Episode Thirty-One: The Interview - Joe Armstrong

Host of the podcast "Independent's Day" Joe is all about music...in this longer episode hear how this art form has shaped and inspired his life and how, when a tree falls in the forest, it definitely makes a sound.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 31 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

This interview is special for me.

I'm interviewing a childhood friend,

A good friend from high school,

Who has his own podcast.

It's super groovy.

It's called Independence Day.

He interviews independent musicians.

You get to hear a little conversation.

You get to hear a little music.

He's also an accomplished musician,

Singer,

And songwriter.

I urge you to check his albums out.

Sidewalk Chalk Manifesto,

And Silverface Champs.

You can find those albums wherever you find your music,

Whether it's on iTunes,

Amazon Music,

Or Spotify.

Stay tuned after the interview to hear one of Joe's songs from the album Silverface Champs.

And now,

Without further ado,

Episode 31,

In my interview with Joe Armstrong.

Second grade,

I had an awful,

Awful,

Awful none.

For a teacher.

I mean,

She would pick kids up by their ears.

She would call kids names.

She would,

On my last name,

Armstrong,

She would always take me and put me in the back of the class and put the first one first and say,

Well,

The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

And I was like,

It's not my fault my name is Abe.

Don't screw me over just because you,

You've got some bone to pick with whatever whomever.

You know,

We live in a social media world and I think on,

You know,

Instagram only gives you like a short little thing to describe yourself.

Like Facebook,

You can have,

You can be extremely verbose,

But I think I put musician,

Adventurer and inquisitive guy.

So if that's like the,

That's like the elevator pitch,

Like the super short version of who I would refer to myself as it kind of encapsulates a lot of things.

It's like vague enough that allows you to project upon it.

What you think I might be,

Which then allows me some room to wiggle,

You know,

In different situations.

But I am very inquisitive.

I,

You know,

Music still is my compass by which I guide my life.

And I'm very inquisitive.

I love learning about things.

And I got into radio to talk to people and hear their stories and,

And interesting things.

And I interview people because it's what I do standing in line at the bank.

It's what I do standing in line at the grocery store.

It's what I've always done.

It comes from my mom's side of the family.

I think they're big talkers.

So those,

You know,

Guide guiding principles,

Descriptors,

I guess are the best thing.

But since I got a little bit of a window of what these questions might be,

I did also write something out.

So if you were to ask me who I was as a human being,

I would say I am a singular individual that is part of millions of elements of humanity,

A combination of my nature and the nurturing of a handful of people who are selfless enough to attempt to teach me the best of what they know about how to operate in this world.

Because if allowed to consider the question,

I will ponder it.

And that's what I came up with.

You and I went to high school together,

And I really got to know you through the swing choir that we were in together.

I wasn't actually in the swing choir.

I did sound for the swing choir,

But I got to know everybody who was in the swing choir really well.

And you were there for your dancing and vocal abilities.

You are tend to a woman of color.

You are a woman of pride.

You are a man who is not pussyfoot around about this.

You were amazing.

And so- That's extremely kind of you to say,

Kirsten.

I appreciate that very much.

When I'm feeling crappy about myself,

You're the person I'm going to call.

That's a touch upon something that will tie a lot of things together.

This is a story,

One of my favorite stories to tell show choir,

Which I didn't understand,

You know,

Our choral director,

You know,

Kept goading me and trying to get me to try out for the swing choir when I was in eighth grade,

Because it starts when you're a freshman,

You could theoretically be in it all four years.

Usually it's like sophomores,

Juniors,

And seniors,

Less freshmen,

But they're always looking for guys who are willing to,

You know,

Cut a rope,

So to speak,

Or even,

Even sing for that matter.

So the choral director had been goading me and goading me,

Hey,

You should come into this audition and come to this audition.

And I was a shy kid,

You know,

Like I was very imaginative.

I lived very much in my head as a kid.

And I guess I still do in a lot of ways,

But somehow like the,

The,

The show choir would come do concerts at the junior high.

And there was a particular guy,

His name was Michael Heaton.

