Hey everybody, this is Daniel Patrick and this is episode number 322 of the Mandolins and Beer podcast, brought to you in part by my favorite website, the Mandolin Cafe. Hope you are doing well. Hope you had a safe and happy Labor Day weekend. Uh, my guest this week is Scott Markhort. He is the founder and CEO of StringJoy Strings and just a great guy. Uh, I think you'll understand why StringJoy has become so successful when you hear this interview. The guy is just Hardworking and and just a nice nice guy, great energy. So it was great to talk with him. I'm glad he took time out of his busy schedule. And as always, I'm glad you guys take times out of your busy schedule to listen to this podcast. I truly appreciate you all. If you'd like to support this podcast, you could do so via the old Patreon. You can go to my Patreon and for little as two dollars a month, twenty four dollars a year only, you can support this podcast. You can also support it for free by sharing it on Instagram, Facebook, telling. your friends about it, buying merch. Got the Mandolins and Beer MTV-style t-shirts, stickers, and all that good stuff at mandolinsandbeer.com. Uh, I'll be performing at IBMA this year. It's the first time I've had a, uh, a showcase slot. So if— and I'll be there, um, Tuesday through Thursday afternoon. I have to come back to Charleston for gigs. But if you're listening to this and you have an opening at one of your showcases, uh, let me know. I would love to do it. The only one I have right now is Wednesday at the Dark Shadow room, which is going to be incredible, and I'm super excited for that. So if you're gonna be at IBMA, shoot me a message. Maybe we can grab a beer, listen to some incredible music, you know, do those, do those mandolins and beer sort of things. Let's get into the sponsors this week. We'll get into this episode with Scott. Peghead Nation. With Peghead Nation streaming video courses in mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle, dobro, ukulele, and bass, you'll learn bluegrass, old-time, and other styles from some of the most talented players and instructors in roots music. People like Sharon Gilchrist, Joe K. Walsh, Mike Compton, John Reichman, Aaron Weinstein, Marla Fiebes, Chad Manning, Ian Corey, and Ethan Sitiawan. All the courses include high-quality multi-angle video lessons, downloadable notation and tab play-along tracks, and plenty of tunes and songs to play. And you can join any of Peghead Nation's video courses now, get your first month for free. Just go to pegheadnation.com and use that promo code MANDOLINBEER, all one word, at checkout. Northfield Mandolins— let's build more than a mandolin together. Check out their website at northfieldmandolins.com. Download their app at mandosummit.app for lots of special performance recordings, demonstrations, and special workshops. And of course, their Instagram is incredible as well. Tone Slabs— get yourself a slab of tone. I love my Tone Slab picks. They have all the shapes and sizes you could ever want, and if they don't have what you're looking for, I'm guessing they can make it. They do it all at the Slaboratory. Go to toneslabs.com and order yourself a slab of tone. Tell them Daniel Patrick sent you. StringJoy Strings. Obviously you're gonna hear a lot about StringJoy Strings here. I use the Foxwoods, I love them. He talks about what makes his coated strings different during this episode, which I think is awesome. And you can get 10% by using the promo code MANDOLINBEER, all one word, at checkout at stringjoy.com. Ellis Mandolins, handcrafted mandolins designed and built in Austin, Texas. And Elderly Instruments. Elderly Instruments is your trusted source for new, used, and vintage fretted and stringed instruments for the experienced to the beginner player. Their vast selection of mandolins, guitars, banjos, ukuleles— and did I say mandolins?— includes all the accessories and books to go with them. All instruments are inspected and set up for easy playability, and their down-to-earth and knowledgeable staff are there to help. They're in their 54th year. They're family-owned and operated. They ship worldwide. They're award-winning. And you can visit them anytime at elderly.com. All right, folks, let's get into this episode. Thank you so much once again for listening. I truly appreciate y'all. Have a fantastic week. Cheers, everybody. All right, well, man, it is my pleasure to welcome to the podcast— I've been a proud endorsee of these strings for years now, and the story is remarkable— Scott Markhort from StringJoy. How's it going, Scott?

It is so nice to be here. You know, we've talked about jumping on this podcast before for some time, but haven't actually done it.

Yeah, I figured it is time. I mean, it's just, one, dude, I love the strings. I mean, I haven't put another set of strings on any of my instruments since I got the first set from you guys. I'm a huge fan, and I love what you do.

Oh, that is so kind of you. I, I, and likewise, I wear my, my mandolins and beer hat. It's like a, a Supreme style hat that you gave me some years ago. Uh, I wear it golfing a lot and it always gets some, some good remarks. I mean, in Nashville, you're a little bit more likely to, you know, be paired with some random stranger who's like, oh, I actually play a Northfield, you know, A style. I'm like, oh, okay, here we are now.

That's awesome. Um, I first heard of you though, uh, Right around, I guess it probably was about the time when you first released the mandolin strings, was you did the Fretboard Journal podcast, I believe. Was that the timeframe, right around there?

I think that that's right. I think I might have even announced those on that podcast, now that you mentioned it.

Yeah, so, and that story is so amazing. And not only is it amazing, I listened to it, and then we went to Nashville, and my wife was with me, and we went by your factory and stopped by, and I'm like, you have to listen to this podcast again. So I listened to it a second time after we met you.

No kidding.

'Cause the story is amazing. So I figured, why not have you on the podcast here? Because it is like, when you think of things, you know, I started a podcast, right? And have been super lucky that it gets some listens and stuff like that. But, you know, you just kind of basically need a microphone and a laptop. You started a string company. If somebody told me, Here, you can start a string company. I wouldn't know step one of, of what, where to begin.

Yeah.

So let's, uh, let's dive into your story. Um, where, where, where are you from originally?

Yeah, no problem. So I, I'm from Indianapolis, actually just north of Indianapolis in a, a little town called, called Carmel. I went to school, uh, in the city in Indy, and I stayed there until I was about 19 and then moved down to Nashville, and I haven't looked back since.

What brought you down to Nashville?

Well, initially it was just going to college. And I was looking at places to go to college. And it was always one of those things where I was like, I know I want to do music. And I also know that I want to learn things, not just music, but all sorts of other things. So I was looking at what school I felt like could kind of give me a little bit of both. I dreamt of going to New York City, because obviously there's everything you could ever want there. And that was going to be way too expensive. So I landed in Nashville and was like, great, I'll study things and then also play in bands. It's Nashville. There's got to be people that know how to play music down here. And boy, there are. And I'll tell you, you know, not to go on a tangent, but like the differences between being a guitar player in Indianapolis and being a guitar player in Nashville are stark. One of the biggest ones that I didn't— I don't think I quite realized is like, when I was growing up in Indy, if I met somebody else at a party or whatever that played guitar, that's like my new best friend, you know, we're like, hey, you want to jam? Like, let's hang out and play. And in Nashville, everybody's like that. And so you playing music is not like enough commonality for you to necessarily become friends. You need something else outside of that.

