Hey, folks, we have John Burton on today as our guest.
John is a podcaster, a professional musician, producer,
writer, dad, surfer, songwriter and a close hound.
The Sunlight Moonlight podcast starts now.
That is some chorus.
Like that's a lot of people.
Live.
I think it's very cool how that so the sort of the size of the chorus
and the amount of people.
I think when you think about it, it like is commensurate
with the power of the song and the message that's that's trying to get
across there as far as I mean, the song.
So the song won't be broken.
This is the brainchild of our guest today, John Burton here on the
Sunlight Moonlight podcast.
John's a friend and a neighbor of mine and we've known each other a few years.
And the last few months has been completely fascinating to watch
everything that John has been doing around the song and this idea that he had.
I don't know if I've ever seen someone sort of like, you know, John,
John lives a very documented life.
And so watching him sort of come up with this idea publicly and sort of say,
you know, he's a guy who's sort of like says what he's going to do and then does it.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then and then says, hey, look what I did.
And it's amazing.
So this is a this is a song that was created by John.
The won't be broken as the name of the song.
And it's really the the lifted project is the sort of idea around the song
and the idea is to bring.
Awareness to John's these four charities that John has chosen for in and around
the Hudson Valley.
So we've got Hudson River Housing, Berkshire Center for Children,
Hudson Valley Animal Rescue and Kidney for Clark.
These are four major charities that need attention and need care and feeding.
And John had this idea like, hey, let's do this.
Let's get all of these, you know, crazy talented musicians together in one place
to not only record this song, I think he referred to it as like the Hudson Valley
version of We Are The World.
But it's like, hey, what what can what does everybody want this, you know,
to sort of symbolize and to represent?
And so many of these people and these musicians, these talented folks
volunteered their time and energy and voted on these charities to say, hey,
like these are the charities we want to support.
And so it's really it's it's a totally fascinating thing.
The most fascinating thing I think about this song and John is that this
this song and the Lifted Project by John Burton
are like a drop in the bucket.
Regardless, just in John's life and everything that John is doing,
you know, writing music, performing music.
He's got so many irons in the fire.
Lot of you know what I mean?
Like, like, he's a busy guy, you know, and it's it's very inspiring.
So so let I think let's let's get them on, you know, because I think
we have we have a lot of ground to cover.
We do. And I think, you know, irons in the fire.
I mean, that's it's it's something that, you know, I think John has been doing
a long time. Hello, John. There he is.
Hey, guys. How are you, man?
I'm doing good, but I don't want to talk.
You guys talking about me is much more comfortable than me talking about you.
Let's just do an hour off, sit and and keep on.
You know, it's great. It's funny because if you weren't here,
Ryan and I would just sit here and talk about ourselves.
And so that's it's not.
All right. We're tired of talking about ourselves.
Not nearly as interesting, but I know way too much about Dom.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's there's not we have nothing left to talk about, Ryan.
That's why we started talking to other people.
Friendship ran its course.
So you started a podcast.
Basically, we got we got bored of each other and we said,
let's start bringing some other people into these conversations.
We need to start seeing other people.
That's right. That's right.
And now we're seeing John Burton here, man of many talents.
John and John's got a pretty fantastic journey.
I think, you know, the the the the marketing acumen and Ivy style.com
and the sort of origins of that along with some some personal stuff
and then graduating all the way to home from here,
which is John's fantastic podcast that's up to what, 150 episodes now.
Oh, thanks. Yeah, we posted 154.
Yes.
That's I mean, that's just incredible.
And then all the way through to the lifted project.
I want to get to all of it.
Ryan, do you do you want to kick us off here?
You had some really good ideas for John.
Well, yeah, I am.
John, it's something that really resonated with me and I want to just make sure I want to ask you.
You've had this a lot of this started from a mental health journey that you've been on.
Yes, sir.
I don't know if you want to get into that.
I was crazy.
I've been on a mental health journey myself and I really what what I've read really resonates with me.
Oh, wow. That's great.
Yeah.
Can you get into that a little bit?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Do we curse or do we not curse?
Go for it.
Okay, good.
Okay, good. So about 10 years ago, I'm facing 350 years in jail and I'm starting to break down and I could I could feel it.
I could feel my head cracking of mentally.
So through the legal system and through my own doctors, I wind up being diagnosed with seven different mental illnesses for which I get seven different medications.
Oh, my.
One of these medications and they're counter they're counter indicating and and I'm I'm not crazy anymore.
When I say crazy, I mean like sitting in your underwear with a BB gun looking for aliens crazy.
And by the way, and by the way, still being home at dinner as a dad and keeping that part that part was segregated.
So all the all these one of the medications I'm on is lithium and turns out if you're John, lithium is toxic.
So the drug that I'm taking so that I don't kill myself is actually killing me and I feel it.
So I go to my whole world and I say I take it myself, pull Turkey off the stop and everybody quit me.
My wife, everybody quit me.
Nobody wanted to be around the crazy.
And I did it called Turkey.
One person hung around with my daughter and she was seven at the time and we had a little house in North Salem or look in the reservoir and everybody left.
My daughter stayed and Trish would check in periodically.
She didn't complete.
And I detox with my daughter for a summer and it started of two weeks just in a just in towels, nothing but towels and ripping and changing the towels every three hours to, you know, a week of throwing up to chills.
I mean, it was nuts.
And I had decided I was going to take my own life at that point.
And I had a plan and the plan was get through the summer with pregnancy.
Grammarcy is my daughter get through the summer with Grammarcy and then when she's back in school and has a support network, take my life and it would go a little bit easier because there would be some distract.
