Our guests this episode are The Doohickeys, a comedic country music duo who are on the rise in the Americana and country music worlds. Haley and Jack join The Dads to talk about their journey from house parties and open mic nights in LA to playing the Ryman Auditorium and releasing their debut album, All Hat No Cattle. We talk about their creative process, the current state of independent country music, and about how Jack was once starstruck by Jon Pardi.

We also talk about Dad Jokes: the definition, their proper use, and their pun-filled overlap with country music. This pair is hilarious and we hope you enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at their unique brand of comedy and music.

Show Notes

03:31: Creative Process for a Comedic Country Duo: Haley and Jack like to start with a clever premise. And even if they don’t think Too Ugly to Hitchhike is the smartest song they’ve written, plenty of fans thinks so.

05:29: The Doohickeys Origin Story: The Doohickeys were born at an LA Halloween party and raised on a shared love of “good” country music and an original plan to make sketch comedy YouTube videos.

10:13: More Background on Creating Comedy Songs and Their Comedy Influences: Haley and Jack share the story behind Rein it in Cowboy. And they cover their main influences like Minnie Pearl, the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, and their very funny parents and grandparents.

14:54: The Doohickeys Play The Ryman: The duo share their thoughts on playing The Mother Church of Country Music and pooping in the same toilet as Hank Williams.

16:58: Making a Point vs Making It Funny: Jack shares some wisdom from Phil Rosenthal (showrunner for Everybody Loves Raymond) about the power of clarity in comedy to get laughs and to get your point across. They also comment on the balance that serious artists walk when trying to be funny, and that funny artists walk when trying to be serious.

21:33: The Doohickeys Get Serious: Jack and Haley give their commentary on the state of popular country music and the entertainment industry at-large, the uphill battle independent artists face, and their love/hate relationship with Spotify.

27:54: Please Tell Me You’re Sleepin’ is Not Safe for the Family: Dave shares how he accidentally played one of The Doohickeys’ more risque songs on a family road trip, and Haley shares how they were banned from a radio station for that same song.

30:38: The Definition of a Dad Joke: The Doohickeys weigh in on Dave and Donnie’s favorite comedy genre. Jack uses the poor pun in Tequila Little Time to share his true feelings about Jon Pardi.

38:20: The Dad Joke Laugh Off: The Dads and The Doohickeys go head to head with their best dad jokes in an effort to get a laugh (or at least a cringe).

Mentioned in This Episode

• Saving Country Music review
• American Songwriter interview
• The Tiny Desk contest
• Minnie Pearl
• Ray Stevens
• Phil Rosenthal’s book
• Cocaine and Rhinestones
• The Big Book of Insults
• Jeff Foxworthy’s Complete Redneck Dictionary
• Freakonomics podcast about AI and Dad Jokes

References

• Theme Music: “Dark Country Rock” by Moodmode
• “This Town Sucks” by The Doohickeys
• “Too Ugly to Hitchhike” by The Doohickeys
• “I Wish My Truck Was Bigger” by The Doohickeys
• “All Hat No Cattle” by The Doohickeys
• “Rein It In Cowboy” by The Doohickeys
• “Please Tell Me You’re Sleepin’” by The Doohickeys
• “Tequila Little Time” by Jon Pardi

Transcript

This is Country Music Dads, the parenting podcast with a twang.

We’re driving a highly subjective, comically contrarian, often irreverent conversation about fatherhood and country music for people who have a passion for both.

My name is Dave, and I’m a country music dad.

And my name’s Donnie, and I’m also a country music dad.

Dad jokes are the highest form of comedy according to a highly scientific poll of dads I just made up.

But more seriously, laughing at the absurdity of life is crucial to navigating it.

Crude, snarky, and sometimes heady comedy is a mainstay of modern fatherhood.

And it goes hand in hand with performed country music.

For generations, comedic acts like Minnie Pearl and Uncle Dave Macon graced the stages of The Grand Old Opry, The Louisiana Hayride, and other major evening radio shows.

This tradition moved into television thanks to the long running Hee Haw program.

And today, comedy and country music aren’t as closely aligned.

While comedians still grace the stage of The Grand Old Opry, it isn’t as well integrated into the acts and performances as it once was.

But it seems, thanks to social media, dad jokes are everywhere.

Dads feel empowered to torture friends, family, and co-workers with horrible jokes.

Which is our right.

Today we are joined by experts in country music and comedy who can help us set the record straight.

The Doohickeys are the singing and writing duo of Haley Spence Brown and Jack Hackett.

Haley hails from Liberty, Missouri, subject of the band’s song, This Town Sucks, where she spent her childhood training horses, helping on her grandparents’ cattle farm, and wanting to leave.

Jack grew up in a Japanese-American household in Atlanta, Georgia, where you had to take your boots off at the door.

They met in college in Los Angeles, where they worked on a satirical news show and made each other laugh.

After they discovered their mutual love for country music, they got to work writing their first song together, I Wish My Truck Was Bigger, which is really just about trucks and nothing else they promise.

Their debut album, All Hat and No Cattle, charted number one on the Roots Music Report and number 22 on the Americana Radio charts.

