EP 591. Mr. Mister Mallard Whisperer

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’ Duck Season Somewhere podcast where today’s interview started like this. I’m sitting in a duck blind with some friends at Wyobraska and also the guys that run Cross & Calls. And we’re all sitting there just waiting out the ducks and the geese on the North Platte River and they get to talking about a friend of theirs who is today’s guest and a former Rock & Roll star, but also a master of mallards and habitat development and hunting pressure and all that good stuff, we’re going talk about today. I didn’t have his telephone number. And I’m sitting at Safari Club International when in walks a guy with a distinctive beard and I don’t know, do I recognize this guy? And his name card was over and the minute I saw his name I go, my name’s Ramsey Russell, I’ve been wanting to get you on a podcast and I’m talking about none other than Steve Farris. Steve, how the hell are you today?

Steve Farris: I’m good, man. How are you doing?

Ramsey Russell: Glad to have you, man. Really glad to have you.

Steve Farris: Good to be here, man.

Ramsey Russell: And where are you? You’re in Nebraska.

“Anyway, so it didn’t have any water on the property, so as a duck hunter, I’m going to have to learn how to create it. The other thing was of course it was twice as expensive as the money I’d saved as everything is when you go to buy something you fall in love with something that’s more than you can afford.”

Steve Farris: Yeah, I’m in Nebraska, man. I was born and raised in Nebraska along the banks of the North Platte river, but the Platte river in eastern Nebraska. And so I ended up back here, I don’t think that was ever part of the plan. Matter of fact, when I lived in Los Angeles, you said I was ever going to live in Nebraska again, I think you’re smoking crack, probably, and probably a lot of people were when I was back in that part of the world. No, but I’ve been a lifelong duck hunter, I’ve been obsessed with that sport. And I always tell people I started playing the duck call about the same year, I started playing the guitar when I was age 9 and it’s always been maybe my hugest passion and I went off and did my music stuff. But after looking for, I kind of concluded a 3 state 5 year search for some land to buy for hunting. I ended up looking at a piece that I saw on the back of a Ducks Unlimited magazine that classifieds for property in western Nebraska on the North Platte River. And growing up I always knew that what a strong area the North Platte River was. But I came out, fell in love with the place, but the interesting thing is, A it didn’t have any water on it and the river in this county where I am is game refuge which I’m a big fan of. And the other game refuge is exactly like this, the one I grew up on in eastern Nebraska. And it’s a statute, it’s not even run by an agency anyway it’s protection area which I believe in. Anyway, so it didn’t have any water on the property, so as a duck hunter, I’m going to have to learn how to create it. The other thing was of course it was twice as expensive as the money I’d saved as everything is when you go to buy something you fall in love with something that’s more than you can afford. And so well, maybe I’ll form a hunting club or something and make some financial sense so I can justify doing it. Well this was God leading me into my new life, I always say that because I didn’t see it. What I didn’t see coming was not just the business that became but the creative outlet that one’s I never would predict it. And I’m a lifelong creative guy, I was drawing and painting since I was 3 years old, my mother was a professional artist and so that created, I was going to be a wildlife illustrator but then I got into music. But I have learned through a little short stint working around the people from Fish & Wildlife Service and Ducks Unlimited Nebraska and Parks. I worked with about a little tiny part of project the beginning of this whole thing and the minute they left I called it company with a dozer and an excavator and I’ve been doing it ever since myself, at this point I’ve worked in 4 different states, I’ve developed 7 of my own and several others in Nebraska and I’ve even worked for the Fish & Wildlife Service in Oregon restoring, designing and doing restoration wetlands for them. So that’s a long answer, I don’t know if you want it long but that’s who I am.

“No, that’s cool, man. What are your earliest memories of duck hunting growing up, and what hooked you?”

Ramsey Russell: No, that’s cool, man. What are your earliest memories of duck hunting growing up, and what hooked you?

Steve Farris: Well, my dad was a hunter. My dad was not a big game hunter, the birds, waterfowl, pheasant, upland game. And he was a fly fisherman, avid fly fisherman. But I don’t know if they talk, if there’s such a thing as your life reincarnation, et cetera, second life. But if so, I was a duck hunter in a couple other lives because when I was a little kid, dad would come home after hunting and he’d bring me duck heads or pheasant heads or something after he cleaned the birds and should I take him to school for show and tell? I was like, all I wanted to do was go hunt ducks. And I used to look at books about ducks and ducks this and just something about the lore and the ambience of what duck hunting was. I don’t know why, but before I even hunted, just the cold weather and the marsh and the whole thing was just had this magic that I’m attracted to. So, I started shooting guns when I was very, I mean, 6 years old and stuff, I was carrying a pellet gun around with me constantly and shooting anything that moved. But then when I was 9 years old, he took me hunting for the first time with an actual shotgun in my Anna 410. And I shot my first green wing teal in the sandhills of Nebraska and here we all are.

Ramsey Russell: That was all you wrote. So your dad was your biggest mentor, or did you have any other mentors back in those days? And who were they and what did they teach you that still guide you today as a human being?

Steve Farris: Well, dad taught me a lot about a lot of things in life, he’s also was a musician, not professionally as an adult, but a lot of things. But my dad couldn’t call a duck to save his ass, he could shoot really well, but he loved the outdoors, great outdoorsman, climbed the treetop, he was an outdoorsman. But he joined a club over in the Missouri River near the town of Takama and a guy named Kenny Wyman had that going. There’s a whole kind of culture of people, Ralph Kohler was a guy that you may or may not have heard of, but back he was part of a culture of the Missouri River thing. And everybody was kind of descendants of the Ralph Kohler School of hunting, building these 10 acre ponds, growing millet, smartweed and flooding them and having pit blind, usually way too many pit blinds next to each other, I mean, like 6 blinds that had 10 people in it each. Because he was a commercial operator and he’d have 60 guns during a time, that’s Ralph Kohler. But Kenny had a club, and my dad joined it when I was about 7^th grade and I learned a shitload from Kenny Wyman about hunting. He actually taught my dad was a great shot, but Kenny was a better teacher, teach him how to shoot. Kenny taught me how to shoot, he taught me how to call, that’s why I started calling. And I mean, he was a big influence on me, bigger than maybe some people would realize. But I used to work on the summers for him so that he would take me hunting where I didn’t have to wait for my dad to take me, he would take me hunting, I’d earn it, and I’d do taxidermy for him because I was doing taxidermies since about 7^th grade, I mounted him a white fronted goose, speckled bellies, as they call them out west. But anyway, a white front and painted him, I also painted him a painting of some snow and blue goose because painting came, drawing came naturally to me since I was 3 then. But that’s what I do, but Kenny taught me a lot about that stuff and just hunting and I was around, he was a great hunter and great operation. But of course, calling, I mean, I’m a musician, it’s manipulating sound, and so calling ducks is like playing guitar to me, it’s learning how to control sound. And so that just always kind of came naturally to me, I guess. But long answers, I’m famous for them.

“But Steve, your dad was a musician, your mom was an artist, man, you come by creativity natural, your dad is like a lot of musicians I know that pick guitars or beat on drums and do stuff around, but never take it to the stage. How did a kid that grew up with those kind of mentors and duck hunting and doing taxidermy since you were a child, how did a kid from eastern Nebraska get into the music scene? What inspired you into that lifestyle? Which couldn’t be any more opposite than watching sun come up on the Platte River.”

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s good. That makes a great podcast guest. But Steve, your dad was a musician, your mom was an artist, man, you come by creativity natural, your dad is like a lot of musicians I know that pick guitars or beat on drums and do stuff around, but never take it to the stage. How did a kid that grew up with those kind of mentors and duck hunting and doing taxidermy since you were a child, how did a kid from eastern Nebraska get into the music scene? What inspired you into that lifestyle? Which couldn’t be any more opposite than watching sun come up on the Platte River.

Steve Farris: Yeah. I’m tooting my own horn but obviously artistic stuff is in me and that’s what I’m good at. So, I guess I had talent to play when I started – I started playing guitar from lessons when I was 9. I mean my mom sent me to piano lessons when I was in first grade, that didn’t take. But anyway, Beatles came in, Ed Sullivan, I thought, well that looks pretty freaking good, I want to do that. All those girls screaming –

Ramsey Russell: That’s right, always the girls.

Steve Farris: So anyway. But I started playing guitar when I was 9 and my mother would make me practice half hour every day before I could go out and play basketball with my neighbors and of course, thank you, mom. And once he started teaching, my guitar teacher started teaching me Beatles songs and stuff, then it became interesting and then of course I was hooked. But first band I put together, I think I was in 6^th grade, it was a band we ever played with 3 of us, we got together, we called it Strings & Things. And we’d mess around, we didn’t know what to do. And then we’d play in front of the school kids or whatever. And then when I was about in 9^th grade, it got a little more serious and they’re local bands, local guys playing in local bands and playing dances and stuff. And I started, we put together a band called Sticky Pete and we practiced all the time. We were kind of, we’re talking about, would that be 1970 maybe? I don’t know. But we’re talking about back when you’re starting to smoke pot because you want to try it. And we’d pick ditch weed in Nebraska and never got high and we were always disappointed. Anyway, so that was going on and one of our singer had long hair because his parents would let him have long, this is back when you got kicked out of school if your hair was over your ears.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right, I remember those days.

“And we play Friday and Saturday night, come home and I’m making like 100 bucks a night back in 1971, which was a lot of money for a high schooler, buying a stereo, buying a car, and that’s kind of how I grew up in that stuff.”

Steve Farris: They’d send you home, make you cut your hair. And so anyway, we be in that band and we did actually play a gig because the bass player’s older brother had a band and they were doing dances and stuff and they were going to play in Arlington, Nebraska, which was 7 miles away at a bowling alley they rented. But on the break they were going to let us play. So we played there, that’s the first actual real gig I’d tell you I ever played, didn’t get paid, but played there. As a matter of fact, my brother played drums because he practiced drums a bit, we didn’t have a drummer. Anyway, we were playing Hendrik songs and Grand Funk Railroad and all that kind of stuff that was out in those days. And then we played at this city auditorium on something, I can’t remember what it was for. And then another band in town that was playing a lot of dances, gigs called Dog Breath. And Dog Breath saw me play and I got it. One Sunday night, we’re eating Sunday dinner and there’s a knock at the door, and dad goes around to answer the door and it’s kind of Bruce Weddigrin and Greg Fernholz and they were 2 of the members of the drummer and singer, rhythm guitar player, Dog Breath and they came over to ask me if I wanted to join their band because they need to lead guitar players. So I joined their band. And this was kind of the start of one of those first times that you get asked by somebody better, so you move up, later on goes on to career level. So I got recognized in a small level and I was in that band. We were doing gigs like when I was a junior and senior in high school, I mean, we were out, we played under the band named Dog Breath for a while, but of course we only got so many gigs that way. And then we went and won a battle of bands one summer over in Iowa against a bunch of bands that were adults, they weren’t in high school. But we won, 18 bands were there and we won. And after that, this agent started booking us everywhere. My mom would write me notes to take to school so I could get out of school early on a Friday so we could drive across Iowa to some gig we had. And we play Friday and Saturday night, come home and I’m making like 100 bucks a night back in 1971, which was a lot of money for a high schooler, buying a stereo, buying a car, and that’s kind of how I grew up in that stuff. And then that faded out. And I was going to go to art school because it was always, Steve’s the best art kid in school. So I’m going to go to art school, because that’s what you do. Oh, you’re going to go to art school. But my dad picked up on the fact that when I was graduating high school, we’re looking at art colleges and said, you really don’t want to go to art school, do you? I said, I don’t know because it was pushed coming to shove, why don’t you go to music school? And he said, I’ve been looking into the things, there’s a place called Berkeley College of Music in Boston. And there were 5 places that – I hope this long answer is okay, you okay with this?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, go man. Roll.

