Testing Whitmer Thomas’ Music Knowledge

Before we start the music, introduce yourself. Hey, my name is Whitmer Thomas, I'm from Golf Shores, Alabama. What's popping? I'm just running late to everything here in New York City. I don't know where I am, I don't know how to get anywhere, and it's hotter than a rat, but that's all right. Doesn't it get hot in Golf Shores, Alabama? Oh, dude, it gets so hot. I actually am thriving right now in this weather. There's the mullet toss, dude. Each year, these mullet are thrown. Chuck, we're lightly tossed. Thousands of times down the 200 foot course. It was very slimey. I know about that. What the hell? Yeah, yeah, yeah. At the Florida Bama. Yeah, no, my mom was the house band at the Florida Bama forever, and so I kind of grew up there. Here you go. Thank you. You just have to tell me who the artist is. [MUSIC PLAYING] Winter Skinner, yes. [INAUDIBLE] From Jackson, Florida. Yeah. But the song, I mean, growing up in Alabama, you hear it all the time. That's what I love about Alabama is. There's no irony. It's uneironic enthusiasm. People are watching Forrest Gump 24/7, and this song is popping off on every boat 80 fucking times a day. People every day, people are watching Forrest Gump. Go to any bar down there. They're watching Forrest Gump. I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is. There's old men crying. Forrest Gump's good. It's legit good. I'm a year from New York, and you like it. That makes me feel good, man. It's good, man. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is Blink. Yep. This is the best song on the record. The line, "Charge the pizza to the house." I didn't know that you could do that when I was a kid. Like, what is he talking about? "Charge the pizza to the house." Like, is he saying they order a pizza, and then they go, yeah, that's the song. I didn't order the pizza, but I'll take it. Yeah, that's the same. And then whoever owns this song has credit at the "Pizza Ria." You know what I really think it is? It's Tom DeLong. He seems like a first draft kind of guy. When it comes to lyrics, he just kind of sings. Like, what sounds right? And then he goes, yeah, that'll do. Because a lot of times what he's saying doesn't actually make any sense. Blink went 82. But later on, he got much more serious. Old angels and airwaves tells a whole story. He's not messing around. No, not at all. What you like and do it all is fake. If I had a chance for another shot. It's very serious what he's talking about. Yeah, yeah. I saw him the other day, and he's really tall. It was like looking at a statue of David. Yeah, isn't it nice to see a celebrity and who's tall? It's usually the other way around. Really nice. See these little guys with these huge heads? You're pink. Thank you. You're a big boy, too. Big, strong boy. He's a good, strong boy. I could use a bigger head. I got a little head. It's important to have a big head. Yeah. I got a big old teeth, a little head. Not a good combo. Leo, Matt Damon, Affleck. It's like a thing. You're more likely to become a movie star if you have a big head? I think so. They're always having to stand me in front of people on camera so that my head looks the same size as theirs. Yeah, but you stand a couple of feet back. But Tom, Sick, Mark, Sick, Travis, Sick, you know, I've always dreamed of having the Tom Delong guitar, the Strat, and my girlfriend got it for me for Christmas. I just hang it on the wall, pick it up every now and again. How do you choose your guitars? Like when you started playing guitar as a kid or whatever. That's what I wanted. It was always you wanted that one. That was the one I wanted. What you just got, whatever one you could get. I just got what everyone was at the pawn shop. Does it make a big difference? I'm not good enough at guitar to know. Yeah. I imagine some people are like, oh yes, the intonation and the pickups and all that stuff. I don't know. You can tell when you play a good guitar. Dude, when I was in eighth grade, I was in my band and we were covering yellow submarine and an old man came up from the audience and stopped us and then tuned our guitars and said, now do it again. And? It sounded great. Well, this is the first day of my life. That's bright and nice. This changed my life. Why? I was on tour when I was 15 years old. I had bronchitis and diarrhea. We were at a roadblock where the cops were searching cars and we had a tour van and all that stuff. So obviously we were going to get searched