Soul Boom - Andy Grammer's Spiritual Muse: The Sacred Side of Songwriting

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Musician Andy Grammer joins us to explore the spiritual practice of songwriting, the roots of creativity, and how serving others through art can transform both the artist and the audience. From busking on the streets for four years to writing global hits like Keep Your Head Up, Andy shares the surprising moments of failure, faith, and inspiration that shaped his journey. SPONSORS! 👇 Proton 👉 (protect your privacy for FREE!) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://proton.me/soulboom ZipRecruiter 👉 (try it for FREE!) https://ziprecruiter.cm/soulboom ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So you're like literally creating geometric shapes that are invisible and seeing how they hit people. And most of them for four years were like, nope. The actual creation of art to me is mostly stumbling. I'll keep stumbling until I find something beautiful. That's really all I can do. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution.

Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy, welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. A quick shout out to our sponsors. Proton. Go to proton.m.m.m. to take control of your private and digital life. ZipRecruiter, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter, get a quality candidate within the first day, and now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Soul Boom.

That's ziprecruiter.com slash soul boom. Enjoy the show. Hi, Andy Grammer. Thanks for coming on Soul Boom. Oh, I love you. I miss you. Oh, I love you and miss you, man. It's been a long time.

It's been too long. We know each other a little bit through being in the Baha'i Mafia. Yep, straight up. And what was it like growing up and your dad was a children's singer? Your dad, Red Grammar. Red Grammar.

Famous Grammy winning? Grammy nominated. Okay, Grammy nominated. Best-selling children's. singer. Unbelievable children's singer. Peace and love songs for kids, sing-along songs for kids.

So we just had, at my daughter's school, they heard that my dad was very grammar, and then they sang, all the children sang one of the songs, and he got to come and be in the audience. It was a song called Listen. How does it go? Listen, can you hear the sound of hearts beating all the world?

And my little daughter got to introduce it, and I just sat there with my dad just like bawling tears. It was fantastic. But growing up with a child, children's singer. Was it a little hard like growing up like Mr. Rogers being your dad in a way a little bit? Not at all. Or was it just awesome? It was just like totally sweet and the coolest thing was growing up around songwriters. So I, you know, turned 42 this year and every year that I get older, the more

I look back in my life and go like, oh, I didn't have as much to do with that as I thought. I was put in a house of people that were writing songs all day long. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and over the dinner table, still kind of going through it, going like, this is the hook. So it's the hook, we need to make it a little bit simpler to do this, and the pre isn't not totally fitting. And so the more that I'm like, oh, I was very lucky to be put in, if I was gonna go be a songwriter,

that's like a great place to be. Right. Even if it's kid's songs, just the fundamentals of it were being tossed right. But he was a regular songwriter before a kid's songwriter. He was totally. And then found great success. And then found great success.

And ultimately the idea with the kids music, even more than adult music, I would imagine, is you're trying to be a positive influence on children using art. And with kids, you can be just even more blatant about it. You can just be like, teaching peace, all the world. Like, you're like, this is what we're trying to get you to understand. Right, right.

Love one another. Love one another. Yeah, and kids are a little more open to that. So that was a cool thing to grow up around. And then also to grow up around parents that were creative and we're just kind of operating outside the normal system of economics. Yeah.

Just like, yeah, this is, I'm a children singer. And my friends would be like, what are you talking about? Yeah. What does your dad do? He's upstate New York and there's like a butcher and this person's like a plumber and this person owns a pizza shop. Your dad does like kids music?

Like is there an end game to that? Like what are we talking about here? Yeah. Right, right. But that was also back in the day where you could make some money having CDs. Yeah, he sold a lot of CDs. Yeah.

And you could go on the road and perform but you can also sell CDs on the road. On the road and I would go to the different performing arts centers that he was playing at. Did he bring you on stage? He did bring me on stage, and I immediately had the bug for it. And there's like an infamous conversation

that we had driving back in the minivan one time where I was like, I think I'm gonna need to be a bigger part of your show. Like I think this is, you got me up there, you brought me all the way up, I say one line, like, we're gonna have to work this out. And he's like, you're dangerous already. Okay.

Right, right. Yeah. I always, it's speaking of songwriting, it's funny because my son loves music and does music. And we always listen for the bridge. Like any song like, okay, where's the bridge? Is the bridge any good?

Because you always want, the bridge is such a weird piece of a songwriting. It is. It should be almost as good as the chorus. Maybe not better than the chorus, because then you're kind of like, well, why isn't it the chorus? Yes. But it should be 40 to 60% as good as the chorus,

but it should still be a banging part of the song. Yeah, and hopefully. What's your philosophy of the bridge? what's your best bridge you've ever written? Okay, so if you want to go to Max Martin route, you know who that is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Swedish guy, yeah.

Yeah, there's like laws and rules to pop music that aren't really, and it's fun to try to break them. But the idea is that if you have a pre-chorus, then a bridge is too much information, depending on what you're talking about. So you have like a verse, a pre-chorus, a chorus, and then if you do that all the way through, then the bridge, if you introduce a whole new piece of information

or take, then you're, like, adding two. much for the average mind to handle. But then- Pathetic. That's pathetic. But for some pop music, it really comes down to what the goal is. If the goal is to keep everybody dancing and moving, then sometimes it is true. But I like a really good bridge.

And I think what you've done up to that point should inform where we're headed in this bridge second. What's your best bridge? What's your favorite bridge? Oh! Take your time. Good bridges. There's, again, it's like, there's like so many different vibes. I think that, I'm talking to you, so I know that you like cool indie music. So that's what I'm filtering my brain through.

But a good bridge that I'm thinking of. I also like good, uplifting Andy Grammar music. You know what I'm saying? I think that Keep Your Head Up has a great bridge. When I get to it, everybody sings it. It's like, yeah. Only circles, rainbows have the rain. Yeah, yeah.

And you switch the, sometimes all you got to do is change just a little bit and it feels different. Yeah, so that's a good bridge. Yeah. Nice. What's your favorite band at the moment? Geese. Cool. Do you know geese?

