The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Touched by the Music: How the Story and Music of “Rachel’s Song” Can Change Your Life by Dave Combs

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Touched by the Music: How the Story and Music of "Rachel's Song" Can Change Your Life by Dave Combs This book is about an inspired (some say anointed) instrumental song, the man who wrote it, the successful music business that grew from it, and the millions of people whose lives continue to be touched by the music. Come along with musician and master storyteller Dave Combs as he brings to life his life changing journey through up close and personal stories of the many faith-based steps along the way. There are stories of lasting friendships with gifted musicians, like the former piano player for the much loved and admired fellow East Tennessean, Dolly Parton. The book also includes a story about Dave being asked to submit some original music for a James Bond movie. Elevate your joy and peace through the power of his soft, soothing, relaxing music and heartwarming, uplifting, and inspirational stories.

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Because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show. Are you ready for the monster? What did that guy say? The monster thing going on there?

Whatever. Monster education with your brain. Well, we're up for another show. So welcome. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to further share your family, friends, relatives. Go to YouTube.com. For it says Chris Voss.

Hit the bell notification. Go to Goodreads.com. For it says Chris Voss. See all the books we're reading and reviewing over there. My books. Go to all of our things on, let's see, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all those places those crazy kids fidget with their phones. I think that's what I'm going to start saying, the fidgeting phones.

The fidgeting phone kids, whatever the hell that means. Anyway, guys, we have another amazing author and talented musician on the show. He's the author of a new book that came out October 1st. I'm sorry, October 11th 2021 My book came out five days before that Six days Touched by the music

How the story and music of Rachel's song Can change your life David Combs is on the show with us He's going to be talking about all of his amazing life And he is a songwriter Author, photographer, publisher He's a native of irwin tennessee dave grew up in a family that enjoyed making music both his parents and

grandmother played the piano which began his musical journey that included being a church choir director and pianist after college dave moved to win-Salem, North Carolina, where he served as a minister of music at a church while working as a computer programmer at a Fortune 500 company. Welcome to the show, David. How are you? I'm doing wonderful, Chris. I'm looking forward to this discussion tonight. I've been thinking about this all day, and I'm all pumped up about it now. There you go. And I've been thinking about you all day because we had you on the schedule, and I'm like, I have to be ready to do something at four. So it's exciting to have you on. Congratulations on the book.

Give us your dot coms, your plugs, where people can find you on the interwebs, please. Well, we'll start out with that, but I've made it very simple. They only have to remember my last name, which is Combs, and it's combsmusic.com. And from my website page, you can go to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all those places at the links at the bottom. But start with combsmusic.com, and when you get there, it's very simple.

I made it almost a no-brainer. My book's on the left, my CD of Rachel's song's on the right, and if you want to hear Rachel's song, just punch the play button in the middle of the screen. And it's the real deal. It's not a shortened version. It's not a sample. It's the real song. So you can listen to Rachel's song. You can check out the book. You can check out the CD. And then if you want to dive deeper, there's little links at the top to go into about me and other things. But just go to combsmusic.com and you're where you need to be. There you go.

So what motivated you when I read this book? And I suppose we should find out about what Rachel's song is. Well, the book came about because of the journey with starting with Rachel's song in 1981, when I actually wrote the music, to now when it's basically all over the world in digital form. And I've gotten letters and notes from people. Over 50,000 people have tracked me down and wrote me a letter or note about what my music has done for them. And so those notes and letters were really the impetus for this book. You know, they're touching letters.

