Opening Day Double Header (feat. Aaron Chewning and Matthew Kaminski) - Episode 909

Turn up the radio and sing along time for another Great Song. This is the Great Song podcast baseball season's greetings. Oh, there we go. And welcome once again to the Great Song Podcast. I'm Rob Alley, J.P. Moser and we're here to celebrate the greatest songs in modern music history. We're going to tell you what makes.

Why we think they're awesome and why you should too. How you doing today, JP? I am doing fantastic. So as I was prepping for this, I have in quotes, supposed to be opening weekend for baseball. Well, you know what, we're having baseball and that makes me very happy. So we have a special treat that is baseball themed.

We had planned this so many, so many weeks ago, months ago, even in preparation for. Is to be baseball season and we have two guests, we're doing a jam packed, full baseball music episode, tell them what we are covering today. It's the opening day double header. So today release day is supposed to be the Eve of opening day.

Correct? Baseball season was supposed to start tomorrow, but for those of you who don't follow baseball, first of all, if you know us for, if you've been with us for any length of time, you know, baseball super important to us, we both love it. It's what we grew up on, you know, and you're a huge sports nut.

Absolutely. But baseball is king. You know what I mean for me away. But. Anyway, tomorrow was supposed to be opening day. There was a labor stoppage, or I should say a lockout. Actually the, the baseball owners locked out the players and it actually jeopardized the season. They ended up canceling some games, pushing some things back and then, and canceling some games.

So the season is starting a week, two weeks late, essentially, but we're going to drop this as planned because we've got other plans. We can't be, we're going to, we're going to work on our schedule. That's that's right. Nobody's locking us out for anything. So we're dropping this today because we got other stuff to do next month.

Today we are dropping the opening day, double header. We're covering two songs of a very different style from very different areas, but both baseball related. And we're going to interview people who are important and relevant and crucial to both and both a Fisher tie ins to the Atlanta Braves, specifically the braids home with our team of choice.

So let me tell you what's coming. Okay. We're going to start out with the WAHO freestyle. That is WAHO by the way, as in waffle house, not as in wahoo, as in native American caricature, I know that's a whole touchy thing, so it's, WAHO the Wawa freestyle by Aaron Chewning. And then we're going to talk to Aaron and then we're going to.

The American classic. Oh man. So many ways. Take me out to the ballgame. We waited nine seasons to talk about, take me out to the Bali. Seriously. It is one of the most well-known songs of all time. And we're going to talk to none other than Atlanta Braves, organist, Matthew Kaminski. So huge day for us. Just incredible.

We hope you guys enjoy it. Even if you don't love baseball, you're going to love some of this stuff on these songs. And so let's kick it off right away. This is WAHO freestyle by Aaron. Oh, Austin's back rolled up to the teller, the teller. I need a couple hours. Now. My homie's throwing it down to Buffalo house, scattered, smothered, and covered.

And Paula Dean with that butter would going through the ship and I'm a milk like damn man. Hey, you ready? Are you ready? Let's go.

And up wrinkles can shock. Where are you on that? Betty White girl.

Oh, you're very right. Ugly swings, man. It's a jetty. Can't fight this feeling like REO. I love Eddie Rosario. I don't mean to be blunt, but he getting his

but we still get to beat the freeze. If he got a little love, favorite old tools, like a lava lamp or the mountains back trips down here. If we're Russ, we beat the west can tell me nothing. He's dodged the bullet. Wishing California loving spending money for nothing. This dire straits up flushing.

come on. Alright. I'm going to stop it. They were willing to revisit some things and okay. There's so much more to this song, but let me lay some groundwork as to what we're listening to. Okay. So first the reason the song exists as far as the, the waffle house aesthetic and the, and the naming of the waffle house.

Comes from a tweet. This, this song was created between last year's national league championship series in which the Braves beat the Los Angeles Dodgers and the world series in which the Braves hello, beat the Houston Astros 2021 world series champions. Hadn't happened since 1995, Ben to tons of sporting events in my lifetime and go into game three of the world series is probably number one.

It's going to be numbers. You got to hold the flag on the flag, on the field. Come on. Yeah, it was wonderful. It was like, what a day? Hey, what a day. And for me it was, I got to go to the 1991 world series, Braves twins and national league championship series against the pirates. And that was like life change.

I was 10. I mean, there's no more perfect time. That's wonderful that stay up to me forever with a, you know, a love of baseball as if I didn't love it already. You're hearing a lot of references. You're hearing the west coast you know, we, we dodged a bullet on the west coast that's cause they beat the beat, the Dodgers in a tent series.

And then there's all kinds of just seriously, you owe it to yourself to go, just read the lyrics to this song. It's an unbelievably dense with references, not just a baseball, but all kinds of pop culture. He's talking about spending money for nothing like dire straits and flushing, talking about the Mets and how they, you know, go by players.

And they, the Mets actually ran a they did a, an exercise, a team exercise last season before the season started where they pretended, they celebrated as though they had won the world series. They celebrated on the field and like, it was, you know, it was one of those just like mental exercises to try and like visualize, or maybe you want to say manifest a world series way and that kind of thing, they got crushed for it.

You know what I mean? And then, and then they ended up, you know, out of contention and all that kind of stuff. So many of these references there, we could not possibly cover every single reference in this song. Go read the lyrics to WAHO freestyle, because if you're a baseball fan, especially if you're a Braves fan, you're from the south too.

And you get the waffle house references or waffle houses nationwide. I don't know. I feel like they're just bigger here for something. I mean, they are, they, they matter more here, I think. Yes. But I think, yeah, I'm pretty sure in waffle house, a little more gravy and syrup down here, I feel like and it's waffle house has a whole aesthetic in the south.

Like it just really is. And so the reason that waffle house is important to this particular song, like what does waffle house have to do with baseball? You know what I mean? It's not just a Southern thing. It's deeper than that. During the national league championship series, a beat writer for the Los Angeles Dodgers or for the LA times, I guess his name is bill and.

He tweeted. And, and said after the five game madness against the giants, that was who the, the Dodgers beat in the nationally division series after the five game madness against the giants, this NLCS game one in sterile shopping mall. Atlanta stadium feels like a Saturday night in may. Most excitement is discussion of post-game trip to waffle house.

And let me tell you that tweet set people on fire, like taken as a personal insult. In other words, he's saying, he's saying Atlanta fans are not passionate, essentially is what's coming off. Right? He's like this stadium is a nothing burger and, and these people don't care about this game like giants fans did, and that flew all over the Atlanta faith.

And so Twitter. Twitter caught fire braised, Twitter caught absolute fire. It just blasting bill flashy for weeks, right. And forever among Braves fans, the name bill Plaschke, you will be tied to waffle house now. Right? And so every chance, every little win, every home run, every whatever there was just waffle house joke's waffle house waffle house.

I mean, the Braves in their former stadium in Turner field in the last several years had a waffle house inside the stadium. So there was just all these little things that came together that made this what it was. And so I went to waffle house after game three, like idea, or you just got to yeah, you just did.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so for, yeah, for a while, that was my, my end game food was going to waffle house and getting, you know, it's. Yeah. It's it's waffle. Yeah. It's reasonably priced. Delicious. You might see the cooks get in a fight with each other, you know, you can play the waffle doo-wop yeah. You never know what you're going to get at a waffle house except for delicious food.

You know, you're going to get that. And then beyond that, you're going to leave full. Yeah. You're gonna leave full and you're, and you're not going to spend a ton of money. And you, you might see something that has never happened to Humana brought to you by the waffle house, right? Yeah, exactly. So that's sort of the impetus for.

This being tied to waffle house, right? This is not the first time that Aaron Chewning has done a brave song. This is, he has done it several other times. And we'll talk to him about that some in the interview, but they're all funny. They're all sort of tongue in cheek. You know, he, he knows he's not like a serious rapper, although I think he's great.

His rhymes are legit. His cadence is good. His he's got he's got good flow. Good. A good, got a good flow. He's got a good voice. You know what I mean? So I, to me, he makes the whale. Yeah, it sounds great. So to me, he comes off perfectly credible as a rapper, but he, but he goes into it going, I'm not trying to be a serious rapper, you know what I mean?

Except for there there's one, he's going to talk about it where people felt like maybe he was trying to be serious and he kinda got, he kinda got blasted for it. But, or kinda got clown for it, I guess I'll say, but a little bit about Aaron. He is, if you don't know him, first of all, go follow him on Instagram, take talk Twitter to Facebook, all the, all the, all the places, but Instagram and Tik TOK is pretty much going to get you most of his content nowadays.

He is a digital creative genius. He's one of I consider is a weird thing to say, but I consider he's. He's one of like the fathers of like the modern you know, digital influencer, whatever in the, in the humor space. There are other people in, you know, other things, but, but for humor, he's one of the OGs for me of the, of the ultra modern you know, humor, influencers.

And I, I discovered him first back on vine and back in the day, I know you don't. Do you even know what vine is talking about it? I've watched all of his. You know, vine was the, the, it was like a seven second video platform. And he was the goat of the seven second video joke for me. Like it, there was nobody better than him.

And now he does that stuff, you know, and take talking to Instagram, but his talents don't stop there. He's now helping major brands. He's done campaigns with major league baseball, the NBA, Regal cinemas, and more with digital campaigns. He's worked with artists like T-Pain for digital ads. He's got pretty much one of the coolest jobs you could possibly imagine.

And he is now stepped out into his own creative agency. You know, he was, he was working with some other people, but he's doing his own thing now. And so he is a, a free agent, so to speak. So if you need him to work on your stuff, you should contact him. He, co-hosts also a hilarious podcast called no worries.

If not with Andrew Stanley that. The title of that podcast speaks to me like few other podcasts do that is my personality. Right? You can just like you, you make a request or suggest something or blah, blah, blah. And then you end it with no worries. If not though, you know what I mean? It's fine. You want to hedge your bets and like not offend somebody and blah, blah, blah.

There are podcasts focused a lot on comedy, but also has a lot of different stuff going on. They interviewed cool people who like just teach them stuff or talk about different areas. But they, they bring on a lot of comedians. They've had our friend Dave Barnes on recently hilarious episode. But it's talk, talk about a lot of cool stuff.

Andrew Stanley is a standup comedian and Aaron Chewning also. Co-hosted one of my other favorite and now defunct podcasts called deep fried kale. He, and tr Wilhite, they did a thing where they would talk about comedy or they would talk, you know, with, with, with special guests. And then they would review a like health food.

So hence the, the, the title deep fried kale. And they would try something that they just, you know, found at whole foods or whatever. And sometimes, and then rate it from like one to 10, you know, and just be, be disgusted or be like pleasantly surprised or whatever. So, yeah, that's kind of the deal with Aaron.

Chewning really funny guy, really nice guy. We hit interacted on Twitter and Instagram for years before this, you know, and, and it was really nice to, to finally get to actually connect in this way, you know, for an interview is the perfect moment. The Braves just won the 20, 21 world series. Wonderful timing.

