Stream of Consciousness # 49 - Colton Cox

In this episode, I sit down with someone who’s been part of my story for a long time — my friend Colton Cox. We grew up together, went through school together, and somehow ended up on two different paths that still share the same heartbeat: curiosity, creativity, and the desire to make something meaningful.

Colton is a music teacher, a multi-instrumentalist, and someone who’s always had music woven into who he is. We talk about the early sparks that shaped him, the move to Kansas City, the classroom, and what it really means to build a life around music. It’s a conversation about passion, purpose, and the moments that stay with you — like hearing him play Blackbird in the dorms and realizing he had something special.

This episode is part reunion, part reflection, and part celebration of someone who’s found his lane and is running with it. If you love music, teaching, or stories about people growing into who they were meant to be, you’ll enjoy this one.

http://www.youtube.com/@DanBackes-Omaha

https://podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1768323039635344d43bab5cf

Main link: linktr.ee/coltoncoxrocknsoul 

FB/IG/Tiktok/etc. @coltoncoxmusic

Website: coltoncox.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Alright, everyone, we are live with Stream of Consciousness with Dan. And today I'm joined by someone who's been woven in and out of my life for quite a long time. Colton Cox. We went through middle school, high school, and even college together. And it's been incredible watching the path he's carved out through music, through his teaching, and through community. So I'm so excited to dig into his journey. We're gonna have a ton of fun. We're gonna tell some stories and just reconnect in a way that we haven't in a couple of years. So how are you doing today, Colton?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Uh I'm doing pretty good, Dan. It's nice to see you.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

It's nice to see you too. Um, I wish you could just like stand up and we wouldn't even see your head, just to show the audience how how tall you are, but uh but no, so before we get into everything you've been doing lately, I just wanted to start with uh kind of one of my favorite memories of you. We talked about it off air when we're in middle school, we're on the basketball court, you're like 6'2. It felt like you were about 6'9 compared to everybody else. And I I believe we were both on the B team, if I if I remember correctly, and I don't think we won a single game.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

We did not.

SPEAKER_04 1:23

Okay, I just wanted to make sure I was remembering that.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

In our defense, I actually uh we we have to correct that statement because it was the A team that had zero victories, the B team, I think, won two games.

SPEAKER_04 1:35

Oh, we won two, okay. Oh my, that's just that's just like I remember that because I was talking to my dad earlier, and I'm like, oh, do you remember Colton Cox? You know, we you know went to school here. Oh yeah, the the tall guy with the buzz cut? Did you have a buzz cut? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

My hair was very short at that point in time, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:55

Oh, okay. Oh, that's so funny. But uh so no, so I just want to give you a quick uh chance to just kind of talk about what your life was like growing up and just how big was music a part of your life always? Because I mean, obviously, when we were in high school and stuff together, you were always in orchestra and things like that, but just kind of talk about your young Colton music experience.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah, I mean, so I started playing the upright bass in orchestra. So that was my very first instrument, that was in the fourth grade. Um, so like music definitely was a part of my life early on. Um, but I wouldn't say it was like a focus at that point. Uh it was something we had, you know, we had to play an instrument for a music class at school. And I was just even I've always been tall as that point in my life. I the orchestra teacher, um, Mrs. Higby, who I I I don't know. I remember Mrs.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

I I remember Mrs. Higby actually. I've heard that name.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Well, yeah, she um basically insisted that I play bass because I was one of the only kids that was big enough to play the bass. Um, so I kind of got stuck with it, but I really enjoyed playing bass, and that's how I met um our classmate uh Gus Applequist, who's another uh Celina face that's could be familiar to some Celina folks. So but yeah. But yeah, I uh I started there and I played bass all the way up to uh freshman year of high school, which is actually when I switched to guitar. Um and guitar had been around. My grandpa played guitar the entire time I was growing up. He's a big part of the reason why I picked it up in the first place. Um, but it was just I started showing interest in it in middle school, and um he just proposed to my mom that he could pay for lessons for me for a little while. Uh, and I got started doing that, took lessons from Drew Davis, who's here in Kansas City now.

SPEAKER_04 3:51

Um, is there a particular album or song that you remember? Because I remember one for me where I was just like, I love music, like it's it just hits you in a way that you really can't explain until you hear like that one song. So is there a moment like that for you?

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Yeah, this is actually um uh kind of like one of my um like guilty pleasure artists, although I don't I hardly ever listen to them now. But uh so very you don't have to lie, you don't have to lie. I'm not going to, don't you worry. No, uh so very first CD I ever bought for myself uh was actually uh stained. Um if you know the song, It's been a while, it's been a while.

SPEAKER_04 4:42

There's no shame in that at all. There's no shame in that.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Uh but yeah, so that was my first CD, and uh that was kind of like what I really wanted to do at that time was do like heavy music. Like I really liked metal and screamo, because of course that was like what was happening when we were in in high school and middle school too. Um, but that's like what really started off my whole like kind of music collection with stained. Uh and then I think what kind of took me down a weirder path is I heard my first Radiohead album when I was in high school. So it was like I still kept listening to metal and scream and all the kind of stuff, but I had this kind of weirder element kind of diverge away from that. Um, but yeah, that stained CD was was really the the formative one.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

I I love asking that question because, like I said, I've got I've interviewed quite a few musicians now, and a ton of them like go to those types of bands where it's stained, it was Green Day, it was Blink 182. And for me, it was actually Good Charlotte. That was the first CD I ever got. Um, I it was the young and the hopeless. Yep. I played I I remember because I had a crappy Honda Accord without a CD player, so I would have to plug in the cassette adapter, but I would play that CD in my car just over and over and over again. So that was kind of my my album that really got me addicted to that genre of music because I I'm still a huge punk guy, I just love punk rock.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

The kids don't know what we did to listen to music back in those days, like they didn't they have their MP3 players and their iPhones and all that kind of stuff. They don't even have MP3 players everywhere. That's how old I am now. But yeah, I uh they didn't know we had to pop a whole cassette deck into the tape machine and have our CDs sitting on the on the car seat next to us.

SPEAKER_04 6:40

Yep. Oh man, I love it. We grew up in this is why I'm so excited to talk to you. We grew up in a time where there was just enough technology that it was like kind of technology, but you really had to like hack it and like make it in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

We truly we we lived through that time frame of the kind of like shift from like fully analog to like digital, and it was like that weird in-between time where you still had to disconnect the phone line to connect to the internet and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_04 7:12

Yeah, so I don't know about I don't know about you, but I remember going home from school, and the first thing you do is go on to MSN Messenger. Yeah, that'd be the first thing you do. That's the first thing you do, and then mom would be upstairs, I need to make a phone call, or something like that. And you're like, Mom, I'm talking to someone, like yeah, I don't think there's oh that generation, no one else can understand that but us. So that's hilarious. Truly oh, that is good. Um, so let's talk a little Celina Central. Was there a uh obviously you you were playing the guitar and everything, but was there a teacher or a even another classmate that really just kind of made an impression on you and that really just kind of helped you, you know, get through high school because high school's hard.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah, I mean, I can think two two teachers and several people, but one in particular um that kind of like shaped a lot of my what I did in school. Um so I was in choir, uh, and I had both um Josh Wilden and Ryan Holmquist as choir teachers because they had a little trade-off. But Holmquist was definitely he he came my junior year, I think, of um high school. Big influence on me. I mean, I still say quotes from him to this day. Uh if he happens to watch this, I hope he does, but I say the phrase good enough, good enough for who it's for off the time. But yeah, uh he had a really big impact. I just uh I think he really showed me um a good music teacher, uh how he uh handled our groups. You know, we were one of the first classes he ever taught. Um so at least I think I I think we were. Um he was very young um at that time. And it was just it's cool to see a young guy kind of figuring out how to be a teacher to kids who are like maybe 10 years younger than him, you know. Um, but then also uh uh Chad Newck, our uh theater teacher. Uh I man, I I I was a a national honor thespian, so I had um gosh, 1200 hours, I think, in our theater department from like yeah, yeah. I think that might be the international one. I can't remember what the guidelines, but but like uh it was a lot, it was a lot of time in that theater department. It was wow.

