You're in big trouble, though, Cal. I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast.
You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?
No.
Hello, everybody. This is Breakfast of Champions Season 1, Episode 2.
I'd like to introduce you to my co-host. His name is Parker.
I don't know. What is your name? Is it John or is it Parker?
Either or.
Okay. I always called you Parker, but then I like try to search for you on social media
and I'm like, there's no Parker here. And then I'm like, oh yeah, it's Jay Parker.
That's by design.
From the Howard family.
But now people will be able to find me on social media.
Sorry about that.
You threw off my plan.
My bad.
Back into the witness protection program.
We can edit that.
Anyway, it's been a week since last we've met.
We've had lots of crazy zany things happen in our lives.
We'll get into that later.
But I've done some traveling.
I went to my grandmother's funeral this past week.
Got to see my family in El Paso.
And right off the top, I have to tell you about something that I've never heard of before.
My father, who I thought I have like this whole history of my dad down in my head.
My father was a door to door donut salesman whenever he was a kid.
No way.
Yeah.
So we're all kind of gathered around talking about the good memories about, you know, everything
that my grandmother did.
And one of the things that she had done is she was like, she was one of the first like
OG entrepreneurs.
Like when Tupperware came out, she was like, sign me up.
And she was like a brownie leader and a Girl Scout leader.
But one of the things that she did was she got her kids invested in this company called
Spudnuts.
And I've,
Oh, I know all about Spudnuts.
I've tried to recreate Spudnuts.
Okay.
I love that you know Spudnuts because my dad, whatever he was in high school, not even high.
So I think he was in maybe like elementary middle school.
Him and his two sisters would go to the local Spudnuts drop off center and they would pay
50 cents for the doughnut and then sell it for a dollar.
So my dad was like, you always had to play that math game in your head.
Like how many do I want to sell versus like if I don't sell them, how many do I want to
carry?
So take it away Spudnuts man that you know about it.
I mean, I don't know.
I've done some research.
But yeah, I tried to recreate them using russet potatoes, you con gold potatoes and even instant
potatoes.
And they were good, but I've never had a legit Spudna.
I think that's more of like a Midwestern thing.
And also, if I remember correctly, I think it came out of like the Great Depression because
it was hard to get a lot of things.
So they used what they had.
I think the recipe is literally just potatoes, sugar, milk or water.
And I don't even know if there's flour in it.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
And then you just make it fry it.
But yeah, they're super famous, super well known.
Yeah, so I'd never knew that about my father until this week.
So it's crazy that we started doing this like breakfast of champions saying review and donuts
and stuff.
And I was like, what?
I was a donut salesman.
I was like, what?
Tell me all about this.
I've never heard about this.
So I did a little research on Spudnuts myself.
They were one of the first like franchisees of donuts.
They started in, I think it was North Carolina or South Carolina is one of the Carolinas.
They basically just like you said, they need that a different way of making donuts.
They also were before Krispy Kreme and the hot and fresh light Spudnuts is famous because
they like to serve their donuts warm because I would like to his donuts warm.
And so as they spread about the country, there's some tax evasion and fraud and ownership changes.
As there is.
Yeah.
So but they actually had, I think we read it right.
They were selling like four or five million donuts a year at one point.
And most of it through their franchise is most of it from door to door salesman from
younger people.
But I thought that was interesting.
A good way to start off the show, tribute to my grandmother and also just to shout out
my dad because he was a donut door to door salesman for Spudnuts in El Paso, Texas.
The OG donut daddy, if you would.
There you go.
He's going to come for his name.
I released my handle so he can have it back.
Perfect.
I hope you've been well and anybody that's out there listening to this, we'd like to
welcome you to the show.
Again, this is a podcast about breakfast foods and violence.
Last episode we discussed the kind of underwhelming shiplies donuts we had.
They fell flat pun intended.
So I've actually been thinking about them almost every day since we ate them and how
disappointing they were.
Somebody actually at one of my jobs.
The manager was like, oh yeah, we're going to have a store meeting.
And I think I'm going to get shiplies donuts for the crew.
And I was like, please don't skip that part.
Yeah.
Anybody else?
I was like, I know a really good donut shop.
I know a few good donut shops, but I know a really good donut shop, especially if corporate's
paying for it.
Let's kick some business back.
For sure.
Speaking of this really good donut shop, we're going to move into, we're moving away from
the welcoming portion.
And let's just go right into our donut portion.
I'm looking at one of the pinkest boxes I've ever seen when it comes to donuts.
When you think of donuts, you think of like the traditional white, maybe some logos on
it, but this is straight up Pepto Bismol Pink.
So tell us a little bit about this box.
Did you design this box?
I did not design the box, but I really pushed for the pink and it took me a little while
to find the right one.
I talked to some different manufacturers and this one actually is like just mass produced,
order it online.
And then the design that's on it is a stamp, but the lady who created it, her name is Julie
Beal.
She was really awesome.
Graphic design, she's done all the spiral diner stuff and she had all the dreamboat stuff.
Yeah.
This is a perfect, perfect little stamp here.
I'm looking at, you just take it away, describe it here.
This is a donut, but what's inside?
So I'll give you some lore on this.
So it's a donut, but inside the hole is a bunny wearing a sailor's hat with a scoop
of ice cream.
Again, this is dreamboat, donuts and scoop.
So we've got the donut is the vessel or the boat.
Get your bunny with the sailor hat on and then you get the ice cream cone.
You get the whole name in one little image, but fun fact is the bunny's name, which most
people don't know this is Pizzuzu.
Okay.
Pizzuzu.
That sounds familiar.
So Pizzuzu is an ancient Mesopotamian God or demon.
I think maybe demon, not God.
If you've seen the movie, the exorcist, Pizzuzu is the one who is the statue and all that.
Got it.
That's why it sounds familiar.
The Blair from the exorcist is vegan and super into like dog rescue stuff.
So the goal was named the bunny Pizzuzu so that when the Blair will show up and eat some
donuts with us.
That's a perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect logo, perfect story.
We are discussing dreamboat donuts.
This is a local to Fort Worth area, Texas area donut shop that we've had the pleasure
of having many times because Parker helped create, launch and run the shop for quite
some time.
And so we are lucky and blessed and thankful to have some donuts.
I haven't even peeked to see what he picked, but like I said, this box just needed to be
talked about because you don't see a pink donut box quite often.
So Parker hit the nail right on the head with that.
You're already looking at like exclusive, exclusivity.
I don't know how to say it.
Good exclusiveness, a differentness stand out, you know, if somebody came to the office
like a regular nine to five and they're like, I brought some donuts and put this box in
front of me.
I'd know that what's inside is not fall apart.
It's not shipwrecks.
Shipley's donuts.
This is dreamboat.
So I'm going to open the box.
Oh, what's in the box?
Oh my God.
So for those of you, we are not video just yet.
We're still working on the deeds of that.
We could be, but just not yet.
This is for just me and Parker here.
So I'm just looking at four of some of the most amazing donuts that I've seen and quite
some time they're not falling down.
They are standing straight up, 10 toes down like Drake.
They've got their head held high.
They are just Drake have his head held high right now.
Yeah, he does.
He's yeah.
Well, not going to get into that.
Speaking of violence, there's some violent stuff going on in the rap world right now.
If you follow any of that.
So I've got classic glazed classic.
I went by the tier that we went with last perfect.
So we've got classic glazed.
We've got the Homer esque strawberry with sprinkles.
We've got a, is that the old fashioned over there with the chocolate or the cake donut?
Yes.
Yeah.
Oh, blueberry cake donut.
So it's super blue and lumpy like that because it has real blueberries.
Correct.
Not the can that we talked about last, not the, the, the nast of the last week.
So, and then this is the famous JJ donut.
Is that correct?
That is correct.
So we're going to talk about the grading scale.
We had six donut holes, zero to six.
We can change that.
This is not, you know, this is not like set in stone forever.
So we did talk about kind of like store specific.
We don't really care for like the chain so much.
We're more like mom and pop or our artisanal donuts, if you will.
So is this, you want to tell us about, so you said last time you had like hundreds of
donut recipes.
Is that right?
Yeah.
So I actually, I created a 25 page document from the first day I started making donuts.
That's what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
So there is every version of this recipe, like the dough recipe and other dough recipes
that had not seen the light of day, along with all the different frostings and everything
and all of that is now, you know, dreamboats, property and there's, they're continuing to
make cool stuff with Danny who works there.
She's she made a donut last week that had a tiny cupcake in the middle.
It was like a fun, fatty donut with a fun, fatty cupcake in it.
So yeah, they're still innovating and creating and doing also all kinds of cool stuff.
And just for just some behind the scenes, Parker and I used to play an emotional hardcore
band called unspell and at the same time that we were kind of fleshing out some, some songs
and some record stuff, he was in the process of creating these donuts.
So he would literally come, he would come to work and as they were setting up the, or
he would come to practice as they were setting up the shop to just be dog dead tired and
just act, just see the hard work that he put into these donuts.
I saw it not only in the results of these donuts, but also just like in how he lives
his life.
Parker has put all of his heart and soul into these donuts.
You can taste it.
You can see it.
Please go visit dreamboat.
They are an amazing staple of the Magnolia neighborhood, the near Southside neighborhood.
They are family members with spiral.
