Episode 17: Ed Hamell & Tyler Watson

Josh Caldwell: Hello, my atypical daydreamers. After this episode, I'm taking a break to record more interviews and make more music. I'll be back on January 11th, 2024. In the meantime, for the month of December, I'll still be posting bonus stories at my Patreon. So head over there to get your road story fix. Make sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen. And if you're liking the show, tell a friend. Thanks for your support. And now on to the show.

Ed Hamell: Then I think like five minutes later or something, I'm still in the living room and she goes outside to the porch and she just goes, Tyler, my God, my God, Tyler, Tyler, Tyler, come here. Like I haven't really heard her like this maybe at all in our relationship.

Josh Caldwell: Welcome to Atypical Daydream, a podcast about life on the road. I'm Josh, your host, and thanks for stopping by. My first guest is Ed Hamell, AKA Hamell on Trial. He's a musician, songwriter, and a punk rock poet. Coupling parenthood with the life of a touring musician has always been a tall order, but Ed knows the recipe to maintain both, and it's a beautiful thing.

Ed Hamell: I had wanderlust. I think about this a lot. When I was a kid, like five or six, there was some lumber in my backyard and I was always going to build a boat and travel. I always had wanderlust. Some people were thinking about this 30 years. I mean, wow, 30 years. I just kind of loved it. So I stayed.

I've been hardcore touring since right around 93, when I could finally make my living playing music. So from 93 till now, that's 30 years. I've always been gigging. I was in bands for many, many years. I was in a band that did primarily Upstate New York for seven years and then after that's when I went solo around 89. It was so difficult because of what I do and how idiosyncratic it is. It was pretty aggressive for the folk rooms and the rock rooms were skeptical that I didn't have a drummer or bass player. It wasn't really until I got signed to a major in 93 here in Austin.

I got signed to a major when I was 39. I knew it was going to be a short-lived thing, but I also knew I wanted to make music my life. I've always sort of been an independent contractor, a small business owner. Some of the rooms I've played, I've been playing the same rooms for 25 years. Similar to a salesman. My ex-wife thought I was being too self-effacing when I would say this, but to a large extent I was a brush salesman. And I don't find that pejorative. I'm proud of my brushes. I work really, really hard on my songs.

Ed Hamell: I've been lucky. I really have. My ex-wife, who is a tough gal, once said, I remember coming back from a gig and saying, I'm never playing there again. And I'm going to tell that club owner, go stick it up his ass. And she said, it must be nice. Because when I work, no one applauds at the end of the day.

The day I got dropped from Mercury Records, we're eating and I'm quiet. And she finally says, how long is this going to go on? You know, the brooding, the sulking. I'm just curious, how long is this going to go on? I'm like, well, give me a break, man. I worked my whole life to get a major. I just got dropped. How about 24 hours? She goes, you know, you should have gotten into the porn industry because in the porn industry, when they fuck you in the ass, they pay you and answer your phone calls.

Ed Hamell: I have no regrets. It's been a great life, a great run. When the marriage broke up around 2008, my son was six at the time. And I was going to make absolutely sure that he was a major part of my life and I was going to be a major part of his life.

My ex-wife was really cool. She didn't grow up with a father and she really knew how important it was. He lived with me technically, zip code wise, because the schools were phenomenal. She only lived 15 minutes north. Very 50-50 parenting. But he toured with me a lot. We've done easily 300,000 miles together in the car. Cross-country 16 times. He's seen the Grand Canyon, Comic Con, Mall of America, Memphis, the Civil Rights Museum. We've done it all since he was six years old and most of this he has documented. I wouldn't trade that for the world.

Some of these people on the bus are 50 years old and they've been on the bus since they were 20 and they haven't talked to people and they haven't been out in gas stations talking to people living on the street. My son and I saw that and witnessed that. And I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world. There's not a thousand people in the room screaming my name. Doesn't mean a fucking thing to me, frankly. But hanging out with him, and often particularly during the Bush administration and the Trump years, you know, the 50 to 100 people that come to see me in Carolina or Georgia or Florida, you have all these people coming up going, thank you. I couldn't say this at work. My son saw a lot. It was very rich.

One time when he was in eighth grade, he got a C in math. He was a straight A student and always was. So I took him aside and I'm like, here's the deal. I'm saying it about Ann Coulter's cunt up there and bringing a new one to every bar in the United States. You can't get a C in math or I can't take you out. You've really got to get straight A's. So when the other parents come at me, I can go, hey, fuck you. Don't judge me. My kid's a straight A student. And now he's going to go for his doctorate, so who wins this one?

I remember when we went to the Grand Canyon. I'm on a budget, like always. Motel 6 when it was cheap. We get to the Grand Canyon, it's 30 bucks to get in. My son has no idea. Like any kid, he wasn't particularly interested. Until you really get to Texas, there's nothing radically different. We get to the gates of the Grand Canyon and I'm paying 30 bucks. My son's looking at me like, why is Pops paying $30 for a hole in the ground? But the look on the kid's face when he saw it. Those are monumental moments. That's really when it all comes into focus.

