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Jocko Podcast
475: With Much Wisdom Comes Much Sorrow. The More Knowledge, The More Greif. With Oliver Anthony Music, Chris Lunsford
03:13:44
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- [00:00]
Jocko Willink
This is Jocko podcast number 475 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.
- [00:05]
Echo Charles
Good evening.
- [00:07]
Jocko Willink
Everything is meaningless. What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north. Round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has has enough of seeing, nor the ear it's fill of hearing. What has been will be again and what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there any thing of which one can say? Look, this is something new. It was here already long ago. It was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind. I have seen all things that are done under the sun. All of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief. And that right there is some scripture from the book of Ecclesiastes, one of the wisdom books from the Old Testament. And it contains reflections and guidance on the meaning of life and of labor and the pursuit of happiness. And it can be found, of course, in the Bible, but some of it can also be found embedded in the tracks of a country, folk, western, honky tonk, gospel Americana album called Hymnal of a Troubled Man's Mind by Oliver Anthony Music. And the album, like that book from the Bible, reflects on life, work, pain and happiness. Oliver Anthony Music is the creation of Christopher Anthony Lunsford, who is the first and only person in history to debut with a number one song on the Billboard charts without any prior chart history of any kind. That song was called Rich Men north of Richmond is released in August of 2023. And the song struck a chord with people, help people feel heard. And Chris has continued to be heard himself. He's risked it, released a dozen singles and in fact, he was the first male songwriter to chart 13 songs simultaneously in the top 50 digital song sales while alive because Michael Jackson did it and Prince did it, but they were both dead. And he released this new album like it's not that new now, but Hymnal of a troubled Man's Mind. He's toured all over the world. Obviously his music more popular than most people would have predicted. And about that music, he said, I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they're being sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung. No editing, no agent, no bullshit. Just some idiot and his guitar. With that, it's an honor to have Christopher Anthony Lunsford of Oliver Anthony Music here with us tonight to share some of his wisdom and lesson learned. Chris, man, thanks for joining us. It's good to meet you finally. I know you and I were trading text for a while, for a long while, trying to make this happen. You've been a little bit busy. I've been a little bit busy. Welcome.
- [04:25]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Just a little bit busy for both of us.
- [04:27]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah. Let's get into it, man. Let's talk about just growing up. What was that like? Where were you at, man?
- [04:33]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
You've. I just listening back to what you. Well, that, that verse you read and then what you just said kind of took me back a second because I've been so. The last three or four months, I've been so like engulfed in all this and all these sort of crazy escapades I've been on that I guess we'll touch on later in this episode. But it was like. I remember that quote and. And what was. Yeah, well, just to touch for a second on that. Like those. That original catalog of music that charted was so crazy that it charted because they were literally all off an Android phone. You know, they weren't even from a studio, but they were. I would write those songs and then that. That video that, that ultimately that. The MP3 version that got uploaded, that was like. That was right after I wrote the song. That was. It was more or less like the tangible medium they call it, but it was just supposed to be something so people couldn't steal the song if I wanted to go play it in a bar or something like that. And they were. And so going back to what we kind of talked about before we started this episode, like the fact that it was able to re. Reach that kind of achievement. It just, it's. It's because there. Because I do genuinely believe in that. Like I said, that purpose. We talked about that I guess we'll get into later of what all. Where hopefully all this will end up. But it's just. To me, it's just shocking to hear to. To be reminded of that. And yeah, that it all happened so crazy like that at the very beginning.
- [05:53]
Jocko Willink
But before you got here, I was talking to Echo Charles and. And Echo Charles doesn't play any musical instruments. I, of course, play guitar. But I said, hey, you know, I was talking about a little text conversation that you were have you and I were having. I said, look, dude, I'm a GCD guy. That's where I'm at, you know. And you said, hey, Richmond's only four chords, right? And then I got in here, I was kind of telling Echo that story, and I was telling him, like, it's true, you know, three, four, five chords is what songs are made of. And then he pulled up a video. What was that video you pulled up?
- [06:29]
Echo Charles
Axis of awesome.
- [06:30]
Jocko Willink
Axis of awesome, the four chords. And he's showing me this video where this guy's just going from hit song to hit song to hit song, and he's playing the same four chords, but just singing this. The songs over him. And it's so true. But you think about, you know, I think about, like, right now, AI, because you would think, okay, well, what do I want to do today? Oh, I know what I want to do. I want to make a hit song. So, you know, Chad, GPT write me a hit song, and it's going to kick out, you know, GCD and cool. Now start playing that and you. And make some lyrics. Now you have a hit song, but it doesn't work that way. Like, there's a. It's almost like, you know, they can't recreate life, right? You know, they can't recreate, like, they know what's in a cell. They know all the little chemicals and atoms and molecules that are in a cell, but they can't make that thing come alive. And that's what I feel like for music or for art, you can put all those chemicals in there. You can put those parts in there. But there's something. There's some spark that it. It. If it doesn't have it, it ain't gonna work.
- [07:33]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. And I. I pray that we can maintain that level of discernment in the long run. Because I do think. I do think now that it's been. There's been multiple generations of people being just so immersed in. In digitalization, whether it's like when we were. You know, I was born in 1992, so I grew up in the cell phone. The developmental age of cell phones and computers becoming more available. And then, you know, now it's to the point where most kids, they learn off a tablet in School. I fear that there may come a time and we may be close to it, to where we may not have the cognitive ability to discern true human being. Human created art from Great example is as much as Randy Travis was one of my favorite. That was my grandma's favorite country singer, and I can remember riding in the car with her as a kid and, and just, she would just be jamming Randy Travis and. But you know, they did an AI they had an AI Generated Randy Travis song that I think actually charted and everything. And a lot of people didn't know the diff. You know, it's, it terrifies me to see where maybe it's going to go.
- [08:39]
Jocko Willink
It's like, where did they source it from?
- [08:41]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It was a song that was written, I think in the 80s and they, they, they AI generated Randy Travis's voice over it or, or AI aided the voice, you know, but so I don't.
- [08:52]
Jocko Willink
Know, I don't know if we can count that because even that right there has like a little bit of, there's a little bit of human in there.
- [08:58]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
There is, yeah.
- [08:58]
Jocko Willink
Right. And yeah, it's definitely interesting to think about.
- [09:03]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Generally speaking, it does work. You know, I, I, I agree with you about that. Like, it's, I think, I think that we have this sort of. We're very complex creatures, you know, like, more complex than anyone ever tells us and probably more than anyone even really realizes. But I mean, even to your point with the verse that you read at the beginning, like, with more wisdoms, there's more suffering. It seems like the more, the more that we know about ourselves, it only, it seems to only destroy us more than it does strengthen us in certain ways. But I do think there's like this. And you know, maybe it's not even that we would lose the ability to discern, but just that we're, we just start, we've become, we have become almost disconnected even with our own selves, if that makes sense. Like we're, we seem to be so immersed in something here or out here. It's like we never. How many people really take the time to, to like, you know, there's so many little things going on. You have, we don't know how to grow our own hair and, and, and you think about like our gut biome and how many little things there are alive in there that, that affect our whole nervous system and how we think and our emotional state and all of that. And it's just, it's, we're very complex creatures that we.
- [10:10]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, you got to be Able to tap into it, too. I know. I've. I talk about this thing of squeezing your brain. Okay. So if you want to. If you want to make something, sometimes you have something that just kind of. It just bubbles to the surface. Maybe that's what it's like for you when you write a song and it just kind of bubbles to the surface and you have this spark, this idea, and you go. You go write it down, and it's cool. But I would venture to guess even with that. So, like, I've written books, right? And the books, obviously, the nonfiction books are. Are not the same thing, but, like, writing even a kid's books or a novel, you have this little, Little, little idea that truly is like a spark. It's just something that comes from nowhere. But in order to make it into something, you got to, like, squeeze your brain. You got to, like, squeeze. You got to, like, squeeze. Now, like, what do you, like, frosting out of one of those things that they have in a B, you know?
- [11:05]
Echo Charles
Yeah, exactly.
- [11:06]
Jocko Willink
Or toothpaste. Like, getting that last bit of toothpaste out. You gotta. It takes work. The song isn't. The song isn't gonna write itself. So it takes some level of work to get that song out. And it takes level of work to get a book out or to get a screenplay out or to create an invention. You know, you have some idea in your head that you think it's good, but, man, you gotta squeeze your brain and make it work.
- [11:32]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Where do you think that idea comes from? Like, that's. That's what. So this is. It's funny you say that guy, like the squeezing analogy. And I think about. It seems like there's so many things that maybe we. I don't know if we understand them in our subconscious. And it just takes that time to. For it to, like, come into realization. But it seems like. Well, in the same way that when you have a problem you don't understand, if you go and talk to somebody about it, you're. It's almost like you're able to. You're able to squeeze it into your.
- [11:57]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [11:58]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Into your. Into existence almost. But it's there somewhere already. You're. It's almost not. In some cases, it seems like you're not so much creating it, you're just. You're. You're able to observe it or you're able to. To extract it, if that makes more sense.
- [12:11]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I think that you're definitely writing that. From my opinion, writing about stuff is a way to kind of organize your thoughts and I've. I had the unfortunate experience of writing a lot of eulogies for guys that died. And I realized kind of after or maybe in the middle of writing eulogies for guys that died that it was very helpful. It was very helpful in. In processing the grief and the sadness and the anger and like, taking those things and kind of like, okay, let me write about how I'm feeling. And it was beneficial. And I actually did that. My. One of my friends died, who was very close with my whole family, and my son, who was probably like 13 or 14 at the time, he got a little bit. He came home one day and he said, you know, I can't. I can't stop thinking about Seth. And it's. I'm having trouble concentrating in school. And so I was like, okay, right, right, right down. You know, I actually told him, write a letter to Seth's mom and explain what you miss about him, what you loved about him and all that. And he did it. And. And after that, he never talked to me about it again. And, you know, he's. That's been a long time now. But I think that letting those things out somehow is very beneficial. And I think when you don't let those things out, when you keep them in, it can turn bad. But to. Your original question is, what is the spark? Yeah, I think. I think that's a mysterious thing because I think it's sort of like the fact that we can't create life. We can put all those chemicals together, but you can't make that cell start to split and divide and turn into a baby. Like, it doesn't work. You know, as much as. As much as we know exactly what's in there, we can't make that happen. And so I think that's. That's probably why it's so valuable. And this is actually something that I've had a. A change in heart of over the last year. And that is. I used to tell people, and I still do, and this is still part. It's still accurate. Is. Is that a good idea? I'll say if you have a good idea, but you don't execute, that idea means nothing. Right? I've said that to a million people because it's true. Like, you can have the best idea for a song or a book or an invention. If you don't do anything with it doesn't matter. No one cares. But the other end of the spectrum is that idea, if it's a good idea, has value because no one can manufacture it. You can't manufacture. You can't manufacture Inspirato. Have you ever watched Tenacious D before?
- [14:40]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Oh, yeah. Okay.
- [14:41]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. Okay. So that. That one episode on HBO where they're like, they. They have to come up with a new song. And for the. The place where they play open mic night, Echo Charles, the guy, the manager there is like, yeah, you guys can play again, but you need a new song. And so they go, okay, so they have a week to write a new song, and they're trying to manufacture inspirado. And guess what? Echo Charles, you can't do it. No, you. Not, not, not. It's hard.
- [15:09]
Echo Charles
Straight up.
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Jocko Willink
Can't do it.
- [15:10]
Echo Charles
Can't do it.
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Jocko Willink
Can't do it. So did anyone after. After your first song came out was like, all right, make more of those songs? They had to.
- [15:19]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. Well, the. The. The timeline of events with the songs was really that all this, you know, all those other songs were already uploaded with. From my phone to. Through Distrokid, which is just like a service that anybody can use to upload to Spotify, Pandora, Apple. It's like, there's a few other services beside Distrokid, but in the. In the modern age, you don't need anyone to help you upload music. You can just do it right off of your phone. And so all those songs were already there. And then Richmond came after the fact even, funny enough, I had been stalking the guy from Radio WV for, like, six months because I knew if I could just get on that YouTube channel with the song. All I wanted to do was just quit my job. I was. I was working in. I was on job sites all day and industrial plants and stuff. And like, some of the stuff we talked about, like the Dodge reports and the. Like, I just. All that stuff was just driving me. I just wasn't what I wanted to do. And so my goal was, you know, we. We'd sold. We were living. I had a nice little house that I bought. I had like, maybe 15 grand in equity on it was all I could do to buy the place. And my goal was for us to just get my family and go off grid somehow. I had kind of like, fallen into that sort of thing like everybody else had. This was like 20, probably 17 when I first started pursuing this. So 2019, I sold our house. I bought some land with the. With a little bit of equity I had. And we. We parked a camper on it.
- [16:44]
Jocko Willink
And how long was a camper? How big?
- [16:46]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It was a 27 foot.
- [16:48]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
- [16:48]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Now, at the time, I didn't have any Kids. I didn't have custody of my oldest and I didn't have the two little ones. So it was just, it was just me and my wife and so it was pretty easy. But it got complicated really quick with kids and everything else and. But all I wanted to do was just not, I just didn't want to have to work a stupid job every day and I wanted to be able to spend more time with my family and spend more time like being a real human being and not just get in this. Stuck in this cycle.
- [17:10]
Jocko Willink
So how old are you when this is going down?
- [17:13]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I'm 32 now. So it was like probably in my late 20s, you know. And you got to think I'd been really. The moment when I realized that, that I was, that I needed to figure something out was when I was, When I was 19, I was working at this paper mill called Rock 10, which is now called West Rock. And there was a guy in there named Shane who, he had the, he was working in the position that I had been hired for. He was on first shift and I was on third shift. But he had been working there 18 years and I was 19 and we were making this basically the same amount of money and I had a ged. I don't, I didn't have any real practical skill or anything. And I was like, I'm going to be Shane like for the, like this is it, like this is as far as I'm going to get. And so that was really this, that was my motive was just to get out of that, just to try to get out of that cycle.
- [18:03]
Jocko Willink
But that was when you're 19. Yeah, but, and then, but then you stayed in that cycle for how long?
- [18:08]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, I worked well when I had a bad accident there, I fell and, and I had, I had a bad head injury. I was in the hospital I don't know how long. It was a, it was a big blur. But there was about a six month period where I could hardly walk. I just hit my head on concrete. I blacked out. I don't know what happened. I don't know if I, if I passed out. I guess we were working 12 hour shifts like I wasn't getting enough sleep. You know, it's three like those when you work and like I'm sure there's people that will comment on this that have been in that cycle, but when you're working like at the time we were working six days a week, 12 hour shifts because we were shorthanded and it was third shift and I wasn't Getting enough sleep when I was at home because it's hard to sleep during the day. You've got other things you got to do and all. And so like I was probably running on a few hours of sleep every night. And I can remember, you know, I can remember on our three in the morning lunch shift, sometimes like you start to like see little, you know, you're almost like starting to dream while you're awake. So I think, I think that's probably something. I don't know exactly what caused it, but I passed out at work, hit my head real bad. And there was about a period of six months where just it was challenging to walk. Like I lost my equilibrium and my short term memory was just terrible. I had some like, inflammation and stuff from the injury. And so that's when I got out of that, that plant work. And I ended up going into the more into the construction industry. And I just, my goal was just to keep working ourselves up the ladder just long enough until I could figure out something else I could do. Like we were looking at, I'd started to get goats. We were going to get into this land clearing business and like people will rent goats out to clear their property with. And we were like, we had started to rent out campsites on Hip Camp. It's like this app like airbnb where people would come out and camp on my land. And I was just trying to figure out whatever I could do to get to break out of that cycle where I didn't have to go work for somebody else every day, you know. So that was really my motivation with the music was like, get the music out there, get it uploaded on distrokid to where I had a tangible medium where people couldn't just steal the songs and go claim them as their own. And I would just try to get on radio WV, get one little song on there, get 50,000 views from it. And then I could at least go to a bar and book a gig and be like, look, I'm on Radio wv. Like, it was just enough of a validation to where somebody would book me at a bar for 300 bucks. And that was, that's. I'd be totally content doing that. That was the goal, you know, what.
- [20:22]
Jocko Willink
Were you doing to Radio WV are just tagging them, like, call every post.
- [20:27]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I was that guy like, hey, look at my video. You know, like, and, and emailing them. And I looked up his business license on Manta and sent him a letter in the mail. And like, I was doing everything I could do and finally called stalking. But it was. I said I used the word stalking. Yeah. But I just knew. I just had this feeling if I could just. And I had no idea. I thought Radio WV, an organization with like 20 people that work there. And this guy Draven was just the owner or the manager or whatever. So.
- [20:52]
Jocko Willink
So anyway, I never like this podcast.
- [20:55]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, everything. You perceive things to be so much more complex than they really are, you know, because they're presented. So. They're presented so well. You just assume there must be this huge team behind it. And so I never forget. I was.
- [21:06]
Jocko Willink
Did you have any success with the goats? Did you have any success with the camping on your land? Like, was any of that stuff hip camp was good.
- [21:13]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, it stayed. I mean it stayed packed.
- [21:15]
Jocko Willink
So you were. So were you starting to see an opportunity to get out of your job that you didn't like besides music?
- [21:25]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, it was a complicated situation because aren't they all. Because of my wife being in veterinary. She's a. She's a veterinary technician and so she had student loans from that and so we were trying to get like all of her debt consolidated and get every. Like that was our, you know. But yeah, I think if we. If we could have got. I think realistically and probably about a five year timeline, I could have gotten her debt paid off and we could have lived. We could have lived off of just probably hip camp and a few other little things and just been very. Live very modest, you know, going back to child.
- [21:56]
Jocko Willink
When did you start playing guitar? How old were you?
- [21:58]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So my grandma taught me GCND when I was like a little kid. Like I said, Randy Travis was her favorite and she was in a little band in the 50s, I think that played on the radio and Hopewell, Virginia, like in the little town where she grew up. And my grandma was like my, you know, like I. I've had a close relationship with my parents, but as far as family or just mentorship goes, it was my grant, you know, it was. Her and my grandpa were like, they were it like, you know, they were like my idols, you know. So I wanted to be like them and I. And they were just. She was. When you learned gcd, five or six years old.
- [22:33]
Jocko Willink
Oh, okay.
- [22:34]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, like, like early we would do like, like. Because a lot of the Randy Trap, a lot of those like 90s country songs were three or four chords. They're really easy to play and we do a lot of like, like in the garden and are, you know, her the easiest. The first song I learned was Three Wooden Crosses. That's just such a simple little song. I think it's like CG and a couple little chords and. Yeah, she got me into it early on, and it was just something that we did, something I just kind of did with her just for fun, you know.
- [23:03]
Jocko Willink
Did you keep playing when you were growing up?
- [23:05]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Not really. The only time I can remember, really, I would goof off with it every three or four months or six months or something, just sitting around. But I never took it seriously. I did. I can remember when I was, like, 12 or 13, I. I thought I tried to do this thing called a. What do they call it? Colgate Country Showdown. And it was like this little lame, like, country singing competition thing, and I. I tried it twice and never made it past the first round. You know, I got roasted, so I just gave up on it. I was probably, like, 12 or something, and I didn't really do a whole lot else with it for. For a while. It was.
- [23:42]
Jocko Willink
Where was the Colgate Country Showdown?
- [23:44]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, they. I think they happened all over the country. It was kind of like an. It was like a miniature. It was like, the same concept as, like, American Idol almost.
- [23:50]
Jocko Willink
And you got voted off the island quick.
- [23:52]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It's funny. I can remember. Yeah, it was. It's so funny because.
- [23:57]
Jocko Willink
Were you doing cover songs?
- [23:58]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It was in. Yeah. You. You just played one song, and, like, 30 people would get up there and play a song, and they would. And the vote. The judges would vote, and there was always some little cut kid that they're, like, perfect already in, like, their little country and western crap, and they always got it, and I was like, and I suck. I didn't deserve to win it anyway. But I do remember back then, like, I did. I guess. I guess what I'm saying is I did probably have, like, that imagine that imaginative dream of going out and doing, you know, it just. I didn't take it seriously back then.
- [24:30]
Jocko Willink
So then when did you start playing guitar? Like, hey, I'm gonna try and make a go at this.
- [24:37]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, oddly enough, you know, Brian, who you met, who's a friend of mine. He. I. I would go out and hang out with him, like, in my. I didn't drink until after I was 21. I didn't touch alcohol until I was. I think I had my. I had, like, a Bud Light lime when I was, like, two months after turning 21. It was the nastiest thing ever. And so I didn't start to drink until maybe 23 or so. I had a friend of mine who was A welder who we hung out all the time and he drank Guinness. So I started getting into drinking. I was just slamming Guinness like I was a Guinness drinking machine. And so I met this guy Brian, who I started to hang out with a lot. And he was the, he's the HOA president of the craziest neighborhood you've ever been in. And so like he, he was like a part. It's HOA neighborhood, but like the most partiest neighborhood and it's a lot of military families and stuff. So I would go down there and they would have a guitar and at some point I would pick it up drunk and just start playing songs in it. And like that was probably like 2015ish when we started to hang or. No, I think we met in probably a little bit after that. But somewhere in that window of time it was just like getting drunk and playing at parties and people saying, oh, you're really, you know, like I never forget. It's like it was a running joke. But anytime I'd play, there was always some drunk old person that would be like, you got to get on American Idol. Or like every time, you know, like everybody was just like, man, you got to do something. There's this guy named David Moore who's like probably in his 60s. But I can remember, I, I jokingly to this day, I remember every time we were drunk hanging out, he'd always say, he said, Chris, you got to do something with that God given talent of yours. Like he would get like this far from my face, drunk. And I was drunk too. You know, when you're drunk, everybody, everybody gets like this. He said, you got to do some of that God given talent of yours like all the time, you know. Yeah, it sort of just evolved into that.
- [26:22]
Jocko Willink
And then David was kind of like right about this whole thing and, and.
