479: Evan Voyles— The Connoisseur of Irony

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe — Episode 479
Title: Evan Voyles— The Connoisseur of Irony
Release Date: April 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this freewheeling, story-rich conversation, Mike Rowe welcomes his longtime friend and master neon sign maker, Evan Voyles, to the podcast. The episode explores craft, nostalgia, the ironies of advertising, what defines artistry, loss, reinvention, and the quiet beauty of noticing what stands out in the world. Both men reflect on their lives and careers—how the things we select, collect, and create define us—and why embracing ambiguity and doubt can lead to a richer, more authentic creative journey.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Art and Craft of Neon (00:30–27:00)

• Mike introduces Evan as the creator of the show’s neon signage and a representative of the kind of idiosyncratic “somebody’s got to do it” people Rowe admires.
• Evan’s journey: English major, prospective architect, collector, accidental neon craftsman. “He’s an artist who can’t call himself an artist because the word makes him uncomfortable. He’s more of a craftsman.” (Mike, 02:32)
• Nostalgia and Neon: They discuss why neon has an enduring allure.
  • “There’s just something so nostalgic and evocative…It epitomizes Pulp Fiction somehow...It’s noir.” (Mike, 01:17)
• Craft vs. Art:
  • “Craft is not only what I bring to the table—it’s the table…We offer craftsmanship in a world increasingly void of it.” (Evan, 21:31)

Process, Technology, and Authenticity (24:15–28:45)

• Even as computers enter the workflow, Evan’s signs are distinguished by intentional, visible handcraft.
  • “No computers were harmed in the making of this sign. I can’t say that anymore… And yet, it’s better than using an overhead projector the way I did for 25 years.” (Evan, 24:15)
• They debate whether consumers should care about the process or just the result, and why Evan makes signs that look like the “real” vintage ones he collected.

Nostalgia, Mass Production & Specialness (28:45–33:51)

• The specialness of handmade, unique objects versus bland mass production.
  • “If I put your sign next to a Starbucks emblem, which do you like better?” (Evan, 27:13)
• Would neon lose its magic if scaled up?
  • “It was a technological advance…then plastic came along and almost knocked neon off.” (Evan, 32:08)

Attention and Meaning in Modern Life (36:30–44:13)

• How little time a sign has to make an impression now—2–3 seconds, down from 5 in earlier decades.
  • “We might spend two, three months building something for that blip.” (Evan, 36:45)
• The flea market and the "tine in the light” metaphor: choosing what stands out, both as collector and creator.
  • Evan describes his process of selection—from boots to vests—and how he hopes his signs “hook” passersby the same way.
• “What right have you to leave it there?” (Evan, about picking up lost objects, 46:28)

Loss, Change, and Phoenix Rising (65:04–77:34)

• Evan’s pivotal fire: his antique store (with 400–500 cowboy boots and assorted collectibles) burns.
  • “It was everything I did. The signs were a sidebar, and suddenly it’s gone.”
  • “There was no way I was walking out of that corner by myself. I needed an act of machine of the gods. That's right. Deus ex machina.” (Evan, 69:52)
• Reinvention: The fire pushes him fully into sign-making, reshaping his life and creative focus.
  • “You bet everything.” (Mike, 104:58)

Personal Elements & Memorable Stories

• Wardrobe as workwear:
  • “Because I wear the same clothes pretty much every day…It’s my workwear. It’s got a reason…Life is simpler with a uniform.” (Evan, 13:08; Mike, 13:40)
• Stories of hunting, collecting, loss, and the significance of finding meaning in objects and experiences.

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Irony, Marketing, and Advertising (80:31–98:14)

• The connoisseur of irony:
  • “I like to think I’m a connoisseur of irony. I don’t necessarily create irony, but I appreciate it when it comes to me.” (Evan, 83:38)
• Refusal to advertise in traditional ways, even though he makes advertising (“I don’t want to be part of that...If I do a good job, somebody who wants that will see it.” 87:14).
• Mike and Evan discuss how their creative lives are entwined with commerce, the contradictions of “art vs. ad,” and how commerce and artistry interlace.
  • “You can’t have one without the other. That is the form and the function.” (Mike, 91:04)
• Unauthorized jingles: Mike shares his habit of writing and performing silly product jingles as a way of staying sane and keeping craft playful.
  • “I do that to stay sane…to kind of somehow stay grounded with this weird part of my past, the splinter in my mind.” (Mike, 95:04)

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On Stories, Family, and Doubt (49:54–62:14)

• Both host and guest see themselves as lifelong seekers of good stories.
• Discuss raising children with learning differences, and how their “otherness” contributes new ways to apprehend the world.
  • “My daughter…she’s amazing…she’s one of a kind. Sui generis.” (Evan, 51:25)
• The value and foundational nature of doubt.
  • “Doubt, therefore I am…doubt is foundational.” (Mike, 15:11)
• The joy, necessity, and irony of being different—“the left-handedness” metaphor.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On craft:
  • “Craft is not only what I bring to the table — it’s the table.” (Evan, 21:31)
• On neon’s nostalgic allure:
  • “It’s noir. It’s of a time before you and I were born, but we’re nevertheless familiar with.” (Mike, 01:30)
• On signs and meaning:
  • “We make things by hand with the absolute intention that they look like they were made by hand.” (Evan, 23:05)
• On loss and transformation:
  • “Be a phoenix…Rise from the ashes. And partly, maybe because she made that invocation, it was—I did become that.” (Evan, 76:19)
• On irony and marketing:
  • “You’re in the advertising business. But you can’t bring yourself to advertise.” (Mike, 80:31)
• On the tension of commerce and art:
  • “You must be in on the joke...There’s a farcical reality to what all of this is.” (Mike, 92:05)
• On choosing what matters:
  • “Beauty is around you all the time. Let it find you.” (Evan, 47:21)
• On risk:
  • “You bet everything…All the chips go across the table every day.” (Mike & Evan, 104:58)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:30–04:30: Intro, Evan’s signage, and neon’s appeal
• 06:17–09:40: American cultural histories; Sylvester Graham, diet, and irony
• 15:11–18:45: On doubt as foundation for creativity
• 24:15–27:00: Neon, technology, and preserving craft
• 36:30–41:27: Communication, attention spans, and the “tine in the light” metaphor
• 49:54–52:55: Storytelling, family, and new ways of seeing
• 65:04–77:30: Fire, loss, transformation, reinvention
• 80:31–88:10: Irony of advertising without advertising, word-of-mouth model
• 91:04–98:14: Ads vs. art, creative integrity, unauthorized jingles, and the craft/commerce crossroads
• 98:45–103:57: Songwriting, collaboration, and corporate overlays
• 104:53–107:50: Risk, betting on ideas, and gratitude

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Tone & Language

Wry, story-driven, reflective yet playful, conversational, rich with personal anecdotes and philosophical digressions. The conversation is warm, unguarded, with moments of laughter and mutual ribbing.

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Final Thought

This episode isn’t just about making neon signs—it’s about finding what really matters, appreciating irony, accepting loss and starting over, and refusing easy definitions of art, commerce, or self. As Mike concludes:

“I’m 100% sure that we are cut from the same cloth in the ways that matter. And I’m 100% sure the country and the world’s a more interesting place with you walking around in it.” (106:11)

Transcript

[Evan Voyles]

Foreign.

[Mike Rowe]

It's the way I heard it. Boy, oh, boy, Chuck. Yeah. I mean, that was fun.

[Chuck]

That was a lot of fun. Like, I've been experiencing Evan for the last two or three years.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Because I've been calling him. You know, we've been talking about these great neon signs and when he's going to make one for us, and then, of course, getting him to be on the podcast. It's like I've experienced quite a bit of him before today.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, for those of you in the audience who have commented on the new signage here at the Way I Heard at World Headquarters, the neon in question was made by my old friend Evan Voyles. He made a sign that says the Way I Heard it, which is now always affixed just beyond our guests here in PH3. And over my shoulder is a more ambitious logo for microworks, all done in neon. Yeah. All handmade, all bent glass. All, I think, beautiful. And, you know, like most people, I've always been attracted to neon. There's just something so nostalgic and evocative.

[Chuck]

It's sexy.

[Mike Rowe]

It is sexy.

[Chuck]

You know, and not in a dirty way.

[Mike Rowe]

No, it's. You know what I think? To me, neon is a kind of. It epitomizes Pulp Fiction somehow.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

It's noir. It's of a time before you and I were born. Yeah. But we're nevertheless familiar with. So in that sense, there's like a vert. Schmaltz to it, you know?

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

In the early days of Somebody's Got to Do it, not long after we stopped filming Dirty Jobs, we featured this guy, Evan Voyles, who. Who has this rundown, crappy little shop in Austin, but who does such great work.

[Chuck]

Amazing work. Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

And, you know, he was. And you'll hear me talk to him about it in a minute, but he really did epitomize the kind of person I was looking for on this show.

[Chuck]

Sure.

[Mike Rowe]

Because you can't put this cat in a box.

[Chuck]

Right. And he is the somebody who has got to do it. He got fixated with neon by accident.

[Mike Rowe]

Afflicted.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

He was a collector. And then he just started going, you know what? I want to do this. And so now you can't stop him from doing it.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

What makes him interesting is that he's an artist who can't call himself an artist because the term makes him uncomfortable. He's. He's more of a craftsman.

[Chuck]

Yep.

[Mike Rowe]

I think he would agree. He can live with that term. He's an English major who went on to study architecture and decided not to work in either of those fields, but both equipped him to be what he is today, which is an incredible conversationalist.

[Chuck]

He's really, really good at talking.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. And listening. Like, he's. Like, it's a.

[Chuck]

And hitting the ball back over the net.

[Mike Rowe]

Really, really good at that always. So in the same way, he was a great representative of somebody who's got to do it. He's also a great representative of the kind of guest I. I try and get on the pod, you know, because I don't want a bunch of questions. I don't like to follow, you know, a predetermined agenda. I just want to talk to people as best I can. And, man, he makes it so easy. He's lived a big life. And as you'll hear us, you know, allude to, we're probably not singing out of the same hymnbook vis a vis a great many things, but the things we agree on, we agree on passionately. And. Hey, look, Mary Sullivan's in the house. Hi, Mary. Hey. We're just recording a podcast, or about to. So you stand there for a minute. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, you'll meet my friend Evan. And fair warning, when you see his handiwork, you might want to hire him, because the boy makes a hell of a sign.

[Chuck]

I want to say one more thing.

[Mike Rowe]

I can't stop it.

[Chuck]

We never do this, but I want to say this, that one of the ways that podcasts grow is people share episodes. This episode is going to be very shareable. It's a conversation with a regular guy who does an amazing thing, and it's a lot of fun. So people out there, please share this episode with someone you like.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, don't be shy. Share away. Then I will smash that, like, button. There you go. That is Evan Voyles. We're calling this one a connoisseur of irony, because he is, you'll see. Dumb. Hey, if you don't care about cutting your monthly wireless bill in half and saving a small fortune on the same 5G service you're currently being overcharged for by some multinational wireless fearless behemoth, okay, maybe you care about keeping jobs in America. PureTalk does. They run their entire operation out of this country, including all their customer service. I appreciate that. I also appreciate the hundreds of thousands of dollars they've donated to America's Warrior Partnership to help prevent veteran suicide. And I really appreciate their commitment to my own foundation. PureTalk is helping microworks train the next generation of skilled workers, and they have Been very generous. Look, don't get me wrong. Saving money is an excellent reason to switch to Pure Talk. And you will save a boatload when you switch. But I'm betting you'll also like the idea of doing business with people who share your values. Go ahead, try it. Go to puretalk.com ro and make it happen. 10 minutes later you'll be saving money on the same 5G coverage you're getting now because you did what I did. You switched to an American wireless company that actually stands for something. PureTalk.com ro Pure Talk. Maybe. Certainly some kind of abuse.