Like, so when we interviewed him, it was so close to it that he had just been. In the, the victory parade in a way we're all hype. Yeah. The day before he was in this victory parade. And then he comes on to talk with us. So, and now we get to release it. The we're going to go ahead and say opening day. It's not opening day, but it's about to be, it was supposed to be we're just gonna go ahead and call it.

Okay. So let's go straight to this interview with Aaron Chewning, but stick around. We've got an entire other episode following on behind this interview with AaronChewning, we'll be back to cover. Take me out to the ballgame right after this. No hinge cost is don't. You have a big cross, a up like a cat.

Ladies and gentlemen, as promised we are here again, cause I forgot to hit record the first time. So we waited about seven minutes.

But we are here seven minutes in heaven. It was well, it's probably best that we don't release it. It got steamy quick. We are here with I'll forego, all the other things I said before, someone on my Mount Rushmore of all of social media, Aaron Chewning, the man, the myth, the legend musician, serious rap artists, trying to totally get taken seriously in the rap space and a comedic director.

Content creator is easy guy. If he needs something done online, Aaron Chewning is your guy. Aaron. Thanks so much for joining us today. Wow. Wow. Goosebumps. Thanks for having me. This is amazing. Okay. Let's I don't even know where to start now. All we had to start over. It was totally my fault. I take all the blame.

Let's see. With the waffle house freestyle. Tell us a little bit about your inspiration for the waffle house freestyle, which is the Braves hype song. We, we, oh gosh, I'm backtracking, but you're a huge Braves fan. We're huge fan. We all roll deep with the Braves. And so when the Braves started winning in the playoffs you decided, okay, I'm going to make a hype song this year.

Tell us kind of a little bit about what you normally do and how and how this year has evolved. Yeah. I, this is the fifth comedic song and video I've done for the Braves over the years for slash about it depends each song. Sometimes they're involved, sometimes they're not the last couple have been self produced and when it's self produced, I just have a lot more freedom.

I can objectify players by talking about their donks and their thickness. It's just a little more fun for me, but, you know, but if I'm putting up my own money and time, I need to be confident that. No we're gonna win. Like I can't put out a hype song and then we don't make the playoffs. That is embarrassing.

And so it just kind of came down to the wire. This didn't look like our year until a week ago when we won it, you know, kinda say, I, I wasn't sure we were gonna make the playoffs even until the last week. And then, you know, I mean, Dodgers brewers there's I don't know. I just, I just, wasn't completely confident and I needed that confidence, so I wasn't gonna do a song, but I went to game six, the NLCS, it was just the best night ever.

I cried a lot. It, wasn't going to do a song that I woke up the next morning, just overflowing with joy. And I went to a coffee shop. I just thought, Hey, let me try to write some stuff. See if anything comes out. And I wrote four pages of lyrics. So right without my crew, Jordan Rowe, who produces the songs, he has a home studio.

We go back a long time. Isn't all the brave songs. He recorded, it, turned it around the day and a half. And then. At is his handle. He does incredible graphics where Kim and his team did a lyric video in a day and a half. So it came together super quick. Wasn't planning on it, but glad it happened. And we're all pretty proud of it, which is good.

It was nuts because you were literally, like, I remember what I think one day on Twitter, Instagram, you were like, I'm not doing a brave song this year. Here's a few lines that I just had in my phone. You know what I mean? So I'm going to pull them out. And then the next day you were like, nevermind, it'll be on SoundCloud in the morning, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, that was, I kind of did I do that every year, because I don't know if I'm gonna do a song, but now that I have in the past, it's always come in the back of my head if I feel super inspired. So I have an apple or a note on my phone with random punchlines or I don't know, it's just going to have my brain works as I was going to quit.

Jokes like that. Yeah. Or roast jokes. So I'm just going to have them just in case. So yeah. Tweeted all those out. Definitely ruined some, some punchlines for the song came out, but whatever, I didn't know it was going to happen. Oh, good. Do you feel now as you've done five of these songs, do you feel pressure with each one?

Like, or do you feel like I got gotta, I got to top it or is it just like, this one is what it is? I don't, I don't feel like I need to top it. I, I just want to make sure I'm not releasing the craziest thing ever. One, one of the songs chop Armstrong, I don't know. Did y'all see that one? Yeah, sure sucks.

So it kind of, it makes sense if you've seen all the other ones, cause they're all different genres, you know, we're not serious, but it wasn't funny enough. So it like picked up steam on all the wrong parts of the internet. And so they're like, this is the worst band I've ever seen. They're like, we're not serious.

So there wasn't enough, it wasn't silly enough. P O D but rock and I don't know, it was a tough week online. So I've learned, I learned a lot from that week and now I'm just like, just asked to be super goofy. No one can take it seriously, but still kind of want it to be cool, but it's gotta be silly enough that everyone knows it's a joke.

You you turned out to be a profit, the Jorge hitting dingers out. The solar system game six hadn't happened yet. No, but the game happened yet. Like you, you nailed that your profit. It was wonderful. That one, that one felt good, but there's still some other ones. Like, I didn't mention AIJ mentor. Sorry, bad.

Didn't mention Heredia. There's some stuff looking back and I'm like, Ooh, that one worked out. The Austin took the mantle from chipper. Like he's Mickey. That one literally made my hair arm, hair stand up. I was like, oh my gosh. That's like, that's like deep. I love that. Yeah. That's great to hear. Have you ever seen the movie blank check?

Yes. Name me one fact about the movie blank check. Tone look, isn't it. And gets hit in the nuts and the bad engagement baseball well done. Also, you have like a 38 year old actress kiss, a 16 year old boy on the mouth. Have you watched it since someone posted that clip on Tik TOK? So I remember when I was a kid, I was like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen.

You know? Cause I had such a crush on her in the movie and they, they smudge in the fountain at the end then watching it now I'm like not okay. Very, very bad. I don't know how they got away with it. You know, the nineties was a wild time nineties probably before laws, all that stuff before we had a government and whatnot.

Okay. J.P. this is your question, but I want you to ask it about waffle house. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So you go in to a waffle house. I, what is your jukebox song that you go into the jukebox at the waffle house? What do you play? Yeah, if it's, if it's the old school jukebox probably going to play neon. I, I first heard that song earlier this year.

I didn't grow up with country. My dad didn't like country, you're speaking. Rob's like you heard neon moon for the first time in twice. And it, it ruined my life this year in a good way. Like, it's all I listened to. There's so many different covers of it that I love now. My friends are so tired of me. There's also a bar in Birmingham called neon moon.

It's all throwback country and a light up dance floor. So fun. Me and my friend, Amy, she's the one who showed me neon moon. Initially we went over there like a pilgrimage, hoping that it would like hear me of this obsession and it kind of did, but I do love that song. So that's kind of the old school jukebox song it big.

And then now there's touch tunes everywhere. You know that on your phone, you can kind of pick whatever. So I try to look around and DJ for the people in the restaurant. You know, usually pretty, pretty good with it. If it's. Dudes in their forties, I'll drop some Peter Gabriel sledgehammer on them fake their day.

And then, yeah, I remember playing, let me love you by Mario. And cook was loving it and he was just dancing, you know, making food. And I was like, this is, this is what it's all about, boys. Right? Making the people happy. Yeah. You're a big karaoke guy too. Right? You do a lot of karaoke. Oh yeah. Way too much.

Way too much gear you even do. So in Atlanta, we don't have this yet. I'm in Chattanooga. J.P. lives in Nashville, but I live in Chattanooga and we don't yet have the like live band karaoke, which I think is the coolest idea in, in history. I'm sure they have a Nashville. I'm sure every bar. So, but like you go to these places where it's like a full live band and you're just like, let's play paramour and then they, you know, whatever.

How what's your, what's your, we first, we badly need that in January. I think. Brilliant idea. What's your go-to song though, in a live karaoke setting. Yeah. Again, you got to read the room. That's a big thing for me. And when people say like your will know, he'll say, what's your song? I'm like, that's, that's amateur.

You got to know what the people want. You know, it's 10 high is the name of the bar. It's below dark horse saloon here in I'm in Atlanta, Virginia Highlands. I live a couple blocks away, bought a condo, not for that reason, but it was a factor. If I, if I'm there with a date that I want to impress, I might do semi charm life because there's so many lyrics.

It is, it's like a rap song. And I don't have to look at the TV. Like I know that one I have, I don't know if you can see it on my wall, but you can't right now. There's a third eye blind vinyl. Love those guys. Don't think they're the best band. Love those socks. Yeah. And then, I don't know, I don't have a huge range so I can do some Billy eyes.

You know, a lot of eighties stuff like NXS like school lower solid. That's awesome. Love it. Okay. Let me go back a few years to the baselines video.

baselines, you know, you had done, that was your maybe second or third, I think Braves song. And that's the point where I went, oh, snap. Like, he's really got something like, when it becomes that official, when you're chilling with Havi Lopez in the, in a video like that, that's, that's like a landmark thing, you know what I mean?

How was that experience and how did that kind of come about that the Braves went, let's kind of partner with you on this. Yeah. So the first one is beast from the east. Completely just about the Braves. Cause I couldn't call them and say, Hey, give me money to make a rap song. No. Who are you free? So we put it out two days for opening day and then two hours later after it went live director of game entertainment called and said, we want her to play the stadium.

It was super cool. So kind of build a relationship with them throughout the year. We did the legend of Elyssa Blanco and the Gaddis that was kind of with them. Like we got to do stuff in the stadium, but still it was on us. So that was the first one where the Braves were like, we have an idea, let's do this.

You know blurred lines just took over the world that year. Another thing looking back on it, pretty rough and problematic. And yeah, so I think initially there was an idea to do the icon of pop song. I don't care. I love it. You know? And I had to kind of be like, Hey, there's not many lyrics here.

It's a girl pops. Like there's not, yeah. That's not the thing. So brought up that idea. Obviously you just want a lot of lyrics, you can fit in a lot of jokes. So it made that happened. Since we were working with them, we got Tom Hawk team. We got Homer at the time there. And then I asked, I was like, cameos would be great.

Who is there any alumni or what you call old players? And they were like, maybe Ryan Klasko maybe I think Knoxy potentially our hobby Lopez. And I was like, well, anybody would be great. Hobby Lopez was my favorite player growing up. So I was like, we'd love to have hobby. So hobby showed up that day.

Amazing. I was just nervous going in you know, doing video stuff for forever. That's not, I don't get nervous there, but I was like, I'm going to, I don't really dance. And we got to dance with Todd Lopez, whatever. So he shows up and. He's shocked when he gets there. I don't think he was informed what it was like he brought because we're wearing tuxes, that's the whole blurred lines thing.

And he had a white dress shirt and a black jacket and then cargo cammo shorts. That's the only hat. And he was like, what is this? He thought he was just doing a signing where he sits behind a table. It doesn't have to stand up. And so he was so weirded out at first. I did my best to make him feel comfortable and it, it, I think it worked.

I was like, just watch us do a few takes. I think he knew some of the Tomahawk team from being around the stadium and whatnot. So he eventually loosened up and got into it and like, it was salsa dancing. That is the reason there's only shots of him from the waist up because he was wearing shorts.

