Dallas Music, Baseball Dreams & a Life on Stage | YDC Ep 233 | Robert Lee Kolb

Nobody would have thought that I would be the one. Ryder, sports talk. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Oh, with a big mic. Oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. Okay. Now I get it. We got a lightning strike, boys. What happened over there, Grego? We had a little lightning strike right outside the window. Win the world series. Alright. Alright. Here's a tip for all these Americano League teams. Don't what? You said tip. Yeah. Tip. Okay. With a p. I would Keep jamming. The ticket the ticket colon, nothing but a big Gen X jerk off the safe. This is a cool night or what? I thought somebody would hear that and go, bullshit. I'm back, bitches. Are you sure? Yes. You're sure you wanna do this? Well, we've started. Can we turn back? No. Too late. We're live, baby. The ship has left the shore, you're telling me? I'm telling you. Well, alright. I guess we'll just have to muddle through somehow, will we not? Always. Hopefully. It is another episode of Little YDC. Good afternoon and good day to one and all. This is Monday, and this is the what? Fifteenth. Okay. June 15 is where we are at today. I always like to give the date even though I know I don't have to. You probably know it better than me anyway. But just in case I get cross ways with somebody on the timeline, I have something to fall back on. Did I say that right? Yeah. I think so. Did it make sense? Good enough. Are you alright, Shupi? I'm good, Shupi. How are you? I'm doing okay. You feel a little discombobulated? We're starting thirty minutes early, so A little bit. You can get your buns to the Rangers game. A little bit. Yeah. I know it's all your fault. Oh, it's his fault. But we'll mow through somehow. How about you, Ashley? You alright? Peachy. I'm peachy back here. Excellent. Well, I'm glad you're both here. Oh, thank Because today, we're going to talk to a guy who has been a part of the scene around here for damn near as long as I can remember. Yeah. Long time. Yeah. That's a hot minute for sure. It is the great Robert Lee Cobb. Yes. Alright. Now I gotta ask you straight away. This is something I never have been clear on. Do you go with Cobb, Cobb, Culb, what? It's a I go with Cobb because that was the way it was as my father taught it to me. But as the years went by, I ran into this issue. Right? The whole k o l b thing. And so I kept asking my dad. I said, what's the deal with it? We're Cobb is spelled c o b b. I said, but our name is spelled k o l b. He goes, well, no, Bobby. My name was Bobby when I was a kid. In Louisiana South Louisiana, I got a restaurant in New Orleans called Kolbs, and it's spelled k o l b s. Kolbs. I went, I just I just accepted that right. I thought, well, makes sense that the old man said it right. But then it kept happening over and over. And I said and that's all kept going back to him. I and he he told me the same thing, but he was also a master sergeant in the World War two where he was a tank commander. And he carried a fiddle on the outside of his tank, and other tankers would carry guitars outside their tank. And then when there wasn't any action, they'd pull up to four corners, and they'd break out their guitars and stuff, and they'd play. And I think it was because my old man didn't want somebody hollering from tank to tank, hey, Sergeant Culb. So I think he changed it to Sergeant Cobb, and that's how I think it went down. But he would never admit to it, and it's been it has been the bane of my marketing existence is trying to sell that too. I finally went to KOBB so it makes sense to the anybody. Yeah. Okay. I thought so because I was kinda trying to pick a spelling between, you know, l and b. It was the And turns out that it is was the It was really a pretty good It really a lot of things and it really helped if I had an alias ticket or something because they couldn't fit you know, it was KOBB and they would look up COBB with a COBB or KOLB and they'd look up COBB and they said, no, you're good to go. So it worked for me in a lot of ways, but it's also been a marketing tragedy for me. KOLB. And then there's Jeff Kolb now, who's on I see Jeff Kolb all the time going, I knew it was Cole. I knew it. But, you know, it was was my old man that got me saying that. So and my name was Bobby when I was when I was younger, when I played baseball as a kid in Louisiana. But and it was all good when I came to Texas to play music. Bobby Cobb, so I thought that was gonna be my handle. And I was getting older, and these people started calling me Bob. And I said, well, no, you can't call me Bob because my last name is Cobb. So that made my name Bob. Yeah. Then you're Bob Cobb. Yeah. No one wants that. So that's when the Robert Lee thing that's why I said, wait a minute. I'm not good with Bob Cobb. But it was the days of David Allen Code, John Johnny Lee. You know, there's so many of those guys back in the seventies with those three names on it. I'm gonna go with my given name, Robert Lee Cobb. There you go. And that's how that whole thing started. You're a Louisiana guy. Well, I'm from near Louisiana. I'm from North Louisiana, which the Cajuns call near Louisiana. Or even even they they really wanna get my goat. They call it Louisiana light because there's a big difference between Bossier and Shreveport where I grew up in Bossier. And if you go below Alexander, that's the Louisiana that people hear about, right? The South Louisiana, Boudreaux, Thibodaux, all that. And I had to wrestle and I mentioned that to you when you were raised in Bossier up north. You know, you're from Louisiana? Yeah. I'm from Louisiana. And I moved to LA. I they go, so where are from? I said, I'm from Louisiana. They go, oh, you're a Cajun. And I and I had to figure this out because I and I finally came up with a good answer. I said, well, I'm more of a Cajun than you are, but I'm not really a Cajun. But, you know, I have a raspy voice, and people think that I'm from further south than I am. But no, man. There's a big difference, especially in the music business. I did okay in in a high school band. I don't know if you had a band in high school. