Jeff Syracuse

00:00Welcome 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. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. We'll be joined shortly with Caroline Galzin, our amazing co-host who's the owner of Nicky's Coalfired in the Nations. We are powered by Gordon Food Service. We just love them so much. I'm so happy you're here today. We have got an amazing episode as we continue to bring on politicians who are running for the mayoral race or even in the city council race. Today we're talking with Jeff Syracuse. Jeff Syracuse is in the runoff for the metro council at large.

01:04Again, that election is going to be on September the 14th. It is a Thursday. The reason why this episode is coming out today, which is potentially on Thursday, is because early voting starts tomorrow, starts on Friday. And I wanted to get this episode out. So if you were on the fence before you went to the polls on Friday, you could at least hear this episode and maybe have a little bit more of an educated decision because I think this guy could change your mind. He's an amazing, amazing guy. Really enjoyed the conversation. Very intelligent guy. Does not come from a political background. This isn't what he does mean. It is what he does, but it's not like a lifelong thing. He really genuinely cares about this community. He wants to do well. He's got some great ideas and he's put the work in eight years. He's been in Donaldson as their city council representative. Now he wants to do it for the whole city. You're going to hear in this election or in this interview about his job over at BMI, what he does for the music industry.

02:11You're going to hear who he's going to back in the mayoral election. You're going to hear us talk about the special session. We're going to talk about all the big issues that are going on in our city, but most importantly, we talk about him and we ask how it affects us. This is something Caroline and I did where we wanted to learn more about it and we kind of said, what can we do to learn more? We thought, hey, we have this platform. Let's bring people in and let's learn about them and we get to share it with you. That's pretty awesome. We really, really are honored to be able to do this. I do want to give a shout out to Jeff's amazing wife, Gina, for helping make this happen. I want to send out a special thank you to Jeff for taking the time to come and sit down in studio to have this conversation. We had so much fun. Can't wait to bring it to you. On that note, we are going to tell you that this is going to be a commercial-free episode. I feel like you need to listen to this whole thing, get through it, do it.

03:12I don't want interruptions. I don't want breaks. Get into it and hopefully you can make your own decision about who you want to vote for. If you can make a plan to get out and vote, please go do it. It is the most important election that we vote in. This is your local stuff. This actually affects you. I do want to say that we're going to talk about a couple sponsors here real quick and then we're going to jump right into the episode. I'm going to tell you about a couple people right now and I implore you, call these people This is such a crazy time for real estate. I think there's this narrative out there that 7% is an interest rate and I can't buy a house there. I should have bought a couple years ago. This and this. Guys, because of that, people are afraid and they're not out there purchasing houses, which means there are deals on houses. You can get a great deal on a house in Nashville. You didn't think that was a thing, right? Because you haven't had the right realtor.

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06:19We have a display here in the studio and people come in, they see the SuperSource stuff and they go, oh man, Jason Ellis, I love that guy, man, he's the best. And I'm not kidding, that is a real thing. If you don't have that feeling when you see your dish machine guy, you need to give Jason Ellis a call. His number is 770-337-1143. And the last person we're talking about today is Corson Fire and Security and of course that's Kevin Rose. He's your guy. If you need camera systems, intrusion alarms, fire suppression systems, fire extinguishers, you need somebody to look at it. This is what Corson does. They're amazing, amazing people and versus calling an 800 number and pushing a button and talking to somebody who doesn't understand your business, you can call Kevin Rose. He's the restaurant specialist so he knows what you're going through. His number is 615-974-2932. You need a guy. You need a guy out there who you can call for all of your fire and security needs. That's what they do. Corson Fire and Security. All right, guys, like I said, commercial free, I want to say is brought to you by those people in Gordon Food Service, my good, good friends over at Gordon Food Service.

07:27We love them. Please enjoy Jeff Syracuse. All right, super excited today to welcome in Jeff Syracuse, who is a candidate for Metro Council at Large. There is a runoff and you and we have an election September 14th. Is that my right on that? That's right. Is there early voting for that? There is. It starts August 25th next week, eight days. Okay, so there's eight days of early voting. No excuses, guys. We had such a sad turnout for the election. Thank you for saying that. Absolutely. It's a horrible turnout. I made a post the day before the election and I said, look, make a plan to vote because it's going to rain tomorrow. It's going to be a rainy day. Don't be like, oh, it's raining, I don't want to stand like, bring an umbrella. Make sure you get out there and vote. Apparently the moderates didn't get out to vote because they're like, if you were really strongly one way or the other, you came out, but like the moderates apparently didn't show up the way that we needed them to show up.

08:32You nailed it. That's exactly what happened. You know, I, let me ask you guys this question and don't let me get things off the rails starting out, but I really am curious since we're talking about the voter turnout. I feel like it seems to me, most of the young people that I know that are our team members are not very engaged in the local elections and wanting to vote in, you know, even when it was kind of national election time, it just seems like a lot of the younger generation is not as interested and engaged. We kind of are all around the same age. Why do we think that is? You know, that's a good question. Why do we not emphasize that in schools enough about civic duties and responsibilities, if you will. I will say in this election, there was about 10,000 additional young voters that were registered. So those that were organized, those that were motivated went and voted. That's what happened. And then you're right. A lot of people stayed home. But there really isn't any excuse, like you said, because the opportunities of early voting are all over the place.

09:36And in this year, we opened up more early voting sites than in previous years. It just seems like we are, you know, every election, I think it's so critical that people turn up and vote. But I feel like especially what's happening locally here in Nashville, nationally over the last few years, it's more important than ever that people turn out and vote. And I don't know, I guess it just doesn't seem to be on people's radar as much as I would like. Especially local. I mean, you nailed it. I mean, we're nonpartisan. And I like that our elections are on odd years. So we're not mixed into two party machinated mess on even years, because then those national issues would probably, you know, guide those kinds of votes. But we can focus like a laser on our city right here on the odd years. I mean, I would never have run for office if I didn't fully believe in Metro. And I do. And I love our form of government. I love the history. We are the one of the very first combination city county governments in the United States. And because of what happened between combining city and county and figuring out who gets the power, county or city, we became the third largest council in the nation.

10:37Behind New York and Chicago, we have the third largest. And so it's very representative government. So yes, I wish more people would be engaged and partake in the opportunity to select your leaders. And I think most people think they vote for president or they go out for the big because they get this national coverage and it's such a big deal. But the election that means the most to your everyday life is this election. Absolutely. And the one that affects like your community when something when you need potholes fixed, when all this like with the stadium voting, all of this stuff. This is the election that decides the stuff that matters to you on a daily basis. And the fraction of people that actually go out and vote is sickening to me. It was pretty much 100000 people decided the fate of 700000 on August 3rd. So and of course, with the runoff elections, you know, it may go down to about 80000. Hopefully I'm wrong. And it's more. But that's generally the way it goes. So you're running for metro council at large, which is five. There's five at large seats. There's 35 districts and there's five. We have 40 people on our council.

