September 20, 2024 • 44 mins
Brian and Trey talk guitars, music, and the DIY approach to creativity with super-talented singer-songwriter Mary Spender.
Mary Spender is the true 21st Century Musician, one who promotes a DIY mentality to independently write, record and release her music to a community of fans all over the world. Mary has amassed over 94 million views on her YouTube channel with over 745k subscribers watching her weekly videos, where she shares her thoughts on the music industry’s past, present and future, interviews prominent artists, and demonstrates the very best in guitars and gear. Mary’s fans are incredibly supportive of her work and allow her to fund recording and releasing her music as an independent artist – no label, no middlemen, just her and her true fans. Because doing it yourself doesn’t mean doing it alone. Seeking to build a community of like-minded musicians following the DIY route, she’s launched The 21st Century Musician newsletter to share knowledge and lessons from her career to date.
Brian Phelps is an American radio personality, actor, and comedian best known for co-hosting the nationally and globally syndicated Mark & Brian Morning Show in Los Angeles for 25 years. As the co-lead of his own television series, with multiple roles in movies, and a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Phelps is also an inductee in the Radio Hall of Fame.
Trey Callaway is an American film and TV writer and producer who wrote the hit movie I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and has produced successful TV series like CSI:NY, Supernatural, Rush Hour, Revolution, The Messengers, APB, Station 19 and 9-1-1 LONE STAR. He is also a Professor at USC.
___________________________________
Make sure to follow us on social media at:
begoodhumanspodcast.com
instagram.com
tiktok.com
threads.net
facebook.com
Mary Spender is the true 21st Century Musician, one who promotes a DIY mentality to independently write, record and release her music to a community of fans all over the world. Mary has amassed over 94 million views on her YouTube channel with over 745k subscribers watching her weekly videos, where she shares her thoughts on the music industry’s past, present and future, interviews prominent artists, and demonstrates the very best in guitars and gear. Mary’s fans are incredibly supportive of her work and allow her to fund recording and releasing her music as an independent artist – no label, no middlemen, just her and her true fans. Because doing it yourself doesn’t mean doing it alone. Seeking to build a community of like-minded musicians following the DIY route, she’s launched The 21st Century Musician newsletter to share knowledge and lessons from her career to date.
Brian Phelps is an American radio personality, actor, and comedian best known for co-hosting the nationally and globally syndicated Mark & Brian Morning Show in Los Angeles for 25 years. As the co-lead of his own television series, with multiple roles in movies, and a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Phelps is also an inductee in the Radio Hall of Fame.
Trey Callaway is an American film and TV writer and producer who wrote the hit movie I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and has produced successful TV series like CSI:NY, Supernatural, Rush Hour, Revolution, The Messengers, APB, Station 19 and 9-1-1 LONE STAR. He is also a Professor at USC.
___________________________________
Make sure to follow us on social media at:
begoodhumanspodcast.com
instagram.com
tiktok.com
threads.net
facebook.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've been washed down the sync of your conscience in
the theater of love. I lost my part. You say
you've got me out of your conscience. I've been flushed
from the bathroom of your heart.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Speak good humans, Be good humans, Be good humans, or we.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Will think you sucked. Thy good, Thank god, uven, or
we will thank you suck. Welcome back to the Be
Good Humans podcast. Everyone's so nice of you to join us.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Indeed, thank you for clicking like and subscribe, and if
you're watching us on YouTube, of course, appreciate your kind
ratings and reviews on all the podcast platforms as well.
So Brian, Yeah, Tray, I was at this industry event
last night. Oh, this was an event that was filled
with super talented, ambitious, up and coming new writers, and
(01:12):
a couple of important things happened.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
You lost your virginity, No, no, thanks for taking my
head there.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
No.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
The first of two things that happened was that I
felt like the oldest person in this room. Oh really, Yeah,
it's just one of those things that happens every once
in a while.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Would it'd be because you were Yeah, quite possibly that.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
But the second thing that happened to me as the
evening went on, I found myself kind of more and
more surrounded by these young writers who were asking for
more and more advice.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Sure, and.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I felt, if only briefly, because God knows, I don't
feel this way very often or anywhere else, I felt like, Wow,
I actually might have some wisdom to offer here.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, you're a professor at USCA, but I don't know
you moonlight doing that.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah, but I sort of see for twenty years, right, yes,
but I sort of see everyone as their own expert
of their own lives, and so I'm always like wow.
But in this particular case, I felt like, wow, I
actually have a mentor role to play here.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
So then that I was like, all right, then this
is what I want to talk to Brian about. I
want to talk about mentors. Yeah, and I want to
talk about these people who come into our lives outside
of our family, outside of our friends, often through professional
circumstances or whatever, but like people who just inspire us
and uplift us in different ways. And I've got to
believe you have people like that in your life.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Well, I'm lucky, fortunate, blessed, however you want to put
it enough to be able to truly say. I have
many mentors, and I'll just pick one to tell you
a quick story. It's a lot longer than the way
I'm going to tell it, but I just am so
excited about our guest today I don't want to take
(02:58):
any time away from her with you, So I'll say
this quick. Do you remember the real Men of Genius
bud light commercial campaign?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Oh? Yeah, okay, real men? Right? Hey, missed a guy
who wears a two pay you know.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
And then it's the well it all started. I was
finishing college in Chicago and doing my comedy group waiting
on tables, and as an elective I took because A
it sounded kind of interesting, and b because well, mainly
because it sounded easy, I took a radio class.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
So one of the assignments of this radio class was
to call your favorite radio station in Chicago and get
any department on the phone and do an interview.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
You picked it, You got a cold column, and you
gotta like, oh wow. Okay, So I called.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
The receptionist answers Q one O one in Chicago, which
I listened to every morning because of the morning show
Murphy in the Morning. Okay, and he had a guy
come in and do all these character voices.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
It was just right up my butt, of course, just
just loved it.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
Of course, so I explained everything to the receptionists and
she goes, hmmm, how about the traffic department, Like I'm
a car guy. Uh yeah, I didn't know. Maybe I
was going to be talking to you like a helicopter
pilot or something.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So it's very nice.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Lady gets on the phone and she explains to me
what traffic is our radio terms, and I start interviewing her,
and during the interview, believe it or not, I got
her giggling.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I got her left. I believe this.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
So as we're wrapping up the interview, she said, Brian,
have you ever considered being an intern? And, like I said,
I was doing comedy and waiting on tables and have
the and I go, no, I haven't.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He goes well, she.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
Goes, well, we got a guy here. He's our productions director,
the creative director, and he does voices.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
On the Murphy at Morning Murphy in the Morning Show.
And I went, wait, what does he do that character?
Does he do this character?
Speaker 5 (04:59):
He goes yeah, that's I go, oh my god, I'm
not such a fan of his, so good, and she goes,
why don't you come in tomorrow and have us sit
down with Peter Stacker.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Oh wow, the great Peter Stacker.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
And I'd never heard of him, although I was a fan.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Just because of the voices he was. Yeah, of course
he is the voice of the real men of genius.
Deep that deep voice.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
He also went on to do the voice of Captain
Jacob Keys in the amazing Halo video games.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Oh wow, yeah, exactly, big moneymaker.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
So my internship is wrapping up, and so he got
on the phone with one of the radio stations that
he did the sounders for the maul. That's WAPI, one
thousand watt blowtorch, that kind of thing, And it was
just Birmingham station, and he got on the phone with him.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And I didn't ask him to do this. It was
a complete surprise.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
I just happened to be in his office when he's
making the call, and he was like, he's this, he
does voices, he writes comedy, he's this and this. However,
he knows nothing about radio. So put him together with
a two radio guy and you've got a good morning show.
How one week later, they flew me down, gave me
the job. I was supposed to originally work for a
guy named Mark o' O'Brien, Mark Mark, Mike Mike O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
He had to.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
Drop out because his wife didn't want to leave Saint Louis,
and so they they put me together with Mark and
and so I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be on
the all those years on the radio without that mentor
of mine, Peter Stecker. I something happened there. Yeah, what
it is, I ain't exactly clear, but I got to
tell you. I became his apprentice and he became my mentor,
(06:38):
right and it was serious.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
We were inseparable. We loved writing together.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I can remember the first commercial, uh that we were
writing and I said, you know, it'd be better if
you say that's the way to do it. And uh
so we recorded it that day and I'm driving to
work two days later and I hear my the that's
my the And I ended up doing a lot of
voices on Murphy in the morning show. He'd paid me
(07:03):
seventy five dollars to come in in the morning and
do to do a voice.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
We see, this is what's so critical in these great
mentor stories or in these relationships, because yeah, to a
certain extent, he's passing a torch to you, but you
are also lighting his creative flame in different ways, right.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
I'd like to think so. But yeah, for a mentor,
and again I'm lucky enough to say I've had many,
there has to be a trust. Yeah, you know, he
trusted me and I trusted him. Yeah, and we got
so very very close, and I'm so thankful that I
was lucky enough to have him in my life.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Well, honestly, I'm thankful too, because if you hadn't met him,
you and I wouldn't be sitting here, right, That's true.
