00:00:00 Speaker 1: M. My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and looked behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. And they would serve things. This is no joke with like a little paper squeeze cup of cheese whiz. Where is this? And I was just dumbfounded until and it was going to start making fun of it a little bit, but until I looked around and everybody there was actively enjoying their cheese whiz. Now what were they putting the cheese whiz on all their breakfast items? What? What state was this? Minnesota? Minnesota? Northern Minnesota. Didn't give you your own? Can? They gave you a like a little individual squeeze paper thing full of cheese with But they uh were they making their own? Or these are like produced? I think they were like craft supply is mate. This is a great cold open to the bar. Surrender. Great the cheese whiz, the cheese Whiz Render? Um Man, do we ever have an e collected group of people here today, you know, so I'm not going to introduce you. May have you may have you know, recognized their voices, but I'm not gonna introduce you for a minute. I'm gonna tell you guys that I've got to warn you that you will be scrutinized heavily by the original Beargrease Greece Crew. Okay, so my wife Mr NUNCLEM. Brent Reeves, Josh Lambridge, spillmaker, Gary Believer nucom that Brent brent Reeves is sharp. Yeah, man's sharp. Yeah. Well, I'm not saying the other people aren't. So occasionally, just the way it works is occasionally if I'm traveling or something and I have a new Bargreas render crew. The next the next time I see all these people, they're like, ah, you know they were Okay, they'll be like, yeah, that guy was this or that. So I'm just warning you you can wind up in a somewhat like I think it might. It might be like a somewhat post modern situation or something where the render becomes about the render. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's we've been accused of that. Actually, we've been accused of that how about the original Beargrease crew you only referred to as the cheacher owns there. Yeah, they're wren it out, dude, I think it would. It would be the crack Southern appropriate. There we go. No, Hey, it is fantastic to have a very new crew to my right, Phil Taylor, Hey, how's it going, CLA. Everybody would know Phil from the Meat Eater podcast, And if you don't, if you wouldn't know Phil from that, you would know Phil from all the incredible work he does on Bargrease. Phil and I work on Bargrease. You know, we coordinate together with how it's built. And so Phil Taylor the sound engineer for Meat Eater. Right, he gets like about a sentence in every podcast, but we have hundreds of them added up as paragraphs on the meta paragraphs of film I film. We need to make a sizzle reel of everything Phil says. Everything Phil has ever said, strong out. I do not want to hear that. You have to be the one that makes it. I know it's never gonna happen. Well, what I've learned from being around felt when he does speak, it's noteworthy. Yeah, I try. I don't like it when people talk too much at me, So I try not to talk too much at them. Yeah, I get it, don't talk at me. To your right, Ryan Callahan, man, this is uh, it's an honor to have you here. Brother. Hey, I've been looking forward to this. So Steve, Ryan and I have really never done much together. Of all the Metater people, have you know, traveled a lot with you? Honest with you, I've actually wondered about that. Yeah, we've never We've just never crossed paths much. And so you guys getting along. Yeah, man, you know it's probably because if you got me to Arkansas and wouldn't come back. Yeah. Yeah, we're brothers from another mother. You can tell by the stashes. Yeah, he's got mules, he's got gardens, got uh, lots of fishing and hunting opportunity. It's a pretty sweet deal right out your front door. It is, to your right, Steve Ranella Man. Now you are you're a regular on bargarase, I'm gonna call you a regular if you're if you've been on there more than twice. So, but good to have you on the Render. So the Render for those for those who might not know the structure of the podcast, it's a little bit different. So we have and this isn't for you guys, this is for people out there. I try every now and then to kind of tell what's going on. So the Burgerase podcast is our documentary style podcast with a very specific target, and we we really dive in deep with multiple guests and and voiceover and soundscapes and really do it up. The Bargeras Render is what you're hearing here, which which is us talking about the previous week's Burgers podcast. So if this is your first time to listen to barg Rease, you know, go back one and you'll hear what we're gonna talk about today, which is the Jerry Clower episode. But yeah, like the Burgries podcast is like all the really informed, correct stuff pretty much, and then you do this and it's it's things that weren't well thought enough to make it into that. Yeah, and you have I would imagine you have some suggestions for the Jerry clod podcast. Oh yeah, I'm I'm very I anticipate these to your right, our last guest, and much of an honor to have you here, Karren, and you would a lot of you would know Karin from the Metator podcast as well. Your first time on Burgary. So my first time. So Karin is uh, tell us what you do, Karan, I produced the Meat Eater podcast, so a lot of pre interviews and setting up the agenda of talking points and transitions, keeping Steve in line. Yeah, Okay, get into it. I want to. I learned there's two things that you don't bring up in the just in Life this week on my Instagram. Okay, there's certain topics that if you bring them up on Instagram, it's just gonna be problems for you. Number One, bee keeping are touching. They are very touchy and of touchy enthusiast groups like the dog oh Man. Okay, so I've got two things. The bee keeping thing is something that happened a long time ago, but I quickly saw that it fit into the thing that I did this week. That may have been a mistake, but bee keeping Misty has a couple of bee hives, and and she's an amateur. She knows it. Uh. Last year sometime I thought it was pretty cool she was pulling out some of the screens and looking at honey. So I took a video put it on my Instagram. The biggest mistake in my life beekeepers who mold they can look at a three second video clip and like, look into your soul to tell you why you know you're bad at life, bad at me? If you get a second, I'd like to speak to the to the touchy enthusiast audience, Well, let me tell you the next that's probably it's close hoof trimming stuff. But I saw that thing and I was like, look like you knew what he was doing? Well, so did I see? Man? No, I am not a I'll tell you my full experience with trimming. And I put my shoes on Mules. I don't shoot him very often. But you know, when I got Mules, I started paying ferriers to come to your house. And it's a hundred and fifty bucks and you gotta do it every six d eight weeks and you sit there. Oh yeah, man, it's a big deal. I don't know that I knew. I thought it