Asking For More Sex: Becoming Sexually Confident
Full Episode Transcript
Let’s start the conversation. Hello everyone, and welcome to Still Becoming One. We are really excited that you are here with us today. We’ve got a great, great show for you.
Kate Aldrich:
We are super excited. We have some guests with us today and I want to introduce them a little bit. I don’t know that they necessarily need it, but we wanted to kind of share who they are and how we’ve gotten to know them a little bit out in the marriage ministry world. Now they’re mainly in the whiskey world, which we also love, and so we are very honored and excited to be hosting our guests today Fawn and Keith Weaver.
Kate Aldrich:
We got to know Fawn and Keith a little bit through being marriage champions when Fawn published her first book called Happy Wives Club, which we greatly have appreciated their focus on marriage that has always sort of had a focus or push on just the happiness and the joy we can experience in marriage, the optimistic and just that hope that like, as we focus on that, that we can withstand and have fun for the the whole time of our marriage, which we just love. Um, through that interaction brad and I followed fawn and keith’s journey to lynchburg, tennessee, and the untold story of nearest green, the first black master distiller and his apprentice and friend jack daniels. So with that we have had the honor of visiting Uncle Nearest Distillery twice now. Every time we launch a kid to college. We go on a whiskey tour.
Brad Aldrich:
Seems like a really good idea.
Kate Aldrich:
So we have done that twice and found that it feels like a little slice of home each time that we go there. As a multi-race family ourselves, we’re passionate about bringing awareness to stories such as uncle nearest in any way that we can as a family. Fawn and Keith speak openly about their love for each other, their marriage of I think it’s 20 or 21 years I’m not sure where you guys are in that their faith and their founding of uncle nearest distillery and the nearest green foundation. Fawn recently released her book Love and Whiskey which was phenomenal we hope you all will check it out in which she shares her journey of uncovering and now sharing with the world the story and legacy of Uncle Nearest, fawn and Keith. A humble welcome to both of you today. Thank you very much.
Keith Weaver:
Thanks for having us both of you today. Yes, thank you very much.
Brad Aldrich:
Thanks for having us Breaking in with a super quick announcement. Don’t miss it at the end. We are going to have a giveaway for two copies of love and whiskey, Fawn Weaver’s new bestselling book. Don’t miss it. At the end We’ll tell you how to enter.
Kate Aldrich:
We’re super excited, we are.
Brad Aldrich:
Yeah, no, we’re so excited. We loved the book. We loved kind of hearing some of the story of your journey and how that wove together with Uncle Nearest and Jack Daniels, which is such a great thing, one of the things that we wanted, since we do a marriage podcast, we wanted to talk to you guys about the relationship that made some of this happen, and I got to hear you speak, fawn, and one of the things that you said I think really well, and it’s in the book too is you said you chose well when choosing.
Fawen Weaver:
Yes, I did, yes, I did.
Brad Aldrich:
What did you guys see in each other that you knew you were choosing?
Fawen Weaver:
well, oh well, first of all, the way that I met Keith is his mother set us up. Okay, she, he met me, she had spent a little bit of time around me. She was at, she owned a hair salon in Los Angeles. My girlfriend had been going to her for about 15 years and Keith’s mother’s favorite topic is her son, her one and only son, and so everyone in the salon would be gossiping and, but not his mother. His mother just wanted to talk about everything he did that week and so he is absolutely her, her cherished gym and and she, she spent a little bit of time around me and she called Keith and said I met your wife. And no, no grown man wants to hear from his mother those words. So, so, so he, he was uninterested in calling me and it took her a while to get my number.
Fawen Weaver:
Actually it she, she, every week that I would go this was back in the day, where it’s not. The appointments were like real appointments, not necessarily cell phones and stuff, so she didn’t have my contact information. And every week I would go to get my hair done and she’d say don’t forget to leave your number before you leave, and every week I would leave out and not give my number. And I realized after doing this, maybe four times, that either I was going to have to find a new hairdresser, because she was not letting off of this, or I’d have to meet her son. And so I called my girlfriend and I said tell me about this, keith Weaver. And she said, oh, dear son. I said yes, and she said what about him? And I told him you know what she said. And she says no one’s good enough for Odia’s son. And so, babe, I’ll let you take the story from here.