Steve Farris: So anyway, there were 5 schools that had guitar program, only 5 schools back then, this is 1975. There was Berkeley College of Music, there was University of Miami at Coral Gables, there was University of Indiana, it was North Texas State, Denton had guitar program, one other one, I can never remember who it was, but not much. But I ended up going to a summer session school in Boston at Berkeley College of Music that summer right after I graduated from high school and made friends there, this was first time I was really out in a real true city, around kids that were playing jazz and stuff at my age, I should back up. I started playing jazz with a guy that was a student at our local college, he was from Chicago and a tremendous jazz player and got to study with him and he taught me a lot. But I went to school like when I turned 18, I guess I’m going to say that’s when he said, I’m going to go try to make it in the music list. That’s what I’m doing. I’m not starting art, that’s what I’m doing. I’m very lucky that I had a purpose and a direction of that age. Because a lot of kids go to college, they’re still, I don’t know what the hell I want to do, I’m just in college, I knew what I wanted to do. I mean, because when I was about, I was in 6^th grade, so I guess that’s what, 12? I don’t know, I was scrolling through, dad had a Hi-Fi, it wasn’t even a stereo, but it was a Heathkit Hi-Fi in the building, the wall with a 15 inch speaker and a receiver for radio and turntable. And I remember scrolling through there one day and I hear this music and I go, the hell is that? It was just so mesmerizing. My older sister goes, oh, that’s Jimi Hendrix. You like Jimi Hendrix? I go, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard. So 2 songs were played by Jimi Hendrix and this was off the Are you Experience album, I don’t Know whether it was Purple Haze, I don’t know whether it’s Foxy Lady, I can’t remember that. But 2 songs off that album, I was like, holy shit, what is that? And so for Christmas that year, I got a Jimi Hendrix record and an N scale train set to put together. So I put together my train set, I’m listening to Hendrix. But I would learn every time Hendrix would come out with a new album, I’d sit there with the album and learn shit off of it, just studying the master, still my favorite guitar player ever. But anyway, I mean, Hendrix. And so, that’s what I learned. So I’m playing that kind of stuff and then I’m at Berkeley College of Music learning jazz and legit stuff that is very complicated. And I met some guys from New York and Tito Rodriguez. God, I can’t believe I remember this name. Oh, you could ask me this for the last 10 years, I wouldn’t remember the name, right now I’ve got it, Tito Rodriguez. Tito had a band in New York City and they needed a guitar player to replace the guy that was leaving the band. And they used to go to Vegas and open for a girl, a woman named Joey Heatherton, I don’t know if that name would ring a bell to you and me. Vegas star back in the 60s and 70s. Anyway, so we make a deal, I’m going to go get my shit in Nebraska and I’m moving to New York. I’m not going to go back to college, I’m going to move to New York. But I get back home and then they write me a letter, they’ve hired somebody else, which should be the first of what you realize, all the things that aren’t going to happen, that are supposed to happen, once you get used to that in life, you’re okay. So anyway, that didn’t happen. Dad and I drive down to North Texas State to pick up school there, we had 2 days to get us in and I decided I’m not going to do that because they didn’t teach electric guitar, but whatever. I end up going back to Omaha and working for a booking agent used to book our band. I did that for about 2 months, I said, well, I keep doing this, I’m going to put a bullet through my head because this is the most depressing thing I’ve ever, I don’t know, just like I’m calling high schools and saying, hey, have you thought about your homecoming band for this year? Telemarketing bands, for God’s sake, when I’m a player. It was terrible. But anyway, I talked to these guys in Iowa City that needed a guitar player and I asked them what music they played and they told me this and that and things I liked and I’m a guitar player. So I went over there, hooked up with them and I said, I’m going to move over there and we’re going to put this band together in Iowa City, well, then that band didn’t get put together. So I went to school there at music school in Iowa and a classical training that taught me nothing, basically. I still have been working out, I learned at Berkeley in like 2 months, but I was a waste of time. But anyway, I was in a semester school there and some local band that was playing clubs and bars in Iowa and everything asked me to play with them one weekend, I ended up joining that band. And then for 2 or years, better 2 or more years, I played in that band and we played, that’s when I started playing in bars full time. And we’d play 3 to 5 nights a week, 2 to 5 sets a night and we would play everywhere from East Lansing, Michigan to Rapid City, South Dakota, meaning Fargo and Des Moines and Omaha and Minneapolis and Chicago and everything in between. And that’s how I lived. And then another better band in Iowa City saw me play. So I joined them, made more money, long answer, but here’s my history, you can pick and choose, it’s interesting in here, but anyway. And then I was playing with that band and then I was writing a lot of music, a lot of instrumental jazz music and stuff we play and we became a big deal, like in the Chicago area. It was really good musicians, most of these guys had been music school, they had degrees in music and stuff, they’re great players. And we would play and we would end up playing the supper club like out in Palatine, which is northwest Chicago. And we’d get done and then other bands knew about us and these guys would get off their gig and they’d come over, we have jam sessions and I was getting all this kind of notoriety as being a good guitar player and all that. And then we put together a demo tape of things that I’d written and the sax player and I went to Los Angeles that one winter and we’re going to play for everybody, play this tape and see we get any going record deal or whatever. So we put together a list of everybody we might know or people that knew somebody that, an uncle of somebody that knew somebody’s sister or whatever in LA of somebody that was in the music business.

Ramsey Russell: It’s just a constant hustle, isn’t it? Hustle, man.

“I didn’t realize how fortunate that was. I mean, you go to LA and look around for 5 years and hope somebody recalls, you know what I mean? Here I am.”

Steve Farris: This story, the hustle’s about to start, we aren’t quite there yet. It’s a hustle. So I go to Los Angeles with my sax player, Donnie, great guy, we go stay with my aunt and uncle who lived in Culver City. And we just were calling way before cell phones. But we start calling everybody and trying to hook up and just meet people and I had met a bass player named Bill Bodine, because he played bass with Melissa Manchester and they came into a bar I was playing, sat in and he gave me a number. So I got here, come out to LA, give me a call, so he’d look up that one. And Donnie knew a guy named Mike Boddicker, Boddicker family had a store in Cedar Rapids, Iowa music store. But Boddicker had become a big session player in Los Angeles, he was working for Quincy Jones all the time and he was a synthesizer player back when that was a new thing, synthesizer. But we met him, went to his studio, he was very successful. And we played him a tape of his instrumental music, well, he was impressed enough to call me, like a day or two later and asked me to come play a session on a session for him. I didn’t realize how fortunate that was. I mean, you go to LA and look around for 5 years and hope somebody recalls, you know what I mean? Here I am. So I go over to play a session in the studio, and I’m playing with a guy that had just played drums on Betty Davis, Eyes for What’s Her Name, number one hit. And another guy was in Nick Gilder’s band. Nick Gilder had a hit. I’m just saying, I don’t know how lucky I am, but I’m damn lucky. So fortune is the word I like to use, still luck. But anyway, so I play with him and then he starts encouraging me to go down, you should come out here, you could be the next Larry Carlton or Jay Gray, he was talking to these session guitar players, and I was, now I’m going to stay with my band, being loyal to my band. And so I went back to Iowa a few more months, slogging it out in cover band stuff. And then we had a time off, like in May, and I said, I’m going to go back out to Los Angeles and hang out with Mike Boddicker again. So then I’m going to sessions with him, this is towards the end of the Disco, 1979 disco era, disco is about to fade out. But these guys are making disco records, like all these are the great session players, these are cranking it out every day, making great money. They’re probably all each making quarter million, $300,000 in 1979, they’re making a damn living. And so I go out and I’m hanging out the studio, meeting all these famous musicians because I’m with Mike Boddicker, I’m just a fly on the wall, but I’m like, man, I’m hooked up. And he encourages me, so I go back, I play for a couple more weeks with my band, I look at him, I go, I’m moving to LA, I’m going. So I sold all my things, I took a Volkswagen Rabbit that barely ran, a Volkswagen Rabbit, and a little guitar amp, three guitars, a suitcase. When I drove to Los Angeles, my uncle said we could stay with us for a month, you got a month and you’re out. I stayed there, and then I ran into some musicians I’d known from Iowa that were renting a house, we rented a house together, then the story’s going on, and I’ll let you ask another question. But that’s how I got to play, how I got successful is a whole bunch of other steps.

“But you got to meet a lot of famous people, I know you’ve worked with a lot of big names back in the day, Kiss. I mean, that’s my first album ever had was Kiss, White Snake, Madonna. What’s the weirdest or most unexpected musical session you’ve ever been a part of?”

Ramsey Russell: But you got to meet a lot of famous people, I know you’ve worked with a lot of big names back in the day, Kiss. I mean, that’s my first album ever had was Kiss, White Snake, Madonna. What’s the weirdest or most unexpected musical session you’ve ever been a part of?

Steve Farris: That’s an interesting question. I don’t think I’ve been asked that one before. Say it again. What’s the most odd -?

Ramsey Russell: What’s the weirdest or most memorable or unexpected musical session you’ve ever been a part of playing with some of these big names, all these folks you’re meeting because you caught your break when you met that guy.

Steve Farris: Yeah. At the end of the day, I played with over 150 artists, I played with so many. Kiss was the first record I ever played on, by the way. I’ll tell you the Kiss story, excuse me, then I’ll tell you another story with Diana Ross, which was also kind of very interesting. But Kiss, I hadn’t done anything big yet. I’m there and I’m beating it out and I’m playing with 7 bands at a time, and we’re just doing everything you can. And I had a band with some of the guys from, they were in a band called Poco, we had some hits, but they were the kind of sidemen with Poco, we had a band called the Mambo Jets. And we go down, and we’re playing down in Marina del Rey at a place called the Blue Lagoon Saloon. And this band, I had a lot of solos in, I was really featured, I did a lot of guitar playing. And these are showcase clubs in Los Angeles, meaning, you come in, you’re an original, you’re playing all original music, you play a set, you off stage, somebody else plays a set, you see this in New York, you see it in Nashville or whatever, but you don’t make money. And they won’t let you come back to the club unless you bring up a group of people, you make all your phone calls, we’re playing out, come in. Anyway, I played with the mama, just get him on the set, I’m going walking back the place is real crowded. Guy comes up to me and starts talking to me, he said, would you be interested in auditioning for the band Kiss? And of course, I said, well, wait a minute, my Volkswagen Rabbit doesn’t run unless I pop the clutch when I run down a hill, I eat soup every night, why the fuck would I want to audition for a Kiss? You know what I mean? Yeah, I might want to audition for a Kiss.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: He goes, give me a phone number on a napkin, because that’s what we did back in those days, always writing on napkins. But anyway, so he gave me a number to call, so she’s handling everything, I call some girl, make a tape come down. Well, so I start gathering a tape, and I go over to a guy named Tony Peluso’s house, he was the reason the guitar played the Carpenters. But I met him doing some different sessions, he was a great engineer, and I liked him. And he helped me put together a compilation of all these things I played on, including things I played on in Iowa or jam sessions or recording sessions on them, whatever I thought showcased me as a guitar player. And I go down to this office down on Sunset Boulevard, where the girl meets me, and she sits there and listens to my cassette, the whole thing, which is kind of weird, she listened to it while I was there. But anyway, and looks completely unimpressed and I get up to leave, thanks, bye. Another day in the life, like, well, that didn’t go anywhere, but 2 weeks later, I get a phone call and the guy says, hey, is this Steve Farris? I said, yeah. So this is Paul Stanley from Kiss, Gene and I listen to your music. He said, we’re doing a record right now, the Record Plant, we’re just having guys come in and play on the record, it’s kind of an audition, would you come down? I’m like, no, I’m not going to come down. I said, yeah, come down tomorrow at 2. So I go to the Record Plant, which is a very famous studio and I’d been in there late at night when somebody had some free studio time when you’re there. But now I’m in there, daylight hours, I’ve been walking in the hallway. I mean, Tom Petty walks out of one room and into another room. Luther Vandross is on a payphone talking. There was some other famous, I can’t remember, the 3^rd one was in the hallway, the stars.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: But I go to Studio D in the back, sliding glass door, and I can see through it a couple tall guys with dyed black hair, no makeup, you’ve never seen these guys that make it back in 1982.

