We are joined by Scott Williamson, a professional drummer and record producer with a very impressive resume. Scott discusses his love for music, as well as flying airplanes!
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00:01
Behind the Prop Intro
Clear prop SR73 Cherokee number two following Flint traffic three mile final one trolley Bravo Makesford in Runway two five going four mile.
00:10
Nick Alan
This is behind the prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot Bobby Doss and his co host, major airline captain and designated pilot examiner Wally Mulhern. Now let's go behind the prop.
00:25
Bobby Doss
What's up Wally?
00:27
Wally Mulhern
Hey Bobby, how are you?
00:28
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always.
00:31
Wally Mulhern
Today we have a guest, a good friend of mine. His name is Scott Williamson. And Scott Williamson is a person that you've probably never heard of, but I guarantee you've heard him. Scott's a Nashville session drummer, producer and recording engineer. Scott, when we're in a public setting and he introduces me to people, he refers to us as opposites. He drums for a living and flies for fun. I fly for a living and drum for fun. If you've listened to the show, you've heard many of my musical references and you know, music was really important to me. It's still important to me. But anyway, Scott is, you know, a professional musician.
01:21
Wally Mulhern
I've, I've had the pleasure of going up to Nashville and observing a recording session and for, if you've never done that, it's something really cool and there's tons of YouTube videos on all that stuff and where this came from. You know, we've had a lot of pilots on the show, people in the, in aviation and whilst while this isn't Scott's main gig, he is a pilot. But it brought me to thinking about learning a skill and what I have found in doing checkrides that people who seem to do well in a performance situation that is a checkride are people who have other skills. They're good at something else. Now it may be they're a good golfer, maybe they're a basketball player, maybe they swam in high school, maybe it's an athletic thing, but might be a musical thing.
02:24
Wally Mulhern
And I was, I watched a YouTube video where Scott was a guest on a musical interview and they were asking him, they said, we noticed your profile picture on something was an airplane. And Scott's answer was, I 20 some odd years ago I wanted to learn another skill. And so he picked flying. So we're going to talk a little bit about his career. We're going to, we're going to, you know, ask him about that. But you know, what I'm interested in is the comparisons in the skill of being a highly skilled musician versus flying an airplane and the parallels are incredible. In my opinion.
03:12
Bobby Doss
Well, welcome to the show, Scott. Tell us a little bit about your journey in aviation and a little bit about your flying background, and then we'll jump into the drummer and producing and all your other skills.
03:25
Scott Williamson
This is hysterical. Doing a podcast where the first thing we're talking about is flying. This is a first for me. You guys are real pilots. I'm a pretend pilot. But I. It's exactly as you just said. I wanted another skill. All I. You know, I'm the guy that even with like a. A laser leveler, if I hang a picture on the wall, it's going to be crooked. I. All I can do is music. And so in my early 30s, I just wanted to. I had always been fascinated with flying and equal parts fascinated and horrified by it. And through a few events in my life, I just decided, I'm going to. I'm going to go learn to do this. I'll never forget walking out to a Cessna 152 and looking at this thing and thinking. I kept telling myself, you can walk away.
04:23
Scott Williamson
You can walk away from this, because the first time you walk up to a Cessna 150, I mean, it's a tinker toy. And so if you're afraid of flying, the sight of a 152 is not exactly comforting. But as soon as we took off and I actually had the first opportunity to hold the controls, it's like a drug. I was instantly hooked up. And so about a year later, I got my license.
04:48
Bobby Doss
I tell my story about my discovery flight quite a bit, but I got there. The 172 looked really small to me, and there were three of us that were about to get in the plane. And the guy that was in charge, he looked to be 12 years old. Right. I thought, how do I even know you have a certificate? Like, what? Shouldn't you have to show me something before I just get in this plane with you? Because I don't know that you can do anything. I know you probably can take off, but how do I know you can let. So I completely relate to that experience. But as soon as he let me grab that yoke, I think my fingerprints were in it. I was squeezing it so hard, but I did not want to let go in a good way.