11:39You've been you've been the council representative for District 15. Right. And that's Donaldson. Right. For the last eight years. So you can only run two. Correct. And then so you're not done. So you but you can switch over to at large. Right. What are these five at large seats mean? So you've been you've had 15. Sure. And now you're going for at large. What does it mean to be an at large council member? So to compare and contrast here. So a district council member is kind of more of a neighborhood oriented council member that deals with all the planning, zoning, codes issues. When you have a specific neighborhood oriented issue, you call your district council member to figure out, you know, how can I help resolve this situation? As an at large member, you have the opportunity to kind of look at things from a more broader perspective. Governance issues, strategic planning, fiduciary policies, and then any other special committee, for example, whatever side of this debate of the stadium you are on to Vice Mayor Shulman's credit, he assigned council member Mendez to be in charge of the committee that will took a deep dive for many months into the Titans debate. And so that was an opportunity for a at large council member to really focus on that and ensure we had proper engagement and oversight over this big issue.

12:54And then one of the other things that a at large council member will do when a district council member leaves their seat for whatever reason, the vice mayor picks a at large member to fill that vacancy temporarily until we have a special election. Gotcha. What I want to talk real quick, because I don't think people recognize how much goes into this. Sure. Right. As the layman over here who gets headlines and there's clickbait and stadium deal will ruin the city. Stadium deals, the best thing for the city. As a council member, none of that is what you're looking at. You're you're you're looking at all of the details. Tell me some of the things that you look at when you're looking at a stadium. Like as a responsible council member, what are you looking at when you're deciding on what to vote? This particular deal? Yeah, that was the most complex deal of my eight years that we dealt with. Absolutely. And ultimately, we were given two choices. Either you invest in the current stadium or you have a new stadium. And so when I look at fiduciary policy and whatnot, I looked at what are we in what are we required to invest in the old stadium versus what is the obligation then for stadium? So obviously, we all know that in the 90s, we we wanted the Titans bad, the Oilers than the Titans. And so we got the team, we got a quickly built stadium. And the deal for the team, we gave them a lot. And we gave them a lot of obligation of our property tax revenues. And especially between the flood and the recession, we stopped putting money into the current stadium. And our obligations were to make sure that that stadium was in first class condition. So to the I don't fault the Titans. They said, Look, you guys have deferred maintenance on this for many years now, you have to you have to start investing in it, or we have another option for you. So it was either a conservative estimate of about seven to $800 million that we were on the hook for to invest in the current stadium, largely what which which would have come out

14:56of our property tax revenue, or the opportunity for a new stadium, which was a our piece was a $760 million revenue bond does not impact your credit rating, and is I would call it performing debt. It is capped capitalizing on the success of Nashville so that we are dumping sales tax revenues just on that site in and around that site into that stadium. So if you use it, you help pay for it. And so I know that people said, gosh, we have all these things going on, we need to pave our roads, we need to invest in affordable housing, homelessness issues, why are we doing this? Well, when you look at the financing of the new stadium, it was state said, you get you can get 500 million, but only if a new dome stadium, you can up your 1% hotel motel tax, but only if you have a brand new dome stadium. And then of course, the Titans put in about what 860 million dollars into it. And then the notion that we were subsidizing billionaires is just completely false. We own the stadium. They are our tenants. And that's a long term revenue generating facility that we will own. So when I look at either dumping 7800 million dollars of property tax revenues into an poorly built open stadium, as opposed to a $760 million revenue bond, completely not impacting our credit rating or touching our property tax revenue. The decision for me was clear, we need to free up our operating budget to focus on the critical needs of schools, sidewalks, affordable housing, homelessness issues. This was our ability to do that. And then I'll take it one step further, I encourage everybody to go review the East Bank plan. I think that this was one of our planning department's finest hours of designing, as future Mayor O'Connell calls a Nashville for Nashvillians. And this is absolutely what we are doing with the East Bank plan. This is an opportunity to have inclusive development, to include culture, the potential of a new TPAC, the potential

16:57of a new Nashville School of the Arts, to recapture all the parking lots around the current stadium that we own, that we can mandate the level of affordability, which we already have about 15 RFPs out there that are coming back to us saying, yes, we want to help you develop this and we can make it happen for you. And then stormwater management system throughout the whole East Bank, because it's it's undeveloped, we have an opportunity to build a sustainable, resilient, inclusive area here called the East Bank that is going to benefit the entire county transit, taking cars off of I-24. It was all the pros outweighed the cons with the new stadium. Absolutely. So let me ask a question just because I want to make sure that I really understand because I think there are there is a lot of information that people are getting about the stadium that seemed to just kind of be the headlines. Sure. But I feel like you went into some more detail that maybe I didn't understand. I think a lot of listeners probably don't understand as well is it sounds like we were under, you know, for lack of a better way to explain it, we were under a contractual obligation to say we have to do A, B, C or D. And it wasn't a choice of, hey, we have all of this money that we could use to build affordable housing or help with our unhoused population or help with transportation.

18:20We legally have to pick one of these choices. That's exactly right. Interesting. I wish people could see the pictures of some of the deferred maintenance of the current stadium. Pretty bad. And at the end of the day, every decision that I make, I look at 20 years out, the decision that I make, how is that going to impact the city 20 years from now? And when I think about capital spending plans in the future, if we were to continue with this current stadium, the future capital spending plans, we would have to tell Nashville, sorry, we can't invest in this park upgrade, this school upgrade, these sidewalks, this affordable housing homelessness issues, because we are contractually obligated to put 10 to $20 million or so this year into an older stadium. That's our contract. So at the end of the day, again, the pros vastly outweigh the cons for the taxpayers. I have one more question about the stadium actually, because I know a lot of criticism around the plan for the new stadium is that it wasn't big enough, we could never be a Super Bowl contender, kind of all of these things. Was the plan for the new stadium, was that really our only option for a new stadium? Was there a world in which somebody could have proposed a different architectural plan or a different type of new stadium that could have accommodated, you know, bigger crowds hosted a Super Bowl, those sort of things? Sure, we actually looked into what would it look like to renovate the existing stadium? You know, when you look at the amount of dollars that we would have had to take from property tax revenue to invest in the existing stadium, it just didn't make any sense that the new stadium is actually holds a little bit less people than the existing stadium. Well, sorry, and I think that my question was why is the plan for the new stadium, why does it have to be that specific plan for a new stadium? Why couldn't it have been a new stadium that's bigger? It was done in consultation with the NFL, absolutely. This is the standard that they want. So it wasn't done... So we could get a Super Bowl. Oh, I think it's a

