Harmony in Action with Rick DellaRatta

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(00:00):
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Denten, you're giving back on aglobal scale. Hello all, my entrepreneurs

(00:22):
and business leaders, and welcome tothe Michael Esposito Show, where I interview
titans of industry in order to inform, educate and inspire you to be great.
My guest today is a multi instrumentalist, penist, composer and founder of
Jazz for Peace. He is consideredby many to be one of the finest

(00:44):
singer pianists performing today through his lifelongendeavor to help advance people to their highest
potential through the understanding of jazz,as well as spreading peace worldwide through his
Jazz for Peace World Tour. Consideredto be an innovator and a visionary.
Please welcome Rick del Rada. Well, hey, Michael, welcome, Welcome.

(01:08):
This is like as I said toyou in our in our pre pre
recorded interview, this is really exciting. I'm very interested in the roots to
Jazz for Peace and I know we'regoing to get into that about all the
different reasons why you started it andhow nine to eleven inspired it. But

(01:30):
something that hits home for me thatI learned about you that was that I
want I have to start the topoff of this with because so many people
know this about me, is thatI am Haitian. My mother is from
Haiti, and we celebrate the Haitianculture. We continue to with family and
friends, and my parents started anon for profit with other family and community

(01:53):
members back in nineteen ninety three calledForgotten Children of Haiti, and so we
have deep roots there and we stillcontinuously help with another organization there called the
Saint Luke Foundation. And it's myunderstanding and from what I've learned of so
much about you, is that Haitialso holds a significant place in your heart.

(02:14):
And you've done a tremendous amount ofwork for Haiti, and so I'm
very interested in what spawned that foryou. Yeah, it's absolutely huge.
I mean, we have been intouch with different Haitian organizations. You know
in the US. You know commonlypeople do what you do. You know,
they want to help Haiti. Theyhelp from the US, and and

(02:36):
you know they they they'll then thenthey'll send up the you know, the
funds or whatever and things that they'reable to provide to that country, et
cetera. But we had a situationwhere we were contacted from Haiti by a
person. His name was like JeanMichelle something or other like that, and
he had a it was Haiti ScholarshipFund. He had this he was doing

(03:00):
for children, and you know,he was explaining it to us and we
were talking to them, and wewere just doing what we do, which
is basically, you know, weare who we say who we are.
We're a philanthropic entity. And ifsomeone contacts us in need or in help,
we will work with them. Imean, you have to drop out.
We won't drop you have you haveto unless you fall by the wayside.

(03:23):
We will keep, you know,working with you to try and assist
you and make jazzer piece work foryou. And we were telling them,
you know, look, this iswhat we do, this is how we've
been doing it. It's a fundraiser. It's a model called the Empowerment Tree.
And you know, he was readingall the testimonials and he was like,
this is amazing. This would begreat for my country, this would

(03:45):
be great for you know, thekids and all that stuff, and they
had these issues with the earthquake thatwere just devastating and all these things,
and we were just going along,going along, and you know, he
was able to complete the easy stepprocess which enabled him to have and anybody
to have a world class cultural eventat no cost to you. Plus and

(04:10):
this plus is very important because youcould give somebody that and they won't know
what to do with it, youknow what I mean. So but plus
the staffing, the expertise, theguidance, the advocacy, all of the
things that are it takes to makethat event a success. So the only

(04:30):
you not only get the event,but you get all of the you know,
experience of Jess for Peace in ourteam to make the event of success.
And that's why people for years lookedat our testimonials and said, you
know, it's just too good tobe true. I just don't believe.
It's just too good to be true. And then they just they just like
got quiet and silent after so manyvideos came out from all over the world.

(04:55):
I mean, you just can't photoshopvideos in Rwanda, and you know,
Keny, I mean, you know, it's it's crazy. So no
this is what we do, andthis is why is successful because we don't
just first of all, we don'tjust throw money at a problem expecting to
solve it. I don't know,you know, I don't know why people
keep doing that. It's a formof insanity. I mean, literally,
you do the same right, didn'tEinstein or one of them guys define it

(05:15):
that way? Right? You dothe same thing over and over expecting a
different result. You have to empowerpeople. You have to do the things
that we provide in this thing calledan empowerment tree. And you know,
we knew that if we had thechance, we could make a difference in
Haiti. And he made it throughthe steps. We assisted him, we

(05:36):
guided him. And the next thingI know, I'm in Haiti. I
mean I get off of a planein Haiti and it's pretty chaotic. I
mean it's kind of like, wow, what the heck is going? I
mean, everything's kind of there's notmuch. Not much is really like a
structured It's like whoa, this airportis just you know, where where do

(05:58):
I find the people that came topick me up? Well, there's nobody
there to pick me up? AndI'm like, oh boy, here we
are starting to big, you know, and I'm in my phone's not working
because it doesn't work, you know, it did whatever the cell tower or
whatever. So I'm like, holyJesus, what is this thing going to
be like? You know? Butnevertheless, I do what I say I'm
going to do. And I said, I'm gonna go there. I go
there. Whatever happens happens. ButI go there, and I walk up

(06:20):
to a guy with a patch onhis eye and apparently it turned out he
had like lost his eye in thatearthquake. He's got a patch in his
eye. And I said, listen, you know, I've got to get
someplace. And these people were supposedto be here, do you know.
You know, they're supposed to meetme at the airport and all that.
Usually they have a big sign.Someone will have a big sign, you

(06:42):
know, Rick Delrado jazzer piece,you know, and I'll see the person
with a sign and hey, okay, and now, you know, off
to the races we go. Butthey couldn't find anybody. And this guy,
he doesn't know who I'm talking about, what I'm talking of or not.
But I said, well, I'msupposed to stay at this bed and
breakfast. I said, this iswhere I'm supposed to go. He said

(07:02):
that I know. He said,that's a place that person has a church
and they do incredible music in thechurch. And he's telling me about the
church. He says, I knowwhere it is. I'll take you there.
So he takes me over to thisbed and breakfast and it has a
name. I think it's called theEucalyptus Eucalyptus in or something like that in

(07:24):
Port of Prince Haiti. And youknow, we go there and I go
in there and I go to thefront desk, and you know, they
look at my stuff, they takemy stuff. They go in the back,
and they come out in the frontand a person comes to the front
and he said, sir, youare on a mission from God. Your
room is paid for, your mealsare paid, you know, blah blah

(07:47):
blah. Everything here during your stayis covered. And out there's the pool
and blah blah blah blah blah.And I said wow. I said,
all right, well listen, youknow, thank you. That's amazing.
And uh, you know, Ican yeah go out and use them.
I'm like Jesus, I love tojump in this pool. So I got
on gym in the pool, butI'm like, listen, I don't know

(08:09):
who that they're supposed to be herewith some people I've been hit. He
said, we'll see if we cantrack them down or whatever. You know.
So by the time I was doneswimming, all these Haitian people show
up and those are the people thatwere supposed to be at the airport.
And you know, they're like,there's I'm so sorry. There's no way
we could get to the airport becausethat's Haiti. You know, you might
get to the airport or you mightnot. If you say you're gonna meet

(08:31):
somebody at the airport, I meanmaybe you will, maybe you won't.
They couldn't do it, and youknow they I'm sure they had plenty of
advanced notice. I was coming along way and all that, but there
was no way they could get tothat airport anyway. Here they are here.
I mean, this is a crazystory. So I know you said
I could stretch. Oh please doplease tell us all we want to know
the story. It's crazy. It'syou know what, it's unique. I've

(08:52):
never had this experience anywhere, andI've had some wild experiences, but you
know, those are different wild.This is like Haiti wild. Yeah.
Now, okay, so we meet. I think we even might have prayed,
might have said a prayer or somethinglike that. There's a lot of
spirituality and religiousness here. And youknow, they said, okay, listen,
now we're going to go. Wehave to do some things. Can

(09:13):
you come with us? So Isaid, okay. They had this big
truck and I'm telling you, thetruck was in the the it was like
about thirteen people in the back,and they wanted me to sit in the
front. And I said, listen, you mean what about those guys.
Oh, they're in the you know, they're fine in the back. I
said, well, you know,I don't really maybe if I could,
could I just sit and get inthe back of the truck with them.

(09:35):
Yeah. I go in the backof the truck because I'm just like,
who are these guys. I wantto talk to them, see what they're
like, to see what life islike in Haiti. Let me get in
the back of the truck. SoI'm in the back of the truck with
these guys, you know, andI'm like, so, and we're going.
I don't know where we're going.I don't know what we're doing.
I don't have a concert that day. So we're off in this truck with
all these Haitians and I'm like,so, what what are you guys like

(09:56):
doing here? What do you Theysaid, we're here with you, We're
here, you know. I'm like, you're not supposed to have some place
to go? No, no,no, we're you. We're with you.
You know, it's okay. Soit's like an entourage I have,
you know, And they're driving thetruck somewhere I don't even know where,
and they're you know, I'm askingquestions about Haiti, this, that and
the other, and they would takeme someplace. And you know, it's

(10:16):
a trip to be in the backof a truck in Haiti if you've never
been there before. First of all, the first thing I noticed, and
this is nuts, Okay, itlooks like Ghana, exactly like Ghana,
Africa, because I had earlier thatyear done an event in Ghana where I
went to Acra, which is thecapital of Ghana. Okay, and I

(10:41):
fly into a crop and you knowhow if you go to a really small
town, your suitcase comes in onlike a conveyor belt from outside. Yes,
you know, talking about yeah,you don't actually have the you know,
because you know, you go toan airport, you go to the
baggage collection, but if you goto a little small it comes down a
conveyor belt from outside. You know, you're I've been to Haiti and the

(11:05):
Domican Republic, and back in theday, especially in the eighties, it
was like that. Yeah, itwas like that, so across like that.
Today, I was in a crasand this is the capitol and it
comes in on a conveyor belt andI'm like wow. And there was one
Caucasian man in that airport that Isaw, and that was the last Caucasian

(11:28):
person I saw for a week anda half, you know, on that
Wild Journey which is another podcast orwhatever. But anyway, back to this,
it that it was a unique lookingplace and I had never seen anything
that looked like Ghana until I gotto Haiti, and now it looks like
And I said, you know,do you guys know something? I said,

(11:48):
Look, either I'm hallucinating or yourcountry looks exactly like Ghana Africa.
They're like really, I said,yeah, you didn't know that. No
no one ever told you, Noone ever told us. That said okay,
well, you know, duly noted. I'll just you know. So,
now they stop someplace while we're havingthis conversation and they tell me I
kind of come inside. I said, all right, I go inside this
place and they go, okay,sit over there. Okay, I sit

(12:11):
over there, and they go insome back room and they pull some manager
out and they point to me,and the manager looks at me and he
looks at their stuff and it's like, that's really you know, I'm the
same guy in their path. Andthen he writes something down and gives it
to them, and then they okay, let's go and now we go to
another place. And I go backin the truck hanging out with the guys,

(12:31):
and they go to another place andthey do the same thing, rinse
and repeat, place after place afterplace. I said, what are these
places that we've just been going to? And why are we doing the same
thing with I sit and you callthe guy out and bla blah blah blah.
You know, they said, thoseare TV stations, those are radio
stations, Those are you know,import of prints, those are you know,

(12:52):
publicity media places. I said,wow, well why are you like
they said, because they didn't believeyou were. None of them, not
one place would advertise or publicize thisevent. They want until they see you
in the in the flesh. Theyare not scheduling your you know. And
and they said, and they scheduledyou tomorrow. We have to go to

(13:15):
all the places that you're going toappear on. You're going to appear on
national TV, You're gonna appear onthis on this, uh, this radio
show. So we went back toall the places we went that day because
they all gave them times for meto come by and appear on their shows
or whatever about what does it talkabout a media tour? It was all
day long. I was. Iwas in these meeting the next day.

