspired to do, I don't really, another thing you may not know about me is I don't really do
things unless I'm really enjoying it or I feel like there's a purpose to it. Um, if I'm not,
if I'm not getting joy out of it, um,
I don't really see a point in doing it.
And it just was becoming more of a task in its current form where it's out of
town a lot. And I was, you know, kind of having to have, uh, you know,
you know, my guy, Chris, um, in the warehouse,
he was helping me out a lot and it just became kind of like an obligation. Um,
so, you know, I, I really liked packing all the orders I always did.
And it just, when that, even that element of it started going away,
just seem like maybe not the time to keep doing it for for now so we'll see so it's not just the
bitcoin price then you only sold it's the best time it'd be the best time to waiting for the
bottom again and for the cycle and you open the store again no but i think if i ever do bring it
back i think i'll i would start totally fresh so i do have all this um inventory still that i need
to get rid of. I've been, I have been trying to think of a, a way to sort of package that up
and some boxes and send it off to somebody in a way that might actually have some sort of
impact and. Well, you're not, yeah. I mean, maybe raise some money somehow.
You only have so many excels to go around for me. So yeah, I do want to read your stickers though.
Next time you're in town. Uh, I would like to, yeah, my friend of mine just did. He just kind
of, I was like, dude, go for it. Take whatever you want. You, I mean, a lot of, some of it's just,
not even around anymore. I love that we call it rug gear, right?
I rugged merch projects that, that rugged or just
plenty of mutiny shirts. If somebody wants to cross
all the letters out after M and
spray paint April, is that what it's called?
So are you, you're acting, so
I mean, it could be rehomed though, if, if, if someone had the right
opportunity but it's such a thought about that i thought about um like completing the cycle i mean
like it would be fun it would be kind of funny if if i started this random for five years and then
and only ever accepted bitcoin and then sold it like a full circle kind of uh entrepreneurial
moment in bitcoin that would be cool but then i thought like you know it's really so much of it
was or is i guess so much of my personality i guess is in it like i had a like a whole
online persona connected to it um in a certain point i think we were out at a meetup and will
with will from fold and we're kind of joking about like if somebody took it they also get
to take over the persona like it just becomes them yeah but i don't know i thought that was
maybe weird so i opted to just um just shut it down for now and just confuse everybody yeah
because i might want to bring it i mean there might be a if there might be a reason to bring
it back someday you know maybe i'm i just i don't know i feel like a lot of the stuff is sort of
slowed down the things that i'm really excited about and um they're you know they're i don't
know i just i feel like at a certain point i'm just doing it just to do it you know so that that's
Does Jack Dorsey have a direct line for his shirts?
No, I don't.
Does he wear them still?
I don't feel like he's moved on as well.
He was like Bart Simpson.
I feel like he got sick of hearing about it.
So he changed his shirt finally.
Yeah.
So Wavelake, obviously Lightning Store was your step to Wavelake.
That was kind of your ultimate goal with this.
uh what tell me about wave lake anything going on um any any announcements anything uh let's talk
lots going on yeah there's definitely i mean it doesn't seem like there's a lot going on because
we've been pretty quiet but um lots of building and and thinking and many conversations between
josh and i um shout out to josh the the lone wave lake employee he's the one in the telegram group
uh always yeah josh is very putting out the flames yeah he's he's an awesome dude um
but yeah i mean we've been we've been working all year on on um kind of the next iteration of this
thing it's um it's gonna be pretty different so you know there's a lot of big ideas and a lot of um
i don't know it's we're still still working on a lot i mean like we worked through it we think we
we finally get to a solution in a place where we're happy,
but then something comes up and it sort of disrupts the whole thing.
So I think we're in a pretty good place now. Um, we, we're,
we are actively back to building. We've sort of been in,
we have these methods of like building out the idea,
hitting a roadblock,
stopping for a month and just talking about it and really talking things through
and making sure, um, we're going down the right path.
and then starting back up.
So we're currently in a cycle of where we've started back up
and we're doing less talking and more rocking.
And yeah, I don't know.
I really hope to have something,
some new version of this out this year,
but I don't really, I can't say for sure.
It's just we're working slow.
We're not in any kind of rush at all.
Just really making sure whatever the next thing that comes out
is really fitting to the idea, like the concept and works
and is something that might intrigue people,
get people thinking about things a little bit differently
and shake things up a little bit.
So, yeah, I mean, that's where that's at.
How much time is it consuming?
You're kind of a busy guy.
Busy, dude.
I mean, yeah, we talk multiple times every week.
We have, we have two like major meetings every week where we,
we go through all this stuff. So we're still, I mean,
still incredibly active in it. It's,
I am very, I mean, more than ever,
I'm actually very excited about the path that we're going mostly just because
it's just some new ideas. And I think, you know, probably whatever this,
whatever we come out with, it's probably going to,
I'm sure there'll be some people that don't like it.
there will be some people that really love it and i think that that's really the idea is just to
continue trying different ideas and and we've talked about this before you know it's like
i don't think anybody's right yet obviously none of these these things are really working in this
and you're just talking about the concept of sovereign music or how you approach just i mean
all of it i mean everything we're talking is like none of it's working you know it's like
Nosfer's not working. Bitcoin's not working. I mean, it's working in the sense that-
My primal notifications are currently wrecked, but I have faith.
Yeah. I mean, people know what I mean when I say that. None of this stuff has entered the mainstream
yet. And some people don't ever want that to happen and they want to keep it precious. And
some people realize how powerful that will be to humanity when these things actually
can work at a mainstream level and everyone can experience
what we know to be kind of true about some of these technologies. So
I just don't think the way that we've been doing it, it's not that it's been wrong.
It's just, we've been, we tried something for a while and I'm not sure if it's quite right.
