Force Majeure with Jeff Becker

The what podcast, the podcast for Bonnaroovians by Bonnaroovians.

Bonnaroovian A, Brad Steiner, Bonnaroovian B, Barry Courter.

No Lord Taco today. Where in the hell is Lord Taco? Is he okay?

It's cool outside. There's no rain. He's probably in the bus in the woods somewhere.

He doesn't go outside. He sits in a bus.

In the woods.

Which takes it from the garage to the trees. That's pretty much it.

So I'm excited about this week.

And it's mainly because we get to talk about an angle of this that we've been dancing around for a while.

But we never really actually engaged with because we're not that smart.

I got to be honest with you.

What? If you'd have told me six weeks ago that not only would we be doing this podcast every week,

but we would have some pretty strong guests.

Yeah.

I would have been...

That's pretty good.

We were struggling.

But I mean, Ed O'Brien, Larkin Poe, Chris Cobb last week, and now Jeff.

Good death.

By the way, not to jump too far backwards, but last week's interview with Chris Cobb,

I implore you to go back and listen to because it is such a...

Although it is a downer and it sucks, but it's reality to swallow.

And it gives you an idea as to where people's heads are that actually have to put these things into motion.

Right.

So whether or not it's an artist who's struggling to figure out what to do for financials

and what they do the rest of the year in their first quarter,

to the venues who have to actually implement all of this, to now the lawyer who then gets to sort it all out contractually.

I am excited about this conversation with Jeff, who turns out I've known for a long time and I totally forgot.

Yeah.

Well, you make fun of me for that.

So yeah, no, I...

You and I have speculated about topics that we talk about with Jeff.

And turns out we were not as far afield as one might have thought for two goobers who...

Yeah.

...who were just talking on a podcast, but to get a guy...

And Jeff, I was really impressed with his resume.

I mean, he's not just an attorney.

We'll go through it. Let's hear it. Let's hear it.

He's not just an attorney. He is a music attorney who...

This is what he does.

So really, really good get for the show.

Well, we were backstage at a...

I think it was Lollapalooza. Yeah, it was Lollapalooza.

And I just started talking and he's like...

And I was like, so what do you do?

And he's like, oh, I'm the lawyer for a blank, blank, blank, and blank artist

that were playing that year and I just...

My mouth went agape.

And I was like, I've been sitting here slobbering over a gin and tonic

making no sense to the lawyer for...

You're kidding me.

Yeah.

I'm like such an idiot.

He's a member of the Lawyers for Creative Arts, Chicago Bar, obviously,

an entertainment committee, American Bar, Forum on Sports and Entertainment Law,

Recording Academy, the Chicago Chapter.

He was named Billboard's top music lawyer on their list, not top lawyer,

put on their list in 2019, one of 40 Illinois.

This is what he does.

And he talks about how he got into it, which is interesting.

And then towards the end, we...

One thing we didn't ask him, and I'm kind of glad we didn't

because he doesn't have the answer anymore than we do is the future,

beyond other than some of the clauses that will be in contracts,

which was interesting.

But now this was another fascinating look into how this world is evolving,

this world that we all love so much.

And we hope that through the series of shows that we've done over the last few weeks,

we've put all the pieces of the industry together for you to make the best decision.

I don't mean a decision, but you can understand the industry

as well as you possibly can and all that has to go into it.

Jeff Becker, our guest today on the What Podcast.

Hello, Jeff.

Hey, Jeff.

How are you?

I'm great. Thanks for doing this.

You're very welcome.

Jeff and I go way back to the hair cutting salon at Lollapalooza.

That's right.

I literally didn't even remember until this morning.

We met like three years ago and this whole time I've been like,

I totally forgot.

That's totally my fault.

Funny story.

Do you remember Chris Mangelis by chance?

I do not.

He's a chef up in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Yes, I do.

I do know this guy.

Yeah.

I remember that guy.

He was like a rock star at that place.

Yeah, dude.

He has this traveling chef thing he does where he cooks for bands on the road.

Then he's got that restaurant up there and he obviously knew Coupe

because of the restaurant world.

Lo and behold, a few months back I started working with this wonderful artist

out of Wisconsin, actually New York, named Aram Ray.

She had recently moved to Green Bay to be closer to her boyfriend

who turns out to be Chris.

I'm like, small world again.

Back to Lollapalooza three years ago.

That is nuts.

I told Barry this before.

I don't go to Lollapalooza just because I think it's such a great music festival.

I do it because everyone that you could ever imagine to meet,

you're going to meet there.

It is the epicenter of the entire industry for a damn near a week.

I guess that's probably why you got into the work and the line of work,

especially that you got into because you just love this so much.

I absolutely, 100% love music and the arts and being around artists.

That's why I got into it.

The Lollapalooza thing is hilarious because to me,

I feel like that kid that never left my hometown

and then everyone who comes home for homecoming

and I go back to the high school football game and they're all there to see me.

I could see everybody at one time because being an attorney in this industry,

not in LA or New York, I find myself oftentimes having to go out to LA

and New York or Nashville or Atlanta or Austin.

It's nice that that one time a year, everybody comes here.

It makes it very easy to hang out and break bread and have drinks with people.

I know that there's a major topic at hand here,

but there's so much that I would love to talk to you about,

just as the industry in general one day.

How did you get your start?

Why did you decide entertainment law was going to be the thing that you dove into?

It's funny.

I think my start really even before becoming a lawyer was in high school, in junior high.

I grew up playing an amazingly very good bad guitar, a very good bad piano.

I sang and I was in the plays and musicals.

I was in bad bands.

I use different words when I'm not on the radio, so to speak, but I'm not being censored.

Is the word you're looking for is dog shit?

Pretty much.

I was thinking shitty.

The line is usually I played an amazing shitty guitar

and loved the idea of being an artist and going out and trying to make it as an artist.

The problem was I'm extremely risk averse too

and didn't want to take the chance of actually making it as an artist.

I wanted to have a job and a salary and benefits to pay for the mortgage I didn't have yet,

the kids I didn't have yet, and ultimately that led me to law school and becoming a lawyer.

I'd say I was probably about four years out of law school,

a young associate at a different law firm,

and a guy comes in my office and says to me,

Jeff, I was making dinner for my kids.

My son was playing a video game.

He paused the game and said, Dad, isn't that your song in the video game?

Sure enough, it was. He was a house musician in Chicago in the 80s,

wrote probably the most prolific speech of all house music

that had been sampled and remixed by hundreds of people.

It's still used by dance artists today.

