Speaker 1: 0:46

This is Backstage Pass Radio. Backstage Pass Radio A podcast by an artist for the artist. Each week, we take you behind the scenes of some of your favorite musicians and the music they created From chart-topping hits to underground gems. We explore the sounds that move us and the people who make it all happen. Remember to please subscribe, rate and leave reviews on your favorite podcast platform. So, whether you're a casual listener or a diehard music fan, tune in and discover the magic behind the melodies. Here is your host of Backstage Pass Radio, Randy Halsey.

Speaker 3: 1:28

Well, I'm here in the studio with drummer extraordinaire Ricky Rocket of Poison. Ricky, how are you, bud? It's great to see you man, I'm doing great.

Speaker 2: 1:36

I'm a little frustrated. I'm in Pro Tools and I'm getting frustrated with something because I'm by myself. I'm not an engineer, uh-oh uh-oh.

Speaker 3: 1:44

Well, you know it's interesting because you know to edit this show. I'm an Adobe guy and it's amazing how complex these tools are. You know to edit this show I'm an Adobe guy and it's amazing how complex these tools are. You know, and I know a lot of people that do. You know the recording stuff probably, which is what you're doing, I'm assuming but there's so many features of these tools we can only touch on just a minute bit of what they offer up, right?

Speaker 2: 2:10

I mean, they're just complex as hell I actually know final cut better than I know, which is a shame. Yeah, that I you know as a musician. But uh, uh, but I'm putting some drums together for my. My wife is making a record, so um. So she asked me to play drums on it. So I'm like like, okay, now you got me as an engineer, just heads up.

Speaker 3: 2:35

Are you saying you're getting the B team? Honey, that's what I'm giving you.

Speaker 1: 2:38

B team stuff.

Speaker 3: 2:40

Well, good for you, man. Well, it sounds like you're staying busy and so you know, thanks for being here and jumping on and chatting with myself and the listeners of Backstage Pass Radio, and you know, I guess we could jump like right into the music. But I did want to touch just quickly on a personal thing because I think there needs to be a human element to everything that we do. But it's not a mystery that you're a cancer survivor, right? How is the cancer thing today? Are you in remission? Can you speak a little?

Speaker 2: 3:14

bit about that real quick, yeah, sure. Uh, yeah, I'm uh coming up on nine years in remission, uh and uh, yeah, it's, uh was pretty miraculous really. Uh, because, uh, I only really had about a 10 chance of making it okay. Uh, because Because I was stage four it didn't get better. I did chemo radiation it didn't get better, and I wound up down at Moore's Cancer Center, which is part of UCSD in San Diego, and Dr Ezra Cohen took me on as a patient and got me on a clinical trial and in about nine to 12 weeks it was gone, dr.

Speaker 3: 3:55

Ezra Cohen took me on as a patient and got me on a clinical trial and in about nine to 12 weeks it was gone. It was amazing.

Speaker 2: 4:01

So is this like an alternative type treatment to radiation and chemo? Yeah, it is, and a lot of people are receiving it now. It got FDA. You know. It got I'm going to say the place wrong. It got approval shortly after my trial ended, and so my trial was a big part of that. I mean, I wasn't the only one on the trial, of course, but yeah, they pushed it into high gear once they saw my response. Wow.

Speaker 3: 4:29

Is this? So? Correct me if I'm wrong. Is this the immunotherapy? Is that? Am I correct there? Am I off base?

Speaker 2: 4:37

Nope, that's exactly what it is, wow.

Speaker 3: 4:40

So you, you wake up. You, you wake up one day. Are you feeling bad? Like what Cause I hear horror stories about the cancer stuff. In fact, I had a buddy that was on the show some years back and he said I would, you know, I was out playing an Aussie tribute band, right, he was the lead guitarist and he said we were playing a Thursday night down at Rise Rooftop and I just didn't feel myself, man, I didn't feel real well, went to the doctor and like three weeks later, stage four lung cancer and within two months he's dead, he's gone. It's like what in the hell, you know? So I didn't know. Was that a similar type of thing for you? Did it come out of the clear blue? Had there been warning signs? Can you speak to that?

Speaker 2: 5:21

the the thing. The thing that was odd about it is the whole family had a sore throat, including me. We all had sore throats. We're like man, this thing sucks. So we went to the doc, got meds. My wife got better, kids got better, I didn't. So I went back and I'm like I didn't get better. They're good, but maybe I got it.

Speaker 2: 5:43

He said, well, maybe you have a secondary infection, let's go ahead and scope you. Have you ever had that? And I went, no, he goes. Well, we go up your nose and look down your throat and I can see if there's anything else going on. And when he did, there was something else going on and it was a lump on the base of my tongue and you know I wound up with a. The thing that tipped him off was I had a lymph node that was swollen Like really bad, and way more than like you can feel them sometimes if you're sick a little bit, but this was. You could see it in the mirror, sure, and uh. So that that was another big tip off too and uh, so yeah. So then I went through, you know, getting biopsies and all that stuff, and then went into treatment.

Speaker 3: 6:32

So it's lump, sore throat, and then, a little bit of time later, hey, ricky, you're stage four. This is the news that you get, or was it in a three, and then it went to four. Like, what did you find out initially?

Speaker 2: 6:50

Yeah, so head and neck cancer is actually staged higher. Uh, for some reason I got you. So if it's, if it's a two, they call it a three. Um, I don't know why, I don't remember the answer, but um, and I think they may have changed that now. But, uh, the reason I was stage four is because we did the chemo and radiation and we did all that and it didn't work. So now it jumped to the other side. There's other lymph nodes involved and that's why it became stage four. So now I can't do radiation because I've already done it. Okay, the chemo may keep it at bay.

Speaker 2: 7:27

If I try something else, surgery is an option, but they wanted to take my whole tongue out and so the other option was immunotherapy. But if it didn't start to respond, I could get to the point of no return. So it was a roll of the dice and I was just like you know, I don't know if I want to live with no tongue and a bag and all this stuff and a stoma. I don't know. What I know I do want to try is this immunotherapy. So when I went to the doc, he goes you know what I think we do have time. I have a way of getting around some of this If it seems like it's going the wrong direction. I I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, so so we did it and uh, the first, uh, you know the first uh, imaging they did. I mean, it was a tiny little bit left, tiny, and within a couple of weeks later that was gone too, and it's never come back wow, how lucky are you, jesus christ very, extremely lucky, wow extremely what a great story.

Speaker 2: 8:35

Well, yeah, what a great story, I mean, you know, because I mean usually that's not the outcome right, as you know yeah, yeah, I bought a video camera and was videotaping myself giving my kids life lessons, you know, so they could reference it as they got older. And so, when all that cleared up, I used the video camera to start my YouTube channel. That's how that went. Sure, yeah, trying to make the best of it.

Speaker 3: 9:07

Well, what a great outcome to kind of what started out as a horrific story for you. But I think they always say what's great outcome to kind of what started out as a horrific story for you. But I think they always say what's the old adage what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So I think you probably there was a whole lot of soul searching you did during that time. I'm quite sure of that right.

Speaker 2: 9:25

I would, as a man.

Speaker 3: 9:26

I would certainly put a lot of things in perspective of life and how valuable it really is, and we look past that sometimes because we just take things for granted, right.

Speaker 2: 9:37

Absolutely yeah, so it's. You know, I've learned a lot of lessons and people are like you know what's the biggest takeaway? Biggest takeaway now for me is I don't tolerate somebody wasting my time 100% If somebody says they're going to do something, and they don't tolerate somebody wasting my time 100 if somebody says they're going to do something and they don't. That's it, I'm done, I love it because you know, uh, that's one thing I learned is it's, you know, we just don't have as much time as we think. Sure, you know the whole. We'll do it next week. We'll do it next week. You know you can have 99 problems, but if you have a medical problem, you got one.

Speaker 3: 10:12

Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:14

You know what?

Speaker 3: 10:15

I mean Because it'll stop you in your tracks.

Speaker 2: 10:17

It'll stop you in your tracks, it will. So, yeah, you can't take it for granted, absolutely. And you know, I'm still don't go to the doctor, maybe as much as I should and stuff like that. But I I'm much more in tune with myself. I'll tell you that.

Speaker 3: 10:35

I get it and you know it's. It's interesting because, as my, as my, parents get older, uh, you know, probably 15, 20 years ago, when they were in their probably let's call it 60s right, they were going to the doctors a lot, and it wasn't because they were not healthy, it was because they were doing preventative things and my brother and I would constantly, just you know, give them the business about. You got another doctor's appointment today and yada, yada, yada.

