Andrew Cook

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01:08We absolutely love partnering with Sharpies Bakery. Aaron Mosso has been selling bread, fresh-baked bread, to locally-owned and operated restaurants six days a week for 36 years. Yes, her father started the company 36 years ago, and Aaron took it over five years ago, and it is doing amazing things. I have so many guests that come in the studio that are like, I love Sharpies, they save me so much time, and the bread is so good. So we've got round buns, specialty round buns, dinner rolls, hoagies, baguettes, they do cheesecake, they do flourless chocolate tortes, they do specialty loaf breads, and regular loaf breads, and bullies, bullies, B-O-U-L-E-S, sourdough, long tuscan, wheat, multigrain, they got everything. You should go check them out at sharpies.com. That is Sharpies, C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com, or you should give them a call at 615-356-0872. Supporting local is so damn important, and Aaron Mosso and all of our friends over at Sharpies Bakery do that daily. Give her a call right now.

02:24Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City, and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. My name is Brandon Styll, and I am your host. Happy Monday to you. Hopefully you are not licking your wounds too bad after that just absolutely heartbreaking Titans loss yesterday to start the season to the Giants. The first time the Giants have won their first game in six years, so that's awesome. I'm glad we could give them that. That's really exciting. It is Sunday night and putting this out, and I am still a little heartbroken, so hopefully you are okay out there. We would like to send a big congratulations out to Memos in Mount Juliet. You the people of Middle Tennessee have chose Memos of 64 Mexican restaurants. They have been voted the best Mexican restaurant in the city. Holy cow. So we're throwing a party there.

03:40They're already doing a party. September the 16th is Mexican Independence Day, and they have all kinds of fun things happening. There's gonna be a band. There's gonna be tables. I believe it's already sold out, so you cannot go that night. I don't believe, but that doesn't mean that you can't just absolutely go in and spend all the time at Memos because they are... Katie and Memos are amazing, amazing people, and I'm so excited that they won because they're amazing. Their food is authentic. It's really, really good, and I cannot wait. They're gonna be on the show this week. We're gonna do a live episode with them. It's gonna be a ton, a ton of fun. Today, speaking of a ton of fun, this, I know this is one of my favorite interviews we've ever done. This today is with a gentleman named Andrew Cook, and Andrew is the owner at the the Fox Bar and Cocktail Club. He also owns Elegy Coffee, and he's also the drummer for the band Dan and Shay. We talked with Laura Untenberg a little while ago. She was on a podcast we did called the Gospel of Cocktail podcast with Kayla Ellis, and if you want to learn a ton about the Fox, you can go back and listen to that episode with Laura. She was amazing, but this interview with Andrew was really, him and I just, we talked a lot about music. We talked a lot about like 90s grunge and alternative, famous people we've met, famous drummers, what the role of a drummer is, how did you get to be the drummer for Dan and Shay. I was really fascinated with all of the the Dan and Shay drumming and all of that stuff. We did talk about the restaurant, however, but this was just a fun conversation and bit of a departure from what we normally talk about, and I kind of love that, right? Because you never know what you're gonna get on this show.

05:31We like to do different things all the time, like Talkin' Shift. We love Talkin' Shift. That is a new podcast. It's an old podcast. We have brought it back to life. It is gonna be every single Sunday night from 9 to 11. I have found a host and you can hear it. I'm gonna put the episode out on Wednesday. We're getting ready to record it live. Hopefully you saw the live notification because you follow us on Facebook and you follow us on YouTube, which is where the show we broadcast live. It's gonna come Sunday nights from 9 to 11. This is a call-in show, right? So the phone number is 615-852-6593. What you can do is you can call that number and you can tell us your restaurant stories. Tell us all the crazy shit that you've been through. You can ask advice. So we're gonna have our host and then we are gonna have special guests that are gonna be in studio and you can call in and be like, hey look, this happened. What do you guys think? Let's talk about it. And then we can ask advice from people that are out there and you guys can all join the show. This is gonna be fun. It's gonna be interactive and hopefully it's going to be entertaining and hopefully helpful, right? Hopefully you can hear some some really industry professionals. We can laugh. We can cry. We can tell stories. We can do all of the things. It's gonna be great. So that is gonna be talking shift. Sunday nights 9 to 11 and I think that's it. I think that's all my announcements. I do want to say that I went out. I had a viewing. You know, my wife's, one of my wife's best friends, her father passed away. He went to a viewing and so we were kind of dressed up a little bit and I said, let's go out to eat. Let's just go somewhere. My parents had the kids and I said, let's just go to East Nashville. I love East Nashville. Let's just go to East Nashville. Let's figure it out. And so we're like, should we go? Where do you want to go? I was like, that green chili burger, redhead stranger, that sounds great. Butcher of B, Pelican and Pig, Pearl Diver, there's a million, there's, they're all over the place. And all of a sudden in my brain I went, what about

07:36Lyra? Lyra? Lyra? I don't know how you say it. I say Lyra. What about Lyra? I've never been to eat and I've been dying to try it. So we said, yeah, let's go. So we went there and they were packed. They said, do you have a table for two? And they go, no. We're packed. But they did have two seats at the bar, which we sauntered up to. And Joey, big shout out to Joey, took fantastic care of us. You ever go to dinner and you kind of don't, because it's Middle Eastern cuisine, right? And I don't typically eat Middle Eastern cuisine. I have a Middle Eastern chef now who's doing really amazing stuff at Maribola and I'm tasting a lot of stuff, but I wasn't really familiar with it. You ever go to a restaurant and you're kind of like, this is gonna be cool. I don't know. But then you order some food and it just blows you away. Like the flavors, the visual, like everything about it is just like, holy shit, I needed this meal and I want more. Every single course that we had was like that. The food came out. It was absolutely amazing. If you have not been there, you gotta go. Like just make a reservation now. You've got to go over to Lyra. Go say hi to Harant is the chef over there and his wife Liz have been nice enough to join us on the show for the Music City Roundup. And I did talk to Harant while I was there and he did commit to come on the show and talk about Lyra and the whole story behind it and kind of catch up with him. I met him a long time ago and he was a chef at Amerigo and in the tree house, he's been kind of around and now they've had Lyra for many years.

09:13And I'm sad to say it was my first time. It will not be my last. I'll be back there many, many, many times. So that I think is my final announcement for the week. We will have this episode of Talkin' Shift that we're going to do tonight. You can hear it Wednesday when we put it out. You can probably find it on our YouTube channel anytime starting Monday or hopefully you participated in it live on Sunday. And what else we got? Anything else? I think that's it. Lots of episodes coming up. This one with Andrew Cook is fantastic. I got a show Friday coming out with Jim Taylor. We're talking with Randy Rayburn this week. Lots of fun stuff coming up and I cannot wait to get all of this stuff out there to you. Thank you for listening. Please tell somebody about this show. I would love it if you would share this and I say, hey, look guys, you ever listen to National Restaurant Radio? You should check it out. Let's build our listenership. I would like more servers, bartenders, restaurant managers, restaurant people. This is kind of a for us, by us show. So I would love if you'd let people know about it. So share it however you can. Subscribe wherever you listen to it. Subscribe to it. Go leave me a five-star review. Do something nice. I you know, I would be amazing. I would love to have more five-star reviews. I would love to have positive reviews and go check out our website. Buy some merch. I got t-shirts for sale. Whatever you can do. We love it. We want to keep doing this for a long, long time and I need your support as always. You listening is plenty and I love that. Thank you for listening and enjoy this interview with Andrew Cook.

10:49Crazy from time to time. I mean my girlfriend works as a server, as a server, excuse me, in town at a place that shall remain unnamed and just the just the amount of crap that the average server deals with and the kind of like just even gratuity alone you know you think that we've evolved to this point with eating and drinking in public that everybody knows the standards of like if you go out to eat you're supposed to take care of the people that serve you especially if they do a good job but just there's a baseline there. Yeah. And just knowing hearing from her how many people just don't tip at all or how many people tip a flat five dollars on whatever it's like it's almost I wonder like you know I don't like to rush to judgment on people or anything everybody's in different circumstances but you know if you're go if you're willfully engaging the act of going out to eat and participate in this experience you should be obliging by the unspoken social contract that is hey I'm gonna do my part take care of you for taking care of me you know and you wonder how much of it is just education like do people really not know that that's what you're supposed to do or are people would just you know do you cheap I don't know you know it's hard to say I don't know like I drove uber for a little while like I had a heart surgery in 2017. Oh wow. Ablation not like a it's just an I had AFib so I had an ablation done okay I think with with my copay I was like three grand and my dad is retired and drives uber and I told my wife I go I really want to do that I just I love talking to people I don't really want to do that and so I started podcast research driving uber kind of yeah so I started driving and I just I started talking to people but people have no fucking clue what to do in an uber they'll call an uber and they're like we'll be out in like ten minutes dude you're like ready when I I don't get paid to sit here and wait for you and people just assume that you're just some