That was copyright infringement.

That's what I was doing in my life, just not for a specific type of person or industry.

I helped him out, got him some money, resolved the issue,

but it was like a snap, like a light went off.

It was music and video games. It was cool.

I'm like, wait a minute.

I can actually bridge my love for the arts and music

with my ability to be a lawyer and help creatives.

From that point, I set off on a path to build a practice.

Two things. I want to jump in here.

One, this is my elevator career day speech, basically.

I'm the same. I can't play the radio.

I have three brothers that are musicians.

I have no talent, but love music.

I found a way to be involved.

For me, it was writing in a newspaper.

That's what I tell kids at career day.

Find something you love.

Not everybody's the quarterback.

Not everybody's the pitcher, but they need lawyers.

They need front office guys. They need marketing.

All kinds of things.

Just to let people know, you're a music attorney,

but as I often do, Google's everywhere.

I looked up Jeff Becker.

You're very active in the law business in music.

I looked at Recording Academy, Chicago,

Billboard Top Music Lawyers last year.

By the way, all of these things were previously bestowed upon me,

my old Jeff.

Which brings me back to what I was going to say at the very beginning

when we started, Jeff.

You used to say about Brad, he only likes two people.

One is himself and the other is fluid.

If he doesn't remember who you are, don't be offended.

I told Brad on my email this morning,

I'm glad that he reminded me as well because I hadn't remembered that.

But that's what happens in this industry.

You realize that you could be one or two steps connected to almost anybody.

At the end of the day, if you're out there and you're active,

you're not going to be able to do anything.

That's where you start.

When you said, look, I'm a lawyer.

I explained to my clients,

my primary job is to make sure you don't drive yourself off a cliff.

We do a lot of litigation as well.

When you have fallen off the cliff, helping you land as well as you can.

But I don't think that's enough.

As a lawyer that helps creatives,

I've had a lot of people that I've had to work with on my career

besides being the person to give contracts to and ask to negotiate deals.

That's how Brad and I met.

Just being out there, being social.

I think that not only in music, in almost any industry,

people want to work with their friends.

They want to work with people that they enjoy working with.

From my perspective, the way I built my business is very simple.

Don't be a dick and don't look too hard for business.

Enjoy them as people and eventually good things will happen.

That I think has worked out well for me

in that we've been able to build this practice in the Midwest.

It really is a national practice now.

I'd say 75% of our clients are not in Chicago.

They're all over the place.

When you were starting,

how hard was it for you to gain the trust of insert artists here?

When did you finally feel as though you had a group of people

that was good enough to sustain a business?

That's a great question.

Can I piggyback on that?

It's kind of what I was just thinking.

Brad and I, we all know artists.

We all know young musicians who are very talented.

It seems like it's always the lawyer gets involved when it's too late

or almost too late.

They've already signed a really bad contract

or given away their rights to something valuable.

Because they have no money, usually early on,

or they don't trust people.

There's all kinds of reasons with young creatives.

Kind of piggyback on that, I guess, with Brad's question.

The way that I often describe lawyers,

I always say lawyers are kind of like dentists.

No one wants to go to the dentist.

They're not fun to be around, oftentimes painful,

not necessarily inexpensive, kind of sounds like lawyers.

But I'll tell you what, you go in for a six-month cleaning with a dentist,

it's way less expensive and way less painful than a root canal.

In my world, it's the same thing.

If you come to a lawyer early on, have them look over the contract

and discuss things with you early on,

that's way less expensive and way less painful than litigation,

which is our equivalent to a root canal.

And to me, going to a lawyer when everyone's happy and hungry,

happy because nothing bad has happened yet,

and hungry because nothing good has happened yet,

you find that everybody tends to be more humble

about what their role is and whatever collaboration they've created.

You wait too long and something big has happened,

all of a sudden the drummer, who I pick on drummers a lot,

because of my love for them,

all of a sudden thinks their role is a lot bigger than it was at the time,

accepted a flat amount of money or a small percentage on something,

all of a sudden they think, well, my beat's the most important thing in this,

or a side artist all of a sudden decides they deserve a lot more money.

So that's why I think it's important to start early with lawyers.

I will say, my career started in litigation, right?

I was on the dispute side of things,

and I switched firms shortly after I met that gentleman who came to my office,

and said to my new firm where I am now,

I want to build a practice in entertainment.

I switched firms primarily because my new firm is very big on business development,

and they understood the importance of encouraging young attorneys to build their practice.

That's Swanson, Martin & Bell in Chicago.

I almost started my own firm,

and I had friends at Swanson who said, you should really talk to us first.

So I came over there, I joined the intellectual property practice group

and commercial litigation group,

but then they encouraged me to find ways to build my experience and my relationships.

So I read everything I could.

I talked to a lot of lawyers that did this work to find backstops

and people I could bounce ideas off of,

but then I joined a really important organization called Lawyers for the Creative Arts.

Lawyers for the Creative Arts is a nonprofit

that provides free legal services to artists who can't afford them.

You ask how do you get people to trust you?

It's a lot easier when you're not asking them to pay you any money

and you're helping them for free.

So I did this early on.

I took on a few matters, both to kind of get my experience,

but also to start building a client relationship base.

I owe a lot of my career to that organization because from the first case I had,

it was a guy fighting with his uncle over who owned the rights to his mom's music.

She had died. She was a songwriter.

She was being administered by a major United States music publishing company

that I won't name for purposes of today.

But again, I helped this guy out,

and I was negotiating this deal with the publisher as well as his uncle.

His uncle was the mom's brother,

and they were fighting over who owned the rights to mom's music.

When I employed that rule I mentioned earlier, don't be a dick,

and it worked really well because by the end of that deal,

the uncle's lawyer was not following that same rule.

The administrator, the publishing company, appreciated the relationship that I had with them,

and we became friends after that.

Then shortly thereafter, a major recording artist got sued in Chicago

along with that publisher and all the writers and other publishers on that song,

and they were putting together the defense team.

The publisher said, you know, Jeff was great to work with when he was not our lawyer.

We should make him our lawyer for this.

So I got to join that team, and that became a paying client.

This happened several times, and word of mouth spreads.

From that case, I represented some pretty large artists in litigation

from Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj, Chance the Rapper, Eminem.

Never heard of them.

Never.

But what happened at that point was there are artists that have not.

Keep plugging, man. Keep plugging.

Hey, man, listen, I hate mentioning things like that,

but I mention it only because it's public record and I can.

But more important than that, it all happened from the Midwest.

And I started developing these relationships that fed off of each other.

