#694 - Caleb Followill

He's a musician and a songwriter. He's a front man for the band Kings of Leon, who have a new album, Oh My Beloved, which comes out this Friday, November 6th. He's had a wild life, and I'm thankful to sit down today with Mr. Caleb Folliwell. ♪ Shine on me, and I will find a song I've been singing since the beginning ♪ Yeah, it's just so bizarre. I saw this freaking, what was this thing I saw? See if you can find this, Trevin. I saw them wash, drone washing a pet. There's like, I guess, a pet service now. Pressure washing via drone. There you go. Yeah, Chinese company uses solar cleaning drone to wash dog. Wow. I mean, I guess I don't have a dog, but I think it's kind of hard to get them together. You get in the bath and stuff, right? So you just sneak up on them with this guy? Yeah, I think you just call them, and they come by in the morning or whatever when your dog's not expecting it. I guess it gives it. I've got a couple of cousins that could use one of those things, bro. Amen, bro. That's the truth, dude. Caleb Folliwell? Yes, sir. Nice. Nice to see you today, man. Yeah, man. Nice to be here. Nice to meet you. Yeah, thanks for catching up, dude. We both ended up wearing this. I know, man. We felt it. It was a denim kind of day, right? I think it was. I think just everything feels so denim right now. Like Ernest P. World. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if it's that time of year. I mean, it's definitely been a beautiful time of year. This is like one of the nicest times of year in Nashville that I've ever seen with the leaves, you know? Yeah, I love this time of year. Yeah. Like when the sun's hitting them just right, I feel like they pop, and you get the yellows and the reds, and it's pretty beautiful stuff. And you're from Louisiana, right? Yeah, I'm from Louisiana, man. And did you guys, you grew up in, you grew up in Oklahoma? Well, kind of, yeah. I'm from, born in Memphis, so. Oh, yeah. The first few years we lived in Millington, Tennessee. Is that outside of Memphis? Yep, just outside home of Al Green and Justin Timberlake, I believe. Nice combo. There you go. Yeah, we used to get dropped off over there by Howard Johnson's over there in Memphis. Yeah. Yeah. There would be like a familial exchange or something. You know, a lot of kids, they meet up with some family member, and they drop, they drop them off in a parking lot, and we'd always be at that ho-jo over there. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, I grew up a first handful of years there, but our dad was an evangelist, so we traveled. Mm-hmm. So we went, you know, back and forth, Oklahoma, but we spent a good deal in Louisiana, too. And I just remember in Louisiana, my cousins from Louisiana, they're from Luling. Mm-hmm. You know Luling? Oh, yeah, it's over kind of, I think it's over by Honville, maybe, or by St. Charles Parish, yes. On the West Bank. Yeah. And I just remember we'd be there, and then it would be like fall or winter, and he'd always be bummed because the weather wouldn't really change. I remember he woke me up one morning, he's like, come outside, come outside. We went outside, and there was just like a little bit of frost on the ground. And he was like, well, let's go make a snowman. Oh, yeah, dude. Look, if you leave the freezer open for too long, somebody will try to make a little Christmas scenario in there, you know? You walk through the frozen food section, you'll start playing Christmas carols on your phone. Oh, yeah. You know, it's just you're looking, you're hoping for any moment of winter because there's nothing like, it's just you don't get any of it down there. And, dude, yeah, you get down towards Luling, you'll have people have family members that are bait. Yeah. You know, it's like you'll have like. Yeah, man, that was always like such a unique place to me because, you know, America has like all these different, depending on where you are, you know, people have different accents and different ways of life. But Louisiana is like a one of one. It really is, man. It's like everyone you talk to. And I got down with the lingo by the end of it. But like first time you've, you know, you arrive and people start talking, you're just like, I don't think I know what. It's not like a southern country accent. It's like so different. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sometimes people, they don't even know the alphabet. And they're just hoping for the best. You know, they're just kind of verbally hoping, you know what they're doing. You know, it's kind of it's a lot of pressure on the listener. Yeah, it is. Yeah. That's what we kind of say about Louisiana. That's the dialect down there. It is big pressure on the listener. Yeah, you got to lean in. Yeah, yeah. You got to be right there with, sometimes we have to hold people's hands while they're talking. You know what I'm saying? Dude, I've had to rub somebody's back to help them get through a sentence. You see a dude hit a semicolon and he fucking, his skeleton can't handle it, you know? But I mean, it is just, it is that kind of place, you know, you'll be like, oh, caught my wife on a spinner bait or whatever. It's just, it's bizarre. It really is bizarre, dude. And it's like, and sorry to get animated about it. I guess I don't think about it that much, but it is a unique place, man. Oh, yeah. First, I didn't, I didn't, I don't think I had really much appreciation for it growing up. But then as I got older and traveled around, I'm like, oh, damn, there's something. And it's soggy. I mean, you'll be talking to somebody and they'll just be sinking right in front of you. Yeah, man, I used to go. You have to lift them up every now and then and set them like a foot over to get through the convo. We used to go spend, like, I would go spend summers in Louisiana. As a kid, you know, it was my cousin. He was my best friend. So we'd just go raise hell and kind of run around and get chased by cops and stuff. We were little kids. So we'd sneak out at night after our, after his parents were asleep and we'd just like go break into the swimming pool and like, you know, just dive off the stuff and get in the snack machines. And I remember there was this one night and we were, you know, we were out and it was about two in the morning. I don't know what we were looking for. I think we were just in trouble. Probably cool air too, you know. I mean, it's summer. It's so rough. But go on, sorry. Yeah, no. And then the cops, we saw lights. And so the next thing you know, we're kind of like in a drainage ditch. Like, and it was kind of like, I was only like 12, but for a moment I was like, I think I need to make some changes. You know, this probably ain't the right thing to be doing. But then later on, like, we got odd jobs, like roofing houses and Thibodeau. Oh, bro. Little in New Orleans. Yeah, dude. Everything down there, it's flooring, bro. They'll put flooring on your ceiling. They don't give a damn, bro. People, they'll put linoleum around a baby, bro. They don't even care down there. Like, everybody in Louisiana, I feel like, ends up doing roofing or flooring at some point, bro. Yeah, and they, there was always like a flood. Like, every year I'd come, they'd have a different color carpet. And then the next time, then finally, they just went straight concrete. They're like, we're done. We're done. So then it'd get humid, and you'd be slipping all around the living room. That's the devil's carpet, dude. And you know, yeah, that is so Louisiana, when you finally just give in and be like, all right, we're doing this. We're a concrete family. We're a concrete family, dude. Bro, so funny that, like, you know, you're talking about a place that's so flooded, you know, that's like so flood-centric, and your family had really kind of a religious upbringing. You said your dad was an evangelist. Yeah. So he was a preacher, but we just, we just traveled and preached from town to town. So like a traveling evangelist. Yep. And was he good at it? Oh, man, he was, he was the best. Yeah. As a, you know, as a little kid, I, he was like a, I mean, people throw it around a lot, but he was a rock star, you know. He would, he would see the biggest, scariest-looking man in the room, and he would have him laughing, and then five seconds later, the man would be crying. He was kind of a comedian. I mean, he was, he was really funny. But he was also, you know, a man who had been through a lot, so he could relate to people. I see. So, whereas a lot of people, you know, they kind of have their nose in the air, my dad was a man of the people. And I feel like that was something that kind of, you know, when we would roll into a town and take over the church for a weekend or a week or something, by the end of it, you know, I felt like everybody wanted us to stay and kind of wanted, you know, us to take over, but. Wow. Yeah. That's almost like a rock star energy in its own right, huh? Yeah, he was. Rolling in like that. That was it, man. We lived out of the car. We, most of my childhood, we didn't really have a house. We, everything was in the trunk. And we were just, yeah, man, looking out the window, looking at the, you know, America, just driving and go to towns and. Dude, that's so cool. Make friends. But then after a while, you started to kind of break your heart because you, you wouldn't see him again. So it kind of started, you started to kind of pull away a little bit, but it was good because I was with my brothers. So we always had each other. But yeah, like seeing a normal childhood and boyfriend and girlfriend and high school and all that stuff was so foreign to us because, you know, that wasn't. It wasn't our life. It was on the road. And oddly enough, we ended up choosing a career path that kind of kept us on the road. So like whenever you guys would pull into town, like, did you, did the kids have like a responsibility? Did you and your siblings have a responsibility to like, you know, to help build the atmosphere? Or like, what was like, kind of, if you can just explain that to me a little. Yeah. I mean, when we would come to town, it was a revival. So when we came to town, it was usually the church needed a spark. Okay. You know, things that got a little stagnant. Yeah. And so we would roll in and kind of fire everyone up and then we'd leave and hopefully it would keep going um but us i think you know we were boys there's three boys so like they just didn't want us to get in trouble you know and to kind of be a good example to the other kids but you know we weren't really the best example i don't think um your adolescence too yeah we just wanted to play sport like whatever if they had a basketball court at the church it was like all right sweet we can go play some basketball we can go whoop up on some kids yeah um we had that we had our brothers so we had kind of like a built-in team um but yeah we didn't really we weren't that involved in the church but we did that is where we started singing yeah um and we didn't want to do it very often every now and then they would they would talk us into getting up um and we'd play the drums uh we would help along you know with the music so kind of almost whatever was needed like if dad needs you to do something yeah you know if we need to go past the plate around or uh you know be the first one to go down to the altar and be a good you know get people feeling comfortable to go do it we'd do that amen dude yeah dude it reminds me bro this is so funny man one of my favorite movies of all time i don't ever even talk about is leap of faith you ever see that movie is that steve martin yeah yeah yeah dude i love that movie growing up we had one of those like i think it was like yeah there it is right there it was like a random house one of those things where you mail them two dollars and they send you six movies or whatever yeah and then they sue you for the rest of your life or whatever for not paying them or whatever yeah or then they like track you down for years or whatever because you have a copy of