20:24done deal of us getting a Super Bowl at some point, absolutely. I think so too. In close consultation with the NFL, this is the new model that they are using throughout the country. And so we didn't do this on our own in a vacuum. We did it absolutely very intentional with big events like a Super Bowl, big concerts. You know, we're in Nashville, so it's not just sports that we're looking at. It's like, what are the big concerts that we can pull here that we're not getting right now? Well, and events. I mean, you put the Music City Center together, where we're bringing in these huge events. Look how successful that was. Yeah. I mean, it's been great as far as I can... I don't know. I look at this and I know what I hear in the news. Right. I've been around long enough now where I've seen deals like that where there was a lot of pushback on a new convention center. But it was an opportunity to invest in Nashville when debt was cheap and the ability to build it didn't cost as much as it would now. And look at the return that that has brought to the city. I feel like our whole city planning has been around getting a Super Bowl. You do? No, I think back in like, and it was 97, 96, 97, we got the stadium, but we could get a Super Bowl. Then I was like, we don't have enough hotel rooms. We don't have enough of this. We don't have enough of that. And it's like ever since then, we've just been building hotels and we've just been building all of these things. A conference center where when you have a Super Bowl, you need to be able to have a place, the Music City Center.

21:50We have the arena. Then like, oh, now we're getting the showpiece. We hosted the NFL draft. We hosted the NFL-NHL All-Star game, the NFL draft, and we crushed it. And my, I mean, as far as the perception of, I mean, listen, for small businesses, I don't think we crushed it. Right. But I mean, for those entities and NHL... Brandon saw me make a face. Every decision I make is about the residents of Davidson County. I mean, of course it is. And so we don't have a state income tax. We're not going to get one. And I don't think we necessarily want one either. But that means that we do have to focus on good quality tourism, sales tax revenues, because those revenues then are reinvested into our critical areas. Are they? I think that's the big debate is that they're not being reinvested into our areas. I mean, people are getting richer and richer and people can't afford to live in Nashville. It's a national issue of the haves and the have-nots and the middle class being squeezed out for sure. I totally get that. But we have done a good job of writing the ship, turning us around financially. And over the past three, four, five years, even before this term started, we have taken our success and reinvested into our people. We deferred even investing in our people. And it's just like whether it's private or public sector, if you don't pay, recruit and retain the best and the brightest, then they're going to leave and go elsewhere. So this past budget was focusing on public safety, folks.

23:17The past three budgets was focusing on teachers and support staff. We now have the highest paid teachers in the state. But we've got to maintain that for sure, if we're going to maintain our ability to have the best and the brightest working in all our departments. And I can give you other examples of finally taking all the success and reinvesting it in ourselves. This rapid growth and development, I mean, it was in the Wall Street Journal recently that we're the fastest growing city in the nation in certain regards. And it's not just Nashville, it's all of middle Tennessee. So our ability to reinvest in ourselves has taken some effort, but we are doing it. And I know that people want, I want that road paved now. And I want this done now. And I want these homeless camps cleaned up now. And I get that these problems didn't necessarily come overnight. And they're not going to be solved overnight. But we are making progress. Absolutely. Okay. Can I I'm so sorry, we're both both of us are chomping at the bit.

24:17Why don't you go? Why don't you go? Because I mine can be anytime if this is topical go, I was gonna switch gears. So you go. Sure. Well, what I was gonna say is, you know, I think that what and we've talked about this so much on this podcast before we've talked about it when we had, you know, other other candidates for office on the podcast. But, you know, I think something that we see a lot in our industry is, you know, the musicians, the artists, the restaurant workers, who helped to make Nashville that its city are the ones who are being pushed out. Now, we don't have affordable housing, right? We don't have transportation. And you know, our you know, you mentioned kind of, oh, people in neighborhoods want the homeless camps cleaned up. But, you know, obviously, because it's more than that. It's not cleaned up. It's what how do we help solve this problem? And, you know, when we don't have affordable housing, it just becomes more and more of a problem. Right? You know, we had some homeless camps in our neighborhood, we had some homeless camps by the restaurant. And those are people in our community that we got to know and interact with, particularly during the pandemic. And one day, these people are gone, and the camps are gone. But it's not that they just disappeared off the planet. You know, what, how do how do we take the focus off these big headlines, like the stadium, like, you know, hotel rooms, all of this and really get to the most vulnerable people in our city and those who are the most in need?

25:5010 years ago, we wouldn't have even been thinking about doing this. But in the matter of months, we're about to open up the first 90 unit transitional housing development with wrap around services all at the bottom. And that's a game changer. We probably need to go ahead and think about building another one. But the opportunity to tell folks that are in the homeless camps, look, you got an opportunity, we can we can house you the fixed homelessness is housing. But it's also those wraparound services to make sure mental health support, drug addiction, job support, all those kinds of things. So it's right behind the courthouse. And it should open up in about six to nine months, we have moved very quickly, as quickly as possible to transition homelessness out of social services into its own department. That allows us to then apply for federal dollars so that we're not just spending our dollars, but we're able to get some matching grants and things like that. It's a part of becoming a big city quickly. And certainly, the pandemic exacerbated it big time. So it was difficult to catch up to that. But we are finally doing it. But but again, it's why did why was it so difficult to catch up? And is this a is this a Mayor Cooper? I mean, how do you think he did? Yeah, as a mayor? I mean, he I think he had the most tumultuous gosh, I mean, I have people there's a lot of firebrands thrown at him, of course. But dude, the term you had was pretty insane. And what do you how do you prepare for a global pandemic? How do you prepare for civil rights unrest? How do you prepare for school shootings? I mean, like, these things all happened under his watch. I think he unfairly gets overly criticized for these things. I'm a fan, by the way. Sure. Like, how do you think he did as a mayor during that time? Ultimately, when you look at the end of the term, which the last meeting was just this past Tuesday, when you look at look back, you're right. How do you plan for a global

27:54pandemic? How do you plan for a bombing downtown? You don't plan for these things. And a lot of this job isn't about planning, it's being able to react well. And ultimately, at the end result, he did a good job. We have righted the ship. Financially, we're very secure. The East Bank is a good plan that it's going to be inclusive for all bringing revenues back to us. Homelessness is on its way to being addressed in a very robust way. So I don't fault him at all, sir. You know, it's just we are all under extraordinary stress in an elected office when you sign up for the job to help people, but never felt more helpless, whether it's pandemic tornado ripping through through my there was another big huge thing, tornado right before the pandemic, you know, I didn't a weird time to be in Nashville, huh? But to be in and to be in leadership in Nashville is God bless me just the challenges. I don't think he gets enough credit for what he had to respond to whomever the next mayor is, is inheriting a city that has righted the ship has corrected our finances and is on a good trajectory. Who do you think is the one to keep the ship going in the right direction? I think Freddie's gonna run away with it for sure. Yes, absolutely. And if this is a redux of 2015, in a way, I you know, it's a past his prologue. You know, so yes, I think that's what's gonna happen. So obviously, you're supporting Freddie for mayor. Sure. I don't want to speak for Brandon, but I'm certainly I'm supporting Freddie for Mayor Freddie. Why Why are you a Freddie supporter and not an Alice Rowley supporter? Well, I've known Freddie longer.