You know, when people go to that much trouble to track you down, they're going to tell you what it means to them, and you better get your Kleenex box out for some of them. They are some tear-jerking letters, let me tell you. Wow. So is the book a compilation of your story and then some of the letters? Yes. It starts out with, you know, the background of

how a little bit about my background and me. And then, of course, Jack Canfield wrote the forward to my book. He he is a wonderful supporter of mine and a good friend. And he wrote the forward. But it's the the book is the story leading up to Rachel's song, the writing of it, how it got its name, how it got recorded, how it got up on radio stations all over the country, and then how it got sold all over the country through gift shops. So it's a long journey of entrepreneurship with the music, but it's also not just about the business side of it. It's about the music itself and how it got created and all it's done for people. Wow, that's amazing. You know, the beauty of music is where it can touch you

and touch so many people. I was at the gym. I normally, when I go to the gym, I'll listen to, like, you know, my music library. And it occurred to me, I hadn't listened to something for a long time, and I was listening to music that used to inspire me when I was 11 or 12. And to this day, it still touches those, you know, vibrates those nerves or the centers of pleasure that you're like, I really like this music.

And so it's beautiful that it has that thing. So do you want to tease out to us who Rachel was? Well, I'll be happy to. I wrote the music in 1981 while sitting at my piano one evening. That's the way I relax. I go home from work. I was working at Western Electric, the division of AT&T at the time. So when I get home, you know, to de-stress and to chill out, I go sit at the piano and just doodle around, play something.

This one particular night, I sat down at the piano and I started playing this song. And it was a song that just it sounded like I'd heard it a million times, but I really hadn't. And it's one of those where I knew what notes were coming up next, even though it wasn't anything that I had seen or heard. And so I played this whole song from beginning to end. It never changed. And it sounded really good on the piano. And then my wife came home from work a couple of days later and she said, what's this song that I've been humming in my head all day long? You know, how you get an earworm where you just kind of can't get that song out of your head. Well, she hummed a little bit of it. And I said, well, Linda, it doesn't have a name. And she got all excited. She says, it doesn't. You play it all the time on the piano.

I said, well, yeah, but it's just something I made up. And so she got all excited and said, well, Dave, have you written it down? I said, well, no, I've got it up here. And she said, no, no, no, no. The truck might run over you and that song would be gone. So anyway. Was she planning on having a truck run you over? No, I hope not.

I don't think so. But so I said, OK, I on having a truck run you over? No, I hope not. I don't think so. But so I said, OK, I'll be a good husband here and listen to you and I'll write it down. So I did put it in my piano bench and then roll forward about two years. Some good friends of ours had a little baby girl named Rachel. Oh, wow. And her parents asked me and Linda to be her godparents. Of course, we accepted. And while we were sitting there in the christening service in the church,

just us and the family, and up at the front of the church, this little country church, there was a beautiful piano sitting at the front part of the church. And at the end of the formal part of the service, I punched Linda and I said, what do you think about me playing this little song now as part of the service? She said, wow, yeah, that probably would fit. So I went up and asked the family and the preacher if it'd be OK if I played this song. And they said, of course, yes. And I went over to the piano, sat down and I played this tune. And I got halfway through it and I kept hearing this sniffles and clearing the throat. And I noticed that my eyes were getting a little moist, too, because it was, you know, a christening service can be pretty, pretty emotional thing.

So at the end of the song, when I finished playing it and the last notes were just dying away on the piano, I looked up and I said, Rachel's. This will now be called Rachel's song in her honor from now on. And that's how it got its name. And it just the it got its name. And it just hit the song and the name and the little baby girl and all that just fit perfectly. And so that was the naming of Rachel's Song. Now, let me roll forward three more years. I'm still working at AT&T Western Electric, doing a lot of traveling.

One of my travels takes me to Nashville, Tennessee. Well, Chris, as you know, Nashville, Tennessee is Music City, USA, and it earns that justifiably. So Linda says, why don't you go get a demo recording made of Rachel's song? Well, OK, sound like a good idea. And so one evening after work, I drove around Nashville looking for a studio. I drove up a little side street called Roy Acuff Place. You may remember Roy Acuff. He was kind of a big name in country music, and they named the street after him. At the end of this street was a big building with a barn-like

top, and out front was a big water wheel, you know, like the music, a mill, you you know ground up corn in the meal and on the side of the building it said the music mill well that's encouraging so i went around the corner and pulled in the parking lot and sure enough there was a man sitting at the desk and i saw through the door went up the door he opened it and invited me in i said and he introduced himself as george clinton and not the george clinton that you're thinking of, probably another one. This fella was a recording engineer in Nashville, highly thought of. And since then, he's passed away. But they he was so well thought of. They did a full page article on him in the Nashville newspaper.

