Hurry up, just take that round And this big-ass push, we say, no you can't Hey, I'm in the band Would it be so hard for you to understand That I've got work to do, you better let me in, man Cause I'm in the band Hello, world. This is Chris Abalo's Podcast Experiment, and I am Chris Abalo. Welcome to the show, coming to you live from Skid Row Studios in downtown Los Angeles. Of course, broadcasting live every Monday night at 9 p.m. Pacific time at skidrowstudios.com. And as always, this podcast is brought to you by Audible.com, the internet's leading provider of digital audiobooks with over 180,000 titles to choose from. They have everything you could be looking for, titles across all genres. And for you. For you. Viewers. And guests. And listeners of CAPE. Audible is offering you a free audiobook and a free 30-day trial so you can try out their service. All you have to do is go to audibletrial.com slash CAPE and get yourself a free audiobook and try out their service for 30 days. 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So make sure to subscribe on all platforms and check out everything every week. Had a little surprising moment that I didn't expect when I was driving here tonight, where a car pulled out in front of me. First of all, before even leaving, don't mind me. I'm not good at transitions. You probably figured that out. That's quite all right. I've known you long enough. That's true. Very true. It was 7 o'clock and I didn't even realize it because it was still light out. And you figure like, oh man, I can't believe it. It's so, oh my God, 7 o'clock. It's two hours until the show. How did it get so late? Because there's going to be a point where I'm going to get to the studio and still going to be light out to do the show for a nighttime show. And it just, it throws me off. Maybe only one show. Maybe. Really? Maybe. I'm thinking it's going to be in like two weeks and then it's going to taper off. Next week would be the solstice, you know? Is it? It's usually the 21st or 22nd, something like that. Oh. Yeah. See, now I'm going to have to keep an eye out for the 22nd. Keep an eye out. Next week. I will. Well, I'll forget between now and then. Okay. No worries. But yeah, I had a moment kind of where I unexpectedly freaked out on my way here, which was a car pulled in front of me onto the 5, which I took to get here. And I kind of had a moment where I was like, because it was the same color and model as the car an ex-girlfriend of mine used to drive. So for a brief moment, I had that, she's here. No chance she's out here. Almost, less than 0% chance she's out here in California. Maybe she's watching right now. Probably not. I'm going to go out on a limb and say probably not. But if she's out here, she's probably trying to kill you with her car. Or she's trying to cut me off. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. But for that, like, it's a ludicrous thought. And it's been years. I've had a kiss with an ex from years ago. And I still just thought, but then it's like, no, it can't be her. There's no way. But it's just the fact that I even had that thought. That's nuts. You know what's not nuts? Cock-eyed optimist. That's how you do a transition. Guest tonight in the studio. Minus one. Please welcome, of course. Yeah, minus one. He's going to be here shortly. But for now, please welcome Cinda, Sean, and Nick from Cock-Eyed Optimist. Thank you, sir. Thank you. We're expecting Eric shortly. Yes. Something of a long history. With portions of the band. Yeah. Totally. Do you remember our first, the first time we made contact? Not to give it a sexual undertone. Without the, by the way, to my family who's eventually going to watch this, TV 14. TV 14. At least. At least. Yeah. I actually thought about it when we had finally put this whole thing together of like, what was the first time that I actually met Chris? And I remembered. Okay. It was. It was in front of the Artists and Career Services office at Musicians Institute in Hollywood. We got there early in the morning. And by early in the morning, I mean very early in the morning. And I was there at like 4.30 and there was already a kid who had been there for two hours. We were signing up for the Paul Gilbert private lessons. Yes. Wow. And I just, and it's funny to me because I was doing even more thinking about it and realizing like, Paul Gilbert's kind of like a guy who's been there for two hours. And I was like, I'm going to make the connection here. Yeah. Is that we met through signing up for his lessons. And then Eric, who I actually known through one of Paul's message boards back years ago. I got to know him through that. And first time I met him was at MI for a concert that Paul was a guest on. So it's just very crazy how this man that, you know, eventually kicked me in once I got into college. To really like get my guitar playing up to snuff. Like really has kind of put this. So Paul, if you're out there, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I didn't even know this story. Yeah. Paul Gilbert's the reason I came to California. The first place to go to Musicians Institute. Yes. He's like the fulcrum. Is that what appropriate is? It's like the center of our collective universe. I guess so. I guess I got to get. You could say nexus or fulcrum or. Nexus, fulcrum. I don't know. Crossroads. That's not really right. No. I don't know. Maybe he's the devil at our crossroads. Maybe. Could he? I don't know. I mean, he seems like a really nice guy, but you never know. Well, I mean, I feel like he would be more how in Tenacious D they play the devil away by playing the best song ever. I feel like Paul Gilbert would be more that, you know. I'd be playing the devil way or the devil. The