Podcast - SURF MASTERY

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6620239f21f2fa5a7b4e4234/641cebb5-b99f-4b69-89b1-69e6f709ef3a/Tony+Roberts+SMP.png?format=1000w] What if your best surfing is still ahead of you—even in your sixties? Many surfers fear they’ll lose their edge with age, but Tony Roberts proves that it’s possible to surf better than ever through intentional lifestyle choices, foundational training, and a lifelong commitment to progression. In this episode, we explore how rethinking surfing as a sport, not just a pastime, can lead to lasting performance and deeper fulfillment. * Learn why starting with longboarding could be the single best thing you do for your shortboard technique. * Discover how the right mindset between sets—using mantras and mindfulness—can transform your in-wave performance. * Get inspired by Tony’s radically focused lifestyle design, optimized entirely around surfing longevity and peak performance. Hit play now to uncover how Tony Roberts has redefined aging through surfing—and how you can too. Tony’s Website etc: https://trsurftrips.com/home/ [https://trsurftrips.com/home/] http://www.youtube.com/@RealSurfStories [http://www.youtube.com/@RealSurfStories] https://www.instagram.com/trsurfing/?hl=en [https://www.instagram.com/trsurfing/?hl=en] Tony on Surf Splendor Podcast: https://surfsplendorpodcast.com/025-tony-roberts/ [https://surfsplendorpodcast.com/025-tony-roberts/] Episode Music: https://www.instagram.com/tuanizmusic/?hl=en [https://www.instagram.com/tuanizmusic/?hl=en] Transcript: Michael Frampton: All right. Well, welcome to the Surf Mastery Podcast. Stoked to have you on board. And I'll just do a quick intro and then we'll get into it. , Tony spent the first little chapter of his adult life as a pioneer in the filmmaking and photography surf industry. And then the second chapter of your life, let's call it, you, dedicated yourself to becoming a better surfer into you're now in your sixties now and surfing better than ever. , You almost epitomized the ethos of this show. And my first question, Tony, is describe to me in the listener , your current relationship with the ocean, how it's evolved recently, and what has remained consistent. Tony Roberts: My current relationship with the Ocean is. The focus of my life. [00:01:00] So that means everything that I do is in an effort to maximize my enjoyment and performance in the ocean. , What has remained consistent is that the ocean has been the focus, whether it was, as you said in the first chapter of my life, which was, or the first half of my life I should say, which was filmmaking and photography, which was centered around shooting, surfing and skateboarding, which is kind of the roots of that goes back to the ocean. Then the last half of my life has been about actually the act of surfing. So all the land stuff I still skateboard. The [00:02:00] skateboarding, the training, the nutrition, the mental and physical flexibility is for the surfing. Michael Frampton: Wow. So surfing in the ocean has remained consistent. Where, when did that passion start? Tony Roberts: When I was eight years old, I was very fortunate that I was raised right on the sand in Capitola, California, which is on the very, very inside of the Monterey Bay. So it has all these perfect little grom spots. So it's the perfect place to learn how to surf. And then as you go up the coast north. You have point break after point break after point break that gets bigger and more exposed to swells. So it was just the ideal learning ladder to climb. It went from capitola to trees to privates, to sharks cove to the hook [00:03:00] to pleasure point to the west side of Santa Cruz, steamer Lane, Stockton Avenue, and then up the coast, which is open ocean. So you have Wadel Creek, Scots Creek, and then started traveling to Hawaii, Australia, Indonesia, Peru, and the whole world. Michael Frampton: . That's interesting. It's, it's a common thread with a lot of great surfers is they were exposed to good beginner waves very early on in life. Do, do you think that really did shape your surfing passion? That, that, uh, we'll call it a gentle, gentle, or appropriate introduction to surfing at the right age? Tony Roberts: A hundred percent. Not only did it form my passion, because I saw all these people that were surfing and skateboarding, and this was the seventies, so it was right in the middle of the hippie era. So it was these free and free love. My parents were hippies, and so I, I saw the passion around me and was able [00:04:00] to really have that injected into my early persona. But more than that, I think the technique of learning at a beginner spot, where ideally if you're gonna learn to surf, it's at a young age, and at any age it should be on a slow rolling wave with a big board. So you can learn the basics and the trim and the core strength before you have a short board. And you're, I. Able to learn proper technique. So yes, growing up in a beginner friendly zone and being able to graduate up was crucial in my not only passion but skill. Michael Frampton: . Once you'd sort of clicked onto surfing and were surrounded by better surfers and better waves, was the desire to, [00:05:00] to be one of the better surfers? Was that, how did that form Tony Roberts: Yes, absolutely that was really cultivated skateboarding because at Skate Park So Cal, which was close to my house, I was able to really quantify my progression. Whereas surfing, that's kind of hard to do, but a lot of the best skaters. Skate parks, So Cal were of course great surfers. In particular, Kevin Reed, the guy who invented the aerial surfing was a pro surfer. Pro skateboarder, and he mentored me. So as a young kid, I was able to look at this amazing surfer, skateboarder and really quantify my progression. So I really wanted to be progressing and I wanted to be [00:06:00] the best guy for my age, and I wanted to win contests, surfing and skateboarding. And I wanted to be able to surf the waves that I saw in the magazine. So that desire for progression was planted very early. Michael Frampton: Was a big part of that. A desire to be able to surf faster and bigger waves. Tony Roberts: Absolutely, we'd go to the surf movies and it was all about Jerry Lopez, Reno. Avalara getting goosebumps right now. The, the big movie, you know, with the, with the soundtrack and, and the dramatic narration. It, it just got into your bones, it got into your blood. And I saw those waves and I wanted to surf 'em so bad. But also in the seventies, of course, it was the busting down the door era. And my friends were just all about [00:07:00] bk. , James Jones. Uh, Rory Russell. But in reality, for me, it was all about Rabbit. Pt. Mp. I was really attracted to Australia, and as a very young kid, I knew. When I got the chance I was going to surf Kira Burley heads, and that was really my dream. So my entire youth surfing was working towards that. Michael Frampton: More performance surfing rather than big wave surfing. ., Back then, particularly did you approach surfing as a sport or an art Tony Roberts: as a sport, which didn't really exist yet? It was still very much [00:08:00] so. The, the flow and the hippie aspect of surfing, that's what was in the magazines. Hmm. And a surf photo it in the seventies was the wave. A surfer was a detail, but skateboarding was different. There was a lot of fisheye, close photos in the skateboard magazines where the action was the entire photo and the bowl or the ramp was a mere detail in the background. And I was so influenced on the skateboarding end of things because I was 50 50 my whole life. And so I wanted to perform. I wanted those repetitions and so much so that surfing as a youth, if I didn't get a lot of waves, I would come in unsatisfied and go skate to be able [00:09:00] to fulfill that, that desire to be complete. And so I think that it was very much a sport. For me personally in the age of it being an art. Michael Frampton: Interesting. And has that changed? Do you still, do you see it as more of an art now? Tony Roberts: No, not at all. It hasn't changed. Um, what has changed is that I love to ride traditional longboards. I love to ride single fins. I love to do a style of surfing that's very artistic, but it's in a process of becoming a more complete surfer. And I feel that those styles of surfing are incredibly technical in a different way. But having done airs [00:10:00] surfing my entire life, starting when I was pre-teen and getting to a stage to where in my forties, wanting to learn traditional longboarding for the first time, I. And so I'm more driven to be a complete surfer and be as good of a surfer as I can be. It gets more intense as the years go on. Michael Frampton: , Interesting. How did, you mentioned, uh, when you started, you started longboarding in your forties. How did that change or influence your shortboarding? Tony Roberts: Wow. I, I have to say it was probably the most important thing I've ever done. , As my foundation became so much [00:11:00] better, my bottom turns trim, board speed, and I was very fortunate in that I was living in Costa Rica at the time. And a friend of mine, Chris Klo, started bringing down the best traditional longboarders in the world who were young guys, Alex Nost, Jared, Mel, Tyler Warren. And when I saw those guys surf, I had a revelation and said, wow, I really want to learn to do this. And, uh, so I got to hang out with these guys, buy boards from them, learn to longboard surfing with them, and actively ask them, what am I doing wrong? How can I improve? And so they very transparently told me what I was doing wrong, what I was doing good. [00:12:00] And that clinic of foundational surfing helped my shortboarding. By leaps and bounds. Michael Frampton: . Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I agree. I've interviewed Bud Freis probably six or seven years ago, and that was one of his tips is to get a big old log and learn how to longboard best thing you can do for your short putting. I took his advice and yeah, it just, it makes you, it forces you to read the wave differently. It slows you down. You've gotta predict your lines differently. You gotta be slow, slower, and more accurate with your movements. Lots of stuff. Footwork, lots of stuff. Tony Roberts: Yes. Yeah. Michael Frampton: , What aspects of longboarding do you think contributed to your, to, to what you just mentioned? Can you break it down a little bit for us? Tony Roberts: Absolutely. [00:13:00] First and foremost, it is, I. When the waves aren't good for shortboarding, you're out there using a part of your brain that is very ambitious in trying to perform, not just enjoying nature and cruising and going through the motions. No really getting intense and trying to do something amazing. And that is a day that if you're trying to shortboard, you're pretty much kidding yourself. And so a day that's maximum longboard, traditional longboarding is minimum at best shortboarding. So that's first and foremost. Secondly, the core strength required to properly trim and turn a longboard is the only way to do it [00:14:00] properly. If you're doing it with your ankles or you're using your arms or any of that stuff, you're completely blowing it. It's a very core internal technique that not only moves the board but looks good, and so you wanna be bending with a straight back. You don't want to be hunching over and, and all of that traditional longboarding technique. When you get on a, a short board and I ride boards that, that are all different sizes, including little boards that are basically like a standup bodyboard. And so when you're getting on these tiny little boards that just wanna squirrel around, but you have that core strength technique, all of a sudden you're like hugging the wave and carving these little [00:15:00] boards. In a way that is really proper technique. And then when you get on your normal shortboard, you're able to really draw out your turns and hold your turns because it's, in my opinion, it's a method that you have to ride all different sizes of boards to, to come to. And I think there's a few surfers in the world, they just naturally kind of have that, that technique. You know, like Bud Friis is one. He was born with an amazing style. Um, Joel Parkinson. You know, you've got these guys that no matter what they do on a surfboard, it looks amazing. But I think for a normal surfer to be able to cultivate that, that full rail core strength, um, never a double hitch in a bottom turn. Never a flapping of the upper [00:16:00] body. Just everything you do is, is proper. That riding all boards is gonna enable you to do that on your shortboard. Michael Frampton: Yeah, no, I love that. They say the same thing is true in golf, right? You don't change your swing, you change your club. Same rule applies I reckon percent. Tony Roberts: And when I learned golf, I got lessons from a PGA pro. I was so, so focused on learning all the etiquette. 'cause golf is a gentleman's sport and you don't walk behind someone in their back swing or talk or step on someone's line. And the way that people approach surfing with so much disrespect and disregard for proper etiquette, which infuriates us lifelong surfers. When I approached the sport of golf, I was very, [00:17:00] very adamant about learning it the proper way and not skipping clubs and not using woods until I could hit the irons and really approaching it in the most respectful way as possible, using the proper shoes, not going out there in a t-shirt and sandals, but really respecting the sanctity of this incredible sport. Michael Frampton: , Yeah, I love that. And you're right, a lot nowadays, people certainly do not approach surfing anywhere near with that, , amount of thought. On that note, if there are any beginners listening at the moment, what advice would you have to them in that regards? Tony Roberts: Yes. Well, I think that if you approach surfing with a lot of respect, then that would be. Before even talking about the social [00:18:00] aspect is self-respect, and that is writing a beginner board in beginner waves until you have that board and those waves mastered. And do not try to graduate and skip steps on the ladder because that's not being respectful to yourself and to the expert surfers in the water. They can see that a mile away that's not being respectful to them. So you have no reason using anything but a 10 foot soft top in one foot, slow rolling waves until you have that mastered. And then when you have that mastered, you go to the next step, then the next step, then the next step. And you shouldn't be riding a shortboard in advanced waves for years. Michael Frampton: Yeah, no, I agree. And that's a great way to think of it actually in terms of self-respect, because that is, that, uh, short process you just [00:19:00] described is the best way to learn surfing, because surfing is a long-term sport. It truly is. It's, there's no, there's no shortcuts in, in surfing. It's just one of those things. It's so dynamic, so complex beyond your ability to realize when you're young and it's, every surf is like a compound. It's quite compound interest, isn't it? It just takes so long to gather up. It's not like tennis where you can go and smash a bunch of balls in the same place with the same ball machine or the same coach and get pretty good in six months. That's not surfing. It's, that's great advice. Yeah. It is a certain level of self-respect because if you are going out there and you're getting frustrated 'cause people are dropping in on you or treating you like shit, well it's probably because you've skipped some of those steps and uh, they're just reflecting back to you your own attitude really. Tony Roberts: 100%. [00:20:00] And furthermore, if you don't do that, you'll always surf like a kook. If you learn on a shortboard, you'll always surf like a kook. Every single person out there who just jumps on a, on a shortboard and didn't go through the learning process, they didn't learn how to turn the board with, with core strength, and they start turning it with their ankles and compensating with their upper body. That's why a lot of in third world countries, nobody has a good style because nobody knows this and they all learn on short boards. So if you wanna have a good style, it helps. If you are doing this when you're a little kid and you're learning on a longer board, but if you're an adult and you're learning on a shortboard, you'll definitely be a kook your entire life. Michael Frampton: Mm. Yeah. No, I, I love that. Makes me think of, , Julian Wilson, someone who has not only great style, but pitch a [00:21:00] perfect technique. He has a longboarding background. Yeah. Tony Roberts: Perfect example. Michael Frampton: Yeah. I, I wanna go back to the, we segued a little bit, but I want to go back to the, the art versus sport subject. I. I, I'm fascinated in your answer. I, I kind of expected you to say art because I, I, 'cause I would argue that even when you treat surfing like a sport, I-E-A-W-S-L competition, the surfers that win those competitions when they're actually surfing the wave, I feel like their surfing is very artistic. And there's the, the, of course you've got, uh, tactics and technique to get the right waves and all that sporting stuff, but once they're actually surfing the wave, it's, they're approaching it as an art form Tony Roberts: perhaps. But in my opinion, I see art [00:22:00] in the aspect that you're talking about, in the way that an amazing NBA player dribbles up the court or in the way that a, a Street League skateboarder puts together their run. But. In my opinion is just artistic sport. The sport is the act of riding the wave. And if you are sitting out there and you're just enjoying nature and you're just having a, a spiritual moment, that's artistic. But I don't look at surfing like that. , And it's because of my skateboarding background. I want the opportunity to try something. And in between sets, I might take in the view and acknowledge the fact that it's a magical moment in nature, but in reality, I'm saying [00:23:00] mantras to myself before the next wave comes, so that I will perform as, as well as I can in that short given. Opportunity that I get that's between, you know, 20 and 90 seconds, depending on the spot you're surfing. And I also have somebody filming me. I want to get a good clip. And so some of my mantras, for example, are I'm sitting there between sets waiting for the wave to come and I'll say to myself, crisp takeoff. Crisp takeoff. And I'll say it over and over to myself in my mind, just so that I don't get ahead of myself. I'm not thinking like, oh, I wanna do an air on this wave, or I wanna combo up. No, no, no. Because if I can get a crisp takeoff, which is hard enough, after 52 years of surfing, I still sometimes don't get a [00:24:00] crisp takeoff and I blow the entire wave. But if I do get a crisp takeoff. Almost always magic unfolds down the wave because we have all the instinct, we have all the ability. It's, it's logged into our mind. We have all the practice, but we get in, we get in our own way with having too much crap in our mind when we're paddling into the wave. So if I can get a crisp takeoff, chances are I'm gonna do magic on the wave. And another mantra that I use is simply, and this is usually after I'm, I kick out from a wave and I'm paddling back out and I'm, I'm playing back that wave in my mind, what I did good, what I did bad, and maybe I did something funky, like a spray check or something where if you do a spray check, your board stops because the nose of your, your board is gonna follow your head, right? And if your head is looking where you want the board to go, and your head's following [00:25:00] through and holding the carve all the way to the bottom of the wave. You're gonna do this amazing carve, but sometimes we do this stupid little thing where we like look at our spray and the board just stops and you fucked up the whole wave. And so paddling back out. Sometimes I'll acknowledge that I did that. And then my mantra, no matter what, between the next sets is going to be form. I'm just gonna say to myself over and over, form form. Sometimes I'll compound it with crisp takeoff form and that's all I'm thinking. And then I get into that wave and I'm thinking form, and I know that I'm gonna have my head going the right direction. You know? I don't know if you saw that video that Ger did with AKI recently where Ger had all these backside snaps of aki, like ready to show him. And he said, AKI, he goes, you know why [00:26:00] your backside snap is the best of all time. Aki iss like, no man, I never really thought about it. And he said, it's where your eyes are. He goes, look at this snap. And it's that classic Billabong Jbe ad where he is just like all rail and just perfect form. And he goes, look at your head. He goes, you're looking down the line where you want the board to go. So you're completing your snap, but you're already looking at the next section. So that's able, while you're able to hold the rail, come out into a full bottom turn, keep it on rail and into the next snap. That whole process was on rail. There was no hitch, there was nothing because a's eyes are always on the prize, so I'll say mantras to myself between waves and that is really how I keep the, the performance at its peak. And so that's why on all [00:27:00] aspects, for me, it's always a sport. Never an art. Michael Frampton: Okay. What about music? Do you see any, uh, similarities between surfing and music? Tony Roberts: I see music almost like a tool for the sport, and I'm a musician and I love to play music and I'm always trying to get better at music. Also. I mean, I enjoy the artistic aspect, but it's a process, you know, I'm trying to improve. And it is not a sport, obviously, it is an art music, however, it's a performance art. And I think that in sports, if it's a performance art, it's a sport. Hmm. Tony Roberts: A creative sport, an artistic sport, a [00:28:00] beautiful sport, but a sport nonetheless. Michael Frampton: So dancing. Tony Roberts: Dancing. And I also absolutely love to dance. I'm always trying to get better. I'm always trying to learn new dances. I want, like for example, I've lived in Latin America more than half of my life, and certain dances like cumbia and meringue, they're really easy. You can get really good if you have natural rhythm salsa's, incredibly technical. It's incredibly difficult and I've got 30 plus years, 40 plus years learning to dance salsa and have taken lessons, and it is, salsa is borderline a sport. Hmm. And there's salsa dance competitions, and [00:29:00] I often use the comparison of surfing and dancing salsa because for example, right now the big controversy is should Kelly Slater get the wild card at Trestles? And people are saying, oh, he is older and he doesn't have the, the board speed he used to have. And I have to remind people that surfing is a sport is a lot closer to a salsa dance contest than it is an MMA fight. So board speed and physical strength in an MMA fight is everything but in a salsa dance contest, experience and transitions. Mm-hmm. Tony Roberts: Are gonna win the contest. And it's very rare that some young couple is gonna be able to [00:30:00] step up and take out what is