Right. Oh my gosh. What kind of music were you into?

Yeah, I mean, like, I started out in classic rock, like I think just about anybody else. And then by the time it was like late junior high or early high school, I started getting really into shoegaze, which has gotten a lot more popular since these days, but in the mid-2000s, Uh, it was like A Place to Bury Strangers was like the only band really doing it at the time. Uh, but I got, you know, really into My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and a lot of that stuff and, um, got just crazy into customizing my gear and buying different effects pedals and, you know, modding amps and just kind of doing all that stuff at like a super rudimentary teenager level, uh, to try to find cool, exotic, exciting guitar tones.

Now, was it somebody that turned you onto that? I always find it curious. I know this is normally— we normally ask this about bluegrass, but like, I grew up in the Midwest as well. so like classic rock and stuff, that was just like, that was the radio. I mean, that was the music that was popular in the Midwest. How did you get into like Shoegazer or Shoegaze?

That's a good question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So probably the cleanest route that I can recall is I was playing in the band at my church, and I was— it was a big, big church that my family went to, so they had nice gear and all this and a ton of people to draw from. So the band was like really good players that were also you know, in their early teenage years. And the guys that I was playing with, uh, got really into, uh, the band Sigur Rós, or Sigur Rós, and I've heard it kind of said both ways. And we started incorporating a lot of that into the music we were playing at church, which is a bit funny, um, but these cool textural, you know, drones and stuff like that. And then that just kind of launched, um, me into this, the stratosphere of appreciating cool and unique tones. Like, before I started playing with those guys, like I said, it's just like riff rock, you know. I'm just like, I dreamt of being Jimmy Page and having these big cool guitar solos. And then it totally changed my understanding of, of the guitar's role in music, um, that it can be, you know, kind of creating this background texture and ambience and not just playing a, a really sick pentatonic riff.

Right. And that the— that is cool way to get into new gear, stranger guitars, like, you know, less Les Paul and Squier or Fender and more, a little bit more, you could buy a pawn shop guitar and you'd be like, you know what? This is exactly what I needed for this idea I'm working on.

Totally, totally. And I should say, I got my first mandolin around this time too.

Oh, no way.

Yeah, I got it for Christmas. I'm actually looking at it. Funny enough, I put it up in my backdrop that I use for Zoom calls. And then I was like, oh yeah, we're just recording audio for this one. It's there as inspiration, if nothing else. But it's one of the Epiphone A-style. It says The Epiphone at the very top, and played on that. I was never as good at mandolin as guitar, like not even close. So it didn't become like a huge piece of my, you know, musical repertoire, let's say. But I have it, and it's always fun to tool around on.

Oh man, yeah. I mean, obviously I love it.

Yeah, of course.

So now another thing I think that you would, find in maybe that style of music is some alternate tunings. Would that be correct saying that?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, a lot, a lot of drone style or ostrich style tunings. I mean, really, you can kind of do whatever you want.

So did that lead you to experimenting with strings?

That is an excellent question. I see what you did there. No, you're, you're, you're quite right. So I mean, a little bit of it was alternate tuning, but more than anything, it was really just this attitude I had around the instrument of the guitar at the time was that, you know, I could change everything. I could swap the pickups out, I could, you know, swap tubes out in my amp. I mean, I didn't have a ton of money, but outside of that being a big limiting factor, anything else I could do to tweak the way that my instrument performed. And strings seemed to be kind of just a natural thing there, you know? At one point, I was just playing D'Addario 10s, and then I was like, oh, I wonder I wonder if I can mess with this a little bit. And so I started getting singles from the shop that I went to, Reno's Music, um, or sometimes a couple different packs of strings and mix them together and all this, um, just to see if I could do it better. I kind of tend to have that, uh, compulsion, um, of just thinking like, okay, this— there's a way that this is done, but I wonder how much they thought it through. I wonder if I can, you know, maybe foolishly at times, uh, do it better, uh, just by having a different attitude.

So how in the heck do you get into becoming a string maker? I guess, is that the right word? String maker? I mean, let's, uh, you know, guitar maker's a luthier. Is there a word? Is there an official word?

There should be an official word, but I think string maker's the best we got. There's really not enough of us to— we'll have to talk about it at the next convention. Yeah, no doubt. No, there's, there's really only, you know, a couple dozen people at best, you know, in, in the, the world that like really, really understand strings. I mean, some of the giant companies, you know, have a ton of people that work there, so to some extent, there's a lot of people that kind of know at least the way that they do it. But there's not that many people that design them. But anyway, to answer your actual question, you know, I kind of meandered my way into it. So I got down to Nashville, and while I was in school, I went to Vanderbilt, and I was working at record labels on the side in the evenings, you know, all that sort of stuff. And I got a job at a record label after school. And in fact, I had this like big job offer to go to Seattle and work for Amazon when Amazon was like much smaller than it is now. And that paid a ton of money. And then the guy that I was working for was like, hey, what if you and I partner up? We'll manage bands together and I'll pay you 40% of the take. And I maybe foolishly was like, yeah, I'll take that option. So I was working for like in the good times, about $18,000 a year. And sometimes, you know, even less. So what happened was we had a couple different artists that we worked with. I was managing Those Darlings, Adia Victoria, Stone Jack Jones, a few other people. And one of them, not mentioned there, that was like paying us consistent monthly income pulled out to go with a different manager, as happens. And my, you know, boss at the time was like, hey, bad news, you know, I'm not gonna be able to pay you anymore. And I was like, oh crap. It was just before Christmas too.

Yikes.

And, uh, yeah, yeah. And, uh, I was like, oh man, I'm, I'm, I'm— that's terrible, but I'll go and find something else. And he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, I didn't say you're— you're— I'm letting you go. I just said I can't pay you anymore. Which is very music industry.

Yeah, yeah.

Very, very, very.

Yeah, no, you still work for me.

