1: Boyd McDonnell - Exploring the Rhythm of Life: Creativity and the Transformative Power of Music

00:01 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Okay, boyd, I want to start at the beginning. I want to meet you in a place that you love. I want to learn more about you and music and you and creativity. So I want to start way back in your childhood home and I want you to share with us what your first messages were about music and maybe creativity broadly, but just those early, the early environment of where that was introduced to you and any early memories you have of making music, knowing that you loved music, or just what creativity looked like.

00:35 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Well, my dad was a musician. He was a jazz sax player all through his youth and into his 30s. He played in clubs even as he was starting a family. He was going through business school and working a job a banking job that he ended up having for like 30 years, but music was always really what his love was. So it was very, very present in our house all the time. He traveled a lot for work. He would be gone usually most weeks like Monday and get home Friday, but on the weekends he would be at the kitchen table with all of his files and his yellow legal pads and his manila folders everywhere and he would just have jazz on. So it was always around us all the time. It was just on, it wasn't anything that we thought about, it was just a part of the fabric of our house. And that's definitely my most vivid memory of music and also really one of my most vivid memories of just growing up.

01:42 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Did your mom play music in the house when your dad was gone Monday through Friday? Was it classical?

01:47 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

No, she probably needed a break. No she, she liked classical music, yeah, and I think my mom has always appreciated music. It's not sort of her truth in the way that it was my dad's, you know as my. It was really the sort of defining factor for my dad was music that was sort of his most pure, authentic means of connecting communication, existing. Yeah.

02:18

It was really. You know, that was it for him was music, but yeah, so, so it definitely was always around. I'm looking right now at a picture of my dad and me and I'm probably four.

02:34 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Will you hold it up for people who end up watching us?

02:37 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, so I'm probably four years old. Oh, that's sweet and it's like my first. I didn't end up playing guitar until I was much, much older, but you can see great 70s.

02:50 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Everything about it is 70s.

02:51 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Great 70s do on me and him. But yeah, I mean, he's beaming, smiling. I think that the message and the sort of the sort of natural message that was communicated to us through action and existence was joy around music. You know, it was just like pure joy that he got out of music, and so that became, I think, woven into my psyche, whether I knew it or not at the time.

03:23 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, did you and your brothers create music that young Were you already creating music. What other types of creative expression?

03:32 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

We started taking or I started taking piano lessons when I was about six or seven and that was mandated. I mean, it was not my own, you know, decision that I made at that age, so it wasn't me leading the charge on that. They want, my dad wanted us to learn music and then see if it sticks. And so I ended up taking piano for about seven or eight years or eight or nine years, even into my teens, and sometimes it was not enjoyable. You know, I was learning like classical Suzuki method piano and that's not really exciting to a kid, but I still felt like I was connected to it in some way. I didn't yell and scream about wanting to quit, so even in the moments when I didn't love it like boy, you know, my friends would have a dinner party or friends over and they'd say, boy, play something okay.

04:31

I don't want to do this.

04:32 - Speaker 3 (Host)

But you did it, I would do it. Yeah, I would do it.

04:35 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

And I don't know, I felt connected enough to it and I guess they saw enough potential in me in that way that they wanted me to keep doing it. So, but then my brothers and I would be making creative content of whatever it called.

04:54 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Call it content. Very loosely called content.

04:58 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

It would be us in the basement you know making up scenes about as a means to get into some sort of action sequence. Yes. So whether it was like a bar fight or like a you know what. Any movie we watched, we would immediately launch into you know a couple hours of fight scenes. Yeah, even if it was like ET, and then we'd be like well, let's fight so.

05:25 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Was Clayton?

05:26 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

ET Probably Clayton was ET and Carter and I were like the two guys trying to kill ET.

05:32 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Right.

05:34 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

And so most, but we would. We were always creating these elaborate scenes. Yeah. And of course we started, you know, using my parents' video camera and we would make music videos and we would make up songs and things like that, for sure.

05:48 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, when did it become more real for you, and by real I mean, when did you realize that that wasn't such an important part of your self-expression and joy, to use your word that you used earlier?

06:04 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

I would say really not until college. So I played piano until I was maybe 14 or 15 and then I quit and it was right when I was getting into jazz and jazz theory and all the cool stuff and like if I could go back. I just didn't have perspective at that time of how cool it was. I just was sort of tired of playing piano. Piano, I couldn't see that it was cool at the time. I didn't have the confidence, I didn't have the perspective to understand that piano is really awesome. So I took a year or something about a year, year and a half off and then I got pulled back in for the first time, really on my own accord, to guitar. A buddy of mine started taking guitar lessons and was telling me how cool it is and everything. And I then started with this teacher and this is weird teacher who was perfect for a 17 year old because I was like I don't wanna learn classical music anymore, I wanna learn guns and roses or I wanna learn chili peppers or whatever.

07:10

it was Something that's relevant yeah, that was connected to me and that I was excited about. So he'd be like oh cool, and he would have this huge, like weird old briefcase and he would pull out these handwritten tablatures of whatever song.

07:24

I wanted, and if he didn't have it, then the next week he would have it. Then I started feeling really connected to music because I was learning stuff that I was excited about. I went to college and I was not. I'd been playing guitar for a year, maybe, maybe two years, and I wasn't very good, I was still really rudimentary, but I knew that I was interested in it. And a guy that I had gone to high school with Tom Kichukis, who was also at Vanderbilt when I was there and he was a year ahead of me and he was in a band and he came and asked me if I wanted to be in the band. He knew I played guitar, we were buddies already and everything and it was like are you serious? Right now?

08:07 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I don't, I'm not okay, are all the band members older? Is everybody in the band a copper classman?

08:14 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Everybody. Well, there was one other kid that was my age, chris Gallagher, who ended up. This is one of my longest.

