February 12, 2025 • 45 mins
In this heartfelt episode of Music Saved Me, host Lynn Hoffman talks with legendary singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman. Known for her deeply emotional and healing music, Beth shares how songwriting has been her lifeline through profound personal challenges, including the loss of loved ones, battling cancer and overcoming a brain tumor. From penning hits like Faith Hill's This Kiss, to creating songs that inspire resilience, Beth reflects on the transformative power of music in navigating life's highs and lows. Tune in for an inspiring conversation about creativity, healing, and the enduring strength of the human spirit.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Music Saved Me.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I trust that there's a collaboration going on that's beyond
the wisdom that I have in.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
The moment that I'm writing something down.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And so often I will write a song not even
realizing that I'm writing it for something that's going to
happen in the future. It's happened so many times that
I totally trust that when I'm writing something and I'm
just following it kind of blindly, like I wonder why
that word popped into my head, I write it all
down because there's something bigger than me that I can
(00:31):
draw from.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I'm Lynn Hoffman and welcome to the Music Save Me Podcast,
the show where we highlight one of the greatest joys imaginable,
the healing power of music. I talk with musicians of
all different types who all talk about their personal stories
and about their experience with the healing power of music.
And on this episode, I get to talk to a
musician who truly understands how music saves us. Beth Nielsen
(00:56):
Chapman is a musician, a singer songwriter who has truly
embraced musical diversity. Welcome Beth Nielsen Chapman to Music Saved Me.
Your story so epitomizes what Music Saved Me podcast is
all about. And we're so grateful to have you with
us today.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you for having me. And I love the title
of your podcast. It got me right away. I'm like, oh,
that's what I preach.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
We got you when we reeled you in. It took
a little while, but we got you here. I'm so grateful.
My first question to you is when was the first
moment in your life when you knew that music moved
you and it would be your life calling.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Oh boy, there's probably several of those, but I remember
being kind of my pilot light came on around songs
when I was probably eleven or twelve, when I was
playing with a friend and I was over at her
house and in the kitchen radio I heard Penny Lane
for the first time, and it was shocking to me
(02:01):
and just we were jumping on the bed and I
was like, and I like got got off the bed
and went wandering into the kitchen, stood in front of
the radio and just was like mesmerized by that joy,
you know, Benny Lane, you know, just and then I
mean before that, I had been listening to my parents,
you know, records, and I remember when Tijuana Brass and
(02:24):
The Lonely Bowl came out and I was like five
years old, I was like, oh, you know, these like
records that I would just get in my head and
I'd go around singing them. So I wasn't really thinking, oh,
I'm going to do this for a living until way
later than that. But I always felt just ignited by music.
And as I got older, and you know, and I
(02:44):
was a teenager and I started listening to all the
singer songwriters at the seventies, and you know, it just
became a complete and total necessary part.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Of life to get through the stuff. From a very
early age.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
I will have to say this, and you know, maybe
people might disagree, but I think the seventies were like
the pinnacle of music. Artists were together in a studio
looking at each other, and yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It was pretty amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Do you recall us an experience or a concert experience
that first connected you with, like maybe your favorite artist.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You know, I didn't go to tons of concerts for
some reason. I remember seeing Joni Mitchell, but I was
up in the nosebleed seats and you know, could barely
see her and it was just all echo up there.
But I mean, as I came into the music business more.
I mean I played in all kinds of different bands
and stuff and just you know, it was just eating,
(03:43):
drinking and sleeping music twenty four to seven. I signed
my first publishing and record deal when I was fifteen,
and my dad had to co sign it. We were
living in Alabama. My dad was in the Air Force,
so we moved around all through my childhood, but we'd
ended up in Alabama and I remember begging him, Oh,
this guy has a studio and he's going to get
me a record deal. And my dad was like, you know,
(04:04):
you gotta finish high school first. I'm like, yeah, but
I mean, you know, so he got a lawyer, but
he got a cattle lawyer, and you know, the guy
just did you know he read the thing, was like, yeah,
it looks like she doesn't have to pay any money,
So I guess it's okay, you know, like I should
have had, Like I always tell people, get a music
attorney because it's totally different.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
But my first inkling of it being valuable was a
couple of years later when that contract got sold to
a real publishing company in Nashville, EMI and.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
They paid him, like, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Twelve fifteen thousand dollars for my fifty songs. They paid
the guy that had signed me to the slave contract
that didn't That wasn't fair. And I just went, Wow,
this stuff is really valuable. And I still to this day,
you know, when I'm talking to young songwriters who are
struggling because you know, if you're just a songwriter, it's
kind of hard to make a living right now, and
(05:00):
I say, but don't worry. Your work is generating way
more than what the trickle down that we're getting. It's
just a temporary glitch in the system that'll get sorted
out later. But know that the value of your work
is that you're creating something that moves people and shifts
their paradigm. And if they need to cry sometimes it'll
(05:20):
help them cry. If they need to laugh, it'll help
them laugh. It's really powerful stuff. Songs are really powerful
little pieces of medicine that are out in the world
that are healing people all day long, you know, whether
it's making you just feel better or literally getting those
tears to come to the surface that are stuck, you know,
And I'm just amazed by it every day, you know,
(05:44):
I'm amazed by it, and I'm so grateful that I
get to do it, you know, for a living.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's so true and such great advice that you give
about how it trickles down later not to worry about it.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
It's almost like a yeah, well, I mean, people want
to do it as they're living, because they want to
just wake up every day and write songs and get
paid enough to live. And that's more rare right now,
because it's just a different time in the music business,
and there's it's sort of like the music business moved
into a new house, but the plumbing from the old
(06:15):
house is all that the songwriterer's got and they're all
stuck in the basement. That's kind of what's happening. But
that's not forever, you know. And what I tell young
writers who go, well, what's the point of writing? The
point of writing is your body of work. You're twenty something, now,
get going start writing your songs right your whole life.
So when you're in your seventies, you've covered that cave
(06:35):
wall with what you experienced. If somebody comes in and
sees your cave wall two thousand years after you died,
they're going to know how you felt. And that's very valuable.
It's valuable to you first and foremost, and it's valuable
to anyone who comes in contact with what your expression
is because anybody can participate in this amazing, magical thing,
(06:55):
this gift that we have. Creativity is not something you have.
There are not people that are more creative than other people.
There's no such thing as that creativity is something you're in.
It's like saying I am oxygen. No, I'm breathing oxygen.
I'm using oxygen. Oxygen is keeping me alive. Creativity is
(07:16):
like that, creativity is all around us. It's this sort
of collective wisdom of thought and energy and shifts and whether.
I mean, there's so much information in opening to getting comfortable.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Not knowing what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
When you're writing or painting or whatever creative thing you're doing,
you're entering into a place of what's next. I don't know,
sounds like maybe this, oh, or it could be that,
And then the song will form itself. It will come
to you, it will say here's what I am. Figure
me out. And that's such an exciting journey to take,
and I take it every time I write a song.
(07:56):
And when I've written the songs that have healed me.
Like after my first Tusban died in nineteen ninety four,
I wrote a whole album of songs about loss, but
probably the big song from that collection of Sand and Water,
And it's a song you know, that I wrote to
get myself through the feeling of what do I do next.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I didn't write it to save the world.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I didn't write it for the woman who would write
to me twenty years later and say, I just heard
this song I lost my husband or i'd lost my child,
and it's just helped me cry. You know, all the
people who benefited from that song, I'm so grateful for.
But I wrote it for one hundred percent selfish reasons,
which I always want my writers. I'm like, right, for
selfish reasons, because you're healing yourself. It's like it's kind
(08:40):
of like put the oxygen mask on yourself before you
try to help somebody else, because you need to work
through that yourself and in the working through it. And
as we created, we create things from all of the
emotions of life.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
We put these little pieces of.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Art that are medicinal out into the world and they
go off and they get fat, and we have no
control over it and it's none of our business really,
but I'm grateful for it.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, you boy, that was a long answer something No.
I mean, I was going to say, podcast can end now.
I mean, that's we're going to drop the mic. But
you mentioned the road kind of builds itself in front
of you if you make it for you, and you
talk about the medicinal healing powers, and of course your
song continues to inspire sand and water in international audiences.