05:26
Scott Williamson
Yeah, it's an amazing thing. I have another funny story with a young flight instructor that we can get to at some point, because I had a similar experience of going, I'm twice your age, and that could have turned into a disaster. It was an interesting story.
05:44
Bobby Doss
I made a note we'll come back to that. So we got to know each other a little bit before we started recording. But I am fascinated to learn about people and what people do and kind of things that we're not aware of. Right. I'm a huge fan of music and that's listening. I think I have an ear for a good song. When I hear a new song come out and there's a new song out called Backseat Driver by, oh, I'll think of his name. But it's not a typical song that he would sing and it's about his daughter and them going through McDonald's drive through. And it brought back so many memories of my having a daughter in the backseat. I just knew that song was going to be a home run for him on the radio. And I was right.
06:27
Bobby Doss
It's doing really good. They actually overplay it now. But I love music and to hear that you were going to be a guest on the show, I got interested in all the stuff on YouTube and everything that you're doing. But give the listeners kind of a. A little bit of a background. A day in the life of what it is like to be all the roles you play in the studio. But we'll start with studio drummer.
06:48
Scott Williamson
So my job is to go in when you're working with an artist that does not have a band. For instance the Rolling Stones, you know, they make their own records. They don't need studio musicians. But for artists who are solo artists, typically sometimes even if they have a band, they will hire studio musicians to play on the records. Because it's a very specific skill set. It's. It's a little different from playing live. Usually you're creating the parts in that during that part of the recording process. And so that's what I do. I go in and work for artists and songwriters and I have different producers who hire me to come in and play drums on people's records.
07:34
Bobby Doss
And so I mean, I imagine these studio sessions being at night, dark, everybody's smoking and drinking. That's because that's what I think the movies make it out to be. But I'm assuming you're. That's not what the real world's like. What is a. What is a day in the studio feel like? What's it look like? You. You. I'm sure assuming you have a start time and an end time. What's. What's it like?
07:57
Scott Williamson
Yeah. Most sessions are booked in three hour blocks. Most sessions start at 10am Some would say a full day. I would be booked on what we Would just. We would just call it a 10 to 6. That's three sessions starting. Then. Those are the start times with an hour break for lunch and an hour break for dinner. So it's like any other job, except that there's a lot of silliness that goes on in the process. You're not sitting in a cubicle. You're sitting in a room full of people creating music. Some days feel more creative than others. Some days the songs are better than other days. Some days, I mean, there's all kinds of different ways that it can happen and all kinds of different quality levels.
08:48
Scott Williamson
But you're paid to be there, so your job is to do your best work regardless of whether or not you like the material.
08:58
Bobby Doss
So when were prepping for this, we started talking about sheet music. And you taught me a lot about new ways to read sheet music, different types of music. And I was fascinated that you say you walk into the studio, get the music, never have heard the song, and the group is 75% to final product on the first go. That is amazing.
09:20
Scott Williamson
That usually happens. It doesn't always happen, but, you know, pop music kind of is what it is. So once you've heard a song, if it's. If it's a fairly normal song, and if they're. If they're not asking for something totally out of the box, you usually can go in on the first take and have a pretty good idea of what it needs to be. Now, usually, especially on a record where there's some money involved and the artist is well known, usually you'll play a second take and a third take because you're developing it. Typically, the drummer needs to get his parts finished before everybody else, because then everybody else. Once I've got that concrete foundation poured, then everybody else can start layering their other parts. Most guitar players are gonna have six or seven different tracks that they play throughout the song.
10:17
Scott Williamson
It just creates size. A lot of times we. A full take is not. How do I say this? I'll play an entire take, and then I'll say, hey, I think that take was great, but I'd like to replay the second verse. I didn't like what I played there, so we'll drop that in. So a lot of times what you're hearing on the radio is something that was very constructed where no one player played their entire take all the way through. That does happen, but it's not always. There's a lot of different ways you can skin this cat, but these are just kind of some of the options. You might run into.
10:58
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I was curious about that. Like how many. When we record these and edit them, there's two or three splices for sure. When I do my own video editing, it's, you know, eight to 20 slices and differing things I'm putting on top. I'm assuming a song post produced is many tracks that are laid out, but you hear one beautiful song at the end of it, I'm assuming.
