Tom is joined by Jay Curley of Ben & Jerry's, the ice cream company, to discuss their multi-year relationship with Phish. Engineer: Brian Stollery. Originally released in 2018.
Please support our work by visiting OsirisPod.com/Premium.
Undermine
Under the Scales: Ben & Jerry's (Re-Release)
(upbeat music) When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Aloe or Allbirds, sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand and great marketing, but an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business, making selling and for shoppers buying simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does online business better than Shopify. It's home of shop pay, the number one checkout in the world. You can use it to boost conversions up to 50%, meaning way less hearts going abandoned and way more sales going through to checkout. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/income, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/income to upgrade your selling today. That's shopify.com/income. ♪ Who are ♪ ♪ Who are ♪ ♪ Under the scale ♪ ♪ Under the scale ♪ ♪ Under the scale ♪ ♪ Under the scale ♪ ♪ Under the scale ♪ ♪ Under the scale ♪ - Hello, this is Tom, your host. Before we begin, allow me to remind everyone that "Under the Scales" is a member of a large family of wonderful music and culture podcasts. If you like this one, you will certainly find others to enjoy at OsirisPod.com. Also, this episode is brought to you by Lure Social, a very cool company. The full website is l-u-r-e-social.com. Are you one of those people who obsesses over fish set lists every night when they're on tour? Do you have a long text chain with your friends debating over what they'll play? Check out Lure Social, again l-u-r-e-social.com. It's a digital community that connects fans for a unique fantasy gaming experience. You select shows and create set lists of what you think fish will play and compete against the entire fish community. Your intuition about a particular set opener, encore, or cover can make all the difference and propel you ahead of your friends. You'll have bragging rights as you win more points than they do, proving your superior fishing abilities. We've been playing it, and it's incredibly fun. Check it out, visit luresocial.com to play. (gentle music) - Are you tired of being tired? Are you ready to get eight hours of unbroken sleep? If you answered yes to either of those questions, today's sponsor may be able to help. Sunset Lake CBD is a hemp farm up in Vermont, making CBD products designed to help you get better sleep. As a former dairy farm that produced dairy and cream for another Vermont staple, Ben and Jerry's, Sunset Lake CBD is no stranger to quality ingredients, or standing behind their products. In fact, Sunset Lake tests every product for potency and purity and puts the results online for all to see. They'll even mail you a copy with your order. That includes all their nighttime products. Sunset Lake carries gummies, tinctures, and soft gels designed to help you get to sleep gently and naturally. I'm someone who tends to think a lot when I lay down to go to bed, so often I'll take a sleep gummy about an hour before I need to go to sleep. The combination of CBD, CBN, and melatonin really helps me fall asleep right when I want to. Sunset Lake CBD is offering our listeners 20% off all orders. Visit sunsetlakecbd.com and use the code under mine at checkout. Sleeps sound knowing that they stand behind their products. Sunset Lake CBD, farmer-owned Vermont, grown. - Hi, this is Henry K. Host to the number one music history podcast, Rootsland. Come with me on a journey to Kingston, Jamaica, where we explore the world of reggae music and the untold stories of some of the genre's greatest legends. From the ghettos and tenement yards where the music was born to the island's iconic recording studios, we are so excited to team up with Osiris Media, the leading storyteller in music. Because as you'll hear, sometimes the story is the best song. - Hello, and welcome to Under the Scales, the Under the Scales mobile studio is in New York City today, where I happen to be able to catch someone who's normally in Burlington, Vermont, all the time, who is also coincidentally in New York. So I made the trip up for this and a couple reasons, and I'm here with Jay Curly of Ben and Jerry's. How are you, Jay? - I'm great, Tom. - And last time I saw you was at the Bakers. - It was. I think we ran into each other in an elevator backstage on, I think, the second tonight, last night. - Okay, and you were carrying, it seemed like you were carrying a box of secret stuff. I had a Ben and Jerry's cooler, and