That's kind of how big a deal it was. Anyway, I did not know that. All I knew was it was a man that let me in this building. And I said, I'm looking for a studio to do a recording of a demo of my song. And he said, well, you're in a studio, young man. And I looked around and over here is a huge life-size picture of Glenn Campbell. Here's a big old picture of the Alabama group, the Forrester sisters. They have gold records, platinum records all over the place in this lobby. I obviously was in a high class place. So, and I'd never been in a

studio and I told him and he said, well, let me give you a tour. There's nobody recording right now. That's very unusual, but there's nobody here. So we went into studio A, which as you know, that's the big one. So the big room, you could put an orchestra in this room. And it was huge. Had a big concert grand piano over on the corner. And I went, wow. And he said, let's go in the control room. So he opens up this big door that's about this thick.

You've seen these soundproof doors with the glass. You go in there. And in that room room there was this console i swear it must have been eight feet long had all the sliders and the knob you know you've seen those big consoles yeah tape recorders all over the place you know i said man you could you could launch a spaceship from in here i believe and so i said well ge, how much does a place like this cost? He said, well, it's one hundred and twenty five dollars an hour plus engineer. Well, now, remember, this was 1986. One hundred and twenty five an hour was pretty steep back in 1986.

A whole lot more than I made. So he said, but don't worry about it. The guy that owns this studio has another one across the street in a little house. And it's got a baby grand piano and a nice little smaller tape recorder machine and console. But it's $15 an hour plus engineer. I said, OK, George, that's my speed. So he says, I said, well, now all I need now is somebody to play my song. Who would you recommend to play Rachel's song for me? He thought for a second.

He said, I know just the guy. His name is Gary Prim. He's a wonderful session musician here in Nashville. Everybody loves Gary. And he said, let me go look up his phone number. And he went over to his Rolodex and looked up the phone number and wrote it down on a piece. You know what a Rolodex is. Yeah, it's a great story. It's the old phone book

in a phone card. Oh yeah, you flip the cards and go through your A and B's. Yep, so he got to the P's, or Gary Prim, and he wrote down the number and gave it to me on a piece of paper. So then I had what I needed. I went back to the hotel, called Gary Prim's number, got his answering machine. 30 minutes later, he calls me back. And he says, this is Gary Prim. Can I help you? I said, I sure hope so. Told him what I needed about this little demo of a song.

Can you do that for me? He said, well, I certainly can. Be happy to. He said, all I need you to do is send me a recording of you playing it and send me a lead sheet. I said, okay, I can send you a recording. But what's a lead sheet? I was showing my ignorance. I said, OK, I can send you a recording. But what's a lead sheet? I was showing my ignorance.

I had no idea what I was talking about or what he was talking about. So he said, oh, it's just the melody and the chords written out of the song. I said, oh, I've got that. That's what's in my piano bench. I just didn't know to call it a lead sheet. So I got back home, mailed that stuff off to Gary. And two weeks later, we met in the studio.

And Chris, it was August the 22nd, 1986 at 6 p.m. I never will forget it because that night and that recording session changed my life. At that time, I was over at this little studio

and in comes walking gary prim carrying his synthesizer under his arm and and we meet for the first time he goes over to the little grand piano yamaha baby grand piano sits down and starts warming up a little bit i'm in the control room with the engineer and pretty soon gary says well i'm I'm ready. So the engineer said, me too. So he pushes the record button and says, we're rolling. And Gary starts playing Rachel's song. Now, remember, this is the first time I've ever heard my own music played by somebody else. Wow. Because I'm the only one that's ever played it before.

