Sam Rogers, Philanthropist, TV Veteran, Dead Head

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The reason I was at that first show is because I lost a bet.

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Welcome to another episode of Chewing the Fat. I am your host, Big Robb. Thank you so much for tuning in, downloading, listening to the podcast. I certainly do appreciate that. Thank you to the folks that have bought me a coffee at ChewingtheFatBR.com. Your support of this podcast means the world to me. Also to the folks that have written reviews on Apple Podcasts, give me the five star ratings on Spotify. Thank you so very much. I'm excited to reconnect with my guests this week.

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known him for over 30 years. We're about to come up on 30 years. He was a great friend to me at some difficult times in my life. And I'm so proud to still call him my friend. Please welcome from Florence, South Carolina, Sam Rogers. Wow, thank you, man. Should I go ahead and send you a check? These days, I guess it'll be PayPal or some other platform. You just been owing me. I'll be fine. I'll be fine.

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Sam is so good to see you. So good to talk to you again, man Yes, you you are still over in Florence, South Carolina now, right? Yes, sir. Yes, sir Still living here in the great PD region of South Carolina. It's a beautiful place. That's awesome Sam and I were first introduced to each other in the world of television. I was an audio engineer Sam was a director I knew of Sam when I worked at

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he was at and then I got hired on over there and was able to work alongside Sam and it was really one of some of the best formative times in my like career life as well as like life life as well. Sam, so what what are you doing now? What's going on? Well, um, after a 2526 year career in the television news business.

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I couldn't take any more of the stress. I ventured out to find, to refine myself. I found a little bit. I worked at a Toys R Us. I actually was a store manager for Toys R Us, which was a fun job. Yeah. Out 65% of the time. But, you know, I couldn't deal with another Black Friday and the retail business, basically.

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Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing how one month out of the year could color the rest of those months because December was just a beast there and yeah, I couldn't do that much longer. I hopped over into landscaping, running a landscaping company for a buddy of mine. That was great. But yeah, as you mentioned, I am in South Carolina and it's tend to be a little warm here.

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As soon as I could get out of landscaping, I got out of that. And I bounced around. I worked in the dialysis field. Now I am working for an aircraft mechanic and avionics company. Oh, wow. And really enjoying it, really enjoying it. And, you know, they'll saying you're never too old to learn. I've been in this job since March and every day I have learned something new about this job.

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It's been pretty cool. That's awesome. That's awesome, Sam. And you grew up in Florence, right? Yeah, yeah. I spent my formative years right here in this area. I grew up 30 minutes from here in Hartsville and I went to college here in Florence. Okay, that's awesome. Where'd you go? Is that Francis Marion? Yes, sir. And I'm proud to say that I went to Francis Marion College. They are now a university.

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They were a great college, so I can only imagine them being an outstanding university too. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's kind of like, you know, it used to be Augusta College here, now it's Augusta University after all the other name changes that they went through and all like that. You again, we were introduced to each other in television news, and now both out of that. Was that something that you went to school for? Well, I...

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I actually went to school with my, my intentions were sports medicine, something that, I was lucky quote unquote enough to get a job at a local TV station before I took my first college class. And after a couple of years of pursuing that major and working in television news,

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I realized that I kind of, I was kind of digging what I was doing and, um, it wasn't going to require another eight to 10 years of school also. Well, I stuck with it and then I had it. I had a very good run. I mean, some of my biggest memories ever are for my days in television news. One of them being during the 96 Olympics. Yeah. You remember that? Yeah.

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But yeah, you know, and even though you weren't technically an employee of the TV station, there was no one else I would have rather had would have rather had on audio with me that night. Yeah, that's a funny story. I think I got let go from that TV station that afternoon. And we used to go to a little bar down in Augusta called Joe's Underground is still there.