- [26:26]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Brian and a few other people just kept pushing me and I didn't have any original music really. I think the songwriting came. Well, the songwriting is exactly what we talked about earlier. It was just a way for me to figure out all the, how to take all of this and put it into words to where it made some kind of sense. And it was just like in the same way that you're talking about your son writing that letter. Like, it's just, I was just writing my letter, I guess. You know, it's the same, same, same concept.
- [26:51]
Jocko Willink
What kind of music were you into when you were a kid?
- [26:55]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Really early on was like 90s country and like I was obsessed with Tony Bennett when I was a Little kid. Like, I'm so. I love all that. Like, I just love that swing of like that, you know. And then when I got a little older, it was probably, you know, I listened to a ton of Stained, Stained and Shined down and, and old country stuff. They like David Allen Coe, Merle Haggard, like, just all that, like old, like Waylon Jennings, you know, my. Going back to my grandma. I can remember as a kid we. She was, she. We used to watch Dukes of Hazzard like all the time. And so I'd see Waylon Jennings there with that little guitar and you know, in a lot of episodes he wouldn't show his face because of the legal troubles and stuff. But that's what. I kind of fell in love then with a lot of that.
- [27:41]
Jocko Willink
And when I was a kid, my dad, he got a used car. It was a 1973 Barracuda. And it was actually. If we had that car now, like, it would be an epic muscle car. It was yellow with the stripe on it and everything.
- [27:56]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Oh yeah.
- [27:57]
Jocko Willink
And it had an eight track player. And my dad liked country music because he went to college down in Texas and he had one eight track one. And it was Hank Williams. It was. And so I to this day know every Hank Williams song, you know, But. And that's why when I first heard you, I was like, oh, let's do this, dude. Sounds like freaking Hank Williams senior. But. So that's you. So you did have like a pretty good variety of music. It wasn't like you were just raised on country western.
- [28:30]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, no, it was just early 90s. And yeah, definitely Hank. Hank senior junior and the third I'll listen to, like, yeah, all that stuff. Like, it just, I'd say after, like probably after the 90s, early 2000s, radio country just kind of started to go. And I just like, I don't listen to country at all. I haven't listened to a new country song that came out other than like Jamie Johnson and maybe a handful of others in years. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't care for it. I kind of joke and say it. Like, I don't, I don't know that my. I guess my music's in the country category, but I don't even like to think of that.
- [29:05]
Jocko Willink
How'd you like my description of your music? What did I say? That was pretty good, right? Freaking. Yeah, it's. It's definitely unique. It's weird because it's unique music, but it still sounds familiar in a way.
- [29:20]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I don't know I'm really excited for you to hear the Neck we just recorded. So I've only technically put two songs out since Rich. Two new songs since Richmond. Everything else, like the whole. Basically the hymnal album was all the cell phone. The. The halfway put together cell phone versions, like in their complete format. Because I just had to do that to at least get that done. Well, you know, like I told you, I just. I went from being Mr. And I. I still am Mr. Nobody, but just as far as, like when I go out, I could go to Walmart and I could go to the gas station and all that and everything was just, you know, it was just normal. And. And so that. That original catalog of music was all I really wanted to complete. And then the next song. So basically there was Richmond, the Hymnal of A Troubled Man's Mind album. And then. And then Cowboys and Sunsets and Cowboys and Sunsets was like my goodbye song. And I was just gonna get to the end of that tour and just call it. Yeah, and I almost didn't get to the end of that tour. I like, by the time the summer came, I was. I was ready to walk away.
- [30:26]
Jocko Willink
Or like when you say you weren't almost didn't make it to the end of the tour, what do you mean.
- [30:32]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Man? I don't like going, like, just. I don't, like. I didn't. I didn't go to concerts because I don't like big crowds. I get like. It's like I somehow. My mom and I didn't used to be like this as a kid. Joe Rogan says that it's because we talked about this on camera and off, and he thinks a lot of it's from the head injury, but I hyper focus on everything. So if there's. If there's a hundred people in front of me, my brain's trying to figure out what every single one of them's doing. Like, I just get. It's just too much. That's why I like to just sit out in the woods by myself. It's like. It's just because it's somewhere where I don't have to. If that makes any sense. I don't know. Yeah, so I don't like big crowds. So, like, I would go see. I've seen. I went and saw Incubus once and I saw. And I've seen Jamie Johnson twice, I think. And the last time I saw Jamie Johnson, we had to leave after like four or five songs because I just couldn't be. I was just like freaking out. I couldn't be in the car. I just couldn't be in that crowd of people anymore. So now that I have to be the guy in front of the whole crowd, it's like. It's bad. I mean, the hues. I felt terrible at the Houston rodeo when we did that because there was all these bull riders and stuff that I was supposed to, like, I guess take pictures with and get to meet, and I wanted to meet all of them, and I met a lot of them after the fact. But I'm in the back room, like, and I'm not trying to be. It's funny to me now looking back on it, but I was. I was literally vomiting and like. Like, I was, like, free. I was having a whole. Like, I didn't want to get in front of 60, 000 people on some spinning stage. I was like. Like, that's like my worst nightmare. Like, just cut my leg, make me do that. I was terrified. Just total. In total fear. And these guys are just thinking I'm being a jerk, not wanting to. And, like, I don't know. It's just tough. I can just think back to some of that. But I got about three quarters of the way through it, like, by the time the summer came, and I was just.
- [32:16]
Jocko Willink
Wait, so how did you actually walk out on stage? So I used to train a lot. Not a lot, but I trained MMA fighters. And there would be guys. Tito Ortiz, before. Before, you know what Tito Ortiz is he. Before, like, a fight, he would be crying and throwing up. Like, he would be that freaking freaked out, and he'd go win. I mean, he's obviously did great. When you're puking and crying because you have to go out on stage in front of 60,000 people, like, how do you overcome that? What you do?
- [32:52]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I. My. I brought my kids along with me, and I. I can. I would always just go sit with my kids and just think about that. I had. I had to do this for them. And if I could just get through it, this. If I could just. If I could just suck it up for just one year and get through all this, like, at least I know they're gonna be all right. Like, they're gonna have. I can leave something for them. And, like, it was just. It felt like I was doing. I was just doing it for my kid. And then. But. But over time. But I also. It's also, like I said, I've. Like, I read all these Facebook messenger messages I get, and I read my fan mail, and, like, I don't reply to all of Them. But I do try to reply to a lot of them. And, like, there's some really real people that felt like. And in. And at these shows, like, to have. I'll never forget when we went to Europe last year, we were at the. I think at like the first or the second show, and this, like, this guy who looks like he could just pick me up with one hand and throw me across the room. Like, I was. He was just sobbing and like. Like hugging me, telling me about how he had lost his brother and going through sobriety and all these things and like. And just talking about how he related to the music and how it helped him so much. And just. I was like, dude, this is like, this is real life. Like, I'm. This isn't just some little moment. Like, this isn't just some little thing that I, like, I have to take this a little more serious. So it's a multi. It's just a. It's a. Combinations of things. But were you.
- [34:13]
Jocko Willink
When you. When all this happened, were you already sober? Meaning were you still drinking right after.
- [34:21]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Right before? All right, so July of 23 is when there was a guy who messaged me on Facebook and said, hey, I know Draven Rife. We used to live together in Missouri. He's the guy that runs the radio, WB channel. He's like, I can get you all connected. So Draven text me the next day. And then we talked for like less than a week. And it was like, so right. Almost right before it. The. I'm trying to, like, relive this in my head because I'm. It's like all the things that have happened between now and then, but sometime in that. Like, in that June window is when I didn't drink. I had like a come to Jesus moment, so to speak, and did. And I just. I can vividly remember being on my property and. And I just. And I. I remember vividly telling God, like. Or just saying out loud, like, I'm sorry that I'm such a piece of. And if you can just find something for me to do, I'll go do it. Like, just. Just give me a purpose, you know, like, just give me something to do. Like, and I'll. You know. And it was like, right after that that happened. Well, the. The. Before Richmond, there was this song dog on it that I put and it did okay on TikTok. So two different A and R dudes hit me up. This guy named Sean Stevens and another one named Stefan Max. And they were both with like, Warner or Republic. Or something. And this was before Richmond. I was still working my job, all that. I was so excited. I called everybody I knew and told him, dude, this guy from Warner Records, you know, I was so excited.
- [35:56]
Jocko Willink
Like, if they would have signed you, they would have been the heroes of the century for their companies. Right?
- [36:00]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So that's. So that was like, almost. Right after saying, like, almost within a week of that, that happened. So then I.
- [36:08]
Jocko Willink
So you had a literal come to Jesus? Like, it wasn't like, come to Jesus. Like, actual hey, God.
- [36:15]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It was just like, I didn't know what. Yeah, it was just like, I didn't know. Yeah. I just wanted to figure out what the. What the hell I'm supposed to do, because I just didn't. I didn't know, you know?
- [36:25]
Jocko Willink
And that's what. That's what made you get sober. And how much were you drinking before that? We drinking every day.
- [36:34]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. Well, I make. I make wine, so I have. It's not good to be. But I. I love making homemade wine. So, like, I would. And I run it. I would run it strong. I would get the. I'd get the. I'd use the wine yeast. That would go to 18% full.
- [36:48]
Jocko Willink
Duke's a hazard scenario.
- [36:50]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, it's really easy to make, actually. It's like, a lot of college. The reason I learned how. I learned how to make wine, actually, from this kid that went to George Washington University in D.C. when I used to go up there a lot when I was younger, like, for stupid stuff, you know, like, oh, God, I'm already open a whole can of worms up. Like, protest stuff and all that when I was younger. And they would make. They call it hooch, which is why I named my white German shepherd Hooch. But hooch is like a slang word, I guess. What you do is you take Welch's grape juice, and you pour a little bit out, and you just add sugar and wine yeast, and you put a balloon on the top and stick it in your closet. And within a month or so, less than a month, you've got wine that was a balloon. 17. It's like an airlock, so it allows the gas to escape the bottle, but not the contaminants to come in. So you can make like. It tastes like Welch's juice, but it's like 16, 17 alcohol. So that's how I got into it. And then I started doing it with, like, fruit. And so I was making my own wine. So I would. I'd go out when I get home from work. I'd have a Like a. A lot of times I would just put it in like in. I would just can it. I would just put it in mason jars, you know, like the wine bottles with the corks and all. That's just.
- [37:56]
Jocko Willink
So.
- [37:56]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
A lot of times it'd just be in a jar and I would drink at least one mason jar of that a night. Like, I'd get just trash. Like, you know, it wouldn't take much. A jar and a half in and you're like. Like there's nothing at 18. There's nothing left of you even when you drink every day. So that was my. And the problem is, is that homemade wine doesn't give you a hangover like cheap liquor or anything else does. So like, you can. You can sort of be. You can sort of get drunk on it every night and still wake up at 4:30 in the morning, go to work, and you're not like totally hungover, if that makes sense. So it was like. So between that and the. And yeah, that and just staying. Just smoking weed constantly, like being high at work and stuff, like. Like pulling up at the job site and you know, smoking before I go out to do what I'm doing. Like, just. It was just like I was just constantly in this state of escapism because I felt like, like sober. Chris didn't like the fact that I didn't feel like I was. I just knew I wasn't the person that I was supposed to be or the person I could be. So it was like. It was just easy for me to just stay in that. It's like I almost just wanted to stay in that state, you know, like that perpetual state of being. And so. So yeah, so the.
- [39:04]
Jocko Willink
The drinking stopped and you did like cold turkey scenario. Like you stopped 100. And was there withdrawals or anything like that?
- [39:14]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, yeah, physical withdrawals. And also like just. Just the temptation of it. Like it was, you know, it's like it was. But you gotta think it all happened so quick that I like, I didn't like so that hat. So all that happened. And then by the time July came, the dog on it thing happened. I started going to open mics to try to figure out because you got to think I never played on stage.
- [39:40]
Jocko Willink
A m. Dudes tell you. Did they try and you know, get you to sell your soul? Like.
- [39:46]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, at the time I was. I had 1200 monthly listeners on Spotify and 10,000 followers on TikTok. I wasn't. And I'd never played a gig before. I'd been open mics. But I wasn't, like, a real. So all they were trying to do is just like. Like, like the one guy was. The one guy was trying to get me to. He was. He worked with Zach Brian, and they. They were. I remember vividly, they were in Oklahoma at the time, and he was trying to get me to come out and hang out with him and Zach Brian and, like, ride the bus and all this stuff. And I felt like that was going to be, like, the initiation sequence to get me, like, stuck in. And I just. I had this terrible gut feeling about it. And I, like, I wanted to do it so bad, but I just. I just felt like I wasn't supposed to do it.
- [40:26]
Jocko Willink
So you actually said no. So they dangled the carrot of Zach Brian tour in front of you, and.
- [40:32]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
You were like, I don't think I would have been able to tour. I don't think I would have been allowed to play with him. I think he just wanted me to come out and experience it and, like, spend a couple weeks isolated with them to where they could work out some kind of. And I think I would have probably gotten a really bad deal. Like, they would have.
- [40:47]
Jocko Willink
I was looking at a contract lately, and this initial contract that came from a group of people, and it was for all IP intellectual property. Echo Charles.
- [41:01]
Echo Charles
Sure.
- [41:01]
Jocko Willink
The. The contract was like, all. I. My lawyer, I. I said, hey, dude, this is all. What do they mean by all? And he says, all. And the thing is, a. If I wouldn't had a lawyer look at it, but also, if I would have been, you know, if I didn't have a job or I was totally broke, I'd have been like, where's the pen? Let me sign that.
- [41:21]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, because you're.
- [41:22]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And that's where they find people. Like, you're very lucky because if you would have rolled down there, they'd have been like, all right, cool. Hey, you know what? All this can be yours, you know, plus, we'll give you, you know, three grand right now. And you'd be like, where's the pen? You know? And you know what? They would have owned all your soul.
- [41:37]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
He's. He. Well, we never got to any of that point in July talking about money or details. It was all very vague. It was like. And it was like, I said I was thrilled by it. Like, the guy. And he was very professional and polite, and there was. I didn't have any bad feelings in that moment. It was just one. When they tried to get, like. We had. We had had, like, a couple phone calls and emails back and forth before any of the bus stuff. It was just like, he was telling me about how he had met. He was telling me the whole story about meeting Zach Brian and how they were trying to get him out of the military to go. Like, he was telling me this whole story about Zach and how they, like, developed him and who knows how much involvement he really had with Zach. Like, I don't know. I've never had the chance to meet, and Zach Brian's, like, on top of the world, so I don't even want to try to. Like, but, you know, I hate bother. Like, even you. I felt terrible. I felt, like, guilty trying to reach out to you to say, hey, like, but. So. But it was easy for me to not want to drink because now I had this thing. It was like I had this carrot I was chasing. And so I went. I. I went to this open mic at this seafood restaurant. What was it called? I always joke, because the name. The place is out of business now, but the restaurant. The name of the restaurant is. I always joke and say. That's what you say when you wake up the next morning from eating the food there. It's called. I don't know. I'll remember. It'll pop in my head in, like, 10 minutes. But that's where I met my guitar player Joey, at. He was there. He never did open mics, but he was there trying this girl out to see if she would work for vocals for his band. The two of us met, and we're sitting there afterwards, and he. He liked what I had done at the open mic, and I liked what he did. And I was. And that was the night I was supposed to get this phone call from Sean Stevens, or no, Stefan Max, the other guy. And I was like, look, this guy's going to call. Like, I was so excited. He wanted to quit his job. I wanted to quit my job. So that was our plan, was, like, we were just going to do it. And then right after that, this. The guy from Missouri reached out, said he knew Draven from Radio wv. And, like, that was it. I mean, it was like everything just fell. Everything just fell into place as soon as I. It was almost. You talk about, like, a movie character. Like, we were talking about the main character. Like, people thinking they're the main character in a movie or whatever. But it was hard for me in that moment to not feel like that. It was like it was supernatural the way everything fell together. And you got to understand, like, so. So that happened. I met Dre. I. I talked To Draven on the phone and texted back and forth. And Draven's like, Draven wasn't this guy that ran this big radio company. He was literally flagging on the side of the highway for his buddy's company. Like, he was on the side of the highway with a stop.
- [44:03]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [44:04]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Slow sign. And I'm in a. And I'm in a plant. We can hard. We had to keep putting the phone down because we had to do. And we'd come back and get on the phone again. And so like that was on a Wednesday. And we recorded that weekend. And I wasn't going to record Richmond. I wanted him to record all my other songs. Richmond only had half of Richmond done. I posted the first half on Tick Tock, but I didn't have the rest of the song finished. Like that whole second. The whole second verse of it. So it was like this last minute thing of we talked on a Wednesday. I finished writing the song. We recorded Saturday and Sunday. We recorded like seven songs Saturday and Sunday. And I think he uploaded like maybe next Wednesday. Have two cameras working, like, so Draven. Draven runs like a. A laptop. A little scarlet solo that you plug your guitar into with a microphone and then he's got a camera. Usually what he'll do is he'll put a camera on a. Well, back then, the original set of videos we did, we did two takes because he only had the one camera.
- [45:01]
Jocko Willink
Okay. So he would film me because I was watching. I was like, oh, there's two cameras here. Because there's two different angles. So. Yeah, well, he's got to do it twice.
- [45:09]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I don't want to tell. Well, yeah, we've. We've upgraded a little bit since then. But at the time he only could. It was just the one camera, you know, he could like there. It's expensive trying to buy all the stuff. So all of his sessions up to that point were one camera. And then like he would go back and have you play the song a second time just so he could film it from another angle. And then he would just cut the two together. Now there's two. Now there's like another camera guy. Like a real mic stand that we don't have to have a cinder block sitting on so it'll fall over and like things are like a little more proper now. But back then it was like. But yeah, I just quit the drinking and the weed. And he had just quit the weed. He didn't really drink. And the two of us smoked a CBG joint in that tent that I had on my property that night after we filmed Richmond. And we were, like, talking all about life and all these things we wanted to do. And, like, that man's like my brother now. Like, we talk. Not every day, but we talk a few times a week.
- [46:01]
Jocko Willink
Was he able to quit his job? Draven? Hell, yeah.
- [46:04]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So in week, we've kind of like.
- [46:07]
Jocko Willink
Well, there's something like 150 million plays of that song. That right there is pretty good money, right? Echo Charles.
- [46:14]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, well, and he had. He had had a few other good ones prior to that, too. That it was just like, for him to fall. He was also kind of in a point in his life. We both had a lot of parallels, and he had. He had kind of had the same, like, come to Jesus type of thing. We both were just. We were both at a point where we felt lost, and we felt like we didn't know what we were supposed to be doing with the rest of our lives. But we knew there was something we needed to do. We just hadn't taken ourselves. We hadn't taken it seriously enough to try to figure out what it was.
- [46:38]
Jocko Willink
But when you're writing songs. So you were writing songs, did you. Did you, like, mass produce songs once you got sober, or were those songs kind of already in the hopper?
- [46:50]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
They were already there. Yeah.
- [46:52]
Jocko Willink
And. And. But that song you finished Richmond, basically, when you were sober, because you wrote it that. That you finished it that day.
- [47:01]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
The second verse. Yeah, within two. We talked on Wednesday, and we recorded Saturday. So I had, like, Thursday, Friday to try to finish that.
- [47:08]
Jocko Willink
And how big of a channel was Radio wv?
- [47:12]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It was big enough where I was stalking him. I mean, he had what was special.
- [47:17]
Jocko Willink
But it wasn't big enough for him not to be flagging.
- [47:19]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
What's special about Draven? Well, what's special about Draven wasn't the size of his channel. It was. It's Draven and the way that he. I don't know, go. If you look at some of his other recordings he had done prior to that, like Logan Halstead, for example, like, just the way he's able to bring out, like, there's a song Logan Halstead has Dark Black Coal, and that's the. That's the best version of the song that you'll ever hear for the rest of your life. He can. Logan can go record it a million more times, but just. You can just feel the. I don't know.
- [47:48]
Jocko Willink
It's like a good director.
- [47:49]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Draven, really. Draven really cares is what it is. Like, he's like. He's not in it for any other reason except that, like, he really, like, it's. We were talking about this because he. He helped me produce my album now. So we are, like, producing, like, real music now with full instruments and equipment and all that we've invested into. We kind of have this dream now of like, finding artists like the ones that he puts on Radio WV that don't have a following and figure out how can we. How can I take somebody like me? How can I find somebody like me who just kind of is. Is brought into the space? And how do we keep them safe from, like, all the vultures? And how do we get their music recorded correctly? Get them a good attorney that's not going to screw them over, Help them with their publicist work and their social media and getting all their accounts verified. And like, you know, I had dudes claiming that they wrote all my songs. I had this guy. There was this guy in the UK that had went to. He had registered all of my work in Parliament for Canada, the UK and Australia. I had to get an attorney to, like, take care of all that. Robert Beckley is his name, I think. And he was saying that he had wrote Richmond, north of Richmond about this suburb that's like in London somewhere called Richmond. And like, they had like, like, how could. And my. My angel really was Jamie Johnson. Like, he came. So after everything blew up, the farm market right down the road from where Brian was in the neighborhood.
- [49:13]
Jocko Willink
Hold on. The reason I asked you about how big Radio WV is, you getting on Radio WV is not like, oh, now you're set for life. You know what I mean?
- [49:24]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I just knew if I could get on there, he would be able to. He would be able to record me in a way that I could get. Like, I just. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. It was just like, I knew I needed to get. I mean, I tried for over a year to get a hold of him, but.
- [49:36]
Jocko Willink
But making it onto Radio V at the time wasn't like, for lack of a better word, like, making it big time.
- [49:42]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Not at all.
- [49:43]
Jocko Willink
No, no, that's what I'm saying. That's what I want to know.
