Today we have a very special guest, a longtime friend, and you probably know him as the crazy guy from Trick Pony way back then, but he does much more than that.

A good friend, Ira Dean, welcome to the show man.

Hey, Brian, what's going on, man?

How you been? I've been good. Since the last time I didn't see you, I've been doing crazy. So when we talked about me going to the Brooks and Dunn show a few weeks ago, and I was the, Ira's the guy that I was just waiting on backstage, waiting on, waiting on.

And I said, where's Ira at?

And I said, oh, he fell asleep in his bus, partying hard.

Partying hard on my diet Pepsi's.

Party and just rocking it like a rock star on diet Pepsi's and pretzel bites. Overdosed on Aspartame. Yes. I had a massive headache, and I laid in my buck, and you texted, I was like, okay, I'm getting up. I'll be right out, and I closed my eyes. Then I woke up to Gary Morris going, hey, Brian's in there. You're going to go say hi? And I was like, oh, no. That was out like an hour and a half. And that was the night that Ronnie lost his voice. Or not lost his voice, but, you know, everything happened with Ronnie. Well, he'd been fighting strep and COVID strovid. And he got dehydrated. And what was bad was he was still singing his butt off. So you don't know if like milking it or what. He kept coming back to my riser going, I can't breathe. I'm like, oh, you're fine, you're fine. And he came back to my riser and he sat down. Yeah. Acting like I'm not talking to him. I'm like, dude, you okay? And I didn't hear nothing. I looked down. He looked up with me like a lost puppy.

I was like, oh, it's serious, man. He was a little pale and just was dehydrated.

And then he got an IV, and next show, we had to do two more after that, and he nailed it.

Really? Nice.

You know, I was telling the guys, it was amazing how, I mean, I've seen Brooks and done several times.

So, like, I know good Ronnie, and that was obviously, like, Ronnie was still good, but not 100%.

Yeah.

But he was still like a just dead on pitch while seeing.

It was like, I can barely breathe.

I can barely breathe.

And I'm back.

Yeah.

He did neon moon and he holds up that big note.

I'm like, yeah, you're breathing fine.

So yeah, it's amazing to see someone truly professional doing stuff like that, you know, because it's just a whole other level.

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