Pipeman Interviews Bourbon Revival at Bourbon & Beyond 2025

0:04 Hey, you unto. Yes, that's true. For see why for you you will? This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c. Y Radio, and I'm here with Bourbon Revival. Nice Now. A lot of times at festivals I do that so I don't fuck up the pronunciation of a band name, because it's like the worst thing you could do. I think if you're in radio, I'd have a hard time being at Bourbon Beyond. To mess up the pronunciation of your bad name.

0:44 That would be bad. I should be kicked at a festival if that happens, Well. Don't feel bad if you did. We wouldn't. We wouldn't hold it against you. And has anybody ever done that? I do it. I always pronounce hard. I call ourselves Bourbon and Beyond. Sometimes since this whole thing started, every time we've talked about this festival, it's like, yeah, we're going to Bourbon and Bourbon and Revival. I think we should tell Danny he needs to rebrand and rename this Bourbon and Revival. And then you are the headliner every year from the house band. Yeah exactly. So you guys won the Battle of the Band, did I? Yes, Yes, that was Birdie told me that, Did I hear that?

1:29 Right? Yeah? It was a battle of Strings twenty twenty five. They held the contest here in Louisville, Kentucky at the Fox denn And we got into contest and pushed some stuff aside so that we can make the dates. And we were just so excited that we won. We couldn't really believe it really, but it was an experience. Nonetheless, do you believe it now or are you still kind of still kind of in all that we're here, like being backstage and the artist areas, Like it's a whole new world I've never seen. And I love that badass. And that gives people like me hope, man, because like I was thinking of starting a band and wearing a mask of a kid so that I could fool everybody and then like get popular, and then I pulled the mask off.

2:11 Haha, I'm fucking fifty eight. That'd be great. I support that. Yeah, that would be a great gimmick, man. I mean, well, you know how many bands have masks You don't even know who their artists are. They just you just know they're going to be in costume. That's what I'm saying. Listen, I've interviewed Gwar and I've interviewed them without their costumes, and I've said to them, guys, you look a lot bearing your costumes. I'm glad you do that. That might be where we would stand too, like looking better. I've always told Matt he's got a face for the radio. Though. There you go, there you go, good, good thigy good thing. We're on radio right now with no cameras right right. So, speaking of being back here, what's your experience been so far of how Danny Wimmer treats artists like you won Battle of the Bands. It's not like you're the headliner, but don't you get treated like as if.

3:05 We feel like we are walking back there and all the I mean, of course you have to have your credentials and stuff for but everyone's treated us like top notch. It's so nice. The hospitality has been great and it's really something to speak for itself. That's way cool. And let him add to it too, because oh, I just think it's a great We're treated like kings here. It's a great, great event, a great way to start awesome. Yeah, He's definitely it's number one. If we come back, though, I want a whole wing like the Goo Goo dolls have you know? Yeah, that ain't cool. I need room to kick out my legs a little bit. There you go. Now if the end he hears that, he'll probably put you like in the little golf cart. That broom closet. Okay, we'll be the Clauset act.

3:47 There you go. Okay. So I have to ask, do you play at Gibson? I do, okay, because that would be really screwed up if you didn't. Playing a Bard and wearing a Gibson hat. Yeah. Actually, I was trying to side on my outfit for today because today's Sunday. It's the Camo theme. So I got a Camo shirt. I tried to get some shoes to match the green. But I had got this hat at the Guitar Center. And I normally I love hats because I'm going bold, I guess, But night I saw the hat and I was like, oh, dude, I play at Gibson. I have a remake of an original Advanced Jumbo from nineteen thirty five play and I thought, how more suiting than is to wear that hat and play that guitar on this stage?

4:29 Today is going to be you know. What a do you pick Gibson as your guitar of choice. It's about the sound of this particular instrument. I'd acquired the instrument when I was about sixteen seventeen years old. I was at We used to have a music shop here in Louisville called First Quality Music Supplies, and they catered to a lot of the banjo They made banjos for Gibson in fact, and actually Cody plays one of their promo models before they started making their line. Nice and a friend of mine, he believed in me, and he I went in there actually just to look at instruments and hang out like musicians, do you know, just in all of all the cool stuff on the wall, and I was I had picked up this blonde Gibson and it was really cool because it had the bass like a Martin. And then my friend, we weren't really friends at the time, but he saw something in me and he was like, hey, real quick, stay right here.

5:20 Came back. He brought me this other Gibson, the one I have, and he's like yours. After four hours of messing with it and like comparing them, he was like, which one would you buy? I was like, if I was a buy one. I'd buy this Sunburst one and he was like, what's yours. Wow. I didn't know what to say. And to this day I still own that guitar. It's the best guitar I've ever owned. The reason I like it because it has two lives, like it has two personalities. It can sound like a Martin or better, and it can sound like a Gibson. Wow, that's cool. Meets both worlds, and so that that moment in time is probably why you're here today, because it's part of it. You might not have continued playing guitar had that not happened. I probably would continued, but not serious.

