#2504 - Skylar Grey

Summary

The Joe Rogan Experience #2504 – Skylar Grey (Holly Brook)

Date: May 22, 2026
Guests: Joe Rogan (host), Skylar Grey (aka Holly Brook)
Main Theme: Creativity’s struggle, authenticity in art, the music industry, and living a grounded artistic and rural life.

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Overview

In this episode, Joe Rogan sits down with acclaimed singer-songwriter Skylar Grey (Holly Brook). The conversation weaves through Grey’s journey from her rural Midwest upbringing, her meteoric rise as a songwriter (“Love The Way You Lie”), the pressures of success, and her philosophies on art, authenticity, and living close to nature. They also discuss the human element in creativity versus technological advances like AI, her personal battles with imposter syndrome, stories from her music industry career, and her rural life raising animals and making wine in Napa.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Human Element of Art vs. AI

• Music and Emotion: Joe opens by sharing how Skylar Grey’s song, “I’m Coming Home,” resonates so deeply it’s become his wife’s “funeral song” (00:17).
  • “The emotion of real music.” – Joe Rogan (01:05)
• AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement:
  • Skylar highlights that “AI is never going to recreate this… it’s not real”—referring to the connection and emotion in her songwriting. (01:22)
  • “The type of music that I make personally… it’s very therapeutic for me to write. I’m always writing from a true emotion.” – Skylar Grey (02:04)
  • Both compare the role of AI to past tools like AutoTune, emphasizing that technology should enhance, not substitute, authentic creativity. (02:52)
• Blurring Reality: They reflect on deepfakes, AI podcasts (e.g. fake Joe & Steve Jobs), and the need to question what’s real in the modern world (04:04, 04:32).
  • “We’re living in a weird, blurry time… the first whispers of the fog of the Matrix as it envelops us.” – Joe Rogan (04:35)

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2. Skylar’s Musical Roots and Self-Driven Journey

• Musical Family: Raised in Wisconsin by a folk musician mother, a father in barbershop quartets, and an opera-singing great-grandmother, music was deeply embedded (06:53).
  • Notably, Skylar could sing harmony at age two (06:53).
• Early Performances: Started on stage at age 6, touring Midwest libraries, schools, conventions, and even a crowd of 1,500 Boy Scouts (07:42).
• Shifting Independence: She went solo at 12, buying her first grand piano by saving her own money—a move that created both opportunity and friction, as it had become her mother’s career too (10:16, 11:24).
  • “I just loved making music and performing and writing… there was no option of anything else I would do.” – Skylar Grey (12:03)
• School Disillusionment: Dropped out at 16, after a teacher dismissed music as a career—an angering but motivating put-down (12:44, 13:15).
  • “She told me music isn’t a career, and I was like, ‘I’ll show you, bitch.’” – Skylar Grey (12:51)

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3. Education, Societal Pressures, and Creative Outliers

• School as Social Control: Discussion of how traditional schooling is designed for conformity (16:21), and the neglect of creative or divergent minds.
• ADHD and Creativity: Both explore how undiagnosed ADHD traits (hyper-focus, boredom intolerance) can actually be creative superpowers (17:38).
  • “If it’s boring, I check in… but then do you have super hyper focus on things that you’re obsessed with?” – Joe Rogan (17:43)

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4. Industry Gatekeepers & Resilience

• Music/Artistic Resistance: Both share stories of discouraging teachers/gatekeepers whose own frustrations spill into their advice (19:27, 21:27).
  • “I feel like a lot of the experts… are just people who were artists and didn’t make it, and now they’re bitter.” – Skylar Grey (21:27)
• Moving to LA at 17: Skylar moves alone, encountering culture shock, dangers (a murder next door!), and the strangeness of LA, highlighting formative adversity (22:08, 23:32, 23:52).

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5. Life in Napa: Animals, Winemaking, and Rural Balance

• Animals & Farming: Now in Napa, Skylar juggles raising livestock (chickens, sheep) and working with guardian dogs—while losing animals to coyotes and mountain lions (37:26, 38:43, 41:02, 41:27).
  • “We lost 12 chickens and four sheep… coyotes.” – Skylar Grey (37:26)
• Winemaking: She lives on a vineyard, transformed to biodynamic/organic farming. They sell grapes to leading winemakers; her partner Elliot works the land (42:12–48:00).
• Country vs. City Creativity: Living rurally restored her creativity, away from LA’s noise and industry pressures (50:09–51:04).

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6. Songwriting Breakthrough: From Oregon Isolation to Global Hits

• Low Point: After her first album flopped, she was broke and living in a literal cabin in rural Oregon—jobs included working in a bookstore, coaching gymnastics, and editing porn (yes, really) (51:10, 52:14).
  • “Edited porn. That was a great experience.” – Skylar Grey (52:14)
• Breakthrough: From that isolated cabin, she remote-collaborated with producer Alex da Kid. The first hook she submitted? “Love the Way You Lie”—which exploded as a global #1 hit (90:03).
  • “A month after I sent Alex that hook, it was a number one song.” – Skylar Grey (90:03)
  • “Going from broke and living in the woods to writing a song that literally took over the world.” – Skylar Grey (90:20)
• Industry Whiplash: Overnight, every major artist wanted a piece of her creative spark, including Eminem and Dr. Dre. With success, she felt overwhelming pressure and imposter syndrome—afraid it was a fluke (91:32, 92:11).
  • “That was too easy… that must have been a fluke.” – Skylar Grey (91:37)

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7. Creative Process, Imposter Syndrome & Healthy Doubt

• Difficulty Collaborating: Skylar describes how forced co-writes with strangers in LA would shut down her creativity (94:03), compared to the necessity for solitude to access her “muse.”
  • “The songs that take less effort tend to be the better songs… overthink, they end up doing nothing.” – Skylar Grey (98:20)
• Imposter Syndrome as a Feature: Joe normalizes this: “Everybody I know who’s really good has imposter syndrome… I think it’s a sign that you have a healthy mind.” (94:52, 95:44)
• Techniques: Both discuss discipline (consciously “summoning the muse”: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield) vs. passive waiting, and the importance of consistency (100:05–102:29).

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8. Nature, Balance, and Artistic Wisdom

• Grounding in Nature: Joe and Skylar see time in the wilderness as a mental nutrient, restoring creativity, clarity, and perspective lost to city chaos and digital noise (108:39–110:54).
  • “Being in a place that has no cell phone service… feels cleaner.” – Joe Rogan (109:47)
  • “It’s like forest bathing, that Japanese practice.” – Skylar Grey (109:27)
• Perspective on Career, Aging, and Output:
  • After years of pressure and perfectionism (waiting 5 years between albums), turning 40 gave Skylar new resolve to release music more freely: “My goal… is to put out an album every year instead of every five years.” (112:44)
  • She discusses shifting her music to capture “moments in time” instead of striving for conceptual perfection.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Emotion and AI:
  “I don’t think it’s capable of writing stuff with this much emotion yet—what’s not real, you know?”
  – Skylar Grey (01:22)

• From Broke to #1 Hit:
  “A month after I sent Alex that hook, it was a number one song.”
  – Skylar Grey (90:03)

• On Imposter Syndrome:
  “I definitely had a little imposter syndrome… I was just like, that was too easy… must have been a fluke.”
  – Skylar Grey (91:37)
  “Everybody that I’ve ever met who’s really good has imposter syndrome… I think it’s a sign that you have a creative mind.”
  – Joe Rogan (94:52, 95:44)

• Songwriting Musings:
  “It’s almost like I’m not writing it, like I’m channeling it… the songs that take less effort tend to be the better songs.”
  – Skylar Grey (98:20)

• On Living in Nature:
  “That life… of like, being on a piece of land and growing something there… that is the romantic life.”
  – Joe Rogan (48:39)

• On Self-Criticism and Aging:
  “I turned 40 and… I just want to have more fun and not take it so seriously.”
  – Skylar Grey (114:00)
  “It’s a beautiful thing that comes with age, the not giving a fuck.”
  – Joe Rogan (115:06)

• Album Announcement:
  “It’s called Wasted Potential… an album where I’m telling the story of my upbringing in small town Wisconsin… discovering my sexuality, a coming-of-age story.”
  – Skylar Grey (115:36)

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Timestamps by Segment

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:17–02:52| The Emotion of Real Music vs. AI: Defining Authenticity | | 06:43–12:23| Musical Upbringing & Going Solo at 12, School Friction | | 13:15–15:02| Teachers Discouraging Nonconformity, Impact of Gatekeepers | | 16:21–18:36| Education System, ADHD, and Creative Superpowers | | 19:27–22:08| Negativity of Bitter Industry Veterans, Moving to LA Alone | | 23:13–26:56| Early Years in LA, Culture Shock, Danger | | 37:26–44:43| Life in Napa: Animals, Predators, Vineyard, And Wine | | 50:09–52:14| Leaving LA, Escape to Oregon, Odd Jobs | | 90:03–91:37| “Love The Way You Lie” & Sudden Success | | 92:11–98:20| Songwriting Sessions, Imposter Syndrome, Solitary Creation | | 108:39–110:54| Nature as Healing, Creative Vitamin | | 112:44–119:54| Age, Album Output, Self-Acceptance | | 115:36–118:22| New Album “Wasted Potential”—Themes and Motivation |

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Episode Highlights

• Personal Stories: Nearly every phase of Grey’s life is illuminated, from singing with her mom in the Midwest to editing porn in LA, to seemingly overnight superstar writer.
• Industry Realism: A rare insider’s take on the psychological cost of hit-making and the dark side of institutionalized creativity.
• Art & Life Philosophy: Detailed reflections on embracing "imperfect" work, the necessity of creative solitude, and giving oneself permission to enjoy creation again.
• Rural / Urban Dichotomy: Vivid anecdotes on raising livestock, combating predators, the role of animals in vineyard ecosystems, and the psychological health found in rural peace.

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For New Listeners

This episode offers an unfiltered look into the messy, often isolating path to creative success, the dangers of perfectionism, and why staying true to your emotional core—and living honestly—beats chasing trends or technological hype. Skylar’s candidness about her ups and downs, and Joe’s probing curiosity, make this a rich story about more than just music: it’s about life, loss, self-definition, and the joy of rediscovering meaning.

Recommended if you like: Artistic process deep-dives, honest career accounts, the intersection of technology and creativity, and finding peace amid chaos.

Transcript

[Holly Brook]

Joe Rogan Podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

[Joe Rogan]

Good to see you.

[Holly Brook]

Great to see you.

[Joe Rogan]

What's happening?

[Holly Brook]

Putting on an album.

[Joe Rogan]

This is the. The power of music. I told my wife that you were coming on, and she said, I don't want to get them all. She said, if I die on my funeral, I want her song, I'm Coming Home.

[Holly Brook]

Really?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I was like, that's a heavy thought. And then I listened to it in the gym and I was like, God damn. I listened to the version where you were on the piano. It was like a solo concert. And I was like, God, that's such a. It's such a great song, but it's such a. Such a crazy thought.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That someone would want.

[Holly Brook]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

A very specific song, man.

[Holly Brook]

Heavy way to start the podcast.

[Joe Rogan]

I know, but. But that's, you know, that's the emotion of real music.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, it's like you sent me a text message about AI, you know, know, because you sent me one of your songs and you're like, AI is never going to recreate this.

[Holly Brook]

I said something like, I don't think it's capable of writing stuff with this much emotion yet what's not real, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it sounds cool. That's what AI does. They. They. There's cool songs that come from AI, but there's always going to be. And I completely agree with you, there's always going to be a thing. We know a person wrote it, that they sat down and they wrote it, and there's this connection with their. Their spirit and their creativity that comes out. And that's what people love about music, other than stuff that sounds. I like. I like AI music because it sounds cool. But I know what it is. I know it's just a robot.

[Holly Brook]

I mean, I think it's. You know, sometimes it's good for certain things, but there's the type of music that I make personally, it's like, very therapeutic for me to write. I always am writing from, like a true emotion. So. Yeah, each Marshall's giving you true emotion. Yeah. It all has its place, though. I think AI is an interesting. It's just like another tool. I feel like that, you know, when Auto Tune first came out, people were bitching about that. And even like my first albums I recorded with my mom when I was a little kid, we did it on 2 inch tape, you know, so there was no computer involved. So then computers got introduced and people are bitching about that. Like, this isn't real music.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

You know, it's just like all these technological advances. To me, I see them as just tools that creatives can use to get their vision across.

[Joe Rogan]

What was, what was Peter Frampton using back in the day? It was like a tube or something, right?

