Hello everyone, this is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert and I have a really fun treat for you all today. We’re talking today with Ed Roman, he is an award-winning singer, songwriter, performer, multi-instrumentalist, all kinds of fun stuff, but he operates in the pop rock full country music space, and tons and tons and tons of a litany of awards, and all kinds of cool stuff.
I’m really excited about having him on the show because I know for a lot of you, you are very creative and you’re artistic in some form or fashion, and it’s really daunting to think about doing it full time. Most of the time it’s like, “Okay, well you’ve got your job and then you’ve got this other thing or you’ve got your business, but then there’s this other thing that really lights you up.”
I’m excited to have Ed on to talk today about creative entrepreneur business because I do think that it’s a whole different ball of wax than what some folks go through. He can share what his journey has been with that. Please join me in welcoming Ed to the show. Welcome, Ed.
Hey Tonya, pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.
You are quite welcome. It’s our pleasure. We’re going to dive right in and ask what are your super powers?
That’s a great question. I think it’s … without sounding corny it’s perception.
Sound corny, you can sound corny. That’s cool.
To me it’s not. I mean because I think this awareness to certain things is turned me onto so many different factions of the art world. As well as just my own personal experiences that fuel me from day to day, from the things that I experienced working outside in my garden to conversations that I have with people or moments that are punctuated by these.
Writing has a spiritual connection.
Well, that is too crazy to be coincidence and I can’t chalk that up to that. For me I’m fueled by that, whether it be in the leg of the paranormal or as I mentioned in sometimes to me this concept behind. Writing has a spiritual connection to it and I think it’s a relinquishment of the ego, and the self in order to find how this moment is pulling you through it.
For me that’s what keeps it fresh is that experience is always changing. If you try to put the map on it, especially in the art world when people are like,”Well that’s a hit song, let’s write more.” That song’s already been written, and without sounding overly artsy-fartsy about it all, I’m trying to like experience, write and then express.
To me that’s what it is, my dad … I grew up in the ’70s, so it’s like if you weren’t paying attention, and he grew up on a farm, like I did be either hit by a tractor, then taken down by a cow. We were forced to do so many because of circumstance, not because of my dad, how do we fix this? “Well, you’ve got to fix it yourself.” From electrical to plumbing to working with animals. It was all encompassing and I see a lot of parallels to my life and what I do today.
I think that’s so perfect. I think it’s necessary to call that stuff out and it’s immediate, it’s all encompassing, right? We talk a lot about living, breathing, being in the full embodiment of our superpowers, and what lights us up and doing our work in the world and all of that fantastic stuff. Well, those elements have to be there and you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief a little bit and say, “Maybe this is for a purpose, maybe there is a reason I’m experiencing this or I’m meeting this person or the synchronicities are just too great to ignore like you said.” Talk to me a little bit about how you got into music. It’s a tough industry but I can imagine, when you feel at home in it, and at peace in it, I can only imagine how fulfilling that can be.
Beautiful question Tonya. It was really my mom and through my own problem being labeled as a dyslexic with a learning disability in the 1970s was traumatic for me. It was really tough for me in school struggling on an academic level, and my mom, God bless her, she … “We want to put your son on riblet.” No. “My son has an issue with timing and understanding a word because a word is so difficult to pronounce.”
She spent hours of time with me reading, practicing, with these rulers, night after night with these flash cards, pronunciation things. It was then she realized, “Look, I’m going to put a guitar in his kids hand because he’s always playing the piano and making up his own songs and telling stories at the dinner table.” I was a bit of a ham.
It was her encouragement that accelerated me, broke me out of that shell and gave me that sense of realization today. Now, if he heard the age of 82, I have these conversations with her beautiful, and they say, “Mom thank you for doing that because it’s now those basic things that we were talking about before where we relinquish ourselves from, I’m an adult I don’t do this.” That childlike behavior and mentality permeates, and it becomes an adventure.
My mom has this wonderful disposition about life, when it comes every day is a gift. I just actually wrote that into a lyric for the record that I’m working on. To me, I see that, and again when you released that, you start to find, “Well, there’s more meaning behind this, those basic simple things are so strong now.” Maybe as a young kid, especially as a teenager, when you’re rebelling, you take those things for granted because you’re finding yourself doing all those kinds of things. But then going like, “How do I make a living at this, and how do I make it a lifestyle a choice?”
It was all those basic things that keeps me fueled. It keeps me going from like, “Oh, well, if I only have this tune on the record or on a radio station right now, that’s okay because I’m still working.” I always say to people, “It’s great to receive awards or be on lists.” Tonya, I’m just so happy to practice my craft from day to day, and that’s the same people I looked up to as a young artist were those people that had, this sort of it’s done encyclopedia, but work a library of stuff that they could look back on but never really looked back on, it just kept moving forward.
For a while I was working with puppets.
Zappa was one of those people that I like where you would record something. People said, “Well, you don’t listen back to the stuff that you do?” I’m like, “No, it’s already done.” I’m not going to sit there and go, look what I did.” Â I mean you’ve been listening to the studio for months trying to get everything together, it’s the last thing you want to do, be sitting there and listening to yourself.
It’s a journey thing, and Tonya that’s what keeps that fresh, when the struggle is there, that artistic way of thinking inside of the business world keeps you fresh, keeps it fresh. For a while I was working with puppets, lately I’ve been thinking about doing a stop animation thing with peasants for a video of mine and just being crazy like you said, “To have that fun experience. It just makes that other part disappear.” When it does happen, when it does click, when you are on the radio, when you are connecting, it’s like, “Okay good things are working, that’s what I was working towards.”
Beautiful, really beautiful. What a gift that your mom is in your life, so gorgeous. Let’s tell people where they can go to find out more about you and then we’ll take a quick break.
roman.net is where you can go, and all my social networking buttons or their Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. My YouTube channel, you can check out the latest lyric video that’s for the latest album read on. The latest album is out, so get it everywhere. It’s all over the place, it’s-
All over the place.
In your face Tonya.
You should have it. If you don’t have it, you should have it, for sure. Very cool. Well, we’re going to take a quick break, we’re talking with Ed Roman today about creative entrepreneur business and we will be right back folks. Stick with us.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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