That's cool. That's a good fact. All right. Let's talk a little vine. Because that is, that is the place where a lot of us found you first. I know this that's the first place that I found you. I. Laughed harder, maybe four or five times in my life than I did the first time I saw good cop dead cop. On vine that's literally, it just hit me just right.

And I honestly can't. I mean, I remember doing that. I think there's a series of a couple of them. Yeah. And it's just, what, what is the joke? Do you remember? So it was like the first good cop line. You know, Hey, just try and cooperate with us, blah, blah, blah. And then the other cop, his dad cop, and he interrupts and it's just like, where's the dang remote?

Just, it just hits so right. I don't know. I just lost it. I just lost it. J.P. you were telling me you're the one that, yeah, I've got like a top four, but my FA my favorite word was the dad. You hear about up dog and he's like, son, I'm leaving and I'm never coming back. I literally not much you, I fell out of the chair.

I was like watching through all yours the other night, just getting ready for this. And I was like, my wife's asleep and I've literally held my side and fell out the chair. I hadn't seen that one that I haven't gotten yet. Can you all tell, I have a difficult relationship with my father is crazy. All the jokes are like weird.

Dad buys you know, my friend group to this day, we'll sit around probably twice a year and just go on like YouTube, where they have like the Aaron Chewning, vines, collections, you know, whatever. And here's, here's 18 minutes of six, second vines. And we'll just, you know, just watch them all and have a good yuck.

It's great. I love the ones that don't have captions. So some of them, some of them, you have to see the cash at. It makes sense. That's a set up and it's just pure chaos. That makes no sense. The lights, the captions are like being able to add another five, six seconds to the joke. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a whole other it's with no context.

Some of them are like, I don't get it. I don't know. Good, good cop, bad cop. Like without that. You're just kind of like, okay, it's just why I didn't need to chill out. Yeah. I like, I do like the dead Jesus still on for Friday. Last supper. Hey Jesus. We still on for Friday, Friday, the last supper, supper, normal supper with the fellows, you know, just hanging up me to hang out with.

Are there, are there any Viners, I know you ran with a lot of like, you know, sort of vine vine legends, and you even did like camp unplug, which was very cool that you directed, which was sort of, I consider it like the Swan song of vine. It was like, you know, they made this last big push before, you know, things kind of went away.

And and so I know you ran with a lot of those guys. Who's, who's a Viner who comes off really weird on vine Tik TOK now who is like totally normal sauce in real life. If you say Cole Hersh, I will not believe you. I swear. My brain went to Cole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He, that is really, he seems so weird. The news was, tell me, I just stopped my toe on your dead wife.

Hello. This is you from the future. I don't have any time to explain. You don't know. He is he, I mean, he's a sweetie pie and he's just kind of heavy, so witty and funny, but just kind of, you know, reserved and great man. Yeah. That is, that is who I thought. Cause I mean, I think most people are. Yeah. I think I'm fairly consistent to a degree, obviously.

Like if I'm doing a character or something, it's, it's kind of me with an emotion. Like I'm not, I can't do a lot. I don't have a range. And most people are kind of like that because they're just kind of funny people that had this new medium that is going to start a recording themselves, telling some jokes, but it's kind of just I mean, there's definitely been people.

Gotten weird or like, you know, a few that have been canceled for being sleazeballs, but for the most part, there's a community of fairly normal cool people. What's the coolest or weirdest recognition that you've got either because of vine or because of your Braves music, as far as like meeting someone as far as meeting someone or just like somebody on the street being like, oh, you're the guy from the thing.

Or, you know, whatever. Yeah. One time at a Braves game, a guy, I was at a urinal and he's like, you're, you're doing the videos. I was like, yes. You know, like trying to like, could you not? And he tried to shake my hand right there at the urinal. Yeah. I just give me a second and he's like, oh, he got it. Then he's like, oh, it's so weird.

I'm sorry. That's a really nice watch. It's like, wait a minute, wait a minute here. Look up here. Yeah. It was like, my hand is full, but still, yeah, that's, that's, that's probably the one that I've kind of always pops out in my head is like what a weird thing to do. I ran into Nellie coming out of a bathroom at a, at a baseball game.

And I was like, do I go back into the bathroom to start a cup, a conversation with him, turn around, was coming out. And he was coming in and I was like, I like it. I was like, Hey, you're Nellie. And he's like, yeah. And he kept on going. I'm like, I can't really just go back in and keep the conversation.

That's like the weakest thing to say to somebody. Hey, you're so-and-so I know, I like choked. It was like, all ahead. What did he quoted country grammar. And he was like, And I don't know. I don't know if there's a clean show. You're good. We're fine. We're family friendly, but we'll, we'll make it, make it worse.

I know it's from country grammar, right?

That's all right. We've we've had some people on here where like half the interview, we just dive into some of the bed. Amazing. Yeah, we do that on, on my podcasts. I do it with Andrew Stanley. Who's a clean comedian works in the church a lot. So I'm kind of down for whatever. Cause I don't, I used to do a lot of ministry work now.

I don't, I'm just kind of loosened up as far as what I can put online. So it's funny. And there has been a few guests. I just of go hard and then I'll send it to Andrew and he'll send me a cheat sheet or it's like S word 3 48, you know? And it's just, it's so funny to me. Let's talk about no worries, if not, no worries.

If not, is, is your, your current podcast project. You also did deep fried kale a few years ago, which we'll talk to you about as well. But let's, let's talk about no worries. If not, like you said, you hosted with Andrew Stanley and you have kind of a rotating guest list of you've. You've had Collin McHugh on and you've had where you bring in, you know, just experts in various fields to like learn things, talk about things who you got a favorite you want to you want to tell us about so far.

I mean, as a, as a brace fan, we had Mike's Roca on, which was super fun. His dad drove him over cause he can't drive cause all he couldn't then, cause it was Achilles. So we just add Mike and his dad. I think Gary, just so Canadian a nice so that, that was, that was cool. Did you ask the dad questions?

Yeah, everyone's always chime in like when apparently Mike was good at a lot of sports, including hockey and he was very good at hockey, I think on like a impressive trajectory too. And then he decided to go baseball full-time so under asking Gary, I was like, is that a Canadian betrayal? Did you feel awful about it?

That's a great question. Yeah, that was cool. And I, we had a bunch of comics on, but I think which is great, but it just kind of usually turns into standup stories and whatnot, and we're not really inside comedy type podcasts. So I think we've enjoyed having on experts in fields. We know nothing about, we had our friend Rebecca on who is a former Disney princess at Disney world.

That was fascinating. Andy Mineo wrapper. Super fun. Cause that was, again, we're not rappers, I guess I am 10% of one. But yeah, that is just, I think when we're actually incredibly interested in the subject matter and it's not just going to random stories, we really enjoy it. So we got a few more fun ones lined up.

Yeah, we're have a lot of fun with it. I'd say the one that kind of blew my mind was when you had the the like neural doctor on who was talking about Enneagram stuff and he, and that was fascinating. I was like Dr. Jerome, he's a funk, a functional neurologist and a lot of other things. Yeah, that was that.

That was funny to me because that was our first episode. And we're like, we're going to kick it off. And people are going to like, get to know intro to our personalities. Kinda. That's what we thought. We also didn't know what we were doing. Cause we didn't, you know, now we're 20 something episodes in and we have structure and before.

Bring back and we'd had no idea then. So it was, it's just intense where like he would talk for 10 to 15 minutes straight and eight an hour just listening and forgot what we were doing because we were so, so entranced. So we, we dropped two episodes just so it was like, this is fascinating, but also not a representation of what the show is going to be.

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was very cool. We're going to have him back on soon. I think. We just know what we're doing and it's going to be more funny. Hopefully I do want to mention deep fried kale because you know, the great thing about podcasts is they live forever. Unless you just go and take them down. But like, I still go back and listen occasionally to deep fried kale.

Cause it was just so funny. UNTR I'd want to know what was, so for those of you who are unfamiliar, part of the premise of deep fried kale was that you guys would try some new health food on every episode. And and then you would rank it, you know one to 10 or whatever. So I just want to know what was the, if you can recall, what was the one that you were like, this is the most disgusting.

What was your worst food experience on deep fried kale? Oh yeah. Oh we try, we tried breast milk, human breast milk, Ashley McHugh. Colin's wife. It was great. It was so good. It wasn't, it wasn't from the source. It was in a little cup just to make that clear, that one sticks out. That one. Wasn't gross though.

Delightful. There was something to do with pickled beets, but they were just soaking in juice. I don't know. I just remember that was the one that was tough. Very tough. I can't remember who the guest was or, you know, it was, as you know, that was the last three minutes of the show. It was just kind of like the gimmick just to have something.

So yeah, I don't know. That's the one that scars me still, I think. Okay. Before the Braves won the world series in 2021 what was your favorite Braves memory? I figured you were pretty young in 95, so I don't know like what your memory of 95 would have been, but I don't remember much of anything. I was six.

I was, yeah. Oh gosh. I was in eighth grade, I guess by then. So we were 14. We were 14. Yeah. So we were pretty important to us by then pre this world series. What was your, what's your favorite Braves memory or I know it was a hard question. That's a great question. I mean, there there's the Braves memory and then my kind of personal memory with the Braves and that was baselines.

I'm sure they played that on the big screen as we took the field and the NLDS. So just, that was like a bucket list kind of thing. So that's kind of what I, what sticks out to me immediately. And then again, this is super, obviously we had some dark times there for five or six years, so not a ton of great memories from then.

But diehard. So I still watched so much baseball in those years, but I think again, we lost the series, but Ronnie hit in that grand slam and the NLDS where's the Dodgers. That was I was at a, I wasn't there. I was. Some sports bar with 15 friends and we were just losing our minds. And that, that's kind of what it took that turn of like, oh, I think we're good again.

Maybe not that year, but like we got something done. So that was super fun. Yeah. That feels like it kind of that moment. Yeah. I dunno. Just kind of tipped the scales and now we're back, baby. Okay. So let me bring it down. Flip the script on that. What's a Braves moment that absolutely devastated you. I know what mine is.

Top of the, I minus Cardinals, wildcard game, the infield fly, like come on. Yeah, there was the Brooks Conrad air. Oh, that just broke my heart again. Yep. Yeah. It's I mean, yeah. I mean, it doesn't get worse than the infield fly. It really doesn't. I think, I mean, Ronald tearing his ACL this year made me so sad.

I hit his face and you could see the devastation like. It was just very, very sad to me. Yeah. Mine's I remember the Lonnie Smith based running air and 91. And I was cause I'm older than you. Well, I'm Rob's age, but I remember being like, why didn't it? We should have scored that run. That's true. This one, it wasn't like devastating, but I've always remembered because I got to go.

So I was 10 in 91 and I got to go to the NLCS and world series games. My dad got some tickets from somebody who got him and couldn't go. And so I got to go to a few of those games, which was mindblowing. But the Kent Herbeck pulling rock that I was always like to this day, whenever people talk about the twins, I'm just like, well, that Herbeck Kirby Puckett get out of here and know, yeah, I get that.