So she she she's there through the rehab and she would she would call people and advocate for me at seven years old.
She would make peanut butter sandwiches.
She would force me to shower.
And when I could walk, she would take me outside and walk me in circles and make up these really elaborate long stories so that I would get fresh air because she knew I wouldn't interrupt her if I got fresh air.
If I got wish she was telling a story.
So as as the summer progresses, I start to feel a little bit better, but still going to take my life because there's still the whole 350 years in jail thing that's not going to go well.
So it's so the summer ends and I'm a day away from doing it.
And it dawns on me that if I do this, the only lesson Grammarcy is going to have for the rest of her life is all hard work leads to somebody dying.
And I couldn't have that.
So it's like said, all right, I'm going to have to manage myself another way.
And the way I the way I decided is I get up three four o'clock every single morning.
I do three handwritten pages of whatever it can be bullshit.
It can be watermelon.
It can be it can be the next great novel.
It can be anything I then meditate for half an hour.
I then make good decisions for the rest of the day until I mediate again in the afternoon.
And then I just make good decisions till I go to bed and doing that.
I've done that every day for about 10 years now.
I'm as close to clear as I think I'm going to get.
You seem clear.
I mean, you seem like I mean, you telling the story.
You were a completely different person.
Yes, sir.
I mean, yeah, I had a double.
Yeah, crazy.
I mean, do you.
Wow, it's almost like I mean, I'm trying to compare what you just told me to what I'm seeing now.
And it's like it's two different people.
It, you know, yeah, yeah, I manage it.
I mean, I treat it like I treat it and it may it may be gone.
But I still treat it like chronic condition.
I treat it like I have it every day.
Oh, yeah.
I manage it every day.
And yeah, and and my life is my life really has turned around because of it.
It's crazy because I mean, I literally met John on the street during COVID.
Or it was like right before COVID, you're like walking your dog.
Yeah.
And we just said hello.
And I think I might have been, I might have been smoking pot out on the street or something like that.
But that's what attracted me.
But and to know that I mean, that was that was years ago that was what probably four or five years ago.
Yeah.
And to understand, to know now that like obviously we didn't get into it, you know, any of that, that moment, you know, it was nighttime.
Yeah, I think I was wearing a headlamp somehow.
Like it was just night and you were you were wearing a headlamp and it was red.
And I said, are you the devil?
No, we're not.
And so to know that that that was sort of a journey that you were on.
It's just fascinating to me because you were just like, you know, just a guy walking his dog.
You would never know that, you know, people and this is why we always say and Ryan and I, we talk about this too.
I mean, the part of what we talk about, you know, similar, same thing with your podcast, John, you know, mental health is a big pillar of what you talk about.
And we try and talk about it here on the sunlight, moonlight podcast as it relates to, you know, balancing work and creativity and things like that.
I think it's very important for people, anybody who considers themselves an empathetic person to really admit and to remind themselves often that you really, really never know what someone's going through.
When you're when you're hanging out when you encounter them.
And everybody's got their bag, right and everybody's.
You know, on feists last record.
She has aligned everybody's got their shit, but who's got the guts to deal with it or to sit with it right.
And I think, you know, your story is is is very, very inspiring to see that, you know, you had basically hit rock bottom.
I mean, right.
Would you call it that?
Yeah, I was.
I sold my car to pay for the summer's rent.
I was unemployed.
I was racking up legal bills and it's funny because if suicides not what people think people, you know, the stigma around suicide is.
It's a selfish act.
And it's not.
Right.
I legitimately thought that the world, my daughter's world, my wife's world, the world would be better without me in it.
And and and, you know, and if my daughter hadn't walked me around for a summer when there were no adults to do the job, and I didn't have to show her that that wasn't useless.
I would have gone.
Sure.
You know, I don't I don't talk about this in detail much, but I went through a similar thing about a year ago.
Not not different, but I mean different, but but similar.
And and I was on some medication that did not agree with me.
I was very stressed at work.
I felt I had I had lost myself and I was I was getting a lot of intrusive suicidal thoughts and I and I thought that same thing.
I thought I can't keep up with work or family or anything.
And you do think that your your family would be better off.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
How are you doing now?
I'm doing great.
I got my my medication was adjusted and yeah, I had I had I was diagnosed with the anodonia and I just I had I could not experience joy or pleasure.
And and it was like I I'm a guitarist and even since I was 14 so for about, you know, for over 30 years and like, yeah, thank you.
And you're welcome.
I there was no emotional feedback even playing the instrument.
I was just like, I don't feel anything.
Yeah.
And it was it was bizarre, but I'm I'm so grateful I'm not in that place.
I had a I had a guitar player on the show who had that.
Yeah.
And he said he's it medication finally hit the right medication.
And he said, you start to see color again.
Yeah.
Right.
That's the way he described it.
You start to see color again.
Yeah, everything was was gray and flat lined.
And and and and numb.
It was it was terrible.
Well, it was it was horrifying.
I'm really glad to see the turnaround too, because, you know, John, Ryan and I have known each other.
Um, geez, almost 20 years.
And we used to work together and we played shows together and, you know, been watched each other get married and have kids and stuff.
And to see to know, you know, Ryan's creative capacity and his sense of humor and to see those things sort of like fizzle out, you know, in front of your eyes.
And there's nothing.
I mean, we talked a lot.
You know, but there's nothing I can't fix, you know, what was broken in there and like that was very it was just rough to see.
And it's so fantastic to see and be able to do the show with you now, Ryan.
Like it's a really good.
It's kind of a feel good story.
Yeah.
And you you were there.
