The Sound of Gold with guest Ken Weisberg

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0:51 Hi, Welcome to the Sound of Gold. If you've been here before, welcome back. If you are new, Welcome. My show is focused on music, musicians, music venues, music teachers and music schools, and pretty much anything that has to do with music, which is always all around us. And if you think about it, there is everywhere we go, everywhere we are, there's always some sound in the environment that is a form of music. And music is a vibration we tune into for healing. It is sound. There are different sounds that help us feel healthier, happier, sadder, whatever it is. No matter who you are, where you are in the world, we are all able to tune into music. So for that matter, for that sake, I should say music is universally something that brings us all together, no matter what happens in the world. Music is the unity between us. There are so many different aspects of life, and there's so many different focuses other than music, and I want to let you know if you've not been here before, or even if you have, I am here in my home studio and in front of my piano.

2:11 I have my cat Calli sitting on my bench with me. If you are viewing this, you can see us. If you are just listening, I'm letting you know. And so I'm so happy to be here with you today. I'm so glad you are here. And you know, there's been a little gap in time for I guess since the Super Bowl. And I'm not a huge football fan, although like everybody else it's part of our lives. We get involved in it, and my husband's very much into football. And it really got me thinking sports is really not that different than being a musician. And if you think about it, you know, whether it's football, basketball, baseball, but my focus today's football. There's a just there is a practice that goes into it. You can't just show up on the fields and play and have a great game.

3:06 You have to work at it, just like me as a musician. As a piano player piano teacher. It's something I constantly work on and it's something i'm there's never any end to it. There's never any Okay, well, when I get to finishing that song, it's going to be great. I'll get onto something different. Well, it can go that way, However, I'm always wanting to better the song. And if you're a musician, if you are working on songs, or if you are in sports, there's always a better way. You always find a different way. Today, I have a very special guest on the show with me. And not only is he or talented when it comes to music and being having a little bit of the same same veins as a musician does and that passion, that purpose. He's also very much into sports. And my guess today welcome.

4:01 I know you're sitting behind stage. Please join me, Ken, And why is it Ken Weisberg. Yes, yes, pleasure to listen. You're you wouldn't be the first person to mess that up, but that's all right. I've listened to s is you. It's there on screen. I figured it's easier if we just kind of have it in front of us. But I've been Weisenberg Weizelberg, Weisberger. I'm used to it. I've been around the block, I've heard it all. But thank you, Lisa, I'm sorry. It's absolutely a pleasure to be here. Yes, thank you so much. And Ken, there's so much of you. Are so talented in so many different ways.

4:42 And I've used this reference before, like a tree with many branches. I think every human being is creative, and a lot of my listeners out there are maybe thinking about getting into the music world or the film world, or getting more involved in sports, and it's it's really a matter of stepping out of our own way and the limit. The limit, miss, if that's the right word, is what we do to ourselves. We limit ourselves so there's no like, oh, you can't do this kind of thing. It's always I remember my dad telling me life is like a schmortgage board. Try a little bit of everything and then you kind of know what you like best. But it doesn't mean that you can't you can't try it, So that's set aside. I really want to focus on you because this show is about you and it's such a pleasure to have you on here. We spoke a little bit over the past couple of weeks and you mentioned your your journey as a trumpet player, and so you know you better than I do. Please share with us a little bit about your journey and take us into your disc jockey years and then into sports.

5:57 Absolutely. You know, it's kind of funny, Lisa. I was not that long ago having a conversation with both of my boys, one of whom is almost twenty four, the others almost had just for nineteen, and we were talking about career goals and you know, kind of what the future holds in store for him. And it dawned on me at that point in time. And sometimes self actualization takes a while to achieve, but it kind of dawned on me. Of all of the different things that I have done and been through during the course of my life, I would not describe myself as a terribly exciting person.

