December 6, 2022 • 52 mins
Matt and I spent a lot of holidays on the road. Listen in for the best and the worst of our holiday gigs!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Everybody. Welcome back to this week's episode of Her with
Amina Brown. And it is holidays time, y'all. I don't
know how much pretending you're doing at your jobs at
this point. I feel like there's two groups of people.
There's a group of people who are not doing anything
(00:53):
at their jobs after December one, basically, and the goal
is to just look like you're doing something until your
time off arrives. Or there are some people who work
jobs that now is a wild time at your job
and you will not be getting any sleep, any rest.
(01:16):
While other people are enjoying the holidays, you are busting
your butt and working super hard. So shout out to
both of you. Shout out to those of you that
are shuffling papers in your cubicle just trying to look
like you're doing something, and extra special, shout out to
you those of you that are working very, very hard.
You're in an industry that gets super busy around this
(01:39):
time of year. I wish for you a slow January
because Wow. Also, Matt is Bat, we are here doing
a Road Stories holiday episode. I always like to have
a holiday episode of this podcast for old Langsyne. I
(02:00):
deal with that, I really, I really like the way
the pronunciation you gave us there. I don't know what
I said. I like it. I'm gonna go with it.
I really I really like the z there, the old
Lang sign. I don't know. I just know that when
it comes up in that song, I sing it hard,
like it really touches me, you know. And I am
just now in my adulthood, even knowing that it was
(02:23):
saying all Lange, I don't know what I mean shout
out to when Harry met Sally, because Sally and Harry
were having that conversation at the end of the film,
which is also a bit of a Christmas movie, where
he was like, why is say that you're supposed to
forget the people you used to know. You're supposed to
know the people you forgot. He was just a lot
(02:43):
of confusing. I am a big with Harry best Sally fan.
I don't know why I haven't done an episode about
that movie. Thank you for bringing that to my mind. Baby.
We're going to get involved here for it. That's not
what we're doing today, though, y'all. That's that's the future
episode we're gonna do. I want to talk about our
road experiences around the holidays, bab and we've had quite
(03:05):
a few, Okay, so I want to lay the groundwork
for you all. We have discussed this in previous Road
Stories episodes, the idea that when you live a life
where most of your work is travel depending on what
you do, that does make the holidays kind of tricky.
(03:27):
We've had some holidays. I know I had many before
Matt and I were married, and in the first few
years that we were married, where I would typically get
booked to do poetry at churches around Christmas time, particularly
for Christmas Eve services, and some churches even had services
on Christmas Day. I do believe our first year dating,
(03:51):
I picked you and your mom up from the airport
it was a Christmas Day because we flew to Oregon,
I think, to do Christmas Eve services and the church
was so large that the Christmas Eve services were on
the twenty three and it was like five or seven services.
And then we took the earliest flight we could take
(04:14):
out on Christmas Day and you had to pick us
up there and you got me my very first ever
Christmas gift from you. I guess I got I got
you a gift also. But are we going to tell
the truth on this podcast, or are we going to
tell the story that you've been telling other people? Is
the first gift? Well, I am on the her podcast,
so maybe I should let her say what her thought
(04:35):
she got him on that first Christmas. I remember that
I was in a Sean John phase and I was
I got you a very nice red Sean John shirts
that I had pre packed in a gift bag and
left it with you. Told you not to open it
(04:57):
until Christmas Day, so I can't remember where you might
have showed up in it. I feel like you might
have showed up in that shirt to the airport. Sounds like, yeah,
that's that's the truth. Usually if I get a gift,
I put it on the media. Yeah that is you.
That's that is the MBO right there, So that that's
the truth. The other story that you have told regarding
(05:21):
what you believe, Well, the way I remember it is
the very first gift that I opened from my lady
on our very first Christmas was some nose hair tremors.
And could it have been a message about the unkemptness
of a man entering the age I was entering? Possibly,
(05:45):
But ever since then, I've kept that nose hair job
done I first of all want to let y'all know
that the truth is not being told from someone on
this podcast. Did you or did you not by me
a nose hair tremor? I did it. That is true
that I did buy you a nose hair tremor. You
were with me when I bought it. Listen. I don't
(06:06):
know if there's any fellows listen to this podcast. Maybe there,
I'm sure there are, But if you are, If there are,
maybe you can come in the comments section and help
a brother out. On your first holiday with your lady,
would you have ever gotten her a skillet? Okay? This
this is why I feel that an untruth is being
told regarding this gift, because we were actually Christmas shopping
(06:31):
together for some other things, got her some some hair rollers,
and I don't remember how the question or the conversation
regarding the nose hairs came up. You got her some
leg hair tremors, but we were at a t J
Max if I remember, it's either t J Max or
(06:51):
it was like the section of Macy's during the holidays
where they have like all the little gifts you can
gift for people. And I did not buy your gift
that day because I bought your gift when you weren't
with me, but I went ahead since we were ringing
things up and through that nose hair tremor in there.
And let me tell y'all something right now. And I
(07:12):
have said this to my husband repeatedly. Many of you
have been around an older man, or could be just
a man over thirty years old. But I have seen
this particularly in men who are in their forties, fifties, sixties.
As you get older, your nose hairs grow longer. And
you know what else grows longer is hair in your ears.
(07:35):
And for me, you can tell if a man has
people in his life that love him, if he doesn't
have enough ear hair just you know, crawling out of
his ear drums, and if you're not mistaking nose hair
for a mustache. So I would like to correct the
(07:58):
thought that I surprisingly bought my boyfriend at the time
a nose treamer and wrapped it up and that he
opened that. I would like to say, I don't remember
how we were talking about it, but something came up
regarding the grooming of a man, and he did not
(08:19):
have this tool. It's a great tool. It makes your
life easier. You don't have to stick kitchen scissors up
your nose hairs and things you shouldn't be doing. It's
a thing just for your nostrils and your ear drums,
that's what we're saying. So was it purchased yes? Was
it purchased with the intent of you using it? Yes?
(08:41):
Was it a Christmas gift? No? Where's my kid? Your honor,
your honor, It's just two of us in this room.
Either way, thank you for bringing the awareness to my
life that I was a man who had entered the
(09:01):
nose hair bearing years. That's it, and I've kept it
fresh ever since. That's right, you do you keep it
very fresh, you know. And and really we've now been
together long enough to have been two or three nose
hair since then, so that that's a long marriage. Or
you can be like, that's three personal grooming tools that
(09:24):
we have used throughout our time. Is that how we're
going to start measuring the length of our relationship. I
think we should do that, Like, yes, we've been married
eleven years, also known as three nose hair tremors. I
think that's fair. I think we should do that. So
(09:45):
the holidays was always an interesting time because as we've
talked about. You have birthdays of people you love, You
have various the sundry holidays that other people are off work,
but you're working. Which is why I wanted to shout
out those of you that that to you right now
that it's a busy season for you, because that happens
to us. Some summers, everybody's on vacation. We can't vacation
(10:07):
because we work in the whole summer. People are taking
time off for Christmas New Year's. Sometimes those were times
that we were working a lot. I remember one particular
Christmas that we were very broke. I don't know I
was about to say. I don't know why I said
in particular Christmas, because they were probably multiple Christmas times
that we were broke, but this one I remember, we
(10:28):
were very very broke, and on both sides of our family,
you know, we would have different Christmas gatherings. And yes,
insert parenthetical note that Christmas is not all about presents,
you know, and insert those thoughts, um because that's true,
and it's also true that you're still gonna buy some
(10:51):
gifts for some people people. It's one of my favorite
I look forward to it. Just a lot of just
a lot of fun and and I think for us
especially you know, getting married, in those in those first
few years of being married, it's like that's a part
of like your family bond. You know, you're getting to
know your extended family members and what stuff they might
(11:11):
like and us deciding, Like I remember we had one
year that we got all of our gifts from like
independent stores instead of shopping in department stores, and you know,
you just have like lots of fun you can have
with that. But this particular year, we was broke as
hal and it wasn't no, it was no place about
it stuff, And we got a last minute Christmas Eve
(11:34):
service gig that came in and came in very nicely
that year, and we were like, whoa, we're going to
Universal student No sorry that was a different side no,
but we were like, we're gonna have Christmas. And it
(11:55):
is a lot of work in general when you are
the person come into someone else's environment as an artist,
but Christmas time was very particular because people, especially churches,
they go all out, Oh man, you've been a part
of some productions that I've witnessed. I'm talking about is orchestras.
(12:16):
We went to some churches during Christmas time where they
had adult orchestra and a child version. There's like a
children's orchestra. They a cantata watch out, watch Out. Now,
that's that's bigger than a Christmas program. That's how I
grew up. Our church growing up, we had a Christmas cantata.
I don't know that that was what. That was a
vibe the other cantatas. I'm assuming not, you know, I mean,
(12:39):
I really have never even looked up exactly what cantata means.
Something is giving me the Spanish um in canto or
something regarding singing, assuming that. But yes, these things were
super produced. Christmas and Easter were like your biggest holidays.
