“Something besides yourself to love”: Austin music legend Bob Schneider on his latest album, “In a Roomful of Blood With a Sleeping Tiger”, non-autobiographical songs written with autobiographical emotion, and why he shouldn’t rule the world.
Since we talked about his ’99 song “2002” so much in our convo…here it is:
Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!
***This is a rough transcription of Episode 106 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on October 5, 2021. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email [email protected] ***
I want to be Will Rogers at some point in my life, where there’s nobody on earth that’s not a friend of mine.
Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.
[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]
Hey there and welcome to Episode 106 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, where we have so much going on today. I’m Nancy Davis Kho, and I’m the host and creator of the podcast, and there are two things I want to tell you quickly and then I promise we are getting right into the interview.
First! We have another Listeners’ Stories episode coming up next time and I need your stories! You know how this works. I give you a topic, you guys write in, record yourselves, drop me a comment, and whatever prompt I give you, and this time it is: GenX Halloween. I KNOW you have something to say: your ‘70s, ‘80s, and ’90s Halloween memories. The kind of stories that our Gen Z kids and our Boomer older siblings just couldn’t relate to. Maybe it was the smell of those plastic masks that your parents bought you at the drugstore. Remember those in the cellophane boxes? Maybe it was the lady around the corner that everybody knew put razor blades in apples. Why would she spend time doing that? She was watching General Hospital. She wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. Maybe you went dressed as a mailbox, because back then being clever or weird was better than being sexy. There were no sexy mail boxes. That was maybe just me. I don’t know.
Whatever the prompt GenX Halloween brings to mind, we all want to hear it! So you know the drill. You can leave me a voice mail right from your computer! You just go to https://www.speakpipe.com/MidlifeMixtape and you can start recording there with one click. I LOVE when people do this, because then I can incorporate the actual voice of our listeners in the episode. There’s a 90 second limit on these recordings, and you can re-record it as many times as you want. If you’ve got a longer story, just record that into your phone as a voice memo and email it to me. The email is [email protected] and again, I love hearing these stories in your actual voice.
You can send me an email with your story typed out to [email protected] and I’ll share it in the episode, or you can always send me a Facebook message, a tweet or an Instagram comment. I’m @midlifemixtape
So, I need those by October 12th, please, and I’ve already gotten some great ones in, including one that actually took place recently, but it was such a perfect Get Off My Lawn, Gen Z moment that it fits right into the theme. So, Gen X Halloween: what have you got?
Second thing I wanted to just say briefly is that this is the time of the year when lots of people start thinking about gratitude, in the run up to Thanksgiving, and I’ve been doing a bunch of virtual and live events about my book, The Thank-You Project. But I still have room for a few more, and I love doing this. Do you have an organization, a club, a class, maybe your work colleagues, just a group that could benefit by knowing more about the power of gratitude letters? Hit me up at [email protected] and we’ll get the ball rolling.
I just did one with an organization called The Choose Love Movement. This is a group founded by the mom of one of the Sandy Hook victims, and it was such an honor to connect with Choose Love and its monthly book club. I love doing it. So, if you have a group and you want to talk about gratitude and thank you letters, I’m your man. Your woman.
So, here’s the deal. About 10 years ago I joined a gang. It was a gang of lady humor writers and our main weaponry is the cutting remark, but a bunch of them are based in Austin and told me back then, “You have GOT to check out this musician, Bob Schneider. He’s an amazing performer based in Austin.” So, I did and I’ve been a fan of Bob ever since. Is his music funk, R&B, Latin, Americana? Yes! That and more. It’s everything, and it’s all done with such a great sense of humor, and I’ve had the chance to see Bob play live a whole slew of times in the Bay Area over the past decade.
But of course, with the pandemic, concert going ground to a halt. Luckily, I am connected to this concert promoter in San Francisco named KC Turner. You can find KC at KCTurnerPresents.com and at KC Turner Presents on social. And you should, because he is always bringing great acts to the Bay Area. Anyway, I got an email from KC earlier this year saying that he was doing a backyard concert series with different artists and these were really small, like 30 people, everybody had to be fully vaccinated. And one day the email came that one of the artists he was bringing to town was Bob Schneider.
I JUMPED at the chance to hear Bob in such an intimate setting, and so did my friends, and long story short: Bob Schneider played a backyard show for a bunch of us here in Oakland at the end of July, and if you go over to my Instagram @midlifemixtape, you can see some of the pics from that day. It was magical, and I finally met Bob in person for the first time, and I’m so glad he agreed to come visit us on the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. Let me tell you a little about him.
Bob is as mentioned based in Austin, Texas. He is a singer-songwriter and former front man of The Ugly Americans and The Scabs. He has become one of the most celebrated musicians in the live music capital. Drawing from a range of diverse musicals styles, Schneider’s talent has defied genres. Combining elements of funk, country, rock, and folk with the more traditional singer/songwriter aesthetic, Schneider draws inspiration from the ’70s but with a modern twist.
He has won more than 59 Austin Music Awards including Best Album, Best Songwriter, Best Musician, and Best Male Vocals making him the most decorated artist in Austin music history. If you have ever been to Austin, you know what kind of a music city that is. So, that’s quite an accomplishment.
But Schneider’s fan base reaches far beyond the city limits of Austin. He started gaining national recognition when he released 2001’s Lonelyland, his major-label debut for Universal Records, and since then he’s released more than a dozen albums, written over 1,000 songs, he is a published author, he is an avid painter and collage artist, and he’s not planning on slowing down anytime soon.