6:38 My ideal evening, and my wife will attest to this too. Our ideal evening is sitting at home, relaxing and watching TV. I'm watching the ball game, generally on the big TV, and she's got her iPad watching she likes as reality shows. I can't really get into it, but me that's that's one of the most interesting aspects of my day is just chilling out at the end of it. But the interesting Yeah, the interesting thing is though, when when I think back to everything that I've done over the course of my life, the things that I have accomplished, the things that I've been involved in, even if it was for only a short amount of time, nothing illegal. By the way, book board, I'm going to that straight just in case you know, he's listening and watching. But everything that I've been involved in his his. It really is kind of a winding journey. There is no near path from point A to point B in my life. So you talked a little bit about the trumpet. It all started when I was in seventh grade and my father had played clarinet. He grew up on Miami Beach and to high school in Miami Beach and played the clarinet and the marching band. And my brother, who's nine years older than me, he followed through when he was in high school as well. I wasn't really into the clarinet, but I'm looking around. I'm like, well, let's see, I could do the drums, or I could do the trump Like, well, my mother probably doesn't want me to do the drums

8:10 because I'll never get the end of it. Let me grab this trumpet thing and see how this goes. And I really enjoyed it for the three years that I was in junior high school in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. I want to brag, but I did make it up to first seat, first trumpet for a fine week period before I focusing on other things like baseball and girls. But I threw me off my game a little bit. But I enjoyed playing the trumpet. I really did like it. It was a lot of fun. And there's part of me that looks back now in retrospect and says, hey, you know what, I kind of wish I had continued. Maybe not with trumpet per se, but maybe if I had picked up guitar, maybe if I had learned keyboard or something like that. But hindsight is twenty twenty, and the indiscretions in insanity of youth kind of pull you in different directions. What ended up happening is I ended up focusing more on playing baseball and like I said before, girls, and it kind of distracted me off from it. But but I've always been in awe of people that continued with their musical education and their their musical talents, and I know it's not too late to maybe try again, although I'm not sure. I haven't in me to play the trumpet, but maybe some other instruments.

9:31 I'm going to interrupt you. I want to let you know that my my old I kid you not, my oldest student is presently ninety five years old. She's been with me for the past three years. So it's never too late. It's never she's She's got me by a few years. So okay, I mean that's that's its creation, and you know so, so maybe maybe somewhere out there, when when things slow down a little bit and time have a little bit more time, I'm to invest. I guess I do. If I kind of turned off the TV, I could pick up a guitars one of these days. But you know, I had, I had always admired. I have some really good friends who to this day still play musical instruments.

10:15 I know one of them. We know one of them, Chuck Fiori, who is a fantastic, fantastic drummer. And it was a little under the weather today, so I hope he's feeling better if he watches this Chuck, hang in there. I have to reach out to. I have some other friends that that I grew up with, went to high school with, junior high, played baseball with, who continue to playing fans on weekends and you know, go around to do different gigs. And another friend who is also a drummer here in South Florida, and he's played with some major acts along the way, whether in studio, whether on tour with them. So I've always kind of been in awe of those people that they've they've kind of been able to continue. So while my trumpet skills didn't lead me to, you know, soloing in the Boston Pops or anything like that. Hey, you know, and sometimes things just don't go the way you thought maybe they would at one point in time. I have always and you and I have discussed this via email and some conversation along the way. Music has always been an integral part of my life because it is the soundtrack to everything.

11:34 I think you hit it great in your introduction when you said that it's it's an emotional release, it's a state of being, it's a comfort blanket. And what that did is it kind of always my interest in music and in my interest in being a little bit of a natural entertainer led me to want to pursue a career in radio. Now this this was in the house and day as a radio back in you know, we'll say last century before you know before Consolidation and a lot of other things happened along the way to make what was once a fantastic industry into an absolute boy. I don't want to use the word cesspool, but radio and ownership had it hadn't been kind to it over the years. But I wanted to be that slick talking DJ, the guy that comes on is at the top of the hour, we're gonna have another digit. And I pursued that by majoring in communications in college and working, eventually starting out as an intern in a couple of radio stations up in Orlando and eventually landing an overnight shift at an oldies station. And music to me was always about the different times and places in life, and here was an opportunity. While I couldn't be on stage making music, I could be behind a microphone talking about it and introducing it and learning about it and understanding the thought process behind the song development and how people came up

13:07 with it, and so it was. It was a great passion of mine, and it was a time and a place that I'll always cherished. But again, you know, like I said, a linear path from getting to point A to point B doesn't doesn't always line up. Right. Well, let me let me hold hold that thought, let me interrupt you from it. So I'm thinking you and I may may not be too far apart in age. Are you Are you able for our guests out there, listeners out there that are in the same generation that we are. Are you able to share what radio station you were you were hosting? Sure, this was at a station no longer exists, of course, but it was cool one O five point nine wu O c l in working. Okay, so this is an old station. And yes, I'm I'm a I'm a gen x or and graduate to high school back in the eighties, nineteen eighties. It's specific.