So I'm blown away by what I'm hearing. Well, he gets halfway through the song and he stops and he said i can do better than that so he we rewound the tape start over and he starts at the beginning and he plays the song all the way through to the end no mistakes nothing didn't have to stop anywhere and then i thought wow this is amazing. Gary says, nope, I'm not done. He said, I've got a fantastic arrangement made in my mind for this. He said, I've got to add some more. So he said, I want to add some electric piano as part of it. And what I'm going to do is what he called doubling.

He's going to play exactly what he played on the acoustic piano on the electric piano to make it sound fuller and you know much fuller sound he did put his headset on just like you've got on there and sitting there listening to himself on the real piano and then he's playing the electric piano along with it two tracks of that so now we're up to four tracks now he says well you know i need this song needs some bottom to it you know the in musical terms they want something some low notes in there so he said i'm gonna put some low strings in here and so we two tracks low strings now it needs some high strings two more tracks high strings and then in the middle part he says you know i think some horns in here would just give it just a little punch just to get it going there he added two

more tracks of horns and then he said well, well, I think that's it. So he came into the control room. We all listened to it all mixed down together. And I'm sure my mouth was open. I was in total awe of what just happened. Gary says, that sounds good to me. So I wrote him his check for his agreed upon amount. And he left.

I had no idea that I would ever see him again. But he and I later recorded over 170 songs together. Oh, wow. I wrote over 120 more, and he recorded all of those for me. And now we are the best of friends. He's like a brother to me. That's awesome. So it all started from that recording session that night in August of 1986.

That's awesome. That is a wonderful story. And you guys wrote a lot of songs. Yeah. And it all started from Rachel's song. Yeah. And it took on a life of its own. Once it got out there and people got to hearing it, I kind of lost control of it because it just people wanted it.

And I had to find a way to get it to them. And, you know, it was just a real interesting story of how I took that one song and then figured out all these things. How do you make CDs? How do you make cassette tapes? How do you design a CD cover? You know, how do you get it manufactured? And all those kind of things. People in the audience

are loving this beautiful story i've got heartwarming uh let's see what else do we have music for the soul so uh yeah people are loving this um and it sounds like people really love the music too so you you said it sold uh do you have cds that people can take an order and buy or some sort of musical format yeah that was you know we started out back in the 80s, in the mid 80s with cassette tapes, of course. And CDs started, they came around about the mid to late 80s. And so I had CDs produced and I still produce my music on CDs. But CD sales even have kind of are kind of going the route that cassette tapes went. They just down, down, down.

Most people are downloading or streaming music these days but i still have my i still have my cds when you go to my website you can see a link right underneath the cd and that'll take you right to amazon and you can purchase a cd right from amazon but you can also download right straight from amazon or stream it from Amazon as well. So there's all kinds of ways to hear it. Whether it's Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, you know, you can have a Dave Combs or a Gary Prim station on Pandora, all those kinds of places. Yeah.

I'm looking at on Google, it says Spotify, YouTube music, Pandora, Apple music, iHeart, and Deezer, some of the places you can stream it from and probably buy the music, too, if you want. And then there's several videos, I think, that you have. I'm seeing on the thing of you playing Rachel's podcast and your other music. Yeah, you may remember one of my things is I'm also a photographer, not a professional photographer, but I love taking pictures. I've probably taken 60 plus thousand pictures with my digital camera since I got one back in the early 2000s. And but I love photography of landscapes, close ups of flowers, beautiful photography. is I take my music and my photography and put them together and make a music video and put it on YouTube so that when you can listen to Rachel's song, for example,

and see some of my photography up there as well, along with some quotes of some of my fans and whatever. And so I've tried to marry the two, you know, the video, the visual, and the auditory parts together to make a, a really good combination on YouTube. There you go. There you go. That's pretty awesome. Is,

is all your music instrumental? Did you, have you ever brought in singers or anything like that? Well, you have funny. You asked that I was asked at one point to write music for a James Bond movie. There's a long story behind how that happened, but,

uh, anyhow, I, the universal studios sent me a script copy of the script summary for the movie and asking me to write music and submit it as a theme song for the james bond movie the living daylights you probably remember that one oh yeah well that was in a long time ago. So I got that information. I called my buddy, Stan Moon, who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He's a wonderful guitarist and a lifelong friend. He's a good songwriter, a good singer, but he's a great guitarist.

