Rocking Through Rebellion: Cliff’s Journey in Sound and Business show notes

Greetings and salutations. Thank you for joining us. My name is Johnny Nato and you are at In Breeze or Storm. We’ve got another exciting episode for you, as always. So today I’m speaking with Cliff, and he is quite the creative person here. I’m excited to do this interview. Cliff is a bass player, cellist. He’s making bass preamps and also making some herbal remedies here. So, cliff, thanks for joining us today. All right, how are you doing? I’m doing awesome. Thanks for coming on. So, before we get too far into the interview, cliff, how did you get involved into kind of like, bass and cello? Before we get into the bass preamps and all that what brought that into your life? How did that get brought into your life?

0:01:07 – Speaker 2
Well, when I was eight years old, in the first grade there was a guy that came into my classroom and he auditioned everybody in the class to see if they could sing. He wasn’t part of the school district or anything, he just came in from outside and, uh, he was a juilliard graduate or no, he had a master’s degree from juilliard and he had a boys choir that he was the director of there in the town and he ran a pennsylvania conservatory of music there in warren, pennsylvania. So his boys choir, that’s what they did. They come out and they’d audition every every kid in the whole County. They picked the singers and then they make a choir.

So I got picked to be in the choir. I was in the little boys choir at eight years old. There was eight of us, we, we, we did two performances a year a year and then, uh, with the whole choir there was a huge audience as opposed standing room only audience, wow that’s kind of funny, though, because, like you, when the guy asked you to sing, like you weren’t even into like singing or anything, I’m assuming.

0:02:17 – Speaker 1
You’re just kind of like, okay, this guy’s asking me to sing and he’s like, oh good, you sing a tune, you’re, we want you and you’re kind of like.

0:02:24 – Speaker 2
You’re probably kind of like, oh, all, right it was funny because every kid in that classroom was trying as hard as he could to sing something, you know, and they could most of they just get up there and they’d be shouting and they weren’t singing. Yeah, I was about almost the last one. I got up there and I sang, and I sang a tune. He says oh, you’re wonderful. I said oh, thank you very much.

0:02:47 – Speaker 1
And that was it. That’s really funny.

0:02:50 – Speaker 2
Yeah, and this was in 1961, you know, and this was back when, you know, the music industry was pretty much going downhill. You know, if you know anything about the music industry, you know that the put in put in, you know it was stopped in 1956, I think it was, and they were still battling a chord all the way up to 1964. So it was the music industry was in in a big state of change at that time. So, anyway, I, uh, I got in this choir and, like I said, we did two performances a year, I think we. I was there for two years and then then, uh, when I was 10 years old, we, the family, moved to pittsburgh and they had a music program in the schools there where you could play an instrument, but there wasn’t any choirs or anything like that that I could join, because it was, like I said, the music, music industry was going downhill, wasn’t much going on but you know so I I played the cello in school yeah, and I.

I did that for a while but it was getting boring. You know the people weren’t really interested. It wasn’t going anywhere and I wanted to do something more because of this experience I had in that choir. And so, uh, this guy I knew in school, he was a guitar he played, he was learning to play guitar and sing and he wanted to put a group together. So I said, yeah, let’s do that. So so I bought a bass guitar and an amplifier and I went down to his.

0:04:14 – Speaker 1
You were like 15 or something like that.

0:04:16 – Speaker 2
Then, right, when you did, I was 13, 13, 13, that’s right so, uh, from the time I was 13 to the time I was 17, or so, by the time I was 15, I was playing college. I played a college sorority formal, you know, and that was that’s cool, yeah.

And so you know, I was really interested in playing because, you know, for one thing, I found an amplifier in a pawn shop in the 1950s and I had this old Japanese bass guitar I think it was, I don’t remember the name, but anyway, uh it we played, uh you know this. This amplifier was bass tone amplifier. It was called and, uh, I got you know, I, I got interested in playing playing bass guitar and and it was, it was you know it really turned me on to play the bass guitar.

This amplifier was good and everything. And then we started playing bigger places and, like I said, you know we were playing, you know bigger places and stuff, and so I decided to get a bigger amplifier. Well, I went out and bought a new tube amplifier brand new, it was a National, two 15-inch speakers. This bass tone only had one and it didn’t do it. You know, there was just nothing you could do to get any sound out of it, I mean the tone on the. I bought a Gibson bass too and Gibson EBO, and it just didn’t do it. It just didn’t do it for me. And so we started playing at Psychedelic.

you know after that know after that we were playing you know, we were playing stuff that was pretty commercial and then when I bought that amplifier the whole sound of the band changed. You know, we started playing all the you know, distorted rock and roll stuff yeah, yeah yeah, I was going to the rock concerts. You know, I saw led zeppelin the first two times they were through there. I saw the doors, I saw all those guys that’s cool and uh, you know their bass amps like the doors. Well, they had. They had a keyboard player that was playing the bass and that exactly found it through the whole whole stadium or wherever we went to see.

It was a good sounding bass, but you know the bass guitars. You should go see groups of bass guitars and the bass guitar amplifiers were just not doing it.

0:06:27 – Speaker 1
You know the bass guitars you should go see groups of bass guitars and the bass guitar amplifiers.

0:06:29 – Speaker 2
They’re just not doing it, you know and, and so I, I you know this is, this isn’t good, but you know and, but whatever you know. So anyway, I ended up going to berkeley. I was doing some academic stuff. For a while I kind of dropped, got away from the music a little bit and then I didn’t want to do that and I decided I’d get back into the, to the music. You know, I thought maybe if I did the academic thing, you know that maybe I could find a way to improve, figure out how to improve the bass amplifier. Yeah, yeah, what I like, what? What the way I like? But they, they had their own program. They wanted me to study this or study that, and I wanted to study. I needed help with my amplifier. Do you do you?

0:07:07 – Speaker 1
do. Did you have that itch at like 15 to like fix the amplifier? Like what? Like how old do you think you were when you’re like man, these bass amps suck, like, like, like, how old do you think you were when you were like I want to try and do something about this. Like was it before berkeley? Was it when you were like I want to try and do something about this? Like was it before Berkeley? Was it when you got there?

0:07:28 – Speaker 2
Oh, it was before Berkeley. I went to Denison university for two semesters. I also went to a boarding school. My parents locked me up in a boarding school. You know like that second amplifier got me in a lot of trouble. They didn’t like what I was doing. They locked me up in a boarding school for two years. So I went to Denison University and I was trying to get these. You know I was trying to get the professors interested in.

0:07:56 – Speaker 1
You know the bass amplifier problem. That’s funny.

0:07:57 – Speaker 2
I found a couple upperclassmen that kind of got interested in helping me, but they weren’t real helpful either. So you know, I just I dropped out of venison and, uh, I went to berkeley. I got that’s when I went to berkeley. So I went to berkeley and I studied um cello, got back in cello again because the, like I said, the bass amplifier wasn’t pleasing me. So I went up there and I, I majored, majored in jazz cello but I minored in electric bass and they didn’t even have a teacher for me at Berkeley. I had to go to that’s crazy.