14:05 So we're the same age then, Okay, there. We're both twenty eight years old. Perfect. Wait, man, I'm twenty. Five, twenty five Okay, I held back a couple of years. Okay, Well anyway, yeah, I was never good at math, very good at writing, but not too good at math. So its all about music. Almost twenty six. Anyways, so I worked at the station when I was in my early twenties, and a funny antidote is that the program director, you know, he said to me, listen, I've been listening to your your demo tapes and they're good and you're learning, and so I'm gonna let you do the overnight shift. And I figured, Okay, I can't screw that up too badly. Right, nobody was listening.

14:51 I think the only people listening to me, even though we had decent ratings at that hour of the night. My primary listeners were the guys at the Orange Any Water and Sewer department. Because it was in the middle of the night, in the middle of. The night and there's nobody else up, and the occasional drunken person who thought they were calling another radio station, or the one or two times there were just these these people that called up and had no clue who they were calling. I don't know what they were on that night they were having, but it meet for interesting recordings that you can kind of throw out there on the air along the way too. But let me ask you this for listeners out there, and this is probably a question I can answer too.

15:33 But again this is about you. For listeners out there that are wanting to get into broadcasting, that are wanting to connect and maybe have a radio show or work with music, tell us a little bit about your journey and how you made the connections and how you made it possible that you could do that. So, thinking back, what I actually started out with was I transferred up to UCF. That's I graduated from in as a junior. Having done a couple of years here getting my associate's degree, I went on to my bachelors up. It kind of all started with doing an internship. I had always also been a fan of talk radio as well too, So you didn't find me. You didn't find many eighteen nineteen year olds that were big into talk radio, but there were a couple of hosts here in South Florida on ME and radio that were absolutely fantastic, funny, humor is very so I managed to get an internship that first six weeks after one semester ended and the summer semester started at w IOD, which was at that time of powerhouse and news talk station. And then I did that simply by kind of writing to them, and that's when he actually had us send the letter into them.

16:52 And then fortunately a friend of the family knew the general manager at the station, so he hooked me up with the interne person in charge. I was able to do that, so then by the time I got up to Orlando, the first station I actually interned at was a CHR forty station XL one oh six point seven, and I was on as an intern there. I also kind of worked. You know, intern, you're doing everything. I mean, you're helping at the time, literally cut tape recorded onto karts. We hadn't quite gotten into CDs yet. You're going around and handing out free samples at a remote or whatever the case may be. I liked it there and it was a lot of fun, but I thought that I might have a better chance of eventually getting some kind of air shift by going over to COOL. At the time, one of the guys who was mid morning show producer over there was a classmate of mine, Funny and yeah, and so he said, now I'll get you an introduction to the program director. So start out as an intern.

18:00 Then started doing some Saturday night stuff and helping out with that. We had an all request show, so it was answering phones and a little bit of my time here and there, and when I had some downtime, I just go into the back studio, take some cards and on some music, do some recordings, and eventually, you know, the program director said, okay, I'll give you a shot to do some overnights. Okay, I could do that. I probably wasn't as good as I wanted to be, you know, especially when you're first starting. Your hands are shaking as you're trying to do what I did. Accidentally one time shut off the entire radio station we had every every three hours, I think it was. You kind of had to check the transmitters and do the reading. And I forgot what happened. I mean, I think I had to go over here and switch out one we had switched to CDs by then switched one CD and the other one.

18:55 I like this, I'm like, oh, I got to get my readings. It's three oh five. I'm already late. But the beat beep and I hit the button that powered down the transmitter. All of a sudden it starts, Oh oh god. I'm like, well, it would have been a nice career in radio. But fortunately I started pressing a bunch of other buttons and all of a sudden, I saw the power levels go right back up, and you're. Probably sitting there sweating, like kind of like the intervention. Oh it was. It was full on panic, Lisa. I was like, I could just leave and pretend that I don't know and never answer my phone again if they call looking for me. But then I then I let logic sin in a little bit. I'm like, m program director, engineer, general manager. They're probably all sleeping. It's two o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. They're not up anyway. Everything will exist fine, and so fortunately it crisis was averted.