Bob’s newest record is called In A Roomful Of Blood with A Sleeping Tiger. It came out in August 2021, and we’re going to hear some tracks from it today. I love it!
So, let’s go with the flow with Bob Schneider.
Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Bob Schneider. I’m so happy to have you here today.
You sound so professional.
Thank you. I think it’s the sound of the dog licking himself in the background that really sells it because he waits until he knows I’ve hit record and then he’s like, “You know what I need to do? Clean up house.”
Wow. That’s a good visual that I’ve got now.
Yeah, well, that’s Arlo. Welcome to the show. It’s me and Arlo Kho.
Bob, I’ve got a question for you. What was your first concert, and what were the circumstances?
Well, the first concert that I paid to go see was Earth, Wind & Fire, and I think the year was 1981, if I’m correct, and they were touring, like they had all their hits. It was the most amazing concert I think I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Now, I was raised by a musician, my dad.
He’s an opera singer, right?
He’s an opera singer, but he would also moonlight in a cover band, and he worked his way through college playing in cover bands, and I know I was at many of those shows before I was even born, and then when I was 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. So I watched him play a lot of shows. But the first official one that I take responsibility for was Earth, Wind & Fire.
It was in Bremen, Germany.
So, I did not realize you were raised in Germany. I saw that in a bio when I was doing my research this week. I also lived in Germany and Bob: I saw Earth, Wind & Fire play while I lived in Germany.
It was not ’81. It would have been at ‘88 or ‘89, and what I remember about it, Bob, is that I went with my American friend Kristen, and we stood up and danced. And the Germans, I don’t know if this was your experience in Bremen – nobody was dancing, they are an orderly people, they sat still. And somebody fired a beer can at my head because I was obstructing their view.
They are very orderly. But they also…
But how do you sit down at an Earth, Wind & Fire concert? That’s not normal human behavior.
Well, if you’re German, you are very… it’s called Pünktlichkeit and Ordnung. I think it’s that or something, I don’t know. I might have made up that word.
But here’s what I know about Germans. They’re very chill at concerts unless they get upset, and then, they’re super quick to start firing beer cans at whatever they don’t like. I saw the Rolling Stones also in ’81 not long after that, and there were three bands. Man, I’m spacing on the first band. What’s the band that did “My Angel is a Centerfold”?
The J. Geils Band were the first band. They were amazing. One of the best bands I’ve ever seen.
Then another a guy named Peter Maffay, he was like the German Kris Kristofferson.
Oh sure. I remember that guy’s name.
Yeah, yeah. So, he gets up there and he’s got an acoustic guitar and he’s singing in German [Bob imitates some guttural fake German], and the Germans, en masse, start throwing, not cans, but beer bottles onto the stage trying to hit him. He had to leave after the second song.
Yeah, they don’t mess around. But here’s the crazy thing. So, I went to all these concerts in Germany, and I feel like when the concert was going on, people were very respectful. They would politely clap after every song. They would listen, and if they liked what you did, they didn’t tell you with beer bottles. Now, I go to the States and the first concert I see there is U2, the Rattle and Hum Concert.
And I get in the audience, and everybody in the audience is losing their minds. They’re going crazy. They’re up on your feet, they’re shouting, they’re screaming, and it’s the concert where they had the light that they would shine into the audience.
And whenever they would shine the light on the audience, people would…
…act like they just won $10 million, and I was like, “They are just shining an annoying light in your face, what is wrong with all this?” It was such a culture shock coming from Germany to the United States.
How old were you when you lived in Germany? What were your years there?
I moved there when I was two, and then I did spend four years in El Paso from third grade through seventh grade. But other than that, I was over there until I was 20.
So, I went to college over there and I went to high school, which, by the way, if you’re going to be a teenager, Germany was the best place to be a teenager. Because the drinking age was 13. You couldn’t drive, you couldn’t even get a license until you’re 18. But then it was thousands of dollars to get a license, which I didn’t have. But the public transportation system is great.
So, I had a wonderful time kind of partying as a teenager.
Well, first of all your song “2002” makes a lot more sense to me now, because there’s a little riff in there about how you went back to Germany. Whenever I hear that I wonder what that’s about. I get it.
I will interrupt you and tell you that that entire song is made up.
Okay. Well, yeah, hopefully. HOPEFULLY.
Yeah, because it mentions that I was addicted to heroin when I wrote it.
He’s kind of a pathetic guy. A lovable guy, but…
Well, see I wrote that song in 1998 after – I wouldn’t say a breakup, I was dating a girl who I was madly in love with, and we only dated for a few weeks. But I feel like the most intense love is that under-two- months kind of unrequited love.
Right. Because you don’t have time to figure out the flaws. It’s just perfect all the way through, for the two weeks.
Yeah, they never become a real person. They’re kind of this idealized version of a person, and you think, “Oh, this is the thing that’s going to make me happy.” And then oh, they’re gone, and it’s so hard to deal with. Anyway, I wrote this song knowing oh, by the time 2002 rolls around, I’ll be over this lovely lady, and so I wrote the song. And then 2002 has come and gone and now people are like, “Oh, that’s an autobiographical song that happened in 2002.”
You heard it on the record here. No, it ain’t. No, it ain’t.
