KERWIN FROST TALKS TO JOHN MAYER

hey i'm kerwin frost and life can really hit you like a ton of bricks don't just sit around thinking contemplating what can you do start your own business get the bright idea and go on shopify.com it's very easy and just like that you can do it i'm out he walks into the interview with clown shoes [Music] hey i'm kerwin frost and on this episode of kerbal frost socks we have a special treat uh the most interesting man in the world john mayer thank you thanks for being on my show uh it was an instant yes but it wasn't an instant how oh but it was an instant yes yeah and i appreciate that that's really true you've been working on a new record i'm in the studio doing nothing but working on a new record so studio home go to sleep wake up two hours to mess around studio whole rest of the day which has been good to just focus on music because when you have everything normally when all the plates are spinning yeah they pull you out of the studio for this and that and i'm not getting pulled out of the studio and i think the results are going to be heard the results the result of unbroken momentum creatively i think will be heard which i didn't see coming again in my career but it is very much like the first record where it's just about making music because that's all you have right right right uh so i'm in i'm i have no reason to leave the studio you know the dinner is the death of great art the dinner what's the dinner the dinner is where you're in the studio and it's 3 p.m and you're trying to figure something out and then it's like 5 p.m and you strike gold right and that's going to take about four or five hours to figure out but you have a dinner at eight and you go by the way i have a dinner at eight and everybody goes oh okay he's got dinner at eight yeah and you will miss a lot of magic because because you had a dinner at eight and the dinner is like the victory lap well i get to go wear my new jacket out yeah yeah there's the guy who did that yeah but you're leaving the thing that could be incredible if it weren't for you wanting to do that dinner dinners are off the table right and we go all the way through those magic hours that are normally done with outfit changes yep and like well maybe bring a couple jacket backups in the car in case on the way to dinner i decided it's not that kind of night yeah none of that all of that is gone and it's just you make your record yeah it's lean dang it's lean and then um with with like how would you describe your last record because i feel like there was this just kind of i don't know there's there was this cohesiveness with like with um room for squares and then you saw the shift in them too and you saw it get like darker and more blues but then you um but then like by like 2010 there was like you know you just kind of like dipped but then you came back with this new sound that was like perfect but it was like perfect for you yes and then when you came with the last album it seemed like it was kind of like not the greatest hits but like kind of like you hitting those touch points of like every pocket that you have yes it it it was like a collection of that it's a little mixtapey yeah and i really like the songs on that album yeah it's not necessarily any document of one moment because when i did dead and company when i started playing those shows i would leave the studio and then go on these wild jags right with that band and then come back and go i have new song ideas yeah man and there was a day when that record would have been the most cohesive but the the project was left open for so long right that i would come back a year later and go i got another song we updated ideas this record is a response to that where it's the same 10 songs that were locked in like may wow so i've been working on the same 10 songs there's no distraction there's no like hey i know we're in the middle of this one but i just stumbled on it it's like that's for the next record because i felt like the search for everything had gone through so many revisions that it ended up not maybe where its natural fate was supposed to be and i'm like this one yeah but it did what it really needed to do and then there's there's a lot of magic moments within the songs like um like uh you'll you'll live for uh you're gonna live forever yeah that's like a [ __ ] that's like a pixar like yeah dream song yeah that one or like screwed me up i was yeah that one that one messed me up yeah i don't know how to play the piano really right and i sat there i think i had my jacket on because i was ready to leave wow but i just sat there and i just kept running these chords and and i i just kept going and going and going until i figured it out and all i had that night was [Music] that whole little thing and i took it home and then i came back the next night and i started writing the lyrics and i was it's the only time i was like bawling wow i was bawling while you were writing i was bawling and oh there's one other time i was born and and that's on the same record and that was a song called uh never on the day you leave wow forget it i can't make it through but yeah but the i would be writing and the microphone would be open and the engineer who i've been working with for years just wait for me to write you know and you'd hear this thing about that song is that that is the only song i think of as not being me singing yeah everything else i'm like okay i'm me right right and i sound like this so i gotta sound that but this one went it was like almost like the way thoughts might sound before they hit your vocal chords but it was so good because you felt the soul of that's it the parts of me were made by you there's no there's no quality to it other than these are the words and these are the notes i mean there is a bit of like a little bit of like a torch singing thing in it but you know you know it's like planets keep their distance too moon's got a grip on the sea there's no like oh people are listening and i'm a famous guy and i'm very right yeah just like complete vulnerableness like just everything on the table a big black box and it's just you and god and that's that's the best songs that it's just you and you and the maker that's it you know and uh but but what's really weird is that like i think that song is as good as a song as i've ever written yeah no for sure but at a certain point in your career people tend to go like oh no no no we got the ones we we got we got the we got the shot i don't think i don't i don't think it reaches that for you i don't know i mean i don't know listen to um uh uh what's the second album it's uh i don't even have your things heavier things yes and the songs on there are so like the cover you look at the cover and immediately you think of that time you're wearing the baggy jeans with the fit shirt yeah yeah and then like you listen to wheel or like you just listen to that album and it rides out and there's this gloom to it but like you're not grim you're just kind of like it feels like new york all that like through and through yeah i was in la the whole time wow maybe you were terrible that's great though because it feels it brought you to new york yeah you know yeah and i was i remember thinking to myself i've got to make another record really quickly because i don't want anyone to think the first one was an accident or that i only have so i want to go back in and there are i mean when you look at the careers of people who've been around for 50 years and you look at their set list it's like sometimes it'll give you uh sort of an imperfect picture of what you think you need to be because like these are bands been around for 50 years and they're pulling 16 songs yeah out of dozens and dozens and dozens of records so you're gonna hit some and you're gonna miss some right right and every record i've done has hits and misses and even the ones that aren't my favorite records there will be a song on there and i'll be like that did it right and you and if you were thinking about how you could have made it better you could have spent more time you could have taken the four that you knew were unforgettable and just kept going and going and going and you wouldn't had the tour yeah you wouldn't have been around you know you wouldn't have grown from that and i i feel like it's their ideas that kind of just stop where you need to stop them right and and i've learned to get over that that that level of perfection is unattainable and was never attained even by the people that you put up on the cork board and go i want to be that yeah no no you know no i had a moment like that when i saw like uh kanye's uh factory of clothes and it's just like everything that's like that you can imagine you know what you could get as a creative like all in one place and it's like oh this is like complete result of like trying to outdo yourself and it's forever and it's messy yeah and it's messy it doesn't end it doesn't end well it's always messy i said i say that you know being a musician or a songwriter you know when you create that way is like a really really really great restaurant with the [ __ ] messiest kitchen you've ever seen and you can go crazy in the kitchen yeah but you have to remember that all the all the patrons of the restaurant see are these beautiful dishes that come out yeah but but it's very difficult sometimes to separate the fact that you may have gone in the studio for a week and come up with nothing right or junk that you heard that no one else heard it man no no they're still going off of this really compressed thing where just you're just the best of what you want to have come out to you it's not that yeah i got i got a edible high the other night and uh i was laying in bed and i was on instagram and i had a very strange kind of artifact of being high and i felt like instagram could see me yeah and i went they can't see you man oh wow you're fine i mentioned it on camera yeah so i didn't really ultimately i sold myself out but i was like i had to remind myself you're in your house man yeah i can't no i can't see you right now they don't they don't know you're vulnerable right now i felt seen it's not paranoid yeah no but i felt seen i know when i wasn't being seen yeah and i had to remind myself you're in your room man you can think whatever you want to think holy [ __ ] damn well so you really understand the the flow of records i've put out yeah i i feel like i do definitely yeah it's nice that is really i haven't thought about it forever because i'm only thinking about like the newest stuff i have that's not right yet so you never like just go back and because something i noticed like when you do like the live shows you always like switch the setlist like every show i have which is like no one does that or like i guess people i'm true but not a lot i'm somewhere between a pop artist and a jam band yeah maybe closer to pop artist but i can't repeat the show right right i've done it and it's really good to get everyone on the same page as you early on but where i'm trying to get to now is like and i'm not thinking about it in terms of doing three shows in a row because of the demand for it but like three shows in a row that didn't repeat yeah i think that would be i mean pearl jam's done that so well where if you fight for it the right way every one of your songs is a baseball card worth owning yeah and you have