May 2, 2023 • 40 mins
Matt and I are back telling some road stories! Listen in as we take you through an awkward event in Birmingham, the danger of following event hashtags during the event, and one of the phrases you never want to hear an organization say!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Hey, y'all, welcome back to a new episode of Her
with the Meta Brown. And I'm excited to have my
husband and producer back in the living room with us
so that we can get into a few more road stories.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Okay, Shenanigan, Oh that's my type of carrying on. You
call me in here for the right reason.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Okay. So we picked out three or four moments that
we can't decide if they're funny, if they're weird, or
if they are are unfortunate, or some combination of I
want to start with a gig that we did in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Which definitely fills all three of those buckets.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
You know, that's that's a good point. Actually it was.
It was weird, it was funny, it was unfortunate, and
we were working with an organization that had had a
moment that quite a few white evangelical organizations had over
the years, where their leadership had said some things publicly
(01:36):
that were causing a lot of problems, and specifically because
a person that was in leadership had said some things
regarding race publicly that were very offensive, very offensive. So
someone in leadership had said something offensive and in a
(01:59):
different podcast episode, we may talk to you all about
some of the other behind the scenes things that went
on there. But for the sake of this being a
road story.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
That's for the meetings and conversations episode.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, because yikes, because.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
There was meetings and there was conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh man, there was so many meetings and so many conversations.
But suffice it to say, we had an opportunity to
decide whether or not we were going to still do
the gig, and for various the sundry reasons at the time,
we decided to do the gig. And I remember there
was another really big name gospel artist who was also
brought in to do this gig because the artist was
(02:40):
someone that the leadership of the organization knew. They felt
that because this artist was very well known and was
also black, and Birmingham being a city that also has
a lot of black folks, that there would be a
way the event could kind of bring people together in
the midst of the fact that they had some leaders
(03:00):
ship that we're making some very terrible statements in public.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Okay, part try to do something helpful, part PR.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Move Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely, part.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
PR Move and smaller sprink let's try to do something helpful.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Definitely sprinkle. I thank you for saying sprinkle, because I
was about to say just a small amount. But I
feel sprinkle is is more of the accuracy. It's definitely
more of the accuracy. And I do want to say
before we get into the what is the funny part,
because I guess this is the part we're telling you
that is the unfortunate part of it. Right is you know,
(03:35):
as you go on in your life and you learn
the different things that you stand for, right, And I
think for us it's learning not just the things we
stand against, but the things we stand for. And I
think also you know, when you're growing up, growing up
in church settings and also have spent a lot of
(03:58):
the time of your youth like you're whies and different
things in church settings, there's just a whole lot of
things that you let.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Skate by, you want to ask no questions that as.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
You get older, you realize these are things that you
would not let skate by. So if you were asking
Matt and Amina of today, if this exact situation were
to happen all over again, I'm pretty sure that when
those people came to us and said, you know, we
give you the option to do the gig or not.
We probably would have been like, no thank you. I
don't even want my name anywhere near any of this.
(04:30):
No thank you. But truthfully, at the time, I think
our minds were along the lines of some other artists
that appeared at the same event, you know, thinking like,
you know, this terrible moment has happened, how can we
help people come together? How can we help people continue,
you know, doing their healing word, etc. And I don't
(04:54):
judge us for having made that choice at all, but
I think we have a little more wisdom behind us
now to know that there are times that you are
doing things to air quotes help people come together. But
sometimes people in leadership use that language because they don't
want to be held accountable for the things they say
and do.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Mm hmmmm hm. So yeah, also have learned that money
spends way too fast, boy, and all money ain't good money.
So just because somebody's paying you money, which you've talked
about a lot on this podcast, being an independent artist,
being a young person doing something. When someone says I
(05:35):
will pay you money to do this thing, You're like,
really you would pay me money? Like I've been doing
this thing for free? For money and then you know,
pay some bills money. Oh wow. But once that money's gone,
then you have time to look back at the thing.
You will probably be like, oh, there's got to be
(05:56):
another way to make money. And that's that's the truth. Yeah,
there's always another way to make money.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah, big facts. So that's that. Hopefully at some other
point we will come back and tell y'all some of it.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Also, do think along the lines of what you were
talking about of looking back at it differently. There is
a time most of us who grew up going to
family events, Yeah, we were sitting at the kids table,
and so the grown ups were having the grown up conversations.
We were at the kids table, right, And for those
of us who came up in the church, especially as
(06:32):
artists and musicians, there's a lot of good that comes
from that because immediately you've got a crowd in front
of you, and you've got instruments, and you've got programming,
and you've got all these things to figure out. That
formulates into you flash forward to your standing on some
large stage. Well that's the journey that started on that
(06:53):
really tiny thing. But in the church family setting, when
you're the musicosition you're kind of sitting at the kids table,
you know what I mean, and so you don't really
ask a lot of questions. Sometimes you're not even aware
of what's going on. Nowadays, it's different now than what
it used to be. Used to be. Uh, there was
(07:14):
churches I played at where you know, you you were
on the stage the whole time because you never knew
when that pastor was going to kick into the You
never knew when it was it's going to come for
you a couple of times, so you might as well
just stay there. Now you can kind of go out there,
play your music and then go sit and you don't
even know what they're talking about. Flash forward to you know,
(07:37):
some of these large settings that we were performing in,
like this one where you're in an arena and everyone
has their own green room, dressing room, there's a common
area where there's food that is for everyone. They're serving dinner, lunch,
their snacks. There's a hangout spot. But for the most part,
(07:58):
if you want to be you can be totally unaware
of what's going on. Yeah, and so you show up,
you do your thing, and you don't know what's going on. Well,
this guy happened to say some things on Facebook and
they were highly insensitive, highly unhelpful. And it's one of
those moments where I started going, oh, just because you
(08:22):
have a big platform doesn't mean that you want to
be helpful.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So, now all of a sudden, we find ourselves not
necessarily sitting at the grown up table in that we
get to decide what this man is going to do.
I don't feel like he handled it the right way, sure,
but I feel like for us, we learned, oh, there's
a different there's a me and you grown up table
(08:50):
where we can go, oh, what are we going to do?
How to you know, we sat down ate lunch and
dinner with all kinds of people helped us navigate it.
And like you said, now, we probably would even navigate
it differently, but at the time, we made the right
decision based off of what was in front of us.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Sure, sure made the best decision we could in that moment.
Yo Oh, y'all, we would really need a different type
of series other than road Stories to tell y'all all
of the things that go on behind the scenes in
this type of situation.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But I just talked to my therapist about this very scenario,
and this was years ago that it's still got some
things tangled up in me. Man.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, it was such a moment, man, y'all. That's I
feel like what you what you said there is is
really important, especially when you're you know, you're looking back
on your choices and decisions, and sometimes in a way too,
I think for us, for those of us who are
performing artists, I think there's also the element of, like,
to the point of what you were saying about the
(09:57):
who who are considered to be the kids who are
who considered to be the people who have power in
the situation, and who are considered to be the people
who don't. And a lot of times, as artists, you
are sometimes made to feel like you are in a
situation where you don't have a lot of power and
you kind of have to concede to the people who do.
