How To Make Your Own Instruments! Ep 61 Shane Speal

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Good morning, LBC Radio. My name is Corey Rosen and you're listening to the Story Podcast. Today, I have on a super awesome guest but before we get into that, if you would like to support what I do, please be sure to go over to the shop and buy some merchandise. We have stickers, we have hoodies and shirts with the first 50 guests on the back and those are limited edition. They will be running out in September. So, be sure to get one before you can. Today, I have on a super awesome and interesting guy, mister Shane York PA Shane Spiel is the world's foremost master of the cigar bass guitar, a primitive primitive string instrument cobbled together from discarded wood, guitar strings, and an empty box as shown here. Shane Spiel is directly responsible for the modern resurgence of the cigar boss guitar, a once forgotten instrument of American blues and roots music. He has been featured in the LA LA Times.

Guitar World and Premier Guitar Magazines and his concert has been featured in several documentaries including the PBS Songs Inside a Box. Spiel is the author of the book, Making Poor Man's Guitars which features plans on how to make a cigar box guitars beer can microphones and many other DIY instruments. Shane Spiel fronts the junk, rock, band, Shane Spiels, Snake Oil Band, A Hard Rock Blues Outfit Gearing, our Featuring Cigar Boss Guitars Electric Wash Tub, Bass, Harmonica, and homemade drums. You can find Shane in all of his projects on TikTok at Cigar Box Guitar, Instagram, same place, YouTube, Facebook, everywhere you look. You can find him.

At Cigar Box Guitar. At Cigar Box. Did I say cigar box? You got it. You did. Ladies and gentlemen, he just made it through the toughest paragraph of his life. This is great. Cory, thank you for having me. This is awesome. Yeah, I am super excited to get to and talk about all these guitars. your incredible experiences and what what made those things happen? I'm back at Lancaster Survival College, man. I haven't been here since 19 eighty-nine.

This is, it's nuts. How much has changed? Half of these buildings didn't exist. No. Half of them didn't exist. They were still building up things at the time. In front, was this, this spot right here is probably still cornfield. Uh, absolutely. Yes, this was definitely cornfield. I mean, I'm looking around. It's like, where is all the old buildings I used to go to class? See, I went to Lancaster Bible College from nineteen eighty 8 to 1989. Um and I really should have kept going but I didn't. But however it is so good to be back here. And I can't believe LBC has a radio station. If if I was going to college now I would be parked here. I love radio and I love what you're doing with this podcast. Thanks man. I'm I'm really excited to keep going with it. So I'm curious then what as a kid got you into music? Was it was it just a part of your family? What what was it? Cory. My whole family like dad and my mother both are musicians. My grandfather was a musician. Piano was the thing in my house.

Uh so my my my grandfather played piano. In fact, in the in the 1930s, he played Ragtime in an old hotel. Wow. In the 1950s, he played in a biracial duo in Pittsburgh. So, this is before, you know, all the other stuff. He was doing it was him on piano and a a guy on Guitar and vocals. Biracial doing that. My father also plays piano. My mother plays piano. So I had that growing up. But for me at five years old I saw Kiss on TV. Mm. And that changed my life. I wanted to play guitar. I wanted to do be Gene Simmons and I'm 52 and I still want to be Gene Simmons.

Hm. That's awesome, man. So, what what did you, when did you first pick up a guitar? Um it, I got my first guitar at the age of I guess I was 8 years old. Um, and I always struggle with it. I was, I was never good at taking standard lessons. Now, I took piano lessons at the age of five or six. That didn't last. My guitar lessons didn't last. Um, but I would always just mess with it. And then in in junior high, I got a bass guitar. Mm. And the reason I got a bass was all my friends were playing guitar and I figured if I got a bass, I could at least be part of a band because nobody else was playing bass.

Right. And it was a great starting point for me and so like 9th grade, 10th grade, I was in heavy metal bands. Um you know, it was first like hair metal, doing a lot of rush, and then, at one point, I was even in a death metal band but that lasted for maybe two months before the two main guys started fighting with each other but yeah. Hopefully, not to the death. No. No. No. They weren't that strong enough for that type But I've I've music has always been a thing with me. Um and it was actually I was going to Lancaster Survival College here. Um when you know I was all heavy metal in high school. Heavy metal. Heavy metal. And I got here and this was nineteen eighty-eight. And that was the year that REM's green album came out. You two's Rattle and Hum came out. And Metallica's Injustice For All. And yes Metallica had the metal side but the other two started messing with me.

And it was like there's deeper music out and then I got a Jimi Hendrix cassette that had Red House on it and that's when I experienced blues music and from there, I was a goner. Um and here's a here's a fascinating, the fascinating thing about blues music is you hear someone like Jimi Hendrix do Red House, you know? It's where my baby stays. Okay, you get into that and you're like, this is fantastic. And then you, you know, that same era you got Led Zeppelin, you got all these guys. But then Real Blues guys start to walk backwards. Uh, and it's like okay, that's so awesome but who influenced Jimmy? And then. Gotcha. Okay, and then you discovered the muddy waters, you discover how in Wolf, you discover the great man, Hound Dog Taylor, okay? And then you're getting into their stuff and you're trying to play it on guitar and then, you start asking, who came, who came before them, okay? And so, I was doing that and this is like, as I'm in college here and college elsewhere, I'm digging, digging, taking out Smithsonian records out of the libraries and listening and then you get to these guys from the 1930s and 1920s and this music's creaky.

It's it's imperfect and it's a little out of tune. And I was like, I have found my music. You know, and it was like, okay, you got blind Willie Johnson, one of the greatest gospel blue singers ever. Um crying Sam Collins, Mississippi John Hurt, all these guys just blew me away. Well, you gotta understand. The the era I'm talking about for me was pre-internet, okay? So, we we couldn't just go and dial up anything. You had to dig and sometimes, you would get the history a little wrong but for the right reasons and for me, I was like, well, what came before Mississippi John Herb, blindly Johnson and I read an interview of someone talking about they were so poor back then that he couldn't afford a guitar out of the Sears catalog. So, as a kid, his dad took a broomstick, put it through a cigar box, wired up two pieces baling wire and gave him a broken bottleneck as a slide and that was his first guitar. Wow. And I was like, I need to do this. This is what I'm looking for.

I've been digging back. I've been digging back and in nineteen ninety-3, it was July 4th, 1993. I built my first cigar box guitar out of a Swisher Sweet Box and a piece of wood from my dad's barn and I went and it had three strings on it. I read that the guys were making them with two strings and I figured three strings would be fan like jazz. You know, so I can put that on but it was played with a slide and as soon as I made it, I felt like Eddie Van Halen because all of the things I was struggling to play on my acoustic guitar came out like lightning as I was playing the three-string cigar box guitar.

I knew from then, that was my thing and that's my music career up to that point of discovering this instrument. And that was, that was, at 20 or so? I was twenty-three. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And I've been doing it ever since. Next year will be 30 years. That's incredible. So what over this swath of time that you've been doing it for 30 or about 30 years. Right. What what has been the number one challenge for you in creating cigar box guitars? Uh earning an income. That's every musician's answer. Sure. Okay, but here's the thing. Um this, let me tell you the challenge. Um I was, I'm going to be spiritual in this interview and I really don't care. Sure. You know, we're going to do it. I'm at like a survival college and I'm going to say things as they are. Um I was called to do music. I know I was called to do music and I have tried to quit doing music so many times in the past 30 years and I've had god tell me, no, you're going to do this and every time I crash and burn, he picks me up.

He gives me time to to You know. Figure it out. Smolder for a bit. Yeah, right. And then it's no, this is what you are going to do. It was back in two thousand two. I was in prayer. Now, you gotta understand. I've been building cigar box guitars for nine years at that point and I was doing it on my own. Um I would do some festivals and sell them. Um but and and in that time, I also felt god pushing me to record an album and I'm like, I don't even play out, record that album.

So, I recorded and you know, I may have given 50 copies away and that's as far as it went. Well, in 2 thousand two, I was in prayer and I felt god saying, show the world the cigar box guitar and it's like, that makes no sense. That's, that's, to me, it was foolishness And that which, you know, men call foolish. Right, of course. You know, so, I'm right, okay. I will, I don't know what I'm doing. You know, I was a new dad. I had an infant baby. Um, my wife and I were just struggling to make ends meet Um living in a single wide trailer at the time.

Mm. Paying off all our bills. And so I went on the internet and back in the day there was this website called GeoCities. Um and it allowed anybody to make their own website. And it was back. This is Web one pointoh. Yeah right. Okay. And so these websites were wonky. Um but you could you know if you were interested in hobby and you didn't find it on the internet, you made your own website and you taught people. Well, I put up a page on how to build your own cigar box guitar. I just figured, god told me, show the world the cigar box guitar.

So, this is all I knew how to do. I made a one-page geocity site. Then, I started adding pages to it of history that I would try to find and collect from newspaper articles or whatever. Um all of a sudden, I started getting Emails from people over and over and over and they're asking me questions and I'm like, okay, I'm answering the same question over and over to dozens of people. I need a place where I can answer these all at once and so, Bulletin Boards came into play. Uh Yahoo had chat room bulletin boards and so, I created one of those for cigarbox Guitars and that went viral, okay? And so, in all of these things, I'm encouraging people to make and play their own instruments.

What I didn't find out in, I see that in hindsight now. First of all, god wants people to play music. Music is a language. God wants us to play music sick. Even if you think you can't. And I have been the leader for people that think they can't play music. And what happens? And it's in the past it's been usually these guys that have a stratocaster you know like a squire strat sitting in their living room that they bought years ago. Someday I'm going to learn to play it. Right. And you never learn to play it. Well you got this guy ranting and raving on the internet saying a three string cigar box guitar is so much fun to make and so much fun to play.

Well all of a sudden these guys started making and them and doing shows and getting out to open mics, creating their own concerts, creating their own festivals, all from starting of putting a free one page how to build a cigar box guitar page on the internet turned into that and that continued to roll into you know where I'm at today. Um but it was all you know, God was like, show the world the cigar box guitar And that's All I could do and that's what I have been doing.

