 Welcome to Dare to Dream. This is Debbie Dashinger, your host. This show is sponsored by Dr. Dane Here and Access Consciousness. They do very powerful energy workout into the world. If you'd like to attend one of their workshops or become a facilitator, go to drdanehere.com or accessconsciousness.com. The Dare to Dream podcast has been nominated for two People's Choice podcast awards and a Webby Award. We are consistently ranked in the top 100 best of self-improvement in all of the USA and Apple podcasts. And right now, the show is trending at 24 in South Korea and Vietnam this week, as well as ranking at number 14 in Portugal. We thank all people and countries for understanding what the message is and for joining us and for dreaming so big. Debbie Dashinger is a certified coach whose expertise is visibility and media. She coaches people to write a page, turn a book, takes their book to a guaranteed international bestseller, and shows people how to be interviewed on radio and podcast and get massive results. You can connect with her at debbiedashinger.com and also get your free videos, your tools, and your templates so you can be interviewed today. debbiedashinger.com slash message. Question, do you want to follow your dream, even if it's later in life? My guest today is Robert Miller, who is a musician and the creative force behind Project Grand Slam, a band that plays a fusion of rock and jazz with a twist of Latin. Robert followed his youthful music dream later in life and became a rock star in his 60s. In just five years, Robert and the band has released 10 albums, including a Billboard number one, has over four million video views, one million Spotify streams, over 50,000 Facebook fans, and has performed at festivals and concerts worldwide and has opened for artists such as Edgar Winter, Blues Traveler, Boney James, and Mindy Abair, and an aftershow for Yes. Robert believes that everyone has a dream, but most people never wind up following their dream for various reasons. So Robert started his Follow Your Dream podcast in order to inspire and motivate people to pursue and succeed at their dream. For more about Robert Miller and his band, go to projectgrantslam.com, and I welcome Robert to the Dare to Dream show. So great to have you, welcome. Thanks so much, Debbie. It's so great to be here. You're an all-star in podcasting. I've been doing this 14 years this June. It's, that's a crazy number. And I've been doing it for one month. So welcome to the world. It's awesome, isn't it? It is awesome. It's been so much fun to start a podcast. And for me, it's kind of like the side of my creativity and music, because I'm trying to combine my music and my message on the podcast. So it's really spurred me to move into areas that I never thought I would get to. Yeah. And it doesn't suck who you get to meet too, right? You get to pop up with a good wish list. It's been so interesting. The kinds of people that I've already had on the podcast are just wildly interesting. Yeah. So I researched you. I have some to say about that. As I shared with you before we started, I'm originally from North Belmore, Long Island in New York. So you said you hailed from Queens originally. And when you were growing up in Queens, were you a musician? Did you have an inclination? Was it a dream? Where was that? I was born to be a musician. In fact, my father told me that he named me Robert Miller, because he thought it would be a great name for a band leader. So I didn't have much choice in all of this. My father was a musician. My father played trumpet. And he did it kind of part time. He played weddings and bar mitzvahs and things like that on the weekend. He had to have a real job during the week. He was a manufacturer of kitchen tables and bathroom vanities and things like that. But he played music and music was his passion. And it quickly became my passion too. Yeah. And so here you are growing up. You've got this passion. You've even received a namesake in order to allow you to be a band leader, which you finally have become. But what was the path? Because your bio reads that you let something go and you chose very bravely, if I might add, to pick it back up. So what was the in-between? What was the bridge that occurred there? And why did you let it go? Well, when I was young, I was a musician. And I just figured it's exactly what I was gonna do. And like about 20 million other people, my work began when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. I mean, there's so many musicians today that you can kind of trace back to that moment when they got inspired to do what they're doing now. And I was one of those kids that was inspired by this. And of course, at that moment, the trumpet was no longer very cool. Okay, you couldn't play trumpet. You had to play the guitar. So I went out, I bought a guitar. My friends, we all bought guitars. We didn't even know what electric guitars were. But we had these little reel-to-reel tape recorders and we took the microphone from the tape recorder and we scotch-taped it onto the guitar. And now we had our electric guitars. And we started to play music. And that's what I did in my teenage years. And I just kind of figured this was gonna continue. I went to college. I was a broadcasting major in college. And I figured once I graduated college, I would try and get a job in broadcasting, but I would do broadcasting and music. I mean, it was as simple as that. I got myself a job in WGBH, which is a public television station in the Boston area. The only problem was when I got into the station, it was at a downtime in the economy. And the only way that you could get in didn't make a difference that I had a degree. The only way you could get in was through the mailroom. So I went into the mailroom. And I figured I'd be in the mailroom maybe a month or two. And then I'd get back into the production and the things in broadcasting. That's what I wanted. I was playing music at the same time in the evening. The only problem was that they weren't promoting people. And one month turned into two and to three and to five. I was in the mailroom for over a year. And I was miserable. My dream was going nowhere. I was trying to play music at night. I was doing that between the mailroom and music. If I made $100 