- [49:45]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Like I said, it was just like. Like I said before, it was like if I could get on there and get 50 or 100,000 views, and it was just something. So like, when I emailed all these bars and all these, like. Because you got to think, like, to just Go play. Like, to give an example. Like, to just go play. To go play the little bar in Farmville or the one in Richmond or whatever. Like, there's a million people just like me who were trying to go book that for three hours for 300 bucks a night. And. And I had no gigging experience. I had no equipment. I didn't really even know more than probably an hour worth of COVID music if I was lucky, because I wasn't. You know what I mean? It's like I didn't have anything to stand on, but I had these. I had put out, like, I think Ain't Got a Dollar was the first one. And I had like, maybe three or four songs, I Want to go Home a few of those. I just knew if I could get radio WV to record a few of those and put them out there, then I could at least. I could at least have something to show them. Like, look, I have a little. I've got 1200 monthly listeners, and I got this song like, just let me come play your bar. Like, that's. That's what I. That was what the goal was, you know, to. I just wanted to get away from my job. I was so miserable being there, and I just felt so stupid that I was just spending every day making people that I didn't like money and, like, wasting what little bit of valuable. Because life goes by so fast, man. Like. Like you can just look in the mirror and just watch yourself age. It's just like. It just happened so fast, and I just didn't want to get stuck, you know? I just didn't want to get stuck being that I didn't want to be that I didn't want to be Shane. Like, I didn't want to be that guy who was 60 years old. Like, I just. I know. What else am I going to do? I can't do anything. Like, I'm. I'm about stupid otherwise. It's not like I can go. I couldn't go. And like, I can't figure out how to. How to wire something as an electrician or do H vac or. You know, it's like I was just either going to be doing dumb labor jobs or I was going to be trying to figure out how to do something on my own, you know?
- [51:30]
Jocko Willink
And so you record Saturday, Sunday. When does he upload it?
- [51:36]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Like, I think it was like the next Wednesday. It was quick. I remember I went into work Monday, and the guy at work that I was real close with, I. I remember telling him, like, dude, this song is either gonna. Because Draven was insistent that Richmond was the first one we put out and I didn't want to put. I knew the song was controversial and I didn't want. I didn't want him. He was. He had already pressured me into recording it. Like, I didn't even want to record it because I was. I pictured and I was telling him before we went on the camera. But the whole Oliver Anthony music thing was, you know, Christopher Lunsford couldn't upload Ain't Got a dollar on YouTube because Christopher Lunsford is on Dodge Reports and on stuff where. If you were to Google Christopher Lunsford, like, and that song pop up. Like, I'm not. I'm not allowed to go into Dupont or Gerdau or any of these like, facilities and plants on thc. They have like a THC policy. So I can't have a song about smoking weed. Like, I would have lost my job. I've got three kids. I'd have been totally. So I. So everything was under that name to kind of disguise myself anyway. And so just without. You know. And it's so crazy now to go back and think about it all because this whole timeline of events led to us having that very first show at this little farm market right up the road from the neighborhood where I had been getting drunk for years and hanging out with Brian and all the them. And Jamie Johnson shows up who. Well, like the whole mind bend of it all was just. Just in the last couple months, I. I got my. I still have my truck from high school. It's a little 99 Tacoma, five speed manual. Like, it was the. I bought. I bought it when I was 15. My dad helped me like put the down payment on it and all. And you know, it's still got Jamie Johnson CD and the CD player from like, it's like, you just can't make it up, man. It's just. So.
- [53:25]
Jocko Willink
So you were about to say when you rolled back into work. So it.
- [53:28]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so scattered. It's just. This is a lot. It's a lot of like, you can. I haven't talked about any of this since it happened. So it's like a lot all that. Like, I'm just remembering all.
- [53:37]
Jocko Willink
It's all good, bro.
- [53:39]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. I remember I went back into work and I told him. I was like, dude, this is. I was like, this song's talking about like, like Epstein island and all this stuff. I was like, this is going to be. I was like, I'm Totally losing my job. I was like, they're gonna fire me like next week. And I'm just pick. In my mind, I'm picturing that the song is going to totally flop and I'm going to lose my job because of it. And I'm like, so I'm think I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm like panicking, freaking out. And I'll never forget right after he uploaded the song, he called me like right after it went up and it had like a thousand views if at like not even that. And I was sitting in my parents living room and we played it on the tv, like with their Bluetooth speaker, like their TV speaker, their bar. And I called him back and I was like, dude, I think we should take it down. I don't think it needs to be on there. Like, I didn't. I was so scared. I was just so terrified of it being up. Like I. And I didn't. I don't know, I just. This whole thing, even now, even with what I'm doing now, I'm terrified like, of. Because I know, I know what I'm doing I need to do. But I just, I know that. I know that even. I know anytime, even if you're doing something that you feel like is right and something that you are called to do or supposed to do, it's like it's. Sometimes it's hard to be brave when you don't want to. It's like, it's hard to like, you know that there's consequences that are going to come with that. Like, yeah, you know that there's risk. There's always risk in anything you do. Like anything that has purpose behind it also sometimes has inherent risk. And I was just. I had to really figure out, do. Do I really want to do this or do I just want to keep working my stupid little job and try to get my debt paid off in 10 years and just, you know, like, do I want that song out?
- [55:12]
Jocko Willink
How long did it take for the song to get traction? Didn't get like 5 million views in three or four days or something like that.
- [55:18]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, I don't really know the numbers because I didn't, I didn't look at it, but I just remember looking at my. I remember my Tik Tok account went like crazy all at once. Like, because I still had my notifications turned on. You know, I was. There's a ton of people, like if you look on my TikTok account now, I don't know how many People I follow, but I was following back everyone who followed me. And when they would message me, I would message them back. Like there's a lot of. I still have friends now that I've now gotten to meet at shows and all. Who are people I was talking to on TikTok like, like before everything went crazy. But yeah, it was like. It was just like this little tight knit group I had on there. And then I was like, the phone was just dinging all day and going crazy and. And then like people were. People had somehow got my number. And I remember there was a guy from a booking agency who was trying to get me like that next weekend to go open for Hank Jr. And all the stuff. And I'm still at my job, you know, and I'm just like, what am I gonna do? It was just. It all went nuts at one time. It really did. Yeah. And people who. People at work, we're catching on to it. And when I go places, people were in like, I don't know how long I work. It was less than two weeks that I worked there before I quit. It was probably about a week and a half. I put my. I put in a two week notice and I left on good terms actually with my boss and he even. It was really cool. So me and him are actually really cool now. And I. But he actually told me, he said, well, if you ever. Because he didn't know, he had never even looked at it. He's like, well, if you. He's like, if this doesn't work out and you need to come back, he's like, you have a job here. Yeah. And I was like, that's so solid. Yeah. I was like, that's so cool, you know, that he. But it just all. Yeah, it just all happened so fast.
- [56:45]
Jocko Willink
And when did you realize like, oh, okay, so it took you two weeks to quit your job, but you knew almost immediately, like, I can quit my job now. Yeah, I'm go do this.
- [56:55]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
The first two shows I was. I remember for sure those first two little shows I did, it was Morris Farm, that was the one. Like Jamie showed up and all those people at the big crazy first show. And then when we did Eagle Creek the next weekend, I remember I was still at work then, but it was probably like, right. It was probably within about two weeks. It I.
- [57:10]
Jocko Willink
How many people came to Eagle Creek?
- [57:14]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
We don't know because they were. They were free shows. I just showed up and played. But we estimate they estimated like 12,000 is what they thought was at the farm market show. So. And that farm market usually has, like, up until then, it would have, like, a couple hundred people there at the most. First, you know, it was a farm market on the way to the beach in North Carolina. It was just like. But I'd been going to that farm market since I was a kid, and I had. And I was, like, sentimentally attached to it, and I just wanted that to be. I don't know, it just felt like the right place to do the first. To do my very first show at. I don't know, but it was nuts. And we did a meet and greet after. I remember I was there for, like, four hours after the show, like, meeting every. And that's when this whole. It just. I don't know. I still can hear, like, what those people were telling me about. Like, they were just so excited. Like, that's the thing. Like, it's not. It's not me at all. Like, ass. Like, I was telling you before, dude, I'm trash. I know, like, seven chords. A lot of those original songs, I don't think even sounded all that. The new. The new album that I got coming out is like, the first piece of work that I've done where I'm like, man, this rocks. Like, before that, I wasn't even a big fan of my own music. It was really just the fact that somebody came along that was saying, you got to think. I'd been on. I had. I had been working with, like, real people for my whole life in factories and going. And, like, going in the steel mills and the power plants and, like, the air conditioning factory I worked at. And even when I worked at McDonald's is like, that's. You don't. You can't. It's hard for anyone to have real conversations with people when you, like, you can't just go to a job site and interview people and ask them about, like, what they're struggling with and, like, their. Their finances and their depression and, like, what they're dealing with with their wife and, like, how their company has screwed them over or how this. This policy that went into a place went into place will, like, affect the quality of life for them because of that, like, they. You get the real story from people when you're there with them and you're.
- [59:06]
Jocko Willink
And, like, you're part of the same ecosystem.
- [59:10]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It was almost like, maybe the only way that rich. Like, maybe that song was just inspired by a decade of just listening to everybody say, like, the exact same thing almost. You know, like, and now. And now to have been to Europe and Australia. And it's the exact, exact. It's like almost the exact same. It's what. It's to your point earlier about, you know, when you, you don't realize what other people are going through but in many cases they're going through the exact same thing you're going through. But there is no hotline. Especially like what, like what is a 25 year old guy supposed to do? What are you going to do? Are you going to call some hotline number and get put on some list? Like I, like I'm not going to. I don't. I didn't feel comfortable. Like even if I could find a psych who. How do you even find a psychologist or some, or a therapist to talk to and how do you even trust him to talk about like you know, to talk about like these dark things that you're dealing with and like I don't know, it's. We're so. Again in my mind a lot of it goes back to the fact that we're just so immersed in this all day long it's really difficult for us to have real conversation. And I think that if anything personal proves it, it's the fact that people are willing to listen to people talk in front of a camera for three and a half hours and be glued to every word of it. Like people need. We are, we are all so lonely and we just, we don't realize how lonely we all are. Like we go find an uncontacted tribe that is discovered in like and st. In like when they show even the way they live which has no outside influence theoretically with the rest of the world, what do they do? They're all super. In these super tight knit communities and they sing music all day long. Like, like it's not something that we're taught culturally. It's a, it's part of our operating system. Like we need it, you know. And that's what makes me so like, I guess that's now like that's, that's why I'm on this. That's why now I'm willing to risk all of it again I guess and go on this, this tangent that I'm going on to try to do something different because I, to me like with music specifically I look at, I look at like the, that music that I wrote that was crap that was on my phone and you know, my guitar is out of tune and I'm out of key and the song's not in time and like they just. By every textbook definition those songs suck. And if you Go on the original I've Got to get sober YouTube video and look at the comments from where I'm sitting under the carport at my camper playing it. Like, read those comments. Like, you just. You can't make that up. Like, those people felt something out of that. And that's. That's the kind of music that we need to be putting out. And. But. But it's like. Like with everything else, medicine, education, you name it, Things that we really need, people have found a way to pry themselves in the middle of. And it's like a little toll road they set up, and they can collect a check every time, but they know.
- [61:49]
Jocko Willink
It'S like a big toll road.
- [61:50]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, they know people or they know people need it.
- [61:53]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. Well, you know, again, before we started recording, we were talking about some stuff, and one of the things I was saying is, I think one of the things like what you just said, the appeal of your music, is that people go, oh, other people feel the same way as I do. And this reminds me, I used to have, like, seeing new guys going out on missions in the SEAL teams. Like, a new guy, you could see, he's real nervous before he goes out on his first mission. And I'd be like, duty? Are you nervous? And of course they'd be like, no, hey, man. Well, you've gone to the. You've gone to the bathroom four times in the last 15 minutes, so something's going on. And basically to say, hey, dude. Yep, totally normal. It's totally normal. You're going to be nervous, of course. You're going to go out and freaking combat. Somebody's trying to kill you. That's fine. It don't. Like, that's normal. And as soon as people realize, like, oh, okay, so what I'm feeling is the same as what a lot of people feel. And I think that, you know, your music is, hey, what you're feeling right now, you're, you know, you got financial issues, you got freaking drama at work, you got the girls, you know, causing problems. Problems. You're caught like you're drunk again, like, all these things, like, oh, yeah, other people are going through these things. And I think that's. That's very common. And then what you mentioned about, you know, you being out of key and out of tune, your guitars out of tune and all that stuff. You know, I was. I was talking. I have a company called Echelon Front where we do leadership consulting. And there's an opportunity, like, we speak to a lot of people and there's an Opportunity, when you speak to people, to clean things up to a point where it becomes sterile. And as we were kind of moving in that direction, I, A few years ago, I said, hey, who here listens to the White Stripes and people like maybe a little bit, whatever. And I said, and because I heard this interview with Jack White from the White Stripes.
- [63:45]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [63:46]
Jocko Willink
And he was talking about how when, like a modern pop musician, when they make music, when they make, they take, they sample like a snare drum and they'll, they'll hit it 100 times and they'll find the perfect snare hit. And then they'll take that, that snare hit, the hi hat, the snare hit, the hi hat, the crash cymbal. They'll take the perfect one that they want and then they put it into the computer. And so every snare hit is absolutely perfect. And then they do the same thing with their guitar solos. Like, they'll take, they'll play that thing 13 times and they'll make little adjustments. They'll get it to auto tune. Like they do all these things. And so you hear something that's clinical and quote, unquote, perfect. But going back to what we were talking about earlier, it's almost like it's not human anymore.
- [64:31]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It's not.
- [64:32]
Jocko Willink
So for you to be like, oh, this is just me. My guitar is a little out of tune. My voice is what my voice is and you're gonna have to deal with it. And people go, and they can feel that that's a huge human there. And that's so much more relatable than something that's been synthesized by a computer, in my opinion.
- [64:51]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, so that's my. Yeah, I agree with you. And that's my, my realization is that there are thousands of people who can do all of that better than me. And, and part of this drive that Draven and I have talked about with producing music is we want to like, we want to do that for like, there's a million more Oliver Anthony musics out there. Like, I, I'm one of, of many that could just go and do that. Like, there's no, it's just like even with my own music. So this last album we just recorded, I've. I've recorded it once in Nashville in November, and it was with two big producers who were very good, like good hearted, nice dudes. And I'm not saying it's not anything negative about them when I say this, but they, we went into the studio, they brought all these Nashville recording dudes in that were and we just sat there and we did all the songs just so perfect. And they went. And then they went back and dubbed all this crap over it. Trombones, vocal background singers, all these little. All these weird little noises and all the stuff. And when they. And I hate. I'm just being transparent, but I'm not proud of this. But when they sent me the songs back and I was listening to them and I was. I'm still. I've still got my trusty blue Suburban that I was talking about on the Joe Rogan at the time on the Joe Rogan podcast. It had just gotten dropped off the back of a rollback. And so the truck got totaled out, but I bought it back, so I'm still driving the turd. And I punched the radio out on it when I listened to the first song because they wouldn't let me listen to any of the rough mixes. They were like, no, no, no, give us a few weeks. We want to. A month went by and they sent me these fully mastered mixes. Mix songs. And they were terrible. They were. That. They were perfect little. And. And then it just. I don't know. It's just like. I don't know. I just felt violated by it almost. But I was so upset that I just, like, punched the radio. And luckily you can buy a radio for a 2007 Suburban for, like, 50 bucks. So, like, it's like, it wasn't really an expensive mistake, but I was, like, furious by it. So we just. We just literally went. So I caught. So Draven listened to him. We both agree that they all suck. So we. I've walked away from the project and we went and bought all the equipment that we needed.
- [67:04]
Jocko Willink
Now, how did you walk. You can't walk away from a project that's got to be freaking legally complicated.
- [67:10]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I don't do contracts. I just do handshakes. And I'll cover all the costs associated with the original recording. I'm going to lose. You know, I'll lose 50 grand or something, but I'm not going to put a song out that's not my song either, you know?
- [67:22]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, but we.
- [67:23]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
But we.
- [67:24]
Jocko Willink
Sounds of any of what.
- [67:25]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
And they were. And they were trying to bully me. Like, they were like, they were sending emails to my attorney. Like, that weren't very. Not like they weren't being very nice, I guess, is all. It wasn't them. It was their attorney not being nice to my. So I. So Draven and I talked about it and we were like, well, let's just try to do it again and just see what it sounds like. And if it's better, we'll just go with our. Let's just do it. Let's just go back to doing it the way we did everything else. And so we bought all this equipment. This was just a couple weeks ago. This was. I can't remember the dates, but it was like. It was literally like two weeks ago. We just went and recorded all this at my house. And I've got a little place near. Just north of Bluefield, West Virginia now, where I stay most of the time. And we brought everybody in. It snowed like, 6 inches. The power went out. So we're literally in my house. Luckily, I got a wood stove in the house, but we're literally in the house with the whole band. You know, we got. Every room is set up with something. So the fiddles in the one bedroom, I'm in the other bedroom. The drums are in the basement. We just recorded the whole album in my house. And it sounds so much better than the original. Like, it is so real and vibrant and chaotic and, like, you know, there's probably. One of the first songs off of it that I'll put out is. Well, like, when you get to the solo parts, there's a part where I wanted it to. It. I wanted the solo to feel, like, the emotions that I'm feeling in the lyrics. So it's like. It's anxiety at the beginning, and then it builds into anger. And so it's like just this most chaotic solo that it goes through that the fiddle and the guitar go back and forth on. And you would never be able to replicate that. Having them go back and play over me. You would never overdub that.
- [68:57]
Jocko Willink
Are you playing lead for most guitar? Hell, yeah.
- [69:01]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, yeah. Joey. Joey does, like, the crazy. I'm usually just rhythm and slide stuff. And he's like. He.
- [69:07]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, he does the solos.
- [69:08]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
He does the solo stuff. Yeah. But it's.
- [69:11]
Jocko Willink
You know, when's the album coming out?
- [69:14]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I have no idea. I'll probably just start dumping. Well, that's the thing now. Like, I don't have. I don't have a management company. I don't have a publicist. It's just like, I just. Whatever, it's just me. I'll just. I don't know, like that. Usually there's a. Usually there's this whole. You know, in music, when New music. That's part of what was so funny at the beginning with, like. With all those songs charting is that, like, most songs to chart have a lot of Money invested in them. Like, I don't know if, you know, like, I didn't know this until all this happened, but it's very common for a label to spend, like, up to a million dollars buying their own song essentially on the chart, like, to get it up to a certain level, there's a. There's a. There's a ton of marketing, and, like, it's a. It's a business like anything else. And so. But with these, we'll. We'll come up with some kind of release strategy and we'll get, you know, we'll put them out probably in the next. There'll be a song out within a month for sure, the first one. And then we'll just. Because I've only. I've only put two. Two new songs out since Richmond. And I did that because, like I said, I thought. I thought it was just going to be kind of done and over with in it. And it's like I tried to let the flame die out and it didn't. And I realized that, like, I was being really. You know, I had this moment not that long ago, and it was. It was around the time that we had to put hooch down, and I realized, like, man, I'm really up not doing this. Like, I. Like, I went back and I remembered. It's like I just kind of forgot for a minute about how everything had happened up to that point. And like. And like, what I told God that I was going to do at the beginning, you know, and like, here I am. I've got. It's like I just felt like such a coward. It's like, here you are, you've made. You've made your three or four million dollars, and you can just go live your stupid little life in the woods. And like, like, what a coward I am. Like Joan and the whale, you know, like, running away from what I'm supposed to do. And so, yeah, it's just. I don't know. I. So, yeah, so I just. I got. I. I had to walk away from a lot of the professional companies that I was using because I was trying to accomplish tasks with those companies that was. That they almost physically couldn't do because it would jeopardize relationships that they already have with the people that I'm effectively trying to compete against, if that makes sense or trying to circumvent. I'm not trying to compete against them. This is a. This thing that I'm going to do is nonprofit.
- [71:25]
Jocko Willink
It's another way. It's another way of doing it.
- [71:27]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It's just another way of doing it. But it. It wasn't like they were even being malicious, I don't think. I think it was just that they couldn't do it because they had other business arrangements that were prior that were prioritized over mine.
- [71:36]
Jocko Willink
You know, how long was it? I'm. I'm wondering how. How long it takes for vultures to attack. How long was it when Richmond came out? How long did it take before you got like a phone call of someone saying, hey, this is. I'm a big studio exec.
- [71:52]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Oh, the president of record labels were at the first show. Like the. I don't want to speak out of context. I don't remember. I don't know what his job role, but there was. There was big, very high level people from Republic and Warner and a few of the other ones at the very first show that Jamie was at.
- [72:10]
Jocko Willink
Do they. Do they just. Do they give you an offer on the spot? Are they like walking up to you like, hey, I'm gonna make your dreams come true. I gotta. Here's a check. What does this need to be? Is it that kind of thing?
- [72:20]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, there was only the. There was only one that gave me a verbal amount of what an advance would be for off the Gap. A lot of them just wanted to. They were all very polite. They're just like sales representatives is all they are. So I never, I never. There was a. Yeah, there was a few offers that went out. Like it. Basically what they'll do is they'll offer you in advance, which is just. It's like. What it is is it's just a loan, more or less. You know, they'll give you $3 million up front, but then they own your intellectual and they're going to make all that money off the back end. And then like that album that I recorded in Nashville, I would have had to put that out. Like, I wouldn't have had a choice. They would have owned it. You know, then this whole catalog of music's going to be out for the rest of my life that I don't even want out. Like, that'd be tortured me, like. And that happens to a lot. There's a lot. And there's other artists that have spoken out about how that's happened to them, but it's. It's a common. It's not like any of it.
- [73:08]
Jocko Willink
Story of. Did you know that story? Like, I've always known that story that guys like Meatloaf, you know? Meatloaf? Yeah, like Meatloaf.
- [73:15]
Echo Charles
He.
- [73:16]
Jocko Willink
He made however many albums. And the original album, Meatloaf was such a huge, massive, like triple platinum, whatever. And he didn't make any money from it because somebody came and he signed some contract that said, you know, what do we own? We own it all. And there's a bunch of stories like that with people getting screwed over.
