- It's the opposite of competition.

It's sharing and seeing it flourish.

- [Customer] Hi!

- There's so many nuances to the trade.

- You really need a strong mentor to help guide you through the process.

- It was an absolute risk.

I really appreciate everything you did.

- [Lane] Oh, thank you (laughs).

- For real, dude.

- This is a good transition.

What a privilege to be building for the future.

(bright music) (bright music) (computer keys clacking) (bright music) The way sunlight interacts with the stained glass, it's a bit magical.

This window was designed by artisans and craftsmen.

There's an honoring of the traditions who are painting with light.

- This story is about a man who has a lot of passion and wants to pass that craft on to future generations.

I'm Taylor Prewitt.

I'm a staffer here at "Texas Monthly," and I wrote the piece "Masters of Glass."

I was approached by a colleague here at "Texas Monthly" about a guy in Waco who was restoring this really important piece of stained glass artwork.

It was the Good Shepherd window at the First Presbyterian Church of Galveston, nearly 140 years old, and it was the first piece by Louis Comfort Tiffany to display in Texas.

Louis Comfort Tiffany revolutionized the stained glass industry in America.

And this artist in Waco, Bryant Stanton, was kind of following in his footsteps as a craftsman and creating his own original works and also restoring really old, really valuable, and really, to him, sacred pieces.

(birds chirping) - Hey, welcome to our little art community out here.

Come on, I'll show you the wood shop.

(bright music) - When I visited Mr.

Stanton in his studio, I felt inspired.

You walk in and you see, you know, every step of the process, pencil sketches of his designs.

You see pieces where he's testing different techniques, and then you walk into another section and there's, you know, his employees assembling or cleaning stained glass.

They're cutting it.

They're organizing it.

And it seems like everyone who's working there sort of has the same reverence for these really gorgeous, large pieces that he does and sort of feels a part of the magic that he's creating there also.

- It's too bad we didn't have any sky because this would be great for sky.

- I'm also an artist, so I found Mr.

Stanton's passion really relatable.

I felt inspired by seeing the artwork he's creating and also the life he's creating.

He's made a successful commercial business out of his artwork.

- What I love about the art form is to design something and see it come to life.

But learning how to build a window properly on your workbench takes years of instruction.

There's so many nuances to the trade.

(employees chatter indistinctly) - It's lead sand that creates glass.

You use color, you use light, which are, you know, the foundational elements of art.

That's something that you can't learn in a book, you can't learn in a video.

You really need hands-on experience.

It's hard to do.

- There's not anything involved in stained glass making that somebody's hand hasn't touched it.

Aaron is assembling the window using lead channel, which is known as lead came, and he is wrapping each piece of glass into the lead channel and then holding it in place with these special nails.

So when he gets the glass all together, he'll solder each joint.

I started learning this back in 1977.

- [Taylor] He was a student at Texas Tech, very young, wandering kind of aimlessly around campus, wondering what he would do with his life, wondering if he should even be in college.

- I have a lot of faith and I prayed and I said, "Lord, would you show me my purpose for my life?"

- When he sort of stumbled across this hippie, as he describes him, working in stained glass in a piggly wiggly converted into a stained glass studio.

- It was like, "Oh, these are my people."

And the guy said, "Hey, you want to learn how to make a stained glass butterfly?"

I said, "Yeah, yeah, that'd be great."

As simple as this is, this is the first piece I ever made and I did it in a beginning stained glass class.

It's seen better days, but there it is.

I do see myself as a craftsman and, you know, it is a incredibly honorable role in our society.

Where would we be without the craftsmen, the painters, the plumbers, the carpenters?

They're very important and it's something I feel is in our DNA, our nature, to work with our hands.

- He really loves the craft, really believes that it is a means to meaning, and I think he wants to see that continue, and all of that drives him to be a mentor.

- So this is Stanton Hot Studio.

We invite the public out.

This is leftover from a class that we taught on fusing.

You know, when I started my business, it was just me and my wife, and I realized quickly for the business to survive, I have to have help.

And so I started very early teaching others how to do this work.