[Evan Voyles]

Some sort of, I think that needs to be practiced on a daily basis, of course. Abuse?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, like anything else, it's a muscle. Yeah. On self abuse to this day. Perhaps the best 1200 words I think I've ever written about. Remember the great masturbation scare? I mean, you wouldn't remember it, you didn't live through it, but it was a thing.

[Evan Voyles]

I think I was studying for that exam, actually.

[Mike Rowe]

Practice, practice.

[Evan Voyles]

No, there was a scare. I wasn't scared. No, this is a real thing.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Are we rolling? Because.

[Evan Voyles]

And is this.

[Chuck]

I'm afraid we are.

[Evan Voyles]

Good distance.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, that's a good.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah, okay.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. No, the great masturbation scare tore through the country in the late 19th century.

[Evan Voyles]

Oh, you're right. I don't remember that clearly.

[Mike Rowe]

Which, by the way, man, you look. I mean, it's. When did I see you last?

[Evan Voyles]

10 years ago? Yeah, 11 years ago.

[Mike Rowe]

What's the Oscar Wilde? Was it Dorian Gray?

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah. You look exactly the same.

[Mike Rowe]

There must be a picture of you in a garage somewhere. That looks like hell. You look the exact same.

[Evan Voyles]

I would like to see that picture. Actually. I imagine it looks exactly like what I think I look like.

[Mike Rowe]

Chuck, can you find that photo online for me real quick?

[Chuck]

Oh, sure.

[Evan Voyles]

Find that.

[Chuck]

I can't find it real quick.

[Evan Voyles]

Find that garage.

[Mike Rowe]

So the great masturbation scare was a thing in this country and it was really preached from the pulpit and it was deemed a sin. And what was interesting about it was there were a lot of tangential things that. That were being argued from the pulpit that were encouraging this behavior. And one of them was diet. Right. So the kind of foods we ate.

[Evan Voyles]

This is Victorian.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes. Well, in this country, you know, we didn't really but about. Yeah, it was contemporaneous, I think, like 1870s, 1880s. Right. And one of the dogmas around discouraging self abuse was the eradication of sugar and flour and really anything that made food taste good. Because the argument was that kind of

[Evan Voyles]

pleasure would lead to the other kind of pleasure.

[Mike Rowe]

Correct. And so the story concerns a famous reverend who preached the eradication of those dietary supplements and created a cracker that just didn't taste like anything at all.

[Evan Voyles]

Like hardtack kind of thing.

[Mike Rowe]

Very much like hardtack.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Which is, of course, what the sailors relied upon as they sailed around the world. Anyway, it was very popular, along with master.

[Evan Voyles]

Along with masturbation.

[Mike Rowe]

Shelby Deer with the drunken.

[Evan Voyles]

That's right. You got the heart attack in one hand and something else in the other.

[Mike Rowe]

And the heart attack in the other. Anyway, the pastor.

[Evan Voyles]

There's new meaning to come about, particularly ARR.

[Mike Rowe]

The pastor was named Sylvester Graham, and his crackers, eventually purchased by Nabisco, are now filled with sugar and flour, which is why the country still can't keep its hands off itself, I suppose.

[Evan Voyles]

Wow. It's too bad that we do not have money invested in Nabisco right now, because shares are gonna soar.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

Or just rise.

[Mike Rowe]

Look at us. There we are 10 years ago.

[Evan Voyles]

Okay.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, aside from the bad. And that's me. I got, you know, another £20.

[Evan Voyles]

We're both grayer.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

Oh, my God. And it still looks just like that. Only I'm not in that building anymore.

[Mike Rowe]

Your place. I'll never forget walking in there the first time and just thinking, is it possible you could have deliberately trashed it to this extent just to make some kind of impression upon me and the crew?

[Chuck]

You thought you were doing an episode of Hoarders.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Honestly, I couldn't savvy it. As the sailors would say, it just didn't make sense. But you're not there anymore.

[Evan Voyles]

No. No, I'm not. I moved out of there five years ago and ended up buying an old gas station, which I then pretty much trashed the same way. But it's not as bad. Nothing was as bad as that. And ironically, I did it because they wouldn't. They raised my rent. This is what happens in Austin, you know, you raise your rent till you have to leave. I said, I'd love to buy it. I had the option. They said, well, the option only works if we want to sell and we don't want to sell it. And so I got out, ended up buying this place not far away. Great. The landlords then leased it to this company out of Chicago. What was it called? Foxtrot. Little neighborhood grocery place. They spent millions fixing up the whole building and turning it into this neighborhood grocery concept. They were doing 33 of them across the country. I got to do the sign, which was a little ironic, you know, to be back on this building and now with money behind me, I'm getting to do what I never would have got to do for myself. And we know I wouldn't have made it nice. Yeah, I'm incapable of that. But I'm. I'm good at making other people's. Make things look nice. That's sort of my job. They lasted one year and then went bankrupt like that overnight. No notice to vendors, no notice to employees. Only the top people got wind and got out.

[Mike Rowe]

How long you been in business?

[Evan Voyles]

30, 33 years as Neon Jungle. And then five years before that, just working with vintage signs for a while.

[Mike Rowe]

Was it Neon Jungle? When I was there, you were calling

[Evan Voyles]

it that then calling it that. There was no sign. There's no sign now. The shoemaker's children go barefoot.

[Mike Rowe]

First things first. Thank you for making these for me.

[Evan Voyles]

You're welcome.

[Mike Rowe]

And I apologize for taking so long to reach out. I knew when I left you after our meeting 10 years ago that I would be a customer one day, but things happen pretty fast in my world, and I just couldn't decide what to ask you to do, you know, because there were multiple titles and things.

[Evan Voyles]

Sure.

[Mike Rowe]

But these are the things where we settled this podcast, this idea of just talking about the world and all the trouble in it is called the Way I heard it. And my foundation, which I was just really starting to take seriously when we met, has become a thing that, in my estimation, is now worthy of neon. And your specific.

[Evan Voyles]

We talked about it then, because I remember I set aside a couple of circles that I had left over and had your name on them for, you know, a good eight years or so before I chopped them up.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

Which was, ironically, probably a few months before we reconnected. Yeah. Just like.

[Mike Rowe]

Damn it.

[Chuck]

I just want to point out that image right there. You're wearing the exact same shirt. You got the exact same necklace on, and you have two pair of glasses on your head. In both real life and back there. I guess that's. That's your look, isn't it?

[Evan Voyles]

Well, it's not. It's not a look, per se. It's all about. It's a uniform. It's how. It's my workwear. It's all got a reason. But it's also true that because I wear the same clothes pretty much every day, and it's not the exact same shirt, but it's the same type of shirt.

[Mike Rowe]

No, man, that's the exact same Shirt.

[Evan Voyles]

I'm easily.

[Mike Rowe]

That's the exact shirt.

[Evan Voyles]

Look, I can take it off and prove it. But that.

[Mike Rowe]

I think part of the reason Chuck is pointing us out, which is an excellent catch, by the way. My compliments.

[Chuck]

Thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

I think it says a lot about our guest, but it also says, you know, if I could bring this back to me for a moment, why not? I own four shirts, maybe five. And all of them were purloined from various shoots. You know, and I. It's one of the many things I think we share in common. Life is simpler with a uniform. Life is simpler with certain things. Predictive. You know, I try and do that, too, but the other thing is that things become sometimes uncomfortably real when they manifest as a sign.

[Evan Voyles]

Oh, that was a segue I didn't see coming.

[Mike Rowe]

What do you mean? Well, think about your own deal. Like you. You don't have a sign for your own sign making place.

[Evan Voyles]

Correct.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay.

[Evan Voyles]

Deliberately.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, that's it. I had a design in my head for the Microworks logo, but I hesitate for so long to pull the trigger. Not for any other reason than I hesitate to make things real prematurely sometimes, ever. So if there's a question in all that, it's what's wrong with us?

[Evan Voyles]

We are. I'll speculate that we're people who know what we want, but have doubts about the actual manifestation of that. And there's also that if it ain't broke, don't fix it kind of thing.

[Mike Rowe]

Thoreau gets all the credit for. You know, ergo kajito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. But some people argue that the original utterance was ergo doubtitum. I doubt, therefore I am. Like, doubt is the. There's something foundational in skepticism. And I always think of that when I think of you. And by the way, not to blow too much sunshine too early, but that segment on Somebody's Gotta do it was the best example that I had in the whole run of the show. You were the best subject for it.

[Evan Voyles]

Because it matched your zeitgeist or what?

[Mike Rowe]

No, no. Because you're a sign maker without a sign. And yet you've been in business 30 years making signs because you wear what appears to be the same shirt all of the time. Because if I remember right, you were an English major with dreams of becoming an architect who walked away from all of that to start fabricating things in the backyard of what, your grandfather's ranch or something?

[Evan Voyles]

Something like that, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Because if you took any road at all, it was windy and circuitous. And like your life to me, I left our first meeting thinking, this cat has taken the reverse commute at every possible turn. And it's all that zigging and zagging has just brought you to, I think, a really interesting place. And to this day, I think that segment, the way it touched on art and commerce and advertising and transaction, everything that came down into the business of bending glass and running current through it, just struck me as just remarkably human and interesting.

[Evan Voyles]

Wow, I'm so glad we're having this meeting because this is putting things into perspective for me at a point in my career where I kind of need to hear that, because there's again, with doubt, you know, I still have doubt every day. And I did not plan to zig or zag. I just found maybe a certain allergy to, you know, to not to doing it directly, often to my own chagrin, certainly my parents chagrin, you know, And I credit them for being so busy sort of falling apart as people that they were not in a position to stop me from going out the side exit.

[Mike Rowe]

Right?

[Evan Voyles]

So that was just luck, you know, they could have cracked the whip and it could have gone all differently.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, sure. I mean, Sliding Doors was a popular movie because it's fun to look back and go, oh, man, this instead of that. What would have happened?

[Evan Voyles]

Well, and we find ourselves looking back, my wife and I, and, you know, things are different than. Than it was before. But you're right, and there's. There's a reason for everything. I'm not just wandering around, you know, blundering, but sometimes it seems that way. I think from the outside, there's a reason I wear these clothes, and it's not just for branding purposes. It's, you know, because they suit the work I do. And I don't wear them every day because I want people to recognize me. I want them to realize that I work every day. Pretty much Saturdays and Sundays too. Maybe not all of it. And I know how to take a vacation. But on the other hand, I'm still used to wearing these clothes, so I'm gonna wear them.

[Mike Rowe]

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[Evan Voyles]

netsuite.

[Mike Rowe]

I said netsuite.com he said netsuite.com/mike. Hence the aforementioned dichotomy.

[Evan Voyles]

Look, that's a good title. The aforementioned dichotomy with Evan Foyles.

[Mike Rowe]

There you go. Jot that down, Charlie. I think that if I don't put some guardrails on this, we really will free associate for two hours, which is what I enjoyed easily. So in an attempt to try and try and focus it, maybe if we could just start with craft, because I don't know that people think it means what you think it means. I know what I think you thought it meant 10 years ago. But how is your thinking evolved with regard to this weird miasma of. Of skill, intentionality, Art, like all of it. If I remember right, the word craftsman was the term that you were most comfortable, right?