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commiserating, I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do next, and we're sitting there at the bar and the bomb went off in Centennial Park. And Sam's phone rings and it's our production manager, well, my foreign production manager, but he calls Sam, he's like, hey, we got cut in. This bomb just went off, blah, blah, blah. The conversation best I could figure out was like,

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I'm right down the street, who's gonna run audio? And the response was like, um. And you're like, well, Rob's right here. And I think with a little, a slight amount of egg on his face, he was like, yeah, if he's okay coming in and working the breaking news, that'll be all right. And I think I was like, well, I'm a,

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I'm a free agent now, so I'm gonna just charge you what I think I need to charge you Instead of what you would have paid me normally my hourly rate. So But yeah, I mean but you know, that's the thing is like when you're in news like that you you are When things happen you realize you have to be there and truthfully that's one of the reasons why I I kind of got out of the tv part because I had Two new kids, you know whenever there was a storm and they're

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people to stay home, news people have to go out in the storm to get to the station. You know, when there's craziness happening, it's like, okay, everybody stay home and buckle down. All right, you got to go to the station. It doesn't matter. You know, you got to be there to put it on. So with two little kids, that was just, that was difficult for me to, you know, kind of put my life out there in case something were to happen and not be there with them. Well, and you know, anyone who

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long career in television news business. They're either a glutton for punishment or, or, you know, they, I don't know, I considered a glutton for punishment because, you know, it's

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I wouldn't trade those years for anything. I wouldn't trade those years for anything because like I said earlier, I had an absolute wonderful time. I went to Super Bowls. I did things I normally wouldn't be able to do through television. But like you said, it literally invades your life. No such thing as a holiday. The news is the news is the news all the time. So yeah, that's something that, it takes a special person to stay in

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for a long time, yeah. And proof of that is how many friends that we have that we started out with that have been out of the business for as long as we have been. Yeah. Yeah, it'll burn you up and it'll chew you up and spit you out in a heartbeat if you're not careful. Yeah, for sure, for sure. But you know, some of the greatest friendships made there though, you know, I say this all the time about working in radio and working in television, it is one of the greatest collections

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weirdos that you will ever find. You know? Intelligent weirdos, that is an excellent way to put it. Yeah, because I mean, it's just people that are super smart, but they also have something a little off about all of them. And I count myself in that group. It's just, but yeah, when stuff has to happen, it has to be on, it's, you know, that's the job, is you gotta be on it. Like I said, there's, you know, you're 24 seven on call,

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they call it that or not. They, you gotta pick up the phone and you gotta go do whatever. Do you have any favorite memories from television days? So like you said, some of the stuff you got to do? Yeah, I went to, in 91, I was fortunate enough to go to the Super Bowl in Tampa. I was there to witness Whitney Houston sing quite possibly the most memorable national anthem ever.

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And it was very touching because less than a week before the Super Bowl, my brother-in-law was sent to Iraq. So, yeah, that moment really hit home. And that's just one of the millions of reasons that weekend will stand out as far as my television career goes. Yeah, that's wild. That is so wild.

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when you left, you went into Toys R Us? Is that where you went to immediately after television? Yeah, well, I chilled for a minute trying to wrap my head around things just to see which direction I wanted to go in next. And basically I took a part-time job, a seasonal job as a loss forbidder at Toys R Us while I was trying to figure out where I was gonna go next.

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at the end of the season, they offered me a full-time position. And since I had nothing else on the books right then, I said, well, you know, I can still look while I do this. And a little while later, there was a situation where right place, right time, because the store manager left, and I ended up getting promoted to front of house manager and eventually store manager.

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was great, but I couldn't deal with any more Black Fridays, any more Christmas holiday season. Yeah, yeah. As we're talking to you, and I'm just, I'm being flooded with memories and stuff that we did and all like that, I remember one, and this has nothing to do with work or anything, we had a very close kinship around music, we had a very, very close bond

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in personality and I remember going to see a lot of shows with you, I remember going to Horde Fest in Atlanta, dancing my butt off and like getting dehydrated, people just handing me bottles of water like, you all right? And then going down to St. Patrick's in Savannah,

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That was a trip. One of my favorite memories though was, I don't know if we were hanging out, you'd come over to the house and were asleep on the couch. And I don't know if you remember this or not, but Jacob probably wasn't more than maybe like four or five or so, he was talking and could walk and stuff like that. And he apparently had got up in the middle of the night and you were sleeping on the couch. And he came in and he thought that you were me on the couch.

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and was like, Danny, what happened to your hair? And you turned over. He's like, oh.