08:22 - Paige Nolan (Host)

We love Chris.

08:23 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, closest buddies, and he was the drummer. Everybody else was older and then, and so, yeah, I joined this band and I didn't really know what I was doing. I felt very pulled in very quickly to it, personally speaking, like it was oh my God, this is like a joy that I've never experienced before.

08:43 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Because playing with your friends, yeah.

08:45 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Playing with your friends, even in just a practice room, and we would go on the rent, like in deep Nashville. We'd go rent like these storage units and bring a space heater and just be out there for hours every night and there's no. You have rudimentary electricity in the place that we would blow regularly, and then no heat, you know, so it's like, and no AC. So you're like, you're just, but you're out there and it's the best.

09:12 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And then certainly playing live was like this high that I was, you know, unfathomable to me Even when you were insecure Even though you were, you know you didn't totally know what you were doing. Once you were on stage, you could feel that surge of energy.

09:30 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Let's just say my stage presence was not great because. I was totally focused on, not fucking up the song so.

09:39

I'm looking at my guitar For the first year, it was like but I could feel inside, it was like oh my God, this is what's happening right now. This is amazing. And then, you know, as time went on through the next couple of years of being in school, the singer left and I became the singer which I then was like I had always been able to sing and I again it was just a growth in musical confidence and everything else, but that was really fun for me and really engaging and elevated it more and, of course, became more comfortable.

10:13 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Were you writing your own songs at that point or not yet?

10:16 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, later in the evolution of the band in college, we started writing our own material, and I did that with a guy who ended up becoming one of the deepest creative connections I would have in life to this day at Jewel. He joined the band maybe a year in, at the perfect time for me, because I had gained enough confidence on how to play. And then he came in and it was like this guy has something that nobody else has, that I've been in contact with.

10:48 - Paige Nolan (Host)

What is that? What is that thing?

10:50 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

It was an is just pure authenticity.

10:56 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, it's a good word for him.

10:58 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, like everything that Ed did.

11:02 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And does, yeah, and does he still like this?

11:05 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Just comes out of him. He's not trying to do anything for anybody, he's not trying to be cool in any way, he just is all those things. And the way that he plays the bass was exactly like that and that resonated deeply with me, because I also approach the instruments and music in the same way that Ed does. Like I'm not. Neither of us is overly technical. We're not great technical players. We're not. We don't shred. You know there's nothing like that. I'm not good at any of that. What I'm good at is having an ear for music and being able to pick things up through listening and feeling things. And Ed really embodied that, like he could just feel it and he could hear it. So when I started playing with him it was very evident immediately like that there was a deeper connection there. And.

12:04

I had already experienced this thing of playing with other people, which was amazing, but then playing with Ed took it to this 10X level of getting deep, deep, deep into the pocket with somebody else, where you're not thinking about anything and you're just going together.

12:22 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I want to ask you about that, whether that's with Ed or in the band, or because I have experienced you having those, I would call them experiences of flow. Now you know, and you're not in a band, now what is that like when you describe, when you say deep in the pocket, I think I know what you mean and I think I know that from my own writing experiences. Does it feel the same when you're deep in the pocket with somebody who is a bandmate and a friend and you're alone? Can it feel the same and tell us more about what flow is like for you?

12:56 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

That's a great question. Yes, it can happen when you're alone. It can happen when you're with somebody else. It's you can definitely get in the pocket when you're alone also, and it's really just about when you're alone. For me, at least, it's really just about letting go and being super present and just not trying to control what's happening and letting it flow. Like a friend of mine and I were talking the other day about this Bob Dylan interview when he was talking about songs that he had written when he was young and he said something to the effect of I don't know who wrote those songs, I recorded those songs, I don't know who wrote them. Like it was, you know and John Matisse did one recently that another buddy and I were chatting about.

13:46

I love him and it's the same, yeah, it's the same principle. Where he's like I'm just this vessel, I'm just a channel for these ideas. I think that's totally true and that's what it is when you can get in the pocket. Unfortunately, you know, the result is typically not a Dylan song or a John Matisse song for me, but the feeling is there and it's really about just releasing and kind of going where you're pulled and then you're not intentionally thinking about I'm gonna play this note, that note that I'm gonna like for you in writing.

14:22

I have to imagine it's the same way, you're not when you get in that deep flow, that deep state of flow you're probably not thinking. Now I'm gonna write this sentence and it's gonna lead to that sentence versus following, where you're being pulled by a bigger thing.

14:39 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I think that's so important because to me, that is the reward of creativity. It's not like what you just said. Well, I'm not writing a John Matisse song or I'm not writing a Dylan song. Those songs aren't those songs when John and Bob are sitting with the creative process. They become those songs when they resonate with an audience.

15:03

But, it's not like Dylan sits down and says I'm gonna write a Bob Dylan song. He's just in the flow and that's what I think. That's one of the things I think creativity has taught me the most in terms of connecting it to wellbeing and a life that matters, which is what I want these conversations to be about, and something that I really care about is having a conversation about really living what's important to you and creativity is important to you and it's important to me, and so in that moment where you're in it and you don't feel so attached to what you're creating and you don't feel attached to the outcome, the audience is irrelevant.

15:44

The reader is absolutely irrelevant. In my best writing, in fact, if you let the listener or the reader in it pollutes the work, because the work isn't about how it's gonna be received. The work is about you figuring out what you wanna say and your point of view and, like you, I think friends have really helped me to understand that and supported me. It sounds like Ed is one, chris Gallagher is one.

16:11 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

The thing that I was able to glean from my relationship with Chris with music is that Chris embodies the joyfulness of music. And much like how I mentioned it with my dad, like Chris has, that Chris will sit in with any band at any time, anywhere. I've seen him every time I'm with him. We go out and he will end up sitting in with the band and oftentimes I have found myself on stage because Chris has informed the band that I should be playing congas.