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. See, I mean, we we were called the Mad Hatters, and we were ripping and tearing our pants off just for fun, you know, back in the sixties. Man, you guys were wild. And unfortunately, that stuck with me, but but I finally was I got where all the boats are, the casinos are now in Beaujola and Shreveport, I was there in high school when they built the first Holiday Inn, and the guy who built it was from Baton Rouge. And I was a bellman there. I got to know him, Mr. Bibi, and he said, well, he found out I played music. He goes, well, my daughter does big parties in Alexandria. You should come down there. They can play one of her parties. Oh, yeah. So the day came when we packed up, me and my bass player, was an all American basketball guy. We throw our stuff in a '55 Chevy truck, painted green with a brush, the colors of Bossier Bossier Bearcats, and off the alley, we went. And, man, when I loaded in, I knew something was up because there was another band set up at the other end of the gym, and they had Vox equipment. Oh. Yeah. My equipment was stolen off the top of Sears and Roebuck. Yeah. So we were that kind of band, the pawnshop band. Yeah. By rolling the Vox, you know they're serious. They're serious, dude. Everything's black. I'm going, uh-huh. Didn't know they had another band. And guess what? Those guys were the band that she she had hired, she just brought us down there to make her daddy happy. Well, when they found out we were from Bossier, from North Louisiana, things went downhill. So they booed us off the stage the first song, and we were pissed off. We went out the back of the gym. We're gonna show them. So we walk and watch whatever load nurse did. We'd see this basket of jerseys. So we swiped these jerseys. We're like, we're gonna show those guys, go back to Holiday Inn, and we're back in there. So it's about nine, 10:00. We're there, and we we shut up for bed, we're laid down, and we hear this Uh-oh. Yeah. I'm like, what was that? I get up, open the door, and there's this gigantic shadow of a guy and with a flat hat. Do you know what that means? Oh, trooper. Mhmm. So I'm hearing That's five o. Yeah. So the state trooper's standing there in the the doorway, and I can't see anything but his shadow, and I and I hear all this noise. And I look around the state trooper, and it's the whole student body Oh. From the high school. They have all followed the trooper over to where we're staying. They got they came in and got those jerseys, and they ran me and my drummer, threw us in this pickup truck and they rode us out of town and that's when I that's when I learned the difference between North And South Louisiana, bro. It was not pretty, but it could have been a lot worse. If the cop had Didn't have to spend a night in jail or anything like that. Right? No. If but that's not the problem. It's it's that it's if the cop hadn't have been there, it would have gotten violent. Yeah. And so we were blessed just to get out of town. My two other band members, they were asleep in the next room. They never knew a thing about it. When did you move here? 1970. 'sixty nine, 'seventy, I came here, and it was the great escape, really. I mean, I've been in Bossier for a long time, man. And we I had a I had a had a good run-in Bossier. We I mean, it was Were you playing there and everything? Well, I had the high school band, you know. Yeah. And that was going great and but baseball was the deal. That was my ticket. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. And I was, you know, one of those little kids that I grew up. My daddy was a carpenter, so we he would build houses next to the elementary new elementary school, so we got to live in the new house next to this new school. And you could see the the play you know, the yard, the field, the schoolyard. And my mama I would see these kids playing baseball over there, these teenagers, and I was just begging her. I said, you gotta let me go up and play. I'm I'm I'm bored to death here. It's summertime. So she finally agreed. So I went over across the fence, played sandlock ball with a bunch of guys, And I was that's how I got to be pretty good for a little guy because I was still very young. I couldn't play eight or nine. So I didn't know that ten years later, that same sandlock coach would be picking the all star team for the Bossier All Stars to play in the Dixie League tournament. And that coach that Sam La coach was the assistant coach ten years later. And he picked me to be on that ball club because I played ball pretty by then, I was pretty good. You know? And and to get on the the all star team, you all had to play three positions and one of them had to be pitcher and not get pitched. We did that, and we had a run-in one district, you know, boom, went to down to Metairie, Louisiana, played Metairie for the state. I had to beat Metairie in Metairie, and we did that. Then we went on to Hattiesburg and had to lost first game. Had to beat Hattiesburg to win that Dixie league national title, and and that went really well. So when did music start coming into your scene? Well, music was, you know, was the the thing, man. My dad dad played guitar and fiddle. So I I started playing drums really to get out of miss fourth grade class because she was a a wicked woman. Everybody knew that. And so they came and knocked on my door. Anybody wanna be in the band, miss Truett? And I jumped up and I said, I didn't. I wanna be in the band. Take me. And they did. So I played drums for five years, and then my mother finally got so tired of me bringing that snare drum home. Mike, she said, look, Bobby, if you're gonna be a musician, you gonna have to learn how to play your daddy's guitar because you are through with this drum. And that's when I took off guitar. So your dad was a guitar player? And a fiddle player. And he taught me to play and hallelujah. What was the first song you learned on guitar? The first one I learned, I I actually wrote I had to write a song because I never really Oh, you had to write one? I didn't I didn't know any chords. I had to make up a song. Right? And it was was called Jing Tingle Jing. Mean, you know, we Do still do that today? Sir? Do you still do that today? Is that part of the set today? Oh, not part of the set, but it's it's part of my it's part of what made, you know, it was it was really how the whole thing with music started was creating my own chords because I didn't have a lot of you know, I'm homeschooled. My dad taught me three chords and the truth. Right? That's what they call it in Nashville, those chords. And then I was lucky. The plumber lived across the street. He was a he played a blues band, a blues lead player. Taught me a few more chords, but then I got in the high school band or a little band, the Mad Hatters, the one that went down to got run out of Baton Rouge where we were on fire having a ball, buddy. The songs I played were all blue eyed soul music, which means I was playing Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, James Brown. You