in it was prototypes of the It's Ice cream flavor that I was bringing for the band to try out. - Oh, amazing, oh, so, all right, so we should back way, way, way up. - Yes. - Okay, so Ben and Jerry's, of course, the famous Vermont Ice cream company, who formed in the '80s. - 1978, oh, it's just had our 40th birthday. - Oh, wow, 40 years. I seem to remember, well, I'll just tell my first experience with Ben and Jerry's. So, in 1982, both Trey and I graduated high school, and they moved, he was living on Front Street. With, I know at least Fishman was involved in that house, it was lots of people, and two of them, I'll say their names, 'cause I haven't seen them forever, I'd love to, Brickle and Annie, came in and were excited about a new ice cream store opening. And they said Ben and Jerry's is opening on, and I forget, I would love to know the name of the street. - It would have been on the corner of St. Paul. - No, Jerry's where it is now. - Oh, are you sure? - Yeah, yeah, so back then, now it's an abandoned parking lot. - Okay. - But it's college in St. Paul. - Okay, all right, so for those of you who know Burlington, this was the first store in Burlington. I think there had been one prior in Shelburne. There was one in Shelburne, but that one was the very first one. - Oh, okay. And Tre and I got in line, and serving us ice cream was Ben and Jerry. - Yep. - So I was actually there in line at the very first store, which is kind of cool. - Oh, that's awesome. - Yeah, so fast forward to 1996, The Great Went, and of course, Fish played the song Brother, and both Ben and Jerry got on stage, and contrary to my memory, 'cause I had to go back and kind of look at this. They didn't get in a tub. That happened later with like a bunch of kids, yeah, I think pages, kids, and Fishman's kids and stuff got into a tub. So that kind of became like a communal, come on stage song after Ben and Jerry appeared. - And also contrary to popular opinion. - Yeah. - They're not brothers. - No, no, they're not. They're also not, they're literally best friends to this day. - Oh, cool. - But that is all in case anyone's wondering. And it was Clifford Ball, but Jerry actually tells a great story about being backstage, and they're trying to practice it with the band, and they couldn't get it right at all. And I think it was Trey who said to them, just get out there and just be loud and wrong. If you're gonna be long, just be loud. - They were. - Yeah, if you listen back to the tapes now, they were loud and wrong. - I think they didn't even have the right key. - Yeah. - Which is fine. - I think they had a blast. - It was mission accomplished. - Yeah. (upbeat music) ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Somebody's jumping into the car ♪ (upbeat music) - They just came out and did the, someone's definitely in the tub with your brother, and then they left. - Yes. - And at the time, I don't think they had even been announced. - No, the flavor certainly had, right? And so, I think, again, they were in Burlington, and they were, Ben and Jerry were kind of peripheral friends with the guys in the band. - Yeah. - And I think getting out on the Clifford Ball is part of it. - Okay, well then, I wanna fast forward to the next big event that everyone in music, or at least in this sort of community, would know, and that's in 1987, Cherry Garcia came out. - Yes, yes. - And of course, Jerry's still alive. You see, I didn't know until I kind of went onto the internet whether or not Jerry had ever known about Jerry Garcia. - Yeah. - But of course, he did. - Well, he did. He definitely knew about it, but Ben and Jerry's is a very entrepreneurial enterprise, right? And they just went out and tried things, and Cherry Garcia was a suggestion from a fan, from Maine, who was a deadhead, who said, "You should make this." And Ben and Jerry were both deadheads, and they were like, "That's a great idea." And they started making it, and they started selling it, and then they got a letter from Jerry's lawyer. And the good news is they went out to San Francisco and sorted it out, and came up with a good solution, I think, for a while, a lot of the proceeds were going to kind of rainforest preservation. - Okay, okay. Well, I mean, and I'm not a dead historian by any means, and so this is sort of what I've gleaned from sort of common knowledge, that Jerry sort of has a history of not really kind of caring about, like, merch, or marketing, and all that stuff, and often even becoming a little bit taken advantage of. - Yeah, yeah. - I think the ties are the one, frequently, like, they made millions and millions, and he gave his art to them cheaply, right? That