to you have to work it work at work it work it so that there's not like here are the big songs and here are the other ones no they're all in the same world and it takes a couple tours to go trust me i'm playing this deep cut yeah because i want to give it this life on stage for the rest of my life but there are some uncomfortable moments in making that change because people come like specifically to hear her like and you might decide oh i want to do this entire album only this show you guys and some people are there because they dig the guitar playing yeah some people are there because they're like if you don't play daughters i'll kill you some people are there because they want to hear the song i wrote when i was 20 that i never recorded yeah and some people so it's like they don't tell you while you're doing something for everyone yeah there's also other people who don't want to hear that no we're taking a bathroom break and you have to and i'm telling you you have to do this i don't do it well i know that i should that while i'm playing walt grace's submarine test there's another person who's going what what is this yeah i did not we did not get a babysitter for this is he going to play better play i know it's definitely me definitely me by the way what what's that that you that you want to you want to hear yeah for sure yeah definitely which one which which john mayer concert show goer would you be i want to see him play the guitar i want him to play the deep cut or i want to i want to hear the biggies i think it's the deep cuts mixed with the biggies yeah yeah but it's mostly the deep cuts what song if you came to a show when you come to a show yeah what song would you say you know what had my time with it not gonna need that one and i probably will play it but i'm not gonna need that one i mean [Laughter] um god let me see [ __ ] i don't see i thought that before i if you could skip forward a moment if you if a moment had us had a necklace and you go no god i love this song but let's see what else he's got what's what's the song you don't need to hear at a show of mine what's uh no i love the idea that you're gonna make me sing it what's the one that goes and i'm gonna go oh yeah no is it this one no it's not that one that one's not great either you're going to make me that's like going like i know you from somewhere where do i know you from like i don't like queen of california you're not going to need queen of god yeah no i got it got it now you know what you know what went through my mind when you said that and this is my point i went oh fine well i love quinn california i was gonna swell no but then you did a couple of songs from that album uh i i saw you um when you played uh i think it was was it madison square garden it was madison square garden and you did a lot of songs from that album yeah from born and raised yeah from born and raised yeah but i actually liked it it was good born and raised you'll catch it is very much based on a thing that i think is age dependent that's not about us it's not necessarily about the fireworks of harmonic stuff or cordials no but it holds up but it's very yeah it's it's like yeah it's like a just like a denim yeah like a pair of denim jeans it holds up yeah whiskey whiskey's on there yeah such a really good one little thing yeah but that's the fun part it sucks in the moment to change yep but if you do it long enough and you look back well you've just made a quilt yeah you've just made something with some tapestry with some texture i always find it hard to like explain kind of your music and a lot of people will like tee it up to be like a certain kind of thing or like a classic one is like like uh like talk about john mayer and somebody like oh yeah that's like jack johnson right and i'm just like that's so [ __ ] disrespectful well well i mean because jack johnson's cool but he's like he's like mom talk music i understand it's like mom's talking i understand like the hymn it usually reveals what that person thinks about music yeah it's like pattern matching yes so if you you know uh with headwear yeah you'll see a lot of people sometimes see your hat and they'll go oh you look like so-and-so and they'll be wildly off yeah but what they've done is given you their gps is to the last the most the most specific thing they've seen involving a hat right right right so you've seen guys hit on girls with glasses okay tina fey yeah this is your point of reference for a female with glasses yeah it's just a glass so you've imprinted other people with what you think about these things so if someone says he sounds like this person to me i go well that would that starts to give me an impression of your music library yeah right yeah but i've had people say dave matthews and i've had people say michael franks and i've had people say and it's really like an interesting insight into what they listen to i think it evades for better and worse it evades description and i'll tell you why me being a singer-songwriter yeah is not necessarily a core instinctive automatic thing right what is that is me being a thinker and a wanter and a doer and a writer yeah so me being a singer and a songwriter is not necessarily like bone marrow deep yeah it's so what is bone marrow deep is thinking about things analyzing things wanting to make the things i like so then that's right about here but here i'm dreaming things up i'm listening to things like oh i want to make a record like that does it ever stop you no at this point no at this point if if it drives me i'm doing it yeah that's fine um i always think the next record is the one everybody wants just play the guitar just come out with the karate demonstration mayor just come out with the blues solo and i go believe me there's nothing more i want to do here we go yeah and then i sit down and i play it and i go all right then i write something that's like that that makes me giggle yeah yeah that's what i want to do yeah and i know that i could i know that i could shred yeah but man it doesn't interest me like and if you give me just one night you're gonna and other people go what a wasted opportunity mayor and i go no the wasted opportunity would be me making a record with guitar playing all over it and what i really want to do is make melodies do these things that are so good that you laugh out loud i don't know why laughing yeah musically is like better than applause like laughter when something is great is the ultimate compliment yeah i mean i when i'm making this record right now like i'm laughing out loud and i'm not even sure if it's because i think it's great or because i think it's insane which is where you should be 20 years down the line right right is making things that still make you laugh i mean yeah that's the same yeah it has to give you that or it's not worth it if i don't if i'm posting an instagram story and i and i want to be i want it to be funny if i didn't go alone in my house yeah i shouldn't it wasn't worth it and if i did then i'm going to be okay yeah as long as it didn't hurt anybody and it made me laugh out loud it doesn't need second thought so yeah i think i i think you have you have to do what makes you giggle in that way you know maybe it's not a giggle for some people maybe it's like it makes them cry or they go oh no this is how i want to be known but i've also seen the metric of cool yeah wait that sorry i just thought because it is something that you do uh do whether it's like a lot with the earlier stuff too like i don't know like even i remember hearing like city love for the first time and it was so [ __ ] funny that like you uh uh she she leaves her too fresh at my place and then it's like she wears my shirt to go to work wasn't it oh man it wasn't i don't remember the lyrics she leaves a toothbrush at my place as if i had the extra space yeah she steals my clothes to go to work yeah yeah and it's just like that's such a vulnerable like weird thing i should say openly in a song yeah because it's not something that guys would like flex about or something right but you're just like openly just kind of like saying that dialogue yeah i mean uh that's that's like um a kind of specificity yeah that allows you to smell the place yeah yeah if you don't have extra space in new york city for a toothbrush no i know what the wall smells that's the best part one detail that yeah creates a domino effect and you can then you know what time of year it is somehow that's the fun part yeah that's the fun part you go i i don't know why i understand what room this is in but i understand the room this is in you know damn um but i'm saying like and i want everyone to know this everyone who is an artist everyone who's trying so hard to break through a certain kind of cool barrier like i've seen the cool metric change yeah so many times so many times that i'm not telling you don't chase cool yeah i'm saying uh it's not worth it like if you could chase cool and get it by all means i'm saying by the time you reach what you think is cool cool's like over here yeah it's over here yep the princess is in another castle yep you know what i mean yeah that's a mario reference yeah i didn't i didn't catch it the princess is in another castle every time you got to the end of a board in mario they would tell you yeah sorry princess is in another castle and on you go damn that is true sometimes instead of um one movie with one pyramid of like a two-hour pyramid of like you know establishing thing rising action climax i want to see like a movie with four smaller movies where everything just goes like quickly and well like imagine like the first one is a hostage negotiation and they like they just figure it out with them i can't take two the next batman movie to go into production should be three batman movies that are 40 minutes long each one a different batman smaller story art three batman's that's the name is it a different villain in each batman different everything i don't want the two-hour struggle we get it i want three smaller struggles with a faster result the older you get the less you want to see trouble yeah and the build-up of it like the beginning of speed that should be the end of speed man yeah are you the older you get you watch a horror movie you go leave these kids alone [Laughter] do you remember when you did the ipod nano thing yeah man i remember every time i ever stood next to steve jobs can you tell me about every time like in detail including like smells uh things like that um he's dead now yeah that's that is true um a cursory bit of research would reveal that um every interaction was memorable and valuable uh yeah i mean the things he said to me went straight into the first page of my playbook forever wow forever could you give us like just a little yes he said to me greatness is communicated in everything you do and that was the day i went every font's gonna matter wow everything and and he was right um if you're releasing something if you're putting something out it is a result it's not one thing it is a result of probably a hundred moving parts yep and if all hundred moving parts are right the same amount of care that you it's like you should wanna you just wanna yeah and if it's not the other day that someone was showing me um a test site for a thing yeah and i looked at it and i went it's a free font right they went what i it's a free font buy the font because free