And so we just going to reconfigure some stuff and try that for a while and see if that works And it very well may not be the solution either but I think would be doing a disservice to just continue down the same path you know and not keep thinking outside the box
Because we have that luxury to do that because it hasn't worked yet.
Like none of the stuff has really caught on in a way that's super meaningful.
So we still have time to try different things.
And I want to utilize that time and the resources that I have though,
very few, we're, we're doing the best that we can.
We're in the cocoon stage, Sam.
Butterfly stage will be coming. It's just a matter of time.
So the, and we'll move that kind of,
so basically wave lake, nothing,
no major changes just yet. Um, but stuff you're continuing.
Yeah. I mean, as far as what people see on wave lake today,
it's like,
that's been pretty much just in maintenance mode all year and everything we've
been working on has been behind the scenes, um, on a completely different,
I mean, everything it's like really is truly being rebuilt from scratch
completely. Um, so, you know,
there really hasn't been much sense in building features into the existing
platform because it's going to be on such a totally wildly different setup how how is that
when you're building uh a completely rebuilt uh wave lake but you're still getting bug reports
on the old one it's fine i mean luckily yeah it's not to you actually hasn't been that bad i mean
there's some there's some big take me an hour but i can just build this other thing that's
going to be latest and greatest so yeah i mean luckily it's mostly working um yeah so we haven't
really had too many problems and when a couple things have come up but they've been very
small and temporary and um yeah so it hasn't been bad i mean that's all josh luckily like yeah i
mean it's just josh is the only dev working on wave lake i don't i'm i'm of no help when it comes
to that kind of stuff so luckily it's all been knock on wood uh pretty pretty manageable thus far
um but yeah it helps when we're not we're not in there breaking stuff constantly because we're
like i said we're working sort of in parallel on a different on a different system so it's like
there's not a lot to really break so luckily if it's like it's been working as is and should
should continue to work pretty well until until we until we switch things over
now you have uh i mean it's it's got to be occupying a lot of your life now a lot of your
time um but your band is back from a 20-year hiatus yeah tell me about tell me about never
gonna score yeah different band same same people a couple of the same people actually
three three of the five people in the current band were actually in never gonna score at one
point in time. And I'm just kidding. Anyway, listening, the format is Sam's main music project,
I suppose now. I guess tell me, let's talk about 20 years ago and maybe just tell me a little bit.
A quick background on the band?
yeah yeah and that you know i understood that uh you you were gonna relaunch uh during covid um but
yeah i mean there's yeah we've i mean we were friends in high school started we were in
the format was our third band together um like you joked about never gonna score but like i said
three of us actually were in that band and we're in the next band and then the band just sort of
turned into this project called the format,
which was two of us in this thing that are the songwriters and primarily
recording most of it.
But we started that back in like 2002 pretty much and put out a couple of
records and toured around the world and then called it quits for a long time.
We took an indefinite hiatus ourselves and then decided to come back in 2020.
Yeah. And we had a few shows scheduled then that were,
that were cut off because of the COVID stuff.
And then last year we started writing some stuff together and that was cool.
And that turned into an album. And then we decided to, you know,
obviously with, with an album kind of in our hands,
we'd have to play some shows.
And then we sort of rescheduled those original shows and got those on the books.
And we've now played those shows and are just in the process of releasing music on this new album and getting ready to go on a, on a big tour at the first part of next year.
So yeah, it's definitely been, we have some more shows this year.
I mean, it's just, it's been, it's been a lot because it's a very big, something that used to be my entire life and is now fitting it into having,
family and having multiple businesses and um all of these things luckily all kind of work together
you know i also have hello merch which is my main merchandise business which is the only reason i
was even able to do the lightning store stuff is because i have this infrastructure in place to do
to make merch um but you know it works it's like we the band needs merch and i have a merch company
So it makes it very easy to do that.
You can tell you have a merch company.
When I looked at the merch for the format, you got a lot of merch, man.
There's some cool stuff there.
Different colored vinyls.
You got your cassettes, your CDs, all the way to jerseys, like Phoenix Suns looking jerseys.
Yeah.
I can see a lot of it's your style too.
um so you've you've you've done your artistic uh uh your your talent has been applied yeah i'm
doing the same stuff it's just different different um you know it's like i i'm always making merch i'm
always making things and sometimes that attention just when it needed to be in a lightning store
it was there and when it needed to be for my band then it's there and when it needs to be somewhere
else it's somewhere else you know so it's all to me it's all the same thing it's just different
shapes and different points in my life things kind of intersect maybe a little bit differently but
really at the end of the day it all just works together and it's all sort of the same
it's kind of like taco bell it's like it all tastes the same but different shapes is that vegan
i don't think it's real meat so i don't know if you can i don't know if you can consider taco bell
ground beef uh real uh so i mean i think most people might recognize you from my super sweet 16
uh performance uh do you want to talk about that oh yeah that was a that was a really cool
show that was on mtv that was ridiculous and uh my band in like 2006 was on an episode of it
in Houston, Texas, I think, or somewhere in Texas.
Lumbert?
I don't know.
It's amazing what you can find on Wikipedia.
I mean, there were elephants there.
I mean, it really was extravagant.
It was absolutely just so stupid.
But that was the same.
I mean, you had kind of a relationship with, well, Carson Daly, I would think, about MTV.
But you were on Late Night with Carson Daly twice, right?
yeah i think it yeah we were on it twice but it was the same appearance they just had us they kept
telling us to just do more songs we're like why and then we realized oh they were just using them
as like another you know it's like a year later we're on it again but it's still from the same
show it's just a different ah so same recording uh same recording but uh same session different
airing yeah exactly yeah yeah interesting uh so that i mean that was years ago what lessons have
you learned i mean how is it's got to be cool and and you're um the bandmate your lead singer
his name is nate roosh he went off to fun and yeah yeah he started a band called fun after the
format took a break um he went on recorded a two albums himself under that that name um
and had a lot of success yeah he went on he i mean he's got grammys and
did a bunch of cool songs with you know co-writes and did stuff with like pink and eminem and
brian wilson and a lot of really cool things i think we we are young is rocking like 1.4
billion listens on spotify oh yeah i think i think you might even have a couple songs i had
to count commas like that yeah i mean it's a big big band that i mean that song you did with pink
is I think like mega.