SPEAKER_04 9:45

Well, that's actually really funny. So Chad would I think he coached me in baseball maybe my freshman or sophomore year, I believe, and then he always was like trying to get me to do like uh what were the really what were the really short ones called? One X the one X. He was always trying to get the one X.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

I'm just like, no, no, just that was his uh that was his recruitment driver, you know. Like he that's how he was really all about like trying to get people who were not just theater kids to do theater. Like he wanted to get the sports kids, he wanted to get the the outsiders, all the weird kids. Like he really tried to get as many people as possible as he could in the program.

SPEAKER_04 10:25

But I know our our uh thespian program at Slane Essential was super amazing. We had so many talented uh thespians.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

My my class, or our class, I should say, uh, we were the first to go to international thespian festival with a show, uh which I was in noises off. Uh, we were the first ones to do that, I think, in the school's history, if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

So yeah, I just remember I just remember going to a lot of the the shows because I do like musical or musical theater and just theater in general. It's just not my I just don't think I could do it. Like I just I remember going to a lot of the shows and they were they were very, very good.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

I mean, so I really had a lot of passionate people in that program. Um, and many of them still do theater all around the country. Uh, if you remember Mark Warner, um he uh I don't know if he's in theater anymore, but gosh, he did technical directing for a long time, um, helping out a lot of different theaters around different places in the country.

SPEAKER_04 11:28

So yeah, well that's great. So I'm gonna go off script really quick. We're gonna go best worst school lunch in high school.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

That's a great question.

SPEAKER_04 11:42

Um okay, so I'll just see how you're feeling if you want to start best or worst, and then I'll and then I'll go with mine.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

I'll tell you, I'll tell you my experiences. So I I will say I wouldn't say it's the best, but it's the one I ate the most was definitely the uh the chicken strips from the the like I don't know like what they called it, I can't remember, but you had to go through a separate line and like get those. Uh the chicken strips I got all the time. Uh I think worst, I don't know about high school. I can tell you the worst school lunch I ever had was in elementary school, and it was for Dr. Seuss Day, and I don't remember what they called it, but they basically did these weird like cheese roll-up things. And I had it, and I remember I threw up afterwards, and it was orange. Uh that's definitely the worst one I've ever had.

SPEAKER_04 12:37

The lunch ladies not in not listening to this, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Right.

SPEAKER_04 12:42

Oh, so it's actually super funny because the chicken strips, if I remember, like costed more than like a normal lunch. Yes. I think you so like I would I would eat the chicken strips a lot as well because they were just I don't they were like crack, they were just so good.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

And but I would remember top-notch chicken strips, they were just they're pretty solid.

SPEAKER_04 13:06

And I just remember because they costed more, and my mom would be like, Well, I gave you this amount of money for lunch for the month. Where did all of it go? It's like it's already only two weeks in. But I actually liked the chicken fried steak.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Oh, yeah, that was a good one.

SPEAKER_04 13:22

Yeah, but the worst for me is that fiestata pizza.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

You know, I said it. I almost I certainly do the octagonal shaped, weird, crusty pizza.

SPEAKER_04 13:39

Oh, that was nasty.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Yeah, those little like the little like meatballs that were like made out of dog food or something.

SPEAKER_04 13:46

Yeah. I don't even know if I'd feed my dog that bad of food, but uh yeah, maybe not. But so we're gonna fast forward to Wichita State. So you're you graduated Celina Central, which would have been 2010.

SPEAKER_03 14:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 14:07

And uh what what did you declare your major in and what kind of were your goals going into college?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

So I did jump around a little bit on majors. I started out as a music major, and that's I ended up being a music major. I was uh I graduated with a guitar performance degree. Um but basically I the college was a weird time for me. I uh I went to school and it was about my sophomore year of college when I kind of realized that I didn't need to go to school for what I was trying to do, um, which is you know the singer-songwriter thing that I'm doing now, uh, because they didn't really teach any of that kind of stuff. They taught, they taught classical music and jazz, but like, you know, there weren't classes about songwriting or like music business or anything like that. There are now. I mean, I don't know about songwriting, but there the program has definitely evolved quite a bit since I was in school.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Um, but basically I realized that I just didn't need to go to school for that. So I thought about dropping out for a minute, uh, and I ended up not doing that. This is why I changed majors a few times. Uh, but I tried out, um, I switched to theory and composition for a little while, um, which I thought would relate to songwriting, but it's really more centered on kind of like writing orchestral pieces and um like symphonies and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04 15:27

That sounds terrible.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a very academic degree. Like most people who are theory and composition majors go on to get their doctorate.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

Um, gotcha. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

So it's very heavy.

SPEAKER_04 15:40

Yeah, I was gonna say, like, that sounds brutal. It sounds brutal.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Yes, and I will I will give praise to them. Uh the the youngest member of the theory and compositions after that time basically pulled me aside one day and was like, I see that you have like ability and you have potential to write pieces, but what you want to do is not what we're providing here, basically. Um, so I switched out of that. I tried doing uh journalism for a little bit. I thought about being a music journalist, um, hated it, and then eventually went back to doing guitar performance for my my final section of college. So I ended up taking I I went to school for five years rather than four because I jumped around a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 16:21

So well, I was four and a half, so I'm right there with you, and I switched. I was I was right there with Tyrone doing the aerospace engineering.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Right, I remember that.

SPEAKER_04 16:31

And uh I got one semester in. I don't even think I took a class, but since I was I joined that fraternity, there were a lot of upperclassmen that uh were in that uh in that field, and I was just like, Nope, this is not for me, so I switched to business. Yeah, so yeah, that I don't even know if there's a single person. Well, maybe Tyrone, obviously, but like you always switch, like everyone switches, it's wild. Like you just have to be adaptable, and uh it obviously worked out for you, so I'm gonna tell you a quick story about what I remember in Fairmount Towers, are very drab, dull, pretty crappy dorm.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Which are not there anymore.

SPEAKER_04 17:22

They're not, they got torn down, you're right. Uh but I remember although even this story first. So I get to Fairmount Towers the first day, you know. My mom and dad are dropping me off. My mom's a mess, you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:39

Um, she's like, I didn't have a car. Well, I had a car, but she's like, you don't need one at college, you can just ride your bike or whatever. So I just had a bicycle. So I put my bicycle in the bike rack at Fairmount Towers and was taken up, you know, my first box to the dorm room, whatever. Came back down, bicycle's gone, got stolen.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:02

Unbelievable. So there's one Fairmount story, and then I remember what floor were you on? Were you on five or were you on a different floor?