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because he thought I was just asleep on the couch and something had happened to my hair. If you don't understand how funny that can be, look at the picture of Sam on the website at youandthefatbjorn.com so you can get an idea of how much we do not look alike. Oh yeah, and it's funny you should bring that up. When I first moved back to Florence, I was staying,

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house one night. His couple Robert and Nikki and their son Harper was three or four at the time. You know Harper had never met me. I'd been back in town maybe a week at this point but I crashed on their couch. Apparently I crashed on a lot of couches every year. But I was on their couch and Harper came downstairs to watch his Saturday morning cartoons and I could hear him running

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Stuart out of the mouth of kids. Oh man. But you know, we're talking about music and you are a huge deadhead. Yes. Huge fan of the Grateful Dead. I remember when Jerry passed and we were able to put together, I think, an amazing tribute to Jerry for the end of the 11 o'clock news.

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rogue and just did that. We told the producer this was happening. It was like, I don't know if we have time for that. Okay, that's cool. It's still gonna happen. So, but music always been a big part of your life? Yeah, I come from a family of singers. Both my sisters sing, have beautiful voices. They both played in marching bands in high school and college. So, I've been around music all

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grew up, all my siblings are a bit older than me. So I was fortunate enough to be one of those little brothers who wasn't kicked to the curb. My brother took me when he went to all his sporting events and things like that, he took me. My sisters always took me places. When my sister was on the band at South Carolina State, sometimes I traveled with the band. I was like their little mascot for a minute. Oh wow. But yeah.

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and pretty integral in my life. But it was my first Dead Show in mid to late 80s that something grabbed me. And I think it was a combination of the music, the atmosphere and the people. I felt like I met a million people at that first show.

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because the reason I was at that first show is because I lost a bet to a college. To this day, neither of us can remember what the actual bet was. But I will say, especially not being much of a betting man, I will say that was the best loss I've ever had. Because, yeah, two or three songs into my first show in Greensboro, North Carolina, I looked at my buddy Tommy and I said, Hey man,

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And he said, well, they're off tomorrow, but they're playing in Atlanta the next night. And I was like, wow, can we still get tickets? He said, yeah, I already got them. Because he knew, he knew. And yeah, I'm proud to say that to this day, Tommy is still one of my best friends in the world. He actually married my wife and I, he was a fish at my wedding. And he did so wearing a cool

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suit. Oh wow. Yeah, it was made in Boston and hand delivered by another college buddy of ours who went through that first dead show with us. He surprised us all by showing up the morning of the wedding with tie-died suit in hand. That's awesome. That is awesome. And I know that influence of music and the vibe that you get from that music has influenced a lot of other things

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a charity group that you've got going on called Grateful Dog. What is Grateful Dog about? Oh, Grateful Dog, we're a non-profit whose main mission is to help offset the rising cost of animal care right here in Florence County and in two other neighboring counties. We're working on spreading it

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down in the Myrtle Beach area also.

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This was Grateful Dog Festival, which is our big event that we throw every year. It happened almost by mistake. A buddy of mine and a musician who I knew from my college days, he and I were sitting at this bar called Southern Hops. It was coming up on what would have been Jerry Garcia's 70th birthday. Doug and I were talking and we were like,

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enough musicians around here and we know enough deadheads around here that we could get something together for like a Jerry celebration. And that was April of 2011. Well, by the end of May, I realized that there was a huge groundswell around town. You know, and the way the way I

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about the Grateful Dead and about Jerry Garcia. And he looks at me and he goes, oh, by the way, there's this cool event happening at Southern Hops. And at this point, Southern Hops had only been open maybe six or eight months. So I was like, yeah, what's this event? And he started telling me what he knew about the event. And I let him finish because I wanted to see how much information had gotten out there. And I was pleasantly surprised

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We didn't know what we were doing. Yeah. I didn't think advertising, you know, I'd made a couple of Facebook posts or something like that, but it was no big deal. But at that point, we also realized we, we, we were onto something. So we decided why not see if we can do a fundraiser, um, didn't know where we were going to attach, but, um, it just, just so happens some asshole broke into the local humane society.

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and just went around with a bat or something and just busted out windows, broke up all the medicine cabinets and just destroyed the place. So that was how the Humane Society became involved. And that first year we just did right here in Florence. The second year we moved to the neighboring county, Darlington, home of the Darlington Raceway. And then a couple of years later, we included another county

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an hour and a half away from us. And we went from a one day event at Southern Hops to a three day event, including camping on 10 to 12 acres of land. Wow. Yeah, it took off. We did nine of them at Southern Hops, but on the fifth one, we realized, they were all scheduled to start at noon. And I remember the fifth one walking out about 10.30, 10.45 to help some people set up

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showing up. Yeah. So that's when I knew that we were really on the something. And, you know, and another thing you were talking about, you know, music and the people that I've met through music, that the venue that we have the event at now, Brian and Alicia Johnson, they're as sweet as they can be, met them at a concert.