(13:39):
So now which was the day ofthe concert. So it was kind of
crazy. So now so now we'rewe're in the car and we're still you
know, it's like now it's maybein the afternoon. And they said,
now, Rick, we have aquestion for you. I said, yeah,
what is it? They said,we just want to know, you
know, while you're here. Youknow, I know you have your concert
tomorrow and everything. What do youneed do you need anything? What do

(14:01):
you need? I said, youwant me to be honest? I said,
yeah, please be honest with Ineed a band. I need a
bet So what a band? Ineed a band? Is there any freaking
people in Haiti that play an instrument, that play jazz that you know what
I mean? And of course theyknow meant plenty of musicians, but they

(14:22):
don't know who plays whata or anything. So now as we're going now to
the next freaking you know, thenext TV station or whatever it was,
or print agency. Now while we'redoing on the way to that, and
of course, you know, yousee all the wild things, a lot
of people with the things on theirhead, and the water and they have
the water in the like plastic pouchesof water. All these interesting things that

(14:46):
you know you haven't seen, eventhough you've traveled a lot you might not
see. You'll see them in Haiti, you know, giant avocados like this
big, you know, amazing stuff. So anyway, I'm seeing all this
stuff, I'm seeing all these people, and I'm in this wild you know,
the the energy is you know,you're you have that energy and the
and the vibe and all that stuff. And now they're talking to people on

(15:07):
the phone and they're going, Okay, we got this person he plays the
you know whatever, it was drumsor I said, okay, good plays
the saxophone. What's his favorite?Ask him his favorite saxophone player? Do
you know what I mean? Andif he's depending on who he says.
Now, I know, if hecould you know, read my charts,

(15:28):
if he could play in the youknow what I mean. And we were
striking out every which way because youknow, I mean, you know,
if your favorite guitar player is bonJovi, maybe this isn't you know,
I'm you're not going to be ableto play this show, you know what
I mean? Or I don't knowwho they would say, but they'd say
different people really and and a lotof them, someonem were Haitian musicians,
well known even they were contacting.But I wasn't going to be able,

(15:50):
you know, with the concert tomorrowto you know, to make this thing
work with them, you know whatI mean? If I was there a
month, so I'm like, okay, and they're going to go, and
I'm we're striking out. I don'tknow. Finally they said, we have
a guitar player, okay, haven'tcharged. Yeah, he's you know,
he's very well known. I said, who's his favorite guitar player, because

(16:10):
that's this is the thing I haveto if I hear something they said Wes
Montgomery, I said, give methat phone, because Wes. My If
you say Wes Montgomery, now Iknow a ton of information. Do you
know what I mean? Now?I know that you're well versed in the

(16:32):
art form of jazz. Now Iknow that you know bebop. Now that
I know that you know you knowyou know what I mean, you know
ensemble playing, you know history,you know I you know there's a whole
just from those two words. Iknow a whole bunch about this man.
Do you know what I mean Alot? Just give me that Give me
that phone. I said, Hey, did you just say your favorite guitar

(16:53):
player is Wes Montgomery. I said, listen. Blah blah blah blah blah.
He said, no problem, Igot you. I said, listen,
I need a drummer. I needa bass player. You know we're
gonna have you, and I guesswe'll make it a quartet. If you
have a sax player, see ifyou can find one. So check this
out. After like two more stops, guess where we went? His house?

(17:18):
His house, And as we weredriving up to his house, I
heard him with the musicians on hislike screen porch or whatever, practicing my
music with the musicians who are gonnaplay. So you follow me? How
fast that came together. So becausehe was the person I was looking for,

(17:41):
he was able to get the othermusicians that could play in my world,
do you follow me? And theywere able to you know, download
my music, grab my records,listen to things, do all that.
And they were just doing that fromthe time I you know what I mean.
So they had been doing that aswe were, you know, doing
the other stuff on our way.So when I've done there, that's where

(18:02):
they brought me to there and thatwas my rehearsal for the show. That
so far incredible And I know thatthat story is not over yet. But
you do play very you play impromptumusic on podcasts, and so I feel
like this is such a great opportunityright now if you could share a little
bit from that concert with us.Okay, okay, So you know one

(18:26):
thing, well, one thing Ido in my concerts is and this is
something that you can do with musicians. It's kind of a way of grabbing
the musicians in a familiar essence withlike a jazz standard. That's why you
see jazz musicians. One reason yousee them playing jazz standards is because they
are familiar with, you know,the American art format. Often they already

(18:47):
know the song. So if youplay something that they already know or whatever
or is in that standard format,now you've automatically got a launching pad,
you know what I mean. Sowhat I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna
do something similar to that. I'mgonna take a jazz air. This song
I'm gonna play is very fitting totoday because it's a song about New York

(19:07):
in June, okay, which isright where I am. Right. So
this is a little standard called howAbout You, originally recorded by Frank Sinatra,
I believe, and maybe a fewother people. And I'm gonna start
out with that, and then I'mgoing to go into a free improvisation.
Now I call all because of Haiti. I call these free improvisations that I

(19:29):
do on these podcasts free j a. And the reason for that is because
when I got to my count,see, like I was saying, the
story just keeps the wildest keeps continuing. Now, this I didn't know until
I showed up to the concert.When we showed up the next day,
the concert did a giant sign andthe sign said welcome Jazz for Peace J

(19:51):
A. S. S. AndI was like, WHOA. The only
person I ever knew that spelled itthat way was a friend of mine I
went to school with. It livesout of Rochester now. His name is
John Siger, and he had anold traditional band called the Bourbon Street Jazz
Band. And this person was astickler for authenticity. So this was like

(20:15):
the very he was playing the veryfirst jazz that was ever evolved, you
know, the very first, thestuff that Louis Armstrong, those guys in
New Orleans. And now it allcame full circle even with Ghana, okay,
because you know when I went toGhana, they took me to the
slave castles and the slave castles wherewhere they would you know, they would

(20:40):
take people actually captured unfortunately by theirown people in Ghana, capture their own
people to get the money from theslave ship, bring him to the slave
castle. They would go from theslave castle onto the ship and took places
like Haiti. Then from Haiti theywould go to New Orleans. And from
New Orleans they would find themselves listeningto jazz because who the hell else is

(21:03):
going to listen to a you know, a a budding new art form that's
in its infancy, that's just developing. Who wants to listen to somebody just
developing, you know, just youknow what I mean developing. It's kind
of like bebop when it started here, it was in after hours clubs.
I mean, that's why they sayMitten's this mittens that Mint's was after hours.
It didn't even play bebop during thenormal hours. Bebop was something that

(21:27):
evolved at like three and four inthe morning, you know, the musicians
playing for free and after hours kindof setting in a jam session. And
that's what was going on. Andthe Haitian people were listening to it because
they are happy with the free entertainment, and they said, wow, man,
this is jazz jass. So anyway, so so I'm gonna start out

(21:52):
with that and then I'm gonna gointo something that's a free improvisation. So
I took the s's off because youknow, that's nobody knows that that's spelled
that way. These of course,though they were misspelled by us. Now
I have free j A, whichyou know and personally it's something that Jazzer
pieces is is on board with,along with a lot of other people you
know, you've got oh my god, it's it's a long list from Rand

(22:15):
Paul to Noam Chomsky to uh,you know, uh Edward Snowden to uh
Tulsey Gabbert. And that's all theissue with Julie Nassange and the free free
you know, the the interests,the concerns that we have about our freedom
of speech being you know, andthe freedom of of the press, uh
to write about what they see andnot be targeted because they wrote something that

(22:38):
wasn't popular, things like that.And so I call these free j A
And that's what that's what that propositionwould be cool. Let me fix this
here. This is exciting to hearyou play. Thanks. I like New
York and how about you? Ilike a gashment. How about you?

(23:18):
I like a fireside when a stormis doing. I like potato chips and
ladder voter choops. How about aman my good books can fail and man

(23:45):
rods books speak me on three fThey didn't come in do do building do?

(26:57):
Oh wo? Wow? That wasunique. That was that was really
cool. Definitely a first on theshow here. Oh my goodness, Well,
it's completely made up. I don'teven know what I did. I
won't know until I hear it back, you know, when the show's released,
So I won't even know myself.It just comes. It's completely No

(27:19):
one can hear what I did.Explus they come to the show because I
wouldn't be able to repeat it ifI tried. I feel like I saw
that happening to you in that likeyou were you started it off, like
as you said, you were goingto start it off with something you knew
and that everybody knows, and Icould see you just kind of going through
that process. I think your eyeswere even open during that process. And
then all of a sudden, causeI don't know the song right, but

(27:42):
I did start seeing your eyes andyour your body language almost start trailing off,
and I feel like that's when youwere entering your creative zone and I
was like, Okay, this isprobably not part of the song anymore.
And then you were and then solike you went through that phase and then
you got deep, and then Isaw there was like a certain portion where
I was like whoa he is,Like he's in a trance like I can't

(28:03):
even if I called your name,I don't think you'd respond. And you
got like very into a trance andthen started coming back, and I could
tell that you were starting to comeback in your body language. So it's
so cool to kind of witness thatand see you go through these different physical,
physical phases while doing the music.And since I don't know the music
itself, I could just only gobased off of your what you're what you're
portraying to me. So pretty coolexperience on my end. Yeah, it's

(28:27):
cool to hear it from your perspectivebecause like you know, I can't really
see myself what what what you know, what I'm doing, But the description
makes total sense because what's happening isI'm just you know, I'm now launching
from that, so I'm keeping youknow, I'm keeping there. There's still
a reference going on. There's stilla reference. But as the as the

(28:49):
journey as you get, you know, as you get you know, further
away from Cape canalverl Let's say,you know what I mean, now you're
next thing. You know, you'rebeing affected by the space and the stars
and the you know what I mean, The l it reminds me and staying
on the Haiti path right now fora little bit, because so the last

(29:11):
time I was in Haiti, Iwas I think I was nine years old
or eight years old, but Iremember. So we stayed with family,
and there were different things happening aroundus, and my father is very inquisitive
and fearless in situations, and therewas I believe it to have been a
voodoo ceremony happening, and my fatherwas very interested in learning what it was

(29:37):
like and experiencing it. Now justfor some back knowledge on him. Him
and my mother, they've been married. They're going to be celebrating fifty years
in August, and they had theirengagement party in Haiti, and he's traveled
to Haiti since every year since they'veknown each other. And in fact,
that's what spawned for Gotten Children ofHaiti was he had done a medical mission

(30:00):
there with a good friend of hisand my grandmother and they had visited different
hospitals and orphanages and some of theplaces that they had already been supporting and
helping. And when he came backwas when in ninety three, when he
came back and he said to mymother, you know, we need something
more formalized, and realized the needfor everything happening there, especially since when
he went at that point, itwas in the eighties where the AIDS pandemic

(30:22):
was just through the roof there,and so that's when they formalized for god
term of Haiti. So that wasjust a little back knowledge as to his
familiarity with Haiti and maybe attending someof these prior. So he decides to
bring his eight year old Michael withhim. That's me, and I'm pretty
fearless in these situations too. Inthat you know, my father said let's
go, and I was like,all right, cool, let's go.

(30:42):
I don't remember that per se,but this is what I remember and why
I bring this up is we goto this ceremony of whatever it was,
and I just remember it being dark, and I remember music being played,
and I remember this woman in atrance. I just remember her just dancing,

(31:03):
but not dancing in a way whereyou can, you know, like
I dance in a trend sometimes whereI'm like, you know, just really
feeling the music and feeling my partnerand really groove into it. Right.
She was in a way where youcan tell there was like a higher being
or something that she was connecting with. And when you were kind of going
down that path in your jazz,I was feeling that, you know.

(31:23):
And so I'm interested in your experience, maybe in Haiti or in Ghana,
or in your travels of experiencing otherpeople and ceremonies or things of this nature.
Well, starting well right what yousaid. I visited a voodoo doctor
in Haiti. I mean, youknow, I think it was a day
after my concert and they were like, what do you want to do?

(31:45):
What do you want to do today? And I knew about the you know
what they call the black magic orwhatever, because there's you know, New
Orleans had it from Haiti, andyou know New Orleans has it because of
Haiti, and they had that movieI think it was, you know,
some in the Garden of Good andEvil or something like that. It's like
a movie about it. And Iwas like, you know, I was

(32:05):
just wondering, is that something youguys could take me to? Is that
okay? Would that be something like? You know, is that the safe
to do? What? Blah blah? You know, Uh, they said,
no, what it will take youto a we will take you to
a black magic, you know,doctor, voodoo doctor and they I went
and visited this voodoo guy and itwas wild. It was absolutely wild.

