November 15, 2022 • 42 mins
For many years, my husband and I performed on stages all over the country. But it didn’t matter where we went, somebody always had something weird to say to us at the merch table. Check out this episode, the first in a series of Matt and I sharing our road stories with you!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to not only a new episode
of Her with Amina Brown, but welcome back to a
new series on Her with Amina Brown. And I am
excited to welcome my producer and husband. Priority is not
in that order, just that he is both my producer
and husband, Matthew Owen, also known as dj O Diggy. Hey, babe,
(00:55):
you know it's gonna feel really weird is when I
do this in post production and I add the applause,
like I guess, we're going to see how how I
view myself if I give myself more applause or less applause.
Something for me my therapist to work out, Okay, like
exact facts, exact facts. This series is called road Stories,
(01:20):
and Matt and I have quite a few road stories
because we started traveling and performing together on the road
the same month that we got married, so we have
had at least we've been married eleven years, so prior
(01:41):
to the pandemic, that's what at least nine eight nine
years that we were on the road together. Pretty heavy there. So,
oh man, we have a lot of stories to tell
you all. So there are going to be a few
to several We're not sure how many episodes, but they're
gonna be more than one episode of us telling you
a few of the interesting road stories we experienced and
(02:04):
those of you that have been here for other episodes
where Matt has come out, which maybe we've only had
one because I think we we did an episode for
an anniversary a year or so ago. Is that I
think that might be our only episode? Yes, right, but
I think it's probably right on her podcast that he
only come you know what I mean, That's that's fair.
(02:26):
That's a fair from high school. I've carried it with
me into many things in life, and I say, this
is one. Know your part and play it. Well, that's it.
So I'm honored to be asked. That's it. So if
you missed that episode, we will link to it in
the show notes on Amina brown dot com slash her
with Amina. You can go there and see all of
(02:47):
the things. Okay, So to give you a little bit
of background, you can get more of the background on
the previous episode where we talked about our story how
we met. But so you have a little bit of
an idea. Matt and I met as became friends and collaborators.
So in a sense, what brought us together was the
(03:08):
fact that we were building a show at the time,
and I was traveling, as some of you know, I
was traveling very heavily in more white, conservative Christian spaces
back then, and I was kind of tired of being
sort of pigeonholed into this like one poem at a
time model, and so I had asked my then friend
Matt to partner with me and as a DJ and musician,
(03:32):
we pulled together this amazing show. And I want to
say maybe like two or three months before we got married,
we got a booking agent, and then before we knew it,
we got married September nine, and I'm pretty sure two
or three weeks later we had our first gigs together.
That sounds wild, and I was there to see it
(03:54):
the first time, but just hearing you recount the story,
that sounds crazy. Yeah, My my just friend Amina had
asked me if I wanted to go into the studio
with her and figure out how to build a show
with a DJ and a poet. And I'll be honest,
Number one, I didn't know how to work with a
p I knew how to, you know, make music for
a rapper or for a singer, or make something that
(04:17):
I would maybe perform myself, but with free verse poetry, it's, uh,
it's a very interesting thing because it's not like, here
are your eight bars land here and so you know,
I was just intrigued by, well, let's see what happens,
and here here we are. We saw what happened. So
it worked out. But I do remember thinking that I
(04:37):
had an idea that Okay, we're gonna build this thing,
and ain't nobody gonna pay for me to travel with you.
So they're gonna figure out how to you know, if
this was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and if
I'm the jelly, they're gonna figure out how to make
their own jam, you know what I mean, Like they're
gonna be like, well, here's this track that we can
play while you do your poetry. Let that guy stay
(04:59):
in the a t you know. So I was like, hey,
nobody gonna take us on the road, and then for
like what a good four years we traveled off of that.
That's true. That's true. It's wild to think now, and
I made I made some decisions at the time, y'all
that I still can't believe Matt and I did this,
But we got engaged on my birthday in eleven, so
(05:22):
that was on May. Shout out to the May babies
in the building. We got engaged that day. So we
decided to plan our wedding pretty quickly because we were
in our thirties. I just it wasn't as important to
me to have this like amazing venue. I mean, this
was a lot of really like before people had, before
(05:43):
people were streaming their weddings. This was before weddings had
hashtags and stuff like that, you know, So I wasn't
as concerned about what the wedding pictures were gonna do
on the Graham or anything like that. That was enough
concern to me. Also, to be honest, we didn't have
budget to be on at that time. Matt was working
as a youth pastor at a church and I was
traveling to churches, so neither of us were making excellent
(06:07):
money at the time. So we were trying to have
a short engagement because we were ready to start our
lives together, but also waiting a year to save up
more money to have a more extravagant wedding just wasn't
a thing that we cared much about. So we were
engaged with a three and a half month time to
get married. Also, Matt's fiance Amina decided this is a
(06:30):
great time to launch the show that we've been building
for the past year. So we actually in the middle
of being engaged and planning a wedding pretty quickly. Also,
we're launching this show that we were going to do
at the time, So we launched it in Atlanta so
that we could get video of it so we could
(06:51):
see what it was gonna do. So it's just while
to think that we launched the show in the time
we were engaged, and actually we're able to secure some
gigs shortly after. Now here's where the road stories gets interesting, y'all.
We have all manner of types of road stories to tell, y'all.
And some of this is really awkward. I think some
(07:11):
of it's pretty hilarious now in hindsight, and I do
feel like we have a few cool, cool stories to tell,
like some cool stuff that we got to do or
that we got to experience because we were people that
traveled alive. I want to start with the merch table.
I want to center our conversation around that today, because
(07:32):
you would be surprised about the amount of awkward conversations
that we have had at the merch table. And for
those of you who aren't familiar, because this was this
story for us was beginning over ten years ago. So
even what was at the merch table, man, First of all,
remember having a merched table, like the idea that we
(07:56):
would get to a venue and one of us would
have to go and set up books, CDs, T shirts.
You're you're paying for these items to be manufactured and
you have to figure out how to get them to
the gig with you. So traveling with me, you're already
(08:17):
carrying for me. It was I was flying with my turntables,
my mixer, all of my gear as well as clothing
and you know, toothbrushes and all that stuff. But then
you've got to carry books, CDs, T shirts hoping you
made something that people are gonna be like, yeah, let
me buy or else. You're just dragging around all this
(08:40):
stuff for nothing and then trying to set it up
in a way. And oh, oh, banners, I remember also banners.
I forgot about banners. Help us banners a thing where
it would roll out and there'd be a massive picture
of you or a massive picture of me. And just
going through through t s A. First of all, going
(09:02):
through T s A was his own experience. Because you're
carrying this thing in your hands. It's not really a
good way to check the banners, and they're asking you
what is this? And I don't know why. I always
got asked, oh, are you a professional pool player? Like
are those pool cues or pool sticks? And I'm like,
shout out to Uncle Phil in the pool hall. I
(09:22):
am not. It's not an Uncle Phil moment. This is
People also thought sometimes they were fishing poles. They wanted
to know if we were gonna go fishing somewhere, and
we were like, wow, we have like the least cool
story to tell regarding what is in this package. It's
a massive picture of my wife's face. And they looked
at me like what almost seemed disappointed. Like then it
(09:45):
goes into, well, why do you have a massive picture
your wife's face. Well, my wife's a poet and she's
gonna talk at this thing. And don't even bring up
the fact that my turntables were going through T s A.
And it's like, every time we would get to a venue,
open up that thing and I would see that little
slip that said I was like, oh lord, please help
these things where like you show up just in time
(10:06):
for sound check setting up, and it's like I gotta
figure out something. Yikes, y'all Like thinking about that now,
the amount of the amount of luggage that we had
to check and then you're limited, like we each had
at that time, We each had two bags each that
we could afford either afford to check or we're able
(10:26):
to amass enough mileage that we were able to like
be have enough status that we could check those bags
for free. So we had four bags between us we
could check, and then we had two items we each
could air quotes carry on. So there were a lot
of choices being made and having to use those uh
those weird hanger weights yikes, to make sure our luggage
(10:50):
wasn't going to be over because they're going to charge you,
mad amouse some money. Yikes, because I do feel like
we ended up, especially when you were traveling with your turntables.