curly sue out or something that you owe them oh man back to louisiana we me and my cousin one night we snuck out and we went to the video store and we wanted to rent like some dirty movies i mean not dirty already rated movies yeah i remember we got this one john claude van damme movie i think it was called like double trouble or double team or something he played twins yeah but it had a it had a couple of scenes that we liked um and we didn't realize you know we had rented it on my uncle's thing but we just left it at that house we didn't want to get busted yeah and then it was years later that he got the bill and he's like what is this yeah they're like you owe eleven thousand dollars yeah but that leap of faith that was uh that looked like a tent revival right yeah that was steve martin it was a tent revival bring it up just for a little bit of uh something just to be accurate here yeah this was man this movie dude he would pull in and they had this soundtrack with it and was like are you ready for a miracle ready as i can be yeah i know that one yeah are you ready for a miracle let the spirit set you free that's awesome we had three movies i think and i watch four hundred times bro uh a 1992 american comedy drama film uh what does it say uh slick talking traveling evangelist jonas nightingale runs a high-tech revival scam using hidden microphone spotters and computerized databases to fleece small town congregations that's kind of like fletch right fletch too isn't he like fake like he's a preacher and they got like yeah yeah yeah did you ever see the apostle uh-uh oh man that's a good one it was robert duvall um that's a good one the apostle but it's kind of similar thing i'll put that on my list i like robert duvall he's in crazy heart have you seen that oh yeah the apostle is his best i think it's his best work but yeah crazy heart's awesome dude yeah that weary kind that song oh man yeah if you want to cry in a parking lot i do then yeah put that on and just pull behind the aldi dude yeah let's do it dude you can park behind any parking lot and put that on there'll be four other dudes listening to it back there oh yeah dude that's a real that's a song right there man i love that ryan bingham no who's who bingham yeah yeah is that right and he was in the uh in the movie too i think yeah he's the i think he's his backing band right he's the leader of the backing band when he rolls up to the bowling alley yeah if you want to know if you're an alcoholic go listen to this a few times i think oh yeah man that movie that'll hit you oh yeah i think that's a good one i think that's a good one i think i'll watch it a couple times when we were on the road and i was pretty beat up and yeah it makes you feels like there's a spotlight on you yeah yeah oh dude in the end bro when he go like when she shows up and she has the ring on she met somebody yeah i know that part i still feel bad about that dude i feel like they got together after that right i don't think that was gonna work right whatever relationship she was in because they had look at the way she's looking at him i know dude god i want that but dude and we asked him why we actually got to interview him not too long ago whoa yeah we got to sit down with him and uh and we asked him we're like how is bad blake doing you know and he's like i heard i heard he's doing pretty good oh that's good so it's just kind of cool to like just go and like uh just get it kind of direct from the source yeah a lot of times you watch a movie and you you know you get to kind of fill out you color in between like what what happens afterwards yeah and you hope it plays out the way that you imagine it plays out yeah yeah and the character they just disappear out into the ether you know unless this person like i was even asking jeff bridges like hey do you ever just bad blake around the house and fire him up just to give him you know a nice afternoon or something you know just take him for a walk yeah i'm friends with the with an actor that was in tron with him garrett headland and i think when they were making that movie maybe they were making that movie and they were making that movie and maybe he was preparing for crazy heart oh wow and garrett likes to play music too so he would uh he told me like stories about him playing those songs to him before he had seen the movie oh to go get ready kind of yeah and he was just always like man you gotta hear these songs these songs are amazing yeah dude that's cool i don't know if i ever met garrett or not but um yeah i just feel it would be so neat to be able to have a character that was so like kind of revered or beloved that you got to fire him up and he was like yeah i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it i'm going to fire him up around every now and then take him on a bike ride or something i know it must be weird being an actor and then you you're i like you have this one role and you're kind of identified as that yeah you know it's it's weird it's always weird if you meet like a celebrity um and you think you know them because you've watched them so much and then you start talking to them like you're talking to the character from the movie and then you realize like oh man they're not like that at all he hates that character oh dude yeah well it's kind of funny how is you like if you have some creative work and you sort of evolve over time sometimes you start to not appreciate your like early works or sometimes they'll be like a little cringe to you or something about it maybe yeah i think you always are going to go through a period where you don't like something but i think you come around if you survive long enough and have a long enough career then you can look back and you're like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry and you know you admire it a little more and you're not as you know embarrassed but a lot of times when you're embarrassed about the thing that you were you look back on that time and you're like oh that was even more embarrassing like the early days were better than that guy oh yeah yeah oh eventually you get to the point where you're like oh the second dude was way more embarrassing than the first dude yeah it's hilarious um let's go back a little bit to like the pentecostal like just to that traveling like what um because i grew up in an area there was a lot of pentecostals down like down out out in the country and stuff like that and um and i always thought that the way that they try and communicate like with their higher power and with god and like i always really kind of admired it in a weird way um because some of it was super unique i felt like yeah um what did you see like what is a typical or even an atypical kind of pentecostal service like oh man it's been a while but it was it was exciting you know we i had i went and visited some friends like they're one of my friends was a church of christ and i went to his church and they had no music and i was just like everyone was falling asleep and i was like and i the way that we kind of did it you know you go in and music is kind of throughout you know it kind of sets the tone and you can uh you can kind of dictate what the night is going to be it's like all right we need some something lively so nathan my older brother or me would get on the drums and um you know kind of wake everybody up but it was a lot of music a lot of uh when my dad preached he was mindful you know he wasn't one of those guys that got up and was long-winded he was kind of he had his hits you know we could you know we could sit there and kind of quote some of the stuff we knew what was coming and we'd be telling the kid like watch he's about to say this he's about to say this verse yeah look out for the magic oh yeah um but it was it was exciting man it was uh it was a good childhood you know yeah i think a lot of people would look at it and and feel sorry for us and think like oh man you didn't have the traditional schooling and um you know you're always on the move and but it was exciting you know when you're a little kid you're not stuck in the classroom or you're not um you know, stressed out about certain things. It was just like, we were always on the roll you know always on the go yeah um and it was exciting you know the services were cool and we'd always go to like a restaurant afterwards and eat at shoney's oh yeah dude yeah man that was good shoney's was freaking crazy dude how great it was oh man the floor's always slippery and staff was always pissed when you roll in at 10 o'clock yeah whole church just in there taking over especially you guys probably not tipping you know now looking back i'm sure nobody probably tipped back then um but oh yeah especially if you're getting out of a revival and you guys are out all hyped up oh everybody's starving they've just been running the aisles for two hours yeah when you're praying at a high level intensity dude the calories you're burning oh yeah you gotta carb up for that yeah oh yeah dude oh carbs for christ dude some of that won't even measure on a whoop bracelet brother some of this praying that should definitely you i wonder how many calories is praying burn let's look that up if you don't mind how many calories is praying burn they don't even want you to know they're like we don't want to give you any ideas praying uh burns about 15 to 18 calories per session or roughly 80 to 90 calories per day if you perform all five daily prayers so that's asking a lot of people but yeah how long are these prayers yeah um about 15 to 18 calories per day if you perform all five daily prayers yeah what specifically is that let me see uh that must be like um it could be a muslim prayer oh it's islamic prayer of salah right but i would say 15 18 calories per session probably seems like that would be the answer i guess that's not bad pretty good yeah if you pray six times in a day you could have like a like a personal trainer slash preacher just get people to pray and then burn some calories make a little money oh dude yeah that could be the next thing it's kind of like it's like an event like a traveling evangelist but with um kind of a ropes course at the end yeah that wouldn't be bad i've been thinking recently about life insurance oh yeah you know just because i'm growing up and you know if something were to happen to me i want i want my family to just to be okay you know i want them to have some more support you know we often think about life insurance after losing somebody that we love but it's not like we're going to live forever and that's not true it's also something to consider after new life events like becoming a parent or or buying a home i had a buddy who was in a uh in a car accident and right after that he actually actually asked his wife to get him a life insurance policy for christmas which is kind of crazy i you know i've seen a lot of dateline and stuff i don't i don't know who you put on the policy but you know it's on people's minds ethos has it on their mind as well ethos makes good money it's on people's minds it's on people's minds it's on people's minds ethos has it on their mind as well 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loose sometimes it's hard to just get it out of you yeah um and it seemed like that was like a branch of a religion where they kind of they let that happen yeah it's hard to get it out of you yeah and when they would lay hands on people or they would pray over people i always felt that to me it seems very powerful yeah because it's like there were more physical acts during some of those services and i feel like that is a good thing a lot of times oh yeah i've seen some i've seen some uh some crazy experiences have you because there were other people that would you know that were evangelists i guess you'd say and that was more of their thing kind of laying hands on people and you know i've seen healings and you know seeing people walk that really weren't walking wow we had this woman that went to our church and uh she was like had cancer real bad like you