a week, it was a lot of money. And I set something else with my life. And one of my friends was in law school. And in a moment of complete weakness, he said to me, well, why don't you go to law school? And I said, well, why would I want to do that? Never entered my mind before. He says, well, you could do law during the day and you could play jazz at night, which is what I wanted to do. And I thought about it for about two nanoseconds because I was an idiot kid, 20 years old at the moment. And I went off backpacking in Europe with my girlfriend who became my wife after that. And when we got back, I found out that I had done well enough that I could apply to school. But I'll tell you how dumb I was. I didn't even know that you could apply. You had to apply like a year in advance. And anyway, I wound up going to law school. I wound up getting a job in law and I stopped playing music for 15 years. Why? Because I was in law school, then I was in a law firm and I was trying to make a living. And then we had children and life gets in the way. That's what I found. It certainly happened with me and I gave up my dream. It just, it flew out the window and I was desperately unhappy about it. And it took me, as I just said, over 15 years to start to get that dream back. And it didn't happen overnight. I started to play music again, but it was more like a hobby, more like an avocation. It was only when I hit 60 that I said to myself, wait a minute, am I gonna regret this for the rest of my life? Am I going to not even try to get back to what I always wanted to do? And I finally said, nope, jump into the deep end of the pool. I just said, I'm doing it. I'm gonna ask you, because that's a very pivotal moment. You bet, because I can't swim too well either. And you're having this awakening and saying, oh my God, like for all of us, right? There's a finite amount of time. What do you wanna do with that time? There's this hunger in you that you've always had for music, you decide to pick it back up. But 15 years, I know, because I started singing recently after 13 years and I could go wax on about the changes in my voice, but also honestly, there's a magnificence. There's a freedom I never had before at the same time, but it's a muscle, right? So how was that for you? What instrument did you pick up, Robert? And then how was it plugging back in? Did you have to reteach, relearn? Exactly like that. First of all, I play the bass. That's my main instrument. I also play the guitar, piano and a few other instruments, but the bass has always been my instrument. And the reason it became my instrument, going back to the whole Beatles thing that I talked about earlier, I mean, when we were young, we didn't know that there was a difference between the regular guitar and the bass guitar. And my friends, when we started our little band, when we were teenagers, they were struggling to learn the treble clef. I already knew the treble clef because I played the trumpet. So I volunteered, I raised my hand. I said, all right, I'll learn how to play the bass guitar. That's how I became a bass player. Anyway, to answer your question, yes, when I finally started to decide that I wanted to get back to this, and I should mention there was one other event that caused me to really focus. And that was when I was, when I was about 40, or I can't even remember exactly, but it was around age 40, I had a terrible accident. I was riding my bicycle in New York City and I got hit by a car. And I wound up with a broken neck. Oh boy. And the only reason that I'm talking to you today is because of the person up above who was very kind to me, because my neck exploded, but nothing touched my spinal cord. So I didn't wind up like a Christopher Reeve or people like that. And I said to myself, that was a wake-up call. Something, some four words to continue in life. And I needed to really refine what I was after. But it still took me probably close to 20 years before I made that jump into the deep end of the pool that we're talking about. So it took a long time. And you're right, you're using muscles and you're using memory and you're using skills that get rusty over time. So you have to go back into it. Actually, when I made the decision to play music again after 15 years away, I found what I call a musician's dating service in New York City. And I kid around when I say that, but it was the kind of place where you could go down and tell them, I wanna play Led Zeppelin's third album, Second Side. And they'd find like three other people that would play that with you. And I did that for about six months. I just started to play with people. And this is all for free? Or did you play this stuff? Well, I had to do that, but I wasn't earning any money from this. Yeah, of course. And then so the musician's dating service and then I recorded an album, my first album of my music because a friend of mine had a recording studio. It turned out that this guy that owned the studio grew up on the same block as I did in Queens. So we knew each other as kids. And he had a recording studio and he's been very, very successful. He said, why don't you come down? Let's make a record. And I was terrified because I hadn't done that before. And I'm playing with professional musicians who are fabulous musicians. But it gave me the confidence once I did that album to start going further. I put a band together. We started to play different clubs in New York City. We played some festivals and the like, but it was still more like an avocation, more like a hobby because I was still trying to work at the same time. I had all the things that people have. I had a family, I had a mortgage, I had obligations. It's not so easy just to give stuff up. And at the same time, so I was kind of in this limbo period. I knew what I wanted. I was kind of moving in that direction, but I wasn't there yet. And as I said, when I hit 60, I said, okay, it's now or never. I've got to figure out whether this is something I really want to go for or do I want to let it pass? And I knew inside in my gut that I had to take the shot. I took the shot and it's worked out so much better than I ever would have dreamed that it would work out. And that's a message that came through loud and clear to me that if you don't take the