Latest / The Scene Projects / Jeremy Zeller on Spirituality, Songwriting, and Authentic Expression in Podcasting

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Jeremy Zeller on Spirituality, Songwriting, and Authentic Expression in Podcasting · The Scene Projects

• 0:02
  Welcome into a very exciting episode of the scene.
• 0:04
  I am your host Bubba Starts, and with me today is singer songwriter Jeremy Zeller.
• 0:08
  Welcome to the show, Jeremy.
• 0:10
  Thanks for having me.
• 0:11
  I appreciate
• 0:11
  it.
• 0:12
  Well, we know your name.
• 0:14
  Let's find out what you're all about.
• 0:15
  Why don't you go ahead and give us a little backstory, and, we'll see where our paths
• 0:19
  overlap.
• 0:20
  Right on.
• 0:21
  Well, I I'll I'll open up by saying I have no idea what we're walking into here.
• 0:26
  So it's awesome to meet you, Bubba.
• 0:28
  I look forward to a great conversation.
• 0:30
  My name is Jeremy Zeller.
• 0:32
  I'm from Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.
• 0:33
  I'm a singer songwriter that tours the world, telling my story of basically death to life.
• 0:41
  You know, I have many topics in my story that manifest themselves into the the songs that I
• 0:48
  write.
• 0:49
  And each one of my songs is a journal entry in and of itself, a journal entry or a prayer.
• 0:55
  I'm a very spiritual man, so I've walked closely with the Lord since I was six years
• 1:00
  old.
• 1:02
  Had my own hero's journey in the middle of it that dealt with addiction and divorce and a
• 1:06
  blended family and ended up finding out I was autistic as an adult.
• 1:12
  And now I use all of it to tell my own story.
• 1:16
  I I believe in the power of an authentic story, and I think that more people need to hear them.
• 1:21
  It gives other people permission to evaluate their own story and, at the very least, be able
• 1:28
  to learn from somebody else's mistakes.
• 1:30
  And so, yeah, I try to use every gift that I've been given to glorify God with it, and, music
• 1:37
  is the language that, I I hear him most clearly in.
• 1:41
  So that seems to be what I do.
• 1:44
  And that's exactly why God has brought us together today.
• 1:47
  Darrell Alright.
• 1:48
  My story my story is very much the same.
• 1:51
  I'm a songwriter myself.
• 1:53
  I would categorize my songs in much the same way.
• 1:56
  The songs I write are deeply personal.
• 1:58
  They've gotten me through something or, you know, the story of where I come from.
• 2:02
  A lot of tear soaked pages over the years as these things are coming out, or, you know, big
• 2:08
  smiles as we relive the joys of our lives.
• 2:12
  Right?
• 2:13
  Amazing.
• 2:14
  Amazing backstory.
• 2:15
  I myself am from South Dakota, so an extremely rural area as well.
• 2:20
  I have always, music has always been, at least until now, how I've communicated with the
• 2:27
  world.
• 2:28
  And in the last year, I I have found podcasting, and it started out as just
• 2:32
  supporting artists and and talking to my friends.
• 2:36
  And in about the last two months, I realized that this is actually how God is speaking
• 2:41
  through us, our sharing of our stories, with each other, right, in conversation, but then on
• 2:48
  the global scale of having these things go out to the whole world.
• 2:52
  And I always say that if there's one life change per conversation and that one life is
• 2:57
  mine, well, then we have succeeded.
• 3:00
  And every single one, much as today, I'm sure, will change my life that every single one has
• 3:07
  been that.
• 3:08
  So, welcome into the show and to, you know, the community that we're building here, the SCENE
• 3:13
  projects, and, welcome.
• 3:16
  Welcome to this much greater, you know, podcasting community.
• 3:21
  I found you through, you know, you kinda putting it out there that you were looking to
• 3:25
  be a guest, And I was just pleased reading very little of your story and your your one sheet as
• 3:31
  it were, was like, I think we're gonna have a great convo, and I couldn't wait.
• 3:36
  And I'm glad we didn't drag our feet on it.
• 3:39
  We just met online, just a few days ago, and now here
• 3:42
  for
• 3:43
  the first incredible.
• 3:46
  Well, thanks for having me.
• 3:48
  I really appreciate it.
• 3:48
  And and, again, I think, like you said, I think God has brought this thing together.
• 3:52
  I I did throw something out there.
• 3:54
  I've got a song couple songs that I'm trying to push.
• 3:57
  So, yeah, I think the best way for me to connect with my audience is to throw myself out
• 4:03
  there and see who even wants to listen.
• 4:05
  So so that's where I'm starting, man.