But Christmas is a big deal. It's lots of bells
and it's dancing. Sometimes it's a moment of theater that's
(13:02):
gonna happen in the middle of this A sketch, definitely
some glowy, some some some visuals, a lot of powder
on the stage. Okay, but we didn't come here to
talk to you all about that. What we want to
talk about is one of our worst holiday. We want
(13:23):
to talk about the worst winter tour there ever. Was
so many, many score and however many years ago, Matt
and I got booked for our first tour together because
I have been on tour since we've been married, but
(13:43):
we could not go together. They only had enough space
on the bus for me, so I would have to
be like apart from Matt. Right, Okay, this was very
exciting for the first you know time that we knew
about it until we actually got on the tour that
we were going to get to go on the tour
to o. This was a bus tour. We were through
the Midwest in December. That should have told us right there.
(14:08):
I don't think I would have known up front what Midwest?
Did that meant cold? North? Middle? Yeah, because I had
been to the Midwest during cold times in the past,
but definitely not around the holidays, and I did. I
went to public school. And I'm not sure is all
(14:30):
the Midwest in the north? Is it all cold? Is
it is there a lower part? Is there a southern Midwest?
You know what You're bringing up A good point though,
because for me, like geography wise, it is like once
you start getting into like Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, I just
(14:52):
figured that's all up north. I don't know that all
Midwest to me, but You have made a point though,
that America, it's like America almost doesn't have doesn't fully
have like a north except we have like well, I
guess we have Northeast a little bit that that tip
of the country where Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and then
(15:16):
we have the northwest where Oregon and Seattle would be.
But anything that's basically between Seattle and past and like
and before you get into New York is Midwest. If
it's not, if it's not Texas and the South, it's
(15:36):
it's Midwest. So as far as we knew, that was
just some mystery land in the middle of the country.
Some of it we've been to, but some of it
we hadn't. We were very excited, and a few things
went badly. First of all, I want to talk about
a tour bus. For those of you that are not
tour bus you know two of us aficionados. You can
(15:58):
tell the budget of the where you are on based
on the quality of the tour bus. Some artists and
bands that you know and love are touring on sprinter vans.
There's not a bed in that van. The people are
having enough room in this sprinter van. I dare say
(16:21):
some people are in a twelve passenger van, you know,
and that's it. You might have a hotel, you might not.
You just out and about trying. Okay, I would say,
based on the tour bus situation we received, we were mid,
(16:42):
we were mid, It had bunks and yeah, so it
felt like all right, our first little day meeting up
with everybody, all that energy initially felt really great. Um.
I am not going to name for you all who
was on the tour, because you know, some things must
keep to ourselves vain, but needless to say, it was us, uh,
(17:12):
a couple of other bands, I think. And there's typically
always a speaker at this because you can't have you
can't really have truly a Christian tour of any kind
if there isn't some sort of talking preaching. It's a
it's a keynote. Yeah, you need to get talked at
(17:33):
a little bit. So there was a speaker. And then
and then in this situation, the tour was being put
on by an organization. And we have had a lot
of experiences organizations and we should we know now but
didn't know then that when you're working with the organization
and they say things like everybody that works here is
so young. Our team is so young. Man. You. I'm
(17:56):
just going to tell you right now. If people are
talking about booking you for something and they say that
to you, charge your highest price because that means you're
going to be inconvenience. And make sure that whoever cuts
the checks isn't young. Make sure you want to see
one at least one gray hair on the person cutting
your check. That's that's that's cool enough. But who running
(18:18):
your quick books? Yeah? Who's handling Quicken? What y'all doing
it here? Let me? Does the person run a y'all checks?
Know how to use something that's not venmo? Is what
I need to know? Is it a check? A check?
Will I get tax forms related to this money? Okay?
(18:40):
The first bad thing that happened was related to the
tour bus. I do believe our tour bus driver had
only driven in the South. I don't think he'd ever
done a Midwest tour like us tour bus drivers. Like,
what is what are we doing here? That doesn't okay?
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Doesn't Chilis
(19:03):
have like a Midwestern just a Southwestern? See that's it right?
So it's a Southwest. There is a Southwest is Texas
the southwest? Yes, okay, yes, yes, But I'm going to
tell you right now that if there was a Midwestern
egg roll, it's a bunch of casse roles that are
(19:23):
rolled up in a tortilla that is covered in either
sour cream or something, and then it's encased in a
cream cheeseball and you have to use crackers to get
to the actual Midwestern egg roll inside. I like that.
(19:44):
My new found understanding of US geography has to do
with the chili's appetizer. Yeah, because see that helps you
Right there, you were like, oh, it's Southwest. It's a
black bean, it's a little guacamole. You're like, okay, I
know the vibes. I'm Texas, I'm New Mexico, I'm Arizona. Basically,
anything that has the worst south east Southwest in it
(20:05):
has black beans. You're pretty sure. You're pretty sure about that.
When I think about Northwest, for some reason, I'm somewhere
between weed and pachuli, some somewhere between those things, some
sort of a some sort of a fir tree, a
frasier tree is happening there. And you know the Northeast,
(20:26):
You're like, it's a lobster roll. You know, it's a
little it's a clam out there. We're right there near
the ocean. But people, people who are listening to live
in the Midwest that aren't from Chicago, tell us your cuisine.
We don't know, Like in the South, we're you're pretty
sure there's there's fried something. There's fried chicken, there's fried
(20:51):
pork rinds. You know, there's a fried oreo in the South.
I just remember the stops we made in the Northwest. Northwest,
is that what we're calling me? No, it's the Midwest. Sorry,
who have had this dude on the her podcast in
the Midwest tour, In the Midwest tour that we went on.
(21:13):
I just know that the different towns we stopped in,
when we went in the diners then people were not
ready to see us. No, they were not. You could
hear the form. And I'm trying to think to myself,
I would have noticed this a lot more now than
I did then. But I was the only black person
on that tour that I can remember. No, there might
have been. I'll say, I'll say of the people of
(21:37):
color on that tour, that was maybe less than five
of everybody who was there. I will say, when we
walk in those diners, you might have been the first
black person they've seen it. Boy, y'all don't want it,
and y'all don't want to be You don't never want
to be in an environment where you're like racist, and
you you especially don't want to be there when it's
(21:58):
cold and you're not sure how quickly your lungs can
run in the in the freezing. I think walking into
that room, for me, it wasn't as much racist as
racist wasn't There was no question. Didn't go up on it,
and it was like, Okay, I can go to the
bathroom and leave her. Yeah, I gotta stand here do that.
(22:20):
I will be standing outside of her bathroom. Gotta do it.
(22:45):
One of the awkward things about this was the organization
that was putting on the tour was headquartered somewhere in
the Midwest, and what that meant was everyone that was
helping to organize the tour, all people that worked behind
the scenes, they lived in the Midwest. And then a
(23:06):
couple of the bands that were on the tour they
had their own way. They were handling transportation, so they
weren't actually on the bus with us, So it was
us and maybe a couple of people that worked in
the sound crew that basically had some days to ourselves.
(23:28):
Kind of I won't say it was the middle of nowhere,
but it was kind of like basically, everyone did the
tour Monday through Friday, and if you could afford to
fly home on the weekends, then you would fly home
on the weekends. But you would be flying home at
your own costs. And if I remember correctly, they were
(23:50):
happy with some of the folks flying home on the weekends,
but those folks were like, home, I ain't staying here. No,
not not in this snow ridden place. Oh I'm not
staying But we didn't have money to do that. And
a couple of other people that were working like behind
the scenes from out of town didn't have money to
do that. So basically, contractually they had to provide lodging
(24:14):
for us, and that's literally it. They pretty much like
dropped us off at a hotel that was across from
a mall. There was a thing in walking distance, and
they were like, have at it. You can go there,
get get yourself some food. Whatever. So imagine, now, thankfully
(24:36):
this wasn't like actual literal Christmas, but it was in
the few weeks leading up to the holidays, so a
lot of that time that you have to start slowing
down your life and doing your Christmas decorations and starting
to get gifts, if that's what you do. We were
(24:57):
taking our weekends and going over to this mall that
we anything you could do or eat in that mall,
we must have done it. I saw it. Okay. The
next thing I want to talk about is the time
that the bus froze. And I need to speak about
this because I mentioned to y'all earlier that our bus
(25:19):
driver had never been to the Midwest, as apparently we
had not either, and I didn't notice. Y'all listening that
live in the Midwest are going to laugh when I
say this, probably, but apparently you are not supposed to
turn a bus. You're not supposed to turn it off
(25:40):
when you are in weather that is below freezing, as
Wisconsin and the Dakotas and Michigan and Minnesota were at
this time of year. Now, normal tour of US etiquette.
I can't tell y'all all the secrets, but normal tour
of bus etiquette is that if multiple people are on
(26:01):
a tour bus, you all have a way to get
in and out of the bus. I'm not gonna tell
y'all what the way is, so y'all won't be looking
for it in your favorite artists bus. There's always a
way that everybody has that's like their secure way they're
gonna get in and out of this thing. And typically
the bus is turned off and you kind of come
(26:21):
in and out like you would your car, but instead
of being your car, there's your bed in there, your
luggage whatever. So this bus driver is doing normal protocol
as far as he's concerned. We show up after the
gig and I hand my turntable. Put there's this place
turntables go under the bus. Place on merch goes under
the bus. Any of our stuff goes in a certain
(26:42):
spot under the bus. The closet locket we get on
the bus, that's all. So we had one one night
that the bus got turned off and froze. They had
to tow the bus, tow the bus, y'all to a
mechanic to what first father bus out. I can't even
(27:05):
see what the bus needs fixing. Let me tell you,
I didn't even know the bus have froze, because apparently
it was enough to have the lights on, right, So
I got to get in my bunk. And when you
get in your bunk, there's that curtain. Close the curtain. Well,
I have a decent amount of body heat, you know
what I'm saying, Like I'm a well insulated individual. I
(27:28):
don't be cold into wintertime, thank god. And so i'm
and now that we're married, I don't either continue. So anyway,
I didn't want to say it, but well it's true,
right and so anyway, So so I'm in my bunk
and I'm warm. I'm here on this commotion. So I
opened up the bunk and automatically see my breath for
(27:49):
the first like, like in my bunk, it was toasty.