Keith Weaver:
It’s really cool and I feel valid for some, because you wouldn’t be able to recreate it today is that we were able to develop a relationship without seeing one another. So in today’s world there’s apps and there’s swiping and there’s the Internet. Of course there was the Internet when we met we’re not that but but there was no internet when we met. We’re not that old, but there was no Facebook. And so our relationship was really began off of connecting really on a blind date where we had conversations and we talked about family and faith and interest and fun, and it was so good that I almost didn’t want to mess it up by meeting her in person, because my mom described Fawn as this woman who comes to the salon, she reads and she has a sweet spirit. So paint that picture in your head of what you might think a sweet spirit girl who’s who can read a book like that’s kind of like maybe at least on the reading side, a low bar, but it was just, it was just really great.
Keith Weaver:
And then when we finally met, uh, it was it’s cliche, but it was love at first sight. And then since that time I’ve been just rocking with my best friend. What’s really cool is to see how we develop and how our relationship respects those developments of each of us as individual, individual people and collectively as a couple. So it’s been quite awesome and beautiful, yeah.
Fawen Weaver:
Kate, you were right. It’s been 20 years. It’ll be 21 years in.
Kate Aldrich:
December.
Brad Aldrich:
Okay, that’s awesome.
Kate Aldrich:
That’s amazing. I love that, guys. That’s so great.
Brad Aldrich:
So there’s this point in the book where you Fawn had fallen in love with this story of Nearest Green, the Green family, the call farm and its connection with Jack Daniels, and you stumble upon this opportunity to buy the farm and you paint it in the book like that was just like this easy. Yeah, let’s do it kind of marriage thing. But those are huge hard decisions. There’s several places in the book that you guys made big hard decisions. How do you guys do that together?
Fawen Weaver:
We spend a lot of time with the Lord and so the alignment. I think a lot of times people are focused on aligning with one another. We’re actually focused on aligning with God and in that alignment, that triangle. So if you’ve got, you know, if you’ve got a perfect triangle, right, then as long as we’re both aligned, this is automatically, that what brings us together is automatically going to make a perfect triangle, because we’re we’re both aligned at the same place, and so for us I can’t say that any there’s decisions in the book that I think would cause most couples to go back and forth for a year, where Keith and I probably made the decisions in 10 seconds, because, again, our alignment is with one another only as a result of our primary alignment, which is with god. So, babe, do you want to add to that? I love that.
Keith Weaver:
I mean that was so well expressed. I mean, we do, we? I always say with fawn she thinks and moves like almost it’s one simultaneous action, as I’m teasing her, as I’m often, you know, doing, but it’s really true of both of us. I mean, our faith foundation is so strong and our instincts are so aligned that we don’t have tons of deliberation, we’re able to look at each other, think about it, pray about it and move, and it moves pretty rapidly. So some of the things that people said wow, you came on a visit and then within a matter of hours, really a couple of days, you’re buying an entire farm in a state where you don’t reside. For us, that’s kind of normal. It’s kind of normal. And the reality is we’ve done it multiple times and so I’ve purchased things. Fawn doesn’t even know I purchased them and I’ll drive by and be like, oh babe, I forgot to tell you we bought this building, okay.
Fawen Weaver:
This is true. We have three buildings on the square that I’ve never been in. But here’s the thing and I think that this is the important part, because it sounds haphazard if you don’t understand our relationship with God and our prayer life our relationship with God and our prayer life. So so that when I met, when I met Keith, we had this amazing conversation, as he described. We talked on the phone and we talked for hours and we get to the end of the conversation and the last thing I said to him was I know that, you know we had a great conversation. I love talking to you, you love talking to me and I know that you think that this is probably going to go somewhere. However, if you wake up tomorrow morning and you have no desire to call me, go with that emotion yeah and he says it was like a Jedi mind trick.
Fawen Weaver:
Right, but. But. But what I explained is it was a prayer that I have prayed for. At that point I had prayed this, that prayer, for about four or five years. At this point, I have prayed that prayer for 28 years and or 27 years, and the prayer was very simple. The prayer is is what I call my box me in prayer?
