[00:00:00] Luke: So this is gonna be an interesting conversation. I am in the best way, so high right now. We're gonna talk about your healing work at some point in the conversation, but for those listening, I just wanna forewarn you, if I am super spaced out, you can blame it on our guest Doyle bra. We just did, um, an incredible healing session, the ultimate breakthrough as you call it, and it was freaking wild.

[00:00:31] So I wanna start off by thanking you for that. Of course. Yeah. Really. Wow. Amazing, amazing stuff. Um, so you have the honorable distinction. I was thinking about this this morning to fact check it, and it's true of being the guest that I've tried the longest to get on my podcast, combined with someone who's a very close [00:01:00] friend.

[00:01:00] I think it has been, I asked Allison, she's like, I think it's been six years. You've been like, Hey, come on my podcast, whatcha you gonna do with my podcast? And, uh, you know, wrangling a gypsy musician to do your podcast is easier said than done. So I'm so glad we finally made this, uh, well, not made it happen, but allowed it to happen.

[00:01:17] Doyle: Yeah,

[00:01:19] Luke: selfishly, I just want to geek out on music for like four or five hours because anytime we've been together. We talk about life and other things and I'm like, you'll just pepper in something really interesting to me about your experience in the music world. And um, I just wanna dive in on every story locked in your head, but for those that are new to, uh, to Doyle here, I was looking at your, your music resume this morning in preparation for, for this podcast.

[00:01:51] And um, but I knew some of these, but just zooming out and looking at your body of work is insane. Um, [00:02:00] I first learned of you in the, with the archangels, like I think in the early nineties.

[00:02:06] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:06] Luke: Yeah. There was kind of a, you know, like a resurgence of roots music and blues and things at that time and you guys were part of that.

[00:02:13] So I was aware of you then. And then around 2001 I was working at a store called Henry Duarte on the Sunset Strip. And I remember seeing your name on invoices 'cause we were making some custom clothes for you, I think for your album cover for that time. And I saw that today. I was like, I remember that jacket.

[00:02:32] I used to sell the shit out of that jacket and you were one of the guys that bought it. So it's a funny kind of near miss history that we have in that way. Um, so you've played with. BB King, Elton John, Greg Goman, Dr. John Buddy, guy Billy Preston, Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, Robbie Robertson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Erica Badu, Sheryl Crow, Roger Waters.

[00:02:55] And more recently and most consistently, Eric Clapton. So [00:03:00] needless to say, I could just be like, let me just take each one of those names and let's just talk about that. Uh, but the thing I want to know is what was it like in the beginning, you know, when you were a kid immersed in music in the Austin scene, in the blues scene, having a musician dad, bring me back to the early days when you first were exposed to music and thought, I wanna try that, and picked up a guitar.

[00:03:30] Doyle: Yeah, it did start here, which is funny that we're doing podcast here because it's, it's my hometown. You live actually really close to my mother at the lake. And uh, and it's, it's always interesting to come back because I remember Austin the way it was in the early seventies. Um, I lived here till I was about five years old, and then we moved to Dallas for a year and then out to California where.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] In Northern California, which is our other connection. Same town. Yeah. Santa Rosa

[00:04:03] Luke: from

[00:04:04] Doyle: Yeah. We, we shopped at the same malls. We, we, uh, went to the same,

[00:04:08] Luke: we bought the same printed tuxedo shirt at the

[00:04:10] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:04:11] Luke: At the, uh, Coddington Mall.

[00:04:13] Doyle: Yeah, exactly. And then, uh, probably like, uh, while you were going to high school there, I was, uh, smoking next to the high school, not going to class.

[00:04:24] Um,

[00:04:24] Luke: to be fair, I only went to Santa Rosa High for the first two months. The day I turned 18. I never went back.

[00:04:31] Doyle: Nice.

[00:04:31] Luke: Yeah.

[00:04:33] Doyle: I just remember walking out of the school and throwing my, all of my textbooks outside in the bushes when I was 15. And I was like, I'm done. I can't do algebra anymore. It's like, I, I just cannot compute what that is.

[00:04:46] What the

[00:04:46] Luke: smartest thing you ever did.

[00:04:48] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:04:48] Luke: It's funny, it's funny that we both lived in or around Santa Rosa around the same time. I think you're like two years older than me.

[00:04:56] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:56] Luke: But I remember our mutual friend, Joey Lesi. Yeah. Uh, shout out to [00:05:00] Joey, who was like friends with you in Santa Rosa, and I was friends with him in Santa Rosa, and I always wondered like, oh, we were like, ship's passing in night.

[00:05:07] It's funny that we didn't, we didn't meet. There might be like a year or two, you know, um, kind of differential there that prevented us from meeting. But it's funny. But anyway, back to back to,

[00:05:17] Doyle: yeah. I think I met him when I was like seven. Oh, six or seven. Oh, so you guys knew each other when you were younger?

[00:05:22] No, we went to the boys' club, like we used to play whatever, like bumper pool together when we were like seven.

[00:05:28] Luke: Funny, I met Joey because I had a New York Dolls t-shirt on.

[00:05:33] Doyle: Hmm.

[00:05:34] Luke: And we were probably the only two teenagers in that entire county that knew the New York Dolls work, you know? So we, we had this very special bond because of our affinity for a certain genre.

[00:05:45] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:05:46] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:47] Doyle: So, bringing it back to Texas, uh, when I was growing up until five years old, uh, I was a part of the music scene by default with my, my, my father who [00:06:00] played with all the different musicians. Most of the musicians had migrated from, from Dallas. So it was all Dallas musicians, but Dallas back in, in that time period was not so hip.

[00:06:13] So down here was very open-minded and liberal. And so all the hippies with long hair and playing blues and all this stuff, they could come down, um, to Austin. And it was like all, you know, springs, hippies, you know, even the country artists down here were hippies, I mean, with Willie. And everybody was super open minded and, you know, free thinking, uh.

[00:06:37] It was just music. It was all music, and everybody was exploring that. So the whole blues movement, they became the fabulous Thunderbirds and Steve Ray Vaughn and my dad's bands, the Cobras, all these bands that was just coming, uh, around in probably 72, 70, [00:07:00] no, 71. Um, and I think all the country artists and folk artists that were down here were already going strong, but it really sort of ramped up at that time.

[00:07:11] And so the club before Antone's, which became the Home of the Blues in Austin, uh, was the armadillo that was like the big club there. And so, uh, a lot of artists like, um, Fatz Domino and um, a a lot of the blues artists, Freddie King, which Jimmy Vaughn and would, would be the, the, the house band, like him and the other musicians in Austin.

[00:07:43] All the young, the young guitar players and, and drummers and and bands down here would back up, um, Freddy and Muddy, and they would all come down. They would be the house band.

[00:07:55] Luke: Wow.

[00:07:55] Doyle: So,

[00:07:55] Luke: wow.

[00:07:56] Doyle: They were probably 19 years old when they were [00:08:00] doing this. And I was, you know, just. I was one, but they would take me to the clubs and I would be at every show, I would be at every sound check.

[00:08:11] And, you know, I would be like, just, they'd be holding me at one or two or three or four, and I would just like hang out. And the club. So everybody, I was sort of like the sort of house wolf that was like the baby wolf that would just hang out and, you know, when it would get too late, they would put me under the stage at the armadillo and I would sleep, um, under the stage while these bands were playing.

[00:08:38] Ha. So it was really just like being infused with

[00:08:41] Luke: Wow. Wow.

[00:08:42] Doyle: With all of that music. Um, and then, uh, and then it sort of got outta hand and my mom was like, okay, there's, there's too much, uh, you know, sex drugs and blues and rock and roll going on here. And she was like, I gotta raise my kids somewhere else.

[00:08:59] [00:09:00] And so she ended up going to Dallas and then we, a year later going to California. And it was, it was quite a contrast of culture because down here it was all, um, blues. Like everything was gritty, raw, you know, dirty and, uh, barbecue. Like everything, the food was dirty, the music was dirty. And uh, we go to.

[00:09:27] California and all of a sudden it's like renaissance fairs, operas, ballets, uh, classical music hikes, backpacking trips, you know, granola, um, even though there was granola down here too, but it was a different, like next level granola out in California going on. Um, so it was quite a contrast. And then, uh, I think it was, you know, I would spend a year in California and then I, you know, I wanted to see my dad, [00:10:00] so I would get sent back to see my dad.

[00:10:02] And every time I moved back from California to Texas, my dad would be in a new city. So I would come down and he would be in Weatherford, Texas. The next time I would come down, he would be in Fort Worth the next time I, you know, so I, I had to constantly switch schools. So I think I went to 13 different schools Wow.

[00:10:23] By the age of whatever. And I think that's where I got disillusioned with school and sort of. Being in a type of life that other people had, because I didn't have a schedule. I didn't have, I was very non-linear in my way of being in the world. So everything was free and open and, and completely non-linear.

[00:10:52] So when I was in a classroom sitting at a desk and my mind drifted to like, drawing [00:11:00] spaceships and planets and aliens and all this stuff, I just wasn't there. I wasn't in the classroom, and I just could not think in linear terms. I couldn't think in a schedule or time or any of that stuff growing up. Um, but back to the music, it became so infused in me that I didn't even think about it.

[00:11:23] I didn't think about becoming a musician until I was really 14 is when I, I felt like, oh yeah, that's what I'm doing. Um, but before that, like, I started playing drums when I was six on my dad's drum kit. And I would do little things here and there and just keep practicing and playing. And I wanted to emulate my dad on drums.

[00:11:48] And then, uh. At 11, uh, I decided to play bass because we had other drummers in the family. So I had step siblings. I grew up with, I had [00:12:00] two stepbrothers and a, and a stepsister, and then my biological sister here, Georgia. Um, and everybody played music and all the uncles and, and, uh, you know, the entire family were all musicians, but there were a lot of drummers and keyboard players.

[00:12:18] And so I was like, all right, well we need a bass player. So I started playing bass and I hung out on the bass for like three years. And then I remember Stevie, Stevie Yon came to the house with the band into my step Grand Grandmother's house. And it was like five, five kids there. Uh, my dad, my stepmother, and then Stevie and his band, uh, double Trouble, which was a three piece band, came to stay there.

[00:12:47] And I don't know how long they were there, maybe, you know, four, four days or five days, but they were living there. And I remember, you know, Stevie always played guitar. Like he was always, he always had it in his hand, that cold shot video of [00:13:00] him like pulling out a guitar every time his wife like threw it out the window and got rid of it and he would just pull another one out and start playing again.

[00:13:07] That was a true story.

[00:13:08] Luke: That's funny.

[00:13:08] Doyle: And um, so I think when I saw him playing, there was something that was just like initiated that it was like, oh. That's what, that's what I wanna do. And I just had a relationship with the actual guitar without even picking it up. I was like, oh, there's something there.

[00:13:27] And so, um, at that point when I was 14, I, I picked up the guitar and my dad had given me a harmony rocket, like I 1963 Harmony Rocket. And it, he, it was played by Lightning Hopkins originally, and he had given it to me for my 14th birthday. But the action was really high on the guitar and the strings were heavy and I couldn't push the strings down on the neck, so I just put it on my [00:14:00] lap and I started playing chords, um, just pressing down flat on the neck.

[00:14:06] And so I sort of taught myself different songs just playing that way.

[00:14:12] Luke: Wow.

[00:14:12] Doyle: Um, until I got another guitar that actually had action I could play, and then I just sort of switched it. But I, I learned all like chord progressions on playing it sort of like who plays Like Jeff Healy.

[00:14:25] Luke: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:25] Doyle: Played that way.

[00:14:26] Right.

[00:14:26] Luke: That's what I was thinking. I'm like, do you ever play lap steel? You'd probably be really good at it.

[00:14:31] Doyle: No, not really. But I, I could play guitar. I can still play guitar like that with it in my lap. Um,

[00:14:37] Luke: well that's one of the things that makes your plane so unique is that you play a right-handed guitar, but you're left-handed, so it's upside down.

[00:14:47] Doyle: No, I actually play a left-handed guitar strong. Oh, you

[00:14:49] Luke: do?

[00:14:50] Doyle: Strong Right-handed. Left-handed, yeah.

[00:14:53] Luke: So that's always been weird to be like, you come to my house and you play my guitar, that's upside down. I'll be like, oh, I'm, I'm trying to look at what you're [00:15:00] playing and I can't tell 'cause it's upside down, like back in Laurel Canyon.

[00:15:04] But what was really interesting is you would, like, you'd be playing something. I'm like, oh, that's cool. How do you do that? And then you would just put my fingers on my guitar and show me how to do it. Which is upside down for you also.

[00:15:14] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:15:15] Luke: So weird.

[00:15:16] Doyle: Well, because it's really cool. Your eye is trained, you know, since you were young, your eye has been trained to see a right-handed guitar player play.

[00:15:24] So you can, you can do the math in your head of what's going on.

[00:15:28] Doyle: Right.

[00:15:28] Doyle: But when you see me play, because everything is reversed, it's like your eye isn't trained to see that. I'm the same way. If I look at, I can transpose everything, a right-handed guitar player is playing, but when somebody's playing like me, I don't know what they're doing.

[00:15:43] Oh, wow. I cant, I can't see what they're doing. I'm like, it's so weird.

[00:15:46] Luke: I wonder if your unique capacity makes it harder for people to rip off your legs. Oh,

[00:15:52] Doyle: for sure.

[00:15:52] Luke: Absolutely. Like if someone couldn't watch a video and you'd be like, oh, I see what he's doing there, you

[00:15:56] Doyle: know. Well, that's actually how I got the, the gig with Eric is [00:16:00] that.

[00:16:00] When we got together for the first time, he wanted me to show him how to play these two songs that he was gonna cover of mine, um, on the BB King Eric record, duet record he was doing. And so I went over to his house because he is, he asked me to come over and show him how to play the two songs. And so he is like, can you teach me how to do what you're doing?

[00:16:21] I can't figure it out. And so we were sitting across from each other and I kept trying to show him, and I would be like, no, like with you, it's like I tried to put his fingers like, no, no, no. It's, it's easy. It's just this, it's like, and he was looking at the guitar and he is like, ah, just come and play the, the part yourself on the, just be on the record and play the part.

[00:16:39] Luke: Oh, sweet.

[00:16:39] Doyle: He's like, I can't figure out what you're doing. It's too confusing.

[00:16:42] Luke: That's funny.

[00:16:43] Doyle: Look at,

[00:16:44] Luke: that's funny.

[00:16:44] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:16:46] Luke: So, okay, so going back to, you got the Harmony guitar, played it on your lap, then take me from upgraded to a guitar that you could actually acclimate to.

[00:16:57] Doyle: Yeah. So I switched from [00:17:00] sort of acoustic and semi acoustic on my lap.

[00:17:03] And then once I brought it up, I got so deep in it. And then I got an electric guitar, which Stevie gave me. This, uh, I don't know if you remember those guitars called Tokas?