know? When I said I was jumping off the stage, landing on my knees, ripping my pants, that was that's that's for real. I mean, I was so excited to be in the band business. Yeah. A lot of bands I was in at first were playing that stuff too, or we were trying to. We didn't have, shall we say, the right stuff to really pull that off. Well, but you had your stuff. Yeah. I And there's I had my stuff. And and your stuff was and and you were authentic. See, that's the tricky thing about doing a cover band. You people say, you know, what kind of music you play? I said, well, I'm a cover band. He says, well, that top 40? I said, no. That's not top 40. I said, that's people who play it like the record. I cover the song, which means I play it with my stuff the way I know. Yeah. Yeah. And and then I yesterday, I played I've been I always wanted to play in the church just one time, you know. I didn't get to go to church when I was little. I got sideways with the church early. So I didn't get to go play in the church much. But yesterday, I got to play at Fair Park Church of Christ, ninety sixth reunion Wow. Down off East Grand and Carroll. Oh. And and and the reason I got that opportunity is one of the players that was one of the first kids that when I went to work at SMU, he was a player on them on June's teams, and he stayed with the school after he graduated as an accountant. Well, I never really ran into him till I needed my check cashed. And I went over to the accounting department, and his name is Shaq, Shaq Randolph. And he's we got to be buddies, and we we chatted up. Said, you gotta come play at the church. And I had never been able to get over there, and I finally did it, man. It's wow. Ninety six reunion, they had, like, several pastors, and they all brought their own organ player. You know how they go. Oh, yeah. Jesus. Hallelujah, Lord Jesus. And these guys, I mean, was it was Those organ players have to know their stick, man. You know how they got me though? He said, Robert, it's gonna be easy. It's gonna be it's gonna be rhyming. I'm gonna I'm getting I gotta turn my phone off. Oh, I got you. But Oh, is that what hit the floor a minute ago? But hear you. I'm like, what is this? But so Shaq said, you know, the reason I couldn't play over there was because I, you know, I didn't know all those songs, man. You know, I'm a I'm a cover band. Right? So what he does, he goes, no. How this gonna go? All straight ahead. Alright. Great. I can probably handle that. So the week goes by and he sends me the songs. Great. I I got this. Then the day before the the church, that Saturday before Sunday, he goes, man, my organ player can't make it, so my cousin's gonna play organ and he can only play in e flat. Oh, no. Oh my god. You know, e flat for a guitar player is like, unless you're a North Texas jazz guy, and I'm not that. So I went, okay. And then I went down there, and it was it was everything you could think of. But I just you know how it is. You know, you don't play the songs like you just play the music. It doesn't matter what song it is, it's all made up of chords somewhere. Somewhere. Somewhere, I'm gonna find that I'm gonna find it, you know. Gotta pick it up along the way. Combination. Yeah. And an e flat, that ain't easy. Golly. That's not every day for a guitar player. No. And it was it was a great day because I just got to sit there and watch these pastor after pastor go through this amazing thing. And the people that their praise choir was all the girl singers from the way from the all those years back. So I'm sitting on this side of the keyboard over here. The band's shut in the corner, and I said, man, I'm not getting up in that corner with that hand, Leslie. I can barely hear anymore anyway. I said, I'm coming. I gotta get over here. And then I'm right next to these 20 beautiful, amazing ladies that are just blowing the roof off the place. Know, they're jumping up and down. I'm just washed in the glory, man. It was such a great day. And then the days I get to do this with you, which is something to me, which is special because, you know, we've been, like I said, wandering in the same shadows for decades, man. I've been hearing your name and then and to the to the to the radio business, but then when you got that band together, I thought, what's the radio guy? How good could it be? How much competition could it be? And then I went and heard your band, I went, I hate this guy. He's killing it. He's killing Tom Petty. Damn good, and he's got a bunch of And I don't know one Tom Petty song. So then I then it was don't know how don't I do it? But you know, you kinda you may have been one of the guys that really brought that into the community here. I never heard tribute bands until after I heard the petty theft. Really? I never really heard maybe I wasn't paying attention. Now, you know, Michael down at Granada, he's like Liz he loves it and lives off the the the tribute bands. And I started hearing them when I went down there, but, you know, and I'm a worker, man. If I'm not if I'm in the bed, that's how I met Eddie Ray. I'm talking about the guy that got this thing going today. Yeah. I met him from loading the truck here. People said, how'd you make your music business? I said, music business? I just load trucks, dude. He said, I get to play music once in a while, but I'm not really in that business. I'm in the I'm in the the furniture move, the equipment moving business. And Well, back in the seventies and eighties, you were in that business, and you were knee deep into it, and nary a weekend went by when I didn't hear of Robert Lee Cobb playing somewhere. We worked, didn't we? You did. We worked. Now did you have a band that whole time or Pretty much. Was it just you or was it you doing a solo thing or Started as a duo with that guy I told you that saved me in that fight in Louisiana. Yeah. That was that was Saturday night. Sunday, since he saved me, I I told him I'll play guitar. Said, said, come over. We'll cook you dinner. He was in St. Ford to see his mom before we went to Dallas to audition at that new new restaurant called The Steak and Hell. And so he came over Sunday, and we picked him, man. We sounded good. He said, you need to come to Dallas with me tomorrow and audition with me. So I went, I went, I jumped in the car. We drove over there, auditioned, got the job. So now, it's Monday. I'm going back. We're driving back. We gotta start on Tuesdays. I'll call my girls to load it, load it up. I'll be there with a trailer in two hours. Loaded it all up. Came in, and then we were driving back that night, man, dead tired, and it was raining. And I ran