• 4:07
  I, I was a I've been a professional musician in one way or in another, for twenty five years
• 4:14
  now.
• 4:15
  And so, I'm trying to take that experience that, I had with working with bands.
• 4:21
  Most of my work was with bands or with churches.
• 4:24
  And so, coming out on the other side of that, you know, what I'm doing now is a very personal
• 4:30
  journey.
• 4:31
  You know?
• 4:31
  I I I peeled myself back for about a year and a half and didn't I stayed in a cave for about a
• 4:36
  year and a half.
• 4:37
  No talking to anybody.
• 4:38
  Just me, myself, a mat on the floor, a bowl and a towel and some water off to the side, you
• 4:43
  know?
• 4:45
  But it was what I needed to do to come to terms with where I was at in my own story, you know?
• 4:50
  I was also losing my dad at the time, who was my best friend.
• 4:53
  So, you know, there was just a a mountain of anxieties waiting for me if I wanted to pick
• 5:00
  them up.
• 5:01
  And I decided to just kind of lay down and understand that my laying down was meant to be.
• 5:09
  It was God making me lay down in the green pastures, you know?
• 5:12
  He makes me lay down.
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  It's not a suggestion.
• 5:15
  So and when I needed to lay down, I had, I always you know, I I was a pastor, so I thought
• 5:21
  I thought my own sabbaticals was laying down for a time, and I thought that, my morning
• 5:26
  prayer routines was was, was sufficient for where I was at, and it just it wasn't.
• 5:33
  I it it required some really deep work, in myself, you know.
• 5:37
  A lot of people will call it shadow work, you know.
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  I just call it prayer, you know.
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  And, and I I really had to take myself through my own story, which, for me, that's the gift
• 5:49
  that my autism therapy gave me was as I began to explore my brain and figure out why I
• 5:55
  thought the way that I thought and why emotionally, you know, I handled things
• 6:00
  differently than most people do or, you know, why I was so good at masking to get myself
• 6:07
  through a situation of survival sometimes.
• 6:11
  And being able to walk myself through all of that and find, for me, on the other side of it
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  was the foundational teachings that I had always applied to myself as even a young man.
• 6:25
  Even as even those teachings that I did have to think through as a kid, do they make sense?
• 6:31
  Those have brought me through life.
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  And my my own problem and my own religious trauma comes from the times that that I allowed
• 6:40
  the expectations of others to supersede the expectations that I had gotten from God, you
• 6:47
  know, whether it be treating somebody in a way that they shouldn't be, whether it is, you
• 6:52
  know, having redemption on your own timeline instead of just understanding that when
• 6:56
  somebody is redeemed by Jesus, they're redeemed by by the teachings of Christ, and it's over.
• 7:02
  There is no redemption process.
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  We are to treat them as authentically as who are you in the now, who are you right this
• 7:08
  moment.
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  I don't care who you were in the past, but, you know, you know, God gives us all these these
• 7:14
  moments if we choose to take them, to define that portion of our life with either a lamppost
• 7:22
  with a light on it saying, hey.
• 7:24
  Check it out.
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  This got me here.
• 7:26
  Or a lot of people will put it under a bush, and they'll try to hide it off the path so that
• 7:31
  nobody knows this part of me that I had to deal with and who I had to become to be that and
• 7:36
  survive.
• 7:37
  I don't ever want anybody to know that.
• 7:39
  And I I think the exact opposite.
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  I think, you know, if you will, if you'll do the work, and if you'll walk yourself back
• 7:46
  through your path, you'll see all these beautiful little bushes that are hiding this
• 7:51
  awesome story of of pain and struggle.
• 7:55
  But on the other side of that, you own the power to that.
• 7:58
  Where did where did ultimately what did it create in you?
• 8:01
  What did it turn you into?
• 8:02
  And here you are right now, you're saying, no.
• 8:05
  I I I think there's something to what Jesus said.
• 8:08
  There is something about me being a child of God.
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  There is something about finding the beauty of heaven within myself, and and there is
• 8:15
  something about being able to follow his path and walk backwards on it if I need to, and
• 8:20
  understand that the light posts that I left myself, I did leave them under a bush, but
• 8:25
  they're there.
• 8:26
  I just gotta whack the weeds down for a minute and let that story shine, let that part of my
• 8:30
  story shine because that means there's a whole group of people that I can connect with now
• 8:34
  that I was afraid to even talk to before.
• 8:37
  And that is that is you taking your power back.
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  And once people understand the value of that in your story, that's that's when you you're
• 8:48
  literally walking people back down that path to find that lamppost that they left under the
• 8:53
  bush by showing them how you got there and back to say, hey.
