Episode 535
with Silvia Vasquez-Lavado, Curtis Cook, and
Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello share some "personal Mt. Everests" from our listeners; writer and mountaineer Silvia Vasquez-Lavado discusses how she became the first openly gay woman to climb The Seven Summits while overcoming addiction and childhood trauma; comedian Curtis Cook explains why you shouldn't wear a suit to Red Lobster; and Patterson Hood, frontman of Drive-By Truckers, unpacks his decades-long collaboration with bandmates, then performs "Shake and Pine" from their album Welcome 2 Club XIII.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
Writer and Mountaineer
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is a humanitarian, mountaineer, explorer, social entrepreneur, and technologist living in San Francisco. In 2014, she launched Courageous Girls, a nonprofit that helps survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking with opportunities to find inner strength and cultivate their voices by demonstrating their physical strength. Courageous Girls has had projects in Nepal, India, the United States, and Peru. Vasquez-Lavado was recognized by Fortune magazine as one of the Corporate Heroes of 2015. CNET named her one of the 20 Most Influential Latinos in Silicon Valley. She has also been recognized by the Peruvian government as one of the “Marca Peru” ambassadors (country brand ambassadors). She is a member of the Explorers Club and one of the few women in the world to complete the Seven Summits. Website • Instagram
Curtis Cook
Comedian
Curtis Cook is a standup comedian and WGA Award-nominated writer who puked after a keg stand on a show called Flophouse, traveled through an Ebola checkpoint for a segment on Vice News, and has appeared alongside Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein on Portlandia. Curtis’s standup has been seen on Comedy Central, where he was also a writer for the recent reboot of Crank Yankers before being hired onto shows at Hulu and TBS. His comedy has been described as "pretty funny" and "why is he yelling at us?" Website • Instagram
Patterson Hood
Frontman of Drive-By Truckers
Patterson Hood was born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and he was also born wickedly talented. He is best known as the co-founder, front-man, songwriter, and guitarist for the critically acclaimed Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers. Their most recent album, Welcome 2 Club XIII, which came out in June 2022, was recorded live over the course of a single weekend, harnessing the band’s ever-freewheeling energy in its 26th year. He currently lives in Portland. Website • Listen
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Luke Burbank Hello Elena.
Elena Passarello Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank It's going well. Feeling very excited this week and very excited to play another round of station location identification examination. Are you?
Elena Passarello Uh, Yeah!
Luke Burbank I'll take that as a solid maybe.
Elena Passarello I feel like these are getting harder and harder.
Luke Burbank I think you might be able to get this one. Okay. This, of course, is where I describe a place in the country where Live Wire is on the radio. And you've got to try to figure out where I'm talking about. Okay. Maybe because the name of the city is really fun to say. It's been featured in the lyrics of many popular songs, such as "I've Been Everywhere" by Johnny Cash and "Down On the Corner" by Creedence, Creedence Clearwater Revival. You know everything about music. And are you able to cross-reference those two songs in your brain and find the Nexus?
Elena Passarello I think it's Kalamazoo.
Luke Burbank I think you're absolutely right.
Elena Passarello K-K-A-A-L-A-M-A-Z-O-O! "Oh, what a gal" was the third thing that you got a gal from Kalamazoo. That song was in there?
Luke Burbank No, the hint was going to be it's also home to the first outdoor pedestrian shopping mall in the United States.
Elena Passarello I know. My cat Sharkey is from Kalamazoo, RIP.
Luke Burbank Look at you Kalamazoo, where we're on WMUK radio in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Shout out to everybody tuning in there and from all across the country. Should we get rolling with the show?
Elena Passarello Yeah, let's do it. Let's Kalamazoo it.
Luke Burbank Take it away.
Elena Passarello From PRX, it's...
Audience Live Wire!
Elena Passarello This week, writer and mountaineer Silvia Vasquez-Lavado.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado I never saw climbing as a way of conquering. The very first time I came across the Himalayas, I felt a sense of belonging.
Elena Passarello And comedian Curtis Cook.
Curtis Cook I wore a suit 'cause I just assumed you had to wear a suit to the Red Lobster. And it turns out you do not need to wear a suit to the Red Lobster. And if you do, everyone assumes you're the manager of that Red Lobster.
Elena Passarello With music from Patterson Hood and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now the host of Live Wire Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in from all across the country, including in Kalamazoo. We've got a great show in store for you this week. We asked the audience a question, as we do each week. The question was, what's your personal Mt. Everest? It's because one of our guests actually climbed Mount Everest. We got those responses. We're going to read them to you coming up in just a little bit. First, though, of course, we've got to kick things off with the best news we heard all week. This right here is our little reminder at the top of the show that there is still some good news happening out there. We promise. We looked it up. We've verified it. It's a real thing. Elena, what's the best news you heard this week?
Elena Passarello Oh, no. I got another sports one.
Luke Burbank I like it. You handle the sports. I handle the animals. Now we're both moving out of our comfort zone. I'm into it.