[00:17:16] Doyle: Yeah,

[00:17:16] Doyle: yeah. Like a Japanese rip of a, A strap.

[00:17:19] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:21] Doyle: And he, he gave me that for. A gift. Um, and as soon as I got the, the electric guitar on my hand, I, I basically spent, you know, eight or nine hours in my bedroom.

[00:17:35] Every bit of free time I had, I would just spend going through records, listening to records usually. Uh, and I started out with BB King, Jimmy Reed Cream were the first things, and that was the tricky part for me is that, um, that I spent eight hours a day listening to Eric Clapton [00:18:00] and BB King. And that's, you know, when I started soloing, it's like I just wanted to sound like BB and Eric.

[00:18:07] So that's why it was so surreal when I got the call from Eric out of the blue saying, you know, I'm a huge fan of your, your record, your songwriting, and you as an artist, and I'm making this record with BB King and I would love, you know, for you to be a part of it. And then walking into the studio that day, and they were rehearsing my song that I had written that Eric wanted to cover.

[00:18:30] But it's funny because I, you know, the influence of Bebe and Eric was in the songs they were covering.

[00:18:36] Luke: Right, right.

[00:18:37] Doyle: So they come full circle.

[00:18:38] Luke: It's like a feedback loop.

[00:18:40] Doyle: Yeah,

[00:18:40] Luke: yeah, yeah.

[00:18:41] Doyle: It's like, uh. It was just very, that was one of the most surreal moments of my life. Hearing them practicing a song that I had written, which was influenced by them.

[00:18:54] Uh, and they're like, Hey, Doyle, come on in. We're just rehearsing your song. And I was like, oh, [00:19:00] okay.

[00:19:00] Luke: It's so amazing.

[00:19:02] Doyle: He's like, put on a guitar.

[00:19:04] Luke: Alright, I'm gonna, I gotta geek out for one second.

[00:19:06] Doyle: Hmm.

[00:19:07] Luke: I promise. I'm wanna talk about other things besides music. How does B, did BB King get that vibrato? Like no other guitar player in the world has that exact vibrato?

[00:19:21] You know what I'm talking about? Is that, is that in my head? Or it's like, no, no, no. You can like hear it's BB King in two seconds. Yeah. Five notes and you're like, that's BB King playing. It's like a lot of it is in that vibrato. So I watch him, he is got this big kind of fat hand, you know, and it's like, like how is he making it so perfect and also so unique to his voice, you know?

[00:19:41] Doyle: It's crazy. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's the, the energy, I think it's the spirit and energy that channels through. So that was like his spirit, that that's where his sweet spot was of his frequency that he was pulling through his fingers. Right. Definitely wasn't a studied [00:20:00] thing. I mean, he learned like many other, uh, blues artists of that time period, you know, he grew up in the Delta.

[00:20:09] He grew up, um, uh. He said the first time that he ever learned how to play guitar was by, um, stringing up barbed wire from the porch deck to the, the awning on his front front porch. And they would like, hook up four or five strings, and then they would play those barbed wire strings and tune 'em and then like play 'em a certain way to get sounds out of them.

[00:20:36] So he actually learned to play guitar on barbed wire on the porch. So

[00:20:41] Luke: cool.

[00:20:42] Doyle: It's like

[00:20:44] Luke: so cool.

[00:20:45] Doyle: Yeah. So, you know, cut to, he, I think he used like 14 gauge strings. Really? Yeah. And that was probably light compared to the barbed wire he he learned on.

[00:20:55] Luke: Right, right. Wow. The blues is really [00:21:00] interesting to me. Um, I, I mean, I've been a fan of blues music forever, and, um, it's interesting because when you start to trace back the history, there's a certain point at which you just get stuck, right?

[00:21:14] There's so many divergent styles of music and, you know, people coming from Africa, um, European styled instruments, and

[00:21:25] Doyle: mm-hmm.

[00:21:26] Luke: Chord progressions and things all kind of converging.

[00:21:30] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:30] Luke: In a really interesting way. And I, I love listening to the really early primitive kind of blues that's just like, that.

[00:21:38] It's not, they're like, is that even a real guitar? You know what I mean? Yeah. I like that. There, there was like a set of rules to music. Right. To secular music. And then a group of people took those rules and some of those instruments and was like, that's nice. We're going this way.

[00:21:53] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:53] Luke: And did something that, you know, like literally changed the world Yeah.

[00:21:57] Culturally at least, you know?

[00:21:59] Doyle: Yeah. [00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Luke: Like blues is just, it's a music I can never get tired of.

[00:22:04] Doyle: Yeah. I think because it's so deeply rooted, um, it's so earthy, it's so real. It's like, it's all emotion. And it's also, you know, if we're speaking in the spiritual sense, it is all root chakra. Right. And so you're, you're feeling that thing that just like, it moves you in a way because it's so primal.

[00:22:26] It's so rootsy, it's

[00:22:28] Luke: primal. That's the word I

[00:22:29] Doyle: was

[00:22:29] Luke: looking for. Yeah.

[00:22:30] Doyle: Yeah. And if you think about it, I mean, a lot of the, the people that came over. Um, from parts of Africa. Um, you know, I kept going back and back because I wanted to, I wanted to, as a historian, I wanted to learn more and more and more about, okay, well where did that come from?

[00:22:48] 'cause it had to come from somewhere. So I just kept going, you know, deeper in the delta Delta until the beginning of that first person that played on a porch that somebody drove by and went, what's that? You know, [00:23:00] they had gotten a hold of acoustic guitar from a country guy and they were like playing this other kind of stuff on it.

[00:23:07] Um, but those, you know, the, the original, uh, the original people where that came from is in Mali, uh, in Africa. That's where they traced back, where the ships came over and where that, where those people first came from. So you have those rhythms and you have, you know, that, that way of singing and that rhythmic thing going on, but now you're using like a, a, a country acoustic guitar to, uh, express that.

[00:23:42] And so it turned into this whole thing of that being the root of that, where that music is coming from. But then it's a new expression because it's a new instrument, it's a new beat, you know, and then they, they're pulling from, uh, all this, you know, spiritual [00:24:00] music and church music. Um, and then they decided to go secular with it.

[00:24:06] Um, just for their own party sake, because it's like, okay, let's let our hair down and let's, you know, let it all hang out. Um, so that, that became sort of their way of like, uh, purging out all the, the things at that time that were going on, um, with, you know, humanity.

[00:24:28] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:28] Doyle: Um, so that was a way they could just like, be free, you know, and get their time and then express in this music.

[00:24:35] And that's why it's so, you know, you just feel it. I mean, I do, I think if somebody doesn't feel that music then I don't know where they're from. Like, I don't know. I don't know like what they're doing.

[00:24:48] Luke: They might be a reptilian. Well, it's funny 'cause when I was like, really probably was in, I guess early nineties is when I really became a blues head.

[00:24:57] And, um, sometimes [00:25:00] people would sing to me like, why do you listen to that sad music? It's so sad and depressing and I could never understand them. Like, are you kidding me? Like, the saddest John Lee Hooker song of all time is like just pure beauty to me. It doesn't sound sad. It doesn't make me feel sad.

[00:25:15] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:25:15] Luke: It just makes me feel, I feel depth

[00:25:17] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:25:17] Luke: In it, you know, but I've never taken it to be sad as some people do. I mean, even you got the blues, right? It is like, oh, you're really down. But I think because of the honesty of that expression and yeah, just the, as you said, a way to, um. A way to move the kind of energy that was among those early people and the suffering involved.

[00:25:42] You know, it's like, even though it was born out of, um, a lot of pain in many cases, for some reason when it hits this, this realm, it lands on me as like a celebration of

[00:25:55] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:25:56] Luke: Of, of beauty. And,

[00:25:58] Doyle: and if you listen to, you know, if you [00:26:00] listen to the old guys talking about that, like the originators of that music, um, they were questioned about that exact thing, and they said, no, it's not, we're not playing it to be sad or to give you the blues or to give you depression or any of that.

[00:26:17] He's, this was a way to, you know, have, have relief from the suffering that it ca it came from. But it was actually to like really like be free and to, to, to feel things and to, to celebrate through that music. Like, if you watch any of these old clips of like, you know, Helen Wolf or Sun House, it's like they're grooving, you know?

[00:26:44] Yeah,

[00:26:44] Luke: totally.

[00:26:44] Doyle: Like all of them. They're just grooving, hound dog Taylor. It's like they are just partying. So it's not that, you know, because it came from the Delta, it came from those hard times. It was an expression of beauty. It was an expression of their [00:27:00] entire, uh. A culture and, and who they were as a, as a people.

[00:27:05] It was that expression of like the most beautiful, majestic spirit coming through the music

[00:27:15] Luke: when you were young and you, you got that electric guitar and started wood shedding. Um, I think this is like, we have so many things in common. There's one that we don't, I think, and I'm gonna, you'll, you'll answer this, but you, you didn't go through like the heavy metal and punk rock phase.

[00:27:32] Like, I think I've asked you if you like Black Sabbath and you're like, what? No, gross. I'm like, what? How could, even now I don't, I'm not sitting around listening to Judas Priest or Metallica or something, but like black, how about like,

[00:27:43] Doyle: you're listening to Queens of the Stone Age?

[00:27:45] Luke: Ah, I don't like them. One song, the one hit song they had, I forgot what it was.

[00:27:49] Uh, no one knows. I think that was a good song.

[00:27:51] Doyle: Yeah. I actually like,

[00:27:52] Luke: but yeah. Did

[00:27:53] Doyle: you? I actually liked them.

[00:27:53] Luke: Oh, you do?

[00:27:54] Doyle: Yeah. I like Josh.

[00:27:55] Luke: I mean, they're super

[00:27:55] Doyle: cool.

[00:27:56] Luke: They have a unique thing going on, on, I'll give 'em that. But did, did [00:28:00] you ever, I mean, did you go through like the trends of music in the, you know, in the early eighties or did you just because you were so immersed in

[00:28:06] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:28:07] Luke: This kind of rootsy music that you just stayed in that lane.

[00:28:10] Doyle: When I was in fifth grade, uh, I was 11, I think. Is that right? 11?

[00:28:16] Luke: I don't know

[00:28:16] Doyle: fifth grade. Unless I was, I

[00:28:18] Luke: have no idea.

[00:28:19] Doyle: Unless I was held back so much. It's all of it, like,

[00:28:21] Luke: sounds about right.

[00:28:22] Doyle: Okay.

[00:28:23] Luke: Yeah.

[00:28:23] Doyle: Uh. Remember? Yeah.

[00:28:25] Luke: 12, sixth grade, 13, seven.

[00:28:26] Yeah.

[00:28:27] Doyle: Yeah. So I was in a history class and I was so checked outta school, like every class except art. I really loved art, I liked English and PE was one of my favorites. Any way to just run and play football or whatever. Um, but I had this one history class at 11 years old, and I remember the, the history teacher said, uh, today we're going to, you know, study about, uh, American music, blues music, [00:29:00] and we're gonna play a film.

[00:29:01] And it was the world according to Lightning Hopkins. Um, and that guy, I can't remember, Les something, I can't remember his name. Uh, he, he made a bunch of films like on Clifton Cheniere and Louisiana and Lightning Hopkins and other artists. And they were brilliant films. And so he turns it on. I'm 11 years old and I remember when he turned it on, I was like, I mean, I still get chills right now thinking about it 'cause I was like, full-bodied chills just looking at Lighten Hopkins and just watching every little thing that was in this movie.

[00:29:40] All the playing and just the relationships, the, the, the relationship to Earth and people and the connectedness of, you know, that community. And I was just glued to this, this, uh, projector, you know, film. And I remember everybody about [00:30:00] halfway through the, the, uh, movie was asleep, like everyone, and I was only one awake.

[00:30:05] And I was looking around at these people like, are you guys crazy? You know, the gold we're getting right here. Like, this is incredible. And uh, so that was like one moment where it was like this awakening thing and then that was it for school. It was like, that was the one cool thing that happened to me at school.

[00:30:26] Um, so, uh, at that time period, people were listening to Duran Duran and, uh, Oingo Boingo and, um,

[00:30:39] Luke: men at Work.

[00:30:42] Doyle: Well, I sort of like men at work. They were cool.

[00:30:45] Luke: I have, I have, you know how songs give you just associations that you can't, you you can't get rid of. Yeah. You know what I mean? There's like, you just hear a certain song.

[00:30:53] A lot of those kind of early eighties pop, new wave hit songs. Yeah. [00:31:00] They give me the creepiest feeling inside because they would be on my, on my clock radio that would wake me up really early to go to school. And I dreaded school. I mean, school was like going, which made even annoying day. Yeah. So I hear some, some of those songs you don't, you want Me baby?

[00:31:16] There's like certain songs from that era. I'm just like, turn it off. Turn it off. Totally creeps me out.

[00:31:22] Doyle: Yeah. So I I I had no, uh, connection to pop music at all. I just, it sounded very lightweight and I mean, it just didn't do anything to me. I would listen to it. I mean, there were some things that came through that I liked, um, like Shock The Monkey by Peter Gabriel.

[00:31:39] Like when that came out I was like, oh, that has something else going on.

[00:31:43] Luke: That's one of the ones that creeps me up.

[00:31:48] Doyle: But because I am a monkey

[00:31:50] Luke: You

[00:31:50] Doyle: are. And Chinese Zodiac. I am a monkey.

[00:31:52] Luke: Yeah.

[00:31:53] Doyle: So when Shock the Monkey came out Oh. Singing for

[00:31:57] me.

[00:31:57] Luke: But you didn't, you just, you didn't get caught up in like [00:32:00] metal and punk rock and things like that?

[00:32:01] Doyle: No, metal was tough for me. Um, even though I was in a, I was in a heavy metal band, one of my first bands when I was 15.

[00:32:09] Luke: Oh.

[00:32:09] Doyle: And it was called Public Enemy.

[00:32:12] Luke: Really?

[00:32:12] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:32:12] Luke: Wow.

[00:32:13] Doyle: And but the funny thing was

[00:32:15] Luke: you should have copy written that shit. Huh? Should have copy Copywritten.

[00:32:17] Doyle: No, it was when I was 14.

[00:32:19] Luke: Oh.

[00:32:19] Doyle: And I think it was before a Public Enemy came out. Just, yeah. Um. But I remember, uh, at that time period, I went through a lot of phases in, in my childhood because I was trying to fit in somehow.

[00:32:32] And so at that time when I was 14, I was very into like country clubs and I was very preppy. Like I dressed with penny loafers and topsiders and you know, I had my Ralph Lauren and shirts and the sweater and all that stuff. And I would play golf and tennis and do the whole country club, you know, preppy thing.

[00:32:54] Doyle: Wow.

[00:32:55] Doyle: And so when I got hired to be in the metal band, uh, my first [00:33:00] band, uh, I still dressed like a preppy, but everybody else had this, the long hair and wear wore the spandex and all that stuff. But I was sitting there with like a plaid, like Ralph Lauren shirt on and penny loafers and short hair. And uh, and then I would just play blues licks over whatever medal they were doing.

