Latest / The Scene Projects / Mark Firehammer on Music, Authorship, and AI's Influence in the Industry

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Mark Firehammer on Music, Authorship, and AI's Influence in the Industry · The Scene Projects

• 0:01
  Welcome in to another exciting episode of the scene.
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  I'm your host, Bubba Sartz, and with me today is author, creator, and entrepreneur, Mark
• 0:08
  Firehammer.
• 0:09
  Mark, welcome to the show.
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  Thanks for having me, Bubba.
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  Well, yep, I just decided to jump in as I often do on these shows.
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  Got to know you a little bit for the last few minutes.
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  I absolutely love what I'm hearing.
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  So before we get into the new book and all this exciting stuff that you're doing, give you a
• 0:27
  chance to kinda introduce yourself and a little bit of your backstory.
• 0:30
  Sure.
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  I'm a 63 year old rebel, have been since I was a little kid.
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  I got kicked out of kindergarten.
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  I got kicked out of Sunday school.
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  I was, you know, against everything that my parents of a generation where you do as you're
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  told.
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  Right?
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  Do as you're told and I've rebelled the whole way.
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  And it truly it's the reason why to this day, I'm as happy as I was when I was five because I
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  didn't let anybody push me around.
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  And, my mom was an opera singer, but not, like, in on a big big level.
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  She studied it in school and sang in the church choir, Much like one of your last guests,
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  Courtney, she's got her start in church choirs.
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  I was in the marching band.
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  I was a trumpet player, and I loved it.
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  Courtney, I think I recall, she said she hated it.
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  I loved the marching band.
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  The structure and the teamwork, it just it really just tripped all pushed all my buttons
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  in the right way.
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  Interesting story about the trumpet though to kinda interleave in my my rebel background.
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  My dad was a dictator.
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  And when I was in the second grade, that would put me at what?
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  Seven years old?
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  He said, you have two minutes to decide what you're gonna play in the school band.
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  And I already knew I wanted to play the trumpet, but I wanted to test how far he would
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  go.
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  So I waited for two minutes and five seconds, and he said, too late.
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  You didn't follow the instructions.
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  So I didn't play the trumpet that year.
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  Did I cry like a little baby?
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  No.
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  What I did was I found my mother's, and you may you may be too young to know this.
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  S and H Green Stamps?
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  Yeah.
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  I'm way too young for that, Mark.
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  Okay.
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  S and H Green Stamps, you got them when you bought groceries.
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  And you fill the book up and then there's a magazine that you go redeem them.
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  Kinda like a like a an arcade where you win tickets, play in the Skee Ball machine and then
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  you get a stuffed animal.
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  I took my mom's S and H book.
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  I didn't ask permission.
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  Went to the store and got a bugle and spent that whole year learning to play the bugle much
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  to my parents' my dad's chagrin because he thought he'd controlled me.
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  Well, the next year comes around and he says, alright, you have one minute.
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  Are What you gonna play on the band?
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  I said, trumpet.
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  So I played the trumpet.
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  But the moral of the story was because I didn't have to worry about the fingerings of the
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  trumpet, I only learned to blow it and to make a good clean tone.
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  I was almost always first chair trumpet from that point on, all the way through my school
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  years.
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  So the rebel paid off by by not being a crybaby and not and not being told what to do and how
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  to be and how to live.
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  So I've basically lived my whole life in that way.
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  I went to New York to get a record deal in '89.
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  Didn't get a record deal, but I got a record.
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  I was sitting on a barstool, met a third generation, I won't drop any names, but a music
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  guy.
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  And he was working in commercials, but he wanted to make real music.
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  So we teamed up.
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  They did the whole record for me.
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  Didn't charge me anything for that.
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  That put me out on the road from '95 to 2,000 full time.
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  No manager.
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  No, no album.
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  I mean, no record company.
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  Just completely independent.
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  I had a borrowed laptop, a dial up modem, which you don't remember those either.
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  A little bit.
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  A little I'm not
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  I'm not that young, Mark.
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  Okay.
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  I could get online back in those days with a phone booth and an AOL account.
