Boost Your Creativity with Kindness – Bill Deasy [Podcast]

There’s a saying that goes like this…

Expectation is the cause of all disappointment.

It isn’t until we shed that expectation, and free ourselves from self-conscious thinking, that we truly feel free. And nowhere does this ring more true than in the creative minds of artists and musicians—like my dear friend Bill Deasy.

Website: http://www.billdeasy.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/BillDeasy

Spotify: Bill Deasy Solo https://open.spotify.com/artist/1avra1tt8RqfItjhmaNggo?si=LfVs8A2NT2KEoFsY-VtJKg

Bill Deasy w/ The Gathering Field- https://open.spotify.com/artist/0BfQ8COB7K647uB6a0kMZn?si=1FM64T_1RfWMY_cKWGZNGQ

Novels: billdeasy.com/novels/ransomseaborn.php

Bill is an incredible songwriter, and author. He has recorded and toured nationally both as a solo artist and with his band The Gathering Field. 

He has also written for Martina McBride, Billy Ray Cyrus, and his song “Good Things Are Happening” was a long-running theme for Good Morning America.

In 2006, Bill added published author to his list of accomplishments with the release of his novel Ransom Seaborn, which is currently being adapted for film.

Join us as we talk about overcoming your inner bully by learning to be forgiving, kind, and compassionate with yourself—and how that can help you tap into your creative flow.

Transcript

Jim Donovan:      Today on the Sound Health Podcast.

Bill Deasy:             I remember I wrote my first song in grade school and it was about all the girls who had broken my heart in grade school and it was called, She’s A Big Jerk. So it wasn’t like serious songwriting yet, but it was a start.

Jim Donovan:      I want to steal that one. She’s a big jerk.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      Wow.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, it was kind of an upbeat song, but then it got really slow for one verse because the one girl who like really annihilated me as a kid and it became like a power ballad—and that’s Paula, my wife.

Jim Donovan:      Before we get started, I’d like to invite you to take advantage of a free resource I made for you. It’s called the Sound Health Newsletter. In it, I share the latest research in music and health plus you’ll learn music and wellness exercises that you can use every day to feel your best. You’ll also get discounts and first access to all my products and events. Remember, it’s completely free. Just come visit me at donovanhealth.com to get started today. That’s donovanhealth.com.

Jim Donovan:      Hey there, this is Jim Donovan. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad you’re here. Today, I’m welcoming a very special guest to the show. He’s an incredible singer, songwriter, an author and a dear friend of mine, Mr. Bill Deasy. Bill has recorded and toured nationally, both as a solo artist and with his band, the Gathering Field. He’s also written for other artists including Martina McBride and Billy Ray Cyrus. Bill’s recording of Good Things Are Happening, a song he co-wrote on a trip to Nashville, became the long running theme for Good Morning America on ABC and he appeared in the promo spots strumming his guitar and singing. I remember seeing that actually. It’s awesome.

Jim Donovan:      In 2006, Bill added published author to his list of accomplishments with the release of his novel Ransom Seaborn, which is currently being adapted for film. Bill was included in the book Pittsburgh Born, Pittsburgh Bred as one of the 500 most memorable Pittsburghers from the past 250 years. I got to check that website out. It sounds cool.

Bill Deasy:             I don’t know what that means, yeah.

Jim Donovan:      That’s cool. Dude, so much good stuff. Hey, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.

Bill Deasy:             It is my pleasure JD.

Jim Donovan:      This is such a fun thing. Fun fact, my wife Tracy, one of Bill’s biggest fan, she used to go to all of his shows throughout the clubs in Pittsburgh. She adores your music and you and your family so this’ll probably be the first episode she actually listens to because that’s just how she rolls.

Jim Donovan:      Hey, tell me a little bit about this adaptation for your novel to the film.

Bill Deasy:             It started a long time ago. I wrote the novel. It’s actually bizarre if I could really go into it because I started writing the novel in the 1990s. My wife Paula and I were in Johnstown and the Gathering Field was playing at the Johnstown Folk Festival, I think. And we were just taking a walk before the gig and I’d always kind of, I just love to read a ton. So I just started to think, I just had this kind of itch to maybe try … My songs were always kind of long and literary feeling.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. You’re a storyteller when you…

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. So it kind of made sense, but I didn’t really know if I could write a novel. So I started to just kind of kick around some ideas for a story and I set it in. I went to this kind of strict college Grove City College. And I was really a fish out of water, so I set it in a fictitious version of Grove City and just made this really simple story about a guy. I’d also seen the name “Ransom Seaborn” on a tombstone-

Jim Donovan:      Oh, wow.

Bill Deasy:             … in the Homewood Cemetery. And I just thought it was a cool name.

Jim Donovan:      That’s a great name.

Bill Deasy:             So it sort of stayed with me. So that’s really how this started this with that name. So I kind of got an outline for a story and started to write a novel. So I spent maybe six months back then in the ’90s writing the first draft of this novel, nothing ever came of it. And then in the, I think around 2005 I found this company in Wales called Voluminous Press and they loved it and they just put out a, it’s kind of like an indie label kind of thing. But it kind of clicked with my audience. But also it won this award. Just got kind of a bigger audience and maybe sold 3000 or something like that. But it was cool that it kind of worked and then at some point and that was that. And I actually wrote two other novels after that.

Jim Donovan:      Oh wow.

Bill Deasy:             At some point somebody said their brother or somebody knew somebody at a movie studio and that would make a great movie. I don’t know if that was a good moment or a bad moment for me because it really sent me down the rabbit hole. And I probably I’ve literally spent about 10 years writing and rewriting. I didn’t know how to write a screenplay. You can easily make it look like a screenplay because it’s easy to get the soft you can easily …

Jim Donovan:      Right, format it.

Bill Deasy:             … format it and it looks like a screenplay but it’s not really a screenplay. So I had a lot to learn and but of course as you, I’m sure, understand, I was just, I kind love that process of learning from scratch, how to do something and especially something involving writing because I love to write. And just over time and so my first draft of the screenplay was very similar to the novel, which did not make a good movie because the character in the novel is kind of in his head a lot and a little kind of passive.

Jim Donovan:      Interesting.

