Latest / The Daily Writer / Don’t Forget to Feed Your Creative Soul (with Alice Perrey)

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Don’t Forget to Feed Your Creative Soul (with Alice Perrey) · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: As artists and entrepreneurs, we face the constant struggle of how to best use our time.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: We want to produce great creative work, but we also have jobs, families, customers or clients, church and community responsibilities, and also sleep that we've got to fit in there somewhere.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's far too easy to forget that we need to feed our souls with great art.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Our guest today shares her story of becoming an amazing artist and why we need to continue feeding our souls throughout our whole lives.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: So stay tuned.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Hey friends, welcome to the Born to Create podcast.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Kent Sanders and I'm an author, professor, and creative coach.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: This is the show where we explore the mindset, habits, and principles to help you make a bigger impact in your life and creative work.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited to bring you this very fun conversation with my good friend Alice Perry.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Alice is the professor of developmental studies and chair of the general education division at St.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Louis Christian College, where I'm also a professor.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: I've always respected Alice's great talent as a fantastic musician, but even more, I've admired her generosity and good humor as an amazing human being.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Alice also released her first instrumental piano album called Streams for the Soul last year.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: On this episode, you'll learn why Alice was drawn to piano as a child, you'll learn insights for dealing with criticism as an artist, and you'll also learn practical tips for making time for your creative work no matter what your stage of life.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: In addition, Alice also offers some great insights into why you must take action and work through the challenges of a new project.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, and if you want to take a deeper dive after the episode's over, be sure to check out the show notes at Kent Sanders.net slash feed your soul.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's KentSanders.net slash feed your soul.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: As an added bonus, at the very end of the episode, I've included the track When We All Get to Heaven from Alice's instrumental album.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: So let's jump right into the interview.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm here with my good friend Alice Perry.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: We are uh not just friends but colleagues.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: So Alice, welcome to the Born to Create podcast.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really glad to be here.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is fun.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: This has been in the works for some time.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: So on this episode today, we're going to be talking about why it's important to feed your creative soul.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when that phrase comes to my mind, you're one of the people who really come to mind in my life because not only do you really take care to do that, but you're also one of the finest musicians that I know.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you also just released an album a few months ago, so you kind of have several streams of this um creative feeding of your soul going on in your life, which is awesome.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm not a naturally really emotional person.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like to show my emotions to people in person, but they come out in my music.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: They do.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: I've always noticed that about your piano playing.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's very emotional.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was I was lucky enough to have really good teachers who showed me how to do that.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't always that way.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: I had a a uh piano teacher in college that told me I sounded like a frustrated Baptist.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: What does that mean exactly?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I was really bouncy, really choppy, not very expressive.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um things were either loud or soft or staccato or not.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: No in-between, no nuance to it.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he really worked on the nuance.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I accompanied a choir at University of Missouri in Columbia.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the director, Tom Mills, we all called him Unc because he was like everybody's favorite uncle.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: He really stressed um being able to express the words and the feeling of the music.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um it wasn't just the choir, he would stop and make me polish my my piano playing.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: In front of the choir?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: In front of the choir.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: So that's either kind of a do-or-die moment.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: You learn it or you don't learn it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: So and as an artist, you know, it's hard enough being critiqued by somebody one-on-one, but when you're in front of a group, and I've had that happen before, you just feel like I want to crawl into a hole and give this up and never play this instrument again.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um we used to have uh piano, uh piano class where everybody who took from the same teacher would meet and we would play for one another and critique each other.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that was probably the longest hour of my week.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: I bet it was.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um because the the professional world is really pretty competitive, and we were learning that, and sometimes our critiques of each other just were not nice.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: And artists are the worst on each other.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: You would walk out feeling like you were three inches tall and uh think you were never gonna do it again, and then you'd go back the next week for more of the same.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: So in this episode, we're talking about feeding your creative soul.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: Let me actually I was gonna say, let me take us back, but I can't take us back there.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Only you can take us back there.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Take us back to when you were a kid.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really curious about, you know, as we're talking about feeding your soul and doing things that really speak to you on a creative and artistic level.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: Why the piano?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: What was it about the piano that drew you and why did you choose that as your main creative expression?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I ever really made a conscious thought.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Or was it more that it chose you?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: It may have.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the piano was available.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe if they'd given me an accordion as a child, I would have been an accordion player.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: But um when I when I was three and four, we lived in a parsonage, and the parsonage had a grand piano, and my mother played, and I can remember being maybe four, almost five, trying to plunk out Jesus Loves Me on the piano.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it was very frustrating that I could not find the right notes to make the tune.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: That would be really frustrating.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and then my mom began to teach me when I was about five, and I started formal lessons at seven.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was really excited about formal lessons, and that lasted 24 hours when I realized that you were supposed to practice the same thing every day for half an hour.