Fawen Weaver:
Lord, if this is, your will open the door in a manner in which no man, including myself, can close. If it is not, your will then close the door in a manner in which no man, including myself, can open. And so for when Keith called me back, I already knew he was the one. Yeah, because the Lord shut down on that prayer. The Lord shut down everyone who came before him, and, and, and. So that is the same thing when we are. The reason why I’m not concerned when he, you know we pass by a building and he says, hey, babe, we’re an escrow for that building is because the constant prayer is if this is not, your will close the door in a manner in which no man can open, including us. So if he opens a door for us to go through it, we’re going to go through it.
Brad Aldrich:
I love that.
Kate Aldrich:
That’s phenomenal.
Brad Aldrich:
I love that. So all right, but this definitely cues up my next question. This one’s for you, keith. So I have encouraged. I love that I married a strong woman and I’ve encouraged other men that, like at every women’s conference, proverbs 31 is read as this ideal woman and I’ve encouraged men. We need to read that and figure out what it means to support that strong woman wife. You married a strong woman who is out there doing amazing things. What does it take for you to be able to do that? Be that strong husband that she needs?
Keith Weaver:
do that, be that strong husband that she needs. It’s, it’s a few things. One, it’s respect. I think one of the challenges societally that we grapple with not so much me and it sounds like not so much you all is people want to put genders in specific boxes, people in specific lanes, and they want the construct of marriage to be defined by what these supposed lanes and boxes are supposed to be.
Keith Weaver:
And when you understand that we’re human, that we’re developing, that we’re changing, and you love the person you’re with and you appreciate that those changes are happening and you’re secure, you can love and support and play you can play it from the back, as I can do. And then sometimes that shifts where I’m in the front. And there were years as an entertainment executive where we go to these events and everybody’s focused on me because I’m the entertainment executive guy and then would look to fawn, say so, what do you do? And now it’s reversed. Yeah, people will look at me like okay, well, what do you do? I’m like nothing, just keep bumping along.
Keith Weaver:
And so I think if you’re not, you know again, like I said, secure, but if you’re not a person that takes yourself so seriously which I do not that takes yourself so seriously which I do not, and if I’m, you know, confident and supportive of what my, my best friend and partner’s goals and ambitions are, and we’re prayed up and connected together, it’s really easy to support that strength. I’m actually, you know, maybe oversharing, but I’m going to share it anyway. I’m attracted to strength?
Brad Aldrich:
Yeah, absolutely.
Keith Weaver:
You know, it’s exciting, it’s a lot of fun, and so, and then that allows us to build things together which are pretty cool.
Kate Aldrich:
I love that for sure.
Fawen Weaver:
So I want to add to something, because I think this whole Proverbs 31 thing has been turned into a bunch of rubbish, nonsense that is not biblical. So let’s talk about what Proverbs actually says. The first thing it says is of the wife is she is worth far more than rubies. We have to understand in biblical times, rubies were more precious and rare and valuable than what we now know as a yellow diamond or a that. So we need to start there, because we don’t look at rubies as being as rare as they were back in biblical times. So we need to begin there. We then have to go to the fact that she selects wool and flax and she works with her hands. Right, she is a worker. And so then people go oh well, she works at home, she sews. So many women that work at home sews. No, no, no.
Fawen Weaver:
It says she is like the merchant ship bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it is night to provide food for her family. Okay, who made the husband the full provider and and and portions for her female servants? Can we just hard stop here for every Proverbs 31 woman who thinks that they are supposed to cook clean, take care of the kids, take care of the husband, go out where she had had servants hard stop, let’s not a servant. And and and and it says female servants. What does that mean? That means that they had to specify the female because there were also male servants. So you’ve got. You’ve got that. Then she considers a field and buys it out of her earnings. She plants a vineyard OK, now there’s plenty more here and about the fact that she’s trading and her trading is profitable.
Fawen Weaver:
The Proverbs 30 woman, 31 woman is a businesswoman with servants looking, because all of these women are miserable and trying to find worth and trying to find purpose, trying to live out. This Proverbs 31 life that the church has convinced them is something completely different than what is in the Bible. It’s also like the Christians who then speak out against drinking, when the Bible not only did it not speak out against drinking, but there’s a reason that Jesus’s first miracle performed was not just turning water into wine. We’ve got to remember the circumstances. He turned water into wine at a wedding, into wine at a wedding. Now, mind you, in those days the weddings would last for days and it was an absolute embarrassment to run out of wine at any point in the three-day wedding. So the wedding would last for days and people would be drinking the entire time this wedding. They drank so much that the wine ran out. So Jesus’s mother asked for him to prevent the embarrassment to make to turn water into wine for people who had already consumed too much.
