Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Amy Grant

Transcript

Amy Grant · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Sets podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Amy Grant,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: who has a new album, The Me That Remains. Well,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: this is a first since I had a podcast with
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: your husband just two weeks ago. So did he talk
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: about that experience?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Well, he came into the kitchen because it was a
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: zoom and walking and said, whoo, my brain's tired. But
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: when I was leaving yesterday to fly to fly out here,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: he said, please tell Bob how much I enjoyed our conversation.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much. Okay, but let's talk about you.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Why an album? Why now? Hm?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Well, the at the outset, I didn't realize I was
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: making a record. You know, the last stretch of years
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: has been a lot for everybody, and I was advised
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: by a doctor to in and so I started leaning
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: into the things that had met a great deal to me.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: So January of twenty five, I recorded two songs. Asked
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: a good friend Mac McAnally, would you produce these? I
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: had started writing lyrics this summer before and for a
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: lot of reasons, lord knows what all, but health issues
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: and other things I had kind of really simplified my life.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: And then I thought, well, I've got to take what
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: all is here, whoever I am looking in the mirror,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: and I've got to start reinvesting in things that matter
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: to me anyway. So I asked Mac, can we you
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: hire some musicians? I would love to record a couple
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: of songs. And we had so much fun. I didn't
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: have a record contract, and he said, Amy, if making
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: music's not fun, something's wrong with the world, you know.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Another six weeks went by and I said, he I've
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: got another four songs. Could we do that again? And
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: he said, hey, I book a double. Another month goes by,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: and by then we were talking because I was doing
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: vocals and and so a month later we had another
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: recording session. He said, girl, we've got a record and
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: I went, well, I wish I had a record contract.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the beginning. Tell me about
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: the doctor saying to lean in.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Hmmm, well that so I had an appointment the end
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: of May with a neuropsychologist at Vanderbilt Hospital.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Just to speak English, what's a neuropsychologist?
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: I don't really know the Webster definition, but I had
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: had a significant head injury two years before that with
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: a bike accident, and they wanted to do, you know,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: a full day of testing and and kind of get
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: whatever my baseline was. They d after head injury, you
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: can pretty much count on two years for what you're
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: going to reclaim. And so I went in and he said,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: I just mind you, the people that are going through
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: these tests are not like top of the class at Princeton.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: They've all been through something, so but you know, I
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: did a whole battery of tests and then I went
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: in for my results and there were three different results.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: I can't remember it exactly what the one was. Memory
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: was in the ninety percentiles, vocabulary ninety percentiles, and processing
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: was below thirty. It was in the twenty percentiles. And
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: I was like, ah, that's what it is. I thought
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: it was my memory. I thought it was and I said,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: dear God, please don't tell me this is all the
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: recovery I'm going to get. And I and he said,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: how do you What do you feel in your life?
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: And I said, I feel myself kind of withdrawing a
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: little bit because I'm not there with the one liner.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: I was never the fastest processor, just because I kind
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: of like to ponder. But I felt the impact of
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: that time timing lapse, and he said, here's my doctor advice,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Amy lean in.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, can you give me a couple of examples of
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: where processing comes into.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Play responding to a joke like the my first response
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: is what's being said? Literally, I don't know, I mean
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: two years ago. I'm now four years down the road
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: from that accident almost, but even you know, two years in,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I would feel like the conversation was happening in the
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: family room and I was down the hall in a
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: back bedroom. And so yeah, just just response time. And
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: so I think that's everybody has a different experience with
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: a head injury, and mine was my unique.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: That was the new baseline. Could you remember the old baseline?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And were you're frustrated by that?
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Good Lord? Yes, sure, I mean my brain. I could
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: always count on my brain. I did one season of
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: a show on NBC called Three Wishes, and it was Yeah,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: it was just such a fun. It was such a
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: fun experience because we were just you know, this was
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: before a lot of non scripted shows, and we were
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: probably maybe a little bit of ahead of our time
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: for that kind of a show. But it was Jason
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Raff and Andrew Glassman, and I would have them in
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: my ear and they would say they would just be
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: telling me all these sort of random facts, and they'd say,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: just ditch it together in a story. And I never
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: gave it a second thought. I was like, you know
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: that that was my superpower, my memory and being able
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: to create a story on the spot. And those things
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: were like audios and so you know, and even that
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: was you know, that was two years ago now, those tests,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: and I just remember saying, please test me again in
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: a few years. Because we're all affected by each other's experiences.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: We want to feel like if somebody has had a
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: good outcome, then it sort of heightens your hope for
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: what might be possible.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So have you been tested again?
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: I have not.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Are you anxious about that? No?
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean I think I would like to
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: go back in for testing, but my dance card has
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: been pretty full.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: So do you feel that your processing is improved?
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: I do. I'll feel like I'll hear an interview and
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: I'll go, man, you're a slow talker. But you know,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I think I maybe was always a slow talker. But yeah,
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: we all just wake up with what we have.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: So those around you, your family. Do they comment on
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: this processing issue.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: I don't remember early on. You know, I had a
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: very quiet stretch of time the end of July. Really
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: my I did not was not in the public until
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: the end of November, so I had months of just
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: recovering quietly.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: So the first question, of course, is were you wearing
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a helmet? Yes.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: In fact, my the neurosurgeon I did not wind up
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: having surgery, but the neurosurgeon I was told I don't
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: remember this, came back into my hospital room and he
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: grabbed the helmet and walked out, and they turned around
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: and he said, I thought this was my helmet. And
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: he said I bike to work every day. And he
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: said if she hadn't had this particular helmet, she would
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: have been in the morgue.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, were you a regular bike rider and it just
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: happened this day or did you, like this was the
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: one day you rode all year?
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: No? No, no, that would like that reminds you a
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: friend of mine's sister who got pregnant the first time
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: she ever had sex. Of course, it's totally changed her life,
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: right right, right, right, No. I have ridden for decades.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I so love all the recreational trails all across Canada,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: all across the US, especially the Pacific Northwest. I have
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: nearly forty years ago, I would take a bike on
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: the road, like a one speed with a baby seat
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: on the back, thirty thirty seven years ago. And it's
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: just a great way to see the world, especially when
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: you tour by bus. You know, you get anywhere and
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: you got no wheels, and so yeah, I've just always
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: loved biking.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. And had you had any close calls before this.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Not that I can recall. I mean I might have fallen,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: you know, but that's once you especially a bike where
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: you've got your feet locked in, you know. But I
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: could take a bike apart I had a flight case,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I could change a time.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, since for this deep what kind of bike were
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: you on?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: I had just gotten an electric bike, a Pettigo, And
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: the reason I got it was because somebody that didn't
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: typically bike could go on a ride with you. And
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: there's such a great bike trail in Percy Warner Park.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: It's the eleven point two mile trail. I've probably done
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: at one hundred times. And yeah, but I had just
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: made the purchase of these electric bikes, so they're really
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: heavy and you can get as much assistance as you want.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: So what exactly happened?
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm told that so much of the interior of
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: the park is not accessible to vehicles. But right as
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: we entered the driver accessible part of Percy Warner Park,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: I was with a friend of mine who was in
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: town from Virginia. We were flying down a hill and
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I was not actually looking at the ground. We were
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: coming up on a golf course that's part of the
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: park system, and I guess it was like a five
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: inch deep pothole.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's deep.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: It was really deep and so and the park had
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: really needed an upgrade on the roads. A lot of
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: people that biked and walked had made comments about it.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: And anyway, and I guess I don't remember. I guess
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I hit that bottle and the bike stopped and I didn't.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you have this accident. Were four years years
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: later we talked about the processing issue. But to what
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: degree were you and have you been depressed? And as
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: your mood changed, because you know why me, you're an
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: experienced bike rider. It's anomalist. You weren't totally at fault,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: is it? You know, there's the woe is me. There
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: are other people who have a very positive attitude. I
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's really real. But how did you
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: experience it emotionally?
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Well, don't really I don't have a memory of the
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: early part of it. And a year ago Easter, our
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: family all gathers and there are a lot of us,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: and then our kids bring friends and you know, so
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: it's usually my sisters now cooking for seventy people. But
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: we were sitting on the front porch after all the
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: gathering and and my h am, I children started telling
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: stories about me the fall after the accident, that's fall season.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: And this must be what a child feels like when parents,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: aunts and uncles, grandparents start telling stories about their childhood.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: For my children to tell stories about me, I was
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: just like, oh my gosh, I feel so seen and
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: so loved. It made me. I felt so happy and
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: they were telling you know, really shifted our relationship in
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: a way. We now truly all see each other as
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: adults because we've all kind of had our coming of
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: age experience in the last stretch of time.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: So how many kids do you have?
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Five between Vince and me and I birthed the four
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: younger ones and nobody's young.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: So how old are these kids today?
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Jenny is forty three, forty four, So they go from
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: forty four to twenty five.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And what are they doing every day?
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Discovering their lives one step at a time. You know,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: they all one lives in Richmond, Virginia. Two of the
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: girls have kids, three out of the five are married.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just the adventure of trying to figure
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: out what their life is going.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: To look like. Are they off the pay roll?
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: They are, yes, as a matter of fact. But I
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: always say, if you need help, but I'm not going
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: to inject myself into your life. And I've had calls
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: like I might have to put my dog down, which
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: you help with the whatever that process is, or.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, well that's not a huge expense. It's nicer colin
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Nation can come for you. You know. It's another thing to say, oh,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I want to go on a trip to Europe and
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I'm fine five K or ten K short? I mean, ay,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: do they ever ask for anything like that? And be
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: how you respond?
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Well, last in the last several Christmases, I have said, hey,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: my capacity for creating Christmas is diminished. So and now
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: also everybody's grown and said, just tell me something that
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: you want or need. And last year my son said,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: I love my car. It's from the nineties, and he
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: said I need help getting an engine overhaul. I'm like, fantastic,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: you know, say something you want or need. And but yeah,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: what was the rest of your question?