They also have three singles on Sirius XM, Outlaw, Country Radio, and All That Good Stuff.

And the critics like them too.

Saving Country Music liked it, so did the American songwriter.

They also create some great, sometimes dad joke adjacent social media content for their nearly 100,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok.

So thank you both for joining us today and saving everyone from our horrible sense of humor.

Thanks for having us.

We’re just gonna drag it down.

I don’t know about that.

It’ll be aunt jokes, not dad jokes.

Oh, God, that’s just the tickle monster.

Leave me alone, auntie.

We’re starting off hot, I can tell.

So let’s just jump into it.

It may seem different for people who are into modern country music to hear jokes and humor deeply embedded into your music.

What drives your creative process?

I would say a clever song idea is kind of what drives our creative process, whether it’s a serious one or not.

That’s where we get started oftentimes is from the hook of, an idea that gets us both excited.

And clever is a sliding scale.

Yes, it is.

You know, we have some that are smarter than others.

I think I heard someone call Too Ugly to Hitchhike Smart at one point.

I’m like, I don’t know about that.

That’s about as dumb as it gets.

Yeah.

We might have some dumber ones in the can coming up, but that one we almost cut because we thought it was too stupid.

We were like, nobody will ever take a series if we play this song.

Who would like this song?

It doesn’t make any sense.

It’s not rooted in anything.

It’s like they’re not going to think we’re a real country band.

They’re not wrong.

They maybe don’t think we’re a real country band, but they definitely.

When we wrote it, we weren’t.

We wrote it in my kitchen.

We were just going to make internet sketches, and then people liked what we were doing.

And it was just going to be YouTube.

I don’t even think we gave a crap about Instagram.

Definitely TikTok at the time.

We’re like, this is for children.

What even is this?

It was just going to be YouTube sketches that would just die and we’d be like, cool, we got 100 views.

We’d get 100 people.

Yeah, we’re like, wow.

Heck yeah.

And then we played it live once, and they’re like, whoa, you guys got to come back.

And we’re like, is this going to become a live thing?

We still haven’t shot videos for those.

Like, the original plan for 2021, we are super procrastinating from making those videos.

We’re talking about making them now, but man, we got sidetracked quite a bit.

Just a little bit.

So you go back a ways, how did that transition take place?

How did you go from, we’re going to make sketch comedy to the country music to do a full vinyl album?

Man, it’s a great question.

Yeah, it’s true.

I met you in like 2014.

We went to a lot of college parties together, but then post-college was the transition.

I came to your house, you were throwing a, there was an infamous weekend after Halloween party.

We love to throw parties in my houses.

My houses have since calmed down, but the people I lived with in college and post-college, we were big on parties.

We’d have like five, like big, like 200 plus people parties a year.

And we love Halloween.

And this is so not important to the band, but we didn’t want to compete with all the other LA Halloween parties.

So we would throw a Halloween party at the weekend after Halloween.

It’d be like November 4th or something.

Which was super convenient for me as someone who had a lot of Halloween parties to go to, but then had a nice weekend after Halloween party.

We also wanted to go to other people’s Halloween parties.

So they would become huge because everyone still had costumes, candy was discounted, decorations were discounted.

And you’d get everybody because no one has the plans after Halloween.

It’s true.

Both economic and smart.

Exactly.

It’s perfect for the Doohickeys.

And then I showed up and he was playing, there were different stations in his house with different music.

But his bedroom was all the good country music.

And by good country music, I mean the stuff that I like personally.

Which is the definitive good music.

Everyone else’s opinion is wrong.

It’s true.

But I mean, you got strong opinions about music.

You weren’t playing the quote unquote bad country music in my book, which made me excited.

And I was like, why do you like the good stuff?

I also like the good stuff.

Because it’s good.

Because it’s good, yeah.

And then you were like, what if we wrote some comedy sketches about music?

And I quit stand up post-COVID.

It just I had a lot of momentum pre-COVID and then post-COVID.

Just the way the comedy scene was in LA.

Just I had my first panic attack on stage at an open mic.

It was the back alley of Delicious Pizza in Hollywood at 5 p.m.

and the direct sunlight.

And both my arms went to sleep.

And I was like, you know what?

I don’t want to do this anymore.

This is such a painful way to get rejected by a lot of people all at once.

So when I said I like country music, you were like, great.

I’m looking for a way out.

Yeah, but we thought we’d write some sketches about country music.

And then we wrote the first one, I Wish My Truck Was Bigger.

And then we wrote a few more.

We did Hitchhike and then…

All Hat No Cattle.

All Hat No Cattle.

And then we still cannot find text proof, written proof.

For some reason, we thought we were smart enough, good enough to submit to the Tiny Desk Contest with our third song ever written.

And we had the band name then.

And I can’t really trace back our line of thinking.

Did we need the band name for the sketches to be under?

Neither of us can remember.

I think we needed it for the Tiny Desk Contest.

It must have been.

Let’s go with that story.

We’re gonna solidify that here.

We needed a band name for the Tiny Desk Contest.

I had a list of horrible band names on my phone, and this was the least bad, was the Doohickeys.