was a couple of times a year. Typically depends on who you are. Typically six eight weeks, like and and talking to the farriers. They're like because when the first guy started coming out, and their fairies are always great people, they really are. I've never met a ferrier. I didn't like they gotta deal with a lot of people they do, and they're just you can't fake out a horse or mule, like you just kind of have to be legit. And they see there one kick away from being mentally disabled, and most of them have been kicked. And he told me, he said, Clay, I said, do I really need to you know, shot this At the time, I had a horse. Actually, don't tell anybody ever on the horse. And I had a horse, and I was like, I really, do I really need this shoe this thing every six weeks? And he just said, Clay, people that are really dialed in on their in their equine business absolutely shoe every six eight weeks. And so I said, okay. But he basically just showed me what he was doing. And I watched him two or three times and I was like, I think I can do that, and he was like, hey, yeah, you can do it. And he just showed me how to do it, and so I started doing it. Primarily, not even financially, as much as it's a pain in the rear to schedule somebody to come six weeks in advance to your house and you know, you may not be there when they show up because you forgot about it or something. So I started trimming trimming my mule feet, which if you're if you're running them on rocks and rough stuff, the feet kind of trimmed down on their own. But man, I put up that little video just because I thought it was kind of cool. And you know, apparently I was using the knife backwards, which I mean, come on, well, there's there's there's there's there's a right handed and a left handed hoof knife, and I had two of them there and I just I mean, I just pick up whichever one's closest, and it it doesn't seem to be a limiting factor in in what I'm doing. But oh man, they went off on me pretty good. So so are you aware of Dr pimple Popper? Oh man? Know, Okay, this is a huge thing for some people. I cannot stand it. But it's it's like and and and and it's a huge following but the same and it's on people right and this person's or persons or whatever. They're plucking hairs, they're popping zits, they're they're doing spaghetti, squeezing it out. There's very gnarly stuff. But this whole thing also exists in the agriculture community to where you can watch these lengthy videos with millions of views of people working on abscess jaws, you know, you know, getting all the pus out of an obsessed jaw um and then doctoring feet is a big thing. Yeah. Yeah, And so these people and we're talking about horses here, just to be clear, correct, we're talking about the the whole gamut. Yeah yeah, And so that's who you're dealing with, okay. So you you just hold your head up high and know that you're dealing with a bunch of people with weird foot fetishes, okay, and at the base of their complaints, they just want to see more clay. That is probably the best advice I've had. And I know that there are very professional ways but to do stuff. Here's my pretty strong philosophy that I have in life though, that has worked out okay for me, is that if you take your instruction from the absolute experts in any field and and they set the bar for entry for you, you will likely be intimidated and never even get into that. Like I'm I am a master at very few things, but good enough at a quite a bit of stuff, and trimming trimming mule feet would be one of the things that UM not a master at, but good enough, you know. And uh, there's so much that I think people get ung up and uh, details that really aren't the limiting factor of their entry point in the summer in the bars a lot lower. And but obviously you're gonna go to the experts to learn how to do stuff, you see what I'm saying. Yeah, and it's paralysis of fear right there, like, oh, I'm gonna make a mistake, and so I'm not even gonna try. And you gotta try some I mean, you gotta get in there some way and do it. And in your case, man, if if you got in a situation where you go a little too thin and then all of a sudden you got a bum foot on your mule, you're gonna feel like crap, and you're gonna be ultra careful. But it's not it's not gonna lead into this. They call that quicken a horse or mule. I've done it one time and and is he just had a sore foot for about two weeks And yeah, I learned from it. And you makes me sad, right right, And you're way more careful than next time, but it isn't. The world didn't end. I didn't have to shoot the mule, didn't have to write Steve, what are your thoughts on this? These type of these type of people that like the enthusiast groups sensitive, touchy enthusiast groups. I'm less excited about telling you now that you gave the fairier example because I would not put fairiers in the touchy enthusiast group things. But a lot of things like like bee keeping. Now, this is gonna insolt all your beekeepers out there. Not that opposed to be keeping. In fact, my brother, my brother Danny, one time saw be tree open, which is probably bad, but we're clearing a lot. We're clearing a lot, saw to be tree open. Tree had to go. Anyway, did you get the honey well kind of it was. It was we didn't do it, like we didn't get like a centrifuge out and like get it out. But we damned had some bar and chain oil in there. It was like we're in high school. Um. Anyways, it is apologies to everyone. It's like a little endy to have some bees. So why do you think we have them? So it's like a new thing and you have people that previously probably didn't have a strong identity and now they've found an identity. Okay, they found an identity. Um, they used to just be like a person that they're like, they have some shows they like and they like to drink certain things, and then all of a sudden they get like they identify, like they make twenty batches of beer, and all of a sudden, now they have an identity and it impacts them deeply. When you're getting that kind of feedback, you're getting feedback from people who have made a new identity. If so, you don't think any of these comments are coming from people who have been keeping bees for decades, maybe in our gate keeping and kind of like, nope, stay out of my lane. If you had, if you let's say you had a video where you're like, here's how I've decided to um feed lot cattle this song or fatten my cattle. Do you think that a guy who's been in the cattle fatten in business for six generations, biggest cattle fattener in Kansas, is he gonna care? Is he gonna be like, No, Clay, I find that when I'm fattening cattle. No, Yeah, he's gonna be He's just like, he's like, I don't who cares. He's like, this is a guy that's gonna fail, and people who don't know how to fatten cattle. You know, I'm not gonna go into detail, but yesterday we were discussing plan to get Steve uh an alternate identity on the internet just so he can make comments like these because I have to. Yeah, but here's the thing too, and then I'm done. I'm done about this whole thing. Yesterday, uh