And then there would be artists you've never heard of before who said to me,

Jeff, thanks for helping me unscrew what I screwed up.

Could you help me not screw up in the first place?

And that began the transactional side.

Once you get burned, you realize the importance of not getting burned

the next time around, right?

You've learned the hard way. Let's avoid it.

And that around, I'd say, four or five years into doing this,

and that goes back now probably eight years ago,

we really started having this stronger client base where they started referring us more business.

And that allowed me to expand our practice group into associates of paralegals

and bring in other partners to do this with us.

But what's so fascinating about that,

tying back to what you originally said as to why you wouldn't become a musician,

is what you just described was years of being risky.

And you applied it to being a lawyer, but you wouldn't apply it to being a musician.

And I think that the word that you're looking for is vulnerability.

You didn't want to be too vulnerable and out there as a musician,

and you just didn't see it.

But you were willing to put your head down and work at a law firm

until you figured out exactly where you wanted to be.

And by the way, it sounds to me like, and correct me if I'm wrong,

but if you spent years doing copyright infringement,

that sounds like, for someone like you, the dullest thing in the world.

I'll be honest, no. Copyright infringement is actually quite fun.

Yeah, look, anything that involves property of the mind, to me, is interesting, right?

We're talking about creative works that have been developed by an artist or whomever

and that somebody else is stealing.

I enjoyed that type of litigation.

More than a lot of other types of litigation that are out there.

And no offense to my partners in other areas of law,

but we have a big medical malpractice group.

We have a big premises liability group, tort groups.

And that's not the type of work that interests me.

I was great in biology as a kid, but I don't want to spend all day studying medical records.

I'd rather listen to the music and understand how similar these two pieces of work are.

I teach music law at DePaul Law School up in Chicago,

and some of my most fascinating conversations with the students

are over infringement of copyrights in the music space.

It's actually quite fun, but that's why I'm a lawyer, I guess.

I get it. I mean, it's, you know, I tell, and people don't believe me,

but we're talking about Bonnarooo, and I tell them, it's work for me.

It's five days of work. Yeah, look at you.

I used to work harder, I will admit that.

But, you know, after so many years of doing it,

but I'd rather be doing that than anything else.

You know, I mean, you get to hang out with cool people like you're talking about

and be around things you're interested in, which is music.

That's a huge part of it.

And when you go into work every day, not right now,

but when you go to work every day, you have an entire entertainment team at your firm,

and how many people you got, and how many people are you currently actively representing right now?

Well, we do have a practice group of about a half dozen lawyers.

We work in film, music, television, literary rights.

So we kind of cross the gambit there.

We do litigation and transactional work.

And it's been great. We also have a group of...

Do you have any radio guys? Because I know a radio guy may be looking for somebody.

We actually have a couple of radio celebrities that we've done their deals for,

their negotiations with their broadcast teams. Absolutely.

How are you in 16 months?

16 months, I'll be talking to you, friend. I love it.

Don't wait too long. Got to start those negotiations early.

Good plans.

But yeah, we have a whole team at our firm that can handle this stuff.

Everyone from the partners on the high end, I oversee, I chair the practice group.

I have a partner, Michelle Wall, who is the vice chair of the group.

And then we have associates, partners, and paralegals underneath us.

And that's just really the idea here is to provide a team relationship with the client

so we can be as cost effective as possible as we continue to develop the client.

Developing clients can't afford legal fees that much,

but we try to make it as cost effective as we possibly can, right?

And I bet you have a ton of experience in figuring out intellectual property and copyright, et cetera,

but I don't know if you ever got a class in law school for Pandemic.

Ooh, yeah. You know, Pandemic Law was not something that comes up on the syllabus, let's say.

It will, won't it?

I'll tell you what. So I teach music law in the fall every year at DePaul Law School up here,

and we go through contracts. Like, we dig down, really nerd out on these contracts.

And I'll tell you, I don't think we've ever spent a great deal of time on the force majeure provision.

It's something that...

I'm sorry, the what? Say that again.

Exactly. That's what everyone's been saying to me for the last two months.

The what now? It's called force majeure, F-O-R-C-E, M-A-U-J-E-R-E,

something along those lines, I think, pretty close.

If you Google it, it'll come up for those listening at home.

Force majeure, which is essentially describing an event that could not be anticipated,

it cannot be controlled by either party, right?

It's a contract provision that's generally in almost every contract, except it's towards the end.

And people stop paying attention by that point in the contract.

They're more focused on how much money am I getting paid?

How long is this thing going on for?

And they don't look at something as what they consider to be mundane or obscure as force majeure.

I've got a friend of mine who's a stand-up comic.

Pat Dixon, it's one of the funniest jokes in the world.

He's like, the terms and conditions box at the bottom is sort of like the Bible.

I just scroll to the bottom and say I accept.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

You've got a lot of guys like that.

So, okay, when you...and this is essentially why we wanted to talk to you,

because this is such an unprecedented event for so many people.

And what are you advising your guys on?

What is the top few things you're telling them and how to make it through, you know, until God knows, first quarter of next year?

Yeah, yeah.

The first thing I say is let me see the contract.

Let me see the contract.

And that's because this provision that we're talking about, the force majeure provision of a contract, it's not standard.

It's not uniform.

It varies based on one document to the next.

Some contract provisions don't have any reference to pandemics.

Some do, depending how old they are.

What your rights are under the contract vary widely as well.

So you got to look at the contract first.

And just while we're on that part of the advice, I'll dig a little deeper on what this means.

Force majeure clauses in a contract allocate risk between the two parties to the contract.

They're intended to explain, hey, if something really unexpected happens or something that's completely outside the control of the parties,

let's put a provision in here that talks about what happens to us in that situation.

Who would be at risk for this or either of us at risk for this?

And what are our rights?

And usually that clause comes with one or two different types of options.

One is that the contract could be terminated with no consequences to either party financially.

And the other is that the contract could potentially be suspended for a period of time while the force majeure event exists.

And sometimes those rights can be invoked by either party.

Sometimes, depending how it's drafted, it might only be one party's right to do that.

So I usually start there by saying, let's look at the document.

And there, right now in today's world, I have basically been saying, what's your goal?

What is your common sense reasonable logical goal here?

And let's see if we can reach some sort of reasonable compromise with the other party rather than trying to necessarily stick with the specific strict terms of the agreement.

And that goes when my client is on the short end of the stick or on the long end of the stick.

Because right now you need to find compromise and reason amongst the parties.

