Get to know a little bit more about us. We catch up on Zach's work situation and discuss the challenges music artists face with streaming platforms. Then Zach has some random questions for Jeff that provide a lively discussion on life's biggest questions.
Get to know a little bit more about us. We catch up on Zach's work situation and discuss the challenges music artists face with streaming platforms. The conversation then shifts to personal questions, such as their first concerts and what happens when we die. Thrash on!
Links Mentioned in this Episode:
🔗 Jeff's BOXOMYLK music on Bandcamp - https://boxomylk.bandcamp.com/
🔗 Benn Jordan: Spotify's Phony War on Bots - https://youtu.be/kVY7-Ti77UQ
🔗 Starbound Renegade - https://starboundrenegade.bandcamp.com/
🔗 Design By Humans - https://www.designbyhumans.com/
🔗 Jeff's Newsletter: https://jefffinley.ck.page/
🔗 Columbia House CD commercial: https://youtu.be/iIJjeq1gCt4
🔗 American Juggalo documentary - https://vimeo.com/29589320
🔗 Five Iron Frenzy band - https://youtu.be/zeyiBKsYQXQ
🔗 Awana Christian Club 1993 - https://youtu.be/g6VBXw7lHVk
🔗 Jeff's Guide on Astral Projection - https://jefffinley.org/obe
🔗 Near Death Experience Archive - https://www.nderf.org/
🔗 The Monroe Institute - https://youtu.be/ZBbWCUoSPBg
🔗 William Buhlman - Adventures Beyond the Body book - https://amzn.to/3U7AGKG
🔗 William Buhlman - The Secret of the Soul book - https://amzn.to/4d14LDk
🔗 William Buhlman - Adventures in the Afterlife book - https://amzn.to/43T15iL
🔗 Pixar's 'Soul' Movie - https://youtu.be/xOsLIiBStEs
🔗 Wayne Bush analyzes the movie 'Soul' - https://www.trickedbythelight.com/tbtl/Soul.html
🔗 Defending Your Life Movie (1991) - https://youtu.be/oZEbLVD72hY
🔗 Zach's Air Guitar video - https://youtu.be/JVuojra6eaY
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Zach's Job Hunt
03:04 Challenges in the Music Industry
07:15 Authenticity and Finding Your Voice
12:28 A Teacher Looking for Students
31:30 First Concert
33:58 Favorite 90s Band
41:34 Did You Grow Up Going to Church?
50:26 What Happens When We Die?
55:33 What Are You Best At?
57:54 Where were Your Childhood Family Trips To?
01:02:29 What is Your Worst Injury?
01:09:29 What is Your Favorite Food?
01:10:52 What is Something You Want to Learn?
01:13:54 What was Your First Car?
01:19:38 What Should You Be Working On?
Zach Hendrix (00:03.054)
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Zach Hendrix (00:13.166)
Welcome everyone to We Should Be Working. I'm Zach Hendricks. That's Jeff Finley. Jeff, happy to be chatting with you again this week. Likewise. And good to see you. Likewise, Zach. Good to be here. How you been? How's your week? It was a good week actually overall, especially from a work perspective. I'm finally starting to get some bites in the job arena. I've been...
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I've been applying for weeks and weeks and weeks. And it's interesting because, you know, I took, I took my resume from what I had before and what I got my last job with. And I had worked on that thing for months and months and months and months. So I took that one. I was feeling pretty good about it and just added my latest experience up on there. Started posting and I'm not getting anything. And I could come up with a number of reasons. One is that.
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whenever I'm looking at creative jobs lately, I'm not, I have a little theory on this, but I look at creative jobs and I'll see, oh, this has been posted. This job's been posted for only 12 hours. It's already over a hundred applicants. Every creative job that I see, it's over a hundred. And I'm like, what is going on with the creative industry right now? Like what's going on with video, with creatives, with creative directors, all of this stuff. I,
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And I think I have a little bit of a theory on it, but I'll get back to that in a second. But so I wasn't really getting any bites or anything and not getting any even screener calls or anything, just auto reject after auto reject after auto reject. So I went back in and changed my resume up quite a bit. And I was like, actually, this thing was not in good shape. So it's interesting how your mindset can even change and maybe even adjust.
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with the day and age where I had really crafted that resume pretty hardcore. Like I said, I was through most of the pandemic, I was looking for a job as well. I was doing a lot of freelance work. I'd really ramped up my freelance business and I was really considering just like, I'm not going to go back and get a full -time job. For people that don't know, I've had a full -time job and freelance mainly just because the benefit that that allows me of having medical insurance.
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Zach Hendrix (02:34.414)
for my family, having a steady paycheck and all of that. So that's kind of how my life has been in the creative world is all freelance and do that. But that I had ramped up my freelance where I'm like, I could just do this full time. I wouldn't have to go back. But I think just some old drawn pole inside of me is like, I want that safety net of insurance. I want that safety net of insurance has always drawn me back to getting what we might call a full time job.
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Um, but so I had been working most of that pandemic on getting my resume up in order, but now I look at them and I'm like, this is horrible. This is crap. So I changed the whole thing around and all of a sudden I start getting some more bites. Um, I've had some better screening interviews. I actually, there was a company that contacted me that I was super excited about. Um, I didn't know anything about them. I just saw the posting and was like, Oh, that fits me apply.
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And then when they contacted me, they go, hey, we do our interviews a little bit different. Here's some examples. Just be prepared when you come and talk to us. Because of that, I was like, oh, well, I better be prepared. I started doing some research on the company and I was like, this is a really cool place. I was like, they do some really cool stuff there. They really seem to care about their people. Even to the point that they wrote a book, a fairly, you know, what I would call for a company.
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Not for an ad agency or something. Like if you were to do this book, it would be more, but for most companies that you see, I would call it, it's pretty creative. They do a book on interviewing with our company and there's this little, you know, uh, I guess almost like pamphlet that you can download. That's like, Hey, here's what it's like chatting with us. And here's all the different steps and here's what you can expect. And they do a bunch of videos as well, as far as like.
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Here's what's working with the company and here's what this guy had to say about it. Here's what this guy had to say about it. So you can really get to know the company pretty well before you've ever talked to them. And I was like, this is a pretty cool place. These guys seem to really care about what their people have to say, what they want to do. And even themselves have said that it's like, most people move around here quite a bit and start making their job what they want to make it. After a bit of time, we go.
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Zach Hendrix (04:58.062)
Their big philosophy is we want you to be your authentic self every single day. And so if you're not feeling fulfilled with what you're doing, let's chat about that and say, hey, what do you want to do? What would be more fulfilling here for you? Because they actually have a lot of different companies. As their company has gone along and gotten bigger, they go, hey, we're traveling more. Why don't we start a travel agency and do that ourselves? So they did. They go, man, we're doing a lot more media production. And.
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logo designs and stuff like this. Why don't we start a media company? We go, okay, done. So as they go and like start touching little things, they go, we'll just do that ourselves and start another company and start another company and start another company. Um, so it was, uh, it's pretty inspiring. So I'm really crossing my fingers on that one and hoping that that goes well. Cause I'm like, I think I could really be out there. That sounds really cool. Are they in, um, your local to you or.
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Yeah, so the office is here and then they've got a few other offices around the nation. So they're starting to spread a little bit. So I think that they've got like San Diego, St. Louis, Boston, a couple other places that they're they're starting to get to. So it was it was finally a little bit of a of an uplifting week where I think the week before was panic attack, where I'm like.
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Man, I've been going after stuff for weeks and weeks and weeks and I'm not hearing anything. I was like, I must really suck at life. And I think that's another thing about the job market and all that is that it really feels like a personal attack at times where it's like, I, maybe this is true and I'm not that good at what I do and I'm not that amazing. And everybody has finally realized that I'm not that good. Um, the, you know, it.
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The cat's finally out of the bag that Zach is not as good as he maybe thought or hoped that he was. So it was a bit of a confidence booster to, I can calm down a little bit. Like I'm getting some interviews, people are wanting to keep talking to me. And so I was like, that's just calm down. You'll get there. So, uh, so it was really nice. What about, uh, for you, what, uh, what should you be working on? Well, I mean, this past week, I actually had some success with posting, um,
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Zach Hendrix (07:15.694)
Some stuff I told you, I think in the last episode, I was working on my box of milk music albums, you know, from my long ago, from like the early two thousands, I'd been compiling and Mac and kind of consolidating singles and songs and try to put on a record, like just digging through old MP3s that I had exported. And when I didn't know hardly anything about music production. So, um, anyway, I decided I finally got some albums ready and I was like, all right, I'm going to put them up on distro kids so they can submit it out to stores like Shopify or Spotify.
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And then I put them on bandcamp. Um, so I actually got two, no, four, four albums posted to bandcamp this past week. So to me, that's a big deal because, you know, when actually you post it, it's done, you know, you, all that, all the month and a half of work leading up to it. It's kind of like, good. It's finally done. It's up there. Now I've submitted, submitted to stores. One of the albums got rejected because there's a song on there that they claim was a copyright strike.