[Evan Voyles]

As opposed to artist.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Evan Voyles]

Nothing's changed on that. If anything, it's sort of, I don't want to say hardened because I'm still learning and we're still changing, but certainly craft is not only what I bring to the table, it's the table. It's what we build on every day. And it's breaking down as we're doing it. And it's a miasma, as you say. But it's also the thing that holds us up. We offer craftsmanship in a world that's increasingly void of it, which is good in a way, and it's also frightening in a way.

[Mike Rowe]

But what's the difference between if you're looking like the signs that you made for us, you know, is that. Is that the product of craftsmanship? Is that not the product of artistry? And you know, like, how does it translate to the work as opposed to the identity of the person doing the work?

[Evan Voyles]

Well, I'm buried in the work. I'm in there. I don't need to sign it. If you know my work, you're going to recognize that I've done it. But it's not about me. It's more about you, the client, the end user, feeling like it represents them. Especially in your case because of, you know, the lifetime of your career of talking about work and what work means and what craftsmanship looks like versus things that aren't. And we're surrounded more than ever by things that aren't.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

By digital, by vinyl, by plastic, by things that were produced and maybe still part of a marketing meeting. And that's not what we do. We don't. We make things by hand with the absolute intention that they look like they were made by hand.

[Mike Rowe]

It's not artifice, with materials that have some kind of. Oh, I don't know. I mean, there's. There's something primal about glass. Right.

[Evan Voyles]

Metal paint and glass, metal paint.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. Those things feel, I don't know, maybe eternal, is a bit much, but foundational in ways that plastic and bytes and bits and cloud and blockchain. Right, Right. Like there's something. I mean, there's something kind of attractive about those things. Obviously, they wouldn't exist so predominantly in the zeitgeist if it wasn't so. But there's a bargain, you know, that we make, and I think you're suspicious of that bargain vis a vis those materials.

[Evan Voyles]

Sure. It's a slippery slope. I used to say earlier in my career, I'd say no computers were harmed in the making of this sign. I can't say that anymore because a lot of times, and in the case of your signs, the information was sent to me via an email, which we then forwarded to imaging company that was born in 1920 as a blueprint company, and I still call them Miller Blueprint, but they're not called that anymore. And most people don't even know what a blueprint is. And they're making a digital print at scale and we use that to. We'll cut that out, or we'll transfer it with a kind of glorified carbon paper to the aluminum and draw it. So to say we live without computer imagery or bits and bytes just would be wrong. I can't make that claim anymore.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Evan Voyles]

And yet it's better than me. It's more accurate and faster than me using an overhead projector the way I did for 25 years.

[Mike Rowe]

So should the consumer care? And if so, to what degree? Like, I mean, I know you're riffing on no animals were harmed in the making of this movie.

[Evan Voyles]

Sure.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, well, that's kind of important to me. I don't want to watch Dances with Wolves and assume that, you know, that wolf was really shot, but the movie itself preserves, you know, a certain illusion, and it's there for me. And it was fun to consume. Your signs, no matter how, no matter what the process is, still look like they could have been the product of the heyday of neon, which was, what, 27, 28, something like that?

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah, we look at the golden age of neon in America anyway as being like, mid-30s, 30s to, you know, mid-50s, maybe late-50s, let's say 1930 to 1960. And I. Because I was a collector first, and I never worked for a sign company, so I came at it from a different angle and have found my sweet spot there. I wanted to make things that looked like the vintage signs I was collecting and restoring.

[Mike Rowe]

Why?

[Evan Voyles]

Because they seem more real to me than the plastic boxes that had taken their place starting in the 1960s. And they provided joy, and they riveted your attention in a way that the plastic boxes do neither. And that hadn't changed. That's still true. It's more true now. We get hired, and I say we because it's not just me anymore. I've got a team, and that's necessary because of the amount of work and because I'm aging, I'm breaking down.

[Mike Rowe]

Second law of thermodynamics, second or third law.

[Evan Voyles]

I've got two or three people and, you know, behind me. And the good news is these are people who I've trained. I mean, they approached me. I didn't, you know, pull them off the street, but trained to make things the way I want to and to see things the way I want to. And what they've seen, all of them, is how it has influenced the culture around us, at least in Austin, mostly, where most of my work is. So what I'm trying to get at is that, you know, it arrived by osmosis. I liked the thing. I bought the thing. I produced it as, you know, folk art to hang on the wall, the vintage signs. And then that led to making signs that looked like that for people that didn't like what I had for sale. And, of course, that took off and kind of took the place of the collecting. I'm still very much interested in the collecting. I still want to do a museum of signs and not about the history of the companies. Mom and pop, who came up with this, that's important. I think that's an American exchange. Somebody wants to start a business and they hire a sign maker who's also in a business to make this expression for the people who are passing by. That's about as basic a human interaction as you can get. I want it to be about design and kind of a yes or no thing. In other words, if I put your sign next to a Starbucks emblem, vinyl on plastic, and say to any audience, big audience, small audience, which do you like better? Never mind whether you like Mike Roer's coffee better than you like Starbucks coffee. Which thing do you like better? I'm pretty sure they're going to go with the neon.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, if they don't, than we've lost.

[Evan Voyles]

We haven't lost yet.

[Mike Rowe]

Humanity.

[Evan Voyles]

That's where we start. And that's when we start re education, if we can. I'll say, okay, you like Starbucks better? Tell me why. Try to cancel out the fact that you have to have one every day and you're addicted to it. Try to cancel out the fact that you're addicted to brand identity and you think brands are more important than individual craftsmanship. Let's just look at two things, two round things together. And if I go on five minutes and I'm not getting anywhere, I'll say, okay, I'm sorry, I've wasted your time and you know, go off to whatever void you came from. And next candidate, please. It shouldn't be judgmental, but I'm hoping that there. If there is anything left of humanity, and I don't want to make it this big a deal, but it's. Can we agree that if you've got two things and you like one better, why are we not making more of the better?

[Mike Rowe]

My friend Thomas Tull, who owns the Steelers and plays in a band that opens for the Rolling Stones and other interesting things.

[Evan Voyles]

That's a good resume.

[Mike Rowe]

And started Legendary Pictures and hired Chris Nolan to make Inception and the Dark Knight Rises. That guy, he sat here a month ago or so and said, you know, pretty stingy with advice, but fail fast works for me. Right? Like fail fast if you're going to fail. You just said five minutes in. If I'm not getting anywhere right now, a lot of people would equate that with quitting or a lack of perseverance. But. But the decision to move quickly is interesting. Chuck, sidebar. How many locations are there in the country for Starbucks? I'm curious, because to your earlier point, much less worldwide. Okay, yeah, both. Now that is what you call sui Generis. It's one of a kind. There's only one Microworks, there's only one podcast called the Way I Heard it, at least I hope so. And so there's only one sign to reflect each of those. But you stumble into Starbucks land, you're talking about thousands. And I mean, does the economy of scale even permit a world where a guy like you or a team of guys like you could like, what would happen to the specialness of that? I can tell you if there was a mechanism by which it could wind

[Chuck]

up on tens of thousands, it's 16,800 to 17,200 Starbucks locations in the United States then.

[Mike Rowe]

That's the question.

[Evan Voyles]

McDonald's, they don't say how many billions served, they just say billions and billions now. But they started out as a place in Downey, California, with neon.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, but they couldn't stay with neon because, I mean, obviously there's an economic reason. But my question has to do with what would happen to the specialness of the glass and the. Just the fundamental stuff about it that you like. If it were somehow able to be incorporated at scale, would it become as banal as the plastic logos that you're evoking?

[Evan Voyles]

Quite possibly. And certainly there was a time when that was true. You have to remember that neon isn't magic, though. For a long time I thought it was a long time magical. It was. If you can put this gas into a vacuum tube and get power to it, it will light up and it will do so without being consumed. And as long as you don't break down the glass, it will do it maybe till the end of time. Name something like that that's not in Harry Potter. It just doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. But so what? It was when they got it and harnessed it and made it available to be used in signage, which it was perfectly adapted for, it almost immediately wiped light bulbs as a way of communicating in signage off the map. It was like the dinosaurs being wiped out by a cataclysm. It was just, and I hate to say this, superior technology. It was a technological advance and it held sway for those, you know, at least that 30 year period until plastic came along and almost knocked neon off. And ever since then. Remember fiber optics? I do. In the 90s they told us this is going to make neon obsolete. Well, it didn't. It didn't make anything obsolete. It's gone, you know, fluorescent tubes, which in the 60s, the advance of that and making cabinet signs almost knocked neon off the map. They're gone now too. Now we've got LEDs. This is going to end it all. And it may be. It will. But not without a fight.

[Mike Rowe]

American Giant didn't start off with a big elaborate business plan. They started off with a mission. A really simple mission to build the best hoodie on planet Earth right here in America. And they did it. 15 years ago. Google American Giant and Hoodie and you'll see all the press. They made the best hoodie ever and they're still doing it today. How? Well, here's what they don't do. They don't look for the cheapest labor or the thinnest fabric. They don't cut corners. They don't take shortcuts. They hire hard working Americans. They source locally grown cotton and they work in towns across the nation where they could build their factories and start competing with China. None of it was easy, but they did it. Then they went about the business of gently reminding people that when you buy a piece of clothing from American Giant, you're not just buying a sweatshirt or a T shirt or another pair of jeans. You're investing in a local supply chain. You're supporting communities from the Carolinas to California. And you're getting a piece of clothing that won't merely survive the wash. It'll get better with age. Check out their high quality staples. Hoodies, tees, denim, they got it all. It's built to be worn year after [e-mail] Mike. It's quality you can feel and a true American success story you can be proud to support. Use code Mike. Get 20% off your order at american-giant.com Mike. American Giant, American made. American Giant, American made. In my industry that's called the displacement theory, and probably in yours too. But in media, you know, there's this. There was a thinking that radio would be the end of newspapers and that movies would be the end of radio and that TV would be the end of movies.

[Evan Voyles]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

And that digital and so forth and so on. Of course that doesn't really happen. More often than not what it does is it, it forces its predecessor to adapt in some way. Unless it doesn't. Right? Eight tracks. Actually, you know what? CDs destroyed eight tracks and cassettes. But MP3s destroyed CDs. Sometimes the displacement theory is true.

[Evan Voyles]

And now vinyl's back though.

[Mike Rowe]

And then it comes back. Yeah. And that, that's the magic in my mind. It's like that's the thing, you can't, at least with this you can reduce it to its various component Parts and wax nostalgic about it.

[Evan Voyles]

That's the danger. Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Up here, it's like we. We get to decide. We get to assign value. We get to appreciate that or not. And back to the speed thing. How much time do you really have to get my attention? How much time?

[Evan Voyles]

In my world, two to three seconds. Okay, it used to be five. Now we might spend two, three months building something for that blip. And everything comes down to that. And it's the reason I think it's shortened. And there's no studies. This is just my experience. Not only is there more stuff. And again, we're not looking at the world of the 1940s where you would see dizzying amounts of layering of neon giant signs in. In cities or on highways, both sides vying for your attention. I'd love to go back and see it. I might not find it as attractive as I think I would now with everybody's looking at their screen while they're driving. I've done it. Makes it exciting on the sidewalk. We've seen it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

You really have to think hard about what you're going to say and how you're going to say it. My job in sidewalk or street culture, which is mostly where I work, is putting stuff on buildings to try to get your attention to either immediately go into that place because I formed a good feeling for you about it, or to put it in the back of your mind like a fish hook that makes you want to go back later. Well, I can't do it now, but I'm going to go back to that place because it looks interesting, or I'm going to find out about it on my phone, on my screen.