- [73:33]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I would have, I would have gotten screwed if Jamie Johnson wouldn't have come to, to the first show. And you gotta understand, I quit my job, but it takes 90 to 120 days to start getting paid for digital streaming sales. So I didn't get a check off of Richmond until like around Christmas time was when I got my first check. So we, and I'd quit my job. We had like a few thousand dollars saved up. I did. The first two shows I did were free, so I had no cash flow coming in. I didn't have nothing. And then, yeah, people are, it's, it was easy for people to throw money around. So. But right out the gate what he did was he, he got me in contact with his attorney and his attorney was like, his attorney was really cool. He didn't, he didn't make me pay a dime until I started having like, he, he worked for me for free for basically three months. But if I hadn't had that attorney, man, like, I mean, I, this is, I, I, I just want to tell the story. So like, this isn't, I don't even want to say this on a podcast, but I do want to just, I want you to, I want like people to understand like how, how psyched out I got from the very beginning. But I had a, I had a relative who owns a couple small businesses. Like, he offered at the very. He, like we're family and he offered to help me set all of my register. I didn't have any of my songs registered. Like I said, that's how that Robert Beckley guy or whatever was able to get me in the uk. I didn't have anything trademarked. I had the uploads from Distrokid. Thank God that was the only thing I had. But I didn't have anything actually registered. I didn't have any of my music published officially. And he went and set all that up for me, but he made himself 3% owner of all my intellectual property when he did it. And he said he had to do that in order to sign things on my behalf. That he would take it back off, but then he wouldn't take it off. So like that same attorney from Jamie like saved me even from my Own family. Like. Like one of my own relatives ripping me off. And, like, that was within the first two months all. So, like, how am I supposed to trust anybody body then? Like, if my. Like, if that's it, just. Yeah. And, like, I. And I don't know. I've matured a lot from this. Even thinking about freaking out at those shows and stuff. I don't. I. Yeah, Like, I've just. This whole thing is just. If there's one thing that I've learned from all of it is, like, they. Everyone speaks about it. You've spoken about it in Jordan Peterson and other things. But, like, the only way to overcome fear and develop yourself is to. Is, like, to face it, you know? And. And I can say that, like, I. I am a much better person right now than I was a year ago from having gone through, like, it does in the long run. As long as you can just maintain enough of a level of discernment to not fall into a pit. And if you're just able to just figure out how to get through it, there is a huge reward at the other side of it. Like, there's. So there's wisdom now that I would have never been able to have if I hadn't went through those things.
- [76:17]
Jocko Willink
But, yeah, no, I'm kind of. I'm very impressed and surprised in the fact that, like, I can't imagine the money that people were offering you as an advance to say, hey, just sign this dotted line right here, and you don't have to worry about anything else. And just go ahead and sign this. Go ahead and sign this. And here you are. You just quit your job. Like, the fact that you came out of that in the position you're in, where you didn't sign those things, you don't. You know, nobody owns. Owns you or your intellectual property is. Is freaking amazing. So then where did it go from there? So now did you. Now you need money at some point? Did. Did you guys just set up a tour? How did that work?
- [76:58]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So Brian was like, all these emails and offers were coming, like, for different. Doing different gigs and stuff. And so, like, we. We just went and took some, like, sketchy gigs without really knowing what we were doing. And, like, there was one. There was this one bluegrass festival I did in Kentucky where they, like, just gave me a briefcase full of cash for doing the show. Like, it was just, like. It was just like. It was the wild west for the whole fall. But it was enough money to. Where I could pay everybody and just have enough to get. To get by On. And then I think, like I said, the first. The first check from Richmond came through. Like, the first. The first big transfer came over from Distrokid in December, and I didn't even know what to do with it. I call. I ended up. I was able to get a hold of the guy who was the president of Distrokid. I think he's just now on the board now. But I was able. I, like, got. I got his cell phone number and called him and told him, don't give this money to anybody. Unless, like, I was afraid somebody was going to hack into my Distrokid account and like, take the money out. And you got to think, man, I was making 80 grand a year and that first check that came in was like 800 something. Like, it was a paralyzing amount of like, it wasn't money that I, like, I didn't know what to do. I was like, I was paralyzed in fear from it, you know, like, and.
- [78:09]
Jocko Willink
That'S from everything from Spotify, from Apple.
- [78:11]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
That's digital streaming.
- [78:12]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, all digital streaming.
- [78:14]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, since I write. Since I've. Since I write all my own songs and technically I'm the label and technically I'm able to collect from all those different avenues. So it is so, like, most artists make their money touring, but I. I actually made just a. As much money off streaming last year as I did touring, you know, just. And, and part of that's also because my, Because I was running my tour at the lowest margin I could to where I knew I could, where I wasn't going to lose. Like, I don't know who does. I, I wanted a $25 ticket option because I. Because I knew what it was like to not only not have any money, but probably have three grand on a credit card. Like, there's people out there who are not only broke, they're broke and upside down.
- [78:55]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [78:56]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
They don't have $200 to go watch a show. And what, like, if anybody needs to go see music, it's the guy who's got $3,000 in credit card debt. It's not the dude that's got a million dollars in the bank. So, like, and. And people thought I was just a dumb ass for doing $25 tickets. Even the professional people were just thinking it was so stupid. And I was just. But man, there was this. There was this. There's been so many times where I've, like, doing the meet and greets after the shows where there was people who came up and you could tell, like, they didn't have any money. Money. Like, they're not people that would go to a, like their kids were in rough looking clothes and they were in like a beater ass car and, but they were there and they were like, they were pumped. They were. Yeah. And, and in cases like, I don't know. I've never seen so many adults cry as I've seen in the last. Like, I didn't, I don't know, like I've never had. I don't know. You know, Jordan Peterson talked about this one time a long time ago and I, I didn't understand what he meant until now I'm in this position. But Jordan was talking about like I, he may have used the word burden, but it's not a burden to me. But just when you, when, when, when another grown person comes to you as a complete stranger and tells you things that they probably had never told anybody else, even their partner or any like, and they're, and they get in that emotional state and they're like. And they're telling you that. And they trust you with that. You'd have to be a psychopath to not carry that a little bit yourself and to like and to not, and to not feel obligated to try to make some kind of. I don't know, like I, I don't know how you're not supposed to. Like, I still think about those, some of those people that I talk to, like, I just, I don't know, they're normal. A lot of them are like big tough guys that you would never even think had a care in the world. And they're like, they're one more bad day away from just wanting to end up, you know, I don't know.
- [80:49]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, then you're doing that. How many, like, how many. What was your touring schedule like? How often were you playing?
- [80:57]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, so I used, I used you. So what happened was, was I was, I was with Brian and we were just like cash suitcase in our shows and like winging it. And that worked up until there was one gig we went to to book at a place. And every show has a contract you sign before the tickets go on sale. And that way I can see like what the tickets are going to be sold out. It has like a, like the payout of what the show will do, estimated cost, what I'm going to make, what the venue is going to make, all that kind of stuff. Well, we had a show that they sent a contract proposal over. It never got signed. I never agreed to do the show. But somehow the show still got put on sale and tickets were getting sold at like this crazy price that was never agreed upon. And so after that I realized like, I can't. I got to find somebody who knows what they're doing to handle this. And my attorney was very like, my attorney is like, you're going to just get burnt. You got to have somebody in the middle that understands how like is it. It's surprisingly complex. That's why I want to do this thing I'm trying to do because it's right now like just even to be an artist and book a show is like you got to have an attorney to do it basically, or a professional agency doing it for you. Like it's, it's a lot of. It's. Those contracts are like very complex, you know, and there's a lot of money at stake. And so I ended up getting a booking agency and they helped me put that. Put that tour together for this past year. So it was like, it was a lot of weekend runs which, which this year when, when I go out and do runs this year, I'll probably do them more. Two or three weeks. Like we'll go out. We're going to do a big west coast tour for 2025. So we'll go. We'll be on the road for over a month in a bus. You know, I've got like a two week run in Canada we're planning. So we'll be in Canada for like two weeks on a bus. Same way with, you know, this Europe. Europe is going to be a month long run and Australia will be two weeks. Like I'm trying to do them more where they're not a lot of artists that tour out of Nashville. My understanding is Nashville's a little more centrally located. You can go out and do weekend runs that way. But everybody that. My whole band's in Virginia. My. The only person that I have out of Nashville is my fiddle player Billy Contreras. Everybody else is just people that live. They're all people I knew from before, you know, my whole. The rest of them. So it's hard to leave out of Virginia, go do two shows in Michigan and Missouri or something. It was like we were just all over the place, you know, home for three days and then right back out again. It wasn't very effective the way it was. It was kind of inefficient the way we were, the way we ran around this year. And I also didn't have a lot of control over it because all the venues have waiting lists basically. Like if you want to play Red Rocks, for example, you have to. Red Rocks is an extreme example, but just the one that comes to mind. Like any of the. Any that really, any of the venues usually already have a couple people in line. So like when you want to book, like if I wanted to go play the Pittsburgh Amphitheater again, there's probably three or four people that have it all who are already in line for like every available day, especially on the weekends. So it's kind of like you're. So there's a lot more demand than there is supply right now in the venue world. I would say from what I've observed, at least at the level at the. At the size venues I'm playing like this meet. Like I'm not doing any big. The biggest shows I'll do is like 10,000 seats or something like that, you know.
- [83:59]
Jocko Willink
How many gigs did you do on tour that first, like run, like how many shows did you do?
- [84:04]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I don't even know.
- [84:05]
Jocko Willink
Was it like, was it like 20 or was it like 100?
- [84:09]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It was like in 2020. I don't know how many shows we did in 2024, but it had to have been probably like 50. More than 50, I'd say.
- [84:17]
Jocko Willink
Well, what. When you walk out like on stage and you're all freaking. You don't like people do.
- [84:26]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I love the people.
- [84:27]
Jocko Willink
Well, what I'm saying, like, that's just got to be the. The craziest feeling when you walk out or when. When you have in 10,000 people singing the words to your songs. That's gonna be a pretty freaking crazy thing for you.
- [84:43]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, like the, the first, the first one I vivid. Well, even I was. I couldn't believe in it that even at that very first show we did right. Which is right after. It's within. Within two weeks of Richmond blowing up. There's of course those people that went back and listened to all the other songs. But even at the very first show, everyone there knew almost every song and I was like, that's when I, you know. And that kept happening and that's when I. It started to realize that this wasn't just like. This wasn't just going to go away like in the next few minutes, which I would like. I said I was kind of like, I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking. Part of me, it just. It was out of. It was mostly fear based, but part of me just kind of wanted it to go away because I just didn't know what to, you know. Yeah, I just didn't know what to do.
- [85:23]
Jocko Willink
Did you get more used to it?
- [85:26]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Now I'm per. Now I'm pretty. Now I'm okay with it. Yeah. Now it's like. I mean, I'm still terrified before I go out there, but it's not like that. Like, the Houston Rodeo was the worst. Probably one of the worst ones, but. And you can watch. Like, if you watch the Houston Rodeo.
- [85:39]
Jocko Willink
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you. Look, you played. You played the guitar at Brian's parties, like, on the block or whatever. Yeah, but as far as you missed an entire maturing process as an artist of doing, like, oh, I'm playing a club with 100 people.
- [85:56]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
The first paid gig was. And technically it wasn't. I mean, they gave me. I think they gave me like $1,000 just to cover my cost. But that Morris Farm show. Yeah, that was technically my first gig. Like, that was my first official gig. And that was 12,000 people that know.
- [86:09]
Jocko Willink
The words to all your songs. You see what I'm saying? That's a weird. That's a weird place to go from.
- [86:14]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
But. But the shows isn't where it's so weird. It's the everyday, real life. It's the, like. Like, like. So Labor Day weekend. Every Labor Day weekend, I invite a bunch of people to my property and we all camp out and ride four wheelers and shoot guns and just fellowship stuff. And I had. I had to go to Farmville Walmart to get hot dogs and, like, some other crap, you know? And this is right after I go to the. I've been in that Walmart a thousand times. But that time I had to. The store manager had to come out and shake my hand and I had to take all these pictures and people were following me out in the parking lot. And like, that's when it's like, that's. That's the part that feels weird. Not so much the show. I can. I can. Yeah, the shows aren't so weird feeling. It's the every. It's like the rest of it, it's like. And I forget. Like I said, I've got. I'll go stay. I'll go stay at our farm for a couple weeks and work on stuff. And, you know, I know, of course, that all this music stuff's going on and I'm involved in it and I'm having to, like, get on conference calls and emails and stuff, but I kind of. I just. I'm just able to be Chris. And then I. And then I go out and try to get gas and like. And I'm like, oh, man. It's like, almost like it. Like. I don't know. It's almost like. It almost feels like sometimes I'm like a fugitive on the run or something. Like, I'm always. I've always got to. You know, because you just don't know. And like, there's like. You were talking about earlier about people waiting outside of that guy's apartment to take pictures with him. It's kind of like sometimes you just. 90% of the time, they're like, very. A lot of times you walk away from those conversations better than you were before. You start, like, a lot of times it's a. It's a very rewarding thing, but every once in a while it's a malicious thing or it's like a. I don't know. Sometimes people are just. We. They're just weird. They're just like stalkers, you know? Like, it's not. It's not good. Like, you.
- [87:56]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And you're not. You're not blending in, too, because. How tall are you?
- [88:01]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, I. My. My running joke is that I'm 511 on Wikipedia. But I'm like. I'm probably like 6. I think my driver's license is 6 6, so I'm probably like really 65 or something. I don't know.
- [88:11]
Jocko Willink
So 6 5. Freaking. Bright red hair, bright orange, beautiful beard. Like, you're not. You're not blending in anywhere. You know, like, people are going to identify you from long range.
- [88:24]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. The shows is, you know, the thing at the shows that's crazy. The one thing that. That. So like, imagine doing the show, you know, being on stage for an hour and 45 minutes in front of five or 10,000 people, and. And then especially towards the end of the show, that's when we really get connected. Because there's a lot of times towards the end of the show, I'll read something out of scripture and, like, we'll do a couple of the more serious songs, and then, you know, usually Richmond, and then we might do an encore after Richmond, but we've Richmond's always like, you know, richmond and I want to go home, and maybe a couple others. Everybody's always really into them, so you feel this connection with, like, thousands of people at one time, and then everything goes away, and you're just in the. You're just like, going to take a shower in the locker room before you go to leave. To go. And it's like you go from all that to, like, to. To being by yourself. That's a very. That's a. That is an interesting feeling. Like, that's something that you don't know. That's a feeling you wouldn't experience otherwise.
- [89:21]
Jocko Willink
You know, like no way to. For a normal person to experience. That was it. Feel lonely, like empty, gratified, satisfied. Like, what's the. What's the vibe when you're sitting alone in the bus after you just freaking made 10,000 people cry?
- [89:45]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, part of it, I. I feel like I feel hopeful for the future that. Because when you're with thousands of people who you feel like are just normal, everyday people who aren't like, like I said, even. I mean, that's why like, anything, sports or anything is so captivating to people or why people will go pay 300 a T to go to a Zach Brian concert because they're in a. They're in an amphitheater with 60,000 other people or whatever who feel the same way they do. At least they all have something in where, like I said, like, in a world where it seems like everybody's at on end with each other and angry about something. Like, there is there. Again, it goes back to, like, the same reason why tribes sing music together and are so close. There's. There is like a. There's certainly a very rewarding experience to be able to be a part of that, but I always just feel like I'm a part of it. I never feel like I'm. I never really feel like I'm the guy on stage. I guess I just feel like I'm experiencing this moment with all those other people, you know? Like, I don't ever feel like I'm the guy on the stage, I guess. And it's a weird feeling. But, yeah, the loneliness is like, like I said, the difficulty, the challenging part comes when you're not at the shows. Like, like I said, every relationship you have changes because even though I'm Christopher Lunsford, my friends, my family, my neighbors, the people I've known 15 years, new people I meet, like I'm Oliver Anthony to them. Even if I am just still Chris to him, I'm different, you know, And I can. It's like, it's kind of the same thing. Like, they talk about. You read about people who win the lottery, and then like their whole life falls apart because everybody treats them different. Everybody wants something from them, and it's not necessarily anybody wants it. Like, I'm not saying it like that, but it's just like, I'm so. To me, this Oliver Anthony music thing is Like a project that I'm working on. It's not me. Like, I'm not Oliver Anthony, you know, I'm not. Like, I'm just. I'm just some guy. Like, I just. I'm just that guy that wrote that song, you know, And I have a million other parts of my life that can. Like, you'd be surprised how little of the actual music space occupies my head on a daily basis. Like, I'm. There's a lot of other things. Of course, a lot of them have been enabled now because of that music project that I'm working on. But it's not like I live in that world all the time either. So it's been challenging. I said it's been challenging. It's been challenging re. Centering myself in my relationships with people. And because. Because it's like I'm almost in a dip. It's like I'm in a different reality. Like, everyone's. My social interaction, the way I engage with people, the things we talk about. Like, it's all, you know, it's just been a learning curve.
- [92:18]
Jocko Willink
But yeah, it's like you're in a new environment that you got to adapt to, you know, like, that's just the thing.
- [92:24]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
And that was that whole process. Last year, like, I fell apart last year. I gained, you know, I was up to 280 pounds. I was anxious all the time. Like, just like, wasn't getting any sleep, just taking terrible care of myself. Like I said, I was just like in the whirlwind of it. And now it's like, I can. Like the last two or three months I've been, you know, working out every other day and. And running and eating right. I'm down to like £245. I'm getting my head right again. Like, I've. I've got this whole mission that I'm on now with this thing this year and just. I'm through it. Like. But it was definitely. But. But again, coming out on the other side of it, I'm a much better person than I was before. And I feel like now I can. I feel like now I can take on the world and I can do all these things that I wanted to do back then. I just had to, like, I had to, like, I had to mature as a. As an. As a. I had to like. It was like. I don't know. You know, Draven and I both joke about it because he's went through a lot of transition in his life now because of what happened. But like, we're like we're trying to be men now. You know, we were just, we like we weren't men before. I don't know. We weren't like we had, we hadn't like accepted there's a certain part in your life and I guess for you like when you, that's probably the beauty of, of enlisting in the military is like it helps you get there quicker but without that guidance and discipline and without that sense of purpose, there's people who are 50 years old who are still just boys. Like there's like a. I don't know, I don't, I'm not well spoken enough to be able to, to like. But I guess you know what I'm saying.
- [93:49]
Jocko Willink
No, I know 100 what you're saying. It's very. Because I've, I've explained that or thought about that before from the military perspective is like what's, it's awesome because you enlist in the military and you are now a productive, self efficient member of society. Self sufficient member of society. Like you have medical coverage, you have a paycheck, you have a place to live and you have food which is actually huge. Like having all those things organized when you're 18 years old is pretty impressive. So yeah, for, for a normal person that doesn't do that, they gotta go out and make all those things happen. It can be a lot harder to become a self sufficient human. And what you're talking about is like when you're avoiding being a self sufficient productive human, you can put that off for a long time. And it sounds like what the place that you were at was like, oh, I know I'm not the self sufficient human I should be. I'm going to cover up that with, you know, some, some freaking homemade wine.
- [94:59]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
There's. Yeah, there's people though that like in my case I was 18, working a full time job. I had my own apartment, I was renting, you know, I even had some money put away and all. Like there was never a time if you looked at me on a textbook that my life was necessarily like that. I wasn't but it was just that I wasn't, I was just, I was just doing what I needed to do to pay the bills and I wasn't pursuing my. It's like I wasn't fulfilling whatever my purpose was. Like I think, I think it's like.
- [95:30]
Jocko Willink
You were treading water.
- [95:32]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, exactly.
- [95:33]
Jocko Willink
But almost not making any progress.
- [95:34]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
But, but most all of us do for a long time. You know, like everyone I know that works a, that Works a job like that. They have something like, you know, it's. And this is like, this goes back to just watching you and Jordan Peterson videos and other things, but you realize at a certain point in your life, like, that we all do have. We all have this great idea. Like, we all have the spark, you know, going back to what we talked about the beginning. We all have the spark that we can light and ignite and run with. And, you know, people have the most brilliant ideas, but all they do their whole life is just talk about the ideas. They never actually. It's terrifying to move forward. It's terrifying to move forward with what you believe your purpose is, because then if you fail, then, like, then what are you going to do? It's easier to just be a failure and just accept it and mask it with. With whatever it is. If it's food, like, for me, definitely. If it's. You know, before it was. It was alcohol that. That I got masked with. But then it's like, but if it's not alcohol, it's food, it's porn, it's gambling, or just. Or just not managing your money correctly and just buying a bunch of shit, you don't need to fill that. It's like there's all, you know, whatever it is, everybody's got that void. It seems like. I don't know. But we all sort of. We all certainly have a spark. We all certainly have the capability to create a better place. And I think. I think my. My vision is. Is like finding a way to get. To get all those sparks together and get all the. Get all those people connected, like, in the real world, and not like, we're never gonna. We're never gonna accomplish real change in this world, and we're never gonna really address all of these problems that we endlessly complain about if we just keep going on X and Reddit and Facebook and Instagram and talking, we can talk about until we're black and blue in the face. But it's like just. I don't know. I think you just got to get all, like, those people just need to get together in person. And the only way I can conceptualize, the only thing that I can think. And it goes back to the theory with the uncontacted tribes, but I don't care what uncontacted tribe you go visit. I'm sure music and food are on the list of things that they do. And I think universally, like our operating system, we. My. My joke now is that if you don't like music or food, you're probably a robot.
- [97:50]
Jocko Willink
And.
- [97:50]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
And so, you know, everybody eats and everybody listens to some kind of music. So I want to. I have this vision of creating this. These spaces, this. This network, this, like this web of these. Of these spaces where. Where there is like, genuine music without backing tracks, without. Because going back to what you said about in the studio with everything being perfected.
- [98:16]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [98:16]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Like, it happens on, like. And it's not. It's bad. You know, it's bad. But it happens more than not, probably, like. Like, because the labels, the main. They want everything to sound perfect. And I understand they want. They're more worried about putting on a production than. Than. Than those people listening to real music. And the. And like, it makes me. My blood. It made my blood boil because I've heard it three or four times now. But when I. When I was talking to people in the professional space about the backing tracks and the drum loops and the. And like, some of the vocal augmentation and some of the other things that's like, common. Like, it's common practice at festival series and even with big bands and stuff. Oh, well, they don't know the difference anyway. They just, they're, you know, they want to hear it that way. And it's like. I don't think they do. I think they want to.