And there's still the oh, what's his name? Old dudes in the daughter's second basement. And he played chase out late. I'm sure. The, the dirty slide in a second, that one stands out to me too. Yeah, for sure. So after they won the world series this year, you actually got to. Be part of the Braves world series parade, kind of a actually, hopefully not a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I hope you get to do it 10 more times. But what was that like? You get the phone call, right. And sort of the day before, right. They just like, you wanna roll with us in the parade? Tell us about that. That was wild. Greg Mies, who is the head of marketing and innovation at the Braves. He's wonderful.

We've got to catch up with each other over the years. Messaged me that Thursday and said, Hey, I got an idea. Do you to, can you chat? Yeah, of course. Like whatever let's chat when you're going to get it, like@braves.com email the answers. Yes. Can you chat? Absolutely. For sure. Yeah. So yeah, th the social team is kind of bare bones right now with the Braves, just cause of COVID.

They had to get a downsize a little bit and, you know, they weren't expecting to go on this magical run. So they're kind of all hands on deck and said, Hey, do you want to get on the bus? Make content tag us if you want, but just have a good time. Yeah, of course. So then I called a trip who I work with and I was like, so I'm either taking tomorrow off or I quit you.

Tell me why I am doing this. He actually came with me, which was great. And yeah, just had the wildest, most fun day ever I, as a Braves fan, so cool. But also I love Atlanta with my whole heart. So just seeing the city that fired up and happy, you know, I mean, and last time I was downtown with groups of people was some protests last year.

It was a very different emotion. So I just kind of sat in that for a little bit too, just seeing everyone. Together. And it just, it felt great. And everyone was so happy. It was the best. I have not thought about it in that context, but I bet that was a very different, you know what I mean? The, wow. Yeah.

That's kind of a powerful thought. Honestly, everything's fixed now. It's fixed no issues. We've fixed everything. The Braves solved racism. It's this huge. We got one question. We ask everybody every single guest, but Aaron's been a lot of fun, man. First of all, I didn't need to say my favorite line. Jackson dropping hooks, lackeys.

Rufio from wrecking balls as my favorite line. That's my favorite. I appreciate that. Anytime I can reference old, like pop culture stuff. It's my favorite thing. Yeah, that was good stuff. Okay, so you're on tour. And you go it, I guess you're on tour. We ask mainly musicians. So this is a, normally a tour musician thing, but you're on tour during anything.

You go into a gas station, what's your gas station, snack food of choice. And while you're thinking of it, I'll tell you mine. I get a three Musketeers bar when I was growing up. My mom would say, you could have any candy bar you want, and it's the most ounces. They're all the same price. So I get a three Musketeers bar.

What's your gas station, snack, food of choice, solid Brits pits, cheese sandwiches. That's huge for me. And then I get a chocolate milk sometimes. Yeah. Love it kind of weird. He like you who? Or like just chocolate milk? No, just like the real chocolate milk, even though it's probably fake. You know what I mean?

Like the actual, I went to a cruise five or six years ago and got a half gallon. Wow. And drank it on the way down to the cruise. And I was sick for two, my two and a half day cruise is always a bad choice. Yeah. It ruined. It never was like, what an idiot. I just, if I'm on a road trip, I need to talk to him.

It's weird. Pavlov's situation, half gallon of milk. We'll send you some some milk and Ritz and we'll, we'll hang out sooner. If you're ever around part of Tennessee, look us up. We'll catch up. Yeah. Would love to hang. And also please do not send me a chocolate milk through the mail. That sounds bad.

We'll try and link up a truest park one of these days, one of these days, and we catch it, catch a game that you'll be at we'll we'll try and link up. But yeah man, thanks so much for joining us today. Absolutely had a blast. Thanks a ton boys. This is the Great Song Podcast and that was the one and only Aaron Chewning, making his first ever appearance here on the Great Song Podcast.

The man of many great baseball songs, many great, great vines. Just go on YouTube and search Aaron Chewning vines. And there'll be like a 30 minute collection of his like seven minute, seven second clips. And you'll just sit there and spend a whole hour just dying, laughing, find one that has the captions.

Cause the captains make them better. They add another, you know, another layer to it. But anyway, follow Aaron on all the things. Use him when you need, if you're if you're a brand manager out there and you're listening and by the way, we, we keep getting shocked by the number of like important people who listened to this show.

People who send in messages and who like, yeah, like I'm, I'm, I'm a person who like, has people under my authority. You know what I mean? Like I'm I manage a lot of people. So I, I know that people are out there listening who are like brand managers and stuff like that. So if you need a digital campaign, go see Aaron, that's some free advertising for that.

Check out his website and get some work done. Part one game, one of the opening day, double-header officially coming to a club. Okay. And in the middle, we'll do the stuff that we do with each episode. So let's play stump, the genius, play the jingle, we'll play stuff, the genius. And then we'll, we'll jump in and keep going.

All right. The genius. Genius. Genius. Genius. All right. So we're going to play stump the genius, brave stumped the genius. So here we go and keep it with all the Braves tie in. Okay. Got six questions. There's not a lot of questions about Braves first baseman. Freddie Freeman. No. Okay. Number one, what city were the Braves founded in?

Boston? Boston was the original, brave. Got to find my bell. Hang on. Well J.P. is trying to find his bell. I will note that the Atlanta Braves are the longest continuously operating franchise in. Definitely in baseball history, maybe in sports history. I can't remember that for sure. They also have the largest radio network in all of sports.

Braves country is nationwide and even bigger than the Yankees, which is funny to me, but the, the south doesn't have a lot of baseball teams, so you've pretty much got the Braves and the Marlins and that's really it in the south. Right. There's not a, because St. Louis would be the next closest, but that's not the south that's that's Midwest.

So it's really in the south. We have the Braves, we have the Marlins. And do we have who else do we have? Is there another Florida team? Marlin's, there's another Florida Tampa bay. Tampa bay. Yeah, there we go. And that's it. So if you're a Southern baseball fan from, from the coastal Carolina, Cincinnati is not north of it's Midwest.

That's like, you know what I mean? So it's in the south, that's it? And then the history of Braves winning, you know, the Braves won, what was the 17 straight division titles, something like that. And now they've won 6, 5, 5 more in a row. Good grades. It's wonderful. I couldn't find the bell found a kazoo, but can't really get it to do anything.

So we'll insert winds later. Okay. One for one number two. Okay. Which Braves manager holds the record for most objections in major league baseball history. That would be Bobby copy. There we go. What position did Dale Murphy make his major league debut in? I believe it was a catcher. It was catcher, Romans three for three favorite quote.

I had this magazine it was a fan magazine. I don't know if you remember those that they would give their, like the program. And it was an article on Dale Murphy as a catcher. And it was the year after, when he went and moved to first base, but they're like nobody ever stole centerfield on him. So my favorites ever.

All right. Number four, who was the youngest player to ever hit a home run in the world series? It's a brave, that'd be Andrew Jones. Let's rock. It was like 19, right? He was super young, crazy young. And his first at bat in the world series. Well, the 99 series against the Yankees. I can't remember. It might have been.

Cause I think that was the last time. I'm just dropping knowledge after knowledge. Love it. Number five. What is chipper Jones? First name Larry, Larry Rob five or five number six. Can he run this amazing? This would be a toughie. Maybe. I don't know what the most career wins by. Left-handed pitcher is a brave.

Okay. Do you know who it is? The most career wins ever by left-handed pitcher. I mean the, the obvious choice. Is Tom Glavine, but I'm going to say there's something deeper there. But I don't honestly, the older guys, I have a hard time knowing who I'm going to say, Warren Spahn let's go. I wish I could have found the bail cause that would've been good.

Jingles galore, Rob. Good jingles. That's going to be the name. Solo album. Good jingle. So that was a great stuff. Genius. Good job, Rob. I forgot my question. So that was fun. Okay. I want to play another jingle and I want to do something silly with make the band. Okay. So let's, let's make the band. All right.

Let's meet the man. It's time to meet the man. Hey mama. Let's beat the man.

Now, how are you going to meet the band you ask? Because we have, take me out to the ballgame, right? Come on. And you have Aaron song. So what I did was the band part of my prep every day before we do this is I, I go to breakfast and I just looked through my notes and I try to look through, obviously I didn't look through that step, the genius section, but I was like, I don't have a meet the band for this.

So I thought of this is the dumbest meet the band I've ever done. Disclosure. This is ridiculous. I was like, if I was going to make a band of baseball players that looked like a band, or like, in my mind, this makes sense as this person plays this instrument. Okay. None of these people probably play any instruments at all, but I could see, so, and so playing the drums, I could see so-and-so as the, you know, whatever.

Yeah. So here's my meet, the band section, baseball edition, I guess on drums. You got to get somebody that's dirty. So I'm thinking catcher at my drummer of choice. Oh. And one other disclosure. It can't be anybody on my favorite baseball players list. Like it's gotta be deep, like. You're totally right when you said drums, I thought catcher.

So I went Gary Carter crappy, but what a wonderful looking drummer, he looks dirty and he's going to give you all these gods every day. So that's my drum. Hard-worker tough. Gary Carter met slash expo. Lead singer. So I want somebody with some swag. That's a little bit, this will make sense when I say his name, but Mitch Williams.

So that's your front man just owns the stage. You've got it. This is a Southern rock band. We're right. We're a rock. Yeah. So I disclosed that. Yeah. Rock, rock band. There's absolutely no logic behind it. Other than this, we've got Mitch Williams fret and the band Gary Carter reliever for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Exactly. This nickname was wild. Wild thing. Number 99 gave up the home, run to Joe Carter. Sad said, tabs look like I go, okay, piano. So I want somebody with some touch and I hate to go back to back pitchers. So I, if I was brave, I should probably, I wanted to do a knuckle ball pitcher. Oh, I should've done Niekro but I'm going Tim Wakefield.

As my piano player, I can see him with some touch on the average pirate pitcher, looking like a piano player, Tim Wakefield. On piano, red Sox kind of legendary. You go, knuckleballer extraordinary on base. Okay. I want somebody big that like, looks like a big bass player, but has the look for the ladies? Like somebody that's good and looking for the ladies that can add all the bass player.

Okay. So I'm going Aaron judge. Oh, I can see him with like a Warwick or something just up there bringing it on his being smooth. Just being smooth. Yeah. Up there, up there doing his thing. So our base Aaron is what? Right? Field field for the Yankees. There we go. And then finally electric guitar. This is, I didn't even write one down.

I couldn't come up with one. Okay. So on the way driving here, I was like, I need somebody that comes out and owns the stage. And I want somebody that doesn't look like the rest of this rock band. I wanted it to look a little different, cause I want to appeal to all genres in this eclectic rock band.

Yeah. And I'm going Ozzie Smith. Oh, because he's going to come out and do the back, flip on the stage with the guitar landed and do the solo. Like his solo section involves a backflip into a guitar solos. Ozzie Smith of the car. No, no. That's my non logic. Meet the band section. Right. I'm going to submit, I'm going to submit one more on plastic guitar or a second, like rhythm guitar, because he literally is the front man of a band.

