The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Jason Isbell Returns

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Jason Isbell is back! The musician (and now actor!) returns to “The Three Questions” to discuss “Killers of the Flower Moon,” how a crew member’s flatulence further proved the genius of Leonardo DiCaprio, loving his day job, and why he’s glad he didn’t get famous in his twenties.

Hi everybody, welcome back to The Three Questions. I'm your host, Andy Richter, and today I am talking to Jason Isbell. Jason is an incredible musician and now a movie star, and he is, if I may say, my first return guest to The Three Questions. This podcast, I always felt like it was a one-shot deal, but they said, Jason wants to come back on. I said, well, I can't say no to that. This past year, Jason was profiled in his own HBO documentary film, Jason Isbell, Running With Our Eyes Closed. He released a new album called Weather Veins, and he released the 10-year anniversary edition of his solo album, Southeastern. He also made his big-screen acting debut in the new Martin Scorsese film, Killers of the Flower Moon. Jason joined me via Zoom, and here is my second conversation

with the great, great Jason Isbell. Can't you tell my love's a- Well, here I am again with Jason Isbell. And Jason, this is an auspicious occasion for this podcast because this podcast is not really designed for repeats. You know, the whole notion of tell me about your story, tell me about where you're going, and now what have you learned about your story yeah i could you know it's like you don't come back on to go like oh i i have a different childhood to tell you about you know yeah you've done a lot of therapy in between episodes yeah yeah you unlocked a lot of repressed memories

or something yeah i just i just remembered. Have you? Have you? Because that would be great if you did. I don't think so. No, I think I pretty much had it all last time. Then somebody said that you wanted to come back on or it was pitched to you. I don't know. But I said, sure, yeah. I like it.

I would love to talk to Jason again. So this is the first time I've done that. And there have been a couple occasions where people wanted to come come back on and I said, no, no, there's nothing there. No more blood to be gotten from that turnip. No, but I just, and I mean, you know what I mean? I just wanted to talk to you and I figured we'd find something to fill out an hour. I just wanted to talk to you and I figured we'd find something to fill out an hour. Yeah. And also, too, to prep for this, because I do occasionally prep for these things.

I listened to our old one, which was interestingly enough, like right after all the January 6th inauguration shit. And we talked about that. And so it was just kind of interesting to hear us sort of laughing about that like what a clusterfuck what a bunch of bumbleheaded idiots and it's like oh no no no that's still very much with us yeah yeah it's still here they're still headed idiots yeah they had a significant act yes and and and they're far more sinister than we even kind of imagined, you know, because we found out that the real the sort of breadth of the just villainy, just the just the villainy of all these nice white folks. You know, that's the other thing, too. It's like they're that, you know, these are the nice white folks. These are the real Americans. And oh, yeah, they they were shitting on the floor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. real americans and oh yeah they they were shitting on the floor yeah yeah yeah nice nice you know

i've never seen anybody behave worse than a group of the nice white folks yeah it's you know you go overseas and you see them in england and as soon as the sun goes down they go from the most dignified people in the world to pissing on each other's feet in the streets yes yes yeah and you know it was that it was that way when i was a kid too it's like uh yeah the the redneck fights are are more just miserable to see than any kind of you know and then anything anything else there's no group of people that can make a bigger idiot out of themselves than nice, polite white people with their shirt tucked in. And I even like I think it was before I got off Twitter. I even noticed it was after they chose Mike Johnson.

Is that his name? The speaker. And he gave a press conference and they're all sitting there so smug. press conference and they're all sitting there so smug and there was that one older woman that when they said well what about you know the fact that you voted to you didn't vote to certify the election you voted against the certification of the legal upfront election and this woman just went shut up yeah like the dignity you know the the the decorum uh which they love to shove down other people's throats but like and i just was struck by these fuckers these are the worst of the whites just they're every fucking shitty woman at brunch talking crappy to a waiter there's their everybody you know who just thinks they're right when they just are wrong wrong wrong over and over and over every gas bag sitting at the bar that makes you go

let's go home you know yeah yeah uh and i and i just i just wonder like if you have theories as to like why there is something so toxic about their anger and their fights. You know, the best I can come up with is the idea that they have been taught to base their self-worth on something other than their actions. Yeah. I think that's a big part of the problem is, you know, when you're not judging, am I doing a good job as a human or not by your actions? You're judging it by who was my father?

How long have I lived here? You know, which land is mine? What is my last name? What school do my children go to? All these things that aren't, you know, the one real thing that matters. the one real thing that matters, then you get so defensive about that ego and that pride that you start to excuse your own behavior and you lose control of your patients because the way to build good decision-making is to judge yourself on your actions only. And so if you never do that, if you grow up thinking, I am worth my last name,

or I am worth the color of my skin, or I'm worth the house that I live in, you never practice being patient. You never practice being dignified. You only practice valuing yourself based on something you have no control over. Yeah, yeah. You know, and eventually that erodes. You get to the point where you think, well, I'm a, you know, Smith. I can say whatever I want to say. Right, right. Or, I'm a Smith. I can say whatever I want to say. Or I'm a white person.