devil goes away because Paul is so awesome at playing guitar. If anybody could. Yeah. He probably. Silence the devil. I'm. I'm pretty sure it'd be Paul Gilbert. I would. I would have to agree with that. Hopefully. So, yeah, I think that was actually the first meeting. It was October 2006. It was right at the beginning. I know. I know. You were in a stroller when I met you. Look at you now. Yeah. I feel so. It's. And even thinking about it, I just thought, oh, Jesus, I can't believe it was that long ago. It's weird. No, you were. You were 19, right? Yeah. Right. Just about. Yeah. Yeah. I was 74. I was young. Back then. 74. I was. Yeah. How are you now? 74. My math's not very good. 106. He's not a math scientist. Yeah. It's not going backwards like Benjamin Button or anything. It's like. No. Still going up. But if they if they bottled that, I'd be first in line. Yeah. I mean. Really? Someone would be there at 2.30 in the morning and then Sean would be there. And then you. And then the cycle would repeat. Yeah. But man. Yeah. Yeah. Hard to believe it was that long ago. Yeah. It's fast. It. God. It's. Tell me about it. Time goes by so fast. Yeah. But those were great times, man. It was. What a great time to be in that. But which is funny because I get asked about Musicians Institute a lot, which is the question like, but you're not a professional musician. I'm like, well, I count them on a couple of hands. But overall, I was like, well, that wasn't kind of the point. I mean, it was the the the the dream, let's say, going in. But that wasn't necessarily the point. Yeah. But as far as an experience, being in that bubble and just playing music for essentially 18 months was amazing. Oh, yeah. Without having to do other college requirements. If you majored in music elsewhere. Yeah. No, Jen. It's no. Yeah. Oh, that was that was the clincher for me, too. Yeah. It was like, why? Why don't I want to go study more math or science when I want to play music? I mean, it's a no brainer. I had to. It was one of the I mean, I guess it's useful for somebody, but certainly not me. When I am humble brag, but I tested out of all the math for community college when I graduated high school. So we have to take a math requirement. There's still a requirement. You have to take something. But you've tested out of everything. Was there take statistics? What's that? It's a formulas. The entire class. Just there's a calculator sitting there and you're just applying formulas to figure out numbers. And I thought, what? This is BS. I can't believe like I'm paying to sit in the class and use the calculator. When I don't know. It was so yeah. Missing out on stuff like that to just focus on music. Cindy, we should say also went to musicians do as well. Yes, I did. The vocal program, which we must have crossed paths at some point and just didn't realize it. Well, I mean, you see people, but you never automatically just know people. Yeah. You know, until you meet officially. Of course. Like I met someone years ago because I put up on my Instagram account. Chris sells out by the way. So please follow me. I put up a photo of my musicians. Yeah. Musicians. I always mess up, say magicians Institute. People think I mean Hogwarts, but I don't. Musicians Institute. My degree. I put up a photo last week and I met a woman who worked in the office. I don't know if you. Yeah. I don't remember her by face by name at the time when I was there. But we met up in 2012. Yeah. I was at a gig where she was singing and she actually might have been the one who printed our degrees because she printed hundreds of these degrees and she even commented on it the other day. Like I may very well have printed this for you because that's when I was working in the admin office and I thought, that's crazy. Such a weird kind of small world. I bet I have videos though of like Cinda singing on live performance workshops of mine. What kind of LPWs did you do? Oh, and LPWs for everyone that didn't go to MI. For the 99% of the population who did not go there. Nick, you're about to have some education on our education. Live performance workshops. Yes. The mandatory live. What kind of ones did you do? Rock everything pretty much. Rock everything. Yeah. I think I did one funk one and then I never went back because it's not my, not my. I know you're a classic rock fan. Papa doesn't have a brand new bag and it's not funk. I know you're a classic rock fan. It's not my bag baby. I am. I'm a big classic rock fan. So yeah, I played classic rock. I think I played modern rock a couple of times and I did coffee house a lot because I was a big rock fan. I was a big rock fan. I was a big rock fan. I did coffee house a lot because that was just whatever. Just play acoustically, which was easy. Oh yeah. So that was a lot of fun because I go and play covers. You can make something up. You can mess up a song and no one would know because there's no required song. You just showed up, played a song and you were good. Yeah. So that was an easy one, but now a lot of rock ones. So if you did the- Did you ever do real world? Ugh. I don't think so. That was a rough one. What is that? I don't remember. Because you had to learn about five songs every day and then they just for each week and then just pick one and you can do it. Really? So if you didn't know all five of them pretty well. That's nuts. I don't know if I could have- But I think the whole point was to get you prepared for the real world. Oh yeah. It's a brilliant name. Well, I guess. I mean, real world. I just picked up a real vocal book the other day. Super stoked. And it's kind of like shooting back to those memories. But yeah, I never did that. No, I never did that one either. But I think