29:42Freddie and I were neighborhood leaders before we got elected. That's how I got to know Freddie. And so when he and I both got elected as neighborhood leaders in 2015, we became good friends. And I have seen his work in the district over the past eight years. And a very thoughtful guy, extremely intelligent. Obviously, downtown is a neighborhood, but it's also the business, the central business district, if you will. And so I think overall, he's he's done a great job. And I think he's good. He cares. I think he does care. I think he will be ready on day one. Absolutely. I think so too. He knows all our department heads. He knows the ins and outs and workings of government. For sure. So So will we always agree? I mean, I don't think you could put two people in a room that agree on everything, you know, but he vote against the stadium. Yes. So he voted against the stadium. Do you can you explain to me why he voted again? You're clearly pro stadium, it needs to happen. Why would he vote against the stadium when it's so clear to you why you should? I'll just generally say, I never heard an alternative from those that were against the proposal.

30:53What is the what is going to happen if we don't do this deal? And again, we have to tell our neighbors across this county, I'm sorry, we didn't do this deal. We're now obligated to start putting millions of dollars into an old stadium. And we don't we don't have the ability to recapture any of the land to build affordable housing around it. We don't have additional revenues to build it. Look at the East Bank plan. If you read the East Bank plan, when it first came out, it gave you the option there. Here's how the infrastructure will be laid out. If you leave the stadium where it is, or option B, with the with the new stadium, here's how stormwater management across East Bank can happen. Green space, here's how the Fifth Street Boulevard is going to be and the road connections and the bridge across the river and whatnot. It was a very thoughtful plan. It wasn't just about the stadium. And obviously, the finances of the stadium in of itself are huge. But when you look at how the stadium was inclusive of the East Bank, that in of itself, also, it made more sense that the new stadium was the way to go. So, you know, whether it was politics, political decision or anything like that, I don't know. But I never heard an alternative. If we don't do this, then we have to go forward with the current stadium. And what happens then?

32:18Okay. Thank you for I said before we started, I said, we're not going to be too we're not going to jump into too many of the issues. We liked it to be light and fun that we just dove right in and started peppering you know, let's Yes. Here's what I love about you is that you didn't wake up. Your dad's not a politician, is he? No, he was 31 years in the army. So you were an army kid, you kind of moved all around as a kid. You're a fellow Blue Raider. And I love that. But you're you're in the music industry. Since you've graduated, I think I've heard that you also used to manage a Blockbuster video. That was one of my very first jobs. Yes, I was on the seven year for school program in college, you know, like like a lot of young folks, I made plenty of mistakes and was finding my way I worked through college, ultimately went to MTSU and got my finished up my music degree majored in piano. But it also came with a recording industry minor was like the most marketable liberal arts degree you could get. So at night, I was studying artist management, copyright law, all these kinds of things. And ultimately, I found a job at my final year of MTSU in a mailroom at BMI, they had an opportunity for a mailroom job. And I took it 25 years later, I'm still with BMI. I love the company. I love the mission. I like to go to work every day and say my job is to pull money in because that songwriter needs to get paid. This this is Nashville, this is our DNA. And to be part of that is just a, you know, an awesome experience. And I love waking up every day doing it.

33:52I think everybody knows the BMI building down, you know, close to the buddy killing circle. BMI stands for what broadcast music incorporated. What does BMI you just described what they do, I don't think people understand what BMI does. Like, if you're at McDonald's, and you hear Mariah Carey song playing, she needs to get paid for that song being played in McDonald's, right? Right. Well, there's there's a interesting you mentioned McDonald's, I could go into that in a moment. But ultimately, it's the bedrock of the music industry. As NSAI says, it all starts with the song. That song ultimately is intellectual property that results in revenues coming in revenues going back to those songwriters. So when we say that the music industry here in the city pulls a $3 billion economic impact to the region, that ultimately starts with the song. And BMI represents songwriters, if you're a songwriter, you affiliate with us, we find out where music is being played. And based on federal copyright law, we license those places. And we only operate in roughly about 10 cents of the dollar, everything else goes back to that composer, songwriter, and publisher. Wow. So you're the one who actually gets the musician, the songwriters paid, the songwriter gets paid, that song then, you know, goes to a publisher, the publisher to the label. And so it's interesting, I don't think a lot of people really truly understand how the finances work and the financial impact that the city has with royalty revenues. It's a completely unique element of banking, if you will, right? Yeah. So what do you do for them? I manage the radio and TV licensing team. So we are just a small but mighty team of four and every single radio and television station in the United States has to be licensed by federal copyright law.

35:36So we maintain relations with our broadcasters, and we make sure that to sell the value of music, which all the broadcasters really get. So we maintain good relations when stations sell, we make sure that the license transfers to new owners, we collect reports, and just make sure that those dollars come in consistently to make sure our songwriters are getting paid. If you win the election to be one of the five Metro Council members at large, would you continue doing your full-time job at BMI? Or is this a full-time job? No, whether it's at large or a district or even vice mayor, it's a part-time job. Okay. So it's been very fascinating. One month after I got my first job at BMI, this thing called Napster came on the scene. Wow. And as we all know, it changed the world. The digital revolution started. And it's been fascinating over the past 20 years to see the complexity of federal copyright law and how that impacts the working songwriter and musician in this town. We watched the middle-class songwriter, if you will, evaporate. Because of all the digital revenues, the revenues were tanking for songwriters until we finally, 20 years later, figured out how to bring some stability to that. It took 20 years, but the Music Modernization Act of 2019 passed Congress unanimously. You tell me what's passed Congress unanimously in recent history?