That's two that's two pieces of air quotes by itself.
Then we would have to take one bag to be
all of our clothing, which for me is more of
a sacrifice, you know, It's it's Matt having a corner
(11:11):
of the luggage and me having all these shoes and
if I could, I can rock it with three or
four different T shirts and were good, and then we
would have a bag that was the merch. Now, I
think at a certain point we got sophisticated enough that
we started having enough merch that we could ship. But
it took us time, like getting to know other artists
(11:33):
who were traveling to know that you could do that.
But also it took forethought and planning because there would
be times that there'll be times that we just like
didn't think about it and now it's two days before
it's too late to ship. Or there would be times
where we were doing a bunch of gigs back to back,
and so you had certain merch you could ship to
(11:54):
that gig, but then that merch was going to get
shipped back home, but we weren't going home, so then
we had to have a certain amount of merch we
could fly with and take to the other thing. It
was a lot, y'all. So let me give you an
idea of what the merch table is, which I think
most artists still like. You know, when you go to
just even general concerts and stuff like that, there's still
(12:17):
a merch area it's just very different than it was
when we were starting out together. So the types of
events we were doing at this time, I would say
tended to be probably have very large events, events that
were in an arena, events that were in a large
ballroom in a hotel, you know, events that could be
anywhere from like two thousand people up to in a
(12:40):
big arena of like eighteen thousand folks. So this is
what made you have to get to a point as
an artist that you had a banner, because you needed
something that was big enough that people would know, oh,
they just saw you on stage, Yes, this is this
is where they go to buy your things. And of
course back then you typically would have well, for us,
we would have had CDs. Both we both had our
(13:04):
you know, our solo artist c ds, but really all
of my CDs were not technically solo because Matt made
all of the music that people were hearing if it
had music to it right, So you would have your
CDs there. We tried a run with various the Sundry shirts.
Remember your first shirt and was so ugly. My my
(13:26):
first shirt I tried to design myself was like so terrible.
By the time Matt and I became friends. He was like,
what does this look like? What? What? What is this?
And I was like, I was trying to go with
like a metallic foil and he was like, yikes, Like
you can't. You know, when you're talking to an artist,
you had to be the tiptoe in, especially just getting
to know you and even still being husband and wife
(13:49):
for us to still be doing this together, it's still
you gotta enter it with a certain you gotta tip
your toe in the water, you know. And so you
don't wanna be like, oh, you like this, but it's like,
so tell me about this shirt. You know, what, what
do you how do you what do you think about it?
What do you do? Do you like? Do you like it?
You like that? That's what you were going for. And
(14:11):
then sometimes too this changed over time. But in the beginning,
you may not be getting paid a lot to go
and do the gig, so you're hoping you're going to
make some extra money at the merch table. Now where
it gets tricky is t shirts are quiet as it's
kept not cheap to produce, and then you typically have
(14:34):
to order such a large amount of them that you
had to have money, like you had to basically have
an account that was just for merch, so that when
you sold merch, you had to keep a certain amount
of money so that you could spend a thousand dollars
on shirts. We still have a checking account in our
(14:54):
business account that's called the merch account. Neither one of
us have set up a merch table in years pre
pandemic years and even and even I think the gigs
that I was still doing where I was like selling
books and stuff A lot of times by then bookstores
and stuff were running the sales and the table, so
(15:16):
I didn't have to I didn't have to ship them,
I didn't have to figure out where they went. I
didn't have to handle the money. So like it has
been years since either of us had a merch table.
But you had the shirts because if you even though
they were they were kind of pricey sometimes to get
them made, if you bought a certain amount, you could
get really good profit margin on them because you could
(15:37):
charge I mean many of you experienced this. When you
go to concerts, the shirts could be I mean back
then they were like twenty bucks, which was like a lot.
Now you can go to a concert. We've gone to
some concerts recently, the shirts are forty dollars, fifty dollars,
you know in the venue. So if it's costing you
five dollars to make this shirt, even seven dollars, and
your profit margin is you just sold that for forty minutes.
(15:59):
That's another thing just brought up is that certain venues
also want a percentage, So they're going to have one
of their people they're selling things, and then at the
end there's account where you have to stand there and
they have to stand there. That way they can come
up with how much money you got to give back
to them, or they would take their percente out and
(16:22):
they would give you a check at the end. And
however they worked it out, you didn't know based on
what city you were going to, if the venue was
then going to be like, oh, sorry, we get ten
percent of that. So when you buying these shirts and
shipping them, it was hard to figure yeah, because it's
like that's turning out to be a lot of costs,
the cost of producing the merch, the cost of shipping it.
(16:44):
And then you get there and they're like, oh, that's
our ten percent. Sometimes at certain arenas that's our fifteen.
Depending on you know, where you were taxes and all
the rest of it. So there was a lot that
went into that merch table c DS. It is very
sad and unfortunate for a lot of us as traveling
artists that that everything went to streaming because c DS
(17:05):
was the perfect piece of merch to have at your table.
They cost less than two bucks to make and you
could sell them for ten dollars. I was printing them
from the house. At one point I had a printer
that you could print on top of the CD, like
the print that cover every Oh my gosh, I try.
I tried to tell young artists like I get a
lot of rappers coming up asking me. You know, young
(17:27):
kids want to wrapping stuff, and young artists come up
to me asking me about stuff and talking to him
and be like, man, once upon a time you could
show up to a venue where no one had ever
heard your name before. And if you got in there
and you put on a show and you made them
people feel something, you want to come back to your
merch table and them CD is gonna be gone, man,
(17:47):
and at like ten fifteen bucks apiece. Man, you know
how many streams and come on man? Like that was
a time. There were some times that we were struggling financially,
and sometimes it depended on the gig, like if you
were gonna actually get paid when you got there. Sometimes
(18:07):
they were like, oh, we only mail checks or we
only send out checks on certain days of the week.
So you went and did the whole gig. And thankfully,
you know, we had a system, you know, with you know,
our booking agency at the time, where there were deposits
and stuff they had to pay, but that still wasn't
money you were walking away with, Like even the deposit
they sent to our agent, we didn't see that money
(18:29):
until we played the gig, until we got home. So
sometimes the merch table was how you were geting ready
to eat food that day or the next day, because
a lot of that at that time was cash. This
is like before there was cash app and all the
rest of those Like I mean, we had a square
where people could use credit cards, but we would get
(18:50):
a lot of people coming by the merch table, you know,
buying stuff in cash. If they really enjoyed what we did.
Sometimes they'd be like, um, I only got a fifty
and I want a T shirt and I want you know,
a CD. And then it would like not work out evenly,
like we would need to give them change and they
would be like, I don't want to change. Like people
(19:11):
would do that at the merch table. So there was
a lot riding on how those sales went. So to
give you all then idea of like how that set
up was in the smaller spaces we went to that
typically would be more so smaller Christian colleges at the time,
smaller churches, you would still have the merch table situation there,
(19:33):
but it would just be less, you know, less people
would be like a smaller thing. Sometimes it would be
a little more intimate, and sometimes I was great and
sometimes I was not so great with the things people
thought they could say to you. So the merch table
was like there in all these different aspects from the
little small church that you went to that only six
people came up to the merch table, to the arena
(19:56):
that you were in where there were eighteen thousand people.
But here here's another thing I went to, y'all. We
would do these arena tours. This happened to us probably
at least a couple of times that we've done these
together and separately. We also both have done like arena
style events And the thing about an arena that's interesting
is when you are not headlining, when you are on
(20:18):
a bill where there might be six other artists right
like your merch tables there, but the people may not
know who you are when you get there, and then
they have to remember you and five other artists, seven
other artists, So that all depended on where you were,
(20:38):
how well those people knew you, how long you got
to perform comparatively to the headliner that may have had
an hour set. Maybe we had ten minutes earlier in
the night. So now at the end of the night
they have to remember us enough to want to come
by the merch table. A lot of things were going on, y'all.
Let's talk about weird things people say at the merch table. Um.