look at her she was you know her skin she was gray um and yeah she she didn't have long and and my dad uh prayed for and she's i think she's still alive wow yeah so you've witnessed miracles out there oh yeah yeah yeah there's definitely power and you know in prayer oh yeah just to be thinking of somebody else it really is it's almost like um it feels like a superpower sometimes to sit there and be like hey let me channel whatever energy i have today yeah man i think you know we are capable of so much you know we have a lot of energy that we can direct towards one another um and when you have that focus and you know everyone's kind of dialed into the one thing and yeah i've i've seen some some pretty cool stuff was there one area of the country that was like uh that was more prevalent for revivals was there one part of the country where it just really felt like uh um i think it happens everywhere i mean our kind of area was in the south mainly um and the south you know they get down oh yeah so yeah it was and then we'd get to like oklahoma and that has more of like a midwestern feel so they were not quite as rambunctious as the southerners you know yeah um but yeah you know we would do like tent revivals like like uh that thing that um that movie and those were always exciting and those happened in the south mainly because you know everywhere else um didn't have the kind of weather for it but i remember we did have this one tent revival and i forget where we were i think we must have been in the south but there was a cold spell that kind of come through and i remember when my dad finished it was like james brown or something because he would like get he'd be so wet and you just want to like put a his jacket over him or something um but i remember he came to the like afterwards he walked to the car and his hair was ice it was like frozen because he had sweat and then it just like froze solid it was wild but yeah i think the south probably i mean like i say that was our that's where we went so i know it i know it was big there but we weren't like um you know then you get to like the mountains and that's where you get like the snakes and stuff that wasn't us it wasn't y'all no no we didn't yeah it's when the evangelism meets like kind of zoo keepers or yeah that was a little that was a little much you know yeah i mean i'm not saying that you you know whatever you i'm not here to judge i think we've got to bring snakes into it you know i don't i think we there's an easier way to get to god you know but oh i said the snake free section bro no crap that is it dude i said in the snake free section snake handling also called serpent handling um a religious right observed in a small number of isolated churches mostly united states characterized as rural and part of the holiness movement the practice began in the early 20th century in appalachia and plays only a small part in the church service there you go early christianity in the second century the o fights reportedly handled snakes during their services um and also worship the serpent the practice of snake handling first appeared in american christianity around 1910 um it says tennessee yeah wow so maybe we did invent a lot going on around here yeah um and i know from your documentary that you guys grew up in poor conditions um was there was there a lot of money to be made in the early 20th century in evangelism no yeah we didn't have any money um we were just you know i guess you'd say paycheck to paycheck but it was town where some town you get to they don't even have any money so you're just kind of you know you're doing your thing and it's kind of like you get us back or whatever i remember we preached to this one church and they gave us uh tickets to disney world no way and so my family didn't get my parents didn't get much out of it but we got to go to disney world you were like man that was the good one right there um but yeah we were yeah we didn't have a lot but we didn't realize that we didn't have a lot you know and i know it's kind of cliche but we had a lot of love and we had each other you know it wasn't a thing where um and we didn't have tv and stuff you know we were right so you weren't always getting this reflection of the world of what you were missing yeah we didn't know we didn't know what we didn't know you know that's a good point man because i think i grew up with a lot of resentment about like not having much you know but i think also it was because there wasn't much communication like hey we don't have much but like we're good people yeah and that you know that doesn't define us and we are a family and that you know we're working together like i think if somebody sat down for two minutes with me and just told me those things then i'd have had a better idea you know um so i think some of that in my own world was like communication probably yeah but i feel like the more and you see it now i mean i feel like the more you have kind of it doesn't bring happiness you know it's like we were really happy and we would just laugh all the time and whenever you're poor but you can laugh at it it's not like you're poor yeah it's just kind of like you're in on the joke you're the joke and you're in on it it's kind of like oh you know you're always making jokes about how bad it is you know definitely dude there was nothing more fun i was actually texting my buddies larry and eddie today from uh the street i grew up on there was nothing more fun dude than making fun of each other out in the street dude oh yeah i mean it was just dude it was the best bro i feel like those rich kids couldn't they can't take it you know like when you're poor you can say anything and it's like yeah i know you know i know you have nothing to lose dude one thing that my mom always said that i appreciated was she said uh the best thing about being poor is you have nothing to lose yeah that's true say what you want you do what you want soon what are you gonna do yeah they got nothing to take from you take it yeah take it i ain't got nothing it's nothing it's nothing dude and i think some of the freedom sometimes even though like i think it was like a lot of like probably discomfort and maybe disconnection like that was kind of in the culture of like like our mom would always work and stuff like that so we would kind of be left to our own devices but then when i look back on it it was like i knew how to sew i knew how to do laundry i knew how to do all these things at five years old that were six years old that were you know things that other kids still would just didn't have a a idea i eventually knew how to resole a shoe there was like just little things i would learn just how to take care of myself right and then my dad would always be like you're gonna you're a survivor it's the only thing he ever said to me right i mean i kind of wish he just had some other stuff but it was like but that's truly the thing i probably needed to hear you know um i don't know i don't really know what i'm talking about i guess i'm just thinking about like yeah i don't know just just yesterday i was thinking like man those are some of the coolest times ever really yeah it's you know it shapes you and now i'll tell stories to my kids and if you know you feel like those stories that your parents told you about going to school uphill both ways and snow and all that kind of stuff um but yeah you know it i feel like it gave us thick skin uh put a drive in us and a hunger um and it's never it was never really for success it was just kind of to prove our worth you know that was all that's always been and even now in the music industry and you know there's always a little bit of a chip on your shoulder from your childhood of kind of walking in a room and feeling like you don't belong in there but you're like by the time i leave this room they're gonna know who i am yeah you know and so i feel like kind of growing up that way you know it instills that in you and it makes you uh and i hope that my kids have that but they're not gonna i don't think so they got it way too good dude it's funny you say my son is seven and he still can't soul with you can he god dang dude humiliating dude i can get him a farrier course online you can start by just learning how to hoof a horse there you go it's like and then you advance into just human uh hoofery i guess if you will but um dude i've never heard it said like that that uh if you didn't grow up with a lot then you felt like you had to prove your worth like yeah i don't know if there's anything better in life than to prove your worth but you're not like if it doesn't get into a negative space for you then feel like you have to prove your worth you know yeah i think you always you know that's the one thing the older i get that i realize that you want respect you know you want to be respected for what you do or for who you are my mom used to always tell me she's like you know once you once people lose respect for you you can't get it back she's like so always you know make sure that people respect you um i feel like that's the same kind of thing as like that proving your worth um yeah you know i mean when you're the poor guy uh and you see the pretty girl and then there's the rich dude over there yeah you're like how am i gonna get her to look at me you know with this guy over here yeah with the washed hair yeah exactly the guy with shoes over here yeah dude my buddy had freaking washed hair dude and he's still does yeah god probably blow dries it too what a show off yeah dude it was probably shampoo and he probably had soap separate too it wasn't just like whatever's there does it all mouthwash oh dude i'm trying to think of some of the things that were kind of different i mean my mom got a car one time and we'd go sleep in that because it was just more comfortable in there you know yeah i mean we died i slept in we slept in our car that was you know usually we were rolling down the road my dad was driving but man i think back i mean i used to sleep in the back windshield seriously i would sleep on the floorboard with the lump oh so you kind of either have to like find a way to curl up on one side of the lump or you just slept with a lump in your back yeah or you got to be a camel for halloween yeah exactly like there's only but yeah man a car my mom had pictures of me in a tiny little suitcase as an infant in the floorboard between her feet oh we we did not play by the rules i don't think little to go item of the lord right there yeah god oh yeah dude i remember on the weekends though i didn't even think about this i used to ride my bike around and collect aluminum i go get cans everywhere i'd be out in the woods looking for cans i found a part of a severed hand in there one time yeah there was something i always wanted to like i don't know i was gonna find a way i think something like that kind of built up dude i remember dude i would sneak in my mom my dude my mom bro and in louisiana our apartment was always sinking bro so when it was kind of dry season in the car because the carpet would get really wet like half the year oh yeah because something was wrong that mildew smell oh god dude oh you'd be talking to somebody they'd have just mold spores all over you'd part your hair and have two reptiles just wiggle on out of it that's kind of stylish yeah it was a bit much um but uh i remember i just elbow crawling in my mom's room dude quiet as she did i'd open her little purse thing or whatever and she'd have four dollars in there and i'd take one of them i'd take one of them you're taking a quarter of the of the family's earnings hey i knew i was gonna take care of it yeah that's why i don't know what she's gonna do we invested it though oh i wouldn't go spend it i just looks like hey just go show it off like yeah mr clean hair yeah it was a different time dude um yeah sometimes it's interesting to try and think about new things i'd never thought about that though that like if i didn't have much and i had to prove i had to create my myself i had to prove my worth i never