• 8:57
  I made it there, and I'm and I made it back too.
• 8:59
  You know?
• 9:00
  It's it's a tough journey, but I promise you, it's safe, and there's nothing but the goodness
• 9:04
  of God laying underneath of that right now.
• 9:06
  It's just you gotta go get it.
• 9:08
  We all have to go get it.
• 9:09
  And that nobody else can get it for us.
• 9:12
  Nobody else has lived our story with us except God.
• 9:14
  That is where my relationship with God comes in handy.
• 9:18
  Anytime that I ever have a question about, well, what what what was that?
• 9:23
  Well, at the end of the day, me and God are the only two that that walked on that particular
• 9:28
  path on that particular day at that particular time.
• 9:31
  He's the only one I trust in that way.
• 9:35
  But the beautiful thing is is when you walk in that way because I did I I cut everybody out of
• 9:40
  my life for about a year and a half.
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  The beautiful thing is is as you reemerge from that journey, you've done the work, and you
• 9:47
  know what kind of relationships are willing to walk with you or you with them.
• 9:56
  You know?
• 9:57
  So I don't even know where that came from, but that's
• 10:01
  And that's exactly why I say what I say this show.
• 10:07
  Opening up, being vulnerable, it it's it's changed my life.
• 10:12
  You know, like I said, this show kinda started as me with, my musician friends and talking
• 10:17
  about them and and sharing some stories, and what was bleeding into that was my story and
• 10:22
  sharing a bit more and sharing a bit more.
• 10:25
  And, we like to keep, you know, our episodes on this program specifically a little bit shorter.
• 10:30
  So I was like, man, you can't be telling all these long winded stories.
• 10:33
  So it actually became another show that we call get better together.
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  And it's exactly that.
• 10:39
  It's digging up the dirt.
• 10:40
  It's whacking the bushes out of the way and going, no.
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  This is this is the story that made me.
• 10:45
  This is how I am the man that I am.
• 10:47
  You know, my green pasture was prison time.
• 10:50
  I did over two years in jail and prison cells, and working on myself and and reading the bible
• 10:57
  for the first time.
• 10:58
  I wasn't raised a religious person, but I felt the hand of God regardless.
• 11:03
  And even in putting putting me into the prison so that I could just stop and I could heal
• 11:10
  myself, you know, and I could I could begin to walk the path that I'm on now.
• 11:15
  And that's not to say that that's been a straight path.
• 11:17
  Right?
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  It has straightened out here very recently, but even after, you know, I was released from
• 11:23
  prison in 2018, God blessed me with a beautiful woman that's helping me raise my three
• 11:28
  beautiful children.
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  None of these things are possible without the hand of God over me, blessing this path.
• 11:35
  And for me, I mean, it's it's hard to tie it all to one thing, but really, stopping a
• 11:41
  relationship with alcohol last October.
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  I'd really slowed down a lot already, but finally, you know, in October, it was like, I'm
• 11:50
  I'm done.
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  I'm I I don't need this.
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  You know?
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  What's the one beer doing for me anyway?
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  Like, I don't I don't need this at all.
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  And then all of a sudden, there was a massive acceleration in the process.
• 12:02
  You know?
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  A year ago, I wasn't even a podcaster.
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  Now we're running a network, and we're cranking out daily content on four different shows, and
• 12:09
  we're doing all these things and and building new podcasts and bringing out all of these
• 12:14
  stories.
• 12:15
  God's put me here to pull on this thread.
• 12:17
  I'm just gonna keep on pulling until it's revealed.
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  You know?
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  I I've made it a mission of the podcast and what we're doing to develop more podcasters.
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  A million podcasters.
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  If we can get a million people turned on to this and they're gonna go have a million
• 12:32
  conversations a day Right.
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  Well, buddy, we're gonna heal this world real quick.
• 12:37
  You know?
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  There's 8,000,000,000 people on this Earth that all have a story.
• 12:41
  You know?
• 12:41
  It's gonna be my impetus to learn Mandarin, to to perfect my Spanish.
• 12:46
  I spent a year in Mexico.
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  Talk about being humbled.
• 12:49
  I went from being a drug dealer and having all the monopoly money in the world, to do anything
• 12:54
  I wanted to living in a, you know, the third world side, right, of Mexico in a very rural
• 13:02
  area and playing my guitar on the street for pesos, man.
• 13:05
  You you talk about, you know, counting $20,000 in cash to counting 200 pesos for your day's
• 13:13
  work.
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  God humbled me first before I was ready to even walk the walk of prison to sit still and to
• 13:21
  start listening.
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  And now I've been given this incredible gift to connect.
