745 | Fly Fishing Films with RA Beattie of Off the Grid Studios

Dave (2s): The fly fishing film tours got their start with a small group of dedicated fly anglers who wanted something new. They retired of the old boring, fly fishing old white guy thing. And the inspiration came from the skiing and skateboarding industry, and today has evolved into a new generation of films. Our guest today has been there since the beginning, and in this episode, you’re going to get inspiration that is going to take your trip to the next level this season. This is the We Swing podcast, where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, And what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. How’s it going? I’m Dave host of the Wet Fly Swing podcast. Dave (42s): I’ve been fly fishing since I was a little kid and grew up around a little fly shop, R-A-B-I-D, fly fishing producer storyteller. And John Gear Rock Fanatic is going to share some of his biggest films, including The Silent Spotter, about a guide who is deaf and new and has created a fishery for top water permit action. We’re gonna talk about that today. Some of this with Tommy. We’re also gonna find out about his connection to Tom Bis Clyde the Car, which we’ve talked about here on this podcast before. And also what keeps him going strong, given changes in the industries. We get into a bunch of topics all over the place in this one. I think you’re gonna love it. Plus we find out how he created a company that produces fully sustainable wood for guitars. Dave (1m 27s): Here we go, RAB 80 from off the grid studios.com. How you doing ra? RA (1m 33s): Doing so well. Thank you for having me. Dave (1m 36s): Yeah, I appreciate you for coming on here. I think I always go back to where the connection was made. I believe it was, well, I’m trying to think. I think it was Tim at Nautilus. He’s got his own media stuff going on there, but I think he connected originally. I, I wasn’t totally familiar with the work you’ve done. I’ve watched some videos since then, and I’m excited to share some of the amazing stuff you do. It seems like you’re kind of out there covering multiple, you know, topics and species and things like that. But we’re gonna get into some of these movies as we go here. But before that, take us back real quick on fly fishing. Are you, were you a Colorado native, or how’d you kind of get into this? RA (2m 10s): Yeah, yeah. I was born and raised in the mountains of Colorado. You know, very rural, small little ranching valley and not a lot to do growing up. And So we did a lot of hunting and fishing and a river, ran through the property. And so, yeah, a lot, lot of fishing jumped into being a guides apprentice and, you know, learned that people would actually pay us money to take ’em fishing, which seemed incredibly bizarre, but did that through, through high school and then through college. And so definitely cut my teeth, you know, grinding it out every day in the summer, you know, just as a fishing guide, which is, I feel like a great way to come up and really just build those skill sets and spend that time in the water. Dave (2m 51s): Nice. So, yeah, so you’ve got some guiding behind you, obviously. Yeah. One of the movies that may, maybe you could talk about this, we’re gonna get into some of the movies, but let’s just kick it off with the Silent Spotter movie. Sure. I think that’s a more of a recent one. And you know, I thought that was really cool because first off, where it is, you know, kind of the, that part of I guess Mexico, where you’ve got, you know, just this amazing famous area, right? Yeah. And then, but you had this, one of the guides, you know, Tommy was this deaf kid, essentially, who is a guide out there. Talk about that. How did that film come to be and and how do any of these films that you work on come to be? RA (3m 26s): Yeah, so yeah, great question. When we are looking for a project, we’re kind of looking for a couple different things. And the first of which is, you know, what is the fishing gonna be like? What is our backdrop? What are the species we’re going after? You know, and is it viable? Is it interesting? But then really the next thing is, are we gonna have a great story? Because really when an audience gives us feedback, we really get two things. They say, we need phishing, like fish, fish, fish. We’re the fish. Where’s the action? And they’re really adamant about having pretty strong phishing action because phishing media has come a long way, and it’s very, very good. And audiences have come to expect really high quality. So we have to really pay attention to that. RA (4m 6s): But then we need a story. And so in this case, the phishing story is a location where because of changes in the environmental conditions, they have found an opportunity to catch permit on floating crabs on the top. And so as an angler, you think, you know, dryly or surface feeding, any kind of surface fishing being the ultimate, being able to apply that to permit, like, that’s a great story. Amazing. Let’s do it. Yeah. Very visual. But permit eating dry flies is not really a story. It’s not a deep story. So we try to look deeper and always understand, okay, what is the, you know, what is the human connection? RA (4m 47s): What is the human story here? And what fell in our lap is that one of the fishing guides that is really pioneering this type of fishing in this particular place, he happens to be born deaf and mute. And so immediately that raises a tremendous amount of questions as a filmmaker or as a storyteller. And you know, like, so how does that work? How do you communicate with people, particularly in a, a type of fishing and fishery where communication is very, very quick and paramount. So we really, really were interested in that story, just of the mechanics and the logistics of how does the deaf fishing guide communicate. RA (5m 27s): And so that’s what kind of opened the door for us and brought us into that space. Dave (5m 32s): That’s awesome. And how does that work? You know, the video is great. I think it’s about 20 minutes, a little under 20 minutes long. It’s easy. Yeah. Well, first off, let’s just give a shout out real quick for people listening. So they can go to off the grid studios.com to check out these videos and they can kind of watch these RA (5m 45s): Yeah. Off the Grid Studios is great in that you’ll find all kinds of videos and more information. Dave (5m 49s): Yeah. And, and I say it, it, I always catch myself, I say videos, right? I guess I use ’em interchangeably, videos, movies. I always think of movies as, you know, know the movies, right? The two hour long movie. But really these, I think especially in the fly fishing, and maybe this is just worldwide, these shorter form movies. What do you call what you do? Do you call these movies? RA (6m 10s): Well, it depends on how technical and how nerdy you want to be. I mean, I, I would say we make fly fishing films, and then a lot of people would spin their heads and say, well, technically you’re not shooting on film and you’re not doing this and this and this and this. And I’d say, okay, well, technically you might be right, but, you know, technically a hamburger doesn’t have any ham in it. So we call things things that aren’t exactly what they are. Gotcha. Dave (6m 32s): Doesn’t really matter. It’s kind of Yeah. That, that’s not the important thing. The important thing is like you’re saying what you make. Right. Whether it’s 20 minutes or two hours doesn’t matter. RA (6m 40s): Yeah. But I’m happy with, you know, videos, movies, films, any of that. They all represent the same idea, which is visual storytelling. And I think in this day and age, it’s changing more and more and more what that means. Because the way that media shot, the duration, the orientation of it, everything’s changing so fast. And the way that stories are told digitally is morphing and changing so fast that names are gonna be harder and harder to pin down on things. Yeah. But for all practical purposes, yeah, we’re making videos, we’re making movies. These are very, very short form in this instance, because they’re being created for, for like fishing film tours where the typical length is between, you know, 12 and 20 minutes. Dave (7m 17s): Yeah. 12 and 20. And why do you know the history? I’m not sure of your background. We could probably talk about that. The history of the fly fishing film tours, right? There’s multiple, there’s the, there’s the one, I think the fly fishing. There’s also a new, I think we talked to the person, I think it’s up a Canadian, it’s more like the, the, it’s another film tour, right? Are there, talk about that. How did that film tour get started? And is that the place, is that the only place you’re making these for? Or are there other places you’re making these films? RA (7m 42s): Yeah, good question. So that’s a long history story, but to keep it really simple, going back to my roots. So when I was a fishing guide back in late high school, early college, technology just started to emerge in the sense that you could get access to, you know, some pretty affordable digital cameras. Granted, they’re still shooting on tape. They weren’t, you know, like they’re not shooting to cards like they are today, like still shooting Dave (8m 10s): On tape. Right. And what year was that? RA (8m 12s): So this was late nineties. Dave (8m 14s): Late nineties. So this was like literally when the internet, right? If you think about it. Right. The internet was kind of coming to be, I believe, right in that period. RA (8m 21s): Yeah. Yeah. I think the internet is just becoming a thing. Social media doesn’t yet exist, which is crazy. And you have, apple comes out and Apple does something revolutionary. They come out with a pretty affordable personal laptop or computer that has software on it that’s called iMovie. And that gives you the tools all of a sudden to really start editing and making movies. And so you can buy a pretty affordable, you know, cannon at this point in time is making pretty affordable digital