Discovering Life's Lessons Through Creativity

WEBVTT
00:00:00.440 --> 00:00:03.286
Hello, loved ones, and welcome, welcome.
00:00:03.286 --> 00:00:05.892
Welcome to this episode of Random Acts.
00:00:05.892 --> 00:00:07.243
I'm Chris Keaton.
00:00:07.243 --> 00:00:08.329
Here we go.
00:00:08.329 --> 00:00:18.512
Okay, I'm going to do this five things thing again.
00:00:18.512 --> 00:00:19.742
You may not like it.
00:00:19.742 --> 00:00:25.089
And if you don't like it, please let me know, because if you don't like it I'll turn it into 10 things that you don't know about.
00:00:25.089 --> 00:00:26.666
No, I'm just kidding.
00:00:26.666 --> 00:00:34.189
But anyway, here's five things you may or may not know about me and, again, you may not even care, but that's okay.
00:00:34.189 --> 00:00:38.148
Number one I'm not a rocket scientist.
00:00:38.148 --> 00:00:39.271
No, I'm not.
00:00:39.271 --> 00:00:48.207
Number two my uncle, however, was a nuclear physicist at Los Alamos, so he was a rocket scientist.
00:00:48.207 --> 00:00:58.665
Third thing and I just heard this one today from my buddy, andrew, I'm telling you my producer, bad decisions make for great stories.
00:00:58.665 --> 00:01:00.029
I love that.
00:01:00.029 --> 00:01:07.884
All right, one of my neighbors in Nashville was Pee Wee Herman's sister.
00:01:07.884 --> 00:01:11.227
Yeah, can't make that shit up, I'm telling you, all right.
00:01:11.307 --> 00:01:19.492
And number five seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan February, brother and I suddenly decided we wanted to play in a band.
00:01:19.492 --> 00:01:34.271
Well, it didn't happen right away, but within a couple of years, we had a neighborhood band startup.
00:01:34.271 --> 00:01:37.248
Yeah, so I wanted to be in the band.
00:01:37.248 --> 00:01:48.709
I already played a little bit of piano and fancied myself a singer, but I came to the meeting of the guys that were going to put a band together and they said, hey, we'd love to have you, but you got to play something.
00:01:48.709 --> 00:01:49.760
I'm like, well, I play piano.
00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:50.882
Well, we got a piano player.
00:01:50.882 --> 00:01:54.850
And I'm like, ok, so talk to my dad.
00:01:54.850 --> 00:01:57.841
My dad said, well, look, I'll take you to the music store.
00:01:57.841 --> 00:02:00.885
Let's figure this out, we'll see if we can find you something to play.
00:02:00.885 --> 00:02:02.028
And I'm like, sweet.
00:02:02.028 --> 00:02:10.407
He said, though, the only way I'll do it is if you will take lessons and play in the band at school.
00:02:10.407 --> 00:02:12.491
And I was like, sweet, I'm in.
00:02:13.473 --> 00:02:18.650
So we go to the music store downtown Roanoke, walk in, we see a trumpet.
00:02:18.650 --> 00:02:21.141
My dad says, oh, look, there's a trumpet, that's pretty cool.
00:02:21.141 --> 00:02:24.789
I'm like I don't know, don't know, no offense trumpet players.
00:02:24.789 --> 00:02:27.842
And then we walk by a saxophone.
00:02:27.842 --> 00:02:29.425
He said, look, there's a sax.
00:02:29.425 --> 00:02:32.432
He said you know, chicks dig sax players.
00:02:32.432 --> 00:02:36.290
And I'm like, hey, let's stop right there, I'll take one of those.
00:02:36.290 --> 00:02:39.259
So that's how I became a sax player.
00:02:39.259 --> 00:02:42.903
And, it is true, ladies do love sax players.
00:02:42.903 --> 00:02:44.325
It's just the reality of it.
00:02:44.325 --> 00:03:01.133
So look, all of that to say being a musician, being any kind of creative, we're all storytellers and it's all about the stories that we tell and you know the people that we meet through those stories.
00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:08.502
So with that I want to say, my guest today is a neighbor of mine, a guy named Sam Dean.
