Steve Young Is… The Daykeeper

cat versus Roach roach versus cat even New Yorkers don't expect to see that cat just wants to play roach gets away lives another day and that's all for this installment of roach versus cat bye roach welcome once again to the Letterman podcast my name is Mike Chisum Steve Young's back this is at the beginning of this thing I um if you would have asked me at the very beginning of this thing hey you know some of these some of these folks who uh worked for David Letterman and Company the company of David Letterman and Company in fact some of the company are going to become friends of yours and uh just come back and you can shoot the bull and literally just catch up with some of these people uh I I would have told you my gosh any one of these people the interns uh you know who who who would be that for me I would be grateful I never thought for a second that a friendship with Steve Young would grow the way that it has and I'm so grateful for Steve uh he's one of the most effort effortlessly funny people I've ever met he makes me laugh out loud uh he has that Letterman sensibility um I I I certainly would love to see some sort of I don't know if you'd call it a reunion or if you just call it an evolution but some of the people like like the Nick PRS of the world and and and and and and Steve of course being one of these people who have just taken that Letterman Legacy and just continued it on uh I just I would love to see a show that celebrates that acknowledges that and celebrates it um you know Steve of course we've had him on in the past you know required make a joke about it during the conversation uh it's fun to give your viewers and listeners homework listen every single time Steve Young has been on this show and I think it's three other times um has been delightful he is just so great and I appreciate Steve to no end uh talking about his career uh as a writer um you know of course the evolving into you know Dave's record collection being one of the things that he one of the bits that he inherited and then mastered and and really made his own in so many respects um which led to of course bathtubs Over Broadway we do an entire episode talking about bathtubs Over Broadway um you know the documentary uh made about industrial musicals uh everything's coming up profits the the book that he um he made as a result of this bit that started on Letterman this whole subculture of industrial musicals and and um you know it's such a it's such a beautiful piece of Americana we talk about Americana uh quite a bit in this episode Steve is also putting out a lot of Comedy music and it's so good to see him expressing this creative outlet that he has and putting out these amazing songs and uh I highly highly highly recommend going to the Apple music or the Spotify uh broken heart insurance is it an album is it an EP we talk about it here it's six songs uh they're all fantastic and funny and I believe have a piece of Americana in them just happy wonderful music that will make you smile and very well produced insanely well produced we talk about that here in fact in this episode um he has heard back from Dave himself Dave gave him a quote that he can use talking about uh his his creative Endeavors his musical Endeavors here and uh we talk about that we talk about the where the state of of of of of the creative process right now he's a he's a we talked I think the last time he might have been on here was actually e during the strike or when the strike had just ended uh the writers and the actors on strike and and and I mean um you think about these poor creatives that have been uh wanting a career in television in the movies in in in in this these creative Industries and the idea that it's becoming a niche market and and Steve has some really neat insights about that and um we just have a really nice conversation that goes it's just catching up a little bit talking about there's some Letterman stories that pop out too of course but I mean at the end of the day um it's just a furthering of the Friendship of the Letterman podcast with the man the myth the legend himself Steve Young I hope you enjoy the episode today all right Steve before we get going here uh uh broken heart insurance has been out since May right yeah end of May end of May and my intention was immediately and if if man if my intentions I was just saying it to you off camera here uh my intention was to immediately say Let's Help launch this thing um and let's get a listening party with some old you know writers who could come on and we can we can listen to some of this amazing comedy that you are not just creating but also performing and uh and and get it out there let's do this and I drop the ball on that because life just gets crazy and whatnot I thank you for putting up with my with with with me and whatnot I appreciate you so so so much your creative output has been amazing um I'm so grateful that you are actually putting this stuff out there um how's it been so far since you've released the EP and are really starting to embrace um you know this creative process I had modest expectations as I think I've learned in the past decade or so to have modest expectations about everything in life so I thought well you know my friends will go wow this is pretty good and then maybe a few people beyond that immediate ring of friends will pick up on it somehow and that's about what's happened uh I have luckily made some friends who know about music and the music business and nobody is telling me Oh get ready to buy a yacht they're just saying yeah I mean you're gonna probably want to put some money into different kinds of promotional campaigns if you're serious about it but don't expect to get your money back but over time you know if you keep with it and keep putting out new stuff and just do it because you want to do it if your stuff is good and finds an audience it will grow and I thought that's fine um and uh okay so I'm I'm curious about there's a few things that I'm curious about number one is uh the EP is what six tracks six tracks right correct yes I guess it is EP Spotify or CD Baby I guess when I was doing this says that anything more than one track is an album so I immediately inflated it up to album status by having more than one track okay so six tracks on it um and I I happen to know that there are you know you've got a lot more than than than six tracks that you have recorded what was it that made these particular tracks the ones selected for this album this was sort of a naturally uh coherent batch because they were all done in Nashville in different ways with with with serious Nashville musicians and production value five out of the six tracks were produced by Allison Brown who's a Grammy winning uh banjo player she she uh plays a lot with Steve Martin and knows every cool person in the blue grass and Americana world and she and her husband Gary West have this uh studio uh Compass records uh more than you need to get your listeners to go through but I was very lucky to meet up with some of these people uh when I first visited Nashville and happy connections led to me actually being able to get my songs up on their feet with these worldclass people and uh there's no way that should have happened but it sounds way too legitimate from my little uh living room fumblings but they made it sound great I do have a lot of other stuff some of which you've heard some of which is very stripped down just like guitar and vocal some of which I play a little more ambitiously with uh base and uh finding a real drummer to do a drum track things like that so it's all over the map but the first batch really felt like well that's the Nashville batch maybe there'll be more someday but for now that's that set yeah I'm glad you brought up Bluegrass I mean if if you were to take this album and kind of categorize it into a yes it's comedy music but it's also I think Bluegrass is probably the the the the best kind of uh description of the style that the music has played in is that something that you loved growing up I had only very limited connection to Bluegrass uh my mother did listen to some country music and that definitely either was baked into my DNA or got in there as an influence early but it was only I don't know 20 something years ago that I started listening to Bluegrass and I do think that it imprinted on me very early because of The Beverly Hillbillies and when I was a four-year-old and the the opening and closing theme music I had no idea who flatten Scrubs were when I was a kid but now I'm a a middle-aged man going oh my God yes this is the stuff that that was like flowing into my tiny little y brain when I was a toddler and and and set something on a course so so oddly enough I have The Beverly Hillbillies to thank for some of the early affinity for that kind of sound absolutely uh it's funny too I'm so glad you mention that because when you read the Apple um music description you go through there and it's and it's some notes from the artist or what whatever that is you actually reference that as an influence and uh um I think that's delightful I I just and again Bluegrass you know you there there there are certain things um you know when it comes to history uh that that that that are certainly Americana and I would point to you know music uh specifically there are