off the road pulling the trailer. And I thought my buddy, who was supposed to be following me, he was out. I thought he was ahead of me, but he was following me. So I ran off the road, and and but I had just been given this Cadillac by the guys that own the clubs in Louisiana, those guys in Louisiana. And I have been given this Cadillac, and they said, look, if you ever get in trouble, it's got front wheel drive. I said, what? What is that? It's 1970. What's that? He said, just don't worry about it. If you get in trouble, just stomp on it. Those big wheels will pull you out. Sure enough, I'm in the I'm 70 miles an hour in the medium in the mud and the rain just trying not to lose it. I just stepped on it, that car straightened out. That big old Cadillac straightened out in the mud, and I just kinda slowly floated it back up on the road. Like it never even happened. Sir? Like it never even happened. It really was a kind of magical moment to not die in the rain on the way to Dallas, but my so I thought my buddy had left me. I was so pissed off. So I'm racing now to catch him. Right? Never caught him because because actually he was behind me, and when he saw me drifting, he just speed started speeding up to catch me. And just when he got to me, I went off the road, and so he hit his brakes, he spun out, he spent the night in the medium in the mud. Oh, no. So he was really the one actually pissed off at me. Yeah. He's thinking, what the hell did Robert Lee leave But that but I got the next night, we started, and I started as a duo. That was your question. Has there always been a band? Duo, then a trio. It was me, Tommy Kirkpatrick, the big Irish guy. Then we got a guy from Shaky's Pizza right down the street from where the Lemon Avenue Steak and Ale was. Shaky's Pizza had a great guitar player named John Barker, Trio. Trio was a big deal because, you you know, three part harmony. Right? So we got a job at a place called General Store over on Greenville, which is now the parking lot for Desperados. And we're singing along. This is going great. And then this I had a girl singer. Then Buckwheat, BW Steelers, and came in one night. This was his little area. Yeah. And he played at a place called the Hammer Tuzera in the village. And he came in saying it was great. All that all is awesome, man. Then the next day, my girl calls me and said, well, I'm going to I'm quit in the band. What are you quitting the band for? Well, PW asked me to go to California with him and do an album. What'd he say about us? Nothing. He say nothing about you, man. So yeah. So then it basically, I'm not sure. I guess Gary Palfrey was our first drummer at the Randy Tarr. I played there five nights a week. Gary Pelfrey? Gary Pelfrey. Yeah. Remember that guy. He was crazy, man. He was good though. Oh, he was good in a lot of ways too, man. He he taught me he gave me a job when I came back from that LA thing, building cases. And he built cases at the back of Crossroads when it was on McKinney. But Pelfrey so we did the we did the whole Crosby Stills Nash kind of harmony thing. Right? Yeah. Randy Torre had 62 seats in it, but we played it like it was in the amphitheater. Every night, man, it was like but it was really cool because when they just started talking, was only just a waiting room for dinner. Right? But when people would start talking, I would just walk off the stage. I I used to do Spider John, the song called Spider John, really, a ballad thing by Willis Allen Ramsey. I'd walk off the stage into the room, just sing by myself my guitar, and the room would just go quiet. Then I walked back up on stage, it was all good. But and I've done that that kind of stuff as because we didn't got no talent. I had to have some sort of showbiz thing going on early, you know. I thought I was a dancer too. That was a big deal. When I was skinny. Oh, yeah. Now where was the Randy Tarr? Talk? No. Where was the Randy Tarr? The Randy Tarr. Where was that at? The Randy Tarr was just north of Park Lane on the left hand side. Back in the seventies, they had the lock, stock, and barrel with a seven eleven as it is. That was on the Southwest corner. On the South on the Northwest corner was the railhead Yeah. This giant thing. Right? Yeah. They had a 300 seat room in that restaurant. 300 seats. And then just a little bit further north was Randy Todd. And it was built like a Harry Potter kind of building. You know, that I don't know what you call that, but it was made of wood. And Randy Tarr, they made them change their their sign because Randy Tarr is slang for horny sailor. And once the city council found out about it, they made them change the sign to Randy Tarr, but it's I did not know that. Well, who would? Unless you're the guys that own it. But they they built an octagon stage at the on the corner, and then it was just it was like home for me. There was a lot of good bands come out of there, a band called Coconuts. You may remember this band. But there were so many good bands, you know, and you know this from where you're from. Right? I like when those guys like Sean Farris and his brother, Scottie Farris, all those guys, Bruce and Christian Brooks is over there, all these guys Yeah. They grew up in the high school band, the high school stuff that I did in Louisiana. Y'all were doing the same stuff here. I mean, I'm sure. No doubt. And I'm sure you were having more fun than we were having. You know, it had its ebb and flow. If you were one of the really good bands, which I never was, then you did alright. But bands like, you know, the Mystics played every week. Yeah. You know, every week, as much as I wanted to. As much they were that anywhere they wanted to. Yeah. Yeah. They were always playing. Did you ever go to the cellar? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I went to the cellar. The first time I came to Dallas was in a Volkswagen going for the my drummer, that the maniac kid I told you, that that stole the jerseys, that was my maniac kid. Well, I've been waiting for somebody to mention the seller that we've had on here See, connected with we didn't know that the real seller was in Fort Worth. Yeah. Yeah. Came we came to Dallas. See, we're in this this dunk dunk asses from North Louisiana, and we drove all the way over here and we go, where's the stuff? Man, there there has never been a scene like that around here, and there never will be. Uh-uh. It's a once in a it's a once not just generation. I think it's once in eternity, the seller. Yeah. And it had to do with that whole season of love that came in the late sixties, man. Yeah. They had no chairs. They had no chairs, just cushions. You know, one thing one thing I'm really wanting to do and haven't been able to to, you know, string it together yet, but I would really like to get some of the guys who played at the Cellar in Dallas and Fort Worth together and have them explain to everybody just what the Cellar was, what it was like, because I can't, you know? Well I mean, all I can say is there has never been a place like this before and there never will be. It was yeah. I won't tell I don't want to tell your audience. I'll let you do that because it was a different kind of vibe all the way. Oh, yeah. Actually, one of my camera guys played at the cellar, you know, over at SMU. When when that all came to pass, really, I got an opportunity. I met coach Jones through Gary Cogil. June Jones. Cogil was my only Gary Cogil and I were friends because our birthday we had the same birthdays, and he was rolling down to Channel eight, and and he'd come out at night and Yeah. Between him and Hans, and it was, like, on all the time. So then when coach Jones came to they they got 10 guys to put up $200, to get 200,000,000 to hire a change guy, a change guy. And that change agent was June. And they brought him in from Hawaii because he just turned Hawaii around. Yeah. And guys, you know, back then, they needed a change agent. They'd lost for twenty straight years. Twenty straight Yeah. It didn't go well for them for But a long boy, once it did, once it started rolling, it rolled big. Well, when it did it took a while to get it started rolling because it was dark over there, bro. Because it didn't they had embarrassed the university. Yeah. And they wouldn't even Eric and those guys, they weren't even allowed on campus. And coach June changed all that. Yeah. He came in was a he's a spiritual man. And Gary called me the first night he was coming to town. So my friends he grew up with him in Portland, played little league baseball with them. They were buddies their whole lives. He says, this coach is gonna coach the Mustangs. He loves music, old old school music, bring your guitar over, which I did all the time. And I did that. On the way over there, I rode a little diddy called Pony Up. There's a great Robert Lee Cobb with us here on YDC today. You can just kind of relax and chill out for a few seconds if you want to because I have to take care of something here. And that's something that I have to take care of is known as the Dreaded and Feared Mid Show Read. Does anybody have any idea what we're supposed to be doing here today? Just HOH. Mhmm. Okay. Alright. Take a look at this that I have in my hand right here. This probably looks like a, deodorant type product to you. It is not. It is so much more than that. It is something that can help you if you are roaming through this world in some level of pain. If you are, you need this and you need to go where this can be had. That somewhere where this can be had is the house of healing. This is the full spectrum salve stick from the house of healing. If you're roaming around here in pain, get some of this, put it on there. And I don't know if it'll get rid of it, but it'll sure make you feel better. How do I know? Well, because right now, I'm having to deal with this a little bit. And I found this stuff and it does help. And believe me, if you're if you're roaming through this world in pain, you'll do anything just about for a few moments of relief from it. And I find this with the full spectrum sap stick and I bet you will too. Now the CBD house of healing has all kinds of other stuff, but I'm not sending you to some head shop or anything like that. They approach it approach it from a medicinal standpoint there. They're there to help whatever's wrong with you get right, and they've got stuff for it over there. Go by and see them and tell them you heard about it from us here on YDC. They're they're located at Northwest Highway and Plano Road in the northeast quadrant of that burgeoning intersection. Like I say, do tell them you heard about it from us and start your healing at the CBD house of healing. That's it. Neil? Is that it? Yes, sir. I can use a I can use a case of that stuff. Well Everybody can. We know the place for you to go. I know. I'm not against and, you know, and, you know, it it may we've been calling a shameless promotion, but I call it open window to maybe something that'll work. Darn right. That's what it is. Now you gotta keep it. You you just can't get, you know, beat down by the things that don't work. You just gotta keep looking. I was skeptical of it. I gotta tell you, was. I was skeptical of it until I tried it and it does help lots. Seeing just a little help goes a long way. Well, if it can give you some just some relief, it's hard to find that because it's just it's so it's so many things come at us at this time of our lives. I mean, things that are going wrong that I didn't even know I had on my body. It catches up with you sooner or later. I've been really, really lucky because I've never had anything like this until now. But man, when it hits you, then you want to do something about it, and this stuff helps. It really does. So do you play these days, or what are you what are you up to? You know, I've been blessed. I've been this is my nineteenth rotation at SMU, And after all these years, I thought, you know, I'm gonna age myself out. I'm gonna I'm gonna give myself a two year exit strategy because I trained up a really great guy named Charles Waldridge who who actually took Eddie Ray's job at 81 to the ballpark. And he's my a one, but he and he you know, his hair is down to his ass. He's a musician. He's a graduate of a music school. He's a brilliant young man. And when we first took the job, I'm, oh, man, I don't if this guy's going to make it, because it's an academic environment. But he put his hair up on his hat, and I said, well, that's you know, he's trying. And then it did hit me. This guy has got some he's got something. So I sat him down and had the talk. You know, this you really have an aptitude for this. Not everybody does. Because we are the show business we are the E in ESPN, entertainment. We do the showbiz stuff of it. And that's how I got the job. I wrote that song Pony Up, played it for June that night. Said, I want you to play that opening day on the field with a marching band. You know what that sounds like, Mike? And it was. It was a and every we practiced, we were ready to go. And we did the the gang came up, and it was a disaster. Do you have a band with you? Oh, yeah. The band my band and the marching band. Oh my gosh. Well, the day before we did Good Morning Texas because Yeah. Barry was the