You don't know geese? No, come on. Yeah, they're like, oh man, it's hard to describe what they do. They're kind of like Led Zeppelin meets Wilcoe. Cool. Meets the band and they're out of Brooklyn. They're all like 23 and they just kind of crazy music pours out of them. And amazing.

Like if they wanted to write the most incredible, catchy choruses, they can do that. Yeah. And they can also write like dissonant stuff and crazy jams. They're amazing. Yeah. I mentioned before we know each other

from the Baha'i mafia because obviously, there's not a whole lot of Baha'is in the United States. So there's like 100, 200,000 Baha'is in the United States, which is about as much as a mega church, if you think about it that way. Like a Dallas megachurch has as many members as like there are Baha'is in the entire United States. So the fact that like Baha'is all like kind of know each other a little bit

It's not that crazy. No. Because it's like a megachurch. You know the people in the megachurch. It may take you years to kind of get to know, especially if you're getting to know the artists. But your dad just layered beautiful Baha'i messages in the kids' music. Just love one another, celebrate diversity, you know, help each other out,

spiritual virtues. Oh, yeah. You know, Baha'is are all about like the virtues of God, about honesty and kindness and humility and compassion and stuff like that. But what was that like growing up in a Baha'i musical household specifically? Yeah, I think you feel this weird balance. So the Baha'i faith, which I'm sure you've talked on here,

is kind of the idea of progressive revelation, so all the major world religions are from the same God. So it's this interesting duality of being an outsider and feeling like an insider. Yeah, because we love Jesus and the Bible. So Christians can talk about Jesus, and we're like, yeah, you go. I love it and Buddha and all the, you know, all the, all the major faiths but then also growing up in upstate New York where there was always the only Baha'i that was there so you had an interesting kind of outsider perspective on things

So much of it is just so sincere and sweet in the Baha'i faith That at its core I just really loved it and I loved singing about it through my dad's like sweet songs and Whenever I connect to the writings of the Baha'i faith, I feel very grounded that like this is all really good stuff and I want to I want to be in the involved more with this. And then I think it gets really interesting when you start to write music, then the dance becomes like, how do you not, no one wants to be preached to,

and I don't wanna preach to anyone. But the process of writing songs or writing, creating anything is that you just, you have to do it so much and bump into the different walls as you go. And you walk that line very well of like, you're obviously a spiritually, and if people know anything about the Baha'i faith,

like a Baha'i and inspired musician in a lot of ways, but you don't wanna ever be relegated as like, like a Christian musician would be. Well, you just really don't wanna be exclusionary. Right. You don't ever want something to show up. And you don't wanna be pigeonholed as like,

oh, he's the, I mean, you're definitely known as like the uplifting singer, an inspiring singer and wholesome singer, but you don't wanna be like Mr. Religious or Faith singer. is always that good art is like laws of physics or something where, you know, the analogy I always bring up is that Newton wrote out what gravity was and then presented it and everybody goes like,

totally, I've been dealing with gravity all day too, you super nailed it. And that doesn't have anything to do with, I don't know, yeah, so I think we're all dealing with these spiritual things all the time. And if you try to label it too much, then sometimes that gets in the way of just like, no, no, it's just human. We're just being humans here.

trying to sing a song about being human. And I think sometimes I've even gone too far to like, no, I just don't wanna be boxed in, you know. Hmm. Yeah. A lot of people know your story, but a lot of people don't know your story, but you're one of the few, like, buskers to international fame.

So I know you've told the story a thousand times. And remember we even did a TV pilot about you. We did. Being a busker. Do you remember that was, like 10 or 12 years ago? That was, that didn't work. With Mark Sherman, it did not work. It did not work.

We tried. This is art, baby. You just keep trying. I've done a dozen that have not worked. But it was a good idea. It was a good, yeah. It was good, yeah. Trying to give some a concert or a label

or a chance at, you know, greater opportunity. It's interesting that I don't know that you can do that as much anymore, the street performing thing, but everybody has, like, time periods have their seasons. It was right towards the end where you could still sell CDs. So financially, it made,

made sense even at that moment to try to, if I could go out and sell seven CDs for $10 each, I could like pay my rent for the month. Because you would get 100, 200 bucks in tips and then the CD sales on top of it. And it varied, but overall, it was fairly consistent over a full week of street performing out there.

And then the whole process was you would learn what was actually working and what was not working. Right. Which is really hard. You'd be up all weekend writing a song, take it out and like everyone just keeps walking. by. Yeah, and in those early stages of creativity,

it's really hard to get honest opinions from people. Your friends and family, like, you're so good. Like, you are so. I love it. Yeah, and you know, in those early days, you're like, you get all your friends to come see you at some crappy little bar, and then they go, like, you're a star.

And inherently, you still kind of know, like, I know all of you, like, very well, and I kind of belligerently asked you nine times through text to come to this show, so something is not quite working right now. Sure. going out on the street was great because people don't have anything invested in you, they don't care. And for the most part, they just walk by.

And if you can handle that for years at a time, then you can... How long did you do it? I did it for four years. Damn. And I love the story of how you wrote your first hit song, keep your head up. But tell us that and other stories of the street. So the stories of the street are basically just resilience of... you know, there's this debate of like, what is art

and what is valuable and nobody really knows. But as the performer, you know when you are being of service to someone or when you are not. So you be like, cool, this song that I wrote, we can call it art, but it is nobody cares and it sucks, I guess. But what I found was when I sang Sunday morning by Maroon 5, my vocals with those chords,

every time I did it, people would stop. And so I had like one little linchpin that wasn't even my son. that would be of service to people as they were walking by, they would actually get them to stop. And then through that process of feeling that actual interplay of like, oh, I'm giving you something, that's all I want as a freaking artist,

is that like something, and I didn't create it and it's not mine, but in this moment, I can feel the tension of like something's happening. Yeah. And then over four years getting to the place where I had 15 minutes where that tension was there the whole time. Whoa. And then you go like, okay, cool.

