Speaker 1: Coming to you from the dining room table at East
Speaker 1: Barbary Lane. Welcome to a very special edition a Full
Speaker 1: Circle the Podcast. I'm your host Martha Madigal and I'm.
Speaker 2: Your host Charles Tyson Junior.
Speaker 1: We have a very special guest today. She is truly
Speaker 1: an American treasurer. Not only is she one of the
Speaker 1: finest musicians, a brilliant songwriter, and a seriously gifted singer.
Speaker 1: She explores genres of music like none other. She's one
Speaker 1: of the most talented and funniest live performers we have
Speaker 1: ever seen. And we got to spend last Saturday night
Speaker 1: with Susan Warner. Welcome to the Full Circle Table.
Speaker 3: I am really happy to be here, and thanks for
Speaker 3: inviting me. Absolutely, I was so excited to meet you
Speaker 3: Saturday because you're pals with my friend Elizabeth Williams, and
Speaker 3: Elizabeth attracts the best energy around her. She is just
Speaker 3: she is just moving the world forward in the most
Speaker 3: wonderful way. She always has been. And so when I
Speaker 3: met you and we were talking and you said a podcast,
Speaker 3: it was easy to say, hell yes, because I'm so
Speaker 3: interested in having more time with you, and so we'll
Speaker 3: have time together with you know, microphones and cameras.
Speaker 1: On microphones and cameras. And by the way, wine.
Speaker 3: Cheers and the little wine cheer cheers.
Speaker 2: This is this is coffee. No, it's not. No, it's
Speaker 2: not you.
Speaker 1: But did you see the mug? Did you see the mug?
Speaker 3: What does the mug say? Wait? Two, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of those Christmas gift.
Speaker 1: It was a Christmas gift. My other buddy actually introduced you.
Speaker 1: And it's also a long time I'm friend of yours.
Speaker 1: Kathy O'Connell.
Speaker 3: Kathy is the best, the best, the best. So Kathy,
Speaker 3: as some of your listeners may know, it is the
Speaker 3: longtime host of Kids Corner w XPN Radio, and she
Speaker 3: has been there so long and created such a great
Speaker 3: community between generations at XPN. And I said to her,
Speaker 3: and I said, does Roger who runs the station, does
Speaker 3: he know the value that you've brought to that to
Speaker 3: that enterprise. And she said, yes he does. And I
Speaker 3: was glad because kids though right to get kids listening
Speaker 3: to you know, independent triple A radio, to get parents
Speaker 3: to have parents listen, and then their kids listen, and
Speaker 3: then the kids go to the shows and hear about
Speaker 3: you know, they hear the music in the car, right,
Speaker 3: and then they stay with those artists and it just
Speaker 3: XPN introduces them to music a little out, a little
Speaker 3: outside the mainstream. And for those of us that do
Speaker 3: music outside the mainstream, it's a real blessing Station's like
Speaker 3: the w XPN.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I'm sure is so great.
Speaker 3: I got to tell you that adults listen to her.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: I have put Shazam on auto for her show so
Speaker 2: many times because I'm like.
Speaker 1: This is good? What is it?
Speaker 2: What is good?
Speaker 3: What is this her energy? It's about the energy, right,
Speaker 3: this positivity that something good is going to happen and
Speaker 3: I'm going to help make it so.
Speaker 1: And it does. And you know she was our twentieth episode,
Speaker 1: is that right?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Actually, because because she's my pal, like you know, she's
Speaker 1: my sister, and you know, I knew that I could
Speaker 1: always call on her, but I didn't want to do
Speaker 1: that until I really felt like, Okay, there's a real
Speaker 1: reason to bring Kathy on and talk with her. And
Speaker 1: it was right after uv ald Texas and I said,
Speaker 1: for Buffalo, I had read the names and I said,
Speaker 1: I cannot do that here. I can't. But I wanted
Speaker 1: a response and that was my response. Why is to
Speaker 1: talk with Kathy and talk about playing the rainbow connection
Speaker 1: and talking talk about how do we talk to kids
Speaker 1: during these times? So, you know, it was a brilliant
Speaker 1: hour and I'm so grateful that she did it. That
Speaker 1: was the first episode of ours that they played at
Speaker 1: Medway Pride was the Kathy episode. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow, I just love it because because you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of us, uh understand ourselves early in life as
Speaker 3: in this as in this as in this fluid place
Speaker 3: or this place where orientation and gender oriented, sexual orientation
Speaker 3: and gender identity, you know, these things are are we
Speaker 3: feel like we might be outside of whatever the Barbie
Speaker 3: and Ken deal is. And and and that she speaks
Speaker 3: so easily about it and so positively about it is
Speaker 3: like it is good medicine. What she does is good medicine.
Speaker 3: She delivers it.
Speaker 1: She yeah, yeah, And I wanted to say, you know,
Speaker 1: none of this is a game. This is Kathy O'Connell, like,
Speaker 1: you know, because half of my wardrobe came from Kathy O'Connell.
Speaker 1: Do you like this? Do you want this? What do
Speaker 1: you think of this one?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean she's just she's been there, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly for me. We've known each other for twenty years
Speaker 1: and she's just one of those people who's been there.
Speaker 3: She's a great American and she should have win. Like
Speaker 3: they're given the Mark Twain Prize for Humor to I
Speaker 3: don't know who this week or somebody. It's like, come on,
Speaker 3: you know right, can we please get outside the Yeah,
Speaker 3: I agree with these white guys with TV shows, it's
Speaker 3: like come.
Speaker 4: On always And for years, yeah, for years, I've referred
Speaker 4: to her as my personal media guru because she's always
Speaker 4: got a song or an album or a book or
Speaker 4: a movie or a television show for me to watch
Speaker 4: or listen to, and it's always just what I need
Speaker 4: in that moment.
Speaker 3: It's delight. I think that's the thing. She finds delight
Speaker 3: in things, and she wants to share that delight.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: It's something to aspire to be. I mean maybe she's
Speaker 3: just that way all the time, but it's something to
Speaker 3: aspire to be.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it just is like she can't help it.
Speaker 3: She can't help it.
Speaker 1: She talks in show tunes, She speaks in show tunes
Speaker 1: like that's and it always comes down to a show tune.
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, it kind of does. Yeah, especially with you.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I so I sent you this fangirl email because I
Speaker 1: really did want to thank you for an amazing show.
Speaker 1: I mean, we looked at each other and we it
Speaker 1: felt like we had sat there for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: That's wonderful. That's the best praise and entertainer can ever
Speaker 3: ever get, is that you know, the audience they forgot
Speaker 3: that they forgot themselves or forgot the outside world for
Speaker 3: a period of time. Yeah, and fifteen minutes out of
Speaker 3: an hour and a half show all that.
Speaker 1: No, it was like, what does she mean they're done?
Speaker 1: How could they be done?
Speaker 2: And I'll admit I was the one that was unfamiliar
Speaker 2: with your work, but just hearing Martha and Kathy and
Speaker 2: Elizabeth like go on and on about how wonderful you
Speaker 2: are and how wonderful your music is. I was expecting
Speaker 2: a good show and it was wonder I told you
Speaker 2: it was perfect in every way, it really was.
Speaker 3: I thank you both for taking a chance. I mean
Speaker 3: to go you've never seen before, right, And You're like,
Speaker 3: I need a folks singer. I need this like a
Speaker 3: hole in the head, right, what is this waste of
Speaker 3: my Saturday?
Speaker 1: Night. It's only when it's a white guy with a
Speaker 1: guitar when I go really like, unless it's John Flynn
Speaker 1: or trout fishing in America, I'm like, I'm busy that guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I'm busy that by Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: one of the people that works high up at XPN
Speaker 1: mentioned a mutual friend's son was breaking into music and
Speaker 1: she just looked at me, deadpan with everything she says,
Speaker 1: it's deadpan, and she said, that's just what the world needs,
Speaker 1: another white guy with a guitar. I was like, yeah, well, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: There's this there's this duo of of of black guys
Speaker 3: and their and their gig is called Their Their duo
Speaker 3: is called Black Violin. Yes, they're tremendous. Yes, just tremendous
Speaker 3: because they're busting everything you think about, all your preconceived
Speaker 3: notions about what black is and what a violin is.
Speaker 3: It's like, wow, mm hmm, fantassic. That's doing the work
Speaker 3: of God right there.
Speaker 2: I discovered them I in one of my dance classes
Speaker 2: that I taught. One of my kids was playing one
Speaker 2: of their songs and I was like, what is this
Speaker 2: And she told me, and I was like, what is
Speaker 2: the name of that album? Write that down?
Speaker 1: So I sent you this fangirl email and I said
Speaker 1: to but I actually forwarded it to Elizabeth and I said,
Speaker 1: I sent this note to Susan. Tell me this isn't creepy.
Speaker 1: And she called me and she said, first of all,
Speaker 1: that's a letter, that's not a note. If you ask her, she'll.
Speaker 3: Tell you whatever you sent me was wonderful. Well, and
Speaker 3: I appreciated your kindness and your enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: I told you a little story, and I want to
Speaker 1: tell you why I told you the little story I did,
Speaker 1: so I told you about my friend Ghosha. Yes, Gosha
Speaker 1: Iguano was a singer songwriter about ten twelve years older
Speaker 1: than us. She was a prolific songwriter and just an
Speaker 1: incredible musician. Piano was her primary instrument. She could pick
Speaker 1: up a guitar, she could play the drums, she could
Speaker 1: do a lot and when I by the time I
Speaker 1: met her, she was doing sing along piano bar in
Speaker 1: a gay bar at tavern on Comeack and she had
Speaker 1: done piano playing like that all over the world. And
Speaker 1: when we opened our bar, she called me and she said,
Speaker 1: I got Thursday. You want Thursday, I said, I would
Speaker 1: love Thursday.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So every Thursday from the day we opened till till
Speaker 1: she was too sick to play, which was really quick.
Speaker 1: Her illness was really fast. She was there every Thursday,
Speaker 1: and we actually assembled a band. She called them the
Speaker 1: Pickups because they were just the guy who hosted our
Speaker 1: open mic night on Tuesday and a drummer that we
Speaker 1: found at open mic night, and they became her band.
Speaker 1: And one night she and it happened organically, just organically,
Speaker 1: and one night she looked at me with tears in
Speaker 1: her eyes and she stopped playing, and I'm looking across
Speaker 1: the barn and I'm like what, And she said thank
Speaker 1: you for this, because I never thought i'd have it again.
Speaker 1: And I went them and she said them, and I went,
Speaker 1: you're welcome. I heard there was live music tonight. Every
Speaker 1: time they would start talking or go off on a tangent,
Speaker 1: I would just that was my line. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: heard there was live music tonight. So she started playing.
Speaker 1: She said how fuck you, and then she started playing.
Speaker 1: But Goosha so early in her career she worked for
Speaker 1: as cap because and it was kind of named that
Speaker 1: tune like if somebody sampled something in a new release,
Speaker 1: she could hear it. She could hear it. And so
Speaker 1: that was her job, was to just listen to new
Speaker 1: stuff and find where they had placed someone else's stuff
Speaker 1: and make sure they were paying for it. That was
Speaker 1: her job. Yes, and she had this ear. She played
Speaker 1: by ear. Everybody else at the piano bar walked in
Speaker 1: with a roly cart full of songbooks. She walked in
Speaker 1: with her car keys and a cup of Dunkin Donuts,
Speaker 1: and that was it.
Speaker 3: She had it, and.
Speaker 1: She either had it or she didn't. And she would
Speaker 1: put it in your key. She'd say, give me a
Speaker 1: little and she could change keys in the middle of
Speaker 1: a song, or she would tell you that's not a key.
Speaker 1: Go sit down and hum for a while and I'll
Speaker 1: get back to you.
Speaker 3: But I mean to say she had the gift.
Speaker 1: She had the gift.
Speaker 3: She had, she had ear. She had the ear, she
Speaker 3: had the childhood ear that is just instant and pattern recognition.
Speaker 3: And I would love to have met her, because I
Speaker 3: learned too as a little kid, really early, and before
Speaker 3: I knew notes or any such thing. It was almost
Speaker 3: like math or colors or something. And she just sounds
Speaker 3: like such an exceptional person that she could just pick
Speaker 3: that up and just create magic like this, like a magician.
Speaker 3: And I'd love to have met.
Speaker 1: Her, And I'm sorry that you didn't, because you remind
Speaker 1: me of her in that Gosha was music, and music
Speaker 1: was Ghosha.
Speaker 3: Online.
Speaker 1: You can, in fact, some of her work has been
Speaker 1: remastered and re released. Her brother is still living, Wow,
Speaker 1: and he he just released an EP I guess right
Speaker 1: of some of her stuff that was original stuff she
Speaker 1: did with a previous girlfriend and tell Gosha and Teal
Speaker 1: and it's out there and it's it's really good stuff.