And in some situations I think that is true, but
(10:20):
I also think we had to learn over the years
to accept the power we do have. We can't control
how the organizations are going to be run. We can't
control the choices, the terrible choices, especially in white evangelicalism,
that many people in leadership made. We don't have control
over all that. But we get to have control over
(10:41):
what we get to stand with or stand beside, or
stand for, how we want to represent ourselves, whose name
we want our names to be next to, and all
of those things. And even aside from the really the
really ignorant story we try to tell y'all, you know,
we we made some subversive choices and how we both
(11:03):
performed our art that particular night, you know, because there
were some things related to the organization and how the
leadership handled that that even in our efforts to try
to like bring people together and make people feel welcome,
we still wanted to make it known like we don't
rock with all this, you know. So I can kind
of look back on us now and see like the
(11:24):
beginnings of us sort of taken our power back. But
I think that's really important to consider. When you're in
a situation where you feel like you're at the kids' table,
you may not be. You may actually have more power
than you think you know to be able to use
your voice and use your art and use whatever you
have access to.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So this brings me to this moment has come now
in Birmingham. We are in an arena. I mean, y'all,
this arena probably seat somewhere between fourteen and eighteen thousand people.
This is a huge, a huge facility here, and Matt
is the house for the event, and I am am seeing.
(12:03):
And then we had a couple of times in the
show that we performed together, like in between the other acts. Okay,
so Matt is djaying as people are like coming into
the arena. So you probably had anywhere from an hour
to ninety minutes of a set.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, especially when things are running behind. Then it gets put.
You know, you got to keep going. And also there
was a broadcast element, if I remember correctly, this is
one of those events where there was a broadcast element.
So you've got the crowd in front of you. Yeah,
that you are, you know, you're somewhat playing background music.
(12:44):
But my job was to have the people on ten
by the time the first artist hit the stage. So
it's me and a crowd for an hour plus and
it's my job to get you in but all so
get you moving. So back then I like to do
a lot of call and response with people. I'd yell
(13:06):
something or I'd sing something and let the crowd sing it.
And then with the broadcast element, someone would have a
headset there, talking with the people and where they were
calling the show, and they would let me know when
I was addressing the broadcast crowd, and there'd be certain
cameras set up that you'd have to go to, and
so there were a lot of those elements that you
(13:28):
were juggling on top of what, you know, the thing
the stories that was there. Another fun thing about whenever
you're DJing in a large venue like this and you're
doing call and response type things with a crowd. Most
times in this case, I'm in the middle of the arena,
(13:49):
but by the time the sound gets to the audience
and then bounces back to me, it's on a whole
different beat than what I'm on. So I learned the
hard way. You gotta get some good headphones and hug
them tight, because if not, there was no way. You know,
when you're DJing, you're blending all these records together and
(14:11):
beat matching, and then if I'm like everybody says oh,
where it should have just been right after oh, it's oh, Oh,
I've got to stay on beat, and man, it was.
It was a lot to learn. It was a lot
to juggle on top of the fact that there was
(14:32):
a lot we had to juggle.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, for sure, I'm trying to get Let's set the
scene for y'all to understand that this organization, we were
booked for six events with them over a two year period,
so by the time this Birmingham event came, we probably
had done about half of the events. They had this
stage set up for Matt in the center of the arena.
(14:57):
So a lot of these arenas were kind of set
up like hockey arenas, where you had the arena seating,
but then you had the large kind of bottom of
the arena where typically would have been the ice and all,
but instead it was just the flooring and that was
all standing room only, so people could come down actually
(15:17):
to the floor of the arena to see the acts
up close if they wanted to. So Matt is set
up in the center of that. Now we learned the
hard way through the first couple of events that people
want to go up to Matt and talk to him
during his DJ set, and I'm talking about he's on
a setup where you can't just literally like walk up
(15:38):
to him. You got to walk down to the floor,
you got to walk upstairs because he was on an
elevated stage in the center of the arena, so you
have to walk up the stairs to get to him,
and I would typically be backstage working on something else
or talking to people or whatever. And I realized this
event in particular, I was going to have to stay
(15:59):
out there during his DJ set to keep people from
walking up there to talk to him. You have no
idea what manner of things people could be saying. Sometimes
people have requests. Sometimes people are there and they don't
even go to church stuff, so they're requesting stuff from
Matt that like, he can't play at.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
This thing, not this thing next weekend I got.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And then sometimes people will come up with very obscure
requests for things. He's like, I don't know what that's about.
And then sometimes just him djaying brought up memories from them.
A lot of back in my day, I used to
DJ stories that people want to tell them Matt.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I get that lot.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So in Birmingham I decided to just stand out there.
I think they put security after a couple of dates.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I do think I remember that that they put like
some stanchions around, and then there was security as some
places because some places the crowd I remember got really close.
And also if I remember correctly, they didn't have an
actual like DJ booth or I've had to set up
(17:11):
my DJ gear in some weird spots. But if I
remember correctly, it was like one of those big road cases,
but it wasn't the road case that was being used
for something else. They had taken the lid, the kind
of flimsy lid from the road case, set it on
side and put some plywood on top, and I think
(17:31):
like taped it all together. So I remember a couple
of cities where like it was getting pretty rowdy down there,
which is that's how I like to do. And so
they're down there with me. I'm with them going, but
I'm looking. I'm like, oh, I think every I'm about
to lose it all. We are at the edge right now.
And one of the city, Toronto, maybe a big breakdance
(17:53):
circle popped up, remember because Toronto has a really cool
hip hop scene, and looked out like, oh cool, you know.
But that as the circle kept getting bigger and bigger,
and so I think they started adding the stanchions of
the ropes around. Yeah, and yeah, some security.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, I want to tell y'all that it depended on
the city. If that security was reliable, paying attention. Yeah,
some cities people people were very vigilant about making sure
you don't walk right up. Other people didn't really understand
what's the purpose of them being security, So I think
sometimes they thought like, oh, they must want this here
(18:30):
so people don't walk away with his equipment. We need
security there so people will stop walking up the steps
and talking to the DJ while the DJ is DJing.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Okay, it's pretty funny phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So I decided on this Birmingham date that I was
going to stay out there and just watch. So there
was security right by the stage where Matt was, and
I was also on the floor, but I was standing
a little further away, and I see this old white woman.
She has got she had gotten to be like close
(19:04):
to the age of both of our grandmothers, probably like
in her seventies and her eighties silver hair. I see
her walking very slowly towards the stage, and I'm like,
I'm gonna go ahead and circumvent this. So I walk
over to her and I'm like, hey, is there something
I can help you with? And she's like, I gotta
talk to him right now. And I was like, Okay,
(19:27):
I said, why don't you tell me what you were
gonna tell him, and I'll make sure the message gets
to him. Well, well, I've been upstairs and I've been praying,
because you know, a group of us are here praying.
And I said, and she said, and I just feel
that he's playing this music and this music is gonna
(19:47):
wake up all the demons in Birmingham. Now, I want
y'all to know that, since this time, my comedic brain
is like it's turned on at a level that is
very different from the level it was on then. Because
if me today had had that conversation, I would have
(20:09):
been like, honey, you think him playing this music is
what's gonna bring back all the demons in Birmingham. Money
the demons. Some of the demons are here alive.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
What you mean? What you mean was real comfortable? He
is walking around drinking a soda.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I'm like, that's that's the demons is awake out here.
I don't know what you mean, y'all. I literally had
Tom Yes, ma'am her all the way back to her seat.