experience. So I feel like dancing is an art, but there are contests and it is judged and there are winners. But just like surfing, you're gonna have one judge who thinks couple B is better than couple A, and that has to do with their background and their biases and maybe even what country they're from. So there's a lot of similarities in sense salsa dance contests and the WSL. Michael Frampton: I think surfing almost bridges the gap between sport and art. I think we're, I like to think of it as an art often because when I think of sport, I think of competitive [00:31:00] sports. But when I think of art, I think of music and being in rhythm and having good timing and technique. So for me personally, at this stage of my life, having good rhythm, timing and technique and just keeping things smooth and appropriate for the wave and the board, I give it more of an art label rather than in, in my twenties I was out there, I wanted to, you know, three to the beach, do the biggest turn. I can sort of pretend I was being judged, I think. So that's where the definition, but I agree. I think they are surfing is both. Tony Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. Like everything that you described that makes it a art for you. I want that in my. My ride and on that video clip and in my next video, it's not just to do it for the expression, the artistic expression. No, it's uh, [00:32:00] it's a concrete thing that I'm trying to accomplish. But surfing, as you said, bridges the gap because for it to look good, it has to look free flowing and not mechanical and artistic as it were. Michael Frampton: . I think if I was as surfers, if we were to snap our fingers and all of a sudden we are standing on our surfboards feet in the right part of the board. Surfboard in the right part of the wave. From that moment on, surfing's actually pretty simple and easy. And that the hardest part of surfing is what happens in between when the surfboard is under your arms and under your feet. How, if Tony Roberts: you have the ability Absolutely. Michael Frampton: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For experienced surfers or any, anyone really. I mean the, the surfer, the, the ratio is what? One minute of [00:33:00] surfing to every hour, if you're lucky in the water. Um, so what we do in between when the surfboard is under our arms and under our feet. What advice would you have to people to manage that part of surfing? Tony Roberts: Oh, man. That's everything because surfing are these fleeting moments and anything in the world. You do in an effort to improve your surfing is gonna pay off huge. And that goes from going to the gym, improving your diet, um, spiritual development, whatever religious faith you might [00:34:00] be., Anything that you do off of the board that is consciously to improve your surfing is gonna pay off huge. And especially in training. And I've heard people say that the best training for surfing is surfing. Bullshit. Surfing will destroy your shoulders. It will destroy your ears. It will destroy all these different parts of your body that the human body wasn't made for this out of balance activity that will destroy you. So yoga is the complete mind body strength, flexibility, discipline, workout that was invented thousands of years ago and perfected [00:35:00] thousands of years ago. And if you adapt that to surfing, it's the best thing you can possibly do for your surfing tomorrow and for your surfing longevity. And that will compensate and balance out your entire body so that your shoulders and these other parts of your body that are getting this unbalanced workout. It puts it all back in balance. Michael Frampton: . Those moments when you are standing on a surfboard and dancing with the ocean, do they inspire you and drive you to, to, to, to practice yoga and eat healthy and get to bed on time, et cetera? Tony Roberts: 100%. Everything. It, it influences every single decision I make in my life and has, since I was a young child. When I was a young [00:36:00] child, I said, how am I gonna be able to surf as good as I can my entire life? And that's been my lifelong mission. And I stopped eating animal products as a child, for example, and started studying Buddhism. Yoga as a child, and that has been a hundred percent for surfing and going through life and relationships. If you're gonna be a good husband or boyfriend, you have to sacrifice surf time. And for me, I figured out pretty long ago that that doesn't work with my lifestyle and my goals. I'm not going to sacrifice and I'm not going to compromise my surfing for a [00:37:00] woman, period. So that means that my relationships only go to a point to where it's not going to interfere with my surfing. And the same goes with my decisions with work, my decisions. With lifestyle, my decisions with diet, my decis decisions with exercise. And the reason why you don't see surfers, I don't see surfers my age doing themselves justice because they've compromised for work, for relationships, and that's fine. That's their priority, but they're not at their full level because of it, none of them. And if you really want to be at your full level, then you need to be a hundred percent committed. There's no [00:38:00] half-assing it. And if you put 20% of that effort into your relationship or you're, you're still drinking and you're still eating hamburgers and smoking cigars and all that kind of stuff, you're not gonna be at your peak level. Which is fine, that's your personal choice, but if you are gonna be at your peak level, it takes a hundred percent commitment. Michael Frampton: . Yeah. And it is, I mentioned the word compound interest. It's interesting to see you improve as you age despite what society tells us should happen as we age. And that your consistency and dedication and commitment to surfing has just seen your relationship to surfing. And with the ocean, just the depth of it increases. And, uh, [00:39:00] yeah, you're still obviously inspired by it greatly, and yeah, it's, is it, is it your most successful long-term relationship? Surfing Tony Roberts: Without a doubt. Also with my daughter who's 19 years old, um, which hasn't been as long as my relationship with surfing, but is I feel like it's a hundred points also. And I was very fortunate in that her mother broke up with me when she was pregnant and was a third world country girl in the middle of nowhere. And I said, well, if you're not gonna be with me, then I'm gonna take the kid, but you're still gonna be the mother. We're gonna drop in and visit you once in a while, but I'm taking the kid. And she signed off on it. So I raised my daughter myself and my concept when she was [00:40:00] an infant was, okay, I'm gonna try to continue living my ideal lifestyle and raise her. And once it's not working out, then I'll compromise. For my daughter, but as it turned out, I never had to compromise and going on my vagabond, following swells, being in different countries at my favorite surf spots during the peak time of the year and focusing everything around that worked out amazing. And my daughter had this incredible international universal education and now is an unbelievably, um, inspirational adult that is now teaching me. So Tony Roberts: [00:41:00] yes, I think that surfing has been my most, my longest relationship and it gets stronger and stronger with age because. I learn as the years go on, how to eliminate the other things in my life that interfere with it. And you mentioned society like this does not work with society at all. And I listen to my friends and other people talk about their relationships and, and what they think is normal. And it does not, it's not conducive to a, a lifestyle where you're committed to surfing if you're in cold water or you're dealing with traffic or you're surfing waves that you don't wanna surf, that are crowded or not surfing because you're at work or any of those things. At one, if, if surfing was your number one priority at one stage of the game, [00:42:00] you wouldn't have sacrificed and you would've made surfing work. And to do that to the fullest. You wanna be in the tropics, you wanna be at a good wave that, that you can continually progress. And if you sacrifice that for work, again, good on you, that's your prerogative. You can live however you want, but you didn't do yourself justice in, in the surfing end of things. And that's what society dictates. And I really don't see any, I've never met anybody who, like myself, is going to go a hundred percent committed to surfing performance in your, in every aspect of your life, in all of your relationships. And guess what? People are gonna respect you more women are gonna want you more when they can't get you. [00:43:00] And your child is gonna have a much more fulfilling education. When you are homeschooling her, you are teaching her on the road and linking her up with professional professors, getting her specialized education, and it goes so many miles beyond what society has dictated for us. And as a surfer, if you're first prior priority is surfing and your own surfing performance, and that is your priority, that leads itself to the best diet, the best religion, the best ethics, the best morals, the best person that you can be contributing to this entire planet because that's what surfing dictates. Michael Frampton: , I love that. I love that. I think it's also to add to that [00:44:00] your daughter's growing up with a parent. Who is modeling what can happen when you do narrow things down and don't try and do everything and focus on something, how good you can get and how you can develop a relationship with something like surfing over time. And it's, I I think that's missing in a lot of, a lot of adults. Tony Roberts: A hundred percent. And it goes back to the word you said, society, you know, and people that they, I can't believe it. I can't believe that they just fall for it. You know, all my friends, we were all the same when we were 13, 14, 15. We all wanted to be in the tropics. Those things that we drew on our notepad, the perfect point break with the hammock, with the dark skinned girls and bikinis running around. I. The, [00:45:00] the cement ramp on the beach, like the doodles. That's life, man. That's freaking life. Michael Frampton: Yeah. There'll be people listening who are thinking, oh my God, how dare you not prioritize your daughter's education? And yet their teenage child is in their bedroom on their smartphone while they're having a glass of wine and watching Netflix. Tony Roberts: Yeah. And my daughter's education, she's 19 years old, and now she's already incredibly successful. Yeah. I mean, I wish I earned the money that she earns and, uh, it's, it's incredible. Very cool. And as Tony Roberts: you said, it was from, she saw an example of somebody who had a focused goal, but that focused goal. There's so many aspects that are integral to go into that diet, [00:46:00] nutrition, lack of stress, spiritual strength, mental and physical flexibility training regimen. That's all she's ever known. And now she's taking it to the way next level. Michael Frampton: Mm. Yeah. No, I like that. That's, I mean, 'cause we we're talking about things that we do anyway. Everyone eats, everyone goes to bed at a certain time. It's just, are you eating for mouth pleasure or are you eating to fuel a better surfing journey? Tony Roberts: That's it, bro. You nailed it. Michael Frampton: , I wanna go back to the time between when the surfboard is under your arm and under your feet when you're sitting out the back, paddling around waiting for waves. I. How do you manage your focus and everything above, you know, above eye level, your head? How do you manage that?[00:47:00] Tony Roberts: Yeah, I try to stay away from people. I don't look at people rides unless it's somebody that is on a high level, because if I see somebody cook it, it can get into my subconscious because the flow I have in my mind is very, very next level. It's built on mindfulness meditation practice. It's built on shalin, um, tai chi techniques. , So much has gone into that mindset between waves. I can't let any of this peripheral stuff interfere with that. And it's also very [00:48:00] important to be cordial and say hi to people. , But maintain focus, as you said, that's, that's the key word right there. And how I do it is concentrating on my breath, returning to the present moment using mantras, and really visualizing what I'm going to do on the wave in the aspect of keeping an open mind when I drop in. Reading the wave and giving the wave what the wave calls for, like getting in crisp takeoff and then looking down the line and not having anything in my [00:49:00] mind and reacting to those changes of the waves. I got to work a lot with Kelly Slater and filmed him all over the world, and he's the best I've ever seen at reading waves. It's incredible how he can react to what the wave is going to do, and sometimes he'll be out there the whole session and doesn't do any errors and people are like, oh, look at him. He, he can't do errors anymore, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the best ramp of the day comes in and he does the craziest error that anyone's done in months, and it was the only one he, he tried because. He's only gonna do an error if it's a perfect ramp. So he's a great example in having an open mind when you drop in. I don't think he ever thinks I'm gonna do this or I'm gonna do that when he is paddling into the [00:50:00] wave. Michael Frampton: Yeah. I mean, reading the wave is the hardest, the hardest part of surfing and, but all great surfers do it. Well that's something that's, that no matter what style of surfing you want it or you do reading the wave is the foundation of it. Right. And that actually starts before you stand up too. Right. You've gotta choose the right wave. You've gotta sit in the right spot. You've gotta paddle in at the right angle. You gotta time your takeoff. And when you say crisp takeoff, what? What do you mean by crisp? Tony Roberts: A good popup. Good popup. You know, from the hands straight to the feet. In a millisecond crisp, you know, and sometimes that means doing a plank, you know, like hands on the rails, feet on the deck, and letting the wave build and [00:51:00] going down the first sixth of the wave in plank position, and then, then right at the right moment snapping to your feet. It doesn't always mean like getting in early and getting up quick. No. Crisp means that popup, it's perfect. There's no like stumbling to the feet. There's no like need grazing the, the, the deck as as you're standing up. It's just that those hands to the feet in like a millisecond, Michael Frampton: but Correct. But timing's everything, Tony Roberts: the timing, as you said. Michael Frampton: Yeah. 'cause there's, there's a difference between quick and fast.. Yeah. You wanna time it well. So would you say that as you're paddling into, and maybe you're in a plank and you're waiting for the right moment, that whole time you're already surfing the wave, like surfing starts before you stand up?[00:52:00] Tony Roberts: Well, that depends on your definition of surfing Michael Frampton: in terms of your, you're not trying to get the perfect popup in exactly the right spot per se, because maybe you misread the wave a little bit so you're remaining adaptable and just changing the timing of your popup. Maybe you hold back, you know, you're always sort of reading the wave one once it's sort of got you and you're almost in it, you're already kind of setting your line. You're, you're surfing the wave, at least visually. Before you even pop up. So a popup is still a maneuver in surfing. So people often say the bottom turn is the first maneuver. My argument would be, it's actually the popups the first. Tony Roberts: I agree with you. Michael Frampton: So crisp, crisp takeoff. I like that. Yeah. Hmm. [00:53:00] Tell us about your surf trips, Tony Roberts: my personal surf trips or my business? Michael Frampton: Your business. Yes. Tony Roberts: Yes., I do a surf trip package where people can come surf and shoot with me. Um, usually they don't get to surf with me very much because I'm shooting the whole time and have a second photographer or filmer shooting as well. But I have a website, tr surf trips.com, where I offer trips to the best waves at the best time of the year that are my favorite spots in the region of Central America and the Caribbean. After being down here for, [00:54:00] you know, 40 plus years, full-time, I've got completely dialed. Where's good when it's good. And I know all the locals everywhere, and I know the best places to stay. So depending on the size of the group, um, the surfers interest their level. I make these trips for them that include all transport, accommodation, and I film all of their waves. We analyze their waves. If they want coaching, I give them coaching. And at the end of the trip I make a trip movie edit for them as a souvenir, which includes not only their waves, but scenics and on the road experiences. And this has been a way for me to use a [00:55:00] lifetime of filmmaking, professional photography as senior staff photographer for Surfing Magazine, official photographer of the Quicksilver Crossing. I was on the Indie Trader for three years on the boat filming all the best surfers in the world. And that project was, they wanted the culture and the surfing, photography and cinematography, which was why I was the perfect fit for that project because I've been in these cultures immersed, bilingual for so many decades that I was able to capture all that for their project. And so now I'm able to utilize all that experience and give that experience. To any surfer on any level and their friends or [00:56:00] family. And it's incredibly gratifying for me because if I get Kelly Slater's best video clip of the year, he doesn't really care. Quicksilver doesn't really care. They're like, oh, great. Good job. You know, they expect it. But if I get the average surfer's best clip of his life, the look on his face, and it, it is just so gratifying for me. And it's the true essence of being able to give back after a lifetime of being blessed with this incredible lifestyle of traveling the entire planet at all the best waves in the world with all the best surfers and. To now continue to utilize that skillset for everyday surfers is incredible. [00:57:00] Michael Frampton: Oh, very cool. Very cool. And gosh, just the whole, just the experience of knowing when and where to surf from home, whatever home base you've chosen, that's worth, I mean, that's just invaluable for any, any surf trip I've ever been on. The better, the better and more experienced. The, the guide, the surf guiding where, where we're going today, what time we're surfing due to the tides and the swell. I mean that makes or breaks a trip really. And then plus it's all on film and you can get coaching if you want. I mean, that sounds amazing. And where people that wanna find out more in book, where do they go? Tony Roberts: TR surf trips.com. So it's my initials, Tony. Michael Frampton: Okay, great. I'll make sure there's links to that in the show notes. And you also have a YouTube channel. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Tony Roberts: Yes. I have two YouTube channels, real [00:58:00] surf stories and real skate stories. And these are a way to cement legacies of the greats of our sports surfing and skateboarding. That gives an opportunity to do a deep dive into their surfing life and what has made them great and using what they've accomplished to inspire us because each surfer has led these incredible lives that have inspired us in so many ways, and sometimes I. You'll hear the person's name, but you don't really know much about that person. And so I'm always looking for those surfers and those stories that really give you a, a better [00:59:00] perspective of them. And also, as I said, to celebrate their legacy so they don't slide through the cracks. Like one example is I'd heard about this guy, Butch van Dale, and I even knew that he was known as Mr. Pipeline, but I realized I didn't know much about this guy. So I started doing some research and holy crap, what an incredible person and story and character. And I mean for anyone who ever knew that guy, he was the most larger than life figure they'd ever met and ever knew. Yet here we are. Decades later and barely even know who the guy is. So to be able to do a story on that guy and then having his family reach out to me [01:00:00] and so graciously say, wow, thank you so much. Like, this is so important to us that that people know Butch's story. And I just did one with a PT where I was able to sit down with him and wrap out for like three hours. Michael Frampton: Oh wow. Tony Roberts: And the amount of influence and impact that he's had in so many different aspects of surfing. People don't realize that they know PT for one thing or another, but if you put the entire package together, PTs, in my opinion, the most influential impact surfer in the history of our sport. Yeah, the Duke is more impactful in in getting it started. Kelly Slater's more impactful in competition. You have these other people that are more impactful in certain categories, but the amount of categories [01:01:00] and the amount of impact that PT had in all those categories. So my YouTube channel celebrates all these incredible stories and again, gives me an opportunity to utilize a lifetime of filmmaking 'cause that has been my career my entire life. I was director of video at O'Neill. I made the O'Neill Ozone in 1988. In my filmmaking career, I was the first person to use hip hop and rap music, and skate videos and surf videos. I invented the follow footage angle and street skateboarding. I invented the skate style water shot angle, and surfing. So my entire career has been, I. Trying to do something that's never been done before doing it and moving on to the next thing. And now I'm able to utilize all that in my own channel, which is like me having my own movie theater, my own TV station. [01:02:00] I've been a musician my whole life, a dj. I make beats, I make music, I rap, I sing. Now it's like I have my own radio station. I absolutely love the technology more than anything, you know, and it's, it's far reaching and, and every direction worldwide. So it's incredibly inspiring and gratifying. Michael Frampton: Wow. Yeah. , Gosh. Okay, listener. Well, if you're inspired to. Go on a surf trip with Tony and, , have some of this rub off and surf some great waves. Get some great footage. Then you can go to tr surf trips and there'll be a link to that in the show notes. And if you wanna learn and explore Tony's, , YouTube channels, there'll be links to those in the show notes as well. Those who wanna learn more about Tony's, , backstory in history, which he just touched on a few points there. I will put a [01:03:00] link to the interview that David Lee Scales did with you, , back in 2014 in the show notes as well. , Tony Roberts, thank you so much for your time., You are an inspiration, especially to us, , older surfers and what's possible in surfing, longevity and performance. So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Tony Roberts: Thank you so much, Michael. Absolute pleasure.