(21:03):
I want to begin the conversation mat with I've never
heard of you, because you would have to set your
merch up, especially if you were in like an arena situation,
you would have to set up your merch prior to
the event, so people would be like coming in to
get their seats and it'd be like us. And maybe
(21:25):
you know, in those of you who are familiar with
like Christian market, meaning like Christian artists that sell albums,
and those parts. There would be Christian artists whose names
were very big, maybe because their songs played on radio
at the time, or because if they were worshiped artists,
people knew their songs from church, or there were all
(21:46):
sorts of things. So there was some artists that people
walked in like, oh they know this band, Oh they
know this artist, And then there was us, and then
there was a lot of them did know us. And
the wild thing about an arena show is for in
our experience, and maybe this is a Christian market thing.
Most of those arena shows weren't in a big major city.
(22:10):
You weren't in l A in an arena. You weren't
in New York in an arena. You weren't even in
Atlanta in an arena. You were in making. You were
in erie, maybe Orlando. If you're lucky, you know, so
you're you're not dealing with people who are metropolitan. You're
dealing with people who are like I came to this
(22:31):
because I want to hear some Christian music, and they're
walking to the merch table and would walk right up
to our table and be like, what do you do?
I've never heard of you. My favorite was when they
would pick the CD up and flip it over on
the back and read it. I don't know if they
were looking for a song they maybe knew and didn't
know it was me or you, or if they're looking
for featuring insert name of whoever, and when they didn't
(22:55):
see it, they just kind of this puzzle look and
put it back down. You don't know me, that's okay.
They would also say is this Christian music? That was
a big question that we would get all the time,
and like, from in my mind, that was always kind
of funny because I don't think even though Matt and
I both were performing our art in Christian spaces, for us,
(23:19):
there was like a difference between artists who considered themselves Christians,
so and so they considered themselves a Christian rapper, a
Christian singer songwriter, they were a Christian band, you know,
and then there were those of us who were like,
we are Christians, but like that's not necessarily like a
qualifier or like a of a title or whatever that
(23:40):
we have. And so whenever they would say that, it
was always kind of funny to me because I'd be like,
I think I understand why you're asking that question, and
I guess some of this aren't we made was Christian.
But then I would be like, nah, you might want
to go to tables down. They are very explicit. Well,
it was always wild to me for my stuff. Spec
typically is because my role in most of these events
(24:04):
was I would be on for an hour up front.
Everybody's walking in, so it's my job to get that
crowd on ten that way by the time the first
band comes in, and then sometimes I would be there
to keep the momentum going between bands. I'm on the microphone,
I got the crowd chanting, singing along, you know. So
(24:26):
it's it's a lot of instrumental music. I'm not up
there making a point, you know. I'm not up there
delivering some form of a message. I am very much
so entertainment and I love it. I'm an entertainer at heart.
That's what I do. It's what I love to do.
And so in the music that I was making was
mostly instrumental music. I ran into this question more times
(24:49):
than I can count, but is it a Christian album?
And the first for a while I would be like, well,
it's instrumental music. Is that that makes it new? Troll
in a sense, yeah, because there's no message. How what
if there's no words? But it was that a Christian
kick drum? Is that a did you baptize that drum kit?
(25:12):
A Christian trumpets? Did you put did you get the
old on that MPC? When I would just say yeah,
(25:40):
I would see it ease up on their face and
be like, yeah, I'll take three of them. And so
I just learned that for whatever reason, these people just
need to know that it was safe for the whole family, right,
because you know, in a lot of these large especially
the big arena and stuff, there's a lot of youth
(26:01):
groups who have shown up in some massive sixteen passenger van,
And I know this dude is asking me this, like
if I put this in on our ride home because
my teenagers just enjoyed what you just did. Am I
going to hear some things? I'm gonna get some calls
from some parents because the kids went home and said
this thing. And and so that's why I was like, oh,
(26:21):
you're just asking is it safe for me to play
at my youth group in the van way? So that's
where I was like, is that thing of customer service
that still very much so exists in whatever line of
work you do. I still have it now even though
I'm not working in those environments. It's some of it's
the same, Oddly somebody just the questions are different. And
(26:46):
I think it is interesting now to think back on
that because we started out doing a lot of youth
events because what we were doing sort of fell in
felt in the fun category, which is interesting when you're
when you're performing in a lot of these especially like
more conservative or evangelical Christian environment. If it falls in
the category of hip hop or like it's fun, it's
(27:08):
a good time, they're like, oh, that must be for
the students. You could come and speak to our youth.
At most they'll be like, oh, I bet our college students.
And maybe every now and then you'd get a young
adult situation, yeah, where it'd be like somehow people randomly
between eighteen and thirty five that are just aimlessly wandering
(27:28):
through their lives can come here. But otherwise, once you
got past that sort of thing, then it kind of
felt like every all the fun got sucked out of it.
All the music turned very slow and had to be
very contemplative, and like any of that fun stuff was
like I was like, what are the vibes? So I
think that was probably one of the things that helped
(27:50):
me and Matt to know that we need to start
phasing out doing youth events because for me, you know,
to the point of what you said, Babe, like, I'm
thinking about art, and for many Christian folks, there is
this idea that like, if it's not air quotes safe
for the whole family, then that means they're stuff in
(28:11):
it that as Christian people, you shouldn't be listening to.
But I started to really have a lot of questions
about that the more we travel, because I was like, well,
the differentiation you made makes sense. There's certain things that
are appropriate for a kid, there's certain things that are
appropriate for a teenager. That doesn't mean that love songs
(28:32):
are bad. That doesn't necessarily mean that songs about sex
are inherently bad. I'm not saying all of them things
is good either, but I'm just saying like it really
like narrowed in this way that in like as an artist,
it very much so narrowed the lane of what story
you could tell as an artist, or or what paint
(28:53):
brush you could paint with. And I felt like those
gaps were already very well filled, that is very well
field and continues to be and that's that's fine. But
like I want to talk about the things that I
see in my every day I want to talk about here,
here's what I see, which I think goes back to
the idea of something we've both experienced of I don't
(29:14):
want you to see me right. Yeah, that was always
a wild question of is it Christian? And that my
brain had to compute through, like what is the question
this person really as probably like, yes it is. If
that's gonna help us order room service later. Sure. The
other thing that would be hilarious to us, especially when
(29:36):
we would be in these like medium to small towns,
that to them this Christian tour of however, many people
coming to blah blah blah city in Kentucky or wherever
we were, this was this was their social interactions for
the year. This was like super big deal. They were
going out and we would go do our thing and
(29:58):
the moments of them coming up after words we have
This happened several times and people would be like, you
know what, I loved every minute of what y'all did.
Y'all are really talented and you know what I think
y'all should take this on the road. Y'all should really
take this out there and listen. If y'all ever want
to go to Wisconsin. My brother is a pastor up there,
(30:18):
and I've got some connections for you and y'all, y'all
really need to think about that. And so, of course
Matton are literally standing at the table like this is
literally the road like we are on. We just left
somewhere to come here. We're leaving here to go somewhere else.
But you know what, you're onto something. Man. There's another aspect.
I don't know if we've talked about this yet, the
(30:39):
volunteer aspect where you would get to whether it's a
large place, small place. And typically they would say, here
is the volunteer that we have from this church or
this organization, who is gonna be at your merchant because
while we're on stage, we can't be there. And also
we're gonna need help once hopefully wants to floodgates and
(31:01):
people go, oh my gosh, this I must have this
wow and so, and we weren't making enough money yet
where we could afford to travel with that size of
team like some artists whatever um genre right, Some artists
get to where they they're making enough money that like
it's them, it's their DJ or their band. Plus they
(31:24):
have people traveling with them to do social media. Plus
they have people traveling with them that are handling merch
inventory money counting that they have a person that does
that at every event. We were not well above. It
was us our go pros maybe to catch some audio
and uh, square reader, that's it. So those volunteers were
(31:47):
kind of like saving grace for us, especially like if
one of us had a gig and the other one
wasn't performing, then the other person might hold down the table.
But when we both had to perform, which we did
together for many years, like who can hold down the table?
So now got random volunteers, you're handing them money like
square readers. Oh man, I would typically ask have you
(32:08):
ever used and iPad before? And you would be surprised
at how often At that time they'd be like, no,
say it ain't so y'all. Okay, Matt, I want to
talk about the air quotes famous conversations that we had
on the road. Being air quotes Christian famous or church
(32:32):
famous is wild is false? Like it's just because when
you're a performer in Christian market, or as some of
my friends referred to it as the Christian industrial complex.