Bill Deasy:             And that does not make a good movie. You need a very active character with tons of obstacles and a really clear goal. so I didn’t know anything like that really. So anyway, at some point a guy I knew who liked my music in LA, heard that I was working on the screenplay. He had a friend who’s a producer in LA and said, “You should get it to him.” And I ended up becoming a, forming kind of a partnership with this other guy in Los Angeles-

Jim Donovan:      Oh, cool.

Bill Deasy:             … whose name’s Alex Castillo. And he has just through tough love and just really brutal guidance. He’s really been, he’s always so honest with me and we’ve just worked and worked and worked and worked and I’ve written and rewritten. There’s so many times I should have given up on it or when I thought it was great and then we would send it out for coverage, this kind of thing where it’s an industry thing where you just get this harsh critique and for years and years it would just come back. So I would think I cracked it and then it would come back basically just saying this still, this really sucks. But for some weird reason I just kept at it and I finally kind of broke through and I think maybe three or four years ago is when I started to kind of, I started to know that it was something was right about it.

Bill Deasy:             And then, and it’s still just more and more people are reading it as we go. And we’ve done table readings in Los Angeles, a bunch in Pittsburgh. But I think we’re going to do kind of a staged reading this coming February in Los Angeles.

Jim Donovan:      Oh, nice.

Bill Deasy:             So it’s getting to be, I just feel that, I don’t want to jinx it or anything, but I have a feeling it’s kind of getting some traction. So it still just shows you that there’s no such thing really as an overnight success. So it might feel that if it ever gets made that it will have taken me about 12 years.

Jim Donovan:      And I like that we’re talking about it now so that when it does go …

Bill Deasy:             You are going-

Jim Donovan:      I’ll say, “Wow, we already knew it because we were talking about it before.”

Bill Deasy:             Exactly, yeah. So …

Jim Donovan:      But I love that you’re tenacious.

Bill Deasy:             I am but only about some things. My wife I’m sure wishes I was tenacious about other things. But yes, with something this I’m just like a dog with a bone. Especially when I just have this sense that I can do that. There are lots of things I don’t have that sense about. But writing, in the screenplay was pretty fascinating. Different form. A novel is so kind of long, you have a lot of freedom and a lot of, just kind of forgiving. And a screenplay is very economical with language and you have to be very active and visual, completely. You can never repeat things. Anything you have in a screenplay has to have a reason to be there. If a guy’s wearing a red coat, you better have a reason that he’s wearing a red coat. Anything you see has to come back or whatever. And I just like that. I just love the challenge of being efficient with words. I even like that in songwriting too.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. You kind of have to be to a point.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, very, yeah. So it’s actually more, it’s funny because screen writing to me is more similar to songwriting probably than to novel writing.

Jim Donovan:      So do you think that having done this process, this years’ long refinement process in this whole other mindset, have you noticed that it’s affecting your songwriting? Have you written much between time periods here?

Bill Deasy:             Yes, I have. Until recently I have generally been very prolific and put records out every one or two years.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah, that’s great.

Bill Deasy:             But not the past couple of years. But I had noticed, yes, I’ve gotten a little more economical. I almost kind of miss the … Sometimes I try to kind of go back to where, when I was kind of knew less about songwriting and would just write just these wild long crazy things and, but generally I think it’s had a good effect on my songwriting and, yeah, I mean it just makes you just really strive for simplicity and clarity. And that’s kind of, but I mean that’s always, I’ve just kind of always tried for that, but get a little better all the time.

Jim Donovan:      And it makes sense in that I think one of the themes I’m noticing when I interview people is that each person seems to be in love with process.

Bill Deasy:             Yes. That’s great.

Jim Donovan:      We’re in the process and I want to wake up and I want to do the thing and if people like it, that’s a nice bonus. And of course, I love it when they do, it gives me motivation, but I have to.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. That’s so true.

Jim Donovan:      It’s like you’re compelled.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. The process is so just so satisfying. And so, not thrilling, but I don’t know, it’s just funny to compare the different kind of buzzes you get from the creativity. Performing is such a different thing, but I can’t and I love it. You can’t really beat the rush of an audience and all that stuff, but it’s really not better, it’s just different than the rush I get from finally knowing I wrote a scene right or I just did a line of dialogue or anything, any kind of writing. This writing to me is very kind of special.

Jim Donovan:      You can see it right away. You can read it, you can look at it, you can sit with it. The show, it’s fleeting.

Bill Deasy:             Yes. And that’s what’s great about that, but yeah.

Jim Donovan:      It’s there and it’s awesome and then it’s done.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. It’s interesting, yeah. And what I love about live music is that you don’t know what’s going to happen. I love that feeling of you’re standing with your band behind backstage and it’s we’re about to go out there and we really don’t know exactly, I mean, you kind of have an idea, but it’s never exactly what you thought it was going to be.

Jim Donovan:      Mm-hmm.

Bill Deasy:             And that’s so cool. And writing alone in a room, be it a song or whatever, it’s intimidating in a different way. I’m kind of afraid of a blank page. That intimidates me and I still struggle with kind of feelings of, “I can’t do that. I can’t do this.” Same with performing too. You just have to overcome this sort of inner hurdle of, I don’t know.

Jim Donovan:      It’s the inner bully.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, exactly. Saying, “You’re really not good enough to do that. You shouldn’t do this.” And I still have that with songwriting and everything.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. What do you do for yourself? You’re staring at the blank page. What do you do?

Bill Deasy:             Well, I drink more coffee and I’ve just learned, I guess really, I’ve learned to be so forgiving and kind and compassionate with myself and just have freedom and just know that you’re going to write so many bad things, not bad things, but so many things that don’t work and that’s totally just part of the deal.

Jim Donovan:      You have to.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. And I’ve gotten to a place after doing it for 30 years or whatever, it’s just that I’m so incredibly comfortable with my own language and my own, just kind of what I want to hear. I don’t really know how I get over that. I mean, maybe that’s part of what I like about it. Even the battle, that inner battle with the bully in me that’s saying, “You can’t do it.”

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. And yet I’m hearing you say that you have to be compassionate with yourself, almost like you would with one of your kids.

Bill Deasy:             Exactly, yeah.

Jim Donovan:      They show you the picture that they just drew and we’re putting that thing on the refrigerator.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right, of course.

Jim Donovan:      No matter what the thing is. We love that. And if we could do that for ourselves, how much more would we try?