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because of a sample from some other artists. I checked on that. I clicked on the artist and the song is not even on Spotify anymore. It's like it was submitted to Spotify through DistroKid back in 2020, but they must've stopped paying. So it's not even available to stream. But that was the song that flagged my song, even though I wrote and released my song in 2002 or something like that. They posted it in 2020, but since they've got the copyright, the content ID thing. So like,
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whatever sample I used in my song in 20, in 2000 has flagged it. So I'm not able to upload that song, but Distro Kid, the only option they give me is to just abort the whole entire album and just like re -upload the whole thing. I can't just like, I can't even dispute the charge or contact Distro Kid. I just have to like say, Oh, can't post it. I mean, I guess like, they're like, yes. Yes.
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Yeah, that's what it sure seems like. And on a related note, I saw this video by Ben Jordan. He's a very accomplished music producer. He's had millions of streams on his stuff. He's been a producer for 20 years. You know, it's his career. And so he posted the disappearing of music on Spotify. And it's like, because Spotify is trying to crack down on artificial streams and bots, they will false flag somebody's music as like getting artificial streams and then distro kit in order to.
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Zach Hendrix (09:39.822)
play ball with that. They'll just remove your entire album and you're not getting any, any streams. So all of his entire discography was removed from all stores at once overnight. And he's like, what do I do? He's like panicking and he's the guy that gets, you know, thousands of streams a day on all of his stuff. And he makes it a living part of his mix of living doing that. And it's just kind of ridiculous. The way you can't contact customer service because it's all like, uh,
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AI driven chat bots and stuff. And nobody knows how to actually, there's no human to respond to you. Or if they do, they're like, sorry, we're just listening to Spotify. Spotify flagged it. This is, you know, so you can just re -upload, you know, or, or do it again. So it's just, you know, it's frustrating. Is that really the solution is re -upload and hope it doesn't get flagged the second time? Yeah, that's for me, I guess I can't even contact the artist because that artist doesn't have any web presence at all, except for their song on Spotify. That's not even available. So it's like,
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This is some very small indie artists that ticked the box. Yes. Sign up for content ID or something. So I don't even know what it was because back then I wasn't, I definitely use samples, you know, but people are also complaining that they'll buy samples from splice, which is a very popular store for music producers to get samples from. And they say you can use these songs in commercial releases. Right. So if I use a sample from splice, I'm free to use it in my song, even though other artists are using the same sample. It's fine.
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But nothing's really stopping that artist from taking the content ID checkbox when they upload their track. And then anybody else who uploads it after that gets flagged as like, you just violated copyrights. It's like this algorithm, AI driven copyright system is just kind of difficult for individual artists. And of course you as an individual artist don't have a label to go to. There's nobody else that a manager to help you with. It's like, well, you're kind of on your own. Um, so.
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Yeah, I bet that that's, it's kind of funny not to, uh, not to have hit the nail too much on the head here, but, uh, from a, we should be working point of view as well. It kind of reminds me of what I've thought about with this job hunting is that I'm, you know, I should be doing all these other things, but there's looking for a job is like a full -time job. And so for you as a musician, it's like, I'd really like to be working on this music and set up the hassling with all of this BS.
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Zach Hendrix (11:59.438)
You create this, you know, environment for artists, um, all along there, but then you leave them in the dust and you go, ah, I guess we really don't care about that. It's not making us money. And I never even really thought about that. Cause I have a, I have a buddy that primarily all of the music from his band is on Spotify. And if they just yanked his album is, you know, all of his work, what the heck is he going to do now? Um, yeah, and that's, he's even getting any money from Spotify because they just, yeah.
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They had this thing recently where if you get less than a thousand streams a year, you're not getting paid at all. Um, so that's the policy that they, uh, put in place last year or something. And so the vast majority of artists on Spotify have less than a thousand plays and it's obviously costing them too much money to pay them the half a penny or a thousand streams. You get, I don't even know. It's, it's, it's ridiculous. Basically you're just paying, I'm paying district kid $30 a year, now $40 a year to manage two artists. Um,
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my star run Renegade and my box of milk. Um, so I'm paying them to distribute to all stores. It's like, okay, if I want to be up there available for people to listen to 40 bucks a year, it's not that big of a deal. It's like the cost of a website basically, or a website or two. But now I'm not going to get any money from those streams. You know, maybe I will get some sense from like iTunes store or any of these other ones. And like, so over the, over the, like the 10 years I've been on there, I think I've made like $35 or something.
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You know, whatever, I don't get paid from this stuff, but what you are paying for is legitimacy. Because if, if you're an artist and you're not on these streaming services, you're just like, well, who are you? Where are you? And unless you're really pushing your own audience via like, via local shows or doing anything locally or with your own social media presence, bandcamp is still really good because they just buy it right from you. They get the album. They don't have a strict copyright system. I mean, they do, but it's not going to flag my stuff automatically. So anything that I can't put on Spotify, I can just sell on my website.
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Ron bandcamp. And that's really what all I'm doing this for is not to make money, but really just an archival project. It just feels really good to have my albums on my website, on my bandcamp, just consolidated, ready for purchase, ready for download. They're finished. And it's like, it's not just a bunch of cluttered MP3s on my hard drive. It's just like, it's out there. And if, so it's really just for me, I don't care if I make any money off of it. It would be nice, but nobody makes money really making music unless, unless you are like some sort of.
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Zach Hendrix (14:22.062)
pro or a teacher or you, you know, the actual artist is really hard to, to make a living. It's really just a labor of love. Yeah, absolutely. It even seems like with bigger artists as well, you know, they're not making money off of track sales anymore. They're now they're making money off of touring and everybody's touring hardcore, hardcore, hardcore, because to make up for all of that. But I do have to say it's, it doesn't give me a lot of hope in society when these big companies are like,
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How much money are we saving by saying, you know, if you don't, if you don't have a thousand streams, we're not going to pay you. How many people are out there that are missing that five bucks? And don't get me wrong. I know that they're not like that five. I really needed that five bucks, but just for them to like, Oh, we just saved $2 million by doing that. And it's like, I know you're not doing it for, for any other reason, other than it helps your company. It's not for the artists. Kind of makes me think of, um,
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I haven't checked in on them for a while, but I know that you will know about them. There was a company out there called Designed by Humans. Oh yeah. The original way that that place started was it was like this competition website to get a t -shirt printed. And so people would submit new designs and then the most popular designs and not always the most popular, I think it's cause they're like, look, if this guy has a thousand friends and this design sucks, we're not going to let him win.
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But it was definitely taken into consideration that, hey, if you submitted a design and you got a lot of votes, they would go and make your T -shirt. And so it was kind of fun is that it was like, oh, you go out there. And so like I made a couple of designs and was raking up pretty high. I'm like, maybe they'll make my T -shirt this week and all that. And like, that would be sweet. Well, then they they shifted their business model to much more of a store. And I was like, this is a place that really does care about their artists and their people.
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And so instead of saying like, we're going to, you know, I think they maybe finally got the idea that it was like, actually, as much as this is fun having this competition, how many people are getting shut down week after week after week when they're a second place all the time, which means that there are people out there that like them and we're saying, no, you're not good enough, but there are tons of people that would go and buy their stuff. And so they've shifted to much more of almost like an Etsy idea where you can be an artist, you can have a shop.
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Zach Hendrix (16:48.558)
You can submit your designs and if people like it, get it printed on a shirt, on a tote bag, on a this, and you can still, it's still designed by humans and all of that. But now you're not shutting anybody out. And so they kind of even eliminated that where it's like, I see companies that do that that want to support their people. And then you have the Spotify's are like, Hey, you're not good enough. We don't give a crap. You're not making us money. So we don't care about you. It.
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Making it harder for creative Steven get started in today's day and age. So yeah, that's, yeah, it's tricky because it's so convenient and everybody listens to uses Spotify and iTunes and title and any of these YouTube music. They all, that's what they all use. So if like you want to be heard, you got to put your stuff up there. But, um, if you're not on a major label anyway, you're still, you're probably not going to get any traction unless you really, really, really try hard to market it in. But if you.
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If you try too hard, you can get flagged for bots and artificial streams and, you know, careful and you might get struck out. So in Ben Jordan's video, he had this interesting thing where he said, most artists are a net negative for Spotify. So it's like you with your, your brilliant music that you created, that you spent all year working on is actually a negative value for, for them. Like it's not, it's not worth, it's not like it's worth nothing. It's actually costing them money. So you're, you're better off not even being on there. Um.
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So it's so weird how like the artistry and all the time that we, the artists put into their work, it's like valued so little in the, in the marketplace, but, but obviously everybody loves listening to music. But to be an actual artist, it's so funny that you can't, that, uh, that is, that's the labor that doesn't really get paid for, you know, like if I wanted to really make money as an, as in the music industry, I would be making products to sell to aspiring musicians because there's.