I went to Boston Conservatory, or Boston University, and one of their top instructor, one of their top students, their master’s students, would come to my apartment every week and give me a lesson. You know I paid him what. Give me a lesson. You know I paid him what 10 bucks less that’s pretty funny yeah, and uh, he’s, he’s up in.

He’s up in montana now. Kirk violins his name was john kirk. He’s up in montana. He makes cellos and that’s pretty cool. Yeah, he’s, he’s really an interesting guy. He studied with, uh, madame, madame boulanger or boulanger, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, boulanger, or something the same one that quincy jones studied with in france that’s crazy, he studied with her and he’s, he’s a really interesting guy but, anyway, I uh, I yeah, I went to berkeley. That’s how I got started, started with the joe on the bass that’s pretty.

0:09:25 – Speaker 1
It’s pretty funny that, um, you had this drive in you like I imagine you uh, you know the younger cliff being like kind of getting in everyone’s ear hey, man, you, you play bass. Like I see you kind of like, hey, help me fix this problem. Like what do you know about this? Like it seems like you’re kind of like picking everyone’s brain learn as much as you could or to get someone to kind of catch your passion and and like hitch, hitch their trailer up up with you, kind of thing.

0:09:55 – Speaker 2
You know, yeah right, you know I, I saw the music industry going downhill and I didn’t know what it was at the time. You know it was. It was like you know what is this? You know why is this going on? You know what happened to my amplifier, what happened to this, what happened to that? You know, it was just like it was all really kind of making me disappointed. You know, I was expecting things to go a lot better than they did, and things were going worse than they ever could. You know, and so you know, and so I, you know, like I said, yeah, it was like that I was picking people’s brains and trying to figure out, you know well, what can we do about this?

0:10:27 – Speaker 1
and well, so do you want to talk about the? Uh, when you were staying at the like that boarding home or the like that, that you’re renting a room or whatever, that’s where you met that guy, right, I can’t remember his name now, but yeah, his name was billy mcwarder.

0:10:41 – Speaker 2
I william mcwarder and I was uh, I was after berkeley. I uh Billy McWhorter, William McWhorter and I was after Berklee. I did some stuff with a booking agent. That was my uncle’s booking agent. My uncle was a vaudeville star, that’s cool.

0:11:00 – Speaker 1
You said he did like acrobatics and stuff, right, like tightrope walking and stuff.

0:11:05 – Speaker 2
He was a hand balancer and an acrobat. He was in vaudeville with Joe Bonomo. Joe Bonomo was the world’s strongest man in the movies. That’s cool. He was in the movies with him too, you know, in the silent movies. And then whenever the talkies came in well, you know, that was a whole different the man changed, yeah, yeah.

Whenever the talkies came in well, you know that that was a whole different the man, yeah, yeah oh so then, uh, he was, uh, they made him a stuntman, he was gene autry, gene autry stuntman, that’s pretty cool. And then, uh, but he had a booking agent that booked him for all this stuff in pittsburgh named sid markey and sid markey. He introduced me to sid markey. He said this guy can help you out, don’t worry about it, he’s his. Girl is one of the girls that he made with Sandy Mason, and she had a number one hit that year. It was. It was by Crystal Gale. I don’t remember the name of the song, but Crystal Gale had a number one hit that same year and it was written by Sandy Mason.

Sandy Mason was, was you know, he made Sandy Mason, sid Markey did so. So, anyway, so I’m talking to Sid Markey and he says well, we can do this and we can set you up with Sandy and so forth and we’ll get you. We’ll get you a record contract and everything. All you have to do is go out and get some, get some places to play here in Pittsburgh. Well, you know the, the booking agents in Pittsburgh. They wanted everything. They, you know the booking agents in Pittsburgh. They wanted everything. You know, if you’re going to play in their club, you’re going to sign their agreement. Everything you get after you play in their club. 20% of it’s going to go to them.

0:12:32 – Speaker 1
Well, they didn’t book.

0:12:34 – Speaker 2
They didn’t get me booked through Sid Markey. I booked it myself. I didn’t need them to get to Sid Markey, so they.

0:12:40 – Speaker 1
the thing didn’t work out you know I’m not, because then you got your your book and your own shows that your agent still wants 20 percent book me for two nights in a showcase or something like that.

0:12:51 – Speaker 2
He wants 20 the rest of my life. You know I said, oh, that’s not gonna work. You know, I’m sorry, you can’t do that you know yeah so the whole thing kind of went belly up you know, I had a lot of money at the time and I lost a bunch of it, and so, anyway, I after that then, uh, you know, I I didn’t have any money and and you know, the money ran out and I was.

I was living in a rooming house in homestead, pennsylvania. I went in there, or I you know, and I found out that the the other people in there were older than me, a lot of them and there was a guy in there who’s’s in 1957 had a number one hit, uh with a group called the dynamics in pittsburgh and he was 15 years old when he made this hit and that’s crazy.

And then he went into the army after that and became a radio guy. He was radio electronics, yeah, yeah. So I told him. You know, I had this problem with my bass amp and he said well, yeah, the music died in 1960, when they changed everything. All the capacitors got smaller and they went from tubes to uh transistors solid state stuff.

Yeah, everything just went downhill as far as the sound goes. The sound was done, you know. You know they killed the sound and I said well, you know, you’re the first person I ever met that has the same opinion that I do, you know.

And he said yeah, and he started talking to me and telling me this and that, and so I said well, you know what I said. When I was a kid I had this Bogan amp, this Bogan PA head that we used for our rock group and it had a preamp in it. I remember, remember that much about it.

I don’t know anything about electronics except, you know, I could fix, fix broken cables and fix broken quarter inch jacks and parts and stuff bars, you know. So I mean, I know a little bit about soldering. So he said he, and he’s pretty much an expert in tube electronics, you know. So I said, well, you know, let’s, let’s look at this. And I found a Bogan PA at a flea market. I brought it home and then I got a schematic.

We took it apart, figured it out and he started showing me what it was and what section that I needed to work to figure out. So I made a little preamp and he showed me how to do it and then I just started changing out the capacitors. He was telling me the capacitors, what makes a big difference? Right, right, it was a tube preamp to begin with, but it had these little tiny capacitors in it and I used those capacitors and put the preamp together and made it work and it didn’t do anything. It really didn’t make any change in sound. So I said, oh well, you know, whatever’t really didn’t make any change in sound. So I said, oh well, you know whatever. And then he says, well, you know, the real difference was the capacitors. Well, I found a church organ. There was a moving company down the street that had these church organs. They set them out in the corner and the junk collector came and picked them up and I had this old volkswagen van and I walked into the place and I said, hey, can I have that organ?

he said sure, so I I got three of them, that’s funny yeah, I took them home and I scrapped them, took everything apart and I pulled all the capacitors. I didn’t go to church organs and I started swapping them in and out on this preamp section. You know, swapping them in. And you know I found out that if you put two capacitors in in series, that that that makes the value of the capacitor half, that if you put two capacitors in in series, that that that makes the value of the capacitor half. And if you put them in parallel that makes double. And I did that’s funny right figure out if two capacitors that work better in one capacitor, and so forth.

