Out of the Blue - The Podcast: Finding the Way Forward
Out of the Blue-the Podcast features interviews with inspirational survivors of traumatic out of the blue events who have overcome unimaginable challenges, sharing their stories of resilience and triumph. By sharing these stories, "Out of the Blue" aims to create a community where others who have faced similar hardships can find solace and strength as together, we find the way forward.
Out of the Blue - The Podcast: Finding the Way Forward
Harmony After Cancer with Will Stratton
Have you ever wondered what happens when a successful artist faces their own mortality just as their career is taking off? In this deeply moving episode, acclaimed songwriter Will Stratton takes us through his unexpected journey with testicular cancer in his early twenties—a diagnosis that arrived precisely when professional opportunities were blossoming.
Will shares the crushing moment when he had to decline an invitation to perform alongside Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon because he was starting chemotherapy. But rather than dwelling on missed opportunities, Will reveals how this life-altering experience fundamentally transformed his approach to music, creativity, and purpose. He describes what he calls an "explosion of gratitude" that emerges after survival—a profound appreciation that can't be manufactured through any other means.
The conversation explores how Will's post-recovery album "Gray Lodge Wisdom" directly processed his cancer experience, allowing him to move beyond it artistically while maintaining its valuable perspective. Now with eight albums to his credit and a thriving music career, Will offers wisdom on balancing creative pursuits with practical necessities as someone with a serious medical history.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is Will's nuanced take on suffering and art. He challenges the notion that trauma automatically deepens artistic expression, instead suggesting that how we integrate difficult experiences matters more than the experiences themselves. His pragmatic yet profoundly grateful approach to life after cancer provides a roadmap for anyone facing life-altering challenges.
Whether you're an artist seeking inspiration, someone facing health challenges, or simply a person wondering how to find meaning in difficult circumstances, Will's story offers both comfort and motivation. Listen now and discover how sometimes our most devastating setbacks can lead to our most authentic creative expressions.
Will Stratton:
Music: https://willstratton.bandcamp.com/music
Website: https://willstratton.com/
Out Of The Blue:
For more: outoftheblue-thepodcast.org
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Welcome to Out of the Blue, the podcast, a space where we celebrate powerful, real-life stories of people who face life-changing challenges and found the strength to move forward. I'm your host, vernon West, and joining me today is my co-host, my son Vernon West III. In addition to being a talented musician, he's also the creative force behind our podcast's logo and theme song. Most importantly, thank you, our listeners, for tuning in and spending your valuable time with us. We truly appreciate your support. And hey, don't forget to smash that like button and hit subscribe. It really helps us to share these stories with more people who need to hear them.
Speaker 1:Today, we're honored to welcome Will Stratton. Originally from Woodland, california, will now calls New York's Hudson Valley his home. He's an acclaimed American songwriter, currently on tour in the US and the UK in support of his eighth album, points of Origin, just released by Ruination Records. Will is here to share a deeply personal and inspirational story, one that began with an unexpected medical crisis and a fight for survival. He'll walk us through his journey of recovery and how he turned trauma into triumph, and how he continues to thrive as a musician and artist. And to triumph, and how he continues to thrive as a musician and artist Will welcome to Out of the Blue. We're so happy to have you.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, Vernon. I'm really pleased to be here.
Speaker 1:We're so happy to have you so well. I know a lot of things about you because I did some research, but I do want to know really what's the event we were talking about there. That was that deeply personal, inspirational story the unexpected medical crisis that was out of the blue.
Speaker 2:So for a little context, you and I met in person a few weeks ago. I happened to be on tour with a close person in both of our lives and you were telling us about a story from your life and it just happened to spark this memory of a specific moment in my life. And when I was in my early to mid 20s I was kind of I was trying to be kind of a go-getter in music in New York City. I was playing lots of shows, I was working full-time and then I would play a few shows a week and I was trying to make things happen in the business, so to speak. And I got very sick with testicular cancer. By the time I had gone to the doctor it had spread to my lung it's my liver.
Speaker 2:And when I was receiving my first round of chemotherapy I got an email from a professional acquaintance of mine named David Garland really great guy. He had a wonderful radio show on WNYC called Spinning On Air and I had been a guest on that show a year or two prior to my getting sick. David at the time didn't know that I was sick when he reached out on this particular occasion, but he was emailing me to ask if I would be a part of his. I think it was the 20th anniversary of Spinning On Air being on the radio, and so the guests were going to be me, yoko Ono and Sean Lennon. That was how he pitched it to me. And so I had to say you know, david, I would love to be a part of this, but I'm really ill, I'm in the hospital right now, so I can't take part. And and he followed up a little bit.
Speaker 2:I think you know, at the time I was maybe a little bit underplaying the situation, but ultimately, you know, he understood what was going on. And that, to me, is a moment from my past where I'm like, wow, if I had been healthy or I had gone to the doctor sooner or something, if I had gotten through that crisis a little bit earlier, maybe that would have happened. And then, you know, maybe that chain of events in my life would have resulted in a different trajectory for me. And it's not so much a moment of regret as it is just kind of an inflection point. You know, I'm still alive, I'm in relatively good health now. I'm still, thankfully, you know, I'm very grateful to be able to continue making music and pursuing things that are meaningful to me. But you know, I think at the time when we were talking, we were talking about big breaks or, you know, near near big breaks, and that was one moment in my life where I was like, ah, I kind of it's interesting to examine that moment from multiple angles.