I just, I just don't pay you. Yep. So I did that for a couple of months, uh, and kept working for him, you know, without pay. And I was bartending in the evenings. And, you know, then I kind of thought about it and I was like, you know, this isn't my dream, right? If I was like an artist and I was like, you know, doing this for free for years and years and years, that would be one thing. But just managing other people's careers for free, I kind of fell out of love with that idea. And so I just went into bartending full-time and was always kind of tooling around thinking, all right, maybe I'll start something of my own. Maybe I'll manage bands on my own, you know, and not be attached to anybody else. And didn't think maybe that was gonna be the thing. I had a few different product ideas, you know, that I was tooling around with and, you know, didn't really work very well. And at some point, you know, there's no like, oh, I was hiking and I got to the top of the mountaintop and I had this epiphany moment. But at some point it occurred to me, I was still doing that weird thing with strings. I was still buying some different strings and mixing them up together to make my set. And I was like, well, I wonder if there's anybody else out there that does that same thing. you know, it's a pain in the butt. Maybe I can make this a lot easier. So the original conception of it, you know, I was living in the attic of this house with 4 other guys, 3 dogs, and like everyone's, you know, girlfriend at the time. So it was just a packed house.

Yeah.

And I was like, I had $500 basically to my name. And I got ahold of a really small string maker and was like, hey, I've got this idea. Can you make me, I want 12 of every single gauge of string. And I don't know why he took that order because it, you know, that's a real pain to do. But he did and made it for me. And so I'd have these big 4-foot, you know, long gun cases because they would seal out the moisture. So that was the best thing I could find for that. And I would have these, you know, tubes, like literally like 3-inch, you know, poly tubing sealed up with each individual gauge of string. And so I started a website, which I knew how to do because I'd done this for bands. and stuff for merch websites and things like that. And started StringJoy and was like, all right, this is— here's the conception of the company. It's nothing but custom strings. I've got 80/20 bronze. I didn't even have phosphor. And I've got nickel electric. And I had bass pretty quickly thereafter too. And I was just like, all right, I'll work with people. You know, if you have like a specific need, whether that's a tonal need or you play in an alternate tuning, stuff like that, just basically email me here. and I'll help you cook up like a perfect custom set that works exactly for the thing that you're doing. And, you know, in the first month, I launched it on November 6th, um, this is 2014. And in that first month, we like did about like $2,000 worth of sales. I think the strings were like $10 at the time. And I was like, okay, I mean, that's not nothing. I'm just bartending like on the side, right? So that felt like some real money. And then the next month, In December, like, word got out in one of the, you know, various, I think it was a Facebook group at the time for like djent and metal style musicians, that there was this place you could go to customize your tuning. And it kind of blew up. I mean, not blew up compared to like nowadays, but like we did maybe $12,000 that month. And I was like, oh my God, okay. I mean, that's some money. I mean, mind you, all that's just going into inventory. I'm not really pocketing anything. but I'm seeing that there could be something here. So I keep doing that for a good long while and I bartended for years in and out until I got to one Thanksgiving and I was the bartender at this restaurant and I was watching my phone just orders blowing up and blowing in and I was like, oh my God, I gotta figure out how to ship these things. And I closed down the bar, no one was there anymore and I told my manager like, hey, I'm sorry, I gotta go do this now. This is what I do. There's enough work here, I gotta figure it out, right? So, it's a secondary story of how I got into making strings, but that's how I got into starting the business.

So, did you have like your own packaging and everything at that point too?

Yeah, I mean, it was all, again, limitations are often the source of creativity, right? So, and in this case, the limitation was money in a pretty serious way. I found these like 5-inch by 5-inch wedding envelopes that were like, you know, kind of a nice like black paper. So I used that and then I got a sticker that I made that I could just like slap in the middle of that. And then I would just handwrite the gauges. And, you know, would send them out to people like that. Sometimes I put their name on them and people kind of liked that. And that was what it was basically in the early days.

How many, you mentioned one of every gauge, like what, Yeah. How many strings, like how many gauges is that ballpark?

Ooh, yeah, uh, good question. Ballpark, probably 20, 30, about 60 or 70 between electric, acoustic, and bass. So a fair few.

Okay. Yeah. Gosh, that's a lot of strings.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as I got into this more and more, and, you know, a little bit of time passed, and I'm working with a lot of people, um, on figuring out these, you know, special sets of strings for them, And the thing that's like kind of nagging me as I'm learning more and more and more about strings, I, I, if, if you know me well, this is a tendency of mine. I tend to kind of obsess about something. And once I'm doing it every day, I want to know absolutely everything there is to know about it. So along this process, I'm like, well, you know, the thing is there, there's multiple ways I could make like a 26-gauge string. Um, you can combine different sizes of core wire and then wrap wire that you wind around it to make that particular gauge of string. And so I'm like, well, there, maybe there's more than even just the gauge itself, right? Like, um, what if I made like a thinner core 26 for this particular application and then a thicker core one for this application? So I started, you know, increasingly making my orders from, to the guy that was making them for me, uh, more, more complex and more of a pain in the butt. And, you know, a lot, a lot of people will say that do like OEM, as in like, you know, they just kind of rebrand other strings. They'll say like made to the exacting specifications of you know, so-and-so brand. They never are. Not never, but almost never. They pretty much are just like, hey, give me whatever, you know, however you do your 26-36-46, that's it, and I'll slap the label on them. So me asking him to like change the ratios really screwed with the whole process of what he was doing, which I can appreciate now, especially for not very big orders, you know, at the time, 100 of this, 100 of that. So After a little bit of this, he kind of got fed up with it and basically was like, hey, Scott, I'm not gonna make you strings anymore. You know, and I'm like, oh God, what am I gonna do now? I need strings or else I'm gonna have to shut this whole thing down. And he was like, no, no, no, it's not all that bad. I'll sell you 2 of my winding machines and, you know, show you how to power them on, wire them up and all that sort of thing. And then you're on your own. And so, This is incredible. This is fantastic news. 'Cause I don't know if you know this, but you can't just go out to the store and find a string winding machine. We had talked about, even prior to this, wanting to make stuff, or I, I tend to use we when I'm referring to the company, and was thinking about like buying a lathe. A buddy of mine was like, I think I can buy a lathe and turn it into a, you know, a hand winding machine. So we were kind of working on that process. We even had the lathe, I think. But then this happened. I was like, oh, this is such a better option. I can actually get a machine that's meant to make this stuff. So I go out and take out an SBA loan for like $50 grand, I'm not even sure how they underwrote that thing, 'cause I don't have any money at all. What do you have collateral?