And finally I found something that really worked on my bass guitar with my little transistor tube or transistor bass amplifier, and I had a PV, a PV bass, and you know it was just terrible sound, terrible sounding setup with the amp amplifier and the PV bass. You know I could never get a sound that I liked out of it. Then I started working with this preamp and I worked it in there and, man, I got that thing sounding as good as my old bass. It really worked good.

0:16:44 – Speaker 1
So that’s that’s how was that when you got it working?

0:16:51 – Speaker 2
I felt like I was on top of the world, I believe it, especially after over.

0:16:57 – Speaker 1
I mean not to cut you off, but in the middle of the kind of your story. But, like, not a lot of people are like you to begin with, but I would say a lot of people aren’t like you, especially now where, like I don’t see a lot of like I got five kids. I don’t, I, I wouldn’t see my kids, and this isn’t anything against them. This is just kind of like how, how you know, kids are people, are these days, or whatever, but like I, I wouldn’t see them being like, oh, let me rip all this stuff out of this electrical, you know, piece of and and you know what I’m saying Like people don’t physically mess with things like that anymore. You know what I’m saying.

Like that’s, it’s inspiring. That’s why I want to have you on, because, like we need more people doing stuff like this. You know what I’m saying. Like or or. Not only that, but you, you literally had this like itch when you’re like 15 or younger or whatever, and like you’re still like scratching that itch you know what I mean. Like it’s still driving you to do stuff, even to this day, selling, like you’re pretty. So I, I just want to commend you on. I think it’s awesome. I love that.

0:18:06 – Speaker 2
I love the drive that you have you know, yeah, I know it’s different and everything, but you know, like I said, I had the you know, I the experience from from those concerts I did when I was eight, eight, nine years old. It really you know that we made a big hit, hit of ourselves Eight kids singing in front of big, large crowd and standing room only audiences, you know, and it was like you know they were, they were nuts.

0:18:31 – Speaker 1
Wow, there’s only eight of you in the in the choir they went nuts.

0:18:36 – Speaker 2
Well, there’s only eight of you in the in the choir.

0:18:37 – Speaker 1
It was a little boys, choir, there was only eight of us. Yeah, wow, okay, because you know, when you’re saying choir, I’m like okay, that’s cool, it’s probably like 50 of you or whatever, but like I didn’t realize it was, you know, less than 10, that’s crazy yeah and uh, the place we we brought the house down.

0:18:51 – Speaker 2
You know, man, that is crazy, okay, okay so so you know, like I said, I had that, that beginning, and you know I had this, this impetus that I wanted to keep going, you know. And so I hear you it was, it was, you know it was, it was interesting to me. You know a lot of people weren’t interested at all at all but you know, I got to the point where you know I would. I just figured it out. You know that you can’t please everybody. You know they’re not. Yeah, no no, totally.

0:19:18 – Speaker 1
You know, I think it’s awesome too how you met that guy who was just like yeah, music died in 19, because it was. It was kind of like you had this frustration and you couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but this guy was like, oh yeah, music died in 1960. Here’s why it’s because these transistors and stuff and you’re like, yeah, yeah, that’s it. You know what I mean. Like that, that’s what’s bugging the crap out of me.

0:19:42 – Speaker 2
It was careful in my life. You know, it changed my life pretty much like this. I was, uh, I was really happy to figure out that the bass amplifier didn’t have to sound like it’s out. But you know so. So I you know. And now today you know, you’ve got all these multi effects boards.

0:20:00 – Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, I’m, amplification now is pretty crazy.

0:20:04 – Speaker 2
It turns on a lot of them. I mean a lot of them. They’re really not too much, but you put the preamp in front of them or behind them or whatever, and it really makes a big difference. And so I, you know, like I said, I’m happy with my sound. I can’t I still can’t get booked anywhere. Nobody booked me. I’ve been living in vegas for 15 years, or for since night, since 1997, and my last gig was 2015 oh my gosh, yeah, and so you know.

It’s just like you know. I go out there and try and find a place to play or somebody to play with, and they’re all. The booking agents are calling all the shots. Every song has to be on their list or something. I’m not going to play their songs, I’m going to play what I want.

0:20:42 – Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, no exactly, do you still do a lot of cello stuff?

0:20:47 – Speaker 2
I just I just released my first album. It’s called, it’s under the name of Clark Clifford and it’s called Potpourri of Sounds, volume 1. That’s cool. It’s over an hour of music, mostly solo cello.

0:21:01 – Speaker 1
That’s cool.

0:21:02 – Speaker 2
It’s electric cello, it’s a lot of effects and so forth.

0:21:06 – Speaker 1
That’s really cool A lot of different sounds.

0:21:08 – Speaker 2
I also have one track it’s a big band jazz composition that I wrote and arranged and so forth, and I’ve got one song that I sing on, which is that’s cool, and so I’ve gotten. You know, like I said, I got over an hour’s worth of material on this record Clark Clifford Potpourri of Sounds, volume 1. It’s on Bandcamp record clark clifford potpourri of sounds, volume one. It’s on bandcamp and uh, you know, and then, like I said, it’s uh, you know, I’m still working on it. I’ve got a yeah buying level three.

Now that I’m working on that, I’m having a hard time getting the noise out of the this, the filament circuit, and you know, I I’ve got ideas and I work it and I put it together and I get it good enough where I can work with it and make. You know, like I made my record, I made my album with it and that worked out with it, you know it helped a lot with that and then like this uh home recording, made easy david vignola, is what really uh got me to the point where I could release my record.

You know, I, I yeah during the during the pandemic, I recorded my, my record, and then, for since the pandemic, I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out how to get it out, get it releasable.

You know I yeah sound was there, but it was and I could hear it. I could hear it, but I couldn’t get it up on youtube to sound good and I couldn’t get it out there right hear it. But I couldn’t get it up on youtube to sound good and I couldn’t get it out there right, you know anywhere. I couldn’t put it up there and then play it through the stereo on my truck or whatever exactly, yeah, yeah sound good.

It just didn’t sound good. But now, like I said, I went through this course with uh david bignola. Home recording made easy. That’s if you use, if you use, studio one. That’s that’s what he specializes in. Okay, okay and uh, he’s got he has a ssl board in his house and he’s worked with steven slate, has all those ssl plugins. That’s great. Figured out how to use those ssl plugins so that they work just, they sound just like a SSL board and that’s what. That’s what got me to to the point where I could release my, my album, and I haven’t even been practicing for the last six months since I started because you’ve been messing around with you, getting it like mastering the sound instead of actually playing yeah, all my time learning how to master and mix this, this record, you know, and it was just like I lost all my chops and now I’m just starting to get back into it.

I released it about two, three weeks ago, so it’s on bandcamp again. That’s cool.

0:23:46 – Speaker 1
Ophirio sounds, volume one so I’m surprised it took you that long. I mean I think you might have said did you do like any session bass playing or whatever kind of like you know in the berkeley days when you’re younger?

0:23:56 – Speaker 2
but I’m surprised you it took you this long to kind of like record something well, the recording, you know, home recording here there was no, there was a lot of. The recording studios were so subpar too. You know, you go to pay. Pay somebody 30 bucks an hour to go in the recording studio.