And Michael was a little older than me by a couple,

Two,

Three years,

As we say in Chicago,

A couple,

Two,

Three,

And he didn't just at the end of the year in this show choir,

They would allow people to do solo performances.

You know,

Like some people would sing,

Like,

You've got a friend with piano accompaniment or whatever.

I'm sure there's some music.

There wasn't a lot of musical stuff there back then,

Like from musical songs,

Mike Heaton got up cause there was an assembly,

A school assembly called the big show was called Showtime,

But they did a preview of it for,

They put all the whole school and threw them in there.

And so then everyone could see us dancing in our red sequin vests,

Which wasn't always the coolest thing in the world.

Mike Heaton went up and didn't just do a solo.

He played a song that he had written,

Which blew like everyone's mind.

It blew my mind because I had started to play guitar by that point,

But the idea of,

You know,

Writing songs at that point as such a young person was just inconceivable to me.

And it was good.

And he was an instant star in our school.

Everyone knew who,

At that point,

From that point forward,

Everyone knew who he was and everyone liked him in some way.

And he was a jovial guy.

He was very goofy and very friendly.

And he had been in choir.

So I knew him from choir a little bit and it just blew my mind.

It changed everything for me because I was a much darker kid as a freshman than I would be in later years.

I was terrified of Ronald Reagan's nuclear rain of fire with the mutually assured destruction.

And I that's the world we lived in,

In the eighties.

And it scared the bejesus out of me.

Seeing him get up there and sing those songs inspired me to,

I went to the show time performance that Friday night and saw him do those songs again.

There were actually two songs he had written,

One about cafeteria food and one called I'll See You in the Stars.

I still remember the titles of those songs.

And they,

It changed my life seeing that.

The auditions for the swing singers were the following week.

And from that moment on,

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my high school career.

And within a week's time,

I had to audition and made it into the swing singers.

And so then within a week,

It started to get a little bit more complicated.

And so within a week,

It's like I had discovered a goal that I didn't know I wanted,

Or just was buried somewhere.

I don't know.

And then got into that group.

And then it took a couple of years.

I didn't get to do a solo that first year,

But then I had my moment.

Like I wanted to kind of do it one better.

No,

I didn't write a song.

I felt like I hadn't lived enough to write songs yet.

Still kind of feel that way,

Written dozens and dozens of songs.

But then I was like,

I was more of a rock and roller singer.

I was like,

I don't know.

I was in the show choir with my friends,

And I was like,

I'm not going to do that.

But then I got to play the guitar solo.

And then we had the whole dual guitar solos with another guy named Mike,

The doer played the solos.

And my friend who was in the show choir with me,

His name's Kirk.

He sat back in the band and did play the drums.

And then the bass player,

A guy named Russ Waters from the bands came up and we started to do it.

And I was like,

Man,

Things changed for me.

I was always a weird kid,

But like now the older kids would be like,

Well,

He's weird,

But he can do something.

He can do something special and unique.

And I started to get invited to parties and I started,

You know,

It just,

Everything changed for me about,

About my life at that time.

And it's set me on a creative path in my life that hasn't been easy and remains a challenge.

But I don't know,

Man,

I just wanted a different view out of life.

I want it to be something different than everyone else had where I had this passion,

This passion of playing.

And,

You know,

It's,

It's like,

What I like to do is I like to do all the things that I want to do when I'm like,

Okay,

I still have the sense of faith in those stars,

Man.

And I still do,

You know,

I don't know if fame is necessarily the goal,

But I would like,

I keep striving to be paid to do it.

And sometimes I do,

And sometimes I don't.

And I'm still at it.

Music industry for years and years and years before Napster caused the bottom to fall out of everything and no one was getting paid anymore.

And I found myself in a situation where I was scrapping around trying to support my life in the arts with random jobs.

People sometimes ask me,

Like,

Well,

What do you do?

And I said,

Well,

I'm a songwriter,

Which means I'll do anything you'll pay me to do.

I mean,

I've painted houses.

I've been a bartender.

I've been a waiter.

I've done an infinite number of administrative jobs.

I've been sales for pro audio equipment.

I've walked dogs in the rain.