So it's a unique voice and I thought I recognized it until I, you know, again, I'm, I'm like
backtracking through, uh, my buddy's band now, uh, buddies with you.
A lot of people have a lot of it's, that was the experience for a lot of people.
They're like, it's crazy.
We didn't even realize, but I mean, it's crazy for me too, because we were a semi successful
band and were able to do it full-time as a job back then for several years but it was it wasn't
the the fan base grew a lot um over the course of 18 18 years people i mean i've told this story a
couple times but i've had so many people have just been like i got married and i turned my
you know significant other on to the band and now they're a fan and then we had a kid and now our
kids 15 our kid loves your band and now our kids friends love the band and so these shows are have
been that we've done have been so much bigger than we would have ever done um and that's just because
it had sort of time to to grow and um that been really interesting because that that doesn always happen that not you know it very rare to go away for such a long time and come back and have that
reception. So I've been very lucky with that.
Time is the cocoon. Yeah. Yeah. You see the theme there.
Yeah. I knew that was going to be the theme.
So I wanted to throw you a bone there.
Uh, it's, I mean, what, what have you learned? What, what, what,
how do you approach this now? Cause it's, it's pretty wild to,
to have that much life experience in between. Uh, and so,
so some people do a 20 year and they're literally just like redoing the,
the albums that they, that, that they did, like, you know, uh,
whatever was it's 25 years since this album, but you're actually,
you actually launched an album.
Yeah. We're not big on like the nostalgia stuff. It's just, we want to,
I mean, just like the lightning store,
the same thing is true with the music stuff and same with with nate we feel that we're on the same
page there where um we wouldn't be doing this if we don't if we weren't having fun or didn't
didn't want to we wouldn't definitely would not be doing this for nostalgic reasons not that there's
some people do that i don't think there's anything wrong with that but that's just not what we're
into we want to just keep progressing and that's more interesting than just going off and playing
a festival for a bunch of money just for the sake of knocking out 10 songs and having everybody
feel nostalgic you know i'm sure a lot of people have felt that way at these shows we've we've done
i'm sure there's some level of nostalgia there and um lots of really cool camaraderie and things
like that you know we've just sort of seen in these crowds so far but so that's all great but
that's just not the purpose that that we're on it's not the mission that we're on now we just
like working together and we like doing this and so the time was right it took a long time but um
you know we're here again and we're making music and it's really fun but yeah we've learned i mean
i think we both learned a lot much in taking completely different paths i mean he's been
in when we were younger we got signed to a major label and it didn't work out very well for us and
um you know he signed to a major label with fun and it worked out really well for him but
up to a point you know but he also saw so he got to see a different side of it where it's still
kind of like it's a grind and it's brutal but it's but it's working so he got to that does still
exist on some level we've talked about it so much with wave lake stuff you know where um there are
different versions of, of these things that you can, you have to kind of choose your battles.
It's like, you can't, it's hard to avoid all of it. You know, at some point in time, you have to
interact with some of the parts of this music business that you don't love. And sometimes it
works out and sometimes it doesn't, that doesn't mean it's right or wrong. You know, it just means
it's there. It's, and that's, I think pretty, those necessary evils are sort of things that we
have to interact with every day you know in our lives just living just living in this country you
have third things that you have to participate in that you may not necessarily agree with um
so that's just life in the world you know but i think that we've both come out on each side of
these of our path and have learned a lot and how to how we're going to respond to things that that
come our way with this particular project now that we're firing back up and it's been cool because
we're both on the same page in a lot of ways there and i think we're using that that knowledge
to really just make sure we're doing things that are interesting to us you know yeah that that
experience and that i mean it just basically gave you the uh the the you're aware of the trade-offs
at this point and you know you can only it's i don't know you just don't want to repeat any
mistakes uh and you're aware of them and then you kind of move forward you just have to have i mean
this is just something in my own me for i can't i can't speak for him so i can just only speak for
me personally it's like not a lot of people can take 20 years off and then come back with an album
i mean yeah you just we're just trying to be authentic you know it's a very unique position
where you have the experience and you've i don't know it just it's it's it's actually intriguing to
me yeah i mean it's it's very cool to be able to do that and um so you know we're not
we're just kind of taking it one step at a time but it's fun it's been fun to be able it was fun
to work on that album it's fun to see the response to it so far and um i think we're both as long as
we're both just like very authentically navigating through these waters that we're navigating through
I think we'll be just fine, you know? Um,
and I'm also hoping to learn a lot in this process, um,
for other things that I'm working on, you know, like I'm,
I am getting an even closer look at the music industry right now,
going through this with this band again.
So I know that that's going to help me and has been helping me a lot this year,
just even in what, um, what we're working on,
what we're building on and being able to look at this project and be like,
is this good enough? If this isn't good enough for my band,
how's this going to be good enough for anybody else? You know,
I need to build something. We need to build something that's, that's,
that I'm going to not only be a member, but also a client, you know,
to a little throwback there for a TV commercial from the nineties or whatever.