You came out with something, it wasn’t it wasn’t even worth 30 an hour and I I, I went to a talk reporting studio back in the back in the early 80s and did a demo. You know, a demo it was good for a demo, but not not something that’s commercially saleable. Yeah, yeah, even some of these records that are coming out and they’re playing them on the radio, that the, the mixing and the mastering is not there. They’re just really choppy. But you know, this one I I’m pretty happy with.

So anyway, I uh, I mean, it’s satisfied, it’s satisfying to me, anyway, I can play it on my truck, I can play it in my car, I can play it on my stereo and it’s still sounding, sounding where I wanted to sound, so I I released it, you know otherwise I wouldn’t, I would have never released it, you know.

No, I hear you, yeah, I know I, I hear you like I said even back in the day, that you know the studios wanted a lot of money and and you know you go in the studio and you spend a lot of money. I could have spent all that money that I spent trying to promote my rock band back in the early 80s going into a studio and making a record. But then you make the record, what are you going to do? You’re going to go out and you don’t have an amplifier.

0:25:21 – Speaker 1
You don’t have anything so yeah, I know, I hear you, I hear you.

0:25:24 – Speaker 2
It just didn’t work out for me. You know, yeah, I was. You know I was. It was a bad thing all around and and then later on I learned about how the Musicians Union had been sabotaged in the 50s and then finally, in 64, the Supreme Court of the United States just threw everything out. The Musicians Union was pretty much. They broke them, they took all their money away and that’s probably really when music died in a sense for the musicians.

0:25:53 – Speaker 1
I don’t know enough of that history, but that makes then yeah, well see what they did.

0:25:58 – Speaker 2
They took all the writers were royalties yeah and they used to take all those royalties that the writers get today and they gave them to to the musician junior.

0:26:09 – Speaker 1
Oh, and then they would.

0:26:10 – Speaker 2
They would split it up amongst them from there and they would take, take, and if your club needed a band, well, they just called the musicians union and they’d send you, they’d send you a band and they’d pay out of that that fund. You know, the club didn’t have to pay you, it was a, it was a union that paid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so in 64, they finally made the final decree that, no, that wasn’t going to happen anymore. Now the writers get all the royalties.

Well now, today. Look at it today You’ve got AI. If you want to write a song, you just push a button and it writes it for you.

0:26:42 – Speaker 1
So you know, yeah, I hear you, I have arguments against and for it. But you know, I think we’re still a little. We’re definitely still in the wild west of AI for sure. It for me not not musically speaking. I use AI for a lot of other stuff and it is. It is quite quite the tool if you learn how to utilize it for for the good that it’s worth. There is a lot of bad that can come out of it, for sure, just like any anything you know, like a gun could be used for hunting, or a gun can be used to kill someone. You know kind of depends what you use it for. Right, so I look at ai as in kind of that same way.

0:27:27 – Speaker 2
So yeah, you know, I use I. I use it for my, for my promotions, for my herbal supplement, the herbal supplement that I started. Yeah, I’ve been using it online on my website and so forth.

0:27:42 – Speaker 1
A blog post, my blog on there, exactly, no, exactly, and.

0:27:45 – Speaker 2
I find it makes my writing sound a lot more sophisticated, more.

0:27:49 – Speaker 1
Dude, I’m like the worst writer in the world. I’m lucky, I spelled my name right half the time. I’m like the worst writer in the world. Like I’m lucky, I spelled my name right half the time. I’m a, I’m a terrible, and so that that’s one spot. Ai has like saved me in so many ways, cause I can say, hey, I need an article that talks about this or whatever, and then you hit enter and you’re like, yeah, that’s what I needed, and it’ll it’ll correct your grammar and everything else.

Oh yeah, no, exactly, it has all the punctuations and, like you know, like I said, it’s it sucks for people that are good writers. But again, ai is a tool where, like, hey, if you’re a good writer, then you should learn how to, like, manipulate ai to you know what I mean. Like, if you’re a good writer, then it gives you kind of a leg up using ai. In my opinion, you know so it’s really it’s.

0:28:42 – Speaker 2
It’s a useful tool. I, when I was, when I was in in boarding school and so forth, they they didn’t have any computers for, for math computers, you know but when I always when I got to denison, the first year at denison well, that’s the year they came out with the hp 35, the, the math, yeah exactly scientific calculator and that thing it was 500.

I wasn’t gonna pay 500 for a calculator, you know. But wow, you know these math students, they could do a. You know where it would take an hour to do one like on paper or whatever, yeah, yeah, on paper 15 seconds with the calculator yeah, exactly people that had the calculators. They weren’t, they weren’t sharing, and it was kind of a bad thing.

You know, yeah, I, I could have bought a calculator a bit of, been a big success and just partied all through college, but I decided I’d just drop out and go play music. Well, there you go. Well, I guess you know, probably today. You know these young students today are having the same problem. The freshmen are coming in, they’re writing master’s degree levels and you know that’s making a lot of frustration for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know how, and you know that’s making a lot of frustration for a lot of people. You know, I don’t know how they’re going to deal with that. They’re going to have to figure it out. It’d probably be 15 years before they have it all we’re still in the crazy wild west.

0:30:06 – Speaker 1
It’s going to take a while. Like this is kind of like this AI thing, it’s kind of like an industrial revolution really. I mean, you know it’s, it’s, it’s gonna rattle a bunch of markets and jobs and all kinds of stuff, just like the industrial revolution, did you know?

0:30:25 – Speaker 2
it’s a big thing, it is but, but, like I you know, back to the back to the point of all this so so this herbal supplement, let’s talk about that yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, I want to come back around.

0:30:35 – Speaker 1
I’ll swing back around to the preamp, but we can definitely talk about this now for sure okay, so this herbal supplement.

0:30:42 – Speaker 2
Whenever I built the first preamp and I got it working, I decided well, look, this is something that somebody’s going to be interested in, we’ll get it marketed. So I I decided, well, I’m going to go out and try to figure out what it is.

So I talked to a bunch of people all over the country about it and I traveled all over the place and I talked to a bunch of people trying to get help with it no, nobody. They said. Oh no, we do all that ourselves, we do everything ourselves. You can’t help us, You’re not going to do anything for us. And so I put it back on the shelf. There there was a preemptive back on it.

I gotta go make some money. So I got, I went. During my travels I got, you know, I was traveling around supporting myself, working on labor raises and stuff like that, you know, and, um, I met a lot of people and they were telling me well, this is breaking loose right now. The offshore oil is breaking loose. They. They’ve been down since the 80s and now they’re coming back and they’re hiring people down in Louisiana and Alabama places like that Florida.

You go down there and you’re going to find a job. So I went down there and I started in Lake Charles and I worked my way down to Morgan City. And sure enough, I got hired, I got paid. I was working seven days a week, 12 hours a day Damn. And they were working me.

0:31:54 – Speaker 1
It was in.

0:31:54 – Speaker 2
Mobile, alabama, they gave me a hotel room. They gave me a ride to work every day. They gave me one meal a day. They did my laundry.

0:32:02 – Speaker 1
No kidding.