- So out of necessity, Stanton began hiring employees and mentoring people and teaching them the craft.

He knows what not to do.

He knows how to avoid the common mistakes that, you know, new stained glass makers might fall prey to, and he knows, you know, how to design a sketch so that it can actually be accomplished.

You really need hands-on experience, and that's what he's kind of creating in his studio.

And now he has almost 20 employees who help him with various stages of the process.

- Through the years, we've brought in more people, and it's grown, and it's become a place of learning and development.

We've mentored a lot of people.

I've had some of my employees that started in their teens and are in their 30s now.

- I never in my life assumed or even thought that this would be a sphere that I'd get to work in.

It's a very niche area.

Now I'm doing this full-time, and have been for a couple years now.

- I've been painting from the beginning.

I learned on the job.

I had no idea that I would get to do this for a living, but I am so thankful.

(bright music) (employees chatter indistinctly) - [Taylor] His four sons work in the business and they're preparing to take over, particularly his son, Jordan.

- My dad would take me to work with him quite a bit, so I've been around the business my entire life.

Having someone that's been there, done it, and can show you the way, it's definitely a benefit.

- My dad is one of the best designers, I think, on the planet, especially in the glass space and in the woodworking space.

- I see us continuing to build on what he built and expanding the business, but I think stained glass is always going to be at the heart of what we do.

I don't really see the stained glass going anywhere.

(bright music) - My sons are going to take it further than I ever took it, and I believe that they're going to build on what I started.

- We're at St.

Mark's Catholic Church in Denton, Texas.

We are here to install the second to last window in the Story of Christ.

We've been working on this job for six years.

There's a total of 47 of these large picture windows.

With the Story of Christ, there are 10.

- It's overwhelming to come in here and see the whole church filled up with paintings that we've done and windows that we've built.

- I mean, this is always the funnest part, is to get to see it up in the window and actually see, like, the sunlight coming through and then also seeing the whole entire space coming together.

(bright music) - I like the hands.

I like the face.

The face is great.

- I think there's so much knowledge that isn't written down currently that would be lost if there weren't people that were handing it down to the next generation and teaching.

- It was worth the wait.

It's beautiful.

- All of the work that Bryant Stanton has put into his business and the mentorship he does shows that the more you put into a craft or an art, the more it can kind of expand and grow.

It's the opposite of competition.

It's the opposite of being stingy with your knowledge and with your vision.

It's sharing that and seeing it flourish because of that.

- There's an omnipotent hand that moves the chess pieces on the board, and I feel like I just show up every day and listen for that still small voice to guide me.

(bright music continues) Had I not said yes to the calling back then, I don't know where I'd be.

(pages rustling) (upbeat music) - Barbecue is such a big deal because it's so hard to replicate.

Every day is different.

Every cook's different.

There's so many variables that go into it.

You can't replicate what we're doing.

It's too intense.

It's too hard.

0.42 on the ribs.

I learned from the best of the best.

You have to make sacrifices if you want to be great.

- The story's really about a guy with a barbecue dream who, instead of going out and doing it on his own, decided first to seek out some mentors and find a great place to go learn the craft.

I'm Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor at "Texas Monthly," and I wrote "Pit-Room Schoolhouse."

(air whooshes) Redbird BBQ is number four on our Top 50 list.

That was a huge surprise, a place that sort of came out of nowhere.

The first time I ever heard about Redbird BBQ is when Amir Jalali came out of the pit room at Goldee's and he gave me a hat.

He had just made some merch for this restaurant that didn't exist.

He came out and announced basically that he was the one who had smoked most of what I was eating that day, and it was fantastic.

Like, it was so good.

I didn't know who he was, really didn't know certainly anything about Redbird BBQ or what it might become.

When Amir gave me the Redbird BBQ hat, I knew he had a plan.

I knew there was a future in this, and it was just for me to wait around until he could announce the news that he was going to be open.

(crowd chattering indistinctly) - I've been waiting in line since about 10 o'clock, about an hour.

- Ever since they opened, we try to come at least once a week.