I said, well, you know what, since y'all were already praying,
I think that's the best thing for you to do.
You just keep on praying for him, and just pray
for everybody at your seat though, at your seat, she said, okay,
(20:51):
but all the demons in Birmingham at your seat, Yes, ma'am,
directly at your seat, y'all. Yikes.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
It is so interesting, like you said, because people come
up to me to talk to me, and sometimes they
don't all the way have it together what they want
to talk to me, even if they're requesting a song,
And so it still happens to me. Now I don't
work nearly as much like in the faith based events side,
which has its own kind of interesting thing to it,
(21:35):
because in a faith based environment, I am there to
keep the energy up, get people engaged and motivated. But
the main thing that people love about music is familiarity.
Oh that's my song, ooh, that's You can't utilize that
(21:56):
in a faith based environment because of what we deemed
secular versus what we deem sacred. And however you draw
those lines, and this lady clearly had a line drawn.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
But and this lady probably didn't know that a lot
of what Matt was spinning was air quotes Christian music.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yis I'm remixing whoever the Christian artist of that day
is also using a lot of just instrumental music, a
lot of those music that I was making myself and
just you know, working it out as we were on
the road. And so it's always interesting when someone approaches me.
I can always tell when someone's walking up to me
(22:35):
and they've got kind of sheepish look on their face, like, Hey,
I don't want to bother you, but I'm going to
bother you. And now what happens to me, Liz is
people will say do you take song requests? And my
immediate responses depends on what it is.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
If you got a bad request, then no, no.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
No no, And I've got my ways of handling that
working around that. But an environment like that was interesting
because I would have someone approach me and be like, hey,
is this Christian music? And it would be absolutely instrumental,
and I learned the best answer was just to say yeah.
(23:16):
It would happen at the merch table. I think we've
talked about this. I had an all instrumental CD that
I was selling at the time, and I would have
people ask me is it Christian music? And I would
try to be like, well, but it's instrument there's no
words on it. It's all just instruments. Yeah, but is
it Christian? And so I learned that, Okay, you just
(23:37):
need to know is this safe? Yes, So when people
will come up to me asking is this music Christian?
I would just say yes because I realized what you're
asking me, is this safe for the whole family? The
answer is yes. You're not going to hear the things
that you didn't show up here to hear. I get it.
I DJ in nightlife entertainment where they show up and
(23:59):
people will walk up to me. I've been at a
wedding and somebody walked up to me and said, Hey,
what's your nastiest song? I'm like, who's cousin? Is this?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Who?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
The wedding? So when something like this happens and someone
wants to walk up to you and have a philosophical
or a theological conversation. Again, remember I'm in a room
to where when I take my headphones off, I've now
lost the beat of where I am and it's impossible
for me to do my thing what I've been brought
(24:35):
here to do. Somebody saw me doing a thing and said, yes,
you come here, do this, and it's like, if you'll hang,
if you'll just hang out. By the end, you everything
ain't for everybody. I get it. But if you hang out,
you'll probably have a good time. You might see that
some of the things you're worried about okay. But there
(24:58):
is an element in those environments of we just got
to make sure. We got to make sure. And I
get it because you didn't show up for all that.
I get it. I understand their supply and demand. There's
customer service, and so I got you. You know, my
corporate gigs, when they bring me in, it's because they
know that I'm not going to play something that's going
(25:21):
to get them in trouble. Right, I've done gigs for
very large corporations where they are the number one soda
company in America. Well, at this gig, you're not allowed
to play anybody who's ever had a deal with the
number two soda company in this country. Well that's a
lot of people. But they entrust me with that. Right
(25:43):
by the end, I got you. But so it is
interesting that if someone were to walk up to me
and have a conversation and now what do I do?
Now do I stop what I'm doing? Like what is
about to change? Like someone brought me here I'm doing
what I was brought here.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
To, but what I was hired to do, what I'm
being paid to do.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Please. Another thing is pretty funny that I enjoy about
my relationship with a Mina is that it's great when
having someone else there to see things and experience things
that you're like, okay, I'm not crazy, right, that just happened,
like okay. And then also because of me and you were,
(26:29):
there's little things that we grab along the way, and
it's just a phrase that now lives in our house
for sure. So something's gonna happen. Hey, careful, you're gonna
wake up all the devons and Burmanham girl, you wiling
a little bit? You might wait. Boy. So I can't
even tell you how many years ago that was, but
(26:50):
we have said that phrase so many times. And you
know what, I'm not even mad at that lady. She
she added to our little She had so much joy
and laughter in this house.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I also love it for both of us that we
both have environments where we no longer have to be
safe for the whole family. Yeah, because that's pretty That's
a pretty like hands tying sort of experience for you
as an artist, especially as a grown like we are
grown people. We are two people in our forties. We
have a lot of life that we've experienced, good, bad, ugly,
(27:24):
and different, hilarious, whatever it is. And to be in
a lot of Christian spaces where art was only valuable
if either A it fit into the worship category and
b if it got too cool or two air quotes
urban Take with that what you will. But if it
(27:45):
started getting into those categories, that's that's for the youth.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, that's the teenagers.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
But either way, it should be something that if you're
three years old or you're three hundred, it's for everybody.
And the truth is there really isn't a lot of
things in life. I mean, like soap and water apply
to hundred.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Honestly. That's that's why DJing weddings is so difficult, because
you've I had a wedding where, uh, someone's maybe four
year old stood by the turntables the whole time and
just kept saying, oh, town road, oh down road. It
(28:27):
didn't matter how many times I played all the time.
He wanted to get well, I'm going and this this
little kid, that's all he wanted to hear. And I've
got to make you your young cousin dance. I used
to I used to ask couples, do you want an
all clean DJ set for your dance floor segment? Or
(28:53):
do you want because some people would want the dirty versions? Right,
I've stopped offering that because you're not going to have
me up there playing bleeps and bloops.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Ok, hips like speaking of disappointment. One of my one
of my most hilarious stories of someone's feelings about Matt's
DJ sets. We were doing a youth event this time.
(29:23):
I can't remember the location. Actually, that's kind of blurred
in me now, but we were doing a youth event
some city somewhere, but it was a big enough event.
It had a hashtag and we were like studying the feed.
We were like reading the hashtag feed as the event
was going on, and at some point an adult, an
(29:46):
adult woman who was there as a chaperone with a
group of kids at whatever this youth event was, decided
that she needed to tweet her feelings about whatever the
music was that she felt you were spinning. I just
remember whatever her comment was to you, The last part
(30:08):
of it was hashtag disappointed.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Y'all.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
The amount of times that Matt and I still say
it to each other. Wow, went to the store and
they were out of such and such hashtag disappointed.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think it was something like I played just a
little bit of teach me how to Douggie or one
of those songs that's like everybody do this dance, And
it was, if I remember correctly, it was a real
short segment. But that right there is why I put
in a rule for myself that when I am performing anywhere,
(30:47):
do not look at social media. Don't look at it
immediately after, maybe look at it before, but not during. Nope,
I've got to wear Instagram, Twitter or any of those.
None of them send me notifications to my phone at all.
I turned them off because in these environments you would have,
you know, like the hashtag disappointment. Now I'm supposed to
(31:10):
go like, there's a there's a place that you have
to take yourself to be able to get on stage
in front of This was another I remember, pretty large
We're doing a lot of at the time, we were
doing a lot of really large room festival style events.