and I asked the driver, our drummer, if he could pull over so I could shut in the woods and he said, we can't, man, it's a roadblock and I'm this van is filled with weed and I was like, man, I thought I was going to die. And then he's just like, just listen to this. He put on bright eyes, just like transported to heaven, man. And then I loved it so much that I went to my creative writing class and I played the song, Big Picture, and I was like, everybody listen to this. I played the lyrics and everybody was like, please, play Sweet Home Alabama. What are you doing? What are you doing here? Bright eyes rolled around and they introduced me to a whole new world of indie rock and singer songwriter stuff. My dad heard me listen to Bright Eyes and got me a Leonard Cohen record. My mom got me a Joni Mitchell record and they both got into it. When the president talks to God and that came on, my mom was watching and started crying and was like, we're back. Here we go. When the president talks to God, do they drink near beer and go play golf while they pick which countries to invade? We're probably similar age. And I feel like that was one of those early records that was like hours. It's like, oh, yeah, instead of just listening to whatever pop stuff was on the radio. And it had a message, you know, Connor Burst stood for something and still does. I think he's very outspoken and I just saw them live and all the things that he had to say was pretty, you know, beautiful. Now I must come up. Oh, my God. Jimmy Buffett. It's my God. He's from Mobile, Alabama. It's about an hour or from where I'm from. As a kid really resented him, parrot heads, his fans, I mean, that's everybody where I'm from. I was like, I don't want to be like them, I'm punk. I got a rebel against them and then I got a little older and was like, what are, I'm not, they're awesome. They're probably more punk than I am. Just drinking bushwhackers and margaritas all day on the beat. So punk. Jimmy Buffett's the best. Like, I think of all artists in the world. Jimmy Buffett probably did it the best in the world. Like, wrote songs about drinking margaritas and cheeseburgers and eating cheeseburgers. Move to Key West, just drove around on a boat all day and died a skin cancer. Like any dyed pretty old, yeah, happiest I've ever been, other than the time I listened to Brides for the first time. As me and all my pals went to Margaritaville at the City Walk in LA, we got the float of Margaritas, all of us just got like obliterated, didn't really realize it and then we went and saw killers of the flower moon. I remember all of us sort of looked at each other, like, are we having the best time of our whole life watching this right now? How is killers of the flower moon hammered? So good. I was just looking at Leonardo Caprio's big ol' head. When I saw it, it was, they were playing Taylor Swift Error's tour movie in the theater next door. Did you hear it? Did you hear, yeah, I could hear Shake It Off playing while there was a lot of murder happening. Maybe a good mashup? No. Probably not. Yeah, you're right. Fuck her. Burn it down. No, she's a friend. We started together, me and Taylor. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. Oh, yeah. I can't breathe. Okay. War. War. So, cool thing about war is obviously the music is incredible. I found out about their music watching a skate video, Ronnie Mullin vs. Day One song. Then, a couple years later, my mom, who was a musician, introduces me to this guy who stayed at our house named Howard Scott, and Howard Scott was in war. Him and my mom were recording an album together with my aunt. Album wasn't good. Never came out. There's a lot of, like, rap in it. My mom tried to sound like Macy Gray, maybe a little offensive. I don't ever want anybody to hear it. But Howard would listen to me and my friend Clay's punk music, and we were attempting to be like, political during the Iraq War. We had a song called Canada that said, "I'm not saying in America, I'm going to Canada because Canada has no war." And Howard Scott listened to it, and he was very moved by it. And he was like, "This is the kind of stuff you got to keep right, and we need kids like you." It was very inspiring. It meant a lot coming from him. Canada. I have it. If you want it, I can send it to you. You can visit it with a drum machine in eighth grade. Who's your mom's favorite? Hmm. Peter Tosh. Ah. My mom lived in Jamaica for a while. She opened for Toots in the Maytals. My