thought about that so sometimes just the things you hear when you're just kind of talking with somebody you know um so how do you get from kind of occasionally going up and singing with your family right at revivals and stuff like that how do you go from there to um kind of getting into music becoming sort of um um kings of leon how do you i know that's a lot in there no yeah it was uh i mean there was it was a bit of a a journey of kind of maybe just trying to find who you are and what what what it is that you're gonna do with your life you know i think there was a part of me that felt like i was probably going to follow in my dad's footsteps and be a preacher yeah i think so i mean that's all we knew i didn't know it's not like you know we had other family members that was doing something that was like oh i want to be that you know um and then we you know we he also painted houses and my uncle's painted houses so there for a little bit we went to oklahoma um my parents split up my dad was in oklahoma and so we went and were painting houses in oklahoma and i was probably about 15 16 something like that um and then just like too much, like, you know, huff and pan. and doing all the, just being a painter, you know, always kind of high, always just felt like crap, always. You got that matte finish in your eyes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then it was like one day I kind of hit a wall, and I was like, yeah, this ain't it. I'm not, there's no future in this. And I actually went in Oklahoma City, and I don't know what I was doing, but I was in like a parking lot, and there was like an enrollment for like the military. Yeah. And I was, you know, considering it. I was like, maybe I'll go do something like that. And then I heard a voice. I mean, you know, it sounds strange, but I heard a voice that just said, go home. And so I went back to the house, and I told my brother and all of our buddies, I was like, I'm going back to Tennessee. And I think everyone was just kind of like, what? Well, I don't know. I was like, why? What do you have there? Because it was just my mom and my little brother living in Jackson, Tennessee. I was like, I think I'm going to go try to get into music. I didn't even know what that meant. But you felt like a calling towards it kind of? Yeah. I just felt like I needed to go, you know, that whatever that was that was talking to me was telling me like, go home. It didn't say why, but it just said go home. And so when I went back to Jackson, Tennessee, I just, I wanted to find my way into Nashville. And so I would like go to the, we'd go to Kroger or something like that, and we were checking out, there'd be like magazines, like Country Weekly and stuff like that. Yeah. And I was like, that's Nashville. So I'd thumb through it, and I'd go to the back, and it was always like, the wanted page. It was like, we want a songwriter, a guitar player, a singer. I didn't know how to do any of those. I knew how to sing. But my older brother, Nathan, who was living in Oklahoma, he called me like three days after I got there, and he was like, hey, man, I'm coming home. He was like, I'm going to help you do that music thing. Wow. And I was like, sweet. And so he got home, and we just looked at each other. And we were like, so how do we do it? And he just got a pad and pen, and we just started writing little storybook rhymes and little, I love you, do you love me, you know? Yeah. And just like listening to, like Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, and then just kind of started doing that. And then eventually we got songs, a couple of songs together that were decent enough to where we could sing them. And we sang a couple to my mom, and she was like, you know what, boys? We're going to go to Nashville. And y'all were in Jackson, Tennessee at the time? Yeah, we were in Jackson. And her boss at the insurance company, where she was the secretary, ended up being her husband later on. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That policy, boy, that policy hitting. Yeah. Yeah. But he was, his marriage was over, hers was over. And so we came to Nashville, and we were living like out in like Hermitage area behind the Hooters. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was inspiring. But yeah, we just, one day we went out. I'd rather be in front of them, I'll tell you that. But yeah, we go on. And her, Tom, Tom Murphy's his name, our stepdad. And he had him a little boat. Wasn't nothing, it was just a little bass boat or something. And we went out on the lake. And my mom, we were out there just kind of like floating. And my mom was like, boys, why don't y'all sing him one of y'all's songs? And so he was like, all right, here we go. And we hit him with a little acapella. Yeah. And instantly he went, Hey, buddy. Man, that's good. That's real good. That's how he talked. And he was like, I think that night we went home because me and Nathan were working at a little restaurant called Tumbleweeds, I believe it was. I was a bad waiter. It didn't last long. And he was like, you know, I'm going to give y'all a little bit of money to where you can quit your job and you can go try to get your foot in the door in Nashville. Really? So he believed in you. He believed in you guys some. Yeah. So it wasn't much. It was like, you know, $1,000 or something like that. A lot of money, though. And by the end of the month, we paid him back because we had gone and knocked on every door in Nashville. And just like in the movies, everybody slammed the door in your face. I mean, now looking back, we had long hair. They had opened the door and we started singing acapella. They were like, what the hell is this? Two of the most busted looking young women I've ever seen. God, she's got a nice mustache. But then there was one, our lawyer. That's y'all? That's us. That's way better than it was, huh? We looked good there. Yeah, that was after we had done all right. But one person didn't close the door on us. And that kind of started it. And we got a little publishing deal and started writing songs and trying to get someone to cut a song or something. But then the songs we were writing weren't like country songs. And so we didn't have, we didn't know what we were. And so eventually after Nashville, I'd kind of said, yeah, it's not, you know, this isn't for you. Our lawyer was like, let's go to New York. And so we went to New York and that was a different story because we had nine record labels that we met with and we played a couple of songs for them. And we got seven record deal offers. Wow. So of the nine, seven of them offered us. And so we ended up living in Nashville. They didn't like what we were doing. Went to New York, got a record deal with RCA Records and then came back to Nashville. And then I remember we were at my mom's house behind the Hooters and like a limo pulled up, just like Wayne's World. Dude got out with the suit, walked into our garage and we're all stunned. Just like, hey, he's like, yeah, play me some songs. And by that point we had called our cousin in Mississippi and we're like, come on, man, we got a record deal. You're in the band. And our little brother was a freshman in high school at Mount Juliet. And we're like, you want to be in the band? He's like, yeah. And we're like, all right, we need a bass player. And he just dropped out? So we had to sit down with my mom and be like, hey, Jared's not going to school tomorrow. Did you have to sign him out or not? I don't know how it happened. But I know my mom believed in us enough to where she was like, okay, you can drop out of school. I mean, we had dropped out too. We never had, so. Was your mom a good judge of character, do you think? Oh, yeah. She was. Oh, yeah, big time. Because that's a wild thing for a mom to kind of do that, I feel like. Because most moms, it would be like, no way. I feel like that would be the move maybe. Yeah, she always knew. I mean, from an early age, she would always just tell us like, you're going to do something great. Wow. You're special. And that was probably her just being a mom, you know. You just say that because you love your kids. Right. But I think she really did, you know, believe that there was something that we were meant to do. And was your cousin a good guitar player? Yeah. Well, we had called him up and we were like, hey, man, we got a record deal. We went to New York. Like, we signed it and everything. They gave us a stretch limo to the Yankee Stadium. We went to the Yankees. We went to the Yankees game. Like, I just, they really did it up. That was back when the music industry had money, I guess. But we're like, man, you want to come be in the band? And he's like, he's like, oh, man, you know, I've been playing my guitar a little. And we said, well, play something. So over the phone, he played, he ripped a Thin Lizzy guitar solo. And we're like, man, that sounds good, dude. You're in the band. Come on. And so we all went to, I remember us going to the airport And we just saw some flip-flops and some bell-bottoms coming down. And there he was. And it was him. And he had told his mom, yeah, I'm just going up there for the weekend. Yeah. But he knew he wasn't going back. A long weekend. So, yeah, so we're in the garage. He's there. We had been practicing a few songs, and the limo rolls up, and this big wig comes in, sits on the couch that our friend had just got drunk and pissed on like two nights before. So it was probably still damp at least. And he sat there, and we ripped like three songs for him, and he stood up, and it was like it was big time. We had made it. That's crazy, bro. Yeah, it was wild. I mean, looking back, do you feel like that's absolutely kind of crazy? It's kind of crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it's like stuff you see in a movie that you're like, oh, they didn't tell the whole story. It's kind of like they glamorized it. But that was it, man. That's how it worked. And instantly, we had to go make an EP because we were going to make an album, but we didn't have the songs yet. We were still writing the songs. So we had a few songs, so we were going to go record them. We went and made the EP, and then we went straight to Memphis. We were going to go make a record. So while we're in Memphis, we get a call, and they're like, hey, we got to pause the record. And we're like, why? They said because the EP has just hit it big uk and so we're like what are you talking about they're like you guys are big and we're sitting there like sounds like a prank show i know i know it's wild like everything you do it's almost like in that and that's great and yep and so then they were like your boys are going to london we're like man we haven't they're like you guys need to go play a couple of concerts so we went and played a show in uh atlanta at smith's old bar by yourself or opening up for somebody we opened for billy joe shafer um and a band we were the first of three there was a band called the skeeters we were i don't think they're still at it maybe maybe they are i don't know but we went and played there and then we went and played the nick in birmingham alabama and we walked on stage at the nick and there was one man standing in front of us and there was like a couple guys playing pool someone at the bar and who was it the irs or whatever yeah he was the only guy that was in the music you know so they didn't even know nobody even knew you guys were actually practicing yeah it was just like to get you the feel of walking out there we just needed to walk on a stage before we go to the uk and there's actually people there and so the guy that was in front of us obviously the first thing you said was free bird and we're like we ain't there yet man yeah we're not even there yet yeah we don't know how to play our songs let alone leonard skinnard's bro what the heck and then we we went and played a few shows and then we went and played a few shows and they said all right you boys are going to london we landed in london um on the way to the hotel we heard