Speaker 1: And there's there's a million, you know, YouTube clips and
Speaker 1: things like that. But one of the things it meant
Speaker 1: was she was fully present as a human. That ability
Speaker 1: to be a part of a song and and be
Speaker 1: the music is what I saw when you stepped on
Speaker 1: stage and played your first song. That's what you do.
Speaker 1: I'm and it impresses me and touches me in the
Speaker 1: same way. And I felt like I've Goosha said the
Speaker 1: first And I told you this story. The first night
Speaker 1: we met. She came over. She gave me a big hug.
Speaker 1: She said, We've known each other one hundred years. And
Speaker 1: we finally found each other again.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I just when you started to play, I
Speaker 1: was like, I've known this soul and and I hear that,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm seeing you up here.
Speaker 3: I'm just honored that you know that.
Speaker 1: Well you you are music.
Speaker 3: You have someone that is really that was really deeply musical.
Speaker 3: And also and on the other side of that, the
Speaker 3: other the other part of that that really moves me, Martha,
Speaker 3: is that Ghosha sounds like the kind of person who,
Speaker 3: again we talked earlier about Kathy O Connell, like the delight, sharing,
Speaker 3: the delight drawing, like I have found something delightful come
Speaker 3: with me right that it's this generosity of spirit, and
Speaker 3: I just feel really lucky. Music kind of found me
Speaker 3: before I knew what I was even doing. When I
Speaker 3: was three, I had eye surgery. I still have a
Speaker 3: bad eye, but I wasn't very good with stereo vision. Okay,
Speaker 3: so I didn't you know, I didn't get to run
Speaker 3: around and play like all the things I wanted to play.
Speaker 3: I had an eye that didn't work right. But there
Speaker 3: was a little there was a little record player, uh
Speaker 3: in our house on the farm. Long story there too,
Speaker 3: But anyway, I played the record the record player over
Speaker 3: and over and over. My mother says, like, I just
Speaker 3: played it for hours. I would just stand there and
Speaker 3: almost vibrate with the intensity of it. And then my
Speaker 3: brother Old, one of my older brothers, brought a guitar
Speaker 3: home from Saint Mary's Catholic Elementary School in Manchester, Iowa.
Speaker 3: Why because Vatican two, right, John the twenty third, Pope
Speaker 3: John the twenty third said, the Catholic Church can now
Speaker 3: have groovy music.
Speaker 1: Yes, I remember this, okay, a huge.
Speaker 3: Right, instead of the old you know, sort of morbid
Speaker 3: right that chant and such, which look that it has
Speaker 3: its place. But what I remember is my brother came
Speaker 3: home with a guitar and I was like, what is that?
Speaker 3: And that was it? And I was five, and he
Speaker 3: showed me three chords and I figured out the rest.
Speaker 3: The guitar was bigger than I was. And I was
Speaker 3: already playing in first grade at Masses at St. Mary's
Speaker 3: Catholic School in Manchester, Iowa. I was already like work, Yeah,
Speaker 3: well they didn't pay me, but but you know, I
Speaker 3: was super motivated. I'm like, I love this, right, this
Speaker 3: is the only gig in town, a town of five
Speaker 3: thousand farming community, and he's like, oh man, this is it.
Speaker 3: And so learning pattern right, pattern recognition and perfect pitch.
Speaker 3: There's a there's a study that said, if you learn
Speaker 3: an instrument before age of eight, yes, there's a good
Speaker 3: chance that you will develop perfect pitch because what you'll
Speaker 3: develop is a is a an eye hand like a
Speaker 3: physical corollary to where, for instance, we're gonna just use
Speaker 3: this hair clip, Okay, as example hair clip, You're gonna
Speaker 3: be like thing, thing, thing, thing. You will hear thing
Speaker 3: and you'll see this image like a key, write a
Speaker 3: piano key, You'll hear it and you'll see it. And
Speaker 3: if you see it, same with a guitar, a note
Speaker 3: on a guitar fretboard, you will hear it always, you'll
Speaker 3: identify it with a visual And that's what perfect pitch
Speaker 3: comes from, is having this visual corollary to it. And
Speaker 3: I was so lucky. I was already playing an instrument
Speaker 3: at age five and then I could play piano and
Speaker 3: I figured that out. And so by ear you were
Speaker 3: talking about Ghosha. I think some of Ghosha's talent must
Speaker 3: have come by learning by ear, just from within instead
Speaker 3: of looking at a you know, a sheet music and
Speaker 3: executing stenography.
Speaker 1: I'm still not completely convinced she could ever site read.
Speaker 3: Well, you don't need to to be musical, It's totally
Speaker 3: That's why I always feel sad when someone says, oh,
Speaker 3: i'd love to learn, you know, piano, that I don't
Speaker 3: read music right right as they supposed to have anything
Speaker 3: to do with each other, and.
Speaker 1: I don't think they do.
Speaker 2: I didn't start playing until the seventh grade, so that
Speaker 2: probably has a hand in why I don't have that that.
Speaker 2: I was trying to be a music major at Temple
Speaker 2: and theory was is not my friend.
Speaker 3: But you don't need theory to be a musical at all.
Speaker 2: Well, luckily that's true. But like I can mimic, like
Speaker 2: if you give me the note, I can sing it
Speaker 2: back to you. But if you say give me an e,
Speaker 2: that's okay.
Speaker 3: You don't need that either. I mean, the most important thing.
Speaker 3: I had a great voice teacher at Temple, Harold Parker.
Speaker 3: He was just tremendous, and he made singing so much
Speaker 3: like speech. It was always about what are you communicating?
Speaker 3: What do you communicating? What are you communicating? And if
Speaker 3: you would start to get too enamored of your own noise,
Speaker 3: right too, enamored of the noise coming out your own mouth. Right,
Speaker 3: He would say, are you making sense or are you
Speaker 3: making tone? Because you can make a beautiful tone and
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean anything. It's made a pretty noise, which
Speaker 3: is lovely, But what does it mean? And even in
Speaker 3: singing in a foreign language, not that this is, you know,
Speaker 3: not that this is let me know if I'm going
Speaker 3: off on tangents here, but not at all. But even
Speaker 3: if you're singing in a foreign language, which is part
Speaker 3: of what a degree in vocal performance is about. And
Speaker 3: why I happened to actually get degrees in vocal performance.
Speaker 3: That's how I could get a scholarship. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: a farm kid. We didn't have any money, right, but
Speaker 3: I had a weird ear, so I could learn, you know,
Speaker 3: German and French and Italian really fast. I could learn
Speaker 3: how to sound it out, and then I could learn
Speaker 3: how to read it. And he would say, even if
Speaker 3: you're singing singing in French, do you know what you're saying?
Speaker 3: And do you know what this word here means? Exactly
Speaker 3: right here? And now say it like a sentence, and
Speaker 3: now sing it, and that the emotion makes itself when
Speaker 3: you speak. Right, If I tell you two that I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed meeting you, I don't have to think to
Speaker 3: put kindness or excitement in that. It's just really true, right.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So it's almost like if I was singing you know,
Speaker 3: I'm so excited I met you. I didn't add something phony, right,
Speaker 3: I just said I'm excited to me and it sounds excited. Right.
Speaker 3: There's no need to hydraulically arrange feeling when singing.
Speaker 1: Right, right.
Speaker 3: Just if it's making sense to you and you're authentically
Speaker 3: connected to what it is you're singing and what you're saying,
Speaker 3: it's going to happen.
Speaker 2: That's the thing with authenticity. It's either there or it
Speaker 2: is not.
Speaker 3: And you can, I mean, you can find your way
Speaker 3: back to it, but you have to have a good
Speaker 3: teacher who keeps reminding you say it like a sentence.
Speaker 3: And often he would do this whole trick, like I
Speaker 3: went to the seven eleven and I bought a diet pepsi,
Speaker 3: and so you would be like, Okay, I went to
Speaker 3: the seven eleven and I bought a diet pepsi and corn. Yes,
Speaker 3: like you go into the sense of it instead of
Speaker 3: thinking about the noise you're making. It's like a sentence.
Speaker 1: It's just okay, that's performing.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm going No, it's not in the.
Speaker 1: Weds at all. It's not in the Weds at all.
Speaker 1: I never thought for a second you didn't want to
Speaker 1: be right there on stage.
Speaker 3: It's the best. Yeah, let's show people a good time.
Speaker 3: Let's have a good time. Life short. No, that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's have a good time right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I invoked you during our last podcast because Charles
Speaker 1: does a fifteen minute fave before our first break. Every time.
Speaker 1: He just whatever song is in his head that week. Yeah, whatever,
Speaker 1: like the two songs that were in his head that week.
Speaker 2: Like my my fifteen minute fave is like in that moment,
Speaker 2: it is my favorite song on the planet. And sometimes
Speaker 2: that can last like three months, or sometimes it's like
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes and then I hear another one. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So but I never get I never get one. But
Speaker 1: I said, my fifteen minute fave this week is free
Speaker 1: your ass, and I want to come back from the
Speaker 1: break on a few notes of that, and he did it.
Speaker 3: So I'm honored. My ass is honored.
Speaker 1: It was fun. It's such a fun song.
Speaker 2: Well, it's going to end up being a fifteen minute
Speaker 2: fave because one of the criteria is how deeply get
Speaker 2: stuck in my head? And for the past two days
Speaker 2: have been walking around going thank you, thank you, thank
Speaker 2: you very.
Speaker 3: Much, and for absolutely no reason, because I don't know
Speaker 3: that Elvis even was in New Orleans for any reason ever,
Speaker 3: but for some reason, it just showed up as part
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, it belongs there.
Speaker 2: And I don't even associate with Elvis. I associated with
Speaker 2: you because it's your voice. I'm here.
Speaker 3: Well there was it, wasn't there a funk Adelic tune
Speaker 3: that was for your mind and your ass?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, free your mind and your ass will follow.
Speaker 3: That was it, And I was like, I kept thinking,
Speaker 3: that's not it, that's not it, or I mean maybe
Speaker 3: it was then, right, but now it's like, we gotta
Speaker 3: get into the ass now.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: Ian you can think and think that that's not really
Speaker 3: The medicine must come from below.
Speaker 2: I have this theory that there are two kinds of
Speaker 2: songs for dancing. There are arm first songs and ass
Speaker 2: for songs, and it just depends on what starts first.
Speaker 2: And you don't know until it happens, sometimes you might
Speaker 2: be surprised.
Speaker 1: It might be an interesting way to do a like
Speaker 1: a playlist, you know what I mean, Like, hmm.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm gonna this is, this is this is a
Speaker 3: golden nugget. Arms first, Arms first, as first.
Speaker 2: Could you just be staying there and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden you start doing this and then they okay, this
Speaker 2: is an arms first song. And then sometimes you just
Speaker 2: feel it happen, like, oh, what's going on back there?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 6: All right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know there's one song that you know because
Speaker 1: I was. I've been listening to you NonStop since the weekend.
Speaker 1: I over prepare for everything, That's just what I do.
Speaker 1: But there was one song I thought if I could
Speaker 1: ask you where it came from, or ask you to
Speaker 1: tell more of the story, I would. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make you guess which song. It just took me
Speaker 1: a minute to find it. May may I suggest?
Speaker 3: So I played that song?
Speaker 1: Sorry night did I cried by the way way in
Speaker 1: a very good way, In a very good way. I
Speaker 1: have my own thoughts on the song because yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I could share that with you, but I'd much rather
Speaker 1: hear you share. There's more there's something behind that song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hear you know. When I when I think
Speaker 3: about a song of mine, I'm like, I kind of
Speaker 3: give it a lot of scrutiny running down my head,
Speaker 3: Like even right now, I'm like, Okay, what are the
Speaker 3: strengths of that song? Where did I maybe not get
Speaker 3: it to one hundred percent? So I'm like, okay, I'm
Speaker 3: going to get past that, get past Susan the editor.
Speaker 3: Let's get past that and put that away and then
Speaker 3: we go here. So, uh, the song came about after
Speaker 3: I got a phone call that my friend Fay Khan
Speaker 3: had passed away. And fay Khan was a dancer in
Speaker 3: Philadelphia and a performance artist, and she was just a
Speaker 3: really special person and a self made person. I think
Speaker 3: she grew up in West Philly. I'm trying to think, no, yeah,
Speaker 3: and she was just she just put together a really
Speaker 3: interesting life for herself, and she built, she built, She
Speaker 3: built her work on her own terms. She just did
Speaker 3: not with not with regard for what other people thought
Speaker 3: of what she was up to, but what she herself
Speaker 3: wanted to bring forth. She was a real artist and
Speaker 3: I knew her. I met her at a breast cancer
Speaker 3: support group. At University of Pennsylvania, and I had breast
Speaker 3: cancer in nineteen ninety one, and I'm there and I'm fine,
Speaker 3: by the way, but that's sort of one of those
Speaker 3: big kind of right through the windshield years of your
Speaker 3: life is going through treatment like that. And Fan I
Speaker 3: just always had a lot to talk about right away.