(32:27):
And uh, I remember him,you know, telling me certain things like
he said, you know, wehad to wrap it up at a certain
time because he had a meeting.I said, who are you meeting with?
He said, the god, theGoddess of agriculture. I said,
wow, is it an address youhave to go to. No, it's
a spirit, a spirit. Sohe had a meeting coming up after me

(32:52):
with a spirit and it was theGoddess of agriculture. And he said it
was very important meeting. So thenwhen I talked to people after that,
they said, well, no thatis I said, why. He said,
because we're having tremendous issues with mudslides in Haiti in the mountains or
something some issues. So there areissues agricultural. He had numerous agricultural issues

(33:15):
that he had to do this meetingand was going on, you know,
and it was, you know,just a lot of ritualistic stuff. And
you know, the thing about itis is that we're connecting to the same
kind of thing that you know,these witch doctors are connecting to, and
also to indigenous tribes and have donea lot with indigenous people. But you

(33:37):
know, from Africa to America,I've been on indigenous like American Indian reservations
that are you have to go throughcheckpoints and when they let you in,
you're not technically in the United States. It's not part of the United States.
It's a separate thing. It's withinthem. It's like, you know,

(33:58):
it's the land they were promised andthen unpromised a zillion times. But
they have these little things and it'syou know, like there. One of
them was Lame Dear Montana and Ihung out with this guy played a concert
and I hung out with this guynamed Leroy white Man, and they call
him that, and it's very Whatwas amazing to me is that a lot

(34:19):
of the rituals are the same whetherthey were in the United States or whether
they were there in let's say,Kenya, Africa. You know, the
mass i the same even though andthey don't even know each other, they
don't they don't even know what,you know, But if they're doing the
same thing. So this Leroy whiteMan, they send him out to and
come back. You have to goout. It's like a rite of passage

(34:40):
at a certain point in your learning, they send you out for like six
days in the wilderness and you haveto come back and depending on what they
assess when you come back after thattime in the wilderness on your own,
without food, without anything, that'swhere you get your you know, your
right of passage, you know,where they give you your name and all

(35:04):
that kind of stuff. He cameback covered in white, like all covered
in white, and that's how wegot the name Leroy white Man, like
you know, really like white pacedall over his face and bat yeah,
and that's how we got the nameLeroy white Man. But in Kenya,
I was up at the Great Migrationand this is where the the the thousand

(35:29):
will know, over a million wildebeesemigrate across the Marra River with the crocodiles,
all that stuff you see on NationalGeographic. I was there because there's
an organization called the you know,here's what's crazy. There are is one
point five million nonprofits in the UnitedStates and over ten million in the entire

(35:51):
world. I thought, after I, you know, started jazzer piece that
i'd play at I would play ahandful of concerts to help a causes around
New York City, and maybe ifI played like six or seven, there's
probably only thirteen or fourteen of them, you know, so I play for
a cover half of them and youknow, call it a day. But

(36:12):
you know they're all there's all kindsof wild things that this was called the
Eloria Nito Oh my god, Isaid earlier, the one I said.
That's them and the Empash Empash EloriaNito Conservancy Trust. And what they are
is they were trying to get allof the land owners in the whole region

(36:35):
of this area that encompasses northern Kenyaand Tanzania, and they were going to
get them to all agree to certainand they did do this. They got
them to agree to a list ofthings together for the preservation of this area.
And they were a list of thingsthat would protect number one, the
Mara River because there's like you know, issues with people dumping charcoal and stuff

(36:59):
in the Ma River, kinds ofthings that impacted the river. To protect
themar River, to protect the wildlife, and the wildlife is off the charts,
I mean way off the charts.You know, nothing you've ever even
imagined. I was seeing there,you know, driving around in one of
those one of those kind of likeuh jeeps with no you know, convertible
jeep you know that you see andthe you see it in the National Geographic

(37:22):
Now that was me and one ofthem just you know, driving right up
near lions and you know everything.I mean, as soon as we got
out of the brush, I figuredwe're staying someplace that's you know, twenty
miles away before we see alms.No, we went through a little brush.
Two giraffes were just standing right there. Giraffe like thirty feet high they

(37:43):
are, you know, they're there, there are their necks. I mean,
it was crazy. And the peoplewe were staying they had guns,
you know, and I thought maybethat was for show and tell. They're
like, no, no, no, you are right in the middle of
everything. You are in the middleof the wildlife, you know what I
mean. And there was a poolkind of like a water pool. It
was very cool freshwater pool and wewere in it and you'd see like a

(38:05):
you know, one of those littleuh hogs or whatever just come running past
you, you know, just youknow, snorting and just blow right by
you. I was like, whatwas that, you know, And one
of them had there was a lionkill. So one of the guys I
was with. He was a hewas a mass I warrior, and he
came to New York, which wasreally crazy. He showed up here to

(38:29):
meet with jazzer Piece in person.He was convinced that jazzer Piece could solve
this issue, that getting all thesepeople to do this, it was gonna
take jazzer Piece to come out there. You know what I mean. It's
almost like you're watching Mighty Mouse cartoon. You know, when they come this
is a this is only Mighty Mouse. You know. I wasn't even here.
I was in I was skiing inUtah, and I'm in Utah and

(38:51):
I get a call and I waslike, Hey, there's this big,
tall guy like six feet nine wantsto meet with you. You know.
I was like, I was like, wow, who did I piss?
I hope it didn'tiss, but whatever, No, he's a warrior from I
said, look, you know,go in, open up, you know,
open up this. You know,this is the this is the quote
unquote jazz for Piece, you knowoffice so to speak. You know,

(39:14):
Posters like I have it unblurring backwas full of posters from all the events
that event wanted to probably here somewhereon this wall. We were all out
of space. There's no more spacefor nothing anymore, but there used to
be. So anyway, he comesin, Yeah, we want you know,
this is what we want. Like, that's amazing. It didn't.
Didn't sixty minutes cover that? Andsure enough, sixty minutes had covered it

(39:36):
only a few months earlier, they'dhad sixty minutes out there with the big
things. So anyway, and theguy that they interviewed on sixty minutes came
and met me, and there's youknow, the jazz reas. You can
see videos of this, you know, and that's why I was like shocked
that people thought it was too Howcan you look at that video and think
that it's too good to be true? Like what are you you know,
gaslight? Like what like, howdo you do that? You know?

(39:59):
That's no, that's after that's me. That's the guy from sixteen minutes.
You know, those are animals thatwe're in the you know, what are
you talking about? Anyway, heso his rite of passage, because here's
what happened. He goes running byme. I'm being an escort with somebody
with a gun. Now, sofrom where I was, I guess,

(40:20):
you know, in one tent wherethey had the dinner and all that too.
Why the little thing that I'm sleepingin a little tent that I'm sleeping
in and they had to have someonewith a gun walk meet there. It
was nighttime too. The big guy, the big African uh you know guy,
goes running past. I said,where are you going? He said,
he said, the lions made akill and he wants to go check

(40:40):
it out. What is he crazy? He's going over there? He came
back and I was like, you'renot scared of lions? He said,
no, no, no, hesaid, because they know so much about
these animals, you know, andbasically, you know, when they're full,
they're not really going to attack youwhen they're full, and they're not
going to really attack you while they'reeating unless you bother them. So you

(41:01):
can literally go up to lions whilethat they've made a kill and they'll you
know, you can, at leastif you're him. Well, he ended
up telling me, he said,to get his you know, to get
his stripes in the Masai uh youknow tribe. He basically killed the lion

(41:22):
with his bare hands, and Isaid, how the hell did you do?
That he said, well, andhe was just a kid now,
but that they were sending him outand he had to come back and prove
show he proved something, proved,you know, prove his prove his weight.
And he said he took there's acertain type of there's all kinds of
certain stuff in Africa, by theway, is nuts right. There's things

(41:44):
they brush their teeth with that arebetter than toothbrushes. They shown me they're
better than a toothbrush. And they'relike, you know, we had a
meeting one and they're all brushing theirteeth. I'm like, what is that.
They said, it's a special stick. It better than a toothbrush,
and they brushed their teeth. Thenthere's another thing. They has a leaf
it's better than toilet paper. Wellit is. It's a type of a
leaf that they use. So hehad a type of stick that was super
super strong, super super strong typeof say, couldn't break the stick.

(42:07):
He took this special stick and hewhittled and whittled with a little knife for
weeks, making this thing on bothends as sharp as anything you could find
in a hardware store, you knowwhat I mean, super sharp by both
ends and when he went out thereon his journey. When he crossed a

(42:28):
lion, he stood in front ofthe lion, and I believe he held
out the stick like this. Heheld it out and he just waited and
they had like a standoff. Hehad a standoff with a lion for like
six hours, and finally the lionraged and attacked him. And when the

(42:52):
lion got up and literally was justabout to close its mouth on this guy's
arm, he went like that quickthat stick up and the stick pointed up
here in the lion and down herewent through his joy in his nose.

(43:14):
Yeah. Yeah, with his barehand, he did it. And the
lion just swirled around the toilet bowland died, just swirled around just a
little, walked around just a little, you know, in a daze,
and died. And he brought andthat's how he became the warrior that could
make the decision on jazz for peace. Wow, you got to kill a

(43:37):
lion, that is that's incredible.You know, that's how he gets how
he got his position in the I'mglad you shared how it happened, because
I'm sure you know it had tobe for a good reason. Uh,
And it was. It was forself defense and it's well. And also
back in those days there was somuch wildlife. So I saw more wildlife

(44:02):
than I will ever see combined inthe rest of my life out there in
that region. But when I metwith the guy from sixty Minutes, who
they had chosen an interview on sixtyMinutes, I think his name is Oklo
something, Oklo something like that,he told me that sixty percent of the
wildlife is gone. But he said, you know, he said, visitors

(44:23):
come here and they're just blown away. But he said, I you know,
we who have been here know thatthere are problems, and I was
there to address those problems. Andyou know, again, you know,
we were trying to implement very strictmeasures that protected the wildlife, protected the
marra, protected the river, andalso protected these roaming indigenous tribes called the

(44:50):
Massai. And so I met theseMassie people, I heard their music.
They actually came to my concert backin Nairobi and I had them do some
of their indigenous songs and stuff onstage as part of the event. That's
I mean, you know, andwhen you think about that protecting not just

(45:10):
the wildlife, but then this tribe, it's the work that you're doing for
Jazz for Peace is incredible, andyou're continuously working with more non for profits.
I'm interested now to go back intotime with you a little bit and
go back to your your beginnings.You obviously have a very deep rooted passion

(45:36):
for people and caring for people andhelping people and this you use music as
the vehicle to be able to dothis work. So I'm very interested in
what your youth was like or growingup and where this was instilled in you
to help others. Well, youknow what it was. It's just something

(45:58):
that I noticed, and you know, it goes back no matter where you
go, you will see you know, whether it's indigenous tribes or it's uh,
you know, towns, their historyof music has had a nurturing and
healing effect. I mean the churches. You know, my mother was a
church organist, so you know,I played the organ in the church and

(46:21):
I used to do improvisations in thechurch because you know, they would tell
me, hey, you know,you got to play something for the offer
tory. You've got to play forthis and for that. Now the people
after they do, after they him, you have to keep playing, you
know. And of course my motherwould probably play something, you know,
put something up broms or whatever andplay that. But I'm like, you
know, I'm just going to lookout there and play and see if anybody

(46:43):
gets pissed off, you know,or whatever. And I'd have to you
know, navigate what I thought werethe parameters of that situation, you know,
with the priests and all that.And after a while, they did
kind of catch on to me.And because they had, you know,
the priests, you know there,some of these priests were experienced. They've
been priests for thirty forty years andthey've never heard of organists like me.