host. So it was great that we get on that field. It was a nightmare. I mean, I've had some flame outs in my life. I told you about Baton Rouge. That was just one of them. There's been multiple ways that the Lord has tested me to see if I really wanna do this. But, yeah, that day was one of the most hard days I went through, but I said, Christ, that's why I'm a believer now because that's that's how I found out that the Lord works in my life. After this after the opening show, when I played my little song Pony Up, I was, like, traumatized. I'm like, oh my god, this is Park City. I just humiliated myself in front of my market, my main market. But they said, hey, the AD wants to talk to you in the suite right now. Oh, k. Great. That's gonna be really good. I can tell. So I walked into the AD's office and I was apologizing. Who's the AD then? It was Steve Orsini. Okay. Ex ex cowboy accountant. Yeah. It really I was also a national champion with Notre Dame. So Steve was a good guy. And he so I walk into his suite, and I'm apologizing. He says, stop right there, Robert Lee. You're the only professional entertainer here. We're academics. We're the amateurs here. This is where my life changed. Can you fix my stadium sound system? Paradigm moment. And that's what happened. I spent the next three because remember, I've been in the business all the years, so I get all the production cats. So I went back to all these guys, to all the production houses, and I found a guy named Mulhady Harvin, who's toured the world with every rock band you can imagine as their sound guy. He had a family, got him a production job, and we we got to be buddies. And I called him and said, Moe, I got I got a job. He goes, good for you. Said, no, man. I got a job for you, bro. And he did. And him and all the people like Eddie and all those people, they helped me. And in the next three months, I got fired twice by the same AD. He goes I told him what is he says, can you fix this? I said, well, don't really fix the stadium. You know? I said, I usually, you know, fix a bit about anything, but I've never fixed the stadium. He goes, well, here's $10,000. Just tell me what just show me what you can do. Let me know if you need any more money. So two months later, it's fixed. I'll give him an invoice for for 4,040 What thousand stadium was this at the time? Ford Stadium. Okay. But when they got the death penalty, they tore it all out, Mike. They tore all the control room stuff out. It was all hanging in the ceiling, bro. So when I did my show, it was on a Crest mixer that had been sitting up in the sun for twenty years and was oxidized to hell. Oh my god. The guitar would jump right on, then it would go off, then the keyboard would jump on and go off. And, yeah. So we got it fixed, and I gave him the $40,000 invoice. He goes, you can't give me this. You're fired. Actually, don't even and I didn't tell him this, it didn't work for him. The coach had hired me. Choon had hired me to do videos of the tune and to write songs because I wrote several songs. Back then, you're right. Right now, they're they're on a trajectory that is for the first time, the the new AD, Damon Evans, he's got the word alignment is a word he really understands. And, man, that place is rocking. The head coach, Rhett Rhett Lashley, another great guy. So that's what that alignment's going to do, man. It's a new president. It's just on fire over there. That's one of the reason I thought it'd be good for me to take and give myself a two year exit strategy. I'll become the COO of AEI, which is Awesome Events, which has really started as an entertainment company, but then grew into a television company. And I'll turn it over to Charles. And last year, we took over or two years ago, we took over the ACC Network television part of it, most of it. And we do the in house. So we do two shows, two full crews, about 60 people for each game. Last year, we booked sixteen eighty two freelancers. Like each ACC game you do this? For SMU. Oh, just for Okay. For basketball men, basketball women, volleyball men and women's, soccer. We do both of those. We do volleyball now. And because ACC has just expanded those sports enormously. But we built four different new control rooms to be able to manage all this. See, when I got there, there was no video directors, no audio support, there was Zippo. I was doing the videos. And that's he hired me because I knew You were a one man band. I knew how to do music videos. And I just started doing music videos with football players. Puts on 15 pounds. And they love it, man. We were one eleven with the best video in the nation. But we were one eleven the first year. But and it was a it was a hard time. But now, these the change is hard. Believe me. When they came when they came in, a lot of people had to go. And I was fortunate that my my crew stayed in it. But this Damon Evans and his gang, Jay Hartzell, they are on fire, buddy. So I turned it over to Charles, and it's rocking. And I'm going back to playing over at the balcony club and just one month once a month and, you know, it's Oh, you do the balcony club now? Where else do you play? I don't really play anywhere else. I'm just making that transition because Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. I see. Oh, yeah. I had to put because I just you know, I had to rebuild the band. And also, you know, I just want to do it and enjoy it. I don't want I was a slave to it, bro. You know that. Right? I made two major mistakes in my life. One, I confused activity with productivity. I was everywhere. Our band was like everywhere. Boom, boom, boom. Right? The next the other major mistake I made was confusing popularity with prosperity. Yeah. You know? I still do that. This wasn't the digital age. So there's you can't go online and go see what we did when we were kids. You know, there was no digital world back then, which has actually worked out pretty well. If you consider some of the behaviors that I represent, not exactly what I would do today, but this is the fact that I'm still in it and you know, have a lot of physical issues with the Dupuy and stuff. How about I had just had a lot of issues with just trying to play. I mean, I had surgery on this in a couple of months ago when I showed the guy's car. Sean, he goes, well, it's a good thing you're not much of a guitar player anyway. I said, well, thanks, bro. Thanks, buddy. Thanks for the encouragement. Yeah. Yeah. And he's and and and he goes, I'm not I said that to anyway, I said, yeah, Sean told me it's not gonna hurt my chops, Andy. He says, my hands, like, cut to pieces. I mean, young. He