might be incorrect, but in any case, so he probably, or his organization, probably turned sort of a skeptical eye to stuff like this. But it turned out to be a big success for everyone. - Yeah, it's been great for a while for Jerry, now, for his family, and it's one of the best-selling Ben and Jerry's flavors to the state. - Amazing. - And to our knowledge, the first ice cream flavor named for a rock and roll star. - That's really cool. That's amazing, 'cause now they're sort of commonplace. There's one for fish, or two for three for fish. - Yes, yeah. - There's certainly one for Dave Matthew's whirled piece or something like that. - So, yeah, through the years, there's been a couple different seasons. - Oh, one sweet world. - One sweet world, and then we did Dave Matthew's Magic Brownies. - Oh, cool. - Neither of those, those are both living in the graveyard. - Oh. - But-- - They were a special event. - No, no, they were real full-time flavors, but they're not selling enough, they don't stick around. - Is that right? - Yeah. - So that's a testament to fish food being a great seller. - Fish food is a great seller. It's definitely top 10, depending on the year, anywhere between four and eight. - Awesome. - Four and eight, what, of our top selling flavors? - Oh, oh, I see, okay. With my favorite half baked at the top. - Half baked is number one. - That is such an unbelievable flavor, so I'm glad when I was looking at, looking through some of the stuff, seeing my number one up there. - Yeah, no, and it's number one internationally as well. It's a big, big seller, and-- - People want cookie dough, for whatever reason. - And it's, I will say, half baked cheats a little, because the number two selling flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, and the number three selling flavor is chocolate fudge brownie. - So they're just through both. - And half baked is literally just those two together. - Nice. So let's take the two best and make it better. - Exactly. - There's nothing wrong with that. - Yeah. - All right, so back us up to fish food, and how it started, and when it came out, and all that stuff. - Yeah, so fish food was officially launched March 18th, 1997, actually with a show at the Flynn. And from the best of my knowledge, and again, I was not working there at the time. I was in high school. But I think there was a desire at the Ben and Jerry's side to kind of like, all right, we had Cherry Garcia, but is there something else we could do? We have these neighbors. At the time, they weren't that big, right? I mean, yes, they were selling out some amphitheaters and some arenas, but relatively speaking, they were off the radar. But again, there were acquaintances of the ban and kind of conversations to start. - Two cool kind of young budding Vermont entities. - Exactly, and you know, obviously fish is not much in terms of commercial partnerships. I mean, maybe there's a few other examples where they've done stuff, but I think what we've done with them is one of the few things. - Yeah, nothing comes to mind, actually. - Right, I can't think of anything really either. - I think John's possible, the Vic Firth endorsement of his drumsticks. - Yeah, but that's kind of, that's not the same at all. - Right, it's interesting, like the cool part is the way the partnership evolved. I think the guys in the band and we interviewed Fishman a few years back and he talked about how kind of Paul Newman was the kind of inspiration. It's like, well, if we're gonna do this, we wanna kind of give money back. And I think they were trying to figure out the, in general, they were growing and they were trying to do more of that. So I think their desire to do more kind of philanthropy coupled with this opportunity really helped spawn the Waterwheel Foundation. - Okay, and now, so even though you weren't there at the time, you've kind of picked up the mantle. Like you, so you're in the marketing side, but you specifically focus on advocacy stuff. - Yeah, so from the marketing communication side, I partner with our social mission team to kind of bring our activism and advocacy to life. And I also do a lot of the kind of partnership work that we do. And I also happen to be a really big Fish fan. And so these days I'm, you know, one of the members on the team that kind of keeps that partnership alive with a band in the organization and particularly the Waterwheel. I think that's really where we get to frankly have a little fun and get to use Ben and Jerry's ice cream, the business to raise a lot of money for Waterwheel. - Are you allowed to go into specifics? - In terms of dollars and cents and all that stuff. - Yeah, I mean, I