fonts are [ __ ] yeah always tell when someone uses it and i don't care what your record is come at me with a free font i can tell from the album cover i could tell who downloaded from font.com wow and when why pay 500 bucks for atlas grotesque yeah when i can get this thing called grote for free yeah but guess what the h is up like four pixels and the word the and the e and a whole page of that yeah your brain doesn't know it yeah your heart can tell your heart goes it's not working and when you buy the font and you see a whole page of a 500 font yeah you go you go you get put at ease very very that's the fun part about making things now is not the bigger things it's the little things all going together and that's what makes the difference between a record coming out and you going whether you heard the record or not you go well that feels good the sean mendes record feels phenomenal as a cohesive thing down to the last little scribble right right and that maybe in this day and age and it certainly is more visible than the actual record that might be more the product than the actual thing like i think the photo of the next sneaker you put out yeah is more important than the fit do you know what i mean yeah or as important let's say you're as important because it's like the whole presentation because i might not wear the sneakers but i will in take it and embed that moment and it will feel like something yeah and that sometimes is the thing yeah you know i've learned to start looking at things that are beautiful and not having to buy them because i think they're beautiful it's like i don't need to own this i don't need to appreciate this from right here buying it yeah is not an up vote i recently went through that and i went oh i'm buying it because i appreciate it yeah and it's like oh come here yeah come on now now i'm learning to go like this well done wow that's beautiful yeah that is a beautiful execution yeah and leave that's how my accountant's training me to think like that yes yeah they they um my taxes are looking crazy you know what a lot of 325 only a few 325 dollar purchases make a thousand dollars which is insane 325 will catch you yeah i went to the 711 and i bought some things and it was a hundred dollars and i was just getting like water red bull and some it's some kombucha like you ma you might have been ripped off there yeah lucky from what i know i felt for hearing yeah no but the number three is wild yeah because on its own it's just three you know but just three of those threes you're basically at ten man you're basically it's a full honk it's a hunk so you know what i mean but back to the back to see no i'd like to stay here it's just back to see if i can just talk about steve jobs was there a song that he just like really liked because it was just such a good pairing i mean i don't when it comes to like apple advertisement especially around during that time there was just like they always paired with just like very sharp like musicians like your music was like just very sharp mm-hmm or like i don't know when i think of like bjork yeah and how hard she hits like i think that's i think that uh steve liked the music a lot yeah i think it was a i think it meant a lot to him so that was uh yeah i think he personally liked it a lot and that was always a hyper flattering thing it was a very flattering thing yeah yeah that's true what was that thought that was a thought that came away i don't know oh okay oh you also okay personally interested in the thing you thought of and went no not that yeah no i wanted to know i wanted to know what you what you cut what did kerwin frost get too wild so um right before covid and then maybe like lightly in the beginning of it you did current mood yes which is amazing it's nice seeing you step out of john merritt's like this is this is who i really am i just want to talk to people yeah let's [ __ ] get it on right but uh 2003 2002 the vh1 show the john mayer show and it's very similar yes the the i think that that little show had a couple of things in it that went the distance in terms of people it was ahead of the time the humor was crazy there was the ice ice you know this this people this may turn people yeah but i may but i see things still and i go i i think i did the focus group yeah you did the focus group i think the focus group i think i did i think i did the focus group and it's not like you're you're not upset you're more curious yeah have you ever wondered whether you started a thing i have and it's not you're just like hey i started you go like this yeah did i [ __ ] start that yeah and you could be wrong and someone could go no man the focus group was actually and you go like this oh god fine all right but you're like yeah yeah i go through that moment every time and you have to you have to always talk to yourself what do you think it was what's the thing that you heard or saw and you went i think that was it happened to me with so many things the one that's that's shareable [ __ ] not that i could think of on the spot but it's just it's such a common thing and especially like i mean with me being into fashion and then also like it's just like right it's it's very common but it's like the thing is is the reward of finding out whether they did or didn't take it right is never fulfilling that's right even if they tell you to your face yeah i did it right or you'd never find out or you never find out which is probably eight out of ten with normal i know go i'll be in the car sometimes i'll hear a new song and there'll be a guitar putter in there and i'll go yeah is that your boy mm-hmm and and you're not going like hey i did that no no but something i mean and you're not even being self-congratulated just like did i was that me yeah did i do the vodka i saw a focus group thing the other day and i went i think i did the focus group but you don't feel ripped i don't feel ripped off because i didn't keep doing the show why didn't you keep doing the show what happened i was touring i just didn't i i remember thinking i couldn't do both at the same time i also can't do current mood at the same time i'm writing a record wow i have a cause it's two different people um it's it's the same person with two separate thoughts yeah same thing right so i i have a certain amount of uh creative energy that if i split the vote neither thing works right so if i wasn't making a record right now i would be writing in my phone all day current mood ideas but i went i can't do current mood right now because i need to come home and obsess because we're talking about like i obsess myself for a living yeah hopefully safely uh obsess myself with ideas and the product of that obsession are these song ideas or maybe i'll put this in that bridge and if i'm too busy thinking about how to make a joke work yeah because it's by the way it's the same spark i brought for me again no creating a joke is crazy it really is yeah crafting a joke yes same thing as crafting a song for me and i think that's hard for some people to have understood in the beginning is i'm me and these are the things i want to do yeah and i can't do both of them and have both of them be important yep so i went okay i've got to divert every last bit of steam into the bonkers concept of one person making 10 songs that sound like five young people in a band playing on the same day all with the right amount of different drugs in them the bass player all right bass player your heart just got broken okay singer you just bought a new car and to get excitement to boil that way from one guy yeah going into the studio repeatedly but i still think of funny ideas all the time i give them to my professionally funny friends yes and i hear their jokes sometimes and i go yeah i i hook the i i can't really write a joke but i can give you the joke parts yeah so i can say to a a comic what about a thing where it's this and that and that and and they go oh you mean and i go yeah yes i can't execute yeah i can't that's why when i stand next to chappelle right he's the he's the mouthpiece and i can sort of peddle the thing along with him because he kind of takes the train on the rails he's the guy i mean and then he's the guy i can help i can help pedal yeah i'm the guy behind he's he's steering and i can help paddle and and i i think i have um i understand the comedy i have the mind for it i don't have the face for it right it's a little punchable and i don't have the ability to execute and also at a certain point in your life you go do i want to be a renaissance man where do i just want to do the thing the one thing that serves the purpose and then enjoy the rest of the time to actually enjoy my real life do i want to be the 4 000th funniest person yeah or somewhere in the 40 uh of of music yeah i'd rather i think i'm ready to put all my chips into that and make my funny friends laugh at home yes yes yes you know damn i have a question for you talk to me you have a long-term partnership with adidas yeah yeah what's a long-term partnership like specifically with adidas no just in general a long-term partnership that's my joke oh oh so you didn't really want me to answer that no i don't know what a long-term partnership is like oh it's um so basically it's it's interesting it's like a real relationship um i love working with adidas um when i when i came in it was very like he's like the witty guy so let's like throw witty things at him so it's like my job to be like no no no this is that we walk the slide funny yeah when people think they have the sense of you and then they try to generate more of it no yeah you go that's not it no for a and i don't know why it feeds like that for a lot of people because they tend to like or incorporate corporate companies that i'll work with it tends to go backwards into more of like it gets diluted into this child like nostalgic like 90s this and i'm just like no it i think it proves how special your mind is yeah if even people who understand your mind go let me do one that's literally what it is and then they show you what they think is one you go i would never have thought of that no but when then talking to them you're like oh you get it yeah yeah so oh my god okay all right 2007 um the tour merch it's a bait flip yeah and yeah and no one [ __ ] your fans are in nashville they're here they're there no one [ __ ] guess what you're doing even if you search up their shirt yes you can't search up john mayer vape it won't come up it was that incognito yes and that was so [ __ ] crazy so babe was a thing that only touring artists from the us figured out right and it was hilarious yeah at the time we didn't know who nigo was we didn't know any of this we just knew there was a store called bathing ape you had to go to oh so you randomly just found out going we just knew you'd go to bathing ape and you hadn't heard it or seen it on on kanye or anything no no no no this was 2003. i went nuts in 2003 on super early bathing ape and i have boxes of like the original vape shell never where is it all sitting in storage in the future john mayer streetwear museum yeah wow you know hosted by cornell university right right but we would go to um japan and this was before the sort of internet really i mean the internet was around but before the network of of everything was locked in yeah and you'd walk around with a shirt when you came home right that said a bathing