[Mike Rowe]

Do you reckon these are conscious associations? Like you said, it formed a good impression in my mind. Do I know. Do I know that in two seconds as the consumer, or am I just. Is it like the medulla oblongata? Is it that, you know, I think there's two levels.

[Evan Voyles]

And I feel this as a consumer of culture myself. Like when I walk through a flea market, which I like to do a

[Mike Rowe]

lot,

[Evan Voyles]

I'm kind of just going in a fugue state. When I was an antique dealer, I was working booth to booth. But now I don't do that anymore. I'm just going through, looking for something that calls to me. That doesn't mean I'm going to buy it, but if it keeps calling me after I walk past, it makes me come back. It's the same exchange. I'm looking for something. I want to feel that Pull. It makes me happy to find something that talks to my inner self through my outer eyes.

[Mike Rowe]

Give me an example of something that you saw, like when you put yourself into that fugue state, which I assume means I'm open to it. I'm not affirmatively looking for a thing, but I'm open to the thing jumping off the wall and making me go, like, what's.

[Evan Voyles]

Well, when I was an antique dealer, I had certain categories that I look for. So it was almost like looking for that shape. When I was a kid at the ranch, my dad was teaching me to hunt deer, and he would say, what you're looking for is the thing that sticks out. And I said, I don't understand. He said, something that looks out of place. He says, light will fall on the. And this makes my father sound like he was a savant. And maybe in this he was. Light will fall on the tine of an antler differently than it will on a tree trunk or leaves, much less if it moves. So what you're doing is just going through, waiting for something that looks out of place. Take that forward. If I'm walking through a flea market in Paris, usually with my wife, and she's usually ahead or behind, we're like Texas or Paris. Paris, France, okay. But also in America still, just not as much because I'm not finding that many things in America that interest me right now. And there's more to that, of course, than maybe should be said. If something jumps out at me, just that light on the tine of an antler, and I'll approach, you know, I'm going to go to the signal and look at it and take it in. I may move on, but as I am moving away, possibly over days even, you know, I'll think that thing is still caught in my head. I should go back. Hopefully I'll do it while I'm still there and go back and buy it. And that happens. That's how I buy things. And that's the closest thing to the shopping experience I still have because obviously I buy clothes by just buying three at a time and then they wear out. And I've got an end game for that now. And I'll go get three more.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean that in it. That's the utter predictability and the certainty of your wardrobe is in stark contrast to the passive aggressive way you're looking for a thing to hook you. Like, that's.

[Evan Voyles]

I have other clothes that are not this uniform. And when I'm not sure, when I'm not working. So example at the flea market. This was just at Christmas. We were there at 7am the light is just coming in. This was at Port Devante in France, Ancient street market, where they just close the street down and vendors are set up on the sidewalk. There's snow on most of the tables. And we're walking along and I see this flash of hot pink with gold braid. It's a vest laid down on a table with a three page dissertation on what it is. It's in French, so I can't read it, but I can tell that it says it's from Albania and it's a woman's vest, or so I think, stood out in the snow maybe. I like vests. I kind of collect vests. I've got Native American beaded vests and, you know, Mexican mariachi style vests. And, you know, these are things I wear when I'm not wearing what you generally see me wearing. And partly just to show that there's this other side of me that isn't just work, however infrequently it gets to go out, but it does get to go out. And so I looked at this thing and now I've learned, especially if I have trouble finding my way back, I'll take a picture with my cell phone. And I got almost to the end and thought, you know, that's the one thing that has caught in my head and I'm going to go back and see if I can get it. And I had no idea it was going to cost and I bought it. And now I've got it with a friend of mine who's a tailor and she's going to restore it. It's you know, 100 years old or more and it's starting to fall apart, but I want to wear it. I don't want to just hang on the wall, I don't want to just put it in the closet. I want to wear it. And so it could have just as easily been a painting, it could have just as easily been a pair of cowboy boots or a neon sign or any of the things I've been known to collect over the years. But that's how I select. And I'm hoping that people moving through the world, even if they're in the back of an Uber, looking at their phone, if they glance up for one minute, one second, and I've put something there that's pink and gold shining in the snow of what is passing by them and they come back, then I've done my job. Now what happens when they go in that store is up to the store owner now.

[Mike Rowe]

See, that whole English degree paid off for you.

[Evan Voyles]

It was a way to write a shorter essay, if you will.

[Mike Rowe]

Sure.

[Evan Voyles]

I am hopelessly verbose, as we know. And so to be able to compact it into one picture with words, what a fun challenge. Little movie. Yeah. No, it's good to be limited in my case.

[Mike Rowe]

There's a great line in the Matrix when Morpheus is trying to explain to Neo what the Matrix is. And before you can get your head around that you have to acknowledge the thing you're talking about. The sort of quiet awareness or suspicion that it might exist, the light on the Tyne might exist if you're open to the possibility that it would present itself. The vest and the street market.

[Evan Voyles]

If you even believe tines are out there to be seen.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. But. But the way Morpheus, he says it's. It's there. You've always known it, like a splinter in your mind.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah, good.

[Mike Rowe]

So good. And. And I. I don't know. I mean, I can't speak for anybody but me but there are things that I've always doubted and always suspected that I can't prove but they're there. And, you know, this whole notion of living, I think in a lot of ways is a search. You know, the shrinks call it a confirmation bias but seeing a thing glint, in a way, I just think that's.

[Evan Voyles]

And does that mean it's there? I mean, this is the foundation of faith. And whole religions, everything are built upon that. And I think people like us who are creative and observers and creators of things that sort of bridge observation to reality end up creating our own faith. And I'll make jokes about, you know. Well, it's against my religion to leave a penny on the sidewalk but that's. I mean, that's as much part of my religion, a tiny expression of that. Take the thing that you see. What right have you to leave it there?

[Mike Rowe]

What a conscious choice to walk past a thing of any value?

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah. What are you saying about yourself and about the world and about the opportunity that's been given to you this tiny little gift?

[Mike Rowe]

Because it comes down to stakes. The world's full of people who will walk past a penny. Will I walk past a quarter? Sure. A dollar less. A five few. A 20? No one who's going to walk past a $20 bill. So the only difference is the accepted value of the thing that you're either going to stroll past or not.

[Evan Voyles]

Where's the bottom of your investment structure?

[Mike Rowe]

Right. Right. Where's the bottom of Your investment structure.

[Evan Voyles]

I haven't found it. I don't want to find it. I don't want to do everything. I want to select. I want to have a selection. I've preset myself to pick up the pennies because I think that I should. And I'll pick up all kinds of things. I'm like a crow that way. If I see discarded earring on the sidewalk, I'll pick it up because I found a ring on the sidewalk at a flea market and gave it to my wife and it fit her and she wears it every day. Is it a wedding ring? No. Does it have any more significance than the fact that I found it? Does it need more? What the hell? That was a thing. So there is the bottom. Should only be in your own judgment, in your own belief, in your own aesthetics. Anything can be anywhere. Beauty is around you all the time. Let it find you

[Mike Rowe]

dumb. Nobody's done more to reinvigorate the skilled trades in this country than Skills usa. I think they're the most consequential youth based organization in the country right now because they do things like National Signing Day. This is a national celebration that recognizes students for committing to a skilled career pathway. It's happening on May 6th. SkillsUSA chapters all over the country will be affirmatively recognizing thousands of students who are starting a CTE program or advancing their technical training or entering the workforce or an apprenticeship program or an internship, or continuing their education after graduation. There's so many ways to encourage people who are considering a career in the trades. And I just love what these guys are doing. I hope you'll check them out. Skillsusa.org Mike they're on a quest to get to a million members in the next few years. And I'm doing what I can to help them by encouraging you guys to just kick the tires and see what you think maybe about partnering or volunteering or maybe starting a chapter at your school. It's not that hard and it's important. More [e-mail] Mike check it out. I'm talking Skills US. Skills US. Skills USA. That's American Beauty. That movie, that little essence right there.

[Evan Voyles]

Sure. The bag. Dancing in the updraft.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Evan Voyles]

Mesmerizing. How did they get that shot? How long did it take them to get it?

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know, but there's the feather in Forrest Gump, right?

[Evan Voyles]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. So those, those.

[Evan Voyles]

This is storytelling.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

This is storytelling for every individual moving through the world.

[Mike Rowe]

And we've.

[Evan Voyles]

I was talking with friends about this last Night. I have lived a good story. I think I was born to seek stories. I was attracted to stories. I was surrounded by people who were storytellers and got just used to that idea. And so. And I'm hoping that I am associated with other people who are living good stories and raising children who, you know, God love them, are going to be addicted to stories and will hopefully live a good story. My daughter's good. My son's good. They're 20 now, so, you know, they're both in college, which is kind of wild.

[Mike Rowe]

Was your daughter, if I recall, blind? Legally blind.

[Evan Voyles]

Legally blind. Absolutely. Legally blind, learning disabled and a little autistic that we didn't know at the time that you and I met. But that diagnosis came in as she moved through the system and, you know, caregivers started noticing things. Yeah, she's amazing. She's one of a kind. Suey.

[Mike Rowe]

Generous.

[Evan Voyles]

Yes, that's right. And it's a different situation, and it's another way to introduce that doubt, you know, every time I sound certain about what you can see and how you can apprehend it, and it's like, well, what about how Zelda sees and how she apprehends? And what does apprehend even mean for her? And yet she's moving through the world, and we're doing our best to help her, and she's helping us, too, helping us see a different way.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, her story is part of your story.

[Evan Voyles]

And same for my son, who's deeply dyslexic. Dysgraphic, dyscalculic, which basically means he can't read, write, or do math or even write numbers very well. And yet he's in art school, which is. And of course, I'm deeply jealous. It's like, I didn't get to go to art school. Like every parent, I'm, like, forcing them to do the thing. Or did I force him, or did he choose it? I can't tell, but. And he's struggling, but he's also loving it at the same time. And that's what you want.

[Mike Rowe]

Does he pick up pennies?

[Evan Voyles]

That's a good question. I may not have trained him well enough. Doubt rises momentarily. I hope so. I hope so. Or I hope he finds a way to express his own religion his own way. I pick up pennies.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm gonna ask you what it feels like to lose everything. I know you have, but a quick sidebar first. You mentioned crows. I'm fascinated by that. That bird. I don't understand the intelligence. I mean, I don't Understand where it ends with the crow. When I was a boy, we had a lot of woods behind our house and a bunch of crows. What do they call them? A murder. A murder of crows?

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah. Why is that?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, they gangd them in the 1870s. They killed a right during the great masturbation.

[Evan Voyles]

That's why they've been banished from getting smarter because, you know, well, they damaged church.

[Mike Rowe]

We had a cat and they attacked the cat. They like descended on the cat and. And I broke it up, but the cat was hurt and I was angry with the crow. I was very angry, the way a 12 year old righteous boy would be.

[Evan Voyles]

Sure.

[Mike Rowe]

So I. I took my.22 long rifle and I walked back into the woods

[Evan Voyles]

and I murdered some crows.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I took a shot at one and they flew off. And then I walked a little further and they had lighted again in another tree and I, I took a shot at another one, hit it, didn't kill it, they all flew off and I walked away. You know, I would walk back into this woods every day. This was kind of my little church as a boy. And the next day I walked back there again, you know, because our cat was pretty jacked up. And I had my, My rifle with me and the crows saw me and immediately flew away. Okay. Later that week, same thing back there. They see me, they fly away. So eventually I get off my revenge kick, cat's fine, and I go for a walk and I take the stick that I would always carry with me. Not the rifle, a stick.