I've,

You know,

Anything you can think of,

I've probably been paid to do it at some point or another.

So I found myself in a position where myself and a lot of my friends were trying to figure out how we're going to continue to make a living in the music business when main record labels were folding.

You know,

Everything was free.

Gillian Welch wrote a song called Everything's Free and kind of referencing that concept.

Everything that we had worked so hard our whole lives could now just be copied bit for bit,

Zero for zero and one for one.

And so I was talking to a lot of my friends,

A lot of our conversations in the pub were like,

Jesus,

How are we going to,

How are we going to do this?

How are we going to,

You know,

I have friends who worked at record labels and they was like rats from a sinking ship.

They got out just in time before things changed and everyone got laid off.

I decided after scrapping around,

I should find some kind of career and I'm using air quotes around career.

And I was trying to find something that I could use transferable skills,

Which is something that they always tell you when you're looking to start a new career.

And I had become an NPR junkie along the way.

I became wildly interested in the world and how it was put together and,

You know,

How our nation,

How we go,

How we choose to govern ourselves in our country,

The American experiment,

Et cetera.

And I volunteered at a local NPR affiliate.

And again,

It was kind of like that swing singer's moment within a week,

I was an intern.

And then on my second day,

They were like,

Well,

One of the interns just quit.

Do you want to make eight bucks an hour to intern on this talk show?

And I said,

Absolutely now that's crappy money,

But you know,

What a great,

What an incredible experience to be able to do that at age 40 something or late thirties,

Whatever it was.

And I learned infinite amounts of things.

I'd always liked radio,

Always liked talking to people as well.

I was very interested in people's stories,

Much like you do.

And I wanted to make something out of those conversations that I was having with my friends who were largely musicians.

A lot of them were like,

How are we going to do this?

Because I'm myself,

I'm doing it to learn myself just as much as anything else.

So,

You know,

There are in a town,

Like I live with Los Angeles,

Southern California,

There's a million bands and a million artists.

So there's essentially infinite number of guests to be on the show.

And even at that time,

I knew people who played in,

You know,

A-list talents bands.

So I could call up,

Call in a few favors from my friends to kind of launch it.

And then I had people from Calexico and people from Dwight Yoakam's band.

And I had over the years I've had Adam Cohen,

Which is Leonard Cohen's son.

I've had Chris Stills,

Which is Steven Still's son.

I've had Phoebe Bridgers,

Who just made a big splash on Saturday Night Live,

Just not too terribly long ago.

She had her on the show.

And again,

I just love talking to people.

So that was the idea behind it.

There are ways that I'm kind of trying to conjure to do it more remotely,

Kind of change the format a little bit and do some interviews that way.

But I really wanted to be a live performance.

There's an interview for sure,

But there's live performances interspersed within that because I wanted independent musicians to have a live performance.

I wanted independent musicians to have a way to show how they do what they do,

And then kind of weave that into the conversation.

So that's independent stuff.

So the second question,

I'm so intrigued.

Did you grow up in a religious household?

When I went to H.

C.

Storm Grade School,

And it was so interesting to me that when you got to grades four,

Five,

And six there,

You were allowed to leave every week to go to the Catholic Church,

Which to me,

Now I look at it and I'm like,

That is so bizarre.

But it was also interesting being like an observer of that whole process.

So for you,

Did you grow up in a religious household?

Did you participate in those things?

Or what happened in your childhood?

Just interesting.

I'm going to turn the mirror on you for just a second.

So was it bizarre to you because you yourself went to the Catholic thing or were you because there were like two groups of kids,

Like some of the kids stayed and some of the kids went?

It was bizarre because I just moved back from Pakistan.

And so I basically lived four years in Lahore and so came back and everything about the US was weird.

Remaining so.

I just remember going to the Roman Catholic Church,

Which was on a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon.

And I thought it was strange that you would leave for religious reasons because we didn't do that overseas.

And then I also didn't understand a lot of the stories because they sounded so,

So I did not really have a religious upbringing.

So these stories from the Bible to me were suspect.

And so.

It's a very,

Very well chosen word,

My friend.