I can say whatever I want to say. My family's been in control of this town or this acre or this house or whatever for so many generations. And it's my birthright. you know, it's my birthright. I, to me, the thing that always strikes me about it is, and it struck me about Donald Trump and I think why he resonates with so many people is that like, there's this kind of white daddy, John Wayne kind of, I don't, I don't follow the rules. I make the rules. And if I decide to break the rules, it's because I make the rules. And I don't, you know, reality is just what I say it is. You know, like I'm a good upstanding citizen. Are you really? You cheat on your taxes, you cheat on your wife. No, no, I'm a good upstanding citizen. And I, you know, because look at me, look at me. I got all the

trimmings of being a good upstanding citizen when it's like, no, you don't. And also the world you've created with your amazing competence, it's not working. You know, it's like it's not so great. It's not being run so well. It's not so perfect. It's not, you know, the things that you're doing are not taking care of everybody. Yeah, but I think the people he's getting with the con aren't necessarily the people who vote. I think what's putting him in the position of power are these leashes.

I think there are leash issues, and a lot of this I feel like sort of started with reagan i know it happened before but it really ramped up when the uh conservative political right figured out what they what they could use as a leash for the religious right and they said okay if you're the only guy that is for um you know pro-life uh you know the term the ridiculous time and we're all pretty pro-life or we'd be jumping off a fucking building right now but which some days doesn't see you know, the term, the ridiculous time. And we're all pretty pro-life or we'd be jumping off a fucking building right now. But which some days doesn't see, you know, I'm not always pro-life. Some days I'm against all of it. The whole thing.

But but if you're not pro-choice and the other candidates are, there's your leash. You can do or say anything because these people think if they don't vote for you, they're going to hell. They're going to get a pitchfork shoved up their ass for eternity you know with not so much as a coffee break and uh and that's really the long that's that that's the horrible con to me because after that they have to keep doubling down until they actually convince themselves that they like it yeah because you cannot vote to kill a baby. If you think you're killing a baby and you're going to hell, you can't hit that button, man.

It doesn't matter what else. He could come shit in your children's mouth, and you would have to vote for him. Because the other option is going to hell forever. Yeah. If we can't get those leashes. Back in a baby killer. Yeah. Yeah. If we can't get those leashes off of people's necks man then then we're just going to continue to get fucked by people who realize that they can keep pushing every other boundary you know yeah yeah yeah

because that's the thing you know it is you know for evangelicals to be for Donald Trump. And, you know, I mean, and you hear it, you see it, you see people, because I think I can see the evangelical rationale that you're talking about, which is, look, I know Donald Trump is certainly not, he does not have a sparkling, you know, clean reputation, or he has not, he does not live the life of an evangelical saint, but he's going to do all the things I want him to do. He's going to save those babies' lives. I can understand that calculation. But you're coming at that with a non-evangelical rationale. Yeah, I guess I am. Yeah. They have been taught not to say what you just said, Andy.

Yeah. They've been taught you don't eat off the tree of knowledge. There's a reason it was the tree of knowledge. They've been taught don't question those things. If you have to go one way, then you go all the way that one way, or else they'd do that with the Bible. If they would do that with Trump, they would look at the Bible and go, wait a minute, this doesn't make much sense to me.

So you can't start that'll crumble you start questioning you know you you have to just go full on you can't hedge any of your bets that's what i was starting what i was uh starting to say is that you do see like people online saying you know donald donald trump is he is like the most evangelical president we've ever had. He is the most Christian. Like they, again, they start making shit up. They start deciding what the reality is when, you know, anybody like that's, it's all. And it's, I think why it can feel so hopeless is because, and we talked about it little bit on on the past podcast look at donald

trump that's that's your like that's your boy your your paragon of competence of intelligence of honesty of you know purity like don't look at him at him. I'm looking at him and I see what I see. And it's like, oh, shit. How do you fight that? You know, I mean, how do you how do you fight people that that will force anything that crosses their radar into the box and fantasy of what they want it to be? Yeah. You got to go back in time. You know, you got to go back in time and make that bottom number the same. The common denominator is not the same anymore. And it never was for everybody. But, you know, you got to educate folks.

Yeah. And once they're 30, 40, 50 years old, it's too late. Yeah. You know, you got to teach them how to like stop doubling down and admit oh i was wrong about this guy look at this guy he's a fucking buffoon yeah you know or else they just keep on double you know it's like people gambling man you see the stupidest possible decisions if you show up two hours into their blackjack game and they're losing you they're doing things and you're going man you're splitting tens here there's absolutely no way you're getting your money back but they're

so far into it you just showed up at the end you know we're showing up at the end of these people's lives and saying why didn't you learn how to look at this guy and know what he really is. Yeah. That's because they have been trained to accept this for their whole life. And everybody around them has kept doubling down on this. You know? Yeah. If you're going to take pride in this, you're going to take pride in America and in our exceptionalism. And you're going to take pride in the fact that we run the world and we make the rules

and we're in control and we come first, you know, and you can't show up that late and say all of a sudden, you know, why are you not saying, seeing the same reality that I'm seeing? And one of the things that you said about your first marriage and that one of the reasons, you kind of said, I wasn't supposed to be married, but I had so much religious programming in my head. And you were raised in a Pentecostal church in the Church of Christ, which is pretty hardcore fundamentalist. I wonder if you'll talk a little bit about what that programming was like and when it started to come undone and where you are now in terms of questions of faith. Yeah. I've talked to my dad a lot about this recently because he was raised full on in the Pentecostal church. So he dressed differently than the other kids. They didn't take over-the-counter medication. He looked very different. And when he went to school, he looked very different. And just recently, I've sort of, because dad's always had labor-intensive jobs. Nobody's ever

really hired him for his mental acuity. yeah and it's mostly house house painting right was he house painting and he did maintenance at a hospital for a long time and uh uh and then he went back to house painting because uh he was working more than he wanted to he couldn't make it to all my ball games and school functions and stuff so he took a pay cut and went back to working with his dad, painting houses. And then eventually I hired him a few years ago because he, you know, he wasn't making a whole lot of money. And I was like, man, I'll pay you more than that to just come maintain our property. So that's what he does now. Yeah.