And then- So you could hold, you could even start with that song, rope them in, but then with a lot of originals and a few other covers, you could put on a whole concert. By the end of the thing, it was like, I know how this works and I will be of service to you in a way that I think you will like for 15 straight minutes, and then I'll stop and I'll sell way more CDs.

Because now I've given you something. Going back to service, the whole idea of when you play shows to start, your friends are being of service to you. We've all felt that, where the audience is like, we're here for you to help you. We're sitting through your sludge as a service to you, my friend. Like, we're here for you. And turning that just takes an amount of failure and resilience that is pretty intense.

I've heard this so much recently about service. And I wanted to bring it up later, but I'm bringing it up right now, that so many psychologists and thinkers and podcasters are talking about when you shift your mentality to service, that's when things open up. Yeah. Like, and you can almost do it, you can almost start selfishly. Kind of like, I wanna have a career as a painter. And it's like, well, paint stuff that's of service to people,

that people will bring them joy and uplift them, or you give it away, or you raffle it off, or you donate it to old folks homes, or whatever it is that you do your art in service to others. And it opens these doors internally and, externally and it's it's it's shifting one's mindset from like egoic success to how do I take the tools that are within me and ship them to service to the world and it kind of can work for anything you can work if you're an accountant it can work with whatever you want to do but I think it

especially works for artists I think so and I think then you get into the weeds of what is actually of service I think if you if you sit down to write a song and you go like oh everybody's really dig in this sound right now so maybe I'll be of service by trying to rip off Bruno Mars then you can get lost like that's not what you want okay there's I think the path to yeah I don't even know if I have a good answer for that I I think that there's this blend of selfish and service of like okay I'm going to spend a lot of time finding out what I love this is the whole Rick Rubin thing it's getting really clear on just like the most service you could be with your art sometimes is

is to get clear enough and quiet enough with yourself of what you genuinely love. And that in turn will become a service because then you will give people something that they like what you like. And that's the most fulfilling piece of all. And I think you can get lost. Basically though, being on the street shows you're not being of service

to anyone. You know, in your early like 20s, you can be like, I'm a musician. I said it out loud. So I guess that's what I am. And then you go to do it and people that aren't invested in you go like we don't care and we don't have any we're just going to keep walking because we actually have no reason to stop And I think that service can show up in ways of being like oh then I'm gonna get really good at this So that I can be of service to you in the way that like a plumber shows up and goes like I know what works what doesn't work how this actually happens

So I think it's some in some mix of finding what your unique purposes and your unique point of view and your style is to bring to the world and then just hard work of getting good enough at the craft so that when you show up to a venue that you were good enough to give the people what they need, you know? And also there's some musicians that just succeed in the studio and there's some that are great live performers and maybe have crappy songs, but you had to kind of, that honed both, right? That really honed both. Because it taught you how to perform as well. And I remember going back to the service thing, there was this essay that I would read when I was out on the street by this guy who was Paul something. And I found it somewhere as like Boston Conservatory Music.

He said to all the parents and he's like, if you were coming to school to be a lawyer, I'd make, I'd really want you to study really your kids to study the hardest because someone's going to come into their office and need their help badly in that moment. If they're a doctor, you better be really good at what you do because someone's going to come to the broken arm. And depending on how good you are at what you do, they leave with a fixed arm or not fixed arm.

And he's like, people will come in to your constant. with hearts that are weary. It makes me cry every time I say it. Because people will come in with hearts that are weary, and if you know what you're doing, and you've studied hard and you've put in all the hours and the work to write the things and to be able to nail it in concert, then they will leave rejuvenated.

And that is what gets me out of bed in the morning. When I go into write the songs, now at this point in my life, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make this thing that I know is gonna have a drum moment that's gonna pump people up or take them down to make them feel something specific, feel something specific. But the whole goal is that when you leave a show, we've all felt that.

We've gone to a show and we're like, oh, I remember something deep inside myself that I forgot by being here. And that is ultimately the goal for me. Wow. It's like, oh, man, if you come to want my shows, I want you to remember something about the goodness of life or community or something that we all, that's like deep in there that in the day to day,

we get weary down. And then shows are these things where you go like, oh, yeah. And your whole week, your whole month, hopefully your whole year is better. I just saw that movie Hamnet. Did you see that? Oh, my God. Oh, it's so good.

Okay, good. But the only showing in this theater we were up in Oregon was at 10.30 in the morning. So me, my wife, and son went to go see Hamnet. And for those who don't know, it's this tragic tale of William Shakespeare and his wife and they lose one of their children. And out of that, the play Hamlet is inspired by the tragic. death of this child, which historians don't know that those two things had a correlation,

but you can kind of, you can kind of make some ties. And we were sobbing. It was like 11.45 in the morning. He was like sobbing with popcorn. But I found it so uplifting. Like I had a weary heart, everything going on in the world, but somehow, you know, just feeling someone else's pain and deeply, you know, connect with.

with we need this compassion like getting just as as darkly richly human as possible was so I mean I would felt uplifted for days even though it was the saddest this is when art becomes something more than just like oh it's like fun like entertainment yeah you know and it's this balance I think that you as an artist as well you're always kind of going back and forth between like it's not that big a deal I mean it can't be that big a deal and then sometimes like it's everything to you in that moment it was like oh my god I needed this so bad It's also just a movie. Yeah.

To kind of hold it lightly. And I've said this a thousand times. Like, I had no idea doing the office. None of us had any idea that we were going to, like, make an impact on people's heavy hearts. Oh, my God. Of course, we wanted people to laugh and we wanted to create funny characters and tell great stories.

I mean, there was a season in college where I went for acting first. Terrible actor. Just awful. Somehow got some roles and I'd be, you know, one of those weird. What did you do? What were your roles? Oh, man. I don't even remember the show. We were like a cowboy in something in college.

Oklahoma? No. I was in- I did one little stint. I was like a man number three on the train of the music man. And then in college I got- You were man number three? I was man number two.

You know what I'm saying? What do you talk? What do you talk? So I remember there was like a season of life where you go through like years at a time, you're like, I don't think I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't feel connected to where I am in my life. And the office was there for me.

