Donivan Blair on Toadies, Martial Arts, Mindset, Healing & Working with Steve Albini // #067

Heartdea13r Podcast w/ chr1stoph3r g0nda // Episode 67 // Donivan Blair (Bassist, Toadies)

Episode Summary:

Toadies bassist Donivan Blair shares insights on maintaining fitness on tour, the role of martial arts in personal growth, and the importance of humility and compassion. Discover how discipline, music, and meaningful relationships foster resilience and self-awareness. Blair shares his journey through music, the importance of embracing failure, the value of honesty in collaboration, and the significance of balance in life and art. Discover practical wisdom on mental health, authenticity, and the power of perseverance from a seasoned musician and bandmate.

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Full Episode Transcript:

Doni Blair (00:00.248)
We also had a gig at Victoria Island and we thought it was just going to be a bummer gig. And it was one of the best shows we’d ever had. Kids were just so excited. You know, they all knew the lyrics. We were four dipshits from, you know, from Dallas, Texas. And there’s these kids on this island in Canada that know every lyric to our songs. We’re like, we fucking love Canada. You know, just I love Canada. All majority of my favorite bands are from Canada. So it’s just I love going there.

We haven’t been there in a long time, the Todes haven’t, so I wanna go back, badly, but.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (00:34.581)
Yeah, it’s nice up here. It’s funny because I think that no matter where you live, there’s always like this element of grass is greener because I was born and raised here, but I lived in Europe for four years. I actually lived in Rhode Island for one year and I’ve done a lot of US traveling and

there are parts of Canada that I’m like, man, I wish we did it more like the US. And I’m sure that you have parts in the US where you’re like, I wish we did it more like, you know, somewhere else. I just got back from Arizona. It’s my first time ever there. And I was like, I was shocked to find out how big the city was. Where were we? We’re like not in Phoenix and Scottsdale, but I guess the Phoenix area is so big now. Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:04.288)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:08.354)
yeah.

Zach Blair (01:20.686)
Mesa. Oh, it’s huge. All of that. There’s Tempe Mesa. There’s Phoenix. Phoenix is, think, proper. And then there’s like, God, two or three huge suburbs right around it, you know. And if you go in, I guess probably east, probably about maybe 100, 200 miles, there’s Flagstaff, which is basically just mountains. It looks like Seattle, you know. It’s beautiful. Just a beautiful part of that state, you know. But.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:31.03)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:48.739)
We were there for a week, like the first week of spring break with our kids and stuff.

I mean, I’ve been to lots of different spots in the U S and so I had a general idea of what to expect, but it was so clean. was so futuristic in a lot of ways. You know, they had this amazing airport that was big and spacious. And then they had the tram, which was driverless. It was all kind of like robotic. People were lovely, very kind. I was having so much fun with like airport security was just such a good experience.

Zach Blair (02:13.998)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (02:20.856)
Good, good. I’m glad. I’m glad. It’s a, I really like Arizona. I like Phoenix. We’re ending our tour in Phoenix. So I will be flying out of that airport with the quickness after two months. Flying the hell out of there.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (02:34.115)
you

What?

That’s a good place to start because you know when I was putting together my notes for today’s chat, one of the things that I was thinking I was going to end on would be like, okay, so new albums coming out in May and now you’re going to be on the road for like two months supporting it, which you’re no stranger to it. But I was more interested in like as a guy with a background in martial arts and physical fitness and then all that stuff. How hard is it for you to do those things when you’re on tour, especially for like a long stretch?

Zach Blair (02:54.434)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (03:09.614)
Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s the thing with, I used to do Taekwondo. So a while back when I was doing Taekwondo, I asked my master and I said, I looked up a bunch of queens, that’s what you call the academy in Taekwondo. And I looked them up in each city and I had like a spreadsheet ready so I could train.

And I asked him, said, Master Kim, could I please, I looked up all of these academies that I can train at so I can keep up, because I was getting really close to getting my black belt at that point. And I said, what do you think? And he just looked at me goes, no, train by yourself. And walked off like, okay, good talk. So the thing with Jiu Jitsu that I’m doing now is you can go into anywhere. There’s a Jiu Jitsu spot in every city. But.

I also have to look out for these, you know, because sometimes people like to, you know, wrist lock you. They like to do all kinds of fun things to your arms and I’ve got to be careful with that. So it’s kind of like when I’m home, I usually like to go about five, six days a week because it’s that’s I’m sure we can get into that, but that’s like my therapy, you know, and I can’t do that as much on the road. You know, I’ll probably go a couple of times, you know, but there’s also

Gosh, you know, there’s so many things I like to do just to keep in shape. I subscribe, I’ll do yoga. There’s a specific thing. It’s yoga for BJJ, you know, or I’ll do mat Pilates or just body weight work. You know, I love body weight work. You know, it’s just, I think, I mean, look at the Roman, you know, and all of the Greek soldiers, all of the, all of the guys with Sparta, they didn’t have weights. They just had their body weight. You know, they were just popping out squats and

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (05:01.122)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (05:05.038)
pushups and things like that. So there’s all kinds of stuff, you you can do to stay in shape and be limber at 54, you know. Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (05:13.919)
Yeah, which which is a good point is never too late to get into fitness. It’s never too late to get into health. mean, I’m 45 and I’ve kind of had this like tumultuous relationship with fitness my whole life where I’ll be really good for six months to a year. I’ll fall off for half a year. You got to get back on. But bodyweight training.

Zach Blair (05:20.64)
yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (05:34.379)
Even the military, right? Not just North American military globally. They’ve been doing things like pull ups calisthenics, sorry, pull ups, push ups, dips, squats for forever.

Zach Blair (05:38.627)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (05:43.682)
Yeah, you can do it anywhere and you can stay pliant. I you can offset that with, you know, calisthenics training, you know, just to keep up your cardio and stretching. You know, I think Pilates is one of the best things to ever be invented. It just helps your core. It just makes your whole body incredible. That along with yoga, you don’t even have to go into a gym. And I like to make it where I don’t have that option. Like, well, I…

I would be able to go work out, but I gotta go to the gym. If I keep that out of it, like, okay, all I have to do is just drop down on the floor and do some pushups or crunches or something or stretch that takes out the, I cowered myself into it. You know what I mean? It’s like, come on, coward, you can jump down there. You can do 50 pushups or you can do 100. You can do this, you know? And it’s trying to stay, because I know if we’re gone for two months,

Once I go back to start training at the Academy that I train at here, I’m going to get murdered if I’m not in good enough shape. They will kill me. They are my good friends. It’s like, it’s good to see you. You know, we’re going to screw you up right now. Right? Like, yep. So I got a and that’s the other thing is so many people I’ve talked to a lot of people that will say, I want to do jujitsu, but I’m going to wait until I get into shape. Don’t just go do it. You know, you’re never going to be in good enough shape to do it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (06:44.675)
you

Zach Blair (07:08.65)
ever. It takes a long time to for your cardio and just for your conditioning to be to get ready for it. So you can just absorb the impact and the mental stress of someone trying to, you know, choke you out. It’s very stressful, but I highly recommend it for any for for a lot of people, you know, it’s not for everyone, obviously, but there are so many advantages to it. You know, I just I love it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (07:19.7)
and

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (07:24.578)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (07:32.749)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (07:36.579)
I want to unpack it some more, but first let’s close the loop of this touring and fitness. So you’re not drinking every day, partying every day. The band is getting good sleep, a good regimen. What are you doing there? you waking up and spending time by yourself in the morning to do some personal training before you get into the day?

Zach Blair (07:39.982)
Cool.

Yeah.

Zach Blair (08:00.75)
Kind of, yeah. I’m a straight edge nerd, so I’ve been high once in my life. And that was like I was 16. it was just a night. think my brother and I have the idea that our parents were hippies. We know they were hippies. And we think they did so many drugs in the 60s and the 70s that it’s just in our system. And it’s like, is nothing.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (08:24.097)
You

Zach Blair (08:30.766)
I’m an early riser, so I like to get up and just get out. And if we’re driving, you know, from one show to the next, I usually just kind of get up and just stretch a little bit and have coffee, call my wife. That’s kind of how I center and like to start my day. Hear my wife’s voice, then I’m good, you know. So I can’t see her, you know. So that’s usually how I like to center. Give her a kiss in the morning, then I go make us coffee. So this time I’ll just talk to her and we like to just start our days that way when I’m gone, you know.

And then I’ll probably stretch or do a little bit some things. I’m usually just, you know, been in the bus jumping around like in bunks and stuff. then depends on what is that day. I could go for a long walk or a run. Or once we get into the venue, just find a good place and do a really good Pilates or stretch or find a good Academy. You know, a lot of times I can fit, spend a few days since I’ve trained. I’ll see if there’s some good Academy’s around.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (09:12.962)
and

Zach Blair (09:28.194)
that I could go visit or sometimes there’s friends I have in those towns who are already teachers that have their own schools and they’ve invited me out. you know, it’s kind of like a, am I gonna do today? You know, it’s kind of a little adventure.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (09:41.761)
Yeah, choose your own adventure. That works out.

Zach Blair (09:44.078)
Pretty much, yeah. And it’s just kind of like a 30 minutes to an hour workout or something. It’s easy to do, even on the road. Even on the road, it really is. It really is. It’s not that hard, as people think.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (10:00.535)
I agree with you. think that in life, oftentimes, I shouldn’t even say oftentimes, more often than not, it’s ourselves that get in the way. We are our own worst enemies. And you you said it there, it’s a…

Zach Blair (10:08.728)
Sure.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (10:14.423)
You can’t wait to get in shape before you do this. It’s no different with anything else in life. I used the analogy recently about moving. You know, I live in a retirement community in the middle of the woods by the ocean and it’s all older people around me and it’s really peaceful and I could have waited a lifetime to do this or I could have just done it now. And I chose to do it now because I had this realization that, you know, we are

Zach Blair (10:35.63)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (10:40.035)
taught to live in chaos and seek peace when we should be in peace seeking chaos. And it was the greatest thing I ever did. I feel so chill. I can go for a walk by the water. can jump in the ocean. The only reason it happened is because I said, screw it. Let’s do it.

Zach Blair (10:45.398)
Exactly.

Zach Blair (10:55.298)
That’s and it’s the same as some people and I said this when we were younger my wife and I like we were wanting to wait until we had enough money to have kids, you know and It just ended up we never had kids, you know, we just figured out wait, we’re we’re not the parenting type. So we took care of that but that was but a lot of people have said, know, like You you just you have to if you want kids you just have to have kids and you figure it out the same as anything You know, and that’s

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (11:21.409)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (11:25.112)
That’s a hard thing to go and just like, wow, I’m just going to commit myself every day to working out and I have to work and I have to feed the kids and I have to do all these other things. So it’s it’s a little easier for me with my life is it’s just my wife and I, you know, so we can we can carve out our time when we’re going to go for and we live across the street from a park. So some days we’ll just go for, you know, walk for a half an hour to an hour, you know, or on tour.