And his wife was a singer. And I told him about this opportunity to write music for a James Bond movie. Well, he got as excited as I did. So he sat down and wrote some words, wonderful words. And he sent them to me and I sat down at the piano and I wrote the music to go with it. And then the two of us and his and his wife met in Nashville with Gary Prim again to record this. And it was called Danger in Your Love. Now, isn't that a great title for a James Bond movie? I mean, it's full of danger and it's always full of love, right?

It sounds like our first nine marriages. Anyway, so we meet in Nashville to record Danger in Your Love. It turned out great. His wife, Carmen, did a beautiful job singing the lyrics. So I took that recording, and I booked a flight to Hollywood. I went out. I didn't want to just mail it. I'm going to deliver this in person.

That was a good excuse to go to Hollywood, I think. Sure. Yeah, right on. So I met this young fellow from Universal Studios at the Hard Rock Cafe there right on Hollywood Boulevard, I think, in Hollywood for lunch. And so I had my Walkman there with me so he could listen to the music. And he liked it. He thought that was a great song. So he said, I'll take this back to the powers that be and we'll see what happens. And he said, you know, Cubby Broccoli is the director of

James Bond movies and he picks out everything. It's his decision. I said, okay, I understand that. So about a month later, I get a phone call from this young man. He says, well, Dave, your song was great, but you didn't get picked to be the song for the James Bond movie. However, a little group that I'd never heard of at the time, but everybody's heard of now, called A-Ha.

The rock group A-Ha got the ability to write and sing the theme song for the movie. Now, if you read my book, this is the ironic part about it. In my book, I talk about three types of moments in your life. There are defining moments when something happens to you, you have no control over, but it just happened. There are threshold moments where you have to make a decision what you're going to do. You're going to go right or left or go through the door or stop. And then there's the third category that I call aha moments.

And those are the ones where you, ah, I got it now. You know, it's a big revelation. Well, this was my other kind of aha moment where I lost out to the aha group in the contest. So that was an aha moment of a different kind, I guess. That's funny. So anyway, yes, I had written songs that had lyrics to them. And if you want to hear the music to that i went back and re-recorded uh the song without the lyrics and that is on the album track number three called your love i i took the danger

of all of the out of the title and i just called it your love and it's a great when you listen to it now that you know the story behind the rachel song and i mean the James Bond part of it, when you hear track three, you're a love. I think you can probably hear in your mind this, this as a theme for a James Bond movie. I still think it's a great theme song with a lot of kind of a mysterious sound to it. There you go.

There you go. Well, this is pretty awesome. I mean, you became really prolific, uh, with the, uh,

you know, working between the two of you uh and uh and and and i guess you guys you said you sold it across america like bus stops and and you know when i remember used to go in and there would be the tapes or cds i think there still is when you go on the long roads yeah the long drives myself and about two other musicians back in the 80s were the three people that invented a new sales channel for music. Back then we had record stores. When you wanted to buy your music, you went to the record store.

Yeah. Well, I couldn't sell mine through the record stores because they wouldn't have anything to do with me. So I found my own channel of playing and selling my music through gift shops. And it became known as the play and sell market. So, you know, when you hear it and you like it, you want to buy it and you take it home. It's kind of an impulse buy thing. So me and two other musicians were the ones that were doing that around the country. And I ended up with over a thousand gift shops playing and selling my music all over the country.