So that's amazing. I mean, these mentors are incredible. What
about I had a few, William Kelly, the Oscar winning
writer of the movie Witness, Don Stewart, who was the
Oscar winning writer of Missing with Jack Lemon and Sissy
space Ac. Those two writers helped me be a better writer.
(07:58):
My first agent was a guy named Ron Mardigian, who
was not only my first and one of my greatest agents,
but taught me how to be my own best representative.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So that was very very key.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
And again it goes back not only to trust, but
you have to like each other, yes, like you have
to massively respect whatever.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
That mentor of yours is mentoring you.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
No matter how much distance there may be in terms
of your experience, there is still a complete overlap in
terms of friendship and that mutual respect and all of
that carries. Because Ron was not only my first agent,
but then he is the reason I wind up teaching
at USC and definitely through as you said, almost this
will be my twentieth year of teaching there, I have
learned over time how important it is to have as
(08:42):
much as possible a direct hand in the training of
your replacements, right, especially when the business is changing so
radically in so many different ways. And I think I
told you this before. I don't know if it was
on the show, but my father always had this opinion,
this saying.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
He would say, always if you're hiring someone, always hire
someone that can replace you.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Oh yeah, definitely, that's that is he was dead on
correct there, because and especially like I said, when things
are kind of unstable. I mean, God knows, the radio
business certainly isn't the same as it used to be.
That's that business has totally changed. We probably wouldn't be
sitting here doing a podcast in the first place. But
the entertainment industry at large has changed, has has been
(09:25):
is going through this hugely seismic period of upheaval we're
talking about, I mean, between a global pandemic and a
couple is necessary, but very long and trust me, very
painful labor strikes, paired with all kinds of corporate and
studio contraction, with big tech coming in and streaming, and
(09:46):
now we have AI sort of looming over our our shoulders.
I'm not sure honestly, Hollywood or the entertainment industry has
ever felt quite so uninhabitable for the very artists that
that built it. We're talking about writers and directors and
actors and creatives of all kinds, including musicians.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Well, but music industry and music industry has changed incredibly
changed as well.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Right, But here's the thing, Brian. Makers got to make
and creators got to create. So when we come back,
we're not only going to meet a maker and a creator,
but a true artist and someone who is not only
in her particular case making and creating amazing music, but
(10:35):
in the way that makes for the very best.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Mentors in our lives. She is also lighting the way
for all kinds of other artists, even questionably old knuckleheads
like us at what often feels like a very dark time.
So please don't go anywhere. We're going to be right back.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Come a bigger.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
We will take you suck.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Welcome back, everyone.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
We are extremely excited to talk to our next guest.
She isn't only an incredibly talented musician singer, songwriter, Oh no, no, no,
no no no, she wears many other hats, my friend,
including video creator, mentor, documentarian, influencer, and gearhead, just to
(11:41):
name a few. We welcome in, ladies and gentlemen, the
marvelous Mary Spender.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Welcome Mary.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
Oh Hello, hello, hello, hello, Thanks for having me, guys.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
Before we get into the real reason why we're so
excited to chat with you, I got to know about
the gearhead thing. I fancy myself was a bit of
a gearhead. So what's going on there?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
What do you like? What do you what do you
tell me about that?
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Oh? I mean it's it's It's a rabbit hole, isn't it.
I've been fascinated with guitar since I was about twelve
years old and coveted my friend's red Strat that was
a squire you know, and he had it in the
locker room's at school, and I was just like, oh
my god, what is this glorious thing? And then, to
be honest, my main gearhead, which I think is so nuanced,
(12:27):
while other people were putting i don't know, like magazine
cuttings of famous actresses or actors or you know, hunky
so and so I was putting Fender p basses on
my school diary. I was cutting out from guitar magazines.
It was so nerdy. I was spending every Saturday in
(12:48):
my guitar shop, where I'm actually still friends with the
guy that sold me my first guitar, but I bought
one guitar in every seven years, you know, So like
every Saturday, I was just in there, and I didn't
really know anything until maybe I was sort of twenty
four to twenty five, so maybe a decade ago, and
(13:08):
then just started asking questions and like not being afraid
of being a beginner. Yeah, And I mean that translated
over into YouTube. When I started making all the YouTube videos.
I would just I suddenly wasn't afraid to be like,
I think this sounds cool, but I don't really fully
know why. So tell me in the comments, and then
just from there it just sort of like spiraled out
(13:30):
of control. And now I have I mean, I'm very
very proud of like the guitars I own. I actually
just received a new amplifier which.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I'm exciting, so stoked about.
Speaker 6 (13:43):
And yeah, it's just sort of sparrowed out of control.
And yeah, I mean, I don't think it's going to
go anywhere anytime soon. But it's an expensive hobby, That's
what I'll say.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Well, look, I mean to it to put it broadly.
In addition to all of the gear which we salivate over,
what's probably most exciting about you, Mary, at least as
one of your fans, is the way you sort of
promote this DIY mentality to independently how to write and
record and release music. And you are just incredibly generous
(14:19):
in sharing not just all of this cool gear, but
all of this amazing knowledge that you have gathered to
what has now become a massive online following.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Look, it's a huge perk of doing this show is
that every week we get to meet people from all
over the world, every walk of life, and some of
them I'm more interested than others, honestly, but they've all
done remarkable things for other people. And so here I
am researching you, looking watching all your videos and just
(14:48):
falling in love with what you're doing and why you're
doing it. Not to mention pretty easy on the eyes, but.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I really am. It's not.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
It's not just Hey, here's my uh you know, here's
my website, here's my YouTube account. It's different every time
you can either you could sit there with a guitar
in front of you and not play it and just talk,
just talk, And I learn so much, Mary, I adore it.
Speaker 6 (15:19):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, my god, your your compliments
will get you everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Well, so then that'll do it for the show. I
got to go to England real quick. What's that flight?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Let me while while he's booking his plans, let me
ask you this, Mary, What I mean, what made you
aside from that red strat that you once coveted, Like,
what what made you first want to be a musician?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
And who were some of your first musical influences.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (15:44):
I mean, I was really really lucky that my grandmother
noticed that when I was a baby.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I was singing as a baby.
Speaker 6 (15:54):
Yeah, like literally is like a I think I was
like a two year old in a cat asleep one time,
and my grandmother was visiting from Australia, so she didn't
she didn't really get to spend much time with me,
so she was sort of a bit more concentrated on
me than maybe my mother was. Right, my mother has
told me this story, So I think my mom was
somewhere probably just resting or just you know, two year
(16:14):
old around and my brother was five, and she just
heard me singing arpeggios, and my grandmother like, you know,
may she rest in peace. She just said to my mum.
She was like, that child is musical. And my mother
is very like her ear is amazing, and she loves
music and she educates me all the time. But she
(16:35):
wasn't trained as a musician, nor was my father, okay,
and they just sort of nurtured it. They were really
open to letting me have music lessons. And I joined
like a community Saturday morning school called Salisbury Area Young
Musicians at the age of six. I was six years old,
so I was singing in a choir. I then got
(16:56):
singing individual lessons. So talking about mentors, like my music
teachers were just incredible. It had a singing teacher called Petra,
a piano teacher called Jill, and they genuinely changed my life.
And they were almost like they were therapists up until
I was a teenager. Then I had an amazing viola
(17:18):
teacher called Gay Gullingford and she, I mean sometimes I
barely even played viola in those lessons. I just was
just constantly motivated when they were just like you seem tired,
you seem overworked, maybe at school because I was doing
a lot of extracurricular music, but yeah, from the age
of six, I was obsessed. And then all the classical
(17:41):
music started taking its toll a little bit and I
found it quite restrictive. So I stole my brother's guitar
when I was about eleven or twelve, and he'd sort
of given up on that journey of and I'm really
glad he did, and I think he's glad he did
as well, because then I just started. It was like
a Spanish guitar, and I think it was missing a.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
String, nylon strings, nylon.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Strings, chunky fretboard, yes, and all I was figuring out,
and I remember it so well. I was figuring out
like the James Bond theme tune on like the lower string, yeah, exactly.