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Uh so I was on the second floor. Oh, you were on too. Yeah, my girlfriend at the time, B. Birchill, she was on the fifth floor.

SPEAKER_04 18:22

Oh, so I spent a lot of time up there. Okay, so I think that yeah, yeah, that makes it full circle because I was on the fifth floor, and there were quite a few Salina people in the dorm, actually. And so I connected with obviously B and you and you know, Tyrone, and I just remember you sitting in obviously it was probably B's dorm room, just ripping Blackbird by the Beatles. And I'm just like, I mean, I know Colton can play, but you freaking rock. Like, where did this come from?

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yeah, I mean, I so I started playing that song uh in high school, actually. Uh I just wasn't very good at it at that point. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think that's uh how I made a lot of friends, uh actually. That song in particular, uh, I remember a separate instance sitting in the hallway of my floor of the dorm, uh playing that in like our first couple of weeks there because I was just uh I was just desperate to kind of and I, you know, nothing against Celina. I was just kind of desperate to shed my Celina self. You know what I mean? I wanted I was finally out of my own. I got I get to be the person I want to be. I get to dictate how I live my life, all that kind of stuff. Very like 18-year-old going to college type feelings. But yeah, I mean, um, I play that in my hallway and I had several other music majors that lived around me, and they all like came out and joined some of them sang with me and stuff. And it was very um those people I I haven't talked to them in years, but I mean they were my friends throughout the rest of college, pretty much. So uh good people.

SPEAKER_04 20:03

Yeah, I'll just never forget that because I uh so I grew up playing piano, so I was good at piano, but you can't just like haul a piano around in the dorms. Yeah, uh uh and then I played the clarinet and band. I don't know if you remember that at all, but I do, yes. And then in college I was like, well, I want to you know try something. So I bought a ukulele, and I just thought I was pretty decent, and that's why it was just hilarious when I went into that room and just hear you playing this, and I'm like, wow, I really suck.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Well, I'll say too, I do think it was it was probably not long after that, like 19 or 20. Uh, I think when I really kind of started figuring out how to really play and perform. Um because I mean, I I'd played, I don't know if you remember at at lunch in high school, we had that like stage of sometimes they'd let us perform on and stuff like that. Yeah, uh, I don't remember what they called that even, but I did that all the time. Um, but you know, I've been doing theater stuff and like I was in choir and everything like that. And I had done a bunch of performances, but I just don't think I really figured out how to be a performer until like around 19 or 20. Uh, and I'm still still learning more about that as time goes by. But I think that's really like when I started figuring out like it's not just playing the song, like you there's there's more to it than that, you know.

SPEAKER_04 21:32

No, absolutely. So I'm gonna do another quick story, and then I want to get into kind of some advice you'd give for people that were in your shoes at you know, age 18 going to college. But I have to get this story off my chest. I don't remember if you heard of the Fairmount Puker.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Uh I think I had heard some some whispers, some rumors. At that time.

SPEAKER_04 22:02

So I'm going to come clean. I'm going to get on the record. Uh, it was, I think it was either the first or second week of college, and you know, you're getting to know everyone. Uh, you know, it's a completely different world. You can do whatever you want, uh, whatever. Right. And uh a bunch of the people on my floor are like, we're gonna go to the hookah bar. And I'm like, Well, what the hell's a hookah? What the hell's a hookah bar? I don't even know what this is. Yeah, I've never smoked anything in my life, and so we get to the hookah bar, um, you know, smoking the hookah, doing whatever. And I get back to Fairmount Towers, but I'm by myself, I'm in the elevator, and I'm spinning. I'm absolutely just spinning, so nauseous, and I throw up absolutely everywhere. Didn't tell a soul. So for everyone listening, I am the Fairmount puker.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Confessional.

SPEAKER_04 23:06

See, yeah, that's pretty embarrassing, but that's college.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

It sure is. And I uh, you know, I'll I'll I'll save it for another time, but I I have had my own hookah smoking puking experience that was just as uh just as embarrassing.

SPEAKER_04 23:20

So I won't I won't make you tell it, but uh so yeah. So if you could just maybe give any advice even to yourself back at 18 or anyone, you know, who wants to just pursue music, would you could tell them to go to college? Would you tell them to move to Nashville or LA or New York? Or what would you kind of yeah, just what advice would you give to them?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

You know, I think something that I've learned, especially um kind of starting my my own business, not just the the studio, but you know, running my own songwriting career and all that kind of stuff. Um it's all right to make mistakes, you know, like if you figured out I probably shouldn't have gone to college, but I don't uh necessarily regret finishing and getting my degree. And it's it's helped me out in a few situations. I wish it hadn't created quite so much debt for myself, but that's that's just our college system. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, you have to try stuff to know what's right for you and what's not right for you, you know. Like just because you do something and maybe it like sets you off course for a little while or something like that's that's just life, you know. Like you can't be so hard on yourself for putting an effort into something and and even if it doesn't work out, like you you learned something from it still. You can still learn from failures, you know?

SPEAKER_04 24:43

Yeah, no, absolutely. And but uh yeah, do you think and I've kind of been struggling with this a lot through all of the conversations I've had with people on my podcast. Is do you think there is too much pressure? And there might be a little Charlie Kirk in me, which I don't want to get into that, but um but do you think the college system is broken?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

I don't think it's necessarily broken. Um I think that there's a lot of flaws to it, just like anything that we have. Um I think what really was kind of the kind of the downfall of the the whole thing of it was there's this kind of societal pressure to send your kids to college, as if that was the only option for everybody. And I think we can see clearly now the effects of that were like the job market did not support that idea of you go to college, you get a job in the career that you intended to get your degree in or whatever, you know. I mean, it's it's I think the the thing, this is something I would tell my college self too, is it's like only go to college if you 100% know that you have to. Not not because it's like an obligation or anything like that, but because you can't go further in the thing that you want to do unless you go to college, you know?

SPEAKER_03 26:02

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Absolutely. If I could have gone back, I I definitely the things that I'm most thankful for going to music school is learning about music theory and being able to like think and work on the same level as people who are classically trained, who have played jazz, people who are very, very skilled musicians. If I didn't have that ability, I would not have the kind of people that I know and play with around me. But I also know that in that time I was going to school, I could have also been kind of exploring a different side of the music industry, getting to know people who did more similar things than what I do, like songwriting and just playing rock music and like that kind of stuff. And you still meet those people in school, but like, you know, it's just different. There's just different, uh, different sides of the field, you know?

SPEAKER_04 26:51

No, yeah, absolutely. That's a great answer. I completely agree with that. Like, obviously, if you want to be a doctor, you can't not go to college to be a doctor. Like, if you want to be a lawyer, you can't be a lawyer without going to law school. So um, but no, I think that's great. So uh you've graduated and you were in Wichita still for how many years? And what music store because you're working at a music store, I believe. What music store was it?

SPEAKER_00 27:18

So uh I was in Wichita for almost 10 years after I graduated.