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, exactly.

Jim Donovan:      No, that’s beautiful.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      Do you have early memories from childhood when you started to think “This music thing, I like to do music. I don’t know how it’s going to happen.” Do you have remote memories of this?

Bill Deasy:             Absolutely. Incredibly vivid memories. I remember, I think on my seventh birthday I had a party with friends and I remember, maybe I’m making this all up, but I remember being in the basement of our house in Penn Hills and somebody gave me an Elvis Presley record. Maybe my parents did and it’s called Legendary Performer Volume One. And the first song I heard I think was, That’s All Right Mama. And it was heroin or something going into my blood.

Bill Deasy:             As a little kid I just knew right then, I knew I want to be Elvis. That’s what I want.

Jim Donovan:      That’s it.

Bill Deasy:             So I really honestly feel I knew right then. And then-

Jim Donovan:      Just flip the switch.

Bill Deasy:             Just flip the switch. And then every single day I would just kind of race home from school and I would listen to Elvis and I would rock on my bed and I would learn every Elvis song and every Saturday my dad would take me to this store in Penn Hills called Grants and we would buy a different Elvis single, that’s how long ago it was. But there were still singles and I just remember Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel and that kind of stuff. And I just lost my mind to Elvis and then I’d watch all this terrible movies and everything, but Elvis was my guy. And then in third grade, because of Elvis, I got a guitar from, again, it was for Christmas. And then I was kind of off to the races.

Jim Donovan:      Wow.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      Have you ever thought about doing a night of Elvis songs? Have you already done it?

Bill Deasy:             No, I’ve never done that and I actually, I was just thinking about it. I was at a party recently for some reason someone played Elvis’ live version of C.C. Rider where he does the theme, the Space Odyssey thing. That’s how he used to start his concerts with that. I think it’s called-

Jim Donovan:      Oh, I need to listen to that.

Bill Deasy:             But it would start with that, the arena. And then a saw Elvis. My first concert was New Year’s Eve.

Jim Donovan:      Oh my God.

Bill Deasy:             His last New Year’s Eve, he played Pittsburgh, and I was with my dad and my brother …

Jim Donovan:      Wow.

Bill Deasy:             … because I had to go, there was-

Jim Donovan:      Of course.

Bill Deasy:             … no question about it. And so the whole place would go down and you’d hear the theme from 2001 or whatever. Then it would bust into C.C Rider as he went to every corner of the stage. And I don’t know, like he was a heavyweight fighter. But he was awesome. And so that just kind of lit me up.

Jim Donovan:      Wow. What do you think it was or is about that music?

Bill Deasy:             That’s a great question. Oh, but you were asking me about Elvis. So I heard C.C Rider recently and I thought, “Man, I want to … I was thinking I want to call Randy Bowman and ask him to let me do that for a ramble or something. Do C.C Rider with horns and everything. But I never, I’ve sung a song here and there, but I’ve never, luckily I have an older brother who liked really cool music. So Elvis kind of lit me up to sing for people.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah.

Bill Deasy:             But then I got into, I remember Crosby, Stills & Nash, their first record was super crucial to me, like Sweet Judy Blue Eyes. You start to listen to music like it’s a college course or something when you’re 13 but you’re hearing harmony and lyrics and so my brother liked them and Neil Young and Jackson Brown and things like that. He loved Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen. So just different things. Luckily, thank God he wasn’t into Barry Manilow or anything. Because that kind of set me on my path.

Jim Donovan:      So he was older than you?

Bill Deasy:             He was older than me. And always had this great record collection and we shared a bedroom. And I would just listen to his records all the time.

Jim Donovan:      So many people have that experience of the older brother. For me it was, I had older cousins and they would play Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and all this and AC/DC and I was like, “What is all this?”

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      “I’ve never heard this before. This is amazing.”

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. Pretty cool.

Jim Donovan:      Wow. Yeah, it just made me think how fun would it be to do a show where you do you do a set of your originals and the second set is Elvis time.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, I should do something like that.

Jim Donovan:      I think it would just be fun.

Bill Deasy:             I don’t know if my voice totally suits Elvis’ songs, but I’m sure I could, yeah.

Jim Donovan:      Do Bill Deasy‘s version of it. Your voice is freaking amazing, you kidding me.

Bill Deasy:             Oh, thanks.

Jim Donovan:      Seriously. It’s so fun to hear about how people get sparked about it. Was there a time where you started to think, “I want to start writing my own stuff.”

Bill Deasy:             Yes, for sure. It was mostly because of the kind of music I was listening to. Once you hear, I really loved like Stephen Stills and just certain songwriters that just kind of resonated with me and it was just a completely natural progression for me to go from singing. At first I got the feeling of people reacting to me singing and that was very exciting to know I could sing to a crowd of people in church or whatever, I remember I sang at a funeral when I was like in fifth grade and people just really reacted to the performance or whatever it was. But then I remember I wrote my first song in grade school and it was about all the girls who had broken my heart in grade school and it was called, She’s A Big Jerk. So it wasn’t serious songwriting yet, but it was a start.

Jim Donovan:      I want to steal that one. She’s a big jerk.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      Wow.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. It was kind of an upbeat song, but then it got really slow for one verse because the one girl who really annihilated me as a kid and it became a power ballad. That’s Paula, my wife. She was the biggest jerk.

Jim Donovan:      Oh my God.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. Now she’s my wife.

Jim Donovan:      Now, she’s your wife and …

Bill Deasy:             Crazy.

Jim Donovan:      And you can return the favor I guess.

Bill Deasy:             Yup. Exactly.

Jim Donovan:      Oh, that’s fantastic. So you were writing early.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, in college I joined this other guy and we became an acoustic duo. We played all original music. So that was my first, I guess, I don’t know if you’d call it professional, but we played every Thursday where people pay to cover and stuff. And it became this big, big deal where we were, but it wasn’t until my twenties that I’d started, I feel like I got better at it.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. It’s like, yeah, you have to start somewhere and you get the thing moving.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, exactly.

Jim Donovan:      And then it does its thing.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Jim Donovan:      So when you were in college, that’s when it felt like you were doing it, it was more real then?