Speaker 3: 11:03

And then you fast forward to they're both what 82. And they're, for the most part, they're healthiest horses because they did all of the things that they should have been doing a long time ago and I think so many times. Not to make this a public service announcement for for going to the doctor but listen.

Speaker 3: 11:19

But if you it's like a car right you're a car guy, like if you don't take care of the car, the problem just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then it costs you a whole lot of money. I guess is the point I'm making, right yeah, I mean, I honestly I don't.

Speaker 2: 11:32

I, you know it's. It's triggering sometimes to talk about it. I'll be honest, but at the same time, if I don't pay it forward, then what the hell did I go through all this?

Speaker 3: 11:42

for sure, and that's, that's the beauty of this, I think you know, because there's we, we, we have a what a 90 plus country outreach on this podcast and I mean, if it touches one person's life, then you and I have you know, isn't that a great thing, right?

Speaker 2: 11:58

Absolutely, and you know what. So it was driven. Mine was driven by HPV, the HPV virus, which there's like 42 strains, I think it's number six, it's typically causes this. I believe I might be wrong or I'm not sure about that. But so the vaccine that the new generation, like my kids, are able to get, it's a two time vaccine. You get it, you get two shots, okay, six months apart. That's it. They're not going to get hpv, okay, and because I don't get hpv, they're not going to get hpv driven cancer, which could be cervical, it could be anal. Okay, it could be, uh, you know my case.

Speaker 2: 12:43

It was, you know, uh, at the base of tongue, which is pretty common with, I mean, there's you, bruce Dickinson, a bunch of us have had it, um and uh. But you know, with the next generation we might get rid of it. Sure, you know so. Uh, you know I, and and I absolutely this is like no politics at all, uh, but I just want to make sure that there's good, there's good information out there. It's not a harmful vaccine. Died from it, people die from hpd. So, yeah, and then you spread it to somebody else, yes, and then you spread it to somebody else and maybe four or five people don't get cancer from it, but maybe that one does and you, you don't know you could have. I could have spread it years ago with a girl I was with or something.

Speaker 3: 13:29

Yeah, I don't know, I'll never know, I'll never know there's no way to benchmark it, there's no way to pinpoint it right. I mean what's? What, what it is, what it is right yeah well, we're getting there, there's go ahead, finish your thoughts.

Speaker 2: 13:42

Sorry about that no, there's, there's some tests being developed and there's there's ways to detect it. Okay now. But uh, you know, so it's, you know, especially for women, they just get a pap test, but yeah, uh, but, but, guys, it's a little hard, there's no like good blood test, but there's, there's a few things coming out now, okay. So, uh, hopefully, hopefully it'll be even more diagnostic in the future interesting stuff.

Speaker 3: 14:04

Is this the same cancer that eddie van halen had? Didn't he have a mouth or a tongue cancer as well, or do you remember?

Speaker 2: 14:11

that you know he was a little and forgive the pun a little tight-lipped about it. He I don't know for sure. You know he. You know he tried to. You know he smoked a lot, he drank. Yeah, he said it came from holding a metal pick in his mouth. You know it could have been all those things, um, you know, but I don't know if it was hpv driven or not. I don't know that if it's hpv, actually there's a better chance with it, believe it or not?

Speaker 3: 14:42

I don't know some reason they found, I don't know why, something about him stood out orally like there was some kind of oral cancer, something of the mouth. I just don't remember. It was a real cancer for sure.

Speaker 2: 14:54

I just don't know what specifically. I don't know if it was the lining of the throat, I don't know if it was. You know the tongue. Usually it's the tongue, yeah, and they say throat cancer and it's really base of tongue or whatever. Okay, uh, it can be lots of things. There's lots of stuff esophageageal, there's a bunch of things in there, but for some reason the HPV kind of buries in the base of tongue more often.

Speaker 3: 15:20

Well, I didn't mean to take you down a medical rabbit hole there, but it's good to hear right man it's good to hear and again, you know there's a lot of things that I've covered on this show that musicians have morphed their way into the conversation, whether it's anxiety and depression or cancer. It's funny how, when you get to just talking to people, just the conversations flow sometimes. And again, like I said, if it serves as a PSA for one person, then you and I have done a good deed right At the end of the day I've done a lot of them.

Speaker 2: 15:54

I've shown up for panels, I've, you know, I've spoken, I've done, you know, at different events and, um, you know, I I'm not going to say I don't mind it, I don't like going to those events because there's a lot of people hanging on my words that have maybe going through something right then and, um, you know, and it's hard, it's hard to you know, and it's again, it's triggering. You're back in a hospital or wherever it is. But again, you know, uh, I gotta suck it up and, you know, face my fears. And, you know, try to make other people feel good. I've helped, I've mentored quite a few people through it and sometimes it helps, but not always. Sometimes they don't want to listen to you. They're like, ah, this is my way and I get that. I totally get that.

Speaker 2: 16:46

I reached out to this singer for Three Doors Down. Haven't heard back from him yet. But if he's comfortable talking to me, great. If he's not, you know he's got I'm sure he's got a great team. Sure you know what I mean. So but if he needs another rock guy or music guy, that's, you know, been through some stuff, I'm the guy.

Speaker 3: 17:05

Yeah, well, I just, I just saw that video not too long ago, I guess that surfaced on social media and I was like, wow, nobody's immune to it, right? I mean, we're all human at the end of the day. But I think there's an old adage you fight the good fight, and it sounds like that's what you're doing. So hats off to you for being willing to go to the panels and the things that take our time, but you're paying your expense experience forward, and and we need more people like that in the world. I think that's a good thing, ricky.

Speaker 2: 17:37

So Well well cool, you know. So the thing, the thing you know. So I'm doing something for prostate cancer too. Right now I'm part of the distinguished gentleman's ride. As a matter of fact, I just got my patch in the mail. Okay, as one of the city co-hosts, I've been doing it about eight years. I haven't been a city co-host for eight years. I'm only two years now, and so I'm playing. We're doing a fundraiser two days before Fundraiser on Friday, ride on Sunday. This ride is in over a thousand cities, okay, across the world all at the same time, but we're doing a fundraiser in los angeles, here at the ovation, and rocket mafia is playing. So, very good, it's a free show. We just ask people to donate and it also benefits, uh, men's mental health and suicide prevention. Very good.

Speaker 2: 18:33

So it's kind of a man-driven cause, but we have a lot of women involved. You'll see these women showing up in suits and it's pretty cool.

Speaker 3: 18:42

We have needs too, right, Ricky?

Speaker 2: 18:45

Yes, we do, yes, we do. Hey, it's on the rise men committing suicide.

Speaker 3: 19:11

Yes, we do. Hey, it's on the rise. Men committing suicide. I don't know if it's more stress, I don't know what it is, but it's higher than it has been in the 59 years old. It's not a mystery, right, and you know, I just think that times have changed since we were young kids running around right, every prices are higher, like taxes and just all of the things, and it's uh, uh. We, we went through a whole pandemic that shut the world down for a while, and I think we're still trying to kind of recover from some of that.

Speaker 3: 19:29

You know, things are not completely back to the way they were as we knew them before, what 2019 or whatever year that was. But uh, you know, it's it's a different time, man, and it's uh, it's, it's an interesting time as well.

Speaker 2: 19:44

I don't know that we'll ever completely recover from that. Uh, that it's always going to leave a dent. You know there was businesses that went out yep, never to come back. Um, things like that. You know what I mean. And, um, I think we all learned a lot from it. Uh, everybody learned something from that. So in some ways, I try to look at it that way. You know, what do we do? The next one that rolls around, and there will be another one eventually Yep, you know, you can't duck it, and it could be worse. Sure, it could be one of these things that you know that kills 75% of people. Exactly, you never know. You know, like a black plague or something. You know. You never know.

Speaker 3: 20:24

You really don't. Well, tell me a little bit, you know, tell myself and the listeners a little bit about your childhood I guess we go back to. Is it Mechanicsburg, pennsylvania, where you're originally from? Talk a little bit about the childhood, like any siblings growing up. And do you come from a musical house? Because I see a lot of the bigger name artists and even the local and regional artists like they don't come from a musical background. So I wanted to hear a little bit about your upbringing and what was going on in your home from a music perspective growing up.

Speaker 2: 21:01

Yeah, so I grew up in the suburbs and I have a sister. She's nine years older than me, actually, and she still lives back there. She's not Mechanicsburg, but she lives back east. Still. My dad was a taxi driver, my mom was a telephone operator and my dad played trumpet and he did all the way from before he joined the Marine Corps until after, and then he played in bands here and there, but but he was taking care of us kids, you know what I mean, and trying to hold a job down so. But he played and encouraged me to play when I you know. So I started playing trumpet and but it just wasn't my thing. I wanted to play drums, you know what I mean. And and he liked it, he thought that was a great idea. So he was, he encouraged it for sure.