certain genres that are that that are 100% Americana as far as I'm concerned Bluegrass definitely being one of them um you can kind of go anywhere with it including and and I mean you prove that because the songs are legitimately hilarious but still have a ring of I don't even know what you'd call it if it's sentimentality but it certainly is Americana that's for sure I hear the phrase alt country a lot which is a very big catchall category that basically means everything that sounds like country music but isn't slick and formulaic enough to get onto the major radio stations so you've got uh a tiny little chunk that is the moneymaking tip of the spear for country music then you have this vast landscape of things that are hybrids and we're we're seeing so much of this now like where's the boundary between country music and Hip Hop where's the boundary between country music and and rock or jazz or any anything else that we're at this bubbling Melting Pot point of History maybe more than ever before and I don't know that I'm pushing it forward in any direction funny country music probably is the major radio stations are not salivating over the prospect of this but I've been very happy when I've gotten some of these songs across the uh attention spans of some cool people and uh I think there have been a couple of radio stations that have played one or two of the songs and and gotten a good reaction so that's again modest expectations but yes I'm happy when I when I hear that people especially friends who thought oh it's G to be Steve Young fooling around in his living room with his plunking away on the acoustic guitar and then they turn this thing on and it's like oh my God this is this is for Real how did that happen and I still think I'm not quite sure how it happened either but been very very very sweet and uh gratifying how it's all played out so far well it's incredibly well produced and that's that's that's I can I can certainly see if if people are coming at it from that vantage point I can certainly see why they would be uh Blown Away by it because the production value on this stuff is really really good is there a um a track on the uh on the record that people are attracting to more um that you've seen so far or is it across the board well there's some interest in the title track uh broken hard insurance which is in some ways is the most straight aadish country feeling one with a certain kind of premise that plays out in a little story yep and that's the one we had the first video done for and that's out and that again looks way better than it it has any right to thanks to talented friends who've helped out and now on the good old fictional country music show here's Steve Young thank you for calling the claims hotline please enter your case number when she said we're finished my heart was feeling pain at least my Devastation would mean financial gain I opened up my desk drawer took out my policy but now my heart's been broken twice by her and the company well I had broken heart insurance but the company went broke they got an avalanche of claims from a million lonely folk oh I still do love her but I know that ship is sail now both our relationship and my back up plan have failed please wait while we retrieve your information Mutual romantic gave me a good rate I paid up all my premiums never mailed them late I wish I hadn't trusted big business or romance can't can't see how I'll ever give either one more chance we are unable to process your claim at this time well I got broken heart insurance but the company can't pay they still get a pile of claims every business day my heart's broke the company's broke it's widespread misery financially emotionally we're all in bankruptcy we are sorry for your heartbreak no further information is available goodbye but I I would say say that uh the one that seems to grab people as this oddly universal theme is the the one fitted sheet oh fitted sheet is good yep came out you know as as I've gotten more interested in songwriting I just learned to keep my antenna up for what am I struggling with or what am I puzzling over and this was a few years ago now just like laundry and get pulling that the fitted sheet and how the hell do you fold this and just the aggravation of it and that was a new point in my life where I realized oh well you may have the beginning of a song here and it starts as this sort of funny song about the trouble of that and then it takes this wildly ambitious literary Cosmic philosophical turn which again I can't imagine the major country music stations wanting to play a country music song that uh talks about the universe uh winding down and growing cold and the poet William Butler Yates commenting on it so you know but if I have any arrow in my quiver that no one else has it is that sort of sensibility that well I guess nobody else in the world but Steve Young would have written that song there you go uh the point of view that you bring across is one that is just and I mean I've been doing a lot of um in the background here I told you about the Jack Rollins uh stuff that we're doing and so because of that I'm I'm watching a lot of late night footage like early late night footage and and the idea of coming from a place strange doesn't quite cover it a skew doesn't quite cover it just coming from the place of the of the odd and um I I just I just appreciate the people that can do that seemingly effortlessly and you seem to be that guy whether it's whether it's the songs that that that are out here on the on the album or the shorts that you're putting out there the the observances that you have are the ones that I wish that I had but I don't but I certainly appreciate the fact that not only do you uh document the observance but you present it in a way that is absolutely uh it's it's it's it's of course hilarious but it's also I don't even know I don't even know what you call it's just unique it's a unique point of view um and and you seem to just have that in Spades and you can't it it seems like you just can't turn it off you just that's who you are let your local UPS Store give you a hand if you need your notary shredded facted or scanned okay that's fine you can come out of the booth uh you know I'm not sure sure that the signs really mean what you're saying here you might want to look into revising that we're just going to do what the script says okay yeah well thank you for that and I as complicated and annoying as life is that is one thing that I'm glad that I was born with or had a shred of and was able to cultivate I sometimes describe it as um finding the right the wrong thing to focus on in any given scene or situation the thing that everyone else their eyes and ears are just going to slide past and I say wait a minute what about if we looked more into that and that fueled the entire uh industrial musicals Phenomenon with all right this is garbage says the rest of the world sitting in a miscellaneous Oddball record bin for a dollar and no one wants it because it's obviously stupid and I thought is it some of it is but maybe not all of it and there's way more of it than we thought and turns out it was the largest chunk of 20th century American culture that had remained under the radar and we'll probably never find anything that big again but yeah anytime I go out for a walk and I see some Oddity and maybe other people are also amused by something or look at that the American Woolen building with a giant Stone sheep head over the door and other people see that but I now am at a phase of my life where I just start singing hey sheep weate you hey sheep and we celebrate you and then I run home and start figuring out oh what would I do with oh I need a bass and I'm gonna do this with the guitar and oh the chords that oh and I'm gonna get ambitious and I'll do the main vocal and then I'll do the the Harmony on yeah you layer in you do yes uh yeah I'm having way too much fun uh history will actually history won't care and won't judge but you could make the argument that I'm just wasting my time on way too elaborate Endeavors that really don't deserve it but to me that's part of the con conceptual thrill of seeing a little thing and making it topheavy with production value yep and it goes through the layers of why bother to that does sound pretty good but it's stupid and that it's stupidity and excessiveness is what makes it worth it in the end um and and and just to bring back the point of you learning skills at the same time it's like you're you're you're you're taking advantage of this sensibility and because you are applying action to it you're also gaining skills um you know the idea of Ste of oh that's Steve plunking away with his acoustic guitar and his yeah okay but you're getting pretty good at that like you're turn turning into like you are layering harmonies on things you are uh you know turning into a a great video editor as well putting the comedy in at the at the right beats and things like that and that's all kind of organic as just just uh taking this thing that you have in your mind but you're then taking those extra couple steps to actually do something with it and because of that you're becoming more of an all-rounded uh I think um you know visual artist comedic performer whatever you want to call yourself these skills are sharpening it seeming seemingly at a