Wow. I didn't need the record stores at that point besides they were going out of business pretty shortly they did i remember going spending hours with it so does the gift shop play it on the music system and yeah they're like what's that music and you go this is you go right over there yeah the very first that's how i found out about how I discovered this technique was a friend of mine gave one of my CDs to a friend of hers who owned a gift shop. Oh, wow. And she just popped it in her CD player.

Now, it was a shop that sold Americana stuff. The shop was called America, so she sold everything red, white, and blue and patriotic music and all that stuff. But my Rachel song got it put in the cd player and every time it got played in the store over the sound system everybody went over to the counter and said what is that playing i want to take that home with me and so she called me the owner and said can you sell me some of these i said well yeah so i that night i boxed up a box of them took them to her store and she sold two or three days later. She said, those are all gone.

Bring me a double the order this time. So my wife and I made a trip to Old Town Alexandria to her shop every week for over a year delivering her order. Wow. She sold thousands of CDs of just one album, just Rachel's songs. Yeah. And I believe you're keeping most of the market right because you don't have to pay in a label you know that's right you know i sold them to her for like say eight dollars she sold them for 15 she made more money than i did on it but it was a good deal

it was a really good deal yeah that's freaking awesome man but that was the first one and then it did so well that's what i decided you know i know, I have my MBA from Wake Forest University. So I am a business oriented person, too. And I'm a math major, physics minor. So I'm very analytical. And I knew that if I could replicate what happened in that one gift shop, I had a deal. So that was my business model. And so I took it from one gift shop to over a thousand all over the whole country. And then in in 1992 i was able to have lunch with my boss at at&t and say boss i'm sorry to tell you this but i i can't afford to work here anymore so it was he he laughed he and i had he was a great guy he is a great guy and he he knew what i was doing with my how well i was doing with my music he knew it was coming but uh anyhow that's late and that enabled me to quit my job and do my music full time there

you go there you go uh lots of questions coming in for the show and stuff i think we covered uh the uh the idea for the song um what are some of the is there any standout stories there from the letters that you got from listeners that were moved by the music? Any that you want to tease out? Sure. One of the first ones that I got was from a lady in Atlanta who was stuck in a traffic jam around Christmas time. And she wrote me just a short little note that said that your music coming on the radio turned a terrible traffic jam into a memorable, pleasant experience. Everyone in California should have that on the 405.

But another one was from a lady in New Jersey who had just gotten her certification as an EMT. She and her husband were on their way home and down the street toward her house, she saw an elderly gentleman fall down on the sidewalk, just collapse. So they stopped, of course, and she ran over to the gentleman to see if she could help him and she left the car door open and she while she was reached the guy she heard on the radio music and she yelled back to her husband turn that music up loud and so he did he turned it up real loud and the man began to calm down and after a while he was okay i think he was probably having a mild panic attack or something. And the music that was playing on the radio, she later found she tracked it down at the radio station and asked him,

what was that music you were playing at such and such a time? And they immediately knew because hers wasn't the first phone call about it. And he said, well, that was Rachel's song. So she said, your music helped me help this elderly man calm down and get back to where he was OK. And I think that was a pretty special first one of the first letters I ever got from somebody. That's awesome. And you've gotten just probably basket loads since. I have over 50,000. If you could see my basement in there, the table is full of boxes about two feet deep. And they're all great. I mean, you better get your box of Kleenex out on some of them.

Some tear jerkers in there, people that were on their deathbed that went to another world listening to my music or babies born to my music. All people married to my music and all, you know, they're going down there down the aisle with the bride to my music. It's just story after story. And I put some of these stories in my book. Chapter 21 is 22 pages of some of the best short notes and stories that I've accumulated over the years. You'll need to certainly read that. And those are all so special.