[Evan Voyles]

They knew the difference.

[Mike Rowe]

They didn't fly away. They sat there in the tree, Evan, and they looked at me and they looked at that stick. I'm like, I held up the stick and waved it at them and they just made crow sounds and I pointed the stick at them. Didn't fly away.

[Evan Voyles]

Not fooled.

[Mike Rowe]

How in the hell can a crow discern a.22 from a stick at 30 yards?

[Evan Voyles]

And why just crows? Why not another bird of equal size, brain capacity, eyes, Raven, magpie, seagull. Yeah, seagulls are smart, but they're not smart enough to use tools yet. That I know of.

[Mike Rowe]

I got a seagull story for you too, but go ahead, say something unforgettable and prescient about the crow's ability to discern.

[Evan Voyles]

I know nothing about crows. I have. Not your murderous knowledge of crows or your attempted murderous knowledge of crows.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, then let me throw the quick seagull metaphor out there as well and you can just ruminate on it. That same year, I worked on a fishboat for My uncle and we were catching menhaden.

[Evan Voyles]

This is off the coast of Maryland

[Mike Rowe]

or off the coast of Virginia, still in the Chesapeake. Industrial fish can't eat it, but they, they would catch these things by the thousands and smash them. And the oil that came out of them, really valuable in all kinds of industrial applications. They use the bones and jewelry. Right. It was just an industrial fish. And God, the boat stunk. And my, my cousin and I, you know, in between hulls would go onto the roof. And the first time he took me up there on the roof of the wheelhouse, he said, we got to get some bait, you know, because they would, they would chum as well. And he took, he had a fishing rod and he took off the hook and he tied a chicken bone to it. And the seagulls, of course, follow the boat and he cast up into the air and the seagull grabs it, right? And he reels it in.

[Evan Voyles]

It won't let go.

[Mike Rowe]

It won't let go. And it gets this far away and he pulls a club out of the back of his belt and knocks the thing unconscious and then cuts it up into little pieces and throws it in a bucket.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

All his friends are watching. Ties off the chicken bone, casts it up, boom. Another grabs it. You reel it in, right.

[Evan Voyles]

Same way you catch crabs, right? Same way you catch raccoons.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. But to your point, they don't learn. Crow wouldn't fall for that. Maybe once May, you know, if it was hungry and all the buddies would be like that. Lunatics, you know, he's, he's bad. Don't grab the chicken. Seagulls don't. So I, you know, well, what article

[Evan Voyles]

of selection gave us the big brains of all the animals? Why did we get to be the crows of, you know, the apes?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

And how has that worked out for us? And we're pretty murderous ourselves.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

You know, so I don't know what to make of that. You know, all these kind of mystical things, like talking about the neon, the sort of magic of it. I had this weird thought last night that, you know, we read, at least as Americans, left to right, and most people are right handed. The world turns left to right. Is it simply. We're all mostly based on a rotational pull. And there's some variation. My aunt was left handed. Aaron Flynn, our sign painter, is left handed. Elise Klein. Happy birthday, Elise, who does most of my fabrications. Right handed. I'm right handed. We welcome variation, you know, but still, is there something to that? Nobody ever asked why are we right Handed. Nobody ever asked me why we read left to right. Asians of course can read up and down and stuff. And of course some signs read up and down, but generally I'm making things that read left to right. Is that just a predisposition of gravitational pull?

[Mike Rowe]

Chuck, what percentage of H. Sapien is left handed? Maybe, you know, it's kind of like the displacement theory. By and large, you know, it's just a theory, but every now and then a thing really is displaced, making it impossible to paint with too broad a brush. Well, not impossible, but just dangerous.

[Evan Voyles]

Don't we prefer to not paint with too broad a brush?

[Mike Rowe]

No, we love to paint with a broad brush as a society. We love to tell kids.

[Evan Voyles]

I agree, but the whole point of what we were talking about before is making the thing that stands out from the broad brush.

[Mike Rowe]

Absolutely.

[Evan Voyles]

That's what I do for a living, is try to be the left handed, the Sinestre.

[Mike Rowe]

But you would have no basis for your business thesis if the rules weren't already in place and the expectations for right handedness didn't already exist.

[Evan Voyles]

If the forest didn't exist, the tine can't stand out in the light.

[Mike Rowe]

That's right. That's right. Or if you're out there at night, your whole metaphor craps the bed.

[Evan Voyles]

You need well for the tine. But I'm making electric signs. Night is my favorite. I got you now. The forest is gone, man. It's all times when I'm working the street.

[Mike Rowe]

Do you still have the genie in the back of the truck?

[Evan Voyles]

It's not in the back of the truck anymore.

[Mike Rowe]

You still have the truck still?

[Evan Voyles]

Of course I still have everything. It's just I took it out of the back of the truck when I had to leave that building and split it, knowing that I was gonna restore it someday. But I still haven't gotten around to it and it's a decade Later.

[Mike Rowe]

Percentage, Chuck.

[Chuck]

10 to 12%.

[Mike Rowe]

Interesting.

[Evan Voyles]

More than I thought.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, well, I mean everybody knows multiple left handed people watch Major League Baseball, the southpaw. I'll bet you the percentage of pitchers that are left handed is higher than

[Evan Voyles]

the aggregate because that's a desired feature of a pitcher. It's going to create a situation. Then there's the people who can bat right and left handed.

[Mike Rowe]

So what do you make of this? I throw darts right handed. Ideal cards left handed. Why? I shoot pool right handed. I kick left footed.

[Evan Voyles]

So you're semi ambidextrous.

[Mike Rowe]

I think I'm equally incompetent with both sides.

[Evan Voyles]

You're incompetent, ambidextrous.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, I don't. I mean, I did hurt my right arm when I was a kid. I was attacked by crows. I don't know if I mentioned this,

[Evan Voyles]

but why you carry a rifle everywhere you go now.

[Mike Rowe]

But, no, I.

[Evan Voyles]

Disguised as a cane, a stick.

[Mike Rowe]

I would struggle to deal cards right handed. And I play cards a lot, so I don't. I don't know what that means or says.

[Evan Voyles]

Can you take that apart? I mean, can you examine yourself and say, is it because I'm saving my right hand for something else?

[Mike Rowe]

Or, you know, and just like that, we're back to the great masturbation scare.

[Evan Voyles]

See, I did try to set that up for you, but notice how I left it to you. Thank you. To close it.

[Mike Rowe]

It's my show.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah, it is your show.

[Mike Rowe]

All right. There we are. 10 years ago. There's the Genie in the back of that old jalopy. There's my crew. Good grief. Chris Jones running audio.

[Evan Voyles]

And we drove all over Austin and several counties like that. That still happens.

[Mike Rowe]

Who was the client? The Genie client?

[Evan Voyles]

Well, me. That was one I bought for the collection. Genie Car Wash now doesn't exist anymore. They're all down. That was the last one that had never been altered. So it was of the three that were in Austin, and they had some in Waco, too. I think that one had never, ever been repainted or anything that made it more valuable to me. That is much larger than I like to acquire. But I couldn't pass it up. And so once we got in the truck, I was kind of stuck there for a while trying to figure out where to go with it.

[Mike Rowe]

You know what just struck me? Pause right there for a second, Chuck. Right there. Actually, back up. Not right there.

[Evan Voyles]

Let's hold it there. Let's talk about this.

[Mike Rowe]

Jeannie, I want to talk about my shirt. It's Herbs Meats. So just back up. Yeah, just a little bit, like an inch. Just so you can see the shirt as I'm walking towards you. Well, not that far. I mean, like, literally just a little bit. I didn't even notice on the day. Right there.

[Evan Voyles]

There it is. Yeah. And where is Herb's Market?

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know. I have no idea who Herb is.

[Evan Voyles]

You don't have the shirt anymore?

[Mike Rowe]

I have it. I still have this shirt. And if I was thinking, I would have worn it today because that's a guy who sells meat and there's his logo as a signed guy. You should appreciate that.

[Evan Voyles]

I mean, he's well, and it shows the different cuts. And then later that day, we went to a barbecue place, remember?

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Evan Voyles]

And you were wearing the competitions.

[Mike Rowe]

I was wearing the actual signage embodiment of the creature we were eating.

[Evan Voyles]

Right. You were also an outside agitator walking into somebody else's establishment.

[Mike Rowe]

With the competition.

[Evan Voyles]

With the. Well, not really local competition, but still. Yeah. So did you. Did we know we were gonna go to the barbecue place? I don't think so.

[Mike Rowe]

No, we did not. Yeah, we had no idea.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And I also didn't know on that ride that was in those days, you know, I was convinced that the best moments would come when the crew wasn't around. Now, I didn't have to worry about that with you because you're impervious, like, utterly aggressively indifferent to cameras. You don't care, but most people do. And so I was thinking right there, so we're driving, and I was like, guys, it's really going to be important to rig this piece of crap truck. I want to be able to talk to this guy as we're driving. Because I've learned over the years when people are driving or doing something, working in their element, that was Dirty Jobs 101, that's when you get to know them. That's when they'll tell you things. So we're cruising around here and I don't know how we got to it, but there was a fire in your life.

[Evan Voyles]

Correct.

[Mike Rowe]

And you had a collection. Was it cowboy boots?

[Evan Voyles]

Cowboy boots plus everything else I own.

[Mike Rowe]

But yeah, you lost every, like. And like, as an antique collector, as somebody who's like, going through the world in a fugue state, like a splinter in your mind, looking for things that speak to you and then collecting all of these things and then losing all of these things. And we didn't have time to really. You just told me the story in the course of driving to eat some barbecue. But later, you know, when I was looking at the footage and trying to figure out, man, this is so heavy and this is so interesting. And look at this, like, squatting there like a couple of animals. What are we doing? There's no place to sit.

[Evan Voyles]

Well, we could have sat on the curb. That was a better shot from the squat.

[Chuck]

Should have been a stand up, but it was a squat up.

[Mike Rowe]

It was a squat down.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Anyway, what's it like to lose everything?

[Evan Voyles]

I still own every everything. And I own the building it's in still too. Nothing's changed there. But what's it like to lose everything as somebody who has A very, you know, we asked earlier what's the bottom of my collective impulse? And we haven't found it. I didn't lose it. It got heavily altered. But of course I went into the burned out building and took everything of mine out and put it in storage and then asked my neighbors if they weren't going to do the same for their building, would they mind if I went in and got that. Because I see value in some things that other people don't. Certainly vintage cowboy boots or neon signs were things that were just ubiquitous and taken for granted. And I at the time thought I was the only person who saw their inherent value is, you know, American folk art. That proved prescient on my part. You know, it turned out there was a market for that and I've. And I made money in those markets. I haven't done so well with, you know, burnt offerings and baked goods, but. But that's what I had for a while. And I ended up selling the collection of cowboy boots. I kept collecting and sold the burnt ones with the unburnt ones.

[Mike Rowe]

How many did you have at the

[Evan Voyles]

time of the fire afterwards? By the end, I had 750. At the time of the fire I probably had 400, 500, which was a lot at the time.

[Mike Rowe]

Why? Why cowboy boots?