12:50hired help and it's like hey man I got it this is my car and I'm I don't want to sit in your driveway and wait ten minutes yep and then they get in the car like oh hey man thanks wait and let's go and then they don't tip you and you're like but this is this there's a whole etiquette that I'm like how do you teach people uber etiquette like yeah be outside waiting for the car and if you don't want to talk say hey man I really don't want to talk to you just yeah but if you need recommendations from somewhere like there's I don't know there's a lot to it there is absolutely and maybe it just comes down to general education for people and not knowing things so it's like where do you go to find out those things exactly well so I feel like we've already started the interview yeah kind of yeah I will I will do a formal introduction that's kind of the mark of a good podcast I feel like they they you know you don't even realize it started now here we are just rolling the gears are turning yeah Andrew what is your last name cook co okay yeah so I will formally say excited to welcome into studio Andrew cook who is the proprietor of the Fox bar and cocktail club yes you're also elegy coffee yes and you were a musician I am yes so you're a drummer for a little bit I've never heard of them before what are they called some spunky young upstarts named Dan and Shay yep so I've been with those guys that's actually why I moved to Nashville beginning of 2014 I had known Dan from previous bands I came from you know the sort of originally the Boston hardcore post hardcore scene I'm from Massachusetts as is my partner Brian nice I came from that world and you know did a lot of touring over the years starting in 2003 really aging myself here but starting in 2003 started touring full-time played in a couple different bands I had met Dan in a prior band and kind of the pop punk world and we kept in touch a bit and you

14:50know he came here and the whole thing happened where he met Shay they started writing songs and it took off very quick and they got a deal and you know he said hey I was living in Los Angeles at the time and he said hey if you know you want to play drums for this thing it's yours you know come come out to Nashville and hell yeah with us and I was like yeah this sounds really promising you know I was admittedly a little discouraged after being in two bands for about five years apiece both of which I cared a lot about and you know was an active contributor to and both times being sort of on the precipice of quote-unquote making it or you know succeeding to the degree where oh like I don't have to get a job when I come off into or make a living doing this yeah yeah and that was what it kind of always expired aspired to and I'd gotten close and then you know had it kind of fall apart both times and so I was kind of of the mindset like I just wasn't gonna do it anymore and Jason I was like I'll play music for fun on my own or with my friends and I'll just focus my you know intentions elsewhere and I was I moved to LA to pursue screenwriting actually and was making art out there and he got the call and I thought hey you know third time's a charm why not give it one more shot this seems like it's got a lot of a lot of the puzzle pieces are already in place and it doesn't seem like it'll take a lot to make it go the talent was obviously there I heard some of the songs and I heard Shay's voice and I was like oh gosh like you can sing yeah it's unbelievable you know and different style than pop punk yeah for sure even though we all come from that world our whole band basically does except for Shay who came from an R&B background but you know as soon as I heard him sing and heard the songs I was like oh okay this is this is dope so now you're playing like sold out stadiums yeah it's been it's been a fun ride yeah we just finished doing direct support for Kenny Chesney for the better half of the year so far and so you're on tour with Old Dominion and Carly Pierce and Shay and Kenny Chesney yep you just finished up in

16:51Boston is it yes that's my hometown show so did you just do it or is it coming up we just did it this past weekend we did two nights back-to-back at Gillette Stadium home of the best team in the NFL so I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I know I know but you know I grew up in Western Mass my partner Brian who I own Fox analogy with he's from Dudley Mass more like Central Eastern Mass so we got a deep Masshole connection there you know although surprisingly he's a Chiefs fan so you have to talk to him about that another time but that is interesting I look I have a mad respect for the Patriots and Bill Belichick I heard Bill Belichick speak actually a few months ago cool at the restaurant leadership conference he can I was blown away by that guy I mean he's an absolute leader in all sense of the world yeah and then I'm I'm one of those people who loves Tom Brady mm-hmm I smart man well I I like greatness yeah you know I think people that excel to that level I'm like dude no teach me I want to see what you do I don't hate because they're better than me like I am a absolute like no Tom Brady you have to respect it the ice water in his veins is incredible how he stays cool under fire and what he's able to it's 45 years old I know I mean it's it's astounding you have to respect it and I feel that way about athletes and other sports that aren't Boston players and you know it's funny living through that whole era where it was Brady and Manning and the constant debate like who's better who's gonna have the bigger legacy and all that and then I was always a homer so I was like yeah Brady you know but he's he has to yeah and now obviously it's a no-brainer but you know when you look at it say you know I'm a big Celtics fan right we obviously just lost the title to the Warriors which is heartbreaking but when you look at a guy like Steph Curry he's he's a Tom Brady level athlete in my mind in terms of like how he's changed the sport yeah he literally has changed the way basketball is played and when you're playing somebody like that you want to almost like like when

18:55it's Celtics Lakers you're like oh the Lakers is so easy to root against them you know even like I hated Kobe when he was playing but like I didn't hate Kobe I hated like the Lakers and that he was such a great player on the Lakers it was the same way that I hated Jeter and A-Rod when they played and then when you take a step back from like a macro sense you look at it and you go well those guys are great and Steph Curry you can't hate him like you know and I'm using the term hate quite flippantly I don't really mean hatred obviously in a sports fandom sense you know where you're like rooting against people you know like it's so hard to root against Steph Curry he's so likable and so good you know I there's I think Tom Brady's probably easier to root against and Steph Curry in a way but because he's a he's like in it he's like a supermodel yeah and he's married like what can't you supermodel and you're like I don't know I respect that I'm more envious Tom Brady and I want to like study Tom Brady what did this guy do replicate him in a lab yeah I mean like I don't know I don't there's no room for hate and for me personally I just look at those guys and I go man the work ethic yep it must take to achieve that level I mean those kids didn't have normal lives when they were kids they shot baskets all day long Tom Brady yeah I mean it's like Tiger with golf you know yeah I mean he just golfed way more than the average guy at every phase of his life studied way harder and he was freakishly gifted naturally so when you combine all those things it's like wow what can't you do you know there's too much too much positive things going on in life to start hating people you can't change any of it yeah I'm just gonna I was I was hoping when I went to the Titans game against the Buccaneers a couple weeks ago and I was like god I just want to see Tom Brady yeah I just want to be like in the same building is that weird no no I just want to see like the number 12 down there some yeah like there's Tom Brady I'm in the same room

20:55as the yeah I love stuff like that you know it's I'm a I'm a huge soccer fan as well I'm a big Liverpool supporter okay which Liverpool's owned by FSG the company that owns Red Sox as well and LeBron is invested in that as well but you know I'm the same way with Jurgen Klopp the manager of Liverpool I've just you know in awe of him and I went over there and went to a few games earlier this year and just like being a few rows behind him and just like watching all those players that I've only seen on TV for so many years it's just an incredible experience and you know being somebody it's who's like a traveling musician or full-time musician for a living we're fortunate enough to meet a lot of athletes and you know we had a great time on this last Chesney run meeting so many of the football players that were coming out to their home stadium and coming to the shows and hanging out with us at the buses and that was like such a trip for a lot of us because a lot of us are really big sports fans and then you realize those guys are music fans the way that we're sports fans because like they can't do what we do and we are you know musicians you know we struggle with a lot of imposter syndrome a lot I think like all creatives do and we don't give ourselves enough credit for what we do a lot of times and then you realize oh these guys who are at the top of their field look at us at the top of our field and go oh man wouldn't it be cool to do that the same way I imagine like gosh can you imagine like you know catching a pass from Tom Brady or something like that I know like it's it's incredible so it's pretty fun to be in that environment and you know see and meet some of those guys and it's it's super cool for me that's like one of my favorite things about touring with Dan and Shay and those experiences that you get because you know I wouldn't get those any other way you know what was that tour like I mean because I listened to the highway and I've I quit drinking two and a half years ago and one of the things that I did and this is weird I don't know why but there's triggers that you have you know when you drink and I listened to I'm like a 90s alternative grunge oh yes I listened to all kinds of

22:58stuff yeah but I almost wore my STP purple shirt that's one of my favorite records of all time I wear that shirt like three days a week I found I was one of the early adopters on STP yes I was listening to KROC in California yeah and I will listen to KROC and they were playing plush and all these things way early yeah anybody in Nashville and I came back to Nashville and I was like dude this band they're no good and I was like no they're gonna be amazing and I had core the album and yeah people wrote them off like crazy when they first started first record came out and they were like oh they're ripping out Pearl Jam they're ripping off Led Zeppelin whoever and still in their debut record and it sold eight plus million copies in the US did great obviously but it's crazy when you look back at bands that have built a legacy and you realize people were just writing them off I think people did it to Aerosmith when they started to you know like really there's there's always gonna be people that say like oh this is just derivative of this because they're you know they want to write things off because for some reason that's human nature but well there was a lot of those I mean early 90s you had like did you I saw a fact the other day that was like Nevermind 10 super unknown and Siamese dream were all released within 45 days of each other and you're like what the early 90s it's crazy it's like it's like the 94 the movie year where you have like you know I don't know Paul's fiction, Forrest Gump, Jurassic Park and Shawshank Redemption maybe which but Forrest Gump won the best actor won the best picture but it beat Pulp Fiction and in Shawshank Redemption and I think Jurassic Park and yeah what a crazy year for movies yeah I think 94 is probably the the best year for movies but yeah it's funny I actually I listened to Nevermind the day before yesterday front to back for the first time in a while because I was talking my buddy Scott about it is we we both share the same favorite Nirvana song which is Breed for me and he sent me a video of them playing in a festival