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The next time I saw them, I was actually walking around a bar promoting Grateful Dog and started talking to Brian and he said, well, hey, man, if you ever need space, I have a ranch called Sugar Magnolia Ranch. And yeah, my reaction exactly. So that forged a pretty strong bond that night, forged a pretty strong bond between Brian and I.

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panic, you know, we go to a lot of shows and hang out. Yeah, but, um, yeah, it's, it's a genuine love of music and a love of people that is a common thread with all of this. Yeah. And you know, that's, that's very indicative of, uh, Deadheads, uh, you know, because, you know, it was grateful that music was never really radio friendly. I mean, yeah, they had a couple of songs in radio, but it was more about the grassroots movement.

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There's more about the people that followed them from show to show to show It wasn't about being this corporate success, even though they you know, they has success But it wasn't about doing it the corporate way. It was about doing it with the people and I think that's amazing that that That heartbeat of that helped flow into what you're doing with grateful dog as well Well, you know what? Yeah, you're talking about the dead doing it for the people

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You know, one of the things I noticed before I even went to a Dead Show was exactly how many cassettes. Back then, everything was on cassette. But the amount of bootleg cassettes that my buddies had, I was like, you know, where are y'all getting them? They're like, oh, so-and-so records them straight from the soundboard. So-and-so does this. You know, the fact that they let people come in and set up an area to tape their shows.

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I mean, yeah, not many bands are doing that. They're trying to save that for the dollars. They're not just giving the music to the people. That was one thing that just struck me as just too damn cool. Yeah, yeah, that is awesome. So when is the next Grateful Dog event coming up? Well, we are in the planning processes now. Will that be 10th year coming up? Actually 12th.

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Wow. It'll be number 12 coming up. Yeah. We had been doing it on the last Saturday of July since Jerry's birthday is August 1st. I stuck to my guns on that for a little while. Of course, with growth comes change. And I saw that we were growing and we could have kept it that day

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we were with maybe four or five thousand people. But once we had an opportunity to move to a new venue and we can include camping, the first year we did it out at Sugar Magnolia Ranch. We had to do it at the end of August because COVID was still floating around. For most of that year, we had no idea what the laws were going to be governing crowds. So we had to keep pushing back

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extremely hot in South Carolina and you know That affected our ticket sales and our camping So the next one we're gonna try to do Late spring or early fall, I'm I would love to do it late spring. Mm-hmm The thing is I have learned though that This is a long process of training of planning. I'm sorry. Yeah

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almost a year-round thing as opposed to, I used to start in January to be ready for July. Yeah. Now it's we're doing something on a monthly basis. We just had an event that we were part of this past weekend, but we're trying to do everything we can do. You know, we sell a bunch of merchandise and we show up wherever we're welcome to sell these things because these humane societies

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They rely so heavily on private donations and the help of the general public. So yeah, we try to do everything we can as often as we can. But I'm shooting for late, I'm shooting for maybe late April, mid-May. Okay, okay, definitely won't have the heat, the heat miser's getting you at that time, so that'll be good. And that's another thing,

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after years getting hotter earlier. And maybe that's just me getting old and I'm getting hotter. I don't know. But you know, yeah, and also with the heat comes the thunderstorms. So that's another thing that we have to try to work our way around. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, I wish you nothing but success and all of that and of course, we'll put links up in the show notes

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with, great for dog and all that stuff. So they can donate, they can get tickets, they can come, they can camp, they can do all that stuff and keep up with what's going on. Do y'all do any events during the year as well, aside from the big event? Do you have any small things that you- Yeah, we were just part of a veterinarian through a fall festival this past weekend, and we were part of that. About a month ago, another brewery here in town called

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Locomotive owned by a couple of friends of mine. They decided that they wanted to do something to help Grateful Dog also. So we did a little Saturday festival-like thing. This time with that, we didn't concentrate so much on Grateful Dog. I have a 16-year-old niece who is type one diabetic and epileptic.