I've got 3 dogs that people that I live with—

Yeah, yeah, I had a 2008 Ford Focus that was worth like $4,000. But I mean, I guess that's what the SBA is for, you know, so that crazy people with crazy ideas, you know, have a way to get get some capital and start a business that they never otherwise would be able to. So, uh, did that, got these winding machines, and that just, you know, opened the doors. Like, my, my mind was blown. Like, I could, I could make any string that I wanted to. I could make any combination, uh, of 26 that I could possibly dream up. Um, you know, as long as I had wire, I can turn that into finished strings. So started doing that, you know, and basically lived at the shop for, I don't know, many, many months. just making every permutation of string that I possibly could. And not just that, but also like re-engineering things about these machines once I got to really understand them. Like, oh, what if that was over there? And what if that worked like this? And fixing them and doing all this sort of stuff to really like become an expert in the string winding machine itself. And in the process of doing that, kind of landed on some strings that I was like, these are really good. Like not just like, Good because they're custom gauge strings and you can't get that anywhere else, but good like you could buy a set of standard gauge, you know, 9 to 42 set of strings. Uh, and, and I think that these are truly better than the strings that you're typically getting at your local guitar store.

So this, even though I know this story, my mind is still so blown by this. I mean, this is amazing to me. So how, how much time did you spend with him learning how to make strings? Because again, like, oh, you could give me the—

No, no, no. Like, oh, Almost no time, like a couple hours.

Really?

Basically just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, like he helped me get them off the truck and wire them up like I said, and, you know, like figure out how to get compressed air to them because that was kind of new to me. Um, but yeah, just a, just a couple hours once we got everything kind of up and, and, and running. It's like, hey, here's, here's how it works. Crank, you know, you turn that crank to make it go this way or this crank to make it go that way. Um, mostly just that, honestly. Like, it wasn't— I was basically figuring these things out, you know, like really, really quickly. Like, I mean, it was helpful to know like, hey, you know, if that breaks, you know, do this. If this breaks, do that. But for the most part, I mean, we were figuring it out from scratch.

Wow. And then did he tell you like what wire to buy and where, you know, all that sort of stuff, I'm guessing, as well?

That I had already figured out because I was such a weirdo and was like also telling him like, hey, I actually like the wire from this place better than this place. Um, like at that time he wasn't even making my plain strings. I was getting those from, from a different spot because I liked the wire that they were using better than, um, what he was using. So I, I already had a pretty solid sense of, uh, of what I wanted as far as that goes.

And then how did you find a place to initially start manufacturing them? And for people who— I got to see these machines, these actual machines you're talking about in person, but like for people to understand how big they are for those first 2, like what size of a space did you rent?

Yeah, sure. So I mean, the first 2 that we got, which are now out of service, they're named Willie and Waylon, but we still have 'em 'cause they're cool. They're about the size of an upright piano, maybe a little bit longer, maybe about 2 feet longer than that. And roughly the general dimension about that. They're about that depth and about that height. So I had 2 of 'em. I had to run a compressor, and those ones were 110, so I could just plug 'em into the wall, which is not how any of our, you know, newer series of machines work. So that helped. But yeah, I rented a spot on Elm Hill Pike here in Nashville, And we actually, when you came to visit us, Daniel, we were just down a few units in a larger unit. We've since moved only a couple miles down the road, but to a much larger facility as of earlier this year, 'cause we ran outta space over there.

That's great, man.

But yeah, I mean, I had a little bit of extra buffer built in on the SBA loan to buy some wire and then, you know, be able to, you know, pay rent. And the business was making money at this time, you know, in a very small way. But we were able to handle, you know, like an $1,800 a month, you know, rent. Prior to that, we were just like in an office for a little bit after the, you know, the attic days. But yeah, I was like, I need like a concrete slab. These things are heavy. It was a whole, whole new world. And by this time, my, my business partner, Blake Weiland, who runs the Tone Mob podcast, if anyone out there listens to that one as well, had gotten involved. So I sold him 10% of the company, not for really much money. I think it was like 12 grand. And a little bit less like, oh, we're bringing on investment, and much more like, hey, I need somebody else to like bat ideas around too so I don't go crazy, which has proved to be a very useful thing in the 12 years since.

So you get these machines and it's like gotta be a game changer then, right, for you as far as, I mean, your options are pretty unlimited now at this point.

Yeah, oh, absolutely. Like, it changed the game in terms of what we could make and how distinctive the strings were, you know, outside of— like I said before, I was mixing strings from a few different manufacturers with some, you know, intention behind it, so they weren't something that you were getting from anybody else right away, but they were— I couldn't customize them the way that I, you know, had envisioned in my head. So that was completely wide open, and something funny that we discovered pretty fast and still persists to this day, is that we kind of thought, like, oh, we'll save a lot of money from making these strings ourselves instead of paying somebody else to do it. That has continued to, like, it continues to cost us more to make them than we could buy them for. Because the way that, yeah, the way that we make them, you know, to make them the way that is the StringJoy way, is just more expensive than you can get. You can get other companies to just run you a ton of strings, and they run everything as fast as they possibly can. Um, you could save a lot of money doing that. Um, so yeah, I didn't budget that in, that it was gonna cost me 20% more to get my strings after buying these machines and rent and all this crap. Um, but it was worth it because we had like a totally unique product that you couldn't get from anywhere else.

Yeah.

And I don't— I can't imagine that we would have, uh, gotten to where we are now, um, if we weren't doing that. I mean, there are a lot of brands out there that are just Sort of like rebadging or relabeling strings for various reasons. It's definitely a thing, but not many of them are like, you know, like really meaningful, have a lot of shelf space and stuff. I think at the end of the day, brand is important, but guitarists and mandolin players and banjo players do care about what it feels like under their fingers, how it sounds to their ears. Like these things ultimately determine whether they're gonna keep buying your product or not.

It's, I mean, I've interviewed the best players in the world in this genre of music, you know what I mean? And the, that is no nonsense. Like they can tell you the thickness of a pick by holding it in their hands. They can tell you, I mean, they can tell you if you have a different set of strings on a set, you know, it's to a, to a professional player and to even some people who aren't, just people who love sitting around and playing and get into it. It's that those little things make a huge difference. Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's like, okay, so like, you know, for you or me, how much of a difference can I tell if I change the tires out on my car? I might be able to tell a bit of a difference, but I might not. You know, if you're switching between like the same tread and all that, you know, I'm probably like, yeah, it feels about the same when I put on a new set of tires. A race car driver knows exactly what tires are on their car. It completely changes the way it handles for them.

Absolutely.

You know, they're very familiar. They can tell how tires wear over the course of the race. You know, like they can feel all that. And the same is true for great players. And as you noted, you don't have to be a professional to have that sense, but not everybody has it. I mean, there are definitely people out there that are like, oh yeah, all strings are the same. You know, I can't tell any difference. But those people are never, it's pretty rare for those to be people playing on big stages, you know? Like, in the early days, when I got my first Epiphone Les Paul, I couldn't, I remember this distinctly, I couldn't tell any real sonic difference between the bridge and the neck pickup. I would switch back and forth between it, and I was like, they kind of sound the same to my ear, because my ear wasn't developed enough to understand it. And even though now, like, to a guitarist out there, like, that's an obvious and huge difference in sound, you don't, like, have that immediately until you learn how to contextualize it.