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  I just dropped the phone thing into the cradle and boot up the, you know, boot up the laptop,
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  and it wasn't the phones back then weren't digital, so they were analog.
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  You could get on the on the Internet.
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  So I booked my tour for five years.
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  I was playing four, six shows a week, ninety days in advance booked out, and I traveled
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  Maine to Miami, living in the van, sleeping in trees.
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  I didn't do hotel motel.
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  I did live in, outside of the structure of culture and really seeing, you know, this
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  beautiful country that we have from Maine to Miami.
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  That's my preachable.
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  That's my pre 2000 story.
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  It sounds incredible.
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  It was the life I wanted to live when I went out and set out for the West Coast in 02/2005,
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  02/2006, and stayed out there till about 02/2009.
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  The 2008 housing crash really put a damper on Bend, Oregon, specifically where I was living.
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  So Right.
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  When it was time to go, it was time to go.
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  But I got to live a small part of that life, not booking occasion you know, as often as you
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  were, but living that vagabond lifestyle.
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  Right?
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  I I was homeless, I say, by choice.
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  I was a vagabond.
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  I wasn't trying to be tied down anywhere, and I I could sleep in a ditch just fine.
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  The weather's so nice in California.
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  Much nicer than it is in South Dakota anytime up here usually.
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  Where are you in South Dakota?
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  Southeast.
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  South Southeast, Southwest of Sioux Falls, about an hour and a half.
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  So
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  Yeah.
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  I know the area pretty well.
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  I was I was married to a South Dakotan for for a few years.
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  Really?
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  Yeah.
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  Beautiful country.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  It's it's yeah.
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  Absolutely love it, and thank God for the Internet, because I can do what I do here and
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  continue to support artists and to meet brilliant people right from my garage in a tiny
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  town of a thousand people and and not change my lifestyle and not feel that I have to go chase
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  some dream in a larger market where it just becomes much more competitive, not just in, you
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  know, for spaces on stages and things like that.
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  I'm a songwriter myself, as you know, but also as, you know, just competition for resources in
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  general.
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  Right?
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  Living around millions of other people makes everything more expensive, and I just have I
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  have no desire to live that life.
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  I'm as close to homeless now as I'll ever be again.
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  Right?
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  Like, is Yes.
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  This we got a nice little house.
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  We got a beautiful space.
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  I I love it dearly.
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  And while we want to improve on our living, we have a nice place, but, you know, the family's
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  getting larger and we need larger spaces.
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  But to live anywhere else is completely out of the question.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, it sounds like you have the right attitude about you really control your, buying
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  into the culture's meme of more.
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  Accumulate more wealth.
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  You know?
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  More and more
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  Accumulate more debt is more like it, Mark.
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  Yes.
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  Yes.
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  I am completely debt free, in my sixties, and everybody that I know my age is carrying tons
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  of debt from a lifestyle that many of them live beyond their means.
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  And, you know, no judgment, but, I don't know that I would be as happy as I am if I had to
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  manage the stress of always looking do you watch South Park?
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  No.
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  I don't have cable TV, Mark.
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  Oh, okay.
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  Well, good for you.
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  Good for you.
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  They they have this phrase, I gotta make my nut.
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  And that's you gotta make, you know, whatever your debt is, you gotta make your nut.
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  And and I think I'm emotionally, really stable and calm and happy because I've never had a
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  very big nut to make.
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  Right?
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  I keep it reasonable so that my life is more about the experience from day to day rather
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  than the working to buy something else, even if the what I'm buying is an experience.
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  Well, and most of what I wanted to do in my life was the experiences.
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  And I learned at a very early age that I don't have to pay for the experiences.
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  I have a guitar.
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  Just go.
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  Yeah.
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  I I have my ins, and now I have this podcast and even more so now because I have something
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  that serves others, right, that I don't need to be self serving in that way, that I can show up
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  and go, hey.
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  We'd love to film content, you know, at the Surgess Buffalo chip.
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  And they said, hey.
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  Here's a wristband.
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  Hang out.
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  Have a great time.
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  You know?
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  So yep.