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  I've always been a networker.
• 13:28
  I've always been able to connect with people.
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  And because of my life before, I can relate.
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  I and to especially to someone like you whose story is could have been this.
• 13:39
  Right?
• 13:39
  So parallel with mine and almost a carbon copy in some ways.
• 13:44
  And to connect with you is to connect with God.
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  I think that was always the teachings of Christ.
• 13:52
  That was always those teachings that it is within you.
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  All of this power to remake yourself every day is within you, you know, and and being given
• 14:02
  those teachings.
• 14:03
  So while I'm still not an overly religious church going person, I think a lot of that has
• 14:08
  been corrupted by man.
• 14:10
  I don't I do believe there are good people there as well, but I think this is the direct
• 14:14
  line.
• 14:15
  Communing with one another on this level and then sharing these very personal intimate
• 14:21
  conversations with the world.
• 14:23
  You know?
• 14:24
  I don't ever I'm not thinking about an audience when I'm sitting here with Jeremy.
• 14:28
  I'm thinking about our relationship right here.
• 14:31
  And I and I think that's so important and what a blessing that podcasting is on the whole.
• 14:37
  And, yeah, I I love that it brings me to people like you with an amazing story and an amazing
• 14:43
  mission of your own.
• 14:44
  Well, thank you.
• 14:45
  Yeah, I I walked away from religion in 02/2017.
• 14:50
  I, you know, I have have a very weird relationship with the church.
• 14:57
  On the I don't even know where to start with you know what?
• 15:01
  I don't even need need I think everybody relates with that statement.
• 15:04
  I don't need to get into anything on that.
• 15:07
  But you had said something about, you know, people wanting you said you you you you were
• 15:14
  identifying with my story in a very parallel way.
• 15:17
  You know?
• 15:18
  It's like our you know?
• 15:19
  No.
• 15:19
  No.
• 15:19
  None of us have a straight path.
• 15:21
  You know?
• 15:21
  We it's it veers right and left and up and down all the time in every other direction.
• 15:25
  But I do believe that the gift that God gave us as human beings, and one of the core reasons
• 15:30
  that we even exist, is to be able to experience pain, to to identify with the emotions that it
• 15:37
  takes to actually live a life and live an abundant life.
• 15:43
  You know, we would not know the great joys if we didn't know great pain.
• 15:46
  And there's there's a truth to that in a way that I believe that is where I think we are all
• 15:51
  in common.
• 15:52
  I do not believe that I would have had to go to prison to understand what your heart was going
• 15:58
  through as you were removed from certain portions of your life that brought you to that
• 16:02
  moment with God.
• 16:04
  I believe other people can experience that pain manifested in a very different way.
• 16:09
  But the pain in in and of itself is how we identify and how we relate.
• 16:13
  It's all that consciousness, you know, coming together and understanding that I've been there
• 16:18
  too.
• 16:19
  You know, one of the songs I just released call is called hear me, and one of the lines is in
• 16:24
  it is about that.
• 16:26
  It says, so I'll say it again.
• 16:27
  I'm not scared of the shape that you're in.
• 16:29
  We're all circles and stars trapped behind bars, dying inside to be told, child, behold
• 16:35
  who you are.
• 16:36
  Like, it's just we're all walking this same path of pain and joy and pleasure and trying to
• 16:43
  figure out the best way to to to make it manageable, you know, even if we have to smooth
• 16:49
  out some of the chaotic parts of our life and not just don't get me wrong.
• 16:54
  You know?
• 16:54
  I've I've been there out partying and stuff, and those nights, you're like, yeah.
• 16:58
  It's like over the, you know, over the moon sometimes.
• 17:01
  It's great pleasure.
• 17:02
  It's great fun.
• 17:04
  But at the the next day, there's just not that.
• 17:07
  It's and if you do that enough times, you're gonna either say you're gonna either enter the
• 17:11
  world of hypnosis where you're hypnotized by that pain so much to where you don't even care
• 17:17
  about anything else, You know?
• 17:18
  Or you're gonna wake up and go, man, that ain't worth it.
• 17:21
  It's just not worth going out and partying all night.
• 17:24
  You know?
• 17:25
  I don't have a problem having a drink.
• 17:27
  I don't have a problem with alcohol, though.
• 17:28
  I know some plenty of people that have a problem with alcohol that, you know, I don't
• 17:33
  drink in front of.
• 17:34
  That's just my own choice.
• 17:36
  I don't because I'm trying to be kind to that person.
• 17:38
  You know?
• 17:39
  I don't wanna do this in front of you if if it's gonna really make you struggle.
• 17:44
  I smoke weed.