OK. If I'm an artist right now and I've got Bonnarooo, Lollapaloo, I've got a string of festival dates coming up and they are suspended with the possibility and very good possibility of being canceled,

how am I protecting myself from a major loss of income, a major loss of career options?

What do I do? What do I do? Do I wait it out and wait for this to all get rescheduled?

Well, you know, that's interesting. So this question you posed to me really takes us outside of my role and wearing my hat as a lawyer into that common sense.

Don't sit on your ass and do nothing kind of mentality from a legal standpoint.

If the contract says there is a pandemic or really what happens a lot more often right now, currently a governmental order that prevents an event from happening, oftentimes, depending upon again, who you are as an artist and who you are as a promoter,

the contract may say the promoter has no obligations to you and can take you have to pay back the guarantee and they can terminate the agreement or suspend it for some period of time.

If you're a slightly larger artist or have an agency that may have negotiated the contract for you, the contract might say that you the artist get to keep the guarantee regardless, but they don't.

The promoter doesn't owe you any additional money. And that's where a lot of these conversations started. You know, we'd have promoters calling us saying, hey, we have an issue here.

We have a bunch of guarantees that we've already paid. We have to get this money back.

And then the question becomes, are you really going to ask for that money back or is there something else you can do with the artist?

And then the promoter would perhaps agree they can keep that money if they agreed to perform for you at this rescheduled event, whether it's this fall or next year.

That's where we started seeing a lot of compromise between the parties looking at ways to work with each other so that when this goes away, everybody is feeling like they've worked together.

With that said, there's not a whole lot an artist is going to be able to do if the event is canceled. Maybe they're able to keep a few dollars from the contract negotiations.

But after that, there's not going to be a lot of live performance going on anymore.

And so I very early on, I actually had written an article you sent to our newsletter sent to our clients about force majeure just to kind of give them the overview of what it means.

But I ended that article by giving them a few practical recommendations about not sitting on your ass and finding ways to use this time frame to better yourself.

Right. Take these lemons and turn it into lemonade.

Before I saw any online concerts, I recommended that you should start really considering putting on some sort of a virtual concert.

Right. Something that we've been doing now. I personally have been doing for the last five weeks.

I started doing this thing called concerts from my couch where I've invited a different artist on every week in the zoom.

You know, I would prefer as strong a audio and video system as I can get.

Zoom is OK. It's not the best, but it does allow for interactions like this where we can see each other and talk to each other.

And we brought together these audiences for the artists where they could donate directly to the artist every week.

Money right in their pockets. And I'm either like you. I need to hire. I need to hire you as a booker.

You're getting better arts than me. Oh, my gosh. Hey, Jeff, just to for my own.

Are you in this world? Are you mostly representing individual artists?

Are you also representing promoters? Are you also representing festivals? Any festivals?

And I run the gaps. We run the gambit. We represent promoters and festivals and artists. So in this current environment,

and this is a totally naive question because I have no idea.

Does it feel like one group or the other right now has an upper hand or does it feel like because of what you've been saying,

people are trying to figure out how to make it work for everybody? You know what I mean?

Because as a much. Yeah, we had a big debate a month or so ago about refunds and things like that and what it might do from the industry.

But there's the bottom up side of it, too. You know, so I'm just trying to get a little.

Yeah, it's interesting because you've added a fourth element to that, which is the fans.

Right. I mean, I believe Ticketmaster Live Nation have been subject to some pretty big litigation right now.

There's actually litigation about the refund policies. I know that South by Southwest cut some unfortunate press when they said they were not going to refund their tickets as well.

And then sponsors are part of this as well. You have sponsors that are putting money into events and wondering what they're going to get out of this now.

Again, all of that depends on the contracts from a upper hand kind of position.

But I think that from what I'm seeing right now, festivals and promoters are in a really tough spot in a really tough spot because their entire industry, what they're doing, their segment of the industry is all about live performance.

It's all about fan engagement. And that's not going to happen anytime soon.

You see, I think Pitchfork in Chicago is just canceled yesterday or the day before.

Lollapalooza, they're still kind of holding out to decide what they're going to do in August.

But that's a really tricky spot, too, because I was recently asked about this.

And from a Lollapalooza standpoint, their contract is with the city of Chicago trying to decide what they're going to do.

And their force majeure clauses exist as well. And look at that government order situation right now.

Nothing can happen in Chicago because there's a stay at home order. Right.

But if that order gets lifted, what's next? We don't know what's next, because if the governor here lifts the order, but still puts down another order that says no live events with more than 50 people, you can't do Lollapalooza or practically any other venue.

So the promoters are still out of luck up here. Let's say it was 500 people.

Let's say there's nothing. What in the world is a festival going to do if there's no longer a government shutdown at all?

But you have artists who don't want to perform because they're feeling unsafe.

Fans that don't want to go and do this and be there because they feel unsafe.

You're no longer able to use those provisions, yet financially it would be a disaster to do this.

And you also don't want to be the only festival putting something on endangering fans and artists.

That's that's only me to something else in a second. But let me just stop for.

So when when a force majeure is there, is there a way that that obviously is some sort of tied to insurance?

So if if something were to happen at insert festival here, if they have that clause in some sort of with their insurance company, that can't just magically be ripped out from under their feet, can it?

If an insurance company decides we're no longer covering you anymore for insert thing here like pandemic, would festival promoter artists have some sort of litigation opportunity against the insurance company?

Or does the insurance company get the right to just say, no, we're not covering this?

Well, that's a very that's a very good question. And that is very dependent on the insurance policy that you have with the insurance company.

Right. So much like contracts between artists and festivals, you know, these festivals and promoters would have cancellation insurance with their insurance companies.

And, you know, for a period of time, you know, in certain contracts, depending upon when they were entered into, you may not see any coverage for pandemics or epidemics or quarantines like this.

Right. More recently, since you've seen things like SARS and other types of pandemics come up, a lot of insurance companies have stopped offering coverage for pandemics.

And if you really want one, you need to get a rider that will cover it in an amendment or addendum to your policy that will provide you with that coverage.

And that could be very expensive. So a lot of festivals you might find don't actually have the insurance they need because from a cost management risk benefit analysis,

they said we're not going to do this because let's be honest, we haven't seen a pandemic like this in any of our lifetimes.

Is it similar going forward? Is it similar to homeowners? I'm trying to just make have it make sense for people.

A lot of people don't have flood insurance. I live on a ridge. I don't have flood insurance. But if I get water damage, it doesn't cover it. Right.