Elena Passarello It's about a player of the basketball variety named Bismack Biyombo, who is from the Democratic Republic of Congo. And he plays for the Phoenix Suns. But he didn't for a while. He was with the Charlotte Hornets and he was a free agent, which totally makes sense to me. But he recently, like last Friday, signed a contract with the Phoenix Suns for an estimated $1.3 million. Guess how much of that he's going to put in the bank, Luke Burbank?
Luke Burbank After taxes and his agent's fee, I don't know, a mil?
Elena Passarello A little bit less than that. $0.00.
Luke Burbank What?
Elena Passarello The reason for that is that Mr. Bismack Biyombo is going to be giving the entirety of his season salary to build a hospital in his home country of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The hospital is going to be named after his late father, Francis, who died last August. He contracted COVID and recovered from it, but it left some lingering health complications. And Bismack Biyombo says "My dad made most of his life about me, my brothers and sisters and being of service to other people." And he wants to honor that service by having a really needed hospital named after this man. That was Biyombo's hero.
Luke Burbank Wow.
Elena Passarello Isn't that amazing? His whole salary.
Luke Burbank Well, the thing, too, is, I mean, that's like a lot of money in public radio, over $1,000,000. But by NBA standards, it's not a tremendously lucrative contract. So it's not like he's going to make 25 million and he's, you know, peeling off 1.3 of that for this hospital. I mean, that's the totality of it.
Elena Passarello Yeah. And he has a foundation that in 2020 raised money to give $1,000,000 in medical supplies to the DRC. So really just a person of tremendous service. And apparently he is very good at the jump-puck-off around all the bases.
Luke Burbank You're doing so well.
Elena Passarello Yeah. He gets the touch down all the time on the Davis Cup. He's my favorite basketball player for sure now.
Luke Burbank Definitely next season I'll be rooting for him especially hard. The NBA broke my heart many years ago when they let my beloved team in Seattle, the Sonics, go away. But I do think Bismack Biyombo is very much worth rooting for, so I'll be looking for him. Hey, something else that we need to be looking for: a narluga, Elena.
Elena Passarello A what now?
Luke Burbank A narluga: the hybrid of a narwhal and a beluga. They think this might actually happen up in Canada, where back in 2016, a narwhal became separated from its pod, like a young narwhal. And so it was just swimming around like in the Saint Lawrence River, which is pretty far south for them. Narwhals are typically up in the Arctic Circle.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank This one is down, hanging out with a pod of beluga. And it has distinctive markings. So they've been they've been getting photographs and video with drone of this. They think that this narwhal is about 12 years old. That's right. The radio audience can't see this. But you were doing, you were doing the international sign for, is that like kind of a unicorn? Is that is that the whale that has a big thing coming out of his head? And yes, that is the narwhal. And they think that there's a possibility that this narwhal that's a male narwhal, because it's been so accepted by this group of beluga, it may mate eventually with a beluga and create the first narluga that they know of.
Elena Passarello Woah!
Luke Burbank But it comes down to it turns out, the other beluga. More or less burrowing down with the narwhal like the male beluga. So the narwhal has to become part of what's called a coalition in order to reproduce. The other beluga have to be like, alright. This whale is cool enough that we're going to let him be part of our sort of, like, reproductive situation.
Elena Passarello Yeah, it's like a like sex sorted packs kind of a thing, right?
Luke Burbank Right. And the thing is that it's not uncommon for narwhals and Beluga to kind of socially associate, but they just, nobody's seen a narluga yet, and so they're very excited about it. I also was excited to learn this detail. Did you know what that tusk actually is on a narwhal?
Elena Passarello Uh, magic?
Luke Burbank It's a sensitive tooth with as many as 10 million nerve endings where it can grow up to ten feet. But it's a giant tooth.
Elena Passarello Amazing.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Elena Passarello I think a narwhal dentist is just like a SNL skit waiting to happen.
Luke Burbank Like the idea of a narwhal furiously flossing the day before they have to go to the narwhal dentist to try to act like they've been doing it the whole time. Well, the hopes of a narluga, that's the best news that I heard all week. Hey, if you'd like to get a little more good news in your life and don't we all, you can head over to the Live Wire podcast feed where we have an entire podcast dedicated to the best news. It's called The Best News Podcast. Please go check that out. All right. Let's welcome our first guest on over to the show. She's an explorer in in more ways than one. She was raised in Peru and then she came to the U.S., where she navigated the highest echelons of Silicon Valley before realizing that she couldn't outrun her childhood trauma. So what she did, well, she started climbing mountains, to be specific. Mt. Everest, Kilimanjaro, a bunch of others, becoming the first openly gay woman to climb what are known as the Seven Summits. Her new book is In the Shadow of the Mountain. And we talked to her about it in front of a live audience at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland. Take a listen to this. It's our conversation with Silvia Vasquez-Lovato. Silvia, welcome to the program.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Thank you so much. It is so exciting. Thank you very much, Portland. Thank you.