But we've talked a lot about the fact that, you know, when he was a kid, if there was a book report that you had to get up in front of the class and present, he would just take a zero. Even though he'd read the book, completely understood it, you know, had no problem turning in a written report. He couldn't get up in front of the other kids because he felt this sort of shame at being different. And he was different because of the obvious religious indoctrination, you know. And I think for his parents, it may have been more of a necessary tool, you know, because they came through the depression with a whole bunch of siblings. And I think they wound up with hammers and they needed, you know, screwdrivers. And so, you know, they taught their kids the thing that had worked for them.

And then my dad and my mom kind of, you know, looked at the situation, even though they were teenagers and said, we're not going to keep doing this. You know, I don't want him to feel different. It was just after this after your birth? Yeah, this is when I was a kid. Yeah. And dad and I talked about this about a week ago. Actually, we went to the SEC championship game in Atlanta and talked about it on the way. But, you know, he said that he made a conscious effort to not raise me as fundamentally, you know, Pentecostal

Christian as he had been raised because it was a source of shame for him to feel different in that way from everybody else. So when it was time for me to get up in front of people, I didn't mind. And it was kind of like baffling to my parents. I think the first time I ever did it was at like Opryland, the old theme park, country music theme park here in Nashville. And they wanted to volunteer. And I just ran up the stage and got on stage. And they're like, what the hell is this? Who is this kid? And I loved it. And I've always loved it since then. But that to me was a very significant decision that they made because it led to everything that's

happened in my life ever since then was there a crisis of conscience in that case like did they think they're going to go to hell because they're you know they're probably a little bit yeah probably a little bit i i don't think they think that now i think over the you know they were kids man they were sure 19 and 17 yeah yeah so so i think at the, you know, they were kids, man. They were 19 and 17. 17, yeah. Yeah. So, I think at the time, yeah, they probably felt pretty guilty about that. But they cared more about me than they cared about themselves, you know.

And over time, I think they realized that, oh, yeah, we're not raising a demonically possessed sinful child. He's making a joyful noise in one way or another, you know. Yeah. As far as like my particular religious beliefs now, you know, I don't really think it matters all that much. It's kind of the thing where, you know, if there's a God or if there's not a God, I still have to get up and put on my pants. You know, still have to take a shower and have some coffee and go to the gym and, you know, work on a song or go do my Christmas shopping or whatever. So, yeah, I don't really confirm or deny, but it's not something that I, uh, use to make my day-to-day judgments at all.

You know, cause I just, I just don't understand how, you know, you could do your best your whole life and try to be fair with people and try to be honest with people because you think it's the way you should be and not because of some reward in the afterlife. Yeah, yeah. Some quid pro quo. Yeah. Yeah. And then you get to the gates of heaven and St. Peter or whoever's like, yeah, I mean, you did everything on paper, but you didn't believe that we were here. So you have to go to hell.

I can't buy that. I think you should do it because it is the right thing to do, not because you're going to get a whole bunch of stuff in the next life. Right. But I have a lot to be grateful for in this life. So I can understand how somebody who is just suffering through their whole existence would turn to religion, like some of the AME church, the Southern Baptist black churches. I had a lot of friends that went to church there, and I went to those churches some myself as a guest. And it was very moved because I think a lot of people, you know, they need that hammer because it keeps them alive and it keeps them hopeful.

And for some folks, there's not much to look forward to in this life. You know, I got lucky that way. Yeah, yeah. Can't you tell my love's a crow? Is there still, because there is, you know, you talked about kind of the transactional nature of a lot of like the basic notion of religion and especially Christianity. Are there vestiges of that in you like do you still have a little bit of you that worries like i'm gonna get like saint peter's gonna go sorry jason you didn't you we told you you know you gotta say the words you gotta you know do the thing and then you see you know i don't know. You see Donald Trump saunter in right past you. He's walking past me. Yeah, yeah.

Like, right this way, sir. Yeah. I was wrong. Yeah. No, you know, I think I've gotten all that out. But there is, to speak to that on a different level, there are motivations within me that could have only come from that kind of fear as a child. You know, there's a determination, and there's also the idea of, you know, the firm idea of what's right and what's wrong that I think built from there.

You know, start with all that hardcore Christianity, do a bunch of fucking therapy, you wind up here you know um because i kept the parts of it that served me well and that was this sort of like concrete idea of right and wrong and so i'm decisive and um if i if i make a choice i usually accept that it's the right choice you know it's the ones that i don't make that get me in trouble. When you look around and go, how did I get here? How did my life wind up like this? You know, right.

And I think I do owe a lot of that in my nature to being raised in that way. I think I've kept that, you know. Yeah. And also, man, I have a vast just. Yeah. And also, man, I have a vast just I don't even know if it's appreciation is the right word, but it is really kind of a miracle or about as close to a miracle as you could get. You know that a bunch of people come up with all these different religions that became so incredibly popular and worked so well for so many things. I mean, if what you're looking to do is get people to follow you, holy shit, what a maneuver. What a book.