Ramsey Russell: Did you recognize them?

Steve Farris: What?

Ramsey Russell: Did you recognize them when you saw them. That’s Ace, that’s Gene, that’s Paul, that’s Peter Cruz.

Steve Farris: Ace, he’s in there because they’re going to see, he’s gone, that’s where you place him.

Ramsey Russell: I got you.

Steve Farris: Drummer’s not there, but this is Paul and Gene, okay? And another guy playing guitar that they’re auditioning. A guy named Bob Kulick, as it turns out, who’s done a lot of stuff, too. And his brother Bruce ended up being in Kiss. But anyway, he’s playing, I walk in and I want to see, hey, great, man, hey, can you hang out out in the hallway? We’re listening to another guy right now, okay. So I go hang out in the hallway, I remember sitting on the couch for 3 hours waiting to play. But you sit there and just wait it out, this guy’s in there playing. Finally, he’s done, he goes walking out, hey, this is Bob Kulick, Steve Farris in, all right. He leaves. They bring me in the room, and I don’t know what anybody knows about guitar. But anyway, so you got an amplifier, they’ve got it out in the sound room and you’re in a control room, so you’re separate. They got a mic on the amp, a lot of times you’re recording, you sit in the other room where you can communicate with the loud amplifiers out there. But Paul goes, hey, man, I got a Marshall out here, he gives me a chord, I brought in my guitar and a couple foot pedals that I use and he plugs in. He goes, okay, the song’s in G, we need an 8 bar solo. He said, we’ll scroll up to the bridge, which means I’m going to roll the tape up to that part of the song. Bridge is a section of song, usually after course it comes before a solo. But anyway, I’ll scroll the bridge, he said, I’ll count you in, meaning I’ll get you there and I’ll go, 1, 2, 3, 4, go. And I know this stuff, I was fancying myself wanting to be a studio player that kind of hired a gun, which I ended up becoming. Come in and nail it and nail it, be a hero and go. So he’s behind the board, he goes and the music go by and he goes, 4, by the way, your listeners, I’m counting with my fingers, 4 but I’m quiet. Anyway, and I play a take of the solo and Gene Simmons looks at in and goes, give him another track. And he gave me another track and I got solo. And they stopped the tape and Gene says, will you dye your hair black? I go, yeah. Can you wear high heels? I said, I’ll give it a try. And they said, this is great and they were all going nuts. Now I’m going to tell you that second take of an audition is the solo on a song called Creatures of the Night on the Creatures of the Night album.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Good story.

Steve Farris: I’ve did 3 interviews about that solo in the last 2 years, I’ve still done interviews about the solo. And that was an audition second take. So they were considering making me the new guitar player of Kiss. Now, mind you, this is pre any big credits. So this is a big fucking. I’d actually had a couple close – I was in the band Player for a minute, they had a song called Baby Come Back. Remember that?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: I played with them for a month and then they had to let me go because they needed somebody to sing lead and I don’t sing lead. So I lost that gig, which was devastating to me because I was so excited about it. Then I was going to go on the road with Brenda Russell and that didn’t happen, anyway. This thing that I didn’t get with Player because I can’t sing pertains to Kiss now because after that they want to set up in a room where they’re all playing like a band, like rehearsing, and we’re all going to play together, they want me to play with them, see what it all feels like, like for real. Then I go down there, all my set up and stuff, and then they say, well, we got to hear you sing. And I’m like, that’s not what I wanted to hear you guys say. I’m like, I can go home now or we can do this? Well, they’re trying to talk me in singing, well, I don’t sing. And Paul Stanley go, Steve, I didn’t used to think I could sing either, but they’re talking me into it. And it’s times in life when you go, I’m either going to try singing now, maybe get the gig, but if I don’t sing, I don’t got the gig. So, what do I have to lose? So I have the dubious distinction of having sung Honky Tonk Woman with Kiss, with me singing lead vocal, which I wish I had a tape of that. That would be one of the worst and best things I could possibly own. So I played with him and then that was the end of that, I didn’t hear from him after that, but about 3 weeks later or so, Paul calls me back and said, we don’t think you’re the right guy for the band, but we love your guitar playing, so we’ll hire you to do sessions. So then I went back, played for him. That’s my Kiss story.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great story. You’re still a duck hunter, you’re born and raised, Nebraska duck hunter. Were you duck hunting at this time when all this rock and roll pursuit was going on? Were you still duck hunting?

Steve Farris: Yes, and no. There was a period of time when I first got there, I didn’t have the luxury of going anywhere to duck hunt or anything. But several years into it, like right after that, I got a gig with Eddie Money, that’s 1982 and after that too, I came back and we were starting to put together Mr. Mister in 1983. And my brother had moved, he had finished his pre Med and now he’s in, he’s doing residency for his medical work at UCLA in LA. So now my brother’s in town, so we decided we get a boat, that’s when we start exploring California duck hunting. I’m sure you know this or anybody listening knows this, public hunting is boot camp, buddy. And you get your together through hot public ground.

Ramsey Russell: You better. Especially in the state of California, those freaking refuge rats are hardcore.

Steve Farris: And you got to put up with, you got to get ready to get a couple fistfights and the whole thing and I did all that, because it was like you had to want to hunt. But it’s great hunting, I mean the habitat’s great, it’s unbelievable, but you got to work your ass off and get your – It’s boot camp, man, it’s boot camp, which played a big role in my whole evolution of duck hunting. But I would go hunt 2 to 3 days a week in the Central Valley of California, which the closest place was Kern Refuge, that was a little over 2 hours. But I got where I was hunting the grasslands by Los Banos and that stuff and that was a 3 hour drive. And I drive up there without a reservation to go to the refuge and those places fill up, they have a quota and to get on. And I’d sleep all night in the truck in the parking area, sometimes I’d get on the refuge, sometimes I wouldn’t have to drive home without even hunting. And I had a bike rack on the back of my Forerunner, I could sleep diagonally in the back of my Forerunner and then I had a bike rack with a mountain bike on it. And I had welded on a basket in the back that I could put a bag of decoys in. And I’d bungee my 870 in a soft case, I’d bungee that to that middle bar on a bike. Because when you go through the check online the refuge, your next move is to get to your spot before anybody else does. So, I haul ass on a bike and these guys hiking down the dyke, I’d ride around on my bike and they’d get to an area, then I chained my bike to a tree so somebody didn’t steal it, that’s duck hunting in California. And then I’d go walking in the marsh with a tule stool, which is a 2×4 that you had a cross on you because pushing the ground. Tule stool bag of duct decoys on my back 870 with a strap and headlamp and march out into the refuge sometimes a half a mile, sometimes less. You had your spot, throw out a decoy, sit there with your light and shine around making trying to guard yourself.

Ramsey Russell: Keep everybody off. Yeah.

Steve Farris: And then sometimes you have guy, I can tell stories about guys setting up next to you and that gets pretty crazy.

Ramsey Russell: We all got stories like it. That’s right.

Steve Farris: But anyway, that’s what I did out there. So I was hunting and then I had to come home to my dad was in eastern Nebraska, my mom was still alive then too. And I come back and I’d spend a couple weeks Nebraska hunting every year or whatever. I still got a lot of hunting in back then, I did a lot of hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Did you ever take anybody, any recognizable name from the music world duck hunting? Did you take Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley to the duck blind? I know you didn’t get Madonna out there.

Steve Farris: I’m not sure. Paul might have given it a try, I don’t think Gene would get near that stuff. But anyway, I’m trying to think, the only guy, the only musician, I’m friends with Ted. Ted and I are pretty good friends. Other than that, and I watched Ray Parker shoot a deer when I was on a celebrity hunt one time and that boy I’m sure had never hunted. I stand there where he killed his deer but I never took anybody. I mean I’ve have famous people that hunt with me now, you didn’t have it but when I think about it, none of them are in the music business, not really those guys. Well, I hunted with Pat Leonard, he’s writer producer for Madonna and he had some ground, his own ground up in northern Michigan, the upper peninsula UP and we went grouse hunting up there one time. But he was more of a fisherman. I don’t know, not many musicians.

Ramsey Russell: It’s almost like different world. It’s like different worlds. You know you look back in the old days, black and white days and you know a lot of those rock stars or musicians and TV stars were hunters also. But some point somewhere along the way when I was in high school and in college listening to you all’s music, things changed, it became like different worlds. And I was just wondering how a guy like yourself reconciled those different worlds.

Steve Farris: I’m good at arguing.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, when you’re in New York City at recording studios or at concerts or bars, I mean probably wasn’t something that came up was your duck hunting path.

Steve Farris: Because I was in the pop world man and pop rock and stuff and there’s some hunters in that, but not many. I would find myself in arguments with anti-hunters all the time but I could always handle myself. Mind you, people are quite as violently opposed to each other as they are politically these days and usually I’d went over people because a lot of people just ignorant about what it even is. I remember I had a roommate, she was well, after my house got destroyed in the earthquake, I had a roommate for a while that she was a musician, a couple musicians, girls, and she was really animal lover, animal rights and blah, blah. But by the end of living with me, I remember she told me about she’d get an argument to dinner parties, sticking up for hunting. And I thought, that’s odd. I got her to cross over and see what it was. I had some of those experiences. But if you get into the country music thing with those boys, they hunt. Country music guys are hunters, pop guys aren’t. I mean, this is general, of course.

Ramsey Russell: When did you say I made it? Was it hearing Mr. Mister on the radio? When did you say, I got it, I’m there.

Steve Farris: I can tell you that answer. Okay. I mean, there’s several steps up there and I played with Kiss and I toured with Eddie Money, and then I wrote a song with Eddie Money that was on the radio and I heard it on the radio and this and then. Mr. Mister, we do one album, doesn’t do anything. Second album, we’re doing this, then Broken Wings comes out and we’re on the road opening for Tina Turner this 1985, and she was huge right there with the Private Dancer tour and all that. I’d been down there, we released Broken Wings on what these call AOR radio, which meant Album Oriented Rock, that was one format and it did okay. But then it got released to CHR, which is contemporary hit radio, which is top 40. And I got hired by Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees. I was down in Miami playing a record with him, I was hired for 6 weeks to do a record with him, some other LA musicians. And then our manager called me and said, we’ve got an opportunity to go open for Tina Turner on her next tour, get your ass back here. And so I told Barry what was going on and I got a guitar player named Kevin Dukes from Billy Joel’s band, friend of mine, he came down and filled in for me. And I went back to LA, start rehearsing for a tour, we went on the road with Tina. Okay, this is where the shit starts to happen because we’re out on the road with her and every week Broken Wings are going up the charts, it’s going up the charts, it’s going up 10 points and you’re like, stuff’s going on and about by Thanksgiving, it was number 3, I think. And you kind of knew that, well, either we’re getting a number, we get number one next week or we didn’t get number one, and you’d always get, you’d always know where the Billboard chart was like the Wednesday before the next week or something, it was like 4 or 5 days before Billboard actually came out. And Rich, the singer, and I, we were out somewhere near Georgia, I think, and we flew back to LA, we had a couple days off or something, and we both went back to LA for whatever. And we didn’t know we’re so close to number one or whatever. But he and I get on the plane to go back to Atlanta that day, and we’ve been told no Phil Collins, I think we were up against Phil Collins and Whitney Houston or something. And there you go, you didn’t go number one, you’re number two. Well, that’s still cool. But I remember Rich and I was flying back, we had a drink, Toasty said, hey, congratulations, we got number two, but of course, number two is a mile away from number one in everything. But anyway, we get off that plane in Atlanta and our road manager picks us up and says, congratulations. Broken Wings is number one. He’d gotten the actual information. We played that show opening for Tina that night, of course, she was sending champagne to us, it was a big deal. And I went back to the Omni Hotel and my ear had gotten, I had a sinus thing going on, my ear got clogged, I could hardly hear. So I’m in the bathroom at the hotel, running steam and shit. And I’m on the phone, this is pre cell phone, but I’m on the phone in the bathroom calling my parents, all my high school friends, everybody and that’s why I said, I made it.