Tell me about a time when you tried to run away from music. Which time out of the two 00000 that I've tried to run away? You gotta understand. Um it's not easy. Uh doing something so unconventional is this. Um I could be doing I could be playing a strat and doing safe music and whatever. Um I'm the weirdo And I'm always the weirdo. I've embraced that in my on-stage persona. Uh I'm over the top. Um but you're doing this stuff in front of people and if they're not your fans already they're either looking at you like what the heck is going on? Um but you're also, there's so much energy involved in doing this and when it's not paying the bills and when you have other things coming out and it's it's tough to to keep going and in fact you gotta understand I've also been doing this full time between this and marketing musical products from home in my own business.

I've been doing this for a decade on my own And it has been extremely hard. Uh this is walking in faith all the time. It is knowing that my wife is making more money than me and you know and and it's tough on her. Uh it's been real tough on her and it's it's a hard thing to keep going.

Um I've wanted to quit so much And I've I receive emails from people on how much I've helped them. Um and it it encourages me but the only reason I have kept going is because I've been commanded to keep going. not to say that as I'm performing, you know, that I'm just doing this as a robot. I'm not, I, I absolutely love this. I live this. I eat this. I breathe this. But being a musician is tough and you're the first interview I've ever talked to where I've divulged some of this stuff because it's a struggle. It is a real struggle, and you know, if it wasn't for feeling the calling to do it, man, I'd be, I'd be working for a corporation or something. And you wouldn't have these wonderful, awesome instruments. I went over it. You know, I I don't know if what it would be nice to switch or switch things here but if if you seen my TikToks or my Instagram, I have a basement full of instruments. Oh, absolutely. Okay, I have been collecting for 30 years and most of my collection is cheap instruments or ones that other cigar box guitar builders have given me.

Um or trading or whatever. I'm I'm a bottom feeder when it comes to musical instruments especially even like regular guitars. I'm a total bottom feeder. Looking for them at flea markets or whatever. I just love, I've always loved gear. it's what makes me actually good in in music marketing and just because I I do live, eat, and breathe this stuff but also, I'm, there's been times where I've been wanting to throw to put it all away and then I felt like God saying I want you to go get this guitar. Cuz I get I get it deep in prayer and I hear the Holy Spirit. You know it's it's like thoughts in my head.

If people haven't heard from God you can hear from God. And you hear the Holy Spirit. Once you learn to hear his voice you can hear him. Um thanks to years of practice. It it does. It takes a lot of quiet time and there's been times I felt God like wanting to reward me or something. get this guitar. And here I've sold a whole bunch of stuff and flipped some stuff around. It's like why do I need another guitar? Right. And I felt him push me go get a guitar. Get this one. You wanted this one. Go get this one. Why do I need one? Um when I was going to LBC here I didn't even have a guitar. Um and we had a band here. And it was one it was Ed Weber who just recently passed away.

He was a youth pastor locally. Um guy named Shane Long and myself and Ed played piano. Shane sang. I played guitar. And I would have to borrow somebody's guitar. Hm. Um you know there's always someone on campus. Of course. But you know, here I am praying to God, why do I need another guitar? Why? And he goes, do you remember when you were in college and you had to borrow a guitar for your band? And I'm like, yeah. And God said, I didn't like that. Hm. and then I there's times when you're talking to him and he says something like that, it floors you. It floors you because he hits you with love and I'm I'm sitting there praying to him and he goes, I don't I didn't I I didn't like that. I didn't like you not having a guitar and then, as I'm praying, I'm looking around and there's literally dozens hanging all around me.

Every type of guitar and I realized he was showering his love on me and there's many different ways but it was one way that I could physically around me that all these things and it floored me. Um it's one of those kind of like you feel you you're not worthy but you feel all the love of god in the universe in you at that moment. and man, I didn't mean to get this deep but Usually, I'm all mister happy and everything but it is, this is, if you're a musician and you're being called, you're going to have to battle all your life and you're going to have to be prayed up and you are going to have to take care of your spiritual life and just remember, Jesus is the door.

So, any opportunity you go to, you gotta go through him first and am I supposed to do this and you pray it through and you you go for it. Um but it's this is a tough road. It is. Um and I'm not even out there preaching. I am just a regular secular bar band musician that was called to make people excited about music again. Um and it's tough. I I don't even know how to end that part but yeah. Well, because there are certain paths which are which are profitable and certain paths that are not. Right. And god is going to get throw you through all sorts of paths. Yes. It doesn't matter if it's profitable or not because what is lost today for eternity forever? Exactly. And you mentioned the the we were supposed to play music and there's a verse, I can't remember off the top I had but even all of god's creation, sings praises to him.

Absolutely. Absolutely and In heaven, music is a language. On earth it is too but we haven't realized it yet. Um I love turning people on to music that never did it. One guy, I became friends with this in the early days of the Yahoo chat group. A guy named Boss Bostwick. He was an old Vietnam vet in Vietnam. He was a tunnel rat which means he was. Right. You know, in the trenches, in the toughest parts. Well, he always wanted to play guitar. He never really did much. Discovered the cigar box guitar, said it blew his mind. Started going to we were having some festivals here. Cigar Box Guitar Fest and he started going to him. Started buying guitars from any builder that was out there. Just amassing him. Soon after he started that, he got diagnosed with lung cancer And we were chatting online one night and he, you know, saying, oh, maybe I should do this, I should do that. And, and I'm like, boss, listen. Everybody tells you, tells me, oh, I ought to write a book. And nobody writes the dang book.

I said, it's time for you record an album. I don't care how bad it is. Get a tape recorder, record it, and I will put it down on a homemade label and so, a week later, I get a tape in the mail unannounced because Shane, I got drunk and I went for it and he he recorded an album and then he recorded another album and then, he recorded seven more. Wow. He hosted his own cigar box guitar fest in his hometown in Michigan in a local theater. All of this before passed away His wife told me that after he passed away, she would sit on the porch as she was missing him and pull out one of his seven or eight albums and listen to him play and I've seen this so much with so many people. I never thought I could play but you know, you're only wrestling with three strings on this and a slide. It's not like I'm trying to get wrestle six strings and and do Eddie Van Halen stuff. No, we're doing simple. RL Burnside riffs and I've seen so many lives changed and opened up to music and now I'm hitting an all-new an all-new audience with TikTok and Instagram.

I mean, for the longest time, I was hitting nothing but retired guys and now, I have, you know, high school and college kids coming in, asking me to do stuff from the Doom Eternal Soundtrack or you know, I'm like, what? What? I have to go to my kids and it's like, what am I supposed, is guttural slug. Yeah. That is so funny. That's that's incredible though. And to your point of just doing it. Yeah. Uh you honestly anyone who's listening who's ever thought about, oh I'll I'll do this.

I want to do that and you stop yourself because of whatever reason. Do it anyway. Go out there and make some grand mistakes. Go and do it. You are going to make so many mistakes. Do it anyway. Do it. Record the album. Write the book. Listen. We're in an era where you can write a book and publish it on Amazon and it costs you nothing. Okay, you can do this. You can use online editors. You can use all these different things. Write that book. Record that album. Make that guitar. Do that thing. We are children of a creative god. okay? And he created us to create. Mm hmm. Okay. So, do those things. Um that's what I'm telling people. I mean, it's I was given a you know, given a command and I'm still doing that. Show the world the cigar box guitar and I learned once I show em something this simple and this easy, then, they're going to be like, well, **** I can do it myself.

Yeah. It's that's always the biggest barrier. I was like of realizing, oh, I have a phone. I can record. Yes. Oh, I have a a piece of wood, a a, I have a broom and a few strings. Yep, I can make a guitar. Exactly. Uh, just realizing that, oh, I have all the necessary pieces. It doesn't have to be glamorous. It doesn't have to be top-end nonsense. Right. It, I can have the stuff in my house, on, in my pocket, and do whatever I want to do right now.

Yeah. I could've started this pot. That was one thing for me about starting this podcast. I could've started it with my phone. Uh huh. But I was like, no, I need, I need better. I need but it it doesn't need to be that. So, you can grow something over time. People forget about that too. It's a journey. It's a process. You gotta start somewhere. Everyone has to start somewhere. Yes. And if you don't start somewhere, Where you going to go? If you don't start somewhere, then, you're not filling in something that God needed you to do. Mm. Okay? Um because he has us through these crazy little things. Things that don't make sense to us.

Because there's a something we haven't we want. We won't see for years to come. Um but we're in an era. Just turn the TV off. If you if you go on a television fast and do Go make some grand mistakes. Go make something fantastically bad. Okay? And then make it a little better. Um and Lamont Christian author talks writes about how to write has a great book called Bird by Bird. And I I will censor how she puts it in there but you're allowed to make crappy first drafts. Mm hmm. Okay and she goes, in fact, you are commanded to make crappy first drafts which means make an imperfect first draft. It is, you are, if you're, whatever you're creating, it's going to be bad at first. And then you refine it. You learn from this. Enjoy these things. Don't get so worked up about it. Um no, no, because we imperfect beings anyway.

Yup. We, there's no, it's, it's impossible for us to make something completely perfect anyway. Yeah. Why struggle and talking to all the perfectionists out there, don't struggle with perfectionism because it's never going to be perfect. Right. If you're going to make something, do it. No matter what the quality because afterwards, you improve. Yes. And it's all a learning process anyway. You're going to, you have to make the crappy first draft to make the the good first, the the good first draft. Yes. In the future. And I don't know how many different albums. You know like as they re release classic albums they always put the studio outtakes on there.

Uh as extra tracks and you listen to studio outtakes and it's like oh man is that bad? You know and and you gotta understand it's it's smoking mirrors. What you get is the final product. Mm hmm. Um especially today. Oh man. Today where everything is auto tuned. In fact even live. That yeah. And yeah even Talking about my favorite band, Kiss. I mean, Paul Stanley can't sing anymore and so, he sings the first verse and the last verse and in the middle, they have a canned tracks. They act, oh yeah.