What a collection. Like, what the fuck? It's like they were all Taylor Swift and Beyonce, every single one of them. They were that good at making something that people wanted to consume and become obsessed with. And, I mean's if you want to hold yourself to a standard as a as a creative person those fuckers knocked it out of the park man because we're still sitting here talking about that shit right now it's amazing yeah i think you

know i'm sure that at some point science is going to understand what it is about the human brain and the way the human brain works that makes you come up with the notion of God. Like what, what exactly what that process is, because every human on the planet has done it. Like there's no sort of like agnostic island, island of people that are just like, well, we don't think about it much you know we just sort of like we get fish from the ocean and and coconuts and you know and we live our lives and like everybody has i mean there's obviously this need this very primary primal need to explain things and to feel like uh you're more than just uh prey you know you're more than just a prey, you know, you're more than just an animal waiting to get eaten. And so, and we have big brains that like stories.

We make them up, you know? Um, but yeah, you're right there. There is something, you know, I've never felt a real, I was, I was involved in, uh, in the Protestant church. We went to a bunch we went to whatever protestant church was closest yeah but i ended up as i got into my teen years being very involved uh with the congregational church in our town which is a very very it was part of the um part of the united church of, which also has a lot of like Unitarian Universalist churches, which are the most sort of like whatever you believe is cool with us. Loosey-goosey.

Yeah. And ours was pretty loosey-goosey. I mean, there were people within our church that weren't so loosey-goosey. But generally speaking, we had a minister, and it was all connected to this minister we had, Larry rees ash who was just a very inspirational wonderful amazing man and and when he was gone i was gone kind of yeah um but i never felt any kind of like religious conviction you know like i uh but but i do find myself feeling like well i gotta know all these jesus stories I got to know all these Jesus stories. Like I got to know all these Jesus stories so I can understand the culture of the Western

world that I live in, you know? Yeah. Just the canon of literature and music. And, you know, it's a reference everywhere. I couldn't possibly keep it out of my songs if I tried. Yeah. Yeah. It's everywhere.

I couldn't possibly keep it out of my songs if I tried. Yeah, yeah. But I think at the risk of sounding like the biggest blowhard that's ever lived, I think it's grief. I think God is grief. I think that we needed a way because survival caused us to stick together. And evolving into a species that would survive and multiply made us love each other. And then when somebody died, we had to figure something out. We couldn't just sit there and think they're gone. It just hurt too much.

And we wouldn't get up and we wouldn't go survive more and multiply more. Or see them again. Yeah, yeah. Or even imagine that they're going back to nature, that they're going into the stars, or that they're blasting off to another universe. We had to have something because they can't just be gone. And to me, the idea that they're just gone, not that I i 100 believe this but it's comforting to me you know i think well that's that they're done yeah and when i'm gone i'll be done too so i don't care

what you say about me or what happens to my money or my guitars or my legacy or i won't be here it sounds kind of awesome you know i'm i'm. I'm right there with you. Anytime anybody has ever talked to me about estate issues, I'm like, I don't give a shit. It's the same thing. I have it written down that I want to be cremated and dumped into moving water because I just feel it's a waste of real estate to put me in the ground and then not be able to use that land for something else. I would clarify the moving water part.

Yes, right. I don't want it to be a pond. There's a lot of moving water out there. Listen, honestly, flush down the toilet, I don't give a shit. And that's what I've said. Like, I think I had a conversation with my son about it where I was like you know but you can do whatever you want with me you can stuff me and keep me in the corner i don't care i don't give a shit it won't matter to me you know yeah yeah yeah but that changes when you think about for me at least it changes when i think

about you know my mom or my daughter yeah you know that know, it's like for me, yeah, sure, I'll be gone. But it's hard for me to imagine that whatever that is, that's not their body, that's not their physical body, whatever it is that makes my daughter her will one day just not be anywhere. That, I need a God for that. Yeah. You know, I start feeling like, okay, well, somebody's got to be right. Let's pick the best one, you know.

And it's really hard to hold that line when it comes to somebody you care about that much, you know. And I know it's just an old part of my cave brain telling me that that's my job is to feel that way about other people, you know. So, it gets complicated. I other people, you know. So it gets complicated. I think love, you know, I mean, really, when they say God is love, that comes right down to that, you know. You love people so you can all survive, and then you need to build a God out of that love so you have something to tell yourself for when they're gone.

Yeah. Are you susceptible to that whole, well, don't you want your child to know a little bit, you know, to have some sort of religious structure in their life? Because that was something I always got. And my ex-wife, you know, she was from a very Catholic family. And I think there was some of that about, you know, she one time her mother came to visit us when my son was tiny and was taking him out. She's like taking him out for suspiciously long walks. And she said, I'm afraid that she's getting him baptized. And I was like, she can baptize him 13 times a day. I don't care. You know, whatever.

But there was that pressure of like, or that notion of, well, aren't you going to take him and give him at least a little taste of it? And I just always felt like, no. Maybe to understand other people, you know, maybe from a sociological viewpoint, you know, like I'll probably give her Reza Aslan's books at some point, you know. I'd like you to know about jesus honey like historically historically right right jesus yeah yeah um you know but also if she gets that if she finds it on her own maybe it gets her through a little period of time when she would have been in danger otherwise you know yeah um and and if somebody else in her life shows her that you know you just have to watch you just have to know your life shows her that, you know, you just have to watch.