Because I'm gonna tell y'all the way the way mid
low to mid budget tour buses are made is your
bunk is not like a bunk bed, okay, is much
lower down to the face. It's almost like you're in
a coffin. I would assume it's kind of classphobic. It's
(28:10):
going to be a problem. Like you're looking immediately at
the roof. So imagine you fall asleep and wake up
and all you can see is your breath and darkness.
Let me tell y'all. Yikes, it was so cold in
the bus, and Matt's bunk was so warm. He got
out of his bunk and let me get in his
bunk until you know, they figured out what we were
(28:32):
all going to have to do. Yikes, I do remember,
because remember they had to go thaw out this bus,
but we still had to get to the next sitting.
So they pulled up in some hatchback talking about we
gotta get as much this gear and here as we can.
So if I remember correctly, I was holding at least
(28:55):
one turntable and lap because it was us and three
other people that were working the behind the scenes. So
the car itself full, there's five of us and a
hatchback with our luggage and two turntables. There was not
enough room for that at all, so we had to
ride in the hatchback turntables and laps. Yikes. Okay, period,
(29:21):
I want to talk to you all about the audience.
We were being told that, you know, this was a
young people's thing. It was it was supposed to be
reaching you know, college students to materials. We saw lights
and piro and young people and made sense everything. So
(29:43):
we were like, bet, that's perfect there were rock bands
on this tour with guitars and amps and like cool cool,
we love that. Well, we get there and it's less
of a young adults, more of a greater grandparents seventy
plus adults, like like a literal hey boomer. They might
(30:07):
have been the greatest generation Boomers might have been their kids. Man,
that was people, Yes, it was. That's that's definitely some
nana's were up in there. And I'm gonna tell you
where you probably don't want a DJ. For the most part,
I can't. I can't necessarily tell you that you don't
(30:28):
want a DJ in front of older people, because if
they're older people that love to party, that's great. But
I'm gonna tell you who doesn't love to party, and
that's older Christian people. The number of times I heard
we've never had a set of turntables in here before. Yikes.
I'm gonna tell y'all, older Christian people the only kind
(30:49):
of party they want to go to is a praise party.
Galling stand. They want to they want to do that
motion that um they used to do back on the
Marinatha where they like kick their legs out. They want
to do that kind the thing. But they didn't come
there to hear yo yo rock wrap. These people were
old enough to where they still weren't sure about drums
and church, you know what I mean, Like they go back,
(31:11):
they go back to handclaps and tambourines. Needless to say,
Matt was getting what started out as like some scowls
and some eyebrows that were feeling concerned. These folks clap
on the one in the three, okay, and some of
them just did not clap at all, y'all feel me.
So it went from I'm about to say because it
(31:33):
went from people looking like I don't think I like
this to them actually walking up and basically like telling
Matt off. And she gave you all her heat about
how loud it was, and she out of that heat.
I was like, and I'm gonna tell y'all, I am
(31:56):
very protective about my husband and I do not like
people talking sideways to my man. Can Matt handle himself? Absolutely?
Most people are gonna look at Matt and they don't
want to tustle with him. They're gonna size him up
and say, no, this is not what I want to
tustle with. But that doesn't stop me from feeling like
(32:19):
I need to step in if I feel like somebody
talking sideways. There's been a couple of old ladies. You've
really saved me from it. Boy, This silver hair lady,
the way she was getting with you, and I'm like,
the people literally brought us here, like it's not a surprise.
This lady was like, if I remember where for world,
it's been long enough. I've forgotten and forgave amen Amen.
(32:42):
But she came at me in a way she was like,
I can't when you were playing that ruckus, I cannot
hear what she's saying. I wanted to hear what she's
say And the truth of the matter is there's a
soundman in the back who is mixing. I really have
a very limited understanding of it. I can hear from
where I am on the stage, so I'm playing things
(33:03):
at a certain volume. But once it gets like beyond me,
once comes to mixing, there's a mixing board in the
back of the house. There's someone who doesn't It's not me,
but in my customer service and in my try and
treat people like, hey, that's somebody's grandma. You know what
I'm saying, Like yo, man, like you know, I got
a grandma, and she might not know how mixing board
(33:24):
works either, So you know, I try to give people
that grace. But that lady was mad, So I just
did my customer service. I'm so Oh, yes, ma'am, I'm
so sorry. Oh yes, ma'r next time. Oh my goodness, yes, yes, yes,
boy was mad at me. I also want to let
y'all know a moment that me and Matt boat most
times on the road. If something went awry, one of
(33:45):
us is mad, and the job of the other person
just to hold space for that person's anger and to
try to be with them as they calm down. Every
now and then something comes up that makes us both
so mad that then we have to like stay in
the hotel or whatever space we have to ourselves, which, truthfully,
when you're on a bus tour, the space you have
(34:06):
to yourself is very little, very minimal, because we're it's
not like we're on a tour bus and we have
a little section of the bus that's just for us.
All the beds are in the same area, y'all, stacked
on top of each other. Three it's three bit yes,
it's three beds stacked on top of each other. And
then it's probably like two or three rows of that,
(34:28):
so it was probably twelve twelve beds probably in the
bus twelve beds ish, right, So it's not like you
have a whole lot of space to go to and
cuss or whatever you feel. You can't roll over on
the bus. And the other thing that's wild regarding how
people respond to DJs is people always have their own
(34:48):
concept of DJA that is typically not what happens in
real life. When people walk up to me and start
doing the DJ hands, we're both hands are going back, yeah,
and when they start making the wicky wicky, yikes. No, no,
So Christmas you need to speak to this baby, because
holiday parties are already a fascinating thing to DJ if
(35:13):
the request is that you play all holiday themed music.
But then if you take that down too, now you're
in a church setting because if you if you take
me back out to holiday music, you've got what you're
gonna get her for Christmas. You know, you've got some
options for Hugh Jams, Mariah Carey, don't. Yeah, you've got
(35:36):
some things. But if you're now taking that and that's
that narrows you're playing field anyways, though there's maybe eight
Christmas songs that have multiple variations. There's how many variations
of this Christmas are there? But we only want to
hear one. That's right, shout out to Donnie Happy. We
only want to So now you've taken if you play
(35:56):
the whole thing, you've taken up about three and a
half minutes. And if you are now narrowing down that
playing field to those aren't holiday songs. Those are Christmas songs,
and those are Christmas songs that people want to hear
in a church only about because you can't play some
Santa Claus. Those are out jingle maybe jingle bells, but
(36:19):
you can't do like some Frosty to Snowman. So you
take those eight songs. Now you're down about three or four.
And you know, Away in a Manger is a beautiful song,
beautiful story. Everything is great, but you don't jam. Oh
you know what's it going? Jesus is okay. Kirk Franklin
did give us one. Franklin gave us a strong one.
(36:42):
Fred Hammond, I'm sorry about it. I don't know what
CCM music is doing with Christmas songs. I don't know
any gospel music has plenty of Christmas jams. Well, I
don't know what CCM is doing as far as Christmas jams.
So a mad gen Matts playing field. What is allowed
(37:04):
to be played is now very narrow because now we're
talking about Christmas songs that are about Jesus. Okay, now
we are getting some feedback from the organization after we
do the tour for you know, a couple of nights,
they're giving us some feedback. And let me tell you
what you don't want to hear is people walking up
(37:24):
to you as an artist after you did a Christian
type event and saying, hey, so are you open to
some feedback. When I was younger, I would be like yeah,
because I always felt like, well, maybe they'll tell me something.
Maybe I'll grow. Now that i'm older, I'm like, hailena,
whatever your feedback is, no, I'm like, let's roll the dice.
You never know what's about to happen. The feedback from
(37:47):
Matt was that what he was mixing was not what
they expected. They were expecting to get mixes that we're
going to blend in bing Crosby. Have y'all ever been
at a dance part party and dance to being Crosby?
You haven't I want you all to write me and
tell me in d M S if you ever did
the wobble to Being Crosby. And again, part of the
(38:10):
story is that we thought we were coming into perform
for much younger audience. So all the prep work, any
remixes that I built, anything like that was with the
idea that we were performing for who we were seeing
in the videos. And so we get there and it's
a much older crowd and it's you're playing to loud,
(38:30):
you know, And what is you wanting Matt to do
with what? Being Crosby just threw us all off? And
the way the person walked up to Matt to give
him this feedback, I feel like Matt, as y'all may
know from this podcast, but if you don't, my husband
is a very laid back person. It takes a lot
to get him to where he's mad, mad mad. I
(38:54):
don't know where we went, because I don't remember that
there was a hotel to go to. I remember this conversation, haven't,
because the person said to me, when I was younger,
I used to go to raves, and at the raves
they could mix anything. But what was also being said
to me was that the music you're playing is too danceable,
(39:18):
it's too high energy, it's too it's too fun, like
can you And I'm thinking, like you brought me, brought
me it's literally a DJ here, Like it's literally a DJ.