When you are a performer there, you feel like a
big fish, but you are actually in a very small pond.
(32:53):
But to that small pond of people, there are some
names that really really matter over there, you know, and
when you leave that space, you are not that you
have you might have. Like we would get booked for
an event and for three days we felt a little
bit like the Beatles because everywhere every restaurant we went
to around the conference venue, every time we went back
(33:16):
and forth to the hotel entering the space, I mean, somebody,
I know, it's gotta sound so weird to y'all. That
like they would have to give hosts to us to
walk us in and out of the venue because there
would be that many people at the conference or whatever.
They would be like, oh my gosh, Amina, oh my gosh,
Dijail diggy, you have that for like three days straight.
(33:37):
Even when you get to the air the airport and
whatever that city is, people are still like, I really
enjoyed to take a picture with me. You could even
land back for us. We land back home in Atlanta,
and there were still people that were just on our
flight that live in Atlanta, still asking for our pictures
at the baggage claim. Okay, And then you get in
(33:58):
your car, you go to a restaurant, when you leave
the airport, you stopped by Target, and you know what
nobody's worried about. So it's weirdly like disorienting because I
can see for people who make their career there for
years and years like that, you do feel like a
famous person. So we would go to places and people
would say they would ask us, especially students in particular,
(34:22):
would ask us, are you famous? Yes? I got that
pretty often at the merge table, Hey are you are
you famous? I remember when Instagram first like started popping
up and become a thing, and like the idea of
you know, once upon a time everybody was in a brand.
We weren't that aware of ourselves. I remember once it
(34:47):
started becoming socially a thing of how many likes you
were getting on whatever the social media plant. And that's
when Instagram was first kind of pop up. That's when
people were posting pictures on Instagram. I don't even think
video was an option yet, And I could remember I
would be you know, wrapping up my turntables whatever. Some
line of thirteen year olds will be standing in front
of me wanting to take a picture. Somebody being like,
(35:09):
are you famous? And my answer has always been, well,
if I was, would you have to ask that far?
And my my answer, my answer was always I go
and Target. Nobody's worried about me. I feel like that's
a famous person. You're in Target. You you going through
the mall and the people are like like, like, I've been.
We both have been in a place where usher was
(35:32):
who was a person who, just to be clear, is
actually famous, like for real famous. The whole mall is
a buzz like, oh my god, that was sure, oh
my go, oh my god. And I would tell the kids,
I go to Target all the time, and you know what,
nobody's there, Like even in the scenario you pointed out
earlier about like being at the airport and people being like,
(35:53):
oh and then and they want to take these pictures
and stuff. The people who were not at the event,
sometimes they'd be sitting next to us on playing to
be like, so, who are y'all? Okay, that's also a
weird conversation at the explain, well, we're you know, we
live in Atlanta. She's a poet, I'm a DJ. We
just were at this event. They had this experience, and
you're trying to it's really not It's not actually as
(36:13):
big of a deal as it might seem. For ten minutes.
I also want to speak to the things you were
asked to sign. Now, I will tell y'all there there
are some heartwarming moments that happened at the merge table,
where your work actually means a lot to people. You
have people come up that are actually like supporters of
what you do. I will tell you that doesn't feel
like most of the time when we were in Christian
(36:35):
work that that was our experience. But there were sometimes
that was wonderful. Other times get a little weird, like
people asking you at the merch table to sign their Bibles.
That was always like, I'm not a co author there,
so I don't know what I'm doing. That was always
a weird one. People asking you to sign other people's merch,
which I realized now was a budget situation. This is
(36:55):
people being like, I can only afford to buy one
of y'all see d s out here, So they're like,
I'm a buy so and so CD over there, but
I'm gonna walk around to everybody else's merch table and
be like sign this. Yeah. There's a small period of
time where there was a certain Christian rapper that was
at a lot of the events we were at, where
(37:16):
I think that record label has an engineer who also
traveled as a DJ with them, and he happened to
be a white dude. I happened to be a white
dude from far enough away maybe like I don't think
we look alike, but whatever. So I would get asked
to sign a lot, and again it's back to that
thing where like people walk up to you and they
(37:38):
already have in their minds like there's no telling them
I'm not that, or no, well it's an instrumental album.
It's just go ahead this person. There's something this person wants,
they wanted in a timely manner, so just going ahead
and give it to him. That's that's just how I roll.
So I was like they walked up to me with
this certain artists c D and for a while I'd
be like, I have nothing to do with this, isn't
(37:58):
mean this, And after a while I'd be like yeah, cool,
And I would always sign a DJ thinking my old
always has like a little gol you know, because I've
had this gold tis a six D so has and
has a smiley face on it. And I saw the
dude and told him. But we had a good laugh
about it. But I mean there's probably I can't even
count to y'all the amount of CDs that people have
(38:19):
at home that have our signatures on it. And we
had nothing to do with the people asking me to
sign their shoes, like brand new shoes, like you're talking
about summertime about listen, I know those yo back to
school shoes and to this concert and your mom are
gonna be upset. But here people asking me to sign
their pizza yis. I'm like, are you going to eat that? Man?
(38:42):
I don't know what we're doing. It got really weird
really fast on my forehead. That one felt I'm like,
this is yikes. And I did it. But I mean
even with the Bibles, that was a weird one. But
I would kind of be I would kind of put
like my you know at that time, I would put
like my favor Bible verse and just sign it because
I was like, maybe just do encourage you while you
(39:03):
reading this, Like I don't know, it's weird. Also, once
people found out we lived in Atlanta, they were like, oh,
you live in Atlanta. You know LACRAI. I can't tell
you how many elevators, how many merch tables, how many
situations we were in like this where people are sort
of like next to the like, okay, you're here, you're performing,
you must be famous in some way, you know, to
them in this medium to small town in the Midwest somewhere,
(39:26):
and they would be like, oh, where are y'all from,
And we would say over from Atlanta, Oh, y'all know
LAKRAI and shout out to LAKRAI. That would always make
us laugh because we would be like, man, we've been
both of us have been in Atlanta, like over twenty years,
Like we've been here like a logtop and Atlanta like
I've been here long to where I've been to freak
Nick right right, And I was here like to probably
(39:47):
two years post the last real real Freaknick Like it
was just dissipating when I moved here. So we've been
in Atlanta a long time, so that always makes us laugh.
I was here when there was a new group called
Outcast coming. Okay, they sound like us. Okay, okay, that's
the people know, and it would just make us laugh.
Also because you know, when we're home in Atlanta, our
(40:09):
artist community here is very different from you know, the
people that even that might have been our friends that
we would see luck on the road or whatever. So
we had a lot of artists community here, but most
of the artists that we know that we kicked it
with that we like went to shows with, they weren't
traveling to these events. They were looking at the pictures
we posted like wait what is this be? Like wait
(40:32):
what is this thing? Huh? So that was always funny
to us, Like the do you know La Craig question
to me typically came out are you famous? And do
you know? And sometimes you know David Crowder some because
some people knew he was here. Yeah, and I think
that that question kind of came with are you famous?
Which also back to my earlier thing about like people
(40:53):
wanting to make sure they're getting the most likes for
their posts. I think what they're asking is are you
worth me taking because I don't know you, but is
it going to give me these lives? Because if I
don't know you, can I prove you're important enough for
me to post if you tell me, oh yeah, I know,
I know Lacre, I know David crowded, like I had
(41:14):
dinner with them or something like at that point, then
they'd be like, oh well if I post it and
people are like, we don't know them, and be like
we are. But they said, you know, they said they,
you know, et sushi with David Carda sometimes or something.
I don't that that was. That was always weird, go
a little muddy, yikes, just like the merch table. Okay,
the merch table is a very muddy place. So we
wanted to give you all a little window into what
(41:35):
used to be our life. And that's just a little
bit of what the merch Table is like. We're looking
forward to coming back and sharing more of our road
stories with y'all because there's so much to tell you,
So thanks again for joining me back. Imagine the stories
we didn't tell. Okay, we'll have to do like an
after dark version for y'all for real, if you see
(41:56):
us in person, and we're like, see you all next time.