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: No, I think that kind of covered it. So if
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: you have kids in their mid forties, you had kids
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: in your ear twenties. A was your parents? Was that
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: their experience? B? Was that your friend's experience?
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Well the Jenny Gill I inherited her when I married
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: her dad. Okay, so the old I had my first
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: child right when I was near almost twenty seven.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, And did you always want to have kids?
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: I did?
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: What did you learn having these kids?
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Well? Uh, what did what have I learned? I? As
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: a as a parent, we help and hurt our children
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: because we're human and I I so, I so loved
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: everything about being pregnant. I sort of loved giving birth.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: I loved traveling with my family. And then as I
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: see them all launched what I really see as Oh,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: because of my unique life and everybody's life is unique,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: I go, whow life is going to be? A steep
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: learning curve for you, because I was at a point
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: in my career it was just as though I were
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: drinking out of a fire hose. So much was coming
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: at me that I from the get go had help
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: with my kids, people I trusted, people I still work with,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: But I go their lives were in some ways unique
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: in sort of their earliest childhoods involved a lot of change,
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: being on a bus, sleeping in a different hotel every night.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: I don't think I thought about saying, you will learn
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: that you have agency over your own life, and so
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: at some point how you invest yourself, learning in relationships,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: all this is going to kind of become what your
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: life is. Because I think so much was coming at me.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: I didn't think about just basic building blocks for my
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: children because I had so many people helping me with
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: my life. And I feel like that financially, I don't
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: know that I taught them everything that they needed to know.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: But I just go, life is an insistent and persistent teacher,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: and they're all smart, and they have the capacity to
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: build a life that matters to them. And that's what
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: I'm watching. And so does I hope that sound I
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: hope that doesn't sound too vague.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Oh wait, wait, it is a little vague. If the
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: good thing about it is it's not one hundred percent
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: pause because most people tend not to speak honestly when
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: it comes to their kids. I mean, I don't know
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: about your experience, but the experience that I had growing up.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: I don't have children, but my two sisters do, and
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: my contemporaries how they raise their kids completely different how
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: our parents raised us. And they'll say things like, oh,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: my kid is my best friend. And so these are
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: things that are hard for me to fathom. But having
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: fame and success does impact children in both positive and
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: negative ways. So the fact that you acknowledge that is
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: my eyes, you know, significant. So where did you grow up?
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Nashville, Tennessee?
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, how'd you end up in Nashville?
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Well, my father his family had been there for generations,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: and my mother moved to Nashville with her small family
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: her senior year in high school, and she and my
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: father were cast as the leads in their senior play.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: And so I think it was called Mignonette. I've never
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: seen the play, but and they went on to marry
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: and so my and my mother was from a large family,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: but a lot of a lot of our gathering was
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: around my father's side of the family. So when I
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: was in college and my older siblings were starting to
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: have kids, we had five generations alive in our family.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: My great grandmother and she had a fantastic farm that's
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: now in Office Park and closing. It was just on
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: the south end of town, kind of the west south
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: end of town. And yeah, and we knew that when
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: she passed way that they were such she and her husband,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: am Burton was his name. They were philanthropists and believed
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: in education, and specifically Christian education, so they had willed
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: everything to a school in Nashville. So I grew up
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: just going, well, we're going to play hard and enjoy
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: every minute we count on this farm. When great Mimy dies,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: it's all gone, you know. So I didn't. I didn't
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: grow up feeling entitled to something that my great grandfather
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: had worked really hard for. So I, like, you just
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: think about the subtle messages you receive without being taught
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: from the time you're young.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: So what did your parents do for a living.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: My father was a radiation oncologist. In fact, he was
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: he went to M D. Anderson for a fellowship, went
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: twice just to study radiology, and they were just beginning
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: radiation oncology, and he came back to Nashville and was
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: one of the first doctors to bring that practice. So
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: he was before it was called Tennessee oncology.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: He was, okay, And how many kids in the family?
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Four girls? And I'm the youngest.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Four girls. You're the youngest. How much old are the
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: other three?
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Well up from me my sister Carol not quite two
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: years and then four and a half years above her,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: my sister Mimi, two years above MEMI was Kathy.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: And what did their lives turn out to be like?
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Well, they've all had children, and they kind of they are.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Two of them are very artistic, and they have worked
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: in and out of the home. My oldest sister, Kathy,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: her husband was my manager for many years and that's
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: not what he set out to do. But I was.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: I think I was ten when Kathy and Dan got married,
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: and then when I started when I got a record
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: deal at fifteen. He said, man, there are a lot
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: of shysters out here. He was a vice president of
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: the Bank of Tennessee. I don't think it exists anymore. Anyway,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: But he said, I'm just gonna I'm going to handle
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: your stuff because there are it's the music business. And
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: then at some point I was in college. My record
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: came out spring break of my senior year in high school,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: and just a year or two into it, he said,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: you were a legal pad in the bottom drawer of
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: my desk at the bank, and Amy, nowt you filled
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: up all the drawers? Would you risk if I leave
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: my job at the bank and handle you exclusively?
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back a Your father was a radiation oncologist.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: He has four children. He eventually passes. Your mother has
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: gone too. Now you have had success, both artistic and financial.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: So when they have the estate, how do they split
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: it up? They split it up four ways equally, or
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: they say, oh, Amy, she's got her own career and
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: we're going to give it to the other three, or what.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Oh their estate? Well, I will say this end of
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: life care was expensive for my parents because they both
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: had dementia, and yeah, everything was just split four ways.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Well that's good, that's the way it should be. Yeah,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: because then there's no arguments amongst the family members. Your
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: brother in law, what was your first manager? How and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: when did that end?
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: That ended? I'm going to be a little all these
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: details are hard for me to recall, but that lasted
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: for several decades, and it was Dan Harrell and his partner,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Mike Blanton, and Mike was a dear family friend, and
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Mike had worked for Word Records and then in Texas
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: and then came back to Nashville, which is where I
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: met Matt Mike when I was a teenager. And then
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: they had their own Blat and Harold productions, and they
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: were taking some risks and diversifying, getting a little bit
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: into movies, a little bit into other things. And so
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of the direct management for me had gone
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: to a woman who was hired as their executive assistant.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: But then they kind of were. She was more of
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: an equal to them, Jennifer Cook. And I can't remember
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: the details. I might have known these details at one point.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you quite was there any acrimony
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: in you plarting waves with your brother in law? No?
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: All good, Okay, let's go back. You're growing up. What
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: kind of kid are you?
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Played a lot in the neighborhood. I was, I was smart,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: but I was not driven by academics, and so I
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: remember teachers saying to my parents, Amy is always going
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: to be high middle of the pack. She doesn't, she's
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: it's not about standing out for her. And so they
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: kept increasing the school I went to. I was in
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: public school and then we moved. They started bussing in Nashville.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: My parents said, she's going to it on the bus
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: before daybreak and get home after dark. So they put
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: me in private school starting in sixth grade. And yeah,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: and in that at that school it's called Ensworth, it
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: was just K through eight, and so they said, we're
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: going to put her in the advanced classes because she
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: will rise to the occasion. And I played outside all
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: the time. I was a tree climber. I never had
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: great vision, so I was not a great team player,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: had really poor depth perception, but I was very active.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: And so years later I took up golf. Because the
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: ball is stationary, you know, you don't have to have
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: depth perception.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's just hear for the golf. Your husband is
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: legendarily a great golfer. Hey, how much do you play
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: and to what degree you you comfortable with the fact
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: of how much he plays well?
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: He plays less now he played a lot when he
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: was younger. And when I had our daughter together, I
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: was forty and so my three older kids are all
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: in their thirties, thirty three, thirty six, and thirty eight.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: It's what they are now. But when I gave birth
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: to Karina, I said, I'm going to put away my
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: golf clubs and someday, when she is on her own,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I will pick them up again. And I'd had such
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: a great experience with golf. I got to play with
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: so many great golfers because it was sort of the
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: heyday of my career. So I would be invited to
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: come and provide entertainment at the Bob Pop Classic at
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: all kinds of things. I've played with Arnold Palmer. I've
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: played with so many great players, And in fact, I saw,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: oh my gosh, I welcome back to that story. You
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: can edit this right.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: No, we're not going to edit it unless for some
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: reason you do something truly ainous.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Okay. Sometimes if I'm trying to remember a person's name,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: this is like where I still feel, oh, you know, okay.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: It's hard for where to draw the line, because as
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: you get older, it's hard for everybody. I once also
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: read a story because everyone is down on themselves losing it.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: And then I read some scientific story on AOL back
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: in the day and it said, there are just many
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: more files in the box. When you're young, you don't
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: have that many files and you remember everything. Yes, and
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: of course it will come back to you. But going
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: back to when you were a kid, were you a
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: popular kid?
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I think I was likable, but I
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: didn't I was. Were you class president maybe in high school?
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you went to public K through six and
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: you talked about your grandmother leaving the property the farm
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: for a Christian school. At what point do you go
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: to a Christian school?
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: I did go actually to the same school. Well, first
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: grade we went to Houston because my dad was doing
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: something at Amdi Anderson. Again, that was our second trip there.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: I went to Kincaid and then in the second grade
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: I went to David Lipscomb. Lipscomb and that was a
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: school that was That's a school that my great grandfather
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: left his inheritance to, or his everything. But there were
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: so many relatives at that school, and I think my
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: parents just pulled me out. It was nothing anti against
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: the school. But when you're kind of connected to somebody
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: that buildings are named after. They just wanted me to
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: be somewhere in the pack and not. I mean, I
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: don't know what they were thinking.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you went one year to the Christian school.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: How many years did you go to public school before?
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: We went back to Christian.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: School third, fourth, and fifth grade, and then I just
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: went to just private school.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: But was it a Christian private school? No, So the
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: rest of your education was not a Christian education, Okay.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Just prep school.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: To what degree? Growing up? Was religion a factor in
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: your family?