There were large events, and so the place you got
to take yourself and now out of how many thousands
(31:31):
of people are in front of me, just knowing this
one person is so upset they went on Twitter and
hashtag disappointed me.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
She disappointed us.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I mean, how do you pick yourself up? How do
you like? Because there's a certain level of confidence that
it takes to approach a crowd and do something that
makes them feel something and give that energy back to you,
and then it's a it's a give and take between
you and the audience. So so it didn't matter how
(32:02):
many people whenever I said make some noise and they're like,
it didn't matter because this lady was hashtag disappointed and
my day was wrecked.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Boy.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
There was times where people would go in my uh
they would go through my Instagram feed and there would
be who knows, some some picture that I put some
caption with and they would Jesus, juke me somewhat, No, Jesus,
the only solid rock and roll of what you got me?
You win? You out argue me. I'm embarrassed, you know what,
(32:35):
I'm shutting it down. I'm not doing this no more.
Know what, Like, what what do you want from me?
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Which we talked about this a little bit on the
previous episode. I can't remember if it was here a Patreon,
but we talked about previously, just even a convert. I
think this might have been a bonus episode. We were
talking about uh ME in talks with a guy who
led one of the bigger name Christian bands at the time,
and he was very up said about you know, ideas
(33:02):
about secular music and blah blah blah. And here's the
thing that I guess we had to learn about ourselves though,
is for us it's like good music is good music,
you know now. I mean there's a lot of music
that people consider air quotes Christian that even though people
who are Christian may agree with the message, I don't
(33:24):
think based on baseline and groove and songwriting that it's
good music. It's not inspiring to me musically, right, So
I do think it's a weird like fragmentation in your
brain almost when we would be in these environments like
playing songs that are actually good, like it's good music,
(33:45):
it's good musicianship, it's good songwriting, the music, but people
are hashtag disappointed because it doesn't have messaging on it
that they agree with, or it doesn't say it in
the way they're used to it being said. And so
I think there are a lot of those elements too
where you would be like, but your hashtag disappointed, and
(34:08):
that was earth winding Fire, Where are you disappointed?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
I think I remember also from that Birmingham gig specifically
because there was a DJ friend that lived in Birmingham
that we had met here in Atlanta and we're like, hey,
we're in Birmingham. So she took us to her records
store she liked to shop at, and I bought some
vinyl while we're there, and for sound check that night,
(34:34):
I went in and during soundcheck, I'm spending. So I'm spending,
like you know, I think there was some earth winding fire,
some slide in the family stone from James Brown. You know,
I was picking up a lot of that, and I
remember Sound's going to be, hey, are you doing something different,
something in the stereo field, some some different. I was like, Oh,
I'm spending vinyl. He goes, Oh, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
That was one of my favorite things about the road
was going to record stores. We went to so many
good ones. Well we'll circle back to that on another
episode too. Okay, in closing for this episode, I want
to bring up one more phrase that always is kind
of a weird, funny unfortunate, and that is the phrase,
we have such a young team. I just can't tell
(35:22):
y'all the amount of churches. This is a very church
specific thing. I didn't hear it as much from organizations.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
A lot of college ministry.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
But a lot of churches, especially churches that could be
like megachurches that had a that had a younger pastor
who was maybe in his early forties or he was
in his thirties or something. You know, it was always
this type of church or or the type of church
that in your city would tell would tell you that
(35:52):
it's doing church differently. It was that type of church
that we would get there and they would be like,
you know, they give us the who were the facility,
and they'd be like, we have such a young team.
And whenever they said it to us, they were very proud.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Isn't it cool?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
So proud? Uh huh. I want to tell y'all that
whenever we heard that, we knew that something in the
gig was going to go terribly wrong. It either meant
that the creative was going to be great. Yeah, but
when it came time to get the check, no one
knew where it was because they have such a young team,
no one knows how to do accounting or accounts payable.
(36:29):
Sometimes they would say we have such a young team.
That meant it was going to be terribly unorganized, that
there was going to be no one there to actually
make sure the ideas got completed. Sometimes they would say
we have a young team, and that would mean that
it was going to be too many things we were
(36:50):
going to be asked to do. Oh yeah at one event,
count yeah. They were going to be like, oh my gosh,
we're so excited to have you guys, thank you so much.
So instead of just performing the one time, we actually
all were in a really great brainstorm and we were
thinking that since we're gonna have morning devotional every morning
at six thirty, we were thinking poetry and djaying is
a great way to start that, and so we were
(37:11):
thinking maybe like for three days, you guys could just
like open devotional at six thirty and then we have
our lunch session in the cafeteria, and these students really
need motivation, and so we were thinking lunch would be
also a great time for you guys to share. And
then we have a video series that we were hoping
you guys could come and do and we set up
a set that totally looks like a porch turned into
(37:31):
a basketball court, and we were hoping you guys could
also do that. Also. Our theme is Jesus is the
Bread of Life, and we were wanting to do like
a mini cooking show and we were hoping to see
maybe you guys could also like bake bread with us
and like maybe like some fish oh loaves. No, that's
a totally good idea, And we're like, like, what are
(37:51):
y'all talking about? You are not paying us enough money.
Number one, for all of these ideas, I'm not that eager,
you know. I want to bring up what you said
earlier is when you hear that, when you hear the
phrase we have such a young team, it means the
people at the kids' table have somehow been left in charge.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
And a lot of times where the issue would come
up would be in housing of where you were going
to sleep. Those part of the details that don't involve lights,
camera action. Those are the details that more than like
it's gonna be like Because when I was twenty, I
(38:32):
slept on a lot of couches.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Listen, listen, the mattress I was on in my twenties
was a hand me down from somewhere. So I do
want to tell y'all when you are like high school,
college age, it's some things that you would be willing
to accept.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
It felt fun, it was an adventure.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
You'll be like, oh my gosh, this place doesn't have
any blinds. All the windows are just open. Let's have
a sleepover. Like you don't think about that. You get
to be wrong grown, You have concerns, You have concerns.
You're like, I didn't travel all the way here to
sleep on a couch, to sleep on a bed that
was made for children. We are also two people. Matt
(39:13):
is over six feet tall and I'm almost six feet tall,
So we can't really be playing no games out.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Here hanging over. I'm a little mattress.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
So maybe maybe you don't have a young team. Maybe
maybe try having something intergenerational. Somebody there is going to
know about accounts payable. Somebody there is going to know
what a good mattress feels like. Somebody there is going
to make sure there's food to meet the dietary restrictions.
Just we need to mix at.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Least make sure it's blind.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Blinds on the windows, just blinds on the windows.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
A shower curtain. How many times have we I swear
no blinds, no shower curtain.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Nothing, And they were like, that's okay, see you guys
in the morning. What do you think I'm doing?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
What do you mean because I'm going to shower so
you going to get a show?
Speaker 1 (40:01):
And okay, because I'm like, if that's the show y'all wanted.
You know, me and macka start are only fans. But
we didn't come out here. We didn't come out here
to such and such camp in the middle of Kentucky
or wherever to start our only fans. That's not the thing. Anyways, y'all,
thanks for joining us for the weird, the funny, and
the unfortunate. We got some more road source for y'all,
(40:22):
so we'll see y'all soon. Hear What Amina Brown is
produced by Matt Owen for Sober Feedy Productions as a
part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio.