Speaker 3: And when she passed away nine years later, I remember
Speaker 3: feeling like this something was coming, and it felt involuntary,
Speaker 3: like a bad example is throwing up, but a feeling
Speaker 3: like something is inevitable and you cannot stop it, you
Speaker 3: cannot suppress it. And I just started kind of may
Speaker 3: I suggest, I suggest that something was repetitive about it?
Speaker 3: I suggest like this, And I do feel I'm not
Speaker 3: one to say things like this, but I do feel
Speaker 3: like somehow, you know, Fay was at work, or the
Speaker 3: energy of Faye was at work in this way, like
Speaker 3: just insistent, this is it, this is it, this is it,
Speaker 3: this is it. Treasure now, treasure now, treasure right. And
Speaker 3: so that's where that song came from, and it has
Speaker 3: just gone so far. There's all around the world. There's
Speaker 3: YouTube of people singing it at the whaling Wall. There's
Speaker 3: a video of people singing it at like the Jesus
Speaker 3: statue in Brazil, and it's just it's just fabulous. And
Speaker 3: that's a song, you know, you don't write it sort
Speaker 3: of writes itself. You just happen to the room. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Nice, Okay, So I feel like I got it right
Speaker 1: because yeah, because that is what I felt in hearing
Speaker 1: that song we're talking about right now, and it's I don't, well,
Speaker 1: you know what I think I've learned. We're the same age.
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty five was a great year. I don't look
Speaker 1: at my life and say that time was the best
Speaker 1: or that time was the best. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: look back with regret or remorse, and even even in loss,
Speaker 1: even in profound loss, I mean, Ghosha, I told you
Speaker 1: she was my three o'clock. She was just there at
Speaker 1: three o'clock. Never said hello on the phone, and you know,
Speaker 1: she just started talking and I counted on that. And
Speaker 1: for your.
Speaker 3: Listeners, and maybe you mentioned this before, Marthur, but the
Speaker 3: three o'clock, the three o'clock friend is the person who
Speaker 3: calls you at three o'clock every day, Yes, and they
Speaker 3: you just know someone's going to call you right around there,
Speaker 3: And like you said, they don't say who they are.
Speaker 3: They just start right, They just start in with can
Speaker 3: you believe I got a fucking parking ticket? Jesus yes, fuck,
Speaker 3: And I don't just write and there just belong. There
Speaker 3: you go and there is and that's your three o'clock friend.
Speaker 3: And then they're like, would you do today? And then
Speaker 3: they listened because you're going at three o'clock.
Speaker 1: Back yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah that was her.
Speaker 3: That was just everyone deserves one and we're lucky if
Speaker 3: we get too and we're lucky if we get to
Speaker 3: be one.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, that part, Yeah, it's true. But
Speaker 1: I still, you know, I look back on that not
Speaker 1: with regret, you know, they're certainly grief, but no today
Speaker 1: like and I love that idea of may I suggest
Speaker 1: that right now?
Speaker 3: Well now thanks for saying that. And even you know
Speaker 3: what you're doing when you talk about Ghosha and the
Speaker 3: three o'clock call your listeners right now, I have to
Speaker 3: think that most of not all of them are like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I want a three o'clock friend, or I
Speaker 3: have a three o'clock friend, or I want to be
Speaker 3: a three o'clock friend. Right, yeah, Ghosha gave you that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you just gave some agosha to everybody who's listening.
Speaker 3: It's awesome.
Speaker 1: And you gave somebody. Now, is this an answer that
Speaker 1: you are familiar with? I am, because the world is
Speaker 1: this big, right, I knew a lot of Fai Khan.
Speaker 2: I never got to meet her, but I was friends
Speaker 2: with friends of hers.
Speaker 3: Because you're so young, you're a fetus. Yeah, yes, I am,
Speaker 3: You're still young.
Speaker 1: That's that's because each time I have to reinvent my life,
Speaker 1: I go younger because someone's going to have to take
Speaker 1: care of me.
Speaker 3: Well, we don't know how that. We never know quite
Speaker 3: how that's going to play out.
Speaker 1: We don't know.
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 1: We do know.
Speaker 3: That's why now no.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed yeah, indeed here today and
Speaker 1: go on tomorrow.
Speaker 3: So for your ass, So for your ass, well, thank you,
Speaker 3: thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I think so. I think. So we're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break and then come back. I hope you're
Speaker 1: gonna come back with us.
Speaker 7: Excellent walcome by the Mississippi, had a happy trip and
Speaker 7: hippie And this is what she said to me.
Speaker 3: What she said, she said, free your ASTs and your
Speaker 3: mind will follow.
Speaker 7: She said, loosen that bomb than rum. All your kids
Speaker 7: swallow because we're here today.
Speaker 3: And we're gone tomorrow.
Speaker 7: Free your ASTs and your mind will thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 8: May Yeah, I suggeste you. May I suggest this is
Speaker 8: the best part of your life. May I suggest.
Speaker 3: This time is blessed for you, This time.
Speaker 8: This blessed and shining almost blinding Bray.
Speaker 9: Just turn your head.
Speaker 3: And you'll begin to see.
Speaker 8: The thousand reasons that we're just beyond your say.
Speaker 3: The reason is wild wild suggesting you? Why suggest this
Speaker 3: is the best part of your life?
Speaker 1: And we are bad?
Speaker 2: We're bad.
Speaker 3: You need a song? Do you have one?
Speaker 9: We do?
Speaker 2: We do?
Speaker 3: We do.
Speaker 2: We have a lovely couple of boys, uh Nat and Clint.
Speaker 2: They call themselves the jingle.
Speaker 1: Berries, well for our purposes. Their their band name is
Speaker 1: actually Frank Lloyd Wrong. Yeah, that's their that's their band
Speaker 1: good name. Yeah, and they they claim that they are twins,
Speaker 1: which is obviously false. But they are very very good friends.
Speaker 1: And they wrote our theme music. Yes, Frank Lloyd Wrong,
Speaker 1: Frank Lloyd Wrong. They're so awesome.
Speaker 2: They're great, fabulous musicians.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they really Frank Frank Lloyd Wrong. Reminds me of
Speaker 3: Martha Graham. Cracker.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love her, We love.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker 1: Dido's fun because Dieto is a great musician. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: really a fab list singer, sings live. Uh you know
Speaker 1: does just what a great character he's created and so
Speaker 1: much fun and I love fun. There's not we don't
Speaker 1: have enough of it more fun.
Speaker 3: So you know.
Speaker 1: What I started to establish was you really are You
Speaker 1: were a consummate musician. You're hilarious to watch, You're a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Your your songwriting is uh comparable to
Speaker 1: any one as far as I'm concerned. It's brilliant. And
Speaker 1: I can also understand what you're saying.
Speaker 3: That all said, Yeah, voice teacher, right teachers, like what
Speaker 3: I told you.
Speaker 1: You know, I told Elizabeth on Sunday, I said, Susan
Speaker 1: is Gaga talented? And I say that was no irony.
Speaker 3: Well I don't have the fashion gift.
Speaker 1: You didn't do the meat suit, And I said without
Speaker 1: the meat suit, which was the hook. You know, you're
Speaker 1: just fabulous. But you know, I do want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit because you know, nobody gets away from
Speaker 1: here without I mean, the world we actually live in
Speaker 1: and we try to make the best of it as
Speaker 1: queer adults looking at the world and the way the
Speaker 1: world is looking at us right now. And I can
Speaker 1: tell you, especially as a transperson, the way our world
Speaker 1: is looking at us right now isn't easy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1: Easy at all.
Speaker 3: And why trans people have been selected now do you know,
Speaker 3: Like in two thousand and four the presidential election in
Speaker 3: the United States, so same sex marriage was the big
Speaker 3: thing that was that was the thing that was going
Speaker 3: to bring down the country. Here we are in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, and same sex marriage has not changed.
Speaker 1: Everybody's okay, they're all okay.
Speaker 3: I did not fall. And the transphobia bugaboo that they're
Speaker 3: working on now right from the right. You know, somebody
Speaker 3: pointed this out and it really it sounds right to me.
Speaker 3: And again I'm a musician, I'm not a you know,
Speaker 3: a political scientist, but it's a guess that and when
Speaker 3: this person said this, I thought that sounds right on.
Speaker 3: And I can't remember who said this, but they said,
Speaker 3: you know, the whole transphobia thing is really about working
Speaker 3: up Grandpa to vote Republican. Yeah, that's not about trans
Speaker 3: people at all. It's about confirming a certain anxiety and
Speaker 3: a certain generation and giving them, you know, confirming in
Speaker 3: them their worldview in this one regard, so that they
Speaker 3: don't wander to the left politically because of any other
Speaker 3: of the million reasons you might and boy that wow.
Speaker 3: And then one other thing, one other thing that it
Speaker 3: came to me to say when I was thinking about
Speaker 3: our conversation that we were going to have earlier today,
Speaker 3: I thought, if we if we have a conversation about
Speaker 3: queerness and transphobia and such, one thing that comes to
Speaker 3: me to say is that the energy that tries to suppress,
Speaker 3: the effort to suppress something is often it comes about
Speaker 3: because there's energy breaking free. So the fact that trans persons,
Speaker 3: trans people have are at this moment is because something's
Speaker 3: something's busting loose. Something wonderful is busting loose, and there's
Speaker 3: there are efforts to smash it because people are afraid
Speaker 3: of what it is or how it's going to write,
Speaker 3: how it's going to open the world and force open
Speaker 3: some worlds that you want to be forced open.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that.
Speaker 3: That's count right. Where there's where there's political chatter, like
Speaker 3: you're talked about, there's much conversation about Georgia, there's much
Speaker 3: conversation about Arizona. Why is this because those states are shifting.
Speaker 3: Anything that has the shift in it, and a change
Speaker 3: like that's where the energy is and that's where something's happening.
Speaker 3: And maybe I'm just old that I'm starting to see
Speaker 3: these patterns, but it kind of helps to see them
Speaker 3: as patterns. And maybe you know, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: they're not awful, right, but maybe it means we can
Speaker 3: we can hope they go away a little sooner.
Speaker 1: That is the hope.
Speaker 3: That is the hope, right that if we talk about
Speaker 3: it and identify it as such simply a change, simply
Speaker 3: another societal change, simply another way of being that we're
Speaker 3: learning to identify and be gentle with that, maybe it'll
Speaker 3: pass a day sooner. We can hope.
Speaker 1: We can hope, I hope. So you know the thing
Speaker 1: I'm unnerved by, you know, and I talk to a
Speaker 1: lot of young trans people all the time, and I
Speaker 1: do try to you know, it is one of the
Speaker 1: things I say is, these are the patterns. So far
Speaker 1: the courts are holding all of this nonsense is unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: Let's hold on. But it's it's when, folks, it's when
Speaker 1: your friends start to pick up a kernel of truth. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's it's feminists suddenly saying that trans women are
Speaker 1: a threat and saying, you know, you know there's something
Speaker 1: to that, and it's like, no, no, you're actually you're
Speaker 1: still afraid of CIS men, not trans women. Try to
Speaker 1: make a distinction, and especially what we're seeing right now
Speaker 1: with trans women in sports, in swimming, and what just
Speaker 1: happened with that. You know, Leah Thomas won one race,
Speaker 1: she swam in three, she competed in three, and she
Speaker 1: won one. She is not herculean, she is not There
Speaker 1: have been women over the last ten years even of
Speaker 1: the same races that would have beaten her. So there's nothing,
Speaker 1: you know, but the argument is being made that it's science,
Speaker 1: and otherwise rational queer people are having these conversations saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just the science. And then here we
Speaker 1: are doing like separate but equal in which always works out, Yeah.
Speaker 3: In competitive swimming, that always works out.
Speaker 1: And he's got do they not remember Jim Crow?
Speaker 8: Like what what.
Speaker 3: You know again? I think the energy behind like this
Speaker 3: concern about trans women in sports, like it's always about that.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you want to hear about transmen in
Speaker 3: sports right right? In sports?
Speaker 1: And you won't because it doesn't fit the narrative.
Speaker 3: It doesn't fit the narrative. And again there's a narrative
Speaker 3: being cooked up, and I think it's to serve you know,
Speaker 3: some people with some you know who really need Grandpa
Speaker 3: to be upset.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and fear is big business.
Speaker 3: Fear. If fear is big business, will put it is.
Speaker 1: And you know, to go back to Harvey Milk, you know,
Speaker 1: that's why it is so important. You know that folks
Speaker 1: are just out. It's why it's why it's so important
Speaker 1: that you know, we're visible, we're there, we're taking up space.
Speaker 1: And then we can say, now you know a queer person,
Speaker 1: Now you do know a trans person or you certainly
Speaker 1: know of one because you've been listening to my voice.
Speaker 1: So you know, let's move along. And it's I love
Speaker 1: the analogy right now of you know, left handedness. At
Speaker 1: the turn of the set, the turn of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: left handedness was like three percent of the population because
Speaker 1: they beat you for it, they beat you for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when they stopped doing that, we found out, oh,
Speaker 1: we leveled off around twelve percent. I am left handed.