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epilepsy has gotten worse and she's gotten to the point where if she's going to be able to go off to college, she's going to have to have a medical alert dog. So I switched the focus a little from strictly grateful dog to we included her in the fundraising efforts. My wife who has her own side business as a tie-dyer, she tie-dyed about a hundred different items for our niece to sell.

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clinical alert dogs, they start at $20,000. Yeah, yeah. And in her situation, her dog is gonna have to be trained in diabetes and in epilepsy. Mm-hmm. So we're looking at 25, 30,000 for her. Fortunately, we raised about 17 or 18,000 that one day. That's awesome. And yeah, and you know, we've got a GoFundMe going on. But,

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You know, we don't always, even when we show up as a group, the Grateful Dog group, of course, a large portion of whatever we do is gonna go to the humane societies. But in some instances, there are other things like, and like our niece, because yeah, although we love the animals and we're gonna do everything we can to support the animals, sometimes other missions take precedence.

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for sure. I was gonna ask you personally, like what what do you got going on? Like aside from grateful dog aside from the job? Anything else that you're involved in? You know, I always told you, you had a great voice, you still got a great voice. Thank you, you know, I've always thought you didn't make a great, you know, like sports announcer or something like that somewhere. But what are you? And aside from attending shows, what

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man. What else is going on? Well, um, a few years ago, I think it was 2013, I started this little thing called Taiwan on Florence. And it came from an idea that a friend saw in Wilmington. He was walking down the street in Wilmington one winter, and he came up on this tree that has scarves and jackets hanging from the limbs. And it had a little card,

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If you need me, I'm yours. Just take me. Oh, wow. So after him telling me about that, I thought that would be something that would be quick, easy, and we could even get kids participating in this to set that groundwork for giving and helping. So I started Taiwan on Florence in 2013, and we'd meet every other Sunday. I had collection boxes and bars and restaurants,

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businesses around town and I'd collect every week and every other Sunday we'd meet at a central location and whoever wanted to come was more than welcome and we'd start at wherever we met but we'd work our way out from the center of town around town to areas that we knew homeless there was a large homeless concentration like the public parks and places like that and it was awesome

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people realize that we could be in the neighborhood and you know, people, people will give you these strange looks like who are these four, five Carlos full of people that we've never seen before in that neighborhood. But once they realized what we were doing, almost to a man in each neighborhood, whoever peeked out that door or came and asked questions would end up helping us. Yeah. And I thought that was great because, yeah, a lot of these people were our

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I don't want to say target audience, but they were the ones we were out there to help. Yeah, and they would come help us. Yeah Had a reporter that worked for an ABC here in town She came out to do a quick little both side on us and it ended up turning into a small series because She was so touched when we got to one of the parts. Yeah, I had met a few of the homeless people Yeah previously

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space. So when I went over to talk to him, you know, she came over with us and she asked if she could ask them some questions and she made a package out of just the interview with them and she created a series with the rest of it. Unfortunately,

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About a month after I met her, she was driving home from South Carolina to New York for Christmas. And she was in a fatal accident. But she had stress to her father, who was a business owner in Long Island, a couple of restaurants down in South Beach. He has a manufacturing plant somewhere on the East Coast.

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how moved she was by this whole project that after her death he started sending boxes and boxes of matching gloves hats and scarves because he knew that that had touched her so he wanted to make sure that we kept it going so yeah so

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somebody and in just a short amount of time, you can learn a lot about that person, you can become close to that person. That person can influence so many things that could happen to help you in the future. Yeah, no doubt. And a side note to that about her father, her father's best friend is one of the promoters and producers for The Grateful Dead. Well, there you go. Yeah.

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So when he found out, when I, you know, just in conversation, I told him about Grateful Dog and explained what that was about. He said, well, hold on. I'm going to reach out to a buddy of mine and he may give you a call. So I got a call from this producer's office for an address and they sent me a bunch of Grateful Dead stuff that we sold at auction, Grateful Dog. That's awesome. That is so cool. That is too cool. Sam, what is bringing you joy right now?

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Life itself, man. I try to focus on that, especially seeing that, we're out in the community helping people try to stay warm, helping animals, helping this, helping that. The simple fact that I am fortunate enough to be the one trying to help as opposed to the one needing the help.