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: We went to church every Sunday morning, every Sunday night,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: every Wednesday night, and that was just what was That
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: was the culture I was born into. And yeah, and
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I loved it. And we had so many great friends,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: great youth group. Every summer i'd go to church camp
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: for a week. I did not. Yeah, And then when
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: I was in high school, my two oldest sisters had
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: both gone to schools in the Boston area, one to
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Wellesley and then one to it I think it was
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: a junior college. It. I don't think it exists anymore.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Called pine Manor.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Well, believe me, I remember Pine Manor from the era Okay,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: you go.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they was nicknamed Pine Mattress. But anyway, they both
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: came back from the Boston area. That was the early
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: to mid seventies, and they had just gotten swept up
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: in this New Jesus movement.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: And so just to be clear, they got swept up
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: in Boston or when they moved back in Boston.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Really yeah, And so they came back to now so
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: they're looking for it was less religious culture and more
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: blue jeans and barefoot and reading the Bible.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're growing up before they come back from Boston.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: You're going to church three times a week. Are you
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: sitting at the dinner table? And are your father and
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: mother quoting the Bible or it just comes up when
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: you're at church camp and when you're in the building.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: I don't remember any kind of demarcation like that. My
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: parents were both so kind. They were just kind, thoughtful people.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: So when I think about, I mean, this sounds crazy.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: I never heard my father. Of course, my father, mind you,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: he's dealing with people who are dealing with cancer. He
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: was a man of great compassion. He loved to laugh,
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: he loved hot food. He had to be sweating if
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: it were hot enough he was sweating. My dad loved
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: the outdoors, and I just remember him. He was not
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: a big talker, but I just remember him being very welcoming.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: And so I know my parents they both read their Bible,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: and I knew in the mornings they would wake up
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: and be praying for us. We would say a prayer
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: before a meal. But I don't remember my parents ever
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: preaching in me.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, so legendarily you started out in the Christian music business.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Was that a natural fit where they say, oh, we
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: have an opportunity in the Christian music business.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Well, so I started playing guitar because of a Actually
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: it was a winter course offered by the high school,
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: the girl's prep school. I was going to Harpeth Hall,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: which is wonderful.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: And I'm out you went to an all girls' school.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Your kids are already out of the house. But A
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: did you send him to an all girls And if
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: you had to do it over again, would you go
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: to a co ed school, whether a private or public
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: or not a giral school?
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm the youngest of four girls, and I just
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: did what my sisters did. It didn't I was just
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: kind of went with the flow. I did not, even
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: though I loved Harpith Hall, I did not encourage my
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: daughters to go there. And part of it was because, well,
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: maybe back up a little bit. When it was time
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: for my first child, the only boy, to go to school,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: we were zoned for a great public school in Franklin, Tennessee,
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: but if he were to miss ten days of school,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: he could not be promoted to the next grade. And
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: so as a parent, I had to put him in
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: private school. Because he missed four months of first grade,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: we had to take a tutor on the road. And
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I thought, well, that decisions made for me because it
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: was just a practical decision. And so that school that
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: they had entered, that the first child entered, it became
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: a high school. And so my kids, who had loved
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: this school were like, I'm not going somewhere else. I
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: had a chance to go to the high school. And
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: so yeah, anyway, and my son, he was kind of
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: on a different journey. Yeah, he you know, our lives
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: are because my life was public. You know. He was
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: like in whatever, sixth or seventh grade and his dad
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: and now we're going through a divorce, and he just
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: I he didn't want to be anywhere and so he
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: didn't want to, you know, so he wanted to go
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: to a different school. I let him pick it. And
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: then he wanted to homeschool and we and then on
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: his own, he went back to that school that he
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: had gone to and asked to be re entered.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: So what is he doing all day now?
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: He is working with a He's pouring his heart and
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: soul into a cannabis company called lab Canna and he
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: they do manufacturing, they have retail and in Tennessee, you know,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: because of legislation, all of his hard work might be
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: for nothing.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: And Okay, I grew up in an era originally drugs
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: were totally bad. Then the Beatles did the drugs, would
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: stock et cetera, et cetera. Your son wants to get
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: in the cannabisinesses, what do you say, Well.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: It's his life and he's grown. He's in his late
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: thirties now, right, and you know, there were some business decisions.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Had he asked me, I would have said, oh, dear God,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: don't do that. But he didn't ask.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: And so did you have any philosophical issue with him
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: being in the business.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: I didn't. But I mean, back in the late seventies,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: you know my father, I mean, he didn't go on
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: and on about this, but my father prescribed marijuana to
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: his cancer patients because it's so helped with the nausea.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: So I'm never I mean, decisions should be should be practical,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: you know. I think that you know, nobody has any
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: idea the firing of a human if they have a
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: propensity toward dependence, or you know, if you don't know
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: if somebody has the tendency toward alcoholism. I remember being
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: a child, like seventh eighth grade, my mother would do
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: a big spaghetti dinner and we were all poured a
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: little glass of red wine. You know, I mean, I
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: guess I was a kid. I love the fact that
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: my parents were saying, this is where you should experience
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: wine for the first time, is around a table in
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: your home. We didn't even talk about it. I was
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: just like, that was my okay understanding of anything. It's
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: sort of like life, that's a lot of discovery.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And so to what degree once you became an adult,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: did you drink alcohol and did you smoke marijuana do
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: other drugs?
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: As an adult? I didn't like the taste of beer
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: until I turned thirty, and I guess whatever that seven
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: year shift is in your taste buds change.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: I still would rather have a coke than a beer,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: but whatever, Yeah.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: I mean we all have events. Feels the same way. Yeah,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: But and what was And I only ever smoked a
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: joint one time? And I was with my high school dearest,
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: I mean my college roommate and a dear friend from
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: high school, and we had made a trip to I
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: went to visit her. She was teaching school at a
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: western province of what was the country she was in.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: I'll refer to that later. Nairobi is the capital of
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: what country?
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Is it?
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Thank you? She was teaching in the western province of Kenya,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: and she and I went to We took a small plane,
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: a bus, a plane and a boat to Mombasa and
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: had such a lovely visit. And we went. We were
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: invited to a man's house for dinner and we went.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: You know, we were just throwing ourselves. I was there
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: for two weeks, just throwing ourselves into the culture. And
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: I guess at some point during dinner, someone knocked on
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: the door and they delivered what must have been some
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: really great weed. I mean my church upbringing, I was
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: like I've never smoked pot. I can't believe I'm doing this.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: But you know when in Rome, okay, you have been
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: on the road a lot. You're there on the road,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: you're performing to somewhere between one hundred and a one
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand people. There's a connection ex experience there that
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: someone who's never done it. Even if you're on stage,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: you can feel it. There's an incredible highe incredible love.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Then you walk off the stage with the same people
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: you've been with, you know, maybe for decades. It is
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: very hard to come down from that high and equalize.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: A lot of musicians that's when they start doing drugs
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: so they can't come down. Then all of a sudden
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: they have to get up and they're not getting sleep.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: How do you come down at night?
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Well, when you first started saying that, what I was
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: thinking about was some of the biggest tours I ever did.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: One was before i'd had any pop success in the
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: late eighties, and I had put out an album called
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Lead Me On, and we were setting attendance records. And
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: I had one child, a son, and we toured probably
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: the month before he turned one until he turned too.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: We would go home, you know, for breaks, but I
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: would get off the road and phyllis the only nanny
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: that I had. I would walk off stage and she'd go,
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: I saved the dirty diaper for you, and she would
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: hand me my baby. And so yeah, I don't even
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: know how. I mean, everybody's experience is so unique. But
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: I was talking to my friend in the hotel this
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: morning and she said, I remember when your third child
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: smiled on Jay Leno and you couldn't wait to tell
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: your family. And she said, I was in the room
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: with you, and you called and said, hey On Leno
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: tonight and I got to barely say it, and she said,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: the next thing out of your mouth was how many
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: points did he score? And it was news about my
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: nephew's basketball game. And it's always been that way. My
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: family was not waiting with baited breath to have a
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: reason to exist, and here came my career. I mean,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: what I was doing was just shoved in as a
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: part of the pie wedg of a big family, and
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: I just think it always kept me who I am.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I interrupted you. You said, you started playing
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the guitar.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, you've got a great memory.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Whatever. You started playing the guitar. Tell me about that experience,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: your motivation where that led.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: I started playing guitar when I was a freshman in high.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: School, and motivation.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: I just loved it. I mean I loved all my
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: I loved my album collection, which was what well. My
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: bedroom was right was connected to my sister Mimi, so
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: we were daughters two and four. We all loved music.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: But and so I would borrow her records or she
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: would say, hey, you might enjoy this. And it was
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: everything from you know, Carol King, James Taylor, John Denver,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Early Elton, John Jethrow Toll, the Beatles, Three Dog Night, Elvis,
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Janice Joplin, Aretha Franklin Chorus, Jackson Five, the Osmonds. I mean,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: it was just everything. Conspicuous by its absence would be
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: any gospel records. I did not grow up with that.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: We sang hymns in church. So I'm learning to play guitar.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: My sisters have come back from Boston. They find a
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: hippie church in downtown Nashville. And connected to that church,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: right across the street was and mind you, this is
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: the seventies. It was a bookstore slash coffee shop attached
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: to all these artisan you know, leather crafters, stained glass windows.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: It was the seventies.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: It was the seventies, yes, But every Saturday night they
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: had music and they would have artists that would come
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: from the West Coast. And there was a local band
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: called Dogwood.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: And this was all Christian influenced.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, And they would yeah, and free, free concerts on
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Saturday night. And I mean, you know, the carpet was
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: patchwork of all carpet samples from a local place. You
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: need to sit cross legged on the floor. No tickets
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: were purchased, no tickets at all, you know. And it
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: was on music row. I mean, there's so much music.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: It was studios, publishers, and then this coffee shop, our bookstores,
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: I guess what it was. And so all this is happening,
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: We're starting to go to the hippie church. I'm in
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: the youth group there. I'm also at Harpeth Hall, which
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: has mandatory chapel every week, not because it's a Christian school,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: but because it's the South, because it's exploratory. You know,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: abb I would come speak a minister, just different guests
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: every time. My sophomore year, I sit through an excruciatingly
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: boring chapel program and I walk out the door. You know,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: we're all in our uniforms, in our assigned seats, and
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: I'm going, God, this is so different from the coin
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: and the coffee shop. It's so different from the hippie church,
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: you know, where it had been within a few months
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: that I had been standing at the back door. There
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: was a bar caddy corner across the street. A lady
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: comes in. I'm standing next to the preacher and she says, Pastor,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: I take my clothes off for a living. Can I
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: come to church here? And he said, ma'am, you give
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: your heart to Jesus. He'll tell you what you can
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: and can't do. You're welcome here. I mean, who doesn't
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: want to be there? Everybody's welcome, you know, and it's
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: respect for everybody's own journey. And so so I walk
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: out of that chapel program at Harpeth Hall and I'm
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: just thinking, Dear God, you could use some pr down here,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: like this is this is boring, And for whatever reason,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: I just walked to the head of school. We called
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: her the head mistress. Mind you, it's you know, nineteen seventies,
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: and I said to students, ever do Chapel programs, and
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: she said, well, I don't think anybody's ever asked are
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: you asking to do a program? I was a sophomore
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: and I said I think I am, and she said
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: what do you think you're going to do? And I
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: said music and she said okay, So I signed up,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: you know, and then I'm like in my room at home,
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: just trying to think of songs about faith, you know,
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: the three songs, three chords I knew on a guitar
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: or ding ed and ling ding ding, And by the
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: time that thirty minute program came around, I'd ask a
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: friend to do it with me. And I was not
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: a kid that looked at myself singing into a hair brush.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: I was never the best singer in the room. But
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: I loved music and I did. I don't have that
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: original set list, but I remember I loved the song
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: that Carol King song will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: And I would just do a Carol King song and
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: then wedge in one of my Jesus songs, and then
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: a John Denver song, and then a Joni Mitchell song,
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: and because for me it was just starting the conversation,
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: it was like going, God, this is such a beautiful
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: part of life, and it should be just comfortable to
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: talk about. It's not about having the answers, it's about
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: just engaging in the conversation and so, and I mean,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: that's kind of been my That's really been my journey
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: the whole way.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. Had you taken piano lessons or anything like that
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: prior to picking up guitar? I did.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: When I was little. I walked to my piano teacher's
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: class and I hardly ever practiced. I would always take
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: her some dessert just to distract her from my lack
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: of accomplishment.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you start to play the guitar. Where is
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: the guitar from? How do you acquire it? And did
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: you take any lessons?