But yeah, you know, it's, it's whatever I'm working on, it has to,
it has to work or else what's the point you know it's just all kind of for show so
it's been very helpful to sort of though it's been difficult to balance some of these things
sometimes it's also doing much more good than bad you know because i'm i'm jumping back into the fire
so to say and it's just um you kind of forget like what what it's like sometimes and how crazy it is
in that fire and so it's been good to to get some insight there and it's and it's helping me on the
on the wave lake front for sure what uh so you you can obviously see out the uh the the stats or the
so like how many downloads uh let's say your your your first single out of the new album uh
holy roller holy rollers or roller holy roller roller uh how much did that appearance on jimmy
fallon uh did did you see a surge um i don't it's i mean it's hard to tell because all that stuff
who was the guest that night i forget her name um i forget her name too i don't know she's some
big pop star i can't remember like uh swift something swift taylor swift that's right yeah
yeah i mean that had to been a pretty large uh what are the odds right that uh the night that
you're gonna play on jimmy fallon it's one of the biggest stars uh it's a musical talent that's
basically the guest so uh yeah it's just interesting that that would cross-pollinate
with the format.
Yeah, I don't know because I don't really
have anything else
to gauge it against.
It was the first time
that we played on TV
in 20 years
and it was the first
that day was the first song that we released
so it's like we couldn't even really gauge it against
a previous song because it was the first
song.
I think it was helpful. I think we definitely got
a lot of people
commenting on those social media posts and stuff, you know,
from the Jimmy Fallon posted or the show posted or whatever.
Definitely a lot of people were like, Oh shit, these dudes are back.
That's cool. So I helped in that, in that sense. I don't,
it's interesting cause yeah, I mean, TV used to be such,
when I was a kid and like even the first go around in this band,
like TV was like the Holy grail.
Like it would be incredible to get on David Letterman or Conan or one of
those things that had maybe not as big of an impact as it did you know like in the 60s you'd
get on ed sullivan and your life would change overnight or even in the 90s you'd get on snl or
something and the next day everyone's you're just buzzing like everyone's talking about you
and tv because of the internet tv has really changed a lot so it's still i mean it's just
to be able to say i played the tonight show is a very cool thing even if from like a business
standpoint it may not have the same impact as it as it as it once did it's still very um it's an
honor to do it it's a classic show um and it was yeah it's an interesting i mean all of these things
for me i have no expectations for anything so all these things to me are just really fun it's kind
of like exciting to be able to go to rockefeller center and hang out took my kid and my wife and
we just like hung out and like made fun of taylor swift and you know played a show and then got some
got some burritos as a Bitcoin psychopath.
Do you even have nerves anymore when you're about to play on this live?
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
It's a,
the logistics of playing on a show like that are actually still,
I mean,
when you're,
when you're standing there,
maybe training and pleb hood would have,
you know,
you're like a monk up there.
No,
it's still scary when you're standing there and you have like one chance to not
screw this up.
And you're looking over and like the roots are staring at you.
some of the greatest musicians are on earth they're just like watching you
judging waiting judging
no it's very nerve-wracking but it's very it was cool cool experience yeah uh you met jimmy
obviously you come into your uh the your is it green room or i don't even know what the what
they would call that kind of uh the backstage yeah a little little green room yeah and i got
I got to meet Jimmy.
It was cool.
He seemed like a nice guy.
He's pretty, he seems like he's the same person
uh, all the time. So I, I don't, I mean, I think,
I feel like some people that are like on TV,
they have like a totally different persona when they're not on it. Uh,
maybe. Yeah, maybe. I'm sure. I mean, it's just like everybody else,
but he's a performer. Like the,
I think these people that have been performers their whole life,
they're always kind of on, you know,
I'm sure that there's moments where he goes in a dark room and,
and cries or something gets, it gets real dark and deep, but.
Are we talking about Jimmy or are we talking about Sam?
I'm always talking about myself.
Yeah.
After this call, that's why I could only do like, you know,
a buck 20 on this thing.
Cause I got to go cry later.
Eat a hot dog.
Yeah.
But no, he was a nice dude.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I'm sure it's, that's,
that's gotta be some life to have to just always be on like that all the
time.
I can't even imagine how exhausting that must be.
Yeah.
Oh dude.
Every night.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Is it,
Is it only, is it on, is it every night?
I think.
I don't know.
I don't, I don't watch.
I don't remember the last time I actually watched that show.
Is it even on TV or is it just on the internet?
I think.
I don't know, man.
I found you on the internet.
Cause I was like, wait, I think it mostly, yeah.
I feel like it mostly travels on the internet.
Yeah.
I'm sure you can watch.
Yeah.
I guess we, we, we did actually come home and watch it on TV.
So.
Okay.
And I will put the, the link to the performance on, in the show notes.
There we go. You can see the beads of sweat running down Sam's head like that dude with the glasses and total recall.
Melting.
So how many, and I guess I didn't put together because I've been at your, I mean, the last time we recorded, I was hanging out in your upstairs room there.
And there was just a bunch of little bells and whistle, different nostalgic musical instruments.
but how many instruments do you actually play Sam?
I don't really play that many.
I play guitar mostly and not even very, not even that good.
And I play, I taught myself how to play piano.
So I can mostly just play songs that I've written on piano,
but I, and I, and I can write songs on piano.
But if someone was like, play, you know, Yellow Brick Road,
I'd be like, get it, get out of here.
Couldn't do that.
Can't do anything like that.
So, I mean, I would say just piano and guitar.
And there are a lot of things that cross over into those realms.
Like I can play a little bit of bass only because I can play guitar.
And I can play, because of that, I can play, you know, my left hand on a piano is a little
bit easier to understand because I'm kind of playing the baseline there.
And these things all sort of work in tandem with each other.
So it's like, if you can play guitar, you can kind of play a banjo.
if you can play a banjo you can kind of play a mandolin you know lots of things like that but
it's mostly i would never actually claim to know how to play anything respectfully um in any kind
of respectable manner other than guitar and and maybe a little bit of piano yeah you're not doing
solos on them here you're basically adding to tracks or um yeah yeah i'm not a solo guy anywhere
on any planet.
I'm a rhythm guy.
Luckily, I don't have to play that much
lead on anything.
What about saxophone?
I cannot
play a saxophone.