Ramsey Russell: You made it.

Steve Farris: That was the moment I go, fuck, I made it.

Ramsey Russell: Was being a rock star all it was cracked up to be?

Steve Farris: Yes. Could give you more details than other questions.

Ramsey Russell: Probably the wrong listening audience for that.

Steve Farris: No, that’s what everybody said. You know what, I’ll tell you what on that answer, you do 5 million interviews when that’s just going, we would tour and you do interviews all day. Some live, some radio, that’s the way this is. I mean, interviews I’ve done my life. That’s part of it. You’re promoting and you’re meeting this, that.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: Get back towards Lincoln, Nebraska to play, which is my home turf. And it’s very exciting, the whole state was behind me. We played Bob were opening for us, their banners up, OMA love Steve Farris, it was great. But I did an interview with a guy from some Lincoln paper, I don’t remember his name, whatever. And he starts asking me, how the whole progression, kind of like what was about how you got there? And he said, was it worth it? And I said, well, I walk on a stage in front of 10,000 people every night after a guy hands me a perfectly tuned guitar. I’ve got girls all in the front saying, we love you, Steve, and I’m making more money than I ever have. Yeah, it’s fucking worth it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I would say so. Well, now, fast forward, not many people, let me just say, there are musicians that are still sticking around, they don’t know when to step off. You know what I’m saying? When did you know it was time to step off? I mean, how come you’re not, I hate to be, I love him, but it’s time for him to step off. You know what I’m saying? I mean, some of these guys, it’s just time to step off. How did you know it was time to step off?

Steve Farris: They don’t have anything else. They don’t know anything else.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Steve Farris: That’s a real different thing for me. And I thank God for it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: Because I got buddies, man, that did a lot, they’re still in music, they might be sidemen, so you don’t know them, but they played with everybody. And that world has changed because everybody’s automated and you program in your house and stuff. So there’s never as much work for a musician as there was 30 years ago, there just isn’t. But some guys, well, like a good friend of mine, really good friend of mine, one of my best friends, he just got done playing with, he was Elton John’s keyboard and music director for, God, I don’t know, 15 years or whatever, good friend and he’s played with everybody. But even back years ago, he’d say, first you’re lucky to have something else you love. He said, I just know keyboards. That’s where most of these guys are at. This was so hard to get there, which it was. I lived it. And that’s all, to do and pretty soon, you’re this age or whatever. Some of them do it gracefully, some of them have business to do forever. I mean look at the freaking Stones, man. They’re still playing and doing good job. Kiss. I mean, so some of them, you’re just that big and you can do that. You could have been, well, Tom Petty died, but he could have gone on forever, he’s a poet and a songwriter and you don’t –

Ramsey Russell: My wife and mother in law are going to see 90 something year old Willie Nelson tonight.

Steve Farris: Somebody in an interview asked him, if he was ever going to retire, he said, from what?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, when did you know it was time to walk away from the rock for the life?

Steve Farris: Well, here’s your storyline, here’s how it happened. I have such a love for hunting the outdoors and I finally was fulfilling that dream of buying hunting land which I talked about earlier. But how old was I? 42 or something when I found it. And I’m still living in LA, but I’m coming out here to Nebraska all hunting season, I started developing it and my interest is this and that. And then because of the success of my first place, other guys came to me and said, hey, if you want, if you ever need more horsepower, a little more money, let’s go get another one and that just led to 7, I had 7 of them one time that I was developing and had ownership in. And I moved to LA after splitting from my first wife in 2005, I moved from LA, I didn’t know where I was going to go. But after hunting I spent my first summer out here in Nebraska where I am now. But one of my buddies had moved to Nashville, there’s a lot of guys work as Nashville was kind of really happening in LA, kinda wasn’t. And so I drove down to Nashville after hunting season one year and I mean the first time there CRS is happening, which is country radio, whatever, but all year in Nashville something’s going on like that every year, every week. But it was CRS and my buddy Todd, a singer, really good friend and he was my hunting buddy by the way, in LA. He was the one hunter that would go, one music guy that would go with me and we’re still great friends. Todd took me around and people were making a big fuss over me because I was Steve Farris and Mr. Mister and all my credits and everything. And I mean I’m even running into the head of Sony Records who John Grady was his name and he was from Nebraska and I’ve been told if you ever run into him and this guy, I will tell you a story, I think you’ll like it. But anyway, so the second item there we’re down at BB Kings and we get invited to be VIPs we knew people were downstairs with record company people and all that and there’s 3 people showcasing one of them is called named Miranda Lambert.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve heard of her.

Steve Farris: Yeah one of them was Van Zant which was Donnie and Ronnie Van Zant. And I knew Ronnie because he was in 38 special when I was opening for 38 special when I was at Eddie Money but didn’t know well but they’re playing and then another girl that didn’t make, we’re down stairs and by the way, John Grady is this is the head of Sony Records at the time. I think I’ve got his name right, Jesus Christ, hope so. But anyway, I knew a guy in Nebraska that had hit records back in the 60s believe it or not and he was a banker then he said if you ever go down there John Grady runs Sony Records and tell him you’ve met, Pinky Simrad and blah, blah and da, da. I thought yeah, whatever. Well, here I am downstairs at BB King second night I’m in Nashville and I’m sitting at the bar and I’ve got some beat up Filson jacket on my half hunting and a beat up kind of cowboy hat, I’m just hanging out and some guy, long hair comes over starts talking to me, he was a guy that had a radio show down there and I’m not stabbing his name right now but he was well known. What’s your story? He said, you look interesting? Starts talking to someone this, I’m a musician, I live in Nebraska, but I’m this or that. Well he goes John Grady’s from Nebraska, I said, well I’ve heard that, he goes John, calls over John Grady, tall guy, I stand up, I go hey John, Steve Farris, because I know who you are I read your article in Nebraska Land which is a hunting mag, and they’ve done an article about my hunting years ago because every article in Nebraska Land he said my brother used to work your records at Mr. Mister, with Mr. Mister? No shit. We start talk hunting, I said yeah, I got a place out in Oshkosh, blah, blah, he’s a hunter, he says, yeah, I got a place up in South Dakota, god, we got to do this, we’re just fast friends. He gives me his card, goes, hey man, call me Tuesday, right? He walks off of my musician friends who stand there, they go, unbelievable. They go, people try for years to talk to that guy in this town.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: He’s giving his card and I said, that’s a duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Steve Farris: There you go. So nothing really ever came of that. I called him and everything, but it just showed you that I thought, man, I could do some damage in this town if I wanted to with music. If I wanted to hustle, but you know where my head was at? It was with dozers and excavators and moving dirt and sloughs here in Nebraska.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: I was like, I’m not getting on the bus again, man. I’m not.

Ramsey Russell: It sounds like a lot of that habitat may have given you a creative outlet.

Steve Farris: Totally did. That’s why I said, I think earlier, that’s why I didn’t see coming and it just became that’s where my interest was. And then I met my now why Cherie. I met her, she was Nashville girl and I had bought a small piece of ground that was contiguous next to my first place I developed and it was an old beat up farmhouse and it came for sale. I didn’t want anybody to get it, I didn’t know they really wanted it, it’s just neighboring ground. Well, I was transforming my hunting club into, hey, I talked to the guys, I said, hey, if I build us a lodge, I’d have to start charging this much, blah, blah, are you interested? So we’ve got that idea. But also I’m falling in love with my now wife, we’re dating and blah, blah. So we started coming out. So I started making it more into a house I can live in and a lodge. And at one point I was like, why am I not just living out there? And that was the moment you keep asking about that, I’m like, I’m done.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: And I used to be out here and I’d get calls from producers still ago, Farris, you’re probably duck hunting, but if you’re in town and you need on a session on Tuesday, can you do it? I’d call back and say I’m duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Heck yeah, man. What a great story. I want to get into your habitat management and it gives you a creative outlet. But is it creative or science or a blend of both?

Steve Farris: It’s a blend of both.

Ramsey Russell: Where are you getting your scientific information? Some of that kind of stuff.

Steve Farris: Same place I get everything. I self-teach everything. I mean I had some guitar lessons, but most of it is self-taught. My whole duck hunting knowledge thing is gathered from a school of experience and being around people and everything. I know a shitload about habitat man, but I didn’t go to school and I once in a while call maybe my friend Jody Pagan down in Arkansas.

Ramsey Russell: I know Jody, of course.

Steve Farris: Jody and I our good friends and I’ve had Jody come up here a couple times because he’s schooled man. He’s legit.

Ramsey Russell: You better believe it. Well, he’s been schooled with school, but he’s also been schooled with actual putting his boots in the ground and make it work.

Steve Farris: This is the second time I talked about him today, actually talking about Jody. He’s a great duck hunter, we’ve hunted a lot in Arkansas together, he’s a great caller. So this boy is a biologist, that isn’t all academia and that’s what I want.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Steve Farris: Because I am not academia. And I always joke when I’m around certain people, I say, God, you can hear the diploma flapping in the breeze behind him, if you know what I mean. But I had Jody up here not that long, a couple years ago, come on up. He killed a turkey with me, I took him turkey hunting up here one time. But see I would hunt with Duncan, George Duncan at 5 Oaks because Duncan and I were on the conservation programs committee for DU together. George even asked me to be assistant chair of Habitat and Science on the second term I did. And George just gave me an open door. I was living in Nashville, I drive over to DeWitt and George and Jody and I would go off on our own and stand by a tree and shoot ducks. So good friends with George, good friends with Jody. And then I have another really good friend from way back in the California days, Gary Zahn, I don’t know if you ever would heard that.

Ramsey Russell: I know Gary.

Steve Farris: Okay. Well Gary and I hunted together in Los Banos and I used to stay at his house and everything. He came to my first wedding, we were great friends. And me talking about it right now makes me go, why have I still gotten Gary out here? We talked about a couple years ago. And oddly, he and I have been conversing about recipes last few days. And I may do a project which I’m going to leave a little nameless right now, I just had meetings last day or so, and that’s where I was when you called me, I was driving into the airport at Sydney. But anyway, and if I do the work at a certain part, I said, you know what I want to do on this? I said, I want to call either Jody Pagan or Gary Zahn about some moist soil stuff because those are actually experts at.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah, they are. You better believe.