Nick's training might be a little bit more- More intense than ours. Indeed. Where did you go to school, Nick? Well, I went to Indiana University for my undergraduate degree and then I got a master's at Rutgers University, both in percussion performance. Nice. So it's fascinating to hear about Musicians Institute because I had no idea growing up about anything about music school. So someone, one of my teachers was like, you should go to Indiana. And I'm like, okay. And so that's- The music mecca. Obviously. If only the camera was on that face that you made. Well, I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure. But you said something you said you might not have made when you said, okay. He might be way in the back. Maybe. Maybe. We'll freescrame it and zoom it in. That's your new profile picture. Yeah. That was great. I think it's a logo for this episode. Oh, good. Okay. Now I'm really worried. But you should go to Indiana with Cock-eyed Optimus. Okay. That's a documentary, a tour doc. But it's like, I mean, feel free to use that. But you know, it's like you got a master's and I'm like, I got them associates. And I just like, I don't know. Yeah. You know, I don't know if you know this, but they actually just ship me hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because I have a master's degree. That's amazing. Everyone should know that more music education just means more money instantly. They just print money for you and shows up in a suitcase. And it doesn't cost anything. That's also true. Did you have to give your credit card and checking account number to an African prince or something? Or like an Arabian prince? Western Union. Western Union Telegram. Do you know Tondo too? I think I got emails from him about penis pills. Well, anyway. Something like that. Oh, and this article we found in Los Angeles Magazine earlier sitting in the lobby. We just found it very hilarious that it lists many different types of jobs you might have living in L.A. The absolute cheapest, lowest pay job listed on this beautiful page. His bass player because he just got here. Otherwise. Musician at $8,400. Oh, my God. He lives to tell the tale. Come on in. Oh, my God. And he has a balloon. So this is Eric. Is that in case your bass walks away? You can find it. People do that to turtles. They'll tie a balloon. I just put it here from a party. Sorry. Oh. Wait, really? They put that on turtles? I've seen those on social media. It might not be a real thing. So people don't step on their turtle. They have like a helium balloon that's tied to the turtle. So they can see where it is. Where are you bringing your turtles? Like, just turtles? I guess I don't want someone walking in and just stepping on the turtles. I don't know. I don't own a turtle. That sounds like way too much work for me. I don't even have fish. Isn't that the whole point of the turtle, though? Is that it's got the hard shell so you can, you know, step on it or whatever? I mean. The man brings up a very good point. Since we've been wearing shoes for who knows how many years. I just wanted to say we are not here to offend anybody. I love turtles. I think they're terribly adorable. What? I thought we were trying to offend everybody. Man. Well, that's usually the weekly goal on the show. Yeah. All right. Oh, boy. Welcome, Eric. I'm Chris, by the way. Eric. Nice to meet you. Yeah. Air shake. There we go. That was good. Do you guys need to reorganize and re-space or whatever? Do you need some room in? No. We like to be close. We like to bring it in. We were playing acoustically, so. Yeah. I mean, that's what it's all about. It's got to be intimate. It's going to be intimate. I was going to say close and personal, but intimate is even better. Yeah. So, apparently. The lowest paying job in Los Angeles is musician. Which is exactly what we do. The second lowest paying, which I was afraid everyone was going to walk out once they read this, figuring we're all in the wrong business. Food blogger. Food blogger? Food blogger. What was the one that was, where was, fruit truck vendor. Fruit truck vendor, $20,000 a year. If you blog about food, you make less than if you're selling the food. The person who sells the food. Yeah. The person who sells the food. Makes less than the person who talks about food. Yeah. That's. I don't know who made up these numbers, but. That's ridiculous. And apparently, if you're a music producer, though, you automatically, like Nick was saying, you automatically make $30 million a year. That's crazy. Automatically. It's like you write down music producer under occupation and they just send you money. Right. You just put it, print it out on a card, Vista print for free. And they send you millions of dollars. And they find you. Yeah. They find you. They find you to look for it. They find you. Well, if you make $30 million a year, you're pretty important. So they'll come find you. Our friends at the IRS will find you for sure. They will. But it's funny, too, because looking at it, it's like Hollywood director, 15 million, is it? It's somewhere near the bottom of the left page. Yeah. Which, as I'm currently working on a short film and then a feature length film, or at least in the early stages of them, then I guess I'll be making 15 million soon. So, bye, suckers. I'll be leaving. Chris Abalo. I'll be leaving Skid Row building my own studio. Hollywood director. That's right. I'm a millionaire. It's going to happen. Oh, yeah. You'll see. It will happen. This is for fun. No, it will happen. It's part of the... That's part of being a cock-eyed optimist. What's the dream, man? Where will it be? For me in particular? Writer-director is overall what I'm looking to do. Plus this. This is for