Like I don't get it, Yeah you brought me like it,
there's no you brought me here? You know what I do?
(39:38):
I got you know, Um, but okay, you know, you know,
and so it's like you there, there were a couple
of back and forth where it was like, um, you know,
there's still customer service to this job. Of course, there's
a lot of customer service to this job. And so okay,
I hear you. Okay, let me see if I can
interpret this vague thing you just said to me and
(40:02):
do something exact with your vagueness. So let me try to,
you know, do this thing next city. And still it
was still it was the back and so we had
gone back and forth to where I was like, I
don't I don't know how to you know. Oh, And
I think what happened was one night I actually did
(40:23):
give them exactly. I played exactly what they had asked.
When that's what that's what happened. So I played exactly
what happened. They were like, well, that actually wasn't quite
what we were looking for. It was like it's I
was like, okay, so don't use danceable drums, but can
you remix out of this pool of three to four
(40:45):
songs in this hour long set that you've got, but
don't make it danceable and just make it less And
so it was like it had gotten to a point.
And um, Also, I think it was the way the
person was talking very patronize, very talking down, very like
you don't know, and that's that's fine. I'm a pretty
(41:06):
laid back, easy going person. I'm not you know, I'm
not rattled very easily. Um, but that one got me
that it was enough back and forth and it was
enough of the way that person was talking with me
that I remember when it was the next weekend that
we were dropped off for the weekend, we were party,
(41:27):
we were in that mall, and that's when we called
back to um, you know, who was our manager at
the time. Oh, it just makes my chest ti thinking
about it, because y'all, I'm gonna tell you I took
offense to a lot of that because at the end
of the day, like people there are certain things that
people don't necessarily think of. I would say the grand
(41:50):
like mainstream people out there do not think of as
being a skill, and deejaying is one of them. People
look at deejaying and really think like, oh, yeah, I
could do that, or like I used to do that
when I was in college. I used to you know,
and it takes a lot of skill. And I was
through the roof about it because I was like, my
(42:11):
husband is not somebody who just woke up yesterday, and
was like, I think all DJ, like even DJ and
at that point almost fifteen years and almost twenty now,
so I was through the roof about that. But let
me tell y'all one thing. They really stuck me about
the conversation that that person had with you when they
(42:32):
said to you back in my day when I was
going to the raves. That almost took me out, y'all.
And let me tell you why. Let me tell y'all
why right now. Even though when Matt and I performed
in Christian Market and we shared stage with a lot
of other Christian artists at the time, some of those
artists were people that if they posted they were drinking
(42:52):
wine on their social media people would be in their
mentions like talking wild to them, like basically they feel
like they're not Christian because they were drinking. Let me
tell y'all something. Me and Matt been drinking, okay, and
me and Matt is not responsibly obviously obviously, but not
obviously because some people don't. We were drinking responsibly and legally.
(43:14):
But we were people who had a drink. We were
people who were still going to the club. People who
knew us, knew that that that type of people. We were. Yes,
I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna do my thing
at this Christian event. And when we get back, if
the club that we like to go to was open, yes,
we go there and we dance. So no, what you're
asking him to do, I don't care whatever the rave
(43:37):
was doing back in the day. What you're asking him
to do is not how the actual club right now
is not how the club right now is. So get
out of here, and we are currently not in a
club not performing for young people. And and also I
don't want to bring it back up, but you said
what I was playing was too danceable with a supposed
(44:01):
to be doing so like the reference to first of
all back in my day. I know I was older
than it was, but that's all right. But the reference
to back in my day when I went to the raves,
what were you going to the raves to do? To
dance with young people? We don't have those ingredients here
you you have set me up. That's that's a time
(44:21):
where I learned I need to start asking some questions.
Oh you're gonna pay me to come do this? That
was awesome, but that money, no, I I after the
experience we had. It's like if I had known that
I could have, I would have given it back. I
would have rather. I would rather have had a broke
(44:41):
Christmas that we still could have been with our family
and been at home and gave everybody one good night.
Here's your rubber band. Period. I would have rather had
that than had that money at that point. It is
a pretty good gift idea, though, because what is more
fun than a rubber band. Also, my last reflection is
(45:05):
that I had just had to start making some dietary
changes right before we went to this tour. You remember
this battles from this one. I'm gonna tell y'all right now.
And I was having some health challenges and so the
medical professional that I was seeing at the time had
given me these like really strict, you know, dietary restrictions
(45:29):
that I needed to do for my health. And part
of what it is supposed to be provided when you're
on a tour is food, because you can't get up
there and perform every night without nutrients. But the way
my restrictions worked, you know, we even like had gone
(45:52):
through and listed for organizations like you know, here are
some you know national chains where you know, Amina and
Matt can eat. Here's their orders. I mean, we had
like just tried to like simplify it as much as possible.
And I remember multiple stops to this tour going into
the green room to be what was supposed to be
(46:13):
dinner and getting there and looking at everything that was
on the menu, and one night, I remember the only
thing I could eat was green beans, and a couple
of nights all they had that I could have with salad.
That was it. And I remember the organization that was
putting on the tour kept coming up and being like,
(46:35):
we just have salad for you. Is that okay? Is
that okay? I'm like, you think me getting up here
performing my heart out on Romaine lettuce, like you just
parked me at the mall for the weekend start. No,
it's not ore just parked at the mall. I've been
(46:57):
looking at the same mall for like three gives it
a road and uh yeah yeah yeah, y'all. Matt and
I both have been in quite a few tour experiences
and that one for me is by far the worst
one down And I feel like here in is what
we learned number one. I think that was the beginning
(47:23):
of the end of you dee jaying in Christian Market. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If if they're if there's not alcohol involved, then chances
are people aren't there to have a good time, which
your chances are you can just play a playlist or
whatever whatever. That's cool, you know what I'm saying. And
I understand that everybody can't go where alcohol is. I
know that some people have issues with it and there's
(47:43):
it's a loaded topic. I get it. But if people
are having something where specifically the point is to have
a good time, and mostly that will not be in
a church, Mostly not in a church because you got
to get that talking and that's what makes it makes
a rock and roll. Okay, but you're gonna pay for
it by listening to Sitka. So I think in in
(48:09):
part we were trying to do what we were doing
together on stage to see if that would gain some traction,
which it did in a lot of places. You know,
we we traveled on the road doing those performances together
for a long time, but that tour in particular started
to be for me, that was the beginning of the
end of us trying to figure out how you could
(48:30):
be deejaying in that side of the industry. It was like,
who cares, We don't need to try this anymore. And
I think it did put us in a position to
be like, there's some things that were not going to
take and there are plenty of things that that gig
was like and that's the last time, honestly, that's the
(48:50):
last time I'm taking that ship. That was like the
vibe that I felt at the moment, like remember the
way this made you feel, Remember that soul suck experience,
and be like you can do this again if you
want to, or just say no, or just say no,
and some things, you know, I think as an artist,
(49:10):
there's a part of you that's always excited for people
to ask you to do your thing. Even now for
both of us, it's like that request that you get.
Your first feeling as an artist is not about how
much money. That's not the first thought. Your typical first
thought is someone's asking. But now that we both have
(49:32):
more experience, then you got them questions after that, what
if this is for an organization? What are they about?
Is that what I'm about is that what I want
to be on stage next to? Are those people I
want to be sharing stage with? Is the money paying
for the inconvenience of my time? Is it paying for
the fact that I'm not going to be at my home.
(49:53):
I Am going to have to you know, navigate whatever city.
This isn't going to have to jump difficult it is
to get into your building, all of those things, all
that stuff. So it did sort of become this like
unfortunate lesson. But I'm gonna tell y'all what that was.
One of That was also I think one of the
last times that we traveled around the holiday like that. Yeah,
(50:17):
that was one of the last ones. And after that
we have enjoyed a lot of wonderful time at home,
letting the year slow down. Now Matt's djaying still but
in better environments now, so he has some Christmas parties
he has to DJ. He's had a lot of New
Year's Eves that he's had to DJ. But you know
(50:37):
what the plus to that is he gonna come home
to our house at night versus when we would go
on the road and then you're gone all those days
or whatever it is, And another time may come that
the road may pick back up for us, and we'll
navigate that too. But right now, I'm enjoying the fact
that as we record this, we're about to be decorating
(50:59):
our Christmas tree. We're about to spend time with our
families and cook food in the house, and that is
much better than being in a hotel across from the law. Anyways, y'all,
whatever your holidays are that you celebrate, even if you
don't and you're just celebrating the end of the year,
(51:20):
we hope that you will enjoy your life, be with
some people that you love, listen to some music that
brings joy to you. We hope that you'll have some
time to reflect at the end of this year and
think about the things you made it through, the things
you survived. If you're listening, just know that Matt and
(51:43):
I are glad you're here. We're glad you're listening. We're
glad we've all made it through what's been a tough
year or a couple of years. So cheers to you all,
and we'll be back soon with some more road stories.
Yes here. What Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen
(52:11):
for Slow Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca
Women Podcast Network and partnership with I Heart Radio. Thanks
for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review
the podcast.