(47:05):
And one day that priest got upand he just announced that I didn't know
what he was going to say.I thought it was gonna blow my cover.
Now he announced to the people thatyou know, this is a very
special organist that we have and whathe's doing, and he's you know,
blah blah blah, and he justyou know, he just he basically nailed
what I was doing. But hedid it in a spiritual way, like
this person is channeling, you know, doing something he is channeling. He's

(47:29):
a it's a spiritual offering of Theyembraced her gift they embraced my gift is
exactly what happened. Yeah, andso you find music just being a part
of so much. And uh,as I continued my journey, you know,
from doing functioning as a musician totraveling all over the world with different

(47:52):
bands, I saw that music coulddiffuse situations. It could can people that
couldn't connect any other way, Itcould break boundaries and every kind of boundary.
I mean, you know, somepeople go through life just playing for
people that speak their own language orwhatever. But you know, I was
noticing that, you know, anything, religion, race, creed, culture,

(48:15):
any kind of thing that is abarrier to us is not a barrier
when you are communicating through music.So I see, I saw all of
that, and then I realize,as they've been going along, which I
still do. Now, we haveall of these problems that are getting greater

(48:37):
and greater and greater, and yetwe still don't consider the arts and culture.
We're trying to see how long wecan go without having to turn around
and say, you know what weare done, Let's get the arts and

(48:57):
culture and fix this, because youare not going to solve any of these
problems without the arts and culture andwhy because you never have It's never been
done. And I harken back alot to a video that I saw when
I was, I believe, earlyin college. It was made in Tibet,

(49:19):
and it's called the Song of theWeeping Camel, and it's about,
uh, it's about a family that'sjust being filmed. This guy's just filling
the filming the goings out of thisfamily. And the family has camels,
and the one the camels, youknow, get pregnant and they have kids.
And one of the mother camels hadan albino child and she just would

(49:40):
not she just would not feed it. She would not you know, she
would just disown this albino. Itcame out all white, and she just
you know, couldn't couldn't deal withit. So you had a situation where,
you know, you've got this albinobaby that's going to start at that
because the mother won't participate because ofI guess the trauma of the birth and

(50:02):
the trauma of the way it cameout or whatever. Well, it also
sounds like kind of like not naturalselection, but some sort of protection of
the species, you know, becausethey're they're animals, so they're they're going
based off of instinct, right,That's what it sounds like to me.
All of it could be playing in, all of it could be playing in.
I just knew that. Here Iam watching this in a little movie

(50:23):
theater that kind of showed it wasa cool little movie theater. You know,
when you're a kid, you dothat. You're like, I'm gonna
go watch the cool movies, theindependent releases, you know. And it
was one of those like artsy typeof mused cinemas that would only show those
really off the beaten path things,and I would go to that cinema instead
of the one that was showing Batmanor whatever, even though they didn't really

(50:45):
do Batman then like they do nowor whatever. But so so I'm in
there and I'm watching this and I'mlike, wow, this is wild.
What's gonna happen? And what happensis the family now intervenes and they're like,
we maybe the camel can afford tolose a camel. We can't afford
to lose this camel because we usethese camels for you know what I mean,

(51:07):
for their whatever it is. Idon't know if it's the milk,
but it's definitely the travel and theyyou know, the camels are an integral
part of their survival, like theyuse this. They need seals, they
need camels, they need things tosurvive in Tibet. They're way up north
in Tibet, and they try everything, and this guy's just filming them trying

(51:28):
every single thing, like we doto solve these problems that we have.
Right, they try this, theytry that. It's almost like the Wiley
coyote or whatever. You know.They's a guy eighty two thousand times.
They try everything, They throw everythingin the book at this problem, and
they can't solve it. And thenI'm watching the movie and then all of
a sudden, you see it inthe you know, in the English subtitles.

(51:52):
Well, that's it. We're allout of ideas. It's time to
get the musician. Wow, andthere's a music musician. Healer into bed.
But he's like days away. He'snot a few hours by car because
they don't have cars. He mightbe a few hours by car, but
they don't have cars. He's onit. They're on donkeys. He's like

(52:12):
three days. They gotta go ona camel ride. There's these camels,
I guess camels or donkeys. Orwhatever they're on. They got to find
this guy, and they go andlook and they find them. Days now,
find the guy, tell them theproblem. He grabs up his musical
instruments, gets on another camel oranother donkey or whatever camels and donkeys,
who knows, could be one ofthem, one of those little you know,

(52:34):
I don't know. Hitch hitches itto that I can't remember. But
he's got a lot of stuff andthey bring it all the way back.
Now he gets has to put theseinstruments like around because he's using the resonance
from the you know how like abass or something has that big empty spot
in the middle like these little itresonates, you know, he's using seeing
all that stuff. So they placelike one, they place two things on

(52:59):
the mothers sides, each of hissides. That's gonna like you know what
I mean, They're gonna resonate whenhe plays, like vibrate, vibrate exactly.
And he's got his thing. Thoughhe's doing his thing. He's like
very confident. This guy. He'slike he's you know, this isn't this
is not a you know, thisis he's just doing his job, gonna
he's there to solve the problem.It's gonna be solved. He's gonna do

(53:20):
this job is and solve it.Now, what he does is he puts
this on and then he they bringthe camel. They bring the two together,
and I mean, it's horrible becausethe poor child is terrified that the
mother's gonna just kill it right there. He does want to getting near the
mother. The mother wants nothing todo with being brought next to the albino
camel that it has that's refused tofeed. And now these two cams are

(53:42):
held by people. They're holding them. They're trying to get away. And
he just plays and plays and play, and he plays and plays and plays,
and he plays until the mother startsweeping uncontrollably, just gushes of coming
down the mother's eyes. And gameOver packs up his stuff. Hey,

(54:06):
thank you very much. They allhug, they all kiss, They blah
blah blah. They see him out. Off he goes on his three day
journey back to where he's from,gets paid or whatever. I don't know.
And that's the deal. Problem solved. So, but they use the
arts and culture. They're not likewe're doing. We are marginalizing the arts
and culture we're capturing it. Youknow, everything's captured. Everything we do

(54:29):
is captured. Nonprofit world, Okay, most of the nonprofits are captured by
their the people they're supposed to bestanding up against. Because a lot of
nonprofits realize that a they're going tobe looking all year for money to do
their job. They can't do theirjob because they have to spend all year

(54:52):
trying to get the money to doit, you know, and then when
they get the money, they've onlygot a few days to do their job
before they have this stark getting money. So it's a lot easier for a
nonprofit that's supposed to be, youknow, fixing the water. Let's say,
to go up to BP and say, you know, if you fund
us, we'll keep an eye openand make sure and make sure that you

(55:15):
know we protect you to full loop. Oh well, that's unfortunate. I
mean what I what I wanted tosay to that is that that's actually why
I started den ten our insurance agency. Is I wanted I was tired of
fundraising for forgotten term of had andnot tired of fundraising. But what you're
talking about the difficulty of fundraising andthat you're spending so much time asking for

(55:38):
a donation, spending so much timein creating events and opportunities for people to
donate. And while that's fun andengaging, it doesn't to your point earlier
on in this podcast, it doesn'tsolve the problem. You know, you're
getting all these donations, but thenyou send it over because to your point,

(55:59):
you have no time. I'm nowto be able to use it and
actually put it into action. Andthat's something that I had seen. And
I also did have the entrepreneurial spiritand wanted to start a company, and
so I was kind of torn whenwhen founding dn ten, and my coach
kind of said, you know,why are you trying to decide between the
two. Why not put them together? And that's where the donation component came

(56:22):
out of or the giving component cameout of DWN ten in that you know,
every we donate, we are committedto donating over one percent of our
revenue to non for profits. ButI'm saying this because this has to do
with when I when I found aDENT ten about finding a vehicle that can
generate revenue for the non for profits. For for Goden Turn of Haiti to

(56:46):
be able to wear I don't havethe fundraise anymore. I can just look
at my company and say, mycompany is going to donate this money without
and I'm glad you brought up theVP example, without any type of pay
for play type of thing, orany type of negative repercussion or need.
It's we're doing it because that's partof our mission. Our mission is not

(57:07):
to sell insurance. That's that's ourjob. We sell insurance. Our mission
is to help those in need,is to impact the lives of others,
and by staying true to that mission, we donate a portion of our revenue
to that. And I mean that'sthat's my vision for for DN ten is
that we build out our own foundationand like a like a non for profit
foundation and be able to help createself sustained communities around the globe because they

(57:34):
again back to your point, isthat we're just throwing money out a problem
doesn't solve it. We want tocreate communities that can can help themselves.
And and you know the work thatfather Rick Foschett doesn't haiti with the Saint
Luke organization or foundation that he founded, is exactly that they built their own
community to where they have Tilapia tanks, they have a bakery, they have

(57:57):
schools, they have an orphanage,they have a hospital. Also that they
can be a self sustained community.And so for me, that's my mission
is to develop more communities like that, and I want to be able to
do that work. I'm staying onthe topic of what you just said there
about using music as a vehicle forpeace. Something happened for you that was
really significant back in December of twentyfifteen, and in Palestine specifically, and

(58:22):
I would love for you to recountthis story about how you were able to
enter a war zone and bring musicto solve or to at least bring some
ease to the tension. Okay,well, I think that situation you're talking
about is actually Pakistan. Pakistan.Excuse me, thank you, thank you,

(58:44):
Sorry about that. So what happenedin fact, because the Palestine thing
was actually in two thousand and one, I brought Israeli, Palestinian and American
musicians to the United Nations and weplayed a concert, right, But in
twenty fifteen, what happened was verysimilar to Haiti. Now, very similar
to Haiti. We were dealing withsomeone in Pakistan and we're doing what we

(59:09):
do same thing. You know,they write to us, we respond,
We go back and forth. Listen, this is what we have to do.
This. We'll try to help youthrough these easy steps so that you
know. Ultimately, what we dois we break the catch twenty two that
you're describing. You know, weare able to break that catch twenty two
with this event because when you lookat a problem and you see getting worse

(59:31):
and worse and worse, and yousee all these organizations whose mission is supposed
to solve the problem, but theproblems is getting worse, Well, they're
captured. That's why the problem willnever get solved. They're captured. It'll
never get solved. They're captured bythat which they are supposed to be addressing.
So because of this vicious cycle thatI describe, what we do is

(59:53):
we we break that catch twenty twowith this event that empowers the organization and
we provide the things that would takeaway from their mission to do themselves.
They wouldn't be able to do themselvesbecause it would overwhelm them and they never
have time to do the good workthat they're doing. So this is a
catch twenty two breaker. That's whatchaz Reube says, now this these people

(01:00:15):
in Pakistan, they're onto us.They start to see, hey, this
is the guy that can break thiscatch twenty two. Well, we're back
and forth, back and forth workingwith Pakistan, and I'm like, you
know, I'm I'm like, listen, I'm gonna be a nice guy and
I'm gonna keep going. But youknow, the chances of this happen.
I wouldn't bet you know what Imean, I wouldn't bet you know,

(01:00:37):
a dime of your money on thepossibility of this ever coming through. But
nevertheless, I'm gonna do my whatI'm going to do my job and you
know, work as best we can. So we're at this basic little stalement
because we've got that. We askedeach organization to confirm their event at no

(01:00:58):
cost to them, with funds alreadyraised for them. And what they do
is they gather their VIPs and theyuse information that we give them templates to
assist their board members to what thisis all about, so the board members
can get enthusiastic and get their comment. So it starts out with a comment
from someone someone wrote to us fromPakistan. He wrote to us, and
we took that comment that he saidyou know, I don't remember what it

(01:01:21):
was, but something to the eventof, you know, wow, if
I love what you're doing all overthe world, if you only did that
for us in Pakistan, it wouldchange people's lives, It would do this
that comment like that. So look, look, we're going to take this
comment and we're going to try toactually make this work for you just from
a comment. So I said,look, here's a one page of what
we want to do, and here'syour comment on it. You know,

(01:01:44):
we want to bring jazzer Piece toPakistan to help with there's a problem with
literacy in Pakistan. I mean we'retalking like ninety over ninety percent literacy in
Pakistan. Nobody knows how to readthere, and because of that, it
is a terrorist hunting ground, doyou know what I mean? Because if
you don't know how to read,your options are so freaking slim. You

(01:02:07):
know that you're easy pickens for somebodywho wants to, you know, capture
you for their own purposes. Theycan tell you how the world is and
that's it. Yeah, And theycan get you to you know, they
can get you involved in something thatyou can't get out of because you can't
read. Where you're gonna go.You know, you can't really leave because

(01:02:27):
you can't even read, so,you know, and it was the fact
that you couldn't read that got youinvolved, that got you captured and in
them in the first place. Sowe're at a situation where they had their
VIPs. You know, they hadpeople that wanted to go, but there
were issues with you know, thecurrency, the you know, the the
current their their own. We couldn'tget this event confirmed and we had a

(01:02:52):
few other sponsors this that finally Iget a call from a guy in Washington
and he's a works for Walmart andhe told me, he said, listen,
you know, I have this passion, and my passion is literacy.
And I've studied the world and thebiggest problem with literacy I find in Pakistan,

(01:03:16):
and I've studied nonprofits and the solutions, and I have come to the
conclusion that the best bang for mybuck to address literacy in Pakistan is Jazz
for Peace and I'm going to comeon board as a sponsor. And his

(01:03:37):
sponsorship, along with all the workthat we did, put this event over.
They were able to confirm their event. You follow me, I had
no cost to them, and withfunds already raised for them and in their
bank account. That's what we do. That's what we could do, you
know, for you. And andwe've done it up up there in near
Pagetsie. We'll be talking about itthat I've already. Yeah. I mean,

(01:04:00):
if we can do it in Pakistan, we can do it anywhere.
But believe me when I tell youthat one. So you know, if
you find out what I went through, well know, we can do it
in Pakistan. There's no place wecan't do it, right, So you
know what I We contacted the peopleand we said listen, you know it
looks like everything together here. Thisis this is a this is a confirmed

(01:04:21):
event. You have qualified the easysteps, easy ABC steps, and this
is done. We're coming to Pakistan. So now I fly into Pakistan.
I'm flying in the middle of thenight, and I get into Pakistan.
And let me tell you something.You think if you think I thought Haiti
was strange, you know what Imean? Which I did? I mean