36:54Nothing. But it was something that was worked out. And ultimately, the Mechanical Licensing Collective set up shop here, which effectuates the law. And I think we're finally stabilized, if you will. We're not completely there yet. But it's been very interesting. And so, then our songwriters and our musicians took a one-two punch. With the rapid growth and development of this city, then all of a sudden, we became a little bit of a victim of our own success. Rapid growth and development means lack of affordability, whether you're a teacher, first responder, a nurse, or a songwriter, or a musician. Lack of affordable housing. Look at our local independent music venues, something that I've been just very loud about over the past few years. We need a healthy and a balanced ecosystem. We can't just become music industry city. If we don't protect that opportunity for a songwriter or musician to come to this city to be successful, that's a piece of our DNA. And we cannot lose that. And that is a big part of what I want to do that other cities are doing to bring some local policy-making effort to ensuring our long-term sustainability to become a truly great international city of music.

38:01How do we do that? Well, you know, the first part, the true equity issue isn't a creative issue at all. It's a real estate issue. And look at our local independent music venues, that mostly they're in buildings that aren't architecturally worth saving, but they're critical cultural assets. Let's take Station Inn, for example. It's this really cool brick stone building, right? You go in there, it's a whole new world, isn't it? You're surrounded by all these new buildings and whatnot, but you go on Station Inn, and just the vibe of Station Inn. It's the, you know, just beer and pizzas and whatnot. But it's a critical cultural incubator. What other cities are beginning to do, and I like to say that Austin is about four or five years ahead of us, maybe. As Stravinsky says, a good composer doesn't borrow, he steals. There's certain things that they are doing that we need to replicate here in Nashville. We can't take ourselves for granted anymore. In a nutshell, it's a cultural land trust. It's a private-public partnership that says, okay, I get that. You've owned a building for three, four generations, and you have the right to sell and bring generational wealth to your family. Sure, no problem. But instead of selling to that hotel or condo developer, how about you sell to this trust, and we will make sure that this critical cultural asset stays for this city. These are the places where our songwriters and our musicians hone their craft, build their careers, and ultimately get to the point where they can play in all the Live Nation venues or whatnot. But we can't have, I'm not anti-Live Nation or anything like that, but we can't have all our venues just run corporatized venues like that. We have to have our local independent music venues as part of that whole healthy, balanced ecosystem. So it is an example of other areas of small businesses. What do we do to help small businesses that can't compete with the big boys and girls? Well, this kind of cultural land trust is one thing that we can help right the ship and bring some equity to the real estate situation that we're in.

40:01It's almost like you could do it with like Arnold's. You're losing Arnold's to the land developer that's buying it. Like, well, no, we want to keep this as a cultural land trust. If they, you know, if they have the opportunity to sell, let's sell to the land trust, then you can continue to operate Arnold's and they still get to have that generational wealth that's, you know, that they wanted in. We don't lose. I still think that with these locally-owned and operated restaurants like that, I mean, I think Arnold's was such an amazing community. You're still in this area, but you're standing in line there next to construction workers, next to attorneys, next to politicians, next to musicians. And that's where communities blend. And that's where people get to like, that's where you get to know your neighbors, you know, and it's gone. And I think something that we kind of see increasingly, you know, happening in Nashville's neighborhoods, and I don't know if there's a way to slow or stop it, but is kind of the homogenization of neighborhoods. You know, we used to have, when I moved here almost 12 years ago, we'd have this unique neighborhood, this unique neighborhood.

41:04You know, you go to 12 South and there's KDK and, you know, it's got this kind of local flavor. You go to East and there's all these unique independent businesses. And now even Eastside, especially 12 South, you know, these neighborhoods are all starting to look the same. They're all starting to have the corporate businesses. They're all starting to kind of, you know, there's a 7-Eleven Laredo taco in this neighborhood, in this neighborhood, in this neighborhood. And you know, it's just, I use that as an example, but it's kind of starting to lose that local flavor, it feels like. I will take that as an olioop and talk about Donaldson, because I am so proud over the past eight years, of course, you know, if they say politics, there's a certain luck to it. I was coming in at a time when Nashville Star was rising, we were the it city. And I have been focused like a laser on balanced and inclusive growth. And I think that's what we need more of in the city, not just steamrolled by corporatization and whatnot. When you go down Lebanon Pike in our central business district, we don't have the chains. We've got Homegrown, Fat Bites, McNamara's, Partyfile, Tenfold, Nectar, Caliber Coffee, we have all the small businesses there. And we put a plan in place. It was during the Great Recession called the Downtown Donaldson Urban Design Overlay. And it was a perfect time to plant the seeds till the soil and wait for the rain to come after the Great Recession. And we had a plan in place and it worked. And what's happening now is balanced growth, whether you've been here for four generations, or you just moved here yesterday, there's something for everybody. And I'm proud of what I've been able to achieve a brand new library that serves as a civic anchor across the street from my walkable town center and a regional transit hub. This is balanced and inclusive growth, we just need more of it in many town center centers, if you will, across the county. Ultimately, you put affordable housing next to these transit centers.

43:04This is how you ensure lower the cost of living for folks who don't have to be dependent on cars. This is how we grow right. I just think that we haven't done a good enough job about working the plan, which back in 2014-15 was called Nashville Next. That's what we looked at said, okay, downtown mission accomplished, we get it. What's next? It is the small little mini town centers, if you will, across the county, where transit oriented development needs to happen, affordability meet the intersection between transit and affordable housing. This is what I've been able to do in Donaldson. And this is one of the things I want to be able to do as an at large member, because we are off kilter a little bit where we don't have that opportunity for the small businesses, the local restaurants, as much as perhaps we used to affordability, whether you're living here or trying to start a small business, it's difficult for everybody. The biggest barrier that that I see to that as a small business owner is that the commercial rents are so unsustainable for independent businesses for people who, you know, don't have corporate backing, who are oftentimes using their own money, you know, trying to scramble and raise money to start businesses.

44:11And I will say that you guys have an amazing, amazing local business scene in Donaldson. I guess my devil's advocate question to that would be, you have businesses that have been there for a long time. What happens today, a year from now, 18 months from now, when people's leases come up, what kind of rents are we looking at, you know, where, you know, an independent business has a great spot going, but maybe their lease rate is going to go up $10 a square foot and it becomes unsustainable. That's what I see happening in the nations. If I were to open Nicky's today, if I were to lease Nicky's today, sure, it wouldn't work. Yeah, no, for sure. And then this is where I get into passionate about historic preservation. It's not just protecting what was, but it's protecting a culture about what needs to be the most affordable building, whether you're living here or having a small business here is the one that is still standing. Because you know that when you knock something down and you rebuild it, well, that developers got to recoup that cost. And so where are your rents? Well, the rents are the numbers are what they are, and they have to recoup those rents. We have to do a better job of the technical term is adaptive adaptive reuse.