Speaker 2: 21:55

My mom could sing. She was in, you know, she'd been in plays and that kind of stuff, musicals and things when she was growing up, but she never pursued it after school and you know, but my dad was. My dad loved black music. He loved James Brown, okay, but also stuff like Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, anything with a good beat and horn sections, okay, you know what I mean Santana, like all that stuff. He liked that stuff. My mom was an Elvis fanatic. My mom was an Elvis fanatic. My sister was a Beatles fanatic. Okay, you know, I had it from all and me, I came out and I decided I liked Deep Purple.

Speaker 3: 22:41

There you go, Right right.

Speaker 2: 22:45

And Johnny Winter, and you know that was some of the first bands that I got into. The first band I ever saw was johnny winner, really you know, the first real professional band. Um, and brownsville station opened for them smoking in the boys room. That's who opened for them, yeah, and then I saw him again. Uh, he came back. And I saw him again with Mountain, with Leslie.

Speaker 3: 23:12

West.

Speaker 2: 23:13

Yeah, and then the next concert I saw was Aerosmith, and I saw Kiss, I saw Boston. I mean, I saw a lot of bands Bob Seger on one of his first tours, deep Purple with Tommy Bolin playing guitar. God, I saw some cool stuff, man. Yeah, I really gotta tell you I was harrisburg, or in philly and all that whole area. We got a lot of concerts.

Speaker 3: 23:42

I gotta tell you yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. Well, I guess that's kind of, if I remember correctly, that's kind of where umaryl Hall and John Oates cut their teeth on the streets of Philly.

Speaker 2: 23:54

Yeah, they're from Philly.

Speaker 3: 23:59

I had Elliot Lewis on my show, who played with Daryl Hall and John Oates and the Average White Band for many, many years, and we talked a little bit about them coming up and do-whopping in the streets of Philly as youngsters.

Speaker 2: 24:14

Absolutely Before. It was Hall Oates as we know it. Boys to Men came out of there and a lot of other blue-eyed soul, as they call it, and Hall Oates still. I mean you go back and you listen and you go, man, those dudes could sing. Yeah, right, I wish I had half that ability to sing.

Speaker 3: 24:33

They definitely had a thing going on. Do you remember, like what year or how old you were when you caught the just the musical bug in general? Was it a young age or was it a teen thing for you? Do you remember?

Speaker 2: 24:47

Yeah, no, I was like um, so two things happened to me. Um, so, and and by the way, I have a book coming out and I talk about all this stuff, um, in more depth. But my sister would get the unfortunate uh, uh duty of babysitting me from time to time, and I wasn't always the easiest one and so I did something wrong and she threw me in my room for the night, but she felt a little bit bad, so she gave me a record player and a bunch of Beatles records. So I sat there and I put a phone book on my bed and I found a couple other things to hit and lincoln logs, and pretty soon I'm playing the ringo, you know, over and over eight days a week, you know. And uh, and she came in like she's like that sounds pretty good, and uh, so her boyfriend what? I gave me this set of bongos to try, but then he put him in his car but the window was open. So a couple days later I stole him and hit him under my bed.

Speaker 3: 25:55

I was not a thief, but I wanted those drums you weren't a thief, but you did steal the bongos right, but those I did okay, I made an exception.

Speaker 2: 26:04

There you go right on, um. So a couple of months later I'm at at a camp with my buddy, lee, and they had a band playing there and the drummer was great. I just kept listening to the drummer. They're catching crayfish and all this stuff and I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to watch this band. Well, the guy's bongos it was his dad, that's who was playing Gotcha, so I was pretty inspired by that. So when I was 12, I found a set of drums for sale and they were cheap, but it had a Rogers Dynasonic snare, so that was good and the rest of the kit was whatever. It was 50 bucks and that was what I started on. And that was 12 years old and that tool has gotten me to everything I've accomplished in my life. Sure, that little set of $50 drums got me to here. Sure, all the way from there to here and everything in between Kind of crazy.

Speaker 3: 27:19

You know, you know what I love about so being a artist here in Cypress Texas, that that's one of the reason I started the show is because I love those kinds of stories. I'm kind of that musical junkie, that musical savant that just absorbs that kind of knowledge. And I remember having Jimmy Fortune from the Statler Brothers I don't know if you've heard of them, but Hall of Fame country stars right, literally two and a half hours. And I said how did you get started playing the guitar? He said we found a guitar at a dump that had two strings on it and that's where all of this began. And much like your $50 drum set, he probably found a guitar that was not worth even picking up, right, let alone trying to play it. And now he's a three or four-time Hall of Fame guy, right? So it's like you never know, and it doesn't have to be like a $10,000 DW kit, right? You've got to get started somewhere.

Speaker 2: 28:31

Well, I couldn't play very loud anyway because I was trying to figure out songs. So I'd put rags on my drums and then I'd have a record player and I remember learning. One of the first things I learned was Bab O'Reilly by the who, because I loved that. Boom, boom, boom, you know, but I couldn't have it louder, it drowned out the record player. We didn't have headphones and all this stuff back then. You know what I mean. We had to, we had to figure it out somehow. You know what I mean. Uh and so, but but that's so. It was okay. You know what I mean. But later, when I tried to play in bands, you know the drums weren't that good.

Speaker 3: 29:12

Yeah, sure, yeah. Well, you talked a little bit earlier about you know, deep Purple and Johnny Winter and groups like that that were kind of back in your formidable years of who you were listening to and kind of latching on to. Who do you listen to these days? Do you pay much attention to music coming out these days? Or my old story was I turned the radio off in 89 and I never turned it back on again, which is not completely true, but you know what I mean. Like our attention is focused so many different places. I know you've got a lot of things going on. I have a lot of things going on and I don't sit around and just listen to the radio anymore. Of course, listening to the radio is kind of a thing that was big back in the day, not so big now. But is there anybody that kind of moves you as an artist these days that you latched on to?

Speaker 2: 30:01

Well, there's a lot of good stuff, but I mean to answer your question. I listen a lot to what my daughter listens to. Okay, so she's 12 years old and she's been playing bass for a year and we go back and forth and she'll go Dad, listen to this, Let me pick a song, and I'll go. Okay, fine, Now let me pick a song and I'll play something for her. Okay, and it's usually Aerosmith or it's whatever. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 30:27

And sometimes we play this game where I try to find a song that fits something we just talked about, Like you know. You know, let's go hiking, you know, and Julie, you know, there ain't no mountain higher. She doesn't know that song. So I'll put on that song, you know, and say there's a song about that. So we play little games like that. You know what I mean. So I wind that. You know what I mean. So I wind up listening to a lot of stuff in the car that she wants to hear, and that's sabrina carpenter and bella porch and all that kind of stuff. She played a talent show so I had to help her with that, because she wanted to play bass, so I had to do a track and get rid of the bass so she could replace it with her live bass, which was pretty challenging and fun, but it's really cool it's really cool, man, because this, uh, this podcast going on, uh, five years you know that I've been doing this.

Speaker 3: 31:23

now it's uh, it's amazing because it's opened my eyes to so many artists that I probably would have never given a second look, right that? That it's like. You know, that's not my thing, right, that's not my genre or my forte, but the more you listen it's like wow, that's catchy. And then you hear the stories behind the songs and it just kind of opens your mind and I think that it's taught me a lot to not just be tunnel visioned. I'm an old rock pig myself, right, all the bands you mentioned that's this guy here Aerosmith, black Sabbath, you know, the list goes on and on and on. But it's a lot of country stuff that I listen to, a lot of Americana that I listen to now because of this podcast. So it's not a bad thing, right? You, listening and learning from your daughter is not a completely bad thing at all.

Speaker 2: 32:14

No, it keeps me. I mean, and there's some really good stuff out there, like that Wren guy is crazy good and different, and then there's sort of this punk side with Emil and the Sniffers and some fun stuff like that out there. There's a lot of good stuff out there right now it really is.

Speaker 3: 32:33

So I'm very open to stuff you know I really am open mind is a good thing. Well, we fast forward a bit. Right, you know childhood, growing up listening to the Johnny Winter records to to Poison. How did you get introduced to Brett and Bobby and and Cece where? Where did the meeting come from?