00:03:08.502 --> 00:03:16.342
He's a very creative dude, really really cool guy, and I'm very happy and in just a few minutes you're going to get to meet him.
00:03:16.342 --> 00:03:18.645
All right, hang on, hang on.
00:03:18.645 --> 00:03:27.775
If the chemistry is solid, we'll get it fun.
00:03:27.775 --> 00:03:32.268
Oh no, you saw me fall.
00:03:32.268 --> 00:03:34.293
Just can't say no.
00:03:34.640 --> 00:03:37.032
What's wrong with feeling?
00:03:37.032 --> 00:03:40.919
It might be better than it was before.
00:03:40.919 --> 00:03:43.868
What's wrong with feeling?
00:03:43.868 --> 00:03:49.772
You know, I really enjoy this part of the show more than just hearing myself blabber.
00:03:49.772 --> 00:03:52.168
But I mean, maybe you like to hear me blabber.
00:03:52.168 --> 00:03:53.365
In fact I hope that you do.
00:03:53.365 --> 00:04:04.620
But now I'm going to give the opportunity to a dear friend of mine to also blabber along with me, because I think two blabbers are better than one, probably.
00:04:04.620 --> 00:04:09.330
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to meet my friend, sam Dean.
00:04:09.330 --> 00:04:10.413
Sam, how are you?
00:04:10.413 --> 00:04:11.914
I'm doing great, chris, how are you?
00:04:11.914 --> 00:04:12.400
Thanks for having me.
00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:13.122
Fantastic man.
00:04:13.122 --> 00:04:14.427
I mean, don't I look good?
00:04:14.427 --> 00:04:21.271
You always look good, chris, you just drafted me and I know, you know, that was an easy fishing compliment right there.
00:04:21.271 --> 00:04:24.841
Thank you for making that so easy you made it easy compliment right there.
00:04:24.800 --> 00:04:25.199
That was thank you for making that so easy.
00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:35.427
Okay, so when gina and I moved back to virginia and started spending more time, you were one of the first people that I met in the neighborhood.
00:04:35.427 --> 00:04:42.908
And then I come to find out that you're a brilliant, ultra creative kind of guy, which what I mean yeah, you are.
00:04:42.908 --> 00:04:55.488
I mean, you're a photographer, you're a videographer, you're a filmmaker and I'm doing it in the backwards order but a great dad and a great husband as well.
00:04:55.488 --> 00:04:57.319
Also, a pretty good neighbor.
00:04:57.319 --> 00:04:58.081
I mean.
00:04:58.081 --> 00:05:02.413
I know that every now and then, your yard is like mine, not good.
00:05:03.060 --> 00:05:05.767
I do pick up after my dog, if that makes me a good one.
00:05:06.108 --> 00:05:07.492
Well, that does yeah.
00:05:08.279 --> 00:05:09.927
Some people don't I know.
00:05:11.440 --> 00:05:13.709
But we won't name names today, will we?
00:05:14.019 --> 00:05:17.355
Well, push me far enough we might.
00:05:17.495 --> 00:05:21.105
Yeah, okay, so tell me about.
00:05:21.105 --> 00:05:25.512
So, first off, you started as a photographer, correct?
00:05:25.952 --> 00:05:26.615
Yeah, yeah.
00:05:26.615 --> 00:05:27.862
So yeah, I'm.
00:05:27.862 --> 00:05:31.108
Well, let's see.
00:05:31.108 --> 00:05:38.750
What brought me to the Roanoke Valley was working at the Roanoke Times and I started that work in 1999.
00:05:38.750 --> 00:05:49.689
I came here at the tail end of my college career at the University of Montana and a friend of mine had come out the previous summer for an internship and he said, hey, you got to go to this place, place Roanoke.
00:05:49.689 --> 00:06:12.649
They got some things happening there, so drove all the way across the country from Montana and spent a summer here and enjoyed it and, you know, went back, graduated, was working down at the Miami Herald on an internship that was turning into a year contract position and had to make some decisions there and just not much of a South Florida type of guy.
00:06:12.649 --> 00:06:18.069
Probably, career-wise I'd been better thing to do, but the job came up in here.