Speaker 1:You know you feel like, wow, this happened. What a time for this to happen. I know exactly what that is. I mean, I had a couple of projects in the fire when, when I got diagnosed, I mean I had a, a book I was writing that was getting a feedback from houghton mifflin. They, they loved it. And all of a sudden I get sick and now fast forward that those people haven't been working there anymore, so it's too late for that. But, um, but the thing is it's like when that stuff happens, it's like you have to wonder like what? What is the like?
Speaker 1:I feel we're looking for the benevolence that's behind these acts that come out of the blue, so like, so typically they might. You know, it seems really a rough turn of events, maybe took you off of a trajectory, right, but maybe it had a reason for that, you know, because, first of all, I wanted to ask you when you were saying, what were the this is probably not just for me but for people listening what? How did you know you were sick? Did you just have started getting sick? Fever or pain? What was it that made you get in there?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean with with testicular cancer, the tumor is first, so I noticed a lump and then I, being this, you know, young, uh, early twenties guy, uh, not having a lot of experience with illness or doctors, I put off going to the doctor until I really did feel sick, Um, which you know, at the time there there are different levels of denial. I was in denial about it, but I also, you know, a part, an aspect of denial is just not wanting to think about something, you know putting it out of, out of your head, Um, and so I was just kicking the can down the road until it was something that I couldn't turn away from. And so I was just kicking the can down the road until it was something that I couldn't turn away from. And you hear about this all the time with testicular cancer and other forms of cancer.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a huge part of Lance Armstrong's kind of origin story, and I happened to have the same oncologist as Lance Armstrong because I was in a very similar predicament to him. Same oncologist as Lance Armstrong because I was in a very similar predicament to him. And you hear this a lot with with young men, you know, people who haven't encountered significant challenges in their lives, perhaps, and feel like they can just keep on coasting or participating in the same behavior that's led them to that point, when really that's a they're. They're in a crisis and they don't know it yet yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's very much the case for most young men, myself included. You think you're superman you know, you don't. You don't feel like there's anything that you can't beat the heck out of. You know so when you went in and tell us what happened, I mean, what was that journey? How did that go? How?
Speaker 2:long. Well, I was in. I was in treatment for about a year. Um, I, you know I went to, went to a doctor, they sent me to an emergency room. I got admitted to the hospital um, got uh transferred to another hospital, got through my first round of chemotherapy. Then I flew with my parents to Seattle Washington, where they were living, and I got the rest of my treatment done at a hospital in Seattle. So it was another two rounds of chemotherapy and a couple pretty serious surgeries as well, as you know, physical therapy and stuff like that afterward.
Speaker 2:It was a very extensive and harrowing journey. I mean, my own experience of that in some ways is kind of the least of it. It's it's very hard for the people around you. I think there are so many internal resources that you don't even know that you have uh, when you're going through something like this I'm sure this was the case for you too Uh, I would imagine where you're. You're in the thick of it, and I would imagine where you're in the thick of it. And you know, in my case a couple of the harder passages of my journey were getting a sepsis infection living through that and it's very tough.
Speaker 2:Later, one of the surgeries was, like you know, 28 hours and involved a lot of recovery time. You know you go through something like that, and your body. I think it's just remarkable to me how resilient the body and the mind can be, especially if you're lucky enough to go through something like this when you're fairly young. Especially if you're lucky enough to go through something like this when you're fairly young and if you're lucky enough to go through a type of the disease where the survival rate is fairly high, which in my case it was. So I got so lucky in a couple of really crucial ways my age, the type of cancer I had and the type of support system I had. You know I had the option of getting treated in New York or on the West Coast and I decided to move back in with my parents for a year.
Speaker 2:As you can imagine, it was a really tough journey. But being on the other side of that is more interesting to me, like the time immediately after I went through all of this, the sort of insane amount of gratitude that you have to have for surviving something like that, and then what that does to your life, in my case, feeling like I had this second lease on life. It was, like you know, getting cut a blank check from a higher power. I felt so good, oh, that's incredible.
Speaker 1:I'd love to hear this.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's incredible. I'd love to hear this. And soon after that I reconnected with my then partner, now wife, and we've been together for 13 years at this point. We got married last year.
Speaker 1:Congratulations Wonderful and I think that thank you.
Speaker 2:I think that connecting with her was only really possible because of this, uh, multi-layered, tumultuous, traumatic journey that I went through. You know I wouldn't have reached out to her had I not been on the other side of the country recovering from this, uh, cataclysmic event in my life. And you never if you do have the good fortune to make it through something like this alive, you never know what is going to come out of that, completely unexpectedly. That wouldn't have happened if you didn't go through that kind of traumatic experience. I try not to. I mean, it's it's been so long now. I try not to dwell too much on the previous versions of myself and those kind of those different, diverging paths that result from different, different decisions that I've made in my life. But that's one element of my journey that I'm really grateful for.