And so I would ask questions and I could tell the teacher was getting annoyed with me.

So I thought,

You know,

I feel like I'm not in the right place because these stories don't make sense.

And I'm asking you about them like earnestly and they can't give me answers.

So yeah.

Yeah.

So to answer your question,

I mean,

Yes and no.

Like I grew up in like a compound household when it came to religion.

My mother was Roman Catholic.

My father didn't espouse any religion of any kind.

My father remains,

He's not a joiner.

Right.

He's not going to join your club.

He's not going to join your church.

He's not going to join your fishing expedition.

I mean,

He loves people,

Honestly,

He really does.

But he's always had a very,

Very deep disrespect or distrust is a better word,

Not disrespect.

It sometimes bleeds into disrespect,

But he's had a very,

Very strong distrust of authority of any kind.

And in any group,

There's a hierarchy and he's very much a Southern man.

He's from Alabama and doesn't want to be told what to do ever for any reason by anyone.

And we just had a conversation recently where he's telling me like,

You know,

I wouldn't let my boss cuss me,

I'd cuss him right back.

This is one of my dad's things.

So when I was really young,

My mother,

And this is going to tie into the music too.

When I was really young,

My mother would sing in the church choir and she would go,

Her whole family were Lithuanian.

They were Roman Catholic Lithuanians.

And my mom's side,

And they would go,

You know,

My mom would go to church every Sunday and I would stay home with my dad.

We didn't have other siblings yet at that point.

There were to be four more Armstrong siblings along the way after I was there,

But they weren't around yet.

And so I would stay home with my dad and watch Star Trek reruns.

And I,

It's so funny because like I didn't get Star Trek.

Like I didn't get space until I love the Apollo program.

And I love,

I grew up on that kind of stuff,

But like Star Trek was a clean space environment.

So when Star Wars came around,

It changed everything.

But anyway,

I was home and I thought Star Trek was boring.

So I,

My mom would come home from church.

And when I got a little older,

She,

You know,

I would go.

And then when I got into school,

My parents sent me initially to Catholic schools.

So I didn't transfer to Batavia schools until sixth grade.

I went to a Catholic school in Illinois or,

You know,

The next town over in Aurora.

You know,

I don't want to use the word indoctrinated,

But I'm sure that's part of it.

You know,

I was taught Catholic dogma from the get-go.

You know,

I went through first communion.

I went through first confession,

Had priests,

You know,

Not all my teachers,

You know,

None of my teachers were priests.

I mean,

Looking back at it in,

But I only went to Catholic school,

First grade through fifth grade.

And there's,

There's,

I'm going to give a quick little detour here.

And I think this is going to,

This is going to be a very important point.

I had gone to a Montessori kindergarten,

And I'm not sure who out there is familiar with Montessori and how,

How,

What their teaching philosophy is,

But it's extremely creative and it's extremely focused on the child's direction that they want to go in.

I mean,

Granted you're in a kindergarten.

So what does that even mean?

But like,

If Susie's into flowers,

Like the teacher would then set Susie up with a way to learn how to plant flowers.

And if Joey,

Which is what I was,

Was into music and building things like,

Well,

Here,

Here are some blocks,

Here's a mandolin,

Here's whatever,

You know?

And so it was a rude awakening for me when I went from that extremely supportive and creative environment into a Catholic school,

Not to say that all Catholic schools are bad,

But they are certainly more restrictive.

Now I got off easy the first year.

My first,

First grade teacher was fantastic.

You know,

Not a nun.

There was basically zero religion mixed in.

We did go to mass in school every Wednesday as part of our Wednesday morning curricula.

But then second grade,

I had an awful,

Awful,

Awful nun for a teacher.

I mean,

She would pick kids up by their ears.

She would call kids names.

She would,

On my last name,

Armstrong,

She would always take me and put me in the back of the class and put the first one first and say,

Well,

The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

And I was like,

It's not my fault.

My name is a don't screw me over just because you,

You've got some bone to pick with whatever whomever,

But she was not a nice human being.

And then I had,

So then I became,

So going chronologically now Montessori to a Catholic school.