I have to tell you my decision to just… we’ll leave Germany at some point, listeners. We won’t always be talking about Germany, but I do love talking to anybody who lived there, because I had such formative few years there after college.
One of the biggest factors in my decision to move home was one night in Munich and listen – it’s a really safe country and I really appreciated that as a young woman who liked her beer. So, I was walking home from a tavern, pub, whatever it was, at like 2am listening to my Walkman, and there’s no traffic. It’s the middle of the night. And I jaywalked in Germany. And two drunk men across the street who were so drunk, that they were teepeeing against each other. They were holding each other up in an A frame situation in their leder hosen. They started yelling at me and they said in German, “Don’t walk against the light. You have to be an example to the children.”
And I’m like, if you can be that drunk and still a rule follower and still yelling at other people, this is not a country for me anymore. I just want to go home where jaywalking on an empty street, that’s just common sense.
That’s the thing I love the most about Germany. I love rules. I really do. No, I love rules, and I love following rules and I love people who follow rules. I went to Mexico with my wife and she had a wonderful time. We went Tulum and there were no rules and I was like…
Were you itchy the whole time?
Oh, I had my first like, full blown panic attack when I was there, because I’m like, if there are no rules, what do I …
I mean, human beings are wild, dangerous, insane animals, without rules. I mean, it’s scary.
Oh, Mexico is the inverse of Germany. If you took everything about Germany and flipped it upside down, you would create Mexico and vice versa. So, I could see where that would be a difficult transition.
I love being on time. I love knowing what the speed limit is and abiding by it, but like four miles over the speed limit.
Would you jaywalk on an empty street if you thought no one was watching in the middle of the night?
Of course. That is ridiculous.
Okay. Thank you. Alright. We have to talk about your album, or we’re just going to talk about why you should move to Germany. Or not.
You have a new album out called In A Roomful Of Blood with A Sleeping Tiger. It came out at the end of August, and we’re going to get to hear a couple of tracks from that today. I wanted to start by asking you, when you started working on it, and whether the studio process was different because of the pandemic than what you usually do?
Well, it was. I didn’t really do anything different than I’ve done on the four or five records before that. I’ve used the same producer, same studio. Generally, the same group of musicians. But yeah, we were supposed to go in and start recording in March of 2020, and everything got shut down.
So, we had to postpone it and, like, literally, we didn’t know if we were going to be able to record it. I started making plans to do everything kind of remotely. I was hiring people that could record the parts at home in their studios, and then at some point later in the year, I think it was August, we were like, “Well, let’s just go into the studio and take our chances.”
August 2020 is when we went in and did it, and everybody was a little nervous. But we all knew each other, and there wasn’t a lot of COVID in Austin, at that time. I mean, there probably was, but none of us got it, and we went and recorded the record.
So, I always approach this question really gingerly when I have a musician on the show, because I don’t know if it makes me sound foolish to ask it.
But is there a particular theme you had in mind as you were going into the writing process, or did you have some songs half-written, mostly written and you just thought, “These are going to sound good together”? I think, as a listener, a lot of us try to find the meaning, the central theme of an album, and I know from interviewing musicians for this show that sometimes that’s just not how it works.
So, what is the process for you? What was the goal for you with the songs?
Alright. Well, let me start by being like that mean magician that tells you how everything is done.
And then the other magicians get really mad at them.
So, anybody that tells you that there’s some overarching theme, that they went in and this event happened, and they wrote all these songs about this one thing: that’s just them bullshitting 100%.
What I do is I force myself to write a song every week. I’ve been doing that for 20 years. I used to do a song every day or every other day, or every three days. And for the last 10 or 12 years, I’ve written one about once a week.
And what I do when it comes time to going into the studio and recording a real record is I look through all the songs that I haven’t recorded in the studio yet and try to find the best ones and put those together. Now, I will say, I have a lot of songs I haven’t recorded in the studio. I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of songs. Maybe 1000 songs that I haven’t recorded. But there’s a reason why I haven’t recorded most of those songs. They’re not that good.
But I probably I had 100 songs that I thought were contenders for this album, and I narrowed it down to about 30, and I picked 12 to 15. They were my favorite. But then I put the other 15 in a folder, and then I let my wife listen to them. I let the producer listen to them, and then they all weighed in on what songs they liked.
And then I just did the songs that my wife told me to do.
That was smart. That’s good strategy.
Now, I did kind of have a nice run a couple years ago of writing some songs, and I think it had a lot to do with the fact that my daughter was around three at the time – and I noticed this happening with my son. He’s 16. My daughter is six. Around that time is when I really started getting to know who my kids were. Before that they were like babies and they’re cute, and all that but you don’t know who they are.
Right. The personality starts to emerge when they’re about two or three.
Right. As soon as they can start talking, you realize, “Oh, this is who they are!” Because they’re stamped with their personalities. If you have a kid, you know what that means. As soon as they start speaking and talking, you realize, “Oh, this is who they’ve been for the last three years. They just weren’t able to communicate it.”
I look back at my son who’s 16 now and he’s always been the same guy when he was eight, when he was two, when he was zero. He was just who he is.
So, around three is usually – with both my son and my daughter, it’s really when I just fell in love with them in a deep way. Obviously with my son, it was very unexpected because I hadn’t gone through it before, and when he was one or two, I was like, “Man, am I weird? Do I have Asperger’s, or am I a sociopath? Why am I not feeling all the things that people say you’re supposed to feel about your kids?”