Everybody. Welcome back to this week's episode of Her with
Amina Brown. And it is holidays time, y'all. I don't
know how much pretending you're doing at your jobs at
this point. I feel like there's two groups of people.
There's a group of people who are not doing anything
(00:53):
at their jobs after December one, basically, and the goal
is to just look like you're doing something until your
time off arrives. Or there are some people who work
jobs that now is a wild time at your job
and you will not be getting any sleep, any rest.
(01:16):
While other people are enjoying the holidays, you are busting
your butt and working super hard. So shout out to
both of you. Shout out to those of you that
are shuffling papers in your cubicle just trying to look
like you're doing something, and extra special, shout out to
you those of you that are working very, very hard.
You're in an industry that gets super busy around this
(01:39):
time of year. I wish for you a slow January
because Wow. Also, Matt is Bat, we are here doing
a Road Stories holiday episode. I always like to have
a holiday episode of this podcast for old Langsyne. I
(02:00):
deal with that, I really, I really like the way
the pronunciation you gave us there. I don't know what
I said. I like it. I'm gonna go with it.
I really I really like the z there, the old
Lang sign. I don't know. I just know that when
it comes up in that song, I sing it hard,
like it really touches me, you know. And I am
just now in my adulthood, even knowing that it was
(02:23):
saying all Lange, I don't know what I mean shout
out to when Harry met Sally, because Sally and Harry
were having that conversation at the end of the film,
which is also a bit of a Christmas movie, where
he was like, why is say that you're supposed to
forget the people you used to know. You're supposed to
know the people you forgot. He was just a lot
(02:43):
of confusing. I am a big with Harry best Sally fan.
I don't know why I haven't done an episode about
that movie. Thank you for bringing that to my mind. Baby.
We're going to get involved here for it. That's not
what we're doing today, though, y'all. That's that's the future
episode we're gonna do. I want to talk about our
road experiences around the holidays, bab and we've had quite
(03:05):
a few, Okay, so I want to lay the groundwork
for you all. We have discussed this in previous Road
Stories episodes, the idea that when you live a life
where most of your work is travel depending on what
you do, that does make the holidays kind of tricky.
(03:27):
We've had some holidays. I know I had many before
Matt and I were married, and in the first few
years that we were married, where I would typically get
booked to do poetry at churches around Christmas time, particularly
for Christmas Eve services, and some churches even had services
on Christmas Day. I do believe our first year dating,
(03:51):
I picked you and your mom up from the airport
it was a Christmas Day because we flew to Oregon,
I think, to do Christmas Eve services and the church
was so large that the Christmas Eve services were on
the twenty three and it was like five or seven services.
And then we took the earliest flight we could take
(04:14):
out on Christmas Day and you had to pick us
up there and you got me my very first ever
Christmas gift from you. I guess I got I got
you a gift also. But are we going to tell
the truth on this podcast, or are we going to
tell the story that you've been telling other people? Is
the first gift? Well, I am on the her podcast,
so maybe I should let her say what her thought
(04:35):
she got him on that first Christmas. I remember that
I was in a Sean John phase and I was
I got you a very nice red Sean John shirts
that I had pre packed in a gift bag and
left it with you. Told you not to open it
(04:57):
until Christmas Day, so I can't remember where you might
have showed up in it. I feel like you might
have showed up in that shirt to the airport. Sounds like, yeah,
that's that's the truth. Usually if I get a gift,
I put it on the media. Yeah that is you.
That's that is the MBO right there, So that that's
the truth. The other story that you have told regarding
(05:21):
what you believe, Well, the way I remember it is
the very first gift that I opened from my lady
on our very first Christmas was some nose hair tremors.
And could it have been a message about the unkemptness
of a man entering the age I was entering? Possibly,
(05:45):
But ever since then, I've kept that nose hair job
done I first of all want to let y'all know
that the truth is not being told from someone on
this podcast. Did you or did you not by me
a nose hair tremor? I did it. That is true
that I did buy you a nose hair tremor. You
were with me when I bought it. Listen. I don't
(06:06):
know if there's any fellows listen to this podcast. Maybe there,
I'm sure there are, But if you are, If there are,
maybe you can come in the comments section and help
a brother out. On your first holiday with your lady,
would you have ever gotten her a skillet? Okay? This
this is why I feel that an untruth is being
told regarding this gift, because we were actually Christmas shopping
(06:31):
together for some other things, got her some some hair rollers,
and I don't remember how the question or the conversation
regarding the nose hairs came up. You got her some
leg hair tremors, but we were at a t J
Max if I remember, it's either t J Max or
(06:51):
it was like the section of Macy's during the holidays
where they have like all the little gifts you can
gift for people. And I did not buy your gift
that day because I bought your gift when you weren't
with me, but I went ahead since we were ringing
things up and through that nose hair tremor in there.
And let me tell y'all something right now. And I
(07:12):
have said this to my husband repeatedly. Many of you
have been around an older man, or could be just
a man over thirty years old. But I have seen
this particularly in men who are in their forties, fifties, sixties.
As you get older, your nose hairs grow longer. And
you know what else grows longer is hair in your ears.
(07:35):
And for me, you can tell if a man has
people in his life that love him, if he doesn't
have enough ear hair just you know, crawling out of
his ear drums, and if you're not mistaking nose hair
for a mustache. So I would like to correct the
(07:58):
thought that I surprisingly bought my boyfriend at the time
a nose treamer and wrapped it up and that he
opened that. I would like to say, I don't remember
how we were talking about it, but something came up
regarding the grooming of a man, and he did not
(08:19):
have this tool. It's a great tool. It makes your
life easier. You don't have to stick kitchen scissors up
your nose hairs and things you shouldn't be doing. It's
a thing just for your nostrils and your ear drums,
that's what we're saying. So was it purchased yes? Was
it purchased with the intent of you using it? Yes?
(08:41):
Was it a Christmas gift? No? Where's my kid? Your honor,
your honor, It's just two of us in this room.
Either way, thank you for bringing the awareness to my
life that I was a man who had entered the
(09:01):
nose hair bearing years. That's it, and I've kept it
fresh ever since. That's right, you do you keep it
very fresh, you know. And and really we've now been
together long enough to have been two or three nose
hair since then, so that that's a long marriage. Or
you can be like, that's three personal grooming tools that
(09:24):
we have used throughout our time. Is that how we're
going to start measuring the length of our relationship. I
think we should do that, Like, yes, we've been married
eleven years, also known as three nose hair tremors. I
think that's fair. I think we should do that. So
(09:45):
the holidays was always an interesting time because as we've
talked about. You have birthdays of people you love, You
have various the sundry holidays that other people are off work,
but you're working. Which is why I wanted to shout
out those of you that that to you right now
that it's a busy season for you, because that happens
to us. Some summers, everybody's on vacation. We can't vacation
(10:07):
because we work in the whole summer. People are taking
time off for Christmas New Year's. Sometimes those were times
that we were working a lot. I remember one particular
Christmas that we were very broke. I don't know I
was about to say. I don't know why I said
in particular Christmas, because they were probably multiple Christmas times
that we were broke, but this one I remember, we
(10:28):
were very very broke, and on both sides of our family,
you know, we would have different Christmas gatherings. And yes,
insert parenthetical note that Christmas is not all about presents,
you know, and insert those thoughts, um because that's true,
and it's also true that you're still gonna buy some
(10:51):
gifts for some people people. It's one of my favorite
I look forward to it. Just a lot of just
a lot of fun and and I think for us
especially you know, getting married, in those in those first
few years of being married, it's like that's a part
of like your family bond. You know, you're getting to
know your extended family members and what stuff they might
(11:11):
like and us deciding, Like I remember we had one
year that we got all of our gifts from like
independent stores instead of shopping in department stores, and you know,
you just have like lots of fun you can have
with that. But this particular year, we was broke as
hal and it wasn't no, it was no place about
it stuff, And we got a last minute Christmas Eve
(11:34):
service gig that came in and came in very nicely
that year, and we were like, whoa, we're going to
Universal student No sorry that was a different side no,
but we were like, we're gonna have Christmas. And it
(11:55):
is a lot of work in general when you are
the person come into someone else's environment as an artist,
but Christmas time was very particular because people, especially churches,
they go all out, Oh man, you've been a part
of some productions that I've witnessed. I'm talking about is orchestras.
(12:16):
We went to some churches during Christmas time where they
had adult orchestra and a child version. There's like a
children's orchestra. They a cantata watch out, watch Out. Now,
that's that's bigger than a Christmas program. That's how I
grew up. Our church growing up, we had a Christmas cantata.
I don't know that that was what. That was a
vibe the other cantatas. I'm assuming not, you know, I mean,
(12:39):
I really have never even looked up exactly what cantata means.
Something is giving me the Spanish um in canto or
something regarding singing, assuming that. But yes, these things were
super produced. Christmas and Easter were like your biggest holidays.