24:59and it was 30 years ago exactly to the day I was like I can't believe that was 30 years ago that's truly astounding and I got chills yeah isn't that crazy thinking about I listened to it's funny you say that because I washed my car last week and I've listened to in utero oh nice from beginning to end and there's something raw about that album yeah that just gets me going like it reminds me of being 16 years old and angry yeah I listen and there's just some there's just some raw angst to that album that just speaks to my heart I don't know I don't know what it is isn't it great that you can still feel that though that's the best thing about music I think is that it can pin you to a time and a place and if you have an experience tied to a record or a song you never forget it like a really distinct indelible one you know it's a totally visceral thing like my my best friend and I we've been really close since we were really little kids Nick is his name and we we share a lot of musical tastes and you know when we were younger we got really into STP obsessed you know we were super obsessed with smashing pumpkins and then of course like you know the corn lit biscuit all that stuff and rage was a real-life changer for me but I remember distinctly like you know we used to play magic the gathering when we were in middle school and like we would hang out after school at his parents house and we would listen to like Siamese dream and whenever I hear the little like build up to cherub rock the distortion kicks in like it just makes me feel like I'm in that moment in that headspace again it brings me these like really like happy emotions you know and it's like not that one specifically isn't like a singular moment it's just a feeling of an era and I love that that's that's what the best thing about music to me is just you know and sometimes it can be for better or for worse sometimes you have songs that you can't listen to

27:00because they remind you of a person or a breakup or a tough moment you know and that's just goes to show you how powerful it is that's why I started listening to country music is because my whole life I was driving uber and I had Stormy Warren in the car with me Stormy Warren from the highway storm Warren show in the morning and I told him I said I don't like country music it's like oysters to me and I go every time I go anywhere there's oysters I'm like I give me an oyster I'll give it a shot every time I'm like I just don't like it and that's the way I'm with country music and he goes listen to country music for ten days straight and tell me what you think after that and I was like okay I'll give it a shot so listen the highway for ten days and it was different for me because the songwriting is wonderful and I love some of the stories that are out there but I didn't have any previous association yeah that's interesting do anything so me post drinking there was zero triggers to any and I'm listening to Luke combs one two three you know I can't have too many drinks or that's why we drank you know Mondays Tuesday there's all these songs drinking songs didn't do anything to me because I've never drank with those that music it's like a whole interesting me post drinking like and I love country music now and I dig these songs like Dan and Shay's tequila like yeah I get like the words the song like but when I taste tequila like I get it like and it's so well done and I love that song but awesome I will tell you mentioned smashing pumpkins Billy Corgan came into the restaurant a couple months ago getting into Green Hills Grill and I'm standing at the front door and he comes in with Hillary Williams and I'm sitting there I was like that dude looks like Billy Corgan yeah and I'm start my start shaking right cuz I mean this is this is not yeah this is not big and rich in the restaurant I mean there's some you see a lot of Nashville guys Reba's in or whatever like I see a lot of these guys and the rest of my god it's cool but like no this is Billy Corgan like this is yeah that's the guy this is the guy that wrote bullet with butterfly wings

29:02and like Soma and yeah porcelain of the vast blue ocean seas and you're just going and so I said I'll see that table I see and he's wearing a shirt that says zero on it I'm wearing the zero sure in my mind that's so funny he's wearing the zero jacket and so I sit him down I'm like hey I don't do this and I we get lots of people in here but like you've got me through so much of my teenage I don't know how to even say this but like you're one of my heroes and I just want to shake your hand he's like no man thank you so much that means a lot and now I just bought tickets to go see him on October the 10th with Jane's addiction oh wow they're playing Nashville Bridgestone Arena October 10th with Jane's addiction so I'm like that'll be great yeah that'll be really great I I remember getting the zero shirt when I was in middle school I actually saw the video for butterfly wings on MTV 2 before school one morning and I was just like my world was rocked by it obviously and I couldn't stop thinking about it all day and then I would just like leave MTV 2 on and wait for it to come on again and then bought the record and I got the shirt and then I wanted to have like silver pants like Billy Corgan had like he had those like silver leather pants so I my dad came down I was in the garage one day and I was spray painting a pair of my jeans silver with spray paint he's like what the fuck you doing I was like don't worry about it kind of look like Billy Corgan yeah I mean come on that's fantastic yeah I it's funny the things you remember though like you know I I was fortunate enough when I was young my parents let me go to a lot of shows you know not too early on but you know my first show that I went to kind of independently that my brother took me to was local H when they first started blowing up and then you know I saw STP when they were touring on tiny music when that first came out they played never saw them live dude oh never did it was incredible that it was yeah right

31:05after tiny music came out it was at the Mullen Center at UMass and I'll never forget speaking of actually silver pants I mean my my my brain could be warping this memory and do a better narrative at this point in life it's been so long but I remember Scott Weiland coming out and having like shiny leather pants on like that no shirt and you had a big blonde afro wig and he had a megaphone and he came out and he did that's how they started and I was just like losing my mind and then they went on hiatus after that tour if I remember correctly for quite a long time and then I randomly saw them again a friend of mine Noel who sings for fits in the tantrums they were doing the the weenie roast but it was a rock weenie yeah yeah when he roasts yep this was right before I moved here I think it was 2012 maybe so I went to that and I had a couple friends involved in it like my friend my old roommate was mixing 30 seconds to Mars at the time and so the reason I stayed is because like 30 seconds to Mars was supposed to play next I think they were headlining that I went to and I was like okay I'm just gonna stay and like hear a few songs I wanted to hear the mix is my you know my buddy was mixing them and because I stuck around to see that before they were doing the rotating stage thing and you know the stage did the turnaround thing and I was like that's not 30 seconds like stage set up that's not their gear I don't know what's going on and everything was like completely dark on stage and then you started to hear though now like the Vaseline riff and I was like no shit and so they can't and it was STP a surprise guest with Chester singing because this was after Scott passed away Chester Chester Bankton who as well you know a great dude and Lincoln Park but he crushed it and I like usually when you see stuff like that you know bands chills again yeah I just got chills hearing like I'm so jealous he did such

33:06a good job he you know I'm actually not sure I I'd have to look it up but I maybe Scott was still alive at the time I don't really remember I know he wasn't in the band anymore and Chester was in the band but like the way he was moving I feel like I remember myself thinking is that Scott like he was doing like the weird like snake like yeah it's moves and it was just and he sounded so good he sounded like Scott but like him as well you know like himself rather and it was just so cool to see because you know now I can like sort of bookmark my experiences with STP fandom from that childhood show to that point and when we were actually out at the ACM's earlier this year oh I'm sorry not the ACM's it was the Billboard Awards we performed on them and afterwards we were at a bar in MGM where we were staying where the Awards are randomly met this guy who came up super nice dude he and his wife just wanted to compliment us on the performance and we ended up like sharing a cigar and a drink and he used to be STP's tour manager for like I don't know 15 years or something like that and so I was like okay how much time you got let me bend your ears I was just like yeah asking for you know war stories from the road about what it was like to be with them and their prime and all that was a really cool serendipitous experience but yeah I mean we could probably do a whole other two-hour podcast just about 90s rock and grunge bands I'm all about it I think we should definitely do that yeah I could talk about that stuff I will tell you 1994 and I'm gonna go into another drummer that you I don't know if you got to meet or didn't get to me but Taylor Hawkins never got to meet him sadly I saw the food fighters four times oh and I saw him on their original the original maybe it's like their fifth show ever that they ever did kidding at 328 performance hall I don't know if you ever heard of that no so that would have been with the sunny day drummer right if it

35:08was like he wasn't there that day it was a different drummer that because the original drummer was the drummer from sunny day real estate where Nate the bass player also came from and he was you know he recorded I'm sure you saw the doc like he recorded the first record and then Dave re-recorded the drums himself yes well I got the book the storyteller right there have you read Dave girl's book yet I haven't dude I need to I love Dave he's an all-time idol have you got drummers that want to be lead singers see I haven't and it's devastating so I've got to meet so many of my heroes thankfully and I have like all of my friends in music that care about Nirvana and Foo Fighters have met him and have unbelievable experiences stories that he's like the best dude in the world everybody's got a great story about him you know and I'm just like god if I know that like if I came across him that you know I could find myself in a half-hour conversation with him just talking about like old hardcore punk bands or whatever drums or you know it just seems like he's so genuine and just loves what he does so much and there's no inauthenticity to it and I love that you know throughout the entire book that's all he talks about is people he gets to meet and how cool his life yeah he's just like I'm just so grateful that I get to do this he tells a story where he's in his house and Paul McCartney comes over to his house dinner he goes and I'm like sitting I'm like holy shit Paul McCartney's in my home he goes in before we leave before he's leaving he's coming over to congratulate a new check we had a new baby and he came over to meet the new baby yeah and he has another daughter and I forget her name is maybe grace I don't know his oldest daughter's name he goes but Paul's walking out and he sees my piano and he goes oh you have a piano and he said yes he goes he brings his youngest daughter over to the piano and they're playing hey Jude yeah please teaching her hey Jude he goes and I just sat there I'm