Steve Farris: What I believe I’m an expert at is building something that has shapes and this and that and will hunt its ass off. I’m a golf course designer. I’m not a geologist, I’m the golf player that hires the geologist.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: The guy says, I’ve always wanted a hole to do this, and I always say, man, every blind is a different hole. I’m a golf course designer. So if I need somebody that’s really got some technical skill above what I do know. And I learned a lot from Gary, man, I’ve learned from Jody, I’ve learned from doing it, lots of trial and error, but I would call those guys if I really needed them for a minute, you follow me?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I do. So when you’re putting it all together, what are the required elements for consistently shooting ducks? What are the top 3 things you’re looking to get right?

Steve Farris: Okay, that question could be answered a couple different ways. The top 3 things, if you want a good hunting spot, you need sanctuary, you need safety somewhere near you. It doesn’t have to be on you. It has to be somewhere near you, the holding tank as I say, you got to have birds in the area. You’ve got to rest your property from time to time. You’ve got to make sure you don’t pound it beyond what it can take. If you’re talking about specifically what the habitat or the facility or the hunting site looks like, well, I draw them and I draw them with an excavator. I sit there and I carve and I draw and I go, I always joke and I say, man, this is great, but if Mother Nature were a duck hunter, she’d make it bend a little more here because the northwest wind’s going to do this and I wanted the choice to be here, here and here. Why not just build it that way?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: Instead of going to somewhere that Mother Nature’s always done, I just tweak the out of it. So my favorite compliment, or a couple, when guys are hunting with me, the first one is my favorite, they always say, hell, they’re too close, my pattern hasn’t had a chance to open up. And I just laugh, I said, well, I can get him farther away because that’s a lot easier.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Steve Farris: But you know what I mean? It’s like, no, they’re right here, I want them 15 yards backpedaling over what one of my guys coined as the Pooty hole, meaning the X. I want them here every time I don’t call a shot. Well, I don’t even allow past shooting out of my blinds. If they’re flying over the head overhead, they’re not decoying, we don’t take them, I’m just purist about this. So that’s one thing, now I was going to say another thing about the Pooty hole. What was I going to say?

Ramsey Russell: What do you say in a Pooty hole?

Steve Farris: The other compliment is, like I say is when they say, God, they’re always landing right here in front of us. I say, it’s magic.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: But I’m finding everything that I, between that and the koi spread in the wind. But I have, like, on one of my properties, I have 10 blinds. Well, some of them aren’t going to hunt in an east wind at all. They all probably hunt in a northwest wind because that’s our predominant wind here. They all will hunt northwest or west, but then after that you go, oh, south, I got to go. You know what I mean? You know this.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: Because you go, well, the wind’s going to tell me that’s the wrong spot, today or whatever or you know the deal. I have some places I built that are really protected, really wind protected. Well, you get 60 mile an hour winds, which I’ve hunted in out here, I’ve hunted at 60. Yeah, I got a couple spots, you can’t keep the ducks out of them in 60 miles because, it’s so protected. But other days there’s no wind. And of course, those are the worst days for duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So when you’re looking at a piece of property, raw land, blank slate. What’s the process? What comes first to your mind in designing the perfect habitat for waterfowl? And here’s what I’m getting at for shooting waterfowl for hunting waterfowl?

Steve Farris: Yeah, of course, for hunting. Number of things. I mean, does it have the potential, literally, like, what’s the hydrology of the place? That kind of thing. So what’s the potential for restoring wetlands or creating wetlands or adjusting wetlands? I mean, what’s the potential for all these things? And what do you think is, are the trees here for windbreak, are they not? Or is the open area, what’s your proximity to other things? I mean, there’s a number of things, and then there’s always the one thing that I think, God, I like it here. And I want to sit, I just told this client, possible client of mine, well, he’s a client for me as a realtor because I just sold the property, but I made you some development for him. And we’re driving around my property, I said, I build places that I want to sit at when the ducks aren’t flying, man, I want to like being here. I make them pretty. I make them look good. And he goes, the place look the best. I mean, that’s not technical, but they look freaking great. It’s landscaping, a bit of it. I go, look at this, man. It’s gorgeous. I want it to look like a DU painting. I want to look like a painting. So that has a big factor if I’m buying it. But the other technical factors are, what are the potential. What’s the bird population in the area? What do they do here? Where are the flight lines? And I’ve done so much of it, and when I say so much of it, so much of looking at land and then buying 7 of my own and doing work in 4 states of a bunch. I mean, there’s a point where I can get a feel what I’m looking at pretty quick. And of course, that’s really played into my real estate business and that’s why I was at a kind of a unique perspective as a guy sell real estate, because I go, well, I know what this is. This is why you don’t want to buy this, or this is why you want to buy this, and blah, blah, you know?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: Is that an answer? I don’t know.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it’s great answer, man. How do you define a successful duck season as a land manager? Is it just bird numbers? Is it healthy habitat, something less tangible?

Steve Farris: Like on my places, Ramsey to give you an idea, I haven’t kept track of total numbers in 15 years probably. One reason being I’m not – it would tell me from year to year, maybe, but my usage is all over the place. Unlike our friend JJ at Wyobraska, he’s got to have people booked, make a successful business. He books people every day and he’s got people booked every day. So you’re going to hunt every day. Me? I’m running mine as a club, they’re members, they come maybe, they don’t. I might have low attendance one year and high attendance, another year. Few guys say, yeah, we killed 1700 mallards this year, we killed 500 mallards this year, well, we limit it out every day with every guy that hunted, we kill 250. You follow me?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: That’s a percentage. I go, what more do you want? I couldn’t shoot any more ducks than we’d be illegal. Quality over quantity, quality of the experience. Because I will put it out there that when duck hunting, the way I’m doing it, this is why I have the disciples and why I have a waiting list, is because I am trying to have, what I think is the highest quality hunt, meaning birds have really decoyed, they’re really giving us a great presentation, the shots are right here, you can see them, maybe the blinds fit, a lot of my blinds face north, so the sun’s at your back and you can see them beautifully. I want the whole experience to be something so that every time you pull the trigger on a duck, you really love that kill. It’s not slot ball. And I end up now, most of my hunting is on my own stuff, but I still go and film shows and stuff, and I’ll hunt with other people and they’re doing it their way. And so often I’m just so not, I’m sort of disappointed because it’s just like you’re just trying to kill, man. I mean, I sort of outgrown that. I want to kill in a certain way.

Ramsey Russell: Well, Steve, what’s the main most thing you’ve learned through trial and error that most hunters or landowners may be overlooking when it comes to quality?

Steve Farris: Okay, here’s a big one. Here’s a really easy one, actually. We take turns on singles. I don’t have 2 guys stand up when I got a pair of mallards coming in.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: How many people does it take to kill one?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: But what happens if you do like, you’ll go to some outfits and there’s 3 ducks coming in and 7 people are all trying to outshoot each other, and I politely get out. I politely bow out and probably I got to go, I’m going to eat breakfast or something. I just don’t want to be any part of it. And I’ve said it on pheasant hunts too, where guys are shooting your lane. You’re like, I don’t want any part of that. And so I’ve always orchestrated my hunts that we take turns on singles, we get a flock in, okay? We all try to shoot our lane like you try to do. And of course you’re going to double up on birds here or there, but you try to, spread it out and get a kill. Because the other thing I said to my new client the other day, I said, when I hear guys say, the hunting was so good, we each took turns only shooting one duck out of every flock. And I said, that’s the stupidest thing you can ever do.

Ramsey Russell: Educating a lot of –

Steve Farris: Education you don’t do. I have rules on top of rules in my club. You could read them and you don’t, we don’t shoot into big flocks, we don’t do this. I got one property that I own that has a massive roofs on it. I mean like 50, 000 mallards live there for 2 months a year on the lake. I mean, we don’t hunt near the lake. But I develop things near the lake and I don’t know how many limits of ducks we’ve killed and how many limits we killed one at a time. But half the time we’re hunting that property, I got to remind everybody we aren’t shooting anything because we’ll have moments, we got 300 ducks working us and eventually a lot of them will go to the roost anyway. But I got to wait for it to calm down where I’ve got 7 or 3 or something, then we shoot them. But if I’d been pounding away at all those birds all that time, I’d never kill anyone. The education man. So that idea, because that usually comes from hunters that aren’t as experienced and they think it was great. God, it was so good, we shot one out of every flock. I said, yeah, and then you educated 29 out of every flock.

Ramsey Russell: That takes a lot of restraint, doesn’t it?

Steve Farris: Yeah. And when you got a guy like me that shot a billion of them, I can have that discipline more easily than some guys have because they go twice a year and they’re like, what the fuck, I want to have, it’s tough. When I first started running my club my way, which was the whole premise of the club, I’m going to set this up to hunt the way I want to hunt, and those that love it, love it, and those that don’t, don’t need to be in it, I’ve only had to get rid of a few, to be honest with you. Not any long time because now it’s an invite sort of thing. But what was I just starting to say? Now I’m having a senior moment, help me out.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I mean, you’re getting around to a lot of what you’re talking about right now is managing hunting pressure. And that leads me into because I’ve heard some conversations you just mentioned rules, lots of rules. And I mean, I’m at a campus, got lots of rules and every rule is written to address a problem with somebody, usually. But what are some of the systems or philosophies or rules that you use -?

Steve Farris: And I’m going to go back to rules now. I’m just going to go back because I didn’t want to say something, the last question, I just remember what it was. But when I first started the club, in a business and I was on the hook, man, I was making payments and here I am telling guys what they can’t do.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: They’re wealthy guys, they’re paying me good money. And I’m saying, I can shoot that, can’t shoot that. And you take a risk because you might have backed them off from shooting shots that were in totally in range. And then nothing comes in and this thing shuts off and you’ve hardly shot any. I’m thinking, oh, God, these guys won’t ever come back or be. Well, just you hang with it and you start having good hunts and pretty soon you got guys that would never hunt them any different. Like, I got guys have been hunting with me 25 years and that’s how they hunt now. We said we aren’t doing it, just because they’re in range doesn’t mean I’m green lighting it. They got to be in range a certain way.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Steve Farris: And I will tell guys anymore because I’m so confident about my place now and I don’t need to impress anybody. I’m kind of like, I’ll say if they’re new with me, I’ll say you’re going to see right today with me that you can’t believe that, I don’t call a shot on. And I go, I said I’m just telling you because everybody does.

Ramsey Russell: That goes that quality.

Steve Farris: And then they kill their whole limit on perfect ducks and they go that was great.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it was.

Steve Farris: It’s kind of like I’m going to make a crass analogy, but I say, well I use the word screwing instead of fucking. But it’s like you start screwing the good looking girls, you want to go back to the fat ones. I don’t like this, if you know what I mean. Once you know how it can be, you do the good stuff.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What are some of the rules and systems and philosophies you use to balance opportunity and long term quality?

Steve Farris: Well, like I said, and this is not my own deal but don’t shoot into big flocks. I’m more religious about that with geese than ducks actually because geese live a long time, they got great memories and pressure really screws them up. And I learned that in Oregon, not from me. My brother lives out there and we were part of, we’d go hunting on this place in Sylvie island. And the only geese they could kill with past shooting. And then at one point the culture there started saying no shooting at big flocks and it took about 4 or 5 years to see the difference and pretty soon they started decoying geese again because they weren’t hammer away sky busting at 50 birds at a time. And pretty soon you got uneducated birds and becomes better. So that’s the one. Now back to rules. I’m sorry, ask a question and I’ll try to.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, what are some of the very specific rules and philosphies? Because what you’re doing is you’re balancing hunting opportunity with long term quality. And here’s where I’m getting around the subject right here is, there’s so much hunting pressure on the North American continent right now and it’s being expressed in a lot of different ways, mostly hunter dissatisfaction. God, there ain’t no duck, we ain’t killing no ducks. So I’m just sitting there going to the guy that is having a great hunt and asking what are some of your guiding principles to ensure long term quality?