our song pull they pulled the van over and we're all like yeah we get back in it they changed the station there's another song so of the three or four songs that were on our ep we heard like two or three of them on the way to the hotel god so then we went and had to play uh our first concert and it was like the new rock revival is what they called it so it was like a bunch of bands that had you know been playing it was a band called the dotsons from australia and they have tight pants and ripping guitar solos yeah and there was a band called sleepy jackson who ended up being empire the sun um but these guys all got up there and were ripping but we were more popular than them so we had to play after all these guys and we didn't know what the hell we were doing and did that feel like scared like oh my god how can we even do this because that seems like like recently this is not a comparison at all but recently i had to go dj one time right i'd never dj'd before in my life i'm thinking like oh i can do this the second i got near it and it was like there's probably eight or nine thousand people there i was like i can't do that i don't even know what i'm doing right yeah like what did that even feel like i had to be crazy i just remember before we walked on you know we looked at each other and we're like what are we going to do and i said just play it very fast and very country i said because that's the one thing that these people don't have that we do i was like we have a southern sound you know these guys sound australian these guys sound british and so we went up there and from the first note man the crowd knew the songs and it's never stopped over there for us it was like out of the gates big there and then we come back home and we land and our mom's waiting there at baggage claim nobody knows who we are for years nobody knows who we are yeah it felt like so you have this secret place that ever you it's almost like like a narnia or something and you're there yeah we'd go to the record i mean to the uh like barnes and noble or whatever it was when we got back to nashville and we go to the magazine section and we're on the cover of like enemy magazine and like all these british magazines and we're on the cover of like enemy magazine and like all these magazines and then no nobody knows who we are and everybody snickers at us when we walk into you know the restaurant because we've got bell bottoms and we're like you right this was england you'd be happy we were here yeah viva manchester yeah just over there wow bro yeah did was anybody able to explain you why you were so popular there like what made you so popular to that audience i think they they started telling our story from the moment that our music hit the radio and they're like oh check out this band man these guys are crazy they're southern guys their dad's a preacher they're this they tell these gothic tales about you know our upbringing and stuff and so like all the press was just fascinated with who we were the fact that we're brothers they didn't believe that they would always be trying to like get us to swab check our dna they'd be like you guys aren't brothers like all this is made up and they'd be like oh you're not brothers you're not brothers you're not brothers you're not brothers so it was once again trying to prove our worth dude that's so wild yeah it was crazy wow so we came home but we played every dive in nashville before i was even i mean i wasn't old enough to be in the room so as soon as we play they come to like get out yeah like you know you're not old enough to be in this bar um we would go to every writer's night anything that we could do to kind of get experience and and keep playing and keep writing um but yeah then we would all like we'd always get on the airplane and go over there and it was things were different dude that's so wild yeah this episode is sponsored by better help you know i've been thinking about mental real estate recently the things that just kind of hang around in your mind that you're ready to let go of for me those things are um am i going to be able to do this or am i going to be able to do this or am i going to do everything am i going to be able to do things uh perfectly um and how other people feel about me those are those are mine those things that loiter that i just really don't have control of and that's where better help comes in better help therapists are licensed experienced professionals such as psychologists marriage and family therapists social workers and more they have at hands-on experience and have the required education training exams and practice better help is now in network with more than 125 health plans with many co-pays as low as 15 for eligible members and if you don't have eligible insurance or you live outside the u.s you can still get 10 off your first month sign up and get 10 off at better help.com slash theo that's better help.com h-e-l-p.com slash theo did did you see that um robbie williams movie mrs doubtfire no it's uh better man dude this movie's so good it didn't get a lot of like acclaim or people wanted to watch it or whatever um he took on this uh is he the monkey yeah he just they put a monkey face on they turn him into a monkey and he's like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die he's a monkey the character for some reason so everybody else in the movie is a human he's a monkey um and he doesn't act like he's just he acts like he's a human but he just happens to be a monkey but this movie was great um wow but it just makes me think about robbie williams like so big in one place and just a different amount of an audience in another place or having to build it in another place you know i know he had kind of a similar career kind of uh where he would come here and it just wasn't the same as when he was in the uk when we'd go over there all of their like all the big celebrities we didn't know who they were yeah um and then you pretty quickly start to realize who is who and um did you ever get to meet like prince harry or anything like that like did it get oh yeah yeah or prince william or whatever who's yeah who's the prince both of them were yeah i think only one of them is now right one of them got unprinced or whatever damn did harry loses i don't know i don't know either but i played ping pong with harry he's a good ping pong player i did play a show that he was like the he hosted it um but we never actually got to meet him that's wild to have that experience over there um i saw where you guys had gotten a tour with bob dylan um yeah and we had billy strings on it was probably one of my like i saw that one dude well i love billy strings yeah man he's great he's just such a open book kind of i guess um but uh yeah he had he just had like kind of this wild experience with bob dylan where he had written a letter to bob dylan and bob dylan had written him back and then and then he got to go and tour with him and open an open forum um what was it like was that one of your early opening experiences kind of yeah that was one of our earlier ones and he had personally requested us apparently he had a radio show and we had heard kind of whispers of it but they were like um his radio show every night he plays y'all and talks about you guys and he's like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know you guys wow and i think it was another thing where he liked the story um and so they you know we got the offer and we were like of course we want to go play with bob dylan you know that's amazing obviously and uh i remember we we went out there and um you know we never saw him and and then we were in the dressing room one night and i smelled like a cigarette behind me And he went like, "Hey." And I turned around, I was like, "Oh God." Dylan and he was like what's that last song you play I said oh it's called Tranny he went that's a hell of a song I was like whoa man that's Bob Dylan just told me that and that was it and then the last night of the tour um they're like hey Bob wants to come say goodbye to you guys and so he came and gave us all a hug and that was that was kind of it but yeah he was he was one of the first um iconic American artists that took us under his wing and and gave us a stage wow yeah yeah there's always a lot of lore kind of around like his appearances or like his involvement sometimes with other musicians or um like yeah he seems to keep this sort of uh uh almost just like like this shadow type of yeah his crew his like uh the guy that's playing guitar with him was a friend of a a friend of ours who lives in Nashville and so he came to talk to us and he would we were playing outside of Chicago and so he came over to us he's like where y'all staying and it wasn't anything nice but it was in Chicago where we're staying he was like man we're so jealous he's like Bob only stays in um holiday inns or places that he can open his window to smoke cigarettes and so they were staying like in a little motel and we were the opening band and we were staying in the city so they were like man we wish we were staying where you guys are staying but I think that's awesome it's like you imagine if you were staying at Holiday Inn and oh yeah there's you're like I swear that guy next to us looked like Bob Dylan smoking out of his window yeah that was Bob Dillon and you could probably fit in because there's probably a lot of dudes that look like Bob Dylan smoking out of their window over there yeah that's classic dude um not not a lot of people get to have the opportunity to kind of like go through fame like with their brothers and with family like can fame and popularity can that like even ruin like a brotherhood in a way or like what kind of extra stresses can that cause on like a brotherly relationship that some of us might not be able to see you know fame is you know there's a lot of baggage that comes along with it I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know a lot of pressure um and to have your brothers with you kind of going through it um it helps but it also you know it's your brothers you're competitive um so we fought a lot um but we also fought together a lot you know it was us versus the world but having your brothers with you was you know it was great and it was awful and it was all of those things it's just you're all going through these strange experiences and you're in room like it's like I said you know you're in these rooms where you don't feel like you belong and everybody is accomplished and everyone's like something and you you're still in your mind you're just these little poor kids from Tennessee or whatever um so having the my brothers with me was always awesome because we keep each other in check a little too much sometimes you know um it was cool and I feel like now that we've gone through everything that we've gone through we can now appreciate it even more you know that we were there for each other because we probably wouldn't have survived you know it's yeah like what is the survival rate of a musician a rock band you know most of them die or you know become addicts and just lose everything and lose their minds um and we did a little bit of all that but I think the fact that we were there together we never allowed ourselves to get too far gone you know we could always no matter what you know no matter how much fun you're having um you still you look over at your little brother you know and you go like damn I'm supposed to be the one helping him you know I'm supposed to be the good example here you know you see your little brother when he was little um so having that to kind of keep you in check it helped you sometimes sometimes oh yeah not always but yeah dude sometimes uh but yeah you know anytime you can have a support system with you to go through the highs and the lows you need that because doing it by yourself I really feel sorry for artists or musicians that kind of get so big and then and really the whole time it's happening you're so alone you know eventually you start looking around going these people