Speaker 2: 32:54

so I, I grew up playing with uh, one of my best friends. He learned bass and I learned guitar and we played in everything, every band together. And uh, he was, um, working as a short order cook at a place called the amity house um, no relation to amityville, her, um, but Her, and it was kind of close by. And he came over one day and he said, by the way, you know, we need a singer. And I'm like, of course I know that and we can't find anybody. He goes, there's a guy that just started as a busboy and he's got his own PA. I said, don, bring him over. And it was Brett, you know. So say hello to whoever's in the background.

Speaker 3: 33:38

I think that might have been my son, my son who's expecting a baby, uh, in a month and just oh, wow, okay, um, so, anyway.

Speaker 2: 33:48

So he came over and and we hit it off and and, uh, we realized that, um, we had started to have more in common than I did with the other guys I was playing with, or we. We really wanted to get somewhere with it and little by little we tried and tried and tried with those guys. But one day we just pulled over one day and said, look, man, it's, these guys are really holding us back. Everything we try to do, it's like pulling teeth. Let's get some enthusiasm in here. So the first thing we needed to do was find another guitar player and a bass player and, by the way, my best friend. Back then when we left the band. He never spoke to me again to this day.

Speaker 3: 34:31

No kidding. Wow, yeah, took it hard then yeah, yeah, he really did.

Speaker 2: 34:35

it's a shame because you know we grew up together. But, um, uh, so I had a friend that was a guitar player and he said, uh, I said, do you know any bass players? He goes, yeah, I do. There's this guy named bobby bobby kuykendall that used to play guitar but now he plays bass. And he started playing bass just because he wanted to audition for this one band. And I'm like, wow, I like that attitude. You know, he's willing to change instruments just to make it work, right. And so I called him up and Brett, and I met up with him and he came over and we played a little bit and we're like, yeah, now we got to find a guitar player.

Speaker 2: 35:21

And so that took a while, okay, and then we finally wound up with Matt Smith, the first guitar player we had, the very first one. His name was Jerry Marsecano and he just passed away a few months ago, by the way. Yeah, yeah, but so we wound up with Matt and and then, you know, I don't want to say the rest is history, because there's there's a lot of stuff in between, but I mean we played the whole, you know, back East for a couple years before we moved out here, and then we moved out here, and then we did that for a year more and then we got CeCe in the band. I'm giving you a brief synopsis. Sure, yeah, so you didn't pick.

Speaker 3: 36:05

CeCe up until the move to California. Then right, right Now, was the Long Island scene. Was that a big scene for you guys back on the East Coast or not so much?

Speaker 2: 36:18

Not so much New York at the time. Okay, the reason is that there was some stuff going on in New York, but it was more on the punk side and new wave side there wasn't. You know, for one thing, the drinking age was 21 and we were 18. You know what I mean. We couldn't play these clubs, so it was a lot harder. In Maryland, the drinking age was 18. So we wound up playing Maryland a lot, and then in Pennsylvania, then we opened for kicks, we got to do the. We find a bunch of opening gigs, um, and then we started to do our own gigs. We started to rent, you know, skating rinks and VFW halls and sell tickets and promote our own gigs.

Speaker 3: 37:08

I mean, it was, it was a lot of work do you remember the, I guess the move, the move to la and trying to break into the scene? How, how difficult, because I guess this was the sunset strip. Man, was this a tough scene to break into or did you guys just fit right into it? We?

Speaker 2: 37:27

couldn't figure it out at first. We we didn't understand the scene at the time. It's it's showcase town, meaning you play the clubs to get the industry to come see you. It's not about making money. And if you overplay the city, you know you'll start to lose the following. It's because it's not like a family friendly bar down the street where you know every other weekend you know you have bill and the guys playing and you know they have a following and people always know that you can have a good time. It's not like that. It's everything is a sensational, sensationalized showcase. You know what I mean. That's how it was okay.

Speaker 2: 38:10

So it was hard to make money. So we would go out of town to make money and go do what we were doing in pennsylvania, which was top 40, mix it with some of our own stuff, and then we'd come back and play hollywood. See what I mean. So we kind of figured it out that way. But we did all kinds of dirty tricks to uh to come up. Uh, we would uh. I remember the first dirty trick we pulled. Um, we were like I'm like how are we gonna get people to come up front to stage that they're afraid to come up to the stage and we got to thinking. So brett and I got this idea that we were going to put beers on the front of the stage.

Speaker 2: 38:49

So if you wanted to get a beer, you had to come up to the front of the stage, so then we started with. If you want more than that, we are having a party right down the street at this hotel, and as soon as this show's over, we're running down there, so everybody would leave and the headlining band wouldn't have anybody there. Oh man, headlining band wouldn't have anybody there. They're like wow, the whole, the whole crowd was there for you guys.

Speaker 3: 39:23

You know well, you got to get creative man. You know you got to be remembered somehow. That's the, that's what set you apart. But I but I guess back then, like at Gazzari's and the Whiskey, it wasn't the whole deal, like you, they didn't even pay the well. I guess they did pay you to play there, but it was all about promoting your own band and selling tickets with flyers and all of that kind of stuff. Was that Well, the first?

Speaker 2: 39:48

couple. Yeah, the first couple gigs we did, we did have to buy tickets, but then we quickly figured out how to, you know, get around some of that stuff. And then we were getting paid, you know, and really when I say getting paid, it was paying rent and food. I mean, that was it. And even then we had to supplement our incomes. Supplement our incomes, um, but um, and playing other places and doing you know, stupid jobs and selling pens and stuff like that, you know, um, whatever we could do, you know what I mean. But yeah, we were flyering the hell out of everything that. Our focus was always that. But you know, we did something that none of the other bands did and that was when, after we were done playing, we'd run down to the front of of the bar, you know, to the, to the exit, and thank people for coming out. Yes, like sincerely say thank you so much for coming out.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Please come out and see us again, it would be great. We're playing blah, blah, blah and we just tell, and some people were smart ass and they thought, ah, you sucked. And then some other people were like you know, whatever. But most of the people went, hey, that's really cool.

Speaker 2: 41:00

And and I think it made a big difference, because in pennsylvania there were, like we used to play, this place called the pine grove inn, right, and there was no dressing room. I mean there was, we had, and there was no dressing room. I mean there was, we had a, and there was no stage. We had a drum riser. So we set up on the floor right and behind it there was a bathroom and everybody used the bathroom. That was the bathroom, right, sure.

Speaker 2: 41:27

So you couldn't go anywhere. You know, you had to mix and mingle. When you were done we did three sets a night you had to mix and mingle. When you were done we did three sets a night you had to mix and mingle. So you come out, you go nuts and everything. Then you're sweating and you throw on a different T-shirt or wipe down and then sit down and have a beer with somebody. I mean, that's, that's, that's how we did it. So we weren't used to like going into like a dressing room and trying to be too cool for school. We didn't even understand how to do that. Yeah, you know what I mean? Uh, it wasn't until later we realized that we just couldn't anymore. You know, when we got big enough, you know we just couldn't do that.

Speaker 3: 42:04

You know it was like yep you know what I bet we thought we could. I bet you sowed a bigger seed by doing that, by going out and touching the people. Yeah, you might've had a few of the clowns that said, yeah, you guys suck, or we didn't like it or whatever, but I bet you that did more good for you guys with that personal touch that kept those people attached and following you around. Right, it's, it's, it's it's all about. Uh, what a book I read a long time ago.

Speaker 3: 42:30

It's all about what a book I read a long time ago, raving Fans. How do we just be that 1% different than the next to retain the attention or the customer or whatever widget you want to throw in the idea, right? But you guys were building rapport with the people that are probably still following you to this day, right? There's no doubt about that.

Speaker 2: 42:56

Well, we'd go in the clubs during the day. Okay, we'd walk down there and walk in the club and say, hey, you know, we just wanted to see if you have anything available or pick up flyers or whatever tickets or whatever it is. But then do you mind if I use the bathroom quick? Oh yeah, no problem, we'll go in and write shit about ourselves in the bathroom, in the girls' bathroom, and it wasn't always good, because if you write good stuff, people don't believe you. Of course not, you know what I mean. So we mix it up Some good stuff, some bad stuff. You know what I mean, you guys were innovators.

Speaker 3: 43:34

I mean, what can you say? Call a spade a spade. Ricky, you were innovating.

Speaker 2: 43:39

You were innovating the Poison brand, right? I mean, that's so awesome.

Speaker 3: 43:43

Well, was there a band you know you guys arrive in LA, you start getting your name out there and whatnot? Was there another band that you guys latched on to more than another band and and became friends with? Or I'm sure there was a lot of them, but was there a main one that you? You guys latched in with?