00:06:18.069 --> 00:06:20.206
It came in 2000.
00:06:20.206 --> 00:06:24.665
Planned was to stay for a couple years and get back out west because I have a Western heart.
00:06:24.665 --> 00:06:32.790
But I met a beautiful girl from Lynchburg and here we are, you know, almost 25 years later, 26 years later.
00:06:33.079 --> 00:06:35.648
And you're still here, but the Roanoke Times is kind of not.
00:06:35.648 --> 00:06:38.725
Yeah Right, I mean, I think I just came in the.
00:06:38.764 --> 00:06:40.129
we all knew it even then.
00:06:40.129 --> 00:06:45.584
Yeah, I came right in at the tail end of you know we I came right in at the tail end of you know we would think it was a traditional newspaper age.
00:06:45.584 --> 00:06:50.286
They could never figure out a way to monetize it.
00:06:50.286 --> 00:06:55.331
Their old method of doing things and a lot of it unfortunately has failed.
00:06:55.331 --> 00:07:02.355
But a lot of really good, thoughtful journalists who work there are still in the area doing other things, thankfully.
00:07:02.355 --> 00:07:04.077
Those are all good people.
00:07:07.139 --> 00:07:08.122
Thankful for them.
00:07:08.122 --> 00:07:26.355
So you kind of rolled from that into, instead of doing just still photography, doing videography and and I mean I call it filmmaking because you're a storyteller yeah, so, um, I'm a commercial filmmaker now and photography director, director of photography.
00:07:27.440 --> 00:07:48.545
That that kind of came about, you know, when video and usage of video and images becoming more ubiquitous across the Internet in the late 90s and early 2000s, and even in print journalism people were making the transition to online stuff, we were doing a lot more video works.
00:07:48.545 --> 00:08:16.190
I'd done that limitedly and when I, when I left uh, the roanoke times just seeing the writing on the wall, um, having no other useful skills, I always say I just started my own, my own small photography production company, um, I went out and I took my book of photos to a little advertising agency here in town who I still work with they're wonderful people, McHugh Harris and I said, hey, can I do some photography work for you?
00:08:16.190 --> 00:08:21.569
And the guy listened to me very patiently, david McHugh, and he said photography's great, but do you do video work?
00:08:21.569 --> 00:08:23.968
And I was like, yeah, of course.
00:08:24.048 --> 00:08:24.309
I do.
00:08:27.081 --> 00:08:28.242
We all know these creative fields.
00:08:28.242 --> 00:08:30.007
You know sort of fake it till you make it.
00:08:30.007 --> 00:08:32.921
I had a new just enough to uh, just enough to be dangerous.
00:08:32.921 --> 00:08:42.908
My brother, however, was living up in brooklyn and had gone to film school, and so they hired me to to direct a tourism film for having done, and so I called him up.
00:08:42.908 --> 00:08:45.514
I was like hey, can you come down and shadow direct this thing for me?
00:08:45.514 --> 00:08:50.792
And he did, and we shot that back in 2012.
00:08:50.792 --> 00:08:54.009
And that got me started in the tourism world.
00:08:54.009 --> 00:08:57.750
So that's primarily what I do now is I work in the tourism sector.
00:08:57.750 --> 00:09:16.326
Visit Virginia, especially one of my bigger clients, visit North Carolina, but I've worked with Virgin Islands, places in California let's see where you're doing stuff for New York state next month and Kentucky A lot, of, a lot of different places.
00:09:16.326 --> 00:09:18.567
I would never have predicted that that's where I'd end up.
00:09:19.600 --> 00:09:23.798
Yeah, but you know I mean, unfortunately you do have to go a lot of places that suck like the.
00:09:23.837 --> 00:09:23.999
Virgin.
00:09:24.701 --> 00:09:25.263
Islands, I mean.
00:09:25.263 --> 00:09:40.092
So I'm curious about this, because so one of the bands that I was in, some genius agent, had us going to Thunder Bay, canada, thunder Bay, ontario, canada, in January and February one year.
00:09:40.092 --> 00:09:43.034
And I'm thinking to myself, you know, florida would have worked a little better.