11:21
Scott Williamson
Yeah, it can be 30 or 40 tracks, it can be 300 tracks. It just depends on what it is. Yeah.
11:27
Bobby Doss
So you're not just the drummer, you're also the producer. You're also a lot of other stuff in the music business. What. What are some of the other things you've done and enjoy doing around music?
11:37
Scott Williamson
So a produce, usually I've got clients who hire me to play drums and then I've got other clients who hire me to produce or I'm doing a lot of mixing now, which is the last stage of the. The process of making records. You send the raw files to a recording engineer and he takes it all and makes it sound pretty. That's what a mixing engineer does. And I'm doing almost more of that than anything now as a producer, the best way to describe that is kind of like what a director does in movies. A producer does for making records. You're just overseeing the whole process. You help to cast the project. Who are the best players for this? What are the best studios? Who are the best engineer? You know all this stuff. That's what a producer does.
12:26
Scott Williamson
You, you work to coax great vocal performances out of the artist. And each producer has a little bit different ecosystem, different ways that they do it. But I've done a good bit of that too.
12:38
Bobby Doss
Well, as Wally said, we've. We've all heard you and now I know for sure I've heard you. But let's talk a short list of some of the stars you've worked with, names everyone would know, and some of the most exciting things you've done. Who's some of the big names and fun people you've worked with?
12:54
Scott Williamson
I. Gosh. Blake Shelton, Reba. Alice Cooper. Believe it or not, I remember playing on a song for Brooks and Dunn years ago. Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant. I mean, I'd have to. I'd have to think that through after 35 years of doing this. It's a. It's tricky. A lot of contemporary Christian artists that I've worked with over the years, but yeah, those are some of the, some of the big names. That I've had a chance to work with.
13:28
Wally Mulhern
Yeah. You talking basketball, all you got to say is Michael, right?
13:32
Scott Williamson
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
13:35
Bobby Doss
Rebus still seems to be working really hard. I mean, surely she doesn't need the money, but she's still got a sitcom. And I think she's on the Voice now. And she played the Houston Rodeo a few weeks ago. Sold out the. Sold out the Reliance. That's a huge sellout.
13:52
Scott Williamson
Yeah, she's. She's not going anywhere.
13:54
Bobby Doss
What's the one thing you remember the most about your music career? And then we'll move to flying. What's the one thing that you. That stands out as a memory? Like, this was a great song. This was the best song. This was the best thing I remember. What's that one thing that stands out?
14:07
Scott Williamson
Goodness. That is a really interesting question. I don't know how to answer that. I mean, it's funny. I can hardly remember what I did three days ago. Some of the stuff that's really branded into my memory is the stuff from the early part of my career when I was trying to make a name for myself. It's. It's funny how those are the memories that you know, because I. I remember the day that I worked for Reba, but I don't remember it vividly. What I do remember is, like, my first big production job, there was a. A vocal group of girls in the contemporary Christian world called Point of Grace. And I just kind of very accidentally got to produce that record that nobody knew how big it was going to be. But I remember so much about making that record.
15:04
Scott Williamson
And that was 32 years ago. You know, these are the things that. The things that you were just lucky enough to be part of. We talked about that DC Talks record that I played on called Jesus Freak. I honestly, I don't remember that much about doing that record. But the record blew up and became this. This flashpoint in Christian music. And I just happened to be there and to get my name on a few of the tracks. So, it's really interesting. The stuff you remember and the stuff you forget. I don't. The human brain is strange.
15:41
Bobby Doss
So let's jump into the flying component of what you do. As Wally said, you're a drummer by a profession and a pilot for fun. Exact opposite of him. How did you get into flying? What was that experience like? And what. What are your flying credentials? What are your certifications and ratings to this point?