So from then on I was hooked. Boys at school
were given, you know, electric guitars. I had to save
up because my parents were like, you're already not practicing
(18:27):
your other instruments enough, can you please just if you're
going to do it, like, why not teach yourself? And
so I did, and I was learning song you know,
I was learning all the stuff that I wouldn't have
learned anyway. So it was the best therapy. And I
remember doing this one show with three of my best
friends at school. We were twelve years maybe we're thirteen
(18:48):
years old, and I remember coming home. It was like
a lunchtime concert, which is so rock and roll. We
played four songs, four covers, and I came back from
that and I was hooked on the edge renolin of
playing to a live audience. And I just remember walking
back into my parents' kitchen and being like, well, that's it,
that's all I want to do.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
And I was thirteen and I just knew. And then
I started writing my own songs at fifteen. Again, just
a few people along the way just gave me a
lot of courage. I met a singer songwriter called Narena Pallo,
who she never blew up massively, but she was pretty
successful in the UK in sort of two thousand and four,
(19:31):
two thousand and five, and we went to a Suzanne
Vega concert where she was supporting, and so we got
to meet her in the interval and she was signing
a CD for me and my mother just literally, you
know when you just grab a child by their shoulders
and just like move them right because they're just too
shy to move themselves. She did that to me, and
she just plucked me in front of Narena, and Narena
(19:54):
was just so patient and kind. She was like, so,
I hear you're a singer. I hear you're playing guitar
and I was like yeah. She was like, do you
write songs? And I was like, not yet, you should
go for it. It's really amazing. So I went home
that evening and I wrote my first song and do.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You still play that sometimes?
Speaker 4 (20:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (20:14):
It's a song called She and it's actually not bad.
I mean, yeah, it's evolved, right, it's evolved over the
time as well, but yeah, it became like the first
acoustic track on an acoustic project I did called Songbook.
So the first song on that Songbook Volume one is
she So that's the first song I ever wrote, and
then you know, eighteen songs in total on that project.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
I know you're dying to know the first song I wrote.
Oh yeah, I was seven, okay, and I wrote it
in the bathtub.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
My brother and I used to take baths together, not intentionally,
but they made us. My little brother and I wrote
one night when I came home, yeah yeah, two three four,
One night when I came home, Yeah yeah, two three four.
I hugged you when I kissed you, I really really
missed you. When day when I came home, yeah yeah,
(21:04):
two three four. That was seven years old, six, seven
years old.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I wrote that, thank you for joining us, Mary.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
That is a hit. Yes, you should re release that.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
You really should hit up. Uh no, we will not
re absolutely so Mary, Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
So you've got all these incredible musical influences and this
natural talent that's starting to evolve your coming of age
as an artist. But at a time also when the
music industry is changing. I guess it's always changing, but
particularly when you were sort of launching this career, it
was there were some big shifts happening. Like we were talking
about earlier in the show. So, how can you speak
(21:41):
a little bit to how today's music scene is kind
of different for musicians? What what are the other kinds
of skills that you need beyond the viola and the
guitar and the singing and the songwriting and all that
stuff to possess besides just having good chops on those instruments.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
Because you wanted to make a record in the fifties,
sixty seventies, in an eighties, yeah, you know, you get signed,
hopefully by a record label. Of the promotion, you didn't
have to do it yourself. It wasn't self promoting. What
was no social media.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
What it usually.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
Consisted of a record representative going to a radio station
with a forty five of this new artist and a
bag a dime bag of blow.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I'm serious. Absolutely, Payola was huge.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, uh huh yeah, or stereo equipment or
in some cases a car play this record. Here's your gift, right,
and they sense outlawed that before I got into radio. Unfortunately,
that would have been cool, Paola, that'd be awesome, but
I never got to experience that. But so that's how
But now it's changed in so many ways. You have
(22:48):
to self promote, and there's a labyrinth of things you
have to navigate to do it yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Can we talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
Well, I'll preface it by being like I was as
successful in that sort of traditional industry even in the
two thousands twenty tens, so I'm an optimist about now.
And yes, you do have to work really, really hard,
but who doesn't have to work hard? And I mean,
what a luxury to be working hard in music and video.
(23:20):
So yes, it's a lot that you also have to
navigate when you also have to just be quite good.
You can't be a crappy musician and expect to succeed.
But all the other stuff. I always think about it
now when I'm asked this sort of question about like, well,
do you really like making videos, I'm like, well, I'm
really lucky. I really do like making videos, always have done.
And I get to spend my day in the way
(23:45):
that I want. Where if I remained in my day
job that I had in sort of two thousand up
until twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, I wouldn't have had the
luxury of that time. So I can be making a
video for sure, and you know, spending time I'm on
dividing up into content, doing all the admin behind all
the videos. But I can also sit with my guitar
(24:06):
on my lap, Whereas when I was in a day
job at nine to five, I didn't have that luxury
that I could just sort of take a break, write
a song and then get back to it. So I
now get more hours to be a better musician and improve.
And although I definitely showed a spark with music, but
I also wasn't very good for a very very very
long time. Like I think I even have a progress
(24:28):
video where it just shows you, like how out of
tune I was singing. So when people are like, well
I can't sing in tune now, I'm like, well, yeah,
it takes twenty years of practice. Yeah really so if
you're not willing to do it, Just like with any
any fields, it is a lot. But you know, going
back to how it used to be, it used to
(24:49):
be down to luck, and a lot of people were
not lucky. A lot of people were not signed, or
even if you were signed, yeah, the right place, right
time thing. It now is the right place and right
time for you to make your own career. But it
doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make it in front
of millions of people. You're not going to be Taylor Swift,
(25:10):
there's only one. But instead there's a sort of like
middle class of musicians where you can focus on building
a very small audience so you only have to cater
to a niche and you can make a pretty healthy living.
And that's just where I'm like, if you're a musician
in this day and age, do you want to be
doing it for the rest of your life? If so,
(25:31):
here is a pathway that is way more likely to
be successful than the traditional way.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
And that brings us to what you do a modern
day musician. You are who's tried to do it their way,
but you started figuring out how to navigate an incredibly
challenging music industry. Now that's a mondumental feed in the
sound right to do it successfully.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
But you, you, Mary, You, here's what you do.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
You choose to share, well, basically give away you're hard
earned do it yourself knowledge to any and all via
your highly successful YouTube account.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
And by the way, she has eighty eight.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Million views and what do we have five to six Yeah,
we're just hoping to coast on some of your fumes,
we're coming here, and of course your twenty first Century
Musicians newsletter. What was do you remember that the moment
in time when you decided I'm going to share this,
(26:35):
I'm going to share my again hard earned knowledge of
how to navigate through do it yourself music industry career.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
Well, I kept seeing other artists who were infamously penniless,
like photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, they were all and musicians too,
But I hadn't sort of found the music YouTube world
just yet. Sort of twenty fifteen, Casey Nistat was uploading
his daily vlogs, and YouTube just looked like this weirdly creative,
(27:08):
super intense because it was daily content platform where people
were building their own businesses within their field. So you
didn't have to worry about the wider music industry, right,
you could just build your own music business and so,
you know, just having the control. I was like, oh,
that seems really intriguing. So I even remember speaking to
(27:29):
my father about it, being like, I'm gonna maybe take
a break from gigging and I'm going to concentrate on YouTube.
And he was so nervous for me. He was like,
you spent so long building up these sort of cover
gigs doing weddings, you know, because even that it's not
a quick fix. It takes years to sort of get
known within those circles and then get the gigs and
(27:50):
of course build the websites that you have to have
and the repertoire that you have to have for a
four hour cover set as well. It was quite hardcore,
but I just said to him, I was like, I've
got this. I've got nothing to lose, essentially, so why
not just give it a go? And very quickly now
I look back at it, I was invited on to
(28:13):
a guitar shop channel called Anderton's and they just treated
me like a musician. I wasn't just I don't know
a person that played guitar. I was like, they were like,
we love your music, play electric for us. What are
you playing? How did you get into this? And it
was the very start of just weirdly being taken seriously.
(28:34):
I couldn't I couldn't quite get over it. And then
some collaborations came out from just me uploading every week
on YouTube, and I was just willing to be honest,
and I think maybe maybe all you know creative industries
could do with a little more honesty and transparency.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
True.
Speaker 6 (28:56):
True, And you know it's still racking now, but I
think by helping with original music, you're sort of bearing
your soul on stage anyway. So it's not that hard
to be able to talk about something that I know
is affecting other musicians, or even just general creativity problems
(29:17):
or you know, just I don't know, also just intriguing
histories and stuff that maybe isn't being taught in schools
now because of defunding music education all over the place.