00:09:43.034 --> 00:09:55.355
So do you think you can get it to the point where you're in the Virgin Islands, like December, january, instead of with all due respect to New York State, but I mean, you know it is, it's winter.
00:09:55.784 --> 00:10:00.609
Well, you've got skiing and you've got a lot of winter activities we're going to be around Lake Placid and everything.
00:10:00.889 --> 00:10:03.355
From what I understand, haven't seen full schedule yet.
00:10:03.355 --> 00:10:05.298
So there's that.
00:10:05.298 --> 00:10:06.908
Virgin Islands.
00:10:06.908 --> 00:10:11.812
Their season is November to March, so that's when we've gone down there.
00:10:11.812 --> 00:10:15.215
We didn't get down there this December.
00:10:15.215 --> 00:10:22.436
Actually this was when I was there last year producing brand film for them with one of the agencies that I work with.
00:10:22.436 --> 00:10:37.277
But yeah, that's kind of my deal, it's a kind of you know, everybody has different seasons, but yeah, no, it's fun, it's wonderful going to these places, you know, but it's sometimes 10, 12 days in a row of 15-hour days.
00:10:37.277 --> 00:10:42.856
So, you know, film production, life is wonderful, but it's very hard work.
00:10:43.278 --> 00:10:44.951
Yeah, it's not glamorous.
00:10:44.951 --> 00:10:47.692
It has moments of glamour.
00:10:48.186 --> 00:11:00.596
I was watching the guys out pouring a concrete slab in your driveway this morning in these cold mornings, and you know these guys work in a house construction down the street and I was like I'm glad I'm not out swinging the hammer this morning, so you know.
00:11:00.725 --> 00:11:18.548
There is a lot to be thankful for right there, yeah, that I'm not out switching camera this morning, so you know there is a lot to be thankful for right there, yeah, so when you're just me being curious, when you're putting together to try to present the story of, like I've seen some of the stuff that you've done for, like, the city of portsmouth, I don't, I'm not sure that that's exactly what, but it was centered in city of portsmouth.
00:11:18.548 --> 00:11:19.070
City of Portsmouth.
00:11:19.070 --> 00:11:30.461
There is a whole arc to the narrative in like a you know, 30, 60, 90 second video.
00:11:30.461 --> 00:11:32.491
Yeah, how in the world do you do that?
00:11:33.125 --> 00:11:36.371
Well, at this point in time I do.
00:11:36.371 --> 00:11:39.839
I don't do a whole lot of the concepting anymore.
00:11:39.839 --> 00:12:00.836
A lot of times I work with advertising agencies and creative directors and so they kind of have this vision, you know, this kind of loose, loose idea of what they want to create according to the brand guidelines for the client, you know, and so it's storytelling in that sense and we're kind of coming in, I think, the one with Portsmouth.
00:12:00.836 --> 00:12:04.350
The idea for my friend Todd is a creative director.
00:12:04.350 --> 00:12:09.339
There is people overlook Portsmouth because you've got Virginia Beach and Williamsburg and that sort of thing.
00:12:09.379 --> 00:12:09.639
Right.
00:12:09.924 --> 00:12:17.719
And the whole entire idea is to say, hey, you know, it's to get a lot of local travel in there and to show some of their history and things like that.
00:12:17.719 --> 00:12:20.201
So that's kind of what we go with is, you know, creative director will come up with a campaign.
00:12:20.201 --> 00:12:28.533
That's kind of what we go with is is you know, creative director will come up with a campaign, and then it's sort of my idea is that the director of photography or the during the jerk on the film is to figure out how we're going to execute that.
00:12:28.673 --> 00:12:28.835
Yeah.
00:12:29.184 --> 00:12:32.514
And with lighting and camera angles and directing and talent, those sort of things.
00:12:33.035 --> 00:12:42.394
Well, one of the other ones that I've seen is again and this goes to like, I guess visit North Carolina, but mainly in the mountains, like some of the ski stuff that you did last year.
00:12:42.394 --> 00:12:44.056
So tell me about that.