But I really didn’t feel it until I got to know who he was, and then once I understood who he was, I knew a love there that I’d never known before. And the same thing happened with my daughter, and I wrote a lot of great songs kind of about that relationship. Because when my son was around that age, I was writing the songs that were on Lovely Creatures. I was also going through divorce, and even though that was such a painful time in my life, I was writing all these, I don’t know, just these beautiful love songs, and I was like, “What’s going on?”
And then I realized, oh, well, it was this mixed bag of feeling. So, I mean, on Lovely Creatures, there’s some really sad songs, and there’s some really happy songs. The sadness was the divorce that I was going through, and the happiness was this love I was feeling for my son.
I think the same thing happened on this album with my daughter, and also, I was pretty newly married. Me and my wife had been married for six years, but we were married for three years at the time. So, there’s a lot of joy and love and expressing that through music, which is always fun, and I don’t know, this is probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I’m the most at peace. I’m not really chasing anything. I think, earlier in my life, there was this idea, “Oh, at some point, if I become famous or successful, or I’m in the perfect relationship or have the right things around me that somehow that’s going to make everything better, and then I’ll be fine.” You know what I mean?
I don’t believe in that anymore. I just I feel pretty happy.
It sounds like you’re at peace.
It does sound like I’m at peace. But trust me, that’s not the case. But I’m the most at peace that I’ve ever been in my life.
Well, you’ve teed up the song that I want to play for our audience perfectly, because those standout song to me on this album is “American Jesus”. So when you did this concert for us in July, you said to the audience, “Who has been married for a long time? Because that shit is hard.”
And we all laughed, because yeah, it is – I’m about to round the bend on my 29th anniversary. So, I can tell you, yes, it’s really hard, and this song is all about what it takes to stay happy in a marriage and to not rely on the other person so much for your happiness but to be there to support them instead. Am I characterizing it the right way? Maybe we should just play it and then the listeners can decide. So, I’m going to play “American Jesus” off Bob Schneider’s new album, In A Roomful Of Blood with A Sleeping Tiger.
[MUSIC: “American Jesus”, from In A Roomful of Blood With a Sleeping Tiger by Bob Schneider]
I can’t be Your American Jesus
I’ve let you down my dear
The sound of your laughter
As you lay there sleeping
Well I’ll be here for you
And they’re both so heavy
When you come through the door
The tides of your affection
The way they wax and wane
Well I’ll always take you
Okay. So, I love your earlier songs that are about falling in love and like “2002” when you don’t really know the person all that well and look at if you play “Tiger and the Lamb” everybody in the room is going to ovulate. But there is something so midlife-romantic about a song that talks about somebody who sees you and understands you, and will give you a ride home so you don’t have to call Uber. I love that song.
Yeah, I do, too. I’m a very sentimental, romantic person and to me, that’s a very romantic, sentimental song about what it is to truly be in a relationship where all of the glitz and glamour is gone.
I don’t care who you are. I mean, there’s a chemical thing that stops happening after three years. There’s a chemical thing that your brain starts creating these chemicals when you meet somebody, and it’s a trick to get you to procreate with that person and have babies. And then that goes away, and when that goes away, you’re just looking at the person like, “Hey, where’s my drugs? Where’s the drugs person that was making me euphoric and happy?”
That’s gone. Now you’re just left with a person, and not some fantasy person, but a person who has all the faults and all the things that frustrate you. You’re still the same person that you were, they’re not going to save you, they’re not going to make you happy, they’re just going to be who they are. But if you realize that, but then still care enough or admire the person enough or respect the person enough that you want to be with them just because of who they are, well then that something I think that’s incredibly special.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but there are these two couples and these fairies sprinkle stuff on these people and they get them to fall in love with people magically, and then at the end, they take that fairy dust off. And then these people are like, “Huh, what do we do now?” My character, by the way, in which I played it in college, I played the part of Lysander -they never take the stuff off him. So he’s left being in love with this woman and he probably doesn’t care about. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. I’m digressing.
No, but I think your point’s well taken. I mean, there’s got to be something – and it’s actually a perfect topic for this show about “the years between being hip and breaking one”, because a lot of us either are in long term marriages, or we’re starting again in a new partnership. And this idea of being older, wiser, and maybe a little bit more cynical in a way that… See, I don’t think cynicism is necessarily a bad trait. I think it helps us cope with hardship, because we don’t always get our expectations out of whack with what real life is going to look like. And just having that realization that yeah, I am responsible for making myself happy, and it’s not fair for me to put that on my partner, because they’re working on their own thing. And of course, mutual support… But if you’re not happy, you’ve got to figure that out for yourself.
Right. And we live in a society that’s showing us all these models of all these relationships that look good on the surface. And when you hang out with your friends who are married, everybody’s on their best behavior, everybody’s pretending to be pretty happy, and like, “Everything’s great!” blah, blah, blah, blah. Then you go home, and you’re like, “Did you see that couple? They were so happy, and you and me just hate each other.”
Yeah, but I also recommend you find the friends who will let you peek behind the curtain. Because they need those friends too, believe me.
Yeah, for sure. Well, the other thing that I know for a fact is all the things that frustrate me about my wife, all of the things that I don’t like are the things that if she didn’t have those qualities, or those traits, I would not be attracted to her or in love with her. Because they represent the same frustrations and problems that I had as a child when I was hanging out with my parents, and those are the only types of people that I’m going to be attracted to.