Speaker 1: I understand, you know, at least the analogy.
Speaker 3: And wow, I love that handedness.
Speaker 1: Yeah handedness Yeah. And folks are freaking out because a
Speaker 1: lot of particularly adults, but it happened with children as well.
Speaker 1: A lot of folks during the pandemic said I can't
Speaker 1: do this anymore. I mean, I started to transition right
Speaker 1: after my mother died, because it was never happening while
Speaker 1: she was still drawing breath. But once she was gone,
Speaker 1: I started looking through our glasses. So and you know,
Speaker 1: change is going to come. But the pandemic really drove
Speaker 1: home what am I waiting for? And the sky is
Speaker 1: not getting any bluer, and nothing is going to change.
Speaker 1: And I felt like everything everything that I wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to do, or say or have was on
Speaker 1: the other side of that stupid, simple discussion. That was
Speaker 1: the thing I feared the most in life. And I
Speaker 1: am I am not at all rare in that particular instance,
Speaker 1: because we did The New York Times did a whole
Speaker 1: spread in it where a lot of trans people who
Speaker 1: couldn't go to work and couldn't be out on the
Speaker 1: street and couldn't otherwise occupy their mindset. It's time I
Speaker 1: reckon with this.
Speaker 3: It's time I reckon with this.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no doubt that, you know. Thinking that time
Speaker 3: is short kind of moves us all along, right it is. Man,
Speaker 3: if I'm going to do this, I'm gonna let's get
Speaker 3: on with it. And I don't want to I don't
Speaker 3: want to run out of time thinking I should I
Speaker 3: could have what should have? The pandemic interesting too, that
Speaker 3: maybe if we had time, I should should look up
Speaker 3: that article that sounds so interesting it is, but also
Speaker 3: that if we are left, maybe we're spending more time
Speaker 3: by ourselves. We have time now to account for ourselves
Speaker 3: in a way that we can say, I'm going to
Speaker 3: be I'm gonna I'm gonna build a change from within
Speaker 3: out instead of being concerned about other people's reaction. There
Speaker 3: was a moment where we had more time to ourselves
Speaker 3: and our own homes, and maybe we could steal ourselves
Speaker 3: build ourselves up to strength with enough strength. I don't know,
Speaker 3: I will never know this firsthand, but to transition is
Speaker 3: to have strength from within and to say, if you're
Speaker 3: having trouble with this, this is your trouble. This is
Speaker 3: not my trouble. And it's one of the things that
Speaker 3: is so wonderful about our friend Elizabeth is that. From
Speaker 3: day one I met her, it was always if you're uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: that's your discomfort. Yeah, oh yeah, And just I adore
Speaker 3: how she just lives, you know, with that light coming
Speaker 3: out and that strength, light and strength and equal parts. Really,
Speaker 3: if I may tell you a little something about my
Speaker 3: own story, I feel lucky in my life that I
Speaker 3: grew up so big Catholic family, six kids, four of
Speaker 3: us are queer. I love that oldest tour straight.
Speaker 1: Right, that's how it works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we talked about this at the end of the show,
Speaker 3: after after the show. And so my third brother is
Speaker 3: a performing drag queen in Minnesota. He was already trying
Speaker 3: on my mom's clothes from the time he was like
Speaker 3: four or five six, And so his name is Robert
Speaker 3: and he always he's he. He would always want to
Speaker 3: be Roberta when he would try on my mother's clothes.
Speaker 3: And so I grew up with Roberta as a fact.
Speaker 3: You know, there was Bobby and there was Roberta. And
Speaker 3: so if he would put on mom's clothes, he was Roberta.
Speaker 3: And then we would just play whatever we were doing
Speaker 3: as Roberta.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it was a great gift early on in
Speaker 3: life that it's like there's room like this in all
Speaker 3: of these ways to be. It was a real gift
Speaker 3: to all the rest of us. And this fluidity again
Speaker 3: some people just right, oh, and it's such a gift.
Speaker 3: Here's one thing I say about queerness is and I say,
Speaker 3: it's like and if I had it took me a
Speaker 3: while to come to to see this, but that those
Speaker 3: of us who are queer are at an intersection. It's
Speaker 3: almost like you're the corner store and you can see
Speaker 3: both ways down the street.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: And it's a gift. If somebody doesn't decide they're going
Speaker 3: to give you a hard time about it, but that
Speaker 3: it's actually an advantage because you know more than one
Speaker 3: way of being right right right, And just to celebrate that,
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess that's a little bit of what
Speaker 3: goes on in Canada with as they say, two spirit.
Speaker 3: Do I have that right? Yeah, Like, look at it
Speaker 3: as a it's a gift. Look at that right. You
Speaker 3: have eyes on the side of your head, you can
Speaker 3: see it all. You have a mirror, you have built
Speaker 3: in mirror right, like like a recumbent bike. You got
Speaker 3: the mirror back behind right, or the driveway mirror. I
Speaker 3: guess that's what I'm thinking of it. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the I get audacious now and again because
Speaker 1: I also write, and one of the essays primarily essays,
Speaker 1: but one of them was called more than a Woman.
Speaker 1: And I actually embedded the song because I had learned
Speaker 1: how to embed songs like that day on WordPress. So
Speaker 1: I embedded the song and I said, you know, if
Speaker 1: we want to start breaking this down, I'm something more
Speaker 1: than you, not less if you only have one way
Speaker 1: of being in this world. I have had to watch
Speaker 1: them all, and I've really had to examine them all.
Speaker 1: And I tried all of your ways first, everything I
Speaker 1: was told, everything I was taught everything, religion said, I've
Speaker 1: done all of those things. Can you say the same, like,
Speaker 1: can you say you have examined this world to come
Speaker 1: to the place where you are. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is true across the community. It is true of
Speaker 1: being queer. It's like we once were sort of start
Speaker 1: to know who we are. Of course we explore that
Speaker 1: of course we're wrong, you know, and the rest of
Speaker 1: the world must be right, and we don't know our minds,
Speaker 1: or at least that's my experience. Of it, and it's like, Nope,
Speaker 1: this is still it.
Speaker 2: This is still it. You know.
Speaker 3: The comedian Noel Kasler who I follow on Twitter. He
Speaker 3: was a staff member on The Apprentice, Okay, and he
Speaker 3: dishes the dirt on the Donald It's and it's it's
Speaker 3: it's it's filthy, you know. I mean, he's you know,
Speaker 3: the former guy is a filthy human being. Although you
Speaker 3: can imagine, then some you can't even imagine. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: Noel Casler says, and I think he's a I think
Speaker 3: he's a heterois guy, but he says, you know, every
Speaker 3: act of courage I've ever seen, it doesn't come They
Speaker 3: don't come from CEOs. They come from the LGBTQ community.
Speaker 3: They come from the Black community. They come from communities
Speaker 3: that have to push back, and it's from individuals who
Speaker 3: had to push back in their personal lives. And they're
Speaker 3: the ones that understand how to take that energy out
Speaker 3: and forward into the world and make good things happen.
Speaker 3: Those are the ones who have courage. I agree, yeah,
Speaker 3: because because because we have the courage in us. You know,
Speaker 3: if I could speak about queerness for a minute, because
Speaker 3: we were you were saying in the first you were
Speaker 3: saying before we started the podcast, we're going to chat
Speaker 3: about these things. So I mentioned that in my family
Speaker 3: of six, four of us are queer, and you know
Speaker 3: that was that was a real challenge because you talked
Speaker 3: about religion earlier, Martha. Yeah, my folks are farmers and Catholic,
Speaker 3: and being born in the nineteen thirties as they were,
Speaker 3: there was just no there was no manual for handling
Speaker 3: any of this right now. So I think my sister
Speaker 3: came out first as a lesbian in college, and this
Speaker 3: really rocked their world. And so Bob waited, my older brother,
Speaker 3: Bob kind of waited because that had been quite a shock.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 9: In college I began sleeping with women and I kind
Speaker 9: of like that too, and I'm like, oh, well wait,
Speaker 9: but wait, I like guys, So what is that?
Speaker 3: What is that? What do I do with that? It's fun,
Speaker 3: it's fun, but it took me a while to get
Speaker 3: beyond sort of the idea of it had to be
Speaker 3: one or the other, right, right, right? And then bisexuals
Speaker 3: were seen in that moment. A bit of queer history here.
Speaker 3: Bisexuals were seen at that time in like the late eighties,
Speaker 3: Elton John right, or you know had made a stop
Speaker 3: on the bisexual you know, made it stop on the
Speaker 3: train at the bisexual stop, because you have to write, okay,
Speaker 3: that's how you ease some people into being right right.
Speaker 3: And it was so bifurcated binary that I was not
Speaker 3: able to really understand myself as a bisexual until like
Speaker 3: the late nineties, early two thousands, and I'm like, oh, oh, right,
Speaker 3: you can just be bisexual, hullo. Yeah, but it was.
Speaker 3: It took a while for all of this to firm up.
Speaker 3: And then in like two thousand and six or so,
Speaker 3: my younger brother sends a letter to all of us
Speaker 3: siblings and he does it in a form of an
Speaker 3: interview and he says, so, Mark, do you have some
Speaker 3: news for us? And he says, yes, well I'm gay.
Speaker 3: You're gay? And Mark says yes, I'm gay. And the
Speaker 3: interviewer says, so how many of that? How many of
Speaker 3: you does that make now? Who are gay? And he
Speaker 3: said all four seven hundred and fourteen of us? Like right,
Speaker 3: he did it in a form of an interview.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 3: And you know, my parents finally I think they just
Speaker 3: out of exhaustion, gave up.
Speaker 1: At least we threw two straight ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then with time, of course, it's all gotten easier.
Speaker 3: You know, really it has gotten easier. And I think
Speaker 3: the treasure the kids they have, Yeah, and that we
Speaker 3: show up. You know, if you show up, that helps
Speaker 3: a lot too.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you still have both of your parents.
Speaker 3: I do, and I can't even believe that. It feels
Speaker 3: so lucky. I fly and they're themselves. That's the thing.
Speaker 3: At eighty nine and eighty seven, that's great. Wow, I
Speaker 3: know it. I know it. And again now every day right,
Speaker 3: every day treasure. But to speak about queerness, I wanted
Speaker 3: to kind of tell the family story there and say,
Speaker 3: you know, I wonder if in the future, if you know,
Speaker 3: if parents have fewer children, I don't know, well, they
Speaker 3: have fewer gay children. I don't know. You know, we're
Speaker 3: going to find out about all that. I guess it's
Speaker 3: oh yeah, I don't think it works that way, does it.
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 2: Because I had a friend in college. He was one
Speaker 2: of four. It was him, his brother, and two sisters,
Speaker 2: and all of them were gay. Uh huh sure, And
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, there's.
Speaker 1: A little bit of science that says like the more
Speaker 1: boys in a family, the more likely that later ones
Speaker 1: will be gay. Like I have two friends who are
Speaker 1: the youngest two in their family. They're both gay. Like
Speaker 1: the other six or eight or whatever, there are straight,
Speaker 1: but it just like there's that, And I think there's
Speaker 1: also something to the older women in particular are when
Speaker 1: they become parents, the more likely it is that they're
Speaker 1: going to have queer kids. We don't know why, you know,
Speaker 1: the hormone thing, the soup, the whatever. You know, however
Speaker 1: this all works. You know, as you talked about that,
Speaker 1: there was an interesting thing, and I want to I'm
Speaker 1: going to credit Julius Serrana with us, but I'm not
Speaker 1: positive it came from her. But it's this idea that
Speaker 1: when or at least when we were younger, when women
Speaker 1: came out as by and we are both by when
Speaker 1: women came out as by, what women were told was well,
Speaker 1: she's just experimenting. Yeah, right, when men come.
Speaker 3: Out as buy, they're gay and they don't want to
Speaker 3: face it, thank you.
Speaker 1: And isn't it interesting that it also it all means
Speaker 1: worshiping the dick. Isn't it an interesting theory?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Isn't everyone is confused about their love.
Speaker 2: For the dick?
Speaker 3: God? And my friend Laura. I don't know who's a
Speaker 3: trans woman in Hawaii. So Lauren says the hardest was
Speaker 3: the most, the most resistance and the most animosity that
Speaker 3: she has received has been from men. She's convinced it
Speaker 3: has something to do with how could you ever?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 3: Part with external genitalia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, would you ever?
Speaker 2: You want to give all this that right?
Speaker 3: Right? And and she mentioned this to me, and I
Speaker 3: just kind of wow that it sounds maybe there's something
Speaker 3: to that that is just so unthinkable to men. They
Speaker 3: just can't get there. Well, they react, so they react.
Speaker 2: So well, there's something in the in the culture that
Speaker 2: is convinced men that they're so damn great. So there's that, right,
Speaker 2: the patriarchy.
