Derrick Whibley - In Studio

Derrick Whibley hangs in studio with The Woody Show

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
The universe has a way of leadingyou to where you're supposed to be the
moment you're supposed to be there.The Woody Show. All right, welcome
back. We are the Woodies Show, and we are your hosts for Alter
Ego, which is coming up inJanuary. And there's a lot of great
bands that are on this lineup.I would like me to tell you about

(00:24):
some of the bands who are goingto be there, please. Yeah,
all right. Well you've got Paramore, you got the nineteen seventy five,
you got the Black keyth you gotthirty seconds to Mars Bush, you got
Yellow Card, Lovely the band Raby'snew favorite band, Last Dinner Party.
We're talking about them. And there'sanother band that's on this lineup. They're
named some forty one. You guyshave heard of them. Yes, Well,

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the lead singer of that band he'shere. Yeah, in fact,
he's in studio right now. Right'sDerek from some point where, Thank you,
thank you. I was trying tothink of ways to, you know,
bring the intro really to an excitement, like a peak of like,
oh my god, yeah that wascrazy, dude. You look great,
thank you. Yeah, you lookyou look very healthy. I feel you

(01:06):
feel good, you feel great?Yeah, well, thank you for being
here, thank you for playing AlterEgo. Yeah, thanks for having us
crazy, crazy, great lineup.Yeah, it's gonna be cool. Yeah.
I mean I know that it maynot be a big deal to bands
when you get on some of thesefestival like you guys just played when we
were young. I think it is. I mean it is for us.
Yeah, yeah, it was excitedto play. Yeah. It's like if
I'm in a group of like abunch of other radio people, like it's
like, okay, cool, it'sabout a bunch of other people do what

(01:29):
you do and you see some peopleyou know and friends like that. But
for the fans, man, thisis really cool that we get all you
guys all on the same h onthe same stage. But thank you for
doing that. A couple things realquick. The new album is gonna be
out early next year, two partalbum, Heaven and Hell Yes, which
we'll talk about here in a minute. But the bigger story obviously is about
how And for the longest time Ikept calling it like you're gonna go on

(01:51):
this and definite hiatus, but it'sa disbanding. That's the word I keep
seeing disbanding. So this is it? Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's
not a hiatus, it just Yeah, I got to a point where I
felt like for myself, I mean, I've been in SPAN since I was
fifteen tenth grade, and that's allI've ever done. That's all I ever
thought about. Every single day Iwake up some forty one is the only
thing I think about and work onevery day all day. And it just

(02:14):
got to a point where I'm like, is that all I got? Can
I think of something else? Like, I'd rather try something than just kind
of do the same old thing,especially if I feel like, you know,
I love the work and I'm excitedabout the band, But if that
excitement starts to wane in a coupleof years, I don't want to like
be dragging the band out there notgiving it one hundred and ten percent.

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Yeah, So is it about music? Like are you kind of like you
still want to do something with musicor do you want to change up all
day? Like yeah, I meanI love music, Yeah, but I
don't I don't know what it isI want to do yet because I can't
think of anything else. Life crisis. It's very possible, right because so
many people like you got all thesebands out there. Man, they're grinded

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and whatever, and they would youknow, they're thinking about, oh my
god, if I'm in that position, if I'm a band of successful,
playing big venues, all these hitsthat people know and love like some forty
one, Like, man, whywould you ever give that up? But
at the same time, it's Ithink it's really cool that you can get
to that place. Is it truethat you've never been on a vacation?
Yeah? Ever no, I meanI grew up with a single teenage mother

(03:17):
on welfare, so yeah, butyou didn't take vacations really, But no.
With the band, I mean,we just it's just we're always working,
right. It's like when the tourends, that usually means that's the
next day I start writing songs forthe next record, and then that takes
me in a week. No,I usually start right away. I mean
there's never a time, especially inthe early days. Well, no,

(03:38):
wonder he's ready to retire, rightWhat I'm saying like, yeah, I
mean been married, this is yoursecond marriage now, like no honeymoon even
that, there's like, wow,how'd you get away with that? I
don't think I've been able to pullthat off. Every year. My wife
and I say we're going to takethe honeymoon this summer, and it just
never happens. What does it feellike work? Because you've been in the
band since you were about fifteen,Yeah, and never really had a nine