What do I have to do? We have people, luckily, that move all of our gear. So I can’t say that. I got to go move the gear. No, I don’t. You know, I have really literally no out there. Well, you know, very good professionals that take care of all of our gear. All I have to do is show up and play bass so I can figure it out. You know, like and and it’s also not like I eat fantastic. I do not. You know, I.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (12:11.095)
Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Blair (12:22.144)
My wife is a baker, an incredible baker. I came home from work yesterday. It was when I’m home, I work at a food bank here in Amarillo, Texas. And it’s so I get to help people eat as well. So I came home yesterday from work and she had decided to make like a foot long cinnamon roll loaf or something just because she thought it would be fun. So.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (12:24.867)
You

Zach Blair (12:46.786)
That’s another reason why I have to work out all the time because I don’t say no or, no, I can’t have that, I’m on a diet. No, I’m not doing that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (12:54.371)
patient. You can’t say no to like a homemade housemate like wife made cinnamon love Come on.

Zach Blair (12:59.02)
Because this weekend she made a god I think it was a double layer chocolate cake with like white chocolate frosting So that’s a real reason I am NOT lying Why I work out so much is so I can eat all of the stuff my wife makes because I don’t I don’t like to be that guy like I got a way hold off on the sugar or all this like I don’t over over bore over do it, know gorge myself, but

Still, it’s like, okay, I can enjoy what I want to eat and all I got to do is maybe, you know, 25 to 50 extra crunches. I can do that, you know, that’s not bad. That’s an easy price to pay, you know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (13:34.86)
Absolutely.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (13:38.647)
I grew up with Eastern European parents who believed everything in moderation. know, if you want to have some of this like moderation, balance it out. You said something telling and you said, I start my day with a call or a talk with my wife to center myself. Did your mindset or the development of the mindset around these ideas like centering or going with the flow?

come after you started to dabble in martial arts or was that already there before?

Zach Blair (14:12.814)
that was there before. Well, when I was younger, my brother Zach as well, he and I started in Taekwondo. We were both in our early 50s. So we started with ninja movies. We wanted to be ninjas, you know, and we were both had ADHD. So my parents were like, my God, we’ve got to put them in something. So they put us in Taekwondo and we just, you know, for two years ended up just kicking the shit out of each other, buying ninja stars and throwing them around, you know.

And we got out of that and then we got into guitars and stuff like that as well. it was just kind of, I always loved martial arts. I loved the centering of it, you know. But after we started playing and touring the world, you know, when we did that, I also got married. So it was kind of like finding my wife was finding my other half, you know. And it was just, we’ve been together.

since 93, so this is our 33rd year, about to have our 32nd anniversary in December. So she and I were talking about this recently and we’ve basically grown up together, you know, since we were in our early 20s. Now at that time, we thought we were adults and we had it, you know, we thought we had our shit down, man. We knew the story. We didn’t know shit, you know, but we thought we did, but it’s, we’ve grown up together, you know, we’re not…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (15:22.402)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (15:39.846)
are how we look at life, how we treat each other, how we treat other people, you know, all of these things have been formed with the other one. It’s not like it’s been really nice. So it’s just kind of we center each other whenever if we haven’t been able to talk, you know, the end of the night before we go on, I call her and tell her good night. Same thing. You know, we’re just very close. But like I said, it’s the same as I am with my brother. We talk every day. It’s just they’re the two.

most important people to me in my life. I like to be have constant access and contact with both of them. As long as that’s there, I’m good, you know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (16:15.693)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (16:21.347)
So your brother brought you a lot of, and correct me if I’m using the wrong words, but he brought you a lot of peace and grounding and maybe like balance in life. And then that was elevated even further by meeting your wife.

Zach Blair (16:36.814)
Yes, my wife Shelly. Yeah. Zach and I, our parents had us pretty close together. We were called, I guess it could be Irish twins, but we’re 18 months apart. So we’re kind of like long Irish twins. I don’t know how that works. We are Irish. So I don’t know whatever that means, but, we always had the same bedroom, you know, we always were about the same size. So we always wear the same clothes. We were always just connected at the hip.

You know, we started our bands together. We hated we were so happy that the other one is in really good bands. He’s the guitar player and rise against, you know, they were just in Vancouver. They’re huge. But damn it, we wish we were in a band together. It sure would be fun, you know, and we just don’t get that option to play together. Let’s work. If I’m home, he’s on tour. If he’s on tour. I mean, if he’s home, I’m on tour, you know, so it’s just that’s just kind of how we were raised.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (17:22.498)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (17:35.15)
to always be there for one another. And then as soon as I met my wife, that didn’t go away. We’re still that same, like, and my wife understood that way early on. She was like, she understands that my brother and I are this or that, you know? So it’s, she loves it. The fact that we are so close, you know, it’s awesome.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (17:35.469)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (17:58.275)
So going back to the martial arts, you said you started in Taekwondo. I think a lot of people do. I I remember my brother and I being 10 years old and also doing Taekwondo classes. It’s kind of like a good base. Was that where you started to focus more on going inward and finding calm in life? Or was it your parents?

Zach Blair (18:12.493)
It is,

Zach Blair (18:21.09)
Yes. Yeah. It was the martial arts that helped so much because, know, I think unfortunately a lot of the wrong people will learn martial arts and they look at it as something to be able to hurt people or to be macho. And I think the actually before I started doing martial arts, I like

My brother and I were raised with the whole point, our parents’ aesthetic was it wasn’t brush your teeth. It wasn’t take your vitamins. It was don’t take shit from anybody. When we got into fights with people, even if we got beaten up, my dad would be like, that’s fine. Did you take any shit? No. Okay, well, I don’t care. So I would get into fights a lot. And since I started doing martial arts full time, I haven’t been in a single fight.

because I don’t care if someone pushes me or if they call me a bad word or something like that. Okay, fine. I’m gonna let a bad word, something that someone said to me, make me enact, getting to an action of violence or something. If that’s the case, then I don’t need to be learning martial arts in the first place. And I don’t think a lot of people realize that. I think it’s…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (19:38.531)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (19:43.714)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Blair (19:48.48)
It’s like self-defense is the byproduct, I think, of all the training that you do. I’ve met some of the best people in my life that I go do jiu-jitsu with and people all over America I’ve learned. And I just have so many great friends, so many great professors, and they don’t get into fights. They’re the same guys as me. They’re just getting up in the morning, trying to stay in shape, hanging out with a bunch of, you know.

other nerdy dudes, the same as them, who are all 40 and 50 and just like, okay, this is the hardest part of my day trying to keep this 250 pound gorilla from breaking my arm. Once that happens, nothing can faze me for the rest of the day. The hardest, crappiest part of my day has already happened. And I think it’s just…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (20:28.611)
Mm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (20:37.848)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (20:40.94)
You just don’t engage in those kind of things. You’re very, you’re really able to just like, okay, man, you’re going through something. I’m good. I’m not going to engage in this, you know, it’s I mean, of course, if there’s bodily harm involved, that’s one thing, you know, but just towards myself, I just don’t get into arguments or if somebody calls me something, you know, or anything like that, I’ve found that I’m calmer with just daily relations period with anyone as far as

you know, not violence, but just, arguing with people. I don’t have that knack for it. I don’t care. Like, okay, that’s fine. I don’t, it’s not in me to prove my point to you to argue, you know, amongst, I mean, even in band, band discussions, cause we will get into discussions and not really heated arguments. We’re not that kind of a band. We’re all in our fifties and sixties. We don’t yell at each other. It doesn’t, it doesn’t make any sense. We talk to each other calmly, but

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (21:19.075)
I’m gonna finish.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (21:35.245)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Blair (21:40.728)
We can get after each other here and there very, very, very rarely. And when we do, I’ve been okay with like, all right, I don’t care about winning this argument, that’s fine. And seeing where they’re coming from as well. A lot of it has allowed me to be more present instead of just, hey, this is whatever and yell at them to prove my point. Who cares? I can see their point better and then agree with them and go, yeah, okay. You know what, I was being.

kind of a dick there. All right, I need to step back and reassess some things, you know? So that’s what I’ve gotten the most from all of that, which has been just, it’s helped me immeasurably, you know?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:11.906)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:20.162)
in

Good for you. I totally agree. think one of the things that’s often misconceived about or misinterpreted about martial arts is that there’s, whether it’s boxing or something else, that it’s about being strong and being able to fight. It’s not. It’s about being able to protect yourself. If anything, it’s about being able to have more calm and more resilience in those moments to decide if you want to even engage or not. You know, it sounds like you’ve taken a lot of that and you’ve really…

Zach Blair (22:47.33)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:51.371)
adapted on a day to day level where you say this isn’t about me this is about you so why would I step into your shit

Zach Blair (22:59.822)
Yes, and also being compassionate. That’s, think, another thing that you learn is compassion. If this if you’re in an argument with someone like, well, wait a minute, they they might be having a crappy day. You know, they could just be coming up on you and they’re having a bad day or even an argument with a friend or something like they might be going through something that I don’t understand. So instead of make it worse, how about just accept that and like, agree with them? And, you know, a lot of

things you learned in martial arts. believe like in a friend of mine took Wing Chun and the first thing he learned was to put his hands up and loudly say, please leave me alone. I do not want to engage in any violence with you. I wanna, know, please leave, just go away from me right now. Have his hands up loudly where everybody could hear. That was the first thing he learned in that class. And that’s what I think a lot of it is. It’s just that ability to

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (23:48.365)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (23:58.958)
walk away, you know, your ego is, if your ego is that small and fragile, where you have to just engage in violence at the drop of a hat, then you really shouldn’t be having that in the first place and learning and being in training and being in a martial arts environment. The same as people who have guns here, you know, in America, don’t even get me started on that, you know, with what we have. And I have guns.

But they’re in my house. They’re not on me. Because this isn’t the fucking Wild West, you know? And we’re all humans, you know?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (24:33.219)
Yeah. Well, think you’re saying something really important there. And I think that this applies to so much in life, whether it’s guns or martial arts or education. It’s about understanding things, respecting things, having good rules or a good relationship with something so that it’s used in the right way, not in the wrong way. You you mentioned

Zach Blair (24:38.094)
Hmm

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (25:00.919)
just now martial arts and putting your hands up. I always thought that the guy who beat someone up, there’s something to be said about that. But the guy who could have beaten them up really easily but didn’t, that person’s even higher in my book. When you see those scenes in a movie where they, do you know who that was? my God, he would have destroyed you. You’re so lucky. Those guys I like and I respect so much.

Zach Blair (25:15.758)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (25:29.091)
I don’t know why, but I thought of Ryan Vader. I don’t know if you know the name. He’s an MMA guy. was UFC. He did that whole UFC reality show and then eventually did a bit of UFC fighting. But he was always like this huge all-American wrestler who learned martial arts and he was like the humblest. He would just destroy people. And then afterwards he was so appreciative. He was like teary-eyed. And I just saw him recently in one of The Rock’s latest movies.

Zach Blair (25:32.866)
Hmm.