But yeah, we went to an open mic, we tried out the songs, and then the open mic was like, do you guys want to come back in two weeks for the paid spot?

And we were like, ooh la la, how much money?

I guess we should put together a band.

Yeah, and that’s what happened.

When you go out playing for the first time, did it feel like workshopping new material as a stand-up comedian to try out your new songs?

How did that compare?

It felt more like that than it felt like a band trying out songs, I would argue.

Yeah, we weren’t there to share our feelings.

We were there to be like, does this work?

Does it make people laugh?

Yeah.

Yeah, we didn’t do it for us.

This was like strictly scientific.

It was like our pure comedy brains, like this is how you try stuff up.

You have to go fail in front of a lot of people.

I think I love comedy because you get immediate feedback.

If you don’t make someone laugh, it worked for us.

And the panic attacks stopped when you started performing.

Because honestly, when I was doing it, I did stand up for five years.

And pretty much every time I was up there, I was like, I wish I had my guitar with me, but people really hate guitar comedians.

So I didn’t do it.

I didn’t know that.

That’s funny.

So what comes first for you guys?

Is the hook the comedy or is the hook the music?

What comes first?

I mean, I think it usually starts from a premise.

I would argue very rarely.

You did, for a few of our songs, come in with some riffs and some guitar progressions.

But it’s like you had a premise already.

And then I was like, I have this riff I don’t know what to do with.

And then we kind of merged.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think most of our songwriting is like you have the premise and you see what sonically sounds right.

I haven’t had much success with, here’s something sonically I really enjoy.

What does this sound like to me?

I haven’t, I don’t think I’ve gotten anything I like from that.

I think it’s always been a premise first and then make it sound like…

I would say most of the time.

Yeah, that feels accurate.

Not saying it won’t happen, it just hasn’t yet.

I mean, the Rein it in Cowboy riff was separate from the premise.

You brought that in.

But it was your song, but the riff didn’t inspire Rein it in Cowboy.

Rein it in Cowboy existed.

It just, the lyrics existed after I got my butt grabbed.

I was like, what would I say if I was really cool to this person that grabbed my butt?

And then yeah, you came in with that riff and I was like, oh, I think I have lyrics for that riff.

What’s still kind of funny is like, do you think you would feel cool if a guy grabbed your butt and you went, oh, Rein it in Cowboy?

No, no, I don’t think so.

I don’t think I would be cool.

I think I would feel cool if I said that to a guy who grabbed my butt though.

You know, that might work.

I think it could work in certain circumstances.

In Desert Five, I think it could work.

It’s true.

Don’t Touch My Ass, D***head.

That’s the next song we’ll do.

We’ll do that song next.

Don’t Touch My Ass, D***head will be the nice sequel, Rein it in Cowboy.

It’s true.

Things have gotten darker.

I took a risk.

Are we letting us swear on this?

This is by dads, for dads.

Not for the kids.

No censorship on Country Music Dads, although I might bleep you out.

That’s fine.

We’ll see.

We would appreciate it.

It might be funnier, because they’ll be like, what was that song?

Sometimes it is, yeah.

Almost every word in that title was a bleep.

What is he talking about?

The sophomore effort takes a darker turn.

So Donnie mentioned some of the more classic comic country acts, Minnie Pearl.

I heard a lot of Ray Stevens and My Parents’ Car growing up.

Do you guys see yourselves as a continuation of that comic satirical country performers, or you feel like you’re bringing it back?

What do you think the Doohickeys’ place is in that history?

I don’t think we saw ourselves any certain way.

I think now it makes sense as a continuation, but I think we were just doing what authentically poured out of us at first.

I think we always love Minnie Pearl.

I love Kathleen Madigan and Theo Vaughn and certain comedians that are Nate Bregazzi, the guys that are continuing the Southern culture in the comedy world.

I grew up on Blue Collar Comedy Tour, but I don’t think-

Jeff Foxworthy.

I had to find Country Music on my own.

I found it April 2021.

I grew up on Southern rock.

My mom listened to, my parents, one year, both got each other Green Day’s American Idiot on CD for Christmas.

That’s the house I grew up in.

They go, where did you learn to swear?

It’s like, what do you mean?

All I did was listen to Green Day that you owned.

I found Country on my own, and then I actually showed my parents like, guys, this is what we’ve been missing.

It’s not just Florida, Georgia line.

They were like, oh, this stuff’s really good, and now they’re hooked.

It’s true.

I also found out my grandfather, when I was 15, passed away, and he had 27 grandkids.

He betrothed all of us bequeathed.

I don’t know what the right word is.

Post-death.

Betrothed is married, bequeathed.

Yeah, bequeathed is dead.

I think I got it there by the second word.

He betrothed all the grandkids.

Oh, boy.

It’s true.

No, but when he passed away, he left me all of his songwriting, and recently, as an adult, I went through a lot of the songwriting, and a lot of it is very comedy heavy, and it makes sense to me now why we write a lot of comedy country.

It’s in your genes, kid.

It’s in the genes.

Grandpa started it.

But I think he took a lot of inspiration from Minnie Pearl and from some of the big comedians of the time, and so it makes sense that it would be passed down through the generations.