Speaker 1: The patriarchy must be based on something, right, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: got to be that, you know, like that's anality. You
Speaker 1: have an aldi, Some people have anies like that's just
Speaker 1: how they're born. And you know, we hang an awful
Speaker 1: lot on that. We're no kinder in raising boys than
Speaker 1: we are in raising girls. In my opinion, we're hard
Speaker 1: on everyone.
Speaker 3: We're hard on everybody. But I do remember a study
Speaker 3: they just get more out of it.
Speaker 1: But I digress.
Speaker 3: There's a study that said, I remember this when my
Speaker 3: sister and her partner began having kids, and I think
Speaker 3: she brought this up that they did a study, and
Speaker 3: I'd like to quote the source, I can't remember, but
Speaker 3: it asked, how are children raised by a hetero couple
Speaker 3: different than children raised by a gay couple? And what
Speaker 3: they found was the gay couple, whether gay men or
Speaker 3: lesbians or whatever constellation of queerness. What they found was
Speaker 3: there was one significant difference between the kids of gay
Speaker 3: couples and the kids of hetero couples. And the difference
Speaker 3: was this that the kids of the gay couples were
Speaker 3: more verbal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe that.
Speaker 3: They were able to express how they.
Speaker 1: Felt, Yeah, and probably encouraged to do so that makes sense, Well, because.
Speaker 3: You have wonderful that's kind of wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to, you know, And it's like, it's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we decided to put microphones in
Speaker 1: front of ourselves and like make sure we sit down
Speaker 1: once a week because we have to check in about race,
Speaker 1: about gender, about orientation and living in this so we
Speaker 1: have to. We would not have been together this long
Speaker 1: if we didn't have honest conversations about those things, knows, yes,
Speaker 1: And we haven't.
Speaker 3: Talked about We haven't talked about race today at all.
Speaker 3: We have not no, And I wish I had something
Speaker 3: wise to say other than you know, we still got
Speaker 3: work to do.
Speaker 1: You know, I will say this because you know, in
Speaker 1: the same vein of what we were talking about with
Speaker 1: what's happening with trans folks, we didn't have a conversation
Speaker 1: around CRT. We didn't have the term in, you know,
Speaker 1: out in the world of critical race theory until we
Speaker 1: had the protracted protests of twenty twenty, and we had
Speaker 1: a lot of white folks joining black folks on the
Speaker 1: street protesting. So the pivot seems to have been it's
Speaker 1: not that we're seeing a major overhaul of the way
Speaker 1: this country polices, but suddenly we're all talking about CRT.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, if we don't teach it, maybe they
Speaker 1: won't know.
Speaker 3: My God. So this reminds me a little of something
Speaker 3: I learned at the Prohibition Museum in Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: I stopped by Savannah on my way up north in
Speaker 3: late March. I've never been there before, and it's it's fascinating,
Speaker 3: it's fascinating city and worth twenty four hours for sure.
Speaker 3: But I stopped at the Prohibition Museum, right, which is
Speaker 3: about selling booz during Prohibition, and you know Savannah's apport
Speaker 3: town and had lots of speakeasies and one thing that
Speaker 3: one of the guards, security guards brought up, and actually
Speaker 3: it was just because I had a conversation with him.
Speaker 3: And I like to talk to the guards in the
Speaker 3: museums right right often there, Right, they're the ones with
Speaker 3: the most interesting things to say. I bet yes, because
Speaker 3: right they've been looking at this stuff and looking at
Speaker 3: people reacting to it.
Speaker 2: I love you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I always talk to the staff anywhere anywhere I am,
Speaker 1: because that's how you learn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they know what's what. Right, they can cut
Speaker 3: through the bullshit and get to the point. Right. And
Speaker 3: this guy said he was a black gentleman, and he
Speaker 3: said to me, you know the real reason prohibition came about.
Speaker 3: I said what he said. There were people getting upset
Speaker 3: that white people were going to drink with black people,
Speaker 3: and they didn't like black people getting in that close
Speaker 3: to white people.
Speaker 2: That tracks.
Speaker 3: So that's why this prohibition had to end. Because because
Speaker 3: of the racial tension component. Somebody wanted to keep these
Speaker 3: two apart.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I was like, whoa, I did not know that, but
Speaker 2: I am completely unsurprised by that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, blew my mind because you think it's about booze
Speaker 3: and right, the free flow of booze. And I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm sure people were making plenty of money during Prohibition.
Speaker 3: Maybe that was the birth of the mob in the
Speaker 3: United States, but that kind of whoa right you think
Speaker 3: about Cotton Club Harlem? What's going on? Whoa these bill? Oh,
Speaker 3: somebody's gonna get upset about this, right, And so like
Speaker 3: the Black Lives Matter protes in Philadelphia and how many
Speaker 3: of us white people joined the march and like that's
Speaker 3: enough of this, and someone didn't like this going on,
Speaker 3: and yeah, so CRT suddenly is a big issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was an amazing outcry. I remember seeing
Speaker 2: a video of like in like Podunk County, Iowa. You know,
Speaker 2: it was like one white dude marching down the street
Speaker 2: saying black lives matter, and folks yelling at him and
Speaker 2: stopping to curse at him from cars, and like, wow, I.
Speaker 3: Will say, in defense of my home state of Iowa,
Speaker 3: I was waiting for that.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I do think I do think that because there are
Speaker 3: there are so few minority people in Iowa. What is
Speaker 3: the population to warn maybe twenty not even that, and
Speaker 3: that's the big city right there, just aren't you know,
Speaker 3: there's so few black in Iowa. And I think that
Speaker 3: you know, you would think, oh, well they're racist because
Speaker 3: they don't see black people. I think there's just mean people, right,
Speaker 3: There's just mean people. Some people are just mean. Even
Speaker 3: if they haven't seen black people, they've decided, right, some
Speaker 3: people just are mean and this is just something fed
Speaker 3: do them by the media. Yeah, actually had no first
Speaker 3: hand experience with black people at all.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, and I you know, we talk about that
Speaker 1: a lot because when I grew up here, it was
Speaker 1: just very white here. It was very white here in
Speaker 1: New Jersey, in this part of New Jersey where I
Speaker 1: grew up here. Yeah, And I remember I had an
Speaker 1: eighth grade teacher. She saved my life. And she was
Speaker 1: the coolest teacher ever. And she used to pick me
Speaker 1: up in the summer and take me swimming with their
Speaker 1: kids and just like gave me a place to hang
Speaker 1: out and somebody smart to talk to. And I remember
Speaker 1: one day we were driving around near here and she's
Speaker 1: commented She's like, the fucking racists. And I went, you
Speaker 1: think it's racist here? And she said, oh, honey, all
Speaker 1: those white sheets out on the clotheslines, they are enough
Speaker 1: for the beds. And I was like, but I had
Speaker 1: like she opened my mind in a way that no
Speaker 1: one else had before. And I went, oh, you realize
Speaker 1: how many sheets you just passed? Wait a minute, and
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, it was sort of a joke, but
Speaker 1: not really. And so I learned things that I hadn't considered.
Speaker 1: And you open your world and then when you know better,
Speaker 1: you do better. And I think in a lot of places,
Speaker 1: especially in the Midwest, you do have folks who they
Speaker 1: just grew up around white people and they didn't know
Speaker 1: any better, and then it's easy to create a boogeyman.
Speaker 1: In the same way if you've met if you don't
Speaker 1: encounter trans people, it's really easy to be afraid of
Speaker 1: us and say.
Speaker 3: But it's hard to be a missionary. You know, Frans person,
Speaker 3: you're a missionary almost all the time? Right, Well, person,
Speaker 3: you're a missionary. You know a lot. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: lot to ask anybody, it is. And may the day
Speaker 3: comes soon when it doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 1: Really may it. Yeah, you know, there's two songs I
Speaker 1: want to talk about because I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to soak up too much of your time because.
Speaker 3: You're being soaking up. I'm soaking up.
Speaker 1: My Okay, well is there more in there? Because there's more.
Speaker 3: In the fridge?
Speaker 1: Okay? Good? Oh, thank goodness.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I wonder you are a brilliant songwriter. One of the
Speaker 1: songs that you did on Saturday night was Manhattan, Kansas.
Speaker 1: It could not be more relevant right now as we
Speaker 1: get to the end of June and wonder what's happening
Speaker 1: with brow ye is that? Is that a tough song
Speaker 1: to do?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Good good? Okay, it's not. I think it's an important
Speaker 1: song to do well.
Speaker 3: Thanks for saying that. It is the You know, I
Speaker 3: like to work sometimes from models. It helps me if
Speaker 3: I have kind of a template, and in this case,
Speaker 3: the model is the songs of Jimmy Webb. Jimmy Webb
Speaker 3: wrote Jimmy Webb is from Oklahoma, and he wrote some
Speaker 3: songs that were country hits in the seventies, including Galveston
Speaker 3: and Wichita Linemen.
Speaker 9: And by the time I get to Phoenix, right right right,
Speaker 9: Puppy Dog Can we put the puppy dog on camera?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's going to insist on it. This is Ali,
Speaker 1: bring him between.
Speaker 3: Us, Aley, not Alvin, Justine, not Alvin Aley.
Speaker 1: There, that's Ali. Yes, that's the He was three pounds
Speaker 1: when we got him. He's almost five now. So oh my,
Speaker 1: he's put on Yeah, he's gotten healthier. He put on
Speaker 1: some weight, his hair grow in. He was a maths
Speaker 1: when we got him.
Speaker 3: I love the joke that my brother used to tell about.
Speaker 3: He would say, I'm really I'm a little nervous because
Speaker 3: I'm going to my elementary school reunion, class reunion this weekend,
Speaker 3: and I've put on one hundred pounds since then.
Speaker 1: Adopted a Doberman.
Speaker 3: My elementary school reunion.
Speaker 1: Oh that's the.
Speaker 3: And re refocus. Oh yeah, so the Manhattan, Kansas. So
Speaker 3: I wanted to write a song. It seemed to me
Speaker 3: that so much of the it seemed to be that
Speaker 3: so much of the discussion about abortion rights has to
Speaker 3: do with this this fixation, this ability to overlook the
Speaker 3: experience of a pregnant woman. She's just invisible to the
Speaker 3: whole thing. And I wanted to write a portrait that
Speaker 3: fills out that story. That's a real person with experiences
Speaker 3: and with decisions to make and how and why. And
Speaker 3: so I landed on the town of Manhattan, Kansas's a
Speaker 3: place I've been in a beautiful place. There's a great prairie,
Speaker 3: restored prairie just outside of Manhattan, and it's just is beautiful.
Speaker 3: It's like what you think heaven must look like. When
Speaker 3: you walk into the gates, You're just like, oh, golden,
Speaker 3: the golden prairie grass and the sun, no trees between
Speaker 3: you and the sun, just for miles. And that was
Speaker 3: how that song came about. Was I had a model
Speaker 3: for this exercise I wanted to do, not just an exercise,
Speaker 3: but I felt strongly like we were overlooking the pregnant woman. Yeah,
Speaker 3: how are we doing? Why are we doing that? And
Speaker 3: sometimes I think it's because because people are afraid of pregnancy.
Speaker 3: It's pregnancy is hard work, to say the least, To
Speaker 3: say the least, it's a major inconvenience. It is I've
Speaker 3: never been pregnant, but major. Your body will never be
Speaker 3: the same, right right, And this this inability to face
Speaker 3: that square on what is that?
Speaker 1: I think it did an amazing job because it feels
Speaker 1: very personal. The song feels, you know.
Speaker 3: It's a piece of it's a piece of writing that
Speaker 3: is obliquely personal, right, and it's it just seems to
Speaker 3: really resonate, and it has ever since I wrote. It
Speaker 3: seems especially powerful right now, God forbid, whatever's going to
Speaker 3: happen here later this week. It's just it can't be.
Speaker 3: It can't be.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I love your town of Chicago
Speaker 1: because you've got you've got resources, and they really are
Speaker 1: trying to I'm losing the name of the organization, but
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the Women's Abortion Center of Chicago.
Speaker 3: And why don't I know that name either?
Speaker 1: But they have you know, they haven't had to turn
Speaker 1: anyone away through the pandemic, and in years they've maintained funding.
Speaker 1: And they're really trying to gear up at this point
Speaker 1: because they're looking at maybe three four thousand more women
Speaker 1: coming through the doors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you know, Illinois is going to be an
Speaker 3: abortion island, right, you know, a sanctuary in a safe place.
Speaker 3: And you know it's because we know from the Upper Midwest.
Speaker 3: You know, Chicago's always been and I live in Chicago.
Speaker 3: I'm here right now in town, and it's always been
Speaker 3: a kind of pool for talent, you know, attractive right gathering.
Speaker 3: Somebody called it a catch basin for talent, right like
Speaker 3: from the Upper Midwest. There's a couple of different things
Speaker 3: you can do. You can go to New York, you
Speaker 3: can go to la or you can go to Chicago,
Speaker 3: and you can still go see your parents. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: so for me this works out, even though it wasn't
Speaker 3: Philly for many, many years, but I came back here
Speaker 3: so I can see my parents and Tracy lived here.