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  Yeah.
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  There's a
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  key We're right all about it.
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  Yeah.
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  There's a key right there, Bubba.
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  You kinda hit the nail on the head for me, is that creative people can find a way to make
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  their way doing whatever it is that's creative that they do, and that always feels good.
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  As as long as you don't get completely tied into the the industry that is around your
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  creativity.
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  My music trip to New York was a perfect example.
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  I went for a record deal, and when I got there, I realized I don't want a record deal.
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  A little little story, if you if you wanna hear it.
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  I went undercover as a butler in 1990 for Sony Music.
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  I was serving Tommy Mottola, president of Sony Music, his breakfast, you know, lunch and
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  dinner.
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  He was on the 50 Third Floor.
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  That's the year he married Mariah Carey, I believe.
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  And so what it showed me was I was inside the music business.
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  I was in the ANR meetings.
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  Pearl Jam was coming up.
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  They were getting big.
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  And the way they talked about the artists, they weren't even really human.
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  They were just a commodity, and they didn't have a whole lot of respect for the creative
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  process.
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  And that's when I'd realized that the music industry was run by attorneys and accountants,
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  not singers, songwriters, performers.
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  And I was like, I don't want any part of that.
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  So that's when I headed out.
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  The days of David Geffen believing in an artist or Yes.
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  Friend and doing that and so many other producers.
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  I I was very fortunate to work with a friend of mine who produced two of Tom Petty's first two
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  albums.
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  Oh, good stuff.
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  He worked for Shelter Records.
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  He didn't get the name rights, but he got the royalties.
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  So he lived a very healthy life and
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  a
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  very good life.
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  But, I mean, the guy was on the Sunset Strip in the late seventies, you know, early seventies,
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  I guess, in that time frame.
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  Worked with Leon Russell, actually moved Leon Russell's moved Leon Russell's studio from
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  Oklahoma out to California to be part of this.
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  So a tribute to my friend Max, who's gone now, but the stories, man.
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  The stories, but it just Yeah.
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  But it just wasn't that anymore.
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  Right?
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  And that's kinda why he had faded out of the music business by the late eighties and
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  nineties because exactly like you said, the business was what it was about, and it hasn't
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  changed much since then.
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  I mean, now it's just Spotify kind of taking from the little people to get them to bring,
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  you know, their listeners onto the platform and then not even be served the people that they
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  came to listen to's stuff.
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  Right.
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  They're being fed the same top 40 stuff that they've always been fed.
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  So, yeah, the disillusionment remains the same for independent artists now as it was thirty
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  years ago, Mark.
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  Well, you know, I've dodged that bullet, my friend, because I'm not interested in being
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  famous or being a star.
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  I never made records to sell records even though from 02/1995 to February, I did the math
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  the other day, I sold about 7,000 records.
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  And if you do the math, that's four records a day.
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  And in $2,075 a day for merch for a guy that didn't have any expenses other than gas in the
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  tank, that was pretty good.
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  That's $30,000 a year.
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  Back when gas was a buck something a gallon too.
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  A buck a gallon.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Exactly.
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  When you when you went south went west, young man, from Dakota to Oregon with your guitar,
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  were you in a van?
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  Girlfriend's car, and then girlfriend took the car back to South Dakota after, like, So a
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  month or then it was just like, okay.
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  I guess I'm out here.
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  And thankfully for me, I read Jack Kerouac's On the Road as
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  a On the Road.
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  That probably I mean, that drew me out there.
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  I grew up as a deadhead.
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  My parents, you know, took me to a dead show when I was, like, three.
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  Right?
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  Still vivid memories.
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  The name has changed, but it used to be the World Music Theater in Tinley Park, Illinois.
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  I forget what it's called now, but the building is still there.
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  They still host a giant outdoor amphitheater, and they had me out in the lot, and then we got
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  to watch on the big screen.
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  And so always being around that culture, right, in that late you know, that sixties hippie
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  culture kind of being, you know the West Coast was Mecca.
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  San Francisco being that, but San Francisco was already too I knew it was already different.