Fawen Weaver:
Okay, so let’s, let’s start here, and and. And. So the thing that’s important is is that then people will say and I’ve heard this all the time in the church Well, you know, what they were drinking then isn’t what we’re drinking now. It wasn’t as fermented and it wasn’t as strong. Really, then why didn’t?
Fawen Weaver:
Noah sleep with his daughters Because he drank too much. I mean, what? What kind of booze was that?
Kate Aldrich:
You don’t recognize your daughter.
Fawen Weaver:
What kind of wine was that? And and so what the Bible admonishes of us is to not get drunk. What the Bible admonishes of us is to drink and consume in moderation, to consume in celebration. That’s why God created it. We keep taking all these amazing things that God created, like the Sabbath, that so many Christians refuse to take off. They decide to spend 24 hours volunteering because Jesus said in a parable would you not pull your sheep out of a ditch? Yes, but you’re not doing that every week, Like Jesus was referring to extreme situations where something might happen, but the commandment is still to rest. And so all these amazing things. Because God knew us so well and God knew how he created us, he gave us drink to imbibe, to not only enjoy and to celebrate. But there’s a reason why. During prohibition, the doctors were giving prescriptions for whiskey.
Fawen Weaver:
Hello, like and it, but it’s all about moderation, and so one of the things that I think Keith and my life do is we really challenged the miserable nature of what the church has created in most Christian households.
Fawen Weaver:
Yes, most marriages not happy. Keith and I I don’t know a marriage genuinely more happy. We laugh so much that people have tried to put cameras in our house for like reality shows, and Keith and I always always say no, because no one would believe that we play and joke and have this much fun because the world doesn’t allow that for married couples. Yeah, correct. And so now we’re on 21 years and we can’t even count the number of times we say I love you in a day. We can’t count the number of times we hug and kiss each other in a day, and that’s something that the church really messed up, because the church has made it seem like marriage should, should, just be so, much, so much work, and and it’s not if you are laying down your life for your partner, for the one that God chose for you, it shouldn’t be that much work Right.
Kate Aldrich:
Endurance, it’s not. It’s not to endure, no.
Fawen Weaver:
Yeah, that’s the, that’s the intention and it’s. It’s interesting because there’s a book that’s still, you know, one of the most famous books of all time, called Think and Grow Rich. It’s a guy by the name of Napoleon Hill and he was hired by Carnegie Andrew Carnegie to go and interview all of the American titans of their day, right? So you’re talking about the people that we see on the side of buildings Charles Schwab, john D Rockefeller, the people that Benjamin Franklin, people that we see in the history books and, and we know, jp Morgan but we sort of forget. These were actually human beings, right, that actually built things. And he entered, he interviewed about 500 of America’s millionaires and all of America’s titans at that time to do a college course and he wrote out this college course.
Fawen Weaver:
It’s in this book called I. I think it’s like the, the, the 10 laws of success, or something like that it’s. It’s literally looks like an academic book to this day, the way that they sell it, but what so many people miss when in that book, when reading and there’s a lot of stuff in the book I toss out. It doesn’t apply to me because of my Christian faith, but I don’t believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater, right, you just need to know the Bible, to know what’s what, and, and Satan will float a thousand truths just to get one lie across. And so you have to know, ok, what are the thousand truths and what is the one lie, and toss out the one lie. And so, going through the book, there’s a lot of truths and then there’s some that is like, oh, satan, you tried to get in there, okay, cool, you got tossed Right. But one of the things that he said and I absolutely believe it to be true is he said in all of his interviewing, the one thing that was the top indicator as to whether or not a person would fail or succeed in this life was the partner they chose.
Fawen Weaver:
And when people talk about that book and they talk about all that, they never talk about that one thing. It’s almost like when people talk about the Bible and they talk about all these laws, but they miss the law that is above every law and above the prophets. They miss that, that one right, and it’s, it’s the, it’s the same thing, and so I take very seriously that God selected someone for me and because of that I hold him in the highest regard and the highest esteem. I adore him. I place him above everybody. But God Right. And when you do that, your ego is checked at the door. Like you it is. There have been. I can count on one hand the times my ego has gotten in the way in our relationship, and every single time it ends very quickly with an apology.