In that moment, either I would just go on like long binges of the office. Yeah. To kind of escape this weird feeling of like, I don't think I'm in my zone. I'm feeling really old right now that you were watching it in college. It was so good. But what a bounty that is. There's one thing I wanted to pull out here. I was watching this really boring documentary about Beethoven.

Okay. Because I opened up Amazon and there was like, Beethoven. I'm like, okay, why not? Beethoven. Who doesn't like some Beethoven? And but, you know, the idea of muses was very big from the ancient Greeks all the way through the Renaissance.

And the idea that there were gods, forces, angels, energies that were there to spark creativity, to give us inspiration for poetry, songs, dance, plays, stories, even inspiration for inventions, let's say. And this was just in the groundwater.

People would be, oh, your muse, how is your muse? Do you have your muse? Mozart has so many muses, you know, et cetera. And they had this thing, and this historian was talking about, like, Beethoven was this child prodigy. And he was like 11 and playing the piano. And he had a vision of his muse. And his muse said, God wants you.

to play the harmonies of your soul. Your muse wants you to play the harmonies of your soul. So Beethoven made his whole life, like, I'm gonna play the harmonies of my soul. I love it. And he was the first kind of composer that was like, you know, playing, well, I don't know much about classical music, but then like would stop and like have,

yeah, like almost silent, just like a couple of, and those kind of like changes like that, You hear in every, you know, you watch severance and it's the theme song. It's modern music was created out of Beethoven's muse of the harmonies of his soul. Have you had, have you ever had a muse moment where you felt like there's something popping?

I, you know, so there's a couple different things to talk about, you know, Elizabeth Gilbert? Yeah. She talks about, she has an incredible TED talk that I would encourage everybody to get into. She has an incredible Soul Boom podcast episodes that I would encourage. Get into that as well.

And she talks about the muse being like a really important piece of the process because it creates a little bit of delineation between you and without output. So if the muse had an off day, then maybe that's not totally your fault. Like your job is to show up and if the muse nailed it,

then like great job for catching it, but it's also like the muse helped a lot. And I like that space for artists to be, in where they don't rise and crash and fall based on like whatever they just did. Because anybody that does write anything knows that sometimes it all flows through in 30 seconds and it's like, oh my god, it's here!

And then most of the time it's not that. So I really love that kind of device and I use that a lot. And then, wait, what was the original question? Have you had a muse moment where something has felt like has touched you? Because you talk to so many artists. I know it's all there.

I know that it's that there's more happening than I can understand and every time that I've ever written a song It's a lot of just Throwing pieces together at Frankenstining something and then every once in a while it stands up and when it does stand up into a beautiful thing You are very aware that like you didn't totally do that There's more occurring in like a fun kind of mystical way The wildest one that was so blatant was that my wife got me a call with a medium for my birthday and the medium got on the phone and said your mom is here and she would really like for you to write a song for your daughter that was just born from her perspective

and she says it's going to be a really great song and you should definitely do it and i'm like okay so i write a song it's called she'd say and it's like all the things that my mom would say to my daughter and then i hear on npr that uh her favorite one of her favorite records was paul simon uh grace land and so Lady Smith Black Mambaza was the African group that did that whole thing, and they happened to be in town the week that I wrote this song. So we reached out to them. They came into the studio, and they sing in Zulu,

I miss my mom, this is what she'd say. And the whole thing happened in like two weeks, and it's unbelievable. And so that was one for me where it was like, whoa. Whoa. Whoa! And so fun to just be in the flow of like, who the hell knows? And to do things, any art,

form, there is mystery to it. That's kind of what's fun about it. And to play with the mystery is like really fun. And then you just have to get used to the idea that you're probably going to lose most of the battles. And if you can get over that hurdle, then you're like, all right, I lost on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We're back in for the mystery on Friday. Let's try again, like, see what happens. And over a long history of time, then people only really know you for or remember you for the moments where it all kind of like worked out. I'm so glad the medium didn't go. Your uncle Ronnie is here and he really wants you to write song about pizza.

He'd really like a pizza song. He feels like that'll be a smash. Okay. All right, Ron. Yeah. But you have a great song too, but your first song, Keep Your Head Up. Yeah.

Which I was in your music video for. I mean... Do you remember? I'm really interested what your take is from your perspective at the time. I was just like crazy making trying to do anything. that was possible. You were huge on the office. The label comes to me and goes, like, what do you think we're in would do it? And I'm already like guilty. Just, this coming from a place

of like, I know him kind of, I don't know him that well. I guess I could play the pie card. Is this how this works? Like, I don't know how to do this. Yeah. And I took you at the lunch and you just said, like, yeah, I'll do you remember that? Yeah. Because you were, you had nothing to gain. No, did not help my career whatsoever. You had nothing to gain. You only had to lose. And I had to sit around on your damn set for like seven hours. The music video makes zero sense. It's one of the weirdest things in the world. I was still like coming in, understanding how this worked.

They like got a director to come do it. It was a visually kind of fun. Choose your own adventure. Oh, it was a choose your own adventure. Yeah. I was like along for the ride and I subjected you to just being a part of it. And you just did it. Yeah.

You showed up with nothing to gain and why? I wanted to help you out. Yeah, I loved your energy. I thought you were a great performer and you were, you know, a fellow Baha'i. And frankly, I wanted to help you. frankly, I wanted there to be at least one other famous behind besides me. But in the moment, there was a lot of pressure.

I mean, I was like, it was 26 when that happened. And I was just so focused on like, man, how do I create distance between me and the ground? How do we get this thing going? How do we go, whatever? And now from my perspective, in today, I'm like, oh, yeah, rain did that. And then just, like, went home and was like, that was pretty weird. I got to imagine, you know, like, what a gift you gave me at the time. Well, and also, you know, it was like, oh, rain was from the office.