6:02 Yeah, if it wasn't for someone believing in me the way he did, and other folks as well. I can't name everybody, but that kind of love and support you don't come across every day. Yeah, and sometimes it's a little bit hard to process. It took me a while to really process that because I didn't know what he had given me. And I could tell you a long story about the wild goose chases. I've been on for guitars and stuff since then, and I always come back to that and find new love every time I pick it up. I'm like, oh my god, this guitar is badass. It's like when you go buy new shoes, you want to go put your old shoes back. That's right, they're fitted for you. Yeah, exactly. I want to hear everybody else's story of what brought you to this moment time today. Just a quick thing about this whole band is we're all bluegrass guys. Me Matt Cody here, we're all right out of traditional bluegrass backports picking. This guy, however, is a rock guy, plays drums and all that good stuff.

6:53 So we'll let him go first and tell you all about that. It's really a great opportunity for me to be entangled, basically intertwined. These guys came to me. Matt came to me a long time ago and when he was a youngster and we recorded his daddy, his granddad's band. I think me be infused. With these guys. It's a good mix because we've got a little bit of we've got a little bit of power on the bottom end, but it's just a unique blend of appellation and pop. And I love it and it really works. What I like is the word blend, because nowadays there's so many bands, so many artists, that the only way you really stick out is if there is a blend, Otherwise everybody's doing the same thing. There's a whole world of material that he could cover.

7:35 But with us starting to enter into the songwriting, that's real exciting. I'm real, real excited to see what the next year or two it's going to hold for us, nice big things. I'm optimistic. This would have been a family thing for me. I started around ten years old with my dad and my sisters started playing music along with my brother. They all played guitar and all that good stuff. And I took one lesson and I don't know what it was, but it was really overwhelming. So I said I don't want to do it. And I didn't do it for another year, and then I saw them growing and getting better, and I'm like, I'd like to do it again. And my dad said, well, if you're gonna do it, you're gonna do it, and you're gonna practice, And by god, I practiced every day until I was about eighteen, when I took a couple of years off because I didn't have to practice anymore. But yeah, I mean that that was pretty much my journey was all about me and dad and going to good festival.

8:28 Good for you and good for dad. Because here's my experience. I played guitar, and I was trying to experiment with see what sounds I could make, the scales. I don't want to do these fucking scales. Okay, that's boring and shit teacher wanted me to do scales like eight hours a day. And my dad said, you should probably not play guitar because you suck. So now I'm talking to you, talk. The guitar players. Cool, maybe we can help fix it. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So I started playing when I was about twelve years old. My grandpa he grew up playing guitar and bluegrass music, and I got started with that and he eventually I started playing banjo and going around jam sessions. Heck, I've been playing with Matt here since I was been thirteen years old, had little jam sessions across the state and just all the time playing music, and like I got the bug instantly, and like knew that this is what I was going to do for the rest of my life at that moment. And then I ended up going to college to Morehead State, and I was one of the first out of there with the traditional music degree.

9:37 And I like to say, I got a ba and banjo. You know, I love it. You're a bab. Yeah, there you got outwards. Yeah. And you know what, I'm. Always curious too. I love the banjo. Actually, right down the street from where I live, there's this park and they have bluegrass, like every Sunday live bluegrass. I think it's cool. Tell and it's not even normally my jam of what I might go to music. I do dig it. I always wonder like, what makes somebody pick the banjo over the guitar? Bad decisions. There's a defect teen pool, you see. It's all that is. It's not. How I got into it was my grandpa did a lot of fingerstyle guitar, and I started taking guitar lessons from a guy that mainly plays banjo, and he was like, you need to be playing banjo. And then that's where that's it just started.

10:29 That with that. So nice. Okay, So now have a really important question for you, okay, and then so tell me if you're really a good banjo player. Okay. So there's another festival next weekend in the same venue. Buy the same promoter and the headlining band happens to be next to you, guys, my favorite band in the world, and I want to know if you can play one of their songs on banjo and if you can maybe play it here at Bourbon Beyond Baby. Do you want to know who the band is? Who's the band Slayer? Slayer. We haven't tackled the Slayer songs yet, but we've got a couple of other ones. There's a long listen. I'll tell you what if you guys could record a Slayer tune using the band Joe for sure, right okay, and send it to me and send all your other music to me. I'll put all the music into the rotation in my radios.

11:24 All right, sounds good. Well, we may or may not have some more rock influenced Nirvana that I like that kind of stuff. We're not scared to go heavy. I saw actually on YouTube. I saw a video of some band and it was like a bunch of them on band Joe's that we're doing all Metallica covers. Oh yeah, I was like, that's badass. Yeah see that. I think this is the kind of the good thing about this band is we're not afraid to go tackle songs that are not traditionally bluegrass or doesn't have that. I mean, honestly, a lot of the stuff that we're trying to do, we don't want to put like the standard two a two beat bluegrass rhythm to it. We want to encapsulate what their original song was, Yeah, just with the bluegrass instrumentation. So I think that's what kind of we're going for.