can talk about the, it's ice flavor. - Okay, well, what about, is there any public knowledge that you can give us as to like round numbers? How much, how much fish food has benefited the Waterwheel? - Yeah, I think I can talk in, in big numbers, in like totality, in the 20 years. It's been literally millions, my guess would be north of 5 million. - Wow, that's fantastic. - Again, it's over 20 years, 21 years now. - And it benefits clean water and the Lake Champlain base in the Virginia Diller? - Yeah, that's where, I think that's the main focus of the Waterwheel Foundation. Obviously the folks there will explain this much better than I will, but my understanding is that they really have kind of two divisions. One that does a lot of grant giving and philanthropy in Vermont and a lot of that is focused on clean energy. Or excuse me, clean water in the Lake. And then they have the touring division, right? So every show, when you see them out, sometimes they're bringing nonprofits in, but always they're raising money for local nonprofits. - Okay, and how do they do that? - Anytime you visit the Waterwheel table, right, at a show, buying the merch or giving a donation, and it ends up, you know, especially when there's moments like walk-ins or Randall's Island festivals and that kind of stuff, you know, it's a really great way that Fish gives back to the communities that they visit. - Oh, okay, I was just wondering if there was a secret. The reason I asked that is, was there a secret sort of Ben and Jerry's link during shows? - Oh, not necessarily. - Yeah, not necessarily. - Okay, okay. Now that brings us to the present day with regard to, well actually there was a freezer reprise. - Yes. - So what was that again? - So I think us like most of the Fish community were like overjoyed and blown away by just the announcement of the Bakers dozen. - Yeah. - And we really just wanted to honor it. Like what an achievement that was, and this was before we even knew how amazing it was gonna be, right? - Right, you guys remember set up outside the very front with the tent, the very first day with some Pollock art, which now we see is on the ice cream. - Yeah. So what we did is, we didn't have time to actually create like a flavor we could put in a pint and sell at the store. - Okay. - So we created what was about a thousand samples of freezer reprise, and it had like the flavor itself had a real donut theme to it. It had like donut pieces and a glaze in it. And so the first night of Bakers dozen, we kind of set up right outside of MSG and headcount was there registering boaters and water wheels there, and we were giving out samples. And it was a lot of fun. It was honestly, it was just our way of honoring the band and like celebrating what, you know, looking back in retrospect was really groundbreaking, but even the announcement at the time was. - Right, right. - That's great. It was kind of nice and sort of familiar to see you guys there because of the fish food history. - Yeah. - But now you've taken a step further and now there's a whole new ice cream. - Yeah, so I mean, what happened was freezer reprise was a lot of fun, right? But it was only like the thousand people. That's a temporary thing. - It was a flash in the pan. We also made a t-shirt that had the Pollock art which helped us raise a lot of money for the water wheel. But it was a flash in the pan and we were like, we wanna, let's do more of this, right? But to get an ice cream on the shelf, you know, that takes longer and so. - Well, it's a lot of work. I mean, I can't even imagine what's involved with getting a new flavor out. - You wanna get the right flavor, you wanna get the right art, you wanna get the right name. I mean, the really cool thing for anyone, you know, listening at home, if you haven't seen that it's ice cream package, it looks nothing like a Ben and Jerry's pint, right? It's Jim Pollock's art. It's a different color palette. It's really inspired by him. And so it was really fun in that way to get to do like a one-off, to really just honor the band. And so, so we started working on it. Like, it's ice cream was actually one of the alternative names for a freezer reprise. So we're like, well, let's do it with that. And it was whatever, three weeks later, that I had prototypes that we actually got to bring down to the band and they try. I don't know if they actually tried it, but I put it in their dress or I didn't. - Management put it in their dressing rooms and they were excited about it. - So that was that top secret stuff you're bringing in. - Exactly. - And that's why you didn't give me any. - I couldn't, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. - It's