Speaker 2: 44:02

you know, we did it a few different ways. Uh like, when we started to to uh branch out into other territories, like we became friends with jet boy and uh, they were, they were like poison in San Francisco, okay, and so they'd open for us here and we go up there and open for them up there, you know. So we, you know help each other's, you know crowds out, but we would get a lot of. Once we were big enough, we started getting bands that opened for us. We would get bands that didn't normally play those same clubs. We got like bands that were sort of punk bands or not hardcore punk, but you know more alternative, of course, just just because we wanted to try to expose ourself to a new audience. We didn't.

Speaker 2: 44:49

Oh yeah, I, I figured, you know, our way of looking at it was we already, we have this building audience now we're doing well, but they can expose themselves to our audience and we can expose ourselves to theirs. And I probably wouldn't go to Club Lingerie and go see that band, but I'll get them to come and play with us. So that's sort of what we did and it worked. Not all the time see that band, but I'll get them to come and play with us, so that that's sort of what we did, um, and it worked. Not all the time it wasn't, but, uh, many times we'd get off off the beaten path, kind of. And then we started. Can I swear on this podcast? Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. We had a band open for us one time and it was the best. Are you ready for this?

Speaker 3: 45:43

We had a band open for us called Fat and Fucked Up. That's worth going to see just because of the name, right? What's this band all about? That's awesome. It was great.

Speaker 2: 45:52

It was great, too funny. People are like what are you doing, what are you guys doing here?

Speaker 3: 45:58

oh, that's awesome. Fat and fucked up, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 46:03

Talk about great branding right it it oh, you had to think about the name for a bit.

Speaker 3: 46:07

I mean it just drew attention to it, just by just by the name itself.

Speaker 3: 46:11

Yeah well, you know there, I think you know back in the day for for guys and listeners like myself that were never out in that scene, I think there's a there, there's a lot of mystique and things around what all was going on in in la and the sunset strip right, we've seen the documentaries, we've heard the stories ad nauseum, right. What is your fondest memory of the strip, when it was in its heyday and you guys were right in the fat middle of all that shit down there?

Speaker 2: 46:45

you know, I, you know, honestly, just from a hedonistic standpoint, I think you know, when we got big enough on the strip, you know, uh, where, where our name was like you know, hey, what band are you and I'm in poison? Oh, wow. You know, when you get that we started, when we started to get that reaction, um, it was getting paid. You know we weren't getting paid except attention, yeah, so we really reveled in the attention. You know, that was probably the most fun and you know so we, you know, would have quite a, quite a few parties, you know, and enjoy ourselves, um and uh, you know that that was one of the the craziest things about it.

Speaker 2: 47:28

But you always felt like the next day something wasn't going to happen, like you were going to play your next gig. You're only as good as your next gig. You know, if you play a gig and you're like, let's say, you sold out the troubadour and the next time you play the troubadour you don't sell it out, yeah, they remember that, right, it's really hard to get that back again. So I mean it was a constant hustle. I mean it was a constant hustle. I mean we hustled and hustled and hustled, and that's when we started to look out to other territories, like what would happen if we went to Phoenix and played Phoenix? What would you know? We have a car, we can get there. You know it won't be easy, but we can do it.

Speaker 2: 48:07

And that's what we started to do is start to play other areas, go to different. You know can't just play A lot of bands that were contemporaries. That's what they do. They play Hollywood once a month, but they were from here. A lot of them lived with their parents or they already had their feet planted here. You know we didn't. The minute we lost money we were on our ass outside, 3,000 miles away from home. You know what I mean? Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3: 48:34

Well, what's new and exciting for Poison as it relates to new music? Is there anything that you can speak of from the Poison camp that's in the works? That's a pipe dream right now. What can you talk to the listeners about?

Speaker 2: 48:49

We have a tour on the table and hopefully we can work it out and do it, because we're talking about 2026, 40 year anniversary. Like doing like 40 shows all across the country, maybe canada. Hopefully we can go out to other places like europe, um, australia, man, that'd be great, um. So that's my wish, that's my hope. Um, we're not getting any younger. The whole band's intact. We're all original members, so I don't think there is any other original member bands left right now that I know of. If you can think of one, let me know.

Speaker 3: 49:28

Well, the only one that I can think of and they've been on my show twice, but it's a band band named zebra right and zebra had some. Oh okay, you know, three guys out of louisiana right had a big hit they're a great band.

Speaker 2: 49:42

Who's?

Speaker 3: 49:42

behind the door and uh, actually I had guy gelso, the drummer, co-host, a, uh an interview with me not too long ago with uh carmine, a piece um of all people, and uh, I saw, I saw zebra with somebody. They were out with lover boy and I think, uh, who else they might have been out? I don't remember who else they were out with back in the day, but I saw them personally in 83 at the summit here in houston. Right, they opened up for lover boy.

Speaker 2: 50:09

So I want to say robin trower or somebody like that I think I may have seen him, yeah I loved robin trower, I'd go see, you know, and there was some, lots of great stuff. Rory gallagher yeah, but not to go down the rabbit hole with that.

Speaker 3: 50:24

It's like when I know, when I think of, uh, all original bands, I mean, I think I think they're the only ones that really pop to mind. I mean, other than you guys like that's all original. You know, usually it's one guy left right and it's still the name. Then it's, you know, is it a tribute band or a cover band? I mean, you can ask 10 people and they'll all give you 10 different answers, right, but yeah, but I think it's an accolade in and of itself that that you guys have been together since what? 83. Is that?

Speaker 2: 51:01

is that 80? Yeah, it's like 83. I mean, you know, of course Matt was in the band then, so you know, what? What CC joined in like 86, I believe, fair enough, okay, something like that, and that's when we made our record, and that's when I say the band began. You know, truly like in terms of our professional career.

Speaker 3: 51:22

What we know it today. Right, that's what we know of it today, yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:26

But I mean, matt was definitely. I mean he was in the trenches with us for the first you know year or more. Okay, you know he really was he. He, uh, his girlfriend came out, she, uh, she got off her bundle and uh, he, he went back and decided to be a dad. That's what happened. Yeah, we weren't making any money, really. Yeah, it did for a minute there. It didn't look like it was going to go any further than the club level.

Speaker 3: 51:54

Yeah, well, you're trying and we stuck it out long enough, right that's, and a lot of people would have probably quit before then too. Right, can't make a dollar, let me go dig ditches for a living and we'll just play a show two or three times a year, and and that's it, right. But you guys sound like you stuck to your guns, right?

Speaker 2: 52:12

you know, I tell people you gotta stick both feet in the water. Yeah, you know, maybe with many things in life or with whatever it is, it's really truly your passion. If you know, that's part of the reason why we moved out here. If we would have been in New York, it's a greyhound ride home, you know, a train ride. I mean it doesn't you know out here. I mean mean it's. Yeah, we're 3 000 miles away from home, makes sense. Uh, so it's you, you it's sink or swim. You got to make it work. Yep, you know, I, I there's no way I wanted to to go home. If I was coming home from new york, it's like, hey, I'm visiting, you know, but you come home from california, it's like what happened?

Speaker 2: 52:52

yeah well then you'd be looking at a certain way.

Speaker 1: 52:54

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 52:56

You didn't want to be that guy and it's kind of what you said. I echo that 100%, because when I said I'm going to do a podcast, I literally jumped in with both feet and I said it's either going to be 150% or I'm not going to do it. But that's just my OCD, that's right, that's just the way I work, and it would have been really easy to look at the statistics after the first interview and say what 10 streams, that's it, you know, and it's that. Oh, fuck this, I'm not going to do this anymore.

Speaker 2: 53:29

I thought I'd at least get a hundred.

Speaker 3: 53:30

But you know, four years later and 91 countries and over a million streams, I mean, I mean, for a guy that doesn't even try to monetize the show, I'm very happy with where it is. So it it kind of all goes back to what you were saying if you're gonna, if you're gonna jump in, I mean jump into the motherfucker and do it at the end of the day, if you're not, don't even jump in right.

Speaker 3: 53:51

Where are you at what city? I'm right, right outside of Houston, in a city called Cyprus. It's like Northwest Houston for all practical purposes, but you know, going back to that longevity and having all the original members, what do you think the key ingredient is? That four guys can, 40 years, stick together somehow and not literally kill each other. You hear this all the time. Right, you could look at any documentary or read any book about bands and they're either not all together or whatever. But what do you think the key ingredient was to all you guys making that a brotherhood?

