- [Announcer] Welcome to "Peach Jam."

Recorded live in our GPB studios in Midtown, Atlanta, where songs and stories come together from the talented musicians who call the Peach State home.

(upbeat music) On this episode, an artist who has music in his blood.

♪ So what am I to do ♪ - [Announcer] And will sit down with a legendary Athens band.

♪ How about you ♪ - [Announcer] Up first, from Richland, Georgia, this is Willy Cobb.

(gentle music) ♪ Well, you said you don't really like my type ♪ ♪ But I better make your mind ♪ ♪ By the end of the night ♪ ♪ Act like you ain't interested ♪ ♪ I'm in the back smoking Marlboro reds ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ I bet you hate the way cigarettes smell ♪ ♪ My cheap taste will probably bore you to hell ♪ ♪ I bet you hate the way cigarettes smell ♪ ♪ I bet you vape all day ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's better for your health ♪ (upbeat music) My name's Willy Cobb.

I'm from Richland, Georgia.

Little small town and people say Stewart, but I'm really in the Webster County side of things.

I play alternative music, so I like to kind of blend genres a little bit, all that kind of stuff.

♪ I bet you hate the way cigarettes smell ♪ ♪ My cheap taste will probably bore you to hell ♪ ♪ I bet you hate the way cigarettes smell ♪ ♪ I bet you vape all day ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's better ♪ ♪ Hate the way cigarettes smell ♪ ♪ My cheap taste will probably bore you to hell ♪ ♪ I bet you hate the way cigarettes smell ♪ ♪ I bet you vape all day ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's better for your health ♪ (upbeat music) - Tell me about Richland, Georgia.

- Richland Rum.

There's a lot of, there's not really a lot to do in Richland.

We have one red light.

Well, I think we got two now, actually.

So.

- Okay.

- You got a gas and go.

I don't know if y'all ever heard of gas and go, but just check it out.

But yeah, Richland is a small town.

It's near Providence Canyon, so a lot of tourists will go there to see Richland rum and go tour the canyons and whatnot.

So.

- That's actually not a bad day, though.

So I know about Richland rum from Fork in the Road, that we have on GPB, and the Fork in the Road podcast.

And so I learned about that.

So it's really cool.

And then I've been to Providence Canyon, so yeah, that sounds like a great day.

- Honestly, I love that area.

Just the dirt roads, and you can get all the way to Alabama through dirt roads if you want to.

So.

But who wants to go to Alabama?

- Yeah, I'm glad you said it.

That's exactly what I was thinking (laughs).

♪ Well, these woods ain't sheets ♪ ♪ But we could get stuck in ♪ ♪ You're my peach, I'm your country pumpkin ♪ ♪ Reckon it's you or that South Georgia heat ♪ ♪ Hot damn, I'm sweatin' in this Cherokee seat ♪ ♪ Let's take it outside, go honey suckle pluckin' ♪ ♪ You're my peach, I'm your country pumpkin ♪ ♪ We live somewhere on the edge, I swear ♪ ♪ I love you better than I love myself ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ (upbeat music) - So when did music start for you?

- Well, my family's always been into music.

A lot of people know my cousin Brent Cobb's music.

And not many people know that his daddy was a musician before him.

And he went on tour with Doug Stone and stuff back in the 90s.

- Really?

- Yeah.

But my whole family plays music.

My grandma, I keep a picture in my house my grandma gave me.

It's actually a picture of my grandma's dad, and them and his family in the twenties, sitting on the porch with their fiddles and their guitars.

In like, 1925, I think the picture's from.

And I still got it on my wall at my house.

So.

- So it's just, it's in your blood.

- That's what people like to say down there.

The Cobbs are musical, and we're good at working on air conditioners, so.

- Is that right?

- Yup.

- What is that?

Is that a family business or something?

- It is.

- Okay.

- Cobb Heating and Air.

- There you go.

Yeah.

So call 'em if you're in the area.

- If you are in the Webster County area, call us.

- Well, Lord knows that in South Georgia, you need an air conditioning working well.

- Lord have mercy.

We've been so busy this year.

It's crazy.