So, even if things don’t work out with my wife, the next person that I’m with is going to be a very similar person. I’ve been with people who weren’t as frustrating, or as complicated as my wife, and I was not in love with them.
It’s a little boring. A little complexity can keep you hooked, I think.
I mean, I’m using very kind words when I say “ complex” and “frustrating,” trust me.
I want to ask you as a songwriter: do you think songwriting helps you work out real life issues? And I ask this because I know that when I write, sometimes I do it in order to understand how I feel about a subject. I can’t figure it out until I’ve put it down, edited it, kind of wrapped it up, and I’m like, “Well, that’s my opinion about that. Who knew?” And I wondered if it works the same way for songwriting.
I think you can work out some stuff with your writing. That’s not the reason I do it. I do it to kind of dissociate.
For me writing a song, it’s like doing the crossword, it’s like solving a puzzle, and it keeps my mind off my anxieties, it keeps my mind off all my worries. So, I enjoy the process of trying to solve this equation, which is a song. For instance, for years, I would always tell everybody why I never write anything autobiographical, because I make everything up. Like that song “2002,” everything in that song is pretty much made up. It’s about the future.
Now, what I have discovered over the year, is that even though the actual events are fictitious, the emotion is actually very autobiographical. So, whatever the emotional tone of the song is, that’s actually happening to me at the time.
Like when I was writing all those love songs, while I was going through this terrible divorce, that emotional quality in like a song like 40 Dogs, which is beautiful love song – it’s the way I was feeling about my son. But I mean, a lot of people write songs were like, “Oh, I love my son, I love my daughter, they’re so sweet, look, they made a poo-poo” or whatever the fuck it is.
I hate that kind of songwriting. It’s my least favorite. When somebody is telling me how they feel and like what they’re going through, I’m like, “I don’t care. Make it interesting.” That’s all I care about. Make it clever. Make it arty. I want to be moved. I want to feel connected to something bigger and deeper. I don’t care what you’re feeling or what you’re going through, and so I’m trying to write songs that are interesting. But at the same time, when you’re doing that, you can’t help but mind whatever emotional content that’s inside you at the time that you’re doing it.
You obviously have a great sense of humor. I’m sure, listeners, you’ve sorted that out for yourselves at this point in the interview. So, there’s a line in the song on the new album about Thor, the god of thunder, and he works in an office and he cooks dinner at night and his wife washes the dishes. And the line where you say he is part owner of the Green Bay Packers… that was my husband hooting at the concert in July because that was really funny to Andrew. I don’t know why he couldn’t get over it.
But I wondered how humor helps you cope both with real life, pandemic life, songwriting. How important is it to you that your music has a sense of humor?
I mean, if music doesn’t have a sense of humor, I’m out.
I’m always shocked by people who have zero need to be funny, and there are people that are completely earnest, that will just speak their truth, and to say what they’re going to say very seriously and very succinctly without ever trying to make a joke, and I find, by the way, those people are the most successful people in the world.
I was just going to say, those are the people…
They are the people that rule the world, because if you act like a clown, people will treat you like a clown. And if you just take yourself seriously, and don’t make any jokes, people will go, “Well, that guy’s real serious,” and take you seriously. But at the same time, they are so deadly boring, and I can’t understand it. I can’t. Who cares? If you rule the world, who a) who wants to rule the world? Me, I do. Of course, I want it, 100%.
But with my sense of humor intact. Thank you very much.
By the way, I want to rule the world. And just know this, if you’re listening…
And you have power to appoint him as world ruler.
Thank God that I’m not the ruler of the world, because I would be horrible, and if there was actually was a ruler of the world, they would be horrible. I’ve done the math on it. You are the ruler of the world, I don’t care who you are. You can make the Dalai Lama, the ruler of the world and in five years, he will be the most evil person on the planet. You just can’t…
That’s what the algorithm spit out for Dalai Lama. He’s got a five-year plan.
I mean, no. I mean, luckily, the Dalai Lama has a very limited amount of power. The problem with ultimate power like that, it will definitely corrupt you. I read about the Mormons – I don’t know if you know a lot…
Oh, we’re fascinated by the Mormons in this household. Everybody who read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, who isn’t fascinated by Mormons?
Well, I found out that if you are in this select group, you get your own planet. And I like thought exercises. I was like, “What would I do if I was the ruler of my own planet?” It would not go well for a lot of people.
Why? What would the characteristics of your planet be?
I would be a murderer for sure.
Where’s that anger coming from? What are you, German at a concert? Come on!
Like after a while, I’d be like, “Oh, that guy’s annoying.”
Oh, my God, I would be terrible.
Alright. Let’s all agree when that ballot comes in the mail about who is going to be ruler of the world, don’t put down Bob Schneider, because homicides are a fundamental organizing principle to his future culture.
Here’s the thing. I am a good person. I’m a nice person. I would never murder anyone, unless I was the ruler of the world and there were no consequences, then I’m sure that I would. And I’m sure everybody would. I don’t care who you are. Anyways, I know that’s controversial for some.
For some. For others, that’s fine. For others, they’re like, “Yeah, I’d vote for that. Sure.”
Well, do seven years of group therapy, and you’ll figure it out eventually. You’ll get down to the root of who you are.
Alright, Bob, this is dealer’s choice. I’m going to have you pick another track to play off your new album. What’s the song that’s particularly meaningful to you and why?