So you guys recently played The Mother Church of Country Music, the Ryman Auditorium.

You opened for comedian Jim Jeffries.

Bingo.

What were you thinking when you walked into the Ryman?

Ah, we’re back.

Here’s our second time opening for Jim.

This old place, Chopped Liver.

Oh, it’s still around, huh?

I thought they were going to tear this place down.

No, it’s great.

That place rules.

It’s such a…

You feel the history when you walk in.

It feels separate from any other venue.

It’s the best sound we’ve had.

Yeah, the team there is so good.

And we felt really good at the performance because when the ushers and the tech crew comes up to you afterwards, it’s like, whoa, what do you guys call it again?

I was like, you guys want a vinyl?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That feels good.

It’s like when you’re on a movie set and you make the crew laugh, that’s kind of the same thing.

It’s a big deal, yeah.

The audience also was laughing, to be fair, but the crew also really enjoyed it.

They were there for a while.

Yeah, the audience was very supportive of people who bought the record, which is nice.

We can’t complain.

Yeah, it’s a special place.

The wood and the flooring on the walls makes it feel different than anywhere else in the world.

It’s a cheesy answer.

Jack, make it funny.

Okay.

There’s a lot of photos backstage of really important people, and why are we there in the same dressing room?

Like, who pooped in the same toilet in the green room that I am?

We pooped the same place Hank Williams pooped.

Exactly.

Some hangover poop from him before he got kicked out.

All of us.

Hank too.

Hank number two, I suppose.

I’m going to move right on there.

No.

That’s a dad joke.

That’s a dad joke.

Thank you.

Put it on the board.

Alert.

All right.

I figured there’d be more bad jokes by now, but I was wrong.

We haven’t been talking that much.

That’s true.

We’ve been letting the funny people do it.

God, we’re really monopolizing this conversation.

Fucking comedians.

That one gets bleeped.

Anyhow.

So there are some songs on your debut album that touch on big and complicated issues like, Haley, you get in your butt touched without consent, hypocrisy of role models and authenticity.

But you’ve already mentioned Too Ugly to Hitchhike and maybe catching your grandfather enjoying the company of his neighbor.

When you come to write down these songs, after you get the hook, are you looking to lampoon something?

Or is it just really to get the song out and have some fun?

Both.

I think it’s mostly to make each other laugh.

I think that’s where we start a lot of our songs is like, if I can make Jack laugh, I know I got a good premise or a good song.

And then it goes from there.

It’s like, I think we both have a trust in each other’s comedy sensibilities that as long as it can make the other person laugh, we’ll pursue that idea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because if you’re like, I have this premise.

I really like it.

You’re like, eh.

You’re like, just be honest.

Yeah.

I don’t know.

OK.

We both have brought some ideas to the table that are like, you got to have stinkers.

You got to have stinkers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Part of the process.

Look, the way you make yourself feel better.

In Phil Rosenthal’s book, Phil Rosenthal was the creator and showrunner for Everybody Loves Raymond.

And most of it’s about comedy.

And there’s like a whole chapter just about a really bad vacation.

There’s nothing to do with anything.

But one of his things about being in the writers room on that show was like, pretty much everything is funny.

The main important thing is clarity.

And if you can just make something really clear, then it can probably be funny.

But a lot of things aren’t funny because they’re just little convoluted.

You take too long to get somewhere.

It’s just clarity is like number one for getting a premise across.

That’s a great point in the podcast format.

Let me talk about it for too long and then divert to a different topic.

So getting a bit more cerebral and maybe not the way grandpa did, do you believe it’s important for serious artists to be funny and funny artists to be serious?

And who’s more important?

Do what you want to do authentically as an artist.

That’s my thought.

As long as it’s you, you do you.

What happens for us is that we have to be funny because that’s just who we are.

It doesn’t come out any other way.

When we write, it’s like if we wrote something serious, we do write serious songs for other people.

And when we do, we still kind of remain central to the idea of having a central premise that is clear, and there are certain ideas that are involved.

But I think the stuff that we want to write for us has to make us have a good time.

I don’t know if, Jack, you have something to add to that.

That’s pretty good.

I like when serious artists are funny, and when buddy artists are serious, but I mean, it’s just, again, what speaks to them, want to know what the artist wants to do.

I’ve seen some more serious, quiet singer-songwriter types.

They’ll make a little joke, but it’s pretty tame.

If that singer-songwriter all of a sudden brought up some random pub joke, he’d be like, what is going on?

So it’s like the bar for humor changes with kind of who your act is.

And like, yeah, just if it feels organic, cool.

But also if we went on stage and just did like a serious diatribe about like the war or something and stopped killing animals, it’s murder, people would be like, what’s happening?

The one time we played our serious song that we wrote, that’s like not even the most serious song in the world.

Jack was like, we can never play a serious song again.

I will not do that again.

He refused.

We did it one time at Hotel Cafe.

If you get me really drunk, I’ll play it for you.

But it’s a good song.

I really like that song.

It is a song for maybe another band.

We’ll play it for our producer and see what he thinks.

It might make it for two.

Yeah, we’ll see.

We’ll see.

It’s called Rain Check on a Sunny Day.