rapid at a rapid Pace well thank you I keep pushing the edge of the envelope for what I can be comfortable with technically yeah uh it wasn't too many years ago I would just sit in the living room with the acoustic guitar and turn on my recorder on my iPhone and just sing and play into the and now okay I know how to run uh certain kinds of things and audacity and garage band then if I want to edit uh I've got the a little program on my phone that I do most of the little short social media ones with but I moved up from iMovie to something called Da Vinci resolve which is a pretty pretty robust editing thing and I know enough editors who either give me hints or say this is not bad but you should look into seeing if you do more like this or that so also so my long Letterman experience I think built into me what some of the rhythms are instinctively for how to make things move and cut and all that and I I I wouldn't say I'm great at it but I'm not terrible at it and I can always keep getting better through practice Yeah well and clearly you know um it it's it's it's happening and it's so fun to watch you again as an Enthusiast for what um for you cuz I mean you know my regard for you is so high uh just to watch this stuff evolve um we the audience are are you know we're the recipients of watching this stuff grow and and I'm so I'm so grateful for it you you mentioned um you know your letter experience I I want to I've wanted to ask you this since May but I've left it for the podcast we were supposed to do a podcast you know four months ago about this um you heard some response about uh about your music well I did think you know I I have this Con nection to Mr Letterman what if I came politely with hat in hand to the organization and said uh would it be possible to get a blurb a little quote from from Dave Letterman and uh it was very sweet and gratifying it came back pretty quickly if I can paraph paraphrase it pretty closely it's uh Steve Young is an an enter entertainment business Triple Threat or is it quadruple threat who cares nobody is safe and so that applies to anything now that I I can put it on my music I can put it on a short film I can put it on uh any video or any any project if I uh finish one of my novels I'll make sure to slap that on the front well I would have to ask for that I'm not sure that but yes maybe it'll be on my and nobody is safe um oh it's such a beautiful that's such a beautiful sentiment um exactly exactly what you would want from that and and I now that you kind of talk about that I want to talk about you diversifying and I mean there's there's great reasons for it and there's also tragic and heartbreaking reasons for it I look at the fact that you're diversifying that you are in some of these short films you're doing your per perform I want to talk to you about performing cuz um you know it seems like that's where you know when we talk from a if you could make a living doing this or a decent living doing it performing is the way to go I look at some of these inventive um you know performance comedic performance artists I I don't know if you and I have actually talked on camera I don't think you and I have talked on camera about Nick PR and I look at Nick and what he is doing he and Joe are doing with the found footage festival and and and all of the different I mean Andy calman like but at the end of the day Letterman Sensibility uh type projects that he does and and um you know it's so cool to see you I mean don't get me wrong your writing is astounding but to Branch out from that and move into the performing it it almost the you know there's a Wayne Gretzky quote that we say up here um in Canada you know we recite it every morning like the Pledge of Allegiance don't go where the puck is go where the puck is going and it feels like creatives where the puck is going is exactly what you're being multi-talented at some of this stuff it's almost not enough just to be a writer anymore because of the way that the industry is changing um are you uh I know I ask every single time that you come on here are you are you embracing the Performing more you're always got dates you're always doing stuff are you are you really starting to lean into that and enjoying it yeah I would say it's uh to my surprise very much uh in my blood now and something where I take the stage either to do my own industrial Musical film clip show or if I'm doing a guest 10-minute spot in somebody else's uh comedy show that I feel like oh man I I didn't think I was this guy but apparently I'm this guy and part of it is there are not really going to be writing jobs and writers rooms in late night or probably the rest of the television in the way that I knew for so long so uh nobody is going to come ask me to do big Network TV stuff anymore that's fairly clear so I have to say well I'm going to invent my own micro entertainment industry either by myself or with my friends and that's what so many people are doing now and you and I were talking about this a little bit earlier that the the golden age uh it it lasted until not too long ago but employment of TV and film writers is way way down and that corresponds with I think people don't feel that TV and movies are as big a part of their lives as they used to I mean we grew up I'm older than you but I think we grew up in an era where you knew what big TV show was coming on which night and you were excited I don't think I've watched quote unquote television in over a year I think I watch uh old movies occasionally some newer movies but it just as as one guy I was talking to as part of My Writers Guild Captain Outreach said that era is over of of this stuff being a huge part of the cultural equation it's going to shrink down and become this little niche thing but when you realize how many people are just scrolling through their phones and getting most of their entertainment through that here's an illustrative anecdote a friend of mine I was talking to uh just about the state of all this and he said now I have a a niece who's a teenager and she said to me oh I love the office and my friend said to her oh yeah the office is so great uh what season are you on are you like and she said season she didn't know it was a TV show she just thought it was little Clips on her phone wow really yeah so we're becoming completely unored from the certainties of what we thought were the TV and film landscape all of which is to say however much time I've got left yes I'd like to continue to make money here and there where I can and live shows are going to be a big part of that I think but I realized gradually I will never get anything done if I wait to be asked by some uh giant system or multinational conglomerate so make the short films with your friends make your little songs and funny weird videos put them out they may add up to nothing in the vast scheme of things but it it proves to me number one I'm not dead and number two I've I've still got something to say and I can get better at it as I go and and if people like you are enjoying it that that's just pretty much what I hope for the perfect audience of uh my friends and like-minded people who go Ah that's a good one um well it it it's certainly is and and it's it's it's funny because you you think about the office that's a really good um that's sobering actually first off it's uh you know the thing about the office it is so Universal and these little clips that can make their way around um you know to this new generation that they would they would they would attract to it uh what a what a lucky circumstance you know when we think about how people are talking about bite sizing bite sizing I get people you know I'm long form I love the long form I love the art of convers ation and and and the enjoyment of conversation as you you well know I I I love it so much but that is not what I am being uh bombarded with from a strategic standpoint people are like short people have short attention spans they have for get it into short little clips and get it out there and and the office is perfect for that um but boy for for for somebody for it to be that much of a departure that they didn't even know that it was like a full-on season with with with with story arcs that some of which lasted you know a decade long um boy that is sobering hearing it like that yeah but for me coming out of the Letterman World gradually dawned on me sometime in the past year that either by nature or by training I have an affinity for short bits so many of the things we did at Letterman were 20 30 40 seconds long yep and I thought I could I I come up with little jingly type weird songs that are in that range I can make my own stuff now I have been leery of tick tock it still seems to me like there's a a culture there that is not necessarily for me and I know that's a superficial take there are a million sub cultures and Tick Tock of people of all ages and interests yep so can't write off but you look at the front page and you go uh this is a blizzard of of nonsense that is aimed at 17y olds uh I'm not invited to this party but I started putting my little bits on Tik Tok just because there's no downside to it I'm not like hanging in the balance of Will My Life turn out well if if I do better on Tik Tok and yeah I can get sort of mildly interested for 20 minutes oh this one's taking off a little more