It's in this music video. there were some headlines that came out about that. So it got it a little extra pop, maybe a few 10,000 extra people saw the music video or 100,000 because I was in it. And like, great, my job is done. Not that you needed me because it was a big hit song. I did need you and I think what I've found in my life

is to at least weekly try to do an action where you have nothing to gain because it just creates these really sweet, kind of like loops that occur. We had someone let me, borrow their house, use their house for my wedding. And they didn't have to at all. And now that I have a little bit of like a nice place,

we've now done it for other people. And you start these process, but it takes someone to go, I'm gonna do this even though it doesn't have anything, you know, just out of the goodness. Yeah. And we need a lot more of that right now. It's like that pay it forward kind of idea. Yeah.

I don't care if it sounds cheesy, whatever it is. We need more of that. Yeah. And you get a taste for it too. And you get taste for it. Yeah. I bet you left and said that was weird. But like, I did a good thing today.

Yeah, I was like, I hope it helps him. This is crazy what they're undertaking here. But you were in a moment, too, where like a day of yours at that moment. We all have different seasons of life, and a day was a big day. It's like a thing to take. Yeah.

I really appreciate it. But there's a great story about how you wrote that song coming out of the busking. Yes. And can you tell it? Yeah, so I had been... We're talking about keep your head up. You've got to keep your head up.

Oh, I've been doing that for a really long time, and it was a full day of just singing on the street and not one dollar, not one acknowledgement. You know, I'd go out there, you'd have to lug your whole freaking cart out there and then wind it down the Santa Monica stairs and you're sitting in elevator, it doesn't really fit. The whole thing's so annoying.

And you go out and you sing to the world and not without, with zero acknowledgement for about eight hours. And I'm packing up all my stuff and I had a conversation with the sky, God, whatever, and was just making it very clear that I will never. never stop. So I'm I will be here singing to people who don't care about me and just want

to came to buy jeans for the next 20 years if that's what you would like me to do. I just want to be clear to the universe that I will never leave. And and I remember being kind of aggressive about it to the sky having this conversation. And then I went home and wrote, keep your head up. It's one of the songs that I've written 100% by myself sat at piano, wrote that little thing. And then then things started to move, you know, but after four years. It's this weird. And when you took that song out and played it in public,

did you know that it popped? Did you know that people were like, Oh, that's something. Which is like so wild. Yeah. Especially having been for four years writing songs and singing songs and trying different, you know,

Leonardo da Vinci says music is the shaping of the invisible. So you're like literally creating geometric shapes that are invisible and seeing how they hit people. And most of them for four years were like, nope, nope, nope. And then one goes like 100% yes. Yes, more of that please. And then that one just went and it was wild. Yeah, it was really a very exciting time

to get to be in music at that moment. But we're talking about, you're talking about saying this prayer as you're creating that song or that inspiration, that conversation with your higher power, Yeah. You're talking about muses. And I love this idea that God is known as the fashioner. One of the names of God is the fashioner.

Yes. And that humans get to be fashioners. Two artists can be fashioners in emulation of that divine spirit that there's, you know, there's an empty stage, and then there's a dance, there's an empty page, then there's a drawing, you know, there's a silent room, and then it's filled with song, and that there is a kind of like a transcendent impulse

to create something beautiful. And that those mystical ropes between that and this, I just love that conversation. They're 100% there. And anybody who has ever done it or experienced something come through, most people I would say would agree that there's something going on that we can understand.

And that's the fun of it. That's the fun is that you just keep messing around with it. You know, the idea that, you have a feeling or an idea, and I would say it's a numbers game for me. I just, by the time that it gets out onto the page or with a song, it's usually bad. It's like birthing something that comes out

and you're trying to keep it just enough to stay alive and most of them come out and crumble into sand. And enough to the point we're like, how do you know if I didn't know how to do this at all. Yeah. You know, the most stream song that I have is a song called Don't Give Up On Me. And we'd written, it was the fourth song of the day,

where we wrote one, came out, turns into sand. And then you write another one, and then, and then the next one, and you're like, it's okay. I mean, I know the fundamentals of songwriting, and then we wrote a song about not giving up about writing songs. And that one now has really affected people in big ways all across the globe.

Wow. And that's just really cool. You would never think that the fourth song, like this tossed off thing. I always try to be as clear as possible that anybody's doing anything creative. In the moment that you're doing it, there's this myth that like,

you know or that kind of like you're saying with the office that you're like aware of the incredibleness that's occurring. And I just don't think that's true. I think it's a lot more workhorse, very boring, like very not shiny. I remember you had an album coming out. I don't know which one it was. And you had it, and you played for me a CD,

and it had like, honestly it had 24 songs on it. And you were trying to pick like, nine but you had a lot of songs on this thing yeah and you're like this one or this one and like this one and and like all the songs were all the songs were good but you were trying to like yeah but no one cares how do you get the the past good how do you and i think even for that one you ended up jettisoning most of it probably most of that and maybe didn't even go with most of the songs on that i think the allegiance has to be to be to be creating as opposed to be creating something brilliant.

That's worked for me. Maybe other people do it differently. But mine is like as long as I feel the burn of like a workout and that I'm consistently doing it, then I will over time get my skills better and then also stumble. I genuinely think that's what I do mostly. It's just stumble upon things that are beautiful.

The actual creation of art to me is mostly stumbling. So when someone comes up at a show and is crying, go like, you changed my life. You're like, I'm so glad I stumbled. Give me a hug, let's talk about it. Like, I love you. I stumbled. And the only thing that I'll give myself credit for

is that I wouldn't stop. I'll keep stumbling until I find something beautiful. But that's really all I can do. Which I would hope would be encouraging to anybody that wants to be creative. Just keep stumbling. You know, like I say, I have a bunch of friends that are in different artistic pursuits

and I will throughout the week text them and go, I keep making shitty art. Just keep making it. Yeah. Make shitty art. Make something shitty today. Yeah. Because it lowers the bar enough.

to where the thing that you think is shitty, then you come back and look at it later, and you're like, this is kinda good. You show to somebody else. You know, I don't think we know necessarily how things are going to react to other people. So my allegiance is to like making. I wanna continually be making.