- [99:07]
Jocko Willink
They don't.
- [99:08]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I think they want to hear like, they want to. They're not. They're there to do everything we just. We talked about with music. Like, that power of music.
- [99:15]
Jocko Willink
And so otherwise just what, just listen to the freaking MP3 or go watch the YouTube video? Like, no, you want to see a human do the thing and.
- [99:24]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Exactly. Metallica is a great example because, you know, if you look at any Metallica video on YouTube, there's a few people in the comments that are joking about how, like, they missed a few notes or like, something about their. But like, they're one of the most incredible bands of all time and still draw huge crowds because they get up there and they're. They play the damn songs with real instruments and they do mess up a little bit because they're human beings and everybody, like, you're going there and you're really seeing Metallica. Like, you want to see it. You want to see it with a few notes missed. Like, that's it. Like, that's the real thing. You know, they're just one example of many of, like, there's a lot of great. So, like, yeah, how. How do you get. How do you get real music into a place without. How do you get Real music into a place without all the augmentation and without all the thrills and. And all the frills. And how do you do it in a way that's affordable enough, where the people who really do need that music, who are probably, in most cases, not financially well off doing it. Like, I would love to see a study. I know there's no way to probably, but, like, think about.
- [100:24]
Jocko Willink
I don't know if we can do a study, but I can give you my opinion. That's for sure. And I know echo can chime in, too.
- [100:28]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I wonder how many people that go to concerts have credit card debt. It's probably 80%. Like, I don't know. There's.
- [100:34]
Jocko Willink
Well, that's just America.
- [100:35]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I know.
- [100:36]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, that's just America. That's the unfortunate place that people get themselves to. It's like. It happens, man. Like, you're going paycheck to paycheck, and all of a sudden it's Christmas time, and it's like, you want to get that thing for your daughter? It's like, well, I'm gonna get that thing for my daughter. You know, people just. It sucks. It's a reality.
- [100:56]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. But there's some kind of way that we can. There is some kind of way that we can teach people how to be more financially responsible in real life, and there's ways that we can teach people skills still in real life, like, in my mind, so.
- [101:10]
Jocko Willink
Well, they're actually getting taught the opposite, right? Because when they go on to Instagram, what they see is, like, an expensive watch, and they're like, okay, that's what I need is the expensive watch. Okay, let's get on my credit card and get the expensive watch. Instead of learning that, oh, no, you don't need that expensive watch. You can just get a Timex and you'll be gtg.
- [101:28]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I was in. So when I was eight, you know, when I. So I dropped. I dropped out of high school and moved to western North Carolina, and that's where I had the kid at 18, and that's where I had the injury and all that. And that town that I lived in was one of the ones that was affected by the.
- [101:41]
Jocko Willink
How come you dropped out of high school?
- [101:46]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I don't know. It was halfway through my senior year. I just. I just wanted to get. I don't know. I don't know. I have this, like, impulsive thing sometimes. Like, I have a problem with authority, I guess, or especially back then. I mean, I still do, I guess, because I can't. I still can't.
- [102:01]
Jocko Willink
Fit in line don't get. Then go guess here, man you 100. I got a problem with authority, but I just got.
- [102:07]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I don't know. The thing that really. I guess the thing that set me off was like, I had this. My history teacher was like this. My history teacher acted like his didn't stink and was always. And come. He ended up having an affair with one of the other teachers there. And it was this whole big thing and they like. I don't know. I just. And there's a few other things to it too, but it was very impulsive. I just. I. I dropped out of high school and basically ran away from. I didn't. My parents didn't want me to leave, but I just. You know what I mean? I was just ready to get out of there and go. I just didn't want to do it. I just. I didn't want to graduate. I didn't want to go to college. I just wanted to go figure out who I was, I guess. I don't know. And I don't know. I didn't have a plan or anything. I was just an idiot. You know, it's not like I'm saying I didn't even. I don't know that I'm. I'm saying. Even saying I made the right decision doing it, but. But yeah, there's no. There's no practical skills being taught to. To like. Like, I guess it was like, what am I going to get out of this? Like, and especially now, it's even worse now. But now, like, in public school, most of the kids, like I said, they're taught everything off of a tablet. Like, a lot of it's already, like, predetermined curriculum. And it doesn't teach them how to manage money or, like, how to fix little things around. Like, it doesn't teach them how to, like, to do any of that stuff. It's like it almost. They're very People. Kids are very vulnerable when they go out into the world now. And that's why they are so easily preyed upon by, like, credit card debt and a lot of these other, like, influences from social media and stuff. And I think we have. I think that we are the last species alive that knows what life was like before. All of, like, like, kids were so much happier in school in the 2000s than they are now. Like, just watch a bit. Like, there's tons of these videos where it shows, like, these old, like, retro camcorder videos of kids in school, like, in the early 2000s, and man, they Were so vibrant and like they just had so much life in them. And now kids just seems, and I don't know, kids just seem so dead now inside. And so they're like. And there's studies. I mean there's a. Oh, I'm going to mess the title of the book up. But there's a book about the anxious. It's like you. The anxious. It's about the anxious minds of youth. There's. I don't know what the title of the book is, but in it one of the things it refers to is like when they started adding front cameras to phones, like in that same year. Like early teenage girls, their self reported like self harm and suicide rates shot like there's a direct correlation with youth anytime that technology advanced and negative side effects with youth, whether it's like ADHD or if it's depression, suicide, like and, and it's hap. It's.
- [104:51]
Jocko Willink
It.
- [104:51]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It negatively affects us as adults too. But now that it's went on for at least two generations and we're on to like the third generation, you know, there's this, There was a study that was talked about on hand on Andrew Huberman about how like I think the example given was. I'm speaking all out, I'm just speaking out of thin air here. So I might, I might miss something up. But, but our DNA and our ch. And our DNA and our sperm can change from life experience. Like, like if you were to have had a kid at 18 and then go off to war and experience trauma and come back and have another kid, the DNA in your sperm that develops that second kid and to my understanding is different than the first. Our experiences literally change the DNA in our sperm because it's almost like our body's way of protecting our, you know, it's a, it's a survival mechanism is all it is. And you read about things like the, the taxi, the taxi drivers in London that have to memorize all the roads and they can take an MRI scan of their brain before and after and it's visibly different. And there's tons of other studies like.
- [105:53]
Jocko Willink
This in one of cops with that where like after a cops. Been a cop for a long time, there's some part of your brain that like is signifies trust. And over time, like cops, they're just, they're just not trusting anybody anymore because constantly they're dealing with people that are, you know, trying to freaking screw them over and attack them or whatever.
- [106:11]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So we should really have, we should as a, like, as a species, like this isn't even an American problem. This is a, this is like a global epidemic. But we should look at, we should think about the average screen time that the average human person in the digitally connected world spends on their phone and their tablet and their computer. Like, that's changing us. It has to change us. If mem. If memorizing roadways in London changes us, or being a cop changes us, or. And like, and it can literally change our DNA and stuff. Like, what, what does multi generational digital immersion do for us as a species? Like, I fear that we'll come to a point soon if we aren't. We're so dependent on these phones. I bought a flip. I bought a Verizon flip phone from Walmart. Like in November when we, when we, When I had to put my dog down, I just was, I didn't want to be on the phone, I didn't want to do conference. I just, I just needed some time to like, get my head straight. And so I was pretty much on a flip phone for a couple months. And man, it was like, it was like quitting drinking. It was like that difficult, you know, like, it's highly addictive. It regulates our mood. It regulates, like when you get on YouTube shorts and scroll for an hour, think about all the different things, all the different experiences your mind believes it's went through and all the different, all the different levels that are affected by that. Like the big ones we talk about is serotonin and dopamine. But there's all these different things that are. And so, so doing that, do that for two or three generations. Like, we are going to, we're going to become, I believe, like, dependent on these devices in order for us to. You can see it all, like the writings on the wall. Like, I, I believe that somebody smarter than me could look at most all the symptoms that we're currently experiencing in society that we're trying to fix. Like all these things that have popped up in the last 20 years that, that are just destroying us and our fam. Like our households and our marriages and our, the way our, you know, our kids and the way they. And it's like, it's obvious to me that our minds are, they're, they're not made to be he. Like, they're made to live in the, like, in the real world and be immersed in it. But as our, as the real world continues to become more dim and dull and hopeless and like, you know, it seems like so many people do have a very hopeless perspective right now about the future. And as the world becomes a more dull and dim place. The Internet becomes more vibrant and exciting and immersive and real. And it's like we. We need that cognitive. We need, like, that attention and that time and that bandwidth that we're spending here. We need it here. Like, the reason this is all falling apart is because we're all spending our time like.
- [108:54]
Jocko Willink
Well, it's like junk food, I think. I think you made this up, Echo Charles. Like, it's just junk food, right? It's junk food for your brain, you know? And junk food tastes good and it feels really good at the moment, and you really like it. And after you have some fudge rounds, like, by the bags over and over again, then. Then actually, like, maybe a steak doesn't taste as good anymore, you know, Even though that steak is the apex food to eat now that you're addicted to the sugar with the fat on it, all encompassed with the flavor and the salt, they do everything perfectly in. In a fudge round, you're like, oh, this is what all I want just. Just poured into my mouth.
- [109:33]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Just, you know, I'm going, I. My brain's always all over the place. We'll go back. I'm not trying to determine, but real quick, because I laugh. I like the little fudge round thing in there. So I told you that I had to write the second verse of Richmond after I talked to Draven, and we had, like, two days to do it. So I was in the Dollar General on Hoffheimer Road in Dinwiddie and the buying stuff and the. There was a lady in front of me who was, like, morbidly obese with her grandchild, and their whole cart was full of junk food. And that was one of the things in it was fudge rounds. And that's, like, where that verse. But, like, it was. But it was funny because I had to go back and explain myself with that verse because it wasn't like I was knocking that lady for buying all that junk food. It was just like, that lady has an EBT card. And, like, this is all she can. Like, this is all she can even. Like, they don't. They just don't even.
- [110:20]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [110:21]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Who. Nobody teaches us even what to eat. Like, I guess that, like, even what to eat. We don't even really know. We don't really know what's in our food. Like, as soon as I started. As soon as we started slaughtering our own pigs and meat birds and stuff and eating that food and then go to Walmart and buy chicken, like, Tyson Chicken is not like I'll. You'll never catch me in Smithfield or Tyson again. Like, it's almost fake. But anyway, I thought this, thought that was funny. I wanted to just bring that up briefly, but. But in our, like, yeah, I think that it's. I think a lot of our dysfunction and a lot of the symptoms that we're experiencing are just simply because our minds cannot run long term on this system of like, and in these. And, and also it's, it's more complex than that too, because with the introduction of AI like we talked about, it's like these devices are, are learning. AI is learning from us as we stay so immersed in it. It's learn AI. I mean, in theory, it's like if these, if these phones do what they say and you know, they, it's like, in theory, this like very intelligent operating system can watch simultaneously where millions and millions of people go and where they eat and how long they sit in a parking lot after they do this and they're talking on the phone with like, it's able to study. It's almost like playing God. It's able to watch like the behaviors and the conversations and the, the thoughts almost of like millions of people simultaneously. So like we're. I don't know, we're almost like. I don't know. I don't think. I just don't believe that we can survive as a species unless we find a way and the only way that we'll ever. I mean like, you can ban TikTok and you can demonopolize something else and you can, you can change porn. Like Virginia changed the law. So Pornhub, you have to be over 18 to get on the platform. I mean, what 13 year old isn't going to just download a VPN and get on porn? Like, we're trying to like correct all these issues. Like we're on age. Like, we're like the way a parent would try to discipline their child and the child knows 10 ways to get around it. Like, you know, like if, like the.
- [112:24]
Jocko Willink
Gun laws, when they make a gun law.
- [112:26]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Exactly.
- [112:27]
Jocko Willink
You can't have a quick reloading magazine. And so you got to put this thing on. And the gun makers go, okay, cool, here's a way to get around that thing that does the exact same thing. Yeah.
- [112:36]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So we'll never fix, we'll never fix it that way. Like there's all we have to make the real world more appealing than Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. And we have to find a way for people to Be able to constructively talk about all these things are important that are important without just doing it on Reddit or on X. Like, so. So this year, like, my whole.
- [112:59]
Jocko Willink
So this is your thing.
- [113:01]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So my thing.
- [113:02]
Jocko Willink
This is your thing right now. This is the. This is the Rural Revival Project, right? This is that.
- [113:07]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. Like it.
- [113:08]
Jocko Willink
Which is also your tour. Right?
- [113:10]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It'll.
- [113:11]
Jocko Willink
So they're the same kind of. They're intertwined.
- [113:14]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [113:15]
Jocko Willink
The Rural Revival Project and Oliver Anthony Music Tour. This go round. These things are kind of entwined. It's kind of a launch point. Is that right?
- [113:24]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. Yeah. We've only done one show so far in Morgantown, and it was like, last minute thrown together so that we've. We've only officially done one show. But even at that, like, it was the best. The best show I've done since all this happened was that Morgan in Town show. Like, even just in my. Just. Even the way I. When I walked away from it, I felt better. Like, I felt fulfilled from it. I mean, we, like, baptized people there and everything was crazy. It was like nuts. But, yeah, I. I envision this. I want to take my platform and my audience and the people who. Who also want change in the world. Like, who also have sent the people who have sent me all these messages that I've read and, like, who, like, don't even. Like the fact I just knew. I just know we're in trouble if people are just counting on some idiot like me to try to figure out how to make a D. Like, I know we're in trouble if somebody's, like, thinking that. But no, yeah, I'm going to start. I'm going to start finding these places to do shows that haven't had. I'm going to find these towns. Like, instead of doing the Pittsburgh Amphitheater, we're going to find a city within 45 minutes or an hour of it or a little town or whatever that hasn't had music or traffic or any kind of economic stimulus brought into it in 10 years or whatever. And I'm going to find these other bands and these other artists that I've met along the way, and I'm going to see if. Because a lot of them are tired of the Live Nation Ticketmaster monopolies and they're tired of, like. And you see people on the Internet all the time, musicians. Like, I mean, going back to Zach Brian, I'm not trying to keep bringing him up, but, like, he. I think he has an album or something about Tick. Like, he. I think one of his albums is. Or one of his tours or something was like negatively about Against Tick. Like he doesn't like ticket master either. And he's at the top of the ticket selling hierarchy. I want to create this festival series that it's a nonprofit and it can go. It can end up becoming anything. It's just a model. Like people could we. There could be 10 other people to start a festival series too. And like, it doesn't just have to be this one, but it's going to a town within an hour of where the monopolized music venue is.
- [115:19]
Jocko Willink
Are they going to be outdoors?
- [115:20]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
They'll be both. Like, one of the ones we're looking at doing indoors is in Bramwell, West Virginia. It used to be a town with the most millionaires per. It was the town with the most millionaires in it, I think in the whole country at one point. Like coal millionaires. It was a rich. It was like. It was a very rich town at one time in West Virginia. And now it's like totally dead. Like half the. Like. Yeah, it's a. It's terrible. Like, it's terrible with those. It's terrible poverty. Wyoming county right beside it is one of the poorest counties in the whole country right now. Like, it's terrible. So we're.
- [115:52]
Jocko Willink
And that's from the coal mines getting shut down.
- [115:54]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. So there's a. Yeah. And drugs and everything else. It's just. It's a. It's a comp. But we're gonna. There's an old school there that's been closed for a while. And we're gonna. We're trying to set one up in May to do in this. In the old gymnasium there. And. And the idea is, is that we could. Like this gymnasium, for example. We'll figure out how to do the ingress egress, figure out how many people we can set up in there, get a stage going. The equity and the infrastructure that we obtain by doing the show will stay with the venue. And then a town that is literally owes back taxes to the federal government right now because they're like, they owed. I think they. They just paid it off. But Brand, the town of Bramwell owed like over a hundred thousand dollars to the federal government, like in bat. In taxes because they had a mayor embezzle money and stuff and they don't have any income coming into. That's the whole reason I got connected with them in the first place. But now the dream is like Bramwell will have a gymnasium that they can go book anybody at any time and because it's. Because the center, because the venue space itself is not for profit. There is no incentive for them to sign a contract with Live Nation and become another one of those venues. And if I can do, if I can, if every show I do from now on is that and I bring other artists in and other people, then it's like, like imagine this network of all these places that have long term economic stimulus and also have a place where people can go and like and do all these things in the real world where we don't have the opportunity to do them now like we're talking about. So when I was in, when I was in western North Carolina, I met this group of people through savage freedoms. Does that ring a bell?
- [117:33]
Jocko Willink
I think I have heard of that before.
- [117:34]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. They were running the. Basically they were there doing what agencies weren't like they were pulling bodies out and it was really, it was tough. But I was able to connect with those guys and actually wrote on an airdrop with them and spent a lot of time with those. Most of them were special Forces vets who had jobs and families and everything that they had. Just like they still came anyway. Like one of the guys there was. He thought he was going to lose his job because his boss needed him to come back to work. But there was like they had pulled a dozen bodies out of a pile of debris that day in Swannanoa. And he's like, I can't go home. Like I've got to be here doing. And like they were there for free doing it. And I believe that it's actually our. I believe that one of the ways that we solve all of this in this country, like the lack of leadership, the pro. Like it seems like so complex. Like it seems too complex. You can't. I don't. We. We want to vote once every four years and we hope that that's going to fix everything. But there's all these little things that we can do along the way. Like I I part of this festival series. I hope to find a way to help empower like the special Forces vets because there are a lot of them are, are proven capable leaders that can. If they were put in a position of leadership and empowered to be able to make change, they would. And that's. And it. And it's the proofs in the pudding. Like they were there, they were there like sacrificing everything to try to help a town that they had never even been in because they felt called to do it. Because there was. The town needed leaders and they Came and did it. And like, I want to go to all these towns. There's a, a gentleman there I met named Justin, Neil and a few other guys who I've, who I've gotten involved now on this board for this rural revival thing. But every town we go to, before we go do the show, we're going to have like, an investigative journalist go find out what corruption is going on there, what problems there are. Is it just things that the town needs? Like, is it things that the people there need? Is there a story there that needs to be told? We want to find the veterans that are there. Who.
- [119:30]
Jocko Willink
Who, Bro, you'll have a freaking miniseries out of every town you go into. Like, you know what I'm saying? You start looking for the corruption and you know, what's going on with the.
- [119:38]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Like, what's, like, what's keeping these people from living a fulfill, fulfilled and good life in these town? And like, what can we do to, like, make their life better? And maybe it's like, you know, maybe, and I'm just speaking out of thin air because I don't know who would fill this position, but, like, maybe we find somebody from Dave, the Dave Ramsey Network who can be there to like, help financially coach those people. And maybe we have, like, like, I've, I've been working with this gentleman named Graham Merriweather who does it, and Joel Salatin, and I even had a conversation with Mike Rowe about this. But I'm, I want to bring in, like, when you go to this festival series, I want there to be like a farm or two that there that can introduce, like, because people can grow a lot of food on their own just in their backyard. And like, and I want to get kids excited about, like, how to grow food and can and like, be out in the outdoors and, but really all I want to do is just build spaces that good people can come and do good things in real life without that. And, and the reason why it will be successful is there isn't a ball and chain of money tied to it. Like, I'm not there to make a pro. Like, I'm not there to, to make a profit margin. It's, it's done for all the right reasons. So, like, I believe if enough good people come together for all the right reasons, that, that all of this can just. I, I. But I believe that's our path. I believe that's our only path forward is for us, is for good people to gather together and help one another. And so the three pillars of this idea is truth, fellowship, and music and, and, and I believe and I, I, yeah, that's like my purpose. And it's still, it's still very much of, in the infancy stages. Like I said, are next show will be sometime in March, but basically, yeah.
- [121:14]
Jocko Willink
Whereabouts?
- [121:15]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Probably the first show will be in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, which is where I got my GED at. And their whole town was devastated there. And then, and then another, another component of it is, you know, like Joe, when I first, when Richmond first happened, it was the day, the day after the farm market show, I is when I was getting ready to do the Joe Rogan podcast and he actually called me and we had like a 30 minute conversation and I was telling Joe then that I just was going to take all the money from Richmond and donate it to a charity because I didn't want the money, I didn't need it, I just wanted it to go do some good. And he said, don't do that. Just keep the money and then do good with it when the time comes, you know, because you don't really know where your money's going to go if you just donate it away.
- [122:00]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [122:01]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
And so, so I've spent most of the money that I've made on buying property and the first property that I'm going to use as part of this is this permaculture farm that I bought and right just south of Farmville, it's about 75 acres. And then I just got another 150 acres beside it and I'm going to turn it in. It was the first biodynamic farm in Virginia and. But it hasn't been in operation in about five years. But they grew enough food on there, feed like hundreds of people. Like it's just green houses and just, you know, it's a permaculture farm. But I'm, I'm creating this space that will be open up to the public that like Robert Kennedy Jr. Calls it a healing center, but I, I'd almost call it more of a grounding center, but it's just a place that people can come and like get out in the woods and reconnect and learn how to grow their own food and just work with large animals and like, it's a therapeutic thing, but it's also just like a reconnecting man. It is so, it's just so incredible to be, I mean, speaking from experience, the guy who sold his house, bought some land and spent a lot of time on that land. Like I found myself out in the woods and found myself reconnecting in nature. And like, like it's, there's more, there's more interesting things just about dirt and all the things like the microbes and the worms and the, and the things you can grow. And so like it's more interesting than anything you'll find on Facebook. I promise you that. You just have to go do like. So that's my two functions is like start this festival series and then start this pilot program farm. And then the idea is, is when we go do the festival series a lot of the shows are going to be done at farms anyway and those farms can also turn into this and it'll eventually hopefully in my, in my imaginative mind it's like this network of, of of farms that people can go to to heal and get their mind right and learn how to be self sufficient and learn real skills. Like, like, like I'm sure there would be trades people that would want to be a part of this festival series and get people back into like wanting to go do trade work. And like I'm sure there would be people there that, that would help with mental health, health counseling and financial counseling and all that stuff. But like there's all these efforts if you look, there's all these people. There's, there's people who are, who are trying to like start their own rehabs and help people out and there's these people who are trying to help vets with PTSD and there's people who are trying to teach kids and school like everything I'm talking about, there's already thousands of people fighting that effort. I'm just trying to give them a place in real life to do all those things. Like I'm not, I'm just one person who's not very capable of doing much of anything. But if I've been given the opportunity now, like I said, if, if, if God did give me the opportunity to have this crazy platform and get these accolades that like I don't deserve at all. Like then, then the per. Then the reason for it is so I can just have the opportunity if I can bring 10,000 to get people together and do some good with it. Like just, and do that enough times. Like it will be on. Like there is no corporate, there's no corporation and there's no, there's nobody that will be able to stop it.