00:12:44.056 --> 00:12:47.457
I mean, cause there was obviously some action on your part.
00:12:47.457 --> 00:12:49.559
You weren't just standing there shooting.
00:12:49.960 --> 00:12:50.240
Well.
00:12:50.240 --> 00:13:00.533
So it's interesting, we actually have another shoot with um, with one of my clients I do a lot of mountain work is a beach mountain town, a beach mountain down in North Carolina, both the resort and the town.
00:13:00.533 --> 00:13:12.037
And yes, I've always been pretty active in the outdoors and will be 50 this year and I'm starting to have to think about pumping the brakes a little bit with that.
00:13:12.037 --> 00:13:14.049
But follow cam skiing.
00:13:14.049 --> 00:13:22.734
You know where you're skiing with the camera, following somebody who is skiing or snowboarding with the camera, and you know you have to have a certain amount of skill to do that.
00:13:22.784 --> 00:13:35.793
I'm a decently skilled skier but I have on my left shoulder I have a broken collarbone of skiing photography incidents, and then on my right one I was doing mountain biking.
00:13:35.793 --> 00:13:45.557
I also would beach mountain out in the wintertime, but in summertime the summer, as I probably told you and was running with a gimbal chasing mountainers and dislocated my right shoulder.
00:13:45.557 --> 00:13:53.716
So my wife, as we're going down there in January, she's like you're not allowed to do that stuff anymore, you're going to have to find a different way.
00:13:53.985 --> 00:13:57.296
So the brakes have shown up, yeah in the form of my wife.
00:13:58.225 --> 00:14:00.691
She's like there's some bad juju at that place.
00:14:00.691 --> 00:14:05.873
You just let the younger guys do that or something, and I've got a great crew of guys that I work with at this point.
00:14:05.873 --> 00:14:06.014
Now.
00:14:06.014 --> 00:14:08.273
It's more directing and less camera operating.
00:14:08.273 --> 00:14:17.476
I still do a lot of still photography, but in terms of the film work, it's more sitting there with a monitor and letting the young guys off the cameras.
00:14:23.365 --> 00:14:30.158
So, getting yourself into photography, was it the love of light and just the way that light works differently?
00:14:30.158 --> 00:14:39.894
I mean, like where we live in Virginia, you can look at the mountains around our house and five minutes later they look completely different, just because of the lighting.
00:14:39.894 --> 00:14:43.032
Yeah, is that what got you into photography or what did completely?
00:14:43.052 --> 00:14:44.636
different just because of the lighting.
00:14:44.636 --> 00:14:46.623
Yeah, is that what got you into photography, or what did you know?
00:14:46.623 --> 00:14:50.474
It's hard to say Probably like a lot of kids who grew up in the 70s and 80s and probably, I'm sure, before that.
00:14:50.474 --> 00:14:50.639
We had to.
00:14:50.639 --> 00:14:53.600
You know, you remember we always have this massive collection of National Geographic.
00:14:53.841 --> 00:14:54.020
Yeah.
00:14:54.586 --> 00:14:59.970
The house there, you know, and I would thumb through those things and unfortunately even that's become a thing of the past.
00:14:59.970 --> 00:15:06.519
But I traveled a lot as a kid and I still enjoy traveling.
00:15:06.519 --> 00:15:21.572
I think looking at the images in those magazines and culture and wanting to create something kind of instilled that desire inside of me.
00:15:21.572 --> 00:15:24.797
And I started off as an art major and an English major in school, switched over to journalism but picked up a camera.
00:15:24.797 --> 00:15:26.278
My senior year of high school got more into it.
00:15:26.278 --> 00:15:37.277
My freshman year of college Changed schools and went to the photojournalism program and so I think that's sort of you know, backed into it.
00:15:37.277 --> 00:15:38.339
You know what I mean.
00:15:40.206 --> 00:15:47.320
Now I look back at it and I really do enjoy storytelling, but I wish that I'd probably gone to film school rather than journalism school.
00:15:47.320 --> 00:15:48.025
Of course you know.
00:15:48.025 --> 00:15:48.547
You just don't.
00:15:48.547 --> 00:15:53.778
You don't know this, these things, until you to you experience them.