You just have to know your kids. So it's like, you know, well, you know, keep them from joining a cult and keep them from feeling so guilty all the damn time because it's already we're already feeling guilty just for taking up space, you know. Yeah. But I think, you know, it's good to know what all these people are talking about and why they're all going to the same building every Sunday and most Wednesday nights and stuff. But, you know, I think the only thing that really counts is this sort of firm foundation of your identity. you know when you're when you're really little like one to five if if people are telling you hey you're you're valuable uh then you're going to be fine and if they're not then you're fucked and that's it yeah you know well one thing that's changed since the last time you were here is uh you weren't a big a movie star back then i was not yet you're now a big movie star you know you're in oh how do you feel about that i mean i feel great i imagine it's got to be pretty damn fun it's amazing um yeah uh because of

the you know the scorsese movie uh killers of the flower moon um it was this was a wild thing to be involved in because i didn't so we were in the middle of the, of the lockdown and we couldn't tour. And I just told my agent at William Morris, I would like to try to be in a show or a movie. If somebody is doing something good, maybe I can get a small part. And so he went down the hall to Alex. I've said that so much to them and it just, I've never been in a Scorsese movie. I don't know what you got that i don't it's the accent is that what it is it's the accent i realized it when i got on set they

had this guy who was the dialect coach and this man was a genius you know this man is like in his 70s you know gucci track suit walking cane you, bopping around the set, going over. Most of his time was spent telling De Niro how to pronounce the letter I in the way a Southerner would pronounce the letter I. That was the biggest part of his job. But the first day I got there, they cut my hair, they picked out my costumes, and they sent me to this dialect coach. And this man had been the dialect coach on the film Gangs of New York. Now, the two people that I know in my life who've had the hardest jobs in my mind were this guy being the dialect coach of Gangs of New York and my buddy

Gabe, who used to be Kanye West's publicist. Those are the two people that I know that have had the most difficult job. But we sat down and he said, you just talk like you talk. I don't have any notes for you. And I was like, now I know why I got this role. So Alex at WME got me an audition. And Ellen, who's been casting movies for Marty for a long, long time, knew my music and gave me a shot. And initially it was going to be a smaller role, like a cameo type role.

And I just did a bunch of work. I went back and read the source material and I studied all the characters and what had happened to them, found all the information I could find. And I went and watched David, who wrote Killers of the Flower Moon. I watched all of his Library of Congress readings and Q&As and got all the information on the story that I could possibly get and told Ellen, you know, if there's a bigger part, I would like to try to get that. And because I was excited at this point, the story is such an incredible thing to help tell, because it's something we should have already known.

And you're also still that same kid that ran up to the stage at Opryland. Yeah, you're damn right. Yeah, I was like, I'm the guy. I'm the guy. Even when I'm not, I'm like, I'm the guy. And like I told my wife, Amanda, I said, it's like playing bass for the Beatles. Because I'm not a bass player, but I can play the bass. And they already have Paul.

I have no idea why they've asked me to do it, but I'm not going to say no. So here I am playing bass for the Beatles. And I might even ask for a solo. Yeah, oh yeah. After a few days, I'll slap something out there. It took a while for me to get comfortable. What really did it was the night. There's one scene with me and DiCaprio where we're kind of in each other's faces.

And we're in the living room at my character's house, Bill Smith's house. And we'd been going back and forth for hours, you know, riffing, just basically saying, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kick your ass and going back and forth and every variation of that. And you could hear Marty laughing from the other room, watching his screens, you know. And it was in a tiny room. It was in the actual house in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, or Fairfax, Oklahoma. And so the house was 120 years old, and it was small. And we were, you know, the camera crew, there's 30 crew people all crowded and jammed in, like holding cameras and boom mics and stuff and and leo and

i are like nose to nose and somebody on the crew farted and it was one of those where you know you could tell by the sound of it that they had lost this great battle like they had you know done everything he could do to keep it in. And you could just hear it. It's a fart that inspires sympathy. It does. It's just like, oh, man. Oh, God. Yeah.

So I start laughing because it's funny when someone farts. Of course. And Leonardo DiCaprio starts laughing because it's funny when somebody farts. DiCaprio starts laughing because it's funny when somebody farts, but nobody on the crew later on, I was calling it farticus because nobody made a sound or turned their head. I was like, I am farticus. I am farticus. The most professional people in the world, you know? So the only sound is the fart of great loss. And then me and Leonardo DiCaprio laughing. And in my head, I thought, oh, that's a blooper reel. Now we're laughing at something.

We're no longer in the scene. And Leo put the laugh right into character and continued with the scene. And all of a sudden, he was laughing at Bill and not laughing with me. And all of a sudden he was laughing at Bill and not laughing with me. Yeah. And I thought, oh, shit, that's why, you know, one of us has a best actor Oscar and the other one is me because I just got out and gone. But that was the night when everything really got comfortable for me. You know, because I felt like I did a good job and I felt like I belonged there after that.

And it was fine. But up until that point, man, I was fucking scared. I was just like, I don't know what to do. How do I do this? Yeah, that's what I was going to say, because I, you know, I mean, I'm not a deeply trained actor. I'm a practiced actor. And I still, you know, if I don't do anything for a while and I come back, I feel like I don't really know how to do this. And the only thing I come back with is, well, you know how to lie. You know, you know how to like say something that isn't true and try and give it all the window dressing of something that is true.

You know, like whether it's a prank or whether it's a joke or whether you're, you know, trying to get out of something that is true, you know, like whether it's a prank or whether it's a joke or whether you're, you know, trying to get out of something. And so it, for me, you know, acting to me is like a lot of it. It's just like, like, I'm not this guy. And I don't really feel like, you know, like the, you know, if it's a restaurant scene, you know, like, you know, the chicken's overcooked. It's like, I don't, that's how I'm going to, but I'm going to say this like a person as if I was experiencing overcooked chicken. And is that sort of, I mean, is that what you were going with? I mean, what did, were you just like, you just scared and just doing whatever? I was very scared.