(09:31):
Can you share the story of the song of how
you are moved by I'm sorry, Can you share with
us how you were moved by the impact of that song,
because it was pretty massive it still is, yeah, I mean,
even the way that it came about.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
My first husband had when he was first diagnosed, he
was given six weeks to live, and our son was
about about twelve years old, and it was.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Just crushing, you know.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And he decided pretty early on that he was not
going to let somebody put a cell by on his head.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That's the way he put so he just.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Said, give me what you got, the strongest stuff you got,
and he was able to tolerate pretty hefty chemotherapy and
got well enough to actually get a Bomera transplant, which
you know, if he had been able to sustain not
having the cancer come back a little bit longer, it
would have given him another five or ten years. He
had a very rare form of lymphoma, but it wasn't
(10:25):
meant to be, and he did have the bow Mara
transplant and then it came back within three months. So
the second time he had six weeks to live, he
literally had six you know, like they said, Okay, but
this time it's more than likely. So in that transition
he went through towards trying to live and working so
hard to try to live, to learning to die. I mean,
he shared that with so many friends, and so much
(10:48):
richness of life was all swirling around us during that time,
even though it was also very heartbreaking. And I just
remember after he passed. I mean, one of our dear
friends was Rodney Crowell, a great singer, a great songwriter,
a producer, and he, you know, he and Ernest evidently
had a little chat where they you know, I think
Ernest said something like, hey, listen, she's gonna put the
(11:11):
guitar in the closet because she's gonna think she can't
be a single mom and a songwriter, touring artist. So
just give her about a month and just call her
up and just go over there and tell her you're
coming over to write a song. And I promise you
her her ego will outweigh her grief. And it worked
perfectly because I was like, oh my god, Rodney's coming over,
(11:31):
and I got got my guitar out and I just
I better get something started, you know, because he was
one of my heroes.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Did you know that he had told him that beforehand? No,
I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I just knew that he called me up out of
the blue and said, Hey, I'm gonna come over and
let's let's get together. And right I was like, so
I had this thing float out of me like pretty
much perfectly written, although I recorded it kind of and
just bloom, you know, in twenty and when he came over,
I thought, it's not finished. In fact, I don't even
(12:04):
know what it's talking about. And it had this line
in it that said solid stone is just sand and
water and a million years gone by, which I didn't
think made any sense at all, goosebumps, and I just
but it was like I was like going right over
my head I wrote it down, but I didn't know
what it meant. And I remember playing him the song, thinking, well,
(12:24):
you know, we can work on it. It's not really finished,
and he's like, just play it for me, and I
played it for me. He goes, that's finished, and don't
touch it like that. You may not touch that. That's
perfect and I'm like, yeah, I'm not sure it makes
any sense, and he goes, no, you will find out.
You had two weeks from now, you're gonna you're going
to suddenly realize what that line means. Just trust me,
and so I and it did take me about a
(12:44):
week to go, wait, that's a really that line is
about transformation, you know. And in fact, on the album
cover there's insight in the insert I'm standing in front
of a boulder that's just massive, and grief is like
this boulder that's set in front of you, and the
universe is telling you you can't go over it, you
can't go around it, you can't go under it. You
(13:04):
have to go right through the middle of it. And
you're like, how am I supposed to do that?
Speaker 1 (13:08):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the only way you could do it is if
it were to dissolve back into sand and water. Well,
when I wrote that song, I didn't have any inkling
of what that was saying. And so I trust that
there's a collaboration going on that's beyond the wisdom that.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
I have in the moment that I'm writing something down.
And so often I will.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Write a song not even realizing that I'm writing it
for something that's going to happen in the future. It's
happened so many times that I totally trust that. When
I'm writing something and I'm just following it kind of blindly,
like I wonder why that word popped into my head,
I write it all down because there's something bigger than
me that I can draw from that teaches me as
(13:50):
I write the song, and that's to me, the most
healing part of it for me. Besides having people tell
me that it helped them. That's very healing for.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Me too, I bet.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And you know, a statistic I happen to read not
long ago said that only one percent of all of
us actually write down our goals.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, so I can't even imagine.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
If you write down your goals and then they say
if you write them down, then they're meant to happen.
They will, They may not happen right away. And it's
the same thing with writing songs, which are medicinal. I
have to know, do you know what it is about music?
Is it the words? Is it the vibration? Is it
the sound? Have you figured out what exactly it is
(14:32):
that is so healing for us?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
That's a really great question because people think, oh, it's
the lyrics that makes it that made me cry, or
it's the melody that made me cry, And I think
it can be both or either. But I think the
most powerful music and the most healing music combines the two.
And I you know, when I teach songwriting, I often
one of the exercises that I give my students is
to go to the grocery store or go whenever you're
(14:56):
out and about. You know, your job is to put
your antenna up and listen to other people talking and
listen to what's happening around you.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Listen to this the melody of speech.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So people don't realize that what melody you put on
the words changes the meaning.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So if I say what time are you coming over?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
That d d dada, that's very staccato, and it's got
an insistence, and it's impatient and It's like I told
you this three times and now I'm gonna ask you
one more time. There's a whole movie in the melody
of what time are you coming over? Right, there's a
whole movie and how I said it, not just what
I said. That's why texting can be so disastrous because
you're you're writing, and nobody knows the melody of what
(15:40):
you're saying or the tone of the tone. Right, Well,
the melody and the tone to me are the same thing.
But if you say what time are you coming over?
That da da D D D. So that melody where
you go you coming over? That's like come on over baby,
you know. So there's a whole other movie. So how
oh you use the melody and the words together is
(16:03):
what really propels Now in the Sand and Water song,
there was this this song organized itself. I just kind
of like Waylon Jennings used to say, I didn't write it.
I just wrote it down. It just went push right
through me. And when you go through tremendous trauma or
you know, deep sadness, you're much more open to this,
(16:25):
to you know, to the access to this creative flow,
this river that's winding around us all the time that
we can tap into.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And you know, the melody was like.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
All alone, no, no, no, no, all alone.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
I sat and cried all alone.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And it has this repetition. It's almost like, you know,
if you ever go to a great massage therapist, they
don't just crunch into the inner part of your shoulder.
They start lightly and then they go a little deeper.
Then they go a little deeper, and so that even
the melody of that song. I watch audiences where there's
always a couple of tough customers, you know, that are
(17:05):
just like not going to cry, and then you get
to this point and then they they then they cry,
you know, and it's it's fascinating because the song has
a healing quality that organize itself. I don't claim having
figured it out. I just notice it on the back end,
like looking back, going wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Well, there's all these sayings that you don't really realize
until you get older. Hindsight is always twenty twenty and
you can go back and look and you know there's
a pattern. And so when you speak, you speak with
conviction and knowledge because you had that history, which you
know it's always like this little light Oh now, I
know why they say that, or why that song said that,
(17:45):
or you.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Know, I did a thing I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I don't know if you've ever listened to The Moth,
which is a radio show that tells story, people tell
stories from all over the world.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
It's amazing. So I that down on the Moth.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
If you put my name in, you'll see a couple
of you'll see two times that I've done The Moth.
One where I was talking about a song called seven
Shades of Blue, which was written at the same time
as the Sand and Water song. And it's a twelve
minute story I can't tell you now, but it's a
really fascinating story about how I wrote half of it,
you know, way ahead of time, before my husband was
(18:18):
even diagnosed.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
But it's all about going through this loss.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
And he loved this song and he tried to get
me to finish it, and I finished it the.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Last week of his life. You know.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
He made me write the third verse, you know, from
his death pacing where's my song? You know, and I'm like, geez,
I've been a little busy, like my you know, my
life's been a little crazy. Anyway, it's a whole story
about it, and it's a really interesting perspective. It's kind
of similar to what we're talking about. But you know,
I've learned to trust that songs are are kind of
glimpses into the future. Sometimes when I'm writing something and
(18:50):
I just feel compelled to put a certain kind of
line in there, but I'm not sure why. I don't
know why I wanted to rhyme with that word, and
I get into kind of a very loose state of
of openness and I write down all the weird things
that come through. Like if I'm writing with somebody, they go,
why are you writing that now? And that's not right,
and I'm like, I know, but it's on the way
to something. It's got a thing, you know. And inact,
(19:12):
a great example of that is I was writing This Kiss,
which was a huge hit for Faith Hill put myself
through college. I wrote that with Annie Roboff and Robin Lerner,
and we've written the first verse and this kind of
channel thing and then this great chorus, and we had
this this kiss, this kiss, and then we had to
write the second verse. And if you've written a really
good song, it satisfies right at the end of the
(19:34):
first chorus, like you've got the whole songs really in
the first half. Then you have to come up with
the second half and say something fresh, but it has
to relate to the first half, but it's got to
be different.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
And we just couldn't get started. We were like, oh,
I can't get the second verse.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
What are we going to say? We don't want to
repeat the same thing. And then they were like, well,
you know, I don't know. And then I say, well,
all I know to do is just start at the
beginning and just sing up to it and just see.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
What flies out of our mouth. And we turned on
the tape recorder and we're like really.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Then we get all the way to the end and
we go this kiss, this kiss, unstoppable, this kiss, this kiss,
And then I went Cleopatra was a snowflake.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
They were like, what I said, I know, it's not weird.
Cleopatra was a snowflake. That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And they were like, ah, yeah, no, Cleopatra was not
a snowflake, and we're not putting that in our song.
And I'm like, oh, I know, I know, I know,
but there's a reason I blurted that out, because why
would I say that. That's so random, you know, And
they were like, we're going to lunch, but what happened?
They're like, bye bye. They left me there for like
a half an hour and they came back. I was
still going Cleopatra had a snowflake. Cleopatra and Cleopatra and
(20:45):
the snowflake. I'm like, I couldn't make it work. And
Annie got right up in my face and she said
that we're not putting Disney characters in our song. And
I went, oh, wait, Disney, hold on, it's not Cleopatra.
She wasn't Disney. It's a Cinderella, and it's not a snowflake.
It's uh snow White. Cinderella said to snow White, how
(21:06):
does love get so off?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Course?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And that then we were blasting off and writing that
second verse, which is about Cinderella talking to snow White
and what is this love thing? It's just such a
pain and love. But you know, which just was so funny.
You know, it's Cleopatra. Cinderella said to snow White, how
does love get so off? Core?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So all I wanted was a white night with a good.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Heart, soft touch, fast horse, ride me off into the sunset,
baby up forever yours. I mean, I love that second
verse if somebody said, how did you come up with that?