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There's like an oversupply of creative people who want to make music and aspire to. So if I could give them the resources and tools to give them the illusion that they're going to fulfill their dream, then they're going to give me a lot of money because they can participate and maybe try to make it. So on that note, I thought maybe I could teach people how to use FL Studio or like private one -on -one lessons on how to take like a beginner who hasn't written any songs to start writing their songs and posting them.
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Zach Hendrix (19:12.206)
I thought that would be really cool, but you know, I'm not an expert. Like, you know, I'm not a guy that I can post my stuff on YouTube and get any sort of traction, but I would think it'd be cool if I did in person, you know, for the, for some, maybe even a young teenager or something like that. It was like, his mom pays me, you know, $60 a lesson or something. And I show him how to use FL studio and he's like super stoked. He gets his, he gets his first track out there, you know, I'm not going to teach them the ins and outs of mastering to a professional level or anything like that, but.
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You know, this idea of being a teacher or mentor keeps popping up and I'm like, Hmm, maybe, maybe there's something there. I don't exactly know how I would do that. Um, it's not like anybody's asking me to teach them how to do this. So I kind of feel like I'm a solution looking for a problem. You know, does that make sense? Zach? It's like, I just keep feeling like I'm like looking for people that could use my services. I'm not, no one's knocking on the door to an asking me to do something that I'm not doing. You know, a lot of teachers say like,
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People just started asking me how to do this thing, how to teach them how to play this, how to do that. So I just like, all right, fine. I guess I'll just step into a teaching role, you know, but do you ever hear about the teachers who are like, gosh, I just need to like. Find people that I can teach this thing to and struggle and try to get it out there and try to find students looking for. I try to satisfy the demand. It's like I'm a hammer looking for an AL, I'm a solution looking for a problem. It doesn't really feel like a good place to be in. Um, you know,
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It's difficult because I feel very much the same. Some of the more satisfying stuff is that there have been one or two people that I've mentored over the years and more than that, but some much more so that I'm still in contact with now. There was a kid that I met before he went to college and now has since graduated and is trying to hack it in motion graphics and video. And we've done some projects together and all that. Like,
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He's trying to break into this industry. And so it's been really fun and rewarding to work with him and see him grow as well and see his demo reel get better and better and then get jobs and then have him even in similar spots as me. It's like, man, I'm really searching for a job out there. Like I'm trying to find this. I'm like, man, in some ways I almost feel guilty. I'm like, maybe you should have gotten into creative arts because right now it's flooded with people, which, oh, reminds me from before. I think my theory on that is as far as why I'm seeing.
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Zach Hendrix (21:31.47)
so many people and applicants out there is in today's day and age, which I think speaks to your point as well is, but I see this as a positive for mentoring and doing all that is that in the social media era and in what we'll call this TikTok era for lack of a better term, everybody is turning into a content creator and kids and especially the younger generation are now being exposed to making their own music, maybe for their videos or picking music.
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Now they're even making videos. So now they're like, oh, I can shoot video. I can edit video. I'm adding motion graphics up there. I'm making my own little logo for my YouTube channel that I'm doing that everybody is turning into a content creator. And so when I look at these jobs at the same time, I also think that that's part of the problem is that people that are very under qualified think that they might be qualified now. It's like, I've made 200 videos. You made them on your phone and they look terrible.
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But unfortunately, you think that it's good. You need somebody to kind of help you to go like, how do you get to this high level where your TV commercial level or, you know, and there are some YouTube channels that I really, really, really respect their production value that do it well. Like there's a channel, my boys watch called Dude Perfect. Those guys, they really do it well. They market themselves well. They shoot well. They have high production value. They edit. They have good motion graphics.
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good at everything all around. And they are, they're one of the most popular channels out there. I think there are over 60 million subscribers, but they put that back into their channel and know like, hey, we're gonna do this and we're gonna do it right. And there's still a bunch out there that still have multi -million views and are just using a webcam and that's fine. But I think it goes to all of that. But to your thing on looking for solutions,
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I love teaching people and I've tried to figure this out with my wife and she's like, just go out there, try to do it. She goes, cause I was like, I don't know, it's kind of flooded with all of this. And she was her advice or solution is the reason that people are going to go after you is because you have a unique take on it because you're you and you're the only one that is you. And if people are attracted to you in any way, shape or form, you might just need to get your voice out there to go like it, which I think says a lot for you personally, Jeff Finley is.
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Zach Hendrix (23:54.926)
That's how this podcast came along is that I was like, I feel like we would work well together. There's something about you that I think has a unique perspective, a unique take. And I was like, let's go do this thing together. So, um, I would say, uh, I saw that you posted some stuff on some coaching and all of that. And I hope that that goes well. Cause I was like, Oh man, that would have been like a dream come true. So Zach, like 15 years ago or whatever, 10 years ago, I would have signed up in a heartbeat. Be like, wait, I can get.
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personal lessons, personal lessons from Jeff Finley. Done. I'm there. Whatever I need to do. This is how I'm going to make it in the industry. So I thought that that was really, really cool that you started putting that out there. I think that's, I think it's really sweet. Yeah. Well, thanks Zach. It's fun. It's funny because my head space I'm like continually thrown because I'll say something like that. And then I'm like, am I just, am I, am I desperate? Am I appearing desperate?
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I didn't, I didn't, I didn't get any responses to it. You know, I'm offering. So what Zach's referring to is in my last newsletter, I put an offer in there saying like, Hey, I'm kind of thinking this kind of feeling called to do this mentorship or coaching or whatever, getting back into it again. I don't really know if there's a demand for it, but I'm, if you, if you're reading this and you're energized by this idea, I'll do it for free. I'll do a session or two for you for free, you know, contact me and tell me what you want to do, you know, and we'll see if it works. And, but like, I didn't get any bites. So then I'm like, you know,
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Is it me? Is it me? Or is it like, you know, does nobody care? Do I not really communicate my value very much or do I even need to do that? Um, if it's not already obvious and present, like, am I forcing it? You know what I mean? Like because I'm feeling kind of like urgency to try to monetize and make money because my bills are stacking up and I, you know, I'm in a, I'm in a situation here. So I'm kind of grasping at straws and I'm not in this position of abundance where I'm like, you know,
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I don't need it at all. And that usually when you're in that state, you start getting it, you know, you start getting the demand is when you're already busy. So I don't know. I put that out there. Not really because I might get a bite. Sure. But it's more like I'm trying to communicate with like the outer reality with the universe saying like, okay, I'm available. I'm ready. I'm ready to take that next level. What is it that I need to do? You know, that was the thing, the whole reason I started my newsletter again, it's kind of like,
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Zach Hendrix (26:17.646)
All right. I need to put myself out there. I want to do it again in a way that's authentic and true. Um, and this is the way I know how, and it's really scary, but I'm going to just say who I am and put myself out there where I met today and just kind of see where it goes. And unfortunately you ended up reaching out and I was turned into this podcast and it's like, all right, all right, that's cool. I'm, I'm into that. I really like this and that's how I like the, the opportunities to come. It feels more like a synchronicity rather than something that you're forcing and forcing and forcing and.
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and hoping to get the approval and hoping to win. And you're in this contest where you're doing all this free labor, aspirational labor, spec work, trying to land something. You'll hear the stories of people say, oh, I did it for six months and it was horrible, but I finally got that job and I'm happy now. It's like, are you really like, I don't know. I just can't imagine myself doing that. But. Well, and I think that there's a little bit of both there, even in the way that you say it where, yes, I think a lot of times first step is putting it out in the universe as far as like, Hey, this is something that I want.
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Um, or something that I'm feeling called to, I'm not sure where it's going to go, um, or what it's going to be, but I have to at least take the first step to figure out what that, what that is to begin with her. I have to open up that door and walk through it to see what's on the other side is that if you're just sitting there, yeah, that's, that's it. But you know, it's like, it took me six months to realize what I wanted and I was doing all of these other things, but you kind of hope that I do this step and this step and this step. And it kind of.
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curves and weaves along the way. And then you're like, man, where I started and where I am now are totally different, but I needed to take that first step to get there is kind of what it feels like to me. And even in this podcast, hopefully everybody realizes that it's like, hopefully it gets a little bit better every, every single week. You know, that, that first step. So it was a little bit rough, at least for me, but, but no, and I think as people get to, to know you and know us in general,
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As far as whatever that journey is, you get to know yourself even more that it's like, huh, wonder why I'm not getting anything on this and why is that not there? And, you know, same for me is that I'm like, well, if I did that, how am I going to feel if I don't get anybody on this or, you know, it is weird being like, I'm a teacher or I'm a mentor seeking a student, right? It's weird. I don't, it's an odd thought process. I know, I know. And it's funny because, uh, two years ago, my, the maintenance guy at my department complex.
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Zach Hendrix (28:43.47)
was, was doing some work on my apartment one day. And, um, he noticed that I had music production software open and I've got to had a guitar sitting out there and my drums. He's like, do you make music? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, that's really cool. And he started telling me how he makes music. And, uh, he showed me a video of him playing on a playing piano on his phone. And the dude was like a savant, like incredibly gifted. Like he was, he w he went to a music, like a music store and just like someone took a video of him playing the piano in the music store.