Wow. It's all over. However, that's also where I think I'm getting the appeal to the younger generation that's loving what I'm doing with all these goofy instruments is they are out of tune. They are not perfect. They are not Kanye West. They are not you know, and they're not pristine. They're not polished.

They're not nothing. I mean, like my band had a practice last night and if we were in tune for one at one point, I would be surprised. However, it was a fistful of attitude the entire time. It's something you don't see bands do anymore. Nobody goes on stage with an attitude ready to destroy and that's what we do. I mean, we are basically barbarians on stage with homemade instruments Um and we're never going to be in tune.

My my bass player plays a washtub bass made out of a whiskey barrel, a stick, and a weed wacker string and we show, he used to use a regular washtub for his bass but it got so beat up. He would, he would go through one every year and so he got a wooden whiskey barrel, cut it down, and is using that but we electrified it but there is not one into note on there of note of perfection that you would hear in modern music. However, this man is not a trained musician. He's a farmer by trade. He a farm like 200 and some acre farm that that's been in his family but he ended up sitting with in with me at an open mic one night because he made his own washtub bass out of a plastic bucket and you know, I kept him ever since. What I didn't know is he would always jam with me and we would never practice.

We would just play in concert, go. Yeah. You know, it was just all improv. And then we recorded our first album and as we were cutting tracks, he was doing some over dubs with just his washtub bass and we're sitting in the control room and I'm like, wait a second. He is not playing a washtub. Usually a washtub is and it's just basically like a bass drum with a little bit of notes in there. He plays running gospel basslines on his washtub bass. Wow. I have never heard anyone do this and I know for a fact that I have the greatest washtub bass ist ever to walk the earth.

Because we're listening to him in his poop, poop, poop, poop, poop, poop, poop, poop. No way. Yes. Yes. Farmer John, he is just it's it's insane because nobody ever told him he couldn't. Right. So, he has a washtub and he thinks, oh, I need to play it like a bass and being that he was raised in the church. Right, boop, boop, boop, boop. Stuff like that. It's insane. That takes talent to be able to play a while. It's like that. No, it's it. Yeah, it takes talent years and years. Well, no, it takes What's the word I'm looking for? it takes an uneducated mind to never be told that you couldn't do it.

You know, and nobody ever told him he couldn't. So, he did it and that's again, creating stuff. Do it. If you have a wild idea, oh but nobody's ever done it before. Okay, go do it. Yeah, but it's exactly the reason why you should do it. Guys, you gotta understand. The cigar box guitar was a dead instrument by the time I started making it. Yeah, there was a couple here and there, maybe a boy scout would make one but nobody paid attention to it. It was a novelty. Mm hmm. And For some reason, I thought it was a serious instrument back in nineteen ninety-three. I thought, oh, this is the thing that happened before the blues. Well, kind of not really. Sort of. We're still uncovering so much history. However, menstrual music came before the blues. I didn't know that. For me, I was it was the cigar box guitar. It was the deadly bow, the one-string instrument, the the people put up on a side of a barn. Um but nobody ever told me that the Starbucks Guitar was not an a real instrument.

Nobody ever told me that whatever. I just believed it was. And in my own mind, it's like, okay, I'm going to go do this. And I did it And I changed the world with it. I changed I I have one tiny little sliver of music history. In my name. It may be you know the size of a hair in the circle of music history. But that little hairline mine. You know, and I can't take credit for it. That's god's but yeah, my name is there. That's about it. It's me. Yeah. So, what is one of the hardest instruments you've ever made? Actually, this one right here.

Um you gotta understand. I'm a hack builder. Whenever I'm on my TikTok or Instagram and I show really detailed instrument, that's usually something somebody else built. Mm hmm. Such as the shovel which I brought or the copper pipe guitar. Other bill but this one is the cigar box mandolin and yeah You know, it it plays great. It's electric. Yeah. Um and it doesn't look like anything major. However, in fact, if you want to put that closer to the camera, let them see it.

Uh it does have a fretted neck and I made the neck myself and I gotta give a shout out to CB Giddy. com. That's where I get all my parts and they challenged me to make this and I'm not one for fretting guitars and this took so much time to get the fretting right to to you know, the when you hammer those fret wires in, then, you've gotta take and you know, get em even and I never did that. So, this one, I took so much time. The other thing is, I also documented the entire process. So, I gave it away as free plans. Um I think it's CB Giddy, G I T T Y dot com slash Mandolin.

I think has the parts list, it has the the video, how I made it, and then another link with the discussion page for people to ask questions but I just gave the the plan away. So, anybody else could make one. So, I'm curious. How hard is it to find cigar boxes? Um actually, not hard at all. No. Uh every town has a has a cigar store? Go in there. Fair enough. Go into the cigar store and you know, sometimes I'll give em to you free. Other times, they charge you. Yeah. Other times they'll charge you two or three bucks.

Um and if you don't have a cigar store, you go on eBay and just type in on eBay cigar box and you will find thousands on average, how much do you think it would cost to make one of these your own? Okay, that, that one there with all the parts, now, I, you know, the neck was first partially built by CB Getty and then I added some things to it.

That was probably $75 total. Really? For that, now, that's very detailed. Yeah. Uh, you can, you can make a a three-string cigar box guitar for, you know, 20 five bucks at most. You just buy the parts. At most. At most. At most. You could probably find most of the stuff or get a junk guitar. Take the tuners off. Um there's free plans all over the internet.

You get my book Making Poor Man's Guitar. Here we go. There's a little plug right there. There you go. Uh this teaches you how to do it as well. But this is the poor man's instrument. And anybody can afford one of these. Anybody can build these. These are simple. So what is one of the most unique instruments that you've ever made? Hm. I've made so many weird things. Um. I know. And I've gone through times of in my career of being an experimental musician doing weird albums and such. But what's one of the most unique ones? I have done double neck guitars. I have done I saw a double necked cigar box guitar and I was like what in the world? Yeah I just finished that one. That's actually oh I saw that from the roots and blues festival. I know you can too. Yeah I just just did one too. Yeah. And did a video last week on it.

Oh that's so cool. Um I don't know. I've I've made them out of so many different things. I'm I made a an electric one string guitar using technology I found in an old science magazine from the 1940s. Uh taking an old helicopter headphone and turning that into a a pickup. They had as early as the 1920s. They had the technology to make guitar pickups. Um because the headphones they were creating at the time. If wired them backwards would pick up a string vibration. Wow. And so, Les Paul learned about this in the 30s when he was experimenting and it was written about, so I made one using all that technology but the body of it was a wooden section of a pipe organ. Mm. A pipe organ pipe. And so that was a unique one. I had a a whole plan and and everything. It was wild. That's crazy. How do you come up with these ideas? Uh I'm always feeding my brain. Um as you see my TikTok videos, there, my library is behind me and I'm always reading books. I am always researching different guitar building, different you know, history of African music Uh you know, because the cigar box guitar can be traced to banjo, can be traced to one string, one string spike fiddles, and there's so many different avenues.

So, I'm researching them all. I found pockets of cigar box guitar tradition in the Wisconsin Lumberjack camps or Norwegians were working in the lumberjack camps for six months at a time. So, they were building their own fiddles and their own guitars out of cigar boxes. Uh this isn't just an African-American thing. This is just everywhere. It just popped up in all these different areas. Um so, how do I get these ideas? I'm always, always, always researching, always learning, talking to other people. This is my thing. So, you know, if you're going to create then make sure you're feeding that creativity. Um if you're going to write an album, go to some concerts. Yeah. Get out of your house and go to concerts. Uh if you're going to write a book, go hang out with other authors.

Um all that stuff. Uh always feed your creativity. I can't stress this enough that you you can you so you have your base creativity, right? Everyone has a base creative point. The way you that and expand that is with other creatives. Yes. That's the only way you can do it. You can't sit there and think and then think of new things. You have to be fed in ideas. You have to be you can pray about it and you can get those ideas from god. Yes. That is that is a total possibility but you yourself, you only have so much knowledge of this infinite, almost infinite world. Yup. And you have to go out to reach because you you have one perspective, one world you one outlook on life. Yup. Everyone has a different, unique aspect to one of those, one of one of those things and they're going to help feed you and you're going to take pieces from that. How do you think people write popular pop songs? It's most of it isn't from LifeFeast experience. It's the ones that are. They're great. Yeah. But a lot of time it's it's people feeding.

It's it's from different experiences that they've seen other people have. Yup. Absolutely. Like, coming up on 27th in downtown York, Pennsylvania is the cigar box Guitar Festival. Pennsylvania Cigar Box Guitar Fest. Um it's happening on the grounds of the York Emporium Bookstore in their parking lot but you go there and Cigar Box Guitar Builders from all over the country. I've met one from Australia, several from Canada. They come down and there's like a dozen different concerts that day and vendors. Well, what happens is the night before, they have a pizza party where everybody gathers at the York Emporium Bookstore. Everybody gathers and jams. There's an open mic. And it's them all just showing off their creations. And then well I had an idea to use an old Makita toolbox and put a neck on there. And and they're showing their techniques and things that they've discovered and it's magical. I'm surprised there might working in factories a lot.

I I I come into contact with a lot of World War two ammunition boxes. Oh yeah. I'm sure I'm sure there's gotta be a million of those kind of guitars. Yep. Not not 1 million. Not a lot of people. But I've some seen some ammo can boxes. I've seen people making amplifiers out of the ammo cans and things like that too. Um yeah you have some of that. I'm curious. How do you you your book also details beer can microphones? Yes. How does that work? Uh it is actually use a beer can. I use a mason jar lid. Uh so you put the lid in the inside lid and that inside lid, the one that pops whenever it's done, that becomes the membrane that vibrates when you talk into it and there's an internal pickup touching that membrane and then there's a bunch of foam and different baffling inside to kind of tune it.