cameras. You can hook it up to a laptop. They even have garage band. So you can start to make some music. And this is for, you know, people that are being a little punk rock about it, that don’t have budgets. This gives that young audience the ability to start making their own art, making their own movies. RA (9m 7s): Now granted that that laptop that came out that we were cutting our first movies on, probably had internal storage of like 20 gigabytes. Right. You know, so If you think about, and the processing power, so If you think about the power in your phone, you know, you could have one of the worst smartphones on the market right now, and I guarantee you it’s 20 times stronger, more powerful than what we were editing with it back then. So anyway, you’ve got a bunch of young fishing fanatics back then, and they are all kind of seeing this trend where all of the popular media and fly fishing does not represent who they are. This sport is old, it’s kept very close to the chest. RA (9m 47s): There’s not a lot of information sharing. Yeah. It’s Dave (9m 49s): The old white guy, the old white guy, fly fishermen, right. That uppity. Yeah. Boring, you know, kind of rich thing. Right? That’s what it was. RA (9m 58s): A hundred percent. And So we didn’t see ourselves represented there. Or also a lot of young people coming from mountain towns where we are seeing surfing and, and skateboard and snowboarding and skiing. And we’re seeing that media and we’re saying, well, how come it’s happening here? And it’s fun and it’s exciting, but it’s not happening in, in the sport that we like, which is fly. ’cause fly doesn’t have to be stuffy, and it doesn’t have to be boring, and it doesn’t have to be any of those things. It can be travel and lifestyle and fun and entertaining. So anyway, we start making content reminiscent of the other sports that we’re seeing in the space, lifestyle based, storytelling based. And we’re not the only ones with this idea. There’s four or five different people doing that. RA (10m 38s): But you gotta remember, there’s no internet, or there’s internet. There’s no place to show these. There’s no YouTube, there’s no social media. Dave (10m 45s): Oh, right. Not even YouTube. YouTube’s not even there yet. RA (10m 48s): Yeah. Nothing’s there. And so what do you do? So we were like burning stuff on DVDs and like sending it around to people and you know, hosting parties, like hosting college parties, you know, and having a kegger and like showing a movie on the screen. And so it was very punk rock. It’s like underground. So we did that for a while. It, it happened long enough where there’s a gentleman, he’s not a gentleman, but he’s a good friend of mine and his name is Tom Bi. And so he wrote the Drake magazine. And so he came from Powder Magazine. And what Powder used to do was a video awards where they would take kind of all the best video of the year and have an event and showcase little pieces of it and give some awards and have a party. And it’s basically an excuse to have a party and get the community together. RA (11m 30s): And so Tom applies that idea to what is called the Five Minutes of Fly Fishing. And he hosts that at the trade show that used to be in Denver. This is probably 2000. And so he, I remember when he had the first one, the whole industry shows up, they have no idea what to expect. And for an hour everybody’s, you know, drinking beer and having fun. And we’re watching these crazy fly fishing films that are each five minutes long and no one’s ever seen anything like this. Dave (11m 58s): And what was this called? What was this called that Tom did? RA (11m 60s): It’s called the Drake Magazine. Five Minutes of Fly Fishing. Dave (12m 3s): Okay. Yeah. The five Minutes of Fly Fishing. This is awesome. Okay. RA (12m 6s): Yeah. And it goes crazy. I mean, you would’ve thought that like we had invented a new color, like people were going crazy and they were, you know, and it was a giant party and it was, and it was like wildfire. And all of a sudden brands got it and they were like, how do we do that? Like, okay, we don’t really even know what this is, but we need in on this. And so all of a sudden we have brands turning to us and they’re like, Hey, we’re gonna give you money to go do this. And we’re like, wait, you’re gonna pay us to do Wayne’s World? Like, Dave (12m 32s): We’re nice. Like, RA (12m 33s): What are you talking about? We we’re not, this isn’t even what we do for a living. We’re just screwing Dave (12m 36s): Around. And at this time, are you a guide? Is that what your full Yeah. All your, all your efforts as a guide and you’re not doing much and you’re doing all the video still. You’re getting into it. Yeah. RA (12m 45s): And I’m a college kid too, and I’m Efficient guide. Yeah. And so, you know, we’re screwing around on the weekends and filming stuff and, and just being bums and, and yeah. And So we did that for a while. And then what emerges there is a group of little bit older folks, and they were called the Angling Exploration Group, and a EG was their calling card. And so they decided we’re gonna go out on the road and we’re gonna produce, you know, some more long form content. And so they start coming out, they go to Patagonia, they go to, you know, they go to, gosh, I don’t know, they, they, their, their shtick was, we’re gonna get in a van and drive and live in a van for a month and fish, and we’re gonna do the trout bu diaries. Dave (13m 26s): And Is that who this is? Is that what we’re talking, is this the Trout Bum Diaries? RA (13m 29s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, the old guard’s like, well, the Trout Bum Diaries has done been done before. John AK wrote that. And I can’t believe you’re copying him. And it’s like, oh wow. You know? Right. Because like everything repeats itself. Right. And so they, so anyway, they created all this content. They’re selling DVDs, they’re kicking butt, and they look at what Tom Bay does and they go, that’s cool. And people like these festival things, So we should start like a film tour. So they started a film tour and that was the, the very first one was called The Fly Fishing Film Tour. And so they would have, they would have a call for entries. We would submit a film, and you gotta remember, there’s like five or six people doing it back then. Yeah. And So we would submit a movie every year. RA (14m 11s): And So we put movies in the Fly fishing film tour for, you know, call it 20 years, Dave (14m 15s): Starting in the, that time the oh fives oh six in that range. Yeah. RA (14m 18s): And so basically what you’d do is you’d make a, you’d make a five minute piece every year and you’d give that to Tom Bai for the Fly Fishing awards and you’d make like a funny little piece or you, and then you’d, you’d make a little bit longer form piece for the film Sewer. That happened for a very long time. And that was kind of the gist of it. And then it became more and more popular and grew and grew and grew in the beginning. I mean, I remember driving to a premier at Patagonia and it was like 20 dudes sitting on the break room tables looking at something on a screen like it, this was very, this was not glamorous. Hmm. But now, you know, and then now fast forward to where I live in Bend, Oregon, we’ve had shows here where our massive, you know, 800 person theater. RA (15m 4s): Wow. The tower here will sell it out four nights or, or three nights in a row. Dave (15m 9s): That’s cool. RA (15m 10s): And to answer your initial question, there have been other festivals that have grown out of this. So there’s the International Fly Fishing Film tour, which is a great film tour. It’s very different than the the Fly Fishing film tour. So our film Silent Spotter actually plays in the International Fly Fishing film tour. And then we, we have another film The Hard Way that’s playing in the, the Fly Fishing film tour. But yeah, they are the core festivals, If you will. Dave (15m 36s): Those are the two, the fly fishing film tour, kind of the F three T was the original. And there’s also now the International, the IF four. Right. Those are kind of the two. RA (15m 45s): Yeah. And the IF four is a little bit more artsy and has a little bit, I’d say a little bit more emphasis on storytelling. And it’s just a little bit different genre of the, of the genre. And then the IF four is like a little bit more high energy punk rock. Dave (16m 4s): God, it’s so good. I love it. And the, I love it. We were off air starting to talk about the Apple with Steve Jobs. I, I love it because I love that story about products and what we’re talking about here is that, you know, the iPhone wasn’t the first cell phone ever. Yeah. Right. But they came in and perfected it right. At that time. Yeah. And, and I think the same thing, the film tour, you know, FF three TI remember, you know, that’s going strong, but then IF four comes in, you’re like, well this is kind of the same thing, but Right. But no, it’s different and they’re doing different things. Yeah. So it’s really cool. And I love that you talked about Tom bi. ’cause we love Tom, you know, and but the storytelling is so obviously, you know, is so critical and all this. And he told this crazy story on the last podcast, I’ve talked about this a couple times, but it was this story about this synthetic marijuana thing, right. Dave (16m 44s): Where people were going, going to prison and like, and it was connected to a lodge and, and it was all this crazy stuff. And I actually ended up getting, it was some crazy emails from it. And, you know, there was like multimillion dollar, like I think Tom got sued for half a bi, whatever it was, billion dollar or some crazy number. Right. And, and so I feel like it’s like, those are the stories that are really interesting. But, but Tom was at the beginning, right? So I didn’t realize, oh, I always forget that. So he was at the beginning of these movies, like he was the guy. RA (17m 14s): Yeah. Well it’s funny ’cause you know, well it’s funny how old we’re getting and how fast time moves, but