Right. Yeah, that's a great point.

You know, and for mandolins, and same with, like, orchestral instruments, violin, viola, like, The strings are really, outside of the instrument itself, the biggest thing you can do to change the sound of the instrument is the strings. So I've always found that like acoustic players are often a lot more keen to the obvious differences between brands or gauges or materials of strings. You know, I mean, any acoustic instrument basically. For electric players, they're like, oh, how different does it sound when I put it through a Boss like Metal Zone? Not that different. But they still feel different. And that's the other thing about strings. And sorry, you know, you could tell how, like, obsessive I am about this stuff. But, like, strings are one of the few things on any instrument that change both the way it sounds and also the way it feels. And so there's a thing there where people will be like, oh, you know, link me to a YouTube video that shows your strings versus something else. And you might be able to hear a difference or you might not through all the, you know, compression of the internet. But they don't just do that. They have this reflexive feedback loop of changing the way your instrument feels and plays, and even kind of which notes you might choose to pick or what you're going to do with them. Um, that, you know, few other, uh, a cable doesn't do that. A pedal or an amp, you know, don't really do that. Um, strings sit on both sides. They affect both your playing and the sound that comes out.

I'm just taking it all in because it's fascinating to me, man. Like that somebody, you know, I'm like looking at my Stringjoys over here. I'm like, that, this This started from somebody who was just getting strings from a guy. He's like, I can do better. And you did.

Thank you. Yeah. And I mean, to what you're saying, like, I mean, you're, you're extremely kind, um, uh, with, with, with all those lovely words. Um, and I, I do appreciate it, but it's worth noting, like, there, there's, there's not that many string companies and new ones come around every couple of decades. For the most part, I mean, I could give you the whole history of strings if you cared for it. But there, there have not been too many. I mean, like since in America at least, you know, there are a lot of companies that made strings in Europe, some of which are still around that have been around for hundreds of years. In America, it was all the Black Diamond String Company, you know, back in the late 19th century through a lot of the 20th century. The Maries, the company that would become La Bella Strings. They started up in the '20s, '30s, and then it really starts to explode once you get after the 1950s. And this is for a deeply unknown reason. So this, you know, more broadly out in public. So this family, the Vinci Guerras, it was Emilio Vinci Guerra was the original sort of scion. They're pasta makers in Italy, from what I've been able to find in my research. They moved to America, and for whatever reason, are like, we can make guitar string winding machines. It's kind of like pasta. And so they do, and they make the first sort of like automatic— automatic is like, you know, heavy air quotes around that, but a purpose-built guitar string winding machine. And then you see all this big explosion of companies opening up. So like GHS, or slightly before that, the V.C. Squire Company, from which GHS, you know, came. That eventually becomes Fender Strings later in the '60s. Uh, you see Ernie Ball pop up and they start making strings at some point after that. I'm not sure when. Um, D'Addario, same thing. There is a version of D'Addario that sells to Martin, uh, C.F. Martin, that's called Darko Strings. Martin still makes those. And then the actual D'Addario company that exists today starts in like 1974. You got Dean Markley comes around in the late '70s and that, you know, wave is kind of crested. DR comes around in the '80s. Elixir comes around in the '90s, and then there's— it's crickets until you get to us in 2014, and there's really been no one, you know, since then that's gotten much sort of purchase. So yeah, it's a rare thing, and it's— there's a lot of reasons for that. It's a very niche thing. Like most of the people that run the other string companies that are around right now, you know, it was their grandfather or something that originally founded this company, so they've just kind of learned from father to son, father to son. It's a rare thing to dive into and learn from, you know, as an outsider. It's a very, very niche thing. And also, it's really hard. Selling very inexpensive products is tough. You know, you've got thinner margins, you get to sell strings to people over and over again. That's really great. You get a nice, real deep customer relationship. But there's not, you know, a lot of money in it. on the front end. So you do have to scale to get it to make sense. You know, if I'd frozen the business, um, you know, at the size it was 9 years ago, I just wouldn't, wouldn't be doing it anymore. You know, it wasn't— I, I wasn't making any money at all. I was still bartending. Like, it, it just doesn't work at a, at a super small scale.

What was the point then where, you know, you get the, you get the string machines, you're already doing Pretty, pretty good business, like you said, although you're still putting the money into, into, you know, the company and stuff like that. Yeah. So what was like at that point, what was the next thing where suddenly it was like, oh shoot, this is, this is actually becoming, this is becoming successful now. This is, this was a good idea.

Yeah, great. I mean, great question. Really, there's not been, um, too many of these huge inflection points like you might expect. You know, like Kim Kardashian, you know, put us on their Instagram and now we're selling millions of dollars of stuff. It wasn't that. It's just been this very plodding but consistent year-on-year growth. We've averaged, and not to get too businessy, but we've averaged about 40% year-on-year growth since the beginning. I mean, we're still doing, very much doing that, even at a much larger size. So it really has just been this network effect of players trying the strings, loving them, and telling other people in their, you know, their band or friend group about them. And some percentage of those people take them up on it and try them out. And then those that love those, you know, become sort of mouthpieces themselves. So it's been, uh, that just year after year after year after year, um, that has kind of led to it. Now, don't get me wrong, we, we have to do a lot of marketing. You know, the other string companies do a ton. So That's definitely a battlefield that you have to get really good at in strings so that people don't forget about you. But it's just grown like that. And I mean, for me, it did very much flip. I mean, I went, I didn't make any money from the business for the entirety of the 2010s. I was bartending, or when I stopped doing that, I was doing some marketing consulting work for other gear companies. and then also running up some credit card debt at the same time. And then just like suddenly, just before COVID actually, in January 2020 was the first time I was like, oh my gosh, there's like $20,000 that I can use to pay off my credit card debt or what's left of my student loans. I think I'm gonna take that. I'm actually gonna take that for myself.

Wow.