37:08looking at this piano going holy shit like Paul McCartney's in my house playing hey Jude on my daughter and I'm just going yeah no I mean he's in the same thing like he's not just as yeah that's a thing like he every genuine moment I got to meet him that tour was Mike Watt ball hogger tugboat album and Eddie Vedder was there too the same night and then his wife was the lead singer of bang called hovercraft but they I met Dave before the show and he said hey I'll sign your guitar after the show and then after there's those thousands of people there if everybody's realized who's there now and he gets out of the show and there's like 50 people hanging out Dave sign this done this yeah and I'm kind of standing off to the side my cars parked right behind the venue and he goes hey man where's your guitar and he like points at me he's like where's your guitar and I'm like it's in my car and he excuse me like leaves all the people walks over sits down in my 1989 Nissan Sentra and grabs guitar signs all my best Dave girl and goes hey did you enjoy the show and I was like it was amazing like yes it was great and he's like anything else I can do for you thanks for being a fan I was like I'm like 16 years old Dave girl sitting in my car signing my guitar left the big group people bigger he's like no no I promised this kid I'd sign his guitar so he just left and did it no man what a guy that's incredible so many stories like that he's just one of those dudes that yeah I don't know yeah he's gonna have that legacy is just like the nicest guy in rock since you are a rock guy how often you get told that you look like Josh from Queens of the Stone Age do people ever tell you that no I really I don't get that at all I get like Craig Kilburn or like Bobby Flay like the great the Craig Kilburn thing I could see a little bit Bobby Flay not so much but you remind me it's probably your stature too but I feel like you kind of look like you could be brothers or something I'm gonna have to Google him and be like okay is he a drummer I know the singer of Queensland Josh Josh home H O M M E some people say homie I don't know but well I'll have to check

39:12it out and I don't get that so that's it that's it thank you I'll take that as a compliment he's a pretty cool-looking dude okay there you go yes so this is Nashville restaurant yeah we could not Nashville grunge rock radio fine I think people get tired of me talking about the same old shit every week like oh it's another restaurant guy how'd you do it you are so you've obviously your music history is what you do yeah and then you're also an artist and then you have the Fox bar and cocktail how did that come to play like how do you begin to open an open a bar yeah I've so I've always I felt like been pretty entrepreneurial pretty industrious and just kind of like the type of person where you know if I get an idea about something I want to do I just try to do it if it doesn't work it doesn't work you know I'm yeah I wouldn't say that about myself but like hopefully one day maybe somebody will say that about me that'd be cool but but you're a creator I mean you're big you're constantly looking towards future ideas happen all the time you probably drop the ball a lot of things and then absolutely you get plenty ideas that don't work yeah enough stuff at the wall certain things aren't gonna stick but something's do stick yes I'm great you stick yeah and that's the fun of life for me is just making things so I always when you know talking to my my partners with the hospitality ventures or really anything creative I just say like my goal in life is I want to make cool shit with people I like that's really what it's all about oh yeah you know early on I started working pretty young in life and my parents instilled a pretty good work ethic in me and I've worked two jobs and I was in high school quite a bit you know and not fun jobs as well like I worked at CVS for a while which is you ever work at CVS during a holiday season that is like the Ninth Circle of Hell that only Dante could dream of and you know I was doing that and I was working at a pub in my hometown which is kind of where I got my start learning about food and Bev and stuff and ended up

41:12with my buddy Nate kind of running the kitchen there and we were 17 18 years old nothing fancy like making pizzas and calzones and pub food and stuff but got a taste of like responsibility as a young age of like okay it's all on you like you know you better you know show up and do your job or else things are gonna fall apart this business that's not yours you know so started that early on and then obviously the there's a huge overlap with people that try to play music for a living in the service industry because it's a really good flexible job typically where you can work when you come home from tours and you know a lot of times the environment of the service industry is really encouraging about people pursuing things like that for the most part sometimes not but you know in general I've found that like it's been pretty hospitable to people that want to do creative things with their lives and especially behind the bar yeah but even chefs I meet chefs all the time that I'm like or I interview musicians and I'm creating music it's very similar to creating a dish yeah you're composing something you're putting together then you're and then you're putting it out there for the public to consume and there's a vulnerable process to do that both sides they kind of are similar yeah you're putting yourself out there to be judged by people that don't know you you know yeah people that might take one bite the same way that people take 30 second listen to a song go now that sucks and you're like oh oh it sucks sorry you know fig and prosciutto that's not gonna work yeah and much like it yeah totally it much like music I think food you know you have certain sets of parameters depending on what type of restaurant you're working in and just like with a guitar piano there's only a certain amount of notes in the scale but people find ways to reinvent it all the time and same thing with food and bed there's so many spirits there's so many paratifs and liqueurs and things that you can play around with but like people still find ways to innovate just like they do in music and they always will and that's what's really cool about both

43:15industries and I think that they drive really well together and you know and just in terms of like how I got from A to B I guess it's just over the years like I mentioned earlier and those first couple bands I played in you know touring for the better part of ten years I was working a lot of restaurant and bar jobs in between to make ends meet because I wasn't making money on the road I was going out doing the labor of love thing but coming home broke going okay now I got to make money so I was working in bars and restaurants and after doing that for quite a long time you know I just got the thought in my head man like you know some of these people I work for really cool and smart and industrious people and some of them are idiots you know like it's kind of like the world in general I guess yeah it's like you get a big enough sample size you're gonna have a healthy mix of both but I thought man like some of these people that I wasn't super fond of were running you know good places or you know successful bars or restaurants I thought yeah why not you know why not me like it's never something I fancied being able to do on my own and it was sort of a serendipitous thing I went home to Massachusetts for a holiday break and I got together with Brian my business partner and his wife Lindsay who were living up in Worcester at the time and Brian used to run the drum company that I played for for a number of years and you know he had left and we were basically just one of those serendipitous things where we got together for a meal we hadn't seen each other in a year or two we're just kind of catching up on life around the holidays saying like what's next you know and he's trying to figure out what's next for him and they were asking what it was like down in Nashville and I said yeah just been touring with this band I was like a year into Dan and Shay at the time I was like I think I want to start a business though I've been working on a business plan for a bar and he said oh man that's like one of my life goals I've always wanted to own a bar I said well you know if you guys find yourselves in Nashville let me know because you know I've always really respected his work ethic in the way he ran the drum company and just you know always really liked him as a person and

45:21his wife and so you know it was somewhat flippant at the time but I was just like hey let me know if you come to Nashville and you know we'll talk more about it and you know that sort of registered with them I think and you know they decided hey we're gonna make a change you want to get out of Worcester and they let me know hey we're gonna sell our house and come down to Nashville if you're serious but want to do this bar thing I said absolutely so while they worked on selling their house we worked on the business plan and kind of you know is one of the more exciting times of my life I would say kind of figuring it all out like like owning the bar and watching it succeed has been great and I'm really proud of what we've done but the time leading up to it like because we had a totally different name and concept we were playing around with a whole bunch of ideas you know it's like when you're starting a band and you're like man we really like playing these breakdowns but then we also like this like synthwave pop stuff too and like you know you're trying to figure out where to go with it if you if you like a lot of different things there's a million different ways yeah and ultimately you got to narrow it down because if you open up a hodgepodge place like it's gonna have no identity right and it's gonna sort of be this jumbled chaotic well people need to know what they're gonna yeah exact exactly I have Nashville restaurant radio it's not yeah conversations with Brandon like what are you gonna get but I kind of like to do that yeah I like that it goes outside rock for 30 minutes and yeah I'm all about that so you know we yeah we just kind of went for it we found the space thanks to Danny from Nicolettos who pointed us in the directions like hey there's this little dingy storage space that is not even trying to be rented but it could be something cool if you put a lot of love into it so we thought hey that sounds like it's right up our alley because we're really big into adaptive reuse stuff so yeah yeah we just kind of went for it and didn't know what we were doing as I think most people don't when they start things and if they tell you they do they're probably lying but you figure out as you go right and hopefully

47:22the lessons that you learn the hard lessons that you learn aren't so hard that they bury you and you know the good lessons that you learn encourage you and keep you going and you learn and evolve and I think with the Fox specifically you know we're coming up on our five-year anniversary which is pretty insane just congratulations thank you thank you fantastic yeah we're really really happy that we made it this far you know and it's been a lot of trial and error and just sort of like fine-tuning you know you never want to get complacent or think that you figured it all out you know you always want to try to create a better experience for people and fine-tune what you offer and how you offer it you know so we took that and we sort of parlayed that into elegy during the pandemic and we decided to open that we were actually working on a bigger space to do another bar concept and a bigger version of elegy that was a much more like aggressive approach and concept and then the pandemic happened and obviously like you know a lot of people lost a lot of funding for a lot of things and just became oh no like we're not going to be able to do this right now so we had to pivot and you know that space was available where we ended up putting elegy and it was super small and approachable and fortunately pandemic friendly we decided to do the takeout window which ended up being a great you know stroke of luck and perfect yeah so we just kind of applied the things that we had learned from the Fox to coffee because we're you know would you learn from the Fox what are some of those you say what are some of those things that you learned from the Fox that you're a fortuitous to learn and grow and like but weren't what just yeah I think for me specifically like as the creative side of the partnership like the person that does the visuals and the branding and the menu and all that it's just to like to check your ego a bit and learn to listen to people and trust people and that you know you put people in positions of power and positions to succeed you got a you know