Like at first I was just scared and doing what everybody told me. But when I finally got sort of a foothold, it was when I realized that turning off all self-awareness was the trick for me. Just doing things and not being anything. Because like, you know, you probably have this constant like tally rolling in your brain of like, you know, what is my spatial relationship to my soul like what am i doing what am i thinking who am i being and turning all that off and just you know you pick up the pistol and you open the door and you step out onto the porch you know and eventually i sort of became the character when I could do that. Now I'm not good at it. I haven't practiced it a lot,

but yeah, I asked Lyle Lovett before I went, um, what to do. Cause he'd been in all those, all those great, uh, uh,

Altman movies, you know, he was in quite a few and he was always fantastic. Um, and I asked him and he said, well, he said, Bob Altman told me right before I went out to the, right before they said action on the first scene that I was in, he said, Bob, he said, Bob Altman told me right before I went out to,

right before they said action on the first scene that I was in, he said, Bob came up and whispered in my ear, don't act. And that was it. That was the only advice he gave him. And so Lyle said, so that's what I'll tell you. Don't act, you know? And it was like, just completely eliminate. I am not acting right now. Yeah.

I'm not acting. I'm driving a car. I'm riding a horse. I'm talking to my wife. Whatever you're doing, you're just doing that. So really, it was kind of an exercise in process and awareness for me. And I watched like watching Lily Gladstone, when she was supposed to be upset on cue, there was no acting. It was just like every terrible thing that had ever happened in her life was right here next to her face. Yeah, yeah. And she just opened that door and boom, you know.

And I asked her about that. I was like, no wonder you people are all insane because you just have to keep this catalog of misery. Yes. Right there at all times. I was so impressed, so impressed by that. It also really, I think, that kind of performing is somebody that's that good. There's something a little scary to it, too. It's unnerving.

It's like you said. It's like looking at a crazy person. It's like you said, it's like looking at a crazy person because and because for me, it really because like you said, she's not acting upset. She is upset. Yeah. So it's real, but it's not real. And the line between what's what's real and what isn't, it gets really muddy and murky. And it and it can't be good for you for your personal life not at all good for your personal life and i think i think that uh the way marty makes a movie i think he he orchestrates that also yeah because like sturgill and i've been friends for a long time right that's what i was gonna say there were a lot of musicians in this movie sturgill simpson was in it and pete yorn

and terry all right right yeah quite and but but sturgill and was in it. Pete Yorn and Terry Allen. Jack White. But Sturgill and I didn't see each other until our last day. Every time when I'm going home, he's headed to set. When he's headed to set, I'm going home. And after that happened about four or five times, we were like, I think somebody is planning

this. I think the governor's making this happen. I think it was that way in a lot of cases because like the the the women who all played the osage sisters you know they spent a lot of time together and and you know some of it voluntarily some of it just seemed like it just happened oh look who i'm in a room with again it's like now that motherfucker over there is is guiding us around. Yeah. Yeah. To great to great effect.

You know, Sturgill and I weren't friends in the movie, you know, so we weren't friends on the set. I mean, yeah, it's just and I understand how that probably you talk about a couple, you know, forming on a movie set. That makes sense to me. Oh, because the good good directors they put you together with people that are you're gonna have chemistry that you can't create you know and and it's just gonna be obvious on stage and uh or or on on on screen and so yeah those things start to get in your head man it it makes sense yeah does it make you want to do more? This story, the way it was told, the way it all turned out, I would like to do that again.

As far as just acting, that's a lot of work, man. Those days are long. There's a lot of sitting around, too. I mean, I know there's like musicians sitting around but acting sitting around i think is yeah it's it's another level of hurry up and wait yeah yeah but yeah i think i will probably do it again um but i just i really love my day job i still i love it more and more and more the older i get and and the more songs we get to choose from to play live and the tighter the band gets and the more we get used to each other. And I just really love my day job. Yeah. Did you find that the kind of efficacy of forgetting yourself and just existing in the moment, is that something, do you feel that in

music too? Because that seems to me like, because I completely relate to what you're saying. Don't act. Just if you're going to be crossing the room, don't be like, I'm crossing the room. Just cross the room. Yeah. And that is like, if you can manage to do that in your regular life too, you're going to, you know, it's good. It's good to do that. It's good to like not be telling your own story all the time yeah and always be kind of thinking like how do i seem what do i look like what's going on

just do it you know experience your life yeah and does that happen on stage with music too i mean is it something is there a difference between a good show and a bad show that involves that kind of energy they're they're they're uh first of all i don't know what a bad show is all right i'm sorry i don't know what a bad i didn't mean to insult you or anything i mean all right let's just say other people yeah when other people have a bad show um no there is i have had bad shows it's been a while uh but i have had bad shows but um there's a thing that it really made me think about this a lot. If I can't remember the next lyric in a song, most of the time, like eight, nine times out of ten,

if I just open my mouth and start sending sound out of my mouth, it will be the correct lyrics. They will come out. It's kind of like when you leave a grocery store and you don't remember where you parked your car so you just stop thinking about it and start walking i'll just walk right to my car you know there's something in my brain that's in the unconscious that registers these things and um the way we do our shows um like i ran into uh phineas billy alice brother phineas and we were talking about you know they have to play essentially the same show every night um uh because they're huge pop stars and people want to hear things a certain way and they got all these triggers and all these

lights and all this stuff and it's all kind of programmed i mean a lot of it programmed yeah yeah um but we improvise a bunch. We improvise a whole lot. Like, I don't play the same guitar solos from night to night. That improvisational thing, you know, that is all about flow state. You know? Yeah. It's all about just not judging what you're doing.