Brad Aldrich:
Yeah, and when I even think back in those moments my stomach still cringes yeah, I love the look he’s giving you right now, where he’s like I don’t even know those times that you’re talking about right now like he’s just like whatever, there are water under the bridge I really don’t.
Keith Weaver:
It’s so funny. I was, I was what I was. What I was thinking was I was like she’s so cute. I just you know.
Kate Aldrich:
Well, that’s what I actually thought when you were saying that I was like he’s checking around um yeah, but I, I love that. I, I think you know. Coming back to what we were talking about with Proverbs 31,. You like and I hope that I’m this for you like, whatever dreams you come up with, I want to figure out how to make them happen.
Brad Aldrich:
That’s the next verse that Fawn stopped at. I mean the next one is she goes to the gates and is talking up her husband right, so there is that place of it. So is a partnership in that Proverbs 31 that we miss often in this world.
Kate Aldrich:
Because he’s walking alongside of her in ways that allow all of that to be whatever she’s doing and whatever she’s accomplishing. And I just appreciate that about you guys so much and I do think you’re not wrong. It’s something that’s missing in marriages. It’s something that’s missing in the church.
Brad Aldrich:
Yeah.
Kate Aldrich:
I mean Brad, and I could go on and on for that for a long time, but I appreciate that you guys are out there showing that example of of the way that it biblically should be.
Brad Aldrich:
And this kind of goes along with it. Statistics show in American couples that couples who’ve been married for more than 10 years I think the rate is now something like they spend 20 minutes a week in actual dialogue together, and you guys are both incredibly busy. The amount of things you’re doing. I can’t even imagine how much you guys are both incredibly busy. The amount of things you’re doing. I can’t even imagine how much you guys are doing. But I’ve heard you several times talk about making sure you’re spending time together, taking Sabbath together. How do you guys do that? How do you guys prioritize time together? I’ll tackle this one.
Kate Aldrich:
It’s it’s.
Keith Weaver:
It’s it’s, you know, what matters most, which is one the Sabbath. It’s biblical, it’s fun, it’s saying as we all know. And then you know, we all make choices, and so there are ways in which you can create excuses for things. We make the Sabbath and our relationship together a priority. So do we travel a lot? Yes, it used to be. On the first half of our marriage it was me that was traveling far more because my job was global, and now Fawn is traveling an inordinate amount of time. She’s on the road to support the brand and the growth of Uncle Nearest. But we’ve made a priority for the most part. Wherever we are, and it’s time for us to observe the Sabbath, we will come to where we are. I mean so I’ll fly to her, she’ll come to me, and that’s just been something that we’ve found important. We also, even in booming periods where there’s a lot of travel demands on us, we still find time to go find each other. And Fawn has orchestrated her speaking schedule and her travel schedule to where she’s not gone for weeks and weeks on end. She makes it so that she’s back on the weekend or I’m going to meet her wherever she is, and so it’s priorities right and then we talk, we have a. It doesn’t happen in the way we prefer it to happen each day, but we have a board meeting and sometimes it’s when it’s ideal meeting and sometimes it’s when it’s ideal board meeting is really coffee hour, but, but the board meeting sometimes it’s coffee hour and we’re talking about nothing, sometimes we’re talking about something, yeah, and sometimes it’s just minutes of time, um, and sometimes it’s actually the board meeting in the morning is actually in the evening because of just the way today it’s going to be in the evening because I had to get to the office early. So that’s just where it is in those foundational components. Those things you put into position are fairly critical because there’s not that much time that goes without observing these principles.
Keith Weaver:
Fawn wrote a book entitled. Well, she’s written a couple, a few now. A Happy Wives Club is one, argument of Free Marriages is another, and really for both of those books it was really getting after. What are these principles? What are these common denominators for successful relationships? And for me, I really appreciate it because, unlike Vaughn’s parents I came from, you know, parents who divorced, and so going into a relationship, particularly with marriage, you know, sort of at the start of it was really disconcerting to me and I appreciate, wow, there are those who have come before us, those who have these very successful marriages, and what are those key ingredients and so we’ve really folded that in. And so we’ve really folded that in. I I know in the way fawn did that research, it was really fueled by.