shot, you'll never know. And if you do take the shot at whatever your dream is, because we all have a dream. I really believe that we all start out in life with a dream and usually the dreams when we're younger are big dreams. I mean, nobody dreams when they're a teenager. My dream is to become an accountant. They dream big. They want to be a nuclear scientist. They want to be an astronaut. They want to be a baseball player. And some of those dreams are not realistic, but some of them can be realistic. And then what happens? Life gets in the way. Your uncle gives you a job somewhere and you say, okay, I'll take that job and then you meet somebody and you get married. You have a child. You go down that path that we all go down. It's very, very hard to kind of reconcile how to get back into your, was lucky. I recognize I was lucky. And I started the podcast because I said, okay, I did it. I want to see if I can help others do it too. Yeah. Yeah, you're so right. Once people go down that path and they have all those trappings, right? And then they have responsibility financially and otherwise to all those trappings. It is really hard to extricate oneself. It is a big, bold move. There's this quote from Richard Branson, which says, if your dreams don't scare you, they are too small. Those who achieve great things are the ones willing to be scared, but not scared off. And you also have to be willing to fail because not every dream is going to succeed. And along the way, there's going to be ups and downs and bumps. For me in music, it was not one straight path to success. It was one step, two steps back and three steps sideways. But in five years, I've accomplished more than I thought that I could ever accomplish. I surrounded myself with young, terrific, talented, vibrant musicians. Yeah, talking about that. How did you find these really talented musicians that make up the band, Project Grand Slam? Well, how did you come up with that name? All right, the name story is this. I was trying to name the band when we first formed the band, and I didn't want to just name it the Robert Miller group or something like that. I wanted something interesting. And I was a big fan when I was young of the James Bond movies, okay? Sean Connery and the James Bond movies. And there was a movie in that series called Goldfinger. And the plot in Goldfinger was to steal the gold from Fort Knox. And the plot in the movie was called Project Grand Slam. So I said to myself, that's a cool name. Let me name the Project Grand Slam. It was only one problem. I actually watched the movie about six months after I named the band and I'm watching the movie. And all of a sudden, Sean Connery mentions the name of the plot to steal the gold. It's Operation Grand Slam. I remembered it wrong. So I said, oh my God, what am I gonna do now? I've already had the band that's named blah, blah, blah. So I went and I Googled Operation Grand Slam. And I found out that there was some kind of like genocidal program in Africa that had the nickname Operation Grand Slam. And I said, you know, I don't think it's gonna be very cool to name a band after a genocidal program. So we kept Project Grand Slam. Yeah, cool. And it always provokes the question, you know, how did you name the band? Why did you name the band? Most people think it's after tennis or golf or some kind of sports related Grand Slam but it had nothing to do with it. All right, and then you, what was the process of, you already know the kind of music you like to do. How did you figure out the vibe? Who would fit? How did you even audition and get this band together? Well, I live in New York City or at least I did pre-COVID. And one of the nice things about New York City is that it's a mecca for talented people from all around the world. And what I did was I rented a rehearsal studio and I ran an ad in Craigslist to ask people to come down and audition for this band that I was forming. And I told them the kind of music that I wanted to play. I've always been kind of a jazz rock kind of person. That's my background. That's where I started in music. So I knew that I wanted to do that. And sure enough, about 30 people came down for that audition and out of those 30, I was able to pick a handful that I thought would work. And they formed the core of the band when I first started the band. In time, I've changed up and moved and brought new people in. So the lineup today is just magnificent. I mean, I've got such talented people. They're remarkably talented and they're almost all from foreign countries. That's what's so interesting. My drummer is from Puerto Rico. My singer is Mexican American. God, she's good. I really enjoyed her voice a lot. Oh, she's fabulous. I mean, they're all fabulous. They're all really, really talented. And what I found is that once I got the band formed, that nucleus, I started to write. I had a writer's block for years because I wasn't playing. And the kind of music that I initially started with was kind of instrumental jazz rock, contemporary jazz type of stuff, very radio friendly. But for me, it was kind of milk toast type of stuff. And I just, I started to move. My background is rock and roll. I grew up during the British invasion era of the 1960s, musically, you know, the who, the stones, the Beatles, that was where I started. And then I moved into jazz. I was fortunate. I took a course when I was young and they set me up with a teacher in the course. And the teacher happened to be John Coltrane's bass player, a guy named Jimmy Garrison, one of the greatest bass players of all time. So he got me into jazz. So, and the music that I started to play at that moment, this was the 1970s. I went back to school. I was in Boston. It was the era of jazz fusion. Groups like Weather Report and Chick Korea in the marvelous music he was making. So that's kind of where I found myself. And when I formed the band, I wanted to play that kind of jazz fusion. But as time went on, I also wanted to bring in more and more vocals into the music. In part, because my wife said to me, you know, people really like vocals. They don't want to hear just instrumentals. It is a small audience for people that want to hear instrumentals. There's a much bigger audience for people that want to hear vocals. So I started to