Mm hmm. Um and they're very low fi. You really gotta have them close to your mouth but I've done an entire concert singing through em. What tone does that give you? Or it sounds a tone? It sounds like a short wave radio. Really? Yeah and then if you throw a little slap back delay on there, it is just like an old record. That's kind of cool. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. I've I've ever heard of Post Modern Jukebox? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. That kind of stuff. Yes. Yes. Oh. Oh, yeah. Cuz and that stuff is that old 19twenties, 1930s swing. Yeah. Um and the beautiful thing is I've performed New Orleans a couple times and that music is alive and well in New Orleans now. Really? Uh it is taken over especially on Frenchman Street. Uh and that's usually where I perform.

Um is all that 1920s, 1930s. You see people playing tenor banjos. You see, you know, the girls in, you know, the 1930s attire and whatever. It's magnificent. There's even a band that plays cigar box guitars and homemade instruments doing that. The cigar box and Brett, their leader, is just like Django Reinhardt on a cigar box guitar. I love it. I love this. I have to check that out when I go there. Uh. Oh, Frenchman Street. Yeah. If you go, if you go to New Orleans, you don't go to Bourbon, you go to Frenchman Street. That's where the musicians hang out. Gotcha. Okay. So, I'm I'm curious. How did you get into being featured into the LA Times PBS Songs Inside the Box? How did that transpire? Well, in addition to always sharing this stuff, I'm also a marketing professional and early on how to write press releases and that's one thing so many musicians don't do.

Uh they always expect people. Just all go check out my Instagram or whatever. No. You learn how to write a press release. You learn how to communicate with feature writers. Uh with media companies. And you send out press releases. Over and over and over. And I would do that And then I became the contact whenever they were working on certain articles. Um also if they were working with someone else, LA Times was working with someone in Los Angeles that was making cigar box guitars but he said, you need to contact Shane Spiel for the history and so they did that. Um but I've always, you know, lately, I haven't done it as much because I've, you know, not had the focus of pushing my band real hard.

We hadn't played in over a year. Um but you need to learn how to get press attention and you know, go on Google. Learn what's working this year. You know, because from year to year and you know, newspapers are dead. I mean, dead is a doornell dead but what are the other media outlets that people are still going to? Um I also started, you know, social networking, I will post my stuff on the usuals, TikTok, and Instagram and it reposts to Facebook. I also do YouTube but I also post on Truth Social which is that new conservative social network put out by Trump because I figure so many people left Facebook there and I'm just music. So, I'll put it on there and it's going, you know, it gets hits over there too.

I will post it anywhere. No, that I, it's, it's smart tactic. Go everywhere. Yeah. Get, especially if it's, you know, just music. Yup. Right? Exactly. That's really smart. That's something I've been trying to trying to do going out to Rumble or like the the YouTube alternative going out to and that's something I have got to really work on. Marketing is not my jam whatsoever. And that's where you may need to collaborate with somebody else that enjoys marketing.

Cuz I actually enjoy the marketing side too. There are people that like to do this. Oh, for sure. And so, collaborating with them is a great idea. Um, I do want to talk real quick about what's going on with TikTok and and Instagram. Of course. Because when we first set up this interview, it was my friend Matt Frim from Sweet Life that said you needed to talk to Shane. Matt and I have been friends since we both worked in a factory back in the early nineties. Wow. Yeah. Um, and you know, I love, I've been on, I was on his first album that he had with Carol back when they were called by the way before they changed their name to Sweet Life And you know, so you had him and so we we set up this interview for here and then, all my stuff went viral.

That's right. And I have one video on Instagram that's about to hit 6 million views. Um Instagram, I went from 2000 followers to a 24, 000 in the last six to eight weeks. Wow. TikTok, I have more than 9000 overall views, hundred and 8000 followers and you gotta understand all of this is in the last 2 months. Yeah. So, what happened 2 months ago? I was sitting there chatting with Ben from the company CB Giddy. com and I do his marketing and you know, he enjoys or he tells me, go out and make people interested in homemade instruments and I'll sell them the guitar parts.

You know, you don't need to always say my name in everything, you know, but every time you use a part, you know, just let them know where you got it from. Mm hmm. Um and it makes sense because we're doing something very unique. He built built his business on this unique niche market. He sells cigar box guitar parts for the most part. Um so, ago, we were talking, it's like, you know what, Facebook's dead? We can't get anything, Everything, it's, all the stuff we're putting out over and over and over is the same And we gotta figure out something new. So, that conversation ended and I went into prayer.

And I'm like, alright, God. What do I do? We need something new and I just, out of nowhere, felt the Holy Spirit say, use TikTok. Now, here's the thing. for the past year, my son, who is also a marketing professional now, has his own company, has been telling me, dad, you need to be on TikTok and I'm like, what do I say? It's just people dancing on there. It's it's just dumb stuff. As soon as I heard, god tell me, use TikTok. I immediately knew what my content was. It hit me at the same time. It was, this is show and tell. You pick up an instrument. You have a basement full of instruments.

You pick up an instrument. You play it. you talk about it, and you end the video and The video editing, whenever I was making my YouTube videos, I had 29, 000 followers on YouTube for that I've amassed over the last two decades and it would take me five or six hours to edit a five-minute video. You know, just to get it right, all the different things. TikTok, is based off of, have you ever seen rage videos for video games where they're so choppy and it's like all the bad editing? That's TikTok. It is, you get in, you show something, you play it for 3 seconds, and when I say 3 seconds, I mean, my sound clips are only 3 seconds. People think I'm Eddie Van Halen. I'm not.

I'm playing three seconds of the only good thing I know. Right, exactly. Okay. Yep. And then I show it off more, show who made it, and being that all these instruments are are. People are going nuts And so I listen to God. I use TikTok. Boom. There it goes. It goes off. It took like a week or two. And then one video went nuts. And then another video I reposted of We Say the Liberian Guitars. We'll get into him. I reposted that and it goes nuts. And so what happened was these videos, one or two videos hit the targeted algorithm that they like at TikTok. What is that algorithm? Nobody knows. They won't tell you. They won't tell you when they change things. They won't tell you if you're doing something wrong. They'll just ban you or shadow ban you. Which means they'll hide things without letting you know and your fans will be asking, where's your information? Okay. So, these these companies are very deceptive but we're still using them for now, okay? Um so, I I'm making these videos on TikTok and it it it is simply, I'm Shane Spiel and I made this cigar box mandolin and then and then, I used a real cigar box.

I used and I go through everything and I make sure I talk as fast as possible, get quick information in there, play it again fast, and then whenever I go to edit it, I use the TikTok app to edit. I'm not using computer. Really? I'm using the app for everything. I'm using an iPhone seven An iPhone 7 for all my TikToks. I'm using the app. The only exception is whenever I've taken some old videos from YouTube and I've cut them into and for that I use Adobe Rush. Premier Rush, which is almost like a TikTok app.

Um and so I put these up there. It is choppy. Sometimes sentences get cut off in the editing. Yeah. But you never let a single breath of dead air in your tech talk or your Instagram reels. No. Okay. Which means as soon as you're done saying one sentence you cut it off. You don't even leave half a breath. Because that is enough time for them to swipe up to the next video. And unless you're a comedic genius. Yeah. Then you can add in pauses. But but but if. No. For for average content. For average content it needs to be bam bam. TikTok is for like the ADHD of ADHDers. Yes. And the thing is Instagram is copying everything TikTok is doing now. In fact, Instagram has made some new changes. If you're going to use Instagram, only use Instagram reels. That is the video, the vertical video, all the photo stuff on Instagram, Uh unless you've already been known for your photo stuff and people going to look for you.

No. Reels. Go to reels. Reels. Reels. Reels. And then first reels, then stories. Mm. You do not just go Instagram stories. You put it on the reels and then you share that. Cheers. Your That's my tips for you guys. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's okay. This is for the people that are looking for real-world techniques of what's happening right now this summer, 2022. Um it is vertical videos, 60 seconds or less. Instagram and TikTok and do not repost TikTok videos to Instagram with the watermark that says, TikTok. TikTok, yeah. Okay, Instagram will throttle those. Go. Oh, yeah. That sense. Yeah. Go get an app. I use an app called SaveTick. There are many apps out there that will rip off your video from TikTok without A watermark. Without a watermark. And then you repost it to Instagram. Okay. There's my real world techniques. These are what's working for me right now. Uh also you know you have a unique story of your own.

You that's your content. You, it's going to take you a while to find that content. You about it and you know, if you're supposed to be using these things, pray about it and he'll show you what your content is. It may take you a while but man, I tell you, when he, when I inquired of the lord and he said, use TikTok.

As soon as I got up to look for it, I knew exactly where to start. It was, it was like, he unlocked a memory chip in my brain that I hadn't opened before. That unlocked and I knew what to do. I, it's the only way I describe it. That's well, that's awesome, man. It's, it's incredible what, what God will use in order to expand not only his kingdom, but to expand his work. Yes, and who would have thought Tiktok TikTok, right? The, the silly dancing videos, the, almost annoyingly, right? Or the housewives trying to get attention with, oh, right, right, right. so much whatever on there. Nonsense on there.

And then that he can use that as a as a passage as a as a vessel. Yes. To further his his kingdom, his work, your work, the love of music. Anything, anything. And why is he doing this? Because revival is coming. That's right. Okay and when revival hits, he wants to have musicians and artists ready for the celebratory arts. Okay, doesn't want, you know, when revival hits and the big one is coming and when revival hits, this isn't just going to be, you know, just as I am, you know, just old time. No. This is going to be a huge party. Yeah. Uh in fact, it was two years ago. I I God would not let me leave John eight. Was it John eight? Uh no, John the wedding at Cana. Okay. Yeah. John, yeah, John too. John two. Uh he wouldn't let me leave there and it was over and over every day. Wedding at Cana, wedding at Cana and it's like, why? You need to be prepared. There's a party coming. There's a party coming. Now, we're going to we're going to go through some rough times before the party but you gotta understand whenever he did six jars of wine, we're talking 1, 000 bottles of wine were made for a small community and What he's saying is this is what you're preparing for.