(01:04:44):
Pakistan Haiti looks like, HEYI lookslike mister Rogers neighborhood compared to Pakistan.
Yeah, I mean it was justbecause every the way they dress is so
different. You know they have those, you know what I mean. Yeah,
and you're and with all these people'slike wow, like you just you've
never seen anything like it. It'sin the middle of the night, and

(01:05:05):
I'm like, I hope, Ihope these people don't get caught in,
you know, because if that trafficproblem that happened in Haiti, if that
happened in Pakistan, WHOA, Idon't know, you know, I don't
know what. Yeah, I don'tknow. If I don't know where i'd
be talking to you today. Sothey were there. Luckily I saw they
had the big sign. I sawthem with the big sign, and they

(01:05:26):
had lots of flowers. For whateverreason they were they flowers. They felt
meant they wanted me to feel safe, you know, and they felt like
by giving me flowers, they wereyou know, making me, you know,
easing my potential stress and tension forbeing all by myself in this place
because I'm not bringing any musicians.You know, I'm not gonna be responsible
for someone's wife and their kids,you know what I mean. I'm just

(01:05:48):
let me see if I can surviveit, right. So, yeah,
So I go to Pakistan and wehad so many problems, just just getting,
you know, before I even gotthere. I mean, the event
was supposed to be in a church. The church had got bombed. Then
it was at another church, andthen it got threats, and then they

(01:06:12):
moved it to another church. Andthen they contacted me and they said,
you can't have this. We can'tdo this event in any church. No
church. So the event had totake place at the hotel because there was
only one hotel. Also that youknow, the consensus was this is a
very high safety place, you knowwhat I mean, very like guarded and

(01:06:34):
all that. And it was itwas I mean, we drove up there,
they drove me back when I pickedme up, and they drove me
to the hotel. The hotel,I mean we were like a half an
hour just to get into the parkinglot of the hotel. They had these
guys opening the they opened the trunk, but they opened the front and the
back. I mean they were lookingall through that car for anything. And

(01:06:59):
I came in there, you know, and I the next morning they had
they had an itinerary for me.So they came to pick me up and
they had it. We had ameeting and they said, listen, this
is our you know, our strategy. And they said, do you have
any clothes? You know, wehave to we want to, we want
we don't want you to dress inyour normal clothes. And they had this

(01:07:21):
car. The car looked like likewhat you'd see like John Gotti or somebody
drive you know what I'm saying,had the tinted window windows. You know,
you couldn't see into this car.You could only see out. And
that's the car they had for me. And they said, there's the car
we're gonna take you. I didn'teven know where they're taking me. And

(01:07:42):
you are very trusting, yeah,And and I said, well, you
know that's the thing. If thisamount of trust can take place for me
in Pakistan, Rwanda, you knowthese places that I've been, I mean,
it's absurd that we can't trust eachother enough in you know, Westchester

(01:08:03):
and you know what I mean,Rochester or whatever. You know what I
mean, that we can't trust eachother enough to solve these problems. If
you see the trust that you knowI've been involved with with these outstanding causes
who, like I said, reallyare not captured. They really are.
And that's why I feel we cansolve all of our problems because if you
take those ones that are marginalized,no one who knows who they are.

(01:08:26):
You know, no one knows whothey are. So that's part of what
we do. We publicize them nationally, locally and internationally. That's just one
of the branches of the empowerment tree. So and that's branch number three to
get technical is publicity and awareness.You know. Branch number two is local
sponsors, you know what I mean. Branch number four is as international publicity,

(01:08:47):
as international sponsors, you know.Branch number five new and prestigious supporters.
You know. So we have allthese branches and when you add them
all up, it's an extraordinary helpfulstep forward for that organization, and that's
why you see the testimonials so glowing. So they got this car and they
said, do you have any uhyou know clau. I said, listen,

(01:09:10):
I was into Paul and I broughtNepaul clothes. They said, good,
where are those? Those? Looklike you live in this region.
They said, here's what we're goingto do. When you get out of
the car, we're going to besurrounded you. And but by the time
anyone even knows you're a Westerner,you're already going to be in where we're
taking you? And I said,where are you taking me? He said,
we're taking to the schools to seethe children and meet all of the
children that are getting helped by yourwork. And what they were doing is

(01:09:35):
they didn't even have enough teachers.There's so many kids that can't read.
They had to bring mothers. Theywere teaching mothers how to read, and
then the mothers teach giant rooms fullof children. So they brought me in
these people over and I play andtalk and hang out with the kids,
and then they take me out intothe you know, into the mafia style

(01:09:56):
car. I go and a gambinocar or whatever, and to the next
s and I went school to schoolto school of school. Then they had
a big they had a big kindof a celebration for me, but again
that had to be held in ahouse, somebody's house, you know,
so because it was all about menot really being you know, they didn't
want to take any chances. SoI'm in the house. I'll tell you,

(01:10:17):
the best Rice I ever had inmy whole life was in Pakistan house.
Yeah, just insanely good. Idon't know how they did. It
was just unbelievable. Rice absolutely incrediblerice dish with you know, some other
There was a lot of dishes,but I just remember like one of them
standing out. I was like,this is the best I've ever had in
any country. And I've been toa lot of places. I had only

(01:10:40):
been in Nepaul a couple of monthsearlier, and that was amazing. That
is amazing stuff. But anyway,and all these concerts, by the way,
they're like, as you can see, it's a whole story all onto
itself. So now I'm in thishouse and I get unbelievable jet linic,
like unreal jetline, you know,and I have to literally have to go

(01:11:00):
to sleep. I mean, I'mlike, I'm like, like this,
it's almost like I've been drugged.But I wasn't drugged. But I was
like, oh my, I can'tstay awake anymore. They said, look,
lie down, we have to godo some stuff. But when we're
done, we'll come back. It'salready nighttime. I fall asleep. The
next thing I know, I wakeup. I'm in a pitch black room
all by myself, and I'm Ican't get out of here if I want

(01:11:24):
to do you know what I mean. First of all, there's outside is
donkeys, people riding carts and donkeys, you know what I mean. Nobody
speaks English. Nobody can even read, let alone speak English. And I
can't ask somebody, well, howdo I get back? I can't even
I don't even know if I rememberthe name of my hotel, I don't
know the address of it. I'mnot online. I can't find anything.

(01:11:45):
I'm here in this room. Andthe room was not properly it was not
properly secured. There was like,you know, there wasn't a window.
I guess a window had been brokenor there was no window, and there
was just a little kind of asheet covering it. And it was in
the wind, and I could hearlike weird things that sounded like gunshots and
weird sounds outside and all kinds ofweird noises coming from the outside, you

(01:12:08):
know. And it was pitch black. And I went up to where I
could find a door and open thedoor and I look outside. There's nobody
in the house. Now, nobodyin this place, just me. There's
one other person, and that persondoesn't speak any English. I try to
ask a question, nothing, Ican't you know, where did they go?

(01:12:30):
They? There's no I can't communicate, right, there's no common language,
like like Latin combines French and Italianand English, everything where there's some
commonality, but there's nothing between.Well the commonality with this language, right
Pakistan. Good luck finding a similarEnglish word. So now, little did
I know, I was literally onlya few hours away from where bo Bergdahal

(01:12:58):
was being held captive by the TalibanVan. I don't know if you know
the story of bo Bergdal. Ididn't know it, but someone told me
when I got back. I wasactually on a tram. I was skiing
again in Utah, and I getoff this tramp. Some guy from the
news in Utah who knew me,said, hey, man, I heard
you went to pakistandi bo Burglan andgive me a podcast. And uh,

(01:13:19):
bo burg doll is a is aUnited States military person who walked off,
wandered off his base. Wandered offhis base. I don't know how or
why, doesn't make any sense,but he wandered off the base, walked
out of his military base, andgot picked up and captured by the Taliban

(01:13:41):
and was for five years not farfrom where I was. And like I
said, this is just the deal. I'm like there's nothing I can do
here. I mean, we don'tknow what's you know, I could anything,
you know anything, you know yourmind. You don't want to use
your imagination because who the hell knowswhat you know? I'm by myself in
a dark room. Finally, twoother people come in with a giant cake

(01:14:04):
in the other room because I'm peekingin just to see if there's any you
know, hope of civilization or anythinganother person. These two people come in
and they have a cake and theyI came out, and they said they
knew who I was. They said, you want some cake? I said
yeah, I said, okay.You know they just got married. And

(01:14:28):
they told me that they liked mymusic and they were coming to the event
the next day. And I said, well, how do you even hear
my music? Because YouTube was blockedat that time in Pakistan maybe still I
know at that time no YouTube.So I had to like do this like
end around to get my music evento them, you know what I mean,
to hear. And I think theywere getting it maybe off Vimeo or
something that had to get off ofanother platform. And they told me a

(01:14:51):
song that they liked actually called wouldyou play it? What would you play
it. Yeah, I can letme play a little bit song I remember,
Okay, I love it. Yeah, h m hm hm m m.

(01:15:27):
I think got fat fast one tola mon days and and these Jude,
those sweetest man coude find so longmy heart, the sweeted for no

(01:16:03):
long shut stores to find to sharethis spy for you've been on that tream

(01:16:24):
fast to see how I feel suchJune sad carried to and I want to

(01:16:46):
see snack very new. And that'sthe gist of it. It's a love

(01:17:16):
song. It's a beautiful love song. And that's that's original, that's yours.
It's an original piece. Yeah,it's called say You'll Be Mine.
And I had actually wrote it andplayed it for my brother's wedding. Wow.
And is not crazy They had chosenall the way in Pakistan as a

(01:17:38):
favorite song for their wedding. Wow. That's incredible. So here I am
in this wild So now you're goingfrom like zero to one hundred. Because
before that I really didn't know,you know what I mean, what to
expect or what could possibly happen.Now it's like, here's these people,
not only that they know my musicand they specifically have a favorite song that

(01:17:59):
relates to their love, you know. So it's like crazy. So now
they're like, listen, you know, they'll be back. They didn't speak
perfect English, but enough, youknow, and they'll be back. You
know, just got to wait,you know. So I'm like one o'clock
in the morning, these people comeback. I said, what the heck?
All that's like, what could youpossibly be doing? They said,

(01:18:19):
we had to get this document signor there would have been no concert tomorrow.
And they showed me this thing fromcity Hall that had dos and dopes,
I mean, and you know what, it's online, so you can
go. You can see this wholething. You go to Jazzferpeace dot org,

(01:18:42):
forward slash Live in Pakistan dot pd F. If you go there,
you'll see that document, You'll seethe car I'm telling you about,
You'll see all kinds of pictures andyou can see a video and it's just
nuts. So now they finally gotthe documents so we can even have the

(01:19:02):
concert. You know, that's allI needed to know that my whole event
was up, you know, stillup in the air. Now they bring
me back two o'clock, two thirtyin the morning or whatever. I finally
get back to my hotel so Ican sleep and get ready for the concert
the next day. And you knowwhat, that can go on too.
But I'll just tell you one oneother thing, just one other crazy thing.

(01:19:24):
You know, before the events,a lot of times because there's a
captive audience, these people want tospeak before, you know, because there's
all these people, right, howare you going to get them all in
one room without me? So theyget me to get all the people.
Now they want to speak. SoI'm I'm you know, I'm at the
concert. Nobody you know, I'mat my own concert, and of course
somebody's got to speak. You know. This guy gets up and he's a

(01:19:45):
big, fat guy, and he'sgot a you know, big round face.
And he gets up and he startswe've got papers, and he starts
reading and starts talking, and thenhe starts getting really emotional, and then
he starts screaming and yelling, screamingand yelling. Then he starts crying.

(01:20:06):
I don't know what he's saying.Tears are coming to he looks like that
camel. Tears are coming down.He's crying, yelling and screaming. I
called this woman over, the guy'swife. I said, what is going
on here? She said, that'sthe speaker has to speak with the I
said, how long is he speaking? He says, I don't know.
I said, is there anybody elsespeaking? She says, well, yeah,
yeah, I said, can Isee the list of people speakers?