Luke Burbank This book covers really the span of your life up till now. But let's kind of start in San Francisco in the early 2000s because you're living there and by a lot of outward indications, you're doing pretty well, doing great at work. You have a lot of relationships or let's be honest, a lot of hookups.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Yes, I did.
Luke Burbank You're a very popular person.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Yes.
Luke Burbank Your life seems to be going okay. But what was really going on in your life at that time?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Well, I was secretly dealing with addiction. I was a full alcoholic. And very, I mean, very few people knew how many times I had been evicted and how many times I had ended up on the ER. And my life was spiraling out of control, especially because I'm a survivor of child sexual abuse. And the emotion, the shame, the trauma had, you know, had chased me in my twenties. And I literally was spiraling out. But on the, you know, on the facade that I was, I had a stable job that I seemed to, you know, to be able to go to fun places and hip places was a way of hiding just the amount of pain and the amount of self-destruction that I was causing myself.
Luke Burbank You grew up in a, I guess you say an upper middle class family in Peru?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Yes.
Luke Burbank So you grew up with resources. But it was also a family that was full of secrets, including some some people that you thought were your cousins that were actually your siblings because your mother had given birth to them earlier, but then was sort of kept from seeing them. What was that story?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado You know, it was very unfortunate. My father, you know, was a little older than my mom. And he was raised in a very conservative way, you know, very patriarchal way. And he was very possessive. And so when he got together with my mother, he gave her a choice. You know, you can get together with me, but you have to let go of your children. Yet, you know, my mother as any woman, she found a way of trying to see her children and trying to be part of their lives. And unfortunately, she entrusted me at the house with a person that she thought that, you know, she can count on who ended up being my abuser. And so every time she would sneak off to be with my siblings, you know, I was experiencing the abuse. And what was really hard growing up is that we would only get together on Mother's Day or on Christmas. And, you know, my older siblings, they were known as my cousins and they were so loving and so kind. And, you know, I remember just always like being, you know, close to them, but not knowing what the secret was until ultimately it unraveled.
Luke Burbank What was that like for you when you actually found out that these were your actual brothers and sisters?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado I think for me, was confusion. And even by the time that I found out, you know, that they were my real siblings. I was already experiencing the abuse. My parents had a very violent relationship. And then on top of this, we were having the birth of a terrorist movement in Peru. So there was a lot of hyperinflation. There was a lot of chaos around my life. And so for me, I was trying to, you know, find answers. I was trying to get to the truth. And if anything, I kind of was surprised, almost like, wow, I have other siblings. And then understanding the complexities of, you know, the drama that my father's way of being created was ultimately very hurtful.
Luke Burbank How old were you when you realized that what you were going through in adulthood was related to what had happened in your childhood?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Well, I came to this country trying to outrun my past. I actually if anything, I came to the States with a scholarship and it was almost like escape. You know, when I told my mother what had happened to me and I unfortunately didn't tell her until I was 15. So I went from the ages of 10 to 15 on my own, pretty much blaming myself that, you know, she took me to a psychiatrist. They did a bunch of tests and they were like, I think she's better off leaving the country. And so for me was like, okay, coming to America, you know, a way to start anew. I remember, you know, seeing 90210 and feeling that, you know, life in the States is going to be perfect. And, you know, so I, you know, and I, I ended up going to the Amish country in Pennsylvania. Yes.
Elena Passarello It's so great in the book when you show up at the Philadelphia airport and you're like, hello, I am Silvia and I'm from Peru and I'm going to college. You find your way to the Amish country.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado It'so one of my favorite lines is like, you know, I'm Sylvia from Peru and I'm going to Millersville University of Pennsylvania. And they're like, wait, what? And nobody I mean, and I figured like University of Pennsylvania, you know, Millersville, University of Pennsylvania, it should be like an annex or something close. But but yeah, definitely was a very unique start in life in America.
Luke Burbank Well, lest people get the idea that this book is only focusing on on trauma that you that you endured, you've also done some really amazing mountaineering which we want to talk about when we come back from this short break. This is Live Wire Radio. We are talking to Silvia Vasquez-Lovato about her book In the Shadow of the Mountains. We'll be back with much more in just a moment.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Thank you.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with the Elena Passarello. We are at the Alberta Rose Theater here in Portland, Oregon. We're talking to Silvia Vasquez-Lovato about her new book In the Shadow of the Mountain. When did the idea first enter your head to try to climb Mount Everest?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Well, you know, I call myself an accidental mountaineer. I come from a country that is known by its gorgeous mountain ranges, but it never appealed to me. You know, we always saw it as only the toughest of the tough could do it. And I even remember, I think it was one of the few trips that we did with my family we went to El Boqueron. And we tried to take a family photo on a boulder, and it was a five feet boulder. And I freaked out and I had a massive meltdown. And from then I was curious, like, I'm never trying that. But it was interesting because I was, my life was spiraling out of control. I already had gotten a DUI. I had been sent to jail, you know, and that hadn't stopped me. And I hit a point in which my baby brother found me, passed out at the entrance of my home, and it felt that I had been, you know, I couldn't hide anymore. So I asked for help. And I told my mom, you know, I need help. She's like, come down to Peru. You do, you're going to do something that your cousin is going to help you with is called ayahuasca. And and so my mother was a very conservative woman. I mean, you know, we go to church. And so I'm like, okay, we're going to do ayahuasca first of all.