45:23We just can't keep knocking everything down. We've got to find those opportunities in those pockets to maintain what we've got reinvested in those buildings and whatnot to ensure some affordability for small business. So I think that that's one way we can address it. You know what he sounds like to me? He sounds like a mayoral candidate. You don't sound like a city council at large. You sound like somebody who I'm going to get back to what I was saying earlier. Your dad's not a politician. You didn't grow up in politics. Yeah, you know what you're taught. Like, there's nothing there's no question that you have a researcher incredibly intelligent. You don't sound necessarily like a politician. What's your why? Like what? Why are you do you have a great career at BMI? You've got a lovely wife who is doing her thing? Like, why are you doing this? You know, I was raised in a very civic oriented household. My dad started the neighborhood association where I grew up in Atlanta. Right. And so I you know, I did the same thing for my neighborhood. It maybe it's just in your DNA about being civically engaged. And then of course, I raised my son here. And when you talk about the why, I can't find a better why as leaving a good example for him about being engaged and and whatnot. So you know, I was a first time home buyer in Donaldson. I had the opportunity of being engaged. Back then when I went to my very first neighborhood meeting in Donaldson Hills, I was the by far the youngest person there. And what's fascinating now is Donaldson hasn't gone through some of those hyper gentrification issues that other parts of town have. It's been slow and steady. And now when you go to neighborhood meetings, you see the young families with the with the smaller kids integrated with the older folks that are still there. And it's, it's very healthy to see. So my why, I think it's a civic engagement has just been in my DNA growing up with both my mom and dad, and has been passed on to me.

47:25And it felt like a natural next step. I went from being a neighborhood guy to truly enjoying serving and helping leading nonprofits. I was one of the guys who helped start hip Donaldson. Now you go on Facebook and you type in hip whatever there's like a hip Murphysboro to hip Gallatin, hip Bellevue, and never had we imagined that the name would just be kind of like, you know, broadened to everybody else trying to say, well, I want my own page. But you know, we're a bona fide nonprofit. And so learning about how to make nonprofits engaged and effective to serve the city. We have an extraordinary nonprofit community, historic preservation, I got involved in our local chamber then and by then, once I got involved in the chamber, and they made me president, it felt like a natural next step just to run for office, nonpartisan local government. I don't intend on being a career politician, but I love the job. I do love the job with all this the headaches and whatnot, you know, I do tell my my neighbors a lot that, hey, for the, you know, 50 to 60 hours a week that I put into this job, 23 grand a year, you pay me, you know, you're getting a pretty good deal. Hell yeah. Well, I, I was the president of my HOA, my second house that I bought, and it was by kind of defaults. And it was like, Hey, do you want to be on the board?

48:33And I was like, No, man, I don't know. What does it mean? I don't know. And then I kind of got guilted. And I just go to this meeting, you'll be fine. It's like, welcome our new board member, like, Oh, what happened? What? And then I ended up enjoying, I kind of liked being in the inside. I liked knowing the the inside financials and everything of the neighborhood, because it made me feel more secure about where I lived, that all of a sudden, I had control over how we spent our neighborhoods money. And I, I didn't like how cold it was. If your yard didn't get mowed, they just dropped a letter off that says mow your yard or else. And I said, I'd rather knock on the door and seek to understand and go, Hey, I noticed your yard is really high. I'm a single mom and I haven't been able to do it. Like, well, why don't I mow it? Can we help find a solution for you? Versus she doesn't need a letter on her door. That's just adding more stress for life. Or it's a, I'm, you open the door and marijuana smell comes. I was like, dude, I'm baked. I don't care. Well, no, I need you to mow your yard. Sure. Let's understand what it is. But like, I could directly be in control of that. And then I became the president of the HOA. And we had this big green space and I built a dog park. Fantastic. It's partly because I was pissed off because people were walking their dogs and they were pooping in my front yard. And I didn't want that to continue happening. So I built a dog park for them to go. And every time I drove by that dog park and I saw families at the dog park, I went, I just got a smile. Like it made me smile inside because I helped create this place that people now congregate and we're building community. And it meant a lot to me. And we moved away from that house into a different house. And there's no HOA where I live now. But for me, it was just, I just wanted to be involved because I felt like I cared. And it seems like that's for you because when you have a full-time job, Matt, that's kind of why I do this podcast. So nice to hear about the dog park and especially building community within HOA because you nailed it that a lot of HOAs, we all know it, they feel like they're more about the color of your shutters, the grass and all that.

50:31You put a shut up. What are you doing? What I started was a voluntary neighborhood association. So there's two types. There's an HOA and there's a neighborhood association, neighborhood association with our older neighborhoods like I live in. They don't have HOAs. They weren't built with those back in the 50s. And so total volunteer, it was boots on the ground community organizing, which I had no intent of getting involved in politics. But I did realize once I got involved in politics is like, I didn't realize what I was doing was setting myself up for being able to bring community together. And so of our 504 homes in Donaldson Hills, we have about 120 people who pay the 35 bucks a year. And through that, we've been able to do entry entryway beautification signage. We replaced all our street signs in the neighborhood tonight, the nice wrought iron street signs, we built pride, we built community. It was just a wonderful thing to be part of. And then to leave it for the next folks. It's nice to see when you can walk away from something like that in a leadership role. And everybody picks up the and they pick it up and they run with it. And you say, wow, that's cool. It's it's happening. You set the foundation, and they can help take it to new levels. What is your end goal? Where do you see yourself in 10 years? You know, it's a fool's game to play in long term in politics. I mean, I don't you know, I was eighth in the runoff. So does that mean I'm the underdog? So maybe so, you know, it's a different kind of election, I guess.

51:50So if I don't get one of these jobs, I'll find a way to just stay engaged. Like I said, it's in my DNA. But I hope to stay engaged of the eight of us in the runoff. There's only one that has served our creative community for 25 plus years now. And like I said, I think it's critical to have some local policymaking effort within government, we can't take ourselves for granted anymore. And just having the neighborhood experience, nonprofit experience, supporting the revitalization of a community, and how that happens inclusive to everybody. Hopefully, that that experience resonates with people. But I know that the August 3 election was fueled from a lot of voters who are not happy with with with things and they want change now. And I get that. But my hope is that, you know, we'll see if I can get in there. But can we talk about gun control? Do you want to go there? Nope. Yeah, sure. We're about to have the special session. And we had Freddie O'Connell on the show. Yeah, the day after the covenant shootings. That was that was probably the most emotional episode I think we've ever done sitting down here. And I'm glad he showed up. Because he could have certainly been doing 100 other things. But he showed up that next morning.