(01:20:29):
I said, all those people they'recanceled cancer, And get that guy off
so we can start the concert.Tell them they can speak at the end.
He can all the way to thenext day. They can speak while
I'm on the plane. It can, you know, speak all you want,
but this show has to start,you know. We got to do
that. And she kind of nudgeshim, does her best, you can.
Finally this guy finishes, and youknow, thank god, we could

(01:20:51):
start the concert. So anyway,it's you see it at the link.
At the link is where you'll seeall kinds of stuff like that, Oh
my goodness, some uh you know, like you said, captive audience.
Yeah, we've been to those gallastoo much, too much talking. I'm
with you on that, like getthe band out, get people dancing,

(01:21:11):
you know, say say a fewwords. I'm all about you know,
the best messages are the shortest messages, and uh, you know, I
if you're doing something a concert forpeace and to bring unity together. There
doesn't need to be a whole dissertation. That's not why they're there. Otherwise
they would have been following you before. So I love that and get them
off speak after me and anybody wantsto linger to linger, but before we

(01:21:32):
wrap up, you know, andand I know it's not going to be
sudden, So don't worry everybody,because this has been quite a fun podcast
and listening to these stories and Iknow you have a book in you of
these stories, and in fact,do you have a book? Well?
I you know. It's what's craziestthing. I have been on author podcasts

(01:21:53):
with no book that I said,why did you even want to have me
on? You know, I don'teven have a book. Everybody else is
an author. They say, firstof all, you have a lot of
books. I mean you are abook right, I mean you know your
your story is you know, betterthan most people's books. Yes. And
second of all, they said,you have to write a book. From
the first person who told me isthe is the he's the head of American

(01:22:15):
Authors and others podcasts, and he'slike, he's the first one of you
and you know, people say yougot to write a book. You know,
it could be a you know,just a guy that could be the
fruit man out front tells me Igot to write a book. It's a
little different from the you know,the head of that podcast. And then
I've had people saying it's got tobe a movie. Of course, you
know, you get people saying it, you know, just but one guy
wrote this has got to be amovie. And I look at his credentials

(01:22:38):
and he's, you know, he'sa major independent filmmaker out of Vancouver,
and he's got like award all kindsof awards he's won and stuff like that.
And I've met with him on Skypen. Crazy thing with him, he
said, I knew who you Ididn't know who Jazer Peasborg, but I
knew who you were. You knowwho I was, he said, because
I grew up in Berlin and ourfriends used to go to the record store

(01:22:59):
and buy like the really hip tryto figure out who the secret underground hip
guys were to buy. And Ihave your records. We used to buy
your records and listen to them inBerlin, right But anyway, that's what
I'm just saying. So it shouldbe a book, it should be a
movie. I agree, you definitelyhave a book, and I know that
for sure, all right, SoI want to make sure that we do
touch on the roots of jazz forpeace, and and that did come from,

(01:23:25):
unfortunately, what happened on nine toeleven, so September September eleventh of
two thousand and one, when thetwo planes crashed into the World Trade Centers
and completely destroyed them. You wereliving in New York City. You currently
live in New York City. Youwere living in New York City at the
time, not far away and witnessthis, and we're sadly inspired by what

(01:23:46):
happened there and inspired this cause.So I'd love to get your take on
this. I know there's a lotwritten about it in all of your bios
and everything, but it would belike to hear it from you. Sure.
So basically, like where I livenow is more more Midtown related on
the West Side, but at thattime I was living on the Lower East
Side. I was living less thana quarter of a mile away from the

(01:24:09):
Twin Towers, and I could seethem from the roof of my building,
and I lived on a five floorwalk up, so the roof was just
I was right. I was theclosest person to the roof in my building.
I was on the fifth floor andthe roof was right above me,
so I received I was woken upby a photographer who had taken pictures of
me the day before, and shehad a job on Wall Street and she

(01:24:32):
was in a tizzy. Uh,And I was trying to figure out,
you know, I said, listen, you know her son, her boss's
son had called him. Her calledher boss from one of the other towers
and said, hey, something happenedin the other tower. I don't know
if it's explosion or a plane hitit, or what what should I do?
And they had the boss had saidto his son, Hey, you

(01:24:55):
know, maybe just get out ofthere, just to be safe, you
know what, Just to be safe, get back out of that building.
And then last time you ever everheard from his son. But she was
like, we didn't know it atthat time. We thought he was running
down the stairs or getting on theelevator or whatever. I ran up on
the roof and I just watched theevents of nine to eleven, and all

(01:25:15):
I had at the end of thatwas a poem that had just come out
of me. And I called thepoem Jazz for Peace, and basically I
decided, let me try to liveup to the words of that poem for
a couple of days or whatever,just try to walk the walk. Because
we're always talking to talk, youknow what I mean. We're always talking
and talking and talking. People alwayssay they're gonna do something after this,
after my after I get one morevacation home, I'm gonna devote there.

(01:25:38):
You know, I'm gonna do thisthing I always wanted to do well.
I always wanted to do the thingsin that poem because that poem was an
expression of how I really felt weshould live our lives. And I've basically
been trying to live up to thewords of that poem ever since. The
poem was then recited at the VanaJazz Festival for like eighty five hundred people.

(01:26:03):
From there, it was put tomusic, and it was performed at
another concert I had in Upstate NewYork. And from there, like I
said, one thing after another afteranother, where the poem and other things
that I said, I said somewords in an interview that got lifted.
If you will google, ever googleRick Delarada famous quote, you see this

(01:26:26):
famous quote and like hundreds of famousquote websites. So yeah, it just
kind of took off from there,and it was kind of like, well,
what should I do now? Whatshould I do next? You know?
And it started with a few benefitconcerts in New York City. And
then when I thought I had donemore than I ever dreamed of, which
was over two hundred, I gota letter from Mayor Bloomberg saying, hey,

(01:26:48):
you can't say we've been noticing whatyou're doing. We got to keep
going. This is fantastic, Like, all right, well let me take
it to a few other states,you know. But then the five hundred
one, I got a letter fromBarack Obama. Hey you gotta keep going.
You know, they all they allsay, you know, you know,
this is only the beginning. Whatare you talking about? And so

(01:27:09):
I let me, let me dothe international. So the next thing,
you know, it just led onething went to another. Now comes the
fascination, fascination of the Jazz Repiecemission and story through you know, these
podcasts. And the strange thing is, uh, you know we through all
of our journeys, we do havea lot of the solutions. You know,

(01:27:30):
in Kenya, there's these some famousuh, I don't know, type
of book in Kenya. And inthat book they described that many of their
many of the best suggestions for theirwildlife came from Jazz Repiece. Well,
they didn't really come from me.I got them from other wildlife people that
I was helping, you know.I think it was saving these turtles over

(01:27:53):
in Mexico where they told me howthey sell the wildlife to the you know,
to the vacationers and all that,and I just conveyed that over to
them. But that's what we have. We have a lot of knowledge that
we've learned from all these different people. When we work for an organization that
we know, they don't know haveall these fundraising tips because why would the

(01:28:15):
Red Cross share their secrets with you, you know what I mean. But
we have them because we've done multipleevents with the Red Cross at the same
time, we've done multiple events fromwith the Habitat of your Humanity or you
know, the United Way or youknow, Special Olympics. So we we've
learned from all these people and wecan share them with you, you know
what I mean. So these arejust again part of empowering outstanding causes so

(01:28:40):
that they don't have to be capturedand they don't have to go running around
all day looking for their funding whenthey should be solving the problem of their
mission. The other thing we havethat is even bigger than everything that probably
takes some time to get to becauseagain it's too good to be true,
is a trickle up economic system justfor philanthropy. And those are ideas that

(01:29:03):
we have that I'm telling you itwould solve a lot of our problems because
see, you've got trickle down,right, But trickle down doesn't work for
everybody, you know what I mean, doesn't work for people that get the
money last we want. We willthrough the jazzer piece cryptocurrency called trickle we

(01:29:24):
can actually help these people get fundedfirst, and when they spend that money
to do the great work they doand solve our problems as there is in
their mission. The money trickles upto trickle up, and you don't have
to cancel the trickle down. Youcan trickle down all you want. We're

(01:29:44):
just going to trickle up in addition, right, and this is a real
cryptocurrency. Yeah, it's called trickle. If you go to our website,
you can actually click and see theexchange. It's on. We had someone
review it and they said, hey, we want to put this on our
exchange. This is amazing to hear. The other question I have for you,
which has to do with non forprofit work, there was a really

(01:30:09):
great Ted talk and I can't rememberwho the person was speaking about the non
for profit space, in that Iforget exactly how he talks about it,
how I can say this where itdoesn't really cause too much of a backlash,
to be quite honest. But whathe talks about is that there was

(01:30:29):
there was a negative connotation given topeople who raised money in the non for
profit space but also took an earning, and so therefore we have this like
backwards way of running non for profitswhere you literally have to be broken poor
to run a non for profit.Otherwise it's like, oh, what are
you doing with our donation? AndI hope people that are listening can understand
what I'm trying to say here,And so what I'm interested in asking you

(01:30:51):
is how do you create a nonfor profit where you can go skiing in
Utah, where you can help solveso many problems in the world world.
You can bring jazz for peace acrossdifferent all sorts of different cultures and help
others, but then also be ableto generate an income for yourself to live

(01:31:11):
a life that's also fulfilling for yououtside of donating and giving and volunteering.
Right, and this you you justasked the golden question, and I'm so
glad you asked you And I reallyhope people listen to this answer, because
this is where the arts and culturecomes in. If you're not using the
arts and culture to solve your problems, A you're you're, you're, it's

(01:31:35):
like it's like taking one of yourIt's like taking your star player off your
team. You know, it's likeit's like going five on four, you
know what I mean instead of fiveon five. You know, if you
play a basketball game and you're andyou know, you take one of those
members out, you know what Imean, and he's a really good player.
As the arts and culture is,you know, you're not gonna get

(01:31:56):
It's it's like the heat going upagainst the end. You know that it
was if you take one of thoseguys, they take Jimmy Butler off the
heat and you don't even replace themwith anybody. You just go four on
five against the Nuggets. You're gonnahave lucky beating them with them, whether
out of me, you don't havea chance, we don't have a chance
without the arts and culture. Andthat's how we do it because guess what,
Jazz for Peace raises more funds foroutstanding causes than the amount it costs

(01:32:26):
to put the events on. Sohere's the that's the catch. See a
lot of people complain and they say, you know, I gave my dollar
to such and such, and Ifound out that only nine cents of it
is going to actually the actual people. You see what I mean. But
see through the arts and culture andour fundraising model, we're raising more funds

(01:32:47):
for let's say, your outstanding causein Poughkeepsie or an outstanding cause in Poughkeepsie.
Okay, then it would cost usto put it on. So in
other words, your donation to Jazzfor Peace, it's not even in.
You're not even getting You're not gettingyou're not getting ninety cents on the dollar,
You're not getting ninety nine. You'regetting more than a dollar on the
dollar because we're using the dollar toraise funds for the outstanding costs, and

(01:33:12):
we're raising more than a cost toput them on. So In other words,
you tell somebody, you know what, if you gave a dollar to
Jazz for Peace, it's like givingtwo. It's like giving three dollars and
seventy two cents to a charity.And they won't believe it except that it's
true because we are empowering the organizationthrough a fundraising model that raises more than

(01:33:34):
the cost to put the event on. Yeah, So it's it's the idea
of like, you know, tenpercent of a small pie versus ten percent
of a really large pie. Well, you know what it really boils down
to is we're generating through the throughthis event. You see what I mean.

(01:33:55):
The arts and culture is a generatorunto itself. So my concert for
you, let's say for you,you know, let's say we get it
confirmed right now. Our team isworking with you to get these other things,
you know what I mean. Sothese are sustainable things that keep you
going, that help you for yearsdown the road. So you know,

(01:34:16):
here's the thing. The very firstthing we do is you'll make you know,
someone will watch your show and Poughkeepsieright or anywhere and say, hey,
I watch this thing with Michael andI learned. So you you and
Michael and man blah blah blah,and then I, you know, I
decided to check a few other thingsout, and this is what I think
about what you're doing, and ifyou could do, if you could do

(01:34:38):
what I see in those testimonials forus, oh my god, it would
be a game changer. Whatever theircomment is, we take that comment,
We put it into something now thatthey can share with their board members,
with their team members, with anyfriends, any people that they that are
care about them, that care aboutthem advancing their cause. Those people will
look at it, okay, ifthey take the time to do it,

(01:34:59):
if they get out of it theirzone for a second and just read it,
look at it, do their duediligence, and those people will say
the same thing, Oh my god, we've been waiting for something like this.
Holy Jesus, how come I neverheard of these guys. Whatever they
say, I don't care as longas I can look at the comments and
names and see these people would bewilling to be a VIP guest of honor

(01:35:19):
at this event and practically get paidto attend by all of the things that
the sponsors provide to the VIPs,because that's what these people are gonna be
They're gonna be VIPs, not generaladmission, so they're literally gonna get paid
to come anyway. So now we'vegot these people on board, So guess
what I'll do, not just me, but you know, our team here.