this one's getting thousands of views instead of hundreds of views but it doesn't matter but once you just realize it doesn't matter uh nothing about my life is going to change whether this gets 5,000 views or 50 views just make it because you enjoy making it and you're happy that you did it and anything else after that is just gravy so yeah Tik Tok Instagram reals Facebook reels that's the the sort of side territory there's the big Nashville album and then there's this little Galaxy of strange short bits um I you know what I'm going to ask this first because I mean we talked about the uh the video um for for insurance policy and and and it's so good am I allowed am I allowed to put that in here like am I like where we talk about it before I want to I want to put the clip in and if if I am allowed then you know we'll have uh successfully navigated time travel because people will have said well wait Mike I saw it already or I listened to it already um are you locked into anything or is all of the content yours I think I can allow you to do exactly what you're talking about yeah I don't I'm not beholden to any uh Sony Music needs to sign off on me yeah it's all self authorized self self-released uh I I think yes please with my blessing put up everything that is out and and as an Insider you've seen a few things or heard a few things that are not released yet y so probably hold off on that but the broken heart Insurance video you can put out all my thing short bits from the social media Okay so we've got permission to do that we can go ahead and do that um but that becomes a that that's another um potential snafu in this okay I'm putting out some music and whatnot in order to get some of these bigger entities potentially to to to um broaden the uh the megaphone then they become owners of this stuff and that that that's another part where where I look at some of these some of these people that are that are um you know writer producer uh actor performer whatever you want to call it that's the other thing too that you be able are able to kind of keep it to yourself has that hit your radar yet or are you um has that not been something that that you've you've had to focus on before I put the album out or sorry EP I I did look around over the past year trying to learn about record labels and I approach some Porky indish labels and the sort of executive summary of what I learned was uh they're all close to being uh if not money losers there there nobody's making money except Taylor Swift but record labels such as they are now they are not interested in a getting a performer on their label unless this person comes to them with millions of social media followers a built-in rabid fan base who's going to throw money and high visibility and you've got to have grown your business and your marketing and all that independently before some company wants to pick you up decades ago it used to be oh here's someone promising we'll cultivate them we'll take them under our wing we'll have this multi armed corporation uh get them uh learning about marketing and graphic design and we'll we'll put them out on the road and they'll get a following now you have to do all of that yourself and it's the same with book publishing yep if you want to write a book and actually have it published by someone other than yourself well you might be very lucky but then you're going to have to figure out your own book tour and and go to bookstores on your own dime and uh do all the leg work yourself so just this vast tectonic shift as the barriers to making stuff and putting it out have fallen so to have the incentives for big companies to get involved with anybody who's not fully uh flowered and blossomed already yeah it it's such an interesting thing when my wife and I um released our book it was it was kind of a hybrid kind of a thing like what you're talking about here we had a publisher but the onus was completely on us uh on on everything and for us um similar and I I think you can you've already expressed the sentiments you know the process is the outcome when you're a creative the process of the creativity is the outcome and I mean you got to figure out ways to monetize because we all got to eat we all got to do things you know after the fact but but but at the end of the day the process is the important part and we would never change anything about releasing our book but at the end of the day it was certainly an eye opener as to how these things work and and and I I I look at a guy like uh like Scott Ryan who did the last days a letterman he's got his own publishing company now because um and and he helps people publish books and and and they have this this method where they are almost Reinventing it's almost like that that's what's happened that all these Industries have gotten so big and it's time to tear them all down because of connectivity probably you know it's diluted uh the audience is so spread out all over the place but now it's creating opportunity for people like you know Nick PR for people like you um to figure out and and and and and carve a path A New Path as to how creatives can figure out a way to create a career in that and I mean you know I I appreciate the fact that you are learning these things and we are talking about this today because there's a lot of creatives who listen to this show but I would say that that that you know the people who listen to this show are a lot of them creatives who don't know how to apply it and there's the two things here there's number one the joy of actually doing it and actually getting it out of your system to make you feel fulfilled and to use the gifts that you have number two is figuring out a way that you can do that and actually um you know make a quasi living from it uh it's a new Frontier isn't it yeah and people are gradually talking about it in smart and Illuminating ways uh there was an article I read not too long ago I don't know if this was the title of it but the theme of it was macroculture versus micr culture and the premise was it used to be that the big TV networks and the big news organizations and the big movie studios they dictated what people were going to know about care about follow spend money on that has been on a long downward slide and now you have a world where social media influencers that you and I have never heard of have millions of followers and if they show up somewhere they are gonna pack a theater full and they are gonna make a lot of money and you and I are gonna go who the hell is that yep how that person be filling a theater and this is replicated thousands of times so the micro culture if you find your Niche fan base it can be tiny to the world of Sony pictures but it can be huge to you as a single person and you can do very well if you figure out what's my thing who are my people yeah they know about me they love me they're going to come and pay $25 to see me do x i at the very small end of that I would love to get better at it but yeah micro culture versus macro culture the other thing I was reading uh it's a book called Art and fear and this was all about all the ways that you get mentally held back from working on whatever odd art projects you want to do and you've got to break through that and realize all right in all probability you will never be Bruce Spring Springsteen or Picasso or Taylor Swift yeah in the broad cultural sense but what are you doing why are you doing it well just remember you do all your pieces of art or music or whatever because you enjoy doing them and each one you do teaches you a little more about what you want to do and what you like to do and how to do it with your materials so you just get the momentum of and I've felt this oh I'm better at editing now I'm better at recording now I'm mixing and playing I can do more I can be a little more ambitious and I look forward to oh I really should work on XYZ but I think for the next 7 hours I just want to go in the Deep trance of working on this multifaceted music video thing and if you can get that feeling of oh I'm just gonna shut out the world and make this thing and I I won't turn out with exactly what I thought I would have but maybe it'll be at least as good or maybe it'll be a little better in anyway then I'll be more confident about trying the next one yeah I um I uh I've talked about this on here as well my my other podcast is a men's mental Wellness podcast my wife is building a a men's mental Wellness uh app and has has built it you know hundreds of guys a day use it um and and uh I'm I'm I'm so excited for what her and her team are doing but boy um one of the pain points with with with with guys uh many times is a lack of purpose and and and um you know we don't necessarily live in a society that that says exactly what you just said as articulately as you just said it and there's so many people that need to hear it if you've got something inside of you just doing that with no outcome except for exploring it and doing it leads to uh it it does it leads to to you know it sounds maybe hyperbolous but it's not it's like purpose it's it's it's it's it literally can turn you know a black and white autopilot world into a fully color um you know where where where somebody is is engaged um in in what it is that they're doing as opposed to just going through the motions and and it's such a it's such an