16:44

I'm not a percussionist. And next thing, I know like we were at a Chicago music festival this was 15 years ago or something, but and Chris, of course, is going to talk to the band and I'm like, well, there he goes. Next thing, I know he's grabbing me and the two of us are on stage now at this huge music festival and I'm playing someone's congas, like with this.

17:03 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Sama band because Chris loves.

17:05 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Sama. So he does not care about anything. He just wants to be music and he just loves it so much and he's always smiling, so he's not concerned about the audience. That's not true. He wants the audience to be having as much fun as he's at.

17:17 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes, he's not concerned about the perfectionism. He's not concerned about the details of the performance, so it sets you free.

17:26 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Which is totally sets you free.

17:27

And then Ed my biggest sort of pull from Ed is, as I mentioned, the authenticity of it and just trusting yourself, the reason that we wrote well in college. And then after college, when I played for several years in a band with Ed and some other guys, but Ed and I would write a lot of the music together and it was really this it was a safe space. It was a very natural safe space where you could have five shitty ideas, but there was no self-consciousness around that, and I think that's just incredibly important to find, either with yourself or with somebody else, cause when you're creating by yourself too, you have to just allow for shittiness you can't expect. It's about releasing that perfection, like you just mentioned with Chris, and so that's hard to do when you're alone, and it's really hard to do when you're with somebody else, because there's just that vulnerability of like, well, I don't want to have this, I don't want to bring up this lame lyric or this riff is so canned, or when you're brainstorming on comedy or something, or writing.

18:37

it's like sharing something that you wrote. Oh, this, I hope they think that this doesn't suck, you know. And so finding someone that you can do that with not only gives you the room to develop that self-confidence and authenticity, but it also just elevates the whole thing. And I'm much more of a collaborator. I like creating by myself and it's fun, but I love collaborating with people, and so finding those relationships that elevate, that have been the key for me in growing creatively and just having so much fun doing it I would much rather be doing it with somebody that I love and that I am like in that pocket with together, whether it's music or whatever else.

19:26 - Paige Nolan (Host)

This is what I think is so interesting about that. I'm just making this connection now, since this isn't the first time we've talked about this, because I don't always press record, but I feel like this connection of you first creating with your brothers and having your childhood home be so receptive and playful and fun and full of good humor is a through line for you and I think that's such a blessing and it's something that I really learned from your family and in my childhood home. Creativity was also appreciated and valued. But I got the message and I don't know if this is just for my parents or the culture at large, but I always equated it to yes, it's great to be creative, but make sure it's useful, make sure it's well received and make sure it's like a book that was a national bestseller is more valued than just a book. I think that's also like achievement culture at large. But then I also think my family's very practical and I love that about my family very grounded and I felt like your family.

20:34

When I was I met your family.

20:36

I think the first holiday I did with y'all I was 21.

20:39

I'd probably been to your house before then, but like the official Christmas holidays, you know I was 21 years old and it was just so full of costumes and wigs and you know, you have two younger brothers, carter and Clayton Carter, going and putting on your mom's clothes for fun and like, all of a sudden we were in a role play or a situation and your dad is, you know, amping that up and kind of fueling that fire for no useful reason.

21:08

It's just, it's just fun. So I think my point here is like there's so many lessons from our childhood that we can keep about creativity and then there's some things that we learn about creativity that are better unlearned and kind of tweaked. And I think your family has broadened my value of creativity, because my challenge is often, you know, letting you have to let go of just control and be in the flow and I have to let go of having it make sense and having it be important and having it matter and having it be helpful, you know, and just enjoy it, like if it's a metaphor, and I think it's a something that's interests me or my brain is in that space of descriptive language. Just go with it, who cares?

21:56 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

It's the idea that the audience is last. That's the rigour. Yeah, you know it has to feel good to you, whether it ends up being a book that sells a million copies, or a book that lives with you on your hard drive, like is or a song or whatever it is, and finding joy and fulfillment in the making of it for yourself.

22:21 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And remaining playful, because both you and I have now, I guess, evolved our career paths to where our creative expression is a big part of how our businesses thrive, and so I think for me it's also like it can still be playful, it can still be light, it doesn't always have to be pointing in this direction of life or death, yeah like my business and what I'm talking about and this is important and you might want to hire me and you know all that stuff. So I think it's a balance of both of those.

22:51 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

It does get more complex when your mortgage is in the balance and your creativity is the driving factor of your livelihood. But I think to your point, it makes it even more important to remember to be playful with it and to remember that it's fun, it should be fun, it should be joyful.

23:19 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Will you tell us when you forget that and how you get back to it? Do you have to switch genres, like I know for your? In your professional life you're often producing music. You're not the one creating it, but you're using your ears and you're giving feedback to musicians and in the last couple of years you've taken up piano. Like is piano a release from that? And you know you're always creating songs for people's weddings and birthdays and you're always doing fun bits with your friends. So when you've lost joy or when you're under the pressure to create something for deadline or for somebody's TV show or somebody's commercial, how do you get back to the origins of why you do music in the first place?

24:02 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

That's another good question.

24:03 - Paige Nolan (Host)

These are all questions I didn't ask you in the first take. There you go.

24:08 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

That's right.

24:08 - Paige Nolan (Host)

This is we're standing by that. You can do something creative and have it evolve, because I didn't play on any of this Exactly.

24:18 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Well, I think that it can be easy to fall into a feeling of and anywhere from like this has to be great because it's for a job or this. I hate this because I'm just and I suck at piano or I'm not good at guitar. What am I doing when I just am creating for fun, like it's, like God it's. I don't even know why I picked this thing up. Of course there are those feelings sometimes, but I think the way to get out of it professionally I've navigated that by surrounding myself with brilliant musicians. So my business has evolved where it started, where I was the one that was on deadline writing the music. Yeah.