fun. Yeah? Yeah. I just do this once a week for fun. Sure is. If I did it five days a week, then it wouldn't be fun anymore. I was just imagining it broadcast at the top of the tallest mountain in LA or something like that. But I don't know. It could happen. Yeah, we should take it up. It could. You know what? With 15 million a year, I can buy that mountain and broadcast it myself. That's what I'm talking about, man. So, I can believe... It all feeds together. Actually, I think the key is just buying the billboard ad and people automatically think they should listen to you because you're on a billboard. Of course. Look at all... Look, the city... I don't know how much time you guys spent riding around before you actually arrived here, but... A lot. There's lots of... Yeah. Tons of bill... All billboards are for your consideration for Emmys right now. And that's all it's going to be. Yep. All those shows are going to win Emmys. All of them. Yep. Every single one. It's all promotion. That's what we've learned being independent musicians, you know? It really is. Everyone will say, DIY, DIY, DIY. It's kind of a lie. Yeah. You know, if you don't have that budget behind you... Yeah. Just nobody's going to know about you. Well, it's funny too. Like, I've... I mean, I still get asked about people, are you still playing music? Yes, I do. But like, not as a... I haven't been doing it as a career because I have other talents like this. And like the voice acting and everything else that I can put to use. So I thought, well, that has a little more return on investment than music will. Whereas music, especially with... The older I get, the less... Not to dissuade anybody. Not to take the optimism out of Cock-Eyed Optimist. But the older I get, I just can't deal with being in a band anymore. I just can't. I can't do it. I can just feel it leaving me now. It's just... Well, Chris, if you become an A-list actress, $34 million. Actress? Actress. Well, I mean, they don't have an actor on there. $35 million. I'm open to it. Okay. Is what I'm saying. There's very little I'm not open to for $35 million. I just want to put that out there into the world. I'd agree with that. If anyone has any ideas... Just dropped his resume. There's no such thing as selling out anymore. It's all just... There's a whole get it mentality, which is just if it pays, do it. You know, bringing up the whole selling out thing point, it's like all those years ago when the bands finally signed with a major label, it was like, oh, they sold out. Like, oh, now they're popular. Now they're not cool anymore. I'm going to drop a pipe bomb right now. I want to get signed. Totally. Like, seriously, I'm going to make no bones about it in front of the audience, for everybody to see for posterity. Like, that's the goal for this. Like, we want to get signed because eventually what we want to do requires that level of commitment from somebody behind us. Of course. Because this isn't a sunshine and rainbows industry. No. You're going to need somebody. You're going to need somebody who's a little bit more ruthless than you are to do the things that you won't do. Because I'm not going to get blood on my hands. Well, you need people who are business minded to do it anyway. Because you can't... You can try being a jack of all trades. Even with regard to this. Like, I've talked to other people with regards to building a website for the media company that this is a part of. Yeah. And as far as everything that goes into production and whatnot. And yeah, you want people who know what they're doing instead of just trying to learn it all. It gets exhausting. Yeah. And you'll quit before you even get started. Very exhausting. But it's funny how you bring that up about getting signed. It's funny that people still ask me, oh, but isn't it great in recent years? Isn't it great though? You can put your music out there now for everybody. And my argument is always, but who's going to find it? We have our music on iTunes, on CD Baby. You can stream it on Spotify. You can even go to our website, www.cockhideoptimist.net. Click on store. And we have an official store through Nimbot Music, who is one of the biggest music companies in the world. It's one of the companies that we've worked with and is underneath PreSonus, which is a company that we work with and that sponsors us. It's cool. It's great to have our music in a bunch of different places so that people all over the world can listen to it. But I'm going to tell you right now, if you are listening to our music in Moscow, Russia, there is no way we are getting to Moscow, Russia. There's just no way. On your dime. Yeah. There's no way it's going to happen. All the big bands have a horseshoe in their glove. And there's been a weird divide over the last few years. You guys are going to play music, I swear, during this hour. Yeah. It's cool. Did you learn five songs? Because you're only going to play one. No. Yeah, right. There's this weird kind of mentality where a lot of people want to gravitate towards independent and away from industry. It's just like, oh, the music business collapsing, blah, blah, blah. There's still artists you hear about. And while there may not be bands in the charts, there's still attention. Everybody. Everybody's still always looking for talent. Yeah. So, but you do have to prove that you can do the work. Actually, here's a perfect example that ties into you, Sean. How long have you been doing Stompbox Saturday for? Oh, thanks for mentioning that. No problem. Stompbox Saturday, for those who obviously don't know, is a YouTube series that I do on my channel dedicated to guitar pedals. And every week I'll profile one either from my collection or one that gets sent to me. I