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: I took one month of lessons. The guitar was a
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: Martin guitar. I can't remember. The year, must have been
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy or seventy one, and it was the wedding
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: gift that my sister Kathy gave to Dan.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, so now you do this chapel. Is it
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: like a movie where whether there are hosannas and every
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: said thank God, we've been delivered. I don't think so.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: But what I found was different classmates, maybe five, but
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: a upper upper classmen. I found notes what like tucked
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: into my locker. Hey could we talk? And what it made?
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, I don't. Yeah, I mean,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: what do you want to what do you want to
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: talk about? And it made me realize and you know,
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: I'd be just fabricating this if to try to remember
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: what those conversations were. But everyone is curious about the
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: biggest part of life, which is what we cannot see.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just the current of energy, the what
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: am I here for? Do I matter? Do I belong?
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Am I loved? You know, there's not a high school kid,
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: They're not a human that doesn't think those things. And
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: I think in a in a spiritual context, especially if
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: you're not trying to use a lot of church words,
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: you can welcome those conversations and say I wonder the
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: same thing. You know, I mean, to this day, I
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: will I got a text from my daughter, whose beloved
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: dog is during the end of his life, and I
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: texted her I said, I'm not really sure how prayer works,
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: but I am asking that love give you the wisdom
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: and the compassion that you need towards yourself and your dog.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: I mean it's all still a mystery to me. I mean,
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: isn't life mostly a mystery?
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Well, just staying on one point, I happen to be
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Jewish and Judaism is a questioning religion where you don't
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: have to believe to be a member of the trot.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: You can question, right, where's my understanding? Catholicism is more didactic.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: You believe or you don't believe. You mentioned how you're
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: non understanding, not sure of how life works. Do you
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: question your belief in God and how he fits into life?
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: How he fits into life?
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Well, first of you questioning, do you say you know?
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: George Carlin did the famous routine is let me get
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: this straight. There's a guy, an old man in the sky,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: and he can see everybody and tell whether you're naughty
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: or nice. By the time you get through that routine,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: it turn for anybody to believe.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: Was that on his AMFM?
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: To tell you the truth? I don't know which album
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, because I had that AMFM really and I never
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: turned on the FM side?
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: Is that credit? We were you afraid of the f
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: F side?
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: I was young and I remember.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but just staying with that question. Yeah,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: are you rock solid that God exists? Or you say, well,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: I have faith exists. I'm not always sure I think
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: It's probably been two years ago. I was so upset
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: about my lack of ability to convince my children of
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: what I was certain, the existence of God. And Vince
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: and I were in bed and I was just like, ah,
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: we didn't go to church three times a week. What
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: have I done? And then the way I've lived my
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: life and I Vince was like, can I have it?
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: I was like, no, no, no, And I go outside
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: and it's I can see the moon on barefoot, I'm
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: in a nightgown, I'm in the backyard, and I'm like,
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: are you for real? Are you for real?
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: And you know? All right?
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: And I thought back to.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: When I was.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: A mother of three young children, a one year old,
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: a four year old, and a six year old. I've
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: come out to la for something with A and M records,
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: and I was staying in a nice place that had
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: a little courtyard area and I've always enjoyed just having
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: a lot of built in quiet and so and part
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: is just my love of nature. But I remember just
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: sitting outside and going I'm going to let my deepest
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: fears come up. I'm gonna let my deepest fears come up.
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere was
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: just like sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, and I thought, what if
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: I spend my whole life telling people about Jesus singing
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: and my children don't share that. I mean they were little,
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: I'm never I mean, we're just having a conversation here.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: But all along I have said I cannot. I can't
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: undo my own journey. I can't undo whatever my path
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: to believing is. It has felt like an adventure. It's
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: felt like an adventure from the beginning. I have felt
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: drawn into something, drawn into a flow. And that night
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: two years ago when I'm like, I'm sobbing, sobbing, sobbing,
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: I'm getting ready to really fly my freak flag, and
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: I'm just like, oh gosh. And then I felt what
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: I have felt many times, that like an energy coming.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: It feels like a hum, like almost like a vibration.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: And then my hands start moving and they go and
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: they're like doing a thing. And then I went, are
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: you dancing with me? And the and the tears stopped
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: and you know, Bob, I don't know what to say,
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: but I I would uh, And I don't know how
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: that would go over to church. But in the end,
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: every one of us is a unique human being. And
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: I kind of go, God, it's it's your job to
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: find people. I mean, I'm gonna sing about my life,
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: but I'm gonna sing about all of it. I might
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: sing about falling in love. I'm gonna sing about something
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: that happens spiritual. I can't explain it, but I and
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: you know, I, I just I have so much respect
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: for the uniqueness of every person's life. And so I yeah,
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, well.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to something early you Sae talked about
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: the big questions about the girls in high school putting
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: notes in your locker. On his first Columbia album, JT.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: James Taylor has a song secret of Life. Secret of
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: life is enjoying the passage of time. Anybody can do it. Whatever.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: You lived a very full life. I mean, you know
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of people that have success in one area
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: of you also have a family. So now, at this
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: late date, what is life all about?
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, I for me, yeah, life is about being
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: present to yourself and to the world around you. It's
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: because and because it is possible to be on autopilot
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: and no matter what's going on around you, you're completely
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: oblivious to it.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Let's assume you're not on autopilot. What would that look like?
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: Are you asking me like what my days are like?
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: No? No, I guess what I'm saying. I'm a little
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: older than you are. But we're contemporaries. Ok and my people,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: my contemporaries, no one believes are gonna die. No one.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: They just think that Lfe's just gonna go on, you
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: know whatever. And especially our generation, our parents were not
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: hipping cool, but everybody from my generation only I got
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: a smartphone. I wear this, I wear the hip stuff.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: I'm as hip as the kids. Okay, so no one
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: wants to talk about you know this? Isn't this weird?
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, as I say, when you turn sixty,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: if you've seen the trick, if there's anything good, I'll
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: find out about it. When you're five, see tricks on TV. God,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: I gotta have tricks.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: Then you reach seventy, you're not there yet, but I am,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: and you go, holy fuck, I'm gonna die. You know
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: somebody who's musician I knew a little bit died at
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: seventy nine. I said, well, you know what if I
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: only have certain number of years left? But no one,
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: I know, we'll talk about that, no one, Okay, But
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: you're touching upon that because we're all driven in a
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: certain direction. You've had or gansuan success. A lot of
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: people are still dreaming and maybe trying to let go
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: of the dream. You've been there. Okay, So how does
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: it all add up?