So anybody with any like dietary restrictions or any vegans or vegetarians in your life,
and even if you're not a vegan or vegetarian, just stop by and grab a donut.
They look amazing.
They taste amazing.
Which one do you want to jump right into?
I think we should start with the glaze.
That's like the, the base one.
Yeah, base layer.
I'm going to let you dig in and just kind of talk about it.
Sure.
Yeah.
I'm going to, I'm going to have a piece of this glaze here.
So the big thing with dreamboat is also all of the donut are made with organic ingredients.
So the flour, the sugar, the milk, like most of the ingredients are organic.
The glaze that was like a big part of it was making sure that the glaze was just right.
The powdered sugar and it's all organic.
Just high quality ingredients also with like the proof and the rise where you can like
see in this.
I'm looking at it.
It's got like those air pockets.
It springs back.
It's slowly springing back right now, but it does do a 24 hour cold rise.
So after it's made, it sits and rises for 24 hours before it is proofed and fried.
I just had my bite.
That's terrific.
It's really, really dense.
It's not super sweet.
Question.
You mentioned ingredients and how organic and quality and that sort of stuff.
What is the price point for your glazed donut?
2.99.
See, there you go.
So I was just looking the other day about DoorDash, you know, just kind of getting,
you know, one of those things where you're like, I'm really hungry.
I wish I could have, you know, donuts, but I was at work so I couldn't leave.
So I started looking and several of the donut chains have four packs, six packs that you
can buy.
But I think if you're going to spend about $2 on a donut, you know, you might as well
just spend that extra little bit for the quality because you can tell right away as soon as
you bought, as soon as you bit into that donut, it kind of bites you back a little bit.
There's like no, like, like you said, last time, as soon as you bit into that shiplies,
it kind of fell and like crumbled and you're like, wait, where did the donut go?
But with this donut, you definitely are getting your mouse worth.
It tastes great.
It's not overly sweet.
The icing, the glaze, it's not as flaky and crumbly.
It stays onto the donut really well and it's not super thick and it doesn't leave your
hands very sticky, but it is a really, really good donut.
It's a great job on that one.
I'm going to dig into the Homer next.
Is that what you guys are calling it officially or you can't really do that because other
chains have done that?
Yeah, there are other chains that have done that.
And actually, when I was doing research for names, the chain that was so bummed they beat
me to the punch is Donut Friend in LA.
Donut Friend is an all vegan chain in LA and they're all named after songs or bands.
Perfect.
There's a Jimmy World donut.
Yeah.
There's like a sunny day real estate.
It's all, we could look at that menu one day.
We're going to.
We're going to have to.
We're going to have to take a field trip.
Yeah.
We're going to have a never episode 50 when we've got some Patreon money coming in.
We'll fly out to LA for a day.
So yeah, it's just the strawberry frosted donut.
This one has sprinkles on it.
Perfect.
I'm going to take a quick bite into that.
You can tell us, did you go through many sprinkles or did you just like, is there only one standard
vegan sprinkle that you can do?
Yeah.
So fun thing about sprinkles, not all sprinkles are vegan.
They use shellac or it has different names, but it's basically crushed up beetles and
it's what gives it that shiny, crunchy texture.
Think about that next time you're eating a donut.
But no, again, spiraled under being around for so long and having a bakery.
It was very easy to know where to get sprinkles.
Like we had a supplier that we used and they've got all kinds of different fun sprinkles, but
we just went with a classic Jimmy sprinkle.
And so that that's a exact reaction I wanted when I made this donut, because to me, the
strawberry sprinkle donut is the perfect classic donut.
But everywhere, like we saw last week with chipleys, they don't put enough flavor in
it.
It's a lot of extracts and it just kind of dies on your tongue.
This is yeah, real organic strawberries that are in the frost.
And you can taste it, boy.
It is not a fake strawberry.
It is a perfectly sweet, you know, composite of like strawberry.
It's almost like a jam taste almost, but it doesn't look like it at all.
It looks like a sweet strawberry, you know, pinky frosting.
Yeah.
Again, we're talking about dreamboat donuts.
These are vegan donuts.
These don't quote unquote taste vegan.
I know that's less like you don't look Mexican.
It's 2024.
Mexican.
But yeah, these donuts don't taste vegan.
So for all of you old heads out there that think that like vegan means disgusting or
vegan means something that it doesn't.
Vegan is not a bad word.
Vegan is not, uh, does not mean gross or does not mean bad tasting.
Vegan oftentimes means high quality.
Vegan oftentimes means care, thought, process into what they're doing.
And you can definitely tell if I gave this donut to like, let's say your every average
day kid, they would love how sweet it is, but they're not getting the fact that it's
actually the strawberry flavor and not the sweetness.
And I think that's some things that sometimes we forget that like fruit itself can be really
freaking sweet depending on when you catch it.
If it's super ripe, like a banana that has a lot of brown pockets and if you throw that
thing in a smoothie, all of a sudden, yeah, all of a sudden you think you have like sugar
in your smoothie, but it's like nature sugar.
And this is a great example of, you know, fruit being sweet, uh, and also tasty.
And that's another thing.
It doesn't taste artificial.
It doesn't taste like somebody just like slapped together a strawberry, uh, or just a regular
frosting and threw some pink dye in it.
So, again, great job.
Amazing job on that.
Perfect.
Thank you.
I'm going to have a sip of this drink here.
I've never tried it before.
This is something that got brought to my attention via all of the adult shops that I attend.
Did you hear that?
Excuse me.
Did you hear that crack?
Crack in a cold one.
So this is a product called Jim weed.
We don't endorse it yet.
We may.
We never know.
It's an adapted gin energy drink.
Zero sugar.
Mine is watermelon flavored.
So I've got pear pineapple.
I see these things everywhere.
Yeah.
I had a friend, actually Danny, who runs streamboat.
She texted me about these and then I started seeing them everywhere.
I'll let you take a sip.
I'm going to take a sip.
So this Jim weed, it has 300 milligrams of ashwagandha.
That's going to help you kind of relax and calm down.
200 milligrams of caffeine is going to do the opposite of that.
100 milligrams of lion's mane.
That's going to make your synapses fire real nice.
100 milligrams of altheanine, which I think also is going to help you like with relaxation.
And then it's vegan and non GMO, just like these donuts.
Wow.
What a great pairing.
This is very light.
It's not super carbonated like a topo where you want to like, oh my God, you know, my
senses around fire.
Yeah.
No, you know, when you sip a sip of topo and it's like TV static running through your
head.
Yeah.
It's not like that at all.
It's like a kind of carbonation to it.
Very good.
Not a lot of aftertaste to it.
You would think with zero sugar and all of the extras that you just talked about, there
would be kind of like a chemically aftertaste, but it actually tastes great.
Yeah.
No, I've got the peripinopulinates like a very, it's almost like a flat tapache.
That's what it tastes like.
It's not syrupy.
It doesn't like cling to your mouth.
After last week's Mountain Dew, I felt so terrible that I was like, we got to do something
different this week as much as I love Mountain Dew.
We either need to do diet dew or we got to do something else and foe show.
I stopped at Quick Trip to get some napkins because I knew that we would need them.
Yeah.
And I was like, oh man, I'm going to grab these.
Yeah.
I've seen these at QT at 7-Eleven at H-E-B at like, I mean, something that just has the
name weed in it.
Especially in Texas.
Yeah.
And at H-E-B, the most Texas of grocery stores.
You would think that that would just be like, mm-mm, we're not carrying that around here,
but I mean, I think the bright colors help.
I think that, you know, like you said, it's 2024 and almost everybody we know is probably
smoking weed or taking weed in some form or fashion.
The name weed is so like propaganda to begin with.
But anyways, thank you for bringing those.
Do you want to, I mean, are you partial to this?
You can't really grade Dreamboat or can you, do you think you can grade Dreamboat?
I don't want to grade it.
Don't want to grade it.
Okay.
Yeah.
So then we talked about sweetness from a scale of zero to six.
I'm going to give it a five.
It is right up there with probably some of the best donuts that I've ever had.
A sweetness scale it is.
And then I thought about this last time.
You want the sweetness to be a high level on the scale, not in terms of it's super sweet,
five out of six, sweet.
Our sweetness scale means the right level of kind of balance.
So if we give you a zero on the sweetness scale, it's either because it's not sweet enough
or it's overtly sweet.
If we give you a five or six on the sweetness scale, that means that your balance is perfect.
It's not too sweet.
It's just the right amount of sweetness.
And I think that Dreamboat nails it on the sweetness.
So five out of six on the sweetness, as far as the thickness, the rise, the yeast, that
bounce back that we talked about.
I mean, you can't beat it.
Six out of six.
I've never seen a donut bounce back the way that the stone it is.
Hold up.
Okay.
And we've probably cracked this.
Last time we cracked the other donuts by now, they've fallen.
They've melted.
Again, Drake, 10 toes down, head held high.
The strawberry donut right here is perfect.
I love that.
So that we had sweetness.
We had thickness.
Maybe like overall presentation.
Yeah, I think overall presentation is.
Okay.
Again, we started off with the fact that this box is pink.
You're not going to miss it.
I mean, I want to take a picture of this JJ donut before I devour it.
That's the one reason I haven't just dove right into it.