Zach Blair (25:50.926)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (25:58.997)
The Rocks like portraying some MMA guy and Ryan Vader is one of… I don’t know what it’s called. You know what it’s called, Rod?

Zach Blair (26:04.655)
it’s the the smashing machine. OK, who is?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (26:08.917)
Yes, that’s the one. So Ryan Vader is like the other actor and I was so happy for him. I was like, my god, this is what happens when you’re good man and you like, you know, stay true to your morals and integrity. Then opportunity finds you and now you’re doing a huge role alongside the Rock after coming from what? Just wrestling?

Zach Blair (26:16.94)
Wow. Yeah.

Zach Blair (26:28.974)
Exactly. Well, but it’s, I think you learn certain things and it’s with that whenever you learn how to defend yourself, you know, if, but the majority of professors that I have in jujitsu, the main instructors called the professor because it takes 10 to 12 years to get your black belt. So you’re, you know, that’s what they’re considering that you’re a professor in college, which they are, their knowledge is incredible.

And they will always say, hey, if you get into a fight and someone says if they have a knife on you, you know, or a gun, you know, I hope you guys didn’t come here. So you want me to tell you how to get rid of the gun or all of that? Because what all I’m going to tell you is what I would do. Give him my wallet and walk away because I have a wife. I have kids. This isn’t a Chuck Norris movie. You know, this isn’t some martial arts fantasy. This is real life. If someone is

you know, going to threaten you really with a knife and a weapon, you know, it’s don’t be the hero. Like, here’s my wallet, take it. You know, I’m gonna walk away from this thing. I don’t care. I could do this move. No, I couldn’t. No, I couldn’t. Even regardless that we’re trained for a lot of stuff like that, who knows about in that instance when it comes down and I’m not gonna take that chance, you know.

My wife would kill me if I got killed during something like that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (27:55.331)
Yeah.

Correct me if I’m wrong but it’s about choice. If you have weapons and tools and you’re forced into a situation where you have to use them then thank God you can use them but you’re not going to actively choose to put yourself in a dangerous situation.

Zach Blair (28:15.914)
No, no, and that’s the part of it. And I think some people do. It’s their ego. And I understand it. As a younger man, I get that. It’s being a, you know, being a, the whole masculine macho identity bullshit that a lot of people go through. I was, you know, I went through it as a kid early until I kind of figured it out, you know, and I would get into fights and…

then wonder why I did that, you know? Couldn’t explain it, couldn’t understand it, like there was something wrong with me. And that was one reason why I went, started wanting to do martial arts, not to get better at fighting, but so I wouldn’t fight. That was the whole point. I didn’t care about being able to be a better fighter. That wasn’t my point. I just was like, there’s something going on in my psyche why I’m engaging in fights. Why do this? Why be so, you know, just…

reactive towards people, why engage in violence so quickly? Didn’t make sense, you know? So I had to figure out and go and correct that. And I kind of figured out, like, if I have the ability to inflict harm upon someone, I’m not going to, I’m not that person, you know? And I kind of figured out who I really was. Like, okay, the guy that was short-circuiting and fighting, that wasn’t me. That was something I was going through for some reason. I don’t know what it was, you know?

Probably some therapy would help that, but that’s a choice. I will make that choice, but it’s this way. It’s kind of like, you know, and doing jujitsu is kind of that. It makes you more humble. makes you real because it doesn’t matter what’s going on outside of the world. And there’s a lot of crazy shit going on outside of the world every day. But I have a lot of friends that

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (29:50.488)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (30:11.224)
don’t necessarily have the same beliefs as me. I don’t have the same beliefs as them. We all know where we stand on certain things. But every one of these guys will hug me every morning, tell me I’m their brother, that they love me and let’s go eat. They don’t give two shits who I am, what I am. They think it’s cool that I’m in the band, but they’re like, that’s great that you’re in the band. Now I’m probably gonna fuck you up. You understand this. Like, yeah, you’re gonna try, you know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (30:17.955)
Mm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (30:40.984)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (30:41.758)
And as soon as you bow onto the mat, everything’s gone from, know, that you were going through or what’s going on outside. That’s, you know, that’s outside. This is real whenever we’re stepping onto the mat. And not that it’s real like in a combative thing. It’s just, that’s what we’re focusing on. We’re focusing on each other and what the professor’s showing us at that day, at that point in time. And…

We crack up, I mean, in the morning I’ll be going to the six o’clock class and we end up just kind of making fun of each other, you know, and laughing at one another. But I will say this, that every time I step off of the mat, I’m never the same person that I was when I stepped on. So that’s kind of why I love to go. I always just shed a little bit more bullshit about me.

every time I go. And I think that’s why I’m addicted to going. And it doesn’t matter just at my home gym. can be any gym anywhere, Chicago, Richmond, New York, San Diego, it doesn’t matter. Everywhere, it’s just, I shed a little bit more, and I love that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (31:42.765)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (31:53.091)
You said two really amazing things there that I wanna kind of explore a little bit more. One specifically masculinity, one that I think applies to humanity in general. But for you, martial arts, you made a joke about therapy, but the martial arts is your therapy. Because therapy is the same thing, whether it’s mental, whether it’s active therapy, like going to the gym by yourself and having your headphones in, talking to a therapist, going to martial arts. That is all about going inward.

Zach Blair (32:09.55)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (32:21.527)
finding the gunk and trying to expel it to be a lighter, better person.

Zach Blair (32:26.828)
Yes, do. However, I do think that therapy and talking to someone is there’s no replacement for that. I think that’s everybody needs that. I think it’s a fantastic tool. I think finding a good therapist to have someone to talk to that understands you and can help you get rid of those things is fantastic. It’s just a great thing to be. I a lot of it, you have to find the right therapist.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (32:48.152)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Blair (32:55.796)
and someone that, you know, I guess understands you or that you can understand them. And it’s the same as in anything. It’s finding the right instructor, you know. Some people will go to a couple of different jujitsu gyms and they don’t find the right instructor and they end up quitting. And when it could have been fantastic for them, you know, but I do use it as therapy, but I also use music as therapy. I use…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (33:06.849)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (33:21.175)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (33:23.118)
Date night with my wife as therapy, hanging out, doing our normal shit that we do, watching our stories at night, seeing my band, that’s therapy. I haven’t seen those guys in probably four months and so laughing with those guys, because we will have, while we’re on tour, we’re basically in a fart tube. We’re just locked into that thing for two months, man, it sucks.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (33:30.913)
and

Zach Blair (33:52.62)
You know, it’s being in it that long. You know, we’re we’re all older guys. We all have our we have like our the things that we do every day. You know, we have that keep. Thank you. Routine. Jesus Christ. It’s a long day today. But and after the of the each like before we play, we do for 30 minutes before we go on. It’s either in the bus or in our green room. It’s just us. No one comes in. It’s

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:04.813)
You have your routines, your ways of doing

Zach Blair (34:22.314)
us listening to music and laughing our asses off. Doesn’t matter what it is, we just get in there and we start cracking up and we have a horrible dark sense of humor. It takes a thick skin to be in my band. It really does. The shit we say to each other and a lot of people have, I’ve had people though, do you guys like each other? Like, yeah, of course it’s my buddy. I love him. You know, like, are you sure? But we do. And like after the show.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:34.989)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:45.559)
Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Blair (34:51.266)
we will go back and hang out like in the back of the bus and just again, listen to music and just talk. And that’s therapeutic, know, just kind of some other things will come up like, you know what, this happened and we get to talk to each other, you know, really about real issues about that point and stuff that’s bugging us, not with the other guys, but just things that are bugging us overall. Like you just want to talk to your buddies about, you know, and to just get it off your chest and just

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (35:13.09)
general.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (35:18.988)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Blair (35:21.23)
talk and communication. just all we have to do is communication. It’s not hard.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (35:27.445)
It’s funny how fundamentally it’s also easier. I was a sociology major, philosophy minor in university. I mean, I grew up reading like Plato and Socrates and Aristotle and all this stuff. I remember my professor talking about, man, I don’t remember if it was the Spartans or Romans or who, but there was this just this warrior class and they were the elite of the elite. Like we’re talking masculine of masculine, but

The point that I think we as society have lost this and I think we’re maybe starting to come back to it. This is what we’re talking about with, you know, toxic masculinity is that these guys were the most ripped burly dudes in the world, but there were soldiers by day philosophers by night and half of their their livelihood, not livelihood, their their being was wrapped in this concept of understanding thyself and communicating with others.

Zach Blair (36:21.742)
Yep. I think that was the majority of Greek culture, you know, really fascinating when you think about that is they, Alexander was Greek. Look what he did, you know, yet just with the thinking that he had, I mean, he was constantly absorbing new religions, constantly allowing everyone else that they conquered, like keep your religion, but just pay taxes. Other than that, we don’t care. They weren’t conquering people and he wanted to learn.

new things. I think that was, they were far more than just, you’re right. Like it looks like toxic masculinity. my God, these guys were, you know, incredibly, you know, just destructive warriors and all of this. Like they were thinkers, they were musicians, they were poets, they were philosophers, you know? So it’s, I love a lot reading about a lot of the Greek and the Roman, you know.

ideologies and things. They had an idea and then they would go and put it into practice or they would at least experiment with it. They like to fight. There’s that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (37:34.819)
But like you said, it’s not necessarily about trying to slaughter your opponent. There’s this idea of fighting in the sense that you’re exchanging energy with someone in a almost like fraternal way. Even if you look at martial arts, the root of most martial arts, correct me if I’m wrong, is in the East. And it comes from a lot of thinkers. It comes from an idea of balance, of Zen, whether it’s Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, like the list goes on.

Zach Blair (37:47.406)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (38:04.555)
And that’s not just about aggression, it’s the opposite.

Zach Blair (38:07.426)
Yeah, it’s they they don’t want you to fight. can that’s again is they also understood that kind of figuring out yourself you could do through these physical exercises. That’s kind of like one of the best ways to do it, you know, and then other people would get more into the meditation and things of, you know, it’s the same as if you’re just going to go work out. That’s a physical.

thing, but you’re not worried about, oh, wow, I’m going to get ripped. That’s a byproduct at that moment in time. When you’re trying to bench press a hundred, 150 pounds. don’t know. can’t bench press 150 pounds. So no way in hell can I do that, but it’d be awesome if I could, but I can’t, but you’re worried about getting that barbell and that weight up and in the correct manner, you know,

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (39:02.369)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (39:03.138)
doing that and like, wow, I’ve got to do three sets of eight. Okay, cool. In the correct manner, efficient, with the right, you know, right style, the right form, all of that. At the end of it, after doing that for a month, then you’re ripped. Like, okay, well, that’s pretty cool. So it’s kind of like the same thing with martial arts. You do this punch this many times and all of that. Through that, you’re learning the right way to do things.