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Which gets a little boring to a kid.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: That did not feed my soul.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um But uh just before I went into sixth grade, I had my tonsils out, which doesn't sound like an earth-shaking thing, but it ended up being kind of a catalyst for what came out came later.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: My piano teacher had just given me um a book of music from the sound of music, and it was the first time that I could remember that it was real music, it wasn't simplified, and the Sound of Music movie had just come out, and we all wanted to be June uh Julie Andrews.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I was sick, I couldn't go outside.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I sat down with that book of music and was stunned to find out that I could actually play the music.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have to practice it a great deal, that I could play it the first time, and it sounded pretty good.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: That must have been a really great feeling.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: That that really changed my whole perspective on practice, that it wasn't now just something that my mom wanted.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was something that I could find enjoyable.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you say that was kind of a key moment when and there was probably a series of these moments, you know, over your younger years when you're kind of going through this discovery process.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: You would say that was a key moment where kind of internally you just said, okay, piano is my thing.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is the thing that I'm gonna latch on to artistically.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I was in the band, um, I wanted to play the flute, but my family had no money, and they did have an old trumpet.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I played the trumpet.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, God obviously did not make me a trumpet player.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I could hit the notes, it sounded awful.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: My band director thought maybe she'd do better on the French horn.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I could hit the notes, but it it just was I I never had the tone, I never had a feeling of that it was something that I wanted to do.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, no matter what I did, I always came back to the piano or or other keyboards.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: Can you just sort of looking internally, is there something specific about the piano that that I mean, even as a kid, but even now, that you feel like, okay, this certain thing about this instrument somehow speaks to me?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it one of those things where it's it you can't really even describe it?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: You just it just is like an extension of of your soul almost.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like um with the piano, you can play more than one note at a time, and it has such a range, it has a deep, deep bass, it has tinkly highs, it has everything in between.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when you play it, um it's almost like you talk with your hands.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can um you can make things louder, softer.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just infinite.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And at home, you know, I have a really exceptional instrument that does all that really, really well.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so often I'll just go in and I'll sit down, and sometimes I have music in front of me, and sometimes I don't.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll sit down and play for half an hour or an hour, and I might do that three or four times a day.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Did you ever think about giving up the piano at any point?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um really from uh all through high school, I swore that every lesson I had was going to be my last one.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I was just going to to go do something else.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um I used to sing um when I when I was younger, my voice is terrible now, but it was it was decent then.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh well, I could I could be a singer, I could go forever and not play the piano again.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that never lasted more than a day or two.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um it always drew you back.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: I always came back to it.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even now, I might go a day or two without playing.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: But then I'll come back and I'll play two or three hours at a time.
• 11:15
  unknown: Wow.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: So let's say somebody's listening to this, uh, somebody maybe who's a teen or a little bit younger, they haven't found their thing yet.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're searching, maybe they've tried a few instruments, maybe they've tried other creative avenues.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Any advice that you would give somebody, particularly a younger person, about how how do you find your thing and how do you know when it's your thing?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's your thing if you can't not do it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you just you are compelled to do it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Even even now, if I'm in a mall and there's a piano store, my husband has to grab me by the elbow to keep me from going in.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it's that your thing is the thing that you keep coming back to.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not every day, but it it just pulls you.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: How did, as a young person, how did you find that balance between you know, you have your passion for it and your interest for it, but in order to get better and to develop more fun with that instrument or with that thing, you have to then put it into practice and kind of do the hard work.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: How did you find that balance in there between those things?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it just a matter of stubbornness?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: You just keep going.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I could tell you that my parents beat me.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my mother was insistent, I was going to play the piano.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: You were going to play.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was it was not optional.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um but when I was in seventh or eighth grade, seventh grade, I think, um, I began playing for church, and people began to hear me, and so I began to get a little bit of uh ego strokes.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would play something and and people would compliment me, and and those were enough to to feed off.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when I would practice, I would balance um working on technique and working on my assigned think of it as homework and then just playing what I wanted to do.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, picking up a song that I wanted to learn just because um I always uh really from the time I was maybe fifth or sixth grade, I would I would take a hymn book and and my parents were very insistent that I was going to be a church pianist.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: There was no question.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so they loved to sing.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we always had hymn books and other books, and they would stand behind me and sing a hymn.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: If I played the hymn properly, we didn't have to do the second verse.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I would sometimes take a hymn book and just fool around with the hymns and see how I could change it up, how I could make a different accompaniment pattern, maybe change a chord here or there, see if I could make it sound different than the four notes on the page.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because if you play a hymn just straight like it's written, it's it's not that exciting musically, typically.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not generally.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's a few songs.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you play if you play those same four notes on a pipe organ, you get a whole different feeling.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: But on the piano, it's pretty bland.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now let me draw out something you you alluded to a second ago, this idea of dealing with criticism.