Speaker 2: 54:33

Well, we may have killed each other, like you know. Now they're talking about that. There's like parallel universes and you could have died in another one. Right, there's at least seven I've died in with, okay, um, you know, it's, it's god. You hear this and it sounds so trite and I wish I could say it in a better way, but there isn't a better way than to say teamwork, okay, like, uh, you know, I, I always encourage people. I never thought I'd say this in my life until I really thought about it, but if you want to be in a rock band, you, I think you should also go play sports on a team and learn that it's not all about you, you know, because otherwise, if it's all about you and the other guy in the band, it's all about him and the other person in the band, it's all about them. What do you think is going to happen?

Speaker 3: 55:27

It's destruction in the making right.

Speaker 2: 55:30

It is, and this is why bands are like what Davidid lee roth said, like dogs that chase cars, a lot of noise and they don't last very long. You know which no truer words spoken. And so I mean there's a million. A million, I mean, I think. When we moved here, somebody gave us a statistic, and it was somebody from a magazine, a local magazine. They said there's 30,000 organized and disorganized bands in the greater Los Angeles area. Wow, 30,000. Now, how are you going to stick out? What are you going to?

Speaker 2: 56:05

do exactly you know yeah right, yeah, and so you gotta.

Speaker 2: 56:10

You gotta check all the boxes, yeah, you gotta. You gotta be ready for pretty much everything. You got to figure out what's good advice, what's bad advice, and you're going to make mistakes. You got to stick to your guns but, at the same time, be flexible enough to change. Change, I mean, you know it. It's. It's like this one of these ninja things right, where you have to do so many things in a row to to get to the end it. That's what it is. It's it's literally and there's some luck and all that kind of stuff, but it's it's just being open enough to know when you should be open and when you shouldn't be, and when you go, know when to fold them, know when to hold them.

Speaker 3: 56:55

You know what I mean, you know, kenny Rogers had it right, just like Kenny said yep, absolutely, it's funny you mentioned something about you know it's a team sport, right? If you have a bunch of chiefs in the band, then I mean it's inevitable that it's going to break up, so it really becomes a team effort. When we talk about team sports, it's funny because you're in one that is not a team sport and that's the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And I wanted to just touch base on that because I rolled for a while in BJJ and I've had three guys on my show, all of which were fighters in the UFC and one is a Hall of Famer from the UFC. There's an interesting thing that they do say about BJJ. Again, I wanted to shift that focus a little bit. I had no idea that you were a black belt or probably a multi-degree black belt by now in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Where did that passion come from and when did you start practicing the art?

Speaker 2: 57:59

When we were. I've always loved, I love Bruce Lee and all that stuff, so I've always been interested in the martial arts. You know, I almost got stabbed in LA back in the day, dabbed in la back when in the day. And so when we made a little bit of money, uh, you know brett, and I hired mark to costcos to come out and teach us some. You know kickboxing, and I said I really want to learn knife fighting. He said, well, you really want to go to some of the jkd? Uh, ishan, you know the the. You know, uh, danny anas, asano's people, people like that, um, some of the scream on and I'm just like I don't even know what you're talking about. And uh, so later, when I came off the road, that's what I did I tracked down, kind of cast Magda, he's direct lineage from Danny and Asano, bruce Lee.

Speaker 2: 58:57

I did some sea lot, he did some. That Southeast Asian sea lot is like a loose grappling, right, okay, at least the type that I learned. Some of it's different, there's a bunch of different version, and it put me in touch with wrestling, which is what I did in school. And then I found out about Horace, gracie, sure, and I was like, hmm, then I met John Jock Machado and he said just come to the school, check it out. I went down to that school and, uh, I'm sure you know who Eddie Bravo is sure Eddie Bravo was in there. Uh, david Meyer, all these original dirty dozen black belts and stuff, and I just got chewed up and spit out. Man, I was just like and I I said to myself, I'm going to do one of two things I'm either never coming back here or I'm coming back here every day. Right, and and I was just like I sat I mean I literally ate my ego like I seriously thought I was a badass and I realized I was not a badass.

Speaker 3: 1:00:03

You and you don't. You don't know what it's like until you get caught in a cross-collar choke with a guillotine. Right then you understand what it feels like, right, right I signed up.

Speaker 2: 1:00:14

I took some money and I signed up for six months. I decided I was going to commit to six months and see if I could get through and all I did was defend. For that first six months, all I did was defend, defend, defend, defend. You know what I mean? I don't think I choked anybody. I don't think I got an arm bar. I don't think I got anything for the first six months. All I did was get railed.

Speaker 2: 1:00:35

And I've never been a fast learner Right. It's always been like oh yeah, ricky, tell him about six or eight times and then another six or eight times. But uh, so uh, after that six months I was like I'm gonna go another six months. Then I started figuring the game out. After a year I started to figure it out and the back then man I mean that was the wild west of Brazilian jiu-jitsu Everybody was trying to figure it out. They were coming in. We'd have dojo busts, people, literally people would come in and say I heard about this, I think it's bullshit and want to fight you. Of course, yeah, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 1:01:16

They learned a lesson real quick too, didn't they?

Speaker 2: 1:01:18

Yeah, and so I was like I better get good quick because I'm gonna have to defend myself being in this sport, sure you know, being in this, this, uh, this discipline, because we had to defend it. You know what I mean? Because it it challenged a lot of things, right and uh, and I think it's still challenging things. Now people are like everybody's figured it out. You know, everybody's figured out. Everybody gets a little bit of jujitsu, we can, you know, and so now we're defending it a different way. So, yeah, it's great stuff. I do think it's. I mean, we are a team in there and we talked about COVID before. During COVID we trained. But the way we did it was we had a little thing set up You'd go in, you'd sign your name, you would test, you'd turn on the timer, you'd wait 15 minutes and, if you were clear, go in and train Really. And nobody ever got sick. Wow, interesting yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:02:17

Well, you know, you look back on the early days of the UFC, when that hit the airwaves back in I don't, I'm horrible with dates what was it in the 90s or something like that. You know when, when Hoist Gracie made his way into the this is back, no holds barred. There weren't even any rules I think this was pre Dana White and Tillman Fertitta, right, and nobody could figure him out, right, he would slap you around and then the first thing you do, next thing you know you're on the ground and you got uh, you know it's like an anaconda on you and you don't know if you're a standup guy. You don't know how to defend against that, because the first time you you raise an arm, all you did was give yourself a death wish, right.

Speaker 2: 1:02:59

Cause we know what's going to happen if you give somebody an arm right.

Speaker 3: 1:03:02

It's going to be an arm bar right, but you trained under Hicks and Gracie right. That's where you came up through. Am I right or wrong there?

Speaker 2: 1:03:11

No, I've done a seminar with Hicks.

Speaker 2: 1:03:15

But no, I went from white belt to purple belt under the Machado brothers and then their lead instructor, renato Magno, who came over from Brazil with them, who's their cousin. Uh, he uh started his own school and, uh, I went on tour and when I came back his school was up and running and he said, just come out, check out the school, you know. And so I did and I just really liked, uh, you know, I by then I had my son and I had to do morning classes and uh, um, to make it work time-wise for me, and it just I kind of just really liked that team over there. And I still love John jock and and, uh, anytime I get a chance to go over and train with him or train with some of his people, or Dave Don or any of those guys, you know, it's always an eyeopening experience, you know well, I don't.

Speaker 2: 1:04:09

I haven't been training as much as I did, and it's just been because of so many factors. But yeah, but I hate it when I don't get to train. I really do.

Speaker 3: 1:04:20

Well, I think that you know, when we think of a martial art that people put their kids in, it seems like historically everybody gravitates to Taekwondo. It just seems like the catch-all martial art. And next thing, you know, little Bobby is, you know, a red belt, and then the following week he's like a yellow belt and the promotions are like bam, bam, bam and it's like really you get promoted that much Because I remember when I was over at Revolution, I mean it's years in between belt promotions, right? Can you speak a little bit about that to the listeners? When we talk about going from from white to blue or blue to purple or whatever, and then to brown, or like, there's years in between these promotions, correct?

Speaker 2: 1:05:10

yeah, years. I mean it took me 12 years or something like that.

Speaker 3: 1:05:14

I mean it was a long time I was gonna say if you're a black belt.

Speaker 2: 1:05:16

It was at least a decade to get the black belt, yeah yeah, and, and you know I'm a fourth degree, but you know, you don't even get your first. You don't start with a first degree black belt. You have to get your first degree and then you can be a teacher if you want to be. Um, so, and then it's five years. It's, uh, three years for the first two and then five years for the next two. So, um, it takes a long time, you know. That's why it's.