I'm going to go with former brave chase. Darnold brother of current Braves catcher. Travis, Travis chased. Arno has his own. Played at played at truest park or maybe played at Turner field, I guess. I can't remember what his, what his era was. Exactly. But yeah, so there, he played guitar and and, and sang and whatever, it was not bad.

He was pretty upset. We've got our band. We will have to get, obviously we can't have Gary Carter, but we'll get you know, come, come listen to the band. You've got gotta come up with a name, right? Yes. All right. That was a lot of fun. That's good. That's good. That's some food for thought, too. If you, if you put, if you put a baseball band together, let us know who you would include and why that's great.

Now we're coming into the first inning of the second game of our double let's play to, as Ernie banks would say, this is y'all. This is, we make such bad decisions. Sometimes as a, as a music podcast, we're like, let's do a whole episode about baseball. You know what I mean? Or so we realized some of y'all haven't made it this far.

Thank y'all for hanging out with that's all right. Like, this is not the most wise musical decision, but because nobody's out there, like coming out of movie month, everybody's loving pop culture and we're like, let's just throw up the straight sports episodes. All right. Let's do a sports episode about a song written in 1908.

All the girls that we gained by having Dave Barnes on last week, or like what the crap is this who's Gary Carter, but you know what doggone it, this is our show and we're going to run it how we want, we are free agents and we'll do whatever we like. We have no corporate ownership that tells us what to do and it shows so, all right, we have no council.

That's right. So let's talk about, take me out to the ball game, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about it. And then we're going to, then I'm going to play it for you. Okay. So take me out to the ball game was written in 1908 by Albert Von Tilzer and Jack nor worth it was the number one pop song of all of 1908.

According to playback.fm. I mean, not just like kitschy sports song, it was a pop song. This was you. This is we're about to talk about a different era of music. Okay. We were talking the first decade of the 20th century. And pop music is easy on me by a Dale and 1908. Yes, exactly. Dude, this is like, I don't even know who's on top in hip hop.

Right. You know what I mean? But that's whoever that is, was, this will take me out to the ballgame in 1908. It was like, this is the music that like your, your youth pastor warned you about in 1908. Right. Take me out to the ball game. So, but, but so. It's saying that it was the number one pop song of 1908, that doesn't quite capture the depth of its popularity.

In fact, it was also the number three pop song of all of 1908. And it was also also the number 31 pop song of all of 19 0 8, 3 separate recordings took over the charts. Number 31 was by co-writer Jack worth. Number three by the original recording artist, Edward Meeker, and number one, the most popular version by Billy Murray and the Hayden quartet.

Okay. So here is the immensely popular recording by Billy Murray and Hayden quartet.

at smooth, close harmony.

all right. So, you know the deal, you, you know, take me out to the ball game. I feel confident there is a second double negative there. The, I don't care if I never get back on the original that's right. So that is the number one song of all of 1908. The version by Billy Murray and Hayden quartet. So here's kind of the origin of the.

Co-writer Jack nor worth saw a sign in the subway that said baseball today. Polo grounds. Okay. The polo grounds being one of the famous old ballparks. At one point it was home to the New York baseball giants, Yankees and Mets. There were four parks called the polo grounds, but the most famous is the fourth, which has a very weird shape for baseball.

And have you ever seen the polo grounds if you're listening or if you've ever played, like MLB the show that the game that has the old stadiums that you can play in? It's got a really weird shape for baseball. It has an extremely deep center field wall and extremely short right and left field walls.

Okay. We put some perspective on it, so you can picture the polo grounds. Do you have the fate? I do. Okay. So left field at truest park where the Braves play. Okay. This is, it's just sort of an average normal dimensions park. Okay. So one of the more modern parks. Yeah. Left-field at truest park is 335 feet.

Okay. Left-field at the polo grounds was 2 79. How we catch them going yard yet? The, if you can, if you can go extreme pole or, or extreme opposite field, you're golden. You're going to hit 60 home runs a year. Easy. Okay. So left left center. Okay. Not quite centerfield, not quite left-field is 3 75 at truest.

It was four 50, holy cow, the pole you're going 200 feet, almost different to consider to left center. That's a lesson that's not even centerfield. Okay. That put it in to put it in perspective center field at any average major league park is going to be like 400 to 405, 4 10 is deep. Yeah. Four 10 is a deep center field now.

Okay. But left center was four 50 at the polo grounds. All right. You're not hitting a home run to center field. You could hit an inside the park home run to center field, but you're not going over the fence. But a center dead center at truest park is 4 0 2. It is 4 83 at the polo grounds. Okay.

Almost 500 feet to dead center. So like there's maybe basically you're going to have to, if you want to hit one out at center, you're going to have to hit from second base. Yes, essentially. Right. I mean, you might get, you might get balls in like the home run Derby that would've gone over the center field.

Yeah. Maybe, you know what I mean? That's right. Yes. The ball that Jorge Solaire hit that pretty much demoralize the Astro's and guaranteed victory for the Braves in the world series that might have gone over center field. Okay. So, right right. Center is 3 75 at truest. It was 4 49 at at the polo grounds and then right field dead, right.

3 25 at the foul pole, 2 58 at the polo grounds. That's like a you know, I mean, that's like a, that's like a middle-school fence, you know what I mean? I'm a real, like, that's, that's like the high school Finn. That's shorter, shorter than a high school fan. Yeah. So that's like elementary early middle school fence dimensions for right field and left field.

That's crazy. Anyway the, as the story goes the, the writers of the song had never been to a baseball game. Oh. At the, at this point they just wrote this song about a girl who wanted to go. Baseball game. So nor worth in Von tills or with no prior personal baseball game experience. You know, at least having never been to a game, I'm sure they knew about the game, but it was still a relatively new game.

It started in the late 18 hundreds. I think that the original leagues started in like the 1880s or something like that. And so they end up pinning this all time. Classic. What just takes over can you imagine if somebody wrote what's a, what's a relatively new sport. It's somebody wrote a song about like curling and it just went bananas.

You know what I mean? Like. You know what I'm saying? Let's do it. Let's write the curling song and, and everybody's just loving it. Like bro brushed dead eyes. There it is the hot new single, but Mosher and Allie brushed that ice just takes over and becomes, this just becomes this all time classic to the point where this song take me out to the ballgame is number eight on a list called songs of the century.

Okay. This list was compiled by the national endowment for the arts and the recording industry association of America loves lists. I do love this list. And so I'm going to give you the top 10 songs of the century list. And I guess we'll go from 10 to one number 10 and these are all just like. Yes.

Okay. Number nine actually is, is, is an interesting one. To me, it surprised me. Okay. Number 10. And some of these are so all from the 19 hundreds. Okay. But many of them from, from earlier in the century, birthday, happy birthday on the list. It's not, but happy birthday is big on one of these lists. It's like, I can't remember.

It's like on that congressional list of like noteworthy songs or something like that. And it's probably in this list somewhere. It's just not in the top title. Number 10 is the entertainer by Scott Joplin. not Billy Joel, right? Yes. Not the entertainer by Billy Joel. Number nine is you've lost that love and feeling by the righteous brothers from top gun, top gun 1964 written by Phil Spector, Barry Mann and Cynthia.

Well, can you imagine, I mean, does that strike you as like. That's one of the songs of the century. Not particularly. exactly. That's exactly what it's a big song. Yep. Okay. Right. Centuries. A long time, but it's, it just barely got beat out by take me out to the ballgame. Okay. So number, so number eight is taking me out to the ballgame.

Number seven is west side story, the album, the full album, west side story by Bernstein and sauna. I feel pretty. Number six is boogie woogie, bugle. Okay, we'll give you a good ball from company B war song from 1941, a world war II you know, Anthem number five, former guest of the Great Song Podcast, Don McLean.

How about all Americans? There we go. Number five on the songs of the century list. Number four. Okay. Number four. You might guess if you think about, if you think about iconic American songs and I conic American artists, female. Okay. I was, I was going to throw out white Christmas and see if it's on there because I know it's on the top of right.

Why is right Chris? Excuse me. White. Christmas is number two by Christmas. Number two, by being from somewhere. Judy Garland is number one with the rainbow, Judy Garland and two another female American female, second half of the 20 of the 20th century. Okay. But certainly not. Respect and respect Franklin written by Otis Redding performed by Aretha Franklin 1967.

So the only one we're missing is number three is number three. And there's an, I don't think it's an American classic folk song. You learned it in elementary school. But it's just one of those songs that you don't think about. You're not far off it's this land is your land by Woody Guthrie. So that is the top 10 songs of the century list.

According to the, it is an elementary school song for us. That's an element. That's your song? You in elementary school. Yeah. You know, you learn all the patriotic songs, you learn 50 nifty United States, and this land is your land in America. You know, all those it was also awarded the towering song award by the songwriters hall of fame in 2008 and award that began in 1995, that recognizes songs that have impacted culture in a major way.

Other songs recognized over the years as towering songs. These, I mean, you think that, that says it really well, right? This is a song that just stands above everything else in its achievement. Other, other towering songs include happy birthday to you. The Christmas song, chestnuts roasting on fire. What the world needs now is love.

And a change is going to come by saying, right? So just songs that are transcended in their cultural acceptance. Let's see what we got here. Let me read you. I know those lyrics were a little hard to understand, right? Can you imagine, but back in the day, that was like the that's what records just sounded like.

You know what I mean? I don't know. A girl. Exactly. Yeah. So let me read you some of these lyrics and you can kind of get the story of, take me out to the ball game. Now these, these are the lyrics vary from version to version a little bit. These are actually the versions from the Carly Simon version of the song, which is included on the Ken burns baseball documentary.

Okay. What's your, if you're a baseball fan and you have never watched the Ken burns baseball document lengthy. Yeah. I mean it's half a day long or more if you think this episode. Yeah. Okay. But it's like, it's, it's so good. But anyway, here are those lyrics. Katie Casey was baseball mad, had the fever and had it bad just to root for the hometown crew.

Every SU Katie blue Sue is like a cent, every cent, every, you know, On a Saturday, her young Bo called to see if she'd like to go to see a show, but Ms. Kate said, no, I'll tell you what you can do. Take me out to the ballgame, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Buy me some peanuts and cracker Jack, by the way, not jacks cracker Jack.

That is the brand name. Cracker Jack. And it rhymes with back. That's right. I don't care if I ever get back. Sorry, I don't Kevin. Yeah. Okay. And then second verse Katie Casey saw all the games, knew the players by their first names, told the umpire he was wrong all along good and strong. When the score was just two to two, Katie Casey knew what to do just to cheer up the boys.

She knew she made the gang sing this song, and then they sing that right. And so it becomes this traditional thing. There's a whole thing about peanuts and cracker crackerjacks. That we maybe won't get all the way into, but let me see if I can. There's a I'm pulling this from the, a website called ds.com.

That's F R I D I E S I believe they make peanuts and peanut candies. Okay. So they have a great thing on how peanuts and baseball came to be inseparable. It says in America, the two have been paired together since the late 19th century. During that time baseball was the national pastime. So people were going to games all the time.

People peanuts were also found at ballparks. It first began. However, when Harry Stevens decided to sell some advertising space on their scorecards to a peanut company, instead of paying for the advertising, You know what they did, the company paid in peanuts, if you've ever heard that phrase, right.