So kind of like this oneness and figuring out yourself as the byproduct, along with self-defense, from just doing these basic punches, you know, or different roles with people, different drills, learning how to triangle someone, learning all of these things, you know. You can also learn a respect for humanity, I think, and trust. There is, I trust everyone that I roll with. They could easily snap my arm, you know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (39:40.941)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (39:52.131)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (40:00.672)
If I don’t tap enough, they could keep going. They could choke me out. They could do all kinds of things to me. But I’m literally putting my life in their hands and they’re putting theirs in mine as well. You know, and that’s that’s a heady thing. It’s different than whenever you’re just doing punching and kicking with someone. Because you can put on pads, you can do all of that. And especially when we trained in taekwondo, you don’t go 100 percent. We go 130 percent in jujitsu. But all you got to do is just

tap three times and look, all right, that’s it. And it’s kind of, you get it all out. You leave everything on the mat. You leave it or on your friend with your sweat. But and again, go ahead, please.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:43.907)
I was just going to say I love the word that you use, the byproduct. I was going to wrap up the masculinity thought by saying similar to this guy, Riven Vader, that it’s about…

Zach Blair (40:51.245)
Hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:57.621)
a balance, right? Like a balance of force and finesse of, of, beauty and beast, so to speak. Like I’m a big dude. I’m 230 pounds. I’m six foot. I, I, I’ve been through a lot of shit. I’m, I continue to take a lot of shit. I’m good. I know what my, my weaknesses and strengths are, but it’s in knowing my weaknesses and being a emotional guy who knows how to cry, who can have a very hard discussion about the loss of his daughter.

his team that my partner finds the most attractive in me and those are also my strengths right like the balance of those things and I think that’s what has been lost over last hundred two hundred years that we’re starting to refine again which is this beautiful symbiotic relationship with ourselves of soft and hard you know loud and quiet

Zach Blair (41:51.214)
I think, yeah, I think that’s an incredible way to look at it. It’s the in and the yang, the soft and the hard, the loud and the quiet. But I think that word masculinity is kind of the root of a lot of evil, I think, with wars. And what we’re looking at these days, it’s ego, it’s masculinity. Instead of just being a human, you know, just because I’m a man, I have to be masculine.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (42:07.009)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (42:17.495)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (42:18.942)
Yeah, can see, I mean, being from Texas, that’s how we were raised, you know? And through no fault of anyone, it’s just, that’s what it was, you know? And it’s trying to get out of that and not kind of fall back into those just dumbass, you know, masculine tropes. It’s like, what is masculinity to you, you know?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (42:29.389)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (42:43.159)
Yeah. You know, it feels like just another one of those words that unfortunately have been like co-opted and redefined over time. And where if you go back to the to, know, this idea of the warrior, the Greek, the Spartan, they weren’t sitting around worried about if they were masculine or not. They were just doing the thing. They were just doing the balance. They weren’t like, I’m better than my fellow man because I’m stronger. This or that. We all had differences, which is what

Zach Blair (43:04.462)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (43:13.52)
I’ll let you comment, but I want it to transition into this idea of humanity because like, fuck femininity and masculinity, let’s all just be humans.

Zach Blair (43:22.73)
Exactly. And it’s just like, let’s be a good, let’s be a good person to our surroundings and try to uplift people and recognize when there’s an injustice done. And maybe that’s part of it. Like, well, there’s an injustice done to me. Okay. I would like to correct that. How do I correct that? With violence or with words? Can I use my brain? And that’s what you’re talking about. The Greek soldiers, they were more than happy, preferable to use their brains.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (43:31.608)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (43:37.068)
and

Zach Blair (43:52.578)
because it was easy to use violence, but they had to, to go to war, you know? But I think it’s just, you know, trying to get rid of that, you know? I think that’s what so many people think this, if someone pushes them, that is an injustice done upon them. Sure, it is. It sucks if someone just violently pushes you for no reason or calls you a dumb epithet, you know what I mean? Or a dumb word, but you have the choice

to go back to them. That’s the thing. Like, okay, yeah, there was an injustice done. So how do I react? And I’m not saying that if you engage in violence, if someone pushes you, that you’re wrong. You’re not wrong. I don’t think so. It’s sometimes that’s enough for people. Like, okay, I’m good with words or whatever you don’t call me, but if you put your hands on me, that’s a whole nother thing. I understand that. And I’m sure, and we’re all…

We’re all people, we’re all humans. We can have this incredible discussion right now and be high-minded, but in a few weeks, I could be dealing with some asshole that’s just gonna knock, I’m gonna go ahead and beat up on this old nerd and he pushes me. What do I do? I don’t know. I would love to say, I could walk away and like, hey man, that sucks, screw you or whatever, get away from me. Hopefully I would do that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (45:10.519)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (45:19.459)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (45:21.016)
You know, 80 % positive I would do that, but there’s that dumb little idiot part of me that could probably go up and throw hands and just get completely destroyed. Unfortunately, you know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (45:32.952)
but.

Well, I agree with you and I think that that is everyone is always trying to have like a black and white answer for everything when most of life is gray. And you know, I remember that I learned in high school that we are humans and humans are fallible and to be human is to err and the more things we learn, whether it’s reading books or therapy or martial arts, the better chance we have of maybe not making that poor decision. But that doesn’t mean we won’t still make a poor decision. I bet you Tony Robbins

Zach Blair (46:00.738)
Yes.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (46:04.645)
who I respect and admire has had many instances in life where he’s like, man, how did I get triggered like that? You know, like it happens. We, we, I like the comment you made earlier, but you don’t know if that person’s having a bad day. Cause I use that too.

Zach Blair (46:13.358)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (46:22.115)
And what you do is if you can choose to end that energy or perpetuate it. So like that person comes up to you, they cut you off, they flip you off, whatever. You could reciprocate that or then push that outwards or you can stop for a second and say, I wonder if he got fired and he’s just upset. I if his wife left him this morning. What’s, I don’t know what his deal is. Why assume and then throw hate back.

Zach Blair (46:45.364)
Or he’s an Arsenal fan and they lost the other day to Man City and he’s in a really shitty mood like we were, so.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (46:47.619)
you

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (46:55.299)
That’s funny. No!

Zach Blair (46:57.464)
Sorry, C-O-Y-G. We’re huge Arsenal fans, my wife and that’s another thing. It really is. We use so many things as therapy though, you know? And talking about different forms of it, I know our record that we’re doing, we are about to go release is, was therapeutic for my singer, know? Therapeutic for all of us because we were coming out of the pandemic, you know? A lot of people didn’t make it.

out of the pandemic, you know, with their lives or with their sanity intact. It was hard on a lot of people, you know, and he’s talked about, and I’m really happy that he’s talked about this because he was pretty much a private guy, Vaden is, and he talks about this every night about suicide hotlines and going to therapy and things because there’s quite a few songs on the record that deal with some really heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy shit.

that he was going through and that he didn’t really talk to us about. He’s not the kind of guy that’s going to call and go, hey, you want to talk about this? know, although we’re always open for that, that’s his choice. But a lot of it, he gets through the music, you know, and he was wrestling with some things and was able to kind of come out on the other side with this record and being around us and his band and doing this together. So I think.

And we all got to, because we were just so happy to be able to play music again. You we all thought it was done and my God, you couldn’t do, couldn’t do any martial arts. You couldn’t do anything. So it was, I got really good at pushups for that year and a half, you know, and, squats and jumping jacks and stuff like that, just to keep my brain from going crazy, you know? And I think a lot of people did a lot of reassessment. So

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (48:28.62)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (48:47.49)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (48:52.392)
out of that, it was finding new things for entertainment, you know. So, my wife and I found football, real football.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (48:56.042)
All right.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:01.123)
You talked earlier about your buddies and how someone commented, do you guys even really like each other? I think that’s such an important thing though, because speaking about mental health and self-harm and things like that, I think oftentimes people, everyone’s journey is different. Horrible things happen to people and that’s understandable.

Zach Blair (49:22.198)
Mm-hmm. Sure. Yes.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:26.551)
But I also grew up with a crazy group of guys, totally different ethnicities, religions, backgrounds. And when we got together, all we did was rip on each other. And it was really horrible. And people would probably say the same thing. They’d probably throw in racist and a bunch of other stuff too. But it wasn’t because we loved each other. And we also created an environment that we knew we were.

Zach Blair (49:36.397)
You

Zach Blair (49:40.279)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:47.811)
Safe into the point where as much as we ripped on each other as soon as someone was down Financially mentally emotionally they knew that they could talk about that in that space. I think that martial arts and a lot of these other Venues afford that and that’s what I want us to do as a society is get back to a spot of Your daughter died don’t sit in your bed and wallow by yourself like it sucks do do your thing

but feel comfortable talking about it, feel comfortable getting it out. Cause as you and I both know through therapy, that’s how you move through it.

Zach Blair (50:27.284)
Yeah, and it’s been, it’s, and I think, like with my band, we have each other’s backs. You know, like I can say whatever the hell I want to my band. They can say whatever the hell they want to me. but if anyone says anything to me outside of the band, they will be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no. You gotta shut the fuck up. That’s my boy. You can’t say that. Like, wait, what? You guys were just clowning on him. Like, yeah, we can.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (50:48.823)
Ha ha ha ha.

Zach Blair (50:56.834)
Where is band? Where is buddies? You can’t say that. You can’t say that shit. know, and that’s what I love. It is. It’s not a gang, but we do love each other. are. It’s like a it’s family, you know, but yeah, we and mean, then again, we were also in locked in a studio for a month with Steve Albany, who had the exact kind of, I guess, sense of humor.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (50:58.935)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (51:11.33)
and

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (51:27.373)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (51:27.958)
as us and I think Steve had a, I don’t think a lot of people really understood Steve, because Steve was very acerbic, very witty, incredibly funny, but he just had a dark sense of humor as well. Incredibly dark sense of humor, but when we met him, we were like, shit, this guy’s one of us. We understand him and he understood us, so it worked perfect. And we just screwed with each other.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (51:43.34)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (51:49.303)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Blair (51:57.194)
All day long every day in the studio with that guy. All day long. The horrible shit we would say to each other. That… Go ahead, please. Go ahead. yeah. Yeah. You got it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:03.235)
Steve was like a, I’m a huge nirvana junkie. So I definitely want to talk about Steve and I think this is a great way. You we’ve done a great job of talking about everything about music.

Zach Blair (52:17.826)
Hahaha!

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:19.811)
If we as a society stop focusing so much on the division and what like our ego wants and what we think is right and instead just talk, what we’ll really quickly realize is we’re all the fucking same. You know what I mean? And we all have similar goals, hopes, dreams, aspirations, humor, et cetera. And that’s what I want to drive towards. But for the sake of this short, lovely chat, let’s talk about music.

Zach Blair (52:43.586)
Done, you got it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:45.123)
So we established the martial arts mindset, your amazing relationship with your brother, all of that kind of came first and then music came after. I’m not going to ask you why bass, because you have a podcast about that, but like why music? What was the song, the band, the moment where you’re like, my God, music.