♪ What do you feel ♪ ♪ My love ♪ (gentle music) ♪ 'Cause I give you something, but it's not enough ♪ (gentle music) ♪ So what am I to say now ♪ (gentle music) ♪ What am I to do ♪ ♪ It's slipping far away now ♪ ♪ The moment I'm through ♪ ♪ So what am I to do ♪ ♪ When I get lost in you ♪ ♪ I don't know what to do ♪ ♪ Is it me or you ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ I look you in the face now ♪ ♪ But what does it really say ♪ ♪ A look of contemplation ♪ - You mentioned your cousin, Brent Cobb.

So I found out about you because I'm a fan of your cousin, and I like his music.

I follow him on Instagram.

He posted about the EP that you released, and I thought, oh, I need to check this out.

And as soon as I heard it, I sent it to my wife.

I'm like, you've gotta hear this.

It's amazing.

And I knew that I wanted to have you on the podcast, so I'm excited that you're here.

- I'm excited to be here, man.

- What's it like?

Like, you have a first cousin, that obviously you're on good terms with, 'cause you write songs with him and work on music with him.

What's it like to have somebody who's like, becoming a big deal in the music industry in your family?

- I mean, it's always kind of been there.

I mean, since I was a kid.

'Cause he moved to LA when I was like, six years old.

- Okay.

- You know, he was born in 1988, I think, and I was born in 2000.

So I'm like, 12 years younger than him, but he's always kind of been there as like my big brother to show me the way.

It's actually kind of crazy how it all happened.

So I wrote Cigarette Smell as a joke, and his apartment overlooking Music Row.

And he came outside, smoked a cigarette, and he was like, what you got?

And then I sang him the song.

He's like, man, I like that.

So we kind of wrote it together a little bit.

He sends the song to Jaren Johnston, who is my producer and record label executive right now.

- Okay.

- And Jaren, in turn, sent the song to Aaron Bay-Schuck, who is the president and CEO of Warner LA.

And if he didn't like it, he was gonna play it off as like, oh man, wrong Aaron.

I didn't mean to send it to this Aaron, you know?

But Aaron Bay-Schuck sent back, "I love this."

We need to get you a record label started in Nashville.

So from there, War Buddha Recordings was started as a subsidiary of Warner LA and they started up their own little kind of indie label in Nashville.

And I was one of the first stars to get signed.

- So they started an indie label because of you?

- That's what I've been told.

- That's cool.

- Yeah.

- How does that make you feel?

- I feel like Willy, man.

- Yeah.

- You know?

- I love it.

I love it.

You have this just kind of coolness about you where it's like, you're going through life doing your thing, and either people like it or they don't, and you really don't care.

- That's the way I feel like it should be in general.

You know?

I don't really like to be too hard on myself.

I know I am sometimes, but in reality, you get what you get.

I can't change anything about myself to make somebody else like me.

And that's been the hardest thing for me in my life, to learn as a lesson.

To not care so much about what other people think.

So I just kind of try to go with the flow, and if you don't like it, screw you, man.

You know?

(Jeremy laughing) - Put that on a t-shirt.

- Yeah.

♪ So what am I to do ♪ ♪ When I get lost in you ♪ ♪ I don't know what to do ♪ ♪ Oh, is it me or you ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ What do you feel ♪ ♪ My love ♪ - [Announcer] Coming up, legitimate Athens legends Five Eight.

- [Announcer] Community.

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- [Announcer] And now let's welcome Five Eight to the Peach Jam family.

♪ On a drive out of town ♪ ♪ I've discovered something about myself ♪ ♪ That I'm forced to admit ♪ ♪ I never knew ♪ ♪ A funny quirk that has taken me ♪ ♪ Taken me apart ♪ ♪ From the part of everything that I love ♪ ♪ Frequently I find myself out of answers ♪ ♪ And here's where I mouth an emotional sentence ♪ ♪ Try to arrange the way that you gave me ♪ ♪ And fit with my concepts of love ♪ ♪ And I'm alone and I long to be lonely ♪ ♪ How about you ♪ ♪ I'm alone and I long to be lonely ♪ - I'm Dan.

- And I'm Mike.

And we play in the band Five Eight.

We're from Athens, Georgia.

And we play sort of a kind of post punk indie rock, I would think.

- I think that's a very apt description of what we do.

I accept that.

This guy over here is Marc.

Marc Pilvinsky.

And he's the director of our documentary.

"Weirdo" is the name of it.

And Marc is a fantastic and handsome human being.

- They're correct about this.

- They're correct about all those things.