[Holly Brook]

I have no idea.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you remember like you, you. You know what that stuff is, Jamie, Right? It's like a tube you put in your mouth or something. Yeah. So it's like a straw. And like the microphone picks up the sound. So the sound would go through the tube into your mouth and then the microphone picks that up and you use your mouth. Because I remember people hating that. Like way back in the day people were hating that. Like, that's not his real voice. Like, what is he doing? Why is he putting it through that thing? You know?

[Holly Brook]

I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

But there's always. I mean, look, there's always going to be tools that people use to enhance creativity, but.

[Holly Brook]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

The thing that's weird now is that they're making entire song. Like they can make a total Skyler Gray category and they sound pretty good. They sound really good. You know, that's what's crazy. It's your voice. It's your.

[Holly Brook]

And it's only going to get better, you know, Cuz it's so new.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So those entire podcasts with me that I never did.

[Holly Brook]

Really?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. There's a whole conversation with me and Steve Jobs. I never met Steve Jobs. It's just me and Steve Jobs talking about stuff.

[Holly Brook]

Is it the visual too?

[Joe Rogan]

No, it's not the visual. This one's just an audio one. But eventually I'm sure there'll be a visual one. Yeah, there's definitely ones of me talking to people I've never talked to because like people pretend they've been on the show, you know, for fun.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Conversation with me. It's very, very strange, you know?

[Holly Brook]

Very strange.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. We're living in a weird, blurry time.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like the lines between real and not real are getting very blurry. Like it's an introduction to the Matrix. Like we're getting like the first whispers of the fog of the Matrix as it envelops us.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

We're getting just these little clouds, like, oh, this is weird. Then eventually just gonna be going to just be in the full cloud of the Matrix.

[Holly Brook]

But I see people questioning everything now. They're like, is this real? Everybody's sussy about everything now.

[Joe Rogan]

You should.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, there's people like prominent news people who've reposted stories with videos in it that were like straight out of a video game. Yeah, it's very, very weird time we're in very.

[Holly Brook]

You know, but I think it's also exciting.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's definitely exciting.

[Holly Brook]

You know, it's fun.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Well, it's weird anytime things are weird. Anything things like, like. Yeah, but that. I think it makes you really appreciate actual things, like real physical things.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Real connection with people, real art, you know, I think that's what's going to happen a lot with AI, like people's actual artwork. Like getting something like, like this chimp sculpt. This is made with thimbles, symbols with zildja.

[Holly Brook]

Oh yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

This guy Shane against the machine, he makes. Yeah, he's an artist, makes cool stuff. But like I know a guy made that.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like when I'm fucking around with this, like this guy made it.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. I think it'll make us value real human made art more and value like nuance and mistakes and things not being perfect, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I mean, that's part of what's relatable about art, is it? And it's part of what makes us appreciate that it did come from a person. You know, like when you look at a really cool painting like that painting like that doesn't. That's not perfect. Yeah, it's not supposed to be perfect. Just supposed to be an expression, you know, it's. It's like a person's work, it's like they're whatever they are, their thing, their essence is in that canvas, you know?

[Holly Brook]

Yep.

[Joe Rogan]

How did you get started doing music? How old were you? You said you recorded with your mom when you were little.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

How old were you?

[Holly Brook]

I was 6 when I did my first show.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. So she was in like folk bands and stuff. And she also plays Celtic harp. And my dad was in a barbershop quartet. My great grandma was an opera singer. So I just was like born into an extremely musical family. And when I was like two, we were singing Happy Birthday to one of my aunts and I started singing a harmony and my mom was like, what is going on? How's a two year old singing harmony? I wasn't even able to say all the words, but the notes I was singing were like the harmony part. And then with all her bands that she was playing with all the time, I would be at the rehearsals and chiming in and then they would like bring me up on stage to do little guest appearances. And it was just very clear that that's what I wanted to do.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Holly Brook]

And so when I was six, we put together our first like hour long set and I played at a library, me and my mom together.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Holly Brook]

And it was a Mother's Day show. Madison, Wisconsin. So I'm from Maisony. It's like a 1500 person, really small village basically in Wisconsin. And so then I just loved it. And so we started touring around the Midwest and played a lot of really random venues like elementary schools, libraries, women's health conventions. I think one of the biggest shows I ever did was actually a Boy Scouts thing. And it was like 1500 Boy Scouts.

[Joe Rogan]

How old were you?

[Holly Brook]

So I did this from the time I was six till I went solo, I think when I was 12 or.

[Joe Rogan]

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[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

At a very young age.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. And it wasn't like I was like a Disney star or something. So it wasn't like on a big scale. It was.

[Joe Rogan]

It was organic, it was small and.

[Holly Brook]

But I made decent money and I mean, for a kid and I saved it up. And then when I was 12, I bought my first grand piano with the money I'd saved up.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, wow.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. And so then I started writing songs at the piano, like pop songs and stuff solo. And it wasn't cool at that time to be singing with my mom anymore. Like, you know, kids get really mean in middle school and they would, like, make fun of me because we were singing the silliest, like, we are the colors of the rainbow and never smoked tobacco and my grandma slid down the mountain. These are some of the song titles. So it was very silly and I got made fun of, and so I wanted to sing pop songs and I went solo. And my mom was not stoked about that because, like, it had become her career singing with me. Like, we. I would miss. Like, I would miss so much school sometimes. I had six shows a week, so it was, like, a lot.

[Joe Rogan]

Hey, lie down, buddy. But you're huffing and puffing. Give me kisses and lie down. Come here. Come here, brother. Give me a kiss. Let everybody see you. Come on up. Give me a kiss.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, look at that.

[Joe Rogan]

So when you say your mom wasn't stoked about that, was that, like, real friction between you guys?

[Holly Brook]

No. I mean, she was really supportive, but, like, like I said, it had become her career singing with me, so I was like, she had to adjust her whole lifestyle and everything for that. Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, that'd be a hard decision for you then, knowing that that's gonna bum your mom out.

[Holly Brook]

Yes and no. I just, like, I was so driven at 12. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, what was the feeling like when you say you're so driven? Like, what was it inside you that made you wanna.

[Holly Brook]

I just loved making music and performing and writing, and I knew. I just. There was no, like, option of anything else I would do with my life. And I knew I wasn't gonna sing with my mom my whole life, you know, So I had to cut her loose

[Joe Rogan]

at 12.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That's so crazy. God, that's.

[Holly Brook]

And I hated school so much, and I begged to be homeschooled, and we couldn't figure that out. So I ended up dropping out when I was 16.

[Joe Rogan]

Why'd you hate it so much?

[Holly Brook]

Because I was so focused on music, I felt like I was wasting my time in school.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. There was this teacher that. My algebra teacher, she said something to me that kind of lit a fire under my ass in a good way. She told me music isn't a career, and I was like, I'll show you, bitch. And so I dropped out and I never went back after she said that.

[Joe Rogan]

There's so many teachers that have influence over children that say things like that. And it's such a crazy, irresponsible thing to say.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Because I had missed or I hadn't done my homework because I had a Show the night before this. And then we had a test, and I aced the test. I was a good student. I had, like, a 3.9, but I aced the test. And. But she was like, but you gotta do your homework just like everybody else in this class. And I was like, I had a show. I couldn't. I didn't have time. And she was like, well, music's not a career.

[Joe Rogan]

That's such a crazy thing to say. Cause it's clearly a career. Like, why do you listen to music? Who's making it? I know when you go to a concert, people are paying. Is there someone. Is there someone on stage? Is that a career? Like, what do you.

[Holly Brook]

What the.

[Joe Rogan]

Does that mean it's not a career?

[Holly Brook]

Small town, Midwest. It's like. I mean, I guess everywhere.

[Joe Rogan]

It's everywhere.

[Holly Brook]

People push the. Go to school, you know, get a. Get a good job. And I just wasn't on that path ever.

[Joe Rogan]

It was pretty wild to be that focused at such an early age. But it is. There's. It's something fun about those kind of, like, I'll show you bitch stories.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Like, I could have taken that and been like, I could have gone the other direction with that comment, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

Right. You could have said, oh, my God, I don't want to be a loser.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Be homeless.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, okay, she's right. And she's an adult, so she must know.

[Holly Brook]

Right. But, yeah, I did the opposite.

[Joe Rogan]

But you get older and you realize, like, there's a lot of people that are teaching. They're like, they're just teaching because they need a teacher. It's not because, like, we found this magical person who's really good at educating children, really good at, like, shaping their minds and their futures.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, there's some good teachers.

[Joe Rogan]

There's a lot of them.

[Holly Brook]

I had some really good teachers, but she was not one of them.

[Joe Rogan]

It's hard to find someone that's really good at a job that doesn't pay very well.

[Holly Brook]

It is.

[Joe Rogan]

That's part of the problem.

[Holly Brook]

That is part of the problem.

[Joe Rogan]

It's almost like you would think that if the future of humanity is very important, one of the most important things would be education. So one of the most important things would be finding the best teachers. And how would you do that? You would pay them really well.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, if we really cared about the future of Earth, we would spend a ton of money making sure that these teachers are really well educated and that they really understand psychology. They really understand how to motivate children.

[Holly Brook]

You would Think that would make a lot of sense.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. We're. It's so odd how intelligent and capable and innovative we are and yet so foolish at the same time that we just allow that Generation after generation, shitty teachers not getting paid, good teachers not getting rewarded, you know, and then they, they retire and they're like, what was that all for? Yeah, nobody cared. Nobody. Nobody appreciated what I was doing. You have to fight for your pension. Like

[Holly Brook]

the whole system is so messed up.

[Joe Rogan]

But the education system's so crazy.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because I mean, essentially, I mean, when you go down the tinfoil hat road, it was essentially designed to make factory workers. I mean, you know, there wasn't really formal schooling like we have now, where children go at an early age and show up and, you know, and leave their parents all day. That's a fairly recent thing in human history. And the reason why they got people really early is because that's how you can brainwash them.

[Holly Brook]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

You get kids when they're 14, 15 years old, they kind of already have their own view of the world. It's hard to shape them. But you get those little 5 year olds and 6 year olds and then if you get preschool, you know, because a lot of people have to work, you know, parents, both parents work. So then you can get the kids real early and then you can make little workers out of them.

[Holly Brook]

Walk in a single file line and.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Control everything.

[Joe Rogan]

Sit in class, sit straight ahead, pledge allegiance. Yeah. And if you can't pay attention, you must have a disease. So we're going to give you some medication.

[Holly Brook]

Exactly, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And then you're like,

[Holly Brook]

I probably should have had some of that medication, to be honest.

[Joe Rogan]

Probably not. No.

[Holly Brook]

I definitely think I'm an undiagnosed ADHD case, but I feel like almost everybody is.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, anybody that's any good at anything. We had this conversation yesterday with my friend Eric and I was like, I think it's a fucking superpower. Yeah, I really do. I. I don't think it's negative at all. Yeah, there's a lot of shit I can't pay attention to. If it's boring, right. If it's boring, I check in.

[Holly Brook]

But then do you have like super hyper focus on things that you're obsessed with? Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah. Like I don't need to sleep.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like I could stay up for days if something is really interesting, if I get focused, which is why I have to stay away from video games and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, you just lock in.

[Holly Brook]

Sucked in for hours.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it's problem.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And, But. But it's not just video games, like, anything that I really love, but things that I. I'm not interested in. It's like, I can't absorb it. It just goes in. And that's what high school was like for me. It was like, I'd be in class, I'd be like, this is torture. But then I'd find something I really loved and I'd be, like, fully locked in.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

But it took a while for me to. Because I just thought I was going to be a loser. I'm like, clearly, I can never hold a job. I'm not. I. I can't take direction. I'm not. I can't pay attention. Like, there's something wrong with me. Like, I'm not. I'm just going to be one of those people that's just kind of a fringe person that's never, you know, never fits in anywhere. I'm like, okay, this is who I am. I'll just get some weird, odd jobs to feed myself with. Like, this literally how I was thinking about my future and look at you now. Well, I got lucky. Found some things that are unconventional, but there's so many children out there that are told, like, hey, music isn't a career. You know, hey, you know, whatever. Acting, writing books, whatever it is, comedy, somebody is there telling you because they didn't do it that you can't do it.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Yep.

[Joe Rogan]

It's a bummer.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, I was an artist when I was young. I wanted to be a comic book illustrator when I was really young. And I had one shitty high school art teacher who was just such a twat, he was so bad. And I just. I quit art my senior year. I was like, I don't want to go to this guy's class, like, because it wasn't a big high school and he was the only art teacher. So I quit.

[Holly Brook]

What. What did he do?