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  So I kinda landed on the coast, landed in a little town like Bend, which was, at the time,
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  like, eighty, eighty, 90,000 people, which was just big enough, right, to where I felt, you
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  know, part of something, but small enough that I didn't feel overwhelmed.
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  But travel through Portland, Seattle, Eugene, you know, down into Arcata, Northern
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  California, bust on Venice Beach for a period of time.
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  And, yeah, I I got to kinda do it all and see it all in a pretty short amount of time because
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  I was fluid.
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  I wasn't trying to tie down to one spot, then like, oh, on the weekends, maybe I'll get to go
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  and do this or that.
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  I was like, no.
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  If I wanna go to Portland on a Tuesday
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  Stick out the thumb.
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  Yeah.
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  And and away I went.
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  Right?
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  Did you busk?
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  Oh, yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  That's how I fed myself, Mark.
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  That was that was So I didn't necessarily start playing shows until I kind of like, I started
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  to play shows in Oregon, but they were like, okay.
• 13:45
  You guys should split the tip chart.
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  Was like, there's five of us.
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  Like, this is crazy.
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  And then, just some some extenuating circumstances actually pushed me back to South
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  Dakota, but I remember the first gig I booked with my dad played lead guitar and, some guys
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  that we knew in town.
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  And That's pretty cool.
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  The first gig we played, they paid us $500 cash at a bar tab.
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  We probably drank $500 worth of booze too.
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  I was like, this is the life.
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  Right?
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  So, you know, as a 22 year old man and started, you know, doing a lot doing a lot from that
• 14:15
  2009 to kinda like 02/2011.
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  Pushed really hard for a few years, but then I'd I was exposed to so many other of the
• 14:24
  pitfalls of that.
• 14:25
  Right?
• 14:25
  I don't were you a solo artist in your touring days, or did you have a band that you were
• 14:29
  traveling with?
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  Like, what was your what was your experience?
• 14:32
  Yeah.
• 14:32
  Good question.
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  The first album was a full band, horn section, the whole nine.
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  And I tried to take them out for for a run.
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  We went out for a few weeks.
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  But because they weren't willing to make the the lifestyle sacrifices, I said, okay.
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  We can't do this.
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  We're not we can't make enough money for all these hotels and all these meals.
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  So they all went back to New York, and they did this they were doing session gigs mostly.
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  And then I went back out.
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  I had the record.
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  That wasn't a perfect representative of who I was in in a live situation anymore because it
• 15:03
  was me and the guitar.
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  People still loved it, they bought the CD.
• 15:07
  I was charging $20, which was a premium in '95.
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  Yeah.
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  But it was a piece of somebody that they
• 15:13
  just $20 went a lot.
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  I mean, that's that's 20 gallons.
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  That's a full tank.
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  Sell a CD and fill the tank, man.
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  That's an incredible, incredible story.
• 15:21
  So, yes, you're very aware of all the pitfalls.
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  I mean and for people that don't know young artists out there just starting out, when you
• 15:28
  have a band and there are very few instances.
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  I know a few that are that are, you know, kind of the, not the norm and are the exception to
• 15:36
  the rule because they're all in it for one purpose.
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  But mostly what you'll run into are people that just aren't as committed as you, the artist,
• 15:43
  the songwriter is.
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  And you're going to now be married to them, their ideas, their family, their problems.
• 15:50
  Their needs.
• 15:51
  Well, and mostly because I was 22, you know, my dad was in the band, so there was a power
• 15:57
  struggle there as well where by all intentions, it was my band.
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  But because my dad was in it, anyone who was in the band would defer to him.
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  And it's like, look.
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  He doesn't book the gigs.
• 16:05
  Right.
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  It was hard for him not to be dad.
• 16:08
  Well and he wasn't dad.
• 16:09
  When he's at 2AM and you're trying to get him out of the bar because he's hitting on 20 year
• 16:12
  olds.
• 16:13
  Right?
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  You know?
• 16:14
  Oh, he's a bad dad.
• 16:16
  You know what?
• 16:17
  Shout out to Jim.
• 16:18
  We've had our issues over the years, but, you know, I love my dad.