[Evan Voyles]

When I started going, I went out on the road, you know, lived in San Francisco and I, I had purchased a Toyota Land Cruiser and rigged it to where I could live in it and was just going to go out on vacation, but I went out and just stayed out. And at the end of two years, I'd really become an antique dealer and collector and had thought that I was going to collect like Navajo rugs and Navajo jewelry, something I grew up with and liked. Well, there wasn't any left. A generation of hippies 10 years before me had cleaned all that out. But cowboy boots were just lying out there everywhere. This is in the early to mid-80s. And I thought, oh my God, this is. Of course, I grew up with cowboy boots and started really seeing the whole history of them and seeing handmade versus factory made and seeing the craft of it and the way that the design was mostly as a tool. It was designed to do a certain function. And then the decor that gets added to it was simply to be an expression of both the maker and the wearer. Well, that's when you cross into folk art. You can make a folk art coffee cup. The design is to hold coffee and to get it into your system. But making it something more than just the design is where you cross over into craft. Again, the art question is a little tricky. So I started collecting these things because I could. They were everywhere. They were cheap. And then I discovered there was a market for them in Los Angeles. And I became a dealer to finance my habit. My habit was the collecting. If you do enough collecting, you become a dealer, because that's just the way it is. That's how you make enough money to keep going. And then that transferred after the fire to neon signs. I had started collecting neon signs. I had a storefront in Buda, Texas. I had my collection of boots in there. I was getting some fame for that and working on movies and stuff. But then it all burned down and the signs were out back and they weren't harmed. So that's what I was left with after the Viking funeral. For my that period of being a well known in a world that didn't care collector of cowboy boots. I became a lesser known, but later well known collector of neon signs. And it also transitioned me into. I never learned to make boots, never wanted to. But I did learn to make signs by simply studying the way they were done and replicating it in my crude manner. So that fire was everything to me, Mike, because I was locked into a situation. I had gotten myself painted into a corner with this whole cowboy collecting thing. It was everything I did. The signs were kind of a sidebar and suddenly it's gone. There was no way I was walking out of that corner by myself. I needed an act of machine of the gods. That's right. Deus machina. Yeah, exactly. I love how much Latin is making it into this.

[Mike Rowe]

Hey, E pluribus unum. You know

[Chuck]

that was low hanging fruit right there.

[Evan Voyles]

State of the union address from micro. How is the economy, Mike? Stock market's at an all time high. We're doing great.

[Mike Rowe]

We're doing great. Form over function.

[Evan Voyles]

Form follows function. But once you've achieved that, then still got form and you've still got some room. And it's in that room is where I think expression takes over. And expression, after all, is the hook.

[Mike Rowe]

But can you have expression absent function? I mean, of course you can. That's what an art gallery is.

[Evan Voyles]

No, the function of art is to decorate your life. So you don't just have blank walls.

[Mike Rowe]

Right, okay, but folk art and sort of like the practicality of a cowboy boot.

[Evan Voyles]

Folk art is a loaded phrase. It's the two words don't match up. I can't use it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

And it. So it has doubt in it. You know, folk art is like, is it art? Is it folk? Is it both? Is it neither?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I mean, the cowboy boot was clearly designed for a utilitarian purpose.

[Evan Voyles]

Absolutely right.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, this is the thing you want on your feet if you're spending the day in the saddle.

[Evan Voyles]

Correct.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, then. Because we're humans, we look at the thing and go, would it. Would it kill you to snazz it up a little bit? Maybe you want to save.

[Evan Voyles]

Why didn't you wear a white T shirt instead of a mauve T shirt that has Herbs Market? Herbs Market. Right. And a picture of a pig on it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Why do you wear the same shirt every day for a decade? More or less. Right. So all these things, you know, because

[Evan Voyles]

I'm doing the expression elsewhere, but you're

[Mike Rowe]

trying to express yourself with really within a really narrow lane of faded denim, two sunglasses, long, like. It's very predictable cowboy boots once you start messing with them. I mean, you couldn't collect them if they all look the same. It's the very point that.

[Evan Voyles]

I mean, who wouldn't collect them if they're all the same? You certainly could, but it's not a good idea. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. So when I say form over function, it just seems like you're living the epitome of that, because a sign has such a clear function, but the form is unlimited. And apparently so, too, is a cowboy boot. And finally, the example you use. Look at these ridiculous coffee mugs. That thing is delivering the caffeine into your system as advertised. Incredibly, my face is on it now. I don't know how you feel about drinking out of my head, but I'm flattered.

[Evan Voyles]

But we'll see how the results turn out later.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, that's the old logo of this podcast on a coffee mug.

[Evan Voyles]

I thought you were still using this. Anyway, keep going.

[Mike Rowe]

No, I'm using the one you made over your left shoulder.

[Evan Voyles]

We could have done a portrait of you above it.

[Mike Rowe]

That's just. This is probably why I didn't call you five years ago.

[Evan Voyles]

It's too weird to see what the end game was going to be. Evan, can you please make giant neon version of Mike's head? No words.

[Mike Rowe]

And look at my words. My mug says really famous, not because I think I am. I don't even know where this came from.

[Evan Voyles]

It's aspirational.

[Chuck]

That's a podcast that you've been on a couple of times.

[Mike Rowe]

This is somebody else's podcast.

[Chuck]

That's right. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Can you unpack it?

[Evan Voyles]

You just made $20,000.

[Mike Rowe]

Listen to this. I'm drinking out of somebody. A mug with somebody else's podcast logo on it. And their podcast is called really Famous, apparently. That's right, which is why I was a guest, obviously. You here, not quite an artist, but a craftsman. You could have selected any mug. Or maybe. Maybe Chuck put that in your hand. Chuck, did you give him the micro mug?

[Evan Voyles]

I'm not throwing you under the bus here, Chuck.

[Chuck]

No, no, you're not. It's all good. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I was trying to find one that wasn't somebody else's logo, because as the

[Mike Rowe]

producer of this podcast, it pleases you to see the logo of this podcast in the shot.

[Evan Voyles]

Oh, for God's sakes. We've got neon signs that we have a shot.

[Mike Rowe]

I know which.

[Evan Voyles]

You're trying to send a message, and it's a message of love. It isn't just relentless marketing because we do it differently, albeit this mug.

[Mike Rowe]

But what am I doing subconsciously? I'm trying to take the piss out of the shameless pluggery that he's determined to do by putting somebody else's logo on a mug, apparently, and drinking from it.

[Chuck]

Kara Robinson. That's her.

[Mike Rowe]

Kara, right. Lovely woman. Yep. Dozens of listeners. Oh, no, she's sweet. That's terrible. No, we had a great conversation. She made it very personal.

[Chuck]

She's had a lot of. A lot of really famous people on her podcast.

[Mike Rowe]

She made it very. She asked me questions like. Like, I wouldn't even ask Evan. Like, really? Like, very personal.

[Chuck]

Really?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, good for her. Anyway, I got a mug out of it.

[Evan Voyles]

True.

[Mike Rowe]

Point is, you're saying you lose everything, and it's a blessing.

[Evan Voyles]

I have an ability to rationalize almost anything. And so maybe that's all this was. But I did find that it opened. You know, one door closes, another one opens. It certainly worked out that way. And also, how are you going to cope with trauma unless you find a way to deal with it? You can't just say, oh, well, that happened. You know, you've got to be able to rationalize it to yourself and to your world. And people would come up to me and say, oh, my God, are you okay? It's like, yeah, I didn't catch fire.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

You know, and let's remember that I didn't catch fire. I remember at the time, a friend of mine, and actually the mother of close friends of mine, wrote me a note that just said, evan, be a phoenix.

[Mike Rowe]

Rise from the ashes.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah, rise from the ashes. And partly, maybe because she made that invocation, it was. I. I Did become that. And so I don't recommend this for anybody. The Viking funeral, as I called it. But if you must do something like that and if you're incapable of doing it yourself, that can be helpful. I'm not saying everybody should get a divorce. Everybody should quit their job. Everybody should walk into the ocean naked. But if you have aspirations to do something and you're stuck try imagining what it would be like if you weren't stuck. And what it would be, how you would feel if you lost everything. And it turned out kind of worked for me. Do I regret it? Do I wish it hadn't happened? I want both, you know? I want the effect without having the loss. But that wasn't the deal.

[Mike Rowe]

Now you want the form and the function.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah. I had to spend the penny I found on the street.

[Mike Rowe]

There you go. And look, in the same way, the. The primal nature of the tools of your trade are undeniable. Like the gas. What is it? Argon.

[Evan Voyles]

Argon and neon.

[Mike Rowe]

Argon. Neon. These are all argon, okay? The paint, the glass itself and, of course, the fire. I mean, what's more primal than fire? Robert Frost. Right.

[Evan Voyles]

We lived without fire. We just didn't live as well.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, did we?

[Evan Voyles]

I don't know.

[Mike Rowe]

Did we really live without fire?

[Evan Voyles]

Apes live without fire.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, that's not us, necessarily.

[Evan Voyles]

Wasn't there a time when it was us? When did. When does the switch happen?

[Mike Rowe]

When does the seagull become a crow? When do you learn to let go of the chicken leg? To not get your brains bashed in? When do you. When do you learn to discern?

[Evan Voyles]

There are plenty of people out there who haven't learned that. And our job is to fix that.

[Mike Rowe]

Some say the world will end in fire, others in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if I had to perish twice. I think I've seen enough of hate to know that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice.

[Evan Voyles]

This is Frost. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

One of my favorites. But that.

[Evan Voyles]

You know, I thought it was gonna be slouching towards Bethlehem for a minute.

[Mike Rowe]

What rough beast has hour come round

[Evan Voyles]

at last Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

[Mike Rowe]

Jesus, look at you. That's Yates second coming. Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

Folks, if you're just joining us here on English Majors, Rebuttal.

[Mike Rowe]

Do you remember he wrote something called Crazy Jane talks to the Bishop?

[Evan Voyles]

I don't remember how it goes.

[Chuck]

Was the bishop a metaphor, by any

[Mike Rowe]

chance, bringing us back to the great masturbation scare?

[Evan Voyles]

Angry Bishop? Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

No. The line that stuck with me was,

[Evan Voyles]

we stay on point.

[Mike Rowe]

A woman can be proud and stiff when on love intent. But love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement. For nothing can be whole or sole. That has not been rent.

[Evan Voyles]

Not been rent.

[Mike Rowe]

Rent as in torn asunder.

[Evan Voyles]

It's a double entendre, though, too.

[Mike Rowe]

Every single line. Yeats fathered a child when he was 90 or 89. You know, I mean, best poetry.

[Evan Voyles]

That's Mick Jagger.

[Mike Rowe]

That's eternal.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah. The desire to do that keeps going.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. You know, he graduated, or I think he dropped out of the London School of Economics.

[Evan Voyles]

Jagger.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah. But learned enough there to, you know, get smart about finances.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, have you gotten smart about marketing? Like your own thing, your whole business? Dude, you're so interesting because you allow people to trade. You're in the advertising business.

[Evan Voyles]

Absolutely.

[Mike Rowe]

But you can't bring yourself to advertise.

[Evan Voyles]

I don't want to advertise. It's a trick. Think about this. I could put a. Why is that funny? I haven't even given you the punchline yet.

[Mike Rowe]

I've got whiskey all over the place. Okay, well, let's just make.

[Evan Voyles]

Now we're talking.

[Mike Rowe]

It's like 10:30 in the morning, and that really sends a message. That's the seagull.

[Evan Voyles]

If we're going to do this, I need to go to the bathroom.

[Mike Rowe]

No, no, we're not going to do this.

[Evan Voyles]

Okay, well, then I guess I'm not going to bathroom. No, no, you can't really.

[Chuck]

You can if you want.

[Evan Voyles]

You can if I need to.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, you can go ahead.

[Evan Voyles]

I just stand up and do it here and keep talking.

[Mike Rowe]

You could do that. I got the stadium pal on. I've gone twice.

[Evan Voyles]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

No, we're not editing it, but we'll wait. Go to the bathroom. It's right there.