25:16

When I was just starting, and that just naturally evolved from me playing in bands and then not playing in bands and being in corporate America and then feeling like I needed some outlet to continue to play music and sort of stumbling into writing music for TV shows, which then led me, over several years of moonlighting doing that, to starting my own company around that, and.

25:42

But when I was starting it it was like, okay, well, I have five other composers that I know, and a lot of the times I was the one writing it, and it was very stressful, so stressful. So over time, though, as I built the company, I've been able to bring in musicians who are incredible and way better than I am, and so and sort of pivot to being in a producer role, which much more suits me, and so I have total faith in my composers and my producers, so I can give them the brief and say we need this in four days, and then I can go about the other things that I have to do and I don't stress about it in the way that I used to. So that's been totally helpful for me, because I know that they will deliver something that's of the highest quality.

26:36 - Paige Nolan (Host)

We're back on collaboration.

26:38 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Everything is collaboration with you, everything's collaboration.

26:42 - Paige Nolan (Host)

It's just good to know that about yourself, because everything is not collaboration for me.

26:46 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Right, yours is much more of an independent journey, mine. Even when I was the maker of the music or the maker of the writing, or the maker of the comedy shorts or whatever the stuff that I've played with through the years, it was always with other people.

27:04 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, and that's not to say that you can't work alone, and it's not to say that I don't like collaborating. I think it's just to know how you need to work and where you feel yourself in flow and kind of in the joy of it all. I feel like the joy of it all for you is working with people, enjoying the process, having fun, and I can do that. But sometimes the joy of it all for me is going deep into an idea and that is playful for me. I mean, that's actually fun to like think deeply about something.

27:42 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, that's where you are in your zone of genius. I mean you think very deeply about most things. Too many things.

27:57 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Boy, do you want to talk about life? Not right now.

28:00 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Not really I want to watch something violent and sexual on TV?

28:04 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Nope.

28:06 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yes, I am. I'm Spartacus. I've been standing here in the bathroom while you're in the bath and talking about the meaning of life, and I've been standing here, as you noticed, for the past 20 minutes, leaning against the door frame, ready to get in bed. Yes, so no, I don't want to talk about it right now.

28:23 - Paige Nolan (Host)

My second winds of reflection often come at the very end of the day, when I've had a day and I've talked to clients and I've done some whatever reading or writing or whatever else I'm going to do, and it's like I want to download with you and you're melting into the door frame trying to walk out.

28:41 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, like that is the absolute opposite end of the spectrum where I am at that hour, which, of course, usually is like 9.03. Yeah, pm. I'm like I am done. All systems are shut down and you sometimes have trouble reading that.

28:57 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I do, but I ignore the signs. You really really you blow right past all the signs. Selective listening.

29:06 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

That's OK.

29:06 - Paige Nolan (Host)

That's OK, I want to go back to something you said earlier when we were talking about how you manage your own limitations. I don't think you use the word limitations, but when you can't figure something out and moving into the producer role has made more sense to you, it suits you better. When you change gears and you're back in the creator role and you're doing something on guitar or you're writing a song to celebrate someone, or you're on the piano and you can't figure that out and you're confronted with a limitation, how do you handle the self-doubt of it? How do you handle that? It's not coming out as perfectly as you hear it, because I have to imagine, for musicians it's similar to writers, it's similar to chefs, it's similar to athletes, it's similar to dancers. You see it or hear it in your mind before it's become a reality.

30:00

And for me it's the gap of what I think I can create, how moving I want it to be, how eloquent I want it to be. And then what comes out? Inevitably in that process? It's different and that's life, right? The idea of life, the idea of a dream. If your dream is to have a different career, if your dream is to have a different type of marriage, if your dream is to get married. If your dream is to have kids, then all of a sudden it's real and it's different, and I think just that as a human is really humbling. And how do you, in those moments, confront your limitation and then embrace whatever actually is coming out, because it's yours?

30:45 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

I'll use piano as an example, because I started, I reconnected with piano in 2020 and I had not played in, I don't know, 30 years. Let's say.

30:58 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Let me paint this for the listener. It would be like a certain type of evening where you've had friends over or even just us hanging out with one of your brothers, both of whom have lived with us. You know, like something happens in you and it's usually at night and it's like a cloud moving over the moon and it's like a werewolf where the hair starts coming out of the back of the shirt and I know you're going to sit down at the piano and just rip something and have so much fun. And it was always Motley Crue. Home, sweet Home was the starting place. It's a good starter. And then you would roll into whatever kind of banging out, any sing-along song that you could find, which for all of us your friends and family was always pretty impressive. So I think you saying you didn't play piano for 30 years, you played piano. You just weren't really serious about the piano the way you are now and like serious about unlocking it and understanding it.

31:59

You were more like let's put on a wig and sing. I don't know, it's really fun to sing those hair band ballads.

32:06 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, of course, and okay, so right, I still played piano, but it was during those years let's call it my 30s, 20s and 30s and 40s, early 40s.

32:19 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Early 40s yeah.

32:20 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

But it was only within the parameters of having a wig on and making people laugh.

32:28 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, well, that's easier. Yeah, that's a different yeah, and that's a big part of your life.

32:33 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, and I've always found that to be a very natural sort of place for me to exist musically. Yes. The stakes are lower versus doing something like a wedding or a first dance or a funeral or other moments that I've had as through the journey that are really meaningful and much more stressful because the stakes are high.

33:04 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And all the times that you've played in those situations, you've played for friends. It's not like you're a musician for hires. No, no, no. Your heart is also feeling. Whatever you're there to experience.