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  I I loved those times that we had.
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  But they were trials for me.
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  Right?
• 16:25
  Sure.
• 16:25
  I can imagine.
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  It was and I didn't know I mean, I was 22, 23 years old.
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  I didn't know anything about life.
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  I didn't know I didn't know enough.
• 16:35
  I didn't know enough about human relationships and interpersonal relationships, to be able to
• 16:40
  massage things.
• 16:41
  I was very like, if you don't wanna do all this, then there's the door.
• 16:46
  You know?
• 16:46
  And so I went through a lot of players.
• 16:48
  I still continue to.
• 16:49
  But now now I'm upfront about it where it's like, I'll just show up in a town, and my
• 16:54
  network is large enough where I know everybody pretty much everywhere that I tour.
• 16:57
  I'll just contact the professional musicians I know there and have, you know, hired guns play
• 17:03
  with me.
• 17:04
  And this last year of doing that, Mark, has been the best year of my career by a long shot.
• 17:10
  Yeah.
• 17:10
  You just give them your tracks on what SoundCloud or something, and they learn the
• 17:14
  bass part, the drums.
• 17:15
  Yeah.
• 17:15
  Yeah.
• 17:15
  It's so easy.
• 17:16
  And with, you know, with technology to chore they're like, I don't write.
• 17:20
  I don't necessarily I don't I can't read music.
• 17:23
  I was a drummer in high school, so I know what the notes you know what I mean?
• 17:26
  I I know what the beats are, but going up and down, I can't read that on the fly.
• 17:30
  But I can chart out chords now, and I can do some things so that most rock musicians I'm in
• 17:36
  the rock country world, can pick it up and go, and I have a huge list of covers that are all
• 17:41
  traditional songs that have been on the radio for years and years.
• 17:44
  So it's very easy for most musicians, I would say, to kind of fall in with that.
• 17:49
  Beautiful backstory.
• 17:51
  So many parallels, Mark.
• 17:52
  I I just love it, and you to a much more successful tone than I ever did.
• 17:57
  So kudos to you for really making it and and being a success story for other independent
• 18:02
  artists to follow.
• 18:03
  That's just so, especially for now because there's more independent artists now than ever
• 18:08
  before, right, that we need to see the success stories and to see people like yourself that
• 18:14
  have been at this for thirty some odd years now and have that success.
• 18:19
  But you're also an author now, and I know your your first your debut novel just came out.
• 18:25
  But I know while it's fiction, it feels like just hearing a little bit about it, it feels
• 18:30
  like there's a little bit of truth in the story as well and maybe some, you know, some names
• 18:36
  have been changed to protect the innocent maybe, but there's gotta be some personal
• 18:40
  stories that you've brought from the road into your book, the echo and the voice.
• 18:45
  Absolutely.
• 18:45
  And, you know, when I decided to do it in December, I'd already had the notes from the
• 18:52
  twenty years prior.
• 18:53
  I was like, okay.
• 18:54
  What do I do?
• 18:55
  Do I do an autobiography?
• 18:56
  No.
• 18:57
  Because I'm not the kind of guy that can sell an autobiography.
• 19:00
  Right.
• 19:00
  The people aren't going, oh, let's learn about Mark Feijerhammer.
• 19:03
  But I had a lot to say because my songs were always here's a I think this is a distinction
• 19:08
  you might appreciate.
• 19:09
  I write songs because I want people to go, oh.
• 19:14
  You can write songs for people to go, ah.
• 19:17
  Right?
• 19:17
  There's different there's a different purpose of the song.
• 19:20
  So I was always the bard telling a story, going to a place, observing the life there, and then
• 19:26
  going to the next town and retelling that story.
• 19:28
  Right?
• 19:29
  So my songs all have that flavor about them.
• 19:32
  So the book is full of that.
• 19:34
  It's an allegory, and the main character is very much in alignment with the trajectory I
• 19:38
  was on for those same forty years.
• 19:40
  And what's really cool is that wrote a 100 songs before February.
• 19:46
  I only released 20 of them.