• 17:45
  You know?
• 17:45
  Plant medicine has has healed my body.
• 17:48
  I'm I have pushed my body to the limits.
• 17:50
  I'm an adrenaline junkie, and so I have pushed my body to the limits my whole life.
• 17:55
  And so I was my own addiction journey was, my back surgery is the is basically the result of
• 18:03
  generations of my family that have had bad backs.
• 18:07
  My dad and his four brothers and sisters all had the same exact back surgery in the same
• 18:12
  location for the same thing that I had to have.
• 18:15
  But when I got word that I was gonna have to have back surgery, I was like, well, then I
• 18:19
  wanna have it now.
• 18:20
  Because by then, I had already been through this weird pain management, cycle that we were
• 18:27
  presented with as we were, you know, young adults.
• 18:30
  You know, it's like, these are called opiates.
• 18:32
  Try these.
• 18:33
  You know?
• 18:33
  You won't have to worry about a thing.
• 18:34
  And so it's like, you know, I got that from an elder at the church that I worked for at the
• 18:39
  time.
• 18:40
  He was like, yeah.
• 18:40
  You need to try this this thing because, you know, I can see you're uncomfortable on stage.
• 18:44
  And so I'm like, well, okay.
• 18:46
  I'll you know, I had always been against pills my whole life, but I tried it.
• 18:51
  Well, it did not take long for me to understand, oh gosh.
• 18:54
  I can just take this and not have to worry about anything.
• 18:56
  So for about two years, man, by the end of that journey, I was on a 50 pain pills.
• 19:01
  I was on five hundred pills a month, a hundred and 50 of which were pain pills.
• 19:05
  And I was in this cycle of just misery and depression.
• 19:09
  And so I came out of that, and I was like, listen.
• 19:11
  I gotta I want this surgery now.
• 19:13
  I don't wanna deal with this pain management stuff.
• 19:16
  I want the surgery now.
• 19:17
  So for six months, I got off of my pain medicine with the exception of, like, 30 a
• 19:23
  month just to get me to my back surgery.
• 19:25
  Had my back surgery, took the management till it that I think it's six weeks, and I haven't
• 19:31
  looked back.
• 19:31
  It is I've never looked back, and and it's been a wonderful journey since then.
• 19:36
  And for me, that's a very real part of my story that I now, because I'm on the other side of it
• 19:44
  and because God is the only reason I made it through all of that, I can use that light that
• 19:51
  I had tucked under a bush for so long because I didn't want anybody knowing that pastor Jeremy
• 19:55
  had a back problem.
• 19:57
  You know?
• 19:58
  I was able to now pull it out and be like, listen, brothers and sisters, I've been there
• 20:02
  with you.
• 20:03
  You know?
• 20:03
  It's it's a it's a slippery slope, but there's ways around that that you can still manage it
• 20:08
  all.
• 20:09
  So for me, I went plant medicine with all of my medicines.
• 20:13
  And so now, you know, I don't have a problem with using marijuana in the same way that my
• 20:19
  ancestors did for their own healing ceremonies.
• 20:22
  And I'm not and it's not like I'm doing it all the time, but, yes, I do it to manage my pain
• 20:28
  in the same way I use other plant medicines that you can get on Amazon.
• 20:30
  You know?
• 20:31
  So it's just it's a choice that I made to step outside of a of a whole world that I don't
• 20:38
  agree with.
• 20:39
  So Right.
• 20:39
  Yeah.
• 20:40
  That whole pharmaceutical Yeah.
• 20:42
  Pill popping, here's your cure, that none of it is holistic.
• 20:46
  Right?
• 20:46
  It's all very linear based.
• 20:48
  Oh oh, that pill didn't solve all the problems.
• 20:51
  Well, here's another pill.
• 20:52
  Let's get this out of car now.
• 20:54
  Yeah.
• 20:54
  I mean, that's crazy.
• 20:55
  Until you're on five hundred pills a month.
• 20:57
  That's insane.
• 20:58
  Exactly.
• 20:58
  Like and that's the status quo.
• 21:01
  Right?
• 21:01
  And I think that consciously we're breaking that.
• 21:04
  Right?
• 21:04
  Where where we're going as a nation seems to be pulling away from that, and and why couldn't be
• 21:10
  more thankful, right, without being overly political about it.
• 21:14
  But I'm glad that we're moving in a different direction now spiritually, it feels like as a
• 21:19
  nation, that that we we are very aware of what we've all been through.
• 21:24
  I'm 38.
• 21:25
  You know?
• 21:26
  I've I've seen a lot of you know what I mean?