goes, that ain't gonna hurt your guitar playing. So and it's true. But I'm not sure if it was the best move ever made, moving to a place where, you know, one of the world's greatest blues guitar players was raised in Oak Cliff. Then I come over here. I'm from Louisiana. I don't fit into any of that. You won't see my name in Buddy Magazine. And there's there's know? I've seen your name in Buddy Magazine plenty. Well, maybe so. Maybe it was I just you know. I've seen your name everywhere, man. You know what? I was I've just been hustling, man. I've been Yeah. You have. I'm scratching. People say, what are you doing? Maybe you've been hustling, but you're also good. Well, I'm good. Mean, somebody out there likes you. Oh, man. Thank you for saying that. You keep getting booked. Thanks for that. And, you know I mean, that sounds like paying praise, but it's really not. You keep getting booked, somebody likes you. Well, that's a blessing. And but it comes from just staying in it for a while, man, and doing it for the right reason. Well, I never really wanted to be a rock star. I didn't fit the image. There was nothing about me that said rock star. It was everything about me that said Captain Clink. So I didn't do so well in LA. And when they took me out there, I didn't go out there to be a rock star to get a record deal. I was a songwriter and bandleader for this girl named Rebecca Holden, who's still out there. And man, it was great. I was a journeyman kind of cat. And I still am for that. And I would rather get up there and have a great band than get up there and be all about me, because it's always been me and that guy in that old 55 pickup truck driving down the road singing Righteous Brothers songs, that harmony. Yeah. That's what it really is about to me is that the harmony of vocals, but also the brotherhood and the fellowship of the band. It's it's good. It was good. And it's not that quite that way. When the old days, you know, you could play somewhere forever. I told you, played the Randy Torres five straight years, five nights a week. I was fired twice by my own band. That's for for not for lack What'd you do? Lack of good behavior. Yeah. But what was the story there? Well, influence, man. I was lost in I was lost for a lot of years. Sixties, you know, when and so here I am. I'm, like, 18. It's 1969, and me and my buddy, the drummer, are sitting behind the football stadium, and we're going, look, number one album is Sergeant Pepper's. Last year was RU Experience. I said, we're gonna have to find ourselves some chemicals and do a lot of them. And that's what the next decade was like. I was lost. I was lost, man. If you ever God forbid, if you ever seen my I mean, that's not going it's it was not good. I mean, not good. And it didn't mean my spirit wasn't in the right place. It just means that I had I was uncoachable because I had all the success in baseball when I was little. And and I just became uncoachable, man. You know, I I after that year, that summer playing baseball as a teenager, the day I got out of off that bus, it was great to have that. They gave us gold watches. The next day, we started school again. And, man, when you're 15, 16 years old, and you miss your summer, and you've just had met and you just had have just met your first girlfriend the day you get on the bus, so it was a brute. That's different. Yeah. And so you're out there on the bus, and everybody loves you. You're you you win the win win the deal, and you come into town. There's a there's four, five, six miles of cars waiting on the highway as your bus pulls in. You're the local heroes. You get off the bus, and you go right back to school, your girlfriend won't talk to you. Aw. Your your first girlfriend. And and that's because when we got to Hattiesburg, we stayed at Ole Miss, and they had host families for the players. And the host family we had just happened to have two daughters that were gorgeous blonde teenagers, which for us was exciting. Yeah. And so they would come out to the ballpark every day when, you know, and they would stand on on the left field fence where I was and they'd go, oh, Bobby, we love you, Bobby. You're just it's awesome, Bobby. Which I remember when I was a teenager, gorgeous blondes were very exciting. They were also way out of play for me. So Well, me too, Bo. Me too. But we they thought we were hot stuff because we were playing for this title. And and and everything was great. And then the championship game comes along, and my mom and dad drove over from Louisiana. But what they did to surprise me is they brought Ingrid Hall, my first girlfriend. So they sat in the bleachers, left field bleachers, and they're the little blondes at the fence going, we love you, bud. And my girlfriend is just bawling, sobbing, just Oh my gosh. Was and I'm in the I'm in the left field. Mike, I got pulled out of the national championship game for girl problems. I mean, who does that? That was my and that's why I was Not me. That's for sure. Dude. That's why I was that's why when I came back, I was done with baseball. I was burned up. They burnt me up, man. And I wouldn't I wouldn't take I just wouldn't couldn't wouldn't play until my senior year, the who was the the American history teacher was the baseball coach. And he goes, Bobby, I'll make a deal with you. If you come play ball this year, then then you'll make a c plus in American history. Hell yeah. And you don't have to come to class. Oh. That's a great deal. Hey, you know what I said? Where are my cleats? And we were still Where do I sign up for this? We were spoiled little rotten kids. We were you know, we thought we were all that. Same thing you probably did in the Well, Of course. Of course. You did, and and I ended up buying my dad my redneck dad, sergeant in the army, bought me a my first car was an Austin Healey Bug Eyed Sprite. And I thought that he was the coolest dad in the world, but years later, realized it because it was only $400. And but but, yeah, there's stories that go on with the forever with that, man. But baseball was great to me. I should've I I wish I'd have been more coachable. But, man, rock and roll came along, and it was it was something else now. Turn your head, won't it? It sure did mine, man. I had so much so much fun. Yeah. Did mine too. Are you do you have any gigs you need to promote? Are you playing anywhere these days or anything you wanna tell everybody about? Well, I'll do it at balcony once a month, and I'm playing there this Saturday, 06:30 to 09:30, which kinda freaked me out when they said, yeah, we we need somebody to do the 06:30, 09:30 set. I went, I don't even start