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6620239f21f2fa5a7b4e4234/7c3faf58-c4c7-45c1-bd45-9731f088f4c6/Joel+Timmons?format=1000w] https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/podcast-surf-mastery/id1088660076 https://open.spotify.com/show/1VvhOpHEu31U4gktXJdkQv?si=ZUWd5smuSkaAh-4ukvIP7g https://www.instagram.com/surfmastery/?hl=en https://www.youtube.com/@SurfMastery/videos https://www.facebook.com/surfmasterysurf https://twitter.com/surf_mastery https://www.tiktok.com/@surfmastery Joel Timmons on Surfing, Songwriting, and Soulful Journeys If you’ve ever found yourself seeking balance between creativity and passion, or wondering how to turn life's challenges into powerful art, this episode is your invitation to explore that path. Joel Timmons, musician and lifelong surfer, shares how his emotional songwriting and connection to the ocean fuel each other—and how vulnerability, self-work, and rhythm tie it all together. * Discover the deeply personal story behind Joel’s standout track “Say It To My Face” and the emotional reconciliation that followed. * Learn how Joel’s journey from coastal South Carolina to Nashville—and back again—influenced the sound and soul of his new album. * Find out why both music and surfing are lifelong pursuits of flow, mastery, and humble progression—whether you're in the studio or in the lineup. Tap play now to hear Joel’s heartfelt journey through music, surf, recovery, and rediscovery—and why he’d pick a surfboard over a guitar if he had to choose. https://open.spotify.com/artist/40Gd49hHE75WtRiqYGGhGj?si=_WNyIrmQQLG7n77zxft70A [https://open.spotify.com/artist/40Gd49hHE75WtRiqYGGhGj?si=_WNyIrmQQLG7n77zxft70A] https://www.joeltimmons.com [https://www.joeltimmons.com] https://www.instagram.com/joeltimmonsmusic/ [https://www.instagram.com/joeltimmonsmusic/] Episode music: “Say it to my face” - Joel Timmons Key Points * Surfing and songwriting, as activities that challenge individuals to be in the moment and focused on their immediate surroundings and tasks, are often pursued for personal joy and expression rather than financial gain. * Joel Timmons discusses how songwriting serves as a therapeutic tool for self-expression and personal growth, often stemming from a kernel of pain or question that needs articulation. * Joel Timmons started surfing at age 13 after moving back to Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, from Louisiana, where he began by riding boogie boards and small styrofoam surfboards. * Joel Timmons identifies as a musician who surfs, valuing both activities for their continuous learning and improvement aspects, and notes that both can be pursued regardless of professional success. * Joel Timmons emphasizes the importance of being fully invested and present during performances, noting that this genuine engagement tends to resonate more with audiences. * Joel Timmons reflects on his early musical influences, including his parents, Led Zeppelin, and the music education he received through choir and band programs, as well as informal jam sessions with friends. * Joel Timmons spent five years living in Nashville, which significantly influenced his musical development, particularly in songwriting and the incorporation of fiddle and pedal steel sounds into his music. * Joel Timmons' decision to pursue music professionally was solidified after a life-changing trip around the world, despite facing significant health challenges upon his return. * Joel Timmons discusses the impact of AI on the music industry, expressing both fascination and concern, and highlights the irreplaceable value of live, person-to-person musical experiences. * Joel Timmons admires Tom Petty's songwriting and artistry, recalling an early concert experience and the influence of Petty's work on his own musical journey.  Outline Joel Timmons' Background and Interests * Joel Timmons is a surfer and songwriter from Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. * Joel grew up with a deep connection to both music and the ocean. * Joel considers themself a musician who surfs, rather than a surfer who plays music. * Joel owns upwards of 15-20 guitars and half a dozen surfboards. * Joel's favorite surfboard is a 9-3 single fin classic longboard. Joel's New Album and Songwriting Process * Joel's new album is called Psychedelic Surf Country. * The song Say It To My Face is Joel's favorite from the album. * Joel finds songwriting to be a therapeutic and cathartic process. * Joel wrote Say It To My Face during a period of personal growth and reconciliation with a friend. * Joel did not release Say It To My Face as a single, which may explain why it is not as popular as other songs on the album. Surfing and Music as Lifelong Pursuits * Both surfing and music are lifelong pursuits for Joel. * Joel sees synergies between surfing and music, such as the long arc of the journey and the joy of expression. * Joel believes that most people who surf or make music do it for the right reasons, not just for money. * Joel finds that performing from a place of authenticity and passion resonates most with audiences. Joel's Musical Influences and Development * Joel's parents and early musical memories influenced their musical development. * Joel's biggest musical influence is Led Zeppelin. * Joel's first concert was seeing Aerosmith in seventh grade. * Joel's first song was a melodramatic piece about misery, inspired by bands like Blind Melon and Smashing Pumpkins. * Joel's songwriting was influenced by John Prine, whose plain spoken delivery and empathy resonated with Joel. Joel's Time in Nashville * Joel lived in Nashville for about five years, which was important for their musical development. * In Nashville, Joel fell in love with fiddle and pedal steel sounds and became more serious about songwriting and storytelling. * Joel met many talented musicians in Nashville who inspired and influenced their own musical growth. Joel's Health Challenges and Recovery * Joel experienced a near-death experience in India, where they contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome and became paralyzed. * Joel's recovery took a full year, during which they relearned how to walk and play music. * Nutrition and lifestyle played a crucial role in Joel's recovery, as did their passion for music and surfing. Joel's Future Plans and Projects * Joel plans to perform and promote their new album, Psychedelic Surf Country. * Joel will attend a bluegrass guitar camp to improve their skills and potentially join their wife's band. * Joel will tour with an artist named Maya DeVitri and their own band, Soul Driven Train, throughout the summer. Joel's Views on AI and the Music Industry * Joel is fascinated and terrified by the potential of AI in music, but believes it is still far from replicating the human element of live performances. * Joel uses AI tools like ChatGPT for tasks like writing emails and sequencing records, but resists using it for songwriting. * Joel believes that the unique vibe and human connection of live music cannot be replicated by AI. Transcription Joel Timmons The vast majority of people that do it don’t ever make a dollar off it. It’s just something innate in people, and it’s something joyful and a sense of expression. Surfing and playing an instrument or singing a song challenges you to be in the moment and be focused on immediate surroundings and task at hand. Michael Frampton Welcome back or welcome to the Surf Mastery Podcast. That is a couple of quotes from today’s guest, Joel Timmons. Joel is a surfer and a songwriter from Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina, who grew up with a deep connection to both music and the ocean. And that is a song called Say It To My Face off his new album, Psychedelic Surf Country, which will play out in its entirety at the end of this interview. It’s my favorite song off the album, so thank you for letting me use it in this podcast. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Joel. I am a huge fan of listening and playing music. And this is a little bit of a different episode. Not a lot of surf content per se. It’s mostly about music. And let me know if you’re enjoying these different episodes. We did one a couple of weeks ago about parenting. This one’s about music. And let me know if you’re enjoying the eclecticness of these episodes. And without further ado, I will fade in my conversation with Joel Timmons. Michael Frampton Thanks for joining. Joel Timmons Thank you. Michael Frampton I’ve been listening to the new album. Joel Timmons Sweet, how’s it translate down under? Michael Frampton Man. Yeah, I’m enjoying it. Pretty good, man. Joel Timmons You’re in New Zealand? Michael Frampton Yes, I am. Joel Timmons Cool. Michael Frampton Favourite song on that album is Say It To My Face. Joel Timmons Oh, cool, man. Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s, for me at least, it’s the most... lyrically, it’s the most relatable song. Michael Frampton Cool. Joel Timmons Yeah. Very good. It’s pretty direct. Yeah, no, I like that. Yeah, this sounds like there’s a lot of self-work thing going on as well. Michael Frampton I guess so. Joel Timmons Yeah. Yeah. I think songwriting is like a big tool for me with that, almost like journaling can be, and then sometimes those journals end up out in the world and that is quite therapeutic. Yeah. To have some secret little kernel of pain or question and then articulate it to yourself and make it feel nice to yourself and then get to share it with an audience. Michael Frampton Definitely transformative. Joel Timmons I guess songwriting is very cathartic in that way. Yeah, the good ones are. That particular song, I was just at home, just like crying my eyes out. The words were just pouring out of me like the tears. And since that moment, I had had the opportunity to get back together with that friend and have the conversation that we needed to have, even before I went into the studio to record it. So then being in the studio, it was really magical to be able to access the pain of when we were at odds, but then also with the knowledge of, okay, we did it. And that kind of jam out at the end of the song, that sort of resolves to a major key, and that musically was that reconciliation. So it was, yeah, it was really a beautiful journey. Michael Frampton Yeah. It’s a beautiful song. Joel Timmons Sophie sent me an earlier version of it before it was released. Michael Frampton Oh, cool. Joel Timmons Once it was released, I went on to—the album was released—I went on to Spotify, and I assumed that would be the most popular song. I was quite surprised to see that it wasn’t. Michael Frampton Interesting. Joel Timmons Yeah. Yeah. And I didn’t release that one as a single. So some of those songs that have singles, were released as singles, have had a little more time out there. I just know of the few people that I’ve talked to into the empire, people like that song, which I didn’t... I love that song, but I didn’t know that it was gonna be special for some people. I’m glad to hear you say you like Say It To My Face. Michael Frampton We played that one Friday. I hit a release show here in town. Joel Timmons Oh yeah? Michael Frampton And we played the whole album top to bottom live, and that one... Joel Timmons Oh, rad. Michael Frampton That one felt really potent. Joel Timmons I’m really enjoying the Trying song as well. It’s really cool. Michael Frampton Yeah, that one was also very fun live. That was like the last—we were at the finish line on the record and you could really cut loose. People were dancing and everything, so it was a good time. Michael Frampton So, let’s keep it surfing a little bit. When did you start surfing? Joel Timmons Yeah. So I grew up on a barrier island in South Carolina, Sullivan’s Island. So we were like riding boogie boards and little styrofoam surfboards when I was a toddler, four or five years old. My family, when we moved to Louisiana for three years, when I was entering fourth grade—fourth, fifth, and sixth grade—we were in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So there was no ocean there. My mom was a windsurfer, so we did a little windsurfing in Louisiana, brought that from South Carolina. And then when I moved back, all my little buddies that I grew up with were all surfing at that...At that point. I guess that was in seventh grade when I was like 13. So I started, yeah, I started surfing and studying and like reading the magazines and watching Endless Summer and that kind of thing. And then I guess like the surf season here is—we get hurricane swells in the late summer and early fall, and then really most of the waves come in the winter. But I wasn’t—when I first started—I wasn’t surfing in the wintertime. It was probably high school before I got a wetsuit and started surfing year-round. And the year I graduated high school, a couple of us took a surf trip to Costa Rica, which is a rite of passage for an East Coast surfer. Outer Banks in North Carolina, Florida, and then like the Caribbean or Central America. Michael Frampton Yeah. Joel Timmons Puerto Rico as well. I’ve been to Puerto Rico a couple of times. I went there in college for the first time, so a couple of years later. Yeah, that’s a really close flight and man, an awesome surf destination. Yeah, I guess I’ve been there maybe four or five times now. Michael Frampton Yeah, to Puerto Rico? Joel Timmons Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been there once and the waves were huge. I was so surprised how much swell they get there. Yeah, I just got back from the Virgin Islands, which are just like the U.S. Virgin Islands, like the next islands over from Puerto Rico. And I’ve been going down there every winter for about 15 years and have scored some great swells down there. This year was a bit off. When I showed up, everybody was like, “It’s the best season we’ve ever seen.” The old guys were like, “The waves haven’t stopped since September.” And then there was one more swell when I got there, and then it stopped and it’s gone quiet. But I did get to catch one good swell down there this year. Michael Frampton Are you a surfer who plays music or a musician who surfs? Joel Timmons I’m a musician who surfs. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Nobody’s paying me to show up and surf. Yeah. And I do get gigs. I don’t know which one I would choose if I had to choose one or the other. Both have really guided me and helped me at different times. Michael Frampton If you were stuck on a desert island, would you choose a surfboard or a guitar? Joel Timmons Surfboard or a guitar? Golly, if there were waves, I’d probably have to choose a surfboard. I’m trying to think of some loophole where I can like get a guitar that’s shaped like a hand plane or something. Michael Frampton What’s harder—surfing or music—for you personally? Joel Timmons I think surfing’s harder. I don’t know. The Surf Mastery title of the podcast is scary for me ‘cause I definitely don’t feel like I’m a master of it, and I don’t feel like I’m a master of music either. That’s what the concept of mastery means. It’s not that you’ve mastered something, it’s that you have a drive to get better no matter what level you are. Michael Frampton Yeah, just want to improve. Joel Timmons Yep. And I do think there’s a parallel there in music for sure, as with surfing. It’s something—I’m 45 years old now—and I’m realizing now, oh gosh, I am one of those old guys now at this point. But there’s a generation or two ahead of me that I look up to and want to still be doing this in 20 or 30 years, both music and surfing. And it’s about learning and improving, even if my body presents limitations to me. If my fingers aren’t as fast or my pop-ups not as fast, to still be on a journey with it. Michael Frampton Definitely. Oh, for sure. And I see a lot of synergy with music and surfing. I think surfing is far more an art form than it is a sport. And you can pick your own journey. You could spend your entire lifetime only playing country music and never master it, and then decide to go into another genre and be like a beginner again. And the same with surfing. You change to a different type of board or a different type of wave that you want to surf and begin your journey all over again. Joel Timmons Yeah. Music’s interesting too, because there’s probably amazing classically trained jazz musicians living in New York who barely earn any money. And then you’ve got people like—have you heard of The Chats? Michael Frampton The Chats? Joel Timmons No? Michael Frampton Uh-uh. Joel Timmons They’re an Australian band. Just grunge, punk rock, basic music. But their lyrics speak to the entire culture of Australia. So they’re cool. Sold-out shows. And they’re certainly by no means talented musicians—they’re not terrible—but music’s cool like that. You don’t have to be an exceptional, talented musician. You just have to play and speak from the heart and be good enough to perform to make it. Michael Frampton Yeah. Joel Timmons When Jack Johnson had his records that were really hitting, that was super inspiring for me. To be like, “This guy, okay, we know him from his surfing and his writing in the surf world, and his music is beautiful, but it’s not fancy. It’s very direct and plainspoken. It sounds like something you’d hear at a bonfire.” And when that was like, “Wow, this can really resonate with so many people,” that’s amazing. I found that encouraging as a young songwriter, trying to find my sound and my way. Michael Frampton Yeah. Joel Timmons On that note, what advice would you have for, let’s say, someone who’s starting to play guitar later in life? Do you ever look back and go, “If I had to start all over again, I wouldn’t do this and this. Instead, I’d focus on that”? Michael Frampton That’s interesting. Joel Timmons Yeah. It’s such a different environment now, like with all the teaching tools on the internet. I have a few guitar students, mostly young kids, a couple that are teens and then some eight- and nine-year-old little dudes that are just exploring to find out what they’re into. And it’s easier for those kids, I think, than it is for an adult. I was probably 12 or 13 when I started picking up the guitar. And I was just, for some reason at that point, so driven to do it and had free time to dedicate hours at it. And today I don’t know that I would have the focus or the time to devote to a new thing like I had when I was that age. Not to discourage any adult learners, but just—it’s going to be difficult. And there’s this painful part of getting the mechanics of your hand to just hold the press, press the strings down. That’s really defeating at first and it doesn’t sound good. Once you press through that and it becomes fun and rewarding because you’re making pleasant sounds—yeah. Michael Frampton Do you play any other instruments? Joel Timmons I’m a percussionist. I play a lot of hand percussion, some drum set. My wife’s an upright bass player, so I’ve gotten better at the bass. I’m not really hireable yet because I physically can’t do it for a whole gig. Ten minutes and then this finger starts getting a blister and this hand starts cramping up. It’s a physical instrument. But yeah, I’d say percussion, guitar, vocals—my main expressions. Michael Frampton That’s interesting because you—considering you have a background in percussion and guitar, one would assume bass would be quite easy for you? Joel Timmons Yeah, the bass guitar I can play and feel comfortable with that, but the upright bass is just such a—oh yeah. There’s no frets there. Strings are really big around and you really have to, one, have good technique and also just have a certain amount of strength and callous to make the instrument speak. And my wife plays bluegrass music, so it’s just like boom on the bass, and like in the jam situation, you gotta just keep that going and it’s gotta be even, and it’s gotta be loud. And she could do it all night—relaxed, with good technique and beautiful tone. And I’m like, “Take the bass!” And I’m sweating and inefficient with my movements and it doesn’t sound as good. It’s not as in tune. And then I’m like, “Okay, sub, please.” So I just haven’t devoted the hours and hours it takes to just get that basic good technique down, yeah. Michael Frampton Yeah, with that instrument. Joel Timmons But I’m—there’s one right over there. I could work on it here after this. That’s a rewarding instrument for me. Michael Frampton Yeah, the fretless bass—it feels really good to play it. When you play live with your band, do you have a double bass player? Joel Timmons Certain groups I do. The band that I played with on this album—Ethan J—he’s the bass player. And he played both double bass on some tracks and then bass guitar and some five-string bass guitar, some four-string bass guitar. We recorded it at this guy Mike Elizondo’s ISS recording studio. And Mike’s a brilliant bass player and producer, and Ethan was a kid in a candy store. “I’m going to use a different one on every—every—” This particular nuance of this song requires this particular electric bass from this era. And Mike had them. Had all of them there. Michael Frampton So cool. Joel Timmons But yes—sometimes it’s bass guitar, sometimes it’s upright, sometimes it’s both. Michael Frampton How many guitars do you own? Joel Timmons Fifteen. Upwards of 15 or 20, maybe. Michael Frampton Oh yeah. How many surfboards? Joel Timmons Half a dozen. Not too many. Michael Frampton And if you had to choose one surfboard, which one would it be? Joel Timmons I think I have a 9’3” Bing—like a single fin classic longboard. I guess it would probably depend where I’m going to be. But I guess if it’s just the board firm, I can still go anywhere I want. Of the boards I have now, I’d probably stick with the 9’3” because I get more days here on that board than anything. Though I’d get myself in trouble if I was in real heavy surf with that. Michael Frampton Yeah. Joel Timmons Break it in half, and then I’d have two shorties. Michael Frampton Do you see many synergies between surfing and music? Joel Timmons Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were talking about just the long arc of the journey. It’s something I’ve been doing since I was a kid and I’m still really excited about it and still improving in some ways. And the vast majority of people that do it don’t ever make a dollar off it. It’s just something innate in people and it’s something joyful and a sense of expression. And then there’s this little industry that makes money on it. Some people are professionals at it, but that’s just a small part of the experience of music or surfing. And yeah, I’m lucky. I’m lucky to get to be making money doing music and traveling. But I think I would still be doing it whether or not it was my job. It would still be a part of me. Michael Frampton So you’re doing it for the right reasons, let’s say. And when you’re performing from that place, is that the performance in the song that tends to resonate most with the audience? Joel Timmons I certainly—when I go to a show, it’s generally pretty obvious energetically if the performer is fully invested in the moment or disappointed or thinking about whatever. It’s a really challenging life to be away from home and putting your best self out there every night. Usually I can find that joy and the excitement of the moment. That both—surfing and playing an instrument or singing a song—challenges you to be in the moment and be focused on immediate surroundings and the task at hand. Michael Frampton Yeah. Do you ever find yourself struggling to get into that flow state as a performer? Joel Timmons Yeah, sometimes. If the audio is challenging, if I can’t hear the guitar or my voice in the way that I’m used to, or if the instrument won’t stay in tune—sometimes I’m like fighting the mechanics of it. Or if I’ve had too many gigs and my voice is worn out, if I’m thinking about just the physicality of it—that can be a challenge. But then, I don’t know, sometimes you can press through. And yeah, it’s not something that I’m thinking about usually on stage. But I think that’s probably an indication that I’m there—whether or not I’m enjoying it—I’m just really focused and primed up into the moment. Michael Frampton Are you able to—same thing in surfing would be the next question. Joel Timmons Yeah. Except when it’s real crowded. Michael Frampton Oh, yeah. Joel Timmons Yeah. I really struggle with that. To not have my mind taken by the social or the dynamic when it’s a lot of folks out there. Or get frustrated on the wave count or whatever. Where I live here, my local is just a big sandbar so you can spread out. There are certain days where it’s crowded everywhere, but that’s just a handful of days a year. So usually I can just spread out. Surf traveling—sometimes it’s not like that. Michael Frampton Yeah, performing as a musician is unique like that. Once you’ve got the stage, you’ve got the stage. Joel Timmons It’s true. Michael Frampton Or do you sometimes have exceptions to that? Joel Timmons Yeah. Michael Frampton What would be an exception? Joel Timmons You have a sit-in musician who wants to steal the limelight or something. Michael Frampton Yeah, the sit-in harmonica player that won’t take a hint. Joel Timmons Yeah. When I was on this recent tour in the Virgin Islands, we actually had a really beautiful gig that sort of morphed into this showcase of all these local musicians who had shown up. We’d been down there for a week and it was our second to last show, and we had a steel drum player that came in for a while, and a saxophone player, a harmonica player—all these guys. At the end of the show, we were like, “Wow, that could have just gone so sideways,” and it was just wonderful. Everybody read the room, played appropriately, didn’t overstay their welcome, and it just flowed. Joel Timmons But that—when sometimes when you're mixing too many ingredients in or just have... audio—if we're playing bars where there's not really a stage, it's just a sand dance floor and a sand stage, and then you have people that invite themselves on, think they can play the tambourine... Michael Frampton Oh yeah. It sounds like a crowded lineup. Joel Timmons Yeah. Totally. Michael Frampton And then when it's you and your buddies on stage, that's like surfing with you and your best mates. Joel Timmons Yeah. That's the best, for sure. Michael Frampton Yeah. And then of course you've got your solo sessions, which are extra special. What would the equivalent of the solo session be? Like you're just in the bar, you and the bartender, you're like, “Man, this sounds so good right now.” Joel Timmons Yeah, or just you in the bedroom with an acoustic. Michael Frampton Yeah, no, that’s true. That’s where a lot of it starts. Joel Timmons Yeah. Michael Frampton How many hours a day, when you