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And it was like Beethoven, you know, that's what it sounded like. And I was like, wow, this guy's incredible. But he's just like this maintenance guy that you would never assume that he has that skill, you know, the way he carries himself. But anyway, he was all impressed with how I made music and, and I showed him some of my stuff and I said, I can't play any of these instruments as good as you can. I suck at that, but I make my music on the computer and I'm like, uh, I like to produce and I like to think about music theory and compose a range of songs.
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And he's like, that's like a foreign language to me, but maybe you could teach me. And I was like, Oh, I'd love to teach you. So there was an opportunity there and I like tried to follow up on it. And then it just never, never came out, never went anywhere. Like he, I think he got, he was shy or something and didn't feel comfortable. And like, you know, it didn't, so it didn't work out in the way I thought, but he did say weeks later that I inspired him to get back into music production and he's already like writing tracks for his new album. He hadn't picked up his guitar in years and he's like back at it. He bought some new plugins, you know? So he's like,
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learning and teaching himself. And he, he, he thanked me greatly for it. So it's like, well, okay, that's how the situation actually worked out. I don't know where things are going, but like, I happened to show up in his life at the right time where I inspired him to get back into music and, and, uh, and yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah, that was really cool. And, you know, he also told me like, Jeff, you could do better within this apartment. So, um, this place sucks. So.
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She's like, management here is terrible. Blah, blah, blah. It's awful. You need to get out of here. That's hilarious. So I did want to as we I want to shift gears here for a minute. And for our listeners is I had an idea today and I kind of sprung it on. Jeff is I was like, well, you're getting to know us as we go along and we get to go through this journey if we should be working. But instead of working on the podcast, I was like, I don't want to do that. Let's let's get to know one another a little bit more.
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Zach Hendrix (31:03.118)
And I was like, I thought it would be fun to kind of go through a bunch of questions and figure out because I've kind of wanted to ask along the way. And either the conversation hasn't allowed or we haven't gotten there. We've gotten off topic or something like that. So I thought it'd be fun for episode six to do. Who are these guys? Mainly it'll be who is Jim, but I'm sure some of my stuff will come up here because I did not tell you if I was going to do this. I just had an idea, but.
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I wrote out a bunch of questions here and I think some will be quick. Some will be long. And if the conversation goes that way, we'll just kind of go with the flow here. But number question, number one, speaking of music, what was your first concert? Uh, I believe it was the offspring. Offspring. Yeah. Oh, it was a great show. My first concert. It was a blossom music center and near Cleveland, near Akron, Ohio. And, um, yeah, the offspring and.
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And I think Bad Religion played and the Dickies, something like that. Yeah. How old were you? I think I was like 17 or something like that. It was, it was amazing. Yeah. The first concert I ever went to, uh, I probably saw live music before that, but I never really considered it a concert until you buy your tickets on Ticketmaster and you go to it. It's, you know, one of the artists I loved, you know, Offspring was a big inspiration for me when I was a kid. So yeah. Yeah. What about yours?
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Mine was Pink Floyd. Jeez, wow. I was 13 years old. And so that's kind of what ruined me for music, which it's so interesting now. It's starting to come back around, but I was like, I can't imagine. I was 13 years old. And the deal was, is that my parents were halfway smart. They were like, you're not going to Pink Floyd by yourself. Plus, I don't know if they'd let me in the door at 13 years old. But.
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My dad said, he goes, well, you're going to have to pay for my ticket if I'm going with you, even though he's a huge Pink Floyd fan himself. So now he's, he's making me pay his ticket. But so me and my buddy went and got a job at my uncle's bike shop, um, working on motorcycles and stuff for like a few days. And we didn't really do any work. It was more just him helping us out and be like, yeah, come on over. I'll give you kids some money. And so yeah, went and bought tickets, uh, Pink Floyd here in Denver at a mile high stadium.
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Zach Hendrix (33:31.374)
And that was quite the experience, but to have that be your first concert, that definitely ruined me. And I still remember it pretty vividly. That was a, that was a pretty amazing show. Pretty, pretty awesome show. So then I was like all about concerts from there on out, like trying to go to as many shows as I possibly could and, you know, ditching school to go to shows and all of that. So that was, that was a good one. Um,
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So what was, what was your favorite band in the nineties? I know we're both kind of a nineties kids and all of that, as far as, uh, you know, our coming of age. Well, my favorite band in the nineties. So I remember the first CDs I ever bought was the offspring for one ace of base was to base. Oh yeah. And, uh, the cranberries that the album was on zombie on it. And I think, so those were probably my favorite bands in the nineties when I was so
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I would have been from like eight years old to 18, um, in the nineties. What about you? The offspring and the cranberries. Oh yeah. You know, and I went to the, I went to the record store and bought the offspring, but I, but I was not looking for a smash that they're the big, their biggest album, you know, that everybody knew. I bought this other one that was like, this one looks cool. And it was their first album. I think it was called ignition. And I really listened to the hell out of that. I didn't realize it was their earlier album, but yeah.
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It had a bunch of songs I never heard before and it was a lot faster and cooler. Were you a big record store junkie? Like all that, like hanging out record stores, looking for new albums, new weird stuff. You know, I didn't really get to go to record stores because of where I lived. We lived far away from any sort of mall. So, or even a Best Buy or anything like that. So I didn't really have CDs too much. And a couple of my friends used to do the Columbia House record CD.
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CDs subscriptions. So they had like piles of CDs and I would lose this scam. I always said, no, I don't know. It was called it. The Columbia house scam. What do you do? You scammed them? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, I had no clue about that. We'd come up with the aliases because it was, it was the nineties and you know, this is when people are, you know, the height of people bouncing checks and stuff like that. But you get that little card and it was like, we'll send you the first 10 CDs for free. And then after that, it's this.
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Zach Hendrix (35:50.382)
So we'd start making up names like, you know, like stacks of cash and like so stacks of cash got like 10 CDs sent to the house and all of this. And then, you know, it was basically like our version of McLovin type of a thing from Superbad. But yeah, we just make up accounts and then they just keep sending them and you'd get your 10 CDs. And so you'd pick out those 10 and then, you know, you just like shut it off and whatever. And, you know, they try to bill you. But I'm like.
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Yeah. Good luck trying to collect from stacks of cash. Like, uh, you've got no authority to, uh, collect this. So yeah, we were dumb kids trying to scam Columbia house. Yeah, that's crazy. No. So my friends, they had those stacks of CDs that we get from Columbia house and you know, Pantera, Green Day, uh, rage against the machine. These, these guys, um, but before that, before I bought CDs, of course I had tapes and some of my favorite ones were, um, Alanis Morissette, but she was a huge inspiration for me, Jagged Little Pill and uh,
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with the Woodstock 94 tape, you know, uh, I got a new insane clown posse towards the late nineties. Um, me and my friends were into that. Um, I'm sorry. I know, I know, no, no. But the funny thing is with, with ICP, it's like, once I started listening to them, I like stopped listening to any other kind of music. It's weird how it takes, it takes over your entire music taste. You just like, you just become, is it cult? I guess you have to juggle us and juggle. Yeah.
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Yes, yes. And I did go to an ICP show with my friends and painted my face. That was an experience. Sweet. How was that? Got drenched, covered in Fago. Yeah, the people watching at that show would be unbelievable. I want to go just for that. I have no problem with the juggalos and juggalettes. I want to see what their shows are like. Because that is some of the most hardcore fans. Like you think about...
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dedicated fans, you had the grateful debt out there and you know, now the John Mayer's touring with them and all that, but like fish hardcore followers, ICP hardcore followers. Like they, I would love to see some documentary on like the most dedicated hardcore fans and ICP has got to be up there. Like those people. Yeah. Have you seen the documentary called American Juggalo? No, that's right. There is one out there on them. I do need to watch that. I've been wanting to watch that. That's good.
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Zach Hendrix (38:06.03)
It's very good. And they would have this, uh, annual gathering of the juggalos and it was, you know, big giant fest every year where people would camp out and stuff. I never went to it, but they, it used to take place in Northeast Ohio at these like ledges. These, you know, kind of this like natural park with a bunch of cliffs and a big quarry, you know? And so it used to take place there. So it was like so close. It's so funny, you know, small town, Ohio. Makes sense. That's one of the best shows I've ever been to.
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for the performance, but the experience was really difficult because you're just in a sea of bodies, sweaty bodies covered in a stinky fego and you can't even move. You're just like, this is terrible. When, when this be over, but like the performance was outstanding. What a circus. That's, that's so great. That reminds me of a wishful somewhat will come up in another question here, but I went to a show. There was a, um, a somewhat Christian inspired ska band here in Denver.