are all making money for me they don't care like they're employees yeah or even if they weren't in the beginning sometimes friends become employees oh yeah yeah I mean that's that's just how it goes and you need something to ground you and we had each other um and we still need it every now and then we still need to keep each other in check um but yeah man it was at times it seemed hard and at times you know you want to be like oh screw this man I don't need you guys you know I can go do this on my own um but I never wanted that you know I always wanted us to be able to do this together you know because that was our our thing you know that's like when we'd walk into the YMCA it was us we were the basketball team didn't matter who else was there it was like you're gonna play against us right you know this is my family right and so that's how we have always approached this career too it doesn't matter how big the band is that might be playing after us or how many albums they've sold it's hard to it's hard to beat family you know like we have something that I don't care how skilled you are instrument and how much money you make when you put a family together you have the instinct and this connection that you might not be the greatest in the world but when you're together it sounds like you are and it's like oh there's something there you know when you hear sibling harmonies you know you hear a brother and a sister or two brothers sing together yeah it sounds like angels because their their voices just link right up um and I feel like that's that's how it's all we have survived as long as we have is that we have something about us that you can't quite put your finger on and I think it's just our family connection it's each other yeah yeah there's been times in my life where I would be like I'd be like the one who would be like kind of telling my friends like hey man this isn't how we should be doing this and then two weeks later I'm the one who's like hoping that they'll be telling me like oh yeah hey man this isn't how how we should be doing this yeah you know um and I can certainly relate to like the trap of like uh oh I can do this by myself yeah oh yeah you start to believe what you hear and you know there's people putting those thoughts in your head too you know yeah sometimes it'd be so much easier if it was you know they save so much money if you if we just get you out there and you go you know not extra hotel rooms not the thing and you start to go yeah you know what that sounds pretty good that'd look good up there on Caleb Falwell instead of you know Kings of Leon but that's the devil though yeah yeah it was actually the devil that was whispering to me yeah he used to work for us did you guys have some bad influences oh no I mean yes but we didn't actually employ the devil I don't think okay we could have I don't know yeah you never know huh we had a couple of demons working for us I think probably but sometimes it's tough to know that just like uh a lot of that's greed control yeah and also to you know I feel like um people get obsessed with I don't know if celebrity is the right word but you know you that's why like LA has always been a weird place to me because you hear the way everyone just like there's one person at the table who's the person and then everyone around them is just like filling them with such bullshit about how perfect they you know everything is just like candy and roses and then you know that starts to happen you start to get people that you know they want to be a part of your your rise or whatever so I think their thing is like pull you away from everyone and then I'll be there with you you know it's kind of like that I don't know it's all kind of scary yeah I mean like I remember one time I was talking with Ben Affleck and I wanted to ask him I didn't exactly but like whenever he became because he and his brother both have a have experienced fame and popularity for their um acting and stuff like that and I was like I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know but I was like will your brother's like affections for you ever be enough like ever be able to live up to this like these hypothetical affections of fans and of of popularity like so that was one thing but that kind of stuff's always interesting to me yeah you know like if Earthworks son has a father that's famous oh man like do they ever worry like how much I care about my dad will never be able to um be the same as how much these people that don't even know him care about him yeah yeah that scares me a lot all the time, you know, as a parent, First of all, you don't want them to see you the way that everyone else sees you. You want them to see you as the dad, that I'm here for you. Whatever you need, I'm the guy that's going to give it to you. I'm going to be the one that picks up the call when you need me. But then when they see you on TV or hear your music or see the way people look at you, then they kind of start— you don't want them to see you that way. You want them to always be embarrassed by you as their dad. You want to be corny, and you want to be those things. But as a band, we all have experienced a level of fame or success, but I was still the one with the microphone. So even though we're all kind of doing this, you still have those moments where your ego kind of pulls you a little away from everyone. And so I imagine there were times when they were probably all like, screw this guy, you know. Because I have had an ego at times, and it's hard not to, especially if you're living a wild, crazy, debaucherous life. Yeah, you can start to believe the hype and start to think like, yeah, I don't need these people. And I tried to not be that way, but I'm sure— I'm sure there was levels of that. Did you notice it yourself, or how do you even check back in, right? Because your ego is so crazy. I think about this kind of stuff a lot, and it's almost like this shadow that grows, right? And you kind of don't even know where it's growing. And you can kind of latch on to different ideas, and it feels like its goal is just to get you to be by yourself, like this isolation thing. Yeah, and, you know, I went through times— when I was drinking real bad, and that in and of itself, I felt like I was trying to punish myself because I didn't like the person that I was becoming, or I didn't like the way that everyone else was seeing me. So we'd be out there on the road, and I was so alone, you know. Everyone hated me. Everyone in my crew, everyone in my band, you know. You could just— You could just sense it. You'd walk out there to do a sound check. Everybody's afraid to look at you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You just want them to look at you. You just want anyone to just make you feel like it's okay, or it's not okay. You just want to feel anything. You're just in a cold, empty arena, and everybody's looking down. And a lot of times that's where I would end up writing songs is because I was like, well, I'm going to get them to notice me. So I would walk up to the mic. With my guitar. And I would start singing something or playing something. And then slowly you hear the bass join in. Then the drums come. Then before you know it, you're all kind of playing. It's like, all right, we're back. We're back. But, yeah, I mean, it's hard to experience something that we've experienced and you not have little moments of selfishness and just feeling like you're better than other people. And I know they've all felt that too. They've had their moments where they pull away. But I guess it's part of it. Yeah, well, it's a crazy thing to happen in life is like to achieve a level, I think, of popularity and a level of creation where you've created something that's kind of infected so many people, like positively infected, I mean, or like touched so many people. Yeah. It's just it's a rare thing to happen in a human life, right? Yeah. And it's scary. It's like, because you think so many things would be kind of perfect from this, from that sort of experience. But there's a lot that goes on. I do think it's interesting that you said that, like, you know, like you could be like so alone and you'd start in and then the other instrument would come in. Yeah. And you always, it's kind of cool. It's like, oh, we're putting a band back together. It's almost like, all right, this family, we're going to make it through one more ride here. Yeah. Yeah. Get the duct tape, man. We're going to make this thing work. Yeah. Sometimes I would get like, I was in a spot where I had a drink before I would go on stage. Yeah. And that was tough because then it was like, I couldn't even have fun out there in a way. Yeah. Unless I'd had a drink. Oh, man. Yeah. You get into a cycle. And that's a bad place to be. Oh, yeah. It's like, well, you know, I'm a creature of habit. So like every morning I wake up with the, you know, my habits have changed. They're better now. But I wake, I have a whole routine in the morning. And back then I had a whole routine leading up to the show. Um, and so you do the thing and then you go out there and you start to realize like, this is the person they expect. So I got to keep doing it. You know, you got to keep being that guy out there on stage. Right. And I look back and there were years that I just don't remember playing a show that I enjoyed. Like I didn't, I was mad on stage and the madder I got, the more the crowd. Loved it. The more I spit, the more they were just like, yeah, he's doing the thing. Um, yeah. And you just look back and go like, man, that was, that was a lot of, uh, a lot of years of just kind of thinking that you were doing something special, but really you were just hurting yourself and you were losing inspiration. And now, you know, a lot of time people don't really want to hear a lot of bands newest music. You know, nobody wants to hear the new album of a band that's been around for a long time. It's like you go to a concert and they break into a new song. It's like, ah, come on. Um, but the music that I, that we're making now, I feel like all those years of, of, uh, being in that, in that pattern, I feel like I'm making up for it now because I love doing the work now. I love playing the show. I love connecting with the crowd and actually talking to them. I mean, for 10 years, I never spoke to the crowd ever. Really? I would, I thought it was Johnny Cash. I'd go out and say, thank you. We're Kings of Leon. And that was it. And we'd rip through a set and that was the only talking. And now I'm like, I want to say a little something, you know, I want to see how Boise's doing tonight, you know? Dude, that's cool, man. Wow. Um, the new album. The new album is Oh My Beloved, um, and it's out today. Yep. Nice. Yeah, man. What makes it so that now you're at a point where you can kind of package all this together and it feels like, um, you want to make music again? Is that a safe way to say it? Well, I just feel like with this album, I kind of really started to look back on my life and where we are now and all of the things that we have accomplished along the way through those years when I wasn't enjoying it. I can now look at it through a different lens and just be like, man, look at how far we made it. You know, we always said if we could ever sell like, uh, 10,000 albums, then that meant one time a year, we could play one concert for 10,000 people. We didn't realize that you have to travel, but like for us, it was like, you know, if we can just play a concert in front of a big crowd one day, that would be awesome. And now I look back at all the things that have happened, but not just success, but like who we are now and the fact that we all are good men who are raising families and we're present and we're, we've become, you know, we beat, we beat the statistics, you know, we're, we survived and we're still here. Um, so I feel like a lot of these songs are full of gratitude and appreciation for, for the way we were raised, um, the men that we've become, the journey, just the bumpy road that led