19:53 But that that was an experience. That's here. It is, you know, thirty years later, and I'm still that's still dwelling on it. Well, maybe that had to happen so you have a story to tell. Could be everything just that the radio gods just kind of lined up, and you know, they're they're a little little turmoil my way. But I was able to survive. And that's the key thing. I had taken classes from some big, big well I don't want to say names out there, but I had taken some big time classes from some big time celebrities, and I'll never forget something that was said in my class and it said it and he said, it's not about your success. It's not about being at the top.

20:35 What matters and what people want to hear most is about the journey that got you to where you are. Yeah, And it's true. It's all about the. Story exactly exactly. It's all about you know. It kind of goes back to the conversation that I had with my kids and the side winding, snakelike path to go from here to here to hear to hear to where I am now. And it really, you know, it kind of started with the whole radio thing because what that also did for me is, you know, it's kind of like actually seeing the proverbial sausage get made once behind the scenes. I mean, when we were kids and we heard you turned on the radio. I mean, whether you're sitting in your room at night doing homework and you're in your car, that was all about that. The dj're like, man, I wish I could be like that. Then you get behind the scenes and I have to laugh a little bit.

21:31 But most of the radio people that I came across that I worked with or had just met through the industry along the way. We're just not the bright, happy, cheery people that you heard on the radio once that microphone went off. Oh the things that came out of their metal. But you know what, though, it formulates an idea in your mind and you think, and I had the foresight to think, all right, I like this radio thing, but do I want to be that guy twenty years from now? And these guys were all, you know, twenty thirty year radio veterans, and right, be that guy? Do I want to go, you know, be here in Orlando for two years, then go out to you know, some po dunk place, because that's how you started in radio, especially back then you asked how they get started? What would somebody do back in that day, what you had to do if you really wanted to kind of launch your career, you had to go work in some rinky dink market in order just to claw your way up, hopefully into a top ten market. And the only place that I wanted to be a morning show DJ, you know that good Morning guy Hong Kong, you know sound the fact in the only place that really kind of gave me even a slight whiff was a place in Farmington, New Mexico, now I would challenge you to tell me where Farmington, New Mexico is, I didn't.

23:00 Yeah, it's it's. The Corners region of New Mexico. So when that was my only prospect, and I had been sending out tapes and resumes to stations everywhere pick a state, I probably sent a resume to it. But the more time went on and the more I realized that this had the potential to be something that I wasn't going to like. I like staying in one place. I like traveling, but I like coming home at the end of course. And with radio, if you can't get into being a nomad, you know there are for every for every Howard Stern, there are thousands and thousands of nomads moving from place to place to place to place. And if you like stability and if you want to potentially start a family, being in radio probably isn't the way to go. So once I said I saw the sausage being made, I said, I don't think I'm gonna get this sausage anymore. And so what ended up happening was that I got out of it and came back down to South Florida and kind of kicked around and looked for something to do, and then eventually wound up I'm still trying to figure this out. Getting into the advertising business and spending six years in New York or just under six years.

24:20 Nice. Yeah. I had met with some friends of the family whose son worked in New York for ESPN and in their sales department. Advertising sales asked me if I thought about getting into being in media planning and media buying and advertising, and I went, well, no, I hadn't really thought about it, but I had nothing else going on, and. He was calling to you. Yeah, And that's what kind of began a thirty year journey through through the advertising industry, working up in New York and then eventually coming back down to South Florida because I just got tired of shoveling snow, is what I told people. But you know, my family was and everything like that. So that ended up being the bulk of what I did during the course of my career and what I was doing here. I worked for a company located in the Fort Lauderdale area called pool Pros Builders.

25:12 We're a custom pool contractor. Started doing marketing for them about a year ago. I love the local business. We're an expanding local business, which is fantastic. And now I'm just recently got moved into a general manager physician of the business. So congratulations, congratulations. I want to interrupt you, you know, I want to congratulate you, because how would I say this As a human being, we are also creative, and I think a lot of people out there and I'm just I'm speculating, So forgive me if I'm over speculating. I think a lot of people out there. Let's say, like in my mom and dad's generation, like they had one job and they slept with that job and then and that's what they had you, and then they had to go through it and you know, prepare for retirement and then retire and that was like the mindset of our parents' generation and for me, and it seems like for you too. You kind of saw within yourself that there is more to just doing more to you than just being that one thing for everybody. And I'm congratulating you because a lot of people are afraid to expand their horizons by stepping out of their box to say, you know what, I think I want to go color with that crayon today instead of using the same cry And I've been using all these years, and it's okay.

