Joe Rogan Experience #2085 - Charles Wesley Godwin

Charles Wesley Godwin joins Joe Rogan for a wide-ranging conversation rooted in Appalachia, perseverance, and the craft of making art. He recounts his unlikely path into music, the brutal 2021 stretch when he went broke touring a seven-piece band, and how his bandmates took half pay to keep the dream alive until his second album saved them. The two trade ideas about treating creativity as a daily job, beating the 'famine mentality' of jealousy, and the loneliness of constant touring. The talk also ranges across coal mining and the hard lives of Godwin's miner father and family, the opioid crisis devastating West Virginia, drug policy and decriminalization, and pandemic-era distrust of media and institutions. It closes with Godwin performing 'Minor Imperfections,' a song he wrote for his and a collaborator's coal-mining fathers.

• Godwin didn't pick up a guitar until age 20, after he wasn't good enough to make WVU's football team.
  00:24:30
• He discovered he could sing while studying abroad in Tartu, Estonia, where his first paid gig was a lingerie fashion show that paid 150 euros.
  00:27:08
• He went broke in the fall of 2021 touring with a seven-piece band and couldn't pay his musicians.
  01:01:33
• His bandmates took half pay, about 50 dollars a show, to stay with him until his second album's pre-sale and a Zach Bryan tour saved them.
  01:03:09
• Godwin's father mined coal for three years in 26-inch seams, crawling on his belly through cave-ins with no roof bolts.
  01:49:21
• Godwin and his wife refused the COVID vaccine for their children despite pressure from other families.
  02:02:29
• Rogan recounts the media backlash after he treated his own COVID with ivermectin and other medications.
  02:04:33

• Jelly Roll won a Best New Artist award at around age 39.
  00:17:49
• Shinola makes American-made watches and leather goods out of Detroit.
  00:11:29
• Steven Pressfield sent the show a box of signed copies of The War of Art, and Rogan claims he's sold more of them than anyone alive.
  00:34:22
• Frank Sinatra was arrested in 1938 for 'seduction' and released after posting a 500 dollar bond.
  01:26:30
• Snoop Dogg rolled roughly 30 to 40 blunts during a single podcast appearance.
  01:33:47
• Willie Nelson was arrested for marijuana about 85 miles outside El Paso, Texas.
  01:37:23
• A coal-seam fire under Centralia, Pennsylvania could burn another 250 years before exhausting its fuel.
  01:52:30
• One mine complex referenced spans roughly 10,000 acres underground, stretching across multiple West Virginia counties.
  01:53:33

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