it’s funny how, how quickly our, the, our, our public consciousness forgets, or, because I just saw Tom and I just saw him a couple days ago. I was at the fly fishing show in Denver and he, he and I are hanging out and we were talking because one of the funny outgrowths, and one of the funny stories is we, I had this, so every year I told you we’d have to make a, a short five minute piece for his, his entry. And it would be, and it’d be funny comedy was the way to do it. Because If you have five minutes, people don’t want to come, come in there and see you posture and be cool and tough. They just wanna go in and laugh. And So we would make funny little pieces that were goofy and we’d make fun of the fly fishing industry. RA (17m 58s): Yeah. And so I called Tom and I said, Tom, ’cause I’m still a guide at this point, I don’t have any money. And I’m like, Hey Tom, I’ve got this idea. I wanna do this really funny film about gangsters picking up like high-end clients because I’m working in Aspen and I’m working for a really high-end clientele. And like, we get in trouble if there’s like a coffee cup in our car. Like, so I’m like, what if it wasn’t me showing up to pick up a client? Like what if it was someone who’s like, what If you had like a gangster showed up? Like, like what would it blow their mind? Right? So we came up with this film called When Guiding Goes Gangster, but we needed a gangster car. And so I called up Tom and I’m like, Hey man, I found this horrible awesome old car. It’s a mercury marquee, this thing’s from the seventies. RA (18m 39s): It’s like this big pimp ride. Yep. I’m like, I have enough money to buy half of it. I’m like, can you buy the other half of it? And he’s like, oh, like what are you doing? I’m like, I’m like, come on, this will be great and we’ll shoot this thing. And he’s like, okay, whatever. So he buys this car with me, we shoot this really kind of funny little piece and Tom stars in it by the way, which, and he does a great job. And then we get done with the shoot and I’m like, well see you later. And he is like, what, what are we gonna do with this car that we own? I’m like, oh well like, I don’t know man. Like we’ll figure something out. And so Tom comes up with this idea and he’s like, let’s put it on the road and we’re gonna give it to people and they can take it on a trip and then they can write it, write a story and they can hand it off to somebody else. RA (19m 22s): Yep. And we’ll call it Clyde. And so that’s Ride with Clyde, which has been part of the Drake magazine for like, I don’t know, 15 years or, that’s Dave (19m 29s): Right. Yeah. Clyde. RA (19m 32s): So it’s funny ’cause we so little goofy screw around projects like that grow into other weird things. You know, Dave (19m 43s): Check out Jackson Hole Fly company today. Premium fly gear straight to your door without the premium price. Jackson Hole fly company designs and builds their own fly rods, reels, flies and gear delivering quality you can trust at prices that let you fish more and spend less. Whether you’re picking up a fly rod for the first time or guiding every day they’ve got what you need, check ’em out right now. That’s Jackson Hole fly company.com. Jackson hole fly company.com. Let on DeMar Lodge give you the Montana fly fishing experience you deserve. The gin clear waters of the Missouri River offer a world-class experience with one of the finest rainbow trout and brown trout fisheries in the world. Dave (20m 24s): Whether you’re a seasoned angler or new to the sport, their family of guides will tailor a trip just for you. You can head over to on demark lodge.com to fish one of the great trout streams in the country. Well, and I’m thinking back now, the podcast, that was the great thing that Drake had their own podcast for a while. And I’m drawing a blank on the name of the person that produced that Elliot, but yeah, Elliot. Yeah, Elliot. We had him on the podcast a while back and he’s, but yeah, he talked about the Clyde. Right. I think he was driving that for a while to tell stories RA (20m 51s): Through it and Dave (20m 52s): All that. And I always thought, I remember seeing that. That’s why it’s so good, this stuff. That’s why using some, you know, again, I talked about John Gear rock a lot, but yeah. You know, some of these great writers where they explain like, how do you become a great writer and instead of, you know, you don’t, you know, basically tell somebody about something. You show ’em like Right. Yeah. You show ’em through things and, and this, this story they told about, you know, you’re, somebody wants to show like, I’m gonna point a gun at you. And instead of, you know, you say, instead of just saying you’re throwing, you’re pointing your finger, you say the finger was so bent that when he pulled the trigger, you know, it, it shot the person in the foot. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Talking about how bent the guy’s finger was mangled. Totally, RA (21m 28s): Totally. Dave (21m 29s): And so you’re getting that picture and I feel like Clyde is the same thing. Right. You’re telling, I remember when I first saw, I was like, whoa, what is Clyde? That’s really bizarre. That must be Elliot. Elliot must be way out there. Right. But so that’s it. So again, it wasn’t about Elliot, this is about Tom and these stories you guys were telling through the, through the ride. RA (21m 44s): Yeah. Well I think that’s kind of the, the little fascinating thread through all of it is that, you know, there’s fishing and just, just like anything, it probably doesn’t matter if you’re into biking or or skiing or whatever it is, you know, there’s a really deep interesting, quirky, cool stories and amazing thing that that happened. And those stories don’t always, aren’t always in line or jive with, you know, popular media and commercialism and, and commercial media because they don’t Right. You know, they don’t fit that narrative. Like, you know, an industry is trying to sell products and do things and they have a structured way of doing that. And, but all this fringe weird stuff is so cool, but how do you harness it and where does it go and how do you access it? RA (22m 24s): And I think Tom did an amazing job very early on of looking at fly fishing and saying, you know, there’s this really weird cool culture and it’s small, but how do we tap into it and how do we give that a voice? And I think that’s what the Drake Dave (22m 40s): Yeah. And you think the small is the small is the fly fishing industry or just the people that were making that are into those movies and that stuff? RA (22m 48s): Well, I think, I mean, honestly the fly fishing industry, I don’t know how big it is now. I mean, I know that like, you know, there was a story back in the day that one of the bass fishing manufacturers made it, like out of their entire catalog of stuff, they had a bunch of rubber worms and one of the rubber worms was a root beer color. And the sales of just that root beer color was bigger than the fly industry. Oh wow. Dave (23m 11s): So, RA (23m 11s): So the fly industry comparatively is really, really small. But I think even within that there’s just, you know, there’s a lot of weirdos and there’s a lot of funny folks. And so Tom did a really good job of like being the voice or capturing a lot of that. Yeah, Dave (23m 29s): He does for space for that. That’s so good. Well, this is awesome. I, I think we’re getting off to a good start here because, you know, I love, again, talking about people that are doing good stuff out there, but let’s take it back to Tommy real quick. We mentioned Yeah, yeah. You know, the communicating. And I’m really interested in that because I haven’t done, you know, much of that, you know, that whole, I watched the other movie you had, I think, what, what’s the other one that just the, the newer one you have out there RA (23m 53s): The hard Way, which is about a Native American fishing guide Matt Mendez on the Deschutes River. Dave (23m 58s): Exactly. And so I’m more familiar, that’s more my, my backyard, you know, and I understand that, but you know, kind of the X Flats and all that stuff was something I wasn’t as familiar with. But this is really interesting about Tommy because he’s, he’s deaf mute. So how does he, so you’re on the boat, how does he communicate? What is that like when you’re fishing and all of a sudden, you know, you’re trying to find permit out there? RA (24m 17s): Yeah, good question. His communication is, so he, he taught himself sign language. And I’ve learned a lot of over, you know, since we started this project. But basically, you know, there’s different variations of sign language and he taught himself his own. And it’s very in, it’s very, it’s oddly intuitive, you know, and you have to watch him communicate with you. But the way that he moves his hands and the way that he represents like a permit or a permit eating something or all the different visuals he’ll do with his hands, they’re really intuitive and you kind of can figure it out pretty quick. Which only, you know, I guess just it speaks to his ability to communicate just with anybody. RA (25m 0s): But he does have to get your attention and he does have to be able to, you know, for anyone who’s been on the valve boat, you know, if a guide sees a fish, they have to tell you where it is. And that’s, for me, I’ve always had a hard time. They say, oh, you know, it’s at 11 o’clock and it’s 70 feet and it’s there. Do you see it? And you’re like, I don’t have any idea what you’re pointing at. And, and so yeah, he has to get you there. He initiates a lot of getting your attention by making just kind of a, a just a real kind of deep guttural noise. And so he kind of just makes this kinda like a, like this kind of deep, kinda like a chirp. And if he initiates that, it’s pretty, you know, you’ll hear it and then you, you just turn to him and he’ll be pointing and he might help him grab your rod and kind of point your rod and do that sort of thing. RA (25m 45s): But you know, he’s gonna make a noise like that. He