Evan Mascagni & Joe Keith Bickett on the Myth, Injustice, and Legacy of The Cornbread Mafia

0:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It's easy to hear your favorite artist on WFPK from wherever you are. [SPEAKER_00]: Listen on your smart speaker, live stream from our website at WFPK.org from Louisville Public Media. [SPEAKER_03]: And welcome to another edition of Kyle Meredith with it's the interview series presented by WFPK at WFPK dot org consequence and the consequence podcast network Thanks for making your way here and check in out the episode please do hit that subscribe button while you're hanging around You're gonna get new interviews just like this one sent you away every single week at Spotify Apple podcast NPR [SPEAKER_03]: WFPK.org consequence YouTube for the video versions or anywhere you get your podcast from, you can subscribe to Kyle Meredith with in place to give this series a rating and leave a review where ever you're listening from because we've had some great guests on lately including actor musician writer director Adam Goldberg, you know him in days to confused saving private Ryan, two days in Paris.

1:14 [SPEAKER_03]: He also plays under the music music moniker, the Goldberg sisters, and we talked about his latest album, Joan Armatrating and the water boys were here, Mike Patton of Faith No More, Mr. Bunglefame, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbado, they produced the new HBO Max documentary, Murder in Glitterball City.

1:37 [SPEAKER_03]: We talked with Maya Mitchell, Susie Porter, [SPEAKER_03]: Thomas Brody's sangster and David Duelis all about the latest season of the artful Dodger on Hulu and Disney Plus. [SPEAKER_03]: Haley Loo Richardson was here to discuss the movie Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, and Manner James Keenan of Tool and a perfect circle fame also drop by.

1:57 [SPEAKER_03]: That's just an example of what you get when you subscribe to the Kyle Meredith with podcast. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's me Kyle Meredith today. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm talking with Louisville filmmaker Evan Miss Gagney and author Jo Keefe Bickets about the wild complicated true story behind the cornbread mafia.

2:17 [SPEAKER_03]: The so-called unorganized group of Kentucky farm boys who became one of the biggest marijuana operations [SPEAKER_03]: in the country, back in the 70s and 80s. [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, Joe Keith Beckett, who served more than 20 years in prison, and later wrote three memoirs, reclaiming the narrative, talks about the myths, the media frenzy, and the draconian sentences handed down during the height of the war on drugs, including how non-violent marijuana charges landed him and others decades behind bars.

2:48 [SPEAKER_03]: Evan Muscagney, who's new documentary on the cornbread mafia, premieres at South by Southwest, will also explain why the story feels especially urgent now in an era of legalization, and how the film balances outlaw legend with real human cost. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a conversation about injustice, reinvention, Southern storytelling, and what happens when the Godfather of Gras era collides with modern cannabis culture?

3:17 [SPEAKER_03]: We're talking all about the legacy of the cornbread mafia. [SPEAKER_03]: It's Kyle Meredith with Evan, Miss Gagney, and Joe Keith Beckett. [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks, sir. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thanks for having us. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to be talking about a couple of things.

3:30 [SPEAKER_03]: One of them is the quorum bread mafia, who I know a lot of people are familiar with that story that we're going to get into here in just a few moments, Joe Keith, that you've been a part of for a while now with some books. [SPEAKER_03]: And now furthering, teaming up with Evan here, who you've been doing the filmmaking for, what, I mean, 15, 16 years at this point?

3:49 [SPEAKER_04]: About a decade, but yeah, about that long. [SPEAKER_04]: I started thinking about it, but my first documentary came out in 2015. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so did you start as a filmmaker here in Louisville, or did that happen after you left for a bit? [SPEAKER_04]: Happened while I was in law school, actually, strangely.

4:06 [SPEAKER_04]: I thought I was going to be a lawyer turned out, I enjoyed making documentaries more. [SPEAKER_04]: So my first documentary actually came out of something I learned about in law school, and I just fell in love with it and had been making them ever since. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a second time I've heard that story because that's how Giel Holland got started.