SPEAKER_04 27:22

Oh, 10 years. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yeah, I was there for a long time. Um, but yeah, I uh um hold on, let me think. So I worked at uh uh I worked at Dam Music. Uh they're on the west side of Wichita. They've been there now since 2003, so a little over 20 years. Um but uh I worked there. I started out as a uh retail associate, just you know, selling guitars and all that kind of stuff. And it was about a year into working there that they asked me to uh the owner asked me to take over the lesson program. So basically, you know, scheduling the lessons, doing all the administrative stuff, but also getting to do some substitute teaching and things like that. Um, but yeah, I mean, I worked there for six years, and I think that was really um really a big part of where I'm at now. Not only did I meet with like most of the Wichita music scene, either as the teachers who worked there or like the people they played with would come in. Um, but also, you know, the Kevin Dam himself and many of the other people worked there, they're just they're great people that r really care about running an honest business uh and not just trying to sell products to people. Right. Um and it was just I it to me, it was a really big part of kind of helping me learn how to run an ethical business, basically.

SPEAKER_04 28:40

Oh that's great. I it's very rare for me to because I I play um up to I think 10 instruments, not well by any stretch of the imagination, but at least sounds like something's going on. But I it's rare to go into a music store where you don't just feel like you belong. Like, I mean you can go into maybe a guitar center and you don't feel like you belong, but like those local those local music stores. I remember in Wichita, I would go to one because I had my ukulele and I didn't know how the hell to restring it. So I would go to this music store, and he was just so nice and just so he would like kind of like even teach me how to do it, and I'm like, Well, are you are you crazy? Like, if you teach me how to do this, then you're not gonna get paid next time that I need my ukulele restring. But that's it's just so it's such a community. Uh music is such a community, it builds, it crosses bridges, and so I guess when you started, when did you start teaching?

SPEAKER_00 29:50

So I've been teaching off and on since I was about like 19 years old. Um so I I wouldn't say that I was like a full-time teacher at that point, but definitely like had a few handfuls of students, maybe two or three at a time, something like that. Um, but when I'd say when I actually started teaching, um it was while I was at the store. Um, so I would do I would fill in on lessons for just like private one-on-one lessons. Um, but in my last couple years that I was there, we kind of revamped our um our rock band program. They call it Rock Academy. Um and basically very similar, um, not exactly, but similar to uh School of Rock, um, where you you know put kids and bands together, they learn some songs and they perform at the end of it. Um but I taught those classes. Um, I taught one one of them where I was fully in charge of it, and then I helped with I think two or three other ones where I was kind of an assistant. Um but I mean, yeah, I mean, just uh I think the big advantage for me was being able to to not be the teacher in that circumstance uh when I was running the program because a lot of music teachers don't get the administrative side of it, they only do the teaching, so they don't really know how to like find new students, how to like promote themselves, yada, yada, yada. Um, but yeah, I mean, yeah, I've been teaching for a long time to long answer your short question.

SPEAKER_04 31:21

But no, so I also wanted to ask because to me, like I've mentioned a hundred times, music is so important to me. It literally saved my life. It literally did. Um, so why do you think that you know kids should be learning music and why teaching music is so important?

SPEAKER_00 31:40

I have always equated music to kind of like um like monks who are seeking nirvana, you know. Like basically like to me, it's like this thing is like it doesn't matter your skill level with the instrument because as long as you're persistent with it, you'll get better. Like that's there, it's inavoidable, you know, um unavoidable. Um, but to me, it's like I have felt throughout my life at different points that at the times I'm growing musically is also the times that I'm growing as a person. And it's like they they just seem so very intertwined. Like I'm not trying to teach you music because it's like, oh, you need to know how to learn how to play music instrument. I'm teaching you music because it's something that you can make a companion for the rest of your life, you know, like you'll have this instrument or just even just the understanding of how music works and appreciating it, like you have something that fulfills you for the rest of your life, you know. I just think that's really, really special. And not everything, not all hobbies can do that.

SPEAKER_04 32:44

No, boy, I I could not agree more. Uh it's that's it's it's really hilarious, actually. So I have a uh I've just picked up the Native American flute. All right. Um it is a very beautiful instrument, it's very simple, but it's it's so funny that you said that because uh my sister came to uh came to Thanksgiving recently. Well, I guess recently, god, it's already February. Uh but she came to Thanksgiving and she picked up the flute and like she'd never played it before, but it was so funny because she just like made it her own and she called it like the dance of the wolf. And you know it wasn't the most uh proficiently played song in the entire world, but like you can still appreciate it, like she felt it in that moment. She's like, I'm doing the dance of the wolf. I don't know, like that's just what music means to me.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

It just uh Yeah, I mean I think it's a really it's a really primitive connection to our our whole culture as a human species, you know. Like we're able to play instruments that people played hundreds of years ago, even if they look different, sound different, whatever. It's like just it's a it's one of the many threads that kind of connects our our past to the to the future.

SPEAKER_04 34:06

So it does. And so what before we take a quick break, what inspired your move to Kansas City?

SPEAKER_00 34:19

So I at the time I was in Wichita, I had been playing music um in several different bands, including my own projects, um, for a good stretch of time. And it was just kind of feeling like I had kind of stalled out a little bit. Um, I don't think it was anyone particular's fault. I just um I'd been through kind of a rough breakup uh a few years after I graduated um college, and this is someone who I felt like I was gonna be spending the rest of my life with. So it was rough, and that's kind of when I really first started playing in local bands and stuff like that. Uh and had seemed really exciting for a few years, and then it just kind of felt like, well, I'm not making any progress forward here. Um, so it just felt like it was time for me to move on and try something different. And I uh kind of never lost contact, but reconnected with uh Brandon Jensen, who's a good friend of mine, has been since high school. Um, and he lived here at the time and started visiting him, and it just kind of felt like, you know, maybe Kansas City is where I should be. So I moved up here.

SPEAKER_04 35:25

Well, I hate Brandon Jensen. I'm actually absolutely kidding because we were drum majors together.

SPEAKER_03 35:32

Right.

SPEAKER_04 35:35

I went to prom with his cousin. Yeah. With her cousin, with his cousin, sorry. Oh my gosh. No, uh but how how much courage did that take, though? Because I know I mean obviously you're doing a good thing with your teaching and you know, working at the music shop, but it's not like you're you know making bucks after bucks after bucks, like it had to take a lot of courage to do that. So where did that courage come from, or did you just have the faith in yourself?

SPEAKER_00 36:06

I think it was a lot of faith in myself, honestly. Um I I mean I really wanted to keep pursuing music as like my main career. Um, and at that point, you know, I you could argue I was already doing that. I was working at a music store, I was performing fairly frequently, um, but I just didn't feel that way on the inside. I didn't feel like it was going successful. I kind of feel differently now when I look back on it, but uh just didn't feel like I was really getting to where I wanted to go. Um so it felt like Kansas City, there was just more opportunities here. It's a bigger city, it's got more connections to kind of the wider American music scene, you know. Um, literally the crossroads in the middle of the country. Um, but you know, that's that's that was a big motivator. It was like I I want to pursue performing and and playing full time. Uh and I'm still kind of sitting in a mix in there somewhere, but I definitely feel like I'm I'm closer to that goal now than I was when I first moved up here.