- This is my daughter Caitlin.

She come all the way from Franklin, Tennessee, to get some of this barbecue.

(Caitlin chuckles) - The thing that put Redbird so high on the list is just how much attention to detail they paid to everything on that tray.

(bright music) - How are you, ma'am?

- I'm great.

How are you?

- I'm doing well.

What you thinking today?

We really took an approach of trying to do everything possible from scratch.

0.47 on the sausage.

- There's nothing boring about a tray at Redbird.

We're talking, like, just spectacular, like, perfectly executed brisket, pork ribs that have, like, a sweet glaze to them.

There are no duds, right?

There's nothing like, "Well, their turkey's okay," or, "Their beef rib's fine."

Like, no, it's all great.

- Okay, this one's done.

- Everything, every time.

And then the sides.

The sides are just... I mean, they're outrageously good.

And they make their own yeast rolls, which are almost as famous as the barbecue.

- [Amir] I don't love seeing, like, store-bought bread on, like, this beautiful barbecue tray.

The Caesar slaw is one of my favorite sides.

It's a cabbage/kale mix.

It's nice and creamy and lemony.

- They also make pita from scratch every day so that they can serve their signature sausage, which is the koobideh sausage.

Amir's dad is originally from Iran, moved to the US, and so the koobideh sausage is really a replication of this Iranian dish, which is a beef kebab.

- I mean, we're in Port Neches, Texas.

You know, koobideh is a Persian-inspired dish, and you'd be surprised how much we sell, and the people that are buying it, you would've never thought that they would be buying something so unique.

(customers chatter indistinctly) - It is this great intersection of so many flavors, and I think that's one of the things that makes Redbird and the experience at Redbird so memorable.

But opening up your own barbecue joint in Texas is a challenge.

Amir was living in Houston, had an interest in barbecue, but he had a day job.

He had an office job.

He was secure.

He had his benefits, good paycheck, but he wanted to learn how to cook barbecue.

- I left corporate America just because I simply wasn't enjoying my day-to-day anymore.

I love barbecue.

You know, it's a very specific craft.

It's really hard to do.

So the challenge there was really interesting for me.

But everyone that was in the food industry that knew me was like, "Don't do it, don't do it," just because of how hard it is.

And the challenging part would be to go and execute it on your own.

You know, that's the hard part.

- You really need a strong mentor to help guide you through the process and learn through that hands-on work that you can go off and replicate it or really take the lessons you've learned there and put it to use in your own barbecue.

Instead of trying to go off and do it on his own, Amir went out and found a great pit room to learn all this craft.

- I really got lucky with where I ended up.

Honestly, I learned mostly everything that I know up at Fort Worth at Goldee's Barbecue.

And this was right after they had just gotten number one.

Look at that marbling in that meat.

So I went from not knowing anything about barbecue to then working at the best place in the world.

- I would say Goldee's is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

When you drive out, you're kind of like, "Where the hell am I?"

(upbeat music) It's almost like a pilgrimage.

When you think classic Texas barbecue that sort of intertwines tradition, but also innovation, I would probably say that's Goldee's.

(customers chatter indistinctly) - So he fell in with guys at Goldee's, but Amir didn't quit his job to learn how to cook barbecue.

He actually stuck with his job throughout the week, and then he would drive from Houston up to Fort Worth and spend the weekends in the pit rooms at Goldee's.

So really all of his free time was all about barbecue.

- [Amir] It took a lot of sacrifice.

I had to drive about five hours there.

I would go up there for 10 to 12 days at a time, and then I'd come home for about a week.

- I probably wouldn't do it, but, yeah, he did it almost every week for a long time.

- Amir was at Goldee's on and off for almost two years.

It was time away from his family, time away from his friends, time away from his professional life too.

Amir said he had to assure his wife, Delaney, that this was going to work out.

I don't know if he assured her about anything.

I think he had to do what he could to try and convince her that there was a future in this.

He had a job, he had benefits, he had security, and he gave all that up on a barbecue dream.

- It was an absolute risk, but I was pretty determined just to do something special.