(04:00):
to five or an office job orsomething like that. So does it ever
feel like work to you? Itdoesn't feel like a job, but it
feels like a lot of work.Okay, But I love the work.
You know. What's your favorite part? Being on stage? Yeah? Like
for me, like doing the showis the most Yeah. Yeah, the
preparation, which I guess for youwould be the I mean, songwriting has
got to be as a musician,that's got to be fun a lot.
I've never cared for writing songs.I like having the songs once I've written

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them. Yeah, but the processhas never been that enjoyable to me.
I mean maybe in the past fewyears, I've probably found a better way
to get around it. In theearly days, like I said, we
were always just putting. We putour first four records out of four years,
so there's never any time there's alwaysso much pressure. It was just
a small window of time that Iwas given to write songs for another record.
Yeah. Now I don't really dothat schedule anymore. I can't.

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I write when I feel like it, rather than here's your six week block
and we need a record done.Derek Quibbley from Some forty one is here.
They're playing an alter ego of twopart album. It's coming out next
year. It's called Heaven and Hell'stell us a little bit about that.
So know going into this that getsplanned this is going to be your final
I didn't know that. You didn't. No, No, that came after
the album was finished, So youhated it that much, hated the process

(05:10):
that much, like you know whatfor the over this. I actually felt
like once this record was finished,I sat back and listened to and I
thought I was really proud of it, and I thought this might be the
best idea and the best record we'veever made, because it's a double record,
Heaven and Hell. But the Heavenside is ten songs of like old
schools sort of pop punk some fortyone s now and the Hell side is
sort of the last fifteen sixteen yearsof Some forty one. It's been much

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heavier, so and that's another tensongs and I don't sit in every record
that comes I say this is ourbest record. But when I listened to
this one, I was like,I really believe this is the best thing
we've ever done. And I wasalready having thoughts of like how long do
I want to do this? Isthere something else I'd like to do?
And then it just kind of hitme of like this should be the last
record and let's just do one lasttour, And then I got to think

(05:55):
about focusing some energy somewhere else.What are you going to do? I
mean, you want to do somethingelse? But now are you gonna take
that time? Are you gonna dothat honeymoon? Are you gonna like,
are you gonna try The first thingI'm gonna have to do, whether I
want to or not, is takemy wife on a honeymoon. Take yeah,
first vacation. Dude, you're gonnaI want to. Definitely you're gonna
love it, man. But doyou have I mean outside of of music.

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Because I'm a person, I strugglewith this question. People go,
what are your hobbies? I mean, do you have other interests or things
that you get in Because I'm Ican relate to you when you say that
you think you're thinking about that band, You're thinking about some forty one all
time. I'm always thinking about thisstupid show, and it just consumes me
and I become a very one dimensionalperson where I don't have these hobbies.
I think about, Man, whatwould I do if all of a sudden

(06:36):
this was gone? What would Ido? Do you have hobbies? Do
you like golfing? Like? Whatdo you like? What are you gonna
do with all the time? No, I'm the same as you. I
I all I think about is this, and I feel like I'm very one
dimensional and I don't know what elseI would do. I don't have any
other hobbies, but I mean,you know, I have creative interests,
like I'll watch movies or a TVshow and think I could have written something

(07:00):
than that, or I could writesomething maybe that could be as good as
that. So I don't know ifthat's what I'll do, but I have
had ideas for some of those kindsof things. I'd really like to go
on in a solo acoustic tour.That's probably the easiest and most obvious thing
to do next, just because I'vealways wanted to do it and I've never
done it. I'd like to dothat first maybe, But I don't know.

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I can't really decide what I'd liketo do until I just burn the
whole thing down and figure out whatI'm going to build next. Think I'm
thinking about taking flying lessons maybe orsomething. This is a like a bowling
or something like a real general question. Artists in the past that have gone
solo and then they go on theroad and then they hire a band to
play with them, why did yougo solo? I've never understood that.