If you see it again, it means someone said Jack, get over yourself.

I think it’s a great song.

I didn’t write it, so that’s fair.

All right, so comedy has been an important part of country music history for a very long time.

The ability to laugh at yourself is pretty critical, especially when you’re doing jobs that do suck.

Farming is difficult work.

Mining is difficult work, and it’s not very fun.

It’s hard to do.

All jobs suck.

All jobs suck.

I suppose that’s a fair assessment.

But you got to be able to laugh at yourself, and that’s been the music.

Country music has been the music of those folks forever.

And it’s now much more broadly interpreted and enjoyed.

And comedy kind of has taken a little bit of a sidestep away from the mainstream country space.

And perhaps even when the people are being funny, they’re taking themselves kind of seriously.

Do you think that there’s any sort of correlation between the kind of popularization of country music, the stuff perhaps you both thought was bad?

Not to put Dave on the spot, but he likes that stuff.

The music that you think was bad, and the fall off of kind of folk-based, people-based comedy that has gone along with it.

Well, you know what it is, man?

This is my joint rip rant.

All the stuff that’s getting pushed on us is big label stuff, man.

They’re just trying to sell stuff, man.

That’s pretty much it.

It’s kind of what the genre of country has become.

And maybe it was kind of all that.

If you go listen to Coke and Rhinestones, the country music industry has been pretty rough all throughout its run.

Right now, it’s just pushing whatever sells, and the quote, real country music has been pushed into Americana, which is a label no one understands what that means.

I was reading a book recently about the inception of Spotify, and I didn’t know that Spotify started as a piracy site.

Oh yeah, tell this.

This is good.

Yeah, it started as a piracy site, and then the big labels were kind of frustrated because the lax laws in Sweden allowed it to exist, right?

It was based in Sweden.

And then the piracy was happening so much that the labels like Sony and Universal and Warner were like, we need to latch on to this before it becomes something that takes too much money away.

So they put a lot of money into Spotify at the very beginning.

And then Spotify became public, and then these companies owned more than 20% of the shares of this company as it began its tenure.

And so a lot of the stuff that you’re getting suggested through Spotify or other sites like that is because the labels pay for you to hear it.

As an independent artist, that’s a frustrating thing to hear.

But also, I get it.

It’s part of their money making system.

Somebody’s got to make money here, but it’s not the independent artist.

So.

Yeah.

And they own radio stations.

They undid the law that big labels couldn’t own radio stations.

What was late 90s, early 2000s.

Tom Petty wrote a song about it.

So they’re owning all the means of exhibition when they didn’t before.

And so I think there’s just a level of like, I wish that they would.

I mean, I think that’s our job as independent artists is to figure out how to navigate the scene of non-independent labels and then figure out how to weasel our way in.

And that’s what we’re trying to do.

Big on weasel.

But we love weasel in the Doohickeys.

Our favorite animal and a big weasel fan.

But I think it would be great to hear more comedy from some of these bigger acts.

I would love to give them some of our songs.

Tell you what, Fancy Like, Pretty Funny.

It’s a good song.

Isn’t that the number two song?

It’s in the billboard top ten country of the past 25 years.

But again, it’s kind of a cheat because the labels own the radio station.

So I could play my own song on loop.

It’s like the Spotify hack.

I’m going to put my own song on loop.

Look, we’re number one.

Look at that.

What the heck?

It’s like when Netflix has their own show.

But you guys get in trouble for it.

Exactly.

You get charged crimes.

Yes.

I think we’re just…

The current state of entertainment is the studios and everybody…

What are they called?

The distributors…

Yeah, the distributors and the exhibitionists are now one.

So that’s what Netflix is and all the streamers…

Because there was a Paramount ruling that was overturned, I think, like three years ago or something.

It said if you are a distributor like Warner Brothers, you cannot own a movie theater.

You cannot own the means of exhibition because that’s a monopoly.

But then someone came in and undid that.

And now they can…

It didn’t happen yet, but they could theory, like, if Warner Brothers came in and bought AMC, they could end out all the Universal movies, have to pay an exorbitant fee to be seeing these theaters.

And so we’re kind of in a weird place in entertainment and like ownership and conglomerates.

And it’s just kind of happening everywhere in entertainment right now.

Yeah, that’s not funny.

That wasn’t funny, guys.

See, if I did this on stage, the crowd would be like, what’s happening?

We’re getting a song about being ugly.

I think it’s an interesting point, right, is that being funny is risky.

You have to get up there and take a huge risk.

And if you’re going out to make a boatload of money, you’re not going to take those risks.

You’re going to do what works to follow kind of the Nashville sound example, right?

You’re not going to rock the boat if everybody who sounds like Morgan Wallen gets played on all the radio stations that are owned and operated by the same people who write the music, own the music, distribute the music, publish the music, and sell the music.

Why would you interrupt the flow of cash with something funny?

Might as well make it painful and sad.

We love painful and sad in the DA.

Well, I’m looking forward to your satirical bro country song.

We got some.

I wish my truck was bigger than it was supposed to be, but I don’t sound like a bro country guy, so it can be whatever it is.

We’re trying to do our part by getting you guys out there.