Again, JJ is a tribute to a local artist and friend, Jeremy Joel.
It's got peanut butter.
It's got peanuts.
It's got chocolate frosting.
It's got Oreo cookie crumbles on it.
I mean, what else could you ask for in a donut?
It's the perfect donut.
It really is.
It's got the saltiness from the peanut butter and the peanut.
It's got the sweetness from the ganache and the Oreo pieces.
Yeah, it's a it's it's a solid donut.
Yeah, I'm going to give dreamboat donuts.
I'm going to give y'all again, five and a half out of six.
I don't think that I've ever seen outside of like your, you know, you're really super
well known like over the top and donut presentations.
These donuts are huge.
Again, so that we talked about quality of ingredients.
We talked about what you're getting inside of this donut.
You're getting something you can feel good about environmentally, consciously, you know,
spiritually, you can feel great about these donuts, but also you know that you're getting
value for your donut.
These donuts are huge.
They're super thick.
If you know, if you can eat like three or four of these donuts, you are a massive person
that has way more, you know, eating power than I do.
I'd really love to see some of those competitive eaters take down some of these donuts because
they're just like so big and thick and righteous that it probably would be very cool to see.
So I've also described that way.
That's what she describes me as.
So thank you again to the people of dreamboat donuts.
Shout out, go see them.
They are right off Magnolia on 6th Avenue in the P.S. 1200.
Yeah.
And they're, they've got a cool spaceship like building with big glass windows.
You cannot miss them.
They've got big, cool, kawaii looking pictures in the front of their store.
And thank you very much to them and their donuts and may their legacy continue forever
and ever and ever and for worth because they are needed.
You can, you can grab Krispy Kreme.
You can grab whatever chain donut you want in any city in the world, but you're not going
to find dreamboat donuts anywhere before we're Texas and we're all about that action.
So go see them.
We love them.
And thank you.
Thank you, Parker.
I know it's kind of hard for you to be a little biased and partial since, you know, you created
these, these were your babies for quite, for quite some time.
And now you've left that.
But their, their legacy has continued and we're glad to see them and we wanted to give them
a shout out and review.
Legit, no bias on my end.
I would tell Parker, I'd be like, look, man, I've told them before, hey, you're playing
the wrong notes, like straight up.
Straight up.
Hey, you suck.
I've never said suck, but you are straight up playing the wrong notes.
But I would never, never lie about donuts.
It's sacred in my book and he's really neat.
Hit the nail on the head.
So I've done, I've done quite some, some talking and some, some eating.
So we're going to talk about moving on, moving on.
We're going to talk a little bit about our lives.
Personally, we talked about kind of like our kids and like our jobs and that sort of thing.
I really wanted to delve into the music part of our lives because music is such a big part
of our lives.
It's a big part of the podcast when it comes to themes and what we're going to be talking
about going forward.
But I just have a feeling that the people that are going to maybe come and guest on the podcast,
a lot of the people that we're going to talk about and mention in our stories are going
to be kind of interwoven throughout our musical life.
So I just thought maybe we could kind of give a rundown of bands that we've been in, maybe
some cool shows that we've played in, maybe some bands that we love so that way people
can kind of get an insight because I know that you and I have, I just showed you some
music before we got started.
I'm constantly listening to stuff and you're constantly reminding me of stuff that was
like, oh yeah, I completely forgot how great like Converge and Cave-In and stuff like that
is.
Simply by the fact like Mall Walker shirt on today, great shirt.
We both have that shirt.
Love that band.
RIP.
RIP?
Yeah.
Sadly, RIP.
So yeah, let me ask you, what was the first band you were ever in?
The first band I was, I ever played a show in was a band called Hainus Genetics.
Perfect.
We started in 2006, I believe, but our first show wasn't until 2007.
That band was pretty cool.
We played a show at 1919, Hamphill, our first show, which I've been going there for years.
RIP?
Oh, very RIP.
Oh man, so much RIP in the show.
Yeah.
But yeah, so we played our first show there with Steeples from Oklahoma City and Damazumari
from Tulsa and then Trifle Tower from DFW.
What a great first show.
Yeah, it was incredible.
It was so cool.
Usually first shows are like I'm playing the backyard.
Yeah.
I'm playing my grandma's house.
But we ended up getting put on another show in Oklahoma City like a week later because
of the friends we made there and I'm still friends with almost all of those dudes today.
And so yeah, that that was cool.
Like, oh, this is my first band and the second show we're playing is out of town.
And we ended up playing more out of town shows when we played in town.
Successful.
Yeah.
So that was cool.
We were very like stubbornly DIY.
We printed all of our own shirts.
This was CDR times.
We burned all of our CDs.
I did all like I would make like lino cuts to put on the CD covers.
So we're very like adamantly DIY, almost a fault because we're just like, fuck everyone
else.
This is what we're doing.
Yeah.
But that's good and bad in both ways.
We know that just from life experience.
So did you always play bass?
Are you have always been a player vocalist of that?
Oh, so even more lore coming to.
Yeah.
So I was a vocalist of that band and then we ended up like kind of taking a hiatus and
then me and Travis Travis was one of my best friends.
He started this band called Sinister Ghost, which was kind of the next step in heinous
genetics.
Okay.
And he had recorded a demo.
We got our friends together.
Basically we knew we only had like three months to do this band because our friend Joe, who
was playing like synth and keyboard, he was moving to Austin at the end of the summer.
Matt, who was our drummer was moving back to Oklahoma, Oklahoma City after the summer
and Cameron, who played guitar in that band.
I think he might have still been in high school at the time.
We're all like 19.
And I think he was like 17.
But so we knew like, hey, we have a limited time where everybody's in town.
Let's do as much as we can.
And we booked a tour, hit the road, had some super weird interesting times on the road
in the Midwest.
Yeah, just it was super cool, very like fast made lots of friends played with a lot of
cool bands.
And we tried and crammed as much as possible into that like three month period.
And then we were done.
And that was it.
Yeah.
So imagine if you had the opposite mindset of like three months.
Yeah.
Wow, that's a bummer and then just didn't do anything.
But now you have like these lifetime memories of like cramming it all in and just getting
it all in.
And that's such a cool thing, especially when it comes to like DIY stuff.
Oftentimes one of the cons of DIY, especially in the punk and hardcore scene is that you
can kind of get into your own headspace and your own bubble.
And you are so focused on a project or you're so focused on your band that you don't step
out and you don't play those shows and you don't, you know, meet with those people or
do those things that, you know, because you're so focused on getting everything done and
everybody's got a task.
But that's great to hear that you guys had that approach of like, okay, we've got three
months.
Let's make the most of it and get it all in.
So I love that.
What was the fate of the most favorite band that you ever played in?
I mean, honestly, and I'm not just saying this because you're here probably unspilled.
It was the most fulfilling.
It taught me the most.
Sure.
Because again, so heinous genetics, sinister ghost, I played.
Oh yeah, I would didn't mean to stop your train.
I was just kind of, but no, so those two bands, I was a vocalist and I was a singer.
And the next band I played in after that, I played bass and then I continued playing
bass.
But unspell definitely taught me the most as far as being a musician, which I chalked
that up to you.
Thank you.
Because I have always in all the bands I've played bass in, it's always been more of a
jackhammer and unspell had a lot of like quiet parts or parts to slow down and there were
space between the notes, which is not something I was used to or something I was comfortable
playing.
Sure.
That was a fun time for us.
And it's it's weird that we're talking bass.
I whenever we started on spell, I was like, I'm going to play the bass in a hardcore
band because I've never done it before.
Bass has always been such.
I think that like I admire bass playing and bassists a lot as as as well as drummers,
because it's one of those things where like, I feel like I would never I've been I've been
here 40 years and I'm barely any good on the guitar.
So I can only imagine how like how long it would take me for my brain to compute how
drums work.
I just can't do it.
Like my left foot, right foot, left hand, right hand, it's like, I wind up just playing
for four, four, four, you know what I mean?
All the time.
So whatever, like, I guess around the time that when unspell started, there was a lot
of like funky dance music that Jordan and I listened to, in particular, like Taemin
Paula and Pond and Tori Mwa.
And it always had like that kind of like funky moving baseline.
And I always thought that between that and then I saw the I don't I'm not familiar with
anybody in American football's name, except for Mike and Stella, but the bass player from
American football, we saw them on the third LP tour.
And I just saw him really, really like using instead of just using one string, which I'm
I mean, hardcore punk bands and you know, you use one string at a time.
And I think go to is just an open E string.
Right.
I just saw him moving from like, so if you're looking at a bass fretboard, or if you're
looking at a bass strings, you have your thinnest string on the on the bottom and that your
thick string on the top, I just saw him moving from like two, three and the second string,
third string and four string, he would just kind of move up in like a pyramid pattern
or like a little scale pattern.
And he would do it in varying ways, it'd be like, like, and not like a, you know, like
a jazzy, you kind of just be like, almost like moving notes.
And like between that and like Taemin Paul and stuff, I just wanted to kind of like bring
some of that to unspell.
And so that's kind of where some of those like, non hardcorey kind of things come from.
But also like, if you listen to a lot of like, like mineral and brain stuff like that, that's
kind of where some of that came to.
So back to your musical journey.
So you had a couple of bands that you're a vocalist in, then you started playing the
bass and you left off, where were you at there?