(40:44):
Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
review the podcast.
Hey, y'all, welcome back to a new episode of Her
with the Meta Brown. And I'm excited to have my
husband and producer back in the living room with us
so that we can get into a few more road stories.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Okay, Shenanigan, Oh that's my type of carrying on. You
call me in here for the right reason.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Okay. So we picked out three or four moments that
we can't decide if they're funny, if they're weird, or
if they are are unfortunate, or some combination of I
want to start with a gig that we did in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Which definitely fills all three of those buckets.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
You know, that's that's a good point. Actually it was.
It was weird, it was funny, it was unfortunate, and
we were working with an organization that had had a
moment that quite a few white evangelical organizations had over
the years, where their leadership had said some things publicly
(01:36):
that were causing a lot of problems, and specifically because
a person that was in leadership had said some things
regarding race publicly that were very offensive, very offensive. So
someone in leadership had said something offensive and in a
(01:59):
different podcast episode, we may talk to you all about
some of the other behind the scenes things that went
on there. But for the sake of this being a
road story.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
That's for the meetings and conversations episode.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, because yikes, because.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
There was meetings and there was conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh man, there was so many meetings and so many conversations.
But suffice it to say, we had an opportunity to
decide whether or not we were going to still do
the gig, and for various the sundry reasons at the time,
we decided to do the gig. And I remember there
was another really big name gospel artist who was also
brought in to do this gig because the artist was
(02:40):
someone that the leadership of the organization knew. They felt
that because this artist was very well known and was
also black, and Birmingham being a city that also has
a lot of black folks, that there would be a
way the event could kind of bring people together in
the midst of the fact that they had some leaders
(03:00):
ship that we're making some very terrible statements in public.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Okay, part try to do something helpful, part PR.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Move Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely, part.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
PR Move and smaller sprink let's try to do something helpful.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Definitely sprinkle. I thank you for saying sprinkle, because I
was about to say just a small amount. But I
feel sprinkle is is more of the accuracy. It's definitely
more of the accuracy. And I do want to say
before we get into the what is the funny part,
because I guess this is the part we're telling you
that is the unfortunate part of it. Right is you know,
(03:35):
as you go on in your life and you learn
the different things that you stand for, right, And I
think for us it's learning not just the things we
stand against, but the things we stand for. And I
think also you know, when you're growing up, growing up
in church settings and also have spent a lot of
(03:58):
the time of your youth like you're whies and different
things in church settings, there's just a whole lot of
things that you let.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Skate by, you want to ask no questions that as.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
You get older, you realize these are things that you
would not let skate by. So if you were asking
Matt and Amina of today, if this exact situation were
to happen all over again, I'm pretty sure that when
those people came to us and said, you know, we
give you the option to do the gig or not.
We probably would have been like, no thank you. I
don't even want my name anywhere near any of this.
(04:30):
No thank you. But truthfully, at the time, I think
our minds were along the lines of some other artists
that appeared at the same event, you know, thinking like,
you know, this terrible moment has happened, how can we
help people come together? How can we help people continue,
you know, doing their healing word, etc. And I don't
(04:54):
judge us for having made that choice at all, but
I think we have a little more wisdom behind us
now to know that there are times that you are
doing things to air quotes help people come together. But
sometimes people in leadership use that language because they don't
want to be held accountable for the things they say
and do.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Mm hmmmm hm. So yeah, also have learned that money
spends way too fast, boy, and all money ain't good money.
So just because somebody's paying you money, which you've talked
about a lot on this podcast, being an independent artist,
being a young person doing something. When someone says I
(05:35):
will pay you money to do this thing, You're like,
really you would pay me money? Like I've been doing
this thing for free? For money and then you know,
pay some bills money. Oh wow. But once that money's gone,
then you have time to look back at the thing.
You will probably be like, oh, there's got to be
(05:56):
another way to make money. And that's that's the truth. Yeah,
there's always another way to make money.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah, big facts. So that's that. Hopefully at some other
point we will come back and tell y'all some of it.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Also, do think along the lines of what you were
talking about of looking back at it differently. There is
a time most of us who grew up going to
family events, Yeah, we were sitting at the kids table,
and so the grown ups were having the grown up conversations.
We were at the kids table, right, And for those
of us who came up in the church, especially as
(06:32):
artists and musicians, there's a lot of good that comes
from that because immediately you've got a crowd in front
of you, and you've got instruments, and you've got programming,
and you've got all these things to figure out. That
formulates into you flash forward to your standing on some
large stage. Well that's the journey that started on that
(06:53):
really tiny thing. But in the church family setting, when
you're the musicosition you're kind of sitting at the kids table,
you know what I mean, and so you don't really
ask a lot of questions. Sometimes you're not even aware
of what's going on. Nowadays, it's different now than what
it used to be. Used to be. Uh, there was
(07:14):
churches I played at where you know, you you were
on the stage the whole time because you never knew
when that pastor was going to kick into the You
never knew when it was it's going to come for
you a couple of times, so you might as well
just stay there. Now you can kind of go out there,
play your music and then go sit and you don't
even know what they're talking about. Flash forward to you know,
(07:37):
some of these large settings that we were performing in,
like this one where you're in an arena and everyone
has their own green room, dressing room, there's a common
area where there's food that is for everyone. They're serving dinner, lunch,
their snacks. There's a hangout spot. But for the most part,
(07:58):
if you want to be you can be totally unaware
of what's going on. Yeah, and so you show up,
you do your thing, and you don't know what's going on. Well,
this guy happened to say some things on Facebook and
they were highly insensitive, highly unhelpful. And it's one of
those moments where I started going, oh, just because you
(08:22):
have a big platform doesn't mean that you want to
be helpful.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So, now all of a sudden, we find ourselves not
necessarily sitting at the grown up table in that we
get to decide what this man is going to do.
I don't feel like he handled it the right way, sure,
but I feel like for us, we learned, oh, there's
a different there's a me and you grown up table
(08:50):
where we can go, oh, what are we going to do?
How to you know, we sat down ate lunch and
dinner with all kinds of people helped us navigate it.
And like you said, now, we probably would even navigate
it differently, but at the time, we made the right
decision based off of what was in front of us.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Sure, sure made the best decision we could in that moment.
Yo Oh, y'all, we would really need a different type
of series other than road Stories to tell y'all all
of the things that go on behind the scenes in
this type of situation.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But I just talked to my therapist about this very scenario,
and this was years ago that it's still got some
things tangled up in me. Man.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, it was such a moment, man, y'all. That's I
feel like what you what you said there is is
really important, especially when you're you know, you're looking back
on your choices and decisions, and sometimes in a way too,
I think for us, for those of us who are
performing artists, I think there's also the element of, like,
to the point of what you were saying about the
(09:57):
who who are considered to be the kids who are
who considered to be the people who have power in
the situation, and who are considered to be the people
who don't. And a lot of times, as artists, you
are sometimes made to feel like you are in a
situation where you don't have a lot of power and
you kind of have to concede to the people who do.