26:40 It's okay to step out of your box and out of your comfort zone because that's how you grow, and that's why we're here as human beings. And I'll tell you something interesting, Lisa, that that is a great summation of what I've done every time. I almost did it subconsciously. I didn't miss true. Yeah, I didn't this necessarily set out to do all of these things. They just kind of happened organically. And yeah, you just don't know where life is going to take you if nothing else. To your point, that's exactly our parents and our grandparents' generation. They went to work for thirty thirty five years, they retired, they got their pension, they got their gold watch, they sold their house in New York or Massachusetts or wherever. They got their little house condo here in South Florida and spent their golden years sitting by the pool.

27:32 So true. We have a common friend, Chuck, and I was good friends with his dad. And I remember his dad saying to me, and he had like a gold album like hanging on his wall. And I remember saying, oh, that's great, I'll probably never get that. And he looked at me and he was almost like like firmly, and I'll never forget this feeling. He goes. Don't say that he goes. You don't know what's going to happen. Like when he he shared with me some of his stories and some of I mean, he was very famous, but you know, he didn't get on the path to be famous. It was kind of like life just took him there. It happens, and it's a beautiful thing. And again I'm mentioning like, don't limit yourself for my audiences out there, don't limit yourself and myself I'm included and for you, like we have to step out of our own way.

28:25 And now in your life, you're you are focusing on football, which is not a lot different than the musician because there's so much intricacies and dedication and commitment and discipline that goes into that goes into all sports and all musicianship. It's not just something you wake up and Okay, I'm just gonna go like what are the plant? Okay? Oh aimen to that. So to your point, about twenty about twenty five years ago, when I moved back down to South Florida from New York, I was looking for something to kind of you as a hobby, just to keep from sitting there goun they. So about three months after I came back to South Florida, I met my wife or who is now my wife, and then I was sitting in her apartment one day at ten.

29:18 She lived down in Coral Gables, so just south of Miami, and I saw an article in the Herald. This is back when people read newspapers. Saw on our article on the Miami Herald that said that the Greater Miami Athletic Conference needed football referees. Went oh, okay, I've watched enough football. I kind of figure out and false darm It goes, see what this is all about. So I went to a meeting and I'm like, okay, I think this is kind of interesting. Maybe I want to get into this. So I did a year down there, and then we eventually moved up to Broward County and so the Fort Lauderdale Arey and I came on up to Broward County and it was just I was hooked instantly, because here's the thing about it. To your point, you know, everybody looks at the athletes on the field, and the athletes are the ones that the fans are in the stands paying to see, totally understand that they hone their craft.

30:12 They're playing whatever the sport is, football, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, curling. I love that, by the way, I got hooked on that in the Olympics. It's but all of those sports and they hone their craft and that's what they work on. But what a lot of people don't realize is that without officials you can't play these games because somebody needs to control the chaos. But at the same time, you can't as an official just step out on the field and think that you know what's going on. It's very easy criticize officials. Ah, that call was terrible, you stank got We've all been there. I do it too. But dedication the practice time it did remind me a lot of when I was playing the trumpet. To the analogy that you make that it's musicians go through the same thing.

31:02 I have spent a lot of free time, downtime practicing that trumpet. To try to get better at it. I have to be out on the field, practicing the officiating and practicing mechanics, going to the gym to try to keep up. I mean, I don't know the last time you ran with like a seventeen or eighteen year old that was down but in ain't easy. But it's all tell us a little bit about for those out there that are not sports into sports, tell us a little bit more about what an official is and what your role is. Absolutely so they're often called referees. In baseball, they're called umpires.

31:44 Your role is essentially to make sure that the game is played within the rules, to make sure that the players conduct themselves in a manner that aligns with the rules of the game. And sports conductor for an orchestra like the conductor for an orchestra. That's a great analogy because you have to make sure every part is moving the way that it needs to, whether it's making sure that the woodwinds come in when they need to or when the brass comes in when it needs to and the percussion sounds just the right. With the conductor, you need to make sure that the coaches are behaving themselves, that the players are following the rules, that the ancillary people, the photographers and everybody they're off the field and out of the way. So you know, some people might laugh a little bit, but there really is a bit of an analogy behind just what you said there. Where you're conductor only you wear black and white stripes and you get a whistle and a flag. We have flags we throw those people do something wrong. But I think a lot of the disciplines that I learned from, whether it was over time in the band, back many years ago, working in radio, timing everything out your record, your back cells, you know, your intros to each of the records, making sure you hit the marks and the posts and that everything runs the way that it does. There's a certain discipline that goes into all of that, and that really