[Joe Rogan]

He was just negative. Oh. He was like, you can't. Because I just wanted to draw what I wanted to draw, you know? And I was into comic book stuff like Conan the Barbarian and superheroes and stuff like that. And he was like, you're not going to a living doing that. You're most likely going to have to do, like, advertisements for, like, diapers, like, diaper ads. And I was like, diaper? Like, that's his explanation that he used diaper ads. And I would look at him and he just looked like. He looked depressed. He was like this skinny guy with a pot belly. And.

[Holly Brook]

Well, he's probably an artist. That didn't make it as an artist, and he had to become an art teacher instead.

[Joe Rogan]

Exactly.

[Holly Brook]

So he's, like, bitter and.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, well, we realized that too when we looked at his actual art. We're like, huh, this ain't very good. Not so inspired. There's not a lot of fire in that belly. You know, he's just a boring dude who's just, like, depressed and sad, and he probably drank a lot. We see a skinny person with a big belly usually. That's like booze.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

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[Holly Brook]

I mean, there's. There's a lot of people like that, even in, like, the music industry. I feel like a lot of the experts in the game are just, like, people who were artists and didn't make it and now they're bidder. And then they try to tell you how everything should go or how you should do everything. And, oh, yeah, that got me for a while when I was really young.

[Joe Rogan]

And I feel like those people are like weights that you have to carry, you know, to build up resistance. You build up strength from dealing with those people because they're stupid ideas. They get. They actually get in your head and you have to wrestle with them for sure.

[Holly Brook]

Especially when you're super young. Like I was when I first moved to LA. I was 17.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa. By yourself?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That's crazy.

[Holly Brook]

And I was, like, very green, small town, Midwest girl.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Holly Brook]

Just dropped in LA and, like.

[Joe Rogan]

And really pretty. That's a terrible combination.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, it was weird.

[Joe Rogan]

Really pretty. 17. It was weird as Midwest. Oh, God, yeah. Look at you now. Shaved head, tattoo on it.

[Holly Brook]

Yep.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. You came out on the other end good, though. But isn't it true, though, that like. Like, those kind of experiences, like, experiencing, like, oddity and uncertainty and just, like, the weirdness of, like, moving to a place like LA when you're 17, like, when you get through it on the other end, you're a different person. You're a stronger person for sure.

[Holly Brook]

I mean, every experience makes you stronger, right? So, yeah, I just threw myself into this crazy mix in la and it was culture shock. Like.

[Joe Rogan]

So what year was this when you moved to LA?

[Holly Brook]

So I was 17, so. And I was in the graduate. I should have been in the graduating class of 2004.

[Joe Rogan]

So somewhere around that. 2003. 2004.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I lived with the guitar player from Culture Club.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Holly Brook]

Roy Hay.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, he had a house in Venice and I crashed on his couch and it was wild culture.

[Joe Rogan]

Boy George. Did you hang out with Boy George? No, never.

[Holly Brook]

No, he wasn't there.

[Joe Rogan]

You ever meet him?

[Holly Brook]

Guitar player on the phone?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, no.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, it was wild. There was a murder next door the first month I moved in. Yeah, there's like a bloody mattress in the little alleyway between the houses. And they taped. They caution taped off all the houses and they had to question about, like, did we hear screaming? And so I was just like, sitting there on the steps, not allowed to leave while they were taking the body out. And then the coroner, after he put the body in the truck, he came and sat next to me on the steps and started like, hitting on me. He was like. He was like, you're a very beautiful girl. I'm like, you were just touching a dead body. This is so weird. Where am I?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, God, that's crazy.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Welcome to la.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, he got over that dead body real quick.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Hey, where are you from?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Blood in his fingernails.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Gross.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow, that's a movie. Yeah. Wow, LA in 2003 was still okay. Yeah, it was like, not bad. You know, there was still traffic and everything, but it hadn't gone completely sideways like it is now. It's so weird. When I go back, I'm like, this is unrecognizable. It doesn't seem like the same place. Every sign has a for. Every building has a for lease sign on it. It's like, this is nuts. Like, it's hard to believe that this is that. You're like. When you see things like Detroit. Did you ever see that movie Roger and Me? It's a great movie. It's Michael Moore and it's all about the collapse of the Detroit automotive industry and how they moved all the plants to Mexico. And when they did that, the entire economy of Detroit and Flint, Michigan, and all these areas just collapsed. Like, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people out of work instantaneously with no prospects. The industry was gone. And it's a horrific. This depiction of what can happen when greedy people Decide that they'll, they'll completely sabotage an entire city so they can make, you know, X amount more dollars and move all the factories to places where you can pay people a dollar a day or whatever the fuck they pay them. And you know, I had seen that, but I was like, oh, that was, you know, 1980s or 1960s, whenever, when the, when, when the, the place was booming. Like Detroit was at one point in time, I think, the third richest city in the world.

[Holly Brook]

Whoa.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, see if that's true, I'm pretty sure that's true. But it was all just because the automobile manufacturing, I mean everything was made there for Chevy, Chrysler, the whole of our big cars. And it just gone.

[Holly Brook]

Like a ghost town.

[Joe Rogan]

Like a ghost town. And you know, and when I visited Detroit to work, I'd be like, wow, this is crazy. You see trees growing through the middle of houses. The houses are collapsed and like, literally nobody took care of the house. It was abandoned. So trees grow through the roofs and they're reclaiming these homes. You see, you go by these gigantic like buildings, like industrial buildings, and all the windows are broken. Yeah, everything. No reliable historical source shows Detroit as the third richest city in the world. The common claim is actually the Detroit was the richest city in the world, or at least the US was one of the highest living standards around 1950s, not third. Oh, so it's the richest.

[Holly Brook]

Whoa.

[Joe Rogan]

It's not. That's the common claim. What? It actually was very high medium household income, around 20% above US average. And it's all because of the automotive industry, one of the highest homeownership rates in the country. Because of this, many commentators and locals histories describe Detroit as the wealthiest city in the US and by some accounts having the highest standard of living in the world in that era. Articles and tours about Detroit repeatedly referred to it as the wealthiest city in the world in the 1950s, not as the third wealthiest. So is that true then? That it was the wealthiest city in the world? Tours about Detroit's history. The third richest city in the world line seems to come from its memes social posts. Okay, these posts are often mixed or exaggeration of real facts. Detroit truly was exceptionally rich by US standards. But rankings like third in the world are not backed by clear, clearly documented global per capita income comparisons from that period.

[Holly Brook]

Well, so it was rich.

[Joe Rogan]

It was very wealthy, very wealthy either way. And when you think about the rest of the world, you know, like, you know, people love to use that term, the 1%, like the top 1%. Do you know what that Is like, for the world.

[Holly Brook]

No, no. What is it?

[Joe Rogan]

$34,000.

[Holly Brook]

No freaking way.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. $34,000 is the top 1% of Earth.

[Holly Brook]

That's crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy. That's crazy.

[Holly Brook]

What is it for the US?

[Joe Rogan]

1%. If I had a guess. Let's guess. I bet it's like $500,000 a year. Do you think. What do you think it is?

[Holly Brook]

250.

[Joe Rogan]

250. What do you think it is, Jim?

[Holly Brook]

That's my guess. I don't know, though.

[Joe Rogan]

150. Top 1%. Wow. All right, let's.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, that's a.

[Joe Rogan]

Throw that in perplexity. I was guessing. I didn't want to look. Throw that sucker in perplexity. What did I say? Half a million. Top 1% of the U.S. 700,000. Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

You're the closest.

[Joe Rogan]

700 to 800,000 or more, depending on the data source, in year. That's pretty crazy. So for The United States, 730 to $790,000 per year, most analysis. And then for the rest of the world, 34,000.

[Holly Brook]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy.

[Holly Brook]

That's wild.

[Joe Rogan]

That's wild. Yeah. That's capitalism.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

But I bet there's probably some truth, too. In order for the United States to have such a high income, these other countries have to get over globally, you only need an annual income on the order of 60,000 to 70,000 to be the top 1%. Oh, it used to be 34,000.

[Holly Brook]

Fluctuates.

[Joe Rogan]

One widely cited analysis found that in 2012, annual income of 50,000 was enough to be in the global 1%. So where's that 34,000 come from? It was a meme that was going around too. Oh, memes. It might have been kind of true, but again, yeah, memes. I saw it repeated by someone very intelligent. I've looked at UP before, but I think it was a meme. Okay, up again. Either way, I get.

[Holly Brook]

I get those memes get me all the time. Like, babe, look at this. And then you go to the comments and it's like all. All fake.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, there's a lot of that. But, you know, that's the. The dirty thing about what, what they did with Detroit. Like, they decided that they'll take advantage of these people that are ultra poor, that are work willing to work with. And it's not just that they get paid a dollar a day or whatever they get paid. It's. There's no health care, there's no benefits, there's no retirement, there's no dental, there's no nothing. You just get that money and Then figure it out on your own. And then, you know, you buy a Ford car and you think it's made in America. Commonly repeated claim the annual income, about $34,000 US puts you in the top 1% of the world. But this comes from rough older viral estimates. It's not based on current rigorous, more careful tools and data sets now suggest that $34,000 places you well above the global median, but likely closer to roughly the top 5 to 10% worldwide rather than the top 1%. Okay. So it appears in social posts. Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

60 is still like right.

[Joe Rogan]

You're barely getting by.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

If you make $50,000 in America, like you're struggling.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Unless you're super young, you don't have any.

[Holly Brook]

And what do they pay teachers?

[Joe Rogan]

That's a good question. Like what's the average public school teacher salary in America? Let's guess. I think it's like 60 grand.

[Holly Brook]

I think it's about that.

[Joe Rogan]

I bet it's about that. Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

To guess, might be less actually.

[Joe Rogan]

Was it. 74,000 public school teachers now average 74,000 to $75,000 per year. So that's like, you know, you're okay.

[Holly Brook]

Depends on where you live.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, if you live in New York, you're fucked.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

If you live in New York, you live in a box.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

That's pretty good for Wisconsin.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay. State averages, lowest paying states to above $90,000. And the highest paying ones like California and New York. So California and New York, $90,000. One estimate says, though it's way lower. Oh. Starting teacher pays significantly lower than the overall average. National estimate. The average starting teacher salary about $48,000. Wow. Meaning it takes years of experience and often advanced degrees to reach or exceed that $74,000 average. So if you get like really intelligent people, even if they love children, they're like, I can't do this, I can't live like this.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You start off at $48,000 a year. That's fucking bonkers. That's not even a thousand dollars a week. And then you have taxes and then you have an apartment and then you have food and then you have a car. Oh yeah.

[Holly Brook]

How do people do it?

[Joe Rogan]

Which is weird that we put our priorities in strange places like the amount of money that goes through, you know, various corporations and NGOs and the amount of loans that all this different that where our tax dollars go. And you look at that and you're like that. It seems so short sighted.

[Holly Brook]

Very.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. No politician runs on that. No politicians. Like we need to really find the best teachers and pay them the most amount of money that we can afford to make sure that we get the best and the brightest. Everybody's like, fuck you. It's weird.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, it is.

[Joe Rogan]

People are strange.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. I wish you could, like, check boxes of where you want your tax dollars to go.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, 100%. Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

I wanted to go to education or whatever.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Imagine if that was an option, if when you voted, you could actually vote on where your taxes went.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Like, not even voted. It should be actually individually, he might have to pee. He's acting, you know. Yeah, Let. Let him out because generally he would be chilling by now. And when he huffs like that, he's usually trying to let you tell you something. Yeah. Like, that's what he does when he has to eat. He huffs. He comes around, he's like, I get it. I go, chill out, bro.

[Holly Brook]

My dog does that. When she senses something outside, like a coyote or something, she starts huffing.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, you guys were saying you have a. One of them giant Caucasian shepherds.

[Holly Brook]

It's a Central Asian shepherd. We have an alibi. I guess there's a lot of different, like, breeds under the Central Asian shepherd.

[Joe Rogan]

They're all herding dogs, right? They, like, protect.

[Holly Brook]

It's a protection.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Livestock.

[Joe Rogan]

Wolves.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Pull up the image of an alibi dog.

[Holly Brook]

Just Google wolf crusher.

[Joe Rogan]

Is that what they call them?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

How much does it weigh?

[Holly Brook]

She's actually on the smaller side. She's like 105 pounds or something.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that is smaller.

[Holly Brook]

But she. Her head is so massive. They get. They get really big. That one can't be real, but they are massive, like.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, so that's what she looks like?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, pretty much. She's all white.

[Joe Rogan]

But those dogs are great for just, like, keeping track of the property. Look at that image. This is wolf crutcher in the bottom. The bottom right there. Right. Go to the left. Right, Left of the wolf grinder thing. Yeah, that one right there.