our dinner guest, dinner mate, whatever you call him, was saying how uh online haters are always unsuccessful. They're unsuccessed, us from unfulfilled in some way. I wonder I like statements like this because well, no, no, no, I like like definitive statements that probably aren't entirely true. But that statement, well, I mean, I guess you have to define what successful is. But yeah, its people hating on the internet. It's a tough it's a tough crowd to diagnose in terms of like, what's their motivation? Do you guys want to hear a quick T shirt idea? Let's do it. Cat Honeybee sitting there on trunk of clover maybe with a bird dog on full point on the honeybee trimming mule foot and it says uh and it says ste sensitive, touchy enthusiasm. Okay, I like it. I like it. I like it. Well, I just thought I would bring that up because I'm gonna keep trimming my mule feet. I've got to just got no choice Korean to do it. Put it out there. I imagine you got you got like the stall for holding their feet up and stuff, so you're not just bent over the whole time. Man. I'm just I'm doing like a lot of farriers to do. Just put it up in between your legs and work it. The farriers are bad backs, buddy. Yeah, yeah, I don't. It's not like I'm doing it every day, you know, once every couple of months. You know what, Clay, I gotta tell you one last thing about that that I saw that video and are you going to join the criticism? I don't know, Like I have zero opinions on the subject other than that, like, I have two friends that do that, but they're watching them do it. But I was watching and it looked to me such confidence and fluidity. Because I thought it must not be you. I thought it must be you filming your ferrier. At first I was like, oh, Clay, he is doing this to a horse's foot, And then uh, I was like that, I can't be Clay. He's never said about how he's never said he's like way into that. And I was like, man, if you watched if you watched a real fairier, they would they would be like so much more. And that's what the guys that we're hacking on me. One guy was like, yeah, I remember what my first beer was. Like that was his literal quote, Like like he could say like, yeah, you hadn't done this that much, which is true. You know, the tone of the converence, you know, the tone of the comment, like maybe it'd be different if it were just like some Instagram for something a little more encouraging. Yeah, exactly, guys like some pointers, maybe some you know education shut. That is my favorite part though. It's like, if you are the authority, here is a beautiful opportunity to interact with a bunch of people and give them something to go home with out of the whole depth of experience that you have packed into your brain. But instead what you say is go f yourself right and It's like, oh, so is that going to make people gravitate towards your intelligence to come find you the authority on this subject. It's like, Nope, Nope, nobody wants. Nobody wants to have your grump spread around. Right. Meanwhile, Clay, who's not the end point of experience on the the hoof Triman scale, He's gonna have a line out the front door because he's a nice person. He's gonna take the time to talk to you. My wife thinks hoof Triman is extremely gross. She oh, she just she watched me do it one time. And it does smell like it has a smell. It's not a necessarily a bad smell. It's just a distinct like nail. Yeah, Like when you like grind to burn hair cut bone with the saw, you have that bone smell. It's kind of like that. Um, real real quick, you you need to you need to shod horses when they're like particularly when they're gonna be traveling on rocky ground. Right. Um, go back to the American West two years ago, where people are traveling long distances, they're away from any kind of settlements civilizations. Are they just not doing it? I mean, obviously the the like the uh, horse mounted planes, Indian hunters riding unshot horses, but they're on rocky. That's a that's a that is a question that I've never really heard someone concisely answered. But I'll tell you my understanding of it. In modern times, the modern breeding of our horses, they pretty much have to be shot if they're going to be used extensively. Just a hoofst ructure. They just stayed together, their feet stayed together so much better if they're shot. Like so those guys might have just burned them out quicker. Yep, I think so. And you know, I mean, if you're talking about the planes Indians and the horses that they had, I mean they were consciously or unconsciously selectively breeding four animals that had strong hoofs. You know, but obviously while the horses didn't weren't shod. But you know, there are some horses that I mean can't even walk through a flat pasture without shoes on and uh, and it's just their structure. Yeah, just like just like there's also you know, some people say if you never shoe them, you know, you don't you kind of buy shooing them. You're creating a process that you have to continue, kind of like us wearing shoes, Like if you never wore shoes, you wouldn't need shoes. There's a fine line, and a lot of it has to do with the specifics of that animal. But that's also one of the reasons I love mules is for what I do with mules. I pretty much never have to shoot him. Now. I was in Arizona two weeks ago with Warner Glenn out there, and they have to shod their mules all the time just because they're walking on uh maupie mau piss volcanic rock all the time constantly, So I mean they're Warner told me, he said, yeah, mule, you could ride an unshot mule in this country for one day and then you'd have to put it up in a stall for two days, and then you could ride it again on the fourth day, you know. And so they shoot them all and don't have any trouble. But yeah, the whole shoeing things pretty well. It's really interesting. You can read some stuff about like rawhide um foot protection for for horses back in the day. That's a that's a real thing. I've read some references to it, but I don't know, but I think the burnout factor is a huge one because you read about the size of the horse herds for a lot of the planes tribes, we're immense, you know, immense ements. So I don't I don't. I don't think anybody was our our idea of having an animal like that's my go to. I don't think it was the thing. Man. I gotta say this before we start talking about Jerry Clower bringing up warrener Glenn and mules. Warrener Glenn, eighty six years old, lives in the Arizona Cowboy Dry ground line hunter. We hunted with him for four days, and in the on the first day, we rode in stuff that was the most treacherous, like the wildest mule stuff I've ever been in, pretty much by far. And you're going out with this eighty six year old man and you think, yeah, I've never ridden with him extensively. So I was like, we're probably gonna kind of go easier places just based upon the man's age. And there were a bunch of us because there was a through there and at one point the dogs went over this big mountain and Warner said, Okay, y'all go around and me and Clay are gonna go