important thing um art and fear I want to I want to definitely do that the one I go to is is PR pressfield's uh the war on the war on Art and that's the one that that that to me is is you know the the the voice inside you that stops you from doing the thing that you want to that you're talking about here that you've got this thing inside your belly you want to do it but then the voice tells you not to and and the discouragement and all of that and and and the war on doing that that many creatives who don't even know their creatives uh are going through um you know when you become present and you find out about that and you realize the Fulfillment of doing exactly what you're talking about wow I mean now life is is a completely different different animal and and I'm seeing it with you you know I I I love that our Dynamic has grown to where it is right now and my My Hope and prayer is that it grows more I love seeing you Express this stuff and um like I think about I think about being able to go and see you on stage and and doing this and and I'm hoping that uh that you do find this audience who want to be entertained and and and at the same time um it's it's it's also insightful it to me your stuff inspires creativity Steve it really really does it inspires people to look at things differently I just really enjoy what you're doing a lot uh bathfitter he's the man with the tub and shower touch he renovates so much he fits baths he's bathfitter okay I want to ask you has it led to Opportunities where you're doing more live music on stage uh I know you're starting to get you're really comfortable with the with the video presentation about the industrial musicals and things like that playing and performing on stage are you ready to do that like if if someone said to you okay we got a spot for you Wednesday night four songs let's do it do you have four songs ready to go I think I could get that going and you know they say uh write what scares you do what scares you and I I do feel like the next Frontier for me is getting out on stage with a guitar or maybe another friend or two with music and doing my own stuff yeah and that that is uh sobering like all right I'm not hiding behind look at this comedic alternate universe I found that I'm just presenting what if it's me and my own stuff I'm in the very early stages of talking with the a producer and a particular venue about how that might work and uh yeah it's just well you can't not do it if you got all this stuff building up after a while and some of it I think will be very fun and effective in a video slash live audio setting like uh you know the the Wordle song I just put out the Dan dad like I can do that song myself standing there with a guitar but if we have somebody off on the side like triggering each graphic coming up during the the lyrics I think that will be uh a really good bit for a live show do you do the Wordle puzzle I like the Wordle and of course I want to solve the puzzle but I also enjoy seeing what sort of interesting phrases turn up while I'm working on it this song is called Dance Daddy and it was inspired by some of the screenshots I've taken while working on the Wordle I'm a dance daddy taking a bliss blimp right yeah I'm drunk funny and I'm tepid proud inside I'm a dance daddy bulge bugle play your tune yeah I'm drunk funny feeling like a drunk prune I'm a loser lover looking for my Grump Crush loser lover loner trying not to go lower but waste angst makes me blush I'm a dance daddy Chino chaos when I dance yeah I'm drunk funny a humor tutor with no Romance I'm a dance Daddy hey honey hello I'm a dance daddy loser lover dance Daddy Let the Bliss blimp hover dance daddy oh no I got to go if you have the phrase going add Agony you got to use it I can get a portfolio together that feels about right with a few things like that maybe uh some left turns into some other comedy bits and video bits uh I'm just accumulating this slag heap of stuff and I've got to shape it into a something but yes I do have that performing bug now and that will extend to my own music I mean Steve Young a slag heap of stuff uh what what what endorsement that is right there about the collection of materials that you built bad bad Mr letter didn't mention that in his little blur slag Heap to go a slag heap of stuff uh to go back to uh what you were saying something earlier about about pacing and timing and all of that uh one thing on this show that we have certainly uh um you know a reoccurring and you know theme and whether it is um you know people who produce the extras versus who wrote the extras versus um you know different the different everybody in in in in in the world of the actual creating of the creative output of of of of Late Show uh shorter is better and I mean that is something that I think you know safe to say that's been ingrained into your head let's get in get out let's not stay too long in the bit um you know a lot of your songs are two two and a half minutes that kind of a thing three minutes um you know that you is that is that something that's just uh reflective to you is that something where it's like yeah I don't want to oversay my welcome with this I'm not going to put a second verse in or or a bridge um necessarily the way that other conventional songs might do because I do want the premise to stay fresh yeah definitely somewhere looking over my shoulder is Mr Letterman saying can we cut 12 seconds out of this please can we get this shorter can we get this down to under a minute and you can cut too much and be too severe in that but on the whole I think I'm glad to have had those instincts cultivated in me and that's why yes there's a lot of little bits I'm doing now that are 30 or 40 seconds and that feels right to me in a lot of ways but the longer bits even the quote unquote longer songs many of them clock in at not much more than two minutes yeah which I feel like all right that's kind of a a classic length uh 50 60 years ago hit singles were kind of often in that range yeah I don't want to overstay my welcome I don't know if I have any welcome to overstay but if I do I don't want to overstay um that makes a lot of sense um again I don't know have we talked about Nick F on camera I don't think we have you've you've actually done shows with Nick kind of a a a brother in- arms spiritual cousin I I did record collection he he grabbed the corresponding Dave's Video Collection which was a piece also and has made an Empire out of that and so we help each other out uh anytime we have tips on oh here's a good venue you ought to investigate he introduced me to uh the person at City Winery here in New York City who ended up putting me on uh a few weeks ago and that that was a very very nice show I was very happy with that show here in New York Nick is uh um you know he's one of those guys who I I forget who it was might have been Zoran I forget they're all blending together now Steve it's so interesting now that we're we're two and a half years into this thing they're all starting to blend together and and I'm starting to um in my own little teeny tiny way understand what you all went through um when people like me would come up to you and give you references on certain shows and things like that and I understand completely why many times it's hard to access uh those little bits in The Very middle of the hard drive because it all Blends together now but anyway someone was tell saying me to to to me about Nick um how how it's people you guys are keeping that Letterman Spirit Alive you know you throw a little Andy Kaufman in there and and and and some of the things that we all love about um about Letterman and and and and the culture and the that you all created together it's almost been years I mean my gosh it's been almost 10 years since the show ended uh we're we're within six months of that um it's very interesting that uh that that you all are still doing or a bunch of you are still trying to get this sort of sensibility out there um have you ever thought about what a reunion or something to do with a reunion would look like have you ever has that ever crossed any of your paths I know I was talking with a few I guess other writers not too long ago and we were observing that yes we're coming up on 10 years since we were all spat out of this ecosystem or silo or whatever you want to call it and I'm guessing there will be some sort of gathering people like get together and see each other like you as you know from the rert farewell that that was a wonderful event and wonderful evening so yeah I'm sure there will be some sort of marking of that anniversary but it is sobering not only to see Oh I thought you were 25 it turns out no you're not 25 and people may look at me and feel the same thing what Steve Young weren't you just a kid with the brown hair well technically that was in the past yes so we all have to Grapple with our own aging but also yeah yeah the landscape of the entertainment business has not been kind to many people some have done okay other people I think have found to their surprise that uh they had trouble getting traction after Letterman it was a legacy show where people could stay for a long time but then the wider entertainment business might have just thought well you're really just somebody worked at that show you weren't in the entertainment business CAU a