16:01
Scott Williamson
All right. Single engine land baby complex. That's about it. I've got I don't know, six or 700 hours. Yeah, I think it's about six, 15 now. So I'm like, I said, I'm a pretend pilot. You guys are real pilots. But I came to it because I. We talked about this. I wanted a different skill. I was fascinated by it. It's funny, the guy that taught me to fly, you know, I remember, I now, speaking of memory, I do remember that phone call, talking to him on the phone and him, you know, saying, well, we want to get you up in the air and make sure you like it. Some people get up there and freak out and never want to do it again. So he said, that's why we do this Discovery flight.
16:44
Scott Williamson
And he said, I'll take you up, we'll do the whole thing. You will fly all. You'll even, you know, I'm going to babysit your landing, but we're going to. You're going to fly. And I was like, great. And I remember that call, I think in part because he and I became great friends and we're still great friends. He now flies corporate. He flies Challengers and Learjets. So, you know, he's another one that became a real pilot, but we're still friends. He's done all my BFRs. And so for some reason, I guess because of the fact that our relationship spans 20 plus years now, I still, oddly enough, have a vivid memory of that first phone call with him. And of course, a vivid memory of the first flight.
17:29
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I don't think many of us forget that first flight or that time, that day we soloed. So you are an aircraft owner. I think many of our listeners wish they were aircraft owners. I think the three of us owners of aircraft would say it's not always a good day to be an aircraft owner.
17:46
Scott Williamson
Yeah. What's the old joke? The two best days of your life are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.
17:51
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I have that with a boat for sure. And I have that with a couple of planes that I've owned as well. Yeah, it does happen. So I believe you have a Mooney, is that correct?
18:02
Scott Williamson
Yeah, 1977 M20C.
18:05
Bobby Doss
Nice. That's a good quick plane. Gets you from point A to point B. Pretty quick. Fast, we'll call it fast for a single engine prop plane.
18:14
Scott Williamson
Yep, yep. I went through four planes to get to it and four, finally, that was the one. And it's been mostly a good experience. You know, anytime you're buying something that's almost as old as you are, you're taking a risk. I only had one annual. That, that hurt a little bit, but it's been. I mean, they're really good airplanes and it's. The engine really runs great, so I haven't had any scares with that. Just. It's always a scare in the pocketbook.
18:49
Bobby Doss
Is what it is, no question. And you want to hear about a scary pocketbook. I just went to Wichita and picked up a brand new Cessna 172. We won a contest with Textron and Cessna and the school got a dry lease for the first 250 hours, but I'm planning on buying it. But a brand new Cessna ain't the same price as a 1977 Mooney, I can assure you of that.
19:12
Scott Williamson
No, what you're talking about, what, 4, 350, 400,000?
19:16
Bobby Doss
I wish. It's gonna be about 600 grand, brand new.
19:20
Scott Williamson
Yeah, well, what's a couple hundred grand among friends?
19:23
Bobby Doss
Yeah, I'll just do it. A few new studio sessions and that'll be taken care of right away. But it's gonna be a big number. But I think it's gonna be good for the students, good for the school, and is a beautiful plane. It was a gym when we stopped to get gas. About halfway home, the fueler says, I'm afraid to put fuel in this plane. It looks like it's brand new and it had like six hours on the hob. So it was an amazing experience for sure. My first introduction to Scott and your flying career was. Wally sent me a few links of your videos. You have a YouTube channel called Pilot Eats Food. I like piloting and I like eating food.
20:01
Bobby Doss
And I've recently learned that the most important thing a pilot can do is pick the right airport with good food when you're gonna make a fuel stop. It's not about the cheap fuel always that is also important. But a lot of times it's more about where you're going to eat and what the food that airport serves. And does that make the right airport stop for the pilots in the plane. And you have made a YouTube channel about the pilot who eats food. And you take really cool people on those flights. Tell us about the YouTube channel, Pilot Eats Food.
20:34
Scott Williamson
Well, for somebody like me, rarely. I don't have any reason to fly except to get up and just enjoy the joy of it. And there's pilot videos everywhere on social media now, YouTube. But the one thing that I had not seen anybody doing, I'm sure somebody has, but I, I didn't See anybody glorifying the $200 hamburger for people, you know, for people like me who've got no other reason to fly. And so I thought, well, is there some way that I could do that? Make videos of it, Highlight these crazy greasy spoon restaurants in the middle of nowhere and do something interesting in terms of conversation while I'm doing it. I've yet to be able to lure in a really big name, but I've had some really interesting conversations, one of which was with. At the time, he was nine years old.