33:15 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Right, by no means someone that you would want to go out and spend a lot of money to perform at your event, but I will do it and if you know me, I'll do it. So, yeah, I mean that was my connection to piano for the majority of my young adulthood, but I never. I just figured it would stay there and then in 2020, I found it again and I found a teacher who is a friend and a contemporary and a genius Bernard Baer. He's the most prodigious musician that I've ever been in contact with this intimately. Yeah.

34:04

Anyway. So I started learning, I started taking lessons again and it was often and it still is about 20 minutes of having a bourbon and talking and 40 minutes of playing piano.

34:18 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And that's perfect. So then Bernard leaves, and you're left with practice hours.

34:25 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

I'm left with practice hours.

34:26 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, which the whole family witnesses is very beautiful because we can hear you putting together a song and you master certain sections of the song and then the harder sections of the song. It can be very violent and there's some curse words and there's lots of sweating. I don't always tell you that I'm observing this, because I'll just kind of hear you as I'm walking through. We have a one story wrenched all house, so we live very closely together and I'll see the frustration. I'll hear you confronting your limitations violently and then I just kind of observed the level of sweat that's happening and then I just softly and gently walk away.

35:12 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

You just sort of fade into the background.

35:14 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes and let you have your process, which is what humans do, and tell us more about that moment, and because I've also seen you overcome those moments and really master these incredible, beautiful songs, like that Radiohead song that you worked on for nine months.

35:30 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, it is a process. There's a lot of frustration, there is a lot of cussing, there's a lot of sweating, there's self doubt and there are moments of total joy and feelings of incredible accomplishment at the end of some of those things. That Radiohead song, for example, let down is the hardest thing that I have ever done musically 10X the arrangement is by this mad scientist guy and it's incredible and it's so beautiful and it's so complicated and so difficult, and so for me, I had all of those moments in that song, 100x. I can't do this. Why can't I? Do this.

36:31

All the way through to sweating and having massive body temperature rise due to effort, emotion, concentration, frustration and a lot of emotion. It's just a lot of in that song specifically, but oftentimes just a lot of emotion that goes into it. So it's a process that taps into pretty much every feeling for me, from rage to total ecstasy. When I'm in that moment of being able, I'm like, oh my God, my fingers are just going, it's happening and I'm not even doing it right now. That happens and that's so cool. It's such a cool feeling and it can happen across any discipline. Obviously it's just about like we were talking about getting into that pocket where you're not moving rocks anymore, you're just flowing with the current and it's moments of disbelief Like holy shit, my hands actually are doing this. I can't believe that. I'm not even really thinking about what's next. They just know where to go now.

37:52 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And maybe that's what it's all for. You know, when we talk about facing self-doubt or confronting limitations like how and why is that even worth it? Why do we even put ourselves in that position to do that? Maybe it's for that moment where you feel like an open channel, you feel like you're part of something bigger than what you could accomplish, you're part of a creative force that's larger, and that you're so in your body that it's such a gratifying feeling. Maybe that's why we keep at it, maybe that's why humans keep at it. And actually I know that was just a comment, but I want to ask you what is that for you? Is that God? Is that source? I know you're not.

38:41

You don't use the word God a lot, but I know you and I. I switch in and out of God. I use God personally, but in my work and my interest is often about somebody's spiritual experience, and so I open up my language and I'm not attached to the word God. So for you, that to me, feels like it comes from a spiritual dimension which I think of as like a transcendent. Spirituality for me is things that you can't see. You know it's another dimension. That's the only word I can think of? Is that tapping into that expression for you, and do you believe in a muse, or it's God, or it's love, or it's life energy?

39:27 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

I definitely think that music is deeply spiritual, the whether you're listening to it or you're making it. Everybody's had that experience of listening to something that moves you to tremendous emotion or lose yourself from everything else that's happening around. It can get, it, can bring you to that very quiet, very still place, Just listening to it all the time and playing it too. It is something else. It's not I'm not consciously thinking about what I'm doing next. If I'm really feeling it, whether I'm playing guitar or playing piano, it's in those most pure moments. It's effortless and it's quiet and it's 100% present and plugged into what is happening, but in an effortless way.

40:29

And I think that that is. It's definitely something bigger. Whatever that is, it is something bigger than we are. And, yeah, I think that for me, music and for my dad, it's always been a means of connecting to self and a means of connecting to something bigger as well. For me, it's very much like my most vulnerable, my most authentic, my most connected moment is listening or playing and just tapping into those things in a way that doesn't happen to me normally or that I can't just channel on my own.

41:21 - Paige Nolan (Host)

In a way that's beyond words. I think that's why music is so universal. To me, it's the highest art form. I don't know if I'm supposed to rank art forms, but it feels like it's one of the reasons we all get so attracted to it and inspired by it, because you can feel it across any limitation of language. It transcends language and there's just so much that gets lost in translation, between people, between cultures, between countries. But when there's a song that brings people together, when there's a sound that brings people together, it's like all of that goes away. And I think what you just said about your dad it's like, if there's a reality, that, okay, he's passed. He died eight years ago.

42:13 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Nine years ago.

42:14 - Paige Nolan (Host)

So he died nine years ago. So technically, that separation, if you believe consciousness goes on. He's on a different plane, which you and I both believe, that there's some sense of presence that goes on. It's like that collapses or it sounds like from what you just said. That's the experience you have. You feel more connected through those moments with the piano and I think that's so unifying and it's so hopeful.

42:46 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, I definitely feel the most connected to my dad in those moments I feel the most, I feel his presence the most. In those moments I feel the most connected to who I am and who he was and the way that that overlaps.

43:11

I like to think that he would be inspired and proud of me in those moments, you know, I think that and that gets me to that place in a way that is different from any other process of getting me to think about my dad or celebrate him or in any other way, or remember him, and so it becomes a very heavy practice for me and I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean it's not in a good way.