Zach Blair (52:58.3)
You

Zach Blair (53:03.764)
the who? It was the who easily. My dad, Don, was a disc jockey. Pardon me. So he we were raised with music. My parents were hippies, so they were always playing Led Zeppelin or Steely Dan or the who or I remember when we were young. I remember watching this movie with all of these, you know, naked hippies and all of these people with, you know.

big hair and jumping around on the stage and it was Woodstock, know, my parents are watching that or they were super counterculture, know. SNL came out, they were there. Monty Python, that was it. We watched British comedies, you know. it was just they raised Zack and I with a really good idea of what good art and good music is.

So we were just surrounded by music constantly. We would go up to my dad’s station when he was working at night and request songs we wanted to hear. But it was the who pretty much. I believe it’s Pinball Wizard that or Baba O’Reilly, one of the two. I’d have to ask my brother. But seeing them on like TV or whatever kind of made Zach and I want to play. I wanted to be a drummer at first, but Zach always wanted to be a guitar player.

But I just don’t know if my dad wanted to buy drums, because we also had an apartment. So he was like, why don’t you play bass? I’m like, I don’t want to play bass. That’s boring. Like Bill Wyman. I mean, I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. So my dad was like, OK, I understand that you’re hesitant, because bass sounds boring. Let me play you this. And he played me long distance run around. Yes. And so then I was like, wait, I can do that?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (54:38.548)
you

Zach Blair (54:58.102)
It was, yeah, you can do that. I mean, I can’t fucking play that song that well, but I mean, I would like to, but like I can aspire to do that. And that was, that was definitely like, okay, fuck, I can do this, you know? And then just getting into, you know, Getty and Rush, that was the next one right after that. Hearing all of those guys and hearing them twisle in the who, and it just kind of worked for Zach and I, you know, we would just teach each other songs.

He would learn something, I would learn something. We’d go back and forth and we were a team, know, always, always doing a team. So it was just kind of, we knew we weren’t gonna get into college. We couldn’t afford it. And it wasn’t gonna be from a scholarship, you know, from academics. That was never gonna fucking happen. So music was it. Music was, it’s not like, we’re gonna try this and then we’ll see what fallback on it. We had no fallback plan. There was none.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (55:42.167)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (55:46.146)
music.

Zach Blair (55:54.892)
You know, it was, have to do this. We’ve got to make sense of this. We have to figure it out and do it, you know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (56:00.579)
Yeah. But I mean, like school is not education. Education is what remains after you’ve forgotten everything you learned in school. Is that Einstein? You know, and you’re clearly a well-traveled man, a humble man, a hardworking man. You got a book, you got a podcast, you’ve got 20 albums under your belt. It sounds like the balance is the key. And the balance is found in Born in Texas to Hippie Parents and Marshall Arson Music. That’s the balance.

Zach Blair (56:25.262)
Yeah, I mean there weren’t a lot of hippies in Texas, but we we were able to be born to the two that there were I mean, I guess like my again, my mom and dad weren’t hippies like peace and love and all of that. They were more long hairs. They were just counterculture. And they were hippies. They believed in peace and love. But again, my dad was I think he my dad was like 6 1 6 2.

250 pounds, took zero shit from anyone. if, we were talking about if somebody pushes you or whatever, if somebody pushed my dad, he would put him in the hospital. He wouldn’t go, man, maybe I should think about this. Nah, that was not my dad. So that’s what I’m trying to get away from. know, nothing against that. Again, I’m not disparaging anybody that does that. It’s what.

you want to do with your life. just I don’t want to be that guy anymore, you know, and trying to get that done through music was kind of a good thing for us. You know, we can kind of just absorb, you know, absorb, it absorbs our lives. It’s everything. It’s how we make our living. It’s how we communicate with each other. It’s how we communicate with the world. If what we want to express and get out to people, you know, it’s the best way to do it, I think.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (57:31.991)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (57:51.883)
I agree. Yeah, my grandmother always used to say, chaca a sangu, which is French for everyone has their taste. You know, there’s nothing wrong with having something different. I think what’s important is to constantly have movement. think stagnation is the worst. Have movement. If you’re going down the wrong road, at least you now know that that’s the wrong road and you’re going to only continue to get better and evolve and smarter. It took me two marriages that ended.

for me to sit down there after the second one and say, hold on a second, I’m the common denominator. What am I doing wrong? How do I get better and fix myself so I can show up better for my kids and for my team and whoever it is? So never be scared to fail. In fact, embrace the failure and just keep going.

Zach Blair (58:28.718)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (58:37.89)
Yeah. Yeah. People are so scared. God, I’m going to fail. I’m going to do this wrong. Like, yes, you are. In fact, yesterday, our professor was telling us he said we’d gotten done rolling and he goes, listen, I don’t and he’s from Brazil. So he’s his English is pretty good, but he’s also more of someone that’s more of high minded concepts instead of today. I’m going to show you how to do a triangle choke.

It’s not that it’s more time. It’s hard to explain, but best teacher I’ve had. But he was saying, hey, everybody, whenever you get done and you think, my God, I suck, you know, you know what you do? Of course you do. You should be sucking right now. You he goes, I suck compared to where I’m going to be. He goes, but who cares that you suck? Who cares that you fail?

Look at where you are now from whenever you were when you started. You have to look at your journey. You’re so caught up in things like, I to be better in front of the professor and all this. No, you don’t. You know, basically embrace the suck. You know, really, we have to embrace people are so goddamn, they’re just caught up in like trying to do it perfect. Like, it’s OK. Fail. You’re never going to get better unless you fail. You know, you’re just going to come out of the womb or just come out and do something amazing.

No one’s Mozart. There was one Mozart. I’m sorry. You’re just not even he screwed up at first, you know, I think it was when he was five, but that’s beside the point, you know, that’s not, you know what I mean though.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:00:14.371)
Yeah. Why, think what you’re saying, but there’s so many people that achieve such a high status in life or within their, know, whatever they’re doing that still think that they could be better, that still think that, man, I’m not as good as that other person. It’s normal. We spend so much time looking forward and looking upward instead of looking downward or inwards. You know what mean? It’s like the analogy of man where we spend so much time trying to figure out space.

Zach Blair (01:00:26.862)
Sure.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:00:42.487)
but we’ve barely explored our ocean. It’s like, dude, that’s right here.

Zach Blair (01:00:45.902)
I know. With my singer, Vaiden, he’s one of the best songwriters I’ve ever encountered. He’s incredible. And there are songs that we’ve had that we haven’t recorded or that we just have demos of that are amazing, amazing lyric content. The chords are amazing. The structure is amazing. we won’t use them. Why? I can just do far better.

What? It’s songs that some of the best songwriters would fucking kill to have, you know? And this guy is just like, I can do better, man. I don’t know. Like, okay, all right, you know? And every damn time he will do better. But that’s, I see that. Like, okay, I think, wow, this is a great song. Let’s play this. He’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We’re not done. I’ve got far better. That one’s not too good. Like, okay.

Cool. All right. I would have gone with just that, but that’s why I’m just the bass player. You know what I mean? And not to be, not to be that way. I’m not being a, but I’m not a great songwriter. I can write music out. I love instrumental surf music, but I’m not a great songwriter conveying what’s inside here, you know, in the correct words. So people literally all over the world can grasp that and see something in it and

You know, it conveys something to them and it can be part of their own. You know what I mean? Like, Vaden can, you know? I don’t have that ability.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:02:25.335)
just finished reading a book called Ikigai, which is this Japanese principle about finding your purpose in life. that the people that find the Ikigai tend to live the longest because you wake up every day knowing exactly what you’re supposed to do and meant to do. I think not only is that such an amazing concept and so real, because I’m living that now and I feel so differently today than I did three, four years ago.

But that ties back to the idea of masculinity and humanity where it’s like, who cares if someone’s stronger than you or a better songwriter because you probably have something that they would kill that they could do. you know, make homemade cinnamon rolls. I’ve never baked in my life. I would probably burn the house down, but your wife obviously crushes that.

Zach Blair (01:03:04.77)
Yes.

Zach Blair (01:03:13.518)
Our wife’s amazing. It’s well, and you you put that into music, it’s, there are the bands who wanted to do everything, you know? They want to be, well, we’re this and we’re that and we’re this, these kinds of things. I think the people, the musicians and the artists who got their point across and who had the best longest careers are the ones that found what made them unique. And they just kept doing that.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:03:32.173)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:03:40.544)
Sure, the Ramones and ACDC made the same record over and over again, but that was a great fucking record, man. You know, really was. And they didn’t have to like, well, in the 80s, they decided to put some drum machines and synth on back in black or some, you know what I mean? They didn’t have to mess with that stuff. You know, they believed in themselves. They believed in what they were doing. And they were confident in that. Like, no, we’re going to do this.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:03:46.768)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:04:01.773)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:04:08.974)
everyone else can kind of fudge the issue and kind of cloud it up with a lot of bullshit that doesn’t matter. And you look at that, a lot of bands figured, oh, we got to do this because that’s cooler or, we’ve done that a few times. And I’m not saying we, I’m saying other bands have gone, well, we’ve done our thing. We got to show people that we can grow. Why? That’s just me.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:04:39.819)
I agree with you. I love growing. I love failing. I love being able to go to my kids and be like, I was wrong. Owning that and then telling them why I was wrong and showing them in real time how to approach something when you’re wrong.

Zach Blair (01:04:44.888)
Hahaha

Zach Blair (01:04:49.506)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:04:58.177)
My business partner, Lance, one of my best friends, he always says, fail hard, fail fast. And I live by that all the time. Like, I am not scared of failing at all now. I will start a podcast nine months ago and just dive into it and see what the hell happens. And here we are having this conversation, right?

Zach Blair (01:05:15.565)
Yeah.

It’s you have to go out there whenever I die, when I’m on my deathbed, I want to look back and look at the stuff that I failed at, you know, or the things that I at least tried, you know, wow, that book I wrote, that was a fucking stinker, but I figured out how to write better. And then the next one was better or that surf record I did, you know, that third one, you know, that’s a hopefully that will just sink to the bottom of the ocean. But

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:05:25.517)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:05:45.314)
Maybe the fourth and the fifth is better, but you don’t know unless you try. We grew up with a lot of great musicians, my brother and I did, who were scared to get out there. They were amazing, but they were kind of just scared to fail. And Zach and I weren’t scared. We knew we were going to fail, but we were like, okay, we could fail or we could do really well. And we did both. We had…

couple of bad failures, you know, we really did. But we learned from those and made our successes far better. We learned what not to do. And you don’t learn that unless you fail. You don’t learn that unless you fall on your ass, you know. I don’t, no one just comes out just being incredible. They just don’t. Even Michael Jordan, you know, even Messi, even, you know, even Terry Henry, even he had his missed chances, you know. So just saying it’s.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:06:26.36)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:06:30.721)
No.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:06:39.223)
Yeah, it’s people think no, no, not at all. think people think that especially through the lens of social media and television that it’s easy. And it’s so and everyone would do it. It’s not true. It takes so much effort and failure to get there. I started to really pay attention to finances and investment and crypto like.