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a neat bow of a question. How
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: does it all add up? Because when you were saying that,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: I was like, my mind was going a million different.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: Well, go whatever. I didn't mean to cut you short.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: These were just some fuss, some interest in your thuughts
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: because you brought up the big issues of life, which
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: most people will answer if they will at all, with
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: the you know, pejoratives. Oh yeah, blah blah blah blah.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Life's family, this is that. But it's life is weird,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: especially the older you get it is.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, I've used this illustration before, but our
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: family is like a lot of families with vacation at
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: the same place, at the same beach, and we don't
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: tend to take Christmas card photos and send those of
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: everybody dressed the same on that same beach. But what
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: I do think about is we all have we as
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: a culture say, yeah, we go to the same beach
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: every year. Yeah, we bought this beach house. Yeah we yeah,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: we love to put on a mask, we love to
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: body surf. There's an occasional shark attack, so everybody stays
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: out of the water. But you know, whatever beach, beach, beach,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: our relationship with it, us and the beach.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Blah blah blah.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: But the way my mind works is if any of
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: us were taken even one mile out into the water
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: with a mask, if we like, if we came face
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: to face with anything that's really out there, we would
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: be heart pumping, scared shitless. I mean, yes, the beach
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: is part of I go every year, we take our
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: family pictures, we have our outfits, we go to the beach, place,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: the crabshack, whatever it is. But go really, I mean really,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: And to me, the spirit life in all of us
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: is the same way. You know, some people like it's
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: there for exploring. For all of us, we're all mind
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: body spirit. I mean, it's the YMCA. I love that,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: and we're all finding our way through life. And at
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: some point, and I assume it's when our bodies give out,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: at some point, we won't be trapped in this body,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: and I think we will all go, WHOA, this is
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: like without the limitations of my skin and my actual lenses,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: I see it differently. Do I know exactly what that's
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: going to be like? No? Do I have answers for
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: my culture, my faith, culture, some but nobody knows till
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: they get there. I just look at every system, the
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: solar system, the human body, the ecosystem. I go, yow,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: this is so intentional, this is crafted, This is brilliant,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: This is beautiful. I didn't think of it like I
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: kind of go, how could you not? How could you not.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: Be filled with all?
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: And to me, that is like that feeling we were
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: one hundred percent, I mean the total eclipse. And I
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: just remember, I don't even think i'd gotten any of
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: those glasses so you could actually witness the eclipse. Until
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: a friend of mine who lives in the DC area, said,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: I'm leaving, I'm driving with a friend, I'm bringing my daughters.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Your yard is total eclipse and we're going to be there. Well,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: was her excitement. I went, oh, gosh, I guess I
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: should get some glasses. I might not have even gone outside,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: but she was making a thirteen hour drive to be
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: in our yards. So we invited friends, we got food.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: I would have missed it, by the way, I would
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: have been inside cleaning out a drawer. But because she
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: told me, then we were all outside, waiting, waiting, waiting,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: and in that moment when the eclipse happened and we
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: could safely take off our glasses. I can't even tell
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: you what happened to me. That euphoria laughed lasted about
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: thirty six hours, and it was just.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Like it was. We were so filled with.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Awe, all of us. And to me, I just feel
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: like our understanding of the source that we call God,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: because we're just looking for a label to put on that,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: the energy and inspiration and intention, that's everything we know,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: every good thing we know. In my mind, I sort
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: of go. We try to drive up music, we try
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: to do the right talk. But nobody had to explain
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: the awe when we took off our glasses. Nobody had
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: to tell us what was happening. Scientifically, we were just
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: like we were just we were in it. It was magnificent,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: it was it was transformative. And that's where I go.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: I trust someday my eyes will be open and yours
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: will too.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, bringing a little bit more literally down to earth,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: talking about aging environment. What does it all mean? Yes,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: in the eighties and early nineties, you had worldwide success.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: That's a tough game for everybody. And you had success,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: you follow up success, and there's that peak. You put
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: out a record. Now in twenty twenty six, what do
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: we know irrelevant of what's on that record? Okay, you
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: cannot have the ubiquity you had in the eighties and nineties,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: not possible. Okay. Like Taylor Swift act Okay, a great
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: percentage of the population has never heard her. Can't mention
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: two songs off the album, and that's Taylor Swift never
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: mind people further down the pipeline. So you're making a
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: new record, okay, and you inherently know because it's got
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with you. The system is changed. You
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: can't reach as many people. A what motivates you and
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: what is the meaning? And what do you want relative
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: to what the meaning was and what you wanted back
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: in the MTV era.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: Well, I will say that the making of this record
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: was for the sheer thrill of it. For like writing
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: the songs, and I had to get help with music
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: because my short term memory. I can write music usually,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: how I'll ask a great musician, will you put together
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: a chord progression that can be my playground and I'll
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: write on top of that. But this time, because of
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: health issues, recovery issues, I reached out to people that
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: I had not worked with before in a songwriting arena
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: because because my my limitations were creating a new path forward,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: and so I reached out to Mac McNally, I reached
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: out to Tom Douglas, I reached out to friends who
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: I'd written with before. All that to say, it's a
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: noisy world. I know now better than I ever knew
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: that the chances of anybody discovering this record are slim
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: to nothing. But to me, the you know, I've never
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: stopped touring. I do eighty shows a year, and the
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: thrill of having new music. I mean, I love walking
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: down memory Lane. I look out around the curtain and
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: you know, most of the I die my hair, but
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: I have got a lot of gray in it. Most
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: of the people in the audience are gray headed, and
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: at some point I go, I know they love all
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: those old songs. Reminds of them of high school, reminds
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: me of college, reminds me of their road trips. But
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: we're here, all of us, and now I get to
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: sing songs about what life is like now, and they've
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: had their own life, and it feels so good. Like
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: that's what music does. Music articulates our different experiences, and
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: it feels so great. I feel like I'm I'm not
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: only doing myself a service, but I'm doing them a
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: service to say I'm somebody that you've trusted, you bought
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: a ticket. Hey, let's sing about what life feels like now.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: They might not share this, that's same experience that I've had,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: or but it feels like a disservice to only be
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: singing thirty five forty five year old songs. At least
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: give the option to say, as a writer, I'm not
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: sure how it feels to you, but this is how
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: it feels to me.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: Now. Okay, someone comes to see you. How much production
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: is there?
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Well depend on the venue. And I love touring with
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: I'm part of an eight eight person band and I
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: love that. And part of it is I love great
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: bgvs and I can do a show all by myself
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: just with guitar.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: Well, let me be more specific. Okay, you talk to
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: the arena acts of your the classic rock acts. You
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: know it's a cliche. They play a new song, everybody
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: goes to the bathroom, right, Okay, Now, generally speaking, it's
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: very hard to comprehend a new song in one of
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: these bills. By the same talking, if someone sits there
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: and plays solo on acoustic guitar, it can be easier
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: to connect. So the question is you have this new
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: material the audience may or may not have heard. How
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: do you sell it to them to keep them focused
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: such as they can hear it, whether they accept it,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: like it, or relate to it as second other issues.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'm not an arena act first off.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: Right, but if you're going out with eight people, that's
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: not a small presentation.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: It's not. But you know, I play theaters these days,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: and we did something that I was challenged by my manager.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: I'm a management team. I had a hometown show on
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: May eighth, the day the record came out, and they
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: were basically, you don't have a hair on your ass
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: if you don't play this whole record top to bottom.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: And my booking agent, who have worked with John hughy
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: Cia since nineteen eighty four, he said, why don't you
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: come out as your own opener and then you play
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: the new record as the opening act and then come
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: back and play the hits. But that didn't feel right
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: to me. I've worked very hard on this, and I thought,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to trust people are going to stay
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: if they want to. And we show started at eight o'clock.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: I came out at eight ten, played whatever you Know,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: thirteen song, fourteen song, first half, all songs that were
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: well known, and then I came back to second half
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: and played the new record top to bottom and it
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: was it was so much fun. I loved it. Brought
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: in two additional players, so there were ten of us
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: on stage. Mac McNally came out and played guitar and sang,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: and Eric Darkin did percussion. He played on every coach.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: You're a performer, and it's a skill unto itself. Riman's
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: not that big, but it's not a club. Right, you're
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: there playing okay, You're aware of the audience and whether
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: they're paying attention. Are you just playing this new music,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: or are you looking at the audience thinking, well, how
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: am I going to connect? How am I going to
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: draw them in?
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm always looking at the audience.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: I know that's why I'm asking. But this is not class.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: You sing, baby Baby, everybody's standing up? Great? You see
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: anybody now, anybody plays anything new, it's a challenge.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: It is, and I knew. I mean, new music's exhausting,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: you know, and you can't expect everybody to be as interested.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: But my feeling is, well, anybody's free to leave.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, between leaving and getting a standing ovation Other than
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: the music itself is the way it's performed under range,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: the way you deliver it. Is there a way to
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: draw the audience into your new music?
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I did recognize writers that were in the audience
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: because I've never played an album top to bottom on
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: release day, and it required a lot of work, and
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: on everybody's part and on the crew, on the band,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: anybody that sang on the record, I invited them to
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: come and sing, and so you know, there were introductions
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: some songs I would give. There's a song on the
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: record called the Saint and it's the actual story of
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: a woman. She and her sister. I invited them to
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: come tell each other their story. And we were on
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: a walk at the park, Percy Warner Park and one
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: has struggled with addiction issues most of her adult life
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: and the other is a nun. And we're walking and
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: I said, have you girls ever told each other your story?
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: And they said no. This was in the fall of
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: twenty four and I said, can we pick a day
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: and can I can I be a witness to you
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: telling each other your story? And would you give me
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: the freedom to write about it? And I just wrote
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: it about the younger sister who struggled with addiction, but
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: man her older sister, who they weren't Catholics. She went
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: to a Catholic school, decided to become a nun her
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: senior year. Her family was not a religious family, and
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: then she got pulled in as a novice right after graduation,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: cut off from her baby sister. Her parents were going
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: through a divorce. And I hear this, what was she eighteen?
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: Going into the cathedral church? What do you call it?
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: At night? Just like shouting wow, whatever, all of her frust,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: her fear, her frustration, Who's going to take care of
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: her little sister? You know, it's like everybody's got a story.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: Everybody is just trying to figure it out. Yeah, and
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: so I want and so so the other night I said,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: I just said, don't I said, Connie, don't shout at
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: where you are. But thank you for telling me your story.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you for trusting me to write about it. And
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: what I hoped was that somebody hearing it would go, oh,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: this isn't like a made up thing. She just acknowledged
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: that whoever, whoever this song is about is seated in
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: here at the Rhymeno auditory with me, you know. And
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: one of the she was breathless, so afraid, but she
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: spoke her truth on an innocent day, the beds she
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: had lain in the lines of cocaine. God knows that
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: woman had lost her way, and it was just her
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: story that she told me that she gave me permission
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: to write about. And so I go, why half the
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: world's in recovery, you know, successfully or unsuccessfully? And I
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: guess I just trust that the intention of the music
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: is I just want to be a witness to life,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: the good, the hard.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, there are men with who had hits in the
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: seventies who we're wigs. Some iconic people at that plastic surgery,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: and they're out there singing about adolescent experiences. And as
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, most contemporary artists do not sing
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: about adult tissues. Right, So did you consciously say, hey,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about life as a sixty something woman.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: I can make sure your age because everybody could look
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: up on wikipedias, they're no secrets. Okay, do you say
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: this is important because there are a lot of people
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: who are over sixty. Oh Moon in June, I was
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: on a date. You know, it's very different. They're not
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: speaking of modern life at this age. Yeah. Were you
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: conscious of that? And you were doing it differently from
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: other people?