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But, you know, I've been married for five years and that's something that I'm guessing 15 years ago, I didn't see it happen. Yeah. Now I can't see myself without it. Yeah. Yeah. And just have having having a wife who is as passionate about the things that we do as I am that really helps.

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Sam, this is the second segment of the show. This is where we dive a little bit deeper into you. I personally believe that everybody goes through down days. Everybody has dark times in their lives, whether you wanna call it, whether it's diagnosed depression or it's just anxiety or you just need to stand in the shower for about 30 minutes and let the hot water hit you. Everybody has those down days that we all go through, but the common part of that

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Even though it won't depression wants to tell you that you're alone. You are not alone So for you, how do you keep the darkness at bay? Well, um music music is a huge key Music plays a part and pretty much every facet of my life Yo music is that That across the board thing that everyone can experience, you know You know

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to know a certain language. You don't have to know how to do anything except open your ears. I'm also fortunate enough that I have some really, really good friends who have very large shoulders. I've never felt that I didn't have anyone to turn to. I know that I'm a phone call

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So if you need me, I'm still a mad owl from working all those late night TV years. So I want people to call me anytime they need me, no matter what the clock says, because if you need to talk, I need to listen. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think that's important, being able to have those people that you, as the listener, have that you can talk to as well.

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and being the listener and I offer my time to people. It's like, hey, if you need to talk, I'm here to listen. I'm there to support. Because sometimes that's all we need. All we need is just somebody to listen to us, just to be able to say those words, get that off of our chest or whatever. But it is important to have those folks, that the listeners have to listen to them as well. Yes, sir. And music, like you said, is such an amazing, it has such an amazing power

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to lift the spirit, to cause introspection, to cause reflection, but to cause joy, just sheer joy as well. Yes, yes, yes. Like I said, whether you know what the words are or if it's just instrumental or if it's just, you know, somebody humming something, you know, that can change your mood instantly. Yes, sir, yes, sir. I remember,

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concert that we went to in Atlanta was at the Fox. We were going to see Hootie and the Blowfish. And it was, I think it was at one of the like New Year's concerts or something, or Chinese New Year's concert that like one of the radio stations up there did. And we were going to specifically see Hootie and the Blowfish, but Blues Traveler opened for them. And I remember, I'd never heard of them, never heard John Popper, never heard their music

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anything. And I completely was like, I'm 100% on board with this band and everything they do. I think I remember even telling you, like, we can go now, because they were the only way out. We don't need to see Hootie. We can just leave now if you want to because there's no way that anything that followed that would ever be any good because again, it just hits you at that right moment. You

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Literally within you if you just have your ears open Yeah, exactly then and and um

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You know, and people say, well, I don't like country or I don't like this or I don't like that, you know, and I won't say I don't like I won't I will never say I don't like any genre really. There are because there's always a song or two you can find in whatever genre that'll do it done. And growing up in South Carolina, you know, I've listened to country my entire life. The new country is a little different.

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But, you know, every type of music out there has something for someone. All you got to do is listen and let it happen.

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All right, Sam, this is the third segment of the show. It's time now for the Fast Five. The Fast Five is time now for the Fast Five. Fast Five. Fast Five is powered by Poddex. It's an app created by my friend Travis Brown. They're great icebreakers, but it's created for podcasters. So if you ever need interview questions or, like I said, if you're just going somewhere and you need to maybe go into a board meeting and you need to do a little icebreaker, you can get some Poddex

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on folks, it's awesome. As a matter of fact, if you go to chewingthefatbr.com slash pod decks and use promo code chew you can get 10% off your physical decks. I'm gonna use the app. I'm gonna just hit the randomizer here and so there's no wrong answers. This first thing come off top of your head. You ready Sam? Ready. Alright, question number one.

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If humans came with a warning label, what would yours say?

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dangerous when heated. Not even sure what that means, but it sounded really good. Sounds good. It sounds dangerous. It sounds dangerous. I like that. I like it. Awesome. Question number two.

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What do you think is more important in a song, melody or the lyrics?