Speaker 1:Wow, I'll tell you I could. I could hear some of the highlights that were going to be taken out of this already, but, but explosion of gratitude, that's a phrase and a half, because that's what I feel like I'm getting. You reminded me of the explosion of gratitude. That's something that's incomparable to anything in your life, and I think that even the people around you get to experience that. It's like when you reach out to your now wife, it's almost like you were sharing that. I feel like that beautiful, uh, gratitude. It's something about it like the second lease on life, is it? It's like something so special. You feel like you're touched by something outside of yourself. That's even though it probably isn't, because I'm not sure our higher power is outside of ourselves probably you know what I mean, yeah, but but somehow it touches us with such a powerful way that the gratitude is. I mean, I felt gratitude, and I'm sure you did too, before that happened, but can you compare it? It's almost incomparable yeah, people's.
Speaker 2:I think people's experiences of suffering are so subjective, but people's experiences of gratitude are also really subjective.
Speaker 2:To look back on their own trauma or suffering, or maybe a family members, and then say, well, they've gone through something really extreme. You have no idea in your, in your own life, what, what that must feel like, I just I don't. I don't think that is true. I think if you're somebody who has thankfully not experienced something really extreme and traumatic in their life and you encounter some difficulty, that suffering in experiencing that is no less than the suffering of somebody else, because you have no frame of reference for what that other person is going through. And if you flip that around, I think the same thing is true for gratitude. In a way, you know, being a little kid, being grateful for a particularly good Christmas present or something like that or something like that that feeling is honestly very similar to the feeling that I had coming through this year-long journey with my life and my health relatively intact and feeling like I was given this gift by no one in particular, but by the world.
Speaker 1:Life itself really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, gratitude is a very relative thing and I want to echo what you said about not being sure about the existence of a higher power, because I had some very close brushes with death in my experience and I didn't I'm more of a materialist, not in, I mean, in the philosophical sense, you know I didn't feel the presence of a singular higher intelligence on the other side of the veil between life and death, but I kind of feel like when people die they return to a kind of huge subsuming, universal intelligence that we as single human beings don't have a lot of um cognition of. If that right right right, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that a lot. Um, it's tough to figure that stuff out. Obviously, we could talk that's a whole year worth of podcast about that, but certainly when you went on from this though, the explosion of gratitude it had to have. Definitely. Well, one thing I did I read this a long time ago, really in my 20s, because I was trying to figure out happiness and I was very sad going through that period of time in my 20s where I wasn't too happy.
Speaker 1:And I found a book written by a Jesuit about happiness and he interviewed like 50 people from all walks of life, but he did like a rich person who was happy, a rich person who was miserable, a poor person who was happy, a poor person who was miserable and everything in who was happy, a poor person who was miserable and everything in between, every other kind of thing you can think of. And what he ended up at the end of the book saying was that the only thing he found that was consistent among all the people who were happy, rich, poor, sick well, was that they were grateful. First, he said there was the only thing he said he could say, fixedly, determinedly, that happiness derived from gratitude. It came from gratitude. So what does it mean? I mean, what is happiness?
Speaker 1:Anyway, I think of it as joy. I mean, when you talked, when you said that explosion of gratitude, I just felt an explosion of joy come in my heart, like because because I relate to that, I relate to that extremely because when you're in that near-death situation it's, you know, it's terrifying. That's before. I'm honest about that I was scared out of my pants and um, when I finally thought, oh, I'm not going to be history tomorrow and not be part of the big oneness and stuff. I'm back and I have another chance, and it was extremely joyous in that sense. I didn't have an expectation of what I was going to do with my life at that point, but I did feel the fact that I had a second chance was unbelievable.
Speaker 1:It was just so wonderful, and so what did you do after this? With all that do, found gratitude.
Speaker 2:I went through a few different phases. I moved back to New York City, I resumed my old job. I moved in with my girlfriend. I kept making music. I in a lot of ways I resumed the old life that I had had before I got sick, but I did it with a different perspective and that informed the work that I made. Um, the music that I made, um, the.
Speaker 2:The album that I made immediately after that was called gray lodge wisdom and it's, uh, definitely a an album emotionally about the cancer experience of getting weaker and then getting stronger, and um, and once I had made that, it was, it was a. It was an enormous relief because I felt like I could write music from a bunch of different perspectives and I had kind of said what I had to say on that topic and I could move on from there. And a record I made after that well, a couple records that I made after that were more kind of heterogeneous, the types of songs that I was making. I was trying new things out, both informed by that particular experience but also just trying to experiment. And when that approach stopped working. With this last record, for example, it's very much it's a concept record and it's about California, mostly California in the 1970s, and it's based on a lot of conversations that I've had with people in my family, especially my parents, and their memories of California, as well as a lot of additional research I did about wildfires. There's kind of this current of wildfires that runs through the album.
Speaker 2:But you know, as life goes on, from an experience like that I think you do kind of have to in my case at least like I found that I couldn't fire on all those cylinders all the time for an extended period of time like there's, there's a line between gratitude, which I think you you have to try to carry with you for the rest of your life, and mania, and I think that it's possible to go through an experience like that and get a little bit manic if you don't try to get back to a little bit of a regular baseline.