[Holly Brook]

So that I think is like a Turkish Kangal, which is, I think, the next dog we're gonna get, because we need another one. Our. Our alibi, Nala. She. I'm just, like, such an animal lover, so she really should be outside living on the ranch, but she sleeps in bed. So I need an outside dog that's actually watching the livestock because this past couple weeks, we lost 12 chickens and four sheep.

[Joe Rogan]

To what?

[Holly Brook]

Coyotes.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow. Where do you live?

[Holly Brook]

Napa. Napa Valley.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow, you have that many coyotes out there?

[Holly Brook]

Oh, they are invading our property. Right now it's been. The last few weeks have been really rough.

[Joe Rogan]

Once they know that there's food there.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Once they taste the blood, they come back every night.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I lost all my chickens in California. Yeah, we. We lost a couple of them every now and then. I had a dog. His name is Johnny Cash, and he was a mastiff, and he was a sweetheart of a dog, but he was huge. He was like 140 pounds, solid muscle. And these coyotes made friends with him. And so they would come by the fence and hang out with them. And then eventually he got, like, accustomed to them. And then one day, the pool guy accidentally left the gate open. And so he went into the area where the chicken coop is. The chicken coop is, like, completely protected. But we had. One of our chickens was brooding. Do you know?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay. Of course you do. So when you take chickens when they're brooding, you have to take them away from the other chickens, and you put them in a smaller coop, and they have to perch. So if they perch, then they don't think that they're sitting on an egg. And then they get over it after a while.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And the coyote tricked Johnny into smashing that little chicken coop so that he can get the chicken.

[Holly Brook]

What do you mean?

[Joe Rogan]

I don't know how this did it, but it couldn't break down the chicken coop because it was only like 30 pounds. And so it was over there with Johnny, and all of a sudden, me and my wife and our kids were playing some sort of a. Like, monopoly or something in the living room. And someone yells, coyote. And one of my kids yelled, coyote. And we see the coyote running across the backyard with the chicken in its mouth and then leaps onto the top of the fence. I thought we had, like, this fence that was probably like 6ft tall or something like that. Like, wrought iron fence. I'm like, that'll keep the coyotes out. No, it leapt like a ballerina, like a gymnast. Toes to the top of the fence and then off with the chicken in its mouth. And part of me was, like, so impressed that it did that I wasn't even mad. But a part, I was like, what the fuck? I was like, how did he get that? So we go outside, and there's Johnny standing there in front of this destroyed chicken coop, which clearly he did.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Cause the coyote couldn't have done that.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And so then he realized that chickens are to be killed.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, no.

[Joe Rogan]

So someone left the gate open again, and he decided to just go right through the big chicken coop, and he killed nine of Them before one of my daughters was screaming, johnny's in the chicken coop. No. Yeah. He made a mess out of it.

[Holly Brook]

That's awful.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, he didn't know.

[Holly Brook]

I know, but my chickens are like my pets. I like, snuggle with them and stuff.

[Joe Rogan]

We lost one to a bobcat last week.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, we had some bobcats. Take some of ours too. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And we lost one to a fox. We lost one to a fox like a couple weeks ago.

[Holly Brook]

Do you free range your chickens?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Let them out of the coop every day.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, they get out of the coop and then we bring them in at night. But the, you know, animals, they figure it out.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. So like last week, because we let the chickens out every morning, it was 6:30 in the morning, and this coyote came and killed 12, like back to back. Just one? Well, on the cameras, that's. We only saw one.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So it was like surplus killing.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Thrill killing.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, they don't. They kill and then they leave them there and then they go back and get them later. You know, they do that with cats.

[Holly Brook]

You know, I mean, mountain lions do that for sure. But yeah, it was weird. He just killed them all and then took like a few of them with him. Left some of them. Mmm.

[Joe Rogan]

Motherfuckers.

[Holly Brook]

It was awful. I was broken. Cause it took my favorite chicken. And her name was Big Cheeks. She was the sweetest. She would like, come like a dog. You could like, call her name and she would come to you.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you eat chicken?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Not my chickens.

[Joe Rogan]

I don't eat my chickens either. But it's always weird because my wife treats the chickens like they're little babies. Like, hey, girls. Hey, girls. She takes care of them and all that stuff. And. And then we'll be eating chicken.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah,

[Joe Rogan]

it's odd. Yeah, it's odd.

[Holly Brook]

I mean, we have cows too, and I eat beef.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you eat your cows?

[Holly Brook]

Well, they're not technically our cows. So we have like an arrangement with a cattle guy and he just uses our property to graze them.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay.

[Holly Brook]

Because we need the cows because we have a biodynamic vineyard. And so we use the cows in the vineyard like for a few months out of the year just because it creates like a great ecosystem. And also, like, their footprints make little puddles and the water gathers because we're also dry farmed. And so what's that mean? We don't water our grapes.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. So why is that? I'm not the wine expert, but I think it's because you get like a better flavor profile if you like, it's more concentrated if you don't, like, overload them with water. And also, it makes the vines struggle in a good way, so it makes them reach deeper. Like, the. The roots reach deeper into the ground, and so you get more, like, flavor, I guess.

[Joe Rogan]

And so this is your own wine.

[Holly Brook]

So we don't make the wine. We sell the grapes to. I think we have five different winemakers now. They're all doing single estate wines from our property. So they're not blending it with anything. So you can drink the wine from our property, but it's not our label. Because I don't want to go out there and sell wine and make people taste my wine, and I don't want to go down that whole marketing. It's like, I have a whole other job. I don't need that one.

[Joe Rogan]

That's.

[Holly Brook]

We just handle the farming.

[Joe Rogan]

That's cool, though. If somebody wanted to buy wine from your property, like, what are the wines?

[Holly Brook]

Well, our property is called Glass Rock, and so Pilcrow, Glass Rock, Tansy. Glass Rock.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, so they all say Glass Rock.

[Holly Brook]

On the farm, they have, like, their brand name or whatever. And then underneath it'll say, like, the vineyard site. So if you get it from a

[Joe Rogan]

Glass Rock, I'm gonna buy some wine from your farm.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, I'll send you some. Do you like wine?

[Joe Rogan]

I do. Oh, I do. I like wine.

[Holly Brook]

Okay. I'm gonna just mail you a package of all of the wines from our property.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, cool.

[Holly Brook]

It's all Cabernet, but we're taking, like, an old world approach to it because Napa cabs are, like, super powerful. Tons of alcohol, and that's not really my style. I like, like, French and Italian wines, usually. And so all the winemakers we're working with are. Are taking that approach. And so we're picking a little bit earlier, lower sugars, lower alcohol. It's really delicious. Delicate, beautiful wine.

[Joe Rogan]

How did you get involved in this?

[Holly Brook]

Well, I got really into wine, like, in my 20s, and then I took a trip to Napa for a birthday, and it's so beautiful there. Have you been to Napa?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah. It's gorgeous.

[Holly Brook]

So I just, like, fell in love with the area, and then I met the love of my life at the grocery store there as I was buying a watermelon, and he asked if he could carry my melon for me, and that was his pickup line. I actually turned him down. I turned him down, though. I said no. Yeah, but we. Carlo Mandavi is his best friend. Gina Mondavi.

[Joe Rogan]

Mondavi Wines.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

So he's grandson of Robert Mandavi, and so they're like best friends. And Carlo, I was living in Park City, Utah at the time, and Carlo had a house in my neighborhood. So that was like our mutual connection friend. And so I would just come to Napa to visit Carlo and he would teach me about all the wine stuff. And. And that's how I met Elliot when we were at the grocery store. And then a year later, we got together officially. We just kind of like kept in touch. I was married at the time. He was in a relationship, so it was very dramatic. But long story short, it was very dramatic. Turned into a crazy divorce, five year lawsuit, all this crazy. But anyway, those are fun. Yeah, it was fantastic. So then I moved to Napa and moved in with Elliot a year after we met. And so then we. But we lived in St Helena, which is like a town up the valley from. From Napa proper. And it was like a 400 acre ranch out in the middle of nowhere. And we had like a 400 square foot house, like a little tiny cabin, basically, that we lived in. And after a while, like getting cats and stuff, I was like, this is really small and I have like, I have to make music, I have to record. And like having a studio in a 400 square foot house, it was just, you know. So then we ended up buying this house down in. In Napa. And we bought it for the house, but there was a vineyard there. And so we were like, we got to figure out what to do with the vineyard. And it was conventionally farmed up to that point.

[Joe Rogan]

But we're conventionally meaning, like, irrigated.

[Holly Brook]

Like irrigated. They use pesticides, like, you know, like pretty much most of the vineyards, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

And. But we're very all about organic and everything.

[Joe Rogan]

That's great too, because one of the things that we were reading the other day was about glyphosate in California wines and that they tested a bunch of California wines and all of them had glyphosate in it.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. So we don't use any of that.

[Joe Rogan]

That's awesome.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, we're very anti. So we transformed the vineyard into this biodynamic, organically farmed.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you know how to do that before that or did you read books? How did you find out how to do it?

[Holly Brook]

No, we hired a farmer for a while from France. That. That was his, like, forte, basically. So we transformed the vineyard and then now Elliot's out there doing a lot of the farming, obviously. We have help. It's because we have like something like nine acres planted a vineyard, and so we have help, but he's out there running the tractors and stuff.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, he's always done, he's always done like a lot of like tractor work, but not ever in a vineyard. So it's, it's all new to us.

[Joe Rogan]

But it's fun that, that life of like being on a piece of land and growing something there and like living with animals, that is the romantic life it really thinks about.

[Holly Brook]

It really is.

[Joe Rogan]

Is it that cool?

[Holly Brook]

It's. Yeah, it's awesome. You gotta come. I think you'll love it.

[Joe Rogan]

It sounds amazing. I want to do that. I've thought about doing that many times. Like buying a ranch, living on a ranch. It's just like I get terrified of like adding one more thing to my life that will probably push out some things or eat up time. I just don't know where I'm getting that time from. That's the only hesitation that I have.

[Holly Brook]

Just hire help.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, but then you have to talk to them and you have to deal with that.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, you have to manage it all.

[Joe Rogan]

You have to deal with like interpersonal drama between the help. Like Mike's a piece of shit, let me tell you. Like. Oh, fuck. You know what I mean?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Like, it's worth it though, honestly. It really is. It's so peaceful, like, especially being in the industry I'm in, going out and like touring and just being in big cities and then coming home to this like peaceful, serene balance. It's. Yeah, it's the perfect balance.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Well, that is probably the key to staying sane as a performer. Like having a balance.

[Holly Brook]

I think so.

[Joe Rogan]

Because so many of them just fucking just stay on the road and you kind of like lose your roots, you lose your grounding. You're always performing well.

[Holly Brook]

And for me it's like living in LA really ruined my creativity.

[Joe Rogan]

How so?

[Holly Brook]

I think a lot of it was like I'm. I have a tendency to like give everybody too much power. So like all these so called experts, like listening to their opinions about what I was doing just got in my head and so removing myself, being able to remove myself from those characters and personalities, telling me what they thought I should be doing, like writing about singing about dressing, whatever. I just, I need to like have open spaces to really hear my own inner voice and like my gut, you know? So I left LA when I was 23 and I moved up to Oregon for a while. Lived in a cabin.

[Joe Rogan]

By yourself?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Really? How'd you find it?

[Holly Brook]

Well, I had. I had been on tour and I was playing keyboards and singing backups for somebody else, so I can back up a little bit. So I got my first record deal when I was 18 or something and put out an album that was with Warner Brothers. Linkin park signed me, and I was going by the name Holly Brooke at the time. That's my first and middle name. And so I put out an album through that and it completely, like, flopped, and I went broke. And, you know, LA is so expensive. And I had spent all my college savings to move out to LA and make demos and everything, so I had nothing left. And so then I had taken. For the first time in my life, I had to get some jobs, like, not just performing. So I worked in Barnes and Noble, I taught gymnastics, and I edited porn. And then edited porn. Mm.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Holly Brook]

That was a great experience.

[Joe Rogan]

That's gotta be a weird.

[Holly Brook]

It was weird.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, how did you take that job? First of all, how did you even find out about that job?

[Holly Brook]

Well, it was a Craigslist ad, and it was just like, we need video editors. And I was like, oh, I can. I can figure that out, because I edit in pro Tools and stuff music, so it can't be that hard. And they said they would train. So I showed up to the interview in a suit and they were like, so you know this is adult content? Because it didn't say that in the ad.

[Joe Rogan]

That's how they brought it up. You know, this is adult content?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

How the fuck would you know?

[Holly Brook]

And they're like, are you cool with that? I was like, I guess so, because I need the job. And so I just took it and it was a 9 to 5. Literally just looking at, like, the most disgusting shit you can imagine. Like, two girls, one cup has got nothing on my socks.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So it was like hardcore, hardcore porn.