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: I was just doing what came naturally to me. I mean,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: I've always used music to process life. It's always been,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: what do they say, cheaper than therapy.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: But at any point have you ever been in therapy?
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: Many times?
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, many times would.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: Like chapters for whole okay, with.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: The same people or different people.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: With different therapists.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, And what was the motivation to go Well.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: Back in nineteen eighty six, I had been married for
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: several years and I was completely lost, just lost in
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: my own life, and I had made a lot of
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: bad decisions. I stood in my bathroom with a mouthful
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: of pills and I thought I could swallow, or I
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: could I could get help. And this is all during
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: I have a very public life, right but life also,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: life is always happening on all levels at all time.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: A lot of truths can coexist. And so that was
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of therapy.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: And then we wait just a little bit more granular.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: Did you spontaneously say I need to go and then
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: find with someone or was there somebody else saying, Amy,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: you know you have these issues, maybe you should go
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: see somebody.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: I think because I was looking at the end, the
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: potential end of my first marriage that I'm imagining, everyone
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: around us said, go see a therapist.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, what'd you learn?
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if I can remember. I mean
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: it was nineteen eighty six.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm not asking you. You know what you decided
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: to do on Third Street at seven o'clock on a
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: Wednesday night. Obviously you say you were in a troubled marriage,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: and you ultimately got out of that marriage. Most therapists
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: don't tell you what to do. But I'm sure at
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: first you felt heard, which is a big deal. Secondly,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: there was something about that experience that allowed you to
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: move forward. I'd only be putting words in your mouth.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: A person might say, Oh, what you're thinking is not unreasonable,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: or you're in a bad spot. Here are a few options, right,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: So that process. What is it about the process that
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: allowed you to move forward?
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember. I think. So that was the
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: end of nineteen eighty six, and I think, in spite
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: of a lot of differences and a lot of history
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: that I would prefer not to recount. You my husband
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: at the time, Gary Chapman, we decided to start a family,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: and so that felt familiar to me, and so I
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: guess I was. I just found so much joy music.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: Music was always joyful, but my private life felt hollow
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: in so many ways. But it didn't feel hollow once
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: I started having kids and anyway, and so I really,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: you know. And so that was like nineteen eighty seven.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: I had a baby in eighty seven, and I had
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: a baby the end of eighty nine. I had a
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: baby the end of eighty two, and then But those
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: dynamics that were always present in my home life, and
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: I was a participant in those dynamics.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: But I.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: Guess it must have been a work situation at the
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: end of nineteen ninety three that I was put in
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: a in a working environment with Vince Gill. And boy,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: he was easy to be with, and so I did
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: a Christmas show with him. I recorded with him, and
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: then I did a television show. So three things within
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: two weeks. And this is so crazy. I was the
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: very first thing was a Christmas special in Tulsa, and
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: it was Michael McDonald, Chad Atkins, Barney Page had done
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: all the orchestrations and was the conductor, brilliant conductor. And
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: I was leaving to go to the airport. And this
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: is so crazy. But I remember my husband at the
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: time said, don't fall in love with him. And I said, well,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: that's a weird thing to say if somebody's headed to
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: the airport. And he said, I've been around him. You
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: guys are cut from the same cloth. But I remember,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: one what a weird thing to say. And it was
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: so strange. I worked with him and I was not
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: thinking about falling in love. I was just thinking about
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: how much fun it was. And then I remember, you know,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: saying to him, God, if I'd been a guy, we
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: would have been running buddies. It is so easy to
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: be with you, and so it was just like the
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: the slow derailing. Once you feel that connection with another human,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: you can't unknow it. And so just like, oh my gosh,
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: anything that I was invited to if I found out
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: he was going, of course I wanted to do that.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: I escalated my golf game because he was a great golfer.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: We got invited some of the same stuff, and people
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: would say, you know, the rumor mule was flying, but
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: I was, well, I was saying, I know what I
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: have not done. But you know, in my justifying the friendship,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: I was, you know, probably undermining what I had never
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: really been able to find at home.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, you had this connection with Vince. You ultimately get
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: divorced and you're with Vince. Frequently, statistics tell us when
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: someone leaves a marriage, the than they leave the marriage
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: for that is not the person they marry. Secondly, very different,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: and it's not exactly like meeting someone when you're both single,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: because there's a safety Well I'm married, Okay, so this
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: isn't really something. So there's a assuming you have a connection,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: it's got an aura. But then when everything is behind
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: you you're divorce and you're together. Then you find out, well,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: everyday life for this person is different, and didn't you
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: experience that? Well, yeah, I mean we're so different from
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: each other. What we liked was so different. And I
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: think one thing I loved immediately about Vince was there
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: was never there were never two levels of communication happening
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: at the same time. I know what you're talking about,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: especially in the music business.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: And I trusted him and he'd never I just trusted
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: him as a person. I had great respect for him
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: and just as a woman. He never said anything like
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: with double entendre, you know, he just it was just
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: him and anyway, so we got married, you know, and uh,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: all I know is in my mind, I imagined it
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: was like I was going down in interstate with my
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: three kids in the car and I was just going
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: to like jump the median, do a quick flip and
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: go another direction. And really what happened it was like,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: you know, a total collision. Everybody went flying from the
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: vehicle figuratively, and all I know is a second marriage.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: There is no riding off in the sunset. Everybody is
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: just trying You're trying to understand damage control everybody's experience
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: is so unique. And then we wanted to have a baby,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: and so we are so we and we had Karina
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: the week of our first anniversary. And so just all
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: that to say, we really tried to let everybody come
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: at their own pace. Vince didn't try to be the dad.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: He just tried to be very respectful and he said,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: I'm going to try to love you well. And you know,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: and we communicated differently. You know, my church three times
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: a week. That was not his experience, you know. The
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: way we I was like, you have to talk through everything,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: and you know, and I wanted him to get in
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: the trenches with me, you know. And he knew he
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: had a hot temper and he was like, I've never
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: regretted anything I didn't say. But our way of dealing
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: with things was so it was not the same. And
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: I think I think I had projected a lot of
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: things on him that I kept looking for and was
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: unable to find. And so the things that I knew
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: about him that I his I trusted his I trusted
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: his pattern of thinking. I trusted that he was practical.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: I trusted he was a truth teller. All those things
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: were vital to me, and I think it just with time,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: I stopped looking for all the things I was never
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: going to find, things that I had projected, and I
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: think I discovered beautiful things I never anticipated with him,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: And even two summers ago, I said, Okay, I have
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: booked flights. This is going to be the greatest trip.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: Let's fly to Portland, Oregon. We can drive the coastline.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: There's a writer I want to see up there, an author.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: We can find great golf courses. And I describe all
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: the trip back. It could be a week long, it
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: could be ten days. And he goes, Dear God, please
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: don't make me go on that trip. And I said,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: are you okay if I go by myself? And he
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: said please? And I did.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: Did he not want to go because he didn't want
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: to go on that trip or he'd been on the
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: road so much. I just want to stay home.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: He just doesn't like to travel. I like to camp.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: I love camp. I go to camp for rest of
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: my life. I'll sign up for that.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I love it. Yeah, And there's so
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: many things I love. Taking the kids to the beach.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: He does not like. He would rather have a California
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: beach he hates the amdity. And I think because we married,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: I hadn't turned forty yet, but I was my fortieth
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: year and he was almost forty three. We have a
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: lot of respect for the person the people we have
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: already become, and so I think, unlike when you marry
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: and you're young and you're just trying to shape each other.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: And I do respect him as a man, as an creative.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: What are you going to say?
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, but your first husband had that eerie comment. So
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: when ultimately you did fall in love with thins, how
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: did he handle it?
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: I think it was awful, you know, And I mean
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: I don't I'm not sure how he handled it, you know.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: I has he ever forgiven you?
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know. We are in the same space occasionally
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: because we share grandchildren. But I was, as you know,
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: that very first Christmas, we have a huge we had
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: back then, always a big New Year's Eve party, and
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: I remember Vince and his dad came to that party
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: and I thought they were going to the town where
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: Vince's dad goes. And the next day Gary was so
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: frustrated and angry, and I thought, what is And I said,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: what's going on? He said, I've waited my whole life
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: for you to look at me like you look at that. Man,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: I know that just kills me for both of us.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: And all I can say is that's why it was
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: like I didn't know what I was doing. I mean,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: I life just kind of comes at you, you know,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: and I at some point I think I said, I
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: am disappearing inside my own life, living doing it right.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: And I and you know, career wise, my manager's never
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: told me and I didn't ask, you know, I don't
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: read rag magazines. But it was a long stretch of
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: awful and weard and worried about the kids and just
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out anything and trying to get back
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: in the studio, and of course nobody wanted nobody's booking shows.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: I mean I was like, well, I'd rather be in
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: a waste land and at least look at myself in
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: the mirror and say, there you are, just going back.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: You say that you wanted to go over the ashes,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: get deep into it with Vince, which would say you're
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: the communicator. Did you have that level of communication in
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: your first marriage.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know that I knew how to wrap my
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: arms around my own life. How did you learn how
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: to do that, I think. And first off, just you know,
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: as a teenager, the career started growing, people kept getting
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: added and so there was a great community. But it
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: was like, let's just keep this going, you know what
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: I'm saying. So yeah, you know there's a big engine
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: and so kind of all that blew up. But I
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: will say my mom said to Vince, I guess he
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: and I were I don't know, married. A year is
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: a long time ago, twenty five years ago. But my
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: mom went up to him and said, hey, thank you
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: for giving my daughter back to me.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: Wow, I have to ask this one side question. You
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: said that Vince has a temper. His image is the
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: exact opposite, and who will interact. He's the most easy
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: going guy. So when will his temper flare?