fun. I love that you mentioned Jim Pollock, the famous fish artist, my good friend involved. And I'm not sure if I was thinking about this, what a perfect person to get involved because he's been involved since the very beginning. So he met Paige at Goddard University. And I was kind of trying to think apart from me and certainly Jim Pollock and certainly the dude of life, Steve Pollock, two unrelated Pollocks and a Marshall are possibly the only three who came in sort of before fish or when fish was extremely nascent that are still contributing artistically to the band, using the term loosely in my case. - I think you can use it a little more definitive. - I appreciate that, but still it's kind of funny to think that those three are still active and I'm so happy to see him doing posters, almost every show or at least every run is just great. - It was so fun to work with him on this project. It's a great project that I even saw on the site, like this cool animation, I think it was on Twitter where there's like a mountain climbing fish that actually climbs the mountain. - Yeah, so I think we created the pint, but we knew people would love more of the art. So Jim created a poster as well. And we, sorry, we sold out of those in 24 hours, but in doing so we raised a lot of money for the water wheel. - Oh good. - And yeah, then we just get to have fun with it, right? We got to animate it, even just the launch video for the flavor itself, it's using the track, it's Ice, which has amazing lyrics. (upbeat music) ♪ The ice and cracks keeps lunging ♪ ♪ And join me here ♪ ♪ Here's my eyes to my thrice ♪ ♪ The last and cold light of my crown ♪ ♪ My double wants to pull me down ♪ (upbeat music) And, you know, we had a lot of fun with it. - This is my first involvement with Ben and Jerry's too, then. As a result, it's ice, right? - Yes, that's right, absolutely. - Which is great, I love it. So now I'm involved. - Yes. - So I got to eat some, we should thank the head count offices and the relics office whose studio we're using right now. So thanks to my partner, relics magazine, and also thanks to head count for offering the studio. - But there's a rumor that there's 20 pints. - There are. - Floating around here. - So as soon as we wrap here, we're eating ice cream. - We're fighting again. - Yeah. So apart from Clifford Ball, and I believe I said the great went earlier, I meant the Clifford Ball, where Ben and Jerry actually appeared on stage, you guys have been involved with almost every festival in some way, right? - Yeah, I think those, the first few, Clifford Ball, great went, Lemon Wheel, it was less, I think we maybe had someone there selling some ice cream, it was fairly minimal. When the band came back and starting with festival eight, we started really collaborating with the Waterwheel Foundation, kind of having a presence at the festivals, and like some of the bigger runs like Baderfield and Randall's Island and that kind of stuff, where we'd really just kind of set up a Ben and Jerry's experience, and usually either right next to the Waterwheel Foundation to again help them raise some money. We've done T-shirts for most of the festivals, which have been a lot of fun. Jim did one of those for us, and some of the other ones we just kind of did with like the first year, which would have been Magnable, the first Watkins Glen festival. We had a lot of fun with like the track vibe, and so we created a fish food T-shirt, but it was sponsored, it looked like a racing jersey, it was sponsored by like antelope tires. Oh, it looked like it had all the brands, all over like Colonel Forbes garage shop and that kind of stuff. So we had a lot of fun with it. That's cool. Now I've seen you speak on behalf of Ben and Jerry's and the activism that they do, and it seems like you took something away from the fish festival learning experience that you attained, and you kind of do that, and that's kind of how you approach activism as a brand, or am I giving fish too much credit? I mean, I think what fish does in the community that fish is really created and that the community itself is created is certainly an inspiration, right? I think what we try to do as a company is use our kind of our place in the world to help grow social movements, right? We're not making them up on our own, that's not our place, but where we can to use our ice cream, our voice, our place in culture to the degree that we have one. We try to use that to really help support and grow and shed light on really important social movements. So socially fish sort of shies away or tends to not really get that involved just because of sometimes the inherent