Then a lot of the boys of the school started being altar boys,

Altar girls,

Couldn't be altar girls at that time.

So I was like,

Well,

Okay,

Fine.

I'll be an ultra boy,

Whatever.

It's what you do.

So I learned how to do all that.

I wore the little robe and you help the priest during the services.

It's basically just a theater performance as far as I can tell is what it is.

I'm probably going to get,

Someone's going to throw a brick through my window for that comment,

But whatever I am who I am.

Became an altar boy,

Went through the whole thing.

And then,

So then I had that same nun had transferred up to fifth grade and I had that same nun for fifth grade.

And I'm telling you Kirsten,

I witnessed this nun.

I mean,

I always say in a cheeky way that I witnessed her do things that would violate the Geneva convention.

Now that's not exactly true.

She didn't gas them with poisonous chemicals or anything,

But she was cruel.

She,

There were,

You know,

Some kids are just messy.

You know,

They're just,

They've got ketchup on their shirt and their desks are messy.

They're messy as kids,

They're messy as adults or whatever.

But like that,

Like rigmarole of being in a box was very,

Very important to them.

She would dump kids' desks out in front of the class.

And some of those people were my best friends.

And I was like,

Well,

This,

This is shitty.

Don't be doing that.

Like there's,

There's a way to address people's,

You know,

We need people to be organized and need and function in society.

There's a way to address that,

But dumping them out and humiliating them as a child in front of your class is not the way to do that.

So right away,

I was like,

Okay,

Every other,

I mean,

Basically every other adults in my life is a kind human being,

Except for this person.

And now she's associated with the church.

So I have kind of a negative association with that.

And again,

Okay,

Here's a detail that particular nun told my mother that my best friend and I were going to be gay at in fifth grade.

Now,

First of all,

Who cares?

What if I was going to be gay?

Whose business of that is yours or anyone else's?

So,

You know,

My mother not being homophobic also felt that way,

But it was like,

Okay,

We can't have this kind of thing for teaching my child to do this thing.

Cause there were four other Armstrong children coming up in line,

You know,

That's a lot of money for that school.

Eventually my mom and I talked about it,

I was like,

What would you like to go to a public school?

And I said,

I don't even know what that is,

But sure.

I'll just give it,

Let's give it a try.

You know,

I'd been in school with the same 20 or so,

25 kids since I was in first grade.

And when you're a kid,

That's your whole world.

Like all you know is what's there and you don't,

Your whole life's in front of you,

Not behind.

So you don't have,

You don't have anything to behind you to like base those choices on,

But like,

Okay,

I'll give you a shot.

Yeah.

I have one thing to add to that.

And this is something that I think is an important thing that taught me a very,

Very important life lesson.

I mean,

It ties into what you were saying about the kids being carted off to Catholic schools.

I did do that.

And I did do that at JB Nelson.

They would take you off to a Catholic church for a couple of hours on a Thursday afternoon or whatever.

And I just did it because that's what you did when you were Catholic at the time.

My Catholic school,

They would have something,

I don't know what the CCD is an acronym,

And I don't know what it stands for.

It was basically Sunday school for kids who were public school kids whose parents wanted them to go and like get some religious,

You know,

Religious listing up before they went to church on Sundays.

And then the,

The,

The none that awful none would tell us if you have anything in your desk that you want to still be there on Monday,

You should take it home because those public school kids,

Man,

They'll steal your stuff.

And I was like,

Well,

That's bizarre.

And then when I transferred out of that school and went to a public school,

I was back in the,

I was now on the other side of that coin.

And I was sitting in my old classroom where my old classroom sat on Sunday mornings for an hour or whatever.

And I saw those other kids,

They were just like me,

Just kids,

You know,

Catholic kids,

Which is what we were purportedly all supposed to have been.

And I didn't see them stealing anything.

I didn't see them being any different than any other kid anywhere would be.

That was the moment that taught me something that taught me that you don't trust what adults say as a kid,

Or at least everything you have to,

You have to,

You have to vet them just like you have to vet anyone else.

And you have to take what they say with a grain of salt.

I don't view miracles.

I don't think the way or magic the way other people would view those sorts of things,

Right?