• 21:28
  Like, but there's been a lot of stuff that's happened just in the last two decades as an
• 21:32
  adult where it's just like, man, this world is weird.
• 21:36
  And I've been through a lot of it, and I've been through a lot of it as a very poor person.
• 21:42
  Right?
• 21:43
  As as someone who's experienced all of these things and in different countries even to see
• 21:48
  how it is different, to see how much happier people were with nothing in Mexico was very eye
• 21:53
  opening to me.
• 21:54
  Right?
• 21:55
  I mean, the the I was making I mean, I would the wages I was making was the same that people
• 22:00
  were making, you know, to to work construction.
• 22:03
  Right?
• 22:04
  200 pesos a day is, like, $20.
• 22:07
  10 dollars.
• 22:08
  You know what I mean?
• 22:09
  Like, I went from counting $10 a week to counting my, you know, $10 in pesos for my day,
• 22:16
  and and we survived off of that.
• 22:18
  And it's like, oh, so life doesn't have to be so expensive.
• 22:21
  Like, what is this thing that I'm in?
• 22:25
  Right?
• 22:25
  What is this organism that is the economic system and, like, what are these things?
• 22:31
  And that really began a journey.
• 22:32
  Right?
• 22:33
  The the eyes kind of peeled back at that, then being in the prison system and seeing that for
• 22:37
  what it was as well, where it's just a rotating door, especially where I was, where these guys
• 22:43
  would get out.
• 22:43
  They wouldn't get treatment for the addictions or the I mean, some of these people needed
• 22:48
  severe therapy.
• 22:49
  Don't get me wrong.
• 22:50
  There's a lot of guys in there that there's they're just bad people.
• 22:53
  Right?
• 22:53
  But a lot of people were just hurt individuals who made really bad choices.
• 22:58
  Right?
• 22:59
  And a lot of them were in there for drugs and for different things, and it it was just an eye
• 23:04
  opening experience to how much pain, especially men especially men around my age, were carrying
• 23:12
  with no real outlet or an ability to just get out there.
• 23:17
  Right, and to get that pain out of you and to be able to examine it and go, oh, I don't I
• 23:23
  don't need to carry this anymore.
• 23:25
  I can leave that and and examine it fully and then walk away from it.
• 23:30
  And, yes, it's a part of my story.
• 23:32
  I'm not trying to hide it, but I don't need to carry it in my backpack with me everywhere that
• 23:36
  I go.
• 23:37
  And that's what a lot of my trauma and things were.
• 23:40
  And, really, this is a this is an awakening for me just in the last few months.
• 23:45
  Right?
• 23:45
  I I committed to just I don't care.
• 23:48
  I'm putting it on tape.
• 23:49
  I don't care who's affected by it.
• 23:51
  If you're affected by it because it personally affected well, you you probably gave me that
• 23:57
  story.
• 23:57
  Right?
• 23:58
  I had a lot of, you know, trauma from my early childhood or, you know, teen years with my
• 24:03
  father.
• 24:04
  And I had held all that in.
• 24:05
  People loved my dad around me.
• 24:07
  He's been a part of my band, and and I'm realizing why some of these things never
• 24:12
  happened for me when we were trying to work together is because I never examined and and
• 24:17
  put it all out there for everyone to see.
• 24:19
  Like, no.
• 24:19
  This is this is why I get so angry.
• 24:22
  This is why I've been carrying on to this thing for two decades.
• 24:25
  Right?
• 24:26
  And now that I've had an opportunity with my own programs and being a guest on other
• 24:30
  people's programs to fully examine that and be able to breathe, to be able to look at it as
• 24:36
  not a part of myself, but as something finally that that happened to me, I can look at it.
• 24:42
  I can address it, and then I can just leave it be.
• 24:45
  And whether that tape ever sees the light of day for anyone else is kind of irrelevant.
• 24:50
  I've gotten it out of me.
• 24:52
  So now we're trying to teach other people like, hey.
• 24:54
  Just just let's start talking.
• 24:56
  Let's start talking about That's what
• 24:59
  this is for me.
• 25:00
  It's like I'm a I'm a live performer.
• 25:02
  Like, that's my day job is I'm a traveling storyteller and singer, and so I I'm I'm in
• 25:09
  front of people.
• 25:11
  Well, like I said, I was in a cave for about a year and a half, so I'm I'm this is a process
• 25:17
  for me.
• 25:17
  I I stepped off the road playing music to raise my kids, took ten years off, and prayed to God
• 25:25
  that I would be able to come back and do it again.
• 25:27
  Well, my children are all grown, functioning, and doing amazing, so it's time for dad to play
• 25:33
  again.