12:10 With That makes a difference too. It really good and personally to me, I think banjo should be included speed metal and thrash metal because man, you gotta be good to play that banjo. And I see these guys pick like you and like, man, they're faster than Carrie King. Yeah, there's a joke in the bluegrass world that country is the bluegrass that rock is like rock is the metal. It's all the heavy instrumentation, the technicality and fast. I love that technology. That's cool. So how do people check you guys out going on the web on socials? If you have merch where they get to merch, because if you do have merch and they don't buy it, they're gonna be blocked for my show, Like nowadays we can hit block block listener.

12:56 Well that's a great question. Actually, we can go check us out Bourbon Revival band dot com. Where is merch available on the website as well? You can check out our downloads on Spotify, iTunes, I think Apple Music, all the social media platforms Instagram. TikTok and stuff. We try to tackle that. It's a lot as an artist sometimes, like yeah, we have some merch here too night. So get on plane right now and come here. I have to catch the set. Just come by to merch, that's right, But the growing thing and we're still trying to find our best foothold and all this stuff. But yeah, that's the best place to find us at Bourbon Revival band dot com. I love it, and man, I am so excited you're here at Bourbon Beyond like it.

13:40 It's a dream come true for me. It's hey for me as well. Being here today is like making it more of a reality than I thought it would be, huh. And I even love seeing, like, you know, guys in my generation that are getting that opportunity that wlve never happened when we were all younger, right right, you know, like I think about now I'll go to a Metallica show and I'll see kids like five years old, ten years old. I'm like, man, when I first started seeing Metallica in the eighties, there's no way I was going to see a band of sixty year old Yeah, it just wasn't gonna happen, right, And like that's what's cool about today. It doesn't matter anymore. Like no, no, Like my daughter she's fifteen, and she loves all that stuff from the eighties, like when from my decades when I was growing up, And it just blows my mind how much the youth has grabbed a hold of that music because they know it's good. Yeah, there's some good stuff out there, and it's pretty interesting how it's a full circle, you.

14:35 Know, totally, and we are bringing musician back to ship back and the good old type of rock music back where people actually played their instrument Yeah, I. Mean look at Ozzy Osbourne. Yeah, like the dude didn't use any ears, he'd had no auto tune and he played on a stage with cranking sound and nailed it every time. And look at the last show, like he can't even move voice. When you hear him talk, you could tell the Parkinson's was killing his voice. That I saw him every year since nineteen eighty. That was the best I've heard him sound. Since the eighties. That's awesome. Like that last show, he was through compassion, giving his heart to it all.

15:15 Oh yeah, And if you talk to the other Sabbath dudes, they're like, he was there a practice every day, like work through for this gig. Worked his ass off. He cut off all meds before the show and he's in severe pain and he was like, no, get rid of all meds. And what he probably detached him from what he wanted to feel emotionally exactly, the connection to his music and his audience. I feel like he knew this was it. Yeah, and he wanted to say goodbye to his fans and only the way Ozzie loved to do. Honestly, it's pretty amazing that he was here in our lifetime. Yeah, I mean, like, oh my god, and just loved by everybody in every genre all over the world.

16:03 Yeah, says a lot, honestly. Yeah, he's he crossed a lot of bridges for a lot of people. There it is. And now you're gonna he's handing the baton to you. It's a big baton to hold. I'm telling you, man, I don't know if we're strong enough. Yeah. Yeah, so now you have to kick ass here at Bourbon beyond him. Maybe now, like maybe go back to a green room and get a couple of chords down and maybe you could like start off the show with like a couple rifts of crazy training and the people just go fucking nuts. They probably would, they would. Or maybe you could do like Mama, I'm coming home on the banjo. That'd be cool.

16:44 That's a sweet song, right, see that. So there's all my requests. Okay, there we go. We got him, we got it. I think I've asked too much, so now I think okay and that and you guys have a final words for the listeners before we send you off to the stage to kick. Our Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for everybody that follow us the band and looking forward to what we're gonna do. We are excited to do it. So yeah, we're thrilled and honored. And if you come out to watch us, hopefully you enjoy the show. If we can gain a new fan to follow us, that would be success for us. And you guys, I know they will enjoy the show. Anybody else got final words here? Goo goo dolls give up? Some of your dressing room.

17:28 I think you should just go in there and sit out and like, oh, we thought this was our dressing room. Sorry. We're just super super happy to be here and just Bourbon and Beyond. It is just such an amazing event and we're just so proud of this band that we made it this far and we're just excited to see where else we take it so. Well, Bourbon Beyond, when last another year unless Bourbon Revival was here. Yeah, we're reviving it. There, you're reviving Bourbon Beyond for the the next generation of festivals. And thanks for doing that, and thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man. We appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man on w for CUI Radio.