I don't want to create the usual science versus religion fights.

I don't think it gets anybody anywhere.

I'm not even,

Maybe they can coexist.

Maybe they can't.

I don't know.

That's not for me to say,

But I can say I have witnessed what other people would consider to be miraculous things in life,

But some of them are very,

Very simple.

You know,

I mean,

I,

You know,

Again,

I got that the cloud got seeded a little bit.

So I took some notes and things because I knew it couldn't be like other people are going to have a lightning bolt story.

I was driving and a truck missed me and I saw a cloud that looked like Jesus and then I went to get ice cream or whatever.

Right.

For me,

It's very,

Very different.

And it's,

And it's things that are somewhere grandiose and some are subtle,

Right?

I think,

I think it's a miracle that life exists at all.

I think it's a miracle that people fall in love.

I think it's a miracle that art exists,

Especially in a society,

Which although it professes to support the arts doesn't in any practical way.

Other countries do support the arts with money because that's how you know someone cares about something is if they spend money doing it now,

Sure.

People go to concerts or whatever,

But it's a much more complicated discussion.

And if you want to hear that discussion,

Stop in Independence Day,

We talked about that all the time,

Little cross promotion there.

Miracles to me don't exist in the way that other,

I think that the way that I perceive them,

That other people perceive them in their lives,

Right?

Let me think here,

Look at my list of stuff and see what I even what some ideas.

Oh,

Here's one moment.

It's not really a miracle,

But it's a,

I hiked not too terribly long ago.

I hiked a 200 plus mile trail in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

And it's not a precarious trail in the sense.

I mean,

There are parts where you could certainly die if you fell off the edge,

But like you'd kind of have to try a little bit or you'd have to take a wrong spill,

But it's a grueling trip that takes people between seven and 30 days to do.

And the very,

Very end of this trail ends at Mount Whitney,

The tallest mountain in contiguous 48 states,

Which I am honored to say that I have had the privilege to summit about five or six times in my life.

But also I'm familiar with the very end of the trail.

And I had met a couple of friends along the way from back East and because I was by myself on this giant adventure.

And at the very end part,

You're coming down from the tallest point in the contiguous 48 states through the trailhead,

Which is around 8,

400 feet of altitude.

And it's about 11 miles over that stretch coming down about 6,

000 feet.

And the closer you get to the end,

You start to see the town and the distance down in the valley and the Owens Valley and California is not central Valley,

But one Valley to the East of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

And you're getting even closer still,

And you can kind of see the little trailhead.

There's cars you can drive up down there.

There's a Whitney portal store,

Which sells the most expensive and delicious mediocre cheeseburger you'll ever have after you've hiked 200 miles in the wilderness.

And my girlfriend and partner was going to be picking me up there.

So I was looking forward to seeing her.

I haven't,

I've showered three times in three weeks.

And even those were cold and then questionable places,

Backcountry type situations.

And I'm exhausted.

I've lost 15 pounds and I'm elated that I've done this.

I've been trying to do this for years.

And I'm hiking down an area,

Which I'm kind of familiar with.

And I hear this huge cracking sound very loud.

And I look in front of me and a pine tree,

7,

500 feet tall.

I don't know how large broke off at about 10 or 15,

17 feet above the ground and fell directly across the trail about 30 feet in front of where I was walking.

And I was kind of by myself,

My friends were another hundred paces or so behind me,

But we all kind of yelled out,

Hey,

Is everyone okay?

And there was another person kind of walking by at the time,

Once we ascertained that everyone was okay.

It's like,

You know,

We said the only thing that you can say was Holy shit.

Like if I had been walking under that tree at that time,

It would have happened so fast.

I wouldn't have even had the chance to even know what was happening.

It would have smashed me in the head and I'd be dead.

All of my friends would be dead or some combination or whatever,

But this tree,

Which is who knows,

200 years old,

It's been here for most of the American experience.

It's been here for the moon landing.

It's been here for the civil war.

It's been here growing up there in those mountains for some reason,

Let go at that time.