to, you know, where we are right now. And a lot of those songs, you know, I'm, there's little lyrics throughout that are from childhood all the way to, you know, yesterday, you know, it's like, I just feel like now I'm, I'm finally, I'm okay with being me and, um, I'm, I'm happy with, if this is the end, I'm happy with everything that we've done. And it's much bigger than I ever thought it could be. I know you guys were touring crazy, like from the 2008 album, from that success, um, till like 2011 or 2012. Um, has there been like a hiatus since then or? No, we've been, we've been at it. We've taken a couple of little breaks. Um, but we kind of like, just, I feel like we kind of faded into the background a little bit. But we tried to just do whatever we had to do and nothing more. Um, so a lot of people, you know, think that we haven't been working or weren't making records or touring. It's like we were, we just, you know, we weren't loud about it. We kind of just tried to, I don't know, we wanted to blend in. We just didn't want to stand out. Um, so there were some years, you know, that it just, I felt like, you know, wasn't inspired um well especially with the success that you guys had right with your i think it was a 2008 album um i mean that success was yeah astronomical oh yeah that was only by the night 2008 kings of leon's best selling and um a successful album worldwide sales over 6.2 million copies sold um over 4.7 billion streams on spotify and i don't even know what date this is debuted at number five on the billboard 200 131 consecutive weeks in the top 75 you had to like y'all's music even if you didn't want to dude that's how huge it was yeah and we didn't like it we did we did not like that um you didn't like what like how big it got you think yeah that was that was when like the rough times started um just the real weight of like actual big time success here at home everywhere i'm still to this day i mean you know doesn't matter where we go we play songs from that album sex on fire or you somebody and i've said it before but i'm i feel like we could play those songs at a funeral and the damn corpse would sit up and start clapping because you know everybody knows them you know so like any you know that's a revival yeah exactly um but that you know that that pressure got to us and that's what we're doing right now i feel like that was when we kind of had some dark times you know we weren't ready for that yeah and do you think anybody could be ready for that or it's just too much like of you you know i'm saying like is it like what is that because it's like some people you're right like don't get to go to this like it's almost like sending somebody out into space right yeah because it's a scary place there's just tons of whatever you want kind of oh yeah um and it's all like the kind of the sin anything you have access to whatever really you know and your own ego can grow it's like it's a scary place to go it's a mordor yeah well i feel like at that point we were kind of doing like this and it was like naturally growing and then it went and when that happened it was like it kind of threw us all and and then i feel like we spent some years either trying to run away from that and then there were times where we tried to like maybe recreate that and it's like it was a moment that you know it happened and anytime you try to repeat success you know it's it doesn't happen it just ends up being like a watered down version of something so yeah those years um i feel like we just kind of struggled with it and it's been recently that i feel like we've kind of found our footing and and just like have become you know in my opinion well i don't want to say that but i i just i don't care who's playing you put us out there we'll hold our own i don't care who it is and there was a lot of time that i couldn't say that but we've got years of experience but we're also we're just in a different place now and like i said we we walk out there and it's like back in the day you know we look at each other and go like all right we're about to if there's something that we're not going to do we're going to do it someone here that doesn't know who we are when we leave here they're going to know who we are you know and it it's you know i feel like that kind of youthful competitive uh spirit is back in us like you found yourself kind of yeah yeah we lost ourselves for a little while um do you think anybody would have though yeah i don't think there's i mean i feel like i'm i feel like we're fairly grounded people you know the way that we were raised and stuff and it affected us the way that i can't imagine someone that didn't have a stable background or you know a supportive parents you know i i that they are the statistic that doesn't survive well yeah i mean it's like you guys professional wrestlers how'd you know about that those guys are oh i thought you said you guys are the follow well boys that'd be a good one jerry the kings of leon lawler yeah bro that's a good one um i feel like it's like rock stars professional wrestlers it's not some don't have a second act a third you know they don't have a it's a dangerous life so it's really a blessing but it's also a challenge really yeah i mean to be in a like a big rock band you've kind of you're you're like what you're shooting for is the tiniest little window you know it's like that window comes and goes and then it's like now what you're either dead or you're you know a caricature of yourself out there bloated like trying to put your tight pants on go out there do the dance that they liked back in the 2010s or whatever but i think it's like you have to evolve but then also you want to give fans what they want right so it's i think it's just a in the end it it's a lot of us of coming to reckon with yourself yeah and with whatever's going on inside of ourselves it's like even with comedy it's like sometimes it's like i'll want to latch on like things that used to work or try to do this or something but it's like well that's not exactly me anymore in some ways it is there's a part of me still there yeah but that's not totally me so if i just try to recreate that which at times you'll try to and stuff it's like yeah it's just a trap but it's also normal to try and want to stay with what's safe you know yeah i just uh i don't know it's all just interesting it's a mind it's a it's it's a mind game um you learn a lot about yourself when you find success you know it's like like i say the more i feel like the more you have the harder it is yeah and when you just go and you're big and then you know you're the we were never that but like i look at some of these pop stars and it's like you're the biggest thing in the world and you are all alone oh i mean if you look at britney spirit she's spinning around by a fireplace with knives every day she's got our music in the background sometimes yeah no way i'm only by the night i'm telling you it was a big record bro yeah when your record is the soundtrack for tough times of mental health you've made it dude but isn't it crazy how we watch this and this has kind of become normal for us too like in a way to just watch this and those dogs spell out help sometimes with their bodies if you watch them long enough oh man she's from louisiana too right i know but it's like you guys come up together no but uh we might have been around a little bit around the same time a couple years but oh she's a little bit younger to me but you would definitely are those real knives you think i mean even if they're not what is going on i mean you know what i'm saying what's going on and your music is inspiring it i know which song she's dancing to right there you i know those moves so you tell me dude um let me see oh right here it says studies show that rock and pop stars have a mortality rate two to three times higher than the general population and fame reduces a musician's life expectancy by roughly four to five years thought it would take a little more than that four to five years yeah right what was their life expectancy before they're dead at 23 isn't that the number that's a 27 what they're supposed to live to 32 what year is this the club's like the 30s the club 27 myth research published in the journal epidemiology and community health dismissed the popular myth that rock stars uniquely die at age 27 like jimi hendrix or kurt cobain the statistical risk is spread out over years of high risk lifestyles you know it's interesting because you want to go see your rock star right you want to see them be a rock star but if they were to continue to be a rock star like they wouldn't be there to perform anymore oh yeah um like i went and saw 311 the other day like um i was in austin and i was at the airport and uh and i saw this guy and i was like you look so familiar and he's like um i'm nick and i was like i'm theo and i was like nick and he's like hexum and i was like oh my god dude and i like the biggest smile came on my face it didn't even come from me it just came from like i think when i was a kid or something and i was like hey can i give you a hug and it was just the craziest thing it was like i don't know and he's like yeah sure man and so they were with me and we're just hugging by baggage claim but it was like i don't know it was just so cool it was like it was just part of me that i think i'd even forgot about some of the stuff i liked so much when i was young and then here that part of me had a moment like and it ran into something that like kind of meant a lot to it or and it was just like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know it was just like anyway that was like just like this moment that was like wow this is um i don't know i've gotten so busy sometimes doing whatever that sometimes i've forgotten about things that really brought me a lot of joy um and then anyway we got to go to the concert and um hexum is sober right so he doesn't drink or do drugs so it's like but i don't know if he'd stay on an old path if he's still you know i'm saying i don't know if i get to see him again or if like a lot of your favorite musicians if you get to see him again you know yeah and if they stay on that path the version that you do see wow is is like oh man yeah or elvis you know his final his final days it's like you see him and it's like I love Elvis, obviously, being a Memphis guy. Yeah, but there's something sad about it. Yeah, because it's like, man, you could see, like, he had to go up there and be Elvis, and he was struggling, you know? And I feel like we all, if you're in music or not, we all have those musical moments from our past, from our childhood, that you're just like, oh, man, that song takes me right to this moment, and that takes me there, and you want to see that. But the thing is, we all get older. We all, you know, our bodies, everything changes. None of us look the way we did in high school or college or whatever, but when you had that poster on your wall and you go to the concert, you're expecting that poster, and then it's like, here comes kind of a chubby version of it, and you're like, oh, man, that ain't the poster. I want my money back. Yeah, dude. And you know what? It's this weird thing, I think, of, like, if you have some sort of popularity that happens to you, you're like trying to live up to the poster. Yeah. And that's such a, it's like. Which, by the way, we need to start making posters again, man. What happened to those? You used to go to Walmart, and you sat there and thumbed through that big, giant thing, and it'd be like a sudsy girl on a car, and then it'd be like Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and then it'd be like all these, like, teeny bopper stars, and then there's Keanu Reeves. And you're like, what the heck? Schwarzenegger all the time. Oh, dude. And sometimes it would just be a big pair of breasts or whatever, and you'd be like, it's warm outside, ain't it, or something. And you'd be like. It is now. You'd be like, I want this framed, mom. You'd get something like that framed for