You guys ended up on my Spotify.

The algorithm picked up you guys.

I take everything back about Spotify.

I’m so sorry.

I happened to be in the car driving somewhere with my entire family.

And sometimes your humor, it sneaks up on you because it sounds like another just pure classic country song until you get to the end of Please Tell Me You’re Sleeping.

Oh boy, you heard that with your family?

Oh, God.

We got banned from a radio station for that song.

That’s awesome.

It was a Bluegrass Family Hour and they wrote us the meanest, angriest letter because they played that song.

They listened to the first 30 seconds and they thought, this is great to play for a grass family hour.

Yeah, and then at five o’clock on a Friday, they played Please Tell Me You’re Sleeping on public radio.

Oh my God, that’s fabulous.

There’s a nice chunk about Elderly Roots.

When our radio promoter sent the album out to all these stations, there were very big asterisks like, hey, by the way, here are the songs that are flagged for content.

I wouldn’t recommend playing them.

We have clean versions of some of the songs, but some you can’t clean them up.

That one doesn’t have a clean version.

It doesn’t.

It just doesn’t.

You can’t blur the cuss words.

Cuss words is just about elderly sex.

Yeah.

It’s all euphemism.

There’s no euphemism at the end of that song, man.

Nope.

Nope.

It’s all very clear.

Just like you said, clarity is how you get to the point.

Exactly.

I was hoping that my kids were sleeping in the back room at the end of that song.

Well, they won’t know what that meant.

Unless, well, I don’t know how old they are.

If they were like 18, they would know what it is.

I hope they find it funny.

They’re little.

It’s just in their subconscious now.

Yeah, they’re just going to be…

It’s in the ethereal for when they hear about it later.

Remember that time we were in the car with dad?

Yeah.

What was that song?

That song kind of does work for newborns because if you look at a baby, and you’re like, I hope you’re sleeping, I can’t tell if the child’s…

Absolutely.

Yeah, we’ll go redo it as a baby song, and we’ll remove the…

It was a lullaby.

We’ll make the ending something different.

Very different, please.

Very different.

Yeah, yeah.

Please.

Please.

I’m shaking it.

Oh, man.

Oh, no.

It wakes up.

What?

That’s the twist.

It wakes up and it’s fine.

Oh, boy.

We went to a dark place.

We tend to.

Welcome to the Doohickeys rehearsal.

Yeah.

Back to Dad Jokes.

So do you see Dad Jokes as its own genre of comedy?

We talked about it earlier today.

We go, what actually is a dad joke?

Because dad jokes, I guess, are just puns.

But they’re kind of clean and dorky, right?

Because I have multiple books over here of jokes.

And I have some, this is my favorite one, the Giant Book of Insults and the Red Deck Dictionary, which I think is just pure dad jokes as a concept.

It’s a great book.

But yeah, if it’s a naughty pun, I don’t know if it counts as a dad joke.

I think it has to be clean.

Thoughts.

How would you define dad jokes?

I think I’d push on that definition, Jack.

I would say that I think it has to be a pun and awful.

It has to be like really bad.

And, but if you’re gonna go into the naughty part, it has to completely miss the children.

It has to land on another adult, preferably a partner, in which like you’re winking and nodding at something, perhaps, that you are alluding to.

But I think that they have to be like cringe-worthy awful.

Okay, okay.

Earlier today, my wife was heating up some lunch, and there were like leftover potatoes and fish sticks in the same plastic tub in the fridge, and so…

Exactly.

So she’s like, I’ll have the fish sticks, but these potatoes are, they kind of look unappealing.

I was like, they aren’t appealing.

Ah, skin still on them.

It was awful.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

And it was so bad.

And I was so proud of myself.

And I think that’s also a big part of the dad joke, is that you really need to think it’s funny.

That’s fair.

And hopefully, it lands on completely deaf ears, otherwise, because they need to think it’s awful.

That’s my thinking.

But when I was younger, I always thought the concept of a dad joke, I didn’t understand it, which is why I still have problems with it today, is because my dad’s hilarious.

And my mom’s also hilarious.

I just have very, very funny parents.

So they’re like, that’s a dad joke.

So it’s really funny.

I want to share it with all my friends.

That’s fair.

Yeah, my dad, too.

My parents are hilarious.

Your parents are hilarious.

They’re so funny.

My dad’s dad joke, he’s got a bunch.

There’s one good one about, did you know that the toothbrush was invented in West Virginia?

I did not.

Because if it was the teeth brush, it would have been invented somewhere else.

Oh, that’s good.

It’s not that good.

It’s pretty good.

He’s got a couple of ducks.

That’s a thinker.

That’s a thinker.

It’s good.

Yeah.

That’s Ward Brown for you.

Most of them are that clever.

He’s got a lot about ducks and…

I love it.

I thought it was funny.

Toothbrush, teeth brush.

It’s one tooth.

That’s good.

Sue me.

Sue me.

He’s a lawyer.

So it counts.

What are you going to say, Tony?

This other podcast I’d listen to called The Freakonomics Podcast, they did an episode about AI and jokes, and so they asked AI to create some jokes, and a lot of them were very pun-heavy, dad jokes sounding.