started that on a whim. Literally, like, I thought of it the day before, filmed it the next night in March of last year. So it's been a little over a year that I've been doing it. And it really wasn't until about the one year mark that companies were really starting to take notice of it. And people were starting to take notice of it. And if you ever interact with us, on social media. It's me that you're interacting with. I handle all the social media for the band. And the reason that I do that is because I handle every single bit of social media for that avenue of what I do as a professional musician outside of CEO. This is the band. That's the band. This is the band. My iPhone is the band. But yeah, no, it's like I do all the social media and it's like, I put it out there for people to see. And it's just about them finding it. But the hard part of it is, is you can easily spend $5 a day boosting a Facebook post, $5 and you will get a really nice size reach. We did that last summer when we released that one-off song we did. And we got a lot of attention for it. But it sure showed us it's like, huh, advertising budget. Yeah. It really works. Yeah. It's a real thing. So it doesn't, you can have talent. You really can have talent and you can get noticed for it. But if you got somebody behind you saying like, I want to make sure people know about you because you're talented. Yeah. You're going to go somewhere with it. And doing the Stop Box Saturday led to you working with. Oh. You want me? I'm just, well. Am I just going to tell my life story? No, not at all. But I'm saying as far as putting in the work. This is no longer the Cock-Eyed Octopus podcast. Sean Pierce Johnson. Well, the thing is, my point, because people have asked me like why I do the podcast. Like I don't, I don't, it's, I like broadcasting. I like doing the podcast. I like doing the show. I particularly like the live format, which I've only been doing here since January. But I've been, I've been podcasting where it's coming up on five years, actually the end of this month. But I just, I enjoy doing it. And would I do it as, as a career? I'm certainly open to doing it. But I didn't get into it. I didn't do it for the sake of like, I'm going to be Dowerd Stern or somebody like that. Like, that's not the idea. But it's also a matter of proving you can do the work. And through you being such a pedal fanatic. Yeah. And putting in the work to ostensibly a weekly show. Yeah. I mean, it really has kind of opened up some interesting avenues in, not just for me though. Like people have become aware of who we are as a band because of it. I was contacted by a guy who puts on a guitar show. Uh, in LA every year, the LA amp show, it's been going on for about 10 years. And the guy who produces it, uh, basically asked me to cover the entire show for YouTube. And that was at the same time as a, a pedal company in Santa Ana, new neighbor, audio effects, uh, asked me to be their trade show demo player. And so it was an entire weekend of, you know, eight hour days split between two gigs. And I swear to God, it was so much fun. But I will never do that again. I would never take on that load again, but all in all, it exposed more people to what I do as just myself, as Sean Pierce Johnson, the guitar player, the musician, exposing people to cockeyed optimist, exposing them to the nonprofit we started. And then through that, I ended up getting a job with new neighbor doing video production, and now I had up their artist relations department, which is a completely brand new thing. Like, and by brand new, I mean like three weeks old. So I can't say that, uh, the hard work hasn't paid off because it is definitely paid off and it's definitely been rewarding. And the people that I've met because of it have definitely been people that I'm, I've, I've been happy to meet and interact with, but my God, man, if, if I had just like a little bit extra, cash to just like boost my videos a little bit in the, in the search engines boost a little bit on Facebook or whatever social media, I mean, chances are I'd have at least double the subscribers that I have now, but it's building. Oh yeah. It's definitely building. I mean that everything I do is all about building just this entity. Yeah. You know, it's not, I could care less about building it just for myself. Like if I'm, you know, these, these people that are sitting beside me are like family. They're, they're my bros. Even, even Cinda is a bro. Like Eric, I've known since he was 13. It's just crazy to think, you know, Nick. Eric was in the cradle. Yeah. You know how we're talking about Sean being. Yeah. Being in a stroller. Eric was just in the cradle at the same time. And Nick, I mean, while I was signing up for AARP. Nick came into the band in such a strange time. And, you know, he, he rose to the challenge and he's just proven to be, you know, rock solid ever since. And I mean, when Cinda finally asked me like, Hey, I, I really think you're a good guitar player and I need somebody to write some music with. I need somebody to, to bring these songs out that I want to write. And I, I want you to be that person. Oh my gosh. Another Paul Gilbert connection because the way I knew him is he has a signature Paul Gilbert model guitarist. Oh yeah. I remember that. Wow. Paul Gilbert is the epicenter. What was his previous Paul Gilbert connection? You missed it, Eric. The fact that. Subscribe on iTunes. Well, subscribe on iTunes and listen later to find out. What time does it go? It'll be up tomorrow. Cool. Subscribe on iTunes in case you miss. If you're just tuning in, which is virtually impossible, but if you're just tuning in, subscribe to the show on iTunes and chrisabal.com. All links there, including cock, cock eyed optimist link. I'm tripping over my tongue a lot tonight. It's fine. I think that that's the, I think we're going to play a song now. I think so. Cause clearly I need a break. Let's do it's time. Cool. Can we do a tune up jam? Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have to tune the bass. I'm giving you my. So the most important thing when playing music is always be in tune. Or at least try to be in tune. Play like you're in tune and people might think you're supposed to sound that bad. I don't normally think about it personally, but that cajon is very well tuned. So I insert. I insert. I insert. I don't do any number of drummer jokes here, but whatever. Oh, what are you sitting on by the way? I'm sitting on a cajon, which is a, it's a box that they decided it's actually, it's a, it's a really weirdly depressing history because what happened was like the Spanish took away the Peruvians native drums and the slaves they brought over from Africa. And they're like, you can't have drums. And so they're like, well, I'll just slap this box. And now the Spaniards were like, that's pretty cool. And it's like, the signature instrument of flamenco music in Spain. So just really twisting the knife in the old, you know, oppression. I was going to say, you really brought the show down. And this is why I like Nick Stone. He always has an interesting, if maybe not positive and happy fact, but he always has some sort of interesting fact to bring to the table, no matter what it is. What is the plural of cajon? If I were sitting on one, what would we have? We would have cajones. Nice. Yeah. Big ones, too. You could sit right on them. I think all musicians have some cajones, if you ask me. Enough for me. Let's hear a song. This is called It's Time. You need my E again? B. B. He needs my B, everybody. Bs! Do I have a buzzing sound? Blame it on the turtle with the balloon. How many of your notes are going to get muted because of that balloon bouncing against your strings? You have no idea. I don't. Is anyone hearing? I'm hearing the bass through the mic. A little bit. A little bit. You know, if you lay... I say lay the mic on its side. It should be okay. Just take it. I got it. Yeah. It's a really heavy stand, so... Yeah. Just stall for time, everybody. Yeah, lay it on the side. The stand is actually made of Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, so... Nice. I didn't know that it had a name. It has a name, and it sounds like a Swedish STD. I will just be bringing you random kind of depressing facts for the rest of the podcast. This is great. Thanks. Thanks. Are you guys good to go? I think so. Yeah. All right. It's going to be cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! front of me. When I said earlier there's a grander vision, that's part of the grander vision. Is it a debut on this show? Sure, absolutely. Just say yes. Actually, it was Friday, right? Or Thursday. Did we practice? We decided, yes, now is time we're going to start writing our new album. Nice. Eric and I had had this deep conversation about how our society is just, well, we're all just sitting texting each other side by side and nobody's paying any attention. Exactly. Have you guys seen the movie Nightcrawler? I have not. I was about to the other day. I watched that last night. There's something you said earlier that was completely relevant to it. You said the thing about getting someone nastier than you to do the job that you aren't willing to do yourself. This is a movie about LA and our mentality. Excellent film. Eric, actually, he's he went on a self-finding trip to Europe. I haven't found it yet. He hasn't found himself. He still hasn't found what he's looking for. I was going to say, I would pull up some YouTube, but we can't afford the licensing. So, can't happen. But, I don't know if we have anything similar. No, probably not. Is it a recurring clip? No, that's Japanese drums. That's not going to happen. Never mind. I don't know. I mean, if everybody wants to... Many years ago. Wow. Yes, Master Splinter. You sound exactly like Splinter. Totally did. That was really good. Actually, yeah. In context. Dude, I totally watched that a couple weeks ago. Totally holds up. Which one? The real TMNT. I'm just asking. I've gotten in more fist fights in comic book stores. What about Secrets of the Apes? How long have we been friends? That's true. There is only one Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Exactly. With that title. Exactly. I'm with you. Yeah. No, totally holds up. It totally does hold up. Totally holds up. Yeah. I think we all watched that together, actually. We did, in fact. Actually, I kind of missed out on bits of it. But you three watched it. I'm willing to bet Splinter found them because they had balloons tied to them. Because you'll notice that in a sewer. Am I right? You would think. Totally. That is an experience we all share. Yes. Yeah, they can't all be honest. There we go. That's for me. Anyway. Anyway. Undocumented, folks. One of the many albums you can get from Cockout Optimist. That was our first one. By many, I mean two. By many, I mean two. Hey. Both. And All That You Were, which I played. He did, in fact. On Cape 34, I believe it was. Where the first episode where I just played a bunch of music and argued about the merits of various modern musicians. Yes. With Jessica Self. And we watched the episode. And you were happy. You were having trouble saying cockeyed. I was. Yes. I'm having trouble saying everything tonight, so it's okay. You know what? Eric, you know all about people who can't get past that certain part. Here's a question we get asked a lot. What is a cockeyed optimist, right? So, I'm going