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I said, how I came up with that?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I got a big clue from them, from the ether
of the other side of creative wisdom. You know, it's
waiting to write songs through us. But you have to
be able to handle the Cleopatra was a snowflake weird
part and go.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Wow, you know, and not be upset when someone may
not love the idea to be strong in your conviction
and listen to your instinct.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Well, I mean I was about to cave.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I mean, not every one of those crazy lines ends
up being a thing. But what's really weird is one
of my students recently sent me a link on Amazon
and there were tons of snowflakes with Cleopatra on them.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I was like, what around that time?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
No, just now, it's like there's like all these like
Christmas to ornaments with Cleopatra.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Anyway by smelling hit coming, I know it's too crazy.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Maybe maybe I can justify that line, but the songs,
but the song even like that, you know a song
that the power of that song is the joy of
getting kissed correctly, I mean that just as a specific
what are we going to write about you know, what
does it feel like to get kissed? Right?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Which is the thing? Yes, it is little pieces.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Of being a human is to me what songs are about,
from loss to joy to craziness, and you know it's
they're all all healing.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
We'll be right back with more of the Music Saved
Me Podcast. And by the way, if you like this podcast,
you are going to love our companion podcast called Taken
a Walk. It's hosted by my dear friend buzz Night
and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to the Music Saved Me Podcast, the podcast
(23:22):
where we discuss the healing powers of music with some
of the biggest names in music, as well as up
and comers. Being a cancer survivor yourself losing your first
husband cancer and having these moments that you still persevered
through beyond persevered. Can you share how the experience impacted
(23:45):
your life in songwriting? How are you able to get
through such difficult personal times?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Well, I mean giving, you know, writing my way through it? Literally,
I mean sometimes I wouldn't. I mean when Ernest finally
passed away, I was immediately into like I have to
be a single mom, I have to take care of
my son.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I can't just fall apart and cry, so I didn't
cry for like a year, and when.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I went into the studio to start recording, I started
falling apart, which made it very hard to record because
I was like, you know, so grief has its own timeline.
We really can't tell it when it's going to hit us,
you know. And going through like six years after Ernest died,
I ended up making a record called Deeper Still. In
(24:36):
the last day of mixing, literally I found out I
had stage two breast cancer. What was amazing is that
every song on that album sounded as if I wrote
it after I went through breast cancer. There were songs
about resilience and staying positive and like so many songs
it was crazy, but one song in particular, and first
(24:57):
of all, I was terrified for my son, who was
now going off to college, and I had to tell
him before he went to college that when you see
me at Thanksgiving, I'm not going to have any hair,
and then trying to convince him that I'm going to
be okay, you know, But I didn't know I was
going to be okay. I was terrified that I wasn't
going to be okay. And he was so amazing. He
was like I remember telling him and I was sitting
on the couch and I was just like, you know,
(25:19):
I just don't want to have this conversation.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
But he knew something was up. He could tell something
was going on.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
And I remember him pulling me and putting my head
on his show, on his chest and saying, You're going
to be okay, Mom, You're going to be okay. And
I just like, wow, you know, and I was okay,
and he and actually seeing me get well and I
was going through that journey together helped us both. Heal
a lot through through the grief of losing his dad.
(25:44):
But one of the songs I wrote two years before
that was called Every December Sky, and I remember when
I was writing it, thinking, is this kind of an
additional song about losing my husband? Because it kind of
felt like I could be singing about that, but I
wasn't sure. I just loved the song and song is
about resilience. And I was sitting on the couch in
(26:07):
the wintertime, is that all the leaves had come off
the trees and all my hair had fallen out kind
of simultaneously, and I was looking out the window and
it was a freezing day and I was really at
a low point and I started just singing the song
in my head, like it came on like a radio station.
And it's a song that says, every December sky must
(26:29):
lose its faith and leaves and dream of the spring
inside the trees, How heavy the empty heart, how light
the heart that's full. Sometimes I have to trust what
I can't know. And I realized, wait, that's like I
needed to hear that, you know, And it's about believing
that you're going to get through this scary time and
(26:50):
knowing there's spring inside the trees and it's going to
be spring again and you're going to be okay. And
it gave me such a sense of connection and you know,
I mean, there's no way that you can get go
through cancer and not at some point feel like God
has abandoned me. I mean, I had that feeling come
and go, you know, and I'd pray and I'd like, oh,
but I felt abandoned, like my own body abandoned, Like
(27:11):
why didn't I Why did my body malfunction? You know?
And all that and that song really centered me back
into a sense of calmness and assurance that I was
being taken care of that no matter what happened, I
was going to be taking care of everybody I loved
was going to be okay. And I just calmed me down,
you know. And the power of that song to me
(27:34):
is very personal. But I know that when I play
that song, it's like one that I get requests for
a lot, because people just identify with that sense of
you know, as freezing as it is, Bazzes right now,
you know, there's there's always a place where hope is
residing and growing and blooming again.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
You were writing your own medicine.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yeah, your own worst script was literally I was literally
I mean on yourself, forgive me answer.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, And I didn't you know the fact that I
wrote it for myself.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
And I knew that's exactly what had happened was kind
of like a reassurance that something bigger than myself was was.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Keeping track and watching over me, you know. And was
that from your history of music?
Speaker 2 (28:21):
And John, I mean just I mean, I've done it
over and over again, but I didn't realize I was
doing it until I got to that point. Like I
did it with several of the songs on the Sand
and Water album, which I wrote prior to my husband
even finding out he had cancer. I was already writing
half of that album. And you know, so I've just
learned to understand that there's a very magical mystery thing
(28:45):
going on here, and we are, you know, some of
us are more aware of it than others. But even
if you're not aware of it, it's still doing its magic.
It's just magical, you know. And another amazing, amazing thing
because I've loved teaching and I've always taught people anybody
can can access this thing with a little bit of
(29:07):
help and some tricks that I like to teach, you know,
how to show up and how to experience this creative flow.
And I thought, you know, all of a sudden, like
in two thousand and nine, for about three months, I
stopped being able to write, and I just couldn't figure out.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
What was going on.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I would sit down and I'd have melodies. I could
get melodies, but I couldn't I couldn't get the lyrics
to come. And I've never had that problem, and I
was absolutely depressed.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
At a certain point.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I was thinking, gosh, you know, maybe there is a
muse and it just wanders off and you don't have
it anymore. And I've been selling this bill of goods
to people all these years. I was just having amused
and now I don't, and you know, I just was
so perplexing. And I remember waking up one morning during
that time with this really weird kind of like a
Tibetan bowl in my head, you know, glonging couldn't hear
(29:59):
pitch go do a big show on the weekend, and
I just call I called my on cologist because I
didn't even know who to call. I'm like, I've got
this weird thing. And he, you know, turned me over
to a neurologist and they did an MRI and I
remember him coming around the corner and saying, so, have
you had.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Any trouble with language?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
And I'm like, well, I haven't been able to write
lyrics for about four months, which has been really upsetting,
you know. And he goes, oh, yeah, you wouldn't be
able to write lyrics with this thing. I'm like, what thing?
And he goes, will you have a brain tumor? I'm like, no,
I have a brain tumor. That's not possible because I
have My husband died a cancer and then I had cancer,
so kind of done. I'm not really up for anything.
You know, I shouldn't have anything like a brain tumor
(30:40):
right now, you know.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
I was like, wait a minute.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
And he's like, and it's pressing against the left frontal lobe,
which is your language center.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
So we're kind of surprised you can talk.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
And I'm like really, he goes, yeah, it's going to
have to come out, and it would definitely encroach on
your ability to write lyrics.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I was so relieved that there was a reason that
I was like, oh my god, this is great. He goes,
did you hear the part about where you have a braindommer? Yeah,
but it's so great, it's like amazing.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
And I remember just thinking, Okay, I'm going to get
on the other side of this thing, and I'm not
going to have to never write a song again. And
I mean that was one of the big benefits of it.
Although it was terrifying, but everything went great. It was
early enough, and anyway, as I got back into the
world coming through this anesthesion, I'm having this weird dreamy
(31:35):
vision of these camels going over sand dunes and I'm
thinking what and I realized they're not camels, they're actually syllables.
And then I realized, wait, that's the third verse of
the song I've been trying to finish for like four
months that I've been sitting there and banging my head
into nothing, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
And my mom goes, are you okay, honey? What do
you need? She was like standing over me. I'm like, good,
a pencil.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Wait, you're saying anesthesia when you came out of surgery,
you said get a pencil?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
You knew, right, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I was saying I was coming out of anesthesia, and
I was having the third verse to one of the
songs that had been really driving me nuts that I've
been trying to finish. And what it showed me was
that all that work I was doing, showing up and
trying to write lyrics, they were getting written, but they
were kind of lining up down the hallway, couldn't get
through the portal because this thing was in the way. Wow.
(32:31):
And it showed me that creative flow and creativity never stops.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
And the fast.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
You know, the quickness that I finished everything with wass
almost like I was just getting the mail, like when
you go on vacation and you come home and then
there's a ton of mail. It was like that, you know,
it was just like, Okay, so there is this thing
we have access to, and you know, people say, my god,
you've gone through this stuff and you know, but yeah,
but every every part of it is just been.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Amazing to look back and say. And then there's that, you.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Know, sure, And I think creativity and art and the
beauty of art and music and all the ways that
we manifest stuff through our grief and through our happiness
and through everything. You know, that's the great gift we
have to give each other and and we use it
to get better.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I think I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I feel like, you know, you're not only.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
You're magical, like you're you're a seer or I should
call you Beth Nielsen Chatman, Nostradamus.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
It's like, really, I'm just I'm just wandering around, bumping
into things.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
And then I have a lot of words that a lot.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Going on though too, to that you've been able to
maneuver around in your life to still show up and
smile and put out such great energy and it's such
beautiful music to help others. What is it like when
you see you talked earlier about you know, there's always
a couple of stragglers in the audience. You haven't quite
got there yet, but then you see that happen. How
(34:10):
does that make you feel when you get those people
to see what you're putting out?