53:05And it was incredibly emotional. Yeah. You have children? I do. My son is 22 at University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Nice. Yeah. What's your take? What's your take on the whole thing? I mean, I mean, we I don't I can ask a bunch of specifics. But I mean, what is your what is your take on gun control in general? So I chaired public health and safety this past year. And there certainly has been a lot going around in that space. As soon as Vice Mayor Schulman appointed me as the chair of public health and safety. One of the first things that we looked at was the opioid settlement dollars and how to make sure that they were spent correctly. And we've worked through violence interruption programs to to really help communities lift out of some gang related activities and things like that and build hope. And then covenant happen. Like I said earlier, you run for this job because you want to help your community. When something like that happens, whether it's the tornado, the pandemic or whatnot, certainly that you feel like I've got to do something. And you know what? I got the best advice from the Sandy Hook Promise, the avalde foundation for kids. And they because I was seeking guidance. What should I be doing? You know what they told me? Don't do anything right now. Make sure that your communities are grieving.

54:29Make sure you're taking care of your kids and your families and you're allowing space to grieve and support them and show love. And then be intentional and thoughtful about how you turn your grief into action. And that's what I did. I sat for a while, I made sure that, you know, obviously that the resources were coming together in extraordinary ways. Obviously, covenant schools a private school, but our MNPS, they did an extraordinary job in supporting that school, as did so many neighborhoods and nonprofits or whatnot. And so in working with the administration and working with our nonprofit partners and whatnot, I've put together a three meeting series to look at school safety and gun violence. And it was an eye opening learning experience. And I'm very proud of the outcomes of that three meeting series. The first one was looking specifically at school safety. And we identified a couple of areas that weren't funded yet.

55:31Ballistic glass and an improved radio system for PD. I found the six and a half million dollars pretty quickly. And we got that done. So that was one of the successes out of that. The next one was starting to build the local, regional and national partnerships with the Baldy Foundation for kids with the Sandy Hook promise, who also turned their grief into meaningful action about how we have good pragmatic conversations that aren't full of rhetoric when it comes to guns and violence and things of that nature. I am now on the National Advisory Board for the Baldy Foundation for kids. That's one of the things that came out of that. I learned a lot about how to have conversations with our Republican legislature about how to talk about guns, that we're not looking at taking guns away, but how can we reduce gun violence, gun violence, as we know, is the number one killer of kids. Gosh, when you look at that, when you look at the statistics, shouldn't you take action on that? Look how many loaded guns are stolen out of vehicles. It's insane. It was just a few weeks ago where a gun was stolen out of a car at Opry Mills, taken down and a cop was shot. We've got to do something about that. Did we pass the measure where you get a felony if they steal a gun out of your car, like you're responsible if somebody steals a gun out of your car? That was on the ballot, right? Well, it was a piece of potential legislation from the state, but I don't think that passed. And so we're beholden to the state to do anything about guns, really. What can we do locally here? Well, in this past year's budget, we put in money for gun locks. We're going to give away gun locks. And all we can do is say, people, please lock your guns. Lock your guns. Please don't leave them loaded in your car, and certainly not your unlocked car. But for crying out loud, you know, we have direct

57:31correlation between loaded guns stolen out of cars to crime happening right here in our community. So we're going to do everything we can to try to turn that around. But we have the special session, of course, coming up next week. And I think most of us have low expectations. And it's certainly when we saw that the governor put a framework around it. I don't know that anything of substance is really going to come out of that. But we have to keep pushing. And so going back to building those regional and national partnerships, it's about us learning from them about how can we have those more substantive conversations with state legislators about getting through the rhetoric, not saying that we're trying to take anybody's guns away, but there are pragmatic things that we can do locally right here in Nashville. And state, you can help us without infringing on anybody's rights across the entire state. Help us here in Nashville, help us in our urban areas.

58:33There was a shooting down in near Beale Street in Memphis the other day. Eight people were injured. We need help with the state legislature to understand the differences between urban and rural areas and respect the different needs of both. But here in larger, denser areas, whether it's Memphis or Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, we need different resources and assistance than a rural area does. And I just wish that the state legislature sometime would realize Nashville needs this. We need to be successful. We're 38% of the GDP for the entire state. It's in their best interest to help us with these issues that doesn't impact their rural communities, but give us the resources and ability to make sure that we deal with these issues. Is that what they're going to be talking about in the special session that's coming up? What are we going to be dealing with there? What does this mean? It's very limited. It's going to be about mental health. It's going to be about, you know, certain... Is it a dog and pony show? Yes. Is that what's going on here? The governor's calling this special session. We're going to go, hey, we need to work on mental health. And Marsha Blackburn is going to say, send grandparents to the schools and they should be guarding the schools. And then we're going to... I can only assume that the reason why it took so long for he to finalize the special session is because they were probably working behind the scenes to say that the negotiation between legislature and the governor's office to say, what is it that we can actually accomplish? Because if they leave there with nothing accomplished, then everybody's going to be angry. Rightfully so. Rightfully so. I hope that they continue to listen to the statistics across this state, that this is not a partisan issue anymore. There's roughly above 80% of people across Tennessee that realize that, gosh, we've gone too far and we need to do something about this to ensure that no more children are killed.

01:00:24Do you think that we need assault style weapons? Do you think that individuals should be able to have like AR-15 style guns? I don't think so. I don't necessarily want to take anybody's rights away, but we have this rhetoric and this culture here that doesn't exist on anywhere on the planet of having so many guns. For what purpose? This idea of what the second amendment that it gives you your right to have whatever gun you want, fine. But if it was about, uh, you know, having militias to make sure that the government doesn't overthrow that, you know, that the government isn't in control. That ship has sailed a long time ago. It was written in 1776, right? I mean, right, right. They didn't have like, what kind of car did you drive in 1776? Like car? No, we're, we're riding horses, right? Like, and now we have Lamborghinis and Hummers, like the world has evolved. The world has evolved. We have drones now. You're not going to even, no matter what gun you have, you're not going to take on the military.