4:21 [SPEAKER_03]: He was a lawyer and doing the whole, that's not a pipeline that I would expect, especially because one of those things like listen, you can be a lawyer, you might not be happy, but you're going to make a lot more money or you can be a filmmaker, that's right, that's true. [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I knew I wanted to be a public interest lawyer if I was one, so I didn't take on all that debt, so it made it the jump a lot easier to go into filmmaking because I wasn't, you know, crippled with student loan debt.

4:47 [SPEAKER_04]: So, right, yeah, it was a pretty easy transition. [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, nothing's easy about the career or nothing's easy about making documentaries, but I wouldn't change it for anything. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And you've done some great work too. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, even just looking at the past few years, of course, we got to bring up a building a bridge, which ended up at Tribeca, it was produced by Martin Scorsesey.

5:07 [SPEAKER_03]: Like, how do you get from coming at a law school and just starting out and suddenly you're working with with him? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that one came, you know, from my Louisville Catholic origins, you know, I didn't even really know there were other religions growing up here. [SPEAKER_04]: I was in that Catholic school bubble.

5:23 [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, kind of distance myself from the church for a long time, still not, you know, a practicing Catholic. [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, you know, this was around a time when there's a lot of things, you know, in the world, geopolitically, there were bothering me and I was like, I'm going to stop being so cynical about the Catholic Church.

5:39 [SPEAKER_04]: Let me go see if there's anything good and it was actually my mom kept sending me these Instagram posts of this like cool progressive priest. [SPEAKER_04]: She saw online and turned out it was this priest father Jim Martin who was trying to make the Catholic Church more progressive and more inclusive and it was a story I was really drawn to right away.

5:58 [SPEAKER_04]: in the Catholic Church talking about these type of things and it was an amazing story and I was living in New York City at the time where he was based so kind of just took off from there. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And so that's what I'm getting to a point here. [SPEAKER_03]: It's, you know, once you've got this this lane and you kind of know what you want your career to be, there's becomes two things.

6:16 [SPEAKER_03]: How do you make it a career? [SPEAKER_03]: Because it's so easy to get shuffled out of this business. [SPEAKER_03]: And then what are you going looking for? [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_04]: That's right. [SPEAKER_04]: I think it's a lot of hard work and a lot of luck as well. [SPEAKER_04]: Find myself in some really fortunate situations.

6:31 [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, just [SPEAKER_04]: I think for me it's all about characters and stories and obviously with Jokeeth here, you know, it's like, that's what I'm drawn to first are the people, you know, these are real people, these are their real lives and I see documentary filmmaking as a collaboration and participatory process through everybody so it starts for me with just amazing people and amazing stories and that's what I like to share with the world.

7:02 [SPEAKER_01]: It's been around for a while, it's been around since the early 1970s. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, actually about the late 1970s, and it's kind of just kind of blew up over the years. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think in 1989, there was a big article coming out in the career journal about the Coyne-Bred Mafia at that time, when it really got triggered, I so to speak, you know.

7:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of bloomed blossom since then, you know, I think we got a lot of credit for a lot of stuff that we did. [SPEAKER_01]: and we got away with a lot of stuff we did too so you know but it's it's a good story it's about country guys you know living on the edge you know bomb boys that grew up in the country and we kind of collaborated there and come up with this so-called unorganized group of people but anyway it was back in the times when you know like tobacco was cheap and [SPEAKER_01]: uh... could make us a little more money than in the local job industry and everything and so we started out just individually in in marion county in a number of county and a number of tons there all through and it just kind of spider web you know we started going to the pot here in the pot there in a little bigger uh... amounts of it here and there so finally

8:22 [SPEAKER_01]: By the 1980s, the federal government got involved. [SPEAKER_01]: And so we saw that Kentucky wasn't the best place in the world to be growing marijuana. [SPEAKER_01]: So we moved on out out of state. [SPEAKER_01]: And there was a number of arrest in various states across the country. [SPEAKER_01]: And they all led back to one of the community.

8:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, the faith's got to go on high. [SPEAKER_01]: This is all one big central thing. [SPEAKER_01]: But [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of how the story got blue. [SPEAKER_01]: We got, you know, like there's a lot of myth about cornbread mafia that, you know, we did this, we did that.

8:56 [SPEAKER_01]: We get created for a lot of stuff that we did not do. [SPEAKER_01]: Every time something comes up, some kind of a mystery on a crowd, all that was a cornbread mafia, you know, all that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: But actually, in our reality, we were just a bunch of farm boys just trying to make some money, trying to provide for our family's son.

9:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And it rolled into a pretty good size, the organization, I guess you would say. [SPEAKER_03]: And we'll be right back right after this. [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back. [SPEAKER_03]: It's Kyle Meredith with Evan Miss Gagdy and Jo Keith Bickett. [SPEAKER_03]: And then interesting how myth works a lot of time.

9:28 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, use those word outlaws and stuff like that, you know, we know the outlaw culture and the way those myths took off. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, when you talk about the old cowboys and everything else, you know, it's like once you realize the real story isn't exactly where it is, but it's also not where it is.

9:43 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there is usually some truth to that. [SPEAKER_03]: So, in that sense, I'm not surprised how it's perpetuated through the years, when did you take the turn then to say, I want to grab some control of this story and start telling it myself? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, primarily, there was a lot of stuff out there that wasn't actually true, and I did a long prison sentence over this mind-bomb, and I started over 27 years in prison over it.

10:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And I was seeing a lot of publications and stuff, but it wasn't really quite true, you know. [SPEAKER_01]: And while I was in prison, I did a little lot of memoir writing and when I come out, I took those firsthand accounts of mine and turned them into the books that I published. [SPEAKER_01]: The first one was of course, Cornbread Mafia, the origins of the Cornbread Mafia.

10:33 [SPEAKER_01]: How it actually got started, how that name occurred. [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of people, you know, fabricated stuff about it and everything, [SPEAKER_01]: I knew exactly how it got started. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I put that in my first book. [SPEAKER_01]: The second book, CoinBread Moth, Outlaw's of Central Kentucky was about, is about kind of the central figures in all that.

10:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Johnny Bannon, Bobby Joe, Shoemaker, and number others. [SPEAKER_01]: And then the third one was about, I caught a cornbread mob here, a quest for freedom. [SPEAKER_01]: That's when we were all in prison serving these dichonian cynicism for marijuana, something that's legal today. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's got crazy when you get to thinking about it.

11:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, five of us guys have been close to a century and jailed together in combination. [SPEAKER_01]: I've spent 20, served 20, my French U-Megger, served 25, Johnny Boone, probably 20. [SPEAKER_01]: He passed away a year or two ago. [SPEAKER_01]: My younger brother, he pulled about 17 or 18 years.

11:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So, wow. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And on something that's illegal today, it's kind of crazy. [SPEAKER_03]: Right, right. [SPEAKER_03]: Something that's become, and I think that's part of the timing of this also, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like we are finally, finally, to this moment, where it's being accepted and way more and is becoming more and more legal and more and more states all the time.

11:47 [SPEAKER_03]: So at what point then Evan, does this land and your lap, and you see something else in this? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, it's a fun story. [SPEAKER_04]: It's a fun ride like Joe keep saying, but it's got a lot of heart to you know, this was some draconian laws that put them behind bars for a long time and especially for people, you know, my age and younger coming up that, you know, see marijuana legal everywhere and then go to legal dispensaries or they can get their medical card, you know, and you got these guys that served a lot of time in prison and here they are getting out what come into this new world of, uh, [SPEAKER_04]: marijuana legalization everywhere and and a lot of ways they you know there's some of the they're the OGs they're the original guys that were growing this stuff you know if you were getting pot in the late 70s or late 80s and in this part of the country you know there's a good chance it may have been coming from these guys so I just thought they're important their story is so important to tell for so many reasons and it's something you know I read all three of joke's books and I was just like oh man this is a quite a ride and I'd love to love to

12:44 [SPEAKER_03]: Because as you're saying there, and I'm just kind of echoing you, it's not just like this is a good story, but it is the injustice that kind of went on on this. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know what you got to do. [SPEAKER_03]: That's right. [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, look, while Joe Keith and Jimmy were both in prison, their sister was murdered, right?