(07:47):
Well, that's probably because of youknow, band relationships or not. Okay,
some bands are hard to be in. I mean, fortunately for us,
we were all great friends. Ifwe started this band, you know,
year is after we already went toschool together. We all knew each
other and we are still great friendsand everything's really great between us, which
I think was a shock to therest of the band. When I brought

(08:09):
this up to them, it wasa bit of a punchised they were just
blindsided because everything's going great. Youknow, every album and every tour we
do, it always just gets bigger. The venues get bigger, but it
just kind of grows. So theywere shocked, for sure. Are they
okay with it now. I mean, have they embraced the idea and like
they're kind of thinking about like whatthey want to do or things that they

(08:31):
want to get involved with. Idon't know. You don't know. It's
like people say, like, oh, what's Greg doing this way? Like
I don't know when it's all wrappedup, do you want to stay home?
Because you've probably been around the world. But I have friends that are
in bands and they say when theyare on tour, they never really get
to experience or anything. It's likea business. Is there just destinations that

(08:54):
you want to go to or doyou just want to be home? I
can't even count how many times havebeen to Europe, but I would love
to go to your on vacation.He's never got to see anything and just
like go around and go to coolrestaurants and see cool architecture and just yeah,
oh that's right. I did read. You're really an architecture. Yeah,
see, maybe you could take someappreciate it. I don't have a
hobby with it, Yeah, Iknow, but like this could be something

(09:15):
like you know, like there's allkinds of classes that you could take or
whatever you can learn about architecture.You can start like designing stuff, you
know what I mean. I mean, think about Little John. He's got
an hg TV show, Little John. What He's got an HG TV show
And it's just something he likes onthe side. And that kind of came
from an offshoot of you know,putting together a production for a show and

(09:37):
designing, uh you know, likeVanilla Ice Project. But yeah, like
maybe you can do something with architecture. It's possible. Do you like HG
TV be watching that stuff? Soyou're more of like the fancy architecture you're
not into like, uh, areyou handy? Like can you fixed out?

(09:58):
No? You can't know? Yeah, I wish I was too.
No, I'm the worst show.All right, Well the back we got
the Woody show. Derek from someforty one is here. Yeah, yeah,
and congratulations. Just got to callthe ninety eight on the sold out

(10:18):
tickets for Alter Ego and it's meetand greet week. You probably even realized
that, yeah, you know whatthe the prizes you win tickets for Alter
Ego today and they also get togo backstage and meet you guys. I
did hear that? You hear aboutit? Okay? All right? Right,
do you agree or like, yeah, they tell me what you're doing.

(10:41):
Probably not. At this point youprobably have to say yeah, we're
yeah, we're meet and fans.Yeah, yeah, we get asked.
Yeah. Are people typically cool orthe awkward and awkward and weird? Like
do you consider yourself to be likea like a social guy, like more
of like whether introverted or I'm probablymore introverted introverted I normally yeah, but

(11:01):
which is odd being you know,the front man, But I think that's
usually how it goes. Yeah,you know most singers are introverted. Yeah,
most comedians are like sad. Theysave it from the stage. It's
so weird that you wouldn't think becauseall, here's this happy, funny person
in there, you know. Idon't know if he like save it.
I think it's once you get upthere in the music. It's the music

(11:24):
brings it out of you. Yeah, it is fame trippy, it's like
tripped out. I don't know,I never really think about it really like
that. I guess is there likeany kind of like weird can you remember
any kind of in particular like reallyover the top kind of like weird interaction
you had with there's some weird stuff. I know when when I was married

(11:46):
to Avril, she had some reallyweird fans and there was some you know,
she had a lot of stalkers thatwhen I was involved, have to
kick any asses. No, butthere was like actually guys who were like,
you know, sending us death threatsand stuff like really there's one guy
in particular that was kind of youknow, the FBI got involved. It
was like a more serious so youknow that's kind of weird. Yeah yeah,

(12:07):
oh yeah, that stuff. That'sa trip. Yeah, don't understand
like if you like somebody that youwant to hurt them or they want to
because I was with Yeah, yeah, but even you hear you hear about
those peoples kind of trippy, yeahquestion, yes, yes, yeah yeah.
So where are you live in thesedays? Where you spend the most
of your time? Las Vegas?Oh, in Vegas. So many people

(12:30):
have made the trip. Yeah,the relocation to Vegas. Yeah, I
was in LA for about eighteen years. Yeah, so what tell us why
we should all move? I'll getout of here. It was more of
just almost kind of the same thingof like with the band for me,
of like wanting to try something different. Yeah, the same thing over and
over again. I maybe it's becauseI've been touring for so long and things