Speaker 2:It's such an extreme experience and such a life-altering thing. But there's also so much else out there in terms of life to experience and I found that once, once the cancer experience had colored my life in that particular way because I could move on substantially from that, you know, with the exception of checkups, and you know all of the medical experience that will follow me for the rest of my life. Just because I have been a cancer patient, I feel a need to try to just live a life on terms that are separate from that experience, but informed by it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:It does, it does. I can feel that would inform everything. I mean it informs. It's not like you want to. You can't break from it. It's part of you, but you do move on. You do move on. It's almost essential, a part of the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as life goes on and as I've gotten older because this happened to me 13 years ago I've lived a lot more of my life and you know, I've had I've had other injuries and other illnesses and other like really transcendent experiences. And so, even though it's it's kind of like to use a really clumsy metaphor it's like my life is a rock garden and there's that's one pretty big boulder in the rock garden. Is that year of my life? Because it's really dense with sensory experiences and memories that don't pertain to anything else in my life. It exists a little bit outside of it, but there are other big boulders in the rock garden too. And so, yeah, as time goes on, I'm there's an additional layer of gratitude for me, which is that I can, which is that those memories become more ordinary and they become more assimilated into the rest of my life and they become one more factor that kind of informs my perspective, rather than the factor right, right.
Speaker 1:So does that when you sit down to write a song now? Um, you don't have, you don't think of that. You know what I mean. You're thinking of the inspiration for the song itself. How would you say it? Uh, affected your ability to write music that's a really good question.
Speaker 2:I I, I think I was really when I was a younger person, I was very fixated on seamlessness and perfection and competency and proficiency and, you know, showing off my guitar playing skills and all of these things. I had a lot of vanity as a young artist and I think one thing that my experience with cancer took away from me was that kind of vanity. Maybe not completely, but it definitely took a lot of it away Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I can actually hear it. I mean I've listened to some of the music I can actually hear it. I mean I've listened to some of your music. I mean it's so, it's getting more, it evolves. Your music is evolving, just like you are, which is about as good as it gets really.
Speaker 2:The older I get. I mean, I'm in my late 30s now, so I'm not a young man, I'm not an old man necessarily, necessarily, depending on who you talk to.
Speaker 2:Age is a matter of perspective obviously I would say you're a young man talking to me well, in any case, I mean the, the music I connect with the most right now has to do with living an entire life.
Speaker 2:It's like, you know, you look at the discography of John Prine or Van Morrison or Joni Mitchell or one of these kind of monumental songwriters.
Speaker 2:You can pick up an album from different sections of their life and feel some of the kind of fabric of what a life is when you compare it to an album from another period of their life. And that's something that I strive for. You know, I want to make music as I get older that carries some of those feelings of that particular time of my life, rather than just trying to be one version of, uh, of a musician and I this is kind of tried to say I think it's what a lot of musicians strive for, especially if they keep making music after their 20s or 30s or after you know what, what the industry determines to be their, their sell by date because that's something we've talked about too is there's like a very narrow box, that uh, so narrow yeah that the industry wants to put you in, as much as there is an industry I think it's the age between 19 and a half and 20 and a half yeah, that's when you're.
Speaker 2:that's when you're you're most, uh, visually marketable, because people want to be you at that age, but it's also when you're the most naive and the most easy to manipulate.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Oh yeah, it's funny they say that they can manipulate you, you. But it's also because you know, um, back in those days, the early music industry selling 45s to of who wears shot shots and things like that. They were looking at the youngsters with the disposable income. They will go down the street and buy a single for a dollar and a half. But now it's not the case. The industry is totally flipped flipped.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way people consume music it seems like it's changing all the time now and I don't have the energy or the inclination to keep up with consumption trends. I really just want to make the music that I can make and everything else. The thoughts that have to be expanded about how the music is perceived I think that those tend to negatively affect my creative process. Speaking personally, it actually gets in the way of writing music.
Speaker 1:It does. It does, trying to write for, you know, for an intentional thing. That's just plain old commercial writing. I mean, if you're writing for like a toothpaste or something, but if you're really writing music, it's art, and art is something very much numinous. It's how would you feel about it, vern? How do you reflect on that stuff too?
Speaker 3:you write songs um, I just came from a band practice last night where we like shot content because we're trying to like work for the algorithm yeah and yeah it is.
Speaker 3:It does feel like, uh, it does feel like a necessary evil because you're marketing and it's part of like being in the music industry, I guess. But it is definitely a distraction from the point which is to create the thing that genuinely comes out of you and then like hopefully, yeah, hopefully, people like that. But yeah, it is very stifling to like concern yourself with like all right, well, what will make money?
Speaker 2:bands are such a beautiful thing, you know it's. It's almost like they really are being on a pirate ship or something. You know everybody has a different role. You can. You can have a member of your band who has to make sure that the band is putting out content for social media and you can have somebody who's in charge of something else, and that's that type of collaboration. I do miss that. I stopped being in bands after college and looking back on it I'm like, oh, maybe I should try to start another band. It's just really nice Motivating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's the camaraderie of it and the act of playing music with other people, where it's not like one person is writing the songs and being in charge of the arrangement and stuff. The communal aspect of it is really nice too. I will say it is.