And that's always a surprise to a lot of people. You know, what you have. Exactly right. Yep. That's exactly right.

OK. So looking at it from a homeowners perspective, if you live in a floodplain, you might not be able to get flood insurance or if you did want it, it would be a very expensive addition to your policy.

Right. Because it's kind of expected if you're living on that plane, there's a good chance you're going to get a flood and that's going to be on you.

In this situation, because these types of events have started happening more regularly than perhaps they have over many, many years,

insurance companies have said, look, we're not going to cover you in that way unless you pay extra for it. That's what it comes down to.

Right. But but the city of Chicago, say, Lollapalooza in the future, if they don't already, are going to force you to have that kind of coverage from here on out.

Because if you decide to to your point a second ago, if you decide to be the festival that comes back and you all of a sudden get somebody sick at insert festival here.

Good luck. Good luck. I mean, you you're more likely going to get sued for the entire festival.

I mean, you're you're pretty much done after that. Right. Right. You very well could be. This is a very detrimental event for so many different companies.

And it's not just large companies like C3 or Live Nation. It's the small independent venues.

You know, we have from restaurants to the small venues.

Some of them can't withstand being shut down for what could be over a year or more if you're focused on live music specifically. Right.

I don't know. I haven't really thought hard enough about whether or not the city would would require a compel C3 to have insurance that would cover a pandemic.

But if they did, it would cost a boatload and almost not be worth sometimes maybe not a C3 or Lollapalooza, but it's going to shut down a lot of entities.

Like, for instance, you go to a small venue. We talked to Chris Cobb from exit in.

If all of a sudden artists start demanding that venues start covering for, you know, pandemic coverage, it is going to cost a fortune and nobody's going to be able to afford it.

And if you do, your cost of fan experience is going to triple.

Yes, that is absolutely true.

One thing I know from talking to people like Chris is the margins are so tight and there's only three or four ways to make money.

So they argue, you know, a nickel here and a nickel there.

Now you're throwing you're throwing this kind of thing.

Are you are you seeing artists?

Will you do you think you'll see artists start asking for some sort of force majeure coverage from venues so they're not on the hook of a lawsuit?

I don't I don't know that the artists necessarily would be on the hook for a lawsuit.

I think. Well, what about what about when when insert place here catches on fire and everybody starts running for the exits and that band is now on the hook for the lawsuit?

What would that happen? Five, six years ago.

But as long as they were they were kind of shooting off some pretty good.

But there's a high row at every other music festival.

Not with this way here.

I'll try to simplify this as much as I can.

There already are provisions in these artists promoter agreements to talk specific about force majeure.

And I think artists are probably going to start with their agents looking closer at those provisions to talk about how they can be protected or have guaranteed income that would come even in the event of force majeure event occurs.

Right. If they're more concerned that, hey, I'm lining up my next six months of touring and that's all going to go away from a financial standpoint, they're going to probably try to make sure there's some guarantees that they get that money either way.

From a liability standpoint, whether it's the show doesn't happen because of a pandemic or fireworks, usually there'll be language in the contract that says, hey, if you're the more on throwing drumsticks out into the audience, if you're the ones shooting off fireworks, that's going to be a new artist.

But if it's our, it's us.

I know, but but I'm the artist that has gathered 250 people here. One of them got sick and then transmitted it to 15 other people that was in the audience.

Who who's liable then?

Like, for instance, if Lollapalooza goes on in August, which they're not doing, but if they do and somebody at Lollapalooza gets sick and then transmits it to something, something, something.

I mean, insert person here has a lawsuit against C3, against the city of Chicago, against the artists that were there.

I mean, it could, it would never end.

Well, you know, that's an interesting question, Brad.

And I think you're going to see that happen soon anyway.

It won't necessarily just be in the context of musical events.

And this is something that my my brethren within the firm and the tort realm and the premises liability realm are going to be playing with a lot, I'm sure, which is a litigation that comes from this.

And I think the question there becomes a negligence standard. Who owes the duty of care to the audience that shows up and have they fallen below the duty of care?

I think that if you actually try to engage an audience in violation of court orders, which, you know, up here we're seeing happen, there's these churches that are holding sermons on Sundays.

Well, in in in excess of the limitations the governors put on these churches.

Right. I think he said small gatherings of 10 people can gather for religious experiences and they're bringing in substantially more people than that.

There's a good question at that point whether or not you are violating some duty of care owed to your parishioners.

And I think that it's going to be very fact dependent, very fact dependent on what the circumstances are at that time.

What is the CDC said? What are the government saying? And how are you operating?

If you're not implementing reasonable standards to protect people, maybe you could be responsible.

But I assure you of one thing. If I were representing the artist or the agent involved in this, I'm going to flat out tell the the promoter or the venue.

This is on you to maintain safety for the audience. And unless we do something negligent specifically, it's on you.

And that's generally what's in there already. Right.

Venues have to provide reasonable security at these events and they're going to have to have insurance for things like property damage and personal damage unless we the artist act in a negligent way.

So I don't I don't know that it will fall on the artists. And I'm sure that there will be new contract language that deals with that.

But how it falls out and how it shakes out in a lawsuit in a courtroom, we'll have to wait a little while and see because right now the courts are still closed.

But you as a but you as the lawyer would never as of right now, I'm not going to say never.

You would not right now start adding language into into contracts that specify that you have no liability whatsoever.

Should anything happen at insert thing here?

Well, that's why I was going to sort of jump in and maybe I'm reading it wrong.

And the churches is a good example because that seems like a I don't know what the right word is.

They seem determined to go against the grain type of thing, whereas from my perception of talking to you and talking to Chris Cobb and and and Brad over these months and the people he's talked to and the people I've talked to.

And again, I don't mean to put words, but it sounds like everyone in the music industry realizes this is an unprecedented, really weird time and that everybody needs each other.

That's exactly right. They need that. You got to have a musician. You got to have fans. You got to have a venue. You got to have promoter.

And so it doesn't feel like there's this get back or me against you.

And if anything, it feels more like people are realizing they need each other even more, which is the whole Chris Cobb, the whole independent venues association that they started.

You know, one of the points he wants to make is we need national level guidelines so that Tennessee is not completely different than California or Illinois or whatever.

So yeah, I don't reading that wrong. Yeah, but I don't think that you're probably you know, I don't mean to be a dick, but I don't think that you're being necessarily a good lawyer if you say, hey, everybody's gonna be OK.

I mean, I think that the job is protecting you against whatever is coming in the future that you can't necessarily see or feel.