might just take his finger too and poke you in the shoulder. Yeah. If he needs your attention, you know, he’s gonna, if he needs to, he can, he’ll pull out. Sometimes he’ll pull his arm out and put it in front of you so you can see like the inside of his arm and he’ll write like letters in, you know, invisible letters on his arm. He can pull out his phone and he can text you stuff. He can, but a lot of it’s just kind of intuitive, you know, kind of song language. If his, his dad is guiding on the back, so he’s standing on the front of the bow, his dad’s on the back. If his dad is trying to get his, get Tommy’s attention, he’s gonna do stuff like take that massive push pull and bring it all the way up in the front and wave it in front of his line at sight. RA (26m 30s): You know, try to get something in front of him visually so he can get his attention and then he can look back, you know, he’ll sometimes stomp on something or make a noise. His dad will because, you know, he can feel the vibrations. Yeah. And so, you know, there’s a lot of ways to do it, but I think what was really hard capturing it is that it’s all very nuanced and subtle and it happens very quickly and it’s not very, like, it’s not flamboyant. There’s not a lot of arms waving around. Like it’s very subtle and nuanced. Dave (27m 2s): And I think part of that, that what I thought about was, you know, the seeing right, the seeing of the fish that that’s not an easy thing to do. You know, and, and he’s good at it. Is it, is there something to that where he’s lost some of those other senses but now he’s the greatest he can see better than anybody else see these fish? RA (27m 18s): Yeah, I think he definitely has. He has, he has amazing eyes, amazing eyes. But I, I think even further, you know, and maybe it’s because, and I noticed this, I was with him last week, we took the film back to Ishak last week and showed it for him in the entire community. And so I spent some time on the boat with him and I spent time on the boat without cameras and distractions. But I think what I noticed is that like when I’m on the bow, I’m hearing skipping mullet behind me or you know, a bird crash into the water. I’m looking over here, I’m like, I think our ability to concentrate is always fleeting and there’s a lot of distractions and he is just, he’s hyper-focused. RA (28m 4s): He doesn’t have a lot of distraction. And so I think that just puts him in the moment a lot more. Dave (28m 9s): Yep, that makes total sense. What about on your, your movie? So this one I think was about under 20 minutes. Yeah. And again, this was the name of it was Silent Spotter. And, and for, I guess people can watch, is that gonna be out there on one of these film tours? RA (28m 25s): Yeah, so that’s touring right now with the International Fly Fishing film tour, the I of four, I think it’s doing about 250 cities right now. Dave (28m 32s): Okay. So it’s out there. So they can easily find that by going to your website. RA (28m 36s): Yeah. And then we will release that film digitally here later in the year. Dave (28m 40s): Oh, you will, will you release that digitally in, in your past films? Are they out there like free to the public or is that something you purchase? How does that work? RA (28m 47s): Yeah, YouTube, we put everything on YouTube Nice. So we have an off the Grid Studios, YouTube, and you can watch all of our old stuff is on there and all the upcoming new stuff will be there. So that’s a great place to catch stuff. But yeah, we’ll put it there. Yeah, the days of the day, days of selling films are long gone. Dave (29m 2s): Oh really? So those days, when did those days, did those end a while ago? RA (29m 6s): Yeah, we used to sell a lot of DVDs. It’s pretty funny. Probably gone back to like 2008. You know, I had someone call me and they were like, I think it was like a German distributor and he’s like, we would like to carry your films and be your distribution partner in Europe. Do you have a distribution partner in Europe? I’m like, dude, we don’t have anything to sell. Like, yeah. Like, okay, like you could be our distribution partner now what do we do? Right. And So we sold a ton of DVDs for a long time and then one morning we woke up and I think that was probably 10 years ago, you know, and it was almost like the stock market had crashed. Like everyone was like, we’re not buying DVDs and we’re shutting our companies down. And we’re stuff Dave (29m 43s): Yeah, it’s changed. It’s amazing because it’s always changing, right? I mean like, and you could look at movies. Yeah. You could look at, you know, music, right? That’s changed. Yeah, the dv, same thing. You had those and now digital and then it was like, now you can go to Spotify and literally get almost every song on there, right? It seems like. RA (30m 0s): Yeah. And the Spotify thing is such a wild beast. I mean, I work in music too, you know, and Spotify is such a, an amazing and cruel animal because like, you know, basically these artists are handcuffed to it because if they want a shot at being in a big festival, if they want distribution, if they want all these things, like they have to use Spotify because Spotify dictates a lot of, you know, who’s gonna show up at major festivals and who’s gonna be headline these different things. Well, Spotify’s dictating a lot of that, Dave (30m 29s): Really not Apple because they have their own music. There’s other Right. But not Apple’s not leading. There RA (30m 35s): Probably depends on the, the specific venue in the tour, but like for most of these artists, like If you wanna make it, you need to play the Spotify game. And I think that’s super dangerous. But yeah. Anyway, that’s a different, yeah, it’s Dave (30m 45s): Different conversation. Well let’s take it back. So Ishk talk about that now. Do you have a connection? Do you have a, a lodge? Is that something you’ve been connected to down there? RA (30m 55s): Yeah, so the way that this whole thing came to be is that there’s a lodge owner, and his name’s Jesse and he owns a lodge called the X Flats. And this is in Ishak, which is in southern Mexico, Southern part of the Yucatan, a couple miles north of the Belize border. Yeah. An end, end of the road kind of small fishing town. And he has a fishing lodge. And so Jesse has been running that really, really well for a long time. Done a great job. Tommy’s one of the guides that works there. Mm. And so I ran into Jesse in the airport in Cancun coming back from a different filming gig. And we didn’t really know each other, but he, you know, we recognized each other and he’s like, Hey, how you doing? Nice to meet you. RA (31m 35s): I’ve got this great story. That’s when he initially kind of pitched me on the story, but he pitched me on the floating crab permit thing. And I was like, well that’s interesting. Let me dig, like, let’s dig in a little bit. Like, let’s see if there’s a real story here. And lo and behold we figured out the Tommy story, but it, it took a little while to get there. Gotcha. Dave (31m 55s): And the floating crab, is that something, you’ve done a little research I’m sure on this, is that something where at the time there was no other place people were fishing with floating crabs? RA (32m 4s): There’s been people catching fish on floating crabs for a while and it’s, and, and different places and in different ways, but it’s definitely been more of like whispers and you haven’t really seen it be like a mainstream thing. Like I, like I, I haven’t seen it where you open up, everybody opens up their fly box and they have floating crabs. But what’s funny is like crabs for folks that have spent a lot of time walking the flats or hanging out in that kinda water, like you see a lot of floating crabs like on the surface and they dive down like permit, you know, people fish with live crabs like floating live crabs for permit. Like they eat stuff off the top. And so I think these scenarios where it is happening with such frequency that they can target ’em is relatively new. RA (32m 47s): And a lot of that has to do with like, these flows of like the sargassum, this really obnoxious floating weeds that are coming in and inundating the flats. And a lot of, a lot of tropical places like this floating grass is bringing in these crustaceans and really kind of transforming the viability of top water permit fishing for some of these places. Dave (33m 9s): Oh, right. So they actual, these invasive weeds are actually making it better for fishing on the surface for permit. RA (33m 16s): Yeah. Which is pretty interesting because initially, like when you watch our movie, we have a lot of drone footage that shows the extent of this floating weed. And it’s substantial and it’s prevalent enough where you could see it being a pretty substantial issue. You know, just in terms of spotting fish, finding fish, and also fighting fish. ’cause you know, trying to sort through all this, all this vegetation and find a fish can be really, really hard. And so if they weren’t capitalizing on the, on eating crabs out of it, it could actually shut down some of these fisheries or make ’em really, really challenging. Gotcha. Dave (33m 50s): Well let’s kind of take this more bigger picture here, the bigger view and talk more on some of your other films. And you mentioned the five minute film that’s the early ones of Tom 20 Minute. And I’m not sure how long of films you’ve done, but does that change, how does that change your process or the film when you’re doing something five versus 20 versus something maybe more longer? RA (34m 10s): Yeah, good question. I mean, I think what we’re always trying to do is create the shortest film, the tightest edit we can create is kind of our goal because we, we like creating really tight, cohesive stories And we don’t really like wasting frames. We don’t like wasting time. Yeah. The tighter the narrative for us, the better. It’s almost like with writing, we don’t waste a lot of words And we don’t, we don’t have a lot of filler. Dave (34m 34s): How do you know when it’s, when you’ve