(12:50):
are just different all the time,and like how it was life? How
was life different in Vegas from youknow, from here. There's certain things
that are are very similar, butthe things that are different are awesome.
Like there's zero traffic, right,they think they have traffic. Yeah,
you talk to anybody, it's like, oh my god, there's nothing.
Yeah, you can't call that traffic. Yeah. And then also just like
I think the ease of everything,everything's easy. Yeah, you can get

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to a parking park, parking,real estate's easier. Everything's easy. Yeah.
Everything's anything that you miss in particularabout so Cal, I mean it's
a lot of the same. I'mhere all the time. You No,
I don't miss anything because I kindof still back and forth. Yeah that
makes sense. Yeah, Like anyone restaurant on me that in and outs
everywhere where they I don't know ifyou're vegan or anything like that, but

(13:33):
uh, usually people have that onerestaurant. Of course, restaurants whenever you
get back. I went to,you know, one of my favorite restaurants
last night, which one I'm notgoing to say, small hole in the
wall kind of. It's sushi sushi. There's enough places you guys don't need
this one. Yeah, I tellyou what, man, it would it

(13:56):
would be hard to sway me offmy favorite sushi place, which is Kawami
Studio City. It's on Ventura,I know that one. Yeah, it's
there's like a Trader Joe's right downthe street there kind of by what's the
what's name of that bar that wego to every once in a while,
the the not the one of crap. But I think I bet the sushi
place is the same one I goto. That's my favorite because you wouldn't
even know it's there if you wantto Laurel Tavern, That's what I'm thinking.

(14:18):
Oh okay, yeah, yeah,what's yours? I'm not going to
say because it might be Derek,and I'm going to be respectful of our
guy. All right, all right, Well, you guys can whisper about
it when we know, when wewhen we get off the air and talk
off. Yeah, we'll keep listeningbecause all day today you're winning sold out
Alter Ego tickets so you can gosee Derek and some forty one and all

(14:39):
those great bands and go backstage andhave a very nice, cordial, non
creepy, weird, non weird conversationwith the guys from some forty one.
They can invite all kinds of negativedemonic influences if you're in the know about
dems and their influence. Yeah,so what do you show? We are
back? It is the Woody Show. Derek from some forty one is here.

(15:03):
Yeah, Some forty one of courseon the lineup for Alter Ego,
along with Paramore, the nineteen seventyfive, the Black Keys, thirty Seconds
to Mars Bush, Yellow Card,Love of the Band, The Last Dinner
Party. They're all gonna be there. Some forty one disbanding after this new
album, and there the tour that'sgonna next year. It's gonna be a
full year international, go kind ofeverywhere, right, full tour. Yeah,

(15:26):
go go all out. And theneventually on a vacation, you show
us all these tour stops, likeMenace is kind of saying, before the
break, use these tour stops.Start making lists of places you want to
go and revisit. You've already gota list recreational prot what of all this
stuff? Because you, you know, talking about you've been in this band
since you were fifteen. You sent, like, what's been the career highlights
so far? Is there one particularmoment. There's no one moment. I

(15:46):
think, looking especially since you knowwe're coming to the end of it,
I think I just looked back atthe whole thing of the thing. I'm
happy the most about it is thatit has been up and down. It's
been all over the place. Careerrise. Everyone watches everything, everything,
the whole thing go fast or slow? It goes fast. Yeah. I
think that's the one thing you realize, especially if you talk to older people,

(16:07):
how quickly just life goes fast.Was winning a Kerrang Award a highlight?
And what is a Krang Award?Yeah? Krang is a magazine in
the UK. Oh okay, givenheard that, Greg, and so I
have no it's a rock mage comeon. But it's also like a radio
station TV show. You know,it's pretty big. Oh, that's pretty
cool. And then this is nota question. It's just I promised I

(16:29):
would uh tell you something. Ihave a friend who's like my little sister.
She said, when you release landMines, it tickled her little punk
rock heart and she said, thankyou for that. Oh cool? And
then how long is this tour gonnalast? She wants to know. I
think it's probably gonna be at leastprobably a year. Okay, so it's
not like you'll be gone. Yeah, No, We're going to do the