Now you get to make a lot more with your wife, Asia. Yeah. She's amazing. She's unbelievable. She came on tour this year. She put on an incredible EP. She has a song called MeTime that was amazing. And her and her band came out and just smashed

in front of the crowds. What was that like you toured with the family? And then your daughter, uh, and my daughters come up and wanna sing in the show and it's, it's a pretty sweet moment. It's a little partridge family. It's a little partridge family. It's echoing you playing with red grammar.

Yeah, my daughter, my oldest one. Can you bring red on as well? I have done that before. The crowd goes wild. If you had red, Andy, Asia. Just get it all together. Yep. And Izzy is, uh, she's down. Yeah, she doesn't care as much, but she's down.

She doesn't want to be left out. Are you all gonna go do it? Sure, then I'll come if we're all going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Louie right now is the one who loves to sing, and she's in theater and she's, we're doing the process with her of like what it means to practice. Right.

You know, you can't push too hard. But what I'm trying to get at is this thing that I just said about doctors, lawyers, all this stuff. Like, if you want to be someone that's on stage, you need to be, you need to take it really seriously and like knock it out of the park because people are gonna come with hearts that are weary. Too much for an eight-year-old.

I don't actually go there. But we're just starting the process of like, takes a lot of work and practice to get on stage and feel free. Yeah. To where you can go with where the moment is taking you or do whatever needs to happen, you know. And there's something to be said for discipline,

trumping inspiration. I would agree. In the artistic process. Yeah. As unfortunate as that is. Yeah. That sucks. I think it's true.

And then, yeah, and then you have seasons where it's unbelievable and then you have seasons where you're just drudging through it. Yeah. People are so grateful that you've, I think that a lot of what art is is the ability to be persistent and go into weird zones and find treasures and then bring them back. And that's a lot of weird internal work. And a lot of times it's very lonely to write 80 songs is a lonely can be a lonely process.

But then at the show, if you found something beautiful that everybody likes, I think that's what they are so excited about, I think. There's not a direct line to it. but I think what I take is like, thank you for doing all the work to get it here. Yeah. Well, I wrote Asia and asked her if she had any questions for you. Oh, let's see.

You're not gonna like it. He's done a lot of work the last few years and how you can view yourself as a hard worker and noble and still allow yourself to rest. But he's always been bad at rest because he feels he has to earn it by burning out first. This intersects with thinking

all you have to give all of yourself away to others before you can, can take care of yourself. He will sign autographs for hours. Mental note, he signs autographs for hours. I sign autographs for seconds. Like, here, there we go. Okay, we're done. And he always gets sick every year between Christmas and New Year's because it's allowed and no one needs him during this time. And I wrote back to Asia. Well, workaholism is the culturally accepted addiction. I would say that's probably true. So, do you struggle with this? I do struggle with it, and I hear it from my wife all the time.

I way overpack my schedule. And now, like, bro, I'm headed towards 60, a giant brick wall called 60. And I'll still, like, I'll go out on the road, I'll do speaking tours, and I'll do, you know, shoots and this and that, and I'll pack my schedule as if I'm 37. And so I have this men's group that I'm a part of,

and I pulled together a little subset of them of an accountability group. that I check in with every two or three weeks. We have a little Zoom and I go over my schedule with them. Just to keep myself accountable that I'm not gonna overbook myself and have some kind of mental or nervous breakdown out on the road. Yeah, and especially growing up as Baha'i, there's so much around service and around selflessness.

Yeah, the idea that the word I is not a great word. And so sometimes I think I can take that. And giving yourself away like the, Shogi Fendi talks about like the light from a candle, like the flame from a candle, like, ever giving or a fountain ever giving of itself. Yeah, and I logically believe that if you don't rest, then you can't give the best of yourself,

but I have trouble putting it into practice. And I'm not at a, I think when I was younger, I thought that was like kind of cool. And now I'm like, I don't know, that's cool. I just don't, I'm not very good at it. All right. Trying to get better at it, yeah. Yeah.

Can I ask you a question? Sure. So you came to my one-man show. Yeah. Oh yeah, I'd love to talk to about that. One of the fun parts of that was this process where we had phones throughout the audience and people would fill out questions before the show started.

Yeah. And one of my favorite processes of the whole night was people would write the name of someone they love that had passed. And then I would get to ask them to have a conversation with this person on the phone in the audience. So they'd pick up the phone and they'd have a conversation in the audience could hear it.

So tell me someone that has passed that you love. My dad, Robert. Robert, okay, now I'll ask you these four questions, which I think you probably already saw. Are you gonna try and make me cry? I'm gonna cry, no, no, this is like, I love this stuff. It's my favorite to try to get deep with people.

So if you're speaking to Robert, I hope you're proud of me for. This is crazy, but I'm gonna go with the title of the new podcast that you wanna do, showing up. For showing up. I wanna thank you for a love of the arts. Yeah. One thing I always admired about you was, damn you.

Damn you. He had just a radiant heart. Oh, sweet. Just like loving everybody. Just, yeah, just he lit up a room. He went into a room and he lit it up. That's beautiful. Yeah.

And then finally, I feel your presence most when? when I'm lost when I'm sad isn't it the best time yeah yeah god he's around he's there this has been many years of like really connecting with my dad and just like help me out here yeah you know give me some direction or you know put your hand on my shoulder just um and you know man I'm kind of a cynical totally guy and uh I can be a little sardonic and uh like saying, you know, to my dead father's spirit, soul, whatever, like put your hand on my shoulder, I need help now. Like when I'm sitting out on a bench in our yard, like,

but this is where I've been going over the last several years and I've needed it and sometimes I've felt it. Oh, I love it. Yeah. It's fantastic. Yeah. I know you lost your mom, Kathy. I remember that we were at a high school together in the Czech Republic.

Yeah. When you got the call that your mom had passed. Yeah. And she had been battling cancer for a long time. She'd been battling cancer, but it happened pretty quick. It was within the year. Within the year, we caught it late. Okay.

And yeah, that was my life fully shifted. Yeah. From that day, actually. A lot happened for you. Yeah. Over the subsequent years. Tell me about that relationship and about that loss. That was the first time my life where I realized that everything wasn't going to be okay.