Josh Caldwell: Hey, Josh here. I love making this podcast and I'd love to make it my full-time gig. Besides telling the stories, I'm basically a one-man band and that takes time. If you're enjoying the podcast, please consider becoming a patron. You'll have access to loads of great bonus stories and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you're supporting a truly independent podcast. Find the Patreon link in the show notes. And thanks.

This next story comes from Tyler Watson. He's a clown, a writer, and a Vegas performer. When I say honeymoon, you probably think of newlyweds, love, and beautiful destinations. Tyler tells a different story and turns the honeymoon into a horror moon.

Tyler Watson: So we booked out two months in the year after we got married to travel through Europe, do a big blowout honeymoon, throw money to the wind, just let it loose. We worked out with our contracts that we were going to have two months off and we were just letting loose. It was summertime. We had been working nonstop for five years. It's our honeymoon. So we were putting back drinks. It was a two month vacation, which I had never traveled that long on the road myself. We kind of had this mindset the whole time, like it's a marathon. We were also drinking quite a bit. We were on this negotiation of hangovers where we just kind of kept the buzz rolling through the first month and a half. We somehow survived and made that work and we're having a great time.

But we knew we ended up in Italy for the last part of the trip and we decided, let's just hold up in Sicily. Let's do a little sober vacation in Sicily, just bask in the sun, find a little art retreat thing. We've been on the go. We've just been eating and living it up. Let's do something productive with this portion of the trip.

So we found a place on Airbnb that was like this little ranch house in Palermo. We'd never been to Sicily. We just were like, that'd be a nice island retreat. We fly into Palermo, it's right up the street. We rent a car. They have to open this gate for us at the bottom of this long driveway. We drive up the driveway. There's almost like a mini orchard along the driveway. And then you get up to the big ranch house. Beautiful, big, almost like an adobe ranch home. And then these giant mountains right behind us, just these giant crags, these rocks. Very visually stunning.

The woman who owned it, Yvette, is there, maybe 80 years old or something. She has a helper there, a younger woman. First thing we see are these cats by the ranch house and we're like, cats. And they're like, yes, you like cats? And we're like, yeah. She's like, these are just stray cats that hang around the property, but if you don't mind them, we sometimes put out food for them. You can feed them if you want.

Tyler Watson: Then we just get the tour. Yvette has put out this giant platter of local fare, wine, fruit, all these pastries. Like no other Airbnb has done this. We're like, oh my gosh, thank you Yvette. This is wonderful. And then in the kitchen she has local pasta sauce and pasta. We're like, oh my gosh, this is way overboard. And then in the kitchen she's like, and if you want to feed the cats, there's all this cat food. It was like a whole cabinet full of cat food. Okay.

Within the first day the cats were scratching at the glass. These cats come here every day. They are fed here. There's no way we're not going to feed these cats. We're kind of assessing the cat situation. There's like a mom cat and then there's a little kitten that sometimes appears that was really hesitant out front. I don't think we saw the kitten for a couple of days. And then there was a male cat that was territorial. Then there was a separate cat on the other side of the property that only appeared on that side.

When they introduced us to the place, the one thing they mentioned, because there was that gate at the very bottom of the driveway, they were like, whenever you leave, just make sure the gate is closed at the bottom. There's stray dogs around, just up and down the streets of Palermo. We were like, yeah, no problem. That's easy enough. And at night you could hear the stray dogs as dusk fell, just dozens of stray dogs somewhere off in the distance.

So we're taking it easy that week. Feeding the cats. Reading books. My wife is making paper mache. That was her project for the week. She'd never done it before. So she was trying to coordinate where to get all the materials in Italy. She looked it up one day and was like, okay, I'm gonna run out and get all the supplies for the paper mache. She was like, I'll be gone for like an hour or something.

It was a very difficult driveway to get out of because to get in front of the gate, you would be in the highway as cars are coming by. Whenever we left together, one of us would hop out real quick, close the gate, hop in the car and drive off. But she was by herself. So she was like, I'm just gonna leave the gate open. And I was like, that should be fine. It's midday, you're gonna be gone for like 45 minutes right up the street. I didn't really think much of it. And then I'm just lounging, reading a book, writing in the ranch house. And then I kind of hear the cats go off at one point.

Tyler Watson: It doesn't sound good. It sounds like some sort of fight. I immediately sit up and I'm like, what the heck was that? And then I peek my head out the window and I see the cats. I think one of the male cats is kind of up and it tackles the other cat, and another cat was kind of mingling around. I was like, oh geez, there must have just been a fight went down or something. And I sat back down. And then not too long after that, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, my wife came back. Then I think like five minutes later or so I'm still in the living room and she goes outside to the porch where the cats were and she just goes, oh my God, oh my God, Tyler, Tyler, Tyler, come in. Like I haven't really heard her like this, maybe at all in our relationship. I was like, what is it? She's like, the kitten. Oh my God, the kitten. I go outside and half of a kitten is on the front porch of the ranch home. The bottom half of a kitten is just lying there on the porch. I'm like, Jesus.