[00:33:20] And I was just like, here's some Albert King, you know? And, uh, and then I switched really hard over to punk rock, the scene of punk rock, because in San Francisco in the eighties, that's when it was, you know, really fired up. It was a little before that in LA I think that punk rock scene. But then it got really, um, you know.

[00:33:45] The punk rock scene in, in San Francisco was a, a pretty big movement. And so I just, uh, that was the culture that I really felt most connected to. So all my friends were punk rockers. The bands I hung out [00:34:00] with were all punk bands. And I went to see everything, all the punk rock bands. And I think it really spoke to me as a spirit because I loved what it represented.

[00:34:09] Just, you know, being totally free, no establishment, like fingers blazing. And, uh, you know, I would hang out in the mosh pits and, and just sit there and like lotus while, you know, with my friend and, and everybody would be like circling and, you know, moshing and doing stage dives. And I would just sit in total peace, like watching, you know, different bands, suicidal tendencies or, so

[00:34:39] Luke: it was the GBH.

[00:34:39] It was the energy,

[00:34:40] Doyle: yeah,

[00:34:40] Luke: the energy of the, of the scene and of the music. You, I just thought of

[00:34:44] Doyle: something and there were some good drugs too,

[00:34:46] Luke: for sure.

[00:34:47] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:34:48] Luke: Um, I just thought of something though, like looking at, at heavy metal and punk rock, say like in the early eighties. I mean, punk rock is much. Closer generally to just [00:35:00] classic rock and roll, right?

[00:35:01] I mean, you think about the Ramones, the Sex Pistols.

[00:35:04] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:35:04] Luke: Iggy Pop. I mean some of the early kind of predecessors of punk rock were playing like 1, 4, 5, like basically r and b chord structures super fast. Yeah. With a lot of attitude.

[00:35:16] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:35:17] Luke: Versus metal gets into like the classical kind of scales and things like that, right?

[00:35:21] Mm-hmm. It's much more GY and dark and Yeah. Doesn't is here as closely to like, going back to the roots of blues. I mean, I hear like the Ramones to me are basically like an r and b band just turned on 78.

[00:35:34] Doyle: I mean, you can, I, if you, if you did some of the Ramone songs, like a fifties band, like a fifties sort of barbershop band, you could probably, there would probably be

[00:35:48] Luke: totally,

[00:35:49] Doyle: you know, some link to the fifties songs.

[00:35:51] Luke: Totally.

[00:35:52] Doyle: You know? Um, I did love Fishbone though. They were one of my favorite.

[00:35:58] Luke: Oh yeah,

[00:35:59] Doyle: they were one of my favorite [00:36:00] groups.

[00:36:00] Luke: Well, we hung out with one of your, one of your buddies from Chris out. Yeah. Yeah. Great guy.

[00:36:04] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:36:05] Luke: Uh, okay, so going back to, and then there's so many more things I want to get into. Yeah.

[00:36:08] So I'm trying to keep myself from going, you know, off the rails here. Uh, but I am just curious about your musical history and thoughts on music in general. Do you remember the first time you got feedback from people, you know, say kids you were playing with or whatever, that you had something special, you know, when did it kind of occur to you when you were like, oh shit, I think I'm pretty good at this.

[00:36:31] Obviously you were wood shedding and practicing stuff, but you have an immense amount of just God-given talent that at least

[00:36:37] Doyle: No, I think I had enough of that on my own. I think I just, I knew that

[00:36:43] Luke: you knew you had a gift.

[00:36:44] Doyle: Yeah. Yeah. Like I, I thought I was really badass,

[00:36:51] you know, I was like, I'm, I'm into some cool stuff here. Like, I know, I know what I'm doing here. Even though looking back, it's like if I [00:37:00] listened to anything that I did when I was 15 or 16, I had to turn it off. It's like, 'cause I didn't really know anything, but I thought I did. And I think that's what sort of, I think that kind of, that energy that I had, that I just thought of myself that highly as a musician, even though I didn't really, like, I was playing in four or five different bands after a year.

[00:37:26] Of like, I started and then a year later I was in five bands playing, like switching off. So I just felt like I thought I could do things.

[00:37:35] Luke: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:37:35] Doyle: And I knew I could do things. And so it, you know, it's like that fake it till you make it thing. Like, I just had it.

[00:37:41] Luke: Yeah. It's like the, your competence gave you confidence.

[00:37:45] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:37:46] Luke: Yeah. And then at 18 you start playing with the Fabulous Thunderbirds with Jimmy Vaughn, right?

[00:37:52] Doyle: Yeah. When I was 17, I was, I flew down to Jimmy, uh, Jimmy Vaughn's house and stayed with him for, I [00:38:00] think three weeks before first tour with the Fabulous Thunderbirds. So I went, uh, from being in all these like, you know, local bands in Santa Rosa and touring Northern California to getting hired, uh, in the Thunderbirds.

[00:38:14] And that came by way of Stevie because I had been sitting in with Stevie at different shows and hanging out with him. And, and so when Jimmy, Jimmy Von had recorded a record called Powerful Stuff, and uh, it was the first record where he had done guitar overdub. So there were a lot of two part guitars.

[00:38:35] And so they wanted to go out and, and represent that, uh, that that record with all the parts on it. And so as he was looking for guitar players, he was talking to Stevie, and Stevie said, you should, you should, uh, hire Doyle to play. And he is like, oh yeah. He's like, he's, he's really good. Like I think he could do that, you know, and be the second guitar player.

[00:38:57] And then Jimmy had later [00:39:00] said that he hired me because of the way I dressed. He said, I, I wore some kind of like zoot suit. You had a co Yeah. Wore a zoot suit and had my hair slicked back At the time when I sat in with him, he was like, yeah, yeah. I like the way he dresses. I think I'll hire him.

[00:39:16] Luke: I mean, he and Stevie are kind of style icons, you know?

[00:39:21] Mm-hmm. Jimmy's got his thing.

[00:39:23] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:23] Luke: You know, he's got his like fifties western skewed suit situation going on stuff. My

[00:39:30] Doyle: favorite was, I think it was the Pat Sajak show. Remember when that was on?

[00:39:34] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:34] Doyle: You remember Sajak?

[00:39:36] Luke: I remember the name, but I can't picture the show.

[00:39:38] Doyle: Okay.

[00:39:39] Luke: He was like a, a a talk show host kind of thing?

[00:39:42] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:39:43] Luke: Okay.

[00:39:43] Doyle: So then he had his own show. So we went on to play on that, and I remember Jimmy walked out with, he had, uh, you know, his Thunderbirds suit on, like all black suit with Thunderbirds on the side, the pants. But he had these cowboy [00:40:00] boots with, with taps on 'em. And also, uh, one of the things on the back Spurs.

[00:40:06] Spurs, yeah. So Spurs and taps. So you could hear him walking when he came down the hallway. Uh, but he wore a holster with guns in it for that performance. On, on that. Performance. We did no

[00:40:19] Luke: shit.

[00:40:19] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:40:20] Luke: What a gangster. That's hilarious. Wow.

[00:40:24] Doyle: Um,

[00:40:25] Luke: real guns too. No.

[00:40:26] Doyle: Yeah,

[00:40:26] Luke: plastic.

[00:40:27] Doyle: So, yeah, so I did the, I guess maybe two years.

[00:40:32] Um, my first show with the Thunderbird. So I practiced with him for three weeks, rehearsed everything. Then we went on tour. We started in Hawaii. I think we had a few shows in Hawaii. And then we went to Australia, and I think we were there for like six weeks or something with my first tour at 18 years old.

[00:40:51] And then we just toured nonstop for two and a half years. Um, and then when we got off the road, uh, [00:41:00] Jimmy left the Thunderbirds. And so I bailed at that time because, uh, I didn't, I only wanted to be in the band if he was in it. Um, so then I left and started my own solo career. Um, and I was in Austin, uh, at, um, at that, that was like the turning point.

[00:41:25] So I, I signed a deal with Geffen. It was like, uh, I don't know how many albums, but I started working on my solo album. Um, but I was trying to find right, the right musicians, write all the songs for it, and then about six months into it, um. We played a show because Charlie Sexton, myself and Double Trouble, Seaver Yvonne's Band after he passed away, we were all rehearsing in this, the Arc Archangels.

[00:41:57] The Arc was the, a rehearsal [00:42:00] complex, and we were all in different rehearsal rooms. And so as I was exploring my first solo album, we decided to get together for, uh, an event that was happening in Austin. So we played the show and there were record labels out, uh, in the audience, uh, at that show. And then it was like everybody wanted to sign us as that unit, Charlie, me, uh, Chris and Tommy.

[00:42:27] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[00:42:27] Doyle: And so they were just like all coming at us like, we're, we wanna sign you. We wanna sign you. And so that's how the archangels came about.

[00:42:37] Luke: Oh, I didn't realize you were already making a path, uh, solo career before that.

[00:42:42] Doyle: Yeah,

[00:42:43] Luke: yeah. Okay.

[00:42:44] Doyle: And I was like, well, I'm, I'm gonna make my solo album. And, but it was the same company, Geffen, that was sort of the highest bidder for us as a band.

[00:42:54] And they said, we'll still make your solo album, but will you do this first? Do

[00:42:58] Luke: this. At what point did [00:43:00] drugs and alcohol start to become a meaningful part of your life and, you know, uh, career, so to speak,

[00:43:10] Doyle: pervasive. Um, I started, I. I started when

[00:43:16] Luke: I was 15,

[00:43:18] Doyle: like the beginning of my 15th year,

[00:43:20] Luke: I started doing,

[00:43:22] Doyle: um,

[00:43:23] Luke: drugs and drinking.

[00:43:25] Doyle: Uh, and I was all in. I mean, I went, I went straight to the hard stuff at that time. Um, and I did that for two years and then I got sober, uh, in the 12 step program. I got sober at 17 and then I stayed sober from 17 till 21, I think. And then I started doing even harder drugs. So I had two years in sobriety.

[00:43:55] Wow.

[00:43:55] Luke: Wow. I didn't know that.

[00:43:57] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:58] Luke: What do you think, [00:44:00] um, led to the relapse?

[00:44:04] Doyle: Well, I know what led to it is the beginning of it was I started having panic attacks that were so intense that, uh, I would walk outside at night to go somewhere and I would look up at the sky and this and the sky and the stars and the moon and everything would start melting.

[00:44:28] It was almost like an LSD type. Thing that would occur. So every time I walked outside, everything would start melting and I would have to run back inside the house. 'cause I didn't know what, I didn't know what that was. But that's how intense panic attacks can get, that it can just really warp the way that your mind works and the way that you see things.

[00:44:53] And so those panic attacks kept getting more intense and more intense. [00:45:00] And then Stevie died in a helicopter accident. And that just sort of sent me, uh, into a, a whole other dimension with panic attacks, anxiety, being scared, um, of existence of living because, you know, one of the, one of the reasons I got sober was because him and my dad had gotten sober.

[00:45:25] And I remember Stevie calling me and, and offering me, you know, offering to help me get sober. And, you know, he was, uh, my mentor and like an older brother to me. And I just, you know, I loved him as a spirit so much and he meant so much to me. So when he, he died, so, um, suddenly, especially from that, that helicopter going down, um.

[00:45:58] I just couldn't [00:46:00] function in, in reality anymore. And so the panic attacks getting more intense and more intense. And then I just stayed in my house and I, I spent like three or four months in my house, in my apartment. Um, and it got to the point, the panic attacks got so intense that I remember that I couldn't go outside.

[00:46:18] At first it was like I couldn't go outside. And then it went to another level of, okay, I can't go outside anymore. And then it got to the point to where if I stood up from a chair above a certain line, like if I stood above four feet in the air, things would start to melt. And so I would have to stay below this sort of imaginary line of like, okay, that's the melting point where everything collapses on me.

[00:46:49] And so then I just basically would crawl around my house to go make food in the kitchen and then crawl back to the bed and crawl back to the chair. I couldn't go above that [00:47:00] line.

[00:47:00] Doyle: Holy shit,

[00:47:01] Doyle: dear. Everything would melt. It would like, I would go into full panic, heart attack, you know, sky melting, ceiling melting.

[00:47:10] Um, that doesn't sound like a very fun way to be sober. No, it wasn't. So I remember I was in, I was at a, a friend's house apparently. I was able to go to a friend's house during, during that time, and. He had, uh, he had, he was talking and he, he said something about Percodan Percodan and he was explaining it because he had had, uh, surgery on his, you know, like root canals and surgeries and all this stuff.

[00:47:44] And he said, you know, I have a whole, uh, bottle of percodan. And I was like, oh, what's that? And he said, well, if you do five of those percodan, it's, it's, it's like doing a hit of heroin. And so I was interested because I was also scared of doing that, [00:48:00] but I was like, anything to take this panic away. 'cause I had, you know, I'd been going to hospitals and emergency rooms because I thought I was dying every night for like 30 days in a row.

[00:48:13] So I would keep going back, emergency room. And they're like, you're fine, you're fine. I'm like, Nope, my heart's, uh, my heart's given out. I'm dying. So then

[00:48:21] Luke: I remember being at Steve Ray Vaughan's funeral and I was having such panic attacks

[00:48:26] Doyle: and I was hooked up to one of those halter monitors. So they, they were, um, checking my, my heart out and I was all like, I was all like, uh, hooked up to these different things to monitor my heart rate and any, um, you know, irregular heartbeats or murmurs or any of that stuff.

[00:48:49] Um. So that's how intense the panic attacks got. So

[00:48:54] Luke: I was finally like, okay,

[00:48:56] Doyle: I'm interested in Percocet,

[00:48:57] Luke: I'm interested in opiate,

[00:48:59] Doyle: whatever that [00:49:00] is. I've never tried it, so

[00:49:01] Luke: that sounds like a good idea.

[00:49:03] Doyle: So I took the bottle and I ended up driving from Dallas to Austin and I took, uh, I think three of the percodan as I was driving down.

[00:49:14] And, you know, an hour later it like all came on and

[00:49:19] Luke: it was the greatest feeling I'd ever felt.

[00:49:21] Doyle: I was like, oh wow, I have no problems. Like I,

[00:49:27] Luke: there's no more of that thing that created the panic

[00:49:33] Doyle: disorder or any of that stuff. I just find it freed me from that, that feeling. Um, so I get back to Austin a week later, I run out of the Percona and I was like, okay, well I definitely need to be on opiates and on that medication.

[00:49:56] So if, so if I've already basically done heroin by taking these FY perin, [00:50:00] I might as well do the heroin. 'cause it's the same thing. So I went to meet someone who I, uh, sold heroin and, uh, I remember even, you know, the, the dealer. Knew my father, knew me, was in, you know, was in the, the circle. And I remember going to find him and I, I said, Hey, I, I'm interested in buying some heroin.