(01:35:41):
We will look at them and we'llsee and go over it with you
and say, hey, you know, look at this comment. I mean,
that person, he really gets it. I'll bet that person would invite
his friends and his family maybe ormaybe some of his people that he's wanting
to bring into this cause to alsobe a VIP guests because it's a great
deal to be a VIP at oneof these events. You can see videos

(01:36:03):
of other events, you know,to know what I mean. And you
talk to him and says, yeah, he'll do that. Hey this,
So now we got four or fiveother people that'll do it, and that's
minimums. Sometimes we get ten ortwenty, but you get five other people
that are also going to make aVIP list. Now you've got five VIP
lists, five of them. Right, Let's say there's twenty people on each

(01:36:25):
list, right, that's one hundredpeople, got it, one hundred people.
They're not going to come alone.They're not going to leave their wife
at home. So they're going tocome a company that's two hundred VIPs,
do you know what I mean?So that's what I'm saying. Where you
know, so now you've got thatthat enables the event to be confirmed at

(01:36:46):
no cost to you and with fundsalready raised for you. But it also
enables them to go to an eventthat they're pretty much going to get paid
to attend because the sponsors. Now, we use that VIP list to get
the sponsors involved, you see whatI mean. With Jazz for Peace,
you know, we say, look, this is what we've done for all.
Sometimes we go to people that alreadysponsored us. If it's a national

(01:37:06):
company, Hey remember us. We'rehappy with that event we did. We
got another one for you. Whatabout this one? And yeah, man
blah blah blah. You know,and now they're getting free beverages, free
food, free gifts depending on thesponsors. Nevertheless, those are just the
roots of the tree. So allthat's being provided just from the roots of

(01:37:30):
the tree, you see what Imean. And you guys are not.
You guys are doing your thing,your freedom to do your thing while our
guidance and expertise is at work,showing you how we've done this for all
these other causes. Now from there, we have a confirmed event. We
are able to get a venue involvedbecause venues love, you know, opportunities
like this, a full house ofpeople, and we're able to show the

(01:37:55):
sponsors. The sponsors come on boardwith all of that. We've got a
tree up to heat or now thisbranch is ready to grow, just like
in a tree. Now this branchdownside for this branch, well, what's
that brand? That's publicity and awareness. You know. We're not going up
to the local radio station or whateverand saying, hey, you know,
we may or may not have somethingon such and such a day and I

(01:38:15):
don't know if anyone will be there. No, this is what we have.
We have all of this. Youknow. Wow, that's we want
to announce that we want to bea part of it. Let's have Rick
on the show. Let's do this, and on we go with this tree.
And that's how we're able to getprestigious supporters. While we're doing it,
we're showing you all of the fundraisingtechniques that we've learned from others.
You're choosing some that you think willwork for you, you know, it

(01:38:39):
could be Hey, maybe this,let's try let's try the silent auction,
whatever it is, you know.Anyway, that's what we're doing. And
so what I'm saying is we're ableto provide more value than even the entire
amount of the donation. Right,So we provide a lot of value to
the donor, and we teach theeon profits how to increase their value to

(01:39:04):
you know what I mean, weshare everything, So we teach you how
to appeal to donors in a waythat doesn't make them look and say,
oh my god, only seven centsis going to go to the right,
right, leaving them better than youfound them. Yeah, and we teach
them how to get around these aspects. I mean, we taught one organization
is a video of it. Wetaught them how to brand themselves because their

(01:39:28):
stuff was getting pirated in Japan inChina, and then they were selling things
that looked exactly like them back inthat country that they didn't make. Yeah.
So you know, and what Iheard there too is that it's run
through through more of a business modelthan it is just a fundraising model,
is what it sounds like. Well, you know, I'm not sure.
I never you know what, Inever, really, I never. All

(01:39:51):
I did was I looked at usan outstanding cause, and I thought,
what could I do for them otherthan this concert? And I realized this
nonprofit is under publicized because I nevereven heard of him myself, you know
what I mean. So if they'reunder publicized, they need more publicity and
awareness. Jazz or Peace provides thatin a positive way because of all that

(01:40:12):
we've done. You know, I'llever forget when we're playing in a youth
hostel in Duke Ellington Boulevard on onehundred and sixth Street and we get a
call from this organization that I hadnever heard of, who told us that
the the congressman of the state ofOhio who's running for president is coming to
the event, you know. Soyou see what I mean that was and

(01:40:35):
that was his name was Dennis Casinich, if you remember him when he ran
for a great interesting guy to checkout he was running for president. He
was in New York and he wascoming to the event. So you see
what I mean. They're getting youknow. So So so my point is
they they were under publicized, Nowthey're getting publicity. They were underfunded,

(01:40:57):
now they're getting funded they were underthey didn't have sponsors. Now they're getting
sponsors that will continue forward with them. They didn't have new and prestigious supporters.
Well, if you ever google DennisConsentence, you'll see there is a
very prestigious supporter of your organization goingforward. You see what I mean.
So again, all branches of theempowerment tree. That's incredible, And you're

(01:41:18):
so right about the arts and contributingin this. So back to for con
term of Haiti real quick. Whenmy parents and other community members and family
members were really working the non forprofit circuit per se of doing different events
and galas and bus trips and everything. One of our staples where we raised

(01:41:38):
the most money out of all wasour Haitian Art show and they put that
on every year. That's where Igot my salesmanship from. To be quite
honest, was I was. Iwas probably like a ten well, I
was probably like twelve years old andinto my teens or mid teens when it
finally ended. But they would puton this art show at the Parish Hall

(01:42:00):
in Queen's and all of these famousHaitian artists would come and they would bring
all their beautiful artwork and we wouldbuild out these huge structures for them in
order to hang all their art.And to your point, you know,
politicians would come and all sorts ofdifferent people would come from out of the
woodworks and attend these events, thesethese art shows and purchase paintings that were

(01:42:24):
worth five ten thousands of dollars.And they were buying them right there out
of the parish hall. And theartists were donating a portion of all of
this. And then I this iswhere I put my sales hat on was.
I was a young little guy andmy cousin Jonathan and I would we
were selling raffle tickets. I mean, there was a whole bunch of other
kids, but Jonathan and I werethe top sellers every year, and we

(01:42:46):
would compete with each other to goup to almost anybody we went to.
There was a wedding happening at thechurch, and the bride and the groom
were coming down the stairs, andmy cousin and I dared each other,
who's going to go to the weddingand asked somebody to buy a raffle ticket,
and I went and got the limodrivers while they were standing there waiting

(01:43:06):
for everything to happen. I gotthem to buy a ticket, and my
cousin then followed suit and was wesold tickets to people that were waiting,
that were guests at this wedding whilethe art show was going on at the
parish hall. So I mean wewere going up to anybody. So I
learned sales at that young age.And my father had said, like,
here's your value statement. You knowit's going to the children in Haiti.

(01:43:27):
Here's what you could win, dada da, And I learned my value
statement when I'm selling something. Butanyway back to what you're saying here in
that and that, those were theevents the art show. We also did
a concert where we had a beautifulopera singer. We had this beautiful church
in Queens called the Maculate Conception thathas really high ceilings, seats probably close

(01:43:49):
to one thousand people. I meanwe had to place sold out and she
put on a concert that you couldn'timagine. I mean you all you could
imagine because you've probably been to concertslike this. She was just tremendous.
And those were the ones that broughtin the most money for for Haiti,
for the people of Haiti, andand a lot of the people that attended.

(01:44:10):
As I was just saying about theart show, a lot of the
people that attended that were that weredonors to these to these events, they
weren't even Haitian. They just enjoyedthe art and they bought the art because
it was I always like to askabout famous quotes and quoted many times over.
But before I get to the famousquote I am interested in, do

(01:44:31):
you remember the poem that you sharedon nine to eleven. Is it something
that you'd be able to share withus? Yeah, if you want,
I can do a I would loveto. I would love it. Okay,
I'll do that. Let me see. Yeah, And while you're looking
for it. Some of the quotesthat that people that you quoted here,
why while you're going to share thatwith us, just buying us some time

(01:44:54):
here for our listeners, is onethat you're inspired by? Is Gandhi be
the change you wish to see inthe world? And I love that quote,
be the change that you wish tosee in the world. You talked
about it earlier in that so oftenwe all decide that we want to do
something. So often we get inspiredto do something and we talk about it

(01:45:15):
and we write about it, andwe share it with our friends and we
post it and whatever it is.But very often we lose momentum in it,
we lose the passion gets drawn outof us. And and it's because
it's hard. It's it's hard todo things. But I think in that
quote, it's not about doing itso much as it is becoming it.
It's it's when when you're working hardon something, it is hard work,

(01:45:40):
but when you become the work,it flows. And that's why I just
love that quote. So go aheadand show amazing quote. And you know,
the thing is, it's like weshould all be embracing that to some
degree, whatever degree we can.And you know when you call jazz for
Piece, that's what we start doingwith you. We start assisting you at

(01:46:03):
wherever stage you are in the journeyof being. You know that you know
what I mean, being the changethat you want to see in the world.
And so you know, you know, just take us up on our
help while we have it available,and let's do it. Let's make it
happen. Cool. Here comes thejazz erpiece poem. I hear jazz for

(01:46:40):
Peace coming through the trees, andin my heart it fills me like a
celebration. I see the light Iwant to follow, inspired by the past

(01:47:14):
contributions of those that came before,laid the groundwork for us to build on.

(01:47:40):
In this universal language. It isa gift for all mankind. When

(01:48:03):
we speak it, people are lightby the creativity and artistry that stands for
peace and love and humanity and intelligence, the needs to reaching potential we have

(01:48:28):
in our soul so we can raiseour total conscience. See that the gift

(01:48:53):
of giving is our greatest privilege.H are you're jazz for peace? Beautiful?

(01:49:26):
The gift of giving is our greatestgift, our greatest privilege. Ye,
greatest privilege. That's that is?That is really beautiful. Thank you
so much for sharing, of course, your stories and your message and UH
and your time with us today.The musical element to this has just been

(01:49:46):
so cool to have. And Iknow we talked about having you in studio
in person at some point, soI really look forward to that, to
having you here or coming to youin fact and being able to to hear
it in person. And I knowyou and I are gonna certainly talk offline
about how maybe forgot in turn ofHaiti and Jazz for Peace can link up

(01:50:08):
for sure. Just to end ona more of a personal note, of
course, we got very personal withyou to some extent. You share some
very common hobbies with me, notvery but you share comment some hobbies with
me that I that I'm very passionateabout. Is probably what I was trying
to say there in that skiing andbasketball. I grew up skiing. Skied

(01:50:32):
for Marist. It's a club sport, but it was the Maris ski team
and we really enjoyed it and reallyreally one of my most natural sports where
it was just like you know,I got on skis and like you know,
of course I went through lessons andeverything, but just picked it up
very naturally. And then basketball Istill play to this day, and I

(01:50:53):
play every Sunday with a really greatgroup of guys. We call it Sunday
Hoops, and it's it's like goingto church for us. We wake up
super I'm up at like four thirtyevery Sunday morning getting ready to go to
basketball like it's a job, andI train all week for it. In
fact, I make sure that I'min physical shape so that I can be
competitive and be strong enough to playhard and to be a very good basketball

(01:51:15):
player against some of these guys who'veplayed in high school and in college and
everything. So really really cool.So you play as well and also ski,
and I'm just interested in a littlebit of that personal side to you.
Sure, So, now, wheredid you ski when you were kids?
You remember the Yeah, So Igrew up in New York City and
I grew up in New York City, and I can't remember the first mountain.