just follow the dogs. And so we went up something that was just wildly steep boulders, limbs, just it was the most treacherous half mile a mule ride and I've ever done. That night, when we got back home over dinner, I said, I said, Mr Warner, on a scale one to ten, one being riding down a gravel flat gravel road, ten being the absolute hardest mule ride you've ever done in your life, what did we do today? And he said, I was about eight or nine. He said if he he said, the reason being, if it was any worse, you just couldn't have gone. And what he said to me, and I'll never forget it, and and I kind of would have known this, but by him saying it, it kind of stamped it on me. He just said, if your mule will go, just ride it and go. He said, your mule will tell you when it's too much. And I mean pretty much you're limited by just where that animal will go. If you spur it and it goes, it's not gonna get itself into a situation that's gonna hurt it. Now, it could hurt you. You could fall off, you could get raked off by a limb, you could, you know, bad stuff could happen to you, but that animal is gonna be all right. So it was a pretty pretty exciting time. So you can't spur a mule off a cliff's edge, That's right. That's why they that's that's their whole thing. Uh. Have you've done much writing at night? A little bit? Not, probably not as much as uh some of these guys coming way back from back country. Yeah, I mean that's that's a wild wild thing. Man. It's not having your light on. Yeah, so you don't don't have your head lamp on so the mule can see better. And yeah, you get that like feeling of floating sometimes and you're just like super dark knights and cross river up and down drainages and they're all all they're doing is heading for home, and they kind of quicken up the pace the closer you get, and it's it's pretty wild, but you get some real real confidence in them. Yeah. But there's also those zones with low hanging branches. Yeah, that's that's treacherous. Speaking of mules, Jerry Cloward loved mules. He was transition, he was he was big into mules mule. Yeah, yeah, he had he had the He had the one where he was with a New York City music executive and he shot the mule Uncle Versy's mule. He was laid by twenty six crops with her. Yeah yeah, Okay, So we've been we've been doing a two part series on the cultural impact of the book where the Red Friend Grows and the way that I described it was it was that one time that coon hunting, this super niche small scale hunting related thing, did a three sixty slam dunk on pop culture made him love it, all right, that's the truth. I mean that that book is just so widespread to this day, used across the country and urban areas. Always thought it was kind of a regional phenomena because you know, I live about an hour from Talaqua, where that book happens. So we we did that. Somebody wrote me and I got to give him credit, and I don't even know who it was, and said, hey, you gotta do something on Jerry Clower and I don't want to. We could get into the details of how I know about Jerry Cloud, which we will. We will. Steve has a few things to say, but very quickly what I what I so the render. Part of the render is seeing behind the scenes of the Burgers podcast. We didn't have this planned out for a long time. If we had, I'd had my friend Steve Ronella talk about Jerry Cloward because apparently he an expert on Jerry clouer. Um. We put this together relatively quickly, and so my friend Isaac Neil, who who helps me with some burglary stuff. I was in Arizona and I said, Isaac, when I come home on Monday, I have got to have an expert about Jerry Cloud. That I I mean, I gotta get an audio recording in like two days from when I get home. When I got he was messaging me and what He scoured the internet, called Jerry's old manager and couldn't get in touch with him, and so he called the The City council office of Liberty, Mississippi, calls him on the phone City Council and he tells them, Hey, we're trying to find a Jerry Cloud expert. They give him the cell phone number of the Mayor of Liberty, Mississippi, which he calls and leaves a message with the Mayor of Liberty, Mississippi. Within three hours, he gets a call from from John on Newman, Jerry Clower's neighbor from East Fork, Mississippi. Jerry lived in East Fork and uh and so so Isaac's like Clay. We got Jerry Clower's neighbor. And I hadn't talked to John, so I didn't know much about him. I said, you know, what's he like? Is he is he excited to do this? Like what's the extent of his knowledge of Jerry? And you know, he said, man, he seems pretty legit, pretty excited. And so I called John and just deep Southern accent, just like Jerry. You know. I find these regions have obviously, like a Mississippi, Mississippi accident would sound a certain way. If you're from Arkansas, you sound a certain way. But it's very regional. One time, Steve, you would like this story. When I was in college, the first day of some big college class, when you're in this big auditorium, I sat down in the seat and I heard a guy two chairs behind me talking and I turned around. I didn't look at it. I didn't know who he was. I turned around and I said, you're from Gordon, Arkansas, And he was from Gurdon, Arkansas, and I'd recognized his accent in a heartbeat because I had a friend from Grdon, Arkansas. Just immediately I picked it up. I say that to say, the accent of the South is varied, extremely varied, and but not when you're a Yankee. Yeah yeah, maybe so maybe so you're from down there. Yeah yeah, no, I get I see what you're saying. But east Fork, Mississippi, it was eight hours from my house. So I drove to east Fork, Mississippi, met John Newman, and uh, can I give it just a little bit of color commentary on Uh, Liberty, Mississippi. Seven would be the population. So the mayor is the mayor of what is known as a micropolitan twelve miles east of McComb, Mississippi. I think McComb, Mississippi, as Jerry says it is, the is the big town. Um. But Liberty is the county seat of Amity. Nope, a mitt Amen River swamps A river? Am I t emphasis on the a A mitt river? Yeah, so a lot, a lot of Jerry Clowder stuff takes place in the Amat River swamps. Yes. So, Steve, what was what's your connection to Jerry Clowder? You know. I thought about it long and hard after Could I first tell my problem? Yes, my problem is I I like, right when I knew you liked hunting raccoons, I was telling you listen to Jerry cloud y'all listen to Jerry Clower. Now listen. Did you think I was listening to Jerry Clower before you were born? So remember when you were talking about the fact that the fact that you would do the Jerry Clower thing, and and not even and I would have to find out about it through Phil. I can see how that would be really hurt. So I'll tell you the first Okay, I thought about it, like, what was my initial Jerry clowd touch point? Was this I could actually put I could go back home and conduct some interviews, and I could probably find out the exact year because I know where my bus stop was at the time. My bus stop was one mile from my