You checked in with me a lot and I just, you know, I love you for that.
I really appreciate it.
Oh, we're all full of love here.
So we should call it the puppy dogs and ice cream.
Yeah.
But John.
Yeah.
Oh, go ahead, Dom.
Well, no, I think that that, you know, that is a jumping off point.
And I think John, talk to us a little bit about sort of like how you're you sort of you pulled yourself out of that hole.
You have a very successful, you know, sort of day job.
Maybe talk about that a little bit and how that's evolving for you.
And then maybe a little bit about the impetus and the and the birth of home from here, which was also sort of serendipitous.
Sure.
So I run a website called Ivy style.com.
I just always dressed more formally than except for today because I'm going to teach it to promote.
But normally I've always dressed more formally and I followed the site for a long time and the site and it's got a Facebook group and it's about Ivy style, which is essentially classed out preppy.
And I but the site and the site and the Facebook group at the time were getting they weren't as inclusive as they thought they should be.
And they were in fact getting, you know, there was some racism in there.
There was some bigotry in there.
There was definitely classism in there.
And when I, you know, my approach was look, you know, the classics are for I, I view it as classic clothing.
I'm like the classics, classic anything is for everybody.
And so I approached the owner of the site and I said, Hey, I think you're doing this.
I think you're going in the wrong direction.
As a business model, it's stupid as a way to live.
It's stupid.
And as a source of energy, it's stupid.
So, you know, let me write a few guest posts and see, see if we get a reaction.
And the guest, the guest posts that I wrote were, you know, they were inclusive in nature.
The first person I featured was a woman who dresses Ivy, who does it better than all of us.
And the response was great.
So I wanted to take it over the site.
It's not a subscription site.
It's an advertising.
We advertise so it generates revenue that way.
I've been at it three and a half years.
There are plans to license it to license now.
And at some point I will hand it off, but and sell it.
So I just have to figure out where in that trajectory I am.
But yeah, that's Ivy style.
Did you start the because there's a podcast also.
I did, I did start the podcast.
And then I started the podcast after I started this one.
And there's a few episodes up.
And it really kind of, I'm debating whether to continue it or hand that part of it off right now.
And I'm thinking about handing that part of it off right now.
But a handsome guy.
Look at this.
Look at this guy.
See what AI can do.
No, it's great.
What a cool.
And so now, now bring us to sort of like where I know other things started to happen.
For you, right?
So you were, you were playing and you were writing and you were planning a tour, right?
Right.
So I'm, I had, I wrote a one man show called home from here.
And the, the idea of the show was it's two hours of me.
I wrote a bunch of songs about my, my experience in the legal system and with mental health.
And it was to tell that story.
It think it's like spring scene on Broadway, but just no spring scene.
And so, sorry.
And so the plan was to tour that and the tour had, the tour had been arranged, but tour
and the tour was break even, which, you know, for a tour is, is for tours is a big deal.
And so I was excited to do it.
I went on, I was a guest on another podcast and talk about it.
And I got in the car and I'm driving away and the station manager wrote me and said,
Hey, would you want to do your own show?
And it dawned on me that if I sang on a podcast, I can get, I'm probably singing to more people
and I'm home every night.
And instead of, instead of breaking even, I can actually make money at it.
So I, so I, I scrapped the tour and started working, started working on the show.
And, and here we are.
And I still, I do, I've done, and by the way, the reason for the show, I did the home from here one man show.
And the first time I played it, it's about 150 people and I play it.
And there's this one part, there's this one song where I have decided to take my own life.
And it's about sort of the way into the show.
So everybody seated and I play it and I got a cry right now.
And this guy, I finished the song and this guy stands up.
He's 250 pounds, he's six foot five, he's bald, he's got a biker vest on, chains on his jeans, and he charges the stage.
And I'm like, what the fuck?
I'm like, did I, did I date your wife?
What's happened here?
He gets to the stage and he goes like this to me, I come down and he hugs me and he says, I was going to kill myself last week, but I didn't for my daughter.
Oh my God.
And, and that's the first time I played the show.
So I thought, okay, you know, this message, I mean, look, there's, there's three of us in a room and two of us have a story.
The message is so much more, so much more relevant to people than we think it is.
And it's, it's just, you know, you're in a corporate world, you can't talk about it.
There are, there are, you know, social circles, you can't talk about it.
There's still some stigma surrounding it, which is fucking ridiculous.
But, but out of that one incident, I, you know, that planted the seed for me to say, I'm just, I'm just going to be public facing about everything.
And, and just stigma in general is just stupid.
And so, yes, so I started the show in a little tiny, it wasn't always here.
It was in a room about the size of a card table in the back of a market in a little town in, in upstate New York.
And then, and then, you know, we, like I said, the message of, hey, I'm sick.
This is what's wrong with me.
All you got to do is say that.
And, and it starts its own me too movement.
Because everybody else is me too.
And so, yeah, there.
It's the evolution of it is so crazy.
And I remember you, you know, we would see each other and passing while this was going on.
And I remember asking, like, you know, hey, how's the podcast going?
This and that.
And each time we connected, you had, you know, this, there had been growth in some way, whether it was you feeling more comfortable doing it.
Or you, you know, sort of honing the purpose and the, and the, and the sort of aim of the show.
And I remember you saying like, now I have, like, I have to figure out how to monetize this.
And so, you know, going on, excuse the construction noises with the whole house is under construction right now.
But we, and seeing that evolution was also inspiring to me to say, I mean, look, I read Ryan and I.
I worked in radio and broadcast our entire careers.
I've worked in radio and television my entire career.
And, but always on the technical side.