So Sinister Ghost had just finished up our last show.
I don't even think I played with them was in San Antonio in somebody's apartment.
It was like a Krusty Scrimmo show.
And also, yeah, Sinister Ghost was like a scrams band.
Orchid is one of my favorite bands, and that was like a big influence on that band.
So so yeah, after that, that was like 2008, probably like August 2008.
I was like, I'm kind of done with music and life was kind of going in different directions.
And then one of my friends was like, Oh, hey, I know this band that needs a bass player.
And this is early 2009.
I was like, okay, what are they called?
He's like, Oh, they're called coin return.
They sound like infest meets agnostic front.
I was like, okay, that sounds cool.
I'll check that out.
Right.
And so I went over to this dude's house in the mid cities and he was the drummer.
His name is Matt.
And so I met him and then the guitar player was his dude named Cody and the vocalist is
this guy named Josh.
And like they had a bunch of songs written.
So they started showing me the songs.
Like, all right, this is cool.
That's not exactly what I had envisioned, but it seems pretty cool.
Like let's keep checking this out.
And then so we went and we recorded like a five song demo and played some shows and
we were getting like really good reactions.
Like I'd never had people react to my music that way.
And I say my music.
I didn't write any of this.
So I was like, people are just like beating this shit out of each other when we would
play and I'd never experienced that.
Again, I've been playing in like screamo bands and but I've always loved hardcore and punk
and all that stuff.
So playing in a hardcore band, watching kids just annihilate each other.
I was like, all right, this is cool.
And then breakfast, foods and violence.
Exactly.
And then so we started like getting a little bit of a following.
This is also like around the same time power trip is coming up.
Those are all like homies.
RIP.
No.
Well, Riley, Riley, I know I've seen the show updates.
Yeah.
He's sitting on your shoulder right now like an angel, by the way, in my view.
Yeah.
He's right there.
We've got a Stony Wayne Bass original Riley artwork in the space we're in.
Yeah.
And just the way that Parker sitting it literally looks like Riley's like sitting over him like
an angel.
Anyway, power trips coming out around this time.
Yeah.
So power trip has been around for like a year or two.
They're all friends.
So we've been playing shows with them.
We record this demo and I'm talking with my friend Sherwin and he's like, oh, I'm starting
up a label.
I'm gonna put out the power trip demo, send me that demo that you guys have.
So we send it to him and he's like, which listening to this demo now, it's like, how
did anyone hear anything good out of this?
Yeah.
But he's like, yo, this is cool.
Like if you guys record something real, like hit me up.
I was like, all right.
So we went into the studio with this dude named Daniel Schmuck.
Daniel was in the band End Times, which also shared members with human error.
He's got a new band that is so sick.
They're called Myth Carver.
There are like new wave of heavy metal band.
Check it out.
They're they just released a single like two days ago on Spotify.
Members of power trip members of I'm going to mess this up.
I'm sorry.
You're good.
Anyways, I'll look it up and I'll get back to you on that.
Okay.
Record with Daniel.
He is super awesome.
He makes a sound even meaner than we actually are.
And so we send it off to Sherwin.
Sherwin's like, yo, let's put this on vinyl.
So he puts out the power trip demo as his first release on withdrawal records.
And then he puts out human errors beyond the wasteland.
Oh yeah, we changed our name, by the way, because coin return is is named after a AFI
song.
We're also all big AFI fans, but we're like, this doesn't really fit our sound.
We were starting to like implement like some death metal stuff and like heavier stuff.
And so like we need a better name and Cody came up with human error.
So we changed our name to human error.
Sherwin pressed a seven inch for us.
And then we just started playing shows like our record release show was also power trips,
first tour kickoff show or might not have been their first tour, but it was one of their
early tours.
And they like we played at this place called the Alamo, which the owner was like literally
smoking meth in the back while we played super super sketchy West Side venue off of
a camp buoy in like Las Vegas Trail.
You know, you know.
So yeah, we like we played that we were pressed up against our amps a whole time.
There are so many people there.
It was super cool.
I got to do so many cool things with that band.
We probably the best show I ever played most wild show, not best, but most wild show we
played with title fight in a house in Austin, Texas in 2011.
The house was packed out and you just like couldn't move because of how many people were
there.
OK, if you are just kind of listening to this podcast casually and you didn't hear what
Parker just said, we're going to reset.
He just said that in some of the bands that he's played in, not in some of the in a band
that he played in, he got to play a show with title fight.
He got to play a show with power trip.
So if you don't know title fight, you don't know power trip, you must stop this podcast.
You must go to your like your closest independent record store and find power trip, find title
fight, please do not stream these bands.
They need your money.
They need your support.
So go to an independent record label, record store, sorry, not labeled record store, find
some old power trip records, find some title fight records, discogs and really just bless
yourself with music that actually matters and counts because those two bands I know
personally in my life have just changed the way that I listen to music, have changed the
way that I make music, have changed the way that I care about music.
They really, I mean, they mean a lot to me.
They've, you know, so stop what you're doing if you don't know either of those bands, go
grab you a six packet donuts from somewhere, put on, you know, put on shed, you know, grab
something to cry with because you're going to cry and just really get into that.
So I'm blessed to be in your presence.
You are, you know, in my mind, you're rock royalty just because you've been in the same
room as these bands.
So I know we were casually talking about our music lives, but these are these are huge
bands to me.
So we just, we just had to kind of reset there for a second and kind of bring that up.
So you've played with title fight, you've played with power trip.
Go on.
Yeah.
I mean, we played, it's funny, like looking back full of hell is another band that they're
massive now, but I was booking them to play to like the end of 20 people when human error
was starting out and, you know, thinking back like, oh yeah, I saw a power trip in
harm's way play at 1919 on a cold like December night and there were 10 people there.
Right.
And now if you tried to go to a power trip show, you were a harm's way show.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's crazy thinking back like a lot of these bands are now like kind of
legendary of our time.
So it's cool.
Like human error.
We had a lot of stuff going on in our personal lives.
So we didn't tour as much as we wanted to.
We didn't, we hadn't really figured out we're all like in our early 20s, the things that
you do in your early 20s between the bad decisions, the relationship issues, stuff like that.
Sure.
It just like human issues.
Yeah.
Human error was not poised to do a whole lot, but the music we put out was really cool.
Matt from human error, he actually now plays drums in frozen soul.
And I don't.
I believe they were the first death metal band to play at Red Rocks.
I've heard this.
Yeah.
So, and that was just a few weeks ago.
So, so yeah, Matt from human error is in frozen soul.
Josh, who is a singer, his brother's a Chad from frozen soul.
He's a Chad.
His name is Chad.
He's at the Chad.
He's the Chad.
And so yeah, seeing those dudes do like doing all the cool stuff with frozen souls.
Awesome.
So Travis that played in human error, he's doing cool music.
He and I have maybe been talking about doing something new.
So we'll see what happens with that.
He also like toured on power trip for a little bit when they want to say European tour, maybe
like a Northeast tour, but he filled in for them here and there.
He's we've got a lot of cool stories.
And then Cody, I don't know where Cody's at.
He's yeah, Cody's off.
I hope he's good wherever he is.
All good things.
Yeah, yeah, like nothing but love for everybody.
We did a lot of cool stuff.
Cody wrote all of those songs.
So yeah, I've heard that he has been doing well.
So I'm glad to hear that.
I'm trying to think what else to talk about after that band.
I did one show with a band called Letch.
Oh, we put out a tape.
It was like 2013.
So I left human error and actually they continued on like they put out they put out a split
and an LP after I left the band.
I still helped with like some design stuff and booking.
But my life was kind of like going more towards the food side of things.
And I couldn't do both.
Did you have kids at the time or no?
Yes.
Okay.
So again, complications like kids work.
I was also finishing school.
Like I was how do you tell a child?
Hey, daddy's going on tour.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Actually, Aiden is my 14 year old son.
He and I were actually talking about like all this stuff the other day and oh man, you
could be touring the world and like famous.
Yeah, do you want me gone 300 days a year?
And he's like, no, I was like, that's why I kind of stepped back from music.
But yeah, so.
Do you want a dad?
Yeah.
So we like.
Or do you want a Drake?
No.
He reaches his dug yet again.
It's violence.
But so yeah, I also human error was the most violent band I played and I've got lots of
violent stories from that band.
We had a tally of how many broken noses we had at our shows.
I've been covered in other people's blood while we've played.
It was it was the most violent band I played in.
So yeah, after that I played in Lech.
That was with some friends that you know, from who worked in the Boca.
Like Kyle, Tad and L.
And all of these great people.
Yeah.
So we recorded a demo.
This was again, 2013.
This was right on the verge of like.
Wiccans blowing up nationally.
Hokes was really big.
All of the.
Youth attack records like Mysterious Guy hardcore stuff was really popular.
So that's kind of what these dudes were into.
And I was in all that shit.
So I was like, all right, cool.
I did base with them, record this demo.
I had a tape label at the time called you can't win.
You still do.
Oh yeah, it never died.
It's just been on hiatus for like a decade.
But but yeah, so we put out 25 copies of our demo.
Tad did all the design work.
Tad's also doing really cool design stuff now for like.
For sure.
The electronic music scene, like the shit Tad's doing is.