write vocal music and to bring in more of that rock and roll background. So now what we've got is this really interesting combination of kind of rock and jazz. I brought in some Latin as well because so many of the guys in my band have a Latin background. So it's rock and jazz and Latin and it's almost all vocal music. And we've had such fabulous reviews. We had a Billboard number one album. And I just found that my writing just came out of me everywhere. And even during the pandemic, I've written and recorded two new albums during the pandemic. I wanted to ask you about that because that COVID must have taken a toll if you're used to playing concerts and festivals, being in person, rehearsing and all of a sudden everything going on with this pandemic puts the kibosh on that. So how did you guys keep it going? Had to keep the love alive? You're 100% correct. The pandemic maybe hit musicians worse than any other group because all of a sudden- And broadly, I have to say for the theater people of which once was one, yeah, it's a crime what happened to theater? We played our last gig, I think it was February 11th, 2020 at a club that you know about called My Father's Place on Long Island. Oh, cool. The new My Father's Place. And like the next day, the world shut down. Luckily, we had an album that we had just finished called East Side Sessions that literally came out at the end of January, 2020. We couldn't play live anymore because that was gone. So the first thing I did was I said to the folks in the band, I said, well, let's do some videos. And we did four videos from songs on the album. The first two were like real Zoom videos, you know, where everyone's in their little box. I saw, and just so people know, they could watch this on your website at projectgranslam.com, it's pretty fun. Correct, they can see all the videos. But I'm saying the first two were just kind of Zoomy type of videos. Everybody's in their little box, we're all lip-syncing and lip-playing to the songs. But it was really nice, I enjoyed that. And then we got more creative. The third one we did was an animated video. And the fourth one was even more creative. I wrote a song that was a country jazz song, okay? It was a country Western kind of thing, totally outside the box of what I normally would do. And the guy that does my videos found a movie that was done in 1968. It was a spaghetti Western. And somehow the plot fit exactly to the song. So we put that together and now between the four videos we got, I don't know, about a million views on YouTube. So it worked out very nicely. So that's what we did initially, we did the videos. And then starting around May or June of last year, I said, well, I gotta keep writing. And that's what I do, I write music constantly. And I had written about 10 or 12 songs and I said, okay, what am I gonna do now? We can't rehearse together, we can't play together. We weren't, all the concerts that we had lined up were gone. We had a European tour lined up, that was gone. We're all sitting in our places wherever that might be. And it turned out that my band members, one guy was in Western Canada, the other guy was in Texas. I mean, there was no way we could do anything together. So I said, well, I'm gonna start to do something I've never done before. I'm gonna record an album and I'm gonna do it remotely. And I started to record it, guess what? On my iPhone, I kid you not, Apple, if you're listening, there should be a commercial. I mean, I just started singing and playing into my iPhone and I would then email the stuff to my engineer in New York and somehow he would make it up to better quality. And then I would send the tape to my guitar player and he would send his material back. I'd send it to the keyboard player. He would send his stuff back and we started to assemble together. And then it came down to the question of, the kind of songs that I was writing. They were all, I wrote songs that in retrospect had two themes to them. One was the pandemic and what it did to me and what it did to the world. Because remember, this was way before we had a vaccine. We were all in the depths of the pandemic. We didn't know when it was gonna end. It was killing people left and right. So there was a negativity that came out. There was that sadness that came out at that moment. But at the same time, I said to myself, there's one emotion that's gonna get us through the pandemic over every other and it's love. Love is the strongest emotion that we have. So I named the album, Summer of Love 2020. And some people understood why I did it. There were others that said, what are you talking about? It wasn't a Summer of Love, it was a Summer of Depression. No, no, no, it was a Summer of Love. So the songs on the album were about my experience and everyone's experience in the pandemic and also love and how love is uplifting and will get us out of this. And then I decided that I was gonna do something I hadn't done before. I was gonna sing all the songs. And before that I had sung background, I had sung harmony, but I was not the lead singer of the band. I have a wonderful lead singer, but I said, you know, these songs are so personal that I want to sing them. So that's what I did. And I was so heartened because the reviews that came out for the album when I finally released the album in the beginning of 2021 were just magnificent. So it kind of, you know, this was part of my dream journey because not only did I jump into the deep end of the pool when I started the band after I was 60, but now I'm doing a solo record, you know, going out of my comfort zone and doing this. And I said to myself, okay, I gotta take a shot. If it works great, if it doesn't work, you know, at least I tried. The fact that the album got such wonderful reviews was so heartening to me because it validated my feeling that I was gonna take the shot. So I recorded that first album and released it. And then over the last couple of months, I continued to write songs and I have recorded a new album. This one is called Miller Rocks. Why? Because I wanted to go even more towards my rock and roll past. And so I wrote a whole bunch of songs that I thought captured that feel that I had when I was younger of that rock and roll side of me. And this album, I'm gonna introduce