00:15:53.778 --> 00:15:54.386
But you know a lot.
00:15:54.386 --> 00:15:55.150
I hear a lot of people.
00:15:55.150 --> 00:15:58.975
It's like Werner Herzog would never advocate going to film school.
00:15:58.975 --> 00:16:00.869
He's like just get a camera and go tell a story.
00:16:00.908 --> 00:16:05.038
Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, and I, I mean, I think that that there's a lot of merit to that.
00:16:05.038 --> 00:16:12.816
And going back to what you said earlier about fake it till you make it, I mean, you know, music business with me was the same way.
00:16:12.816 --> 00:16:14.807
I would just show up and somebody would ask me something.
00:16:14.807 --> 00:16:19.107
If I needed to, I would tell them a lie and then I would go learn how to do what they asked me to do.
00:16:19.107 --> 00:16:39.109
That's right, but mean, I think that and this is not a message to all you young folks out there However, I think that the question ought to be asked before you get ready to go and commit for four years of school somewhere, you have to start thinking about is that going to get me from point A to point B?
00:16:39.109 --> 00:16:40.250
Because I don't think that.
00:16:40.250 --> 00:16:44.948
Well, at least with me, there was no clear direction from A to B.
00:16:45.751 --> 00:16:53.696
Yeah, no for sure, and most of the in terms of journalism, some of the best photographers that I know of don't have degrees in photography or journalism.
00:16:53.696 --> 00:16:57.613
James Knockley, I think he's probably a preeminent war photographer out there.
00:16:57.613 --> 00:17:03.456
He's getting older these days, but if you look up his work you'll see some heartbreaking, amazing stuff.
00:17:03.456 --> 00:17:04.589
I think he had a degree in history.
00:17:04.589 --> 00:17:10.939
One of the current recent Pulitzer Prize winners actually interned with us at the Rundown Times.
00:17:10.939 --> 00:17:18.858
His name is Marcus Yan Wow and he was a smart kid and I can't remember what he studied, but he didn't study journalism.
00:17:19.244 --> 00:17:25.151
It might have been economics or something like that study journalism, it would you know, might have been economics or something.
00:17:25.151 --> 00:17:31.571
Yeah, um, and so I think people who are just curious about the world and then then find their way into it, I think the same things would look at me as filmmaking very, very passionate.
00:17:31.571 --> 00:17:37.394
Um, you know about what I do now, but uh, um, yeah, wouldn't have predicted this is where I was going to end up.
00:17:37.394 --> 00:17:47.294
So, like you're saying you just kind of you know, but but there's the other side of it too, is and this is again going back to the ubiquity of images.
00:17:47.354 --> 00:17:56.467
These days you have so many young people that think, because I see all this imagery out there, I can do it and I should be able.
00:17:56.467 --> 00:18:00.135
I should be where you are at 49 years old when I'm 22.
00:18:00.135 --> 00:18:04.135
Yeah, and there's the whole entire notion of the 10,000 hours, right?
00:18:04.135 --> 00:18:10.229
So with photography I've had 10,000 hours and 10,000 hours and 10,000 hours and filmmaking.
00:18:10.229 --> 00:18:12.555
Maybe I'm getting close to my first 10,000.
00:18:12.555 --> 00:18:12.935
I don't know.
00:18:12.935 --> 00:18:14.551
I still have a lot to learn.
00:18:14.551 --> 00:18:30.016
I'm enjoying learning about it, but there's a process that balance between confidence and yourself and your work and your creativity and your vision and your drive for that, and also some humility in realizing you know you've got to pay your dues and you've got to learn.
00:18:30.016 --> 00:18:31.038
You've got to always be learning.
00:18:31.244 --> 00:18:32.892
Yeah, and I totally agree.
00:18:32.892 --> 00:18:35.153
I mean, if you ever stop learning, you're done.
00:18:35.153 --> 00:18:35.634
You know.
00:18:35.634 --> 00:18:47.099
And the other side of that the confidence coin is, you know, come in one way it's humility, the other way is arrogance, which is a whole other thing, you know.