Keith Weaver:
This is amazing what we have being told. Relationships don’t last this little way. No, your honeymoon, oh, it’s your one, it’s your two, it’s your three, it’s your five, okay, okay, it’s year one, it’s year two, it’s year three, it’s year five, okay, it’s 10 years, but wait for the next 10 years. And so, like putting this doom and gloom and this termination on something that, in our case, has just developed, that cadence for how we’re connecting has been just really foundationally fortifying for us and it’s pulled us closer together, especially with what we deal with. Here’s a little secret Most people, when you look at us, and if you Google Fawn and you Google me, like, ok, great, well, two highly successful people that join together and become that much more successful. Those books, which I love when people have read them, like you all, have a really foundationally just a blessing to us and I’m happy that it’s helped and been beneficial to so many others.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah, so good, that’s so good. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think, with the couples that we work with, there is that piece of people. I find it painful when people say like we just, we just don’t have the time, we just we can’t carve it out. And I mean, like you guys are, it’s different, but our lives are very, very busy, and I’m like, but this is, this is what we carve out and figure out first, and then fit everything else into it. Right, because that’s what’s? That is our priority and our our, um, yeah, our number one after God. And so I’m always thinking you can, you can figure it out. I know it’s hard sometimes, but you can.
Brad Aldrich:
Well, I I always end up challenging people that, as long as the you know ratings networks are saying that you know, viewing hours keep going up and amount of time on Instagram and keep going up. You can right Like you can make that time. It’s just you need to choose it Exactly, so exactly yeah.
Keith Weaver:
It reminds me of when Fawn and I first met. I didn’t grow up in a church, going home, you know. So I’ll be transparent in that. And so I was saved as a late teenager, and then I went deep into work and just work, work, work, work, work.
Keith Weaver:
And then so, when Vaughn and I met, even though I was saved, even though I had, you know, this faith foundation, it wasn’t as strong as I wanted it to be in one area in particular, which is I didn’t observe the Sabbath. So, for Vaughn, a meeting, it was a non-negotiable and it made me nervous. And it made me nervous because I had this crazy job, I was climbing up the Hollywood ranks and I felt I needed to look at the time of the Blackberry so I need to look at my Blackberry all the time. I have a global job and because it was a non-negotiable for Fawn, the Blackberry aside and what I found and it’s not intuitive, but it’s certainly in accordance with faith, which is when I put it aside to discipline myself, to submit to his word and his will I actually ended up being that much more productive, I actually got more accomplished.
Keith Weaver:
And so, as it relates to what we’ve been talking about, oh, I don’t have time for the coffee hour or the time together or the time for this. I’m going to wait till this point to get to that time Actually, that time may never come and actually, the time that you’re connecting with your spouse, they end up benefiting you in such a great way, even beyond the greater connectivity to the two of you. You know Fawn has shared with me and others that it’s not just two halves make one, it’s a multiplication that we’re together, we are a superpower together. That we’re together.
Fawen Weaver:
We are a superpower together and so those benefits we don’t want to have people not benefit and rob themselves of those things that can make them great and superpowers that. The church for so long has taught that the husband is half, the wife is half, and a half plus a half equals a whole. That’s not how God intended marriage to be. He intended for both of his children to be whole. So marriage in the church has been about addition. But marriage in God’s kingdom is about multiplication. One whole person times one whole person equals one whole person. That’s what the two becomes one need. God never said half and half becomes one. He said the two become one. How do two become one? It’s one times one equals one.
Kate Aldrich:
Right, I love that and I have to be honest, I don’t want half of Brad, I want all of him, all of who.
Fawen Weaver:
God, I have to be honest.
Kate Aldrich:
I don’t want half of Brad, I want all of him, all of who God made him to be. If it’s half, that means we’re actually shedding some parts of who God made him to be, and I love that. I think that that is key.
Brad Aldrich:
And that is truly our vision for the podcast for our blog that we did in the past, our podcast now of still becoming one, and even our ministry, where we’re helping couples try and figure out what does it look like to get back on that journey of becoming one, so that so speaks to our hearts.
Kate Aldrich:
Yeah, for sure.