0:32:03 – Speaker 2
They were paying me $30 a day per diem and it ended up being like a thousand bucks a week and I had been you know just nothing, man. So I got this job and it was six weeks, after six weeks, the company got run off of that job and they had another job in in uh homo louisiana and they said oh, if you want to go down here, we’ll take you down here and I said okay, and there was a little paper test that I could take to become a full-fledged pipe fitter.

You know, okay, I went from helper to pipe fitter in six weeks, that’s where I turned him in pipe fitter six weeks later in homo louisiana.

0:32:42 – Speaker 1
I worked there for a month.

0:32:43 – Speaker 2
I mean worked there for a year. We built this offshore oil module for uh it was for global marine and it was uh, no, it was the first job. The first, the one we got run off of mobile was for global marine. But then we went to homa and we were working on this uh offshore oil module for texaco. They ended up dropping it in the ocean. It was a big. They lost a lot of money on that.

0:33:10 – Speaker 1
But but anyway it, it, uh.

0:33:12 – Speaker 2
I worked for a year, we built it and I started having stomach problems. You know all this, all this hard work and everything that I wasn’t worked to wasn’t used to. Working 10 hours a day, six days a week, seven days a week yeah, yeah, that’s intense, yeah, and so my stomach started bothering me really bad.

I just had bad indigestion. So I went to doctors. They didn’t have anything. They didn’t have anything that worked. They had some pills but they seemed to make me weak and sick and disoriented, hired and stuff probably, yeah, and sick and disoriented and stuff, probably yeah, they’re disoriented and stuff, and it was so hot out I couldn’t, you know, I can’t, can’t live like that, not feeling like that. So I went to uh, went to a pharmacy. I found this stuff called uh, twin labs, stress formula b15. I took that and three weeks later, I mean, my stomach’s all better, you know no problems. So this is, I put it back on the shelf. You know, go another six months, the stomach where it acts up again, take some, goes away. Well, I’m fine for a couple years going on like this, you know no problems. So, uh, then one day I go to the pharmacy and they don’t have many. So what happened? They said they’re discontinued. Oh no, I’m telling you.

0:34:22 – Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s the word you don’t want to hear. Yeah.

0:34:27 – Speaker 2
So I started looking around everywhere I can look. You know, I went to GNC and they had this stuff on a shelf called Mood Formula and I looked at the ingredients and there it was exactly the same ingredients. That’s funny. Yeah, there was only 60 caps in this bottle like, whereas twin labs, I think, had 200 caps and it was.

0:34:45 – Speaker 1
it was like five dollars less or something I would have been like how many do you have any more in the back?

0:34:53 – Speaker 2
yeah, I was fine again. I got good for good to go for a while, you know. And then I one day I walked into into gnc. They didn’t have any more. It just continued, oh man. So you know, I had the blotto, I had the ingredients, I knew what it needed. So I started looking everywhere. No, can’t find it, can’t find it anywhere. And I started trying to make it myself and buying, you know, the herbal ingredients. It was just a B50 formula. It had a few few vitamins in it and then it had this herbal formula after the vitamins and I looked everywhere for the herbal formula.

I figured I I’m already taking a b50 vitamin. That’s not good and it’s this herbal formula. So I’m looking everywhere for the herbal formula.

I find I find all the, all the ingredients online, ebay and everywhere. I find them and I buy them. I put them together, I bought a little scale, I weigh them, I put them in capsules, try it on. Nothing’s working for me. Nothing. I can’t find one ingredient. There was just one ingredient that I couldn’t find. It was an extract, a flower extract, I think they call it, and so I bought linoleum flowers. I tried to make an extract. You put it in booze or alcohol for six months or eight months and then you take it out and that’s supposed to extract. Well, it didn’t do any good. You know, the stuff wasn’t working for my stomach. It didn’t do anything. So, like I pulled a tendon in my ankle and I was out. I was out for a while, I couldn’t do anything. They were going to do surgery, but it was the middle of the pandemic. I said, no, we’re not going to do surgery in a pandemic, I don’t want to go be in a hospital yeah, exactly so they gave me a brace.

I wear a brace on my foot now, so I have to wear it all the time, or I don’t. I have to wear it when I’m working you know manual hard work. So I, you know, they gave me this stuff called naproxen for my pain when I pulled my tendon. Well, the naproxen really messed with my stomach it was for a year and a half I was in a bad way and the doctors were giving me all this, you know panoprazole and stuff like that. I don’t like panoprazole. It makes me sick, you know like.

0:37:12 – Speaker 1
I said it makes me weak and that stuff. And that stuff tears up like the walls of your stomach or whatever. Right, I mean, it’s not good for you. Yeah, I don’t.

0:37:21 – Speaker 2
I didn’t didn’t work for me. Some other, some people it works for, it doesn’t work for me. So I mean not my lifestyle, you know so yeah.

So I, you know whatever and I thought so, after a year and a half of suffering, I couldn’t even lay down in bed. I had to sit up to sleep and stuff. And so I, after a year and a half of suffering, I’m looking online for this, this ingredient. I found it and, uh, I said, okay, send me, send me a sample. They sent me a hundred grams and I’ve been working on that a hundred grams for for over a year now and that’s cool, not bothered me since then, you know. So I decided well, I’m going to manufacture this stuff.

So I started in last October I went to a trade show here in Vegas, supply side west, and I started asking people how to do it and everything. And I figured out all the regulations and how you have to do it and everything. And I started a website. I’m doing a crowdfunding campaign. So I’m building an email list right now. So I’m going to build an email list until I get about 5,000 people that I really know are going to buy the product, and then I’m going to have a manufacturer and sold. It’s like a crowdfunding thing. You know, it’s a little bit different. You can’t do it on Kickstarter. You can’t yeah, because it’s a supplement and they don’t allow supplements for a lot of things. There’s a lot of regulations for supplements and they don’t want to be involved with all that.

0:38:42 – Speaker 1
Yeah, no, it makes sense.

0:38:46 – Speaker 2
Yeah, so I think I’ll do it on Shopify with a pre-sale button. I’m not real sure Right now. I’ve got over a thousand emails that I’m working on. I still have to sort out whether they’re using buyers or they’re just looky-loos or whatever.

0:39:10 – Speaker 1
Like I said, it’s a good product.

0:39:11 – Speaker 2
I’m calling it uh gastro rejuvenator, stress mood formula there you go.

0:39:15 – Speaker 1
Gastro rejuvenator, all one word gastro rejuvenator.

0:39:17 – Speaker 2
You can find it at gastro rejuvenatorcom and uh, that’s. That’s funny.

0:39:23 – Speaker 1
This is like a it’s almost like your, your base preamp thing kind of all over again. We’re like you’re, you’re getting into this other kind of like industry. You’re like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but damn it, I’m gonna fix this I mean some people have a pet peeve.

0:39:42 – Speaker 2
Well, mine is. Mine is when they take something good off the market that I can’t live with you know, I hear you.

0:39:48 – Speaker 1
I mean I mean honestly that there’s probably a lot of other situations where people have kind of felt the same thing. You know not, you know the same, but like the same, you know, like, oh man, I really love X and now it’s gone. Really love x and now it’s gone. It’s kind of funny how many people might have missed out on opportunities where it’s like you know what, maybe that person should have stepped up and put x back in the market or whatever, you know yeah, maybe that that company just they they weren’t gelling right, or something yeah, yeah, yeah manufacturing or something was it wasn’t happening right or their marketing wasn’t properly done or something.