13:00 [SPEAKER_04]: The man that murdered their sister, her husband and their dog got the same sentence that Joe Keith and Jimmy were sentenced for a nonviolent drug offense. [SPEAKER_04]: These guys were grown marijuana. [SPEAKER_04]: This was a man cold blood and murder got the same sentence as them, you know?

13:17 [SPEAKER_04]: This is just it's crazy, right? [SPEAKER_04]: And I feel like as you were saying earlier, we finally've come to this point now where we realize how crazy those laws were. [SPEAKER_04]: You know, we make sure in the film to show who was behind some of those laws, right? [SPEAKER_04]: We get into Nixon, we get into Reagan, and the war on drugs, and all of these draconian federal laws that led them to these incredibly harsh and unjust sentences.

13:39 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Now, Jokie, I mean, you putting these out, do you notice that things start changing once you're telling the story? [SPEAKER_03]: Is that part of how we get to where we are now? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I don't know if I want to take credit for all that ain't the credit now.

13:53 [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, and I just wanted to express my firsthand account of how all that comes about, you know, the guys, most of the guys, now I'm sure you're going to have a little more criminality in certain aspects, but overall it was just a bunch of country boys that, uh, [SPEAKER_01]: started out growing small patches of marijuana.

14:15 [SPEAKER_01]: And as we learned all these different techniques and everything, we saw a lot of this imported pot coming in at huge prices. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and we said, we can do this, you know. [SPEAKER_01]: We know we all had farming background, you know, racing to back is very similar and all that kind of stuff.

14:32 [SPEAKER_01]: But at the time in the 1970s, it was just a misdemeanor in Kentucky and the feds were uninterested in. [SPEAKER_01]: But by the 1980s, I think the fans say, hey, that bunch of country boys out there making too much money, it's married down on them, and that's kind of the way it went down.

14:47 [SPEAKER_03]: But it always comes down to, right? [SPEAKER_01]: They're all about getting more and more nuts, right? [SPEAKER_01]: All about the money, they won't get near to the peace. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if that's completely true, but it sometimes seems that way. [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, they're getting their peace now, right?

14:57 [SPEAKER_04]: With all these legalizations, they're getting their tax revenue now. [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you look at sites like Colorado and the surpluses they're getting from this. [SPEAKER_03]: And that was always the maddening part of it. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, like my whole life, I remember people arguing that points.

15:10 [SPEAKER_03]: Like you could be making the money off. [SPEAKER_03]: Just put the tax on it like anything else. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Just like whiskey, our bourbon or anything. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's the same thing in a science-like prohibition. [SPEAKER_01]: When it was about they saw that didn't work.

15:23 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and of course the moonshine started up, which lots of us are related to a lot of the old moonshineers back in the 40s and 50s and a long in there. [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, that kind of played out somewhat. [SPEAKER_01]: I suppose it's still going strong in certain sectors of the country, you know.

15:41 [SPEAKER_01]: But we kind of just picked up where they left off, you know, with the different products, with the different. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and you was a writer. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you were writing these memoirs while you were in prison. [SPEAKER_03]: Correct. [SPEAKER_03]: Did you was writing always a part of your life?

15:54 [SPEAKER_03]: Before that? [SPEAKER_01]: Not a lot, but when I went to prison, I spent a lot of time working on my case. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, trying to get it overturned, and I worked on a lot of other guys' cases while I was in prison. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, just following different kinds of habeas, corpus, on a lot of cases that were just completely crazy.

16:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Just trying to get them a little. [SPEAKER_01]: uh... cynicism or whatever and it in between uh... that stuff you know when i had a lot's period i i've been just i started hey back then you know such a such happened nineteen seventy seven seventy eight seventy nine and i started compiling all that and i have a lot of time obviously on the hands so you know i try to put it to good use you know so but you're good storyteller it comes down to [SPEAKER_01]: It's a storytelling part, it's true, but basically based on facts, you know, I don't try to exploit it in a way that, you know, it's bigger than it actually was, you know.

16:55 [SPEAKER_01]: people get this idea of the mafia, the compones, and all that kind of stuff, you know, that's all BS, we know that. [SPEAKER_04]: He's being humble. [SPEAKER_04]: If it wasn't a good story, we wouldn't be premiering the film next month itself, that's not the best in those contexts. [SPEAKER_01]: No, I had to hand it to Mr. Muscage.

17:13 [SPEAKER_01]: His talents was the one to put all that together. [SPEAKER_04]: And me and a lot of other people are producing American Capo, we had an amazing team behind this film. [SPEAKER_04]: We're super excited to share it with the world. [SPEAKER_03]: And we'll be right back right after this. [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back.

17:26 [SPEAKER_03]: It's Kyle Meredith with Evan Miss Gagdy and Jo Keith Bickett. [SPEAKER_03]: So that's so this is, so it's gonna premiere it, South by. [SPEAKER_03]: And this is the documentary. [SPEAKER_03]: Correct. [SPEAKER_03]: So when you're, and I like this question to document your hands a lot, because when you're telling the story, you have to choose which story you're gonna tell, right?

17:45 [SPEAKER_03]: You're gonna end, and how you're gonna have to tell this story. [SPEAKER_03]: So like, when you're making this and maybe you've already answered it because I feel like you have a lot of a bit of this that we've already set right here. [SPEAKER_03]: But you know, you've already got you've got to find out a amount of time and I'm looking behind me in three very thick books of source material.

18:04 [SPEAKER_03]: So what ends up being the story that we're going to see. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question because usually I do a lot of air-tay observational filmmaking where I'm falling people in real time This was a heavily archival and historical piece, right? [SPEAKER_04]: And these guys weren't running around with video cameras filming what they were doing at the time So that makes it its own challenge, but [SPEAKER_04]: the biggest obstacle was this just went on for so long right i mean they were the sons of uh... moon shineers and bootleggers during prohibition they started in the you know seventies ghost their big bus was an eighty nine they spent all this time in prison they get out right what are they doing now so i'm like how am i gonna cover this much material in ninety minutes and that was the challenge but

18:46 [SPEAKER_04]: I'm pretty happy with the way we did it in Joe Key's books where a great guiding light for us to do that. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: And did I also read it somewhere? [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there's also a scripted series in the work? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's Mary K. Poho, who is one of the producers on this documentary, is also working and interested in making this into a scripted project either a series or a feature film.

19:05 [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that's still early days in the works, but I think some more news will be coming out about that later this year. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So Joe Key's when it comes to that part, how precious are you when you're giving over your story? [SPEAKER_01]: I put that in Evans' lab where I pretty much trusted him and everything he's doing.

19:24 [SPEAKER_01]: He's done a great job. [SPEAKER_01]: He took a lot of material and pieced it together. [SPEAKER_01]: There had been a number of different people working on this story for several years, probably ten. [SPEAKER_01]: And with his ingenuity and everything, he picked that together and I got him.

19:42 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so let's also bring Evan, because this also happens at a time where you've started a new production company that's put slaughterhouse to 502. [SPEAKER_03]: I keep trying to think of an unstuck-in-time reference and I just get to make it happen. [SPEAKER_03]: But your second production company after a named after Ivana gets story there, that's right.