And pay myself, which was great. And it's just, continued to work as a business since then. But I'll be honest, man, I mean, people ask me a lot that are thinking about starting a business, you know, how to do it. And I think the most common objection that I hear from people is they're like, well, so I'm 45, I make $120 grand, you know, at my job, my wife doesn't work, so it's pretty much all on me. You know, how do I make that same $120 grand, you know, immediately from starting a business? And I'm like, ah, dude, I mean, It might be possible. I'm the wrong guy to ask. I don't— it wouldn't be possible for me. You know, this only worked because I was crazy enough and really just young enough, honestly, to live on peanuts for years. Many, many, many years. Like, I really don't think that makes sense in most seasons of your life. But I was 24 when I started the thing. So, you know, it wasn't a big deal to eat ramen noodles and drink PBR or whatever, you know, for many years. And Nashville, you know, Nashville was a lot cheaper back then. So that made it easier too. But yeah, I just, I can't imagine, certainly with strings, but even with most things, how you can do that and be making money very quickly. For us, it certainly took a long time.

Sure. What was it, what was like trying to get it into like stores? 'Cause you're in Guitar Center now, which is like, as far as, which, I mean, as far as music stores, it would be like, In the '80s, getting a toy at Toys R Us in the, you know, on the shelf, like it is, that is the big retail spot for people to buy guitar accessories. You know, how, how tough is that to do?

Oh man. So in the early days, like right, right when I started out, uh, I called up a couple of retail stores, can't even really remember who, and was like, okay, you know, we wanna get our strings on the shelves where everything else is. And, you know, to a man, all of those people were like, huh?

Who?

No. No, absolutely not. We're not taking on something we don't know that people aren't asking for. So it became obvious like, no, that's not gonna work, we're gonna have to figure out how to find our customers on our own. So we did, and we sold direct-to-consumer, you know, exclusively for the first several years, and then it started to get a little bit easier, you know, some more stores knew about us. I mean, 99% of them had never heard of us, but, you know, that 1% that was familiar, you know, started to— grow a little bit, and we were able to get some of those people to bring them on. But that has been, you know, its own very, very slow, intentional, and sort of plotting move. I mean, as much as now we've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of SpringJoy players, there's still— we're still only in about half the stores in the US, maybe not even quite half. So, and it can be really tough. I mean, I've got a sales team that works on this, but You know, guitar store owners, some, a lot of them are really, the successful ones tend to be really with it, they understand who the new brands are. I say guitar store, but any, you know, instrument store. But the other ones that are, you know, maybe kind of just hanging on, they don't pay much attention, really, you know? You'll call them up and they're like, huh? I've never heard of you. So we definitely still get a lot of that, but to the Guitar Center question, so I mean, We've been working that. That's, that's been a dream of mine for forever. Um, and, and we had some— we've, we've had some customers that have reached out that are worried that, you know, because we're in Guitar Center, that's gonna, um, change something about our process or our product. And it absolutely in no way is, like, not, not in any way whatsoever. Um, but I grew up going to— I went to Reno's Music for lessons, but I would also just get dropped off at the Guitar Center in Castleton in Indianapolis, my dad would just like drop me off there and go fishing, and I would play every guitar in the store for hours and hours. And that was a big part of where I, you know, really learned to love like, you know, guitars themselves outside of just playing them, but seeing all the differences, you know, between each guitar. And so it's always had a really special place in my heart. You know, that was really like where a very formative spot that I hung out in. So I wanted to be I, from the very beginning, wanted to be there to be getting the next generation of Scott Markorts or whoever that are out there, um, you know, buying strings there. So yeah, that, that just happened. We just rolled out 6 SKUs into the store, uh, about a month ago as of when we're taping this. Um, and already, like, we're hearing from a ton of the stores that they've sold out. You know, it's certainly our hope to be able to really grow that assortment, uh, over time to have even more SKUs in there because the customers are asking for them. But yeah, it's been amazing. I mean, one big highlight for us certainly was about 3 or 4 years ago, we got into Sweetwater, who's of course, you know, just a huge name in music retail in the US. And that's been a fantastic relationship. They're awesome and do everything they can to find the right product for each particular user. And so the Sweetwater sales engineers, you know, a lot of them really, really love our stuff and will actually push people to be like, hey, have you ever tried these? You should maybe, maybe give these a look instead of just buying that same, you know, other, other set. So it's been huge. I mean, the thing with strings, um, and, and I think the players out there can appreciate this, like, it's like a Coca-Cola. You need to be absolutely everywhere. If, if a StringJoy player walks into a store and they don't have, you know, their particular gauge or, or our brand, very likely they're just gonna buy whatever else is there on the shelf because they need strings. That's why they're there. Something broke. If you're shopping on Amazon and you need, you know, need a new salad spinner, but also you need some strings for your guitar, you're gonna buy whatever's on there. We see this buyer behavior all over. People might be loyal to a brand, but they might have purchased it in 9 different places in the past couple of years. Right? Like, think about how you buy body wash or something, right? Like, you might have a brand that you like, and over the past couple of years, if you think about it, you've probably purchased it from 3 different Krogers, 1 Publix, a Walgreens, that CVS on vacation 1 time, Amazon because you were actually ahead of it and knew that you needed it. So we need to be in all these spots, and that's always been a core, you know, part of the Stringjoy plan is to make strings of this, you know, high premium quality but have them be available for people wherever they get their strings so that people can actually be like long-term loyal people that use our products for, you know, years and years and years.

Right?

Right.

That's awesome, man. I have to ask you, because you told me this and I say it every, every ad that I say for, for you guys on the podcast is I use the Foxwoods. I have never liked coated strings ever. I always thought it's great that they last longer, but it takes me 2 weeks to play an average set of coated strings to make them sound good. I got the Foxwoods instantly. I'm like, these, the, I, I will play these forever. I love these strings. And you had told me about the way you do your coated strings, cuz you also do the coated and it's—

Yeah.

Uh, I think it's a very interesting story. And so I thought maybe it'd be cool to pick your, or to, to have you talk about that.

Absolutely. So, I mean, for years, the official StringJoy answer was we don't make coded strings because we don't think that they sound or feel as good as uncoded strings. I mean, that was— we had blog posts, you know, saying that. All this sort of stuff that we eventually had to revise. But we didn't revise— like, this is a core piece of our philosophy here. We're not gonna make something just because people are saying, hey, you should make this thing, if we don't think it sounds good or plays up to our level, go get them from somebody else. There are other people that make them, and that's fine. So we're always tooling around with things, right? I'm always trying new alloys, new stuff. Sometimes when we get something that's looking pretty good, we might send out some samples to artists or players and stuff like that. But we're always working on it. And so I found this way of coating strings that somebody was doing, that it really exists for, like, copper wire that might be used for electrical purposes and stuff like that. So what it is, is we coat the wire itself. So I should actually back up, sorry, because I'm assuming knowledge that maybe isn't always there. So a typical coated guitar string, let's start there. Elixir really invented these back in the '90s, and Elixir themselves is a really small division of a huge company called WL Gore that makes Gore-Tex and all this stuff. So what they would do is take finished guitar strings that they would buy from other guitar string manufacturers and they would coat over top. So they, you know, either spray or dip or whatever application method they use the strings with a PTFE. So polytetrafluoroethylene, it's what's used in your nonstick skillets. It's an inert sort of plastic. stick. So they'll do that, and that's why coated strings, the, you know, traditional OG style, they feel really smooth because that PTFE is filling in, um, in between all of the windings on your strings. But it also has a tendency, especially to my ear, to deaden the string. I mean, and this is kind of like 101. So when strings die, one of the big things that's happening is they're getting sweat and dirt and gunk and grime, uh, on the string and in between the turns of winding, and that's adding mass to the string, which is changing how the string resonates, and that's why it's not so lively. It starts to sound kind of dead. So when you're adding PTFE over top of it, uh, so that additional, you know, gunk and grime can't stick to it, naturally that's already adding some mass and changing the way that the string is resonating, and I find it to be a bit of a darker, um, or just kind of plasticky sound.