And then my wheels start turning. I heard a noise 20 minutes ago. It sounded like a fight, but I didn't see anything. And the gate was open. Did a stray dog just come up and murk this cat? It just like completely, there was like no coming back that day from that situation. I put on some gloves, got a plastic bag, picked it up and put it in the bin.

We had been making friends with these cats and so it was just like, it's our fault. We left the gate open, this little kitten died. Jesus Christ, what have we done? This is terrible. We just kept thinking, man, this is ranch life, I guess. This is what it's like on a farm. They come and they go. The biggest thing was that we thought it was the kitten that we had been seeing from the first day.

Tyler Watson: And then later that day after the incident, we saw the kitten again and we're like, oh my God, it's that kitten. The one that was healthiest and oldest of the kittens was coming around. So we were like, oh, he survived or whatever. It was another kitten we never even saw. There must be other kittens around. We were still feeding the cats and made sure from now on that the gate was always, always closed.

And then I started to really assess what the true scenarios were. I kind of put it together. There's this orange tabby on the other side of the property that isn't willing to come over where they eat, like has been shunned or something. But that seems to be the dad of this kitten. But then there's a new male that has taken over this side of the house that eats with the mom and the kitten. He's like black or dark gray. So there's dynamics here. There's a whole pecking order, territories and stuff.

And then two days later, my wife is either out of the house or in the room with headphones on doing her paper mache thing. I go out to throw something away in the bin. And lo and behold, at the bottom of the stairs outside the porch is another half of a dead kitten. Same scenario but completely different kitten, different coat, everything. My stomach turned but I was assessing it real quick. I'm just gonna grab a bag, put this one in the bin, and my lips are sealed. I'm not gonna tell my wife because she's gonna freak out again. These kittens are just going down left and right.

The gate was closed all day today. There's no way a dog came in unless there's some hole in the fence. And my wheels are turning. Two days ago we beelined to the assumption that the gate was open and the stray dog came in. But this time I'm like, I don't think there was a stray dog. I feel like we would have heard barking or seen some evidence. And there are all these dynamics with these cats and the two male cats and I didn't even know about these kittens.

Tyler Watson: So I just decide to Google, do cats like murder their kittens? Immediately like thousands of responses. It's been Googled thousands of times by all these different people. Do cats murder their kittens? And it's just like, yes, they do. Yes, yes, yes, yes. For these reasons all the time. And I'm realizing, I grew up with cats, but all the cats were fixed. These are just wild cats.

And even one day I heard a crazy cat noise again and I went outside and it was one of the male cats mounting the kitten. And I was like, oh my God, he's trying to get on with the kitten. What is going on? Get off, get off. And he ran off. And then I even Googled, how young does a kitten have to be to have other kittens? And it was like some insane number, like six months old or something. I was like, oh my God, the animal kingdom when it's in its natural order is so much more severe than I thought.

The Google articles were just like, if a cat can't provide for all of its kittens, or if it's stressed, if it feels imposed upon or unsafe, all these things. We were these new people on the property. Maybe we weren't feeding in exactly the right way. But I feel like there was just this pecking order within the cats. I kept this second kitten secret. I was like, I'm not going to tell my wife. Let's just keep the Sicily trip going. Just hopefully another one doesn't go down.

And then we ended up making these friends the very last day in Sicily and we were having a couple of drinks and telling stories and my wife Grace brought up the cats to the friend. This cat thing happened. And in the moment I was just like, yeah, and I didn't tell you, but there was another one. And she was like, what? Because I did want to tell her. I don't think my new assessment is I don't think it had anything to do with you leaving the gate open. I don't think a dog came in. I think it's these cats murdering their children.

It was this weird thing of domesticity and the wild where we wanted to have this idyllic little retreat but then we were imposing ourselves on this natural order that was established within this property. And it was, for me, just weird to kind of reassess with cats I had grown up with. Those weren't cats at all. Those were neutered, domesticated animals.

Josh Caldwell: I want to thank Ed and Tyler for sharing their experiences. Make sure to check out Hamell on Trial's new album, Bring the Kids. It's out now. Also, if you're in Los Angeles this coming Thursday, December 7th, see Tyler perform in the show Hail Santa at the Elysian Theater. Otherwise, catch him on stage at Spiegel World's Absinthe in Las Vegas. This podcast was created and produced by me, Josh Caldwell. Music by Visual Aid, my side music project. General support and copywriting by Miranda Caldwell. If you like the show, please follow, subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like to financially support the show, check out my Patreon page. You'll have access to loads of great bonus stories. You can find the link in the show notes. Thank you for listening, and I hope you come back next week.