(16:49):
whole worldwide tour and that takes alittle while. Awesome. I did remember
something because I thought about like thewhole like what would I do if I
wasn't working? I was asking Derek, like, all right, so once
this is all wrapped up and youknow, some forty one is now done,
you're thinking about the next thing.Are you just going to be kind
of like hanging golf and watching TVor what like retired people do. But
you know, he's forty three,you know, I'm forty seven. I

(17:11):
was reading about Jack Nicholson and whyhe doesn't do movie stuff anymore. It's
not that people don't want him inmovies or whatever, and he says he
just really enjoys sitting under a treeand reading a book. Yeah, but
he is eighty right, Yeah,but he's like, you know, I
want to eat the food I wantto eat. I just want to like

(17:32):
I think it's just like, yeah, yeah, he could tell he's getting
some really good thows. He atethe tree. Yea hey, I mean,
do you do you mind if Iif I ask about the the health
struggle that you have, because Ithink it's just such a relatable thing for
so many people. I mean,and you've been you've been very open about
it. I just don't know whichone. I just don't know if you're

(17:53):
just really, you know, tiredof talking about it. But I mean,
uh, so many people go throughthese you know, these health crists.
This season back in September, you'rein the hospital for pneumonia, and
then there was also like something withyour kidneys, like you collapsed right,
like, so like what all wasgoing on? Was this triggered by you
know, just your lifestyle thing orlike this what's changed? I know,

(18:15):
like you've you've gone sober, soyeah yeah, and that's all together so
there's no wed no drinking of anykind and then a healthier lifestyle. Yeah
yeah. So just in generals,So what what other kind of things?
Like where were you? What wasgoing on? And you know, how
did you get to this point whereat now? Because again you look awesome,
man, you look very happy,healthy, You're looking good, cool,

(18:36):
thank you well. I mean thoseare two separate health things. I
mean, back in twenty fourteen,you know, I had liver and kidney
failure from just alcohol, you know, from drinking too much for too long.
And that was a long I mean, that was pretty serious. I
was in the hospital for quite awhile. Yeah, I remember reading stuff
about that at that time. Yeah, and that took a long time to
recover from that, took about ayear and a half. Yeah, But

(18:57):
like the healthier lifestyle thing, like, were you able to like going through
that and these things happening to yourbody? Like, was that like you
just you stopped immediately when I wentto the hospital, I barely remember it
because I was drunk, you know, and I passed out. Everything just
shut down, and I was ina coma for about a week. So
when I got out of the coma, I hadn't had any alcohol in my

(19:18):
system for over a week at thatpoint, and as soon as I came
to I was just like, oh, thank God, like I'm sort of
done. I didn't have to gothrough all the withdrawals or like trying to
quit. It was just gone outof my system. So what do you
wake up from a coma? Like, I mean, do you realize that
people have to say, dude,you were in a coma? Yeah,
yeah, I had no idea.I didn't know. Okay, yeah,
so you don't. You don't rememberanything, you didn't see anything, you
didn't no light, darkness, silence. Yeah. Now, Greg and I

(19:41):
we had this great idea. Yeah, it's called coma side Como sides for
fat people like me. Yeah,because we're overweight and we would like to
be put into a coma and thenthey can let wake us up when we
hit our goal away. Yeah.Yeah, what do you think of that
idea? Someone? I would yourecommend it? Will you back us?
Yeah? We need investors. Canwe say that you tried koma size?

(20:03):
Because you again, like you're alwaysyou've always been like a like a skinny
in shape guy. I don't know. I think I'm done with comas,
all right, all right, allright, I didn't know if we moved
to take talkie into them. Allright. So I have a couple are
they true questions? You know,it's like you read stuff, you hear
stuff. Sure, is it truethat your biggest regret is finishing high school?
You'll hear people say, like,my biggest regret is I didn't finish

(20:26):
high school, or I didn't goto college. I knew really early on
that I didn't. I wasn't goingto use high school anything that I was
in high school. I knew Iwanted to be in a band, like
I said, I was in fortyone back then. But I don't regret
going through it. It made mymom happy, and that was really the
only reason I stayed. And nobodywas like fortunate about college or trying to
get you to go to college.My mom wanted me to. I mean,

(20:48):
my mom struggled a lot because shedropped out of high school when she
had me, and she had togo back when she was like twenty seven
twenty eight and then go to collegeand it was hard for so she really
wanted me to go. And butby the time I was getting out of
high school, we already had interestfrom labels, Like it was already looking
like we were going to get signed. So maybe you might not like this.