Luke Burbank So this was, by the way, the most wholesome ayahuasca, most family oriented ayahuasca trip of all time. They, like, pick you up, they take you out to the place. Everyone's like, We're really rooting for Silvia with this out-of-body experience.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado I mean, well, who does ayahuasca with their parents? I mean, it is very interesting, but but so that was quite unique. And so, of course, I'm like, you know, feeling I mean, like many of us, I'm just like, okay, great. I'm going to have a vision of the people that are causing all this damage in my life because I wasn't ready to to really admit to myself. So I'm just like, okay, let me see, who am I going to see? Who are all those negative forces? And I'm doing the ayahuasca. And the very first person that appears is me as a little girl. The little girl that I had ignored through all my years that I had run away from Peru, the life that I had wanted to disappear. And so I see her. I see her fragility, and all she wanted was reconnection with my adult self. And so I remember, like embracing her and feeling that wholesomeness and there was something powerful. And as we're doing this and I hear this rumbling around us and these mountains took shape and my little girl grabs my hand and starts taking me into mountains. And so that was a powerful vision that I had on on this episode with ayahuasca. And so I'm a Virgo. I can be very square. And I figured, you know what? Why don't I could have looked at it and being like the metaphor of life, walk the mountains, you know, of life with my little girl. But I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Let's put this into action. And I'm like, If I need to bring this massive pain, why don't I bring it to the most massive mountain in the world? Why don't I walk to the base of Everest? And of course, I never had done anything like that. I had never, you know, hiked before. I didn't have any of the gear. But but there was something powerful about how that vision came from something so sacred and so innocent of me that I figure, like, I have nothing to lose. So, you know, I just did what any normal person would do. I, you know, I decided to attempt to just walk to the base of Everest.
Luke Burbank We're talking to Silvia Vasquez-Lovato here on Live Wire. The book is In the Shadow of the Mountain. So I mean, then you've gone on to have this incredible kind of mountaineering career and established this record of being the first openly gay woman to climb the Seven Summits. What do you think has made you so good at mountaineering from such a inauspicious start of not wanting to get on that boulder?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Yeah, I think, you know, for there are a couple of things. I mean, first of all, I never saw climbing as a way of conquering. You know, the very first time I came across the Himalayas, I felt a safety. I felt a sense of belonging that I had never experienced in my life. And something completely just broke, you know, any any darkness that I had kind of felt that I was being held. And that's what it is. Almost like my shadow. All all those secrets, all that pain was nothing in comparison to the power of the mountain. And so the way that I've taken into climbing has always been as a way of reverence, of respect, of actually connection. And so that takes away from I mean, for me, the pressure of ego. I always say I don't conquer anything because when you are in this massive mountains, we're so tiny. First of all, these things have been in formation for millions of year. We're just passing by. So, like, we're going to conquer who? I mean, the mountain is looking at us going like, Oh, really? I'm going to put a little storm and you're going to be blown off the mountain. So. So there is a sense of me, of humility that that I come through this. And I think that has allowed me to almost feel as if I'm going in a temple. And it makes experience very fulfilling. And what I've really enjoyed is opportunity of getting to know myself more. I mean, I was going through this, and I learned from the very early start that you can't do this while drunk because, you know, it's a little bit like your vision is quite impaired.
Luke Burbank So you tried that?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Well, you know, one of those things is like you get a headache and you're like, oh, my God, what am I throwing up? But if anything, mountains kept me safe and mountains kind of saved my life.
Luke Burbank Do you think physically, though, you have some kind of gift, whether it's lung capacity or just tenacity? Because, I mean, a lot of people have tried these things that you have done and they have they've quit and you didn't. Is that just sheer willpower? What do you attribute that to?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado I think stubbornness, I would call it.
Elena Passarello You are a Virgo.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Yes, I think it's stubbornness. It's actually just that perseverance is a curiosity. I mean, what I get in mountains in nature is all, you know. And it is proven that three days in nature starts rewiring of the brain. So most of these expeditions, you know, usually go over a week. And because I have found so much inspiration and safety that, you know, by the fourth day, I'm kind of connected. And it's almost like, you know, the curiosity about, let's see how far we can go.
Luke Burbank Are you just unfazed now by pooping outside? It's in the book, by the way.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado I call myself the woman s*** her pants. So, you know, and I'm proud of saying that. But but yeah, you know, I look at it as as a new kind of comfort.
Luke Burbank So now, even after you climbed Everest, you were still actively drinking?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Yes, I was.