Bill Deasy:             Yes, for sure. When it came time to go to graduate school or set up job interviews or whatever, I never did that. I graduated and then I just moved back with my parents and I started just writing and recording on a four track all the time. I think that’s when I transitioned into a serious songwriter and I was really into people, I love this guy named John Hiatt who’s a great-

Jim Donovan:      Oh, sure.

Bill Deasy:             … but his songwriting was kind of something I strove to emulate. And people like that and Jackson Brown. Jackson Brown has a record called Late For The Sky that is my, probably my all-time favorite record.

Jim Donovan:      Nice.

Bill Deasy:             And I still wasn’t quite there yet as a writer, but I was getting there.

Jim Donovan:      And Jackson Brown is such a beautiful storyteller and his voice is just so smooth and it’s like, it just draws you in the whole time.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. And he’s perfect for wallowing. I was a wallower. I was a melancholy junkie and so I would just feel bad and listen to Jackson Brown.

Jim Donovan:      When you go into songwriting mode, I’m interested to know, where do those first ideas start to show up? You have certain places or times that ideas drop in more than others?

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. I think I’m most creative in the early morning and I get up at maybe 5:30 every morning, I don’t sit with a guitar every morning, but that’s kind of when I’m most connected.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah.

Bill Deasy:             This morning for example, I was just having this, I haven’t written a song in a while. I was remembering my wife and I, our honeymoon was in San Francisco and I remember driving on highway one in the night. And she fell asleep and I was listening a Bruce Springsteen record called the The Ghost of Tom Joad, it had just come out. And I was listening to that song and I listened to that song in my office where I work this morning. I was just remembering highway one and I was sort of longing for the innocence of our relationship or just kind of when you’re just at the beginning and it’s all out in front of you. And I was just, so I started to think highway one. I know there’ve been a million songs playing with that highway in it. But I was thinking that that could be a good title. So that’ll percolate in my head and it could be months, but just the title, the idea and I’ll just start to get a feel for it. And one thing that has definitely, in my early, early song writing, I would write lyrics and then I would write music, I would kind of force the lyrics into music. I haven’t done that in a million years.

Bill Deasy:             So my songwriting is completely sitting with a guitar and the melody finding is the same as the lyric finding. It’s all one thing. And I find that it’s just the songs to me are much more organic and feel a little more you’re finding them in the ether. When they all come out as a melody and the words start to kind of, at first it’s a melody and it’s getting comfortable singing it and finding the right voice, things on the guitar and everything. And then words start to come and I’m really not as literary or whatever as I am as a songwriter. I’m very, I like kind of more impressionistic lyrics to where there’s a story there, but it’s not overly spelled out. So there’s a lot of room for the listener to inhabit it in their own way.

Jim Donovan:      It’s not Jack and Diane?

Bill Deasy:             No, yeah. Although that’s a good song.

Jim Donovan:      It is a great song, yeah. But it’s not like line by lines, the story like. You have to like feel into the words to get some of the meaning and you get to translate it as the listener to what you think it is.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. It’s interesting when I think of kind of our biggest song with the Gathering Field was Lost In America. (singing).

Bill Deasy:             That’s a very simple melody. I wrote it with zero labor. That was one that just kind of came through me and I remember I wrote it one day and we played it. We had a steady Thursday night gig at Nick’s Fat City at the time and we played it that night and we sound checked it. I kind of showed it to them and it just happened. And then we ended the set that night with it. And you could just tell it from the very first minute that that was the song. But the lyric on that, it tells a story. It’s like painting a picture. It’s not overly specific. There’s some details like he’s drinking a bottle of cheap wine and things like that. I don’t know, it’s just kind of cool. I don’t even know how I wrote that.

Jim Donovan:      But it’s not a direct message.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      It’s a message.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      But the listener still has to …

Bill Deasy:             It’s weird.

Jim Donovan:      … feel into it.

Bill Deasy:             It’s interesting. I think it’s kind of fun to contemplate it a little bit like I’m thinking of that for some reason, I’m thinking of that song like a waitress in Tennessee said he looked like Jesus. That’s very specific, but that never happened to me or anything but it’s just I don’t know, just and he silenced her raging sea and walked out the door and it’s really about a guy. That song is kind of about what I think I was, which is a little bit of a poser. He’s kind of pretending to be so deep and tortured and sensitive and I don’t know, it’s all kind of an act.

Jim Donovan:      Interesting.

Bill Deasy:             So I wrote a lot of songs like that where I was sort of hiding behind the song to expose myself in some way, but in a kind of a cowardly way behind a song.

Jim Donovan:      But still bringing it out.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, true.

Jim Donovan:      But for yourself.

Bill Deasy:             Yes. For myself, sure.

Jim Donovan:      Here’s how I’m going to do that.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      And I get to do that because I’m writing.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. I’m doing it. Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      If you want to do it, write your own.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right. Exactly.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. That makes sense. That’s the song I remember hearing the most whenever we’ve done things together, it just reaches out to you. If I’m in a club or Hartwood Acres, any of those places I’ve seen you, you’re just like wah and everyone just like wooh there.

Bill Deasy:             That’s so nice, yeah.

Jim Donovan:      They’re right too. It’s beautiful.

Bill Deasy:             And I know you relate to this, but just the feeling of having lots of people singing that song. I just remember times where it just lifted me up so high to hear just how people liked it.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah, the resonance.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. If you could know why that happens, you could do it all the time, but you just can’t predict it. I don’t know if that’s my best song I’ve ever written, but I don’t know, it might be, but it’s kind of bizarre. It’s mysterious. It’s powerful.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. It’s like part of the parts that we don’t get to know about, I guess.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      But U2 does.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      Springsteen—he gets to know about it.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right.

Jim Donovan:      But I think just knowing, what I’ve heard and read about those artists is that they were probably just bounced back. Just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing and never stop writing.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. And that’s my advice I think to most people. Just write and write and write so much that you get so fluid in your own heart, in your own language that it just starts to flow out of you. And some of it’s good and some of it’s bad, but yeah, you just keep letting it all flow.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. Is the process between novel writing and songwriting, does it come from a similar place? Do you get inspired in a similar way or is there some differences there?