And so I've never really been behind the mic like this.
I've never hosted a show or anything like that.
And there was something about, well, thanks man.
Thank you.
And as you are, how's are you and, and I think that, but you, you doing it first being a guy who plays guitar, who writes songs and plays covers and knows other people and plays gigs and stuff.
I saw myself in you and you were doing this podcast about this thing that you knew about.
And I was saying to myself, like, well, I have ideas and I have things to say.
And, you know, if there's a guy like John who is very similar to me, like, and he's doing it, like, why couldn't I be doing that?
Now it helped for me to get laid off, you know, and basically have nothing else to do.
Except, you know, look for jobs that aren't there.
But, you know, and this was sort of the time where Ryan was, was sort of coming out of his haze and the low points.
And I was saying to Ryan, you know, hey, we're, we're kind of doing, we're, we've always been very similar.
And Ryan just left corporate life too.
And we were kind of like, let's put our heads together on this.
And we had this idea talking to working people about being creative and what creative people do for work.
And we find that, I mean, there's everybody we talk to gives us like three more people to talk to, which I'm sure is the case for home from here too.
Because this network of musicians that you've not only sort of connected with but helped cultivate, you know, the introductions that you make and all the folks getting together for the lifted project and won't be broken.
That's probably a good segue, right? So you've got, you've got this podcast. It's doing well. You're talking to all these musicians.
And I remember you having like a public social media epiphany because it was like the documentary for We Are The World came out.
And you were, and you had gone to Paul's Runaway Cafe in Wappenshaw Falls.
And I think it was like an open mic or something, right?
Or there was a show.
I've got a show there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And so talk us through that, right? You're meeting these musicians and you have this moment.
So, right. So I'm, it's inspired by my wife. So my wife, my wife had her own journey. She had a head and neck cancer.
And she had an inch long tumor in her cheek. She went through a, she went through 10 months of just horrific, horrible treatment.
I mean, it, it, it, it's barbaric what happens to individuals who have this kind of cancer.
So she gets surgery and they graft, they graft a post it note size piece of her thigh into the inside of her cheek.
They cut her from the back of her ear all the way across to center her over throat and they remove 10 lymph nodes.
And that was, that was the easy part.
That's insane. Isn't it rare for women, is it rare for women to get some foam?
It's very rare for women and it's ridiculously rare for women to have age.
Gosh.
Nope. Yeah. Nobody could believe it.
So then she gets chemo and radiation. And for the radi, the chemo, it was once a week, it was, it was six treatments.
It's hard, but the radiation was really hard because it was every day.
So what they did is they made a handle, elect her mask for her custom to her phase.
And for a half hour every day, she lay it on a table strapped down with this mask overhead and her body strapped and a late analyzer would burn the side of her face.
And by week three, when she would sleep on the pillow, when she would get up, there was ash on the pillow.
Her face was just ash. It was, it was crazy.
So they, the end treatment ended December 30th.
And when treatment ends, they say, you know, look, you should come back for physical therapy because she had, she was emaciated.
She couldn't stand. She had no muscle tone. She couldn't stand. She couldn't do anything.
So, and they just, they just kind of give you this person and say, okay, now it's on you.
And I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
So I, so she heals for like another four months.
And there's little landmarks like she can put on her own coat. That was a big one.
But it gets to, we're about four months in and she's still not moving.
Like we, we walk, you know, halfway from my house to your house down and or your old house and she had to turn around.
And, and, you know, and that was like a big workout for her.
So I take her, I go to lifetime in chat box.
And so I friends with the teacher there. So I went to the teacher this time, definitely going to cry.
So I go to the teacher and I say, look, and she doesn't want to be seen because she's got giant scar and this part of her face is puffy.
And she, she goes, she thinks everybody's staring at her neck.
So I said, can we stand in the back of one of your classes and I'll just shuffle my feet with her.
And, you know, just to get her out of the house and get her something to do.
So she gets so we go to the class and she's got giant sunglasses on a baseball cap and a giant scar.
It looked like she was going to rob the place except she couldn't walk.
So she wasn't getting away very bad.
And we stand in the back of the class and, you know, it's, it were about five minutes in and this teacher, she's an angel.
She walks back grabs to her, she's by the hand, it's as fuck this brings her up to the front of class, turns around and there's a whole class shuffling with Trish.
Well, everybody else is doing these, you know, crazy, clear class.
So we get in the car and she calls me and says, how's Trish?
And I said, great.
And she said, bring her back tomorrow.
Every day she would write a special class for Trish and she would do it with Trish while the rest of us were doing, you know, the regular class.
And the journey was amazing.
She got to the point where she could walk and then she got to the point where she could, she could walk faster.
And every day, one day, this trainer brings out a three inch step and says, hey, I want you to jump on it.
Trish has neuropathy.
Her head, her head isn't talking to her feet.
She tries to jump on this little three inch thing and she can't and she just starts crying and she falls on her hands and knees.
It's a crowded force. She falls on her hands and knees.
This trainer falls down over her to protect her body so that people didn't see.
They go forehead to forehead and three minutes, I don't know what happened.
It was better than any church service I ever saw.
Trish wipes her nose, stands up and starts looking way into the game.
At the end of that class, this trainer brings Trish over to a two foot block.
Now Trish can't stand step three inches and she says, we don't quit till you can get this.
Every day they do a little bit of work.
One day Trish is standing in front of a block and she can put her foot on.
That's all.
Put her foot on it, bring it back down, put her other foot on it, bring it back down.
And this trainer walks over and by now they have love, they have trust.
Trish kind of believes in life again a little bit and they go forehead to forehead again.