- [124:59]
Jocko Willink
You know, like yeah, no, that's epic. You know, we have a factory up in Maine in Farmington, Maine, which is awesome and it's a great place. Maybe we could think about doing a one up there and then we have Another one down in Asheboro, North Carolina, which, again, just, like, a bunch of. The thing that's cool about it is a lot of people don't recognize that you can get a. Like, a job that is a skill working in a factory, doing something that, like, you like doing.
- [125:26]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [125:26]
Jocko Willink
Whether it's people that are weaving material, working the looms, people that are sewing. Like, it's honorable, awesome work that people like doing. And a lot of people don't. You know, if you're a. A young kid right now, you know, you're 19, 20 years old, maybe, that, like, you, like, hey, you don't really have a skill set. You can actually learn one, and you can have a good job that pays good, and, like, you're doing something productive for America. So that'd be pretty cool.
- [125:53]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
And I think that. Yeah. And I think the people who will help. The people who will help me more than anything is. Like I said, I just. I have a friend of mine named Billy, and Billy was a. Was a Marine. And I don't. You know, I'm just. I. I don't know if Billy. Billy is probably gonna be pissed that I even mentioned him on this podcast, but he's like a hero to me. Like, he. You know, he. Sir. He was in the Middle East. His. He got their. I guess their tank got hit. He was the only one that survived out of his unit, to my understanding. And, like, you know, Billy deals with a lot of stuff because of that. And like. And like you. He's socially awkward. Like, I am. Like, you can tell he just doesn't really fit in. In society. But when he. But when they were out there trying to save those people and stuff, like, he was the most cool, calm. Like, I was the one. I was the one that was upset out there, not him. Like, he. And then. And I just thought. I don't know. I just thought in my mind. And I think a lot of people do that. Like these. These guys, like, these men and women who are, like, in the military and, like, tough and go over there and fight and do all the stuff that they're just. Like, somehow they're just immune to all of it. But, like. Like, those guys at night were, like, throwing up and crying, you know, like, they. It messed them up just as much as any other human being to have to see all that and do all that and go through it, but they just went and did it anyway anyway, because they like that. Like, they're per. Like, their calling and their purpose, and they're like their drive outweighed that fear, you know, but like, they have to. They're enduring all that just like any of us would if we were to go do it. They're just so, like, I, I never felt. I never felt safer or in better company than I did when I was at that savage freedoms around all those people. Because, like, I don't know, I just, I just, it just, I just realized in that moment, like, these are the, these people are going to fit. Like, these are the people who are going to fix our country. Like, not some scumbag, not some scumbag mayor that's going to embezzle money out of the town or not some group of council people who are going to vote in all these stupid laws. And like, the people who are going to really save us, I think are like, are the people who, who like, dedicated their whole lives to saving us already. Like, I. And instead of us empowering those people to put in a position of leadership, it feels like. It feels like the only system in place right now is to just give them SSRIs and stuff and just like, send them on their way. And like. And like those guys were saying that they didn't lose a lot of their friends over there, they lost them once they came back home, you know, like. So if we can just. I don't know, I, I'm gonna find some way to empower those people into position of leadership through this. And, And I think, like, I don't know, I just think. I think there's enough good people left in the world that if we just find a place for them to all go and gather and like, and it's, and it's based on, it's all. And we're all there for the right reasons, you know, I just, I don't know. I just have this vision in my head and it's difficult for me to even like, speak it in words because the whole thing is so complex. But at the, in the end, I just envision this network of, of like, just. I just. I don't know, I just don't see a way for us forward. I don't see a way that we're going to survive as a species if. If we stay immersed in the digital world and we, and we, and we stay, we stay stuck in these, in this like, algorithmic cycle where everything we worry about is what they want us to worry about. Like, people are so mad about things in politics that don't affect their quality of life or anyone's quality of life really. They're emotionally based. Like, they do the. The algorithm does a really good job of finding the things that they. That's going to destabilize us emotionally the most and polarize us the most. And they keep it in your face all day long 24. 7. And there's all these, like, real quality of life issues that, like. Like, we're in a cr. I mean, we really are in this country in a crisis right now. Like, you know, our vets, our homelessness, our education, our food. Like, everything's falling apart. And like, people complain about it all day long and they want to vote in these systems that they think are going to fix it. But, like, we've got to start voting every day to, like, you know, like, this is like an endless fight. Like, this is a fight that we're in. And. And there's a lot of. There's a lot on the line. Like, I don't. I don't think. And it's not. It's not anyone's fault, but, like, none of us can really conceptualize how much sacrifice was made for us to be able to sit here and film this podcast today day. And we don't. And I don't think we're able to conceptualize how much evil there really is in the world. You know, we were talking about Jordan Peterson, and I think, like I said, his. Your episode with him is what introduced me to Jordan Peterson, like, 10 years ago or whenever y'all filmed. It was a while ago. But his maps of meaning course, like, I would advise anybody in the world to go back and watch that episode with you. And then if they want to dive deeper, go back and look. If you go to Jordan Peterson's YouTube channel and search oldest to newest, his original Harvard or his original lectures from the. Whatever college in Canada he was in, like, where he's got the paper and the projector and all that, and he's like. And he's talking about the Soviet Union. And like I said, I don't know. It just. I don't know. I'm just. Like I said, I'm just like, I'm the same guy. Whatever. That quote you read at the beginning about how I'm just that dummy or whatever. Like, I don't claim to have all the answers, but I just. I know that there's an. I've just. I've been exposed to enough good people in the last year that I know that there's thousands and thousands and maybe even millions of people who just want this world to go back to the way it was, and they want, like, we're too wrapped up in, like, it. The thing about the Bible that I was never taught as a kid, you know, I, I got, I went to church as a kid. I got turned off to it. I was so angry about it. And I used to talk about God and I remember I would talk about, like, I would call God, like, Sky Daddy and the Spaghetti Monster and all that. I was very much like, like, again, like, I was just hated it because to me, to me, God in the Bible was just like another man's way of, of like, putting authority on me or, you know, like, trying to create some moral high ground on me. And it wasn't until, until all of this that I was like, I real. I realized that the Bible is a book that centers society in a way in which it can exist functionally and healthy. Like, sin is not something that is a lot of fun that people don't want. People don't want us to. It's not like God doesn't want us to sin because he doesn't want us to have fun. And sin is fun. Sin is destructive. Sin goes against like, just the, the laws of, like, like hate and anger and lust and, and greed and gluttony. And like, these are all things that are bad for society. They're bad for us. And it doesn't matter what time in history, at what point in the world, everyone that existed before will be forgotten. Like we are in the world, in world history. The United States is probably something that a lot of people will never even know existed. Like in the real. Like, how many societies existed before us that we have no idea who they even were. Our modern history, like, written history, only goes back so far. And we know there's all the stuff that existed before that we don't really know a whole lot about. But that, but those, those words in that book, even though they were written so long ago, are still so. Like, if you read Ecclesiastes and Proverbs and just read about, like, what Jesus talks about, how to live in Matthew, like, forget all the rest of it for just a minute and just look at Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Matthew, and like, he's telling you, like, the reason that you turn the other cheek and the reason you love your neighbor and the reason you reason that you have to do all these things, even though they don't really make sense when you first read them, it's because they help preserve you and they help empower you. It's not like the book is there as a guide for us on how to live is what it is. Like, sin is something that's not good. We would all love to live in the Garden of Eden. Like, we would all love to live in a place where there's paradise and there's no pain and there's no suffering. And, like, all there is is just love and good food and, like, I mean, it's like we all. It's like, wherever. Everybody just tries to go on vacation to replicate the Garden of Eden for a week, you know, Like, I don't know. Like, and we'll never achieve the Garden of Eden, but we can sure try to, like, at least identify. At least just. At least just identify that our sin is not something that even helps us. It hurts us more than it does anybody else. Being angry at somebody hurts you more than it does them. Like, it. Like, you're it. It's destroying us. And now. And I do think that, like, sin is more appealing and more attractive and more available now with the Internet than it ever was before. Like, go on Instagram without seeing some girl's butt shaking around or seeing, like, you know, it was just like, we've just got to start getting good people together. And, like, and just. And I think all. I think everything else will just come into place. I think this is all part of God's plan. Like, I think there's been, like, man, even, like, people who didn't believe in God at all. I mean, Jordan Peterson is a great example of that. I don't think he was very open about believing in God until very recently. But I saw, like, there was a song Ed Sheridan put out, like, a couple weeks ago, talking about Jesus and all the stuff. I don't know. I just see it popping up more and more, and I just think it's. I don't know. I just think it's time that we all just get together and just figure out how to fix. Like, let's just fix this thing. Like, let's just quit talking about it and start being about it.
- [135:05]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. I got a friend who's a veteran army guy, and. And he really gets upset about, you know, he wants to help out. He wants to. He. He's always talking about how we need to put new legislation in, and he's very. But he gets very, very frustrated with how difficult that is. And I'm always, you know, just going back to him saying, man, just, like, help out the guy, like, down the street from you. Help out your neighbor. Help out the veteran that, you know, you see down on the street corner that's begging for like begging for money, like, go help that guy. And that is just as impactful as trying to push through a piece of legislation that's going to take four years to get through and vote someone into office that you hope is not going to get bought out at the last minute and change everything. Like, then like, forget all that. Help your neighbor is the place to start. And if, like what you're saying, if we get a bunch of people that are all trying to help their neighbors, we can actually make a big impact.
- [136:06]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. Because I, I, I surprisingly have a fan base on both sides of the political aisle. You know, and honestly part of that originated because people misunderstood the first video with the comment about Joe Biden. And so there was a lot of people on the left who actually thought I liked Joe Biden. So then they started to become a fan. So I have like, so it's so weird that I'm like kind of in the position I'm in, but I have like very far left wing female comedians who joke about things that are like, not the things that like we're in two totally different worlds, but they're actually a fan. Yeah, but, so, so I have this theory and it, and Jordan does talk about this too, but I think that, I think there's a word called scissor G. I think that is the word that describes, it's the, it's where two opposites combine and empower one another. And I think that, I think what's happening and I think it's because of the, this algorithm that we're in. But the reason why we're so divided and the reason why it seems like the left is so far left and polarizing and the right is so frustrating. Like the, it's like this endless battle we're in with politics is because generally people who are people who vote conservatively or vote more liberally and they're, they also apply that in their own thinking. Like it's part of their personality. Like, I think the analogy used by Peterson is again, this is why I just want people to go watch the maps of meaning because I'm giving you like the wish.com version. But, but people who think more conservatively are like the type of people who in a business would be the, would be like the cfo, whereas the people who think more on the liberal side of the spectrum would be like more the entrepreneur, like either in somebody innovative in the company or like maybe even the CEO, you know, and for the same reason why there's so many people that work at it, even Though so many people on the left despise Elon Musk now and they think he's, you know, because of X and Twitter and all the polarizing stuff in politics. I think from the people I've Talked to at SpaceX and Tesla that I've met, it sounds like there's more people on the left that work for those companies than on the right. And you would think it would be the opposite, but it's because we need both. Like, we need people who put everything into boxes and keep it organized and keep it centered. Like, we need people who think more conservatively, but we also need people who, who do think outside the box because it's our innovation that takes us forward. But the problem is, is right now we don't have people putting things in boxes and we don't have people figuring out how to add new boxes on. We have people who are like, here, like, just desperately trying to hold on to keeping things the same. And then I think what's happened is I think that a lot of the kids in college that seem to like, get this very far left ideology and start to talk about like, you know, like, like just that kids can use a litter. Like there's schools in Virginia where there's litter box boxes now, you know, and like, it's because those people who come up with those ideas and believe them and implement them, they, their brains are designed to think outside the box. They're, they're, in many cases, like the friends that I have that are left are super smart and they're not bad people at all. They just think way outside of the box, but they don't have a constructive way to think outside of the box. And they don't really have a reason to create anything productive because everything now is just so negative and so like, like so stalemated that now they're just, they're like, they've been influenced to, to use that innovation and that thought to kind of just. They're rebellion. It's a, it's a form of rebellion is what it is. Like in the same way that when I was growing up as a kid with the war on terror, you know, you remember the left was very against the Bush administration and that's what sort of originated these concepts, like the, like the rage against the machine type of thing, the Green Day type of thing, and then that maybe became like at some point like Occupy Wall street, and then that turned into like antifa and black block, and then that turned into this and it's like it should just become a More and more form extreme of rebellion. But I do think there, I do believe in my heart that there's a way to take these like hyper intelligent college kids who currently right now are sort of like being weaponized and letting them actually really be able to use their innovation and their talent and the creativity to, to help better. And I do think there's a way for the people on the right who the left despise to help keep us centered and focused. And, and, and like I do think in the same way that a business needs a CFO and a CEO or the way they need a business manager and an innovator, I do think like that's how, that's the way our country like is. It was talked about many of the founding fathers and by the way, everybody wants to act like the founding fathers were the greatest people in the world. They were human beings too. Like they had flaws. Like, like the fact that they were trying to escape from a country where they didn't have freedom and create freedom. Like that's why we appreciate them. It's not because George Washington was a saint or because of any. Like, we don't even really know any of those people. All we know is what we can read about them. But they wanted, they just wanted people to have freedom of speech and freedom of thought because there's no, that's, that is the pinnacle of how we exist in society. If we're not allowed to speak freely, we're not allowed to think freely, and if we're not allowed to think freely, then we're not allowed to create or innovate or do any of these important things that we need to do as a species to be able to move forward, to be able to survive and thrive. And when we don't do that, that's what we get like a, you know, the Soviet Union is the example that everybody uses. But it's like when you really read about the Soviet Union and what those people did to each other, not only what the government did to them, but what those people did to each other out of fear, you know, that's exactly what, that's, that's where we're head. Like that is where we're heading. But if the thing is, it's like, no, that's, I, you know, it's like, that's the only difference between me and somebody who probably who is just full on right wing is like, I do believe in the first and second amendment. That is traditionally a conservative thing. But I also, I don't see people on the left as Being evil or crazy or whatever. I think a lot of them are just. They are highly intelligent people who are creative thinking, but they've just been misguided. And this algorithm has weaponized all of us against each other. And if you get all those people in real life, everyone. I don't care who you are. Like I said, I don't care who you voted for. Like, you like food and you like music, and so get those. If you get those people together in real life and, and don't even give them the opportunity to talk politics, they'll find there's a million other things they have in common. Like, you know, like, how much time have we spent on the Internet? Listen, like, I would love to see how much time on social, like how many conversations on social media there's been about. About, like, about gender versus how much there's been about, like our food or about our, you know, about, about how we, how we get. How we take care of our veterans or our homeless or how we, or how we figure out how to get people in a position to where they aren't entrapped into debt as soon as they get out of high school. Like, let's, let's just get all these people together and just like, let's just take a time out. Like, you guys can go back to arguing in five years, but let's just take five years. Let's all go. Let's all just hang out and figure out how do we identify all on a local level? How do we identify all the things that are affecting our quality of life and fix them? It's just out of everyone's best interest. Like, everyone just, you know, like, I don't know if I'm even making any sense or not, but I just. And I always look at the best in people and I know people have. I know that not. I know there's a lot of evil in the world and a lot of people. And I understand. Like, I know not everybody wants the world to be a hell happy place. A lot of people just want to see. Watch the world burn. But you know, honestly, dude, there's a part of me that wants to watch the world burn too. I mean, I, like I said I used to go to Washington D.C. and go to some of these protests and stuff. And I, I'm definitely not somebody who likes establishment or authority or any of those things. But at the same time, I do understand, like, I don't know, I just, I just see that we're all being weaponized against each other. And this is a What? Like, just get us all together and just. You know, I. I don't know. I just see. I just see. I see a bigger picture of. Of an opportunity for us. And it's like this everywhere. In, like, Europe, man. People in Europe are dealing with the exact same things we are. And they are just. Their countries are dying. Their. Their governments don't care about them. The decisions they make seem like they hurt them more than help them. It's like. It's almost like the people in charge have malicious intent. Like, they don't want that. They want the country. Like, they want these countries to die somehow, you know, so. But there's so many. I don't know, there's just so many good people left in the world, and there. There is a way out. There is a way to fix it. So that's like my. That's like, what I'm gonna do now. Like, I.
- [144:16]
Jocko Willink
There is a way to fix it. It's going to start with the Rural Revival Project, coming to a neighborhood near you. Coming to a farm near you. Yeah, that's what we're doing.
- [144:26]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, Our. We're definitely going to be. We're going to keep everybody there well hydrated using Jocko's Hydrated Island Orange Drinks. So. Right.
- [144:35]
Jocko Willink
Oh, man. So when is it. When does the tour kick off? Or when is the. When is. When are you going to start doing these things?
- [144:40]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
You said.
- [144:41]
Jocko Willink
You said they're going to be out here on the west coast at some point. Is there a plan for that yet? You got any locations yet?
- [144:45]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, well, the pro. The problem has been that, like I said, I. I was. I was trying to use management companies and, like, people in the professional space to help me plan. So my very first meeting that I had when I went to Nashville for the very first time, I met with four different booking agencies, and I pitched this idea to all four of them, and I picked the one that I thought would do the best job, and they just stalled me for 14 months. And it's not their fault. And the people there, like, a lot of the people that work at the. Mind you. I got to clarify this, too. A lot of the people that work at the Nashville companies are really good people, and they are there for the music. It's not their fault. It's like a very small percentage of. Of people at the very top of the company is what's. It's not the people there. But so. So, yeah. So I've had to go basically do this all completely diy. I'm going rogue, I guess. As the cool kids say. And have you ever heard of a.
- [145:37]
Jocko Willink
Band called Minor Threat? Either a punk band from D.C. they're okay. They're. They're just led. It just. You should look into them. Because the guy that was the singer, he. He was also in a band called Fugazi. You ever heard of that band? Okay, so he was kind of the. Brought a lot of the DIY stuff to his life and. But he started his own record label and he did like, all these shows that he'd do. He would play in weird places and charge a dollar to get in. And he stuck. He stuck with that his whole life. You know, he's still doing it. Yeah. So it reminds me a lot of what you're trying to do, you know, keep prices down, bring people together. You know, the music's different, but the. The attitude is the same. And he's been pulling it off.
- [146:22]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, this certainly won't be a country festival either. Like I said, like, my dream first. My dream first festival would be like. And I don't even need to play necessarily these fest at all of them. Like, it. It could even just turn in it. But my. My dream would be to have like some crazy mashup with us and some punk rock band and like a rapper or something. Like, it doesn't. Because, like, going back to the Pittsburgh analogy, letting the people in Pittsburgh be able to experience a part of their state that they would never otherwise go to. Like, they'll be amazed at how awesome that town is that they go to, and they'll have no idea how good it is until they get there. And then also being able to bring music from pop culture to those towns and let those people experience that, like, it's bridging a huge gap. And it's just a. I don't know. It's just. It's a very exciting opportunity. But yeah, it definitely won't be a country festival. Like, my best festival, my favorite festival that I did in 2024 was the levitate Music Festival in Massachusetts, which was. Which was. We opened for Sublime.
- [147:29]
Jocko Willink
Oh, damn.
- [147:30]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
And that was my favorite. Yeah, dude, you want to talk. You want to talk about, like, a cool moment is being on stage and looking over and the dudes from Sublime are like, video in your set or whatever. That's a cool feeling. Like, that was a. But that's kind of the vibe I would think this is going to have is more of like a Levitate music festival, not like a country music festival. You know, like, it's going to have the immersive feeling of like when you go to like a bluegrass festival, but it's going to have the. More of the music of like a, of like a levitate music festival with. And then like I said all the other people who can be there to help with things like, because people just need resources and stuff too. Like if you're a 25 year old dude, you're in, you're in debt, you've got a, you've got a kid that you, that, that you and your fiance. Because a lot of kids now, they have a lot. Like I was, you know, I, I had a kid and never got married. So I was trying to raise a kid with a girl I wasn't married with. I didn't have any financial education. I didn't know what the hell I was doing with my life. I was just working in a. Like it would have been great. What am I supposed to. Like, you can't just pick up the phone and call somebody and, and you know, you can watch stuff online like podcasts and videos and stuff, but there just needs to be something in the real world to like there just needs to be a place. And at one point in time the church served that purpose. But see, the church is. The reason that church has died so much in this country and lost its way is because of all the reasons why I was turned off to the Bible in the first place. So like this is kind of a, this is technically a ministry effort, but it's not, it's not a church. It's a, it's. But it's going to serve the purpose of what church maybe once did at one time, you know, which is like community. Like let's look out, like let's just figure out how to fix all the problems that these people have. It's. It's complicated, but it's not that complicated. Like we can teach people how to manage their money and we can teach them how to get good skills and, and how to, and how to manage their time and how to. And how to find synchrony in their families and be able to spend time together as a. Like just in the average household. I'd love to know like how much screen time individual everyone in a family spends versus the amount of time they spend together. It's probably like 10 to 1 or something, you know, like, yeah, those are those. There are so many complex problems that we have in society today that we all talk about and we all identify and many of them are brought up in politics, but a lot of them are brought up just in Society and on social media. But I don't think many of those things are individual problems. I observe most of those as being symptoms of a bigger problem, which is that we have just. We have to be connected to one another in order to. In order to exist. We can't we just. And like I said, give it a couple more generations and like, I don't know that. I just don't know. I don't know. I don't see any other way. I don't see any other way forward.