Yeah. And going with it. And it's kind of the old hippie thing, the old Grateful Dead thing. And we do it within the frame of three or four or five minute songs. Like I'm not going to get up there and jam all night. But if I have eight bars. Thank you for that, by the way. You're welcome.

You're very welcome. If I have eight bars to play a solo, I'm going to try to do something different every single night. And to do that, you've got to stop judging yourself. Yeah. You have to immediately say, I'm going to try to do something different every single night. And to do that, you've got to stop judging yourself. You have to immediately say, I'm not judging this, I'm just doing this. And that's a real trick that I've learned songwriting-wise that's probably helped me more than anything over the last 20 years is how to not judge yourself until it's time to judge yourself. The first time you're writing, don't do anything that slows you down.

Don't look for connections. Don't try to write to the ending. Just make people, make characters and follow them around. And then later on, you can go back and judge it as hard as you want when you're editing it. But I think that was the thing. It's like doing half of a songwriter's job when you're acting because you're doing the part where you're not judging yourself. You're just being and you're just creating constantly.

And then you're expecting, you know, Marty and Thelma Schoonmaker to edit it, which they do a pretty good job. They sure do. Yeah. But if you trust them and the way they're going to make you look and sound and appear, then, you know, there's no you don't have to judge at all. You just be just do things over and over and over. Do things.

Yeah. Can't you tell my love's a crow? Well, another thing that's new that I would be remiss if I didn't talk about is your beautiful new teeth. Oh, thank you, Andy. Yeah, yeah. Tell me about that because I've read so much shit online about your teeth. Really? People are interested.

They are interested. I mean, and this is after the movie, right? Yes. You got fixed after the movie. Yeah, the movie I had my real cowboy teeth. Do you think if you got them fixed before, you wouldn't have gotten to be in the movie right you get it yes they got fixed after the movie yeah the movie i had my real cowboy teeth do you think if they you got them fixed before you wouldn't have gotten to be in the movie i might have had to wear prosthetic teeth that looked like my old teeth because that's leo had on prosthetic teeth really yeah yeah so i might they may have made me wear prosthetic

teeth and that was i was thinking i'll just make sure and wait until all this is over because you know people didn't have perfectly straight pearly whites in 1924 in Oklahoma. They sure didn't. Yeah. fall in love with a toothache uh which which is you know and i mean it's meant to say how you know the minuscule can affect the sublime um and i and i do know because i mean haven't had teeth issues or whatever throughout like is how why did it take you so long to get it i mean you know you probably got dental uh yeah not that kind of dental not that no no no i'm sag after they ain't covering that um but uh you know honestly this was the first time since i

could afford it when i'd had a long enough period of time to recover from it oh really how long and how long was that it well i didn't know how long it was going to take. It took a couple weeks, really, to get to the point to where I felt almost normal again. But I don't take painkillers. Yeah. So I still can't feel part of my chin. They had to do like a nerve block. But the first surgery was eight hours. The second surgery was six.

My shit was fucked. Yeah, they pulled like 12 or 13 teeth. My wisdom teeth were still in there. One of them was pushing on my trigeminal nerve and causing me severe neuralgia pain in my face. Um, and then I had tons of infection in my gums, like periodontal disease. And it was going up into my sinuses. Oh yeah. And I didn't know this. Like I went to a dentist here in Nashville, and they said, well, we can give you Invisalign. Everything else looks pretty much okay.

But that did not turn out to be the case. When I got out to California, Dr. Sayans, he was like, oh, yeah, this is going to take a lot of work. And sure enough, they said it was their most challenging job of the year um wow it it was you should be proud of that yeah i was actually i was like that's right i'm from how many people from alabama come in here my friend because i had some roll tide teeth but uh but i'm i'm so glad it's so much easier to sing now is it yeah the higher range the falsetto and uh you know no not really because you know people say that like they say uh freddie mercury

uh wouldn't get his teeth fixed because he thought it would affect his singing voice i think uh he it was a different reason i think freddie mercury wouldn't get his teeth fixed because he thought it would affect his singing voice. I think it was a different reason. I think Freddie Mercury wouldn't get his teeth fixed because he didn't want to have to go in and give a bunch of medical information to people in the UK who might've made that public. Because there's a lot of things he didn't want people to know about himself. For me, man, it... And yeah, it might've been a concern if I'd gone to somebody who did it in one or two days and did it for 10 grand. And it was like the cheapest, quickest. But I went to the best person I could possibly find, and they took their time. And so I wasn't worried about it.