Start with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
Sographee Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network.
(42:20):
And partnership with I heart Radio. Thanks for listening and
don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to not only a new episode
of Her with Amina Brown, but welcome back to a
new series on Her with Amina Brown. And I am
excited to welcome my producer and husband. Priority is not
in that order, just that he is both my producer
and husband, Matthew Owen, also known as dj O Diggy. Hey, babe,
(00:55):
you know it's gonna feel really weird is when I
do this in post production and I add the applause,
like I guess, we're going to see how how I
view myself if I give myself more applause or less applause.
Something for me my therapist to work out, Okay, like
exact facts, exact facts. This series is called road Stories,
(01:20):
and Matt and I have quite a few road stories
because we started traveling and performing together on the road
the same month that we got married, so we have
had at least we've been married eleven years, so prior
(01:41):
to the pandemic, that's what at least nine eight nine
years that we were on the road together. Pretty heavy there. So,
oh man, we have a lot of stories to tell
you all. So there are going to be a few
to several We're not sure how many episodes, but they're
gonna be more than one episode of us telling you
a few of the interesting road stories we experienced and
(02:04):
those of you that have been here for other episodes
where Matt has come out, which maybe we've only had
one because I think we we did an episode for
an anniversary a year or so ago. Is that I
think that might be our only episode? Yes, right, but
I think it's probably right on her podcast that he
only come you know what I mean, That's that's fair.
(02:26):
That's a fair from high school. I've carried it with
me into many things in life, and I say, this
is one. Know your part and play it. Well, that's it.
So I'm honored to be asked. That's it. So if
you missed that episode, we will link to it in
the show notes on Amina brown dot com slash her
with Amina. You can go there and see all of
(02:47):
the things. Okay, So to give you a little bit
of background, you can get more of the background on
the previous episode where we talked about our story how
we met. But so you have a little bit of
an idea. Matt and I met as became friends and collaborators.
So in a sense, what brought us together was the
(03:08):
fact that we were building a show at the time,
and I was traveling, as some of you know, I
was traveling very heavily in more white, conservative Christian spaces
back then, and I was kind of tired of being
sort of pigeonholed into this like one poem at a
time model, and so I had asked my then friend
Matt to partner with me and as a DJ and musician,
(03:32):
we pulled together this amazing show. And I want to
say maybe like two or three months before we got married,
we got a booking agent, and then before we knew it,
we got married September nine, and I'm pretty sure two
or three weeks later we had our first gigs together.
That sounds wild, and I was there to see it
(03:54):
the first time, but just hearing you recount the story,
that sounds crazy. Yeah, My my just friend Amina had
asked me if I wanted to go into the studio
with her and figure out how to build a show
with a DJ and a poet. And I'll be honest,
Number one, I didn't know how to work with a
p I knew how to, you know, make music for
a rapper or for a singer, or make something that
(04:17):
I would maybe perform myself, but with free verse poetry, it's, uh,
it's a very interesting thing because it's not like, here
are your eight bars land here and so you know,
I was just intrigued by, well, let's see what happens,
and here here we are. We saw what happened. So
it worked out. But I do remember thinking that I
(04:37):
had an idea that Okay, we're gonna build this thing,
and ain't nobody gonna pay for me to travel with you.
So they're gonna figure out how to you know, if
this was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and if
I'm the jelly, they're gonna figure out how to make
their own jam, you know what I mean, Like they're
gonna be like, well, here's this track that we can
play while you do your poetry. Let that guy stay
(04:59):
in the a t you know. So I was like, hey,
nobody gonna take us on the road, and then for
like what a good four years we traveled off of that.
That's true. That's true. It's wild to think now, and
I made I made some decisions at the time, y'all
that I still can't believe Matt and I did this,
But we got engaged on my birthday in eleven, so
(05:22):
that was on May. Shout out to the May babies
in the building. We got engaged that day. So we
decided to plan our wedding pretty quickly because we were
in our thirties. I just it wasn't as important to
me to have this like amazing venue. I mean, this
was a lot of really like before people had, before
(05:43):
people were streaming their weddings. This was before weddings had
hashtags and stuff like that, you know, So I wasn't
as concerned about what the wedding pictures were gonna do
on the Graham or anything like that. That was enough
concern to me. Also, to be honest, we didn't have
budget to be on at that time. Matt was working
as a youth pastor at a church and I was
traveling to churches, so neither of us were making excellent
(06:07):
money at the time. So we were trying to have
a short engagement because we were ready to start our
lives together, but also waiting a year to save up
more money to have a more extravagant wedding just wasn't
a thing that we cared much about. So we were
engaged with a three and a half month time to
get married. Also, Matt's fiance Amina decided this is a
(06:30):
great time to launch the show that we've been building
for the past year. So we actually in the middle
of being engaged and planning a wedding pretty quickly. Also,
we're launching this show that we were going to do
at the time, So we launched it in Atlanta so
that we could get video of it so we could
(06:51):
see what it was gonna do. So it's just while
to think that we launched the show in the time
we were engaged, and actually we're able to secure some
gigs shortly after. Now here's where the road stories gets interesting, y'all.
We have all manner of types of road stories to tell, y'all.
And some of this is really awkward. I think some
(07:11):
of it's pretty hilarious now in hindsight, and I do
feel like we have a few cool, cool stories to tell,
like some cool stuff that we got to do or
that we got to experience because we were people that
traveled alive. I want to start with the merch table.
I want to center our conversation around that today, because
(07:32):
you would be surprised about the amount of awkward conversations
that we have had at the merch table. And for
those of you who aren't familiar, because this was this
story for us was beginning over ten years ago. So
even what was at the merch table, man, First of all,
remember having a merched table, like the idea that we
(07:56):
would get to a venue and one of us would
have to go and set up books, CDs, T shirts.
You're you're paying for these items to be manufactured and
you have to figure out how to get them to
the gig with you. So traveling with me, you're already
(08:17):
carrying for me. It was I was flying with my turntables,
my mixer, all of my gear as well as clothing
and you know, toothbrushes and all that stuff. But then
you've got to carry books, CDs, T shirts hoping you
made something that people are gonna be like, yeah, let
me buy or else. You're just dragging around all this
(08:40):
stuff for nothing and then trying to set it up
in a way. And oh, oh, banners, I remember also banners.
I forgot about banners. Help us banners a thing where
it would roll out and there'd be a massive picture
of you or a massive picture of me. And just
going through through t s A. First of all, going
(09:02):
through T s A was his own experience. Because you're
carrying this thing in your hands. It's not really a
good way to check the banners, and they're asking you
what is this? And I don't know why. I always
got asked, oh, are you a professional pool player? Like
are those pool cues or pool sticks? And I'm like,
shout out to Uncle Phil in the pool hall. I
(09:22):
am not. It's not an Uncle Phil moment. This is
People also thought sometimes they were fishing poles. They wanted
to know if we were gonna go fishing somewhere, and
we were like, wow, we have like the least cool
story to tell regarding what is in this package. It's
a massive picture of my wife's face. And they looked
at me like what almost seemed disappointed. Like then it
(09:45):
goes into, well, why do you have a massive picture
your wife's face. Well, my wife's a poet and she's
gonna talk at this thing. And don't even bring up
the fact that my turntables were going through T s A.
And it's like, every time we would get to a venue,
open up that thing and I would see that little
slip that said I was like, oh lord, please help
these things where like you show up just in time
(10:06):
for sound check setting up, and it's like I gotta
figure out something. Yikes, y'all Like thinking about that now,
the amount of the amount of luggage that we had
to check and then you're limited, like we each had
at that time, We each had two bags each that
we could afford either afford to check or we're able
(10:26):
to amass enough mileage that we were able to like
be have enough status that we could check those bags
for free. So we had four bags between us we
could check, and then we had two items we each
could air quotes carry on. So there were a lot
of choices being made and having to use those uh
those weird hanger weights yikes, to make sure our luggage
(10:50):
wasn't going to be over because they're going to charge you,
mad amouse some money. Yikes, because I do feel like
we ended up, especially when you were traveling with your turntables.
That's two that's two pieces of air quotes by itself.