Zach Blair (01:06:42.296)
Go ahead, sorry.

Zach Blair (01:06:50.158)
Ugh.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:07:03.817)
just around the beginning of the pandemic. was like late 19, 2019 or 2020, I started to really get interested in that, my age, probably other things, having kids, family. And the more I started to follow different

people who have been successful entrepreneurs or investors, the more they all had the same story, which was I have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. have gone bankrupt. I have totally messed everything up. And they all said the same thing. The best way to learn is to lose, man. You, you remember that it stings and you get better the next time.

Zach Blair (01:07:31.544)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:07:35.246)
It makes you, it’s playing gigs. All of our first gigs were horrible, you know. No one had great gigs coming up. that’s, unfortunately, I think it’s something that people aren’t gonna figure out if they make their careers just on YouTube. I know I sound like a boomer. Of course I do. But they aren’t, they’re not gonna figure that out because, you know, there was no edit. You can’t edit and just like, I’m gonna record this and then once it’s perfect, I can hit.

You know, send and then it’s out there to the internet and that’s fantastic. You get to reach people. But what you don’t learn is how to sit there and sweat your ass off, you know, because there’s only 10 people in front of you, you know, and you’ve got to make them happy for the next hour and a half to two hours, you know, or the promoter, you know, who hates your fucking guts. Once you out of there and pissed off that they got to give you five grand, you know, anything.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:08:22.04)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:08:30.721)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Blair (01:08:32.622)
And it’s just there, it’s, I think you need those real life failures. You need to have people boo you. You need to have clunkered notes on stage, you know? I had one of my first tours with the band, we were playing Lollapalooza in 2008. And it was during a part, one of our songs called Away. And it’s just a long bass part. That’s it, it’s bass and vocals, it’s all it is.

And out of the clear blue, I’m in front of 80,000 people, you know, we were going on right before Rage Against the Machine. So the place was packed and Barack Obama was there also. So the place was also shut down. hadn’t, hadn’t became president yet, but he was the nominee. Sorry, excuse me. And while I’m playing this song, my amp just goes down, you know, like my, was my pedal. So I just had to keep playing.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:09:13.965)
Mm.

Zach Blair (01:09:30.134)
Our tech fixed it and it wasn’t that bad, but I learned just keep playing. It’s okay. Just keep playing. If I had just stopped and gone, dang, you know, all will shucks. No, you don’t do that. You know, you can’t do that. Cause that’s all people are going to remember. But if you just keep going, like I got it. There’s nothing happening here. Then no one’s going to make a, no one’s going to make a big deal about it. You know?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:09:35.821)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:09:44.866)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:09:58.446)
Like, okay, we all fail, we all screw up. You just gotta kinda go through it and just not make a big deal, not make a big fuss about things because everybody’s human, like you were saying. It’s just about humanity. And then trying to navigate that the best way, the best logical way with the most heart, I think, and compassion for other people, you know, I think so. That’s it, you know, it is love. mean, again,

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:10:09.121)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:10:21.212)
That’s love and logic. That’s that love and logic. You brought it up.

Zach Blair (01:10:28.436)
Hippie parents, love, it is about love, it really is. And it’s love for yourself too. And people forget that. They’re so invested in giving love to everyone else, they’re not giving it to themselves. They’re not setting their boundaries. They’re letting themselves go, you know? And they’re not taking care of themselves whatsoever. But that has to, you can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself, you know? How are you going to be able to do that?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:10:56.927)
It’s funny, you said something there about the editing of the YouTube world, which is ironically kind of like where we are right now in this YouTube world. But that’s why a lot of people are gravitating towards podcasts and long form content because this is going to be unedited. This is going to be real. And if I see the wrong thing or misspeak, then I can be held accountable by the internet army, you know, but that’s the beauty of it. That is the beauty. It’s not about perfection. I have

Zach Blair (01:11:03.694)
Sure. Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:11:14.531)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:11:26.145)
this tattoo on my forearm. It’s a Japanese Enzo. And it’s the philosophy of Wabi Sabi as well, is like imperfection is the perfection, so to speak, that the beauty is in the imperfect. And we cannot just put a filter on everything and say, that’s my reality. Just live your life. Warts and all.

Zach Blair (01:11:30.38)
Nice, yeah.

Zach Blair (01:11:46.626)
Yeah, it is. The internet is an incredible thing and it’s been a curse all at the same time to show you what you think your life should be instead of just living your life. It’s just entertainment. Get on, get off. It shouldn’t be your life. And I think so many people get on like, my life should be this. I should look like this. I should do this. I should believe this because it’s

and it can be manufactured according to your likes. And it’s like, okay, no, maybe I don’t want to be that way. You know what I mean? So it’s there are there’s so many great positives. I think there are better. There are more positives to it than there are negatives, but the negatives are pretty powerful. You know, I think so. I really are. And it’s and it does allow us to communicate. It does allow some kid and where I’m from Sherman, Texas.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:12:17.378)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:12:33.463)
Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Zach Blair (01:12:43.544)
This kid might be wanting to play his songs and he’s gonna come out and he can put his songs online and have a million to 10 million people really connect with that kid that he normally wouldn’t be able to do. Then he’s gotta figure out how to play in front of 10 million people. have fun with that. Not the issue, not the issue. Exactly, I’m befuddling.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:13:03.725)
separate issue, but we’ll feel forward to that.

Zach Blair (01:13:11.586)
Messing it up, that’s not the issue. The issue is he can reach people. That’s what we’re talking about.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:13:15.651)
Hell yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let me pivot to music for a little bit before we wrap up because this has been the Donnie and Gonda mental health hour is really good and we’ll do it again. It’s so funny that you mentioned 2008 because that was the year that you joined Toadies, I believe. And so like, can you imagine joining the band and then just like that you’re playing in front of 80,000 people?

Zach Blair (01:13:21.71)
Sure. Shoot.

Zach Blair (01:13:26.663)
Please, please.

Zach Blair (01:13:35.842)
Yes. Yeah. Yep.

Zach Blair (01:13:44.042)
No, it was, that was incredible. I don’t even think they expected it. They expected it to just kind of do like a couple of tours, maybe a year. They didn’t expect that. I don’t even think they expected that we would be still be doing it this long, you know, after, but the response has been incredible. People are like, they really love the albums, you know, and we’re even more excited about this record because it was

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:13:59.618)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:14:12.386)
just the writing process and demoing and then being able to work with Steve was just incredible. It really was, because we were all huge. I I’m a huge Steve fan. Pretty much every record I saw that it would be, if I saw his name on it, I would get it just to listen to it, to hear what he did. to have the interactions that we did with him, was just kind of a, it’s silly to say dream come true, but it really was.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:14:24.611)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:14:40.418)
and listening back to the album of what we were able to do with it is just incredible. It’s the best thing we’ve done, you know, I think. Well, and so the other guys.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:14:50.977)
You’re, well, I some of the press material that came with this new album talks about like how it’s a dream come true. And obviously Steve’s a legend in terms of what he’s done in his world. Just Nirvana alone, PJ Harvey, like there’s some of the names that he’s worked with. But it sounds like members of the band, maybe specifically your front man had like a lot of stuff that they…

got off their chest with this album with album eight, Charmer, and it sounds like it was heavy. Do you think a lot of that release came from the fact that you guys are so connected as a unit and also I believe that this was the first album you kind of recorded live off the floor. Do you think, so this is like more, there’s more of you in it at the same time, like it’s a healing experience.

Zach Blair (01:15:20.216)
Yep. Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:15:34.828)
Yes. Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:15:41.174)
It was, and it was also, like I said, during the pandemic, we all went through a bunch of shit. We were dealing with our own shit, and Vadim was able to deal with it through songs and convey, love songs, songs about his parents. His dad went through Alzheimer’s and just horrible.

Vaden has talked about it and it’s horrible to watch. And I feel bad that he had to watch his dad. I had to do something like that when our dad passed when we were, I was 19, Zach was 17. To watch your father go through that is horrible. And he was just being able to write about this stuff. And I think to, it was kind of a celebration of we’re taking everything back. We own the record.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:16:21.56)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:16:34.721)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:16:36.366)
We weren’t on a label, we were making all the decisions, we were doing everything ourselves. And to go in and have it come out so good. I hate to pat myself on the back, but it’s a really good record. I love it. And I think just to share that with his band, like, okay, I’m going through all this shit, but hey, my band understands this. And I’ve got this vision that I don’t even really have to tell them. They already pick up on it because we’re all so…

and sync with one another. And it was just a good way for him to kind of exercise a lot of fucking demons and things that were screwing with him and with everyone. And I think a lot of people are going to be able to see themselves in a lot of these songs. Or I think that’s the best thing with his songs is he’s asked people, he said, hey, is it about this? I don’t know. Is that what it is to you?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:17:08.246)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:17:35.512)
Does the song mean that to you? Like, yeah, he goes, okay, then that’s what it’s about. But what did you write it about? goes, doesn’t matter what I wrote it about. Matters what you think it’s about. Because that’s what it’s speaking to you. That’s a good song, you know? Why ruin it? No, it’s about this and this and this. That’s, no, don’t do that, you know? And he doesn’t do that. People are able to see what they want within it. Like, okay, cool, sounds good to me. Am I right? Don’t know. You know?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:17:55.33)
and

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:18:04.546)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:18:05.676)
And I think there’s a lot of that on this album.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:18:08.195)
What’s it like, I mean this is kind of a little bit of an out there question, but those are my favorite kinds.

Zach Blair (01:18:11.694)
Sure.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:18:14.967)
You know, you’re brothers with these guys since 2008 roughly. What’s it like? And when we’re close with people, we can kind of see things oftentimes more easily than they can because there’s this whole subjective versus objective reality, you know? What was it like seeing a friend, such a close friend, start to exercise some of his demons, to use your words, and get that release, get that catharsis, get that healing? How did that impact you and the rest of the band?

Zach Blair (01:18:44.638)
it made us happy for him. It was, he’s, Vaiden can be very private. He doesn’t like to burden anyone with what he’s going through. It could be really hard, but he’s, I’ve talked to him a lot of like, if you have something to say that you want to say to me, please say it. Don’t worry about what.

my reaction will be or how I feel. My reaction is my reaction. You know, if there’s something you have to get off of your chest, and I tell everybody that, but especially him, because when I joined the band, you know, we didn’t know how much long how long I was going to be in the band or how long the band was gonna be around or anything. And we’ve all got to know each other. You know, close, we’ve gotten closer over time and really figured out, wow, this is a really good guy. I love playing with this guy. I love to have this guy as my friend. And

opened up to each other a lot more than we thought we would. And I just wanted him to be able to express to me any authenticity, any honesty that he wanted to without fear of reprisal of that. I’m gonna, you know, start yelling or screaming or pout or whatever, you know? And that’s the point. Like if I do, who gives a shit? You have to get it off your chest, you know? And I think…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:20:06.531)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:20:08.99)
Seeing that change and seeing all of that is and seeing the growth, you know, and we’ve all done that to each other. We’ve all we’re all pretty honest with one another. If there’s something bugging us like, hey, can we go talk really quick? I think I want to talk to you about this. Like, sure, you got it. You know, we’re very open. We don’t scream. We don’t yell. We’re just very matter of fact of like this happened and kind of sucked. Can we talk about it? Sure. You got it. You know.