Speaker 3: Long story. But the idea that Illinois is going to
Speaker 3: become one of those places where you know, we can
Speaker 3: help that it would have to even.
Speaker 1: Do that, that's right, right, I mean, but it's true.
Speaker 1: And at least they are like they're prepared.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what we're going to see, you know, that's
Speaker 3: we're going to see. All over the country. There's gonna
Speaker 3: be places where you can go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What a what a hideous place to be in. But
Speaker 1: it's nice to know we have islands.
Speaker 3: I hope to think right now, by the way, that
Speaker 3: there's a lot of stocking up on plan on the
Speaker 3: plan on Plan B Hill.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, well I've seen a lot of that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one has to hope that a lot of that's
Speaker 3: going on, getting ready for the battle ahead, because it
Speaker 3: is that the links.
Speaker 1: The mail order. Yeah, because we don't think especially here.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we live kind of in a bubble,
Speaker 1: you know here in New Jersey, Like Pennsylvania has that
Speaker 1: pennsyl tucky thing in the middle, but New Jersey doesn't, Right,
Speaker 1: So you know, New Jersey is putting the lalls in
Speaker 1: place in the ways that Illinois is to say, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for you know, we hear you, we hear what's happening,
Speaker 1: and we're going to make sure we protect folks. But
Speaker 1: you don't realize what it's like for someone in Texas
Speaker 1: or you know, or someone who is in one of
Speaker 1: these huge states where there aren't that many people to
Speaker 1: begin with, and there's nowhere to go and there's not
Speaker 1: the money to get there.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and this fairy tale about the babies, right
Speaker 3: that there will be all of a sudden all of
Speaker 3: these white babies show white couples to adopt. Yeah, please,
Speaker 3: that's not what's going to happen here, you know.
Speaker 1: Well, no, of course it's not.
Speaker 3: No, it's just sad.
Speaker 1: And we will lose more adult women. I think that's
Speaker 1: going to happen.
Speaker 3: No, we will. There's a lot about it. So remember November.
Speaker 3: Remember November.
Speaker 1: Yes please, I love that that rhymes because that's it's
Speaker 1: the one place I always land is and vote, vote, vote,
Speaker 1: then vote wherever you are.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Exactly. And it's like, you know, you may want to
Speaker 1: blow up the world, and I'm fine with that, you know,
Speaker 1: carry the sign. We can have that conversation. But I
Speaker 1: need you to vote.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: I need and need you just suck it up, vote
Speaker 1: for a Democrat, and then then we can talk about
Speaker 1: all the rest of it in December.
Speaker 2: In the but I'm in between times.
Speaker 1: I want to know that I can still live here
Speaker 1: in December, like I want to know that because the
Speaker 1: pink triangles were not that far away from.
Speaker 3: Oh god, yeah, it feels very yeah, very republic.
Speaker 1: I imagine you don't get to see a lot of television,
Speaker 1: or maybe you.
Speaker 3: Do, but not so much. But hey, are we running
Speaker 3: out of time? We are?
Speaker 1: No, we are unless we take one more quick break
Speaker 1: and then and then we can wrap it up on
Speaker 1: that or we wrap it up now, let's have one more.
Speaker 1: Let's have one more break, fill our fill our glasses
Speaker 1: and then because I think if you remember, there was
Speaker 1: one thing I had hoped you did on Saturday that
Speaker 1: I didn't get to hear. So if if there's a guitar.
Speaker 3: Nearby, I can go get it.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll be right back. We'll be right back.
Speaker 6: I was a college girl from out of state. He
Speaker 6: was a rancher from Salina, And when I told him
Speaker 6: I was three weeks lane, he said, I can't be.
Speaker 3: A father. Manhattan conslus. We all do what we gotta do.
Speaker 7: I did what I did, and I surely don't blame you.
Speaker 7: I simply needed.
Speaker 3: For things to turn out differently.
Speaker 6: Or Manhattan, Kansas, can you understand me?
Speaker 5: The longer side walk will over see.
Speaker 3: Hey, I'm Karen and I'm Aubrey.
Speaker 10: And this is chick Lit, a literature comedy podcast where
Speaker 10: we enjoy getting lit and talking about books that spoke
Speaker 10: to us as young adults.
Speaker 3: Yeah book it was dope as fuck.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I get the little personal Pam pizza.
Speaker 8: Just for you. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nobody can take that ship though. But we also cover
Speaker 3: movies with special guests and it can get pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: I'll make a controversial statement.
Speaker 3: I will take this over.
Speaker 2: Space jam is that controversial?
Speaker 3: People love space? Jam. We might have to, we might
Speaker 3: have to stage a fight.
Speaker 10: So if you enjoy ya fiction, that fool of a
Speaker 10: fairy Loucinda did not intend.
Speaker 3: To lay a curse on me. She meant to bestow
Speaker 3: a gift. Boozy beverages.
Speaker 10: Little shot of Bailey is in your coffee, coffee, pizza
Speaker 10: and Bailey's goes together like doesn't go together, Like it
Speaker 10: doesn't go together at all, And the power of friendship.
Speaker 10: I'll be like, I bought your Christmas present and she'll
Speaker 10: be like, what'd you get me?
Speaker 1: I have to know, tell me right, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: hen you get so irritated because I'm like, do you
Speaker 1: want your present now?
Speaker 3: And he's like, it's like October, No, I don't. Then
Speaker 3: we're the podcasts for you.
Speaker 10: We've been best friends for over a decade, So join
Speaker 10: it on the fun and grab a drink, y'all. January sixth,
Speaker 10: at one fifteen pm, the day that Dry January died.
Speaker 3: You say, you know, you say.
Speaker 11: Und that holely Bible of bam Shell.
Speaker 12: Do you recall when jeeves a sad judge not last
Speaker 12: judge yourself.
Speaker 5: For I know you down if you could, my friend,
Speaker 5: that's simply not your call.
Speaker 3: If God is great and God is good, why is
Speaker 3: your heaven.
Speaker 1: So small? So we are back? I swear I'm going
Speaker 1: to get out this one thought. Somebody somewhere is based
Speaker 1: in Manhattan, Kansas, or someone somewhere whatever it's called Somebody
Speaker 1: somewhere somebody.
Speaker 3: Why would you choose that, right?
Speaker 1: Well, because it's Manhattan, Kansas. It's such a I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's a I don't know, but it's a really
Speaker 1: good show about uh, you know, a woman kind of
Speaker 1: our age who finds herself back where she grew up.
Speaker 3: Well that's why, right, because it's not I mean, did
Speaker 3: somebody from La cook up this idea?
Speaker 11: I don't know?
Speaker 3: What is it? How does it serve the story? Well,
Speaker 3: that's what it's about. It's about somebody coming back to
Speaker 3: connecting to their roots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's it's it's a fun it's a
Speaker 1: fun show. It actually is a really fun show.
Speaker 3: Well, I would expect something from set in Manhattan, Kansas.
Speaker 1: To be I thought it was the only time I
Speaker 1: would ever hear it, and then I heard your song
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, two people have been there.
Speaker 3: Well I want to show there this fall. So I
Speaker 3: know I'll play that, but maybe I can talk about
Speaker 3: this show now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's based there, It is based there. I thought
Speaker 1: it was so interesting, you know, I was, I was
Speaker 1: cooking up a thought during the break, and I guess
Speaker 1: it was just this. When you talk to young musicians,
Speaker 1: what do you tell them?
Speaker 3: Hm? Hm?
Speaker 1: You know you, because you know when I look at you,
Speaker 1: I see someone who does exactly what they want to
Speaker 1: do with maybe the exception of the Broadway show, which
Speaker 1: I did want to kind of fit in real quick.
Speaker 1: But but you you really do explore different genres. Your
Speaker 1: albums are also singular and different, and I think you're
Speaker 1: just having fun and that has to there has to
Speaker 1: be a price to that. There has to be that's
Speaker 1: hard because you haven't made yourself easily I love I
Speaker 1: love this answer already. You haven't made yourself easily distinguishable,
Speaker 1: Like what's your genre? My genre is music?
Speaker 3: Yeah, at some point you realize, you know, you're giving
Speaker 3: a choice, right, you think you're giving a choice, which
Speaker 3: is look susan. You know, really you ought to be more.
Speaker 3: You know how many times did I hear this? You know?
Speaker 3: It would be nice to have something more marketable. It'd
Speaker 3: be nice to have something we can fit into a bin,
Speaker 3: you know, fit into a bin in the record store
Speaker 3: and the bin, right, what bin are you in? And
Speaker 3: at some point you realize that you hear that enough,
Speaker 3: but you're not doing it, Like you're just not going
Speaker 3: to do it right, but you're not going.
Speaker 2: To do that doesn't work for me at all, and
Speaker 2: fitting in a bin doesn't even sound the tract is.
Speaker 3: No, a little bit, it sounds a little bit like
Speaker 3: a little tiny doggy cage is awful. Yeah, at some
Speaker 3: point you just realize, no, you're not going to do it,
Speaker 3: and then you have to Here's the hard part is
Speaker 3: to accept what comes back from that. Meaning if you're
Speaker 3: going to be an idiosyncratic artist right who brings challenges
Speaker 3: before themselves, And that's where the energy is. That you
Speaker 3: may not be a household name. And the question is
Speaker 3: are you willing to accept that or are you going
Speaker 3: to yell at it and be bitter about you know,
Speaker 3: not being I don't know some right, save this name.
Speaker 13: Right.
Speaker 3: At some point you just say, hey, you know this,
Speaker 3: I kept wanting this, I kept really wanting this. There's
Speaker 3: a reason I want this. You know that this is
Speaker 3: my way, this is my calling this is it. So
Speaker 3: then you do that and you enjoy being that somebody
Speaker 3: wants to be ourselves, we have to give up being
Speaker 3: other possible selves. M Yeah, And to really enjoy being yourself,
Speaker 3: you just say, okay, yeah, could a what A should me?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna enjoy being this what this is? And yeah,
Speaker 3: So that's how that works out right. You may know
Speaker 3: that there's something else you could do, But if you
Speaker 3: accept being yourself and that the rewards are gonna come
Speaker 3: from that, and you're gonna and you're gonna be and
Speaker 3: you're gonna be good with those rewards, you're gonna like
Speaker 3: your life.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: But if you're always trying to scream like, why aren't
Speaker 3: I experiencing the rewards of a major career? Well, are
Speaker 3: you doing the work that attracts a major audience? Right?
Speaker 3: Are you doing that? Are you willing to change what
Speaker 3: you do to be that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And that's a question. You think you can just do
Speaker 3: it and have it, but no for some of most
Speaker 3: but it would be something we'd have to consciously aim
Speaker 3: at and decide to be and even then it may
Speaker 3: not work.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: I could write a whole bunch of songs that I
Speaker 3: think are mainstream pop, indie rock whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you could, but.
Speaker 3: They still might not they still might not work.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's interesting because what just rang in
Speaker 1: my head Kathy. We interviewed Kathy, and I told you
Speaker 1: about that, and I said, you know, she kind of
Speaker 1: told her story about coming up in radio, and I said,
Speaker 1: isn't it interesting, like just the serendipity and how so
Speaker 1: much fell into place? And she said, once I knew
Speaker 1: who I was. Yeah, And that's what you've just said
Speaker 1: is kind of once you know who you are, right,
Speaker 1: that's where the good stuff is.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, And I think for I think for some
Speaker 3: of us, for some of us women, I think for
Speaker 3: some of us, with the option to be pregnant, the
Speaker 3: decision not to have children yourself is a big one.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, And it frees up if you think that
Speaker 3: you might have children, and there's a moment when you
Speaker 3: say it's not going to happen in this lifetime. There's
Speaker 3: an energy I found that came back to me like, Okay,
Speaker 3: well then I'm just going all in on this other thing.
Speaker 3: There's a window of time where some of us may
Speaker 3: hear the biological clock really ticking, like and I think
Speaker 3: there is such a thing. I think it's like you're
Speaker 3: I don't know what's going on. Maybe your body's throwing
Speaker 3: more eggs, are like, come on, come on, the cough
Speaker 3: at this point, sneezing eggs, right, And I think the
Speaker 3: moment that I became really comfortable with the idea that no,
Speaker 3: I just I'm going to do this and there's a
Speaker 3: way to be. There's a way to be. Somebody said generativity.
Speaker 3: The word generativity, like there's a way to make good
Speaker 3: things happen, to generate life with that happened to be
Speaker 3: a mom pregnant yourself?
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So the question may be what is what is it
Speaker 3: you really want to do? And is parenting part of
Speaker 3: that right? Or is it is it raising a child?