Bill Deasy:             Similar. It all comes from the same pool, the same kind of reservoir of whatever. I was surprised actually writing a novel was a little more musical than I would’ve anticipated. And I can remember especially with a few passages every now and then where you catch a, you kind of trip into something and then your writing is almost like a performance. You almost feel you’re observing it too. I just remember a couple of times where I would kind of lose my breath as I was writing sentences that I knew were kind of just coming out of me. And the very last couple of pages of Ransom Seaborn, the novel, I remember just kind of flew out of me and I just knew, I don’t know if I was crying, but it was kind of, it just felt real cathartic. Songwriting and performing and all that can.

Bill Deasy:             It’s really all the same stuff. Screenwriting I guess is different because that’s a little more of a puzzle. And just a different kind of challenge. I mean it’s creative and I actually, I do get the same kind of buzz every now and then from a scene we know in the movie thing.

Jim Donovan:      Do you have those days, I’m sure you have these days, where you feel blocked?

Bill Deasy:             Oh man. Yeah, lately, especially, I’m really struggling right now and today I’ve played guitar for maybe an hour earlier today and just like trying to get it going and sometimes I feel too. I get stuck in certain guitar tunings or, and I’m just so tired of my own melodic instincts and things. Luckily, not too often in my career have I had that happen, but it’s been a while since I’ve written a song that I would be dying to play for people. I know a song is pretty good if every time I pick up my guitar I just want to play it, just by myself. And I haven’t had that in a little while.

Jim Donovan:      What are some things that you do when things just feel like, “All right, I feel stale. I’m pissed at this.” Any like any tricks that you play on yourself?

Bill Deasy:             I just have to be patient and I guess I have to give myself time. The time to do it. A lot of it is just life. You kind of-

Jim Donovan:      Life is big right now.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. You switch what you’re focusing on. I probably have to make kind of an intention to say, “I really want to keep doing this.” And I actually have enough songs probably for a new record right now, but I …

Jim Donovan:      Almost like doing pushups.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      You got to just keep doing the push-ups. Otherwise-

Bill Deasy:             Exactly, yeah. But then it’s like when I think of a few years ago I made a record with Jake Hanner called Timeless Things and that was such a beautiful process…and the song…It was some of my favorite songwriting in my whole career. And the last song on that record is called The End of The Record Song and I can remember just sitting kind of finding that as I played it and sang it. And I don’t know man, it’s such a big kind of mysterious thing once it happens and yet you can’t predict it and you can’t plan for it. At least I can’t. I know some people who can, I think I talked to Joe Grushecky once and I think he sort of just says, “I’m going to write a record now.” You know what I mean? It’s like he can do that and I think there are people that can do that. I’ve just been so prolific really in general that I’ve never had to make time to say I’m going to write for these three weeks, whatever. So anyway, it’s an ongoing process.

Jim Donovan:      You and I are friends with Chuck Olson.

Bill Deasy:             Yes.

Jim Donovan:      He was on the podcast a few weeks ago and he said this thing, he said so many deep things that just blow my head apart but the big one from our interview was, he said, “Life is going to bull you. It’s going to be the bills. It’s going to be the shuttling kids around, it’s the laundry, it’s all this stuff.” And he as a 65 year old man with grown kids, giving us advice saying you just have to make it a point that you carve out this slice for yourself where your work gets to exist.” And he’s right. I mean there’s just so many things calling at attention, but this is part of who we are. We have to feed that thing.

Bill Deasy:             No, I know. And the extra wrinkle though is the economics of it in a way, it’s like, “Does it makes sense to spend any money to make a record?” Not to be so practical about it but-

Jim Donovan:      I hear you.

Bill Deasy:             … you know what I mean? The model is so bizarre now and you just can’t really make a ton of, you can maybe break even on a, if you spend like $3,000 making a record. You know what I mean? It’s just a hard puzzle to solve. But that’s beside the point. I still have to just write songs because that’s who I am. So it’s to what Chuck said, I think I have to, I give myself excuses to kind of like shy away from it and I got to stop.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. I’ve done it too. Over and over again. I had a 10 year excuse in between when I left Rusted Root and when I started writing for Sun Kings. My excuse was, “Well, my musical life is over. I think that part of my life is finished.” And I couldn’t figure out why I felt so freaking irritated for a decade. I had just this constant, like awful mood. And part of it was being depressed about leaving this dream but the other part was that I wasn’t flexing that part of my muscle. And it was actually in the room that we’re recording right now, I called Sean one day, I said, “Listen, I’m going to make a record. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but it has to happen and it might take five years.”

Jim Donovan:      And it did, it took five years, seven. Sean was like, “I have all these fingers up. It’s probably been more like seven.” He was a he was a therapist to me. And yeah, I’ve struggled in the booth song after song after song after song trying to figure it out. But when I started again, that’s when I started to feel more of myself again. I had to extract myself for three hours a month from my house to come in here. And that’s all I had for a couple of years, three hours a month. I recorded the first record that way.

Bill Deasy:             That’s interesting. That’s pretty fascinating. That’s cool. And now I admire you and I see you mostly when you’re performing. And you just seem to be coming from this, such an openhearted, authentic place. It’s admirable and it’s inspiring. So it’s cool that that’s where it started. In a kind of place of struggle and maybe frustration and whatever, but just to where you’ve come is pretty cool.

Jim Donovan:      and I think a lot of people, even people listening right now, we’ve got that inner irritation that just pokes saying, “Come on, come on. You know you should be doing this. You know you should be doing this. Come on, come on.” And then my rational mind goes, “No, I’m not doing that. I don’t have time for that shit. I’ve got more, I got to make some money, I got to pay these bills. I got to … ” On and on and on. BS, BS, BS. Anyway, there’s something to this creative thing.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. There sure is.

Jim Donovan:      It feeds us in a way that nothing else does.

Bill Deasy:             Yes.

Jim Donovan:      One of the things I try to do on this podcast is to encourage people that don’t consider themselves to be creative to try.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right. What’s the worst that can happen? And it’s just so therapeutic no matter what. To just to sit and sing, let alone singing through microphones and sound. Singing and be making loud music in front of people is amazing, but even just singing by myself, it’s just so, it’s the best way I know to kind of release demons and things.. So that’s what I have to do. Although I’ve been having an interesting battle where I’m struggling just with my whole body of work. I hate to even say that phrase because it sounds kind of pretentious, but just the …

Jim Donovan:      You do have one.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, I’ve written and recorded just tons of music, so it’s hard to know how to relate to it. And some of it I realize now was me sort of pretending I knew more than I did and, I don’t know, I feel just kind of conflicted in some ways. I’m a little disconnected from my own body of work, some of it. So I had to kind of, I’m just in a little bit of a dark pathway here that I … I think, I still love performing and it all kind of clicks when I’m doing it but I just got to switch on the light again and kind of get back on point.