house. And it was can you do this in a Jerry one from I will you need three compass directions one mile east of where Duff Road and Strail Road came together. Okay? It was yeah, I can do all that you could if you had time triangulation. It was we had to walk that far to the bus stop because they didn't they needed to have a certain amount of visual clearance down the roads, and apparently so for a while they moved our bus stop to a horrible fire away spot. The reason I say this I heard of Jerry Clower's story and it was the one he tells about the little boy out on a moped or something and a brand new I can't remember what car, like some sports car pulls up next to him and the little boy is like so curious about the car. The owner of the car rolls the window down and the boys got his nose there and he's smelling the new leather and he's just so blown away in and the light turns green, and the motors decided to impress the little boy and just gun it out of the intersection. So he peels rubber out of the intersection heads down the road, and a while later, in his rearview mirror, he sees his little boy overtaking him on the moped and foom past him, And a little while later he comes back to the other direction, Poom passes him, and while they're here, he sees him coming agains like, how's that boy going that fast? And smashed into the car and the guy gets out. He's like, Oh, is there anything I can do I for you? I'm so and he's like, yes, sir, you can unhook my suspenders from the rear from the side of you mirror. So uh, and I remember going down to the bus stop. You were tickled by that one. When you remember going down to that bust that bus stop in that spot and telling people about it and what it was was. My mom had been raised in in in in a farm area outside of Chicago that became like now it's like a big Chicago subdivision in Naperville. I think, Uh, she's a w g N listener because she's like Chicago Cubs. Even when she moved four or five hours away from Chicago up into Michigan, she would do anything possible to try to get w g N. So I grew up with w g N always playing. She liked the Cubs games all that Cloud used to go. So this would have been in the I was born in seventy four. This has been like late seventies, early eighties. Cloud would go on w g N. Tell a story now and then no one like we knew about him. No one knew about him as a point. It wasn't like a thing is like, we had a very like specific entry into Cloud, but we liked them a lot. So we probably had the eight tracks at a time, but we had like Jerry Clowder cassette tapes in the car and my parents would find this stuff and buy it and we would listen to Cloud. And then even in all through like high school, all through college, within my like immediate group of friends, we would make Clouder references all the time. Yeah, if we were describing a tree that did you'd be like, there wasn't a limb on it for a while, right, Yeah, And like we had all these Clowder jokes we would run. Later, when I was in graduate school, this guy there's this novelist from Mississippi named Larry Brown from Oxford, Mississippi, and he kind of like took me on his wing a little bit and we became buddies, would go drinking together and stuff. He actually passed away or had a heart attack when he was young. Um. I was like, oh, you know, one day we're just talking and I said to Larry Brown, I'm like, you're from Mississippi. Have you ever heard of the guy Jerry Clower not only that he hung out with Jerry Clowder And that's what made me think that you like the Mississippi people, Southern people whatever, like somehow all know each other. And Larry Brown would talk about how he was friends with Jerry. We're talking about how Jerry had a rule for himself that he wouldn't tell a story on stage on a radio show, that he wouldn't stand, that he wouldn't feel comfortable standing up front of his church and tell him and what Clara died. Yeah, it wasn't too terribly much longer than that. Uh, Larry Brown died. Um, but that was the first person outside of my immediate circle that I ever encountered the knew who that guy was. So so my biggest question was how big of a national phenomena Jerry Clowd was because he was on the Grand Old Opry, which would have had, you know, a national presence, but he was. I talked to Dr Brooks Levins, who was kind of an Ozark's regional expert, and I just kind of pitched an email to him like, hey, what do you know any think about Jerry Clowd. He knows quite a bit about other Southern cultural related stuff. And his comment to me was that he felt like Clara was kind of a regional phenomena. And and you know, he acknowledged that he would have been known at the wider scale, but you know, obviously the hub of his the hub of his, his base was clearly the South. But Clara also talked about traveling up in the Northeast and telling stories. He actually in in one of the books that he has, a book called Stories from Home, and it really was just a transcription of a big long interview they did with him, and he talked about when he was in the South he could tell stories just real freely, without explanation of stuff, and when he was anywhere else he would his stories would be longer because he would say something like boiled okra and he would have to qualify it tree. Yeah, then he got where he had to explain the terms for everybody. Well and just here and you say that, you, I mean, I was surprised. I actually considered text in you that week that we were building this, which was just last week, and I was gonna say, do you know who Jerry Clowd is? And I do remember, I remember now you're telling me that yeah, yeah, I do remember you telling if you want to get if you want to increase the number. Like you might say to someone, do you know who Jerry Clowder is? They're gonna say no, then say to him this. Imagine back to when you were a kid. Do you remember a magic bait commercial in which a man said, it'll fling a craven on him. Speaking of magic the use of magic bait, will fling a craven on the catfish. That is Jerry Clowder. So he did a commercial for that company and it was like magic bait, It'll fling a craven on him. That's Jerry. That was Jerry Clowder's voice, and that will get a lot a lot of people be like, oh, yeah, I remember that. I'd be like, if you you're the guy, the milk guy Verne and all that, What the hell's that guy's name? I don't remember. Yeah, you can say like, hey, do you remember his name? He was born when a lot of your life happened. It sounds so funny too, because what you're talking about the intersection of the core demographic and where that core demographic overlaps with the magic catfish bait. I think you may be giving it too much credit because the widespread phenomena that had six people, I got it. Uh, buddy in in Alabama who is just like your classic soft spoken storytelling dude and his he knows that it just had giant repertoire Jerry Clower stories. But and he'll just like slow roll him out for you, you know, and their their first person stories, right, and so after the very first one, you're like, oh, I get