But this time I got to hear it and this trainer says, you can do this today.
You are a feather, you can fly, you can do this today.
The trainer stands back, hold Jim goes quiet, everybody faces Trish.
And I see Trish looking at the trainer and I see the trainer just staring back at her.
And because she believed so much in what that trainer said, she flew up on a two foot block after not being able to jump up on a three inch one.
That one moment of somebody believing in you, of you believing in somebody, no money changed hands, no, of somebody, what happens if you just, if somebody just lifts you for the pure joy of lifting people.
No money, no recognition, no, it's not a TV show, just did it out of the goodness of her heart.
I was so, it's one of the most powerful things I ever saw.
So now the We Are The World documentary comes on and I'm sitting there and the big deal about the We Are The World is, oh, it's a room full of ridiculously talented musicians.
But you guys are testament to this.
The Hudson Valley is a geographic anomaly of ridiculously talented musicians.
They're everywhere here.
It's not like other places.
And so by virtue of the show, I'm like, hey, I can make that room.
So then I thought, what if we all just get together?
I'm going to write a song and we will, you know, and I didn't want any money to change hands.
It's not about money.
It's not about fundraising.
Everybody raises money.
I wanted to raise energy for these nonprofit partners that we had.
And it was an incredible, so I sent out the invitation.
And the most amazing thing is everybody said yes without a song written.
And there's two ways to take that.
One way is they believed in me.
The other is they didn't think it was going to happen.
So they just said yes to get back on the show.
I'm choosing the format.
And so, you know, long story short, we posted at Paula's, which happens to be in an airport.
We sell out the airport.
And I write the song.
That was really hard because I didn't want to rehearse.
I wanted the rehearsal to be part of the show.
So in order to teach people the song, I had to do a demo.
So Eric Dalton is my producer.
He said, come to the studio and I'll produce for you.
Well, his idea was instead of to duplicate the choir effect, I'm just going to use, have you sing at 38 different times?
And we'll just layer that on top of each other.
I don't like the sound of my voice one pack.
38 times.
I'm with you.
38 times with a whole lot of Johns.
Oh, it was choir of its choir of voice.
I don't like it.
Now I got to put it out there.
So I put it out.
There was there was no rehearsal.
We get there that day and it's still that room.
There's an amazing band and there's this big choir.
Everybody in the choir, except my daughter is a headliner in and of themselves.
And we do the first, we do the first rehearsal and it sucks.
And Trisha's in the front row.
And I turn around and she looks at me like, we're going to have to move.
Motherfuckers.
We are about to be so publicly embarrassed.
We're going to have to move.
And I'm like, maybe that guy can see that going that way.
We did another take and it got a little better to the point where I could almost hear a song coming out.
So it takes something happened and it went off.
And they're like, okay, we got it.
And I'm like, no, fourth take and I had a reason.
So we did a fourth day and then we took like a 45 minute break and the nonprofits, the audience got to me go with the nonprofits and learn what they do.
We get back together.
And the recording that you listen to, that's a live recording.
There's it's all one shot.
There's no, there's no take.
You know, I was going to, I was going to ask.
So just the recording itself because I saw there's a video, I saw some video footage of it, but the recording itself is what was recorded real time live at Paula's, correct?
Yep.
Oh, wow.
The performance is crazy.
Yeah, it's amazing.
I got lucky.
Eric's a great producer and the choir was amazing.
And so we got, we got it on the first take, but my problem was I wanted to do one take with the audience because it's a call answer song.
So I wanted to do one take where the choir and the audience got to sing together.
So we did this.
So I did it three more times because I needed the choir to be bored with it.
Now you sing the same song eight times.
You're starting to get bored, which is what I wanted.
And they were, they were restless and I could see something like, okay, now it's time.
So I tell the audience what they're going to do.
I tell the choir what they're going to do.
And then at the end I say, you know, by the way, when we're done, bands just going to keep going.
If you want to sing a solo riff, do whatever you want.
Just like, wound up with a 10 minute extended version of just people going nuts.
And it was, yeah, it was beautiful.
So it was a good day.
And that, and that all stems from this moment, right?
This moment that one moment of just witnessed.
Yeah.
Just seeing two people that believed in each other and somebody, you know, just based on the fact that
two people believe in each other, one person did something that nobody thought they were ever going to be able to do again.
That's beautiful, man.
Wow.
Like, I mean, your, your wife literally like the foundation's gone.
You have to build the foundation again to even have some sort of be a living person, you know?
Yeah.
No, you're 100% right.
She, she couldn't talk.
She couldn't eat.
She couldn't move her head.
She, it was empty.
Yeah.
I'm, and I'm so glad that she's, and she's doing, she's doing much better now.
Oh, she's ridiculous now.
She went from like, not being able to walk to being like one of the most fit people at the gym.
Yeah.
And it's also good because she got her belt, like you get neuropathy and you get chemo brain.
You come out like a little bit of a different person.
And I actually like her better now.
She's out of, she's out of fucks to give, which makes her really interesting.
Yeah.
She's, she's hilarious because she just doesn't act, doesn't care anymore.
And she also has this great perspective.
You know, when you come out of tragedy, Brian, you probably know this too.
When you come out of, when you come out of tragedy, every moment has a different flavor
and she's got that.
She's, you know, she's got that dude, we have three hours.
We're doing something crazy with it.
Yeah.
A lot you're going to be with him.
Yeah.
You definitely, it, it, it changes you to where you're like, you know, I was at the bottom.
I bottomed out and, and I'm, I'm back and I'm not going to take it for granted.
I can't wait to get you on the show.