I wonder what Wikipedia
says you play.
They seem to know everything, right?
Wikipedia, I don't know.
Have you ever added to your Wikipedia bio?
No, I wouldn't even know.
Who does this?
I don't think you can.
How do they get it?
can't you request i don't i have actually no idea who does any of that stuff
it's just people it's pretty incredible it's like i mean it's like bitcoin core people just
work on it people just go in and like work on things i don't know i don't know where they get
this information yeah it's uh it's uh i don't have time for this right now but that's uh yeah
Anybody, if you want to know Sam, look at his Wikipedia.
You'll know more about him than he does pretty soon.
Yeah.
And I was editing yours this morning.
No, no.
I'm just trying to help out.
Just fucking with it.
Yeah.
There's that.
I added a section that said controversy.
Opinion pieces.
And yeah.
So, I mean, and we've kind of talked about this, but it's kind of,
It's kind of crazy because you got into merch through your original.
And these are things I remember in our conversations.
I mean, before we even went to this 20-year flash ahead, now you're on Fallon.
You started doing merch in your first band.
And you were kind of the merch guy on the side.
And that's kind of what led to Hello Merch.
Yeah.
But now you basically are just a one-man army of, like, you were built for the merchandise you're making today.
Does that make sense?
Like, it's pretty wild.
I don't think anybody's ever been in the music industry.
Do you know anybody that's super into making merch to a point where they have an entire company?
And they're actually designed their everything, basically, for their merch?
not not really i mean i know that there have been a couple i think maybe i'm there's there's one
dude in particular that was in a band called glass jaw and he started a company called merch
direct and it was very very similar story where he was in he was making all the merch for his band
glass glass jaw and then started a merch company in the east coast and still to this day is doing
it i think so i'm not the only one but one of very few people who really sort of do all of it
and the music part two um but yeah i mean to me it's i've always done it like you said i was i
made the merch in my very first band and that was i was probably 16 so that was about five years ago
um so yeah i've been doing it for a long time and it just feels natural to me just because i'm
I'm always making merch for somebody or some something.
So it's cool.
Every once in a while,
I just turn that back on myself and make some for,
for me.
It's cool.
But at the core of it,
you're,
you're an artist.
Um,
you know,
you are creating art.
Uh,
yeah.
I mean,
just like I,
I create art just like I play guitar,
like not super well,
but well enough that it works.
It's just,
I think I have my own style and some people like it and it works for,
it works for,
for my project certainly.
because it just has my personality on it.
So that's why I always like doing that stuff.
But there's plenty of technical people out there
that make arguably much cooler, better merch than I do.
But I think that's what's...
Yeah, and I've always thought that's what...
I think with anything that you create,
the limitations are actually what make something interesting.
I'm sure
I'm sure you feel the same certain
aspects of things that you do
not at all man
you only have four listeners
so you can only take this so far
you know
you're allowed to be very expressive
because you don't have to worry about bumming anybody out
and it's always a trip to me
when I see cassette tapes
now because
and CDs are coming back too
yeah but that makes
I mean, a CD makes more sense to me.
It doesn't, though.
I know.
I know what you mean.
I'm curious how it makes more sense to you.
Because it's just better quality to me.
You know, you don't have to rewind, I suppose.
Yeah, but like a record and a cassette, they have a very distinct sound to them.
But you can't put a six-disc cassette player in your trunk and be driving on the street and go to disc two, you know?
Yeah.
But the CD is just a compressed digital file.
So it's like it is basically just an MP3.
So there's no like charm to it other than the artwork, which I,
I appreciate it. I, I appreciate art of all shapes and sizes.
So.
Didn't say I didn't appreciate it. Just, just, just, I think I would opt to,
if I'm not vinyl, then I, you gotta kind of like, okay,
how many things am I going to listen to?
I buy some, I buy some cassettes.
What I like about cassettes is they're affordable.
$9.99.
Yeah.
$9.99.
Reorder today, the format.
Yeah They they cheap They easy to make They quick quick to make I appreciate that about it Like the last EP that I put out of my own music I only released it on cassette and digital cause it was I wanted to have a
uh, you know, like a physical product, but I didn't have the budget to do a record.
So I was like, and I didn't have the time. So I record,
I wrote and recorded it all in seven days and then released it on cassette.
and I had the cassettes in like a week later, you know,
so it's kind of cool to be able to make something fast.
So I appreciate that about cassettes and even CDs.
CDs are very affordable and have quick turnaround where records are,
are a little bit more involved. So, so I, I appreciate it all.
I like it all.
Well, I like the fact that the, it's $2 more than the digital.
Oh, I guess the CD is too, a 989.
You know, it's interesting.
And that's going to ship out of Hello Merch?
Or is it drop ships from somewhere else?
Oh, no.
Yeah, we're doing all of it.
It's all shipping out of Hello Merch.
Sweet.
So you can actually, your leverage in the shipping, your core competency there is actually going to help with the pricing of things.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
I'm saving the band a lot of money by doing our merch.
That's for sure.
Is that why you're in the band at this point?
Yes.
Yeah.
You know, I need a new customer.
dude i'm kind of looking at the uh oh the signed album sold out um are you going to sign any more
albums or was that limited uh limited that was limited and i i'm not that was a um we didn't i
just want to make it known we did not charge more for that because that's something i'm looking it's
all 24.99 yeah that's something i actually think is kind of disgusting is just charge for your
signature, but, um, some people do really like having signed things and I appreciate that the
people out there. So we did agree to do a small amount of, of signed stuff just for the people
that really do like that stuff. Um, and I'll, I mean, I'm always sign anything. If someone really
wants me to, I think it's hilarious when someone wants me to sign something, but I'll do it.
Yeah. I think I have your signature on a Noster PHX poster.
On a forged check.
They still have my office.
I'm on the website right now.
Can I pay in Bitcoin for this vinyl?
