Singer John West's Humble Hustle

Hey, what's up y'all? This is Jon West, hanging out at the Young Hollywood Studios. About to play you my song, Love You Tonight. You're far, far away from me. Yeah. And I don't know much about you, but I like what I see.

Hey everyone, Nicki Novak here in the Young Hollywood Studio with John West. How's it going?

Oh, it's good. Yeah, good to be here. Would you mind if I told you I loved you tonight? Kind of seems when you're close to me, it's going to be all right.

Oh, you sort of do it all. You started. Wait, did I hear your very first job? Shrimp peeling?

Yes. If you're from Louisiana, this is, you know, a right of passage. This is like working at McDonald's. Yeah, right. You know, it's either McDonald's or you peel shrimp and crawfish at a seafood restaurant. while sitting on a bucket, um, in high school. But yeah, that was basically my first gig. Um, and it was it was good because basically I got to listen to the radio all afternoon while I was stalling out crawfish. Would you mind if I told you I loved you just for tonight? Kind of seems when you're close to me, it's going to be all right.

It's gonna be all right. Yeah.

It's gonna be all right.

And then you became a cartoonist? Or you went to school for it or?

Yeah, I was always, I've always done art on the side. I was published at one point in about a dozen college newspapers like doing this comic strip and some, you know, left-wing political cartoons.

There's a lot of political stuff. Yes, with that. Caricatures and that.

And some caricatures. Yeah, on on on occasion.

And then you ended up getting into music and you were a street performer on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. And I heard that you were very specific about how you chose where you were going to do street performing. Like there's the people in Venice and

Yeah, I mean, well definitely like the Venice boardwalk if you're familiar with LA here, you know, like it's a little more out there of like, I want to say the freak show, but it's a little more like crazy. This like people are out there to get a beer. Right. Maybe throw you a dollar. You know what I'm saying. But the Santa Monica Promenade is more like, It's the elite. It's it's the mall. Right. It's like, yeah, definitely like and so people are out there like trying to buy some $30 sunglasses. And so they're a little more instead of a dollar, they're up and it a little bit. Yeah, so you might be able to sell a CD, you know what I'm saying. listen. We've been in love before, haven't we? Haven't we, babe?

And I think being in front of random crowds like that definitely gives you. You got to hustle, which is the name of your new album that's it's not out yet, but it's called the Humble Hustle. And you have three-song EP now on iTunes.

That's right. There's three-song EP. There's also our last song we put out with Big Sean called Already There. You can buy separately as a single.

I love that song.

Yeah, thank you. Everybody in the world, if you hear me now, put your hands in the air with you now. This goes out to the already there. You know that we're already there.

And you said you get your style from Will Ferrell and Anchorman.

Oh, yeah, completely. Yeah. Will Ferrell is a fashion icon. I mean, every move he

So do you wear the thick ties?

He switches it up. I've got some in the closet, you know.

Polyester jackets?

Oh yeah, I've got a whole one. Yeah. And I have a nice blue. I have a blue blazer, a nice like blue blazer. I think it's like saying that blue blazer. It's going to be all right. Yeah. I promise. It's gonna be all right. Yeah.

We have a little, we want to bring you back to your roots.

Oh wow. Yeah, I saw these um, Yeah. These dry erase markers and

Yeah. Well, we have them here for a reason. We want to bring you back to your cartoonist days.

Oh wow. So are you up for a little draw-off?

Yeah, I think we should, maybe we could just like draw each other or something. Caricatures of each other?

Yeah, maybe we'll do some of the words like we do a head and then if we want, we can do a little body.

Okay, let's do it.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying. We'll just be stick people.

Somebody's going to give us one minute. Oh, we have a minute. Okay. I gotta be quick on this. Get ready. All right. Okay. Set. Go. You said you have a lazy eye, right? A lazy eye. What does that mean? It just hangs a little low. Okay. It's supposed to be eyebrows, but it looks sort of mannish. You got nice hair. Okay, we're

Thank you.

Did you get that? He said I had nice hair. All right. Are we ready for the reveal? We we going to turn we can't show it to each other? Or we going to show it to the

We'll show it to them first and then we'll turn it towards each other and we'll laugh. Let's talk about our art. One, two, three, go. Okay, so this is just a rough sketch. Wow. You win. I have your hair. I gave you a guitar. I gave you a fat tie and a smile and a lazy ear. Is this hair with the high eye? Well it wasn't meant to do it that way, but you do have that. Look, I didn't really, I didn't really give you. Yours is just like some dots and a little. Here's is much more flattering and much more professionally drawn than mine. If I would have drawn feet it would have been over. Do we get that?

I think we should hang it as art in the Young Hollywood studio.

It's going to be all right. Yeah. It's gonna be all right.