[Holly Brook]

And it was like. It wasn't editing feature films. It was taking, like, a feature film and then cutting out all the highlights so that I could make, like, basically reels or, like, you know, it wasn't Instagram, but basically, like, these little clips that people would search and find, like a cum shot or like a cream pie or whatever search term they would use to find this specific little clip. And so I would put together these little clips and then tag it with all the search terms somebody would use to find it. That was the job. And so it was all just like, watch the whole film and pick out all the most disgusting moments you can find and turn that into a clip. And then I started getting this thing called the Tetris effect. Have you heard of that?

[Joe Rogan]

No.

[Holly Brook]

So, like, if you play Tetris for too long, you start seeing, like, the shapes falling. You hallucinate, basically. So you'll just, like, be making dinner or whatever, and you're just, like, hallucinating, like, the Tetris shapes. But I was hallucinating, like, gaping buttholes and. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, my God.

[Holly Brook]

And so how long did you do that job? I only lasted two weeks, but it was the best paying job out of all of them that I had because I got paid by how many clips I got done in a certain amount of time. And so I was making like 30 bucks an hour, which is great for a high school dropout, you know, and so it was good money. But I. With the Tetris effect thing happening to me, there was, like, a light socket over my bed that I had taken the light bulb out of because it was too bright. And every night when I fell asleep, I would, like, stare at that and see a gaping butthole. I was just like, this is not healthy. Like, this is can't be good for me to continue doing, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

No.

[Holly Brook]

And then I also simultaneously got offered to be a keyboardist for this other singer, Duncan Chic. He's like a 90s. He had a song called Barely Breathing in the 90s. And I was a fan, and so I was like, well, that sounds like a better job, you know, Definitely. And that's music, at least. So I went on tour with him for a while. I don't know if it was like a year or two, but the whole time I was just like, I wish I was making my own music and singing my own music, you know, it started really eating at me, being, like the backup musician. And so I was, like, journaling a lot on tour. And I wrote, I just want a cabin in the woods where I can set up my studio and be away from all these people. And basically I manifested the cabin because, like, six months after I wrote that in my journal, my mom called me and she was like, my friend has this property in Oregon, and she has a cabin, and she's willing to let you live there for free. You just have to work in her art gallery, selling art like, twice a week. I was like, that sounds perfect.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Holly Brook]

So that's what I did.

[Joe Rogan]

That's how you wound up in Oregon.

[Holly Brook]

So that's how I wound up in Oregon.

[Joe Rogan]

What part of Oregon?

[Holly Brook]

It's the southern coast. It was in the middle of nowhere, but it's basically near Bandon. Do you know where Bandon Dunes Golf courses?

[Joe Rogan]

No.

[Holly Brook]

Have you heard of that?

[Joe Rogan]

No.

[Holly Brook]

It's a really famous golf course. But it was kind of near there. And I lived there for like six months, set up my studio, kind of like had to rediscover my love for music and fall back in love with it because I had like writer's block and was really depressed. I had also just before that, broke up with my boyfriend at the time. And my heart was broken and it was just like I was. I was a mess. But my cabin was this really small one room cabin with one light bulb and there was no bathroom in it. There was a bathroom outside and so I had to like walk in the middle of the night. If I had to pee, I had to walk to the bathroom and I was like, terrified. Where was the bathroom?

[Joe Rogan]

Was it an outhouse?

[Holly Brook]

No, it had a flushing toilet and a shower.

[Joe Rogan]

But it was like a standalone.

[Holly Brook]

But it was separate from the cabin and like down a path.

[Joe Rogan]

By itself?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Just a bathroom?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Why would anybody. Well, because the cabin was like an old fire lookout that they turned into a cabin. So it didn't have like plumbing or something. So they like add. I don't know, but it was really beautiful. And it was also at the top of a sand dune, so I couldn't drive up to it. So I had to park down the hill and hike to it.

[Joe Rogan]

How far was the hike?

[Holly Brook]

Like a quarter mile every day? Yeah. Yeah. And so. And I didn't have like Internet or anything up there.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Holly Brook]

But it was great. But I was terrified of mountain lions the whole time. And so I would like, you know, walking up that hill at night if I came home from whatever. I had my flashlight and was like looking all directions and I actually made a mask to wear on the back of my head because apparently like eye contact with a mountain lion, like, they won't attack and so because they attack you from behind. So like wear a mask on the back of my head.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa. That's. Who told you how to do that?

[Holly Brook]

I don't know. Google, There's. I don't know if it's real, but I did it.

[Joe Rogan]

It's real for tigers. There's a group of people that work for the government in the Sundarbans. So the Sundarbans is this area in India that's notorious for tigers eating people. And apparently over the. Let's just Google this number because I'll fuck this up too. I think over the last 200 years, something insane, like 300,000 people have been killed by tigers. What, in this area? Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

That's insane.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, well, there's a lot of villages there, and then there's also typhoons. And apparently when these storms happen, sometimes people die and they wind up in the river and, you know, they get washed away. And then tigers apparently developed a taste for human. And then there's also this thought about the water. The water is not fresh. It's brackish. So the water has a high salt content in it, but they still drink it because it's the only salt water. So they're probably constantly irritated. The sunder bands usually prone to attacking, sometimes eating humans, causing dozens of deaths every year. But not every tiger there is a man eater. Oh, sweet. Historical reports suggest Sundar band Tigers regularly killed 50 to 60 people per year, with some estimates over 100. Especially including unreported cases, most recent expert estimates put the average about 22 to 23 human deaths per year in the sundarbans, Far lower than the popular perception. Well, there's like, clusters of attack. Oh, yeah, here it is. Local news has reported clusters of attacks. Multiple fishermen and crab catchers killed within a month, showing that risk can spike in certain areas or seasons. I had a bit in my 2009 comedy special about this attack that happened in the Sundar bands where there was four guys in a boat, and this tiger swam out to the boat, killed a guy, dragged him to shore, dropped his body off, jumped back in the water, swam to the boat, killed another guy, jumped back in the water, did it with three guys before he got tired. And the last guy is just fucking shitting his pants on the boat by himself. One guy lived. So these are the people that would walk around with these masks on the back of their heads.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, wow.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

So I did the right thing.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, you did the right thing. Well, at least for tigers. But there's.

[Holly Brook]

I mean, I'll.

[Joe Rogan]

Isn't that crazy? Like, look at these people all living around there. These are honey collectors. And the sunder bands to prevent tiger attacks. Like, you got to know there's a lot of tiger attacks when you're wearing a mask around your head when you're going to work.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, that's creepy.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Scary. It's a crazy way to got to die, too, you know, especially a tiger. It's probably pretty quick, though, I guess once they get a hold of you, it's just smush to get the back of your neck.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. I mean, it probably happens fast. Ah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Mountain lion. Probably take a little longer.

[Holly Brook]

I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Probably 20 minutes, 15, depending on how much you scream.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, we've had to deal with those, too.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you have a gun or anything when you were up there?

[Holly Brook]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

No. Did you think about getting one?

[Holly Brook]

No, I didn't, actually. I had an axe.

[Joe Rogan]

It's better than nothing.

[Holly Brook]

It was. I was just chopping wood because I had a little bit of a.

[Joe Rogan]

If you were really afraid of mountain lions, how come you didn't get a gun?

[Holly Brook]

I don't know. I didn't even think about it. I don't know why.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow. That'd be the first thing I thought of. There's not a fucking chance in hell I'm walking around there without a gun.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, I don't think at that point I was into guns yet.

[Joe Rogan]

Are you into them now?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, yeah. We have a gun range at our house.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that's cool.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, Elliot's very into them. I have a carry permit.

[Joe Rogan]

Good for you.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, good.

[Joe Rogan]

Have you ever seen a big cat in the wild?

[Holly Brook]

Oh, yeah. A mountain lion.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. What's the biggest one you saw? Like, a real big one.

[Holly Brook]

I don't think the ones I saw were huge. They were like a hundred, maybe 150.

[Joe Rogan]

The first one I ever saw was just in Colorado. It actually wound up getting one of my dogs. And this was it.

[Holly Brook]

Got your dog? No.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Yeah. I lived in a place called Gold Hill. It's, like, north of Boulder, So it's like 3,000ft above. Boulder was beautiful. Gorgeous. I would have stayed there, but it's very high altitude. It's like 8, 500ft above sea level. And my wife got pregnant. And when you are. If you're pregnant at very high altitude and you're not accustomed to that, it's like you have the flu every day. It's horrible. And we wound up going back to la. But so that was the first one that I saw. And then I saw one in Santa Barbara. I saw one in. And actually in Montecito, we were driving and I saw this thing running across the road. I was like, oh, is that a coyote? And then I saw the tail.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, the tail's a giveaway.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's a mountain lion. Like, that's wild. But that one wasn't even that big. That was like £70. And then a couple of years ago, I was in Utah with my friend Colton, and we were driving around this corner, and he goes, dude, look under that tree. Look at that cat. And we see the glowing eyes of this cat because it was, like, just starting to get dark out And I was probably 30 yards from this thing in the truck with the binoculars, just looking at its head. It's fucking head was massive like a pumpkin. Like the muscles, the mandible muscles were like these things around its head, just a crushing machine. And these huge forearms. That's what I remember about it the most. His forearms were massive. And it was just sitting there under that tree staring at us. And I was in the truck. Like, I wasn't. You know, we were armed and we were in a truck and I was still. My pants. Like, that thing is so big.

[Holly Brook]

How much do you think it weighed?

[Joe Rogan]

At least 180 pounds, maybe 200. It was a big tomcat. Like that one that we have out front. Like that. Like that size.

[Holly Brook]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it was like. That one was one my friend Adam Green Tree killed and he killed that in Colorado. And that one, they had a depredation permit because it was targeting this rancher's cows. And they. They had tracked it. And that day, as they were tracking it, it had killed one of these cows and just. It was still alive. They just gutted it. It basically took it down and just started eating its organs. While it was still alive.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, that's what they do.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it was pretty rough. Yeah, they're monsters.

[Holly Brook]

We had that. We had an issue with mountain lions. Up at our other property in Napa, we had sheep. And I was actually on tour with Eminem and got a text from our neighbor that our sheep had had babies on Valentine's Day. And so I was like, so excited to get home and take care of these lambs. And I guess one of the lambs was rejected by the mother and so we had to bottle feed it, which is the best thing ever. I love that. You know, some people think it's like a unnecessary chore to take care of bottle babies, but I love it so like three times a day feeding this thing. And she became like a dog. Like she would follow me everywhere. She slept on my front porch. Her name was Valentine. I got a tattoo of her actually. And. But so like a few months later, we had had like maybe 10 lambs at that point. Little babies. They're so cute. And like one morning. Oh, well. So our. The property was like 400 acres and so. And our house was so small, but we had like other little buildings on the property. So I'd set my studio up in one of the other buildings. And so I would drive up there. It's like a half mile up the driveway. And I was driving one day up to the studio. And I saw this mountain lion, like, crossing our field. And I, like, rushed to get my phone out to take a video of it. Of course, it didn't get a very good shot. By the time I got the video and I turned around and went back to the house, I was like, babe, there's a. There's a mountain lion on the property. And I showed him the video, and it was, like, kind of blurry. You couldn't really tell. And we called our neighbor and I think the sheriff and showed them the video, and everybody was just like, well, nine times out of ten, when people see it, say they see a mountain lion. It's just a bobcat or, like, whatever. And I was like, no, I know this is a mountain lion. Like, I know what I'm looking at. You know, I saw the long tail, the whole thing. And they know. Like, nobody believed me.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, it's Bigfoot or something.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Like, I'm like, no, I swear it's a. It's a mountain lion. And Elliot believes me. So we went up and took a little hike up the ravine where I'd seen it walk off to. And I swear that, like, the lion must have been tracking us back to the house because it. That night we were. Because we didn't see it. We went up the ravine, and we didn't see the lion anywhere, but we went back home. And then that night, we were, like, watching TV and scrolling through Instagram or whatever, and he showed me this. You know how the Russians, they, like, become friends with all these crazy animals, like bears and whatever? So there's like, this video of this, like, Russian guy, like, in bed with his mountain lion, like, cuddling with it.

[Joe Rogan]

It's always Russians.

[Holly Brook]

I know, right? They're psycho.

[Joe Rogan]

They are not regular white people.