Yeah (laughs).

I'll take that.

Right, yeah, sure.

- Yeah.

I've only known them for 30 years, and you know, I'm hoping they'll get my name right.

- When people ask me about Five Eight coming in, they're like, oh, what type of music do they play?

I just said, Athens alternative rock.

And most people were like, oh, that makes sense.

- Oh, that makes sense.

- Yeah.

- Sure.

- You think so?

- Sure.

I haven't heard the term alternative rock in a long time.

- Right?

- But yeah.

Indie rock, alternative rock, same thing.

- Why is Athens, Georgia so special?

- It used to be special, 'cause it was cheap, but I can't really say that anymore.

It's just got a lot of talent.

- it's really laid back, too, and it's got tons of clubs.

And- - It's true.

- Lots of places to play.

There's like, there's always new college students coming, you know, and art people, art students.

And there are great house parties always still going on.

And I think because it's such a small town, it has this kind of, there's like a sort of like, a local vibe of, you know, with the music.

But there's also, you know, the bar scene is extremely just Athens.

There's bars that you're never gonna see else.

And same with the clubs.

They just have a real local history to them.

And I think people are, they come because of that.

We came because of the scene there.

- Yeah.

- We came from Binghamton, New York and Long Island to play and live in Athens.

♪ I long to be lonely ♪ ♪ I long to be lonely ♪ ♪ I long to be lonely ♪ ♪ I long to be lonely ♪ ♪ I long to be lonely ♪ ♪ I long to be lonely ♪ ♪ I long ♪ ♪ I long ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ 'Cause I'm alone ♪ ♪ And I long to be lonely ♪ ♪ How about you ♪ ♪ I'm alone ♪ ♪ And I long to be lonely ♪ ♪ How about you ♪ - This guy was writing excellent songs, and he still does today.

So, and we had our singular kind of thing.

We were not like other Athens bands.

First of all, there's nothing cool about us.

And we're like, I don't know, we're like these- - Weirdos.

- Seeing us, to me it's like seeing like an exposed kind of raw nerve.

You know?

It is a different vibe.

- Mike had this mental health incident that sort of was the birth of a lot of the characters that he writes about in his songs, I'd say.

You know, from that, from being institutionalized, and put on Thorazine and being locked in this institution for five weeks.

You know, he sort of felt like he was destined to just be there for the rest of his life.

But his parents pulled him out against doctor's orders, and he picked up a guitar again and started writing songs.

And that's all the early Five Eight stuff.

- In my mind, I was trying to become a straight A student, you know?

As a classic kid, you know, trying to please their parents.

I had- - And how old were you again?

- I was 22.

- Okay.

- So it's like two years before I moved to Athens.

Well, no, 21.

21.

And it should have been my junior year.

I had given up my guitar.

I'd stopped writing poetry.

I was a poetry major.

And I had gotten in, I had a lot of success with the poetry.

I had gotten into John Gardner's magazine.

I was being taught by Heather McCue.

And so there was all this idea of I was gonna be this writer.

And I gave that all up.

And I started just, I was just gonna get into being a psychiatrist or something.

So I started just trying to get through these classes at SUNY Binghamton, which is the school I went to with Dan.

And it just broke me trying to do that.

And I have a vivid memory of it.

Like, I still do today.

I remember a lot of details and it was the most painful thing that's ever happened to me.

So when you hear people say, you know, they're schizophrenic and they've had psychotic breaks, it's physically painful to suffer through that.

It's really, really rough.

And your sense of time disappears.

You wind up like in you're in a dream.

So it can last for one second, can last so long.

And so that's what it was like for me.

And when I got out of it, somehow, I realized I was gonna have to be an artist and I was gonna have to follow my heart.

And somehow I had some kind of miraculous kind of vision that I was going to just make music.

And, Farnes was a lot of, he's a huge part of that.

He was a friend.

Dan was a big part of that, because they were friends, and we took ourselves seriously as artists, but we were also goofballs, you know?

So it was like, here was this crazy weirdo who was like, I've never been anything to anybody.

I was always a goofy idiot.