Every single poster I seen Tad put out is just like, I can't believe I know this person
in real life.
It's just so talented.
And he did all like one of the best layouts of any music I've ever released.
And he did all of it back in like 2013.
Also just a genuinely sweet human being.
Absolutely.
One of the single time I've ever interacted with them, just a hug, a smile, a genuine ask
how you're doing.
And so just big shout out to Tad.
Love that.
Love them.
Love Tad.
I hope you hear this.
So yeah, he did that layout.
We made the tapes.
We made the tape duplicator, so we like did 25 super fast.
Put the tapes together like literally as we're about to go to the show.
But what we did is I.
My friend Jeremy, he he had this great idea.
He's like, man, I've always wanted to put razor blades in a tape.
And I was like, what if we stamped all the razor blades with the band name and then wrap
them in obituaries from the newspaper?
So when I bought a bunch of newspapers.
Got a bunch of razor blades stamped the name Ledge on each razor blade wrapped in obituaries,
tossed them in each tape.
Somebody opens one of those tapes after they buy it at the show.
They all sold out in the one show we play.
Hell yeah.
This is the type of stuff that doesn't happen at quote unquote non DIY shows or like, you
know what I mean?
Like this, the the razor blade thing is something that is just super cool.
And then it just becomes a thing where it's like, oh, that who would have thought of that?
But it's like because we sit around and we think like, how can we get our name out there
to 10 people, 15 people so that way we can sell something so that way we can pay for
gas to get back to the house or the next show or a recording or practice space or whatever.
But yeah, sometimes the necessity of the idea is what creates some of the coolest ideas
and it becomes like a hook to just like, I mean, who would have thought?
Yeah.
And it's a simple idea, but like super simple to know that.
Yeah.
And so you all thought of it.
So yeah, we we played this one show.
We had some like kind of theatrics.
Tad had a gas can full of water that he was throwing on the audience and like lighting
matches and throwing them at him.
That show was also awesome.
I've got some photos from it, but it was Wiccans breakout.
Oh, who else played that?
Wiccans and breakout, though.
I mean, those two alone.
Sure.
If you're not familiar with Wiccans, check them out like Denton royalty that moved to
Austin and if you're familiar with Andrew Savage, he was one of the founding members
before he broke off to do Parking Courts.
Yeah.
And then Adam, who plays in Wiccans, he's a vocalist.
He's done so many cool bands over the years.
I actually met him at the first heinous genetics show I played.
There you go.
So had known him for a while.
Circle back.
Yeah.
At 1919.
It's all all connected.
I think out I'm not sure if they're still active, but one of the coolest like Oi influenced
bands, but they're I wouldn't call them hardcore.
I wouldn't call them punk.
They're into all kinds of cool stuff.
So and I'm trying to remember who else was on that show.
There are a bunch of homies on it.
But yeah, so did that.
And then we played that one show and we never played another show after that.
That was it.
It was a great show.
We got a great reaction.
We sold all the tapes and we call it a day.
Thank you.
The greatest guy hardcore out on hard out on a high note.
Yeah.
And then human air after they recorded their LP with only like one to two original members
in the band, they kind of went on hiatus.
And then we got asked to do it beyond the wasteland like original lineup show.
So we did that and we played I think in 2015 and 2016.
In 2015, we played with gate creepers their first time coming through.
And so we got back together to play with them.
Now they're like huge.
It was like right a few kids there.
It was they were awesome.
Like I when I saw their comments like, hey, we should try and get on this.
Oh, well, people have been asking us.
All right, cool.
We did that 2016.
We played again.
Some stuff came up or just like, hey, let's just put it to bed.
Never again.
And then after that, I didn't play music until 2020 when I got asked to join unspell.
And now you're just kind of free agent free ball.
I've got a project with Brian from unspell.
He and I are working with our friend Adam.
Love that.
So I'll quickly go through like my musical rundown and then we'll get to some violence.
I started playing guitar because I played a lot of sports and then I broke my finger
and I needed something to do because I was kind of driving myself nuts.
And my parents bought me a guitar when I was like eight.
And it was a classical guitar that just kind of sat in the closet.
So broke my finger, my index finger on my left hand, which is kind of counterintuitive.
You kind of need fingers to play the guitar.
But I taught myself how to play guitar, restrung that classical guitar with still strings,
learned how to tune a guitar, read a few interviews from Kurt Cobain about learning
how he played the guitar or how he learned to play the guitar.
And in my mind, I was like, I can do this.
And basically just started listening to Nirvana, half Nirvana and half like Jesus worship songs
because part of the deal of like me growing up in a Christian household and playing the
guitar was like, oh, I'm a built in like praise and worship kid now.
So I did that a lot of my performative like experience comes from the fact that I was
ordained and licensed as a minister when I was 14 or 15 years old.
My dad was also a minister and so we would kind of come as a package deal.
He was the youth pastor who had a youth who could play music for the youth.
And so played almost every Wednesday, Sunday and any type of like church setting you can
think of mostly guitar.
But all throughout that time that I was in high school, I also played trombone.
And so got a lot of theory and different performance experience in that performative setting and
actually got a scholarship to go play music at Dallas Baptist University after high school.
So I have a lot of like background music experience that's not like super like in performative
like punk hardcore.
That didn't come to later for me.
Did you ever play in a ska band since you played trombone?
The world needs to know.
I tried to form a ska band.
It just was on the like back end of like that third wave.
So it was like, come on guys, we can do it.
And then it was like we probably played like three or four like practices.
And then we realized that like it's really hard to play in a ska band.
Growing up, ska was huge.
Like some of my first like local shows were ska shows.
So speaking of ska and growing up, our the vocalist in our band, Jordan, unspell, he
sent me some.
He's going through, he's been on a kick of like trying to find some of his old band shirts
because he's been on like a big resale kick lately.
And he's got a ton of great stuff.
But as he was going through some of his stuff, he sent me a flyer for a show that he went
to in high school.
And we actually went to the same show at the exact same time, even though we didn't know
each other.
It was Saturday, October 2nd.
I believe this was the year of 2000.
It was at Holiday Roller Rink in Northeast Fort Worth.
Was that Holtam City?
Yes, that's correct.
It's no longer there.
It's actually a Birdville ISD like 4H thing now.
So I'm going to let you take a look at this.
This is the same show that we were at at the same time while we were in high school, but
not knowing each other.
The W's, Five Iron Frenzy.
Oh, God, I love some good Christian scott.
The insiders, Justin McRoberts.
Yeah.
So I don't know if you remember the W's.
They had one song.
I don't know how they're doing on this.
Five Iron Frenzy is the only band I recognize on there.
They should be.
They should be headlining this tour.
The W's at the time had a one hit wonder on Christian Radio called You Are the Devil
and the Devil is Bad.
It was like, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum,
brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum, brum.
religious.
There's something in the show and stuff and stuff.
This was so dove-like.
So I think people felt really horrified and thought that like it was a really terrible,
not even Scaw but because they had horns in the band.
It was like, oh you're a scab news.
Just a super quick aside the Holiday Roller rink and Holtam City, shout out to Holtam
particularly the Christians.
Pick it up.
Yeah.
So after like in high school, I tried to have this band.
We were called No Fun Intended because of the pun.
Pony.
No Fun Intended or NFI because it was like AFI, NFI.
So also NewfoundGlory, NFG, NFI.
I was super into like that whole thing
because like I thought that was really cool.
Like you could go by a name or you could go by an acronym.
Some both of them are cool.
Early 2000s, you either put a the in front of it,
numbers of the end or an acronym.
Correct.
So I thought it was I was I thought it was so clever
as a senior in high school coming up with this
No Fun Intended kind of like punkish name, NFI.
We played one show.
It was a buzz oven battle of the bands.
And I brought two guitars with me.
And for some reason they had us like it was like
backstage was outside.
And so I had both of my guitars just sitting outside
for like several hours.
And then like when it came my time to play,
I brought them from outside to a very air conditioned stage.
And so strings, I popped so many strings.
I think I popped two on the first one.
And I was like, I brought a second guitar
and then brought up my second guitar.
And then on like the first chord I brought,
I broke like two on those.
And I was like, there's just no way I can finish this.
So it was a really embarrassing, hard time.
That was my like first quote unquote
non Jesus performance.
It was at the rec room.
RIP.
Yeah, it was like a late afternoon show.
And so that was kind of weird and threw me off for a while.
But then after that, I kind of just started trying
to like write songs.
And I was working with a good friend of mine
at the time and we would just kind of like float ideas
back and forth.
I was really like, well, what if we do this?
What if we did this?
The first band I was ever in that kind of like played shows
out and about was called Beauregard.
They were kind of like a baroque, very like,
you had to dress up to be on stage like suits and like,
like,
again, age 3000.
Yeah, it was very like killers and the stroke.
Arcade fire.
Yeah, like if you had to like have a vest
and a weird like maybe like a ukulele and, you know,
everything else.
But so yeah, that was Beauregard.
They were Le Beauregard chic.
That was a fun band.
We got a chance to play a lot of cool shows in and around
the area, a lot of Denton shows, a lot of Dallas shows.
I was still making my own music at the time.
And then after that, I was in another group called Titan Moon,
which was a local group in the area that that got a few shows
was here and there. We played with a lot of, you know,
local bands.