Luke Burbank So how was it that you came back from that intense experience and were like, but I am still going to rely on this on this drug to try to alter my kind of feelings?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Well, you know, the amount of euphoria, especially after a lot of the summits, there was a sense of celebration. And, of course, there was a way of like I mean, you just have all this adrenaline and it'll be like, oh, you know how to do it. And I mean, it is great that we finished the book at the top of Everest because if people would know coming down, you know, I still had like a party for like three days and that set me. But the beauty, I mean, now I've been four years sober.
Luke Burbank Congratulations, by the way.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You know, I think at the time for me, you know, I felt that I still had control over my drinking. So even after coming back and partying, I felt like, well, I've done this amazing thing and, you know, maybe maybe a little celebration. Let me give myself a little time to, you know, good job for doing this, for exposing my life, you know. My year after climbing Everest, my anniversary, I ended up having a bike accident. I ended up in the ICU and the doctors found a brain tumor. They couldn't determine if it was cancer or benign for a couple of days. My mother had died of cancer, so I'm like, and we've had it in the family. So I told myself, Well, you know, it could be my time to go. And the very first thing that came into my life was gratitude. I remember being like, God, you know, I've had such an amazing life with all the ups and downs. I've seen some of the most beautiful sunrises, sunsets, I've seen this uninhibited dawn. And I figured like, Well, if it's my time to go, you know, I'll quit my job tomorrow. And I spend the rest of my time trying to work with young girls, trying to climb and trying to share my story. So I remember putting myself a little bit of purpose, yet I still had to finish that last mountain, which was Denali. And after I was done with it, I remember I came down and I had a bad episode of drinking, and I just told myself, okay, you just completed this thing. You know, it's either one more drink or your life. And so I decided to take, you know, a closer look to my addiction and to figure, okay, where is the pain? And a dear friend of mine recommended me to take this incredible class on compassion, like self-compassion. And that completely changed my life. And it actually allow me to start walking my talk. And I felt, okay, now, if I can if I can actually, if I want to be able to share my story and if I want to be able to do it in a vulnerable way that I can even walk my talk, I need to like face these demons, you know, for once and for all. And it's been one of the most beautiful gifts. And so writing this book has truly saved my life in that way.
Luke Burbank Wow. A lot of this book, a lot of the parts about the trauma have to do with secrecy in your family and also you feeling this tremendous sense of shame and trying to keep secrets together, whether it was the trauma that you went through as a child or your drinking or what have you. I mean, was was climbing Mount Everest or was climbing the seven summits more difficult than putting all of that information into this book that now, you know, lots and lots of people are going to read and hear about?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado I, you know, kind of reliving pretty much the book was the hardest thing. You know, first of all, I had to open those chapters. I had an open a lot of those experiences and I was doing it while sober. And so there was no work for me to hide. And that's the one thing I'm so proud about. The book is almost like, I think I overshare too much. I mean, my family's not too happy, but. But, you know, I mean, for me, it was somebody needed to say things that sometimes we don't want to say. And being able to bring out shame and secrecy out of the shadows and put it out there. So it was really tough. But, you know, I knew I mean, this is a this is a book that I wish I would have read after getting on or getting out of one of the ER sessions. I mean, I wish I would have been able to find a story of somebody who was that vulnerable and that open. And so that's something that has filled me with pride. It was hard, but I had a lot of help. I mean, I had my therapy and I love that. And one of my biggest realizations is how much information we store in our bodies. It is amazing when, when, if we're really committed to trying to find out, you know, things that maybe have caused a lot of pain in us, the information is in us. And actually, it made me really sad to see, you know, how much self-destruction I was I was doing to myself.
Luke Burbank Well, it's amazing to hear what you've come through, and I think it's really kind of inspirational to other people who have experienced trauma in their life. I'm wondering, would you say the takeaway from this book is that everyone should do ayahuasca?
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Yes, everybody should do ayahuasca. No, but no. The reality, I think, is, you know, this is a story, even though it comes across as a mountaineering story, it is a story of all of us. You know, we all have experienced shame, you know, a little bit of I mean, loss, grief, addiction. I mean, there's a lot of aspects. I mean, this is this is a book that reflects a lot of our different stages. And the biggest invitation is, you know, I know by the time you finish this book, you're going to be inspired to kind of ask yourself, okay, so what's what's my next, like, what's my inner mountain? What's my outer mountain? I mean, what it is beautiful about the whole story within the book. It's almost like this beautiful healing circle. You know, it's a combination of common humanity, how the power of all of us being able to heal in community, how when we're willing to hear our stories and especially just even being willing to take a walk in nature, the power and the transformative experience that we can all do it. I mean, it's a roller coaster ride that people are really going to enjoy.
Luke Burbank The book is In the Shadow of the Mountain. Silvia Vasquez-Lovato, thanks for coming on Live Wire.