SPEAKER_04 37:09

So yeah, well, I think that's just great just advice to take a leap of faith and trust yourself. And you know, all good things don't come easily. And obviously you've worked incredibly hard your entire life to get to where you are now. So yeah, I hope everyone listening can you know just take a little piece of that courage with them in their musical journey, to be completely honest. So well, we're gonna take a quick break, and we will be playing a portion of Stuck by Colton Cox. It's it's it's jazzy, it's riffy, it kind of gets me dancing. I don't know, I just really liked it. So I'm excited for the audience to hear it. We're gonna go Mount Rushmore of Salina, Kansas restaurants. Colton, do you want to go first or do you want me to to take it off?

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Uh I'll I'll start it off because I I you you mentioned this and I uh my the wheels started turning. Uh okay, so I know uh a very important one for me that I don't know if it's there or not anymore was uh La Hacienda.

SPEAKER_03 40:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Are they still around or are they not? I'm not sure, but but it was good. Yeah, I think they may have closed, but I'm not a hundred percent on that.

SPEAKER_04 40:30

So I will 100% accept that. It's it doesn't make my Mount Rush more, but I I I I respect that.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Respect is very important to my family. We're all like massive Mexican food people.

SPEAKER_04 40:49

So I'm gonna go something, and it ties into our high school roots. So obviously, we weren't allowed off-campus lunch, or weren't supposed to. No, but I was in again, don't don't arrest me, don't sue me, don't do anything, but uh I had a physics teacher. Um, why am I blanking on his name?

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Was this Goodwin?

SPEAKER_04 41:19

No, it was Mr. Goodwin. Okay, yeah. So it's Mr. Goodwin, and it was the lunch period, and I would go to Imperial Garden with Jim Reed in his firebird. So Imperial Garden is on my Mount Rushmore because I just remember just pounding General So's chicken as fast as I could in the car and get back to class.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

That'll that'll bring me to my number two, because as you know, in high school we were not supposed to go off campus for lunch, so that means it never happened. Uh what uh Mr. Newlik would do is uh bogeys.

SPEAKER_04 42:02

Oh my god, that's my number two.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Yes, yeah, I was uh I was a slave to the uh uh the chili cheese fries for a long time.

SPEAKER_04 42:15

Dude, bogeys is the bomb.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Yeah, for salina people who don't know bogeys, it's like kind of like old like 90s Applebee's esque aesthetic. Well, but like pictures of movie stars and old like like golden age movies and stuff like that everywhere, but like burgers, fries, shakes, fantastic, all of it.

SPEAKER_04 42:40

Like 700 flavors of shakes.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Truly, truly, like yeah, wonderful place.

SPEAKER_04 42:48

Well, that was easy, so you're up again because I chose bogey's as my number two already. I already had that in my mind.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Yeah, I mean, fair enough. Um Celina, so I think the I don't know the last one, but you know, um, I think we both need to mention, even if it's not on our list, Cozy's. The burger. I have to mention that.

SPEAKER_04 43:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

It's royalty. I mean, it's Celina royalty, you know. But uh across the street from Cozy Inn is one of my favorite pizza places that I know is not there anymore. The scheme.

SPEAKER_04 43:22

Colton. Is that yours? My mother waitressed at the scheme.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

Oh, did she? I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_04 43:36

Yeah. Salada's not that small, people. I promise that there's more restaurants than this, but there are.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

There's some really good restaurants that we probably won't uh mention on this list.

SPEAKER_04 43:47

So no, but also underrated though, their lunch sandwiches are pretty good too. Uh did you ever have any of their lunch sandwiches? Yeah, they're very good.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

I did, not not very often, but I did.

SPEAKER_04 44:00

Oh my god. It's like the segment is going so well, but also going so terribly because we're saying the same thing. All right. I'm going number four first before you ruin it. So uh I'm just gonna go something very uh classic. I remember when I was really young, it was called Jim's Chicken.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Dude, yeah, that was my number four. So you guys. Yeah, no, I that's Jim's chicken is what got me into fried chicken in the first place. Like I hadn't I had eaten fried chicken at home that was homemade. It was like, oh, this is all right. But Jim's, especially like before they changed their their management, like original Jim's chicken, perfect.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

All right, well, that was the great minds think alike, Dan.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

That's that's all it is.

SPEAKER_04 44:59

That couldn't have gone any better. 100% honest. Well, we'll do the next Mount Rushmore in a second, I hope. Uh I think we'll have some different answers on that one, but uh, I want to talk about your 2025. Uh, because 2025 is a huge year for you. Uh, you got married, uh, you have your own studio now. So just kind of talk about what what your life is looking like right now.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

I mean, I really can't complain. I um my so I have my studio here. I actually um I split the space with my wife. Uh, she has her own uh business that she's running. Uh she sells vintage clothing. Yeah. Um, she's she loves that stuff. Um, but yeah, so I've got the studio I'm running. I um I've been doing a daytime job where I work at a convention center where I kind of I do audio and video stuff. So I hook up lighting and do like fly rigs and all that kind of stuff. A really interesting job. Uh and I um I haven't performed as much in the last year or so because I've had the wedding and just lots of other stuff going on, but I'm kind of resurging into doing all that again. I've got a show um this next week. That'll be my first show I've played since April, I think. No, June last year. So it's been a while.

SPEAKER_04 46:22

Well, no, well, that's awesome what you're doing because as we've discussed throughout this conversation, just how important it is to teach people music. It's brought me, like I said, people from Australia to Ireland to Canada. It's amazing. Like I'm I've been into this, it's called Acadian. So it's a very small community in kind of the northeast of Canada, and they're very French, very, very, very French. And I don't know what the hell they're singing half the time, but it doesn't mean that I can't appreciate their music. So uh yeah, no, so I super pumped with what you're doing there because it means the world. And are you doing just mainly guitar, or are there any how many other instruments are you teaching?

SPEAKER_00 47:18

So guitar is my main instrument, as what what I got my degree in. Um, but I also teach um piano, I teach bass, uh ukulele, uh, and uh vocal. I teach vocal as well.

SPEAKER_04 47:30

So as someone who has done music lessons in the past, but sometimes just maybe like the money isn't there, or I'm not you just you know can't commit to you know that schedule. How can you practice on your own efficiently? Because especially as an adult, you know, we're always working, we've always got a million things going on. So like if I'm spending 30 minutes on the guitar, I want to spend 30 minutes on the guitar, you know, getting better, not just you know what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Yeah, uh it's a really it's a really good question, and one I've been asked many, many times. Um, I think there's kind of two like tenets to it, right? So basically with your practice, you want that practice to be as efficient as possible because often you don't have the time to do you know an hour of practice or you know, longer than that. I mean, if you're in music school, a lot of time they want you to do four or five hours a day, you know. Um, so basically you have to know what you're gonna practice and know what you need to work on specifically, not just kind of a nebulous, like, oh, pick up my guitar and play, you know. Uh so being focused and having a specific thing you're gonna work on. And then two, the thing that you're working on, you want it to be something that you're you're interested in. You know, you want it to be something that gives you the motivation to practice it, you know. Uh a lot of times for people, it's like a particular song, like they want to learn that particular song, and so they get kind of obsessed with it because they they have to know how to play it, you know? Um, and that's that's kind of the thing. Learning an instrument is obsession, like that's it's what it is. Like you have to be able to sit and play one small melodic passage that's like the hardest thing you've ever played until you get it right, because it's it you you just can't help it. It's like a compulsion to do it, you know. Uh at least that's the goal that you're looking for.