Speaker 3:It is that it is one person like writing the songs and being in charge of the arrangement and stuff. The the communal aspect of it is really nice too. I will say it is. It is that it is one person like writing the songs and like bringing them. But, yeah, like I, I'm the drummer, so I get to, I get to offer my interpretation of a song and, and it is, it is super collaborative, um, and it is very rewarding. And I will say this, though it distracts me from my own stuff, so keep going with your own stuff.
Speaker 3:If that is where you're like, true, like where you really feel the most like rewarded for creating, I'd say, stick to that, because I'm in a bit of a situation where it's like I hear you and talking about your, your like journey and you've got a discography and beautiful music, by the way, I like, and it's also very clear there's an etherealness to the music which I know. I don't know if it came necessarily from that experience, but it does have a sort of like heavenly, kind of like droney quality, like the song on your website from Grey. What was the name of that album?
Speaker 2:Grey Lodge, wisdom.
Speaker 3:Grey Lodge Wisdom. Yeah, it has, like this drone that comes in, you know, and it does feel very like. This experience of like I don't know meditative has has like permeated your life and then, like all of the, all the other songs I've listened to after that had a similar quality, so it is cool to hear how it's. You're really like crystallizing this taste or this like style it's coming.
Speaker 3:It sounds like it's coming from your dedication to like your the craft, so that's something that I admire. I'm I'm over here like I gotta be in less bands. I'm in four four bands. Okay, that is that is a lot of bands. Everyone needs a drummer yeah, that's.
Speaker 2:I mean that speaks to your abilities as a as a drummer, because if you're in demand, that means that you got something going on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, willingness to not be the front man.
Speaker 2:Well, that's that selflessness is really important too. That can translate into a very fruitful career in music. That involves some solo work too. I mean, you look at a lot of prominent sidemen of the past. They put out amazing, amazing solo work. I think of somebody like Jackson Brown, who started out like just being a bit player in other people's music and then really I may be getting this wrong- no, I think you're right, though yeah what I.
Speaker 2:When I first thought about jackson brown, it was because of um his work on um. Well, he wrote a song when he I think he was 19 that ended up on a nico album. These days that's one of my favorite songs and it just blows me away that he was that young. But you know, he wasn't known as a songwriter until many years after that came out. I think like five or six years after that he was putting out solo records and in between, you know, I think he was doing a lot of uh work as a side man in la and all of that stuff. I have no doubt and informed his his work later on. There are just so many stories of people like that. Glenn campbell is another one where, like you, know, right, right, right, he was a debt.
Speaker 1:And jimmy hendrix, yeah, he was adept.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:Jimi Hendrix.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He was a side guitar player for the Platters or something right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he played in a bunch of soul groups and you can kind of hear that in his guitar playing too. It's like he's thinking of the guitar as a horn section almost. It's like the kind of stabbing stuff that he's doing with the guitar reminds me of like the horn horn section and james brown or something like that that's.
Speaker 1:That's so true. I never even saw an interesting insight. Um, that's really right on. He definitely did. They think of our foxy lady yeah, exactly, that's like.
Speaker 2:Exactly it's like, it's like saxophones.
Speaker 1:And playing in three-piece. You probably missed that because he had been in bands with horn sections.
Speaker 2:My first band was a ska band.
Speaker 1:Oh, that sounds like fun.
Speaker 2:It was fun. Oh yeah yeah, and we had a horn section and aside from that, I've recorded with horns, but I haven't played with a horn section since I was in high school and I do kind of I miss it a little bit.
Speaker 1:Oh, I bet, I bet I had. One of my earliest experiences was like playing at my cousin's wedding. We got up to play and they had a whole horn section and we did Boney Maroney, which is a Lennon, did that song. It's an old rocker, written by Fats Domino I believe. And when they came in with that horn section after we sang a verse and then bam bam and they did this off-setting horn line, it blew me away. I was so excited. I wanted give me horns, I want more horns. And it's funny because when I first started out trying to get into clubs, I can't tell you how many times we would audition for a club and they would say, well, get a horn, you need horns, Get some horns in the band. We never did, but I think we might've got a sax player for a little while. But really insightful comment, Will.
Speaker 2:I'm going to remember that forever. I'm sure I've heard that somewhere else. I don't think that's a Will Stratton original.
Speaker 1:It's not a Will Stratton. I don't think so. For all intents and purposes, we're going to attribute it to you.
Speaker 3:Back to your point, Will. I'm kind of hoping that through this process I'm meeting people and I'm making connections and I'm hanging out with people, and that's a big part of it. And, like you know, one of these days the path will take me somewhere. Then you know, maybe money will be there, Maybe a living will be there. It's kind of just like yeah, right, and it's always a maybe the music industry right now.
Speaker 2:I, I really I want there to be some kind of mass organization around streaming royalties or you know something. Something's got to give so that people who are particularly talented and in demand, like yourself, can find their way to a living, um, and yeah, way to a living, um, and yeah, people's, people's consumption habits just keep changing, though, and I think people's uh, attention spans are diminishing somewhat too. It's like content is starting to overtake music in a way as a as a focus of people's attention, and to the extent that that's lucrative, I guess that's okay.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's also part of life like that. That will happen. The the media will change the way. The the way we consume the media will change the media. So now it's like like we were filming videos vertical and with the camera sideways, and it was like what this is like now. We, now we're trying to do that right.