• 19:50
  So there's 80 songs sitting on the table, and many of them, you might be able to relate to
• 19:55
  this too, Bubba.
• 19:56
  Many of them, I never wanted to record myself because we all have our instrument.
• 20:02
  Right?
• 20:02
  And I didn't think many of those songs were I I do not want to sing them.
• 20:07
  I'm not the singer.
• 20:08
  Well, when 2025 rolled around and I discovered tools like Suno and Moises and production tools
• 20:15
  that allow you to create a sound yourself.
• 20:20
  I'm not asking AI to write the songs, but imagine what I want it to sound like and then
• 20:25
  iterate it until I get the end result.
• 20:28
  That's what really spurred me to Jonas's character and this particular novel, because I
• 20:34
  wanted him to write the songs that I already wrote in the same environment that I wrote
• 20:41
  them.
• 20:42
  So and I released that album about two weeks ago in Jonas Wilder's name, not Mark
• 20:47
  Firehammer's name.
• 20:49
  So, you know, wherever you listen to music, just go play
• 20:52
  Jonas Jonas, the fictional character now who has been given an AI voice and has written
• 20:58
  songs.
• 20:58
  Yeah.
• 20:58
  I love it.
• 20:59
  I we're we're having so many conversations on the show these days about AI.
• 21:03
  About that.
• 21:03
  Yeah.
• 21:04
  My feelings are, you know, I while the commercial aspect of it and the fact that
• 21:09
  record companies are going to use this to just manufacture pop stars out of fairy dust now,
• 21:14
  they've already been doing that and exploiting human beings to that effect for generations.
• 21:19
  So Exactly.
• 21:20
  They were already taking advantage of artists.
• 21:22
  So go let them take advantage of the AI.
• 21:24
  I think real human beings are going to suss that stuff out.
• 21:27
  What I find interesting is that if you have a story to tell and you don't necessarily like
• 21:31
  your voice or you don't know how to play an instrument or you don't know how to produce
• 21:35
  music, now you have these tools that are available to be able to express yourself.
• 21:40
  And now Jonas, this fictional character who is kind of the epitome of all these songs in this
• 21:47
  life that you've lived, right, that you've created this character, now has an opportunity
• 21:51
  to write them for himself.
• 21:53
  I think that's a beautiful thing.
• 21:54
  I I think it's an amazing thing and not possible even two years ago.
• 21:59
  Exactly.
• 22:00
  In fact, what I did in let's see.
• 22:03
  It's August now.
• 22:04
  What I did in July, which is when I mastered his tracks, I couldn't have done in January.
• 22:10
  The tool had not evolved so that I could create a uniform and consistent persona and then use
• 22:15
  that persona over and over again.
• 22:17
  But what I'd done is I'd produced a version of the ones that he would release that I liked the
• 22:23
  musicality of the instrumentation.
• 22:25
  I gave it the melody by singing into the into the device.
• 22:28
  It didn't do the melodies for me.
• 22:30
  And then once the the software evolved, and it was a surprise that it could do it, all I had
• 22:36
  to do was tell the new persona that I was allowed to create for Jonas to then cover those
• 22:42
  songs.
• 22:44
  Right?
• 22:44
  So go get the track I did in January and sing it as Jonas Wilder, and it came out completely
• 22:50
  different vibe.
• 22:51
  A full rock instrumentation was paired down to guitar, piano, bass, and a single vocal.
• 22:58
  And it's like, yes.
• 23:00
  Yes.
• 23:00
  It's amazing.
• 23:01
  This is my man Jonas.
• 23:02
  Yeah.
• 23:03
  Right.
• 23:04
  It's, it's it's amazing to me, and, I'm I'm gonna continue to have conversations about it,
• 23:11
  I'm sure, on this show for many years to come, as it continues to evolve.
• 23:16
  But I I think it's great.
• 23:17
  I think it's great that people can express themselves.
• 23:19
  Look.
• 23:20
  Nobody's making money in music.
• 23:21
  Nobody's selling any records except the people that are already at the top with all the money.
• 23:26
  So who cares?