ape busy works babe ape shall never kill abe you know you go what is that and it would just be great and fun and it made sense that hip-hop would have picked up on it yeah and i just thought it was great because he's an invitation of hip-hop yeah which then became its own thing which which you know you get teriyaki boys yes hilarious wow you know and and you get these shirts that are plays on things that we in america just never really thought about yeah like an american express card yeah right and the very first g-shock that i thought was out of control was the babe g-shock was it the pink one no it was a black one and it in it each letter of g-shock was a different color yeah they were super playful so for me i mean cause did like the the laminates for the 2000 maybe like eight tour or something and then did the laminates for 2007. so i mean this was back when there wasn't this giant neural network of streetwear no so it didn't even get around you went to union on like sullivan yeah you know yeah and and this is when their stock was in the floor it was a trap door and they came out from so shady you know and it was great and you went to la brea and they were undefeated and there was union and there was a couple other places and and and if you ever saw someone else wearing it you would just start talking because yeah because it's such a small community yeah there were no lines yeah no there's no no so and if there was everyone was like having fun on the line yeah that was it yeah it was like they were just misfits yeah yeah that was a world yeah for misfits and i think at first they were probably like why is this your body as a wonderland guy in in in this line or whatever but i think over the years i think i've engendered some trust that i can make a pop song but i can also participate in a different world or different culture without wanting to take it over or combine them like i think having separate planets of the things that i do have been really good for me yeah instead of one giant thing like the watch world is pretty separate from the music world yeah and the comedy thing well i like i like it that you'd have to want it to find it defined you know i i like how did you get into the watches what was that all about what's your end game with that i was just i just wanted to like just touch it for a second it's nice if there was a stress ball yeah that created more stress this is this little like stiff crunch in the middle yeah i wonder if they've ever photographed that's not food photography um i think you either get watches or you don't you either see it as a world on your wrist or you know i mean i've given how do you get into it though just not even the deepness okay so just like what was the beginning when you're when you're a kid growing up in the early 80s a watch is a tv a phone i mean it doesn't perform those tasks but it's the only thing you have that's technical right that you can at night lay in bed and press a button and it lights up under your covers yeah that is what now people have their iphone for yeah and i remember like my first one was like an armatron watch with c-3po and r2d2 and then you step up to like a timex iron man then you get your first g-shock you're like it lights up yeah you play games like can i guess what a minute it is uh you know these because you're bored you don't have these other things and then uh you just get used to the sense of a watch doing i know it just tells time i know that but deep down inside it i feel like there's this other level of preparedness or something i just feel like i could get lost somewhere but my watch would get me out of it which isn't true yeah no it's not but there's this sense of reliance on it it feels like uh a tool right it feels like a tool yeah and uh and i believe me i know it feeling like like a tool like a tool is like yeah jeez yeah but what was the what was it like oh i'm gonna start was it just like tattoos like you get one and now you gotta kinda yeah well there's a bigger answer which is the way my mind works is nothing is the end everything is the beginning of the next thing so the first thing i ever did when i got a little bit of money which no one expected i was gonna get nobody in my life expected i was going to get money from being a guitar player or a singer it all makes sense looking backwards but where i was born and where i was from parents of my friends were concerned for me that i wasn't going to college and that i had come into money before my friends graduated was very special to me in a certain way and i wanted to buy a rolex with my first publishing chat and i bought a rolex explorer to most people they go got it it's the cadillac of watches we're done and i went well what's this in relation to everything else yeah and it was the door into understanding well yes rolex is a fine watch yeah but you know they are smaller more boutique more interesting and you just keep getting and i don't care about the watches as much as i care about walking through the forest and going wait so what about the hunt it's always so it's not necessarily the watch itself it's that the watch represents waypoints yeah on the hunt and so that item always changes in terms of what the thing is what that is it's about the specifications yeah damn it's cool that you have that so now for me discipline knives knives knives what just keeps going what keeps going i'm into knives yeah yeah but now wait a minute what's your reaction is why knives yeah why knives it's not about the knives it's about the hunt comparative research yeah well i have this one but i've seen this one online yeah how does the one i own differ from this one uh oh yeah well this one is half serrated well what about what about one that has no serrations they're saying it's easier to sharpen well do i need one with no serrations guess what google the name of the knife serrated verse boom non-serrated let's read up on it my brain won't stop it that's crazy even if it is concerning itself with completely inconsequential stuff yeah it's just running damn it's just running it almost has to because you have all those different has to go i'm the same way it has to go it's almost like that thing is like the centerpiece but also when you can go back you can look at things and it's immense times for you they're like yeah bookmarks yeah yeah yeah and and this time of the pandemic is very interesting yeah in the way that people both consciously and unconsciously have adapted they're thinking to suit themselves yeah and i think i think we're under a kind of pressure and a duress that we're only 30 percent aware of until this is over yeah that's and i i feel like that because i agree with that yeah we're not like we have no idea what the [ __ ] is going on it kind of feels very apocalyptic and we're all i don't know and it also seems like people are consuming more than ever like it's all there is man it's yeah it's uh i i looked at it the other day like i made myself a little crazy yeah as a vaccine for real insanity so if a vaccine contains a little part of the virus then the vaccine for losing your mind is allowing yourself like if i were a kid and i were my own dad i would say you have a minute to swear as much as you want wow you know what i mean yeah that you can engender a kind of craziness that can just keep you sane right i'm not trying to be hyper-poetic but for me it's like john what do you need to do tonight so that you feel soothed right a lot of times for me it's like being a kid man yeah and i know i'm not a kid anymore sam but being a kid is really important right now because the part of you that's scared is the kid the kid is [ __ ] scared and it doesn't get scary till the lights go out yeah you know yeah and if it's the glow of your iphone or your laptop while you look at an hour and a half video on surviving in the wilderness yeah it's not about how silly that would be no it's just what it's doing for you that mental vacation that it is that re-censoring moment it's keeping a kid quiet during a hostage standoff it's giving a kid your car keys to play with while the bank manager and and the robber go have a talk in the back office and you go you want to play with my keys yeah just to keep the kid from crying wow and we are that kid yeah we are and you have to figure out a way to go look just whatever it takes to soothe yourself tonight for me i think a lot of people i have to imagine that if i'm doing it i'm not that special that a lot of other people are going yeah man i'm really into this right now i wouldn't have gotten into this one again yeah and for me i quite self-awareness though is really strong and i think it's a big thing that maybe everyone could do a lot better with yeah whatever your thing is whatever your reward system is like it's okay to trigger your reward system yeah on things that your friends might not understand yeah the difficult thing is that and this is honest i know it feels like it's salacious but it's honest that there's something built into this crisis that seems to be a very sneaky endorsement for drugs um you know yeah the if you listen to the quiet enough drugs sort of go just let you know i'm right here i'm right here if it'd be a night you don't have to do anything tomorrow no you know and i always said like growing up being an adult not doing drugs is not a moralistic standpoint it's logistical you go i'm not against it on a spiritual level i don't have the time to recover i don't have the people around i can't afford to get into this [ __ ] yeah and now now there's something very sinister about that's kind of like oh you have enough time i'm just letting you know john i'm in the closet i'm old i'm expired but i still probably work yeah just letting you know better and you have to go every night yeah no man yeah because now how do you build that self-discipline like where does that come in for you because i feel like it's something that you probably got within the past couple of years or was it i've had it my whole life i've had it my whole life i i that's fire i i'm i am holding the other end of the line yeah that i'm hanging from yeah and i don't know how transposable that is to advice for other people but yeah i'm holding the line yeah because as an artist and a thinker you're gonna go some places you're gonna figure but there's also a kid from connecticut who's deep is actually ashamed of his life path yeah deeply ashamed of it and the left brain kid who's scared people are going to be upset or scared he's going to let himself down that i'm always doing this so when it goes like hey it's day 12 and there's nothing to do be a hell of a night yeah watch mandalorian high yeah yeah and you go like no wow and then you go like and you go wait a minute i'm not patting myself on the back so it's a really tricky thing and you have to go not tonight every night normally you go you don't even have the discussion yeah no no no i i did you don't have the recovery we don't have the runway as adults yeah to take off before this stuff and now it's like oh by the way you've got a car and an abandoned airfield but don't speed and you go okay i'm you know what i mean like that's that's the part of the pandemic that i think we're going to look at later on and go oh my god that was like the you know that was that there there was a lot of darkness around me and if if the only the thing that staves that off is