21:37
Scott Williamson
My son, he's almost 11 now. But I've had some studio musicians and just different people who do different things and there's no script. I literally just say, what are you doing Saturday? If the weather's good, do you want to go get something to eat? There will be cameras in the plane and that's literally all the planning that goes into it. And then my son, who is a very gifted video editor, takes all of the raw materials and it figures out how to. I didn't really mean for it to turn in. You know, it feels to me a little bit like comedians in cars getting coffee, except with a plane. That was not my intent, but that's kind of what it turned into. And if it's good, it's entirely because of my son, so.
22:18
Bobby Doss
Well, I hope your son likes the video editing. He does some amazing work. I wish I had access to someone who could pull that off for some of my videos. They're pretty bland.
22:28
Scott Williamson
But you do. I think he's for hire now. You can call it.
22:31
Bobby Doss
All right, I'll have to get his information from you.
22:33
Wally Mulhern
And you've got to watch this. It's. It's really interesting, especially the one with Scott's nine year old son. If, if his nine year old son does not make you cry from the laughing, there's something wrong with you. So it was. He's hilarious.
22:51
Scott Williamson
He was our midlife surprise. My oldest is 20, almost 28 and just gave us a grandbaby. There's. We had three kids and then a nine year gap. And then Maddox came along. So he's grown up in a house full of grownups. He's just smarter than all of us combined. And you kind of see that on this video. He's very precocious.
23:12
Bobby Doss
That's awesome. And isn't that what we all love to do is share aviation with those younger kids and have them get a taste of it?
23:19
Scott Williamson
It's the best.
23:20
Bobby Doss
So we talked a little bit about it. I tried to get Aaron Tipton on the show, you probably are aware of who he is and what he's done in his music career. But I did own a flight school in Spartan Tennessee. Maybe he could be the bigger name that you get on your, in your plane and y' all go eat some good food and ask him to be on my show one day. That'd be nice.
23:41
Scott Williamson
It would be lovely to meet him. He is a legend. And yeah, Sparta. That's funny you say that. I think the first episode I did on my channel was a restaurant in Sparta with my. Another one of my kids. So that was sort of our test episode.
23:57
Bobby Doss
Yeah, well, you have a lot of views. I mean, I don't think, I think everyone thinks they want to be a YouTuber or something like a YouTuber. I think they want the instant fame, but that ain't easy. And you've got tons of videos, hundreds of views on each video, some with thousands of views. That's pretty impressive for a guy who doesn't do it as a full time gig.
24:18
Scott Williamson
Well, again, if it was any good, it's because of my son. And I also hired. It's funny, in the music industry, I know different people. There's a girl that I, she works with a producer that I work with. She's fresh out of college and she's really gifted at social media, you know, positioning, posturing, marketing, all that stuff. And so one day were, I was working for this guy and I said, hey, would you want to do the little short versions of these for TikTok and Instagram? And she said, sure. And so all that, all those little shorts that you see, that was stuff that she did for me and she did a fantastic job. Yeah, it's funny, with YouTube you can't even start thinking about monetizing until you're up over a thousand. I think it's a thousand followers.
25:08
Scott Williamson
So this, despite whatever success it looks like we've had, we're still in the growth phase and it's. There may be a little bit of a hiccup there, which we can. We talked about it before went to air, but there's a little, there's some other drama in my life right now that is making this sort of an interesting little exercise both intellectually and emotionally.
25:35
Bobby Doss
So, well, we're just going to root for the best for everything involved there and we're going to assume the channel is going to continue strong and you're going to do many more flights in that Mooney and buy many more couple hundred dollar hamburgers That's a lot of inflation, by the way. I thought it was the $100 hamburger, so I know Tennessee is expensive.
25:51
Scott Williamson
Well, of course I try to get out of Tennessee sometimes, but yeah, you're. Somebody joked with me at one point, it ain't the $100 hamburger anymore. And I thought, yeah, it's probably double that now. So I don't know.