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Well, I'm really not trying to get anybody to do anything.
That's part of the To me, that's part of the
practice of being a performer and singing. In fact, I
teach a whole singing thing which is called vocal presence.
And I'm not a proponent of over singing. I like
to speak on pitchin rhythm. I don't really like to
(34:38):
get too calisthetics, you know, like, oh you know. And
I feel like, for instance, a song like Sand and Water,
the less you try to sing it with any drama,
the more powerful it is because everybody's in a different place,
and there will be people who listen to that song
and really appreciate it who don't cry. You know, not
everybody cries, but people who have pushed grief down that
(35:01):
sometimes will just go oh, you know, like that'll do it.
And I feel like I'm the messenger and my job
is not to overly amp the message, just let it
be what it is. It's powerful enough as a thing
to hear that doesn't need me to put a catch
in my voice or try to show you how sad
(35:23):
it is. Like I sing it almost neutrally because I'm
honoring the power of the song to deliver its whole thing.
And you know, in twenty twenty two, believe it or not,
my second husband, Bob, who I married in twenty eleven.
I met him four years after Ernest died, and then
(35:44):
it took until that was like nineteen ninety eight. Took
until twenty eleven for us to get married. We had
a wonderful journey together, and he passed away in twenty
twenty two. He had leukemia. And I remember when I
first met him and he was trying to get me
to go out with him, and I was like, yeah,
I'm not really, you know, it's like I don't think so,
and he was like, I promise you, I will let
(36:05):
you die first. That was like a running joke with us,
and so when he got leukemia, he's like, don't worry,
I got this.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
We're going to get rid of it.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
And it was actually one of the more curable kinds,
and it kept coming back, and ultimately he passed away
and you know, he was so he was so brilliant,
and he was so funny. The last couple of weeks,
you know, we were similarly to Ernest, you know, like
kind of going towards death with a kind of a
staying present with it, you know, like laughing about it,
(36:34):
crying about it, being in that place, not acting like
it's not real, but also living every single moment together
that we could, you know, and learning. I mean, I
learned so much from both of those experiences about how
to live.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
And I remember Bob saying you cannot.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Can't because I had all these shows booked for twenty
twenty three and he was December in twenty twenty two
when he died, and he said, please don't cancel.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Your tour next year.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't know how
entertaining I'm going to be after my second husband dies
of cancer.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
I mean, how am I going to you know?
Speaker 2 (37:09):
And you know, just to give you a sense of
his sense of humor, he said, well I think you
should do it.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I think he's just what else are you going to do?
You know, I'm not going to sit around and cry.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Go out there, do your song, do sand and water
you know, let people just share it with them. You know,
your people will understand and I'll appreciate. I thought I
couldn't see how that would work. And then I had
this one big show coming up in Nashville at the
Franklin Theater, and it was the first one I would
have had to cancel. He goes, just tell me, just
promise me, you'll do that one show. And at this time,
(37:41):
you know, he didn't know if he'd still be here
when the show happened. But he passed away four days
before the show. And then I felt like okay, and
I got Rodney Crowe, my old friend, to come and
be my stand in in case I lost my nerve.
And I put a little note on the all the
seats and I told the audience, Okay, here's the deal,
and I explained, my husband just passed away.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
He really wanted me to do the show.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
I have no idea whether I can do this show,
but I'm going to give it a shot. And it
was just the most powerful, amazing, loving thing to be surrounded.
I mean, it makes me cry by this group of
people that came, and some of them didn't have any
idea they were going to.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
See this show.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
You know, they thought it was going to come hear
me do this gets and all my songs, and it
was doing sand and Water and having my son come
up and sing the harmony with me, and you know,
it just made me realize, this is what I should
be doing.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
And whether I'm crying through it.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Or laughing through it, this is what I'm supposed to
be doing. And I didn't cancel a single show. And
it was really, you know, an amazing journey to to
take my sort of active grief out into the world.
And you know, I mean i'd laugh and you know,
we I don't actually cry on stage, but most of
the audience get gets a chance to go.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Who you know.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
And and I didn't really set out to be any
kind of musical missionary by any by any stretch. And
when you say, oh, you're magical, I don't think I'm magical.
I think it's magical. I think all of this is magical,
and some of us are able to go.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yes, it is. I can feel it because I'm aware.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
I'm aware of it, and others maybe don't so much
put it in that terms. But I don't think anybody
is unable to access the magic. It's just a matter
of whether you have a way of doing you know,
like you learn to do it or you start to
see it.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
It's all around.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Us all the time, Yes, and we need to tap
into it more. Speaking of all of this, it's just
mind boggling what you just said to me.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
I know it is.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
It's you're just a mere mortal. And yet the way
that you speak about how you're living your life through
all of this potential tragedy or you know, a life
of just depression. How what advice for those listening right
now who maybe going through something and they're hearing you
and they still hear a smile in your voice, and
I can imagine still.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
It's still fun.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
There's still funny stuff, sort of the saddest things. Yeah,
I've been trying to I forgot to. I forgot to
actually tell you that one of the things I was
going to finish and I forgot to do it was
when I was having these conversations with Bob about whether
or not I should do the show.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I said, look, you know you've been to my show's Bob.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
I mean, I talk about I sing my songs and
kind of do this chronicle of my life. I talk
about losing earnest. I talk about going through breast cancer,
I sing a song about that. Talk about my brain tumor,
I sing a song about that. How am I going
to add another.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Husband who died? How does that? You know? And he's
a psychologist and he's like, hmm, very good point.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Let me think about that. Hmm okay, And he comes
back to me and he goes, I think you should
drop the brain.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Tumor can't be break you know.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
So he was from New Jersey, so I mean York.
So well, it's not always funny. It's not you know.
There is a deep joy that I feel and a
deep gratefulness, you know, like I say, having gone through
chemo and all my hair fell out and knows terribly
upset at the time, but you know what now that
(41:17):
I'm I have like there's no such thing as a
bad hair day.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Ever. Any hair is a good hair day, any hair
at all, beautiful hair. By the way. Oh it's kind
of a mess today, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
But I mean, I just feel like when you have
the perspective of the parameters of life experience part of
what I think you have to well for me, I
will only speak for myself. I mean I have to.
I have to acknowledge it and look at it. I
can't try to evade the feelings of sadness. When a
feeling of sadness comes up, I say thank you, and
(41:52):
this sucks, but okay, thank you. I'm gonna and so
a wave. It's all of its waves and it's not
going to be there. The thing about the worst part
of grief, especially if you're really really raw with it,
is when you're in one of those waves of grief,
you think it's never gonna end. This is how I'm
gonna feel for the rest of my life, and it's intolerable,
and then it resolves, and then you have to remember
(42:14):
that was a wave. It had to beginning, a middle,
and an end, and there will be another one and
it will also lead back into joy. That's the only
way that I can express it.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Well, it's a beautiful expression. And I'm so grateful. It's
taken me a while to get you here. I know
it's been crazy, yet I'm so glad we finally got
to do this. Me too, and to me you in person,
and you're just such a shining light. And just keep
inspiring and keep doing what you're doing. I have one
last question for you, because it's just hit me. Why
(42:50):
do you continue to do what you do every day
in terms of sharing and teaching, And there's got to
be a reason.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
I think it's.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
You know, one of my drugs of choice, okay, is
the drug of feeling someone else kind of get their pilot,
like relt if they've lost it or if they've never
had it. Lit That to me is such a feeling
of I feel so grateful to be able to be
(43:24):
a part of that. It's, you know, there's something about
feeling like you're I don't know, maybe it's just feeling
like you're being useful to someone else. And not everybody
has the same reaction to anything. And I think one
of the things I've learned is I can't have no
control over whether or not anything I say or do
is going to help them. Maybe they're not in a
place where they're ready to hear what I have to
(43:45):
say or what it is. But the music goes on
all by itself. It's like I write a song and
it goes out in the world and it's got its
own little power source, and somebody tells somebody to go
listen to that song, and then they write me, you know,
And I mean, it's just it's like finding out you
win the lottery in little little lotteries all the time
(44:05):
when that happens because I didn't write the song to
In fact, if you try to write a song to
help other people, it usually sounds very flat. It's and
I tell my songwriting students all the time, I want
you to write selfishly.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
I want you to write to help you get out
of the cage of whatever you're you know.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
And and that's what makes it really powerful, you know,
just telling telling me about you. Don't try to about me,
don't try to fix me, just tell me how to
how you got fixed within yourself.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
It just as evolved as something that I'm very drawn to.
And and it's it's it's a The world is full
of so much stuff that we have to struggle against.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Well, you may have been a part of it. You
may have been selfless selfish in writing, but in your
life you are selfless for sharing all of it. And
we're so grateful that you came to share.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I love sharing it as you can tell it.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Yes, I feel the same way. I feel like I'm
infringing on someone else's time.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Right now, so I don't want to.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
I could talk to you all day long, but thank
you so much for sharing your story and I hope
that it brings some joy to whoever was listening to
us speak today because you're just amazing and thank you,
thanks so much, and.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Please check in on you.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
I will, and thank you for this podcast. I'm going
to go listen to all the other ones now.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Oh I love that.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
I don't think anyone will be as good as this one.