• 25:33
  My son just he graduated high school last year, graduated the fire academy this year, and is a
• 25:40
  full time firefighter, EMT.
• 25:42
  And so now it's it's time for me to get back out.
• 25:45
  And so part of the ways that the way that I'm doing that is I'm anybody and everybody,
• 25:50
  especially podcasters, man, I wanna begin to I wanna learn how to talk again.
• 25:55
  You know?
• 25:55
  I was an an autistic man trying to go through my own therapies and, you know, in a room by
• 26:00
  myself only to reporting to my therapist at one time.
• 26:04
  So, I need to I'm I'm learning to communicate again.
• 26:09
  You know?
• 26:10
  I come from many different worlds and different backgrounds.
• 26:13
  As a musician, I've had to have other secondary jobs, you know, which have taken me through the
• 26:19
  banking industry, the construction industry, the factories.
• 26:24
  You know, I've and every position that I've had, I've always risen quickly in my role.
• 26:30
  So it was like I learned a lot very quickly with the with the exception of my last job, but
• 26:35
  I didn't really want that.
• 26:36
  I was I was at my last job to figure out what I'm get what I'm doing now.
• 26:39
  So and now I'm doing what I'm doing.
• 26:41
  So but but all of these all of these things are are beautiful ways to be able to relate to
• 26:48
  other people's stories.
• 26:49
  For me, there's two major contributors to why I believe that I do what I do.
• 26:55
  Number one is I was a pastor for a long time, and I'm hearing the most disturbing stories and
• 27:01
  pain that you can hear from another human being at their lowest moments.
• 27:05
  You know?
• 27:06
  That was part of my role towards humanity was to be there for people in those moments.
• 27:10
  Well, then what ended up happening when I left the church and left religion, I ended up
• 27:17
  getting a job as a first responder, as an EMT.
• 27:19
  And so I became a medic.
• 27:21
  And so being able to live two years every single shift tangibly working on the
• 27:30
  experiences that I had prayed for for decades, maybe not the same characters, but the same
• 27:35
  situations, you know, I'm literally there holding the man that just shot himself in the
• 27:40
  head, holding his head together in the same way that I was praying, you know, ten years earlier
• 27:45
  for this family that had just lost their son of the same age.
• 27:48
  It's just it was a very, very healing time in my life.
• 27:52
  And and I and I thank God for all the pain that I had to experience.
• 27:57
  I had an I I was the medic that responded to my one of my daughter's best friends getting shot,
• 28:04
  and I was the last eyes she saw.
• 28:06
  So there's just some very real connections that not not just as a pastor or as an EMT, but
• 28:13
  specifically for Jeremy Zeller that I needed to walk through so that I could come out on the
• 28:19
  other side and realize that it was all for something.
• 28:23
  It was all for my purpose.
• 28:25
  God allowed me to live through my own story and experience what I did because nobody else is
• 28:33
  made for it like I am.
• 28:34
  There's nobody else that could, you know, not say that I had it worse, but I'm saying that I
• 28:39
  believe in the same way with you that your soul was put into that flesh suit to walk the
• 28:44
  journey that you're walking in a way that only you're meant to understand.
• 28:48
  I'm not.
• 28:49
  I'm there to support, encourage, see you, love you, and root you on the best you can and walk
• 28:55
  right, like you said, along those parallel paths, living life, you know, and helping each
• 29:01
  other find those lamp posts and create them while you're doing it.
• 29:04
  You know?
• 29:04
  The story of god is never ending, which is personally, I read all the spiritual teachings.
• 29:10
  I love them all.
• 29:11
  The more, the merrier for me.
• 29:13
  Because of my own background, the language that I understand most clearly is the Christian
• 29:19
  bible, the holy bible.
• 29:20
  So most of my teaching as a as a child and a young man was from that book.
• 29:27
  I still read it nearly every day.
• 29:29
  I read something every day, but this one this is one that I always rely on.
• 29:34
  But it's it's because I for Jeremy, I understand what it means for me.
• 29:38
  I am not one that thinks that every word in that book is literal.
• 29:47
  There you go.
• 29:48
  I don't think that everything in there is literal.
• 29:50
  Right?
• 29:51
  I think that that book is the most beautiful.
• 29:54
  It's the same as the Mahabharata that the Hindus use.
• 29:57
  You know?
• 29:58
  It's just it's a beauty it's an epic tale.
• 30:00
  It's an epic tale of humanity that my story is woven in and out of it from the very first word
• 30:07
  to the very last.
• 30:08
  If I stop and I read in in the fullness of what it means to me, I can dissect my own life and
• 30:16
  find healing in ways that were only meant for me to understand, and I can use those moments
• 30:22
  of healing to inspire it in other people by just sharing the how.