That's what I don't think. I don't read it like everybody's gonna be OK. Just get over it and trust.

I get I read it more like how do we make this work for everybody? Yeah, let's be clear here.

I'm going to throw this out there because I hear what both both of you are saying. And first, let me say Barry is correct that the immediate reaction to this.

Right. We're talking about drafting new contracts. Yeah, Brad, we're talking about contracts already exist and we're all like looking up into the sky at the satellite coming towards Earth.

Are we all going to point at each other and say that's your job to take care of or we're all going to work together?

You know, and and to me, that's what we're all facing. I had a call with with one of the major agencies that was representing several artists performing at one of my clients festivals this summer.

We hadn't yet decided to cancel. We didn't know quite what we were going to do yet. It was still I was still in the office. Right.

We hadn't had stay at home yet. Social distancing and no one knew what and ninety five meant. But I called this agent up and asked them, what do you what are you guys thinking about this and how do you interpret this act of God in your opinion in these contracts?

And he does a lot of work with his roster at this agency for festivals in the Midwest. And he says, look, you know, right now we're looking at this and saying, what can we do to be reasonable with the artists and with our festivals and everybody else?

You know, this is right around the time Coachella was rescheduled to the fall and everybody was agreeing.

We'll keep everything where it is. We're going to move the dates. Certain artists were not going to be able to perform because they had other obligations already set for the fall.

They let them out of those contracts. This was no longer about enforcing strictly the agreements, but looking for a way to be reasonable to everybody.

Now, to Brad's point on a going forward basis, yes, we, the lawyers, are likely going to be looking closer at certain provisions in the contract and proposing revisions to those in order to allocate risk in a way that helps our clients.

And just like any other contract, whether it's a record label deal, a publishing deal, live performance, you're going to see negotiations that take place and there will be leverage.

Bigger artists might be able to get away with things that smaller artists can't. Bigger companies will get away with it too, unlike smaller festivals or startups will.

It's going to be a negotiation and a discussion. But you're right, Brad. I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't trying to protect my client.

But also, I've never been one to over-lawyer a contract to the point that it causes frustration and consternation between the parties.

I would say, protect my client, yes, but look for some reasonable middle ground that everyone feels good about getting into this deal together rather than finishing the deal and all being angry at each other.

Do you have any artists that are flat out just scared to go back out on the road?

Oh, yeah. We have artists that are scared to go on the road and we have artists that can't wait to go out and are going out now that are trying to plan different types of events.

I don't know if you've heard about these drive-in performances that are starting up. I don't know if you've heard about those yet.

I did. I have.

I don't know how that's going to work yet, but they want to be drive-in performances.

Because Lord knows, nothing sounds more exciting than having a rave in a Toyota Tercel. Boy, oh boy, that sounds like a blast.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember a few weeks ago one of my clients saying, I don't know that I'm going to be able to perform for the next year just because there's this concern.

And look, they're not alone. The venues very well may not be able to open for the next year because of this concern of a resurgence.

It goes down, like the flu season, it comes back again. And until the governments have a better understanding of what they're going to allow these entities to do, artists look at this and say, I don't know how I could step foot into these venues.

And also saying not only that, they don't want to, not out of fair, but out of practicality. I think there was some statement by President Trump recently that venues should open up again, but socially distance.

And I want to ask you, if you've ever thought of an artist wanting to go to a venue where there's a pit of people on the floor that are all six feet apart from each other, it sounds miserable.

That story about the venue in Arkansas that's opening, it's a 2,000 seat venue they're letting 200 people in. It's not going to feel right. It won't feel right for the artist, it won't feel right for you as an audience member.

Nothing about that's going to work.

But how do you make any money? You're counting on 2,000. You need 2,000 to make your margin. What is 200 going to do for you?

And the venue's not going to make any money. They're going to operate a lot. How can a venue operate with 200 people coming with the staff they have to put in there? It's not going to work.

It's extremely unfortunate, but that's why I think you're going to start seeing a lot more creativity in trying to find ways to engage besides a pure live experience.

It goes back to, I know people are virtual concerted out already, but that's why those events themselves need to evolve.

I personally don't like the Facebook live events or the Instagram live events. No offense to either of them, but they just feel very disconnected from the fan base.

What we're doing is making it so that everyone's in the room. We have a waiting room in Zoom beforehand. I tell the doors are going to open in five minutes.

We do the sound check with the artist and we make it storytellers. At each event, it's not recorded and then put online again.

You show up and you see it and you leave like a real live event and we interview them. We ask them questions so the audience feels like they're getting more of an engaged experience.

That's to me the creativity I brought to it. How many of these have you done? Who have you had? We've had five so far. We're doing our sixth one tonight.

Tonight, it's every Thursday at 7 o'clock Central. We have a list of people that ask for the Zoom link. Our artists will put it out on their socials and provide the Zoom link to people that reach out to them.

We don't like just putting the Zoom link out there so anyone can show up. We want to make it a little bit more special. Tonight, Raquel Castro is going to be on. She is an artist, a songwriter.

She actually was on Songland last week on NBC. She won. The recording artist, her, has recorded her song and put it out last week.

I love her so much. She was my Grammy vote two years ago.

She was fantastic. I saw her there. Amazing. Raquel was fortunate enough to have her song selected. She'll be on tonight.

Again, she's kind of putting out a half dozen songs and sharing her thoughts on the world right now. It's nice. Two weeks ago, we had a young band out of LA called Beauty School Dropout.

They're a client and they were really getting geared up because they were about to head off to South by Southwest with a whole bunch of shows.

It was going to be their moment too. A lot of these artists are missing their catch.

Here's the beauty of what happened three weeks ago. They were on Zoom. They had a good visual, good audio, nothing perfect.

They had about, I'd say, 50, 60 accounts signed in, which equates to probably 150 people or so. Every account might have a few people sitting in their living room.

This young girl, at the end of the show, what I started doing was I left the Zoom open so that people could interact with the band, actually talk to them. I call it Backstage Pass.

I leave it open primarily so that people could donate, so that the Venmo is still on the screen.

I realized what was happening was there would be people on from all over the country, quite honestly, watching these artists.

Normally, at the end of a show, you go backstage and five or six people can get back there, whoever your manager lets back there.

This allows you to talk to your fans and anyone can watch and just see what it's like to interact.

This one girl unmuted herself and she was a fan of the band. She said, hey guys, thank you so much for doing this.

This was a really hard week for me. I just got fired from my job. They shut down the company. I have no job.

She was a young girl living on her own. I live in a house with a wife and two kids.