You can, actually.
Really?
Yeah, of course you can.
That's sweet, dude.
I did not know that.
I thought that was only on the mysterious lightning store side of things.
Oh, no.
Helimerch has a BTC pay server.
Has for many years.
Oh, there's the link down at the bottom.
Yeah.
yeah it's there so i mean technically you can sell the satoshi shirt on on hello merch right
could technically well no i couldn't because i i'm not able to receive fiat so even though you
could buy it with bitcoin i can't i'd have to somehow limit it to limit the shopping cart so
it's only bitcoin and i don't think that that'd be tough yeah wow but yeah everybody has the option
to use lightning or bitcoin or um all of our you know our pleb chain coin that we issued last year
that's good that works anything that's like anything that'll fit in a meta mask
wallet did you get the update by the way yeah i just
yeah you could do a thousand more shit coins uh yeah yeah the uh so you did your original launch
of the uh your your comeback tour i'll call it uh was it four four shows yes three cities four
shows we did um big one in phoenix at the mad ass mcdowell anyone well let's talk about this first
so you you're planning four shows and you're thinking to yourself all right we'll just do
these four shows these are big cities phoenix obviously hometown but we'll you know you're
looking for that kind of guaranteed we're going to get some reception right yeah and how obviously
i was talking to you i'm like dude this this sucks because i was i was trying to get the uh
the when the when the tickets launched uh everything broke and i asked you at the time like
how is this broken or is everyone rushing and you you you were basically kind of amazed i
I think, uh, at the, of the volume that was going on.
Was, was that what you were expecting?
Was it something where you're like, Holy crap, you know,
you had to be hometown after 20 years. And we did,
we'd put those shows on sale in 2020 at the,
we were initially going to play the Van Buren and ended up selling out. Um,
and we added a night and that one ended up selling out.
We added a third night and that one ended up selling out really quickly,
all within a matter of minutes actually back then in 2020 so we we expected you know some level
of craziness there but definitely not what happened i mean that was the whole reason we
we played the state fair because we're like this will be really funny
we we can play the bit like one of the biggest rooms in the city and never have to worry about
it selling out and it'll just be and it won't be like a bummer because it'll just be the state fair
so it'll be fine you know like if there's yeah if you guys suck we still got a fair yeah like a
few thousand people show up like so what it's not like a bummer it's not like oh wow they they went
for it you know like they really went for it and didn't sell out the room it's like no one would
expect like no one ever sells out the fair um so that was the idea is like if we can convince them
to let us actually play the fair then that would be a really fun thing to do and then we wouldn't
have to worry about because it was a bummer for some people couldn't go or just the ticket
experience did actually suck for a lot of people back in 2020 so we thought like oh this will solve
all the problems we can just play this big show this big room that'll never sell out um so when
it did it was very it didn't actually was pretty convinced it was like bots and stuff because i was
pretty nervous up until the night of because i was just like noster dude dark noster yeah i was
like this is this is really weird like this is not making any sense this like a lot of people are
probably buying these some bots are buying these thinking they'll be able to resell and they're not
going to be able to like it's just going to end up with a big empty room after we've told everybody
it's sold out but um that ended up not being the case they were real people and it was a really
cool show it's a lot a lot of people and the other uh the others i think what new york and la
yeah that was just i mean that was another thing too we were like trying to avoid playing
live nation rooms i still do where we are playing some on the spring tour but
the neva crowd yeah i mean my preference is to play independent rooms as much as we can
there's not a lot of independent rooms at the size or it that gets harder to do when you're
playing bigger size rooms because unfortunately live nation's come in and bought up all these
big rooms even i mean even van buren now it's owned by live nation where it wasn't before
yeah because i thought that was part of uh was it part of crescent and valley bar yeah group
crescent valley bar and live nation were all started by this guy charlie levy who's a good
and not live nation van buren yeah yeah van buren i love van buren as a as a venue uh their green
room is amazing too uh yeah it's really cool it's a beautiful room he did a great job and all the
people that are were involved with that did great um and they just opened up a new room in tucson
called La Rosa, which is a small crescent-sized room in an old church.
And we're actually playing there.
And that's December.
It's a Monday, I believe, you play there.
15th or something, I think.
I know, because obviously life happened.
I was supposed to go to your show in Phoenix.
Yeah, thanks for showing up.
My mother-in-law had something lodged her throat.
She was our babysitter, and she had to go to the hospital.
and it was happened to be a monsoon night um so yeah it was also storming like crazy
right so which was i was like wow people are going to the state fair and it's storming uh we'll see
how this goes yeah it was a little scary but it worked out but i've been wanting to go back and i
want but i'll be in rocky point actually i'll be mexico uh i'm kind of pissed that you're doing the
tucson show on a monday uh when i'm out of town but it's also an acoustic show excuses yeah that
That one's an acoustic show.
So, but anyway, yeah, we, there are other rooms we picked.
We just trying to trying to play rooms that didn that weren um as corporate Is that the compromise is is is is the acoustic show going to be kind of the way you can play smaller rooms
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, we can play smaller rooms. We can play wherever we want, obviously, but it's not a great fan experience to just keep doing that because people want to see you play.