20:03 [SPEAKER_04]: So tell me about Slur House 502. [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I mean, I moved back to Kentucky. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I spent half my life here, then spent the other half away. [SPEAKER_04]: And last 10 years, I was in New York City. [SPEAKER_04]: And when I moved back here, I really wanted to start something that was really rooted and grounded in Louisville, In Kentucky, where I'm from, telling Southern stories.

20:20 [SPEAKER_04]: This is a great one to kick it off. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, slaughterhouse five is one of my favorite vana get novels and so, you know, paying homage to that and also five owed to our area code here and my first production company was named Player Piano Productions, which was vana gets first novel, so just kind of made sense of all of that.

20:36 [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, super excited. [SPEAKER_04]: Just hitting the ground running here with a lot of stories in development and production and post production and you're going to have a lot of announcements coming this year on some exciting projects. [SPEAKER_03]: films, documentaries, commercials, all the above.

20:53 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, hopefully. [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, we're starting with documentary. [SPEAKER_04]: I'm a documentary filmmaker. [SPEAKER_04]: I love making documentaries. [SPEAKER_04]: But of course, I'm, you know, I'm scripted curious. [SPEAKER_04]: I'd like to get in there and have a little more control over my environment.

21:04 [SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes, you know, with documentary, you're kind of just... [SPEAKER_04]: see in what you get in adapting after that it'd be nice gosh sometimes i think how nice it would be to know exactly what the story is and what it's going to look like before i started so hopefully i'll do a little bit all the above and work with some of the you know amazing nonprofits that i've always loved here in town and some of the businesses that mean a lot to me so yeah i'm hoping to do a little bit of everything [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, starting a production company too.

21:29 [SPEAKER_03]: Like, because I was thinking about in the current environment. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, is it helpful or is it sort of starting a production company versus the current environments? [SPEAKER_03]: And this goes back to like, how do you how do you make a career out of this? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's not easy, but it's a lot of fun trying to figure it out.

21:46 [SPEAKER_04]: And it's working right now, so I'm going to keep it going. [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, you know, you do a mix. [SPEAKER_04]: You know, I have my cornbread mafia's been a passion project in mine for years, but you do the commercial work. [SPEAKER_04]: And you do the, you know, other projects to help you keep the lights on, gets the bills paid, hire the people you want to hire.

22:01 [SPEAKER_04]: But hopefully, yeah, I mean, stories like this one in the attention is getting. [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to hopefully propel me just to make the next one. [SPEAKER_04]: And next one after that, I have another one right on the heels of this for the [SPEAKER_04]: First time as a documentary filmmaker usually you're starting from scratch after you finish one you're going to go start the next one But luckily I'm already moving into post production on a new one right after this.

22:20 [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, it's a pretty exciting time all local crews all local crews we try to as much as we can Right, I mean especially for like cornbread mafia when we're shooting in Marion County, which is an hour from here. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think it's important to me Louisville and Kentucky in general has amazing talent here, right?

22:35 [SPEAKER_04]: There's amazing cinematographers amazing editors. [SPEAKER_04]: I've been working since I moved back with [SPEAKER_04]: quite a few of them and it's been you know quite an enjoyable experience and I'm it's super excited to develop more projects with these people and and real quick the healing fund yeah tell me about this healing fund well um yeah a few things happened last year was a tough year my uncle passed away and he had always struggled with mental health issues and addiction issues and um [SPEAKER_04]: I had another childhood friend of mine pass away who was really involved with the community Jason Brown here on this bar brownies and was always giving back to the community and I, you know, I'm back here, I'm studying my roots here and I wanted to give, you know, like you said, it's not easy, it's not easy to be a documentary filmmaker.

23:20 [SPEAKER_04]: And there's a lot of folks giving grants and giving money out to scripted projects and things like that. [SPEAKER_04]: And I just wanted to give back and help documentary filmmakers here that are based here, that are trying to tell Kentucky stories that are important to them and important to our communities.