- [150:04]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. It's like when people morph in the future and their neck is bent over and, like, their eyesight can only see like 18 inches in front of their face. That's what you got to watch out for. Becoming that. Becoming those kind of weirdos.
- [150:16]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It's already to that point, like in the 90s, if you talk to somebody about the idea of them having a chip implanted in them, they were talking about how it was the Antichrist and freaking out about it. And now there's people excited about that opportunity, like, because. Because their whole life they've been attacked. Their whole life they've been in technology, you know, like, and now Kim Kardashian's got a Tesla bot. So who knows what that thing's gonna figure out, you know, like. But, you know, it's like, that's an AI Is a. Is. AI is a whole nother con. I don't see how we're gonna. I don't see how AI won't take over the. I mean, like, really. I just don't see how it's not going to happen, but.
- [150:51]
Jocko Willink
Well, because AI can't run the rural. Can't come to the shows at rural.
- [150:57]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Maybe they will. Maybe they will see, but that's why I say music and food. Yeah. There's no robots showing up there, that's for sure.
- [151:04]
Jocko Willink
Oh, man. Awesome. That get us up to speed. That's what we're doing. Anything else? When's the album come out? We're dropping it over the next month or so. We need to coordinate.
- [151:14]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
There'll be a.
- [151:14]
Jocko Willink
We need to coordinate. Hopefully we can get one of the first song out when this comes out. That'd be pretty.
- [151:18]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So all the. Yeah. So all the song. I've got, like, I think four that are pretty much done. We've just got to start dumping them. And then now that I've. Now. Now that I'm going to keep doing this thing, I've got like a lot of. We've got a lot of music to record and I Want to do some really cool collaborations with other artists along the way too. Yeah, I had just talked to, like, I don't know, like, crazy stuff like Shabu. Like, I talked to Shabuzzi about doing a song with him, which, funny enough, like, going back to your E minor GCD thing with Richmond. Do you know, I didn't realize it till after the fact and I don't know which song came out first. But you know, Tipsy and Richmond, north of Richmond use the same chord, I think even the same chord progression, like, exactly like. So it just goes to show, every song is just like the same, same song. But yeah, give it a month.
- [152:04]
Jocko Willink
Little bit of soul.
- [152:06]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
But yeah, that's a little snapshot into my head and I'm so sorry. I've been all over the place on this podcast. I've been just rambling along over here.
- [152:14]
Jocko Willink
But you're. You got that mind of the artist, right? It's. I was over here trying to put it in a box. You're over there just getting after it, I guess. So, yeah, that's what, that's the way it's got to be in order for something to work.
- [152:25]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Right.
- [152:25]
Jocko Willink
Got both sides. Where can people find you? So it's. You got oliveranthonymusic.com you. You got Instagram, which is Oliver Underscore Anthony Underscore music. You're on Twitter X at ain't got a dollar. And then you got your YouTube channel, which is at Oliver Anthony Music. And then you can get your music kind of wherever, Spotify, whatever places is that you want to get into it, right?
- [152:50]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. So the last thing I'll say is that my, my last plan, my last part of this mastermind scheme this year is because I can't, I can't in good faith push stuff on social media and tell everybody to not be on social media. So somehow this year I'm gonna probably eventually deactivate all those profiles except for YouTube. So I'll have my music on YouTube and on the streaming platforms and I've got an SMS email list that you can sign up for through my website that I haven't started actively posting on yet. But eventually what will. By the end of this year, the fans will be able to catch the updates through the SMS email list and I'll put the new music on YouTube. And if anybody finds, if anybody wants to post the stuff from the SMS email list on their own, like, for example, there's a guy now that takes a ton of my stuff and cuts it up into shorts and puts it all over Instagram and it does really well. So I don't worry about cutting my stuff up and put it into shorts. I'll just let other people do it. But at some point I probably just won't even be on social media. I think it's like, I don't see how I can preach about us getting off of social media and be on it, you know?
- [153:54]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, no, that's a tough one. I know. I have that thing too where I tell people to get off social media on social media. I'm literally telling people, don't be on social media while I'm on social media. There's some kind of major hypocrite activity going on there. I'm not. I haven't figured out how to.
- [154:07]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It would be cool to have like, if you had like a Jocko SMS email list that you could sign up for and then like imagine it wouldn't really be you texting them, but like, how cool would it be if my phone. If I got a notification on my phone and there is an SMS or an imessage message on my phone and it's. It's from Jocko and it's got like what you're. You know, like it's.
- [154:27]
Jocko Willink
Well, luckily for you, if you text Jocko Fuel to 24672, you'll get it. So we.
- [154:33]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Perfect.
- [154:34]
Jocko Willink
You have that. Yeah.
- [154:34]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, I'll have to. I'll just have to look at what you're doing and try to. I'll just try to copy off of yours, I guess. I'm just kidding. Yeah, well, hey, if I actually text Jocko on my phone, I get. I get a pretty real. It feels just like I'm talking to the real guy now.
- [154:46]
Jocko Willink
So that is the real guy. Right on, man. Echo. You got any questions?
- [154:51]
Echo Charles
Yeah, real quick. So G, C D E off the top of your head? Actually kind of for both you guys, I guess, but. Oh, Chris, do you like. Is there any songs off the top of your head that. That can play? Just those chords, dude, that's Richmond.
- [155:08]
Jocko Willink
North of Richmond songs. That's like literally. It's a ridiculous.
- [155:11]
Echo Charles
Well, maybe no ones that are like kind of known, you know, like. Okay, speaking from a beginner standpoint. Right, because that's. You said that's what you.
- [155:17]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, with gcnd, you can do almost anything. And if you were to buy a capo. See, I didn't know this until. I didn't know this when I was a kid, but with a capo and I do this capo, what's a.
- [155:28]
Jocko Willink
Like Thing that you asked me about on that guitar over there, and I said I didn't have 100% solid answer. It's so you can play in a different key, right?
- [155:36]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, you can just bump it up and so, like, it's like Guitar for Dummies, like, for you. You'll see me do that. Like, I'll just move the cape. Because I. Yeah, but so I would say, to answer your question, GC and D, which I would say learn. If somebody wants to learn guitar. GCD and E. Yeah.
- [155:53]
Echo Charles
Okay.
- [155:54]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So it's almost any country. Like, almost any country song and most pop songs. And if you go on Ultimate Guitar, for example, to look your chords up, if there's a button that'll say transpose and it'll have an arrow up and down, and even if. And there's also another button on there that says simplify. So let's say you wanted to learn, like, whatever popular song, go on Ultimate Guitar, look it up. There's a good chance that you can hit the simplify button and then transpose up or down. And there's some kind of way to play it with GCD and E and maybe, like, one other chord variating from that. But it's. There's. There's not very many. You know, not very many songs that you can't do that with.
- [156:34]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [156:34]
Jocko Willink
Then he. Do you want to play ukulele?
- [156:36]
Echo Charles
Right, yeah.
- [156:38]
Jocko Willink
Ukulele before.
- [156:40]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah. So a guy actually there was a fan of mine who made me a. He. He was a welder in a shop, and he made me a metal ukulele, welded it together, and I've been playing around. It's sick. I love the ukulele. Well, I've. I've. A lot of people in my age range fell in love with the ukulele because of. Spongebob was like the big show when we were all growing up. And I believe that's got the ukulele on it, but. Yeah, dude, that'd be sweet.
- [157:04]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [157:05]
Jocko Willink
When you play chords, I mean, obviously it's only four strings, and the chords are even more simplified than they are in guitar. So it's. Yeah.
- [157:15]
Echo Charles
It's smaller, though, right?
- [157:17]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, well, it's definitely smaller.
- [157:18]
Echo Charles
Yeah. So it's, like, freaking hard.
- [157:19]
Jocko Willink
No, no, no, no, no, no. The spacing between, you're so jack.
- [157:22]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It's gonna be like. It's gonna look like this big when you're playing it.
- [157:26]
Jocko Willink
The weird thing is, so I was out. We have a thing consulting company called Echelon Front. We were talking to people and we have this thing we do, and we were up at this campfire with these people. And we know when we talk about when you're in a leadership position, the tone that you have and, you know, the way that you're communicating people, you have to make sure that you're. That you are have the right tone when you talk to people. And it's very difficult to fake it. Right? And then I was playing the guitar because we were sitting around the campfire and I said, listen to this. And I played like a. Like a, A, and I'm like, that's a happy note, right? And this is universal. It's universal. And I was just doing this to Echo before. Before you showed up. I'm like, see this? This is happy. And then I'm like, now this is a minor. And it's like. And that's universal. Like, you were talking about how you go to different. What is it? Tribes that have never been contacted before, they will be able to tell the difference between A and a minor. Happy, not happy. Like, that is a universal thing that shows up. So the music is a real thing. Echo Charles, there's something going on there. What else you got? Any other questions, Echo?
- [158:37]
Echo Charles
Nope. Nope. That's it. Good to meet you.
- [158:40]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Likewise. Yeah, it's so, like, again, you got to think from my perspective, like, this is just such a surreal moment to sit here with. Like, after watching countless episodes of you guys, I just don't know if I can even put into words, like, how crazy it is to sit here at this table and talk to you.
- [158:58]
Jocko Willink
Like, it's funny, when you walked in, you're kind of, like, looking around like, it was like, yeah, yeah.
- [159:03]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It's just like, oh, it's cool. This is a day that I'll, like, for the rest of my life, this will be in the top 10. Like, I just don't know how else to say it. I don't want to, like, sound like an ass kisser, but it's, you know, like, I don't. And that's one of the first things everybody asked me when, like, random people at the airport and stuff. They'll always talk about a little bit of my stuff. And then they're always like, well, what's Jordan Peterson like? Or what's Joe Rogan? Everyone that watches one of these podcast episodes always dreams about, like, oh, yeah, if I get on here, this is all the things I would talk about. You know, it's like a. This is a life moment for me to be able to do this. So that's Awesome. I really appreciate your time and I appreciate everybody listening to me ramble on for a little while. So it's. It's been good to articulate a lot of this because I haven't had the opportunity to talk to this with a lot of people other than, you know, my dog Rufus. Don't really. He doesn't have a lot to say when I tell him.
- [159:48]
Jocko Willink
He's a good listener, man. Well, awesome, man. Well, thanks for joining us, man.
- [159:52]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yes, sir.
- [159:52]
Jocko Willink
Really appreciate it. Thanks for coming out here to do it. I know this is your first time in California. We were having a little. Good. You and I were having a little text conversation about what California's like. And, you know, I. I almost started sending you, you know, pictures and. Because people don't real. When you don't come from California. Echo. Charles, you think that all of California looks like Baywatch and Berkeley, like, between those two things. That's what you think it looks like. But as I pointed out in text, you know, California is basically agriculture. The vast majority of the state is agriculture, or just straight nature and produces. I forget the figure that it's like, but produces like, like 12 or 15% of all the agriculture in all of America is here.
- [160:36]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
California is somehow the. You know, growing up, there was always this expression about, well, everything that happens in California, it'll be to Virginia in 10 years. But California has been sort of the leader of so many things and like, so many things have originated from here. It's like probably our most. One of our most important states and is in. So it's no surprise that it's in such a state of turmoil. And so, like, it seems like it's just so mismanaged and so upside down right now. It's kind of like, like when. When California started to have so many issues and so many. So much over regulation and stuff. Like, however many years ago that should have been a red flag that it was coming everywhere. But I think at the same time, though, I think this is an important. And I hated that I couldn't get on the west coast last year, but it was. Again, I'm working with agencies and I only have the options that are given to me. And there was no. I just couldn't do a West coast tour for 2024. I didn't have enough time to plan it. But California is a state I really plan to focus on this year with even some of the, like, this is a beautiful place.
- [161:35]
Jocko Willink
Oh, yeah.
- [161:35]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
And when I, I was. I was like, my jaw dropped when we walked out of the hotel this morning and just got to see San Diego in the daylight. It is like, you know, I. I don't know. It's a. It's an amer. Like, this is America in a big way. And.
- [161:49]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And it. Look, I think the. The pendulum's about to swing back, you know, in the other direction because, you know, we just had these terrible fire fires up in L. A. And the mismanagement of those is very clear for everyone to see. And you're also seeing, you know, what. What happened up in San Francisco and, like, all these companies leaving, stores, shutting down. Like, it's unsustainable. It's just unsustainable. And, you know, it's like eventually, imagine if you were a kid and your parents, like, bought you a house to live in, and you're like, oh, awesome. And so you start, like, having people over, and you're starting to have parties, and more people are showing up. And now, like, the electric bill's kind of getting higher because people are jumping the jacuzzi, and they're also, like, pouring drinks in the jacuzzi. And all of a sudden, you wake up one day and you go, damn, dude. Like, I'm gonna ruin this whole house if I keep going in this direction. I think California is saying that right now. They're just waking up and going, oh, hey, it seemed like you were super cool, like when you were the guy, when people were coming over, they're like, oh, my gosh, this is awesome. Wait, I can eat all I want out of the fridge? Of course you can have what you want out of the fridge. You want some booze? Have some booze. Hey, you want to do some drugs? It's all good. Go ahead and do it. You want to. You want to bring your friends over, too? And you, like, that's what we're doing in California. And so it feels really good, you know, you're going, oh, yeah, we're really cool. We're great hosts. We're going to take care of everybody. But then you look up, you wake up one morning, and you go, oh, damn, all my silverware has been stolen. You know what I mean? Like, oh, damn, somebody took a. In the fish tank, right? Or the sink or whatever, and you say to yourself, you know what? I'm not going to do this anymore.
- [163:32]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [163:33]
Jocko Willink
And you're going to put some rules in place, and you're going to be a little bit more sane, and you're going to recognize that, hey, when someone. We're going to have to kick them out, like, if you in the. In the fish tank, you're getting kicked out. If you. You. You just can't. You can't come in here and clean the refrigerator out. You can't do it. So that's where we are.
- [163:51]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
It's a great. California is a great example of how about how both ways of thinking went against each other instead of helping each other. Like, yeah, like, California had all this cultural. And, like, a lot of good. A lot of good music came out of here and a lot of new ideas and, like, a lot of cool stuff. But then it's like, there was also a lot of really stupid ideas, but there was no way for any of those people to admit that they were stupid ideas, because then that means the other side's right. And. Same way it happens both ways, you know? But, yeah, this. I do think one day California will be a great place to live again.
- [164:23]
Jocko Willink
But right now, I don't think it's very far off. Honestly. Honestly, I think. I think the. I think there's gonna be a big shift in the government here in the very near future, and I think it's gonna, you know, swing back to the way it should be. And it's a. I. When you come back out, I mean, I'll come see you wherever you're doing shows. You know, I'll roll up and. But, man, if you go to Yosemite national park, bro, it is, like, awe inspiring.
- [164:47]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, I think I. I think I told you in the text, but it was funny. Of all the things that really, like, opened my eyes to how beautiful California was, was when they were chasing Christopher Dorner and he was hiding out Big Bear. He was hiding out in Big Bear.
- [165:00]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [165:00]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
And like, this is. This is just like the bet, like, the bad side of me.
- [165:05]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. You had no idea that that was. Could exist in California.
- [165:08]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I just pictured California just being like dumpsters on fire and like. I don't know. I just.
- [165:13]
Echo Charles
I.
- [165:13]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
All I saw, the only pictures I'd ever seen of it were like, la. Like the. I don't know. I just had this bat. I don't know. I'm just. You know, there's a lot of people, just a lot of stupid people like me that don't know any better. But, yeah, it was a. Yeah, the Christopher Dorner chase. I was like, man, that's a. Wherever that is, that's beautiful. Like, I probably wouldn't want to run. I probably wouldn't want to be a hostage for Christopher Dorner, but I'll go there once they catch him.
- [165:34]
Jocko Willink
You know what's crazy about that is so that place where he was Big Bear. That's. That is an hour and a half from la. And when you're certain parts of the mountains, if you go like to the E.T. the. The edge, the mountains that are south, you can see all of la. It's like, crazy. You can be up, like, if you look in, if you look north, you'll see what looks like it could be just unbound nature for as long as you could see. And if you turn around 180 degrees and you look south, you will see San Bernardino and Los Angeles, just this entire sprawl. And it's crazy that that exists. But that sprawl of la, once it ends, like you get. It ends like it just stops. And then you get into. I mean, the. The Sierra Mountains, which are freaking amazing. You know, you go through Death Valley, which is amazing in a different way. I mean, it's Death Valley called Death Valley for a reason, but it's. It's. It's nature. And then you go up north, like, man, it's just. That's another thing that's crazy is when you get to San Francisco, people think San Francisco's Northern California. It's actually just the midpoint of California.
- [166:40]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [166:40]
Jocko Willink
And above San Francisco, there's just nature. It's just nature forever. So, yeah, man, when you get out here, hopefully we'll get to spend a little time and I can show you around some of that.
- [166:52]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Man, I would love. I'd love to come back when you get your. But hopefully by then you'll have your gym rocking again and all that. I'd love to come. Hopefully by then I won't be such a fat slob. I can come work out with y'all.
- [167:01]
Jocko Willink
Come and do it, man. That's another thing. You know, I wanted to chime in about four times today, dude. Another thing. Jiu jitsu, man. Jiu Jitsu is community. It's contact. It's hanging out. It's three hours, two hours, one hour of hanging out with your friends. You know, if you're Echo Charles, you're spending at least. At least 50 of the time just sitting around talking to other people on the maps, which is good.
- [167:24]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, I would love to. So you're like the fourth person in two weeks to tell me I need to try it. So I guess it's a sign that I need to try it.
- [167:30]
Jocko Willink
Oh, yeah, no, it's. It's awesome, but it's just. It's just. It's something that brings people together, you know? It's something that brings people together kind of like. I guess you can't put it in the same exact category as. As food and music, because food and music are very universal. But maybe. I don't know, man. Scrapping.
- [167:47]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Scrapping, you definitely.
- [167:48]
Echo Charles
For boys, I think.
- [167:49]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for boys. You know, I just got a new dog.
- [167:53]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [167:54]
Jocko Willink
Because of what happened to Odd, my other dog. But, you know, neighbor's dog came over and, like, they're instantly doing jiu jitsu, like, instantly, you know, and. And when. The same. When you have, like, little kids, man, Little kids, little opportunity, they're gonna wrestle, you know, especially what opens it up for him is if there's a pool. Because a pool, like, all of a sudden you have padding and you can kind of fight each other. Yeah. You know what I mean?
- [168:19]
Echo Charles
Like a shallow pool or something.
- [168:20]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, like a shallow pool. Like, we just wrestle in the pool.
- [168:23]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [168:24]
Jocko Willink
So it's true. That's good stuff. But I think California is gonna make some big changes in. In my opinion, pretty quickly. I think everyone's gonna.
- [168:32]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
So the. The question that I had for you, I guess, last before we, like, so. So for like a guy, just for other people listening, but, like, for me too, because I'd love to know this. Like, so, like, in my position, I. You know, I was trying to. I was like, God, I got to the end of this tour last year, I was like 280 some pounds. I was like, I got. Do something with my life, you know, get back into working out. So I've been eating, like, intermittent fasted, and I've been working out basically every other day. My neighbor in West Virginia is like a physical trainer guy, so we've been doing a lot of different. But is there, like, for, like, the people who are out of shape, who want to. Like, who. But it's so diff. And it's so hard to find a routine. And there's a million different things out there. Like, what's the most cut and dry, like, to get it? You know, they say it takes 30 days to create a habit because you've got to create that neural pathway. So, like, it's so much resistance when you get into it. Like, what's your. Like, what's your advice to, like, the. To like, all the other slobs like me that want to get their life right and, like, they want to get. I know. I know that it's no easy way to do it, but, like, from just a nutritional standpoint, from a workout, like, what's the E like what's the most simplistic way to at least introduce it? Do you think it's defined somebody to mentor, like to go to a judicial, to Jim? Or do you think it's. Do you. What do you think? Like what?
- [169:45]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, if you're gonna. I mean, if you want to get into Jiu Jitsu, here's. Here's the following process. Do you have a pen? You can write these things down. Oh, don't worry about it. You'll be able to remember. Here's the deal. If you want to start doing Jiu Jitsu, go to the Jiu Jitsu gym and start training Jiu. That's what you need to remember. Yeah, I think, I think as far as getting on the path for being more healthy, I think one of the best things you can do is before you do anything else in the morning, like get up and then go do something physical. I don't care if you go for a walk. I don't care if you do some weightlifting. I don't care if you do yoga. Don't care what you do for. The simplest thing is walking. Right. This is simple. Echo Charles, been on a little kick for a little bit now, doing his. He's stretching the term, calling it road work. So road work from the boxing world, road work is. You got a new run at 4:00 in the morning, right?
- [170:39]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [170:39]
Jocko Willink
Even my freaking daughter Rana and my other daughters, they were getting fired up the other day talking about road work. Mike Tyson was saying, he's like, why are you doing this? He goes, because it, because it sucks. Because this is what we're doing, you know, like, you can get fired up for road work, but that's legit road work, which is hard. That means you're getting up before the sun comes up, you're going out, you're doing it right. Cool. Fired. Up. Up. Echo's doing Echo's version of road work. It's like. Road work. Yeah, road work. Explain. Because. But I honestly explain your. Yeah, because I think that's a good place.
- [171:12]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [171:12]
Jocko Willink
Well, if you were to wake up and go for a road walk.
- [171:15]
Echo Charles
Road walk. Well, yeah, I still think it's appropriate. Road work, the word. Because. Yes, in the boxing world, it's true. Road work because. But you're training for something. Training for a match or something like this. But in life it's a lot more mellow than that usually depends on your life, I guess. But usually it's a little bit more mellow. So we can, instead of that freaking, you know, five mile run or whatever. We can just walk for 30 minutes or something like this. Right. And it's going to be super beneficial in all these other ways. Even though it's, like, mellow. It's way more mellow than a freaking run. It does not suck at all. Especially if you like audiobooks or this kind of stuff. It's actually kind of cool. Easy to pick it up as a habit if you have the time. If you're not rushed every day, like some people are rushed every day. I get it, whatever. But. But, oh, yeah, super beneficial. It doesn't zap you of your energy, too, or nothing like that.