Like, oh, he's paying them peanuts. This is where that came from. And then these peanuts were sold in the ballpark. Okay. So they turn around and made money off the peanuts that they got paid with. And thus began the long national love affair with peanuts at a baseball game. And it's kind of deal where baseball is a slower paced game.

Right. And so you've got time to like fiddle around with peanuts. It's not constant action. You're not going to, you're not going to do peanuts as much at like an NBA game. You know what I mean, where it's, you're having to watch over and over and over, up and down the floor, baseball moves at a slower pace.

And so you've got time in between pitches to crack open a peanut and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's what you can have the crumbles on the ground and it's okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. They'll sweep it up places. They got people for that, you know? And then regarding cracker Jack there's an article from the New York times called the seventh inning snack.

And it, it, it talks about the You know, the, the origin of crackerjack, we won't get into that, but, you know, cracker Jack is so ingrained because of this song in baseball culture, that it was, I believe it was the Yankees that tried to switch to fiddle faddle, you know, fiddle faddle and people had a fit.

People were super mad. Dad loves crackers, but they, they say the the vendors say that crackerjack, even after all this time, you know, it's not like cracker Jack was still pretty popular when we were kids. You know, I remember my grandparents would always have it and they would put like a little tattoo in there for a prize or whatever.

Now the prizes are mostly like digital, you scan a QR code or something and it gives you a game or something like that. But but you know, it's not every, you don't see people walking around a seat and cracker Jack, you know, but still it's among the top sellers at baseball parks. It's just a thing that because of this song has become so intertwined with baseball, that it can't be sort of pulled away.

Okay. Let's talk a little bit more, and then we're going to talk to Matthew Kaminski who don't sleep on this. You've heard it talk about him before. We've actually talked about him from kind of toward the very beginning of the show, really as just a brilliant guy who makes brilliant use of his job as an organist in baseball to sort of playfully poke at the other teams.

You know what I mean? He won't use the word. You know, he won't use the word troll but it's, it's a, it's a good natured ribbing. Let's say. He gives the other team with, with some of his playing, not to mention just being a fantastic player and a truly a great jazz you know, organist and piano player and all these other things.

We're going to talk to him and I'm going to play you a little bit of his version of take me out to the ballgame before we, before we talk to Matthew Kaminski. But before we do that, let's talk a little bit about the style of this song that we just listened to this 1908 sound is called tin pan alley sound.

Okay. Tin pan alley. Some of this is from Wikipedia was a collection of music, publishers and songwriters in New York city that dominated the popular music of the U S in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It originally referred to a specific place west 28th street, between fifth and sixth avenues in the flower district of Manhattan where a plaque can still be seen.

But essentially they a group of music publishers set up shop in the same district of Manhattan. And it was like, you know, just pianos everywhere. It was like it was like just we're we're making this a songwriting district and you know, all these popular songwriters. Would be there and just pianos all over the place and people, you know, I'm just making up, making up tunes, varied origins of the name tin pan alley.

The most popular account says that it was originally a derogatory reference by someone in the New York Herald to the collective sound Bain by made by many cheap, upright pianos, all playing different tunes being reminiscent of the bang of 10 pans in an alleyway. There's also an origin of the name published in a 1930 book about the music business in this version, popular songwriter, Harry Von Tilzer, who co-wrote take me out to the ballgame was being interviewed about the area.

And he had modified his expensive Candler and Colin's piano by placing strips of paper down the strings to give the instrument a more percussive sound. The journalist told Vaughn Tilzer you're a Kindler and Collins sounds exactly like a 10 pan I'll call the article tin pan alley. In any case, the name was firmly attached by the fall of 1908.

When the tin pen. Article came out later that era of music, once that era sort of passed on a gateway to other things that style became known as, as tin pan alley okay. Popular songs from the tin pan alley era to give you some more context include, give my regards to Broadway, the grand old rag meet me in St.

Louis over the rainbow. It had to be you like bye-bye black bird, you know, it's that sort of thing you want to, you see, you see a guy like waving his straw hat, you know what I mean? It's that kind of like bugs bunny you know what I mean? That sort of style, right. I just see like, almost like what you would hear barbershop quartets do, but with instrumentation, you know what I mean?

A lot of that sort of sort of stuff. Just a little bit about the seventh inning stretch, which is when you traditionally here, take me out to the ball, Patrick. I don't think I, I feel like I used to be better. I don't know. I can't do it. It's been a very long time. And you almost, at this point you almost have to do will Ferrell doing Harry carrier.

You get, what is it? He says, he said, if I would've, if you had said something, I would have bitten your air off. I would have come up to you like a hurricane of hair and teeth and fingernails. Oh man, Harry Carey with Steve stone and Tom Brennaman. Yeah, we go to the bottom of the seventh, you know, growing up.

So growing up, we had basically two options for watching baseball on the regular. If you had cable anyway, you could watch TBS. The Superstation. Oh, in which you saw America's team, the Atlanta Braves, right at 6 0 5 or whatever. And then you had WGN, outer Chicago in which you could watch bozo the clown in the mornings and Cubs baseball, you know, at night with Harry Kerry and Steve stone, because it wouldn't have, they didn't have Cubs, didn't have night games for the longest.

So it would be right after school, you could turn on the Cubs game and then catch the Braves game that night. And so you could, it was kind of pick or choose, or for a lot of us, it was Braves first Cub second. Right. We were secondarily Cubs fans because we had access to these so many games. And so we all live around Sandberg and Andre Dawson Dunstan.

So it was, it was kind of like that. There are a lot of Budweiser. And so the, the origin of the seventh inning stretch a tradition is actually not as clear as you might think. It seems like it'd be pretty easy to pinpoint. But there are several sort of claimants to the origin of, you know, how it got started.

The man credited with bringing baseball to Manhattan college in New York city, his name is brother Jasper. He said it was his job to sort of supervise the student fans at every home game. And on one particularly hot and muggy day in June 18 1882 during the seventh inning against a semi-pro team called the Metropolitan's New York Mets, anybody.

The, he noticed that his, his students were becoming restless and sort of break the tension. He called a timeout in the game and instructed everyone in the bleachers to stand up and unwind. It works so well. He began calling for a seventh inning rest period at every game. The Manhattan college custom spread to the major leagues after the New York giants were charmed by it at an expert.

That's one story in June, 1869, the New York Herald published a report on a game between the Cincinnati red stockings. That would be the Cincinnati reds to me and you and the Brooklyn Eagles, the home team at the close of the long second inning, the laughable standup and stretch was indulged in all around the field.

Whether a stretch was observed nationwide is not known, but later in 1869, the Cincinnati commercial reported on game that was played in the west coast, between the Redstockings and the Eagle club of San Francisco. One thing noticeable in this game was a 10 minutes intermission at the end of the sixth inning, a Dodge to advertise and have the crowd patronized the bar.

So that's a big thing cause usually alcohol sales stop at the end of the seventh and eighth. Right? So they go, all right, it's your last chance call everybody up. And then once you get people up, they're more likely to go grab a, you know, grab that last beer before, you know, before last call. There's also a popular story about president Taft doing a seventh inning stretch that, you know, he was a, he was a big man.

He was my kind of dude. And he stood up to stretch in the seventh inning and people just sort of stood up because the president stood up. You know what I mean? Like it was just seem like the thing to do. And so who knows, but. It's it's done in every major league baseball game. They play, take me out to the ball game and Harry Carey, you know, made it a very adorable run.

And to this day, the Cubs now have a a celebrity singing, you know, every lots of like bill Murray and you get Billy Corgan, you know? Yeah. You know, Chicago legends, and then just random celebrities coming in to sing. Take me out to the ballgame. I think that's all I have other than to introduce Matthew Kaminski, and then I'm gonna play you his version.

And then we're going to talk to Matthew Kaminski. Super great for us to get to talk to the Braves organist. I don't know all you baseball fans and especially all you braise fans are gonna enjoy his, his conversation. But let me play you a little bit of Matthew. Kaminski's take me out to the ballgame.

This is the way we hear. Every time we go to a Braves game. Hello, baseball fans. Now introducing the Atlanta Braves organist, Matthew Kaminski.

Can you smell it? Can you smell it? Yeah. I feel the whole thing when I hear this.

So honestly, when I hear, when I hear Matthew playing, what I feel is walking into the park during batting practice. Right? I'm an, I'm a, I'm a get there early guy and walk in. And like usually the video visiting team is hitting by the time I get there. Yeah. I said, there's just random balls flying everywhere.

There's people who are doing long toss in the outfield. And he's just playing all this cool stuff. He plays a little bit of everything, you know what I mean? But it's this like traditional thing that I hope they never get rid of like some people, like why on earth would you still have an organ at a baseball game, but it's such a part of it.

He goes live in innings and you can get on Instagram and just watch him and he's sitting there. Okay. All right. And then depending on the game situation, he'll pop something in there. He'll play somebody walk up song, you know, for the, the home team has like songs that they have played. You know what I mean?

And we've talked about that. We'll try, what would our walk-ups be that kind of thing. But then for the visiting team, he'll play a song that is kind of a play on their name, a pun or a little, you know, kind of a jokey thing or some sort of tribute to their names, something that has something to do with them, or some fact about them.

And it's always a little fun game within the game. To go. Okay. What is Kaminski playing? You should follow him by the way, at Braves organist on Twitter. You can also find him on Facebook and on Instagram as well, but he'll go live sometimes and you can do that. And he'll, he'll post ahead of time.

If you want to know he'll post. Okay. Here's what I'm playing for each player today, but it's more fun to me to just try and get it that I want to hear it and go, okay. First of all, can I name that song? Right? Do I know what that song is? And do I get the reference and then yes. Do I? Yes, exactly. Do I fully fully get the reference?

So it's great. You guys, if you ever get a chance to go to a Braves game, if you live in the south or free come down this way, find yourself in Atlanta, go to a Braves game and half the fun is all right. I'll say maybe 40% of the fund is is, is tracking with Matthew as he plays. He has several albums of his own, his latest.

Is called LA connection. It came out in late 2021. And he's going to talk a little bit about it, but it's just a straight up jazz. Let's listen to a little bit of it. Here's some of the first track. This is sir John off of the album LA connected.

This is with Jeff Hamilton and Bruce Foreman.

Let me come on. That's just dope.

We've said it before, like anybody who can hang in a jazz combo has forgotten more about music than we'll ever know. You know what I mean? Like we're pretty knowledgeable about music and we know music theory and stuff like that. But jazz cats are another level or another level, jazz cats and really good gospel cats are like, just, I can't, there's no way I could possibly hang with you.

You know what I mean? There's a certain point where you just leave me. Here's this major seven chord. What do you think of that? And they're like made her seven, please. Is it third grade? You know what I mean? Like get out, come on, get out of here. So yeah, so check out all his stuff. He's got great stuff.

He actually has an album of just baseball stadium. Sounds just the sound, the things you expect to hear from an organ at any baseball game that you could use for your own like sound effects or whatever. You know what I mean? He's got that as well. So unless you have something else, that's going to conclude our coverage of take me out to the ballgame.