But Christmas is a big deal. It's lots of bells
and it's dancing. Sometimes it's a moment of theater that's
(13:02):
gonna happen in the middle of this A sketch, definitely
some glowy, some some some visuals, a lot of powder
on the stage. Okay, but we didn't come here to
talk to you all about that. What we want to
talk about is one of our worst holiday. We want
(13:23):
to talk about the worst winter tour there ever. Was
so many, many score and however many years ago, Matt
and I got booked for our first tour together because
I have been on tour since we've been married, but
(13:43):
we could not go together. They only had enough space
on the bus for me, so I would have to
be like apart from Matt. Right, Okay, this was very
exciting for the first you know time that we knew
about it until we actually got on the tour that
we were going to get to go on the tour
to o. This was a bus tour. We were through
the Midwest in December. That should have told us right there.
(14:08):
I don't think I would have known up front what Midwest?
Did that meant cold? North? Middle? Yeah, because I had
been to the Midwest during cold times in the past,
but definitely not around the holidays, and I did. I
went to public school. And I'm not sure is all
(14:30):
the Midwest in the north? Is it all cold? Is
it is there a lower part? Is there a southern Midwest?
You know what You're bringing up A good point though,
because for me, like geography wise, it is like once
you start getting into like Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, I just
(14:52):
figured that's all up north. I don't know that all
Midwest to me, but You have made a point though,
that America, it's like America almost doesn't have doesn't fully
have like a north except we have like well, I
guess we have Northeast a little bit that that tip
of the country where Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and then
(15:16):
we have the northwest where Oregon and Seattle would be.
But anything that's basically between Seattle and past and like
and before you get into New York is Midwest. If
it's not, if it's not Texas and the South, it's
(15:36):
it's Midwest. So as far as we knew, that was
just some mystery land in the middle of the country.
Some of it we've been to, but some of it
we hadn't. We were very excited, and a few things
went badly. First of all, I want to talk about
a tour bus. For those of you that are not
tour bus you know two of us aficionados. You can
(15:58):
tell the budget of the where you are on based
on the quality of the tour bus. Some artists and
bands that you know and love are touring on sprinter vans.
There's not a bed in that van. The people are
having enough room in this sprinter van. I dare say
(16:21):
some people are in a twelve passenger van, you know,
and that's it. You might have a hotel, you might not.
You just out and about trying. Okay, I would say,
based on the tour bus situation we received, we were mid,
(16:42):
we were mid, It had bunks and yeah, so it
felt like all right, our first little day meeting up
with everybody, all that energy initially felt really great. Um.
I am not going to name for you all who
was on the tour, because you know, some things must
keep to ourselves vain, but needless to say, it was us, uh,
(17:12):
a couple of other bands, I think. And there's typically
always a speaker at this because you can't have you
can't really have truly a Christian tour of any kind
if there isn't some sort of talking preaching. It's a
it's a keynote. Yeah, you need to get talked at
(17:33):
a little bit. So there was a speaker. And then
and then in this situation, the tour was being put
on by an organization. And we have had a lot
of experiences organizations and we should we know now but
didn't know then that when you're working with the organization
and they say things like everybody that works here is
so young. Our team is so young. Man. You. I'm
(17:56):
just going to tell you right now. If people are
talking about booking you for something and they say that
to you, charge your highest price because that means you're
going to be inconvenience. And make sure that whoever cuts
the checks isn't young. Make sure you want to see
one at least one gray hair on the person cutting
your check. That's that's that's cool enough. But who running
(18:18):
your quick books? Yeah? Who's handling Quicken? What y'all doing
it here? Let me? Does the person run a y'all checks?
Know how to use something that's not venmo? Is what
I need to know? Is it a check? A check?
Will I get tax forms related to this money? Okay?
(18:40):
The first bad thing that happened was related to the
tour bus. I do believe our tour bus driver had
only driven in the South. I don't think he'd ever
done a Midwest tour like us tour bus drivers. Like,
what is what are we doing here? That doesn't okay?
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Doesn't Chilis
(19:03):
have like a Midwestern just a Southwestern? See that's it right?
So it's a Southwest. There is a Southwest is Texas
the southwest? Yes, okay, yes, yes, But I'm going to
tell you right now that if there was a Midwestern
egg roll, it's a bunch of casse roles that are
(19:23):
rolled up in a tortilla that is covered in either
sour cream or something, and then it's encased in a
cream cheeseball and you have to use crackers to get
to the actual Midwestern egg roll inside. I like that.
(19:44):
My new found understanding of US geography has to do
with the chili's appetizer. Yeah, because see that helps you
Right there, you were like, oh, it's Southwest. It's a
black bean, it's a little guacamole. You're like, okay, I
know the vibes. I'm Texas, I'm New Mexico, I'm Arizona. Basically,
anything that has the worst south east Southwest in it
(20:05):
has black beans. You're pretty sure. You're pretty sure about that.
When I think about Northwest, for some reason, I'm somewhere
between weed and pachuli, some somewhere between those things, some
sort of a some sort of a fir tree, a
frasier tree is happening there. And you know the Northeast,
(20:26):
You're like, it's a lobster roll. You know, it's a
little it's a clam out there. We're right there near
the ocean. But people, people who are listening to live
in the Midwest that aren't from Chicago, tell us your cuisine.
We don't know, Like in the South, we're you're pretty
sure there's there's fried something. There's fried chicken, there's fried
(20:51):
pork rinds. You know, there's a fried oreo in the South.
I just remember the stops we made in the Northwest. Northwest,
is that what we're calling me? No, it's the Midwest. Sorry,
who have had this dude on the her podcast in
the Midwest tour, In the Midwest tour that we went on.
(21:13):
I just know that the different towns we stopped in,
when we went in the diners then people were not
ready to see us. No, they were not. You could
hear the form. And I'm trying to think to myself,
I would have noticed this a lot more now than
I did then. But I was the only black person
on that tour that I can remember. No, there might
have been. I'll say, I'll say of the people of
(21:37):
color on that tour, that was maybe less than five
of everybody who was there. I will say, when we
walk in those diners, you might have been the first
black person they've seen it. Boy, y'all don't want it,
and y'all don't want to be You don't never want
to be in an environment where you're like racist, and
you you especially don't want to be there when it's
(21:58):
cold and you're not sure how quickly your lungs can
run in the in the freezing. I think walking into
that room, for me, it wasn't as much racist as
racist wasn't There was no question. Didn't go up on it,
and it was like, Okay, I can go to the
bathroom and leave her. Yeah, I gotta stand here do that.
(22:20):
I will be standing outside of her bathroom. Gotta do it.
(22:45):
One of the awkward things about this was the organization
that was putting on the tour was headquartered somewhere in
the Midwest, and what that meant was everyone that was
helping to organize the tour, all people that worked behind
the scenes, they lived in the Midwest. And then a
(23:06):
couple of the bands that were on the tour they
had their own way. They were handling transportation, so they
weren't actually on the bus with us, So it was
us and maybe a couple of people that worked in
the sound crew that basically had some days to ourselves.
(23:28):
Kind of I won't say it was the middle of nowhere,
but it was kind of like basically, everyone did the
tour Monday through Friday, and if you could afford to
fly home on the weekends, then you would fly home
on the weekends. But you would be flying home at
your own costs. And if I remember correctly, they were
(23:50):
happy with some of the folks flying home on the weekends,
but those folks were like, home, I ain't staying here. No,
not not in this snow ridden place. Oh I'm not
staying But we didn't have money to do that. And
a couple of other people that were working like behind
the scenes from out of town didn't have money to
do that. So basically, contractually they had to provide lodging
(24:14):
for us, and that's literally it. They pretty much like
dropped us off at a hotel that was across from
a mall. There was a thing in walking distance, and
they were like, have at it. You can go there,
get get yourself some food. Whatever. So imagine, now, thankfully
(24:36):
this wasn't like actual literal Christmas, but it was in
the few weeks leading up to the holidays, so a
lot of that time that you have to start slowing
down your life and doing your Christmas decorations and starting
to get gifts, if that's what you do. We were
(24:57):
taking our weekends and going over to this mall that
we anything you could do or eat in that mall,
we must have done it. I saw it. Okay. The
next thing I want to talk about is the time
that the bus froze. And I need to speak about
this because I mentioned to y'all earlier that our bus
(25:19):
driver had never been to the Midwest, as apparently we
had not either, and I didn't notice. Y'all listening that
live in the Midwest are going to laugh when I
say this, probably, but apparently you are not supposed to
turn a bus. You're not supposed to turn it off
(25:40):
when you are in weather that is below freezing, as
Wisconsin and the Dakotas and Michigan and Minnesota were at
this time of year. Now, normal tour of US etiquette.
I can't tell y'all all the secrets, but normal tour
of bus etiquette is that if multiple people are on
(26:01):
a tour bus, you all have a way to get
in and out of the bus. I'm not gonna tell
y'all what the way is, so y'all won't be looking
for it in your favorite artists bus. There's always a
way that everybody has that's like their secure way they're
gonna get in and out of this thing. And typically
the bus is turned off and you kind of come
(26:21):
in and out like you would your car, but instead
of being your car, there's your bed in there, your
luggage whatever. So this bus driver is doing normal protocol
as far as he's concerned. We show up after the
gig and I hand my turntable. Put there's this place
turntables go under the bus. Place on merch goes under
the bus. Any of our stuff goes in a certain
(26:42):
spot under the bus. The closet locket we get on
the bus, that's all. So we had one one night
that the bus got turned off and froze. They had
to tow the bus, tow the bus, y'all to a
mechanic to what first father bus out. I can't even
(27:05):
see what the bus needs fixing. Let me tell you,
I didn't even know the bus have froze, because apparently
it was enough to have the lights on, right, So
I got to get in my bunk. And when you
get in your bunk, there's that curtain. Close the curtain. Well,
I have a decent amount of body heat, you know
what I'm saying, Like I'm a well insulated individual. I
(27:28):
don't be cold into wintertime, thank god. And so i'm
and now that we're married, I don't either continue. So anyway,
I didn't want to say it, but well it's true,
right and so anyway, So so I'm in my bunk
and I'm warm. I'm here on this commotion. So I
opened up the bunk and automatically see my breath for
(27:49):
the first like, like in my bunk, it was toasty.