Speaker 3: Is it being pregnant? What part of what part of
Speaker 3: these right? To break it down into its component parts
Speaker 3: and say this is really I really like about this,
Speaker 3: and is there a way to do this that feels
Speaker 3: like myself and that I get to keep myself and
Speaker 3: do it right and I feel like this is the
Speaker 3: right decision this way. And then when Kathy O'Connell comes
Speaker 3: to my show, right, Kathy O'Connell from kids corner at XPN,
Speaker 3: and I wind up playing songs like you kissed your
Speaker 3: dog on the mouth, Oh.
Speaker 1: My God, And she went home and did that, so
Speaker 1: of course she did. I want to tell you this, Stu.
Speaker 3: I want to say. I mean to say, we just
Speaker 3: finished this thought is that that song is such a
Speaker 3: big hit with kids.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they love this song.
Speaker 3: And I would never have thought i'd ever write a
Speaker 3: children's song. I didn't mean to write a children's song
Speaker 3: with kids, right, I love anyway, the idea we're talking
Speaker 3: about generativity and parenting and deciding to be who you are,
Speaker 3: and the energy that gets released when you decide to
Speaker 3: be who you are. It may still come back in
Speaker 3: some way that you didn't even foresee, right that I
Speaker 3: wrote a song that makes eight year old kids happy.
Speaker 2: I love them.
Speaker 1: It's awesome and that's a wonderful thing to just have happened. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I could totally see you writing kids music. I
Speaker 1: totally see that.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's going to happen, though.
Speaker 1: No, Okay, I want I want the agnostic children's album.
Speaker 1: I want that. I'm like looking for it now.
Speaker 3: So what for your listeners, Martha, I think is referencing
Speaker 3: is a project I did called The Gospel Truth. Yes,
Speaker 3: and it puts songs of faith next to songs of doubt,
Speaker 3: and it's church music. Sounds like church music, right, it does?
Speaker 3: And uh and it is. I mean, the song styles are,
Speaker 3: the song forms are of the church. But it puts
Speaker 3: these songs of faith next to songs of doubt, right
Speaker 3: next to it, which is how a lot of us
Speaker 3: experience the church. Is like, oh, this is great, this
Speaker 3: is horrible, right, this is really a wonderful quality to
Speaker 3: have as human being. This is awful, right. And so
Speaker 3: I put that record out and then somebody said you
Speaker 3: should really do an agnostic children's album, and I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that'll sell tens of.
Speaker 2: Units, tens of fives of albums TSI will go ten
Speaker 2: double pocket lit.
Speaker 1: It's that song is a perfect song for eight year olds.
Speaker 1: I can be content with that. Kathy's dog, Tammy, who
Speaker 1: I adore and this is her second home. Kathy does
Speaker 1: Kathy does, Tammy does the tongue slide like. I have
Speaker 1: to put her head down because if I let it,
Speaker 1: like if I relax and let that dog's face anywhere
Speaker 1: near mine, she'll wait for me to be talking and
Speaker 1: her tongue goes halfway down my throat, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: your mother likes that, not me.
Speaker 3: I use this product called Farah Breath. Have you heard
Speaker 3: of Sarah breath? Yes, it's really yes, And maybe just
Speaker 3: keep that on hand for occasions like that, the oral hygiene.
Speaker 1: Either way, I don't want her doing that. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I sit there, I am not consenting to this.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm not.
Speaker 1: There's no consent.
Speaker 3: It's an assault doggy. That's horrible.
Speaker 1: And then Keathy's just called me here and call kiss mommy.
Speaker 3: No no, Also, don't kiss mommy human.
Speaker 1: Mom yea, no, human mommy encourages that nonsense. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: He thinks it's hilarious when it happens to me, Yes,
Speaker 1: right right, yeah, what happens to you?
Speaker 3: Well, I think this dog has figured out that I
Speaker 3: get that. They get a reaction out of.
Speaker 1: You, right, she does, and she loves that. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: thinks that's great. She thinks that's great.
Speaker 3: That's the kind of power even negative attention.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, do you have pets at home?
Speaker 3: I don't. I travel too much.
Speaker 1: We're going I thought I was going to say that
Speaker 1: that can't really be possible, Ken, No.
Speaker 3: It's not possible. And I would love I mean, i'd
Speaker 3: love to have a dog. I love that dog. I
Speaker 3: love dog.
Speaker 1: Liza Minelli always takes hers with her. I'm just saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't anyway.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are performers who do that, but you also
Speaker 3: have to have a staff that's okay with the dog
Speaker 3: coming with you. And I just you know, I go
Speaker 3: visit my road manager, Jane up and Shellefont and her
Speaker 3: dog Adrian is my time share dog. Is like, oh,
Speaker 3: good time share dog. And Jane named your dog Adrian
Speaker 3: because Jane's and Philly so off the back porch she
Speaker 3: can yell.
Speaker 1: That's perfect, it's perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some creative dog names out there, but
Speaker 1: that's that's a good one. That's a good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: ALIAS just named that so I could get him in
Speaker 1: the house.
Speaker 3: I went to a voodoo shop in New Orleans and
Speaker 3: I went in. Yeah, and from the back I heard
Speaker 3: this dog was growling it right, really growling at my presence.
Speaker 3: And I heard a voice say, Jesus Christ, shut up,
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, come here. So the dog's name was Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3: And that's when I knew I was going to have
Speaker 3: a great hour and a half at the Voodoo Shop.
Speaker 3: And it was awesome.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, that's perfect, it's perfect. So what's coming up
Speaker 1: for you? What's happening when your schedule look like I
Speaker 1: know that you are constantly on the road. What's next?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I try to not sometimes be on the road, right
Speaker 3: so I can be home and like, you know, eat
Speaker 3: food that has vegetables in it, go crazy, have a
Speaker 3: piece of fruit. Wow, that stuff is the stuff you
Speaker 3: get tired of in travel, you know, the sitting down
Speaker 3: for hours and the food. But I go to let's see,
Speaker 3: go up to Massachusetts. I'm doing a show at the
Speaker 3: well Fleet Actors Theater on the Cape, which I've never
Speaker 3: done before, and I'm going to have a couple extra days.
Speaker 3: And that's hard to complain about, right right, Those gigs
Speaker 3: are hard to complain about. I'm up at Booth Bay
Speaker 3: Harbor and Maine in August. Maine in August is hard
Speaker 3: to complain about.
Speaker 5: Nice.
Speaker 2: Nice, And now.
Speaker 3: We're back in Philly. I think in January at the point,
Speaker 3: I think the point has opened up again. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: the main point was in Ismar and now there's a club.
Speaker 3: There's a club called The Point that was open for
Speaker 3: a while and then I think they're going to reopen
Speaker 3: as The Point. Okay, so it's great. It's such a
Speaker 3: great little space, so cozy, and I'm excited to go
Speaker 3: back there.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fun. That's fun. I loved Singing Your World
Speaker 1: Cafe Live. That was a great It's a perfect venue.
Speaker 3: It is talent with me too. I had Trina Hamlin
Speaker 3: on harmonica.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she was amazing, amazing.
Speaker 3: No one can do that. She plays the drums in harmonica.
Speaker 1: At the at the same she also whistles like almost
Speaker 1: no one I've ever heard. Yes, it's like Roger Whittaker
Speaker 1: or something. It's amazing, amazing.
Speaker 2: Seriously, when she was whistling, I was like, you better sing.
Speaker 3: She does, and she does. She does that, and she writes,
Speaker 3: you know, songs, great songs, and plays piano and guitar.
Speaker 3: She's mind blowingly talented. And then you had Chris Matthews
Speaker 3: there that night too, and what a tremendous talent.
Speaker 1: Now where did you Where did you meet Chris Matthews?
Speaker 1: Because we were captivated, captivated, I think.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know at Folk Alliance in New Orleans and
Speaker 3: like twenty nineteen, I think, right before the pandemic of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, and I'd heard of Chris before and I
Speaker 3: finally saw a set and I just was so just
Speaker 3: blown away by again this energy of positivity, just picking
Speaker 3: up an audience and lifting us. And we just need
Speaker 3: more of that. We just we can never get enough
Speaker 3: of it. We'll never get enough kindness, we will never
Speaker 3: get enough positivity, and she is just bringing it. And
Speaker 3: also pitch perfection, perfection. And what I learned later was
Speaker 3: that Chris has a degree in music and plays clarinet
Speaker 3: quite well, so I think Chris may have been a
Speaker 3: scholarship student. And that pitch when Chris sings is just
Speaker 3: it's it's like Barbara Streisan pitch. It's right on it.
Speaker 1: It was amazing.
Speaker 2: Clarinet was my instrument too.
Speaker 3: That helps, and that helps with that helps with your
Speaker 3: sense of singing and your help and your sense of line.
Speaker 3: When you sing a phrase, like phrasing, how to make
Speaker 3: how to make the phrase grow, go up, come down,
Speaker 3: where to let people where to kind of the handoff
Speaker 3: to the next phrase. I mean that is it's like
Speaker 3: drawing a line clarinet is like drawing a very very
Speaker 3: long line with a black sharpie. If one can see
Speaker 3: this is the line here it is. It goes like this,
Speaker 3: and it does this right. And when I do that,
Speaker 3: I mean this right, emotionally right. It's the intention of
Speaker 3: what you're doing. Yes, Harry's to people even if they
Speaker 3: have no idea. You could be thinking, you know, thoughts
Speaker 3: about like you can be thinking, you know, the most
Speaker 3: angry thoughts in the world, violent thoughts. But if you
Speaker 3: if you sublimate it into music. No one knows exactly
Speaker 3: what you're thinking, but they can feel something like what
Speaker 3: you're right. And this is the beauty of music, right,
Speaker 3: that you can bring your feelings safely, whatever they are,
Speaker 3: you can bring through an instrument. You can bring those
Speaker 3: feelings safely to other people. Yes, because it's not there's
Speaker 3: no name attached, right, there's no name, there's no specifics attached.
Speaker 3: It's universal. This brings back some again. I'm always referring
Speaker 3: to studies. What that was wrong with me? So there
Speaker 3: was a study where they played they had a musician
Speaker 3: play a note on the piano, just the same note,
Speaker 3: but play it seven different ways, and people all over
Speaker 3: the world use the same kinds of words to describe
Speaker 3: the emotion just playing one note, how they played the
Speaker 3: one note right and it wasn't specific but like gentle
Speaker 3: or tender right or angry right, but with one note
Speaker 3: just right. Anyway, I'm going on, I'm trying to catch myself, but.
Speaker 1: I you know, I look at music that way though.
Speaker 1: I think that especially this is just my theory that
Speaker 1: I want to share with you, particularly as the rhetoric.
Speaker 1: The rhetoric just keeps getting hotter and further apart, where
Speaker 1: words are failing us and we're not trusting one another.
Speaker 1: I've always thought art, and in particular music is universal
Speaker 1: and bridges those gaps, and we need it now more
Speaker 1: than ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and where we can right to do, to do
Speaker 3: music with other artists, especially artists that do not look
Speaker 3: like us, especially artists that do not have the same
Speaker 3: orientation as us. Anytime we can mix it up, anytime
Speaker 3: we can create a dialogue. And that's what's hard, is that,
Speaker 3: right that when you have we talked earlier about record
Speaker 3: store bins. Right, the genre, there's genre, so then people
Speaker 3: tend to stay within the genre and whatever that is.
Speaker 3: But anywhere that we can bust out of that. Boy,
Speaker 3: that's Oh, that's it. That's it. That's it, that's it,
Speaker 3: and and yes, more of that, And you're inspiring me
Speaker 3: to complete a project I'm working on. I'm gonna make
Speaker 3: a note good.
Speaker 1: Do you do you have a favorite collaborator?
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: I mentioned to you it was it was quite a
Speaker 1: quite a thing. As we were announced as the newest
Speaker 1: DJs on Medway Pride. We tuned in and it was
Speaker 1: Susie on Sundays and there you were, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this world is this big? And I had looked at
Speaker 1: some of the Susie on Sundays where you had Dar
Speaker 1: Williams and Kathy Matteia. Do you have a favorite collaborator
Speaker 1: or somebody that you want to work with that you
Speaker 1: haven't yet? So somebody that comes to mind?
Speaker 3: You know, there's there's some people I've really enjoyed working with.
Speaker 3: I had the good fortune to do a tour with
Speaker 3: Kemmo m It was just a wonderful human being and
Speaker 3: who does some of what we were just talking about right,
Speaker 3: which is to create gentleness and dialogue and you know,
Speaker 3: do your work that way, create create good, create create positive.
Speaker 3: He's really super positive and just so dedicated to it
Speaker 3: all the time. And I really like working with my
Speaker 3: pal Eric Johnson there in Philadelphia. He was with a
Speaker 3: band called huffa Moose. He's a drummer and just a genius,
Speaker 3: and I love his I love the diversity of his
Speaker 3: network of musicians and the excellence that is Philly musicians.
Speaker 3: Can I just tell you, I'm gonna I don't mean
Speaker 3: to speak poorly of my hometown of Chicago now, but
Speaker 3: I will tell you that Philly musicians are just a
Speaker 3: cut above.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: I have to agree with you.