Speaker 2: 1:05:42

You know most of the guys that have like coral belts are over 50 typically. You know it takes a long time. There's some younger people coming up now. Um, I haven't been uh, training in the gi very much lately. Um, I've been almost exclusively no gi, not for any other reason except it just most of my training's been on Fridays when we have no gi day Footlock Friday, we call it. But no, I mean, I love the gi, don't get me wrong, but it's a different game. I got to get back to the gi a little bit because, let's face it, when you're out in the world, you're going to wind up grabbing clothes and all that stuff.

Speaker 3: 1:06:23

Well, you're not going to be wearing a gi everywhere you go right.

Speaker 2: 1:06:26

So you better know right.

Speaker 3: 1:06:30

So that's a huge accolade for you, man, and it's not easy to come across. Not many people say I'm a black belt in jiu-jitsu. So to me when I hear that it's like somebody that's disciplined and has built their life around the sport, right, I mean you just don't go and somebody hands it to you, right, you really have to go earn it. It's a, it's, it's. I just understand that game very well and it's interesting. I don't know too many celebrity type people that that tout martial arts too much, but it was. There was one that was interesting to me and ed o'neill right, al bundy from married with children, is a black belt and I had no idea. I'm like, wow, I would have never guessed that he was a practitioner of bjj, right you know what he came in one day to, uh, the club.

Speaker 2: 1:07:20

He's friends with David Mamet. David Mamet's a playwright who's also a director, filmmaker, you may know him. He's got tons of books and his daughters have got a Tony Award. He's, if you know, you know a tough guy and he's really good friends with Ed. Ed, of course, is a greasy guy, but he brought him over one day, okay, and then we all went out to lunch, you know, and I'm like this is so cool.

Speaker 2: 1:07:49

I'm hanging out with Ed O'Neill, right, right, and we're at Il Forno, which is an Italian restaurant there in Santa Monica, and somebody was screaming like somebody, like maybe 20 feet away from us, right, and it's one of those things that just you know, you turn around, you like look, you know what, that, what the hell is going on, right, and somebody looked over towards our table because we all had looked around. Of course, we go like this because all of our necks are messed up, right, but anyway, ed got this look in his face like, like he meant business. I've never seen that. Okay, yeah, so al bundy went from funny al bundy right to like this maniac, yeah, and like looking like if shit's going to go down, I'm right there, like I saw it. I saw it, and after that there was no more mystery for me about him.

Speaker 3: 1:08:47

His capability or his confidence? Sure yeah. I could just see, he had a 50-yard stare at this guy.

Speaker 2: 1:08:54

You know yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:08:56

Very interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:08:57

Yeah, bundy's a badass, you know.

Speaker 3: 1:09:00

Well, good stories there are on the mat, like what a great sport. And you know I had a guest on my show a few years back to kind of shift on you a little bit, but that was a big ghost hunter, right, a band out of Louisiana called Lillian Axe Sure and you know Stevie Blaze, the guitarist, was on my show and this whole Ghost Hunter thing that he has going on. And it was interesting as I started diving into Ricky Rocket, right, you found out that Ricky has a fascination of the paranormal activities. When did this start for you? Like, what brought on the interest?

Speaker 2: 1:09:46

I've been into horror films and haunted houses and all that stuff ever since I can remember. I went to the Amityville house back when I lived in Pennsylvania, like every month, to see if anything changed. Like I got to see something tonight, you know, because at Long Island it's not that far and yeah, and I'd go to Waymire's Hollow. I was just always, like you know, looking for ghosts. I always thought that was, and now these days I don't chase ghosts as much as I like to think. You know, I have this legend tripping channel. I'm out checking out urban legends, you know. Okay, I like to solve that. Okay, that is my jam. Okay, and that's something that's only been a few years, you know, in the making. Sure, I just love it because it's almost like it's paranormal in reverse is what I call it. Yes, it's reverse paranormal. Okay, it's like what happened, what's supposed to happen? And if it did, is there ghost because of it? Not, I'm looking for ghosts. Okay, I heard that there might be something.

Speaker 2: 1:10:56

I want to know who died there first. Okay, you know, that's the first thing I want to know. Died there first? Okay, you know, yeah, that's the first thing I want to know. But, um, so, uh, I just signed a deal, um, with a new company and we're they're pitching it, so we'll see. I don't like to say anything about that stuff. It's so hollywood oh, we're gonna get a show. I don't know if I get a show right on. If they're smart, they'll give me a show, because I think it'll be a great show. I promise you. Yeah, right on. But, uh, yeah, but yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:11:22

Well, I was going to ask you, I mean, if you're a ghost. Well, first of all, and I promise you I'm not going to go down a rabbit hole with the Amityville horror, but it's interesting because I, like you, I'm not a paranormal guy, but I saw the show as a kid, right, and I've read the books and the stories of the DeFeo family, and not ad nauseum, but I know the course of events, right. What's your take on Amityville, the house? Do you believe that there was something going on there after the murders of the DeFeo family? Not so much with what we know is the hoax or whatever, but what's your take on Amityville, just in general?

Speaker 2: 1:12:06

you know, I I'm not sure because I haven't been inside the house. I tried to buy it, by the way. Um, I actually thought about doing it, I was taught. I talked to the owner, um, and he was like, hey, we're redoing the kitchen. If you buy it, you can pick out the colors. So I was like, but, uh, I didn't want to bring my kids into that scenario and I was thinking my kids would grow up in that house, even if, haunted or not, everybody's gonna think they're.

Speaker 2: 1:12:37

Um, so, uh, you know, let me say this certain places do have an energy and if it didn't have an energy before, it does now. Because everybody believes something is there, yeah, so you can't go there and not feel something. Right, you're gonna feel something when you go to the amityville, amityville house, even if you're not, don't believe in anything. Yeah, because so many other people believe that, of course it's like. It's like I think if you go to the holy land, right, sure, and I haven't been there, but, um, if you're, if you're an atheist, you can go to the holy land you're gonna feel something, of course, you know. Yeah, because there's been so much good point. Yeah, good, all our life. You know what I mean, or santa claus. You know what I mean. It's like santa claus might as well exist for real, because we've manifested santa claus yes and I think sometimes we manifest stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:13:33

We believe it so much, we manifest it, yeah, literally. I think so, um and uh. But I do think a lot of this paranormal stuff is physics. I think it comes down to physics. I'm not sure if it's quantum physics or what. Uh, it could come down to consciousness. You know human beings share consciousness. A lot of times we heard about raising the collective consciousness. Then you know that, of course you. Does somebody have to be alive to have that, yeah? Or does our consciousness die when we die? You know, there's so many questions and that's what keeps me going Sure To experiment. What happened at this bridge that I heard about? I'll just expose myself to it and find out.

Speaker 3: 1:14:18

Do I feel anything.

Speaker 2: 1:14:20

And I'll dig into this stuff and see what I can come up with. I'm not a naysayer, but at the same time I don't like the wool pulled over my eyes either. I don't want to feel like an idiot. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 1:14:32

Well, I'm a little bit like that too, ricky. It's, I guess you could say I'm a skeptic by nature and it's, I think it's with like I just don't believe everything everybody tells me or I see on the internet, like I'm just not that guy. I like to go and dig into things and like to do a little homework myself, but being that skeptic, just not being the paranormal or ghost guy, I look at what you do or what Stevie Blaze does and I'm like really, guys, I mean, have you really seen a ghost? Like that's, that's Randy for you, right, but do you?

Speaker 2: 1:15:09

I've had two experiences, but that were bad. But let me just say this honestly I think 98% of it is BS, but I think that 2% is truly. That two percent is truly amazing. Fair enough, okay, and that's what makes me want to keep going at it, yes and uh, and, and makes it interesting because and and what is it what? What if everything? I always look at it like what if everything out there that we've heard about has some kernel of truth?

Speaker 2: 1:15:44

all the way down the leprechauns, and I don't care what it is right, all this shit came from somewhere right yep and uh, you know, and it's interesting to get to it. I just think some of it has a lot of truth and some of it has about that much. You, you know what I mean and it's fun for kind of distilling that Sure.

Speaker 3: 1:16:05

Well, I think maybe I can latch on to the whole energy thing and you said it best Like if you go to the Vatican you're probably going to feel an energy there and I don't doubt that for a minute. I'm not some Christian guy, I'm not, I'm not this atheist guy, but I could say if I went to the Vatican I mean just the hype around it would be energy alone. But I've heard I've had a good friend of mine say yeah, I was in my room one night and the chair started rocking and I'm like you know, like I have a hard time wrapping my arms around a story like that. Now, I'm not saying that it didn't, it's just that I don't believe it unless I see it with my own two eyes, right? So I didn't know if people say I'm a ghost chaser, is there something you have to believe in ghosts to be a ghost chaser, or are you just going to feel the energy like, can you speak?