I will say this about the record, there’s not a song on the record I’m not proud of and now, that’s only true of one other album I put out. I put out an album called Lonely Land, which was my first record. Every album I put out since, there’s at least one or two songs that, if I re-recorded the record, I wouldn’t put those songs on the album. I love every song on the record, and they’re all very personal. Again, everything’s made up.
But “Thor”, for instance, seems very autobiographical – I’m remarried, I have a daughter, and a lot of the ideas in that song ring true in my life. For instance, I’m sober alcoholic, I’ve been sober for 26 years and the character Thor is the god of thunder and he gets in this fender bender with this guy and he could just kill him, but he doesn’t want to kill him because he doesn’t want to do that anymore. It wasn’t working for him, and he talks about maybe people can change.
And I don’t think I can fundamentally change who I am that’s why I can’t drink. If I were to try to drink right now, I’d still wouldn’t be able to drink successfully even after 26 years. But I don’t have to drink, so a lot of the things in the song kind of ring true in my life. Maybe we should listen to that one.
[MUSIC: “Thor” from In A Roomful of Blood With a Sleeping Tiger by Bob Schneider]
Thor is the god of thunder
But he’s also a family man
Settled down in Milwaukee and
He’s got himself a wife and daughter
He works for the Bank of America
At night he likes to go to the karaoke
Sing his favorite songs by his very
He’s got a minor drinking problem he’s
but it’s getting out of hand
Thor likes the Green Bay Packers
And one day while he was driving
He got into a fender bender
It took all his patience not to kill the other guy
All he really had to do was let
But that rage and destruction stuff had really
So he put it all behind him forever
Cause maybe people can change
Thor is the god of thunder
I wrote that line in the song about the Green Bay Packers. My ex-wife, her whole family, are Green Bay Packers’ fans – she’s from Madison, Wisconsin. And now of course, I’m a Green Bay Packers fan because my son is. And I’ve only gotten into football because my son got into football when he was five or six.
And I thought that line was so funny and I couldn’t wait to go to Milwaukee and Madison and play the song for those people, play it for my in laws, play it for all those Green Bay Packer fans, because I thought they’d think it was so funny. People, everywhere I play it, think that line is funny. Except for one place.
Wisconsin! Because they don’t get the joke.
Oh yeah, I guess they might be too close to it.
Well, I mean, they like being Green Bay Packers’ owners, but it’s funny.
Yeah, it is. It’s empirically funny.
So Bob, you are not just a singer/songwriter. You’re actually one of the most prolific creatives I’ve ever come across, because you paint, you write poetry, you’ve got your own podcast, and I’m curious how that creative process may have been impacted during the pandemic. I know for instance, you also had to become your daughter’s art teacher, because she was studying from home.
I did. My wife doesn’t like to get up early in the morning, so I had my daughter from 6:30, 7, whenever time she woke up until noon. That was our agreement, and so I was kind of like the homeschooling person. It made me really appreciate teachers in the job they do. Good God. That was hard for me. I mean, like I said, I love my kids with all my heart, but I’m not good for hours at a time.
I could never. My kids are in their 20s, thank God.
Yeah, I’m good for a few minutes at a time, and I like asking some questions, getting some answers. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like hearing my children laughing in the distance. That’s a beautiful sound to me.
But actually having to engage with them, it’s tough. It’s real hard for me. It’s hard for me to engage with adults, with real people, let alone little children. So it was…
Yeah, you became an art teacher – because if you guys go see Bob on tour, please take notice of his jewelry, which is a necklace that his daughter made him in the pandemic. It’s a lovely thing. Actually, you’re wearing it in your streaming concerts, too, I noticed during the pandemic.
Well, ever since we made it, I haven’t taken it off, and I figured eventually, it would fall apart. It just hasn’t fallen apart yet in the last year and a half. But I find that it’s easier to do art projects than it is to actually just have a conversation or something. So I did try to figure out some stuff we could do together to get to the noon deadline where I could then do my own thing.
But you’re still doing your painting and your poetry and actually – let people know where they can find your podcast.
So, I have a podcast called I’m OK You’re OK, I’m Not OK You’re Not OK that I do with a very good friend of mine, Clint Wells, which I am very proud of that podcast. We talk about really just the human experience, mainly, but we joke around, have a good time.
And then I also have another podcast that’s kind of linked into my Patreon. It’s called The Song Club, and basically, what I do is, I have a Patreon. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s sort of a monthly subscription service, and what I do is I release eight of these demo songs that I’ve written every month, and I’ve been doing that now for about three and a half years.Because I write the songs every week, and I’ve been doing that for 20 years.
So, I have thousands of songs on my computer that nobody will ever hear, and so I thought this would be a great way to let my fans have some of this material and get it out to the public, and so I have a podcast where I talk about those songs, writing those songs, and just whatever else comes into my head, and that’s called The Song Club.
And you’re back to doing live performances again. So, you’ve got a residency at The Saxon Pub on Monday nights, a longtime residency in Austin. If you’re lucky enough to live there, you can go check Bob out. I’m sure you know that because Bob’s a living legend in Austin.
Does it feel different being back with a live crowd having had the reset?
Yes, it does. After taking all that time off, it really does make you appreciate playing live.
For the year that we had, I mean, it was literally a year where I didn’t play a live gig. I was doing live streams from my studio at home once a week to kind of in lieu of doing that Saxon Pub residency, and it kind of just gave my life a little bit of structure, thank God.