Jim Donovan:      Yes. It’s interesting looking back at all of the earliest things that I’ve recorded that you’ve recorded, how can you know at that time? When I look back, I’m like, “I didn’t know even a 10th of what I know now.” And I was very naive and I’m at the point now where I can look at that and go, “You know what? That was a good thing to be.”

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right.

Jim Donovan:      It was good to be naive. There’s something about that, that it affected the music in that way. Or there was I’ve written these songs that are really, really dark and angry, but I don’t feel anymore. I can’t sing them because I’m not in that spot. But at the time that needed to happen.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right. That makes sense.

Jim Donovan:      It’s a snapshot of all this stuff.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. I guess if you look at it that way, although I’m just realizing that some of my snapshots were a little doctored. That I wasn’t, I was sort of playing the part of a spiritually kind of curious man. Kind of honestly struggling in whatever, that was kind of my thing. And that’s what’s fueled my music. In some ways I realized I wasn’t, just recently, I’ve had kind of a little bit of a crisis where I just realized that I wasn’t as far along as I thought I was and that I was kind of conning myself and my audience maybe in a way, not really, but you know what I mean?

Jim Donovan:      Not, really, right.

Bill Deasy:             And I’m being a little too hard on myself, but it’s just, I’m navigating this interesting terrain now where I have to feel it’s okay for me to sing those songs. Because some of them were insightful. A lot of them were and kind of meant a lot to people. And I just have to know what they meant to me, what they mean to me now.

Jim Donovan:      I think that makes good sense. And I think that every year that goes by with life happening, we look at all that stuff with a different lens. Having personally been through near death stuff this year, I look at everything with a completely different lens. One of the gifts of that experience was that I am very forgiving of everybody, including myself, especially myself. Because I know for sure that I am finite. I know it for sure. So for whatever seconds I have left here, I just want to be in that light spot.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, that’s good.

Jim Donovan:      There isn’t anything else.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right, this is it.

Jim Donovan:      This is it.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      This is the whole thing. But yeah, my personal opinion, Bill, and you’re being way too hard on yourself because your stuff, it’s beautiful.

Bill Deasy:             And I feel it. Some of the lyrics, I was singing how I wanted to be. I was singing who I wanted to be.

Jim Donovan:      What’s wrong with that?

Bill Deasy:             What’s wrong with that? I know you’re right. And I thought I was closer to that than I was at the time and I was sort of a little bit of a pretender but not really.

Jim Donovan:      What-

Bill Deasy:             It was my best self, I think.

Jim Donovan:      What if your recognition of that catapulted you to understanding who you are becoming?

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, no, you’re right. I think it’s all going to have a happy ending, but it’s just I’m just a little confused and, but that’s part of the fun.

Jim Donovan:      Be a fun song to write about.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, for sure.

Jim Donovan:      Go into that spot.

Bill Deasy:             Yes, I will.

Jim Donovan:      Are you all listening out there to this? Do you hear what’s happening here? We get in the muck on this stuff.

Bill Deasy:             Yes, muck is the right word.

Jim Donovan:      And the muck is real and it’s deep and sometimes it feels like it’s drowning us and you sit with it and you wallow, I think is the word that you used. We got a wallow in this stuff and then turn it around in your hand and look at it from the other angle and talk to other people and see if something can start to shake loose.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, that’s good.

Jim Donovan:      Because that’s what why we’re here for us, what we do for each other is-

Bill Deasy:             Yes.

Jim Donovan:      … we start to bounce this stuff back and forth and all of a sudden there’s a new perspective and the creativity starts again and in that is a ton of healing.

Bill Deasy:             Yes, for sure. And I was just, for some reason I flashed on the Gathering Field played a show recently and we played this Van Morrison song that I’ve sung 10 million times called Sweet Thing.

Jim Donovan:      Oh yeah, sure.

Bill Deasy:             It’s kind of an improvisation type song that’s never, literally never the same twice. I mean, I would guarantee that in my whole life, I know I’ve never sung the same exact melody twice on that song which is cool and Dave Brown just goes someplace, Dave is such a, you know-

Jim Donovan:      Oh, I know Dave very well.

Bill Deasy:             Dave is such … But you know how good he is.

Jim Donovan:      He’s magnificent.

Bill Deasy:             He’s such a deep, deep, deep player. But that particular night we played Sweet Thing and he did this amazing solo and then at the outro, I always ad lib in different ways and I started to just sing these lyrics and this melody that I wasn’t expecting and it just kind of lifted up, blew the roof off and it’s just, so I’m not so hard on myself that I, that can’t happen. It’s just-

Jim Donovan:      And that you can’t recognize it.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right. So I just need to kind of start to live in that place more.

Jim Donovan:      Especially given what we were talking about earlier as a creative, our old systems of making a living have evaporated. And that there’s a whole new model that is emerging that we here in midlife are trying to understand and see how it works on top of all that creative stuff is the new thing that’s emerging that we just have to understand and find our spot in all of that. And it takes time. I remember coming back into this a couple of years ago and I thought I can plug in my stuff into what used to be and there wasn’t anything there. It had evaporated. It was all gone.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. That’s pretty fascinating. Although you’re interesting because your live experience was always going to be at the core of what you’re doing really so that doesn’t really change. I mean I think a lot of changes around it, but it’s still guys on the stage, band on the stage and people hearing it and just the communal feeling of especially your music has that real, just a communal sense.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah, we want people to be up in our faces with us and right around us moving around, dancing around.

Bill Deasy:             So at least you, luckily your kind of music really translates to any model truly because you can’t, that’s one thing you can’t digitize or kind of …

Jim Donovan:      The experience.

Bill Deasy:             Force it out of existence. Yeah, the experience, yeah.

Jim Donovan:      The same is true for your music. It puts you in a spot that, yeah, you can listen to it on headphones, but when you feel a real guitar coming at you and you see men and women on stage vibing with each other and having eye contact, that’s an energy.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right. You can’t duplicate.