to let you know. Let you in on it. Tell the people. Take them to church, please. Take them to church. Because a lot of people searched for something else and came upon this show. So, please, let's sort it out. Yes. So, it comes from the musical South Pacific. I don't know if anyone's ever watched that. It's a Rodgers and Hammerstein. Right, Nick? Yes. Okay. Just double checking my... Here's a sad story. Nick also plays in musicals. So, it's the song. There's a song called A Cockeyed Optimist, okay, that this lady sings. And it's basically just about she's hopeful even if it doesn't really make sense and everything's kind of weird. But she's still like, I'm optimistic, you know? And that's... I thought that was... That's such a cool idea to be optimistic no matter what, you know? Oh, great. Because it's so easy to be depressed, you know? And it's cool to be hesitant. Not hesitant. Skeptical. It's cool to be skeptical now. Yeah, totally. Instead of enthusiastic. So, I thought being a cockeyed optimist is like seeing that light through the tunnel, you know? Even if it looks so dark right now, there's the dawn, you know? And just keep holding on. And just keep holding on for the light. Harvey Dent promised us that the dawn was coming. And then we got the Dark Knight Rises and he was wrong. But that's another show. Tell me about... I am a cop... God damn it. Tell me about... I am a cop. I am a cop. I am a cop. I am a cop. I am a cop. I am a cop. I am a cop. I am a cop. Well, I've said that a lot. Dot org. Yes. I know that. Dot org. I saw you looking at the bottom. I was. What is this? Okay. Where do we start? Where do we start? Well, this is how I start. Music has been... Music has been what I've used in my life to just keep going. To get through the difficult times, the pain that I've experienced in my life. What did I do? I just wrote it down, you know? Even if everything I wrote wasn't a song or a poem, I just wrote about it and got that out. I expressed my feelings, you know? Instead of keeping them inside. And music and writing songs has helped me move on and move forward and just keep going in life. And have hope. And I realized, well, if that is... If it's this way for me, then other people can feel that too. So we created IamACockEyedOptimist.org as a way of telling people to express their emotions, whatever they are. We all have emotions, whether they're happy or sad emotions, but we have them, right? No. Eric over here. He's an emotionist. Not everybody. He's actually an android. He doesn't have a sense of time either, but... Yes. That's... Pot, meat, kettle. Yeah. Anyway. So expressing them is just the first step. You know, at least if you can express your emotions, you've at least released a little bit of that, you know, tension in your life. And so we thought, hey, we need to tell other people that it doesn't matter if they feel like I'm a good artist, I'm a good musician. That doesn't matter. It's about positive. It's about positively expressing yourself instead of hurting other people or hurting yourself. And so on our website, we have crisis resources for homelessness, rape treatment, suicide hotlines. What else? Free clinics. Homeless shelters. Drug and alcohol abuse. Balloons for stray turtles. Yes. Balloons for stray turtles. Definitely not. Somebody's buying that domain right now. I just... That's a million dollars. That's a million dollar idea. Just gone. Just gone. I don't even have a master's degree. Too late. There are support systems out there beyond any of the like social and like the environment, the environmental factors around you. But there are people out there that will help you even if people in your life make you feel shitty. Yeah. About what you do. People will listen. Yeah. That's the one thing that's... And that's one of our biggest things. No matter what you're dealing with is you're not alone. Yeah. Because you may feel... You may feel like I'm the only person going through this, but there are other people dealing with the same stuff as you. And just that is a comfort, you know? Oh, yeah. Anything. There's not that... You can make yourself feel isolated, but the reality is there are resources out there. There are people out there. There's a whole world out there you can literally connect with. Yeah. Yeah. So we are actually going on the Vans Warped Tour on Friday for the California dates. And we're setting up a booze there. That's a big deal. Thanks, guys. Yeah. We're super excited. We're super excited. We have this thing called the Healing Wall that we're going to put up. And it's just a board that you can write down your stories or whatever you're dealing with and just post it on the wall for other people to see and just for you to release that. This is what I'm dealing with. Boom. And it's just that little release of tension that could be the difference between going over the edge or not, you know? And they can do it anonymously, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Completely anonymously. If you want. Still get it out. Exactly. With pen to paper and just release it. And you know, the thing that's we part of what we do with the nonprofit is we take an assembly that tours high schools. And we did our first one back in February for a shout out to all the kids at Milliken High School if they find a way to watch this because they were awesome. And the thing that was so unbelievable about that was we did three assemblies in a row. We were going since like four in the morning, setting up, playing in front of these kids at like the beginning of their school day. And these kids walk in the gym and they just look like, I don't want to be here. And it's another stupid assembly. It's high school, right? Who wants to