The Bobby Bones Show - Musician Donnie Emerson discusses the film "Dreamin' Wild" based on his strange musical journey

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

On this episode of Takin' A Walk, Buzz talks to Musician Donnie Emerson. The two discuss the film "Dreamin' Wild" based on his strange musical journey.  Donnie and his brother Joe made an album in 1979 that was a brutal flop only to find viral success decades later. *****Thank you so much for listening to the TAKIN’ A WALK PODCAST SHOW hosted by Buzz Knight!   Listen to more honest conversations with a compelling mix of guests ranging from musicians, authors, and insiders with their own stories. Get inspired, get motivated, and gain insights from honest conversations every week that can help you with your own journey. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and be part of this blessed family. Website: https://takinawalk.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebuzzknight LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/buzzknight  Linkfire: https://lnk.to/takinawalk Please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends and family!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to the Taken a Walk podcast, where host Buzz Knight delves into stories of passion and resilience in music creation. Find the podcast on all platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, along with IHeart and the podcast Playground. Now, imagine if you're an artist that releases a project in 1979. It fails miserably, only to be discovered years later. It goes viral and is now the subject of a new movie starring Casey Affleck. The movie is Dreaming Wild, based on the incredible story of VIII.

Donnie and Joe Emerson. And Donnie is next with Buzz Night on Taking a Walk. Hi, Donnie. How are you, my friend? Good. How are you? I'm doing excellent. I'm walking around my backyard here in Carlisle, Massachusetts.

I'm watching a bunch of hummingbirds having a fight at the feeder. They're vicious with each other. They're very territorial. Oh, yeah, yeah. They are. So, Donnie, walk our audience through your... your wild ride in life that is such an unbelievable story in dreaming wild. Well, I can't do it in just a few minutes.

I can only give you the summary of the film, okay? Which in theaters today, AMC theaters, possibly some legal theaters as well. So I want them to go out and see this family redemption. Forgiveness, on your dreams, 78, 79 in a rural area. 13 kids in my class. So you can put the scenario because we put all. because we never got anywhere with it. A baby, it's placed in multiple,

created the interest of Bill Pollard, Jim Burke. Jim Burke, who did the Green Book, beating up to about five years ago to do this film called Dream and Wild around my struggles we had. It's between two different time periods coming together. 1979, coming together to 2011. Great music in it. Bowbridge is playing my father.

Zoe D. Chelle playing my wife, Nancy. Duke playing me at a young age, Jack Brazer playing my brother. Song in the film called When a Dream is Beautiful, which fits everybody about how they go through life, you know, and they give up on their dreams. Don't give up on your dreams. Your journey is your dream. So were you at a point when this all sort of went viral and started growing? Had you been at a point where you wanted closure of all that time? What was your mindset? that. Well, I just wanted to move on. I wanted to move on. I didn't want to go back to that time period. I mean, I did, and I didn't. I wanted to, but I had to do my best to wrestle with all that. Now, that's what I'm saying about this film. It moves ahead, and it pulls people together, like when it dream is beautiful, the song, you know, that we wrote and saying together in the film, Nancy and I wrote together, you know, you got to bring both together and move on together.

You know, he's behind and then moving ahead. I want people to go out and see this film. I really do. I think it's going to change their lives. It's going to give them a different perspective. The song is going to give them a different perspective. Now 40 some years later, I think you'll be amazed. What about your brother, Joey?

What's his perspective on all this? His perspective, because he wanted me to go back to, you know, you're going to do the old music and everything. And I'll honor the old music. But you have to move ahead, and he finally realized that. He's doing his own music. now. I help him. I'm helping me actually produce a new album for him.

We've come to wrestle with this thing behind me, and I'm 100% behind him, just in different time periods right now. Even right now, he's on the farm still and I'm in New York promoting. You know, we've been in L.A. 45 years. So during all this, you never

stopped playing. No, I never stopped playing at all. I take it very seriously. I don't give up. You can't keep your chops up. If you're going to stop for a year, it's hard. You know, three months. You've got to keep playing as much as possible.