Oh well, thanks Beth, thank you,
Music Saved Me.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I trust that there's a collaboration going on that's beyond
the wisdom that I have in.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
The moment that I'm writing something down.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And so often I will write a song not even
realizing that I'm writing it for something that's going to
happen in the future. It's happened so many times that
I totally trust that when I'm writing something and I'm
just following it kind of blindly, like I wonder why
that word popped into my head, I write it all
down because there's something bigger than me that I can
(00:31):
draw from.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I'm Lynn Hoffman and welcome to the Music Save Me Podcast,
the show where we highlight one of the greatest joys imaginable,
the healing power of music. I talk with musicians of
all different types who all talk about their personal stories
and about their experience with the healing power of music.
And on this episode, I get to talk to a
musician who truly understands how music saves us. Beth Nielsen
(00:56):
Chapman is a musician, a singer songwriter who has truly
embraced musical diversity. Welcome Beth Nielsen Chapman to Music Saved Me.
Your story so epitomizes what Music Saved Me podcast is
all about. And we're so grateful to have you with
us today.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you for having me. And I love the title
of your podcast. It got me right away. I'm like, oh,
that's what I preach.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
We got you when we reeled you in. It took
a little while, but we got you here. I'm so grateful.
My first question to you is when was the first
moment in your life when you knew that music moved
you and it would be your life calling.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Oh boy, there's probably several of those, but I remember
being kind of my pilot light came on around songs
when I was probably eleven or twelve, when I was
playing with a friend and I was over at her
house and in the kitchen radio I heard Penny Lane
for the first time, and it was shocking to me
(02:01):
and just we were jumping on the bed and I
was like, and I like got got off the bed
and went wandering into the kitchen, stood in front of
the radio and just was like mesmerized by that joy,
you know, Benny Lane, you know, just and then I
mean before that, I had been listening to my parents,
you know, records, and I remember when Tijuana Brass and
(02:24):
The Lonely Bowl came out and I was like five
years old, I was like, oh, you know, these like
records that I would just get in my head and
I'd go around singing them. So I wasn't really thinking, oh,
I'm going to do this for a living until way
later than that. But I always felt just ignited by music.
And as I got older, and you know, and I
(02:44):
was a teenager and I started listening to all the
singer songwriters at the seventies, and you know, it just
became a complete and total necessary part.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Of life to get through the stuff. From a very
early age.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
I will have to say this, and you know, maybe
people might disagree, but I think the seventies were like
the pinnacle of music. Artists were together in a studio
looking at each other, and yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It was pretty amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Do you recall us an experience or a concert experience
that first connected you with, like maybe your favorite artist.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You know, I didn't go to tons of concerts for
some reason. I remember seeing Joni Mitchell, but I was
up in the nosebleed seats and you know, could barely
see her and it was just all echo up there.
But I mean, as I came into the music business more.
I mean I played in all kinds of different bands
and stuff and just you know, it was just eating,
(03:43):
drinking and sleeping music twenty four to seven. I signed
my first publishing and record deal when I was fifteen,
and my dad had to co sign it. We were
living in Alabama. My dad was in the Air Force,
so we moved around all through my childhood, but we'd
ended up in Alabama and I remember begging him, Oh,
this guy has a studio and he's going to get
me a record deal. And my dad was like, you know,
(04:04):
you gotta finish high school first. I'm like, yeah, but
I mean, you know, so he got a lawyer, but
he got a cattle lawyer, and you know, the guy
just did you know he read the thing, was like, yeah,
it looks like she doesn't have to pay any money,
So I guess it's okay, you know, like I should
have had, Like I always tell people, get a music
attorney because it's totally different.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
But my first inkling of it being valuable was a
couple of years later when that contract got sold to
a real publishing company in Nashville, EMI and.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
They paid him, like, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Twelve fifteen thousand dollars for my fifty songs. They paid
the guy that had signed me to the slave contract
that didn't That wasn't fair. And I just went, Wow,
this stuff is really valuable. And I still to this day,
you know, when I'm talking to young songwriters who are
struggling because you know, if you're just a songwriter, it's
kind of hard to make a living right now, and
(05:00):
I say, but don't worry. Your work is generating way
more than what the trickle down that we're getting. It's
just a temporary glitch in the system that'll get sorted
out later. But know that the value of your work
is that you're creating something that moves people and shifts
their paradigm. And if they need to cry sometimes it'll
(05:20):
help them cry. If they need to laugh, it'll help
them laugh. It's really powerful stuff. Songs are really powerful
little pieces of medicine that are out in the world
that are healing people all day long, you know, whether
it's making you just feel better or literally getting those
tears to come to the surface that are stuck, you know,
And I'm just amazed by it every day, you know,
(05:44):
I'm amazed by it, and I'm so grateful that I
get to do it, you know, for a living.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's so true and such great advice that you give
about how it trickles down later not to worry about it.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
It's almost like a yeah, well, I mean, people want
to do it as they're living, because they want to
just wake up every day and write songs and get
paid enough to live. And that's more rare right now,
because it's just a different time in the music business,
and there's it's sort of like the music business moved
into a new house, but the plumbing from the old
(06:15):
house is all that the songwriterer's got and they're all
stuck in the basement. That's kind of what's happening. But
that's not forever, you know. And what I tell young
writers who go, well, what's the point of writing? The
point of writing is your body of work. You're twenty something, now,
get going start writing your songs right your whole life.
So when you're in your seventies, you've covered that cave
(06:35):
wall with what you experienced. If somebody comes in and
sees your cave wall two thousand years after you died,
they're going to know how you felt. And that's very valuable.
It's valuable to you first and foremost, and it's valuable
to anyone who comes in contact with what your expression
is because anybody can participate in this amazing, magical thing,
(06:55):
this gift that we have. Creativity is not something you have.
There are not people that are more creative than other people.
There's no such thing as that creativity is something you're in.
It's like saying I am oxygen. No, I'm breathing oxygen.
I'm using oxygen. Oxygen is keeping me alive. Creativity is
(07:16):
like that, creativity is all around us. It's this sort
of collective wisdom of thought and energy and shifts and whether.
I mean, there's so much information in opening to getting comfortable.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Not knowing what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
When you're writing or painting or whatever creative thing you're doing,
you're entering into a place of what's next. I don't know,
sounds like maybe this, oh, or it could be that,
And then the song will form itself. It will come
to you, it will say here's what I am. Figure
me out. And that's such an exciting journey to take,
and I take it every time I write a song.
(07:56):
And when I've written the songs that have healed me.
Like after my first Tusban died in nineteen ninety four,
I wrote a whole album of songs about loss, but
probably the big song from that collection of Sand and Water,
And it's a song you know, that I wrote to
get myself through the feeling of what do I do next.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I didn't write it to save the world.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I didn't write it for the woman who would write
to me twenty years later and say, I just heard
this song I lost my husband or i'd lost my child,
and it's just helped me cry. You know, all the
people who benefited from that song, I'm so grateful for.
But I wrote it for one hundred percent selfish reasons,
which I always want my writers. I'm like, right, for
selfish reasons, because you're healing yourself. It's like it's kind
(08:40):
of like put the oxygen mask on yourself before you
try to help somebody else, because you need to work
through that yourself and in the working through it. And
as we created, we create things from all of the
emotions of life.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
We put these little pieces of.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Art that are medicinal out into the world and they
go off and they get fat, and we have no
control over it and it's none of our business really,
but I'm grateful for it.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, you boy, that was a long answer something No.
I mean, I was going to say, podcast can end now.
I mean, that's we're going to drop the mic. But
you mentioned the road kind of builds itself in front
of you if you make it for you, and you
talk about the medicinal healing powers, and of course your
song continues to inspire sand and water in international audiences.
(09:31):
Can you share the story of the song of how
you are moved by I'm sorry, Can you share with
us how you were moved by the impact of that song,
because it was pretty massive it still is, yeah, I mean,
even the way that it came about.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
My first husband had when he was first diagnosed, he
was given six weeks to live, and our son was
about about twelve years old, and it was.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Just crushing, you know.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And he decided pretty early on that he was not
going to let somebody put a cell by on his head.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That's the way he put so he just.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Said, give me what you got, the strongest stuff you got,
and he was able to tolerate pretty hefty chemotherapy and
got well enough to actually get a Bomera transplant, which
you know, if he had been able to sustain not
having the cancer come back a little bit longer, it
would have given him another five or ten years. He
had a very rare form of lymphoma, but it wasn't
(10:25):
meant to be, and he did have the bow Mara
transplant and then it came back within three months. So
the second time he had six weeks to live, he
literally had six you know, like they said, Okay, but
this time it's more than likely. So in that transition
he went through towards trying to live and working so
hard to try to live, to learning to die. I mean,
he shared that with so many friends, and so much
(10:48):
richness of life was all swirling around us during that time,
even though it was also very heartbreaking. And I just
remember after he passed. I mean, one of our dear
friends was Rodney Crowell, a great singer, a great songwriter,
a producer, and he, you know, he and Ernest evidently
had a little chat where they you know, I think
Ernest said something like, hey, listen, she's gonna put the
(11:11):
guitar in the closet because she's gonna think she can't
be a single mom and a songwriter, touring artist. So
just give her about a month and just call her
up and just go over there and tell her you're
coming over to write a song. And I promise you
her her ego will outweigh her grief. And it worked
perfectly because I was like, oh my god, Rodney's coming over,
(11:31):
and I got got my guitar out and I just
I better get something started, you know, because he was
one of my heroes.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Did you know that he had told him that beforehand? No,
I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I just knew that he called me up out of
the blue and said, Hey, I'm gonna come over and
let's let's get together. And right I was like, so
I had this thing float out of me like pretty
much perfectly written, although I recorded it kind of and
just bloom, you know, in twenty and when he came over,
I thought, it's not finished. In fact, I don't even
(12:04):
know what it's talking about. And it had this line
in it that said solid stone is just sand and
water and a million years gone by, which I didn't
think made any sense at all, goosebumps, and I just
but it was like I was like going right over
my head I wrote it down, but I didn't know
what it meant. And I remember playing him the song, thinking, well,
(12:24):
you know, we can work on it. It's not really finished,
and he's like, just play it for me, and I
played it for me. He goes, that's finished, and don't
touch it like that. You may not touch that. That's
perfect and I'm like, yeah, I'm not sure it makes
any sense, and he goes, no, you will find out.