What years was Titan Moon around?
So Titan Moon was, let's see, it's 2024.
So I would say 2007, 2008 kind of.
Because Truman, my son was born in 2008.
And that was when we were in Japan.
So I would say like maybe 2006, seven and eight
somewhere in there because like 2010, 2011,
there was another local band called either Titan Moon or Moon
Titan. They were called the Moon Titan.
Well, this was my roommate at the time.
It was two members of Power Trip that did.
It was like sleep influenced stuff and they played a handful of shows.
Yeah. Interesting.
So the lead singer for that project Titan Moon, his name is Tyler.
He's now living, I think, in New York.
And he is a pretty kind of famous ish artist.
And one of his paintings is hanging up in Gusto's.
So if you ever go to Gusto's and you see a painting of Andy Warhol
eating a hamburger, Tyler, the lead singer of that project painted that.
That was probably the craziest, zaniest time I've ever had in playing
and making music, made two records with them.
Got a chance to tour all around the world.
Uh, got a chance to play in Pakistan.
We've played, we visited Bahrain, Dubai, China.
How did you leave Pakistan?
Was it with an escort?
That's correct.
So this is 2008, 2000.
Yeah, 2008, right after Truman had been born.
We are in Pakistan.
And this is also, like,
Septemberishly Septemberish.
And during this time, there was an international program called Daniel Pearl World Music Days.
And we got in contact with them.
Basically, they wanted to hold concerts all around the world and memory of this journalist
who had been captured and killed by the Taliban.
His name was Daniel Pearl.
And so his mom set up this thing.
And so we thought, what better way to commemorate Daniel Pearl's life
than playing a show in Pakistan, you know,
you know, a few years removed from that event and from the terrorist events of 9-11.
So we thought maybe that would be cool.
And so we kind of advertised it a little bit, but not really.
When we went to Pakistan, we had sold our shows to Paul T.
And MTV Pakistan.
So any of our live shows were actually at hotel ballrooms.
And it was filmed by MTV and then broadcast,
simulcast around like all of their, their channels there.
But the last show we were supposed to have was at a different hotel a little bit north.
And so the night before that show, we were just kind of sleeping in our beds.
And we had government security and escorts at that time.
And we just get knocked on the door in the middle of the night.
And the head of security is like, hey, you guys have to pack everything you have
and come with us right now.
We're like, why?
He's like, there's a bomb threat that's been called against the show
that you guys are performing at.
And the government doesn't want to have anything to do with that or have any of like
your your blood on our hands.
So we need to get you out of here as soon as possible.
So literally we had like 30 minutes to get everything we brought with us.
And then we got in the back of these military trucks and we were legit like
military escort guns back of a military truck, like guys with like AKs, full body armor,
like all of it.
And they're I mean, already in a third world country, there are no traffic
signals, lights, rules.
People are just honking.
They're honking to let you know they're coming.
They're not honking to let you know to get out the way.
So everything is just beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
Well, when these guys came and got us, we were just on sidewalks.
We were just getting to the airport fastest I've ever been anywhere.
So we got to the airport and when we got there, no no clearing customs,
no going through security, no waiting in any lines directly to the airfield
from on this truck into an airplane into first class.
Damn flying in style.
We've never I'd never flown in first class before.
And they were like, yeah, we love you, but you got to you got to leave now.
So we immediately got out of Pakistan and flew into Dubai like four days early.
And that was probably one of the most intense times that we had.
Because just as a band, we didn't we just had all this uncertainty.
We had a show that we knew was going to bring us money that we're missing out on.
We had reservations in Dubai that were not for another four days.
So how do you just like immediately overnight just get a place to stay in
another country? We also have visas and stuff like that, that, you know,
have certain dates on them.
So we just can't just like go from country to country like this without like
having some blowback. So it was a very intense time for all of us.
You know, I'd never thought in a million years that, you know,
a terrorist would call a bomb attack on one of our shows.
But again, you're in Pakistan.
Things happen.
But I'm still friends with Zeeshan Haidz.
But I'm still friends with Zeeshan Haidz, the guy that was the head of security
that got us out of the country that day. We're still friends on Facebook.
We keep in contact.
He's a very cool, interesting person with a lot of stories.
Got the real story of like how Pakistanis live, what life is like in Pakistan
from him, from a person in Pakistan.
So anytime I hear anything on the news, I give it just two farts of like
a consideration, you know what I mean? Because that's one thing I will say that
if you've never traveled outside of the United States, if you've never traveled
outside of Texas, you as a person are doing yourself a disservice,
especially if you have the ability to do so.
If you are physically able to do so, if you're financially able to do so,
get out of your state, get out of your country and see how other people are living.
Because that's the only way that you're going to get the real like truth
on what's going on in some of these places.
So yeah, that was a great time.
Moon, we, like I said, we spent about two and a half, three weeks in Japan
at the end of that tour, made some lifelong friends.
I never thought I'd be able to say that I had visited Tokyo,
had played rock and roll in Japan, that I have friends in Japan.
And all of that, that was a dream come true.
The second we landed in Japan, I just I gave the lead singer of the band
a big hug because like we were not on good terms at that time.
We had just gone through, gone through some fist fighting in Dubai,
again, with the violence.
But, you know, it was one of those things where like you get to Japan,
it's just like your whole body is a vibrating from just like the fact that you're there.
So after Titan Moon,
I put together a project of my own called Sons of Sierra.
It was like a roots rock inspired band,
very, very much so inspired by like Alabama shakes and Delta Spirit and
kind of like the Walkman almost like kind of like a roots rock garage rock,
like the strokes, but like more along the lines of like Texas and like Hispanic
inspired music, Sierra was my grandfather who passed away.
My at that time, he was my only grandparent that passed away.
Maximus Yerra, that was his last name.
So my mom's maiden name, so that's kind of where the name came from, Sons of Sierra.
Again, acronym SOS thought that was cool.
The we had a few shows played Art Scoggle,
got the opportunity to share the stage with Leon Bridges before Leon Bridges became who he was.
Shout out.
Yeah, shout out Leon.
We played together at Lola's RIP.
Yeah, I know so many RIPs this episode.
After Sons of Sierra, I was in a project called Woze.
Initially, it was called Ill Smiths.
We kind of like played with the name Will Smith and the fact that we like were the
Smiths inspired, it legit was a joke.
We started with a bass player that had never played bass before.
It was just something that we wanted to do one summer that started out as a project
and it turned into six, seven years of just playing music together.
We got a chance to make an EP with Jorts Richardson, local hero, Grammy award
winning producer, mixer, master engineer.
Fantastic drummer.
Yeah, and I'm just an amazing drummer.
If you've ever heard the Woze EP Get Your Life,
he is the drummer on that EP and he nailed every single one of those songs in one take.
No lie, no exaggeration, legit set up the drums,
heard the song once or twice and just nailed it.
We get so many compliments on that EP and it is strictly
just due to Jorts seeing what we were doing at the time and just really helping us
shape that EP.
Couple of those songs live on the orange years.
It's a documentary about Nickelodeon, not the bad documentary about Nickelodeon.
It's a little bit older.
It's a lot more lighthearted, but you can hear some of our songs on that documentary.
We changed our name from Il Smith's to Woze because we kept on getting
hit by this promoter in Oklahoma that thought we were an Italian Smith's cover band.
So we're like this.
Mamma Mia, Mamma Mia, the Il Smith's are coming.
But so we just thought like if we're going to continue to play music and it was going
to be like something that was a thing, we should change your name.
I know he keeps on coming back up, but
Drake had a song at the time, I was running through the six with my woes.
And like literally, we just took that part and made Woze a thing.
And it was also kind of like Sad Boy, Click era.
So it was like worries, problems.
We thought like, what a cool name just to call your name like problems.
So Woze was a thing.
And then after Woze,
I started on spell and that's kind of where we are today.
We we put out again, got an opportunity to work with a Grammy Award
winning producer, Alex Bohr, whenever we recorded that EP in John Congleton Studio
in Dallas, Jorts again, helped out a little bit with the project by mastering a single for us.
I would also be remiss to say anything that I've ever put out has only
and ever been mastered by Danny Kalb out in California.
That guy is not only a genius when it comes to mastering music.
He's just the sweetest, kindest person whenever it comes to like working with anybody on a budget.
He's worked with Karen Oh, he's worked with Beck.
He's worked with like, I mean, you name it, the royalty of music and yet still has time
to master projects like Woze and unspell and anything that is connected to
Jorts, mainly Jorts is the link there.
And so, yeah, I I humble brag about this all the time, but like Woze was produced
by a Grammy Award winning producer and mastered by a Grammy Award winning producer,
as was unspelled.
Our EP was recorded by someone who won a Grammy, Alex Bohr.
It was mastered by Danny Kalb, who someone is one of Grammy.
The single obscene was mastered by George, someone is one of Grammy.
So, yes, we are DIY, yes, we are punk, yes, we are hardcore, yes, we are all these things.
But we also have friends that care about us.
That just happened to also be in the business and that are amazing.
So anything that I've ever done has always been touched by someone that is just,
you know, great and awesome.
And I just I wouldn't be as proud of anything that I've done musically had it not been for those people.
So big shout out to Alex and to Danny and to Jorts for that.