be there? As soon as that like first song is done, they're just like, oh, my God, what just happened? And then Cynda takes them through her story and how music and just expressing herself rather in a positive way rather than resorting to heartache. And then Cynda takes them through her story and how music and just expressing herself and hurting yourself. I mean, girls were coming up to her with just tears in their eyes and people were coming up to me, Nick and Eric, just like, you guys are so awesome. Like, I can't believe that you're actually here for us. And I guess probably like the biggest reason we wanted to go on the Warped Tour first off was because I don't know about here in L.A. because it's been I'm I'm born and raised in the Valley, but I moved out of L.A. several years back. But where I'm at, there's just nothing for teenagers, nothing like you have the kids programs from the time they're two to twelve. And it seems kind of like once a kid turns 13. Home to the Lions. Yeah, you're on your own to the Lions. You're on your own. We don't work. Yeah, you're too young to work. You're too old to be considered a kid. You can't really do anything without your parents until you have your driver's license. And even then, I mean, you got curfews all over the place. You know, they'll treat teenagers that are being perfectly reasonable, not being terrible at all, like like crap, quite frankly. And it's so frustrating to me because I remember that time was so hard in my life. And, you know, this instrument was what got me through it. And just being around the right kind of places and the right kind of people having the right kind of people saying, like, I can't do this. I don't care about you. I give a crap and you're going to be fine. And when we gave them that. It was like. You care about us. It filled a gap. Yeah, exactly. It's tough for everybody during those early to mid teen years anyway. Yeah. Because you don't. I mean, now I couldn't even imagine with everything, all the distractions and everything else. And it can make you feel even more isolated with social media and everything. Absolutely. There's more of a. Almost a mob mentality in a negative way. But it's like. I. You wouldn't know even where to go. Yeah. And where to turn. And quite frankly, it's like. You have nowhere to go. Well, come to us. I mean, the resources that are available on the website, you know, you can. It's I am a cockeyed optimist dot org. You know, just check it out. Look it up. See if there's anything like if you feel like you're going through something. Just look it up. And, you know, we make it available to reach out to us and. Share your stories on our website and you can do that anonymously as well. Yeah. And we're always open to seeing people like sharing their art with us. Absolutely. You know, we're totally cool with that because, you know, we are all four of us. We're artists and we want to see good art. We want to see art that makes us feel something. And on that note, should we play another song? Yes. I think so. I'm itching to play. Does anybody. Okay. Please. I've been driving here for three hours. Let's see if I finally found the bees. I totally helps Chris. Finally found the bees. Great. So this song is Fine Line. It is on our All That You Were album. Obviously, that's the electric version. This is an acoustic version. So, you know, it's going to be slightly different. But that is available on iTunes. And you can stream it on Spotify. You can stream it on Spotify, too. I'm not a Spotify hater by any means. I love Spotify. So, you know, I don't know, Chris, you're giving me a look. So I'm not sure. I'm smiling. Okay. Okay. This is my default listening face. So you can listen on Spotify or you can buy it on iTunes. And yeah, this is Fine Line. I'm going over the word cockeyed in my head. So don't mind me. I'm going over the word cockeyed in my head. I'm going over the word cockeyed in my head. I'm going over the word cockeyed in my head. I'm going over the word cockeyed in my head. I'm sorry. No potions, no pill do you take You go to bed Jekyll But hide you awake Your appearance Doesn't change Except For inside But I can see the difference I can see There's a fine line Between Jekyll and Hyde Not only genius But mad Naked inside Don't wanna Be there When your two worlds collide Cause next thing I know I'm running for Ooh Ooh Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Making her debut as the show in the show's Mission Control today. That's right. Anyway, talking about things bleeding together, been getting a lot of attention with the Only Podcast It Matters, which you can find at theonlypodcast.com and Facebook and the Only Podcast on Twitter and all sorts of other stuff. the show I did for four years, which is coming up on five years ago that we started, but 200 episodes. It's awesome. Whoo! very much. No longer going, but there's still tons of content there. So yeah, theonlypodcast.com and check out the show on social media. Again, all the links are there. Not on iTunes at the moment, but that's something we're looking to correct. But you know, it is on iTunes, this show. So please subscribe, give it five stars, write a little review. We do appreciate it and share the crap out of the show on social media. Please do. The link for the YouTube channel is also on chrisabal.com. So please check that as well. Cock-eyed optimist. Once again, thank you guys very much. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much. And I will put all their links at chrisabal.com as well and on all the social media resources. So until next time, for Cinda, Sean, Eric, and Nick, this is Chris Abalo and this was yet another experiment. See you next week. See you next week.