the album in a totally different way than I've ever done before. Normally what happens is you make an album, you release the album all at once and that's that. I said, well, the world doesn't work that way anymore. Unfortunately, there's been a generation or two that's been taught that music is free. How is it free? Because they can go on Spotify and they can get anything they want for free. They can go on YouTube and hear almost anything they want for free. So musicians no longer can really sell their music. We almost have to give it away because that's the way the world is gone. And you know, I can't do anything about it. That's simply the way it is. So on the podcast, I said, okay, I've now got this podcast. I'm gonna introduce this album by playing all 10 songs one per week. At the beginning of the podcast, I'm gonna introduce the podcast with a song. I'm gonna tell people why I wrote it, how I wrote it, what it's about. I'm gonna play a whole bunch of it and then I'm gonna send them to my website where they can download the song for free. And at the end of 10 weeks, I'm gonna release the whole album. And if people wanna download the whole album for free, that's fine. No problem with that. What I'm looking to do obviously is generate more fans, introduce people to my music and to the band. And when it comes the time that everybody can go back and play live, I hope that that will generate a greater interest and will get people to come out. Very cool concept. I like that you're incorporating how reality really is into what your goals are and making that marriage work. And I'm curious hearing your story, Robert, how did you go from I'm in, I'm fully in, okay? You're working out the music. Then the writer's block goes away and now this writing is flowing. You do this audition, 30 people show up and you call the most amazing people from all sorts of countries and you create the Project Grand Slam Band. How did you get into these big venues and how did you work alongside on the stage playing at the same place as some of these names? Cause that's a pretty big accomplishment and that's a pretty fast trajectory. So what came into your sphere or what was it you knew to do in order to get into these bigger and bigger more expanded venues? Well, you're right. It was an evolution. And of course you have to start small. I mean, when we first started playing gigs, there were some times that we played, there were two people in the place, the bartender and the waitress and us, okay? It was like a rehearsal in somebody else's location. And you have to be willing to work through that. I mean, and it hurts. Believe me, it hurts. You're a musician. You've put so much time and energy into producing the music, the show, the environment and you have to start small and hope that you start to resonate with people. And that's what happened. Social media these days helps because you are able to get your message and your music out to a much broader audience than we ever could before then. My personal pet peeve with social media for music though is that I find that it takes almost no commitment and no effort for somebody to hit a like button, okay? Like on Facebook. And one of the reasons I started the podcast is because I wanted a deeper level of engagement with people than I was able to get just letting them hear my music on Facebook or one of the other social media sites. But going back to your question, you're right. It's one step at a time. And we started to just work ourselves up and things happened along the way that we're good. And we started to get some opening act things. And the openers are really important for a band that's starting out. You're working in an environment and these were all performing arts centers or big concerts where the headliner is drawing the audience. And you're out there for 20 minutes to 40 minutes. You're basically borrowing their audience for that period of time. They don't know who you are. They don't even know that you were gonna be there. You have to make a mark with them out of nothing. And you know what? That was so satisfying to me because in every instance where we opened for another artist, we wound up after 40 minutes getting a standing ovation. And it said to me, okay, they get it. One of the ways that I made the band into, that I took the band into a performance mode that helped us. Again, I grew up during the 1960s and the 70s, that whole British invasion era. And there were groups and artists that came out of there that I adored and still adore. And I said to myself, I wanna take some of their music and I wanna see if I can make it mine. You know, we talk about covers. People do covers all the time. Most artists start out doing covers, meaning other people's music. But 99% of covers are just playing the original the same way the original was. And I had no interest in that. I said, if I'm gonna do somebody else's music, I wanna try and make it mine. This goes back to the fact that I was at the original Woodstock, okay? And I was playing music in the area that summer. I happened to get to Woodstock just for one day. And I got there the moment when Joe Cocker went on stage. And if you remember, Joe Cocker did this amazing version of with a little help from my friends. That's it. It was an amazing thing. And from that moment on, I said, oh my God, you could take somebody else's song. He took a Beatles song and he made it his own. And there've been so many instances where artists have done that. So I said, that's what I wanna do. I started off with a Hendrix song, Jimmy Hendrix, Fire. And I put that on my first Project Grand Slam album in 2015. And then after that, I took songs by Kreen, by the Who, by the Kinks, finally the Beatles. And in each case, I made these songs into Project Grand Slam songs. And then when we played music for audiences that didn't know us, I would always work in some of these songs because I knew that the audience knew the songs. And it would help for them to be able to relate to us. So it was musically part of my theory and it was from a kind of marketing standpoint. It was part of my way to introduce the band as well. And that helped us get up in the hierarchy. And then when we played certain festivals, I mean, we had this amazing, my aha moment when I knew that I