Steve Farris: Because I’m talking to you through a computer. I’m actually going to go right to my rules here, if you give me just a second. Now I can read them. Read a couple of them anyways, give me one second, man. Just a minute. And when the guys, just a second.

Ramsey Russell: While you are doing that, I’ll just share the story, you were talking about taking turns on shooting and even in hotbed places like Argentina, my favorite hunts down there are where myself and the other guy take turns and sometimes we come back without a limit, but that’s okay. I picked the drakes, I picked the shots I wanted.

Steve Farris: Everything was better quality.

Ramsey Russell: Yes. And besides that, the ducks that don’t get shot at, you just get to watch. And that’s something that in a lot of places that I hunt in the United States, I don’t get to do. I just don’t get to sit back and enjoy the flight. And when you do, it’s something to be seen.

Steve Farris: Yes, it is. Hold on a second, man. I’m sorry. I’m having a minute to get what I wanted to get to you, but it’ll be good if I do, just a bit. Yeah, I promise. No, I mean, if I go down the rules and rags –

Ramsey Russell: How many of them are written specific to managing hunting pressure?

Steve Farris: Well, they all are.

Ramsey Russell: Most of them?

Steve Farris: Yeah, just a minute. Plant agreement. God dang it. I’m not finding the real, well, I’m not finding the document because I haven’t had a sense – Oh well, hunting, we only hunt till one every day, we won’t hunt in the afternoons and that’s even kind of long, but that’s the way I like to do it because we kill a lot of geese after 10 o’ clock where I’m hunting. Because they come back from the corn and stuff like that. And I’ll put hunting days, that’s a membership deal, I only let my guys come for 3 days per time they come, no more than that. And they have to have a 4 day interval before they come again. Well, most of them come for 2 days and they come 3 weeks later, whatever. Another guy park in there hunting every day and burning up the place, that’s part of it. The hunting hours, we only go till 1 o’ clock, I don’t allow any roaming the property can’t just go for walks. You can’t take your dog out and do that –

Ramsey Russell: Don’t drive, don’t disturb them.

Steve Farris: No. You never go, you can’t go boost them off of another area, that’s a junior hunter thing, when they say, God, they’re going in there, we’ll never kill another one, we better go haze them up. You’re like, you’re not going over there, not at my place.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: You let them be happy there, man. And I always say –

Ramsey Russell: Arkansas public wood, that’s what they call shooting a raft.

Steve Farris: Yeah. So you think we go over there and scare them? They’re all coming and going into our decoys right now. No, they’re just going.

Ramsey Russell: No, they’re just going.

Steve Farris: And so anyway, running dogs, we don’t say, blah, blah. Let me see, I was saying something blind, I’m saying refuge, this is not actually my rule list. No past shooting, that’s my club, my design, we don’t take blah, blah, after decoys are calling –

Ramsey Russell: What do you call them past shooting, Steve? If they’re not hooked up, if you don’t got them on a string. If they’re not decoying, don’t shoot them.

Steve Farris: If they’re not going to come into land, they’re pass shooting. I don’t care, the 10 yards going over us, that’s just mine. I’m purist.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Steve Farris: Yeah. I’m hardass.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: Like if they’re just moving across, just leave them alone. I mean the geese, I could shoot past shooting. And I go, no, we got to decoy them. It’s a specific thing we’re doing. No jump shooting, absolutely not. No jump shooting on the property and no sky busting. We’re taking them out of range all that shit, man, I’d boot your ass out of the club, and I have. Yeah, they started doing that shit, they’re gone. We don’t shoot anything bigger than 20 gauge.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Steve Farris: Nothing bigger than 20.

Ramsey Russell: 28 gauge will be welcomed.

Steve Farris: Really welcome. I shoot 410 a lot.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Do you think the difference in a 20 gauge, is it the sound do you think that makes a big?

Steve Farris: I’m glad you bring that up, that’s a collateral benefit that’s not why I ever invoked it but I know places in Idaho doing it and that was some of the big reasons the disturbance on the property, I go well you know what, it is less disturbing. I did it originally just myself I just want to start shoot 20 for more personal sport, one thing I do, then a couple other guys started doing, then we got into 28 and I started shooting 410s and in recent years, I just made a new rule on my new place, I said, nothing bigger 20 gauge. First of all, it helps you make sure – you aren’t less temptation to go back –

Ramsey Russell: You know it mentally handicaps you.

Steve Farris: It puts you down where we’re going to decline because man you could smoke them with 20 gauge we do it all the time on geese, ducks 20 gauge is plenty, especially way we’re hunting plus but the disturbance on the property was a collateral benefit that I know is true and I didn’t see that coming, it wasn’t the design. It’s just like you know what, I shoot 410 a lot with the advent of boss shells, brother.

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah, you better believe it.

Steve Farris: I was just talking to that about my client today, I said, you got to get boss. He’s talking about this and that, I said, I’m just telling you particularly in the sub gauges, you get down 28 and 410, those shells in 410, there’s nothing like them.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Steve Farris: About 5 years ago and I wrote Brandon at Boss, after about 5 hunts by myself, I said, I’m a 410 shooter. I’ve never seen anything like this, because it smokes them. But anyway, that being said, God, I get distracted, I start saying something else. But the 410 creates so much sport – Oh, I know what you say about disturbance. You get ducks to come in here, I’m hunting my sloughs, that’s what I create working on a slough is basically meandering corridor was, it’s a stream, more or less, it’s a long winding running thing. And there might be ducks that are in the slough downstream from you, they might be 150 yards, they miss sitting there and maybe they’re around a bend, they don’t see you. You can shoot ducks that come into you with a 410 and those ducks don’t lift. You shoot a 3.5 inch magnum from the other side of the river, everything lifts.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Steve Farris: I hear guys across the river going field in your chest and they go, those are minimally 3 inch 12s, but they’re probably 3.5 inch and maybe even some 10 gauge goose guys. I see you can feel that in your chest here. And you watch the birds up in the air and they’re 3 quarter mile away and those birds are going. So I’ve got some guys into the idea of shooting smaller gauges on their own places strictly because of the disturbance there, I never thought of that, I do. Because I haven’t shot at 12 gauge since 2004 unless I was on TV where I had to and that’s what we’re doing. Because I shot 12 gauge, I’m like, this seems overbearing.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I know you don’t walk around and haze birds and do stuff like that, what about the time of day you come in and leave? Are you all running ATVs out through all the properties or -?

Steve Farris: No, not as a rule or anything. Most of my properties I built to be able to get your pickup truck to everybody near the blind, I don’t drive up to the blind. You could and I don’t like tracks, that’s an aesthetic thing. Geese, they don’t care that you had tracks. So you follow me? I just don’t make 2 track trails up to the blind. So I might park at 100 yards away, we walk over. Now on one of my properties, I have a Polaris, and I’ve been using that a lot lately because it’s really easy to hide when you’re hunting and everything else, but it’s not really a necessary tool, if you will. I built all my places to be able to drive a pickup truck to the blind to work on the blind and do whatever I need to access.

Ramsey Russell: Do you limit the number of shotgun shells people can take to the blind?

Steve Farris: No.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Steve Farris: As a matter of fact, I’ve had a couple of guys, they have one box and I’ll say, take 2. What do you mean? I said just take 2. I said, the last thing I want to do is hear, we’ve fucked around and taken an hour to put out our spread and this and that. And you’ve come all these miles away and you’ve flown in and you go, oh, I ran out of shells. Now how do you run out of 25 shells? You got to work pretty hard at. I once in a while will do it because I’m guiding, I may be chasing cripples or whatever. And we’re shooting geese and ducks one day. I mean, sometimes a few times you might go through them. But that’s just a superstitious like, don’t ever have too few shells. If you’re hunting with me and I’m guiding, we aren’t taking shots I don’t want you to take. So I’m a benevolent general, basically.

Ramsey Russell: Benevolent dictator, yeah.

Steve Farris: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I think that some of the best – I mean, running any kind of hunting camp, there’s no such thing as a democracy. You can’t have it, it won’t work.

Steve Farris: You know what, and early on, and having a hunting business. Of course, now I’m out of, I’m not hanging around a bunch of musicians and people like me. I’m kind of like the black sheep guy, I’m a musician, hanging around these CEOs and stuff, which now I’m just part of their hunting guru. So, we’re great friends and I bring that to them, but at first I was kind of like, worried. God, you’re telling all these guys what to do and controlling them and everything. And then you learn from them that they like that. Because CEOs are going, yeah, I want somebody in charge, I don’t want to be out here arguing with the others about what we’re doing, because they all been in situations that are partners on land and they all want to do things differently. And they never set up the rules and signed off on them. You see that all the time. Like when I even sell in real estate, guys wanted to put together something I sold a couple years ago, and they wanted to go fractional and look for partial owners. I said, well, the first thing you do is create really good rules in your LLC and have that in your operating agreement and you have everybody sign them and if they don’t, you can boot them out, if they don’t, they can get fined. I said, you think this is hardass, but it keeps friendships together. Because I’ve seen it all along, guys get in these things, next thing hey, if I want to send my grandkid out there without me, I own it too. I’ve seen that kind of shit like your grandkids jump shooting everything up and down the roost.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Steve Farris: No rules. I got offered one time, I was doing work for a club I won’t name the name. And there are 20 owners and everybody’s going 500 different ways, no great rules. And they wanted me to continue doing work and they offered me an equity membership in it. And I said, no, this is a cash or it’s not, but I want no part of this.

Ramsey Russell: We were talking the other day, I’m changing the subject now, Steve. We were talking the other day and you have traveled around. You’ve been outside of Nebraska and California. I mean, you’ve been around the world of duck hunting. And you were telling me earlier the other day that you started down the path of collecting species worldwide. What’s driving that?

Steve Farris: Well, you know what, I actually started just by being there in Botswana, I was in the Okavango Delta in 1989 on a safari that my uncle had left my brother and my dad and I and it was just 2 weeks in the Okavango, which is incredible and I’m sure you’ve been there, but it’s like, magic. And so I since I did taxidermy since I was 7^th grade, so I took scalpels and stuff over there and I would skin ducks in my tent. Now I didn’t have everything set up with Fish & Wildlife or anything, so what I had to do is leave them there with a taxidermist to have them send them over like 6 months later. So a lot of shit didn’t happen. But I mean if you look over, it’s out of focus, but there’s a white face whistling back there, that was Botswana. There’s a red eyed pochard over here. I skinned those in Botswana and brought them back. And so there’s a couple exotic ducks. But when I was a kid, I couldn’t afford to have a bird mounted. So dad bought me a book on taxidermy, I learned to do taxidermy. But my whole thing growing up, like through high school, my biggest thrill was to get a new mounting specimen. Like if I shot a duck other than a mallard, that was full plumage in eastern Nebraska, I mean it made my year because as you know, earlier in the year, the birds aren’t any good anyway and a lot of them would have migrated through Nebraska back in those days. So getting mounting specimens has always been a thing with me. So I had a little place set up in California that I would mount ducks. But I haven’t done it in maybe 30, 35 years mounted a duck until this year. And I went to Greenland last March, went to Greenland to collect eiders, I also shot a musk ox over there, but I don’t do big game taxidermy. So I brought back the eiders and that’s what I needed to do because I’ve been fucking around and not getting into it. I built a taxidermy shop and I workbench a studio, 7 years ago when I put an outbuilding here and I never used it. And so this said, God dang it, I’m going to do it. So I hooked up with a taxidermist at a place called Almost a Live Taxidermy down in Denver, Jared owns it and I talked to him, I’ve sent him clients and I went down there to learn the new techniques though everything they’re using with new mannequins and feet and a whole bunch of stuff that I had never learned in the old days. So I went down and mounted a bird with him and learned a lot of new stuff. And I’ve done 3 more, I did a redhead, a ring neck duck, hooded merganser, and I’m going to do a wood duck and then I’m ready to do my eider. So this has also spawned a whole like, it’s rekindled the whole thing for me. It’s a big deal. My wife’s, like I said, you don’t understand. This is a little art thing I did as a kid that was so exciting, now I’m really excited about another dimension of duck hunting is collecting good trophies and getting them up on the wall. And I said, Chris Dorsey is the guy that’s on all these production companies that I’ve done TV for, and who I went to Greenland with, which I didn’t mentioned, I said, Chris, let’s go get some exotic ducks. Let’s go, let’s make that the show and stuff. And you with your business doing that, it made me think too, man, because then I saw you online, I’m seeing you go shoot shelducks over here and this and that over there, that’s why I brought him up to you there. I said, man, maybe we got to hook up. And then you actually went into the problems that it’s harder and harder to get –

