What It’s Like to Carry On a Tradition With a Friend Who Can’t Remember It

Gabe: As though you’re strangers.

Andy: You take 20 paces, then turn around and come back. You still don’t acknowledge each other till the very last second. Then you just stick up your hand, give a high five, and walk home.

Gabe: You can’t speak.

Andy: There’s no acknowledgment of the other person’s existence other than the high five.

Beck: Were you able to maintain a straight face?

Andy: The first time was hard.

Gabe: We got really good at it. We thought, What if a car is driving by right now, or there’s another family walking behind us—and they see two random guys walk past each other, then turn around at the exact same time, walk back, give each other a high five without looking, and then just keep walking?

Andy: It would be a weird thing to witness, so we saw it as a gift for anybody who happened to be driving by.

Gabe, talk about the mechanics of the high five.

Gabe: [It started as] a pretty standard high five. But over time, we started adding other moves to it. It eventually became a clap, a snap, and then you open your hand and high-five.

Beck: Could we talk about the journal that you have with the hand on it? Was that instated from the beginning, or did you go through the archive to get these details?

Andy: Early on, we would shoot baskets, and I wanted to keep score of who was winning. So I started the journal, and I would just go back through our text thread and document who sent the signal and, if we played a basketball game, who won. And anything else interesting about it. We’ve done a few high fives walking across the stage at the Ryman Auditorium here in Nashville when we were doing shows there, or other places when we’ve been on tour.

Friends started to ask, “Can I go on the high-five walk with you?” So I mark down any special guests. It isn’t rare for our wives or kids to come, too.

On the first birthday of the high five, we probably had 15 or 20 guys [come with us]. Some walked with me, some walked with Gabe—so there was a long line of guys walking and giving each other a high five. Another gift to the people driving by.

Beck: Over these six years, how often would you say you’ve missed it?

Andy: Probably two or three times a year, [when we’re out of town].

Gabe: This might sound funny, but for the last six and a half years, it’s been one of the most consistent things in my life.

Beck: Walking 30 minutes to high-five each other is not the easiest way to regularly connect with your friend. It would be a lot simpler to just have a weekly phone call. So what makes it so meaningful to you?

Andy: It’s the kind of thing that sounds really stupid at the beginning, and it only sounds cool if you’ve been doing it for a long time. There’s something about the aggregate of it that feels special. It’s a commitment. It feels like an intentional waste of time, and I mean “waste of time” in the best sense.