made it. We played a festival in Serbia. Wow. In 2018, the Nisvil Jazz Festival in Nis, Serbia. And just imagine this, the festival is held in this castle setting that's about 700 years old. You walk in over the moat into this castle and they had two huge stages set up so that one band is playing while the other band is setting up. And we're playing before 20,000 people in Serbia. So they're coming from Serbia, Bulgaria, all the different countries in that area. Most of them don't speak English. Most of them, they have no idea who we are because they haven't seen us before. And we play for an hour and we get this amazing standing ovation. And when we get off the stage, as they come down the stage, there's a line of people waiting to get our autograph and to take pictures with us. And I said, okay, that's it. I can tie a happy man now. Yeah. And we put that album out called Greetings from Serbia, which is our set that was live in Serbia. It was an amazing evening for us. Oh, that's so beautiful. I love hearing these pinnacles, these moments where you have these, I have arrived, this was what the dream was about. Whatever it took to get here this moment, this makes it all worth it. So I wanna, I love that story. I wanna also bring in a little bit about your podcast, follow your dream. And you have had some amazing names on it. I wanna talk to you about one of the names, because I sort of have a painful story, a very painful story about one of your guests from my childhood. And it happens to be Cousin Brucey. Don't be nervous, it's not bad, but it's something my brother did. And so Cousin Brucey, who I grew up with. I don't know if it was- We all did, we all did. Yeah, 69 or 70, Cousin Brucey Morrow was on WABC, and like radio was everything, right? So what was it like having him on your show? What was that conversation like? What was the connection like? Did you feel satisfied with everything you were able to ask and what he shared? For anybody that doesn't know who we're talking about, Cousin Brucey Morrow is number one radio personality of the 1960s and beyond. He was radio in New York City when the Beatles were out, when Beatlemania took place, when the British invasion took place. He was the number one disc jockey on the number one station. And there was a competition of sorts going on at that time in New York City. It was only AM radio. We didn't have FM radio. So on WINS, there was a guy named Murray the K. Murray the K was called the fifth Beatle, and you had Cousin Brucey on WABC, and then you had the WMCA Good Guys. And you could go back and forth as a teenager between these three stations and just hear wonderful music. Remember Wolf and Jack? Yes, but I don't think he was on New York radio at that moment. He became really big afterwards. So anyway, I grew up like we all did at that time with Cousin Brucey. And he's been on the air for 50 plus years. He started on AM, then he went to FM, when FM took off, then he went to satellite radio. He was on Sirius XM for a decade or more. Now he's back on AM radio. I happened to know Bruce because there was a time in my life when I owned a record label. And we had bought the rights to Tom Jones' 1960s television show, The Music Rights, and we put out this big album of Tom Jones singing duets with all these wonderful artists, from Barbara Streisand and you name it. And we needed to promote it. So I said to myself, who would be better to help me promote than Cousin Brucey? And I called him up and I said, Brucey, we're gonna do a Tom Jones impersonation contest. Would you emcee the contest? And he said, I would be happy to do it. And we did that. And we found a guy that was so much like Tom Jones. He sang like him, he looked like him, he acted. It could have been Tom Jones. And Cousin Brucey helped me do that. And from there I established a relationship with him. So when I started the podcast, I rang him up and I said, Bruce, I'm just starting this thing. Would you be my first guest? And he said, absolutely that he would do it. He's so gracious, he's so wonderful. And he came on, he told all these wonderful stories about what it was like on radio at that time. And the one thing that I really loved in the entire episode, for anybody that doesn't know him, he's got a theme song, this Cousin Brucey theme song that was recorded by the Four Seasons. And I said to him, Brucey, you gotta tell me, how did you get that theme song? Because you hear it every time he's on the air. He plays it underneath as he's doing his introduction, et cetera, you can Google it. I mean, it's so famous. And he said to me, he told me the story, I didn't know that they were doing it. They surprised me, they gave me this gift that was the song that was the Cousin Brucey theme song. And now it's been with me for 50 plus years. So I said, okay, that's great. And I found the theme song and I started, I played it in the episode underneath as he was talking about it. So very cool. When I have a music or a music related guest on the podcast, I'll always find one of their songs and I'll slip it in underneath. I used to be on the radio when I was in college. So I love doing a podcast almost like a radio show, like you're doing a radio show. So I start the podcast, I play one of my songs that relates to the guest underneath the introduction. And then I'll usually play something else that makes sense underneath the guest. They don't even know that it's happening because it's put in afterwards. And then at the end, I'll play the song that I started with, I'll play the entire song again. I like to mix my music into it because music is, that's my dream. That's the manifestation of my dream. And I'm trying to help people figure out what they wanna do with their life and their dream. But I want them to see this is what I did with my dream. Hmm, yeah, it's super inspiring. And I love this story, Cousin Brucie. Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm having a full circle moment. This is probably meant to resolve something like a trauma. You know, so when I grew up, he was thebomb.com, right? He was there. And I listened to this guy as a kid. I listened to him every day. And as a little girl, I had this love for him, like huge love. I was so cute. I sat down and wrote him this letter. God knows what it said. I'm sure I gushed everything he meant to me and how much I listened to him and who I was you know, I sealed up that little letter and put on a stamp and went down to the mailbox and put in the mailbox and completely forgot about it. And months later, a letter arrived, addressed to me from Cousin Brucie. And I will tell you, you know, beautiful Yiddish saying, I quelled. I almost lost my mind, but here's where the villain comes in. I was the baby in the family. Now, my brother and I are really close. Just, you know, he's a Grammy, award-winning, recording engineer, he's a composer. He does very well. He's a great human being, but we were kids. And in this moment, he was not a nice brother. And he took the Cousin Brucie letter from me. And when I went crying to my mom, and I have to believe this is what happened, that letter was lost. So what I'm saying is Cousin Brucie, I assume Cousin Brucie wrote to me. If it wasn't someone in his office, I'll pretend it was him, but I never got to read that letter. And can you imagine, I've never forgotten that. Like that's still like a, oh! I'm gonna do this for you, Debbie, okay? Cause you're so terrific. I'm gonna get in touch with Brucie. I'm gonna tell him the story and I'm gonna ask him to write you a letter again, okay? And I bet you he'll do it. That's so beautiful. Oh my God. And you know, I'm gonna, if this actually happens, I am gonna have to allow my inner child to come forward to completely receive that letter and have that moment because that was really huge. I actually thought that was incredibly kind of him. To even, I'm sure he was deluged, right? He was so famous at the time and it was so kind to write this tiny little girl, you know, who had a crazy crush on him and thought he was like, you know, just couldn't wait to listen to him every day. Like he really made my life so awesome. So yes, that would be beautiful and I receive, I receive. Okay, well, I'll see what I can do. I can't make any promises for him, but he's such a nice guy that I suspect that he'll be happy to do this. Particularly if I tell him you'll read it on the air. Oh, I will read it on the air. I'll read it to my brother. I will frame it. Yeah, like, yeah, that's a full circle moment. It really is. It's crazy the things you never forget from when you're a kid that have such, you know, a huge impact on you one way or the other. So I wanna ask this because I think there's two ways I wanna ask this. The first piece is you have this thing and I love that you created it called the dream theory, the five step plan. Like this is how you implement a dream, but I also wanna like throw this into the mix because I have this so much in common with you in so many ways, podcasters, dream. I've written books about creating dreams. It's been very important in my life. Later on in life, picking music back up. I was a professional actress and singer. It's what I did till I got into voiceovers and radio and everything took off. I'm grateful for where I am. And yet here COVID brought up for me. Oh, whatever happened to music? It was, it's everything to me. So my partner, we lived together. He dusted off his guitar and he used to be a professional guitar player and hasn't been. He's been in real estate and all of a sudden he starts playing, I start singing. Five months later, we're booking online gigs and podcasts are interviewing us. And I'm just sitting back watching this saying, this is a beautiful ride. I'm not efforting, but for dreams, let's say we want something bigger for us. Let's say people who are listening are saying, man, this guy's inspiring me. If he can, dot, dot, dot. So what, Robert, do you recommend people do five steps in order to take ourselves from where we are right now into the much grander, the project grand slam idea of where we could be? Well, I did create what I call my dream theory. And I use the word dream as an acronym in order to explain the theory. So if I may, I'll go through it with you quickly. The D stands for dream. Everybody has a dream. Most people know what that dream is because it's still inside of them. But with just a little bit of effort, they can refine that. I really believe everybody starts out with a dream. And if you're lucky enough to have pursued it, wonderful, but so many people have not done that are of dream. The dream has to be somewhat realistic. I mean, if I decided when I was 60 that I wanted to become a professional baseball player, that probably wasn't gonna be very realistic. And some might say, well, becoming a rock star at 60 was not so realistic either, but I thought it was and I thought I could do it. So the dream has to be somewhat realistic. The E of the dream theory is the most important thing. It's execute. And by that, I mean everything in life, I think requires an action plan. If you wanna be successful at anything, you need an action plan. It's just a series of baby steps to get you from A to Z. When I decided that I wanted to be a full-time musician, I wanted to go for it. I wanna be a rock star. I literally sat down with kind of a napkin and wrote out the first five or 10 steps that I thought I needed to take. And it breaks it down and makes it into bite-sized pieces that enable you to move forward because the inertia is what keeps people from going forward. Something, it's just too big for them. It's too much, they can't comprehend how do they start? Where do they go? How do I make this happen? Well, if you break it down into small pieces, it makes it all the more doable. So that's the E. The A of dream, D-R-E-A-M is for adjust. Why? Because there is no such thing as a dream that's a direct straight line. Like I said, in music, for me, it was one step forward, two steps back, three steps sideways. I like to quote the former heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson, who was asked whether or not he had a plan when he went into the ring for a fight. He said, every fighter has a plan until they get hit in the face. Okay, and then you have to adjust your plan. There's always gonna be an obstacle. There's always gonna be an issue. There's always gonna be something. But if you think about it, and if you really put your mind to it, you'll figure out a workaround. Okay, the objective is continue to move forward. And