33:18 it does kind of align to your point about being a conductor. I mean, it's all about making sure you know every single part and make sure that it's running the way it is. And to kind of take that analogy one step further, in every sport there are obviously multiple officials on the field at any given time. You can't really do it all by yourself. I guess maybe tennis, you know, because you're just sort of sitting in a chair, that's why. But there is a crew chief on every crew okay, And so that you talk about a conductor, that's what I am on the crew chief, so I have to make sure not only are all the players and all the coaches and auxiliary staff doing what they need to do, I have to make sure each of the other six people on my crew are also doing what they're supposed to be doing, and leading the meetings and the development and the practice sessions to make sure that it's all finely tuned, finally tuned machine. So that music analogy isn't quite as crazy as it sounds when you put it into that context. So really, it really it's a craft, just like music. It's a craft.

34:31 It's a discipline. It's a discipline, it's a commitment. It's it's not something like I've mentioned a couple times already. It's not something you just wake up and do. There's a flow. There becomes a flow to a consistency. And I've learned that. And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I know growing up. I remember as a young child, I'm like, oh, yeah, when I learned this, then I can just go on to something else. And my dad, my dad's no longer with us, but my dad would send me, Lisa, you will always be learning your whole entire life. I'm like really, you mean when I get to twelfth grade, like I'm not learning, like I still have to learn, and it's like, yeah, My point is is that what I've learned in the consistency of having the discipline to make the commitment to focus on something anything, and everyone is talented. It's what you invest your time into to grow into. It is that consistency grows and you become that squeaky wheel becomes like like WD forty.

35:37 It just makes it flow easier and just you become better and better without even trying because you don't even think about it anymore because you know your role. Yes, absolutely, and that's what it's all about. But at the same point, you need to continue to evolve in to learn, not just you know, whether it's issue, where it's music, it's life in general. Right, If you stop learning and you stop wanting to learn, and you stop having the desire to learn, oh man, you might as well just give up and lock yourself not come out. I can't understand why somebody when I was younger, and my mom to this day she's almost eighty seven, loves to tell this story to anybody that will listen to when you were younger, you used to go to the bookshelf and grab the encyclopedia and sit there and read it for hours on end. She's not wrong, but I've always had that lifelong knowledge, lifelong first knowledge a lot better term. But what it's also done is it's allowed me to have a head full of completely useless knowledge almost anything, including music. And you know, it's funny. You and I talked about this a little bit in some of our communication ahead of the today's show. One of the things that I love the most about music is just the artists and the lyrics and the rhythms and the melodies and everything that goes into a song, even the most basic, you know, let's call it instrumental dance hit,

37:11 right up to the most complex rock anthems, to the sonatas and sweets and everything that goes into classical music. There is something that magical about the way all of that's put together. So one of the things that I did, now, again let's keep in mind, this is the early nineties, this is before the internet, and it's two o'clock in the morning, and I had nothing else to do. All we had in the studio, I kid you, now, it was a little black and White TV, so basically me and ABC World News. Now overnight, we had a book by Joel Whitburn, who was a writer for Billboard magazine and spent many many years with them. At that point, had we had a book in the studio of every song that had cracked the Hot one hundred from nineteen fifty five to nineteen ninety. I must have read that book cover to cover a million times. And what it allowed me to do is be able to tell you, probably within a year or so of when a song came out, who's sang it, and approximately the position that it hit on the Hot one hundred. So, like I said, I mean a had full of useless musical knowledge, but it was always great because going through time, I mean, you heard a song and you could go look it up and it was It was cool too because it kind of gave you a little bit of detail on the song of music and who the performers were in

38:43 the different things, the genre and everything. So it wasn't wasted information. It was it was knowledge for you. Yeah, and then it was something. More to talk about. And tried to have this conversation with my husband the other day, like it's well, it was a deeper conversation on a different subject, but kind of the same as to you just become broader, like a broader human being, because then you can relate to different people of different talents, and you might not know exactly what they know, but you can generalize and have a relative conversation in understanding. And that's what it's all about it. I don't think anything we learn is ever useless.