And so I got rocked pretty hard and, questioned all of the rules of life, you know, being raised by unity, sweetness, you have service, everything works at. Like, and then to have it all crush me so quickly was real, and I'm now really grateful for it. I think that it opened me up to a level of compassion and empathy for other people that I just, I don't know how else I would have gotten that, you know. And it's made it really gave me thirst at 25 for where do we go what's the purpose of all this if my favorite person is now somewhere else or just gone I need to like really reckon with what that is It also set me up I talked about this in the one-man show for the way that I grieved her was by writing

I couldn't believe how sad I was I was mostly happy person Everybody has things that are difficult and life is hard but that level of pain was something that I needed to work through and so I started doing Kathy Grams, which was just a really sweet way to start my music career, where I would say at shows, and this was before I had any hits or anything like that, I would just be like, at open mics, be like,

if you know anyone who's going through a hard time, I will write you a song in my mother's name. There's like a really sweet behind writing. Did you do it over the phone? You could leave a message or something like that? Yeah, people would email me with stories and then I would upload them to YouTube. And you would write songs?

I would write these quick little songs. They were not like impressive or amazing by any means. Yeah, how many did you end up writing Kathy Grams? Probably 30 to 50 and people would just send me very like small things like I just failed the test and you said you write a song or My father is in a coma and I saw you said you'd write a song or The first one that came in was from a mother that said my daughter was born without arms and And she does everything with her feet,

so it has caused back problems. So she's going to get back surgery and she's really nervous about it. This is like a really random thing, but my friend just told me that I should tell you this so you could write her a song before she goes into surgery. And now your Tuesday is like totally transformed and it's something like so deep and interesting and fascinating.

So was there a spiritual inspiration to do these Kathy Grams? Yeah, there's a Baha'i quote from a spiritual teacher, Abdul Baha, who I love in his writings have really spoken to me a lot. And I was reading them right around when my mom passed. And there's a quote that says, good deeds done in the name of those who have passed on are most helpful to the development of their souls

in the realms beyond. Which is basically what I take it as is like, if you do good things in the name of someone, wherever you go when you die, somehow it helps them in a way that I can't understand. Right. And so the process, I was like looking through my life, what do I have to offer that I can do?

And I don't have any money. I don't have any like real expertise in anything. But I can write you some crappy songs. You can write songs. Like if you want me to write you like a quick, silly little song that takes me six minutes to write, like I could do that. And so that was all I really had to offer. And I did it a bunch and it changed my life.

Well, this goes back to service. Yeah. So that loss, that heartbreak, that grief, kind of leveraged you into service as a way to cope with your grief. As a way to cope. And then it kind of sparked a whole new way of thinking about making music.

I do think that if you can get your brain to be thinking mostly of how to be of service, like if that's your way that you're going, then there are these little trap doors throughout the day that lead you into like these beautiful situations that are like, holy fucking shit, what is going on? And I wrote like, Kayla, we got your back till you get your back back, like wrote it, threw it off, then her, her, her,

cousins heard it because it was so on like wait well who did this why did this guy do this and they're like this is sick and they made a jazz version and they sent it back to me and they played it for her while she was in the hospital and there was no going back to the idea of like can you be searching throughout your day of how to give in a way that doesn't necessarily benefit you immediately and what that will do for the people that you're doing it for and for you yourself I remember getting the the jazz song version back and a note from her mother that it like made the whole process of her this stranger, her whole procedure went like way better and was surrounded by love in a way that she was really terrified and now it's like great. I'm just like sitting in my shitty LA apartment just like crying pretty hard going like, what is this? Yeah.

This is unbelievable. Is this available to everybody all the time? You just like, it doesn't like if you are thinking of how do I be of service to other people consistently, then your life turns into neon colors. And I've had seasons where I've been really good at looking at that. And my life has been in neon colors. And then there's other seasons where I just can't do it.

I fall off or I'm out of the flow. And I need what I need. And I need to serve myself. And I think that's where the delicate line of like, how, what my wife's question is because I'm just a little bit too full. Because workaholism is different. but they can sometimes be a little too close. Sure.

Yeah. Sure. So you're talking to companion, Companion Arts, check it out here, about doing a podcast on their creator network, showing up. Yeah. What are you thinking?

I just kind of what we've been talking about the whole time. By the way, you were an original podcaster. Yeah. Was it during COVID or was it pre-COVID? It was like eight years. It was a little pre-COVID. Yeah, it was like 2018 or something like that. Like you came over with a little sound kit.

to my house. I am not afraid to look stupid. If there's anything that I am, I'm like, let's go. You had like these suitcases and podcasting? Set up. And then it just didn't, you know, we did a season of it. There's some really fun conversations in there. But it wasn't, it didn't have the legs

that I hoped it would. Yeah. But we're trying again. We're starting up again. Kind of what this whole conversation has been about is like how do you show up for other people? Because when you are able to do that, everything in my life has gotten better from that.

It is one of the starting points of what separates a normal day from, oh my God, I'm so glad to be a live day. And I love the idea of figuring out how to show up for yourself as well. And getting in conversation with other people who have like, so who like a question that I would love to ask on this podcast would be because you're someone that comes up for me of who's shown up for me more than I have for them. We just in in the accidents of life. I'm like, oh my God, this guy now with perspective, he just showed up. I like super needed it. No, I do wanna say, like, I asked you at least once or twice to come up to Seattle and perform for that Mona Foundation

for the- Totally. Charity benefit. Yeah, and you flew- I forgot that. To another city. Yes, yes, yes. And performed for nothing. Yes, I would say only because you started the process.

Okay. Right. You were in a really position of had a lot going on, and you just did it out of the goodness of your heart. And therefore, for the rest of my life, If you tell me to go anywhere, I will go wherever Rain Wilson. Oh my gosh, wow. Forever. Yeah.