[00:50:29] And he said, what are you talking about? He is like, you and your dad are sober? And I said, yeah, I know, but, uh, I still wanna buy some heroin. And he goes, I'm not, I'm not gonna be a part of that 'cause you know, I'm friends with your family and I don't wanna be a part of that whole thing. And I said, look, either you give me some heroin or sell me some heroin, or I'm gonna go on the east side and I'm gonna try and find it.

[00:50:53] And I said, and I know it's pretty dodgy over there and I'd rather know where I'm getting it from. And so I [00:51:00] talked to men into selling me heroin that way. And, uh, and then it was on for, so two and a half years later, every day I was on heroin and then started adding cocaine to that heroin. Um, and then started adding everything else on top of that.

[00:51:20] So two and a half years of speedballing and alcohol and all that stuff.

[00:51:27] Luke: Where were you living at this time?

[00:51:28] Doyle: Santa Rosa.

[00:51:30] Luke: Oh,

[00:51:30] really?

[00:51:30] Doyle: Well, I was, I was here in Texas for a while, but then there was a whole scene where, uh. The, the feds were casing my, uh, my garage apartment, which I was hosting the biggest drug, uh, heroin and cocaine dealer in Austin at that time.

[00:51:51] It was this like Sri Lankan drug dealer. And so if I let them use my house for them to run drugs through, then they would just gimme the free drugs. [00:52:00] So I thought it was a pretty good deal. Uh, but my dad had, had, uh, told, he had told me that the feds were casing my place 'cause he had been coming by because he was worried about me.

[00:52:12] And he saw fed cars that had been casing the place for like six weeks outside my apartment. So anyway, the last I, I remember everybody left all the sort of dealers and the runners in my house, and I was the only one in the house. And he, he broke in the door and took me and basically forced me into a car, got me on a plane and flew me out to California to stay with my mom.

[00:52:40] And the very next day that I was taken from that by my father, they, uh, busted the house and sent everybody away for like five years in prison.

[00:52:52] Luke: Wow. Wow.

[00:52:53] Doyle: So he just had, he was on it, he had a hunch that something was about to go down. He just broke in and took me out to [00:53:00] California. So then there was a whole other life in California on that until, um, basically I.

[00:53:08] Luke: I OD'ed on,

[00:53:11] Doyle: uh,

[00:53:11] Luke: heroin

[00:53:12] Doyle: one night

[00:53:14] Luke: and it took them seven hours to revive me.

[00:53:18] Doyle: Um, and before that moment, I never thought I could die doing heroin or cocaine. I actually thought I was invincible. So as soon as that happened and

[00:53:30] Luke: I realized that I had died and come back,

[00:53:35] Doyle: I was so scared. I was like, oh wow, I can die.

[00:53:38] 'cause I just thought I could do infinite, you know, amounts of everything and be cool. So once I, I died and came back, I was like, okay, well if I go back into using again, it's not gonna get better than that. Like, there's only one, one place I can go with it and I know I will go [00:54:00] there.

[00:54:02] Luke: So your dad was still, so he and Stevie had gotten sober.

[00:54:07] You'd gotten sober. Stevie dies, you relapse and start descending. Your dad stays sober and then

[00:54:15] Doyle: Yeah, he was sober at that time.

[00:54:16] Luke: How long after Stevie died did your dad pass?

[00:54:21] Doyle: Uh, Stevie died in 90, maybe, I think 90. And then my dad died in 2011.

[00:54:29] Luke: Oh, so it was a long time after that.

[00:54:32] Doyle: Yeah. My dad, my dad and Stevie got sober in the mid.

[00:54:35] Late, uh, like 87 maybe.

[00:54:37] Luke: Early adopters.

[00:54:39] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:54:40] Luke: Pioneers.

[00:54:41] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:54:42] Luke: Dude, I remember, uh, one of the fears I had around getting sober, 'cause I was living in Hollywood and playing in bands and all that stuff, and like being sober felt uncool to me, right. And I was like, I want to be a musician playing band. Like being sober is [00:55:00] lame.

[00:55:00] Um, which is so funny when you're like a total loser addict. Mm-hmm. You're like thinking the people that have their shit together and are living happy, productive lives are the losers. That's a funny perspective. But I remember being really inspired by, um, by Stevie, um, who was another, there was another very public, uh, artist that got sober around that time.

[00:55:23] Eric. Eric, I think it was Eric. Eric. Eric, yeah. And I was like, that doesn't, doesn't get much cooler than that. It was inspiring. And

[00:55:29] Doyle: then,

[00:55:30] Luke: you know, when I, when I did get sober, I ended up, um, working for Aerosmith and they were like the first like rock stars to come out, you know? Yeah.

[00:55:39] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:55:39] Luke: That were like a rockstar band, you know?

[00:55:42] Yeah. They were

[00:55:42] Doyle: into it too.

[00:55:43] Luke: Yeah. And like, talking about it everywhere in the media and like seeing how cool it was and it was so, it actually really helped me to have, um, touch points like that. Yeah. You know, just icons of what is possible that you, you know, your, your gifts or your [00:56:00] opportunity to. Make a creative career for yourself.

[00:56:03] Aren't dependent on Yeah. On doing drugs. So I really appreciated when people started to come out publicly like

[00:56:10] Doyle: that.

[00:56:11] Luke: Yeah. You know,

[00:56:12] Doyle: that's a good point also because I wanted to emulate my father and Stevie so much when I was growing up, that when they got sober, it's like, I wanted to emulate that too.

[00:56:22] It's like, oh wow. There must be something in that. And I think that, you know, Stevie was into a lot of, and he was into the 12 Steps and the big book and Bill Wilson and all that, but he was also into the Course of Miracles as well.

[00:56:36] Luke: Oh really?

[00:56:37] Doyle: Yeah, he was. Oh wow. He was really big on that.

[00:56:39] Luke: Wow.

[00:56:40] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:56:40] Luke: Interesting. I didn't know that.

[00:56:41] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:56:42] Luke: Huh. One, uh, artist that we both share in common is, um, slice Stone, uh, rest in Peace. I was thinking about that this morning. I was like, oh, what music did Doyle And I both like, I mean, there's so much of it, right. But, um, I know you're like a [00:57:00] super hardcore slice stone fan as I am.

[00:57:02] And I was thinking about, you know, the Desert Island collection thing. Mm-hmm. I think Fresh would be in my top two to five. Like, you can never listen to any music the rest of your life, except a couple albums. I really think that would be one. Anytime I go back and listen to it, I just go like, what the fuck is this?

[00:57:24] Yeah. Like, this is so, it's so perfect. It's so brilliant. It's like really just one of the best. Documented pieces of music of all time to me.

[00:57:35] Doyle: Yeah. He really captured that era, like what was going on and, and the sort of zeitgeist and all of it, you know?

[00:57:45] Luke: Yeah.

[00:57:46] Doyle: He was, he, for me, I mean, every sly record, like even the first one, he, a whole new thing like that has songs on it that is so deep.

[00:57:57] And that's when he was just beginning, you know, he was a [00:58:00] DJ in San Francisco or Oakland and, uh, you know, that's, he was coming out of just being a dj, but then he was also very schooled, so he knew composition. Mm-hmm. He knew song songwriting, composition, like, you know, arranging all that stuff. And I think that's what I loved about Sly is he, he had all the funk and all the soul and all the beauty and the, the, the poetic lyrics, you know, to go with it.

[00:58:30] And, um, but even just listening to Family Affair, you know, off riot. I mean, it's just a masterpiece. I mean, he has so many masterpieces.

[00:58:40] Luke: That album is rad because it, it's, it's like the introduction of home recordings. You know, there's like, there's the drum machines mm-hmm. And everything's very kind of dry and sparse and there's not tons of layering of tracks.

[00:58:54] It's like pretty roomy.

[00:58:56] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:58:57] Luke: But it sounds home recorded.

[00:58:58] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:58:59] Luke: Like I used to [00:59:00] have it on cassette and I was like, this is so lo-fi Before lo-fi was a thing. Right.

[00:59:05] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:59:05] Luke: Compared to some of the other ones that are, have so much orchestration and horns and there's so much going on. And like a live room feel.

[00:59:12] Doyle: Yeah.

[00:59:12] Luke: Like a big, big, that one is like so compressed.

[00:59:16] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:16] Luke: It just like lands in a different way.

[00:59:19] Doyle: Yeah. I mean, there's so much going on with Sly because he was so innovative in so many different ways with, you know, sonically innovative, um, song structure, new forms of music, new forms of soul, new forms of rock and roll.

[00:59:36] I mean, he was just like, uh, sort of in this whole alchemy of like slimness, which in encompassed to everything, every type of music. And it was all in there. But he would do like really innovative stuff. Uh. Like, just anything that popped into his head. And he didn't know if it would work or not, but he just like got a hit.

[00:59:58] I was like, oh, [01:00:00] let's do it this way. So, like, for instance, on Family Affair, if you listen to his voice, it's a different voice that he's singing with on, on that track, different than other tracks that he sang. And he wanted that like morning voice.

[01:00:18] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[01:00:18] Doyle: So that's why it's really low sounding, like he sounds like a sort of horse baritone on that.

[01:00:25] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:25] Doyle: Uh, and checking

[01:00:28] Luke: each other out. Yeah,

[01:00:30] Doyle: checking each other out. Yeah.

[01:00:33] Luke: Yeah.

[01:00:33] Doyle: But, um, but the, the story on that was that he, he, he got the idea that he wanted to record, uh, right when he woke up, like the first thing he said when he woke up. So he had the engineer, uh, basically he had a mic and he had the engineer stay up as long as [01:01:00] he could, but he said, as soon as I say record, I'm gonna wake up in the morning.

[01:01:03] So he went to sleep. He said, I'm gonna wake up in the morning and I want you to hit record as soon as I say record.

[01:01:10] Luke: Wow.

[01:01:11] Doyle: And so, you know, he got nine, 10 hours sleep, whatever it was. And then he woke up in the morning and was like, all right. Record. And so he pressed record. The engineer was waiting all night to do that and they played the song down.

[01:01:26] And so that was just his track of, of just waking up. Uh,

[01:01:31] Luke: that's so funny because you think about all the singers that do all, all these vocal warmups and stuff. You, it's like dudes so talented is like, he's doing the opposite of that. It's like, how cold can my voice be when I go record a number one hit?

[01:01:45] You know? It's so funny, dude.

[01:01:46] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:01:47] Luke: Wow. Yeah, there was

[01:01:48] Doyle: a, and also Billy Preston was on that as well, so it was him and Billy Preston playing the two keyboard parts on that.

[01:01:54] Luke: Right. Um, one of my favorite songs of all time is Billy Preston's [01:02:00] Cover a Blackbird. You ever heard that? The Beatles Blackbird.

[01:02:03] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:02:03] Yeah.

[01:02:04] Luke: Insane. Anyway, I digress. Um, let's talk about getting sober, what that looked like. And then I really want to talk about recovery, being a musician in recovery, traveling, you know, how you were able to navigate that in a world that, you know, I'm sure maybe less so now in some cases, 'cause many people have gotten sober and sobriety and rehabs is kind of a, a known and popular thing in the entertainment Yeah.

[01:02:32] Entertainment industry more so than then. But when you, you know, really started getting to that, um, you know, breaking point that the do or die phase, what did that second. Sobriety entail. And where did that start to lead you in terms of your spiritual path and career?

[01:02:49] Doyle: So during the time that I was, I was doing speedballs, which is heroin and cocaine, not speed.

[01:02:58] Um, [01:03:00] I didn't, I didn't pick up a guitar or play music or even think about music in that two and a half years. Um, I had no interest for anything other than getting the drugs and putting them in me.

[01:03:16] Luke: Yeah,

[01:03:16] Doyle: I'm familiar. And, uh, so, you know, I would, I would be asked to play music and the only time I would play music is like, if I totally ran outta money or, you know, didn't have a way to steal anything, I would, um, I would go play a gig and I would be like, whoa.

[01:03:31] Like I have a lot of money here for my drugs. Like, it's a good idea. But I, I really didn't wanna be outside because I also didn't look like, I look now, I, I got down to probably 145 pounds maybe. And, uh, like I was so skinny and I mean, the bones was like sticking out in my face. Um, so I didn't really want to be seen.

[01:03:58] Um, [01:04:00] so, uh, when I. I went through that two and a half period with zero music in my life, zero. Anything other than drugs that when I OD'ed and came back to life. Um, that's when I put myself on a protocol. 'cause I'd already, I'd been to many treatment, uh, centers. Um, I'd just gone in and out of many treatment centers, um, during that time period.

[01:04:30] Um, but I only lasted like, you know, three or two or three days until I just couldn't And you just

[01:04:35] Luke: bounce.

[01:04:35] Doyle: Yeah. Couldn't take it anymore. It was like two or three days and I was out. I would break out of the treatment centers even if they were like locked. I would figure out a way to get out.

[01:04:44] Luke: Thank God.

[01:04:45] Doyle: Um,

[01:04:45] Luke: one of the things that kept me sober in the early days was knowing how much it sucks to be in rehab for 28 days.

[01:04:54] I got fucking brutal. That was on so many levels. I was like, I'm never gonna [01:05:00] relapse because I know if I don't die or end up in jail, I'm gonna end up in another rehab. And that I can't allow that. It's just torture. Mine was in Santa Rosa. No, Sebastopol.

[01:05:09] Doyle: Oh really?

[01:05:10] Luke: Azure Acres. And I went in, I went

[01:05:12] Doyle: into that place

[01:05:13] Luke: and I went in coming off heroin.

[01:05:14] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:05:15] Luke: And so I, I'm insomniac right. And can't sleep cold as shit. I'm 135 pounds. Are you

[01:05:23] Doyle: gbs?

[01:05:24] Luke: I check into that rehab and it's all tweakers. It's like all construction workers whose insurance paid for them. It was all tweakers. So all they could do is sleep and they're always hot. I was like totally outta sync, which made it torturous.

[01:05:38] So I'm just, I can't sleep for days and days. I'm freezing my ass off. It was in February in Sebastopol and it was just, yeah. I mean, I'm grateful for, obviously for it saving my life, but that was really motivating to me. I'm like, I'm never doing that shit again.

[01:05:51] Doyle: Hmm.

[01:05:52] Luke: Yeah. So I can't imagine being in a few.

[01:05:54] Doyle: Yeah. So, so when I, um, went through that thing, I, I OD'ed [01:06:00] then I went to jail the same night that I OD'ed.

[01:06:03] Luke: Oh fun.

[01:06:04] Doyle: And, uh, I spent a couple, a couple days in jail

[01:06:08] Luke: in Santa Rosa.

[01:06:08] Doyle: Yeah. And, uh,

[01:06:11] Luke: where'd you go to jail for?

[01:06:13] Doyle: Well, they got me for, uh, public intoxication.

[01:06:17] Luke: Oh.