little whiff of that myself like well you you knew how to do this one very odd specific thing but it doesn't really necessarily translate and maybe you can prove to us that it translates to other things if you write a great screenplay or Pilot script or whatever and I've done some of that and I think they were fine but there are tens of thousands of other people also writing very good things and very few places buying them anymore more so we're back to that well I guess I'll uh I'll invent my own micro entertainment business and and not wait for the giant gears to turn in a favorable way for me yeah um the Gathering is one thing and I think that that's a beautiful beautiful thing and and and I mean I honored beyond measure I I talk about it all the time with people who who who it's funny it's funny people find out that I host a letterman podcast just locally or whatever and my first question is are you familiar with David Letterman because now it's getting to the point where it's like okay and of course 95% of people are but the degree is different than it was even three years ago um you know and and and so I always kind of qualify because if I'm going to throw verbal diarrhea on people and go off the way that I can go off and talk the way I can talk enthusiastically and all of that stuff I want to make sure the person understands what it is that I'm talking about before I do that and it's you know um and and so that being said when I think about a reunion and oh so I I was going to say anybody who listen I'll talk about the fact that I can't believe that I got to go to that that that reunion the and and and and the goodbye to rert and that's a beautiful beautiful thing the idea of that get together for the 10 year but I was thinking about something a little bit more um I know for a fact that if there's a letterman themed reunion that is at never mind an Almo Draft House in New York probably Radio City Music Hall there's some sort of reunion where you can put that name on there and maybe some of the alumni can can can perform and do some things and you bring some friends of the show back and all that kind of thing I would think it sells out in a second I don't know I just I I feel like there's still a hunger for stuff like that if if if something like that were to happen would you be part of that uh who can say uh what the Inner Circle would want to do and who they would want to involve I think I'm uh still on a reasonably good uh terms with with the power structure so always happy to hear about any plans of foot and I'd be honored to be involved but I haven't heard about anything like that oh no I don't think I don't think it exists yet but I mean I believe that you're more of an Insider than I am at this point you've got all the Intel about what's being discussed oh may God help us all if that's the case Steve I hope I don't know if that's I don't know about that but but I mean I just know from from folks who love the show there is certainly a hunger for it um there's a lot of people who would would appreciate that from a music standpoint uh from an entertainment standpoint I just I think that there's a lot of people and and D hey uh we do a congratulations to Dave I mean the old institution still is around a little bit They just won an Emmy uh he want he won an Emmy for my next guest with the with with uh the episode with John melany um so congratulations to Dave on that were you were you aware of that do you do you watch uh anything these days are you watching like okay Letterman on Netflix sure that's great are you watching a lot of the stuff or do you when you're in a creative place not watch a lot of stuff uh it's very much the latter I I I don't have Netflix uh during the strike uh that it coincided with the Crackdown on like password sharing and my family was a legitimate nuclear family unit but now history has brought us to living in different places so Netflix didn't like this said uh you can no longer have this far-flung family plan you're G to have to sign up for your own and during the strike I thought I'm not giving these guys money this power structure so I I let Netflix go and haven't pulled it back so I'm I'm very very erratic with the keeping up on a lot of uh of the modern programming um I I hear you and I think that that is probably a sentiment that a lot of people are expressing and it's part of the reason why things are are are changing the way they are but uh I believe Su solution will come from that it'll it'll it will uh it will happen now that being said your creative output is like we talked about before I want to talk you you've been also acting you've been in short films um and and uh let's talk about that a little bit that's that's that's that's fun another chapter I didn't see coming but after bathtubs Over Broadway came out director David whisnant said what else can we do we should make some stuff and we've written some longer scripts together which have not been produced but she said you know we could just make our own short films without quote unquote waiting for permission or whatever so we made those two in New Mexico a few years ago photo op and brief survey which have had a very long Film Festival life and won quite a number of awards very gratifying and then another uh friend of mine who I met at the Woods Hole Film Festival a few years ago he was saying last year oh we ought to work on something together sometime and we were both at Woods Hole last summer down on cap cot we went over and explored this Lighthouse and I began improvising this character of The Proud but embittered Lighthouse Keeper who has the daytime shift when you can't tell whether the lights's even on and we later realized there could be something there let's take what we were riffing on that day and get it Formed into a real script and try to get some costumes and production value and it was very micro budget last minute sort of thing and we got a lucky break actually being able to get into into the lighthouse to shoot the Daye keeper has now started its Festival run and I've been a few cities with that and recently won a best actor award from the mystical uh the Mystic Film Festival uh and if you get out of the house and go places and meet people other doors open in the past I guess it was the other short films I was at a festival chatting with a producer who had a film there and later he emailed me would you like to have an acting role in this Indie feature we're putting together because they'd seen me in the shorts and I said sure now I have this other acting credit and now I have this new short film and some people in Mystic Connecticut were saying oh we really enjoyed uh your performance there would you be interested if we in our upcoming projects uh approached you about acting and something else so I'm not a train actor I am a smartass who's way too confident now on camera and I may Crash and Burn yet at some point but until then just just keep uh just keep having the weird adventures and seeing what next adventure comes from it um the premise of daykeeper is so great it's such a perfect little it's such a perfect little premise right there um and that's is this is the stuff that keeps me hope that gives me hope that AI uh will stay at Bay because the creative human Spirit of of of of the Absurd is just something I just have a hard time believing it would ever uh be able to learn properly that is so fun congratulations on the uh on the award the Accolade as well um if people want to watch daykeeper is it possible to watch it right now because I mean you know short films on a on a on a on a short film circuit are are are you know it's it's neat it's Art House it's fun can the masses see this only on the film festival circuit for now we still haven't put out uh the previous two short films on on YouTube or anything I think we should get around to that soon but um coming up I don't know when this bit's going to air but the evening of October 11th here in New York City the daykeeper is screening as part of New York shorts International Film Festival yep uh Naples Florida is coming up as uming they don't get obliterated by the next hurricane yeah this will be probably just at film festivals for the next uh several months well into next year yeah that's the the wonderful and slightly annoying thing about film festivals although you can now sometimes get a virtual pass to some of these festivals and watch something from the comfort of your home even if you don't get to New York City or Mystic connectic so uh I guess I will direct people to well Steve Young world.com but also uh I I don't even remember what the New York shorts has for a virtual platform or Naples Florida so I'm GNA have to just lamely encourage people to do their own research on and I'm fine staying cryptic I'm you know I'm fine keeping it a tease as as the premise and people will be like well wait what what I want to I'm okay keeping it that way too but yeah when when this stuff does come out on YouTube um again you brought up daa's name with Dava like I mean you know filmmakers and and things having to find these inventive ways to still stay creative um and and and and put something out but yet at the same time you know um um make a living it it's such a such a tough it's such a tough thing I'm glad you and Dava are still doing stuff together um safe to say you