49:25if you trust them to be in that position in the first place you got to kind of let them cook and let them do what they do and and never assume that you have everything figured out you know and I'm very let go of the fine so to speak yeah totally I'm very fortunate to with my partnership with Brian because it's a friendship and a partnership but we you know we're very different people we have different tastes a lot of things we have different tastes creatively but we always find a way to meet in the middle and we talk through things a lot and we fight about things but it's always like from a place of mutual respect and a shared goal you know and that's a that right there like that whole thing has been one of the greatest learning experiences for me it's actually helped me I think become a better person like the way I've like dealt with conflict with him because it is not like conflict conflict it's just like decision-making stuff in business you know and we call it healthy conflict healthy that's what we encourage it yeah yeah and it's you know a lot of people shy away from that and run from it and I've never been the kind of person in my life to run toward conflict by any means but it's like you know you want to stand up for your opinion and what you think about something but you also need to be flexible and open-minded and listen to what somebody else has to say and know that like maybe neither of you are a hundred percent right but maybe there's somewhere in between where both sides land that's like better than you know it's sort of like the sum of its parts thing you know and I think that that's worked out really well for us over over the years you know why that works out well I can tell you tell me because you trust each other yeah because just like any relationship right trust number one thing that people in business they don't fight the right way there isn't healthy conflict because there's a politicking and there's an I don't trust what you're doing it's for the 100% benefit of the business right I feel like you're doing something because you're personally invested you want an angle and then you lose that level of trust and when you

51:27trust somebody completely when you have a dude I trust you with everything then you can disagree with me all day long because the ultimate goal I know that you want was best for the business and you know that I want was best for the business yeah it's absolutely okay for us to have different opinions let's talk it out but at the end of the day it's not I don't like you and I think you're trying to go behind me to politics when you have that level of trust fighting is just it's it's more of a disagreement but yeah it's very fine common ground because I didn't think about it that way you're right good job you don't have that thing in the back of your mind you're wondering what their real intention is yeah no as you trust each other that's a really good point and it definitely rings true for me I mean there's nobody I trust in the world more than him to be honest and like you know I often don't really dwell on that but it's true and it allows us to do what we do so yeah it's been a it's been a fun ride so far you know super excited about the way things are going and sort of the footprint we've created with the Fox and the one that's growing with elegy and got the new shop opening soon in Germantown which is a big step for us the new elegy new elegy going on Germantown yeah nice so opening in the Griff building which is where like the optimist is yeah so we'll be right next to the optimist should be open in the next month ideally so well that's exciting yeah super pumped about that I love Germantown it's probably my favorite yeah me neighborhood and I love East now all over East Nashville is great too but like Germantown is just such a neat vibe there yeah it's very distinct to his own world great great restaurants most of my favorite restaurants are in Germantown I feel like what are some of your favorite restaurants where do you like to go eat so actually my number one favorite restaurant in town currently is not in Germantown it's in 12 South and that's Locust okay Locust is my favorite there you go yeah what about Locust do you love I love it for a bunch of different reasons yeah there's a bunch of different reasons for me too the food first and foremost that has to be the

53:30the main reason the food is fantastic the food is just fantastic and unique and fresh and innovative the vibe is relaxed like you don't have to put up with a bunch of bougie bullshit to like go have an incredible dining experience because I've been in way more stuffy atmospheres and paid four times as much to have food that's half as good and that's like the thing that I just loathe so much is like when we started the bar we were like let's be an upscale high-end cocktail bar with elevated drinks but like no pretentious BS attitude like no condescending bartenders because we've all encountered those people you know coffee is the same way and you know we don't want to be the the coffee shop with the staff that like wants to remind you that they know more than you about coffee or like scoffs at you when you order something sweet or whatever like I hate that shit and so does Brian and you know that was always one of our main goals is like let's do whatever you want elevated stuff that is really great quality with great service but with how to pretentiousness you know so that's a big part of it and yeah back to Locust you know I just I like the casual relaxed vibe there I love like the the vibe of the staff I love how they everybody serves everybody yeah the chefs they're making the food are also the ones who are come and taking your order and like it's not just hello my name is Brad I'll be taking care of you today what would you like to it's like yeah hey man what this is our menu and it's just so laid back but it's done so well it's done great it's almost like it doesn't feel it because you're kind of like is this it's kind of crazy around here but everything is intentional yeah but it doesn't necessary feel it in the moment till you're done and you go oh well that was a perfect experience that was every was different than normal it's very laid back the food was in incredible the music in the building you're like

55:35what the hell we just listened to or you know it or like it's just a it's a whole vibe yeah I just I love that place it's always the first thing I recommend to people when they ask for like you know nice elevated dining experience here we're gonna take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors we are so excited to partner with Corson fire and security let me tell you about Kevin Rose he's my friend over at course in fire and security he's the restaurant specialist so I know that you're thinking fire security yeah I get it but hood suppression systems fire alarm systems emergency exit lighting general fire products fire extinguishers do your servers do your bartenders does everybody know how to use a fire extinguisher one of the things that they want to do is they want to come in and educate your team on how to use everything are your the little caps on your fires your hood system are they in there because gosh when you cook grease gets in those you need to be checking on those things and this is what they do they come in they've got a multi-point inspection they're gonna find out whether or not you are safe and sound to go and they'll come in and proactively check on that for you this is something that's an afterthought to a lot of people they just have some company that comes in and they don't know what happens Corson's gonna explain everything to you they are amazing you need to give Kevin Rose a call his number is 615-974-2932 another company we were really excited to partner with his justice industries and their number one company just dot glass let me tell you about them they're a nonprofit and justice industries creates social enterprise businesses what does that mean I'll tell you they seek to employ those who find it difficult to obtain and retain work because of barriers such as criminal history addiction recovery mental illness domestic abuse generational poverty yes the people that are out there that are struggling the most these people at justice industries that's who they're gonna hire and they're going to hire them to work for their company just dot glass just dot glass will come to your home or your business and what they do

57:37there is they will pick up your glass that you use from your bar from whatever any glass and they will pick it up for recycling so you're not only helping the earth you're helping hire people that need jobs this is the greatest thing in the world and it is so easy to sign up all you have to do is go to justice industries dot org justice industries dot org you can sign up to click one button you can sign up to have just dot glass come pick up your glass every single week it is that easy they are a nonprofit they need your help go check them out right now our last ad here is poached poached jobs here is the cool thing about poached right now they are offering free hiring you can do free posts for the month of September all you have to do is go to Nashville restaurant radio.com you click the sponsors tab and you go down and you click the poached link and right there you can place any job that you've got within your restaurant for free for the month of September guys it is already September the 12th you need to get on there right now and continue posting this is a big deal if you're if you work out there you're looking for a job this is an amazing place to go go to Nashville restaurant radio.com and you can click the sponsors tab go to poached right now on post I've got jobs from Martin's barbecue I've got salty and sweet Anchorhead coffee Santo the farmhouse downtown all kinds of restaurants on here you could be next and it is 100% free so if you're tired of spending all kinds of money on the other apps and all these other different things you need to go right now to poached.com and you can get there free by a link at Nashville restaurant radio.com click the sponsors tab again poached for restaurants. I'm a big seafood guy because obviously growing up in Massachusetts so that was one thing I was worried about living here it's tough to get fresh seafood but I do love the optimist and you know they take great care of us when we go there and I love Henrietta Redd as well never really German town favorites yeah that's what I'm

59:39saying man Germantown like they got it down they really do there's a lot of good places I mean there's places I've been there a while now it's who City House Butchertown Hall just they do great great stuff you know I know Oku is very popular over by optimists as well. Oku is wonderful. Yeah it's a great vibe got a couple friends that work there actually the staff is always really cool it's yeah I have some some go-to favorites that because you know a lot of people are gonna say the same stuff like Locust and Bastion it's great obviously you know Yolan like there's all these places that are just good you know and like everybody's Audrey there's solid yeah there's like a top seven of just like yeah everybody just kind of agrees on what they are but you know on the day to day you know thanks to Patrick who owns Aberdeen or other partner elegy he turned me on to taqueria Andrea which is my favorite taco in town I don't even know oh my gosh Andrea Andrea is incredible yeah and you know I ate my weight in tacos when I lived in LA obviously and had some great options all around me wherever I was there was tacos or Riza or tacos zone or taco Azteca all these places I was going you saw those you know like it's great options so coming here I was always out let me try to find not not Southern California yeah exactly and Andrea is just like out of this world good just great authentic Mexican where is it so the like the brick-and-mortar version of it is on Dickerson and Trinity it's on Dickerson right before you get to Trinity if you're going north and you're right it's like a little old house and there's a trailer in front like they cook all the food in the trailer out front you can sit on the patio or inside the house and there's like another little place inside where you can get all these different like paletas and stuff and they're all homemade it's incredible it's it's the only I'm sure people have differing opinions on this but it's the only good carnitas I've