then the M of the dream theory is measurement. How do I measure my success? Remember dreams come in all different shapes and sizes. My dream happened to be music, but other people's dream could be to learn a new hobby, to learn a new skill, to open a store, to open a restaurant, to go into a new business, to go into a new career. Everything has got, these are all dreams and they're all different kinds of dreams and they all have different measurements of success. And my feeling is, look, let's be really down to earth about this. Not every dream is going to succeed. I believe it's not the success or the failure that counts. It's the act of trying. That's what gives you the inner satisfaction. That's what gives you the happiness. I took the shot. I tried. You never wanna go to your grave. You never wanna go to get to any point in your life where you say, oh, I just wish I had tried such and such. I just wish I had gone for it. You don't want regrets. I have an episode coming out on my podcast that's called Regrets and Redemption. And I speak about the fact that we never want to have regrets. And there are big regrets and little regrets. It's not, I regret that I didn't get into the course that I wanted. We're talking big regrets. These are inner feelings that are so important to you as a person and they define you as a person. You always wanted to be a teacher. You always wanted to be an actor. You always wanted to do something, but you didn't get there. So what's the answer? Are you just gonna give it up? Are you gonna let it fly out the window or are you gonna take a shot? And I am living proof that it doesn't make a difference how old you are when you decide to take that shot. I mean, if I could succeed in music, which is a young person's game, let's face it. If I could succeed in music after the age of 60, then anybody can succeed at anything. Wow. What do you do every day to keep yourself grounded, centered, moving forward? Do you have a ritual or a practice? Well, I'm a very fortunate man. I've been married to the same woman who I adore for, I don't know, 45 years or so. We started out as college sweethearts and it's continued. And I have two daughters and four grandchildren and they keep me very, very centered and I'm very, very involved with them. And I love, and I do my music and I do my podcast on a daily basis. It's got, even during this COVID mess, it's gotten me out into the world. I talk with people, I interact with people all the time and I think that's important. You've got to stay active. If all you're doing is sitting by yourself in a room and lamenting where we are as a world, that's not a way to live. You got to be trying to figure out the best way to get out there and do your thing and that's what I do. And what do you next dare to dream? What are your future dreams or your future goals, Robert? Oh God. You know what? I've been so fortunate in my different goals that my dream at this point is just to keep doing what I'm doing, hopefully stay healthy along the way as we all hopefully will be after we get past this terrible pandemic. And I want to continue to play music. I want to continue to do my podcast. I wrote a book, okay, which I'm going to come to you for your help on because I said it's one thing to have a five step dream roadmap. It's another thing I said, I want to expand upon this. So I wrote what I call the Follow Your Dream Handbook. That's great. And the handbook is basically a little bit memoir of me and my dream and how I came to it. And it's a how to and I elaborate on, well, how can I help somebody get from point A to point Z? I want to help people follow their dream and be successful. That's my mission right now. Ah, you're my dream brother. This is so great. That's beautiful, you know? So it is the end of the show. I want to tell people, definitely go to Project Grand Slam, buy the music, buy the, you know, they've got t-shirts and everything and listen to the music and you know, start to become a follower so that you can know where they're playing and what's going on. What do you want to tell people here at the end, Robert? Well, I'd love them to go to the webcast, excuse me, the website, as you said, but I also want them to get into the podcast. Please go to followyourdreampodcast.com. And again, I'm giving away all my music that goes into the podcast. It's all downloadable for free. And I'd love to get people to start, you know, listening to the podcast and sharing it and rating it. You know, I want to get it to the point that you've gotten your incredible podcast to. And if they go to the podcast website, if they go to the music website, if they get in, if the kind of music and the message that I've got resonate with people, I would be very, very happy. Cool. And you'll hear, Cousin Brucey. That's right. He's named by Robert. And also, I mean, I listened, I was checking out his, now that I've met him, I've been checking out his podcast as well. So he's got some really amazing celebrity names if you're in, into music, in music, in any fashion, or you just really like hearing some very interesting backstories of what goes on for people. It's worth tuning into and he's a great host. So I end today's show with this quote from George Herbert. Do not wait. The time will never be just right. Start where you stand and work with whatever tools you may have at your command. And better tools will be found as you go along. Tune in to the number one weekly transformation conversation Dare to Dream. Next week, my guest is Bill Gladstone, who is a bestselling author and a literary agent. Bill works with some of the most influential authors of our time, including Marie Kondo, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Neil Donald Wall, she came and taught at my book writing class, the guy is so cool and interesting, very charming. I can't wait to pick his brain. And Bill founded Waterside Productions. You don't want to miss that. If you are listening to this as a podcast and you are curious as to what I look like or my wonderful guests and see the animation and energy exchange, definitely go to and subscribe youtube.com slash Debbie Dashinger, D-A-C-H-I-N-G-E-R. And remember, don't just dare to dream, dare to turn all your dreams into your reality. Thanks for joining us today.