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: So as a pianist, as an artist, you know, you're doing something that feeds your soul.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, it helps to feed other people's souls as well.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: But you're doing this thing that is really, really important to you.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's life-giving, it's something that that is a really key part of your identity as a person.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: So how have you dealt with this idea over the years of particularly you mentioned church music, which I've been a part of church music my whole life as well.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: How do you deal with critics?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: How do you deal with people who don't like your playing or they criticize something, you know, and and not take it personally while realizing, hey, you're you're sort of attacking something that is part of my identity as a person.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: How have you been able to maintain that balance over the years?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I don't.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I carry those criticisms around with me.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um really and it's not confined to piano.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: If students give me uh a criticism on my teacher evaluations, I will nurse that for years, probably.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard not to take it personally.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I do take it personally.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: But uh especially at church, um I feel like people are eavesdropping on my own personal worship.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm you know, yes, I think about what my congregation would like to hear, and so I may tailor my song choice toward toward them, but when it comes down to it, I am not playing for them, I'm playing for the Lord.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: So he is the only one really who has the right to criticize me.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else is just personal preference.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it really is.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, my dad used to tell me to consider the source.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know, and now I I'm nearly 65, so you'll see how long I I carry this uh criticism around me.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was 13, um I learned to play Yezu Joy of Man's Desiring, which is still one of my favorite and everybody knows the tune.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, even if they don't know the name, they know the tune.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I played it as an offertory for church.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I also like to play really fast.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was 13, I had absolutely no concept of a song having an an ideal tempo.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I I must have played the song pretty fast.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And afterwards, the church ladies were complaining to my dad that I was choosing Irish jigs to play for the offering, which wasn't true at all, but I thought it was pretty funny.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder why they chose Irish jigs.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think that's an Irish song.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not, it's not an Irish song, but I am Irish, so maybe somehow they correlated the two.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it was close to St.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Patrick's Day or something, but that is really difficult to deal with criticism, I think, as an artist.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's not like you're you know, and I'm not a plumber, obviously.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why everybody picks plumbing as, you know, when they're gonna make an example of a profession, we either use attorneys or plumbers.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why that is, but I can imagine that if you're a plumber, it's it would be easier to take criticism of your work because there's an emotional distance from it.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if there's any plumbers listening, maybe that's not the case.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure I'll hear about this from somebody.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: But as an artist, it it's like this comes from a place that's very deep within you and it represents who you are, so it's really hard to manage that criticism.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, to take your analogy, if you're a plumber, your measure of success is if the toilet flushes or the or the sink drains.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: But music is very subjective, and and what I like and what speaks to me will not be what other people like or what speaks to them.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh criticism, criticism is hard.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: When I play, I go to I think it's a different place in my brain.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great point.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: I admire worship leaders who can play the piano and talk at the same time.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do that at all.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: My words come out garbled.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't get a sentence out because I am so it it I must be really, really right-brained.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're so engaged in the moment.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: When it when I play, when people criticize music, it is like they are criticizing your soul, you know, your very being.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's really tough.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I mean, there there are times, and I engage in this too, as as I go down the road and I'm listening to music on the radio, I will often say, Oh, they could have they could have mic'd that better, or the song isn't mixed very well, or the person needs to work more on technique or something.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I I don't often say, you know, they never should have played that song at all.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: It is hard because sometimes we artistic people are the worst critics of other of other artists.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and I'm sure you've had this experience as well where you're sitting in somebody else's church service, and it's really hard to shut off your critique mindset, at least it is for me.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it you know, I played for Harvester Christian Church for a very long time, uh nearly 30 years, and that was a large church, and so there were aspects of that that are very like music production anywhere, professional productions.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it spoiled me from enjoying professional productions because I can I can look at people's eyes and know that they're not hearing what they want to hear out of their monitor.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and and so I see more uh the magic is gone from professional productions because I know what's going on behind the scenes.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: So you're in a stage of life now where you don't have kids at home.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: You probably have a little more time freedom than you did when you were raising kids at home.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: During that period of your life when you know you're working, you've got kids you're contending with, families, responsibilities.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: How did you manage to still make time to practice and do what you loved?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: And and what are the challenges now to still because you know we're both professors here at this college, we're both really busy, we have demands on our time and responsibilities.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: In these different stages of life, how have you managed to still make time to do the thing that really feeds your soul and that you love?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I always practiced.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um often my practice would occur uh a lot of times on Saturday, either Saturday mornings or Saturday afternoons when the kids were small.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I would do it in in bits and snatches when the when the meatloaf was in the oven, I knew I had an hour to play.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um But my practice did suffer when my when my kids were little, and I had two sets of little kids ten years apart.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that that was a little tough.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was always involved in church though, and I always knew that I was going to show up on Sunday.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And need need to have something musical for several hundred other people.