23:34 [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, we launched the Healing Fund with a bunch of different awesome organizations here locally. [SPEAKER_04]: given away $10,000 to a few filmmakers and we're gonna be announcing who those are soon and it's just some amazing stories You know, just I was blown away once the application started coming out.

23:50 [SPEAKER_04]: I love that. [SPEAKER_03]: I love that. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, be interested to see what you're following up with too. [SPEAKER_03]: Joe Keith, what what happens with you? [SPEAKER_03]: What do you got going on next? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, right now, I work from the law office out in Marin County.

24:03 [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, through a kid in the Evan there, it's Emma George's law office. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a parent legal there, and I've been with them for about 15 years. [SPEAKER_01]: And I have some farms out in Marin County that I take her with. [SPEAKER_01]: We have some cattle, and we grow some hemp.

24:16 [SPEAKER_01]: We've got another little company out there that we're working on. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's a lot of, you know, a lot of good stuff going on right there. [SPEAKER_01]: uh... sick grand children three great children uh... great grand children so i i have my hands though i have a full life you know and it's all good i mean you know i jump back and forth from the paralegal stuff to the farm life and then in between i'm working on books on in the future i intend to uh... published my fourth book and it's going to be uh... center to run johnny boom the godfather of grass and as uh... lots of people know he was on the run for about eight years and so this [SPEAKER_01]: Kind of full circle on the books of R.I. publish, so it's going to be interesting, I think a lot of people will enjoy it.

25:01 [SPEAKER_03]: I think a lot of people are going to be interested in that one right there. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we talk about, you know, those names, those outlaws and the way people take to them and those myths. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's, that's absolutely one right there. [SPEAKER_03]: It's so interesting, the work that you guys are doing.

25:15 [SPEAKER_03]: And, and we really want to thank you both for taking the time to talk about it today. [SPEAKER_03]: It sounds like also a joke, you're going to be very busy promoting a documentary to go along with all this. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: with them and say up of course. [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of help from a lot of people who help make it.

25:28 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just riding shotgun right now. [SPEAKER_03]: Real quick because it premiering itself by when do you think, you know, the rest of us will be able to see it. [SPEAKER_04]: I know timelines are always loose, but hopefully shortly thereafter we'll see how it happens and how everything plays out itself, but we're excited.

25:44 [SPEAKER_04]: They gave us a screening on the opening night of the festival and we have a matinee about halfway through and then we're on the closing night as well. [SPEAKER_04]: Excited for a lot of folks to see it. [SPEAKER_04]: Like excited to see a lot of Kentucky folks down in Austin and yeah I think it'll be a good time.

25:59 [SPEAKER_04]: We're just gonna celebrate this win right now and then hopefully we'll have more info after the festival Yeah, well once you get a premiere around here I hope you let us know so we can be there as well. [SPEAKER_03]: We hope so. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely Having thank you both so much for stopping by.

26:12 [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for having us. [SPEAKER_01]: All right. [SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate it [SPEAKER_03]: My thanks to Evan and Joe Keith. [SPEAKER_03]: You can find Joe Keith's memoirs in stores now and be looking for that new documentary from Evan Miskegney as well. [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks to you for checking out the episode.

26:26 [SPEAKER_03]: Hit that subscribe button before you get out of here to keep up with all the interviews that I put out every single week. [SPEAKER_03]: You can grab us at Spotify, Apple podcast, NPR, WFPK.org, consequence, YouTube for the video versions. [SPEAKER_03]: anywhere you get your podcast from you can subscribe to Kyle Mereith with and please to give the series a rating and leave a review wherever you're listening from.

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27:44 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Kyle Meredith, I'll see you next time. [SPEAKER_00]: Consequence podcast network, it's easy to hear your favorite artist on WFPK from wherever you are. [SPEAKER_00]: Listen on your smart speaker, live stream from our website at WFPK.org from Louisville Public Media.