Brad Aldrich:
I know we have limited time because I know you guys are super busy, but I could not help but acknowledge today, october 1st, as we’re recording this you released a new label with Nearest Green’s name on it.
Fawen Weaver:
Yes, we did.
Brad Aldrich:
Man like that is such a vision. I wanted you to talk about what that means for the two of you.
Fawen Weaver:
Yeah, well, you know Uncle Nearest, that is what everyone called him, right? But if Nearest Green, during that period of time, would have been able to own his own distillery because, remember, in the prime of when he was working and when he was distilling for Jack, african-americans were property, not considered people. We were not allowed to patent, we were not allowed to trademark, we were not allowed to own businesses. And so I have to think that if he was able to own a business, if he did start a business his friend Jack Daniel had Jack Daniels, I have to believe, and had Jack Daniel distillery, I have to believe he would have named his distillery nearest green distillery. And so one of the things that’s been confusing for people for so long is that the brand name is uncle nearest but we intentionally did not name the distillery uncle nearest distillery. And the reason is is because it was always intended that Nearest Green Tennessee Whiskey would be what takes this company to the next level. That price point, that $29.99 price point that is able to compete with the big boys, that’s able to go toe to toe, that’s able to go all around the world. That was always the case.
Fawen Weaver:
But if you think about it, when we began this if we had said the name nearest green, if we had put that on a bottle, people would think number one. They must have run out of names to call something Number two. It sounds like your closest golf course. So we really had to define nearest green as a human being. Now when people say nearest green, they don’t think about the closest golf course, they think about the human being. But it took us about seven years to be able to do that. For people, when you hear the name nearest green, to immediately think of near screen, the master distiller, the teacher of jack daniel, the mentor of jack daniel, the only known master distillery for jack daniel distillery 7, we had to define him as a human by putting uncle in front of it first. But now that we have done that, that line will still absolutely remain that top tier $50 to $200 bottle. But what will really go around the world and what will go into every market is Nearscreen Tennessee Whiskey.
Kate Aldrich:
Wow, that’s awesome. That’s amazing. Brad was so excited when he was like they’re announcing something the day that we get to talk to them. I know we announced it just two.
Fawen Weaver:
we just announced it two hours ago, so I’m talking to you while my text messages are flooding.
Kate Aldrich:
Oh, my goodness, yes.
Brad Aldrich:
So I saw it as soon as and just man, seeing that name on a bottle, I’m reading the book, knowing how much that’s been a passion and how God’s been leading in that passion for so long, and seeing that today was just really kind of cool.
Kate Aldrich:
So it was really awesome, absolutely, guys, it’s been phenomenal having you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with us. It has been an honor. We’re super thankful for you guys.
Fawen Weaver:
Yeah, it’s just everything you are doing is just near and dear to our hearts and we will promote it, as in our little way, as much as we can, because we appreciate it so very much thank you very much, appreciate you thank you kate, thank you brad, and I’m always so grateful when, when people have like zoom meetings or or anything in the middle of the day, where I get to see keith in the middle of the day this is two days in a row where we’ve had zooms where I got to see him in the middle of the day. And because I don’t actually pay attention to my calendar other than to do what it says to do, I didn’t know he was on this call. I didn’t know he was on the one yesterday.
Kate Aldrich:
So this has just been awesome, oh good, good Well, thank you so much, guys. Yes, thank you.
Fawen Weaver:
Thank you, kate, appreciate you, Appreciate you all, appreciate you, appreciate you all.
Brad Aldrich:
Before we sign off today, we want to give you a chance to get your hands on a free copy of the remarkable true story of Jack Daniels, his master distiller, nearest Green, and the improbable rise of Uncle Nearest, the book Love and Whiskey by Fawn Weaver. We had such a great time talking with them and we loved reading the book. I think you will too. All you have to do is go onto Instagram, go to stillbecoming1, follow our page and you’ll see the post where we talk about love and whiskey and we talk about this episode. All we want you to do is like that post and make a comment, tell us something that you liked about the episode, and we will be choosing two people on October 23rd 2024 to receive a free copy of the book. So watch your DMs. We’ll be sending you a message for your address and we hope that you enjoy the book as much as we do. So thank you guys. So much for tuning in. Until next time, I’m Brad Aldrich.
Kate Aldrich:
And I’m Kate Aldrich. Be kind and take care of each other.