divisive nature of that. Ben and Jerry's has no fear to tread with, you know, in those places. No, we don't. I think we, and for all the right reasons that fish doesn't wade into these issues, I think we see it's a really important responsibility that we have as a business, and it's part of our founding ethos that really started with the guys with Ben and Jerry. And yeah, no, we often will steer right into the controversy, not away from it. And I think we end up being not partisan in any way, but the issues that we stand up for, whether it's climate justice, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, like they're inherently political, right? So we're not partisan in terms of choosing parties or individual folks, but we certainly don't shy away from standing up for what we believe in. That's good. All those issues need help right now. - They do. - They do. How many shows have you been to? - I have been into, I think it's 107. I meant to, like before I came down, I meant to count less. - Re-do your stats. - Yeah. We'll give you 108 just in case you, you know. Plus or minus one, as always. - The thing is, like I knew when I had 100, but I kind of cheated because I wanted it to be in Hartford. So it was a couple of summers ago, and it was really like my 100th or 100th second, but I wanted it. - So you rounded down, often people round up. - Yeah. - I rounded down to get that moment. - That's always allowed. - Yeah. - You can always round down, but you know, the over-exaggerating your counts have to be frowned upon. - Yes. - Of those 107, 108 shows, do you have any favorites or where was your first? - Yeah, so my first was Hartford. I grew up in West Hartford, so Hartford Fall '96, which was a blast. I like, honestly, it wasn't like one of those, oh my God, and I remembered it, but I remember the tweezer, and I remember like the double drummers during the whole second set. It was one of the first or second shows after they came back at the Meadows or whatever bank or wireless company it was owning it at the time. And the double tweet prize encore. Like, to me, there's no better four minutes in rock and roll than tweezer reprise, right? And so to have him do it twice, literally right in a row. And like, again, there's been more transformative moments, but just the pure fun and joy of that. - I don't think I knew about that, so they played tweezer reprise in its entirety. - And they stopped and Trey said something to the effect of, that was a blast, let's do it again and drop right back into it. And then they just played it again. I think maybe they had not, they had played a tweezer and not done the encore, so he was kind of making up for it or something, but, okay. Well, let's hear that right now. (upbeat music) - You know, we're out since a great time. We've only got a couple of minutes to play and kick us off this thing. And we've played a tweezer in Hershey Park that we've never been tweezer advised. So we're gonna play it again. This is for Hershey Burke. (upbeat music) (crowd cheering) - Awesome. All right, that's great. How about any of the more recent shows? - Yeah, so I think just the sheer, honestly, emotion of it was the last night of Bakers. - Oh my God, yes. - I mean, I only got, I did the first night and then I did the last two, so I wasn't, you know, part of the marathon crew. But yeah, just the emotion of that last night was, it was just, it was the fact that they did it. - Right. - And then the raising of the banner, it was really intense. And I, you know, the older I get, the like easier I cry. - Extreme emotion that night. - Yep. - And even just recently talking to Trey about it and just the, you know, emotional aspect of it, we'd actually didn't mention the banner or anything, but just being on stage with his friends and making that accomplishment and having it being done, I think was overwhelming to the band. - Right. - And it was overwhelming to the audience. - Yeah, it really was. I mean, there weren't many dry eyes around me during "On the Road." (upbeat music) ♪ The band of gypsies we go 'bout behind ♪ ♪ We're best friends ♪ ♪ And just in that world ♪ ♪ We're serving our way ♪ ♪ And our way ♪ ♪ It's on the road again ♪ ♪ I can't wait to get on the road again ♪ ♪ 'Cause I might love to sleep using my friends ♪ ♪ I can't wait to get on the road again ♪ (upbeat music) - Or, you know, so. - Have you done other projects, maybe not necessarily fish related, but waterwheel related? - I think one of the most fun things that we've done with the waterwheel was to celebrate the 15th anniversary of fish food. We created what was the world's largest cowbell ensemble and John Fishman led the