I have not been alone or bored for the last month and a half, but this girl is by herself.

She said to the band, I really needed this. This actually made my week because I was having a really hard time.

I started this to give the bands the ability to make a few dollars and interact with their fans, but I realized so much more was happening here with the people on the other side of it.

The bands that have done this, it forced them to play around with their audio set up and their video set up. Now they're doing their own shows.

You just struck on something that is probably going to be the future of this.

Instead of these large swaths of hey, how can we move people all at one time, artists are going to have to go door to door to try and connect with human beings.

If I could go to a Lollapalooza or a Bonnaroo and immediately be overcome by the Alabama Shakes, the Alabama Shakes try to do that today.

They would need to be going from computer to computer to computer trying to do it one at a time.

We actually had a work planning meeting yesterday and this topic came up because we did my father's 90th birthday on Zoom.

It was not the immediate 20 of us. We had cousins in California, Florida, Indiana and people we hadn't seen in 20 years.

Relatively, that's a small group. You had 50 on that Zoom, but people are finding out.

They're also, as part of our conversation, people are talking a little bit more because they can with things like this.

We don't know. Nobody can predict how long it will continue, but it's there and it is to your point, Brad.

I mean, the door to door is a figurative thing. I think Axe will find that out.

Think about this for a second. Door to door is interesting because the one thing that I realized about this is that, shoot, I don't want to share my screen.

Let me stop that. Oh my God. If you did the contract, we'd see. Yeah, right.

There we go. Back to normal. I thought about this and yes, smaller groups perhaps, but the beauty of the events that we were doing is the artists did this from their house.

I call it concert from my couch because I sit right here on my couch when I do it.

And so does everybody else. I encourage them to get their whiskey. The bar is open at your house. Go do it.

But the artist is at home too. And that means the artist could put on, let's say, 20 of these concerts for 50 or 60 accounts at a time and not spend a single dollar on travel, a single dollar on hotels.

And you can cap out if you're a slightly larger artist, cap out how many people can come put on unique shows for different markets.

There's the word. There's the word I was going to use. When I interviewed Drew Holcomb when they brought the Moon River Festival to Chattanooga, we were talking about the curated festivals, the smaller, the 8 to 10,000.

And that was the word. People that went wanted to feel like they had gotten a unique experience, which is exactly what you're talking about. I got to hang out.

I mean, Brad even said his his new BFF at O'Brien was in his living room three or four weeks ago.

That's you know, that's the thing. It's a unique who else gets that right?

That's right. That's what it's going to come down to.

Artists should probably start thinking about what their Wi-Fi setup is, their video and audio abilities are.

And I've seen artists connect right in through Ableton and Logic and some artists just play a guitar or piano and directly into their normal microphone.

I think our audiences also are a little more forgiving right now.

Yeah, right now. Yeah, that ain't going to last.

But I but I do think that, you know, over the next month or two, you're going to start seeing other platforms, whether it's Facebook coming out with something else or just somebody Zoom fixing what they what they have going on or some other company that sets this up in a way that really does a great live show.

One of our clients was on Red Bull Records did a festival I think last weekend and it was really cool how they brought everybody together.

And I think that's why that's pre-recorded right because you can't do it truly live live and have the live experience and have the quality also.

And if someone could figure out a way to keep the quality up, allow for this engagement because you can't really do that very well on some of these, you know, social media platforms that can be a really big help to audiences.

I know exactly what you're exactly right when Facebook Live started Jeff. I thought it was a fascinating thing three years ago.

And if you could see my office, you probably can't how cluttered it is. But I see it.

No, what I've been doing is collecting all of this is just what he's talking about. It's all stuff I've got. Yeah, I don't see any clutter.

Yeah, that up there, Jeff. That's the thing to tell people. Yeah, secret.

It is. It is. Well, man, I can't I can't think enough. It's such a fascinating conversation.

And you tell the story so simply and so well, just as a piece of curiosity.

You ever been to Bonnarooo? Are you just a lot of I was I was planning on going to Bonnarooo this year. Stop it.

No, I'm not even kidding. Yeah. This was going to be my first experience, man. I'm kind of bummed about it.

I look the one thing I'll say is as a lawyer, I get jealous of my agent friends quite a bit because they had down there and my radio friends to my good friend.

Norm Weiner goes down all the time. Norm's a good friend and client. He's in our guys group in Chicago.

Yeah, he is. Yes, he is. And he's one of my favorite people and is always talking about going to this festival or going out to Colorado for that radio thing you guys do.

And and I keep saying, but I got to be in the office and look at contracts. It's hard for me to just jump from Lala to Bonnarooo to Coachella because, you know, I'm I'm unfortunately somewhat the nerdy one making sure nothing happens in the background.

But I was looking forward to making my first excursion down this year. And well, the dirty little secret that Norm won't tell you that I will is that we don't really have that much to do.

We've got a lot of free time. But who are you who you're excited to see if you're going to come down to Bonnarooo? Who you're going to see? Who's your top three?

You know, I honestly I haven't even had a chance to look at anything. You're just going to go.

I was just going down for the experience. And as soon as all these things started kind of canceling, I'll be honest, when I go to South by or or even Lala, even in Chicago, I might see some of the big headliners jumping up there first.

But I don't even sit down and highlight my roster and probably until a day or two beforehand because I haven't had a chance to study it.

And and personally, my favorite artists are usually in the middle to bottom of the bill.

Right. It's these artists I start caring about coming up that I want to see the headliners. I've probably seen somewhere before.

And they're fun. I'm not going to I'm not going to lie to you, Barry.

And I've said it before, but I'll just keep saying it over and over.

You just don't understand Lala Palooza. It's unlike anything that you've been to now as a fan.

It's it's different. But for us, it is a swamp.

Once you once you get circling in the thing, you don't get out.

And I can't tell you, I maybe have seen on two hands Lala Palooza shows in how many six years?

I've seen 10 shows at Lala Palooza. It's you get stuck back there and you just don't get it.

Get your hook. They get their hooks in you and you don't get out.

It's very true. It's the truth. It's it's a it's a fun time. It's a fun time.

I think I will say this, you know, you know, I saw Liz Lizzo this year performing at the Grammys.

That was that in the South by right before that.

I'd love to see an entire set of hers on a big stage.

And I'll tell you what else, somehow, you know, staying at home, my kids are discovering more music on their own.

And my son has just started playing Tame Impala on a loop, which is kind of fun.

It's the one song and I've exposed him to some more stuff.

So, I mean, figure artists, I think those would be fun to watch a lot of fun to watch.