0:40:22 – Speaker 2
I don’t know. But I, I, you know that pill it should have been. They called it a mood formula. They called it a stress b50 stress formula you know they could have just called it a stomach pill. They never mentioned. It’s a stomach pill and that’s what it works I wonder.

0:40:40 – Speaker 1
I wonder if it’s due to like uh, I don’t know enough about this like fda or whatever, but maybe it’s like claims, you can’t make kind of thing, or whatever. Like the f, the fdc and the fda.

0:40:50 – Speaker 2
Yeah, they want, they want, uh, you know, laboratory clinical studies yeah, yeah, yeah and stuff like that. Well, you know, with the supplements, you know this is ancient, ancient medical stuff. You know they’ve been doing this for centuries. You know using these herbs for centuries I hear, and so they can’t, they can’t go against all that all of a sudden, just because they’re they’re in power you know they, they have to give a little bit of leeway so you, you can get away with it as long as you’re not making an actual claim.

Oh, this is going to fix your stomach yeah, well. I can’t say that, you know. I can say well, this is. You know, this is good for this. It’s a rejuvenator, it’ll make you relax, it’ll give you the overall well-being. That’s fine, okay.

0:41:31 – Speaker 1
Yeah.

0:41:31 – Speaker 2
You know, I’ll just call it gastro rejuvenator. I figure that’s what Twin Labs should have called in the first place and they clinical studies done and all that. They got all the money. I don’t you know, I’m just somebody that wants, wants this stuff. I don’t want to you know this if I don’t have this, I probably can’t live that long, you know no, I hear what you’re saying.

0:41:49 – Speaker 1
I hear what you’re saying.

0:41:49 – Speaker 2
Yeah oh so anyway, you know, it’s just something. I’m I’m, I’m really I’m thinking that this is gonna, this is gonna make me some money so I can make some capacitors. You know, no one will make my capacitors for me. I’m gonna have to make myself. So I’ll make some money with this and I’ll make some capacitors and then I’ll build preamps and sell them cheap. You know, that’s what I want to do well.

0:42:10 – Speaker 1
So I guess you know what I’m going to take that. To swing back around to your bass amp. So like when, when you would talk to that guy in in the boarding room there and he was like, oh, you know and and you kind of got the first one working and all that, what? Like? What happened after that? Like how did you know? Because we got and during the conversation at one point you mentioned how you got like a hundred of them built and like you still I don’t think you still, or maybe you did so you still have some of them even right now of the of those hundred revising them.

0:42:44 – Speaker 2
You know there’s new safety regulations and so forth. I mean, I put the price high enough where you know, it. It could possibly possibly become a collector’s item or something like that someday. You know, see, here’s something that really did work. You know, really made a difference with bass amplifier, you know. But you know it’s, it’s, it’s. Uh, you know I put the price high enough where I’m not going to sell a whole bunch of them I don’t want to sell a bunch of them.

0:43:07 – Speaker 1
I don’t want I mean, you still need to, you know, get paid for what you’re, what you’re doing yeah, there’s only so many of these old capacitors around and in some states they don’t.

0:43:16 – Speaker 2
They don’t want you to sell them in their, in their like in the european union. You’re not allowed to have them anywhere near there.

0:43:23 – Speaker 1
You can’t sell any masters and I don’t.

0:43:26 – Speaker 2
I don’t know if you’d even be allowed to tour with one of these preamps in their country, because they’re really strict about having that wow, that’s pretty funny.

0:43:34 – Speaker 1
Yeah, because I think you were saying something about, like the capacitors, like have this a tiny bit of material in it that’s like cancer causing or something like that.

0:43:41 – Speaker 2
Right, they call them pcbs. They’re, they’re, it’s a, it’s some kind of whenever, whenever they manufactured the, the capacitors, they used to use this oil. There’s mineral oil with the pcbs. Well, the pcbs were a firing inhibitor. They used mineral, mineral oil in in the capacitors at first, but then some some. Sometimes, you know, they’d catch on fire and burn a whole building down. Mineral oil is what you use in lamps. Wow, mineral oil. And so the PCBs are the fire inhibitors. So the mineral oil won’t catch on fire with that in there. But it turns out it’s a cancer causing agent and you can’t manufacture this stuff now in this little capacitor.

You know, if you take it apart and get it on your fingers or something like that, that’s probably not gonna hurt you but if you go, to work every day and you’re getting it all over your, all over yourself right right, you know you’re probably gonna get sick after a while yeah so they’re not really dangerous or anything like that. It’s just that they’ve got something in them that they don’t want to manufacture anymore. Yeah, yeah, We’d get sick. So you know, and they, they, they’ve got these new capacitors. You could buy the capacitors they’re about 80 bucks a piece New paper and oil capacitors. But you know who’s going to pay $80 a piece for capacitors.

0:45:07 – Speaker 1
It takes five of them. One of my pre-emps. I was going to say that jacks up the price of your pre-emps, for sure.

0:45:10 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I’m not going to make any money on those capacitors If I put them in there. I can’t charge more for those capacitors, so it doesn’t make sense. $80 a piece is way too much for five.

0:45:23 – Speaker 1
I hear that’s almost 500 bucks or whatever Just.

0:45:26 – Speaker 2
I mean, they use five cents worth of material and they’re charging 80 bucks. You know it doesn’t make sense. You know so. So I’m just you know, saying that the so the new capacitors, the oil that they’re using in there, that’s not so environmentally fresh sound either not very.

It’s kind of dangerous stuff too, you know, and so you know there’s I think there’s, there’s a solution out there somewhere, and somebody’s got it and already figured it out. I just have to find it, so you know, and then once I did, I’d be able to uh, you know, put, do a mass producing thing on it you know if I sell enough stuff. It’s herbal, herbal supplement. I’ll do that, you know, we’ll see so.

0:46:15 – Speaker 1
So, like when you got that, when you kind of made the hundred, you found obviously enough capacitors or whatever. Like you know, you mentioned in passing, I think, before the interview, like you went to nam a few times and stuff, I mean, like you were yeah. Like yeah, I mean you. I mean you were working a regular job to fuel, doing your base stuff. You know what I mean. Like yeah. So, like again, I don’t think a lot of people have that kind of drive where it’s like oh screw, I need to get a regular job whatever because I need to funnel it into this thing I’m doing. You know what I’m saying. Again, I like your drive. It’s impressive and it’s encouraging. It makes me want to get up and start doing something right now.

0:47:03 – Speaker 2
When I was in college, they talked a lot about alienation. You know, alienation, I guess, is a subject that that fits under.

I was so alienated, you know I was like no, I wasn’t, I wasn’t a part of all this stuff that they’re doing there. I was. You know, I, like I said I had this beginning with this boys choir and I, this push to be in the musical and music industry, and I found that, you know, that they were doing things that I didn’t agree with and I, I couldn’t stand it and I couldn’t get along with it, and so I decided, you know well, you know, I just keep keep doing my own thing. You know, and you know, live my life the way I want to live my life. I’m not going to live my life the way they want me to live it. So I, I just did that, you know.