But once I got back out and actually started playing live again, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to do it. Now, I had lost perspective as to even what I was doing when I was playing live, because I was playing so many shows a year, it was just kind of like, you’re just going, you’re playing the same song to different people, but you’re like, “What am I doing? What does this even mean? Like, why are people even here?” And then when you haven’t done it for a while, you understand kind of what it is because it’s new to you again.
And there is something really kind of wonderful and magical. I don’t know, it’s like seeing a stand-up comedian or watching a play or you’re being told a story and it’s making you feel all these things and you’re together with people and I don’t know, it’s something I think we need as human beings. We need to get together and share experiences. I don’t know why.
It’s that collective effervescence. It’s that idea of seeing people you don’t know around you enjoying the same thing that you do and like bouncing that energy off each other and making it bigger in the process.
Yeah, there’s something about it that’s very comforting, and it’s got to come from our evolution. At one point, I mean… imagine if you’re alone 50,000 or 100,000 years ago, you probably weren’t going to have a very good go of it. And I think at a certain point if you got enough people together, if you got a group of like 40 or 50 people together, you might be able to make it, you might be able to defend yourself against other groups of 40 or 50 people, you might be able to collect enough firewood. You know what I mean?
Yeah, there’s strength in numbers, to a certain level.
Yeah, there’s something in our heads, something in our evolution that when we get together with groups of people, it’s comforting. And I think the pandemic was really hard, not being able to do that. I think it probably tapped into something in our subconscious where we really needed it, and because we weren’t getting it…
I know, for me, I have a lot of anxiety. There was a lot of fear, and usually, when you have a lot of anxiety and fear, I mean, it does manifest as anxiety. But fear usually manifests itself as anger. So, you just walk around and run into somebody, and everybody’s just mad, and you’re like, “Why is everybody so mad? “It’s because everybody’s so scared, because we’re not doing these things that comfort us.
Like getting together in groups, like even going to eat. You go to eat dinner, and you’re surrounded by people, and there’s something about that that makes you feel safer, I don’t know.
Everybody get your vaccine so we can all let go of the anger. Please go get your vaccine.
Well, so I did these backyard concerts, and how lovely were those? Those were so fun.
I mean. I will say that was my best day of the summer. I’m going to get a little teary. There was something so magical about seeing this – because there’s only 30 people. I knew 29 of them. Just being there with my friends and seeing them be happy and having Bob Schneider – Bob Fucking Schneider – playing in the backyard…That was my best day this summer. And it had been a long time since I had a best day.
And then the dog jumped put up on her hind legs and ate the hors d’oeuvres and Bob had to stop the show and say, “Someone might want to get that dog because she’s going to town on that food.”
That wasn’t my dog, by the way. That was Kerryn’s dog.
That was like a Marmaduke dog. That dog was getting busy on that table.
Oh my god. Alright, so I could talk to you for two more hours. But I’m guessing you’re busy. You probably have an art class to conduct.
Actually, let me ask you first, where’s the best place for people to go to find out about your upcoming performances, check out your music, check out your art, check out your Merch? Because actually I said to Maddy yesterday, “I’m finally going to get myself one of those FAYM hoodies. It’s been years that I’ve wanted one, this might be the week to do it.”
Well, if you go to bobschneider.com it has everything that you need to know. You can follow me on Instagram, bob_schneider_music or I don’t know. But if you just go to bobschneider.com it’s all there.
And you’ll find the Patreon with the Song Club so you can get access to those unreleased songs too. So check it out.
Last question, Bob, what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?
That is a good question. When people ask me about the music business, I always tell them, “Do anything else. Not that.” It’s so difficult to make a living doing it.
But I will say, I think the most important thing to do, and I think this is true with any creative endeavor, whether it’s writing a book, writing a play, making a movie, building a coffee table, whatever it is that you’re doing, I think it’s really important that you are thinking about satisfying one person and one person only. And that’s Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Oh I thought you’d say Bob Schneider.
I’m the ruler of the world.
“What would the ruler of the world want in this exact situation?”
Just make sure that I like it. Otherwise, you’re going in the trash heap.
Bob will strangle you with his bare hands.
No, I think that you should only do it, not for fame or fortune or for any other reason other than… no, I take back everything I just said, and I will tell you this thing that this very strange billionaire told me when I was very young, and I don’t think I’ve heeded it.
How many billionaires were you hanging out with when you were young?
I don’t know. When you’re young and good looking, you meet billionaires all the time.
But I was in Houston, Texas and this billionaire who’s real intense. Real intense. I’m sure he’s been canceled at some point for who knows what. But he was friends with a friend of mine, and he came up to me and he just grabbed my hand. I’d never met the guy, and he was holding my hand like to say hi, shake your hand, and just looked at me real intensely, and he said, “You’ve got to ask yourself one question. What would you do with your life if you could not fail?”
Had he read that off a mug at Spencer Gifts? I mean, he didn’t make that up. I’m going to tell you that.
Well, I had never heard it before, and I was like, “That’s a good question.”
Now, I don’t think I did that for many years, but I did do that at a certain point. When I was around 30 years old, I made Lonelyland and I made that record with the sole purpose of doing something that I would like. I wasn’t making it for a record company, I wasn’t making for an audience, I was just making it for me. I wanted to make something that I found interesting, and that I was proud of, and that’s all. I only made it for me, and I think it’s the most successful thing I’ve done to date.