So it all just kind of it didn't happen all
at once. You know, you can see the progression of
like the style of content. I used to just switch
(29:38):
on a camera completely unprepared, and now I've had to
level up because of, you know, essentially the competition on YouTube.
Like we're all we've all been doing it a long
time now, and you know, you want to be more polished.
And I've learned so much from you know, why would
you have a table read for a script in TV?
(29:59):
Because it's preparation and you desperately need it. Well, I
have table reads for my YouTube videos now, so in
front of my team, so you know, it's all those
sorts of things where you're like, Okay, this is actually
how to build a business. This is all the stuff
we have to do. This is the way to make
it more natural and fluid on camera, also save time
elsewhere and be way more efficient to be able to
(30:20):
keep up with that sort of kind of constant weekly turnover.
You know, we don't really get the season breaks on YouTube,
which one day I kind of hope they'll just force
us to have. But yeah, it was definitely this like
decision I made, and I knew I had to talk
(30:42):
on YouTube and be a bit more of a YouTube
personality as opposed to just playing songs every week, because
that hadn't worked for me beforehand. So I had to
sort of show a little bit more about who I
was in my background and my interests.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
We talked earlier about before you came on about mentors.
To be a mentor, you you have to be trusted,
you have to be to whoever you're mentoring, transparent, you
have to be honest, and you have to be interesting
and you are all of that all joking aside. You
talk to me what I'm watching. I know some radio
(31:23):
DJs that that I could listen to on the radio
and they were talking to me. You have that quality,
and I just think you fell for your for your
newsletter just just immediately, and and your YouTube videos just
just immediately.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
And I trust you and I learned so much.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
As I said, that's the key word that you used
is honesty, right, That authenticity absolutely makes its way online
to to all of your followers, including us. And then
in the middle of all of this, Mary doing all
these videos, creating all of this content, in hiring all
of these people, you also somehow just managed last month
(32:04):
to drop an incredible new album which is called Super
Sexy Heartbreak. We absolutely love the songs, by the way,
I can't stop listening in particular.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Two, you can have Chicago back.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I have a love affair with Chicago, but also like
what Chicago represents metaphorically. I feel like we've all got
that kind of a Chicago in our lives.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
But like, there's so much great music.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
It's just a beautiful, personal, really powerful album that I
know you're about to go on tour across the UK
to support, I think in late September early October. But
if I may, if we may, there is there anything
from this incredible new album super sexy heartbreak that you
(32:49):
might perhaps be willing to play for us today on
be good humans.
Speaker 6 (32:52):
Well, suddenly enough, I have a guitar.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yes, Oh really, you have a guitar near you?
Speaker 6 (32:59):
Yes, I have a guitar in me. How shocking.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
She's reaching for the guitar.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
This is for the guitar.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
This is a watershed moment. Can't wait?
Speaker 6 (33:09):
Do you want to gear ahead over over this guitar first?
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Oh? Yeah, tell us anything.
Speaker 6 (33:14):
This is like my pride and joy. So I've been
playing an twenty eight by Martin, and like I've always
loved and coveted Martin, especially like their history and then
also the players that have signature models, and well, I
got the opportunity to go to the factory and then
they were like, we're going to build you a custom instrument,
(33:36):
and so I collected this in December and so this
is my custom.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Forty t to your measurements and all that. How do
you customize the guitar other than the appearance the Mary
Spender guitar?
Speaker 6 (33:47):
Well, I mean, so the shape is is the OM shape,
So that's kind of fixed, right, what you know, just
the feeling of it is very similar to my twenty eight.
But I got to pick the woods. So the spruce
top with bear claw.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
On it beautiful.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
Yeah, it's kind of crazy. It literally just looks like
a bare house.
Speaker 5 (34:12):
Everyone just listening and not watching this on YouTube. Everyone
listening there, Sorry, but we're sounding like we're at a
firework show exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Mary, Mary does? Does she have a name?
Speaker 6 (34:26):
I don't name my instruments.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Okay, okay, good. Brian's a good name for a guitar.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
I've never I know. I was actually reading about bb
King and how he louse seal and it's like this
crazy story I can't wait to make this video that
I've got in the works, and I was like, oh wow, okay,
but there is a bit of a quote that I
can't wait to make a joke about about what it
feels to have a guitar on your lap. You can
(34:52):
use your imagination, but anyway, it's got my signature.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Across the fretboard. Look at that is this signature in pearl?
Speaker 6 (35:00):
Yeah, and it's crazy delicate. And then basically they surprised
me with so I've got a bicycle tattoo because I
like bikes, and so they put a bicycle there. It
is over the headstock.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
The back at the headstock, there's a bicycle.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Wow, this is a special instrument, and this is a
very special moment for Oh look at that. Oh beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful finish.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Very special moment for both of us.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yeah, for both of us, no question. We're going to
shut the hell up now and let you play. What
is it you're going to be playing for the new album.
Speaker 6 (35:30):
It's a song called Getaway Son, and I hope I
do this guitar justice now after that, big fan, fa.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Take every line, spin away with every excuse, all the tears.
She wept across every road. Which way now? Run for
the stands, catch us out of town, find a way out.
(36:24):
It's word you say to me over the wind to
sun oh in the sky, sat on the.
Speaker 7 (36:37):
Beach, three weeks feels chee get away sun, getaway.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Son, give me cover to run. Now it's night. I'm
on my way, Bedley hen I the North Star craved.
My forehead's cold stuck on glass, reflecting missing faces passengers
(37:16):
up front. We're all on the run. Run It's what
do you say to me? Oh in to Sun row
in the sky, sat.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
On the beach, three weeks feels cheap.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Get Away Sun, get Away Sun, give me cover to run.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
Run run.
Speaker 8 (37:58):
D run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Run run slow down, slow down. Brainer. Can't stop blaming, retreating, shaming,
must get off sun keeps beating, pouring, sinking, never sleeping
(38:48):
on the run. Mm hmmm, that's what you said to
me overlin Son, Oh in the.
Speaker 9 (39:03):
Sky, Sat on the Bead three weeks Phil's cheap get
Away Son, get Away Sun, give me cover.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
To Okay, I got lost in that song.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Oh my god, that is such a gift.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
You are such a gift, Mary Spender, thank you so
much for that. That again, Getaway Son from Super Sexy
Heartbreak your latest album, Mary. If people want to follow
you and or subscribe to your newsletter twenty first Century Musician,
here's some of these amazing songs. Find out your latest
tour dates, not to mention, watch and learn like we
(39:56):
do from all of your inspiring videos. What's the best
way for them to do that?
Speaker 6 (40:00):
If you just type in to google Maryspender dot com,
then that's kind of like the home base, where you
will find a link to the YouTube channel, a link
to the twenty first session at Century Musician newsletter, My
tour dates too, if you do happen to be in
the UK late September early October. But yeah, I'm always
posting something on Instagram or you know, now I'm broaching
(40:22):
into the world of TikTok as well, so yeah, you
know here there everywhere on YouTube of course.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Okay, credible, Well, Maryspender dot com. We're definitely going to
also post a link on the Be Good Humans podcast website.
Speaker 5 (40:35):
And Mary, listen, believe me when I say, We've never
asked this in the months we've done this podcast, but
we would love because I've got millions of other questions
I prepared my for this incredible interview, and I've got
millions of other things to.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Talk about with you and ask you about.
Speaker 5 (40:55):
So if you could come back some other time, we
would adore that.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Okay, we got that tape exactly, have it on so
she said absolutely yes.
Speaker 6 (41:08):
On the contract.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Now, well, thank you again so much, Mary for being
such a good musician and such a good human.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
We really appreciate your time and for seeing that song
for us.
Speaker 6 (41:20):
Thanks to you guys as well for making this space
for people to come on and actually, you know, talk
about what they do and also be so enthused by it,
and I love how curious you both are. And yeah,
I just you know, sending love right back your way.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
Please come back, we have it on tape.
Speaker 5 (41:48):
We will take you suck welcome back. In sitting here,
just trying to think of.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
How to express.
Speaker 5 (41:58):
What a wonderful person she wasn't and how beautiful that
song was. Oh my god, but I can't find the words.
That just doesn't sound like you know, your average run
of the male fan.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
It's but let's just.
Speaker 5 (42:09):
Be that because she deserves it absolutely, And I wanted
to share something with you because I was going to
ask her about this and when she come not.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
If, yeah, when when when she comes back she comes
back to be a guest.