You had two weeks from now, you're gonna you're going
to suddenly realize what that line means. Just trust me,
and so I and it did take me about a
(12:44):
week to go, wait, that's a really that line is
about transformation, you know. And in fact, on the album
cover there's insight in the insert I'm standing in front
of a boulder that's just massive, and grief is like
this boulder that's set in front of you, and the
universe is telling you you can't go over it, you
can't go around it, you can't go under it. You
(13:04):
have to go right through the middle of it. And
you're like, how am I supposed to do that?
Speaker 1 (13:08):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the only way you could do it is if
it were to dissolve back into sand and water. Well,
when I wrote that song, I didn't have any inkling
of what that was saying. And so I trust that
there's a collaboration going on that's beyond the wisdom that.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
I have in the moment that I'm writing something down.
And so often I will.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Write a song not even realizing that I'm writing it
for something that's going to happen in the future. It's
happened so many times that I totally trust that. When
I'm writing something and I'm just following it kind of blindly,
like I wonder why that word popped into my head,
I write it all down because there's something bigger than
me that I can draw from that teaches me as
(13:50):
I write the song, and that's to me, the most
healing part of it for me. Besides having people tell
me that it helped them. That's very healing for.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Me too, I bet.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And you know, a statistic I happen to read not
long ago said that only one percent of all of
us actually write down our goals.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, so I can't even imagine.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
If you write down your goals and then they say
if you write them down, then they're meant to happen.
They will, They may not happen right away. And it's
the same thing with writing songs, which are medicinal. I
have to know, do you know what it is about music?
Is it the words? Is it the vibration? Is it
the sound? Have you figured out what exactly it is
(14:32):
that is so healing for us?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
That's a really great question because people think, oh, it's
the lyrics that makes it that made me cry, or
it's the melody that made me cry, And I think
it can be both or either. But I think the
most powerful music and the most healing music combines the two.
And I you know, when I teach songwriting, I often
one of the exercises that I give my students is
to go to the grocery store or go whenever you're
(14:56):
out and about. You know, your job is to put
your antenna up and listen to other people talking and
listen to what's happening around you.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Listen to this the melody of speech.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So people don't realize that what melody you put on
the words changes the meaning.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So if I say what time are you coming over?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
That d d dada, that's very staccato, and it's got
an insistence, and it's impatient and It's like I told
you this three times and now I'm gonna ask you
one more time. There's a whole movie in the melody
of what time are you coming over? Right, there's a
whole movie and how I said it, not just what
I said. That's why texting can be so disastrous because
you're you're writing, and nobody knows the melody of what
(15:40):
you're saying or the tone of the tone. Right, Well,
the melody and the tone to me are the same thing.
But if you say what time are you coming over?
That da da D D D. So that melody where
you go you coming over? That's like come on over baby,
you know. So there's a whole other movie. So how
oh you use the melody and the words together is
(16:03):
what really propels Now in the Sand and Water song,
there was this this song organized itself. I just kind
of like Waylon Jennings used to say, I didn't write it.
I just wrote it down. It just went push right
through me. And when you go through tremendous trauma or
you know, deep sadness, you're much more open to this,
(16:25):
to you know, to the access to this creative flow,
this river that's winding around us all the time that
we can tap into.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And you know, the melody was like.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
All alone, no, no, no, no, all alone.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
I sat and cried all alone.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
And it has this repetition. It's almost like, you know,
if you ever go to a great massage therapist, they
don't just crunch into the inner part of your shoulder.
They start lightly and then they go a little deeper.
Then they go a little deeper, and so that even
the melody of that song. I watch audiences where there's
always a couple of tough customers, you know, that are
(17:05):
just like not going to cry, and then you get
to this point and then they they then they cry,
you know, and it's it's fascinating because the song has
a healing quality that organize itself. I don't claim having
figured it out. I just notice it on the back end,
like looking back, going wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Well, there's all these sayings that you don't really realize
until you get older. Hindsight is always twenty twenty and
you can go back and look and you know there's
a pattern. And so when you speak, you speak with
conviction and knowledge because you had that history, which you
know it's always like this little light Oh now, I
know why they say that, or why that song said that,
(17:45):
or you.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Know, I did a thing I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I don't know if you've ever listened to The Moth,
which is a radio show that tells story, people tell
stories from all over the world.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
It's amazing. So I that down on the Moth.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
If you put my name in, you'll see a couple
of you'll see two times that I've done The Moth.
One where I was talking about a song called seven
Shades of Blue, which was written at the same time
as the Sand and Water song. And it's a twelve
minute story I can't tell you now, but it's a
really fascinating story about how I wrote half of it,
you know, way ahead of time, before my husband was
(18:18):
even diagnosed.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
But it's all about going through this loss.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
And he loved this song and he tried to get
me to finish it, and I finished it the.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Last week of his life. You know.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
He made me write the third verse, you know, from
his death pacing where's my song? You know, and I'm like, geez,
I've been a little busy, like my you know, my
life's been a little crazy. Anyway, it's a whole story
about it, and it's a really interesting perspective. It's kind
of similar to what we're talking about. But you know,
I've learned to trust that songs are are kind of
glimpses into the future. Sometimes when I'm writing something and
(18:50):
I just feel compelled to put a certain kind of
line in there, but I'm not sure why. I don't
know why I wanted to rhyme with that word, and
I get into kind of a very loose state of
of openness and I write down all the weird things
that come through. Like if I'm writing with somebody, they go,
why are you writing that now? And that's not right,
and I'm like, I know, but it's on the way
to something. It's got a thing, you know. And inact,
(19:12):
a great example of that is I was writing This Kiss,
which was a huge hit for Faith Hill put myself
through college. I wrote that with Annie Roboff and Robin Lerner,
and we've written the first verse and this kind of
channel thing and then this great chorus, and we had
this this kiss, this kiss, and then we had to
write the second verse. And if you've written a really
good song, it satisfies right at the end of the
(19:34):
first chorus, like you've got the whole songs really in
the first half. Then you have to come up with
the second half and say something fresh, but it has
to relate to the first half, but it's got to
be different.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
And we just couldn't get started. We were like, oh,
I can't get the second verse.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
What are we going to say? We don't want to
repeat the same thing. And then they were like, well,
you know, I don't know. And then I say, well,
all I know to do is just start at the
beginning and just sing up to it and just see.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
What flies out of our mouth. And we turned on
the tape recorder and we're like really.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Then we get all the way to the end and
we go this kiss, this kiss, unstoppable, this kiss, this kiss,
And then I went Cleopatra was a snowflake.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
They were like, what I said, I know, it's not weird.
Cleopatra was a snowflake. That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
And they were like, ah, yeah, no, Cleopatra was not
a snowflake, and we're not putting that in our song.
And I'm like, oh, I know, I know, I know,
but there's a reason I blurted that out, because why
would I say that. That's so random, you know, And
they were like, we're going to lunch, but what happened?
They're like, bye bye. They left me there for like
a half an hour and they came back. I was
still going Cleopatra had a snowflake. Cleopatra and Cleopatra and
(20:45):
the snowflake. I'm like, I couldn't make it work. And
Annie got right up in my face and she said
that we're not putting Disney characters in our song. And
I went, oh, wait, Disney, hold on, it's not Cleopatra.
She wasn't Disney. It's a Cinderella, and it's not a snowflake.
It's uh snow White. Cinderella said to snow White, how
(21:06):
does love get so off?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Course?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And that then we were blasting off and writing that
second verse, which is about Cinderella talking to snow White
and what is this love thing? It's just such a
pain and love. But you know, which just was so funny.
You know, it's Cleopatra. Cinderella said to snow White, how
does love get so off? Core?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So all I wanted was a white night with a good.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Heart, soft touch, fast horse, ride me off into the sunset,
baby up forever yours. I mean, I love that second
verse if somebody said, how did you come up with that?