And and so I, you know, I got along, I got along with the way I wanted to do and you know, that way I’m not so alienated. Like I said, this, this record. When I just got this record out, I feel a lot better. I feel a lot better. I hear you, the weight of the world off of my shoulders because you know, I don’t have to, I don’t have to. You know, people, people, if they want, if they want to say who are you, I say, well, here’s my record go listen to you like it.

Listen to it if you don’t like it don’t listen to it, you know, but to me, that’s me right there, you know, I can tell you I I feel a lot better. I I got this, I got a decent sign.

Man, you know, I don’t sound like I don’t sound like so, and so down the street I I got, I got a professional sound out of this thing. I went to school to become a professional music and I got a professional sound out of my first recording. You know so I’m happy. You know, but you know again, you know all, during the time that I was doing this recording I wasn’t feeling too good. I had this problem with my stomach, you know so I can’t say I did.

At my best level, but I can say that you know now I’ve got my stomach back together I mixed it in my best level. So I’m I’m doing better. I’m doing better. My sound is going better. My preamp business well, you know, it’s kind of on the back shelf now. I can’t find any capacitors. I’ve looked everywhere I could could think of to ask people to help me with finding these capacitors and you know, they’re not, they’re just not interested?

I don’t. I don’t know what it is, you know. I guess the industrial world is just too important to them to even think about, you know? So I, I just go on with the heck with it, you know what am I gonna do so. I I got a few preamps. If you want a preamp, call, hit me up, I’ll sell you one.

0:49:17 – Speaker 1
Have you had anyone like getting a hold of you after like using one being like dude? This is freaking awesome, like I, I was looking for this, or whatever you know like yeah, yeah, I mean my.

0:49:27 – Speaker 2
I got a list of endorsers on the on the website nightwalkerpreampcom. Uh, you can just look up new bass tunnelcom and it’ll take you there. That’s uh. They, uh, you know, I, I have a list of endorsers on there. That’s uh. You know some pretty heavy hitters on that list and you listen to what they’re about to say. They did videos and so forth.

They did demos with it and how it works. It’s pretty good. Yeah, I mean, I got it going and there’s a lot of people like I did shows. I went to a bunch of shows and they said you know?

what I can use that. I want that. I got it. You know you can do it. I said, well, look, you pay me 400. Go make it yourself, because you know what you know. I mean I I sell them half price to the endorsers. Yeah, look, you can make one of these things for 35 bucks. You know you can make it yourself for 35 bucks. And I want to tell you, you guys probably know better electronics guys than I am. I’m not the best electronics guy in the world, you know. I knew I learned. I learned from a guy that was. It was in the army and he went through the whole course.

You know and I I put these and I put them together and yeah, they work and yeah, you know you can buy one for 800 bucks and, believe me, it’s going to last you probably 15, 20 years with no problems. It’s, it’s built that good. But you know what? You probably got somebody that knows more about the electronics that I do. So you know, take the, take it, try it out. If you like it, go get your buddy to make you one. You know that’s what you should do. Or you can take this and use it. You know and use it, that’s hilarious cliff.

0:51:00 – Speaker 1
You’re like talking yourself out of like, yeah, I mean like selling pretty ass yeah, I mean I could sell.

0:51:07 – Speaker 2
I could sell them for 200, 300, you know, and still be making a nickel a dime here, you know. But I’m selling for the price I’m selling for I’m losing money. I’ve been losing money since 2008, my first made. So it’s you know, it’s okay for now, but hopefully you know something’s going to break, you know no.

0:51:26 – Speaker 1
I hear you.

0:51:28 – Speaker 2
You know something’s going to break where. You know I’ll get partnered up with somebody or somebody’s going to say you know what we got to fix this. This is terrible what’s going on here. And you know I live in Las Vegas.

0:51:48 – Speaker 1
You know I audience a lot of the audience doesn’t care if they’re letting a lot of these rock bands get away with playing like backing tracks and everything to. You know their music, I mean that’s a whole nother topic.

0:52:03 – Speaker 2
But yeah, but even then, you know the, like I said, the bass, the bass and the drums is usually what ruins the show. You know, I’ll get out there and listen to it. It’s just not happening I mean if you’re you’re high enough, it’s you’re gonna have a good time right yeah, have you.

0:52:19 – Speaker 1
Have you been to that? Uh, what’s it called the sphere? Have you been to that yet? I built this called the Sphere.

0:52:23 – Speaker 2
Have you been to that yet? I built the.

0:52:24 – Speaker 1
Sphere, no kidding.

0:52:25 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I worked on that. I had a job there for a year building that.

0:52:30 – Speaker 1
Dude, that’s cool. What did you do there? I mean, if you don’t mind going into that.

0:52:34 – Speaker 2
I put the pipe in. That’s cool Air conditioning and for the. You know like they have these big, big rooms full of computers and you have to cool them down to keep the oh yeah, oh yeah you know, we put in a cooling system for that. That’s cool. Yeah, it was so it was. It was a good job it was good.

0:52:52 – Speaker 1
So how is? Have you seen a show there like how is, how is that place for like acoustics and all that?

0:52:58 – Speaker 2
I haven’t seen a show but I’m really interested in going. They have these acoustic foam. Like you know, you see a lot of stadiums where they put rock bands and so forth. Well, this place has got acoustic foam on the walls, you know, like foot and half thick. You know all around and everything. I imagine the sound is pretty good yeah. I would hope so They’ve optimized it. I haven’t been to see what they’ve done.

0:53:24 – Speaker 1
You know, like I said, I I’m not too. I’m not too optimistic about it, but you know I’m gonna I’ll come down here and watch a show one day here, pretty soon and uh I, I guess, coming circling back around to your, uh, this is the supplements. You’re doing too like I. Again, it’s very like parallel to your amp thing. We are just and it’s hilarious to where you’re like, screw it, I have the ingredients right here in the back of the box. I’m going to, fricking, make this myself.

0:53:56 – Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, you know I had. It was something I found that worked, you know, and I was fed up with going to doctors and doctors and trying all these other products, and I did try a lot of different products, nothing working, nothing did anything for me. And, but this one worked, you know. So I figured well, I’ll make myself just.

And then when I finally did figure out how to make it like some 15, 20 years later. Well, you know, how much can I get of this, how much can I get of that? Can we, we put this together? Can you make it for me, you know?

0:54:28 – Speaker 1
and how did you figure out kind of like oh, I need to put in like this much of that or this much of this, like how did you kind of figure out that like?

0:54:35 – Speaker 2
that’s what the label on the, on the original product had had the ingredients and how much of this was oh no kidding, yeah, yeah, like you know, wow, they literally.

0:54:46 – Speaker 1
They literally gave away like the secret sauce or whatever.

0:54:49 – Speaker 2
That’s funny 100 milligrams of this, 50 milligrams of that, and then just put it together so that’s funny.

0:54:56 – Speaker 1
Yeah, no kidding. So like again, it’s hilarious. How like, uh, you know like don’t take this the wrong way. It’s like you didn’t know what the hell you were doing. You’re like I’m just gonna buy these ingredients and like get sit in my kitchen and, you know, measure them out, and I’ll ingest a few and see what happens I read a lot of books.