know one of your your number one collaborators is Dava still director of bathtubs Over Broadway yeah she's been doing a lot of her own projects and brought in on other people's documentaries and such but we do have another short film script that we're pleased with that will take a bit more budget and production to realize properly and we're uh just a we just got like to the quarter quarterfinal round of some Grant project so uh possible that someday we'll we'll get to the the the end of that process and have a new one together but yeah it's it's tough to make things that are more complicated than just you and two of your friends and an iPhone yeah um well I'm just grateful that you guys are doing what you're doing for sure I still want to get daava on this show if if if if at all possible but I know how busy how busy she is as well um what do you have okay so so uh early October I don't know if it'll be out by the 11th but it'll be out shortly after that uh this episode here uh do you have any other gigs booked at this point here for the industrial musical show for any of the other stuff that you're doing uh have some industrial musicals bits coming up one's on Cape Cod at the end of October it's like October 28th in in the little town of chadam that's a pretty small one A friend of mine is uh bringing me in for a couple days is sort of a event for a local library and so it's a very small scale one so if you're near chattam Massachusetts at the end of October but I have bigger ones coming up modernism week in Palm Springs is in February and that's a big Extravaganza every year and I've gotten lucky connections and met people out there and I'm doing two installments of my show there in February I'm going to go to Mr letter Hometown in early March yep go to Indianapolis do a show there I'm always trying to string a few more together so they seem to come up semi- randomly but uh always interested in hearing from people with suggestions about oh I know this great venue they love weird alt comedy slide slashfilm slash whatever yep and if I get good tips on places to take the show I'm all ears well and I mean you go back to uh go back to Nick and Joe with found footage I mean they're on the road 150 200 days a year these days doing doing this thing it's it's it's it's pretty amazing to watch them as Road Warriors I'm actually looking at trying to they've got a show in Seattle and they've got a show in Vancouver and for those who are uh geography Buffs and and know that uh I'm from Colona Colona is kind of right in the middle of the two and they have a day in between so it's like oh you know what if we could figure out a way to get them here I'm actually looking to do that right now um you know the idea of being a bit of a road warrior and and doing this stuff uh is is is it's neat it's neat to see the I think of think of you being out there doing this uh have you to go back to the industrial musicals for a second have you added to the collection since last we spoke slowly uh yes uh it's pretty rare now that a new vinyl record gets added to the archive oh I've got a couple mysterious 7 inch Oddities coming from a record dealer not quite sure from the cryptic description what I'll be listening to but yeah for $12 or whatever you got to take a chance one New Frontier that does come up is people who see me at one of my shows or watch the movie and get in touch and say uh my late grandfather worked on a lot of this stuff if you'd like to come see his basement uh you might be very interested and I was on Long Island a few weeks ago after a an overture like this someone who came to one of my shows and his grandfather had worked on Industrial shows from the late 60s into the 80s and I came home with bulging duffel bags most of it I have to give back but cassette tape and real toore tapes stuff that never even was pressed on vinyl and I'm having uh a friend of mine who has the right equipment digitizing a lot of tapes that haven't been heard in decades and maybe justly so I mean the quality of this stuff is always wildly unpredictable and you might listen to 19 shows and think yeah I'm fine with this never having been pressed on vinyl I'll put it in the archive but I'll never listen to this again and then once in a while I was like wow that one was off the charts crazy and beautiful thank God that survived so just that uh sifting panning for gold but just to find a treasure trobe of a basement which has been untouched for 25 years and all these rows of tapes and uh scrap books full of programs and photos oh when that happens that's a great feeling okay so like um for the car enthusiasts out there this is like a barn find and and and uh and I'm going to put in the intro by the way the intro when I shoot the intro for this one I'm going to say okay you got to go back and you got to listen to the um bathtubs Over Broadway episode that we did you know cuz cuz the way I look at it I just want to continue the relationship with you and just talk about this stuff and for people who this is their first time uh seeing you on the show go back and look at Steve's all all of st's other appearances on here and all the context will be revealed have homework I'm sure they'll appreciate that oh yeah people love homework especially yeah in the entertainment field having homework is a good thing uh but I don't care and that's the one thing again I can I again a fisherman can recognize fisherman the enjoyment I get is just this and I love it so much it's so much fun now I hearing that the collector and me is so excited for you because when you see these when you find this basement there's obviously you've got a puzzle that you have built in your mind a tapestry an image that's there and you've got the images all connected for the most part but I'm certain that there are still little teeny tiny pieces that you add to the tapestry when you see stuff like this or hear stuff like this um some of these personalities people who were a part of things that you already have a blueprint in your mind for and then you realize oh they worked on this as well or something like that did this basement provide anything like that for you yeah there's a few interesting new puzzle pieces like listening to something that came back from the first batch of digitized real toore tapes I don't know if it was Nabisco or Victor calculators or something but I realized this is a alternate version of a song I know from a Kenny shoe manager show from the 70s this guy must have worked on that and then you go oh wait a minute look these tapes labeled champion this guy must have worked on the uh Champion road grader musical which is a a weirdly brilliant one that's had zero information about the credits maybe I'm cracking that one open finally there you go I love that and I love that you I know how much that Stokes you when things little things like that happen and I'm I'm very very very happy that this is still uh the gift that keeps on giving for you and again everything's coming up profits we've got it uh right here uh do you still have any copies of that book are they still around or are people now at the point where go to eBay and that's where you're going to find it yeah you can buy some on eBay once in a while at a not horrendous price but it is out of print the blessing and the curse of the documentary bathtubs Over Broadway which was uh suddenly that the book was a hot item and we sold out a printing and then the publisher printed a second Printing and uh that sold out and I was able to rescue 93 copies from a warehouse that had decided they were damaged and they were going to throw them away and most of them were fine so I did lucky a last stash of books which I sold privately at my shows but right now there's no plan to do a third printing if by some miracle the Steven Spielberg amlin company movie that they've been developing after they bought the rights to the book if that ever goes and gets green lit then I'm sure we'll reprint the book but till then it's going to be not as easy to find as I would like can you tell me the connection there like what what Stephen Spielberg amblin entertainment what how does that how did that happen yeah when the book came out uh it's a guy named Mark plat who's a very wellestablished producer who has a an eye and ear for interesting properties I believe he well he could look up all his credits I know he was involved with La La Land so movies with a musical element he certainly is familiar with but like a lot of people when the book came out and people were starting to talk about it the realization was this is a vast and weird and fascinating secret subculture of America that we did not know about and didn't see coming and there's got to be great stories in here and so uh I don't know if this movie will ever get done there's a a story a fictional story set in this world in the 50s into the 60s people working on these shows go and wrestling with the uh conundrums of am I an artist or am I a hack am I on my way up or am I on my way down how do you judge the value of doing work like this when the rest of the world number one doesn't know about it and number two wouldn't respect it if they did know about it so all these big them that I've uh seen emerge while I've been doing this investigation I think I think they will have a very good movie if they end up doing it