Now I being a non religious person,

I'm not going to ascribe meaning to that in the way that someone else would,

But I do find,

I mean like that concept of miracles being something that's just kind of like so far outside the mean or something unique that you witnessed that you wouldn't have had,

That you wouldn't experience in a normal situation.

So it fell into,

So then,

You know,

You have the,

Like the,

The mortality thoughts,

Like that could have fallen on my head after something I've been trying to do.

It's,

It's a mile from the end of a 220 mile hike.

And I would have succeeded because the trail technically ends on the top of the mountain,

But then you have to hike out to get to the trailhead.

And I thought,

Well,

At least I would have succeeded in my goal,

But I'd be dead.

And then,

You know,

Then you think of all the other close calls you've had in your life.

But then as my friends caught up to me and walked up,

We had to climb over at this giant tree,

It's large and this branch is all in the path.

I picked up a piece of the tree.

I picked up a branch and I said,

I'm taking this with me.

And my friends said,

Isn't that like,

Isn't that bad juju?

Is that bad luck?

And I said,

No,

This is good juju.

This tree did not kill me like anything else that hasn't killed me in my life.

So I kept the little six inch chunk of that tree.

And I keep it on a bookshelf here now,

Just to kind of remind me of the time when I wasn't killed by a tree.

So when it comes to something,

A prototypical example of a miracle,

Sure.

I'll give you that one.

I was touring with a band one time and we got to,

I got to ride on the top deck of a 747 flying from Japan to Australia.

And it was wintertime in the Northern hemisphere.

So it was cold in Japan.

It was soupy when we got to Australia,

But it was an overnight flight,

Red-eye.

And I had a,

I had a flight that was a little bit different than the one I was on.

And I was flying in the top deck of a 747.

And I was flying in the top deck of a 747.

And I had a,

I guess it would have been an East facing window on the top floor of this double deck of this,

You know,

Big 747 airliner.

And they give you sushi on Japan airlines,

Which I think is awesome by the way,

A little detail,

Not everybody knows.

I mean,

It's pretty good sushi.

You came from Japan,

I suppose,

But I'm looking down and I know that we're flying over the equator or thereabouts.

And I'm looking down and we're flying at 40,

000 feet,

Whatever.

And here's a thunderstorm over the South Pacific.

And I can see the lightning flashing the tops of these clouds.

And I'm a lower middle-class kid from suburban Chicago.

I never in a million years thought that I would get to see something as incredible as that.

Seeing something like that was just,

Just to be on tour at all.

Cause I had just gotten that gig maybe a few weeks beforehand.

I had,

I had,

I traveled around the country for the better part of six months,

Had gotten back home and I wasn't sure what I was going to do with myself.

I was having relationship issues.

I was having job issues.

This was post September 11th.

The economy was in the toilet.

Wasn't sure what I was going to be doing with not just the rest year,

The rest of the year,

But the rest of my life.

And I got this gig working with a band.

And within a week I was in Los Angeles playing at the House of Blues,

Helping them play at the House of Blues.

I was a technician on that tour.

And then within a month we were flying,

You know,

Having toured in having the band played on the Tonight Show.

We were in flew straight to Japan,

Spent a week there touring around flew over the South Pacific,

Landed in Brisbane,

Australia.

And I love summer.

It was summer down there in humid.

And I loved it.

So that was an experience that I thought was just,

You know,

Just incredible.

What's a miracle?

I don't know.

I don't know what a miracle is.

It is what you define it as.

And like to me,

A lot of those things are,

Are kind of miraculous in their own way.

And I choose to define it in a different way than other people do.

And I guess maybe that's the thought I want to leave with everybody about miracles.

This has been Episode 31 of Bite Sized Blessings,

The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us.

If only we open our eyes to it.

I need to thank the redoubtable Joe Armstrong for being my guest today,

As well as the creators of the music used,

Chilled Music,

Frank Schroeder,

Lilo Sound,

Kevin MacLeod,

And Music L.

Files.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Joe.

Discover what you love,

And then go for it.

And here's Joe and his song,

JL Have Not,

From his album Silver Champs.

It's not yours.

It's not yours.

It's not yours.

It's not yours.