Then we would have to take one bag to be
all of our clothing, which for me is more of
a sacrifice, you know, It's it's Matt having a corner
(11:11):
of the luggage and me having all these shoes and
if I could, I can rock it with three or
four different T shirts and were good, and then we
would have a bag that was the merch. Now, I
think at a certain point we got sophisticated enough that
we started having enough merch that we could ship. But
it took us time, like getting to know other artists
(11:33):
who were traveling to know that you could do that.
But also it took forethought and planning because there would
be times that there'll be times that we just like
didn't think about it and now it's two days before
it's too late to ship. Or there would be times
where we were doing a bunch of gigs back to back,
and so you had certain merch you could ship to
(11:54):
that gig, but then that merch was going to get
shipped back home, but we weren't going home, so then
we had to have a certain amount of merch we
could fly with and take to the other thing. It
was a lot, y'all. So let me give you an
idea of what the merch table is, which I think
most artists still like. You know, when you go to
just even general concerts and stuff like that, there's still
(12:17):
a merch area it's just very different than it was
when we were starting out together. So the types of
events we were doing at this time, I would say
tended to be probably have very large events, events that
were in an arena, events that were in a large
ballroom in a hotel, you know, events that could be
anywhere from like two thousand people up to in a
(12:40):
big arena of like eighteen thousand folks. So this is
what made you have to get to a point as
an artist that you had a banner, because you needed
something that was big enough that people would know, oh,
they just saw you on stage, Yes, this is this
is where they go to buy your things. And of
course back then you typically would have well, for us,
we would have had CDs. Both we both had our
(13:04):
you know, our solo artist c ds, but really all
of my CDs were not technically solo because Matt made
all of the music that people were hearing if it
had music to it right, So you would have your
CDs there. We tried a run with various the Sundry shirts.
Remember your first shirt and was so ugly. My my
(13:26):
first shirt I tried to design myself was like so terrible.
By the time Matt and I became friends. He was like,
what does this look like? What? What? What is this?
And I was like, I was trying to go with
like a metallic foil and he was like, yikes, Like
you can't. You know, when you're talking to an artist,
you had to be the tiptoe in, especially just getting
to know you and even still being husband and wife
(13:49):
for us to still be doing this together, it's still
you gotta enter it with a certain you gotta tip
your toe in the water, you know. And so you
don't wanna be like, oh, you like this, but it's like,
so tell me about this shirt. You know, what, what
do you how do you what do you think about it?
What do you do? Do you like? Do you like it?
You like that? That's what you were going for. And
(14:11):
then sometimes too this changed over time. But in the beginning,
you may not be getting paid a lot to go
and do the gig, so you're hoping you're going to
make some extra money at the merch table. Now where
it gets tricky is t shirts are quiet as it's
kept not cheap to produce, and then you typically have
(14:34):
to order such a large amount of them that you
had to have money, like you had to basically have
an account that was just for merch, so that when
you sold merch, you had to keep a certain amount
of money so that you could spend a thousand dollars
on shirts. We still have a checking account in our
(14:54):
business account that's called the merch account. Neither one of
us have set up a merch table in years pre
pandemic years and even and even I think the gigs
that I was still doing where I was like selling
books and stuff A lot of times by then bookstores
and stuff were running the sales and the table, so
(15:16):
I didn't have to I didn't have to ship them,
I didn't have to figure out where they went. I
didn't have to handle the money. So like it has
been years since either of us had a merch table.
But you had the shirts because if you even though
they were they were kind of pricey sometimes to get
them made, if you bought a certain amount, you could
get really good profit margin on them because you could
(15:37):
charge I mean many of you experienced this. When you
go to concerts, the shirts could be I mean back
then they were like twenty bucks, which was like a lot.
Now you can go to a concert. We've gone to
some concerts recently, the shirts are forty dollars, fifty dollars,
you know in the venue. So if it's costing you
five dollars to make this shirt, even seven dollars, and
your profit margin is you just sold that for forty minutes.
(15:59):
That's another thing just brought up is that certain venues
also want a percentage, So they're going to have one
of their people they're selling things, and then at the
end there's account where you have to stand there and
they have to stand there. That way they can come
up with how much money you got to give back
to them, or they would take their percente out and
(16:22):
they would give you a check at the end. And
however they worked it out, you didn't know based on
what city you were going to, if the venue was
then going to be like, oh, sorry, we get ten
percent of that. So when you buying these shirts and
shipping them, it was hard to figure yeah, because it's
like that's turning out to be a lot of costs,
the cost of producing the merch, the cost of shipping it.
(16:44):
And then you get there and they're like, oh, that's
our ten percent. Sometimes at certain arenas that's our fifteen.
Depending on you know, where you were taxes and all
the rest of it. So there was a lot that
went into that merch table c DS. It is very
sad and unfortunate for a lot of us as traveling
artists that that everything went to streaming because c DS
(17:05):
was the perfect piece of merch to have at your table.
They cost less than two bucks to make and you
could sell them for ten dollars. I was printing them
from the house. At one point I had a printer
that you could print on top of the CD, like
the print that cover every Oh my gosh, I try.
I tried to tell young artists like I get a
lot of rappers coming up asking me. You know, young
(17:27):
kids want to wrapping stuff, and young artists come up
to me asking me about stuff and talking to him
and be like, man, once upon a time you could
show up to a venue where no one had ever
heard your name before. And if you got in there
and you put on a show and you made them
people feel something, you want to come back to your
merch table and them CD is gonna be gone, man,
(17:47):
and at like ten fifteen bucks apiece. Man, you know
how many streams and come on man? Like that was
a time. There were some times that we were struggling financially,
and sometimes it depended on the gig, like if you
were gonna actually get paid when you got there. Sometimes
(18:07):
they were like, oh, we only mail checks or we
only send out checks on certain days of the week.
So you went and did the whole gig. And thankfully,
you know, we had a system, you know, with you know,
our booking agency at the time, where there were deposits
and stuff they had to pay, but that still wasn't
money you were walking away with, Like even the deposit
they sent to our agent, we didn't see that money
(18:29):
until we played the gig, until we got home. So
sometimes the merch table was how you were geting ready
to eat food that day or the next day, because
a lot of that at that time was cash. This
is like before there was cash app and all the
rest of those Like I mean, we had a square
where people could use credit cards, but we would get
(18:50):
a lot of people coming by the merch table, you know,
buying stuff in cash. If they really enjoyed what we did.
Sometimes they'd be like, um, I only got a fifty
and I want a T shirt and I want you know,
a CD. And then it would like not work out evenly,
like we would need to give them change and they
would be like, I don't want to change. Like people
(19:11):
would do that at the merch table. So there was
a lot riding on how those sales went. So to
give you all then idea of like how that set
up was in the smaller spaces we went to that
typically would be more so smaller Christian colleges at the time,
smaller churches, you would still have the merch table situation there,
(19:33):
but it would just be less, you know, less people
would be like a smaller thing. Sometimes it would be
a little more intimate, and sometimes I was great and
sometimes I was not so great with the things people
thought they could say to you. So the merch table
was like there in all these different aspects from the
little small church that you went to that only six
people came up to the merch table, to the arena
(19:56):
that you were in where there were eighteen thousand people.
But here here's another thing I went to, y'all. We
would do these arena tours. This happened to us probably
at least a couple of times that we've done these
together and separately. We also both have done like arena
style events And the thing about an arena that's interesting
is when you are not headlining, when you are on
(20:18):
a bill where there might be six other artists right
like your merch tables there, but the people may not
know who you are when you get there, and then
they have to remember you and five other artists, seven
other artists, So that all depended on where you were,
(20:38):
how well those people knew you, how long you got
to perform comparatively to the headliner that may have had
an hour set. Maybe we had ten minutes earlier in
the night. So now at the end of the night
they have to remember us enough to want to come
by the merch table. A lot of things were going on, y'all.
Let's talk about weird things people say at the merch table. Um.