like so a damascus blade that will rust quicker yeah but it's stronger i see as long as that that junk drawer in your kitchen yeah isn't getting open enough then then then that's a win and and i think we'll all have something that uh we picked up we didn't know that we were picking up and yeah that got us and we have to we'll we'll hammer that out later yeah but uh it's tricky man it's tricky i don't think we know i think everything is pandemic related i think if you had a falling out with a friend about something completely separate as pandemic related to it right now all pandemic related i think when this is over you'll go all of that was that yeah that's what i think that's what i i think you can see the tip of it right now but it it it goes all the way down to who you are and what you do to survive you know holy [ __ ] anyway but but you said something that was in passing but i think is really interesting you're talking about escapism yeah yeah that i have a little box but what i do with my mind inside this box is my interior decorating yeah even though it's not on the walls yeah i'm going to make this thing thing i've been given i'm going to put as much dimension into it as i can yeah that's why you are where you are yep because you are i mean that's the true nature of a creative yeah it isn't like oh i want to change the color of this thing and get patted on the back it is escapism it's fantasy yeah there are ways i mean we had different upbringings i they are relatively similar yeah in that and i grew up outside of the city in the suburbs but my sense of the world was very similar i want to go do this thing and i'm being held back and well that's what no such thing is oh man you know what i mean if people just hear the catchy hook but it's like you hear the song and it's like nope parents are telling you this is a book why is it the book you know what i mean like no i mean the the the best analogy and i cried when i saw this movie because i felt like that was me was truman's show wow yeah major couldn't get off the island there would be so to this day that is very relevant there'd be a fire i've chills while i say this there would be a fire on the bridge to get off the island yep and that feeling that not only are you working against the natural forces of the universe yeah you're working against the applied forces of the people around you yeah everything that's out to make sure you can't take that bridge john so where are you going to school and i go and i every year occur when i go i'm not going to school and you're like what i'm going to be a guitar player what do you mean i already knew yeah i [ __ ] heard me i heard me i was in a bedroom the whole time i heard it you know yeah and i'm going to go do that and i watched people get more upset every year when they found out i wasn't changing my mind wow that's when i learned one of the worst things you can do is defer getting upset because you think the reality is going to change yeah that's how you blow your stack is when when you're a senior and you say no i'm not looking at colleges yeah the tables are flipped it's made because that person or those people didn't everyone is talking about it too and then that's when you go i'm getting off the island yeah i'm going to get off the island now i'll take you one step even further yeah that is very sincere and i hope people understand yes once you get off the island you're so [ __ ] mad that that happened to you yeah but you're an [ __ ] for a while yeah because you don't know who's against you and you yeah you're complete everything is if you stand in a bad way like this pressing as hard as you can against the door frame and you step out your arms are going to do it you are you are so programmed to combat to combat people who are pushing you back yeah that when people finally go like this you're still going like this and that takes yeah couple of years holy [ __ ] to not be an [ __ ] yeah yeah you weren't an [ __ ] in here no what you were doing was you spent so many years trying to get off the island yeah and also proving that wrong and so and not enough i told you but it's like no look you see people go like this here they go like this you go you don't get it no no and they go but what do you mean we love your record and you go that can't be enough yeah i'm going to do this i'm going to do that and i'm going to do that and you keep trying and trying and trying and then people go we think you're a douche bag and you go no no no no i'm going to fight it i fought everything else and i won i fought everything else that i want so i'm gonna fight this i'm gonna win i'm gonna fight this and i'm gonna win i'm gonna fight this i'm gonna win yeah and then you get so far off that you fought when you needed to fight now you don't but now you're now you're fighting when you don't need somebody with another fight how is this part of myself coming out like i know i'm supposed to be fighting i knew what i was gonna be known for and not liked for and that wasn't even right yeah i started being like no you're hating me for the wrong hate me for these things you're so self-aware that you're looking at all those it's the same with for the face that looks cocky when it's not yeah for that right hate me for the over talking hate me for the hype or creativity hate me for being terrible in group work because i go you guys stand over there and i'll do it yeah you know but the idea of being hated for this other guy that was a sympathetic result of fighting to keep the real guy alive yeah then i then i went to black oh and then i fired it back up again slowly yeah and that's where i became a really happy excitable sweet i'm i'm not attacked i wasn't being attacked no but i was punching back you're punching and if you're punching back at people who didn't hit you you're the aggressor dude and that really took me years and years and years and years to get right and um that was and i feel like maybe that same thing was i don't think you punch back as hard but she went i'm gonna make the world that i want to dream in 100 i'm going to make the world i want to dream in and i'm going to be the person in that dream that i want to be and location won't be specific yeah because i can't trust location yeah i don't trust my location but i trust my mind and i'm going to soothe myself i'm going to entertain myself i'm going to dream things up and then you get to a point where these things that were your escapist survival fantasy become things other people can watch yeah and where yeah that is true and they found something in it damn when you wore the head piece when you when when i first got out of the car i went two things i went ah of course and then i went that's [ __ ] cool maybe i'll never buy that thing but i'll guarantee you i'll do something tomorrow oh that's cool that is the equivalent of that but for you we need to be reminded that you can that's nice and maybe that you can you do yeah remind people you can't that that's on the menu yeah which is the way i feel actually when i come back from japan yeah when i go to tokyo i come back i go i'm rocking goro's chains full goro's chains i'm gonna wear uh matching tops and bottoms i'm gonna wear my headphones around my neck i'm gonna have carabiners like like crazy i'm gonna put patches on things and then you get back to the states yeah no you're not no you're not no oh those people are like what's that you go you're right yeah the one thing i don't tolerate is reality distortion you can argue with me reality i will fight you we'll it'll be great i'll stay in the room but it better be all facts if you if you try to distort reality i'm out i'm out i'm out that that includes all of the flavors of gaslighting you know projecting it goes in every way and it goes back to that you know the thing but it's just like the reaction and it all it's the same calculation where other people be where are people telling you what other people are thinking about you oh damn gone gone i'm gone reality distortion i'm out we can anything in reality uh we'll let's dance i'll stay in the room we can we can go to bed as mad as you possibly can be yeah but as soon as you distort reality i can't stay i get queasy i get queasy man like i couldn't do it yeah that's all i ask stay in the reality and we can we can have ups and downs and ups and downs and ups and downs but you know nobody likes it you know it's like you know that triangulation like that is that we don't we can't we can't do it other people think it too girl yeah it's not just me kerwin it's not just me other people think this too isn't that the worst that's a weird [ __ ] word that's like one of the that's the classic thought at the same time it's not just me i leave not even they don't say who the people i can't i'm not going to say that right right i don't want to know i don't want to live uncomfortable i'm just saying i'm not the only one who feels like this it wouldn't be right me oh i i you know i don't i wouldn't even yeah we leave out of like uh nope i don't i can't even think straight before i'm i'm like oh i'm driving yeah oh i'm in the car i'm headed home how do you feel about christmas like honestly and i that's like what people really want to know i think it is really what people want to know um christmas is a wonderful holiday yeah and i believe it's an elective holiday each year right is saint patrick's day christmas song is what i'm asking st patrick's day is a holiday song but it's very much about well you know before we had a phrase cuffing season huffing season yeah there was a song called st patrick's day yeah yeah which was about cuffing season yeah which was you're locked in it's not even really about loving this person it's like there's no way we can get out no no no no but i do say we'll be safe will be till so i guess i guess the writer is uh out of his league a little bit yeah yeah yeah going well at least i get her until yeah well i would say i would say there's job security in the holidays okay i would say the holidays you have job security right right because again it's too powerful with substance it's just a bunch of electricity that you can clamp onto anything yeah if you clamp christmas electricity onto a breakup both people get destroyed yeah so i think christmas is devastatingly sad and nobody will admit it right i think have yourself a merry little christmas is sarcastic yeah it's not about having a merry little christmas it's about having the worst [ __ ] christmas of your life i'm hearing about talking in the background and your arm is broken and you're on meds and your christmas tree is flickering it's this big and you go to the dwayne reed and they're playing this [Music] chris it's like this yeah damn that's not about having a merry christmas no that's about having a terribly sad christmas and the song is ironic that's honest to god what i think okay when i was younger i remember i don't i was like maybe like 20 or something and i had stayed up all night and there was this window from 6am to 10am where you're just it's the best version of yourself but you're extremely delirious yes there was one morning it was maybe like 25 degrees in new york and it's six in the morning and i'm just running downtown with a speaker playing mr blue sky saying good morning to everyone there's a homeless man crying everyone's freaking out and where do you pick up mr blue sky in your life