[01:06:17] Doyle: But they, they, they said they were getting me because I had drugs on me, but I didn't have any drugs 'cause I did all the drugs.

[01:06:24] Right. I had nothing on me. Right. Um. But yeah,

[01:06:28] Luke: they sort of roughed me up, did this whole thing, and then took me to jail and then they fire hosed me in the jail

[01:06:33] Doyle: and what stripped me and put me in the, the, the cell with the holding tank with all the other people in jail. And then they would just fire hose me and leave me in the middle of the room.

[01:06:43] Luke: Are you

[01:06:43] Doyle: just strip naked are

[01:06:44] Luke: serious?

[01:06:45] Doyle: Yeah,

[01:06:45] Luke: I know where that jail is. It's right, it's right off the 1 0 1.

[01:06:48] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:06:49] Luke: On the way to Windsor.

[01:06:50] Doyle: Yeah. It wasn't pleasant. I mean, the funny thing is, is I thought Texas like, you know, would be more hardcore on that level.

[01:06:59] Luke: Yeah.

[01:06:59] Doyle: But [01:07:00] it was actually Santa Rosa, which was a bit more hickey uh,

[01:07:03] Luke: right.

[01:07:04] Doyle: With, you know, that scene.

[01:07:06] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:07:07] Doyle: Um, so anyway, I was in there for a couple days and I just had this sort of, you know, moment where, you know, the universe was looking out for me. Um, because when I was getting roughed up in jail and going through all that stuff, I walked out, uh, I was let out of that holding tank and they were gonna switch me and get, and so this, this guy who was, uh, a sheriff that had walked in, he said, um, he, he opened the door, let me out, and we were walking to get some clothes.

[01:07:40] He said, Hey, I have some clothes for you. We're gonna go in this other room so you could put the clothes on. And he said, I'm, uh, I'm, uh, I think his. He was my best friend's uncle, and he had recognized my name and he said, you know, I I, I heard about what they did with you. [01:08:00] And he said that wasn't cool what they did.

[01:08:02] And he said, and so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna let you out, uh, the back door, but when I let you out the back door, just, you know, take off and don't look back.

[01:08:13] Luke: Holy shit.

[01:08:14] Doyle: Uh, so he broke you out? Yeah. It was like my, my childhood best friend's uncle who had recognized me my name.

[01:08:21] Luke: Yeah.

[01:08:22] Doyle: Even though he probably didn't recognize my face 'cause the way I looked.

[01:08:26] But, uh, anyway, he said, you know, I saw what they, they did to you and, um, it wasn't cool and I'm gonna let you outta here, but don't say a word about this. So he let me out and then I got, um, you know, some court document at my home address where I had to go to court for, you know, some certain things around that.

[01:08:48] And, um,

[01:08:50] Luke: did they, did they, uh, charge you with like breaking out because you couldn't tell that you were let out?

[01:08:55] Doyle: No, because they didn't have anything on me. 'cause they were saying that I had drugs on me, but they [01:09:00] didn't, I didn't have anything on me

[01:09:01] Luke: evidence. Right.

[01:09:02] Doyle: So they got

[01:09:03] Luke: me. No true junkie ever carries around drugs because you, you did it all.

[01:09:07] Yeah. The only way you get caught with drugs is on your way back from scoring. But most pe like in LA we used to score on, um, a sixth and Bonnie Bray.

[01:09:17] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:09:17] Luke: That area down by MacArthur Park. I was there. That was really the only place, one of the few places you could buy heroin on the street. Yeah. Because no one sold it in Hollywood.

[01:09:24] They only sold crack.

[01:09:25] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:09:26] Luke: And the junkies that I hung around would, would score and then like, pull over right there and use

[01:09:33] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:09:34] Luke: And, and often get arrested, you

[01:09:36] know?

[01:09:36] Doyle: Right.

[01:09:36] Luke: So I never, I never did that 'cause I didn't want to, I didn't want to interrupt my high, you know, it was like, I would just sweat it out till I got back to Hollywood and then I would use, you know, just drive home with the balloons in my mouth in case I could pulled over, I could swallow 'em, you know.

[01:09:51] But I used to always think like, God, you idiots 20 more minutes and you're home free. You know what I mean? It's like, don't pull over right next to the dope spot and use you [01:10:00] fucking idiot. A lot of people used to do that.

[01:10:03] Doyle: So when I, um, so I went through that whole thing, went through the court thing. Um, I ended up, you know, getting off, uh, and not having to go back to jail, but, uh, in court I was told that I have to, uh, do, uh, weekly counseling every day, weekly counseling at, at the methadone clinic.

[01:10:26] Um. That was like for six, for six months, I think I had to go every day, every weekday to the methadone clinic and have counseling. Uh, so I would get my methadone and then I would go into the counselor's office and we'd have an hour of discussion and then I could leave. And so I did that. Um, and then the scene and in, in, in Santa Rosa at the time was, was getting more intense because at that point I was like, okay, I'm stopping heroin and I'm stopping cocaine.

[01:10:58] But I was still on methadone and I was [01:11:00] still on a lot of alcohol. Um, and I was on, uh, Klonopin, Valium and Librium, all three of those at the same time. And so when I would drink, I would drink so much that I would go into blackouts. And there was one, you know, month where I blacked out 30 nights in a row.

[01:11:22] But I was blacking out from like a sip of beer because like my liver just couldn't process or kidneys couldn't process any more alcohol in my blood. So I would drink like a couple of sips and then I would just black out. Um, so anyway, I moved back to Texas, got outta Santa Rosa, and then I decided to, I was started to write songs again, not being on heroin.

[01:11:43] So all these songs started, you know. Pouring out of me. And I decided, I was like, okay, I'm gonna give myself a year and I'm gonna put myself on my own protocol. And my protocol was to wean myself off of [01:12:00] methadone. I was gonna keep drinking as hard as I could drink because I thought I'll drink for a year just myself into oblivion.

[01:12:06] So when I wake up from that, uh, after I wean myself off of all the other drugs, uh, you know, I don't really like drinking. I'm just doing it because I don't wanna think about heroin anymore. So I would, I would, you know, wouldn't be seduced anymore by heroin and cocaine. And so I did, I drank myself into oblivion and caused a lot of, you know, havoc in my life.

[01:12:32] But I also was weaning every day. I would very, I would like be very meticulous about like, okay, five milligrams less of this, five milligrams, less of this. And I did it. And then to the year I weaned off of everything. And I remember waking up after being in a blackout, and I was off all the drugs finally one day.

[01:12:52] And, uh, I looked at myself in the mirror and I was, my liver and kidneys were so taxed that it was like I had just [01:13:00] like these red splotches that were all over my body because I wasn't processing the alcohol. Like I wasn't filtering it out anymore. And I was like, okay, cool, I'm done. And I just stopped.

[01:13:12] And then then. Like maybe a week later I moved to California and picked back up where my record deal had left off. 'cause I still had a record deal with Geffen. And after the Archangels

[01:13:27] Luke: are they like just waiting on uh, hello? You owe us three

[01:13:30] albums.

[01:13:31] Doyle: But during that time period of that year, I had been demoing and writing songs and I think I had like 30 songs that I had written.

[01:13:39] Oh wow. And pitched to the company, the record company. And they really loved the songs. But I just wasn't quite ready 'cause I wasn't sober yet. So I stopped alcohol, all the drugs, and I moved to California and within a month and a half I was making my first album in la

[01:13:56] Luke: Holy

[01:13:57] Doyle: shit. Uh, with Wendy and Lisa.

[01:13:59] Luke: [01:14:00] Wow.

[01:14:00] Doyle: From Prince's Band, the Revolution.

[01:14:02] Luke: Wow.

[01:14:03] Doyle: And uh, so then that started that life. So I was able to stay, you know, at that point I had no interest in doing drugs and alcohol ever again.

[01:14:11] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:12] Doyle: And I wasn't going to meetings at that time, but I did start going to meetings here and there. And then I got a sponsor and that sort of eased into the 12 Step program again.

[01:14:24] Luke: That's the craziest, uh, rehab program ever. I was,

[01:14:28] Doyle: yeah,

[01:14:28] Luke: wean off methadone one day at a time for a full year drink like crazy. You didn't have the DTS or anything when you stopped the alcohol?

[01:14:36] Doyle: No, I mean, I was, I was getting so sick from the alcohol. Okay. Yeah. It was like the next day I just felt like, oh, right, I'm finally free.

[01:14:45] And it's like my body started clearing up.

[01:14:47] Luke: Was there, you know, during that period or when you, you know, went back to LA and started working on music again? When did, when or if prayer, [01:15:00] divine intervention, you know, that come into play? 'cause I, I know for me, I mean, there's a moment where I think I uttered my, well, I don't think I know.

[01:15:10] I uttered my very first sincere prayer to God.

[01:15:12] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:13] Luke: Even though I didn't believe in God at all. I just, there was no other choice. And I did it and was struck sober and it'll be 29 years in a couple days, you know, so it's like I couldn't deny that God was the, um, was the common denominator in that.

[01:15:30] Right. Yeah. Because I could never do it myself. All of a sudden I say this little prayer and poof, like, magic, you're just sober. Never, ever thought about using, ever since. You know, it's just crazy. Did you have any kind of epiphanies or visitations or signs or were you working on this from a spiritual angle at all?

[01:15:49] Doyle: Uh, not really. You know, when I started getting back into a, into a or, um, you know, the 12 step program. [01:16:00] I was doing it because I thought it was the thing I should do being a recovering alcoholic. So I would go to meetings, but I would sit in the back and if I knew that they were calling on people around the room, I would duck down below somebody.

[01:16:17] I totally, so I wouldn't get called on, and then I would like peek back up after, okay, well that's time. And I'd be like, okay, cool. I can sit up now and be free. Um, but I really half-assed it. Like I was just there, just putting myself there because I, I thought it was the right thing to do, or I thought people would think it was the right thing to do.

[01:16:35] Like that's what you're supposed to do. You're a recovering alcoholic, you need to be in meetings. I was like, okay, that's what I have to do. Um, but it wasn't until 2010 where I went through this whole shift, like at Veta non-duality shift, where I became one with everything. I could see that I was one with every, you know, energetic thing in, [01:17:00] in the world.

[01:17:02] So I started connecting in that way. And then I really went deep into, um, the 12 step program. I got a sponsor, went to my home group, and. You know, I was in bliss, you know, when I started doing that. And, but I actually hit on the, the whole spiritual awakening thing into non-duality just before I started. I went into AA to practice that as a, the spiritual program, but I had come into it before that.

[01:17:33] Just before that.

[01:17:34] Luke: Did that happen, um, in a spontaneous way, or did you get the clue that, Hmm, I should probably start leaning into spirituality?

[01:17:44] Doyle: Uh, no. I think it was like, you know, I, I was in a, I was in a, uh, a marriage and had two daughters in that, that marriage. And, uh, [01:18:00] we ended up s splitting and, and, um, getting a divorce at the time.

[01:18:06] And so, uh, it was a very taxing and challenging process to go through, not not being with my children and not being there every day and every morning with my daughters to, uh, to be a part of their life because, uh, I had to be outta the house. You know, I had to live somewhere else. And, um, it was very difficult for me because I'm so connected with my, my children.

[01:18:38] So, um. I was getting very anxious, very fearful and all that, um, stuff through the divorce process. Um, and even just being away from my children. And I think I, I just sort of, I sort of blew a gasket one day [01:19:00] in that process. But I also did something at the same time that I made a choice in my life. And when I made that choice and took action to do that thing that I was afraid to do, that, that opened up the doors and it opened up my heart.

[01:19:20] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[01:19:20] Doyle: And something just activated within me, but I had to do that thing for it to activate. And I didn't, you know, I didn't know that until I went through it.

[01:19:32] Luke: And what's it been like being immersed in the music industry as a sober person? Was that more difficult early on? I mean, did you encounter situations in which, you know, you pick up a gig and like everyone else in the band as high as shit and there's like tons of drugs around, was that, was that an issue at any point that you had to learn how to navigate?

[01:19:53] Doyle: Not really because. I always had an understanding that, you know, I had no issue with anybody else [01:20:00] drinking, you know, around the dinner table or other people drinking wine or people, you know, doing their thing or if even if they wanted to do drugs, it's like, that's not my issue. My issue was me and drugs and alcohol.

[01:20:13] But, you know, other people don't have that issue. You know, some do, but I would, I didn't mind that people would drink around me. Like it, it didn't affect me at all. And, and in music, you know, I would go to clubs and be around people that drank all the time. I mean, I might not want to have long conversations with people that are sort of, you know, like spraying me with saliva when they're drunk or, you know, talking gibberish or slurring.

[01:20:45] It's like, that's not that interesting for that long. But other than that, it's like, I didn't judge them for whatever they're, they're going through and whatever, you know, they have their own so soul contracts here that they have to.

[01:20:57] Luke: Did you ever feel any sense of, [01:21:00] um, like insecurity or not coolness?

[01:21:04] Doyle: No, not at all.

[01:21:06] Luke: Were you open about the fact that you were sober with people you playing with? Yeah. And touring with

[01:21:10] Doyle: and stuff? Yeah, I liked it. I liked it because it was different. You know,

[01:21:14] Luke: it's punk rock.

[01:21:15] Doyle: Well, it's like

[01:21:15] Luke: I play guitar left-handed upside down. Everything I do is non-linear. Everything I do is different.

[01:21:22] Doyle: The way I play guitar to Eric, with Eric playing is on the backside of what he does. It's upside down and backwards from what he plays. So that's why we fit, like, you know, a puzzle. It's like we fit perfectly because I do all the stuff around what he's doing. So he plays his bits and then I do all the stuff around him, just weaving around mm-hmm.

[01:21:45] What he's doing. And I've always sort of been that way in everything in my life. Like I've, I've been, uh, a foil to whatever. I, I've always been a counter, which, [01:22:00] you know, comes into like, uh, what is it? The human design, which is a generator. So if I'm with a manifester, I can take what a manifester gives if they have an idea, and I can take that and then I can generate so much energy around that and just pass it back.

[01:22:18] Luke: I'm trying to remember what my image design thing is. I think it's a manifesting generator.

[01:22:23] Doyle: Oh, sure, buddy. You got it all.

[01:22:26] Luke: I did it. I the

[01:22:27] Doyle: best of the

[01:22:27] Luke: best. I did a show on it and she, she read my chart. I think that's what it was. But I, I haven't followed. Yeah, that

[01:22:32] Doyle: makes sense.

[01:22:33] Luke: I haven't followed it enough.

[01:22:34] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:22:35] Luke: Um, so. At what point, because you and I share something that is pretty unique in my experience, and that is feeling called to work with psychedelics while at the same time being firmly committed to sobriety. Mm-hmm. Something I've been writing a lot about in my book, it ended up being a pretty large portion [01:23:00] of the book, just because it's been so, I don't know, liberating and illuminating for me, but it's also something that is super risky, you know, for people in recovery.