And in some situations I think that is true, but
(10:20):
I also think we had to learn over the years
to accept the power we do have. We can't control
how the organizations are going to be run. We can't
control the choices, the terrible choices, especially in white evangelicalism,
that many people in leadership made. We don't have control
over all that. But we get to have control over
(10:41):
what we get to stand with or stand beside, or
stand for, how we want to represent ourselves, whose name
we want our names to be next to, and all
of those things. And even aside from the really the
really ignorant story we try to tell y'all, you know,
we we made some subversive choices and how we both
(11:03):
performed our art that particular night, you know, because there
were some things related to the organization and how the
leadership handled that that even in our efforts to try
to like bring people together and make people feel welcome,
we still wanted to make it known like we don't
rock with all this, you know. So I can kind
of look back on us now and see like the
(11:24):
beginnings of us sort of taken our power back. But
I think that's really important to consider. When you're in
a situation where you feel like you're at the kids' table,
you may not be. You may actually have more power
than you think you know to be able to use
your voice and use your art and use whatever you
have access to.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So this brings me to this moment has come now
in Birmingham. We are in an arena. I mean, y'all,
this arena probably seat somewhere between fourteen and eighteen thousand people.
This is a huge, a huge facility here, and Matt
is the house for the event, and I am am seeing.
(12:03):
And then we had a couple of times in the
show that we performed together, like in between the other acts. Okay,
so Matt is djaying as people are like coming into
the arena. So you probably had anywhere from an hour
to ninety minutes of a set.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, especially when things are running behind. Then it gets put.
You know, you got to keep going. And also there
was a broadcast element, if I remember correctly, this is
one of those events where there was a broadcast element.
So you've got the crowd in front of you. Yeah,
that you are, you know, you're somewhat playing background music.
(12:44):
But my job was to have the people on ten
by the time the first artist hit the stage. So
it's me and a crowd for an hour plus and
it's my job to get you in but all so
get you moving. So back then I like to do
a lot of call and response with people. I'd yell
(13:06):
something or I'd sing something and let the crowd sing it.
And then with the broadcast element, someone would have a
headset there, talking with the people and where they were
calling the show, and they would let me know when
I was addressing the broadcast crowd, and there'd be certain
cameras set up that you'd have to go to, and
so there were a lot of those elements that you
(13:28):
were juggling on top of what, you know, the thing
the stories that was there. Another fun thing about whenever
you're DJing in a large venue like this and you're
doing call and response type things with a crowd. Most
times in this case, I'm in the middle of the arena,
(13:49):
but by the time the sound gets to the audience
and then bounces back to me, it's on a whole
different beat than what I'm on. So I learned the
hard way. You gotta get some good headphones and hug
them tight, because if not, there was no way. You know,
when you're DJing, you're blending all these records together and
(14:11):
beat matching, and then if I'm like everybody says oh,
where it should have just been right after oh, it's oh, Oh,
I've got to stay on beat, and man, it was.
It was a lot to learn. It was a lot
to juggle on top of the fact that there was
(14:32):
a lot we had to juggle.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, for sure, I'm trying to get Let's set the
scene for y'all to understand that this organization, we were
booked for six events with them over a two year period,
so by the time this Birmingham event came, we probably
had done about half of the events. They had this
stage set up for Matt in the center of the arena.
(14:57):
So a lot of these arenas were kind of set
up like hockey arenas, where you had the arena seating,
but then you had the large kind of bottom of
the arena where typically would have been the ice and all,
but instead it was just the flooring and that was
all standing room only, so people could come down actually
(15:17):
to the floor of the arena to see the acts
up close if they wanted to. So Matt is set
up in the center of that. Now we learned the
hard way through the first couple of events that people
want to go up to Matt and talk to him
during his DJ set, and I'm talking about he's on
a setup where you can't just literally like walk up
(15:38):
to him. You got to walk down to the floor,
you got to walk upstairs because he was on an
elevated stage in the center of the arena, so you
have to walk up the stairs to get to him,
and I would typically be backstage working on something else
or talking to people or whatever. And I realized this
event in particular, I was going to have to stay
(15:59):
out there during his DJ set to keep people from
walking up there to talk to him. You have no
idea what manner of things people could be saying. Sometimes
people have requests. Sometimes people are there and they don't
even go to church stuff, so they're requesting stuff from
Matt that like, he can't play at.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
This thing, not this thing next weekend I got.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And then sometimes people will come up with very obscure
requests for things. He's like, I don't know what that's about.
And then sometimes just him djaying brought up memories from them.
A lot of back in my day, I used to
DJ stories that people want to tell them Matt.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
I get that lot.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So in Birmingham I decided to just stand out there.
I think they put security after a couple of dates.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
I do think I remember that that they put like
some stanchions around, and then there was security as some
places because some places the crowd I remember got really close.
And also if I remember correctly, they didn't have an
actual like DJ booth or I've had to set up
(17:11):
my DJ gear in some weird spots. But if I
remember correctly, it was like one of those big road cases,
but it wasn't the road case that was being used
for something else. They had taken the lid, the kind
of flimsy lid from the road case, set it on
side and put some plywood on top, and I think
(17:31):
like taped it all together. So I remember a couple
of cities where like it was getting pretty rowdy down there,
which is that's how I like to do. And so
they're down there with me. I'm with them going, but
I'm looking. I'm like, oh, I think every I'm about
to lose it all. We are at the edge right now.
And one of the city, Toronto, maybe a big breakdance
(17:53):
circle popped up, remember because Toronto has a really cool
hip hop scene, and looked out like, oh cool, you know.
But that as the circle kept getting bigger and bigger,
and so I think they started adding the stanchions of
the ropes around. Yeah, and yeah, some security.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, I want to tell y'all that it depended on
the city. If that security was reliable, paying attention. Yeah,
some cities people people were very vigilant about making sure
you don't walk right up. Other people didn't really understand
what's the purpose of them being security, So I think
sometimes they thought like, oh, they must want this here
(18:30):
so people don't walk away with his equipment. We need
security there so people will stop walking up the steps
and talking to the DJ while the DJ is DJing.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Okay, it's pretty funny phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So I decided on this Birmingham date that I was
going to stay out there and just watch. So there
was security right by the stage where Matt was, and
I was also on the floor, but I was standing
a little further away, and I see this old white woman.
She has got she had gotten to be like close
(19:04):
to the age of both of our grandmothers, probably like
in her seventies and her eighties silver hair. I see
her walking very slowly towards the stage, and I'm like,
I'm gonna go ahead and circumvent this. So I walk
over to her and I'm like, hey, is there something
I can help you with? And she's like, I gotta
talk to him right now. And I was like, Okay,
(19:27):
I said, why don't you tell me what you were
gonna tell him, and I'll make sure the message gets
to him. Well, well, I've been upstairs and I've been praying,
because you know, a group of us are here praying.
And I said, and she said, and I just feel
that he's playing this music and this music is gonna
(19:47):
wake up all the demons in Birmingham. Now, I want
y'all to know that, since this time, my comedic brain
is like it's turned on at a level that is
very different from the level it was on then. Because
if me today had had that conversation, I would have
(20:09):
been like, honey, you think him playing this music is
what's gonna bring back all the demons in Birmingham. Money
the demons. Some of the demons are here alive.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
What you mean? What you mean was real comfortable? He
is walking around drinking a soda.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I'm like, that's that's the demons is awake out here.
I don't know what you mean, y'all. I literally had
Tom Yes, ma'am her all the way back to her seat.
I said, well, you know what, since y'all were already praying,
I think that's the best thing for you to do.