Jim Donovan:      And in the improvisation you were talking about on the Van Morrison song, you can listen to that, but to see it live for sure is a different experience.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. So that’s our saving grace. But you and I where we are in our career, in our lives, kind of, the trick then is although maybe our lives get back to a place where we have more freedom again and we can play the weekend gigs and Rochester, New York or whatever that kind of stuff, because it’s easy to kind of slip into like a nineties sort of a semi-personality in Pittsburgh who can sing it if all star jam or whatever and kind of just do that kind of stuff and not stop being an alive artist who’s always changing. That’s the challenge.

Jim Donovan:      I think we need to be allergic to that-

Bill Deasy:             Yes.

Jim Donovan:      … and break out in hives.

Bill Deasy:             Yes. Let’s do it.

Jim Donovan:      … when we start to think that way.

Bill Deasy:             Make a pact, right here.

Jim Donovan:      Shield ourselves with an EpiPen and go somewhere else.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, that’s right. Okay, that’s good. I’m going to declare that right now.

Jim Donovan:      Let’s hold each other accountable to never do that.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      When you’re recording, how do you know when it’s done?

Bill Deasy:             You have a sense of it. There’s some songs that I just write forever. I’ll rewrite a lyric, sometimes I’ll know, I’ll just know there’s something not quite 100% right but I’ll still record it.

Jim Donovan:      It’s more of a feel thing.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. But I don’t know. That song, I’m just thinking of that song I mentioned earlier called at The End of The Record Song. And that was just so completely satisfying of a creative process, including the sense when it was over that it was over. I had done it. I don’t know. There’s something about, I’ll just send you the song.

Jim Donovan:      Oh, I’d love to hear it, definitely.

Bill Deasy:             There’s just something about it, it’s like, I guess it’s a kind of vague feeling, but there is a sense of satisfaction I guess. Or just this inner peace, a click that something clicks inside when it’s done.

Jim Donovan:      Maybe is it kind of a friendship, you know when you have a friendship with somebody and you know when you don’t totally jive with somebody. Is it like that?

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, that’s good. Yes, it is.

Jim Donovan:      Interesting.

Bill Deasy:             And I remember a Jackson Browne interview where he said, good songs are forgiving or songs are forgiving. And I think that’s true. It’s not so rigid, they’re oftentimes there really are four right answers for a melody or a lyric.

Jim Donovan:      Sure, yeah. That makes sense.

Bill Deasy:             But although the way I write, I’m so sound based. I’m just, even lyrically, even though I seem a word obsessed kind of songwriter, I’m more sound obsessed, and so the vowels and everything are as important to me as the lyrics though I would never let it be nonsense. But-

Jim Donovan:      The way you approach your E and the A.

Bill Deasy:             My goal is for the words and the sounds of the words and the feel of the melody and the chords and everything to kind of become this one thing that’s sort of finds its right frequency or whatever. It’s emotional vibration.

Jim Donovan:      It’s like a resonance and it hits you a certain way or it doesn’t. Is that what you mean?

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. And then when I know it’s all kind of in sync with that, then it’s forgiving and there’s a little leeway probably in some choices within that. But only once I know I’m in the safe, and so many songs I never play for anybody or never make it there.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. So The End of The Record Song has that?

Bill Deasy:             It has all of that, yeah. So …

Jim Donovan:      Oh, I can’t wait to hear it.

Bill Deasy:             Well, it’s just a mellow, and it’s an interesting song too because it’s exploring songwriting in a way. The song starts off in the third person, “Like a moth that haunts along extinguished flame, but the light is gone and can’t recall his name …” But it’s all he. So I’m talking about him and then there are these little kind of bridge sections and after the second bridge, the second bridge it’s about me wallowing in self-pity as a kid and listening to these records, The End of The Record Song. I would always seek out the last song. It seemed people I like, like Jackson Brown, the last song on the record would always be this kind of like epic, sad, whatever with the symphony and you just think the way bring it on, the wallowing, just perfect. And so I was thinking about how this, the guy I was wallowed in this painful place and just kind of I wanted to just stay there and then the song is ultimately about becoming happier and kind of lightening up a little bit.

Bill Deasy:             And the process of stepping out from behind these story songs like Lost In American and those songs. Then the bridge, the second bridge part is, but then I changed a couple pronouns, put a few good years behind me. So suddenly it was in the first person. And though the song is still a slow one, it doesn’t need a symphony because with you, with you nearby, I’m always smiling or something. But then the last verse is first-person and it’s very direct.

Jim Donovan:      Oh, that’s cool.

Bill Deasy:             It’s me trying to say this has been me. I don’t know, some kind of …

Jim Donovan:      You’re pulling yourself in …

Bill Deasy:             Into it, yeah. And I’m not hiding anymore. And I’m feeling better.

Jim Donovan:      That’s strong. I love that.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. So in part it’s just a cool. Rob James plays electric guitar in it and Noam and Eric.

Jim Donovan:      Oh, sure.

Bill Deasy:             But the two of them were just, and I wanted this kind of David Lindley from old Jackson Brown record sound and there’s this kind of pedally feel to the whole thing and it’s just cool.

Jim Donovan:      In six episodes on this podcast, Rob James’ name has been mentioned in all of them. We’re going to have to have Rob come on.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. Rob is the man.

Jim Donovan:      He’s the mystery podcast.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. Not surprised.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah, we have so many gifted friends in the scene here in Pittsburgh. A lot of people don’t realize it’s just, it’s so rich. It’s got amazing rock people and great jazz people, soul people. So much good stuff.

Bill Deasy:             When you’ve mentioned to me what Scott plays he talked about with he and I kind of affecting each other. It made me think of how cool just the ’90s were in Pittsburgh because there wasn’t a hyper competitive, there was probably a tiny bit of that, but there really wasn’t that sense of, “I don’t want you to succeed because I’m afraid it will keep me from succeeding.” It was the opposite. And I remember, because Dave Brown had, I don’t know if he engineered or he did what for Cruel Sun.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah, he was a producer on our first indie record called Cruel Sun.

Bill Deasy:             And so like I was just thinking of all the ways we affected each other. And Liz Berlin sang on all of our records. Scott Blasey sang on all of our records, Jim DiSpirito played on some things because he and Dave Brown go way back.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah.