Yeah.

So anyway, with all that kind of said, what we ended up finding, and we tried a bunch of different, you know, techniques over time, was that coating the wrap wire itself, just the wire that goes around the core wire, with a really thin and harder coating. So like PTFE is really soft, ours is much harder. If we do that and then we wind a string our way, we can make a string that has that same barrier between your fingers and the core wire and all that, Um, but doesn't feel like a coated string and doesn't sound like a coated string. And the reason it doesn't feel coated is because the gaps between each winding are not being filled in by anything, um, because it's just the wrap wire itself that has the coating. Um, and the reason it doesn't sound like a coated string— and uniquely, our Foxwoods tend to be even a bit brighter than our uncoated strings. And so the reason that is, is in very simple terms, softer wrap wire tends to lead to a slightly warmer or more mellow sounding string. As you get like harder wrap wires, like a stainless steel, it gets brighter. So when we coat our phosphor bronze wrap wire, the coated phosphor bronze is a bit harder than the uncoated phosphor bronze. So that's why it has that, that really lively resonance despite being coated. So once we had this, it was like, okay, for one, I'm gonna have to eat some crow. talk about how now we're making coated strings when we said we would never make coated strings. But we thought it was a really exciting product to launch out to the market because it really has its own unique thing that other coated strings don't have. And the challenge with that is there's 2 types of players when it comes to coated strings. There are players that actually love the sound and slippery feel of a coated string, which is totally fine, right? Everyone's different. That's a totally valid way to feel. And then there are people that don't like the way coated strings sound or feel and either use them anyway for extra longevity or just, you know, eschew that and don't use them at all.

Right.

So Foxwoods, or the Orbiters, which are our electric version, those are really for the second camp of people. People that want strings that last a long time but don't sound like coated strings, don't feel like coated strings. Um, there are people that love the sound of coated strings and they'll try them and be like, oh, these aren't like the other coated strings. No, they're not, they're not. Um, and, and again, totally valid that you feel that way, uh, but that's not the market we were going for. We were going for the people like, like you described that, you know, want strings to last long, but they don't wanna lose or sacrifice tone and they don't want 'em to feel weird.

Yeah. Well, you nailed it, man. And, um, I, I love 'em. And one thing I wanna make sure to mention too is you have a factory. This is, I, rumors I see, you know, not, there's a lot of, and, and I think this is the case for some manufacturers, but, you know, there's that rumor out there that, oh, well, there's only 2 manufacturing plants that make strings for every company. And I don't know, I don't know those numbers, but I have been in your factory. I have seen your machines and your people working. I just want people to know that this is, this is all being done. And is it still like, is it still 24 hours a day?

Yeah. Yeah. So we, we actually take 4 hours off in the middle of the night. Well, not me. I, I work a pretty normal schedule. We, uh, adapted our scheduling a little bit, so we got some more machines and didn't have to use a third shift. So we run 2 shifts now. One starts at 5:30 and goes till about 2, and then the second shift is a 4 by 10. So they start at 2 and go to about 12:30 AM, and they have Fridays off, which they love. So yeah, to your point, yes, we do really, really truly make strings. I don't know when exactly or where exactly the rumor came from that only 2, 3 companies make, you know, all the strings in the world. It's never been true. What is true, as I've alluded to, is there are definitely brands on the wall that don't make their own strings and get them from one of the other brands. And in some cases, like I was kind of saying earlier, like they might say whatever they say on the packaging, but in some cases those are the exact same strings that are in a cheaper set right next to them. So that definitely can happen. But there's a lot more string winding companies or string manufacturing companies companies than a lot of people seem to realize. There's huge ones, there's small ones, and we all make strings just like anything else.

And I'm assuming you seem like the type of person that even though you already make a string you're completely happy with, that you're still always trying to make a better version of your strings.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of those things. I'm not sure if I said this on the Fretboard Journal podcast or not, but It often seems to me like, um, because I'm buying competitor strings and measuring them all the time just to see what they're doing. It seems like a lot of them, um, they've got players that have used their strings for decades, right? You know, they're, they're a lot older than us. And so they might come up with a, you know, clever, oh, what if we did it like this? What if we did it like this? Like little improvements. But I would imagine, you know, the, the, the weight of knowing that if you change something and all those people that are already buying the thing don't like it, that you are screwed now, um, kind of weighs on them. And so it often seems like a lot of those companies will wait until they bank up a bunch of different, you know, ideas and then be like, okay, uh, here's our new more premium line. Um, we, we don't do that. Um, that would be really boring. Uh, we're constantly, uh, making, you know, minute changes to the strings. In the early days, I mean, like early on when we were first winding strings, that could be really significant from, you know, one month to the next. Because we were rapidly finding things out that were making things better. Nowadays, it's much more minute, you know, very, very, very slight changes that still matter to us, but are you gonna be able to tell the difference on your end? Very likely not. But yeah, we always are changing things. I mean, we're changing, we've changed our packaging, interior packaging around like 7 times over the years. We're always working on changing it. And, and maybe we do that too much and it causes some confusion. That's, that's definitely possible. I just— it's, it's kind of in my nature. If we find a better way to do it, we're gonna do it that way. Um, I just can't bear to be— to know of an improvement and not put it into place.

Well, I can say I've never had a set that has been, um, corroded or any— like, I haven't— I've had issues before with previous brands where I'd put, you know, the High Eon in I would say a good percentage of times, right when I'd get it to tune, it'd be like ping.

Like, oh yeah, you know, that is a bummer when that happens. Yeah, yeah.