[Holly Brook]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

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[Holly Brook]

And so he's like. He showed me this video and he's like, oh, I could never kill one of these unless they fucked with my family.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

That next morning, I take my coffee out onto the front porch. Like, I always did look down at the sheep pen, and I see this mom sheep laying with her baby that's not moving. I was like, this is. Something's not right. And I go down there, and sure enough, there's like, the fang marks, you know, the deep fang marks in its throat, and it's, like, stomach eaten out. And the mom would not leave its side. And so I go back to the house, and I'm like, babe, we lost it. A lamb to the mountain lion. Nobody believed that I saw. And so we called Fish and Wildlife, and they came out and confirmed that it was a mountain lion kill. And so they set up. They were. They put traps in our sheet pen and, you know, to see if we could, like, trap it and relocate it. And so they stayed on property that night. And I can't even remember all the details, but basically, in the middle of the night, we heard this big bang. And we thought, oh, the trap closed. And we opened the door, and it wasn't that. It was like one of our sheep had busted through the fence trying to escape the lion and was standing in our driveway, like, right in front of the house. I was like, oh, fuck. So then Elliot goes down to the sheep pen, and he sees the lion, and it's like just like those glowing eyes, you know? And then it darts off into the woods, and it had killed another lamb and didn't. The trap didn't go off. And so then the guys, the trackers, they came down and they were like, okay, let's, like, hunt this thing. Like, take the dogs. So they had, like, six dogs, and basically, for the next, like, week, tried to get this lion and couldn't. Like, the dogs were getting all mixed up. They were, like, wandering off one direction and then going another direction, and they. They're like. And the trackers were like, this has never happened. Like, they usually get it. Like, what. What the hell's going on? They were. The dogs were just getting all confused, and we basically. Oh. And then another night, Elliot was out there thinking that he heard the guys whistling, but I guess it was the cats whistling. So. Mountain lions whistle. Do you know about that? Yeah, it's a crazy sound. You can probably look it up.

[Joe Rogan]

Mountain lion whistle. I need to hear that.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, but he heard whistling, and he thought it was the trackers, like, saying, like, we're here. And he, like, was just standing out there, and then 20 minutes go by and the guys aren't there. And so then they finally pull up and they're like. Or he was like, were you guys whistling at Me. And they were like, no. Like, did it sound like this? And he was like, yes. And they said, that's the lions. They. They whistle to communicate with each other.

[Joe Rogan]

Put the headphones on so you can hear this.

[Holly Brook]

Oh,

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that's in. That's Tahone Ranch, that I go to that place. That's in California. That's outside of Bakersfield. Elk hunted there before that place. To hone ranch, they had one pond where they set up camera trap. They set up trail cameras. They found 18 different cats on one pond.

[Holly Brook]

That's crazy. That's not normal.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, they have a lot of cats.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, California doesn't do anything about.

[Holly Brook]

I know.

[Joe Rogan]

They're kind of nuts. Texas has the complete opposite approach. Yeah, you just shoot them.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You don't have to have a permit.

[Holly Brook]

We got permits. We got permits because they came back and killed every night. And then they took my Valentine and I was like, so heartbroken.

[Joe Rogan]

There was nothing you could do to, like, lock them up. And.

[Holly Brook]

Well, I tried to bring Valentine into the house and put her in a kennel in the kitchen, but try sleeping with a screaming lamb. It was like, not a thing. We put her back out and she was fine that night. But the trappers just kept saying, no, we gotta just leave everything as is and. And we'll get them. But then, like, after a week of hunting them and they nothing. It was like, what are we doing? Like, we should move these sheep. Like, I was fighting for that, but they were just like, no, we gotta keep everything as is. Because if you move them and change the what's going on, it'll like, the cattle just, like, maybe not come back for a while, but then it'll come back, you know? And so they were like, if we're gonna get this thing, we gotta leave everything as is. But anyway, so they finally got the cat. One night, I actually had to leave town and do a show and Elliot called me and he. He actually. He actually was the one that shot it. But they got the cat. And I felt like this huge sense of relief. And I came home and I thought everything was fine and we weren't going to lose any more lambs. And then like a few days later, I woke up and took my coffee outside, and there was a mom sheep dead now, and she was dragged under the fence. And I was like, what the absolute fucking. So turns out there was two cats hunting together. And that's why the dogs were getting confused and couldn't follow the trail. And I guess, like, in the spring, a Lot of times the. The moms will, like, teach their children how to hunt. And so they weren't even, like, eating the lambs. They were just killing them. And so it was like, basically them learning how to hunt, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. But we got another permit and we got the second lion, and then everything was peaceful. But we. We went down from, like, 20 to three sheep.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, God.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, it was awful.

[Joe Rogan]

Killed 17 sheep. Holy shit. That must be terrifying.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. And I mean, I'm, like, out there. I'm scared for myself even. Yeah. That's living out there and, like, going into my studio and stuff. Like, it was really scary and really heartbreaking.

[Joe Rogan]

Awful. I could imagine. 17 is crazy.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, it was really bad.

[Joe Rogan]

When you shoot the cat, do you have to bring it somewhere and then they have to, like, register?

[Holly Brook]

Well, they took them. The. The Fish and Wildlife.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay.

[Holly Brook]

Took the bodies, but, yeah, the dogs, you know, treat them and.

[Joe Rogan]

Because people eat them. Like, they taste good.

[Holly Brook]

Really?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, Yeah, I had some.

[Holly Brook]

Wouldn't it be kind of, like, tough because they're, like, so muscly.

[Joe Rogan]

Eat the loin. Like, the law. Like, people eat the roasts. It's. It's like pork. Yeah. My friend Steve described it as a superior pork. Yeah. A lot of people eat mountain lion.

[Holly Brook]

Interesting.

[Joe Rogan]

I know it sounds crazy, but I'd try it. Have you ever had bear? Bear is good.

[Holly Brook]

Really?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, believe it or not, people, like, it depends on what the bear is eating. Like, if you eat a bear that's eating a lot of fish, it's going to be kind of funky. Or if you catch a bear that's been, like, eating a dead deer for, like, a couple of weeks, that's not good. You know, moose. Like, a dead moose. That's.

[Holly Brook]

Does it taste kind of rotten or something?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it'll smell rotten. But if you catch one that's been eating blueberries, it's like, some of the most delicious meat.

[Holly Brook]

Damn.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. My friend Steve Rinella, he has a show called Meat Eater, and he was hunting black bears in Alaska over this blueberry patch. So he shot this BlackBerry and he's cooking it, and as he's. He's butchering it. He did it all on camera as he's butchering it. Like, the fat from the bear is purple with, like, blueberry. And so, like, the flavor of blueberries was in the meat itself.

[Holly Brook]

That's interesting.

[Joe Rogan]

He's like, it's the most insane meat. It's delicious.

[Holly Brook]

I'd try that.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it's good.

[Holly Brook]

I like Elka because my favorite.

[Joe Rogan]

Where do you guys. You live? In Napa. When are you guys going back?

[Holly Brook]

Tomorrow. No, tonight.

[Joe Rogan]

I've got some. I'll give you some.

[Holly Brook]

Really?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I got a freezer bag. I have a commercial freezer out here. Oh, sick with some elk. Oh, yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Let's go, let's go. That's by far my favorite.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Oh, it's delicious. The best is the best for you too. Like, you feel different when you eat it. You're like, oh, it's like it's got so much nutrients in it.

[Holly Brook]

You've done the access deer hunting in Hawaii. We want to do that so bad.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's. It's. First of all, if you use a rifle, it's a hundred percent guaranteed.

[Holly Brook]

Really?

[Joe Rogan]

Like, you can't not get a deer. There's so many of them. You have to kill them. There's. On lanai, in particular, there's 30,000 deer and 3,000 people.

[Holly Brook]

Holy.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And so in Lanai, you can actually stay at the Four Seasons. So you stay at this, like, amazing resort, and then you go hunt.

[Holly Brook]

That's awesome.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So I went with. Well, we've gone a few years, but I went with a whole group of friends. One time, it was like seven of us. We went there and we. We had the best time. We hunted, and then we ate axis deer. And it's like you're. You're overlooking the oceans. This gorgeous paradise.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, that sounds like a great bow hunting deer.

[Joe Rogan]

But there. That's a deer that evolved around tigers. And they are so fast. Like, unbelievably fast. Like, if you shoot at one that's 30 yards away and it hears that the bow go off, it'll be out of the way before the arrow gets to it. They. What's called jumping the string. They just duck down and take off you. It's not like they know an arrow's coming at them. They just know to run. And the way they run is they load up their muscles by getting low and then springing forward. But they do it so fast that. Okay, 30, 40 yards. Let's say 40 yards. So 40 yards, you've got an arrow that's going 290ft a second. And from the sound of the bow going off, the pop of the bowing bow going off, they're gone.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Can you. Can you hunt with rifle out there?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Okay.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah. That's how they do most of the hunting.

[Holly Brook]

Okay.

[Joe Rogan]

That we went and I went with a bunch of, like, very experienced bow hunters, like, top of the food chain, bow hunters. And we all got access deer. But it was a struggle. It's like a lot of them jumped the string a lot. You got to. We wound up realizing that the best time to go was at night. Not at night, but in the afternoon, because in the afternoon it's much windier. And so it hides your sound. Because they're just on edge. Because they get hunted 365 days a year. There's no off season. And they have to hunt them because there's so many of them. Like, you, like driving at night, you'll stop and turn the headlights to a field, and you just see thousands of eyes. Like, they're. They're infested, Infested with delicious animals. And there's no predators. There's zero predators other than people. So they bring in snipers and people with night vision, and they shoot them at night and they. They use headshots. And when you go to, like, the restaurants in the four Seasons, they serve Axis deer.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, that's cool.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's delicious. It's so good. What is that place? Malibu farms, I think it is. They have insane venison sliders from Axis. Deers are so good. I mean, it's. It's one of the most delicious game animals. But when we went, we did a podcast from there, and, you know, we call it podcast from paradise. We're all having a good time and. Because after that, 150 different people went the next year, and only one of them was successful with a bow.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, wow.

[Joe Rogan]

Every other one was like this. I'm getting a rifle. This is ridiculous. These things are so fast. Like. But it's an animal that evolved, like I said, around tigers.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

King Kamehameha in Hawaii was given access deer as a gift from the leader of India in, like, the 1800s. That's how they got there.

[Holly Brook]

And then they just took over.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah, they took over. They're everywhere.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Maui has a lot of them, too. But they also have this company called Maui Nui. So, like, if you love game meat, you can actually buy game meat. So wild game meat in America, you can't sell. So if you buy, like, say if you buy elk, like, you go to a restaurant, you buy elk farmed, you're getting it from New Zealand.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, wow.

[Joe Rogan]

Most likely, yeah. Most. Most. I think most of the elk that they serve in restaurants in America is coming from New Zealand because New Zealand's a similar situation. No predators. And they brought in all these animals, and then they're just Infested. And most of it's probably not even really elk. It's probably stag, which is super similar anyway. But when you get like farm raised elk, that's. You're probably getting it from somewhere else. I mean, they probably have some places that are allowed to sell farm raised elk in America. I don't know which one that would be. But wild game like that you hunt, you cannot sell. Because that's how they almost went extinct in this country.

[Holly Brook]

Oh.

[Joe Rogan]

In the turn of the century, in the beginning of the, I guess like the 1800s, the beginning of the 1900s, they brought elk to the point of extinction almost. And the same with white tail deer. They, because they were market hunting. So because no one had refrigerators, you'd have to get meat all the time. And so they were just shooting all of them.

[Holly Brook]

Wow. Yeah, I didn't know that.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. But in Maui you have so many of them. And then they set up a company called Maui Nui. And Maui Nui, you can buy bone broth, venison, bone broth. They have like meat sticks and you could buy actual venison and they'll freeze it and then ship it to you. So if you want wild game, it's like one of the best place and one of the most delicious wild game too.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Access tier is delicious.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, we want to do that hunt for sure.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's a great hunt.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because you can't, first of all, you're in paradise and you, you're gonna see them. It's not like if you go on an elk hunt, like you could be in the mountains for days before you find any elk. Because, you know, you got to find out where they are. You got to listen for Bugles. You got to, you know, you got to glass a lot. You got to look around. You might not be successful. If you, if you bring a rifle to Lanai, you 100 are going to be successful. And you can kill a bunch of them. You know, you could.

[Holly Brook]

And they like package it for you and ship it home to you.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, there's a guy named Bob the butcher. Shout out to Bob, he. He'll butcher them for you and package it for you and all that jazz. And, you know, if you give it enough time, they'll freeze it. And we actually brought it back to the Four Seasons and they put it in their commercial freezer. They froze it for us. And then we, you know, put it in these big yeti coolers, brought it back on the plane.

[Holly Brook]

Nice.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And you could like literally get a Year supply of your meat in like a few days if you wanted to do that and just eat venison for the rest of the year. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. We usually try to get a deer every year up in Napa too. Mm.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you guys go deer hunting?