You just keep on praying for him, and just pray
for everybody at your seat though, at your seat, she said, okay,
(20:51):
but all the demons in Birmingham at your seat, Yes, ma'am,
directly at your seat, y'all. Yikes.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
It is so interesting, like you said, because people come
up to me to talk to me, and sometimes they
don't all the way have it together what they want
to talk to me, even if they're requesting a song,
And so it still happens to me. Now I don't
work nearly as much like in the faith based events side,
which has its own kind of interesting thing to it,
(21:35):
because in a faith based environment, I am there to
keep the energy up, get people engaged and motivated. But
the main thing that people love about music is familiarity.
Oh that's my song, ooh, that's You can't utilize that
(21:56):
in a faith based environment because of what we deemed
secular versus what we deem sacred. And however you draw
those lines, and this lady clearly had a line drawn.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
But and this lady probably didn't know that a lot
of what Matt was spinning was air quotes Christian music.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yis I'm remixing whoever the Christian artist of that day
is also using a lot of just instrumental music, a
lot of those music that I was making myself and
just you know, working it out as we were on
the road. And so it's always interesting when someone approaches me.
I can always tell when someone's walking up to me
(22:35):
and they've got kind of sheepish look on their face, like, Hey,
I don't want to bother you, but I'm going to
bother you. And now what happens to me, Liz is
people will say do you take song requests? And my
immediate responses depends on what it is.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
If you got a bad request, then no, no.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
No no, And I've got my ways of handling that
working around that. But an environment like that was interesting
because I would have someone approach me and be like, hey,
is this Christian music? And it would be absolutely instrumental,
and I learned the best answer was just to say yeah.
(23:16):
It would happen at the merch table. I think we've
talked about this. I had an all instrumental CD that
I was selling at the time, and I would have
people ask me is it Christian music? And I would
try to be like, well, but it's instrument there's no
words on it. It's all just instruments. Yeah, but is
it Christian? And so I learned that, Okay, you just
(23:37):
need to know is this safe? Yes, So when people
will come up to me asking is this music Christian?
I would just say yes because I realized what you're
asking me, is this safe for the whole family? The
answer is yes. You're not going to hear the things
that you didn't show up here to hear. I get it.
I DJ in nightlife entertainment where they show up and
(23:59):
people will walk up to me. I've been at a
wedding and somebody walked up to me and said, Hey,
what's your nastiest song? I'm like, who's cousin? Is this?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Who?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
The wedding? So when something like this happens and someone
wants to walk up to you and have a philosophical
or a theological conversation. Again, remember I'm in a room
to where when I take my headphones off, I've now
lost the beat of where I am and it's impossible
for me to do my thing what I've been brought
(24:35):
here to do. Somebody saw me doing a thing and said, yes,
you come here, do this, and it's like, if you'll hang,
if you'll just hang out. By the end, you everything
ain't for everybody. I get it. But if you hang out,
you'll probably have a good time. You might see that
some of the things you're worried about okay. But there
(24:58):
is an element in those environments of we just got
to make sure. We got to make sure. And I
get it because you didn't show up for all that.
I get it. I understand their supply and demand. There's
customer service, and so I got you. You know, my
corporate gigs, when they bring me in, it's because they
know that I'm not going to play something that's going
(25:21):
to get them in trouble. Right, I've done gigs for
very large corporations where they are the number one soda
company in America. Well, at this gig, you're not allowed
to play anybody who's ever had a deal with the
number two soda company in this country. Well that's a
lot of people. But they entrust me with that. Right
(25:43):
by the end, I got you. But so it is
interesting that if someone were to walk up to me
and have a conversation and now what do I do?
Now do I stop what I'm doing? Like what is
about to change? Like someone brought me here I'm doing
what I was brought here.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
To, but what I was hired to do, what I'm
being paid to do.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Please. Another thing is pretty funny that I enjoy about
my relationship with a Mina is that it's great when
having someone else there to see things and experience things
that you're like, okay, I'm not crazy, right, that just happened,
like okay. And then also because of me and you were,
(26:29):
there's little things that we grab along the way, and
it's just a phrase that now lives in our house
for sure. So something's gonna happen. Hey, careful, you're gonna
wake up all the devons and Burmanham girl, you wiling
a little bit? You might wait. Boy. So I can't
even tell you how many years ago that was, but
(26:50):
we have said that phrase so many times. And you
know what, I'm not even mad at that lady. She
she added to our little She had so much joy
and laughter in this house.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I also love it for both of us that we
both have environments where we no longer have to be
safe for the whole family. Yeah, because that's pretty That's
a pretty like hands tying sort of experience for you
as an artist, especially as a grown like we are
grown people. We are two people in our forties. We
have a lot of life that we've experienced, good, bad, ugly,
(27:24):
and different, hilarious, whatever it is. And to be in
a lot of Christian spaces where art was only valuable
if either A it fit into the worship category and
b if it got too cool or two air quotes
urban Take with that what you will. But if it
(27:45):
started getting into those categories, that's that's for the youth.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, that's the teenagers.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
But either way, it should be something that if you're
three years old or you're three hundred, it's for everybody.
And the truth is there really isn't a lot of
things in life. I mean, like soap and water apply
to hundred.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Honestly. That's that's why DJing weddings is so difficult, because
you've I had a wedding where, uh, someone's maybe four
year old stood by the turntables the whole time and
just kept saying, oh, town road, oh down road. It
(28:27):
didn't matter how many times I played all the time.
He wanted to get well, I'm going and this this
little kid, that's all he wanted to hear. And I've
got to make you your young cousin dance. I used
to I used to ask couples, do you want an
all clean DJ set for your dance floor segment? Or
(28:53):
do you want because some people would want the dirty versions? Right,
I've stopped offering that because you're not going to have
me up there playing bleeps and bloops.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Ok, hips like speaking of disappointment. One of my one
of my most hilarious stories of someone's feelings about Matt's
DJ sets. We were doing a youth event this time.
(29:23):
I can't remember the location. Actually, that's kind of blurred
in me now, but we were doing a youth event
some city somewhere, but it was a big enough event.
It had a hashtag and we were like studying the feed.
We were like reading the hashtag feed as the event
was going on, and at some point an adult, an
(29:46):
adult woman who was there as a chaperone with a
group of kids at whatever this youth event was, decided
that she needed to tweet her feelings about whatever the
music was that she felt you were spinning. I just
remember whatever her comment was to you, The last part
(30:08):
of it was hashtag disappointed.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Y'all.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
The amount of times that Matt and I still say
it to each other. Wow, went to the store and
they were out of such and such hashtag disappointed.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I think it was something like I played just a
little bit of teach me how to Douggie or one
of those songs that's like everybody do this dance, And
it was, if I remember correctly, it was a real
short segment. But that right there is why I put
in a rule for myself that when I am performing anywhere,
(30:47):
do not look at social media. Don't look at it
immediately after, maybe look at it before, but not during. Nope,
I've got to wear Instagram, Twitter or any of those.
None of them send me notifications to my phone at all.
I turned them off because in these environments you would have,
you know, like the hashtag disappointment. Now I'm supposed to
(31:10):
go like, there's a there's a place that you have
to take yourself to be able to get on stage
in front of This was another I remember, pretty large
We're doing a lot of at the time, we were
doing a lot of really large room festival style events.