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I said, how I came up with that?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I got a big clue from them, from the ether
of the other side of creative wisdom. You know, it's
waiting to write songs through us. But you have to
be able to handle the Cleopatra was a snowflake weird
part and go.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Wow, you know, and not be upset when someone may
not love the idea to be strong in your conviction
and listen to your instinct.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Well, I mean I was about to cave.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I mean, not every one of those crazy lines ends
up being a thing. But what's really weird is one
of my students recently sent me a link on Amazon
and there were tons of snowflakes with Cleopatra on them.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I was like, what around that time?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
No, just now, it's like there's like all these like
Christmas to ornaments with Cleopatra.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Anyway by smelling hit coming, I know it's too crazy.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Maybe maybe I can justify that line, but the songs,
but the song even like that, you know a song
that the power of that song is the joy of
getting kissed correctly, I mean that just as a specific
what are we going to write about you know, what
does it feel like to get kissed? Right?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Which is the thing? Yes, it is little pieces.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Of being a human is to me what songs are about,
from loss to joy to craziness, and you know it's
they're all all healing.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
We'll be right back with more of the Music Saved
Me Podcast. And by the way, if you like this podcast,
you are going to love our companion podcast called Taken
a Walk. It's hosted by my dear friend buzz Night
and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to the Music Saved Me Podcast, the podcast
(23:22):
where we discuss the healing powers of music with some
of the biggest names in music, as well as up
and comers. Being a cancer survivor yourself losing your first
husband cancer and having these moments that you still persevered
through beyond persevered. Can you share how the experience impacted
(23:45):
your life in songwriting? How are you able to get
through such difficult personal times?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Well, I mean giving, you know, writing my way through it? Literally,
I mean sometimes I wouldn't. I mean when Ernest finally
passed away, I was immediately into like I have to
be a single mom, I have to take care of
my son.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
I can't just fall apart and cry, so I didn't
cry for like a year, and when.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I went into the studio to start recording, I started
falling apart, which made it very hard to record because
I was like, you know, so grief has its own timeline.
We really can't tell it when it's going to hit us,
you know. And going through like six years after Ernest died,
I ended up making a record called Deeper Still. In
(24:36):
the last day of mixing, literally I found out I
had stage two breast cancer. What was amazing is that
every song on that album sounded as if I wrote
it after I went through breast cancer. There were songs
about resilience and staying positive and like so many songs
it was crazy, but one song in particular, and first
(24:57):
of all, I was terrified for my son, who was
now going off to college, and I had to tell
him before he went to college that when you see
me at Thanksgiving, I'm not going to have any hair,
and then trying to convince him that I'm going to
be okay, you know, But I didn't know I was
going to be okay. I was terrified that I wasn't
going to be okay. And he was so amazing. He
was like I remember telling him and I was sitting
on the couch and I was just like, you know,
(25:19):
I just don't want to have this conversation.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
But he knew something was up. He could tell something
was going on.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
And I remember him pulling me and putting my head
on his show, on his chest and saying, You're going
to be okay, Mom, You're going to be okay. And
I just like, wow, you know, and I was okay,
and he and actually seeing me get well and I
was going through that journey together helped us both. Heal
a lot through through the grief of losing his dad.
(25:44):
But one of the songs I wrote two years before
that was called Every December Sky, and I remember when
I was writing it, thinking, is this kind of an
additional song about losing my husband? Because it kind of
felt like I could be singing about that, but I
wasn't sure. I just loved the song and song is
about resilience. And I was sitting on the couch in
(26:07):
the wintertime, is that all the leaves had come off
the trees and all my hair had fallen out kind
of simultaneously, and I was looking out the window and
it was a freezing day and I was really at
a low point and I started just singing the song
in my head, like it came on like a radio station.
And it's a song that says, every December sky must
(26:29):
lose its faith and leaves and dream of the spring
inside the trees, How heavy the empty heart, how light
the heart that's full. Sometimes I have to trust what
I can't know. And I realized, wait, that's like I
needed to hear that, you know, And it's about believing
that you're going to get through this scary time and
(26:50):
knowing there's spring inside the trees and it's going to
be spring again and you're going to be okay. And
it gave me such a sense of connection and you know,
I mean, there's no way that you can get go
through cancer and not at some point feel like God
has abandoned me. I mean, I had that feeling come
and go, you know, and I'd pray and I'd like, oh,
but I felt abandoned, like my own body abandoned, Like
(27:11):
why didn't I Why did my body malfunction? You know?
And all that and that song really centered me back
into a sense of calmness and assurance that I was
being taken care of that no matter what happened, I
was going to be taking care of everybody I loved
was going to be okay. And I just calmed me down,
you know. And the power of that song to me
(27:34):
is very personal. But I know that when I play
that song, it's like one that I get requests for
a lot, because people just identify with that sense of
you know, as freezing as it is, Bazzes right now,
you know, there's there's always a place where hope is
residing and growing and blooming again.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
You were writing your own medicine.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yeah, your own worst script was literally I was literally
I mean on yourself, forgive me answer.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, And I didn't you know the fact that I
wrote it for myself.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
And I knew that's exactly what had happened was kind
of like a reassurance that something bigger than myself was was.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Keeping track and watching over me, you know. And was
that from your history of music?
Speaker 2 (28:21):
And John, I mean just I mean, I've done it
over and over again, but I didn't realize I was
doing it until I got to that point. Like I
did it with several of the songs on the Sand
and Water album, which I wrote prior to my husband
even finding out he had cancer. I was already writing
half of that album. And you know, so I've just
learned to understand that there's a very magical mystery thing
(28:45):
going on here, and we are, you know, some of
us are more aware of it than others. But even
if you're not aware of it, it's still doing its magic.
It's just magical, you know. And another amazing, amazing thing
because I've loved teaching and I've always taught people anybody
can can access this thing with a little bit of
(29:07):
help and some tricks that I like to teach, you know,
how to show up and how to experience this creative flow.
And I thought, you know, all of a sudden, like
in two thousand and nine, for about three months, I
stopped being able to write, and I just couldn't figure out.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
What was going on.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I would sit down and I'd have melodies. I could
get melodies, but I couldn't I couldn't get the lyrics
to come. And I've never had that problem, and I
was absolutely depressed.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
At a certain point.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I was thinking, gosh, you know, maybe there is a
muse and it just wanders off and you don't have
it anymore. And I've been selling this bill of goods
to people all these years. I was just having amused
and now I don't, and you know, I just was
so perplexing. And I remember waking up one morning during
that time with this really weird kind of like a
Tibetan bowl in my head, you know, glonging couldn't hear
(29:59):
pitch go do a big show on the weekend, and
I just call I called my on cologist because I
didn't even know who to call. I'm like, I've got
this weird thing. And he, you know, turned me over
to a neurologist and they did an MRI and I
remember him coming around the corner and saying, so, have
you had.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Any trouble with language?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
And I'm like, well, I haven't been able to write
lyrics for about four months, which has been really upsetting,
you know. And he goes, oh, yeah, you wouldn't be
able to write lyrics with this thing. I'm like, what thing?
And he goes, will you have a brain tumor? I'm like, no,
I have a brain tumor. That's not possible because I
have My husband died a cancer and then I had cancer,
so kind of done. I'm not really up for anything.
You know, I shouldn't have anything like a brain tumor
(30:40):
right now, you know.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
I was like, wait a minute.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
And he's like, and it's pressing against the left frontal lobe,
which is your language center.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
So we're kind of surprised you can talk.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
And I'm like really, he goes, yeah, it's going to
have to come out, and it would definitely encroach on
your ability to write lyrics.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I was so relieved that there was a reason that
I was like, oh my god, this is great. He goes,
did you hear the part about where you have a braindommer? Yeah,
but it's so great, it's like amazing.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
And I remember just thinking, Okay, I'm going to get
on the other side of this thing, and I'm not
going to have to never write a song again. And
I mean that was one of the big benefits of it.
Although it was terrifying, but everything went great. It was
early enough, and anyway, as I got back into the
world coming through this anesthesion, I'm having this weird dreamy
(31:35):
vision of these camels going over sand dunes and I'm
thinking what and I realized they're not camels, they're actually syllables.
And then I realized, wait, that's the third verse of
the song I've been trying to finish for like four
months that I've been sitting there and banging my head
into nothing, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
And my mom goes, are you okay, honey? What do
you need? She was like standing over me. I'm like, good,
a pencil.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Wait, you're saying anesthesia when you came out of surgery,
you said get a pencil?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
You knew, right, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I was saying I was coming out of anesthesia, and
I was having the third verse to one of the
songs that had been really driving me nuts that I've
been trying to finish. And what it showed me was
that all that work I was doing, showing up and
trying to write lyrics, they were getting written, but they
were kind of lining up down the hallway, couldn't get
through the portal because this thing was in the way. Wow.
(32:31):
And it showed me that creative flow and creativity never stops.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
And the fast.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
You know, the quickness that I finished everything with wass
almost like I was just getting the mail, like when
you go on vacation and you come home and then
there's a ton of mail. It was like that, you know,
it was just like, Okay, so there is this thing
we have access to, and you know, people say, my god,
you've gone through this stuff and you know, but yeah,
but every every part of it is just been.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Amazing to look back and say. And then there's that, you.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Know, sure, And I think creativity and art and the
beauty of art and music and all the ways that
we manifest stuff through our grief and through our happiness
and through everything. You know, that's the great gift we
have to give each other and and we use it
to get better.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I think I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I feel like, you know, you're not only.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
You're magical, like you're you're a seer or I should
call you Beth Nielsen Chatman, Nostradamus.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
It's like, really, I'm just I'm just wandering around, bumping
into things.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
And then I have a lot of words that a lot.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Going on though too, to that you've been able to
maneuver around in your life to still show up and
smile and put out such great energy and it's such
beautiful music to help others. What is it like when
you see you talked earlier about you know, there's always
a couple of stragglers in the audience. You haven't quite
got there yet, but then you see that happen. How
(34:10):
does that make you feel when you get those people
to see what you're putting out?