They might make the genre obsolete.

The AI is going to come for the dad jokes first, I think.

They can just do it way faster than even then Donnie C.

Cutler can do it.

But they won’t do it with the same level of pride.

Yes.

Yes, I think that’s the difference.

That’s the artistic experience.

That’s what makes it real, is how happy you are with yourself.

Because you know it’s a stinker.

But it’s so bad.

It’s like, I’m going with it.

I’m just going to go right with it.

But you commit to it.

I’m 100 percent.

It’s all about the delivery of like the, you know it’s coming and you’re just going to do it anyway.

Oh, this is awful.

I’m going to say it out loud now.

Another human has to hear this.

Yes, it’s so bad and it’s in my head.

I actually think that goes to a little bit about the comedy aspect of everyday life, right?

You have to laugh at this.

If you don’t, you’re going to go crazy.

And so, yeah.

So I’m going to laugh at my appealing potato joke.

It’s good, man.

That’s good.

I liked it.

It was good.

It’s perfect.

Yeah.

Put it on your tombstone.

I had the eye on the prize.

Another potato pun.

There you go.

That’s two foot two.

Two foot two.

It is on a roll.

Is there any overlap between the pun heavy world of dad jokes and the country comedy world?

We’ve got some pun songs.

We’ve been called punsters.

But I’ll tell you what, here’s my beef with pun titles or pun songs.

The pun that you use in the song still needs to make sense by itself.

So I’m a Jon Pardi fan, but he has a song called Tequila Little Time.

Which is supposed to be like tequila little time with you, but you never say tequila little time.

That’s not a phrase.

So it still needs to be like a phrase you would say for the song to make sense.

Otherwise, you’re just like, it kind of sounds like this other thing, but it means absolutely nothing by itself.

They have to have a double meaning.

That’s my standard.

I will say, Jack was the most nervous he’s ever been meeting a celebrity when he met Jon Pardi.

Absolutely.

He met Brad Pitt.

He’s met all sorts of folks.

Jon Pardi was a foot taller than I thought and so hideous.

You can’t say that.

They’re going to bleep me out with everything else I say.

You’re not allowed.

I’ll bleep out hideous.

I have no idea what you just called Jon Pardi.

He should just keep on bleeping out hideous the whole time.

It’ll be great.

I’ll never do it with this.

This is the guy?

Oh my God.

I love this guy.

Oh my God.

This is him.

So he can’t hitchhike is what you’re saying.

No.

He’s so tall, you wouldn’t stop for him.

He’s so tall.

Frightening.

You’re afraid of what he could do.

Well, I think he technically is like a lumberjack because he worked in cutting down trees and stuff up in Sacramento.

He’s from central or Northern California doing wood stuff.

He’s a lumberjack.

He just kept looking at me because I kept talking and he wasn’t saying a word.

I was like, oh, I can’t stop talking.

Don’t clip that.

That’s all staying in.

It can stay in.

It’s all coming in to the Instagram clip.

Yeah, yeah.

Jon Pardi will come back and go, hey man, screw you.

I’ll be like, fair enough.

Oh man, that would just be great for our numbers though.

We want Jon Pardi to respond.

It’s true.

Well, we like his music.

Jon Pardi, where do you stand on how ugly you are?

A foot taller than all of you.

Jack came on here, not very successful.

Crap’s on your huge hit and it calls you ugly.

What a jerk.

There’s nothing redeeming about any of that.

Unless you agree with me.

Did I lose you yet, everybody?

It was only half the doohickeys that shat on Jon Pardi, I like to point out.

The other half could still duet with Jon Pardi.

Jon Pardi, have you liked a duet?

Jon Pardi replaces Jack in the doohickeys.

Honestly, his version of I Wish My Truck Would Be Bigger would be F.

I’d be here for you.

That’s true.

What was the question?

Let’s stop here before we dig any deeper, right?

Let me name who else I think is ugly.

How do you actually feel about Jon Pardi was the question.

Oh, okay.

I think I answered that.

I think you got you.

Yeah.

Oh, Lord.

All right.

So we went off the rails a little bit, but that was expected.

Speaking of going off the rails just a little, we usually have a recurring segment in the show called The Dad Life Sound Check, where we talk about a song that’s speaking to us in some way or another.

But this week, we figured we’d change it up a bit and go with the dad joke laugh off, which is also not funny when you say it out loud like that.

But, you know, we’ve seen all of these things on social media where you say a dad joke very seriously and then make the person not laugh.

I think we’ll be okay here as we go over the rules.

We tell a joke, anyone who doesn’t laugh gets a point.

The most point wins and the worst joke gets an extra laugh.

I think we’ll go through one, perhaps we’ll bring in another.

We’ll see how it goes.

But I would like to open the floor to someone besides me to go first.

Haley, since you most likely will never be a dad, why don’t you take this one and go first?

That’s very judgy of how she presents herself.

I do identify as a lady.

My dad joke, there was a scientific study that found that most humans have a brain full of microplastics.

And frankly, that’s my last straw.

Didn’t make any of you laugh.

Not doing it.

I could have done better in the delivery.

Not doing it.