• 23:28
  Well, let's just make some really cool music with the tools we have available.
• 23:34
  And to me, I see it no different is when you started to have digital effects.
• 23:38
  Right?
• 23:38
  And digital music started to come into the analog world of the seventies as the seventies
• 23:42
  evolved and you had more digital effects.
• 23:44
  A lot of these same conversations were already had fifty years ago.
• 23:48
  Right?
• 23:48
  And and, oh, that's not real music, and that's not it's just music.
• 23:54
  And Yeah.
• 23:55
  And you know what?
• 23:56
  Anyone who's using AI you know, my only my only, you know, pity that I have is that Jonas
• 24:02
  will never be able to go around a campfire with his friends with an acoustic guitar Right.
• 24:06
  And to play these songs for other human beings.
• 24:08
  Right?
• 24:09
  Right.
• 24:09
  And you're never gonna be able to take that away.
• 24:11
  And maybe that's because that's where I started.
• 24:13
  That's where everything started for me was around a small campfire in rural South Dakota.
• 24:17
  My dad playing to all of us, and that was our TV while we lived in a tent for three months
• 24:21
  and built a basement to, you know, get snowed in typical South Dakota fashion.
• 24:26
  Yes.
• 24:26
  Yes.
• 24:27
  That I can still play them around the fire, though.
• 24:30
  As long as I'm alive, I can play them around
• 24:32
  the can now go and cover Jonas and Yes.
• 24:36
  How amazing.
• 24:37
  Well, Mark, I appreciate you.
• 24:39
  You've given me so much of your time already today.
• 24:41
  Tell everybody where they can find the book.
• 24:44
  Tell them where they can find the music that goes along with the book.
• 24:47
  I really feel like it's a they go together.
• 24:49
  Right?
• 24:49
  So as you're reading it, you can be listening to the songs that are being written in the
• 24:53
  book.
• 24:53
  Yeah.
• 24:54
  In fact, at the beginning of chapters part two, there's four parts, 24 chapters.
• 24:59
  At the beginning of part two, there's a QR code that you scan, and it brings up the the page
• 25:05
  where they're in order of him writing them.
• 25:07
  Very cool.
• 25:07
  Yeah.
• 25:08
  My recommendation is while you're reading the book, don't don't listen ahead.
• 25:12
  Listen to the song when you're in Jonas's moment.
• 25:15
  Like, there's a moment.
• 25:16
  He's in love with this girl.
• 25:17
  Man, interactive media, Mark, there is something new.
• 25:20
  This is great.
• 25:21
  He loses, not to give away the story, he loses Isabelle, his love, his soul mate, his
• 25:27
  traveling companion to circumstance.
• 25:30
  And he the day in the days that follow that, his first real mourning of a loss of a
• 25:36
  relationship like that, he's sitting around the campfire and he writes this song.
• 25:41
  And it's not on the album because it's not part of the story that the album was designed to
• 25:45
  tell, but it's it's available on on the website.
• 25:50
  And you've mentioned where can people find this.
• 25:53
  The book is written under the pen name j w Kindbloom.
• 25:56
  You could search for that, but markfirehammer.com, spelled just like it
• 26:00
  sounds, everything links there.
• 26:03
  The book, the albums, the AI music, it's all there.
• 26:07
  Fantastic, Mark.
• 26:08
  What an enjoyable conversation this was.
• 26:11
  I look forward to continuing to, to be friends with you, and I cannot wait to, get my hands on
• 26:17
  a copy of this book and to be able to do are they just digital copies, or did you get
• 26:22
  physical printed as well?
• 26:24
  IngramSpark will send them anywhere, any bookstore.
• 26:27
  Yeah.
• 26:28
  You can get it on Amazon, either paperback or Kindle.
• 26:31
  But go find it at markfirehammer.com, and all the links are there for you.
• 26:36
  Mark, thank you so much for being on the program, and thanks
• 26:39
  for being
• 26:39
  part of the scene.
• 26:41
  Thanks for doing what you do.
• 26:42
  I appreciate you having me.
• 26:43
  My pleasure.
• 26:44
  Alright.