A few times I have done things that I didn’t even know I was doing. I was just in my own head, but he didn’t like or, you know, it’s him or even some of the other guys didn’t care for them. And they were like, hey, we, we want you to not do that or to kind of think about this or you know what I mean? And like, wow, I had no idea that I was being that way or doing that. Or even if I was just like kind of in a bad mood and bringing everyone down, they wanted to talk to me about it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:20:35.992)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:20:54.178)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:21:05.9)
You know, so that’s kind of where we are these days. And it’s really helpful. You know, it’s definitely helpful within the spirit of the band, but way more important than the spirit of the band is my friends, individual mental health, all of them, Rez, Clark and Vaden. Everybody’s mental health is fantastic because the band is the band. Well, we won’t be together at a point, I’m sure. But I care more about those guys, you know, than I do just our collective like, well, the

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:21:14.177)
Hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:21:33.539)
I’m sorry.

Zach Blair (01:21:36.546)
Band Idea is doing great and our whole collective thing so that the train will keep on rolling. No, I care that my buddies are doing good mentally, that they’re okay, that everything’s all right with them. That’s far more important to me.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:21:51.371)
Totally agree. That’s a beautiful thing and I appreciate you sharing that. A couple last questions. I would love to stay on music. We’ve talked about so many amazing things.

Zach Blair (01:21:54.945)
Ahem.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:22:06.595)
in the spirit of sharing anecdotes, talk to me a bit about Steve. You know, we talked about mental health and mindset and humor and razzling each other, not taking things so seriously. Cause I, you know what, I just, had a thought and I forgot it it just came back. And that’s like this idea of being defensive, right? Like so often people will confront us and say, listen, what you said there and there really upset me. And immediately we get defensive and I’m not like that. it’s, is about, it’s so much better when we just say,

Zach Blair (01:22:15.292)
God, yeah.

Zach Blair (01:22:24.386)
Okay.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:22:34.656)
I’m sorry, or we listen and then we maybe reflect on ourselves and then come back to it. It sounds like you guys are doing that, but like, what was it like with Mr Albini?

Zach Blair (01:22:42.093)
Yeah.

Steve was like I said, Steve has had and has a reputation for being a Serbic and I think rubbing people the wrong way, probably some of it probably intentionally because he was in the upper echelons. He dealt with, you know, the biggest people in the music business period, you know, look at the records that he did. I mean, he worked with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant for the love of God. He filled with some great stories about that, but

I don’t, I think Steve was Steve, you know, and you had to have a thick skin because Steve was going to be honest. If you asked him really what he thought he would tell you. So prepare, you know, because you’re going to get the exact, know, you, you may not get the, the, the answer that you want because he will be brutally honest because he doesn’t care. That’s what he’s there for to be. You know, you’re paying him for his opinion and

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:23:40.172)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:23:42.068)
I think to us, we love brutal honesty. We’re very, we’re, when it comes to music, we’re very honest with each other. Like, what do you think about this part? No. Or, Hey, did I play that good? you could do it a little bit better because we all have to believe in it, you know? So there’s no hurt feelings of like, man, he said I could play that better. What it’s, if it’s strut, if it’s not good, we have to do that. You know what I mean? So

One day, as one of our songs, I think it’s Damage, and I was playing tambourine on it, going back and forth and making sure that it was in time. And we’re listening back to the song, and I asked Steve, and I said, hey, does that sound in time? He goes, what? And I said, the tambourine. And he goes, it’s fucking tambourine. Who gives a shit? And it of turned away.

Everybody starts cracking up. I’m like, yeah, you’re right. Who gives a shit? But I think other band members, know, other bands would probably get their fucking feelings heard like, that was rude. Okay, maybe it was rude, but that’s just how it was. You know what I mean? And it’s it’s a small thing. It’s fucking tambourine. Who gives a shit? You know, but it’s.

So many people, go into these studios and you think, well, I’m paying for this and I’m paying for that guy and this is going to be the best record ever. And you’ve got to, you know, bow down to me at everything and make sure that I’m happy. And we are not that band. We do not like having our asses kissed whatsoever. We like brutal honesty, especially when we’re creating an album, you know, and whoever’s involved in that album, if it’s us and an engineer and a producer, then they’re the ones whose opinions we care about.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:25:20.045)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:25:34.408)
Everyone outside of that group can go fuck themselves. We don’t care what they say, you know, they can tell us it’s great or it’s not or whatever. We just don’t care. It’s and it was just the five of us. Steve engineered everything. And so we would ask him what he thought and he would be brutally honest like, you might be able to do that one better. Cool. Let’s go do it. You know, and we listened to him and it was just, he was more of a producer than he liked to let us.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:25:40.216)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:25:49.197)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:25:58.594)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Blair (01:26:04.238)
people I think, you know, he gave us a lot of great ideas that a producer would do. And we would be like, you know, you’re producing. No, I’m not just giving you an idea that’s come, you know, that I kind of thought was cool. We’re like, that’s producing dipshit. That’s what it is. You know, but he

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:26:13.955)
you

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:26:20.885)
Yeah, I love that mentality because the same thing applies to mental health in general is like there isn’t time to like for pleasantries and placating you just have to be real because if you’re not real you don’t heal it’s that simple.

Zach Blair (01:26:32.75)
No. Yeah. Yeah.

That’s fantastic. If you’re not real, you don’t heal. I love that. And that’s what I did learn from that whole thing is Steve was very real with us. And I think he in that way, and that’s how I look at it. If you’re honest with someone, you respect them. That’s showing respect and not like good enough. I think that’s the term in a whiplash. know, good enough is the worst thing ever pretty much, you know, from that movie on the right. It’s like, that’s pretty good.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:26:52.259)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:27:06.294)
No, not pretty good. Not good enough. It has to be right or it has to be great, you know. And if it wasn’t, why bother?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:27:16.255)
I mean, I could only have hoped and dreamed to have met someone like Steve, but it sounds like not only was he honest and real, because that’s his job. He’s trying to get the best out of people when he’s with them. But he was also just holding up a mirror saying like, you might not like what I’m saying, but you’re saying it to yourself.

Zach Blair (01:27:33.922)
Yeah. You can either like, like what you can leave it if you want, but you know, and we would see was also a few times. Steve also loved the immediacy of, of the take. He didn’t like 10 takes or anything like that. He liked no more than two or three, you know, and there are quite a few things that we would overdub. I think we did basically the basics altogether.

but there would be some guitar things that we wanted to overdub. And at first we were like, shit, Steve’s not gonna like that. And we got in and he goes, I don’t care. You can do whatever you want. This is your record. It’s, I will do whatever you need to do. So if you wanna do some overdubs, please do overdubs. If you wanna retake something, please do it. He said, that’s how I used to be. I’m not that way anymore. Just don’t do 10 of them.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:28:24.599)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:28:26.658)
But he also wanted, he didn’t want perfection to mistakenly get in there. He wanted, he wanted there to be life within the take. And if there’s some mistakes, and there are some mistakes on the album, but we left them because overall it was fantastic. You know, he was just a highly, he was more emotive than people think. Some of the things he said to us individually were very encouraging and just became a really good friend.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:28:36.333)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:28:43.725)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:28:55.926)
You know, and it just sucks that we lost him so early. You know, really, we were even with him three weeks before he passed. We had done another recording session with him for another thing that we’re going to release. you know, literally it was we were talking to him like, all right, we’ll see you in a few months. We’ll come back and touch this up. Like, OK, we’ll figure it out three weeks later. Passed, you know, so it sucks. It really does suck. He was a

You know, like I said, we had found our guy like a shit. We’re never going to anyone else from this point because he just got what we wanted to do immediately, you know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:29:28.087)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:29:35.949)
There’s so much pain and yet wisdom in that story in the sense that life is fleeting, that we… He said no more than three takes. I mentioned that Wabi Sabi, that the imperfection is the perfection. It’s organic, it’s real. But there’s also this Japanese appreciation for impermanence. Things are fleeting and you have to be present and appreciate this because…

Zach Blair (01:29:53.87)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:30:05.401)
It might be gone in three weeks, you don’t know. So enjoy the now.

Zach Blair (01:30:09.44)
Exactly. And don’t worry about the perfection. Perfection happens over time, you know, or getting it right happens over time where you want it. It comes from failing. You know, you can’t just do it right, right out of the gate. You know, you just can’t. You got to fail. You got to screw it up a lot to figure out the right way to do it. You know, correct. And that’s enjoy the process. It’s what we have to do is just enjoy the process of everything, you know, like embrace the suck. That’s the only way we get better.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:30:12.472)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:30:15.885)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:30:19.841)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:30:23.746)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:30:39.222)
and not getting bombed out about it. Like it’s just, we’re humans, know? That’s how I look at it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:30:39.544)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:30:45.187)
Mm hmm. Me too. Last thing before you have the hard job of wrapping us up with a very nice wisdom to share with everyone. So you got I’m giving you a warning. I usually don’t give a warning, but you have to do that. I like to talk about mindset, mental health, lifestyle, you know who you are. And then obviously the music. But then also at times

Zach Blair (01:30:58.868)
f-

Zach Blair (01:31:02.638)
Wow, I’m crying.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:31:15.071)
as much as possible impart some advice to people within whatever industry, this case music, space flight records. You you’ve done 20 albums, you’ve been around music since I think the early 90s, if not, if not earlier. Why that label? What about that label? You know, like the music industry is not what it used to be. I hope that it continues to evolve and get even better.

Zach Blair (01:31:31.871)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:31:44.813)
Talk to me about where you are as a musician and a creative and why you chose this partnership.

Zach Blair (01:31:49.762)
Well, we were at a very good advantage being done with this album because we owned it. So we paid for it all ourselves and we could go with whoever we wanted to. We weren’t beholden to anyone. it took a while to get this record out. And we were talking to a couple of other labels who were good, you know, and they would offer some fair deals, but there would always be a wrinkle.

Either we wouldn’t, was just one of those sayings where like, this just doesn’t feel right. I don’t know if we want to be tied to this particular organization, you know, for this record, it means so much to us. And it was kind of, it’s the same as failing, literally. We had a couple of failures with that, that kind of put it off. It would have been out a while back if we had just decided to go with the first one, you know, and you know, we’d probably be looking for another label at this point.

And Spaceflight came about through a mutual connection with our manager, Tammy. Another lady turned her on to Spaceflight and she had an incredible discussion with them. And then we all had a discussion with them. And the thing about it is that Brett that owns the label was a sound man for Jack White and widespread panic. And I believe John Cougar, Mellencamp, a lot of people. So he’s been doing it for.