[01:23:10] So

[01:23:11] Doyle: yeah,

[01:23:11] Luke: it's like, I talk about it, but at the same time I'm like, just because it's worked for me, I, yeah. I really don't recommend it. You know what I mean? That's, it's like, I don't know how that's gonna turn out for someone else. Yeah. I think in my case, I was so deeply committed to my sobriety from day one.

[01:23:25] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[01:23:26] Luke: You know, that by the time I started working with plant medicines and stuff, I was 20 years sober and like this, I'm not, I wasn't interested in going out. Right. Yeah. Or like relapsing, like no, I sat with Ayahuasca the first time. I was like 10 times more committed to my sobriety after that, you know?

[01:23:43] Yeah. So it really is, it's kind of a, a real dichotomy and, um. One that I think a lot of people don't understand from the outside because it's like, wait, you call yourself sober, but you're doing mushrooms? Yeah. It's like,

[01:23:57] Doyle: yeah.

[01:23:58] Luke: What, how did you [01:24:00] reconcile that and what was going on in your life where, where you felt there might be something there for you in terms of healing or expansion of your spiritual practice or whatever it was?

[01:24:10] Doyle: Well, I think it was, um, what was it, what's the guy's name? Michael p Pola Po

[01:24:17] Luke: Poland, Michael Poland,

[01:24:19] Doyle: the guy who wrote about microdosing

[01:24:20] Luke: and mm-hmm.

[01:24:22] Doyle: So I read that book and it fascinated me just on a level of what it does, even as a microdose and how it hooks up all the neurotransmitters and neuro pathways and reconnects things that aren't connected.

[01:24:37] And with, you know, the type of drug use and alcohol that I used. I'm, I was like, well, there's gotta be some stuff that's not hooked up there. So, reconnecting all that stuff within my system, you know, felt like a good idea. And so I started, I was on the road and I started, uh, microdosing, uh, mushrooms, but it [01:25:00] was imperceivable.

[01:25:01] I mean, I, you, I wouldn't be able to tell at all if I had taken it or not, but I just knew it was doing something in my system and, uh, I just, I started to, um, I started to feel different and also. You know, now looking back, I think that just on a microdose level, the mushrooms, which, which hold all the information of the earth right?

[01:25:30] And holds all this information, those God wisdom in it, or whatever you want to call it, but that earth wisdom, you know, the wisdom that the ancestors, you know, knew about the, the going all the way back. Like it holds all the information of what you know, things that we've lost as a western civilization that we've lost touch with, right?

[01:25:53] So we've lost touch with our spirit to source and to be here on earth at the [01:26:00] same time, and what it means to be on earth. What does, what does it mean to be connected to a tree? Like, do people have those relationships with energy that's coming from a tree or a cactus, or a, or a wolf, or you know, a bird or whatever it is.

[01:26:17] And, uh, so I think that when I started microdosing mushrooms, it was giving me information and sort of guiding me on what I needed to get to within this human body system and how I really needed to, to ground here on earth and, and have a connection to this life and, and this body and other people and other animals and other rocks, like whatever it was.

[01:26:47] Um, so I think that the mushrooms, they're very funny. You know, they have a, a very cosmic sense of humor, and I think that it was informing me to do a more deep [01:27:00] dive using, uh, you know, uh, a therapeutic ceremony dose of mushrooms. And so, you know, I looked around at different ways of exploring that and, uh, you know, I was thinking about ayahuasca, um, and, and other types of, of plant medicine or animal medicine.

[01:27:21] And, and, uh, and then I was, it was suggested to me to work with, uh, someone that was, you know, doing really beautiful, uh, ceremonies. And so, um. I remember I'd been microdosing for about, uh, a year on the road. And when I got back I was like, okay, I, I feel like I want to do that type of ceremony. And I'd been reading about it, I'd been hearing about it from a lot of beings that were coming into my field.

[01:27:49] I mean, even you, like, that just happened, like out of nowhere. We were connected and we had like

[01:27:56] Luke: Right. 'cause when you met, I, I think I had already

[01:27:59] Doyle: You were there. [01:28:00]

[01:28:00] Luke: Yeah. I had, I'd done two ayahuasca retreats, I think at that point.

[01:28:05] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:28:05] Luke: Yeah.

[01:28:06] Doyle: But I said, you know, we had hooked up, you had commented on like a, a post or something, or I had commented on one of your things and you were like, Hey man, I remember you from blah, blah, blah, and

[01:28:16] Doyle: mm-hmm.

[01:28:17] Doyle: And then we started talking and then we had all these, you know, connections. Like, oh, I went to the same school as you did in Santa Rosa, and I did, uh, drugs. Just like, you know, we had like the exact same mirrored life. Yeah.

[01:28:31] Luke: Yeah.

[01:28:32] Doyle: Along the way. Um, so then, yeah, I, I went in, uh, and when I did that first ceremony, when I went in, it was, it was really wild to me because I was not interested in losing my sobriety at all.

[01:28:46] Like, anything to to, to cloud my presence. W. I had no interest of any of that. Like I wanted to be more clear. I wanted to be more present. I [01:29:00] wanted to be more connected. I wanted to understand how, uh, addiction works in my body, how the codependency works in my body, how, um, you know, all these spiritual, emotional, ancestral things work.

[01:29:13] And I knew, uh, that I hadn't gotten to the deepest parts of that within me. And so when I did that first ceremony on mushrooms, it opened me up into where it was like, I was like, oh, I understand these realms. Like these are the realms that my spirit exists in all this third dimensional stuff. And the density here, I, that's the part I don't get, but I understand this.

[01:29:52] So every time I went in, I would do ceremonies. I was like, oh, I'm free. Like, oh, I get it. And I [01:30:00] could see all the things like, I mean, I had things that happened when I, in my childhood, in that first uh, ceremony that I did, that popped up and it was like, it was basically like I, I said to the shaman, I was like, this is like swallowing, like Carl Jung like I just swallowed Carl Jung and now I have young in my, like I, I have access to those parts of myself that he was talking about.

[01:30:22] And now I get to explore 'em and I get to do the surgery and spiritual surgery on myself to correct certain things. And, um, so, you know, I, I started exploring that. And then I started, uh, you know, helping the, the shaman facilitate and do bigger, you know, facilitations for group, group, like large groups. And, and then I just was basically became like, I, I remembered myself as a medicine man, like from whenever.

[01:30:56] And so it's like, oh yeah, I remember this, I remember this. I know how to do this, [01:31:00] you know, and um, and then, you know, the plant medicine and animal medicines really opened me up and, and that's where I got all of my practice. On all the spiritual processes, uh, that I go through now, and the, and all the healings that I facilitate.

[01:31:20] Like I got all my chops with medicine, but at some point I had to, you know, specifically drop the medicine in order for me to actually, uh, ascend into the next level of how to do this without the medicine.

[01:31:34] Luke: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, the work we did today, I was, Allison doesn't know that much about your, you know, your protocol.

[01:31:44] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:31:45] Luke: Said, oh, I'm so excited tomorrow I'm gonna do a session. What do I, she's like, 'cause are you guys doing medicine? I'm like, no, dude. Doyle doesn't fuck with medicine. He's on some other level of shit, you know?

[01:31:54] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:31:55] Luke: Which is funny 'cause she's always said since I've known her, like, you don't need psychedelics to go to those [01:32:00] places.

[01:32:00] There's just one way you can get there. But she's been doing it on the natch for a very long time, you know?

[01:32:06] Doyle: Yeah. So I think that's, you know, I think that's true for a lot of people. I think with me, it helped me on the fast track to get here to where I'm at now.

[01:32:20] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[01:32:21] Doyle: And you know, I mean, I ended up like, you know, with my face planting on the edge of the universe because

[01:32:29] Luke: I did so many plant medicine ceremonies that I just hit the edge of the universe 'cause I wanted to see it all

[01:32:34] Doyle: right.

[01:32:35] I wanted to, I wanted the biggest peak behind the veil and go. What is at the core of the universe, I wanna know everything. But when I asked for that on the medicine, it was like, okay, you wanna see everything. It, it includes the, the lower worlds too. The underworld.

[01:32:53] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[01:32:53] Doyle: And I didn't, like, didn't part counted.

[01:32:56] I was like, oh, yeah, I didn't wanna see that part. Like, I don't [01:33:00] want to. So I sort of get my ass handed to me. And it was all perfect, because when I got my ass handed to me through the medicine, what I did for the next eight months after that was I took myself outta society. I took myself out of basically everything.

[01:33:20] I didn't read books, I didn't watch tv. I didn't look at clocks because they were screaming at me. Uh, I hadn't, I, I couldn't take any stimulation of any senses. And so I basically put myself in a version of like a dark room for eight months and ate a lot of food, grounded, went hiking every day for, you know, four or five, six hours a day.

[01:33:45] I would hike, then I would eat, then I would hike. Then I started working out, and then I, I wanted to bulk up. I wanted to get grounded here. And then after eight months, it was like, I was sitting in a house and I was like, oh, I'm so scared to let go outside [01:34:00] because I just couldn't take any like, you know, uh, outside sensory stuff.

[01:34:07] And then finally it was like I was sitting, I was sort of running outta cash. I'm like, okay, I can't sit in a room for eight months. Like I have to do something. Like I have, I have children, I have like all these things I have to do insurance. And so finally I got a call from Eric and, and he said, Hey, we're gonna do a tour.

[01:34:27] And that was coming out of COVID. So it was the first time anybody was touring in the u the US after COVID, they were starting to opening up, open up, uh, venues again. And so he said, will you come out with me to do the tour? And I was like, yep, okay. I'm ready. And I remember I got on the flight, left the room in the house that I was in for that eight months.

[01:34:53] And I got on a flight. And I remember when I landed, I could feel like a [01:35:00] cellular shift. And I walked into rehearsal and saw Eric and all the band and all the, the, um, the crew members that were a part of that. And I remember I just blasted open, my heart chakra blasted open, and it was like, I, I felt like, you know, the whole term love, it's like I was this loving consciousness that just transmitted love to everyone around me.

[01:35:32] And by doing that. It was like that thing of what I'm putting into it is what I'm getting back even much more than I would ever get if I just sat with nothing. Right. And so, um, like every, I, I, I went up to everybody in the crew, every band member, and had the most meaningful conversations with all of them.

[01:35:54] And it was the first time I connected with some of the crew members that I had been seeing for years and years. [01:36:00] But I'd never actually, like, had a conversation with them. And I remember how, you know, deep that connection felt with, you know, 40 people that I had talked to over that first day of reconnecting with, with everyone.

[01:36:15] And at that point, something just shifted in me and I knew I had, something had changed within me. And then, uh, after that tour, we went on the tour and it was just like everything was super flow full. Um, it felt like, you know, three day tour and it was three weeks and it was like done. And I was like, wow.

[01:36:39] And, uh, I remember getting off the tour and after that, um, I had, I had had something booked with, uh, John to go up to his, his center and, and uh, so I went up to Dr. John and did like, you know. I was supposed to do like three days with [01:37:00] him of doing like some regenerative medicine stuff. And I ended up staying two weeks and, you know, doing like full on John protocols for two weeks.

[01:37:10] And I was so amplified by this, you know, the stuff I was doing. Uh, and then at the very end of that he said, he was like, Hey, there's this like person that does breath and does these sessions. And he said, I'm, I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I thought you might do that before you go. And I think it would resonate 'cause he is, you know, he is good at connecting people.

[01:37:31] And so I remember I, I booked a session with this person, went to see her, and when I sat down, uh, with her, we sat six feet apart. And I remember we just did the eye gazing thing that, you know, we do in the first part of the session. And I remember it was like 10 seconds and all of a sudden I saw, like, I popped into the medicine space that I would do on all the ceremonies in 20 [01:38:00] 20, 21.

[01:38:01] And I was in that realm. I was like, how am I, how, how am I here in those dimensions? How am I accessing that with just sitting in front of you, like I'm not doing anything. And so I went through her whole session, which was about two and a half hours long and it's, you know, a version of this different. But, um, she also studied with the person that I, who.

[01:38:26] You know, I studied with my guru and uh, and I was like, Hey, where did, where did you get this? Like, where did you learn how to do this? She said, oh, I studied with this guy out in LA for 17 years. And I was like, uh, I gotta get ahold of him. So I, anyway, I got ahold of him, booked a session, and walked in the door.

[01:38:45] And when I walked in his, uh, you know, session space, I remember he opened the door and he is like, I've been waiting for you. I was like, me? He goes, yeah. He's like, we're getting the band back together.

[01:38:57] Doyle: Wow.

[01:38:57] Doyle: And I was like, oh, like full body chills. [01:39:00] Like, uh, what do I not know here? What's, what's going on? So anyway, I did my first session with him, and then I was like, all in, you know, I wanted to study with him and, and, uh, we would just go in like a couple times a week.

[01:39:16] I would book sessions with him and, and we would just go through the process. And then I was like, okay, well this is what I'm facilitating. So just by doing that, uh, stuff with him, it's like I was getting all the information of how to facilitate this kind of thing without using the medicine. And I think that in this time in.

[01:39:41] You know, in, in 3D world, uh, and for Western society, it's like going through this process in three hours so somebody can, you know, have, you know, four, four hours in the morning where they have time and they'll go, Hey, can we go in and do a session? [01:40:00] And then they have to go to work after, well, you can do this kind of medicine ceremony without the medicine and then you can integrate in real time.

[01:40:07] So it's like how you're sitting here, it's like you wouldn't be able to do that if you had just done ayahuasca for eight hours. Like you wouldn't be sitting in this chair doing it in the

[01:40:17] Luke: fetal position, soiling my shorts,

[01:40:21] Doyle: right? So this is like, this is how we bring in doing this kind of like ancestral, you know, releasing ancestral trauma, alchemizing anger, sadness, grief into the love and light to be able to transmit that because it's very much like, uh, what the 12 step program is for.

[01:40:42] And what Bill Wilson was, you know, doing with the 12 step program as a spiritual process was, you know, a lot of people think that it's about them going to AA that makes them feel better. So it's like, well, I just have to go to my meetings because that makes me [01:41:00] feel better. And I just listen to stories there about people and their thing, and then when I leave, I feel better.

[01:41:05] Well, that's a part of it, but what. Bill was doing back then with the design of the 12-step program was it's not about you, it's about you getting as right with yourself as quickly as possible so you can be of service to another being and help them. Right. And I think that's the misconception about a lot of people get stuck in, uh, that thing of like, well this is, you know, AA is for me and for that, but it's actually for you to be of service to another being as soon as you can.

[01:41:37] Right. So like when I went in and I started working with my sponsor, he was, he said the same thing. He was like, this isn't about you. This is about you being of service to another being. He, I, he said, so I hadn't even gone through the steps with him and uh, as I was, you know, going through being a sponsor, I hadn't gone through the steps.