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Melody. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we were just talking about John, John Popper. Blue Traveler had a song called The Hook and that that song was basically, you know, it was just saying, you know, the hook in the lyrics will bring you back. But the lyrics themselves can make absolutely no sense like the lyrics of this song did. Yeah. And you can write the coolest lyrics,

43:21
make people move or whatever you need to do. It's a poem. Yeah. That's true. That's true. Yep. Yeah. And I 100% agree that I love words and I love the effect that words can have and a turn of phrase is amazing, but a melody can make me cry. Just, I mean, just a violin playing something, you know what I mean? Or,

43:51
you know, a guitar riff could just set me on fire. I mean, so I 100%, it's like, I go both ways on that, but as I have gotten older and I listen to more jazz, I don't, there are not a lot of lyrics in what I listen to. So I definitely think the melody is very important. All right, question number three. ["The

44:16
What would constitute a perfect day for you? Lots of music, some sports on the tube, and my wife and I chillin' with some of our best friends. Yeah, yeah, and simple, yeah. Nothing extraordinary at this point in life, dude. Simplicity is where it's at.

44:46
Question number four.

44:50
What was the first car you ever owned? A Pontiac Sunbird. Ooh, fancy. Yeah, it was it was my sister's and when I turned 16, she bought her another car and let me drive the Sunbird. And man, I thought that was the baddest thing around. But at this point, I can't even remember what they look like. I just know that they don't make Pontiacs anymore. So, right, right. We keep dating ourselves in this thing.

45:20
All right, question number five.

45:29
What's the best compliment you ever received? Wow. I would have to say that the best compliment I've ever received would be something surrounding Grateful Dog. When people tell us how much fun they had or how great the festival is or something like that, that's the greatest thing. And you know, not that compliments are needed.

45:59
But who doesn't like to be appreciated? Who doesn't like to be recognized? So when those things come out, you know, and for instance a couple of months ago the city of Florence Did a proclamation and they they recognized grateful dog for the things that we've done over the last decade or so Yeah, you know and That right there me because I I've had some contentious times with the city

46:29
My Taiwan on Florence thing, some business owners downtown didn't like what I was doing. They thought that we were bringing the homelessness down to them when in reality we were going to the homelessness that the owners just didn't realize that they were already there. So you know, the city and I, like I said, we've had a slightly contentious relationship over the years. So for them to give grateful dog that recognition, man, the world.

46:59
That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, I hope you continue to keep up what you're doing with the great for dog and Taiwan on and everything you've got going on, but that's our fast five and that's the show Sam Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me for a little while and reconnect man. Yeah, man Man, thank thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having us because Being a nonprofit, of course we spend money as Little as possible. Yes, so

47:29
There's really no such thing as an advertising budget. So anyway, anyway that I can get the word out, I try to get the word out. And our time and all the time we spent in local TV news, that's helped me because I have the connections at the TV station, at the radio stations, but with friends like you. And now the beauty of technology is,

47:59
advertising more than just Florence, South Carolina. Yeah, more outside of the PD. We're fortunate enough that Grateful Dog has gone worldwide. Yeah. We've gotten pictures from Germany of cars with our little decals on it. A buddy of mine in an army was in a bar in Germany and he took a picture of a Grateful Dog sticker on the side of a cooler in the bar.

48:29
And, you know, I just thought that was so cool. So cool, man. That's awesome. Yeah. And we've got the podcast is we've got a big German group of folks that listen. We've got a big following in Canada and Ireland and England. And so it's it's amazing that your message will be able to reach the world in another form as well. If folks want to keep up with the Grateful Dog, what's the what's the easiest way for them to do that? Keep up with you.

48:59
to Facebook and check out the Grateful Dog family. I try to post there often. I try to keep it fresh and moving. Not only will you be able to find out about what we at Grateful Dog Group are doing, but we have info about other animal rescues in the area, missing pets, just all kinds of things, pet related on that page. Awesome, I'll make sure to put that link in the show notes

49:29
that again. Sam, thank you so much for being here. I love you. I appreciate your friendship and hopefully it's not gonna be long before maybe we can get together somewhere in between here in Florence and grab a beer or something like that together. No doubt man that would be very very awesome and I thank you on behalf of the Board of Directors for Grateful Dog. We thank you very much. We thank you very much. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much Sam. Yeah man. And if

49:59
If you would like to support this podcast, I'd appreciate it if you buy me a coffee at ChewingTheFatBR.com. But until next time, I look forward to when we have a moment to sit a spell and chew the fat.