I reread them all the time because they're just so special and reaffirming that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. That is awesome. I'm looking through Spotify here trying to pull up the library. I guess some of it's under Gary Prim. Gary Prim. Yeah. Verified artists. to pull up the library. I guess some of it's under Gary Prim. Gary Prim, yeah. Verified artists. And there's a whole mess of songs on Spotify and everywhere else.

Tons of plays. My gosh. So that's awesome, man. That is awesome. What a story. It flips back and forth. You know where the most popular place in the world on Spotify to play my music is? Where?

Argentina. Really? I'm sorry, not Argentina. Brazil. Brazil? Wow. Brazil. San Paolo is the number one city playing my music in the whole world. Now, I do not, Chris, I have no idea why that's the case.

I'm grateful that it is. But when I see the stats from spotify every month they give you a map of where it all is sometimes it's the united states and sometimes it's brazil yeah maybe i need to go down to brazil and meet some people i don't know yeah maybe you need to go on the brazil tour yeah there you go a world tour on Brazil. Yeah, it's funny how before the Internet came along and being able to easily publish stuff on the Internet, I never thought I would ever sell a product outside of the U.S. because in the old days it was like, oh, exports and all that stuff.

But it's funny. The podcast is huge in places all over the world. The Chris Voss Show website is all over the world. In fact, we get pounded by China and Russia a lot for trying to hack our site. They're always trying to break into it. There's different parts of Europe. There's some seedy parts of Europe that are always trying to break into our website. Sometimes we get tens of thousands of hits a day where people are trying to break into it and um it's been around for 12 years so i guess for some

reason somebody thinks it's interesting uh but uh you know it's interesting you you look at all the countries and you're just like seriously our youtube channel is the same way we're just like you're like uh people in ethiopia care about whatever that they can't they don't speak my language like what the hell but uh no man it works um we find on youtube when we do our copyright strikes we'll find like all these countries a big one is india uh and africa where they steal our content our video content and then rebrand it. Which is funny because it still has the Chris Voss Show logo on it. You can't really move the logo without screwing up the video, so they just leave it on there.

And, of course, sometimes we have, I think the last time we went in, we had like thousands of copyright claims we had to take and do takedowns on. But, yeah, it's just really amazing how, you know. Maybe you've got a future tour there down in Brazil now that coronavirus is over. Speaking of YouTube, one of the things that I did back in the pandemic, it's hard to believe it's been two years. In my mind, it's just last year, but it's really two. It feels like five to me.

It's unbelievable. But you remember those stories that came on the news right after this thing happened and they started locking down everybody. They would lock down these nursing homes and assisted living facilities. And, you know, my mom lived in an assisted living facility the last two years of her life. So I knew what this was all about. And my heart just bled for these people that were just basically suddenly imprisoned in their own rooms. They couldn't leave. Their family couldn't come see them.

They had to slide their food under the door. It was just terrible. So I decided I'm going to do something because I knew that my music helped relieve the stress of those people. Because I used to go out and see my mom and I'd do programs for she and her hallmates. I'd play music and they loved it. So I knew that this would help them. So I took my music and my videos and you can find it on my YouTube channel, Combs Music. There's some long playing videos.

I took a whole album and photographs and all of the album and repeated it. So the YouTube video plays for six and a half, seven hours so that these nursing home and assisted living facilities people could put it up on the screen, push play, and they would play all day long. They didn't have to babysit it. It would just play and play and play. And the people there could enjoy the beautiful music and the scenery and take their mind off the troubles. And so I did that, and I contacted.

I did a lot of work, but I got a hold of all 45,000 facilities in the entire country. Wow. I got my music basically so that they could all play it for free. I sent them YouTube links and said, Here, just play it for your residents and hope that it helps. And I got great feedback on that. And it's still out there. They can still play it, but it's long playing videos.

I think I have three of them that will play for that long. And so that's what I did to hopefully do my little part in helping them get through the pandemic. That's an awesome way of giving back. I saw a lot of artists, you know, because they couldn't tour. And so they just started broadcasting from their home. Some of my favorite artists from when I was a kid suddenly appeared and started, they're like, we're just going to play.