I think to 20 years. He’s been in the trenches, you know, he’s been in the small, shitty, smoky clubs surrounded by people. But he has a love for music and he had learned enough about different labels and things. know, Brian, the guy that’s the A &R is the bass player for the sword. I believe Rick, who takes care of sales and media, he’s another touring musician. So it’s a lot of, a lot of that is the fact that it’s people.

who were put in the same situations as us. It’s, when you go into a lot of these meetings with people who are just business, they know business really well, but they have a hard time trying to talk to music. They put our music into phrases like content and numbers and all of this. And I understand that’s what you have to do. But when you go through the kind of shit that we went through for years, especially if with the pandemic, is our career gone?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:33:54.403)
Mm-hmm.

Zach Blair (01:34:14.194)
or whatever else creates great albums, whether it could be strife or whether it could be joy or whatever. And you do all of these things and you fail and you do all this crap. And then some deckhead in a suit says, well, think that’ll make, that’s gonna make some good numbers here. Like, no, no, no, fuck you. You’ve taken all of our hard work and our soul and everything that makes us what we are as musicians. And you’ve made it into a one and then zero or like a

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:34:33.175)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:34:43.438)
a percentage of something. You put it into the shittiest denominator that you can think of, you know? And they weren’t like that. They didn’t care. They gave us an incredibly fair, the best deal that we had found. Not only did we like them and their ideas and what they were wanting to do, but from a business standpoint, it was the best that we had encountered, you know? But they definitely didn’t talk about numbers and they didn’t put it into

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:34:50.007)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:35:12.386)
bullshit terms like that, you know, and we all know it is a business. So it’s no, I’m not being high minded and like gasp, you’re talking about money. I can’t, we’re talking about music. No, I understand that shit, you know, but to talk to these people and that’s all that they care about. It just kind of rubbed us the wrong way or how they wanted to promote us or things like that. And space front, I’m, I’m sorry, space flight. They had the exact same

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:35:26.253)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:35:39.65)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:35:42.346)
ideas that we did. They even came up with better ideas than we thought, you know, and just how they ran their business. The majority of their label, a lot of it is nonprofit. So they will take local artists even from around the Austin area, because they’re based out of Texas, you know, they’re doing good work with, we got to keep Texas cool, you know, we’re trying. So it’s kind of hard to do, but we’re doing what we can these days.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:35:45.975)
and

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:36:08.035)
I’m

Me and more hippie parents.

Zach Blair (01:36:11.95)
We need more hippie parents. We need something and then then what’s running, running this place right now. I’ll tell you that. But they they’re fighting the good fight. They’re trying to give back. You know, they don’t they’re not trying to become tycoons. You know, if they make profits, they put that back in to discovering other people. You know, so someone like I was saying earlier, this kid in Sherman who writes these great songs or whatever.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:36:25.581)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:36:41.262)
They could hear that kid and go, wow, all right, we’re going to give you 15 grand for an album, and then we’ll just put out your record and see what we can do. And then who knows, that kid might not have had a start without them doing that. So that’s another reason why we wanted to go with them, because some of the money that we make for the label is going to go back into other artists who don’t owe anything. Like here’s money. You don’t owe it back. It’s just go do your career.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:36:54.232)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:37:10.818)
Do what you need to do. Go make the world happy. Live. Be a musician. Do this. So that’s another thing. So we get to something that we make that we’re, with the Charmer, profits that they can make from that. We’ll go back into either the Austin music scene or someone in fucking Pukipsey or whatever who has a great techno record that’s, who knows what’s gonna happen, but that could be their lifelong dream that we’re helping out.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:37:15.384)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:37:38.996)
So it’s just a fantastic aesthetic, I think, to run a label and just the guys there, everyone that works for them, they love music. They just love being in the business. They love going to see bands. They love that we’re part of it as well, that we’re just as excited. We just couldn’t have found better partners. And I’m glad that we had those other failures, because then we wouldn’t have come to this that we had now.

I think if we’d have gotten it right right out of the gate, it wouldn’t have been right, you know?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:38:06.925)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:38:11.191)
Yeah, I love that and I’m really happy for you and the rest of the band and for the label. You you talked about the percentages and the artist. It’s profits and product. They can live together. But if there’s one word to sum that up and this entire conversation is its balance. You know, you have to find that middle point of artistry and business in order to, think, have

you know, a good relationship and success. You can’t focus on one or the other. There’s that middle spot. I’m a very grateful person. I try to wake up every day and just be thankful for all that I have. So I’m thankful for your time. Our almost hour and three quarters.

Zach Blair (01:38:54.094)
Thanks for having me. Thank you for having me, man. I appreciate you. This has been great.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:38:58.987)
Yeah, amazing conversation. So we got an album out on the 1st of May. We’ve got a US tour and then I’m sure more tours after that. You’re to try to come to Vancouver so that I can see you.

Zach Blair (01:39:10.414)
I would love to. We were there years ago, I think when I was, I turned 40, I know in Winnipeg at the Burton Cummings Theater. So for all of you Guess Who fans, I love the Guess Who, but so it was us and Social Distortion. We were touring with them, a fantastic tour. And the Canadian audiences loved us and we haven’t been able to get back. And so we’ve been talking about that. We want to come back.

as soon as possible. I think that’s one thing we’re trying to figure out instead of just staying in America, go up to Canada, go down to South America, you know, and you guys like just good rock and roll. You know what you you know what you’re doing up there when it comes to music. I mean, you have national hockey night. How can you not be an amazing country when you have national fucking hockey night? You know, yes, I’m a stars fan. Let’s not hold that against me. OK, but I do love the Dallas Stars, but.

You have national hockey night. That’s just a great country right there. And you have some of the best bands ever to come out and talking about giving back. think space flight basically do exactly what the Canadian government did to promote bands and promote Canadian music. So I think they use that as the model. So you have a great country.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:40:32.195)
very cool. You know what? It’s not bad. I’m happy. I’m happy with that. Did you say that you, it was the who that got you into music?

Zach Blair (01:40:36.906)
It’s not bad. I love it. I love it, man. Great place.

Zach Blair (01:40:48.12)
They were the first ones that pretty, mean, like listening to N Twistle on Penball Wizard, just his, his bass playing, you know, on that or in Baba O’Reilly or we would watch the kids were all right, that movie and watching N Twistle stay stock still, you know, and Townsend’s doing his windmills and know, Keith Moon’s throwing his drumsticks around and Roger Daltrey’s doing his microphone, you know, but.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:40:57.602)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:41:17.698)
John and Twistle isn’t moving anything except his fingers, and he’s the loudest one and doing the most out of all of them. There’s more tension coming to him of what he’s playing than anything, you know? So having that ability, he has that power. He’s just playing. He doesn’t have to jump around the stage or anything like that. It’s all focused on him from just playing that bass. It’s like that spoke volumes to me, that.

You don’t have to go around and do all that and look at me, look at me, look at me. I’m not that person, you know? I’m just not wired that way. But to be able to have that power, you know, with bass, it’s like our… In bass, our absence is noted. know, good bass playing, our absence should be noted, pretty much, you know? And our entrance. So if the guitar comes in and out, that’s kind of cool. But when the bass comes in and out, you feel it here.

And guitar, you just kind of hear it there, because it’s hitting you in your ears. Bass hits you in your abdomen, in your heart, in your soul. That’s where the bass hits, you know? That’s where it should be.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:42:15.267)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:42:25.399)
That’s like that guy Ryan Vader that I referenced. It’s that quiet power. It’s just, I can destroy but I don’t need to.

Zach Blair (01:42:32.142)
That’s why we’re all, yeah. All the bass players I know, we’re all quiet until we get around each other and then we just fucking nerd out with each other. But most bass players are nerds who just are like, all right, I’m a nerd. I’m going to stay in the back and play. You guys go do that shit. No one’s going to notice me anyway. And that’s fine. I don’t want anyone to notice me. You know, that’s good bass playing. Don’t get noticed. We are the support jock of

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:42:54.434)
Yeah.

You are where you want to be. Listen, I…

Zach Blair (01:43:01.29)
of music or the jock support.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:43:03.491)
I only brought up the who because I thought it was hilarious that you started with the who and were ending with the guess who.

Zach Blair (01:43:13.048)
That dude, both of them great band. My parents knew great music though, you know, I mean, God, they guess when we were in Canada, we were leaving Vancouver and going to, it might’ve been, we were going to Edmonton. So we went through the Canadian Rockies and the whole time our drummer, Mark had a, Guess Who playlist that we listened to the entire time and just incredible. I’ve always loved the Guess Who though. I mean, Burton’s voice is incredible. The songs were incredible.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:43:38.434)
Yeah.

Zach Blair (01:43:42.434)
Just then the band was amazing. So, just saying, you got all the good ones, you know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:43:48.707)
Well, I wouldn’t say all, but we got a good amount. You guys got some great ones too.

Zach Blair (01:43:52.302)
I mean, your great ones are far better than our good ones. So I’m just saying, that’s me.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:44:02.007)
We’ll agree to disagree, because otherwise this is how the war started, fighting over music.

Zach Blair (01:44:03.438)
All right, done. You got it.

No shit. You’re going to win it. If it’s a music war, you’re going to win. I’m sorry. In my book, you’re going to win it. So I’ll tap out.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:44:10.721)
Ha ha ha!

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:44:17.363)
Why don’t you do what I told you earlier, which is sign us off with some sage advice for the people watching.

Zach Blair (01:44:26.192)
my God. I think we’ve kind of said it. I just think like I said earlier, you have to A give up your ego, you know, and listen to what someone else is. Be a good receiver. Communicate, you know, with people. Be a great communicator with someone. It’s hard to do. Really hard to do to be honest and to tell people your feelings. But I think over time you get better with it, you know.

I probably people probably think I’m a mushy dickhead, you know, I know the guys that I do jujitsu is probably do I tell them I love them all the time or whatever like, hey, let me know if you need this. They’re probably like, ease up, dude, you know, but we’re all going through shit and they’re all the same guys like me and I want people to go and that’s the thing with it’s weird within that group. Yes, we’re masculine, but we all tell each other we love each other, you know, and it’s like that’s not

A lot of people don’t do that, but we have a certain thing from all of the training with each other. So I think that would be the best thing is just communication. Embrace the suck, you know, fail for whatever you want to do. And same with communicating. Your first couple of times communicating with people, you’re gonna get it wrong. You’re gonna say the wrong thing until you figure out the right thing to say, you know? But I think, you know, leading with your heart, not your brain.

And I’m saying that to myself as well. I’ve got to lead with that and just kind of be an open wound for people and be able to accept it. And if they walk all over it, then they walk all over it. That’s okay. You can’t let that change you. I don’t think so. And become embedded. It’s not necessarily sage advice, but it’s just, it’s kind of just from what I’ve learned in life is I don’t, I do things not.

so I can change, I do things so they don’t change me. That’s basically all I can be.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:46:27.203)
Hey honestly like Donnie this has been so awesome. Let me just hit stop make sure we got everything.

Zach Blair (01:46:35.768)
You got it.