00:18:47.099 --> 00:18:50.815
I mean that's confidence with nothing to stand on, absolutely.
00:18:51.405 --> 00:19:00.769
And I feel like when I run into young people in my industry, you very seldom do you find someone who's balanced in both, and maybe none of us are fully.
00:19:00.769 --> 00:19:00.990
I don't.
00:19:00.990 --> 00:19:21.430
I think is what requires the work, but most of the time you've got a young person who's just super ambitious and they're real, go get and they get a lot of energy, but they're arrogant, you know, and they don't know what they don't know, and they've got to be humbled, naturally.
00:19:22.141 --> 00:19:30.250
Or you have somebody who has the skills and the work ethic and they're quiet but they lack the confidence to step out and keep going on their own.
00:19:32.762 --> 00:19:35.990
And it is balance and it's finding your own.
00:19:35.990 --> 00:19:38.866
You know you gotta, and you gotta, find your way through that Sure.
00:19:38.866 --> 00:19:41.588
Well, sam, thank you for being my guest today.
00:19:41.588 --> 00:19:44.048
I want you to please tell everybody how they can find you.
00:19:44.308 --> 00:19:48.892
Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram and SDinPhotos.
00:19:48.892 --> 00:19:53.547
My website is samdinfotographycom.
00:19:53.547 --> 00:19:54.869
Beautiful.
00:19:55.411 --> 00:19:56.573
Well, Sam, thank you very much.
00:19:56.573 --> 00:19:59.045
I appreciate you being one of my random acts.
00:19:59.326 --> 00:20:03.121
Hey, I'm always proud to be a random act or something.
00:20:03.121 --> 00:20:05.968
Hopefully it's a good act.
00:20:06.008 --> 00:20:06.569
Thank you, my brother.
00:20:06.589 --> 00:20:06.951
All right.
00:20:07.111 --> 00:20:07.592
Thanks, chris.
00:20:07.592 --> 00:20:17.767
All right, yeah, that was my buddy, sam Dean, and I'm telling you, as you can see, there's always a through line, there's always some kind of story to the storytellers.
00:20:17.767 --> 00:20:22.851
And as we go through, random Acts, as we go forward, that's what we're going to talk about.
00:20:22.851 --> 00:20:29.076
We're going to talk about storytellers and the stories and we're going to even make up stories as we go along, probably.
00:20:29.076 --> 00:20:36.088
But I'm telling you so leaning back into me, seeing the Beatles and it changing my life.
00:20:37.214 --> 00:20:49.045
Interestingly enough, when I was in a band in the 70s called High and Mighty, I met a guy who actually showed up at a nightclub when my saxophone I had popped a spring off of it and I'm trying to fix it.
00:20:49.045 --> 00:20:52.383
This dude walks into the dressing room, says, hey, man, can I help you?
00:20:52.383 --> 00:20:53.968
And I'm like sure.
00:20:53.968 --> 00:21:00.464
And he said well, I just graduated instrument school, instrument repair school, and maybe I can fix that for you.
00:21:00.464 --> 00:21:01.689
And I'm like, yeah, okay, what?
00:21:01.689 --> 00:21:04.902
So I gave him the sax and, boom, like that, he fixed it.
00:21:04.902 --> 00:21:07.684
Well, we hired him right away.
00:21:07.684 --> 00:21:11.670
He became our third member of the road crew.
00:21:11.670 --> 00:21:15.734
The other two guys treated him like a dirt bag.
00:21:15.734 --> 00:21:18.145
It was awful, but Phil's a very smart guy.
00:21:18.599 --> 00:21:28.603
Phil Romano was his name, and one of the funniest things that ever happened, though, was we were getting ready to leave Wilmington, north Carolina, early one morning.
00:21:28.603 --> 00:21:38.474
Pulling out of the motel, he throws his suitcase into the back of the truck and forgets to pull the back of the van down.
00:21:38.474 --> 00:21:42.691
So they take off and the back of the truck is wide open.
00:21:42.691 --> 00:21:48.104
His suitcase falls out Before they realize it and stop.
00:21:48.104 --> 00:21:53.413
Some car drives by, a random car picks up the, the suitcase, puts it in the car and takes off.