01:01:42ever had in Nashville like real carnitas like half the time you get carnitas in Nashville like this is pulled pork you know I mean like every time every time I go to a Mexican restaurant and I look at my wife and I go should I roll the dice and she's like I don't know because you rolled it I call it rolling the dice and I have carnitas we'll give it a shot why it's either gonna suck or it's gonna be badass I don't know but I look and I go roll the dice she's like you're brave yeah the carnitas at Andrea's so good they also have a truck that's on Gallatin it's like Andrea number two I think it's called if you're going north on Gallatin right before you get to Briley Parkway where like the Home Depot is on your left yeah and then you merge right under Briley to go down toward Opryland that last gas station on your right there's a there's a truck in it before you get to Briley and that's the Andrea truck super solid as well love that and besides that my other favorite tacos are from Garden Fresh Market in Madison you go in the the Mexican grocery store there Garden Fresh and you go to the back left corner and there's like a taqueria like hot food counters you're going legit you're going like legit yeah taco street tacos yeah yeah I'm not like a tacos now about I'm not like oh it has to be like an authentic street taco to be good I mean I went to Lady Bird the other day with a buddy for lunch and had some great tacos and that's reminds me more of like a redheaded stranger five it's like the Austin in Texas thing yeah it was really really good you know I'm not opposed to that style of taco those guys I welcome any and all tacos that are good and tasty you know both of those played redhead stranger and ladybird tacos guys that run those places are super super cool people like just love I love red headed stranger to you that's and you know that and Audrey right next to each other it's a great one-two punch I mean I just I love what they do they're their green chili cheeseburger too is like low-key one of the better burgers around so you can see in here I'll show you this we had the bad look oh yeah the bad look burger club in and they said that's my favorite burger in town so it

01:03:44is it is fucking amazing right so they're both like to my favorite people in the world but while we're in the interview they said I said where's your favorite one and they said you got to try this place to go and the green chili redhead strangers fantastic and I go yes it is and then we went we actually after the interview we went to redhead and we ordered like everything on the menu we just grubbed together yes but then next week I had Brian Lee Weaver in and you see right next to the signature how Brian put a little jab and he put best burger in Nashville redhead is stranger then he signed his name right next to the bad luck burger guy so he put a tiny little jab on the door there I love it they could come in and write second above it if they wanted to yes well they would they will definitely have them in again the the best burger conversation is a really interesting one we talked about it a lot on the road obviously when you're sitting around on a bus just gabbing about food or beverage and we have a lot of opinionated people a lot with us on the road so we get into these big discussions we were doing a lot of grilling on the road this summer because catering at times was somewhat unsatisfactory unfortunately but uh no dig at them I mean it's a really hard job to do and do well so it is what it is but um you know our a couple of our guys and our crew really just love grilling and so we had this rig that we had out with us charcoal grill a little cast-iron pot and then Corey who drives Shay's bus I guess his sister worked for this other grill company and he got us this like smoker and grill kind of like a Traeger situation yeah I should be promoting the company but I can't remember the name of it off top my head unfortunately but it was great so we just had this full setup so you know we're going out on weekends for shows and we would set up and we would be doing like smash burgers or chopped cheese and like all sorts of different stuff we did like brisket and ribs and all sorts of shit on the grill and we're just like hang out we're basically just having to cook out every weekend cook out at the putt it was awesome do you hang

01:05:46out with the other bands when you get that many big name bands it's like Carly Pierce ever saunter over like what are you guys cooking I'm hungry I mean it depends on the tour honestly this summer was a little different because it was so spread out and it was just one show weekend so it felt like we're just playing the same festival every weekend a lot of times yeah but everybody is friendly on the road you know and and you know Kenny himself is like very inclusive about wanting people to like hang out and have a good time and like his kind of compound every night and you know we have a pretty big crew of guys in our own world and everybody gets along quite well would you guys get headline your own tour like that yeah I mean not not stadiums but you know we we did a really successful arena headliner last year you know I think we're going back to headlining soon and I always look forward to that because when it's like quote-unquote your show it's just a different experience and you know you get to play longer and it's just yeah it's how long do you guys play where you're opening because I hear like Dan and Shay I hear Old Dominion I think those bands are like big-time draws in himself to Kenny I get but like yeah we played 65 minutes it was a long okay yeah so it was fun good experience all in all you know we got to this by talking about burgers again I'm still fascinated by it though because I mean that's such a cool I don't know so many there's thousands of people that go to these shows yeah I mean you know I don't know how often they get to hear the drummer for the band that's getting up in front of 60,000 people playing I mean do you get butterflies before that no not at all no even does it you get excited or it's just like I get excited to work I definitely get excited from time to time it's different it varies just like going to work any at any other job you have good days and bad days you know most of like our bad days are not usual people's bad days when it comes to like shows and stuff because a bad day look like for you you know I don't know I mean I mean you could have the external factors of course where it's

01:07:47like there's bad weather on a summer festival type tour and you know it kind of dampens things literally and metaphorically but you know there are those factors but for me it's just it has a lot to do with my mindset I think and lately you know I've been taking steps on my own to try and put myself in more of a position to succeed and be happy on the road I kind of for the most part stopped drinking before and during shows for the last couple years and that's been super helpful for me I've been drinking a lot less lately like in general several months yeah I'm in the middle of marathon training right now so I'm like way more conscious about what I'm consuming and how it affects me and you know mentally speaking there's a there's a big tie between my mental health and the regularity with which I'm drinking alcohol yeah I'm sure you understand you know having quit drinking yourself and you experience the difference right it's incredible I'm I've always tried to be one of those like all things in moderation people you know and I've gone through stretches of life where I've stopped drinking for a year at a time year and a half things like that then I come back to it and it's almost always to like sort of test myself or prove to myself that I can do it and that I'm in control of it and that it's not ever a problem or like a crutch you know because if food can be that way too for me especially I know it is for a lot of people where it's like a sort of a safety blanket it's like you have a long stressful day and you're pizza you know what I mean like I love pizza and I you know it's the perfect food but you know if you eat pizza every day it's gonna catch up to you if you drink every day it's gonna catch up to you then if you find the ability to space it out and control your impulses which is tough for me at times but then you just appreciate it more you know absolutely when it becomes a treat instead of an everyday crutch and drinking is a lot like that for me you

01:09:49know everybody goes through these ups and downs in life for sure we've all been in ruts and we've all been at high points and you know when you can kind of take a step back and analyze like what are the things that I'm doing on a day-to-day basis that contribute to this being a high point for me what am I doing what habits am I am I like allowing myself to partake in that are creating the best version of myself right and then listen to it that's the other thing is like especially we act upon what yeah act upon it don't just so I know that I should be doing this but I won't do it you know like it comes back to what I was saying with this whole like you know the creative thing like a lot of creatives are you know we struggle we have self-loathing we have imposter syndrome we know what we should do what's good for us and what's best for us and we don't do it because it's almost like a you know sticking it to ourselves sort of thing for whatever weird reason so I'm trying to grow out of that and my you know later years here I'm just like trying to learn about you know how to like love myself more and how to make decisions that like set me up for success more you know I love that it's all no that's that's all part of the journey you know how old are you I'm 38 okay yeah so you're right there yeah that's a good time to kind of do so I just interviewed you see the Dave Grohl book yeah and then I've got a book called beat the odds by getting Sandy Gennaro you know who's Sandy Gennaro is not off the top of my head no he's a drummer okay taking all kinds of people on the show he was the drummer the original drummer for Cindy Lauper oh cool so he recorded girls just want to have fun yeah you know and he played toward her and then he toured with Joan Jett then he toured with the Monkeys and Bo Diddley Wow resume played drums for but one of the things he said was he goes look none of this is about me yeah because none of this but he goes I'm always a good drummer and the fact that I just I stayed in the background the whole time it was never about me because but that's my language right there to be the drummer

01:11:50he goes my job is to keep the rhythm throughout the show like I'm the one who's kind of here we go I'm counting it off I'm starting off but then like I'm my job is just to keep the rhythm over here hitting hi-hat just I'm keeping the rhythm they're the performers I'm just the one kind of keeps it all together it hit me like the backbone but it was like this weird he had to have this self-realization to stop like I'm touring with these people to kind of go I have a role yeah and my role is in a support it's a supporting role and he was totally okay with that like he was totally okay with that do you man I that resonates with me so hard okay I was gonna say cuz it's when you're hired a like but still it's freaking cool I don't know that is a big part of how I feel and it took a while to get there I think and and to have that realization of like this is not about you my name is neither Dan nor Shay and despite like you know every band member and country their parents want to be like when are they gonna show you more on TV you know like stuff like that like but I've told them from day one I'm like listen like this is a job you know yes I'm like in a band with these guys that are my friends we have a great time with great camaraderie it feels like a band but like it's not a band it's these are this is an artist a duo and we are the band that plays with them you know yeah and they're and they're great to us and I'm super thankful for the job that I have with them but at the end of the day like when you look at on papers like it's a job you know I don't have to do all the extra stuff that they have to do and take the risk that they have to take and you know it's just different and you know there was a point where I really settled into my role with the exam I'm the bandleader as well which in our camp really comes down to basically being the responsible guy in the band being the band dad you know not so much the MD as