[Holly Brook]

Well, I don't.

[Joe Rogan]

Elliot does.

[Holly Brook]

Elliot does. I help him clean it, though. I've been doing that since I was a little girl.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, really?

[Holly Brook]

My dad taught me when I was a kid and I would like. He hunted a lot and I would just. He would send me on these like, routes to kick the deer out to him, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, okay.

[Holly Brook]

So I would like do the hiking and kick him out and push.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

And then we would, we would all gather. It was usually around Thanksgiving. We'd all gather in the basement and like cut the, cut the meat up and skin it and all that.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Holly Brook]

So I like doing that part.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's cool. It's a great way to be connected to what you're eating.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, exactly. Different experience, you have a different appreciation for it.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah.

[Holly Brook]

You know, then something you just like buy at the store or in a restaurant, like, totally different appreciation.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, 100. And also it's like, you know, it's organic, it's a actual wild animal. And it's the best life that this animal is ever going to live and including the best death. Because especially if you, if you're good with a rifle, if you're, you're accurate, you practice like it's. It's dead like that. And it's not like getting it's guts eaten out by a mountain lion, you know, or.

[Holly Brook]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Anything else that's going to eat it or old age or winter. All the horrible ways that animals die.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, their teeth grind down to nothing and they essentially starve to death or. Oh yeah, that guy's rough. It's a hard life. Yeah. So how'd you wind up leaving Oregon? So you're walking quarter mile every day by yourself, a flashlight trying to avoid being eaten.

[Holly Brook]

Yep.

[Joe Rogan]

How'd you get out of there?

[Holly Brook]

Well, I figured out that I needed to find a way to make a living in music. And so I reached out to the only person I had left in my corner musically because, like, at that point I had lost my record deal. My lawyer dropped me, my manager dropped me, but I was still technically signed to UMPG Publishing. And so I reached out to my like, point person there who I hadn't spoken to in years, and I said, help me figure out how to make a living. In music, I gotta figure this out, because that's the only thing I really know how to do. And I'm a dropout, so I can't really get a good job other than editing porn. Yeah. And I don't wanna do that. And so I met with her in New York. I flew to New York, and we just sat down, had, like, this long conversation, and I had, like. Ever since I was, like, 13, when I first heard Stan by Eminem, I'd always been like, I love that combination of, like, a pretty, you know, female vocal with hip hop. And so I'd always wanted to do something like that. And so I said, I think I could write hooks for hip hop songs. Like, that was kind of like my. What I told her I wanted to do. And she was like, well, we just signed this producer named Alex the Kidd, and that's kind of like his wheelhouse, so you guys should meet. And so I flew back to Oregon, and she connected us on email. And I would go down to the little cafe to get Internet. And so I would just. I emailed him, and he emailed me back some beats that he had just made. And I would just sit there with my headphones in the cafe and, like, hum little melodies into my computer and send them back. But the first one I did was called Love the Way youy Lie. And a month after I sent Alex that hook, it was a number one song.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow. What was that like?

[Holly Brook]

It was crazy. Going from, like, broke and living in the woods in this cabin and then writing a song that literally took over the world. Yeah. So that's kind of what took me out of Oregon. Because after that, I started getting phone calls, you know, from everybody wanting songs from me. Em had me and Alex come out to work on detox for Dr. Dre and puff Daddy wanted a song. That's where Coming Home came into play. Yeah. It was just crazy. Suddenly I was. I went from nobody caring to everybody trying to get a song.

[Joe Rogan]

That's got to be such an insane experience to be like, what am I doing? I'm out in a cabin. I gotta go outside to pee. I gotta walk quarter mile to the house. You're, like, completely isolated. Did you have any friends out there at all?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, I had a couple friends. I made a couple friends when I was out there.

[Joe Rogan]

And then all of a sudden.

[Holly Brook]

And all of a sudden I was,

[Joe Rogan]

yeah, off to the races.

[Holly Brook]

It was crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

How did you adjust to that? I had to be very strange.

[Holly Brook]

It was. And I also felt so much pressure because, like, I definitely Had a little imposter syndrome when I wrote that song, because I was just like, that was too easy. Like, it took me 15 minutes to write that hook, and I sent it off, and suddenly everybody wanted to get a song from me. And I was like, that must have been a fluke. Like, this is never gonna happen again. I'm never gonna write another one like this or whatever. And so, so many people were just wanting songs, and I felt so much pressure to deliver a hit song every time, you know, And I was always so hard on myself, but that became even worse. Just. I would just put way too much pressure on myself. I. I got invited to do so many songwriting sessions, but at that point, like, I had pretty much only ever wr by myself. And so being, like, thrown in rooms with songwriters and producers and stuff, I was so shy. I just felt it was always so hard for me to open up creatively in front of strangers. So I would just, like, walk out of sessions crying and just be like, I suck. I can't do this. You know, it was hard. That was the hardest part for me, just to.

[Joe Rogan]

Performing in front of a bunch of

[Holly Brook]

people, just like, yeah, just studio. Yeah. Just trying to, like, create hit songs. Every time I go into a writing session, I just felt like there were some such high expectations on what I would deliver, and I can't force creativity. It's like, it just happens or it doesn't, you know? But I felt like I had to deliver a hit song every time, and because I put that pressure on myself, it kind of shut down my creativity, and it made it really hard for me to do that. So then I ended up, like, just leaving a lot of sessions and feeling like a. Like I didn't deserve to be where I was and not good enough.

[Joe Rogan]

How'd you get over that?

[Holly Brook]

I didn't really. Yeah, I don't think I ever got over that. I did a lot of these sessions for a while because I felt like I had to. And then I just kind of stopped taking them. I stopped agreeing to do them because it was just too much. It was too hard on me.

[Joe Rogan]

So explain these kind of sessions. So you go to a studio with producers, and they essentially say, okay, let's try to create something. Ready? Go. And then you're in there, and your creative process is you by yourself. Like, trying to connect with emotions and thoughts and ideas, and all sudden you're around people, and also you're a little weirded out because you've been living in a cabin.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

By yourself. You know that. And you're editing porn for two weeks, and it's like that.

[Holly Brook]

And I just had this, like, hit song that was huge. It was massive. And I just felt like there was such high expectations on me, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Holly Brook]

So it was very hard.

[Joe Rogan]

Everybody that I've ever met who's really good has imposter syndrome.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I think it's a part of being genuinely creative, because I think, like, genuinely creative people that don't have that kind of weird ego, we're like, yeah, finally I'm getting mine. Because some people do have that, or they feel like they deserve this. But I feel like at least most genuinely creative people that I've talked to, when something big happens to them, they're like, this is crazy. Like, all of my comedian friends, when they start to hit, like, when something happens, when they get, like, a viral clip and then they do a Netflix special or something like that in the beginning, and they're like, bro, I'm kind of freaking out. I'm like, we all are. It's okay. Okay. Like, this is the thing. Like, yeah, you're gonna feel weird.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That. That thing, whatever it is, that imposter syndrome, I think, is a good thing. I think it's a sign that you have a healthy mind, or at least maybe not healthy. Maybe that's the right word. You have a creative mind, you know, and that you. You're. And also, everything completely changes. You have a hit song all of a sudden, out of nowhere, number one. Like, what the. Like, that kind of shift in paradigm, like, that is not normal to get adjusted to. You'd have to be a complete psycho to go. To be like, all right, this is perfect. This is what I've been waiting for, you know?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because everybody, like, sees people either on television or, you know, in. You see them in the media, and you think, that's a different kind of thing than me. I'm not. I'm not a famous person. I'm not popular. I'm not successful. I'm just me. Like, and then all of a sudden, people know who you are and love you, and you're like, oh, my God, I'm a fraud.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, my God. They don't. They don't know about the shitty songs I've written.

[Holly Brook]

Exactly. They don't know that, like, 99 of the songs that I write suck. And then the one.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, I think that's the case with everything, though. You know, I talked to all my friends that are comics, all say the same thing. Like, out of the jokes that they write, like, 10 of them suck, and then one. One pops through. But the thing is, like, you just gotta keep cranking, keep. Keep trying to find whatever it is.

[Holly Brook]

That was the hard part for me, was the keep going and keep trying.

[Joe Rogan]

How would you do it? How do you. How did you, like. What is your creative process?

[Holly Brook]

My creative process? Well, now a big part of it is not living in la. I have to be out in the middle of nowhere, and I like to be alone in the room. Even if I'm writing to somebody else's beat or something like that, I just like to sit with myself and do it. And I just try to focus on how it makes me feel. You know, I spent some time trying to write what I thought other people wanted to hear, and I feel like those songs always sucked and so just, like, letting it flow. Almost like I'm not writing it, like I'm channeling it or something that's better. The songs that, like, take less effort tend to be the better songs. And the songs that I slave over to try to get them perfect and overthink, they end up doing nothing.

[Joe Rogan]

John Mellencamp told me he wrote I Need a lover that won't drive me crazy in the shower. Yeah, like that. Done. He was just saying it.

[Holly Brook]

I need a lover that won't drive me crazy. No, it makes total sense. I write stuff in the shower. I write stuff when I'm cooking dinner. It's not, like, go into a studio from this hour to this hour and write a song. Like, it never works for me to do that, so it'll just be random. Like, this new album I'm putting out, there's a song called Motivation. I remember it came to me when I was standing outside the vet's office when my dog was getting surgery on her ACL or whatever they call it in Dog World. I was just, like, pacing outside during her surgery, and this, like, song started coming to me.

[Joe Rogan]

Did she have to do that thing where they cut the bone?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I had a dog. She had to have both her back legs done that way. She blew out both.

[Holly Brook]

It was brutal. The recovery was brutal.

[Joe Rogan]

It's horrible.

[Holly Brook]

She was also a puppy, so she had, like, puppy energy, and it just. We had to sedate her, and it was. It was awful. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And so do you take specific time to just, like, sit and try to write, or do you just, like, let ideas come to you?

[Holly Brook]

I usually just let ideas come to me. I, like, take a lot of voice notes in my phone, or I'll write down lyric ideas that come to Me, and then I need to be better about making time for it, because when I do make time to, like, go in and be creative, it usually does. There's a balance. It's like, I can't force it, but I also can't be lazy and, like, just avoid it completely, you know, So I try to balance that.

[Joe Rogan]

Have you ever read the War of Art?

[Holly Brook]

I started. I started it. I started it.

[Joe Rogan]

I have copies out there. I'll give you a copy if you don't have one.

[Holly Brook]

I think I started the book on tape version copy.

[Joe Rogan]

It's a very small book. It's very easy, but it's all about that. And Pressfield was, you know, kind of like an underachiever until he was, like, 40. And then somewhere along the line, he realized that what he really has to do is be a professional. And so he developed this methodology of, like, channeling the muse. And instead of thinking of the muse as being, you know, instead of thinking of creativity as being the sort of abstract thing, he thought of it as a thing that you summon. Like. Like, legitimately show up every day at the same time in front of your computer or your notebook or whatever, however you do it, and literally say, I am here to summon the muse. Like, I'm here respectfully to call upon you for your gifts. And if you just show up every day and treat it like that, it will work. Which is a really crazy thought.

[Holly Brook]

It makes sense.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Do you do it?

[Joe Rogan]

I do it. Yeah. I don't do it every day.

[Holly Brook]

Does it work?

[Joe Rogan]

But when I do it, yeah, I. I just sit there, and I don't say, I'm summoning the muse like, I think he does.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What I do is I go, here we go. I just say, here we go. I say, here we go. And then I start typing. And a lot of times, it's, like, almost like, working out. Like, in the beginning, you're like, you know, you got to warm up. You got to get things going. You know, you get on the bike a little bit, crack a sweat, start stretching. You know, I'm typing. In the beginning, it's just like, well, I suck. This is. These thoughts are useless. This is not.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And I got something.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And I figured out a way to do it with. It is more organic for me because I used to just try to write things that were funny, and now what I do is just write. I write on a subject, like, a thing, and then I'll let it. Like, if I'm writing about whatever, global change, global warming, earthquakes, whatever, I'm writing about. I'll let it shift to what? I don't try to stay on subject.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, you let it just.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it might completely change to something totally different, a completely different subject. And I just let it. And then I just try to just get out of my own way and write as much as possible. And then I go over it and try to extract things from that. And I take those and I copy and paste them into something else. And then I'll expand on that idea. Like, I'll start fresh with this idea. And it's. It's. It's just a numbers game. It's just a numbers and time game. The amount of numbers, the amount of time that you spend thinking about stuff, you get these little gifts.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And that's where the concept of the muse comes from is because it's almost like it's like some sort of a divine entity.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, it feels like that.

