Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.

I'm Rhett Miller.

Band of He started up and we ain't going to starve. I said like you. I could not. That's when they got wheels off. Band of Heathens rocks.

Gordy Quist rocks.

This is a band out of Austin, Texas.

They've been rocking for about 15 years,

and they're doing it all themselves.

They own all their own records.

They put them out on their own record label.

They work their asses off. Gordy Quist from Band of Heathens is my guest on this episode of Wheels Off. And during the pandemic, like so many of us, he is having to reinvent the wheel.

We talk about that. We talk about the hoops

through which we must now all jump to do some version of our job. But you can tell from

listening to our conversation that he still loves this job, as do I. And we feel very lucky to get to do it.

That was a common theme through all these conversations I've been having the last few months,

but very much so with Gordy. He's a good dude. I really love talking to him. I'll tell you right

now that this introduction I'm having to record on my phone because I'm on top of a mountain, and I didn't record it when I should have when I was down at the bottom of the mountain. And yet here we are. But it's appropriate because the conversation

you're about to hear, we couldn't do it with our normal technology. We had to use a different

technology. I won't throw anybody under the bus, but the one that we did use made my voice come

through crystal clear while Gordy's voice not so much. My producers

have tried in post to even out our voices and make Gordy's voice clearer and louder,

but they could only do so much. I still think it's worth a listen. I think you can wrestle

through the sound issues. I mean, this is the world we live in now, right? So, it's worth a listen. I think you can wrestle through the sound issues. I mean,

...