My phone is yours. I'm gonna need you to go dig latrines in Mongolia. But I'm really fascinated with the inter-working of why it's hard to show up, like what stops us. Yeah. When you want to show up for someone else, there's all these interesting blockages or reasons why. Like, say, like, you know, a young version goes like, all right, well, then I'm just going to like do really nice things for people all the time. But sometimes when you try to do that, then there's like dignity. You don't want to like just think that you're above someone

to do something nice for them. There's all these interesting inter, like small little problems or ways that it works better sometimes. And I'd love to have conversations with people about that process and tease out like how we can all better show up for each other. Because in this moment in history, we needed that bad. And you said to me in the green room

before we started this conversation that sometimes you're overwhelmed, you don't know what to do right now. We're looking at the news and it's like people getting shot in the face and we're invading Greenland and what the hell is going on. It's a wild. How are you dealing with this? How are you keeping your head up? How are you don't give up?

How are you don't give uping? Yeah, I think you just can control. How are you showing up? Man, I would love to give you a better answer. I'm going to try to do, I mean, for me it's music a lot of times is going in and trying to write music that expresses how I feel. in the moment and trying to be a source of calm and bringing people back to the center mostly myself and then hopefully creating you know I'm working on a new album right

now that I'm really excited about that's been a lot of what's bringing me peace and excitement at the moment and then doing the everyday little things where I am showing up for others I that I have a practice where I will just consistently call probably 15 to 20 friends and check on on them seeing that they're doing, push them, try to encourage them and whatever's going on their lives. How do we, you know, I'm always on the lookout for like big events.

Did someone just get married? Is there a death in the family? Is there like a tragedy? Like just like consistently looking for ways to show up for other people. And I find that in that path, I'm always a little bit happier. That usually pulls me out of whatever bullshit I'm in. And it's always good to start,

even if you have to start for selfish motives. Totally. Start for some selfish motives. 100% to give to other people. And it does get a little more contagious. It does. It gets a little more kind-tage. This is my idea, and I don't know

that it's gonna work or not. Okay. I'm excited about it. Clothing brand called kind-tageous. Clothing brand is called kind-tageous. The idea is that- Is that stupid shirt you're wearing for sale? Because that's ridiculous. I know, this is not it, but I like the shirt.

The idea of kind-tageous is... It's a stupid shirt. The collars stick up and they're like white. It's weird. First of all, you can blame Alana. Alana gave me this shirt. She purchased it for him. But I won't blame me.

I like this. I got this shirt. I got this hat off Amazon, like a crappy hat. It's like, treat people with kindness. And I wore it a bunch, and I got comments about it,

and we'd have conversations with the coffee person that was getting me coffee. Like, yeah, we need more kindness in the world. And I found that when I was going to pick a hat, I have like a couple different hats every day that sometimes I'd choose.

One of New York Yankees from New York. York like a jazz fest hat because I love New Orleans and then this kindness hat and Clothing can be like showing what team you're on almost and I found that at Every day I would like look at it and I would kind of unconsciously just keep choosing the kindness hat and And and then I had a sense of like oh I think the people that are into my music That are have in the same brain space that I'm in of like consistently trying to look outwards and and How to show up for people how to do how to create better moments throughout my day,

I wonder if clothes can do that. And that is my question. So are they message clothes? Like, do they always have graphics? Currently right now, it's like the first run is all just says kindness is contagious. And we did a thing where when we announced it last, we, it's available, go tocontagious.com,

but you can't purchase anything unless you leave a kind message for the next person that's gonna purchase. You literally can't buy it, which has been a whole dance to figure out how to like, actually make it harder for people to buy our clothes. I've been told by some of you're like,

this is a terrible idea. Like, don't do this. I'm like, no, no, no. The idea is to continually see if through clothing we can create a movement of bringing more kindness into the world. And I do think it's contagious. When something happens to you that is kind,

you are more likely to do it to somebody else. So in my small little corner of the world and the internet, these clothes are making me really happy. And what we did was we did a giveaway where we said, nominate the kindest person you know tell us why and we'll send them these clothes. And I just sat there and read all the sweetest little stories of like, oh, this lady's been the best

kindergarten teacher for 30 years and she always does these beautiful things. And we went and picked somebody and even just sitting with my daughter, my eight year old, we read them all together. There was like 500 of them. And by the end of it, you're like, I feel so good about everything. Like, let's do this. Whether one person or a billion people buy these clothes, this is like feeding my soul at the moment. Oh, man.

So go check it out if you like it or not and leave a kind comment for someone. Well, you are walking bundle of kindness. We are trying here. I've been to your concerts and I've seen how much your fans love you and how much upliftment you've brought to the world. I'm just so grateful that you're on this planet, Andy Grammer.

Thank you so much for having me. And it's in your beautiful family and your spirit. And I know you brought a guitar. Yes, we play a song. Let's do it. You brought a guitar. This is awesome. I got a guitar. We're gonna do the one, we're gonna do the, just all into this mic.

We'll keep it raw and intense. Okay, maybe not. We're gonna pause a little bit and get set up. Okay. Tell us about this song. What are you gonna sing for us? This is called Save a Spot in the Back for me. This is one of my favorite songs with my last album.

Okay. And just kind of a rebellious cry to keep fighting to be good in the world. All right. These are my favorite songs to try and write and get out while not, like, if you can write a song about this and not feel cheesy by the time it's over,

then I feel like I got through somehow, like a border crossing where like I got through and nobody got me. Somehow I got out. Or I didn't. So roast me in the comments. Here we go. I hate out a lock on my front door implies that I don't trust the world. Now I know that underneath it all were all misunderstood. That's who I've been cheated.

But that can't take my spirit or believe. So if nice guys finish last, then save a spot in the back for me. Finish last, I played the game. I know the rules and my heart is not completely clean. I got good intentions, but the truth is that it's in the air we breathe. I've been chewed up, I've been swallowed, but deep down that's not... So if nice guys finish last, then save a spot, in the bag for me.

So if nice guys finish last, then save a spot in the bag. Thanks for having me, my man. Super cool. Consider it saved. Consider it saved. No bridge, though. No bridge.

No bridge. You need a bridge. No bridge. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.