Speaker 5 (42:19):
Another time, in a video that she put out recently,
she said something that truly resonated with me, truly resonated,
and I wanted to run it by here and we
will when we talk to her next, and I wanted
her to expand on it. But for some reason it
just touched me and resonated with me. She said, how
(42:41):
does a creative stay creative by pushing their own boundaries
and remembering how it used to be? Which is a
song lyric in itself, and she just throwing that out
in conversationally.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
But those are the kinds of pearls of wisdom she
routinely drops on her YouTube channels. So please check it
out again Maryspender dot com. We are going to drop
that link on the Be Good Humans website. Go to
the Be Good Human's website. If you would, please tell
us about the good humans in your lives, give us
some pointers on how to be a good human. Follow
us on the socials, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all of that stuff,
(43:16):
and also come check us out and subscribe on Patreon
where we've got some exclusive content waiting for you. I'm
on a high, I told her already, like that's it
doesn't get better than that.
Speaker 5 (43:25):
I've heard practically everything she's done in her videos on YouTube.
But I'm going to get this album and go deep
into it. Yeah absolutely, I've heard some songs, but I'm
going to go deep into It's going to be on
my new stereo.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yeah, well, you will love it. Meanwhile, thank you for
joining us once again. Uh and as always, we encourage
you openly and passionately too.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Should we sing it, we can't.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
I'm not going to follow that at there's no way
good good ideah.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Be good Humans. Bye bye Good Humans.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Good Humans.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
Be good humans, or we will thank you suck.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Be Good Humans is executive produced by Brian Phelps, Trey Calloway,
and Grant Anderson, with associate producers Sean Fitzgerald and Clementine
Callaway and partnership with straw Hut Media.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Please like, follow, and subscribe, and remember be good humans.
I've been washed down the sync of your conscience in
the theater of love. I lost my part. You say
you've got me out of your conscience. I've been flushed
from the bathroom of your heart.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Speak good humans, Be good humans, Be good humans, or we.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Will think you sucked. Thy good, Thank god, uven, or
we will thank you suck. Welcome back to the Be
Good Humans podcast. Everyone's so nice of you to join us.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Indeed, thank you for clicking like and subscribe, and if
you're watching us on YouTube, of course, appreciate your kind
ratings and reviews on all the podcast platforms as well.
So Brian, Yeah, Tray, I was at this industry event
last night. Oh, this was an event that was filled
with super talented, ambitious, up and coming new writers, and
(01:12):
a couple of important things happened.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
You lost your virginity, No, no, thanks for taking my
head there.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
No.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
The first of two things that happened was that I
felt like the oldest person in this room. Oh really, Yeah,
it's just one of those things that happens every once
in a while.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Would it'd be because you were Yeah, quite possibly that.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
But the second thing that happened to me as the
evening went on, I found myself kind of more and
more surrounded by these young writers who were asking for
more and more advice.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Sure, and.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I felt, if only briefly, because God knows, I don't
feel this way very often or anywhere else, I felt like, Wow,
I actually might have some wisdom to offer here.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, you're a professor at USCA, but I don't know
you moonlight doing that.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah, but I sort of see for twenty years, right, yes,
but I sort of see everyone as their own expert
of their own lives, and so I'm always like wow.
But in this particular case, I felt like, wow, I
actually have a mentor role to play here.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
So then that I was like, all right, then this
is what I want to talk to Brian about. I
want to talk about mentors. Yeah, and I want to
talk about these people who come into our lives outside
of our family, outside of our friends, often through professional
circumstances or whatever, but like people who just inspire us
and uplift us in different ways. And I've got to
believe you have people like that in your life.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Well, I'm lucky, fortunate, blessed, however you want to put
it enough to be able to truly say. I have
many mentors, and I'll just pick one to tell you
a quick story. It's a lot longer than the way
I'm going to tell it, but I just am so
excited about our guest today I don't want to take
(02:58):
any time away from her with you, So I'll say
this quick. Do you remember the real Men of Genius
bud light commercial campaign?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Oh? Yeah, okay, real men? Right? Hey, missed a guy
who wears a two pay you know.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
And then it's the well it all started. I was
finishing college in Chicago and doing my comedy group waiting
on tables, and as an elective I took because A
it sounded kind of interesting, and b because well, mainly
because it sounded easy, I took a radio class.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
So one of the assignments of this radio class was
to call your favorite radio station in Chicago and get
any department on the phone and do an interview.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
You picked it, You got a cold column, and you
gotta like, oh wow. Okay, So I called.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
The receptionist answers Q one O one in Chicago, which
I listened to every morning because of the morning show
Murphy in the Morning. Okay, and he had a guy
come in and do all these character voices.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
It was just right up my butt, of course, just
just loved it.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
Of course, so I explained everything to the receptionists and
she goes, hmmm, how about the traffic department, Like I'm
a car guy. Uh yeah, I didn't know. Maybe I
was going to be talking to you like a helicopter
pilot or something.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So it's very nice.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Lady gets on the phone and she explains to me
what traffic is our radio terms, and I start interviewing her,
and during the interview, believe it or not, I got
her giggling.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I got her left. I believe this.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
So as we're wrapping up the interview, she said, Brian,
have you ever considered being an intern? And, like I said,
I was doing comedy and waiting on tables and have
the and I go, no, I haven't.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He goes well, she.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
Goes, well, we got a guy here. He's our productions director,
the creative director, and he does voices.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
On the Murphy at Morning Murphy in the Morning Show.
And I went, wait, what does he do that character?
Does he do this character?
Speaker 5 (04:59):
He goes yeah, that's I go, oh my god, I'm
not such a fan of his, so good, and she goes,
why don't you come in tomorrow and have us sit
down with Peter Stacker.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Oh wow, the great Peter Stacker.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
And I'd never heard of him, although I was a fan.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Just because of the voices he was. Yeah, of course
he is the voice of the real men of genius.
Deep that deep voice.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
He also went on to do the voice of Captain
Jacob Keys in the amazing Halo video games.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Oh wow, yeah, exactly, big moneymaker.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
So my internship is wrapping up, and so he got
on the phone with one of the radio stations that
he did the sounders for the maul. That's WAPI, one
thousand watt blowtorch, that kind of thing, And it was
just Birmingham station, and he got on the phone with him.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And I didn't ask him to do this. It was
a complete surprise.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
I just happened to be in his office when he's
making the call, and he was like, he's this, he
does voices, he writes comedy, he's this and this. However,
he knows nothing about radio. So put him together with
a two radio guy and you've got a good morning show.
How one week later, they flew me down, gave me
the job. I was supposed to originally work for a
guy named Mark o' O'Brien, Mark Mark, Mike Mike O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
He had to.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
Drop out because his wife didn't want to leave Saint Louis,
and so they they put me together with Mark and
and so I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be on
the all those years on the radio without that mentor
of mine, Peter Stecker. I something happened there. Yeah, what
it is, I ain't exactly clear, but I got to
tell you. I became his apprentice and he became my mentor,
(06:38):
right and it was serious.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
We were inseparable. We loved writing together.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I can remember the first commercial, uh that we were
writing and I said, you know, it'd be better if
you say that's the way to do it. And uh
so we recorded it that day and I'm driving to
work two days later and I hear my the that's
my the And I ended up doing a lot of
voices on Murphy in the morning show. He'd paid me
(07:03):
seventy five dollars to come in in the morning and
do to do a voice.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
We see, this is what's so critical in these great
mentor stories or in these relationships, because yeah, to a
certain extent, he's passing a torch to you, but you
are also lighting his creative flame in different ways, right.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
I'd like to think so. But yeah, for a mentor,
and again I'm lucky enough to say I've had many,
there has to be a trust. Yeah, you know, he
trusted me and I trusted him. Yeah, and we got
so very very close, and I'm so thankful that I
was lucky enough to have him in my life.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Well, honestly, I'm thankful too, because if you hadn't met him,
you and I wouldn't be sitting here, right, That's true.
So that's amazing. I mean, these mentors are incredible. What
about I had a few, William Kelly, the Oscar winning
writer of the movie Witness, Don Stewart, who was the
Oscar winning writer of Missing with Jack Lemon and Sissy
space Ac. Those two writers helped me be a better writer.
(07:58):
My first agent was a guy named Ron Mardigian, who
was not only my first and one of my greatest agents,
but taught me how to be my own best representative.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So that was very very key.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
And again it goes back not only to trust, but
you have to like each other, yes, like you have
to massively respect whatever.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
That mentor of yours is mentoring you.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
No matter how much distance there may be in terms
of your experience, there is still a complete overlap in
terms of friendship and that mutual respect and all of
that carries. Because Ron was not only my first agent,
but then he is the reason I wind up teaching
at USC and definitely through as you said, almost this
will be my twentieth year of teaching there, I have
learned over time how important it is to have as
(08:42):
much as possible a direct hand in the training of
your replacements, right, especially when the business is changing so
radically in so many different ways. And I think I
told you this before. I don't know if it was
on the show, but my father always had this opinion,
this saying.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
He would say, always if you're hiring someone, always hire
someone that can replace you.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Oh yeah, definitely, that's that is he was dead on
correct there, because and especially like I said, when things
are kind of unstable. I mean, God knows, the radio
business certainly isn't the same as it used to be.