Celebratory arts. Get ready and that I can tell you that is one of the things that I'm seeing that is going to come about of this. Uh and one of the reasons I was told to do what I'm to do is to prepare people and get them to make music. Because there's going to be a reason to sing. That's yeah. It's coming. It is. Right. Um people can't see it but it's coming. And we gotta prepare for it. Absolutely. So, let's Let's talk about, yeah, let's talk about this. Let's talk about that.

Here we go. Your most prized possession. Yeah, you told me to bring some instruments so I thought I would bring this. Uh if you don't know the story, this is a three-string guitar made by a blind Liberian musician named We Say Freeman. We say went viral on Facebook with over 17 million views because someone pulled out their cellphone camera and filmed him performing what was going on was this individual, this guy who was from India. His name's Sachin Ramchandi. Ramchandani. Sachin Ramchandani is his name. I want to get it right. Right, of course. Okay, he was in Liberia and he had started a company making potato chips and was had a had a contest going with social media in Liberia. Mm hmm. Uh come up with the O Chip theme song. Well, they were giving out chips at out on the street and the streets all dirt and everything and this blind my musician holding a guitar just like that walked up to him and he said, hey man, you know, can you do a song? And he filmed him and we say did an impromptu song called Oh Chips.

Well, that video went viral because people couldn't believe the sounds that were coming out of, you know, guitar just like this and I got to, I went nuts when I saw it because it's like, here's a musician playing a three-string guitar. That's what I play as a three-string guitar and I believe it. You know, that's a paint thinner can that is a piece of wood that he found. He used the machete to to shape the neck. The frets are made of coat hangers and the strings are made from brake cables. Yeah. So. And they are killer on the fingers.

Oh, they are. You, he knew how to play it. Yeah. Um and so, if you search YouTube for We Say the Free Spirited Liberian, you'll find the the video but so, I went nuts and I was like, I gotta find this guy. I gotta, you know, contact him. Well, I contacted Sachin who made the video and he said, yeah, we say he's here and he, you know, we say would visit his house every once in a while and Satch would, you know, buy him things because that video went viral and he wanted to take care of him. Well, I also wanted to do more than that and a friend of mine, a Christian friend in in Texas, Kirk Otto, was going to a special church service where missionaries were talking about their work. You know, the missionaries come back and you give more to it and the guy said, yeah, I am working Liberia. My friend went up to him afterwards. He said, Liberia, he goes, you don't know the guy that plays the tin can, three-string guitar and he goes, oh yeah, he's in my neighborhood Out of nowhere.

So, I had been dying to really connect with this guy and here, Kirk called me up. He said, Shane, I know someone that knows this guy and he's a missionary so we can channel money to him. Oh. I ran a couple fundraisers. We got him an apartment. We got him clothing. We got him food. We were taking care of him and it was just absolutely supernatural how we were connected to it. Um at one point, I told him, I was working with the missionary over there, George Towy, and I said, have we say make a couple of these guitars? We'll find a way to get them shipped to America and I'll try to sell em to rich people and we'll just like for a thousand bucks a piece and we'll just channel the money back. We say made 3 guitars but unfortunately, we say then got kill in an accident.

Uh he was blind. He was mostly blind. He could see a little out of the one eye here. Um earlier earlier part of his life. He was stung by bees into his eyes. Um. Oh. Well, he was walking down the road and somebody reckless driver just plowed into him. Um we ended up raising money for his funeral and everything else but and and like when that happened, I was just devastated. Uh like soon after I went to tattoo parlor, I got Wesay's Guitar Tattooed on my arm and then a year later, Kirk from Texas called me and said, they're shipping over one of those guitars that we say made and and we're giving it to you.

So, that's what you're holding right now. And it's, it's, what a work of art, really. It is. And we say, you know, dreams can be prophetic. God can come to us in dreams. God came to, we say in in a dream, he showed, we say that guitar in a dream. Um, because he couldn't Ford regular guitar to make a living made that, you know, saw that in a dream, built it the next day, and was making up the $4 a day as a street musician. that's crazy and it's what when you say DIY, this is as DIY as you could probably get. Yeah. There's. But it's genius. It's genius. Okay, here, if you look, the neck goes through the body halfway. Yeah. And then there's a piece of wood that was cut from the neck that goes from the underside of the neck to the bottom and that is his bracing but it works. And it, yeah, and it's, he uses nails for tuners. Yup. The tuners are rusty bent nails.

Rusty Bent nails and he use brake cables? Yes. Brake cables. He would go to the motorcycle repair shops and ask him for old brake cables and he would twist off three strands for the low string, two strands for the middle, and one for the high. The high one broke on its way to America and I put a guitar string on there which it just doesn't sound as good as the brake cables and it hurts your fingers. Yeah, it's tuned to like a B flat or a C chord somewhere around there. Somewhere around there and like you said, we're not aiming for perfection. Nope. No. Uh I I really cool. It's really cool how he use nails to separate each string at the top. Yup. As well. Yup. I just knitted it's so so unique.

That's so cool. And it was just playable too. Yeah, it's absolutely playable. Go for it. Get a pick here. It's like, Yeah. It's that's crazy that that that can work. I think the other cool thing is when it came to me, the neck was real loose because the whole. Yeah. He macheted it and so I took some aluminum foils trying to think what would I use to hold it and I shoved a bunch of aluminum foil in there. Well, I was talking to Kirk Otto, the guy that sent it to me and he said, oh yeah, the other one had it where we say used a whole bunch of aluminum foil To hold the neck, I'm like, alright. Uh huh. Great minds think a Yeah, that's awesome. That is insane that one can find those, make that. Yeah. And the fact that God connected us and that you know, it's it's every I I see what they call the fingerprints of God in so many things.

Mm. Um that one was just there's no way. There is it is, at what point, do the coin incidences become improbable. Right. Right. Something like this would happen. And that's you know beyond the shadow of a doubt. God is just laughing. Like what am I going to do next? Yeah. You want to meet him? Okay. Let's have some fun. Yeah that's it's it's crazy. It is. It is. It's it's So, early part of this podcast, I was talking about how rough things are. These are the things that keep me going. These are the things that energize me. These are my Red Bulls, okay? My spiritual Red Bulls and that's what we'll call them and you need, you need, as a Christian, you need to look for those things in your life that you know god delivered and you need to party over them. Those are your Red Bulls. Those you need to celebrate those those miracles that happen. You can't just say, oh thank you god. I I humbly thank you for giving me this and then.

Go on. No. No. You party over this stuff. Have you read the Psalms? Oh, I know exactly right. Exactly and. Whole party. But we forget to party. Yeah. We forget to celebrate. We and more than just humbly thank him. We need to tell everybody about this and not be ashamed to say, god hooked me up with him. It was awesome. The Holy Spirit showed me this. Um all this stuff, I'm not that good. I am not that good to do what all the stuff that has happened. It it's it's incredible for this podcast. People always say, oh you do so such a good job, such a good, I didn't do any research for this. Yeah. I just. I just I I the only work that I've been doing has been Emailing and and calling people. Sure. It's literally it. Yup. Everything else, god. Yeah. Yeah. You can't take credit for it.

Yeah. But you can sit and laugh. Sit and out of amazement and yeah, it's it's incredible. Uh this, the stuff that I'm able to do because of of of god, essentially, giving me these ideas, giving me the the methods, giving me the courage and strength to act. I'm an introvert. Yeah. No one will ever know. Uh huh. If you watch this podcast, you would not know unless I said I I was an introvert. Yup. I called these people out of the blue, cold calling people which is like the the number one nightmare. Absolutely. Yup. And now, I get to talk to awesome people like you. I'm you you said Muddy Waters. You know Darryl Davis then. Darryl Davis. No, I don No? No. Oh. Oh. He's a cat you gotta look up. He's a black musician over the course of his years. He has deradicalized over like 1 hundred or so KKK members.

Oh, nice. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, and he's a Boogie Woogie musician. Nice. Through and through. So, I. Nice. I'm I got. Oh, I get a I gotta check him out, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. I'd get to talk to people. Insanely cool people. Uh you you must know Rich Ruloff then. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I talked to him. All of his incredible experiences, the Chameleon Club owner. Absolutely. People, I would have never have been able to talk to ever. Uh because of him, I got the reach out to him, listen to Liberty DeVito. I I I swear Rich just loves connecting people.

He is the best connector in in. He's got me. He's giving gigs at the Chameleon back in the day. I mean, he's just, he's, he's another magical person. I I love him, man. Magical people. So, you got to meet Liberty DeVito. Liberty DeVito, Kevin Aronson, all these insanely awesome people. I have, I'm one connection away from Ellen John. Nice. And he has like and and and he is my biggest influence. And a player? Yeah.

Yeah. He is, if I could meet anybody, any musician, it'd be on John. Okay, hold on. Hold okay. Crazy God story. You ready? Yeah. So here I am at OBC. Okay, I'm getting into blues music And soon after Glenn Kaiser who led the Christian rock band, the Rez Band, The Resurrection Band. He basically invented Christian Hard Rock in the seventies. Was huge, massive. In the eighties, they had to hire Utwo's tour manager to do their tour for one of the things.

Well, in the nineties, he got into Delta Blues and did a couple or did a couple albums with Darryl Mansfield. It was Kaiser Mansfield and they were doing Blind Willie Johnson and a bunch of old gospel blues stuff. I wore those cassettes out. I had to buy em a couple times. I I played them that much. Um and that's it. I look back at my set list from nineteen ninety-six, 199. 7, half the set was half half the set list was stolen from him. Uh songs I I took from him. Well, god hooked us up together. Wow. Glenn got in Making cigar box guitars. Um he contacted me one time saying, hey, I I like your guitars and everything and then, that time, I was at a low point in my life and I'm like, oh, I can't believe Glenn Kaiser's contacting me but I'm like, I need your prayers and since then, oh, he we've done shows together.

He's come to York. I've done concerts together with him. He's been like, okay, now, I want you to go find a bar and I want to do a show with you there and what I found was he spent the 70s and 80s bringing people to Christ. Now, a lot of those have fallen away and now he'll go to bars to bring them back again. And so people will go see him in a bar because they, you know, it's, oh yeah, I remember this stuff. Um, I I got his number on speed dial on my phone. I could call him at any point. And, you know, I'll get a text from him every once in a while. I'm working on this guitar made out of a pie pan.