00:21:53.413 --> 00:21:56.148
So phil is like freaking out.
00:21:56.148 --> 00:21:58.175
The other two guys are laughing.
00:21:58.175 --> 00:21:59.480
They think it's the funniest thing ever.
00:21:59.480 --> 00:22:10.801
So they pull into a place to have breakfast, they sit down and the the two main guys are sitting there and and they're thinking you know, we really should apologize to him, we shouldn't have laughed at him.
00:22:10.801 --> 00:22:24.306
So phil comes walking over with his tray of food and he's also got an iced tea on there, and as he got ready to sit down, kid Funk, one of the other road guys, looked at him and said hey, man, I'm really sorry, we shouldn't have laughed at you.
00:22:24.306 --> 00:22:31.528
Well, phil tripped and the iced tea went all over Kid Funk's breakfast and all into his lap.
00:22:31.528 --> 00:22:33.731
So he stood up and said what the hell with you?
00:22:33.731 --> 00:22:37.256
You, son of a gun, I don't care, we're going to laugh at you anyway.
00:22:37.256 --> 00:22:42.652
So, anyway, instant karma right there.
00:22:43.019 --> 00:22:52.211
I don't know why I told that story, but yes, I do know why I told it, because Phil Romano has, for the last 25 years, been Paul McCartney's piano tech.
00:22:52.211 --> 00:22:53.534
There it is.
00:22:53.534 --> 00:22:55.585
That's how shit works out sometimes.
00:22:55.585 --> 00:22:57.750
I'm just telling you Okay, all right.
00:22:57.750 --> 00:23:02.330
So I want to talk to you one more time about this new project I got.
00:23:02.330 --> 00:23:05.803
It's called the Song Inside you and what it is.
00:23:06.002 --> 00:23:10.644
I am aiming at people my age 40 to 70 years old, somewhere in between.
00:23:10.644 --> 00:23:13.728
There you probably loved music your whole life.
00:23:13.728 --> 00:23:19.064
You probably started out in a band, but then you had a career come along that you had to go and you had to make money and do things.
00:23:19.064 --> 00:23:22.271
Well, now you're at the point in your life where you made the money.
00:23:22.271 --> 00:23:33.575
You've done a lot of things, but you never realized your dream of being a songwriter, making a song, having it you know, a demo of it created.
00:23:33.575 --> 00:23:35.742
So what we have put together is a program for you.
00:23:35.742 --> 00:23:38.333
I am going to connect you with hit songwriters.
00:23:38.333 --> 00:23:40.942
I mean proven hit songwriters from Nashville.
00:23:41.502 --> 00:23:42.967
You get yourself to Nashville.
00:23:42.967 --> 00:23:48.045
We put you up in a killer hotel, you have a songwriting session with that hit songwriter.
00:23:48.045 --> 00:23:50.230
You put together a song.
00:23:50.230 --> 00:23:57.306
The very next day you go on a killer studio with unbelievable musicians and you do a demo of the song.
00:23:57.306 --> 00:24:05.603
And then the third day, you fly home with a cd or an mp3 or whatever format we'll be using tomorrow of your song.
00:24:05.603 --> 00:24:06.584
How cool is that.
00:24:06.584 --> 00:24:13.131
So if you're interested at all, please go to the website thesonginsideofyoucom.
00:24:13.131 --> 00:24:14.292
Yes, thesonginsideyoucom.
00:24:14.292 --> 00:24:19.103
I'll get it right one of these days.
00:24:19.103 --> 00:24:22.891
Or reach out to me, chris, at chriskeatoncom.
00:24:22.891 --> 00:24:25.183
I'll be happy to tell you all about the program.
00:24:25.183 --> 00:24:31.305
Also, don't forget, I've got two books out there right now Dapper and Confidence on the Fly.
00:24:31.305 --> 00:24:32.448
You can get them.
00:24:32.448 --> 00:24:35.733
You can purchase them from me, chris, at chriskeatoncom.
00:24:35.733 --> 00:24:57.182
Anyway, thank you for being here for this episode of Random Acts, and all I can say right here is thank you, hey, hey, hey.