That's that business has totally changed. We probably wouldn't be
sitting here doing a podcast in the first place. But
the entertainment industry at large has changed, has has been
(09:25):
is going through this hugely seismic period of upheaval we're
talking about, I mean, between a global pandemic and a
couple is necessary, but very long and trust me, very
painful labor strikes, paired with all kinds of corporate and
studio contraction, with big tech coming in and streaming, and
(09:46):
now we have AI sort of looming over our our shoulders.
I'm not sure honestly, Hollywood or the entertainment industry has
ever felt quite so uninhabitable for the very artists that
that built it. We're talking about writers and directors and
actors and creatives of all kinds, including musicians.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Well, but music industry and music industry has changed incredibly
changed as well.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Right, But here's the thing, Brian. Makers got to make
and creators got to create. So when we come back,
we're not only going to meet a maker and a creator,
but a true artist and someone who is not only
in her particular case making and creating amazing music, but
(10:35):
in the way that makes for the very best.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Mentors in our lives. She is also lighting the way
for all kinds of other artists, even questionably old knuckleheads
like us at what often feels like a very dark time.
So please don't go anywhere. We're going to be right back.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Come a bigger.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
We will take you suck.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Welcome back, everyone.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
We are extremely excited to talk to our next guest.
She isn't only an incredibly talented musician singer, songwriter, Oh no, no, no,
no no no, she wears many other hats, my friend,
including video creator, mentor, documentarian, influencer, and gearhead, just to
(11:41):
name a few. We welcome in, ladies and gentlemen, the
marvelous Mary Spender.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Welcome Mary.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
Oh Hello, hello, hello, hello, Thanks for having me, guys.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
Before we get into the real reason why we're so
excited to chat with you, I got to know about
the gearhead thing. I fancy myself was a bit of
a gearhead. So what's going on there?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
What do you like? What do you what do you
tell me about that?
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Oh? I mean it's it's It's a rabbit hole, isn't it.
I've been fascinated with guitar since I was about twelve
years old and coveted my friend's red Strat that was
a squire you know, and he had it in the
locker room's at school, and I was just like, oh
my god, what is this glorious thing? And then, to
be honest, my main gearhead, which I think is so nuanced,
(12:27):
while other people were putting i don't know, like magazine
cuttings of famous actresses or actors or you know, hunky
so and so I was putting Fender p basses on
my school diary. I was cutting out from guitar magazines.
It was so nerdy. I was spending every Saturday in
(12:48):
my guitar shop, where I'm actually still friends with the
guy that sold me my first guitar, but I bought
one guitar in every seven years, you know, So like
every Saturday, I was just in there, and I didn't
really know anything until maybe I was sort of twenty
four to twenty five, so maybe a decade ago, and
(13:08):
then just started asking questions and like not being afraid
of being a beginner. Yeah, And I mean that translated
over into YouTube. When I started making all the YouTube videos.
I would just I suddenly wasn't afraid to be like,
I think this sounds cool, but I don't really fully
know why. So tell me in the comments, and then
just from there it just sort of like spiraled out
(13:30):
of control. And now I have I mean, I'm very
very proud of like the guitars I own. I actually
just received a new amplifier which.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I'm exciting, so stoked about.
Speaker 6 (13:43):
And yeah, it's just sort of sparrowed out of control.
And yeah, I mean, I don't think it's going to
go anywhere anytime soon. But it's an expensive hobby, That's
what I'll say.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Well, look, I mean to it to put it broadly.
In addition to all of the gear which we salivate over,
what's probably most exciting about you, Mary, at least as
one of your fans, is the way you sort of
promote this DIY mentality to independently how to write and
record and release music. And you are just incredibly generous
(14:19):
in sharing not just all of this cool gear, but
all of this amazing knowledge that you have gathered to
what has now become a massive online following.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Look, it's a huge perk of doing this show is
that every week we get to meet people from all
over the world, every walk of life, and some of
them I'm more interested than others, honestly, but they've all
done remarkable things for other people. And so here I
am researching you, looking watching all your videos and just
(14:48):
falling in love with what you're doing and why you're
doing it. Not to mention pretty easy on the eyes, but.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I really am. It's not.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
It's not just Hey, here's my uh you know, here's
my website, here's my YouTube account. It's different every time
you can either you could sit there with a guitar
in front of you and not play it and just talk,
just talk, And I learn so much, Mary, I adore it.
Speaker 6 (15:19):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, my god, your your compliments
will get you everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Well, so then that'll do it for the show. I
got to go to England real quick. What's that flight?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Let me while while he's booking his plans, let me
ask you this, Mary, What I mean, what made you
aside from that red strat that you once coveted, Like,
what what made you first want to be a musician?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
And who were some of your first musical influences.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (15:44):
I mean, I was really really lucky that my grandmother
noticed that when I was a baby.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I was singing as a baby.
Speaker 6 (15:54):
Yeah, like literally is like a I think I was
like a two year old in a cat asleep one time,
and my grandmother was visiting from Australia, so she didn't
she didn't really get to spend much time with me,
so she was sort of a bit more concentrated on
me than maybe my mother was. Right, my mother has
told me this story, So I think my mom was
somewhere probably just resting or just you know, two year
(16:14):
old around and my brother was five, and she just
heard me singing arpeggios, and my grandmother like, you know,
may she rest in peace. She just said to my mum.
She was like, that child is musical. And my mother
is very like her ear is amazing, and she loves
music and she educates me all the time. But she
(16:35):
wasn't trained as a musician, nor was my father, okay,
and they just sort of nurtured it. They were really
open to letting me have music lessons. And I joined
like a community Saturday morning school called Salisbury Area Young
Musicians at the age of six. I was six years old,
so I was singing in a choir. I then got
(16:56):
singing individual lessons. So talking about mentors, like my music
teachers were just incredible. It had a singing teacher called Petra,
a piano teacher called Jill, and they genuinely changed my life.
And they were almost like they were therapists up until
I was a teenager. Then I had an amazing viola
(17:18):
teacher called Gay Gullingford and she, I mean sometimes I
barely even played viola in those lessons. I just was
just constantly motivated when they were just like you seem tired,
you seem overworked, maybe at school because I was doing
a lot of extracurricular music, but yeah, from the age
of six, I was obsessed. And then all the classical
(17:41):
music started taking its toll a little bit and I
found it quite restrictive. So I stole my brother's guitar
when I was about eleven or twelve, and he'd sort
of given up on that journey of and I'm really
glad he did, and I think he's glad he did
as well, because then I just started. It was like
a Spanish guitar, and I think it was missing a.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
String, nylon strings, nylon.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Strings, chunky fretboard, yes, and all I was figuring out,
and I remember it so well. I was figuring out
like the James Bond theme tune on like the lower string, yeah, exactly.
So from then on I was hooked. Boys at school
were given, you know, electric guitars. I had to save
up because my parents were like, you're already not practicing
(18:27):
your other instruments enough, can you please just if you're
going to do it, like, why not teach yourself? And
so I did, and I was learning song you know,
I was learning all the stuff that I wouldn't have
learned anyway. So it was the best therapy. And I
remember doing this one show with three of my best
friends at school. We were twelve years maybe we're thirteen
(18:48):
years old, and I remember coming home. It was like
a lunchtime concert, which is so rock and roll. We
played four songs, four covers, and I came back from
that and I was hooked on the edge renolin of
playing to a live audience. And I just remember walking
back into my parents' kitchen and being like, well, that's it,
that's all I want to do.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
And I was thirteen and I just knew. And then
I started writing my own songs at fifteen. Again, just
a few people along the way just gave me a
lot of courage. I met a singer songwriter called Narena Pallo,
who she never blew up massively, but she was pretty
successful in the UK in sort of two thousand and four,
(19:31):
two thousand and five, and we went to a Suzanne
Vega concert where she was supporting, and so we got
to meet her in the interval and she was signing
a CD for me and my mother just literally, you
know when you just grab a child by their shoulders
and just like move them right because they're just too
shy to move themselves. She did that to me, and
she just plucked me in front of Narena, and Narena
(19:54):
was just so patient and kind. She was like, so,
I hear you're a singer. I hear you're playing guitar
and I was like yeah. She was like, do you
write songs? And I was like, not yet, you should
go for it. It's really amazing. So I went home
that evening and I wrote my first song and do.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You still play that sometimes?