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: Something's gonna happen.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, fear is a great motivator for practice.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think honestly, now that my kids are grown, I think I'm busier now than I was when they were younger.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um That's a super interesting insight.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's true for for many people.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I uh my husband and I seldom eat a meal at home.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we we had dinner at home together last night and I cooked it, and that was the first time in probably five or six days.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um most of the time I eat breakfast at my desk, I eat lunch in the cafeteria, and I pray that I get home from work by five.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh if you're lucky with St.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: Louis Traffic.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, with St.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Louis Traffic.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So um I've had to become the music director at our church, so I now direct the choir and make sure that schedules are going.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And um when I practice now, my husband is in the shower.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, you know, I don't think there are very many people in the world who get a concert while they're bathing.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Very true.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I know that that is uh a half an hour period of our day when I'm not going to be interrupting something that he wants to do.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: It it's kind of downtime for us both.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: When he's mowing the lawn, I'm playing the piano.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: So you recently had an album release.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: I did.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: This has been a few months ago over the summer, correct?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um it it came out in I don't know, March or April.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: We recorded it the first week of March, and there was so much stuff I didn't know about releasing an album that I that I've learned.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so the release process has been long and drawn out, and finally this week it is done.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it took six months, and it it was released first to the streaming services, and then a couple of months later, you were able to get physical CDs if you wanted them.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, this month I hit Pandora, and and so I think I'm done with it.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: So walk us through the process and maybe share the title of it also.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: Walk us through the process of why you decided to make an instrumental piano album and what your goals for this project were, and you know, maybe any future plans for for this sort of realm in your life.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I'd kicked around the idea of recording for a long time.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Murray Hollis of the Gospel Lads had told me for years, he said, You gotta make an album, you've got to record.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Eric Elder was here at the college last February, and I took him home with me to see my piano, and he heard me play, and he says, Oh my goodness, you've got to record it.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't know how.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: So he came down and helped my husband and I record the album.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's most it's called Streams for the Soul.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: But this is music that I like.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I I chose I had to look and see what had been recorded.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do my own arrangements, I I play other people's, so I had to kind of peruse Spotify and Pandora and see if the original artist had recorded them because I didn't I didn't want to plagiarize.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I came up with a playlist, we recorded it in our house, we had to make deals with all of our neighbors not to make noise for three days, which was difficult because one neighbor was doing house construction, and uh that would be hard.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: He had to he had to call off house construction for three days, but we recorded the entire album in two days.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then my husband mixed it.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, you have to get licenses for all the songs, which are you know, that's that's a complex process.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a complex process, but it's an important process because the people who who did the hard work of writing it and arranging it deserve they deserve credit and they deserve part of the profits.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way they make their money.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um So we we got everything figured out and it went live and things are going well.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you listen to it, I thank you in advance for your penny.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: So after this interview, I'm actually going to include a track from your album on this interview, if that's okay.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think that would be great.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I would love to do that.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: What did you learn through this whole process, either about yourself or the recording process or playing or or anything at all?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: What really surprised you and what did you learn?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I learned I'm not nearly as accurate as I thought I was.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um that it's very difficult to play for three or four minutes solo and play it flawlessly.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: That that's I can think things sound pretty good, and I realized I was just glossing over wrong notes or or things like that.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've learned that people are over-optimistic about the appeal of their own creative process.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: But honestly, it's really gratifying.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking at at some stats this week because Spotify lets you see how many people have played your songs, and really it's not been very many.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a good day, I might have ten.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: But they also let you see where they are.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the last month or two, my music has been heard in Indonesia, in the Philippines, in Argentina, uh, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada, and the United States.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's pretty amazing.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, nowhere, I I don't care how good I was, I would not have reached these people with my music if I were performing it live.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I I have no idea whether they like it.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um you don't really get the statistics on how many up arrows or you know, up thumbs up you get.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um But it's really kind of kind of awe-inspiring to realize that okay, if they like it, maybe maybe I've brought just a little bit of Jesus into their day.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly, I I when it went live on Pandora, I listened this week.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it is kind of a rush when your song plays and the next person up is Andre Prevan and then Jim Brickman, and you realize suddenly that, you know, hey, this this is really cool.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: But in several hours of listening to my own radio station, my music was the only religious music that it's mixed with.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Seriously, I didn't realize that.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're not putting it on with streams of hymns.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're putting it on with streams of jazz and uh kind of new agey things.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So my music is the only thing on that stream proclaiming Jesus.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's really cool.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't realize that.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um I never really thought of myself as a missionary.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just a I'm just a church pianist who happens to be pretty good.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: You're a musical missionary.