band. It was at the top of Church Street and we had two to 3,000 people all playing the cowbell to don't feel the reaper. - Yes. - And God, it was just a blast. It was pure fun. - Was that after that Saturday Night Live? - Yeah, it definitely was. It was inspired by that, I think. So what happened? - Will Ferrell. - Yeah. - And Christopher Walken. - And Christopher Walken. - We were at Walken's Glen and I was talking with one of the fish's managers and she runs the waterwheel bath and it was really her idea, but we had just run the 5K race. - Oh yeah. - And we were saying-- - Runaway gym. - Exactly. Which I've signed up for this year as well. - Oh, okay, good. - So we were talking, like, let's do something fun to celebrate the 15th anniversary and we were thinking of a parade or a run or something in Burlington and she had the idea of let's break a record and she found this cowbell. - And ensemble record. - Yeah, and it was just so fun. - What was the record and what did you guys end up breaking? - I think the record was in the high, like, thousands, like, 18, 1900 and I think we were well more than 2,500. And-- - Still an attainable record. I might attempt to just break that on my own. - It is possible. - Yeah. - I think we were, or she was really looking for, what can we do? - You know, what could we break? - Right. - There was a record of naked people or something, I forget, there was something-- - That was at the great one. - Yeah. - I remember being woken up in my tent by my friend being like, "Let's go get naked for this photo." And I was like, "No, get away from me." - Yeah, let's just get naked right here. (laughing) - Sorry, sorry. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay, now we've talked about Ben and Jerry's at Fish Festivals, are you at other festivals as well? - Non-fish? - Yeah, so, occasionally, I think your own's always guaranteed to see us at a fish festival, but over the years, certainly in the last decade, we've done a lot of other festivals like Outside Lands or Governor's Ball and Lock-In, but one of the bigger partnerships we did was with Bonnaroo. And so, for about, I forget exactly five, six years, we were there every year, and we did a lot more with them where we actually created a Bonnaroo flavor. - Oh wow, what was that called? - It was called, first it was called Bonnaroo Buzz. - Nice. - It was a coffee malt ice cream with English toffee pieces in a caramel whiskey swirl to kind of owe it to Tennessee. So that was really fun, and it was fun because, you know, I think for Ben and Jerry's, we had had Cherry Garcia, we had fish food, and we were looking for kind of like, this was, I think it was in 2009, we're kind of looking for another kind of musical partnership, and Bonnaroo at the time really represented like, okay, it really has its roots kind of in the jam band scene, but it has grown to kind of encompass modern American music. - Right, so it was really kind of a great partner to work with, and the crew at Superfly was great. - Nice, so long that vein, do you ever utilize any sort of younger musicians, so to speak? I mean, fish, and the dead, and Dave Matthews, kind of all hail from like a 50 and older. - Well, I think some of the work we've done again over the last decade has many folks might know the organization called Reverb, they do a lot of like, greening of concert tours and advocacy, and it's led by Adam, who's one of the, he's in Guster, right? The band Guster, okay, eight or nine years ago, we got a call from one of the folks at Reverb saying, John Mayer really wants to just give out some ice cream at a concert, and we're like, and he had asked them, do you know what Ben and Jerry's, they knew us, so next thing I know, I'm down with like a couple folks on my team at Jones Beach, backstage, and basically, John Mayer just wants to give out ice cream, and this is, when you think about it, what chance that John Mayer like woke up and like called his manager and said, I'd like to give out ice cream at a concert, you know that that's like a manager translating it, right? There's no way that he said that. - That's my guess, yeah. It was really interesting though, like getting out there, and when you met him, did he wanna give out ice cream? - Yeah, he was way into it, and so we get out there, and we're in a picture of standard Ben and Jerry's ice cream truck, so the plan was, I'd start giving out ice cream, get some people over, and then he would just kind of come over and start doing it too, so we did that a couple times, people lost their mind, like I've never been that close and certainly on the other side of people freaking out to meeting a famous person. - Wow. - So