were first really inspired and coming up and learning, would you spend on the instrument? Joel Timmons I think I spent like upwards of three or more hours a day when I was first really tackling it. And then maybe backed off that at some point. And then back to that point again at different periods. I’m actually signed up to go to a bluegrass guitar camp this May. It’s like—there’s a big tradition of fiddle, banjo, bluegrass camps in the Appalachians and out West, all over the U.S. I’m adjacent to that scene. I’ve grown up hearing bluegrass music, but not playing it and going to those camps, whereas my wife is just deeply bluegrass from before she was born. Part of it is wanting to be able to keep up with her and her friends, but also I’m genuinely interested in getting better at this kind of music. It’s going to be fun to go and, like you’re saying, be a beginner again in this particular genre. I’m like, “Yeah, okay, I get paid to play the guitar—but not this type.” Michael Frampton You’re going there as a student? Joel Timmons As a student. Yeah. Michael Frampton Oh wow. Joel Timmons Yeah. I sent my application, my video in, and sent my money in. It'll be three or four days. I’ll have to leave for one of the days to go play a gig and then come back—miss one of the days. But I’m excited about that. I haven’t ever done a surf camp or anything like that. The first time I went to Costa Rica, I guess because I was a minor, we went to a camp that took us around to the beach. So I guess I did do that when I was a kid. Michael Frampton Yeah. Those types of camps are becoming more and more popular in surfing—where you go on a surf trip for a week or so, and the objective is to actually learn and to get better at surfing and/or learn a new style of surfing. Those are becoming more and more popular. Joel Timmons Yeah. Totally. In music, there seems to be less arrogance around that. Even though you love to play and perform and write from the heart, you’re still very aware of, “Hey, you know what? I could do with some theory and learning some different styles.” And there’s a humbleness within the music industry that hasn’t really infiltrated surfing culture as much yet. Michael Frampton Yeah, and I was just thinking—it’s there. There are videos and people breaking down surf lessons, but it seems like a much more difficult thing. Like, I can sit here with my guitar, stop the video, play it in slow motion, and really integrate a lot of stuff with a YouTube instructor. But watching a video and then going out and paddling around and trying to integrate all that is a much slower, more difficult loop to get your reps in. Joel Timmons Yeah. I guess surfing with that analogy would be more similar to singing. When you are singing, and then you hear yourself back on a recording, you're like, “Oh, that’s not how I thought it sounded.” Michael Frampton Yeah. Joel Timmons Because when you watch yourself back on footage of surfing, you’re like, “Oh.” But I think in the same way as singing, the more you record and listen to yourself, the closer those two things become—the way it sounds when you're doing it and the way it sounds on the recording. Michael Frampton Has that been your experience? Joel Timmons I think so, yeah. And maybe you just get more used to the sound of your amplified voice and it not coming through your head. I’ve gotten more comfortable with that and knowing how much of that I want in the stage monitors. If it’s too muddy or too bright, I now know how to get it to where it feels comfortable and doesn’t feedback. I can sing quiet and hear myself, or I can sing loud and not blow my head off. I think that’s come with experience. Michael Frampton Mic technique. Joel Timmons Yeah. Same with surfing. When you watch yourself on video, and then go back and practice, those two things—the way surfing feels and the way it looks—start to line up. Michael Frampton Did you have lessons growing up—music lessons? Joel Timmons A little bit. It was more just like playing music with groups of people. There were other kids getting instruments at the same time I was. And there was this art school that one of the kids I grew up with—his mom started it when we were really little—and it grew into a program. There was an early American folk ensemble that this lady, Hazel Ketchum, taught. We were probably in seventh, eighth, ninth grade, and we were playing guitars. She was teaching us everything from Grateful Dead songs to old English ballads. It was acoustic music, and she was teaching us how to be in an ensemble. We did read music a little bit, but it was a lot of learning by ear and harmony singing by ear. Joel Timmons In school, I was in the choir and in the band program, so I was getting a little more structured musical education there. And then in our afternoons, my friends and I were making up songs and jamming in the garage on electric guitars and drum sets, so I was getting it from all sides. Michael Frampton Not too many private lessons? Joel Timmons Not really. A handful at the very beginning on guitar. Michael Frampton Were your parents musical? Joel Timmons Yeah, my mom. She had a guitar at the house. She played guitar. And at church, we would all sing in the choir. She would—before church—there would be a more informal kind of song circle, and that’s the first place I saw people playing guitar and singing. I was just amazed at how fast they could move from one chord to the next—right in time with the song, not even breaking stride. I remember placing my fingers individually, slowly, stretching them to get that chord, and I was amazed that people could just fluidly move between them. Michael Frampton But they weren’t professional? Joel Timmons No, not professional—but in a reverent way, for sure. Michael Frampton Who’s your biggest influence musically? Joel Timmons Some of those earliest memories would make it tough to not say my parents, especially because they were the ones taking me to concerts and encouraging me to be in the choir. Also, I had a really great choir instructor in high school—Ms. Austin—who also sponsored the guitar club at our school, which was like the “boys with guitar toys” jam space during homeroom. Ms. Austin helped me a lot. And then, Led Zeppelin is still maybe my favorite band of all time. They were long since passed when I discovered them through cassette tapes, but it still felt as vibrant as ever. Michael Frampton You mentioned concerts. What was the first concert that made a big impression on you? Joel Timmons I have a really early memory—there’s something in Charleston, South Carolina, called the Spoleto Festival, and it’s like an arts-from-around-the-world kind of thing. It’s still going on. Some of it’s highbrow opera and chamber music. And then the city does its own sort of sister festival at the same time. I remember seeing these guys playing Andean panpipes. It was a whole ensemble of dudes playing in concert together, and I just remember it totally blowing my little mind. Joel Timmons I also have memories of the choir at church. And then the first real rock-and-roll concert I went to was in seventh grade—Aerosmith. A friend of ours—the cool mom—loaded a bunch of us into the car and drove us two hours up the road to Columbia, to the Coliseum, to see Aerosmith. Michael Frampton Wow. Joel Timmons Yeah. That was awesome. Michael Frampton What year was that? Joel Timmons I’m thinking it was like ’92. Michael Frampton Wow, so they were already old rockers by then. Joel Timmons Yeah, I don’t know if it was the “Get a Grip” tour or when they had all the cow graphics—it might’ve been that era. Michael Frampton They still played “Sweet Emotion” and stuff? Joel Timmons Yeah. Michael Frampton That would’ve been amazing. Joel Timmons “Janie’s Got a Gun,” yeah. Michael Frampton What’s the first song you wrote—or at least, the one that comes to mind when I say that? Joel Timmons There were two songs, probably in seventh grade or something. There was one I wrote by myself that was super melodramatic: “My life is full of misery, you love everybody but you just can’t stand me.” Real sorry-for-myself 12-year-old emo stuff. Joel Timmons And then me and my friend, Natonya, co-wrote a song about a stick. It was like a story about an inanimate object—a little bit buried Tom Robbins—which I didn’t really realize at the time. It was the whole life story of this stick. Neither one of those songs ever got recorded. Michael Frampton Maybe they should be. Joel Timmons Dig back, yeah—why not? You never know. There’s a lot of wisdom in the childlike perspective. Michael Frampton It makes me think of “Hazard” by Richard Marx. That was a songwriting project given to him by a teacher. He wrote it for no reason apart from that, and it became one of his most famous songs. Joel Timmons That’s cool. Michael Frampton Yeah. And I definitely—there was one song, I can’t remember the title—but I heard a lot of John Prine influence in one of your songs. Joel Timmons Cool. Yeah, he was a huge influence for me, for sure. I do remember hearing John Prine for the first time—not live—but my friend Joey, his dad lived up in the country in McClellanville, South Carolina, and we would go up there sometimes on the weekends, probably around that same seventh, eighth, ninth grade. We stayed at his dad’s—Dirty Dan’s—house, and Dirty Dan was like, “You guys need to listen to this.” And he played us “Sam Stone” and “Paradise” and “Angel from Montgomery.” Since then, John has been a total songwriting light for me. His plainspoken delivery, but with layers and layers of empathy and humanity. Joel Timmons I got to see him live a couple of times in Nashville. He lived in Nashville when I was living there. One time we went to Arnold’s—it’s like this meat-and-three restaurant. My mom was in town, my wife, probably both my parents and my wife and I, all went for lunch. And then here comes John—this was one of his regular spots. He goes to the buffet, and I’m kind of stunned. He walks past the table, and my mom—she can’t keep it cool—she says, “I love you, John. We love you, John. Thank you.” And he was like, “Okay.” I was so embarrassed at the time. And then a few years later, COVID happened and we lost him in the early days of COVID. I was really grieving that a lot during a crazy time, and I was so glad that my mom told him that she loved him when she had the chance. Even though it was a little inappropriate, hey—that was her chance. She took it. Michael Frampton And he knew it. Joel Timmons Yeah. I’m sure he appreciated it on some level. She didn’t grab him or jump up and try to take a picture or anything. I was probably the one taking a picture over my shoulder at him. Michael Frampton How long did you spend living in Nashville? Joel Timmons I lived there for about five years. I was visiting Shelby, my wife, for about a year before I moved there. So I think I moved there in 2015, and then in 2020 we moved out. But I’m heading back there next week. I love it—it’s an awesome place. Michael Frampton No surfing though? Joel Timmons No. It’s a long way from the beach. Michael Frampton How important was that Nashville time to your musical development? Joel Timmons I think this new record definitely wouldn’t have happened without Nashville. It’s me trying to document and take a Polaroid of that time and the people I met there. There are lots of songs about South Carolina, the Lowcountry, my youth on the coast—but all the sounds, the fiddle, the pedal steel—I fell in love with that in Nashville. I got more serious about songwriting and storytelling. The musicians I got to meet there—you just get better by hearing those people play regularly and watching their approach up close. You’re just surrounded by it. It’s like going to the North Shore as a surfer. Michael Frampton Yeah. You better learn to duck-dive or go back to Alabama. Joel Timmons Yeah. Michael Frampton Psychedelic Surf Country—what inspired that title? Joel Timmons It was after we’d made the record, and it was like, “Oh God, here comes another one of these decisions—what are we going to call it?” I was just describing the sound to somebody and I said, “I don’t know—it’s like psychedelic surf country.” And then I thought, “That kind of sounds cool.” The first way I was using it was to describe it as a genre or an amalgam of sounds. But I also like thinking about it as a place. A friend of mine the other night said, “Oh, I thought it was a place—where you’re from.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, sure—that too.” It just came out of my mouth, and I thought, “I think I like that. I think it sums it up pretty well.” I did a quick Google search and it wasn’t already a band or anything. Lots of psychedelic surf rock, lots of surf-country, even psychedelic-country, but I couldn’t find all three together. Michael Frampton Does it describe your three favorite things? Joel Timmons Yeah. Pretty well. Three interests for sure. Michael Frampton The psychedelia is when the walls start getting fuzzy and the boundaries between things get blurry and you realize there’s a great unity behind everything. And that’s like music—a genre-less place. Joel Timmons Yeah. Michael Frampton That gave me the image of—what’s that cartoon? With the Black musician who has an out-of-body experience. Have you seen that? Joel Timmons I don’t know if I have. Was it one of those documentaries with cartoon reenactments? Michael Frampton No. It’s a really good movie. It’s about a Black music teacher who finally gets offered a gig with a famous jazz musician. But then he dies and has an out-of-body experience and comes back. Joel Timmons Oh, I have to check that out. Michael Frampton I’ll put the title of that movie in the show notes if I don’t remember it before the end of this. Really cool movie. All talking about the soul of music. He very much loses himself in the music and has a psychedelic experience while jamming. Joel Timmons Yep. Michael Frampton I’m very much an amateur musician, but I’ve certainly had jam sessions where you’re just playing a song and the song takes over and you’re almost witnessing yourself. And I think those are the best surfing sessions too—when you become one with the rhythm of the ocean. You’re not really thinking, you’re just moving in time with the waves. Joel Timmons Yeah. That’s a noble pursuit. Michael Frampton I think so. And I think for getting better at surfing, I always say to people—if you want to become a good musician and you’re not naturally gifted or you don’t play by ear or anything, then there’s no way around it. You have to spend time learning your chords and your scales and your modes. And then when you jam, if those things are in your muscle memory, you don’t have to think about them. That’s when you can slot in and have that creative expression. Joel Timmons Yeah. Michael Frampton And I think surfing is the same thing. It’s more athletic—it’s full-body movements, not just fingers. But if people want to become better at surfing, they really do have to practice those movements over and over again. Just install a slow-motion popup and a tube stance into your nervous system—just like a music scale or a chord shape. Joel Timmons Yeah. Michael Frampton Do you have people doing those motions on land? Like surf-specific exercises? Joel Timmons Yep. Michael Frampton That’s the thing—if you didn’t grow up surfing as a kid for eight hours a day, and you come to surfing later in life or you reach a stage where you want to really improve, there’s no way around it. Because even if you go surfing for three hours, maybe three minutes of that is actually spent standing on a wave. The rest is just paddling or waiting. Joel Timmons Yeah. Michael Frampton So there’s no getting around those surfing exercises. Joel Timmons The rest is just paddling in circles, trying not to drown—is what I tell people basically. Michael Frampton So I always use the analogy of music. Musicians humble themselves. They do the scales, they learn the chords, the theory—and that’s what gives way to jam sessions, songwriting, and creative flow. Joel Timmons Yeah. Totally. Michael Frampton Where in New Zealand are you? Joel Timmons I’m in a place called Hawke’s Bay, which is on the east coast of the North Island. Michael Frampton Cool. Joel Timmons Long way away. I got to visit New Zealand just once, in 2003. I was doing an around-the-world itinerary. I had finished college, worked for a year, saved up some money. We flew to Tonga, then crewed a sailboat from Tonga and came in through the Bay of Islands. Then caravaned around New Zealand for six weeks. It was awesome. I can’t believe I haven’t been back. It was life-changing. I’ve been back to Australia a few more times since then. Michael Frampton Were you here in New Zealand playing music? Joel Timmons I had a little backpacker guitar with me, and we were just cruising around. Met some house truckers, did some car park jamming. But no gigs or anything. I wasn’t at that level yet. That was the trip where I decided, “Yeah, okay—I want to do music for real.” When I came back to the States, I started. I already had a band and had been playing gigs, but I was like, “No. I’m not going to grad school. This is what I want to do.” Michael Frampton How old were you then? Joel Timmons Twenty-three or twenty-four. Michael Frampton Was that a scary decision? Joel Timmons Yeah, I guess so. Maybe not at the time. When you’re 23, you feel like you can do anything. There have been scary parts along the way—moments of reevaluation, reinvestment, digging back in. But on that same trip, we went to Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, then Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Nepal, and India. The plan was to go to Europe, but in India I got super sick and ended up in New Delhi with Guillain-Barré Syndrome. I was basically fully paralyzed. Michael Frampton Wow. Joel Timmons It was a real near-death experience. When I came back to the States, I was in a wheelchair, couldn’t sing, couldn’t play guitar. But I knew that’s what I wanted to do. Focusing in on music—and my old bandmates, who would accommodate me, let me play just a little bit, and encouraged me—was a huge part of my recovery. Michael Frampton How long was recovery? Joel Timmons Like a full year. I was in the hospital for six weeks. When I came out, I was super emaciated. Then it was just physical therapy for the better part of a year. Retraining everything—learning how to walk again, everything. Michael Frampton How important was nutrition and lifestyle on that journey? Joel Timmons Extremely. And surfing, too. Initially I was body surfing and bodyboarding, then longboarding and stand-up paddleboarding. Through my different physical restraints, it opened my eyes to all these different ways of getting out there and riding waves and getting the benefits. Nutrition was more about just eating anything and everything because I was down to a skeleton. I’ve always been thin, so I just try to eat a lot—but make sure I eat a lot of vegetables too. Michael Frampton Lifestyle must be a challenge being a musician? Joel Timmons For sure. Having a regular time to go to bed, a regular time to wake up, and three square meals—it’s tough. Sometimes I’m in a different bed in a different town every night. And there’s always alcohol and every other thing around. But I’ve managed to not go to jail or die. I’ve seen plenty of people who have, and the wreckage along the way—it can go either way. Michael Frampton So when you finally made that commitment—“I’m going to put everything into music”—was it a relief in some ways? Joel Timmons Maybe, yeah. It definitely allowed me to let go of some of those other voices. I studied geology in undergrad, studied science. That’s a field with a lot more opportunity if you go to graduate school or get a PhD. I also wondered about being a wilderness instructor or a few other things. But I dove into the band, treated it like a business. Moved into a house with my buddies—my best friends—and everybody had their role. It was super DIY. Not necessarily punk rock, but very communal. We shared groceries, piled into the van, drove across the country, played shows, made what we could out of it. It was pretty dang fun—but also very scary. You’re watching your friends take exits off this lifestyle—getting married, having kids, settling down—and I’ve seen folks take the off-ramp. But for whatever reason, I’ve stayed the course. Michael Frampton You mentioned a scientific side. Did that show up in your songwriting? Any songs based on science or theory? Joel Timmons Yeah, I wrote a song that started off as a kid’s song. I was working at a camp in North Carolina—right around the time the band was getting serious. It was for the summer solstice. I wrote a song explaining the position of the planets, what the solstice is, why we have seasons. It turned into a jam that my band Sol Driven Train has played for years. But it started off as a nursery rhyme science lesson. I’ve also written some book report songs about local history and stuff like that. Michael Frampton So what’s the future hold for your music? Do you have another album concept or are you focused on this one for now? Joel Timmons It’s going to be performing and doing press stuff for this record. I’m heading to Nashville the day after tomorrow to play a show. My wife—she’s also a musician—has a listening party for her new record. So it’s coming right in the tail of mine. Part of my going to bluegrass camp is to get good enough that maybe she’ll hire me in her band when her record comes out. I’m also touring with an artist named Maya de Vitry. She’s a Nashville songwriter I met when I was living there. We’ve got a bunch of West Coast tour dates and more throughout the summer. My band, Sol Driven Train, is guys I’ve known since childhood here in Charleston. We have a scattering of shows—next ones are in Key West, Florida. Michael Frampton I’d love to get your opinion on the music scene in general. There’s a lot of talk about AI and AI-written music. Are you experiencing any of that or is it all hearsay? Joel Timmons I’ve heard some pretty funny AI songs. It’s getting pretty good. I’m simultaneously terrified and fascinated with AI. I use ChatGPT. I’ve resisted using it for songwriting, though I think it would be a brilliant songwriting partner. But I’ve used it to write difficult emails, or the other day I was doing a TV thing, and it helped me sequence my record. I asked it, “Here are the songs, and a little note about each—give me five different sequencing possibilities.” I didn’t use any of them, but it suggested putting one song first that I never would’ve thought of, and I thought, “What does that mean?” It just generates ideas I wouldn’t think of—really rapidly. Joel Timmons As far as generative songs and recordings—I’m sure it’s going to get perceptively good at some point. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s pretty funny. My wife played me this AI bluegrass song the other day—something about Ricky Skaggs in outer space. Very strange, but it had a banjo roll in there and hit the elements. Every field is going to be affected. Michael Frampton The music industry’s been through a lot. When you were getting into music, a lot of musicians were making money off CDs. Now those musicians spent all that money, and they’ve got to go back on tour. Joel Timmons Totally. Hootie and the Blowfish are a Charleston band that were absolutely blowing up in the early ’90s—when CDs were at their peak. Multi-platinum Cracked Rear View. Darius is still out there. I don’t think he spent all his money, but he’s still touring, doing country. Mark Bryan’s still super active in the Charleston scene. But yeah, I definitely missed that boat. I’ve been a live performer my whole career. That’s how I’ve managed to make it work. The recordings support that and help capture the songs, but most of the revenue has come from face-to-face, old school. Michael Frampton Which I don’t think AI will be able to replicate. Joel Timmons Unless you’re thinking Westworld. Michael Frampton No, I think that’s a long way off—robots as jukeboxes in bars that can play any song. But not just a jukebox—a mechanical robot that physically plays drums, guitar, etc. Joel Timmons Chuck E. Cheese used to do that, but they just played recordings. Still, I think you want to see a real person. Michael Frampton I think so. That’s a life transmission of heart and soul. Joel Timmons Like Rick Beato tried to quantize a John Bonham beat—it sounded terrible. Michael Frampton Yeah. Joel Timmons There are drummers whose feel and groove you just can’t replicate. Michael Frampton That vibe of a band like Led Zeppelin can’t be recreated. Joel Timmons You could program it—dump all Bonham’s tracks into an AI, and it would get the tone and feel. But it wouldn’t be new. And it wouldn’t drink all the beer. Michael Frampton Are you a fan of Crowded House? Joel Timmons Yeah. Absolutely. Michael Frampton What did Tom Petty mean to you? Joel Timmons Man, I love Tom Petty. I saw him in high school at the Coliseum in Charleston. What a songwriter. The sound was bad that night, and the performance seemed a little lackluster, so I didn’t have a great impression of the live show. I’ve seen videos since and I know he was a fantastic live performer, and his band—one of the best ever. But as a 16-year-old, I was a little unimpressed. Still—I love Tom Petty. That Wildflowers album—maybe my favorite. Michael Frampton It’s special. Joel Timmons Yeah. Michael Frampton Where can people go to find out more about you and listen to your music? Joel Timmons I’m on all the streaming services. My name’s Joel Timmons. joeltimmons.com is my website—that’s the main portal. I’m a reluctant user of Instagram—that’s about my only social media—but I’m on there pretty regularly. Michael Frampton Awesome. I’ll put links to everything—your website, your Spotify profile, etc.—in the show notes. Joel, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, man. Joel Timmons Michael, thanks a lot. I appreciate you having me on. Michael Frampton Cool. Alright. 118 Joel Timmons on Surfing, Songwriting, and Soulful Journeys [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_XJBXVtJkI&list=PLOIoGM_c3zEOeXrgrbCxmC3xNmfMisAEr&index=2] For the passionate surfer—whether you're a weekend warrior, a surf dad, or an older surfer—this podcast is all about better surfing and deeper stoke. With expert surf coaching, surf training, and surfing tips, we’ll help you catch more waves, refine your paddling technique, and perfect your pop up on a surfboard. From surf workouts to handling wipeouts, chasing bigger waves, and mastering surf technique, we’re here to make sure you not only improve but truly enjoy surfing more—so you can get more out of every session and become a wiser surfer. Go from Beginner or intermediate Surfer to advanced.