gone through that process, I’m not sure how long that takes, but how do you know when the thing is ready when it’s done? RA (34m 40s): Good question. So they’re all a little different, this one. So the Silent Spotter one was really tricky because we had to, we had to tell a story about someone who can’t speak and can’t tell their own story. And so inherently that caused a lot of issues from a narrative and structural standpoint. Like, how do you do that? So if, if Tommy can’t tell his own story, then who should tell his story? Are you gonna have his dad tell it in Spanish and you’re gonna subtitle the entire thing? You know, there’s not a lot of options. And So we looked at it And we said, okay, you know, Jesse from the lodge owner, he has a, he has really good banter and he kind of has that Ryan Reynolds kind of quick fun fast. Dave (35m 21s): Yeah, he does. That was the thing you pick up on that movie, Jesse was, you know, like you just resonate with from the very start of that, the quick little Yeah. You know, that comedy was just perfect, you know what I mean? Like, it just flowed really nicely. RA (35m 34s): Yeah. He has a very quick wit and a fun kind of banter. And So we talked about it as a team. We said, you know, Jesse could narrate this, but then it begs the question, If you wanna be honest, like what gives Jesse, what gives this, you know, white gringo from the Rockies, what gives him the right to tell this story? You know, he’s an outsider coming in And we ask that question all the time Dave (35m 57s): And you asked it, that’s a great thing. You actually asked it right at the start of the, of the movie. Yeah. You basically said, why does this guy have the right to come in here into these native lands and you know, do it, tell that story. Well, RA (36m 8s): ’cause we see it all the time and we’ve been guilty of it ourselves. Look, I’m not saying we, we we’ve, you know, haven’t ever done this, but you see it all the time. People show up, they show up in a new place with cameras, you know, and they kind of act like they’re like, like Columbus showing up on, on some foreign land. They’re like, look at this beautiful place that we found And we discovered all on our own and we’re gonna tell the story about it. And you’re like, wait, people live there. Like, you didn’t discover this. You just showed up today. So we didn’t wanna be those people. And So we had to really, and so the quickest way to cut that conversation out and to just kill it is to address it right out of the gate. So we come in and say like, why am I telling you this story? You know, because why isn’t Tommy telling you this story? RA (36m 48s): Because he can’t, he can’t speak. And so Jesse does a really good job of telling all the different aspects of the story, but then also being, you know, very witty and fun and playful and acknowledging when he’s, you know, being self-deprecating and poking fun at himself and you know, acknowledging when he is being ridiculous. And that gives it a little bit of levity and allows the story to unfold in a way where it, it needs to be fun. Yeah. And it needs to be light and it needs to be entertaining. And so Jesse allows that to happen. Dave (37m 22s): Yeah, he does. I think that’s why the funny, it sets you at ease right away. You know, you know, this isn’t gonna be like, oh, hardcore fishing. Like I’m the most, I’m the greatest permit, you know, I’m, I’m so crazy at permit. You know, it’s like, it’s funny that, that that’s important, you know? Yeah. Because I think you hear these permit stories about the how addicted people are and sometimes it’s over the top, you know? And I feel like, yeah, I think you did a good job of bringing it together. So, so go back to the length. So what is the longest film you’ve ever produced? RA (37m 52s): The longest stuff that we produced would probably be around the 30 minute mark. We haven’t gotten too far down, down the runway after that. I think we do a lot of, ’cause we do, we’ve done a lot of TV and a lot of that kind of stuff too. So, I don’t know, I, I just, I feel really good in that 20 to 30 minute space. It feels comfortable. It seems It Dave (38m 11s): Does. Okay. RA (38m 12s): It doesn’t seem too exhausting, you know? ’cause I don’t know, I, I have a very short attention span. You know, if I was a writer I’d be writing short stories and Sure. Dave (38m 21s): I always go back. I love, you know, going back to the river Road street and you, you know, because you were kind of there probably right the early, you were talking about late nineties, but this was like mid nineties, you know, we kind of joke, right? The greatest fly fishing movie of all time sort of thing. But that was like one of a kind. Right. There’s nothing else really out there like that movie. Everything else is shorter. What’s your take on a river runs through it. Do you remember that? RA (38m 43s): Oh yeah. I mean, a river runs through it. You know, I was such a fanatic crazy fish bump when I was younger just to like an unhealthy level and to see, you know, phishing didn’t exist in, in mainstream media. And like nobody understood it. No one, no one got it. And like, yeah, I was the only kid in my school who fished like, no, I ever thought I was, I was like the weird fishing Dave (39m 6s): Kid You fished or fly fished? RA (39m 8s): Fly fished. Yeah. And so when a river on Syria came out, it was like, oh my God, like this is amazing. Like someone’s capturing kind of the essence of this whole thing. And, and, and the story itself is just phenomenal. And, and it’s got Brad Pitt in it. I mean, so why not love it? That was also, I was a fishing guy during that time and that’s also when, that was the boom. And that’s when it went from, you’d have a trip every now and then to, you know, you’re booking like two trips a day in Colorado because you’ve got people showing up out of the woodworks in every mountain town and everyone’s like, I’m gonna try this fly fishing thing. Like I saw Brad Pitt doing it. We’re trying it today. Yeah. But it was a beautiful, I mean that piece still holds so well. Dave (39m 50s): Yeah, it does. It’s RA (39m 52s): So beautiful. And, and, and it all comes back to the writing. Dave (39m 55s): Yeah. That’s a, that’s the writing. What’s the process, your process like on that? Do you write out your entire movie? Is it scripted? How do you do that? Because you’re not dealing with real right. Actors necessarily. These are people. How does that work? RA (40m 8s): Well, we’ve learned a lot back in the day. We do a lot of run and gun stuff. I’d call it more like gonzo journalism, where you, you just grab a camera and grab a plane ticket and you take off and see what you get. And you can do that. That’s a viable way to do things, but it’s not a very smart way to do it. And So we kinda, the way that we look at it is we do a lot of pre-production. We do a lot of research And we know that it’s, there’s the film that you write, the film you shoot, and the film you edit. And those are three different animals. And So we will, we’ve got an amazing writer that we worked with on these last two films, miles Noie. And so Miles is, he’s been riding in and fishing and hunting for a very long time. And he is very good. RA (40m 49s): And So we take a location and a place and we do, we start doing research and we start calling people and we start interviewing And we will write out a full treatment And we will have a full idea of what we’re gonna do. And then you get there and everything goes upside down and nature screws you and you throw everything out the window and you shoot what you shoot, Dave (41m 15s): You shoot what you shoot. Right. Because it’s fishing. Right. That’s the great thing. You’d never know what’s gonna happen. It’s RA (41m 20s): The hardest thing to film. I mean, I’m so jealous of these other action sports folks. I tell my, my friends and like, ski and, you know, snowboard or whatever. I’m like, I, I’m like, I’m like, so is it, is it nice being able to like set your camera up and you have a cup of coffee and then you just get on the radio and say go like, what’s that feel like? Because it’s never easy. It’s never what you want it to be. But anyway, you do it, you capture it all, then you gotta come back. And so what we’ll do is we’ll start laying everything out. And so this film, we lay everything out and it’s 30 minutes long And we say, okay, we need to cut 15 minutes out of this thing. So we gotta cut this in half And we gotta kill a bunch of stuff that we love And we gotta start chopping. And So we did 17 revisions of this edit. RA (42m 3s): Hmm. And that really comes down to Miles writing, looking and saying, okay, you know, we asked this, this question is asked here, but it’s not answered here. And this needs to be changed structurally. And then we show it to a lot of people. We show it to, I think we probably showed it to 20 or 30 people. Dave (42m 20s): Hmm. Just give him it and say, what’s your take on it? RA (42m 22s): Yep. And you know, Tom bi was hilarious ’cause Tom bi watched it. Yeah. And he’s brutal. ’cause I’ve known him for so long. I’ve known him for so long since I was like, right. Dave (42m 31s): What was his initial take? Do you remember? Saw RA (42m 33s): It Well he’s like, he’s like, yeah, okay, well yeah, I watched the film and I’m like, well I can tell that, you know, from your, your the hostility in your voice that, you know you don’t love it. And he’s like, ah, no, no, I mean it’s okay. And I’m like, well, do you love it or you hate it? And he’s like, neither. I was like, okay, well that doesn’t help at all. Like, so what’s wrong? He’s like, well, you’re just telling, you’re telling too much and it’s too much and it’s still too much and you just gotta cut it all down. It’s like, okay. Yeah. Dave (42m 58s): Okay. Like you’re going into too much detail on stuff. RA (43m 1s): It’s actually, you know, it’s kind of funny ’cause it’s like the process is kind of like, that scene actually in a river runs through it where there’s that writing scene in the beginning, which I love. Where the kids are writing and doing homework or or writing. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s, I think it’s Norman, right? Norman writes this thing and brings it to his dad’s desk and he reads it and he hands it back and he is like cool. Half as long. Yeah. And he takes it back and like writes it and half as long he hands it to me. He’s like half as long, you know, he brings it back and he’s like, good. Throws it away. That, that’s kind of, that’s kind of how a lot of people are that are, that are watching your stuff, which is good ’cause that’s what you need. You need really strong feedback. Dave (43m 40s): Stay warm, stay focused, and don’t let the cold dictate quitting time with heated cores, advanced base layer technology, hydro wick fabric wicks away moisture while undetectable. Carbon fiber, heating elements target key areas to keep you dry and warm all day long. I had a troubling experience fishing a New York steel head stream while in December was fishing it and my feet, my legs, I was getting cold. I literally felt like things were freezing. I had to step outta the water and I literally had to stop fishing and then I watched somebody else take that steelhead. So never again for me, I’m sticking with heated core, lightweight and unrestricting. You can stay on the water all day with three levels of heat and a rechargeable 7.4 lithium ion battery heated core may just be your ticket to more time on the water this season. Dave (44m 32s): So you guys have done a few things out there now. You’ve been out there doing this while. What, what’s that look like as far as your catalog? How many do you keep track of that? How many movies? Which one has been the most resonated with your audience the most? That sort of stuff? RA (44m 46s): We’ve done a lot of stuff. I mean, I think we’ve probably done, we’ve probably done 30 films about, you know, this length for different film tours and a lot, I mean more short films that I can count. And there’s definitely some favorites in there. I mean, honestly, like we did a, I did a piece and I got to incorporate John AK and he was a hero of mine just growing up reading the Trap bomb diaries and Oh yeah. And, and loving Gak. And so that film was called The Arctic and it’s super old, it’s probably 14 or 15 years. But I still really like that piece. But we’ve done, we’ve done a lot of just all kinds of weird stuff. We’ve done, you know, conservation pieces and fish porn kind of pieces and, and we’ve done some horrible stuff too. RA (45m 32s): I mean, some of the stuff I look at, I’m like, this is just terrible. But that’s how you learn, right? Dave (45m 36s): Is that stuff still out there? Is the horrible stuff still. Can people find that on YouTube out there? Oh RA (45m 40s): Yeah. Everything’s on our YouTube and you can find this, the good, the bad and the ugly. I don’t care. I just put it all out there. But that’s part of the artistic process, right? If you’re gonna learn how to do this on your own, you just got, you can’t be scared to make garbage. You have to just go do Dave (45m 53s): It. Yeah. You gotta put in the, put in the reps. Right. You gotta just keep, you know, you’re gonna have something that’s gonna be great and something that maybe isn’t as great, but you gotta just keep putting the reps in. Yeah, totally. RA (46m 2s): Yeah. And it’s terrifying. And you get, you get, you know, you get beat up a little bit and you know, people give you just horrible feedback. It’s getting, actually the Internet’s getting nicer. Dave (46m 11s): Oh, you do? It’s getting nicer. Well, like, I don’t know, RA (46m 13s): What do you think? Dave (46m 15s): It’s a good question because I always feel like, you know, you’re not even there yet until you get your first one star review when I talk about podcasting, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like, ’cause that really is a time where, you know, if you’re getting all, all great, you know, it’s just you need a voice to have a take a side. Yeah. You don’t have to be, you don’t have to be like super po you know, this political stuff where it’s crazy, but, you know, take a stance and then you’re obviously gonna get people that are gonna be against that. Oh, RA (46m 43s): Totally. Dave (46m 44s): You know? But yeah, I don’t know. I feel like I’ve never worried as much about that. Obviously it hurts, you know, it still hurts. You’re like, oh my God, you know? Sure. Am I that because I had, I can’t think of, I mean, we get ’em probably, you know, the same for you. You get ’em regularly and, and stuff comes in. I can’t remember what the last Oh, oh, I know what it was. It was, I mean, it was a conservation. We, we do, everything we do has a concert. Not everything, but we try to, when we do our events, we always have a conservation partner. Sure. And we had one up in Alaska because the Chinook stuff that’s going on is crazy, you know, like these collapses and stuff. So we’ve been covering that on some of the trips and Oh, and I had the salmon state on, and it was like, I was just basically listening like I do and let people talk. And some, a listener reached out and was like, man, I love your podcast, but you didn’t tell both sides of the story. Dave (47m 27s): Right. And I’m like, oh, well I guess there is another side. I’m not sure what that is, but, oh. And that’s when I told him, I was like, Hey, you tell me what is the other side and who should I RA (47m 35s): Get on? Oh, you’re a brave, you’re a brave man. Yeah. If you, If you get in the salmon steelhead territory, like you gotta put some armor on and get ready. Dave (47m 43s): I know. Why is that? Do you think salmon steelhead stuff’s different than the permit stuff? Because there’s probably RA (47m 48s): Oh yeah. It’s, I, I, so, I mean, look, I’m, I, I’ve been living in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve lived in Bend, Oregon for 15 years. I went to school in Tacoma. So, you know, I, I’ve probably spent 20 outta 40 years in the Pacific Northwest. And I’m not even close to being able to call myself like a, a local or being able to understand this whole weird ecosystem up here. But I did, I did put my time in trying to be helpful and trying to understand the steelhead thing. And I talked to a lot of smart people. I’ve interviewed a lot, I’ve interviewed a lot of people, and I’ve tried to be helpful creating content and ways where we can help protect salmon and steelhead. RA (48m 30s): And I continually got slapped by so many different interest groups and different aspects of it that I kind of just said, I went, you know what, I’m just trying to be helpful and I clearly can’t. So, you know, I kind of bowed out unfortunately, because that’s kind of co it’s kind of a coward move, but, right. I don’t know. It’s, it’s very complicated. It’s very steeped in history and tradition. There’s a, there’s, there’s so many fragmented interest groups. And I would just stare at these groups of people and say, Hey. And, and, and also it’s very common in fishing. Like If you go to a fishing location where there’s a lot of fishing guides, you’ll have a ton of fishing guides that despise each other. RA (49m 12s): And I usually am kind of the, the one in the middle, because I’ll work with a lot of ’em and I’ll say, Hey, you know, that guy that you don’t like is a pretty good dude. And yeah, you guys are pretty similar and you’re both good dudes. I bet you If you guys sat down and had a beer for 30 minutes, you guys would probably be fast friends. Like the, it’s just that you’ve got some weird stuff between you. But If you just like had a conversation, you’d get along great. That’s Dave (49m 35s): True. And I RA (49m 36s): Feel like that’s the famine and steelhead thing. ’cause I look at these groups and I’m like, you know, you guys are, you’re, you’re using so much energy churning and burning and pointing fingers and, and, and picking at each other that it’s like watching a bunch of kids in the back of the car fight. Like, If you would just take a second and, and apply that energy to something constructive, you could probably move forward. Dave (49m 57s): You could, RA (49m 58s): But I’ll probably get in trouble saying that Dave (50m 0s): It doesn’t happen. Partly. Well, partly it’s the social media stuff, right? It’s this world that we live in where, you know, the more you’re negative, the more you’re, you know, you get more views. Right. Again, back to those polarizing things. Ah, the more, the more negative you are actually, the more money you can make. Right. That’s true. That’s true. So that’s the crazy thing. You have that whole thing going on too. Yeah, RA (50m 19s): That’s true. Dave (50m 20s): Which is messy, but, okay. Cool. Well, you got, I mean, basically you have, you know, some of these videos. Let, let’s talk about, you know, we’re gonna start to take it out here. Actually, let’s just hop into our conservation kind of segment. Sure. Our conservation court, this one today is presented by Patagonia. They’re swift current waiters, So we gotta give a shout out to Patagonia. Oh, sweet. We love Patagonia. I had Yvonne Sheard on, we talked about, you know, just Patagonia, the company, how it came to be, and his ethos and what he, it’s amazing when you talk to that guy because he’s so dedicated Yeah. To his mission and stuff. But, so first off, shout out to Patagonia. We love them. Talk about that. I want to, I wanna hear about, have you written more about some of the conservation stuff? You talked about a little bit on that, on that episode, the Silent Spotter. Dave (51m 3s): Are there other issues that, are you, is that something you’re really thinking about as you’re doing these movies? RA (51m 9s): Yeah. Yeah. And I wanna give a, since we’re doing a Patagonia shout out, I want to give one to Nick, Nick bl at Patagonia. I think he’s the, I think he’s the number one Patagonia employee. I’m gonna go ahead and say it. Oh, Dave (51m 19s): There you go. Yeah, I’ve heard his name. I RA (51m 20s): Just saw him a couple days ago in Denver and just love that