43:53

It's just a very meaningful, deep moment of connection, to myself really too, and like my vulnerability and my struggle and you know whether it's the struggle with actually struggling, working on a song like that, whether it's the struggle of life, all of that comes to the surface for me in those moments. And then that very real, real feeling of connection to my dad.

44:36 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, well, I think that's why creativity is so important for all of us, because it's the part that's very human and it's the part that transcends our humanity, and you can call that divinity. In my mind, when I think about it, I can access the word divinity, but that doesn't have to be the word. You know, it's like that You're a mind, a body and a spirit, and I think creativity is one of the places that we go to feel all of that, you know, to feel total, to feel whole. And I have this quote on my bulletin board. I keep it as you guys, you. I say you guys, you and all of our friends, because sometimes my bulletin board, which is a massive collage, gets populated with little notes from your friends that come over and our friends that come over.

45:29 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Trust in slaves yes.

45:31 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And Anna has left notes and all of our beautiful friends who have supported our creativity, and they come into my writing space and write me encouraging notes, so I have a lot of gratitude for that. But I keep one up there that says take your heartache and turn it into art. And I can't remember who said it I think it was Meryl Streep at you know, at something I read, or maybe an award show. That makes sense because she's a master of her art, her craft. But I think that's so true.

46:00

It's something that is so important in our lives, and one of the things that you've done and I've seen you do this and I want to ask you about this is you've made time for it and you didn't always make time for it, do you? I know this might not have been conscious for you, but it's certainly something you protect. Now, how do you have the discipline or how do you? You know in your mind, how do you think about time and the time that it takes to engage in something that's creative? That's not necessarily a direct connection to either driving income or something to do with your kids or something to do with somebody you're responsible for, because I think a lot of people listening in my little world, including myself, struggle with time and what gets our attention and how to prioritize it, and I think you're a person who prioritizes creative expression in your life and creative projects, whether they drive your income or not. You just make time for it.

47:02 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Bernard, my piano teacher says the longest journey that you have to travel is from the couch to the piano bed. So there's definitely that is true. Like I do not want to go to the piano, which I don't want to go and sit down, like for you, it's like you could have. There are a million things on your list at any given point. There are four people in this house who demand your attention, who hug you and violate your space too much, who maybe don't listen as well as they should, but still want to violate your space. So how do you get from? Just I just want to be done to sit down and be disciplined and do it, particularly when you're learning something. For me like piano, for you like the mastering, writing or developing a new modality or like a new part of your business or a cracking, a new idea.

48:12

That's big when it's not. The results are not always tangible and there isn't a lot of reward necessarily on a day to day basis. It's like and Bernard also equates things to this it's like learning a language. So a lot of piano for me and a lot of music is, yes, you learn some things that can get you to where you can make your way around a guitar or a piano and you and that's great and those. Or it's like going to the gym, like you are learning a new sport or anything. There's a lot of growth in the beginning and that's awesome.

48:56

And you're like, oh my God, this is all of a sudden I'm a great runner. And then from there, the results and the rewards are nebulous a lot of times. So like you just have to sit with it and keep working and keep chipping at it. And you're not. And then like, eventually, one day you'll be able to speak rudimentary French. It's not like I just practiced again and now I'm this much better at that, or this unlocked the thing.

49:30 - Paige Nolan (Host)

It's not linear like that. You have to trust.

49:32 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, you just have to be disciplined and trust that every little thing and every little step is getting you a little bit closer, even if you don't feel it, and so that's hard. I mean, I'm a pretty disciplined person.

49:46 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes. I think you would probably I admire, slash, envy that about you all the time. I think you have a lot of willpower, way more willpower than I have.

49:56 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

I mean you have 10 other things that are more than I have.

50:00 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Thank you, I wasn't fishing for a compliment, but you really do Page. Stop fishing for compliments. You really do hold yourself accountable to the time that it takes, and I am much more. I can get derailed by a feeling I'm having If you really want to accomplish something and achieve something, you're going to do it, whereas I'll be tripped up on like I'm tired today or this doesn't make sense, or one of the things that I get really frustrated with is just the amount of time. It's not just making time, okay, it's not just making time. Then, if I devote a certain amount of time and I didn't get what I wanted to get out of that time, then I say to myself this wasn't worth it. You think you can write. You can't write. You can't even make sense in two hours. You need six hours to even start, and then the mountain comes up.

50:54 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Why does this take me six hours? Why does?

50:55 - Paige Nolan (Host)

this take me six hours, and then I start blaming you, sorry.

51:00 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Isn't that great I do.

51:01 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Why do I have to go to the grocery store? Why doesn't he go to the grocery store?

51:05 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

As I'm walking in with bags of browns, oh, please.

51:10 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes, we'll sidebar that, we'll do another episode about marriage and we can talk all about division of household labor. You do a lot, but you don't go to the grocery store.

51:19 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Invitation accepted page. I think what has resonated with me are those couple things that I mentioned, that Bernard said. If I say to myself, just get to the bench, just get to the bench, because guess what, you're going to enjoy it, it's like I just want to watch TV, it's already whatever time, or I don't have time, or just get to the bench for 10 minutes, sit down for 10 minutes if you don't have an hour. And that, I think, is the most important part. It's like the artist's way the morning pages Do the morning pages. It's a little different but it's the same thing. It's like just go and do a little bit.

52:11 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Do a little bit every day.

52:12 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

That works for me sometimes too, or every other day or once a week or whatever. It is, just be consistent. And then don't overthink what your results are versus what your time is.

52:24 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yes, I have to trust that there is. Yeah.

52:28 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Sometimes you're not going to see it. Yeah.