But like I said, I love that middle to bottom of the bill.

You know, we're starting to come up. It's a discovery, right?

Yeah, well, that's that's where this that's where this whole show started, man with it.

But hey, dogs, by the way, thank you so much for doing it.

By the how much did this hour cost us?

What are you charged with my question of what this hour cost me?

You got this phone on my friends.

You know, look, look, the only plug I'll make for us is this, you know, having built this practice in the Midwest and having worked with a lot of developing artists as they come up.

You know, I try to provide a way to make sure that my my artists are able to afford legal services.

And so we'll work with them. We do hourly flat fees percentages.

It just it's a matter of what makes sense for us and what makes sense for them.

So we've got a great team to make it cost effective.

So if you're listening and you just have a question or two, give me a buzz.

Otherwise, you know, we could always work something out.

Yeah, you're the best man. I appreciate it.

And thanks so much. Yeah, this is so much fun.

Gentlemen, you're so welcome. Yeah, we'll see you soon.

I hope so. I hope I actually see you. Yeah, I'll try to remember it next time.

Take care, gentlemen.

All right. There you go.

Jeff Becker, entertainment lawyer for the he's our lawyer now.

I think that we officially hired him. I sent him one dollar on Venmo.

And he's officially he's officially our lawyer.

What do you think?

What is your takeaway about the idea of the attitude of people right now?

I mean, it it it feels like doom and gloom because we're in the middle of this thing.

But as I mentioned during the talk with Jeff, it still feels to me the positive that I'm getting is that it feels like most of the groups anyway, realize they're all in this together.

And, you know, the independent guy who's playing the 50 people is important, just as the 50,000 person act is in the grand scheme of things.

And the small venue is just not as just but is important to you.

I mean, do you feel like that or is it just I have no I have no financial implications in all of this.

So I just have an opinion. My the way that I've gone forward is I'm pessimistic.

But if something comes around and surprises me, I'm going to be really, really excited.

That's just natural disposition, to be honest with you.

And I just I'm trying my best to hold out hope and I'm trying my best to say to say positive. It ain't working for me.

In what way? So if I so I'm relatively so if I get surprised by something excellent, I can't wait.

But I'm operating in a pretty pessimistic space right now.

And in what way, though, as far as like how soon this will open or the future future, because I'm asking more about the future than I agree with you.

Nothing else happened till late both.

Both because I don't know. Boy, how can I say this? So the idea that I'm going to ever walk into the Tabernacle in Atlanta and be surrounded by 500 people, maybe it's because of where we are right now.

It seems so unbelievably hard to imagine. And I don't know when that that light bulb just turns back on. And I don't know when that that ability just and I don't know if it ever will.

I'm I'm I'm trying not to be worried and I'm trying not to overthink it.

But there's just something in me that that feels like the idea of 80,000 people in a field. Those days don't seem like it's even if even if you believe all of the stuff about coronavirus not being as bad as the flu or it is.

It is so screwed the psyche of humanity, not just in this country, but across the world that I don't know how large swaths of people don't forever have their mind screwed on this.

And at the end of the day, and I said this a couple of weeks ago, maybe last week, the shows that are going to do really well in the short term, Kid Rock and Toby Keith, because they got a group of people who don't give a damn who think all of this nonsense.

And they're going to show up and give their shit to everybody. They don't care. Those are the people that are going to do really well.

And as far as like the the really thoughtful, interesting ones that I I don't know.

I just know I get what you're saying. And I'll tell you what illustrates that for me.

And I noticed this about a week ago. Not only are people wearing masks inside their own cars, they're staying well away from the car in front of them.

Yeah, that's good. Their car is social distancing as well.

Have you noticed that? I mean, it's the weirdest thing. It is a very strange. It's what you're it's your point. It's inside of our psyche now.

I don't disagree with that at all. Like, for instance, you're probably not going to change the minds of hard.

Let's just use binary. For example, you're not going to change the minds of hardcore hardcore Bonnarooians.

They're going to show up anyway. But the fringes, the ones that that that people like Bonnarooo make their money on the 20 K that show up just because of the lineup or just because, you know, it worked out.

I don't know. I just I don't see them showing back up to these things for a very, very long time.

And here's here's where I the crux of my thought process of this is that when we move on from Covid, there's going to be another one.

There's there's going to be something else that screws up the next thing.

And I hate to be one of these guys. It's like the dominoes falling and never again.

Are we ever doing? But but I've gone too long in my life to realize that if you give if you give space for something bad to happen, it's probably going to well.

So what's coronavirus is done? What's next? We joked about it. But the more I thought about it, it's not funny.

You know, you said a couple of weeks ago, the idea of being in a field on a Friday night or a Saturday night with 80,000 sweaty people is one thing.

But seriously, the idea of porta potties and those FEMA showers, that's that's changes it a lot.

You know, it's it. I'm not a germaphobe, but, you know, we think about that when we're there before.

Yeah, now it's I don't know. I'm not ready to think about it too, too deeply.

I'm not either. When it happens, I'm not neither.

And I think that we all I think that the optimistic part of us just loves the idea of doing something and that's fine.

And we don't want that ripped away from us.

So we don't want the opportunity to even feel that to be ripped away, because if you tell me reality, then all of a sudden I can't even engage my mind to think about the idea.

I get that. Right. But all I know is the second the second that this is all over and we move on or or we get something back that's good.

Something else is going to come around. You know, it just the next one is just going to be just as bad.

I don't know. I know. But then but even if it's not as bad, the psyche of it, it's so screwed with our psyche that the next thing that we think is going to be the world ender.

And we're going to be in quarantine in a in a week and a half, not a month and a half.

It's I don't even think about it. I don't either. I think you need I just I just want to go outside and eat croffles with people.

I just want to go to go get on the floor with the dogs and just get a big hug with the dogs.

All right. Hey, Jeff Becker was amazing.

Check him out. Do do all my favorite radio show in the world, The Bennington Show.

My radio hero, Ron Benning, always calls the people that reach out to his guests and applaud them and say thank you to them.

The first responders. Boy, if we have a group of first responders that could reach out to Jeff Becker and say thank you for your time, that would be much appreciated because it's expensive.

It's very, very I didn't think about that. You said it. Man. Yeah, he he he gave up.

Well, he just lost the car payment. Yeah. By the way, this was this thing.

I know you may be listening to it a different time, but this ain't the weekend.

This is midday in the middle. He just gave us a lot of time.

Thanks so much for you for listening and for being a patron.

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