but for every movie that gets made there are hundreds that don't get made so is there a script have you read it uh unofficially uh I'm not I'm not sure how much I'm even allowed to talk about this oh my gosh we've discovered something here okay did you write it are you allowed to say if you wrote it I I'm not gonna comment wow look what we've done here what I've seen was very encouraging the uh you know the this is just one of the hard-hitting uh you know information seeking arms of the Letterman podcast and what we uh what we strive to do here oh that's fantastic okay well uh you know everything that you've said here uh hey hey hey Mr Spielberg let's let's let's let's do this let's make that happen that sounds really really good let's even get to a place where we can talk about it how about that uh super super cool um now that being said you're still making music uh the first album out people can go to the Apple music to the Spotify um it's on I think it's you've even got it on YouTube I think broken heart insurance right you've got that you've that's the title of the of the album look up you look up Stephen young or Steve Young broken heart insurance I'm sure you'll find your way to it one problem I found and I I was not surprised by this there are quite a few people named Steve Young Who Make Music yep and then you find that your album has been assigned to some other Steve Young's body of work and then you have to file an official claim for disambiguation or whatever and then 6 months go by and and you're in a queue uh because apparently there must be people whose entire professional lives are just doing this numbing uh paperwork to fix these problems so some places have me as me some places have me as someone else all right I I've lost the ability to be agonized about that we were working on it but yes I'm out there I'm um it is I I cannot I I cannot thank you enough for uh what it is that you do for putting this stuff out there Steve um anything else to come is there anything else we want to plug Stevey youngworld domcom obviously uh broken heart insurance is the EP that you can get or the uh the album that you can get right now uh put into your devices it's it's it's fantastic um hilarious and heartfelt at the same time if that's if that's possible but it is um what else anything else that we want to you know talk about on this installment I think I'm going to put a bunch of my little short bits which have been on social media I think I'll put those on YouTube and anything under a minute gets categorized as a short yep so I'll probably have a whole portfolio of shorts but uh I'm happy with a bunch of those and there is the uh the new song called Dance Daddy which is not on Spotify and all that cuz it is so much a video project but that's on the Steve Young World YouTube channel if you haven't seen that's the word one right that's the word okay I think that's a fantastic way because you own this stuff that's a beautiful thing no no corporate Juggernaut uh can take your creative output I think we'll finish the uh the episode here by putting uh by putting dance Daddy on if that's okay with you that's one where the Wordle puzzle is owned by the New York Times and I was taking screenshots of this puzzle and I did do a little uh unofficial back Channel chatting with some people in the New York Times about are am I going to get sued if I put this out and they seemed Charmed by it and I got a quasi official assurance that I was not going to be given the cease and desist order so hopefully hopefully that will continue to exist yeah well we're going to test that uh we're going to test that theory right there um Steve thank you for your friendship thank you for uh oh you know what let's uh let's do our little plug for uh because I mean Irene will kill me if I don't if I if I do anything with you and don't mention her name she will absolutely uh kill me she has said that she would uh of course on on public record I even have a video of them you know what with with with Irene and rert I have a video of them in Greece we did a video call over the summer while they were spending time at her at her place in Greece and uh uh um your name came up during that as well so funny she has gone on record saying that she loves rert her little root beer loves him to death uh but would leave him in a second for Steve Young she adores you so so so much it's you know what deade campaign to ruin Rupert's life is finally come a fruition yeah he's had it nice for so long time to um it's you know what I just it just occurred to me um man it's a year ago today that we were at uh we were we were at Rupert's Rupert's going away thing it's a year ago today isn't that interesting um and uh you know it's funny the the the the new h Hello Deli fantastic good good on you guys for for for that and continuing the name whatnot but um yeah rert is just a guy you talk about the the world Stephen King uh in his in his uh Opus The Dark Tower they one of the one of the um um the major overarching premises in that book is the world has moved on and uh boy our you guys in your particular uh in the Letterman Universe whatnot you talk about the world has moved on that is a phrase that is certainly something that I'm certain you can all relate with um you know that Deli being open and rert and May and and whatnot they're just a they're a unique type of sunshine aren't they yes i' I've been quite uh amused and conceptually gleeful that uh years after the show ended uh here I am hanging out with rert at some Gathering or whatever just it it's wonderful but the whole thing about uh moving on yeah I've I'm not given to too many morbid thoughts but I have occasionally pondered that that if I'm lucky enough to live to a ripe old age and do enough other things maybe there will be an obituary that mentions several other things and then as a sort of throwaway also worked at the David Letterman show like I feel very happy if that was only one of several things that by the end added up to whatever it adds up to but yes I I felt that I don't want to just be an oldies act just talking about Letterman myself and you get a special pass because you weren't there and you get to be the Super Fan for me the super fan would be odd so I'm trying to be more uh broad-based well um and I appreciate where you're coming from when you say that but that being said I am very grateful for people like Nick for people like you for people who keep this Spirit Alive because I do believe it is a culture I do believe it is something that people um just have inside of them and and and it is it's it's it's it's it's the quirky it's the odd it's the hilarious um is also again attaching all that to heartfelt and you live you live it my friend so thank you for being the unique light in the world that you are I appreciate the hell out of you Steve thank you for taking time uh will not be the last time um but I'm so grateful for you thank you for for for appearing here again and thank you for all of the things that you do um to make the world a better place thank you Steve I appreciate wow um that's a heavy burden but uh I'm trying uh thank you for having me and letting me talk about my my odd what did we call it slag heap of project slag heap of content that you are creating yeah appreciate the the conversation and I love that we go from oh this silly thing that silly thing and suddenly we're talking about the art and the fear and the philosophy and the the what do you what's the point of your life and all that yes I love that you can be on a spectrum that slides so cleanly from the Absurd and and then down to the profound and all the points in between it's all related and uh and and I think that again that encapsulates everything that you guys uh ever did you could go from that spectrum and I think that's that that probably is formative stuff that when my cement was wet that skill came from the art that you guys made so thank you for that that's a nice metaphor yes one my submit wet I like that uh I appreciate the hall my friend I'll uh I'll do a really quick outro and we'll say bye privately thank you again for this um you know I just I can't express enough how grateful I am for uh for Steve Young for some of these people that I can now call friends uh you know this this this silly little thing called the Letterman podcast has become the thing that it has um and and and you know what the little side projects that are showing up because of it um and those are fun too but nothing nothing for me is more important than the friendships that have happened uh and and and as a result of this thing uh Stevey youngworld docomond one sponsor only at the Letterman podcast that is of course the aforementioned uh Rupert G hello- deli.com he may not own the deli anymore but you can still get official Late Show with David merchandise uh hats and mugs and shirts and all that kind of stuff at hellodd deli.com this has been another episode of the Letterman podcast with Mike Chisum coincidentally I am Mike Chisum thank you and good night hey big melty oh hello little melty so why did our faces start to melt well time weather pollution each made its harsh contribution yes it's an unkind blow that fate has dealt yeah our faces are a mess well I know people on the internet got short attention spans so I'll talk to you later big melty goodbye little