I want to hear all about that.
We're here with John Burton on the sunlight, moonlight podcast.
We're talking about John's project, the lifted project that's liftedproject.org, born out
of some of the things he's witnessed with his wife struggles, his own struggles.
His podcast is the home from here show available on all major podcast platforms, including
MixCloud.
I know John, you're a big fan of that platform, MixCloud.
John's format is great.
Local musicians coming up and telling their stories, talking about mental health, talking
about creativity and songwriting.
John, I have to ask you, I mean, you put all these pieces together over the last, say,
10 years of all of these trials that you've, you've taken on head on, pulled yourself sort
of out of the emotional and mental gutter as it were, and have touched the lives of so
many people in the, in the process.
I, I have to ask you a very honest question.
I mean, aren't you fucking exhausted?
No.
Does this like you just can't stop?
You guys will find this out back when you, because I, I, I did corporate for, for fucking
ever.
And I think it's what drove me crazy.
Right, Ryan, we can testify.
Oh yeah.
When you, when you hit flow, when you finally are doing what you're supposed to be doing,
your head blows off.
I can do 24 hours of podcasts and your head blows off.
It's just a completely different, different energy.
And it's really hard for creative people not to be creative.
And when, when you have a, when you have a, when you have a corporate job, like, like
we all, and you can't exercise your, you can't exercise your true self.
In fact, you have to dampen your true self every day.
Nobody gets out of there better.
Nobody.
There's a type of person that can succeed in that environment.
Creative people are not it.
Yeah.
I had, you know, one of the reasons why I'm okay with getting laid off last year was because
Mike, I had been with the same company for a long time.
It was a very familial atmosphere and it had become through mergers and acquisitions,
it had become a lot more sort of corporate and cold.
And basically my position was that first of all, I'm a fatalist in the sense that
everything kind of happens for a reason.
I don't think everything's predetermined, but I do think there's sort of like, there's a,
there's a, not a plan, but there's a, there's a path here, you know, no matter what happens.
But the other thing was, is that, you know, I don't want to be some place where they don't
want me and I don't want to be someplace that doesn't bring me joy or that I'm not proud
of.
Yeah.
And so, you know, going through that experience, after working steadily for over 23 years in
the work media, which, you know, takes a toll on you, but it was sort of liberating for
me just being jettisoned from that experience.
I have yet to land.
I don't really know what my next move is.
I really enjoy doing.
Maybe it is.
Yeah.
Well, look, I think that I really enjoy doing this show with Ryan.
Ryan and I have a great time.
We were just talking about it last night, like how much fun we're having and how cool it is
to be able to talk to, you know, so many interesting people in our orbit and to learn so much through
each of these sessions.
It's been really gratifying.
And, you know, Ryan and I said, I mean, we sort of throw numbers out there like, hey, if we could
make, you know, X amount of money doing this, we wouldn't ever do anything else.
But I think it's, it's really cool to see also the, I was asking about, you know, levels
of exhaustion because what I'm noticing from afar or via social media is that it's not like
you're sort of like glomming on to something new and then abandoning what you've already
accomplished.
You just keep kind of adding.
And so because you're still playing shows, you play private shows, you play public shows,
you play originals, you play covers, you play, you know, venues that you wouldn't normally
think, I mean, you play your gym.
You know, like you wouldn't normally think that these are opportunities for entertainment,
but you go after that stuff and you accomplish it while you're adding on these additional
things like a podcast and this, these efforts to help out these charities.
And I think that that's, it's really commendable because I think it could be very easy for
someone like you to sort of chase the shiny object and then move on from what you've already
accomplished.
But it seems like you're just sort of like, you know, adding to the resume at this point.
What I, what I learned from kind of leaving corporate to working for myself to doing this
is like, I, I, and I was never laid off.
I can't imagine that, but I imagine it makes you not trust the universe.
And I, for me, the biggest lesson is just to, to trust, trust, trust the, it sounds so
stupidly hallmark, but trust the path.
If, if, you know, unless I, unless I morally object to something like being asked to play
in the gym, unless I morally object to it, it's music, it's fun.
It's a chance to give back to, you know, to people like that to me.
I'll just, I'll just do it.
And when you're in flow, which is not, it's not an elevated state.
I fucking tripped over it.
But when you're in flow, um, you don't really worry about energy level so much anymore.
You're just doing what you're supposed to be doing.
And then you then, and then things come to you.
It's weird.
I, I, I read the secret.
I think the secret is bullshit, but I will say you do what you're supposed to be doing
and you attract.
I think the secret is because people think that's all you have to do is just wish it
and it happens.
It's not, but do what you're supposed to be doing and you attract, you attract things.
Well, I think, I think, yeah, I think, I believe in manifestation.
I believe there's, there's, you have to do the work.
You know, you have to go on, right?
Right.
Like it doesn't just make it and it happens.
Like it's your prime, you're priming the pump for success by thinking about it and
you're, and you're, you're sort of setting yourself up chemically and emotionally to
do it.
Right.
It can't, it can't happen if you didn't think of it, but thinking of it is just the first
time you know baby steps.
Right.
Yeah.
It certainly helps things.
It's like Tinder, right?
Yeah.
I think, I want to talk about your page.
The website Tinder.
No.
Which is married.
Did I share a screen?
I'm sorry.
John, you're sharing a screen.
No good at this.
Yeah.
So let's talk about your pages for a second though, because I know that you write three
pages every morning, no matter what is that, is that born out of the artist's way?
Or is that something you picked up?
Okay.
No, no.
Because I went for that.
Yeah.