And so if you have, we're very fortunate to have some demand of people that want to see us play. So we play a certain size room that we think is reasonable to meet that demand. And we also keep tickets as cheap as we can, which is increasingly harder to do these days.
but um our tickets are always like you know 25 to 35 bucks which i think is pretty reasonable
these days um at that size room in the size room that we're playing so
uh but yeah if we want to play smaller stuff i think especially like around the holidays and
you know we we used to do this stuff back in the day we'd play like a holiday show or something and
our actually our first show ever was a was a like a christmas show in the nile basement and it was
acoustic and we played we played acoustic quite a bit back in the day so it's very normal for us to
do kind of do that in between tours so we'll probably keep doing those sorts of things just
to change it a little bit an acoustic show i mean is that just two of you or yeah well these ones
are just going to be two of us but we've done them in the past and we'll do other things like this
in the future that we're working planning on now where we'll do like a bigger we just want to change
it up. So we'll do full band shows. We'll do stripped down acoustic shows. We'll do
some bit, you know, bigger acoustic shows that more, more people involved that have
slightly different sounds. We just like doing different stuff. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know,
when you start getting out and traveling around, you're going to eventually hit some of these
places that are owned by people that, um, you wish they weren't owned by, but that's just kind
that is some of the trade-off and some of the compromise out there is like sometimes in this
world you are going to engage with things that maybe aren't optimal but we try to play independent
rooms as much as we can and definitely favor those when we're looking at offers and stuff for
for shows so that's why when we did this first one at run it was it actually was pretty important
to me for those in particular to do um rooms that were outside of that live nation aeg world and um
so we did the hollywood forever cemetery in la and then we did the beacon theater
in new york which is a bowery ballroom room um so yeah it was cool the that that run was really
really special and how's uh how's the uh roadmap looking for uh our buddy open mic
uh we're playing it we're actually playing one of his rooms actually the turf club in december
in saint paul is a first avenue independent room um we're playing like a weird matinee show
which we had to do because the other their other rooms were all full so
we're playing like a 1 p.m. show just to just to play with them how do we get that on toonster
i'm excited that worked out uh that one probably won't be on toonster i don't think
i don't think we'll be broadcasting these just yet um but you know you never know down the road
how i mean comparing uh you know nerves and obviously just thinking about toonster i'm sure
you're getting a little bit rattled.
But between playing the Tonight Show versus a Toonster launch,
how much more nervous would you be for a Toonster?
I think Toonster is really the pinnacle of success.
So there's the Tonight Show, SNL, and then a Toonster performance.
Yeah.
I mean, that's clearly the Tonight Show is the launch.
Toonster actually might be more nerve wracking because as we know, there tend to be a lot of technical difficulties when it comes to doing those nostrils.
A little lag between the video and the audio.
Yeah, the sound doesn't work.
Things happen, but that's the fun part.
That's definitely the fun part, but it can be frustrating.
I'm sure he's done a couple more since then, but the last Toonster event I was a part of was at the Ainsley show and kind of side event in Vegas.
And it was it was not working.
It was not working like we needed it to.
So, yeah, it's a little.
It's a little much sometimes.
So hopefully, as we know, the technology will always get better.
so the band the format it's how do you come up with that name the format
i just like anything else you know just throwing out ideas and something works and the domain names
available we our first song we ever put out was called the first single our first release we ever
put out was just called ep so i think we were just at that time playing into just the simplicity
of the music industry
and just trying to be very generic in some way.
At a time when a lot of bands were
in the emo and screamo days,
people had these ridiculous names
like Death Cab for Cutie and whatever.
There's these very emotional, long-winded names
or something like Bright Eyes or something.
Some name that's trying to make some statement
to just play into what it is.
So you can just see the band name
and just kind of know what they're going to sound like.
We thought it would be funny if we just had a band
that was just called The Format
and it had no real, I don't know,
maybe just a little bit more ambiguous.
your black album or your you know just uh yeah everything's just very simple and that's we've
kind of maintained that over the years just kind of keeping everything kind of you know in a similar
style don't we don't drift too far outside of the the um the personality that the band has
established over the course of several decades now and then you came to boycott heaven yeah we
changed a little bit with boycott heaven i guess maybe that was a bit more of a a bit more of a
jump there but um there's still a faceless cover which is in line um yeah and that's uh
all of our albums are sans sans faces crystal mary yeah we got crystal mary which sounds like a
like a doors song
it's is that a strain of meth uh crystal mary yeah hey man he got you that crystal mary uh
yeah that's a that's a very beautiful piece of art by this australian artist kyle montgomery
he did um that's that's his it's he makes these figures of these things um it's not even just
mary's he's done other things like taxidermy with crystals kind of coming out of like this crazy
things but um it's very cool looking and it was very fitting with the album title we thought it
was it was thought it was great so we reached out to him and he agreed to let us use that
imagery for the the record and um yeah i think it's cool how long have you been working on this album
um we started it we started writing it um a little over a year ago probably we started
recording it the first first week behind my back yeah behind your back and first week of january
this year actually started recording it went out to la for a few months and recorded it there so
that's why we didn't do nostril phx culture shack uh as one of those but one of the reasons how dare
you one of many reasons i think but yeah that was maybe one of the reasons that was one of the that
was definitely the reason i wasn't there although i think you guys could have kept kept it going but
yeah um that those things don't have to happen every year you know you could take a little bit
of a break and come back when it when it makes sense when there's a reason to 20 years yeah 20
years 20 years we might have 12 we might go from 12 people showing up to 12 000 showing up you never
know the the children of the people that were at the first one exactly exactly time is the cocoon Maybe Ainsley Costello kids are going to be there it going to be cool oh man uh yeah so so when you wait so you been working on it for a year but when you
were doing your 20-year launch that was uh when so you were just actually going to do the 20-year
nostalgic tour nostalgia yeah I mean we weren't thinking of it that way necessarily but yeah we
were just gonna play some shows and then see what happened and it was 20 years of what dog problem
or no that was no that's next year actually will be that um no this was in 2020 so it was like
12 years probably since the last time we had played and about 14 years from the last
record we put out um so it was just because the time the time just was right with everybody
everybody could do it we'd been talking about it for even several years before that but
we just couldn't get it together because everyone lives in a different state um and has jobs and
kids and things going on so uh in 2020 it just that's when it all lined up when everyone could
do it and then it took about five years for it to line up again but now now we're there and um
yeah we went i guess yeah started working on music before which that wasn't the case at all
last time so um slightly different approach but a lot a lot of time went by so there's a reason for
that we were we were sort of working on stuff during covid too just because we were bored
we were working on like a fake pop punk album at one point in time just just out of pure boredom
um passing stuff around but um yeah just evolved into something else
isn't it a little poetic that uh you played at the madhouse at mcdowell uh your the format
jerseys were essentially replicas of that purple palace jersey uh the sun's og jerseys uh well at
least in the 90s when they were ripping um but uh yeah that was the pre-america west arena jersey
yeah yeah but the purple and orange uh i mean that's kind of your uh we we all the plebs are
are drawn to it now at least the nostriges that uh that that that value um you know decentralized
or permissionless uh social media but uh it's an interesting coincidence there between the
the Phoenix colors and the, and the pleb chain colors.