mom loved, you know, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Chinato Conor, Cheryl Crow. Cheryl Crow is music designed for single moms, I think. Like single moms who are driving into a better future. There we go. That's Crow. Soundtrack to this conversation. That's my Crow. She's a great singer. Sing back up for Michael Jackson. That's tough. Great writer. God. Cheryl Crow is great. She's cool. She hits the spot. Ah. Beautiful. She's just killing it. Cheryl, if you're watching this, you mean a lot to me and a lot of moms out there, thank you, Cheryl. And every morning there's a halo. Sugar ray. Sugar ray. Just don't get enough credit. Talk about, talk about unironic enthusiasm. The enthusiasm. Yeah. Like, the production on these songs is incredible. too. I don't know if it's coming back, but I feel like it should. This kind of style. It's kind of buffet, too. It's got a bit of buffet in there. Mark McGrath? Ah, also. Beautiful man. I took his photo to my mom's hairdresser when I was a kid and was like next time. I wasn't even getting a haircut. Yeah, but my mom was and I was sitting there and I said, "Hey man, you think if I'm in an appointment. " I was probably 11. I think if I'm in an appointment, you could do something like this to me. He was like, "Yeah, but I used to be so afraid of showing a picture to the guy." But I thought it was offensive. Oh, really? I don't know why. But back in the day, I would be ashamed almost to show like a magazine or something. It's embarrassing to them. It's embarrassing. But I felt I got to let this guy cook, you know? I can't give him too much direction. Yeah, he's an artist. I respect that. But if they're doing a bad job and you're watching them do a bad job, do you say anything? Hey pal, cut it out. I don't think it's too far gone. I'll be like watching them cut my hair sometimes and be like, "All right, well, there's no way I'm going to be able to cover up my receding hair line now and I'm just going to have to figure out how to live with it." So here we go. I'm old enough now to reveal this to the world. Yeah. Something really embarrassing happened recently where I showed them a picture of Josh O'Connor. He's like a new movie star. Yeah. He's new. You want to show old photos like legends, but Josh O'Connor is new. He posts her from like his next movie. Yeah, and I was like, "Yeah, I kind of like how this looks." She was like, "Okay." And then she just shaved my head. Is this Randy Noon? Yes. I've never heard this song. This song is ripping. We don't get enough songs nowadays or it's somebody like, "This is no thing." Like, what the hell? Why don't we got these bouncy little numbers anymore? You could do it. No, but no, but yeah. Randy Noon and I guarantee you when he's writing a song, you know, they do word salad. His word salad is dubby-duby. That's all he's doing. He's going to dubby-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub. That's what he's doing. He's saying dubby-dubby and then he fills in the water. What are these going to be? What do you do? You do words? Oh, man. Now, it's a chance, right? Lyrics first? Like with the Canada song. You definitely wrote that first. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, that was my friend Clay. Those were his words. I don't want to take credit for that. But, uh, if you listen to my songs, you'll see there's not a whole lot of melody, so I could probably get away with writing words first. What's your new special? It's this special called "Terminal Crude Dudes" on HBO Homebox Office. Do you direct it? Yeah, me and my friend Clay. Directed it yourself. My buddy Clay who wrote Canada with me. We've been writing, working together since we were 11. Was it always for you like music and comedy and everything was intertwined? No. Started out as music. Yeah. And then me and my bandmates quit playing music because it was too hard in LA. We talked too much. So we quit music and just accidentally sort of stumbled into being a sketch group. And then I started doing stand-up through that. And I've always loved stand-up. And then I had written an album and it wasn't very good. And then I changed the lyrics to be a little bit funny. And I was like, oh, you can make mediocre music with kind of funny lyrics and get away with it. So that's what I started doing and now it's both. Wow, it's awesome. Thank you, man. Keep it up. Thank you, dude. Appreciate it. Good to see you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.