26:02
Wally Mulhern
Yeah, your channel is more about pancakes than hamburgers though.
26:06
Scott Williamson
I really believe, I believe in pancakes.
26:10
Bobby Doss
I really.
26:12
Scott Williamson
What's funny, you know, I went to the doctor in December and he encouraged me to may up on the pancakes a little bit. So. But I'm certainly not going to do a YouTube channel about health food and piloting. I mean, come on, that's no fun.
26:30
Bobby Doss
The greasy burger was pretty good. I mean, the food looks amazing.
26:34
Scott Williamson
Oh, we've placed Luke's and Dixon. That burger is. It's one of the best burgers I've ever had.
26:44
Bobby Doss
That's awesome.
26:45
Scott Williamson
Yeah, that doesn't always happen.
26:47
Bobby Doss
Well, if you get back to Houston or the Woodlands, down this way, there is a. At the Conroe Airport, there's a black walnut that's a just a chain of sorts, but you can actually buy in the black Walnut. At the Conroe Airport, you can buy a gift card that is called the hundred dollar hamburger. And if you buy the gift card, it's a hundred dollar gift card. If you buy the gift card, you get a hamburger for free. So it's such a draw to fly all the way to Conroe, go to the restaurant, buy the hundred dollar gift card and get lunch for free. I mean, every pilot has to do that at least once.
27:21
Scott Williamson
This sounds like a really that solid.
27:23
Bobby Doss
That's a good marketing material, isn't it? Because most of us pilots probably fly away with a gift card that they're never going to use. So the hamburger actually did cost 100 bucks. You mentioned a funny CFI story. I'd love for you to tell that funny CFI story as we start to wind down.
27:39
Scott Williamson
It's funny because I lived through was one of those lightning rod moments that happens for every pilot at some point. I was checking out in a Cherokee 6 because I needed to take a friend long distance to a doctor appointment. He loves aviation. He wanted his wife to come. I'll skip that part of it. But I just needed a bigger plane with longer legs and more room. So I get there and the instructor is like my son's age, my oldest son's age. And I'm thinking This is funny. I, by this point I was probably 45, 47, 8, I don't know, it's. I was plenty old, at least twice this kid's age. And I looked in the tanks before. I've never flown this plane or seen this plane. And I looked in the tanks and the, it was below the.
28:42
Scott Williamson
I thought it looked a little low below the tabs. And I said, do you think we're okay here? And he said all. He said, you know how to fly. We're just gonna go out and do a couple of maneuvers and some pattern work. It's fine. I know this airplane. So we take off, go out, do our maneuvers, come in, do a touch and go. Beautiful. Fly the pattern one more time. Another touch and go and about 100, 200ft off the ground, engines gone. That's a great time. I, you know what? It must have been higher because as soon as it happened, yeah, it must have been higher, maybe 300ft off the ground because we had time to land. I didn't have the presence of mind to go backwards and remember everything that had happened on the pre flight. We just.
29:34
Scott Williamson
What I remember is there were, There's a. The runways are kind of juxtaposition in such a way that I was looking to my left at the other Runway at the airport, and I just said to the kid, I said, you fly, I'll call. I called tower, it's a class D, this airport. And I said, emergency engine failure, landing right now. And we just literally. He did a very beautiful left turn. We put it down and just kind of sat there for a minute in dead silence. And we're just trying to figure out what happened. And they came, towed us off the Runway, and the mechanic who works on the planes took the plane, got it immediately, started up after switching tanks and comes in screaming at us, just, you know, four letter word, what. You know, it was at the time, absolutely horrifying.
30:31
Scott Williamson
And I remember when he said, you bled this tank dry. I looked at the kid, I just looked at him and he knew exactly, because I. And the lesson was, oh, we structure instincts. And he was a great instructor, he's a great pilot. And evidently what happened is they. And hopefully you can edit this to actually be an interesting story, but they, I heard through the grapevine afterwards that they realized they had a. A breach in the way that they were training their pilots on this specific airplane and getting them checked out in it. So they had them all go through a kind of a better than a cursory overview on it. Because I guess the. The fuel tanks are misleading. But to have an engine failure on takeoff, as we know, is about the worst possible time.