Bill Deasy:             There was this kind of … But then Rusted Root because you guys let us open for you all kinds of cool places, all around the country even, we opened for you and it’s just cool. Just how everybody was helping everybody and it was just such a, I think that was part of the magic of that time was that we were all sort of inspired by successes of the other bands. You guys were just blowing up and we were just, that was just fuel for us.

Jim Donovan:      Pittsburgh, it’s a city but it’s a small city and you know everybody. We know each other’s business and for better or worse. You’re right. It’s nice that we went that way.

Jim Donovan:      I know that there are people that listen to this show who are songwriters or people whom might want to try writing. Maybe they wouldn’t write a full song, but maybe they would just start to write some lyrics. Do you have any advice you could give somebody like that? Just starting out, how could they get started? What could they do today to just get the ball rolling a little bit like we’ve been talking about?

Bill Deasy:             I think it’s all about freedom and just giving yourself the license. And just, I don’t know, there’s no pressure whatsoever and there can’t be a bad result from it. At the worst you write something that you never show another living soul, but then maybe three days from now you write something else and then it’s like, “Well, maybe I’ll show my wife that.” Or it’s suddenly it’s something. And for me it’s just about getting comfortable and having fun and but just freedom. It’s all about freedom. And to me, self-consciousness is the enemy. In recording and everything. The more we do it, the less self-conscious we are and the better it gets. So just skip all the agony that we went through and just don’t have self-conscious— Who cares? Nobody cares. No one’s watching. There’s no place for vanity here, right? Just be creative because it’s good for your soul and see what happens. And maybe you’ll end up forming a band or maybe you’ll just end up writing poems for the rest of your life that no one sees, but what’s the difference really?

Jim Donovan:      It’s true and it hearkens back to what we started with earlier in the process of our interview, which was letting yourself be in love with the process.

Bill Deasy:             Yes.

Jim Donovan:      And one of the mistakes I’ve made over and over again is writing or creating to turn it into something. That it has to be something that makes money or that somebody sees or I get approval from-

Bill Deasy:             Yes, of course.

Jim Donovan:      … blah, blah, blah, all that stuff is great and as a professional, I do that. But what you’re saying is, is the thing which is start from a place of, “I’m not going to judge this. I’m just going to make something.” Is that what you mean?

Bill Deasy:             Yes, for sure. And even for you and I, where we are in our careers, we still have to do it ultimately for the joy of it. And it feels to me the more joyful and unselfconscious what we do is the more likely it is to like make money or to lead to gigs and all that stuff. It’s like people know when you’re being real or when some real emotion is being shared in some vulnerable, exciting way. And so anyone can do that really wherever they are.

Jim Donovan:      That’s the beautiful thing I think about creativity is that, that we all, or at least most of us I should say, get what it feels like to be angry or we get sadness or grief or whatever the feeling is. Start there. Start with something that made you joyful or pissed off or something and write a little bit about it. Write one phrase about it, and then write another phrase.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, that’s good. That’s real good.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. You just said, anytime I’ve tried to write something to write something it’s crap.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, right. Yeah, of course.

Jim Donovan:      It never turns out. That’s really, really good. Is there anything, you said you’ve got a collection of songs that you think might be close to making a record. You think you’re going to record sometime soon? Anything new coming up for you?

Bill Deasy:             I’m very instinctive and intuitive and sort of I’ll know when I know and then I’ll just do it. But as we kind of indicated, it’s a tricky terrain for me right now, so I need to kind of, I might need to step up my conscious choosing a little more and not rely on my instincts, which just haven’t been coming through lately.

Jim Donovan:      Yeah. It makes sense. And I know that feeling. Something I’m considering doing in the near term is instead of trying to tackle a whole record is just to come in and do one.

Bill Deasy:             Do a song.

Jim Donovan:      Do a song.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah. And maybe put it out like I feel like who needs records really. I mean I like the feeling of a whole body of work, but maybe that’s not the where we’re headed.

Jim Donovan:      Or even just to shake things up.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      Come in, do one top to bottom. Best it can be. And then see how I feel after that.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah, that’s a good idea, yep.

Jim Donovan:      I can do that. I can do one song.

Bill Deasy:             You can absolutely do one song, yap.

Jim Donovan:      So can you.

Bill Deasy:             Yeah.

Jim Donovan:      Well, first of all, I’m going to include ways for people to contact you and to connect with your music on the show notes on donovanhealth.com under podcasts. I’m going to put your Spotify on there, Facebook, website. Is there any other ways that people can connect with you?

Bill Deasy:             Facebook’s probably the best-

Jim Donovan:      Facebook’s best.

Bill Deasy:             Or even my website and just sign up for an email that I send out. That’s where you’re guaranteed to hear what’s going on.

Jim Donovan:      BillDeasy.com.

Bill Deasy:             BillDeasy.com, yep.

Jim Donovan:      So D-E-A-S-Y, BillDeasy.com.

Bill Deasy:             Correct.

Jim Donovan:      Oh, Bill, it’s been a great time here this evening. I’m so glad we got to do this-

Bill Deasy:             Me too.

Jim Donovan:      Maybe we can do it again some time?

Bill Deasy:             Heck yeah man, anytime.

Jim Donovan:      I want you to take good care and I can’t wait to hear about the new things that are coming up. And we’ll see you next time, man. Thanks so much.

Bill Deasy:             Thank you Jim.

Jim Donovan:      Now before you go, I’d like to let you know about a free resource I made for you. It’s called the Sound Health Newsletter. In it, I share the latest research in music and health in an easy to understand form. I also share beginner friendly music and wellness exercises that you can use every day to feel your best. When you sign up. You also get discounts and first access to all of my Sound Health products and events. Remember, it’s completely free. If you’d like it, just visit DonovanHealth.com and enter your name and email address and I’ll start sending you new issues right away. (singing)

Jim Donovan:      While you’re on the website, you can also read full transcripts of this show and check out a ton of other valuable resources. If you have any feedback, send me an email to [email protected] all the information presented on this show is for educational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice.

Jim Donovan:      Lastly, come and visit me on our Sound Health Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube channels. I’d love to see you there. The Sound Health Podcast is produced by OmniVista Health Learning and Donovan Health Solutions. For Sound Health, this is Jim Donovan. See you next time. Take care.