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Well, I'm really not trying to get anybody to do anything.
That's part of the To me, that's part of the
practice of being a performer and singing. In fact, I
teach a whole singing thing which is called vocal presence.
And I'm not a proponent of over singing. I like
to speak on pitchin rhythm. I don't really like to
(34:38):
get too calisthetics, you know, like, oh you know. And
I feel like, for instance, a song like Sand and Water,
the less you try to sing it with any drama,
the more powerful it is because everybody's in a different place,
and there will be people who listen to that song
and really appreciate it who don't cry. You know, not
everybody cries, but people who have pushed grief down that
(35:01):
sometimes will just go oh, you know, like that'll do it.
And I feel like I'm the messenger and my job
is not to overly amp the message, just let it
be what it is. It's powerful enough as a thing
to hear that doesn't need me to put a catch
in my voice or try to show you how sad
(35:23):
it is. Like I sing it almost neutrally because I'm
honoring the power of the song to deliver its whole thing.
And you know, in twenty twenty two, believe it or not,
my second husband, Bob, who I married in twenty eleven.
I met him four years after Ernest died, and then
(35:44):
it took until that was like nineteen ninety eight. Took
until twenty eleven for us to get married. We had
a wonderful journey together, and he passed away in twenty
twenty two. He had leukemia. And I remember when I
first met him and he was trying to get me
to go out with him, and I was like, yeah,
I'm not really, you know, it's like I don't think so,
and he was like, I promise you, I will let
(36:05):
you die first. That was like a running joke with us,
and so when he got leukemia, he's like, don't worry,
I got this.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
We're going to get rid of it.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
And it was actually one of the more curable kinds,
and it kept coming back, and ultimately he passed away
and you know, he was so he was so brilliant,
and he was so funny. The last couple of weeks,
you know, we were similarly to Ernest, you know, like
kind of going towards death with a kind of a
staying present with it, you know, like laughing about it,
(36:34):
crying about it, being in that place, not acting like
it's not real, but also living every single moment together
that we could, you know, and learning. I mean, I
learned so much from both of those experiences about how
to live.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
And I remember Bob saying you cannot.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Can't because I had all these shows booked for twenty
twenty three and he was December in twenty twenty two
when he died, and he said, please don't cancel.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Your tour next year.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't know how
entertaining I'm going to be after my second husband dies
of cancer.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
I mean, how am I going to you know?
Speaker 2 (37:09):
And you know, just to give you a sense of
his sense of humor, he said, well I think you
should do it.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I think he's just what else are you going to do?
You know, I'm not going to sit around and cry.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Go out there, do your song, do sand and water
you know, let people just share it with them. You know,
your people will understand and I'll appreciate. I thought I
couldn't see how that would work. And then I had
this one big show coming up in Nashville at the
Franklin Theater, and it was the first one I would
have had to cancel. He goes, just tell me, just
promise me, you'll do that one show. And at this time,
(37:41):
you know, he didn't know if he'd still be here
when the show happened. But he passed away four days
before the show. And then I felt like okay, and
I got Rodney Crowe, my old friend, to come and
be my stand in in case I lost my nerve.
And I put a little note on the all the
seats and I told the audience, Okay, here's the deal,
and I explained, my husband just passed away.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
He really wanted me to do the show.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
I have no idea whether I can do this show,
but I'm going to give it a shot. And it
was just the most powerful, amazing, loving thing to be surrounded.
I mean, it makes me cry by this group of
people that came, and some of them didn't have any
idea they were going to.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
See this show.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
You know, they thought it was going to come hear
me do this gets and all my songs, and it
was doing sand and Water and having my son come
up and sing the harmony with me, and you know,
it just made me realize, this is what I should
be doing.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
And whether I'm crying through it.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Or laughing through it, this is what I'm supposed to
be doing. And I didn't cancel a single show. And
it was really, you know, an amazing journey to to
take my sort of active grief out into the world.
And you know, I mean i'd laugh and you know,
we I don't actually cry on stage, but most of
the audience get gets a chance to go.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Who you know.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
And and I didn't really set out to be any
kind of musical missionary by any by any stretch. And
when you say, oh, you're magical, I don't think I'm magical.
I think it's magical. I think all of this is magical,
and some of us are able to go.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yes, it is. I can feel it because I'm aware.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
I'm aware of it, and others maybe don't so much
put it in that terms. But I don't think anybody
is unable to access the magic. It's just a matter
of whether you have a way of doing you know,
like you learn to do it or you start to
see it.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
It's all around.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Us all the time, Yes, and we need to tap
into it more. Speaking of all of this, it's just
mind boggling what you just said to me.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
I know it is.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
It's you're just a mere mortal. And yet the way
that you speak about how you're living your life through
all of this potential tragedy or you know, a life
of just depression. How what advice for those listening right
now who maybe going through something and they're hearing you
and they still hear a smile in your voice, and
I can imagine still.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
It's still fun.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
There's still funny stuff, sort of the saddest things. Yeah,
I've been trying to I forgot to. I forgot to
actually tell you that one of the things I was
going to finish and I forgot to do it was
when I was having these conversations with Bob about whether
or not I should do the show.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I said, look, you know you've been to my show's Bob.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
I mean, I talk about I sing my songs and
kind of do this chronicle of my life. I talk
about losing earnest. I talk about going through breast cancer,
I sing a song about that. Talk about my brain tumor,
I sing a song about that. How am I going
to add another.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Husband who died? How does that? You know? And he's
a psychologist and he's like, hmm, very good point.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Let me think about that. Hmm okay, And he comes
back to me and he goes, I think you should
drop the brain.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Tumor can't be break you know.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
So he was from New Jersey, so I mean York.
So well, it's not always funny. It's not you know.
There is a deep joy that I feel and a
deep gratefulness, you know, like I say, having gone through
chemo and all my hair fell out and knows terribly
upset at the time, but you know what now that
(41:17):
I'm I have like there's no such thing as a
bad hair day.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Ever. Any hair is a good hair day, any hair
at all, beautiful hair. By the way. Oh it's kind
of a mess today, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
But I mean, I just feel like when you have
the perspective of the parameters of life experience part of
what I think you have to well for me, I
will only speak for myself. I mean I have to.
I have to acknowledge it and look at it. I
can't try to evade the feelings of sadness. When a
feeling of sadness comes up, I say thank you, and
(41:52):
this sucks, but okay, thank you. I'm gonna and so
a wave. It's all of its waves and it's not
going to be there. The thing about the worst part
of grief, especially if you're really really raw with it,
is when you're in one of those waves of grief,
you think it's never gonna end. This is how I'm
gonna feel for the rest of my life, and it's intolerable,
and then it resolves, and then you have to remember
(42:14):
that was a wave. It had to beginning, a middle,
and an end, and there will be another one and
it will also lead back into joy. That's the only
way that I can express it.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Well, it's a beautiful expression. And I'm so grateful. It's
taken me a while to get you here. I know
it's been crazy, yet I'm so glad we finally got
to do this. Me too, and to me you in person,
and you're just such a shining light. And just keep
inspiring and keep doing what you're doing. I have one
last question for you, because it's just hit me. Why
(42:50):
do you continue to do what you do every day
in terms of sharing and teaching, And there's got to
be a reason.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
I think it's.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
You know, one of my drugs of choice, okay, is
the drug of feeling someone else kind of get their pilot,
like relt if they've lost it or if they've never
had it. Lit That to me is such a feeling
of I feel so grateful to be able to be
(43:24):
a part of that. It's, you know, there's something about
feeling like you're I don't know, maybe it's just feeling
like you're being useful to someone else. And not everybody
has the same reaction to anything. And I think one
of the things I've learned is I can't have no
control over whether or not anything I say or do
is going to help them. Maybe they're not in a
place where they're ready to hear what I have to
(43:45):
say or what it is. But the music goes on
all by itself. It's like I write a song and
it goes out in the world and it's got its
own little power source, and somebody tells somebody to go
listen to that song, and then they write me, you know,
And I mean, it's just it's like finding out you
win the lottery in little little lotteries all the time
(44:05):
when that happens because I didn't write the song to
In fact, if you try to write a song to
help other people, it usually sounds very flat. It's and
I tell my songwriting students all the time, I want
you to write selfishly.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
I want you to write to help you get out
of the cage of whatever you're you know.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
And and that's what makes it really powerful, you know,
just telling telling me about you. Don't try to about me,
don't try to fix me, just tell me how to
how you got fixed within yourself.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
It just as evolved as something that I'm very drawn to.
And and it's it's it's a The world is full
of so much stuff that we have to struggle against.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Well, you may have been a part of it. You
may have been selfless selfish in writing, but in your
life you are selfless for sharing all of it. And
we're so grateful that you came to share.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I love sharing it as you can tell it.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Yes, I feel the same way. I feel like I'm
infringing on someone else's time.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Right now, so I don't want to.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
I could talk to you all day long, but thank
you so much for sharing your story and I hope
that it brings some joy to whoever was listening to
us speak today because you're just amazing and thank you,
thanks so much, and.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Please check in on you.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
I will, and thank you for this podcast. I'm going
to go listen to all the other ones now.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Oh I love that.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
I don't think anyone will be as good as this one.
Oh well, thanks Beth, thank you,
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