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And I was, I was born and raised Catholic and went to youth group and all that and had friends and we had a fairly progressive youth minister come and for us for a little bit. And we all got along with him. I think it was like the youngest one appointed in the region or in the States or something like that. So I was like a junior senior in high school and he was only like maybe five years older than us. So we were like really close in age and into similar things and all of that.
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And we all remember like, it was so crazy. He was a smoker and like, can you believe he's a smoker? So crazy. He's seen a priest outside smoking and like still human being. Um, but we thought that it was funny, but we went to this, uh, ska band with him and all of that. And, um, you would not guess that they're a Christian ska band. Like I said, that's not who they are, but I know that they kind of have like some Christian roots or whatever. What was their name? Do you remember their name? Five iron frenzy. Okay. I've heard of them. Yeah.
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Okay, yeah, so I didn't know they were a Christian band. Yeah, well, that's the thing. They aren't, but I know that they have some Christian roots. And I could totally be making up. If I've earned frenzy, if you're listening, I'm sorry. But that's how I remember explained to me, because I didn't know about them before this youth group. And so we go out to the show and they've got like a little bit mosh pit going on in the middle and all that. And we're there with our youth minister.
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Zach Hendrix (40:33.838)
And there's me and this other dude named Socrates, really big, powerful dude. And I'm kind of like a skinnier guy in Socrates. You know, the father Rocco is standing there and all of this and Socrates just goes up and we're like, let's get him in. We shove him in the mosh pit, getting knocked around. And some guys going around like this and just socks him in the face. Oh no. It breaks his glasses. Oh God. And he comes out and he's, don't guys, don't. Stop.
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Stop pushing me in the wash pit, guys, stop. No. Dude, this guy just got socked in the face. It felt so bad. It's like glasses are all broken. That's terrible. And all this. He's getting pushed around in the wash pit. He's still got his collar on and everything. Everybody's like going after him and all this. But, you know, he took it in pretty good stride. He's like, don't, don't, guys. Just like somebody like poking in the side. That's kind of was his reaction. Like, don't, stop poking me. But, yeah, that was a fun concert just for that, too. Have our youth minister get socked.
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Um, so, um, that, as I move around here, did you grow up going to church? What was religion like for you growing up? Oh, wow. Okay. So my mom's side of the family is very, very, very Christian evangelical. Like not my mom, particularly she's, she's very Christian, but like her family was like Jesus pushers constantly talking about Jesus at family gatherings.
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Um, you get a birthday card in the mail, there's your card, but there's another letter telling you about Jesus, you know? They were huge Ohio state Buckeyes fans. So when they would send us like Buckeye paraphernalia, but then there'd be all these letters about Jesus, you know? And so my experience growing up was like, we would go to church sometimes we went to this, um, thing called Awana. I'm not sure if people, people might be familiar with it as like a Christian thing for kids, like summer camp. And you go to it.
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And they have like, uh, games and recreation and events and contests and kind of like boy scouts. You know, you had, you had a uniform and if you would like learn your Bible verses, you get patches and badges and stuff. Um, and this van would come and pick up me and my siblings, you know, like once a week and we would go to Oana. And it was fun to go to this thing. I didn't really know anything about religion, although I was in this environment and I believed in Jesus and they told me stories of like Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark. And I learned all about that stuff. And.
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Zach Hendrix (43:00.91)
My uncle on my mom's side was a preacher at his church and it was like, um, he had gone through some tough times in his life where, and then he like changed his life around and became a Christian evangelical Southern Baptist preacher, kind of fire and brimstone. You know, one of those is going to like scare you by talking about hell and you know, you better repent for your sins. So that's the language that I heard growing up was this like, there's such a thing called hell. And if you don't believe in God, you're going to go there. And if you are bad, you're going to go there and you must listen to your parents.
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Otherwise you're going to look bad in God's eyes. And so I kind of developed this habit of praying every night and almost like in a compulsive way. And I think it developed into like OCD where I would pray and if I didn't pray, I would feel like bad stuff is going to happen because I forgot. Um, Catholic guilt along with, uh, with, with all this. Great. Yeah. Yeah, I know. And then, so I developed a very strong feelings with about sex before marriage. Like I was a devout virgin when I was in high school.
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I was very proud to be Christian. I had a friend of mine who was a, um, who was like a very, very, very strong Christian. He was like really cool. I thought he was like so cool. Cause he, he was like an independent kind of a think for himself kind of guy. Like he was so proudly Christian. He would bring his Bible and put it on his desk at school and people made fun of him for it. But he felt like, so like, I don't care what you think, you know, and he listened to all of these awesome metal bands, like living sacrifice and, um,
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Uh, a few other ones that they were Christian, but they were like brutal, you know? And I was like, Holy shit. This guy listens to amazing music. That's like heavy as hell, but they're Christian. I'm like, I didn't know Christians made that kind of music and like bands like POD. If you remember them. So I kind of like, he inspired me. So I was like a very, very devout Christian kid. I was well -behaved, very responsible. I was looking for Christian girls as a girlfriend. I was waiting for, waiting for marriage. Um, all of that stuff. Needless to say.
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A lot of that was brainwashing and fucking discipline and very difficult to unpack that later in life. A lot of that kind of screwed me up and developed difficult OCD patterns and weird paranoia, fear, guilt, shame, lots of that stuff came with it. But yeah, that was my background in religion. Yeah. Well, and you kind of answered the second part of that was I was going to say, is it still have an influence on you today? And I would say the answer is yes.
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Zach Hendrix (45:27.854)
I think for all of us, like, you know, there's the scars that religion left behind. And I think as I've gotten older, the interesting thing is, is that, you know, the the 20s were definitely the 20s, not the 1920s or 2020s when I was in my 20s. Or definitely my rebellious period specifically against religion and all of that and exposing, you know, the farce behind all of that. And, you know, as I got older,
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I started to see some of, you know, I can accept some of the positives that I was like, look, I can, I just don't want to be mad all the time. Like I'm not here to be upset all the time and be like, this is what's pissing me off. But when you're in your twenties, that's like everything like let's band together and fuck everybody. And, you know, I'm like, that's I'm too old for that crap now. I was like, there are some positives behind how I was raised and how I was.
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put out there and I've got a different opinion on things, but I was like, yeah, the scars are still going to be there in a lot of different ways. We're like, good Lord, some of the stuff that these people said and did and were forced to do. And, you know, I'm like convincing myself. I'm like, man, I'm so good at this. I'm such a good little Catholic boy and all of this. Like I was an altar server and all of this and trying to be involved in every way that I possibly could and doing all of these things. And I was like, I guess I'm doing really good at this, but.
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Then when you don't see the payoff, you're like, I feel like I'm devoting my life to this. It's not coming around my way. That crack then becomes, you're like, it's not really a crack. This whole thing has crumbled to the ground. It ruins this facade of what I thought religion was going to be or what I'm told that it is, is not true at all. That was kind of fascinating.
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Yeah, well, I'll tell you when I when I felt like I left my religion was I was at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and I was walking to school every day I had to walk across the Smith Street Bridge from Mount Washington back to the Art Institute and I was walking home one day and Was stopped by a couple of guys who were with the Bible in their hand and they're like, hey, do you do you? Believe in Jesus is Jesus in your heart and I was like like I'd never really been stopped before on the street I mean I had been
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Zach Hendrix (47:48.206)
Mildly mugged at a concert a new metal concert in Cleveland I was I was a extorted for some cash my little bit of cash in my wallet You know nice by some very influential people on the street who I was afraid of Album by the way mild mugging mild mildly mugged not violent not violently, but just you know pressured Anyway, and so but these guys so I would get approached on the street by these two Christian
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missionaries or whatever, and they're telling me, asking me about Jesus. And I'm like entertaining them as if, if this is a totally legitimate interaction, but they start asking me if, you know, when I told them that, yes, I do believe in Jesus, it wasn't good enough for them. So they're like, well, do you do this? Is he this? Is he that? And I said, well, I don't know. They were like basically questioning me. And I was feeling really intimidated. Like this isn't, doesn't feel right. This feels really gross. And they're like, oh, you must go to that church upon this, this part of town. I said, no, I just moved here. I go to school here. I don't know anything about Pittsburgh.
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But it was this pressure that they would put on you. And that just gave me a bad taste in my mouth. And I think I'd experienced it a little bit before. And from my family, it's like pressure to be a better Christian than you are. It's just like, you're not doing a good enough job. I was like, fuck this shit. I was done at that point. I said, I'm tired of people pushing Jesus on me. I'm like throwing it all off. And I angrily threw it all off and just, you know, what I think has always been a big issue that I have with it.
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to begin with is, you know, and I've talked to a friend about this quite a bit is, you know, everybody wants you to want to like their version of Jesus and all of that. And it's so it just became so odd and apparent to me that it was like, it's weird that I have to like yours, but you fail to see that if I like mine, that that's wrong, that everybody could like their own, like what, you know,
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That you have to take it upon yourself. You're so worried about my soul that if I don't do it your way, but you can't see the fallibility of like you are a human being and like you can't even follow your own doctrine of like man, you know, the fallibility of man. It's like, don't you realize that you're probably wrong or it could be wrong. And the fact that you can't admit it, that's the problem. Hey, let me like it my way.