Speaker 3:It's in and the same for this. In the same like, uh, same vein, music is becoming shorter and more intense and like like um, over super stimulating because of that form and it's like that's not bad inherently, but it's like different from our sensibilities, cause I'm, I'm, like I'm early thirties, I grew up without much electronic influence, like I think Lincoln park was like the closest to I, I'm getting, I'm, I'm digressing, but um, it's like not bad necessarily, but it's just different. And it sucks for people like us who, like, appreciate a specific style or approach that is now niche and there's no way to break through to people that understand it or it's or it's's a lot harder. Yeah, this is the. This is the eternal struggle, and I am curious about like, did your experience like sort of make you feel more confident about just consistently pursuing music?
Speaker 2:I have tried to be very pragmatic about the way that I approach all of this, because once I came out of this experience, I could no longer and this is going to get really very specific about stuff unrelated to music for a second. I could no longer really get health insurance as an individual on a marketplace, even though this was post-Obamacare, because I had been on Medicare when I was sick, when I was on Social Security, disability, et cetera, et cetera. There are all of these little loopholes that make it hard to get healthcare for somebody with my medical history, or at least did at the time, right immediately after my illness. And so I have tried to always at least have a full-time gig that will give me health insurance through um, through my job, and I have tried to pursue music to the best and fullest of my abilities alongside that, in parallel with it. So I have needed the stability of full-time employment, just, I mean, for the sake of my immediate family, so that they don't worry about me in case something were to happen.
Speaker 2:Uh, I've, I've kind of had to take a particular approach and, you know, has that stopped me from pursuing music all of the time like I would otherwise want to? Yes, I haven't toured as much as I would have, I think, but the grass is always greener if I didn't have to have a full-time job. That being said, I also wonder if you know if the shoe had been on the other foot and I had really tried to make a go of it as a touring musician for a couple years, you know if I had like tried to do the thing, where I live out of my car and I tour all over the United States like some friends of mine did in the 2010s. More power to them.
Speaker 2:I really admire people like that for going out and doing that, but that can be a really hard thing to do for your physical and mental health and I think it can lead to you kind of burning out if you're not careful, if you really go hard at it. So I think that there's this question of like longevity it's, it's a really, it's a really. It's what is the phrase from the last waltz. It's anyway. It's an impossible way of life, the life of a professional musician, and it gets more and more impossible. And there are people who make it work. A lot of those people have vast hidden reserves of familial wealth to draw on. Not all of them. There are also very talented people who do make it through this crazy gauntlet of the industry with their self-sufficiency intact, just because they are that talented and that dedicated and that lucky.
Speaker 1:But all together right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to have all three and I think that, in my case at least, having the ability to not worry too much about the health side of things, having the ability to have insurance because of the country and political system that we live in, has allowed me to also make a lot of music that I wouldn't have made otherwise. So I've made four albums. I've put out four albums since this all happened. That is a slower rate than when I was in my 20s, but I'm still making music and I really do. I still have goals related to touring.
Speaker 2:I want to do a tour all over the United States, which I haven't done yet. I've toured a lot in the UK. I've toured a little bit in Europe. I'm going out for a couple of weeks in the UK in July and each time it's like it's kind of a shot in the dark. I don't know exactly what's waiting for me. Sometimes it's amazing, sometimes you know there's only two people at the show. But the act of writing songs and of playing the music for people who find meaning in it has not gotten any less fulfilling as time has gone on, and I'm very grateful for that at least well, I think that's.
Speaker 1:That would be probably um. We're talking about the um, the thread. One of the things I like to look for with Art of the Blue Things is the thread. There's a thread coming through it that kind of, to me, informs me personally of where I'm going, if I'm going the right thing, everything. I can't you have to do that for yourself, obviously, but I hear you and I think yeah, you might have said you did say less hectic pace of album release, but I think, of terms of quality is over Trump's quantity and any time in the morning for me, you give me 10 songs that are okay. Give me one song that's unbelievable. I'm listening to that song the whole time. Forget the other 10. It's quality. I think that's what this Out of the Blue event has turned your implosion of gratitude into a pretty sharp focus on staying in tune with your truth. It seems that way, I mean on the outside, looking in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you use the word thread. There's a poem by William Stafford it's maybe my favorite poem called the Way it Is, and it is all about that following a thread through your life that gives the rest of your life meaning, and I think that's kind of what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I said and I think that when we get in tune with our thread then you recognize it when things happen. You don't maybe instantly recognize it, but eventually it starts to manifest and you go, yeah, okay, and it informs your feeling going forward. So we can't predict tomorrow, much less the next hour, but we know that when it comes to points where you've got to make decisions that can change your life, you don't even realize it. It might be the smallest decision, but it's going to set you on a whole other path.