You forget the game is to not laugh.

It was funny.

I can…

It’s funny.

It’s funny.

It’s okay.

We shall just mumble.

Funny.

Funny.

Funny.

It was funny.

Funny.

Funny.

Funny.

Jack, the floor is yours.

I hate when people use double negatives.

To me, it’s a big no-no.

Funny.

Funny.

Funny.

Funny.

Funny.

Very funny.

Yeah, it’s very funny.

Dave?

So, I don’t know if you guys know this, but Hank Williams Jr.

actually has a farm.

And on the farm, he raises sheep, and he’s been very successful at raising the sheep.

And it’s due to this secret technique that he uses.

To the male sheep, he feeds them their feed with a little bit of whiskey sprinkled into the feed.

It’s a Ramly tradition.

Funny.

Very funny.

Potentially serious ramifications.

Very funny.

Very funny ramifications.

Follow up.

Funny.

Follow up.

Funny.

Funny.

Funny.

Funny.

I refuse to laugh because none of you laughed at mine.

Funny.

That’s the game.

Fair enough.

That’s the game.

You gotta play the game.

I got you.

I’m gonna go in the animal world here on mine and go with the classic one that my wife cannot not laugh at.

It’s her joke, not mine.

What did the fish say when it swam into the wall?

Damn.

I laughed.

Funny.

I laughed.

Very funny.

Donnie, you get a point.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

It’s a good joke.

Donnie, what’s the point?

It’s a funny joke.

It’s pretty good.

It’s pretty good.

I hadn’t heard that one before.

Yeah.

That’s one of my favorites.

Pretty good.

It feels like a classic.

It’s a classic.

And then I have a follow-up fish joke because, of course, I do.

Why are fish the smartest animals in the animal kingdom?

Because they stay in school all their lives.

Yeah.

It’s a biology joke.

Yeah.

I was booed that one.

You’re trying to shoot the moon and get the bonus point.

It’s like a double line.

Shooting fish in a barrel.

Oh, there it is.

Thank you.

I think those are all the jokes we should have.

I don’t think we need it anymore.

I don’t think anybody is asking for it anymore.

No, they’re from the Redneck Dictionary.

The Redneck Dictionary is pretty good.

That’s pretty excellent.

We’ll link the Redneck Dictionary in the show notes so that you can buy one for your home.

Honestly, really great book.

You guys know what foreclose means?

What does it mean, Jack?

Marla said she needed money for clothes.

What the hell is wrong with the dress she’s got?

Thank you.

Good night.

That’s what they all are.

That was a sympathy laugh.

They sympathy laughed at you.

Yeah.

I didn’t write the joke.

I just opened a random page.

It’s Jeff and his 10 other writers.

I was just going to say, Jeff Fox were these names on the top of that.

He had nothing to do with it.

Definitely nine other guys.

He’s cashing checks.

To wrap things up, Jack, Haley, thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks for having us.

It was a lot of fun.

We touched on lots of different things.

Where can our listeners find you guys?

There’s a couple places you can look.

First, turn very slowly around, we won’t be there.

Our website is thedohickeysband.com.

But breaking news, we just acquired the website, thedohickeys.com.

Someone forgot to renew, it’s ours.

It used to be $6,000.

You got it for not that.

I got it for not that.

The normal price of domain should be, we will switch over the website when we figure out how to do that.

Otherwise, on Instagram, we are the.dohickeys, TikTok is the.dohickeys, Venmo, we are just thedohickeys, no dot.

I almost put a dot in, but I was like, let’s capitalize and we don’t have the dot.

I might have messed up.

Anyway, no dot for Venmo.

I didn’t know this.

I’m learning new things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s the good stuff.

We are on all streaming services.

You just look up the doohickeys.

We are SEO’d pretty well.

You look us up.

And also for everyone listening, the H is not capitalized.

Please stop capitalizing the H.

Thank you.

It’s all our case except for the and the do.

Well, the T and the.

The T and the do.

The T.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You get it.

We had a long conversation about whether the T should be capitalized.

Yeah.

And we decided to do what the Beatles did and not Eagles.

We are the doohickeys, not.

Because the Eagles are just Eagles.

The Beatles are the Beatles.

Yeah.

Which I like that we’re comparing ourselves to these greats.

It’s great.

Just for articles.

Just grammarly.

Amazing.

You can see how much thought we put into nothing.

Yeah.

It was like a 30-minute conversation.

Why would we capitalize the T?

Anyway, that’s what we do.

Thank you for listening.

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Tune in next time when we talk about the good old-fashioned family vacation.

Or is it a family trip?

We’ll talk about the trials, the triumphs, and the great country songs that help us get to the grind of traveling during the summer with your family.

And until next time, whether you’re at the dance hall, the playground, or the schoolyard, or just folding some laundry, thanks for tuning in.

We’ll talk to you soon.

Transitioning a little bit and perhaps getting a little bit more cerebral.

Perhaps not how Grandfather…

Man, I had a joke written.

Oh, do it again.

Do it again, do it again.

Don’t worry, no one will ever know.

Oh, I don’t trust you at all.

Jon Pardi was a foot taller than I thought and so…