- [171:59]
Jocko Willink
She gives you energy.
- [172:00]
Echo Charles
Yeah. Like you're kind of, like flowing after. Yeah. If you. And it depends on where you live. But me, for example, I started with just 15 minutes. I just start walking. 15 minutes, audiobook, boom, freaking 50 minutes. Then I walk home. That's 30 minutes.
- [172:13]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [172:14]
Echo Charles
This is the first thing. Drink water and just go, you know, And. Oh, yeah. Then right there. From there, you can stack on any simple workout program. And bro. Yeah.
- [172:22]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
But yeah, walking. If you could. If you could walk that 30 minutes every morning, then at least it's in. It's getting you going. And it's also probably getting your mind in a state of like, all right, I'm doing, like, it. Maybe it gives you some accountability and some kind of point of reference to build off of.
- [172:35]
Echo Charles
It does a lot of things. To be honest with you. The whole reason I started, which I think applies to a lot of people, is, of course, I just started hearing all the benefits of walking or whatever. But if you kind of evaluate your life in my situation, like, I'm pretty sedentary. Even though. Yeah, I work hard to work out and, you know, work out, do all this stuff. Good jiu jitsu, you know, sometimes varying levels of activity there, but other than that, pretty sedentary. Just sitting in front of the computer screen, even less sitting here. We've been like, yeah, mentally, but that physically. This is sedentary work right here that we're doing. So when you kind of evaluate your day, day to day, it's like, bro, I'm living a sedentary lifestyle even though I'm working out.
- [173:14]
Jocko Willink
Which percentage wise. Percentage wise. Totally sanitary.
- [173:17]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [173:17]
Jocko Willink
Compared to. Compared to if we were back at the moving company.
- [173:20]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [173:21]
Jocko Willink
Like, all day we're lifting stuff.
- [173:23]
Echo Charles
Exactly, exactly. Right, so. And your body doesn't know the difference. Right. Your body's not like, oh, yeah, you lifted today. Good job. Now you can be healthy. Brad doesn't work like that. You know, so I'm like, all right. So then I just started walking and then, yeah, all this. So, you know, I can reap all that, the benefits. And like I said, it's not like you're doing these hard 2A days either, right? You just walk for a little bit. Like a lot of people are doing that kind of activity anyway, you know, so it doesn't really register on the tired part of your, your day, but you get the benefits nonetheless, you know.
- [173:48]
Jocko Willink
So I think that's a really good like baseline. Wake up early, go for a walk at a minimum, and then just figure out like some basic calisthenics to do, man. Like just even doing push ups, you know, push up, sit ups, pull ups if you got them, some squats. Like I'm not talking with weights, I'm just talking like doing squats just with air, right?
- [174:09]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [174:09]
Jocko Willink
And I think those things right there, if you can't do a pull up, hang on the bar, like those kind of things, which if you don't do them, you're. You will not be able to do them. Like that's a real problem with life. That's why, that's why as people get older, all of a sudden when they fall down, they can't get back up again. Remember that commercial when we were kids? Like I fallen in the can't get up. That's a real thing. Because if you don't practice getting down and getting back up, you know, it's. You won't be able to do it eventually. And I've talked about a couple things where I've had situations in my life where I had an injury and I couldn't do a certain movement for a while. And when I went back to go back and do that movement again, I couldn't do it anymore. I had to re. Earn it, had to get it back again, you know, and you can get it back again. It's not fun and it sucks. It hurts your ego because you're like, dude, I used to be able to do this and now I can't do it. Yeah, cool. Well, what are you gonna do? Surrender the submit, you know, don't surrender, don't submit. But if you're not careful, you can look up, see one thing, that's. How did you say 31 right now?
- [175:09]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
32.
- [175:09]
Jocko Willink
32 years old, bro. Like you're still at a stage where you probably have most of your mobility that you would have had when you were 18, right? But now's the time if you don't start, if you don't use it, you'll lose it. This is a simple saying. So real basic, real basic stuff, man. Push ups, sit ups, pull ups.
- [175:31]
Echo Charles
I would add one more element that I think no one really talks about that much that I realized it's almost intangible. But I'm gonna explain it the best way I can. If you care about the workout, like some people, you know, when they get into work kind of, you know, I want to get in shape, they care about being in shape. They don't care about the workout. So if you, if you're like, okay, I can do. I don't know you. Even if you. Let's say we're starting super. I'm going to do 10 push ups, right? We'll say I'm going to do 10 push ups, okay? I got all 10 push ups. Like, the next time you do push ups, right? You got to care about that kind of stuff, you know, like, you got to be like, okay, I. I only got nine. That should bother you, you know, you should be like, no, no, I need to do my 10 or 11 or 12. And once you get up to like 15 or something and then you're only doing 14 one day, that should bother you. Like, you should care about that kind of stuff. And I think that way it'll keep you kind of in the game as like, almost like a little mini mission in your workouts rather than, oh, my gosh, I gotta gut through this thing. And you're looking forward to, you know, for it to be over, which is the case anyway, a lot of times. But if you have that little mission mind set in it, it'll help you stick with 100.
- [176:32]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I remember, like, when I was watching your videos years ago, you know, like, you're talking about your routine because there was videos talking about routine. That really helped me with what I was. Because I was waking up early in the morning and seemed like I just couldn't. I didn't have good time management. But I remember you talking about how important those workouts were in the morning. If you didn't get them, you were just like. So I think if you can. I think the battle for everyone is getting to that. Like, maybe once you get to that point where it's such a habit, then it's like. But it's. It seems like it's like that first. But the 30 minutes of walking, like, who, who doesn't want to just go walk for 30 minutes? That seems like such an easy way to get. Yeah, get over that. Well, thanks. Yeah, I was just, I Wanted to ask that while we were here.
- [177:08]
Jocko Willink
And then you asked about eating. Eating, too. And it's like, we. At our gym, there was a guy, and he had stacked on some weight over the years. Not good weight, by the way. And then one day he disappeared for a while, and he came back and he was like, pretty. Like, he lost weight. And I said. I said, dude, freaking dropping some weight. You dropping down a couple weight classes. And he's like, yeah, yeah. I dropped, like, whatever. It was 38 pounds. And I was like, dude, that's awesome. I go, how'd you do it? And he goes, I stopped eating like an asshole. And I was like, yeah. You know what I mean? I knew exactly what he meant. You know, it's like when you're eating pizza and fudge rounds and the other crap, you're. You're gonna. You're gonna get out of shape. And if you. You. Everyone knows what to eat. Like, eat. Eat things that are good for you. We all know what they are. So just don't eat like an asshole, man. That's the key.
- [177:57]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah, well, yeah, it's. It's just a lot of people don't realize how bad all that food. Yeah, nobody tell, you know, it looks so good and it's so appealing. Not even the junk food, but even. Just some of this, like. God, like I said, even some of the stuff you buy that you think you. There's some things that are marketed as being healthy for you that are still like, you know, it's like the.
- [178:16]
Jocko Willink
The. The way that they do packaging and stuff now is like, they just make it a certain color and use a certain font and use like one or two words. And you're like, yo, this must be good for me. And, dude, my wife is pissed about this stuff. Like, she. Because she'll fault. She'll be in the supermarket. My wife's very healthy, and. But she's not, like a crazy healthy person, but she's like, you know, she likes to eat what's good. And she'll come home and she'll throw stuff away. But, you know, I'll, like, open to throw away something, and I'll see, like, packaged things in there. And I'm like, wait, why do we throw away food that we bought? You know? And sure enough, it'll be. She goes, look at the ingredients, and I'll look at the ingredients, and sure enough, a bunch of sugar in it. Just a bunch of chemicals, and it's just terrible. So, yeah, you gotta. You're right. You gotta be careful. Just be the packaging, they know how to do it. They know how to make the packaging look like it's healthy, and it ain't healthy, so you gotta watch out for that. Anything else, Echo? Charles?
- [179:13]
Echo Charles
No.
- [179:13]
Jocko Willink
Chris. Anything else, brother?
- [179:14]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
I'm good. Thank you. Thanks for your time.
- [179:15]
Jocko Willink
Right on, man. Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks for what you're doing to support rural America, which I think is going to be a big deal. And then thanks for making your music. Thanks for sharing your music. I know it was like, kind of almost on a whim. It seemed like sometimes that you were uploading that stuff, but I think it's really helping a lot of people connect with other people, connect with their families, connect with their past, connect with their future, connect with themselves, connect with their faith, man. And I think it's awesome, so.
- [179:40]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Well, thank you. It means a lot coming from you. Yeah.
- [179:42]
Jocko Willink
Thanks, bro. Thank you.
- [179:44]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Appreciate y'all.
- [179:46]
Jocko Willink
And with that, Chris Oliver Anthony has left the building. However, before he left the building, he played a. He played us one of the new songs.
- [179:59]
Echo Charles
Oh, yeah? Yeah.
- [180:00]
Jocko Willink
And I'm gonna go ahead and call this right now. Look, hey, did I just hang out with the dude? Have I been trading text with him for a while? Would I be considered, like, I'm. I'm a supporter. Yep. 100. But I would not say this. I'm about to make a statement.
- [180:16]
Echo Charles
Okay.
- [180:17]
Jocko Willink
The song that he just played us is going to be huge. It is going to be huge. I'm calling it and I wish I could, like, somehow, like, put a bet on it. Right. But I don't know how to do that.
- [180:34]
Echo Charles
Can you say the name of the song or no.
- [180:38]
Jocko Willink
Had to do with a woman. We'll say that.
- [180:40]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [180:40]
Jocko Willink
Okay, so there you. We noted. Is that. Is that for. For ver.
- [180:43]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
For.
- [180:44]
Jocko Willink
What is it called? To verify my. My hunch.
- [180:47]
Echo Charles
Well, I know the name of the song and I know how the song went because I listened to it. Agree. I like it. I'm less of a prophet than you, I think. So I'm gonna.
- [180:56]
Jocko Willink
But I would put it this way.
- [180:58]
Echo Charles
If you're absolutely 100, 200% correct, I will not be surprised because I. I dug it, too. 100.
- [181:04]
Jocko Willink
It was freaking. It was freaking ripping. It was a ripping song. Yeah. It had everything. And it's like, look, it's not going to be a hit song like a pop song. It's gonna be like a rock and roll, like, legend song. So that's what I'm here to tell you.
- [181:21]
Echo Charles
Not to go too, Too deep on this particular song, but you ever watch the movie Desperado? Antonio Banderas?
- [181:27]
Jocko Willink
He goes, I think I saw parts of it.
- [181:29]
Echo Charles
Vengeful. Anyway, there's this part right after the shootout scene, one of the shootout scenes that this rock song kind of plays. It had like the exact same vibe as that song.
- [181:39]
Jocko Willink
And you like that song?
- [181:40]
Echo Charles
Very much so.
- [181:41]
Jocko Willink
Actually, you can see what I'm saying here.
- [181:42]
Echo Charles
Yes, I do.
- [181:43]
Jocko Willink
That song is going to be epic. So hopefully it could be dropping that thing pretty soon. And it's awesome. He's still got control over his whole, let's say, library and life and stuff. So very cool. Also, if you're going to be getting it done musically, got to get it done physically. You heard him asking like, you know, everybody's got to stay on the path.
- [182:05]
Echo Charles
Yep, it's true.
- [182:06]
Jocko Willink
You can't be rocking out if you're not in shape. So that means you're doing what you got to do. Means you're getting after it even. It's just a road work in the morning. What? Echo Charles. Echo Charles. Road work.
- [182:19]
Echo Charles
Yep. Now keep in mind, this road work I'm talking about as it applies to life, is a lot more beneficial than just the physical elements of it.
- [182:27]
Jocko Willink
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no, I. I get it, dude. I support you. Hey, and. But if you step it up a little bit more than that, sure. You're gonna need some fuel. Hey, check out jockofuel. Jockofuel.com Speaking of, you could. You could hear Chris spent some time in Walmart. You can get Jockofuel in Walmart, by the way. If you didn't know that. You can also get it at Wawa vitamin shop, GNCs, military commissaries, a fees, Hannaford Dash Doors in Maryland, Wake Fern, Shoprite, HEB down in Texas, Meyer in the Midwest, Wegmans, Harris Teeters, Publix. Just got into Publix down in like the southeast Florida. So if you need it, go get it. We're also in a bunch of gyms. We're in gyms. Chiropractors. If you're a chiropractor or you own a yoga studio or a jiu jitsu gym or whatever. Powerlifting gym, performance oriented gym. Sell Jockofielder. Email JF salesjacofield.com We got everything that you need. Got energy drinks, we got protein. I saw you drinking a protein during the recording of that last podcast. Are you going catabolic?
- [183:35]
Echo Charles
No, I was not going catabolic.
- [183:36]
Jocko Willink
Danger.
- [183:37]
Echo Charles
Well, you know, if you don't drink, if I in this particular situation didn't drink the milk? Yeah.
- [183:41]
Jocko Willink
Did you lift this morning?
- [183:42]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
No.
- [183:43]
Jocko Willink
Are you lifting after we get done?
- [183:45]
Echo Charles
Yes.
- [183:46]
Jocko Willink
Did you walk this morning?
- [183:47]
Echo Charles
No.
- [183:48]
Jocko Willink
No road work for the kid.
- [183:50]
Echo Charles
Came here.
- [183:51]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, well, whatever you need. We got supplements for you. Greens. Creatine. Are you on the creatine training right now? How many. How many scoops a day?
- [184:01]
Echo Charles
One a day every morning?
- [184:02]
Jocko Willink
I'm on two a day.
- [184:03]
Echo Charles
One. Oh, damn.
- [184:04]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Okay.
- [184:05]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [184:05]
Echo Charles
So the protocol is. And this is helpful. The first thing in the morning, water already staged. I got that from you, by the way. Creatine staged with the water, with the hydrate.
- [184:16]
Jocko Willink
Are you dry scooping it?
- [184:17]
Echo Charles
No.
- [184:17]
Jocko Willink
Oh, I see what you're doing.
- [184:18]
Echo Charles
Creatine hydrate packet in the water. That's already. Everything already staged.
- [184:22]
Jocko Willink
Boom.
- [184:23]
Echo Charles
First thing in the morning, every single.
- [184:24]
Jocko Willink
Morning, I'm dry scooping creatine.
- [184:27]
Echo Charles
Okay.
- [184:27]
Jocko Willink
Morning and night.
- [184:29]
Echo Charles
Okay. I get. Hey, man, that's a good. Cool. But yeah, I like my protocol. It's way more comforting.
- [184:34]
Jocko Willink
There you go. Jockofuel.com get what you need to be jacked and in shape and healthy, capable the whole nine yards. By the way, we were talking about with. With Chris, Oliver, Anthony, we're talking about bad foods. Go read the ingredients, then read the ingredients on Jockofuel. Just do it. Go take a look. We got you covered. The clean goods. There you go. Also Origin USA.com we talk about America. We talk about the revival of America. We talk about bringing people back and bringing manufacturing back. That's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com Everything made in America. Pants, jeans, T shirts, hoodies, geese jujitsu, Geese jujitsu, rash guards. If you're in the Nogi era of your life. Yeah, we're making jiu jitsu belts now.
- [185:25]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [185:28]
Jocko Willink
We might be able to make that happen, actually, you know, because I've only had one black belt the whole time, and it is old. You know what I mean?
- [185:37]
Echo Charles
Yeah, but it's special. Yeah.
- [185:39]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, no, definitely. Cuz you only had one. But I'm getting a new one too.
- [185:43]
Echo Charles
Yeah, fully.
- [185:44]
Jocko Willink
And I feel like I need it.
- [185:45]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [185:46]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Yeah.
- [185:47]
Echo Charles
Especially the origin one. I mean, you know, that's a. Yeah, that's. That's the good one for sure.
- [185:51]
Jocko Willink
Yep. So origin USA.com everything 100 made in America. Hunt gear, workout gear, just everything that you need. Go check it out. OriginUSA.com Boom.
- [186:03]
Echo Charles
It's true. Also, Jocko store, called Jocko store. This is where we can get our merch when we're on the path we want to represent. Discipline equals freedom. In my case, right now, Stand by to get some good one. Get after it. You know, all these notions, we'll call them for lack of a better term. Anyway, you want to represent, that's where you go. Choco store.com. the hoodies. The hoodies, Quick flip hoodies. They're not super heavy, by the way. They're like, they're like a medium light. Perfect for spring. By the way. They're restocked. Cuz a lot of people were hitting me up, hey, what's up with it? You know, they're restocked, so boom, hit it. Also, the shirt locker, which is subscription shirt scenario. Get a new design every month. Let me ask you this. This is just for your opinion, your opinion. Because this will have no effect because I already sent it. But it's almost like a rebel against drinking scenario. So you know how sometimes there's like parodies, right? I'll do like a parody shirt. Yeah, like there's one that's like of the, of a certain candy bar, but it says discipline. Right? So it's like a be disciplined rather than eat candy bars. Right. It's like, it's like an anti candy bar scenario. There's one of anti beer. So it looks like a beer brand, but it says discipline equals freedom instead of the beer.
- [187:13]
Jocko Willink
Huh.
- [187:14]
Echo Charles
Is that appropriate, you think? Or does it come off like, oh, I'm representing the beer brand, you know, like, what do you think?
- [187:20]
Jocko Willink
I think it's actually pretty good.
- [187:22]
Echo Charles
Yeah?
- [187:22]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I think it's good because it's like you go, oh yeah, beer. Oh, no, no.
- [187:27]
Echo Charles
Discipline.
- [187:27]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, See, I like it. You have the same little.
- [187:30]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [187:30]
Jocko Willink
Little vibes.
- [187:31]
Echo Charles
Yeah. So I didn't know if I was.
- [187:33]
Jocko Willink
We.
- [187:33]
Echo Charles
I didn't know if we were taking it too far because there's one thing to the anti candy bar that's like pretty. Like it's fun, you know, but to, to bring the beers into it. I don't know. Felt like, oh wait, am I pushing it? Maybe I am.
- [187:44]
Jocko Willink
Nonetheless, I'm very anti beer at this point in my life.
- [187:47]
Echo Charles
There you go. There you go.
- [187:49]
Jocko Willink
So let's make fun of beer if we can.
- [187:51]
Echo Charles
Yeah, yeah. It's all on jocko store.com. go ahead. Yeah, check those out.
- [187:54]
Jocko Willink
Also check out primalbeef.com primalbeef.com from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Have to get Chris out there to have a look around Shawn Glass's facilities out there. So check it out. Primalbeef.com we have steak for you. And we also have coloradocraftbeef.com which is up in Colorado. Both companies, awesome people making awesome steaks. Primal Beef has jerky. Colorado craft beef has meat sticks, and they got beef tallow. Have you heard of this thing yet?
- [188:30]
Echo Charles
Of course. I'm down for the beef tallow.
- [188:31]
Jocko Willink
What, are you cooked with it yet?
- [188:33]
Echo Charles
Yeah, not the Colorado craft beef one, but I have. No, I'm down.
- [188:36]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, it's good because you can use it instead of putting like, oil in a butter. Oil butter, no tallow. Boom. We're good 100%. So check those out. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also check out jockoinderground.com also YouTube channels. We got a bunch of them. Check out Psychological Warfare. You can get into that. And then we got some books. I written a bunch of them that just reminded me. Chris said something about a book when we were out there talking, but I didn't. We didn't discuss it. Maybe he's written a book. I don't know. Well, check it out. I've written a bunch of books. If you want to know anything about leadership, you can check those out. Bunch of kids books. Way the Warrior Kid. Check those out. Also Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. Next big event that we have is in San Diego. It's February 23rd through the 25th. These things always sell out, so make sure you go and register. Go to echelonfront.com to register. Also, we have an online training course, or it's actually a whole series of courses, and it is called the Extreme Ownership Academy. You can learn the leadership skills that will help you with every aspect of your life. Go to extreme ownership.com and register and take some of those courses. There's some free courses on there. Just take the free ones. If you don't. If you're like, oh, I don't. I can't afford this.
- [189:58]
Christopher Anthony Lunsford
Cool.
- [189:59]
Jocko Willink
Just take the free courses. Learn for free. They will help you. Guaranteed to help you. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their family, join. Help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org also check out heroes and horses.org we know that Chris Oliver Anthony likes to go out into the wilderness and get in touch with himself and his soul. Well, that's what Heroes and Horses.org does. And then also Jimmy May has an organization called beyond the brotherhood.org helps SEALs get into the civilian world in a smooth manner. And if you want to connect with us, starting with Chris, he's at oliver anthony music.com he's on Instagram, Oliver Underscore Anthony Underscore Music underscore. He's on Twitter X at Ain't got a Dollar. And the one thing that he said he's going to stick with is his YouTube channel at Oliver Anthony Music. And you can find his, his music wherever you want to find music, whether that's Spotify, itunes, everything. They got you covered. So check that out for us. I'm@taco.com and both of us are on social media whether we're hypocrites or not. Hey listen, fire can be good, right? Yep, sure can be good. Cook a steak with it, you can warm your house with it. So it can be good. It can also burn down half of Los Angeles in a real bad way. So let's think of social media as a little fire. Can use it properly or you can let it destroy your life. So just be careful that if you can maintain some control. I'm at Jocko Lincoln. Echo is at Echo. Charles, just be careful. Don't let the thing burn you. Thanks once again to Chris, Oliver, Anthony Lunsford for joining us tonight. Thanks for sharing your stories and your lessons learned and thanks to all the hard working people out there across America, from the factories to the farms, from the construction sites, the corn fields, fixing our power lines, drilling for our oil and gas building, making and fixing our great nation. Thank you all for the hard work you do every day. Also thanks to our service men and women who are out there every day and night, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 365 Days a year. They're out there to protect us and our way of life. And we thank you. Same goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service and all other first responders. Thank you for being there for us as well. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, protecting us here at home and everyone else out there going back to the book of Ecclesiastes, when times are good, be happy. But when times are bad, consider this. God has made one as well as the other. It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Some good word from the good book. So stay grounded everyone. Not too high, not too low. And until next time, Zeko and Jocko out.