[Joe Rogan]

It does feel like that.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Everybody says that. Whether it's authors or musicians or comedians or anybody creative, they say it feels like it's not even my idea. Like, it just came to me out of nowhere.

[Holly Brook]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Which is the weirdest thing about the creative process. It's not like. Like a structure you're putting together, like a house, you know, Like, I know how to do this. I lay down the foundation, I put up the girders. I do the. It's like this thing, like this spiritual, weird entity that you're in contact with.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, for sure.

[Joe Rogan]

And it's not you because you're, like, empty. When the ideas come, they just, like, make their way into your head. You're like, whoa, where the fuck did that come?

[Holly Brook]

But then you're responding to your emotional, like, how it makes you feel.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Like reading what you're channeling or listening to it. And for me, like, I focus mostly on that. Like, how is it making me feel? Is it causing some type of, like, emotional response, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

And then those are the magic moments.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's why it would be so weird to do it in a studio with a bunch of people you don't know with, under pressure.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. For me, it doesn't work. I don't know how some people are, like, thrive in that environment. I don't know how.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I get it. A lot of rappers, I just love doing that, but I think they feed off of each other, you know? And like, a lot of rappers, they tell me that, like. Like they're doing it for their boys. So, like, as they're, like, hitting, like, new lines and coming up with new. New rhymes and new raps. It's like they're. They're around with their friends and, like, having a good time. Like, impressing them with, like, strong lines and great bars and.

[Holly Brook]

I mean, I've definitely had some moments like that. Especially, like, you can find people you have really good chemistry with, then it can work.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Holly Brook]

But generally speaking, just going into a room with strangers, it doesn't. Doesn't work for me. But, yeah, there are some people that, like, I feel super connected to creatively, and I can do that with them.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, I'd imagine everybody's got their own different little process, but it's just a matter of, like, doing something, like, making the time for it. And I would imagine also it's like, as you get really busy and successful and there's a lot of obligations, it's harder and harder to find that still. Time.

[Holly Brook]

Well, yeah, and there's, like, cycles. Like, right now, I'm not writing at all because I'm just in, you know, album promotion mode. And so it's all about, like, content and all this other stuff. So I haven't written a song in a long time, so. And it's also kind of like a muscle, like, songwriting for me. Once I get into a songwriting zone, it's, like, coming, like, way easier all the time. But I have to, like, warm up to get into it and get back in that headspace and, you know, warm up that muscle again.

[Joe Rogan]

That makes sense. Like marathon running.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Something. Yeah, I think everything's like that.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You get into, like, grooves. Yeah. So when you're in the middle of promotion, like, what is the difference in, like, do you have ideas that still come to you and you just sort of jot them down and go, one day I'll go back to that.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just store them.

[Joe Rogan]

Does this feel like when you're in promotion time, does it feel weird, like. Like you got to go out and sell it and you gotta. I don't know about it.

[Holly Brook]

I enjoy all the different aspects of it. You know, I love the. It's all creative for the most part. Like, even just, like, making content and filming stuff. It's a. It's an art form, too. So I feel like I'm still, like, getting my creativity out. It's just not in the songwriting.

[Joe Rogan]

So is it like, one of those things where in the back of your mind you're like, eventually this will come to an end, and I'm gonna get back to it, and then it starts to, like, itch at you.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, yeah, I get the itch.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Time to get back.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. I'm already feeling it. I'm ready to write again. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, I would imagine that being in a place like Napa where you're like, around, like, peaceful, you know, beautiful background and, you know, nature, and it's probably like, way easier to get in touch with your mind than to be trapped in Manhattan.

[Holly Brook]

For sure.

[Joe Rogan]

Beep, beep. You. You know.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. That's exactly why I've stayed away from cities.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I guess everybody has to find their own thing because I have friends who've thrive off that shit. I have friends who live in New York City. They can't live anywhere else. They love it.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Maybe it's because I grew up in a rural environment.

[Joe Rogan]

Maybe it's because you're not broken. I think my friends are all broken. So fuck is wrong.

[Holly Brook]

I think it's a comfort thing because, like, I grew up in the woods, so it feels like home to be out in the middle of nowhere. But if I grew up in the city, that might feel more comfort, comfortable for me and I might be able to hear myself think better there. But, you know, everybody's different.

[Joe Rogan]

I think everybody who goes to the woods realizes they need it. I think it's a vitamin. I really do. I think it's just like how sunlight gives you vitamin D. I think there's something about being in wilderness where you're in tune with all those life forms because it's not as simple as, oh, there's a bird, there's a squirrel. No, the ground's alive, the trees are alive. There's energy that all these things have that is being distributed somehow or another in this strange array of. Of information and. And of just life that's all around you that you feel. You actually feel when you're out there.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, it's like forest bathing. Yeah, that Japanese practice. Yeah, for sure.

[Joe Rogan]

And it's also. There's no cell phone service, so I think there's something to that too, because the. The earth feels cleaner, if that makes any sense. Like, when I'm in a place that has no cell phone service. I swear there's a subtle difference in the way the world feels.

[Holly Brook]

It's like a vortex.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, yeah. Because I think, like, in this room we have WI fi, We both have phones. Like, I think there's signals that are just out there that we can't. You know, you can't tune it in and go, oh, that's a video my friend sending me. You don't do that. But there's something about whatever the fuck that stuff is that I think your body recognizes as a. Like, they say it with bees. Like, cell phone signals in particular. Really? With bees and, like. Okay, well, with bees. I bet it with us, too.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Because it feels like if you're in a place with no cell phone service, the world feels different. And it's not just because you can't check your phone. It's the world. The actual. The actual air around you feels different.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah, I definitely feel that, too. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. I think that's how people are supposed to live. I think we're doing some weird to ourselves, you know, for sure. But the weird is cool in a lot of ways, you know, because it's how we meet each other, how we talk to each other, you know, how we find out about things.

[Holly Brook]

Good balance of it all, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you have goals?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What are your goals? Like, because some people don't. Some people just enjoy just doing. They don't think about, like, goals.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. I mean, I have, like, things I want to do before I die.

[Joe Rogan]

What do you want to do?

[Holly Brook]

Well, I want to be better about putting out more music because. Because I do put so much pressure on myself. It's taken me, like, five years between each album to make one and put it out. I second guess myself all the time, and. And I think, like, I put so much pressure on it. Like, this has to be the. You know, the sound that the mark I leave on the world, and this is what I want to be known for. I'm like, all that. Just capture a moment in time. Like, what am I feeling right now? What vibe am I into and capture that zeitgeist musically and then move on to the next one. Like, it doesn't all have to be cohesive. I used to just be, like, put so much pressure on it being cohesive and having, like, a certain sound or whatever. But now I'm just like, okay, right? Like, right now, this album, I'm calling the genre Bubble Grunge because it's, like, inspired by the 90s, pop and grunge kind of, like, combined together. But then the next album, I might totally flip it and do something totally different, and that's okay. Like, it doesn't all have to be, like, it can be different. I can change it up. And so my goal in regards to that is to put out an album every year instead of every five years.

[Joe Rogan]

That's a big shift.

[Holly Brook]

It's a big shift. But I Don't want to look back and just wish I would have released more because I have so much music sitting on hard drives and on a Dropbox folder that's never come out. Because I would, like, make a bunch of music and then second guess it and start over and start over again. It's not good enough. It's not good enough. I'm like, I should have just put everything out. I should have just been okay with, like, you know, putting out a bad album or a bad song. It's okay. But just, like, making it and putting it out.

[Joe Rogan]

Perhaps a part of the creative process is boiling it down to something that you.

[Holly Brook]

I think so, but I think I take that way too far.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you think that that is in part because of the pressure that you experience for your first thing that hits is number one, which is a crazy experience.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And you were really young.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, and all sudden, boom.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. Maybe that was part of it. Just made me, like, extra hard on myself. But I want to have more fun and not take it so seriously.

[Joe Rogan]

So how do you plan on doing that? How do you plan on having more fun and not taking it so seriously?

[Holly Brook]

I'm already doing it.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. I think I just turned 40. And I think that also has something to do with it because I'm just, like, seeing the end, like, what am I doing here? Just, like, torturing myself with all this pressure and not just, like, having fun and being creative and throwing it out there, you know? So I'm already doing that. I'm already having more fun.

[Joe Rogan]

That's great. But that. That is one of the beautiful things that comes with age.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You giving less, giving less, and just accumulating experiences to the point where you recognize, like, the flaws in your past thinking and why I did this, and I'm not happy I did that. And you gather enough of those experiences where you get a better map of the territory. Like, I think I get it now.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And then you're. You're really established now, too, so it's like, you don't have to be as worried about whether or not, you know.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

It's a beautiful thing that comes with age, the not giving a. Or not. You know, like, one of the funniest things to see. An old person doesn't give a. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Holly Brook]

Old people who don't give a fuck and just say anything that comes to their mind. It's hilarious.

[Joe Rogan]

They're fun. Well, thank you for being here. It's a lot of fun.

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Enjoyed it. Enjoy talking to you and I really enjoy your music.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, thank you. Can I talk a little bit about the album that I'm putting out?

[Joe Rogan]

Absolutely.

[Holly Brook]

Okay. It's called Wasted Potential. It's about me wasting my potential. But it's a. It's an album where I'm telling the story of my, like, upbringing in small town Wisconsin, discovering my sexuality, and just like, it's like a coming of age story and it's a part of my story. I don't think a lot of people know. They mostly know me from working with Eminem and all the things I did after that. But I just felt like it was time. I think because I turned 40 recently, I was like thinking about my childhood a lot and like realizing I didn't appreciate it enough. I had a great childhood and so I just wanted to tell that part of my story kind of for the first time ever. So I'm excited to get that out and it's important. It was important for me to get it off my chest and out so that I could like, finally. I was depressed about turning 40.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Holly Brook]

Oh, yeah. So depressed about it. But I think it's because I didn't. I didn't feel like I was like, present during my childhood. And I mean, I was working a lot and so it was important for me to get it off my chest and be at a point now where I feel like I can accept that I'm 40 and actually enjoy it. And so that was the whole gist of the album.

[Joe Rogan]

Why do you really think that you have Wasted Potential?

[Holly Brook]

Oh, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Really? How so?

[Holly Brook]

Well, when I made music with my mom growing up, it was a completely different lifestyle to now making music in, you know, LA and the big world of music. I didn't realize how much work it would be. I didn't realize the grind. And I think when I first got into it, I was kind of lazy about it because I was like, oh, honestly, I probably should have been a Gen Z because I was just like, fuck this, I don't want to do this. You know. And so a lot of decisions I made in my career, I feel like, you know, it was all my fault. Basically. All the failures that I've had, I realized were my fault for being, you know, lazy or not putting in the effort and the grind and. Yeah, so I wasted a lot of potential. I had so many huge opportunities when I was younger in the music industry. And then I kind of just like, was like, this is too much work.

[Joe Rogan]

But is that a part of like a work life balance?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah. I mean, that's what Gen Z would say, right? They're all about the work, life, balance. But in, I feel like in my generation, the millennials, it was all about like work, work, work, work, work, you know, And I wasn't doing that as much. So, yeah, I didn't, I didn't feel like, like turning 40. I was like, I'm not in the place where I thought I'd be. I didn't do all the things I wanted to do by this age. And I was feeling kind of like a failure.

[Joe Rogan]

And so do you think that that self critical mindset though, is just one of those things that's just like, it's, it's actually inherent to anybody that's creative and ambitious. Like you're always going to be self critical and that's probably one of the reasons why your music is so good. Like this idea, like it's not good enough. It's not good enough. It's like. And obsessing over things. We only release something every five years. But then look at the quality of the songs that you do release that you do love. It's like there's a balance in there. Like a little bit of self critical, a little bit of like, I'm not doing enough. Like it's. Let it in there, but don't believe it, you know?

[Holly Brook]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Life is life. It's like, it's not all, you know, it's not all, like leave a legacy. Because in the end, really, it doesn't matter.

[Holly Brook]

I know. You know it's true.

[Joe Rogan]

Enjoy.

[Holly Brook]

That's why I'm just so. I'm trying to have more fun. That's great.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, both things. Both things. Listen, your music's awesome.

[Holly Brook]

Thank you.

[Joe Rogan]

And it was awesome seeing you with Eminem. It was great.

[Holly Brook]

Oh, yeah. You came to the show.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And also that's how Marshall was named. He was named after.

[Holly Brook]

I told you that.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So, so cute. Thank you. And best of luck with your album, with everything else in the future. This is really cool. I enjoyed it.

[Holly Brook]

Me too.

[Joe Rogan]

All right, thank you. All right, bye. Everybod.