it. This is not your story. Is just a good story. But there's a great one about this kind of wealth due gentleman. He's out there squirrel hunting, not doing very good, and here comes this this boy up the road is just obviously from from a lower class society right the other side of the tracks. And he's got a bunch of squirrels hanging from his belt but no gun or anything. And and he's a son. Looks like you're doing pretty good. And so yes, yes, sir, yes, sir. You know all Clowder stories are like very polite and uh talks, you know, addresses the squirrel squirrels on the kid's belt after giving him a spare apple, and they're there talking about, uh, the squirrel season, and he says, well, son, I see you don't have a gun. He says, no, sir, uh use a sling or or just slings Rocks said, And he said, I just chuck rocks, just chuck rocks at him. Yeah, And and pretty soon as squirrel presents itself and and and you guy says, son, why why don't you take a crack at that thing? And so I think, like left handed, he wings a rock up there, knocks squirrel off the tree, and ties another squirrel to his belt. And the gist of the story is it's like, oh, man, I and you're like you're a lefty to boot or something like that, and the kids like, oh no, sir, my, my papa won't let me use my right hand. I beat him up too much, he said, is he had those squirrels tucked up under his belt and it looked like a squirrel hula skirt. You know, I it had been a long time since I had listened to Jerry Clower, and when I was driving to Amtt County, Mississippi, I listened to NonStop on on Spotify and Amazon Music. They have Jerry Clower's greatest hits. They have um, Possums, Peaches and possums. So there's different albums and then they have clower power, so there's three albums. There's some deep cuts on Spotify too though, or maybe no, you can find some deep cuts maybe on YouTube. But I feel like there's some deep cuts on can say there's there's more. Is that what you're saying hidden gems? Yeah? Yeah, deep cuts is like a term for stuff no one knows about besides B sides and music. I was actually kind of surprised to find it so easily on these main plats. Amazing that it's out there. Yeah, yeah, I listen to ask the guys that Spotify. I bet they're not aware. If you went to the if you met like the CEO Spotify, really, you know, I appreciate you guys got some clower up. There's gonna be like, oh yeah, that was negotiations all the way from the top. Um. I think it's all those stories are so like wholesome that it's it's due for resurgence, right, Like all I do is read up to date, like periodical all all day, every day, and it's it's amazing, like how stories like that now triggers such an emotional response because everything else like you have to suck all the emotion out of it just to get through and be like, oh, a bunch of people dying, but you know the environment getting destroyed. Uh, And then you're like, he's actually right handed. I love it. I love it. You know. There there were a couple of things that that did stand out to me. I never really thought I would have never thought of Klower as intentionally like a clean comedian. I mean like we just listened to him, and it's just kind of like who he was. You didn't compare him up against somebody who is different than him. Klower overlap with George Carlin, Richard Pryor, all right. I mean folks that started they were the ones who started cussing. Yeah. Yeah, Well, I I appreciated well going back in and reading his and I don't know if it's the most in depth, but you know that book Stories from Home, Like he made a very intentional decision. And I said it on the podcast because I've I value stuff like that when somebody has a has a strategy that is against the trend and they just do that strategy. And he he said that some of somebody at Hollywood exact or somebody that was you know over him said hey, man, you're you're gonna have to be more risk ay if you want to be nationally known. And in his words quote he said, I defied them, you know, and he uh and he just stuck with who he was. You know, he didn't he did. He didn't let it change him. And that's what I appreciate is he he didn't let it change him. And man, that is what. Yeah. You know, I talked to John Newman for like two hours and you probably heard maybe twenty six minutes of John Newman talking about Jerry, and the main thing that he wanted to tell me it was just what an incredible guy Jerry was just as a neighbor and a friend, and the things he would do for you in private. So I mean, he was just this genuine guy, but clearly a comedic genius. And what I I asked John, I said, I said, do you think Jerry was? And I knew the answer to this. I just kind of want to see what he would say. I said, how is Jerry influenced by the people around him? And I know the answer because I know the way that I talk and tell stories is a hundred percent. I mean I could track, I could point it back to the people in different things that I do that. I mean, it's not like I'm trying to imitate them. Just you hear someone talk, can you hear someone tell a story? And it's just that communication style you identify with it, and then you kind of adopted in and recognize that it. It's like it's effective, it's a it's an effective way, it's an even even a cultural way to do something. And so you create this, you know, inside of your personality in the way you communicate, you tell stories. Man, Jerry had to have been surrounded by some big characters down there in the South. John didn't really he you know, he just said, you know a lot of Jerry's stuff was just natural, and which it certainly was, and he kind of came up with his own unique style. But man, I guarantee you those guys down there that's they told stories like that and the other thing. And I'd like to hear you guys thoughts on it. Jerry is the one who said he said I'm not a comedian. Uh well no, no, don't no, no. Somebody said Jerry wasn't as much a comedian as he was a humorist. And then the quote from Jerry Cloud was he said, I don't tell funny stories. I tell stories funny and I know that I know that that exists, but I completely disagree. I mean, he did tell funny stories, but I think what he was talking about was he always had the hook and the part of the story that was really funny, which was a funny story, but all the stuff up until that, like I'm from East Fork, Mississippi and Amit County and dada da da da da da da dada. I mean, like he's just that's not funny stuff. But he told it funny. I think that's what he meant. You know, I got you, but he like there's an interview where I can't remember it was Larry David or Jerry Seinfeld talking about the writing of Seinfeld Okay, and that they eventually realized that when someone goes somewhere, like you can't have a scene in a bowling alley because something needs to happen there, because they have to be in the bowling alley for a funny reason, and then something funny can happen at the bowling alley. Everybody has to be somewhere for a funny reason, right, You don't just haven't set for no reason in the bowling alley so that