Because I'm gonna tell y'all the way the way mid
low to mid budget tour buses are made is your
bunk is not like a bunk bed, okay, is much
lower down to the face. It's almost like you're in
a coffin. I would assume it's kind of classphobic. It's
(28:10):
going to be a problem. Like you're looking immediately at
the roof. So imagine you fall asleep and wake up
and all you can see is your breath and darkness.
Let me tell y'all. Yikes, it was so cold in
the bus, and Matt's bunk was so warm. He got
out of his bunk and let me get in his
bunk until you know, they figured out what we were
(28:32):
all going to have to do. Yikes, I do remember,
because remember they had to go thaw out this bus,
but we still had to get to the next sitting.
So they pulled up in some hatchback talking about we
gotta get as much this gear and here as we can.
So if I remember correctly, I was holding at least
(28:55):
one turntable and lap because it was us and three
other people that were working the behind the scenes. So
the car itself full, there's five of us and a
hatchback with our luggage and two turntables. There was not
enough room for that at all, so we had to
ride in the hatchback turntables and laps. Yikes. Okay, period,
(29:21):
I want to talk to you all about the audience.
We were being told that, you know, this was a
young people's thing. It was it was supposed to be
reaching you know, college students to materials. We saw lights
and piro and young people and made sense everything. So
(29:43):
we were like, bet, that's perfect there were rock bands
on this tour with guitars and amps and like cool cool,
we love that. Well, we get there and it's less
of a young adults, more of a greater grandparents seventy
plus adults, like like a literal hey boomer. They might
(30:07):
have been the greatest generation Boomers might have been their kids. Man,
that was people, Yes, it was. That's that's definitely some
nana's were up in there. And I'm gonna tell you
where you probably don't want a DJ. For the most part,
I can't. I can't necessarily tell you that you don't
(30:28):
want a DJ in front of older people, because if
they're older people that love to party, that's great. But
I'm gonna tell you who doesn't love to party, and
that's older Christian people. The number of times I heard
we've never had a set of turntables in here before. Yikes.
I'm gonna tell y'all, older Christian people the only kind
(30:49):
of party they want to go to is a praise party.
Galling stand. They want to they want to do that
motion that um they used to do back on the
Marinatha where they like kick their legs out. They want
to do that kind the thing. But they didn't come
there to hear yo yo rock wrap. These people were
old enough to where they still weren't sure about drums
and church, you know what I mean, Like they go back,
(31:11):
they go back to handclaps and tambourines. Needless to say,
Matt was getting what started out as like some scowls
and some eyebrows that were feeling concerned. These folks clap
on the one in the three, okay, and some of
them just did not clap at all, y'all feel me.
So it went from I'm about to say because it
(31:33):
went from people looking like I don't think I like
this to them actually walking up and basically like telling
Matt off. And she gave you all her heat about
how loud it was, and she out of that heat.
I was like, and I'm gonna tell y'all, I am
(31:56):
very protective about my husband and I do not like
people talking sideways to my man. Can Matt handle himself? Absolutely?
Most people are gonna look at Matt and they don't
want to tustle with him. They're gonna size him up
and say, no, this is not what I want to
tustle with. But that doesn't stop me from feeling like
(32:19):
I need to step in if I feel like somebody
talking sideways. There's been a couple of old ladies. You've
really saved me from it. Boy, This silver hair lady,
the way she was getting with you, and I'm like,
the people literally brought us here, like it's not a surprise.
This lady was like, if I remember where for world,
it's been long enough. I've forgotten and forgave amen Amen.
(32:42):
But she came at me in a way she was like,
I can't when you were playing that ruckus, I cannot
hear what she's saying. I wanted to hear what she's
say And the truth of the matter is there's a
soundman in the back who is mixing. I really have
a very limited understanding of it. I can hear from
where I am on the stage, so I'm playing things
(33:03):
at a certain volume. But once it gets like beyond me,
once comes to mixing, there's a mixing board in the
back of the house. There's someone who doesn't It's not me,
but in my customer service and in my try and
treat people like, hey, that's somebody's grandma. You know what
I'm saying, Like yo, man, like you know, I got
a grandma, and she might not know how mixing board
(33:24):
works either, So you know, I try to give people
that grace. But that lady was mad, So I just
did my customer service. I'm so Oh, yes, ma'am, I'm
so sorry. Oh yes, ma'r next time. Oh my goodness, yes, yes, yes,
boy was mad at me. I also want to let
y'all know a moment that me and Matt boat most
times on the road. If something went awry, one of
(33:45):
us is mad, and the job of the other person
just to hold space for that person's anger and to
try to be with them as they calm down. Every
now and then something comes up that makes us both
so mad that then we have to like stay in
the hotel or whatever space we have to ourselves, which, truthfully,
when you're on a bus tour, the space you have
(34:06):
to yourself is very little, very minimal, because we're it's
not like we're on a tour bus and we have
a little section of the bus that's just for us.
All the beds are in the same area, y'all, stacked
on top of each other. Three it's three bit yes,
it's three beds stacked on top of each other. And
then it's probably like two or three rows of that,
(34:28):
so it was probably twelve twelve beds probably in the
bus twelve beds ish, right, So it's not like you
have a whole lot of space to go to and
cuss or whatever you feel. You can't roll over on
the bus. And the other thing that's wild regarding how
people respond to DJs is people always have their own
(34:48):
concept of DJA that is typically not what happens in
real life. When people walk up to me and start
doing the DJ hands, we're both hands are going back, yeah,
and when they start making the wicky wicky, yikes. No, no,
So Christmas you need to speak to this baby, because
holiday parties are already a fascinating thing to DJ if
(35:13):
the request is that you play all holiday themed music.
But then if you take that down too, now you're
in a church setting because if you if you take
me back out to holiday music, you've got what you're
gonna get her for Christmas. You know, you've got some
options for Hugh Jams, Mariah Carey, don't. Yeah, you've got
(35:36):
some things. But if you're now taking that and that's
that narrows you're playing field anyways, though there's maybe eight
Christmas songs that have multiple variations. There's how many variations
of this Christmas are there? But we only want to
hear one. That's right, shout out to Donnie Happy. We
only want to So now you've taken if you play
(35:56):
the whole thing, you've taken up about three and a
half minutes. And if you are now narrowing down that
playing field to those aren't holiday songs. Those are Christmas songs,
and those are Christmas songs that people want to hear
in a church only about because you can't play some
Santa Claus. Those are out jingle maybe jingle bells, but
(36:19):
you can't do like some Frosty to Snowman. So you
take those eight songs. Now you're down about three or four.
And you know, Away in a Manger is a beautiful song,
beautiful story. Everything is great, but you don't jam. Oh
you know what's it going? Jesus is okay. Kirk Franklin
did give us one. Franklin gave us a strong one.
(36:42):
Fred Hammond, I'm sorry about it. I don't know what
CCM music is doing with Christmas songs. I don't know
any gospel music has plenty of Christmas jams. Well, I
don't know what CCM is doing as far as Christmas jams.
So a mad gen Matts playing field. What is allowed
(37:04):
to be played is now very narrow because now we're
talking about Christmas songs that are about Jesus. Okay, now
we are getting some feedback from the organization after we
do the tour for you know, a couple of nights,
they're giving us some feedback. And let me tell you
what you don't want to hear is people walking up
(37:24):
to you as an artist after you did a Christian
type event and saying, hey, so are you open to
some feedback. When I was younger, I would be like yeah,
because I always felt like, well, maybe they'll tell me something.
Maybe I'll grow. Now that i'm older, I'm like, hailena,
whatever your feedback is, no, I'm like, let's roll the dice.
You never know what's about to happen. The feedback from
(37:47):
Matt was that what he was mixing was not what
they expected. They were expecting to get mixes that we're
going to blend in bing Crosby. Have y'all ever been
at a dance part party and dance to being Crosby?
You haven't I want you all to write me and
tell me in d M S if you ever did
the wobble to Being Crosby. And again, part of the
(38:10):
story is that we thought we were coming into perform
for much younger audience. So all the prep work, any
remixes that I built, anything like that was with the
idea that we were performing for who we were seeing
in the videos. And so we get there and it's
a much older crowd and it's you're playing to loud,
(38:30):
you know, And what is you wanting Matt to do
with what? Being Crosby just threw us all off? And
the way the person walked up to Matt to give
him this feedback, I feel like Matt, as y'all may
know from this podcast, but if you don't, my husband
is a very laid back person. It takes a lot
to get him to where he's mad, mad mad. I
(38:54):
don't know where we went, because I don't remember that
there was a hotel to go to. I remember this conversation, haven't,
because the person said to me, when I was younger,
I used to go to raves, and at the raves
they could mix anything. But what was also being said
to me was that the music you're playing is too danceable,
(39:18):
it's too high energy, it's too it's too fun, like
can you And I'm thinking, like you brought me, brought
me it's literally a DJ here, Like it's literally a DJ.