Speaker 4 (20:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (20:14):
It's a song called She and it's actually not bad.
I mean, yeah, it's evolved, right, it's evolved over the
time as well, but yeah, it became like the first
acoustic track on an acoustic project I did called Songbook.
So the first song on that Songbook Volume one is
she So that's the first song I ever wrote, and
then you know, eighteen songs in total on that project.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
I know you're dying to know the first song I wrote.
Oh yeah, I was seven, okay, and I wrote it
in the bathtub.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
My brother and I used to take baths together, not intentionally,
but they made us. My little brother and I wrote
one night when I came home, yeah yeah, two three four,
One night when I came home, Yeah yeah, two three four.
I hugged you when I kissed you, I really really
missed you. When day when I came home, yeah yeah,
(21:04):
two three four. That was seven years old, six, seven
years old.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I wrote that, thank you for joining us, Mary.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
That is a hit. Yes, you should re release that.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
You really should hit up. Uh no, we will not
re absolutely so Mary, Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
So you've got all these incredible musical influences and this
natural talent that's starting to evolve your coming of age
as an artist. But at a time also when the
music industry is changing. I guess it's always changing, but
particularly when you were sort of launching this career, it
was there were some big shifts happening. Like we were talking
about earlier in the show. So, how can you speak
(21:41):
a little bit to how today's music scene is kind
of different for musicians? What what are the other kinds
of skills that you need beyond the viola and the
guitar and the singing and the songwriting and all that
stuff to possess besides just having good chops on those instruments.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
Because you wanted to make a record in the fifties,
sixty seventies, in an eighties, yeah, you know, you get signed,
hopefully by a record label. Of the promotion, you didn't
have to do it yourself. It wasn't self promoting. What
was no social media.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
What it usually.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
Consisted of a record representative going to a radio station
with a forty five of this new artist and a
bag a dime bag of blow.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I'm serious. Absolutely, Payola was huge.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, uh huh yeah, or stereo equipment or
in some cases a car play this record. Here's your gift, right,
and they sense outlawed that before I got into radio. Unfortunately,
that would have been cool, Paola, that'd be awesome, but
I never got to experience that. But so that's how
But now it's changed in so many ways. You have
(22:48):
to self promote, and there's a labyrinth of things you
have to navigate to do it yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Can we talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
Well, I'll preface it by being like I was as
successful in that sort of traditional industry even in the
two thousands twenty tens, so I'm an optimist about now.
And yes, you do have to work really, really hard,
but who doesn't have to work hard? And I mean,
what a luxury to be working hard in music and video.
(23:20):
So yes, it's a lot that you also have to
navigate when you also have to just be quite good.
You can't be a crappy musician and expect to succeed.
But all the other stuff. I always think about it
now when I'm asked this sort of question about like, well,
do you really like making videos, I'm like, well, I'm
really lucky. I really do like making videos, always have done.
And I get to spend my day in the way
(23:45):
that I want. Where if I remained in my day
job that I had in sort of two thousand up
until twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, I wouldn't have had the
luxury of that time. So I can be making a
video for sure, and you know, spending time I'm on
dividing up into content, doing all the admin behind all
the videos. But I can also sit with my guitar
(24:06):
on my lap, Whereas when I was in a day
job at nine to five, I didn't have that luxury
that I could just sort of take a break, write
a song and then get back to it. So I
now get more hours to be a better musician and improve.
And although I definitely showed a spark with music, but
I also wasn't very good for a very very very
long time. Like I think I even have a progress
(24:28):
video where it just shows you, like how out of
tune I was singing. So when people are like, well
I can't sing in tune now, I'm like, well, yeah,
it takes twenty years of practice. Yeah really so if
you're not willing to do it, Just like with any
any fields, it is a lot. But you know, going
back to how it used to be, it used to
(24:49):
be down to luck, and a lot of people were
not lucky. A lot of people were not signed, or
even if you were signed, yeah, the right place, right
time thing. It now is the right place and right
time for you to make your own career. But it
doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make it in front
of millions of people. You're not going to be Taylor Swift,
(25:10):
there's only one. But instead there's a sort of like
middle class of musicians where you can focus on building
a very small audience so you only have to cater
to a niche and you can make a pretty healthy living.
And that's just where I'm like, if you're a musician
in this day and age, do you want to be
doing it for the rest of your life? If so,
(25:31):
here is a pathway that is way more likely to
be successful than the traditional way.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
And that brings us to what you do a modern
day musician. You are who's tried to do it their way,
but you started figuring out how to navigate an incredibly
challenging music industry. Now that's a mondumental feed in the
sound right to do it successfully.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
But you, you, Mary, You, here's what you do.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
You choose to share, well, basically give away you're hard
earned do it yourself knowledge to any and all via
your highly successful YouTube account.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
And by the way, she has eighty eight.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Million views and what do we have five to six Yeah,
we're just hoping to coast on some of your fumes,
we're coming here, and of course your twenty first Century
Musicians newsletter. What was do you remember that the moment
in time when you decided I'm going to share this,
(26:35):
I'm going to share my again hard earned knowledge of
how to navigate through do it yourself music industry career.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
Well, I kept seeing other artists who were infamously penniless,
like photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, they were all and musicians too,
But I hadn't sort of found the music YouTube world
just yet. Sort of twenty fifteen, Casey Nistat was uploading
his daily vlogs, and YouTube just looked like this weirdly creative,
(27:08):
super intense because it was daily content platform where people
were building their own businesses within their field. So you
didn't have to worry about the wider music industry, right,
you could just build your own music business and so,
you know, just having the control. I was like, oh,
that seems really intriguing. So I even remember speaking to
(27:29):
my father about it, being like, I'm gonna maybe take
a break from gigging and I'm going to concentrate on YouTube.
And he was so nervous for me. He was like,
you spent so long building up these sort of cover
gigs doing weddings, you know, because even that it's not
a quick fix. It takes years to sort of get
known within those circles and then get the gigs and
(27:50):
of course build the websites that you have to have
and the repertoire that you have to have for a
four hour cover set as well. It was quite hardcore,
but I just said to him, I was like, I've
got this. I've got nothing to lose, essentially, so why
not just give it a go? And very quickly now
I look back at it, I was invited on to
(28:13):
a guitar shop channel called Anderton's and they just treated
me like a musician. I wasn't just I don't know
a person that played guitar. I was like, they were like,
we love your music, play electric for us. What are
you playing? How did you get into this? And it
was the very start of just weirdly being taken seriously.
(28:34):
I couldn't I couldn't quite get over it. And then
some collaborations came out from just me uploading every week
on YouTube, and I was just willing to be honest,
and I think maybe maybe all you know creative industries
could do with a little more honesty and transparency.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
True.
Speaker 6 (28:56):
True, And you know it's still racking now, but I
think by helping with original music, you're sort of bearing
your soul on stage anyway. So it's not that hard
to be able to talk about something that I know
is affecting other musicians, or even just general creativity problems
(29:17):
or you know, just I don't know, also just intriguing
histories and stuff that maybe isn't being taught in schools
now because of defunding music education all over the place.
So it all just kind of it didn't happen all
at once. You know, you can see the progression of
like the style of content. I used to just switch
(29:38):
on a camera completely unprepared, and now I've had to
level up because of, you know, essentially the competition on YouTube.
Like we're all we've all been doing it a long
time now, and you know, you want to be more polished.
And I've learned so much from you know, why would
you have a table read for a script in TV?
(29:59):
Because it's preparation and you desperately need it. Well, I
have table reads for my YouTube videos now, so in
front of my team, so you know, it's all those
sorts of things where you're like, Okay, this is actually
how to build a business. This is all the stuff
we have to do. This is the way to make
it more natural and fluid on camera, also save time
elsewhere and be way more efficient to be able to
(30:20):
keep up with that sort of kind of constant weekly turnover.
You know, we don't really get the season breaks on YouTube,
which one day I kind of hope they'll just force
us to have. But yeah, it was definitely this like
decision I made, and I knew I had to talk
(30:42):
on YouTube and be a bit more of a YouTube
personality as opposed to just playing songs every week, because
that hadn't worked for me beforehand. So I had to
sort of show a little bit more about who I
was in my background and my interests.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
We talked earlier about before you came on about mentors.