(21:03):
I want to begin the conversation mat with I've never
heard of you, because you would have to set your
merch up, especially if you were in like an arena situation,
you would have to set up your merch prior to
the event, so people would be like coming in to
get their seats and it'd be like us. And maybe
(21:25):
you know, in those of you who are familiar with
like Christian market, meaning like Christian artists that sell albums,
and those parts. There would be Christian artists whose names
were very big, maybe because their songs played on radio
at the time, or because if they were worshiped artists,
people knew their songs from church, or there were all
(21:46):
sorts of things. So there was some artists that people
walked in like, oh they know this band, Oh they
know this artist, And then there was us, and then
there was a lot of them did know us. And
the wild thing about an arena show is for in
our experience, and maybe this is a Christian market thing.
Most of those arena shows weren't in a big major city.
(22:10):
You weren't in l A in an arena. You weren't
in New York in an arena. You weren't even in
Atlanta in an arena. You were in making. You were
in erie, maybe Orlando. If you're lucky, you know, so
you're you're not dealing with people who are metropolitan. You're
dealing with people who are like I came to this
(22:31):
because I want to hear some Christian music, and they're
walking to the merch table and would walk right up
to our table and be like, what do you do?
I've never heard of you. My favorite was when they
would pick the CD up and flip it over on
the back and read it. I don't know if they
were looking for a song they maybe knew and didn't
know it was me or you, or if they're looking
for featuring insert name of whoever, and when they didn't
(22:55):
see it, they just kind of this puzzle look and
put it back down. You don't know me, that's okay.
They would also say is this Christian music? That was
a big question that we would get all the time,
and like, from in my mind, that was always kind
of funny because I don't think even though Matt and
I both were performing our art in Christian spaces, for us,
(23:19):
there was like a difference between artists who considered themselves Christians,
so and so they considered themselves a Christian rapper, a
Christian singer songwriter, they were a Christian band, you know,
and then there were those of us who were like,
we are Christians, but like that's not necessarily like a
qualifier or like a of a title or whatever that
(23:40):
we have. And so whenever they would say that, it
was always kind of funny to me because I'd be like,
I think I understand why you're asking that question, and
I guess some of this aren't we made was Christian.
But then I would be like, nah, you might want
to go to tables down. They are very explicit. Well,
it was always wild to me for my stuff. Spec
typically is because my role in most of these events
(24:04):
was I would be on for an hour up front.
Everybody's walking in, so it's my job to get that
crowd on ten that way by the time the first
band comes in, and then sometimes I would be there
to keep the momentum going between bands. I'm on the microphone,
I got the crowd chanting, singing along, you know. So
(24:26):
it's it's a lot of instrumental music. I'm not up
there making a point, you know. I'm not up there
delivering some form of a message. I am very much
so entertainment and I love it. I'm an entertainer at heart.
That's what I do. It's what I love to do.
And so in the music that I was making was
mostly instrumental music. I ran into this question more times
(24:49):
than I can count, but is it a Christian album?
And the first for a while I would be like, well,
it's instrumental music. Is that that makes it new? Troll
in a sense, yeah, because there's no message. How what
if there's no words? But it was that a Christian
kick drum? Is that a did you baptize that drum kit?
(25:12):
A Christian trumpets? Did you put did you get the
old on that MPC? When I would just say yeah,
(25:40):
I would see it ease up on their face and
be like, yeah, I'll take three of them. And so
I just learned that for whatever reason, these people just
need to know that it was safe for the whole family, right,
because you know, in a lot of these large especially
the big arena and stuff, there's a lot of youth
(26:01):
groups who have shown up in some massive sixteen passenger van,
And I know this dude is asking me this, like
if I put this in on our ride home because
my teenagers just enjoyed what you just did. Am I
going to hear some things? I'm gonna get some calls
from some parents because the kids went home and said
this thing. And and so that's why I was like, oh,
(26:21):
you're just asking is it safe for me to play
at my youth group in the van way? So that's
where I was like, is that thing of customer service
that still very much so exists in whatever line of
work you do. I still have it now even though
I'm not working in those environments. It's some of it's
the same, Oddly somebody just the questions are different. And
(26:46):
I think it is interesting now to think back on
that because we started out doing a lot of youth
events because what we were doing sort of fell in
felt in the fun category, which is interesting when you're
when you're performing in a lot of these especially like
more conservative or evangelical Christian environment. If it falls in
the category of hip hop or like it's fun, it's
(27:08):
a good time, they're like, oh, that must be for
the students. You could come and speak to our youth.
At most they'll be like, oh, I bet our college students.
And maybe every now and then you'd get a young
adult situation, yeah, where it'd be like somehow people randomly
between eighteen and thirty five that are just aimlessly wandering
(27:28):
through their lives can come here. But otherwise, once you
got past that sort of thing, then it kind of
felt like every all the fun got sucked out of it.
All the music turned very slow and had to be
very contemplative, and like any of that fun stuff was
like I was like, what are the vibes? So I
think that was probably one of the things that helped
(27:50):
me and Matt to know that we need to start
phasing out doing youth events because for me, you know,
to the point of what you said, Babe, like, I'm
thinking about art, and for many Christian folks, there is
this idea that like, if it's not air quotes safe
for the whole family, then that means they're stuff in
(28:11):
it that as Christian people, you shouldn't be listening to.
But I started to really have a lot of questions
about that the more we travel, because I was like, well,
the differentiation you made makes sense. There's certain things that
are appropriate for a kid, there's certain things that are
appropriate for a teenager. That doesn't mean that love songs
(28:32):
are bad. That doesn't necessarily mean that songs about sex
are inherently bad. I'm not saying all of them things
is good either, but I'm just saying like it really
like narrowed in this way that in like as an artist,
it very much so narrowed the lane of what story
you could tell as an artist, or or what paint
(28:53):
brush you could paint with. And I felt like those
gaps were already very well filled, that is very well
field and continues to be and that's that's fine. But
like I want to talk about the things that I
see in my every day I want to talk about here,
here's what I see, which I think goes back to
the idea of something we've both experienced of I don't
(29:14):
want you to see me right. Yeah, that was always
a wild question of is it Christian? And that my
brain had to compute through, like what is the question
this person really as probably like, yes it is. If
that's gonna help us order room service later. Sure. The
other thing that would be hilarious to us, especially when
(29:36):
we would be in these like medium to small towns,
that to them this Christian tour of however, many people
coming to blah blah blah city in Kentucky or wherever
we were, this was this was their social interactions for
the year. This was like super big deal. They were
going out and we would go do our thing and
(29:58):
the moments of them coming up after words we have
This happened several times and people would be like, you
know what, I loved every minute of what y'all did.
Y'all are really talented and you know what I think
y'all should take this on the road. Y'all should really
take this out there and listen. If y'all ever want
to go to Wisconsin. My brother is a pastor up there,
(30:18):
and I've got some connections for you and y'all, y'all
really need to think about that. And so, of course
Matton are literally standing at the table like this is
literally the road like we are on. We just left
somewhere to come here. We're leaving here to go somewhere else.
But you know what, you're onto something. Man. There's another aspect.
I don't know if we've talked about this yet, the
(30:39):
volunteer aspect where you would get to whether it's a
large place, small place. And typically they would say, here
is the volunteer that we have from this church or
this organization, who is gonna be at your merchant because
while we're on stage, we can't be there. And also
we're gonna need help once hopefully wants to floodgates and
(31:01):
people go, oh my gosh, this I must have this
wow and so, and we weren't making enough money yet
where we could afford to travel with that size of
team like some artists whatever um genre right, Some artists
get to where they they're making enough money that like
it's them, it's their DJ or their band. Plus they
(31:24):
have people traveling with them to do social media. Plus
they have people traveling with them that are handling merch
inventory money counting that they have a person that does
that at every event. We were not well above. It
was us our go pros maybe to catch some audio
and uh, square reader, that's it. So those volunteers were
(31:47):
kind of like saving grace for us, especially like if
one of us had a gig and the other one
wasn't performing, then the other person might hold down the table.
But when we both had to perform, which we did
together for many years, like who can hold down the table?
So now got random volunteers, you're handing them money like
square readers. Oh man, I would typically ask have you
(32:08):
ever used and iPad before? And you would be surprised
at how often At that time they'd be like, no,
say it ain't so y'all. Okay, Matt, I want to
talk about the air quotes famous conversations that we had
on the road. Being air quotes Christian famous or church
(32:32):
famous is wild is false? Like it's just because when
you're a performer in Christian market, or as some of
my friends referred to it as the Christian industrial complex.