So what, what,
anything that you want to talk about that we haven't any,
and I guess I'll,
I'll ask you for a few links cause I'll put them in the show notes for all,
all seven of us here. But you know, we gotta,
if anything's going to push album sales, Sam, it's going to be our listeners.
Oh yeah. I'm going to run and check the stats right after this,
after this airs.
How many shows you got lined up?
Maybe you don't know the exact number.
Any of them you're looking forward to?
Anything, any venues that you're looking forward to?
Yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to all of them.
They're all going to be cool.
But in particular, playing Nashville, the Ryman.
It's a beautiful, historic, cool room I've always wanted to play.
Stoked to see Open Mic in St. Paul.
The big mall.
You just want to go to the Mall of America.
I'm definitely stoked to see open mic at malls.
Yeah.
I'm going to hit that roller coaster.
Yeah.
Lots of really cool play.
I mean,
it's going to be fun.
I think we got about,
I don't even know,
16 or 17 shows lined up right now.
And we're playing a big festival in Iowa next year.
That'll be cool.
I haven't done a festival in many years.
So that'll be exciting.
Iowa.
Is that like the state?
Isn't the Iowa,
isn't Iowa doing the big state fair or maybe,
they already did i don't i don't know i don't know this is just like 250 years uh yeah anyways
this is world fair oh they're doing a world fair there well i thought that with the 250 year uh
united states i could be wrong um yeah but yeah i don't know iowa interesting yeah these guys have
asked us to play for like four or five years in a row so now we're actually we're actually playing
again so we we said yes this time so that'll be that'll be cool playing with some cool bands there
um yeah it's gonna be great man looking forward to it
sorry i got i got sidetracked into the iowa state fair checking your email
checking my uh spam and my email it's just me it's just me it should be more interesting
It's just me texting you, wrap it up.
Me texting you a picture of me tapping on my watch.
So everything is going good, Sam.
I'm really, you know, I'm a little pissed off that I didn't know about all this,
but at the same time, it's amazing.
And I think you're doing a lot.
I think you're bringing your daughter to a lot of this.
So it's something she can experience that she wouldn't have never had this opportunity.
that's actually the coolest part about it is just being able to share this part of my
life yeah with with this new like see what daddy did before you yeah now now look yeah
yeah she's she's having a blast and there's and you know people in our band have kids her age and
they're all hanging out it's been really super cool and fun to experience all this stuff with
her so that's that's definitely a big part of why i'm doing it is just to be able to show her
that part of my life,
which you never know if you get a chance to do stuff like that again.
Usually you don't.
So I'm very, again, very fortunate, stoked to be doing it
and still be able to do all these other things.
Except for lighting store.
Yeah.
That's dead.
Any other plans for a Phoenix show?
Maybe just like a rebel lounge, just very small, intimate.
just for me maybe well now comes out we're definitely be doing some some stuff around there
um some hometown you know album release type things those would be cool um i'm not sure exactly
where when or where those are going to be but um i can imagine there will be some things around there
and then yeah i mean it's the hometown so do a flag flagstaff show would love to do a flagstaff
show i like going to shows up there and get the hell out of the heat there's i don't know if it's
still there. Maybe it's called something else, but there's a really cool venue there called the
Orpheum. Orpheum. Yeah. That's, I think that's the only venue there short of like outdoor festivals.
Yeah. I don't know. It's a cool place to play. Yeah. Well, it might, it might be too small for
you though, Sam, you're kind of big time now, buddy. No, nothing's too small.
All right. Well, Hey man, uh, thanks for, uh, showing up. Uh, it was a great show. I'm,
I'm happy that we, you know, Avi wasn't here.
You know, he gave me the flexibility to just have one-on-ones with Sam.
That's what I do now.
Every show is just a long conversation with Sam.
Yeah, this one's not going to be behind the paywall.
I'm just hanging on your coattail.
Just not behind the paywall.
So everyone's going to listen.
Nice.
Everyone who normally would.
So thank you for showing up.
I know you got stuff to get to.
Busy New York City.
New York guy.
You probably had 20,000 steps right now.
Almost.
I have been,
I have been out there a lot.
Hitting that pavement today.
Yeah.
Well,
I appreciate your vegan hot dogs,
20,000 steps.
So,
and,
uh,
the next,
the next meal we have,
it's going to be so different because you're just going to be looking at me
such suspense of what I'm going to order.
What's this guy going to get?
Is it going to get a grilled cheese sandwich or a bean and cheese burrito?
Or no,
I already knew you were,
uh,
yeah,
you were,
you were a freak,
We have truly had like five or six meals together.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm going like poutine and you got like two eggs.
Well, that's the thing.
Some people who are vegan or whatever like to be very preachy about it.
I think it's kind of stupid and boring to talk about.
So that's why I usually don't.
Because I don't care what anybody else does.
I love the sound of New York City in the background.
I do too.
I wonder what's going on out there.
What isn't going on?
That's the bigger question.
Well, thanks, buddy.
We'll wrap it up here.
And thank you, everyone, for tuning in to Pleb Chain Radio.
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Until next week, goodbye.