[Evan Voyles]

Good. I'm going.

[Mike Rowe]

All right.

[Evan Voyles]

All right. And then the wishes.

[Mike Rowe]

Sure it will. All right. As Evan takes care of business. I'll just. I'll just reflect. Chuck, dude, you know what I mean? I told you.

[Chuck]

Oh, no, this is slam dunk. He's an interesting cat.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, you could probably fill a book with the stuff we don't agree on. Yes, but as a soul walking the planet, there is just no arguing the fact that the Earth is more interesting with this cat with Evan in it. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. Man, I was really blown away 10 years ago after that day. And I remember, you know, thinking about him again when we were recutting the show for sure. For tbn.

[Chuck]

Yep.

[Mike Rowe]

And just going, man, there was just so much there. Taylor, were you there when we shot this? I don't even know. You were on the ground. I can't remember one from the next.

[Evan Voyles]

It was like our fourth episode.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

It was right at the start. Come in here.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. What do you remember from that day? Like, when we. When we left there, it was hot. It was hot as balls.

[Evan Voyles]

95 degrees.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

And we drove around town and had a great time, looked at all the signs, ate tacos, and then we had cold beers at the end.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, I remember it was hot.

[Evan Voyles]

We wrote a song. Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, God. We got to get to that, too. Yeah. My lawyers will be in touch. Or yours.

[Evan Voyles]

They will.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. No, it was hot outside. And then we walked into his little pit of despair, and it was actually hotter inside, and he had the fans on, and we had to turn him off for, like, an audio or something.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

So we just.

[Evan Voyles]

I'm amazed I had fans. Thanks, Joe.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. How'd it go in there, by the way?

[Evan Voyles]

About the same as always. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Sounded fury. Signifying nothing, really.

[Evan Voyles]

I mean.

[Chuck]

I mean, you weren't in there long, so that says something good.

[Evan Voyles]

Well, that's because it's a tale told by an idiot. It doesn't take long playing table tennis here.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, yeah, man. Let's. Okay, wait a minute.

[Evan Voyles]

We were talking about.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

Why I don't advertise.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Evan Voyles]

When I'm in the advertising business, and this is one of those things that it's a. I like to think I'm a connoisseur of irony. I don't necessarily create irony, but I appreciate it when it comes to me. And I'm looking out for it, just like I'm looking out for that tine in the world that will stick out and stick in my head.

[Mike Rowe]

Chuck, that could be our title. Jot it down. A connoisseur of irony. Thanks.

[Evan Voyles]

There was some reluctance on my part to actually put up a sign that said, yeah, I'm here. Hire me. But I did. I had an office starting in 1995, and I put the neon jungle on. It was handcrafted out of old muffler pipe, and people would come in through the door. Very few of them were the people I wanted to meet. And as soon as I could, within a year, I got a studio I could build in the one you went to, and I started spending more time there and just had the door locked. I had a fax machine. That's how long ago it was. And I would get faxes Every day from people saying, well, and I was in the phone book. I was doing everything you're supposed to do. Hey, I'm out here. I was listed with the Texas Film Commission. And what you get is people sending you the prior version of an Autobot thing saying, we are soliciting bids for signs like this. We're contacting everybody in town, and we want to. Whoever gives us the lowest number, that's who we're going with. And I realized I don't want to be part of that. And I'm not the guy that's going to give you what you want. I'm not the right tool for that job. And so instead. And the first time I made a neon sign that was actually out in the public, could be seen outdoors, that I designed myself, was in December of 94. And somebody within the first month saw that sign, liked it, went inside to the shopkeeper and said, who did your sign? And they told him, did you like them? They said, yeah, we do. You know, and he said, give me their number. I'm going to call them. And that became the model of marketing. If I do a good job, somebody that wants that will see it and they will ask you if they've gone to the trouble to stop the car, go inside, ask. I've got them. They already like my work. They already want this kind of thing. I've eliminated the fax machine. I've eliminated the advertising. You paid me to do the advertising.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, I did.

[Evan Voyles]

We put this.

[Mike Rowe]

I was happy to.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah. I haven't updated that website since 2006.

[Mike Rowe]

Welcome to the Neon Jungle. Take a look at the vintage and custom signs for sale. There are some good ones. Thanks for stopping by. At least you went with an exclamation.

[Evan Voyles]

I didn't write any of that. No, my friend Matt Linol wrote that. But. And I haven't all it is that the only part of that you need to see is call Evan Voyles. Five, one, two, six. It's Better Call Saul. You know, that's the only part. You can look at the rest of it, and if you like it, great. But I'm kind of more interested in what did you see in mine. How'd you find me? You know, what did you see you like? And that gives me a window into what you like, what you want.

[Mike Rowe]

Is it as simple as look, the work speaks for itself, and it has to speak first before I do. If I can't get you there, that means I have to sell you, and I don't want to do.

[Evan Voyles]

And I have to work and that's not my game is selling. Yeah me well here let me sell

[Chuck]

neonjungle.com theneonjungle.com you have pictures here and stuff. Even though it's old it's still got your phone number on it and yeah he made these great signs that are right here for us and he's made a million signs. Maybe not a million, slightly less than a million over the course of his lifetime. Was reasonably easy to deal with. Reasonably A lot of fun to talk to as you can imagine. So yeah if you need a sign call Evan because it's one of a kind. He'll make you a one of a kind. Suey generous gorgeous Sui Sui generous.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah I like how yalls cadences of now after all these years pretty well matched up and you could pretty much you could be AI programs for each other.

[Mike Rowe]

Well the other reason that I loved

[Evan Voyles]

to our point earlier.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes the segment I think we really wrote to this certainly in the recut anyway but like you know I, I make my living in advertising really.

[Chuck]

That's how the show started. Yeah. Talking about all the QVC I was in it.

[Mike Rowe]

You want to. Yeah.

[Chuck]

One of the, one of the ads we did together.

[Mike Rowe]

See I'm. I. My own dysfunction with my industry has to do with the artists in it who see themselves as artists or maybe craftsmen. I don't want to put words in their mouth but whoever they are, they draw a pretty bright line between what they'll say in the context of a commercial and what they'll permit in the context of say an integration into a show.

[Evan Voyles]

What do you mean by that?

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, Bill Peterson, famous actor. You'd know him if you saw him. If the name doesn't ring a bell. I think it was. Was it NCIS maybe or one of those shows. He, he was at the height of his popularity and this was in I think the early aughts and he walked off the set because he's having a scene with his co star and an SUV pulls up in the script to pick him up. It's his driver and he's going to get in the car and. And if I remember the story right, Bill noticed the. The DP tilt down a little bit to make sure the logo of the SUV was in the frame.

[Evan Voyles]

Product placement.

[Mike Rowe]

That's right, product placement. Now Bill drew a line there right. He was like nope, I'm not going

[Evan Voyles]

to, I'm not party to this.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm not party to this. I'm not going to get into this vehicle. This is an advertisement and There's a difference between an advertisement and the art that I was right in the midst of creating, and now I understand forgetting

[Evan Voyles]

entirely what television is founded upon.

[Mike Rowe]

But, yeah, correct. So, you know, look, if you're in my line of work or yours, and I think this is the thing we really have in common. We get to draw the line wherever we want. You know, I think this podcast is free. No one subscribes to it. There's no paywall. There's no patreon. I've never asked anybody who watches any of my crap for money, but I do ask the advertisers for it. And I don't draw the line between the conversation we're having right now and the ad that is destined to interrupt us any moment now. Because you can't have one without the other. Right? That is the form and the function.

[Evan Voyles]

Absolutely.

[Mike Rowe]

That's the deal, dude. That's the deal. And if you're gonna be. You must be this tall to get on this ride. And Bill pissed me off when he did that, because he was like, nope, I want to take the ride, but I want to distance myself from the parts of it. Right, right. So, anyway, he gets to be holier

[Evan Voyles]

than everybody else he works with. And, of course, I didn't see this, but I think we're in a unique position to talk about this and talk about where the line is and how we feel about it and have a discussion about a thing that everyone on earth is engaged in unless they're hiding in a cave. And believe me, there's days when I want to be hiding in the cave, but I'm not. And so to the extent that there is beauty in the street, beauty on the screen, beauty in these kind of conversations, then let's let that flourish, and let's let it go where it's going

[Mike Rowe]

to go to survive. You must be in on the joke. You must be excellent at what you do, and you must take your clients seriously. But you must also understand there's a farcical reality to what all of this is. I write unauthorized jingles for the sponsors of this podcast.

[Evan Voyles]

Unauthorized how?

[Mike Rowe]

Jingles. Like, I don't ask them. Like, ZipRecruiter is a sponsor. Mdry. I mean, we go down the list, you know, netpy, that's.

[Evan Voyles]

But isn't that why they hire you, is because they know you can do that?

[Mike Rowe]

No, no. They hire me because hundreds of thousands of people listen to this.

[Evan Voyles]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

And they just.

[Evan Voyles]

The ratings, just the numbers. I can't believe that they don't.

[Mike Rowe]

They like Me?

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And they like that, what that sign stands for. They like the association.

[Evan Voyles]

They're buying into the brand.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Evan Voyles]

And part of the brand is you writing unauthorized jingles.

[Mike Rowe]

No, that's never. That's never. Well, maybe, Maybe now.

[Chuck]

It's a value add, man.

[Mike Rowe]

It's a value add.

[Evan Voyles]

That'd be what I'd want.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, look, if I ask them, if I say, okay, this is what you pay to advertise on the podcast. Now would you like a jingle? I'll write it myself and sing it in four part harmony. And they say, yeah, that sounds great. Now it's transactional.

[Evan Voyles]

Now you don't want it to be transactional. You just want to do whatever the hell you want.

[Mike Rowe]

Dude, you know what I wrote for?

[Chuck]

Oh, my gosh.

[Evan Voyles]

I mean, are you not supposed to go here?

[Mike Rowe]

Probably not.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

But you know, Mansource, it makes a product to shave your testicles. Obviously not available during the great masturbation. Thank you. But they needed a jingle, so, I mean, obviously, your gonads are covered with curly black hair, fuzzy and furry. They're dangling there. Your scrotum needs trimming. But don't you despair. Manscaped is here so your balls can be bare. Boom. Art or commerce.

[Evan Voyles]

Well, history too. I mean, the style of that songwriting, it's very.

[Mike Rowe]

Get on the mic if you're gonna be interesting.

[Evan Voyles]

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I was backing off in case we had to edit this out.

[Mike Rowe]

Stand back. I don't know how big this thing gets.

[Evan Voyles]

This could be bad. You know, you wrote that in the classic style of like 40s, 50s radio based jingles. That's right. That bled into television.

[Mike Rowe]

That's right.

[Evan Voyles]

The television that you and I grew up with. Being of an age, that jingle's lost on somebody that's, you know, born after 2000 and yet it's still catchy, still hooky.

[Mike Rowe]

We had Denture Fit. Denture Fit.

[Evan Voyles]

We know who your demographic is.

[Mike Rowe]

When your teeth are going south, get Denture Fit inside of your mouth. Ridiculous. No ad agency would ever bless that. I can't.

[Evan Voyles]

Well, in 1953 they would have. And they would have had three part harmony from some of Andrew's sister's knockoff.

[Mike Rowe]

Absolutely, yeah. So here's the question. I do that to stay sane. It makes me laugh to be home in my office with my little piano and go, oh, geez, this is so stupid. Sometimes it's indulgent. Sometimes I think it's appreciated. Mostly I think it's tolerated. But I'm not doing it for any reason. Other Than to kind of somehow stay grounded with this weird part of my past, the splinter in my mind. Yeah, I bet you're doing something similar.