Silvia Vasquez-Lavado Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstops from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Palm Springs and San Francisco, and as a member of the OneWorld alliance, Alaska Airlines can connect you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at AlaskaAir.com. Do you ever wish that you were more in the know about upcoming Live Wire guests or advance ticket sales for our live shows? Well, you can be if you sign up for our weekly newsletter and get all of the inside Live Wire scoop delivered directly and conveniently to your inbox. Just click Keep in Touch over at LiveWireRadio.org and we will be sure to make sure you hear it all first. You're listening to Live Wire, where each week we asked Live Wire listeners a question in honor of Silvia Vazquez Lovato's mountaineering skills. We asked the Live Wire listeners, What's your personal Mt. Everest? They sent in those responses. Elena has been collecting them up. What are you seeing?
Elena Passarello Okay, how about this one from Ron? Ron's personal Mt. Everest. Oh, I feel this so hardcore sticking to my physical therapy home exercises. I know when you think of Mount Everest, you think of these, like, completely insurmountable goals. And it's funny because a physical therapy home exercise is usually pretty short and sweet and simple. I'll be darned if it's like all I can do to get myself to do these tiny things every day that, you know, will keep my spine in decent shape for the next 30 years. I can't do it.
Luke Burbank Well, that's why, of course, you could often go to the office where the physical therapist works so that they can stand right next to you and be like, You have to do that, Elena, even if you don't want to.
Luke Burbank Yeah, yeah.
Luke Burbank You know, without them looming over you, it's probably a lot harder to kind of, like, find the determination in yourself.
Elena Passarello Yeah, I got to do it. Apparently, I'm just going to have, like, powder for vertebrae if I don't, like, lay on my back and pretend to blow up a balloon while doing half a sit up every day for the rest of my life.
Luke Burbank I got some advice from a physical therapist because I was having a little bit of sort of neck discomfort and they just said, look, when you're sitting in the car, try to pull your chin all the way back, kind of into your neck, if you will, and do that 15 times just anytime you're in traffic and you're just like, have a moment or you're at a stoplight, try to do that and it'll do something for you. And I have to admit, it has been very effective, but I look like I've lost my mind when people pull up next to me at a stoplight and just see me doing like, sort of like the funky chicken or something, you know?
Elena Passarello You're supposed to express the gratitude. Have you heard that? My schedule is tight at every stoplight that I come to.
Luke Burbank What's another personal Mt. Everest one of our listeners wanted to talk about?
Elena Passarello How about this one from Marie? Marie's personal Mt. Everest is being able to fully make the bed while a cat is sleeping on it. Yes, I'm close. I'm very close to being able to do this.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Elena Passarello But like there's some kind of rule that when a kitty is just curled up like an adorable little fuzzy donut, it doesn't matter.
Luke Burbank What is it that is hardwired into us from, I don't know, natural selection, that if there is a cat that's sleeping in an adorable way, we will do everything and anything to not disturb it. I mean, the cat doesn't pay rent. Like the cat will go sleep somewhere. It's not a baby, you know, like I get if you have a baby that's sleeping, that baby continuing to sleep is probably going to define whether or not this day is survivable for you as the parent.
Elena Passarello Yes.
Luke Burbank The cat's just going to go somewhere else. But it's like don't don't wake the baby. Don't interrupt the cat's busy schedule of napping.
Elena Passarello Yeah, nobody's ever like, oh, what if we can't put her down again?
Luke Burbank Right? How was your day? It was tough. We could not get Spooner to go down.
Elena Passarello Oh, Spoonie.
Luke Burbank That's the name of Elena's cat, by the way. What's one last personal Mt. Everest from one of our listeners?
Elena Passarello Oh, here's one from Meredith. I want to know if you think you could do this one. Meredith's personal Mount Everest is attending a two week silent meditation retreat. Could you do it?
Luke Burbank I don't think so, although I did take a two second pause. So that's like this. How far out of the way is that? If I can do 2 seconds. How many times do I have to do that before it's been two weeks.
Elena Passarello Well, on radio, a two second thing feels like two weeks. So, yeah, you could drive a truck through that pause. And that counts as your silent meditation.
Luke Burbank I, I think it would be really difficult for me, but I don't just like go with, I should try to do an hour of silence. I go right from like 2 seconds to can I do four months on the side of a mountain?
Elena Passarello Can I never talk again? Can I become a mime?
Luke Burbank Thank you to everyone who wrote in to answer our listener question this week. We've got another one for next week's show, which we'll reveal at the end of this week's program. So stick around for that. In the meantime, let's get our next guest onto the show. He's a standup comedian and writer who's really done it all. He puked after doing a keg stand on the standup comedy show Flophouse. He traveled through an Ebola checkpoint for a segment on Vice News and he's appeared alongside Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein on Portlandia. He's also performed on Comedy Central. Let's take a listen to some comedy from Curtis Cook, recorded in front of our audience at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland. Take a listen to this.