Christmas. Oh, we had that. I think we had Kathy Ireland on our wall. Some of those old Sports Illustrated. We had Kathy Scotland, not as good looking. What? But a good attitude. That's what we had. Oh, but, yeah, Kurt Cobain, bro. And when those magazines would come, like, we were, like, big in, like, Aerosmith, Def Leppard, GNR, like, just all those magazines. And you'd see them all bloodied up and stuff. Like, one of them had gotten, like, Sebastian Bach every week had gotten hit by a bottle somewhere. Outside of the Roxy. Yeah, always like that. It was probably all mythological shit, but we were just sitting there just absorbing it. You know? Dude, that was so much fun. I miss those. I miss some of those times, man. Your band that's going back on tour, it's the same members as always? Yeah, me and my two brothers, my cousin. Yeah, it's us, man. It's always been us. Never been anything else. Yeah. And what's something that you kind of, like, admire about each one of those guys, kind of? Oh, man. I love those guys. I mean, besides the fact that we've kind of all gone through it together, we all have our role. We all have something that we bring to the band that makes us who we are. And it doesn't necessarily mean on stage or in the studio. Personality-wise, you know, Nathan being the elder statesman, he was the one that always felt like he was watching over us, you know? Even when he wasn't. None of us were like, we weren't watching anything. But he always seemed like he was, you know, he was the guy that would, if somebody said something about us, he would push everyone behind him and want to fight for us, you know? Jared is, you know, he's my little brother. He's just funny and got a big heart. And just, you know, we still laugh like we did back when we were kids. Matthew is, you know, he's, he's the cousin, so there's that. You know, he probably has a little chip on his shoulder. Does he, because he's the odd, because he's just like. No, I don't think he does. He, you know, he's always been cool. We always assumed it, but. Oh, yeah, the cousin. You know, because you're out there with three brothers and we all have our, you know, we have our inside jokes and now he's in on everything. But there was a couple years where I'm sure, you know, it seemed like we were. Was it you guys against him? Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it felt like. No, it didn't seem like it to us, but, you know, we were always trying to be funny and usually when you're trying to be funny, it's at the expense of someone, you know. The cousin. Yeah, whoever's not the brother, it's like, yeah, we're going to pick on you or. But they all picked, they picked on me for a while too. They did? We all got it, yeah. You took your turns. Yeah. If I had a freaking cousin, dude, the shit I would do to him. Oh, man, it's so fun. I hope I never have one. You probably do. You're right. Probably Britney Spears. Hey, heavy on the Spears, huh? I mean, damn. She looks like, damn, Donatello out there or something. I mean, Raphael. It's Raphael, right? Yeah, I mean, she's definitely a Louisiana snapping turdler. I mean, that's crazy over there. Before you leave, bro, how has your relationship with religion changed over time, if that's okay to ask you? Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it's been an evolution of kind of where we came from to where we are now. I think the way that we grew up, we kind of saw behind the scenes and kind of how the sausage is made, I guess you'd say. And so I got a little bitter for a while because there was times I felt like my dad kind of got pushed out because he. Because he was having normal struggles that a man goes through, but he was supposed to be this perfect man, but he wasn't. And so I got bitter for a while about that. And so I feel like now my relationship with God is a personal relationship. And I try to maintain it and try to, you know, I pray and I read the Bible, but don't. put me on a pedestal. I'm far from perfect. I make mistakes every day. I'm just like everyone else. And I'm always searching. I don't know all the answers. I don't know what I believe all the time. But I know I've always been searching for the answer. And I'll keep searching. And maybe one day I'll find it, or maybe I won't. And the journey is. awesome. You know, it's like that searching sometimes is the best part. So I try to raise my kids right. We were raised right, even outside of the religious aspect. We were always just raised to be kind and considerate of others. And like I said, when you grow up with nothing, you learn to love people for who they are. And you don't love someone because they have something or because they're doing well. In fact, a lot of times those people put you off because they aren't authentic. And they haven't had those experiences. So, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'm always searching. And, yeah, maybe one day I'll find what I'm looking for. Yeah. I mean, I think that's probably the creed of a lot of people probably. You know? Yeah. The truth. You know, a lot of people's truth is trying their best. Sometimes our society makes it so tough to have time to have peace with yourself. You know, time to focus and turn your attention to a higher power sometimes. Yeah. And I feel like you're always, you know, if you're doing it right, then maybe it's not doing it right. I don't know. But I feel like you do try to help other people, even when you're not doing it right. When you're struggling. You see someone, you try to pick them up. And then, you know, there's that voice in your head like, why are you giving this person advice? Look at you. You don't even know the answer yourself. And you're trying to, you know. But I feel like that's our, as humans, you know, you want to take what little experience you have and pass it on to someone. Yeah. And then hopefully they'll hit you with something back. And you're like, oh, thank God. I've needed that, you know. Oh, yeah. Dude. I go to recovery meetings and I'll go sit in meetings sometimes. And it's like, oh, yeah. Sometimes I'll hear somebody say something. And I'll literally feel my shoulders go like. Yeah. I'm not alone. I took an exhale that, like, has been stuck in my lungs for 20 years. Yeah. It's like old air that won't come out. And it's like, because I heard them say something that I just couldn't say or something that I needed to hear. Yeah. I don't even know. I don't even know sometimes what the unlocking is. But. But, yeah. And then any break I get from thinking about myself is nice, you know. Yeah. And hopefully you have people either in your life or people that admire you and they're, you know, they're praying for you or they're trying to, you know, help you get through what you're going through, you know. And maybe that's why you hear someone say something. It's like, oh, someone knew I needed to hear that, you know. Mm-hmm. Maybe it was my, you know, my uncle that prayed for me or something and then that spoke through that guy and that guy didn't even know what he was saying but he was talking right to me you know amen yeah i feel i think about that stuff a lot yeah because it does feel like if you're praying that there's a power in it oh there's power in it yeah you know it feels like there's like this is this does something this is not for not you know it's almost it's an undeniable thing yeah why would you do it if there wasn't right like i mean besides the burning of the calories but you know lose a little weight oh dude that's a great call i do way to bring that full circle right there dude um yeah do you ever see yourself ending up in a space with uh like doing revival or something like that we always used to say uh when we first started that one day we could see ourselves um with our dad back up there and we were the band you know kind of like how bob dylan his band was the band do you know the band so they're one of our favorite bands but they're they're called the band um they were canadian um except for levon the drummer he was from arkansas but they were bob dylan's band and then they went on to have massive success on their own and so i feel like we all you know we imagine that one day that could be us and in this scenario this is a very small church in the middle of nowhere this isn't like one of those i've never understood those big super church things right where the lord comes down on a rope or whatever yeah yeah i never understood that stuff but for me it was always what church was to us which was just four little walls you could smell the furnace you know it was like everything was tight it was all plywood and yeah but you know that was the best place in the in the town you know for that moment you got that box rocking oh yeah so we could you know i think there's there's that kind of romantic fantasy that perhaps one day that could happen but that's cool dude i would love that like that kid mason locklear have you ever seen that kid i don't know he's like this little kid he does um he's uh i think he's pentecostal this him whoa don't add up to me i just want to i just want to point this out don't add up to me you say that you're a christian right say that you're a christian i want you to listen to me good you say you're a christian but you're gay this kid is but you're gay oh dang you married a woman you married a man but you say you're a christian we can find another one i mean go go read leviticus 18 and 22 and see what it says i'm heading a little too close here i know i'm just saying bro that that kid's wild i love his voice man how are gay christians doing actually look that up if you don't mind that's a good i haven't even looked that up in a long time you've looked it up before though i'm sure gay christians today experience a wildly polarized landscape ranging from full theological affirmation and ordination to strict expectations of celibacy or outright exclusion overall gay christians are doing pretty good hell yeah i knew it they're doing all right all right there we go man um well now i'm gonna go home and watch that little kid oh you gotta send me his name man oh that's gonna be my youtube's gonna be firing tonight when i'm falling asleep oh yeah that's firing and brimstone right there that little fella who knows man maybe if we hit another time like this like you know like if we hit into some you know they say the world could be in it who knows what's going on if we hit into some grapes harass stuff maybe it'll be i mean revivals might be all they have again hey that's it's a good time oh yeah dude it's a good time man um you guys are doing some uh festivals as well you guys just got on the uh sand in my boots festival yeah with uh morgan ella langley that's gonna be great um dude the bands on here are crazy look empire of the sun he was he was the sleepy jackson that was at that concert in london when we were so scared and here they are yeah he's up here on the bill that's saying to my boots um have you met morgan or no i have not met morgan no or ella or that's gonna be great dude nelly nelly cole swindell flow right um the new album oh my beloved it's out today yes sir um yeah caleb thanks so much how's your dad doing by the way oh man he's good he was just here uh he'll be here uh in a couple weeks for thanksgiving so yeah he's good is he still evangelizing no um but he still gets up and preaches every now and then at his local church in oklahoma amen yeah nice man well tell him we said hello um caleb falwell uh kings of leon tell your brothers and cousin that we said hello and thank you guys for uh just coming by yeah chatting with us for a bit and uh yeah we'll see you next time um best luck on the new tour man and just congratulations on being alive still thanks man you got to come out and uh have see a show with us i'd love to yeah i will man uh thanks brother yeah man thank you now i'm just floating on the breeze and i feel i'm falling like these leaves i must be cornerstone oh but when i reach that ground i'll share this peace of mind i found i can see you in my bones