[01:41:58] And I remember [01:42:00] like I was on step two or something and uh, I said, uh, he said, okay, I think you're ready to start sponsoring now. And I said, what do you mean? I haven't even like gone through the entire steps. I was just a step two. And he goes, yeah. He's like, how much time do you have? And I said, I don't know, like 22 years or something sober.

[01:42:19] And he goes, yeah, I think you have quite a bit more than somebody that's three days sober. I think you have a lot to share and I think you can put it to use. And I said, and you offer them? I said, if they need help. You offer it to them. He said, I want you to go to beginner meetings and, and I want you to make up cards that have your name and phone number.

[01:42:39] That's it. Nothing else on it. Just a simple card Doyle, only Doyle and your number, and give it to every newcomer that comes up to you, or you hand it out and say that you'll sponsor them. And so I put it immediately on the second step. I was like, okay. Uh, but it's, [01:43:00] it's so cool because it's true. It's like, you know, my daughter is, is, you know, going through the 12 steps and has a sponsor and going through it.

[01:43:11] And I, I, I relayed that information to her and, you know, when I said it, I said, you know, you should start sponsoring people. She's like, well, I'm only on step blah, blah, blah. And I said, yeah, but you have, you know, eight more months than somebody that's just coming in at three days. I said, you have a lot more experience than they do, and you have information for them that you can, you know, share that could really help them.

[01:43:39] And so I said, it's about being of service, so go be service. You know, and, and she got it. She was like, oh, yeah, that's pretty cool.

[01:43:48] Luke: I mean, when you've. Uh, destroyed any semblance of self-worth, you know, which is kind of what happens when you hit bottom in different ways for different people, but [01:44:00] you don't have real high self-esteem when you walk into your first meeting or going to rehab.

[01:44:04] Right. But that's something that occurred to me too, um, pretty early on, is that, say, say you've been sober a week and you come into contact with someone who's been sober for 12 hours. Mm-hmm. You're like Buddha to them. There's such a marked shift between no days and any number of days.

[01:44:29] Yeah. You know, and that, um, that's one of the things that I think is so useful in terms of feeling like your life has some sort of meaning or purpose beyond just selfishness. That most addicts live their whole life. Right. I, I mean, I never thought about anyone. I mean, I was nice to people. I cared about people, but my survival mechanism was so ingrained and so primary, I really couldn't, there was no space to think about anyone else.

[01:44:58] Right. That was, that was one of the early gifts for me. [01:45:00] It's like, oh, I can give someone a ride. And it is like life changing for them. You know what I mean? Yeah. Some kid, you pick 'em up from sober living, take 'em to a meeting, drive 'em back home, get 'em some food at Denny's. I mean, it's like this, you just change that person's life.

[01:45:13] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:45:14] Luke: With very little effort. But it felt so good and still feels so good because for me, it was the first time in my life that I'd ever started to even have a concept of being of service to someone without any kind of ulterior motive.

[01:45:28] Doyle: Right.

[01:45:28] Luke: Or, you know, there's nothing in it for me, quote. Right, right.

[01:45:31] Other than I'll probably feel better if I do this.

[01:45:34] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:45:34] Luke: You know, but you brought up a misconception, um, around around 12 step groups, and the one that you highlighted is definitely true. One that I've observed is that I think many people outside of and inside of programs, um, take AA for example, think of it as well, I go there to quit drinking.

[01:45:55] Mm-hmm. Just like the obvious kind of

[01:45:57] Doyle: mm-hmm.

[01:45:58] Luke: Most, um, [01:46:00] blatant idea. But to me it's, it's not where you go to quit drinking. It's where you go to have a spiritual experience. Mm-hmm. And when you have a spiritual experience, which is of course, ongoing, it's process, not a one time thing, the need to drink goes away, you know?

[01:46:15] Mm-hmm. You know, it's like the first thing is the spiritual experience. That's what enables you to be sober.

[01:46:20] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:46:20] Luke: I think for many years I missed that and was just like, oh, the reason I'm coming here is to stay sober. Yeah. You know, and it, I really had a very difficult time in early sobriety because I didn't really change, I was the same guy.

[01:46:33] Doyle: Right.

[01:46:34] Luke: Um, my life was a little more manageable, but not much.

[01:46:37] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:46:38] Luke: Um, but when I started to really dig into. You know, the spiritual purpose of it. Mm-hmm. Then things started to, to really change and I started to see like, oh, it's just drinking and using as a byproduct of not having any spiritual connection in your life, you know?

[01:46:55] Yeah. It's like you get the spiritual connection. It's like, why would I trade this that I'm [01:47:00] starting to discover for something so fleeting and destructive and dark, you know?

[01:47:04] Doyle: Yeah. And that's where all, that's all we're searching for when we do drugs and alcohol is we're searching for that connection.

[01:47:10] Yeah. To source. We're searching to be in bliss and, and get beyond the mind. It's like we're, we're doing it. It's just not, it's not the path of the true thing that we're searching for, but we think we're getting there. It's

[01:47:25] Luke: counterfeit.

[01:47:26] Doyle: Yeah. Yeah. And so that's what, but, but it is what we're trying to get to.

[01:47:31] It's like when I was doing heroin, that was a spiritual experience for me. It was just a very hardcore, nasty, one way of getting there. And, you know, a lot of,

[01:47:42] Luke: a lot of side effects,

[01:47:43] Doyle: consequences, side effects, consequences and all that.

[01:47:46] Luke: It's like the, uh, Carl Young letter, the Carl Young letters between he and Bill Wilson.

[01:47:50] There's one of 'em that's really beautiful where Carl Young is, um, describing how he tried to help this alcoholic, uh, Roland Hazard. It's like in the, you know, really in the, [01:48:00] um, folklore of, of AA history. And eventually, uh, young just gives up. He's just like, I can't help this guy. And he tells Bill Wilson that he tried to help this guy and it didn't work, and that he thinks the reason why is because alcoholics have a thirst for God and they're, they're trying to find God through spirits, right through the alcohol.

[01:48:20] Mm-hmm. And he told the guy, I've tried to help you. I can't help you. I think the only chance you have is some sort of spiritual experience because the problem you have is not a, it's not a, um. Cognitive issue. Like, we can't talk about your problems until you stop drinking. He is like, you need to go somewhere and find some spiritual experience.

[01:48:37] And then he found the Oxford groups kind of a

[01:48:39] Doyle: right

[01:48:39] Luke: precursor to aa. But I, I love that letter because it just, it comes from such a, you know, an accredited source. Right. I mean, Carl j okay, what does he have to say about it? He is like, yeah, we basically, he said like, psychiatry, psychology, we can't really help you alcoholics.

[01:48:54] You need to go join some group or find God somehow. Well, he just threw up his hands. He was like, I'm done. [01:49:00] I've, he literally says in the letter, he is like, I, I gave him everything I have and it still didn't work. He tried a couple times and the guy kept relapsing. Right. I always, I love that story. 'cause

[01:49:09] Doyle: yeah, and I think that that is, it

[01:49:10] Luke: points to what you're, that's

[01:49:12] Doyle: an interesting point because also, um, the sponsor that I, that I had in LA told me one time, he was like, spirituality is not something that you get, it's not something that you access.

[01:49:30] He said, it's an action. So he said, that's the whole being of service thing. He said, so when you are of service, truly of service to another being and helping out. First of all, it's like a multifaceted thing. You're out of yourself. 'cause who wants more self and self and self and self, a fractal self self.

[01:49:52] Like enough of the self, like it gets you out of self because you are now helping. Right? So that is [01:50:00] one of the great things about being of service is you're no longer thinking about yourself 24 hours a day. You're actually, you can't because you're helping another being. So you, it's gone. Right. Right. At least for that moment.

[01:50:13] Luke: Right?

[01:50:13] Doyle: So the more you do that, the more you be of service, the more you're out of self. The loop.

[01:50:18] Luke: Yeah. Going, going back to the, the psychedelics and when you made a pivot out of that, after that eight or 10 month, whatever it was, um, you know, self-imposed darkness retreat, I think there's, there's, there's real wisdom in that.

[01:50:34] And it, um, reminds me of the, um, Alan Watts quote, I'll paraphrase, but something to the effect of, you know, in reference to using psychedelics for spiritual, uh, enlightenment and so on, he said, yeah, there comes a certain point where you, you get the message, you gotta hang up the phone, you know, and it's like that.

[01:50:54] Propensity that some people have to keep chasing those kind of experiences. I think it was really [01:51:00] wise and admirable that you were like, okay, I got the message. I'm hanging up the phone and I'm gonna find a way to access these realms and this level of healing, um, without that. Yeah. Which is, you know, clearly, I mean, the experience we had today, I mean, I was, I don't want to reduce it to something as trivi as tripping, but I mean, I was having, you know, very, very heightened spiritual experience, let's put it that way.

[01:51:26] Crying, laughing, hysterically, body moving, shaking, Kundalini energy going. I mean, those are the kind of things that I've had in my most profound medicine ceremonies. Yeah. You know, where I've walked out a different person and made changes in my life that were tangible as a result of those experiences, you know?

[01:51:44] Yeah.

[01:51:45] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:51:45] Luke: So I think it's so beautiful that, you know, you're crafting and curating and pioneering a modality that allows people to have that experience. Especially speaking to someone in sobriety who's like, I'm not taking freaking drugs. You know, which I [01:52:00] totally respect. Yeah,

[01:52:01] Doyle: yeah.

[01:52:01] Luke: It's like, I think, oh man, but you're gonna miss out on like the depth of healing that's not only possible, but in many cases, um, unavailable.

[01:52:09] You know, I mean, when I first sat with Ayahuasca, dude, I had no idea. I mean, no concept of how traumatized I was as a child. It just, I could think about it mentally. Yeah. That was kind of rough. And I guess everyone goes through that, you know, and when I started going into those spaces, it was like, oh my God.

[01:52:28] I mean, the, the amount of abuse and trauma was insane. And I, I don't know how I could have ever found that and been able to hold, to be able to hold and understand the gravity of how much harm I experienced and how it impacted my life, you know? Mm-hmm. So it's like, to see it in that kind of reality is one thing, but to be able to go in and actually start to get it out of your nervous system and, and move through it and Yeah.

[01:52:59] [01:53:00] Transmute it. Um, I just, for me, there's, there's, I don't think there's any way I could have done that, just no matter how much I dug my heels into my program, you know? I mean, I dug my heels in for 20 years.

[01:53:13] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:53:13] Luke: Hardcore. Yeah. I mean, I was so committed, dude.

[01:53:16] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:53:16] Luke: And, you know, they reached a point, but then on the other side of that, it's like, well, well, you gonna keep like chasing those experiences forever.

[01:53:24] Yeah. You have to find a way that there's a sustainable practice that doesn't take you out of the game, like working with medicine often does, you know?

[01:53:33] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:53:34] Luke: It's, it's risky in a lot of ways. Yeah. Like the shit you went through. It's like, I watched that happen and I was like, oh shit. Doyle went off grid son.

[01:53:43] Like, I hope he's okay. You know, it was like, I mean, you're the kind of guy that kind of, like I said, early gypsy musician. So, you know, I, you roll in the world in a different way, um, than many people who are sort of more present all the time. But that [01:54:00] time you were like, gone. Gone. I was like, where's Doyle?

[01:54:02] We don't know. He's in Vegas somewhere, locked in an apartment. We hope he's okay. But I'm so grateful that, you know, you took that me message and went, okay, I'm gonna find a way to do this. Yeah. That doesn't have downside. So tell, tell us more about, um, you know, what you do. I remember when you got your space in Miami.

[01:54:21] Doyle: Mm-hmm.

[01:54:22] Luke: Um, when you, you moved there with Yeah. With Al. Mm-hmm. McPherson, your, your childhood supermodel, sports Illustrated dream girl that's now yours. You have such a blessed life. Um, who's a lovely woman. I'm so happy for you and happy for her.

[01:54:38] Doyle: Yeah. She did it. She did your podcast

[01:54:39] Luke: recently. Yeah. Yeah, she did.

[01:54:40] I mean, what a, an amazing freaking woman. Um, but I remember you got your space down there Yeah. And you're like, yeah, I'm starting to see people here and there, and I'm developing, you know, my, my protocol and stuff. And then when we recently connected here, you're like, yeah, I'm seeing like multiple people a day or a week and it's a whole thing.

[01:54:56] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:54:56] Luke: Which I can see now having experienced it in its current [01:55:00] iteration, I mean, how. Powerful and beautiful. It is.

[01:55:03] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:55:04] Luke: So what's that looking like? You know, what are the things that you do with people? What kind of, um, impact have you seen? And like if anyone's in Miami, can they look you up and do a session?

[01:55:16] How, how does that work? Like public facing wise?

[01:55:18] Doyle: Yeah. I mean, everything up to this point has been by word of mouth. Um, and, and now it's getting to the point to where I'm going to, you know, have some information so, you know, when somebody comes by. 'cause there, there have been people, I've had clients come in and they do a session and then they send eight people, you know.

[01:55:44] Um, also, I've been, recently I've been working with families. So I worked with this woman who sent her sister, and then I worked with the husband of that woman, and then I worked with the [01:56:00] mother. Oh, wow. And so it's like the whole family. And that is really, uh, a beautiful process because when I work with families that do it around the same time, the things that they're clearing out of the lineage, like the ancestral stuff, it's clearing all of it from all of them.

[01:56:18] Luke: Wow. Wow.

[01:56:19] Doyle: And so they're all clearing it out of their whole lineage. But when you have multiple people doing that in that lineage, it clears it like, like really fast. So I've been having, uh, such a beautiful time and, and complete awe that, you know, I'm, I'm getting to work with families that want to wanna do that.

[01:56:44] Um, and so I think now it's like the clients I have are like two to three per day, per week. So I usually, you know, keep the weekends, um, [01:57:00] without doing sessions. And then during the weekdays I'll do two to three a day and they're all three hours sessions, so it's six to nine hours a day that I'm doing that.

[01:57:10] Luke: And you don't get gassed?

[01:57:12] Doyle: No.

[01:57:12] Luke: You're

[01:57:13] Doyle: not at all.

[01:57:13] Luke: Wow. '

[01:57:14] Doyle: cause because my, my channel opens up when I'm doing it, and it's not me that's actually doing it. So I'm just, I'm an instrument of whatever is channeling through for that other person to be able to access their own self-healing process. So I'm guiding and spotting and, and, you know, teaching certain things very simply, but it's really the person is doing the self process.

[01:57:42] I'm just there to make sure that, you know, they, they stay in that flow with it and, and sort of like conduct it.

[01:57:50] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[01:57:50] Doyle: A bit.

[01:57:50] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[01:57:52] Doyle: Um, it's

[01:57:52] Luke: like, it's like playing an instrument Exactly. In a way, right? It's an, it's an ensemble. It is. I mean, it's like you're, I did, I [01:58:00] didn't open my eyes. I had an eye mask on, and I, I know you had your gongs, but there were so many points where I'm like, what is the sound?