before 10:00. What are you talking about? But now I realize because I'm at this age, all my friends are this age, and they love getting there at 06:30 and getting out of there Get to bed on time. That's Yeah. The worst. I love the 07:30 or 08:00 downbeat these days. See, there's I do too now. Yeah. I'll sign up for that anytime. And it's I get to see the sunset out there in the in the out the window of the balcony. It's a little bitty place. And I've always been drawn to little clubs, I guess, because you don't have to have a big crowd. You still have a good energy. Right? Yeah. And there's something about and it was that way with sports, and still is. But in the band business, and you know this, there are times when the the club's right, the managers got a good good attitude. Club's right. AC's right. The people are right. The band's right. And then you get that right certain song, and you get to that chorus where the whole room lifts up off the ground. It feels like about that far. Yeah. And that's same way with sports, man. That's what you do it for, man. That's what you do it for. You do you do it to to find that place, and when you find that place, you wouldn't take nothing for it. No. There's no they know that you can't buy it. No. You can't you can't go and buy it somewhere. You can't there's money can't you can't get it. You're gonna have to be that guy, and they've gotta they also it has to be the the guy that it is the rising water that raises all ships. That's right. The rising tide that lifts all boats is what you gotta be. Oh. So I love it. That's still and that's one thing I I don't mind handing off the operations. I've done it nineteen years. I've been on that field for nineteen years in August setting that ref mic, setting all the band. And then so it's good that I've got a young man, and and Charles is god. He's a good cat. So he's doing that. It allows me to go back and get into music, and that's how I ended up at that church yesterday, even though I practiced in the wrong key for a week. It's amazing to to be able to do what you've done for as long as you've done it. Thanks, buddy. I love the and that's the journeyman part of it that is really what I'm really all about. But I do, when I step on stage, the reason I'm serious about it, because I spent five or six hours setting up a three hour show. I've realized later when I started doing corporates and stuff that my guys, they had to get out of their day job, race home, throw on their tux, and then race over to the Troy Aikman wedding, which I did. So when I saw these guys, they're dragging their feet in. They're they're putting their tugs on. I said, wait a minute. I'm six foot, you know. Well, I used to be six two, and I'm six one now. But I used I'm I'm big enough. I can do this. I quit college to be a roadie in a band because it was Vietnam era. They had the they had the lottery going. And I and my art teacher offered me a scholarship. Said, man, I don't want nothing to do with I am getting out of school. No way. And my high school quarterback was Buddy Welch. He he quit high school about Christmas and joined the army. We were all you know, we thought we were all that. Before school was out, he was back in a body bag. And so all of us so called tough guys, we were looking for anything but going to war. It was the end of the war. We didn't want to go. So I took my art scholarship. I went to college, and my roommate was a senior art student. I was a freshman. I was two forty seven, and the last number they picked was two forty. So I wouldn't have to go. That next week, my roommate got a record deal with Decca Records. And he says, I'm leaving I'm quitting college. I'm going on the road. I'm going too. I said I said, my people can't afford college. They can't afford this. I'm gonna go on the road with you. What what he says, well, you can you can carry the equipment. For the next three years, I was that's how I started moving it back in the back. It was after high school. I was in college. Now my high school band was gone, but I'm a roadie. Man, I just love I just still love it Because when I'm through setting up, everything's where I know it is, and everything works. When the c I got this from working in these corporate events where CEOs would walk on stage that are y'all starting up to the mic and go. Then they'd turn to the stage, and the only person standing there would be me. And they'd go so I said, I'm going to fix this shit. So I started setting up all the keyboard, all the drums, all the wedges, all the lighting, all the PA, everything. And now my players, they get to go home and have dinner with their mom I mean, their wife and their kids, and she's happy. He puts on his stuff, heads up there, show walks in, it's all set up. He's a happy guy. Yeah. And and I did that until I wore out until finally the head of comp USA. I told him the story. He goes, you did what? I said, yeah. I'd I'd save you money by not hiring a production company. He said he didn't say it like this. He said something else. But he said, the hell with the money. You're the star of my show. You don't load equipment. And I hadn't even heard that concept in my whole career. But he was right. I wore myself out finally loading equipment that I couldn't do the show because I was thinking about loading out. We've done the show here today, man. Damn right. For letting me come down and hang out with you Down here on the M Streets, I'm telling you, I know a lot more about you, man. And, you know, just as good as I thought it would be. Thanks for the invite. Well, alright. The great Robert Lee Cobb there. Now we must remind you one more time before we go here that if you have a regard for what we're doing here on Little YDC, then that's cool. That's very cool, and a lot of you do. We're very pleased with the numbers that we pull, I must say. But there's always upside there. There's always room for more. And if you would mind sharing us on your social media with your social media pals and your friends and your aunts and your uncles, your cousins, your neighbors, anybody you know, anybody you wanna tell about little YDC, we would appreciate it if you would help them get on board with us. That's not asking too much, is it? Mm-mm. I think not. No. No. No. So do it. Do it. It'll work out wonderfully for everybody. Thank you, Shoopy. Thank you, Ashley, to all of you out there. Thanks for watching no matter when you may be watching and no matter where, no matter how, none of that stuff. Thank you for watching. Bye. Bye. Alright. I'm gonna go take my pants off. You're Dark Companion is a stolen water media presentation.