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Zach Hendrix (50:07.662)
And you like it your way and let's celebrate that be like, oh, that's cool. You know, you think that, oh, I think this, oh, I like this piece. Oh, I like this piece. And, you know, put all that together is that that does not even really exist even today that much, which I find crazy is so interesting. What happens when we die?
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Well, let me tell you, no, what do you, I don't know exactly. Have you figured it out? Well, I mean, that's something I've looked into quite a bit. I have been fascinated by near death experiences and like psychedelic trip reports and the mysticism of, you know, spirituality versus our physical existence here and what does happen after we die. And also with my experience with out of body and astral projection, um, I,
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Know that I, my consciousness exists outside of this physical body. So because I've had that experience, it's given me a fresh perspective on understanding the sort of the larger nature of our world as far as physical, mental and spiritual beyond that. So hearing people from near death experiences, their consciousness still exists. It's almost like waking up from a dream, like how you wake up from like a really convincing dream in the morning. You're like, Oh, I'm here. This is who I am. This is who I, how I exist now.
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This feels, this feels like me. I, I, I'm real, you know, so imagine like you die, your physical body is gone, but your awareness is still there. And you're like, Oh, I just woke up from a dream. This is who I am. This is real. And then you start to like, remember your life, um, that you just lived and start thinking about it. And, um, you're often greeted with this like profound sense of love, at least from a lot of these near death experience reports, they talk about, um,
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Seeing the white light or seeing loved ones that had passed, seeing, uh, ascended masters or folks like Jesus show up or different people that they believed in. Maybe if they were grew up Islam, they'll see religious spiritual figures from their belief system. And when I took, uh, the five day workshop at the Monroe Institute, which is a center for consciousness studies, I did this in 2015. I took a week long workshop on out of body travel and William Buhlmann was the teacher. He's wrote, written several books. One of them is called the secret of the soul.
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Zach Hendrix (52:24.27)
The other one's called Adventures in the Afterlife. So he's, he's very big on afterlife studies. And I think his wife, um, also is like a death doula, like who consciously like helps people cross over like on their deathbed and helps them kind of affirm what it is that they want to experience as they're dying. So they don't, they aren't met with any surprises or something like that. So it's like, you know, having a conscious death experience as they transition into, into the afterlife. And, and William Buhlman talks about there being different realms like heaven, for example, exists.
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But it's not the only experience in an afterlife. It's an astral realm that if that's your belief system, you're likely to go revisit that if that's what you really strongly believe. Like a person who is an Aborigine from Australia is not going to go to the Christian heaven when they die. They're not going to experience that. They're going to experience their belief system. And so like Sahara and all of that, you know, absolutely. Yeah.
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Yeah. So I did believe life goes on after this life. And, you know, there's a lot that you can talk about there being like reincarnation cycles and how it is that we enter and become a body in this physical world or who these ascended masters are, these angels and people that we experience or lost loved ones. If you've seen the movie Soul by Pixar, they kind of get into what it's like in the afterlife as like this sort of weird conveyor belt system where like there are souls being processed on like an industrial level.
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And like, they're trying to get people in bodies so they can go have an earth experience. There's also a movie called, um, life after life or something like that. I forget, I forget what it's called, but it's an older movie. And they talk about like the sort of bureaucratic nature of the afterlife. Like it's a comedy, but you die and you're like, Oh, here I am. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like you die and then you're just like, okay, get in line, buddy. You're like, you know, you're going to meet them, going to meet the maker. You're doing your life review. You're like, Oh my gosh, look at this. And it's all like the system by these like higher beings that are just like.
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turning through souls that they're as they're in like a cattle farm, they're just like industrially processing souls to get them in the bodies, come back out, get them into bodies, come back out, write down their scripts or, you know, give them life scripts and stuff. So I've got a lot of interesting thoughts about the afterlife. Of course, I don't know exactly what happens, but I feel pretty confident that, that like my experience with out of body travel and meditation and all this stuff, it's like helped helped me as it will become in handy when I do crossover. Um, what that experience will be like, I don't really know.
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Zach Hendrix (54:44.11)
No, I love that. I was going to say for me, I've always, you know, I've, I've taken the mindset of it's a difficult question to answer, but not having a hopeful answer feels really bad. So I was like, it's just doesn't feel right. I was like, I don't know what it is, but I feel like that there's something there that there to your point, consciousness will carry on.
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Um, as we go forward, it just, it seems to make more sense to me that way as well. I don't have any evidence for one way or another, but that just feels more right. Um, or a parent for me, I have a lot less experience or evidence than you do. Um, which, which all of those, which we're going to spend an episode on that at some point. What do you think you're best at?
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Uhhhh...
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Zach Hendrix (55:44.942)
That's a hard question to answer. I mean, as far as like talent wise or um, however you interpret it. I feel like.
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Zach Hendrix (55:58.83)
I suppose the best thing, the same, one answer I can give is to love. I just feel like that's what everything, the easiest thing that it can come down to as after, you know, I could be skilled or talented in any sorts of things. I can be disabled. I'm good at talking and listening and conversing and being present. And I, cause I'm a Gemini and I just feel like naturally I have this like interest in communication and talking and being.
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And following my curiosity, but underneath that is like a love and a curiosity. And I think I'm really good at, you know, trying to be empathetic and understanding, putting myself in somebody else's shoes and just wondering what it is that their consciousness is like, like what must it be like to be them? And I mean, it's not anything that you can really demonstrate, but I feel like in any moment I can return to love and I can do that. And that's really the default, the foundation. That's kind of silly. That's a pretty phenomenal answer.
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I like that quite a bit. You know, I think somebody asked me that recently and it caught me so off guard that I was like, wow, this is really weird. I've had 42 years to prepare for this answer and I don't know if I know the answer. Like that's a really, it was kind of, it just struck me as very odd. Like, wait, I don't know what I'm good at, but at the same time, obviously I do.
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The best that I came up with, which I like your answer a lot better. I'm just going to steal that and claim it as my own going forward. When you're asked in the job interview next time, you can give them that. What are you good at? Good at loving. Yeah, that's a good buddy. No, the best that I came up with was the ability to wonder. I wonder about things. I think I'm pretty good at that.
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I'm still a work in progress as a dad and a husband, but I can wonder about what would make me better. Did you go on trips as a kid? And if so, to where? Do you guys take like family trips? Go anywhere fun? No, not really. I mean, occasionally we... No, no, no, no. We couldn't afford it. So the closest thing we would do is maybe go to the lake nearby or something and spend the day there.
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Zach Hendrix (58:16.078)
No, I don't remember us going on any trips at all. Now I did go like my mother's sister, my aunt, she picked us up and took us down to Tennessee where she lived. So that was like the longest, most out of the state thing that we had ever done. And we did go to like Opryland and Nashville, Tennessee. So it wasn't my own immediate family that offered us those trips, but I did get the opportunity to go some places. And the first time I ever traveled on my own in a plane was when I was like 17.
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And I flew to Chicago to participate in the all American competition, all American crew competition for McDonald's. Oh, that's a McDonald's job paid off. Look at that. McDonald's job paid off. I got, I went to the finals in Chicago and represented my region in the fried products category. And so that was the first time I was on a plane. Wow. I experienced a big city. Um, yeah, that's pretty cool that they actually did that though. So wait, the competition was who made the best fries? Is that like,
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You were that good at making fries that you got to go compete nationally. So, yeah, I mean, so my small little store in Mannaway, Ohio, they had allowed, allowed the crew to participate in the all American competition. Who wants to sign up? I'm like, all right, I'll do it. And so then they assign you a station, your local store says like, okay, you are going to be on everyone's got a station, whether you're on cooking meat or you're cooking fried chicken, or you're on the French fry machine, or you're doing customer service. Basically had your station and then.
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In order to be good at it, you had to like know all the answers to all of the food safety questions. So they had the little book and they would quiz you and you have to know all the answers. And of course you have to perform your job perfectly, um, according to their standards. And then you had to be a really good team player, like really cheerful and good customer service, you know, really good team player. So you get all these categories to be judged by. And then I won the local stores competition and then I won like the, the, the city. And then I'm like, I kept winning and then, and then.
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So my, my supervisor had to like drive me to these like competitions and this, there was another guy that at my store that also was participating too. So it wasn't just me, but we did the regionals, the state and all that. And I ended up winning and I was like, well, I guess I'm going to the finals. So I had a plane ticket and then I got to go there and I didn't win. I don't know what place I got probably like second, third place. I don't know, but, um, I represented the chicken nugget category. That is so great.
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Zach Hendrix (01:00:37.902)
Speaking of things to throw on your resume, you know, a state chicken nugget champion. That's, that is so great. And when you put it that way, it's hilarious. And I got to meet Ronald McDonald at the, at the rock and roll McDonald's in Chicago. And, but I also got to meet R Kelly. Now, how did R Kelly get involved in the chicken nugget competition? He was, must've been paid by these people who put on the, the McDonald's competition.