And yeah, you, you, you, you know, you're trapped. For us, the podcast was really, Coronavirus was really good for the podcast because everyone was trapped and had to listen to my silly little broadcast here. But, you know, it worked out pretty good. And we got some really good guests off it because they couldn't go anywhere else for their book tours. Yeah, right. So it worked out great.

Anything more you want to touch on before we go out about the book or tease out? Yeah, right. as an entrepreneur from scratch to build my music business. And you may not be in the music business necessarily, but the principles that I use to kind of go around and get from A to B in a kind of zigzag way sometimes, but those principles stay the same, like the principle of taking action. Don't just sit back and wait for everything, all the lights to go green before you leave. You just have to go on faith and try something. If that doesn't work,

no problem. And you just found out one more way it won't work. So you go back up and you do something else. So there's a lot of those kind of principles of success that are in my book. So those people that are entrepreneurial oriented would, I think, like to read my book. And of course, those that like music and like to hear these stories of how i went from racial song to 15 albums and from one gift shop to over a thousand those kind of stories are all in there as well along with the the 22 pages of stories from my my fans as well so i'm hoping that the music will appeal to people and then that's really my mission i wrote the book not so much to sell books it's doing it did real well when it came out it was an amazon

bestseller in several categories but my real purpose is i there yeah there are millions of people who have heard my music but there are millions more that have never heard it and like people maybe on your listening to your podcast or watching it now never heard Dave Combs' music. Well, hopefully they'll at least go to my website and play Rachel's song and say, well, I like that one. I wonder what the rest of them sound like. So they'll at least be exposed to the music and hopefully be touched by the music. That's my overall goal is to spread the word and spread the music around.

And as some of my podcast hosts have told me that, that my mission is to spread happiness. I kind of like that. So maybe that is my mission. Happiness, hope, positivity, and helping people feel good.

Yeah. You know, when I grew up, my, my, uh, grandmother, uh,

was a beautiful piano player, and she used to play for the church and stuff. But she sat and taught me a little bit of how to play piano music. I didn't get it at the time. But she sat down and taught me a real appreciation. And to me, there's few other things like the acoustics of a piano. I mean, the acoustic guitar is cool, but there's something so things like the acoustics of a piano um i mean the acoustic guitar is cool but there's something just there's something so resonant about it that that can really move and

touch you i don't know maybe i just have a preference guitar players are like i hate you right now but uh hey you know that's the way it goes but i love guitar music too you know you know it's just a wonderful instrument. But you're right. I can sit down at that piano bench back there and I can just play a chord. And that piano, it will kind of it will sound for a minute over. The sound does not die away for well over a minute. And sometimes I like to just close my eyes and play a pretty chord and just and just listen to it. And it is it's very soothing and it just kind of reaches into you.

It does something. There's a connection there. Definitely, definitely. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show, Dave. We really appreciate it. Well, I appreciate your having me on the show, and I'm delighted that hopefully your listeners will be entertained and maybe enlightened a little bit, too, from our discussion.

And I sure love to hear from some of them. They can always reach me, go to my website down at the bottom. There's an email thing. You can click on that and send me an email. And I love to hear from people and, and be sure and check out Rachel's song and, and the rest of my music.

And on my book, by the way, when you go to Amazon, you don't have to buy a paperback. You can get a Kindle e-book. Or if you like to listen to me in my East Tennessee accent, read for eight hours. I have an Audible book with me reading my book to you. So you can do that too.

There you go. Well, thank you for coming on. Everyone, pick up the book, Touched by the Music, How the Story and Music of Rachel's Song Can Change Your Life. Awesome story, very inspiring. To my audience, go to youtube.com, you can see everything we're reading and reviewing. There, go check out Dave Combs' channel

as well, goodreads.com, see all of our works on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter that I think is killing it, our giant 132,000 group on LinkedIn. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.