• 30:06
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is really an important lesson for all of us who do any sort of creative work because it's the idea that you didn't feel ready to do this album.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, somebody suggested, of course, Eric Elder's a great friend of mine as well, who has spurred me onto things well, creative projects and so forth.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Hey, you and suggested, hey, you maybe you should you should think about this.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: You did it, maybe didn't feel ready, but you went through the process and and now your stuff is available worldwide on multiple channels, which is really, really cool.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's really cool.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is something that I never dreamed.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I know when I went through school, I really had intended to become a concert pianist.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as I as I got closer to it, I decided, okay, it's probably possible, but that's not the life that I want.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't like the competition.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't like the traveling.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I can reach more people now electronically that I could than I could in a concert hall.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to think that concert halls were, you know, that that was just really what I wanted to do.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to play Carnegie Hall and be the person on the on the stage.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, when I was at Harvester, I played for two or three thousand people every weekend, fifty weekends out of every year.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: There is no way I would have reached that many people if I'd become a classical pianist.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um sometimes really as as I play, I don't always play solo, and in fact, I rarely play solo in my real life.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I might do a prelude occasionally at church, I might do an offertory, though that's maybe once every three months.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've learned to take real pleasure in making other people sound good.
• 32:01
  unknown: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that that really represents something that I want to emphasize through this whole podcast is the idea that your art is not just about you, it's ultimately about serving other people and doing something for them.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, isn't that really what all great art should be?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: It it's in service to humanity.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: It it is and and I like to think that when I uh I like to think that God made me to play the piano and that he takes pleasure when I do.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so if anybody else likes it, well that's fine, but just remember that most of the time you're not the audience.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: That reminds me of that quote from, and I'm probably gonna misquote this.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's Eric Liddell from Chariots of Fire, where he says, I feel God's pleasure when I run.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he's a runner.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm probably misquoting that a little bit.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: But it's that idea of you're doing what you're born to do, which is the whole idea of this podcast.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're born to create something.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: So so and you're one of the people in my life that I see all the time that I feel like embody this in a super cool way.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I love your playing.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just never know.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: So relaxing.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, seriously.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I should I should make a point to uh tell people that more often, but yeah, it's it's so relaxing, and I really hope that you make more albums.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's particularly a Christmas album.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to hear that.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a Christmas album is planned, but I don't think I can make it happen this year.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: The the next album up is called White Lace and Promises.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of music for weddings.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's not religious at all.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: It will have um here, there, and everywhere from the Beatles.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: It'll have some show tunes, and again, it's romantic music that I like.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's amazing.