When you are a performer there, you feel like a
big fish, but you are actually in a very small pond.
(32:53):
But to that small pond of people, there are some
names that really really matter over there, you know, and
when you leave that space, you are not that you
have you might have. Like we would get booked for
an event and for three days we felt a little
bit like the Beatles because everywhere every restaurant we went
to around the conference venue, every time we went back
(33:16):
and forth to the hotel entering the space, I mean, somebody,
I know, it's gotta sound so weird to y'all. That
like they would have to give hosts to us to
walk us in and out of the venue because there
would be that many people at the conference or whatever.
They would be like, oh my gosh, Amina, oh my gosh,
Dijail diggy, you have that for like three days straight.
(33:37):
Even when you get to the air the airport and
whatever that city is, people are still like, I really
enjoyed to take a picture with me. You could even
land back for us. We land back home in Atlanta,
and there were still people that were just on our
flight that live in Atlanta, still asking for our pictures
at the baggage claim. Okay, And then you get in
(33:58):
your car, you go to a restaurant, when you leave
the airport, you stopped by Target, and you know what
nobody's worried about. So it's weirdly like disorienting because I
can see for people who make their career there for
years and years like that, you do feel like a
famous person. So we would go to places and people
would say they would ask us, especially students in particular,
(34:22):
would ask us, are you famous? Yes? I got that
pretty often at the merge table, Hey are you are
you famous? I remember when Instagram first like started popping
up and become a thing, and like the idea of
you know, once upon a time everybody was in a brand.
We weren't that aware of ourselves. I remember once it
(34:47):
started becoming socially a thing of how many likes you
were getting on whatever the social media plant. And that's
when Instagram was first kind of pop up. That's when
people were posting pictures on Instagram. I don't even think
video was an option yet, And I could remember I
would be you know, wrapping up my turntables whatever. Some
line of thirteen year olds will be standing in front
of me wanting to take a picture. Somebody being like,
(35:09):
are you famous? And my answer has always been, well,
if I was, would you have to ask that far?
And my my answer, my answer was always I go
and Target. Nobody's worried about me. I feel like that's
a famous person. You're in Target. You you going through
the mall and the people are like like, like, I've been.
We both have been in a place where usher was
(35:32):
who was a person who, just to be clear, is
actually famous, like for real famous. The whole mall is
a buzz like, oh my god, that was sure, oh
my go, oh my god. And I would tell the kids,
I go to Target all the time, and you know what,
nobody's there, Like even in the scenario you pointed out
earlier about like being at the airport and people being like,
(35:53):
oh and then and they want to take these pictures
and stuff. The people who were not at the event,
sometimes they'd be sitting next to us on playing to
be like, so, who are y'all? Okay, that's also a
weird conversation at the explain, well, we're you know, we
live in Atlanta. She's a poet, I'm a DJ. We
just were at this event. They had this experience, and
you're trying to it's really not It's not actually as
(36:13):
big of a deal as it might seem. For ten minutes.
I also want to speak to the things you were
asked to sign. Now, I will tell y'all there there
are some heartwarming moments that happened at the merge table,
where your work actually means a lot to people. You
have people come up that are actually like supporters of
what you do. I will tell you that doesn't feel
like most of the time when we were in Christian
(36:35):
work that that was our experience. But there were sometimes
that was wonderful. Other times get a little weird, like
people asking you at the merch table to sign their Bibles.
That was always like, I'm not a co author there,
so I don't know what I'm doing. That was always
a weird one. People asking you to sign other people's merch,
which I realized now was a budget situation. This is
(36:55):
people being like, I can only afford to buy one
of y'all see d s out here, So they're like,
I'm a buy so and so CD over there, but
I'm gonna walk around to everybody else's merch table and
be like sign this. Yeah. There's a small period of
time where there was a certain Christian rapper that was
at a lot of the events we were at, where
(37:16):
I think that record label has an engineer who also
traveled as a DJ with them, and he happened to
be a white dude. I happened to be a white
dude from far enough away maybe like I don't think
we look alike, but whatever. So I would get asked
to sign a lot, and again it's back to that
thing where like people walk up to you and they
(37:38):
already have in their minds like there's no telling them
I'm not that, or no, well it's an instrumental album.
It's just go ahead this person. There's something this person wants,
they wanted in a timely manner, so just going ahead
and give it to him. That's that's just how I roll.
So I was like they walked up to me with
this certain artists c D and for a while I'd
be like, I have nothing to do with this, isn't
(37:58):
mean this, And after a while I'd be like yeah, cool,
And I would always sign a DJ thinking my old
always has like a little gol you know, because I've
had this gold tis a six D so has and
has a smiley face on it. And I saw the
dude and told him. But we had a good laugh
about it. But I mean there's probably I can't even
count to y'all the amount of CDs that people have
(38:19):
at home that have our signatures on it. And we
had nothing to do with the people asking me to
sign their shoes, like brand new shoes, like you're talking
about summertime about listen, I know those yo back to
school shoes and to this concert and your mom are
gonna be upset. But here people asking me to sign
their pizza yis. I'm like, are you going to eat that? Man?
(38:42):
I don't know what we're doing. It got really weird
really fast on my forehead. That one felt I'm like,
this is yikes. And I did it. But I mean
even with the Bibles, that was a weird one. But
I would kind of be I would kind of put
like my you know at that time, I would put
like my favor Bible verse and just sign it because
I was like, maybe just do encourage you while you
(39:03):
reading this, Like I don't know, it's weird. Also, once
people found out we lived in Atlanta, they were like, oh,
you live in Atlanta. You know LACRAI. I can't tell
you how many elevators, how many merch tables, how many
situations we were in like this where people are sort
of like next to the like, okay, you're here, you're performing,
you must be famous in some way, you know, to
them in this medium to small town in the Midwest somewhere,
(39:26):
and they would be like, oh, where are y'all from,
And we would say over from Atlanta, Oh, y'all know
LAKRAI and shout out to LAKRAI. That would always make
us laugh because we would be like, man, we've been
both of us have been in Atlanta, like over twenty years,
Like we've been here like a logtop and Atlanta like
I've been here long to where I've been to freak
Nick right right, And I was here like to probably
(39:47):
two years post the last real real Freaknick Like it
was just dissipating when I moved here. So we've been
in Atlanta a long time, so that always makes us laugh.
I was here when there was a new group called
Outcast coming. Okay, they sound like us. Okay, okay, that's
the people know, and it would just make us laugh.
Also because you know, when we're home in Atlanta, our
(40:09):
artist community here is very different from you know, the
people that even that might have been our friends that
we would see luck on the road or whatever. So
we had a lot of artists community here, but most
of the artists that we know that we kicked it
with that we like went to shows with, they weren't
traveling to these events. They were looking at the pictures
we posted like wait what is this be? Like wait
(40:32):
what is this thing? Huh? So that was always funny
to us, Like the do you know La Craig question
to me typically came out are you famous? And do
you know? And sometimes you know David Crowder some because
some people knew he was here. Yeah, and I think
that that question kind of came with are you famous?
Which also back to my earlier thing about like people
(40:53):
wanting to make sure they're getting the most likes for
their posts. I think what they're asking is are you
worth me taking because I don't know you, but is
it going to give me these lives? Because if I
don't know you, can I prove you're important enough for
me to post if you tell me, oh yeah, I know,
I know Lacre, I know David crowded, like I had
(41:14):
dinner with them or something like at that point, then
they'd be like, oh well if I post it and
people are like, we don't know them, and be like
we are. But they said, you know, they said they,
you know, et sushi with David Carda sometimes or something.
I don't that that was. That was always weird, go
a little muddy, yikes, just like the merch table. Okay,
the merch table is a very muddy place. So we
wanted to give you all a little window into what
(41:35):
used to be our life. And that's just a little
bit of what the merch Table is like. We're looking
forward to coming back and sharing more of our road
stories with y'all because there's so much to tell you,
So thanks again for joining me back. Imagine the stories
we didn't tell. Okay, we'll have to do like an
after dark version for y'all for real, if you see
(41:56):
us in person, and we're like, see you all next time.
Start with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
Sographee Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network.
(42:20):
And partnership with I heart Radio. Thanks for listening and
don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
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