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6620239f21f2fa5a7b4e4234/fd3008d5-a2ed-4b36-aded-3bab383d4adb/Dee+Jay+Morris?format=1000w] https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/podcast-surf-mastery/id1088660076 https://open.spotify.com/show/1VvhOpHEu31U4gktXJdkQv?si=ZUWd5smuSkaAh-4ukvIP7g https://www.instagram.com/surfmastery/?hl=en https://www.youtube.com/@SurfMastery/videos https://www.facebook.com/surfmasterysurf https://twitter.com/surf_mastery https://www.tiktok.com/@surfmastery What happens when a lifelong connection to the ocean turns into a mission to surf every single day through winter? Whether you're a surfer, an ocean lover, or someone chasing consistency in your passions, this episode dives deep into the transformative power of daily dedication and the personal growth that comes from truly connecting with the ocean. If you've ever wondered how doing something every day could reshape your mindset, this is for you. * Hear how DJ Morris turned his childhood love of the ocean into a thriving surf school and daily surfing ritual. * Discover the surprising challenges and benefits of surfing every day through a New Zealand winter. * Learn the biggest beginner mistakes in surfing—and how to actually pick the right board for your skill level and local waves. Tune in now to get inspired by DJ’s story of ocean connection, consistency, and the joy of sharing surfing with others—this episode might just change the way you approach your own passions. Follow Dee Jay on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deejaymorris/ [https://www.instagram.com/deejaymorris/] Hawkes Bay Surf School: https://www.facebook.com/HawkesBaySurfSchool/ [https://www.facebook.com/HawkesBaySurfSchool/] Song - Fernweh By Nachur Key Points * Surfing every day during winter has led to a deeper connection with the ocean and improved surfing skills for DJ Morris. * DJ Morris has been using a 4/3 wetsuit for the first time this winter, which has helped him adapt to the cold conditions. * DJ Morris has noticed a significant improvement in his surfing style and ability to connect with the ocean due to his daily surfing routine. * DJ Morris emphasizes the importance of matching the right surfboard to a beginner's skill level to avoid frustration and enhance learning. * DJ Morris discusses the transition from being a passionate surfer to a surf instructor, highlighting the energy and satisfaction of teaching others to surf. * DJ Morris shares his experience as a former lifeguard, including the challenges and emotional toll of searching for drowning victims. * DJ Morris mentions that the surf school is busy and continues to offer lessons through the winter, despite the cold conditions. * DJ Morris provides information on how to follow his daily surfing journey and the surf school's social media presence.  Outline Introduction to DJ Morris * DJ Morris is a guest on the Surf Mastery Podcast, sharing their journey and experiences in surfing. * DJ Morris is a surf coach at the local Hawke's Bay Surf School and can be followed on Instagram at DJ Morris. DJ Morris's Surfing Journey * DJ Morris started surfing properly around the age of 10, initially introduced to the ocean through surf lifesaving at age 7. * DJ Morris's first memorable surfing experience was catching a green wave on a Minnie Mouse longboard provided by a friend's dad. * Surfing is currently a significant part of DJ Morris's life, serving as both a source of income and an outlet. Surfing Every Day in Winter * DJ Morris set a goal to surf every day throughout the New Zealand winter to deepen their connection with the ocean. * This challenge was documented on social media to maintain accountability. * DJ Morris has been using a 4/3mm wetsuit for the first time, having only worn a 5/4mm previously. * DJ Morris has not yet resorted to wearing gloves or a hoodie, managing with earplugs and a beanie. Impact of Consistency on Surfing * DJ Morris believes that surfing every day has helped them achieve a perfect flow state and improve their surfing style. * DJ Morris has noticed changes in their surfing approach, including a better understanding of tides, wind, and wave patterns. * DJ Morris emphasizes the importance of patience and observation in surfing, rather than rushing. DJ Morris's Relationship with the Ocean * DJ Morris has a long-standing relationship with the ocean, influenced by their family's history as fishermen. * DJ Morris worked as a lifeguard, gaining a deep respect for the ocean's power and unpredictability. * DJ Morris describes several challenging experiences as a lifeguard, including searching for drowning victims. Transition to Teaching Surfing * DJ Morris transitioned from surfing as a passion to teaching it professionally, finding joy in helping others learn to surf. * DJ Morris has learned to adapt their teaching style to better suit beginners, emphasizing patience and proper technique. * DJ Morris highlights the importance of matching beginners with the right type of surfboard for their skill level. Common Mistakes of Beginner Surfers * DJ Morris notes that beginners often rush their learning process and may choose inappropriate surfboards for their skill level. * DJ Morris advises beginners to start with foam boards or longboards before progressing to high-performance shortboards. Future Plans for the Surf School * The surf school, run by DJ Morris, is preparing for a busy summer with school lessons and private lessons. * The surf school is in the process of creating a website, currently operating primarily through their Facebook page. Social Media and Contact Information * DJ Morris can be followed on Instagram at DJ Morris (D-E-J-A-Y Morris) for updates on their surfing journey. * The Hawke's Bay Surf School can be found on Instagram and Facebook under the handle HB Surf School. Transcription DJ Morris I reckon it's got me into like this perfect flow state on surfing, and I wanted to get out and get that connection properly in tune with it. Michael Frampton Welcome back or welcome to the Surf Mastery Podcast, the podcast that helps passionate, lifelong surfers to catch more waves, surf with more speed, style and grace, and to gain wisdom and confidence in the water. I am your host, Michael Frampton, and that was a couple of quotes from today's guest, DJ Morris. DJ Morris. And this interview was done at the end of winter last year, where DJ had a goal of surfing every day throughout the New Zealand winter. In this episode we will hear about DJ's story of ocean connection and, of course, consistency, and we discover the surprising challenges and benefits of surfing every day through a New Zealand winter. DJ is a surf coach here at the local Hawke's Bay Surf School, and you can follow DJ's story on Instagram at DJ Morris, which is D-E-E-J-A-Y Morris. Links to everything in the show notes, as always, and without further ado I shall fade in my conversation with DJ Morris. When did you start surfing? DJ Morris Started surfing probably around like properly going out around the age of 10. So I actually started in surf lifesaving when I was seven. And that got me not introduced to the ocean, but just got me confident in the waves and that, and then ended up, yeah, going from those long paddleboards into a short board that someone found on the beach, I think had been fixed up. Yeah. It was an old season board and the nose had actually been snapped off and they had fixed it by just rounding the nose. And then gave me that a whack and yeah, fell in love with it. Yeah, so that was about 10 years old. And then kept going. And that was just out here. That was at Waimarama. So I grew up at Waimarama, still living at Waimarama. Have moved around a bit. But yeah, back there raising a family. Michael Frampton Do you remember like the first time you caught like a green wave? Yeah. Like really? DJ Morris Yeah. I definitely remember that. It actually wasn't even on that board that I was talking about. It was on a, so my dad used to manage bars and run nightclubs and he had a mate that had a Lion Red longboard or mini mal. Mini mal. Yeah. And I remember him being like, oh, you gotta come out of the whitewash and come right out the back. And it wasn't, it mustn't have been that big. Felt big. And then he pushed me in on it, and I just remember that feeling like, whoa, okay. Did it. And then actually paddled that board back out to him so I could do it again. Yeah. And what does surfing mean to you now? Surfing means everything to me. Like, at the moment, it's—well, it's every day. And then I'm part owner with Bronson Primer in the surf school, Hawke's Bay Surf School. So it's my income and it's my outlet and, yeah, I'm focused in on it, like super focused in on it at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Just loving it. So every day at the moment. Tell us about that. Yeah, so surfing every day of winter, it wasn't even meant to be like this thing that it's kind of turned into. It was just kind of a goal for myself to more connect with the ocean and, 'cause I'm doing the surf lessons, I wanted to get out and get that connection properly in tune with it, and teaching people how to get in that connection. And I thought, well, through winter, I'm not the biggest fan of like cold weather in the winter here. So I was like, I'll make a challenge for myself. But then I got real into like documenting it. And I put it out on social media and that was for like—how can I explain it—to make it accountable? Yeah. So if I did stop, people might reach out and be like, hey, you didn't even make it. So that kept it going, but then it got easier and easier. Like, well, it hasn't been hard yet. Because I love surfing and I love getting out there. There's been a couple of dicey days that were like, yeah, oh, I'm not even gonna make it out where there was no back to get out to. So I just grabbed the foam top and jumped on a couple of little ones on the inside. But yeah, surfing every day of winter, it's been awesome. Yeah. Day 81 today. Day 81. So what, technically there's 90 days? Yeah. Yeah. Technically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Going through it. Michael Frampton Oh cool. And what is it, getting colder and colder as you go? DJ Morris The water—it has, but then like, I dunno if I'm getting used to it more, but there's like colder places like Te Awanga, for example. That little outlet of the river, that's real cold. Yep. And then I surfed a couple of times at Perfume Point off Napier. Yep. And yeah, that was freezing. But the wetsuits that we have now are mean. Yeah. Like can't beat them. Rocking those 4/3s, booties. It's my second season ever in my life in booties. Yeah. First season was last year and I was like, didn't know if I was onto it. And just a different feel, eh? Like I know. I liked feeling the board. Yeah. And then, yeah. Put them on and yeah. Yeah. You get to a certain age and your feet just start hurting in the cold. Like it's, you can't not wear them. Michael Frampton Yeah. That's definitely it. Yeah. Wait, you gone gloves? DJ Morris I didn't wanna put that one—gloves yet? Age? No gloves yet? No. Gloves and hoodies messed me up. Even I've, I've only just gotten used to the earplugs. Michael Frampton Hmm. I don't hear yourself. Do you wear earplugs? DJ Morris Yeah, I wear earplugs. If I don't, I'm so prone to ear infection, so I'm just used to them now. Michael Frampton Oh yeah. I wear the surfers ones so you can still hear. DJ Morris Yeah. Yeah. I got those ones. It's not the same. No. And it does take a bit of getting used to. Yeah. But, um, yeah. And my hearing's bad, like already, so when I've got those in and people are talking to me, I'm like, yep. I'm like screaming at them. Michael Frampton Yeah. You could try the Docks plugs. Have you seen those? You could try those. Yeah. They've, they've vented. So they don't—what I find is that it's not about stopping all of the water. It's about stopping the pressure of the water going in. So there, there's these ones called vented Docks, and they've got a little hole in them so you can actually hear pretty good. DJ Morris Oh true. And they let a little bit of water in, but there's no, like lots of—there's no pressure and no lots of water going in. Yeah. Those do okay for me as well. But, um, yeah, no, earplugs are just a habit for me now. You get used to it, nice sort of thing. Yeah. But yeah, slowly getting used to it, so yep. It's good. Michael Frampton You get to know the next age bracket is when you have to wear gloves when it's cold. Otherwise your hands just hurt. Stop moving. DJ Morris Yeah. Luckily I've surfed in like colder times where I remember my hands freezing up. This winter has been—like everybody's saying that it's been like quite a wet, bad winter, and I'm like, man, it's been mint for me. I don't know. Yeah. Just in a different flow of things, I guess. Michael Frampton So every, every day this winter. And has anyone joined you? Anyone jumped on the bandwagon? DJ Morris No, not really. No joining me to come every day, but heaps of people I've been surfing with. Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple of local guys out at WA that I kind of rope in when it gets to a decent size and I'm like, I don't really wanna surf by myself. And I go jump around there and be like, you guys want to come out? They're like, yeah, as a kid. I'm like, yeah, it's real good. But yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, definitely been fun. Michael Frampton What do you think that consistency does for your surfing? DJ Morris Oh man, I was talking to someone about this. I reckon it's got me into like this perfect flow state on surfing. And the way that this has been moving—going on TV, which is weird—it's just hooked people into it. And then, yeah, but with this surfing side, I've definitely seen a different style come out of myself because I've been changing boards up quite a lot at the moment. And I've been surfing, like to myself, real good. I don't know. It's just, yeah, like I said, connecting. Especially with the ocean and that and knowing where to be. Like I used to kind of rush surfs, like it would be on a timeline or I'd jump out just because there's a wave that I've seen. But now I can just walk down to the beach and be like, oh yeah, that looks like a good little spot. Sit there, watch it. And then even days where it's like, okay, I gotta get this done 'cause I've got other stuff to do, I can now time it like, oh yeah, I know this tide, the wind's doing this. So that connection's really helped. Michael Frampton Mm. Yeah. 'Cause you get in tune with the tide, the banks. DJ Morris Yeah. The wind. And you just—and I can see the banks moving. Yeah. It's crazy. Like different little peaks and that. So it's been—yeah. Definitely helped my surfing. Michael Frampton Yeah. It's like a long-term relationship, surfing. DJ Morris Yeah, it is. Yeah. Finally got it back. Michael Frampton Yeah. But no, the longer you stick with it, the more effort you put in, the more it gives back, you know? DJ Morris Yeah. That's it. Yeah. It's been cool, like going to just beaches along in Hawke's Bay and just, yeah, finding that right wave. And people even messaging me like, oh, there's a wave coming over here. We'll be surfing today? Yeah, I'm going out now. Okay, let's go find it. Michael Frampton Oh, cool. DJ Morris Yeah. Michael Frampton How would you describe your relationship to the ocean? DJ Morris I've got a long relationship with the ocean. I love it. I can't be away from it too long, even if it is just a flat body of ocean. No swell. I grew up around it, obviously my whole life, but my dad and my granddad were fishermen. So I live off it as well, like during the—well now during the summer. Love seafood, love fish, gather from it. And then now my business is in it. So I spend a lot of time with it and then respect it as well, like a lot. Because I know, as my first job I was a lifeguard, so I know what it can take from us and what it can give. So, you know, I love, love the ocean. Michael Frampton Was any gnarly experiences as a lifeguard? DJ Morris Yeah, like we had a few. We never had drownings—like we saw them drowning and then they drowned. It was just like searching for bodies that had been. And that's pretty gnarly. Like, you know that someone's out there, but it's been too long for them to be alive, so you know that they're probably gone. But then you've got like the family there that are holding on hope and you kind of want to give them hope. But you know, an hour out there in that condition—yeah. Unless they're on the beach somewhere lost, they're definitely gone. And yeah, you grab your fins and your tube and you have to go out. Or like when I first started, 'cause I was the rookie, you jump in the water with your fins and tube. And you're just floating and there's other guys in the boat and you're just sitting out like, I wanna find them but I don't want to touch them. Michael Frampton Yeah. Oh, that's heavy. DJ Morris Yeah. But then beach crashes—oh well, yeah. People, uh, not crashes—people running into the water and there's like holes or a sandbar and just banging their knees out and like coming up and you're like, oh yeah. Michael Frampton Yeah. How long did you do that for? DJ Morris So that was my first paid job. I did it—so I used to compete in it. So I did the boards and did the swimming. Then really got into the IRB, so the racing boats. It was just a bit more adrenaline really and real fun. Had a lot of mates that we all did it together. So I think I kind of left when I was around 18, 19. So I did it for—yeah, probably a good 10 years. Michael Frampton Mm-hmm. DJ Morris And then surfing kind of took over, kept that relationship going with the ocean. Michael Frampton Yeah, yeah, yeah. DJ Morris I went straight into surfing. And just kept that up. Yeah. But then I kind of dropped out for a while as well. Some of us do. I went into the hospitality scene and that kind of took over majority of, well, a good seven to eight years. Michael Frampton Yeah. DJ Morris And I was like on and off surfing. So I was, oh yeah, go out for a wave. But kind of lost that fitness level. Was definitely it. Doing late nights and then, yeah, everything that comes with hospitality. Michael Frampton Yeah. DJ Morris So, yeah. Didn't lose touch with the ocean, but definitely lost like the flow of it. Yeah. And just, yeah, it was kind of, if I was around it, I would surf. Not like hunting a swell. Michael Frampton Yep. And now it's every day obviously. And you've also bought into the surf school. DJ Morris Yeah. Michael Frampton What was that transition like, going from surfing being a passion to then teaching it for a living? DJ Morris Like, I helped them out during summers for probably two years. So I got a taste of it then. And it's, yeah, like it's pretty cool as you know, like teaching someone how to surf. Just the energy and the water when people are like catching their own wave and being able to stand up and finally—it's like one of those things, when you really wanna do something, and they're the people that are coming to the beach. And then they finally do it, it's like an energy wave just comes over you. But it was a cool transition. It's been, yeah, awesome. Michael Frampton What has it taught you about your own surfing? DJ Morris Probably gaining that connection, seeing how stoked they are just to be in the water, catching anything. And then you kind of pick up little tips. Sometimes you're just in the flow of things and you're teaching them something and then you're like, oh man, I need to do that a little bit more. You know? It's, yeah, you're analyzing them and then once you go and do something and you're like, I've said to someone to do that and I'm not doing it myself. Yeah. Like, just breathe, relax, you know, things—little things. Michael Frampton Yeah. It's a reflection of what you need. You're always teaching yourself in some way. DJ Morris Oh yeah, definitely. Michael Frampton Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned boards—what board are you riding at the moment? DJ Morris At the moment I'm riding this twin fin, J-Dub 5’8”. Like it's real thick, real easy to paddle. It's been like a hand-me-down. Well, it was made for one of our mates, Damien. Then Bronson got it and then was like, this is too short. I was like, I'll give it a go. It was like perfect for Te Awanga. Michael Frampton Yeah. I imagine when you first started working with the surf school as an employee and now fast forward, what, four years is it? DJ Morris Yeah, been four years. Michael Frampton What's changed in the way you teach an absolute beginner? DJ Morris Probably the confidence in teaching. Like when I first started, it was kind of like, okay, I know how to surf and I know what I'm doing in the ocean. But then it was kind of relaying it to them in a way that they get it. Because I'm trying to teach—like you say, you teach yourself everything—but I'm saying it how I probably wanted to hear it, where it needs to be, not that it's dumbed down or anything, but put into terms where it's go slower. Where I'd just be like, get up, get up, get up, you can do it. You know? Then it's like, actually I'm shouting at them to stand up quicker, where it's like, okay, just breathe. Take your time. Get your balance first. Stand up. Michael Frampton Mm-hmm. DJ Morris So I think that's changed a bit. The way that I teach them is how it's kind of changed into it. And then yeah, it's been pretty cool showing them how to catch waves, surf, obviously. Michael Frampton What's the biggest mistake that you see the beginner, that early learner, make? DJ Morris Biggest mistake? Like when we are teaching them or even when you just see them? Michael Frampton Both. DJ Morris Like sometimes rushing and then kind of confidence level to what their level actually is—and probably boards. Like we were talking about. The wrong board. You just need to pick the right—well, yeah, pick the right board is probably the biggest one. I'm trying to think. Actually, last time I was seeing somebody learning, they go hard out and get, you know, performance boards from the shops that are selling them here. Like, I reckon surf shops would sell a whole lot more boards if it was for the waves that we've got here. Michael Frampton Yep. I agree. DJ Morris But the industry just gives them the latest. Michael Frampton Yeah, whatever John John's riding, the industry pumps to them and yeah, someone comes in—I need a board—and they're like... DJ Morris And I was a sucker for that when I was younger. Michael Frampton Yeah. We all were. DJ Morris I was like, go in and be like, oh, that one. Then I'd paddle it out. But it was a lot lighter on the feet. But yeah, for the waves that we get here—like even when we are sending our students to go find a board and, you know, they've not just mastered the foamy, but you can tell that they don't want a foamy—we try push it always. Especially kids. Like kids, they'll probably get the foamy, but someone that's done, say, a few lessons with us and is like, what proper board do I go get, we lean them into a nice fish, big long, or even a mini mal. Michael Frampton Yep. DJ Morris Longboard. And say, start there and then start dropping down. And then you see them come back out and they're, yeah, they're on a high-performance board. You're like, and he's like, oh yeah, but he said it's like six-seven. Like, okay, I don't think I can catch waves on that board yet today. Michael Frampton I know what you mean. DJ Morris Yeah. But yeah, and especially with the level of their surfing. So you're matching a high-performance board? Well, not—yeah. I don't know what they—like I said, I'm a little bit different in the way of the surf culture. I like to pick up a surfboard and feel it. And still looking at dimensions and what it's doing. Michael Frampton Mm. DJ Morris And the new ones—ah, what is it? Liters. Liters. Michael Frampton Yeah. DJ Morris They're like, oh, you know, but I'm this weight and I've got this many liters. And I'm like, well, where are the liters? 'Cause I don't know how you're gonna paddle it. Michael Frampton Yep. I know what you mean. It's kind of a guide. I think liters is a guide for performance shortboards. DJ Morris Yeah. Kind of. Oh, is it gonna help? Is it gonna float me? Kind of guide. Michael Frampton Yeah. Yeah. That's about it. DJ Morris Yeah. It's irrelevant otherwise. Michael Frampton And you're right. Most people—it's so funny. You go to TA and it's waist high and there's a bunch of kids on performance shortboards like pumping and not catching waves, jumping up and down. DJ Morris And then, mind you, I was one of those. Michael Frampton Screaming, "Whee, there's a wave!" Just kidding. DJ Morris You come back frustrated and you're like, oh man, should I go give them this one? And then, yeah, get out there. Michael Frampton We've all been there. DJ Morris Yeah. But yeah, now a bit more foam is your friend. Michael Frampton Oh yeah, definitely. DJ Morris No, yeah. That's super fun. Michael Frampton Yeah. And those soft tops, I mean, they are fun, man. And they're pretty—nowadays, they're made pretty well. DJ Morris Yeah. And now it's got me, when I'm on a shortboard, thinking about, oh, I could do a turn there, but I'm just like gliding along the wave past that section. I'm like, oh, what did I just do? Damn it. Okay. But just getting that—the line, eh—finding that perfect line and, yeah, just feeling comfortable on the wave. Especially, I love getting on bigger waves now. You know, 'cause it's been quite small lately. Today was a good little surf. But you get on—say I'm on the foamy here at knee-height waves and you're just cruising. Then you get onto a proper wave and see it stand up in front of you and you kind of just have that confidence of just standing there, just watching it. Oh, well, I find now I'm just—yeah, it's bigger, bigger, bigger. Ah, that's the one. I might not even turn on it. Get to the little end section to a little whack and then it's, that was sick. Michael Frampton Yeah. That was done. DJ Morris That's all it is. Surfing. Michael Frampton Yeah. DJ Morris Yeah. That's all it needs to be. Michael Frampton Yeah. It's just the pure joy of being on a wave. DJ Morris Right. That's enough. Michael Frampton Yeah. That's it. DJ Morris Yeah. Because that's the connection to the ocean. You're waiting for it. You're on a wave, searching for it, standing there. Michael Frampton Yeah. Sometimes it's all it needs to be. DJ Morris Yeah. That's that. Michael Frampton What's—what does the future hold this summer for the surf school? DJ Morris We're pretty busy. So we do school lessons as well. The schools come out and we take them. And then we had a real good last summer. It actually hasn't stopped, so I'm still doing lessons through the winter with people. So it's been cool. Bit different. Because you have to explain that it's cold, real cold, and they get a shock. But everybody's been amped in it. And the waves have been reasonably good. You know, we're having those offshore winds as well. And yeah, tides are all matching up to the weekends, so it's been real fun. Michael Frampton That's good. DJ Morris Yeah. But the summer, hopefully we are pumping. Last summer was real good. There were some big days in there. Big days in the water. Michael Frampton Yeah. Just staying salty really? DJ Morris Yeah. Michael Frampton So, is there a website for the surf school? DJ Morris Not at the moment. So it's just getting built. But we run our Hawke's Bay Surf School Facebook page. Michael Frampton Okay. DJ Morris That's Facebook page. Michael Frampton That's what happens here in New Zealand. People don't have websites. They just have a Facebook page. DJ Morris Yeah. It's just kind of easier to control at the moment. But yeah, the website's literally being made as we speak. So that'll come out. Michael Frampton Oh yeah. It'll be—it's just down to Hawke's Bay Surf School when it's out? DJ Morris Okay. Is it Hawke's Bay spelled out or HB? Hawke's Bay spelled out. Yep. But then our Instagram page is different because someone's got Hawke's Bay Surf School. So we’re just trying to get it back now. But it might've been made up and now no one knows the password before me. Michael Frampton Oh okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, if someone goes on Facebook and searches Hawke's Bay Surf School, you'll come up. DJ Morris We'll be there. Michael Frampton Yeah. And on Instagram it's HB Surf School. DJ Morris Yeah. Michael Frampton And then what if people wanna follow your surf everyday journey and stuff? DJ Morris So that's on DJ Morris, just on Instagram or Facebook. Michael Frampton Yeah. And that's D-E-E-J-A-Y? DJ Morris D-E-E-J-A-Y. Michael Frampton Okay. DJ Morris Yep. Morris, M-O-R-R-I-S. Michael Frampton Alright, cool man. DJ Morris Yeah. Michael Frampton I'm sure there'll be people that want to check that out and come and get a lesson as well. DJ Morris Yeah. Michael Frampton Try surfing if you're a local listener and haven't tried it, and yeah, Waimarama is the perfect beach for it. DJ Morris Yeah, it really is. Michael Frampton Alright, well thanks for joining us man. DJ Morris Awesome. Michael Frampton Thank you, appreciate it. DJ Morris This has been awesome. 117 Surf Every Day: How DJ Morris Found Flow in Winter Waves [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFevtjhjV0o&list=PLOIoGM_c3zEOeXrgrbCxmC3xNmfMisAEr&index=3] For the passionate surfer—whether you're a weekend warrior, a surf dad, or an older surfer—this podcast is all about better surfing and deeper stoke. With expert surf coaching, surf training, and surfing tips, we’ll help you catch more waves, refine your paddling technique, and perfect your pop up on a surfboard. From surf workouts to handling wipeouts, chasing bigger waves, and mastering surf technique, we’re here to make sure you not only improve but truly enjoy surfing more—so you can get more out of every session and become a wiser surfer. Go from Beginner or intermediate Surfer to advanced