and times like what do you mean where where did where do you find mr blue sky like where does where in your life does mr blue sky make itself yeah i definitely wasn't a movie or a yeah it didn't come in naturally i got to know what that song is well it's just that then so you're aware you're alive yeah you're aware you're on a ride yes and you're aware other people are not aware they're on a ride yes and you would like your lasting legacy to be reminding people that they're on the ride yeah yes man fully yes so but that's how i feel about christmas sometimes and it's like sometimes going with it is almost better than not i agree with you i'm not against those chris i know for me personally following chris i feel you would take me into a dark alley yeah no no because i see that part intensely i know i know what you're talking about with role media yeah and sometimes i feel like well things that me and you have to do is kind of like foregoing whatever you know and doing what you know people need well if i had people in my life right which i don't oh and i've been paused that way right the pandemic paused my life in its current state which is a guy buying knives supplanting a need for love with information so you would say you're still looking for love oh god yes i didn't know that see people say this and that you haven't but the overall idea that people are surprised that i have not forgotten the idea of love is like it hurts me to the core because i don't think i've ever done or said anything no support the idea that i find the construct of love to just be some sort of lie that i want to spend the rest of my life proving doesn't exist i want it i'm sure i'm going to get it yeah it's not easy to find it's not easy to find and the older you get the more you kind of miss the natural traction yeah like this sort of natural but also yeah the more you become older in your career as well there's tons of reasons why it gets harder but why you become more selective right and when you're older everyone you see can i ask how old you are yeah i'm 25 i'm like 20 25 25. people just naturally out of the law of averages become younger yeah and you go so now i'm in between a young girl and her mother's age right so i'm stuck between 24 and like 50. um and i don't so that's just a harder thing to manage if you go out to dinner people women stop grouping together at tables after about 30. so any table of women yeah it's usually in their 20s that's when they're still packing like that yeah i'm still me i have i sort of live like a divorced man yeah that's what it seems like i live like a divorced man yeah without the yeah without the pain of of of a divorce damn so i have all the loneliness of a divorced man living alone but i have the excitement of a bachelor and the dwindling opportunities of a man in nearing his mid-40s and for the first time in my life i'm learning this thing and you'll watch this back 10 years 15 years from now go he was right yeah i'm learning to look at pretty girls right and say to myself stop it wow stop it think about this if i haven't had a marriage and a divorce that would that would really kind of telegraph to me that i am now passed to this kind of prime right my heart still feels like well i haven't found the person yet yeah so i'm going to keep looking for the person but every year you don't find the person it becomes a little stranger yeah and a little bit more wishful thinking to be engaging with people who are in their early 20s so i'll look at a picture of someone who is all who makes my heart go pitter-patter and i go stop it yeah and for the first time in my life i have to go you're right yeah stop it because my heart goes and you go john leave her alone yeah not leave her alone as and stop but just don't don't begin because my brain doesn't know yeah that the rest of me is getting older so i'm i have the mind and the heart of a dad yeah but i'm going to have to be younger to be able to become a dad so i'm a little bit over evolved and i have to unevolve to be able to go out and meet people and then the pandemic came by yep and was really like sweetening the deal on never meeting anybody yeah so now i go like i'm so psyched to go home into my world right and execute everything i want which is going to be very difficult when it comes time to get to know someone again yeah because someone's going to say a thought that i didn't have yeah yeah yeah do you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend aaron yeah yeah yeah so how does this work you were extremely intelligent i'm sure you must be as well do you ever find that in your creative life it's made you a kind of a tyrant when it comes to ideas yeah and that compromising in a relationship is difficult because you don't compromise in your art that happens almost all the time so our our relationship is like really crazy because we which she manages me but we also work very hand in hand on everything so there's like one being or like what i'm doing but i'm also behind that kind of like tweaking it and um we just we just recently had a complete blowout and like like separated and it was messy and it was crazy and it was like re-centering and kind of putting we're still putting those pieces back together and going through that are you good at compromise in relationship when you are spending most of the day in the driver's seat alone as a creative i think i think it gets it gets fuzzy sometimes i think i think sometimes i am but i like i there's a lot of days where i'm very grateful that i'm not doing what she's doing you know what i mean because i know how meticulous it is or like how much my world is her world you know what it feels like to me sometimes it's like asking someone else while i'm sitting here point to the shake and point to the coffee and i'm like that's the shake and that's the garlic and having someone else go and i go that's the shake and that's the coffee and they go i'm just thinking yeah yeah let me just let me just have a moment yeah and you have to learn to go it doesn't matter it doesn't matter and by the way yep that's the shake and that's the coffee yeah yeah that's literally we have so many of those moments it's crazy that is what i'm told yeah it's like yeah and everything else in my life it's trained to go like no one shake coffee next yeah chili dog shake coffee next yeah and it's not that at all and it's not that it's not that at all and i have to learn and again the pandemic was sent to me by the god of loneliness who goes no we want him on our side we never want him to ever meet somebody right right um it that's very difficult for me and i'm ready i i i have these brain farts sometimes that look like they look like they're that they're they're meant to i just have brain farts and like they're you know i don't i don't like being held to account for it but you have to be healthy okay what's your opinion on therapy for me i think it's a complete sham but then i also think it's like christmas that for like oh that's a great analogy yeah yeah well it's whether your heart's open to it yep it's whether you need it yeah on any given moment right whether you buy into it and who's throwing the party i would take people specifically like me and you are just very not vote yeah kind of vulnerable we'll just like say anything just out loud yes to any of our close friends that we do have i've learned to try not to say things because they're an interesting idea if they don't if i don't mean them yeah and if they don't stick well i'm not gonna wear the sweater but i stitched it no you have you you you got even around my friends now it's like a cool idea is cool but if you don't mean it right i've learned i've had to learn like well no i just made it to make it right right i mean yeah i mean going down for a thing you didn't mean is no way to live yeah um oh sorry you have tried therapy i did yeah does that suggest there is a need for therapy do you believe there's a need for it i just wanted to try it okay you know i just wanted to try i think everyone's feeling bummed and you know what i mean you tried it for for the for covid yeah i i tried well no well during oh me and aaron's fallout yeah this is very recent oh you went to couples oh no we didn't even we didn't do couples therapy yet no this was just personal god and this guy had all these accolades and all these like you know the columbia university of the boom boom and we talk and i'm just like i kind of can create any version of myself for this guy one two two even if i tell him exactly you know i cuz i'm i was talking very honestly i know they're kind of just like trying to shift you in these places and i do that already by myself and how i think and then and then so then i'm just like wouldn't it be better if there was like a therapy that was kind of like a boot camp where the [ __ ] was just telling you what to do and he was like dude you just got to do this more that's it that's what you came here for something monumental right now you said i can pretty much think anything i don't want to put words in my mouth no let's say what you thought i think you said i can pretty much think anything i wanted yeah i get to that conclusion by myself i i do these like self uh uh you know inward things where you're thinking about well who is kerwin and what's inside and and what makes me happy and i i know those blessing and your curse yeah is that you are mostly ideas yep you i said to my therapist one time yeah i'm not really a person i'm more just a collection of a bunch of ideas yeah yeah and then the person emerged yeah not to say that yours has it no no and like you hit it on the head yeah like i instantly be i was i was instantly like man i never want to check out of this place yeah as soon as the person fused with all of the ideas bro i went i never want to [ __ ] die now oh yeah man yeah and i look back at pictures of myself with all of this innate slenderness yeah this metabolism you know a jawline not worth fretting about and i went i wasn't in there you know to look around i was just running ideas man i was just running out of all it was and i think at your age just run ideas just [ __ ] run ideas crazy and when you go into therapy there's something about it that seems a little uh corny at best and intellectually offensive yeah a little bit having to talk about these things because you can make yourself think anything you want to think there was a moment in the session where i couldn't think of anything else to talk about and we still had like 40 30 minutes left you know why because you're a show runner yeah and i'm a show runner and you have a run of show yeah when you go to therapy and you feel great because you're trying to [ __ ] entertain the therapist you can't even see that's fully what it was and you feel ashamed that you came into his office for the kerwin frost one-man show without a run of show and there's 40 minutes left there was 40 minutes left and i just like saw him just get quiet and then there was more time and he was like well do you just want to do meditation and i was like why am i paying you for you [ __ ] there's it's a little bit of that but it's all you felt like you left you wanted to give a performance and you didn't have a second guess you didn't have a second guess no no there wasn't you didn't have a third segment no no there wasn't no no sometimes good stuff comes out like that but i'm