Curtis Cook Hey, what's up everybody? I'm glad you guys are here. I've been inside my apartment for two years. This is the most white people I've been around. And I'm terrified. But thank you for having me. I got married over the pandemic, which was really exciting. Thank you. But the thing was, we've been together for a long time. Before I asked her to be my wife, I was nervous. I wanted to get it right the first time. And so we've been married for one year, but we just celebrated our ninth year anniversary and we've got a good relationship. But my wife is a little bit richer than I am. So we have I have a hard time taking her out, making her feel like a special lady because of how she grew up. So like, like when my parents for their 15th wedding anniversary, they went to the Olive Garden. So I just grew up thinking that the Olive Garden was a five star restaurant. And I believe that until I was 22 years old, my rich roommate's parents took me to an actual five star restaurant. I said out loud and complete earnest, Oh my God, this is even better than the Olive Garden. But the one place we could never afford to go to growing up was the Red Lobster. So I was like, I'm going to take my girl to the fanciest restaurant I can think of. But I wanted it to be a surprise, so I said it's eight baby, you got to wear a dress where I take you this weekend. And then she put on a dress. I wore a suit. Cause I just assumed you had to wear a suit to the Red Lobster. And it turns out you do not need to wear a suit to the Red Lobster. And if you do, everyone assumes you're the manager of that Red Lobster. So we ate for free, and she was a good sport. She didn't make me feel broke or nothing. I didn't realize I messed up to the next day. Her father calls, said "Hey, where'd your husband take you for your anniversary?" With intimidation in her voice. she said, "Dad, he took me to the Red Lobster." Her father said, "Well, you can always move back home if you need to." And then my father called me and said, "Hey, boy, where'd you take your girl for your anniversary?" And it was pride. I was like, "Dad, I took her to the Red Lobster." My father said, "Goodness gracious, you must really love that woman." I should go on record. My father has never said goodness gracious in his life, but I was told to keep it FCC appropriate. But she's a good person. We've been having a lot of life experiences together. I should say, before I tell this next joke that I'm a Black person, but I'm the type of Black person has to announce it to the crowd before I do a race joke. Otherwise, everybody's like, Yo, this Indian kid is super racist. Like, I'm aware I look like the Taliban's jazz instructor, but. But before the pandemic, my wife and I, we had this dream that one day we'd be able to go see the world together, but we never thought it would really happen. And finally, we saved up enough to go across the world. And we decided to go to Africa becausey you hear Black Americans go to Africa, you get a deeper understanding of your place in the world. We decided to go to Sierra Leone because the cheapest place we could get to in Africa. And then we learned that because race works differently in different cultures and because me and my wife are both so light skinned, we are considered white people in Sierra Leone, and it was the greatest vacation I've taken in my life. Like if you haven't been white before, you've never lived. But I was just walking around. People were giving me the benefit of the doubt. And at one point, this old African man explained slavery to me because he thought I'd never heard of it before. He was like, What happened is your people stole my people and took them to America where they're still not treated equally today. And I couldn't think of anything smart. So all I said was, That's crazy. And this is something nobody ever warned me about. Being white goes straight to your head like, I've been Black in America for 31 years and frequently I'm frustrated like, Yo, why don't these people do more and they know their complacency is the root of the problem. I was white in Africa for three days before I was like, Why would I change a perfect system? It was a quick fall from grace because I came back to America. I forgot I wasn't white anymore. A TSA agent was like, Excuse me, sir, I need to go through your bags. I was like, Do you know who I am? I just started saying white nonsense. Like, unhand me. Uhand to me is the second whitest sentence in the world. The first is I live in Portland. So, hey, thank you for coming out to the show. Enjoy the rest of your night.
Luke Burbank Curtis Cook, everybody. That was Curtis Cook right here on Live Wire. You can check out his website, CurtisCookComedy.com. Find out when he will be in a town near you. You're listening to Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We have to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we will be back with music from Patterson Hood. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. Our musical guest this hour is probably best known as co-founder, the frontman, and songwriter for the critically acclaimed Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers. Before launching back out on the tour, though, Patterson Hood was nice enough to stop by the Alberta Rose Theater to play us a song accompanied by his friend Chris Funk from The Decemberists on the dobro. Take a listen to this. Patterson, welcome back to the show.
Patteron Hood It's great to be here.
Luke Burbank I was reading an interview that you did in Bitter Southerner.
Patteron Hood Right.
Luke Burbank Which is a real thing, by the way.
Patteron Hood It's actually really, it's actually really good.
Luke Burbank It's a really interesting magazine that I wasn't familiar with until this week. And what it really highlighted for me was a strain of Southerners who are from this part of the country where there's a lot of traumatic and racist history and terrible histories, but people who are pushing back against that. And, you know, they're from a part of the world and of that part of the world, but not completely defined by it. Like, how do you relate to your, you're from Alabama, right?
Patteron Hood Sure.
Luke Burbank How do you relate to your southerness?
Patteron Hood Yeah. And I grew up you know, I grew up during a particularly bad time of that because I grew up during the Wallace era. And but, you know, I was also and my dad was a musician who made his living playing on Aretha Franklin records and stuff. So I grew up with a very atypical kind of childhood there. And at the same time, you know, as much as gets made of the South versus the rest of the country, it's it's it's so often more urban-rural. You know, I mean, you can go five miles in any direction. And it's not that different in a lot of ways culturally than where I came from.