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6620239f21f2fa5a7b4e4234/ec88cdbf-9edc-4907-a9db-4d7ab3dfaa8e/Maggie+Dent?format=1000w] https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/podcast-surf-mastery/id1088660076 https://open.spotify.com/show/1VvhOpHEu31U4gktXJdkQv?si=ZUWd5smuSkaAh-4ukvIP7g https://www.instagram.com/surfmastery/?hl=en https://www.youtube.com/@SurfMastery/videos https://www.facebook.com/surfmasterysurf https://twitter.com/surf_mastery https://www.tiktok.com/@surfmastery Are you raising boys and wondering how to guide them through risk, resilience, and real conversations—without losing your mind or your connection with them? Navigating the journey from boyhood to manhood can feel like walking a tightrope—especially in today’s digital, high-pressure world. This episode offers a refreshing, deeply insightful look into parenting boys with empathy, science, and solid boundaries—while still letting them crash, climb, and surf their way to growth. * Learn the three foundational rules every parent should use to help kids make better choices and build integrity. * Discover how movement, like a simple walk or shooting hoops, can open powerful pathways to communication with your son. * Hear real-life stories of parenting wins (and fails) that show how warmth and structure build trust and resilience for life. * How surfing helps to shape good men. Hit play now to discover how you can be the calm, connected parent your son turns to—no matter what. https://www.maggiedent.com [https://www.maggiedent.com] Key Points * Advocating for three foundational rules for children to make better choices. * Importance of resilience, risk, and nature in parenting boys as highlighted by Maggie Dent. * Discussion on effective communication strategies, especially through small chats, for guiding children. * Highlighting the importance of allowing boys to experience the unpredictability of life and the value of nature play. * Discussing the role of surfing in developing deep friendships and its impact on mental health. * Exploring the concept of masculinity beyond societal expectations and the importance of emotional expression. * Sharing insights on grieving processes and the importance of safe spaces for emotional expression among men. * Emphasizing the significance of unconditional love and safety in parenting.  Outline Surfing and its impact on boys * Maggie Dent discussed the positive impact of surfing on boys, highlighting that it teaches them to deal with outcomes they cannot control * Surfing was mentioned as a way to build resilience and frustration tolerance in boys * Maggie shared personal anecdotes about her sons and their love for surfing, and how it helped them reset and regulate their emotions Parenting boys with backbone, heart, and resilience * Maggie Dent emphasized the importance of raising boys with backbone, heart, and resilience * She discussed the need for parents to guide boys through risk and resilience, and to have real conversations with them * Maggie suggested three foundational rules for parents to help their kids make better choices: be aware that every choice has a consequence, ensure choices do not hurt oneself or others, and do not damage the world around * She advocated for warm, connected, and responsive parenting, emphasizing the importance of boundaries and consequences Communication and listening in parenting * Maggie Dent highlighted the importance of effective communication and listening in parenting * She shared her experience as a teacher and counselor, emphasizing the value of being a safe and non-judgmental listener for children * Maggie advised parents to resist the urge to immediately solve their children's problems, allowing them to develop problem-solving skills * She suggested taking a walk or engaging in physical activity to facilitate conversations and create a safe space for children to open up Dealing with teenage behavior and challenges * Maggie Dent discussed the challenges of parenting teenagers, including their tendency towards risky behavior and impulsivity * She shared personal anecdotes about her sons' experiences with injuries, accidents, and emotional challenges * Maggie emphasized the importance of maintaining a warm and loving relationship with teenagers, even as they push boundaries and seek independence * She advised parents to be patient, empathetic, and understanding, and to avoid shaming or punishing teenagers for their mistakes Navigating the digital world and online safety * Maggie Dent addressed the challenges of parenting in the digital age, including the exposure of children to harmful content online * She discussed the importance of monitoring children's online activities and having conversations about online safety and appropriate behavior * Maggie suggested limiting children's access to smartphones and social media, and using monitoring apps to keep them safe * She emphasized the need for parents to be aware of the potential dangers of sextortion and the importance of teaching children about consent and respect in relationships Masculinity and men's mental health * Maggie Dent discussed her views on masculinity, rejecting the concept of 'toxic masculinity' and emphasizing the importance of men's emotional vulnerability and connection * She shared her experiences working with men and highlighted the need for men to process grief and trauma in their own way * Maggie advocated for men's groups and safe spaces for men to express their emotions and connect with others * She emphasized the importance of men being present and involved in their children's lives and expressing love and affection towards their partners and children Transcription Maggie Dent And I think that's one of the beautiful things, you know, why I talk about why surfing was so good for the boys, because... They couldn't control the outcome. I think if every family had it and we came back to just three rules instead of too many rules is that. Michael Frampton Commonly known as the queen of common sense, Maggie Dent has become one of Australia's favorite parenting authors, educators, and podcasters. Welcome back to the Surf Mastery Podcast. I am your host, Michael Frampton, and today's episode, a little bit of a different one. It's all about parenting. So if you're not a parent or an expecting parent, this might not be the episode for you. But if you are... Stay tuned. Maggie raised four surfers, four boys, four surfing boys. And she is a parenting expert with a podcast and 10 books. So really cool conversation. We talk about raising and guiding boys through risk resilience, real conversations. We talk about the three foundational rules that every parent should use to help their kids to make better choices. Plus much more. This episode is for any parent, not just surfers. So please share this episode with friends that could use it. A little bit of parenting help, and we all can. Without further ado, I will fade in my conversation with Maggie Dent. Excellent. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you too. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Maggie Dent Total pleasure since it's something I know a little bit about. Heh. Michael Frampton Surfing and boys. Maggie Dent Resilience, risk, injuries, you name it, I've got it all. I live in Jerringong, which is south of Sydney, right on the coast of Cook. So my lawyer son lives here. My doctor son lives in Pottsville, just south of the Queensland border. One lives near Manly. And the other one is in the Margaret River area and his favourite beach is the one where three people have been eaten by white pointer sharks. Nice. And he said, like I said, you never see any of my sons happier than... After sift. Michael Frampton Yep. Where the good waves are is often where those big creatures are as well, sadly. Maggie Dent Yeah, and I think, you know, early on, as every, I think every probably woman, even more so than a man. That was, you know, I had to really give myself some really strong talking to's because I...The chances are you get killed by mosquitoes at far higher. They came with me with the stats. I love it with this pragmatism of boys and men. Now look, mozzies kill millions. Donkeys kill more than sharks, Mum. And I had to sit there and go, they're actually right. Put it in perspective, Mark. And then, you know, the other thing they say, I know I'll give you the full story to this one where they came to. So they've come down for Christmas when I lived in Dunsborough, which is near Margaret River. Somebody had been attacked in the area on the Saturday. All four boys got up, put their wetties on, and they're about walking out the door. And I'm looking at the Sunday Times front page story. And they paused and they looked and said, you're okay, Mum. And I said, no, I'm not okay. And they said, well, it's, you know, it's a really rare chance, Mum. And then one of them says, and we'll all die doing something we love. And then the third one, which I thought was the classic, the clown of the family says, anyway, it's not hungry. Ha. Only a mother of four sons would know that. Michael Frampton Gosh, how old were they when it happened? Maggie Dent Yeah, that was, that would cover 22, 20, 18 and 14. Michael Frampton Oh, okay. Yeah. Is that, that sort of 14–15, that's, is that the age where you just, you have to sort of let go? Maggie Dent Oh look, you know, and I think it was even before we really had the science to show, I mean, I was a high school teacher, so I taught them, and we all know the age of 14, they turn into kind of Neanderthal apes. Really. There's an awful lot of crazy behavior. 'Cause they're wired to hang out with mates and make 'em laugh and be stupid. And often it's the physicality, which many—often women don't understand. So punching and slapping and wrestling isn't a sign of aggression. It's actually a sign of connection with a lot of boys. So in my English classrooms, there were just days, I'd just be rolling my head going, no dude, that's it. Outside afterwards, right? Can we get on with the English? Oh yeah, miss, sorry, miss. You know, and that whole—they use lightness, laughter, and physicality to try to deal with the incredible stress that they're living with because they haven't got a clue what's going on. They don't know their brain is pruning everything, which means they're even more forgetful, even more poorly organized, even more impulsive, uh, and are wired for risk. When you get the science, you see them through such a different lens, Mike, and I, I loved, you know, I absolutely loved boys in that window, and that was kind of firstly before I had my own, and then even more so after I had my own, 'cause that was my house. Michael Frampton Yeah. No, and I, I have three boys. So— Maggie Dent How old are yours? Michael Frampton Eight, nine, and 12. Maggie Dent Wow. Right there. We're on the cusp of that beautiful journey, and please don't listen to all the doomsayers. You know, like I, I probably had, I reckon we worked it out when we had a couple, not long ago, my boys are now, 43, 41, 39, and 34, 35, and they were—we talked about it. We reckon there were five big moments. That were, yeah, that were really scary and a bit frightening and not necessarily involving them. More their mates. They lost a couple of mates in a car accident… mm-hmm, in a cousin, in a plane crash. There were moments where one got diagnosed with type one diabetes, knee reconstructions, crash cars, broken hearts, you name it. When you put it in that perspective, you know that with four boys. So it's not half as bad as the world paints it to be. That's why I've written my latest book. 'Cause if you get a way of communicating—and it doesn't matter if it's girls or boys—that doesn't sound like you're a grown-up who knows everything, that you're a grown-up who just damn cares and can remember how bumpy that ride was, then you know what? They'll turn to you. They'll turn to us. And quite often, it was their—the boys would actually get their mates. They come in some days and say, “Mum, can you talk to him?” And I go, “Why?” And he said, “'Cause he's being a dickhead in class. And he's gonna get in trouble, he's gonna get expelled. Can you just have a bit of a chat, but don't tell him I told you.” And so there is a genuine concern for friendships in that window. And quite often teens are more worried about their friends than they are themselves. Michael Frampton Mm-hmm. So it's one of those, you know, I call it a, a bit of a hack is that, you know, check in with how are your friends going as these exams are coming, or are any of your friends vaping? Go by the friend door and there's a more chance the door stays open. If you go straight at them, bang, it's shut. Interesting. So what—so your boys were getting you to talk to their friends. Were you one of the few adults that would actually just listen to them rather than straight away give them advice or something? Maggie Dent Yeah, I think I was. I was kind of born to be that lighthouse figure. I can still remember in my boarding school days having chats to my own age group. Making sense of stuff. I don't know—did I grow—was I born old? I don't know. But also being a lighthouse figure while I was teaching, you know, the kids all knew that you can hang around and talk to Mrs. Dent. And also if they were worried about one of their friends, and in actual fact there were a couple that were contemplating suicide that their mates came and told me about. And I was able to actually be there right near that time because where are the safe people that they can turn to? So it's great if we've got a warm, loving relationship with your parents, even though you are wired to push 'em back. Because you're meant to start individuating into being an adult. It doesn't matter, girls or boys—girls start earlier than boys, which again makes boys often look like they're even thicker than they were. It's not their fault. And then as they go forward, is there a safe grown-up? And that really is why I ended up leaving teaching English. And then I became a relief teacher. 'Cause I really was drowning in English marking. So with four sons obviously. So I became the relief supply teacher. So that meant I could say no if someone was sick or—and I loved it 'cause I'm a bit of a, you know, basketball freak. So quite often I liked the phys ed classes the best, because there's not so much sitting, 'cause I'm not good at sitting for long periods of time. Then I realized, anyone can teach 'em how to write a paragraph or an essay, but I don't know. You know, not everyone can do what I can do when they're really struggling. So I did a post-grad diploma in counseling and therapy and set up a counseling and training center, which was in—oh God—1998. Yeah. And that began the whole different journey for me. And it's been interesting as this book launched because I kind of went back to where I started. So I've locked the gate, 10 books for parents—no more. I might write fiction or something next. But I've had all these messages, you know, via socials 'cause they can find me. And there was a really big feature in Western Australia, which of course embarrasses my sons, but anyone I counseled or taught, they all were reaching out and I just sobbed for the first two weeks because of the gratitude that was coming. Because having that capacity to shut up and really listen, and kind of hear them and see them and validate them, that's something that you can learn. But for some people—and the most exceptional of our teachers and coaches have that ability—mm-hmm. But we can learn it. And I think that’s, you know, it wasn’t hard for me to know how to do it. 'Cause I was such a moody, dark teen myself. Michael Frampton So, yeah. Uh, I think as parents, often, I know when my boys—if they come to me with a problem—my initial thought is, here’s the solution. Isn’t it obvious? Yes, you idiot. But I have to tell myself, no, no. Just repeat back to them what they said—like empathy. Just hear them out, let them vent. Then quite often they’ll figure it out themselves or maybe they’ll ask a specific question. But I just always have to stop myself from just giving advice willy-nilly. Maggie Dent I know, and it’s because when they’re younger, that’s absolutely valid. Because they’re young and they’re kids. But as they go on this journey, their prefrontal is growing and the capacity to learn things is growing, even not as fast as we’d like. And boys are again, later than girls. But if we keep solving all their problems, we deny the capacity for them to be able to solve their own problems when they leave home. So in other words, we make them even more incapable of living an independent life. And I know it’s so hard, you know, when they do some of the big muck-up that I write about in the book—you know, you find the bong under the bed or there’s vapes or a used condom or whatever. Our number one first reaction as a parent—it’s biologically been proven—is to get really angry. Michael Frampton Hmm. Maggie Dent And the same will happen if you lose a toddler in the supermarket. Your first reaction is anger, which apparently they don’t really know why, but we do it. And then, so you can imagine what happens with a teenager who’s just realized, or—you know, they know what’s coming. If we come at them with anger, we aren’t going to facilitate that to be a teachable moment, an opportunity for reflection, or giving them the support they need right now. And the big one there is: can you still love me even though I’ve messed up? These are the really big things. So that’s why I keep on going through—you turn up with calmness, even if you have to walk for a few hours to get yourself back into regulation. It’s worth even leaving it 24 hours. And that’s not easy for women. We are biologically wired to have it out right now. Whereas we know that’s the female brain—it goes from fired up to word center. And the boy brain and the male brain goes from fired up to the body, into the body, and then at some point later it could come up into the word center, which is why I advocate so often for taking your son for a walk. Michael Frampton Yep. Maggie Dent Go for a walk. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent You know, somewhere—if you can feed him, even better. And there’s a beautiful story that came from a dad who heard a podcast I did with Richard Fidler on conversations about this—just connect, and know if they’re hungry, they can’t listen anyway. So he—their 14-year-old boy was getting into so much trouble at school. You know, he was on the verge of getting expelled, he’d already had some suspensions, and they just couldn’t get to the bottom of it. You know, they banned everything and they punished him and it was just awful. And the dad walked in the door and said, “Just heard this lady on the radio. I’m gonna try something different.” She said, “Yeah, the school’s called again.” And he’s just called out, “Hey dude, come for a walk.” The son was very suspicious—as they will be—the first time you start coming on a different angle. “Where did you get this from?” Walked up to the Macca’s, which was a K and a half away. Mm-hmm. They just sat and ate a big bucket of chips and had a smoothie and stuff. And then on the way—halfway on the way home—the boy started to cry. He told his dad that these year 11 boys had been bullying him and they bailed him up when they caught him in the toilets, and they’d said if he dobs, they’re gonna cut him. Michael Frampton Mm. Maggie Dent And he was able to give it all to his dad. And as he walked, you know, his dad held him and said, “No mate, that’s not gonna happen. We’ve got your back, we’ve got this.” Really. He didn’t even go into anger ‘cause it came from a different space. Right? It just came up, and it was easy to be empathetic. Anyways, he walked in the house, the boy’s called out, “Hi Mum,” and he’s gone to his room. And she said, “What the heck?” And he said, “Who would’ve thought—a walk and a bucket of chips.” Now we’ve got to the bottom of it. And he said that’s a really powerful thing for us to remember. All of those things in it. Can you just sit with me so I can get the courage first? But also the fact that my word center opens much better after movement. I use a basketball hoop—I’m a tragic basketballer. I’d shoot hoops, and then my boys, if I was worried about them— Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent Yeah. It could take 20 minutes. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent Yeah. And I can go, “Is everything okay? You look a bit—you sound a bit off.” And, you know, gradually little bits come out. But if I confront him in the kitchen, especially if his brothers were there— Michael Frampton Shut down. Maggie Dent Yeah. Yeah. And men are the same too. We connect, you know, standing side by side, doing something. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent Not this eyeball stuff. Michael Frampton Yes. Maggie Dent Yeah. There’s another really big part that I wrote about in From Boys to Men a lot, which I learned from my boys. And you gotta get the timing right. You know, like if they’ve just got out of bed—nah, it’s not a time for a conversation. They’ve got an erection in front of you, that’s not a time. If they’ve got their phone, it’s not a time. If they’re eating, it’s not a time. In school after night, it’s not a time. Getting ready for bed, it’s not a time. If they’re gaming, it’s not a time. You’ve gotta find this window. And quite often that window will be in the car, especially if you wanna have a big conversation, Mike. If you wanna just sow a seed. People keep saying, “I don’t know how to talk to my son about pornography,” or something. We don’t go at it with one big conversation. We go at it with lots of small ones. And a great way to start that conversation—as you’re driving at 110 with only your son in the car, possibly in the back seat—is to say, “Mate, I meant to mention this to you for a while. I’ve just been reading a lot of information about, you know, how many young kids and boys particularly are watching porn. And I just want to tell you that one day I want you to have fabulous sex. But I’m gonna tell you—porn won’t give it to you, mate.” That’s the mic drop. Boom. You say nothing else. You’ve dropped something that you’re gonna go up and pick up later in a different, well-timed moment. So that, you know—otherwise they just—because they can’t get out at 110. Michael Frampton That’s good. I like that framing because essentially you’re—that is what they want. Maggie Dent Yes. Michael Frampton And you’re acknowledging—yeah, of course you want that. And I want that for you too. Maggie Dent Yeah, totally right. But that is—that’s seriously not gonna do it for you. And of course I think that one of the things that’s been coming up a lot, which is quite problematic here in Australia—and maybe where you are—is boys who’ve been ranking girls. Now, when I’ve spoken to my boys over the years, and I’ve seen the ranking sheets when I was teaching—45 years ago—but it was “super hot” to “freezing cold.” Whereas now with the influence of pornography and the misogynistic content online, it’s notable. Oh, right. And totally fable. Right? So the language has changed. The intention under it is probably still in the same alignment—that it’s this kind of fun game, “let’s rank the girls,” without recognizing that it can be really, really harmful. And then the second thing that’s quite problematic at the moment, which AI is now creating opportunities for—you know, where we can take a photo of a girl off her socials and put her in a disgusting, sexualized position—still thinking it’s funny. So that line in the sand is something I talk about a lot, which is: there’s a line in the sand when we’re being kind of funny and trying to back our mates’ life, and there’s a line where it’s actually hurtful and potentially illegal. And I’m gonna have many conversations with you so that you know where the line is in terms of the values of our home. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent Because I want you to be a man who’s proud of himself. Michael Frampton Right. Maggie Dent Yeah. Yeah. And these choices aren’t gonna set you up on that pathway. Michael Frampton Yeah, there’s so many things like that where I’m not quite there with my—he’s 12 still, so we’re on the cusp of talking to some of that stuff. But mostly it’s about—it’s almost like, you know, all of his friends—we live in quite a sort of an okay area, so all of his friends have an iPhone. I’ve only bought him a flip phone two months ago, ‘cause I’m—no. I’m saying no. You can call your friends, but you’re not going on social media, having access to the internet. Not on my watch. So that’s been great. He can now call his friends, but, you know, his friends all have iPhones and they all have PlayStations in their rooms and—yeah. Maggie Dent And Mike, you do realize he can sit next to those boys on the school bus. Michael Frampton Yes. Maggie Dent And so he’s gonna be exposed to it, and he is also gonna feel the peer pressure—feel sort of left out in some sort of way. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent So how do we negotiate that? Because he sees my point of view and he’s seen—I’ve shown him some of Jonathan Haidt’s work and he’s like, “This is how bad it is. You can’t deny this.” And he gets that. 'Cause he wants to—he wants to be an athlete and he wants to look after himself. But he’s also feeling the peer pressure of, “Come around to my house and watch this,” or “Do this.” So how do we negotiate that culturally? Maggie Dent We know that not all of it is harmful. And that is, you know, I’m part of the big movement that’s trying to shape those tech companies to just shift those algorithms—because they could change the algorithms tomorrow. That would take the harmful content away from all of our kids under 18. Michael Frampton Mm. Maggie Dent They wouldn’t see porn, they wouldn’t see the misogynistic stuff. They wouldn’t see it. And so what we’re trying to do by banning it to 16—everything, social media—is that they might go, “God, we’re gonna lose some serious coin here, so let’s just alter the algorithm because we don’t want to lose that market.” Right? Michael Frampton Mm. Maggie Dent And that’s really—you know, whether we can get there, I don’t know. We know all the difficulties, but banning doesn’t necessarily teach our kids. They’re going to be a digital native. So my challenge to us is, you know, as late as possible—which you’re doing really super well—but also how can they, you know, can they FaceTime their friends on their phone with your phone? So it’s actually not a call—‘cause who calls as a tween or a teen? No, we don’t. Or an app on your phone that you monitor and you keep an eye on so that they’re part of the group. And it needs to be just one—and preferably not Insta or TikTok, both a bit dodgy—but one app that the other families are aware of. So we’re actually gonna monitor one and keep them as safe as we can, knowing what is going on. And one of the biggest challenges at the moment is it’s not just seeing pornography—it’s the sextortion. Where a 14-year-old boy really thinks it’s a 14-year-old girl that’s flirting with them online. And of course when she asks for the dick pic—you know, every boy wants to show their best friend to somebody who likes them. That’s just a little bit of a thing I cover in my seminars. If that is a sexual predator, then the shaming that is coming up later—now it’s 94% of boys aged 14 to 17—and we have had boys die by suicide as a sequence of that shaming. So you can see again, those are the conversations if you keep having with your son, he’s aware of what dangers are out there. But also, one day, you know, we are gonna step you forward into this space because you can access fantastic support services on there. There are some—you know, if you’re into music, there are some great music ones that you can have, you know, playlists. If he’s into surfing, he can watch other dudes who are doing stuff. Do you know what I mean? So while we need to know it’s potential for harm, we need to know it still has a potential for connection, which is a really big part of this journey. But the fact that you’re in that sort of an area, you’re having those conversations, and you are letting him access those things—and he’s already active. If he’s not out there doing some things in real time, then I get worried. If it’s not organized sport, is it riding your bikes? Is it going surfing with friends? Is it—you know, what are we doing in real time? Because I’m extremely concerned about our kids with social anxiety ‘cause they’ve just been in a bedroom. Michael Frampton Yes. Maggie Dent Staying safe—technically—but no capacity for making great choices in the social context of the world, which also means your capacity to be a resilient, capable, independent human has been compromised. Because those opportunities have been displaced. By the damn phone. Michael Frampton Yeah. Well, all three of my boys are—they’re mad on football. They love sports and they’re always out and about and doing that, and they’re very confident. They’ll talk to anyone. So— Maggie Dent They’re doing well. They’re doing well in that regard. They happen. Yeah. Michael Frampton But my question would be that, like—obviously this—as they get older, they’re gonna get exposed to more and more stuff, especially once they get to high school. And you know, if he doesn’t have a smartphone with access to the internet— Maggie Dent Yeah. Michael Frampton Someone does. And he’s gonna get exposed to a lot of stuff. So I guess, what’s the overarching principle? Because you can’t be there all the time and you can’t—you also don’t want to be. Right? What’s the overarching principle? If there’s one thing you could give to all parents, what should be consistent throughout the boys’ life? Maggie Dent I think it’s a very simple—and it’s a three-rules—that I think if every family had it and we came back to just three rules instead of too many rules is that: you know, as you go forward in life, you’re gonna make choices. And what I want you to be aware of is every choice has a consequence. So I want you to be aware that the choices you make don’t hurt yourself, and they don’t hurt anyone else, and you’re not damaging the world around you. Right? So it’s a call to—yeah, that you’re gonna make some impulsive choices. And if you do, then how are you gonna make it right? That’s what grows into a good human later, is—we are all gonna make mistakes. And we still do. Trust me, I still do. So I’m gonna call it that—ah, that wasn’t a very good choice, was it? Now I need to make it right. And I need to make sure that I’m gonna think about what I might do next time. So it’s just having those ongoing conversations totally, rather than coming at our kids with the shame, the blame, and the punishment, which is still lingering from last century. We know now it’s not terribly effective. And what it tends to do is create shame inside people. And shame inside people means the inner critic becomes even louder and they can really struggle with this sense of self and their sense of self-worth. So when we have great humans who create those opportunities—even if you just grab a small chat of something you’re watching on TV—you know, “God, what do you reckon? That wasn’t really consent, was it? They just moved on in, didn’t they?” Just drop these little moments. What happens then if you are safe—we want our kids to know if something happens online or something happens in the real world one day—because it can happen anywhere: at a party, on the way home from school, or one of your friends is doing something really harmful—we want them to turn to us or a significant lighthouse figure. And so we say to them, “If it’s not me, you know, who else is it?” You’ve got to have a safe landing place on this journey to adulthood. And that—the big line underneath it—is just: no matter what. Michael Frampton So… Maggie Dent I’m gonna love you no matter what. And your lighthouse figure’s got your back no matter what. But together, we’re gonna work forward through this. Because the most successful people in life have all made mistakes. And it’s not a sign that there’s something wrong with you—it’s a sign you are human. And we all have hard times. So I just want you to know, if I’ve got a hard time, I’m gonna let you guys know so that we can kind of gather together. And that’s a really big message—it’s you’re never on your own. Because that was the thing when I worked with a number of teens who were contemplating ending their lives—they would say, “No one cares. I don’t matter. And the world would be better off without me.” Michael Frampton Hmm. Maggie Dent We can fix those. Michael Frampton Yeah. Shame is a big, big, big one. And like you alluded to, I think it was passed down from my parents and the parents before that. That’s kind of—that’s the way they did it. Maggie Dent That’s it. And there was physical abuse—it was a normal way. If you didn’t, you know, spare the rod, you’re gonna have a horrible child. And fortunately we have the science of child development now that shows that warm, connected, responsive parenting—it’s just not fluffy stuff. It’s what you do in those big moments. Where you—how you hold the boundaries. You don’t clip your kid around the head to get that boundary. You don’t give them a belting if they’re drunk. But you’re coming alongside them to reaffirm that boundary and that there may be a consequence as a result of not being able to do something. And I love a beautiful example a dad told me—he said he got it off me, the idea came off one of my seminars, which I can’t even remember—but it was you give them three chances. So if they’re leaving their bike—and that’s what this boy was doing—he’d ride home from school, leave his bike straight behind the car. His dad had said to him—and then he’d come home from the seminar—he said, “Mate, I’m gonna give you three goes to make sure you can put that away without me having to do it ‘cause I don’t wanna drive over your bike.” Anyway, after two goes, it was still dropped, and the boy comes home from school. He says, “Dad, I can’t reach my bike.” He says, “Why is that, mate?” He says, “Yeah, it’s up near the ceiling in the garage.” And he said, “Yeah, yeah, it’s gonna stay there for a bit.” And he says, “Why?” He says, “Remember I had that conversation—that if you—you know—then I’m—well, it’s obvious you can’t do it yet. And I’m worried about your bike and I’m worried about you. So let me know when you are ready to have another go at riding your bike and putting it in a safe place. And I’ll get it down. But I reckon you can have a few days without it.” Michael Frampton Mm. Maggie Dent Right. See the difference in the learning? Michael Frampton No, I like that. Maggie Dent It is technically a form of discomfort. I believe you just need to create discomfort—not punishment. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent Punishment is when we hurt them. And this is mildly uncomfortable and inconvenient. And I have—one of mine actually, he was into that sort of 15-year-old wanting to punch his 13-year-old brother, but it was harder than he used to do it. So he was trying to be a macho male and he’s the alpha boy. And I gave him—you know, these three—I said, “Look mate, if you’re unable to pull that back, then I’m having your surfboard for a week.” He said, “No you won’t.” I said, “Yes, I am.” Anyway, yep, and he’d kind of—you know, he’d been kind of trying, but he still swung and gave him a good crack around the TV one night. And so I said, “So it’s a week. I’ve got your board. It’s in my room.” Was not happy. Was not happy. Anyway, I was the worst mother on Earth of course. Michael Frampton Mm-hmm. Maggie Dent And I was quite happy to be the worst mother on Earth ‘cause that’s actually what happens with good parenting. And he knew then there would be—yep. Anyway, I got to day six and I sat down with him and said, “So, what do you reckon about this kind of—have you got an idea around it now? What else you can do? Can you back it off?” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, you can have your board.” He said, “Not a week?” And I said, “Well, you’ve just said you reckon you’ve got it, so I reckon I’ll give you another chance ‘cause I believe in second chances. I also believe in third chances. And we’ll see how we go with it.” And I never had another problem. Michael Frampton Hmm. Maggie Dent However, they did bring it up at my 50th birthday with the other one. I had a sugar freak—totally, right—and he was—what was he doing? He was doing something else equally as annoying. Anyway, I said, “No, there will be no dessert for a week.” And he went, “You wouldn’t do that. You know I couldn’t live without that.” Anyway, so he’s got up at my 50th birthday and said, “Mum is so tough. Did you know once she—she wouldn’t let me have dessert for a week?” And everyone just fell on the ground laughing. And he just is still really, like, “My mum was the toughest mum ever.” And that behavior also didn’t happen again. Michael Frampton Isn’t that funny? Maggie Dent Yeah. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent Right? So they’ll hold—they’ll hold onto that: “I didn’t have sugar for a week.” It’s better than, “I got the strap,” that’s for sure. Michael Frampton Right? Maggie Dent Yes. Generations—man, you got the belt. Oh God. I love it because it’s all about perspective. But what it’s done is it’s just said, “Look, I’m holding this boundary ‘cause I’m the adult and you don’t have power over me.” We work together with most stuff—you have choices. And that’s another big thing I think. Where we had no autonomy in the past—except we did have a lot of autonomy, ‘cause we weren’t in the house very much. Kids in those previous generations, “Make sure you’re back when the lights come on,” had not—so they had a massive amount of free autonomy. And then they came into a tough system. But they actually had that. So today they almost have too much freedom without boundaries, which doesn’t help you make good decisions later. ‘Cause you get into a work environment and you’ve got to be there at a certain time. You’ve got to actually work, even if you’re not feeling like it or it’s boring. You don’t develop those things if you’ve been able to get away with those mildly uncomfortable things like chores. And those sorts of things. I was super tough. My boys—if they broke a surfboard, they got the big foamy for the next few months till a birthday or Christmas, and I gave them specific chores to earn money towards their new board. And I can remember once they all came home—similar ages—and I said, “I was pretty tough, wasn’t I, about that?” And they said, “Well, actual fact Mum, we’ve already had a conversation about this and we are really glad you did. Because we really value our stuff. We look after our boards, our wetties, our cars. Whereas we’ve got friends that just trash their stuff.” And I went, “Oh, okay.” So isn’t it interesting—as their prefrontal lobe grows and they start reflecting through a different lens other than a teenage boy lens—they land on a very different perspective of it. Because they still were surrounded by a warm, loving human. But she just had boundaries that were not negotiable. And I was a good cook. That was another reason. Michael Frampton But that must have been quite like—as a parent—to set a boundary like that. And whilst it’s not a punishment per se, it’s more of, you know—it ends up punishing you, doesn’t it? Maggie Dent Oh, it always— Michael Frampton It’s a long week. Maggie Dent Yeah, exactly. Michael Frampton And that’s why— Maggie Dent Welcome to parenting. You know, if we wanted our children to think that they’re gonna run around in a field of daisies and everything’s gonna be lovely—we are dreaming. Michael Frampton Yeah. But you got that—you got that gratification when they were probably over 25. Once they realized, you know. Maggie Dent Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s one of the beautiful things—you know why I talk about why surfing was so good for the boys—because they couldn’t control the outcomes. So at times, you know, they’d go out with great enthusiasm, they’re sure they’re gonna get the best waves and it’s gonna be the peak moment of their life. And some blooming offshore wind happens, or something happens, and it all flattens out and they get back and they’re really pissed off with it. So it’s really good that they know what discomfort feels like—or what we call frustration tolerance—because I feel today’s, many of today’s kids—we pass, we change pass-the-parcel rules so they don’t get sat at a birthday party—so they’re actually less capable of dealing with setbacks and hard times and things that don’t work out how they want. Whereas that was one of those beautiful gifts that I felt going surfing was providing them—not just once or twice, it was, you know and just recently there was about a five-week stint here where there was no surf. And my surfer—my son who’s a lawyer—so he works really long hours from home, and he was in the end—you know, he’s got into the second week and said, “Oh, I’m just going swimming now.” Right? He missed the ocean so much, he’s just gone for a swim in the ocean pool. 'Cause it just—it resets him. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent It’s like—they’ve all said it’s a part of their mental health. It resets them into something that nothing in the home or in the—nothing else does it. They’ve all played different sports, but surfing’s the one that resets them. And I think it’s that profound connection with Mother Nature in a way that—it’s always familiar. Salty water smells and tastes like salty water every time, right? And the ebb and flow of waves—it’s kind of, after all these years, she’s like a second mother figure that holds them until they reset. So it’s a beautiful capacity of self-regulation that is following them into adulthood. And I’ve spoken to some older surfers and they said that sometimes, “I don’t care if I don’t get a wave.” Michael Frampton Yep. Maggie Dent “I just—getting on the board and paddling out and just waiting—that is where I reset. That’s where I have a chance to ponder and reflect or just—” And it was one of the boys’ mates who said to me once—he was probably only about 20 and he had had some really big stuff going on in his life—and he said, “The best place for me to figure out where shit is going down is waiting for a wave.” And I felt, what—isn’t that gold? Another boy said to me—he wrote in his English class, he was in year 11, which is 16—and he said, “The closest you can get to God is in that blue tube—is in that wave.” And I—that’s when I realized it was way bigger than me. ‘Cause I—seriously, I’m a farmer’s daughter, there was no surf near me, no waves. And I swim in ocean pools ‘cause I know I’m not gonna get eaten by a shark. But I’m never gonna go—no waves scare the heck out of me, right? So it took me a while to really comprehend what was going on on many different levels. And why me having to get out of bed early every weekend to go and look for bloody waves was the best thing I could do as a mother of boys who liked to surf. Even if they didn’t get one, we drove from beach to beach to beach or whatever. The banter in the car, the conversations about which directions, them working it out together, they were problem-solving together, they were communicating together. I just—I learned so much being a witness to something I didn’t understand. And originally, in my days, the only people who surfed were dopeheads, weren’t they? Which is the other reason I think—just being able to expose them to the unpredictability of life. And that risk is something that you can get better at if you have opportunities. Which is why I’m a nature play advocate. Why I want the long monkey bars back. Why I want them climbing trees. Our kids can get better at it if we actually allow them to move into those spaces with their own intuitiveness and their own early warning systems and their own—because they actually are wired to keep themselves alive. And we shouldn’t have to be there always plucking them out of things so that they stay safe. Michael Frampton Yes. Safety is not such a good thing. Maggie Dent No, I agree. Let them make the mistakes while they’re young and made of rubber, and the consequences are a lot smaller than when they’re 15. That gives them that—like you said—the autonomy. Right. And the self-confidence. Michael Frampton Yeah. And I love those analogies with surfing you’re talking about. ‘Cause surfing is something that’s so much bigger than us. Obviously you didn’t know it back then, but since your boys started, books like Blue Mind have been written. Maggie Dent Yeah. Michael Frampton We know how getting out into nature—and especially with water—how it affects the brain. Inherently, whether you realize it or not, your subconscious brain realizes how risky it is to enter the ocean. So there’s—you’re satisfying that risk, connection with Mother Nature, the unpredictability/slash safety boundary, and all of that. Maggie Dent When I look back to the—and that was really the first book I ever read was Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys. And I remember when he wrote Manhood and he talked in there—‘cause I’ve done a lot of work with men and I think it’s partly ‘cause I spent most of my childhood with my dad—‘cause he was my attachment figure, not my mum—that I have an ability to see a lens through both male and female. And I’ve worked a lot in shearing sheds and in recovery from disasters and things. And when I talk to men, the understanding too of making sense of stuff through inner processing—and that men are actually a lot deeper than they’re perceived to be—and that when they work out their own values around things, they’re quite deep. Whereas sometimes—this is a sweeping generalization—women are often shifting around and not being quite so anchored. So learning really that Steve talks about the wild man. And if we recognize that we are still biologically linked to our earliest of mankind, the number one—the two biggest roles for men were to keep everyone else safe and alive. So it was to protect and to provide. And there are so many of those biological drives that still tend to drive our—and also the females as well, even though we can do either side of things. You know, we have amazing women in our armed forces and fire response—firefighters and things—so we know that we can. There is a proportion that can swap over. But I think there’s something about the wildness, the uncontained part of that. And I kept suggesting that it’s a really good thing for men with their mates to go and have a few wild days. Just the same as women love going and—whatever, book club weekends or whatever. It’s really good for that. If you’ve got a friendship circle, it’s incredibly cup-filling to stop having to be responsible for your family and your partner and whatever for just a couple of days. And it—whatever they wanna do. Whether it’s a golfing weekend, and there’s something that is about filling us up. ‘Cause it allows almost like the boy within us—or the girl within us—to just stop having to be responsible all the time. And it’s usually—whatever fills that cup. And sometimes it’s fishing trips, it’s golfing trips, it’s surfing trips. So two of mine have been on surf trips with their mates from high school this year. And listening to them and—yeah, it was just—you know, magical. And also you don’t realize that sometimes guys’ friendships were actually formed early in life. So it’s another thing that surfing often does. Of course, you can play in different sporting teams. But if you go surfing with the same kind of guys, you are actually deepening a bond of connection even through the silence of those moments. And often guys don’t have as much time later in life to form the same depth of friendship. So a lot of them—it’s linked back there. I read a study recently—it’s 400 hours to develop a deep friendship. Michael Frampton Wow. Maggie Dent So you can see how, if you’re in an area and you stay in that area and you hang out with certain boys, it’s often—that’s where your 400 hours will come from. Whereas with girls and women, they’ll prioritize hanging out with a new friend till they build up their 400 hours, so they can actually create new, significant friendships. I found that really fascinating because I’ve written a piece about fragile boy friendships and that they often just have to be in proximity. And we’re all busy now, and parents are more busy, there’s not much neighborhood play, and so they’re not getting the same amount of 400 hours to develop a friendship that they look back on and— Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent —which is interesting. Michael Frampton Yeah, does that make sense? Maggie Dent Yeah. Michael Frampton Yeah, it does. Yeah. And even—yeah, just sitting there with a friend, not—you don’t have to be talking. You just—you know—you’ve got each other’s back. You’re sitting there in the ocean or— Maggie Dent Yep. Michael Frampton Even if the other one’s in the car, you still—you know you’ve got each other’s back. Maggie Dent Yeah, so interesting. And one of the beautiful things I found—so my oldest had a battle with bowel cancer. He was diagnosed on his 40th birthday, which wasn’t exactly the gift he wanted. And what I loved was how much support he got from not just his brothers but his mates he surfed with. They stepped up. People often talk about guys not being really open and honest—I was just blown away. And yeah, it was—it was a big part. ‘Cause I couldn’t fill that cup, you know? Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent As his mum, neither could his wife. But those mates—you know, they were nearly on a plane over, the ones from WA. And the ones that were scattered around—they checked in at times and they asked big questions. He was able to really own it. Not just say, “Oh, it’s fine. It’s all good. I’m handling it.” No, they wanted to know the ins and outs. And so again, that proximity of time that they’ve spent means that we are more likely to turn up in the crisis moments. And then, you know, one of the biggest issues that we are noticing with men’s mental health later in life is loneliness. Michael Frampton Yes. Maggie Dent So that’s yet another thing I think you’ll find in significant surfing communities. You’ll have older guys still surfing, still ready to have a chat, still—you know what I mean? So not as significantly lonely as without something like that. Michael Frampton Yeah. Surfing gives everything—almost gives community as well. All of that. As long as it’s not a job and doesn’t provide you money, it almost gives everything else. Maggie Dent Yeah. And of course you help lots of other surfers who need to make money from that. Michael Frampton Yes. Maggie Dent I go right back—in Albany, what was her name? Jodie—what was Jodie’s last name? She was one of the first female surfers out there, around Layne Beachley’s time. But it was really interesting ‘cause she had brothers, so she was kind of part boy. And the skate track opened up over there—the first time we ever had a skate—skateboard. It was the first one in Australia. It’s interesting, isn’t it? It was set up by her dad and a lot of whole guys that were in town. And so watching it—watching her—there were days she wagged it, you know, because the surf was good. And there was one teacher who would probably be okay with that. And that was me. Michael Frampton Yeah. Get ‘em outside. Everyone should be outside more. Sitting in classrooms is the worst thing for them, isn’t it? In some ways. Maggie Dent Yeah. Hopefully that changes one day soon. Michael Frampton And you touched on something I’d like to ask you about. You mentioned men—traditionally providers and protectors. That leads me to a slightly taboo question for the times we are living in, but—how would you define masculinity? Maggie Dent Oh golly. And I’m a really passionate believer that there is no such thing as toxic masculinity. Michael Frampton Thank you. Maggie Dent I get really cross when we label it like that because I’ve worked—I’ve been surrounded by exceptional men and I meet them all the time. So it’s not the gender that is toxic. There are toxic males. But I’ve also met many toxic females. So I guess my—you know, being surrounded by men and my dad was an exceptional man as well—is that I think the man of today, given the societal shift towards men turning up to want to be equal, team parents, wanting to turn up with their big heart—it’s very much exactly what Steve Biddulph had talked about all those years ago: that we want men who turn up with backbone and heart. So we actually—there are times that we need your physical capacity to be strong and stabilize the ship. But we also know that in our relationships, you don’t have to be the stoic, tough guy anymore. And that in actual fact, in my work around relationships and counseling, especially around trauma and death and dying, is that when a man owns his struggling to a female partner or wife, what happens is she then activates her masculinity, and she becomes this absolute fierce lioness. And she’ll cover that guy’s back like you won’t believe. He’ll be so supported so he can stay in that vulnerable state getting whatever support he needs. What happens though if he shuts down and keeps it from her? Then there will be just more and more distance. And he will struggle alone. And that’s why one of the reasons that so often with a major death in a family of a child, there’s a really high degree of divorce. Because men are still driven by those big societal things that you’re supposed to be tough, you’re supposed to deal with it—you know, toughen up. Where in actual fact, that’s not how we process major trauma. And one of the experiences I had, which I treat with incredible respect, was I was called—I’d already been into an area in Western Australia where there was massive bushfire. And at the small community outside, these guys had fought for five days with no extra support. They’d lost most of the primary school, many farms, and they lost one of their most significant community members and two of his workmen. So they were shattered, right? So I’d gone and run a couple of community seminars talking about recovery and stuff. And then the men, about three months later, they found some funding to get me to come back, and it was a shed full of men. And what they wanted to know was, why were they still feeling so lousy? So I had to put it through the context of, well, you know what? You went to fight, as you are biologically wired to fight—to be the hero and defender of your community—but every day you are driving around and you are seeing how you failed. You see that it didn’t—so that’s feeding into you a sense of not enough. Not all that shit that you’ve been told—you have to be the hero and everything. And I said, what you’ve got is also grief. You are grieving not only the guy you lost—you’re grieving where your community was before. You’re grieving that there are so many that are really on their knees. And that’s grief. And grief is just a bitch of a thing because it lasts so much longer than you think. But you’re also dealing with what I call situational distress. And that’s that continual reminders of it. And the guy who was killed in the fire—his twin sons were in the front row. And so it was a really powerful moment for the guys to realize that when people keep—your wife keeps saying, “Why aren’t you talking about it? You need to talk about it,” I said, it’s not actually really helpful for a lot of men. Talking works for women—it doesn’t work for men. So I need to give you permission that you are actually processing so many layers of grief at the moment—that that’s why you are tired, why you’re even more grumpy, why you’re finding it hard to get out of bed—it’s because you are processing it. But you are processing it, and you are probably halfway through it. But it’s not a magical, “Oh God, today it’s all over.” But I’m gonna give you permission that if you do actually feel like you want to sit down and just howl—you have it. You have permission from this group. You will never be judged in this area. And then kind of after, when I left—it was interesting because about two weeks later, BlazeAid is this beautiful organization where retired farmers and men with their wives turn up with caravans and they rebuild fences for free. It’s just the most beautiful thing. And the BlazeAid people—it was about four or five caravans—they’ve always got a campfire going. And over the next few weeks, every now and then about nine o’clock at night, a farmer would turn up with a beer and just have a yarn around the fire. And quite often—that’s when the tears were coming. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent So they don’t want to cry, they don’t want to break down in front of the woman they love particularly, or their children. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent But they will if there’s another safe place for that. And that’s something, when you understand it, it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Michael Frampton Yes, it does. And we’re seeing a lot of men’s groups that are facilitating that sort of stuff coming up a lot too. So that’s good. Maggie Dent Ah, so good. My hubby—he joined a Men’s Walk group during COVID and it’s been the best thing. Like he—yeah, he and that group—and in that, he’s developed a new friendship with a guy he really likes. And I’ve just seen such a happier husband. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent But I could have told him till the cows came home, “A bit of exercise would be good for you.” But what he actually needed—he was—he actually needed the company. He was lonely. Because there’s only so much of our cups we can fill. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent And I think that’s—and also the men—you know, the story that we tell ourselves is sometimes incorrect. You know, the narratives we’ve learned over the years. And there was this beautiful man who I had actually supported—his—I was a bereavement support person and a death doula—supported his wife as she died. And she had two sons—beautiful sons. And he was there like every day. He was just full-on, right there. He is a beautiful man. And after the funeral, which was a beautiful celebration of her life, and the boys spoke beautifully in that—anyway, I just noticed the dad walking like in an angry walk down the car park. And I thought, well, that doesn’t look right. Anyway, so I wandered off after him and he’d slid down behind a car and he was just crouched on the ground. And I said, “I’m just checking in mate—what’s going on?” He said, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that in all that time that she was sick, I never actually got to tell her I loved her. It just got stuck in my throat. And now she’s dead and I can’t tell her.” I sat down next to him and said, “Women are not quite that shallow. You were there every day. She knows.” I said, “Can you see that same thing again? What have you been conditioned to think? And how easy is this next generation of men—telling their kids they love them, and telling their partners that they love them, or turning up?” Look, you turn up to a playground in Sydney—when I’m up there sometimes—and there aren’t any women. There are just dads with babies tied on, toddlers, and you’re just—they’re absolutely nailing it. And that’s the reason I did The Good Enough Dad podcast. Because I wanted to give dads voices to own. That it’s still a struggle because there’s no game book. Like they said, “Give me the game book.” Well, there is none for parenting. And that you’re gonna have meltdowns, you’re gonna have arguments, gonna get frustrated at your kids. And that’s—every parent does it. But there’s this slightly different lens—“Am I supposed to fix shit?” So am I supposed to fix that toddler who’s yelling and screaming? No mate, no. That’s what they’re meant to do at that age. Oh see, I had a game book and what I really loved about it was when I asked all 26 of them at the very end—I said, “Okay, so what’s the one thing you want your kids to learn from you as their dad?” You should see it—the depth of the responses. Honest to God, the number of times I got tears. And that’s what I loved the most—was giving men an opportunity to own their muck-ups. Own the bits they’re doing good. What they found hardest when they became a dad. And some of them were really older dads. Some had gone through 10 years of IVF. Some had lost a baby at birth. So some of them had a real story. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent But what I wanted them to say—and that’s the depth of men. They actually have already worked it out. It was beautiful to be able to share those. Michael Frampton That’s a cool story. I like that. Wow. It’s just coming up on the hour. Maggie Dent Thank you so much for your time. Michael Frampton Really appreciate it. I’ve listened—a friend of mine put me onto you about three or four months ago actually. He’s a father of three, lives in Avalon—Nick. He’s a big listener and a reader of your books, and I’ve been absorbing your podcast and your work ever since and learning so much. Maggie Dent Oh, my boys are pretty happy we were having a chat—like I’m talking to the right sort of people for a change. Michael Frampton I love it, don’t you? Parenting is—it’s hard. I just love putting the podcast on and just getting little bits from you and your guests and it just helps put the pieces together and build your own overarching principles to— Maggie Dent Yeah, and there’s no—you know, people kind of sometimes look to an expert and I say, “No, look, I’m not in your home.” Right? What I can give you are possible suggestions. But your child is a one-offer. There’s only ever gonna be one of them. And you are the only parent that is—you know what I mean? So yeah, sure. These are guidance, but at the end of the day, you are the best person. You are your kid’s best bet. Michael Frampton Yeah. Maggie Dent Provided they know how fiercely and unconditionally you love them. Michael Frampton That’s it. Yeah. I always tell my kids, “Here in this home, you are safe and you are loved.” Maggie Dent Yeah. Michael Frampton No matter what happens, come back here. No matter what—we can talk about anything. ‘Cause you’re safe and you’re loved. Maggie Dent No matter what. Michael Frampton That—I keep it that simple. No matter what. Maggie Dent Yep. Michael Frampton Alright. Well Maggie, thank you so much. Maggie Dent Thank you. Michael Frampton Awesome. Maggie Dent Cheers. 116 Maggie Dent - Parenting Boys With Backbone, Heart And Surfboards [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPeH53DPxUk&list=PLOIoGM_c3zEOeXrgrbCxmC3xNmfMisAEr&index=4] For the passionate surfer—whether you're a weekend warrior, a surf dad, or an older surfer—this podcast is all about better surfing and deeper stoke. With expert surf coaching, surf training, and surfing tips, we’ll help you catch more waves, refine your paddling technique, and perfect your pop up on a surfboard. From surf workouts to handling wipeouts, chasing bigger waves, and mastering surf technique, we’re here to make sure you not only improve but truly enjoy surfing more—so you can get more out of every session and become a wiser surfer. Go from Beginner or intermediate Surfer to advanced

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/podcast-surf-mastery/id1088660076 https://open.spotify.com/show/1VvhOpHEu31U4gktXJdkQv?si=ZUWd5smuSkaAh-4ukvIP7g https://www.instagram.com/surfmastery/?hl=en https://www.youtube.com/@SurfMastery/videos https://www.facebook.com/surfmasterysurf https://twitter.com/surf_mastery https://www.tiktok.com/@surfmastery Have you ever been snaked, dropped in on, or steamrolled by an aggressive surfer who seems to think they own the ocean? Find it hard to deal with localism?  Navigating the lineup isn't just about catching waves—it's about dealing with egos, entitlement, and sometimes flat-out intimidation. If you’ve ever felt powerless or frustrated by alpha surfers who constantly push the boundaries of etiquette, this episode offers a crucial shift in mindset and approach. * Learn how to gain respect in the lineup—even from surf legends like Laird Hamilton. * Discover the psychological principles behind why some surfers bully and how to respond effectively. * Get practical tips for standing your ground calmly and confidently without escalating conflict. Hit play now to learn how to hold your own in the lineup and start catching the waves you deserve. Key Points * Introduction of the topic on dealing with aggressive surfers and the importance of standing up for oneself in the lineup. * The host shares a personal anecdote about dealing with Laird Hamilton, emphasizing the need to stand up for oneself and not be a willing victim. * Discussion on the psychological principle that aggressive surfers often connect through conflict and the importance of facing conflict to gain respect. * Advice to match the energy of aggressive surfers and be willing to engage in conflict to earn their respect and avoid being bullied. * Caution about confronting certain individuals, such as psychopaths, and the suggestion to ease into confrontations in crowded lineups. * Reiteration that being bullied in the surf is due to being a willing victim and the importance of not being conflict avoidant to connect with dominant surfers.  Outline Dealing with Aggressive Surfers * Michael Frampton discusses strategies for handling aggressive surfers, emphasizing the importance of standing up for oneself and adhering to surf etiquette. * Michael shares a personal experience involving Laird Hamilton, highlighting the need to confront aggressive behavior calmly and confidently to gain respect. * The narrative illustrates how matching an aggressive surfer's energy and being willing to face conflict can lead to mutual respect and cooperation. * Michael advises that experienced surfers, especially those who exhibit dominant behavior, will test others. Demonstrating skill, respect for lineup etiquette, and confidence can earn respect. * It is noted that while confronting aggressive behavior is important, one should be cautious and read the situation, especially in crowded lineups, to avoid unnecessary conflict. * Michael suggests that if confrontation is not feasible or safe, finding another surfing spot might be a better option. Psychological Principles in Surfing and Life * Michael discusses psychological principles relevant to both surfing and everyday life, particularly the dynamics of conflict and respect. * He explains that many dominant individuals connect through conflict and may take advantage of those who avoid it, suggesting that facing conflict can sometimes lead to connection and mutual respect. * Michael advises that if someone is consistently causing problems, such as snaking or dropping in, it may be necessary to match their energy and engage in conflict to resolve the issue. * He emphasizes that surfing is a competitive activity where waves are a limited resource, and surfers need to be assertive to catch the best waves. Avoiding Conflict with Psychopaths * Michael warns about the presence of psychopaths in surfing and advises caution when confronting aggressive behavior. * He suggests easing into confrontations and reading the situation to avoid dangerous encounters. * Michael emphasizes the importance of knowing when to confront and when to find another surfing spot to ensure safety. Surfing Etiquette and Respect * Michael stresses the importance of surf etiquette and mutual respect among surfers. * He highlights that standing up for oneself and adhering to lineup etiquette can lead to a more harmonious surfing experience. * Michael advises that experienced surfers will test newcomers, and demonstrating confidence and respect can help earn their respect in return. Transcription Welcome back, or welcome to the Surf Mastery Podcast, the podcast that helps passionate, lifelong surfers to catch more waves, surf with more speed, style, and grace, and to gain wisdom and confidence in the water. I am your host, Michael Frampton, and in today's episode, we're gonna learn how to deal with the aggressive surfer. The arrogant surfer, the take-every-wave surfer, the entitled surfer. We all know who this person is—the person that snakes everyone, drops in on everyone. They are everywhere. How do you deal with this? The first thing you gotta remember is it takes two to tango. Every bully needs a willing victim. Let me tell you a story about how I dealt with the literal take-every-wave attitude of Laird Hamilton. I used to surf this novelty spot on an outside reef in Southern California. And every now and then, I'd cross paths with Laird. Always tried to be friendly and say hi. He would always just blank me. And then it got to a stage where he started surfing basically on my schedule. We'd almost paddle out together at first. It was the same thing. I'd try and be friendly to Laird, and he would just completely ignore me and do his thing—take every wave. He was on a standup foil, which was a wave-catching machine, and he himself is a bit of a wave-catching machine. His ability to be in tune with the best wave of the set was pretty admirable. But even when it was my turn, he'd always just come straight at me on his SUP, on his standup foil. Having Laird Hamilton come straight at you on a foil SUP is very intimidating. And the first couple of days, the first couple of surfs this happened, I just backed down and, "Okay, yeah, take that wave, Laird. I'll catch the next wave of the set." But after two days of this, I thought, you know what, if you lead, I'm going. And a set wave came through, and I wanted the biggest wave of the set. So did he. But he'd already just taken the biggest wave of the previous set. And I thought, you know what? It's my turn. I'm gonna hold my ground. And same as before, he got in a little bit earlier than me, and he was pointed straight at me. But I put my blinkers on and I caught the wave. He got scary close, but at the last second, he turned away from me and he continued to surf the unbroken, the shoulder part of the wave, which you can do on a foil board. And I continued to surf my style of surfing, which was closer to the whitewater. And as we were paddling back, he said, "Hey, that was my wave." I stopped paddling and sat up on my board and looked him straight in the eye and with calm confidence I said, "No, it was my turn." And he immediately gave a cheeky smile and paddled off. As I joined him at the takeoff zone and sat up on my board, he said in this friendly voice, "Oh, was that a New Zealand accent? Which part of New Zealand are you from?" And from that moment on, we just chatted and swapped waves. As soon as I chose not to back down and to stand up for—not necessarily my rights—but just general surf etiquette of, "We're both surfing. We're both capable and confident enough to be out here. We can just take turns." As soon as I did that and stood up for myself in a calm way, I instantly gained respect. And that is when he actually engaged with me. Experienced surfers, especially alpha surfers, will test you. They will intimidate you. But once you prove your skills and you show respect to the lineup etiquette, and you conduct yourself with confidence, you will be respected. But if you back down and let yourself be intimidated and you essentially gift that person the waves, they will take more than their fair share. Now, that's an extreme example with Laird, but Laird’s an extreme person. And he was being a twat. He was really pushing me and testing me. But I still, in the beginning, in the first two days when that was happening, I showed him respect. He's a better surfer than me. He's older than me. He probably surfed that spot more than me. But then when it came time, when push came to shove, I held my ground. The principle here is that I matched Laird's energy and I was willing to face the conflict. Remember, it takes two people to tango. Every bully needs a willing victim. Another psychological principle here that is relevant not just in surfing but in your everyday life, is that often these alpha males—or the extroverted person, whoever you wanna label them—they actually connect through conflict and they take advantage of those who are conflict avoidant. So if you're feeling any sort of domination or bullying happening in any part of your life, look that person in the eye and talk about it. Face them and dive into that conflict. You might be surprised—it's actually how you connect with them, because for them, that might be how they grew up. It might be normal for them. Conflict is a normal way of life. Conflict is how they engage with people, and they don't see it as conflict. That's just normal for them. If there's someone that you are having consistent problems with, someone that keeps snaking you, someone that keeps dropping in on you, you have to be willing to match their energy and enter some conflict with that person. Because surfing is not yoga with dolphins. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. And waves are a limited resource. And if you want to catch some set waves, you better be hungry for it and you better be willing to fight for it. There are certain people you should not confront. There are psychopaths out there. Ease into it. Read the room. But if you are conflict avoidant, these surfers will run rings around you. So sometimes it's better just to go and surf somewhere else. So to round off, remember, if you are being bullied in the surf, that is because you are a willing victim. Side note—remember that my example with Laird was an extreme example because he's an extreme character and it was a one-on-one situation. At your local beach, in a crowded lineup, it's gonna be more of a slow burn over time. You have to ease your way into that. But there will be a point where you have to engage in conflict because if you are conflict avoidant, you will never connect with those dominant surfers and you'll never earn. So for more surfing tips and information, please check out the back catalog of this podcast. 115 Handling Aggressive Surfers: Surf Coaching Tactics for Confidence, Respect & More Waves [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tttCt9UZ-3M&list=PLOIoGM_c3zEOeXrgrbCxmC3xNmfMisAEr&index=5] For the passionate surfer—whether you're a weekend warrior, a surf dad, or an older surfer—this podcast is all about better surfing and deeper stoke. With expert surf coaching, surf training, and surfing tips, we’ll help you catch more waves, refine your paddling technique, and perfect your pop up on a surfboard. From surf workouts to handling wipeouts, chasing bigger waves, and mastering surf technique, we’re here to make sure you not only improve but truly enjoy surfing more—so you can get more out of every session and become a wiser surfer. Go from Beginner or intermediate Surfer to advanced.