To be a mentor, you you have to be trusted,
you have to be to whoever you're mentoring, transparent, you
have to be honest, and you have to be interesting
and you are all of that all joking aside. You
talk to me what I'm watching. I know some radio
(31:23):
DJs that that I could listen to on the radio
and they were talking to me. You have that quality,
and I just think you fell for your for your
newsletter just just immediately, and and your YouTube videos just
just immediately.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
And I trust you and I learned so much.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
As I said, that's the key word that you used
is honesty, right, That authenticity absolutely makes its way online
to to all of your followers, including us. And then
in the middle of all of this, Mary doing all
these videos, creating all of this content, in hiring all
of these people, you also somehow just managed last month
(32:04):
to drop an incredible new album which is called Super
Sexy Heartbreak. We absolutely love the songs, by the way,
I can't stop listening in particular.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Two, you can have Chicago back.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I have a love affair with Chicago, but also like
what Chicago represents metaphorically. I feel like we've all got
that kind of a Chicago in our lives.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
But like, there's so much great music.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
It's just a beautiful, personal, really powerful album that I
know you're about to go on tour across the UK
to support, I think in late September early October. But
if I may, if we may, there is there anything
from this incredible new album super sexy heartbreak that you
(32:49):
might perhaps be willing to play for us today on
be good humans.
Speaker 6 (32:52):
Well, suddenly enough, I have a guitar.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yes, Oh really, you have a guitar near you?
Speaker 6 (32:59):
Yes, I have a guitar in me. How shocking.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
She's reaching for the guitar.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
This is for the guitar.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
This is a watershed moment. Can't wait?
Speaker 6 (33:09):
Do you want to gear ahead over over this guitar first?
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Oh? Yeah, tell us anything.
Speaker 6 (33:14):
This is like my pride and joy. So I've been
playing an twenty eight by Martin, and like I've always
loved and coveted Martin, especially like their history and then
also the players that have signature models, and well, I
got the opportunity to go to the factory and then
they were like, we're going to build you a custom instrument,
(33:36):
and so I collected this in December and so this
is my custom.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Forty t to your measurements and all that. How do
you customize the guitar other than the appearance the Mary
Spender guitar?
Speaker 6 (33:47):
Well, I mean, so the shape is is the OM shape,
So that's kind of fixed, right, what you know, just
the feeling of it is very similar to my twenty eight.
But I got to pick the woods. So the spruce
top with bear claw.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
On it beautiful.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
Yeah, it's kind of crazy. It literally just looks like
a bare house.
Speaker 5 (34:12):
Everyone just listening and not watching this on YouTube. Everyone
listening there, Sorry, but we're sounding like we're at a
firework show exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Mary, Mary does? Does she have a name?
Speaker 6 (34:26):
I don't name my instruments.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Okay, okay, good. Brian's a good name for a guitar.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
I've never I know. I was actually reading about bb
King and how he louse seal and it's like this
crazy story I can't wait to make this video that
I've got in the works, and I was like, oh wow, okay,
but there is a bit of a quote that I
can't wait to make a joke about about what it
feels to have a guitar on your lap. You can
(34:52):
use your imagination, but anyway, it's got my signature.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Across the fretboard. Look at that is this signature in pearl?
Speaker 6 (35:00):
Yeah, and it's crazy delicate. And then basically they surprised
me with so I've got a bicycle tattoo because I
like bikes, and so they put a bicycle there. It
is over the headstock.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
The back at the headstock, there's a bicycle.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Wow, this is a special instrument, and this is a
very special moment for Oh look at that. Oh beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful finish.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Very special moment for both of us.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yeah, for both of us, no question. We're going to
shut the hell up now and let you play. What
is it you're going to be playing for the new album.
Speaker 6 (35:30):
It's a song called Getaway Son, and I hope I
do this guitar justice now after that, big fan, fa.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Take every line, spin away with every excuse, all the tears.
She wept across every road. Which way now? Run for
the stands, catch us out of town, find a way out.
(36:24):
It's word you say to me over the wind to
sun oh in the sky, sat on the.
Speaker 7 (36:37):
Beach, three weeks feels chee get away sun, getaway.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Son, give me cover to run. Now it's night. I'm
on my way, Bedley hen I the North Star craved.
My forehead's cold stuck on glass, reflecting missing faces passengers
(37:16):
up front. We're all on the run. Run It's what
do you say to me? Oh in to Sun row
in the sky, sat.
Speaker 7 (37:34):
On the beach, three weeks feels cheap.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Get Away Sun, get Away Sun, give me cover to run.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
Run run.
Speaker 8 (37:58):
D run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Run run slow down, slow down. Brainer. Can't stop blaming, retreating, shaming,
must get off sun keeps beating, pouring, sinking, never sleeping
(38:48):
on the run. Mm hmmm, that's what you said to
me overlin Son, Oh in the.
Speaker 9 (39:03):
Sky, Sat on the Bead three weeks Phil's cheap get
Away Son, get Away Sun, give me cover.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
To Okay, I got lost in that song.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Oh my god, that is such a gift.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
You are such a gift, Mary Spender, thank you so
much for that. That again, Getaway Son from Super Sexy
Heartbreak your latest album, Mary. If people want to follow
you and or subscribe to your newsletter twenty first Century Musician,
here's some of these amazing songs. Find out your latest
tour dates, not to mention, watch and learn like we
(39:56):
do from all of your inspiring videos. What's the best
way for them to do that?
Speaker 6 (40:00):
If you just type in to google Maryspender dot com,
then that's kind of like the home base, where you
will find a link to the YouTube channel, a link
to the twenty first session at Century Musician newsletter, My
tour dates too, if you do happen to be in
the UK late September early October. But yeah, I'm always
posting something on Instagram or you know, now I'm broaching
(40:22):
into the world of TikTok as well, so yeah, you
know here there everywhere on YouTube of course.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Okay, credible, Well, Maryspender dot com. We're definitely going to
also post a link on the Be Good Humans podcast website.
Speaker 5 (40:35):
And Mary, listen, believe me when I say, We've never
asked this in the months we've done this podcast, but
we would love because I've got millions of other questions
I prepared my for this incredible interview, and I've got
millions of other things to.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Talk about with you and ask you about.
Speaker 5 (40:55):
So if you could come back some other time, we
would adore that.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Okay, we got that tape exactly, have it on so
she said absolutely yes.
Speaker 6 (41:08):
On the contract.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Now, well, thank you again so much, Mary for being
such a good musician and such a good human.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
We really appreciate your time and for seeing that song
for us.
Speaker 6 (41:20):
Thanks to you guys as well for making this space
for people to come on and actually, you know, talk
about what they do and also be so enthused by it,
and I love how curious you both are. And yeah,
I just you know, sending love right back your way.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
Please come back, we have it on tape.
Speaker 5 (41:48):
We will take you suck welcome back. In sitting here,
just trying to think of.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
How to express.
Speaker 5 (41:58):
What a wonderful person she wasn't and how beautiful that
song was. Oh my god, but I can't find the words.
That just doesn't sound like you know, your average run
of the male fan.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
It's but let's just.
Speaker 5 (42:09):
Be that because she deserves it absolutely, And I wanted
to share something with you because I was going to
ask her about this and when she come not.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
If, yeah, when when when she comes back she comes
back to be a guest.
Speaker 5 (42:19):
Another time, in a video that she put out recently,
she said something that truly resonated with me, truly resonated,
and I wanted to run it by here and we
will when we talk to her next, and I wanted
her to expand on it. But for some reason it
just touched me and resonated with me. She said, how
(42:41):
does a creative stay creative by pushing their own boundaries
and remembering how it used to be? Which is a
song lyric in itself, and she just throwing that out
in conversationally.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
But those are the kinds of pearls of wisdom she
routinely drops on her YouTube channels. So please check it
out again Maryspender dot com. We are going to drop
that link on the Be Good Humans website. Go to
the Be Good Human's website. If you would, please tell
us about the good humans in your lives, give us
some pointers on how to be a good human. Follow
us on the socials, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all of that stuff,
(43:16):
and also come check us out and subscribe on Patreon
where we've got some exclusive content waiting for you. I'm
on a high, I told her already, like that's it
doesn't get better than that.
Speaker 5 (43:25):
I've heard practically everything she's done in her videos on YouTube.
But I'm going to get this album and go deep
into it. Yeah absolutely, I've heard some songs, but I'm
going to go deep into It's going to be on
my new stereo.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yeah, well, you will love it. Meanwhile, thank you for
joining us once again. Uh and as always, we encourage
you openly and passionately too.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Should we sing it, we can't.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
I'm not going to follow that at there's no way
good good ideah.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Be good Humans. Bye bye Good Humans.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Good Humans.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
Be good humans, or we will thank you suck.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Be Good Humans is executive produced by Brian Phelps, Trey Calloway,
and Grant Anderson, with associate producers Sean Fitzgerald and Clementine
Callaway and partnership with straw Hut Media.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Please like, follow, and subscribe, and remember be good humans.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!