And we are going to go to an interview right now with Braves organist, Matthew Kaminski. We'll see you at the end.

Ladies and gentlemen, as promised, we are so excited to be here with the best organist in all of baseball, Matthew Kaminski, organist for the Atlanta Braves and many others, but our, our hearts belong to the Braves forever. He is at Braves organist on Twitter. You can find him there and, and sing along as he plays.

You can hear him pretty well, especially in some of the like radio broadcast and all that stuff. You can hear him so best organists in baseball. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Thank you. You know, it's, it's a pleasure being on your show and I don't know if I'm the best.

Maybe I had the most exposure this year. You're our favorite. Absolutely. Is there a, is there a, I imagine this maybe so is there sort of a fraternity among like baseball and sports organists? That's, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a club that has shrunk over the years. Is there among the, you know, the, the various clubs that still have a live organist?

Is there sort of a fraternity among you guys? Yeah, I would say so at least over social media, I've actually only met one current organist in baseball. His name is dealer rule and he was or he is the organist for the Lakers. And also, no, I'm sorry, the Dodgers, but he also does the Kings. Can you do the Lakers?

But I think doing three sports was a little bit much for him. So he's in Los Angeles, but there is a Facebook group where we all kind of. I guess events to each other is that includes hot. Yeah. It includes hockey organists and, and baseball, minor league and college baseball as well as major league, as well as basketball too.

So there's definitely a little bit of a fraternity on online. Unfortunately, you know, living in all parts of the country, it's a little bit hard to get together and like have a convention or anything like that convention. Okay. So you are, you are, if people know you for anything other than either your, your, you know, music that you put out or being the Braves organist, they know you for being troll is not the right word, but they know you, I don't like that word.

They know a playful sort of a poker, you know what I mean of the other teams. And that's one of the things that is always, is always funny on, on Twitter. Like you get people who don't know kind of what your thing is, you know what I mean? That you're just like in, in good fun, having some fun with player names and doing puns on their names and that kind of thing.

But seeing people from other teams they'll get offended and not, you know, and they'll, they'll come in hot. This organist for the Braves is what kind of, you know, whatever is, is that something that you just revel in? Like, come on guys, bring it until, until you get the joke, go ahead and be mad. Well, you know, it seems like every year people discover what I've been doing, even though I've been doing it.

This was my 13th season. So since 2009, I've been doing the same thing, you know, I haven't really changed much of what I do. So it's always surprising to me that every season there's, there's new people who discover, like, did you hear what that Oregon is? Did? Well, I've been playing this same song for this certain player for 13 years know.

Yeah. So it's funny to me how. At any random moment, someone just finally gets it. Well, I was main Robert talking about before I was particularly fond of small world to bay and the free fall in for Bregman. I thought those were wonderful. I'm sorry. It was hilarious by the way, do you have a zinger or one that you're super proud of that you're like, this is the one that, that, that is like, will live in your hall of fame of, of great, of great.

You know what you mentioned that. So I played it's a small world for Al to bay and then he hit a home run. So I think, yeah. So by me saying, I'm sorry, on the next one, I think that's one of my favorite ones, just because it was a direct connection to exactly what happened. That's true. Yeah. So I'm apologizing.

Number one to the Braves fans, I'm also apologizing to or making him mad enough to hit home, run dual level as well. I think my favorite. Oh, well, I don't want to say my favorite, but one of my favorites was always Camptown races for for Lucas Duda who was playing. I thought that was always love that I liked the solar this year for the miles Davis tune for so layer.

I thought that was pretty good. I thought that was well, you land only about 5% of the crowd got that one. It's sort of like, you know, especially when you're, when you're in the park and it's obviously you hear that the organ very prominently, it's like a mini game within the game, you know, and it's fun.

And, and you, so for the people who want it spoiled, you often, you know, tweet out or post on Facebook that, you know, here's okay. Here's what I've got for this lineup coming up today or, or you'll even sometimes solicit help, you know, who's pitching today. What anybody got any ideas for, you know, for this person is actually, is there a person out there who's just sort of really stumped you that you were like, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to pull anything out for this.

I'm sure there were, but you could often just do it based on their number. So if they're number one, if they're their Jersey number one, then one is the loneliest number. Or if I play number two, then deuce by kiss works. So if I can't get their name, I could at least get a number or from where I could find out where they're from.

So sometimes a name might stump me, but usually I could find something I know there was a, there was a short period in time. And I don't even know if you're like, if you can talk about this or if you want to talk about this, but there was, there was a brief period a few years ago, where for a moment, I think you had to sort of back away from that sort of, that sort of, you know, playful I'll call it teasing.

Is there, was there a reason for that, that you can talk about, you know, EV every year you know, even though I've been doing basically the same thing all these 13 years, every year my boss has kind of asked for different things. Okay. So sometimes they'll ask me like, well, we're not going to do any walk-ups today and that's fine.

And sometimes they, and the fans noticed right away. And then sometimes they'll say, you know, we'll just, let's just play just generic music. Okay. So unfortunately I'm not high enough in the food chain to kind of decide exactly what I'm doing on every game. Yeah. Well, when I show up, you know, I'm kind of, I'm an employee just like anyone else and I'm, I'm taking direction from.

The director and then, well, you've done his box 13 years. I mean, you, if you'd have bothered somebody, it wouldn't have lasted 13 years. Haven't gotten fired yet. Going back kind of in that timeframe. I want to talk about your first project taking my time from 2010. I'll just you on track to that's track two for the title track taking my time.

It's just you on Oregon and the drum start sax player. I think that's EGA Hughes. If I'm not mistaken, I don't know which guitar player plays on that. Whether it's Micah or Charlie Robinson or Charles, but I love it. And the walking bass line is so tight. I know hot dog first track, but we're talking Kaminski so we can leave Lou Donaldson for another time.

How, how have you developed as a studio musician or advanced since 2010, you think you're smarter better? The same. How has your development gone from 2010 till now? I think, you know, as, especially I consider myself a jazz musician. So as a jazz musician, I'm constantly trying to get better. So I hope, and in my mind, I think that every album is better than the last, and I think my next album is going to be better than the current one.

So and as a musician, I hope that my best playing is not behind me. I hope it's ahead of me. Sure. So I, I look at, or I listened to that 2010 album and I think it was a very good start of my professional recording career that was on summit records, such as a semi major label and the jazz and the jazz world.

So that was kind of my first initial step into kind of the big leagues of jail. And then every, you know, every album after that has been just kind of a stepping stone. Well, I, so hopefully I get better. There's one reason that I'll like the 2014 album swinging on the new Hammond better. I love sail on sailor, which we talked about.

Brian Wilson. Rob loves that song. We love that song. It's because I know who plays on what track, because there's only three musicians on the, on that Dave and Justin. So I know who's playing what the other one I'm like, I don't know. It was, there's so many different things. So that's one thing that I did like, but that's a great project as well.

Oh, thank you. Yeah. I'm Dave Stryker the guitar on that album, actually his lips in New Jersey and he, he was in town for a jazz convention. I'm like, Hey, we had a mutual friend. I'm like these. I asked my mutual friend, you know, do you think, you know, Dave would want to play on the album? And all I had to do is have him stay in town for one more day, you know, and get his plane ticket back home.

You know, I, I try to take advantage of those opportunities if like, if there's someone who I really want to work with, you know, if they're in town, I'm going to try to work with them. That's great that y'all knocked that out in the one day. I mean, that's, that's moving. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was whirlwind, jazz cats.

That's right. You know, me and JP were rock guys, whatever jazz guys. It's a whole other thing. It's, I mean, really the LA there's no overdubbing, you know, we may have fixed a few things here and there, but really it was just all kind of dude. I love that. And that's awesome. Where have you been a, a lifelong baseball fan?

I like baseball growing up, but, and I was a Cubs fan. I grew up in Chicago. So don't hold that against me all gotta start somewhere. So I I enjoyed it. I enjoyed going in Wrigley field. I wouldn't say that it was my favorite sport growing up in Chicago. Number one, the Chicago bears of 85 was in my kind of boys fandom years.

Like I was at, I was born in 77. They won an 85 or 86 was a Superbowl. So I was like eight or nine years old. So that's when, like my love of football kind of came through and I'm still a bears fan and still curse at the TV screen if they're not doing well. And then and then Michael Jordan came and happened for the bulls or so the whole diet bulls dynasty was throughout my high school years.

So, you know, for me, basketball and football were. A lot more watched than, than baseball in my family. The good era did not that you could pick, but to live in Chicago. I mean, that's a good that prompt Tom to be living there. That's awesome. So how did you, how do you end up initially getting the organist position for the, for the Braves?

How did that come about? Was it like an audition thing or somebody you knew? How did that work? Yeah, it was really just dumb luck. So one of my adult, Oregon, the students, so it's the partner of the audio engineer at the Braves. And he said, they're looking for an organ player. So they were kind of looking more behind the scenes and they were like, there was no audition or there's no press release.

It was just the audio engineer kind of asking his friends. Wow, that's pretty cool, man. Fantastic. Without like, within me finding out that there was a position open. I got a call back. Like he, he told his partner and his partner called the boss and I got a call back within an hour with not even like, not even giving me enough time to think about whether I could do 81 games a year or whatever.

I just took the phone call and had an interview a week later and just kind of roll from there. Timing's everything. Seriously. That's fantastic. Tied in with timing and it's a little, I think you were here probably. You would have been here a little bit after these people, but you went to the university of Arizona, correct?

Is that correct? Yeah. From 95 to 98. Okay. So you just missed the people I was going to ask you about cause they played late eighties, early nineties there. Do they still talk about Trevor Hoffman and Kenny loft in there? Cause they both went to Arizona. My wife's favorite pitcher ever was Trevor Hoffman.

Believe it or not. I really didn't follow Arizona baseball because our basketball team won the national championship. No, it was actually after that was Mike Bibby. Jason's Harry Michael Dickerson miles. Steiman that was probably 96 97 maybe. Yeah. And then, and, and our football, our football team that year when I was like 95, 96 Tedy Bruschi was on our defense.

And we had what we call the desert storm defense. Back when I was there, it was all about football and basketball. There you go. Once again, Yuba. So you play an SK two at truest for gear people out there and you also play an S K one and an I'm sorry, an S K one and an X, K three. What's kind of the differences.

Are there any big differences between an S K one and an S K two. And for the gear nuts out there? Yeah. Well here at the house and you guys could see the people at home can see it, but you guys could see behind me, there's a Hammond B3 organ. So the Hammond B3 was made. And the I want to say the 50, 60 seventies and those, those are analog working parts and there there's a motor that runs around and everything is all analog inside there.

So they've in the last, you know, 20 years or so, they've tried to digitize. What you see kind of behind me with a Hammond B3 organ and the newer, the newer products are the SK series S K standing for stage keyboard. And that's what I use at the stadium. And it's a lot better to use than say a B3 at the stadium because I could just plug it in right to the mixing board.