52:31

I've been working out for a month and I'm still the same as I was or whatever Across anything that you're trying to. I've been eating so well and I haven't lost any weight. Whatever the thing is with discipline, it's just you just chip at it and then trust. And for me, if I do get to the bench, I enjoy it every time. When I end up, I'm just going to go for 10 minutes and then I'm going to watch TV and then an hour later, I'm having a great time.

53:06

Then I always feel amazing after I do that. So it is really hard though it's a struggle across any creative endeavor that I do, because it's very much of a struggle to stay consistent with continuing to learn and work. Yeah, you know.

53:27 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And I think what I hear you saying, if you can get to the bench once you're engaged in the process, that is the learning and that is the reward, is the engagement. It's resisting the engagement with the process and then on the other end of it, in my experience, when I battle with, did I produce something? Was it useful? That's like what we were talking about earlier. That's when I need to do the reframe of it doesn't have to be this useful, perfect product. It's that I got there. I wrote something down. You know I had this humbling moment the other day and you know that I like to do this. I like to go back through my journals or just kind of piddled around in my office, all these books behind me. That closet is filled with journals and I have so many scraps of paper, so much writing in our house Like books upon books. It's really unbelievable.

54:17

It's like I can't even keep the books lined up vertically.

54:20 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

They're saggy which that's 1% of your-.

54:22 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I know, I know it drives you crazy, but this I'm not gonna be a minimalist, this is how I am. It's how it was as a kid. So I was going back through, because I like to do this sometimes when the house is quiet at night. So all of y'all were out. I don't know where people were. This was probably like a couple months ago.

54:38

I was at a rave probably, and I was going through the journals and I say the same thing. I've said the same thing. I've been curious about the same things, I've been writing about the same things for years and what really? The two things at least that are a thread that run through, what I get curious about. I'm really curious about how people balance their lives and specifically how women balance their lives between having their own identity and having a sense of self and being married or being in partnership and relationship and having children. Like, I'm really interested in that.

55:18

I've been interested in that since I was a teenager and I'm really interested in faith and how we live in this really hard, brutal world.

55:29

There's so much loss and there's so much hurt and there's so much pain, and yet it's so beautiful and love is everything, and how do you believe that things are gonna be okay? So those are the two things I write about. So in one way, it's so cool to see all the writing and all the thinking that I've done and all the time I've spent thinking deeply and observing this, and then, on the flip side, I get so frustrated that I don't know that I've landed on anything or I don't know that I've said anything. So it's like if I release, if I've said something that matters, and just sit with the fact that these ideas engage me, that they invite me, I'm playing with them, I'm writing about them, I write poetry, I write in a journal, sometimes I share essays and articles and blogs. It's like when I release that, the need for it to equal something and add up to something and was it worth it when I drop all those questions, of course, like what else would I be doing?

56:39 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, you're learning a language. Yeah.

56:44

That's the language, and doesn't it feel great to be able to speak French now, like isn't there a ton of value in that for you, even though it's been years in the making and it's been progress. That sometimes feels dramatic and sometimes feels like when is it gonna come? It's happening the whole time and you don't have to go and speak French to a million people at a convention for it to be meaningful. That's what has been happening for you and it is incredible. You have journals with deep thoughts in them from like 1985, you know, and you see the seeds of the ideas that inspire you now that they were happening then. It's so cool, do you feel?

57:44 - Paige Nolan (Host)

that same way about yourself? Do you feel? Can you look back and reflect on seeds that have led you to the creative life that you've built for yourself now?

57:55 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

I did love playing Mollie Crue when I was like 12, probably two home, sweet home. Now I would say, yeah, I think I always. When I look back now, I think that I always really enjoyed and felt fulfilled and inspired by being creative and making things, music videos, trying to be funny or express myself in those ways.

58:29 - Paige Nolan (Host)

And tell stories.

58:31 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Tell stories, yeah, as a kid, I think that it was there. I didn't write it down in 7,000 journals and put them all around the house and like all Different strokes for different folks. I didn't like use them as coffee tables, and most of our no, yeah Opposites attract. Yeah, that's the truth.

58:52

Do they say that it's true? For us it is, it is. But I'm always impressed when I think about that with you and how authentic it is and how pure it is and how much of your life force it is to be a deep thinker and to learn this language that you've learned and that you're learning Like it's always been there. So, so steadily and so strong.

59:24 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Well, I think that's why I wanted to invite you on today and have this conversation and what I feel about in my work, because, no matter what I've done for work, I've always worked closely with people of different ages in a learning environment, whether that's a one-on-one coaching environment, whether that's a classroom, whether that's a, you know, outside of the classroom kind of learning experience, and it's true for everyone.

59:48

I think we have three lines, I think we have seeds, I think we have things that we came here in our life to experience and to explore and you know, for anyone listening who has a an instinct or an impulse or a curiosity about exploring their creative expression in some way, I think that's a sign. You know there's that that Joseph Campbell quote follow your enthusiasm and I feel like you've really done that in your life and I've really done that in my life too, and it's it's led us both to own our own businesses and have a professional expression of it. But it doesn't have to be professional, like it's the way you talk about. I was listening to you talk about your dad and I was envisioning our daughters we have twin daughters who are 16, how they'll talk about you one day and I think they'll talk about you cooking with them. You know, I think you cooking with them on Sundays or any day. I mean it doesn't always have to be a Sunday, it just turns out that Sundays are the days that are most convenient for y'all to cook together.

01:00:49

I don't like cooking, but that's been a beautiful, like consistent expression for the three of you and talking about food and exploring different recipes and looking at cookbooks, and that's something that has nothing to do with your professional life, but I imagine them when they're your age, reflecting back on what creativity was like in our home, and those memories of the kitchen will probably come forward, I would have to imagine, as well as memories of the piano and other things we've done.