01:01:31The world has changed. I would like us to focus on first and foremost, keeping guns out of the hands of those that shouldn't have them. And I think there is a way to do that. You know, I wish that the special session would have looked at red flag laws. All that most of us are asking for are pragmatic, incremental common sense. We're not asking anybody to take anybody's guns away, but we're asking for common sense, pragmatic, incremental support. And even if you just allow us the opportunity here locally to do it and not mess with the rest of the state, you know, I wish that that, I wish that kind of mutual respect could happen. Agreed. So I want to switch gears just a little bit. And then we'll wrap. Before we let you go, because this is Nashville Restaurant Radio. Absolutely. If someone is listening and they are a hospitality worker, a restaurant worker, hotel, live music venue, why should they vote for you? Well, I am here for them. Our musicians, our hospitality workers, as I've hopefully articulated here over the past hour, I have a great respect and understanding of the incredible, critical value that our hospitality community has to the success of the city. And so whether it's getting rid of smoking in our in our venues, or the legislation that I passed about large speakers being turned back in, we just saw that we've got to help and support our hospitality community because they are the reasons why people come here and spend money. And so if we don't support them, then just like any other job, they're going to go somewhere else. But we have got to show the love and support to our hospitality community because this is our economy. It's it's it's who we are. It's been extraordinary to see the growth of Nashville also bring awesome new restaurants and build our food food community. My uncles have had Syracuse's pizza plant for

01:03:34the last 43 years in Buffalo, New York, New York, they've got two locations there. So I kind of grew up with it in a way and I get that, you know, all the extraordinary work it takes to to run a local restaurant and whatnot. But also somebody over the past eight years has represented the district that has the greatest concentration of hotels and motels in any district combined, because I'm the hospitality gateway to Nashville. Everybody comes into the airport and I've got all the hotels and motels that support the airport. I've got the 30th largest hotel in the world, Opryland in the Opryland part of my district. So I've got a unique understanding, I believe, of the value of our hospitality industry to this city. And I feel like that some of the rhetoric here locally, they've gotten a bad rap and lumped into the anti tourism kind of thing. I get it, we need to create a Nashville for Nashvillians, but we need and we need to balance the ship. But we also need to make sure that we support good quality tourism. Do we need more family tourism? Absolutely, we do. Do we have a more of a raucous situation going on downtown?

01:04:37Absolutely, we do. I've started that correction, if you will, by bringing everybody together on the one speaker issue. But we need to protect our musicians, we need to protect our hospitality workers. They are so critical to our ultimate success as a city. Jeff, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me carving the time in and getting here. I want to give a big shout out to your beautiful wife, Gina Syracuse, the best kind of helping set this thing up. She's just amazing. And give her a plug for what she still has her last name, Gina Cecilia. So no, go go look her up. She's an extraordinary artist, has 10 projects working on a Sam Cooke tribute album right now. A pandemic side hustle of creating Gina's Italian cuisine when live music venues were shut down and the touring wasn't happening. She took her extraordinary talents as a cook and started her own business. And it did so well, that it's now become a second career.

01:05:38And one of the awesome success stories that I'd like to say is that her success, she was able to self fund her 10th album that came out last year. And so I know how cool is that? That's amazing. And so now she's been able to merge the two. And she's part of the Arts and Business Council Periscope program right now. So she's going through some extraordinary training to take the arts and make it a successful business. So I couldn't be more proud of her because she's also sacrificed extraordinarily for me over the past year to do this campaign. And I couldn't do without her. She's extraordinary. You've opened my eyes that this isn't just something that you, hey, I want to be a counselor, I'm just gonna I'm gonna run for it. Like there's a lot of moving parts in this thing. And you've been doing it for eight years. I'm excited to have you on the show. I think you'll do a wonderful job. Get out there and early vote. Yes. September, did I say September 15th? 14th. 14th. September 14th is election day for the runoff. Please get out there and vote. Early voting starts next week, August 25th. We finished every episode with a Gordon food service final thought. I'm going to take your thought when you said why do we vote for I'm going to take that as your final thought. Is that okay? Absolutely. I want to get Gordon's name in there because they're amazing people and we love them on the show. Jeff Syracuse have a wonderful day. Best of luck, sir. Thank you so much. All right. Awesome. I love that very end part where Caroline says awesome. I don't know if you caught that, but it's pretty good. Listen to the very end again. So funny. All right. Thank you again, Jeff Syracuse for joining us on the show.

01:07:12I want to talk about our fantasy football team. We have a Nashville restaurant radio fantasy football team. We're benefiting the giving kitchen and I'm pretty excited about this. Tony Galzin, which is Caroline's husband, he is going to be joining me on a new show that's going to come out Friday mornings and it's going to be a fantasy football show, but it's going to be us talking about our league. None of us are pros, but we like talking about football and we're going to talk about football with chefs. So that sounds like it's a lot of fun. Here's who's going to be in the league. So far we have Max Goldberg, Brian Baxter from the catbird seat, Shane Nasby from Cletus Burgers, Alyssa Ganjeri, who is the partner over at buttermilk ranch and chef, Tony Galzin, Pat Martin, Naima Walker Fierce, who's the owner of the Germantown pub, Brian Lee Weaver, redheaded stranger, butcher and bee, Alex Ballew, who was the winner of hell's kitchen season 21, myself. We are also going to have Hal Holden Bache, who is the chef owner at Loughlin table and Tandy Wilson, who is from city house. So we're really excited. This is going to be a really fun league and we're going to be asking, we're going to be raising money. We're going to be raising money for the giving kitchen. We're going to have a link for you guys to go in and I've been exactly figured out how we're going to do it, but it's probably going to culminate with a dinner at the very end where you get to meet some of these people. It's going to be a lot, a lot of fun. So if you are a company out there, if you're somebody that wants to sponsor this event, the money will be going to the giving kitchen. Here's how you do it. You just contact me on Instagram at Brandon underscore in RR. We have different package levels that I'll

01:09:13give you different things. You'll be sponsored on that Friday show. We'll be talking about you. We may even get you on the show to talk football with us. You can help break down our teams, what's going on. So it's a separate thing. Follow us at Nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio on Instagram and we will be posting the schedules once a week. We'll be posting all of the matchups. You can see who's playing and what the teams are. We want you to get involved and this is going to be fun. One of our missions is building community and bringing all of these chefs together to play together again is towards that mission. And then obviously working with the giving kitchen, which helps restaurant workers in crisis really works with that mission. So if you want to be involved, we would love to have you please get out there and vote early voting starts this Friday. The election is on September the 14th. If you can't early vote, make a plan to get out and vote on the 14th. And we just want to say thank you for listening. Thank you for all your support and thank you for all of your comments about our episode with Brian Lee Weaver, where we talked about tipping. So much fun. We did a poll on Instagram where we kind of learned that you're either no, I'm not, I'm not gonna have to fatigue at all. I love tipping people.

01:10:30This is what we do in our industry and I love that. And some people are like, I think the majority was sometimes I'm annoyed by it. I think that the game should you tip is a is a something that was real and live and I think it was really interesting. So thank you for listening and hope you're being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.