Speaker 3: There is something about it. I wonder if it has
Speaker 3: to do with a long history of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Speaker 3: I wonder if it has to do with a long
Speaker 3: history of playing casino gigs where you had to, you know,
Speaker 3: execute with people you'd never met before. I wonder if
Speaker 3: it has to do with Broadway shows coming down and
Speaker 3: doing tryouts in Philadelphia. I wonder if it's part of
Speaker 3: the North Philly scene and Jill Scott and you know, gambling,
Speaker 3: huff and all of that that Philadelphia has. Philadelphia had
Speaker 3: a recognizable moment and then a neo soul moment with
Speaker 3: Jill Scott. Yeah, but that there was a moment where
Speaker 3: Philadelphia was making the music that everybody in the world
Speaker 3: listened to. And whenever I go back to Philly, if
Speaker 3: I'm in a public building like the airport or a
Speaker 3: post office or something, they're playing Philadelphia music and people
Speaker 3: are humming along, even singing. I don't see that anywhere else.
Speaker 3: I don't see that anywhere else, and I just love it.
Speaker 3: I just love it. We sing along with a great tune,
Speaker 3: and so much good music has come from Philadelphia that
Speaker 3: there's great music to sing to that's identified with the city.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 1: We had our bar for five years, just before COVID
Speaker 1: shut the bar down, but we had an open mic
Speaker 1: night on every Tuesday night, and it became known because
Speaker 1: there was a circle of musicians that are cutting their
Speaker 1: teeth and working it out and collaborating with others, and
Speaker 1: they know which place has which like World Cafe Live,
Speaker 1: it's Monday night. We were Tuesday, somebody else was Wednesday,
Speaker 1: but they knew, you know where to go, and we
Speaker 1: had we had musicians come through that brought up a
Speaker 1: horn section. Yes, I don't open mic night on a Tuesday, right, That's.
Speaker 3: Not going to happen in Chicago. I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 3: that that's not going to happen. It's just nope, it's
Speaker 3: just I don't know why, but that just does not
Speaker 3: happen that way. And I think, again, Philadelphia had this moment,
Speaker 3: and it has this tradition everybody, let's all get together
Speaker 3: and make something special happen. And also, like the horn
Speaker 3: section is a very seventies thing. Oh yeah, and again
Speaker 3: it comes from this great moment in Philadelphia music, you know,
Speaker 3: pop music history. I love hearing that. I love that
Speaker 3: you were part of that. Thanks for creating a place
Speaker 3: like that. It matters hugely to have a place to
Speaker 3: go try out your stuff.
Speaker 1: I agree, Yeah, we agree.
Speaker 2: We had that.
Speaker 1: That was an honor. Really, it was an honor.
Speaker 3: And may chance you're going to open your bar.
Speaker 1: I think I'm done with the bar business. I do.
Speaker 1: I think it was a moment in time for us,
Speaker 1: you know, but there are so many other ways to
Speaker 1: be creative. So when Charles and I first got together,
Speaker 1: he was producing a performance series in West Philly, the.
Speaker 2: Et Cetera Performance Series, And yeah, and I thanks for
Speaker 2: doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was fun. It was primarily dance, And
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I had sat in the audience,
Speaker 1: and I said, the thing that's missing from this is
Speaker 1: a host because I just like that, you know, I
Speaker 1: like the performers being able to have an intro and
Speaker 1: an outro and someone to just you know, kind of
Speaker 1: announce who they are what they're doing in the world.
Speaker 1: So I started hosting and and it was really a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. So we're talking about doing that again.
Speaker 1: And as you know, as we did it, we incorporated
Speaker 1: more music, more musicians, more you know, just a variety,
Speaker 1: and expanded it beyond dance. And then in the are
Speaker 1: it started as what we called Fringe of the Fringe
Speaker 1: because Philly has the big fringe festival in September. Well,
Speaker 1: we were up in the Northeast and we couldn't afford
Speaker 1: to pay to be a part of the Fringe festival.
Speaker 1: It was a lot like our technology today. So what
Speaker 1: we did we worked that we did we did was
Speaker 1: we had Fringe of the Fringe and we would have
Speaker 1: this big day where we just kind of brought everybody back,
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of hand picked from the open
Speaker 1: mic nights and the people that played there, and we
Speaker 1: had this big, long thing.
Speaker 2: I booked it for an entire year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then Charles said, let's let's do First Friday
Speaker 1: and let's incorporate a visual artist. So we would do
Speaker 1: every First Friday, we had a new visual artist who
Speaker 1: would put their work on the wall and sell their
Speaker 1: art through that month. And then we did kind of
Speaker 1: a mini version of Fringe of the Fringe every First Friday,
Speaker 1: and it was we had harp, we had you know,
Speaker 1: like a rock fiddle player. We had Yeah, so so
Speaker 1: much cool stuff, cool music that came through. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't say us as bar owners again,
Speaker 1: but how do you ever get away from it?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 3: But there's what what you were doing was creating a
Speaker 3: space for creativity to happen. So maybe that doesn't have
Speaker 3: to be a bar, right right, Yeah, before I forget
Speaker 3: to mention it, Charles, I just did this gig up
Speaker 3: in french Town at art Yard, and that's a good
Speaker 3: space for visual arts and dance, okay from the barren mind,
Speaker 3: because they're really pretty open minded about what they do there.
Speaker 3: So the art Yard, Yeah, look it up. And I
Speaker 3: think that they might be looking for a Charles, you know,
Speaker 3: they might be they might be looking for a Charles
Speaker 3: and the talents of the Charles.
Speaker 1: And an event, and Frenchtown is like quintessential Bucks County,
Speaker 1: one of those gorgeous Well, the french Town is New
Speaker 1: Jersey though, right, the New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, somebody said it's the new New Hope.
Speaker 1: And that's fair. Yeah, but it's so quaint and beautiful
Speaker 1: and quiet, and.
Speaker 3: But the space is looking to bring in all kinds
Speaker 3: of things.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Art yard cool, that's cool to know. Well, we we
Speaker 1: are very close to the Broadway Theater in Pittman, and
Speaker 1: Kathy has us with season tickets. They do you know, uh,
Speaker 1: mostly musical theater and they're fantastic. Yep, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's great regional community theater. But the level of
Speaker 1: production quality is just amazing and it's like, wow, that's
Speaker 1: right here, and it's just like and I can park,
Speaker 1: so we.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah yeah, and it doesn't cost.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah.
Speaker 1: So I the the answer to that is we'll be
Speaker 1: doing something because I don't know how to not support
Speaker 1: art and artists and you know, our life is so
Speaker 1: much better because of them all.
Speaker 3: And so this goes back to the sharing delight thing
Speaker 3: we were talking about with Kathy O'Connell. You know, there's something.
Speaker 3: If you love it, you know, some people want to
Speaker 3: share it, some people want to hoard it right right,
Speaker 3: and some people get it, and some people get a good,
Speaker 3: great delight out of watching other people enjoy it. Right.
Speaker 3: Somebody said once, uh, there's Broadway actors and Broadway audiences
Speaker 3: that look at the stage, that look at the stage
Speaker 3: when the show is going on, and then there's producers
Speaker 3: and writers, and producers and writers turn the other way
Speaker 3: and watch the audience right right right, and they're watching
Speaker 3: to see what works and what doesn't exactly what doesn't,
Speaker 3: but also to take some pride and showing people a
Speaker 3: good time. You made that happen. Look at this great
Speaker 3: time everybody's happened. Everybody's happening. It's almost like a parent generativity.
Speaker 3: You know, you made this happen, baby go we do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have.
Speaker 1: We have quite a family of young musicians who really
Speaker 1: did cut our friend the jingle berries for instance, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: our friend Medeu. She's the first woman to do satria,
Speaker 1: which is a prayerful form of a traditional Indian dance.
Speaker 1: It was always done by men on this little island,
Speaker 1: like just these monks did it. Wow, And she was
Speaker 1: the first woman to ever bring it to the United
Speaker 1: States and the first woman allowed to do satria, and
Speaker 1: the first place she did it was at the et
Speaker 1: Cetera performance series Wow. And so she always credits us
Speaker 1: with giving her her start, which is, you know, ridiculous
Speaker 1: to us because she's so fabulous. But one of the
Speaker 1: cool things that has always happened was a collaboration. So
Speaker 1: we had a tap dancer. His name is Reggie Tapman Myers.
Speaker 1: He was out of New York and yeah, we're gonna, okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to wrap this up. He was out of
Speaker 1: New York and he did a combination of hip and
Speaker 1: tap and he would change his shoes during his performance.
Speaker 1: And then they met, and then they surprised me at
Speaker 1: the next et Cetera and they performed together. So we
Speaker 1: had traditional Indian dance, tap and hip hop all on
Speaker 1: the same stage, all in the same performance, and it
Speaker 1: was electric.
Speaker 3: And everyone agrees on this. Everyone agrees on this. Everyone
Speaker 3: loves this. There's nothing not to love about this. Right.
Speaker 3: It is almost like you talk about music is the
Speaker 3: universal language. It's the lyrics that cause bar fights, right
Speaker 3: right right dance Like you were just talking about no one,
Speaker 3: no one cannot watch that. Yeah, it gets to your
Speaker 3: eyes before any other interpretation happens. It's just what is
Speaker 3: coming in. I'm gonna I think a dance is going
Speaker 3: to save the world.
Speaker 1: You know, well, I think it all is. I think
Speaker 1: in combination. But it's definitely art and it's definitely love.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd love to see more dance outdoors. I'd love
Speaker 3: to see more dance that happens to us.
Speaker 1: Oh, we'll come over. It happened here all the time.
Speaker 1: I am going to ask you to do something that
Speaker 1: you your version no, no, no, no, that wasn't the
Speaker 1: same word. No, but wrong. Sorry. You've been so wonderful
Speaker 1: and generous with your time. All of the world needs
Speaker 1: to know more of Susan Warner. I know I can't
Speaker 1: get enough, and I feel so blessed to have had
Speaker 1: this time and to talk to you. And I'm just
Speaker 1: going to ask you if you would please grace us
Speaker 1: with a song that you do so beautifully and a
Speaker 1: song that you know doesn't require the lyrics are are
Speaker 1: in another language, and it's just this is gorgeous. This
Speaker 1: is Susan Warner.
Speaker 3: Cold to Leo are in the Pound to buy Love
Speaker 3: be Helbo did a mot.
Speaker 13: The motor to leisure, some fair cusho, hely talk, the.
Speaker 11: Mock ca in the pound, the borner lock as Sallie
Speaker 11: to read on lovee imman Andy leisure, Hipple, loving Christian
Speaker 11: lapper shore more okay, ke.
Speaker 3: Diz zuki form betsinemia, heri chiso.
Speaker 13: Persia saboo, while abouts are.
Speaker 3: The lomoga jah partia he do domo cad upon, don't
Speaker 3: you cone lack all seb more.
Speaker 13: You know lovey, you'll malady lasureempo lovy.
Speaker 3: Hey, okay, And because you let us swear a lunga
Speaker 3: songs or one more again.
Speaker 1: Keep but.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, Susan Warner, Oh my goodness, I felt things.
Speaker 3: You know. It's wonderful, isn't it How a song can
Speaker 3: just do that without you knowing the specifics we were
Speaker 3: just talking about. Right dance gets to you before any
Speaker 3: other sorts of interpretations. And you know, a beautiful sound.
Speaker 3: I didn't used to do that, that song all that much,
Speaker 3: and and and I became aware of what just some
Speaker 3: a thing of beauty. It's just the thing of beauty.
Speaker 3: And I can sing it, you know, like with some
Speaker 3: credibility of some sort. You know I can sing, okay,
Speaker 3: so let's just do that and make it beautiful, right.
Speaker 3: But bring this beautiful song, which is a song from
Speaker 3: the Fourties, but bring this song to life and just
Speaker 3: make a lovely thing. And that's an argument for itself.
Speaker 3: That's enough. It's enough. It doesn't have to be some
Speaker 3: it's just a lovely thing. And I hope it helps.
Speaker 1: We need more beautiful things. And I can't thank you
Speaker 1: enough for being here with us.
Speaker 3: And you two are beautiful people. I really enjoyed this
Speaker 3: conversation with the two of you, and thanks you this podcast,
Speaker 3: and let's just attract you know, positivity and delight and share.
Speaker 13: With other people.
Speaker 3: I love what you're up to. Thanks for including me.
Speaker 3: I appreciated that. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you Susan so much.
Speaker 3: Bye Bye, Martha by Charles Bye Bye.
Speaker 2: Full Circle is a Never Scured Productions podcast hosted by
Speaker 2: Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal, Produced and edited by
Speaker 2: Never Skurd Executive Produced by Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal.
Speaker 2: Our theme and music is by the Jingle Bears. All names, pictures, audio,
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Speaker 2: their respective copyright holders,