SPEAKER_04 49:35

No, but yeah, it echoes exactly what I've talked about with a lot of other people. Uh Michael was like, it's just addict, like music is such an it's an addiction. It really is an addiction. And like, so my go-to, like if I'm ever feeling down or feeling, you know, I had a crappy day, I will literally just go to my guitar, plug in my amp, and just rip holiday by Green Day. And it's the best feeling in the world.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

And that's what I'm saying. Like, you know, like it's more important that you pick up the guitar and play it than you know, just think like, oh, I need to practice, and like, oh, I didn't practice what I wanted to practice. I didn't, I didn't accomplish whatever. It's that doesn't matter at the end of the day. Like the fact that you picked it up in the first place is the most important thing, you know. Like, you can't get better at guitar if you don't ever touch it. Like that's just a simple fact, you know. So even if you I think people too expect like that instant gratification of like, oh, I learned a whole song in one day. And it's like, well, sometimes the song is gonna take you a month or or longer, even. I mean, it's really like it's not about accomplishing it, it's making small growth on a consistent basis, you know. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 50:53

Oh, I love it. I absolutely love it. So let's you in a between a rock and a hard place. So uh my sister recently got engaged, so congratulations, congratulations, Alyssa. Um, but no, she tasked me with playing Pockabell Canon in D as she walks down the aisle. So, do you have any any advice? So I bought a book off the internet and it has like a one through five level of like the piano, and so I'm like, Oh god, I definitely not getting the five, I'm not doing that, but like um so like just what advice would you give? Because I want to keep it simple and about her, but I also don't want to like suck.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

I think so. It's cool that you've got like different levels of it. So, what I would recommend is you get to the level that feels most comfortable to you, and then you just practice the crap out of that one because as you just said, it's not about you, so we don't need the flashy pockle bells, can it? We just need you to be able to play it solidly and in rhythm.

SPEAKER_04 52:03

That is fair enough. So I think I think I can probably get to the three. I definitely already have the two down, the two's easy, but I could probably try to get to the three, uh, which is funny because I had a book back in way back when I started piano, but it was in C. So obviously no sharps are flats or anything, so it was way easier, and now this gosh dang D sharp and F sharp are in there, and I'm like, But that's okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:35

It'll get no, it'll get weird real quick if you end up playing uh like an F natural or a C natural, getting into minor Pockabell's canon.

SPEAKER_04 52:45

Oh man. Oh, that's so funny. But I know I can mess up, so I'll tell a quick story. Sorry, Alyssa, again, but when I got when I got married, my sister was my best man. It was a very small wedding, small intimate wedding. So I just had my sister be my best man, and she went to the wrong side of the aisle. And I'm like, uh, hello, I'm over here. Like, what do you do? So I don't know. So I can maybe mess up a little, but it'll be okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

My uh, my bass player uh was a wedding DJ, well, just a DJ, but more often than not, a wedding DJ for probably about two or three years. And he told his um officiant, who is one of his very good friends since high school, like, you have to tell people after you start the ceremony to sit down, or else they won't sit down. And he harped it like four or five times that day. He's like, Wyatt, make sure you tell people to sit down. And what did he not do when the ceremony came along? He didn't know what he said.

SPEAKER_04 53:51

Oh gosh, yeah. You just have to know, and I'm sure something went wrong at your wedding, too. I would imagine something did. Absolutely, and no one's gonna remember anyone.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

It's too big of an event for for it to go perfectly, you know, like there's too many uh moving parts to not have something messed up.

SPEAKER_04 54:08

So oh gosh. All right, so we're going to we're going to Mount Rush more of our bands or artists. I don't think we're gonna get any overlap, but we will see. I'm sorry. My favorite album of all time is Deja and Tendu by the band Brand New. That's my favorite album of all time.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a classic in the genre, so oh man, when he just rips on uh oh, what is it, no one will ever know, or what's that?

SPEAKER_04 54:47

It kind of sounds like uh that Papa Roach song, last resort, but it's prettier.

SPEAKER_00 54:54

Right.

SPEAKER_04 54:56

But no, I that that album's just incredible. I love that album.

SPEAKER_00 55:00

I listened to um The God and Devil Are Raging Inside of Me, I think is the name of the album, or maybe that's just a song. I can't remember.

SPEAKER_04 55:10

Oh, by Brand New?

SPEAKER_00 55:11

I think so. I th I think it was after Deja and Tindu, but it's it's been a long I might be thinking of a different band.

SPEAKER_04 55:17

Uh I think it's The Devil and God are raging inside me.

SPEAKER_00 55:23

Yeah, that's yeah. I listened to that one. I so when I was in high school, and this may or may not be something you know about me. Uh, I subscribed to Alternative Press magazine for like two or three years while we were in high school, and that's like where I got almost all of my music from.

SPEAKER_03 55:37

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:38

And one of my favorite things that they did, and brand new was not a part of this, but one of my favorite things they did is um every year they would have an article that was highlighting 10 of the best albums from the uh from the year a decade prior to that. So, like in 2007, they did a top 10 of 1997. See what I mean? Um, that's cool. So yeah, yeah, I really like that feature. They brought it back in more recent years, they didn't do it for a while, but um, but yeah, so brand new was actually I learned of brand new from alternative press, and that was the record they were promoting at the time, was the guy inside me.

SPEAKER_04 56:18

It's a very good record. I I just remember Deja Nintendo.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

Um all right, you're up.

SPEAKER_04 56:27

Don't say brand new Deja Nintendo.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

No, I think my tastes probably run a little bit older than yours, I imagine. Um, so I'd say one of the most important albums for me was uh Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys.

SPEAKER_04 56:42

Um a little back, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:46

Yeah, most of my like big influences are really from like the 60s and 70s, more so than more modern stuff. Uh but yeah, Pet Sounds is one of my I mean I wrote a paper on it in college, uh, the whole like recording process and composition process, all that kind of that. Um it's just it's a monumental record. I mean, the the songwriting in it is incredibly advanced. Uh, not just like the lyrics, but the the music itself. I mean, people don't realize wouldn't it be nice? Kind of moves between three different keys throughout the song, and it's only like three or four minutes long.

SPEAKER_04 57:23

It's actually wild.

SPEAKER_00 57:27

Yeah, yeah. And it has several key changes in that in that time frame.

SPEAKER_04 57:31

Yeah, because that's a very cool album. Right, uh I mean, yeah, I love The Beach Boys.

SPEAKER_00 57:37

Yeah, it's it's also, you know, it's not like a deep cut or anything because that album is like constantly on the lists of like greatest albums of all time. Um, so it's not like a secret album that people don't know about or anything, but but it's one of my favorites.

SPEAKER_04 57:51

And it doesn't need to be. So I'm going to uh gosh. I wish Mount Rushmore had more than four faces on it. Uh but no, uh an album very dear and near to my heart is by a band called Jack's Mannequin. Oh yeah. Uh the album is called The Glass Passenger. I have their lyrics tattooed on my heart. Uh it's a very important album to me. He's just an incredible pianist.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

That's an incredible album, too. That's a that's a one of his best works, I would say.