01:01:18

But it's a beautiful way to open up your you know, whoever's listening, your definition of creative expression. It can come in all shapes and sizes in your life and it's core to who we are as people, and I think it's also core to what we can offer other people. You know your creativity, your music, your sense of humor. That's been a gift to all of us to me, to our kids, to our community, to our friends and anyone who's ever experienced you in that way and can receive you in that way. It's joyful, which is exactly what your connection to it is. You know, I really believe that the intention with which something was created is how it's received. It carries that, and you create with joy, so it's received with joy, and everybody has something like that in their life.

01:02:10 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, yeah, thank you. By the way, that's a very sweet say, but and I do agree with that the way that something is created is how it's received.

01:02:19 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Yeah, I like that.

01:02:21

I wanna tell you this last thing, something that Ryan said and we can wrap up our conversation. But the other day they have this class. They're juniors and Ryan has a class in career development. So it was some curriculum that they were doing around exploring various career paths and to set them up to do that, this year they had to take a series of career counseling like quizzes and tools, and there's this one called the Holland Code and it was developed by a psychologist named John Holland. So I knew about this career tool from graduate school.

01:02:58

So when she came home with her results I was like oh, I know about the Holland Codes, like, tell me about your results, and basically what you do is you take a quiz and it gives you a result and you can be three of six different categories and there are different attributes that you then match with possible jobs for you. So the assessment really is about this idea that jobs and vocations have personality types and when a human matches his or her personality type with the job type, that's gonna be a more gratifying career path. So she is three characteristics she scored high on social, artistic and enterprising. So she opens up her folder and she's like oh, I'm an SAE, and so we look at the different jobs that match SAE and so I say to her I'm picking up on the A in the middle for artistic. And I say to her oh, that's so cool that you have this aptitude for artistic jobs. If you ever wanna explore more of that or if we can support you somehow, whether you wanna take a class, you wanna take a art workshop, whatever. And she looks at me and she goes, I know, and I said oh, how did you know? And she goes. Well, because you and dad are artists.

01:04:25

And I thought that was so powerful because, first of all, I don't ever think of myself as an artist and I have never heard you refer to yourself as an artist.

01:04:33

But why it was so powerful to me is that, no matter what we say, no matter the words or the explanations that we give our children to raise our children, or no matter what beautiful advice we give our friends when our friends call us for advice, all of those words pale in comparison to how we live and how we embody what's important to us and I felt really proud.

01:05:03

I feel a little emotional. We're calling it now because not for myself, but really for you, because you really do drive so much of the collective creativity in our home, and I think it's such a powerful validation that she's absorbed that in our home, just like you absorbed it from your childhood home, and that pursuing art or creative expression or her unique authenticity is a no-brainer for her. It's not even a conflict because you live that way, and I think that's why I wanted to talk to you. I'm so grateful that you share about your experience and I know someone listening, I hope, will be inspired and motivated by what you've done and how you've prioritized music in your life, and I know we are all better for it.

01:05:55 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with me. That makes me feel like I'm doing my job as a parent.

01:06:06 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Well, your job is to be you, and then that means that you get to be. I mean, I think that's what our kids want us to be and that's what they're.

01:06:14 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Living, just living a true life. And my dad, after well, he was always connected to music, right, so he had a banking job for 25, 30 years, as I mentioned, but every week he would travel and he would go and spend his nights out with musicians at clubs and see music every night and he met all the club owners and all the musicians and he developed this incredible network. And so when he was probably around my age, we were already in college or out of college, but he quit his job and he started a jazz label and for the last 15 years of his life he ran this jazz label and it was very artist-centric, it was very joyful and it was very authentic to who he was and why he was connected to music and it was all about making great music and it was the happiest that we ever, or that I ever, saw him.

01:07:21

It was the happiest I ever saw him in his life and when he died it really I mean you wanna find a way to not make money? You should start a jazz label. So it definitely was not.

01:07:35 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Well, that's also another podcast episode we could do. It's just how creativity relates to the reality of financial the world. So he made that leap. It was his second career.

01:07:48 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

He definitely did not do it for financial reasons, and so when he died, the real inheritance for me and for my brothers but speaking from my perspective was to live a true life and to be brave and trust, and I really took a lot from watching him in his purest state like that. And so when I came to a crossroads in my life as to whether I was going to continue doing jobs that I didn't really care about, or trust and try to build something that was my own, that I really am invested in and I really care about and am passionate about, it became very not easy, but it became much easier.

01:08:50

For me too, it was very clear that it was the right thing to do so when Ryan says that she sees us that way, it really does feel pretty great that I'm doing my job. By the way that I live. Yeah, you sure are. So thanks for sharing that with me.

01:09:12 - Speaker 3 (Host)

Thanks for being here, thanks for having me Will you come back.

01:09:18 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

We will see. I'll put you in touch with my people. And my people is Ryan actually, so you're gonna have to negotiate with her.

01:09:28 - Paige Nolan (Host)

She's already told me she doesn't wanna come on, but she'll book you.

01:09:32 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Yeah, that's it, and she takes a piece. So, I don't know, it's funny enough, I was SAE also. I remember when.

01:09:39 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I did that. Oh, you, that test. I remember those three exactly. Yeah, that's good Soful artistic and enterprising. We'll put a link in the show notes for you guys to do it at home. It's a good one. I like all those personality assessments. Anything that we can do to get more self-aware and get more aligned with your aptitudes, I think is a useful way to spend your time. So yes, we'll put a link there. All right boy.

01:10:06 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

Thank you for having me.

01:10:07 - Paige Nolan (Host)

I love you.

01:10:09 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

I love you too.

01:10:09 - Paige Nolan (Host)

Thanks for meeting me.

01:10:11 - Boyd McDonnell (Host)

I'll meet you in the kitchen, yeah sounds good Okay bye.