we had to kind of like shut that down and go over to another zone before it got too big. - Really? - It was really fun, and he was really interesting. He was so, he was just so excited to be out there, like interacting with the fans. - That's great, so fish has always had a little bit more of a personable relationship, where they wouldn't be like flipped out over necessarily, but maybe, who knows, whatever motivates that kind of behavior. - Yeah, yeah. - I mean I have theories, but so have Ben and Jerry like done social activism on their own, themselves not through their company, or? - The co-founders. - Yes. - Yes, absolutely. And certainly, I think, the guys are still involved in the business these days, they're still on the payroll and really working on the stuff they wanna work on, which is almost exclusively the activism and advocacy work. - Oh good. - Which is great, I get to interact with them a lot, like that, I actually was part of the team that helped get them arrested a few years back for some civil disobedience. - Oh. - Under what was the issue? - So, it was actually, it was a really, really interesting movement. This was, I think the spring of 2016. And it was kind of the coming together of the environmental movement groups like Sierra Club and Greenpeace with the civil rights movement, groups like the NAACP. - Oh wow. - And it was a rally around getting big money out of politics and then getting people in. So it was about things like overturning Citizens United, so corporations can't just spend unlimited amounts of dark money and reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, making sure people have access to polls. So it was this really cool confluence of organizations and we were the only business there, which in some ways is cool, but I'd like it if there were more businesses joining us. But there was about 5,000 people in this march and it ended with an act of civil disobedience on the Capitol in Washington DC. - Oh wow. - And so the guys got arrested. - That was their goal, kind of. - Yeah, it absolutely was. They meant to and along with the executive directors of NAACP and Greenpeace and the interesting thing for me on that was the mainstream media didn't cover it. Zero coverage at all, but we had actually brought a crew with us like a videographer and a writer and a photographer and that night we put up a blog that was why'd Ben and Jerry get arrested and that went viral and the next day or two, you had all the major media outlets covering it and in doing so, telling the story of the issue, right? - Yeah. - Which is, when we get it right, we're able to use our business in that way. - That's really great. What a great business and what a great partnership over the years with Fish. And thanks so much, Jay, for elucidating the relationship. - Yeah, it's, I mean, we at Ben and Jerry's we consider ourselves so lucky to get to frankly have fun and do partnerships like this. Seems like such a fun company and a company striving to do good. - Yeah, and we're trying our best and just to be able, like, to be, you know, of the fish community, trying to do cool stuff. - You're in it, for sure. - And we're trying our best, hopefully people like it's ice cream and-- - Yeah. - Well, if you're on that secret backstage elevator at Madison Square Garden, then that means you're in the community. - Yeah, that was my one and only time there, but (laughs) thank you so much, Jay. - Yeah, thank you, Tom. All right, so long. The OSIRIS. (upbeat music) - This podcast is in the loop, the Legion of OSIRIS podcasts. OSIRIS is creating a community that connects people like you with live experiences and podcasts about artists and topics you love. Get in the loop at OSIRISpod.com. - Hi, I'm Daniela Clark. - I'm Barbara Ann Wild. - And we are at the Honest AF show. - Our podcast is real, honest conversation with our celebrity friends and pros. - Covering our anything, but average, rock and roll lifestyle. - All while tackling the hell that is aging and the battle of beauty. - Oh yeah, nothing is off the table. - The Honest AF show is available wherever you get your podcasts. - Hey, this is Chris Sweeney, formerly of the Atari's and currently host of that one time on tour, part of the Sound Talent Media Podcast Network. Have you ever wondered what it's really like on the road? The highest can be euphoric, but the lows can be crushing. Join me every week as I chat with industry pros about what it's like living out their wildest dream and in some cases, their worst nightmare. Past guests of the show include members of no effects, Pennywise, bad religion, and more. Listen and subscribe at soundtalentmedia.com.