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But he had that song, I believe I could fly and he's standing up. We're standing on the parking lot. He's surrounded by a bunch of teenagers in McDonald's uniforms, putting their all hands up on him like this. And we're all like, I believe I can fly. We're singing it in the parking lot at the rock and roll McDonald's. This was before R Kelly did what he did. Um, got in trouble for all of his sexual assault and stuff. But then I got, I got a signed picture of him, you know, and everything like that. But that's something I can put on the resume.
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Yeah, that is phenomenal. Man, what an experience. R. Kelly, Chicken Nuggets, Chicago, first plane trip as well. Yeah, that was American flag McDonald's uniform with like stars and stripes. I mean, it was pretty bad ass. We had videotape of it, you know, got on the news. It was kind of a big deal. And you're like a local celebrity there. You know, Jeff finally made it out. He's broken out of this small town.
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He's going to the big show in Chicago. That is so great. They put my name up on the McDonald's arches when I came back and went to work the next day. It was like, it was like, congrats, Jeff. Best of the best. It's like they were really celebrating it. You know, it's like small town from Manoway. He's made it. That is so awesome. Ben, you did have a good relationship with McDonald's. Good for you. All right. What was your, what is your worst injury that you've ever had?
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a broken bone or cushion. I've never broken a bone, never had a concussion. I stayed relatively safe. No stitches? No stitches. Oh, I did bust a tooth. I did break a tooth. Yeah, I was on a swing set when I was like in third grade and the like this hanging bar was just like I came off it and smashed right in the mouth. And I'm like, I felt this like
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Zach Hendrix (01:02:57.102)
tooth crumbling out and I was like, Oh my God, I started crying and I went to my mom. That was the first time I went to the dentist and they fixed the tooth and it's still the fake part that they put on there is still there. Oh man. Hardcore chip tooth. That's hardcore chip tooth. I went to school the next day and I was like, I shit my tooth guys. Like, you know, they think you're all cool. Man, I can't think of any other injury. Yeah. What about you?
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I've had too many and too many weird ones. I have three weird ones, but my favorite one to say is I broke both my heel bones during an air guitar competition. Oh my God. That was pretty good. It's up on YouTube as well. If anybody wants to go see it. Oh shit, really? I gotta see them. My stage, it's very anticlimactic because there was so much adrenaline going through my body that I couldn't feel it at the time. So I remember I...
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I was living in Ohio at the time and I saw this documentary about air guitar, of all things, on like VH1 or something. And then I found out that there's a world competition in Finland. And I was like, man, I was watching this and this guy goes in to this crappy bar, does this air guitar routine, wins the competition and then gets a trip to Finland. I'm like, I want a free trip to Finland. I was like, I'm going to go play, I'm going to go do some air guitar.
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Well, because of that documentary, it kind of like blew up in the States a little bit. And so I come out here and they've got all of these rules about it where you have to have like a one minute routine. So you have to pick a song. It can only be one minute long. And then they'll play it all that. And so I'm trying to pick my song and I'm getting real into it that I'm like. Put a whole lot of thought into it, came up with a whole bit of routine, staged it all, practiced it all.
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and all this. And part of the routine was at the end, I was going to go and stage dive into the crowd and, you know, have them carry me around. I was like, nobody's going to do that. Nobody's going to think about that. And I was like, I'm going to get down there with my people and all this. And, you know, that's what a guitar god would do. And that's the whole deal is that you've got to be a guitar god. Yes. And kind of a parody of a guitar god. So we get out there and, you know, we go down to the theater and.
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Zach Hendrix (01:05:15.63)
And so this one's actually a theater, not just like some crappy bar. I'm like, man, I go to concerts here. This is crazy. They're going to sell this place out. It was packed with people. So we go out there and they're giving us the prep and hey, do this, do this. And they go, do not stage dive. Whatever you think is going to happen, the people will not catch you. If you think that they're going to catch you, they will not catch you. Do not stage dive.
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So there because the stage is about maybe five and a half feet off the ground From where everybody is so there's like a little pit underneath the stage like like you would have most of time So they're like don't don't do it. I'm like, that's like my big finale is this stage dive and So I was like, alright, I'm gonna I'm gonna do this differently I'm just gonna get everybody out of the way and then I'll jump down there and then I'll be down with my people and you know They can like put their hands. I mean like yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
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Well, I wasn't wearing any shoes. And the thing that I was most worried about, so I'm five and a half feet up off the air or up off the ground. I'm not wearing any shoes, not doing any of that. And the thing I'm most worried about is I'm like, this is not just an easy like jump down. I need like I'm not just going to hop down. I have to look cool. So I took like kind of like a running start and did a big whee right in the middle as I'm going up. So I'm like, I have to look sweet.
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Um, as I'm doing it. So I do a big like head off the air guitar, um, as I go down, but I'm like, you've got to stick the landing and I'm like, you got to carry, struck this thing. You got to stick that landing. I don't care what else. So I just shove my feet out and it's concrete down there. So bam, snap my heel bones and I get back up on stage. I can't feel it at all. So I get back up on stage like, Hey, give it up here's and my stage name was Z licious.
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Nice. So so they're like, give it up for Zlicious. I'm like, yeah, go. As soon as I get off stage, I'm like, man, it's hurting to walk a little bit. And then they have a green room behind the stage and you have to go down the stairs. And by the end, I'm ripping the rail with both arms like this. Like, oh, oh, like something is broke. Something is wrong. I can't walk. And sure enough, I broke both my heel bones. The worst part is, is that I made it to the final round.
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Zach Hendrix (01:07:37.198)
And so I have to have, I was like, I'm still going out there. I was like, I can't walk, but I'll still go out there. And I was like, Hey, can two of you guys help me out there? And the guy goes, Hey, you know, sometimes things go wrong. People got hurt. Hey, you know, he's still going to come out, but you know, sorry, the guy's a little injured. I don't think the crowd really understood that. Like, is he, or is he not like, this is a weird thing. We're in air guitar competition anyway. And everybody is having this weird sticker bit. Like this a bit like.
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pretending to be hurt. And so I helped me out. And I'm sitting on a stool, trying to play air guitar. I'm like, like, it's some, some acoustic session, like unplug or something. And I'm sitting on a stool and everybody's like, I mean, boom, well, this sucks. Like you're just sitting there. So I kicked the stool away. And I stand up and I'm like, Hey, my feet don't hurt anymore. This is sweet.
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I go running across the stage, running across, I'm going, and then I jump off the stage again. I was like, I got to give the people what they want. Jumped off the stage again. And, uh, dubbist dubbist thing that I ever did. So that was, that was a pretty bad injury, but I've also fallen off of a golf club and broken my leg. I'm falling off of a golf club. What does that mean? Two people were holding a golf club and they were launching kids like, so like you're holding each end and then one kid would sit down.
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Well, I kind of slipped because it's a golf club and like do a backflip and bam and just fall weird and break my leg. Um, so did that one. And then I've, uh, as everybody can enjoy this sultry raspy voice that I have, I tore my vocal cords when I was like 20 years old. So now I have like this constant raspy voice from coughing too hard. Oh, coughed. Not even anything cool. Not even anything cool, but tore my vocal cords. Um,
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All right. We'll get a couple more of these in and we'll wrap it up. What's your favorite food? I have to say tacos or burritos. Really? Even in Ohio? I was going to say, yeah, well, I lived in Ohio. The, uh, the Mexican food out there that I could find was poor at best. Yeah. Um, it was, uh, but there was one or two really good places. I found a pretty good place in Akron, but living in Colorado, we have pretty good Tex -Mex.
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Zach Hendrix (01:09:59.598)
style Mexican food out here. And so the tacos, the burritos, the green chili is, uh, is pretty on point out here. So it was hard to go to Ohio when I lived out there. I missed my Mexican food. I know, I know. I, I lived in Austin for a year and they had great tacos. The first time I ever had breakfast tacos and they would serve it up like coffee shops. So I would just get some breakfast tacos with my, you know, cold brew. Excellent. You know, so now I just have, I've got like breakfast tacos in the morning. Well, it's a breakfast burrito, but.
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But yeah, I don't really eat them as frequently as I used to, but they're still, I would still say they're my favorite food. Yeah. That's, I was going to say living without that made it my favorite food. Like when I went to Ohio and I couldn't get that again, I was, that's what I was missing the most. That was, I wouldn't call it like, Oh, that food makes me think of home, but it did make me think of Colorado. Like my mom's cooking always makes me think of home. But, um, yeah. Yeah. Um, what's something that you want to learn or get better at? Hmm.
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Hmm.
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Gosh, that's a good question. There's a couple of things on my recently, like I feel like I want to get learned. I want to learn and get better at like reality creation or reality co -creation, um, manifesting or this like conscious experience of, uh, of like understanding my true infinite nature as a creator. I know that is like big and esoteric, right? Like, but when I compare that to other things I want to learn, like I want to learn the next thing in my music production journey.