And, um, you know, I knock on wood, you know, I, I've not had that happen. And I've— I mean, gosh, I don't even know how many sets I've gone through now. I mean, I try to change them as much as possible. Um, but yeah, I mean, just bonus with the Foxwoods is they last longer than— than, you know, I was changing them once a week for a while before I started using your strings.

So yeah, yeah. You know, and, and just for anyone out there that, that plays our stuff, just so you kind of understand how we think about it. So, like, the way that we've landed it, the way that our strings are packaged right now, the cheapest way to package strings by far is to coil a bunch of them together, you know, put them in a single plastic bag and throw it in a pouch and then you're done. And I mean cheaper by, like, that costs like an 8th the cost of how we do it. In our polling, we've done a ton of research of StringJoy players and non-StringJoy players, And we found that players really valued having individual strings and individual envelopes in one way or another so that they can grab an individual string, or in the case of mandolin, you know, 2 strings potentially. And so we're like, okay, well, you know, that might be more expensive, but that's what we're seeing, you know, pretty, pretty handily. And don't get me wrong, about 20% of people like the strings that are coiled together in a pouch, and that's fine. But, you know, 80% of people were saying this is the way we want it. But the thing is, they're like, when I open a pack of Ernie Balls where it's just like a flow-wrapped, like, you know, plastic wrapper around some individual paper envelopes, now those strings are open to the air and could potentially corrode or age, you know, if I need to pull one string out of a set. So we got to thinking, okay, how can we, how can we have our cake and eat it too? How can we coil everything individually, but also have each individual string be sealed so that if you pull one string out, everything else is still completely fresh? as the day that it was wound. And that's how we landed at the way that we're doing it right now. Initially, we were like sealing strings in a barrier plastic, 'cause that was the only easy way to be able to do that. I never loved the way that it looked, but it functioned pretty well. And then we got a different machine, and we were able to kind of get, you know, more control in the process, and we were able to make a paper-aluminum hybrid package that we have right now that's been working really nicely. to do the same thing. And is that the final boss? Maybe not. I don't know. It may or may not. But, you know, the nice thing is all those individual strings are individually, you know, sealed in an airtight pouch because of the aluminum that is resistant to moisture, oxygen, all that sort of stuff. So you can be sure that they're always gonna be fresh. And then those are inside of a box. And that's important too. You know, when you take the plastic-packed strings and you like jam them into a spring-loaded string rack at a retailer, strings are getting kinked and crushed and stuff like that. So with our box, that doesn't happen. And that's kind of how we landed there. And I could talk about that to a point at which would be mind-numbing for everybody, so I won't. But that's the way that we approach kind of everything of like, what, what does the customer need? What does the customer want? You know, which might be different from, from needs. You know, and of course, people are not all identical. So some people will vary on that. But how do we make the most people happy while also, you know, leveling up? Is there an opportunity to do something different than what anybody else is doing on the market and provide yet another thing that's unique and better about StringJoy strings? If we can do all those things and we can do it without having to raise prices or anything on anybody, yeah, we'll do it every time.

Again, it's just like, you remind me a bit of Adrian from Northfield in the sense of like, you guys both, you both could have rested on your laurels years ago as success was happening. But you guys both are like, you can still build a better, you could still do better. And I love it, man. It's just like anything. It's so fascinating.

You and I were talking before we got on. I love the Northfield stuff. I was just at their booth at the Fretboard Summit. They make just beautiful mandolins and they have these, I'm not sure what they call them, but they're like a mandocello or something that's electric. So it looks just like an electric guitar. That's, you know, tuned in fifths with 4 different unison courses.

It's the LE Octo. It's actually— it's an Octo— I'm looking at one right now. I've got one of them. I love it. It's amazing.

I spent some time playing on that, and it was awesome. I loved it. It was so— it felt so familiar. I'm like, oh no, I'm playing a guitar. That's— it's the size of a guitar and all that. But no, completely different playing experience, which is super fun.

I agree. Well, dude, Scott, thank you for taking the time. I mean, I know how super busy you are and I'm a huge fan. I proudly say it every week when I talk about 'em and I'm a, yeah, I just love what you do and congratulations on the success. I mean, it's obvious you can hear the hard work and your excitement level. Like this is like when I, when you did the tour with my wife and I, when we went through the tour of the factory, you're, it was just the exact same excitement level. of this. You could tell you love what you do, man, and that's— I think that says a lot about the company.

Well, thanks so much, Daniel. I, I very much appreciate it, and I should extend the congratulations to you. I know you've got a new label deal and are just like just cooking with gas, uh, everywhere.

I'm trying, I'm trying.

So no, it's, it's, it's so awesome to see, you know, people like yourself that like, um, both are, are passionate about the music they make but are also finding a way to kind of make it work and just being creative around like I've got a podcast. I also make music. I'm doing all this, all this different stuff. Because honestly, almost everyone I know that's like fairly successful, you know, with music or making it work in this day and age has a few different cool irons in the fire. You know, it's not just I play here and, you know, and that's it. They're, they're, they're doing maybe studio work or live work, or they have their own podcast or a YouTube channel, you know, and doing all this stuff without it affecting how awesome their art is. in the first place. So I just really admire, you know, musicians like that and like yourself.

Wow, thanks so much, buddy. Well, man, thank you for doing the podcast. I appreciate it.

Oh, of course. It's been a blast.

Same here, man. Well, cheers.

Cheers.

You know what? This is Daniel back here real quick, and I've got Scott back on. We went through the whole podcast, and we were talking on the phone and getting ready to hang up. I'm like, oh my God, I didn't ask if you had a favorite beer. So Scott, Do you have a favorite beer?

Oh man, you know, it's funny, I should have like thought about that, you know, before we jumped back in here to talk about it. Uh, I could name a lot because I, I do quite like, uh, beers. Um, I— maybe the Wiseacre Ananda IPA, which is made in Memphis, uh, just down the, you know, down the road from Nashville, um, might be like one of my favorite sort of, sort of go-tos.

Nice.

But, you know, if I, if I can get my hands on, you know, Pliny, uh, like elder or younger, if I'm out in California, that's always a really good time. Big fan of Radeberger Pilsner, you know, from Germany. Yeah, I mean, there's not so many beers I've met that I don't like, which I'm— maybe I should be ashamed to say that. I don't know.

Not on this podcast. Not on this podcast. You don't have to be.

I'm amongst friends.

You're amongst friends.

Awesome.

Now with that, thanks for doing the podcast.

My pleasure.

All right. Thanks to Scott for doing the podcast. Thank you for listening. Again, if you want to try those StringJoy strings, You can get 10% off using the promo code mandolinbeer, all one word, at checkout at stringjoy.com. All right, have a fantastic week. Cheers, everybody.