01:13:51it is in a lot of camps in country especially the bandleader often doubles as the MD we don't really have an MD because Dan is a musical director oh yeah so Dan essentially is the MD and like show producer I mean Dan is the most hands-on guy in the country world I would dare to say you know put him up against anybody I mean the dudes work ethic is insane and he has his hands on everything so for me being the drummer and bandleaders like being the responsible guy and there have been times early on where like you know I faltered or I did irresponsible things and like you know drank too much night before and like was hung over for a show and then you know I hit a certain point where I was like that's that's not who I want to be you know I want to be the guy that everybody can rely on and depend upon because I'm not a kid anymore and I gotta stop acting like a kid because you know you find yourself in these environments that encourage you know ridiculous behavior sometimes and it's you know easy to get caught up in that but at a certain point I had to sit back and say oh no like this is a job like take it seriously be thankful you have it and figure out how to be the best at it and do your job well and like my my job going out there on stage with them isn't to show the crowd how good of a drummer I am you know like it's to play for the song it's to play perfectly every night and be that backbone and create the sort of bass layer on the canvas for everybody to paint over yeah do their jobs well and set them up for success because if I do that well they and I play perfectly everybody else plays better they have a better show it works out better for them long term it's good for everybody you know and then that trickles down to being better for me and it's you know the the standards by which I measure like my own success in that role have changed because it's not about me anymore you know and my my go-to

01:15:52joke with like my parents and family like when they always say like you know when are they gonna like feature you guys more whatever you know like I go well when we started the band was called Dan Andrew Shay where they thought it didn't really sound good so they shortened Andrew to and now it's just Dan and Shay no it's like that's my corny dad joke that's you know it's at the end of the day it is you know it's a really great job and and I'm super thankful to do it it's but it's different than the last two situations I was in but I came into it knowing that it would be and it's it requires a different approach in a different mindset different set of responsibilities but the other really great thing about it is that it's afforded me this opportunity to take swings elsewhere in life that I wouldn't have been able to before the fact that now like I'm able to like sustain myself year-round and be paid by them to play drums but not play every day it gives me a lot of time to pursue all this other stuff yeah analogy and to do art and to run a marathon and yeah I mean I'm quite literally a full-time craft designer I mean that's what I probably spend on any given day ten hours doing design work like I would say on average I mostly design merchandise and logo and branding and album packaging and stuff like that but that that would be fun it's it's a lot of fun I get to work with a lot of artists that I love it's a really rewarding experience and if it wasn't for Dan and Shay and the situation they've created for me to thrive in I wouldn't have been able to do any of that stuff you know so Dave Grohl in his book he said we was talking about the Foo Fighters and somebody had asked him did you have all these songs written he

01:17:54goes yeah you know I wrote songs but you know the fastest way for a drummer to get fired to say hey guys I wrote a song yeah exactly let me write a song and they're like no thank you you're good he goes so I had these songs do you know the random fact do you know how long Nirvana was a band oh gosh probably like six years or something three and a half years three and a half entire thing the entire thing three and a half years that's I said six because that's how long the clash was a band which is pretty staggering as well three and a year can't I can't believe that and now Foo Fighters at 25 years yeah I mean he had these songs written and he knew that and you mentioned earlier you said another drummer who wants to be a frontman do you want to be a do you have these do you write songs do you want to be a frontman do you want to do your own thing in a different genre I mean every drummer I think inside somewhere wants to be a frontman you know there are times when I think about it go oh man it would be so cool to be able to do that because I feel like I could do it but that feeling might be a little irrational it's you know it wouldn't be anything like in the country world if I was to do it it would be something totally I don't even know what it would sound like do you write do you write songs do you have like a book not much these days I used to write a lot I used to just write a lot of lyrics honestly I've always been a very lyric guy like I said I went and pursued screenwriting for a couple years and I've always been really into that so I've just always been a very very lyrical person never really wrote like a big bank of songs hoping like one day for my Dave Grohl moment or anything like that you know I did a little bit of co-writing for fun during the pandemic when everything was shut down I just had more time on my hands like did a couple writing sessions with friends which is you know rewarding in its own way just creating things again with people that I like but I have no real designs on doing that and you know when I first moved to town all my

01:19:57friends were doing it and there was like a few months where I was like yeah I should do this too because I feel like I could contribute you know be productive and like really be an asset for people but then I had all these other things I wanted to do that nobody else was really doing and I was like why why am I trying to get my foot in the door trying to write songs where all my friends are doing it better than I am probably I'll let them do that and I'll go figure out what I'm good at and so that's you know kind of why I pivoted to that there you go you have a ton of tattoos I do I'm so jealous I have not one tattoo blanks and I want tattoos so bad what do you what do you have working over here can you tell us about some of the do you have a really really good stories you got a coffee mug on your leg I got I got some stories yeah the coffee mug you share with us when that's a Twin Peaks reference one of my favorite shows of all time I've got a lot of Laura I've got a lot of yeah Laura Palmer Laura Palmer Laura Palmer yeah Twin Peaks yeah great show that was so good I've got a lot of music inspired tattoos to be honest all right what do you got I'm a sort of a walking billboard for my musical taste over the years because you like I said I grew up as a punk rock kid my my best friend Nick he only has one tattoo and it was the first tattoo we both got we got together we got a Penny Wise tattoo so a Southern California punk rock band that we grew up really loving so that was my first musical tattoo I've got a big portrait of Tom Petty here on my legs you can see who is like I don't know if you can see on the camera there we can see that on the camera yeah love Tom Petty it's one of my favorite songwriters you ever get to meet him sadly no I would have loved to I did get to see him finally which was amazing but I saw him on the Wildflowers tour at Starwood amphitheater that's awesome which is a classic Nashville yes that is classic gosh so yeah I got a whole hodgepodge of stuff to be honest

01:22:00this big part of this sleeve here is a musical inspired one it's sort of inspired by a song called music box by a band called thrice which is another California band a post-hardcore melodic post-hardcore band that was really really influential to me a big part of the reason why my first band started our band we were lucky enough to do a couple tours with them and you know a couple of the guys have become friends of mine over the years which is still crazy to me because I've just loved the band so much there was such a seminal influence for me though I have I have some joke tattoos on my legs too I have some like funny random stuff I have a a Nevada license plate that says KFBR 392 on it which is a MacGruber reference the Will Forte yep yep so it's a reference to the movie MacGruber I highly recommend anybody listening to go check that out it's my favorite comedy ever I've got my most recent jokey tattoo I have on the back of my leg here it's a baby duck with his head caught in a stewed tomato it's a reference to a sketch from a show called I think you should leave it's on Netflix guy called Tim Robinson really great writer and performer created the show there's two seasons of it on Netflix he actually used to be a writer for SNL for a number of years and was a performer for one season but all of his stuff was just a little too out there to really work for SNL and then he was kind of given the reins to do his own show and it's it's incredible sketch comedy sort of you know if you like stuff that's in the world of sort of like Tim and Eric and things like that you should leave kind of adjacent thought yeah I think you should leave highly recommend that I will catch that I covered the week before last and I was like look I put a tweet out over it I was like what should I watch tell me what I'm just not watching a lot we could do a whole separate podcast about film and TV I mean I'd talk to you for six hours about that the other though the weirdest joke tattoo I have and it's a funny one when

01:24:05I was growing up my mom I collected pez dispensers my whole childhood so I've got hundreds of pez dispensers and a big that's random Tupperware yeah super random they worth any money I don't think so but I'm just gonna hold on to them in case they are one day you know good memory from childhood sure so I had a sticker on my bedroom door that my mom gave me that said you're not famous till they put your head on a pez dispenser just like a corny weird sticker my mom probably bought at a gas station but I was not like I said over the years I sort of resigned myself to not being the front man not being famous and just settling into the job that I have and being what I call fame adjacent working for famous people and like you know really enjoying that role so I thought oh you know it'll be really funny tattoo I'm gonna get my head on a pez dispenser because I know I'm never gonna be famous and it would be a funny and you have this so yeah on the back of my leg I have my own head on a pez dispenser and the funny thing about it is that I would say on average like two to three people a month when I'm especially in the summer when I'm wearing shorts all the time asked me is that Kevin Smith in the back of your leg silent Bob I'm like no that's not and then I usually just leave it at that because I don't want to have to tell the whole story but every once in a while people say now people hear this they'll know what that is my dude I love the pez dispenser with your head on it now they'll know how great was the movie clerks though oh fantastic we could we could do there's another one coming out is there a new a new clerks yeah yeah clerks too I thought was even funnier than the first clerks I watched that on an airplane on the way home from Germany one time and I swear everybody else around me was like what's going on with stop crying laughing at this stuff works too was yeah there's there is a trailer online if you look up there's a new one coming up all right good stuff yeah yeah yeah I've got an owl and you got some olives got a big owl clock over here