telling you i'll say to my therapist now like i really feel like i'm giving it to you today this is great yeah great just can't super see something say something yeah because i in the beginning of it i'm like oh yeah well there was this because i'm like oh these are cool things to talk and then i'm just like wow okay well that's it i i really feel like i understand you i really understand the moving parts you are hyper creative and the person sometimes gets wedged out of the deal yeah but i'm also going to say kind of doesn't matter right now except in your relations slash relationships yeah be the one just keep going until you hit the wall okay keep going until the idea doesn't work anymore right right right the idea of kerwin frost is still a heavy hitter yeah so good and bad it's all working when i have a panic attack i know a song's coming yeah i've done this so long right that while i'm eating a xanax you know what the plan is sitting on the top it's the same yeah i know it's about well it's gonna be song time yeah it they all it's yeah until you go okay i've i've checked out what this thing can do yeah and i know the idea is i want to know where the person is and again i'm not saying there's no person in there but i'm not i'm saying it might matter more that the ideas come out now yeah yeah go find the person yeah here's here's the greatest scenario yes you get born right you get loved enough but you also get left alone and shaken up and disturbed yeah you find a thing to help survive that becomes the thing you're known for right it metastasizes as you become more famous yeah you get paid people love you but the beast keeps growing yeah you take the money that you've been paid for the thing the beast did yes go to a therapist and you say get the beast out of me but keep the rest now you've already made the money from from the beast 300 cash out on the bees it's never 325 dollars a pop yeah you've got the money because the beast helps you get there you go i want you to slay the beast but i want you to keep all the rest of it that i got and you can do that so now i have all of the power that i had as a writer and a creator when i was 24 and i have next to none of the trauma and i had the trauma like i had the trauma right and i don't have the trauma anymore which is why i immediately go like oh i never want to have to go yeah i never want i just want to keep doing this where those moments like stop this train and like home life oh yeah man stop this train is yeah is uh stop this train really came from an era of my life that i was the most frightened and saddened by which was at 25 i think you still have access to all your memories yeah i for me it's a little blurry really well think about the times yeah okay it probably was easier but the important ones yeah and every christmas that comes by reminds you of being sick yeah and then at a certain number of years behind you certain links come up error 404 yeah on on feelings you're trying to go yeah and you go i can't oh i can't find it yeah i can't rub my hand across the rug of my childhood home in my head no i've spoken to childhood friends and just like what was i like when imagine a memory and now it looks like this and it starts to look like this yeah and you go it's not exciting it wasn't just like this but i can't tell you what was here yeah that's sad man yeah i really needed all these things and you hear have yourself um and you go i there was something here and it starts starts going like this and you start going [ __ ] it was there was food here yeah that's that's what it felt like and stop this train was like no no no no no no no no don't take this away don't take that away and don't take that away i've already no no no no no no no no yeah and i remember back when i used to drink i would get drunk and the only thing i want to do is lay on a bed kind of like do that super heavy i'm drunk breathing yeah you think about time travel wow that's not useful it's not useful yeah dream of ways to go back no [ __ ] it's living in the past but but it's helpful for a minute until you move oh my god i've gotta gotta go yeah but it's also it's like we don't talk about how insane it is that you have been you specifically have been in this entire shift of all these like important periods of music and time and culture and why don't we talk about that you know what i mean it's like um what i mean i think the part of what makes it interesting also makes it hard to sort of collect into one thought yeah and those who are watching can sort of go like oh there's a forest gump-like aspect yeah there is yeah it's like the older i get man the more memories and photos of things become like like i just want to do this yeah i saw a video of myself playing with clapton the other night right and i went crazy this is this is like to be held on to like this yeah i could frame this video yeah i mean there's there's right yeah you want to frame these frame the video yeah and and after the thing is done after the song is out or the tour is done after you're worried and maybe you succeeded and maybe you didn't and maybe you came somewhere in the middle there's a wonderful thing that happens many years later where you go oh i have that to my name yeah there's a life beyond the release week of a thing yeah more people could understand it doesn't matter about your release week no it's almost a worse listen to some durability matter yeah it's what people think about it down the line and and i have been uncool yeah i have been cool i will be uncool again i might be cool again and if you just keep doing your thing yeah the winds keep going like this and you just hold still and just fly through it wow and for me now i don't nothing is win or lose anymore right like for better and for worse at this point yeah i've had my downs i've had regrets i have things like can't even take credit for them so well yeah and that's kind of situated and now it's like okay now what are you gonna do yeah and that stuff is really fun because i can make a record and go any direction only made for being great it's not made to make you think a thing no i don't go oh boy i hope the guest list gets bigger this tour yeah and by the way every artist should have those tours yeah like who's on the guest list in l.a i just go i can't win any more love and i can't lose anymore yeah i'm aware of how true love is right when it comes to fan love or and i'm aware of how untrue love is or how untrue hate is or how true it so now just make the thing right make it as great as you can make it and that's the fun part for me is listening back to this record and going like i don't know if it's cool but i think this is really good good yeah that's where you should be you know i like that and i i see i think give yourself that thank you yeah i see people uh and i get it and i don't know that they should change but who are looking at fire as a metric trying to make someone go that's fire is a different part of the brain then that's great fire is a very instant it's a rapid test is your first impression yeah it's like immediately when it makes you feel fire fine it feels like whoa but i don't know that everything that is fire yeah ultimately good fire just means whoa yeah and you can do that now technologically where you can make a sound grab you like that whoa that's fire yeah but i don't know that you should be trying to only make [ __ ] yeah fire the world needs sour patch kids yeah and the world needs a peanut butter and jelly sandwich okay and i'm fine being pbj baby do you ever walk into your house right you're like all right i'm gonna make a new post on my instagram and they just want to like just post a photo of your foot yeah have i ever wanted to yeah like just completely handle your instagram like you're not john mayer no um because i'm aware of what a picture of something else could have done right right okay and we live in a very competitive that's so crazy so we live in a very comparative world yeah the comparative reasoning is helpful sometimes and extremely unhelpful other times yeah so a post of my foot right in today's thinking would be a slap in the face to other posts more important than a post of my foot okay okay does that make sense yeah that makes complete sense and if i've just learned now that my posting something has a pretty good line of credit with people looking at it yeah i'm going to conserve the energy yeah of of sending a message so that when i send a message it's more seen and and taken in yeah a picture of my foot i would have a hard time leaving up yeah but it would be a 10 post great great tie-in if this makes the yeah this makes the edit then a picture of my that's how my brain works right i already went already thinking about the headache i do interviews with people and i'm already reading it while i'm talking to people there's not right i'm as i'm talking to you i i'm like that'll make it yeah what do you think it does to a moment yeah jesus christ i'll be singing a vocal what happened to me too that line sucked yeah how can i sing the next line if i'm already coming down to myself for the line i just say god damn it but you're no [ __ ] no i'm not it would have been easy for someone is outgoing as yourself yeah to delude people into thinking that you had something right but you have a very very very complex mind oh thank you very complex man you know in a way that i really like because it means the external stuff is stemming out radiating out from the internet yeah it's not the external as a way to trigger something no it's not which you see a lot of the time and that's okay too maybe if i get crazy enough the creativity will come on the heels of that the idea of like well if all geniuses are mad maybe i have to get mad to become a genius but it doesn't really go that way no so it's nice to know that the things that other people find eccentric about you are natural and sympathetic to the real thing inside you which is that you are just very very attuned to all of your senses yeah thank you you know yeah okay live albums are we gonna get any live albums i think live albums uh are made every night okay i like them personally because of the the way you carry the songs differently when you perform them i i mean that they're made every night by people on their iphones at the concert um right and when you were making them they uh yeah when you're making a live album 20 years ago uh people heard you live right now i didn't think about that you just go check it out it would just be a better quality sounding thing that you'd have to wait right a year for yeah but i think youtube is the new kind of live album i love what youtube has done yeah where it's allowed people to learn how to play guitar right listen you can catch up on everything i've ever done in a month on youtube okay damn all right all right i feel like i want to ask you questions yeah do you get recognized when you walk around the street i do do people who recognize you know who you are is or is it i know you and i don't know where or does the name is his name it's the name it's the name and i uh have this weird thing with it because i super appreciate it and it went so long in my life being like guys right you know what i mean but i it i think the other day i was at home depot buying a plunger and this guy's like yo curling like let me play my music i'm just like i'm not even that guy i'm not