(21:08):
Is it true that you used tobe a clown? Yeah, I
had a job as a clown whenI was thirteen. The yeah, terrifying
clown. No, it was areally embarrassing clown flower shop or something.
The flower shop. I had tohold a sign that roses out on the
street. Wow, did you haveto spend the sign? Yeah? That

(21:29):
spinner guys, Some of those guysare really good. I was not that
I used the playl Yeah. Likeone of the jobs that you had before
you uh, I mean you werefifteen when you had the band, but
I mean before you could do theband full time. I worked at a
gas station in like the little Kiosk, right, I did all the typical
things, you know, a paper. Did you ever work a McDonald's No,

(21:52):
Okay, we just had something theother day about one in eight people
have worked at some point worked ata McDonald's. I was thinking about it,
and my mom said, now youcan get a better job somewhere else,
something else. You just didn't wantme to do it. You can
tell my mom's boy. At thispoint, I guess, hey, same
thing. You know what you tellthat story about your mom, And I
have so much respect for single mothers, you know, just based on my

(22:14):
own experience. My mom, youngmom had me when you know, she
was just turning eighteen, and youknow, single for a long time,
going through school, working full time, going to school full time. And
so I got out of that samekind of conversation about like even though I
knew radio is what I wanted todo about like how you had to go
to college, And I think youknow, we all want that as as
parents. I can tell you,like I sit there, my kids are

(22:36):
fourteen eleven, like you you wantfor them. You want them to be
independent, to start there, andthen obviously to be successful and happy in
that whole thing. So if you'vegone through that struggle, I know that
we didn't like we weren't living ina mansion or anything, but like I
didn't realize just how poor we were. Yeah, so I respect thought start
hitting those ages that your mom was. So I don't even know your mom,

(22:57):
but I love your mom. Yeah. You performed at the When We're
Young festival last month? Was itcool because every every artist is there?
Yeah? Was there any kind oflike reunion that happened there? It felt
like a big family reunion. Imean we didn't really get it was like
one band or whatever that you justhadn't seen in ten years or I mean
we're really good friends with a lotof those bands. But it was great

(23:18):
to see good Charlotte. You know, we've we started really early with those
guys. Yeah, and same withBowling for Soup and they're still great.
Man like good Charlotte was great.Yeah. I mean we didn't get to
see anybody perform really yeah, butwe saw everybody you know backstage. I
got to see you perform and youdid a good job. Job, really
waited a great b plus. No, youled it. It was good.

(23:44):
Well, so do we know anyI mean they keep saying early next year
for the album. Do you havea date? There's no date yet,
no date yet? What like whatdetermines that? Yeah, I've always wondered,
like the album's ready, right,that's a record company thing. And
do I mean I did my part, it's finished. Yeah, well it's
called Heaven in Hell released a twobe determined tour forthcoming. I mean,

(24:07):
you know, we talked about acouple of little things here, like when
we were young, and of coursethe big show that we're involved with Alter
Ego some forty one on that billalong with Paramore, the nineteen seventy five
Black Keys, thirty Seconds to Marsand Bush and Yellow Card, Love of
the Band, the Last Dinner Party, and we thank you again for doing
that and appreciate you coming in.Good luck with your retirement from some one

(24:32):
in to let us know what you'redoing. Yeah, dude, there's something,
honestly, there's something really exciting aboutthat. I mean, I know,
it's not a situation where it's like, man, I got to find
something next, or I'm not goingto eat or I'm not going to keep
a roof over my head. Soyou're in a very fortunate, very blessed
situation that way. But yeah,just to have that whole world opened up
to you where you can really justkind of see where the wind takes you.
Yeah, maybe it takes me nowhere. I have no idea, right

(24:55):
and you know what, and thatwould be fine. Maybe you'll be under
the tree with Jack Nicholson. Yeah, yeah, being all boring stuff.
You never know. But Derek,thank you so much for coming by.
Well thanks you today with altering yougo Direck quickly from something forty one?
Everybody joy ye Gus the more?What the show coming up for you?
Next? Tang up sit hey more? Next The Woody Show.