Keep writing as much as possible, even when you don't want to. And I think I was groomed for this moment because there's no way I could handle it when I was a younger age. I don't think I could appreciate it as much as I do now because I know how hard this takes to do for different aspects of the film, production, to take everything. I know how it works. I feel like at the time in 78, 79, when you guys created this, that your influences, were kind of, you know, in that Pablo Cruz sound, maybe the Hall of Oates and maybe even a little Chuck Mangione kind of influence. Am I right about those influences and what do you influence by now?

I was influenced by all those. You know, you hear it in the record. You hear it, you hear bread, you hear Chuck Mangione, you hear Stanley Clark. You hear a lot of things. You hear a lot of one radio station in 1979. So I listened to Eddie Arnold, so there's country aspects of it too, that I grew up on Eddie Arnold, Hank Snow, Ernest Tubbs, big influence on my life. You can hear that in the song, Dreamful of Dreams. And, you know, even now, I'm influenced by other artists

that move me ahead as well in the production that I've heard so far. You know, when you listen to the weekend, I love how the ambience and that's all filled in, but that's all old school, too. going to hear their influences here in the film right now that are kind of current as well. You know, when we did this last ending credit song, again, when a dream was beautiful, is the title, Nancy and I. You got to evolve.

You just have to. You can't keep going back in the past. I do old school recording around all this stuff. I try to keep. Any regrets that you have going back many, many years? You wish you could have done something differently, whether it be, you know, about the process or with your dad or anything. don't have any regrets.

I really don't. In fact, I'm taking those, you know, I can remember I was only 15, 16. You know, I'm a kid. It's because you learn as you go. And I've taken all those skills now and brought them up to 2023. Old school techniques that have been basically buried for so many years and not many people understand it in this day of cutting and editing that I know how to do. And I know how to do it at a pretty, pretty high level.

So I don't really have any regrets. because that's what brought me here today. And it was the record collector, Jack Fleischer, that really ignited this, right? Yes, yes, he was. And, you know, he looked at the album, and he thought it was kind of interesting, you know, the two suits and all that old vibe. And then, yeah, and he showed it to a record collector and this and that, and another record collector, and then it went viral.

It went viral, and then it got into tons of films. It's being looked at for other things right now. I mean, it's been in so many. Yeah, the music's just transcending people's lives. I know this film's going to transcend a lot of people's lives as musicians, artists, as well as just hardworking American people, or world people all around the world. That family, faith, redemption, forgiveness is where it's all at.

And don't give up on your dreams. Don't give up on your dreams. That's why we wrote that song, when a dream is beautiful. By the way, it's dropped as well. You can get that today as well. the soundtrack. Donnie, isn't it wild thinking about in today's day and age, if you would put that music out,

you could have uploaded it to, you know, one of the platforms, YouTube, whatever, and it would have had a shot to take out of its own back then in that regard. Isn't it wild thinking about the shifts in time? It would have been grasped. Technology that has taken us away from the feel of music for the last 20 years. Okay?

and the underground was getting tired of that. And that's what you have to have something to pull you away from something to know what really is real, okay? That music I did back then was real. The one takers on that thing, it's all about feel, it's all about just expressing yourself. And we've been caught up in all this other music and other art. And I'm saying it's not bad or whatever it is,

but there's something to be said about purity. they grasp the hold of that and going to show people that and give them hope that you don't have to be conformed to what you've been told or whatever you can be you and live your dream

and the last perspective that you could maybe give Donnie for any aspiring independent artists listening to this be thankful for what you have you know all your gifts come from God try to live and be thankful

don't be so hard on yourself and don't be hard on other people while you're going through your art harsh on people that don't get you how you how your art needs to be portrayed just be thankful and and have fun with your music have fun with your life because it's a dony congratulations on everything i'm so happy for you thank you so much taking a walk with buzz night is available on spotify apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.

I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins.

But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian. Michael Mancini. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is love trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.

It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become, when life makes sense.

other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.