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: What hardly ever does now they did more in the beginning.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: I mean it would it would. He would never exhibit
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: toward me. He would just like sort of implode.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: Well, would he ever be in an environment I'm not
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: talking about the I didn't ask relative to relationship, but
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: would he ever in my environment where he got frustrated
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: and he raised his voice?
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: Well, it's always at himself golf course, on stage, if
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: he plays something or or that's kind of not what
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: he meant. You know, he's playing what he hears, he's
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: singing what he hears. He's brilliant. But there's some pretty
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: classic stories of him turning his back to the audience
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: and how however, the anger comes out, you know, a
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: choice phrase. But he'll action because he's looking away from
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: the audience. He'll be it'll be there'll be somebody else
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: in the band, and it might be somebody who just
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: flubbed a note and they think, oh my gosh, I'm
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: going to lose my job. Vince just turned around and
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: and he told me what he thinks of me. But
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: he would he's because of his his wiring is so
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: respectful toward other people. He lives with such difference to
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: other people. But he will exhibit extreme frustration toward himself.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: But I think that's the perfection in perfectionism is in him.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: That hasn't made him such a great artist, a great player.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're an attractive woman with an upbeat image. There
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: are a lot of popular musicians women who are dark
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: and negative. That is not your image. Okay. In addition,
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: you had universally or playing the Heyday of MTV. What's
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: it like being a famous attractive woman in society? It's
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: tough enough to be a woman at large at society,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: never mind be attractive famous woman. Men are aggressive, they
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: want something. What has your experience been?
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: I think because I grew up in an environment of women,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: I always felt like I had a voice, I felt
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: seen because I went to a girls' school. I I
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: never felt like I got my value from attention. For men.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: It was what do you love? What makes you thrive?
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: Do more of that? What are the things about which
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: you're curious? Pursue that? I mean that that's the education
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: I had. And so, you know, to be in an
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: environment that's you know, sexy, like very visual, I think,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: I I don't. I don't really care that much about clothes.
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: I don't, you know if I let mecas.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, there can be. I've had the experience where you're
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: with someone and you're married even and a guy will
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: hit on the person you're involved with right in front
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: of me. Okay, you must have had experiences like that
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: were men just were you had to fend for yourself
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: when men were being desirous aggressive, whatever?
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I have I felt that kind of energy. Yeah, yes,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: I feel like that whatever that energy is has to
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: It's all about understanding the power and impact of your
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: choice I choose mens. Do I feel Do I feel
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: sort of? I mean all that the I wish I could.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: I'm just looking like trying to find a specific, you know,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: an example to talk from. I mean, I remember doing
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: a radio tours with when I was with A and
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: M in the nineties. I was in my mid thirties,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: which is really the beginning of a woman's prime. Really,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: thirty five to forty five, fifty is like you got
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: some wisdom, your body's still great, you know, and that's
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: a formidable time for a woman, I think. And that's
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: what my mom would tell me when I was a
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: kid with bad agnes. She'd say, don't sweat it now,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: thirty five to forty five or like, really the best
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: years of a woman's life. But you know, I had
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: a guy like caught my butt and all I thought
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: was is so unattractive. And so you know, you can feel,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: I can feel someone's neediness, and you just don't you
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: just don't encourage that. I mean, you know, life is
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: all there's there's energy in every interaction and you know,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: you I might feel something coming from somebody and you
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: can steer that in a different way.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: I want the best for myself. I want the best
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: for other people too. I mean, there's so many funny stories.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: When you're younger and on the road, it's like, oh
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: my god, there's there's a lot of you avoid a
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: lot of potentially awful situations. One time, there was a
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: therapist in Nashville who asked me to come in and
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: talk to a bunch of young female artists and they
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: were all in the Christian And I said, Okay, just
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: because you're singing about Jesus, people are still people, and
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: you're just at such a high hormonal age and a
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: lot of people get pregnant on the road.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: Okay. So are you saying when you have these awkward
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: situations you have a skill to send energy or a
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: message that kills it.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: I'm saying everybody has a choice at every turn.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: To say sometimes people don't respect other people's choices.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: Though, well, that's true, and I have never been acted upon,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: and I know that's a whole other arena and says
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: a lot about the perpetrator and probably what was done
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: to them. This a totally other thing, but you do.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: The beautiful thing about making music with people and your
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: road family is there's deep love and deep respect, and
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: they are like your extended family. And you know, just
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: like your family, you know people's strong points and you
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: know their weaknesses, and when you're with people all the time,
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: you see all that and so you you just you
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: steer through life with respect towards yourself and other people.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: And you make a lot of mistakes when you're younger,
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: and you make less mistakes the older you get.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: Well, So I always say, I know, you know, you
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: know so much more when you're older, but you feel
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: a lot dumber because you realize all the stuff you
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: don't know when you're twenty year.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: Know everything, Isn't that the truth?
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: But you're playing the guitar, you're doing chapel, How does
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: that turn into a record deal?
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: A friend of mine who was my sister's age, you know,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: we were all going to the hippie church. He was
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: working with the youth group which I was part of,
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: and he was a studio engineer and was taking classes
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: at Belmont was Belmont College at the time. It's a
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: great music school at Belmont University, and he said, hey,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: I'm taking these classes I get access to the college studio.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: I don't need those I have a studio job. Any
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: chance you want to record your songs? I was fifteen,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: and I said I would love that, like in a
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: real studio. And I came another friend of mine. His
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: name is Bill. He's passed away since then, and uh,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: Bill Loki, and he and I went in. He played piano,
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: he did some of his songs. I did all my songs.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: And then that friend of mine was in his studio
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: where he had a job making tape copies so I
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: could give one to my mom and dad, maybe three
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: copies total, and his college roommate came in and said,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: Word Records is wanting to launch a contemporary label and
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: they're looking for twelve artists to launch it. And he
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: said who is that and he said, well, that's Amy.
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: And this guy had been out with one of my
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: older sisters. And he said, well, I'm going to call
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: the record company and he played it over the phone.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: So Chris Chris Christian, his name, his legal name was
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: Chris Smith. But Chris Christian called Word Records and played
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: my tape over the phone, and I think he played
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: it for either the president and his name was Gerald McCracken,
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: or he played it for a man named Buddy Hughey
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: who was head of A and R. And they've both
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: passed away since then. But whoever you played it for said, well,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: she's not that great, but she sounds sincere. And I
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: got offered a record deal when I was fifteen.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's just say that kind of happens by accident.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: Although you're young and fresh and opened ideas. No one
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: becomes as successful as you are without wanting it and
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: working really hard. So now you have a record deal.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: You know you're in the music business. You're not flying
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: by accident. Now what's going through your mind? Oh, this
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: is good. I want to have something bigger. I want
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: to make more records. What's going on?
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm highly creative, and I think I was given
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: I never really thought about the big picture. But for
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: somebody that loves music, has always loved music, I get
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: to go in and take my little ding diddling ding
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: songs and have studio musicians bring those to life. I
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: mean that starts to wet and feed an appetite. That's beautiful.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: You go, I get to do it again, and I
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: you know, I just I kept being introduced to people
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: who were so great in their field, like the people
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: I first worked with. Brown Banister was the man that
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: worked with our youth group, that had the job in
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: the recording studio, and then he started producing my stuff.
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: And there were lots of great Nashville musicians, but like
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: Brown said, let's go to La you need to work
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: with Able Boreal. You need to work with Leland Sklar.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: You need to work with because he loved music too.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: He read you know, Robbie Buchanan, he read liner notes too.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: And so then suddenly you've got a budget to make
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: a record, got a young artist who's a songwriter, and
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: it's like at every turn it was it just felt
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: like discovery, and it just was feeding a passion for
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: all of us. And I just want to say the
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: passion was not about looking in a mirror singing into
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: a hairbrush. And I was never it. And I mean
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: years down the road, I was maybe the I was
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: in Palm Springs and I was going to be singing
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: at a dinner and anyway, and I remember and I
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: was playing golf and it was so much fun. And
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: I remember my assistant, her name is Deanna, and it
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: was just all the happy things for me, and she
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: pulled me inside and I know you feel beautiful on
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: the inside, need to pay a little attention to the outside. Yeah,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: it's just like at every turn I've had people that
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: saw my drive. And my drive was not to be famous.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: My drive was to communicate.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: How does it turn into a deal with the non
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: Christian market with an.
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: M Well, my sixth record with word happened in nineteen
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: eighty two. I had recorded at Caribou Ranch, which is
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: no longer, but that's in the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: And Jim Garcio, who last week sent me some honey.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: He keeps bees at his ranch now in Wyoming. But
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: Jim Garcio, he is just so supportive. From the beginning,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: we had rented the studio there at Caribou Ranch for
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: two weeks. The first week we flew all the musicians
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 2: and their family Emily's we ate dinner by lantern light destination.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: The second week I had to sing the vocals, but
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: we flew all of my family, my grandmother's on the
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: back in nineteen eighty two, my grandmothers, my parents, my sisters,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: their spouses, their children, so it was always everything felt
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: like a community experience. And anyway, Jim Gercio came in
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: when we were just at the very end have a
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: listening party, and he said, this album's going to go platinum.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, excuse me this, Yeah, this album's going to
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: sell a million. I think I'd sold maybe two hundred
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: thousand records to date, and we laughed. I said, I
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: don't even know how to I'm not even sure what
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: he means, but it did. And I think word records,
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: and this was true of every gospel or Christian record label.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: There were not record stores. Those albums were sold in bookstores,
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: and I think that they kind of went, we have
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: an artist that has the capacity, her music has the
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: capacity to find a larger audience, And in their due diligence,
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: they wound up asking A and M, or signing a
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: contract with A and M by nineteen eighty four if
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: they would distribute my records, and then by nineteen eighty
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: six or eighty seven, I was signed directly to A
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: and M. And I so loved Gil Friesen and Jerry
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: Moss and Herb Albert and David Anderley, who was the
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: head of A and M. He was so lovely and
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 2: they just encurreg They didn't tell me what to do.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: They didn't say go pop. You know. I remember the
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: first meal I had with David Anderley, who was an
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: amazing painter in addition to being very musical, and he said,
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: my first experience with anything Christian was the life size
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: cross that was burning on our front yard. And I said, wow.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: But anytime I wrote a song, he would just say,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: just let it be. Who this woman. I'm sitting across
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: the table from sing to.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: Me, Okay, you have success at the height of MTV
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: and BH one. What was it like seeing yourself on
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: television and suddenly in regular life people know who you are?