You know, and and he's just one of those people. I mean, the guy, once they achieve success, they both, they bought a hotel in Chicago and turned it into a homeless shelter and they have lived there in as a commune since the seventies taking care of the homeless, giving them jobs, getting them back on their feet. That's what he does. I mean, this guy is the real deal and he's one of my best friends now and here, I was pouring over his cassettes. Right. So, you're talking Elton John? God can make that happen. God, yeah, it it's I I hope it does. speaking about celebrating and talking about god and all that jazz, I, we're going to have to round up our radio time. So, I have a song prepared. Uh it's called You Remain.

It's a song I wrote two years ago when everything shut down and when we mean everything, we mean everything. Uh and it made me realize that only one thing truly remains and that is god. So, with all that said, this is you remain by me. when can no longer speak you are there beside me hope is lost and I can't bear the cost you pain and when things turn to dust and there's nothing to trust oh it's clear who you're meant to be you are my fade away I've been crying everything is dying nothing seems clear comforting me and shout and tell them all every kingdom falls in you shout and tell them stay you and that was, you remained by me.

That was fantastic. Oh, man. I mean, the the amount of layers on there you're blowing me away and I I'm not I, this is 100% sincere. I mean, I'm hearing this thing build and you know, from you to go to the tempo change to the Sergeant Pepper's staccato beat to the the the Timpani blast or that was just Fantastic. Uh hold on. Where can people hear this? Uh people can find that. I believe it's on Spotify and Apple Music and all that jazz. Uh you've unfortunately, you won't be able to hear it on Facebook because they they view copyrighted music at all.

Yes. So, you all that stuff you just that we just heard, other people won't hear. Is it under Corey Rosen? It is under Corey Rosen. Um Corey Rosen Productions, I think it might be. Uh I have Facebook. You can go Facebook page there. Chorus and Productions. You can find all that stuff and more of my music there. More of my original compositions there. but yeah, if you want to want to hear that, I'm pretty sure it's on Spotify. You got a new fan. You got a new fan. Serious. That was compositionally off the hook. I mean, everything about it. Great job. Thank you very much, man. Well, where can people find you? They can find you everywhere but what are some upcoming gigs that you have? Okay, next week, I am performing at the Susquehanna Folk Festival on Friday, August 12th.

I am doing a solo set. Um the Susquehan Folk Festival is at the York Fairgrounds this year. Um and I think it's the it's or I I don't know. Just just look up Susquehanna Folk Music Society and you'll get the information. So, I'm performing there on Friday, okay? I'm doing a forty-five-minute set on all my different instruments and then, they asked me to come back on Sunday and it was the at the invitation of the library of congress and the library of congress asked me to go through their archives and find a song and reinterpret it. I will perform it. I will be interviewed first and then I will perform it and so, I was going through the archives and I found a song called the Avamore Mining Disaster and it was from the eighteen sixty-nine disaster in Avenmore, Pennsylvania and this was a massive coal mine fired disaster, killed, you know, hundred over 100 people.

Um and here I later learned after I chose it, it was also the one thing that spurred so many labor unions and things after that. Yeah. Um so, but I loved the First of all, I loved it was local. I loved it as I was reading the lyrics, it was like, oh, I can groove these lyrics because the original song was very validy and and you know, a very 1800s ballad. Well, I turned it into this RL Burnside Blues Grind and and then, I decided, I'm going to play it. I was thinking being it's a coal mine song. I would play it on this, the shovel guitar. Uh that was by my friend Richard Newland.

That's the shovel caster guitar. But I then went on TikTok and Instagram yesterday and I said should I play this song on a shovel guitar? And then I cut away to my wood shop and I was out there and I have an old pickaxe. I said or should I make a guitar out of pickaxe? And what's more appropriate for a coal mine? Hundreds and hundreds of votes came in.

Everybody wants the pickaxe. So this week on my social media which if you go TikTok or Instagram it's at cigarboxguitar. Mhm. Facebook even. Facebook. com. slash cigar box guitar Um I am going to be showing, I'm going to be in my shop this week building the pickaxe guitar that I'm going to use next week at the Susquehanna Folk Music Society to or Susquehanna Folk Music Festival and I'm going to do that mining disaster of Avamore song on. That's incredible. I can't I can't wait to see that. Oh, my band was practicing it last night. I need to talk to them. They wanted me to do it solo but if I can pull it I'm going to bring the full band with me because when in their lives are they going to do something for the library of congress? Congress.

So, anytime I get like a big blessing like that, it's like, let me bring my friends in. How can I help my friends too? And so, I'm going to be talking to them. Hopefully, today and just asking them, can I bring them on? We'll keep the, you know, the number of connections for the PA system. We'll keep it in a minimum but we all want to do this together. And it's not only that but it's Americana as. Yes. Lord, give out. Yes, right? That that's your washtub, base. Yup. You got your what do you have for drums? Uh right now, we have a cajon. Although, I have a new drum set that I built that is not being used yet. We're still tweaking it. It is an actual junk drum set made of old soda crates and hidden insider drum triggers. So, feeds into a computer and it sounds like the craziest drum set you've ever had. That's cool. Oh, yeah. Electronic junk junk set. Exactly and then we have a harmonica player too.

So this is Americana as you can get. Really? The thing is my family came from the coal mines. Both sides of my family came from the coal mines. And so for me to be able to do a coal mining song is a no-brainer. And for those who don't know what the Library of Congress is, it is the like it is the spot. Imagine if the library of Alexandria was in the USA. Yeah. But dedicated to American history. Yeah. US history. It is that is like the biggest record deal you could ever get.

And I mean, I'm going through the archives and it's like, they gave me some examples to go with. Do you want to use Muddy Waters original plantation recordings? Do you want to use Mississippi John Hertz archival recordings? How about the ones we just discovered of Sunhouse? And all these things and I'm like, oh man. So, give him all. What I did was I started with I started with an instrument with a shovel. Mm hmm. And I started looking for actually started looking for stuff like gravedigger blues or something like that and then a shovel song or a a coal mining song came up and I'm like, Cole and I discovered the Avamore song and then, as I was going on, it's like, why have this pickaxe? So, I put it to the fans and it just added to the hype and and quite honestly, that wasn't me.

That was god throwing ideas into my head again because it was too perfect. Right, it was. It was just absolutely too perfect. Well, if you want to check that out, check out his TikTok at Cigar Boss Guitar. That's his website, YouTube, Facebook, all that jazz as well. And you have your original music out on Spotify as well. Oh yeah, Shane Spiel. Go look at that and he has some incredible music. Unfortunately, I don't have any of that today but we'll get to that in a future episode. Cool shorter because it is it's cool stuff.

Uh with all that said, if you're on the radio, we're going to continue live here on Facebook but if you if you want to follow us, support what I do, look up the story, Corey Rosen on all platforms. You can find us on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your podcast. You can find us there. You can go to Instagram at the underscore story underscore podcast or Facebook. com forward slash the story Corey Rosen and you can find all of our upcoming guests and events there. With all that said, we're going to get you guys back to the radio and we'll see you guys later. That's always really cool when it comes with the legal ID. It's like, oh yeah, that was the actual official radio. Yeah, now.

So, okay. So, we're still on with Facebook. We're still on the Facebook. Hey, guys. I have left. Uh so, Have you ever tried because here I'm I'm such a visionary. Yeah. I'm like holding this like it's on my child. Uh but have you ever tried to put together a orchestra of Cigar Boss Guitars or all of these weird instruments and trying to make something really cool with that? Okay. I wasn't part of it but three or four years ago at the Pennsylvania cigar box Guitar Fest. They had the world's largest cigar box guitar jam. Uh where I forget how many hundreds of people played bad to the bone together for the Guinness Book of World Records. So that was dope. Yeah. Yeah. I I didn't get to be part of that but they pulled that off. For me, there's always the novelty of the instruments. However, in my mind it's less of a novelty and more of who I am. I can rip leads on that thing better than any stratocaster, okay? Um and so, when I put my band together, the although we're all homemade instruments, it was it just happened and I know it's also not my fault that it happened that way.

At the time, I was running an open mic in a smokey little bar in downtown New York called the First Capital Dispensing Company. Oh yeah, yeah. Of course. And the reason I was running it is I was attending it for about six to eight months before that. My playing was horrible. I was a such, I was, I would do shows and I would crash and burn and so, I was like, I need to reinvent how I play and I had to strip everything of everything down and come up with a new style so that it it sounded right and so, I started going to open mics and I would crash and burn every Wednesday and then, I would start to get a little better and this is one of those things.

Do it bad until you do it well. Right. And so, I did that and then the guy needed to quit hosting the open mic and I took over and so when you host the Nova Mic, you get the first set. You get the first half hour of your own. You know, four or five songs, six songs and so I would do that and then Farmer John who was always there having a beer on a Wednesday night said, I just built this bucket base. You know, friend of mine showed me how to do that. Can I sit in? I'm like, absolutely, I'm playing a cigar box guitar.

It's perfect. Um and then, one night, we actually electrified it in the backroom of the bar so that I didn't have to put a microphone on it or. Right. We were duct taping on it just so we could hear it. Um and then another guy Aaron Lewis showed up and said can I play harmonica with you? And I'm like sure.

And so the three of us were playing every Wednesday for the open mic and I said we're so good. You guys are just following me. It's like I'm driving the Cadillac and you're going on for the ride. You know where I had because I had a foot stomper and I had the cigar box guitar and I was you know the the main rhythm of the band and these two guys were dancing around me. Um after months of it Without a single practice. I said, I want to start booking gigs and they're like, sure, let's do it and so, farmer John got us a gig at a a beer fest, a brewery fest and that was our first show and it was like, what do we call ourselves and the original name of the band was Shane Spiels World Famous Snake Oil Jug Band. It was like the longest thing I could think of for it. Right. And it became Shane Speal Snake Oil Band but the idea was to have this old jug band playing what I call stomp blues.