Speaker 1:The more people like we were talking about this the other day, I think about some people don't understand why bad things have to happen for people to get grateful, because it's just the way it is. I mean, lots of times people go through life and they coast and they God bless them. They never have anything really critically earth-shaking happen to them, but they're grateful and they think they're grateful and they probably are. But is that the kind of explosion of gratitude that we're talking about here? Because when you have the earth-shaking thing happen from out of the blue, I feel that's a we are. But is that the kind of explosion of gratitude that we're talking about here? Because when you have the earth shaking thing happen from out of the blue. I feel that's a, that's a. I have to say it. I hope God isn't listening to me on my higher power. Please don't listen to this. All right, I am saying it was almost. It was like what I needed. What happened to me. I needed it to happen. I needed to have my head shaken up because I was so complacently thought I had it figured out and I just thought it was. I just can't believe how much I've changed from that as a result of that event.
Speaker 1:And I look at my old self. I don't I'm not mad at me. I mean I had, you know, raised a family. I had to bring money in. I was always focused on making money. No, but I look at it now, it's so much different. I think maybe it's because I did save, I put a lot of time in. Now I have the ability to say do what I really feel and love first and foremost. I feel like that's what I've learned about my life now. And when I hear you talk, I think that that's exactly what you're learning and you're evolving in that way that the things that are important in your life. I mean, yeah, you have to have a job for the medical and that stuff. But it doesn't preclude writing these great songs you're putting out and then going on the tours when you can do it and I think something will unfold and you'll know when it's time to do that national tour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the stability is important in my case. Some people need some chaos in their lives to be creatively productive. I've always tried to. When I was really young, my dad was an English professor. He's now retired and had a bunch of other careers as well, but he has a love of poetry that he passed on to me, and when I would write poems as a young person it was from a perspective of trying to transcend earthly things, trying to, you know, transcend day-to-day experiences. And for better or for worse, that's been kind of my approach as a songwriter too.
Speaker 2:I'm not I'm not a super earthy songwriter, I think because of that kind of poetic background and for me at least, I can only get to that kind of slightly disinterested, above ground perspective from a fairly stable place. And that stability, that's what I get from not having to worry so much about the day to day and putting in time at a job. I really admire people like Charles Ives, you know, this great American composer who worked, as you know, was one of the founders of the American insurance industry, for better or worse. Or William Carlos Williams, you know, who was a medical doctor and was also writing these beautiful poems. I think there's.
Speaker 3:Brian May. Isn't he like an astrophysicist? Yeah, yeah rocket scientist or something like that yeah, incredible yeah, this art is not mutually exclusive, but intelligence being a form of art, yeah but continue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I agree those inspired the hell out of me yeah, I mean, I mean I, you know, I really admire people whose central, core part of their identity is they are an artist and that is how they interact with the world.
Speaker 2:But for me, because that hasn't been the only part of my my journey, that that balancing act and the kind of stability I get from the other parts of my life have have informed the way that I make music and in terms of like all of musical history, I think there have been these very brief periods in society where people are allowed to make a living as a musician and we're kind of looking back. We've had a very fertile, commercially fertile period of music making and there was, you know, the period of when sheet music was selling like hotcakes and there's all of the stories of composers. It's being taken under the wing of various monarchs and aristocrats in Europe and being part of a patronage system, kind of like the great visual artists of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment era and all of that. And these examples stick in our mind because they are such a pivotal part of that society, even if it wasn't being remunerated, being compensated with the value that we would ascribe to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it probably was, and people were still, probably sort of against their will, creating stuff that was really heart-wrenching. You know just of the times, of their experience. It doesn't matter at the end of the day, and it's a shame that maybe these periods of time the music is a mystery. But there's also something really beautiful about that too, like how it is ethereal.
Speaker 1:Music is the most. It's one of those arts that comes directly out of the blue. I mean, when you're performing it and the audience is listening, you don't know exactly how they're hearing it, because they're interfacing with your music and their frame of reference with reality, so its impressions are totally out of your control. It's like anytime you write anything you have to realize. Now it's in the hands of the listener or the reader and they're going to create from your creation the experience, and I've seen it all my life. You know we may not have had a hit record that was global, but for the people we played it for it was a part of the fabric of their lives and for that I get much joy from that. So it doesn't matter if I, if my band didn't, I don't get to go on a nostalgia tour right now. You know, and play for a bunch of people that said, yeah, that's a great song, but if I did, to the people that heard me, they are that way.
Speaker 1:There was a time, I think, that there were musicians all over the country doing the same thing, because, while the industry may have been ignoring us and making us subsist and gradually taking away the livelihood of musicians, which is, I don't think they meant to do it, it's just what unfolded after the pandemic and whatnot. Yeah, I think, whatever it is, it's going to force us musicians, artists, to come up with even better stuff, to break through that wall of noise, and ultimately, music is needed for that connection to the ethereal. You know what I think? One said it's the bridge between the physical world and the non-physical world, the spiritual world, for lack of a better term. And music, or art is the bridge to that. And I think music is the most vibrant form of any art on the planet that does that. It stirs the emotions up. I mean, think about what it does. I mean they use music to march and get people ready to start a war. It's that powerful.
Speaker 1:So I mean we are in our hands, in your hands, will taking that out of the blue state, and Vernon too, and myself, but I'm a little bit old now, but the thing, it doesn't stop me from making music, but still, with the same token, it's like our duty, duty as artists, to keep the fire, fire, keep the golden chalice from spilling as we bring the offering to the, to the minds and hearts of those people who are hungry for it what a great story you have. Well, I mean, it's just a wonderful story of how that event happened in your I like to call them the terrible 20s. When we all go through them, as we're a little cuckoo and we're a little wildly driven, I mean gosh, the amount of drive you have when you're in your 20s is off the charts. And if you're channeling it, maybe that was your out of the blue force saying all right, we want to help you channel it better, we want to get you some real perspective here, and maybe that's what happened.