Ramsey Russell: Well, what I’m trying to say is, what I’m trying to tell everybody is don’t sleep on your dreams, the world is getting smaller, not bigger. That’s just the world we live in, it’s getting smaller, not bigger. Just since back in the day you could, I mean, it’s been 15 years you can’t legally bring birds out of Argentina. Thank God I brought them back 20 years ago. You know what I’m saying? But now it doesn’t mean as much to me as it did then. But you can bring birds back from a lot of places or have them shipped back from Africa and do not get birds mounted in Africa, I promise you, not right now and they don’t have a basis for it. But at the same time, I’m just saying to anybody that had this aspiration of collecting birds, don’t sleep on your dreams. I mean, there was a time, and I’m a guess 15, 20 years ago, you could have brought the birds out of Australia. I’ve shot all the species over in Australia, I can’t bring them back. But I tell you something crazy Steve is, I will still travel halfway across the world to target a species, most recently all the way down in Tasmania for Cape Barren geese, knowing I couldn’t bring them back, but that’s okay. I got to take pictures, I got to handle them, I got to see them, I got to experience them, I got to hunt them and it goes back to kind of that quality versus quantity. It is an experience, man. It’s where that bird takes me to, where really and truly, you see that crap in the picture in the back that don’t mean nothing to me anymore. If anything, I sit in that blue chair that belong to my granddaddy and I sit there and look at something, I see a duck on the wall, I go, man, I remember this story, I remember this experience that really had nothing to do whatsoever with the duck and that’s what compels me personally.

Steve Farris: Yeah, that’s trophy hunting. Because they mark something in an experience, like you say, and it’s where it took you, probably the experience of where you were, and it’s different. You got to see these birds fly and you brought one home and it’s a great souvenir. It’s a souvenir of a mark of time. Trophies mean different things to different people. Now we’re off subject a little bit with deer, I never grew up during it because my dad didn’t hunt deer. But then I started buying land that all had great deer on it, and I got into deer hunting 15 years, maybe longer ago than that, and got good enough at that that I ended up, my goal was to shoot a giant whitetail off of each one of my properties, like my own grand slam. And I’ve done that finally, it took 15 years to really collect. And now I don’t know if I ever had whitetail again. The point was, it was really about my land producing that animal and me designing the facility to be a certain way than it is anything else. Like, if a guy said, hey man, you want to go shoot 185 inch whitetail in Kansas? I go, I’m busy. I don’t care about that white tail the same way I care about the one that came off my property.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I get that. Well, that brings us on point. Let me ask a question this way, out of all the hunts you’ve done, whether it’s close to home or far flung, what stands out as the most powerful or meaningful experience that you’ve had so far?

Steve Farris: Of any hunt? Birds, mammals, everything?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: Well, it kind of comes to home because I’m going to go back to white tail deer. And hunting deer is not really that fun, it’s grueling is what it is. You sit forever, but the payoff is big. Like when I first shot a big deer, it was a really big deer. I shot 192 inch on one of my properties, and he’s exceptional. And he does all these times, he’s 16 point. And when I walked up, looked at him in the grass, I was like, that was a big day, that was a big hunting day. That’s one of my biggest hunting days of my life. And the next year I shot 193 inch on another property. And I thought, boy, they’re shooting big deer is really fun. Of course, then I had my ass off for 9 more years and didn’t pull a trigger, we didn’t have a deer. But those moments were truly really big. I mean, I’m trying to equate a waterfowl moment that was like that.

Ramsey Russell: But what made those bucks stand out? I mean, as you spoke about earlier, it wasn’t just their sheer size, it was that sheer size was a byproduct of your commitment to the habitat and to a discipline to let them get to that age.

Steve Farris: Yeah. They’re on my land produce them, and the way we run the land, it produces them. And they’re hard to hunt, man. Getting big whitetails is not easy, man. Some guys have the story, I got out of the truck, he was right there, I shot him. Well, yeah, but I mean, it’s amazing. Because I’d run, I used to run commercial whitetail hunting here, I’d have hunters and I had a guy come from Texas 2 years in a row, and this guy was in his 70s. He’d shot everything. Polar bears for his whole life, he shot everything. And sheep and everything and he still even to this had never killed a big whitetail. Which they say a big whitetail is one of the hardest trophies to get in the world. But there’s a lot of big ones killed every year. But that’s a product of, there’s that many hunters. But you just going out with all the money in the world and say, I’m going to pay an outfit or whatever, I want to get a huge whitetail – you go to Africa and say, I want to kill a big Cape buffalo, you’re going to kill a big Cape buffalo. I want to go kill a sheep and you’re going to get one. But you could come all across America, say, I’ve got a week and I’ve got all the money in the world, I want to kill a big whitetail other than in high fence and that may never happen. So that’s how much respect I’ve built in myself for them, too. Like, I’ll always be a duck hunter for the experience and the actual activity of duck hunting is way better to me.

Ramsey Russell: Well, in the world of duck hunting, what experience stands out to you, Steve? Because I’m sitting here thinking you talked a lot about hunting on California public and there’s nothing exotic or far flung about that. But you better bring an A game if you’re going to hunt. I mean, you better bring a freaking A game. And there are California public land duck hunters that bring the A game, have perfected it years ago that come out consistently with a heavy strap, well, hats off.

Steve Farris: I’m going to brag a little bit, but after the years, I probably did it for a little over 10 years. And I would go to Los Banos and there’s one place called Salt Slough, it was a new refuge and it got to be where I’d be by myself. I mean, I had a friend, Todd, he’d go with me occasionally, but usually I was hunting by myself. And I’d sneak out there into this flooded millet thing and back then, the limit was small. Remember it was like 4, 3 mallards, 4 ducks, right? It could be 4 ducks, only 3 duck could be mallards. This is like 1991, 1990 or something like that. And I got where every time, because you have to check off the refuge and you give the card of what ducks you killed and the refuge guy was in, I’d go through, he said, let me guess, 3 greenheads and a bull sprig, I go, yeah. Because that’s the home run limit in those areas. Because you can only kill one pintail, you could kill 3 mallets. So 3 green heads, a bull sprig, that’s the home run. Let me guess, and I thought, yeah, I’d go out. And I talked to guys, I was over there hunting, he goes, I know where you were, I heard you. Because they knew my calling because I knew where you’re at. And I like that. That means I was getting that good in that arena.

Ramsey Russell: Are you an aggressive caller, Steve? Is that how they recognize you? Are you an aggressive duck caller like playing a lead guitar, cutting down on it?

Steve Farris: Well, all of it.

Ramsey Russell: You shred a duck call?

Steve Farris: I can shred on the duck call. And you’re mad at me for bragging, my calling card is the big and I’m going to call it the highball. But I’m not talking the competition eyeball, I can do that too. But I’m talking about a really loud and even my guides, that guide with me are great callers, but none of them have that thing. They all have the finish game, they’re really good at all the other stuff. But I still use Tim Brown hen calls. I got about 5 of them. And God bless Tim and rest his soul, he used to tune it for me perfectly. We’re going through a few changes because hunter changed a bit, but he’s starting to tune his calls like, for me, like he used to for his dad. And they’re big and they’re loud and they’re full. And when I say full, this is a musical thing. They have all the frequencies so you get away from them, it sounds like a duck that you just turn the volume up on. It’s not high and shrill like that highball that competition callers call, which I hate. Anyway, so I call loud and if I could say one thing, I am famous with my hunters for you to be able to turn ducks from areas that most guys say, no, you can’t call them for that far. I said, well, I’m going to call at them and we’ll just see. And not every bunch, I’ll tell you what, 25 years ago, it’s more like every bunch duck callers, there’s a lot more good duck callers and they get pressured more from Canada and everything. So it isn’t quite the same as it used to be, but I’ll turn sons of bitches from way up after that, I think there’s a lot of callers that they’re in the league with what I’m doing. But that’s the one magic thing that I have, and I will blow Ramsey, I will hit them hard, and I will over call. And if I was sitting next to you, the first time we hunt together, which we should do, by the way, I’d say, you’re going to hear me over call right now, I’m just going to tell you, you’re going to think, man, that’s somebody over calling. Because what I’m doing is I’m going through repertoire and I’ve gone faster, I’m going slower, I’m going down to the 3. I’m doing different things, when I start to see the reaction, I go, that’s the song here today. Then I start working them from that, but I will start, if I’m trying to get their attention, man, I will blast them. But I don’t blast them in something that doesn’t sound like a duck, meaning like a highball.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Steve Farris: I can do that, too. But I’m talking about loud.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Steve Farris: So that gets up there. They don’t know it doesn’t sound like a duck, ducks don’t call that loud.

Ramsey Russell: You kind of reading the flock like you read the crowd in some of your past life.

Steve Farris: I’m doing that when I see that thing or they lock for me, and I go, there’s money. And sometimes I might change calls. I told you, Tim Brown’s hen call is my favorite. But my grandson named me Chief Many Call, so that’s my name.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a good one.

Steve Farris: So Chief Many Calls has all these calls, I probably got 10 duck calls on me every time. Now, I probably got 2 or 3 hen calls that are my favorite one and then my backup or whatever that’s just there. But then I got an R & T and I got it. Oh, I’m trying to think another Arkansas brand that I really like. And I can’t think of the name, but yeah, I got this and that, and some days you go, it’s like fishing, you grab another lure say, I can’t get anything going.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Steve Farris: And then you go off this. And then all of a sudden you’re single read rich and tone, they go, oh, it’s working today. They’re hearing it differently and now I’m good with that. Let’s throw the green one, let’s throw the green and see if they’re biting the brown one. So, it’s interesting. And I think some of that’s a product of humidity in the air and stuff that how that sounds when you get far away. I don’t know what it is, but why would – I mean 9 days out of 10, my favorite color is the one that works. And of course, I have confidence in it, so I always blow it. But some days, it’s like, well, why did that one work now? The other one didn’t.

Ramsey Russell: I think sometimes ducks just hear something different. Like, I was in New Zealand many years ago, and they all called, the ducks were working around, they were all calling and the ducks didn’t do nothing. The whole time they’re calling, I’m fixing around in all my pockets, trying to get a call out that wasn’t yet out of my bag. And finally got it out in, the duck were disappearing over the hill. And I just hit them and it wasn’t that I’m a great caller, it’s that they hadn’t heard that before, they go, oh, maybe that’s a real duck. And they come right back. And I’ve seen that around the country. Well, because it’s funny how Nebraska, Washington, Maryland, Mississippi, Arkansas, folks just got a different cadence and a different accent or something to their duck call and sometimes just bringing your accent or your cadence to the situation will change it. Oh, I hear something different that must be a real duck.
Steve Farris: I think, it’s the decoys too.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I do think.