Luke Burbank Sure. I was looking at some of the photos on your website and on Twitter and places of the recent tour that you kind of went back out and did some touring. And I know people were so excited to see you and you were selling out shows left and right. Drive-By Truckers have such a fervent and loyal fan base. I'm curious if you have
Patteron Hood Bless them. Yeah.
Luke Burbank Do you have theories about what it is about your music that just connects to its fans so intensely?
Patteron Hood I mean, I don't know. I mean, I know, I know the music I connect to and I can maybe pinpoint why in some cases on that. But as far as I'm just I'm grateful that people like our band, but I sometimes don't know why.
Elena Passarello But I'm one of those huge fans for 15 plus years. And I think it's because you see your relationships on stage when you all play together, like you see long term friendships and musical friendships and years and years of touring. And it it's such a surprise and it's so fun every show to see the interaction. That's what I think.
Patteron Hood I mean, I'll say that my partner, like the senior partner in the band Cooley. Cooley, and I've been playing together for 37 years this August and
Luke Burbank Wow.
Patteron Hood It's pretty amazing. I mean, you know, and I think I was 21 and he was about to turn 19 when we started playing together. And so and, you know, now we have kids that are almost grown and, you know, we actually we actually get along better now than we ever did. I mean, we actually have I mean, we've gotten along a long time, but we get along really well. And and I mean, like the new guy in the band just hit ten years. So I'm sure, you know, and we've had The Truckers was our fourth band together because we had three bands before that and the longest one of which Adam's House Cat we did for like six years when we were that was our first band and you know, we were like a dismal failure as far as on any kind of commercial sense. But, you know, it also taught us how to do what we do. So.
Luke Burbank Well, speaking of what you do, can we hear a song?
Patteron Hood Yeah, let's do that. All right.
Luke Burbank What are we going to hear?
Patteron Hood I did start writing towards the end of the pandemic and wrote some songs that are coming out on a record this summer. The Truckers have a new record. We recorded it last summer, and I'm going to do a song from that.
Luke Burbank All right. Patterson Hood and Chris Funk here on Live Wire.
Patteron Hood I wrote the song for my buddy Jimmy C, who passed away on 2020. The song is called "Shake and Pine."
Patteron Hood (singing) Well, you've gone astray. A New York minute. Nothing left to say or ways to spin it. You've just gone too far unsafe within it all strung out and swept away. You were here one day, gone by sunset. You set out that way, lest we soon forget blood on the sawdust light coming in from the broken windowpane. I shake and pine didn't really mean to do me wrong this time, make it up as we go along to fake and find a reason and a rhyme, the strength to carry on. Seems more you know, the less you like it till you ache to go strike out on your own. Movement becomes you till you become so removed by the hands you show. It seems the more you know, the less I have the answers to these things I sow that eat me like cancer till there's nothing left for you to grab ahold of till I'm spiraling out of control, shake and pine for a way out of this hell besides a life of crime, standing before judgment it'd be so sublime to step out of your shadow and walk towards the sun. Shake and pine, look inside for the answer to this nursery rhyme like a ballet dancer, we leap in the air, lost in the footlights and the fog. Lost in the footlights and the fog. You got the hang, all your missing, Alabama claw, above the bangs and lashes. And we saw it all reaching for the stars. But only catching dust.
Luke Burbank That was Patterson Hood from Drive-By Truckers, along with Chris Funk from The Decemberists. You can find out where they're going to be at by going to DriveByTruckers.com. All right. Before we get out of here, a preview of next week's show. We have some music from Samantha Crain, as well as comedy from Chris Mejia. And we are going to be chatting with Booker Prize winning and all around, well, hero of mine, American hero George Saunders about his new collection of short stories, Liberation Day. Mary Karr calls him the best short story writer in English, not one of, not arguably, but the best, end quote. High praise, but pretty well-deserved for George Saunders. So we're very excited to play that for you next week, hope you can join us for that. In the meantime, we've got an audience question for next week's show. Elena, what are we asking the listeners?
Elena Passarello We want to know what is the most impactful thing that a teacher ever said to you?
Luke Burbank That's relevant because George Saunders is also a professor at Syracuse and teaches a pretty legendary program there. So we want to hear about impactful things that teachers have said to you, the Live Wire listener. And if you've got a response, go ahead and hit us up on Twitter or Facebook. We are @LiveWireRadio. All right. That is going to do it for this week's episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Silvia Vazquez-Lovato, Curtis Cook and Patterson Hood, plus Chris Funk. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather Dee. Michelle is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Tré Hester and our marketing manager is Paige Thomas. Our house band is Ethan Fox, Tucker, Ayel Alves, Alex Radakovich and Mike Gamble. A. Walker Spring composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer and our sound is by D. Neil Blake.
Luke Burbank Additional funding provided by the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation, Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank member Roger Mayer of Beaverton, Oregon, for more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