Speaker 2:I did. I did get perspective and, yeah, coming out of that event, the thing I kept on telling people and I could tell they didn't completely believe me was that I wasn't regretful about what happened because of what it gave me. Those experiences are really important to to the person I became.
Speaker 3:And I will say that speaks to you and my dad your resilience, like your personal resilience Because I think a lot of times people like me that haven't really I mean, I've experienced family members going through things, but I haven't been through physical, intense things there's a feeling like, oh, it was meant to happen to you, so you learn this lesson, and I haven't needed to learn a lesson, so it hasn't happened to me. But I think that's a load of BS because that's like really hindsight bias. It is really and it's selling yourself short. It's a testament to how freaking strong you guys are that you would go through this and be like you know what, after all, that this is the good I could take from it, like that's a choice.
Speaker 3:Not everyone I don, I don't think reverts to that, but that is like a testament truly to your guys' spirit and maybe there's something to being an artist, having that connection, being willing to find inspiration from this experience. I mean, I commend both of you guys. I think you guys are clearly, you have a humility and appreciation for life that I'm inspired by, just sitting here in my laptop.
Speaker 1:Vernon, I'm gonna say one thing don't underestimate what it's like to have your father or a loved one go through this thing, because my father yeah, it sucks well, my father went through it and he died eventually.
Speaker 1:That did it for me. That was my first out of the blue event that made me appreciate and find something very special about my life, the second chance of my own life, though that's a heavy one, but when you've experienced it you and your sisters and my family have all experienced it going through this with me, my family have all experienced it going through this with me. Not to mention, I'm going to give you guys also the, the kudos for having gone through the pandemic, which is no small thing for individuals to endure, and that goes to you and everybody out there listening.
Speaker 1:You've all been through something just as heavy as anything, so you can make it turn your life into a one big explosion of gratitude if you try yeah absolutely right.
Speaker 3:It's like we said this it's these things are subjective, so how they affect you and your perspective is what is most important. If you stub your toe on a rock and then it just you decide to, you know, work for a charity because there's too much suffering in the world, like you know, like all the power to you, if that's, if that's what triggers it. Amazing, you know, and I definitely appreciated the growth that we went through after that as a family.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, and I think it benefited everybody. Unfortunately, I had sorry to say that god, I know you don't want to do another one to us, right, higher power? But it was really helpful. It did help us a lot and I hope that you know. Anyone listening here today to our wonderful story from Will Stratton can see that, that you can go through these things. You can still come out the other end with an explosion of gratitude and a new way to look at life. That is a new paradigm, a new shift, that you can move your life forward. And boy oh boy. Thank you so much, will, for sharing your story with us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:It's been an incredible podcast. Vernon, you want to say something.
Speaker 3:One last thing I had an old high school friend recently died because of testicular cancer. Uh, he was like he's my age, he's like 32, he's brian bell dad. Um, he was, you know, a young man and he was too proud to admit something was wrong and it became too late and it took his life.
Speaker 2:So I will say I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sorry to interrupt you too, but I'm the. The reason I still talk about this in settings like this is with the hope that it will find people who might be in similar situations, and having told these stories over and over again, you know it. I know that they have made a difference, but I'm so sorry for your loss.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks. Well, of course you know it's a it's life, that's one of the things that's going to happen. But, yeah, if, if, if we can make that, you know, make one person who's a little insecure or scared get over that just to get it checked and give them a little more time, then hell yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it Appreciate you doing that? Thank you so much. And before I say bye, one little act of shameless promotion here with my cup folks.
Speaker 3:And the sweater.
Speaker 1:And the sweater. But also, don't forget, we're going to post some links for Will Stratton. You've got to get his music. Go on, go get a hold of it on Spotify or go to Bandcamp and just click, go to his website and you can find it all. So thank you so much for joining us, will. It's really been an amazing pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank, you so much. Thank you to both Vernons.
Speaker 1:This has been great, both Vernons, it's a double Vernon. You got the two barrel Vernon at you.
Speaker 3:Vernon 1 and Vernon 2.0.
Speaker 1:The new version and improved. All right, but thank you so much for everything. Vernon, thank you for co-hosting with me. I can say it I know, I can.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us. Those of you who's, please smash the like buttons and click the follow, because every little bit helps, and thank you from here of us, all of us here at Out of the Blue. Have a wonderful day and don't question it. Get some, get an explosion of gratitude from it. All right, thank you so much for joining us. Bye, everybody. Out of the Blue, the podcast Hosted by me, vernon West, co-hosted by Vernon West III, edited by Joe Gallo. Logo and theme song by Vernon West III. Have an Out of the Blue story of your own you'd like to share? Reach us at info at outoftheblue-thepodcastorg. Subscribe to Out of the Blue on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and on our website, outoftheblue-thepodcastorg.
Speaker 2:You can also check us out on Patreon for exclusive content.