So I think we're running a little bit short on time.
So maybe we'll come back and do violence later.
Or do you want to do violence and skip the UFC recap or?
I'll let you choose on that one.
OK, let's come back.
And I think we have a lot more to talk about when it comes to violence between the two of us.
So let's make that a third part of this introduction.
We're just going to fight in the next episode.
Yeah, the next one we're going to fight three five minute rounds UFC style.
So let's talk a little bit about UFC 300.
We we want to talk, you know, this this kind of became more music heavy this episode,
but we wanted to kind of get in our personal
ties to violence.
One of my personal ties to violence is the fact that I am a UFC ultimate fighting
champion, mega fan for the past 10 years, I would say, a solid 10 years.
I've legit seen every event.
I've legit watched every contender series, every
ultimate fighter series.
You know, it is a ritual in my house, my children, my wife,
anyone that knows me knows that Saturday nights equal UFC Saturday night fights.
Yeah, Saturday nights equal fight night.
So my kids have grown up with it.
I just, you know, it's so much a part of my life that I sometimes I forget
that the UFC is kind of shocking to some people.
Yesterday we were, you know, hanging out with some friends and kids around the same
age of my kids and I didn't even think about it.
I was just like, you have these on and put it on TV.
And these kids face when they see just the blood.
They're just like, you know, and it's just like so.
Yeah. So violence is a big part of my life.
Obviously, weekly competitive violence is a big part of my life.
I'm a huge fan of MMA, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, kickboxing, just that whole thing.
And we had a huge event happen.
It is UFC 300.
And so if you're not familiar with the UFC, they've been around for about 30 years now.
They started out kind of as a mom and pop company and they really have grown
themselves into just about, you know, I would say in the same echelon as the NFL or the NBA.
They are the creme de la creme of fighting when it comes to competitive fighting.
They're just they've they've made a name so much
some of themselves that they've they've crossed over into boxing.
One of their greatest stars and competitors, Conor McGregor,
had a chance to step over and fight Floyd Mayweather in a sanctioned boxing match.
So the UFC is legit.
It's here. It's going to be here for quite some time.
They've got multi-year deals with ESPN and other companies.
They're probably going to be actually with Netflix or Hulu, I believe.
I believe they're going to be testing the waters with the streaming service like
that after this contract is run up.
So they are not going anywhere.
But US three UFC 300 just happened two weeks ago.
It is the 300th event that they put on.
And so 100 was a huge celebration.
200 was a huge celebration.
But 300 was an even bigger celebration.
Each year it gets bigger and bigger.
They had, I think, 14 fights on the card and every single one of those fights,
I believe, could have headlined its own individual card.
They just had so many stars.
But the two big events that I kind of wanted to talk about and the takeaways
from this are the two events that I would say really crossed over into sports in general.
The first one of those events was the fight between Max Holloway
and it's been two weeks now.
Who did he fight? Sorry.
And just for the listeners out there, I am a casual UFC watcher.
Renee is the guy who knows everything here.
So I'm here to ask questions, chime in with the things I do know.
I again, casual enjoyer.
I love watching it, but Renee is the one who's knowledgeable.
So just jogging my memory, Max Holloway fought Justin Gaichi.
Justin Gaichi is that was the holder of a belt called the BMF belt.
This belt was created a few years ago so that Nick Diaz could fight for a title
because he never got a chance to actually really fight for a belt,
even though he is probably regarded as one of the most heavily fan favorite fighters
and also probably one of the most skilled boxers that has ever fought in the UFC.
He's had kind of some weird beats in his life where like,
you know, Conor McGregor was kind of streaking at the time that that he was kind
of coming into his prime.
And so they kind of crossed paths twice.
He is what they call the baddest motherfucker.
And so they came up with the belt to kind of allow him to compete for that belt.
Unfortunately, he didn't win that belt.
Jorge Mosvedal did and Jorge Mosvedal took that belt from him.
And then after Jorge retired, they had another fight between Justin Gaichi and
Dustin Poirier and then Dustin Poirier took the belt.
So now Dustin Poirier is kind of defending this belt against Max Holloway.
Max Holloway is a little bit older than Justin Gaichi.
Max Holloway has been in the UFC a lot longer than Justin Gaichi.
Max Holloway has had an actual belt, a championship belt in his weight class.
He is just when you talk about fan favorites,
Max Holloway is one of the greatest.
He's always he's a Hawaiian fighter.
His nickname is blessed.
Everything about his life.
He is positive.
He's blessed.
And so it's always fun to watch someone that is he lets his fighting talk for him.
He's not a trash talker, but he is definitely one of those guys where
when he's in the ring, you just don't ever, you know, you don't want to be across from him.
One of my favorite Max Holloway moments is he's boxing somebody and it's in the
sometimes during the pandemic, they would fight in the apex in Las Vegas with no crowd.
And so that came up with this whole dynamic where you could hear the coaches coaching.
You could hear the fighters talking trash to one another and the fighters could hear the commentators.
So the commentators are talking about how great Max Holloway is as a boxer.
As he's boxing somebody, he hear this, he heard this.
I think it was Dominique Cruz that said he's one of the greatest boxers in the UFC.
He turned to look at the commentators and said, I am the greatest boxer in the UFC.
As he sang this, the guy tries to hit him.
He dodges the punch and then boom hits the guy.
So this guy is just amazing.
The fight that we saw with Max Holloway and Justin Gachey for five rounds was just nothing but pure violence.
They legit are just two of the competitors.
They don't run from conflict.
They stand in the middle.
They fight each other.
If it goes down to the ground, they're looking for submissions.
There's neither of them are wasting time.
Neither of them are trying to look for a way out.
Both of these fighters are looking to end the other person.
And in the most respectful way possible, they're both just great fighters.
The thing that was amazing about this fight is that.
There was five five minute rounds up until the fifth round.
In my opinion, it was pretty even.
You didn't really know Max had pretty much handled it, but it was one of those things
where it hadn't been definitive that the fifth round.
Max really dominated it and you could tell, OK, Max is going to win this.
But he didn't.
He did not coast.
He and the last 10 seconds,
motions to Justin Gachey says, you meet me right here in the middle of the octagon.
He invites the person that holds the belt as the baddest motherfucker in the world
and says, yes, we've just beat the shit out of each other for 24 minutes and 50
seconds.
50 seconds, but this last 10 seconds, I want it right here in the middle of the ring.
You don't back up.
I'm not going to back up and we're just going to throw until somebody falls
and Justin obliged.
And for the last 10 seconds, they met each other in the middle of the ring.
And with one second left on the clock, Max Holloway connects and folds the fuck out.
Folded Justin Gachey.
And then as soon as Justin Gachey fell over in front of a Max Holloway, stepped over
like almost like Alan Iverson stepped over Tai Lu.
Just it was just the most beautifully violent thing that I've probably ever seen
in quite some time.
And it was so like.
It was so moving that it was like it made Sports Center and made like all of these
things because it was like it was Babe Ruth.
Yeah, he literally pointed to the to the stands and knocked that home run out.
And it was like watching in real time with my family.
My wife was scared for Justin Gachey.
Yeah, because of how he fell.
Yeah, it was nasty.
Yeah, I mean, that knockout was just one of the most
curry like I'm shaking thinking about it right now because I'm just so excited about
reliving that moment.
So big props to Max Holloway.
He won with a big knockout and with one second to go.
It was probably one of the coolest things that I've ever seen in MMA history and UFC
history, not to mention the fact that this card is just full of just killers,
knockouts, finishes that we've seen.
However, the night didn't end there.
The very last fight of the night was a light heavyweight
championship fight between Alex Pareda and Jamal Hill.
Now, Alex Pareda is a newer fighter to the UFC.
Jim, we've got him.
Yeah, I got a little burpee.
Alex Pareda is a Brazilian.
He's a newer fighter to the UFC.
I'll probably wrap up in five minutes or so.
He is an interesting character in his own right because he comes from the kickboxing world.
He fought Israel Adesanya in kickboxing, who if you are unfamiliar with Israel
Adesanya, he was probably after Conor McGregor left the UFC or has gone on as
hiatus from the UFC. Israel is probably the most
popular, most entertaining and probably most recognizable star from the UFC.
He went on this wild streak of just being undefeated.
He captured the belt in his weight class very quickly.
He fights with style.
His nickname is the last style bender.
He has he's one of those guys that on the walkout, he'll have a face mask and a dance routine.
He brings like the the showmanship to it all of the theatrics.
I'm a sucker for it.
So previous to both of them being in the UFC, they both were in a kickboxing league
and Alex Pareda knocked out Israel Adesanya in kickboxing.
And so the storyline is the only person that's ever beat Israel Adesanya or the only
person that's ever knocked out Israel Adesanya is a kickboxer.
And Israel left that behind, had a good four year run in the UFC.
But all this while, Alex Pareda in his background of his mind is seeing this and saying,
wait a minute, I beat this guy beat him twice, knocked him out, beat him twice.
Let me go over here into the UFC and chase him.
So that's what he does.
He comes over to the UFC and he begins chasing Israel Adesanya.
And it is one of those things where like three or four fights and you recognize
that this kid is different.
He is not like just a regular kid and he finally gets his chance to fight Israel Adesanya.