It's a pretty intense industry, so if you want to be really good at this industry, you have to be here.

You have to be doing it.

- That's a real dedication, but also it really showed an openness from the Goldee's crew.

(customers chatter indistinctly) - They were an open book, all of them.

It is surprising because in some stage, we are competition.

To them, I feel like it didn't really matter.

They're just great guys.

I learned how to do everything there.

- [Daniel] If Amir had one strong mentor at Goldee's, it was really Lane Milne.

- [Lane] Amir was a quick learner.

So he learned everything pretty fast and he always did a good job.

First time Amir cut ribs, like, he learned extremely fast that day and I was kind of blown away how, like, quick he was, like, getting good at cutting the ribs, because normally that's like a trickier one for people.

- Lane's a humble guy.

I mean, he's the best barbecue cook in the nation.

I couldn't think of anybody who cooks better barbecue than Lane.

He'll give you guidance.

He'll push you in the right way.

Lane is just the best at training someone up and then letting them run with their ideas.

- [Amir] He's an open book and he's genuinely a food genius.

- That doesn't really make sense for me to, "Oh, yeah, I taught Amir everything," or whatever.

I think maybe I helped him get a head start in the beginning.

- I still talk to him to this day.

We talk all the time.

I'm going to give him a call to see if he'll answer.

- [Lane] Yo, what up, Amir?

- What up, Lane?

- [Lane] Not much, what are you doing?

- Not too much, man.

Just ran the first service, first time back.

- Amir speaks very highly of Lane and speaks very highly of his time at Goldee's, the way the kitchen operates and how open they were with the information they shared, and with Lane specifically, because of how much time they really spent together developing menu item by menu item, all the different sides, all the different proteins, working with Amir to come up with that opening day menu at Redbird.

- All right, man, well, take care of yourself and I'll talk to you soon.

- [Lane] All right, later, man.

Love you, buddy.

- All right, love you too, man.

Take care.

Great guy.

(customers chatter indistinctly) - [Daniel] What is unique is the way that Goldee's views sort of the way that they do mentorship, which is they bring in pitmasters who want to be mentored here at Goldee's but only with the purpose of leaving.

- I got you a little extra brisket on us today too.

- You know, they made number one in 2021 on our barbecue list, and four years later, people who came to work with them because of that had gone off to open their own places, and we now have Barbs BQ in Lockhart, you have Redbird BBQ in Port Neches, Sabar BBQ in Fort Worth.

All of them made the Top 50 this time around.

So it says a lot about the way that Goldee's trains and the talent they're able to spot.

You can certainly see, like, the Goldee's stamp on a lot of these places.

- The Top 50 barbecue list is a big deal because it comes out every four years.

When the list did come out, seeing number four was genuinely mind-blowing to me.

That really solidified all the hard work and everything that I've put into this business and genuinely all the sacrifices that have been made to get where we are.

I've been working here for three years nonstop, 60, 70-hour weeks.

I don't sit down.

You know, people are coming here, they expect really good stuff, especially after we got ranked number four.

So the last thing you want to do is let them down.

We genuinely have people traveling to Port Neches from all over the country, and that to me is really special.

Goldee's Brisket Class.

- [Daniel] It's refreshing just to see people like the folks at Goldee's who are willing to just share their knowledge and do it without really expectations of any payback of any sort.

- Redbird is where it's at because of me, sure, because of our team and my family, but the foundation was set because of him, and that was big.

That was big.

I really appreciate everything you did.

- [Lane] Oh, thank you (laughs).

- For real, dude.

I'm very thankful.

I mean, if I keep talking about it, I'll probably cry, but I'm very thankful.

(bright music) - [Daniel] A mentor is just somebody with valuable knowledge, no matter what field it's in, who's willing to share that knowledge with someone who's willing to learn it.

- [Taylor] I think that's part of mentorship is that you want the next generation to sort of build upon what you've created.

Without people passing things down, a lot of craft, a lot of history, a lot of stories wouldn't survive.

Mentorship is how we get there.

(bright music continues)