So when I, when I, I, when I got better, I think, okay, part of what got me sick was the
throttling of creativity.
So, but corporate guy, you know, first off corporate guy with a mortgage, that's hard
to be creative.
It's, you know, there are some circles where it's considered very frivolous to be creative.
You know, you're not supposed to be a creative husband and father.
You're supposed to provide and then, and then if your wife lets you, you can play guitar
in the garage, but that's, that's it.
And so I, I've heard about this book, The Artist's Way, and it's all about allowing,
giving yourself permission to, to be creative.
And one of the things that, that she says to do, and it's, it's magic producing.
One of the things she says to do is you get up every morning, first thing you do, you
can make your coffee, but you can't drink it until you start writing, and you do three
handwritten pages.
It can be anything.
You can write the word bullshit or watermelon or doorknob, whatever you want, but it's got
to be three pages.
It's got to be handwritten.
And it sounds like, okay, that's a stupid idea, but here's what it does.
It moves, normally when you get up, you get your coffee, you watch the news, you get depressed,
you receive bad information, you got to do lists of things you got to check off.
It's obligation, obligation, obligation, and all you're doing is receiving information
and you don't start putting anything out for a while.
And certainly not anything creative.
What this, what the pages do is it teaches you the orientation where the first thing you
do every morning is you do output.
Don't take in output.
And, and that puts your, that puts your brain in an output gear for the rest of the day.
So, so, you know,
So a couple of comments on it.
So first of all, I, I didn't, the artist way is a six week program.
I never finished it.
I think I did probably three and a half weeks and then I kind of fell off it.
So I will admit that, but I did, I did pages for a couple of weeks.
And it really solved one of my gripes of sort of like the idea of sunlight, moonlight, right?
Like what working people are doing to be creative, what creative people do for work.
I think that one of the things that doing morning pages, writing like that in a discipline, provided
for me was that, you know, Ryan's heard me talk about this previously is that, you know, when you're working a job
and you have a family and you want to be creative, what winds up happening is that
everything except creativity gets done first.
And you wind up with the shittiest 40 minutes of the day.
Yeah.
At like 950pm when you're bleary eyed, you might be a little sore, you're kind of, maybe you're pissed at your kids.
You know, maybe you've had, you didn't like your dinner and the house isn't clean.
And all of these things and that's the time you get to create, which is a fucking sham.
Yeah.
And what's cool about morning pages is that chemically speaking and scientifically speaking, you are at your most creative
when you wake up in the morning.
And it allows you a creative output.
When you are the freshest, the newest, the most well rested, you will be all day.
Yep.
And that's the moment.
And that's what I really loved about it was because it was the gift to yourself to say these first few moments and 10, 20 minute blocks in the morning are the most precious time based commodity I'm going to experience all day.
How am I going to treat them?
You know, am I going to turn on the news and get depressed?
Am I going to start checking email for work?
Am I going to start to say, oh, I feel like I'm behind so I need to catch up.
And all of that is robbing yourself.
You're giving all of that precious time away to everybody else except yourself.
Yeah.
And that's what I really liked about it.
And I found extremely helpful.
No, you're 100% right.
And the other, I can so relate to your 950.
Now I got 40 minutes to be creative.
And the other thing that happens in that scenario is you produce crap because you're exhausted.
It's an inch.
And then you start.
But then you then your confidence starts to wane.
And you're like, well, wait, why bother being creative when all I'm doing is making this garbage anyway.
And it feeds on itself.
So yeah, you're right.
Now, to do it, I have to get up really early to do it.
That's part of the dispute for me.
But you don't have to get up early to do it.
You can just, I mean, you get up like insanely early.
You get up like between three and four.
Yeah.
Can I ask what time you go to bed?
Yeah.
730.
You don't post that.
730?
730, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not usually in bed by 730, which is why playing out is a nightmare.
Because like, yeah.
So I never, I, oh, go ahead.
I'm down.
I'm way down more for lunches than I am for playing bars at night.
I still do it, but it's tough.
Yeah.
Even if I, you know, somebody says, hey, I got a late dinner reservation at like nine o'clock.
I'm like, oh, no, that's really late.
Right.
You just get, you just get to a point where, you know, when you're out that late, where
you're not interested, interesting, you're, you're tired.
And the only interesting thing that's going to happen is you're going to make a bad decision
and we're trying not to do that.
So, you know, it's funny.
I get a lot of my ideas.
Like, as I'm falling asleep.
Do you, do you go by the bed?
Sometimes.
Okay.
I don't, I, yeah, like I should just leave it there.
But, um, so I came from like, when I first started working, I was working nights, seven,
or 11pm to 7am.
And I was in bands and I was rehearsing three to five times a week and playing shows.
And then so I would be getting up, eating, rehearsing, going to work.
And then because I was in my twenties, usually drinking during the day, because when, when
else am I going to drink?
Right.
And, and, um, but I think somehow because of that, and I did that for about four years,
I like somehow trained myself where the creativity starts happening at night and not necessarily,
I'm not much of a morning person.
I'm more of a night person.
But, you know, in the corporate world, you have to be a morning person.
Right.
So I think kind of getting you mentioned something which was like, you know, you start throttling
your creativity.
And you know, Dom and I worked in a 24 seven environment.
So it was like, I was on calls in the middle of the night.
I was on calls all day long.
Like I had to find, you know, plus I have kids.
I, my peak there, man, I did the averaging and I, my phone rang every six hours basically,
whether I was at work or not.
Yeah.
That was insane.
Oh, I'd get calls during rehearsals, during shows.
That's crazy.