And now I was like, you know, writing these songs about that psychotic break and about love and about just finding my heart ♪ You take it from me ♪ ♪ I'm the last one to flee ♪ ♪ You've got a house and family ♪ ♪ I'm this blue dot in a sea of red ♪ ♪ Tempers and temperatures ♪ ♪ Temptations, rapturous ♪ ♪ Hatism, racism ♪ ♪ Face down in dirt ♪ ♪ It's not the fourth of July anymore ♪ ♪ No, it's not the fourth of July anymore ♪ (upbeat music) - So I met Five Eight about 20 years ago.

I worked as a morning show producer in Atlanta at 99 X, and you guys played some parties for us, and you came in studio and did some stuff.

- That was with Rizzi.

- Yes, with Rizzi.

And who came in for a special episode of Peach Jam with John Driskell Hopkins.

- Yes.

Just recently.

- So I gotta catch up with him.

- Yeah.

- So I met you guys when you had a song on the radio.

- Yeah.

- You were making a run at like, alternative radio.

- Yeah.

- And then you got to open for REM.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Tell me about that.

- That was a big break.

That was in the movie, too.

The Black Record.

Just to fill you in.

The Black Record that came out after The Good Nurse was the album that the REM guys all heard.

REM and Burtas, right?

- Yeah.

- And they called us up and they wanted us to tour with them.

It's stringent.

They all have to like it.

- Yeah.

- That's their rule.

- Hmm.

- And it's a good rule.

I like the way that band does business.

They're very, very cool.

Anyone like, wants to put 'em down and I'm like, ugh, 'cause they were so good to us, you know?

I mean, that was one of the best weeks of our life, opening for REM out west.

Oh my God.

The Greek theater.

And like the first, the first night they saw us/ With the roadie on.

The techie, I should say.

He saw us coming in with our little rented amps and they were him and Mike Mills.

They were all like, why don't you just use our stuff?

And I'm like, okay.

So we returned all the, and every night after that I got to use Mike Mills's, he had two SVTs on stage side by side.

One was a backup.

He didn't play through both at once.

One was there for him, and one was a backup, and I played through that backup every night.

All I had to bring was my base.

And you know, a couple of cables.

♪ It's dark in my room ♪ ♪ And it's dark in my eyes ♪ ♪ My whole body shakes as I realize ♪ ♪ People over there starting to scatter ♪ ♪ I hear you say ♪ ♪ What is the matter with the weirdo ♪ ♪ Weirdo ♪ ♪ Weirdo ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Here's a phone call to you from ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ The all night diner of my mind ♪ ♪ Probably realized I've been tongue tied ♪ ♪ It seems my heartstrings have all been tied ♪ ♪ There's a pain in my heart ♪ ♪ What did you say ♪ ♪ You didn't say that ♪ ♪ You said weirdo ♪ ♪ Weirdo, weirdo, oh ♪ ♪ And wow, what I said ♪ ♪ I thought it was funny ♪ ♪ The more I did, I tried to be cool ♪ ♪ What I show is my impersonation of you all ♪ ♪ I'm your weirdo ♪ - There's an Athens Music Walk of Fame.

It's like the, you know, the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and Five Eight just got theirs.

- Yeah.

It's a guitar pick in the sidewalk.

- Yeah.

- And it says Five Eight.

- Yeah, from the city.

- So we're in that sidewalk forever.

I was saying even Godzilla will come through and he can smash the buildings, do his usual stuff.

- Yep.

- High tension wires, buildings.

Usually he picks up a bus or a train.

Everyone inside.

- People, yeah.

- Yeah.

And he stomps some things.

But he probably usually leaves the sidewalk alone.

Lucky for us, like, Godzilla is not that detail oriented.

I was telling Calvin who also has this, that's huge.

I've never done that before.

Have I?

(upbeat music) ♪ In my yearbook is my diagnosis ♪ ♪ There's a mournful look ♪ ♪ I remember the sleepless nights ♪ ♪ Dark brown eyes in circles ♪ - [Announcer] Do you wanna hear more songs and stories?

Check out our podcast at gpb.org/peachjam ♪ Blow dried straight ♪ ♪ Now you think someone else had gone crazy ♪ ♪ But I did ♪ ♪ And I'm your weirdo ♪ ♪ Weirdo ♪ ♪ Weirdo ♪ ♪ Well, what I said ♪ ♪ I thought it was funny ♪ ♪ What I did I tried ♪ - [Announcer] Thanks for watching.

Please go out and support live local music and independent record stores in your area ♪ And I'm your ♪ ♪ Weirdo ♪