But I really didn't expect it to be so much easier like when i sang cover me up on uh colbert that was the first time i'd really sang that song since i'd had the teeth fixed replaced and it was so much easier i think just because the infection in my sinuses i was having to push through so much shit just to get the notes there you know um but i'm i'm very very happy with happy with it. That's great. That's great. I mean, and I mean, do the people around you notice, like, is there a noticeable difference in your carriage? Yeah, I think I smile more. So people think I'm nicer, uh, which could be a good thing and a bad thing. What are you, are you smiling because you got pretty teeth to show off and you were self-conscious or are you smiling more? You're not in pain you know yeah it's a little bit of both i think you know you

don't necessarily realize how much pain you're in until somebody relieves it and then you're like oh shit that hurt really bad like yeah yeah i mean i'm not supposed to just always have a headache because like when you know when i was drinking back in the old days like if i woke up now feeling like i will you know feeling like i felt every single morning 15 years ago i would think i was fucking dying yeah you know i would call a man i would think that i had cancer and that cancer had aids and i would call a fucking medevac immediately you know but you know but then i was like oh yeah this is just how i feel i think you get

you don't necessarily get used to it but you get accustomed to it yeah yeah do you feel i mean because i you know from when we talked i guess it was in 2021 it was you know two and a half years ago something like that um i feel like there is a a much like you loom larger in the public consciousness now than you used to like i think a big year yeah i think that you know before you were you know you were a very well-known americana artist but that's you know that's like saying you know a very famous square dancer yeah the most popular shih tzu yeah and i mean and and i mean how do you i mean do you feel like it was just kind of a natural thing was there something that was there like a publicist push or was it just kind of a natural

evolution of things and and how does it make you feel well i think it all of it was owed to the to the fine people at the oreo company who are on this call silently right now um no the truth of it is it was a natural thing it was you know i made a record that was really good that that was the best that i could do and i produced it myself and we tried really hard and uh and then you know i was also in a movie that was a really fucking amazing thing and a huge deal and that documentary came out on hbo um you know all these things sort of lined up uh also the fact that cover me up uh the song has become sort of a part of the the canon you know so many people have covered it and stuff that that's become a big part of it the guy i can't remember his name

morgan wallen he covered it on his record and and uh you know i think all these things just sort of happened at the same time uh the 10-year anniversary of south eastern album um you know everything just sort of converged in a natural way um and i'm okay with it you know uh it it serves my purpose which is just to keep doing my job and keep being able to travel comfortably and you know take care of my family and and have good gear and you know take care of my band and my crew and all this um it's not necessarily something that i had aimed for uh but i'm i'm okay with it and i enjoy it once i've you know once i've accepted that it's happening then i'm gonna try to figure out ways to have fun with it um yeah you know so i but I'm 44 and I've been sober for almost 12 years.

So, you know, if I can't handle that shit, nobody can. I mean, it's really, it's not that big a deal, you know?

Yeah. It's all very, very positive. And, and it also gives me the opportunity to do things that I couldn't do otherwise. Like, you know,

now if, if I pick all of our openers and now when I bring an opening act out, I think the audience knows to show up early and pay attention. They treat them well. And sometimes that really helps people find an audience of their own, you know? Yeah. And then sometimes I just pick the people that I love the most, like Amy Mann. She's doing a couple of big shows for us in a couple of months.

You know, that's just for me. That's like, she's got plenty of an audience, but I just want to hear her sing again. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's always nice. I mean, that's anybody that does it sort of like take, take success and fame and leverage and angle it into just being like spending more time with their friends is doing it wrong. You know, that, you know, cause that's, that's the whole key. It's like, if you're, you know,

if you, if it starts working, like that means, okay, well now the party can really begin, you know, and if you, if you do something other else with it or start, you know, getting high on your own supply, as they say, then you're sort of missing out on the the point of it all oh yeah yeah luckily you know that kind of thing didn't really happen to me until i was pretty much fully grown and i'd been in therapy for a long time so it's kind of easier you know if i was 18 or 19 man like i don't know i was at an event a couple of weeks ago, the GQ party. My best friend runs GQ magazine. He didn't when we met. We've been friends for a long time. But, you know, Olivia Rodrigo was there and, you know, it's just she's just like an adult.

She's just fine. You know, she wasn't like drinking. She wasn't she was just being nice and hanging out and saying very normal things. And I was thinking, man, when I was that age, if I had been one-tenth of as popular as her, they would have been scraping me off the fucking ceiling of this place. I would have been a disaster. I would have burned this place to the ground with my own ego. So I'm always impressed when somebody that age handles it well because it's like, I i'm i'm in my

40s what are they what are they gonna do you know i still gotta go get my fucking colonoscopy and you know it's like it's hard to get too full of yourself when you got a camera going up your ass well you know unless you you know what's on the screen is magical. Of course. If there's diamonds and rainbows. I always knew it. I always knew that's what was in my ass. There's magic in me. Well, Jason, thank you so much for doing this again.

And it was such a joy to talk to you. And this hour just flew by. For me, too. Thank you. Sure. And I'm so happy that, you know, you're that, that you are enjoying all this, all this stuff. And, and I do feel like it's not, you know, like if anybody can handle it with grace and aplomb, it's you. And, and so, you know, I look forward to just everybody getting to know who you are and finding out

the stuff that you really do, the music, you know? Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you, Andy. And I'm honored to be honored to be your first repeat customer. That's a big deal. Thank you. Thank you.

I, uh, it, it, it was good. I was a little worried cause I felt, cause like I say, when I listened to the first one, I was like, I was a pretty good one. It was a good one. We covered a lot of ground we did and I and I so I was like oh shit what am I gonna talk about but you know we both have the gift of gab well you can talk that we can do yeah uh love to everybody on your side of the world same to you and thank you and thank you all for listening and uh I'll be back next week. and Jeff Ross. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, with assistance from Maddie Ogden. Research by Alyssa Grahl. Don't forget to rate and review and subscribe to The Three Questions

with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts. And do you have a favorite question you always like to ask people? Let us know in the review section. Can't you tell my love's a-growing? Can't you feel it ain't a-showing? Oh, you must be a-knowing. I've got a big, big love. This has been a Team Coco production.