There were large events, and so the place you got
to take yourself and now out of how many thousands
(31:31):
of people are in front of me, just knowing this
one person is so upset they went on Twitter and
hashtag disappointed me.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
She disappointed us.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I mean, how do you pick yourself up? How do
you like? Because there's a certain level of confidence that
it takes to approach a crowd and do something that
makes them feel something and give that energy back to you,
and then it's a it's a give and take between
you and the audience. So so it didn't matter how
(32:02):
many people whenever I said make some noise and they're like,
it didn't matter because this lady was hashtag disappointed and
my day was wrecked.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Boy.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
There was times where people would go in my uh
they would go through my Instagram feed and there would
be who knows, some some picture that I put some
caption with and they would Jesus, juke me somewhat, No, Jesus,
the only solid rock and roll of what you got me?
You win? You out argue me. I'm embarrassed, you know what,
(32:35):
I'm shutting it down. I'm not doing this no more.
Know what, Like, what what do you want from me?
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Which we talked about this a little bit on the
previous episode. I can't remember if it was here a Patreon,
but we talked about previously, just even a convert. I
think this might have been a bonus episode. We were
talking about uh ME in talks with a guy who
led one of the bigger name Christian bands at the time,
and he was very up said about you know, ideas
(33:02):
about secular music and blah blah blah. And here's the
thing that I guess we had to learn about ourselves though,
is for us it's like good music is good music,
you know now. I mean there's a lot of music
that people consider air quotes Christian that even though people
who are Christian may agree with the message, I don't
(33:24):
think based on baseline and groove and songwriting that it's
good music. It's not inspiring to me musically, right, So
I do think it's a weird like fragmentation in your
brain almost when we would be in these environments like
playing songs that are actually good, like it's good music,
(33:45):
it's good musicianship, it's good songwriting, the music, but people
are hashtag disappointed because it doesn't have messaging on it
that they agree with, or it doesn't say it in
the way they're used to it being said. And so
I think there are a lot of those elements too
where you would be like, but your hashtag disappointed, and
(34:08):
that was earth winding Fire, Where are you disappointed?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
I think I remember also from that Birmingham gig specifically
because there was a DJ friend that lived in Birmingham
that we had met here in Atlanta and we're like, hey,
we're in Birmingham. So she took us to her records
store she liked to shop at, and I bought some
vinyl while we're there, and for sound check that night,
(34:34):
I went in and during soundcheck, I'm spending. So I'm spending,
like you know, I think there was some earth winding fire,
some slide in the family stone from James Brown. You know,
I was picking up a lot of that, and I
remember Sound's going to be, hey, are you doing something different,
something in the stereo field, some some different. I was like, Oh,
I'm spending vinyl. He goes, Oh, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
That was one of my favorite things about the road
was going to record stores. We went to so many
good ones. Well we'll circle back to that on another
episode too. Okay, in closing for this episode, I want
to bring up one more phrase that always is kind
of a weird, funny unfortunate, and that is the phrase,
we have such a young team. I just can't tell
(35:22):
y'all the amount of churches. This is a very church
specific thing. I didn't hear it as much from organizations.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
A lot of college ministry.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
But a lot of churches, especially churches that could be
like megachurches that had a that had a younger pastor
who was maybe in his early forties or he was
in his thirties or something. You know, it was always
this type of church or or the type of church
that in your city would tell would tell you that
(35:52):
it's doing church differently. It was that type of church
that we would get there and they would be like,
you know, they give us the who were the facility,
and they'd be like, we have such a young team.
And whenever they said it to us, they were very proud.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Isn't it cool?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
So proud? Uh huh. I want to tell y'all that
whenever we heard that, we knew that something in the
gig was going to go terribly wrong. It either meant
that the creative was going to be great. Yeah, but
when it came time to get the check, no one
knew where it was because they have such a young team,
no one knows how to do accounting or accounts payable.
(36:29):
Sometimes they would say we have such a young team.
That meant it was going to be terribly unorganized, that
there was going to be no one there to actually
make sure the ideas got completed. Sometimes they would say
we have a young team, and that would mean that
it was going to be too many things we were
(36:50):
going to be asked to do. Oh yeah at one event,
count yeah. They were going to be like, oh my gosh,
we're so excited to have you guys, thank you so much.
So instead of just performing the one time, we actually
all were in a really great brainstorm and we were
thinking that since we're gonna have morning devotional every morning
at six thirty, we were thinking poetry and djaying is
a great way to start that, and so we were
(37:11):
thinking maybe like for three days, you guys could just
like open devotional at six thirty and then we have
our lunch session in the cafeteria, and these students really
need motivation, and so we were thinking lunch would be
also a great time for you guys to share. And
then we have a video series that we were hoping
you guys could come and do and we set up
a set that totally looks like a porch turned into
(37:31):
a basketball court, and we were hoping you guys could
also do that. Also. Our theme is Jesus is the
Bread of Life, and we were wanting to do like
a mini cooking show and we were hoping to see
maybe you guys could also like bake bread with us
and like maybe like some fish oh loaves. No, that's
a totally good idea, And we're like, like, what are
(37:51):
y'all talking about? You are not paying us enough money.
Number one, for all of these ideas, I'm not that eager,
you know. I want to bring up what you said
earlier is when you hear that, when you hear the
phrase we have such a young team, it means the
people at the kids' table have somehow been left in charge.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
And a lot of times where the issue would come
up would be in housing of where you were going
to sleep. Those part of the details that don't involve lights,
camera action. Those are the details that more than like
it's gonna be like Because when I was twenty, I
(38:32):
slept on a lot of couches.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Listen, listen, the mattress I was on in my twenties
was a hand me down from somewhere. So I do
want to tell y'all when you are like high school,
college age, it's some things that you would be willing
to accept.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
It felt fun, it was an adventure.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
You'll be like, oh my gosh, this place doesn't have
any blinds. All the windows are just open. Let's have
a sleepover. Like you don't think about that. You get
to be wrong grown, You have concerns, You have concerns.
You're like, I didn't travel all the way here to
sleep on a couch, to sleep on a bed that
was made for children. We are also two people. Matt
(39:13):
is over six feet tall and I'm almost six feet tall,
So we can't really be playing no games out.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Here hanging over. I'm a little mattress.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
So maybe maybe you don't have a young team. Maybe
maybe try having something intergenerational. Somebody there is going to
know about accounts payable. Somebody there is going to know
what a good mattress feels like. Somebody there is going
to make sure there's food to meet the dietary restrictions.
Just we need to mix at.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Least make sure it's blind.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Blinds on the windows, just blinds on the windows.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
A shower curtain. How many times have we I swear
no blinds, no shower curtain.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Nothing, And they were like, that's okay, see you guys
in the morning. What do you think I'm doing?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
What do you mean because I'm going to shower so
you going to get a show?
Speaker 1 (40:01):
And okay, because I'm like, if that's the show y'all wanted.
You know, me and macka start are only fans. But
we didn't come out here. We didn't come out here
to such and such camp in the middle of Kentucky
or wherever to start our only fans. That's not the thing. Anyways, y'all,
thanks for joining us for the weird, the funny, and
the unfortunate. We got some more road source for y'all,
(40:22):
so we'll see y'all soon. Hear What Amina Brown is
produced by Matt Owen for Sober Feedy Productions as a
part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio.
(40:44):
Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
review the podcast.
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