Luke Grimes — Actor known for playing Kayce Dutton on the hit series Yellowstone and lead of the new show Marshals. He's also a country musician who started performing live at 39 after a record-deal pitch.
The gist
Luke Grimes joins Joe Rogan for a wide-ranging, three-part-long conversation that opens on Taylor Sheridan's relentless work ethic and the surreal success of Yellowstone. They dig into Grimes's late-blooming music career, crippling stage fright and beta blockers, and the difference between LA's groupthink and the freedom of living rural in Montana. The talk swings into Joe's deep MMA and boxing history, jiu-jitsu, and the discipline of elite fighters from Tyson to Lomachenko to the Gracies. They close on creativity and the muse, addiction and sobriety, elk hunting and grizzlies, AI's threat to art, and conspiracy rabbit holes from Bigfoot to flat earth.
Big reveals
- Grimes played his very first live show at age 39, in Billings, Montana, and literally blacked out from nerves.
- His fourth-ever live performance was Stagecoach, a massive festival stage.
- His father's dying advice ('do anything you want to do while you're here') is what pushed him to pursue music.
- Joe recounts being told flying to early UFC events in 1997 was career suicide, 'like I was doing porn.'
- Joe describes arriving to find UFC's Dana White down $600,000 at blackjack on a 'normal night,' calling him a degenerate gambler.
- Grimes nearly crashed his motorcycle into a cliff alone on PCH and quit riding for good.
- Grimes had to tap out on day four of his first elk bow-hunt because his legs stopped working.
- Grimes says he and his wife saw a 'sky performance' on mushrooms that convinced them to move to Montana.
Things worth remembering
- Oliver Anthony's first-ever live show was reportedly in front of around 20,000 people after 'Rich Men North of Richmond' made him famous.
- Anthony Bourdain got seriously into jiu-jitsu at 58 and trained obsessively, sometimes twice a day on the road.
- Cus D'Amato adopted Mike Tyson at 13 and used hypnosis, telling him 'You don't exist, only the task exists.'
- Sugar Ray Robinson was reportedly around 90-0 before he ever lost a fight.
- Oleksandr Usyk was trained by Lomachenko's father, making him essentially a heavyweight Lomachenko.
- Francis Ngannou beat Ciryl Gane after blowing out his ACL, fighting on essentially one leg.
- Brazil was holding no-rules MMA-style fights in the 1930s and 40s, where the Gracies invented Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
- Joe says liposomal glutathione in high doses helps the body process alcohol and reduce hangovers.
- Footprints at White Sands, New Mexico push human presence in North America back to roughly 22,000 years.
- The grizzly shown is described as 1,600 lbs, the second-biggest bear ever taken.