01:26:07it says time is on my side and I got that when I was on tour and I asked my mom for my birth time and I was like it'll be cool thing to put on the clock like the time I was born and she told me and I got the tattoo and then the next day she texted me and she was like oh sorry I mixed up the time that was Leslie's time your time was actually this and I was like that was like my sister's birth time and I was like oh cool that's good thing I didn't like get it tattooed on me or something you know but meanwhile I had so yeah that's my sister's birth time and that's such a cool story that is such a cool story so your sister was born at what 12 oh five total six yeah very nice that could even be wrong I don't know my mom's memory is a little shaky these days but I was born a story to 16 what's your birthday my birthday is May 7th May 7th yep and March 8th March 8th all right very nice well okay man we sure did talk a lot about restaurant stuff here yeah awesome sometimes these are my favorite interviews where we don't talk about restaurant stuff but you know what the good news is if you want to learn a ton about the Fox bar and cocktail club you can go listen to we did an episode with Laura Unterberg yeah there's your head bartender yes and she spoke with Kayla Ellis and the gospel of cocktail podcast which we put out here awesome week before last so you can learn all about all the cocktails that they change them monthly why they change them monthly what they do how they do it you can learn all about that listening to Laura and that girl is sharp as a tack and she's amazing huh man I listened to that and I was editing listening to it and I was like god this girl's amazing yeah but you know what in the same thing with Kayla interviewed Kayla and I started talking I was like this girl's a fucking pro mm-hmm I mean just like gets it understands the business side of it but understands hospitality and I think

01:28:09that's what you're going for is to run a really good business but understand that and I kind of consider hospitality do things for others that you don't have to do yeah go above and beyond yeah just do the stuff don't be like oh that's over there go get it like no go get it for them like make it special and Laura gets that she definitely does and one of the most common compliments that I get from people that come in and see the bar even if I'm out of town you know I'm always telling people to come see it when they come to town obviously I have a very deep Rolodex of friends from music being in it for 20 years now and pretty much unanimously the thing they always say is like the details like you guys nail the details I'm like great that's what I want to hear that's good because you know that's really what sets you apart I think it's just a little things you know a lot of people can figure out the basics about opening a bar restaurant because we've all been to a lot of bars and restaurants and if you said to any random person that's been dining out for most of their adult life like write down on this piece of paper like what are the things you would do if you open a bar like a lot of people would probably do a lot of the similar things you know you get a general idea of how things should run but it's all about the details really and Laura gets that very much Kevin our GM gets that intentional being intentional with everything yeah it's not because we've always done it that way when you open something you can do every single thing specifically because you know that's why we want to do it because this and this and this and this and it's pretty cool when you can keep that going absolutely and like kind of like with running the business from an ownership standpoint it's just like you got to listen to people you got to be a little bit open-minded and flexible and be okay with the fact that not everything works and you know from a creative standpoint like for a bartender maybe you have a drink that's like your pride and joy that you worked on for three months you put on the menu and it just doesn't go and you get it's sort of like a song on

01:30:09a record you back man I love that song I can't believe it's like the worst streaming song on the record you know sometimes you just gotta go you know like that is what it is it means a lot to me yeah and that's what's important for me you know it's okay they can't all be winners you know I you know it's funny because I do interviews and like this interview right I'm sure this interview will do really well but like I have interviews I'm like god I love that interview like I was completely engrossed in the moment like the world could be falling around but I was in that interview and it was so interesting to me and then you put it out there and it's like nine people you're like yeah that was such a good interview come on you guys are missing and you want to promote it but it's like that's not a name that everybody knows you know it wasn't Brian Lee Weaver it was right this guy like but he said that'll be the case with me when four people listen to this I just hear random stories about Stone Chippewa pilots Andrew what am I doing with my time hopefully I think people will listen to this and they'll be like oh it's not just Brandon droning on about operations in a restaurant like we can do that all day long I that's me talk I could talk I love getting into these deep conversations but thank you thank you thank you for coming in spending the time we've got to do this again I'd love to one of the things we do at the end of our show is we have the Gordon food service final thought oh yeah so yeah what you get you get to take us out the show whatever you want to say as long as you want to speak just the mic is yours you get to surmise the show whatever you want to say you're speaking and we didn't get to talk about your marathon you've got a great cause behind that love for you to talk about yeah maybe make that part of your final thought but whatever you want to say the mic is yours go cool well that's not intimidating at all so yeah I'll talk for a brief second about this marathon that I'm training for right now which is not something I ever thought I would do

01:32:11but here we are you know 11 weeks or so into the training I'm running the New York City marathon at the beginning of November it's part of team Morgan Hoffman and if you've never heard of Morgan before I highly recommend you Google him a really cool and inspiring dude he's a PGA golfer he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy back in 2017 and was widely told by a lot of Western doctors hey like that might be it for you on the athletic side of things you're probably never gonna be able to build new muscle in your body in one pandemic he went to Nepal he started studying and practicing Eastern medicine that he was learning about over there came back having built new muscle in his body and completely transformed his way of thinking about health and wellness and decided that he was gonna make that a big part of his journey and figuring out how to sort of spread that knowledge to other people and he moved to Costa Rica he wanted to live in a blue zone and wanted to focus way more on his health and well-being and he bought some acreage down there with the intent of building this health and wellness center for people to come and get treated in ways that they might not through traditional Western practices here so long-winded rant there but you know basically we have a charity team of runners and we're running the marathon and each of us are raising money through a donation page to raise money to help Morgan build the center in Costa Rica that will hopefully be helping a lot of people so if you do want to check that out and maybe donate a couple bucks to help a good cause you know on my Instagram which is Andrew Steven cook Steven with a pH not a V you go to my feed I've got a video of myself explaining on there in my bio there's a link to the donation page and highly recommend even if you know you don't want to donate just look up Morgan read about his story it's a really cool and

01:34:13inspiring one and you know I think he's gonna probably help a lot of people when hopefully I'm able to be a really really really tiny part and helping him achieve that goal at the same time you know it's been a really interesting experience for me so far it's been pushing my personal limits it's not really something like I thought I would be able to do at this stage in life but a big part of the reason why I'm doing it is to prove to myself that I can do it because a lot of times it's quite torturous you know and it's you know running in Nashville a lot of hills a lot of hills a lot of humidity and heat so I've been getting up way earlier than I'm used to getting up like I've been a touring musician for 20 years so you know you keep a certain schedule certain hours doing that kind of thing so I've just been getting outside my comfort zone a lot but I find that's been really good for me and I think that's good for most people and I guess maybe that's part of the final thought here is that like you know I think we should all as human beings be less afraid of getting outside of our comfort zone learning new things trying new practices and really listening to ourselves our bodies and our minds and identifying things that are working for you and the things that aren't working for you and don't be afraid to cut ties with the things or even sometimes the people that aren't working for you and surround yourself with people that encourage you and make you want to be the best version of yourself just listen to yourself and trust and love yourself more and that's something I've been trying to work on for a number of years now is loving myself accepting love from other people giving it back and just trying to be a more well-rounded person and I've found that this experience is really been a good kick in the ass for me in that regard you know and it sort of improves everything else you know I've gone through phases of my life where I've exercised a ton and then stopped altogether and there's no comparing

01:36:15those times you know it's you know I'm I'm not a crazy health guru or exercise not by any means but just a little something every day that gets the endorphins flowing and kind of wakes your brain up there's there's no substitute for that you know and it really impacts everything else in life it impacts your workflow your productivity the way you interact with other people and just sort of your general well-being and like sort of happiness levels on a day to day so it's you know it's been really positive I'm not saying everybody needs to go out and train to run a marathon by any means but like just find the thing that works for you maybe the thing that challenges you and try some new stuff and don't be afraid to fail it's a it's almost like you've been listening to the show and I have something called Brandon's book club okay I have a leadership group at the restaurant and then this month the book that we're reading is called the comfort crisis by Michael Easter if you read that book I've not okay it's called the comfort crisis and the entire book is around your potential is this huge your potential is limitless and we live in this little circle and you've got to get outside of your comfort zone get outside because when you come back when you when you really challenge yourself when you try really hard I just talked about this with chef to mosh a minute ago when you really push yourself everyday life's pretty easy yeah when you really we all live in this little 72 degree bubble and we don't like to the second we start feeling bored we grab our phones and we yeah we comfort ourselves like get outside get uncomfortable for a minute push yourself you'd be amazed at what you can you can do and I love that self-talk like just that if you wouldn't say something to somebody else why would you say it to yourself mm-hmm it's okay like be okay with who you are and step outside and learn these things so really really good stuff one of the best final thoughts I think we've had here a long time all right you just there on the nailed it love it Andrew cook thank you so much for joining us today my pleasure

01:38:22thank you for having me really nice to meet you and conversation yeah it's great well we can do a whole other pod one day about film and TV we'll do one about 90s rock we're getting some stuff let's do it man I love it awesome thanks for the rest of your day yeah man thanks you big big thank you goes out to Andrew cook for joining us on the show you should go visit him out at the Fox bar the Fox bar and cocktail club out in East Nashville you should go visit their lead bartender Laura Unterberg who joined us on our talking on the episode of the gospel of cocktail podcast with Kayla Ellis we hope that you guys are being safe out there love you guys bye