someone can meet someone's mom. It's like they go to the bowling alley for and if you if you watch, curb your enthusiasm. Everywhere they go like they're already there for a funny reason, and then something funny happens, like Clower. I mean, probably my favorite Clower story is the the guy that uses the monkey to hunt raccoons, the monkey with the pistol in the flashlight. Okay, like they're out there's a funny punch line. But they're out in the swamp for a funny reason because the guy is like, I can hunt. I could kill more coons than anybody with this monkey than anyone with a dog. Right, So they're out in the swamp for a funny reason. Like he follows and he was doing his way before those guys are doing it. But I'm saying, like he follows the road map of comedy. Yeah, well he did it. He's like it's like he is h he's pioneering for sure, but he's definitely like like has a hole. He's like a honed craft. He's got a different approach though too. Okay, and I touched on this a bit last night. But it's like it's like a fable, right, and he starts with like the basis of something, and he's like, oh, but wouldn't it be funny if it happened like this? And this is the end result. When Norm McDonald passed away, I was watching a lot of Norm McDonald. I'm still I'm still, I'm still doing it. And if, like Conan O'Brien posted this thing, is like the funniest guest was Norm McDonald and and he laboriously tells this joke and and it's it's a joke that you've heard in some way before, and it's like a fly walks into um like a barber shop, and it's telling telling the barber about all the bad things in his life and everything, and and the barber is find like, well, you know, next door is the therapist office. He says, I know, and he keeps telling him about it, and he said, no, the next door is the therapist office. He said, why are you in the barbershop and he said, well, because he had the light on. So it's a moth, right, it was a moth. But Norm McDonald tells it on live TV and as if the whole other world only showed up to hear this, like whatever story of his, and it's so belabored and it is. It is one of the funniest, funniest things I've seen in the telling. And so Clouer kind of you know, it wasn't his joke. He just built up the world around the world around it. And so Clower like everybody's heard this anecdotal joke. Uh, you know, I always say, you know, a couple of guys sitting around and oh, a nice shot. Another guy turns around and goes, should see me with my right hand? See me with my left hand? Right? And it's like, that is the joke. We've all heard it a good jillion times, but you put it in the context like two people from different worlds out in the squirrel woods bump into each other, have this moment together, and then should see me with my right hand? Yeah? He yeah, he like could dress up, he could take like a simple joke and dress it up and put it in an eight minute context. But like the one I wrenched earlier, that the suspender thing that's not telling a story funny, Yeah, it's a kid who got to suspend. It's like it is funny. Yeah, yeah, that was for sure. And a monkey with Ashly isn't telling the story time though he I mean, he covers both. He's such a musical performer too. He's he's very dynamic. Is the highs are high and the lows are low, and you have to kind of strain to listen. He draws you in and pushes you away and brings you back in. Norm McDonald, who's you know, incredibly funny as perfect timing. He's not dynamic in that way. Yeah, he's very dead pand that funny. Yeah, I got you. I just realized the two things I need to tell you. You can get around to mean when you want, but to help me remember mccullach, chainsaws yea and details but say whatever you want. Remember I was just gonna say I wanted to make a whole section about it on the podcast. But his sound effects, he when I listened to him, like, I start to laugh inside every time he goes whoa. He kind of has a growling man in that coon that I mean, you know, you just can't replicate at and you could tell it was so natural and it was the most fascinating thing. And I wouldn't have known this about Clower. You know that he he was forty five years old. He was a fertilizer salesman from Mississippi Chemical and it was just a funny guy. I mean, he had built a whole life, a whole life as just this country salesman. He sounded that such a joyful spirit, and maybe for all of those decades of his life he soaked up a whole lot. I mean, honestly, I didn't. I didn't grow up in a chicken coop. I grew up in a concrete box, and I had not heard of somebody doesn't just show up in New York City crib And just to follow up on that, I I My favorite part of the podcast Clay was listening to Brent Reeves recall him their meeting. He sounded so wistful, he emotional. He remembered every tiny detail. You're a pretty boy. I'll never forget. That's the thing you cannot say to something, that you are a pretty boy. I'm like, yeah, I'm taking off. Uh what what was your thought? Had you ever heard a joke on now? I had not? Um and my yeah, my yeah, totally surprising, right. My first interaction with his comedy was listening to your episode yesterday, which I had to pause right and to go play the chainsaw Monkey, to play the motor Yeah, yeah, I was cackling. I mean it was just his his delivery, his spirit. It just hearing him was so feel good and so funny. I I was driving while listening, and it was probably a dangerous situation because his the Okrah line about it so much that just people and were too just it's I don't know, you know, the delivery, the energy that everything, even if not necessarily relatable. He it seemed maybe after you know, starting late in his life, that he perhaps had already h solidified to a great degree his confidence in himself, his sense of who he was, and that his comedy was maybe so good because it was him being him and and and relaying stories in a funny way, or funny stories from the entirety and the breath of his experience. I just found it so delightful, you know, him being to our dinner guest last night. He was a comedian. He said that confidence is such an important part comedy, just being confident in who you are. And at forty five, after dealing with you know, all these farmers, for all these years go on and selling chemicals and and selling fertilizer like he was. He knew who he was. I think when he stepped in the show biz, it was just a matter of shifting a few things around and just kind of being who he was. You know. That's what was so cool about him. Business is a beautiful thing too, because he's like here, you walk into any Cooper right and be like, I know you need what I'm selling? Yeah, do you want to buy it for me? I bet. There's some stories all over the south of him, uh, you know, in his role of well of people, stories of him as the salesman. Hey, lastly, well we'll go, we'll end with your chainsaw stuff. But and details real quick. I was. I was very glad to I would not have known about Jerry's positions on race in the seventies. I just looked it up. I was just like, I just typed in something about that, and immediately it popped up some of his quotes and people saying Jerry was thirty years ahead of race. I thought that was noteworthy. Yeah, he'd get he'd get I mean, he'd still get canceled now if you listen to everything he does because like his jokes about women's liberation and stuff. They may come after him pretty hard. Yeah, he wouldn't say him, but they'd come after him hard about it. Yeah, man, any of these comedians you could with a little historical revision, we just wipe him out. You know, his whole big joke about how good his wife's got it. Yeah, you don't want to mess with what mama's got his his like, his whole thing is he looks at the woman's liberation movement and what they're after, and then he talks about how how grave he is if has it, and he's like, she do a want to know that ship? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. McCulloch chainsaw. Oh, it was funny. In the show they were talking about you associating Clowers chainsaw from the famous talking chainsaw um and your old man having a mccullic. So our family chainsaw was a McCulloch yellow McCulloch and uh, it was just funny because it was like we understood later that, like it took note of the fact that Marcel's chainsaw was the chainsaw we owned, which I don't know what the hell happened to that company, but I was in the chainsaw tree business for a lot of years and never laid eyes on another McCullah. As he puts it, another thing you hit on, uh is his use of detail. And he's like a very good in that way, a very good, technically proficient writer. And the thing I returned to is his like the coon hunting story, his most famous story, his description of um the tree, like if you listen carefully to his description of like how big the tree is, He's so efficient, but it's like how big the tree is the person that's going to climb the tree, what their attitude is about tree climbing. When they take off their shoes, they don't just take off their shoes, they take off a pair of Brogan shoes, which was like the poor working person's It told you who this guy was most It was like the most functional, like poor. It would be like if you were like when I was a kid, to be like he took off his hush puppies right, and you'd be like, got it, Like I know everything about that kid. Now I know about that kid's parents sensibilities, like he took off his tough skins. Okay, you'd be like got it, Like I know that person's parents, I grew up with that person. He takes off a pair of Brogan shoes and then the thing too. He says, I pointed this out. I told cran about this later. Is um, you know sweet gums got smooth bark, kind of a soft smooth bark, and that he buries his toenails into the bar to start climbing. It's like, this is like beautiful build of like very telling details. You know. As I said that, I was envisioning like trying to tell a kuldnhun story like him. And I had the same thought about how efficient he was, even with detail, because sometimes someone tells the story and you're like, okay, come on, speed it up, like too much, you know, there's too much detail. And he he would give you just the right amount of detail and the places you needed it and then skip. I mean, it's just natural, Like I I doubt he's sat down and really thought about it much. It was just instinctual. But a lot of his a lot of his you know, comedy. The different routines were like under two minutes, like the chandelier one. That is a perfect joke that the chandelier story like that, that's like a minute in fifty seconds. Yeah, I just it's not I mean, no one really likes to hear someone breakdown a joke and tell you why it's funny. But I love that he stands up. He's like, well, no one could spell chandelier anyway, so I don't think. I don't why are we doing this? And you're like, ha ha, that's funny. And also no one could play this chandelier. And then as a listener like huh what And then then of the punchline, I much rather spend the money and getting some lights in here. It's just it's just so it's perfect. And then as you heard from John Newman that that actually happened. That was one of the stories that just like straight up happened, and Jerry just told it, you know, which is pretty amazing. Now, what I hope this does is everybody can go find some Jerry Clower. It would be hard. I think it would be hard for anybody to listen to that and not find some bit of enjoyment. I've seen it happen. I've seen it happen every person that I over the years, every person that like we travel with on the crew, I've I've subjected them to klower most of them get something out of I've seen something where just as like this, yeah no connection, yeah down the internet, and I'm like, I like it, really this really like no part of this. Like I do think you have to have some connection to work. I think you have to have some connection to world one. Now, you just got to be a cold person. If I was a cold blood running through your veins. Yea. The pheasants forever, quail forever, the old talking. A couple of weeks ago and over and over, I had a bunch of a little talks on the stage there and over and over again. People would be, well, how to any tips for getting first time hunters into and it's kind of like this Jerry Clowd thing, like I don't understand how you couldn't like it. And for me, upland bird hunting is the same way. I'm like, lots of exercise, beautiful country dogs doing doing their dog thing, doing the thing that they're made to do. And my success rate in taking first time upland bird hunters out who really want to go again is next to zero. Shot my gun and I got Jerry Clower was a big coil hunter man. We we don't have time to get into it, but he he said something that I thought was great detail. I don't think I brought it up in the episode, but when in the story of when he had to shoot Uncle Very's meal, when he had to put it down Uncle Vert, he went to Uncle Versey's and said, Hey, we're gonna we're gonna hunt on your property. And Uncle Versy goes, oh, that's great. There's seven right covies between here and the road. I thought that was a that's how that's something somebody would say, that's right cove between. That was another I know where you're trying to wrap it up. That was another running joke with me my friends, and just like teenage years is dealing with landowners and trying to get permissions. There was a joke where it's like, only people that do that would get how receptive when he goes to get permission, Oh, I'm so glad you come out and hunt my place. Only someone who's like dealt with like permissions all the time would find it funny that like Jerry goes to get permission to the guys like so glad. Yeah, we've been saving them for you. Man. There's so many jewels inside of that and so it's been a lot of fun. Thank you guys for being on the Burglary Surrender. Thank you much appreciated. Yeah, I hope the the original crew doesn't have too much of a problem. You would like to say, what's up to the porkrass cracklands? Correct? Who's how to do it right? Boys? Yeah, and Lady

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