• 30:26
  You know, we all know the why.
• 30:27
  It's because we wanna have purpose.
• 30:29
  We wanna be seen.
• 30:30
  We wanna be loved.
• 30:31
  We wanna be heard.
• 30:32
  How do we do it?
• 30:33
  We do it together.
• 30:34
  We do it by letting somebody bring their authentic shit to you, put it right down in
• 30:39
  front of you, and you're not gonna judge them for it.
• 30:42
  You're gonna say, oh my gosh.
• 30:43
  You should've seen the shit I had this morning.
• 30:45
  You know?
• 30:46
  We all do it.
• 30:47
  It's it's just you gotta see people for their authentic self and and not judge them for
• 30:54
  things about them that you have no idea.
• 30:57
  You have no idea the indicators that were in place that made this person or that person do
• 31:02
  what they did.
• 31:03
  You don't know the the lineage of family and a karmic background that they had to deal with to
• 31:08
  be even born into this world, let alone judge who they are and why they did what they did.
• 31:15
  Now that's not to say there's not consequences, but my gosh, that's what consequences are for.
• 31:19
  Yeah.
• 31:19
  You gotta deal with the consequences, but that that that consequence doesn't define you.
• 31:24
  That consequence is there as a barrier to prevent you.
• 31:27
  Now it's how you deal with it is up to you.
• 31:29
  But I think we all need to be doing what you and I are doing, which is just sharing our
• 31:36
  story.
• 31:37
  You know?
• 31:37
  I wanna I want to talk to people because I need to talk to people for my professional day job.
• 31:42
  You know?
• 31:43
  In the process I also have podcast.
• 31:45
  I haven't done it for a while, but it's I had to stop because my live music is starting is
• 31:52
  going very well.
• 31:53
  So picking and choosing my battles.
• 31:55
  And, look, I I posted that there the other day because I was like, you know what?
• 31:59
  Why am I even because because I was stressed, and I was like, man, I haven't done a podcast
• 32:02
  episode in a while.
• 32:04
  And I'm sitting there going, why are you even stressing about it?
• 32:06
  You got a billion people out there with podcasts that are looking for guests, and if
• 32:10
  you're just trying to learn how to talk again, then just go on their podcast.
• 32:14
  And I was like, thank you, god.
• 32:16
  That's such a beautiful idea.
• 32:17
  That means I don't have to edit anything.
• 32:19
  I don't got I just show up and talk, baby.
• 32:21
  I'm like, I am in on that ride.
• 32:23
  So that's where that post that I made came from.
• 32:25
  It was, like, like, this moment of desperation where I was like, I don't have the time to do
• 32:29
  my own podcast.
• 32:31
  So, yeah, I appreciate the opportunity, man.
• 32:34
  Yeah.
• 32:34
  Well and and since we're talking, why don't you go ahead and plug everything, and and we'll,
• 32:38
  talk a little bit off camera before I let you go as well.
• 32:42
  Absolutely.
• 32:42
  Yeah.
• 32:43
  I mean, just I would say look me up online on all the socials and everything, Jeremy Zeller
• 32:47
  and the other side.
• 32:50
  YouTube is typically where I drop my content, like, my creative content anyway.
• 32:56
  You know, I'll post on Instagram or Facebook and stuff like that every once in a while.
• 33:00
  I try to keep people, you know, up to date where my shows are and, you know, show posters
• 33:06
  and pictures and all that stuff.
• 33:08
  But, yeah, I'm just now kinda getting this thing.
• 33:13
  It's it's finally ready to take out on the road and kinda get get the the website tweaked.
• 33:20
  I still don't even have my website tweaked the way that I need it to.
• 33:24
  But I'm I've also just turned a lot of that over to my lady, so I'm hoping that, you know,
• 33:29
  she is she is way better at that social media stuff than I am.
• 33:32
  Jeremy Zeller on social media.
• 33:35
  I'm on Spotify, iTunes, all those streaming stuff.
• 33:40
  I try to drop a couple songs a year at least.
• 33:45
  I'm looking to try to drop a song a month, but, you know, I gotta have the creative team behind
• 33:50
  me to do that.
• 33:51
  So, yeah, look me up.
• 33:53
  Fine.
• 33:54
  Come come come to a show sometime.
• 33:56
  If you're in the autism world in Kentucky, I am a autism awareness advocate and would love to
• 34:03
  meet you at a show sometime.
• 34:04
  So
• 34:05
  Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for being part of the scene.
• 34:08
  Thank you.
• 34:09
  I appreciate it.