[Evan Voyles]

I mean, it's irony like we're talking about. The irony is being in on the joke and pushing the limits of the joke and maybe going too far, maybe not going far enough. And you get to. That's delicious. To get to live with that, to have that built into your thing. And I get to do whatever the hell I want with this because of what I've done elsewhere that lets me have that. And yeah, there's so many ironies, you know, I can't draw that well. And yet. And I have, I still use a notebook, analog to sketch what I'm going to do. And you show that to somebody, there's no way they will or should hire me based on that. And they're not. They're hiring me on what they've seen me do on the street. It's like, pay no attention to the man behind this drawing.

[Mike Rowe]

What?

[Evan Voyles]

You pay attention to the screen, the big Oz, you know, not the fumbling guy from Kansas. But they're also, because they're hip and they like irony too. They like the ironies of. We hired this guy who like carries this notebook and he draws these terrible things in and then they turn into swans. Everybody loves the ugly duckling story, you know, because all of us have an ugly duckling inside us still. And we also think we have a swan inside us and both live there rent free, as they say.

[Mike Rowe]

Ducklings, swans, seagulls, crows. God, man, we cast oh my net.

[Evan Voyles]

We throw out one chicken bone and see what we can catch.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, because we know, we know something's going to latch onto it and they won't let go until they get too

[Evan Voyles]

close to their death.

[Mike Rowe]

Then you sit on the hot stove and then you learn teachable moments. Or if you don't, folks, do not

[Evan Voyles]

try that trick at home. Nobody should sit on a hot stove. Not even a seagull or a crow.

[Mike Rowe]

You know what's crazy, man? The most honest I've ever felt in hindsight was. Was actually on QVC when the entire like 24 7. It was a commercial. The whole thing was a never ending commercial. Right. And so the job then was to make the commercial feel more like content, like to be more human in that ridiculous construct. Everything today is the opposite. Today it's like, oh, you're. You're making your. I'm practicing my craft, I'm making my art. And now somehow or other I gotta.

[Evan Voyles]

That's ironic too, in a sad way.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, when have you felt the most congruent or honest in this weird nexus of commerce and craftsmanship?

[Evan Voyles]

I mean, now, to some extent, as we're talking about this, and now that I'm in late career, probably, you know, I'm gonna turn 68 in a few months.

[Mike Rowe]

No kidding.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah. So have you thought about a haircut? Oh, my God, I don't have to. My wife thinks about it for me. She approached. We were going out the other night, and she came at me with the scissors. Yeah, no, that's coming. I mean, you know, it's all coming. It's all coming. It's all coming apart.

[Mike Rowe]

The sound of inevitability. Back to the Matrix.

[Evan Voyles]

It sounds like scissors. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, well, at the risk. Oh, you know what, Chuck? I gotta ask him out. One more thing. I know we're going late, but if I didn't properly thank you for indulging the creative process at the end. End of our day, when we were drinking a beer and you brought out your guitar, and I had in my head, you know what somebody's got to do. It needs some kind of song. And I'd been kicking something around.

[Evan Voyles]

Yeah, you had the beginnings, I had the beginning.

[Mike Rowe]

And we sat down and, you know, when we got done with that, I still didn't have the end, but I. But I had something I could use. In the episode, right?

[Evan Voyles]

You. It was in the episode.

[Mike Rowe]

It was in the episode, like, we filmed. Like we actually. You know what? It's a really good example of the creative process, whatever that means. In this case, it was fueled by humidity, heat, beer and exhaustion. Exhaustion.

[Evan Voyles]

You had a guitar spontaneity, but you're

[Mike Rowe]

a child of the world, man. You know that. Wait a minute. If Mike turns this into a theme song and it defines the series. Well, you had a role in creating that. So, you know, we ought to. At least that's where you met Mary or somebody met Mary. And all of a sudden, I remember CNN was like, well, wait a second, man. Who wrote this song? I'm like, well, it's not even really a song yet. It could be like, well, if it is, what are we gonna do about Evan? He's gotta sign a piece of paper. And now, just like that, a couple of craftsmen and artists are in a

[Evan Voyles]

world where we got a corporate overlay to everything.

[Mike Rowe]

Everything.

[Evan Voyles]

Now, that was an interesting moment because I remember I wrote all the lyrics down. I charted it with chords, and I went to put it in your hand, and then I pulled it Back. And I said, so how are we handling this? Right. You know, Right. In my world of musicians. The musicians I know, this is a co write.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Evan Voyles]

And you said, oh, don't worry, Evan. This is, you know, you'll find him a very generous person. We know how to handle this. I go, great, and hand it over. I've got cameras. I've got a witness in the neon guy. This is, you know, I don't want to think about the fact that I dropped out of law school. I want this just to be a spontaneous moment. Two guys at a bar coming up with a thing.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Evan Voyles]

Three weeks later, I get a, you know, two page thing that says, I hereby relinquish all rights to the song. Somebody's got to do it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yep. I am so sorry for that, man.

[Evan Voyles]

That's okay.

[Mike Rowe]

Not. Not my. Not my thing.

[Evan Voyles]

No, I know it wasn't. And. But it was. It's part of the lesson, you know, part of the curve. And this. That's their job. That's their job. The people who are protecting you, the people who are doing the law. And I said, absolutely not. That's not my understanding with Mike. That's not what. I'm not gonna sign this. And if you wanna go further, I'm gonna hand it to my attorneys and that's what you guys are for, and that's how it'll work out. And then it disappeared, you know, just didn't. It didn't come back. And then it was on the episode. So it's like, well, what did happen? And that's the thing. You can say that about every moment of every. Every day, it's like, what just happened? And what does it mean?

[Mike Rowe]

This is exactly.

[Evan Voyles]

You know, I've had situations with other clients who are also friends of mine. Where we got on either side was a design question. It's like, I designed that logo. Yeah. Well, did you? I did. Now this is a true story. I won't mention names. And they said, well, we kind of. We need to own that. And I said, well, okay then, you know, how are we going to handle this? And he said, how about we put you on retainer for a few years? You're gonna get some money every year. We can write it off as, you know. In other words, we're not acknowledging anything. And you're not acknowledging anything. This is a gentleman's agreement between two. We're friends. But also, he saw me as a threat to his business. I saw him as a threat to my sovereignty as a designer. And. And you know, it Went away because also, I didn't want to. At the end of the day, even if I hold the copyright, is it not in my best interest to see the thing go wild?

[Mike Rowe]

Right. You have to change.

[Evan Voyles]

Isn't that what I'm after?

[Mike Rowe]

Sometimes you're Lennon, sometimes you're McCartney. Sometimes. Sometimes you're. Sometimes you're Ringo. Yeah, but look, you know, Dirty Jobs is very personal. You know, it was tribute to my granddad, and it was hard to get it on the air. And when I finally did, the network didn't even want it. Even when it raided, they didn't want it. They shelved it for a year. And then, you know, the people just wore him down.

[Evan Voyles]

Wanted it?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, the people wanted it, and we decided to do it. And I signed a piece of paper that Mary, who you just met, still busts my balls over there. So it was the worst deal I could have signed, but there's no way I could have got that show on the air. There's just no way. So I agreed to things that were just horrible, but would only ever be rectified if it worked. And of course, the show.

[Evan Voyles]

How many rock bands have the exact same story? They sold away all their rights just to get to play and record their music. And as harrowing as it was, did we not all win because the music got out there? And in the case I'm thinking of, Fogarty gets to actually buy it back 40, 50 years later.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes. You know, I went to Discovery before, like, right after, early in the first season. We didn't know there was going to be any more, but I believed in, and I said, how about this? I'll work for free. You don't pay me anything. Yeah, Just let me own a piece of the show that I brought you. Just let me do that. And if there's money to be had, we'll whack it up later. It was like, sorry, this is not

[Evan Voyles]

our model, not how it works.

[Mike Rowe]

So, you know, it's the same kind of moment. You got to go, well, I'm still betting on the idea, and maybe later it'll lead to something good.

[Evan Voyles]

And, I mean, isn't that how we do all of our careers?

[Mike Rowe]

Everything.

[Evan Voyles]

You bet everything.

[Mike Rowe]

Every damn thing, man. Everything.

[Evan Voyles]

All the chips go across the table every day. Every day. Well, and I don't gamble.

[Mike Rowe]

Like, the hell you don't.

[Evan Voyles]

I. But I gamble incessantly.

[Mike Rowe]

How many times have I said that to you? I hate Vegas. In the casinos, play games for money.

[Evan Voyles]

Except here we are, playing a game for money every day. Every day.

[Mike Rowe]

Thank you again for the signs.

[Evan Voyles]

You're welcome again.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm sorry. 10 years.

[Evan Voyles]

I don't care. Conversation can take a long time in many turns, you know, you didn't have a podcast then.

[Mike Rowe]

I barely had a song. But I did have a suspicion he's

[Evan Voyles]

about to sum up.

[Mike Rowe]

This is where the plane lands. While you were in there taking a crap in the middle of our conversation

[Evan Voyles]

or whatever, Yeah, I was monitoring that. I left my phone out here so I could hear it.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I said. I said to Chuck, you know, I. I get it. There's probably a long list of stuff you and I don't see eye to eye on, but I'm 100% sure that we are cut from the same cloth in the ways that matter. And I'm 100% sure the country and the world's more interesting place with you walking around in it.

[Evan Voyles]

Well, likewise to you. And people ask me going into this, what are you going to talk about? I said, I have no idea. Aren't you worried about this? I said, not a bit. You know, for one thing, I think I'm better loose. And I think that's how you roll, too. It's just like I've got a certain confidence that if I'm talking to somebody of reasonable intelligence, that we're going to have a good time and maybe get somewhere.

[Mike Rowe]

We didn't get to the AI which is funny just for grins.

[Evan Voyles]

That was over the point.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, we just said, what would we ask the AI?

[Chuck]

I asked the AI what would Mike Rowe ask Evan Voyles?

[Evan Voyles]

It didn't take it long to come up with an answer either immediately. Can we do it again?

[Mike Rowe]

I don't think so.

[Evan Voyles]

I'm sorry.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm sorry. Only if you put it to music. And I'm going to need you to sign a piece of paper.

[Evan Voyles]

I'm sorry, that's not my model.

[Mike Rowe]

Did you drive or fly?

[Evan Voyles]

Flew.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, yeah. All right. Well, enough already. Thank you. Was a fan. Continue to be one, folks, at the risk of really, truly shameless. Plug once removed. If there's room on your wall for a little bit of neon, a little bit of argon, and you're trying to think about the design and you're trying to think who might do it, you would be a straight up fool. A fool to go anywhere other than the neon jungle. And you would be very lucky indeed to get this rapacious, guilt ridden capitalist, Evan Foyles to do the work for you. He's all that in a bag of chips. A connoisseur. Of irony.

[Evan Voyles]

The end.

[Mike Rowe]

Thanks man.

[Evan Voyles]

Cut.

[Mike Rowe]

Let's cut it. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online. And leave us a review. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do do is leave a quick 5 star review. All you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review. All you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review. Definitely not 2. All you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review. All you got to do is leave a quick Even if you hate it.

[Chuck]

Especially if you hate it. Thank you

[Evan Voyles]

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[Mike Rowe]

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[Evan Voyles]

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[Mike Rowe]

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[Evan Voyles]

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[Mike Rowe]

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[Evan Voyles]

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[Mike Rowe]

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[Evan Voyles]

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[Mike Rowe]

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[Evan Voyles]

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