While their first match in the UFC, he straight up and down knocks out Israel Adesanya and
takes his belt from him, which is amazing, crazy.
You know, it was a crazy fight.
It was one of those times where it was like it was it was sad because for me,
because I was such a huge Adesanya homer, I've seen him just like dominate in so many fights
that it was just like it was sad to see him go down that way.
They fought again in a rematch and Israel Adesanya, Ropa doped him.
And if you're unfamiliar with the Ropa doped term, basically you you get hit and you kind
of play like you're stunned or knocked out a little bit.
But in reality, you're not.
You're allowing that opponent to kind of come after you with reckless abandon.
And usually when they think that you're stunned,
their guard gets let down a little bit and you can kind of crack him.
So that's what he did.
He pretended that he was stunned.
And as Alex Prada came in to knock him out, Israel just knocked him out.
So they're one in one in the UFC.
But after that fight, Alex Prada said, I'm done in this weight class
because it was one eighty five.
And he is a guy that walks around about two twenty five.
So he was cutting forty five fifty pounds just to go down just to chase Israel.
That's Israel's natural weight.
He walks around at one eighty five.
So now he moved up to light heavyweight, which is two oh five.
So he's still cutting about twenty pounds to get there, but it's not as hard on his body.
Well, two fights into light heavyweight.
He got the belt there, too.
So USC 300 comes around.
He's defending his belt against Jamal Hill.
Jamal Hill has actually won the belt in the light heavyweight division before,
but he hurt himself playing basketball during international fight week last year.
He hurt his knee.
And so embarrassingly, he went ahead and gave the belt back because he had won it.
But then he had hurt himself playing basketball.
And so he gave the belt back and so the belt was up.
And then so now he's coming back off of this injury and he thinks, hey,
I've never been I've never been beat for my belt.
Let me go get my belt back, which sets up this clash of these two titans at USC
300, Alex Prada, Jamal Hill.
So the very first round, it's pretty indicative that Alex does not respect Jamal
Hill or his power.
Basically, what happens is you have a few exchanges, but a couple of minutes into
the fight, three minutes into the fight, Jamal Hill kicks
Alex in the growing.
You can hear the cup pop.
Now, in the UFC, if someone gets hit in the growing, they automatically call time
out, you are afforded up to five minutes to recover.
There's no coaching allowed during this time.
It's basically just a general time for you to recover.
My wife hates it.
She thinks it's the worst, most, you know, pansy move in sports.
Basically, like she's like, I gave birth to four children.
You know, to me, it's like no drugs.
You know, you guys can get kicked in the nuts.
I tried to explain to her.
It's just never.
It's just one of those things we don't experience periods.
They don't experience the ball tap.
So yeah, the ball tap can bring you to your knees.
It is involuntary.
It will hurt all the way up into your stomach.
So yes.
So anyways, Alex gets popped.
He gets hit in the growing.
Herb Dean, the ref comes to stop.
And as he reaches in to stop without even looking out of his peripheral vision,
Alex grabs his hand, pushes it away and says, no, thank you.
I don't want I don't want to call time out.
I don't want this five minute rest.
Whatever just happened in my growing is fine.
So it's a very cool, like smooth assassin.
Like he didn't even turn his head.
His eyes are on his opponent the entire time.
The ref's hand comes in and his peripherals.
He grabs his hand and pushes it away.
And then in the next 10 seconds, he moves in and delivers a few blows and knocks Jamal
Hill out. So it is a very just definitive victory.
There's a couple of people that have said
since this fight has happened that Jamal Hill was not ready
because he thought that time out had been called.
All of that's BS.
Jamal Hill said that he was cleared by a doctor Sunday the day after he got knocked
out, he says he was never knocked out.
It's one of those things where it's like ego's a bitch.
You know what I mean?
Like we literally have video proof of your eyes rolling in the back of your head
as you're falling down to the ground not once but twice.
Yeah.
And even if the referee did not stop it, there was literally nothing that you could
have done to prevent the onslaught of blows that was happening to you at the time.
So I am thankful to Herb Dean because Jamal Hill lives to fight another day and is
not brain dead.
But Jamal Hill really probably should, I would say, go ahead and eat this one
because there's no denying the fact that he was knocked out.
I don't care that you found a doctor to clear you the next day.
That doctor probably is a quack because all you have to do is show him the video
of you getting knocked out and the doctor would be like, oh, yeah, you were knocked out
because the second that he got he got hit to the head with that left hook.
He's he's falling backwards and you can see his eyes legit rolling in the back
of his head and then he got hit a couple more times and it happened again.
So since then, we've had kind of a little bit of a controversial opinion when it comes
to, you know, I thought, you know, he called time out.
So I stopped my like fighting stance or whatever.
I've watched it several times since then.
None of that happened.
Yeah.
You know, the other thing is in combat sports, protect yourself at all times.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like the number one thing in fighting is protect yourself at all times.
If the referee isn't there in the middle of you guys, you still you got to protect yourself.
I mean, we've seen I've seen Floyd Medweather use it to his advantage where
a referee is kind of like on the fence of calling, you know, time out.
But because he's not fast enough and the guy like led his guard down,
Floyd just went ahead and sucker punch him and knocked him out.
But it was like these things like you're in the ring.
You protect yourself at all times.
So you see 300 was a great event.
We got to see, I mean, just looking back at some of these names.
Alex Pareda defeated Jamal Hill with that great knockout in the first round.
Jean Wellie Jean Wellie and Yao Shanan.
There are two Chinese fighters that I wanted to mention that because that was one
of the first times in the UFC where I've seen a Chinese fighter versus a Chinese
fighter, in particular, a women's a women's Chinese champion versus a women's
Chinese champion.
China loves sports.
They love the UFC.
They have some terrific champions.
And so I thought that was such a cool thing because we are ignorant because we're not
Chinese, we're not, you know, super political and super high up.
As far as what is going on over there, we just know what we know from what media
tells us or from what other people tell us.
But they have a great thing going with the MMA program.
We see it in their women's championships.
They've got some great fighters and that was a great fight.
So I just wanted to shout out that was one of the first times I've seen China
versus China in the UFC and really kind of spotlight and highlight the fact that,
yes, no matter what's going on in the world, that's one of the cool things about
Dana White is like, yeah, some people give him crap.
He's a Trump supporter or X, Y and Z.
But like he number one, let's any fighter say whatever they want.
Yeah.
You know, and whether you agree with it or not, that is the First Amendment.
And you know, it's one of those things.
You know, one A.
You know, so it is cool to hear people that are Ukrainian ask people that,
you know, for some understanding when it comes to that,
people that are from Russia, people that are from China, people that are from
Korea, people that are from these places that we see that are like quote unquote,
the boogeyman.
There are humans that live in these countries.
There are people that are working hard towards a goal and and they're made it
past whatever those those boundaries are.
So that was a cool thing to see.
Shout out to Max Holloway for retaining that BMF belt.
He's changed the name from baddest motherfucker to blessed man forever.
So very cool.
Yeah.
So UFC 300.
Thank you very much for the entertaining times.
There was a fight last night.
It was OK.
The Alexander Pantosha fight was the hot of the headlining fight.
They went five rounds.
Alexander Pantosha looked pretty
definitive.
He did get caught a few times, but, you know, he he retained the belt.
It's pretty good.
We have some some fights to look forward to coming up.
We've got next week, one of my favorite fighters, Derek Lewis is fighting.
He is from Houston, Texas.
He is a heavyweight fighter and he's had some of the most entertaining fights.
He is the fighter that one time he fought, he won.
Got a knock out of him the first round.
I think he took his shorts off.
And Alec, Joe Rogan says,
he's like, why'd you take your shorts off?
And he said, my balls was hot.
So so he's a good reason.
Yeah, he's one of those guys that he doesn't really like to work out.
He doesn't really like the train.
He thinks that Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a myth.
He says you just stand up.
So he loses a lot of these fights.
Yeah.
He's one of those guys that, like, you know, if he put it all together,
he probably could be the best, but he likes to eat churches.
He likes to swang and bang.
He likes, you know, so a lot of a lot of good stuff to look forward to.
The next episode, we are going to specifically delve into our personal
relationships with violence.
I've got a couple of fight stories.
I know Parker's got a couple of fight stories.
We both play punk and hardcore music.
So we've got a couple of show fight stories for you.
We're going to recap
the Derek Lewis fight, but we're also going to review the movie Roadhouse.
Conor McGregor was mentioned earlier in the episode and he has made his acting
debut in Roadhouse and so we're going to review that.
We're going to talk about is he good?
Is he not good? What happened with Jake Gyllenhaal?
Does he die at the end?
You know, what's going on here?
What a hunk.
So yes.
So thank you so much for being with us.
You have been with us on another episode of Breakfast of Champions.
Thank you, Parker, for bringing in the Dreamboat Donuts.
Please go visit those guys.
Any and every chance you get, you have anything you'd like to add?
No, I got nothing.
All right, so you heard more about our musical lives, our musical journeys.
You're going to hear more and more about what we like breakfast wise.
We're going to get into some celebrity sheds.
We're going to have some guests coming through,
maybe some members of bands that we've been in that we've talked about in this episode.
So just be on the lookout for more episodes.
We're going to be doing this weekly and we just thank you for being with us.
Hope you guys have a great day.
Each breakfast.
Bye.