Speaker 2: 1:17:03

yeah, I don't know if my question makes sense or not, but hopefully you get where I'm going with that. Right, I think there's ghost believers and I think there's paranormal investigators. Okay, I know quite a few. There's people in my group, the taps group, that, uh, they don't know what to believe. They don't know if it's string theory, they don't know what it is. They don't know if it's string theory, they don't know what it is. They just know there's something going on, there's something beyond just the natural, and you know, some of this can be tested.

Speaker 2: 1:17:31

I think we're at a point in time where we've got to get past, you know, flashlights and lit cat balls to figure this out. You know what I mean. I think we need some real science and I think if we do get some real science, I think we might be surprised about what some of this phenomenon might be sure, because you know, there there is some scientific back physics that that says that we do live on space-time continuums. I mean, I could get very, very, very deep with all this stuff. And how do you test all this stuff? How do you test it? It's math at one point. You know some of it.

Speaker 3: 1:18:14

Well, I was wondering from your opinion, and let's just go on record to say that, um, we can, we can also strike this portion of the of the interview. But I wanted to ask you, like you, you see these things because I live close to galveston, texas, on the on the coast, and there's there's a lot of belief that a lot of the old homes that were built back in the 1800s and places are are haunted. So you see these advertisements sign up for a ghost hunt and you get a flashlight. You know, like you said, and and we go ghost hunting. Is that? Is that just? Do you feel like that's a money making Ponzi scheme or is there some legitimacy to that? Or B, do you plead the fifth and just don't want to answer that Right, because I kind of look at it, I do think a lot of yeah, some of it's BS, I think.

Speaker 2: 1:19:10

But I mean, you know, let's say you went to a place where 12 people were murdered mercilessly. There's a lot of energy there. Yeah, there's energy there. There's got to be some kind of energy. We had this one guy at NYU that was this one doctor that was doing, you know, MRI scans and stuff of corpses two days after they were dead and seeing some not electrolytical activity but seeing some brain activity. So what, what is it, you know, that's that's different about what gives us our consciousness. Is that consciousness that's lighting up in there. Are we conscious after we die, wouldn't that? It's a horrible thought, right? Who would?

Speaker 2: 1:19:50

know right or is the conscious different? Yes, you know, when you die, um, and so if he's right and and somebody had their brain splattered on the wall because somebody shot him, I mean, there, you know, there, you have brain splattered on the wall because somebody shot him. I mean, there, you know, there, you have consciousness splattered on the wall. So I mean, I know I'm getting really nasty right here, but I mean, just take it from there and look at it. Does it go away eventually, uh, or is it absorbed? Everything kind of like moves up into the atmosphere and you know, ashes to ashes, you know, or does consciousness stick around somehow or go somewhere, or is it just gone when you die?

Speaker 3: 1:20:32

You know it's hard to say yeah, it is, but it's all very thought-provoking right, which is kind of cool. It stimulates the brain. Whether you believe in ghosts, whether you don't believe in ghosts or Santa Claus or whatever the mythological character is of the day, it still is thought-provoking and it's kind of cool to say, well, what if there is some energy there, what if there is something? I don't know enough about it to speak intelligently about it, but it's interesting thoughts. That's why I knew that you were really into that and I wanted to bring it up, because I think there's a curiosity with everybody, especially ones that have never had an encounter right.

Speaker 3: 1:21:15

And I can't say that I have. So that's why I'm probably I wouldn't say a naysayer, but I mean you, I would kind of have to see it to say, oh okay, now I believe it, kind of thing right, but I've just never had that experience with it.

Speaker 2: 1:21:28

So yeah, I mean it's. Look, you know, my son the other day was bummed because he got to the end of a video game, right, yep, and he said the guy died and then he goes. It's kind of kind of sad, kind of bums me out. I'm like like hold on a second, jude. This is a video game with fake characters, fake personalities. None of this is real and you're feeling something because of this. Same thing happens with a movie. You're watching fiction, you're reading fiction. These are not real characters, okay, and you're feeling something. It's not that hard to imagine that. We're feeling a lot of other things that aren't there too, okay. So this makes it very confusing. So you have to kind of wipe the emotion out of stuff in order to get to the root of it, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 1:22:18

No, nicely stated and that makes perfect sense. A minute ago we talked about poison and you mentioned rocket mafia. I wanted to shift a little bit to rocket mafia. This is still a thing for you, right, and this is an active project for you. Can you speak to that?

Speaker 2: 1:22:35

yeah, so we're playing next, uh, this upcoming friday okay, so four days from now. So we have a show, like I said, it's part of the distinguished gentleman's ride. It's a fundraiser, it's a free show. People can donate to it and uh, you know, we don't ask you do, we just ask a donation. It can be a dollar, it can be a hundred, whatever you want to do, and uh, so it's at the um, it's at the uh ovation in hollywood at seven o'clock, but all day there's a motorcycle show and all kinds of raffles and all kinds of fun stuff, food to try. It's like a little mini festival over there.

Speaker 2: 1:23:11

But then we're going to top it off at the end of the night and play Stephan Akita Adika, rather, is going to play Bass Force that night and he has a podcast, adhika live. So definitely, he interviews people and I did an interview with him and I had known him prior. Uh, we, we were like 10 feet of knowing each other for 20 years and uh got along really well and stayed in touch over the last year and I'm like, no, wait a minute, you play bass and I need a bass player next friday. So, uh, so he's gonna do it. So I'm pretty happy about that rocket mafia. By the way, just so you know, we're doing a lot of cover songs. Um, we're going to be doing some poison deep cuts that poison doesn't do, um, but we're trying to take it like all these songs, that we do a lot of 70s stuff and everything and make it sound like we wrote all those songs. Okay, that's the goal.

Speaker 3: 1:24:08

So it's your spin on those songs, right, yeah, okay, all right, I follow.

Speaker 2: 1:24:12

And so we're just having a blast with it, you know. Real quick I am going to have to go, though I have to pay attention to a couple of things that I have to take Sure.

Speaker 3: 1:24:19

Well, let's, let's go ahead and get wrapped, let's see. You know I wanted to. A quick shout out to Eric and Shannon for hooking us up and allowing us the chance to to hear your story, ricky, and to to reiterate it, and a lot of good stuff there. Where can the listeners find rocket mafia, you all things you on social media? Can you plug the social media real quick?

Speaker 2: 1:24:51

yeah, um. So I mean, rocket mafia has an instagram and a facebook page, um, and a youtube, and that's where I think I love you. We did. We made that partridge family yeah, so that's up there, awesome, I Love you. We made that song Archer's Family yeah, so that's up there, awesome, so you can go listen to that. And you know RickyRocketcom and at Ricky Rocket, for all my Instagram and Facebook and all that stuff, it's all just my name, yep, and my YouTube channel is the Poison Drummer.

Speaker 3: 1:25:18

The Poison Drummer.

Speaker 2: 1:25:19

okay, All right, and my second channel is Ricky rockets legend tripping.

Speaker 3: 1:25:24

Okay, awesome, ricky well listen. I thank you so much for for joining myself and the listeners of backstage pass radio. I wish you uh, uh continued good health and success and, hope, the family as well. And uh, thanks for being here, man.

Speaker 2: 1:25:40

I really appreciate the time we we went a little longer than I thought, but it's easy to talk about the things.

Speaker 3: 1:25:43

Hope the family as well. And thanks for being here, man. I really appreciate the time. Thank you, we went a little longer than I thought, but it's easy to talk about the things that we love, right, yeah?

Speaker 3: 1:25:48

absolutely. I asked the listeners to check out Poison's website also at poisonofficialcom, and then I asked the listeners to like, share and subscribe to the podcast on Facebook at Backstage Pass Radio Podcast on Instagram at Backstage Pass Radio Podcast on Instagram at Backstage Pass Radio and on the website at BackstagePassRadiocom. You guys remember to take care of yourselves and each other and we'll see you right back here on the next episode of Backstage Pass Radio.

Speaker 1: 1:26:15

Thank you for tuning into this episode of Backstage Pass Radio. Backstage Pass Radio. We hope you enjoyed this episode and gained some new insights into the world of music. Backstage Pass Radio platform. Your feedback means the world to us and helps us bring you even more amazing content. So join us next time for another deep dive into the stories and sounds that shape our musical landscape. Until then, keep listening, keep exploring and keep the passion of music alive.