39:24 We could always apply it or reference it in some way. Well, I'll tell you it helps me when a few pub trivia nights here and there, so I'm not go live and I did, Okay, But it really is because here's the other thing about having all that information and knowing it is that, aside from sitting there watching Jeopardy and thinking that you could do it, they can do it. Ain't that easy. It does help people if you know something and they're in a particular situation and you say, well, you know what I had once heard that X, Y and Z will happen if you do this, and then it kind of pertains to their situation. In fact, I mean, the funny thing about it is, after when I first started dating my wife and introduced to her family and her uh, Uh, my wife's names, asked her mother, So what you think about Ken? And her response and her New York accent was always very knowledgeable, So you know, knowing stuff has its privileges.

40:27 It does. It does. Now I want to play a little bit because it's I'm in my second season, and I promise some of my fans that I would play a little bit during my show before I do that, because I know you're gonna you're gonna stay with me here for a few minutes, Can you please share with our audiences out there? You're an official for football, you are in Brower County. How do listeners out there connect with you if they want to learn more about what you do or how to get involved with you and and what you do. Absolutely, we have a website. It's the brow It's Browered Football Officials Association website, and on that you have anything that you might want to know about becoming high school football official, anything that you want to know about getting involved in it, things that you would need, equipment that you would need, everything like that. So prower Football Officials, Yes, it's Proward Football Officials, sorry, not association. And then you you can learn what you need to and there's a you know, if you have an email, you can go ahead and put it into the email address. And I'm on the board of directors there, so I pick on the website as well too.

41:52 Yeah to know, I would like to play for you and my listeners out there, a little something. Music is. As we mentioned in our show today, I didn't wake up and just play piano. I've been playing a really long time and I can't explain it. I'm also a music teacher. I don't teach what I play for the fact that I don't have any sheet music, so I kind of pick up the energy from where you're at. I'm here in my home studio. I'm picking up the energy here and I'm just going to play a little something. It is Monday. It is the end of the day here in the East Coast of the United States, and even if you're on the West Coast it's midday, it's still Monday. And wherever you're tuning in from in Europe, wherever you are, just sit back and relax. If you're driving, don't close your eyes. If you are in a space in a place and you want to close your eyes, go for it.

43:25 The h m hm h M hm.

44:22 Hm hm h. Ken. Thank you so much for being here with us today. It's been a pleasure having you on. And yeah, to our listeners out there, sports and being a musician, there's not a lot of difference. And and yes, you're you're being an official is like being the conductor of an orchestra and I love that what you do. And and for listeners out there, please tell us one more time how to get in touch with you through the website. Yeah, Prowurdfootballofficials dot com. We have a contact form there so you can you can head over there and find a way to leave a message. And by the way, the best part of some of the games I've done, Lisa March at halftime. They say that again, I said, the best part of some of the games that I've done over the years has been the marching band at halftime.

45:25 Marching band, It's the best part of high school football. I love that. In closing, can please if you don't mind, do you have any last minute inspirational words for our listeners that you know are thinking about getting involved in either football or music or just something different. Follow your passion, follow your heart, don't be afraid to try something different. If I was afraid to try something different, I wouldn't have wound uphish eating football and enjoy life and have a past, work hard from nine to five, but strive to be the best you can. Not only at that, but whatever you strive to do on the outside and try different things, life will be much much better and more fulfilling if you do that.

46:14 Absolutely. And last night a conversation I had with my husband it was what is your escape? Like, what is your escape? And I'm like, oh, well, it's my piano. I play piano, right, So we all need a healthy, quote unquote healthy, healthy escape because life can be challenging. Yes, my life, you know so. But we don't want to live on that on that street where it's challenge all the time. We want to enjoy our life. Yes. So there's about one minute left to the show for my listeners, thank you for joining us today. Tune in next week. I'm not going to tell you who my guest is, but I have another fabulous guest next week, So you got to tune in then next week at four pm Eastern time, one pm specific time, if I can say that right, specific time, specific time. Yeahs enough, but can thank you so much we will be in touch, we will talk and and everybody else out there, have a bus a day, be safe wherever you are. Thank you for tuning in smile just because it's easy and you can. And there's always something to be thankful for always, And let music live on through all of us. And let's keep music alive by keeping it real, right, keep it real, that's right. Thank you so much, everyone,