0:55:17 – Speaker 2
I read a lot of books. I have a lot of books on alternative alternative medicine, you know that’s cool, that’s that’s cool time the doctor tells me there’s something wrong with me, I go get, search my books and I look and see what, what I can do. You know, try and stay away from the doctor’s office, you know I hear what you’re saying right, you know a lot of my jobs I don’t have, I don’t have. You know a lot, of a lot of my life I spent without any insurance. You know?

I hear you know it takes three months to get on the insurance and the job’s maybe nine months. So you’ve got six months insurance and maybe a month or two after that. And then you know, then they want so much for insurance. Well, you know, wait for the next job, you don’t? Have insurance, so on and so forth. So I you know I’ve figured ways to uh you know, to keep myself healthy without running to the doctor all the time? Yeah, and honestly.

0:56:06 – Speaker 1
I mean it’s it’s kind of a good testament to for people listening. Like you know, maybe someone listening has some other issue, right, they’re going to the doctor for, like, if you haven’t checked out kind of like natural remedies or holistic kind of stuff, it’s definitely worth checking out. You know what I mean. Like you won’t waste, you won’t be wasting your time. I can say that much.

0:56:28 – Speaker 2
Yeah, folk remedies. There’s a lot of powerful folk remedies out there. I mean you can laugh, but oh, you got a cold. Get some chicken soup. You know Well, chicken soup makes you feel better. If it makes you feel better, that’s pretty good, right.

0:56:44 – Speaker 1
Yeah, no, exactly, yeah, totally. So with the supplements right now I know you’re doing the crowdfunding thing, so is the point to get people to kind of give their email? And do you have a future date or an idea of when you would like to try in?

0:57:06 – Speaker 2
date or an idea of when you would like to try and, you know, once I’ve got around 5 000, you know people that I could talk to and engage with and figure out that, yes, they’re going to buy this stuff and and then I’ll go out and get stuff made and I’ll sell it to them.

0:57:14 – Speaker 1
So are you still making it for you just because you need it for you, right? Yeah, I make it for myself yeah, but you but you couldn’t actually like sell it to anyone right now, could you? No, I don’t think so because of regulations and all that stuff or whatever. I think I could get in trouble for selling stuff that I make on my kitchen table yeah, that’s what I mean, because you have to get, not necessarily a facility, but you have to make sure it’s all passes, all the codes and all that stuff.

0:57:46 – Speaker 2
It’s got to go through lab tests and all this stuff Plus the insurance. You need to get insurance for it in case somebody does throw rents into work somehow, yeah, or it’s just pretty expensive. So I need to get an insurance policy for it. And then I have to get, I have to find a contract manufacturer to make it for me, and I have to get the testing laboratories to test it all for me and get everything. You know, that that’s kind of a nightmare right there.

0:58:16 – Speaker 1
Yeah, I hear you.

0:58:18 – Speaker 2
You get them over here and then you test them and of course you know it’s a it’s a hit and miss thing where if you find something wrong with it, can you return it. You know it’s like oh, you’re going to get your money back. Are they going to rob you? You know all this, you know it’s, you know. But so I’m, I’m, you know, I’m working on it and I believe it’s going to work out. I really do. I mean, I do too.

0:58:43 – Speaker 1
Man, I, like I said you, you, you know if it’s already working and it works for you. That’s like half the battle right there. You know what I mean. Like you, you so nice to kind of unfortunately need to go through all the headache of all the paperwork. You know all the, all the crap that sucks.

0:59:06 – Speaker 2
But pain’s to an end. That’s that’s what it is, you know, and so so I’ll get there and I’ll do what I have to do. You know, that’s what I. That’s that’s life, you know, yeah so what one?

0:59:13 – Speaker 1
one other thing I wanted to hit back on is like you met, so you put out the potpourri of sound. That was the first album, but you already do. You have planned on putting out two or three other ones, is that right?

0:59:25 – Speaker 2
I have plans. The first one I recorded the first three suites. Uh, the first three cello suites, box suites, oh wow. And so the second one. I’m going to record the third three.

0:59:41 – Speaker 1
Okay, okay, I already know them, I just need to polish them up like sit down and do it yeah yeah good, do you think that’ll go a little bit smoother, now that you’ve kind of been through the first time, you think, like you know, mixing and mastering and stuff will be a little bit smoother?

0:59:56 – Speaker 2
uh, it’ll be a lot better. Yeah, yeah, I know I know the ropes. You know I’ve learned the ropes and so it should go a lot faster. The recording will be better. The second one will be a better recording, I’m sure of.

1:00:09 – Speaker 1
I hear you, cliff. I had an awesome time talking to you. Dude, you’re an inspiration. People tell me that I’m an inspiration to them. I think you’re an inspiration. I love how you just roll up your sleeves and it’s like, whatever I’m gonna, I’m just gonna freaking.

Do this like you know, like you travel around the country talking people’s ears off, trying to like get them on board with your preamp or figure out how to do things better with that, and then I’m sure you’re kind of did that with the supplements too. Like, like I said, it’s inspiring and I hope hope people listening. You know we’ll take a little bit from them because you know, like, like I said, it’s inspiring and I hope hope people listening, you know we’ll take a little bit from that because you know, like, like, what’s the worst that would happen? Like I mean, you know, when you’re like, say, when you’re building your first kind of like preamp, like the worst thing that happens is you’re gonna plug it in and turn it on and nothing’s gonna happen, right, like you know, like there’s nothing to be afraid of if you fail.

Like I think a lot of people are worried about failing. You know what I mean, especially this day and age, like, I think, with like social media and all that, people probably, you know, look at Instagram and they see people like playing guitar or whatever it is Right, and they’re probably just like, oh I could, I could never do that, so then I’m just not going to start. You, you know, like, like, people think you have to be like this awesome, whatever the first time you you do something, and that’s not the case. You know, it takes a lot of hard work and effort and practice to do a lot of things of what people do. So, you know, I, I, I hope people listening to your story, uh, picked up on that oh, I appreciate that yeah yeah, no, seriously, man, like that, like, like for, not like.

That’s why I I, you know have people like you on, because I, I think other people need to hear stories like yours and they, they can be like you know what. Why? Why am what am I afraid of? You know, I have this idea. To whatever make this thing, I’m gonna do it like that. That’s what I want people to do when they hear people like you talk. You know what I mean.

I appreciate that yeah, for real, for real. So I, I, I wish you well on everything you do, cliff, and it sounds like, uh, you know you’re gonna succeed at everything you do, because you’re a little bit like me, I would say, and kind of stubborn and don’t know when to stop, which is a good quality to have you know, thank you.

1:02:23 – Speaker 2
Jonathan, I appreciate that.

1:02:25 – Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. So is there anything else you want to go over or cover any? You know anything else about the supplements or the preamp or the albums. We didn’t cover anything else you wanted to go over.

1:02:36 – Speaker 2
I think we hit everything.

1:02:37 – Speaker 1
Thank you very much. Yeah, no, I appreciate your time, dude, and yeah, seriously, I hope we can uh continue conversations past this. Uh, I’d love to stay in touch with you after this sure enough anytime yeah, awesome.