That's and it started from me using a foot stomper as the percussion and that was a soda crate with a couple pickups on the inside, run into a preamp with all bass going into a PA system where it sounded like a combat boot to the chest. So, if I tapped on this box, it was boom and so, I I just had this real just basic foot bass drum as my drums and then the cigar box guitar had to be played rhythmically whereas if the bass drums boom, boom, boom. All my guitar parts had to go. I had to go like. Everything just had to go with that that sixteenth note or eighth note rhythm to go with it. Um just because your whole body is in that rhythm. Um and that created what is our sound. Now that I have Rick Stapina playing drums for us.

I still tell him you know play less. You know I want to hear more of the bass. And then you can add other flourishes in there. But it's just a thrive. Yeah it's just absolute drive. Think you know Mumford and Sons ended up doing it later on. Um. It's like four on the floor. Yeah four on the floor. Yeah. but with us, it's, it's that, it's Stomp Blues mixed with humor like, my lyrics, you gotta understand, I'm playing blues, okay? Of course.

I'm a fat, short, suburban guy, okay? I cannot sing real blues. Nobody would believe me. I wouldn't even believe me. So, I spoofed the stuff. Um because I, I'm sorry. If I see a blues band and they look like me and they're singing this deep blue stuff. I don't believe em. I I mean, it's just like, you're just copying stuff. So, like, There's a tambour that comes with tortured souls. Uh yeah and so I you know like for murder ballads a lot of bands will do murder ballads and it's like old 1, 800 stuff. And I'm like what would a modern day murder ballad be? And it was.

Not a ballad. It would be from the murderer's point of view. And what's the most what's the worst most murder ballad title of a song I could ever create. So I created the and then I made the song. The title is I'm strung out, drunk, and busted and there's a body in the trunk. Okay, you start with that scenario. Now, here's the crazy thing. Now, it's so it's all tongue in cheek and people know it's tongue in cheek. Nobody takes me serious. The thing is, I was posting this online and another one of my Christian music heroes was my Facebook friend, Pat Nobody. It was Pat Nobody Taylor. Uh he he had a couple. Pat, nobody. He had a band called Nobody Special. Of course. Oh, no. This is, if you want Christian punk that is the best, nobody special. Look it up. It's hard to find. But Pat nobody was on Facebook and I posted, I think I've come up with the worst, most blues murder ballad title ever.

I'm strung out, drunk, and busted, and there's a body in the trunk. Pat, nobody, was the first to comment and said that no good woman of mine stole my money and shot all my junk. I'm like, there it is. There it is. There it is. It's so and so that's what I do. I mean, my stuff is all tongue in cheek or like for my album, Holler. What we also did was we went into the library of Congress archives and studied prison chants and field haulers.

Hm. And we would mix those in with some of the songs. So, there's this this reoccurring theme going throughout the whole album and with the stomp blues, then, you hear this chanting in the background and swing the old hammer, let it swing. Yeah. Swing it in the morning with the boss man. Morning. the old hammer let it swing and and and so you know, there's I, I do teach some history in my lyrics, but for the most part, we're, we've got a, a goofy smile on our faces when we write our songs.

Uh, it's just, you know, I got the dumbest song in the world that I ever wrote is one of the audience's favorites, Judy Got a Booty. Judy got a booty and she shakes it when she cuts loose. And it's just like the dumbest thing, but when people are there for a show, they want to just dance and they want to goof off and you know maybe someday I will write lyrics that that are as deep as my life but on the jester.

You know, I'm the jester. I'm in concert. I'm the jester. I show up in overalls, a top hat, you know, just a crazy look and you are there for a party. I mean, I grew up with Kiss. I know that when you go to a show, you should give them a show. Right. Um just to be sitting there gazing at your shoes as you're standing in there and T shirts and a jean and jeans.

You better do something magnificent in those T shirt and jeans or you know, I'm I'm heading out Um and so, the band knows this too. I, you know, in concert, it is just four insane guys on stage. Uh like putting it all out there. Um and then the reason we haven't done a show in the last year is I told them I'm done with with our current setup. Uh I want to take this act into theaters or rock clubs. Uh my biggest influence for that is Blue Man Group. So, I want our stage to look like a junk yard. Yeah. Except everything's playable and. Stomp. Yeah, exactly. Stomp, recycle percussion, Blue Man Group. Um and I think that our type of music and humor could work. I know it'll work well in rock clubs.

Um I've opened up for other bands in those bigger clubs and you know, we once did Gettysburg Bike Week and we open up for? I think it was Kentucky Headhunters that time and people were coming up to to us saying that we blew them away. I'm like, no, you can't say that. We were just up there having fun but they're like, no, you're completely different. Um but that's the whole idea and my biggest thing that's holding me back and I'm praying about is a makerspace. I need a makerspace to build the stage and then to build the show because it's, you know, right now, we're practicing in my garage but you need an actual partial warehouse. Yes. Uh to set this stuff up to build these instruments because it's not just for me. The other band members are going to have different instruments. The drum set made out of junk parts is actually going to be the centerpiece of the stage and it's going to look like Fat Albert's Junkyard. Mm hmm. And so the strum set is is going to also have different props on it.

Um instead of stage lighting, I want old like the hook lights you use for when you're working on a car. You know, except with Edison bulbs so that the stage is like all amber. So, that stage almost looks seepia toned and then you have this just American rust is the is the look of the stage. That would be that's pretty cool. That's my vision and it's taken me forever to pull it off. Now, we're doing the Cigar Box Guitar Fest, the Pennsylvania Cigar Box Guitar Fest on August 27th in Downtown York and that will be our old show.

That will be, you know, Cajon and you know, all high in high high energy but not the new stage yet. Hm. So, some general questions to move on to. Okay. Uh we talked about how your faith has been challenged, how how you've grown. Mm hmm. What is worship? I have a tough time with worship. Mm. music wise, especially if I'm at church, at a meeting, or whatever, and they have worship, my musician brain is always listening to composition. I would love I have a vision and you know, I've prayed about it and it hasn't happened yet and maybe it's just not something that god has for me to do yet.

I would love to find a church that meets in an old church and they're always going to one for a while but just didn't work out. Um and I've seen these newer churches try to go into old spaces. They put the PA there and they they do, you know, the contemporary worship which ends up booming the drums and the bass guitar is too loud and everything echoes. I would love to do a service of Dulcimers, hammered dulcimers, auto harps, you know, acoustic instruments like that but lush strings like I think it would be the most beautiful thing in the world for a church to have a hammered dulcimer player.

Yeah. Um and there's there's things like this. This is the creativity that I want to see in churches with the upcoming revival. I want to see them break out of the traditional contemporary worship because there's more to it than that. Um and at times, some contemporary worship mimics what's going on in popular culture and we should be the ones who are leading in the creative arts. Um but this is where you need to feed your creativity again. Mm hmm. Um and as people doing worship, I used to play bass in church and I've learned later on in life that what you're doing is you're basically pulling down sounds from heaven. You're pulling down things heaven as a worship musician. It is your job to bring those down and to take them outward.

Um and you just can't fake this stuff. You can't just I don't know and there's times where I've seen some worship services that blew me away. Cory, the greatest church experience I ever saw in my life, music experience. Um I was with someone else at the time that we were in Southern York County driving around looking for a church just on a Sunday morning. Found this tiny little church in I don't know if it was railroad PA or one of these little towns that don't even have a red light and we're like, let's just go here.

You know, and and so, it was in an old, old 18hundreds church, pews and they had their service. I don't remember anything of the service but at the end to as everyone was leaving an old eighty-something-year-old man in his finest church suit from the 19 seventies, walked up to the pulpit and got out. Do you know what an omnicord is? The electronic auto harp? Yes. Okay. So, he must have got one of these so he could play an instrument at home. It has buttons and you stroke a little sensing pad. Mm hmm. He got up there he put that on the pulpit and he did an old hymn and he sang it with everything he had on this cheap little omnicord that had like type of drums to it.

I was mesmerized. I was absolutely is this was the greatest church music I had ever heard because it was the most sincere thing I have ever seen in my life. It was this man. It was it was the woman with two mites. Okay? It was this the old man in the omnicord and like the person I was with getting up ready to go and I'm like, no, I'm not going anywhere. I'm waiting till this song's done and it was, I, you know, we're talking, this is 1993 when it happened and I still remember it as vivid today. Um I want to see that in other churches. I want to see that and you know, just we, we started off this podcast telling people to be creative and and going out and make that thing that they're afraid to make.

I want to see that in churches. Okay, you're in a church contemporary church service and you're struggling with the drums, okay? And you have the plexiglass wall around you, half the drums are electronic, Um why don't you start studying other percussion? There are more things than western drum sets out there and it doesn't have to be just hand percussion. It can be other and why not bring that to the altar? Um this is worship. I have trouble watching worship at home. I have trouble doing worship because my mind is always on music composition. Um there's times where I can get past that but that's a real struggle for me. Um Although, you know, for me, it is prayer it is you know, the other thing about me is, I find it extremely important to spend time alone away from everyone, praying in tongues.

Whether people want to go in, I won't go any further than that, but especially here, but you know, it's, you have no idea the power of what I've seen in praying in tongues, but, yeah, I have, worship itself and music. I have a tough time giving that to God. I do it from time to time, and I'll feel him, tell me to do it from time to time, but I can't flow in it because my mind is too engaged in the automatic or the the mechanics of it. It's and so this conversation is is going back to a century-long conversation of how or a trend that church music used to be this culture center. Yes. It used to be church music was the the forefront of musicality. Mm hmm. And that and over the time it switched to where now all the contemporaries, all any music now. It's just copies off of what's popular now. Yeah. Instead of trendsetting. Imagine if we we brought in those older instruments, all those these newer instruments that are coming out even.