And, uh, like, I wouldn't answer them usually because I'd be like, well, you know, I got
to live, you know, I'll call, I'll call when it's over.
That's a thing too though, right?
When you don't take the call.
Yeah.
Well, it's like, what, what nightmare am I going to walk into?
Because I didn't take the call.
Well, it's delaying it too, because you know, you're going to have to deal with it.
Like there's nobody else to step in.
And so you just know, so you, you give yourself some grace and space by not taking the call,
but you know it's there.
Right.
Yeah.
But you know, I mean, that's life.
It's full of problems.
I want to make sure, John, we do a segment here with our guests before we leave and we part,
we've covered so much today.
And I'm so incredibly grateful and thankful and happy that you agreed to come on here,
John, and talk with us.
No, thank you.
Thank you very much.
We've got some really good.
Please do, please do this three times a week.
Okay.
That's a lot of homework for Ryan.
No, Ryan does Yeoman's work and making sure the show is presentable and packaged up very
nicely and our promos and such.
This, the segment we do before we go here on the sunlight, moonlight podcast is called
easy uneasy.
And this is the part of the show where Ryan, who's a very nice young man, will ask you
a question that should be easy to answer.
Oh, crap.
And then after that, I, who is, I'm not such a nice person, Ryan's infinitely nicer than
me, then I will ask you a question that will probably make you uneasy.
Okay.
So you don't have to answer either of them.
But this is a fun segment that Ryan and I are great guests.
That's a great idea.
You know, it's not, not just a hat rack here, John.
Okay, Ryan, do you want to go first?
What is your bedtime routine?
Uh, so recently it started, it has changed.
Um, I say good night to my daughter at 715 every night.
Make sure she's got what she wants.
Go kiss Trish on the head.
She's watched a TV.
I go to bed.
And for the longest time, I tried to force myself to write again at night useless.
Uh, so now I just sit on my iPad and play back until I fall asleep.
Okay.
Oh man, I love backgammon.
Oh, it's such an underrated, it's an underrated leisure game.
It is the game that mirrors life the best because it's part lock part skill.
I love that.
That's great.
Okay.
Uh, now comes the part where I ask a question that might make you uneasy.
Oh man.
Did you meet a child of mine that I don't know I have?
Uh, not yet.
Okay.
That would be uneasy.
I would be uneasy.
Anything else I can take.
Okay.
Uh, have you ever stolen anything?
Well, have I ever stolen anything?
Yes, when I was crazy.
Okay.
I imagine that would be.
No.
Well, two times.
One, I was like seven years old and I stole a rubber spider man.
Um, that's amazing.
Um, I've done that when I was young,
but think about how that's burned in your brain.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
No, it still bothers me.
I took it back.
I stole a G.
I took it back.
I was like, see, that's why that's why you asked the easy question.
That's a good guy right there.
Um, have I ever stolen anything?
Uh, yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
I have to.
I just want the biggest thing I think I've ever stole is that I went to a golf course
once and I rented clubs and in the bag of rental clubs, there were two sand wedges.
That's nice.
I took, I took one of them.
I still love it.
Oh, it wasn't part of the, it wasn't part of the.
No, it was, it was part of the set, but there was two of them.
So I was like, Oh, well, you know, they have two sandwich like, um, so I took it and, uh,
it's a nice lu or tease 56 degree sandwich and I got it re-gripped and, uh, right now
I use it.
You avoided the pain in the ass of taking it back.
I did.
Well, the bag was definitely lighter when I took it back.
There you go.
That I'm not going to say, I still play at the course though.
So I'm not going to mention the course.
Thank you for being a good sport on that, John.
This is being recorded.
What a, what a cool, what a cool time we've got John Burton.
Um, let's, let's, let's do the rundown here.
I want to make sure that we give, um, proper promotional consideration to, to your myriad
projects.
We've got Ivy dash style.com, which is John's style blog, which is fantastic and very well
organized and very easy to use.
We've got the home from here show.com, which is a John's homepage for his podcast home
from here, which is available on all major podcast platforms, including mixed cloud.
We've also got the lifted project.
That's lifted project.org and that is featuring the song.
Won't be broken.
Um, co-written by John.
Um, and I'm sorry, it's Olivia Bollger.
Yeah.
I'll give her credit too.
Right.
And then, um, that is, uh, is supporting, um, Hudson river housing.
So that's Hudson river housing.org.
We've got the Berkshire center for children, which is Berkshire farm.org.
We've got Hudson Valley animal rescue, which is HVARS.org.
And we've got kidney for Clark, which you can look up and has a Facebook page.
And that's a fantastic charity, um, for an ex cop who needs a, who needs a kidney.
Um, and John's doing again, fantastic work, bringing awareness there.
John, thank you so much for being on the show with us today.
Yes.
Thanks, John.
Thank you guys for having me.
This is our flu.
That's how you know it's good.
Thank you.
We'd love to have you on again too in the future.
Give me a time.
I'll be there.
Now it's awesome.
And now that we covered all this, we can have you back and you can play some tunes.
Right.
I would love that.
Or you guys can come up here and you guys can play me some tunes.
I love it.
I think, uh, well, you be careful.
I just want to watch some of Ryan's videos.
I don't know if you want, I don't know if you want his stage performance going on in
your studio there.
Everything's plastic.
We'll be fine.
That's great.
We'll put down some tarps.
There you go.
Yeah.
Right.
Do your own work.
I love it.
John, thanks again.
Ryan, nice job, man.
Yeah, you too.
We're here on the, the Sunlight Moonlight podcast.
Dom, Dorn, Ryan Havers are awesome guests.
We'll see you next time.
Bye.