And I do think a lot of people do stuff for money, and they make excuses for why they’re not doing the thing that they want to do. “Well, I have to do it. But once I make a certain amount of money, then I’m going to stop doing this thing, and I’m going to do the thing I really want to do.”
I do think the other question besides what would you do if you couldn’t fail, the question I asked myself is, “If you had all the money in the world, what would you do?”
And if I had all the money in the world, I would do exactly what I’m doing, I would just pay my employees more, I would pay the guys that I work with more, I would travel in greater luxury. But I would still do exactly what I’m doing. I love what I do, and so I think that’s what you need to do. Everybody knows what they want to do. So, just figure out what you want to do, what you love to do, and then just do that.
And you might not make any money. I mean, I’ve had times in my life, where I had like $0.11, and no way of making any money. Like there was no money coming in and I had $0.11. There have been times in my life where I’ve drank flour mixed with water, because I had nothing else to eat, and there were years where I was living in abject poverty, but I was doing what I love. So, I think that is the thing. Just ask yourself, what is it that I really love? What is it that I really want to do? And then do that.
Most people won’t. Most people are like, “Well, I’ve got to make that mortgage payment, my kids are in school.” Whatever it is, yeah, there’s a million excuses.
And you have this limited amount of time on the planet.
That’s what I think is cool about being at midlife, Bob, because I think you have a much more concrete sense of your mortality, and you realize you only have X number of years to do the thing that you love to do. So, even if this is not a younger person listening to this advice, hopefully, the people who are tuned in because they are in midlife, just remember, like, you don’t have that much time to dick around. If you want to do something, today’s the day.
Right. But you might have to sell your house, you might have to live in a tiny apartment, I don’t know. That’s the other thing, too.
But there’s all kinds of tradeoffs you can make, right? I mean, you might have to do that, but maybe just sign up for a class for the thing that you want. You don’t have to throw everything in the garbage heap all at once. Give it a try. At least take one step.
I know you do. I’m trying to give the other view of it. “Or start a podcast!”
My cousin is a very successful anesthesiologist. He’s a brilliant guy, he’s my age, he’s in his mid-50s, but he loves art and he’s like, “I just want to quit all this doctor BS and just do art.” I’m like, “Well, do it.”
“Now, you won’t be able to just travel anywhere you want in the world, you won’t have any money, you’re not going to be making any money, but do art.” And he’s like, “Maybe I’ll do it on the weekends.”
Well, but if he starts on the weekend, then maybe at some point he has grown the flame, the interest, the passion enough that he’s ready to make the leap. I’m just saying there’s many points on this spectrum between Bob’s and mine. Okay? Choose the one that feels right for you.
Hey, at the end of the day, I really don’t know if any of it matters. I think the only thing that truly matters is finding something besides yourself to love, and giving… Alright, I’m going to take everything back.
If I have to go in and edit this, I don’t even know where to…
No, don’t edit any of it at, please, for God’s sake.
But I will say this, the only thing that truly makes me happy is loving. Period.
Not being loved. I’ve been loved, my parents loved me, my kids love me, my fans love me. None of that matters. I say it matters, but it truly doesn’t. The only thing that matters is me loving. Now, it’s really easy for me to love my kids, for whatever reason. I love them more than I love myself. It’s harder for me to love people. But the more people I can love – I think we had this conversation…
Well, I was just going to ask. I didn’t want to bring it up unless you did. But you told me something really interesting that I’ve thought a lot about since after that show, about how you manifest that for people who are very hard to love. Would you talk about what you do there? Because I’ve been trying to do it.
So for years, and I learned this in AA, but for years, if I have a problem with somebody, if there’s somebody I really dislike, that’s really causing me a lot of frustration, for whatever reason, I include them in my prayers.
Now, even just saying the word prayers, people are going to be like, “Oh.” They’re going to say whatever. Now, I only pray because I was told to do so in AA, and I’ve done it, and I don’t know, I get results from it. I don’t know why, but probably some kind of subconscious thing or whatever.
But what I’ve found in the past is when I first got sober, I really hated this one guy, because I was dating a girl and he swooped in, took her, and they ended up getting married. And I would just despise this guy. Like, every time I’d think about him, I was like, “Oh, I hate that guy, I hate that guy.” And then I was told, “You need to put that guy in your prayers every day and say, ‘Oh, I hope something wonderful happens for him today.’”
And so I would do it. So every day, even though I hated the guy I’d be like, “Alright. I hope something wonderful happens for him today.”
And I would say it every day, and after about a week or two of it, I ran into that guy, and I never ran into him ever back in those days, and when I ran into him, I didn’t really have any animosity towards him. I was just like, “Hey, what’s up?” and he was like, “Hey, what’s up?”
And since then, I’ve become pretty good friends with him, and I really like him. And all of that anger that I had towards him, it wasn’t hurting him. It wasn’t doing anything to him, it was only hurting myself. It was disallowing me from feeling, I don’t know, the sunlight of the soul, or whatever you want to call it, I don’t know. But as soon as I was able to channel that into good feelings towards him, I immediately felt some relief. I just felt better, and so my goal always is if there’s somebody that I don’t like, I put them in my prayers.
And there’s somebody that you and me both have a really hard time with and that’s what we talked about. No need to mention the person’s name.
But people are so bent out of shape about this guy, and I’m like, “Well, I’ve been putting this guy in my prayers for like years now,” a