Like I don't get it, Yeah you brought me like it,
there's no you brought me here? You know what I do?
(39:38):
I got you know, Um, but okay, you know, you know,
and so it's like you there, there were a couple
of back and forth where it was like, um, you know,
there's still customer service to this job. Of course, there's
a lot of customer service to this job. And so okay,
I hear you. Okay, let me see if I can
interpret this vague thing you just said to me and
(40:02):
do something exact with your vagueness. So let me try to,
you know, do this thing next city. And still it
was still it was the back and so we had
gone back and forth to where I was like, I
don't I don't know how to you know. Oh, And
I think what happened was one night I actually did
(40:23):
give them exactly. I played exactly what they had asked.
When that's what that's what happened. So I played exactly
what happened. They were like, well, that actually wasn't quite
what we were looking for. It was like it's I
was like, okay, so don't use danceable drums, but can
you remix out of this pool of three to four
(40:45):
songs in this hour long set that you've got, but
don't make it danceable and just make it less And
so it was like it had gotten to a point.
And um, Also, I think it was the way the
person was talking very patronize, very talking down, very like
you don't know, and that's that's fine. I'm a pretty
(41:06):
laid back, easy going person. I'm not you know, I'm
not rattled very easily. Um, but that one got me
that it was enough back and forth and it was
enough of the way that person was talking with me
that I remember when it was the next weekend that
we were dropped off for the weekend, we were party,
(41:27):
we were in that mall, and that's when we called
back to um, you know, who was our manager at
the time. Oh, it just makes my chest ti thinking
about it, because y'all, I'm gonna tell you I took
offense to a lot of that because at the end
of the day, like people there are certain things that
people don't necessarily think of. I would say the grand
(41:50):
like mainstream people out there do not think of as
being a skill, and deejaying is one of them. People
look at deejaying and really think like, oh, yeah, I
could do that, or like I used to do that
when I was in college. I used to you know,
and it takes a lot of skill. And I was
through the roof about it because I was like, my
(42:11):
husband is not somebody who just woke up yesterday, and
was like, I think all DJ, like even DJ and
at that point almost fifteen years and almost twenty now,
so I was through the roof about that. But let
me tell y'all one thing. They really stuck me about
the conversation that that person had with you when they
(42:32):
said to you back in my day when I was
going to the raves. That almost took me out, y'all.
And let me tell you why. Let me tell y'all
why right now. Even though when Matt and I performed
in Christian Market and we shared stage with a lot
of other Christian artists at the time, some of those
artists were people that if they posted they were drinking
(42:52):
wine on their social media people would be in their
mentions like talking wild to them, like basically they feel
like they're not Christian because they were drinking. Let me
tell y'all something. Me and Matt been drinking, okay, and
me and Matt is not responsibly obviously obviously, but not
obviously because some people don't. We were drinking responsibly and legally.
(43:14):
But we were people who had a drink. We were
people who were still going to the club. People who
knew us, knew that that that type of people. We were. Yes,
I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna do my thing
at this Christian event. And when we get back, if
the club that we like to go to was open, yes,
we go there and we dance. So no, what you're
asking him to do, I don't care whatever the rave
(43:37):
was doing back in the day. What you're asking him
to do is not how the actual club right now
is not how the club right now is. So get
out of here, and we are currently not in a
club not performing for young people. And and also I
don't want to bring it back up, but you said
what I was playing was too danceable with a supposed
(44:01):
to be doing so like the reference to first of
all back in my day. I know I was older
than it was, but that's all right. But the reference
to back in my day when I went to the raves,
what were you going to the raves to do? To
dance with young people? We don't have those ingredients here
you you have set me up. That's that's a time
(44:21):
where I learned I need to start asking some questions.
Oh you're gonna pay me to come do this? That
was awesome, but that money, no, I I after the
experience we had. It's like if I had known that
I could have, I would have given it back. I
would have rather. I would rather have had a broke
(44:41):
Christmas that we still could have been with our family
and been at home and gave everybody one good night.
Here's your rubber band. Period. I would have rather had
that than had that money at that point. It is
a pretty good gift idea, though, because what is more
fun than a rubber band. Also, my last reflection is
(45:05):
that I had just had to start making some dietary
changes right before we went to this tour. You remember
this battles from this one. I'm gonna tell y'all right now.
And I was having some health challenges and so the
medical professional that I was seeing at the time had
given me these like really strict, you know, dietary restrictions
(45:29):
that I needed to do for my health. And part
of what it is supposed to be provided when you're
on a tour is food, because you can't get up
there and perform every night without nutrients. But the way
my restrictions worked, you know, we even like had gone
(45:52):
through and listed for organizations like you know, here are
some you know national chains where you know, Amina and
Matt can eat. Here's their orders. I mean, we had
like just tried to like simplify it as much as possible.
And I remember multiple stops to this tour going into
the green room to be what was supposed to be
(46:13):
dinner and getting there and looking at everything that was
on the menu, and one night, I remember the only
thing I could eat was green beans, and a couple
of nights all they had that I could have with salad.
That was it. And I remember the organization that was
putting on the tour kept coming up and being like,
(46:35):
we just have salad for you. Is that okay? Is
that okay? I'm like, you think me getting up here
performing my heart out on Romaine lettuce, like you just
parked me at the mall for the weekend start. No,
it's not ore just parked at the mall. I've been
(46:57):
looking at the same mall for like three gives it
a road and uh yeah yeah yeah, y'all. Matt and
I both have been in quite a few tour experiences
and that one for me is by far the worst
one down And I feel like here in is what
we learned number one. I think that was the beginning
(47:23):
of the end of you dee jaying in Christian Market. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If if they're if there's not alcohol involved, then chances
are people aren't there to have a good time, which
your chances are you can just play a playlist or
whatever whatever. That's cool, you know what I'm saying. And
I understand that everybody can't go where alcohol is. I
know that some people have issues with it and there's
(47:43):
it's a loaded topic. I get it. But if people
are having something where specifically the point is to have
a good time, and mostly that will not be in
a church, Mostly not in a church because you got
to get that talking and that's what makes it makes
a rock and roll. Okay, but you're gonna pay for
it by listening to Sitka. So I think in in
(48:09):
part we were trying to do what we were doing
together on stage to see if that would gain some traction,
which it did in a lot of places. You know,
we we traveled on the road doing those performances together
for a long time, but that tour in particular started
to be for me, that was the beginning of the
end of us trying to figure out how you could
(48:30):
be deejaying in that side of the industry. It was like,
who cares, We don't need to try this anymore. And
I think it did put us in a position to
be like, there's some things that were not going to
take and there are plenty of things that that gig
was like and that's the last time, honestly, that's the
(48:50):
last time I'm taking that ship. That was like the
vibe that I felt at the moment, like remember the
way this made you feel, Remember that soul suck experience,
and be like you can do this again if you
want to, or just say no, or just say no,
and some things, you know, I think as an artist,
(49:10):
there's a part of you that's always excited for people
to ask you to do your thing. Even now for
both of us, it's like that request that you get.
Your first feeling as an artist is not about how
much money. That's not the first thought. Your typical first
thought is someone's asking. But now that we both have
(49:32):
more experience, then you got them questions after that, what
if this is for an organization? What are they about?
Is that what I'm about is that what I want
to be on stage next to? Are those people I
want to be sharing stage with? Is the money paying
for the inconvenience of my time? Is it paying for
the fact that I'm not going to be at my home.
(49:53):
I Am going to have to you know, navigate whatever city.
This isn't going to have to jump difficult it is
to get into your building, all of those things, all
that stuff. So it did sort of become this like
unfortunate lesson. But I'm gonna tell y'all what that was.
One of That was also I think one of the
last times that we traveled around the holiday like that. Yeah,
(50:17):
that was one of the last ones. And after that
we have enjoyed a lot of wonderful time at home,
letting the year slow down. Now Matt's djaying still but
in better environments now, so he has some Christmas parties
he has to DJ. He's had a lot of New
Year's Eves that he's had to DJ. But you know
(50:37):
what the plus to that is he gonna come home
to our house at night versus when we would go
on the road and then you're gone all those days
or whatever it is, And another time may come that
the road may pick back up for us, and we'll
navigate that too. But right now, I'm enjoying the fact
that as we record this, we're about to be decorating
(50:59):
our Christmas tree. We're about to spend time with our
families and cook food in the house, and that is
much better than being in a hotel across from the law. Anyways, y'all,
whatever your holidays are that you celebrate, even if you
don't and you're just celebrating the end of the year,
(51:20):
we hope that you will enjoy your life, be with
some people that you love, listen to some music that
brings joy to you. We hope that you'll have some
time to reflect at the end of this year and
think about the things you made it through, the things
you survived. If you're listening, just know that Matt and
(51:43):
I are glad you're here. We're glad you're listening. We're
glad we've all made it through what's been a tough
year or a couple of years. So cheers to you all,
and we'll be back soon with some more road stories.
Yes here. What Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen
(52:11):
for Slow Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca
Women Podcast Network and partnership with I Heart Radio. Thanks
for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review
the podcast.
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