• 33:49
  unknown: Yeah.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much for doing this interview.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we're gonna begin to wind this down here in the next couple of minutes.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: Where can people get in touch with you and listen to all of your great music?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I uh if you want to get in touch with me, um, I have a blog called Songs from the Living Room.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think the address is songsfromthelivingroom.blog.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um you can find me if you look up Alice Perry, and that's P-E-R-R-E-Y.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: On Spotify or Pandora or YouTube, you can find me.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you really want to get a hold of me, you can contact me through St.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Louis Christian College, a Perry at stlchr.edu.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'll have links to all that stuff in the show notes.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Alice, thanks for your music.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for your friendship and your what's I was gonna say your colleaguesness, but that's not actually a word.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Collegiality.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Collegiality, your help as a fellow professor here.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate that, and I'm looking forward to hearing more of your music in the future.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Alice Perry.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: At the end of every interview, as you know, if you've listened to any of these interview episodes before, I always share three specific things that I learned from our guests, and these are key action steps that you can put into practice right away to start making a bigger impact in your creative work.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: So let's dive right in.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: Takeaway number one, make the time to do what you love.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this is easier said than done, of course.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: We all have busy lives with multiple commitments.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: However, there's always a way to find time to do what truly matters most to us.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: Alice mentioned that when she was raising kids, Saturdays were a key time for her to practice piano.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: So if you have kids at home, then you can definitely relate to the struggle.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Even if you can't spend as much time as you like doing what you love, you can still surely find at least a little bit of time to devote to pursuits that feed your creative soul or that help move your business forward, or that help you reach any other goal that's important to you.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's also something to be said for paying attention to your stage of life.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: A single adult, a parent with a small kid, a parent of a teenager, and an empty nester are all people in different stages of life.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it's important that our habits, routines, and goals are in alignment with how much time we can devote to each of those things.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think we have to flow with the life that we have.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: We have to work with the life that we have and the stage of life that we're in, rather than working against it.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: So recognizing your stage of life and your family commitments and other type of things that we have going on is really key to I guess the best way to say it is it's key to managing our expectations of how much freedom and of how much discretionary time that we have.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: But no matter what stage of life we're in, we can always make at least a little bit of time for the things that we truly love.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: Takeaway number two, do the hard work of making a product.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: Alice talked at length about making her first instrumental album this past year.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: And this presented a real learning curve for her, as it does for anybody who's learning a new process or creating something for the very first time.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: But she worked through the challenges step by step, she got some help from somebody who knew what they were doing with that specific thing, and she stuck with it and finished the project.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: Any creative project is going to have a set of unique challenges.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: Now this includes something like setting up a blog, creating a podcast, writing a book, making an album, starting a business, or any number of things.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: You have to be willing to stick it out and work through the grind of doing what it takes to be successful with that project.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's not really a matter of talent, I don't think, but it's much more a matter of persistence and just good old-fashioned being stubborn.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to commit to doing the hard work.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: Now there's also the matter of starting something before you feel ready to start it.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Alice mentioned that she didn't feel ready to make her first album, but nevertheless, she dove into it anyway and learned what she needed to learn as she went along.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Chances are pretty high that you don't feel ready to dive into whatever thing that you're wanting to work on as well.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that is totally okay.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Just dive in and you'll figure it out as you go along.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: Takeaway number three.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: Ask yourself, do I take pleasure in serving others?
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: During our interview, Alice said something that was really profound.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: She said, I take great pleasure in making others sound good.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: And this is a really key point for any artist who wants to make an impact on others and not just create things and put them out there for other people to experience.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Now, while it's good to make things and we all should be making things, it goes beyond just making something and then being detached from the world around us.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: It goes to the point of serving other people and wanting to make them be more successful.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason I say that is because the creative process, I believe, is ultimately all about serving others, not just making cool stuff.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: The best artists, the ones who have the most impact long term, are those who view their art as a way to serve their audience.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you can serve people in a variety of ways.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: You can entertain them, you can inspire them, you can teach them, you can challenge people, you can do coaching, you can do speaking, you can do tons of other things that are serving people in some way or another.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: But it all does come down to the fact that you're creating something to improve someone's life on some level.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, our creativity should be fun.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: Our creativity should make our lives better, our creativity can definitely help us to make money.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't agree more with all those things, and I want to accomplish all those things as well.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I have accomplished those things to some degree.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: But at the end of the day, our overarching goal has to be to serve other people.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: It has to be more than just about you.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, friends, that wraps up this episode of the Born to Create podcast.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: I want to thank Alice Perry for taking the time out of her busy schedule to share this amazing conversation.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: You can find the show notes at Kent Sanders.net slash feed your soul.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: If you'd like a great resource to help you save time and be more productive, you can download my guide, 21 Time Hacks for Writers, by visiting KentonSanders.net slash subscribe.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: It only takes a minute and it helps other people to discover the show.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: You can subscribe as well as leave a rating and a review by visiting KentonSanders.net slash Apple.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or a family member who you think would benefit from it as well.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now to close out this episode, I'd like to share a track from Alice's instrumental CD, Streams for the Soul, and this song is called When We All Get to Heaven.