And so even though he wasn’t that old at all—I mean, he’s only like, a little bit older than my parents, so … late forties? Early fifties?—even though he still had a lot of years left in him, he was essentially in permanent retirement. When the Bums were still touring and making those four albums, every single one of them just MURDERED—like, hit after hit after hit—and they used “Broken Sparrow” in all those Hyundai commercials—probably at this point, it’s gotta be like, a hundred?—so we’re talking about millions and millions of dollars. And so Chris just had no reason to ever pick up a guitar again unless he really, really wanted to. And he didn’t. LOL. He was just like: I’m gonna drink my daiquiris, and get involved at the Seaside Club, and go pick my kids up from school every afternoon, and, every once in a while, we’ll go skiing in Colorado, and that’s gonna be my life.

But still, I just had it lodged in my mind—I don’t know why, but I was just so obsessed with this idea—that if I could somehow manage to pull Chris Jeffries out of retirement and make some music with him, it was gonna be the dopest shit ever, and so I started talking to him.

And at first, obviously, he was super-dismissive. Like, I didn’t dance around it at all—I don’t know, I just think something I’ve learned from Bob is like: Life is too short to bullshit your way through any conversation—and so I just launched right in with: I wanna make a song with you. And Chris was just immediately, like, laughing his ass off. Like, I think his reaction was like: Look at the balls on this kid, you know? But I started talking to him about grunge—like, I started talking to him about the scene way back in the day—and he ended up actually being really impressed with the depth of my knowledge. I mean, it’s sad, you know, because this meeting would’ve been the highlight of my dad’s life—like, he literally would’ve killed to be at this meeting—but looking back on it now, if my dad ever did end up meeting Chris Jeffries, he would’ve just totally blown it, because he would’ve brought this energy with him that would’ve been completely the opposite of what Chris responds to. Like, yeah, my dad was able to keep his cool and sort of keep up his chill vibe in the beginning when it came to our stuff, but my dad actually LOOKED UP to Chris, you know?—like, Chris was his IDOL—and so he would’ve just turned into this nervous, anxious, horrible little guy, and Chris would’ve sniffed it out immediately.

But anyway, after a little while talking to him, Chris decided that I was pretty legit. Like, he made up his mind that I was at least knowledgeable and appreciative of the music he had made and the scene he came up in, and so he kind of warmed up to me. And, I mean, he was still sort of joking around, you know, like he was still smiling about it, but eventually, he was just like: Why don’t you show me what you’ve been working on?