Yup. And brought that into worship and made it something amazing. It made it made it God worthy. Instead instead of popular worthy. I did see one like that. Um and that was just a couple months ago. Uh one of the people I study under is a guy named Kevin Zadai and doctorate in theology has a ministry called Warrior Notes. I saw em out in Pittsburgh and he is very much into pulling the sounds down from heaven. In fact, he was dead on the operating table for a period of time. Wow. Spent 45 minutes in heaven. It has affected everything about his ministry and he's seen a lot of things behind the veil and he talks about music being language and such. However, when I saw him Uh all their music is by the spirit. There is, you know, they start out with a key and like this isn't his regular church. This is for special meetings and so you go there and it's all improvised and but the thing is, he's pulling in he's got keyboards. He's got guitar, the guitar is the guitarist very much has a the U2 sort of sound to him.

Lot of delays. It's beautiful stuff. He actually uses it artistically but Kevin will perform on like 14 different instruments. When I saw him, he was performing on a a Celtic flute. It was the long. Yeah. Yeah. And it's almost impossible to play. Mm hmm. Well, he spent a lot of time on his effects pedals. So, when I saw him, there was like I said, I heard in your song, this vortex of sound going around where it wasn't like your typical church service. There was actual a a manifestation surrounds yeah. Yes. But it was stoked. It was it was it was physical but it was spiritual as well. Um I would love to see that type of stuff happen in an acoustic setting. Mm. I would love to see that stuff happen without a PA. Um that would fascinate me. And that goes back to in a you find an old church with big plaster walls that was originally made for a pipe organ. And you fill it with hammered dulcimer's auto harps. Um strings. Strings. Just all or strings or woodwinds as well.

Yeah. Um you know, one of the most beautiful things I ever heard was mixing a nylon string guitar with a clarinet. For some reason, those two match perfectly. Yeah, yeah. You know, Yeah, I mean, I have so many ideas but every time I pray about it, it's like, no, you gotta do this. It's like, alright, I gotta I know what I need to do. You know, and that and you can encourage others to.

Yeah. Do do that. And I've blogged about it to, you know, give people ideas and there's there, yeah, the church should be, people should want to go to a church just out of fascination for the art being created on the inside. You know, DL Moody, I read his biography and Moody used to build churches and he would always install a pipe organ. Did he do that for increased worship? No, he did it because he knew it would draw a crowd and if he drew a crowd, then he would start going to the church. Um he put a pipe organ in every church for that simple reason. He knew it would draw people. Uh I think in a deeper spiritual sense too, we should be doing that. Um and in in that type of stuff. I would love to see that. Every once in a while, you do see it in certain churches where if they allow their their worship team to just flow in that new things will come out. Um. Have you ever been to Calvary where they have the orchestra every now and then? No. Yeah. Calvary Church here in Lancaster.

They they'll they'll put an orchestra together and play like Bach or some of the old stuff like that. Nice. In the in the big church. I did a duet of cigar box guitar and pipe organ on a Sunday or on a Christmas Eve service I was going to this little Lutheran church at the time and I had this three string cigar box guitar with a Dobro cone a Dobro cone is this spun aluminum cone inside where the bridge is of a guitar and it makes it project it makes it louder I hung halfway over the balcony up where the pipe organist was at and we did Silent Night and it was a midnight mass type of service.

That's nice. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done. That's amazing. So what is one mistake that you've made or seen other people make? How can we prevent that, curb that for other people to come? The biggest mistake is thinking that your mistakes are going to end you. okay? Cuz you're going to make em. You're going to make a ton of mistakes. Um this is a marathon and I used to think oh I I got this interview with this magazine. Now, things are good. Nothing went anywhere. Um this is a marathon. Uh when god called me to do this, that was in two thousand two.

Hm. You know, 20 years ago. Um and I thought, okay, that's my ticket. You know, and I I'm realizing, you know, I still have a lot more work to do. He has something big for me. Um tangibly big coming. but I have now been beaten down humbled to the point where I know, alright, it'll come but this is his. This isn't mine and it took me all these years to get to that point. Um, and you gotta understand, only in the pop world is music for the young. Mm. Okay, only in the pop world. And we, that's only since the 20th century, since we've seen the youth drive music. Culture Yeah. You know, where it, you know, it used to be anybody, everybody. Um and so, I'm going to continue to make mistakes.

I am going to continue trying new things and I'm going to continue praying about everything. More so now than ever in my life. So, yeah, I may be the goofy guy in a ballroom playing ballroom blues but I can tell you that I'm fully prayed up before I go on stage. You know, what else do I say? Yeah. Well, this has been a wonderful time. This is a most unique interview I've ever done. Good. Good. I'm glad. It's always the worry with some some of the bigger people I'm having on in the future. It's like, well, how am I going to make this difference? Right? Be yourself and you know, I don't know. This is, this has just been, I've been, you have no idea how much I've been looking forward to this interview, because I can, I knew I could be completely open about my spirituality here.

Yeah, it's, you're right, that's one of the things I I really enjoy about this podcast is that, that I don't, there's no, besides cursing, everything is open, right? Yeah, exactly. But no, I guess what I want to, I don't even want to promote myself at the end of this. I just want to tell people, you can make do something. You know, the book of Psalms, I don't know if it's Psalm 131 that says that god wrote a book about you before you were even born and that's not figurative. That actually, Kevin Zadai was saying, was one of the things he saw in heaven was that there are real books. God wrote your book about everything he wants you to do and every day is another page and every day that you wake up, god, I pray to do your will today and to fulfill that page that you have for me.

Well, let me tell you something. Our god is a creative god Mm hmm. And if you feel like you should be making something, creating something, doing something, it's time to do it. Now, more than ever. Um you know, we're about to come into some tough times and you are going to need to be strong through this but it is time to do those things he's calling you to do. I think it's crazy that we're in these tough times and god has me showing off goofy instruments on TikTok but that's what he's got me doing and I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it every day and I'm going to do it as he tells me to do it and I've had him say you're not putting enough videos.

And I'm like I put two out today. Put two more. You know and do these things. Cory, do the podcast. Do your music. That music you did is fantastic. And that is That ain't all you. Mm mm. Okay. I could tell. There's that ain't all you. That God's moving through you in that. You're compositionally you were throwing stuff in there that I didn't expect. And usually whenever I hear modern music I know what to expect. Right. Okay and you just knocked me out six ways to Sunday. Um people do something. Do something that you're supposed to do. God wrote a book about you before you were born What is that he has called you to do? I want you to do it. Um and it probably won't make sense to you at first. You probably think why should I be cooking cherry pies for people? Right. You know. I don't know. Um that makes no sense. And then you do it and it he's going to take you to the end of your flesh.

And just I keep doing making these cherry pies and nothing ever happens and then all of a sudden you see that entire time you were changing somebody else's world and you had no idea. Yeah a lot of times the the product isn't the purpose. No. It's the people you meet along the way. Right. That that makes it all worth it. Yep. Imagine the lives changed by Biden, your local bodega, right? Yup. That it might not be, you know, that's. Barbershop. Barbershop. Barbershops. Oh my gosh. Yeah. How much of a cultural impact that barbershops have on anybody who's ever been the one? Yeah, exactly. Just someone you can talk to while they cut their hair.

Yeah. Incredible. All of these things. Um you're watching this podcast and there's a reason for it and whatever is bugging you. That one thing that is talking to you. It's bugging you. Deal with it today. Serious. Seriously? Yeah. Yeah. That's all I got to say. Well, with all that said, if you have enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to share, like, with your friends. Absolutely, share. I want to see how many times we can get this shared on Facebook. I dare you to send it. I dare you. I you. Alright, the the the most shares I've ever had is 19 which is. Oh, come on. Oh yeah, right. Yeah. Rookie numbers, right? Oh, no. We gotta we gotta destroy that. Yeah, we, share it to whoever you feel needs to hear this stuff. Yeah. Uh, because there are, it's, the world is broken right now, and and when I say broken, I mean broken.

And here's the thing though, guys, we are not coming to you and giving you the same old **** that you would hear from a sermon. No, we're saying you got something inside you. God wants you. God wants you to do these things. You know, yes surrender to him. Tell Jesus, I'm yours. I've come to the end of my rope. I can't do this anymore. Jesus, my life is yours. You made me, you didn't even know what's happening in my future. Take my life. I give it to you and then, right then and there. Okay. What do we do? What are we doing today? Mm hmm. Not what do we do? What do I do in my life? What do I do next time? What are we doing today? What are we doing right now? Yeah, just today. Um as I, you know, here having my coffee.

Alright God. You know, what's going on? You know, last last year I I got hit with COVID and was in the ICU for for a week. And it was bad. But all by myself And I at the end at the very end I cried out to God but I called him daddy. I was gone. I was just gone. I was so bad. The the amount of oxygen they were pumping into me was insane. And at at one point I just called out to the father and I called daddy. And it was at that point I felt him pick me up. And the next day I was released from hospital. And since then what I call em is daddy.

What's going on? Daddy, let's talk. and that's how I pray. Um you know, I either talk to him, daddy, I'll talk to Jesus, talk to Holy Spirit. They've become, yes, they're all one but they've become three different people I'm talking to for different things but for the most part, it's a kid going up to his father and saying, daddy, we got this. He told me to do that. I see this working. What do we got today? And between that and read your Bible every day because That's him talking to you too. Mm hmm. With all that said, like, share. If you want to support? Share this everywhere. Everywhere. Uh to I, for, well, let's see. What do I have coming up? I have a few I have a well, quite a few guests coming up.

Uh this Friday is going to be John Flavin. He's a cool guy who plays guitar, he's a singer, and he's another event promoter. I'm excited to talk to him and all that he's got and Greg Fleury is coming on after that. He's a cello player, composition person and so, I'm excited to about. Cello. Cello is so great. There's always room for cello. There's always room for cello. Uh that's one thing I love putting in my music is strings and horns. I don't know if you can tell obviously. Yeah. From that. Mm hmm. Uh but and then the Sunday will be Darryl Davis, one of one of my most one of he's one of my role models.

Nice. To put it to put it simply. I'm really excited to talk to him and hear about all the stuff he's got going on. Uh it's from the past and today. With all that said, I hope you guys have really enjoyed this podcast. You can follow us on all streaming platforms, The Story Coy Rosen at C O R Y R O S E N. Follow us there. Listen.

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