SPEAKER_04 58:28

He's an incredible person as well.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:31

Um, so that that that's number two for me. It's not a good choice. Yeah, I love it. I could listen to it right now. Hang up, Colton. I'm listening to it. All right, you got number two.

SPEAKER_00 58:47

Uh so I think most everyone would know um one of my biggest influences is Bob Dylan. Um yeah, he's um, I mean, I have so specifically an album that has always stuck out to me by him is actually one of his live albums. It's um live at uh the Royal Albert Hall in 1966. This was uh a time frame where he was touring and he had gone electric and people were like very upset about him playing electric. Um, but it's very cool. Uh, for people that don't that don't know him very well, I feel like it'd be a really interesting introduction because he plays the first half of the set by himself and everybody's kind of chill, whatever, but he's not playing his protest songs that he's known for. He's playing these kind of weird, surreal, like acid trip songs, you know. Uh, but then he comes out with the band, and by the third song, the crowd is actively like rebelling against him. They are like they start clapping in rhythm in a way to prevent his band from playing in rhythm themselves. Uh, somebody towards the end of the concert calls him Judas. Uh yeah, it's very powerful. And the whole time there's this sense of like Bob Dylan versus the audience, uh, which is just a dynamic that I've just I've never seen before in another artist. And it's it's just an incredible capsule of like what was happening to him at that point in time. It's really interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:17

Thankfully, that wasn't on mine, but it was close. The first vinyl I ever bought was Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan. Excellent one. It it didn't make my Mount Rush more. It probably should be on there, to be honest, because that's a great album. But um, but no, my third, and it's not quite as uh old as the ones you mentioned, but it's um crime of the century by Supertramp.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:48

Oh, yeah, Super Tramp's awesome, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:51

And I think people don't realize how good Super Tramp is when they just hear, you know, Breakfast in America or The Logical Song or things like that. But if you listen to Crime of the Century, I don't know the name of the pianist off the top of my head. That the guy freaking just dances across the key. I mean, oh my god, their musicality is incredible.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:16

Supertramp is truly a criminally uh underrecognized band. Um, they are incredible songwriters. It's I think it's because so much of their stuff is not like immediately accessible, you know. It's kind of like a little more challenging than your run-of-the-mill stuff. Um, but yeah, they're incredible band. I love Super Tramp.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:37

Well, don't tell my mom that's a hilarious story. One of my mom and dad's first dates was at a Super Tramp concert. Of course. So my dad, so my dad is like, hell yeah, I'm going on this date, you know. Gonna see Supertramp. It's gonna be awesome. And my mom falls asleep. Like, you can't make that up.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

Uh to just not to jump ahead, one of my uh Mount Rushmore people is Jack White. Um we uh uh I got to see him uh back in 2024 when he came to Kansas City, uh, and my wife fell asleep during that show. So I know the experience.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:30

That is so good. I may fall asleep in a Jack White concert. That's what I want to know. I don't know, Colton. You might want to be getting those divorce papers out. I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:43

No, uh she just I at the time um she was working a job that required to get up early in the morning, and Jack White is definitely not like she's not against Jack White, but it's not her taste. We were there for me.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:55

So he he would also probably make it on an eight-faced Mount Rushmore. I I he's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:04

Yeah. Um what the Yeah, he's definitely uh Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:10

Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:10

I don't listen to him as much as I used. I didn't I don't listen to him as much as I used to, but um, when he first started his solo career, um his first solo record um was huge for me. I I really liked that record. Um and I would argue like at that time. That was um Blunderbus was the name of that record. That was what 2012, I think, maybe somewhere around that time frame. That was that I was definitely imitating him a lot at that point in my my songwriting career.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:39

So what'd you say the album was called?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:43

Blunderbuss. Blunderbuss. Yes, it's an old um type of musket. Kind of like uh yeah, it's kind of it's like a blue cover with a peacock on it, I believe.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:00

Oh yeah, I got okay. My favorite, I love 16 saltines. That's my favorite gym. I mean, who can just talk about eating 16 saltines and then I lick my fingers?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:14

Like yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:16

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:17

Yeah, that's that's a great song, and that's it's so funny. Like, he um I feel like as he progresses his solo career, he has songs that it's like this is the white stripes song. Like, I I will always keep a song that sounds like the white stripes in every album that I make.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:33

Oh, all right. So do we both have one more? Oh, it's gotta be a good one. Gotch darn, there's so many. I need to.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:42

I have a feeling I probably get I probably get asked this question more often than you do.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:47

Well, I don't get any questions. I've never been a guest on a podcast, I've only been the host. Um, but no, there is a a band, and I I get very drawn into piano because that's my main instrument, and so there's a band called Jukebox the Ghost. Oh yeah. Um their latest stuff has been a little much for me, but I remember listening to Live and Let Ghosts. The album has like Good Day, hold it in. Um my god, he's just an incredible pianist again. And it it it got me through a lot in college when I was, you know, not doing the best personally, and it just kind of gave me some hope, so it means a lot to me. So all right, so are we going to like 60s or are we going to like the 40s, you know, Elephant's Gerald?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:46

No, I don't go that far back. Uh no, I'll give a more modern one actually. Uh, because I do have some modern influences. Um uh I just really love the 60s and 70s, but no, um, someone who uh Again, I wish I had uh more than just four faces because I I could name a lot of people. But um uh Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakespeare honestly, um, if you're not familiar with them, they're like kind of like a rock funk soul. Oh I am yeah, um, I think she is just a a criminally uh underrated musician. And I mean, she's obviously massively successful. It's not like nobody's ever heard of her, but like to do what she does and be like so in the mainstream as she is and still have so much soul, have so much talent, have like just a very real, authentic feel to it. I feel like that's really hard to hang on to once you reach a certain level of success, um, just because you kind of end up becoming a business that's grown so far beyond just you as the artist. Um, but yeah, she just shows so much integrity and she's just an incredible songwriter, and really, yeah, I could not say better things about Britney Howard.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:09

No, well, that's great, and it's actually a perfect segue into my next question is I appreciate you as an artist. You were an incredible musician, but like you're not, you know, touring like Taylor Swift or Jack White or whoever we mentioned. So, how do you keep yourself grounded knowing you're doing what you're supposed to be doing? And not that you know everyone needs to be that, but to just bring that feel because like I mentioned very, very earlier, even maybe even offline in that song, it just like wow, this is really good. So, how do you just be like, it's okay that I'm not the the you don't you know what I'm trying to say?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:01

Yes, yeah, no, I I absolutely do. Um, this is actually a big part of why I opened my own studio in the first place. Um, I don't want to give like too long of an answer, but this is something that has plagued me for several years.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:13

Uh basically take all the time you need.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:16