And it has an on kind of onboard Lesley effect. Okay. So there's there's a Leslie speaker that goes with these Oregon's, I've got one behind the organ over there and the Leslie speaker has a, a rotating horn. It's actually two horns that rotate, but only one of the horns actually produces sound and the other one's for counter weight balance.

So one is kind of a dummy horn one's actually working and it's rotating around. And but Leslie speaker produces a kind of rotary Doppler effect. Now in the newer instruments, they do, they do a digital simulation of that. And that's where the SK one and the SK two really worked to our advantage at the stadium.

So we don't have to work with a 400 pound instrument. There's only a 30 pound instruments in the SKC.

Correct? Yeah. And I could use headphones and if I wanted to change the sound switch, I don't like to, I like to have a pure organists in that way where I like to just have Oregon. I don't like to even play with a drum machine. So there are organists in the league who do all the groove boxes. And you sir foster with the Hawks.

He's a master at that. He, he does all sorts of sounds and stuff. Me, I'm more of a pure organist where I just want to play my instrument. There's been a few times where you've sort of just gone live, set up your phone and, you know, you'll just go live for an inning or two. And that has been such an enjoyable thing for me to watch where it's just, you're not even really interacting.

You're just setting up the phone and doing your thing and catching just the sounds of the game going on and in the Oregon intersperse and all that. And the, you hear the announcers in the background, it's just, yeah, that's such a great really experience. If you, if you guys first go follow Matthew on Twitter at Braves organist, and he's on Facebook as well.

Are you on Instagram too? Yep. I should be following you. I don't think I am. But beginning, beginning, today, I'm on cameo. Okay. Cameo actually, they actually contacted me. Yeah. No one wants to pay for me. That's big time right there. That's when that's, when you know you've made it. Who needs, who needs the blue check mark?

When you got the cam yet? Yeah. Kimmy. Well, I think on camera, what I'm going to do. If people want me to play a walkup song for them, whether I choose it or if they choose it, then let's do that on cameo. I could just set the video the camera on me and, and I'll play your walkup song. Fantastic. Good. I love it.

I love it. Has there ever been a moment in a game where you where like we've all done it, maybe you haven't. I don't know, but where you've bought something in a big moment and you just went, I, I make mistakes all the time, but I would guess most people don't know it's a mistake. Okay. Fair enough. So in my mind, I make mistakes every game.

Okay. But I wonder how many people notice it. I can probably get away with it, you know, and I guess the, the stadium atmosphere is pretty forgiving too. If there's something, you know something minor that goes on, we probably would not even even be aware. Flip it. Do you have a moment where you go, bro?

I really nailed that in like an important moment in a game or important moment in a series where you're like, I made an impact right there. I added to the, you know what I mean? Yeah, you know, I I've played so many games, so this past year I've gotten over a thousand games under my belt Braves games, but I also do, I also do UGA baseball and, and other colleges as well.

So I've done maybe 1300 by now. There was one this past year or yeah, this past year at UGA. There's a serious guest. One of, one of our. Radio announcers is a big led Zeppelin fan. Okay. So during one long inning, and actually it was UGA was scoring a lot during one that long inning. I wanted to see how many led Zeppelin songs I could fit in that half ending.

And I think I got up to 13 led Zeppelin signs, and I was pretty proud of myself. And the only reason why there wasn't any more is because there's, there's the third out. I could, I had no more opportunities to play a headset from song. Are you doing these off the top of your head or do you have a kind of a fake book, a real book or a, you know, I I'm a fan of led Zepplin.

So I had them on the top of my head. Most of what I planned the stadiums are memorized because it takes too much time to open the music. Now, sometimes if I have a long time to play before, then I'll, I'll have my iPad there. And I have plenty of music on my iPad. Throughout kind of the game action. I try to have everything memorized.

I know you threw cashmere on one of your projects. I can't remember, but you'd put it at the end with another song. I don't remember which one off the top of my head, but knowing your, yeah, it was subdivisions and cashmere and it's kind of a mashup. Yeah. If anybody listening is out there in Atlanta or coming into Atlanta, take the opportunity when you can to get to a Braves game early for batting practice, because I know then you get to hear Matthew just sort of playing for an extended time, doing your thing while the, while they usually, while the opposing team, I think and oh man, batting practices, its own sort of environment.

And it's, you know, it's really fun, but the, you just walk. It's like I get like an endorphin rush. When I, when I walk into the stadium, see the field come up, you know what I mean? And then you get the Oregon. It just is a, it's a whole atmosphere that really just chemically. It works for me, man. I just love.

What's what's your favorite food at truest park? If you get, you got, do you eat the food there? I'm going to give you the right answer. It's the H and F burger. It's amazing. I had the first H and F burger of the world series. I was at game three and I was like in by five o'clock first and line. Now I wasn't, I was first in line for H and F I bought the first one of the world series.

So I was like, what is your favorite food at truest park? I would say Fox brothers. Barbecue. Yeah, a lot of times when I go there, there's employee food and it's not going to be the same as, as the restaurants out there with the common folk, but that's common. So, so yeah, if I'm going to. One of the stands I'm going to, I'm going to search up that Fox brothers, I think.

So now you've been in two different stadiums for the Braves. Do you have a preference as far as your setup, your vantage point even even the in and out, what do you ha do you have a preference between truest and a Turner field? I live in Lilburn for anyone around Atlanta is the Northeast side of Atlanta.

And it was, it was a lot easier to get to Turner field from where I live. It's a little more convenient that vantage point Turner field actually was, was definitely a better for me. Vantage point and Turner field, I actually was in the press box, meaning not in that whole area, but in the actual press box with the reporters.

And what was nice about that is the windows opened completely. It was like, like a whole panoramic view of the stadium and we were on the second level. So I'll have to give it to Turner field on that point as well. So however everything else with truest park, the whole battery area, and the whole experience, there's a record store you know, in the battery area called Waterloo, sunset records.

So everything else around surest park definitely gets a win for me. Okay. With Turner field, you know, you have just that bullpen, I guess, was, was the only little restaurant. But yeah, it has a pluses and minuses for both. Okay. All right. Fair enough. Well said. So as, as we're speaking, we are just over a week removed from the Braves winning the world series.

And of course everybody's been going insane. It was, it was fantastic moment. And for those of us who have been lifelong Braves fans, it was a long, a long wait from, you know 95 to of course talking to a guy who grew up watching the Cubs. I, you know, whatever you understand. But after, after the world series, you got to do something incredibly cool, which was be part of the world series parade.

That was awesome. Tell us a little bit about that experience. Well, it was, it was awesome, but it was a cold that morning. That morning. It was cold. If you, if you saw a video of me, I actually had a winter hat on top of my Braves. And I had my gloves in my pocket cause I had to play. Yeah. And they put me, they put me in a back of a semi on a flatbed what the heavy hitters.

So luckily I put my earplugs because those drums are pretty loud. But it was, it was amazing, you know? And the first part we went through downtown Atlanta and then we went through Midtown and I had Marco wins next to me, who is the end game host. And for us, like we've been working together for 13.

He's been there for 15 years. I've been there for 13. And we were just saying how cool it was like, we've been through so many seasons, you know, and just see the sea, the sea of people. And, you know, I could actually say that I've played for a million people. Right. And between that and truest park and my kids actually got to go with my neighbor.

My wife was actually working, but my neighbor took my kids over there and I got to wave to them. That's pretty in the Midtown area. So, you know, I don't really get, I don't really get too starstruck when it comes to players, but it's those moments like that, like being a part of a parade or, or being, you know, playing the organ for the world series while everyone's watching, you know, stuff like that to me is, is what I get excited for.

Yeah. And that's great. And that, you know, you'll have, you'll have moments that can go back and be watched for. You know, recorded sports history. You'll be part of it. You know, it's just, it's crazy to think about the legacy that, that sort of, you know what I mean? You'll be a trivia question on jeopardy one day, for sure.

Right. Used to, you know, used to have fun with opposing players and was part of the brave 21 world series. And then he got fired for playing something and he fended the wrong guy one day. And man this has been a blast. It's been fun, man. We have, we have one question that we ask everybody. I'll let, J.P.

ask you this. Yeah. So you're you're on tour. You're touring doing your solo stuff, doing traveled with the Braves. When they take you on the road, the I'll joke aside, you go into a gas station. What is your gas station? Snack. Food of choice and why you're thinking of it. I'll tell you mine. I get a three Musketeers bar.

When I was growing up, my mom would say, you can have any candy bar you want, and it's the most ounces. So I get a three Musketeers bar. What is your gas station? Snack. Food of choice. I share mine with my family, but it's combos. Every time we go on a trip, it's going to be combos and pepperoni or does it matter actually?

You know, actually I kind of like them all. I go with whatever my kids pick out. Okay. So my daughters are eight and 11 and they they'll pick up probably usually the pizza one. Okay. Now you, you, you, Atlanta people are going to hate me now. I actually, I prefer diet Pepsi over Coke, Coke, unfortunately.

So I'm going to say diet Pepsi and combos. Right? I saw you drinking a Pepsi, zero sugar a little while ago. I was like, all right. No, the one thing from Chicago that has never left is my love for Pepsi. Right? Charles would be impressed. So there you go. You got the right one. Nailed it, Matthew. Thank you so much for joining us.

It's been a real treat to get to talk to you and congratulations on everything you've done with the Braves. Hopefully we get to see you for a long time and we'll make sure to tell our listeners to pick up LA connection with Jeff Hamilton and Bruce Foreman on there, and you bring it on home. So thanks so much.

Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show, man. Cool, man. Have a good one.

Two three strikes. You're out at the Great Song Podcast. It is baseball season. Once again, we couldn't be happier. This is our second fully baseball themed episode centerfield by John Fogarty in which we wrongly said that he was saying, put me in cold tan. I've never gone through and just cut that section out, but we need to put a disclaimer on that episode.

It's put me in. Crying out loud. We believe something in the last second. And didn't think to just look at the lyrics in the liner notes, whatever man it's put me in coach. But yeah, we're so excited to have baseball back. As you can tell, we went full blown, double barrel, you know, opening days, double header.

That's right. So big, big, big, thank you to Aaron Chewning. Matthew Kaminski to joining for joining us today on what has just been a baseball love Fest. And you know what? We're not done. I'm sure we'll do another baseball episode. Any excuse we can do to, to mix our passion for the Atlanta Braves and music.

We'll we'll we'll find so hope you guys have. This a extra large episode of Great Song Podcast, celebrating the national pastime. I'm going to call it that even though it's not anymore. Football has far surpassed. I mean, are you kidding me? But baseball lives on forever. Stay strong, enjoy major league baseball.

Let's go Braves. Let's repeat. Let's do all the things. And then we'll be back next week with your regular scheduled programming, actual, you know, just straight up music coverage with no sports. Another theme, another theme starting next, next week. So we'll see you again. Coming out of movie month, we had this as kind of a segue.

It's kind of the pause between the months, but another theme month next month. We hope you guys enjoy it this week. We're in 1908. Next week. We're going to be in 2021. So if you, if you belong somewhere in the middle, you're going to enjoy it. All right. We'll catch you guys next week with another Great Song until then.

I'm Ron J.P.. You'll listen to some music.