guy. But anyway, And we love Patagonia too. Yeah. Yeah. Conservation. Look, I mean, I’ve been raised in a household where I was told you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna be active in conservation and giving back. And, and, and a lot of that’s gonna be in two different minds. You’re gonna get your hands dirty. And so I’d go to the nature center and clean up, you know, cages for the birds to prey and do that stuff and, you know, do physical work and put the time in and put the work in. And then also use your, you know, use your skills that you have and use your brain as you can to, to help in conservation too. So my whole life I’ve had, I’ve, I’ve been in a lot of different projects and so we’ve done, we’ve done some very deliberate stuff and we’ve been very active in a lot of campaigns. RA (52m 7s): It’s, I do a lot more in conservation as it applies to forests, because I work in the music industry and I work in guitars and timber, and so I, I do a lot of work. Oh, right. Yeah. So I do a lot of work in sustainability and conservation as it applies to timber. But as we know, you know, this world is one big connected thread. So what’s good for, you know, what’s good for old growth forests in southeast Alaska and the Tongass is great for salmon streams and, and, and fish. So it all comes around. That’s right. But we’re actively, you know, we try to have an integration in something into everything we do. I think, you know, the way that you bring conservation into media nowadays is really complicated and challenging, I think with, with Matt the, the hard way film that we have going, oh, yeah, Matt is a steward of the river and he does a tremendous amount of work, river cleanups, planting trees, all sorts of things that are, you know, he’s, he’s boots on the ground, getting his hands dirty. RA (53m 5s): And he does a lot of work to keep his ecosystem and the Deschutes River clean. When it came to telling that story with Matt, Matt’s a very quiet individual and he’s doesn’t say a ton. And so what we wanted to do with him was show instead of tell, you know, so, so Matt basically is like, you know, as he’s walking along the river, just pauses for a moment and shows some willows and goes, you know, these are some willows that we planted back in this year, and these willows help protect the bank from, you know, cattle getting in the water and doing this. And I’ve got shots of Matt, you know, just basically doing what he always does, pulling trash out of the, you know, pulling plastic chairs and trash outta the river and carrying it out. RA (53m 46s): And, and so him showing, you know, how what he does without being asked, without making a big deal, without doing social media posts about it, him just being a steward of the river, I hope is a, a subtle reminder that, you know, we all have things that we can just do, little things we can do. Dave (54m 3s): That is a good subtle reminder. Right. And I caught that in that as well. Yeah. It was just a little clip on the Willows and you could get that sense from Matt too. Yeah. He’s quiet. He got, you know, at the start he talks about getting stabbed. Did you get, you didn’t tell that story much other than that. Do you know that whole story about where he came from and how he became a guide? RA (54m 22s): Yeah. You know, Matt’s story’s fascinating. And so in that movie, when we started out with that movie, we, it was really a movie. It was a love letter to the Deschutes River. And we wanted to show the river over the course of Four Seasons. And that how it changes and, and just ’cause it’s a very, it’s a high desert river, so the change is subtle. You know, the grass goes from bright green to brown, and that’s a big change. So it’s capturing these little changes. But we needed a really good human character ’cause people relate to people more than water. And So we brought in Matt and, you know, Matt kind of tells his story about being a Native American guide on, on that section of River. RA (55m 3s): And he didn’t really tell us, he didn’t wanna talk a lot about his backstory until pretty much the very end. But yeah, he basically explains, he was brought up in California in a pretty rough environment and was a city kid. Didn’t like nature, didn’t like Oregon, didn’t like the high desert. They tried to send him up here a couple times. He didn’t like it. Finally, he got in some pretty bad situations back in California and he got jumped and he got stabbed a whole bunch. Geez. And almost didn’t make it. And finally when he was recovering, said, okay, I’m gonna get outta here. And he went to the high desert where, you know, his, his family lives on the Warm Springs reservation, and he came up under his grandfather, who was the first native guide on the Deschutes and a very tough individual. RA (55m 55s): And Matt came up the hard way, kind of like chopping wood and driving shuttles and, you know, slowly became a fishing guide and learned to love it. So went from a city kid who hated nature to loving it. And now he’s probably the most successful guy, or one of the not most successful, one of the busiest guides in the, in the state. Dave (56m 17s): Yeah. The cool thing about that is there’s not a lot of guides on the worm strings. Right. I think there’s him and is it Elke is the only, are they the only other operation on the, with the Native American side? RA (56m 27s): Yeah. There’s not many guides up there and, you know, there’s not a, there’s not a tremendous amount of outdoor recreation jobs or opportunities on that on in that area too. So super proud of him and he’s just an amazing individual and yeah. His, you know, he, he’s his, yeah, his story. You know, he didn’t really want to go super, super deep into the darker parts of his story, but he kind of gives it to you a little bit and you learn that he, you know, that he comes from a hard place and that, you know, yeah. He decided to have a healthy, clean track and now he’s got a great, I just got a text from him yesterday. They just welcomed their new daughter. Oh, wow. RA (57m 7s): And so he is got a great family and he can, you know, do all these things with this great resource. So it’s a really nice story. I really like it. Dave (57m 14s): That’s so cool. Nice. Well, we’ll, we’ll have some links out to that. What is your, let’s just take it outta here on your, where are you now? What, do you have a home, well you mentioned Bend. Is that kinda your home or do you, are you traveling more outside of, of Oregon and, and doing more of these, your production stuff? RA (57m 29s): We do, yeah. So based in Bend, Oregon here in the middle of the state in the high desert. And we do a lot of, we do a lot of storytelling. We’re, we’re working on a big piece, trying to save a big track of forest in Montana, a piece of old growth forest that’s under threat, working on a big project with, with the actor Jeff Bridges. And so that documentary hopefully would be done this coming year. But basically just trying to find good authentic stories that need to be told and trying to do a good job of, of honoring everyone’s story. Dave (58m 3s): Yeah. I’m interested in the forest. We don’t have to go deep on this one, but, you know, because obviously it’s like, it’s not too dissimilar to the salmon. You mentioned the connection, you know, there is a total connection in the life cycle of all this, but Sure. You know, old growth forests were at one time, you know, you can go down to the redwoods and see the drive through the trees and stuff, but I mean, historically in the Pacific Northwest, that was everywhere. Yeah. Now they’ve been, I don’t know if what’s left a percent or there’s some small, what is your take on that, the forest? Like, do we have a shot here? How do we get to that point where the forests are protected? RA (58m 35s): I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s a really polarizing and it’s a, it’s a really tough, it’s a really tough topic to speak about. Yeah. Dave (58m 42s): Do you remember the forest? You probably, well you might have remembered this back in the, I think it was the early nineties, Clinton was in office. You had the spotted owl. Yeah, yeah, RA (58m 50s): Yeah, yeah, Dave (58m 51s): Yeah. So the spotted out was like, you used, I think as a tool to say, Hey, save the spotted out. But really it was about the trees, I think. Yeah. And RA (58m 58s): Well, I mean, look, I’ll try to keep this as short as I can. I mean, I spent the last 20 years in sustainable, you know, procuring sustainable woods and all these things and going to pretty much every forest in the, in the world to, to learn about ’em. But Oh, right. I think, you know, look, we all need wood. We all need paper. We all need timber. Dave (59m 18s): Yeah. We all need toilet paper. Right. That, that’s what the loggers need. Toilet. I think that’s what the loggers will tell you. Hey, you wipe your butt too. Right? Yeah. RA (59m 24s): We need toilet paper, we need timber. I love building stuff. Like we build guitars outta wood. So, I mean, right. You know, I love timber and I am, I am super pro. I mean, I’m pro logging, like we need to log a lot And we have a lot of resources And we can do it. But I also, I think about it like having a garden. You can have a lot of stuff in your garden and you can have stuff that you can cut down that’ll regrow fast that are gonna be really, really great. And then you can have beautiful things in your garden like apple trees and you know, these other things that are old that you need to protect to their, that are heirloom things that are, that belong to us, that belong to Americans, that belong to people in Montana. They, there are natural resources, there are things and they’re beautiful And we should treasure that. There’s not a lot of ’em left. RA (1h 0m 5s): And so if we have the way, if we have the ability to keep them, and then also have the ability to get the resources that we need somewhere else, then we should just try to be in the same mind and say, yeah, like maybe let’s keep some of these really nice things