the mixtape guy but also that's never worked ever but also i'm i'm buying a plunger at 10 p.m right at home depot right how did you play it off i i was just nice you can't because this is the thing it's like uh someone came up to me yesterday uh when we were walking downtown or no it was by korea by koreatown and he said you're killing and me and aaron are just walking and you know we're going to where we're going we're not stopping around here but the kid he had this look in his eyes you know and i know that he kind of needed that and we spoke for a second and he he had tagged me in this post after and it was like you know this just kind of saved my life this moment and i was just like that's really crazy that we're able to kind of just add any of that kind of value and it's perilous and then it's like this isn't about you anymore you know what i mean it's like but also that's not necessarily a bad thing because it's like you bring joy and you bring i i always feel like i always called it like the magic worked more than you wanted it to yeah and then for that matter no but it's true you don't i appreciate it because i i do but i do have those moments where i'm like come on it's great it's a fantastic creativity not the bathroom dapper at its core it's genius right it's like you're it's like the idea makes no sense no we're going to replicate you a billion times once for a billion people right yeah and then a billion people i'm gonna all want to tell you that they like what you do so the current makes no sense it's like here's the circuit that i built here's the power source and it's going to get sent out to a million people but they can also flip it and send a million volts back this way and blow out the power so it's very you know what's crazy when you are ready to like open up to that one kid that comes up to you that's the kid that just wants a photo and to walk away that's great it's so it's so great in ways that i know we're perverse yeah but but the system is so flawed great but awesome so i love the connection that i have yeah i even feel weird saying fans i just i just go like other people in the world who dig what i do right yeah because it's but that's i see myself as just a fan but the reason the reason that we're not in my house is because i just need like i just need three walls yeah all i need is three walls that no one has seen before yeah or understands the dimension of i don't understand celebrities who are like welcome to my house i'm like you are naked here yeah there's like i mean i have i have this beautiful little tiny place in montana and it's like not little tiny but it's not what you think when i say a place in montana and there's this view over the water and when people come i go you just can't take a picture of this oh that's nice it's the only thing i have is this one view that goes over the yellowstone river and if i ever saw that view on instagram explore page i would cry wow i just go i just want this after that it's like it's all a result of this crazy insane like senseless level of math which is we're going to take all these people who love what you do and we're going to make we're going to change your life because of the ability to get all this you're going to just fire off your synapses to all these people yeah but they're also you're also only one of you yeah there's only one heroin frost customer service department i think i pretend like a mother kerwins and it's not they're saying oh no do you it is like having imagine if coca-cola had one customer service guy yeah that's me i'm pete from coca-cola you got an issue do you have a bottling issue in chile come to me pete i'm the only so there's a there's there's a giant division but when it comes time to talk to the you're the only guy yeah and i don't know why maybe it's because i've been in my house for six months i think it's hilarious right now no it is it really is okay so just for fun you're at home depot let's role play this i've seen you have a plunger in your hand right you're way too embarrassed to tell me that it's for the toilet yeah make up a lie right now what's the plunger for i just thought it looked cool it actually does look cool what island are you gonna start like making a plunger thing no no no no i was just getting one i thought it looked cool i guess i want a plunger too now oh that that would be your level of influence ah if i saw you and you said i got a plunger oh that would be so nice just because i think it's really cool when i want one i'd be like what does he know about plungers that i don't yeah yeah that's influence wow have you ever have you ever seen something you liked i like those though i would love for someone to run up to me and just ask me for advice on one thing that just like immediately came to their head right that that you would like more than one of them wanted to play you their song yeah they're playing the song they know that's not gonna go anywhere but they're just you know playing with something different playing the song doesn't reference your humanity yeah no um have you ever been into something like really you kind of got into something and you went i better buy three of these before i tell people that i'm into this yeah i can still get these if one of these yes yeah that's me all the time with everything so before you even share that i bought five of these hats the first time i bought the top that's the kind of interview [ __ ] that i live for you've just admitted that there's five of those because you know it's gonna start a thing and you want to be able to have access to the videos so you're stockpiling things before you show them to the world you did that with the oakland over the top soon buying multiples yeah so that if and of course when they become popular you already have enough so that you don't have to go on ebay and find that they've gone up 130 because of you so you learned the hard way yeah from now on you buy everything you want to buy of that thing you love before you go before you put people on yeah it's crazy that's [ __ ] psycho you're like a film department with a costume it's like yeah we have five of these should anything happen to them in filming that's incredible i do that with guitar pedals yeah so if if i find a guitar pedal i really like and i know i'm going to go on tour or people going to see me use it i buy three or four more of them because i don't want to pay more for them once people go that's the guitar pedal that's easy so i'll be like i'll get four of those then i'll take it on tour that's crazy you're aware of the impact yeah you know so could i play you a hip-hop song that i wrote yeah that would always be my question would he do it for me yeah oh my god um who would be uh who would you be the most star struck if you met star struck uh like tummy ache sort of like can't think straight can't go back to your task the way you the way you left it when this person walked in uh what kind of meeting is it like are we like talking and like like what's uh they're popping they're they're i don't know yeah who's that for you um now you can see it wasn't a setup because i had a question yeah sometimes people ask a question to someone because they want to be the one to answer once it comes back to them where do you must want to go these holidays well i have my answer uh the person who could walk in a room and make things go like that eddie better man eddie better yeah he could that that that yeah i think eddie better would make me completely and i met him before but i still go like ah yeah yeah yeah i mean i guess if you're using people that have that who's the person who young kerwin is so deep in the water table that seeing them would would would shake you in a way you're not even adult kerwin isn't prepared to brace himself for [ __ ] i don't even know anymore have you met everyone that you've wanted to huh yeah i've done a lot so it's weird so i don't know i feel like bjork bjork yeah that's cool she would shake the room she was at the table a little bit yeah what the hell is in her brain right that's the right okay okay check it out that's the right fame yeah the right fame is not oh i've seen him in the box yeah yeah and now he's here right the right fame is what did he think today yeah when i saw the first time i ever saw paul mccartney i didn't think there is the guy from the thing i thought about his eyeballs wow and what they had seen and his ears and what they had heard yeah yeah and his thoughts that day yeah what must and what's the song in his head now yeah that i don't know yet and that is when i went that's more interesting to me than i know you from the thing right so that's nice there are songs in my head right now yeah that i know note for note right that you won't hear until april and i know them like i know all these songs they're in my head right now i'm gonna think i'm gonna know which one's gonna be the big one too i'm sitting here right now yeah oh april man they ever meet an actor sometimes and they got some crazy kind of facial beard thing going on and like a big actor you'd be like what are you working on like i was doing a movie you're like god i know it's a huge movie yeah yeah yeah and then like a year later it's like so and so is jesus jesus and you're like i meant that when he had the thing he never told me it was the movie about jesus and he i just met him and he said it was for a thing yeah yeah actors that whole thing is so great i also love the idea of being an actor you can eat whatever you want and look however you want to look and just say it was for a while yeah and i wonder if there's ever been an actor who just put on a bunch of weight and then said get me a heavy person's role wow and then as a way to be like it was for a role it was for a role that's what i think that would be i think i got a trainer recently but i was too insecure i couldn't find a good one so i wanted to ask instagram and oh because instagram understands fitness if there's one place to go as you're i found a really good one through it but what i said all right instagram is always on with the footage what i said on instagram was um [Laughter] looking for a good trainer i i'm practicing for a role exactly and it made it okay to say i was looking for a trainer exactly you can talk about it there was no role because what do we love more than we hate talking about weight no job opportunity yeah yeah yeah yeah there you go yeah hey paul listen i've let myself go you have anything out there for a for a guy who's pretty round right now i don't know uh maybe some i don't know can i fight a bear yeah anything anything you got no ah [ __ ] all right get me a trainer so you're striking out with trainers yes and therapists yeah it's a little bit of a you gotta call me i i as a collector i also think i find the best people yeah i put myself through the experiments of liking things and not liking things yeah and then i just take the part that was good and i go just start here yeah damn ah john this is literally yeah kerwin this is awesome thank you this is awesome kerman frost ladies and gentlemen awesome oh there we go i hand shake the head [Music] you

Channel: Kerwin Frost

Views: 536,182

Keywords: Kerwin Frost, Kerwin Frost Talks, Kerwin Talks, John Mayer, John Mayer interview, John Mayer Kerwin frost

Id: iWgyprxp1wk

Length: 98min 16sec (5896 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021