[01:58:05] Where's that sound coming from? How is he doing that? I wanted to peek so bad, you know, but like the soundscape and then, you know, you were sort of chanting and singing at different points. Mm-hmm. And then some body work, and then there was, you know, some breathing stuff that I, I've done a bit of you Yeah, I've put that with you before it was just, it's the sense I had and the experience was like, wow, this is like, it's a symphony, you know?

[01:58:28] There really is, it's such music. Yeah. I mean, there's, music is a big part of it, the experience. Yeah. But the essence of it is very musical, you know, there's so many different tones and layers and levels and

[01:58:40] Doyle: Yeah.

[01:58:41] Luke: And it's also very, um, multisensory.

[01:58:43] Doyle: Yeah. And I think because I'm, I'm, I'm so, um, you know, I've, I've come into this mastery, mastery of frequency and energy and sound.

[01:58:56] So how I'm using, uh, [01:59:00] how I'm using frequencies. It can be, you know, energy work a lot through the hands, but it's all coming from the chakras. Um, you know, I, I, I do reiki, I do other energy work that's Reiki esque, but not exactly reiki, but I find that. A lot of the stuff is, is channeled through for the specific spirit that, or the specific client or person that comes in, like it is channeled through that way exactly for them.

[01:59:35] So if that person goes back to another person said, you know, they recommend it, and they're like, well, what is it like? Well, it wouldn't matter if they told them what it was like anyway, because that's not going to look anything like their session because it's always very specific to them. It's almost like, you know, an Ayurvedic, uh, like energy.

[01:59:56] Like, like I have all these different modalities that I can work [02:00:00] with and they're all little tools that I can use. Like, do I want to go through the gongs? Do I want to go through sound bowls? Do I want to go through body alignment? Do I want to go through the reiki, uh, energy? Do I want to activate the chakras through another process I can do through the breath, I can do other type of breath, like I'm actually learning on the fly, how to facilitate new ways of that body that's like on the table.

[02:00:31] Like, um, it's all channeling through. So it's constantly evolving with each client because everybody's different. You know, everybody's spectrum. Light spectrum is different. Everybody's thumbprint is different. Everybody's genetic makeup, it's so different. So then what they're clearing is different from the other person that's clearing after them.

[02:00:56] So I'm just learning on the fly and I'm really, really, uh, [02:01:00] I'm very sort of kung fu and Samurai about following the, what's channeling through and opening up to it and not editing with my mind any part of it. So even like recently, like, you know, I, I would play the gongs and people would feel like they were on medicine or in mushrooms, just on the gongs, and they would be like, you know, way out in deep space and seeing deities and like all this stuff that

[02:01:32] Luke: was me dear.

[02:01:33] Doyle: And they would be on this journey. And then all of a sudden, like I started singing in this, like, other language. And I'd never done, I had never sang in like a language or a light language or an ancient language, whatever it is that's channeling through. But the, the, the pre awakened me person would've never done that because I, because I would think, oh, this sounds stupid, or [02:02:00] what are they gonna think of me?

[02:02:02] Like I'm, they're gonna think I'm weird if I'm like speaking in this weird language that I don't know what it is, they don't know what it is. And now I don't hold back. Like I just follow whatever's comes through. I let come through. If there are words specifically coming through that I hear for them, I speak them without knowing like, I don't know Doyle, Bramhall doesn't know what these words are, what they mean, but I'm going to speak whatever it is that comes through and I know it's specifically for you and that you're going to understand it.

[02:02:35] And usually it's the people like I'll say some words like it'll just channel through really fast. And they'll say, how did you know that? How did you know that that was what the process I went through exactly. And I said, I don't,

[02:02:48] Luke: yeah, you're getting out of the way.

[02:02:50] Doyle: Yeah.

[02:02:51] Luke: Funny to these things don't surprise me at all anymore.

[02:02:53] But I do like to acknowledge them just 'cause they're beautiful. But for some reason I was on the table and we, when you [02:03:00] were when in the first portion of it that involved the sound, I was thinking about EDA James. I was just reflecting on, you know, like how blessed I am to have seen so many incredible, just one in a million artists and her being among them.

[02:03:15] Mm. Um, you know, that that generation of blue singers and things like that. I was like, fucking edit. I saw edit James Sing man. I was right there for that one, you know? And I went on dreaming about other stuff and then we're done with that. And you're like, yeah, it's just like EDA James Luke. It's like, gotta be kidding me.

[02:03:31] Then the end of the session at last, you play freaking Eda. James song is on the playlist already. I'm just like, okay, come on. You know, those are the fun little clues we get. I think that remind us, like, yeah, everything is really connected here.

[02:03:44] Doyle: Yeah. And that would happen. Like when I first got together with Peter, uh, my guru in la it was that thing.

[02:03:52] He was like, you know, I step in the door and he is like, I've been waiting for you. I'm like, whatcha talking about? And then we would do that thing, and then I would think [02:04:00] of something. So he would do the breath with me and we'd go in and I would like pull my head back and a, and a song would pop in my head.

[02:04:07] And of mine, this particular song popped into my head as I did. And the portal would open and I would go in and then I would like go into some kind of time warp. Like where of sound, where it's like,

[02:04:24] where everything slowed down. And I was like, I was like, all of a sudden I was in sound. I was like, had entered into sound. Like, and then I started to come back to this realm and as I came back, the song that I was thinking of right before I did the breath was on. And it's so obscure, like for him to know.

[02:04:48] Mm-hmm. I was like, you're playing. And he's like, don't speak. Like he, I didn't even have to say it. He, it

[02:04:56] Luke: just let

[02:04:57] Doyle: it happen. It's about experiencing it. And I [02:05:00] was like, yeah, but I wanna talk. He's like, no, no, no. You don't have to like, you don't have to look up at the plane. And, and, and he go, Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, there's a plane.

[02:05:09] Look at the plane outside. He is like, just listen to this sound. It's like,

[02:05:16] just be in the experience of it. You don't have to go, oh plane. I need to describe it. You know? I was like, yeah, but you know, what you just did is like, I just thought it and then you did it. And he is like, okay, calm down. I was like,

[02:05:29] Luke: he's like, this is,

[02:05:30] Doyle: but it was, it was one of those moments with you because I hadn't thought of Ed James in like, me either years.

[02:05:37] Luke: I'm

[02:05:37] Doyle: not sitting

[02:05:37] Luke: around

[02:05:37] Doyle: listening to Ed James and then just came out of my mouth to you.

[02:05:39] Luke: Yeah.

[02:05:40] Doyle: It's hilarious.

[02:05:41] Luke: Yeah. I love it.

[02:05:42] Doyle: And I love it. And that, that stuff happens all day long in the sessions and I never question it. And I'm always surprised by it and it's so beautiful. But they're like, how do you know that?

[02:05:51] I don't know that, but I know how to fully open up for spirit to move through [02:06:00] to give you information.

[02:06:02] Luke: Yeah.

[02:06:03] Doyle: Hmm.

[02:06:03] Luke: Tuned in the radio station, the field.

[02:06:07] Doyle: Yeah. And, and I'm a musician K

[02:06:09] Luke: field,

[02:06:10] Doyle: and I'm a musician, so it's like you're, those are speaking my terms. It's like, let's tune up, let's plug in. Mm-hmm.

[02:06:17] Let's turn up.

[02:06:19] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[02:06:19] Doyle: And let's get turned on.

[02:06:21] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[02:06:21] Doyle: You know, it's like,

[02:06:22] Luke: yeah. Turn off the distortion pedals. Go clean and turn it up. All right. Um, our, our boy Jared, has to get outta here, uh, very soon. And I don't know how to run any of this equipment without him. So I'm gonna ask you my final question and then make a request.

[02:06:38] Uh, if you would indulge us with some, uh, little guitar playing, because I just personally love to watch and hear you play. Uh, but before that, let me know. Three teachers or teachings could be a philosophy, a person, a book, a record, anything that have informed who you are, how you roll, what makes you [02:07:00] Doyle.

[02:07:01] Doyle: Uh, I would say, um, as far as like, you know, spiritual teachers or mentors, I would say it started, well, it's, it's two part. Donny Hathaway and Stevie Wonder. They're like one for music. Like, I feel like I learned everything about how music moves. With Stevie Wonder, uh, musically, vocally, the sound, uh, the way his spirit moves, uh, is the way that the Kundalini moves in me.

[02:07:44] And, um, the range of emotions that I could feel through music, I think I learned most from him.

[02:07:54] Luke: Wow, that's interesting.

[02:07:56] Doyle: Um, I would say that [02:08:00] Yogananda was my entry because my mother, she was a part of the self-realization fellowship and, uh, she had all these books with, uh, about Yoga Nanda and also a lot of yoga books and stuff, uh, but sort of obscure yoga books, like not ones you would find now of like, here's how to do the poses and, you know, heat up the room and all that stuff is like more physical.

[02:08:28] But this was like ancient yogic practices of like, here, put this goat. Strand up your nose and pull it all the way through, and then you floss your nasal passage, uh, and wear and wear a loin cloth and then do all these like crazy practices. Right. So I remember I would just look through those when I was like seven years old or six years old, and I would like always like, look at her yoga books and yoga Nanda and I would just stare into Yogananda's eyes [02:09:00] and those eyes, you know, on autobiography of a of Yogi, like his eyes on that.

[02:09:06] Like, I felt like I was like getting pierced with this consciousness, with like something that was helping me remember myself as a spiritual being in this lifetime. And so I would say that it started with Yoga Nanda was my first introduction into like, oh, spiritual being, there's something about this, you know, that I will be exploring

[02:09:31] Luke: another parallel.

[02:09:32] I won't take the time to explain it, but it'll be a story for a later time. Same experience with a different mystic, you know?

[02:09:40] Doyle: Yeah.

[02:09:40] Luke: So that, that's really cool. Yeah.

[02:09:41] Doyle: And I'll say that, you know that Peter Evans is. For what I'm doing now in my life and the understanding that I have now of music frequency, energy chakra system, facilitations, breath, pretty much [02:10:00] everything with the understanding of like how it works in the, in Qigong Dao, the tarot with the Kamala Tree of Life, with the Vedic system, the Kundalini system.

[02:10:10] The tantra system, like in, in Christianity, like all the different religions, like I understand of the big picture stuff of how everything works, uh, through his, his teachings.

[02:10:27] Luke: Yeah. Incredible guy. Yeah. I think the first time I ever, well, one of the first times I ever had a full blown like visual hallucination without being on any medicine was with Peter.

[02:10:41] Tilt my head back. Look at that. That mandala. Yeah. On the ceiling. I was like, um, who slipped DMD into my drink? What is happening?

[02:10:49] Doyle: I know's the first time I thought I had done bfo, I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. I didn't have, when did I do bfo? Yeah. And he was like, you didn't do anything. I was like, oh yeah.

[02:10:59] Luke: Powerful. Oh man. [02:11:00]

[02:11:00] Doyle: And you know, also the great thing, the thing that I find so fascinating is these, when I. First saw him, it was like, I walked into it, into his space and we started doing breaths immediately. And I remember I was just laughing. I was laughing hysterically. And because I was going in on the breath, it was like I was accessing other dimensions.

[02:11:25] So it was like my laughter was like reverberating into the universe and I could hear this rah ha ha ha. And I was just laughing. And like the stuff that he would share with me as I was doing the breaths, and then I would come back and then he would share more gold and, and the way he was putting things.

[02:11:47] But it was all with humor. It was all with humor. It was with enthusiasm, it was with joy, it was with love, it was with, um, it just had everything to it that was like, it's all so joyful. It's like [02:12:00] we're here to express our love and share that love and our light with everyone. Even it's like, if you think of Buddha and, and, and Jesus and all these avatars, it's like, you know, Buddha wasn't sitting at the tree going, uh, you know, that person that's judging me right now for sitting at this tree, like meditating and being enlightened, like they don't like me.

[02:12:25] He was still allowed at the party. He doesn't have to drink from the light or, you know, he doesn't have to drink anything, but he's, he's allowed to be there. It's like the light keeps emanating the light. If the dark dissonant beings want to be there, they can be there. If they want to, you know, draw from it, they can, but they don't have to.

[02:12:46] But, you know, that being never judges, the dissonant being, for being what? In whatever part of their journey that they're in. If they can't see it, they're still like, you can drink anytime. [02:13:00] I'm still gonna share the love and the light no matter what.

[02:13:04] Luke: All right. So in, in closing, um, which I could have actually to be honest, just had the whole podcast just sit, listen to you play guitar went, I mean, I love your playing 'cause it's so unique.

[02:13:14] But also anytime you pick up the guitar, something totally different and spontaneous comes out, you know, which is makes it more interesting. Mm-hmm. Which is why I wasn't like, Hey, can you play this one song at the end of the show and just like, just do something. It's gonna be super cool and surprising to me.

[02:13:32] Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you too. Um, in addition to, uh, or it was a comment slash question in addition to Black Sabbath, uh, which we don't share love for that particular band.

[02:13:43] Doyle: I

[02:13:43] Luke: Oh, you like Sabbath?

[02:13:44] Doyle: Yeah.

[02:13:45] Luke: Oh, I had that wrong. Okay. Yeah. Sabbath are kind of bluesy in a way. No, I like that. Okay. Okay. The one that shocked me was the Grateful Dead.

[02:13:53] Which is a very polarizing band. But I remember asking at some point, I was like, well, you like Jerry, right? And you're like, eh,

[02:13:58] Doyle: no, I like [02:14:00] Jerry.

[02:14:00] Luke: Oh,

[02:14:00] Doyle: okay. I just like, I could listen to Jerry and I could listen to the songs. I just, I, I couldn't get into the jam stuff with them. I was like, got it. I like their songs.

[02:14:13] Luke: Got

[02:14:13] Doyle: it. I liked, fair enough. And Jerry, like, I grew up in Santa Rosa, so I was a part of a lot of the, the bands up there that all were, you know, doing that noted with him. And so I remember hearing when I was 15 or 16, there was some live performance of Jerry playing this solo. It was like a 20 minute solo.

[02:14:33] And it blew my mind, like Okay. What he was doing.

[02:14:35] Luke: Well, we've cl we've clarified

[02:14:37] Doyle: the record. I just can't listen to like, you know, this

[02:14:39] Luke: drums in space for 45 minutes.

[02:14:42] Doyle: Yeah. It's like, I, I, I, but I would, I'd rather listen to like John Coltrane or Joe Henderson or, you know,

[02:14:51] Luke: cool

[02:14:51] Doyle: kind of thing.

[02:14:52] Luke: Play us out, baby.

[02:14:54] Doyle: Okay. Well now that we're in Austin, Texas, you cannot only play blues in [02:15:00] Austin, Texas.

[02:15:00] Luke: I'm here for it.[02:16:00] [02:17:00] [02:18:00]

[02:18:32] Doyle: Well, yeah.[02:19:00]

[02:19:29] Epic. That was dope. Thank you. I just made up some words. That's fun.

[02:19:35] I.

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