around. ’cause we don’t have very many, very many, yeah. Many of them left and on a case by case. And so, and I think what’s gonna be tricky is that there’s a lot of, we have a lot of really, really big issues right now with forest fires and Dave (1h 0m 37s): Oh, I RA (1h 0m 38s): Know. Fire makes it really complicated. And I grew up again in Colorado where there was a ton of beetle kill. And I understand the danger and I understand the threat. I live in a place that is probably gonna burn down at some point. Like, I’m scared of fire. I don’t like it either. But we, we can’t just apply. We really have to look at everything on a case by case basis and be thoughtful about it. ’cause ’cause there’s old stuff like, you know, when it’s gone, it’s gone and you can do it sustainably. Like we, we go to different forests and we buy wood and we learn from different cultures and people that have been doing it sustainably for way, way longer than we have. RA (1h 1m 18s): And it’s like, oh, okay, well there’s a way to do it. So anyway, I don’t wanna get on a soapbox, but I think Yeah, Dave (1h 1m 23s): No, I hear you. I hear you. I, I, I like, I like, well let’s, let’s segue this, take it out here, the guitars. We’ll take it into music because I love music and Oh you do? Yeah. I have a guitar. I, but I’m not a great, you know, guitar player. But what does that look like for guitars? What is, you know, first off, just what is that, what you do with the, talk about your music background and then how you choose guitars? Is that one type of wood or is there tons of guitars made on different types of wood? RA (1h 1m 48s): Well, it’s why I work for a company that’s been building acoustic guitars for 30 years. And I’ve been doing, I’ve been working with ’em for 15. We decided we wanted to be the first fully sustainable company and everybody’s like, oh, you can’t do that. It’s impossible. We’re like, okay, well here you go, we’ll show you. And we did it. And then they said, well you can’t do it in Asia If you import guitars. ’cause you can’t have sustainability in China ’cause it’s a black hole and you can’t track everything. It’s too. And So we were like, yeah, we can. So we did it. We’re like, here you go. Here’s an example. Other industries have at it be sustainable If you want. Anyway, the point is, If you look at, there’s a tremendous amount of wood and different species and there, and it’s no different than fish or animals or mammals or anything. There’s variety all over the world. RA (1h 2m 30s): If you want a lot of variety, you want a lot of flavors, you want a lot of different things, then you have to preserve the different types. If you want one or two options, then cut everything down and grow one or two things. An example of that is like mahogany. If you like mahogany, then you’re gonna have to figure out how to use it sustainably because it only grows in a very small window from, you know, basically Costa Rica up into the bottom part of Mexico. And it only grows in a very specific region where hurricanes can come through. It’s a species dependent on hurricanes to disrupt the canopy for its growth. Like it has a very small place where it can grow. And If you clear cut all the forests to raise cattle, that species gone. RA (1h 3m 12s): It’s gone for good. But you can go to a lot of places where communities are managing their forests. So they have counted every single tree. They know the age of ’em, they know how many they have and they know how to replant. And they’re like, we can sustainably keep these forever if we just pay attention. So there’s ways to do things If you really want to do it or you can cut it all down. And just, like I said, you can just have a couple species Dave (1h 3m 36s): Have a monoculture. What is the, what are the most, what’s the most famous? The Stratocaster, right? Like some of those, I guess that’s more electric guitars, but Yeah, what’s the most common wood that a acoustic guitar is made out of? RA (1h 3m 47s): So to keep it really simple, guitars have to be made out of two different types of wood. They need to be made out of a hardwood, which is on the backend sides, and they need a softer wood on the top that’s gonna move and create all the sound energy inside of the body of the guitar. And so traditionally speaking, the backend side woods were things like Rosewood, Brazilian rosewood would probably be the most iconic or a mahogany. And so those two woods are probably the most iconic. Rosewood is found all over the world. It’s a dalberg, but iterations of it are found all over the world. The Brazilian is the most famous because it was, they basically said you couldn’t use it when they were trying to preserve the rainforest. RA (1h 4m 28s): And so it is now considered under the law, it is seen as the same as like African elephant ivory in terms of owning it and having it, like you need to have paperwork and it, it is highly regulated, but there’s a lot of other things that can sound similar to it. But I think the problem is like, there’s a lot of different types of woods and a lot of trees, but again, as you start to whittle them down and, and they start to disappear, you just, it’s like cooking. You start to lose your, your different flavors and eventually you’re gonna be left with just a couple spices. Dave (1h 5m 2s): Gotcha. Okay. So that’s a little on the guitars. That’s great. Well, well let’s let, let’s start. We always love to get back to music and movies and kinda keep this going here. Yeah. What is your, what’s your genre? What type of music do you like? Do you play, are you a big guitar player? RA (1h 5m 16s): You know, I, I, I shouldn’t say I’m a big guitar player. I’ve been playing for 20 years and I should be a lot better, but I sure love it. I listen to a lot of different stuff, but I’ve been listening to, you know, I really, I really dig this kid Marcus King, you know, Billy Strings. I’ve been listening to a lot of that kind of just depends on, but you know, I also listen to a lot of old school hip hop, listen to, you know, all, all different types of genres. But how about you? Dave (1h 5m 50s): Yeah, kinda the same. I mean, I love the string band, I love the, the Bluegrass, you know, I love Old country. Yeah. You know, kind of mixing hip hop of course. You know, I love Rick Rubin. I was just like, again, I’m a podcasting freak. Right. So Rick Rubins, there’s, they’ve got that podcast where they go into the back in the history, but I think his story is so cool that he can take, you know, the from, you know, sex, you know, what was it? The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Yeah. And then he goes in and he takes Johnny Cash from a, a li almost at the end of his road and he produces five, five of the greatest albums ever. Yeah. For Jo, right. Johnny Cash. RA (1h 6m 25s): Oh yeah. Dave (1h 6m 26s): It’s so good. I just, it gives me goosebumps thinking about it. So I, I feel like Rick Rubin, that’s what I love about music. It’s, it’s, it’s powerful, right. Yeah. So I’m pretty, I’m I’m all over the place. I always have a, a struggle to pick one, but yeah, that’s good. So we’ll put some Marcus King, I don’t know Marcus, so we’ll put that in the show notes. RA (1h 6m 43s): Oh, check out Marcus King, Google, Marcus King and Billy Strings. They get together in Nashville a bunch and they go to this super high-end, it’s a Highend music store with all this super old expensive stuff. And they go in there and they basically just film ’em jamming out together. And like yeah, if people, you know, you’ll always hear people be like, oh yeah, well, you know, music’s dead. Or like, you know, guitar Playing’s dead or like the greatest music was back then. Like, go listen to Billy Strings and Marcus King Jam for a little bit and tell me what you think. Dave (1h 7m 13s): Right. Good. Okay, we’ll leave the, we’ll leave the show here on that and we’ll have some people out there listen to that. So this is good. Alright, cool. Alright, well we’ll send everybody out to off the grid studios.com. They can check in with you there and check out your stuff. And yeah, man, appreciate all your time and I’m excited because I’ve got some more movies to watch of your history and I’ll be keeping up with you and thanks again for all your time. RA (1h 7m 34s): Yeah man, thank you so much and I hope you have a good rest of your day. Dave (1h 7m 38s): Quick call to action for you today. If you’re interested, check in with RA at off the grid studios.com and let ’em know you heard this podcast and you can check in on some of those movies. We didn’t even get into all of ’em. He mentioned he’s got over 30 and so there’s a bunch of content there. If you’re interested, let me know If you get a chance to check in with ra. Also, we have our own YouTube channel going and hopefully we’ll be connecting a little bit more with RA here. We have some webinars going on that are on YouTube. You can check in with Bruce Richards. This was completed fly casting. If you want fly casting instruction from one of the best, it’s out there right now. You can check it out on YouTube. Bruce Richards webinar, it’s there now. Dave (1h 8m 19s): We have the Missouri trip going strong right now. If you’re interested in Phish in the Missouri, If you ever thought about this in Montana, one of the great Western rivers we’re heading there. You can go to West fly swing.com/missouri right now and that’ll get you to a page. You can enter your name and email and I’ll follow up with you on details and I’ll let you know what we have for availability. This is gonna be a small group. We’re going to a small lodge, a very family oriented, really cool lodge. This is Craig Dmar. We have an episode with him on, you can check in with that. Craig Dmar on De Mark Lodge. That’s gonna be on this year. All right, I’m outta here big day today. Hope you are having a good one. I hope you’re having a big day yourself. So, and you have a good morning, a good afternoon or good evening, wherever in the world you are. Dave (1h 8m 59s): And we’ll talk to you on the next one.