(01:51:39):
I think it had closed and it'skind of like on the tip of
my tongue, but I can't sayit off the top tip of my tongue
right now. But Camelback was thenext one that I remember in Pennsylvania.
Yeah, that's the one I remembertaking lessons at. And then as we
got a little bit older, nottoo much older, because by the time
I was in fourth grade, Ithink a third or fourth grade, we

(01:51:59):
were skiing at Gore Mountain and uhand I had been asked to be on
the racing team there, and that'swhy I remember when we were there,
because I remember when that happened andthe conversations that we had around at the
commitment and everything. And unfortunately Iallowed basketball season to override that four hour
drive to to Gore, you know. So, yeah, so I didn't
join the ski team, but yeah, Whiteface is another one that we skied

(01:52:23):
out a lot. And then ofcourse we've we've we have family in Canada
and had skied at certain mountains inCanada and as well, of course Trumplong
one of the most famous ones.Right well, I have with that,
with that knowledge I have, Ihave, you know, I can,
I have some great stuff to tellyou. So yeah, I also grew
up in Upstate, New York.You know, I still played basketball to

(01:52:45):
this day. My roommates at whenI was my ski bump roommates were basketball
players, and I couldn't believe theywould ski and then play basketball, which
was nuts. But I did playwith them some you know, they're a
lot younger than me, but theywere like they would put me on the
sky and they're like, man,if you can take care of this guy,
we can we can win this game, you know, we can and
do the rest. And I wouldsometimes have to do that, just really

(01:53:06):
guard like somebody who was just crushingit from the three threes and all that.
Anyway, we'll let's play basketball,let's do it. Let's do that
sometimes, you know what I mean, Well, let's play ball together.
And then the other thing was withthe ski thing I grew up, you
know, skiing. I grew upin upstate New York, so I was
already it was only about an hourand a half from Gore, okay,
so you know it was a loteasier for me than you to, you

(01:53:28):
know, to ski a lot.Yeah, I mean you know, Connectedy,
Connectedy. Okay. Yeah, Sowe go whatever the north Way or
whatever, exit twenty two or whateverit was for I forgot the names of
those white White Fed or White Fallsor something like that, and get off
that exit and go over anyway Goremostly, but I've skied Killington and the
other mountains that are up there,you know. Of course I've skied White

(01:53:51):
Faced. Jpeek was a favorite.When I was a paper boy, I
got this guy, Joe the barber, to like order a bunch of papers
on the last date me over thequota. And he was a numbers runner
down there, so he had money, you know, so he just threw
threw a bunch of subscriptions on hisyou know car and everything. I had
credit those days. It paid everythingto cast specially them guys. But you

(01:54:13):
know, uh so I want.I won a ski trip to uh,
you know, Montreal some scheme onit wasn't tron Block, but it was
Montreal. I skied there for threedays, you know, just from winning
a ski trip because I got fivenew whatever it was, seven new customers
in an X amount of span,you know, like I said, three
of them at least three of Joethe barber. But anyways, uh,
I love skiing so much that Iwas like, and I noticed a lot

(01:54:38):
of grown ups like us kids wereskiing our brains out, you know,
we skipped school and ski or allkinds of crazy stuff. You know,
we got money. And I waslike, I don't know if I want
to grow up, if I haveto stop skiing, and I just in
my whole life, I don't know, this might not work out. And
then I realized that I could playat the ski resort. So what happened

(01:55:00):
was I was I was in Martinique, island of Martinique, and this this
bass player who we both crazy enough. We both had the same girlfriend,
not at the same time, thinggirlfriend at different times. And he he
had a gig in Martinique at aclub med and he loved my original music,

(01:55:21):
so he wanted to play my originalcompositions at this gig. So he
put me in his band and wehad, you know, we had whatever
it was, five piece. We'redown in Martinique playing my original compositions and
the club met people love at theChef de volage or whatever, you know,
loves it. And he's hanging outwith him. I'm walking on the
beach with the guy and I wasjust charge you shooting the syear with him,

(01:55:41):
you know, And I said,you know, it's really too bad
you don't have one of these ata ski area. And he said,
oh, we do what. Isaid, yeah, but they're in France
where they do have them in France. So no, there's one in the
United States, he said. Isay really, I said where is it?
He says in Colorado. I saidreally, where and he said Copper
Mountain. I never heard of copI think it's probably some little hill because
you know, club Men is notgoing to be about world class, you

(01:56:03):
know. To me, I'm justthinking, because we're tennis and snorkeling,
I thought maybe skiing was just aminor. He said, no, no,
no, I'll send you a I'llsend you a trail map. So
somebody knocks on my door next day. You know, some girl hear this
from the chef dey village, wantsyou to see this. I open it
up in his a freaking trail map. I'm like, Wow, this is

(01:56:23):
a serious mount and Copper Mountain isgreat. It's you know, it's a
prem all Colorado ski resort. Goodship there. And I said, you
know what, send me out there. So they started sending me out there
and that was it. I almostnever skied in the east again. Wow,
that's what they would do is theysend me out and after a couple
of weeks they just give me aseason pass, hoping I would stay.

(01:56:45):
And it was like they fly youout. You'd play hardly at all,
like an hour here or there.At the end, I did what they
liked a lot. Was they hadthey had a piano bar downstairs in the
basement for special reservation people. Itwas called the Kiva. So I would
play piano for them. But thenI brought a little electric keyboard that I

(01:57:05):
would play around the bar and singBeatles tunes and stuff, and they just
loved it. They're like, oh, Stan, and I'm like, I
feel too guilty. It's a fivestar life. But I'm a starving artist
in New York City trying to makeit and music jazz. So I'm like,
I will do this a bear andback to New York to try to

(01:57:25):
cut it, you know, justtry to you know whatever this crazy thing
here. And so I almost becamekind of a pseudo five star starving artist,
you know. So I would goout there. Ten years I went
out there. They would fly meout and then they would like send me
they opened another one of Crested Butte, so I do a month at Copper
Mountain. Then they'd put me inthe middle of the night in a car

(01:57:45):
like they one of these large carsand just shollowed me over to Crested Butte
and I'd play there for a coupleof weeks and then go back. So
it just kept going and going.In two thousand and eight, the stock
market crash. Remember that I wasshorting it, shorting the market, you
know, I was betting against realestate and all that stuff. And I

(01:58:05):
so I had money, and I'mlike, you know, and those places
had closed. So now it's likeI hadn't been skiing much, but I
did have money. And someone calledme from Utah. Actually, one of
the people that I had, Ihad basically tried to addict, you know,
like a drug act. I triedto get other musicians addicted to skiing
so I would play in my skiband in Colorado, and I had people

(01:58:29):
like James Brown's drummer was playing withme. All these good musicians were coming
out to Colorado playing with me atthe ski resort so I could get my
ski Jones happening. Anyway, oneof those guys calls me once. He
says, hey, Rick, youknow it was so blah blahly dob,
so thank you, thank you,thank you. All Right, you're welcome.
You're welcome, You're welcome. Whatyou know what else. I'm in
Utah and we're at this place.I think you would love it if you

(01:58:51):
could get out here. You couldstay with us. My brother is a
really good cook. We'll give youa ride back and forth of the mountain.
Well, you know, I wantto pay you back or whatever.
So I go out there. Themountain is Alta, which is Alta snowbird,
and I knew and anyway, Iwas like, Wow, this place
is major, like major shit.Yeah, as you check it out,
it's called Snowbird really is where Iski, but Snowbird Alta like Alta's on

(01:59:15):
this side, Snowbird's on that side. They're both right there. And it's
up this canyon called Little Cottonwood Canyon. And you know what it is like,
world class powder skiing, powder over. Actually, what you want to
do? You want to do this? You want to go to ski Bums
for Peace dot com. Ski Bumsfor Peace dot com. You should see

(01:59:40):
pictures of it'll blow your mind.I didn't put this year's up. This
year they had the most snow ofany year ever in their whole history.
We're talking powder like I don't know. If you go to that website you'll
see what I mean. Deep powderskiing as deep and steep. And I
went out there for a season figuringbecause I had money finally from that thing.

(02:00:01):
And I'm like, you know,I'll get the T shirt. Because
always wanted to be a ski bumb. I just didn't realize in't pay anyone.
In fact, I wanted to bea you know, jazz mission,
a ski bumb. I mean,what the hell was I thinking? You
know? But I figured out justif I if I'm going to be one
thing, I'll do the you know, the musician. But now I had
a chance to be a ski bumpand I went out there and it was
an amazing year promise. I haven'tbeen able to stop. Well, you

(02:00:24):
know, it's not a bad addiction. It's it's a it's a pretty good
one. That's that's really cool.You're you You've definitely inspired me to do
some things. I actually was talkingwith with my marketing manager and something I
want to put together as a communityevent on a regular basis, on a
monthly basis. And when we weretalking about it, you know, it

(02:00:45):
started with the idea of, well, why don't we get together and have
these talks once once a month.And it was like, well, what
are we going to do in thesetalks? Well, why don't we have
them, uh over breakfast or overcoffee or something. And we're going through
that and we're playing with it,and I'm like, you know, everybody's
doing that, and it just soundsso boring, and I'm an outdoors kind
of person. I'm like, whydon't we do it where we meet up

(02:01:06):
and we have a little bit ofa talk, you know, a fifteen
minute talk of some sort that's inspirationalmotivational, educational, whatever it is.
And then we do a hike,or we do a kayak or in the
winter we go skiing. And toyour point, I was telling her,
I said, Katie, I said, actually, what I'm really trying to
do is just like feed my desireto do outdoors and fun stuff and get
this community around it that wants togrow and learn and get educated and inspired,

(02:01:30):
but also do these fun things thatI want them to, you know,
help me be able to go dothese things. So it's funny that
you're actually doing that. So youand I certainly will be talking a lot
offline about a lot of things,and I look forward to playing basketball and
perhaps skiing with you at some point. This has been just a tremendous show
with you, and I want tomake sure that you're able to get all

(02:01:51):
of the different ways that people canreach you out there. So of course
jazzfopeace dot org is where they canfind so much information. In my research
of you, I found just atremendous amount of PDFs and links and podcasts
and shows and different ways and testimonials, and then I have them here,
but you can certainly go and readthem for yourself. But is there any

(02:02:12):
other handles that you would like ouraudience to hear about. Of course it'll
be in the show notes. Youknow, I hate to say skee bums
for peace, but I'll tell you. You know, yeah, well you
know what it is. Basically,someone someone contacted me recently and they said,
look, we want to do aprint article on you. I think

(02:02:34):
it. I'll called the Enterprise Zone. I said okay, and they said,
we want you to list the fivethings that make you happy. That's
what they wanted me to do.And I just put find a blank that
works for you, and I justput five times, and I put five
things in that you know what Imean. And so the first thing I
put was a philosophy. I wasjust off the top of my head.

(02:02:56):
I didn't even know that philosophy meantso much to me, but I put
philosophy. And then I put,you know, five philosophy that works for
you? And I put this stoicphilosophy works for me, and I put
why and you know this guy Marcusare really and and why they work for
me? Why they help me?Put things in respective, stay humble,
but stay focused, and all thiskind of stuff. Then I put you
know, find a blank that worksfor you, find a plank, and

(02:03:18):
one of them was, you know, I think it was an activity,
a hobby. I know. Oneof them was find you know, uh,
friendships and relationships that work for you. You know what I mean.
That not toxic ones, but onesthat were really nurturing each other and these
kinds of things. And then Ilooked at it, I'm like, damn,
I should try to practice that,you know, if I had those

(02:03:38):
five things going. So the schemething is kind of cool because it's like,
you know, like you said,you get up early in the morning
for basketball. I would get upearly in the morning, you go out
of my ski bumhouse, get ona bus, get there, get on
first tram, and you know,you have this camaraderie with all these great
skiers that you know, you knowwhat I mean, And you have that
You're getting this exercise and active thatworks for you, you know what I

(02:04:00):
mean. So it's fulfilling a lotof those things. And then I would
get back to my little ski bumroom and I'd be able to do my
music. But I've already had sucha good day, you know what I
mean. It's like I really haveto screw up to mess up this day
already and it's only like noon,ye, So you know, I'd like
to leave people with just maybe Idon't know where that article is, but

(02:04:21):
you know, if you get afew things that work for you and try
to try to keep an eye onHey, am I am I doing these
this little combination of things, becauseI'll tell you, if you get two
or three of those things in aday, that's pretty good, right there.
Yeah, that's awesome. Well,thank you so much. And then
of course you could find Rick andJazz for Peace on Instagram and that's instagram

(02:04:42):
dot com backslash Jazz for Peace,So again thanks. You should tell you
my email address because that's what allstarts. Yeah, the info at Jazzfpeace
dot org. That's where someone couldjust send a comment, ye, send
anything, and we can get startedwith them in one way or other,
incorporated them into you know, jazzrepees, helping them get from where they
are now to where they need tobe. So it's info at Jazz Revie

(02:05:04):
stud org website jazz Repece dot org. And if you just want to find
out about me, of course,there's Rickdlraada dot com. Rickdelarada dot com.
Oh cool, cool, yeah,and get some some cool stuff.
And for for our YouTube watchers,you could see some really great articles like
that when they're again. Thank youso much for coming on the show.
This has really been a lot offun, a really unique experience having the

(02:05:25):
music and everything in the background.I really appreciated you coming on today.
Thank you my pleasure, Michael.Thank you for listening to The Michael Esposito
Show. For show notes, videoclips, and more episodes, go to
Michael Esposito Inc. Dot com backslashpodcast. Thank you again to our sponsor,
dan Ten Insurance Services helping businesses getthe right insurance for all their insurance

(02:05:48):
needs. Visit Denten dot io toget a quote that's d e N t
e N dot io and remember whenyou buy an insurance policy from Denten,
you're giving back on a global scale. This episode was produced by Uncle Mike
at the iHeart Studios in Poughkeepsie.Special thanks to Lara Rodrian for the opportunity

(02:06:10):
and my team at Mike Lesposito,Inc.

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