Part of my my realization, so I released my EP in 2021, and I have not released any music since then. That's been five years this year. Um and part of it is that I went through the process of releasing that EP, doing self-promoting it, um, all that kind of stuff. And I put hundreds of hours into making it, promoting it, all that kind of stuff. And at the end of it, I largely just kind of felt ignored by the larger music community. Uh, and that's that's fine. I mean, there are so many people making music out there nowadays that it's kind of hard to cut through all of that, you know? Um, but basically, I got really down on myself and I I've really struggled in in the last few years of like, why am I continuing to do this? Why am I like I'm not making any money at it? I'm not like I'm not making enough to like make a living at it. Uh I feel like nobody's really listening, except for people I kind of coerce into listening, you know. Um, but really it I think what it is is you do this stuff because it's important to you. You do it because it's what keeps you moving forward and it means something to you. And I have really just reached a point in my life where I'm kind of uh tired of doing things for other people, uh, having a job that builds someone else's business or you know, whatever. Uh, and I just want to uh be in control of what I do and do what I love and and live the life that I want to live, you know. Um, and doing what I do, I wouldn't be able to do that if I belonged to a record label or if I had to answer to someone else, basically. Um and I think what we've seen too is the music business has been kind of falling apart for a long time. Uh and I'd say that it was falling apart before 2020, but I think the pandemic accelerated the process. I mean, you see artists who are not necessarily Taylor Swift or Jack White, but like large artists who have a big audience and go tour regularly, they can't tour because the cost of touring have become so prohibitive that they they can't do it. Uh, it doesn't make financial sense to them. Um, and you you have several artists who even talk about like when they go on tour, they are hoping to just break even, not lose money on the tour. Uh and I think for me, what it is creating is I think more and more musicians are beginning to recognize that we have to abandon this infrastructure infrastructure that we have. We have to change it to where the artists who make the music, who make the whole thing work in the first place, are the priority and the focus. Because if we're just raking in money for record executives and all that kind of stuff, like we're not we're not helping anyone, we're not helping ourselves, you know? Uh, and it's just um, I think for me, it's really pivoted around to kind of what I mentioned in in my business of not trying to be a mega superstar. You're trying to be a middle class musician, basically. Like people seem to think you're either poor and obscure or you're a massive mega superstar celebrity. But there's so many people who are in the in-between that just kind of get overlooked, you know? And I think that what we have to do is start building a world where artists can build communities that are built around themselves, and it's not dependent upon having like connections to the massive mainstream media network to build your career. It's it's about more about like building up a career where you feel respected and the people that listen to you actually like you. And you know, it's much more real and authentic than this kind of huge monolithic thing that the music industry is right now. Um, so that's kind of the future that I'm working towards, is one where artists are more in control of what they do rather than all the the all the riff-raff, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:22

No, I again I couldn't agree more. And it's I'll say it again, it's exactly what my podcast is trying to do. It's I don't need to interview Jack White, I don't need to interview Taylor Swift, I need to interview Colton Cox, I need to interview Peanut Butter Sunday, a band with 10,000 views on Spotify. I need to interview Joey Robon Hashe, an incredible Acadian artist, and they pour just as much energy with one tenth of a percent of the resources that those other people have. I say this all the time. And and their and their music is just as good, if not better.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:07

I say this all the time that I think you will find better, more unique, more original music in your local communities than you will ever find on the national scale. Because those people, like not only that, you're gonna see a much more personal connection to the music than someone who writes music to be listened to by millions of people. And I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, but I I would argue that people could find a more real, a more personal level of lyrics and musicianship going to their local bar and seeing a local singer-songwriter than just going to see Taylor Swift, who already has billions of dollars, and like her songs are written for millions of people to connect with. They're kind of they have to be generic in in some way for people to connect to it. Not talking shit on Taylor Swift or anybody else that does pop music.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:01

You can though, you can though, it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:04

I mean, it's just kind of the nature of the beast. You're writing songs in a way that is meant to be uh to appeal to a large amount of people, and it's you the more you do that, the harder it is to get that more unique, that more personal connection to the people that listen to your stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:21

No, I think the the best thing you said in our entire conversation was being a middle class musician.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:29

That really resonated with me. So I'm I I don't go to big concerts. I don't even know if I've even been to a big concert before. I think I saw um oh, what's that Christmas band?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:42

They're very yellow. Or are we talking about trans Trans-Siberian Orchestra? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:47

So I saw Trans Siberian Orchestra, they were very good. So I I've been to that, but I I I don't want to go see Taylor Swift, I don't want to go see any of those big names. I love going to small intimate shows, hanging out with the band after, buying their merch, talking to them, um, seeing.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:07

I mean, that's what art is supposed to really be about, you know. It's supposed to be about connection and community and like building real authentic spaces in the world where it's really hard to do that in our in our society, you know. Um, and I again, I mean, it sounds like I'm just totally against mainstream artists and stuff like that. And in a way, I have been my entire life, but like for me, it's just it I've just seen so many people who are not big artists perform either because I'm playing a show with them or because I just chose to see them, and I just get so much more out of those shows than I do going to see. I don't know, it's so much more inspirational to me. I mean, I've seen I've seen Jack White, I've seen big names, and I love seeing them, but I don't get the same feeling that I get when I go to see someone else do something I've never seen someone do before, you know?

SPEAKER_04 1:16:02

Yeah, absolutely 100%. You couldn't have said it better. And that even when I go to a smaller venue and I'm thinking, have you heard of the band Tiny Moving Parts?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:14

I haven't, no.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:16

Oh, they're like a big math rock band.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:19

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:20

Which is I'm because I'm a dork. But, anyways, what I'm saying is like sometimes you'll go to like a show where I'm like, oh, I'm gonna see tiny moving parts and they're gonna be awesome. And they were awesome. But oh, there was this opener, and I'm like, yeah, oh god, these guys are really good. Like, holy cow!

SPEAKER_00 1:16:38

I have a perfect example of that myself. I saw uh Sean Lennon, um, John Lennon's son in Oklahoma City of all places. Um, and the band that opened for him was uh Deer Hoof, um, which I had never heard of before. And they've actually been around since the 90s. Uh and they're just like kind of a weird psychedelic, noise rocky kind of band. Um, but they were incredible. I mean, honestly, some of the best musicians I've ever seen live. Um yeah, they're a pleasant surprise, Deer Hoof. Uh, they even have um, they have a video of them performing at the uh the Super Collider. Well, I forget what that thing is called, the the Hadron Collider, I think is what it's called.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:23

Oh, yeah, the Hadrian Collider, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They they they performed at that for whatever reason at some point in time.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:32

So well, oh my god, Colton. We've had an incredible conversation. We've covered a lot of ground. We've covered a lot of ground, but it's been it's been amazing, and everyone listening, check out his stuff. Not just check out Colton's stuff, check out, as he said, your local bands, your local music shops. Just there's more to music than what's playing on the radio.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:05

Not even just music. There's so much more to your life at your hometown that you just ignore because you just you live there. Why would you pay attention to it? You know?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:15

No, yeah. It can it can go it go to a local grocery store. Don't go to you know, Hive or Insulina Dylan's.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:26

Listen, I I I live in a place that doesn't have Dillons now and I miss it.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:33

But but but no, but seriously, support your community. Yeah, and Colton's a great example of that, and so check out all of his stuff. I'll post every link I can, and I cannot wait to get this edited down and recorded. So, Colton, seriously, thank you so much for doing this. It's been really cool to reconnect with you, hearing your story, uh, just kind of walking through what your life has looked like, and you're building something really special, and just know that you can get emotional, sorry. Uh people like people like me do feel that. So never feel like you're uh underappreciated.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:16

Well, I appreciate that, Dan. That's uh that means a lot. I mean, that's the whole reason why I do this in the first place.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:21

So I know. So all right, everyone, we're gonna sign off and uh we'll see you next time on Stream of Consciousness with Dan.