Steve Farris: Some years ago, I got out of, because I had decoys at my blind, some years ago, you know what I got out, I got out my old carry light, aqua keel mallards.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Steve Farris: Remember those?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I do. Recently, 2 years ago, my buddy Mr. Ian, that’s the only decoys he ever had, we always hunted over his.

Steve Farris: I pulled out all the modern shit I had on a couple blinds, started killing the shit out of ducks. Why? Because nobody has those. I mean, I think there’s a lot to that. Hey, go back to the bigfoots, instead of the Dave Smiths or the whatever.

Ramsey Russell: Throw them something different, man.

Steve Farris: It’s the same freaking stuff. Or here’s the other one, you know this, too, the calling deal. I would say I have expertise at duck calling, and I say I’m an okay goose caller, and I call some, I wouldn’t go bragging, but I’m good enough. And every kid can call you go into Cabela’s and every kid can blow out goose call, it’s amazing. But you get youth out there sometimes and you hear them calling and it’s like, that’s the calling tape. That’s the routine. You know what I mean? That’s the arrangement. They go through this one, then they’re going to go to this note, then they’re going to go to this note, every time. You’re just going through that freaking routine because you memorize it, but you aren’t necessarily paying attention to what they’re doing.

Ramsey Russell: Got to read the birds.

Steve Farris: Got to read the birds.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to start closing up with a few more questions, Steve. you’ve hunted, managed, traveled, mounted, you’ve seen a lifetime’s worth of ducks in Nebraska and beyond. You’ve been on the stage, center stage, rock star with girls yammering for you and everything else. But what drives you now? What keeps life exciting?

Steve Farris: Well, that’s a great question, man. Some interesting questions, Ramsay. But I think there’s a hell of a lot of joy in having accomplished some things I’ve accomplished. I mean, I don’t have to get on stage again and I’m so thankful for what I did with music. This whole hunting world as a developer, business, whatever you want to call it, I’m so thankful. And I only have to get outside this house and get a player to go across there, and I’ve got an incredible hunting facility that I built. So what gets me going is just sometimes to go out there and look at it and be happy and keep working on it, tweaking it that keeps me going because I’m like, I’m thankful to God, man.

Ramsey Russell: There’s really not a top of a mountain. A lot of people think that, I’m climbing to the top of a summit and it’s really not a top of a summit unless you stop there. I mean, are you still climbing? Are you still digging? Are you still exploring and trying to gain achievement?

Steve Farris: My achievements change and I don’t know if there’s bigger goal as they used to be. I don’t know if they’re, like you said, the top of the mountain – I have two mountains, man. I have music and I have the hunting thing. And so I don’t know that I’m looking at really that like, we’ll put it this way. At one point I owned 7 duck properties that I developed or I had ownership in one I live on, I’m an owner and I have partners, I still have a couple of them that I’d have partners, but I backed off, I’m down to 3 and I’m kind of, for lack of better term, gone to retirement mode. It’s kind of like I’m downside really enjoying what I have and maybe that’s the best. Spend more time with my wife and do things. I love what we got, grandkids, you take them out hunting, and I got one that’s old enough to hunt, the other ones are coming up boy, they’re going to be all about these little boys, they’re going to be all about a couple of them. But I take the oldest one out, taught him how to hunt. And it’s like enjoying what you’ve done is kind of, I guess, reaping the rewards and maybe that is the new mountain.

Ramsey Russell: That reminds me of the old adage about the secret to happiness is wanting what you have, not necessarily having what you want. I think it says a lot, just wanting what you have.

Steve Farris: I like that. I go with that. Wanting what you have.

Ramsey Russell: How much of what you do is about the ducks and how much is about what duck hunting gives you back as a person?

Steve Farris: Well, are you asking the question like about the ducks in a conservation idea?

Ramsey Russell: I’ll leave that open for your interpretation.

Steve Farris: Well, I think you’re asking like how much is about the ducks, you do it for the ducks, and sometimes I joke with my DU cronies, I said, it’s for the ducks, we’re doing it for the ducks. But I think it’s broader than for the ducks for me, it’s about hunting, it’s about having the right to hunt, that’s about the world understanding that management of resources, including wildlife, subcategory hunting, that is something we have to do because we are freaking overpopulated. I mean, truly with everything. We don’t have diseases, we have very few things that kill us really. And so we are just eating up the earth, eating up the planet constantly. They say populations are going down, maybe they are. But at that point we sort of have the responsibility of managing everything. This is where the anti-hunters are so wrong. I don’t have to be mad at them because they love animals, they don’t want them to be killed, that’s an emotional thing, whatever. But what they aren’t getting is that you can’t just leave it alone. You’ve got to get involved to manage things. I mean, snow geese are a perfect example. We all know they’re eating up the tundra, there’s so many of the sons of bitches. Certain species of animals have declined even to extinction because of man, certain species have excelled beyond anything. Snow geese is one of them. They say it’s because of agriculture. Before there’s agriculture, it was balanced differently. Now they just have taken off there and you can’t – so they eat the food and that other animals need to eat. And this is where this all anti-hunting thing goes wrong or the idea that you should just leave everything alone. You left alone, so many species would fall apart and decline, it’d be a freaking mess. So I guess in a broader sense, how much is it for the ducks? Well, that’s a big life thing. Do I build everything just for ducks? No, I build things to hunt, man. I do. But the collateral it hits for the ducks. It’s all good habitat. Laterally, it’s for freaking frogs when I’m building, it’s for all kinds of things. It’s for ecosystem, it’s for clean water. I’m not going to bullshit you and say that’s why I’m doing it because my whole mission is for clean water, no, I have my personal goals, it’s for hunting and I love hunting, thank God for what I do to create hunting is benefiting all kinds of things.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you talk about putting nature in a jar and trying to preserve it, you really can’t do that today. And we recently had a guest on talking about the overwhelming massive decline of bird life in North America with a notable exception, despite the cyclical downturn of ducks and geese that are being specifically managed. And it’s funny how if you go from migratory birds and birds that are completely unmanaged or benefit of waterfowl habitat management, the greater the decrease in their population versus birds that are benefiting from waterfowl habitat management. It’s clear and dry. I mean, we’ve got our management activities being on private land or public land combined, it’s necessary in this day and age.

Steve Farris: It’s necessary. And it’s also what I’ve always said to people, I say, hunting – because, guys, people are so crazy about hunting, thank God, because their money goes to such great efforts and you can say all day long, shouldn’t hunt, they just be conservation donation. Yeah, good luck with that. That’s never going to be the money. So they’re motivated by hunting for their own personal love of it and everything, great. It goes towards the benefit of all wildlife. You follow what I’m saying? Am I being clear about what I mean by that? Because again, I’ve had people say, we talk about arguments and hunting, and they try to soften it up and say, well, I do it because of this and that and I say, no, I do, because I freaking love it and that’s okay, get everybody to love it. And then it gets taken care of because of it. And they write bigger checks for it. So make them love it even more. Because if you’re just talking about people that are philanthropists that are just doing it for the sake of conservation, that money’s going way down way down.

Ramsey Russell: Last question Steve is, times have changed, whether we’re talking rock and roll, I kind of sort of think music died, real rock and roll died, I think when the big LP album went away, let alone when the cassette. I mean, I just what I think the whole music industry changed. But by the same token, duck hunting has changed since you were that young man growing up in eastern Nebraska. What’s your message to new hunters or want to be rock stars today that are just getting started in a very different era than when you began?

Steve Farris: Was the question duck hunters or music?

Ramsey Russell: What would be your message to new hunters or want to be rock stars today?

Steve Farris: Well, there might be 2 different answers. To the people that want to be in music, I don’t know why this comes to mind, but it was fresh with me about explaining it to something, somebody. And I used to say this routinely in interviews because that was what I was thinking about. But always create things that, this is music, create things that please yourself. Always please yourself. Create things. Don’t think about what that record company guy is going to want or this person is going to want that. Because once you start not pleasing yourself with your creative work, now you’re diving into mediocrity, and that’s a very fragile area. If you’re guessing about what’s good because you think somebody else needs to like it, they’ll probably never be great. And I learned that through my life. When I started embrace fuck this. I’m going to make, like our second record of Mr. Mister, our first record didn’t sell anything, it was not successful. Our second record had two number one hits and sold 4 million albums. Okay, that album was self-produced with the band and an engineer named Paul De Villier was really talented. But I would think everybody had the same input and I know I did. I played that I wanted to play. I played guitar solos and I had to sign off one of myself. Matter of fact, I probably pissed the band off by going back and re-recording 4 solos with a different engineer. But one of them I’ve got written up because it was transcribed, it’s on the wall out of England, it was successful because I believed in it. And my hunting developments and stuff too, I make stuff that I like and I have to like it a lot and sign off on it. This is called the artist in me, but always do that you believe in, then you can sell it because you believe in it. If you’re guessing what other people like in life, good luck.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, right.

Steve Farris: Fast approach. And I think that probably goes in when you ask about what’s your advice about hunting? The first answer has nothing to do with hunting unless you’re creating hunting spots. But I don’t know advice to people that want to hunt, I mean, just be protective of the resource, do it a lot, learn how to do it different ways. Again, be respectful of what it is, present it well. Do not be villainous. You give the whole thing more bad name and nothing and it doesn’t need any of that. You know what I’m saying by that?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I do. But one of the parallels, I’d say between the two, one of the parallels I’d say whether you’re aspiring to be a rock star or aspiring to be a duck hunter is give it your best, perfect the art and both come with time and hard work. I mean, your story up front about breaking into rock and roll, it didn’t just walk into it, learn to hit a lick and walk in, man. You paid your dues, man.

Steve Farris: Nobody does.

Ramsey Russell: There ain’t no shortcuts to success.

Steve Farris: Well, okay, let’s jump to just the broader answer then. The broader answer is, music was my life for so long, and then I started doing hunting and I become really good friends with, like I say, CEOs and business people and pro athletes and just different walks. And particularly, it accentuates when I say, these are business guys, suit and tie guys, and I’m a rock and roller. But the one thing, the one common denominator, all these guys I know that are really successful is they work their ass off. They always have worked their ass off. Now, there are people that inherit money, that’s not what I’m talking about. But people that become successful, whether that’s monetarily, whatever, or writing a great book or anything, everybody works their ass off. That’s the one thing I’ve seen. There’s no around just getting there. And I think we have a society, a younger society that has been wrongly taught so much entitlement and we just see it all the time. And of course, those old fuckers always talking about it. But still, nothing’s for free everybody. I could say it about my first wife, she’s what she was. But I could say this with something that comes up in that our marriage went south in the way it did, but it was good for a little bit. I’d get a question like, when I first bought the land, when is this going to really happen? When’s this going to really take off and I don’t know. Music took forever. This one will take forever, too. But it came together and all paid off and so did music. It all took a lot of time and crazy amounts of work. So did the hunting, crazy. And I was on the hook, I had financial risk and everything and you work your ass off and you go over the humps and you get up and do it again, and you go to auditions and music and you fail and you get up and go do it again. And I’m saying it all takes work and time, the good things, no matter what you do in life.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Steve that was a great answer. And I’ve enjoyed the visit, man. Thank you very much for the time and appreciate you sharing your story today.

Steve Farris: Yeah, enjoyed it, man. Well, we have to shoot something together sometime. Wait a minute. We’ll have to hunt something together.

Ramsey Russell: Let’s go hunt something together. Which will probably involve shooting something together. Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. Go work your ass off on something good. See you next time.

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