31:26
Scott Williamson
And it was only funny in retrospect. Yeah. And if we didn't have. If we didn't have that Runway next to us, I don't know what we would have done.
31:34
Wally Mulhern
So, Scott, so tell me. You know, when I. When I do checkrides with people, I always say, tell me about yourself. And I kind of get an idea of who I'm dealing with. I try to maybe tailor my. The oral portion of the checkride to them. You know, if they're a basketball player, maybe I'll use basketball analogies. If they're a musician, I'll use musical analogies to the extent that I'm able to do that. And again, I found that good pilots are usually. They're good at something else. And I feel a lot of times I'll hear in a debrief, I'll. I'll ask the applicant, well, why did you do this? And they'll say to me, I've never done that in my life. I've never done that. And I kind of think, well, I'm not sure I believe that, but okay, we'll go with that.
32:36
Wally Mulhern
How do you. Do you see a comparison in flying an airplane from point A to point B to performing music?
32:46
Scott Williamson
I think in the sense that it requires a specific skill set that you had to learn and practice to get good at. For me, flying is an escape from what I do. But the similarity. For me, I had to learn drums and music more by watching and doing than by reading books. And the same was true when I learned to fly. I'm. I'm not dyslexic or anything like that, but for some reason, learning stuff out of a book is really hard for me. I think that my reading comprehension skills are okay, like if I'm reading a novel or, you know, any kind of apologetics. I love theology. But when there's more technique involved with what I'm reading, I usually can only get so far looking at the text or the pictures. Eventually, I've just got to go do it.
33:51
Scott Williamson
I remember, for instance, learning Vors. They're still teaching people how to use Vors now, aren't they?
33:56
Bobby Doss
Oh, yeah. Very important.
33:58
Scott Williamson
Well, I remember my flight instructor trying to help me understand it. I couldn't figure out what it was doing or why from reading the book. But all of a sudden, one day, after turning the knob enough times, it just clicked. It was like learning to drive a stick. Shift. One day I just found that sweet spot where you don't stall in the intersection anymore. And you're like, is that all it was? Why was this so hard? But now I understand it, and I came to music and flying kind of that same way. I eventually learned the academics of it by doing it and not the other way around. Does that make sense?
34:40
Wally Mulhern
Totally. Totally makes sense. I, you know, I look at flying a lot like music, and I. I look at it a lot like playing jazz. Jazz is kind of a more free form of music, if you will. You, you may be in a combo and you're going to play the song, whatever. And flying a flight, you might be flying from point A to point B. And every time you go there, you're getting there a little bit differently. You're going direct to here, direct to here. Whether it be IFR or vfr, for whatever reasons. So at the end of the day, it's still the same song, but maybe the. The way you play the song is a little bit different, if that makes sense.
35:34
Scott Williamson
It does. And of course, you know, in music, hearing what another musician does in an unexpected way will inform the way that I'm. The trajectory of my drum track. If I'm flying along VFR and there's a giant build up in front of me, my DTO no longer works. I'm going to have to deviate. So you're getting, like you say, from point A to point B, but I'm going to have to take a different route than I originally planned on. There's some improvisation involved in flying if you want to do it safely.
36:16
Bobby Doss
It was great to get to know you a little bit, Scott. I loved watching your videos. Hopefully everybody out there will go watch and follow Pilot eats food on YouTube. And I look forward to hearing your music on many more tracks to come and maybe a part two of this show somewhere down the road as well. Thanks for coming.
36:34
Scott Williamson
Absolutely. Thanks, guys, for having me.
36:36
Bobby Doss
To all the listeners out there, as always, go listen to Scott's music and subscribe to his channel. And stay behind the Prop.
36:46
Nick Alan
Thanks for checking out the behind the Prop podcast. Be sure to click subscribe and check us out online@brave.theprop.com behind the prop is recorded in Houston, Texas. Creator and host is Bobby Doss. Co host is Wally Mulhern. The show is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to replace actual flight instruction. Thanks for listening and remember, fly safe.