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: I mean I only ever had one time that anybody
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: screamed right in my face. And I was going into
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: the donut Den in Nashville, Tennessee, and it's right next
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: to Hillsborough High School and there was a bunch of
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: girls coming out, you know, and I was going to
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: go get an Apple.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: Fretter, great best donut.
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were like, and I just hi, you know,
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: I don't really know. I mean, my life was always
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: so full of normalcy, so it's like.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, going back you were going to school, and maybe
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: your larger success came after school. But you're not the
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: regular student everybody. So is that Amy she's a singer
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: and she just happens to be in our class or
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: did people look at you differently?
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Well, I worked every weekend. I mean
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: back when I was at Furman University. Every flight every weekend,
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: I would work, and you know, I'd have to fly
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: through Atlanta, and so I might fly out on a
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: Friday afternoon just sing a Friday night, on a Saturday night,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: and sometimes a Sunday morning. I would just take school
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: friends with me. I took one time, I took our
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: dorm advisor. She was ten years older than I was,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: but we became good friends. Sound was like, you want
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: to go to Eugene, Oregon this weekend. But I played
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: guitar at FCA. You know, I was got a boyfriend,
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: and yeah, I mean just you know, I don't think
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: my grades were as good as they could have been,
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: but I was juggling a lot.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: How hard was it to drop out?
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I completed four years, so two years at Furman,
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: and then I transferred to Vanderbilt because just trying to
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: record so all of my college years, every year I
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: was making a record, so I was either flying to
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: do it on the weekends, flying to do a show,
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: or flying back to Nashville. And I just thought, I
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: can't do this. I'm going to transferred to Vanderbilt. And
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: you know, because of my work schedule, I think I
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: maybe carried twelve or fourteen hours a semester, and so
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: I was shy of having enough credits to graduate. But
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: I went four years and I went to my dad
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: and said, I can't. I have an opportunity to make
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: music and it might not ever come back. And I
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 2: asked his permission to drop out.
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: And what do you say?
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: He said, promise me you will get your degree.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: So what happened?
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: I got an honorary degree.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: Well, you know there's a famous Ruth Springsteen record. He's
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: talking to his mother said he can always go back
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: to college. That never had any interest for you.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: I feel, yeah, I am. I mean, I'm interested, but
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: just hasn't made sense yet.
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about being a teenager in high school
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: and writing songs. You talk about writing songs for this
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: new album. Many musicians say, oh, I have a new
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: album scheduled. I got to sit down and write songs.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: There are other people writing songs all the time. Which
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: one are you?
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: I'm somewhere in the middle. I didn't have a record deal.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: I've had seasons of my life that I'd finished one record,
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: be touring and already writing for the next record, And
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: I think I am probably somewhere on the add spectrum,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: and having a deadline and having that pressure is a
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: good way to harness your skills and get it done
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: without having a record contract for new material. I went
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: through about a decade of my manager just pleading one song.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: I'm back even for one song, and it was really
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: just my life. You know, everybody went through COVID. I
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: had an unexpected open heart surgery, which, by the way,
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: I felt so much better after that correcting a birth defense.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: How did you find out you needed open heart surgery?
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 2: I went to a doctor's appointment with Vince, who was
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: about to be sixty five. The age's father died to
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: tack and we were going to get his treadmill test results,
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 2: and I just went to hold his hand and the
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: doctor said, you're great. And then the doctor, doctor John
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: bright Cage, he looked at me and he said, I
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: want to see you, and I wid, I'm fine, like
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: I'm the energizer binding I have a freakings amount of
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: energy and he would not let it up. And he said,
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: I want you to come see me, and I said,
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: we are right in the middle of Christmas shows and
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: I can't and he said first week of January. And
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: after he retired, he wrote me a letter and he said,
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: twice in my life have I felt such an strong
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 2: impression impulse to get somebody to come see me. And
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: he said one of those was you. And you know
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: what I had pat for. I can't even think what
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: it stands for now. But my blood was not circulating
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: properly through my bod and it was enlarging my heart.
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: And he said, you would have been fine, fine, and
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: then catastrophic. And so he really saved my life.
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: When he said you had a problem, Did you believe him?
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: I I think I just what. Yeah, he called over
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: the phone the next morning. He said, I've told the
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: radiologists stand down, stand down, and they're saying we need
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: to get you right in the hospital. He said, I
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 2: think we've got a few months. And I did feel
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: like what, I don't know what you're talking about, but
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 2: all any of us know is what we have.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know it's like the famous joke you
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: know with God. You know, buy a ticket, you know
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: you can meet someone halfway, you can go for an
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: annual physical right.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I wouldn't have had a reason to go
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: see a cardiologist. I've always been very active and it's
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: made me. I'm so glad to have been a spokesperson
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: for the American Heart Association because a lot of women
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: might be might have something fixable that would in their
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: life prematurely, but if they could check on it. And
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: you know, the insistence to go in for a checkup
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: was not generated by me. There was a doctor saying,
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: come see me, come see me. Now, I'm like why,
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: And then the result.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: Of that, Wow, lucky you caught it. Okay, you've been
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: all around the world. You grew up in Nashville. Nashville
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: is bigger and more popular than ever. Not all of
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: it is music. You know, you have the Hen Party
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: weekends with people coming to celebrate their bachelorhood. And what
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: is it about Nashville that makes it different from everywhere else?
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: And what do people not understand about Nashville?
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: Hm? Well, I think Nashville is a rare combination of
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: the arts entertainment, not just country music, but all kinds
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: of music and dance. But it's the arts education. So
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: many great universities in Nashville, arts education, medicine, and philanthropy.
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: And it just so happens that like, for instance, Minnie
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: Pearl Taylor Swift, a woman named Cordia Harrington, who is
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: the bun lady for all the McDonald's bonds, Dolly Parton.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: These are all were many, but all very strong women,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: all very talented, and very vocal about philanthropy. And it's
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 2: changed our town. And there were men as well. But
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 2: even through the you know, the forties, fifties, sixties, I
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 2: think I think Nashville was instrumental in women getting the
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: right to vote.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know that story about Liz It.
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, well, I know they were one of the first
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: states to have women voters, and it was my history here.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: But a woman whose last name was Dudley, it may
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 2: come to me, it might not. She was married to
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: a man named Guilford Dudley, Senior, but she was known
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: nationwide as being an advocate for women's right. Her husband,
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 2: so here's a very loud talking woman, her husband was
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 2: one of the men that my great grandfather went to
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: in the early nineteen hundreds. He was a self made man.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: My great grandfather as self educated, but he wanted to
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: start a life insurance company and so he went to
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: four investors, a woman and three men and started life
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: in Casualty insurance company. And he was a philanthropist. Am
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: Burton and anyway, so I think there was a tax
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: law that if someone gave away ninety percent of their income,
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 2: they were not required to pay income tax. And the
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: only American who's ever done that was Amburton. And so
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: a lot of the wealth from Nashville came from life
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: and casualty. And I mean, now it's diversified in so
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: many things, but it's just interesting that there's so many
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 2: highly visible, strong characters, male and female, that help steer
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: a community in a direction. And I still feel that
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: in Nashville. And I think people show up and it's
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 2: not just skyscraper's in all finance. I mean there's actual
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: you know, the buskers downtown seeing well enough to be
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: on any stage. You just go, oh my gosh, because
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: there's something about creativity that the guy parking your car
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 2: or the person slipping the dishes off the diner table
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: might write the next song. So it's not the glass
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: ceiling that a lot of the industries have the creative arts.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, I've been speaking with Amy Grant. She's got a
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: new album, The Me that Remains Sure. You're asked this
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: question all the time, but I'm gonna have anyway. Tell
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: me the derivation of the title.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: I sat down to write what I thought was a
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: poem to myself. It was two years after a bike
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: accident that had left me changed, and the doctor had said,
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 2: don't pull back, lean in, and I thought, well, I
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: need to wrap marms around myself. What do I have?
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: And I just wrote that lyric, and then I reached
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 2: out to mac McNally and said, hey, can you help
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: me with some music for a song? No Sacred Cows,
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 2: change anything you want, And that was the first song.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: It became the title for the album, and to me,
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: it's just indicative of this point in life. None of
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: us are who we used to be. Years ago, I'd
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: been on a bike ride on a Saturday afternoon in
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: Oklahoma City and I had written for several hours and
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: I wound up going to a diner that actually had
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: a jazz band, kind of a dance band in the afternoons.
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: My mother in law had told me about it. She's
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: a hundred by the way. And I walked in and
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 2: the dance floor is packed, and I have on those
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 2: padded bike shorts. I was totally pitted out. I took
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 2: off my bike helmet and I'm just looking at all
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 2: these people, all these middle agers, just cutting a rug.
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 2: And this man came up to me and he said,
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: you look like you want to dance, and he had
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 2: on a veteran's cap and I said, I would love
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 2: to dance. And we get out there and he's spinning
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 2: me around and I said, what is your name? And
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: he said, honey, I'm what's left of Bob. And so
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, at some point, that's all any of us
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 2: have is was left.
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: We got to leave it at that. We can't talk
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: that Amy. I want to thank you so much for
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: taking this time with my audience. It's been a pleasure
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: speaking with you.
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: Bob till next time. This is Bob left sets