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you know, music theory, things like that, new plugins. Um, okay, that's there. I want to learn how to update. I want to update my website. So I need to like learn how to use some modern web tools. Like that's kind of exciting, but it's still like on the computer stuff like that. But the stuff that really gets me excited is more about like life's biggest questions and like, you know, getting better at, at that. Um, I don't know that. Does that make any sense? That makes makes a ton of slides.
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Zach Hendrix (01:11:59.822)
I mean, it's yeah, how can I get better? How can I figure these things out that I wonder about? Like I said, my ability to wonder I'm like, what's happening here? What's happening there? It makes makes perfect sense. Yeah, I want to get better at being here on earth now, you know, like I've astrally projected out of this world, so to speak. Um, and I've realized that I am a cosmic being of infinite nature. Okay. A lot of people are looking to even experience that. And I'm fortunate enough to say that I've got a glimpse and I.
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spent the last 10 years pursuing, um, spirituality and mysticism as a big part of my life of what really motivates me and what matters and, and understanding the truth. And so I feel like I've gotten to a point where I'm like, you go so far with that, that earth life just seems like really, really hard and pointless and difficult. And you don't really know exactly what the point of it all is. So I would kind of like want to experience more falling in love with being here on earth, you know, while I'm here, I don't want to leave. So I want to understand more about this earth planet.
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Knowing what I know about my spiritual essence that I've experienced, you know, like waking up to the game, to the illusion and playing in the illusion a little bit more with more fun and in more enjoyment rather than dread, fear, survival instinct. You know, I want to bring some of that, bring some of my true self, my essence into this world and in an enjoyable way that doesn't feel like it's just constant processing of trauma and fear and survival. And I don't, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if I'm ever going to get there, but.
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I would say that's pretty much the same for me, just kind of geared in a slight, slightly different way is learning how to be, you know, a better father and husband so that my kids and wife are living without fear, shame, and have confidence to be who they are and to seek who they are and know how to do that appropriately. So yeah, I love that answer. And on that note, we'll make our last question an easy one, but I think this is the most telling of all of them. What was your first car?
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My first car was, first car that I bought was a 1988 Mazda 626. Oh wow. It was sky blue. My dad worked at an auto mechanic shop and they lent me a car for, I think it was a thousand or $1 ,500 and I got to pay a hundred dollars a month, you know, to my dad's boss who let me have this car. So that was my first car. It was a pretty decent little beater. Yeah. I take that for a first car for sure.
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Zach Hendrix (01:14:26.158)
My first car was a 1988 Honda Prelude. That was yellow. The only unfortunate part about it is that it had teddy bear rims on it. I bought it off of this guy who bought the car for his nanny and they put teddy bear rims on it and sold it to me and I was too stupid and dumb to even think. He told me that they were hubcaps. They were not hubcaps. They were wheels.
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And so I could not pop them off because he's like, I just pop off the teddy bears and you're good. Could not pop them off. What does that mean? Teddy bear rims? So do they look like an actual teddy bear or is it like a figure of speech? Yeah, no, it was teddy bears that spinning around on the outside of the car. Like so instead of spokes or something like that, it was a teddy bear head and arms and legs that were connected to the outside of the wheel. And I went to go look them up because I was like, what the hell did they even find these?
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The only place I could find them online at the time. Now granted, this was in the infancy of the internet, but, um, was on a website called racer chicks .com. And I was like, great. You have rims from racer chicks .com. So I tried to tell everybody that they were grateful dead bears. I was like, no, it's grateful dead bears, man. So I hated stopping at a stoplight because people would walk, look over and they could see the teddy bears on that. And I was just wanting my car to be moving.
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So that you could tell that I teddy bear rims. So did you ever get into like pimping out your ride, like putting neon lights on it or. Now. Creating your sound system or any of that. I did love that show. I always wanted to do that. I just never had the money to do it. Like that was always my dream was back. I got it. I did have a pretty sweet Kenwood taped CD deck that was, that was awesome. That was about the best that I got. And then when that got stolen, I was like, that's screwed this up. I don't give a crap.
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That of course that happens because I had it in dash mp3 player and it was stolen like somebody smashed my freaking window Right outside of bills that go media right in that driveway. Oh, that's that you went to so I parked out there and I had at this point I had a Mazda, but it was not the original Mazda. I had it was the second car. It was a emerald green Mazda I don't even know the name of it. Honestly, but I had these yellow windshield wipers these yellow colored we are hubcaps and
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Zach Hendrix (01:16:47.822)
So like Bill teased me about how like quirky my car looked, but I thought it was cool. You know, this yellow and green and, and I had this in dash CD player and their MP3 player. And then of course some guy from the neighborhood smashed the window, took it right out. And, uh, yeah. So of course MP3 players are just made to be stolen. God damn it. They always can keep them exactly. I was going to say, yeah. Jacked, jacked my stereo. I remember it was weird too, because when it got stolen.
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And the only thing that I can think of was this, but when I went back, they also pulled up the back seat, like the, they ripped off like part of the back seat. And I was like, Hey, the hell did they do that? And I remember I would tell people that over the years. And then somebody finally gave me an answer and I was like, Oh, that's probably it. Cause he goes, they were looking for drugs. And I was like, Oh, cause I was like, I was wondering why they didn't steal like the subwoofer in the trunk or like the amp or anything like that.
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But they didn't hold the alarm like so they popped the hood pulled the alarm Grab my CDs grab my CD player and ripped up like part of the backseat and he was like, yeah They were looking for drugs and I was like, oh I guess I look like I I have a car that a drug dealer would have or something because it was this little tricked out Honda Civic But I didn't do any of it I bought it that way and it had like the body kit on it But you know, I didn't have the money to paint it and neither did the other guy. So I bought this
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It's a Honda Civic with an unpainted front, you know, rim on it, a screwed on like a spoiler in the back, you know, in super dark tinted windows that I can't see out of the stupid thing at night and got in a car accident. Cause I couldn't see anything. And, uh, yeah. So I guess that was a car that might have drugs in it. So yeah. Yeah. I had, I had some friends that, that really went above and beyond with pimping out their ride. You know, they had amazing sound system and subs in there that would rattle the windows and the doors of their like.
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You know, 1989 Ford Bronco, it's just like, you know, it's a piece of crap car, but there's like a hell of a cool system in it. Now I, the only thing I try to do, I would buy the cheap windshield wipers or something like that, or custom decals or stickers. I got like the little neon glow thing around your license plate. Oh, sweet. So I put that on there and I'm driving around and of course I get pulled over and ticketed the first time I go out there with it. So that was the last of that. Why are you ticketed for neon white around your license plate?
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Zach Hendrix (01:19:11.374)
You're not allowed to have this extra light around your license plate. I don't know. Maybe the cop was just like, this would be an easy one for me. Let me just pull this kid over. I was going to say, I would figure it would be encouraged so that you can see the license plate easier. Like, Hey, we're putting a light on it so that you can see it even more. Like I knew friends that got pulled over for tinted windows. Um, that's a, that's a new one. Um,
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Well, I know we're going a little bit long here, so I do want to wrap it up. So we'll try to make this one quick. I do want to do, I know I said last question, but last one, just so we can kind of bring it full circle. Last question is what should you be working on right now? Instead of doing this podcast? Um, well, I should be working on is, is getting these podcasts posted. So the people that are listening, so you should be working on.
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No, but I've got, we've got a couple of people that are totally, they're listening. So they're eerily awaiting the next episode. So I want to make sure to get that out. But other than that, I need to be getting the rest of my box and milk albums posted. I think I've got six more to go. I've got a remaster them, make sure all the audio levels sound cohesive, that all these songs that were exported out of various different times at different volume levels all sound like they're on the same record. So I got to make sure I'm doing that correctly and posting that that's, that's something that's going to really satisfy me when that gets done. Um,
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And writing my next newsletter. That's my work. I'm actually doing some work. I mean, none of it's paying, but I mean, I don't know what else can I do? What do I pay for our work? Yeah, no, I'm with you. I was like, I got a lot of work to do on the episodes. I gotta go apply for more jobs. Got to go work on this. Keep working on the resume, getting prepped for all of that. And then, um, hockey season finished for my boys.
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Football is coming up, so I got to get a few things started for spring football as well. So, yeah, these full time nonpaying jobs are are sweet. I just got to find a way to make the money to do it. So. But now this was this was a fun one. I appreciated that. So everybody like subscribe if you can. If you don't mind our little pandering, we hate doing it, but we we appreciate it helps us out and.
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Zach Hendrix (01:21:30.414)
If you want to answer one of the questions that you found interesting in the comments, feel free to and we'll take a look at those. So with that being said, thank you for listening. This is a, we should be working and you all have a good day. Jeff will chat soon. Take care everybody. Bye bye.
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Zach Hendrix (01:22:01.518)
That's stupid, I'm not doing that.
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